Article
"In the Washington of 2016, even when the policy can be bipartisan, the politics cannot. And in that sense, this year shows little sign of ending on Dec. 31. When President Obama moved to sanction Russia over its alleged interference in the U. S. election just concluded, some Republicans who had long called for similar or more severe measures could scarcely bring themselves to approve. House Speaker Paul Ryan called the Obama measures ”appropriate” but also ”overdue” and ”a prime example of this administration’s ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world.” Other GOP leaders sounded much the same theme. ”[We have] been urging President Obama for years to take strong action to deter Russia’s worldwide aggression, including its   operations,” wrote Rep. Devin Nunes,  . chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. ”Now with just a few weeks left in office, the president has suddenly decided that some stronger measures are indeed warranted.” Appearing on CNN, frequent Obama critic Trent Franks,  . called for ”much tougher” actions and said three times that Obama had ”finally found his tongue.” Meanwhile, at    and on Fox News, various spokesmen for   Trump said Obama’s real target was not the Russians at all but the man poised to take over the White House in less than three weeks. They spoke of Obama trying to ”tie Trump’s hands” or ”box him in,” meaning the   would be forced either to keep the sanctions or be at odds with Republicans who want to be tougher still on Moscow. Throughout 2016, Trump has repeatedly called not for sanctions but for closer ties with Russia, including cooperation in the fight against ISIS. Russia has battled ISIS in Syria on behalf of that country’s embattled dictator, Bashar Assad, bombing the besieged   city of Aleppo that fell to Assad’s forces this week. During the campaign, Trump even urged Russia to ”find” missing emails from the private server of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. He has exchanged public encomiums with Russian President Vladimir Putin on several occasions and added his doubts about the current U. S. levels of support for NATO  —   Putin’s longtime nemesis. There have also been suggestions that Trump’s extensive business dealings with various Russians are the reason he refuses to release his tax returns. All those issues have been disquieting to some Republicans for many months. Sens. John McCain,  . and Lindsay Graham,  . C. prominent senior members of the Armed Services Committee, have accepted the assessment of 17 U. S. intelligence agencies regarding the role of Russia in the hacking of various Democratic committees last year. That includes the FBI and CIA consensus that the Russian goal was not just to discredit American democracy but to defeat Clinton and elect Trump. They say the great majority of their Senate colleagues agree with them, and McCain has slated an Armed Services hearing on cyberthreats for Jan. 5. But the politicizing of the Russian actions  —   the idea that they helped Trump win  —   has also made the issue difficult for Republican leaders. It has allowed Trump supporters to push back on the intelligence agencies and say the entire issue is designed to undermine Trump’s legitimacy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far resisted calls for a select committee to look into the Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. He has said it is enough for Sen. Richard Burr,  . C. to look into it as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Typically, Republican leaders and spokesmen say there is no evidence that the actual voting or tallying on Nov. 8 was compromised, and that is true. But it is also a red herring, as interference in those functions has not been alleged and is not the focus of the U. S. intelligence agencies’ concern. For his part, Trump has shown little interest in delving into what happened. He has cast doubt on the U. S. intelligence reports to date and suggested ”no one really knows what happened.” He also has suggested that computers make it very difficult to know who is using them. This week, Trump said it was time to ”get on with our lives and do more important things.” However, at week’s end he did agree to have an intelligence briefing on the subject next week. The   has not wanted the daily intelligence briefings available to him in recent weeks, preferring that they be given to the men he has chosen as his vice president (Mike Pence) and national security adviser (Mike Flynn) with Trump taking them only occasionally. The irony of this controversy arising at the eleventh hour of the Obama presidency can scarcely be overstated, and it defines the dilemma facing both the outgoing president and the incoming party in control. Obama appears to have been reluctant to retaliate against the Russian hacking before the election for fear of seeming to interfere with the election himself. The Republicans, meanwhile, have for years called for greater confrontation with the Russians, with Obama usually resisting. Obama did join with NATO in punishing the Russians with economic sanctions over the annexation of Crimea. Those sanctions may have been painful, coming as they did alongside falling prices for oil  —   the commodity that keeps the Russian economy afloat. On other occasions, despite Russian provocations through surrogates in Syria and elsewhere, Obama did not make overt moves to force Russia’s hand. That includes occasions when Russia was believed to be hacking critical computer systems in neighboring Ukraine, Estonia and Poland. But this week, following a chorus of confirmation from the U. S. intelligence community regarding the Russian role in computer hacking in the political campaign, Obama acted. He imposed a set of mostly diplomatic actions such as sanctioning some Russian officials, closing two diplomatic compounds and expelling 35 Russian diplomats. There may have been more damaging measures taken covertly, and some Russophobes in Washington held out hope for that. But the visible portion of the program scarcely amounted to major retribution. And Putin saw fit to diminish the Obama sanctions further by declining to respond. Although his government has steadfastly denied any interference in the U. S. election, Putin rejected his own foreign minister’s recommended package of    responses. (He even sent an invitation for U. S. diplomats to send their children to a holiday party in Moscow.) That allowed Putin to appear for the moment to be ”the bigger man,” even as he spurned Obama and kept up what has looked like a public bromance with Trump, who tweeted: ”Great move on delay (by V. Putin)   I always knew he was very smart!” At the moment it may seem that the overall Russia question amounts to the first crisis facing the Trump presidency. Whether forced by this campaign interference issue or not, Trump must grasp the nettle of a relationship Mitt Romney once called the greatest threat to U. S. security in the world. To be sure, Trump needs to dispel doubts about his ability to stand up to Putin, who has bullied and cajoled his way to center stage in recent world affairs. But Trump also seems determined to turn the page on past U. S. commitments, from free trade philosophy to funding of NATO and the United Nations. And if his Twitter account is any guide, Trump shows little concern about the conundrum others perceive to be facing him. Above all, Trump has shown himself determined to play by his own rules. A year ago, many were confident that would not work for him in the world of presidential politics. We are about to find out whether it works for him in the Oval Office."
"  Donald Trump has used Twitter  —   his preferred means of communication  —   to weigh in on a swath of foreign policy issues over the past few weeks. His comments give a glimpse into how his incoming administration will deal with pressing foreign matters  —   but also highlight how reactionary comments on social media can immediately spur international concern and attention. And his staff has indicated that taking to Twitter to air his concerns or, often, grievances, won’t end once he enters the Oval Office. On Wednesday, Trump blasted the U. S.’s abstention from the U. N. Security Council vote on Israeli settlements earlier this month. The tweets came just hours before Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech defending the decision and calling the continued building of settlements on Palestinian territory in the West Bank a threat to the   solution in the region. Trump’s support for Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  —   who has had a fraught relationship with President Obama  —   may be the biggest forthcoming shift in immediate foreign policy between the outgoing and incoming administrations. Throughout the campaign, he pledged that his administration would be a steadfast ally of Israel. To underscore that, Netanyahu replied to one of Trump’s morning tweets, thanking him  —   and also his children Donald Jr. and Ivanka, who are close advisers  —   for their support. Ivanka converted to Judaism when she married her husband, Jared Kushner. An Israeli official told CNN the government will give the Trump administration ”detailed, sensitive information” proving that the U. S. worked to push through the resolution. The Obama administration has denied those claims. Last week, after the U. S. decided not to veto the resolution, Trump also tweeted that ”things will be different” come his inauguration, and then on Monday he again blasted the U. N. as ineffective. The Israeli settlement issue has been at the forefront in recent days, but last week Trump also weighed in on nuclear issues. In a tweet, Trump called for the U. S. to strengthen its nuclear arsenal. MSNBC’s Morning Joe reported that the   told them he wanted an ”arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass.” As the Washington Post’s Dan Zak told NPR’s Robert Siegel on All Things Considered last Friday, Trump was inconsistent in his statements about nuclear weapons during the campaign. ”Trump said, you know, he’d be the last to use nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a horror. He seemed to understand what they’re capable of doing,” Zak said. ”At the same time, he said it was only a matter of time until countries like South Korea and Japan get nuclear weapons. He seemed to tacitly or not so tacitly endorse proliferation, again going against decades of international policy.” Trump also slammed China for its seizure of an unmanned U. S. Navy underwater drone, calling it ”unpresidented” in a tweet before correcting the typo in a new tweet. After talks with the Pentagon, China agreed to return the drone, but then Trump later said the country should keep it. It’s not the first time Trump has stoked tensions with China. In a stark break with protocol, Trump spoke on the phone with Taiwanese President Tsai   earlier this month. Beijing considers Taiwan to be a renegade province and doesn’t recognize it, and most other countries don’t either. The U. S. has operated under a ”one China” policy for more than four decades. Throughout the campaign, Trump blasted China for taking away U. S. jobs and claimed it was intentionally devaluing its currency to boost exports. He has blasted U. S. companies that manufacture goods in China, but as a New York Times story noted Wednesday morning, many of his daughter Ivanka’s clothing and shoe lines are made in China much of Trump’s own apparel line is also made overseas, including in China."
"  Donald Trump is unabashedly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, a day after outgoing President Obama issued tough sanctions against the country in response to alleged cyberattacks intended to influence the U. S. elections. In a tweet Friday afternoon, Trump responded to Putin’s decision not to expel U. S. diplomats from Russia in kind after Obama ordered 35 Russian diplomats to leave the country  —   admiring the Russian leader’s strategic approach over President Obama, which is the theme of Trump’s ongoing praise of Putin. Earlier Friday, Putin instead signaled he would wait to decide how to move forward until Trump takes office, giving him someone in the Oval Office who has been much friendlier and quite generous with his praise  —   a stark break from decades of U. S. foreign policy. The Russian Embassy in the U. S. also retweeted Trump’s post, which he pinned to his Twitter timeline so it would remain at the top. Trump also posted it to Instagram. On Thursday, President Obama issued a stinging rebuke to Russia after U. S. intelligence officials concluded the country had directed hacks into Democratic National Committee emails and the personal email account of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. In a statement, Obama said ”all Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions.” Trump’s praise of Putin stands in stark contrast not just with the outgoing administration, but with top leaders of his own party. GOP congressional leaders backed Obama’s actions on Thursday, albeit criticizing the president for being too late in taking a strong stance against Russia. House Speaker Paul Ryan called the sanctions ”overdue” but ”appropriate” and said that ”Russia does not share America’s interests.” ”The Russians are not our friends,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement, calling the sanctions a ”good initial step.” Obama has pointed to the impact of past sanctions by the U. S. and Europe in the wake of the annexation of Crimea, maintaining that his approach has damaged Russia’s economy and isolated the country on the world stage. Trump released a brief statement Thursday evening in response to the latest actions by Obama against Russia simply stating that, ”It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.” He said he would meet with U. S. intelligence officials regarding the cyberhacking, though Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on their findings and throughout the campaign dismissed reports that Russia was behind the attacks. Trump raised eyebrows throughout the campaign with his praise of Putin. ”He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” Trump said in an interview with MSNBC in December 2015. He was pressed by host Joe Scarborough on the killings of political figures and journalists critical of Putin and deflected. That interview came just after Putin praised Trump as ”talented.” Later in the campaign, Trump suggested Russia should find emails missing from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, which his aides later said was a joke. At the time, Trump tried distancing himself from Putin. ”I never met Putin. I don’t know who Putin is. He said one nice thing about me. He said I’m a genius. I said, ’Thank you very much’ to the newspaper, and that was the end of it,” Trump said. But not long after, Trump was heavily criticized for saying Putin wasn’t going into Ukraine, even though his country had already annexed Crimea. The Republican nominee also repeated his praise of Putin as ”a leader far more than our president has been” at a national security town hall in early September. One of the most memorable clashes in Trump’s debates with Hillary Clinton was when the Democratic nominee accused him of being a ”puppet” of Russia. Trump shot back: ”No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet.” He often criticizes the   ”reset” with Russia that Clinton led in the early days of the Obama administration, even as Trump himself repeatedly has called for friendlier relations with Moscow. With three weeks until Inauguration Day, Trump has increasingly used his Twitter feed to weigh in on foreign policy  —   violating usual protocols where the winner of an election avoids interfering in the foreign policy actions of the sitting president. Trump’s staff has said such use of Twitter to weigh in on foreign policy won’t end once he’s in the Oval Office. So far, he’s outlined his opposition to the United States’ abstention from the U. N. Security Council vote on Israeli settlements earlier this month. Trump has also criticized China for its seizure of an unmanned U. S. Navy underwater drone, before saying the country that he’s often criticized should keep the drone. And Trump has also called for the U. S. to strengthen its nuclear arsenal and recently seemed to encourage a nuclear arms race with Russia  —   perhaps because he believes his strategic approach to Putin will work better than Obama’s."
"Updated at 2:50 p. m. ET, Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia won’t be expelling U. S. diplomats in a    response to U. S. sanctions, as his foreign minister had suggested earlier Friday. Instead, he says he will decide how to move forward depending on the actions of   Donald Trump’s administration. Trump took to Twitter on Friday afternoon to praise Putin’s decision, calling it a ”great move.” On Thursday, the White House announced sanctions against Russia in response to what it called ”a   campaign of   operations” against the U. S.  —   including actions meant to interfere with the U. S. presidential election. On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov went on state TV and called the sanctions ”antics” that Russia can’t leave unanswered. He said the U. S. provided no evidence for its claims of Russian cyber operations, NPR’s Lucian Kim reports. ”The Kremlin has consistently denied accusations that its hackers had broken into the Democratic National Committee or tried to sway the U. S. election,” Lucian notes. And he proposed specific counteractions Russia could take. As we reported Thursday, President Obama’s executive order calls for 35 Russian diplomats  —   described by the White House as ”intelligence operatives”  —   to be expelled from the U. S. and for two Russian facilities in the U. S. to be closed. Sanctions will also be imposed on several Russian individuals and organizations, and Obama’s statement says more actions will be taken, ”some of which will not be publicized.” Lavrov announced plans for Russia to respond in kind, as Lucian reported from Moscow. Lavrov’s plan, which needed Putin’s approval, called for 35 American diplomats to be expelled and for U. S. diplomats to ”lose access to two buildings, just as Russian diplomats will no longer be able to use two retreats in Maryland and New York,” Lucian reports. But just two hours after Lavrov’s comments, Putin announced that nothing of the sort was happening. Putin called the Obama administration’s actions provocative and said Russia had grounds for a response. He said the Kremlin would reserve the right to a countermeasure  —   but that it would not ”stoop to the level of irresponsible diplomacy,” as Lucian translated it. At least for now, no diplomats will be expelled or barred from using facilities in Moscow, he said. Any actions will wait until Trump takes office. ”It is regrettable that the Obama administration is ending its term in this manner,” Putin said. ”Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family. ”My season’s greetings also to   Donald Trump and the American people. I wish all of you happiness and prosperity.”"
"From photography, illustration and video, to data visualizations and immersive experiences, visuals are an important part of our storytelling at NPR. Interwoven with the written and the spoken word, images  —   another visual language  —   can create deeper understanding and empathy for the struggles and triumphs we face together. We told a lot of stories in 2016  —   far more than we can list here. So, instead, here’s a small selection of our favorite pieces, highlighting some of the work we’re most proud of, some of the biggest stories we reported, and some of the stories we had the most fun telling. Transport yourself to Rocky Mountain National Park, with all its sights and sounds, in an immersive geology lesson with Oregon State University geology professor Eric Kirby, who discusses the geologic history of the Rockies in   video. ”Today, Indians use much less energy per person than Americans or Chinese people. Many of its 1. 2   population live on roughly $2 a day. But what if all of those people had electricity at night, a refrigerator, a car? ”With ambitious goals to improve the standard of living, and 400 million people lacking reliable electricity, ’This means we need to enhance the energy supply by four to five times what it is now,’ says Ajay Mathur, a climate expert who runs the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. He says that no matter how fast India increases its clean energy, like solar and wind, the country will probably also double its use of coal between now and 2030. ”Todd Stern, who served till last month as the top U. S. envoy on climate change, says India has a steeper hill to climb than any other country. ’There is no country, probably, with a bigger challenge  —   looking at the number of people, the level of their economic growth, the number of people who don’t have access to electricity,’ he says.” Can India’s Sacred But ’Dead’ Yamuna River Be Saved? India’s Big Battle: Development Vs. Pollution, In India’s Sundarbans, People And Tigers Try To Coexist In A Shrinking Space, ”Trying to understand the Trump Organization is a daunting task.   Donald Trump has not released his tax returns, so the best clues about his privately held business interests come from a financial disclosure form he released in May. ”The document covers scores of pages with small type, and suggests he is financially involved with hundreds of companies, including some that simply license his name. ”A dive into that disclosure form, submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, shows his largest sources of revenue are golf courses and   rents. But his interests are far flung, and include media, retail, entertainment and much more. ”Those business interests are affected by government agencies and policies. NPR scoured this document to create an overview of some of his business assets and operations (excluding debts) and the possible areas where conflicts may arise.” The protests at the Standing Rock Reservation, which started in early 2016, had small roots but grew into the thousands, drawing support from Native Americans from across the country, as well as activists who joined in solidarity against the proposed route of the   Dakota Access Pipeline just north of the reservation. In December, those protests won a concession from the federal government: The Army Corps of Engineers announced it would deny the permit necessary to build the oil pipeline in that area. In Their Own Words: The ’Water Protectors’ Of Standing Rock, Protesters Mark A Solemn Thanksgiving Day At Standing Rock, Protesters, Police Still Clashing Over Disputed North Dakota Pipeline, N. D. Pipeline Protester: ’It’s About Our Rights As Native People’ ”Up to 1 in 5 kids living in the U. S. shows signs or symptoms of a mental health disorder in a given year. So in a school classroom of 25 students, five of them may be struggling with the same issues many adults deal with: depression, anxiety, substance abuse. And yet most children  —   nearly 80 percent  —   who need mental health services won’t get them. ”Whether treated or not, the children do go to school. And the problems they face can tie into major problems found in schools: chronic absence, low achievement, disruptive behavior and dropping out. ”Experts say schools could play a role in identifying students with problems and helping them succeed. Yet it’s a role many schools are not prepared for.” ”Grapefruit’s bitterness can make it hard to love. Indeed, people often smother it in sugar just to get it down. And yet Americans were once urged to sweeten it with salt. ”Ad campaigns from the first and second world wars tried to convince us that ’Grapefruit Tastes Sweeter With Salt!’ as one 1946 ad for Morton’s in Life magazine put it. The pairing, these ads swore, enhanced the flavor. ”In our   world, these curious culinary time capsules raise the question: Does salt really make grapefruit taste sweeter? And if this practice was once common, why do few people seem to eat grapefruit this way today?” Rio de Janeiro hosted the world’s elite athletes in an Olympics that promised transcendent moments in sports  —   and potential controversies outside of the competition. The Summer Games began Aug. 5, and more than 10, 000 athletes from 206 countries participated. From concerns over the Zika virus and Russian athletes banned on doping charges to incredible wins by the U. S. women’s gymnastics team and sweet moments of   support, the 2016 Olympics was one of the biggest events  —   and biggest stories  —   of the year. ’A Fantasy Of A Fantasy’: U. S. Fencer Jason Pryor On Reaching The Olympics, In Rio’s Favelas,   Benefits From Olympics Have Yet To Materialize, How The Olympic Medal Tables Explain The World, ”Philando Castile spent his driving career trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, revocations and reinstatements, raising questions about bias, race and luck. ”Castile’s trouble with traffic stops began when he still had his learner’s permit. He was stopped a day before his 19th birthday. From there, he descended into a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, late fees, revocations and reinstatements in various jurisdictions. ”Court records raise big questions: Was Castile targeted by police? Or was he just a careless or unlucky driver? ”An NPR analysis of those records shows that the    cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, Minn. suburb, was stopped by police 46 times and racked up more than $6, 000 in fines. Another curious statistic: Of all of the stops, only six of them were things a police officer would notice from outside a car  —   things like speeding or having a broken muffler.” During a week in Cleveland, photographer Gabriella Demczuk explored the ways that people embraced and challenged the Republican Party’s mission in this election  —   both from inside and outside the party. Then in Philadelphia, Demczuk continued her exploration of the fractures in America’s political system, examining the Democratic Party’s attempt to make itself ”stronger together.” True Believers, Protesters And Trump: Scenes From Cleveland, Dissent, Drama And Unity At The Democratic Convention, ” ’With recent events and political environment, these weapons will be harder to get a hold of.’ ’This is what your   dreams it could be when it grows up.’ ’I can meet . .. near the FL Mall in Orlando or any other time.” ”Cash is king.’ ”These classified advertisements for   weapons were listed on Armslist, a website where anyone can advertise a firearm they’d like to sell, and anyone can contact a seller with an offer to buy. The site is legal. But there’s no way to know whether buyers and sellers who meet through Armslist are following federal, state or local background check rules. ”We wanted to see how many   firearms  —   defined here as handguns and rifles able to rapidly fire a large number of bullets, one shot per trigger pull, without having to reload  —   can be currently found on Armslist, and how quickly new listings appear. This provides a window into the difficulty of regulating access to a type of weapon frequently used in mass shootings.” Our favorite albums of the year draw from all of the genres we cover at NPR Music, from rock, pop and   to classical, jazz, electronic and international artists. These are the records NPR Music couldn’t stop playing  —   albums that speak to a moment and a lifetime, that party, and that exist in their own worlds. Our list of the year’s best songs may begin with Beyoncé and end with Drake, but between those two stars you’ll find a   mix that celebrates all of the music we love. These are the pop anthems, rallying cries, party jams, riff rockers, perfumed piano pieces and emotional exorcisms that we loved to share this year. ”Across the country, private organizations,   groups and individuals quietly have been working to ease the plight of Syrian refugees. More than 11, 000 have arrived in the U. S. this year, fulfilling a pledge by the Obama administration. That figure far exceeds the number of Syrian refugees accepted during the previous four years of the Syrian war, and the White House is calling for a big bump in the overall number of refugees next year. ”It had been a long journey for Osama and Ghada and their four kids, who are among the nearly 5 million Syrians who have fled their homeland since the war began in 2011. They survived the war in Syria and had struggled for three years as refugees in Jordan when they were notified by the U. N. refugee agency, UNHCR, that they had been accepted for resettlement in the U. S.” ”There are huge gaps in school funding between affluent and   districts. And, with evidence that money matters, especially for disadvantaged kids, something has to change. ”School Money is a   nationwide collaboration between NPR’s Ed Team and 20 member station reporters exploring how states pay for their public schools and why many are failing to meet the needs of their most vulnerable students.” Is There A Better Way To Pay For America’s Schools? Why America’s Schools Have A Money Problem, President Obama spoke to NPR as he prepared to leave Washington for the holidays, reflecting on the year that was, the 2016 campaign and other news, plus revealing what he’s hearing from citizens. In the   exit interview, NPR’s Steve Inskeep asked Obama about Russian interference in the U. S. election, executive power, the future of the Democratic party and his future role."
"I did not want to join yoga class. I hated those   beatific instructors. I worried that the people in the class could fold up like origami and I’d fold up like a bread stick. I understood the need for stretchy clothes but not for total anatomical disclosure. But my hip joints hurt and so did my shoulders, and my upper back hurt even more than my lower back and my brain would. not. shut. up. I asked my doctor about medication and he said he didn’t like the side effects and was pretty sure I wouldn’t, either. So I signed up for Gentle Mind and Body Yoga, the   of yoga classes. I think the principle is that you get into some pose that has cosmic implications and then hold the pose until you are enlightened or bored silly. I like the bridge pose, where you lie flat on your back and put a rubber block under your butt. I purely hate the eagle pose, where you wind your arms around each other and then wrap your legs around each other and stand on one foot I drop like a sprayed mosquito. The teacher is forgiving: ”Yogi’s choice,” she says, meaning that I’m now a yogi and I can do what I want. She says we’re not trying to get anywhere, and I deeply appreciate not trying to get anywhere. I enjoy a stretchy pose where you sit with a knee crossed over a leg and the opposite arm wrapped around the knee but the point is, says the teacher, to wring the toxins out of your internal organs. I’m not going to wring out my internal organs. Sometimes she wants us to lower our shoulders and raise our chests to open up our hearts  —   a phrase that gives me   creeps. The best is the sponge or corpse pose, which is what it sounds like. I’m fully competent at being a sponge, except you’re supposed to breathe in all the way up your left side and breathe out on your right because this activates your left and right brains. I just breathe on both sides. Then we sit on some     blankets that smell like unwashed humanity, with legs crossed. The teacher says this is called sukhasana which means easy seat, but it’s no such thing. So I stretch my legs out in front of me, yogi’s choice. We end in sukhasana with our hands in prayer and say to each other namaste, which is apparently Sanskrit for the godhead in me salutes the godhead in you, but which my brain hears as basta, which is Italian for stop it, enough. I’m OK with all this, even the pretend science which I’m free to ignore or better yet, to subject to my fellow Last Word on Nothing blogger Michelle Nijhuis’ stellar B******* Prevention Protocol (BPP) which in these days of blatant disinformation if you haven’t read, clipped out and taped to your computer screen, you may as well join an ant colony. Some b. s. you don’t need a protocol to detect, so I didn’t even try to find out whether twisting my body wrings the toxins out of my internal organs or whether breathing through my left nostril stimulates my right brain. But it’s true that after yoga, climbing steps doesn’t hurt, waiting for Greek carryout promised 15 minutes ago isn’t irritating, and on the drive home my brain doesn’t do anything except drive. Does yoga work? I’d answer this, but working through the full BPP takes time. So I took three shortcuts. One, I searched for yoga and efficacy in PubMed, the database of the National Library of Medicine, and skimmed the titles of review articles. No answer, or rather, too many answers: yoga for cancer, chronic low back pain, diabetes, cystitis, sleep disorders, hypertension, schizophrenia, depression, multiple sclerosis. And that was just on the first page. The second shortcut was no better. I searched the website of the National Academies Press, which publishes independent scientific analyses for the government. Yoga showed up in studies on pain management, alternative medicine, improving bus operators’ health and teens’ sleep habits, obesity, fitness, Gulf War syndrome, astronaut care and PTSD. The third shortcut was the Cochrane Reviews, independent reviews of medical information: same thing  —   yoga for asthma, cardiovascular disease, epilepsy. Bill Broad has probably answered all these questions in his book The Science of Yoga, but I’m not going to read it. My rule for any one thing that affects so many different diseases and functions is that it affects none of them and completely fails the BPP. Or else it affects something huge and general like mood or immune function that in turn affects everything else. What with lots of kinds of yogas, lots of different diseases, lots of different kinds of studies and    entities like mood or immune function, I’m giving up. I haven’t a clue whether yoga helps at all, let alone how. You’re on your own here. For myself, I’ll keep going, not because it’s not b. s. but because I like occasionally painless stairs and quiet brains. Besides, I’m finally getting competent at the infant version of the sun salute and I’ve learned never to look at the other people in the class. But I have no plans to advance to Beginning Yoga. Ann Finkbeiner is a science writer whose books include After the Death of a Child and The Jasons. She is   of the blog The Last Word on Nothing, where this essay first appeared. "
"With a   who has publicly supported the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, suggested that climate change is a hoax dreamed up by the Chinese, and appointed to his Cabinet a retired neurosurgeon who doesn’t buy the theory of evolution, things might look grim for science. Yet watching Patti Smith sing ”A Hard Rain’s   Fall” live streamed from the Nobel Prize ceremony in early December to a room full of physicists, chemists and physicians  —   watching her twice choke up, each time stopping the song altogether, only to push on through all seven wordy minutes of one of Bob Dylan’s most beloved songs  —   left me optimistic. Taking nothing away from the very real anxieties about future funding and support for science, neuroscience in particular has had plenty of promising leads that could help fulfill Alfred Nobel’s mission to better humanity. In the spirit of optimism, and with input from the Society for Neuroscience, here are a few of the noteworthy neuroscientific achievements of 2016. One of the more fascinating fields of neuroscience of late entails mapping the crosstalk between our biomes, brains and immune systems. In July, a group from the University of Virginia published a study in Nature showing that the immune system, in addition to protecting us from a daily barrage of potentially infectious microbes, can also influence social behavior. The researchers had previously shown that a type of white blood cells called T cells influence learning behavior in mice by communicating with the brain. Now they’ve shown that blocking T cell access to the brain influences rodent social preferences. It appears that interferon, an immune system factor released from T cells, is at least partly responsible for the findings. A single injection of interferon into the mice’s cerebrospinal fluid, the clear, protective fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord, was enough to restore social behaviors. Lead author Jonathan Kipnis from the University of Virginia speculates that there might be an evolutionary linkage here  —   one protecting us from the increased pathogen exposure that comes with socializing. He also says the findings could help improve our understanding and treatment of brain disorders. Of course these findings were in rodents, but earlier work by Kipnis suggests that the brain and immune system communicate in similar ways in humans. Major advances were also made this year in joining human with machine. In October 2015, Hanneke de Bruijne, a    Dutch woman with Lou Gehrig’s disease, received a brain implant that would allow her to communicate simply by thinking. Eighty percent of patients suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, as the condition is also known, ultimately have trouble communicating because of muscle paralysis. At its extreme, this paralysis results in a tragic state called   syndrome, in which patients remain fully aware but can’t express themselves they become locked inside their own bodies. The new therapy, which comes on the heels of similar work out of East Tennessee State University, was developed by a team from the University Medical Center Utrecht in collaboration with Medtronic. It consists of four electrodes implanted over the motor region of the brain that connect to a wireless transmitter implanted in the chest. After 28 weeks of training, the device was able to recognize brain activity patterns that occur with thinking about typing a particular letter. Though de Bruijne’s muscles still can’t move, this   interface can now translate her brain waves  —   or her ”thoughts”  —   into text. Among the biggest neuroscience drug advances of the year was the Food and Drug Administration’s Dec. 23 approval of Biogen’s Spinraza, or nusinersen, the first treatment for spinal muscular atrophy. Spinal muscular atrophy is the No. 1 genetic cause of death in infants. Those affected by the devastating disorder carry a gene mutation that renders them unable to produce a protein essential to survival of neurons in the spinal cord. Gradually stripped of their abilities to walk, eat and breathe, most children struck with the disease don’t make it past 2 years old. Spinraza is a gene therapy that boosts the production of the essential protein. Despite possible side effects, which include bleeding complications, kidney toxicity and infection, the drug appears to work so well that two recent clinical trials were stopped early, as it was deemed unethical to withhold treatment from babies assigned to placebo groups. As with many other drugs for rare diseases, the price of Spinraza is expected to be high to help recoup research costs  —   perhaps as high as $250, 000 per year. The Alzheimer’s disease community also received welcome news this year. After hundreds of failed trials of potential treatments over the past couple of decades, the experimental drug aducanumab, also produced by Biogen, was found in early trials to slow the cognitive decline that comes with Alzheimer’s. And then there was the ongoing resurgence of psychedelic medicine. It’s been pretty well established that the hallucinogenic anesthetic ketamine may be an effective antidepressant. Now we have some potentially groundbreaking findings for psilocybin, the active compound in ”magic mushrooms.” Two clinical trials found that just a single high dose of the drug is effective at treating symptoms of both depression and anxiety in    patients. Scientists are unsure just how psilocybin works to relieve mental duress. But one theory holds that it disrupts   thought and fixation  —   common in those suffering from depression  —   allowing selfless cognition and experience to occur. In both trials the intensity of the patients’ ”mystical experiences” correlated with the decrease in symptoms. Both research groups strongly caution against recreational use or   with magic mushrooms, but the findings have many experts and institutions reconsidering the   of negative counterculture stigma surrounding psilocybin. The list of neuroscientific advances from the past 12 months goes on: The Human Connectome Project gave us the most complete map of the cerebral cortex to date a Canadian group revealed in part how fear memories are formed scientists at Mount Sinai charted the neurocircuitry behind social aggression. Still, the field of neuroscience remains, at best, in adolescence. As British novelist Matt Haig wrote in The Telegraph in 2015, ”Neuroscience is a baby science. . .. We know more about the moons of Jupiter than what is inside of our skulls.” As the year’s abundant advances attest, there is plenty of room left for discoveries in the coming year and beyond  —   and plenty of creative, eager researchers to make them. Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired, Scientific American and on The Atlantic. com. He graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. He’s also on Twitter: @BretStetka"
"I was standing by the airport exit, debating whether to get a snack, when a young man with a round face approached me. I focused hard to decipher his words. In a thick accent, he asked me to help him find his suitcase. As we walked to baggage claim, I learned his name: Edward Murinzi. This was his very first plane trip. A refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, he’d just arrived to begin his American life. Beside the luggage carousel at Washington’s Reagan Airport, he looked out at the two lanes of traffic and the concrete wall beyond. ”So this is America?” he said. From finding his bag to finding his apartment and finding a job, there was a lot for Edward to learn. Later, he acknowledged that while he was standing in the airport looking for his luggage, he felt the magnitude of the task before him. He says questions were zipping around his head: ”How will I start? You get scared. How will I manage?” After he found his bag and I called his caseworker to come and pick him up, we parted ways. He thanked me for being his ”Airport Teacher.” But, it seemed to me, he needed a teacher for the rest of America. That might as well be Claire Mukundente’s job description  —   not in Edward’s case but for many other refugees. Halfway across the country, in Chicago, Mukundente works for the   Association, a   nonprofit, and spends her days visiting new refugees and helping them adapt to a new country. How Does The Stove Work? Today, she’s headed into a   apartment building on the city’s north side. On the second floor, Alexia Mukambalaga and six of her family members share a   apartment. They arrived two weeks ago from Congo  —   by way of Rwanda and Niger. The family crowds around a folding table for lunch  —   some standing, others sitting. Within minutes of meeting them, they ask Mukundente why the food in America tastes like pineapples. It’s so sweet, they tell her. Mukundente says food is always one of the first lessons: How to get it, how to cook it and what’s healthy. She helps the family figure out what goes in the freezer and fridge, and how to use a stove. Mukundente says many Congolese have spent more than a decade in refugee camps, so a lot of the stuff in a kitchen is brand new to them. Grocery stores, too. ”Shopping can be a big deal, especially for your own food,” says Claire Mukundente. She often accompanies new arrivals to the grocery store, explaining how to evaluate dozens of different cereal brands and why it’s important to avoid the sugary drinks. Then she moves on to other lessons: the banking system and bus routes, social norms and gender dynamics. Mukundente says they talk about ”almost everything.” She says these families have learned a lot shuttling between countries and refugee camps, but when they come to a place like Chicago, many of those skills don’t translate. But Mukundente insists that she’s not their teacher. Instead she says, ”I see them as myself. Like me, when I came.” Claire Mukundente fled Rwanda in the 1990s during the genocide. And after traveling through seven countries, she arrived in Chicago. She cleaned hotel rooms, tried to learn English and scrambled to find daycare for her three kids. Ten years ago, she decided to start teaching other refugees what she’d learned. But not all refugees have someone like Claire Mukundente. Three months after I met Edward at the airport, I visited his   apartment. It was about 30 minutes outside Washington, and he shared it with several other refugees. (He has since moved to Louisville, Ky.) Sitting in the living room that doubled as his bedroom, he told me that soon after arriving he realized he needed to be his own teacher. So, he started observing everything. ”I tried to observe very silently,” he said in the room that functions as his living room, bedroom, kitchen and dining room. He learned to read a map and a bank statement. But Edward says there was more he called them ”invisible lessons  —   ideas.” The biggest one? ”Time was paramount to every success in America.” Edward said that, during his 20 years in a refugee camp in Uganda, time had never before been linked to money. Just being a person meant you got a food ration, he said. But here, he got a job  —   as a line worker  —   and he was paid hourly. ”Time was important. Important!” He told me that things have been hard during his first three months  —   America hadn’t quite been the Promised Land he expected. ”I remember the story in the Bible: The Exodus.” Back in the refugee camp, Edward said, he always thought life would be easy in America, akin to the Biblical land of milk and honey. But now, he finds himself having to remember that the Israelites struggled, as refugees and newcomers. Eventually though, they learned to adapt to life in a new land. Edward says he hopes he will too."
"If movies were trying to be more realistic, perhaps the way to summon Batman shouldn’t have been the    —   it should have been the bat squeak. New research from the Bat Lab for   at Tel Aviv University found that bats are ”vocalizing” more information than many researchers previously thought. And researchers were able to decipher what the bats were squeaking to each other about  —   often they were bickering over things like food, sleep and mating. ”It’s not as if now we can understand everything. It’s not as if we have a    dictionary,” says Dr. Yossi Yovel, a   at Tel Aviv University and a member of the Bat Lab. ”But what we’ve found is that this cacophony that you could hear . .. actually contains much more information than previously believed. So, all of [this] shouting, all of these vocalizations that were previously all categorized as aggressive vocalizations, we can now divide them,” Yovel tells NPR’s Scott Simon. ”For example, we can classify whether the bats are arguing over food or over mating or over sleeping position or over other contexts,” he says. ”We can recognize the individuals vocalizing and we can even, to some extent, say who they are vocalizing to.” In a recent study, Yovel, along with researchers Yosef Prat and Mor Taub, monitored groups of Egyptian fruit bats with   audio and video recording for two and a half months. They say they analyzed almost 15, 000 bat vocalizations. Egyptian fruit bats are one of a small number of animal species to communicate    within their species, instead of ”broadcasting” their message. Bats do more than argue, Yovel says. But Egyptian fruit bats spend a lot of time arguing. ”Nearly all of the communication calls of the Egyptian fruit bat in the roost are emitted during aggressive pairwise interactions, involving squabbling over food or perching locations and protesting against mating attempts,” the researchers write. ”What they’re saying is stuff like: Why did you wake me up? Get out of my way,” Yovel says. ”In the case of mating, it’s usually the female protesting against a male who is trying to mate with her.” Context in bat communication was one focus of the study. If we humans say the word ”apple,” we imagine certain characteristics just from that word alone: a red color, a round shape, a certain taste, Yovel explains. ”This is something that is [a] very very important factor in human communication.” He says animals almost never demonstrate this ability. But their research shows that vocalizations between bats have more of this type of context than researchers knew about before. One goal of the research on bats is to apply it toward general knowledge of how different animals  —   including humans  —   communicate. ”It’s all part of a big question: How complex is animal communication?” Yovel says. ”Identifying context specific calls can be a first step toward the recovering of meaning in animal communication,” the researchers write. ”Understanding the encapsulated information in animal vocalizations is central to the study of sociality, communication, and language evolution.” So is there a   translator in the works? ”Step by step we are getting closer to deciphering their communication,” Yovel says. ”I don’t think we will  —   not in my time, at least  —   be able to really talk with them.”"
"Eighteen years ago, on New Year’s Eve, David Fisher visited an old farm in western Massachusetts, near the small town of Conway. No one was farming there at the time, and that’s what had drawn Fisher to the place. He was scouting for farmland. ”I remember walking out [to the fallow fields] at some point,” Fisher recalls. ”And in the moonlight  —   it was all snowy  —   it was like a blank canvas.” On that blank canvas, Fisher’s mind painted a picture of what could be there alongside the South River. He could see horses tilling the land  —   no tractors, no big machinery  —   and vegetable fields, and children running around. This is David Fisher’s American Dream. It may not be the conventional American Dream of upward economic mobility. But dreams like his have a long tradition in this country. Think of the Puritans and the Shakers and the Amish. These American dreams are the uncompromising pursuit of a difficult ideal. The scene that David Fisher imagined, on the New Year’s Eve almost two decades ago, has turned into reality. It’s called Natural Roots Farm. To get to the farm, you have to leave the motorized world behind. Cross the South River on a swinging footbridge, and there in front of you are seven acres of growing vegetables, neatly laid out in rows. It’s early in the fall, on this day the hillside beyond the fields is glowing with red and yellow leaves. It’s idyllic, almost magical. Anna Maclay is out checking on the fields. ”I came originally as an apprentice in 2002,” she tells me. ”Totally fell in love with the land. I just thought, ’I want to live here!” Her wish came true in a way she hadn’t expected. She and David Fisher fell in love and got married. They now have two   children: Leora and Gabriel. It’s a harvest day on the farm and David and Anna have some help. They’re joined by Emmet Van Driesche, who lives nearby on his own farm, and two apprentices, Kyle Farr and Calixta Killander, who are living and working on the farm for a year. Together, they’ll need to fill a wagon with spinach, beets, broccoli and a host of other vegetables and herbs. About two hundred customers have bought shares in the farm’s harvest. Among them is Maggie Potter. She arrives with her children to pick up her produce. ”It’s not only having the vegetables  —   the nourishment for our own bodies. It’s creating community, making friends along the way,” she says. If this all sounds like a vision of peace and contentment, take a closer look. Watch David Fisher at work. While the apprentices stick together in the fields, chatting as they work, Fisher works by himself, cutting greens off just above the soil, hacking out heads of broccoli. He moves quickly, with purpose in every step, almost never stopping, from daybreak until dusk. And when you talk with him, it becomes even clearer: He’s a very driven man. He’s driven, in fact, by a kind of desperation. And to understand it, you need to know his life story. David Fisher grew up in the suburbs north of New York City, in the village of Pleasantville, in Westchester County. He spent summers at a rustic camp in the Adirondacks. ”You could only get there by boat, you couldn’t drive there,” Fisher says. ”No electricity, bathe in the lake, live all summer in a tent.” Then, at the end of every summer, he’d get on a train back to Grand Central Station and it would hit him. ”Noise, steel and concrete and lights everywhere,” he recalls. It was an overwhelming sensory experience, and for young David, it wasn’t a pleasant one. When he was 15, that    paradigm shift was more than he could take. He was overtaken by despair over the environmental fate of the earth. ”I was like   this is craziness. The whole thing. Civilization as I’m seeing it is absurd. The way that humans are living on, consuming, destroying the earth is absurd,” he says. ”The only thing I could see to do was pack up and flee.” He determined to drop out of high school his parents forced him to get a diploma, graduating early. Then, Fisher got as far as he possibly could from houses and highways and smokestacks. He hung out in the west, skiing and backpacking, immersing himself in nature to ”soothe his soul,” as he puts it. He loved it, but he still knew, in the back of his mind, that it was just an escape. It wasn’t an enduring path out of his despair about the world. One day, when Fisher was 20 years old, he was back on the East Coast, visiting a friend at Hampshire College, here in western Massachusetts, and he wandered into the college’s small organic farm. It was another overwhelming sensory experience, but the opposite of Grand Central Station: ”Autumn leaves raining down, and the lush fields of vegetables and cover crops. Open the barn door, and the tables are lined with this abundance of earthy, healthy, vital produce. And I was like, ’Wow! ’” He felt like he was seeing, for the first time, a way to live immersed in the natural world, and also be productive. To make a living. He started learning to farm, from other farmers. And then he found this land near the town of Conway. You can call this farm utopian, if utopia is the kind of place where you work extra hard and live very frugally so that you can grow food in a way that’s more in harmony with nature. For instance: Half of the land on this farm is always devoted to ”cover crops” that don’t produce any food that customers will buy. The purpose of these crops is simply to protect and nourish the soil. His most defining choice, though, is to rely on horses as the primary source of power on the farm. Two of them, Pat and Lady, pull a wagon full of vegetables from the fields across the river and up a hill to a small barn beside the road where families come to pick up their produce. Kyle Farr, one of the apprentices, holds the reins and directs the horses with cryptic words and sucking sounds. David Fisher is committed to horses partly because it makes the farm more  . ”It’s so direct,” he says. He doesn’t have to rely on fossil fuels. ”The fuel is there in the grass. The power is right there, in the form of these live animals.” Also, he says, horses force you to work at a more natural rhythm. But there’s a cost, in the form of time. Horses need care and feeding every day, whether they’re pulling a wagon that day or not. Fisher learned this past year that two former apprentices at Natural Roots Farm who had learned to work with horses here and then adopted this method on their own farms, recently went back to farming with tractors. It bothers him. But he’s not giving up. Because for him, working with horses is one small answer to the despair that led him here. ”The environmental crisis is heavy. It’s a heavy, heavy situation. And to find any hope of effecting some sort of change, or examples [of change] is critical to my emotional, psychological ” he says. Over breakfast that day, I ask David, ”Are you a perfectionist?” He starts to deny it, but Anna cuts in. ”Yes!” she says. He and Anna both tell me that David’s driving ambition to build a better farm  —   constantly working, always starting some new project  —   has led to conflict between them. ”This is the   disagreement,” Anna says softly. ”I always think that we need to take on less, you know?” They’ve managed to keep this farm afloat for almost two decades now, but ”it’s still a serious struggle to make the economics of it work out,” David says. And apart from worries about money, they have to manage the logistics of a complicated life  —   200 families depending on a steady supply of produce from their farm, children in school and playing soccer, and their car parked on the other side of the river, a   walk from their rustic home. ”There’s not a lot that’s easy about living this way,” she says. ”But most of it feels pretty right. And I guess that’s turned out to be more important, for me.” Those are the words they often use, talking about their choices. This small, alternative American Dream, for them, just feels right."
"For years now, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we’ve been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games. So we’re running an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective. I played the game through the first time in something like a perfect state of awe and terror. Enraptured is, I think, the word that best describes it. Carried away completely into this ruined, beautiful world and the story of Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us. Normally such a completionist  —   so obsessed with exploring every hide and hollow in these imaginary worlds I throw myself into  —   in this instance I simply rolled with the narrative. Ran when running was proper. Slogged through dark and rain and snow and sunshine. Stood my bloody ground when left with no other options. Joel came to love Ellie, his surrogate daughter, and Ellie came to love Joel, the only father she’d ever known. And I (a father, with a daughter roughly Ellie’s age, with Ellie’s   vocabulary and Ellie’s strange, discordant humor) loved Ellie, too. So when I reached the endgame and was presented with a terrible choice (no spoilers . .. yet) I drew my guns and slaughtered my way to the end credits, alight with fury and sure knowledge that I’d made the only choice I could. Second run: The beats are all the same, the story a known thing. Joel and Ellie fight zombies and soldiers and bandits and madmen. They lose friends and see sunrises and, this time, I play with an awful wisdom. Cassandra’s curse. I know how this story ends and I have made up my mind that, this time, I will make the other choice. The right one (morally, mathematically, humanistically) and so I walk with ghosts the whole way, right up to the end, and then . .. And then I make the exact same choice again. I can’t make the other. It hurts too much. Because that is how good the storytelling is in The Last Of Us. It makes you care so deeply for a   bunch of pixels in the shape of a teenage girl that you will damn the whole world twice just for her. (OK, so now we’re gonna get spoilery. Fair warning.) The Last Of Us is a zombie story. It is incredibly derivative, borrows liberally from a hundred different books and movies, is structurally simplistic,   melodramatic, viscerally violent, and despite all this (or, arguably, because of all this) tells one of the most moving, affecting and satisfying stories you’ll find anywhere. At its heart, it is the story of Joel  —   a broken and   thief and smuggler living 20 years deep into a zombie apocalypse. He and his partner, Tess, are forced into a job that requires them to smuggle a young girl out of the Boston quarantine zone and deliver her to an army of revolutionaries because, of course, this girl is The One  —   the only person ever to be immune to the   that turns infected people into gross, murderous mushroom zombies. That young girl is Ellie. And, unsurprisingly, the job does not exactly go as planned. If this all sounds familiar, that’s fine because it is familiar. The   is a stock frame  —   tested and dependable. It is a road trip story in the same way that Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is, or Mad Max: Fury Road. Go from point A to point B, survive the journey, get there whole. And there’s nothing at all wrong with a simple narrative architecture when it is being used to support complex character arcs, as it is here. The Last Of Us is a simple road trip story underneath, existing in service to the complex and rich redemption story on top. All the stakes and ruination are laid out in the first 10 minutes, in a prologue so powerful that it’ll break your heart even if you don’t have one. Joel loses his daughter on the night the world ends, his little girl dying in his arms, under the gun of a panicked soldier trying to hold back the infected. When Ellie floats into his life two decades later, the jaded gamer in you says, Oh, so here’s where he learns to love again. . .. And you’re right. But then you watch it happen  —   in tiny moments like when Ellie, blowing off caution, walks a rickety plank between two buildings and Joel glances briefly down at the watch he wears, a gift from his daughter that he’s been wearing for 20 years  —   and you participate in it happening (protecting her, defending her, eventually becoming her for an extended chunk of the game in a brilliant bit of perspective switching) and it all just clicks. This is a love story  —   one of the best    narratives ever told. Which is when that ending comes and you are presented with the ultimate parental nightmare scenario: Will you sacrifice the life of your child to save the world? Not a stranger, a friend or even a spouse, but your own daughter (which is what Ellie is now  —   Joel’s daughter, blood or no). Because in Ellie lives the cure to the mushroom zombie plague. But in order to create it, she has to die. I started a third playthrough before writing this piece. I am walking slow, taking my time, listening to Ellie read from her joke book, watching her swarmed by fireflies on the outskirts of Boston and admiring the natural beauty and deep environmental storytelling of the game. Nature has reclaimed most of this abandoned world, giving us an unusual apocalypse run riot with wildflowers. And while I have not made it to the end yet, I know it’s coming. I know the choice I’m going to have to make. And I know exactly what I’m going to do. Jason Sheehan is an   a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book."
"For years now, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we’ve been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games. So we’re starting an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective. In the beginning, I breathed only methane. Seeded onto a pinkish and poisoned world of scouring winds, I stumbled from my broken spaceship, unsure of my footing or anything else. I saw strange plants moving, the stalagmite spikes of ore deposits like plutonium fangs, the wreckage of my crash, dust. When I moved, I heard nothing but the crunch of my heavy boots and the occasional chime from my spacesuit  —   followed, always, by the weirdly autotuned computer voice in my ear saying, ”Environmental protection falling . ..” And hers was the only human voice left to speak in the whole of this impossible universe. And I was hooked. No Man’s Sky (released in its original form in August of 2016 by indie studio Hello Games, and updated just a couple weeks ago) is a bauble, an amazement that borders on magical in its opening hours, becomes almost hypnotically comfortable at a certain point, then simply majestic in its scope and incomprehensible size. It is, at its most elemental, a procedurally generated universe in a box  —   one containing 18 quintillion planets, all unique, all created, sculpted and populated by nothing more than random numbers and some math. Because of this hugeness, it is a lonely game. Land on a planet and it is yours alone. Land on ten, twenty, a hundred, and you will likely never see anything more than the traces left behind by other amateur spacemen who came this way before you. But the loneliness is part of the point of it. It is a game created to make you feel small in the face of the (nearly) infinite. So as I play, I do so in a universe empty of man. Or at least so close to empty that the difference between truth and the fiction I am building in my head is statistically null. No Man’s Sky comes in at polar ends of a long narrative spectrum. On the one side, there’s the   story of the game, which is just terrible. At worst, it is incomprehensible   gibberish about ancient civilizations and lost artifacts. And at it’s best, it ain’t much better  —   failing on many basic levels to tell a   about the   universe being a simulation (which, you know, it is) where the player (also called ”the Traveler”) is tasked by its creator to explore his way to the center of everything, essentially making the player a kind of   landlord checking in on all the tenants. But on the other hand, it is also the best game I have ever experienced for   storytelling. To crack the hissing cockpit of my spaceship and peek out through the trees of an alien forest, to run from robots or watch herds of galloping slugs running across the plains of a   desert  —   these are experiences made for children of the Dark Ages who gobbled pulp   like candy and lay back on cold hills, staring up into the   sky and dreaming of what was out there for   geeks who’ve never wanted for anything so much as they have for a spaceship, a jetpack, a ray gun and unlimited horizons. The only human in the universe, I played in a silence that was nearly complete, and loved No Man’s Sky precisely for its emptiness and for the way that even the few aliens I ran into spoke no language I knew. Granted, this changes. You learn words. You upgrade your stuff. If you’re me, you ignore the skeleton construct of the game’s story and simply roam. With the new update, I was suddenly granted the ability to build bases, to run freighters between stars, but that almost felt like work and I just shrugged and ignored most of it for the joys of simply romping around the ’verse, telling myself stories that were better than anything that lived within the construct of the game’s narrative. I could spend days hunting for just the right beach, the right view, or playing alien zoologist, meticulously cataloguing the   space dinosaurs on one world, then scare myself half to death by stumbling upon sea monsters at the bottom of a shallow, purple sea, jump into my ship, blast off, run from some pirates, and be bounding through the snows of an ice planet ten minutes later. The quest for the center of the universe, for the   of No Man’s Sky’s story, was far less interesting than the small, quiet, private stories that lived over every hill and horizon on every new world I discovered. No Man’s Sky does not tell a great story, but it contains multitudes of them. And any time it begins to grow dull or rote or predictable, all I have to do is look up, into the starry sky, and wonder what else might be out there. And then go find out for myself. Jason Sheehan is an   a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book."
"The Colorado River is like a giant bank account for seven different states. Now it’s running short. For decades, the river has fed growing cities from Denver to Los Angeles. A lot of the produce in supermarkets across the country was grown with Colorado River water. But with climate change, and severe drought, the river is reaching a crisis point, and communities at each end of it are reacting very differently. Just outside Boulder, Colo. surrounded by an evergreen forest, is Gross Reservoir. Beverly Kurtz and Tim Guenthner live just out of eyesight from the giant   dam. And that’s on purpose. ”I could have built a house that overlooked the reservoir,” Kurtz says. But, she says, ”It’s choking off a wild river, which in my opinion is never a good thing.” Kurtz and Guenthner have a newfound job in retirement: fighting a proposed expansion to Gross Reservoir’s dam. The utility that owns it, Denver Water, wants to raise the concrete dam 131 feet. ”It doesn’t make any sense to build a   dam and disrupt the environment here when down the line, that’s not going to solve the problem,” Kurtz says. The problem is that Colorado’s population will nearly double by 2050. Future residents will need more water. Denver Water CEO Jim Lochhead says more storage is part of the solution. It’s also an insurance policy against future drought. ”From Denver Water’s perspective, if we can’t provide clean, reliable, sustainable water 100 years from now to our customers, we’re not doing our job,” Lochhead says. Demand for Colorado River water is already stretched thin. So it may sound crazy that places like Colorado and Wyoming want to develop more water projects. Legally, that’s something they are entitled to do. Wyoming is studying whether to store more water from a Colorado River tributary. ”We feel we have some room to grow, but we understand that growth comes with risk,” says Pat Tyrrell, who oversees Wyoming’s water rights. Risk because in 10 or 20 years there may not be enough water to fill up expanded reservoirs. A   drought has dramatically decreased water supply even as demand keeps growing. And climate change could make this picture worse. It makes Tyrrell’s job feel impossible. ”You understand the reality today of a low water supply,” he says. ”You also know that you’re going to have permit applications coming in to develop more water. What do you do?” Tyrrell says that as long as water is available, Wyoming will very likely keep finding new ways to store it. But a future with less water is coming. In California, that future of cutbacks has already arrived. The water that started in Colorado flows more than 1, 000 miles to greater Los Angeles. So even in the sixth year of California’s drought, some lawns are still green. ”Slowly but surely, the entire supply on Colorado River has become less reliable,” says Jeffrey Kightlinger, who manages the Metropolitan Water District in Southern California. He notes that the water level in Lake Mead, the biggest reservoir on the river, has been plummeting. An official shortage could be declared next winter. ”And that’ll be a historic moment,” Kightlinger says. It’s never happened before. Arizona and Nevada would be forced to cut back on how much water they draw from the river. California would be spared that fate, because it has senior water rights. So you wouldn’t expect to hear what Kightlinger says next. ”We are having voluntary discussions with Arizona and Nevada about what we would do proactively to help,” he says. California could help by giving up water before it has to, between 5 percent and 8 percent of its supply. Kightlinger isn’t offering this out of the goodness of his heart if Lake Mead drops too low, the federal government could step in and reallocate all the water, including California’s. ”We all realize if we model the future and we build in climate change, we could be in a world of hurt if we do nothing,” Kightlinger says. This idea of cooperation is somewhat revolutionary after years of lawsuits and bad blood. Recently, farmer Steve Benson was checking on one of his alfalfa fields near the Mexican border. ”We know there’s a target on our back in the Imperial Valley for the amount of water we use,” he says. This valley produces   of the country’s vegetables in the winter  —   with water from the Colorado River. In fact, for decades, California used more than its legal share of the river and had to cut back in 2003. This area, the Imperial Irrigation District, took the painful step of transferring some of its water to cities like San Diego. Bruce Kuhn voted on that water transfer as a board member of the district. ”It was the single hardest decision I have ever made in my life,” he says. Kuhn ended up casting the deciding vote to share water, which meant some farmers have had to fallow their land. ”It cost me some friends,” he says. ”I mean, we still talk but it isn’t the same.” Soon, Kuhn may have to make another painful decision about whether California should give up water to Arizona and Nevada. With an emergency shortage looming, Kuhn may have no choice. Grace Hood is a reporter with Colorado Public Radio. Lauren Sommer reports for KQED."
"For the last installment of NPR’s holiday recipe series, NPR founding mother Susan Stamberg lays out her special New Year’s Eve recipe for caviar pie. Here it is, so you can make it yourself. 6   egges, chopped3 tbs mayonnaise1 cup red onion, minced   cream   cup sour cream, Mix the eggs with the mayonnaise. Spread on bottom of oiled   spring pan or pie pan. Sprinkle with the minced onion. Soften with the cream cheese. Blend the mixture with the sour cream until smooth. Spread over minced onion with wet spatula. (Smooth it out with your fingers.) Cover with wax paper. Chill three hours or overnight. To serve: Spread and cover top with black caviar. Knife around sides of pan. Lift off the spring belt or just cut into wedges and lift out with pie knife. Serve with lemon slices and good crackers. I like eating it with a fork, like pie. Others spread it on crackers. Makes about 10 servings."
"Being overweight can raise your blood pressure, cholesterol and risk for developing diabetes. It could be bad for your brain, too. A diet high in saturated fats and sugars, the   Western diet, actually affects the parts of the brain that are important to memory and make people more likely to crave the unhealthful food, says psychologist Terry Davidson, director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at American University in Washington, D. C. He didn’t start out studying what people ate. Instead, he was interested in learning more about the hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s heavily involved in memory. He was trying to figure out which parts of the hippocampus do what. He did that by studying rats that had very specific types of hippocampal damage and seeing what happened to them. In the process, Davidson noticed something strange. The rats with the hippocampal damage would go to pick up food more often than the other rats, but they would eat a little bit, then drop it. Davidson realized these rats didn’t know they were full. He says something similar may happen in human brains when people eat a diet high in fat and sugar. Davidson says there’s a vicious cycle of bad diets and brain changes. He points to a 2015 study in the Journal of Pediatrics that found obese children performed more poorly on memory tasks that test the hippocampus compared with kids who weren’t overweight. He says if our brain system is impaired by that kind of diet, ”that makes it more difficult for us to stop eating that diet. . .. I think the evidence is fairly substantial that you have an effect of these diets and obesity on brain function and cognitive function.” The evidence is growing. Research from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience published in July found that obese people have less white matter in their brains than their lean peers  —   as if their brains were 10 years older. A more recent study from researchers at the University of Arizona supports one of the leading theories, that high body mass is linked to inflammation, which affects the brain. But if we understand how obesity affects the brain and memory, then maybe we could use that relationship to prevent people from becoming obese in the first place. Lucy Cheke, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, says her study in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology this November gives her some idea of how to do that. Her researchers asked obese and lean people to do a memory task that’s a virtual treasure hunt. The subjects had to hide something in a scene across various computer sessions, then they were asked what they hid, where they hid it and in which session. The obese people were 15 to 20 percent worse than lean ones in all aspects of the experiment. The finding confirmed what other researchers had already seen in rodents. ”This really picks apart spatial, item and temporal memory, as well as, crucially, the ability to integrate them,” which Cheke says is ”one of the most fundamental aspects of memory.” If you’re obese, she says, you might just be ”10 to 15 to 20 percent more likely to not quite remember where you put your keys.” Diet isn’t necessarily destiny. People can compensate. As American University’s Davidson puts it, ”Let’s say I had a kid and I gave him a   diet and he showed hippocampal dysfunction. That kid may not do worse in school.” But, Davidson adds, the processes that help the kid do well in school may be impaired. When that happens, the kid would have to work harder and be more motivated and would ”have a tougher go of it.” Cheke says with the link between obesity and the brain growing as a field of research, we could see more ways of targeting obesity. For example, if the issue is that the diet of obese people degrades their memory and makes them more likely to overeat, then maybe making their meals more memorable would help them eat less of the bad stuff. Cheke says there’s already some research showing that if you watch TV while you eat lunch, you’ll eat more and also be more likely to get hungry in the afternoon and later to eat more at dinner. She says not watching TV while you eat is one of the ”small easy changes that people can make that don’t involve a lot of   and that don’t involve a lot of sacrifices, but that can still make a significant difference into how much you’re eating.” However, even though we are beginning to understand that obesity affects the brain, we don’t exactly know how, says John Gunstad, professor and director of the Applied Psychology Center at Kent State University in Ohio. He points out that obesity changes a lot about the body: blood sugar levels, the cardiovascular system, inflammation levels throughout the body. Any one of those things could affect the brain. ”Most likely, the effect of obesity on the brain is related to not just one cause but a combination of causes,” Gunstad says. Davidson is also moving forward by studying how to break the vicious cycle of a Western diet, obesity and brain changes. But he says the underlying idea that obesity affects the brain is clear. ”It’s surprising to me that people would question that obesity would have a negative effect on the brain, because it has a negative effect on so many other bodily systems,” he says, adding, why would ”the brain would be spared?” Alan Yu is a freelance reporter who also contributes to the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. You can follow him on Twitter: @Alan_Yu039."
"Who’s the YouTube star of 2016? Adele singing carpool karaoke and the Japanese comic who made the viral     video were among the top 10 videos of the year. But there was lots of competition around the world. This month, YouTube Rewind released its list of the top 10 most popular YouTube videos in nearly 40 countries and regions, based on how many people viewed and shared them. Here’s a sampling from some of the places we cover in our blog. With nearly 6. 7 million views, Nigeria’s top video of the year features a comedic faceoff between    Emanuella Samuel and a gang of bullies nearly twice her size. ”You’re not afraid of me right?” she shouts (even though she is clearly afraid of them). The video, titled ”I’ll Beat You,” is also ranked among the top 10 most popular videos in South Africa and Uganda. Last year, a new dance  —   the na goore  —   brought out the moves in Senegal. This year, something old is new again: sabar, a traditional Senegalese dance set to energetic drumbeats and characterized by ”  lifts and springing jumps,” as a New York Times dance critic put it. Abandoned during the French colonization of the 1800s, sabar   between the 1960s and 1980s under the country’s first president in the   period as a point of national pride. The video has picked up close to 1. 4 million YouTube views. It’s the old game ”Truth or Dare” played between a dad and his son  —   part of an infomercial from India’s first furniture rental company in an attempt to woo millennial shoppers. The   ad garnered 1. 5 million views in just four days and is among the top 10 most popular videos in the country, with more than 6 million views. Dad starts off with innocent questions ”What is the capital of Nagaland” and then goes in for the kill: ”You have alcohol bottles hidden in your flat?” Perhaps it’s no surprise that Trevor Noah’s skewering of South African president Jacob Zuma was the top video of 2016 in The Daily Show host’s home country. Zuma has been facing calls to resign after having been accused of corruption and political mismanagement. In the clip, Noah pokes fun at Zuma’s use of $15 million in state funds to ”renovate his house”  —   including the installation of a pool, which Zuma said was actually a ”fire pool” whose water would be used to put out any fires. And then there’s his inability to read aloud the numeral ”769, 870.” A video of a   talk show that ponders the future of the Arabic language has racked up 9. 1 million views. The host asks some kids to name different animals. They know the English words ”giraffe,” ”crocodile” and ”owl” but go blank when asked to say the names in Arabic. And it’s not just a joke: The National, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, reports that experts are increasingly concerned about young Arabs speaking a hybrid language  —   usually Arabic laced with English  —   to sound more sophisticated and modern. The trailer for Disney’s Queen of Katwe  —   a movie based on a true story about a young chess champion rising out of the slums  —   was the fourth   video in the East African country, with 1. 8 million views. As NPR previously reported, this is possibly the first Disney movie to be set in the Africa with all black actors. One of the top videos of 2016 from Mexico come from the second most subscribed YouTuber in the world. A native Chilean who likes to rant, he’s known mainly by his stage name HolaSoyGerman  —   Spanish for ”hello, I am German,” which is his first name, pronounced Herman. He has over 30 million subscribers and 2. 9 billion views. His most popular video this year, in which he enthusiastically spews out a string of thoughts on food, has reached 24 million viewers. He dramatizes, for example, his frustration of opening a bag of chips only to find filled mostly with air. The original     video didn’t break Indonesia’s top 10 list, but the song itself clearly struck a chord. The   popular video in that country, with 8. 3 million views, is a version of the song by comedian Andre Taulany on an Indonesian talk show. The bit is just one of many imitations of the viral but   routine, showing that sometimes all it takes is a catchy beat and a silly dance to bring the world together."
"Here’s a quick roundup of some of the   you may have missed on this week’s Morning Edition. Clean that screen, It’s time to talk about germs. Yes, germs. In a somewhat startling announcement your smartphone may have five times more germs than a toilet seat. It’s OK, I just looked at my beloved little iPhone in disgust, too. All of this is according to the Japanese mobile company NIT, which seems to be exploiting the grossness that is your handheld device. As Morning Edition host David Greene said Monday, the company has installed special rolls of paper in bathrooms at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. The rolls look like toilet paper, except they have some writing on it, which says ”Welcome to Japan. ..wipe your smartphone with this.” The toilet paper then encourages you to log on to NIT’s wifi network and enjoy some quality web surfing. It’s probably a good idea to wipe your phone down now that you’re done reading. In cold coffee, It’s common knowledge that journalists follow the money to uncover stories. Just ask David Fahrenthold. But when it comes to the police officers, well, they follow the   coffee cups and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. At least that’s what happened with some police officers in Cheyenne, Wyo. As Morning Edition host David Greene said Tuesday, the officers have accused Zachary Munoz of burglary. They say he targeted a business called 4 Rivers Equipment and a JCPenney store. Police used DNA to connect the crimes. Apparently, Munoz left his coffee cup at JCPenney and a half eaten PBJ sandwich at the equipment store. So remember what your mother told you, DNA is evidence that can be traced, and it’s important to clean up after yourself. No one likes a messy burglar. Home for the holidays, Stuffed animals have all the fun these days. And this definitely stands true for    Eleanor Dewald’s stuffed bear, Teddy. As Morning Edition host Rachel Martin said Tuesday, Dewald was flying from Dallas to Detroit with Teddy by her side. But when she got off the plane, Teddy somehow managed to stay behind. Dewald’s mom sounded the call on social media and airline agent, or should we say modern day hero, Steven Laudeman, located the bear, who was unfortunately on top of a trash can. Before sending Teddy back, Laudeman took the fluffy fella on a tour of the plane cockpit, the tarmac and into the gift shop. Teddy snapped some pictures alongside the other stuffed animals there. Needless to say Teddy gets some major street cred and bragging rights for his holiday adventure. Raise a glass cup, What would parties and   be without some hearty libations? Sad! And what would hold the liquid courage we drink if red Solo cups weren’t there? Good question. Well New Year’s Eve parties tend to have plenty of drinks, which means there will be plenty of those red Solo cups floating around, but this year you need to raise your plastic cup to the oncoming 2017 and Robert Hulseman. Hulseman invented the red Solo cup and as Morning Edition host David Greene said Friday, the inventor died at age 84. His family told the Chicago Tribune that Hulseman knew every employee’s name and went to Catholic Mass on Sundays. Beyond his success of creating the cup, he also inspired a Toby Keith party song. So this weekend, we’ll fill them up and lift them up to Hulseman."
"Ben Johnston doesn’t follow the rules of music. Sure, he’s got degrees from two colleges and a conservatory. But from an early age, Johnston heard music differently. When he was growing up in Georgia, he questioned the standard scales he was taught in school. ”I played by ear and I invented my own chords,” he says. In Western music, we’re taught that there are set notes in scales, but there is actually an infinite number of pitches in between those notes. They’re called microtones, and those are the notes Johnston likes to work with. ”String Quartet No. 4,” Johnston’s take on ”Amazing Grace,” is probably his   and   work. At his home in Madison, Wis. surrounded by a flock of peacocks and a herd of barn cats, the    composer says the work has its roots in his childhood, in slavery and in his desire to hear what the song might have sounded like if Beethoven had covered it late in his career. It was actually Johnston’s love of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Broadway show tunes that made him want to be a composer. Then, during World War II, he heard Stan Kenton’s band. ”It was the first time I heard real jazz improvisation,” Johnston says. ”Immediately, I could get it by ear. It changed my whole approach to harmony.” After the war, he apprenticed with the iconoclastic American composer and   Harry Partch and studied with composers Darius Milhaud and John Cage. All of them encouraged him to follow his own path. Johnston later became a mentor himself  —   he taught at the University of Illinois for over three decades. Composer Larry Polansky, who studied under Johnston there, says Johnston’s work is groundbreaking and necessary. ”We need Jackson Pollock, we need John Ashbery, we need James Joyce and we need Ben Johnston,” he says, ”because they do question something that generally goes unquestioned.” Polansky, who went on to become a professor himself, says Johnston taught him there was more to music than the standard Western scale. ”To enforce and entrain a very specific set of pitches and reify them as somehow natural . .. just doesn’t make any sense,” he says. Johnston has used all of the notes he can wrangle in dance music, percussion pieces and orchestral work, but he spent the bulk of his career  —   almost four decades  —   composing 10 unique string quartets. Johnston, who celebrated his 90th birthday this year, recently received a special present: the completion of a more than   effort to record them all. The Kepler Quartet formed in 2002 with the specific intention to record these compositions  —   and it took 14 years of rehearsing and recording to get them all down. Eric Segnitz, the group’s second violinist, says the rehearsal process required both learning and unlearning. ”There was a fair amount of invention and learning curve and getting rid of any preconception of what a chord actually sounds like,” he says. Segnitz says what struck him even more than the complexity of the music was the way Johnston has never veered from his vision. ”There are all sorts of pressures on modern composers to reach an audience, to be popular  —   it’s like high school, basically,” he says. ”So the fact that someone has cut through all that is very meaningful.” That doesn’t mean the composer can’t be playful. In his ”String Quartet No. 10,” Johnston subtly teases a traditional tune through four movements. ”You build up this enormous expectation until finally you get to the end and . .. we reveal the tune,” he says. ”It turns out to be ’Danny Boy!’ ” Johnston now wants musicians to take his ideas into the future. He sees his string quartets as a foundation, and he wants others to build upon his tunings  —   and keep making what he calls the ”sounds that people never thought they wanted to hear.”"
"David Bowie, Prince and George Michael are all pop icons who died in 2016. But there is something else that connects them: They all helped to redefine the concept of masculinity in pop culture. Cultural critic Wesley Morris has been thinking about how these artists performed gender and sexuality. He recently wrote in The New York Times that in today’s climate, ”The Princes and the George Michaels seem as radical as ever.” Morris joined NPR’s Ari Shapiro to discuss how Bowie, Prince and Michael called upon their audiences to reimagine what it is to be a man. Hear their full conversation at the audio link and read an edited transcript below. Ari Shapiro: Let’s start with David Bowie. He was the oldest of the three, and he kind of paved the way in the 1970s. How do you think he changed our view of manliness? Wesley Morris: Sort of by suggesting that it didn’t exist, for at least the first 10 or 11 years of his career. He was part of a wave of artists who were interested in  —   and I don’t know how conscious it was  —   but it definitely was a reaction against a kind of standard notion [of what] men are supposed to do, any sort of male cliché. So paint a picture of what he did  —   how he performed his version of what it meant to be a man. For one thing, he was limber. He seemed very loose. He was what I imagine the people who might have tormented him, or tormented kids like him, would have called a ”sissy”  —   on the nicer end, I guess, the less mean end. I think that he was really interested in his femininity more than he was interested in his masculinity. He spent a lot of time creating these personae that were androgynous  —   they weren’t from this planet. Right. As much as he dissolved the border between male and female, he also kind of dissolved the border between human and alien. I mean, he made every aspect of what was normal about being human seem foreign. I think that Ziggy Stardust period was probably the most obviously queer period that he performed in. He was interested in this makeup and these platforms and this hair, and it was neither male nor female, and I think that was what was so disconcerting about him. But also, if you were a kid, it was kind of weirdly exciting, because these ideas of gender and masculinity and femininity are these acquired notions. I think that if you’re ignorant of what they signify, you see this person signifying none of it and it kind of blows your mind. Prince was 12 years younger he took what David Bowie did and ran with it. How would you describe the way he evolved from the version of masculinity that Bowie presented? It was incredibly sexual. Not only was he interested in acquiring it  —   he liked having it. He liked making sure the person he was having it with was happy. And yet he sang about it in his very falsetto voice that doesn’t sound typically masculine at all. No, no. And it has a tradition in popular music, obviously: He’s doing what people like Little Richard do. I mean, he was a seducer, [but] he wasn’t doing the thing that a lot of RB artists were doing  —   like ”Yeah, baby, you and me. We got something so special.” He doesn’t turn the lights low. And he he’s also doing it while wearing boas, high heels, eyeliner, makeup. And if not being a man in the way that we think of men was something that didn’t hurt your art or hurt your sales, then why not continue to pursue it? The thing about the ’80s in particular was just how   we had become. There was the burgeoning of the American action movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career as an action hero began. Sylvester Stallone moving from Rocky not just to Rambo, but to things like Cobra and Over The Top. This was a time when Michael Douglas was the sexiest man alive. And people who were gay, defying gender norms, were dying of AIDS. Yes. And so you have this tension between straight culture  —   and you have, in somebody like Prince, this person who is really queering the difference between these two. He was singing about heterosexual sex while looking anything but conventionally heterosexual. How do you explain the success of Bowie and Prince and these other   pop stars in an era of such  ? Their songs were good. [Laughs] Let’s get to the third member of this trifecta of musicians who exploded masculinity and who died in 2016  —   and that is George Michael. What was he doing that was different from Bowie or Prince? He seemed to be the person who was most clearly gay. Well, he was. I mean, unlike the other two, he was gay. Right, but at the height of his popularity, he wasn’t out. But he was the person who, more than anybody else, if you had a gaydar, he set it off. That shot in the video for ”Faith” that’s focused on the seat of his jeans, just swinging back and forth. Yeah, there’s that. I think that by the time the ”Faith” video came around  —   it was his first solo album  —   he wanted to have a look that separated him from Wham! And this very sort of butch, rockabilly thing that he went for was so different than the other George Michael that it was arresting. That video just completely eroticized him: I mean, the camera is rising up his body as moving around this contraption that’s spinning. It’s great. How standard was it at that time for a male body like that to be the object of the camera’s gaze? Because it’s so much more common for the camera to gaze upon a gorgeous woman, especially in a music video. Right, like the express train to Elvis is immediate. And the express train to James Brown it goes there, too. I think the thing is that it’s immediate and it’s unmediated. You are allowed to look at this body in a way that you weren’t allowed to look at Elvis’ while he danced. It’s obviously a tragedy  —   a coincidence of the calendar  —   that all three of these artists died in 2016. But do you think that when you put the three of them together, you see something about the evolution, or maybe devolution, of masculinity in pop music? Yeah. I mean, to have that happen in a year in which we were   the propriety of maleness with regard to women, and excusing it as just the thing that men do? You’re talking about the presidential race talk about sexual assault, things like that. Yes, yes. And I think that just looking at what the coming administration is going to look like, it’s gonna be full of generals, full of men who have exerted power in this very traditional way. I think that we go through these waves, these periods. It’s gonna be really interesting to see what the next three or four years turns up  —   in terms of how you might be able to trace some   from people like your Princes and David Bowies and George Michaels to whatever is happening in music in two years."
"In November, the typically straitlaced Office of Government Ethics surprised observers with a series of tweets mimicking Donald Trump’s bombastic style, exclamation points and all: ”Brilliant! Divestiture is good for you, good for America!” The controversy was  : (1) The OGE doesn’t typically air its positions publicly, advising White House transition teams behind the scenes. (2) Trump hadn’t promised the total divestitures of business interests implied by the tweets. New records shared with NPR on Friday show that behind the curious tweets was the head of the OGE himself, Director Walter Shaub Jr. In two emails, dated Nov. 30, just several minutes apart, Shaub sent to OGE Chief of Staff Shelley Finlayson the nine tweets that took the Internet by storm that day. He then followed up with a link to a legal document referenced in one of the tweets and writes: ”Get all of these tweets posted as soon as humanly possible.” The emails were part of a   document shared with NPR in response to disclosure requests under the Freedom of Information Act. OGE is generally tasked with overseeing ethics in the executive branch of the government, and so it’s one of the agencies looking into Trump’s   business interests and the conflicts of interest they create for the   as he takes over the reins of the country in January. As NPR’s Jim Zarroli has reported: ”With his vast network of licensing deals, golf courses and commercial real estate, Trump and his family stand to profit from his presidency to an unprecedented degree. Virtually any decision Trump makes could affect part of his domestic or international business empire.” Several OGE officials did not respond to requests for comment on Friday. It’s still unclear why  —   if Shaub’s tweets were deliberate  —   they were temporarily deleted on the day they were posted. At the time, an OGE spokesman said the agency was enthused by Trump’s indicated interest (on Twitter) in avoiding conflicts of interest. Despite the stylistic peculiarity of OGE’s tweets, Shaub’s position on Trump’s conflicts of interest is not secret. He appears to be on a campaign to get Trump to divest, as shown by his lengthy letter released earlier this month. ”I think that there’s a uniform consensus among everybody who does government ethics for a living . .. that Donald Trump must divest  —   he’s got to sell his holdings or use a blind trust or the equivalent, as every president has done for 40 years,” says Norm Eisen, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. ”So I took the tweets as an expression of that   view,” says Eisen, who has served as special counsel for ethics and government reform in the Obama White House. ”This is an undebatable position in our profession.” NPR had requested, under FOIA, that the agency share all emails related to the Twitter postings on Nov. 30 and related to Donald Trump. Only one exchange appeared to involve a member of the Trump team. On the day of the tweetstorm, Shaub emailed ”D. McGahn”  —   presumably Donald McGahn, the former chief of the Federal Election Commission whom Trump picked to be White House counsel  —   to notify him of the press inquiries and the OGE’s response. OGE redacted about 15 pages among a week’s worth of emails, describing them as ”draft” or ”internal notes” or ”draft communications plan.” The vast majority of the disclosures were media inquiries from the month of November  —   but also troves of messages from members of the public received around the time of the tweets. There are dozens and dozens of emails, letters and even a postcard (of Alexander Hamilton with a black eye?) expressing concerns about Trump’s business holdings and conflicts of interest. Many writers criticized OGE’s tweetstorm others welcomed its candid commentary. Most writers encouraged OGE to hold up the ethics law and standards. NPR’s Jim Zarroli contributed to this report."
"This is the time of year when everybody is making predictions for next year, and everybody is making resolutions for the things they plan to do. But it’s a Pop Culture Happy Hour tradition that while we do these things too, we also revisit the ones from last year to see whether we have any ability to know what’s going to happen (rarely!) and any tendency to follow through on our own plans (sometimes! ). As she has for the last two years, Kat Chow of NPR’s Code Switch team sits down with us to check in. What will the Oscars bring? Did Kat get her dad using Netflix? Just how much is Stephen promising to write? What habit is Glen trying to break? All this and lots, lots more on this special New Year’s edition of Pop Culture Happy Hour. Here’s Glen’s chart, by the way. As always, we close with what’s making us happy this week. Stephen is happy about sharing a new show with his kid, Glen is happy about a film that ”aches for you to be charmed by it,” Kat is happy about an upcoming book you’re sure to hear more about, and I’m happy about a feature Glen recently completed and the return of a favorite reality franchise. Thank you for listening this year, and follow us on Twitter to get good stuff in 2017: me, Stephen, Glen, Kat, producer Jessica, and producer     Mike."
"Terrorist attacks, hurricanes, a divisive U. S. election, Brexit  —   2016 has not been easy. With the year coming to an end, we thought it was time to get some serious perspective  —   from the scale of the entire universe. We’re tackling big questions: what scientists know, and what they have yet to learn. So before you ring in another year, take a moment to contemplate the billions of years that led to 2017 and the billions more yet to come. ”That happens to be my absolute favorite question,” says Chuck Bennett, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University. He points out that the   theory says the universe started out dense and hot, and that it has been expanding and cooling for 13. 8 billion years, but, he says, ”the   theory doesn’t actually say what happened right at the beginning.” You can follow our laws of physics back in time, he says, but they break down close to the start, when things were unspeakably fiery and close together. Still, there may be clues from the weird world of quantum physics. In that world, strange stuff can happen, like particles can just appear out of nowhere. ”Even if you take something that’s a complete vacuum, you’ve gotten all of the particles and dust and everything out of the way, in quantum mechanics you still have particles popping in and out of existence all the time,” explains Bennett. So maybe the kernel that became our universe just randomly and spontaneously appeared. ”It seems bizarre, but that is kind of the going thinking about this,” Bennett says. And if you want to think about something even more bizarre, consider this point made by Caltech theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. If the big bang was the first moment in time, that creates a conundrum: ”There’s no verbs before time itself exists, right? There’s no popping into existence, there’s no fluctuating, there’s no quantum mechanical craziness, there is literally nothing,” says Carroll. You might be tempted to try to answer this question by stepping outside the universe so you can take a gander. But, obviously, that’s impossible. ”There is no such thing as outside the universe, as far as we can tell,” says Carroll. Even though the universe has been expanding for about 14 billion years, that doesn’t mean it’s ballooning out into some other realm. ”I know it’s difficult to wrap our minds around,” says Carroll, ”but it’s just getting more and more of it, even though it’s not expanding into anything at all.” So if we can’t leave the universe, all we can do is look around inside. Let’s say you flew off the Earth, out of our solar system, out of the Milky Way galaxy, out of our cluster of galaxies, and flew on and on. How far could you go? ”We don’t 100 percent know,” says Janna Levin, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University. ”What we see of the universe is vast. We know that the universe is something like 90 billion   across.” But that’s just the part we can see. Anything beyond that has to remain a mystery, because stuff out there is so far away, its light will never be able to reach us. ”It makes logical sense to assume the universe goes on beyond that boundary. It would be kind of magical if we were just happening to be able to see right to some boundary and then something crazy happened beyond that, like galaxies ceased to exist,” says Levin. ”I mean, that just seems nuts.” So the universe goes on, but is it infinite? ”It is somewhat unimaginable but quite possible that our universe simply goes on forever,” says Bennett. To us, the universe seems flat, so maybe it’s like an endless sheet of paper. But on the other hand, people used to think the Earth was flat, too, because people saw flat land stretching to a horizon, beyond which they could not see. These days, the idea of a flat Earth seems silly  —   we know it’s really a huge sphere. ”Our universe might be like that,” says Bennett, noting that the universe might be curved and might even curve back on itself like a sphere, ”but on a scale that is truly enormous.” If so, and you headed off into the universe, going straight in one direction, you would eventually find yourself right back where you started. You might think this is one of the easier questions about the universe to answer. But you would be wrong. ”All the stuff we’ve ever seen in the laboratory, all the kinds of particles and matter and energy, that only makes up 5 percent of our universe,” says Carroll. Five percent! So what is the rest of the universe made of? Well, one biggie is something called dark matter. About 25 percent of the universe is dark matter, which is quite literally dark. ”It just doesn’t interact with light at all,” says Bennett. ”It doesn’t give off any light it doesn’t absorb light it doesn’t scatter light there’s no way to see it. The only way we know that it’s there is because it has gravitational effects.” Scientists discovered dark matter when they looked at the motion of galaxies and realized that something unseen had to be exerting a gravitational pull. Dark matter may be some kind of particle that we just haven’t detected yet. The rest of the universe  —   70 percent  —   is something even more crazy, called dark energy. It appears to be some kind of energy that’s inherent to empty space, and it acts to push the universe apart, speeding up its expansion. Like dark matter, dark energy is another big mystery. ”Other than the fact that we don’t quite understand 95 percent of the universe, we’re doing really well,” jokes Bennett. All of the world’s leading theoreticians, who write whole books about the universe, just have to live with this state of affairs. ”You’re entitled to say, if you’re so smart, why don’t you tell me what that dark matter is? And I’ll have to confess I don’t know,” says Jim Peebles, Albert Einstein professor of science, emeritus and professor of physics, emeritus at Princeton University. He’s not depressed, however, that so much of the universe remains unknown. ”I think I’d be depressed if everything were nearly all known,” says Peebles, ”but I don’t feel any danger of that happening.” Let’s face it people tend to be pretty  . ”If you look back at the history of astronomy, you know, we used to think that the Earth was the center of the solar system. Everything was about us,” says Bennett. Even when we figured out that Earth went around the sun, and the sun was part of the Milky Way galaxy, we thought our galaxy was the center of the universe. ”Then we learned no, it’s just one galaxy out of hundreds of billions of galaxies out there,” he notes. With that track record in mind, it’s natural to wonder whether our whole universe isn’t so special  —   if it’s just one among many. ”We don’t know yet,” says Bennett, ”but it’s very possible.” Given that scientists believe the seed that started our universe may have spontaneously popped into existence through a kind of quantum weirdness, that presents an obvious question: If that could happen once, why not more than once? ”So then you have this kind of array of universes in which ours is not unique,” says Bennett. How many universes could there be? ”A really, really big number,” says Carroll. But since everything we can observe and poke and prod is, by definition, part of our universe, it’s unclear how we could ever detect some other universe. This is why some thinkers worry that pondering the   multiverse is more like philosophy than science. It’s sort of fun to think about whether our universe is solitary, and it’s a legitimate question, says Peebles, ”but since we’ll never be able to answer it, I can’t get very excited.” But maybe this idea could be testable. Imagine if you had two universes that were expanding and ran into each other, says Bennett. If another universe bumped into ours, there could be ways to tell. In fact, there have been efforts to search the skies for evidence of that kind of impact, but there’s no sign it ever happened. Which might be a good thing, since that kind of event ”would be very dangerous at least for people in one of the universes or the other because one of them would probably be destroyed,” Bennett says. ”Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,” wrote Robert Frost in his famous poem Fire and Ice. He favored fire but, hedging his bet, added that: I think I know enough of hate  To say that for destruction ice  Is also great  And would suffice. These days, most astrophysicists are guessing the universe will end as cold as ice. The universe, which started out hot and dense, has been expanding and cooling for nearly 14 billion years. We now know it’s actually expanding faster and faster. ”This is like hyperdrive on the cooling,” says Bennett. ”So it’s the ice solution. Everything would grow dimmer and dimmer you would stop seeing things in the sky everything would grow dark and cold.” As everything gets farther and farther apart, each particle of the universe will eventually end up completely alone. It all sounds bleak. But, cheer up! Ending with fire is still possible. Since dark energy is pushing the universe to expand faster and faster, and physicists don’t know what dark energy is, it’s possible that it might just decay or go away, making our expanding universe slow down. ”Maybe even reverse its course for all we know, and then what? Then we go back to kind of a fiery end,” says Levin. She explains that everything would fly back together toward a big crunch, which is like the big bang happening in reverse. Fire or ice, either way, the end is coming. But not for a long while. ”We think it will be at least a quadrillion years before the last star burns out,” says Carroll, noting that this is 1, 000 trillion years. Our own sun will burn out way sooner, in about 5 billion years. Though Carroll says that’s kind of a parochial concern, when you consider that our Milky Way galaxy has around 100 billion stars and is just one of trillions of galaxies. ”So we are not significant on the cosmic scale. We are not important to the universe. That’s the bad news,” says Carroll. The good news is that, even with our puny brains, we’ve managed to figure that out."
"We all experience stress at work, no matter the job. But for teachers, the work seems to be getting harder and the stress harder to shake. A new report out this month pulls together some stark numbers on this:   percent of teachers say they feel high daily stress. That’s on par with nurses and physicians. And roughly half of teachers agree with this statement: ”The stress and disappointments involved in teaching at this school aren’t really worth it.” It’s a problem for all of us  —   not just these unhappy teachers. Here’s why: ”Between 30 and 40 percent of teachers leave the profession in their first five years,” says Mark Greenberg, a professor of human development and psychology at Penn State. And that turnover, he says, costs schools  —   and taxpayers  —   billions of dollars a year, while research (like this and this) suggests teacher burnout hurts student achievement, too. Greenberg has studied America’s schools for more than 40 years, and, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (also an NPR funder) he helped author the new brief exploring teacher stress. He says teachers feel frazzled for many reasons, including   testing and the fact that many students are themselves coming to school stressed. As for the fixes, Greenberg recommends a few. New teachers who receive steady mentoring are less likely to quit. Workplace wellness programs can also help. But both require schoolwide, even districtwide  . If that’s not realistic, Greenberg suggests a fix that is well within every teacher’s control, one that just might surprise you . .. Mindfulness, That’s right, mindfulness. For teachers. Patricia Jennings wrote the book on it (literally). It’s called Mindfulness For Teachers. Jennings was a teacher herself for two decades and now studies stress in the classroom as a professor and researcher at the University of Virginia. The Journal of Educational Psychology will soon publish a study of her work in New York City, teaching mindfulness to more than 200 educators in   schools. Jennings says the teachers who received mindfulness training ”showed reduced psychological distress and time urgency  —   which is this feeling like you don’t have enough time. And then improvements in mindfulness and emotion regulation.” Translation: These teachers were better able to cope with classroom challenges and manage their feelings, which made it easier for them to manage their students’ big feelings. And that, says Jennings, helps students learn. What is mindfulness? Definitions vary, but Jennings likes to think of it this way: attending to things in the moment with curiosity and acceptance. If this all sounds a bit . .. squishy, rest assured, there’s even research on how mindfulness can help reduce stress in U. S. Marines preparing for deployment. Meria Carstarphen is not a teacher but knows a thing or two about classroom stress. She has run a couple of big city school systems and is now superintendent in Atlanta. Carstarphen says she advises new teachers: You can’t take care of your students if you don’t take care of yourself. ”Put your oxygen mask on first,” she tells her rookies. ”Then we’ll talk about everybody else.”"
"When John Fahey recorded The New Possibility in 1968 to make a few bucks off Christmas sales every year, his album title turned out to be emblematic of the solo guitar’s potential. The music grows decades later, rung out in steel vibration and wrung out from tradition. In 2016, there was an incredible bounty of guitar music across Americana, jazz, ambient, psychedelic, experimental music and what Fahey labeled American Primitive. For sake of focus, these 10 unranked records (and a few honorable mentions) were all primarily made by one person with the guitar as the primary instrument. That’s why you don’t see the stellar records made by Chris Forsyth, Mary Halvorson, William Tyler or Cian Nugent this year, as they were backed by bands that understand their singular approaches to the instrument. Instead, these records celebrate new possibilities in the solo exploration of six and 12 strings."
"This year was one of   hacks, exploding smartphones, months of debating encryption and the proliferation of augmented reality, VR,   cars and fake news. But there were lots of other stories  —   some of them off the beaten path  —   that illustrated the constantly evolving and hugely influential relationship that we have with technology around us. Can you remember (or guess) some of the numbers and facts gleaned from 10 of NPR’s tech stories of 2016?"
"From West Virginia to Wyoming, coal country overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump and his message that he will bring coal jobs back. Now, those same voters are eyeing his incoming administration closely, careful to see if he will keep his promises to revive the coal industry and get miners back to work. These hopes have become increasingly desperate as the industry has floundered. U. S. coal production in 2016 is projected to be at its lowest level since 1978, and over the past few years, the country has lost about 30, 000 coal jobs. That means hard times for places like Wyoming’s   Powder River Basin. Three of the region’s four main coal producers were in bankruptcy in 2016. Two of them laid off hundreds of miners at once. Still, the community of Gillette, Wyo.  —     as the Energy Capital of the Nation  —   is breathing a sigh of relief lately. Production has ticked back up past where it was at this time last year, and some mines are even hiring workers back. ”I do believe that my friends and   are safe for now,” says coal miner Stacey Moeller. She believes that ”for one more year, we’re going to be coal miners.” And Trump’s win has buoyed her hopes, as well as those of investors. The day after the election, coal stock prices leaped and many in coal communities celebrated. For Moeller, a single mom and lifelong Democrat, the decision was complicated. ”I did vote for Donald Trump,” Moeller says. ”It’s really hard to even say that because I so dislike his rhetoric. But I voted for him on one singular issue, and that was coal.” She’s not alone. Dave Hathaway of Pennsylvania will be watching Trump, as well. Since the coal mine he worked in closed a year ago, he spent much of 2016 looking for work. The search gained urgency when his son Deacon was born in August. On Election Day, Hathaway made a choice he hopes will help his   job prospects. ”I voted for Trump  —   I mean, a coal miner would be stupid not to,” Hathaway says. He says he’s had a hard time finding a job to replace the $80, 000 he made working in the coal mines under Greene County, Pa. a few miles from the West Virginia border. Hathaway recently found a job at a nearby mine. While he thinks Trump’s election means he’ll have a better shot at keeping his new job, he didn’t like a lot of things Trump said during the campaign. ”He is a whacko he’s never going to stop being a whacko,” Hathaway says. ”But I mean, the things he did say  —   the good stuff  —   was good for the coal mining community. But we’ll see what happens.” That message clearly resonated in Greene County, where over the last four years a third of the coal mining jobs  —   like Dave Hathaway’s  —   disappeared. Trump won the county by 40 points, eight years after Barack Obama basically tied John McCain there. Tom Crooks, vice president at R. G. Johnson, a construction company that builds mine shafts, witnessed the decline of the coal industry firsthand. ”Two years ago this week we had 145 employees,” Crooks says. ”Right now, we have 22.” Crooks doesn’t use the phrase ”war on coal,” but he does think federal regulations mounted by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama have weighed down his industry. One example is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. That rule, which Trump has pledged to eliminate, limits the amount of carbon dioxide from   power plants. Instead, Crooks wants to see more government research into making coal as clean as possible. ”Really, what’s happened over the last eight years is the smart people stopped working on coal, in part because of the way the federal government and the state governments looked at us,” Crooks says. ”We just want them to start looking to coal as an option.” Leigh Paterson is a reporter with Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focusing on America’s energy issues. Reid Frazier is a reporter for The Allegheny Front, a public radio program based in Pittsburgh that covers the environment. "
"Updated Jan. 1 at 9:56 a. m. ET, At least 39 people were killed and 69 others wounded during New Year’s celebrations Saturday after a gunman opened fire at an Istanbul nightclub. At least 16 of those killed were foreign nationals. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters that the attacker entered the Reina nightclub and began shooting at random, NPR’s Peter Kenyon tells our newscast. The killer then changed clothes and left, says the minister. The manhunt for the attacker, who has not yet been identified, is still underway, Soylu adds, as police believe he carried out the attack alone. Provincial Gov. Vasip Sahin has described the incident as a terrorist attack. ”A terrorist with a   weapon . .. brutally and savagely carried out this incident by firing bullets on innocent people who were there solely to celebrate the New Year and have fun,” Sahin told reporters. At Reina, one of the city’s most popular nightclubs, it’s believed some 500 to 600 revelers were celebrating the start of the new year. Reuters reports that the attacker shot at a police officer and at civilians before entering the nightclub. Many inside were said to have jumped into the neighboring Bosphorus waterway in an attempt to save themselves from the gunfire. A Turkish cabinet minister told the   Anatolia News Agency that citizens of Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Libya and Lebanon are among the dead, Peter reports. In addition, the Israeli Foreign Ministry says a young   woman was killed in the attack. Peter adds: ”The interior minister named several possible culprits, including Islamic State, Kurdish militants or   groups.” According to the Associated Press, several ambulances and police vehicles were dispatched to the scene, an area described as ”on the shore of the Bosphorus Strait in the Ortakoy district.” The cosmopolitan neighborhood is home to many clubs, restaurants and art galleries. Says Reuters: ”Security measures had been heightened in major Turkish cities, with police barring traffic leading up to key squares in Istanbul and the capital Ankara. In Istanbul, 17, 000 police officers were put on duty, some camouflaged as Santa Claus and others as street vendors, state news agency Anadolu reported.” This latest attack comes just two weeks after Russian ambassador, Andrei Karlov, was shot dead by   Turkish policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas and three weeks after a bomb attack killed 44 people at a football stadium in Istanbul. A Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility for the latter. Turkey, which is part of the U. S.  coalition against Islamic State, has faced numerous security threats. In all, there were at least six attacks in Turkey in 2016, claiming more than 200 lives. Meantime, the White House is condemning the attack, calling it a ”horrific terrorist attack” and offering to assist Turkey. According to the AP, White House spokesman Eric Schultz says President Obama  —   who is vacationing with his family in Hawaii  —   ”was briefed on the attack by his national security team and asked to be updated as the situation develops.” The AP adds: ”White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price says the attack on ’innocent revelers’ celebrating New Year’s shows the attackers’ savagery. He says the U. S. sends thoughts and prayers to the relatives of those killed. ”Price says the U. S. supports its NATO ally Turkey as both countries fight terrorism.” Turkey’s Bloody Year, ”It was a horrible year,” journalist Mustafa Akyol told NPR’s Ailsa Chang on Sunday morning. ”We had a bloody coup attempt . .. almost 300 people were killed, then a very brutal crackdown began after that and thousands of people found themselves in jail with, I think, exaggerated charges in my view  —   at least some of them. ”Then, the terror attacks, both the PKK  —   which is a Kurdist, separatist group with a   secular ideology, and ISIS. They both organized major attacks inside Turkey.” Akyol’s latest column, published just hours before the attack, enumerated the many tragic events of 2016, calling it Turkey’s ”worst year ever.” ”And you know what is the worst?” he writes. ”There is no guarantee that the future will be any better. There is no assurance that all this will prove to be a temporary crisis rather than the new normal.” ”What we need at this time is not more conspiracy theories,” Akyol told NPR. ”Not a more authoritarian government. But really, national unity based on understanding and tolerance and reconciliation. We’re not there though, unfortunately yet.”"
"On the morning of Jan. 1, Los Angeles residents and visitors alike awoke to see the iconic Hollywood sign had been altered overnight. Some were delighted. A number of posts on Instagram Sunday are captioned things like, ”I love this city!” and ”Let’s keep it!” Police were, perhaps, less amused: They were investigating the vandalism Sunday, and said the male prankster was recorded by security cameras wearing all black at around 3 a. m. He could face a misdemeanor trespassing charge if caught. This actually isn’t the first time this has happened. Whether it was a tribute, or an accident, the vandal mimicked a similar prank that was done 41 years ago today by Daniel Finegood, on Jan. 1, 1976: The day California’s relaxed marijuana law took effect. According to the LA Times, Finegood did a number of similar stunts, changing the sign to read ”Ollywood” to protest the worship of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North during the   hearings in 1987, and ”Oil War” in 1990 as a political statement about the Persian Gulf War. The ”Hollyweed” prank, however, seems more like a celebration than a protest. The AP suggests it might be a gesture to the approval of Proposition 64 in November, which legalized recreational use of marijuana."
"In September, reproductive endocrinologist John Zhang and his team at the New Hope Fertility Center in New York City captured the world’s attention when they announced the birth of a child to a mother carrying a fatal genetic defect. Using a technique called mitochondrial replacement therapy, the researchers combined DNA from two women and one man to bypass the defect and produce a healthy baby boy  —   one with, quite literally, three genetic parents. It was heralded as a stunning technological leap for in vitro fertilization, albeit one that the team was forced to perform in Mexico, because the technique has not been approved in the United States. The technique is spreading quickly, gaining official approval this month from the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority in the U. K. The move will allow clinics to apply for permission there to carry out the treatment, with the first patients expected to be seen as early as next year. But for all the accolades, the method also has scientists concerned that the fatally flawed mitochondria can resurface to threaten a child’s health. Earlier this month, a study published in Nature by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, head of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, suggested that in roughly 15 percent of cases, the mitochondrial replacement could fail and allow fatal defects to return, or even increase a child’s vulnerability to new ailments. The findings confirmed the suspicions of many researchers, and the conclusions drawn by Mitalipov and his team were unequivocal: The potential for conflicts between transplanted and original mitochondrial genomes is real, and more sophisticated matching of donor and recipient eggs  —   pairing mothers whose mitochondria share genetic similarities, for example  —   is needed to avoid potential tragedies. ”This study shows the potential as well as the risks of gene therapy in the germline,” Mitalipov says. This is especially true of mitochondria, because its genomes are so different than the genomes in the nucleus of cells. Slight variations between mitochondrial genomes, he adds, ”turn out to matter a great deal.” Mitochondria are the energy powerhouses inside our cells, and they carry their own DNA, separate from our nuclear genome. The danger lies in the fact that mitochondria are in some ways like aliens inside our cells. Two billion years ago they were   bacteria basking in the primordial soup. Then one such microbe merged with another   bacterium, and over evolutionary time, the two formed a complete cell. The bacteria eventually evolved into mitochondria, migrating most of their genes to the cell nucleus and keeping just a few dozen, largely to help them produce energy. Today, our nuclear genome contains around 20, 000 genes, while a scant 37 genes reside in the mitochondria. And yet the two genomes are intensely symbiotic: 99 percent of mitochondrial proteins are incorporated from the nucleus. Mitochondria also still divide and replicate like the bacteria they once were, and that constant replication means that mutations arise 10 to 30 times more often in mitochondrial genes than in the nucleus. If too many mitochondria become dysfunctional, the entire cell suffers and serious health problems can result. Faulty mitochondria are implicated in genetic diseases, as well as many chronic conditions from infertility to cancer, cardiac disease and neurodegenerative diseases. That’s because when mitochondria falter, the energy system of the cell itself is compromised. A   baby could solve the problem by overriding faulty mitochondria, but it also raises the stakes, because the procedure does not completely replace the defective mitochondria with healthy ones. When the mother’s nucleus is transferred, it’s like a plant dug up out of ground  —   a bit of the original soil (in this case, the mother’s mitochondria) is still clinging to the roots. That creates a situation that never happens in nature: Two different mitochondrial genomes from two different women are forced to live inside the same cell. In most cases, a tiny percentage (usually less than 2 percent) of the diseased mitochondria remain  —   but that tiny percentage can really matter. In his new study, Mitalipov crafted   embryos from the eggs of three mothers carrying mutant mitochondrial DNA and from the eggs of 11 healthy women. The embryos were then tweaked to become embryonic stem cells that could live forever, so they could be multiplied and studied. In three cases, the original maternal mitochondrial DNA returned. ”That original, maternal mitochondrial DNA took over,” Mitalipov says, ”and it was pretty drastic. There was less than 1 percent of the original maternal mitochondrial DNA present after replacement with donor DNA and before fertilization, and yet it took over the whole cell later.” Mitalipov warns that this reversal might not only occur in the embryonic stem cells it could also occur in the womb at some point during the development of a baby. Complicating things further, Mitalipov found that some mitochondrial DNA stimulates cells to divide more rapidly, which would mean that a cells containing the maternal mitochondrial DNA could eventually dominate as the embryo developed. Some mitochondrial genomes replicate much faster than others, says University of California molecular biologist Patrick O’Farrell, who called Mitalipov’s research both impressive and in keeping with his own thinking on the matter. A diseased mitochondrial genome could behave like a   bully, O’Farrell says,   and having a large impact on the   baby at any time. It could also affect that child’s future offspring. ”The diseased genome might stage a sneak comeback to afflict subsequent generations,” O’Farrell says. On the other hand, he says, the   could act as ”superheroes,” if they carry healthy, fit DNA that is able to   a mutant genome. The nuclear genes donated by a father could also influence the behavior of the mitochondria in ways we cannot yet predict, O’Farrell says. For example, the father might introduce new genes that favor the replication rate of a defective bully genome. Or the father might introduce genes that help a ”wimpy” healthy genome survive and thrive. Mitalipov’s proposed solution to the problem is to match the mitochondria of the mother and the donor, since not all mitochondria are alike. Human mitochondria all over the earth are in a sense a billion or more clones of their original mother, passed down in endless biblical begats from mother to child. Yet, even as clones, they have diverged over time into lineages with different characteristics. These are called haplotypes. O’Farrell mentions blood types as a comparison. Just as you would not want to transfuse blood type A into someone with blood type B, you might not want to mix different lineages. And while he says he thinks the idea of matching lineages is brilliant, he suggests going a step further. ”I say let’s . .. try to get a match with the dominating genome so that the defective genome will ultimately be completely displaced.” In fact, he adds, the ideal would be to look for one superhero genome, the fastest replicator of all  —   one that could displace any diseased genome. To find out which branches are super replicators, O’Farrell hopes to collaborate with other laboratories and test the competitive strength of different haplotypes. Earlier this year, O’Farrell’s laboratory published work showing that competition between closely related genomes tends to favor the most beneficial, while matchups between distantly related genomes favor super replicators with negative or even lethal consequences. There are, he says, at least 10 major lineages that would be distinct enough to be highly relevant. Mitalipov says that most of the time, matching haplotypes should ensure successful mitochondrial transfers. However, he cautions that even then, tiny differences in the region of the mitochondrial genome that controls replication speed could cause an unexpected surprise. Even in mitochondria from the same haplotype, there could be a single change in a gene that could cause a conflict, he says. In his study, Mitalipov zeroes in on the region that appears responsible for replication speed. In order to find out a mother’s haplotype, he says, full sequencing is necessary, and this region from the donor’s egg should also be looked at to be sure it matches the mother’s. Today, it costs a few hundred dollars to sequence a woman’s mitochondrial genome. But battles between mitochondrial genomes are only one part of the emerging story. Some research suggests that nuclear genes evolve to sync well with a mitochondrial haplotype, and that when the pairing is suddenly switched, health might be compromised. Research in fruit flies and in tiny sea creatures called cephalopods shows that when the ”mitonuclear” partnership diverges too much, infertility and poor health can result. In some cases, however, the divergent pairs are above average and can actually lead to better health. Swapping as little as 0. 2 percent of mitochondrial DNA in laboratory animals ”can have profound effects on the function of cells, organs, and even the whole organism, and these effects manifest late in life,” according to mitochondrial biologist Patrick Chinnery of the University of Cambridge, writing in November in The New England Journal of Medicine. Because of all these unknowns, a U. S. panel recommended last February that mitochondrial replacement therapy, if approved, implant only male embryos so that the   mitochondrial germline would not be passed down through the generations. Most scientists approve of this advice, but biologist Damian Dowling of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has reservations about even this solution. His own research in fruit flies shows that males may actually be more vulnerable than females to impaired health from mitochondrial replacement. Since females pass on mitochondria, natural selection will help daughters sift out any mutations that might be harmful to them, and keep their nuclear and mitochondrial genes well matched. Males aren’t so lucky: If mutations don’t harm females but do harm males, the males may have to suffer impaired fertility and go to their graves earlier. This is known as the ”mother’s curse”  —   a term coined by geneticist Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago in New Zealand to describe the biological baggage that mothers unwittingly pass down to their male babies. The bottom line, according to biologist David Rand of Brown University, who studies mitochondrial genomes, is that when you swap mitochondria, the reaction is ”highly unpredictable.” And that’s why many experts are calling for caution even amid all the excitement following the   Mexico trial  —   though there is reason to believe they aren’t being heard. A   baby has now been born in China, and two more may soon be born in Ukraine, according to Nature News. Zhang, meanwhile, continues to encourage potential patients in Mexico: ”We have received interest both locally and abroad,” he says, ”and we invite people to learn more about the treatment.” Doug Wallace, head of the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is among those calling for a more methodical approach to the technique, though he says he doesn’t think there’s any way to put the brakes on now. ”I think what’s happened is we’re going to see more and more trials and some families are going to be exceedingly fortunate  —   and perhaps some will be an unfortunate part of the learning set.” Research on mitochondria has to catch up, Wallace says, and while matching haplotypes is a good idea, it isn’t so easy to do in practice. ”Finding women to be egg donors is going to be a major limitation,” he says  —   especially when you’d first have to survey a large group to find compatible mitochondrial DNA. Still, for women desperate to conceive a healthy child this may seem reasonable. Wallace adds that mitochondrial replacement therapy might find favor even outside those seeking to avoid passing on fatal genetic mutations  —   such as older women simply facing reduced fertility. ”There’s no proof that’s the case,” he says, but if it came to pass, that could mean a therapy that might change the DNA of tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of babies conceived by this method. That would have a real impact on the   future of society, Wallace adds, and we don’t yet fully understand all of the implications. ”I think it’s an exciting possibility,” he says, ”but also a little disconcerting.” Jill Neimark is an   science journalist and an author of adult and children’s books. Her most recent book is ”The Hugging Tree: A Story About Resilience.” A version of this article originally appeared at Undark, a digital science magazine published by the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program at MIT."
"In an effort to take advantage of the intimate relationships between stylists and their clients, a new law in Illinois will require salon professionals to receive training in domestic   as part of their licensing process. The law, which goes into effect Sunday, aims to educate beauty professionals to recognize signs of abuse. But stylists won’t be required to report violence, and are protected from any liability. The legislation was introduced by state Rep. Fran Hurley, who told the Chicago Tribune, ”There’s an openness, a freeness, a relationship that last years or decades between the client and the cosmetologist. They’re in a position to see something that may or may not be right.” Joan Rowan is a hair stylist who owns two salons  —   one on the South Side of Chicago, and the other in Oak Lawn, Ill. She says that for many years now she’s been providing training for her own staff about what to do if they think someone is in trouble. Rowan says that clients do sometimes talk to her about what is going on in their lives. ”And sometimes they tell you so much they never come back again, because they’re afraid, or they’re embarrassed, they don’t know what to do.” ”I’ve had women, you know, when you’re washing their hair, they have bumps on their head, you know, they ’ran into a door again,’ ” Rowan says. ”I’ve been a hairdresser for 41 years. One in three women have violence in their lives. So yes, I have talked to women.” The training that the stylists will receive is an hourlong ”awareness and education” program called Listen. Support. Connect. It was designed by Chicago Says No More, a coalition of domestic violence advocacy groups, in partnership with Cosmetologists Chicago. Kristie Paskvan, the founder of Chicago Says No More, says she knows that an hourlong training isn’t going to make anyone an expert. ”We’re not asking the salon professionals to intervene. We’re just asking them to have the tools in case the clients ask for information,” she says. ”There’s something like 88, 000 salon professionals that will be trained in the next two years,” Paskvan says. ”That’s 88, 000 more individuals that will be able to have conversations with family and friends and clients, and that raises awareness about domestic violence and sexual assault.”"
"Much has been said about the physical and psychological injuries of war, like traumatic brain injury or   stress disorder. But what we talk about less is how these conditions affect the sexual relationships of service members after they return from combat. Since 2000, service members who were deployed received at least 138, 000 diagnoses of PTSD. More than 350, 000 have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury since 2000. Evidence suggests the numbers are actually higher because many don’t seek treatment. These conditions cause their own sexual side effects, such as emotional numbness, loss of libido and erectile dysfunction. And the long list of medications used to treat PTSD, TBI and other medical conditions can worsen those side effects. ’He would sleep for days’ Chuck and Liz Rotenberry of Baltimore struggled with their own challenges when Chuck returned from Afghanistan in 2011. He’s a former Marine gunnery sergeant who trained military working dogs. He left active duty in 2012. She is an Elizabeth Dole caregiver fellow, a spokesperson on issues chosen by the military caregiving foundation. For Liz and Chuck, sex had never been a problem. They’ve been married for 14 years and they’re still very much in love. Liz says she fell for Chuck in high school. He was that guy who could always make her laugh, who always had a   ready and never seemed sad. But when Chuck returned from Afghanistan, their relationship would soon face its greatest challenge. Baby No. 4 was just two weeks away for sure, it was a chaotic time. But Liz noticed pretty quickly something was terribly wrong with her husband. ”I wouldn’t be able to find him in the house and he wouldn’t be outside, and I’d find him in a separate bedroom just crying,” Liz says. ”He would sleep for days. He would have a hoodie on and be just tucked away in the bed, and he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. He would have migraines that were so debilitating that it kept him in the bed.” When Chuck was in Afghanistan, an IED  —   improvised explosive device  —   exploded 3 feet behind him. Shrapnel lodged into his neck and back. It would take three years for someone at the Department of Veterans Affairs to explicitly lay out for Liz that Chuck had developed severe   stress and suffered a traumatic brain injury  —   and that she would need to be his caregiver. The Marine   During that   period, there were times Chuck estimates he was taking 15 to 16 different medications twice a day. Sex was usually the furthest thing from his mind. ”I didn’t think about it. I wanted to be with Liz, I wanted to be near her,” he says. ”When the desire was there, it was unique. It was rare, as opposed to the way it was before. And a lot of times, with the mountains of medication I was on, you know, in my head [it was] all systems go, but that message didn’t go anywhere else.” Liz noticed that Chuck stopped initiating physical affection. ”The thought of him reaching out to me to give me a hug wasn’t existent. It was like I had to give him the hug. I now had to step in and show him love,” she says. Sometimes months would go by before they would have sex. ”It started off as being pretty embarrassing, pretty emasculating,” Chuck says. ”It was like, ’Really? This too doesn’t work?’ You blame it on, ’Oh, it’s just the medication,’ or ’You’re tired,’ or whatever initially, and you don’t realize it’s stress or my brain just doesn’t work like it used to.” Liz and Chuck had never really talked about sex in any serious way before. So they kept avoiding the conversation  —   until this year. That’s when Chuck finally asked his primary care provider for help. The doctor prescribed four doses of Viagra a month. Liz and Chuck say the medication has improved things substantially  —   though they joke about how few doses the VA allots them every month. But asking for just those four doses took Chuck three or four visits to the doctor before he could work up the nerve. He says it can be especially hard for a Marine to admit he’s having problems with sex because it contradicts a   so many Marines have. ”You know, as a Marine, you can do anything. You believe you can do anything, you’ve been trained to do nearly anything,” he says. ”You’re physically fit. You’re mentally sound. Those are just the basics about being a Marine.” If he has any advice for a Marine going through the same thing he and his wife are facing, he says you need to talk about it. Bring it up with your spouse. Bring it up with your doctors. ”Marines always jokingly hand out straws. You got to suck it up. You got to do what you need to do to get it done,” Chuck says. ”It’s just a different mission. . .. Don’t let your pride ruin what you worked so hard for.”"
"Editor’s note: This post includes language that some readers will find offensive. A rift has surfaced within the   the movement closely associated with white supremacism that has been celebrating Donald Trump’s election as president. In fact, they are planning a big event around Trump’s inauguration  ” the ”DeploraBall.” Organizers of the event, which plays off Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s ”basket of deplorables” swipe at some Trump supporters, have rescinded the invitation of a prominent social media personality with the   movement, Tim Treadstone, better known by his Twitter handle @bakedalaska. He tweeted on Monday   and racist comments that included ”it’s a common fact the media is run in majority by Jewish people, it’s similar to observing blacks are good at basketball.”"
"The   movement, which has been associated with white nationalism, is receiving new attention. The debate about the movement is also focusing on what is the best term to describe it."
"On New Year’s Day, Portland restaurant Ava Gene’s will be serving brunch to the hungry and   masses. And amidst the frittatas, French toast, and grits, there will be Chef Josh McFadden’s own favorite: pasta carbonara. McFadden, who has cooked carbonara at New York Italian restaurants, fell in love with it for breakfast while living at the American Academy in Rome. A plate of spaghetti doesn’t look anything like your local greasy spoon’s    special, but McFadden says the dish is a whole lot more familiar than you might think. ”It’s literally the same thing as taking toast, putting an egg on the toast, and then putting said toast in your mouth. And with coffee? Amazing.” Yes, the refined starch takes the form of noodles. But the other basic breakfast building blocks  —   including a dose of something in the bacon family  —   are the same. Hot pasta (most often spaghetti) is drained and tossed with beaten eggs, cheese (Parmigiano or pecorino Romano) and cooked pork (guanciale, pancetta, and bacon all make appearances). The hot noodles cook the eggs, which set with the pork fat and residual cooking liquid to create a lusciously rich sauce, not too different from a hollandaise. So how did a dish that hits these   notes come out of Italy? According to food historian Anthony Buccini, recipes for pasta dressed with fat, eggs and cheese (cacio e uova) go back well into the 19th century. But mentions of carbonara  —   the dish that adds cured pork to the mix  —   don’t show up until after World War II. And, according to one popular theory, this might not be a coincidence. ”In effect,” says Buccini, ”the claim is that there was a joining together of American taste for  —   and supplies of  —   bacon and powdered eggs [thanks to military rations] with the local Roman love of pasta asciutta [a simple sauced dish] Roman cooks came up with the recipe to make use of the American supplies and to satisfy the foreign troops, perhaps with some prodding from those troops who missed their familiar bacon and egg combination.” It’s a beautiful story of food traditions melding and evolving. But is it true? Buccini is skeptical, noting there is ”little in the way of compelling evidence” that carbonara was inspired by American GIs, rather than being a simple variation to a large family of traditional pasta dishes. The Oxford Companion to Italian Food also rejects the WWII theory, stating: ”The absurdity of this at a time of hardship and intolerable shortages calls for no comment.” But others, like Jeremy Parzen, a food historian and translator who teaches at Italy’s University of Gastronomic Sciences, think it’s not so   to conceive of American tastes shaping Italian cuisine. ”American culture played a huge role in how Italy developed after the war,” Parzen explains. ”Essentially after the war, with the Marshall Plan, we rebuilt Europe. And whereas the French became snobbish, the Italians embraced American culture. They embraced American film, American music. .. They love their own food, but they also love food from all over the world.”  Until the definitive source of the carbonara is unearthed, the debate will continue. But there’s one thing almost all Italian chefs agree on  —   do not include cream. While this is a creamy dish, its lusciousness should come from the emulsion you get when you toss the eggs with the hot pasta and pork fat. This does require a delicate touch to get right, but it’s not much more than navigating tossing and temperature. Even with a hangover, it should be doable. And in a true nod to American palates, Chef McFadden admits that it’s not with bad with a little shake of a nice hot sauce, especially when you serve it as a   breakfast."
"U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts praised the   work of federal district judges in his   report on the federal judiciary, avoiding any talk of politics in regards to the country’s judicial system. Incoming president Donald Trump will have more than a 100 vacancies to fill at the district and appellate court level nationwide. He’ll also be able to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The   Congress has refused to hold a hearing on President Obama’s nominee for that empty seat. The future of those judicial vacancies was a key issue in the presidential election. Roberts’ focus, however, was on the work of lower court judges, who he called ”selfless, patriotic and brave individuals.” Congress has authorized 637 district court judgeships across the country. And the people working in those positions do so largely out of the public eye, Roberts wrote. ”You might be asking at this point why any lawyer would want a job that requires long hours, exacting skill, and intense devotion —  while promising high stress, solitary confinement, and guaranteed criticism. There are many easier and more lucrative ways for a good lawyer to earn a living. The answer lies in the rewards of public service. District judges make a difference every day, and leave a lasting legacy, by making our society more fair and just,” he wrote. The report also looked at    differences in the filings brought to the federal judiciary. The most striking difference was the number of cases in which the United States was the defendant, which increased 55 percent. Roberts wrote that the increase was due to the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision in Welch v. United States, which provided a new basis for certain prisoners convicted under the Armed Career Criminal Act to challenge their sentences. Bankruptcy petitions fell to their lowest number since 2007 and the number of defendants charged with drug and immigration crimes both showed slight decreases. Roberts wrote that the most difficult part of a judge’s job is sentencing an individual who is found guilty of a crime. He wrote: ”The judge must consider the perspectives of the prosecutor, the defendant, and the victim, and impose a penalty that, by design and necessity, will alter the direction of the defendant’s life.”"
"When Octavia Spencer first read the script for Hidden Figures  —   based on a book about the African American women who did the math for our early space launches  —   she thought it was fiction because it seemed too good to be true. Her disbelief reveals how conditioned we are to think that only white men make notable contributions to science, technology, engineering and math  —   and how important it is that we celebrate stories of the women who do. Big Hollywood movies based on true stories are an excellent way to do this. Narrative has a role to play as well, especially when it comes to another form of popular media: Romance novels, the second largest category of fiction in the U. S. Long derided as mere smut, these days romance novels feature heroines in the STEM fields  —   and the prejudices and obstacles they face on the way to a personal and professional happy ever after. The romance in Courtney Milan’s Hold Me is off to a rocky start when the hero, Jay na Thalang, assumes the heroine must be a lab supply salesperson when she shows up at his graduate studies lab. Not only is Maria Lopez a woman, she’s a pretty, ”done up” woman with an interest in shoes and planning her brother’s wedding. She cannot possibly be smart enough to be worthy of his time and attention. But unbeknownst to both Jay and Maria, they are already friends online  —   or at least their avatars are. When they meet as just minds (enabling Jay to imagine that she is a frumpy, nerdy girl) they are friends and trusted confidants who discuss problems both scientific and, eventually, personal. As long as she isn’t an undeniably sexy female body, Jay can respect her intelligence. Much of the conflict between the hero and heroine in this book stems from the hero’s assumptions about a woman’s brains based merely on her appearance what Jay comes to realize is that the problem lies with him. Even Odds by Elia Winters continues with the theme of a woman’s body getting in the way of her brain  —   not for her, but for the men in the room. Isabel Suarez, a design manager at a gaming firm, just wants to focus on the work. Whereas Maria flaunts her femininity, Isabel learned she must hide hers in order to succeed professionally, so she wears baggy clothes, pulls her hair back and smiles tightly when one coworker’s comments make her uncomfortable: ”His words were teasing, but Isabel bristled. This is what she’d wanted, though. It was better just to be sexless and professional, treated like another one of the guys, if she wanted to be taken seriously.”  Complications ensue when romance blossoms with her new coworker. Being open about their relationship means owning that she is more than just a sexless work automaton and opening herself up to judgment. Isabel only gets her happy ever after when she can allow both sides of herself to flourish  —   with the love and support of her enlightened hero (and an equally enlightened HR department). In Beginner’s Guide: Love And Other Chemical Reactions by Six de los Reyes, Kaya Rubio is happy being all brain: she lives and breathes her work as a molecular biologist and has optimized her life so she can focus on it completely. While the plot of her story is familiar  —   single girl seeks date for family wedding  —   the approach she takes is novel. When it comes to finding love, Kaya devises ”The Boyfriend Experiment” which draws on scientific principles and peer reviewed papers. Her hero is her negative control, a man so wrong he can’t possibly be right. He introduces her to romance  —   spontaneous, messy, emotional, pleasurable, utterly confounding logic and reason  —   and to another side of her herself, showing that needn’t sacrifice her heart for her brain. Being romance novels, these stories do end happily: The heroines get to be brilliant and beautiful. They can be smart and sexy and loved for it. It’s a message repeated in so many romances, whether these titles or my own historical novel, Lady Claire Is All That, which features a heroine based on Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. Professional success doesn’t have to come at the expense of personal happiness. It’s a message that matters, especially with regard to women and heroines in STEM. Those who develop technology we use are creating the world we live in, and having women build it is the best way to ensure that the sexism and misogyny that have held us back so far isn’t baked into our future. Stories have an important task to do here: They show all the different ways smart women can succeed personally and professionally, without having to hide their brains or their bodies in order to live happily ever after. Maya Rodale is a bestselling romance author. "
"If you find yourself at a loss to name even one Native American food dish, you’re not alone. But a growing number of Native chefs are trying to change that. Freddie Bitsoie is one of those chefs, working to bring back indigenous foods from centuries ago, and adapting them for today’s palate so people can learn not just about their cuisines, but their cultures too. Bitsoie found his way to the kitchen of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D. C. in August after finishing a stint as the chef at an Indian reservation casino in New Mexico. NPR met up with Bitsoie in the museum’s bustling basement kitchen. Bitsoie has lectured on Native cuisine before, and occasionally he has put together menus for some Native American museums  —   but this is his first gig as a chef whose work is entirely devoted to preparing and spreading awareness about indigenous dishes. Bitsoie is also the first Native American chef at Mitsitam Native Foods Café. He’s a member of the Navajo tribe, and grew up in Arizona and New Mexico. As a kid, his parents spoke fluent Navajo, he says, but it wasn’t until adulthood that he grasped the impact his Native American culture had on his life. ”When you’re growing up, you’re really not aware of what your parents are trying to teach you you just want to do the things that your parents don’t want you to do,” Bitsoie says. ”Back in the ’80s when I grew up, being Native wasn’t cool, it just wasn’t the thing to do. I was lucky enough to live off of the reservation and then on the reservation, and then move back off the reservation. I had that ability to see from the inside and see from the outside.” That tug of war between native versus   insider versus outsider, might explain why Bitsoie loves bridging the old and new in his cooking. One of his signature dishes is a simple soup that has evolved across regions and across centuries  —   and then Bitsoie decided add his own twist. ”This particular clam soup is pretty much the definition of my work,” he says. ”Because with this clam soup, indigenous people from Nova Scotia to down on to Maine,   Massachusetts, had a soup that was only made with three ingredients: It was sunchoke, clam and seawater.” ”I can’t picture myself gulping seawater down voluntarily,” confesses NPR reporter Ailsa Chang. ”But at the same time, in Italian cooking people say when you cook your pasta, make sure it’s salty like the sea,” Freddie Bitsoie says. But when he cooked with NPR, Bitsoie used a substitute. ”When I look out at that ocean, I’m like, I don’t even swim in the ocean,” he laughs. Bitsoie understands that to make some traditional dishes palatable to more people, you have to tweak them. ”In developing this recipe, I wanted to still have a connection to the tribes who used to eat this dish,” he says. ”At at the same time, this was made 500, 600 years ago. So my palate is completely different from my grandmother’s palate which is even further from my grandmother’s grandmother’s palate.” So to appeal to today’s palate, he took the three original ingredients  —   clams, sunchokes and salt water  —   and added some   soup basics: leeks, onions, garlic, thyme and bay leaf. It’s a balancing act, accommodating mainstream tastes while being confident enough to hold fast to Native traditions. In the culinary world, Bitsoie says, that can difficult. ”I worked for a French chef where, when I would cook something native, all he would say is, ’You did that wrong,’ ” Bitsoie says. He adds: ”The biggest example is potatoes. When people think about potatoes, in the French style of cooking, potatoes have a bite  —   we call it ’al dente’ in the food world. But with native food, we sauté them, and we allow them to cook, but we cover them with the lid. So the potatoes aren’t only being cooked from the bottom they’re being steamed at the same time. Each culture has their own techniques, and with native cuisine we were always told, ’You’re cooking that wrong.’ And, see, I didn’t know that because I was just growing up with the way my mom cooks.” ”Look, when I got in the food business, I was looking at my mom and I said ’You’re cooking that wrong’ and I became colonized as a chef,” Bitsoie laughs. But working at the museum cafe is a whole new chapter for Bitsoie. He can call the shots  —   and figure out how he wants to integrate flavors and techniques from his own culture with his formal training as a chef. When Ailsa Chang went in for the taste test, she was surprised. ”I was expecting a saltier flavor,” she says. ”It’s very delicate, I really like it.” ”And that’s what native food is,” he says, ”it’s really delicate and innocent.” Bitsoie says that’s what he’s trying to do here  —   create new tastes and give people a new appreciation of one of America’s overlooked, and perhaps least understood cuisines."
"By day, Nicola Berlinsky and sisters Lisa Pimentel and Joanie Pimentel are all teachers at the same elementary school in southern California. By night, they’re rockers, playing together in a band called No Small Children. It sounds like a lot to balance, but the members say they often find their two careers overlapping. ”I’ll see Joanie and Lisa at work, and recess becomes a band meeting,” Berlinsky says, ”but then we start talking about our students and sharing notes about our students and really living the successes of each other’s students  —   and then we’re back at band practice again. They are so intertwined.” Joanie Pimentel says music feels like an ideal outlet given the work they do. ”It’s much cheaper than therapy,” she says, laughing. And Berlinsky says her students have generally been supportive of the project. ”They think it’s really funny,” she says. ”The parents do come to our shows, and so the children end up wearing our band   to school, which is quite something.” The three members of No Small Children joined NPR’s Ailsa Chang to talk about their work in and out of the classroom. Hear their full conversation at the audio link."
"It’s that time of year again, when I atone for my failure to make top 10 lists by simply offering a collection of 50 of the many wonderful things I read, watched or heard in 2016. (Here’s last year’s list, for reference.) Standard caveats: I don’t watch everything! I am behind on many things. That’s just the way the world is. So if something you loved isn’t here, it is not a rebuke. And: these are cultural  —   mostly    —   things. These are not the best things in the world. Like yours, my actual list of wonderful things from the year, if I wrote it in a journal instead of for work, would be a list of people and moments spent with them, of days when it was unexpectedly sunny and of the times when things suddenly felt better. But whatever journey you’re on at any given moment, you can always use more good things. So here we go. 1. The willfully  —   gleefully  —   stupid jokes of Angie Tribeca, the TBS comedy starring Rashida Jones that reminded me of Airplane! in a wonderful way that very few things do. Vive le prosthetic tongue! 2. The moment in Captain America: Civil War when a bunch of characters sit around and discuss, with seriousness, a moral dilemma. For a surprisingly long time! Searching conversations in which multiple basically good characters have very different things to say and are allowed to say them and mean them are not all that common in summer blockbusters, and this one was welcome. 3. Leslie Odom, Jr. telling the story of how he watched Shonda Rhimes yell at Art Garfunkel. It’s what   talk shows are for, and it made me instantly envious of everyone who got to see it in person. 4. All of John Mulaney’s comedy special, available on Netflix, called The Comeback Kid  —   and from a strictly shallow perspective, John Mulaney’s tremendous blue suit. Sue me, I’m a lady who likes a great . .. suit. 5. Mike Birbiglia’s sensitive, funny, sad, honest film Don’t Think Twice, which has more affection for and understanding of a certain kind of comedy person than perhaps any piece of fiction that’s ever been written about them. It’s got a killer cast including   Key, Gillian Jacobs, and Birbiglia himself, and it got some of the best reviews of the year  —   deservedly so. (And an R rating, by the way, which is dumb as rocks and completely unnecessary. You’d be much, much better with your teenager seeing this film than some   slaughterfest with abundant death but invisible blood. Boo, ratings.) 6. The finale of the most recent season of the beloved series The Great British  . As I’ve written at length, it’s a thoughtful and uplifting franchise  —   really!  —   and the most recent finale (which we Americans did indeed get in 2016) was as richly satisfying as a good slice of cake. 7. The most recent season of HBO’s Veep. I don’t want to spoil it, but while the show has always been sharp and hilarious, its unexpected and byzantine plotting (in both the    sense and the    sense) got utterly bazoo but somehow remained believable within the world the writers and performers have built. 8. Anna Kendrick and Stephen Colbert singing ”They Say That Falling In Love Is Wonderful.” This is also what   talk shows are for. 9. Christian Siriano, fashion provocateur  —   in the best way. Siriano has grown from a bit of a pain in the behind when he won Project Runway to a very interesting designer and a fascinating guy to listen to. He got a lot of attention for dressing Leslie Jones for the Ghostbusters premiere, but he wound up dressing eight women for the Emmy Awards, and they represented quite a mix of sizes, races and ages. They all looked very different, and they all looked right. Siriano believes in his own vision and always has, but he also seems to believe that the purpose of women’s fashion is to serve women, not that the purpose of women is to serve women’s fashion. Good on you, CS. 10. Speaking of Ghostbusters, Kate McKinnon’s Jillian Holtzmann was one of the weirdest, greatest characters of this year and most other years, and her work on Saturday Night Live as Hillary Clinton was surprising and touching. SNL is often plagued by its institutional standing and a certain cultural (not political) conservatism, and the fact that some of what McKinnon did as Clinton was so weird as comedy  —   even if you didn’t think it always worked  —   is one of the most encouraging signs that the show remains alive. 11. Titus Burgess on WNYC’s Death, Sex  Money. The discussion he had with host Anna Sale is one of the most candid, peaceful, wise conversations I can remember from any corner of public radio, and I recommend it to everyone, always. 12. ”Grandma’s Teenage Diaries,” an entry by David Rees in the New York Times Magazine’s ”Letter Of Recommendation” feature. Rees discovered some of his grandmother’s early writings, and the way he describes them is warm and lovely, but more than anything, it sheds light on the way so many of us think of our older relatives as having always been calm and settled, when in fact, they often led wild, adventurous, exciting lives all their own that we simply never saw. 13. Kristin Chirico’s BuzzFeed piece about visiting the bridal salon where Say Yes To The Dress is filmed. It doesn’t go the way she expects, and I won’t spoil it more than that. Chirico is one of my favorite writers for all sorts of reasons, and her willingness to be surprised by her own experiences is one of the big ones. 14. The Indigo Girls story in Dave Holmes’ memoir Party Of One. I enjoyed this book so much that the second time I read it, I lost all track of time and got my first bad sunburn in years. True story!  : Dave’s tweetstorm about phone scammers. 15. The anniversary celebration of All Songs Considered where I saw Glen Hansard break a guitar string with the force of his   which he does kind of a lot. 16. The frustrating and enlightening ”Object Anyway” episode of the podcast More Perfect. Officially about jury selection, it winds up being about the complex ways people think about race and crime. It’s great radio, and very educational, and constantly compelling. Bonus: I also love the episode ”The Imperfect Plaintiffs.” 17. ”I got this.” The U. S. women’s gymnastics team cleaned up at the Rio Olympics, but perhaps nothing thrilled me more than Laurie Hernandez, just before her beam routine, being caught on camera saying to herself, ”I got this.” 18. Take My Wife, Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher’s comedy series on the   Seeso network. It would have been a terrific show about a complex couple even if it weren’t the regrettably rare depiction of lesbians who, as one episode points out, don’t die immediately when they have sex. 19. W. Kamau Bell’s United Shades Of America, the bracing and funny travelogue series about race and culture that seems even more needed now, as it prepares for a second season on CNN, than it did when it first aired. 20. The    musical Sing Street, which seems to be about a kid who starts a band, but which also turns out to be about the bonds of friendship, the perils of romance and especially the crucial role of siblinghood for anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t quite know how to bloom in quite the place where they were first planted. 21. The year Sterling K. Brown had on both FX’s The People v. O. J. Simpson and NBC’s This Is Us. Both are shows with large casts, and no one in either group was more critical or better than he was. It’s really rare for the same actor to do such good work on both a prestige cable miniseries and a traditional broadcast drama, and Brown more than pulled it off. Absolutely my dramatic acting MVP of 2016. 22. Samantha Bee’s acceptance of the award for Outstanding Achievement In News And Information from the Television Critics Association for her TBS show Full Frontal. She spoke about the show and how grateful she was, then added, ”Now I’ll take your questions on how I achieve   balance.” Like much of what she did through the year, the line was direct, funny, and cutting. So maybe don’t always ask women about   balance, because it appears that they do notice. 23. Michelle Obama’s Carpool Karaoke segment with James Corden, which took a bit that was (and is) rapidly reaching overexposure and immediately made it surprising and joyful, particularly when you include the cameo appearance in the back seat. 24. Sunny Pawar in the drama Lion. Dev Patel is terrific as the adult Saroo, but before he can play a man who looks for his biological family, Pawar has to hold up a good part of the film as a very little boy who loses contact with his. In a pretty good year for kid acting, Pawar was one of my favorite discoveries. 25. ”Unbreakable.” Not everything worked in the revival of Gilmore Girls, but the performance by Sutton Foster of an original song by Jeanine Tesori and show creator Amy   was an unexpected surprise that broke the format but did its job with great force. I was surprised to learn it was written for this, because it’s the kind of song you instantly feel like you’ve heard before, not in the sense of cliche but in the sense of warm familiarity. 26. The ending  —   perhaps too neat, but come on, that’s kind of the format  —   of the   Downton Abbey. It didn’t precisely scratch my every itch (I don’t personally believe Downton ever quite recovered from the loss of Dan Stevens) but did give me some of the things I wanted most, and did deliver a solid dose of Matthew Goode, perhaps the most Downton man who took quite that long to be on Downton. 27. Weiner, hoo boy. There is much, especially in retrospect, that is   about this documentary, which chronicles Anthony Weiner’s failed 2013 run for Mayor of New York City two years after he resigned from Congress following a sexting scandal. If you see this movie with, say, five friends, I can almost guarantee you that you will have a series of conversations about it in which the running theme is, ”I just do not get it.” There is one sequence that involves Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, just . .. pacing, that may be the most interesting thing I saw in a documentary all year. 28. Minnie Driver’s funny, singular performance as the mother to three kids including a special needs son on ABC’s Speechless, a show that has avoided about eight different potential pitfalls to become one of the best broadcast comedies on TV. Driver has needed and deserved a role just like this for years, at least as far back as her hilarious guest spots on Will  Grace, and it was a delight to see her find it. (Bonus: the rest of the cast is just as strong it’s a really solid group and the show is a fine addition to ABC’s strong family comedy lineup.) 29. ”Hello?” I’m convinced that no one who really knows and likes PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman, the hosts of Gimlet’s Reply All podcast, would think it was a good idea for them to take phone calls from anyone and everyone for 48 hours straight. And it was not a good idea. It was a terrible idea, and their bizarre apparent fantasy of going without sleep (? ?) for days (? ??) while talking to strangers (? ???) on tape (? ???? !) quickly fell apart, as it should have. But what ultimately came of it was a nearly   episode that contains, particularly as it progresses, moments of real grace and surprise. 30. Nothing I saw this year was more unexpectedly weird than watching the real Grandmaster Flash try to explain his art to a bunch of television critics during a preview of Netflix’s The Get Down (in which Grandmaster Flash is a character) at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. We were overmatched by what amounted to Grandmaster Flash’s TED talk, and I’m not afraid to say so. Meanwhile, The Get Down was a little bit all over the place, but the central performance from Justice Smith was a real pleasure. The show has half of its first season yet to come, and for Smith, at least, I’ll watch it. 31. Ryan Gosling leaning on a lamppost in La La Land. It pushed a button that’s been deeply programmed inside me since I saw Singin’ In The Rain, and I found it utterly delightful. The movie isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it was my entire pot thereof. 32. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. One of the real travesties of this year was that this music mockumentary from the Lonely Island somehow slipped past people. Already, it’s got a reputation as a film much better than its   flopsitude would suggest, and I firmly believe that as years pass, those of us who truly appreciated it will be vindicated. Please see it just for the   songs and the celebrity cameos. 33. The second season of Catastrophe, starring Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan  —   with Carrie Fisher. It started with a time jump that was clever and wise and instantly moved the story to a more interesting phase of their relationship to explore than you would have seen had the second season picked up right where the first left off. That kind of experimentation is always welcome in episodic comedy, where it’s so easy to box yourself into a corner with such matters as . .. new babies. 34. Little’s bath. While there are a lot of things about Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight to celebrate, I’ll just choose an early sequence in which Little (Alex R. Hibbert) carefully heats a pot of water on the stove. It’s a beautiful little peek at his routine  —   at his independence, resilience and loneliness, all of which will recur through what we see of his life, all at once. 35. The youngest tier of performers in Stranger Things  —   Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Caleb McLaughlin, and Gaten Matarazzo. They were asked, in essence, to embody archetypes from a period they never lived through: the Steven   King ’80s, when kids roamed on bikes and discovered oddities with their best friends. Nevertheless, they all came through like champs, and while the show had trouble delivering on all of its promises (as supernatural stories often do) the friendships sustained it throughout. 36. Sailor dances. I am overlapping as little as possible with Glen Weldon’s Pop Culture Advent Calendar (which offers 25 more good things from this year) but I, too, would be remiss if I didn’t mention Channing Tatum’s ”No Dames” number from Hail, Caesar! For musical aficionados, the callbacks to sailor movies, tap numbers and even Rodgers and Hammerstein (the song is a   in places from ”There Is Nothing Like A Dame”) are a special treat, and Tatum can dance on my screen any time, for as long as he likes. I’m still not sure that guy has been used to the absolute height of his powers. I fear what could happen (to me) when he is. 37. Issa and Molly. There are lots of shows about friends, but not that many good shows about friends. Issa Rae’s Insecure on HBO was many wonderful things at once (I could easily have chosen the early sequence in which Issa talks to herself in the mirror, which has been rightly praised by many before me) but I treasured nothing about it more than I did the portrayal of Issa and her best friend, Molly. Their bond is their primary emotional entanglement in many ways, and therefore it’s the relationship that often has the highest stakes. 38. Michael Shannon in Loving, the story of Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga) whose Supreme Court case established that it was unconstitutional for states to ban interracial marriage. The leads in the film are absolutely divine, and Nick Kroll does good and unexpected work as their attorney. But I was also a sucker for a brief appearance by Shannon as Grey Villet, the Life photographer who took the most   portraits of the Lovings while their case was pending. (Take a look at the real photos, if you never have.) 39. As if it’s not enough that Mamoudou Athie played Grandmaster Flash in The Get Down, he was also a very dreamy romantic lead in a little movie called Jean Of The Joneses, from   Stella Meghie, which follows a young woman (Taylour Paige) with a sprawling matriarchal Brooklyn family. It premiered on TV One in October, and while I don’t think you can stream it right now, it’ll show up, and it will be well worth seeking out. 40. HBO’s documentary Suited, about a Brooklyn custom suiting shop that caters to transgender, nonbinary, and gender   customers. It’s about identity and fashion and compassion, and it was one of this year’s best. 41. Ezra Edelman’s O. J.: Made In America. As good as the FX drama series of the Simpson trial was, I think Edelman’s documentary was even better  —   more stirring, more focused on the social aspects of the case, more searching. It makes the point over and over that what’s most beneficial isn’t to know more about the court case itself, but to understand the many ways in which the case, both as a series of events and as a cultural phenomenon, was created by the country where it happened. 42. Josh Gondelman’s comedy album Physical Whisper includes a track called ”Kiss Me Neck,” and in it, you’ll find one of the reasons Josh (who’s a pal and a writer for Last Week Tonight With John Oliver) is the kind of comedian he is: it’s long and involved, and then . .. the punch line doesn’t come from him. It’s somebody else’s laugh, and telling the story comes from a place of generosity. That would make it unusual in a lot of people’s repertoire, but it fits right in on this record. 43. I am   obsessed with the musical The Last Five Years, and I had no worse FOMO this year than what I experienced when I missed Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Henry performing it at Town Hall in New York. Fortunately, there’s video evidence. This kind of   theater experience, which is sort of a relative of the production of Company a couple of years ago with Neil Patrick Harris and Stephen Colbert, is something I could stand to see a lot more of, hopefully when I’m not traveling. 44. The Brooklyn   episode ”9 Days,” in which both Jake (Andy Samberg) and Holt (Andre Braugher) got the mumps  —   and were quarantined together, and named their goiters  —   was goofy and perfect. Brooklyn is a show I’m crazy about, but never more than when they lock up Jake and Holt and just make them bump into each other in a variety of ways. 45. Emma Thompson being really just about perfect. Much of Bridget Jones’s Baby was just a nostalgia tour for    —   and there’s nothing wrong with that, really. But Emma Thompson shows up in a few scenes as Bridget’s   and she is so funny that it makes the entire film a great bargain, just for that. (”My husband said it was like watching his favorite pub burn down.” A line delivery so good I   in my living room.) 46. This fall’s fresh Emmy winners: Rami Malek for Mr. Robot, Tatiana Maslany for Orphan Black, and Louie Anderson in Baskets, Courtney B. Vance and Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown for The People v. O. J. Simpson, among others, gave hope to those who would like to see the Emmys get a little more . .. well, creative in recognizing talent. Sometimes it feels like it’s all the same faces every year, and this year, it wasn’t. The rare awards show where the winners themselves were fairly frequently exciting to see. 47. All the moments in which, even while grieving, we shared thoughts about artists who died this year. While no one can feel happy, really, about losses like Prince and David Bowie and George Michael and Carrie Fisher, there is a way in which sadness frees up vulnerable thoughts, and I’m not sure we’ve ever had a better year for memorial essays and other reminders to appreciate the artists you love as loudly and unreservedly as you can. To wit: I could easily have made one of the items on this list my firm belief that nobody wrote better more consistently this year in more different ways than Rembert Browne here’s his remembrance of Phife Dawg, and here he is on George Michael’s ”Freedom ’90.” 48. Inside the NPR family, one of my favorite podcast episodes of the year was Code Switch’s ”Audie And The    School Bus.” Just listen. (Bonus in this category: My Pop Culture Happy Hour   and dear friend Glen Weldon’s great, great book The Caped Crusade: Batman And The Rise Of Nerd Culture. Pro tip  —   consider the audiobook.) 49. This was my year of Hamilton, as it was for many people. Not only did that mean I had the chance to see the show, but it meant I got to watch the #shotsoutthegrammy phenomenon on Snapchat, and I got to watch a digital puppeteer for PBS’s Splash  Bubbles make a fish lip sync ”My Shot,” and it meant I got to hear Code Switch’s Gene Demby talk to George Washington himself, Chris Jackson. (By the way: I don’t love everything on the Hamilton mixtape, but I do love Dessa singing ”Congratulations. ”) Big year. 50. I don’t think it would be fair not to acknowledge that all the wonderful things there are often coexist with tremendous sadness and disappointment and fear. In that spirit, I want to close the list with Gregory Porter’s Tiny Desk Concert, which he played at NPR just after we learned that NPR photographer David Gilkey and journalist and interpreter Zabihullah Tamanna had died in Afghanistan. There had been so much crying that day that half the eyes in the building were still swollen. Porter came to us by chance, but it was just as if he’d been sent for this purpose. The concert was sorely needed and incredibly healing. And yes, it was wonderful."
"For those of us at NPR, 2016 was   of big news stories, so much so, it sometimes seemed the horrors in the headlines would never stop  —   the migrant crisis, police shootings, terrorist attacks, and on and on. But when we looked at stories that you, our NPR One listeners, loved listening to the most in 2016, it painted a very different picture of the year. The   stories in NPR One indicate that you are passionate about three subjects. First, you love science and innovation. You really love the National Park Service for its 100th birthday, NPR produced a series of stories throughout the year that captured your attention. And you also enjoyed our longer,   discussions with artists such as Miguel and Dua Lipa, who talked about their creative processes. Oh, and you also love stories about Finnish mail carriers. (More on that later.) First, a little bit about how we came up with this list. Our NPR One app allows you to customize your NPR experience, by skipping ahead to the stories you like or to your favorite podcasts. When you listen to a story instead of skipping it and either share that story or tap on that story’s light bulb icon (it’s our version of the ”like” button) it’s a pretty good indicator you enjoyed or appreciated that story. These are the 10 stories that had the most of these positive interactions. 1. Just Like Human Skin, This Plastic Sheet Can Sense And Heal, Joe Palca took us to a lab to meet a scientist who is trying to make artificial skin out of plastic that can feel things, heal itself and keep germs out. Zhenan Bao has a long way to go before testing the plastic skin on humans, but she’s making progress. Listen, Read,  2. Planet Money  —   NPR One Oil Exclusive, In an NPR One exclusive, the Planet Money team explained how crude oil becomes more than just the fuel that powers our cars and heats our homes. It’s now the basis for many other consumer products, including the dyes that color our clothes and even painkillers that cure our headaches. Listen,  3. Noteworthy: Miguel, In this piece from NPR Music’s Noteworthy documentary series, host Jason King visited psychedelic soul artist Miguel in his Los Angeles home and spoke with him in the studio where he’s working on songs for an upcoming fourth album. This is a deep, immersive listen into the world of creating music. Watch, Listen,  4. Don’t Care About National Parks? The Park Service Needs You To, The National Park Service has been a part of our country for 100 years. But Nathan Rott reports about concerns that the majority of the visitors to National Parks are white and don’t reflect the demographics of the country. He looks at some attempts to change that with new programs and efforts toward diversifying the park’s staff and visitors. Listen, Read,  5. Indian Automaker Balances Luxury With Global Sustainability, Sonari Glinton, Ari Shapiro and Susan Stamberg put a Jaguar sports car through its paces in the hills of Los Angeles. An Indian company called Tata now owns Jaguar, and it’s trying to find new approaches to limit pollution and energy consumption. Listen,  6. Finland’s Postal Service Will Mow Your Lawn, Postal service workers in Finland have long helped out the elderly by delivering food and assisting with small things around the house, but now mail carriers are available to mow lawns. Listen,  7. Noteworthy: Dua Lipa, Noteworthy host Jason King met Dua Lipa in New York the morning before her Tonight Show performance for the latest episode in the NPR Music documentary series. They spoke about how she developed her sound, why she has always wanted to be a pop star, and why breaking through in the United States is so important to her. Listen, Watch,  8. National Park Service Celebrates Its 100th Anniversary, Nathan Rott introduces us to the people behind the scenes who keep the National Parks running. Listen,  9. Blockchain Looks To Change How To Do Business Online, Blockchain is a technology that allows people to share what is basically a digital ledger. It is best known as the code that makes Bitcoin work. Don Tapscott wrote a book about blockchain and says it is the greatest innovation in computer science in years. Listen,  10. Keeping Bears Wild  —   Or Trying  —   At National Parks, There are wildlife biologists who try to keep bears in National Parks wild and away from people. We learn about the problems of ”bear jams” and ”bear selfies” and meet the people who try to   the bears that get too attached to life near people. Listen, Read,  Related: The Secret Sauce Behind NPR One: An Editorially Responsible Algorithm"
"Though many of us lamented the   saga of this year’s U. S. presidential election, the news was too momentous to tune out. Indeed, many of the year’s biggest stories on NPR. org were all about politics. The top 20 most popular stories from the past year ranged from fact checks to mosquito bites, from Aleppo to taxes, and how to raise kids who will thrive, whatever the future brings. Here they are: the   stories from a year we won’t soon forget. Here Is What Donald Trump Wants To Do In His First 100 Days, The top story of the year  —   and in fact, the top story of all time on NPR. org, with more than 17 million views  —   was one that we didn’t write. It’s a memo from   Donald Trump, released in October, setting his agenda for his first 100 days in office. FACT CHECK: Donald Trump’s First 100 Days Action Plan, NPR’s reporters and editors took a deep dive into that plan for the first 100 days: How much of his proposed agenda can   Trump really pull off? They assessed what it would take, for instance, to eliminate two federal regulations for each new regulation that’s added, as Trump said he wants to do. Who Benefits From Donald Trump’s Tax Plan? Trump promised to ”massively cut taxes for the middle class, the forgotten people, the forgotten men and women of this country, who built our country.” During a town hall meeting on NBC’s Today, he said he believes in raising taxes on the wealthy. But some economists say Trump’s tax plan would benefit the 1 percent the most. Fact Check: Trump And Clinton Debate For The First Time, Though some have claimed we’re now in the ”  era,” NPR. org readers aren’t buying it. Our live fact check of the first debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton drew nearly 10 million page views, becoming what was at that point our most viewed story ever. FACT CHECK: Clinton And Trump Debate For The 2nd Time, The second debate was a testy one, and our political team assessed the accuracy of the candidates’ statements on everything from the deficit and the Affordable Care Act to Trump’s comments about women and Clinton’s email server. Fact Check And Full Transcript Of The Final 2016 Presidential Debate, This was the debate that added the terms ”bad hombre” and ”nasty woman” to our lexicon. NPR’s political team dug into the   of the candidates’ statements about guns, abortion, immigration and more. Shades Of 2000? Clinton Surpasses Trump In Popular Vote Tally, As the final votes were tallied, Clinton became the fifth U. S. presidential candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election. The structure of the Electoral College makes it theoretically possible for a candidate to win the White House with less than 30 percent of the popular vote. Live Coverage: Election Night 2016, Then there was election night itself. Trump’s victory caught many by surprise, and our live blog tracked the triumphs and tears as results emerged in contests around the country. Donald Trump Might Be In Real Trouble This Time, After the Republican Convention in July, Trump’s poll numbers went into a slump. NPR’s Ron Elving delved into the factors that were hampering Trump at the time. A Wounded Child In Aleppo, Silent And Still, Shocks The World, The image of one child, wounded and bleeding from the head, became a symbol of the Syrian conflict’s brutality, with airstrikes that often targeted hospitals. For 70 Years, A Mug In Auschwitz Held A Secret Treasure, In a mug belonging to Jews sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, museum conservators discovered a false bottom, concealing a gold necklace and a gold ring inlaid with stones. The jewelry had remained hidden all these years. What’s The Best Way To Keep Mosquitoes From Biting? The best way to avoid the Zika virus is to not get bitten by mosquitoes in the first place. NPR talked to researchers  —   many of whom spend a lot of time in   jungles and marshes  —   about the pros and cons of repellents including DEET, lemon eucalyptus and good   long sleeves. One scientist adds this fashion tip: Tuck your pants into your socks. Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away, With the advent of laptops and tablets, many students started typing notes, because it’s often faster than writing. But it turns out that the slowness of taking notes by hand is what helps students process information and actually understand the concepts they’re writing down. How To Raise Brilliant Children, According To Science, Two developmental psychologists offer a new framework to help parents cultivate the skills their children will actually need to thrive in the world: ”If we don’t rear children who are comfortable taking risks, we won’t have successes.” Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney Phil Did Not See His Shadow, It might have been the chilly weather that day or just a love for Bill Murray movies, but readers needed to know the latest   meteorology. Phil’s verdict: Winter was on its last legs. WATCH:   Nails Impersonations Of Trump, Clinton, Obama, Sanders, From the depths of an exhausting election, a bit of mirth emerged in the form of Jack Aiello,   graduation speaker extraordinaire. What would the candidates say about the cinnamon rolls at Thomas Middle School? You’ll have to watch the video. Suspect Purchased Guns Legally Ahead Of Deadliest Shooting In Modern U. S. History, In June, a gunman opened fire on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. killing at least 50 people before he was shot dead by police. The suspect, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to ISIS in a 911 call before the attack. Mateen legally purchased a long gun and a handgun in the days before the attack. Minnesota Gov. Calls Traffic Stop Shooting ’Absolutely Appalling At All Levels’ Philando Castile, a    black man, was fatally shot by a police officer in suburban St. Paul, Minn. in July. Castile had notified the officer that he was licensed to carry a handgun and was reaching for his wallet at the officer’s request when he was shot. His death, streamed live on Facebook by his girlfriend, sparked national outrage. Gwen Ifill, Host Of ’Washington Week’ And ’PBS NewsHour,’ Dies, Gwen Ifill, one of the most prominent political journalists in the country, died in November. ”I’m very keen about the fact that a little girl now, watching the news, when they see me and Judy [Woodruff] sitting side by side, it will occur to them that that’s perfectly normal  —   that it won’t seem like any big breakthrough at all,” Ifill said in a 2013 interview. In Victory For Protesters, Army Halts Construction Of Dakota Pipeline, In December, the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the construction of a key section of the Dakota Access Pipeline, to the cheers of protesters who had built a sprawling camp that was then covered in snow. That decision essentially halted construction of the   oil pipeline, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation."
"With so much attention paid to   women in 2016, from Hillary Clinton to Wonder Woman, it’s easy to lose sight of   women who are blazing a trail in   and   countries. In ways big and small, these women have moved the needle on gender equality by being activists, role models or simply taking a stand. Here’s a roundup of some of the many memorable women we profiled on Goats and Soda in 2016. Halima Aden, the beauty pageant contestant who wore a burkini  The      wanted to compete for Miss Minnesota USA and didn’t let the fact that she is a hijabi  —   a Muslim woman who wears hijab  —   stop her. In the swimsuit portion of the competition, she wore a burkini, a type of modest swimwear specially made for hijabis. She grabbed headlines for her confidence, from the States to Somalia. ”Beauty isn’t   ” she says. ”If I can find different ways to spread that message, I will.” Sitawa Wafula, founder of Kenya’s first mental health hotline  Wafula has bipolar disorder, but she had a hard time getting diagnosed in her native Kenya. Some people thought she was cursed  —   and even worse, there just weren’t many mental health facilities in Kenya where she could get good information about her condition or medications. So she established Kenya’s first text message mental health hotline so anyone in the country could send in questions to trained volunteers. She’s become a role model in Kenya  —   and this year, named one of her country’s 40 women under 40. Shahd   a mom who slammed a teacher who shamed her daughter, When Swerki’s    daughter stripped nude in front of some boys in preschool, the teacher was frantic, acting as if the girl had ruined her future. At first, Swerki was filled with panic and shame. But she was determined to raise her daughter to be comfortable with her own body  —   an awareness she herself wasn’t taught as a young Palestinian girl. ”I will never allow anyone to control my reactions and feelings toward any incident happening to my daughter. To my husband. To me. To my life,” she says. Jacqueline de Chollet, a Swiss aristocrat who tackles child marriage, What was supposed to be a vacation to northern India ended up changing her life  —   and the lives of almost 200 child brides and other girls. After a chance encounter with a woman in a remote village, de Chollet, the daughter of a Swiss baron, was inspired to start a school for girls in Jodhpur. Called the Veerni Institute, the school requires parents to sign a contract stating that they won’t send their daughter to live with her husband until the girl graduates from high school. In exchange, the girl gets free room, board and education. Petrona Choc Cuc, a victim of sexual violence who testified against her abusers  It happened during Guatemala’s civil war in the 1980s, but Choc Cuc hadn’t forgotten. This year, the    Mayan Indian went to court and told a   judge how soldiers killed her husband, captured her and her daughter, and repeatedly raped her. Many women were too scared to come to court, but not Choc Cuc. Her testimony was critical. In February, two military officials were sentenced to over 100 years of prison each for their war crimes. Rita Superman, a police chief who fights human trafficking, Superman has found that sometimes a   conversation is all it takes to turn a victim’s life around. She shares the story of Sylvia, from Bulgaria, who was arrested in Cyprus for prostitution. Superman asked her: Do you like what you’re doing? Are you satisfied with your work? No one had ever asked Sylvia those questions before. Sylvia was inspired to go to a shelter and press charges against her captor. It’s moments like these that moved the U. S. State Department to honor Superman this year for her activism against human trafficking. Neetu, child bride turned   wrestler  She was a child bride. Today, she’s a   wrestler eyeing the 2020 Olympics. Neetu, a   athlete, an occasional Bollywood actor and a mom of two, is seen as an inspiration in India. ”She’s changed everything,” says a woman from her village. ”Everybody believes that a girl can now say  —   ’I want to do something.’ ”"
"As the 115th Congress is sworn in Tuesday, Republicans will be poised to control Washington with a stronger hand than they have in a decade  —   with the Senate, House and the White House in GOP control once   Donald Trump takes office on January 20. This past November, Republicans held their congressional losses to a minimum, helped by an unexpectedly strong GOP wave behind Trump. After losing just two Senate seats, they’ll hold a   edge (two independents caucus with Democrats). In the House, Republicans lost six seats, giving them a   majority. House Speaker Paul Ryan boasted shortly after Election Day that the ”new unified Republican government” would be ”focused on turning   Trump’s victory into real progress for the American people.” And as NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis explained, there is precedent for a unified government pushing through sweeping changes early on: ”When the White House and Congress have been controlled by the same party, Washington has produced some of the most sweeping  —   albeit politically polarizing  —   legislation aimed at shifting the political trajectory of the nation toward the cause of the party in power. ”In particular, the first   congressional session of a new administration  —   when public approval is generally at its highest for the incoming president  —   has produced some recent presidents’ most memorable legislative imprints.” GOP congressional leaders and Trump agree on many things  —   paramount among them their best chance ever to repeal and replace Obamacare, in addition to rolling back federal regulations and increasing infrastructure projects. But there are some looming showdowns between the incoming president and members of his own party on Capitol Hill  —   many of whom were less than supportive of Trump in the primaries and lukewarm on his prospects in the general election. Top Republicans have already signaled their break with Trump over alleged Russian cyberattacks intended to interfere with the U. S. elections. After President Obama announced sweeping sanctions against the country last week, Ryan called the response ”overdue” but ”appropriate.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the sanctions were a ”a good initial step” and reiterated his support for a congressional investigation into the supposed interference. Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain is planning a hearing for Thursday into the breach, with three top intelligence officials set to testify. Trump, however, has said the country should ”move on” from the cyberattacks. During the campaign he repeatedly praised Russia and its president Vladimir Putin, casting doubt that they were behind the intrusion. He even praised Putin as ”very smart!” after his muted response to sanctions from the Obama administration. Trump has, however, agreed to meet with U. S. intelligence officials regarding the cyber breaches this week. Congress is prepared to get a jump start on confirming Trump’s Cabinet nominees as well, with hearings on some top appointees beginning next week. But many of his most important picks are controversial, particularly Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson. The Exxon Mobil CEO’s ties to Russia and Putin have already raised concern, and he’s sure to be pressed about the new sanctions as well. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’s nomination for attorney general could be contentious too. While sitting members typically receive deference from their peers, Democrats will draw attention to his past failure to get confirmation as a federal judge because of alleged racist remarks made in the past. Another looming fight will be when Trump makes his pick for the Supreme Court to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland languished last year as Republicans declined to take up his nomination. The process of repealing the Affordable Care Act is expected to get started this week as the Senate is expected to take up a budget measure that would begin the process of dismantling President Obama’s signature domestic achievement. But it won’t come quickly. Without a replacement plan on the table, some Republicans are wary of moving too quickly to dismantle the healthcare law for fear it would roil insurance markets if no fix is ready to be implemented. Soon after the members of the 115th Congress are sworn in on Tuesday, their next task will be to officially   Ryan as speaker. And while there’s little drama expected, there could still be defections once the voice vote is held on the House floor, particularly from hardline Trump supporters. Two years ago,   John Boehner had 25 members of his own party vote against him. When Boehner stepped down in October 2015, only nine other Republicans voted for someone other than Ryan. Ryan distanced himself from Trump just before Election Day after damaging audio emerged of Trump bragging about groping women. The two have since reconciled, but there have been signs of discord among the base. At a rally last month in Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin, the speaker was booed. And while Trump quieted the dissenters, he did caution that if Ryan ever opposed him their relationship might not be so rosy any longer. ”Honestly, he’s like a fine wine: Every day goes by, I get to appreciate his genius more and more,” Trump told the Wisconsin crowd on Dec. 13. ”Now, if he ever goes against me, I’m not going to say that, OK?” It may have been a joke, but speaks to the strain in the most powerful relationship in Washington."
"Democrats may have lost the House and the Senate over the past eight years, but they always had one thing: President Barack Obama  —   and his veto pen  —   in the White House. That won’t be the case next year, when Republicans find themselves with all the power in Washington for the first time since 2006. The capitol’s new power dynamic  —   and the aggressive agenda Republican leaders are laying out for 2017 —   is forcing Democrats to make some tough strategic choices about how they’ll work as a minority party. The starting point in the conversation Democrats are having with themselves right now is this: Republicans in Congress spent almost all of the past eight years opposing President Obama, and they seem to have reaped a lot of political rewards for the block opposition. GOP leaders will get to set the agenda in Congress next year. And among their first orders of business will be voting on a Supreme Court nominee picked by President Donald Trump. That’s after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected any hearings, let alone votes, for Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is quick and careful to reject an approach of wholesale opposition, though. She recently described Democrats’ approach as ”always trying to find a place where we can find a common goal. Giving [Republicans] credit, or saving face, whatever it happens to be.” ”We would be hopeful that there are some places that we can work together,” Pelosi said. But when Pelosi and other Democrats talk about working with Trump, that common goal is conditional. They say Trump would have to be willing to do things they care about  —   like, perhaps, following through on a promise to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure projects. ”We think it should be large. He’s mentioned a trillion dollars. I told him that sounds good to me,” incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recently told ABC News. Highlighting differences, But otherwise, Democrats are confident that drawing out their differences with the new president will be a winning strategy. ”Our big leverage is the public,” Pelosi said, expressing confidence that public opinion sides with Democrats when it comes to issues like not making major changes to Medicare and Social Security. Democrats are eager to draw the contrast on those sorts of topics, and see those particular wedge issues as a big reason why they won back the House and Senate in 2006, the last time Republicans held so much power in Washington. That’s why, while Republicans like McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are focusing on repealing Obamacare, Pelosi, Schumer, and other Democrats keep talking about the possibility of wholesale Medicare changes. ”Republicans here in Washington are gearing up for a war on seniors,” Schumer warned at a recent Washington press conference with a ”hands off our Medicare” message. Schumer said Senate Democrats will give ”one heck of a hearing” to Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s pick for the Department of Health and Human Services and a longtime Medicare critic. Democrats think they can generate a lot of positive headlines by grilling Trump’s cabinet picks. ”These are, with a few exceptions, radical nominees, the likes of which we have never seen in this country,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Democrats see hearings as a way to continue emphasizing their key concerns about Trump, like the fact he never released his tax returns, and the ongoing question of how he’ll avoid    problems as president. They see Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson’s hearing as an avenue to highlight Russia’s attempt to disrupt the presidential race, and Trump’s warm words toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. A big choice on Obamacare, But highlighting contrasts can only go so far, when Republicans set the Congressional agenda. At some point, Democrats still face a choice. Do they do their best to block every single big initiative, or try to work with Republicans to make it more  ? Sarah Binder studies Congress at the Brookings Institution, and said Democrats do have leverage. ”On most measures, whether it’s spending bills, deregulation, repeal  . That all requires cooperation from at least eight Democrats.” That’s because while Republicans will control the Senate with 52 seats, they’ll need at least 60 votes to advance bills in the chamber. The hardest political calculus could be Obamacare. Republicans can repeal the landmark law without any Democratic votes, using the budget reconciliation process that helped pass the initial law. But they’d need Democratic support in the Senate to pass a replacement plan, since the measure would be subject to filibuster. Blocking any sort of replacement plan, and then trying to lay the blame for disappearing health care coverage on Trump and Republicans, would be a bold, if callous, political move. ”Are they kind of, as a party, constitutionally adverse to that type of strategy? Many people think so,” said Binder. ”That they just value government and legislative action too much to do that to the process.” Indeed, many Democrats might want to work with Republicans to keep as much of Obamacare as they can. But helping give Trump a big legislative accomplishment could make him more popular. And it could anger progressive activists. ”It is the responsibility of this minority of Democrats in Congress to block, obstruct, disrupt, and do whatever they can,” filmmaker Michael Moore recently argued on CNN. He issued a warning to Democrats who may consider cutting deals with Trump: ”In the same way that the Tea Party was there in 2009, myself and thousands like me are going to be at those town halls in the district in the spring. And we will primary these Democrats if they don’t do their job.” Warnings like that may be why leaders like Schumer are quick to qualify any talk about working with Trump on issues like infrastructure spending. ”When we oppose Trump on values, or if his presidency takes a dark, divisive turn, we’re going to do it  ” he told ABC News. Pelosi knows Democrats all across the country are anxious. But she’s urging patience as the party tries to make its case to voters. ”Somebody used the analogy of, it’s like telling somebody they married the wrong person or their art is fake,” she recently told reporters. The first scenario is something many people have seen happen to a friend or family member. The second? Maybe not as much. Still, Pelosi’s point was that American voters did choose Trump and the GOP this year. ”They bought it. They’ll find out sooner or later whether they made a mistake,” she said, arguing that it’s better to let the married couple or art connoisseur make that discovery themselves, than to be told by an outside party. Pelosi has seen voters reject Democrats, come back to the party, and then reject them again. She said she is patient enough to point out the key differences between the parties, and wait for voters to eventually come back."
"There’s more methane gas in the atmosphere than there used to be, by every scientific measure. The Obama administration has been trying to stem the increase of this powerful greenhouse gas, but the incoming Trump administration appears bent on keeping the government’s hands off methane. The gas comes from agriculture, especially flooded agricultural lands like rice fields, as well as from the digestive tracts of livestock. But it’s also the main component of natural gas some methane escapes from leaky oil and gas operations. Whatever the source, scientists have found that, after many years of very little change, concentrations of methane in the atmosphere have increased by 3 percent over the past eight years. ”Methane concentrations in the atmosphere are surging faster than any time in the last 20 years,” environmental scientist Rob Jackson, of Stanford University, told NPR. Jackson and his colleagues have long tracked various sources of methane, as it emanates from oil and gas wells, city sewers and manure pits he recently published scientific papers on global as well as local concentrations of the gas. ”We understand some of the reason for (the increase),” he said, ”but not all of the reasons.” Other climate researchers have confirmed Jackson’s findings, and point out that methane warms the atmosphere at about 30 times the rate carbon dioxide does. Jackson said the recent increase convinces him that methane deserves as much, if not more, immediate attention as carbon dioxide, the main contributor to greenhouse gas. Scientists point to agriculture as the likeliest source of the new methane, especially in Asia and Africa. Feeding more people has meant more rice fields, more livestock and more manure  —   all sources of methane. There also is some evidence that small changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere may be allowing methane to stay aloft longer than usual, giving it more time to warm the air. But Jackson noted that there are other sources. ”We also see evidence for some increase from the fossil fuel sector,” he said, meaning drilling, processing and the transporting of natural gas. Recent research shows that leaks from the natural gas supply chain are more widespread than previously thought. The U. S. government is taking steps to stem that source of methane. The Environmental Protection Agency has written regulations to make companies plug methane leaks at new or modified oil and gas operations, and at the operations on some federal land. But the oil and gas industry believes the government is overreaching. That debate is likely to flare up when   Donald Trump takes office. Trump has said that environmental regulations drive up the cost of doing business and kill jobs his choice to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, has made similar claims that the agency has a history of overly regulating oil and gas companies. Jack Gerard, who leads the American Petroleum Institute, told reporters in November that he wants the incoming Trump administration to dump the regulations. ”Methane (regulation) is a top priority, and we’ll be pursuing that aggressively,” Gerard said. Some oil and gas companies have already sued to stop the regulations, which aren’t yet in effect. ”I think everybody understands that there needs to be methane regulation, and it’s really a question of degree,” Steve Leifer, an environmental lawyer at Baker Botts, a legal firm that represents oil and gas companies, told NPR. ”I know the industry is very concerned. They are taking it very, very seriously.” Oil and gas representatives argue that the recent research shows that the biggest source of methane is agriculture, along with natural sources like wetlands. That may be true, but Mark Brownstein, a lawyer with the Environmental Defense Fund, said he believes that’s a red herring. ”I think the debate over what’s caused the   rise has served to obscure the fact that emissions are already too high,” Brownstein told NPR. You have to start somewhere, he said, and capturing leaked methane from oil and gas operations is easier than changing agriculture practices. In fact, stopping methane leaks should make economic sense for the oil and gas sector, he said: Methane is a commodity, and leaked methane is money lost. Brownstein’s organization, along with university researchers and natural gas companies, has studied how much gas is leaking. ”Let’s keep in mind what’s at stake here,” he said. ”We’re wasting enough natural gas every year to serve the needs of 7 million homes.” So far, oil and gas interests haven’t been convinced. Gerard points out that the industry is voluntarily reducing leaks and doesn’t need federal enforcement. Leifer, the attorney representing oil interests, told NPR the debate will likely end up in court, along with lots of other pending environmental regulations. ”There is no major rule that isn’t going to go to court,” he said. ”You just can’t find one.” That shouldn’t be surprising, he said. Every change of administration in Washington means more business for lawyers."
"A Jewish farming couple from Canada says it has shepherded the sheep of the bible back to the Holy Land after centuries in exile. With donations from Jewish and Christian supporters, and some help from the Israeli government, Jenna and Gil Lewinsky have airlifted 119 furry members of the Jacob Sheep breed from their farm in Abbotsford, British Columbia, to Israel. Jacob Sheep are found in the U. K. and North America, but the Lewinskys say the breed originally roamed the Middle East and ancient Israel, and their spotted and speckled coats match the description in the Book of Genesis of Jacob’s flock. ”You know that Israel is built on Jewish people returning. Now you have a case of an animal from the Old Testament also returning,” said Gil Lewinsky from a customs loading dock at Israel’s international airport near Tel Aviv. Several times a week in recent weeks, an Air Canada jet touched down at the airport carrying a group of the Lewinskys’ fluffy Jacob Sheep in its cargo. ”Come, Israel, come!” farmer Jenna Lewinsky said to one reticent animal, coaxing him out of his shipping crate. Each animal comes with a Hebrew name. About two years ago, the Lewinskys wanted help with their spiritual mission to repatriate Jacob Sheep to their biblical homeland, and they contacted Eitan Weiss, then the head of cultural relations at the Israeli embassy in Ottawa. ”I was like, what the hell? Sheep?” Weiss recalled. ”I don’t know. It sounded very, very odd, I had to say. But when I did the homework and when they sent me some material, I said, I think this is an amazing story.” The Israeli Agriculture Ministry was not as enthused. Canada is not on Israel’s list of approved countries for livestock import. But the Israeli ambassador to Canada got involved, and the Agriculture Ministry granted a   exception for the Jacob Sheep. Curious to learn more about the sheep’s pedigree, I visited sheep expert Elisha Gootwine at the Israeli Agriculture Ministry’s research organization, the Volcani Center. ”Jacob Sheep are related to Jacob the same as the American Indians are related to India,” Gootwine said with a chuckle, standing inside the research center’s sheep pen. The Jacob Sheep are originally British and got their name in the late 19th century because their spots and speckles called to mind Jacob’s sheep from the Bible, Gootwine said. Generally, all sheep can be traced back to the Near East, he said, because sheep were first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent. But the Jacob Sheep breed, according to Gootwine, is not indigenous to ancient Israel. Zohar Amar, a senior lecturer in the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at   University in Israel, who studies the flora and fauna of ancient Israel, said the Jacob Sheep breed ”may have a long history in the U. K.,” but, ”according to all of the scientific indications we have (historical and zoological sources) it has no connection to the ancient sheep breeds” of ancient Israel. ”Anyway, it’s a nice breed and people will be happy to see it,” Gootwine said. ”It is a good story. For journalists, not for scientists.” ”So, it’s just, it’s a myth,” I said. ”Yes. But what is wrong with myth? If you enjoy it, why not?” Gootwine replied. The Lewinsky farmers say the biblical roots of the Jacob Sheep are not a myth. They’ve traced the breed’s route from ancient Israel to the Iberian Peninsula to England to North America  ” and now, to Israel. The Lewinskys are currently setting up a farm for the sheep near Jerusalem, and they are continuing to solicit donations for support. Five of their sheep died shortly after arriving in Israel.  Meanwhile, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is planning a welcome home ceremony for the animals. Is Israel their original home? The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Eitan Weiss said he sees it as a matter of faith."
"As Donald Trump prepares to become president, he’s promising to explain how he’ll deal with the many conflicts of interest posed by his businesses and charitable foundation, even as he insists they pose ”no big deal.” But short of selling his properties and putting the proceeds in a blind trust, it’s not clear that Trump can completely resolve the controversies over his many businesses. ”There’s a uniform consensus among everyone who does government ethics for a living . .. those who are still in government and those who have left government, that Donald Trump must divest,” says Norm Eisen, former ethics adviser to President Obama, and a fellow at the Brookings Institution. ”He’s got to sell his holdings, through using a blind trust or the equivalent of it, as every president has done for 40 years.” Since his election, Trump has settled some outstanding legal disputes, including lawsuits over Trump University and unionization drives at hotels in Las Vegas and Washington, D. C. Trump’s efforts to put these issues behind him suggest he recognizes that he and his family face serious conflicts of interest, Eisen says. ”That being said, [Trump’s actions] are not enough. They are baby steps, when what we need is a giant leap,” Eisen says. Trump says he will hold a press conference soon to explain his plans for his extensive network of businesses, but hasn’t said when it will take place. An earlier press conference to address the issue was canceled in December. His transition team cited the complexity of Trump’s businesses and said he needed more time to decide what to do. But Trump himself suggested to reporters in Palm Beach last week that addressing the conflicts was a simple matter and said his businesses are ”no big deal.” ”When I ran, people knew I have a very big business. So, I mean, they elected me at least partially for that reason. So I think that’s going to work out very easily. It’s actually a very simple situation,” he said. One issue that Trump appears eager to put behind him involves his charity, the Trump Foundation. Trump has been accused of using money from the charity, most of which was donated by other people, to pay expenses related to his businesses. The foundation has acknowledged ” ” on its tax returns, although it’s unclear what specific violations took place. Trump announced on Christmas Eve that he would shutter the foundation, a move that makes sense, says former IRS official Philip Hackney, associate professor of law at Louisiana State University. ”It begins to eliminate a minor conflict. I really think the Trump Organization is a much more significant conflict than the Trump Foundation was ever close to being,” Hackney says. But the New York  ’s office, which is investigating the charity, quickly scotched the idea of shutting it down prematurely. Closing the foundation too soon could complicate the investigation, Eisen says. ”We don’t want any information to disappear into the ether when the charity closes. That’s a particular problem for Donald Trump because he has a propensity for secrecy,” he says."
"The Islamic State issued a statement on Monday saying it was responsible for the attack at a New Year’s Eve celebration at a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, in which at least 39 people were killed. The   Amaq News Agency published the statement: ”In continuation of the blessed operations that Islamic State is conducting against the protector of the cross, Turkey, a heroic soldier of the caliphate struck one of the most famous nightclubs where the Christians celebrate their apostate holiday.” NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports the ISIS claim hasn’t been verified. On Sunday, Peter reported that Turkish officials identified several possible culprits for the shooting, including the Islamic State, Kurdish militants or   groups. Turkey’s   news agency says that nearly   of the people killed were foreign nationals. Clubgoers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Lebanon and France are thought to have been killed. Funerals for some of the Turkish victims began on Sunday. A      woman was killed in the attack. Peter reports that her father warned her not to go but she insisted  —   wanting to be with her friends. Nearly 70 people were wounded in the attack, among them a    businessman from Delaware, according to the State Department.   reports that Michael Raak of South Philadelphia says his brother, William Jacob Raak, called on New Year’s Eve to say he had been shot in the leg. The search for the attacker, who has not yet been identified, is still underway, says Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu. Police believe he carried out the attack alone. The Associated Press reports: Hurriyet and Karar newspaper reports Monday cited unnamed security officials saying that authorities have determined that the gunman who killed 39 people comes from a Central Asian nation and is believed to be either from Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan. Police had also established similarities with the   attack at Ataturk Airport in June and was investigating whether the same IS cell carried out both attacks. NPR’s Peter Kenyon reported on Weekend All Things Considered that Turkey’s prime minister says the attacker left his weapon at the scene and fled in the chaotic aftermath. At Reina, one of Istanbul’s most popular nightclubs, it’s believed some 500 to 600 revelers were celebrating the start of the new year. Reuters reports that the attacker shot at a police officer and at civilians before entering the nightclub. Many inside were said to have jumped into the neighboring Bosphorus waterway in an attempt to save themselves from the gunfire. The U. N. Security Council condemned the attack in a statement, calling it a ”heinous and barbaric terrorist attack.” Both the White House and State Department condemned the attack. The assault on the nightclub comes just two weeks after Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov was shot dead by   Turkish policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas and three weeks after a bomb attack killed 44 people at a football stadium in Istanbul. A Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility for the latter. Turkey, which is part of the U. S.  coalition against Islamic State, has faced numerous security threats. In all, there were at least six attacks in Turkey in 2016, claiming more than 200 lives."
"On a September day in 1940 while much of Europe was engulfed in war, four teenagers were walking through a forest in southern France when their dog fell down a hole. As they called for it they heard an echo. Crawling in to rescue the dog, the boys discovered a cave with hundreds of prehistoric animals painted across its walls and ceiling. It turned out to be one of the world’s best examples of prehistoric art. The Lascaux cave became a popular tourist site after World War II. But it had to be sealed off to the public in 1963 because the breath and sweat of visitors created carbon dioxide and humidity that would damage the paintings. Now the French government has spent $64 million building a near perfect replica to recreate the original cave  —   and the emotions of that first discovery. To see the replica, which is next to the actual cave, you begin outside, at the top of the adjoining museum. Visitors walk slowly down toward the cave entrance. All the while, sounds of the surrounding forest on a summer day are played on speakers. This specific order to the visit, referred to as the museum’s sequencing, is important to recreating an authentic experience, says Dina Casson, who was part of the team that worked on the museum’s design. ”When you visit the original cave, you’re actually walking through the forest with these sounds,” says Casson. Casson says recreating the impression of going underground and coming out again  —   from light to darkness to light again is also important. One member of her team was allowed into the original cave. ”That was one of the things that he said was so powerful,” says Casson. ”This sense of being outside, then inside, then outside.” Once inside the replica, the temperature is cool and constant, just like the real cave. As eyes adjust to the darkness there are suddenly animals everywhere. The more than 600 paintings and a thousand engravings in the actual cave were done 20, 000 years ago. Using a laser light to point out details, archeologist   Chadelle says these early human artists used very advanced techniques. ”You can see how they used a magnesium pencil for the black horns of this bull,” he says. ”And for the softness of the muzzle they used another technique. They blow dried paint made from natural ochre colors through a tool crafted from hollow bird bones.” Chadelle used to give tours in the original cave, which he says eventually became a victim of its own success. ”There were so many visitors that people were passing out inside the cave from all the carbon dioxide.” Chadelle says in the 1950s the hole the boys climbed through was opened up so a giant fan could be installed to help circulate the air. ”That’s why this replica is almost more real than the real cave,” says Chadelle. ”Because it has that original hole the boys climbed through.” Guillaume Colombo is the director of the new cave and museum complex at Lascaux. He says the art was so well preserved for so long because the cave was sealed tight  —   like a cork in a champagne bottle. ”So the cave wasn’t affected by sudden temperature changes,” says Colombo. ”And another reason it was protected is there’s a layer of clay in the soil that waterproofs the cave. That’s why Lascaux has no stalactites or stalagmites. It’s a dry cave.” Standing in the first big room of the cave replica, known as The Hall of Bulls, prehistorian Jean Clottes says the animals don’t really represent what these Cro Magnon humans would have hunted and eaten at the time. ”That would have been mammoth or reindeer,” he says. Clottes says the many bulls and horses were likely animals that played a role in the beliefs and spiritual life of these early humans. There are many mysteries surrounding the Lascaux cave paintings. For example, experts don’t really know how long it took to complete them. ”There was a code and a certain style they all follow, so we are pretty sure they were done by a small group, and in just a few years,” says museum director Colombo. ”But we don’t know if it was a few years within a hundred years or a thousand years.” Colombo says the paintings were most likely done by a couple generations of painters who passed down the knowledge. Such questions can be explored in interactive exhibits in the museum. Each visitor is offered a personalized tablet available in 10 languages. The glass museum looks as if it was slipped into a fault line on the hillside. Norwegian Thorsen Kjetilis is one of the architects. He calls the museum a link between past and present. ”It is a very contemporary building cut into the landscape and out of the landscape,” says Kjetilis. ”It’s just at the borderline between the vertical forest where the original cave lies behind us, and the horizontally of the farmlands in front.” The whole complex, known as Lascaux IV, is the third and most ambitious attempt to replicate the famous cave. It is precise down to three millimeters thanks to 3D digital scanning of the actual cave. Every nook and cranny is recreated using polysterine and resin, and the latest fiberglass techniques. Francis Ringenbach led the team of 34 artists who reconstructed the cave walls and ceilings and then copied the paintings onto them. He calls the   job ”colossal.” Ringenbach says to reproduce the art,   images of the paintings were projected onto the walls and copied pixel by pixel. The painstaking work gave them a real appreciation for the skills of the prehistoric artists. Ringenbach says they had a real level of mastery, and used the surface of the cave. ”These animals are not positioned by chance,” he says. ”For example, the eye of this bison is not engraved, it’s a natural cavity they exploited to make the eye.” Ringenbach says the more his team worked, the more astonished they were. ”Putting ourselves in the context made us realize how difficult the conditions were. They were working in darkness and working from memory to do these compositions.” Ringenbach said the prehistoric painters would also have had scaffolding that was fairly comfortable. ”They certainly weren’t working on a branch.” At times, he says the copy job became emotional. ”There were moments when I realized that I must be doing the exact gestures and movements of the prehistoric artist. And that’s when a little shiver would go down my spine,” he says."
"Hundreds came out New Year’s Day to ride the train in New York City, cheering as it left the station. That may sound odd, but this wasn’t just any subway or any old station, it was the stuff of urban legend: the Second Avenue subway line. To understand the crowd, you have to go back to the 1920s when the idea for the subway line was first floated, but never left the station because the Depression hit. The idea was revived again in the 1950s as a replacement for the elevated trains, but city planner Robert Moses decided to spend money building expressways instead. In 1968, the city finally got federal funding to build a subway on Second Avenue. It was expected to cost $220 million. The TV show Mad Men even worked in a reference to the plan when Peggy Olson, one of the main characters, goes apartment hunting on the East Side that year on the show. But it didn’t happen because in 1975 the city was broke. By the 1990s overcrowding on the sole East side line had become untenable so the idea for a Second Avenue subway line was revived, and in 2004, a plan was approved. The first phase would include three new stations that go from 72nd Street to 96th Street. The Metropolitan Transit Authority even gave a deadline: 2013. And a cost: $3. 8 billion. But the public was skeptical, as that deadline was pushed back to 2015 and costs crept up. The MTA finally settled on Dec. 31, 2016. On New Year’s Eve, at a newly renovated station on 72nd Street, Gov. Andrew Cuomo held an opening night party. There was a   band, a newsstand was converted into a beer bar, and the cavernous station was filled with purple, pink and orange lights. The governor helped secure more than a billion dollars in federal funding for the project and the MTA, and appoints their board members. At the New Year’s Eve party he told the more than 500 invited guests that the Second Avenue Subway is vindication of his vision. ”We needed to show people that government works and we can still do big things and great things and we can still get them done,” Cuomo said. The final cost for the three stations, and two miles of track was $4. 5 billion. And on Sunday morning, it officially opened to the public. ”I am so excited. I’ve been waiting for this for years and I’m thrilled to be on the first train,” said    Lillian Redl. Redl, who lives nearby, says the new line will shave nearly 20 minutes off her commute. And the new stations filled with colorful tile art, including 12 portraits by the artist Chuck Close, are snazzy. ”I love the high ceilings, it looks like there might be some soundproofing so I’m really pleased about that,” she said. And this announcement is sweet music to her ears: ”This is a   Q train via the Second Avenue line.”    train enthusiast Jared Margulis was impressed with the clean elevators, but had one suggestion: ”I think they got to work on the train, because the train did not say the right stop that the train is going to.” Residents are concerned that the new line will also bring higher rents that could push   residents out. The next phase will extend the line to 125th Street and is estimated to cost $6 billion. Tunneling could start in the next two years."
"What to expect when you’re expecting a baby dinosaur? Expect to wait. That’s the conclusion of a study by researchers at Florida State University who determined how long it took dinosaurs to hatch from their eggs by studying their teeth. Much like tree rings, teeth have growth lines called lines of von Ebner that can be used to estimate the age of an animal. Researchers had expected dinosaurs might take the same time to hatch as bird, between a week and a half and three months. But in fact, they stayed in the shell far longer  —   between three and six months. The leader of the study, Florida State University professor of anatomy and vertebrate paleontology Greg Erickson, says you can think of it like layers of paint. Every day, a liquid layer of dentine fills in the inner portion of the tooth and mineralizes, leaving distinct growth lines on the tooth that scientists can measure. The researchers studied two types of dinosaurs, Protoceratops andrewsi and Hypacrosaurus stebingeri. These two dinosaurs produced eggs that range from the smallest known dinosaur eggs, to some of the largest. ”The Hypacrosaurus had a four kilogram egg  —   imagine that as four times larger than the egg of an ostrich,” says Erickson. ”They look like volleyballs.” The eggs revealed that dinosaurs probably spent about three to six months inside the egg before hatching, depending on the size of the dinosaur. The long incubation time of the eggs could have played a role in the extinction of dinosaurs after the   extinction event. ”You can imagine after the asteroid hit all of a sudden the resources went to nothing,” says Erickson ”Even when they (dinosaurs) did reproduce, they had extremely long incubation periods on top of it.” Unfortunately for the dinosaurs, animals that reproduce quickly are better equipped to adapt to challenges and are more likely to survive extinction events. The biggest limitations to the study are the number of specimens the researchers were able to analyze. While dinosaur eggs are fairly common fossils, intact eggs containing a skeleton are very rare. Erickson and his colleagues hope to look at more dinosaurs, including carnivorous dinosaurs, to see if their speculations about incubation times are true for all types of dinosaurs. The new research published in the journal PNAS on Monday."
"John Grant is not your      . He’s a superstar overseas, but he’s relatively unknown in the U. S. where he was born. He lives in Iceland and speaks four languages. He’s openly gay. And he’s HIV positive, as well as a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Grant’s journey from obscurity in Buchanan, Mich. to playing   gigs at London’s Royal Albert Hall started in the 1990s with his band The Czars, which released eight albums over 12 years. This was a big deal for Grant, who had come from a home where his parents were convinced he needed to be ”fixed” because of his sexual orientation. ”When I was young, people were so disgusted by me,” Grant says. ”Before I even knew that I was gay . .. everybody else had it figured out and, you know, they were letting you know.” Even as The Czars gained critical acclaim, Grant submerged   dysfunctional relationships and anxiety in an oblivion of alcohol and drugs. ”I spent a lot of time caring, and it drove me to really just try and annihilate my brain,” he says. ”I just felt that I was going to fall apart if I didn’t learn to be myself.” The Czars split. Grant stopped drinking, and he stopped making music for a couple of years of recovery. He says he began to find the courage to bring out his whole self through his first two solo records. He sang about being HIV positive, and railed against a bad boyfriend. Ultimately, Grant realized he was dealing with severe depression. ”Sometimes I still can’t believe how much it can beat me down,” he says. BBC 6 Music Presenter Mary Anne Hobbs says Grant’s songs can be painfully  . ”Most songwriting, even if it’s based on a true story . .. is embellished in some way,” she says. ”But John’s lyrics  —   they’re so true they might as well be written in blood.” Grant says people close to him have questioned whether it’s good to expose so much of himself, but he says he enjoys performing intensely personal music. ”Sometimes, you might be feeling like you’re dredging things up, but that isn’t usually what’s happening,” he says. ”Usually, you sort of dealt with it and went through it when you wrote the song. And then when you perform it, there’s just the joy of connecting with people.” Pioneering singer and broadcaster Tom Robinson was one of the first rockers to come out as gay and mix music with LGBTQ liberation. He says Grant’s 2015 record, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure, exudes a powerful confidence. ”If I had heard a song like ’Snug Slacks’ when I was a gay teenager in the ’60s, I think he could have saved me 10 or 15 years of heartache and pain,” Robinson says. ”It’s so great to hear somebody making music this unashamed and yet this irresistible.” Grant says he wants listeners to hear the fun in his music, because that’s a part of him, too. ”I want it to be a mixture of pain and laughter,” he says, ”which is a good representation of what life is like.”"
"Since George Washington penned his farewell address in 1796, announcing he would not seek   and laying out his hopes and fears for the nascent country, presidential farewell speeches have become a tradition in the peaceful and democratic transfer of power. President Obama announced Monday that his farewell speech will be Tuesday, Jan. 10 in Chicago. It will be held at McCormick Place, the venue for Obama’s 2012 Election Night celebration. In announcing the speech, Obama said he’s just starting to write his remarks but that he’s ”thinking about them as a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey, to celebrate the ways you’ve changed this country for the better these past eight years, and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here.” Presidential farewell speeches have historically been a chance for presidents to defend their accomplishments and lay out their hopes for the future. In some cases, the speeches have included pointed warnings that reverberate long after the speech has ended. For example, in his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the country about the growing might of the military, and specifically about the ”  complex,” the relationship between the U. S. armed forces and defense contractors. NPR’s Tom Bowman reported on the lasting impact of this speech in 2011, noting that it ”has become a rallying cry for opponents of military expansion.” Bowman said: ”Eisenhower was worried about the costs of an arms race with the Soviet Union, and the resources it would take from other areas  —   such as building hospitals and schools. ”Bowman says that in the speech, Eisenhower also spoke as someone who had seen the horror and lingering sadness of war, saying that ’we must learn how to compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.’ ”Another concern, Bowman says, was the possibility that as the military and the arms industry gained power, they would be a threat to democracy, with civilians losing control of the   complex.” In his farewell address on Jan. 15, 1953, President Harry Truman reflected on and defended his decision to drop the atomic bomb in Japan and mused about the start of the Cold War era. He said: ”I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the ”cold war” began to overshadow our lives. I have had hardly a day in office that has not been dominated by this all —  embracing struggle —  this conflict between those who love freedom and those who would lead the world back into slavery and darkness. And always in the background there has been the atomic bomb.” President Ronald Reagan named the deficit as one of his regrets in his address to the nation on Jan. 11, 1989. He called out ”popular culture” saying: ”For those who create the popular culture,   patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom. . .. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile. It needs production. So we’ve got to teach history based not on what is in fashion, but what is important.” In President Bill Clinton’s speech on January 18, 2001, Clinton hailed the economic progress under his administration and called for the U. S. to be a beacon of freedom and peace in the world. He also saluted America’s diversity, saying: ”In our hearts and in our laws, we must treat all our people with fairness and dignity, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation and regardless of when they arrived in our country, always moving toward the more perfect union of our founders’ dreams.” President George W. Bush delivered his farewell address on Jan. 15, 2009. Despite his dismal approval ratings and a limping economy, he said, ”You may not agree with some of the tough decisions I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.” He also called Obama’s election ”a moment of hope and pride for our whole nation.” Obama leaves office with his approval rating at a   high, according to Gallup. Despite Obama’s conciliatory   speech about   Donald Trump, and his administration’s ongoing transition work, Trump tweeted on Dec. 28: ”Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition  —   NOT!” With the country fiercely divided after the election, Obama is expected to continue to strike a hopeful tone about the incoming Trump administration. And with much of his policy legacy  —   including his executive actions on immigration and the Affordable Care Act  —   at stake, it’s likely Obama will use his address to defend his actions."
"Erica Abad glides down the ancient canals of Xochimilco, a borough of Mexico City, on her   boat. Her cousin, Efren Lopez, steers their boat  —   called a chalupa  —   by pushing against the canal floor with a long wooden pole, while Abad flips a sizzling quesadilla on a steel griddle fitted into the boat. When a group of people on a nearby barge signal to them to order some quesadillas, Lopez navigates the boat toward them. And Abad places a few more quesadillas on the griddle for their customers. As the quesadillas turn golden, with the cheese inside perfectly melted, she fills them with huitlacoche (a deliciously earthy fungus that grows on organic corn) mushroom, chorizo, squash blossom and other ingredients. Abad’s chalupa is among many selling traditional Mexican street food and drinks, including sopes (a tortilla topped with refried beans, chorizo or ground beef, lettuce, salsa and a grated salty cheese called cotija) roasted corn and pulque (an alcoholic drink made from the fermented sap of an agave plant). The boats are surrounded by floating chinampas  —   gardens  —   with plants and small animals, like frogs, crayfish and salamanders. One chinampa is allegedly haunted, with creepy toy dolls hanging from nooses on trees.  Gliding past these gardens and boats are Xochimilco’s famous trajineras  —   vibrantly painted barges  —   that are filled with people knocking back micheladas (a spicy drink made with Clamato, beer and lime). Some barges even have mariachi bands playing on them. This is a typical day in this ancient borough, whose name means ”the garden of flowers” in Nahuatl, a language of the Aztecs. The chinampas were built centuries ago by indigenous settlers, who had found themselves surrounded by wetlands and needed to create spaces for growing plants like cactus, bougainvillea, bonsai and dahlias. So, they made floating gardens with tree branches, soil and mud, and tied them to juniper trees on the banks, to hold them in place. Over the years, the older gardens sank and new ones were on top of them. Today, the chinampas are no longer tethered to the banks. They look like little floating islands with plants, houses and other buildings on them.  The canals, which once helped transport goods from Xochimilco to other places, have evolved into a popular day trip destination in the last century. This borough’s history, beauty and a continuing campaign to protect the place from deterioration led UNESCO to declare it a World Heritage Site in 1987. Locals and tourists visit to enjoy the scrumptious street foods and alcohol, with the colorful sights and sounds all around. Lined up along the concrete loading dock is a long line of trajineras, with bright, swirly shapes and floral patterns painted on them. Their colors and designs have been an unchanging part of the boats for hundreds of years, reflecting the indigenous roots of the culture here. The trajinera have modern names these days  —   like Fernanda, Beatriz and Shakira. A newlywed couple, their wedding guests and a mariachi band dressed in white, board a trajinera with ”nuestra boda” (”our wedding”) spelled out in roses on an arched metal covering that shades the seated passengers. They drink and dance on their way to their reception, passing barges with a bachelorette party and a family enjoying lunch. You can spend an hour or four making your way down the long canals and experience a visual and aural symphony. There’s music everywhere. There are mariachi bands for hire. Or you can simply enjoy the Latin pop or club jams by rapper DMX blaring from rented stereos on passing trajineras. Dancing and singing at the top of your lungs are encouraged. As you float down the canals that once were inhabited by the Aztec and other indigenous communities, you’re treated to the smell of frying oil from boats selling quesadillas or the steam from boats selling elote (roasted corn smothered in butter, crema, cotija cheese, lime and hot sauce). And when you’re hungry, the boats will feed you and ply you with beer. The street food here is special  —   made with local ingredients deeply embedded in Mexico’s history. For example, the huitlacoche fungus goes back to the Aztecs, who gave it its somewhat unappetizing name, which means ’raven’s excrement.’ Food vendors take pride in the quality and   taste of their food. Lopez says all their quesadilla fillings are slow and patiently cooked at home before bringing it to her chalupa. And here in Xochimilco, you can enjoy these delicacies in a setting unlike anywhere in the world."
"Congress is back in session on Tuesday, and leaders of both houses say their first order of business will be to repeal Obamacare. If they do that, it will be a slap in the face to President Obama just three weeks before he leaves the White House. The Affordable Care is the outgoing president’s signature achievement, marked by an elaborate signing ceremony in March 2010 at the White House, with lofty speeches from the vice president and Obama himself. ”Today, after almost a century of trying, today after over a year of debate, today, after all the votes have been tallied, health insurance reform becomes law in the United States of America,” Obama said that day, to long applause from the assembled crowd. And Joe Biden famously leaned over to remind the president that it was ”a big f****** deal.” But Republicans have been vowing to repeal the law since the day it passed, and they’ll soon have a sympathetic president in the White House to sign whatever bill they send him. ”We will repeal the disaster known as Obamacare and create new health care, all sorts of reforms that work for you and your family,”   Donald Trump vowed last month in Orlando. That new health care plan hasn’t been fleshed out yet by Trump or his allies in Congress. So they say they’ll vote to get rid of Obamacare, but delay its demise until they come up with a replacement that will cover the millions of people who have insurance thanks to the law. Insurance companies and health care analysts are worried. ”I don’t see how you talk to any [insurance] carrier and give them any desire to hang around to see what they replace it with,” says Dr. Kavita Patel, an internist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ”Why would you stick around for that?” Patel worked in the White House and helped create the Affordable Care Act. But she’s not alone in her concern. Last month the health insurance trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans sent a letter to lawmakers asking them to keep in place many of the financial incentives that are central to the law  —   including subsidies for patients to help them buy insurance and cover copayments, and a provision that eliminates some taxes on insurers. The American Academy of Actuaries also warned in its own letter that a repeal of the ACA without replacing it would be dangerous to the   health of the insurance market. Still, Republicans appear determined to move ahead with the vote as soon as this week. Some history: Democrats rammed the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010 with no Republican support. It was a huge, complicated law and, like most legislation, it was flawed. Over the subsequent six years, Republicans, who were angry at the way the Affordable Care Act was passed, refused to cooperate in any actions that would be seen as helping it succeed. Instead, they promised in speeches and television interviews to repeal it entirely. In fact, the House has voted more than 60 times over the years to do just that. ”There’s no getting around the fact that lots of Republicans campaigned hard against the ACA and a lot of them won, including the person at the top of the ticket,” says James Capretta, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. But even with control of both chambers of Congress and with Trump in the White House, Republicans can’t simply repeal Obamacare. They would need the help of at least a handful of Democrats to overcome a filibuster. Democrats can’t, however, filibuster budget bills. So Republican leaders have decided to defund Obamacare, eliminating the tax penalties for those who don’t buy insurance and the subsidies to help people pay their premiums. Essentially, that guts the law’s main elements. The problem for Republicans is that today, an estimated 20 million people get their insurance through Obamacare. About 10 million buy policies through the exchanges set up by state and federal governments, and most of those patients get subsidies to help pay the premiums. And millions more are covered because the law allows states to expand the number of people who are eligible for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. So people who had   conditions that shut them out of the insurance market before the ACA passed, or people who had reached   lifetime benefit limits, generally like the law. But, then there are people like Will Denecke, who is mad because his insurance costs have gone up since Obamacare passed. Before the law was enacted, he spent about $340 a month on health insurance. ”Incredibly, we got a notice from my health care company, Moda, which has been having financial problems, that my premium was going up to $930,” he said last October. He’s a   urban planning consultant in Portland, Ore. and, unlike most people in Obamacare, he makes too much money to qualify for government subsidies. ”I’ve had health insurance my whole life, but it’s just offensive in principle to think of spending $1, 000 a month on health care insurance when there is a good chance I won’t need it,” he said. He was considering just letting his coverage lapse. And, on the other side, you’ve got people like Leigh Kvetko of Dallas. She takes 10 medications every day because she’s had two organ transplant procedures, and the drugs are part of her daily regimen to survive. After Obamacare passed, she was able quit her job at a big company and start a business with her husband, because she could finally get individual insurance. ”This particular plan, the fact that they cannot discriminate against me because of how I was born, was a lifesaver, literally,” she says. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady told the Washington Times last month that consumers needn’t worry. ”We can assure the American public that the plan they’re in right now, the Obamacare plans, will not end on Jan. 20, that we’re going to be prepared and ready with new options tailored for them,” he said."
"Almost a million elephants roamed Africa 25 years ago. Assessments of their population now vary but suggest there are fewer than half that many. The main reason for the decline is ivory. Despite a 1989 ban on ivory trade, poachers continue to kill elephants for their tusks. Now China, the destination for most of that ivory, has announced it will shut down its domestic ivory market. Wildlife experts had thought that the international ban on ivory trade would slow or even stop the killing of elephants for their tusks. It didn’t. In fact, the killing got worse. That’s mostly because the ban didn’t cover older ivory, that is, ivory taken from elephants before the 1989 ban. So people are still killing elephants but passing off their ivory as old, and therefore legal to trade. John Robinson, with the Wildlife Conservation Society, says efforts to stop the supply of ivory at the source, in Africa, have not been very successful. ”Addressing the demand is absolutely essential if we are going to deal with the poaching issues,” he says. The biggest source of demand for ivory has been China. ”Almost all the ivory is for carving,” says Robinson. ”China has had a history of doing so. Whole tusks are carved into elaborately assembled pieces of one kind or another.” Now China has agreed to close down that legal trade by the end of 2017. Robinson says it’s an announcement conservationists have been waiting for since 2015, when U. S. and Chinese officials started negotiating an end to China’s trade. ”Certainly closing down domestic ivory in China will have a dramatic impact,” says Robinson. ”The Chinese market is the largest ivory market in the world.” Says conservation expert Elly Pepper at the Natural Resources Defense Council: ”It’s a game changer and could be the pivotal turning point that brings elephants back from the brink of extinction.” The Chinese government has laid out an extensive plan that includes putting ivory carvers to work on existing museum pieces or other projects. The government says it will also educate the public on the consequences of ivory trading for elephant populations. The Obama administration already has shut down almost all trade in ivory in the U. S. and several states have their own bans. Robinson says the Chinese decision may help convince other countries that trade in ivory, such as Vietnam, the United Kingdom and Japan, to do the same."
"The second day of January is National Science Fiction Day, an unofficial holiday that corresponds with the official birthdate of Isaac Asimov, the enormously influential and prolific scientist and writer of science fiction. The start of the new year is also a good moment to reflect on the future  —   an exercise familiar to both writers and readers of science fiction. But where New Year’s resolutions typically extend over weeks or months, the imagined futures of science fiction usually unfold years or centuries from the present. Interstellar travel and space colonization, if they come at all, aren’t coming in 2017. But maybe Jan. 2 is a good moment to take a longer view. What do the possible futures of 2067, or 3017, mean for the decisions we ought to make today? In an essay published in 1978, Isaac Asimov advocated for a ” ” way of thinking, a way of thinking that should inform the   of the present. He wrote: ”No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the word as it will be  —   and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our Everyman, must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved.” The ”fictional” in Asimov’s ” ” thinking shouldn’t be misread. Asimov wasn’t calling for baseless speculation, but for systematic and scientifically informed prediction  —   an appreciation for possible futures, all the while acknowledging their contingency on our current actions and the many uncertainties involved. If this form of thinking is for Everyman (and Everywoman) what does it mean for us, in 2017? Adopting a longer view helps clarify which problems merit special attention. New Year’s resolutions are often focused on the self  —   with dieting and exercise topping many people’s lists. But looking a century into the future can change that focus from the self to future generations. For me, that highlights climate change and inequality as deadly problems of today, and science and education as crucial   investments.   thinking isn’t a reason to give up on dieting or exercise. But it might be a reason to consider a more ambitious set of resolutions for 2017 (and for 3017, too). Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Creatine, a chemical constituent of meat and fish that’s legally been sold online, in supermarkets, health food stores and vitamin shops for at least a couple of decades, may be the most commonly used   supplement marketed. But the safety and effectiveness of creatine hasn’t been rigorously analyzed by the Food and Drug Administration in the way that drugs are evaluated. And while proponents argue that the supplement’s long history of use by many athletes suggests it’s relatively safe for healthy adults, pediatricians warn that it’s unclear whether the supplement might harm the growing muscles and bones of kids and teens. That hasn’t been studied. The American Academy of Pediatrics specifically recommends against its use by adolescents, and most of the flavored powders, tablets, energy bars and drink mixes containing creatine bear warning labels that the supplement is not recommended for anyone under 18. Even so, use of the supplement among teens seems to be rising, particularly among young male athletes. Researchers at the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York wondered whether retailers were appropriately cautioning high schoolers and middle schoolers not to take the stuff. So they did a little survey: A    undergraduate, a member of the research team, called 244 health food stores across the U. S. posing as a    football player seeking to increase his muscle strength. In each phone call he asked workers at the stores for their recommendations about which, if any supplements he should take. More than two thirds of the sales associates recommended creatine to the caller  —   despite the label clearly warning against its use by young people. The researchers published their findings in in the February 2017 issue of the journal, Pediatrics. ”The biggest concern for teens is the potential impurity of the supplement,” says Dr. Michelle LaBotz, a pediatrician in private practice who specializes in sports medicine and   the cautionary position paper on creatine for the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Sports Medicine  Fitness. Because the FDA only lightly regulates dietary supplements, LaBotz explains, the purity of these creatine products cannot be assured some have been found to be contaminated with other substances, including testosterone, which can impair a child’s ability to grow and develop bone. The body is an ”amazing machine which functions, for the most part, beautifully on its own,” says Dr. Ruth Lynn Milanaik, who led the study. ”There’s no need to rush the game of muscle mass, which can be added slowly and healthfully through clean living, a good diet and exercise,” Milanaik tells Shots. LaBotz says a solid, strength training program can increase a teen’s strength by 30 percent or more in 12 weeks, and is far more effective than taking creatine. Milanaik says her findings should be considered a ”call to arms” for parents, coaches, pediatricians and retailers, to address and discuss potential risk of supplement use, especially with adolescent athletes."
"Men who work out may be using legal    supplements to the point that it’s harming their emotional or physiological health, according to a recent study. The preliminary study, presented Thursday at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention, recruited 195 men ages 18 to 65 who went to the gym at least twice a week and regularly consumed legal   or   supplements  —   things like whey protein, creatine and  . Participants answered questions about their supplement use as well as their   body image, eating habits and gender roles. ”The heyday for illicit supplements for the average man is over,” says Richard Achiro, lead author of the study and a registered psychological assistant at a private practice in Los Angeles. ”The bulky Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone are not what most men are seeking to achieve now. They want to be both muscular and lean, and it makes sense that [legal supplements] are what they’re using or abusing.” Forty percent of participants, who were all men, increased their supplement use over time, while 22 percent were replacing regular meals with dietary supplements. Eight percent of participants were told by their physician to cut back on supplement use because of health side effects, and 3 percent were hospitalized for related kidney or liver problems, which can be caused by excessive use of protein powders and other supplements. Men who used dietary supplements inappropriately also were more likely to have behaviors associated with eating disorders. Achiro is no stranger to the culture of workout supplements. His interest was piqued when he noticed throughout college and graduate school how common it was for his male friends to use supplements before or after workouts. ”It became more and more ubiquitous,” Achiro says. ”Guys around my age who I knew  —   I’d go to their apartment and see a tub of some kind of [protein] powder.” Not to mention that this has become a   industry that’s grown exponentially in the recent decade or so, he adds. Achiro was surprised to find that most studies focused on illicit supplements such as hormones and steroids and gave little thought to the role of legal supplements, which are readily available at supermarkets and college bookstores. One big factor behind supplement use is body dissatisfaction, the study found. The men internalize a particular set of cultural standards of attractiveness usually depicted by the media: healthy, muscular and lean, ”like Zac Efron,” says Achiro. And they’re unhappy that their own bodies don’t meet that ideal. But the study also found that the men using supplements were more likely to feel gender role conflict, which Achiro explained as underlying insecurity about one’s masculinity. ”This isn’t just about the body,” Achiro says, ”What this is really about is what the body represents for these men. It seems that the findings in part [show] this is a way of compensating for their insecurity or low  .” Abusing whey protein and the like can also put gymgoers at risk for other health problems such as body dysmorphic disorder, also known as muscle dysmorphia, and related body image disorders. ”Body dysmorphic disorder used to be referred to as reverse anorexia,” Leigh Cohn, a spokesman for the National Eating Disorder Association, says. ”Someone with anorexia will feel they need to continue to get thinner and lose weight. With bodybuilders, they act in the same kind of manner. They acknowledge that they’re ripped, but are obsessed with certain body parts that they find inadequate. This drive for muscularity preoccupies them. Supplements serve them the same way diet products serve someone with an eating disorder,” Cohn says. For people affected by body dysmorphic disorders, this constant and compulsive behavior takes over their lives  —   they are constantly   and can be unhappy, dissatisfied, or have low  . ”Think about competitive athletics on the high school and college level. Lots of these guys are encouraged by coaches and trainers to take these supplements,” says Cohn. ”This isn’t thought of as a negative behavior but can have negative consequences.” The silver lining, Achiro points out, is that 29 percent of study participants knew that they had a problem of overusing supplements. But they might not be aware of possible underlying psychological factors. ”Guys think taking supplements is healthy, [they’re] convinced it’s good for them, [it’s] giving them all kinds of nutrients they wouldn’t be getting otherwise,” says Cohn. ”[This is] ignorance about what proper nutrition is.” It’s also not unusual for people diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder or its characteristics to also have a high incidence of depression, anxiety and alcoholism, Cohn adds. Although the research is preliminary and has yet to be   Achiro hopes his research puts the issue on the map and encourages researchers to replicate his work. ”This is just the very beginning. There’re still tons to look at,” he says."
"There are a lot of reasons victims of sexual assault choose not to report it. High on that list is fear of retaliation, so many victims won’t come forward unless they can stay anonymous. The criminal justice system cannot guarantee that kind of confidentiality for accusers and the accused. Further, when sexual assault is reported to law enforcement, a majority of cases never make it to trial. In fact, only 3 percent to 18 percent of sexual assaults lead to a conviction, according to research funded by the Justice Department. But a court case involving the University of Kentucky has highlighted how confidentiality can complicate justice. Jane Does on campus, Student victims have the option of reporting sexual assault to their school’s Title IX office. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination on campus. These offices are also tasked with investigating allegations of sexual misconduct and these investigations come with the advantage of guaranteed anonymity for both the accusers and the accused. The two women at the center of this case were graduate students in the University of Kentucky Entomology Department when they said their adviser sexually assaulted them. NPR spoke with both women as well as the accused. Because this story is meant to focus on the system, we’re respecting the confidentiality of the accused and the accuser. We’ll refer to the women as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, and the accused as the professor. NPR obtained a report prepared by the University of Kentucky’s Title IX office in which the Jane Does allege the professor groped them and said sexually suggestive things to them while attending separate conferences with him. The Jane Does told NPR that confidentiality was the most important thing for them when they decided to go to the university’s Title IX office with their allegations. Jane Doe 2 said they never wanted to go through the courts because they couldn’t afford to be named. ”I just spent a good portion of my life in grad school trying to further my career and if I’m labeled as someone who filed a sexual assault claim against a professor, that could very easily backfire against me,” Jane Doe 2 says. ”There’s a lot of people in academia who think that there are women who make up stuff like this.” Jane Doe 2’s concerns about retaliation in her professional life is just one of many reasons victims of sexual assault choose not to come forward. Research shows that only about 35 percent of rape or sexual assault cases are reported. On college campuses, the percentage of incidents that go unreported is more than 90 percent, according to the National Sexual Violence Research Center. The Title IX office launched an investigation and after months of interviewing dozens of people and collecting all sorts of evidence, they found enough of it to move to the next step: an official hearing. Who presides over Title IX hearings can vary from school to school, but they are typically run by school officials and do not involve law enforcement. If those presiding over the hearing found the professor guilty, everything would go on his employment record. But that hearing never took place because the professor was allowed to resign, highlighting what Jane Doe 2 calls a loophole in the Title IX system. ”Not just at UK but at every single university, if a professor resigns before there’s a hearing then he’s allowed to move on to another university potentially victimizing more students,” she says. In a statement to NPR, the professor said there is no truth to the allegations and that he resigned to protect his family from the publicity and stress of a hearing. Seeking justice, This gets to the heart of why letting universities handle sexual assault investigations can be problematic. You can’t remain anonymous in a criminal case as the Constitution guarantees the right to face our accusers. It’s different going through a university Title IX office, where the primary focus is protecting accusers. The office keeps their identities confidential and there’s even a different burden of proof. Frustrated that there would never be an official hearing, the Jane Does reached out to the university’s independent student newspaper, The Kentucky Kernel. Marjorie Kirk was the first person at the paper to hear the women’s story. Kirk is a journalism student at the school who had made a name for herself as an investigative reporter. ”It was March and a person walked in asking for someone to talk to and I said, ’I can talk’ and they basically unloaded this huge story on me,” Kirk says. After hearing the Jane Does’ story, Kirk was troubled by the lack of transparency on the university’s part and wanted to dig deeper. ”I felt an obligation to the safety of other people to try and report this,” says Kirk. ”And that’s why we started this battle for open records.” The newspaper filed two Freedom of Information Act requests seeking all the documents related to the investigation. The university turned over some records, but not all of them citing a law called the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act  —   or FERPA, which protects the privacy of student records at all public schools and universities. ”And this institution, the University of Kentucky, has consistently held that student information, particularly in cases that might identifying a student in a sexual assault, sexual misconduct case, must be held confidential,” says Jay Blanton, a spokesman for the university. So the newspaper appealed to the Kentucky attorney general, who sided with the newspaper. But the university still wouldn’t give up the records and because of a quirk in Kentucky law that says the attorney general cannot be named as a party in a lawsuit, the University of Kentucky took its own student newspaper to court in order to block the documents from being released. For Kirk, the move was reinvigorating. She really did believe the university could have simply redacted names and other identifying details and now she’d get to prove it in court. This time a lot more was at stake than just one professor leaving campus without a hearing. ”A decision would be for all the marbles,” said Kirk. ”It would affect any decision that a judge anywhere would try to come up with for similar documents. They would see this decision and likely follow the precedent.” Kirk says that just two days after the lawsuit was filed, two people who said they were acting as representatives of the Jane Does showed up in her office  —   a point the Jane Does dispute because they say they did not have two representatives. Though the Jane Does had consented to giving The Kernel 21 redacted pages of the investigation, they say they didn’t tell anyone to leak the full investigation to The Kernel. Ultimately, though, The Kernel ended up with the full report.” In the more than 100 pages were interviews with witnesses and emails where one of the women confronted the professor about his behavior. The investigation also included the professor’s version of events. So Kirk began writing. She’d publish her first story after receiving the documents on Aug. 13, but the investigation didn’t stop there. ”And as we dug into the system a little more, we saw there was much more to this than one professor,” she says. ”And so the scope definitely grew into a system that universities were enabling.” Pushing forward, pulling back, While Marjorie Kirk was on a crusade, the Jane Does watched with growing concern. They were happy with the first few articles. The women got to maintain their anonymity and the professor was named. But then their personal story mushroomed into something they hadn’t signed on for: dozens of articles and an open records fight. In an effort to put a spotlight on one broken system, the Jane Does stumbled upon another.    can be successful in exposing  . But media outlets ultimately have say on how they pursue stories and aren’t subject to the same rules as the court or universities. So it’s really not surprising that The Kernel took the story and tried to expose as much as they could. In November, the women filed a brief actually taking the University of Kentucky’s side. ”There needs to be some sort of reporting system for professors accused of sexual misconduct while still protecting the privacy of victims like me and Jane Doe 1,” says Jane Doe 2. ”And the records that Marjorie is calling for, those hundreds of pages of documents aren’t necessary for that reporting system.” Judge Thomas Clark of the Fayette County Circuit Court tells NPR he plans to issue an opinion sometime in the next two weeks. But in the meantime, we still have a university struggling to protect students and hold employees accountable, a crusading journalist sued by her own school and two women still searching for a more perfect form of justice. Ashley S. Westerman is a graduate of the University of Kentucky."
"You can only dissect a year for so long before another, hopefully better one comes along. So let’s set aside 2016  —   with its celebrity deaths, political upheaval and, yes, great music  —   and take a moment to look ahead to the best music of 2017. For a quick primer on 2017 music, here’s a world tour of sorts  —   one that runs through Mali (Tinariwen) the U. K. (Little Simz) Brooklyn (Sinkane, who’s also lived in Sudan, London and Ohio) Canada (Japandroids) and, finally, NPR’s hometown of Washington, D. C. (Priests). Hear a song from each below."
"After the countdown to New Year’s, Americans start thinking about upping the intensity of their workouts or making room in their schedule for a boot camp. But the men and women of the Hadza, a group of   in Northern Tanzania, have no need for resolutions to be more active. Anthropologist Herman Pontzer, an associate professor at Hunter College, and his collaborators distributed GPS units with heart rate monitors to a group of Hadza adults. The goal was to use the gadgets to pinpoint the level of physical activity in Hadza life. What Pontzer and his collaborators reported in a study published in October in the American Journal of Human Biology is that the Hadza are moving much of the time, typically in moderate and sustained activity rather than vigorous bursts. There’s a theory that human physiology evolved through hunting and gathering to require aerobic exercise, so that’s what the researchers were interested in testing. The 46 subjects  —   19 male and 27 female with a mean age of 32. 7  —   had their heart rates tracked over four   periods, covering both rainy and dry seasons. This data was matched up with what the researchers have learned about the Hadza’s cardiovascular health by testing 198 subjects (including 30 also in the   study). Their findings: An examination of blood pressure, cholesterol and other biomarkers shows no evidence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The typical Hadza day begins at sunrise. The Hadza wake up in grass huts in the middle of the savanna and mill about while figuring out plans and eating breakfast. Then the men set out with a bow and   arrows, covering miles and miles to track prey, such as giraffes, impalas and zebras. ”They don’t run,” Pontzer notes, unless, of course, ”someone jumps out of the bushes at them.” But they walk pretty much continuously, with just a single break at midday to avoid the worst heat. If they’re striking out with hunting, Pontzer says, they might chop into trees to get wild honey. Women go out in groups, along with children under the age of 2, who are usually wrapped up snug on mom’s back. They pick berries at such a rapid clip that Pontzer admits he couldn’t keep up with the pace. The tougher task is digging into the hard and rocky ground with a sharpened stick to collect tubers, which are a staple of their diet. The upper body workout can take hours, Pontzer says. It all adds up to about 135 minutes per day of    physical activity. Contrast that to the current recommendations from the U. S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of at least 150 minutes per week. And only about 10 percent of Americans achieve that guideline, Pontzer says. This Hadza study is ”very relevant,” says Oxford University associate professor Charlie Foster, who is deputy director of the research group on Population Approaches to   Disease Prevention and president of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health. In a sense, he says, humans are all still  . ”We’re good at gathering food whenever we can. We just don’t have to go very far,” Foster says. ”Within 100 meters of your front door, you can probably buy a coffee.” And what many humans are hunting for these days is an exercise strategy that requires as little time as possible  —   hence, the rising popularity in the Western world of short,   interval training programs, says Foster, who was not part of the study. So one detail about the Hadza research that stands out to him is that they pretty much take the opposite approach. Is there a way for Westerners to design an equivalent exercise to tuber digging? ”Maybe if you garden aggressively,” Pontzer says. But he advises against mimicking the exact patterns of Hadza lives and instead recommends thinking about what you can learn from them. ”What the Hadza study says is that you don’t block out an hour. You put a bit of activity into everything you do. Forget this artificial distinction between exercise and life. Try to change things so you’re doing them more actively,” Pontzer says. And keep on doing them as the years go by. One of the researchers’ key findings is that the level of ”moderate and vigorous physical activity” doesn’t drop off as Hadza age. ”You see   and    men and women keeping up,” Pontzer adds. ”There’s no sitting on a   .” The same is true with Hadza kids. As soon as toddlers are old enough to skip foraging with mom, they join a mob of children who basically just run around all day, Pontzer says. Other than some limited opportunities to go to school, ”a Hadza kid has never spent a day inside because there is no inside,” he says. Maybe that’s another lesson to learn from the Hadza, Foster adds. When it comes to exercise, he says, ”You’re never too young to start.”"
"Some prominent conservatives have signed on to a letter warning   Donald Trump that he needs to sell off his businesses to address his many conflicts of interest. ”Respectfully, you cannot serve the country as president and also own a   business enterprise, without seriously damaging the presidency,” says a letter sent Monday by a bipartisan group of politicians, ethics advocates and academics. The letter was signed by several moderate Republicans, including former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson and former Rep. Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma, who was chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. But the signers also include some   conservatives, including Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, and political consultant John Pudner of Take Back Our Republic, which seeks to build GOP support for campaign finance reform. Pudner was instrumental in the successful Tea   effort to unseat   Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican. He also is a contributor to Breitbart News, which has been managed in recent years by Trump’s senior counselor, Stephen Bannon. A Trump supporter, Pudner said that cleaning up Washington had been a central part of the  ’s campaign and that now he needs to follow through. ”He made such a theme of things like the revolving door and the ways in which decisions can be influenced, not for the public good,” Pudner said. ”If you have the presidency and people are going to question every week, ’Why is he making this decision? Is there some business angle on it?’ I just think it undercuts so much of the reason that people did support him.” Other signatories included several   groups, such as People for the American Way, Public Citizen, Common Cause and the Revolving Door Project, as well as liberal Democrats such as Zephyr Teachout of Fordham University School of Law and Harvard Law School’s Laurence H. Tribe. Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Monday that a news conference is planned for Jan. 11 to address conflicts of interest. But she added that the date might shift, depending upon the advice of Trump’s lawyers. In the past, Trump has said he will turn over his companies to his grown children to operate. The letter notes that the   has begun to address some of the conflicts he faces, terminating real estate deals in Brazil, Azerbaijan and Argentina and announcing plans to close his charitable foundation. ”That is a good start, but we wish to be clear that the only way to solve the problems you face remains divesting your business enterprises into a blind trust managed by an independent trustee or the equivalent,” the letter stated. You can read the letter in its entirety here:"
"There aren’t many Shakers left. Sister Frances Carr, one of three remaining members of the religious group commonly known as the Shakers, died Monday at the age of 89. According to the group’s website, Carr died due to cancer at the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine, ”surrounded by the community and her nieces.” The group’s formal name is the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, founded in 1747 in Manchester, England. Critics called them ”Shaking Quakers” for their style of worship which included ”ecstatic and violent bodily agitation.” Persecution led them in 1774 to emigrate to the New World, where they established their first community in upstate New York. The persecution didn’t end for the group that advocated pacifism, gender equality, communal ownership and celibacy. Still, the community survived and attracted more than 5, 000 followers spread out over 18 communities in 10 states just before the Civil War. Along the way, Shaker communities were credited with creating distinctive furniture and   devices such as the   broom and circular saw. The Shakers’ utopian communities declined after the Civil War. What remains today is the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake. Sister Frances Carr was a    orphan when she was left in the care of the Shakers, according to The Associated Press. The surviving members of the religious group are Brother Arnold Hadd, 60, and Sister June Carpenter, 78. Hadd told The Associated Press that even in her final days Carr had hoped that the Shaker community would grow again, and that she would not be among the ”last” Shakers."
"It’s been 150 years since Fisk University opened in Nashville to educate freed slaves after the Civil War. The school’s later students would become prominent black leaders of the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement. But the small school is still grappling with a dilemma that’s been there since the start: how to become financially sustainable. Fisk is perhaps most widely known for its music, but that legacy is intertwined with money. Just five years after the Fisk Free Colored School was founded in 1866, Congress stopped funding black colleges. Historian Reavis Mitchell says money dried up. ”When the school reached the point of less than a dollar left in the treasury, when there was no hope, a student chorus was put together in the fall of 1871,” he says. That chorus of nine students called the Fisk Jubilee Singers set out on its first national tour. ”They would present themselves  —   some the children of slaves, a few enslaved themselves  —   and the world was astonished by these young people from this place called Fisk,” Mitchell says. The Jubilee Singers became legendary. They performed at the White House for President Ulysses S. Grant. They traveled to England and sang for Queen Victoria, who instructed her court painter to create their portrait, which still hangs at Fisk today. And the tours worked. With the money the singers raised, Fisk bought the land it sat on and built the campus’ first permanent building. It’s a point of pride even today. At Fisk events, speakers frequently invoke the original nine Jubilee Singers, thanking them for their dedication to the school. But as their legacy lives on, so does the financial burden they tried to relieve. Fisk nearly went bankrupt in the 1980s. Then, a decade ago, it set off a long legal battle when it tried to sell famous paintings donated by Georgia O’Keeffe. The school was later put on temporary probation for its finances. That’s not to say it’s always been shaky. Marybeth Gasman at the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions actually wrote her dissertation on what she calls Fisk’s golden years  —   the 1940s and ’50s. ”And that’s really the last time that Fisk had like real financial success,” Gasman says. ”They were at the helm of [historically black colleges and universities].” To get back to that point, Gasman says, Fisk needs a few things. It needs stable leadership as the school has been cycling through presidents lately. It also needs to buckle down on fundraising by getting potential donors excited about the school today, not just its history. ”No one’s going to give to Fisk merely because of Jubilee Singers or Jubilee Hall,” Gasman says. ”They want to see what Fisk is doing now.” That’s the biggest challenge for Jens Frederiksen, who is in charge of fundraising at Fisk. He says he wants to move the school away from its reputation of being strapped for cash. ”I think for a long time we were probably mired down in a few familiar narratives that sort of usurped all the press,” he says. Instead, Frederiksen wants to highlight academics. For example, Fisk is nationally ranked for its master’s program in physics. He’s also trying to increase alumni and private company donations. The Jubilee Singers still have a role in all of this, 150 years later. They’re seen as ambassadors for the university as they travel around the country to perform. But this time, the fortunes of the school no longer rest on their voices."
"Lawmakers returned to Washington and wasted no time getting to work on the repeal of Obamacare. Sen. Mike Enzi,  . introduced a resolution just hours after the new Congress convened Tuesday that will serve as the vehicle for repealing much of the president’s signature health care law. ”Today, we take the first steps to repair the nation’s broken health care system, removing Washington from the equation and putting control back where it belongs: with patients, their families, and their doctors,” Enzi, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a press release on his website Tuesday. It’s the first step in Republican lawmakers’ plan to fulfill their most ardent campaign promise  —   to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a Republican alternative. Republicans have to use a special legislative maneuver, called a budget resolution, to undo the ACA because they don’t have enough votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. Budget bills aren’t subject to filibuster, so lawmakers will be able to repeal the parts of the law that have budget and tax implications. That means they can essentially gut the law, removing all the subsidies that help   and   people buy health insurance and getting rid of the smorgasbord of taxes  —   on medical devices, insurance companies and wealthy individuals  —   that pay for those subsidies, Enzi’s resolution calls on the Senate to get a bill to the Budget Committee by Jan. 27. Republican lawmakers say they don’t want the 20 million people who have newly gained insurance because of the ACA to lose their coverage. So they plan to phase out Obamacare over time while they devise a replacement plan that they say will make affordable health insurance available to everyone, without the   mandate to buy insurance if you don’t want it. Many analysts are skeptical that this ”repeal and delay” strategy will work. ”The most likely end result of ’repeal and delay’ would be less secure insurance for many Americans, procrastination by political leaders who will delay taking any proactive steps as long as possible, and ultimately no discernible movement toward a real marketplace for either insurance or medical services,” said Joe Antos and James Capretta of the conservative American Enterprise Institute in a blog published Tuesday in Health Affairs. Antos and Capretta say a partial repeal with no replacement would lead insurance companies to pull out of the Obamacare market altogether, leaving those who get coverage there today with no insurance at all. It’s not clear exactly what will be included in the actual repeal bill. The best model we have now is a bill passed by the House and Senate and vetoed by President Obama last year. That bill eliminated the mandate for individuals to have insurance coverage right away but delayed the other parts of the repeal for two years. ”I can see how it would be hard for Republicans to maintain the individual mandate, which is possibly the most objectionable part of the ACA in their view,” says Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. ”On the other hand, getting rid of the individual mandate immediately risks a collapse of the individual insurance market.” The ACA includes the mandate to ensure that both sick and healthy people buy insurance to spread the costs across a broad population and keep premiums low. If Republicans follow the model of last year’s bill and eliminate the mandate immediately, many healthy people would forgo insurance, and the price of coverage for sick people would spiral out of control, analysts say. ”That is a prescription for health plan disaster during this transition and brings into question just how many plans would stay in the program for 2018,” says Robert Laszewski, a health policy consultant."
"The House and Senate are back in Washington today for the start of the 115th Congress. With GOP control of both chambers and soon the Oval Office, Republicans are promising an aggressive agenda that will prioritize the repeal of the current president’s signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act. The Senate is expected to start that process with a budget resolution this week. After the pomp and circumstance of taking the official oath and the   of new members is complete, the top Congressional priority is usually given the honor of being introduced as House Resolution 1, or ”H. R. 1” for short. With the rollback of Obamacare working first through the Senate, Republican Speaker Paul Ryan will not take the privilege of introducing that as H. R. 1, but looking back at the first bill to be introduced in the House in past sessions of Congress gives a glimpse at the priorities of legislators at the time. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Speaker at bill introduction: Nancy Pelosi,  . Control of House: Democratic Control of Senate: Democratic Final action on bill: Signed into law by President Barack Obama  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is the official name for what is generally known as ”the stimulus.” Washington was 180 degrees from where things are in 2017  —   Democrats had control of both the House and the Senate and Barack Obama had just won the presidency.   Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the H. R. 1 designation for the bill which was intended to address the effects of the Great Recession. Eventually Congress passed the behemoth $787 billion plan, which aimed to save or create millions of jobs and funneled spending to highway infrastructure investments, improvements to public housing and expanding broadband access to underserved areas. Before its passage, President Obama lobbied hard to get congressional Republicans to support the legislation, but the measure failed to garner a single GOP House member and only three Republican senators.   Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011, Speaker at bill introduction: John Boehner,   Control of House: Republican Control of Senate: Democratic Final action on bill: Died in the 112th Congress, but later became the legislative vehicle for Disaster Relief Appropriations Act in the next Congress. Following the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans picked up a net total of 63 House seats and regained control of the chamber. Much of the Democrats’ historic losses were blamed on a sluggish economy and backlash to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. With Republicans back in control of the House, Speaker John Boehner sought to make good on the GOP   promise to restore ”fiscal sanity” and cut back on government spending. He used H. R. 1 to introduce Rep. Hal Rogers’   Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011 bill to do just that. In a statement, Rogers said at the time that the bill’s spending reductions were ”historic.” ”HR 1 provides $1. 028 trillion for discretionary programs through the remainder of fiscal year 2011, a level $100 billion below the level President Obama requested in his fiscal year 2011 budget one year ago.” But this was the start of the   ” ” era of Congress  —   not a whole lot was being done with a divided government as Democrats maintained control of the Senate and White House. Though the bill passed easily in the House and was sent over to the Senate, no consequential action was made on it. That is not until December of 2012. By that time two major events had taken place: President Obama was   and Hurricane Sandy walloped the East Coast with New York and New Jersey taking the brunt of the storm. It was one of the costliest storms in our nation’s history and more than 100 people died in the U. S. alone. When the Senate finally took action on the measure, it became the legislative vehicle to supply funds for disaster relief efforts. The Senate amended the bill and passed it late in the year. According to the website GovTrack. us, the bill died in the 112th Congress because differences between the House and Senate versions of the measure were never resolved. The bill was reintroduced in the 113th Congress and came to be known as the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013. Implementing Recommendations of the   Commission Act of 2007, Speaker at bill introduction: Nancy Pelosi,   Control of House: Democratic Control of Senate: Democratic Final action on bill: Signed into law by President George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi’s first legislative action as Speaker of the House was bringing this bill up for a vote. Fresh off their sweeping gains in the 2006 midterm elections that gave Democrats control of Congress, members were eager to demonstrate their national security prowess as the Iraq War dragged on Republicans. It had been more than five years since the 2001 terrorist attacks and Democrats intended to make good on a campaign promise to put in place many of the recommendations put forth by the   Commission, which was released in July 2004. The highlights of this legislation included funding increases to state and local government   efforts and mandating the Department of Homeland Security inspect all cargo arriving in the U. S. by sea and plane. A provision was added before President Bush signed it into law favored by many Republicans that shielded Americans who report suspicious activity to authorities. When he signed it into law in August 2007, Bush said he was ”pleased” by this addition but also called for Congress to take further oversight action. ”There is still other work to be done. I continue to believe that Congress should act on the outstanding   Commission recommendations to reform the legislative branch’s oversight of intelligence and   activities, which the Commission described as dysfunctional.” Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, Speaker at bill introduction: Newt Gingrich,   Control of House: Republican Control of Senate: Republican  Final action on bill: Signed into law by President Bill Clinton, Like our previous entry, this piece of legislation was the first introduced at the beginning of a Congress in which one party, this time the Republicans, were fresh off historic gains. The 1994 midterms elections, commonly referred to as the ”Republican Revolution,” saw the GOP take control of the Senate and seize control of the House for the first time in 40 years. Seeking to put forth conservative principles outlined in the ”Contract with America,” which the new House Speaker Newt Gingrich was chief architect of, the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 was given the status of H. R. 1. This bill made certain that rules governing private sector workplaces are applicable to Congress. The bill passed the House with no opposition  . The Senate passed their version in similarly overwhelming fashion and President Clinton signed it into law. The action would apply a number of major laws to Congress including the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes minimum wage and overtime pay to employees, and the Americans with Disabilities Act that prohibits discrimination against people physical or mental challenges. The law also established the Office of Compliance, which covers more than 30, 000 federal workers. It is a   independent federal agency created to enforce the law and to serve as a place for workers to file complaints. Regulation Reform Act of 1981, Speaker at bill introduction: Thomas ’Tip’ O’Neill,    Control of House: Democrat Control of Senate: Republican Final action on bill: Died in the House, This bill was introduced in the 97th Congress and was intended to make regulations more   and directed each federal agency to provide instructions on how the public could take part in the regulatory process. The bill also required agencies to include instructions for the public to obtain agency reports on ”each proposed and final major rule instructions.” Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill slated regulation reform for the H. R. 1 designation following the landslide 1980 elections marked the start of the conservative Reagan era. That election returned Republicans to control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter century, in addition to giving the GOP the White House back. Other than a few hearings held by a House Rules Subcommittee, this bill went nowhere and eventually died in the House without coming up for a vote."
"One of the most stressful questions a new parent confronts is, ”Who’s going to take care of my baby when I go back to work?”  Figuring out the answer to that question is often not easy. When NPR, along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, surveyed more than 1, 000 parents nationwide about their child care experiences, a third reported difficulty finding care. Searching far and wide, finding little  Megan Carpenter, a new mother who lives in Alexandria, Va. knows well the feeling of desperation that can come with the search for safe, quality infant care. She had a hard deadline  —   16 weeks after her baby was born her maternity leave would end and she would have to return to her job at a nonprofit that serves homeless and   women. So she and her husband started looking for child care early, only a few months into her pregnancy. ”At our first few interviews we were asking a lot of questions and were really trying to get a feel for the place,” Carpenter recalls. ”And by place 10 or 11, our only question was, ’Do you have a spot?’ ” The answer to that question, time and again, was ”no.” That meant getting on a lot of waitlists  —   and paying a hefty, nonrefundable waitlist fee each time. ”There were a lot of places that were totally willing to take our $100 or $200 waitlist fee,” Carpenter says. ”We spent over $1, 000 in waitlist fees  —   many of which I never heard from again.” By the time baby Cora arrived, the couple still had no prospects. Ultimately, Carpenter and her husband persuaded their mothers to take time away from their jobs and fly out from Georgia and Missouri to watch Cora in shifts until a spot at one of the centers opened up. Scenarios like this are playing out all around the U. S. An analysis of some 7, 000 ZIP codes by the Center for American Progress describes roughly half as ”childcare deserts.” While Megan Carpenter’s experience is representative of what many working parents go through, Narinder Walia’s is a   scenario. Walia lives in Fremont, Calif. and works in biotech. Her baby boy, Avin, was born on Halloween 2014. During Walia’s   maternity leave, trying to find child care nearly became a   job. ”I made   calls,” she says. ”Some were not accepting infants. Or they were full.” Of the roughly six dozen centers, only three were able to offer her a slot. Of those, she says, two were messy and disorganized. The third option, an   facility, set off some red flags. But it was the best available. Walia says her main reservation was that the center catered to toddlers and older children. Still, the owner assured her, it could handle a baby. What ultimately happened on Avin’s first day at this facility is every parent’s worst nightmare. ”I was on the way to go pick him up,” recalls Walia, ”and the Kaiser ER called me.” You have to come over, they told her. Your son is here. To settle Avin for his first nap on her watch, the paid caregiver had put the baby   in his bassinet  —   a move that goes against established   guidelines set by the American Academy of Pediatrics and is against standard practice in the infant care field. Research has established that placing babies   to sleep puts them at higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome. The caregiver told Fremont police that she turned Avin onto his back after about 15 minutes, and that he stopped breathing a short time later. On his first day away from his mother, Avin died  —   he was 3 months old. The coroner’s report confirms SIDS as the cause of death. ”I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” says Walia, straining to recount the day. ”He was smiling. He was a big baby, all chubby. There was nothing wrong with him. Even at the first and second checkup the doctor was like, ’Mama, keep doing what you’re doing. The baby’s doing really well.’ ” What happened to Walia’s family is rare. But it’s the deepest fear of parents who face severely limited child care choices. ”The market really doesn’t work”  These experiences  —   from disruptive frustration to tragedy  —   leave many parents wondering why the supply of quality, licensed infant care in the U. S. does not meet the demand for it. The answer boils down to the fact that child care, particularly infant care, is an extremely low profit field. Costs are high, factoring in real estate, supplies, insurance and, above all, labor. Many states require a ratio of one caregiver to every three or four babies. And, on the other side of the equation, centers can’t significantly raise their prices. According to a recent report by the nonpartisan think tank New America, parents in the United States pay, on average, $9, 589 a year for   care of children from birth to age 4  —   that’s more than the average cost of   college tuition ($9, 410). Many parents can’t afford to pay more. So, low profits  —   combined with high liability and the need to navigate complex regulations  —   make for an uninviting business climate. And, in this climate, the waitlist has become a tool necessary for providers’ financial survival, to buffer against unfilled spots and lost income. A select few providers are thriving, though. Over the past 30 years, the company Bright Horizons has grown to operate more than 1, 000 child care centers in 42 states and the District of Columbia. So, what’s the company’s secret? ”We’ve convinced employers to invest over a billion dollars, in either capital investments or subsidies, for their working families,” says Bright Horizons CEO Dave Lissy. ”That just didn’t exist before we pioneered the model.” Some employers, including Home Depot, Starbucks and Chevron, have partnered with Bright Horizons to establish child care centers primarily for their workers. These employers pay most, or even all, of the cost to build the facilities. ”After that’s all done,” Lissy says, ”on average, tuitions are funded 75 percent by parents and 25 percent through employer subsidies.” That means parents pay their college   sum, and the employers that partner with Bright Horizons pay even more on top of that. Bright Horizons is able to build these bright, cheerful centers because of this generous underwriting by employer partners. Without that cushion, the rest of the child care sector is largely operating on   profit margins, slow to grow and fragile. That industrywide weakness was a central finding of New America’s study of child care nationwide. ”The thing to remember about child care is that the market really doesn’t work,” says Brigid Schulte, an author of the study. ”It’s like education. When you look at the education market, it also doesn’t work. It has to be subsidized. It has to be seen as a public good, and the same sort of economic logic works in the [age]    early care and learning situation as well. We just haven’t thought about it like that.” An infrastructure investment? The idea of child care as a public good has increasing resonance with policy thinkers from the left and right. ”There definitely is an issue of child care supply,” says Angela Rachidi, research fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. ”It’s an issue up and down the income scale.” Of all the ways the government could spend public money, investing in child care, she says, should be a priority. ”Not only does that then benefit children,” Rachidi says, ”but it also helps the parents work.” Katie Hamm, senior director of early childhood policy at the   Center for American Progress, agrees. Without much greater public support of the child care industry, she says, demand for licensed infant care will continue to outpace supply. But she takes heart from a campaign season where heavy emphasis was placed on the challenges American workers face when it comes to child care and the need for infrastructure investment. She sees the two issues as interconnected. ”It seems like there might be some consensus, both with the incoming administration and among members of Congress, that we need an infrastructure investment,” says Hamm. ”A lot of people talk about that and mean roads and bridges. But before parents get on roads and bridges and support our economy, they need child care.” For Walia, the mother from Fremont, Calif. more good quality infant care can’t come soon enough. She is expecting another child any day. ”I’m kind of being very hesitant even just thinking about the child care service right now,” she says. ”In my mind I just want to hold him tight and not let him go. But obviously that’s not practical.”"
"Ford and General Motors both reacted Tuesday to   Donald Trump’s continued criticism of U. S. companies manufacturing products in Mexico. Ford announced it would cancel its $1. 6 billion plans to build a plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and instead invest an additional $700 million to expand an existing plant in Michigan to make autonomous and electric vehicles. That comes on the heels of another decision in November to keep production of some small SUVs at its plant in Kentucky. That announcement came a couple of hours after Trump took to Twitter to criticize General Motors: ”General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U. S. car   free across border. Make in U. S. A. or pay big border tax!” GM responded that only a small number of hatchback models are manufactured in Mexico and sold at U. S. car dealers. ”All Chevrolet Cruze sedans sold in the U. S. are built in GM’s assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio. GM builds the Chevrolet Cruze hatchback for global markets in Mexico, with a small number sold in the U. S.” Why did Ford change its mind? The move marks a departure for Ford, whose CEO last month said it was looking forward to working with the Trump administration on trade but that it very likely wouldn’t change plans for its $1. 6 billion factory. Now CEO Mark Fields tells NPR that Trump’s rhetoric was a factor in reversing the earlier decision, but one of several factors. He says the carmaker was influenced by promises of new tax and regulatory reforms and the prospect of keeping jobs at home. ”Ford is a global automaker, but our home . .. is right here in the United States,” he said. What is the significance of this change? It means 700 additional Ford jobs will come to Michigan, and Ford says every factory job is likely to create another seven related jobs. ”We’ve created 28, 000 jobs and we’ve invested $12 billion in the U. S. in our plants in the last five years,” Fields said in a press conference. Shifting a factory itself would not be news but for the fact that it is highly unusual for companies to respond to direct, public pressure from an incoming president. ”I know from talking to business people that no major firm wants to be a subject of a Trump tweet,” says Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He says companies realize Trump controls the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the IRS, Treasury and regulatory agencies, and ”the amount of control that intersects with what companies are doing is enormous.” Will such moves inspire retaliatory trade barriers that hurt other U. S. firms and cost American jobs?  Trump has pledged to rework U. S. trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump has also called for high tariffs on companies that manufacture products overseas and then import them for sale in the U. S. The question is how broad such tariffs would be, and whether American trading partners would object and retaliate with similar measures. So far, Trump has (or claims to have) put pressure on American companies including Carrier, Sprint, Ford, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and GM. But Hufbauer says if Trump makes good on actually raising tariffs, ”I think some form of retaliation [from other countries] is almost certain.” Who’s next, and what is the possible economic impact? So far, tweeting trade and other corporate policy has played well for Trump. He has targeted Boeing for a potentially large contract to build a new Air Force One, and he criticized Lockheed Martin for its expensive   fighter jet contracts. Hufbauer says it remains unclear what the economic impact of all this will be. So far, the tweets have gotten a massive amount of media attention, and that may mean it will continue and that others  —   consumer brands in particular  —   could find themselves targets. ”Some people may wrongly think this is the way to create jobs in the U. S.,” Hufbauer says. ”My estimate is that this kind of thing [companies responding to tweets] is not going to have a major effect,” and it is not in keeping with a   economy,” says David Dollar, senior fellow for the Brookings Institution."
"  Donald Trump said Tuesday that he intends to nominate Robert Lighthizer as his U. S. trade representative, potentially signaling a major overhaul of U. S. trade policy once Trump takes office. Lighthizer has long advocated a tougher stand on trade with China, which is in line with Trump’s campaign rhetoric. Lighthizer, 69, was deputy U. S. trade representative under former President Ronald Reagan during a time of ferocious trade wars with Japan. He has spent the past three decades as a Washington, D. C. lawyer primarily representing U. S. steelmakers in trade cases. He would replace Michael Froman, who led negotiations for the   Partnership, a massive trade deal devised to link the economies of the U. S. and 11 other Pacific nations. Trump says the TPP would take away American jobs and has vowed to pull out of the deal. He has also threatened to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, hammer out new bilateral deals and slap punitive tariffs on a number of U. S. trading partners seen as violating trade rules. Lighthizer gained plenty of experience negotiating tough bilateral trade deals on everything from steel to grain during his time in the Reagan administration, according to a statement from Trump’s office. The   says Lighthizer will do an ”amazing job helping turn around the failed trade policies which have robbed so many Americans of prosperity.” One target would be China, which Lighthizer has accused of unfair trade practices. He wrote in 2010 congressional testimony that years of passivity had allowed the U. S.  trade deficit to grow ”to the point where it is widely recognized as a major threat to our economy.” Going forward, he wrote, U. S. policymakers needed to take a more aggressive approach in dealing with China. Lighthizer won’t be the lone voice on trade in the Trump administration. Peter Navarro, widely considered a China hawk, will head up a new trade council. Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, also could play a role on trade policy. Lighthizer’s nomination quickly drew praise from many Democrats calling for a change in U. S. trade policy. Richard Neal,  . ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, called Lighthizer a skilled negotiator whose nomination could ”signal a welcome move in a new direction for the Republican Party.” Still, Neal acknowledged that many Republicans are advocates of free trade deals, saying Lighthizer’s ability to change policy will depend on whether he is ”able to overcome the resistance he is likely to face within his party.”"
"After a storm of criticism, including from   Donald Trump, House Republicans have reversed themselves and restored the current rules of the Office of Congressional Ethics. GOP members met Tuesday afternoon and agreed by unanimous consent to withdraw a change to House rules approved late Monday evening, before the new Congress was sworn in, that would have weakened the ethics office, an independent watchdog first established in 2008 under House Democrats. According to lawmakers in the room, GOP leaders said the change was a distraction from their agenda and that the issue needed further vetting. Public outcry, opposition from ethics watchdog groups, a divided GOP, and two tweets from Trump critical of the rules change prompted a swift reversal of the proposal authored by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte,  . Trump questioned, via Tweet, Congress’ priorities. He tweeted a pair of posts saying that while the OCE was ”unfair,” Congress had more important issues to take up, including tax reform and health care. Inclusion of the ethics measure threatened to bring down the entire rules package  —   the governing rules of the chamber  —   that is headed for a vote later Tuesday. The majority party traditionally passes the rules package on its votes alone, and a defeat would have been an embarrassing start for Republicans in the new Congress. House Ethics Chairwoman Susan Brooks,  . said that the ethics panel will review the proposal and come back to the conference with any recommendations by late summer or early fall. Republicans said they would like to have Democratic   to any proposed changes to the OCE. Several Democrats in recent years have also voiced criticism of the OCE, but Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,  . who played a critical role in establishing the office, has fought back any efforts to reduce its role. Pelosi said in a statement that ”House Republicans showed their true colors last night” and decried ”the toxic dysfunction of a Republican House that will do anything to further their special interest agenda, thwart transparency and undermine the public trust.” Democrats did not immediately comment on whether they would take part in an Ethics Committee review. Opposition to the gutting of the office was swift and came from some unexpected sources in addition to Trump. Exhibit A: Jack Abramoff, the former lobbyist, whose conviction on   charges helped lead to the creation of the OCE, told Politico the Republicans’ action was ”exactly the opposite of what Congress should be doing.” Former Rep. Bob Ney, who also served time after being convicted as part of the same scandal, said, ”House Republicans should not have done this and also the way they did it without announcing it is not a public policy to be proud of.” Judicial Watch, the conservative group that has led efforts to release former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, called the House rules change ”shady and corrupt” and a ”drive by effort” to eliminate the OCE, as well as ”a poor way for the Republican majority to begin ’draining the swamp.’ ” House Speaker Paul Ryan had issued a statement saying many members feel that after eight years, the office ”is in need of reform.” Ryan argued the office would continue to operate independently and still take complaints from members of the public. He said the House Ethics Committee would merely provide oversight of the complaints office but insisted that the office ”is not controlled by the committee.” The Project on Government Oversight also chimed in, saying ethics watchdogs like the OCE ”need to be strengthened and expanded  —   not taken out back and shot in the middle of the night.”"
"Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is leaving the cable network for a role at NBC News. In a statement Tuesday on her Facebook page, Kelly said, ”I have decided to end my time at FNC, incredibly enriched for the experiences I’ve had.” Kelly has been an icon for conservatives, but her decision to move to NBC, a network that   Donald Trump and some conservative pundits have branded as ”liberal,” is not a complete surprise. As NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik reports, Kelly’s career change follows a period of turbulence in her relationship with the network: ”[Kelly’s move] comes in the aftermath of her explosive accusations that former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes had sexually harassed her earlier in her career. And that was on the heels of her colleague Gretchen Carlson alleging the same in a lawsuit. That led to the departure of Ailes and to significant questions about what path Fox News would take forward. Her departure only raise the stakes for Fox.” Kelly butted heads with Ailes and her network colleagues at other times as well. When Trump, angered by a question she asked him during a debate, attacked her repeatedly during the campaign, Kelly said she didn’t feel supported by the network. In an interview with NPR’s Kelly McEvers, she said, ”My boss, Roger Ailes, was not able to stand Trump down. My friend Sean Hannity, who is a big Trump booster as you know, he was not able to stand Trump down. No one was able to stop his antics.” In the interview, Kelly said she received threats from Trump supporters for months. Kelly’s move to NBC News was first reported by The New York Times. Her contract with Fox News expires this summer, and the Times says rival networks were not prepared to match Fox News’ offer, reported to be ”more than $20 million a year.” The newspaper adds: ”The NBC News chairman, Andrew Lack, wooed Ms. Kelly away from Fox News by offering her a triple role in which she will host her own daytime news and discussion program, anchor an   Sunday night news show and take regular part in the network’s special political programming and other   coverage.” The exact terms of her new contract are not yet known. Kelly started at Fox News 12 years ago as a legal correspondent and quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the network’s biggest stars. Since October 2013, she has hosted her own nightly program called The Kelly File, becoming the    host on cable news after her Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly, according to TVNewser, a website that tracks TV ratings."
"When spirits entrepreneur Steven Grasse considered writing a book about early American cocktails, he already knew it was a subject that had been, in his own words, ”done to death.” Ultimately, the book he did write, Colonial Spirits: A Toast to Our Drunken History, tells the story of a time when water was full of deadly bacteria, making alcohol the safest liquid to consume. As Grasse says, ”this book is about survival.” Colonists, transplanted to a New World, were faced with the task of   old recipes, often with unfamiliar new ingredients. Alcohol was a godsend in the Old World, sipped by adults and children alike. In the New World, imbibing called for experimentation. There was plenty of trial and error, and, in Grasse’s view, an unexpected recipe for democracy. ”Before democracy, there were spirits, and from spirits we created taverns,” writes Grasse in the book, ”and it was in those taverns that we laid out the blueprint for a new kind of country. . .. In other words, we got drunk and invented America.” With witty illustrations by Reverend Michael Alan  —   think Pennsylvania Dutch folk art crossed with Edward Gorey  —   Colonial Spirits thumbs its nose, ever so slightly, at the American obsession with mixology and fussily precise   cocktails. It does so by providing just one simple premise outlined on Page 3: ”In relating these recipes to you, and updating them for modern times, it was of the utmost importance to us that you  —   yes, you  —   would not die or even be hospitalized should you choose to make or imbibe them.” In all honesty, some of this stuff could kill you. In fact, on Page 154, you’ll find out that, yes, some home distillers were desperate enough to try making alcohol from sawdust  —   which Grasse reminds us would actually be methanol. So, yes, you’d die if you imbibed it, which is exactly why you won’t find a recipe for it in Colonial Spirits. What you will find, however, is Ass’s Milk, Cock Ale, and Lambswool (only one of them does not actually involve farm animals) with a    history of each concoction in question and modernized versions that sound, actually quite palatable. ”I wanted to make this like a Betty Crocker kind of book,” says Grasse. ”This is not a book for snooty mixologists. These are culinary folktales.” While many of those mixologists tend to laud the recipes by Jerry Thomas, the bartender generally credited with popularizing mixed drinks beginning in the 1850s, Grasse’s view is that cocktails existed well before Thomas was behind the bar. ”Cocktailing, as we know it,” says Grasse, ”was a result of industrialization and the rise of leisure time. But punch was clearly a cocktail, just served in a communal bowl.” Sharing and crafting history is a hallmark of Grasse’s career, which has included creating Hendrick’s gin, Sailor Jerry’s rum and Art in the Age craft spirits. A team of 65 employees in Grasse’s   company, Quaker City Mercantile, did copious amounts of historical research into the alcoholic recipes of early America. They dug through 17th, 18th and 19th century manuscripts detailing the booze preferences of Gen. Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, a failed attempt during the 1500s to establish a vineyard in what is now Jacksonville, Fla. and how rum was considered to be a cure for syphilis, malaria and even death. Many of the recipes are unfailingly simple: Spruce Ale starts with spruce essence made from Douglas fir tips (be sure to pluck those tips from actual spruce trees instead of some possibly poisonous lookalike, the book cautions, so you don’t, you know, die) which is added to chilled ale. The Everlasting Syllabub ended up being a favorite of illustrator and recipe tester Alan, who says, ”It’s essentially a big bowl of whipped cream that you incorporate a little bit of alcohol into. There’s really nothing bad about that.” During the process of recipe testing for the book, Grasse’s unique position as a distillery owner also gave him the opportunity to make a   production of one of the recipes, Martha Washington’s Cherry Bounce, a classic blend of brandy, cherries and sugar, typically enjoyed during winter as a fresh taste of summer. The updated version, made at Grasse’s Tamworth Distilling in New Hampshire, incorporates rye whiskey and smoked cardamom for a modern twist on a Colonial favorite, while also tipping a hat at George Washington, who was one of America’s largest whiskey producers. ”When I look at cocktail books, I don’t really get a context,” says Grasse. ”So my goal was to present the historical context behind these recipes, while making it relatable to the modern reader. I like to retell these stories in a way that people can digest.” He pauses. ”We’re inspired by history, but not slaves to it,” he says. ”At the end of the day, the point is to have fun and maybe learn something at the same time.”"
"Every year in the U. S. more than 30, 000 people die from things related to guns. That puts guns ahead of HIV, Parkinson’s disease, malnutrition, hypertension, intestinal infection, peptic ulcer, anemia, viral hepatitis, biliary tract disease, atherosclerosis and fires. Yet, the funding for research on gun violence lags far behind other leading causes of death, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers evaluated the leading causes of death in the U. S. and plotted them against the funding and publication of research dedicated to to them. The researchers wrote: ”Gun violence had 1. 6% of the funding predicted ($1. 4 billion predicted, $22 million observed) and had 4. 5% of the volume of publications predicted (38, 897 predicted, 1738 observed) from the regression analyses. Gun violence killed about as many individuals as sepsis. However, funding for gun violence research was about 0. 7% of that for sepsis and publication volume about 4%. In relation to mortality rates, gun violence research was the   cause of death and the   funded cause of death after falls.” NPR’s Cheryl Corley reports that in a different study published Tuesday by JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers studied gun violence in Chicago over an   period to explain how it can spread like an infectious disease.” She said medical advocates have long argued that gun violence is a public health crisis, and that the researchers say their study helps prove this point. Cheryl says that: ”Yale University sociologist Andrew Papachristos said researchers treated the idea of gun violence literally and created a network from more than 100, 000 individuals at risk of getting shot. ” ’These gunshot victims  —   they’re in very small social networks. They tend to cluster together in these networks. And really what our study shows is that gun violence cascades over time,’ Papachristos said.” Papachristos said the study in JAMA Internal Medicine helps show there must be a more coordinated approach to drive gun violence down, one that treats it as a public health epidemic and not just a policing problem. The research published in JAMA offers an explanation for the lack of funding: A 1996 congressional appropriations bill that banned funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be used to ”advocate or promote gun control.” The authors of the study note that ”similar restrictions were subsequently extended to other agencies (including the National Institutes of Health) and although the legislation does not ban   research outright, it has been described as casting a pall over the research community.” Research, though, has proved an effective tool in driving down mortality rates from other leading causes of death. David Stark, one of the JAMA study’s leaders and medical director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told The Washington Post that   deaths can be reasonably compared to motor vehicle deaths. According to the newspaper, he said: ”I think a good parallel can be drawn to motor vehicle accidents. Those kill about the same number of people, but that has been decreasing substantially. . .. All of that really starts from essential public research that determines the proximate causes of accidents  —   and it’s only with research that you can start to develop plans and policies and initiatives.”"
"   Demarco Webster Jr. was helping his dad move to a new apartment a few months ago, when he was shot and killed. His stepdad, Juawaun Hester, says they had intentionally waited to start the move until after midnight in order to avoid any trouble. Hester says Demarco didn’t even like going outside if he didn’t have to. ”I don’t understand man, and you know what’s going on now is like the future children, the good children, the smart children, with scholarships and they’re the ones who’s dying to the gun violence,” Hester says. Hester says just one day after his stepson was killed, his neighbor’s twin teenage boys were both fatally shot, too. Two more deaths in what has been a very bloody year in Chicago. The city has logged more than 700 homicides this year, more than any other major U. S. city, In September, the city surpassed last year’s total of about 470 killings. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced the city would hire about 1, 000 new people to work in the police department. ”These officers will be assigned directly to the streets of our communities,” Emanuel says. ”To work with residents in partnership to confront gun violence.” But many residents are skeptical that having more cops will stop the murders. The Rev. Marshall Hatch has a church in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, one of the most violent in the city. He says relations between the police and the community have deteriorated since late last year when a video showed a Chicago officer fatally shooting Laquan McDonald, a young black man. ”They’ve seen it in their best interest to pull back and not be aggressive,” Hatch says. ”That probably has helped fuel a lot of the surge of violence that we’ve seen this year.” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said earlier this month that fallout from the shooting of McDonald has contributed to the spike in violence this year. But he says his officers are in a bind. ”They’re cautious about the national narrative that’s out there right now, so they’re careful about how they do police,” Johnson says. ”But at the same time the biggest reason for this spike is because our repeat guys just don’t fear the judicial system.” Johnson says Illinois needs tougher sentencing laws for repeat gun offenders. And locking up gang leaders did help in the late ’90s  —   the last time the city saw this level of killing. But University of Illinois Criminologist John Hagedorn says that comparison is far from perfect. ”[In the late ’90s] we were at the downward slope of organized gang wars that racked Chicago,” he says. ”Homicides were often called by leaders who were locked up in prison. They were intentional kinds of violence. Today the violence is spontaneous it’s local. The gangs are no longer structured and citywide. They are small cliques of kids. The reasons for the homicides are often insults, accidental events  —   very difficult kinds of things to contain.” Hagedorn says in the late 1990s Chicago police ”cleared” about   of all the city’s homicides  —   meaning they knew or thought they knew the culprit. Now, the Chicago police only clear about a quarter of all killings. ”So we are dealing with a different kind of situation, which calls for some different policing strategies,” Hagedorn says. ”But mainly it should tell the city that is has to address the roots of desperation.” Kyisha Weekly knows that desperation. Weekly says she tries hard not to think of her friend Candice Curry, who was shot and killed in a park when they were both 13 years old. Curry was the victim of a    on Aug. 10, 1998 in Bronzeville, according to a Chicago Tribune article published days after she was killed. ”She was at my house before she went to the park, and I was telling her to wait on me while I got dressed, and she just wanted to go to the park,” Weekly says. ”So I told her I’d meet her up there. And she went to the park and got shot.” Weekly says she remembers a group of boys from the neighborhood coming by her house and telling her Curry had been shot. At first, Weekly thought her friend would pull through, but Curry died that night. Weekly remembers Curry as a pretty,   girl who liked to jump rope. ”Our favorite spot to go to was called Route 66. It was a skating place, and it was skating on one side and dancing on the other side,” Weekly says. ”So our parents used to think that we used to go for the skating, and we used to go for the dance part until one day my grandma came and picked us up and saw all the people and how rowdy they were. She was like, ’No, no, no, y’all can’t come back up here.” Weekly says a few years after Curry was killed, a second member of the group, Charlene Johnson, was killed by another girl she had been fighting with over a boy. Weekly says she has also lost a brother and a nephew to gun violence. ”I try not to think about it,” she says. ”Sometimes I drink a lot to not think about the stuff that has happened in my life.” Now, Weekly says she hardly goes outside, except to take her    daughter to the aquarium or park. ”I love my baby. That’s why you can’t sit on the bus stop with your kids,” Weekly says. ”People getting shot, they’re shooting women, it’s out of control.” Despite the loss of her friend in 1998, Weekly says she is certain the violence is worse now. It was rare then, she said, for an innocent victim such as Curry to get caught in the crossfire. But not anymore. ”The gangbangers [in the ’90s] used to make sure the kids were in the house before they started shooting, Weekly says. ”They used to care then about kids, but now they just don’t. It’s the little kids. They’ll be 13 or 14 years old with guns. If somebody looks at them wrong. ..they want to pull out their guns and start shooting. And it’s like they’re shooting with their eyes closed because they’re hitting innocent people.” Member station WBEZ has been revisiting families affected by homicides in 1998, the last time the city suffered more than 700 murders. See more of their work here."
"Ah, to work in France: plenty of vacation and a   workweek. And, as of Jan. 1, a new law that gives French employees the right to disconnect. Companies in France are now required to stop encroaching on workers’ personal and family time with emails and calls. The law was part of an overall labor bill that provoked months of street demonstrations and divided the country. The controversy was mostly over a single provision that made it easier for French companies to fire people. But nearly everyone supports the provision allowing workers to walk away from emails and ignore their smartphones when they’re out of the office. French Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri commissioned a 2015 study that warned of the health impact of what she called ” .” It showed that more and more French people could not get away from work  —   even when they weren’t there. Labor lawyer Patrick Thiebart argues that burnout and other   issues are on the rise because of an overload of digital demands on employees. ”If an employee receives emails during all their weekends and at night until 11 p. m. then I can assure you that at a certain point in time, it can negatively impact his health,” he says. The new law stipulates that companies with more than 50 workers must negotiate with employees and unions and agree on a policy to reduce the intrusion of work into private lives. ”Of course your boss shouldn’t send you emails on a Sunday when you’re at lunch, enjoying a leg of lamb and a good Bordeaux,” says Bernard Vivier, who runs the Higher Institute of Work, a think tank that focuses on the French workplace. ”It’s so French to throw a law at every kind of problem,” he says. But he doesn’t think a law can fix this one. Such ills must be changed by management and through new practices, he says. It’s a complicated issue, notes Thiebart, the lawyer, because digital culture also offers employees freedom and flexibility. ”Everybody is happy with the smartphones and the new technology,” Thiebart says, ”because employees can work at home and don’t have to spend time and money in commuting. And for companies, they can save money because they don’t need all the staff on the premises.” Many large European companies and government departments already recognize the right of their employees to disconnect from work. Companies such as Volkswagen and Daimler, and French insurer Axa, have taken steps to restrict    messaging  —   including Volkswagen’s limited email server connections on evenings and weekends. Thiebart says that isn’t such a good idea, since many businesses operate across several time zones. But he says his clients, many of them large corporations, are not hostile to the new French law. They believe a lack of downtime decreases the productivity of their workforce. At a Paris gym where people are working up a sweat after a day at the office, many are still attached to their devices. Jean Luc Bauché is lifting weights, wearing white earbuds connected to a smartphone in his pocket. He says it’s a great idea to be able to disconnect. But he doesn’t think it’s possible. ”You can pass laws to protect people from dangers like speeding,” he says, ”but this law won’t work because it’s counter to the way society is evolving.” Bauché says he’s the only person he knows who turns his phone off at night when he sleeps. ”Most people don’t dare,” he says. ”They’re afraid they’ll miss something.”"
"Viridiana Martinez’s parents brought her to the U. S. illegally when she was 7. But it wasn’t until she was in her 20s, when she took the microphone at a rally in Durham, N. C. that she ”came out” as being unauthorized herself. Martinez, now 30, has been on the front lines of the immigrant rights movement in North Carolina ever since. She   the North Carolina Dream Team, which advocated for immigrants who were brought to the U. S. illegally by their parents. She was once arrested at a   demonstration in Atlanta, risking being turned over to immigration agents for the sake of protest. A year ago, she helped launch Alerta Migratoria, a hotline that immigrants in North Carolina can call to report the presence of ICE agents in their communities (it forwards calls to her cellphone). In other words, Martinez is just the kind of person you might expect to be terrified by Trump’s ascension to the presidency, given his promise to deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally and repeal President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has granted Martinez and 730, 000 young immigrants like her work permits and temporary protection from deportation. And yet, sitting on a futon in her tidy apartment in Raleigh recently, Martinez said she wasn’t upset by Trump’s victory. In fact, quite the opposite. ”I’m actually happy that Donald Trump won,” she said. ”I am. I’m very happy, because this is an opportunity to take a new approach at immigrant rights organizing.” For Martinez and others advocating on behalf of immigrants, this election has surfaced some unexpected opportunities. In the battle over the fates of people in the country illegally, Trump’s election may look like a victory for those who would have the federal government expel as many as possible. But people like Martinez are finding that the simple fear of that possibility has given their   efforts a shot in the arm. Viewing Trump as a grave threat to their immigrant communities, many local lawmakers are reacting to his deportation proposals with the kind of defiance that   advocates have been asking of them for years. ”I mean, sure, it sucks that it took Donald Trump winning,” Martinez said, ”but it’s already moving people to act.” She was referring to reports from across the country of mayors, police chiefs, city council members dozens of public officials who have vowed to defy Trump should he try to enlist them to deport people. Though the   has scaled back his most sweeping campaign promise to deport all 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, many local officials are taking no chances. ”If the federal government wants our police officers to tear immigrant families apart, we will refuse to do it,” New York Mayor Bill De Blasio said in a speech days after the November election. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a $10 million fund to provide lawyers for immigrants facing deportation. ”We don’t know how far the new administration will go when it comes to our nation’s immigration policy,” he said, ”but we all heard the rhetoric.” In smaller cities and towns, from Arizona to Iowa to North Carolina, officials have taken a similar tone. This is exciting for   activists like Martinez. During the past eight years, many efforts to advance immigrant rights in the absence of a federal immigration reform bill were aimed at persuading the Obama administration to act unilaterally through programs like DACA. Now, in anticipation of Trump, the strategy appears to be shifting. Activists say they’ll focus on persuading local officials to be more aggressive in protecting immigrants in the country illegally from the federal government. ”In the coming years you’re going to see people fighting to establish new civil rights protections in cities by forging new ground with policies that might not have been deemed possible even as recently as two months ago,” said Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a   immigrant advocacy group. The public statements many local officials have made in recent weeks, he said, suggest that cities will be receptive to this strategy. Officials in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago have already started acting. For activists like Martinez, there’s a tinge of frustration over the fact that it took Trump’s election to spur this response. ”Because the reality is, we just came out of a presidency where the administration has deported more immigrants than any other,” she said. ”And the only reason this is happening now is because our   is Donald Trump.” It’s hard to say for sure whether Obama outdeported all of his predecessors. Interpreting the statistics can be tricky because the government’s method for tracking deportations has changed over time. Department of Homeland Security figures indicate the Obama administration will have deported about 3 million people by the time the president leaves office. The George W. Bush administration deported roughly 2 million. Martinez said that for years, she has been watching families get torn apart by Obama’s deportation policies. So, while Trump’s rhetoric has been alarming, she said she sees little substantive difference between his most recent proposal  —   to deport 2 to 3 million immigrants he says have criminal records  —   and what Obama has already done. ”It’s like a guy who tells you you’re ugly to your face versus a guy who tells you you’re pretty, but then turns around and tells his friend, ’Damn, she’s ugly!’ ” Martinez said. Martinez said the problem is that for the past eight years, many local officials were convinced by the ”you’re pretty” guy  —   Obama, in this case  —   and didn’t feel the need to take as forceful a stance against his deportations as they now are taking against Trump. ”I think people were conformed, complacent,” she said, ”and they felt that under a Democratic presidency things could not be bad that President Obama was a friend of immigrants, even though that was far from the truth.” Obama, critics like Newman and Martinez say, believed that to gain Republican support for an immigration reform bill that included legalization for millions, he also had to prove he could be tough on enforcement. It was a strategic gambit that failed, Newman said. Obama deported millions while Republicans blocked immigration reform efforts that might have made it possible for immigrants in the country illegally to gain legal status. ”And he was able to, on a certain level, get away with it” among his allies, Newman said, ”as long as people believed that he was also in favor of something that might not have ever been possible  —   namely, comprehensive immigration reform.” Kevin De Leon, the Democratic leader of the California state Senate, represents a heavily immigrant district in Los Angeles. Earlier this month, he introduced a bill he calls the California Values Act. It would prohibit police departments from devoting resources to enforcing federal immigration laws. Addressing unauthorized immigrants in a statement announcing the bill, De Leon said ”the state of California will be your wall of justice.” This is the sort of thing activists in California have been asking for for years, through a campaign called ”ICE Out of California.” The campaign’s goal has been to persuade local and state officials to kick Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents out of local jails to make it harder for them to take immigrants into federal custody when they’re arrested by local police. Asked to consider the argument that a lot of these new   measures should have been put in place years ago, given Obama’s deportation record, De Leon said he understands why many activists might feel that way. ”But this is very different,” he said. He called Trump’s deportation promises during the campaign unprecedented. ”It’s a very pernicious,   type of campaigning that we have yet to ever see. And I think that is the major difference.” De Leon said part of what concerns him about Trump is his unpredictability. The   promised so many things, has changed his posture on major issues so many times, that it’s impossible to know exactly what he’ll do, De Leon said. Because of that, he said, California has to ”prepare for the worst.” Martinez is skeptical that it will get any worse. Trump is a businessman, she said, and he understands the value of immigrant labor. Still, she said she appreciates the steps officials are taking to enshrine into law protections for immigrants at the local level. She and fellow activists in Durham have a list of proposals they plan to bring to the City Council, which has proved to be  .   of Durham’s recent population growth has come from immigration, both legal and illegal. Newman, of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said that as justified as many immigrant advocates are in fearing a Trump presidency, there’s also reason to believe some good will come of it. In the past, liberal leaders have held out hope for an immigration reform bill, he said. Now they seem to agree that a sensible bill is unlikely under a government controlled by conservatives. ”And the absence of that possibility has in some ways been liberating for local policymakers,” he said. Now, Newman said, he expects local leaders and activists will start to ”experiment with a range of decentralized tactics” that will make cities the locus for policies aimed at better treatment of immigrants. ”Legalization from below,” he called it. In some cities it’s already started, with initiatives like the legal defense fund in LA and the refusal by many cities to put their law enforcement officers at the disposal of federal immigration agents. Officials in other cities have said they will look into becoming   sanctuary cities, jurisdictions with policies to protect immigrants who are in the country illegally. The city of Santa Ana, Calif. took that step in December. Newman said that activists in other cities are organizing to push their local leaders to follow suit."
"Beijing’s sky appears blue at the beginning of the   video. Then it completely disappears from view, blotted out by a cloud of brown smog. The   video shot Sunday by Chas Pope, a British citizen, dramatically illustrates the extent of China’s pollution problem. Pope says the thick haze moved into Beijing over the course of 20 minutes. Dozens of Chinese cities have suffered heavy smog for nearly a month. ”State media report that 72 Chinese cities are under pollution alerts,” NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing. ”Environmental officials have fined some 500 factories that have failed to cut emissions as the alerts require, and some 10, 000 heavily polluting vehicles that are on the roads in violation of the alert.” Some 40, 000 inspectors have been deployed to make sure everyone is complying with required emissions cuts, Anthony adds.   of the Chinese cities are on red alert, the most severe level of air pollution, according to a statement from the country’s Ministry of Environmental Protection. Schools in   areas were suspending classes, the ministry said. It added that conditions were expected to improve by Friday. The crackdown on industries that are violating environmental regulations is part of China’s larger ”war on pollution,” now in its third year, Reuters reports. The news service says it’s ”aimed at reversing the damage done to its skies, soil and water after decades of untrammeled economic growth.” But there are major challenges in curbing pollution. Recently, ”state media have also reported that some local environmental authorities are tampering with air quality monitors to make pollution look lighter than it actually is,” Anthony says. China’s pollution issues also are exacerbated in the winter. According to The New York Times, ”residents have come to expect such dense air pollution in late fall and winter, as people burn coal to heat their homes.” A recent World Health Organization study found that China had the most deaths in the world attributable to air quality in 2012  —   at 1, 032, 833."
"It’s 1968 in New Bordeaux, La. On the surface all looks tranquil as you drive through the bustling city in your red Pontiac, tapping your foot to Sam Cooke’s ”Chain Gang.” But as you take a sharp left down a winding back alley, an alarming sight gives you pause. Behind you, trucks painted with the Confederate flag begin to appear, the white men behind the wheel angry and visceral as they shout racial slurs. Your name is Lincoln Clay. You’re a    biracial man  —   but in this place, this time, you’re black, and instances of racism and bigotry are commonplace. This is Mafia III, an   video game developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K Games. It’s a game that, in a lot of ways, meticulously adopts and adapts from the racial and political history of the era. And it’s become a provocative and in some ways cathartic alternate reality that directly confronts gamers of all walks of life with the reimagined raw trials of a protagonist rarely featured by the industry. The game’s authentic use of past racial tensions isn’t the crux of the plot  —   its premise is similar to other Mafia games, in which a protagonist goes up against the mob. But their presentation is heavy and deliberate. Senior writer Charles Webb says the creators wanted to spark players’ consciousness without overindulging in a history lesson. ”One of the things I’m really, really proud of is we’ve kind of created this game of empathy,” Webb says. ”This is what it was like to occupy this space, as this particular type of person, as a young black man in 1968 in the South.” Grounded in history, As you drive throughout the city or make a pit stop for some quick cash, music of the era  —   Nina Simone or Janis Joplin  —   keeps you company. News broadcasts reflect the period, announcing tragedies like the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or the arrests of Freedom Riders. ”We attached ourselves to this idea of the documentary. It gets you to think about how have things changed, if at all,” says Creative Director Haden Blackman. The writers say they did extensive research, studying films, documentaries and literature, including The Trials of Muhammad Ali The Black Power Mixtape   the James Baldwin debates with William F. Buckley from 1965 and Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War. The writers cited ”The Ballot or the Bullet,” speech from April of ’64 by Malcolm X as a primary influence. An invisible character by the name of ”The Voice” delivers evidence of this research: As a radio personality, he often speaks directly to the player, providing critical commentary and analysis of the prejudice and injustices within this reimagined narrative. ”Being able to have him as this ’voice of the people’ in the city, especially of the marginalized, specifically black community, at the time  —   it’s one of those things that really helps tie things together,” says Senior Writer Ed Fowler. ”The way that it evokes the time and still resonates today speaks to many things, just in general in our world right now.” ’Scared as all  ’ With so much history involved, the team admits the game’s subject matter can be, at times, grueling and potent. As Clay, you go on a mission to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan and confront other white supremacists groups on numerous side quests. You hear racial slurs and witness hateful acts against  . The police watch you  —   always. The game’s open world is abundant but you, the player, are not welcome in every aspect of its landscape, simply on the basis that you are you. The ambiance of bigotry  —   quiet or bombastic  —   is consistent, whether in hateful glances when you walk through areas reserved for ”whites only” or the seemingly increased police presence when you stroll through predominantly white suburbs. The team knew the game had the potential to be polarizing. ”I was definitely scared, scared as all ” Webb says. ”It was very important to our team as a whole to hammer home to be authentic and true to the period, and that’s a fine line . .. not only respecting how hostile this space might be toward Lincoln but also figuring out ways to not make it completely repellent to the player.” It all appears to have worked, as Mafia III became the   title by 2K Games, with more than 4 million units shipped in the first week. But despite the game’s positive reception, some reviewers have argued that its excessive and chaotic violence overshadows the abuse black and brown people experienced during the era, as The Verge’s Chris Plante has argued: ”A black man lynching a white man in the American South in 1968 is an arresting image, except its power is undercut by the game’s pace. It takes no time to unpack what we’re seeing, let alone acknowledge that, below the hanging man, fester dozens of other men murdered by Lincoln Clay.” Female representation, Still, Mafia III inches away from the familiar tropes of  ’  games. One of them is the poor depiction of women, who are often heavily sexualized or subservient to the male protagonist. In Mafia III, women hold their own and serve more than just atmosphere, which Webb says was a deliberate move. There’s Cassandra, the head of the Haitian mob then Alma Diaz, who runs smuggling operations and Nicki Burke, a lieutenant in the Irish mob. And then there’s the inner circle of Clay’s friends and family, most of whom are black and help shape the narrative. This batch of characters joins a small group of other individuals of color from recent major games: Marcus Holloway from Watch Dogs 2, antagonist Nadine Ross from Uncharted 4 and Lee Everett from The Walking Dead Telltale games universe and others. Yet, many groups remain highly underrepresented in the gaming industry, which has faced criticism, for instance, not only for the rarity of protagonists of color, but also for their voices being performed by white voice actors. A 2009 study found that Latinos were virtually unrepresented as playable characters, while   were largely featured in sports games or similar titles that reinforce stereotypes. A possible harbinger? S. Craig Watkins, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, says the tech industry is commonly under fire for its lack of diversity, while the video game industry hasn’t been held ”nearly as accountable.” The vast majority of game developers are white  —   the results of a 2015 survey by the International Game Developers Association suggest that only about 3 percent of   makers are African American and 7 percent are Latino. Meanwhile, several studies have found that black and Latino children and teenagers spend more time per day playing video games. ”The statistics are shifting and telling us that who plays games is no longer this imagined idea of the white straight   adolescent male who is at home in their parents’ basement,” says Edmond Chang, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Oregon. ”The industry has really failed in certain ways to catch up.” Watkins says Mafia III could be a harbinger for the industry. ”The idea that a studio would even consider investing the resources, the time, the human capital to develop a game like Mafia III,” he says, ”that’s a really interesting approach to what the gaming world and experience might look like.” And Blackman, the creative director, says he’s proud of the game sparking important dialogue. ”We’re not so naive as to think that a single game could cure racism  —   and that was never our intent,” Blackman says. ”But at the end of the day, if we make people think about race and we make people think about what’s happening today, I think we’ve done something that very few games have done.” Iman Smith is a freelance reporter. You can follow her on Twitter at @ImanThePress."
"One in five Americans is religiously unaffiliated. Yet just one of 535 members of the new Congress is. That’s what the latest data from the Pew Research Center show on the opening day of the 115th Congress. The nation’s top legislative body remains far more male and white than the rest of the U. S. population as well, but religion is one of the more invisible areas where legislators in Washington simply aren’t representative of the people they represent. Only Arizona Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema admits to being ”unaffiliated,” which Pew defines as people who are atheist, agnostic or who describe their religion as ”nothing in particular.” That means only 0. 2 percent of Congress is unaffiliated, compared with 23 percent of U. S. adults. That group is   than any religious group in America, as Pew found in 2015. Meanwhile, nearly 91 percent of congressional members are Christian, compared with 71 percent of U. S. adults. Here’s a full breakdown of how Congress’ religious affiliations compare with those of the U. S. population: America’s nonreligious are young  —   and not politically organized, Why the massive gap? For one, religiously unaffiliated people tend to be young, and Congress just isn’t that young. In the 114th Congress, the average age for House members was 57 years old and for senators it was 61. (To a modest extent, this is a reflection of age rules: Senators must be 30 or older, and representatives have to be at least 25.) But groups that identify as ”nothing in particular,” agnostic and atheist  —   the three groups that make up the unaffiliated in Pew’s definition  —   are among the youngest ”religious” groups in America. So it may be that once Americans start electing more millennials to Congress, there will be a greater share of nonreligious people elected as well. In addition, younger Americans tend to have much lower voting rates than older people. That may also contribute, though the logic requires a couple of leaps  —   if this means the (relatively young) religiously unaffiliated population isn’t voting as much, and if the religiously unaffiliated are more drawn to likewise unaffiliated politicians  —   that could also help explain the lack of ”nones” in Congress. Likewise, the inverse is true: If older (and more religious) Americans are voting for more religious politicians, it means less room for the nonreligious ones. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, the unaffiliated Sinema is also relatively young for a congressional member at 40.) One more potential reason unaffiliated people aren’t in power: Not being affiliated often also means not being politically cohesive. ”They may be unaffiliated they may be atheist they may be agnostic . .. but they’re not part of some club,” said Margie Omero, a Democratic strategist at Purple Strategies, to NPR in 2015. ”You could certainly argue that evangelicals are not monolithic in terms of their policy beliefs, but there’s no denying that there’s more of an organization around organized religion than there is around disorganized atheism.” Atheism doesn’t poll well, It’s true that Americans remain at least somewhat open to atheist officeholders. In one regular polling question, Gallup asks Americans what types of people they would (or would not) vote for as president. For example, 91 percent of Americans say they would vote for a Jew and 81 percent say a Mormon.   percent of Americans would vote for an atheist. That’s not only a majority but a record high for atheists. Then again, it’s very low compared with Jews and Mormons (and Christians in general, who have made up all of the presidents to date) and the numbers altogether suggest that America’s nonreligious have a long way to go before they become mainstream as politicians. That 58 percent put atheists next to last on Gallup’s list, above socialist (at 47 percent) and on par with Muslim (60 percent). Not only that, but atheist is still far more of a minus than a plus for voters. According to one 2014 Pew poll, just over half of Americans said that knowing a presidential candidate was atheist would make them less likely to vote for that candidate only 5 percent said ”more likely” (the remaining 41 percent said it ”wouldn’t matter”). It’s not exactly ”nones” (atheists are only one subset of unaffiliated Americans) and it’s a question about voting for president, but it at least sends a message: Being nonreligious is still not a big selling point for many voters."
"Updated at 1 p. m. ET, Turkish authorities made multiple arrests Tuesday as they search for the person who attacked an Istanbul nightclub in the early hours of New Year’s Day, killing at least 39 people. A lone gunman shot his way into the Reina nightclub, which was packed with holiday revelers. Police arrested two foreign nationals who they described as suspects at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, according to the   Anadolu news agency. They reportedly searched the pair and took them to police headquarters in Istanbul. ”The country remains on high alert, especially at transport hubs and border crossings,” NPR’s Peter Kenyon in Istanbul reported. The two arrests follow earlier media reports Tuesday  —   which were later reversed  —   that police had identified the suspected gunman at the Reina nightclub. The   TRT World news network showed images of a passport from Kyrgyzstan belonging to someone it identified as the suspected gunman and named that person, as Peter reports, but the broadcaster stopped showing the passport page shortly after without explanation. (We have since removed that name as well from this post.) Police later denied that the passport was linked to the shooting, as Peter reported. He added: ”The Hurriyet newspaper says police detained a woman in the town of Konya who’s described as the wife of the main suspect in the attack. According to the paper, she told police her husband never showed any sympathy for ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for the attack.” Turkish authorities have released a ”selfie” video purportedly showing the gunman walking along a city street. Turkish authorities did not say when the video was recorded or how they obtained it. Peter reported: ”The claim of responsibility by ISIS prompted Turkey’s deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus to say Turkey’s response will be to step up military attacks against ISIS in northern Syria. ”That escalation appears to have already begun. The military tells the   Anatolia News Agency that Turkish attacks have killed at least 18 ISIS fighters in the past 24 hours, and at least 150 ISIS targets have been hit by airstrikes or tank and artillery fire in recent days.” Police have conducted raids in Istanbul neighborhoods, Peter reported, and 14 people were being held for questioning in connection with the attack, in addition to the pair from the airport."
"When   Miranda was a teenager in the 1990s, he liked to make eclectic mixtapes for his friends. In those cassettes, he experimented with the rise and fall of energy in music: A musical theater number might play after a   song, only to be followed by an oldie or an obscure pop song. It was through mixtapes that he could bridge the gap between two seemingly opposing passions  —   Broadway and rap. ”I think I learned more about writing scores for Broadway by making mixtapes . .. than I did in college,” the actor, composer and lyricist tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. In 2008, Miranda’s first musical, In The Heights, won four Tony Awards, and in 2016, Hamilton  —   a   infused retelling of the Founding Father’s life  —   won 11 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. Though Miranda stepped away from his Hamilton role in July, he remains busy with other projects. He wrote several songs for the Disney animated film Moana, and he’s preparing to star in a film sequel of Mary Poppins. Looking ahead, Miranda says he doesn’t feel pressure to duplicate or exceed the success of Hamilton. ”If you think in terms of topping, you’re in the wrong business,” he says. ”I remember getting that question after In the Heights. ’It’s your first musical and you won the Tony, how are you going to top it?’ I’m like, ’I went from broke substitute teacher to Broadway composer. I will never make a leap that big in my life again.’ ” On what it was like to play Alexander Hamilton every night  It was an enormous challenge to do that show every night, and yet who to blame but myself? I wrote the part! And it was also the most thrilling roller coaster every night. You know, I got to fall in love, I got to win a war, I got to write words that inspired a nation. Getting to go through that experience, it’s something I’ll never get old of, which is why I really tried to downplay my departure as much as possible, because I don’t think I’m remotely done with it. On Donald Trump’s tweet calling for the theater to be a safe place after the Hamilton cast read a statement directed to Vice   Mike Pence, who attended a performance soon after the election, Here’s where I agree with the  : The theater should always be a safe space. . .. I think one of the reasons Hamilton has been embraced by people of every stripe on the political spectrum is that theater is one of the rarest places where we still come together. You may take a totally different conclusion from Hamilton than I do, based on your ideology and your politics and your life experience, but we all sat in a room together and we watched the same thing, and that doesn’t happen anymore. As you can see from this election, we have our own sets of facts based on who we listen to. Which news organization gets our business determines the facts that get in our head. So I think one of the things that makes theater special is, first of all, it’s one of the last places you put your phone away, and second of all it’s one of the last places where we all have a common experience together. So to that end, I agree with [Trump’s comment]. I don’t agree with his characterization of what we did. I think anyone who sees that video sees [actor Brandon Victor Dixon] silencing the boos . .. from the audience itself, who . .. nine days after the election are still working through that thing. I can’t speak to that, but I know that Brandon quieted the boos and made a plea to lead all of us. I don’t believe there’s anything remotely resembling harassment in what we’ve done. On the life he dreamed of as a kid  I have two wonderful, supportive and very practical parents who are like, ”You’re really talented and really creative. You should be a lawyer,” because there’s a safe path there. I knew I was never going to be a lawyer. I knew that I wanted to make movies, and I wanted to write shows. On his love of Disney musicals growing up, I had the great joy of being 9 years old when The Little Mermaid came out, and I went and saw that three times in the theater. Then I dragged my parents back and my family back to see it a couple more times. I don’t know why it changed my life as much as it did. I think Sebastian the crab had a big amount to do with it  —   the fact that this calypso number happens under the water just knocked my socks off when I was a kid. It had this power over me. I would perform that thing  —   I would jump up on my desk in fourth grade and sing that song. Then I had the good fortune of being a kid during that really kind of amazing run of musical animated films. It’s Little Mermaid, followed by Beauty and the Beast, followed by Aladdin, followed by The Lion King. That’s an incredible run. And what’s been exciting is animation has changed so much. There’s this incredible Pixar golden age, and really golden age from all these other studios as well, and it feels like we’re in another one of those where musicals have a seat at the table. You’ve got Tangled, you’ve got Frozen, next to Inside Out, next to Zootopia, and it’s exciting to be a part of that tradition again. On the music that influenced him as a teenager  My sister is as responsible as anyone for giving me good taste in music. I remember stealing her copy of Black Sheep’s A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing and learning ”Engine, engine number nine, on the New York transit line.” I think that’s probably the first rap song I really worked hard to memorize in sixth grade, but then also Naughty by Nature and Queen Latifah. The music you love when you’re a teenager is always going to be the most important to you, and I find that it’s all over the score of Hamilton. . .. These are all New York, East Coast, ’90s rappers, and that’s when I was a teenager. On   between the Latin American neighborhood he grew up in and his school with affluent white kids  If you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere, have them be an observer kind of all the time . . .. I won the lotto when I got into Hunter  —   to get a great, free, public school education sort of saved my family, and I was aware of it. I was aware that I was at a school with kids who were really smart. And I also had friends in the neighborhood who went to the local school, and I remember feeling that drift happen. . .. The corner that I lived on was like this little Latin American country. It’s one in which the nanny who lived with us and raised us, who also raised my father in Puerto Rico, never needed to learn English. All of the business owners in and around our block all spoke Spanish, and yet I’d go to school and I’d be at my friends’ houses on the Upper East Side and Upper West Side and I’d be the one translating to the nanny who spoke Spanish. So it’s interesting to become a Latino cultural ambassador when you’re 7."
"Opening punches were thrown in what one top Democrat today called ”the first big fight” of the new congressional year  —   the promise by   Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. President Obama met with Democrats on Capitol Hill while Vice   Mike Pence sat down with Republicans, as each side prepared for the skirmishing in the days and months ahead. Asked what advice he gave Democrats in the   meeting about the legacy program that bears his name, Obama responded, ”Look out for the American people.” It was likely Obama’s last visit to the Capitol before the inauguration of his successor. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama told the lawmakers he wished he were in their place. ”The word he used was ’envy,’ ” Earnest said, ”for the opportunity they have” to fight GOP repeal efforts. Pence told reporters that Trump will sign executive orders on his first day in office to begin implementing the repeal of Obamacare, saying it was ”the first order of business.” The incoming administration, Pence said, is working right now on ”a series of executive orders that will enable that orderly transition to take place even as the Congress appropriately debates alternatives to and replacement of Obamacare.” He did not offer any specifics on what those orders would entail. He said Republicans will be taking a ”  approach” with a combination of executive and legislative actions. The new leader of Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York, said GOP lawmakers seek ”to rip health care away from millions” of Americans, ”which will create chaos.” In his short, prepared statement, he repeated the word ”chaos” four times. Schumer said Democrats in both the House and the Senate are united in their opposition to Republican attempts to ”make America sick again.” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Republicans asserted, however, that there would be ”an orderly transition, so that the rug is not pulled out from under the families,” which he said are currently ”struggling” under Obamacare. But replace it with what? Ryan offered no specifics, except to insist Republicans do ”have a plan to replace it. We have plenty of ideas to replace it.” But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, addressing reporters after hearing from Obama, said Republicans don’t have the votes for a replacement plan. Pelosi blasted an approach that some Republicans have discussed, that would repeal the ACA but delay its effect to give lawmakers time to come up with a replacement. She called the strategy ”an act of cowardice.” Trump himself weighed in today via his preferred method of communicating, tweeting that ”Republicans must be careful in that the Dems own the failed Obamacare disaster” and ”Don’t let the Schumer clowns out of this web.” He warned that ”massive increases of ObamaCare will take place this year and Dems are to blame for the mess. It will fall of its own weight  —   be careful!”"
"Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s former Anglican archbishop and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, recently celebrated his 85th birthday with an interesting message: He wants the option of an assisted death.  Tutu has largely retired from public life, but is still considered the moral conscience of South Africa for his leading role in the fight against apartheid. Some were taken aback when Tutu said he wants the option to end his life when he chooses. ”As a Christian, I believe in the sanctity of life, and that death is a part of life,” Tutu said in a recent video. ”I hope that when the time comes I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life’s journey in the manner of my choice.” An assisted death is currently illegal in South Africa. The Supreme Court of Appeal reaffirmed that stance in December when it struck down a lower court’s ruling that granted an applicant the right to an assisted suicide. Tutu, who has lived with prostate cancer for decades and has been in and out of the hospital in recent years, says he supports efforts around the globe to legalize the procedure.  ”I pray that politicians, lawmakers and religious leaders have the courage to support the choices terminally ill citizens make in departing Mother Earth with dignity and love,” he said. Tutu made that video for advocacy groups that support      laws. At the St. Alban’s Anglican Cathedral in the capital Pretoria, the organ starts to play as parishioners file into the   stone church, which sits among tall government buildings. Musima Gwangwa, who is attending the service, says Tutu’s leadership in ending apartheid, and the stances he has taken on human rights around the world, serve as a model that Anglicans like her should try and emulate. ”He’s more than an icon for us,” she says, adding that she supports his position. Not all parishioners agree. For Richard Botha, the archbishop’s decision is a confounding one. He calls Tutu a global elder and someone who is willing to call out leaders for poor judgment. But Tutu’s support for assisted death does not comport with Botha’s religious beliefs. ”I won’t remember him for that. I will remember him for his credentials and his human rights struggle,” says Botha.  Tutu has largely stopped giving interviews and declined NPR’s request. But he’s been making his feelings known in editorials in which he described as ”disgraceful” Nelson Mandela’s final days before his death in 2013. He described how Mandela, widely known as Madiba, was used as a political prop in photo ops, despite being unable to communicate. ”It was an affront to Madiba’s legacy,” Tutu wrote in The Guardian newspaper in 2014. He went on to argue that South Africa needed to revisit its laws regarding a person’s right to die. South African judges wrote in their recent ruling that they would welcome action by Parliament, meaning the legislature, and not the courts, should determine whether assisted death will be permitted in South Africa. Advocates for assisted death could take the case to the Constitutional Court.  Whatever the outcome,    advocates say Tutu’s support for the issue can guide conflicted people across the globe. ”It helps to hear a person who has dedicated his life to religion, and about whom there’s no question they are deeply religious, say there’s no incompatibility in religious faith and medical aid in dying,” says Barbara Coombs Lee, who leads Compassion and Choices, a group that lobbies for assisted death in the U. S."
"If you’re looking for a diet plan that suits your lifestyle, a new list of rankings from U. S. News  World Report has you covered. Most dieters are familiar with commercial plans such as Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig  —   both of which continue to make the magazine’s list for top diets. But a range of options offer fresh approaches, including the MIND diet, the   diet (a     diet) and the Ornish diet  —   which is ranked top for heart health. The annual rankings list includes 38 different diets, all of which have been evaluated by a panel of doctors, nutritionists and other health professionals. ”Each profile is an exhaustive look at what it’s like to be on each plan,” says Angela Haupt, assistant managing editor for health at U. S. News. The diets are ranked in categories, from ”easiest diets to follow” to ”best diets overall” to ”fastest weight loss.” The   diet makes the cut in the fastest   category. The diet was developed by a nutrition scientist at the University of Toronto. ”It’s a   spin on the Atkins diet. It calls for 31 percent of daily calories to come from plant proteins, 43 percent from plant fats and 26 percent from carbs,” explains Haupt. The claim is that dieters can lose 8 pounds a month, while improving blood levels of triglycerides, cholesterol levels and blood pressure. ”Our experts say it’s superior to Atkins and good for fast weight loss, but it can be tough to follow, since guidance is scarce. You’re largely on your own, which can deter some dieters,” Haupt tells us. Other   diets that rank high include the Ornish diet, based on the plan developed by Dr. Dean Ornish. This diet approach is touted as a way to reverse diabetes and heart disease. The diet moved up a notch from the 2016 list. It emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products, nonfat dairy, as well as some ”good fats that contain   fatty acids,” according to a description on the diet’s website. The Mediterranean diet retains a top spot as well. As the reviewers explain in the diet’s profile: ”There isn’t ’a’ Mediterranean diet. Greeks eat differently from Italians, who eat differently from the French and Spanish. But they share many common understandings.” A   Mediterranean diet pyramid was developed by Oldways, a nonprofit in Boston, working with researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health. The U. S News reviewers point out: ”The    secret [of a Mediterranean diet] is an active lifestyle, weight control, and a diet low in red meat, sugar and saturated fat and high in produce, nuts and other healthful foods.” Another bonus: A little red wine with meals is not frowned upon. If keeping your noggin sharp is a high priority, the MIND diet  —   which is ranked No. 3 on the list of Best Diets Overall  —   combines the DASH diet approach (which was originally designed to help people control high blood pressure) and the Mediterranean diet. According to the U. S. News reviewers, MIND  —   which was developed by researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago  —   focuses on foods that influence brain health. So what are some changes from last year’s rankings of Best Diets? The vegan diet moved up to No. 16 on the Best Diets Overall List. (Last year it was No. 21.) And SlimFast dropped from No. 15 on the list of Best Diets Overall down to No. 20. Two other diets that slipped in the rankings: Atkins fell on the Best   Diets list, and Biggest Loser also slipped in the Best Diets for Healthy Eating category. The paleo diet hangs on. It’s ranked 36th out of 38 in the Best Diets Overall category. The main knocks against it: Reviewers say the produce aisle and meat counter tend to be expensive, and the diet can be hard to follow while dining out. Reviewers note that dieters will need to get accustomed to ordering breadless sandwiches and skipping many other menu items that contain grains and dairy. Also noted: Alcohol is not part of a true paleo diet. Why the changes in rankings? ”Our expert panelists reviewed and rescored each diet, and their scores vary each year based on program changes, new research and general evolution of thinking in the diet and nutrition space,” Haupt tells us."
"Rex Tillerson,   Donald Trump’s nominee for U. S. secretary of state, is severing his ties with Exxon Mobil. The former chairman and CEO is in line to receive a $180 million retirement package. Tillerson, who has spent his entire career at Exxon, would have reached mandatory retirement age in March. The company announced that it will pay him in cash for the more than 2 million shares he would have received over the next 10 years and that the money will be transferred to an independently managed trust. If confirmed as secretary of state, Tillerson also has committed to sell the more than 600, 000 Exxon shares he currently owns. The deal means he will give up about $7 million dollars, compared with what he would have received had he retired in March as planned. The deal was worked out to comply with federal ethics rules. Tillerson has promised not to return to the oil and gas industry for 10 years. If he violates the agreement, he would forfeit all the money in the trust, which would be given away to charities chosen by the trust manager. All this is meant to reassure senators that Tillerson would not be unduly influenced by Exxon Mobil if he were to become America’s top diplomat. He still has an uphill battle for confirmation. Democrats have yet to agree on confirmation hearings tentatively set for Jan. 11, and senators on both sides of the aisle will likely question Tillerson about his close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. As Exxon Mobil CEO, he was opposed to U. S. sanctions on Russia, which got in the way of his company’s project with Russian energy company Rosneft to drill in the Arctic. Tillerson met Wednesday with the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin, who has been an outspoken critic of Russia and a supporter of sanctions. The Maryland senator said he had a ”candid” discussion with Tillerson.  ”Russia is not a friend of the United States,” Cardin told reporters outside his office, saying he thinks ”that is a strong bipartisan message you will hear during the confirmation process.”   Cardin also said he didn’t have time to review Tillerson’s divestment and ethics plan before the meeting and that he still wants to see three years of his tax returns. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker,  . has argued that there’s no need for that. He said the agreement that Exxon Mobil’s board reached with Tillerson to comply with conflict of interest requirements is ”all tidied up and done.” Sens. Marco Rubio and John McCain, both Republican members of the foreign relations committee, also have expressed concerns about Tillerson’s views on Russia."
"Dylann Roof delivered his opening statement in a South Carolina courtroom Wednesday, as the penalty phase of his federal trial got underway. Roof, who was convicted last month of murdering nine black churchgoers, will be representing himself as jurors weigh whether to give him the death penalty or life in prison. His remarks were brief, focused only on defending his decision to dismiss his lawyers for this phase of the trial. He said it’s ”absolutely true” that he chose to represent himself so that his lawyers would not present evidence of mental illness. ”The point is I’m not going to lie to you,” Roof said. ”There’s nothing wrong with me psychologically.” He did not address his crimes or the prosecution’s opening remarks against him. U. S. District Judge Richard Gergel approved the    white supremacist’s request to serve as his own counsel after a second hearing on his mental competency. The request for    —   and its approval  —   came over the protests of Roof’s own lawyers. Roof has said he will not call witnesses or experts to the stand during this phase of the trial. Still, earlier this week, Gergel laid out strict rules for Roof’s conduct while acting as his own lawyer. ”In an order, the judge detailed how Roof can behave while in court,” Alexandra Olgin of South Carolina Public Radio reports. ”He cannot approach witnesses, the jury or the bench and has to give opening statements from behind a podium.” Roof killed nine parishioners at Charleston’s historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015. In a confession taped shortly after he was taken into custody, Roof made plain his racial motivations, adding: ”I am guilty. We all know I’m guilty.” It took less than three hours last month for the jurors to concur. They found him guilty of charges ranging from murder and attempted murder to obstruction of religious belief and damage to religious property. Federal prosecutors, who are pursuing the death penalty, delivered a much longer opening statement. Assistant U. S. Attorney Nathan Williams focused his remarks on those who died in the shooting, and on what he called Roof’s lack of regret. Central to the latter argument is a journal that prosecutors say Roof wrote in after his arrest. In the journal, excerpts of which were presented to courtroom reporters, Roof allegedly says that ”  have to pay for what they’ve done.” ”I created the biggest wave I could,” Roof allegedly wrote. ”I did all I can do, now it is in the hands of my brothers.” In concluding his remarks, Williams warned that the testimony to come will be worse than what jurors have heard yet: ”It will be heartbreaking,” the prosecutor said. The penalty phase of the trial resumed Wednesday with prosecutors calling their first witnesses. The prosecution plans to call up to 38 people as witnesses and experts during this phase of the trial, according to The Associated Press. This is not the only trial that Roof is facing  —   and not the only possibility for capital punishment. ”After the federal proceedings,” reports NPR’s Debbie Elliott, ”Roof is scheduled to be in state court early next year on murder charges that also carry the possibility of a death sentence.”"
"A crowded commuter train crashed into a bumper block and partially derailed as it pulled into Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal on Wednesday morning, according to N. Y. officials. The FDNY says at least 103 people sustained    injuries. ”It appears that the train was heading into the station, at 10 or 15 miles per hour, and did not stop,” WNYC’s Stephen Nessen tells our Newscast unit. ”It hit a bumper block the front two cars were lifted off the tracks. One of the rails actually pierced the bottom of the front car.” The crash happened during peak morning commuting time, when between 600 and 700 people were on the Long Island Rail Road train originating from Far Rockaway, Queens, Nessen adds. ”People just went flying,” passenger Donette Smith told The New York Times. ”Bodies were everywhere. It was very scary.” The injuries reported so far have been largely minor: WNYC reports that the most serious is a broken leg. The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Thomas F. Prendergast, told the Times that most of the injuries were sustained when the train ”came to an abrupt stop after crashing into the bumper block at the end of the track.” Nessen says it’s still unclear what caused the train to crash: ”Trains pulling into the station do automatically slow down but it is up to the conductor to hit the brake finally for the train to stop and in this case, it appears that didn’t happen. Investigators are still looking into what happened.” Prendergast also suggested that responsibility may lie with the train’s conductor. ”At that speed, it’s pretty much the locomotive engineer’s responsibility to stop the train,” he said, according to Reuters. Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters at the scene that it could have been worse. The crash is drawing comparisons to September’s train crash in the nearby Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey, which killed one person and injured more than 100 others. The Times quotes Cuomo as saying that the train in the Hoboken crash ”was coming in much faster, did much more damage, hurt many more people.”"
"Amid this week’s firestorm over Republicans’ attempt to weaken the Office of Congressional Ethics (and subsequently, backpedal on that attempt) you may have seen this chart floating around the Internet. It depicts data from Google Trends about Americans’ search interest in learning who their congressional representatives are, with a pronounced spike around 9 a. m. Tuesday. The Hill reported this on Tuesday, with the The New York Times later referencing the trend. The conclusion some are drawing is that people looked up their representatives, then called them to complain about the ethics issue, and that the groundswell of support got Congress members’ attention. And, indeed, some Congress members reported that these phone calls did influence them. But there’s a   issue with this data, and with all Google Trends data  —   the problem of scale. While there’s a ”spike” here, there’s no way to tell how big it is without comparing it to other popular  —   or unpopular  —   search terms. Depending on what you’re comparing it to, that spike is little more than a speed bump. Here, for example, is the ”who is my representative” search compared to searches for ”Obamacare” in the U. S. over the past week. The spike nearly disappears here  —   as of 9 a. m. Tuesday, ”who is my representative” registered at 7 on this chart, compared to 60 for Obamacare. But then, maybe that’s not fair. Obamacare is a really big topic in the news right now. Let’s try a Google search term that’s still   but with less mass appeal, like infrastructure. The    spike is a bit more apparent here, but it’s still dwarfed even by searches for the relatively nonsexy topic of infrastructure. The really striking comparisons come when you compare this ”spike” to searches for   topics. How about a newly released, poorly reviewed movie? What about a certain pop superstar who recently gave a catastrophic performance on national TV? OK, so the spike for Mariah Carey happened a couple of days earlier, but you get the picture. It’s true that Google Trends data can say something about what people care about, and that can be   in a democracy where politicians are theoretically supposed to represent those cares. For example, researchers reported in October that Trump searches outstripped Hillary Clinton searches. They subsequently concluded that ”this could be evidence that Mr. Trump is doing better than the polls project.” But when that data is presented without a reference point, it can overstate the importance of a particular search trend. In fact, to get a term that has comparable volume to the Congress member search, you have to get creative and do a lot of random Googling. As it turns out, searches for ”who is my representative” are roughly equal to searches for a 1990s trend that people have mostly forgotten. So searches for ”who is my representative” spiked, surpassing Beanie Baby searches for the first time in . .. well, a long time. None of this is to say that this spike didn’t matter lots more people than usual did Google their Congress members’ offices, and anecdotal evidence suggests that there was an increase in people calling their Congress members. But it is to say that Google data on only one search term can misrepresent the size of a phenomenon. Yes, plenty of people were Googling their Congress members this week. But plenty more were watching that Mariah video."
"Louisiana is losing its coast at a rapid rate because of rising sea levels, development and sinking marshland. Officials are trying to rebuild those marshes and the wetlands, but much of the coast can’t be saved. This makes Louisiana’s history an unwitting victim. As land disappears and the water creeps inland, ancient archaeology sites are washing away, too. Richie Blink was born and raised in Plaquemines Parish, La.  —   way down south of New Orleans along the Mississippi River. Now he works for the National Wildlife Federation. When he was a kid, his dad showed him a special place in Adams Bay, where they’d go fishing. ”We would come out of the floodgates and my dad would say ’Head for the Lemon Trees! ’” Blink says. What’s locally known as the ”Lemon Trees” is a stand of weathered old trees on a grassy tuft of land. It’s a   landmark for fishermen, but Blink says they would rarely stop there to hunt or fish because it’s a sacred Native American site. ”The legend goes that you were always to bring some kind of sacrifice, so somebody left some lemons for the ancestors,” Blink says. And those grew into big trees with   lemons. But as land was lost to the Gulf of Mexico, saltwater made its way into the freshwater marsh, killing off the trees and other plants. The trees stand like skeletons on the edge of this scrappy,   island. Waves beat against the dirt, washing it away, exposing shards of ancient pottery. ”You can see, it’s just everywhere . .. there’s just shards of it all over the place,” Blink says. ”This is earthen pottery made by natives. This site is in the process of being destroyed. It only has a few more years left.” This ancient Native American site is an important archaeological find. It’s one of many historic sites being forever lost to the Gulf as rising seas and saltwater intrusion eat away at Louisiana’s fragile marshes. Two sites like this are lost each year. When Blink saw how fast the land was eroding he decided to find an archaeologist and ask for help. That led him to Brian Ostahowski. Ostahowski says he gets a lot of calls like this, at least once a month. People who say: ” ’I have a great archaeological site in my backyard,’ ” Ostahowski says. ”And chances are they usually do.” So he hopped in a boat with Blink and went out to the ”Lemon Trees.” ”Richie wasn’t lying,” Ostahowski says. ”This is actually a very, very important archaeological site.” Based on the pottery and soil, Ostahowski says native people lived at the site 300 to 500 years ago. The pieces of broken pottery are probably from an ancient trash pile, called a midden. There could even be human remains there. ”You’re talking about a whole ceremonial center that could tell you about lifeways, or the change of lifeways, that’s going to be completely gone within 10 years,” he says. ”It maybe took 300 years of occupation there.” Three hundred years to build it  —   and in just 10 years it could be erased. Ostahowski took samples of the soil for radiocarbon dating. Unlike the usual   archaeology dig, Ostahowski wants to excavate the mound as soon as possible and study the pottery shards and oyster shells. But the truth is, there just isn’t much time. ”We’re talking about different ways that we can come up with kind of an emergency action, or emergency excavations,” Ostahowski says. He wants to learn more, like how long people lived there and how many different occupations there might have been. These details could help fill gaps in our understanding of the prehistoric Plaquemine culture, which includes tribes that lived on the lower Mississippi before Europeans came. For Blink, it’s more than ancient history at stake. It’s personal history, where he grew up. He honors that in his own way, like two weeks ago when he brought out some lemons. Under a windswept tree, on top of the small mound, a handful of dried up lemons sits in the shade."
"Murmuration refers to the phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of starlings fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky. Maybe you’ve seen a murmuration video before. But this one is especially beautiful. It was shot earlier this month in Wales, at Cosmeston Lakes in the Vale of Glamorgan, and posted on Facebook by the BBC Cymru Wales. Why do I love this short video so much? It’s all about science. Just how do the starlings manage to fly in such an amazingly coordinated way? A few years ago, George F. Young and his colleagues investigated starlings’ ”remarkable ability to maintain cohesion as a group in highly uncertain environments and with limited, noisy information”  —   a nice description of what goes on in a murmuration. Going in, Young et al. already knew that starlings pay attention to a fixed number of their neighbors in the flock, regardless of flock density  —   seven, to be exact. Their new contribution was to figure out that ”when uncertainty in sensing is present, interacting with six or seven neighbors optimizes the balance between group cohesiveness and individual effort.” Young et al. analyzed still shots from videos of starlings in flight (flock size ranging from 440 to 2, 600) then used a highly mathematical approach and systems theory to reach their conclusion. Focusing on the birds’ ability to manage uncertainty while also maintaining consensus, they discovered that birds accomplish this (with the least effort) when each bird attends to seven neighbors. In following this role of seven, then, the birds are part of a dynamic system in which the parts combine to make a whole with emergent properties  —   and a murmuration results. That’s just incredibly cool. Also, starlings are essentially an invasive species in this country. They were famously introduced to North America at New York City’s Central Park in the 1890s by Shakespeare enthusiasts who wanted all the bird species ever mentioned by Shakespeare to inhabit this continent. With starlings, they certainly succeeded: 200 million of these birds now inhabit North America. They aren’t welcomed by everyone. As the Cornell Lab of Ornithology puts it, starlings in the U. S. are ”sometimes resented for their abundance and aggressiveness.” In this Scientific American piece, they’re even called a ”menace.” The murmuration video invites us to see them with fresh eyes. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve, and her forthcoming book, Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat, will be published in March. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"Armed men reportedly attacked a jail in the Philippines, killing a guard and allowing more than 150 prisoners to escape. The attack took place at the North Cotabato District Jail in Kidapawan, a city on the island of Mindanao, just after 1 a. m. local time on Wednesday, according to the BBC. It added that ”authorities suspect the gunmen are linked to Islamist separatist groups.”   newspaper The Philippine Star reported that the strike was carefully planned: ”Superintendent Peter Bungat, provincial jail warden, said the attack began with a power outage that plunged the facility into darkness, followed by heavy gunfire aimed at the buildings inside its fenced compound. ”Bungat said one of his subordinates, Jail Officer 1 Hexel Rey Desibo, was killed in the ensuing encounter with the gunmen who attacked from the rear of the jail compound. ’It was not a jailbreak. It was a planned rescue of certain detainees,’ he said.” The BBC noted that the 100 or so attackers were ”armed with rocket propelled grenades and snipers’ rifles,” and far outnumbered the jail staff of around 20 people. The broadcaster added: ”In the chaos following the attack, 158 prisoners were able to put a ladder against a back wall and escape. Many of the 1500 inmates at the jail are linked to the various Islamic insurgent group in Mindanao. The authorities are already blaming the attack on the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, a   faction which has refused to join the protracted peace talks with the central government.” A spokesman for the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters denied the group was involved in the attack, according to the Star. The assault was the third in 10 years at the Cotabato jail, the newspaper said. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose war on drugs has led to the deaths of thousands of people, hasn’t yet publicly commented on the attack and mass escape."
"Frenchman Robert Marchand set a new world record Wednesday when he cycled 22. 547 kilometers (about 14 miles) in an hour  —   at the age of 105. Wearing a purple and yellow cycling suit, pink helmet and yellow glasses, Marchand completed 92 laps at the Velodrome National, an indoor track near Paris that’s used for elite cycling events. According to The Associated Press, he set a new record for the   age group and received a standing ovation from people in the crowd, who chanted ”Robert, Robert” as he rolled to a stop. Still, he said he could have done better. ”I did not see the sign warning me I had 10 minutes left,” Marchand said, according to the AP. ”Otherwise I would have gone faster, I would have posted a better time. I’m now waiting for a rival.” For comparison, the U. K.’s Bradley Wiggins rode 54. 526 kilometers (about 34 miles) in 2015 and holds the record for the men’s hour, the BBC reported. ”I am not here to be champion. I am here to prove that at 105 years old you can still ride a bike,” Marchand said, per Eurosport. His   ride Wednesday was incredible, but Marchand’s entire life has been a series of singular events. The AP has this on his background: ”Marchand, a former firefighter who was born in 1911 in the northern town of Amiens, has lived through two world wars. He led an eventful life that took him to Venezuela, where he worked as a truck driver near the end of the 1940s. He then moved to Canada and became a lumberjack for a while. ”Back in France in the 1960s, Marchand made a living through various jobs that left him with no time to practice sports. ”He finally took up his bike again when he was 68 years old and began a series of cycling feats. ”The diminutive Marchand  —   he is 1. 52 meters ( ) tall and weighs 52 kilograms (115 pounds)  —   rode from Bordeaux to Paris, and Paris to Roubaix several times. He also cycled to Moscow from Paris in 1992. ”Ten years later, he set the record for someone over the age of 100 riding 100 kilometers (62 miles).” So what’s his secret? Marchand’s coach and friend Gerard Mistler told the AP it’s simple: He eats fruits and vegetables, doesn’t smoke, drinks wine only on occasion, goes to bed at 9 p. m. and exercises every day. Mistler, perhaps cognizant of the cloud of doubt that hovers over impressive cycling performances, told the news service: ”If [he] had been doping, he would not be there anymore.” As if this story couldn’t get any better, here’s some amazing photos of the feat."
"People think of black holes as nightmare vacuum cleaners, sucking in everything in reach, from light to stars to Matthew McConaughey in the movie Interstellar. But, in real life, black holes don’t consume everything that they draw in. ”They’re actually pretty picky eaters,” says Jedidah Isler, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University. She spends most days chipping away at one of the universe’s biggest mysteries: How do the huge, overactive black holes, known as quasars, work? ”They are billions of times the mass of our own sun,” she says. ”I like to call them ’hyperactive,’ in the sense that they are just taking on a lot more than an average black hole.” And these monster black holes tend to do something strange. They not only reject material, but they use it to put on a space version of a fireworks show, shooting out shredded stars and other things in a stream of light and charged particles. ”Think of them as cosmic water hoses that are spewing out all kinds of particles and light,” says Isler. These are some of the most powerful particle streams ever observed, causing chaos in their host galaxies. Theoretically speaking, if an unlucky planet happened to cross paths with one of those jets, Isler says, it would not be pretty. ”It would basically destroy the planet completely. It would completely eviscerate anything that got in its way,” she says. She added, ”You know, things are being eviscerated in space all the time. It’s part of what makes it fun.” Isler specializes in the subset of quasars that happen to have their jet streams of material pointed toward Earth. These are called blazars, or ”blazing quasars.” Telescopes built in the last decade, like NASA’s Fermi   Space Telescope, have spotted a few thousand blazars. But don’t panic. ”Thankfully, they are far enough away that they are not going to have any negative impact on us as human beings,” Isler says. One of the closest blazars is 2. 5 billion   away. ”But they do serve as really interesting laboratories to understand these really exotic systems,” she says. ”They are able to accelerate particles to 99. 99 percent of the speed of light,” Isler says. ”How does that happen? So, I’m interested in where along that jet do we get this acceleration, and what is the physical mechanism that is responsible for the acceleration of particles that we see?” By analyzing data from a large sample of blazars, she and her colleagues have found that some particles exhibit   acceleration closer to the black hole than expected, suggesting that differences in blazar jets occur because of an internal process, like turbulence, as opposed to a more consistent factor, like how quickly the blazars draw in material. If the scientists can figure out how these natural particle accelerators work, they may begin to understand the physical laws that guide these unusual black holes, and maybe a lot of other systems out there that are capable of pulling things in and flinging them out. ”That process happens at many different scales across the universe with many different systems,” Isler says. For example, when planets form, they pull nearby material into what are called protoplanetary disks. Sometimes, they shoot that material out in jets, too, though on a much smaller, weaker scale than blazars do. ”There may be some way that this process is universal in our cosmos,” she adds. Understanding supermassive, hyperactive black holes could be a first step in figuring that out."
"Several civil rights activists were arrested Tuesday night for staging a   at Sen. Jeff Sessions’ office in Mobile, Ala. to protest his nomination as U. S. attorney general. The   was staged by the NAACP and portions were broadcast live online. The NAACP has sharply criticized Sessions’ record on civil rights, voting rights and criminal justice reform. Six of the activists were apparently arrested, including NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks. The NAACP highlighted Sessions’ history with voting rights as a major factor in the protest. Brooks told The Associated Press that Sessions ”does not acknowledge the reality of voter suppression while mouthing faith in the myth of voter fraud.” He also noted that Sessions once prosecuted civil rights activists on charges of voter fraud. As NPR’s Nina Totenberg has reported, those charges were dismissed by a jury, and civil rights groups described the prosecution as attempted intimidation of black voters. The NAACP cited Sessions’ ”record of racially offensive remarks and behavior” as another reason the group objects to his nomination. As Nina explained in November, Sessions was nominated for a federal judgeship in the ’80s. He was rejected by a   Senate after he acknowledged having made racially insensitive remarks and calling several civil rights groups  —   including the NAACP  —   ” .” He later denied making some of the remarks, which ”seemed to add a credibility problem to his troubles,” Nina wrote. After making public statements objecting to Sessions’ nomination, the NAACP turned to civil disobedience. Brooks tweeted on Tuesday that the activists with him in Mobile were prepared to be arrested for their protest. The   began on Tuesday morning at Sessions’ office in Mobile, Ala. the AP reports: ”Demonstrators refused a request by the manager of the building  —   which includes several other tenants in addition to Sessions  —   to leave when the building closed for the day at 6 p. m. Police could be seen on video footage . .. handcuffing the six protesters and [escorting] them to a police van. ” ’We all are aware of the laws of trespass. We are engaging in a voluntary act of civil disobedience,’ Brooks told the officers who arrived at the scene.” AL. com reports that ”according to Mobile County jail records all six of the arrested members have been charged with   criminal trespassing.” The   was part of a statewide protest against Sessions, Kyle Gassiott of Troy Public Radio reports for NPR. ”Sessions has five offices in cities across the state, including Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile, and at each of the five locations members of the NAACP held press conferences protesting his nomination for attorney general,” Gassiott says. Sessions was in Washington, D. C. as the protests in Alabama were unfolding, the AP writes. A spokeswoman for Sessions said in a statement that ”false portrayals” of Sessions ”will fail as tired, recycled, hyperbolic charges that have been thoroughly rebuked and discredited,” the AP reports. Meanwhile, more than 1, 200 law school professors have signed a letter urging the Senate to reject Sessions’ nomination. ”Nothing in Senator Sessions’ public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the    attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge,” the professors write, citing his prosecution of civil rights activists and ”consistent promotion of the myth of   fraud,” among other things. ”All of us believe it is unacceptable for someone with Senator Sessions’ record to lead the Department of Justice,” they write. Sessions’ former chief counsel, who is black, told The Washington Post that the ”smear campaign” accusing Sessions of racial insensitivity needs to stop."
"Vocalist Xenia Rubinos ended 2016 with a bang: Her album Black Terry Cat was singled out in     lists by NPR Music, The New York Times and Rolling Stone. That kind of recognition is a major deal for an independent artist with a     artistic vision. Alt. Latino first recognized that vision back in 2012, when we featured a track from Rubinos’ first   EP, Magic Trix. After we first heard Black Terry Cat earlier this year, we rushed her and her band into our office for a mesmerizing Tiny Desk concert that only hints at the magic of her live show. That’s what we’re always trying to do at Alt. Latino: find and then support artists whose vision and imagination stops you in your tracks and opens up new worlds of sounds and ideas. So when Rubinos and her band passed through D. C. while on tour recently, we asked her to bring some music so we could discuss art, life and the joys of subtlety. It’s a spirited conversation, and we can’t wait for the next one."
"Imagine being able to collect the DNA of a human ancestor who’s been dead for tens of thousands of years from the dirt on the floor of a cave. Sounds fantastic, but scientists in Germany think they may be able to do just that. If they’re successful, it could open a new door into understanding the extinct relatives of humans. Most ancient DNA is extracted from bones or teeth. Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig says you don’t need very much of the bone less than a thousandth of an ounce will do. But there’s a problem. Anthropologists hate to give away any of their precious bones. ”We’ve been recently trying to explore new sources of ancient human DNA,” Meyer explains, ”as the fossil record is very limited.” He and his colleagues began to wonder if maybe they didn’t need an intact bone at all. Many of these interesting bones come from caves. What if, over the millennia, some of the bones had just degraded into a kind of dust, and fallen to the floor of the cave. It would be easy enough to get at that dust. ”You just take a shovel with some dirt, and then you look for DNA,” says Meyer. He says other scientists have recovered DNA from a variety of species from the floors of caves. Meyer now has some of this ancient human DNA from cave floors, and he’s been able to begin analyzing it. But there are problems to solve before he can make sense of the data. He’ll have to develop methods to be certain that the DNA came from an ancient human bone, and not a more recent human cave explorer or some contaminating bacteria. And the DNA they’ll get will be in tiny snippets. Piecing together the big picture will be tricky. Meyer says they’re making headway with those issues. Now, let’s say you can get lots of DNA that you know comes from an ancient human ancestor. What do you do with it? Plenty, says Janet Kelso, a colleague of Meyer’s at the Max Planck Institute. ”We’ve initiated a project just this year to try and generate sequences from a large number of Neanderthals, to try to understand something about the Neanderthal population histories,” Kelso says. Even though they’re gone now, Neanderthals were in Europe and western Asia for more than 300, 000 years, she says. During that time the climate in those areas changed dramatically. At times glaciers covered a large chunk of the landscape. If archaeologists can get DNA samples from Neanderthals at various time points in their history, Kelso says, ”we can see how were they adapting to the environment. How did they differ over time? Can we understand what happened to them in the end? That may not be something you can tell from the sequence, but it would be interesting to try.” Another question is just how often Neanderthals and modern humans had sex with one another. ”Was this something that was happening relatively regularly over some time?” she and other scientists wonder, as they try to piece together what was happening during each era. ”Was it something that was quite rare?” Kelso says most modern human populations have at least some genetic connection to Neanderthals. But there are many questions about when and where Neanderthals made their contributions to the modern human gene pool. It would be pretty amazing if the answers came from dirt on the floor of caves."
"The machinery inside Conner Bottling Works doesn’t sparkle like it used to. In fact, everything and everybody in here looks like they could use a break. ”We are the last   independent bottler in the state of New Hampshire,” says Dan Conner, part of the fifth generation to work here. ”A hundred and   years, from start to today. Never shut down, never stopped.” Launched in 1863, the first Conners bottled only beer, but in the 1890s, the company branched out into sodas. During Prohibition, harder drinks were made out back, while a friendly sheriff reportedly looked the other way. And then in 1938, the company laid out $2, 400 for the Dixie, a new bottling machine manufactured in Baltimore that has more than earned its keep. ”They put it in here brand new,” says Tom Howcroft, the only   working inside the factory. ”It’s been in this spot ever since, working just about every day.” Watching soda get made is more pleasant than watching, say, sausage. Howcroft lines up the gleaming glass bottles, with each one rattling along toward the spigots. He knows it’s a scene right out of a sitcom. ”Laverne  Shirley, the one that a lot of people bring up, with the conveyor belt,” says Howcroft. The gleaming bottles move down the line, first passing under the syruper that deposits two ounces of cane sugar and flavoring. Then, a stream of carbonated water, followed by the cap. ”Which happens with a big clang,” Howcroft says. The bottles then get a quick rinse from a tiny sprinkler. After they dry, they get a label, and finally, a taste test. ”It doesn’t taste anything like Coke, doesn’t taste anything like Pepsi,” says Howcroft. ”Like a traditional cola.” Traditions rolls deep here at Conner, and that’s thanks in part to the current owner, Tom Conner, who started working here ”when I was old enough to walk across the driveway from the house there. You didn’t have a choice back then.” Child labor rules have changed, and so have the economics of soda making. For starters, there’s not much local competition. ”At one time there were 60 bottlers in New Hampshire,” says Tom Conner. ”And we just happen to be the only ones left.” That ability to hang on has started paying off. The company’s line of sodas, sold under the name Squamscot Beverages, are now carried in more than 600 stores around the country. The Squamscott is a    river that runs through southeastern New Hampshire, as well as the name of the Native American tribe that settled in the region. Customers can choose from 27 different flavors, including root beer, cherry cola, fruit bowl and ginger ale. There are even some   options, much to Tom Conner’s chagrin. ”I don’t care for it. I know people like it. Some people have to drink it, and we make it. And let it go at that,” he says. During the holidays, the biggest demand is for Squamscot Beverages’ limited edition Mistletoe Mist, which is only available for about a month, unless it runs out sooner. It’s a family recipe Tom isn’t about to reveal. ”My parents used to take a mixture of different flavors, and they’d pour it into a punch bowl whenever they had holiday parties. And then we thought we’d just pour it into the bottle, cap it and call it something good,” he says. Mistletoe Mist is pinkish, citrusy and not really all that seasonal. But like a good punch, it goes well with whatever else is kicking around. ”Rum is good with it, vodka is good with it. But you can put anything you want in it,” he says. Everything in moderation, he cautions, though he ignores any concerns that too much soda is bad for your teeth. His smile reveals a mouth full of pearly whites, all his own. ”Well, most of them. You know, a couple broke off, had them fixed. But [my son] 40 years old, never had a cavity,” says Tom. ”So tell a dentist that.” After showing off his grin, his warehouse and the delivery truck, there’s one last item to see on the Conner family property. ”We can walk out back and see the solar system,” he says. Tom’s not talking about the celestial bodies that twinkle down upon his soda operation. Instead, it’s the 156 solar panels that power the entire factory. They’re big on tradition here at Conner Bottling, but are happy to update things if it makes financial sense. This story aired on New Hampshire Public Radio."
"An Israeli military court has convicted a soldier of manslaughter for shooting and killing a Palestinian assailant who was already incapacitated. The shooting happened in the occupied West Bank in March of 2016, and was captured on camera. The judges found that    Sgt. Elor Azaria acted in cold blood when he shot and killed Abdel Fattah   NPR’s Joanna Kakissis reports from Jerusalem: ”  had been shot and wounded after stabbing an Israeli soldier. Eleven minutes later, Azaria shot the motionless   in the head. ”A human rights activist filmed the killing. The video went viral. ”Many Israelis say Azaria was justified because he feared   might have been wearing an explosive belt. But Azaria’s superior officers say his actions contradict the army’s ethical standards.” On Wednesday, as three military judges announced that Azaria had been found guilty, hundreds of Azaria’s supporters outside the army base where the trial took place chanted ”God is with him,” Joanna reports. The case has been deeply polarizing in Israel, The Associated Press reports. It’s rare for an active member of the Israeli military to be charged with manslaughter. The AP reports: ”The verdict caps a   saga that has deeply divided the country. Defense officials have criticized Sgt. Elor Azaria’s conduct, while large segments of the Israeli public, along with members of the nationalist ruling coalition, have rallied behind him. ”In delivering her verdict, Col. Maya Heller systematically rejected all of Azaria’s defense arguments, saying ’the fact that the man on the ground was a terrorist does not justify a disproportionate response.’ ” Azaria is set to be sentenced on Jan. 15, according to the AP."
"”Dogs are better than human beings,” wrote Emily Dickinson, ”because they know but don’t tell.” That sentiment comes to mind when considering Emily Bitto’s debut novel, which showcases a dazzling, gabby and ultimately doomed collection of stray human beings. Assembled under one bohemian roof in 1930s Australia, most of these characters tell all to a fault. But one, an adolescent girl named Lily, sees all but keeps her mouth firmly shut  —   until she comes to narrate this book. Framed as a memoir drafted in 1985, when Lily has grown to maturity, The Strays invites readers into a world that is by turns disturbing and magical. The   art scene in   Melbourne burns white hot. Painters find themselves characterized as decadents in the newspapers and do their best to live up to the reputation. A canvas of riotous and erotic oils, the creative ferment comprises the narrative backdrop of The Strays. In the foreground is the story of two young girls who fall deeply in love and create an intensely private relationship amid the adult chaos that reigns around them. From the day they meet as    in grade school, narrator Lily adores Eva Trentham. The   exotic Eva lives with her parents Evan and Helena and two sisters in a grand heirloom of a house surrounded by rambling, sumptuous gardens. Lily assesses the sharp differences between the Trentham household and the boring, bourgeois,   suburbia where she has been raised by her utterly conventional mother and father Helena and Evan love their daughters, but that does not preclude them from partying nightly in front the kids. Helped along by generous doses of ”reefer,” as Bitto refers to marijuana throughout, the rolling revelry also features toothsome feasts, nudity, moonlit trysts and far too much wine. The     father of the clan takes a notion to defecate in the garden with everybody watching, which given the outrageous milieu is about par for the course. Lily is gobsmacked by the goings on. The adults are too feckless to shield their offspring, neglecting to send the young ones off to bed when it gets late. The girls themselves grab whatever stimulant they can get their hands on. Our narrator acclimates herself ”to being invisible, to being secretly in love with the people I lived with every day.” And the strays keep arriving, painters who move in with their slim suitcases, their brushes, oils and ”turps” (turpentine)  —   and their ambitions. Bankrolled by Helena’s inheritance, the Trentham property increasingly functions as a   arts commune. As a    Lily sees her future ”unfurling in the sunlight.” Taking up writing, secretly, as a voyeur, she finds herself ”learning the habit of attention, of noticing the world in all its ravishing detail and complexity.” The adolescent journals form her personal mode of   and eventually become the foundation for the ”memoir” that the grownup Lily presents in The Strays. ”Sometimes,” Lily tells us, ”I felt myself to be a dog under the table, scrounging after dropped morsels. I was sly and skulking like a dog has to be.” Word pictures which elevate the ordinary to exquisite appear throughout Bitto’s novel, appropriate to a book that focuses so much on the glory of art: ”The air there smelled of dry bush, gum leaves and wet clay, like the heavy blocks we used in pottery class, our teacher slicing them to pieces with a string tied between two clothes pegs.” It’s all too wonderful to last, of course. Eva, who prides herself as a young teen on a   dive from a cliff into the local quarry, suddenly grows up, engages in truly bad behavior, and distances herself from her crestfallen buddy Lily. They had shared a bed, with limbs entangled, ”an intimate, entwined existence.” With precise and graceful turns of phrase, Bitto reveals the bond of passion between the two girls, which seems unbreakable but inevitably snaps under all that can’t be said. And she delivers all of this with a grace and eloquence which rival that of the young friends’ bond. Jean Zimmerman’s latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin."
"There are more than 80, 000 educational apps in Apple’s app store. It seems like a great way to encourage brain development and make your little one the smartest baby genius. But just sticking a tablet in your kid’s hands might not be as helpful. Sure, use the app. But it’s not a babysitter  —   you’ve got to help them use it, too. Several recent studies have looked at how young children learn from touchscreens. One study, published in Child Development, compared how   and    learned to build a   puzzle. Some children learned how to assemble the puzzle from a ”ghost demonstration”  —   meaning that, initially, the pieces moved by themselves on the tablet to show how it works. A lot of apps that are intended for young children often have some element of this ghost demonstration: Pieces move on their own or objects will move them. Other children had a person sitting next to them to move the puzzle pieces on the tablet. After they watched the demonstration, both groups of children were asked to complete the task on either a touchscreen tablet or a real puzzle that looked identical to the one they saw. The   and    who saw the ghost demonstration had a hard time replicating the task  —   but did well after they saw the human hand. Researchers concluded that having a human guide  —   often referred to as having social scaffolding  —   helped these young children learn. ”Simply having someone show them how to put that puzzle together, rather than the app showing it to them, allowed them to put that puzzle together themselves” explains Rachel Barr, a professor at Georgetown and one of the authors of the study. ”But taking away that person  —   taking away that scaffold  —   made their performance just look like they had never even seen it before.” Previous research from Barr found that the presence of a parent  —   more social scaffolding  —   increased a child’s ability to transfer knowledge from the tablet to a real object. I spoke with Barr and Laura Zimmermann, the study’s lead author who is now at the University of Delaware, about the takeaways for parents, teachers and app developers. Should we be surprised that   and    learn better from a real person than from a screen?  Rachel Barr: Learning from apps and connecting it to the real world is challenging for a really young child. When we watch children play with touchscreens, it seems so intuitive to them. It’s very easy for us to forget that they are just like any other tool. And just like any other tool, children are going to need to learn how to learn from them. The ease with which we use technology makes us forget that this is really a fairly complex tool. If we think about how many hours each of us as adults spend with technology each day, and if you just add that up over at least 10 years, this is thousands of hours that we spent learning how to use this technology. These babies are only 2 years old, so their amount of experience using the tools is relatively limited. The fact that they don’t just learn everything like magic from these tools means that they require someone to help them with this experience. Is this a plea to have adults interact with the apps their kids are using? Laura Zimmermann: In an ideal world, we would love for there to be joint media engagement. So: Having a scenario in which a parent or a teacher or a sibling or peer is   with the child, interacting, teaching and showing new things to each other. This is an optimal way to promote learning and that should not be downplayed at all. Typically, having another person present during these interactions with touch screens or while viewing television is really beneficial. The parent or teacher can take into consideration what their child knows and build on that  —   something that’s too complex for an app to be able to do. So rather than children interacting with a touch screen on their own, parents can provide support, to then boost their learning or help them transfer what they learned to the real world. They could also connect that information to something else that they have in their home. Barr: With   [it’s] giving the child a little bit of support. That can really help them to process. It’s no different than other learning situations. Technology seems to be able to do everything. But for a very young child, it’s just a tool just like any other. And they need to learn how to do it and the best person to help them may be a parent or older siblings. Can you give me a concrete example? What would this look like?  Barr: Let’s say there’s a show or an app game about a cat and you have a cat living in your house. When that image of the cat is on the screen, the parent can simply say, ”Oh that’s a cat just like ours.” So it’s not sort of   and guiding every single piece of the experience, but it’s providing that information at the key point. ”Here’s the cat. It’s like the cat in our real world.” Or, if they’re playing a game putting together pieces of a puzzle on an app, then afterward, the parent can say, ”Oh let’s get out a real puzzle and switch that out.” Or if they’re building a block tower on an app program, building it with them. And now, ”Let’s build some real blocks.” So it’s just really helping them make those connections that seem obvious to us, but really are more difficult for young children. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot, but the trick is to think about apps and the television more like you think about picture books.  That’s the ideal world. But that doesn’t always happen. Barr: Right. We want to be realistic. Zimmermann: There is going to be interaction without humans. That’s just the nature of our world. Kids are spending time using touchscreens. And if we want to promote the best possible learning, then we have to think about ways that we can provide this social scaffolding in some other form. That’s the way I approach it. I definitely agree that having a parent show a child something would be the gold standard. Very early in life, infants are capable of imitating different facial expressions or sounds, just by observing their parents. This isn’t a new idea, right?  Zimmermann: We know, from decades of work looking at social learning, that kids learn best from a human. Compared to a touch screen, compared to video. There’s real importance in terms of the social scaffolding. Barr: Exactly. It’s the same with books. There’s been a number of studies where we find the same thing. Parental support around   is highly beneficial for later literacy. Around television: Some support around the content, helping them bridge that gap between the 2D world and the 3D world is really helpful. And now these latest findings suggesting the same thing is happening with apps. So, if there’s not a human around, are there things that app developers can incorporate into tablet games to help replace or mimic the social scaffolding?  Zimmermann: App developers could provide information in the app that teaches children or gives them feedback if they’re right or wrong to help improve their learning. Maybe a special sound or other haptic feedback  —   which is a form of touch information, such as vibration. This addition is something that would allow kids to learn, ”Oh I’m doing something right, or I’m doing something wrong,” to help them achieve some type of goal. In our study we did not provide this feedback in the app. We also know from previous work that different factors like repetition can help facilitate learning and encoding of information. So building in things like repetition can be useful for young children. Barr: The really nice thing about technology is that it will repeat. So we know that if babies are able to see the same show again, or the same task, this does help them learn. Zimmermann: There could also be adaptive play  —   things like leveling and scaling. It may be the case that with the       in our study, this puzzle was pretty complex for them. So maybe we should have started with a   puzzle. And depending on either the age of the kids or their previous performance, the app could present information accordingly. So as the kid succeeds on a   puzzle, the app could move on to a   puzzle. The task could get increasingly more complex based on the kid’s individual performance. I also want to be clear that this leveling is not something we manipulated in this particular study, but it’s something that I think future work should look at. When making educational apps, we need to be careful, to go back to the basics. It should be the starting point for developers to ask: ”What do we know about learning and early childhood?” and then use that information to design new technologies. All this is not to say that there aren’t exceptional educational apps out there, but there’s a lot for parents and teachers to sift through. How could this apply to the classroom? Laura Zimmermann: Early educators often require children to transfer knowledge from a task that they learned in one context to another. One example of transfer learning is a teacher showing their students something online or in a video, and then asking them to do an activity in real life or with some   test. Another example, in a preschool or an early elementary school classroom, is children learning basic addition and subtraction with blocks from their teacher. Then later, being asked to transfer their learning to a math activity on a touchscreen for a   assessment. Touchscreen assessments can be very useful tools, but it may be important to consider how their children learn a new skill  —   on a touchscreen or with concrete toys  —   as it may influence how they demonstrate what they have learned. "
"To what lengths would you go to stifle the thunderous snorts and   growls of a spouse or roommate, just so you can get a good night’s sleep? Dozens of   devices crowd the market, ranging from slightly absurd to moderately torturous. ”Some of them are more medieval than others,” says Dr. Kim Hutchison, associate professor of sleep medicine in the department of neurology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore. And some of the devices, she says, even have some basis in fact. ”When you sleep, the back of your throat relaxes. That narrows your airway and, as you’re breathing in, it causes it to vibrate,” explains Hutchison. So, many   products are aimed at opening up that airway, or the tunnels that lead to it. For example, you can buy hollow nose plugs that, instead of closing the nostrils, prop them open. ”If you have a deviated septum or something like that, those could help open up your nose and decrease snoring,” says Hutchison, but they won’t help everyone because ”most snoring appears in the back of your throat.” Other devices are designed to force sleepers to turn on their sides. ”Sleeping on your back makes your tongue block your airway a little, sort of like the skinny part of a balloon, when you let air out of it,” Hutchison says. So some devices combine straps and pillows that make sleeping on your back uncomfortable  —   or poke you if you roll over. There are also chin straps aimed at repositioning your jaw in a way that opens the airway. They might work for some, says Dr. Richard Schwab, director the Pennsylvania Sleep Center. But one chinstrap on the market covers the wearer’s entire mouth. ”A terrible idea!” says Schwab. ”You should never cover your mouth  —   you could choke.” Devices that gently poke and prod might help some snorers, says Hutchison. Eventually, some people do stop sleeping on their backs, to avoid being jabbed to consciousness. If that’s not annoying enough, there are more insistent devices: wristbands that send a little electric shock every time you snore. That seems drastic. But maybe not, if love is on the line. ”Snoring can create a lot of stress in a relationship,” Schwab points out. ”It’s an intermittent noise, so you can’t just get over it. People lose so much sleep, they can’t sleep in the same beds.” And snoring that routinely disturbs your partner could be a sign you should see a doctor, says Schwab. You might have sleep apnea, a disorder characterized by loud snoring and interrupted breathing. People with untreated apnea are at greater risk for high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. A lot of apnea cases go undiagnosed, Schwab says. Consider prodding your snoring partner to see a doctor  —   even before trying some of the   remedies. ”If you treat the snoring and not the sleep apnea, you might never get evaluated,” says Schwab. And that’s important, because sleep apnea is treatable. Sleepers can wear masks linked to CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines, which are very effective at keeping airways open and stopping the problem, he says. Sleep apnea can prevent the snorer from getting deep sleep many people say they feel more awake after using the machines. The whir of the machine can take getting used to at first, Schwab says, but it’s much quieter than snoring, so roommates usually love them. The bonus for the snorer: It doesn’t shock you awake. And it actually works."
"Even though most of the protesters fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota have left, hundreds still remain here atop what is essentially a sheet of ice. One group of campers say there’s a change taking hold at camp, which was once overrun by thousands who felt a sense of excitement about the gathering. Byron Shorty, who lives on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, says now that the Army Corps of Engineers is temporarily halting pipeline construction, the protest camp is calm. ”I want to be here to reflect, and I want to be here to help clean up our abandoned campsites that I still see,” he says. ”And we’re in the process of cleaning those up and repurposing the things that people left behind.” Others, like Jacob Chamberlain, who came here from Scotland, are doing daily chores like chopping firewood. ”It’s not about taking selfies and saying that you were out here anymore. At this point, it’s about being hearty, surviving in the cold,” Chamberlain says. Earlier this month, the Army Corps said it would conduct a lengthy environmental review of this project, even as a fossil   administration is coming to Washington. Standing Rock council member Chad Harrison attended a recent meeting between tribes and the Trump transition team and was pleased that could even happen. ”My hope is that that’s an indicator of how serious he’ll be when it comes to Native American issues,” he says. But Doug Burgum, North Dakota’s new governor, is urging   Donald Trump to approve the project. He’s doing that even as he recently met with Standing Rock leaders in an effort to rebuild frayed relationships. A community divided, Demonstrations have caused gridlock, disrupted businesses and severely stretched police resources. ”It really kind of makes me sad when I see the picture that is being painted across the nation, this narrative that it’s this bad cop thing happening. And that’s not here in North Dakota. Not at all.” says Shelle Aberle of Bismarck, N. D. who runs a Facebook page supporting law enforcement. ”Our law enforcement are there to protect both sides.” Other residents back the pipeline opponents. The Unitarian Universalist congregation has supplied food to camp and shelter. In this protest, both sides often seemed to speak right past each other. Minister Karen Van Fossan says that should be changing. ”We aren’t often talking about the things that are on our minds, and now we really are,” Van Fossan says. Kay LaCoe hopes that’s true. The Bismarck resident recently called on residents to support businesses targeted by protesters. But soon after, hateful messages flooded her Facebook. She even received death threats and just wants a final decision on the pipeline to end all this tension. ”Whatever the government and the tribe and the energy companies decide to do with that pipeline, I’m good with it. Just give me my hometown back,” she says. But the legal battle over the pipeline will likely continue to play out in 2017 as North Dakotans grapple both with the protesters and the fallout from their continued presence. Amy Sisk reports for Prairie Public Broadcasting and for Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focused on America’s energy issues. "
"  Donald Trump has selected former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to be director of national intelligence, according to a statement from   Donald Trump’s transition team. In choosing Coats, he is getting a veteran Washington establishment figure  —   a senator, former lobbyist and ambassador to Germany  —   with a rare distinction: being banned from Russia. Coats’ views on Russia after its annexation of Crimea, and his calls for stronger sanctions as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, landed him and other senators on Russia’s banned list. It’s a major difference with the   who has praised Putin and cast doubt on U. S. intelligence conclusions that the Russian government, sought to help   Donald Trump’s election chances. Coats even mocked Russia with a David   top 10 list on Twitter in 2014: Coats served as senator from 1989 to 1999 and again from 2011 to this year. (He did not seek   in November.) In between Senate stints, Coats served as U. S. ambassador to Germany during the George W. Bush administration and worked as a lobbyist. He was also asked by Bush to help his unsuccessful attempt to win Senate confirmation of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Coats has been an outspoken critic of the Russian leader. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Coats wrote President Obama after Russia annexed Crimea in 2013, urging Obama to impose sanctions against a Russian weapons exporter. The senators argued the sanctions ”would send a powerful message to Putin,” whose foreign policy, they went on, has become ”increasingly belligerent.” Coats also sponsored an amendment to a Ukrainian aid bill in the Senate that would prohibit the U. S. government from doing any business with the exporter, a company called Rosoboronexport. Such actions, Coats said, ”would require our foreign partners to make a choice between America and Putin.” In 2014, Coats also called on organizers of soccer’s World Cup to move the tournament, scheduled for Russia in 2018, somewhere else. All of which won Coats the honor of being banned from Russia, along with five other lawmakers, including Armed Services Chairman and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and three Obama administration staff members."
"Updated at 2:15 p. m. ET, Intelligence agency leaders repeated their determination Thursday that only ”the senior most officials” in Russia could have authorized recent hacks into Democratic National Committee and Clinton officials’ emails during the presidential election. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper affirmed an Oct. 7 joint statement from 17 intelligence agencies that the Russian government directed the election interference  —   and went further. ”We stand more resolutely on that statement,” Clapper said during a Senate Armed Services hearing with the intelligence chiefs into the politically charged issue. Clapper noted that the intelligence officials would not dive into many more details at this hearing, deferring to a broader, unclassified report on the election interference to be released next week. Committee Chairman John McCain,  . said there is no national security interest ”more vital to the U. S. than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference,” and that ”every American should be alarmed by Russia’s attacks on our nation.” ”We will ascribe” a motive for the Russian cyberattack in the upcoming report, Clapper said. He wouldn’t say Thursday what it is, but it has been widely reported that the intelligence agencies agree that Russia was trying to get Donald Trump elected. Clapper also said he will ”push the envelope” to make much of that report unclassified without jeopardizing sources or   details. ”The public should know as much about this as possible,” Clapper said. In addition to Clapper, testifying before the committee were Defense Undersecretary Marcel Lettre and Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of the U. S. Cyber Command of the National Security Agency. All three will be leaving their positions at the end of the Obama administration. One of the first questions from McCain was about the involvement of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks published emails  —   from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta  —   that the intelligence community says were hacked by the Russians. Assange has denied the Russian government gave WikiLeaks the emails. McCain asked Clapper if Assange had any credibility. ”Not in my view,” Clapper said, adding that Assange ”has put people at risk” with revelations about U. S. intelligence gathering. ”I don’t think those of us in the intelligence community have a whole lot of respect for him,” Clapper said.   Trump, however, has openly questioned whether Russia was involved in the hacking, pointed to errors the intelligence community made over the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and has appeared to back Assange in tweets. Clapper also said there is a difference ”between skepticism and disparagement” of the intelligence community. Trump has taken to Twitter, referring to ”Intelligence” and its officials in quotations. Clapper also testified that there is no evidence the Russian hacking changed vote tallies ”or anything of that sort.” He did say, however, there is no way of gauging the impact of Russia’s actions ”on choices the electorate made.” McCain asked Clapper if the Russian   constituted ”an act of war.” Clapper responded that constitutes ”a very heavy policy call,” which, he said, ”I don’t think the intelligence communities should make.” But he did say what was done carried ”great gravity.” Clapper added that Russia deployed more than just cyberattacks in its effort to disrupt the election, calling it a multifaceted campaign. ”The hacking was only one part of it,” he said. ”It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news,” which he said was still going on. There was a fair amount of talk about rocks and glass houses, with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina calling the Obama administration’s response to the hacking, a set of limited economic sanctions, just ”a pebble.” ”When it comes to interfering with our election,” Graham said, ”we better be ready to throw rocks.” Sen. Thom Tillis,  . C. noted the U. S. has also attempted to interfere in other nations’ elections. ”We live in a big glass house,” Tillis said, ”and there are a lot of rocks to throw.”"
"The Republican Party has embraced   Donald Trump’s positions on immigration, trade, the deficit and conflicts of interest, but when it comes to Russia, Trump and his party are not even close to being on the same page. Trump has repeatedly and consistently expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin and has refused to accept intelligence community findings that Russia hacked Democratic Party emails during the campaign. That puts him at odds with almost every other Republican in Washington, D. C. On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told CNN he is mystified by Trump’s feelings toward Russia. ”What bothers me is that   Trump seems to get the Chinese for what they are the Iranian agreement is bad, he understands that he understands the threat we face from ISIL and he understands we can’t let the North Koreans build a ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] to attack our homeland,” Graham said. ”When it comes to Russia, he seems to have a blind spot. And I’m completely perplexed, because the Russians are undermining democracy throughout the entire world they’re taking land owned by others by force they did hack into our political system they’re doing it to other political systems, and they need to pay a price.” Vice   Mike Pence seemed to reinforce Trump’s effort to undermine confidence in the intelligence community. During a press briefing with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday, Pence referenced Trump’s upcoming briefing with the intelligence community. ”We’ll be looking at the facts and the information,” Pence said. ”But I think, given some of the intelligence failures of recent years, the   has made it clear to the American people that he’s skeptical about conclusions from the bureaucracy, and I think the American people hear him loud and clear.” But Trump has gone beyond skepticism. He has sided openly with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, a fugitive from justice and someone most Republicans consider an enemy of the state. Ryan, the highest ranking Republican on Capitol Hill, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he didn’t share Trump’s approval of Assange. ”I think the guy is a sycophant for Russia,” Ryan said. ”He leaks he steals data and compromises national security.” According to Molly McKew  —   an expert on information warfare and a   consultant who has advised the governments of Georgia and Moldova  —   the   community can’t quite figure out Trump’s unwavering devotion to the Russian line. But theories abound. ”I think the discussion in the region and intelligence services that deal with Russia,” McKew said, ”is that his behavior looks like someone who may be compromised or may be concerned about something and nobody knows what that is  —   if it’s financial ties or financial leverage, if it’s something more than that. I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of different things. I think there probably are   relationships with Russians and Russian oligarchs that we don’t understand, that we don’t see.” Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, a Trump supporter and a harsh critic of Putin, argues, though, that people should give Donald Trump a chance. ”I don’t think the rubber has met the road on this yet,” said Bolton, who is reportedly under consideration for a job in Trump’s State Department. ”It’s one thing to exchange niceties and compliments before a president actually takes office. It’s another when you confront concrete Russian behavior. That’s the real test.” Bolton said the   will draw his conclusions once he receives his full briefing by the intelligence community Friday. What those conclusions will be will send an important signal to Republicans on Capitol Hill, and to the Russians, who, McKew said, are also unsure about the new disruptive  . ”I think they’re as nervous about Trump as the rest of us,” she said. ”And I think that’s potentially a very big opportunity for Trump if he chooses to use it. I don’t know what happened in the election. I don’t know what his relationship with Russian financial interests or others are. None of us know any of that. What we do know is he will be the American president very soon. And if he wants to operate as a man defending our country’s interests, he needs to have a smart, aggressive Russia policy that limits what Russia is doing to us and exposes what that is.” That’s why the Friday private briefing for Trump is so important. His reaction to what he hears will be the first clue about whether the new president wants to stand up to Putin when he works against the interests of the United States."
"For a revolutionary, Deepali Vishwakarma is more quiet and reflective than you might expect. She’s in her 30s, small, with a round face that holds intense brown eyes and a shy grin. Vishwakarma is a lay counselor in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India  —   a   community member who goes out daily to fight what novelist William Styron once called a ”howling tempest in the brain.” She’s part of an effort by the Indian nonprofit group Sangath to provide mental health treatment to poor people in India and to show that people with much less training than a psychiatrist or psychologist can deliver effective care. Vishwakarma had 40 hours of training for her role as a counselor. So her counseling is definitely revolutionary. And some mental health observers wonder if it might work in the U. S. But it’s a controversial approach. Critics say the use of lay counselors means that patients receive substandard care. Tell that to Vishwakarma. In a typical week, she may meet with 25 people, and in her several years as a counselor, patients who’ve stuck with her, as most have, have done well. The patients have been diagnosed with serious depression (or stress or tension, as it’s more often called in India) or alcoholism, and every so often, someone with schizophrenia. She’s been trained to listen and to assign specific tasks to her patients. She might tell someone who’s feeling really low to go for a daily walk, or go out and play soccer, or work in the garden or listen to the radio. For depression, it means thinking about anything other than that paralyzing howling tempest. For schizophrenia, it means helping people, many of whom are on medication, adjust to living in society. Vishwakarma’s biggest challenge is educating her patients. Worldwide, most people with depression don’t seek help, and Deepali’s patients are no different. ”The people don’t know they have depression because they don’t understand what depression is,” she says. ”They come in seeking help for not sleeping, not eating. We tell them no, when we cure your mental issues the symptoms go away. Then they accept treatment.” To run this program, Sangath  —   that’s a Konkani word that means support or partnership  —   gets funding from the Wellcome Trust and other donors, And it’s not the only health care group trying this experiment. Several other countries, including Ethiopia, Nepal, South Africa and Uganda, are working on the lay counselor approach as well. Thirty or 40 years ago, the U. S. was, too. Lay counselors were going to be the next big thing for depression treatment. There were lots of pilot programs, and medical journals carried the results of research trials. Most of the old research showed that lay counselors were just as effective for depression as counselors with lots more education  —   sometimes even more effective. A 1979 review paper in Psychological Bulletin analyzed 42 papers and concluded   paraprofessionals got results ”equal to or significantly better than those obtained by professionals.” In a 1985 rebuttal in the same journal, the best the opponents could come up with was that professionals did just as well, but not better. In India, the establishment of lay counselors was pioneered by psychiatrist Vikram Patel and colleagues at Sangath. The idea sprang from something Patel saw in Zimbabwe, where he worked as a psychiatrist in the  . Community members were being trained to give care to people with AIDS. Patel figured that maybe the same approach could be used for people with mental illness. Years into the project, someone at Sangath came across the U. S. research and told Patel about it. ”It completely blew my mind,” says Patel. ”There was an entire research enterprise.” At first, Patel and his colleagues thought they were starting from scratch. They ran focus groups to gauge community acceptance and conducted small trials and then larger trials comparing lay counselors to ”enhanced traditional care”  —   basically, diagnosis by a doctor or health worker at a primary health center, medication if necessary, and sympathy from the staff, but not ongoing counseling. ”I was very happy to get the first set of results,” Patel says. And the results got better and better. The medical journal Lancet has just published  two large studies that confirm earlier research showing that lay counseling works and is  . Lay counselors get paid on par with staff workers at charitable institutions  —   a little lower than they might get in private industry. Psychiatrists or psychologists periodically review the charts the counselors are taught to fill out, and check in on the patients. Patel recalls being criticized at international meetings for advocating for substandard care. His standard reply: ”We need to wake up.” Lay counselors are effective, he says, and they address the lack of mental health workers that is so common in poor parts of the world. But Derek Summerfield, a psychiatrist with the National Health Service who has published papers on violence and mental health, says that the symptoms displayed by the patients  —   like anxiety and unhappiness  —   are the result of poverty and cultural differences, not depression. In a debate with Patel at McGill University, he said ”these are people who are struggling to find lunch for their children.” Patel’s response is that poor people can get depression just as rich people do, and they’re just as deserving of attention. Lay counseling could not work, says Patel, without people like Vishwakarma. The lay counselors come from the same community as their patients. They speak the same dialect, and they identify with their patients. The counselors start with at least a 10th grade education. Vishwakarma had been an ASHA, an accredited social worker. But she says she didn’t know anything about depression or schizophrenia before going to intensive   training. Today, Patel says, the challenges are figuring out how to scale up the program, which is currently funded by the Wellcome Trust and other donors, and how to make sure that a   program will produce adequately trained counselors. ”We’re no longer asking can we use community workers, we’re asking how do we deploy them,” says Patel. Right now community counselors are available in two states in India, and more are likely to come online soon. The Indian Parliament is considering a plan that promises mental health care for all, using primary health clinics  —   and lay counselors. That’s not the case in the U. S. What happened after that flurry of papers, says Patel, was that ”suddenly the trail goes dry, and from the 1970s onward the literature dries up.” Patel’s suspicion is that the professional community was threatened by the use of paraprofessionals with comparatively light training. He’s been careful in his work in India to avoid competing with psychiatrists and psychologists. Instead they do the initial diagnosis and help with the training program. The medical officer at Vishwakarma’s clinic says he very much appreciates the support of the lay counselors. ”Before, we couldn’t treat these patients,” says Dr. Wilfred Mirand. ”After the patients were successfully treated I became confident.” The approach has American proponents such as Alan Kazdin, former head of the American Psychological Association. ”Seventy percent of the people in this country who need psychiatric services receive nothing,” he says. That number comes from several studies, including two published in the Annual Review of Public Health and JAMA Internal Medicine. ”The truth is that today, we are not treating everyone in need, and we cannot do so if we insist on    therapy, at a clinic, with a mental health professional.” Kazdin is an expert on parenting but has been interested in lay counselors as a way of expanding access to care for years. So why no change? ”There’s no incentive,” says Kazdin. ”The individuals who suffer from mental illness are not the best lobbyists, and there’s no industry behind this.” Terry Wilson, a psychology professor at Rutgers University, says it’s always challenging to introduce a culture shift. ”The problem is professionals here are concerned or worried that lay counselors are not going to be able to provide the expert level of care that they’d want.” But he thinks lay counselors could catch on here. ”Change takes time,” he cautions. Meanwhile, Vishwakarma soldiers on. Recently she took me to visit one of her patients, a woman who wasn’t sleeping or eating well. The woman had suddenly felt a sense of loss that she thought would somehow kill her. Vishwakarma gave her homework. Every day pick a number from one to 10 that indicates her mood and write that number down. Read her ”smile cards”  —   yellow cards with positive sayings. Take time to sing and listen to music. Sometimes her patient picks devotional songs sometimes she opts for Bollywood tunes. Without Vishwakarma, the woman says, ”I would have only worsened.” The patient is still worried about finding money for school fees for her three young children. But she has found ways to cope with her worries. To show me, she takes out her cellphone and plays a devotional song. With her    daughter at her side, she looks at Vishwakarma, hums along softly with the tune and smiles. Reporting for this story was supported by The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting."
"  Donald Trump sat for a deposition on Thursday in a civil lawsuit related to his hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington, D. C. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed to NPR via email. Even as Trump prepares to assume the presidency, he continues to have entanglements related to his   business dealings. A source close to the case confirms the videotaped deposition took place at Trump Tower in New York and lasted 90 minutes. The $10 million civil lawsuit, for breach of contract, was filed by Trump’s lawyers in August 2015 against celebrity chef José Andrés’ restaurant group, Think Food Group. Andrés pulled out of a plan to open an upscale restaurant at the hotel after   Trump disparaged Mexican immigrants. Think Food Group also countersued for $8 million. In countersuing, the restaurant group argued that Trump’s comments were hurting business: ”The perception that Mr. Trump’s statements were   made it very difficult to recruit appropriate staff for a Hispanic restaurant, to attract the requisite number of Hispanic food patrons for a profitable enterprise, and to raise capital for what was now an extraordinarily risky Spanish restaurant.” Trump’s lawyers had tried to avoid the deposition, arguing the   was ”extremely busy handling matters of very significant public importance.” But last week the judge in the case ordered Trump to sit for the deposition before the end of this week. While the civil case has dragged on for months, as recently as Thursday morning Andrés tweeted an offer to Trump for a way to settle the dispute. A number of lawsuits involving Trump and his businesses remain outstanding and are unlikely to be resolved before he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. That could mean having a president in office who is subject to ongoing litigation, a potential major distraction for the leader of the free world. There is a pretrial hearing scheduled for May 17 in a case against another celebrity chef, Geoffrey Zakarian, who pulled out of a restaurant project in the Old Post Office as well. Andrés endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton during the campaign and called on Trump to apologize to Mexicans and every ”person he has insulted.” Zakarian told the Village Voice in November that he nixed the project ”because my buddy Donald, he f***** up. He opened his f****** mouth.” NPR’s Peter Overby wrote in more detail about both cases late last year. Despite Trump’s boasts that he does not settle lawsuits, he has settled several, including a   fraud case against Trump University for $25 million. There’s also a question as to whether Trump can hold the lease on the Old Post Office building once he becomes president. He doesn’t own the building but is leasing it from the federal government. The agreement contains a clause that could prove problematic for Trump: ”No member or delegate to Congress, or elected official of the Government of the United States or the Government of the District of Columbia, shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”"
"  Donald Trump has suggested he may give his daughter and    some roles in his new administration, but a 1967   law makes doing so a lot more complicated. The law bars presidents from hiring relatives to Cabinet or agency jobs, although a federal judge has ruled that it doesn’t apply to White House staff jobs. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have played key roles in Trump’s campaign and his transition team and reportedly are preparing to move to a house in the Kalorama section of Washington, D. C. Either or both of them are also said to be considering some sort of White House job, perhaps in an informal or unpaid role. The   law was passed by Congress in response to President John F. Kennedy’s decision to appoint his brother Robert as attorney general, says Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. ”It was very controversial at the time. Lyndon Johnson in particular did not like that, and when he became president he helped shepherd this   law through the U. S. Congress,” West says. Not many presidents have sought to hire relatives since then, so the law hasn’t often been tested. But when President Bill Clinton appointed his wife, first lady Hillary Clinton, to head his health care task force, the move was challenged in court. A federal judge ruled that the law didn’t apply to White House staff jobs, making the appointment legal. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment from NPR, but spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway cited that ruling when she was asked whether Trump would hire his children during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last month. ”The   law apparently has an exception if you want to work in the West Wing, because the president is able to appoint his own staff,” Conway said. ”The president does have discretion to choose a staff of his liking.” But just because it might be legal for Trump to hire his own children doesn’t mean it’s good politics, West says. West warned that it could spark a public backlash, much as Kennedy’s appointment of his brother did. ”People might accept the fact that it was legal, but they would not necessarily view it as ethical or wise,” West says. Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, notes that the   statute was one of a series of laws passed in the 1960s and ’70s, at a time of growing mistrust of the presidency. ”We shouldn’t forget why we have these [laws]. It was to try to purify the presidency to a certain respect, or to create more accountability in the people that they appoint,” he says. Americans need to know that presidents are not listening to people just because they’re related to them but because they’re the best people they can find, Zelizer says. Moreover, it can be hard for other staff members to say no to a president’s relatives, Zelizer says. ”And so you create an environment where people might be less willing to take on and challenge someone because they’re related to the president,” he says. Hiring the Trump children would also be complicated because they have played big roles in the Trump family businesses, he adds. ”If you load up the White House with family members, all of whom are working for this business, that problem will certainly not look good to many Americans. And the politics are as important as the law in this issue. How things look, how things appear matter very much,” Zelizer says. For Ivanka Trump and her husband, taking jobs in the White House would also come at some financial cost. Unlike Trump himself, they would almost certainly be subject to federal    laws, which would bar them from participating in decisions that would affect their financial interests. That could force them to divest themselves of some of their assets."
"Just before dawn Thursday, at Tokyo’s historic Tsukiji market, a familiar face walked away with the biggest fish in town. Kiyoshi Kimura won the first auction of the year at the market, just as he has for six years running. And to the winner go the spoils: a   Pacific bluefin tuna, which ultimately cost Kimura 74. 2 million yen  —   or about $632, 000. That comes out to more than $1, 300 a pound for Kimura, whose Kimura Corp. owns a restaurant chain called Sushi Zanmai. Still, it’s not the record for the seafood market’s annual first bluefin auction. That distinction also belongs to Kimura, who in 2013 bid a staggering 155. 4 million yen  —   which at that time came out to $1. 76 million. Every year, worldwide media hype attends the year’s opening auction at Tsukiji, which ”handled more than $4 billion in fish and produce in 2014” alone, according to The Wall Street Journal. NBC reports that it is the world’s biggest fish market. But conservation groups protest that attention should be paid to a different, and much darker, reality confronting Pacific bluefin tuna: the species’ dwindling population. ”People should be thinking about that when they see news about the auction,” Jamie Gibbon, officer for global tuna conservation at the Pew Charitable Trusts, tells the Guardian. In July, Pew called for a   moratorium on commercial fishing of Pacific bluefin tuna, citing a more than 97 percent drop in population from historic levels. The month before, about a dozen environmental groups petitioned the U. S. National Marine Fisheries Service to list the species as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Conservationists argue part of the problem is that when fisheries catch Pacific bluefin tuna, they’re mostly catching juveniles who have not yet reached the age of reproduction. That practice has always been around, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, but ”more fisheries specifically targeting juveniles started in the 1990s, increasing pressure on the juvenile population.” And even if the species gets an endangered listing in the U. S. as conservationists would wish, it’s not likely to make much of an impact on the species’ population worldwide. That’s because American fishermen don’t comprise a large portion of Pacific bluefin fishing worldwide, as Alistair Bland reported for NPR: ”Of the 37 million pounds of Pacific bluefin caught by fishermen in 2014, American fishermen caught just 2 percent, according to data provided by Michael Milstein, a public affairs officer with NOAA Fisheries. (Japan took about half and Mexico almost 30 percent. )” The Guardian estimates that Japan consumes 80 percent of the global bluefin catch. For now, the only major change looming for the Tokyo market’s annual New Year auction is its location: The city had planned to move the historic market to a new location to make way for a highway planned for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics  —   but the market was granted a reprieve when concerns were raised about soil contamination at the new site, which used to be home to a gas plant. The Tokyo government expects to have a clearer idea on the safety of the new site this year."
"Last year, NPR’s Ari Shapiro visited Toledo, Ohio, to talk to refugees settling there from Syria’s civil war. Recently, he returned to Toledo to check in on the community. Mohammed Al Refaai is a    butcher who fled Syria. He lives in Toledo, Ohio, with three other guys, who are also in their 20s, who decided they wouldn’t mind having a refugee for a roommate. In the year and a half since he moved in, he has learned English from the Americans including the lyrics to some Top 40 hits. In return, he taught them some of his favorite Arabic pop tunes. They generally avoid talking about more difficult things. But his roommates  —   Doug Walton, Andrew Trumbull and Johnny Zellers  —   made an exception during our recent visit to Toledo. While Refaai was at work, they talked about politics and whether he will ever be reunited with his family. ”Moh,” as they call him, won’t really talk about these things, Walton says. ”This is by far the most depth we’ve ever gone into it, and if Moh was here, we probably wouldn’t, because he doesn’t like the topic,” Walton says. Refaai’s story is atypical. He was the only one of his family allowed into the United States as a refugee. His siblings and parents are still in Jordan, waiting for approvals. They’ve been there since the family fled Syria in 2011. Refaai is now trying to get a Green Card so if they can’t come to the U. S. he can at least go visit them. The recent presidential election hit especially  —   and literally  —   close to home, Zellers says. ”We actually got a flier from Trump, and it had . .. three big issues,” he says. ”The third one was ’Stop the influx of dangerous refugees from Syria’  —   as . .. the biggest bullet point. I was like, ’No, we want more of ’em. . .. We have one, I have one in my house right now. . .. I can go say hi to him!’ ” The guys in this house lean conservative. They all take their Christian faith seriously. None of them voted for Trump it was a mix of Clinton and   votes. They didn’t even know who voted for whom until we all started talking about it. ”It is weird to have a vote in a situation that felt like we were voting for people who were helpless. Usually we vote on jobs or whatever, and so for me, I’m like, that’s not a big deal. I find a job. I’ll make things work, whoever gets elected  —   they’re not going to change things that drastically,” Trumbull says. The guys don’t own a TV, so on election night, they all went into Walton’s room and huddled around their phones with Refaai to watch the results come in. ”So we were all kind of together just like kind of hugging him and just kind of watching it all go down,” Walton says. ”He definitely kind of got sad a little bit just thinking of like, OK, maybe his family may not be able to like ever come here,” Zellers says. ”That’s like the biggest hope that he’s had like this past year. . .. Now Trump elected it’s like, oh, those chances go down like a lot.” An ”unusual” situation, Refaii is a butcher at a new Middle Eastern supermarket and restaurant in Toledo. When we met him a little over a year ago, he barely spoke any English. He had learned the terms that a butcher uses every day  —   chicken legs, chicken breast, steak, lamb  —   and that was about it. Today he looks confident. He doesn’t use an interpreter when he talks to us. He video chats with his family in Jordan about once a week. He shows them the snow on the ground in Ohio, and they tell him how proud they are that he’s learning English and working. ”I like it they come here, but I don’t know how. I need they be safe and close to me, my family, but I can’t do anything,” he says. ”I feel bad for they not with me, but I can’t do anything for help him.” We asked the State Department about Refaai’s situation. Just like a year ago, they told us they don’t comment on specific cases. But veterans of refugee work say his situation is not normal. ”This situation you’ve described is very unusual,” says Eric Schwartz, who ran the State Department’s refugee resettlement program earlier in the Obama administration. He’s now a dean at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He says once you’re over 21 like Refaai, your case is considered on its own. But even then, grown children are rarely separated from their parents and siblings. ”And it would be very unusual for them not to be departing and coming to the United States together,” he says. It might have just been an oversight. Schwartz says an immigration lawyer might be able to sort out what happened  —   but Refaai and his family don’t have one. [Editor’s note on Jan. 9: After this story was broadcast and published, Schwartz contacted NPR to note that hiring a lawyer is not required and that   refugee advocacy organizations often make case inquiries with the Department of State at no cost to the refugees themselves.] ”This is a program that involves so many tens of thousands of individuals that sometimes mistakes or problems do arise, and the way they get fixed is somebody asks about them and somebody presses them,” he says. Refaai fears that his window is closing as the days tick down to Trump’s inauguration. The office that issues Green Cards has told him to stop calling, and that has changed the way the other guys in this house think about their future. ”Before it’s just like ’Oh, Moh is here, his family will come and then I’m like, well, I’ll move on with our lives  —   we’ll all move away or get different jobs or, I don’t know, and then Moh will have his family. But now it’s like his family may never come,” Zellers says. Walton says Refaai won’t talk about that. ”He doesn’t even want to acknowledge that could happen because thinking about this family being broken up, that like leaves him lost in a sea in a way,” Walton says. ”But we don’t know what’s going to happen. So I don’t know what’s going to be asked of me as his brother, but I guess I’m just more aware that he may have more need for support than even he does now.”"
"Unexplained, short radio bursts from outer space have puzzled scientists since they were first detected nearly a decade ago. The elusive flashes  —   known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs  —   are extremely powerful and last only a few milliseconds. The way their frequencies are dispersed suggests they traveled from far outside our galaxy. About 18 have been detected to date. They’ve been called the ”most perplexing mystery in astronomy.” Scientists are still grappling with why these bursts happen. But researchers have now pinpointed the source of one series of the FRBs  —   to a dwarf galaxy billions of   away from Earth. And locating the source of the mystery bursts could hold clues to what is causing them, according to Shami Chatterjee, an astrophysicist at Cornell University. He’s the lead author in a paper recently published in Nature. Let’s talk quickly about one burning question: Could the source be aliens? Probably not, Chatterjee tells The  . ”Never say never, but we don’t think so. We can view this with physics that we know and understand.”   explanations involve a neutron star or an active galactic nucleus, though there are a slew of possibilities, he says. The story of this particular burst, called FRB 121102, took a wild turn when scientists found that its signal repeated. This immediately eliminated a number of theories about why it was happening  —   for example, it couldn’t be two neutron stars colliding. ”Because we know right away that it can’t be explosive. Whatever it is, has to survive this radio flash,” Chatterjee adds. The equipment used to detect FRBs is able to see only a tiny patch of the sky at any moment. The discovery that FRB 121102 repeated suggested that it was a good direction to point the detection equipment. ”If you go fishing in this spot in the sky, you might be more likely to get lucky than in other random spots in the sky,” Chatterjee says. In 2015, the team began using an interferometer  —   in this case, a network of 27 radio dishes called the Very Large Array that’s in New Mexico  —   which is capable of much higher resolution detection than other readings. ”It was a pretty intensive observational and computational challenge,” Chatterjee says. The interferometer captured data at 200 frames per second from this patch of sky, he says, resulting in a terabyte of data every hour that put a major strain on archival and computational resources. During the first 10 hours of recording this sliver of sky, they found nothing. They recorded 40 more hours  —   again, no bursts. Frustrated, the team also enlisted the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This time, they got lucky. They captured nine radio images of bursts, allowing them to ”pin it down to an absolutely tiny patch of the sky” for the first time. In that patch of the constellation Auriga lies a dwarf galaxy a fraction of the size of our own, Chatterjee says, some 2. 5 to 3 billion   away. It’s worth noting that the sheer distance of the flashes’ origin makes ”catching it in the act” very relative, since the event that caused it happened billions of years ago. So what was that event? Chatterjee says there are many theories. It could be originating from an active galactic nucleus, which emits FRBs as blobs of plasma drift into its jets and are vaporized. Or it could be originating from a newborn magnetar  —   a neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field  —   that is ”emitting these giant pulses as it spins.” It also could be the interaction between a magnetar and a black hole, or many other possibilities, he adds. A crucial question now, Chatterjee says, is whether all FRBs repeat like this one, or whether there are types that don’t repeat. ”They’re probably the same thing and we haven’t been lucky enough to observe the other ones repeating,” he says. ”But if not, hey, great, nature’s given us two fantastic mysteries instead of one fantastic mystery.”"
"There’s a new narrative solidifying in Washington:   Donald Trump distrusts the U. S. intelligence community because it’s been sounding the alarm on Russia’s interference in the November election. In turn, this feeds a growing sense of dread among U. S. intelligence professionals that the   and his inner circle will ignore or undermine the intelligence community at every opportunity. The intelligence community certainly has reason to be concerned. Trump’s goal to slash and restructure the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence was reported by the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, the same day the   raised doubts about U. S. intelligence in a tweet citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. A day earlier, Trump elicited alarm after he tweeted disparagingly about a classified briefing he is due to receive this week. But it’s doubtful there will be a major conflagration between the president and the national security bureaucracy during the Trump administration. The intelligence community is likely to back down from a major conflict with its boss, the president, and its overseers, Congress  —   because the disincentives to upset one’s superiors are so numerous and ingrained. This is not the first time the intelligence community in general, or the CIA in particular, has faced scorn  —   or worse  —   from a president or  . Richard Nixon famously disliked the CIA and was skeptical of its analysis. Nixon once told his Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger, ”Get rid of the clowns. What use are they? They’ve got 40, 000 people over there reading newspapers.” Within three months, Schlesinger pushed out 10 percent of the workforce. Following the   Church Committee investigation of the CIA for spying on   War activists, President Jimmy Carter’s fellow U. S. Naval Academy classmate, Adm. Stansfield Turner, dismissed hundreds of agency employees in a mass firing dubbed the ”Halloween Massacre” of 1979. (Turner later reflected in his memoir, ”In retrospect, I probably should not have effected the reductions of 820 positions at all, and certainly not the last 17. ”) Yet the agency survived to fight another day. The intelligence community has traditionally served as a convenient scapegoat when policymakers’ decisions go south. There’s an old saw in Washington: In this town, there are only two possibilities: policy success and intelligence failure. We think of the Iraq WMD debacle primarily as an intelligence failure. And Trump’s communications staff certainly thinks so, as it resurrected the issue to dismiss a Dec. 9 Washington Post report that the CIA had assessed that Russia was trying to help Trump win the White House. ”These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the Trump statement said. But remember, it was a policymaker’s decision to actually go to war in Iraq. So the intelligence community has played this role of whipping boy before and will very likely continue to play it in the Trump administration. And there probably won’t be a showdown. People will grumble, but will go back to work. Most intelligence collection and analysis is a job as potentially interesting or humdrum as anyone else’s. Despite the classified nature of the ”industry,” people still collect data, type on computers, fill out forms and try to make sense of the world around them. One can often forget that the intelligence community is made up of professionals who lead regular lives. Sure, they hold   clearances, but they have mortgages and car payments, lawns to mow, children to take care of, vacations to plan. They are civil servants with a secure,   American lifestyle that would be jeopardized if they quit their jobs. That said, there may be some who could try to undermine Trump by leaking embarrassing documents and committing criminal acts in the process. Certainly in an industry where millions of people hold security clearances, there will be some who could try unilaterally to take action (how’s January in Russia, Edward Snowden?) to effect change or cause disruption. A few people might also just quit in protest. But those willing to do this to stick it to the president are few and far between. Most people will not throw away their life’s work. Still, there’s a large exception that may arise if the president asks the intelligence community to do something that is   illegal and immoral  —   say, commit obvious war crimes. On the campaign trail, Trump claimed that ”torture works” and said he favored tactics like killing the families of terrorists. He later appeared to   on torture after discussing it with his defense secretary nominee, Gen. James Mattis. But if he changed his mind again, it would, of course, be members of the military or the intelligence community who would carry out these deeds. And in such a case, all bets are off. Treat the intelligence community badly  —   well, that’s par for the course. But if the events of the last 15 years have taught this generation of intelligence professionals anything, it’s that one’s sacred honor might be sacrificed for reasons beyond one’s control. Assuming there is no   conflagration between the new president and the intelligence community, a slow degrading of our intelligence capacity during a time of unprecedented global challenges may be a more likely  —   and worse  —     outcome. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, recently noted that right now, America is ”facing the most complex and diverse array of global threats that I’ve seen in my 53 years or so in the intel business.” Perhaps otherwise motivated intelligence officers with specialized skills will redirect their energies into other careers if they disagree with the direction of a Trump administration. The CIA publicly acknowledged in 2015 that it continues to struggle, despite numerous years of trying, to recruit and retain minority officers. If there’s, say, real   or   sentiment sweeping through the intelligence community because of the words and deeds of senior leadership, talented people will vote with their feet, ultimately damaging our   national security. So does this all end with a bang or a whimper? Or not at all? Clapper is confident, because of the intelligence community’s mission and professionalism, that it will be a ”pillar of stability” during the presidential transition. We’ll find out when the first national security crisis occurs under Trump’s watch. And if the past is any indication, a crisis (or two or three) will explode soon after he takes the oath of office. Aki Peritz is a former CIA analyst and   of Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda.  Follow him on Twitter @AkiPeritz"
"  Donald Trump continues to dispute the consensus of U. S. intelligence agencies that Russia used computer hacking to interfere in the 2016 elections. He does so even though other Republican leaders and analysts perceive a serious cyberattack that demands retaliation. If he persists in this posture, Trump may wish to rely on the precedent of previous presidents who entered the White House at odds with their own parties over a major issue in foreign relations. But can he find one? That’s a tough question. In recent decades, presidents have come to the Oval Office in something very much like lockstep with their parties regarding relations with Russia and other familiar adversaries. Presidents whose parties had their backs, Ronald Reagan, the predecessor Trump likes to cite as a model, came to office largely on a vow to get tough with Russia  —   then still the Soviet Union and making aggressive moves on several fronts (1981). In this stance, Reagan had the overwhelming support of his own party and from many Democrats as well. In fact, Reagan’s predecessor, Democrat Jimmy Carter, had canceled U. S. participation in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, in 1989 continued the pressure on the Soviets and was in office to see that regime replaced by a semblance of democracy in Russia. His term included the fall of the Berlin Wall and other symbols of what was long called ”the Red Menace.” The first President Bush did go to war, however, after Iraq invaded its neighbor Kuwait in 1990. But he had the backing of Congress, including nearly all of his own party and many Democrats as well. Foreign policy was not a big priority for President Bill Clinton, either as a candidate in 1992 or as a   president, but he had the backing of his Democratic troops when issues did arise, including the brief Kosovo War in the Balkans in 1999. George W. Bush took the oath in 2001 at a time when foreign policy was on a back burner in Washington. The terror attacks of that September changed all that, and Bush had the backing of both his own Republicans and most Democrats in sending troops to attack   in Afghanistan. Republicans were also strongly behind Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, as were some (but by no means all) Democrats. After those wars had become quagmires, Barack Obama arrived in 2009 with a promise to recalibrate the ”War on Terror,” especially by winding down the U. S. presence in Iraq. His party was very much on board for this, although some differences on the details emerged over time. His desire for a ”reset” with Russia reflected the desire of Democrats generally to lessen global tensions and concentrate on domestic issues. A common enemy, Finding a precedent for Trump’s party schism does not get any easier looking at the decades right after World War II. Although the Soviets were a major U. S. ally in that conflict, tensions began immediately over the postwar map of Europe and the Soviets’ intensive covert campaign to steal secrets for a nuclear weapon. The tensions came to be known as the Cold War, and extended soon to the Communist regime that took over China in the late 1940s. In the presidential politics of the Cold War era, candidates in both major parties vied to be the most outspoken in their  . Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952 vowing to ”go to Korea” to meet and defeat communist aggression there his former running mate Richard Nixon won in 1968 while uniting his party around his ”secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam. Both had solid backing from Republicans across the board. Democrat John F. Kennedy rallied his partisans in 1960 to close ”the missile gap” he said we had with the Soviets, and his former vice president, Lyndon Johnson, campaigned on his determination to stop communism in Southeast Asia in 1964 (after Congress, dominated by Democrats, gave him carte blanche to do so). Returning to the era between the first and second world wars, it is difficult to find much daylight between a newly elected president and his party on a foreign policy issue. Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover had few real disagreements with their Republican backers. Like them, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected with a unified party preoccupied with the economy and social issues. In fact, if you plow your way through the rest of American history, you will be   to find presidents preparing their first inaugural addresses while engaging in a highly public dispute with their own party over the behavior of a foreign adversary. As a rule, international affairs have mattered to a new president when a foreign threat  —   real or perceived  —   has united that president’s party in support. No one expects a   to agree with his own party’s leaders on every issue. It would be especially surprising if that were the case with Trump, who entered the contest for the Republican nomination as an outsider and conducted his campaign largely on personal terms. Nonetheless, Trump and the GOP adapted to each other with notable success in the endgame of the 2016. Former rivals such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and leaders who had refused to stump with Trump (including Ryan) expressed their intention to vote for him. In the end, even most of the GOP voters who had reservations about Trump came home on Election Day and voted a party ticket. They did it knowing there would be disagreements down the road. But they might not have expected them to come before the new president had even been sworn in."
"The halls of the Kiambu County Hospital just outside Nairobi are empty. This is normally a bustling place but on Thursday entire wings are closed. Only in the emergency room are there a scattering of patients. Moms with babies sit languidly on metal chairs. Men with broken bones and some with serious injuries are just hoping to be treated. But they probably won’t be seen by doctors. A doctor’s strike that began last month in Kenya has now entered its second month. Physicians at public hospitals want more money and better medical equipment, but the government says it can’t afford to meet their demands. The strike has left millions of Kenyans without proper health care and has also overwhelmed some of the country’s private hospitals. The nurses at the public hospitals are not on strike, so they’re doing whatever they can. They’re the ones running the ER. But a patient who needs complicated care and can’t afford a private hospital is out of luck. The only doctor I found at the Kiambu hospital is David Kariuki, who is on strike but showed up to perform his administrative duties. ”The current strike is about better working conditions for doctors, especially those within the public health sector,” he said. A doctor right out of school in Kenya makes about $10, 000 a year in the public health system. To earn more money, many of them are lured abroad or into the private hospitals that many Kenyans can’t afford. That means, Kariuki said, that ”the public health care system continues to be strained, because you have fewer doctors to see a growing population, so everyone would get overworked” and more stressed out. And it’s not like there were a lot of doctors on duty before the strike: 5, 000 physicians in the public sector serve a population of nearly 50 million. In the emergency room, I find Masa Mawili, who came to the hospital because of his foot. It was so swollen that it hardly fit in his sandal, and the swelling extended all the way to his calf. He doesn’t know what caused the swelling. He said he had already seen the nurses but they couldn’t tell him what was wrong with his foot. So he sat and waited hours in the hope that a doctor would show up  —   some of them have been working despite the strike. On Wednesday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta met with the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union for hours. Late at night, his government put out an offer: Some doctors would get a more than 100 percent raise, others significantly less. The doctors are supposed to respond by Friday, but they seem determined to hold out for the 300 percent raise that the government agreed to in a 2013 collective bargaining agreement but has since walked away from. But it’s not just about the money. ”The CBA [collective bargaining agreement] once signed will make sure more doctors are trained to improve on service delivery,” the union tweeted. At the hospital I visited, some patients sided with the doctors but others took the government’s side. Paul Kagiri, whose   son was given the OK to go to college after a physical at the hospital, said that what the doctors are asking for is ”very, very, very high.” The government can’t afford to pay them. And there are reports of people who sought help at public hospitals and ended up dying. Right now, he said, it’s time to think about the wanjiku  —   the ordinary people. ”Only the wanjiku right now is suffering a lot,” Kagiri said. ”And instead of wanjiku suffering why [don’t the doctors give back to the public?”"
"The vaquita is a small porpoise found only in the northern Gulf of California, in Mexico. Today, the species is critically endangered, with less than 60 animals left in the wild, thanks to fishing nets to catch fish and shrimp for sale in Mexico and America. The animal is an accidental victim of the fishing industry, as are many other marine mammals. But a new rule that takes effect this week seeks to protect marine mammals from becoming bycatch. The rule requires foreign fisheries exporting seafood to the U. S. to ensure that they don’t hurt or kill marine mammals.  If U. S. authorities determine that a certain foreign fishery is harming these mammals, the fishery will be required to take stock of the marine mammal populations in places where they fish, and find ways to reduce their bycatch. That could involve not fishing in areas with high numbers of marine mammals. Fisheries will also have to report cases when they do end up hurting mammals. This is what American fisheries are already required to do under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). Up to 90 percent of seafood eaten in the U. S. is imported, most of it shrimp, freshwater fish, tuna, and salmon. The goal of the new rule is to ensure that seafood coming into the country didn’t harm or kill marine mammals. But can this new rule protect the vaquita? Zak Smith, a senior attorney with the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, thinks so. The vaquita is kind of a poster child for what happens when you don’t have this law in place,” he says. To understand the potential impact of the rule, Smith says, we should consider the laws that saved dolphins from tuna fisheries. For decades, dolphins  —   which swim with schools of tuna  —   were accidentally (and sometimes deliberately) killed by tuna fisheries. According to NOAA, over six million dolphins have been killed since the beginning of tuna fishery. Enacted in 1972, the MMPA required tuna fisheries to take measures to stop harming dolphins. Then, in the 1980s, the act was amended to ban the import of tuna from foreign fisheries that harmed dolphins. In 1990, the U. S. passed another legislation  —   the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act  —   that spelled out requirements for ” ” labeling on all tuna sold in America.  Smith says these laws have helped reduce dolphin deaths. But the new rule goes even further, he says, because it applies to all kinds of seafood and all marine mammals, not just tuna and dolphins. As an American consumer, ”I’ll know that anything I purchase in the U. S. met U. S. standards,” he says. A 2014 analysis from the NRDC estimated that hundreds of thousands of marine mammals are injured or killed every year by fisheries around the world. The U. S. government’s independent Marine Mammal Commission says unintentional encounters with fishing gear represent ”the greatest direct cause of marine mammal injury and death in the United States and around the world.” So the new rule could help protect many marine mammals worldwide, says John Henderschedt, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Fisheries Office of International Affairs. He says in some fisheries around the world, fishermen use nets that whales and dolphins easily get caught in. And some fishermen won’t take the time to make sure entangled marine mammals are released safely, he says. He adds that for some fisheries, the new rule will make them take stock of their marine mammal populations, and think about how to protect those animals for the very first time. The new rule is good for American fisheries too, says Ryan Steen, a lawyer representing the Hawaii Longline Association. ”If U. S. fisheries are going to be subject to the standards that are set by the [Marine Mammal Protection Act] then I think it’s only fair that their foreign competitors would also be subject to the same standards if they’re delivering fish into U. S. markets,” he says. ”It’s the fair thing to do and it’s the right thing to do.” But implementing the new rule could be tricky, cautions Linda Fernandez, an environmental economist at Virginia Commonwealth University. For example, the World Trade Organization could object to any bans on imports from a seafood exporter, she says. Fernandez says the push for   tuna holds a good lesson in this. In 1990, the U. S. banned tuna imports from Mexico because Mexican tuna fisheries didn’t meet American standards for protecting dolphins. The decision upset Mexico and it complained to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) the predecessor of the World Trade organization. A GATT panel concluded that the U. S. was wrong to embargo Mexico imports simply because it didn’t like the way the tuna was harvested. ”In that case, the U. S. was unfairly treating trade partners based on how . ..they harvested the product,” Fernandez says. What the U. S. could do without violating international trade agreements, was label tuna as either ” ” or not.  It gave seafood exporters an incentive to get a ” ” label, she says. Judging from this history, she says, the WTO will be fine with a labeling system (which the new rule doesn’t require) but it probably won’t be fine with an embargo, which could happen under the new rule. Cost is also a big concern in implementing the rule, according to Lekelia Jenkins, a marine conservation expert at Arizona State University and a former NOAA employee. Jenkins says her number one concern is how much money NOAA will have to enforce it. ”We can write laws as much as we want,” she says. ”It does not mean that there will be appropriations to fund those laws. Rob Williams, a marine conservation fellow at the Pew Charitable Trusts, says the amount of resources that the U. S. invests will determine the effectiveness of the new rule. Some resources, he says, should be used to help other countries implement U. S. conservation measures. He says it took the U. S. 40 years to refine these measures. ”We should be exporting those lessons learned so that other countries don’t have to take 40 years to learn,” he says. Otherwise, he says, ”countries presumably will just find other markets for their seafood.”"
"Citing local regulations, Apple has removed The New York Times news app from its app store in China. The incident is the latest in the long history of media restrictions in the country, but also in the ongoing pattern of tech companies getting involved in the efforts. The New York Times reports that Apple removed both its   and   apps from the app store in China on Dec. 23, though other prominent publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times as well as the Times’ crossword puzzle and   apps remain available. Along with other websites, the Times has faced restrictions for years. The site has been subject of blocks since 2012, when the newspaper reported on the wealth amassed by the family of the   minister. Apple did not explain Thursday what distinguished the Times from other outlets. Spokesman Fred Sainz shared a statement: ”For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations. As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.” Sainz did not elaborate on what legal standard was applied to warrant the removal of the news app, but the Times suggested it was under 2016 regulations issued for mobile apps: ”The regulations say apps cannot ’engage in activities prohibited by laws and regulations such as endangering national security, disrupting social order and violating the legitimate rights and interests of others.’ The cyberspace administration says on its website that apps also cannot publish ’prohibited information.” Over the years, numerous publications have faced blackouts in China, including Bloomberg, Time and The Economist. Users in China sometimes use software to circumvent the government’s firewall to surf the Web and access blocked sites. For tech companies, China is a massive, lucrative market and a major manufacturing hub, but operations there are tricky. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have been restricted. Apple’s own iBooks and iTunes Movies were blocked, as well, not long after they were introduced. For Apple, China is a key production location and sales market. But iPhone sales have slumped there in recent years. In May, Apple invested $1 billion in Chinese   app Didi Chuxing. The company has, in the past, removed other media apps from its App Store, but none as prominent as The Times, according to the newspaper. And it’s far from the first time that a tech company cooperated with the Chinese government to suppress content, as the industry generally complies with local regulations around the world. In 2016, The New York Times reported that Facebook quietly developed software that could prevent posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific parts of China, going further than the typical practice by U. S. Internet companies to block certain content after it’s posted. The newspaper also reported, just last month, on ”a hidden bounty of perks, tax breaks and subsidies in China that supports the world’s biggest iPhone factory”  —   billions of dollars’ worth of incentives at the heart of Apple’s phone production. In 2014, the radio program Marketplace reported on LinkedIn censoring posts from its members that were deemed sensitive by China’s government. In 2010, Google altered how users in China could access the site as it faced possible loss of license to operate in the country. Perhaps the most notorious case dates back to early 2000s, when Chinese authorities arrested and imprisoned dissidents, including a Chinese journalist, based on evidence provided by Yahoo. Yahoo settled a lawsuit by the dissidents’ families in 2007. In 2005, Yahoo bought what later became its most valuable asset: a stake in a Chinese   site Alibaba."
"A comparison of kid brains and grownup brains may explain why our ability to recognize faces keeps getting better until about age 30. Brain scans of 25 adults and 22 children showed that an area devoted to facial recognition keeps growing long after adolescence, researchers report in the journal Science. The area didn’t acquire more neurons, says Jesse Gomez, a graduate student in neurosciences at Stanford University and the study’s lead author. Instead the brain region became more densely populated with the structures that connect and support neurons. ”You can imagine a   by   garden, and it has some number of flowers in there,” Gomez says. ”The number of flowers isn’t changing, but their stems and branches and leaves are getting more complex.” To see whether that sort of change occurred elsewhere in the brain, the researchers also looked at a nearby area that responds to places, instead of faces. In this area, there was no difference between children and adults. The results suggest that brain development is more varied than researchers once thought. For years, scientists have focused on a process known as synaptic pruning, which shapes the brain by eliminating unused connections among neurons. Most synaptic pruning takes place in the first few years of life. ”After age 3, the textbooks are pretty silent about what’s going on in the brain,” Gomez says. The continuing growth in facial recognition areas may be a response to the need to recognize more and more faces as children grow older, says Kalanit   a professor in the psychology department at Stanford. ”When you’re a young child, you need to recognize your family and a handful of friends,” she says. ”But by the time you’ve reached high school or college your social group has expanded to hundreds or even thousands of people.” And recognizing all those people requires a lot of brain power,   says, because ”all faces have the same features and the same configuration.” Ongoing changes in the brain may also help children focus on different sorts of faces at different stages of development, says Suzy Scherf, an assistant professor of psychology at Penn State University. ”Children’s face recognition early on is very much tuned to adult faces,” Scherf says. ”In adolescence it changes to be highly tuned toward adolescent faces.” Understanding how facial recognition develops throughout childhood could make it easier to figure out why some people have difficulty recognizing faces, researchers say. Gomez hopes to scan the brains of people with ”face blindness,” a disorder that can leave a person unable to recognize even familiar faces. And Scherf wants to know whether people with autism, who often struggle to recognize faces, have abnormal development in the facial recognition area of their brains."
"Director Damien Chazelle’s La La Land is an unapologetic musical that hearkens back to Hollywood’s glory days of song and dance. The passion and grandeur of the musical numbers might make you believe that Chazelle had always imagined himself working in the genre, but he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that’s not the case. ”It wasn’t until I actually started making experimental films and, ironically, documentaries in college that I think my eyes got   or awakened, to . .. old classic Hollywood musicals,” Chazelle says. ”There was something about them that felt like, ’Oh my God, here is an experimental movie in mainstream packaging.’ ” La La Land is a love story set in the present day, but the influence of old Hollywood and musicals of the past is all around. The film features Emma Stone as an aspiring actress and Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist, both of whom are struggling to reconcile their showbiz dreams with reality. Chazelle says that the film’s song and dance numbers provide the audience with an insight into the characters that is often missing in film. ”In a weird way, movies are kind of limited by what you see in front of the camera,” he says. ”Musicals find this wonderful way around that, because the songs are . .. an expression of inner feelings that can’t be articulated any other way.” On what musicals do that   can’t, There’s something so brash and defiant and almost   about the idea of just breaking the normal rules of normal reality. Movies have kind of been engineered over the century to somewhat reflect reality usually, even if it’s a fantasy or something. There’s some kind of an assumption that things are going to follow a certain order, and musicals just break that. They break it in the name of emotion. That, I think, was a really powerful, beautiful idea to me, that if you feel enough you break into song. On the film’s opening number, which is set in a freeway traffic jam  We’re on this kind of elevated freeway ramp that’s in utter gridlock and . .. one by one characters start to kind of join in this collective number. The idea was to go from [an] individual car radio . .. and all these individual sounds build in and sort of layer into this one collective song that eventually explodes into   joyful unison singing and dancing before all the drivers return to their cars. The idea was to sort of introduce the world and, I think even more importantly, begin the musical with as   a scene as we could possibly imagine  —   really try to announce our intentions right off the bat with a bang. One thing that I think that has kind of been lost a little bit is the idea of choreographing dance for the camera. That to me was the beautiful thing about old Hollywood musicals from Fred [Astaire] and Ginger [Rogers] through the Gene   Donen pictures, to something like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. . .. There’s a wonderful barn dance set piece in the middle of that movie, which was a big reference for this. . .. It’s all about how the dance looks in relation to a single camera, not ”let’s do the dance like a live event and just film it with 15 cameras and then we’ll find it in the editing room.” So that long take aesthetic was there right from the beginning. And my choreographer, Mandy Moore, had to choreograph with that in mind, and the DP [director of photography] Linus Sandgren, had to kind of be involved in that choreography. So it was really the three of us and this troupe of dancers that Mandy and I brought together rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing for months. And often very theoretically, because the other problem with shooting on a freeway ramp is that you can’t really rehearse onsite very easily. And so we were able to find this elevated ramp that the city would let us shut down for a Saturday and a Sunday to shoot. On wanting to appeal to musical skeptics, You hear a lot, especially when you’re making a musical today, how much distaste for musicals exists in the world and how many skeptics there are, so . .. it was important to me to reach out to the skeptics, to have this movie not just play for a little coterie of musical   of which I would include myself. . .. There is that kind of needle scratch sometimes  —   you can even feel it in a theater when a song begins and it hasn’t been quite properly set up. So I always thought of the analogy of the frog in boiling water and the idea that if you drop the frog right away in boiling water it feels it and jumps out, but if you put a frog in room temperature water and then slowly boil it over the course of however long, it won’t realize that it’s boiling and it’ll just sit there and die. So I kind of wanted to put the audience through  —   this will sound morbid  —   but through the same sort of process where they kind of don’t even necessarily realize as it’s happening that they’re being sucked into a musical. On making Whiplash (a film about a musician who attends a   music conservatory) based on his own experience as a jazz drummer  At the point that I wrote Whiplash I had been paying the bills in L. A. mainly by writing genre pictures and sort of doing rewrites on horror movies and sequels and stuff that was very not personal to me. I was just trying to make a living. . .. Whiplash in some ways was the most autobiographical thing that I had written up to that point. . .. There was a phase in my life, it was mainly high school into college, where music and specifically jazz drumming, as you see in Whiplash, was everything for me. It had a lot to do with a very intensive jazz program at my high school that I was a part of, and a very demanding teacher, and certain emotions I felt as a young player where the kind of enjoyment and appreciation of the art of music was inextricably wrapped up in fear and dread and anxiety about getting something wrong. . .. I sort of thought . .. maybe I could kind of write those experiences as though it were a genre film, as though it were a thriller or a kind of war movie or a sports film, something where you expect to see a lot of physical violence and try to sublimate that violence into emotional violence, into the music and into the style. On what Whiplash and La La Land have in common, When I think about when I was writing Whiplash, a lot of what I was grappling with as well is how do you become whatever you’re supposed to become? I guess that’s there in La La Land, too. . .. You don’t know for sure whether you actually ”have what it takes,” and also you don’t know if that whole idea of having what it takes  —   is that actually its own kind of nonsense? Is talent even really a thing? Is it actually just the best musicians are the musicians that work the hardest? Or the musicians who listened the most? Or the musicians who are lucky enough to be at a certain place at a certain time and what we think of as a meritocracy is actually not? . .. I think all those questions were swirling around my head and are still, I think, to a certain extent."
"After multiple recent studies showing that feeding   foods to infants can reduce the risk of peanut allergies, there are new federal guidelines for parents about when to start feeding their infants such foods. The National Institutes of Health announced Thursday that a panel of allergy experts recommends that parents introduce   foods into the diets of babies as young as 4 to 6 months. As the NIH summary for parents and caregivers states, introducing babies with severe eczema or egg allergy  —   conditions that increase the risk of peanut allergy  —   to foods containing peanuts at that age can reduce the risk of developing peanut allergy. However, the guidelines spell out that these infants should be evaluated by an allergy specialist before their parents or caregivers introduce them to peanuts. For infants without the risk factors of eczema or known food allergies, parents can stick to whatever   diet they prefer. As NPR’s Allison Aubrey reports, ”parents of infants used to be told to hold off on introducing   foods, sometimes until the toddler years, especially if there was a family history of allergies.” Experts thought this could reduce the chances of developing an allergy. But over the past few years, Allison says, several large studies such as this one and this one ”have found that babies at high risk for becoming allergic to peanuts are less likely to develop the allergy if they are regularly fed   foods in the first year of life.” As NPR’s Patti Neighmond has reported: ”The guidelines are largely based on dramatic findings from a large study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015. Researchers found that babies at high risk of developing a peanut allergy who were fed the equivalent of about 4 heaping teaspoons of peanut butter each week, starting at the age of 4 to 11 months, were about 80 percent less likely to develop an allergy to the legume by age 5 than similar kids who avoided peanuts. The benefit held up even after the children stopped getting the puree, a   study found. ”Allergic reactions to peanuts can range from hives or rashes to, in the most extreme cases, trouble breathing and even death.” The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has published the full text of the guidelines for the prevention of peanut allergies, as well as summaries for doctors and parents, on its website. Infants and small children should never be given whole peanuts due to the risk of choking, the NIH cautions. A video aimed at parents warns that even undiluted peanut butter can be dangerous for infants because it is thick and sticky. The American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology video, which features Northwestern University pediatrician Ruchi S. Gupta, recommends adding hot water to 2 teaspoons of peanut butter to make a warm puree. Feed a little bit of the puree to the child, and then monitor for about 10 minutes to make sure there is no reaction such as hives, rash or trouble breathing before continuing to feed the child   foods."
"As President Obama’s tenure in the White House draws to a close, he’s looking back on eight years of work  —   and ahead toward what he sees as a brighter future for the U. S. In a letter to the American public, Obama says he’s proud that the country is ”stronger and more prosperous” than it was eight years ago  —   and hopeful that the country will build on the progress he sees. The letter is paired with a set of ”Cabinet Exit Memos”  —   Cabinet members wrote about the work their teams have done, and the work they see that remains for the next administration. The secretary of the interior says new parks and public lands tell a more inclusive story of America the secretary of agriculture highlights a drop in rural unemployment the secretary of Veterans Affairs points out, as an aside, that the VA is still providing benefits to the child of a Union soldier  —   from the Civil War. Obama, for his part, begins with a summary of the woes the U. S. faced at the beginning of 2009, in the midst of a financial crisis and two wars. He describes economic growth, an increase in health insurance coverage, a boost in renewable energy production and troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things. He describes the state of the country today as ”a situation I’m proud to leave to my successor,” whom he never names. ”And it’s thanks to you,” Obama writes to the American people, ”to the hard work you’ve put in the sacrifices you’ve made for your families and communities the way you’ve looked out for one another.” He says that ”change is never easy, and never quick,” and that he wishes he’d been able to enact gun safety measures and immigration reform. ”We still have more work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a dignified retirement,” he said. ”What won’t help is taking health care away from 30 million Americans, most of them white and working class denying overtime pay to workers, most of whom have more than earned it or privatizing Medicare and Social Security and letting Wall Street regulate itself again  —   none of which   Americans voted for.” Obama concluded: ”We will have to move forward as we always have  —   together. As a people who believe that out of many, we are one that we are bound not by any one race or religion, but rather an adherence to a common creed that all of us are created equal in the eyes of God. And I’m confident we will. Because the change we’ve brought about these past eight years was never about me. It was about you. It is you, the American people, who have made the progress of the last eight years possible. It is you who will make our future progress possible. That, after all, is the story of America  —   a story of progress. However halting, however incomplete, however harshly challenged at each point on our journey  —   the story of America is a story of progress. . .. ”It has been the privilege of my life to serve as your President. And as I prepare to pass the baton and do my part as a private citizen, I’m proud to say that we have laid a new foundation for America. A new future is ours to write. And I’m as confident as ever that it will be led by the United States of America  —   and that our best days are still ahead.” Obama is expected to deliver a farewell address on Tuesday in Chicago."
"On a cold night in January nine years ago, Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses. That first big step on the young senator’s unlikely path to the White House was fueled by an army of campaign volunteers, which Obama later called one of his proudest legacies. ”That’s what America needs right now,” Obama told campaign workers a year later, after he was sworn in as president. ”Active citizens like you, who are willing to turn towards each other, talk to people you’ve never met, and say, ’C’mon, let’s go do this. Let’s go change the world.’ ” There was nothing glamorous about the work those volunteers did for Obama: A lot of knocking on doors and making phone calls. But for many veterans of that first Obama campaign, it’s a time they’ll never forget. ”I’ll be friends with some of those people forever,” says Nathan Blake, who quit his job at a Des Moines law firm to work for the upstart campaign. ”We’ve got that shared experience that was   and historic and important, and good for our country.” It wasn’t obvious at the time that the man they were knocking on doors for eventually would make his way to the White House, but even in those early days, Blake was a ”true believer.” He had plenty of company. Brian Kirschling, who works at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Iowa City, was older than a lot of Obama campaign volunteers, and he’d never been politically active. But by 2007, Kirschling had decided it was time to roll up his sleeves  —   a decision he explains by quoting Dr. Seuss. ”His quote from The Lorax is, ’Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, noting is going to get better. It’s not,’” Kirschling says. Kirschling became a ”precinct captain” for Obama. Children’s books and a Disney video were key parts of his caucus night toolkit for attracting parents with young children. ”In the Iowa caucus,” he says, ”it’s about how many people are standing in your corner. I can tell you everybody in that room that had kids was in our corner.” Aletheia Henry was just out of graduate school in 2007 when she heard a story on the radio about a training camp Obama was running for campaign volunteers. She packed her car and drove from Ohio to Chicago, listening to a tape of Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, along the way. ”By the time I got there I was really hooked,” Henry says. She wound up working as a field organizer for Obama in eight different states. ”I would show up in a city and not know anyone,” Henry recalls. But she’d be given the name of someone who’d volunteered to let her sleep on their couch. ”And they’d have me over and have dinner and talk a little and they’d let me stay there for weeks or months at a time and we’d work together on this democracy.” After Obama was elected, campaign workers went their separate ways. Nathan Blake spent time in Washington, working for the Agriculture Department. He’s now back in Iowa, doing consumer protection work for the attorney general. Brian Kirschling, who’d never done much before in politics, decided to run for his local school board. And in a crowded field of nine candidates he made a point of knocking on doors all over the city. ”Which is exactly what I remembered learning with the Obama campaign,” Kirschling says. ”It was uncomfortable at times to go into parts of the district that don’t necessarily agree with my opinion. But it allowed me the opportunity to stand on doorsteps or sometimes come into their house and have those conversations.” Aletheia Henry went on to run Obama’s successful reelection campaign in Pennsylvania. In 2016, she was an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign there, which was not so successful. ”I think these next few years are going to take a lot of conversation,” Henry says, recalling the motto of Obama’s 2008 campaign: ”Respect, Empower, Include.” ”I come from rural Ohio,” she says. ”I understand some of the frustrations that Trump supporters are feeling. We should talk with everybody about how we can work together to make our country a little bit better.” Many of those who worked to elect Obama years ago are disappointed with the man who will follow him to the White House. But they’re not giving up on the political process. Brian Kirschling says while it’s easy to be apathetic, the lesson he learned from the Obama campaign is that if you want to effect change, you have to be a part of it. ”I think it’s pretty cool that a guy who was a community organizer ended up energizing and empowering people across the country to get involved and do things that they might not have done before,” he says. Kirschling suspects he’s one of many people who were moved by Obama to try something different. Nathan Blake agrees. His social media feed is full of colleagues from the 2008 campaign who are still carrying on their mission  —   in politics, business, or   just as Obama predicted. ”It’s not surprising that that was inspiring to a lot of us and that we responded in a way that said, ’Yeah, this is something I want to do with my life.’ Figure out different ways, wherever I am, however I can do it, to continue being involved and live out this Obama legacy.” More than a library or foundation, Blake says, that’s this president’s lasting impact: an army of campaign veterans who continue to serve."
"Updated at 4:15 p. m. ET, Four people have been charged with hate crimes for allegedly carrying out an assault,   online, in which a man was tied up, hit and cut with a knife by several assailants. Authorities say the victim, who had been reported missing before the attack, has ”mental health challenges.” He was encountered by police on Tuesday evening and is recovering in the hospital. ”There was never a question whether or not this incident qualified to be investigated as a hate crime,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Thursday afternoon, citing the victim’s mental capacity, race and other factors. ”The actions in that video are reprehensible.” The Facebook Live stream showing the attack has been deleted. But multiple outlets have posted videos they identify as archives of the stream, recorded by a woman who frequently turns the camera on herself. The clips show multiple people taunting, threatening and hitting a man who is tied up in a corner. At least once, a man uses a knife to cut the victim’s hair, cutting into his scalp. On the video, the assailants, who are black, say ”F*** Donald Trump” and ”F*** white people.” They force the victim, who is white, to say ”F*** Donald Trump,” as well. The four people accused of the crime have each been charged with a hate crime, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office. Other charges include burglary, robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle. As for the remarks about   Donald Trump, police Cmdr. Kevin Duffin said at a news conference late Wednesday that investigators are working to determine whether the statements are ”sincere or just stupid ranting and raving.” Chicago police found the victim in distress on the street before they were aware of the existence of the Facebook live stream, authorities said at the news conference. The four suspects were arrested after police were called to a residence near where they’d found the man and then connected the incident and the location. The victim, a resident of a Chicago suburb, apparently spent at least 24 hours in the company of his alleged assailants  —   one of whom he knew from school, police say. He had been reported missing on Monday. Police say he traveled into the city with his acquaintance in a stolen van. A GoFundMe account for the victim has been set up a public relations representative for GoFundMe says the website will be working with the campaign organizer to ensure all money raised reaches the victim. At Wednesday’s news conference, Johnson highlighted the ”brazenness” of the assailants, for not just carrying out the attack but broadcasting it ”for all to see.” ”It’s sickening,” he said. ”It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that. I’ve been a cop for 28 years  —   I’ve seen things that you shouldn’t see in a lifetime  —   but it still amazes me how you still see things that you just shouldn’t [see].”"
"Fans are so geeked about Showtime’s coming revival of Twin Peaks that they turned a   promotional video into a viral hit.   David Lynch appears in a black suit and tie (seemingly reprising his role as FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole) wordlessly consuming a glazed doughnut while the show’s distinctive, mournful theme plays in the background. The video has drawn more than 500, 000 views. That blend of mystery and weirdness helped make Twin Peaks a hit back in 1990, and it’s made Showtime’s revival one of the most anticipated new TV shows of 2017  —   mostly because fans have no idea what the guy who made Eraserhead and Blue Velvet might do with the resources and creative freedom offered by a premium cable channel. Lynch was already an   director known for surreal, sometimes violent films when he and   Mark Frost developed Twin Peaks. (Frost was a writer on NBC’s pioneering cop drama Hill Street Blues, and had worked with Lynch on a movie about Marilyn Monroe that was never made.) Together, they cooked up a story about the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Wash. The FBI agent sent to investigate the case was Kyle MacLachlan’s Dale Cooper, a clean cut guy with an odd enthusiasm for trees, cherry pie and good coffee. Cooper constantly recorded detailed notes on just about everything for an unseen assistant named Diane. What followed was a series that redefined the boundaries of television. It mashed up genres, moving from a   murder mystery to a surreal, dreamlike supernatural story. It revealed the seedy, sometimes absurd underbelly of a placid, rural town long before Fargo would take that story to another level. And it sparked legions of fans obsessed with the show’s weird details, like the Log Lady, a woman who seemed to communicate with supernatural forces through a log she carried around. And now Lynch and Frost want to try it again. Showtime’s revival features MacLachlan and much of the series’ original cast, including Sherilyn Fenn, Ray Wise and David Duchovny. And yes, the Log Lady, aka Catherine E. Coulson, also appears on the cast list, though the actress died late last year. They’re joined by new names like Michael Cera, Amanda Seyfried, Trent Reznor and Naomi Watts. Lara Flynn Boyle, who played Laura Palmer’s best friend in the original series, isn’t on Showtime’s new cast list and neither is Heather Graham, who played Cooper’s love interest. In a press release, Showtime says Lynch will direct every episode of the new Twin Peaks, which picks up 25 years after Palmer was killed. One clue about the revival’s plot may come from Mark Frost’s new novel, The Secret History of Twin Peaks. The book depicts documents contained in a dossier with loads of information connected to Cooper’s investigation. Readers leafing through the pages see FBI memos, old photographs, newspaper clippings, fictional lost letters from legendary explorers Lewis and Clark, and much more, annotated with observations by a new agent attempting to determine who compiled all this stuff. Like Twin Peaks itself, the book creates an oddball world fans are encouraged to immerse themselves in. The mystery is mostly an excuse the savor the strange environment and its exquisitely crafted details. A look back at the old series (Amazon offers the program via streaming to Prime members and Showtime gave subscribers access on Dec. 26) reveals a lot that doesn’t hold up well. Twin Peaks is very clearly the bridge between the more workmanlike television shows of the 1970s and ’80s and the more filmic small screen work done today. Its nods to soap opera sometimes led to clunky scenes with awkward acting, and the show’s look wasn’t always as grand as its ambitions. Still, Twin Peaks is filled with iconic moments that continue to resonate with fans today, and it influenced shows as different as AMC’s The Killing and AE’s Bates Motel. The question now is: How will Lynch and Frost surprise fans with a new story at a time when so much of today’s high quality television already feels like a distant homage to Twin Peaks?"
"Dorlyn Catron’s cane is making its radio debut today  —   its name is Pete. (”He’s important to my life. He ought to have a name,” she says.) Catron is participating in one of the America InSight tours at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D. C. The museum offers    tours, led by specially trained docents, to blind and visually impaired visitors. Docent Betsy Hennigan stops the group of nine visitors in front of Girl Skating, a small bronze sculpture from 1907 by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle. The   girl is full of joy. The visitors  —   of varied ages, races and backgrounds  —   stand close together, hands on top of their long canes, facing Hennigan as she describes the artwork: The little girl careens forward, arms outstretched, her hair and her dress flow behind her. Carol Wilson trains the 12 volunteer docents. ”Sight isn’t the only pathway to understand art,” she says. Wilson suggests the docents invite visitors to imitate the pose of a sculpture and use other senses in their verbal descriptions. ”There’s a red in one of the paintings and I’ve said it’s like biting into a strawberry,” says docent Phoebe Kline. William Johnson’s painting Café depicts a man and a woman sitting    having a drink in a jazz cafe. ”There’s no way you can see music in this piece,” says Hennigan, ”but I ask them to imagine hearing jazz. . .. Can you smell cigarettes? Can you smell the alcohol?” Docent Edmund Bonder uses real music to help bring to life a painting of a young woman at a piano. He describes her fingers on the upper right part of the keyboard, and then plays some classical piano music on his smartphone right in the middle of the gallery. No one shushes him. ”I check with security personnel beforehand and let them know this is what’s going to happen,” Bonder says with a laugh. Sometimes   and blind visitors can actually touch the art  —   in   gloves. Kline learned something herself, when a   felt Hugo Robus’ sculpture Water Carrier. ”She ran her hands down the body of this female figure, and her first remark was: Oh, she’s pregnant,” Kline recalls. ”And I had never thought about that. But in fact, the figure does look like a pregnant woman. Here was a kid really showing me something that I had been looking at for 35 years, probably, and had never noticed.” The visitors move slowly through the museum, some ”seeing” in their imaginations, others, with low vision, getting really close to the artwork to see it better with magnifying devices. The docents take questions about the art and the artists. Visitor Kilof Legge listens intently. He’s taken lots of these tours. He has had macular degeneration since childhood and has deeply missed art. ”For the longest time I really felt angry when I came into a museum,” he says. ”And hurt and insulted, almost. Because these are public places and I felt I was denied access.” He says he is ”grateful and excited” to have the art world opened back up to him through tours like these. This was visitor Cheryl Young’s second American InSight tour. She was born sighted, so she has color memory. ”This experience . .. brought back another piece of my life that I haven’t been able to explore since my vision loss,” she says. Twice a month, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum helps blind and   visitors to see art in their minds’ eyes  —   and demonstrate that there are many ways to experience a work of art."
"It’s Monday, 8 a. m. and these teens have already mucked stalls in the barn and fed the goats, alpacas and miniature cows. They’ve rounded up eggs in the henhouse, harvested cabbages and a few   tomatoes, and arranged them in tidy tiers to sell in the Agriculture Store. Now they’re ready to put in a full day of classes. These are the Aggies. They’re the first kids to arrive at John Bowne High School in Flushing, Queens, in the morning, and the last to leave on the New York City buses and subways that shuttle them home in the evening. Some 600 of the city’s public school students are enrolled in Bowne’s specialized,   agriculture program. Like most of their schoolmates, the Aggies follow an ordinary curriculum of English, math and social studies. But they also learn the building blocks of diverse careers in the booming industry of agriculture, which sees almost 60, 000 new jobs open up in the U. S. every year, according to the USDA. The Aggies grow crops, care for livestock and learn the rudiments of floriculture, viticulture, aquaculture, biotechnology and entrepreneurship. While high schools in rural farming areas have long prepared students for these sorts of jobs, they can’t come close to meeting the demand. So some urban public high schools are stepping in to fill the void. Since 2007, students at the Food and Finance High School in midtown Manhattan have grown tilapia and lettuces in interconnected,   labs built by a Cornell University agriculturist. The city’s Harbor School on Governors Island has so far graduated three classes of aquaculture students, who have hatched trout and worked on oyster farms that supply restaurants. Bowne’s program is much older  —   it harks back to World War I, when city boys were recruited to fill in for upstate farmers serving overseas. Today, it attracts a diverse array of students, including many girls. Many are low income some have parents who hail from Central America and the Caribbean, where more than a few once grew their own subsistence crops. ”We’re trying to give these kids as many career opportunities as possible,” says Steve Perry, who has headed Bowne’s program for 20 years, and also graduated from it. ”But for a lot of them, we’re also home base.” Forty percent of Aggies go on to   programs at colleges like SUNY Cobleskill and Cornell, studying everything from animal sciences to food safety and farm management. ”It’s so annoying that everyone thinks we’re just farmers,” says Aggie senior Erika Jerez with a roll of her eyes. She’s sporting a sweatshirt from Rutgers University, where she hopes to study food processing next fall. ”But there’s so much more to ag than farming.” Fellow Aggie senior Jailene Cajilina says her parents farmed a piece of land back in Ecuador. Despite that, she admits that before starting at Bowne, she had a poor idea of how food was grown. ”Being in a city, you lose touch that someone out there is breaking their back growing these plants, having to slug it out with animals and the weather,” she says. Cajilina spent four years doing everything from weeding broccoli beds to interning at an upstate organic dairy, gaining firsthand knowledge of the physical and financial struggles of farmers. That’s not a life she’s eager to replicate. Instead, she plans to become a   veterinarian. ”A lot of these kids are focused on supporting their families,” explains Rebecca Cossa, a Bowne plant science teacher. And with so many farms starting up within city limits, she sees potential for future generations of Aggies to find   careers close to home. There’s also demand for ag teachers. The New York State Education Department got requests to help set up 65   programs statewide last year, some of which require certified ag teachers. It’s a number administrators expect to keep growing over the next decade. Natalie Arroyo already knows that education is the direction she’ll be heading when she graduates from Bowne this June. After an internship last summer in which she taught children about animals at a Fresh Air Fund camp, she says, ”To see someone who wants to learn what you know, and choose their career based on something you taught them, that’s really inspiring.” Says Mayorga, ”The kids in the STEM program at Bowne know about science and technology.” But the Aggies, she says, can grow their own food. ”That’s right,” says fellow Aggie Dayana Panora. ”The Aggies are ready for the zombie apocalypse!” Lela Nargi is a   journalist and cookbook author. Her writing has appeared in publications including Gastronomica, Civil Eats and Roads  Kingdoms."
"The Shins are back with the group’s first new album since 2012’s Port Of Morrow. Heartworms is set to drop on March 10 on Aural   Records. In making the announcement today, the band shared the joyfully infectious pop cut ”Name For You” and a lyric video. Frontman James Mercer produced Heartworms on his own, a first since The Shins’ 2001 debut album, Oh, Inverted World. He says the new music was inspired, in part, by growing older and parenthood. ”Name For You” is a hopeful ode of empowerment to Mercer’s daughters. ”Given all the drops in the ocean, better take it one sip at a time,” Mercer sings. ”Somebody with an antique notion comes along to tighten the line, they’re just afraid of you speaking your mind.” This is the second song the band has shared from Heartworms. In October, The Shins released a   video for the song ”Dead Alive.” Full track listing for Heartworms:"
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Natalie Hemby’s debut album starts out very country, risking corniness from the  . Southern gospel harmonies float over a   beat as Hemby, one of Nashville’s premier songwriters, sings of   traditions  —   picket fences, alma maters, ”the roots of my inheritance.” She’s waxing poetic about Puxico, Missouri, population 881, where the Nashville native spent summers fishing with her grandpa and attending its annual Homecoming festival. In 2011, Hemby began work on a documentary about Puxico that lovingly captures the town’s deep communal roots within an American moment when the rural is both overlooked and stigmatized. Celebrating small towns is a country staple. But Puxico the album, like the documentary in which its songs first appeared, doesn’t settle into clichés. Instead, Hemby and her producer (and husband) Mike Wrucke explore both the   missions of memory and its tendency to slip into fiction: its comforting haziness coming into focus when we need it as a balm for longing or a way of coping with the new. The songs on Puxico both enact and examine memory. Some place the listener in the middle of a flashback: ”Lovers On Display” captures the thrill of young love declaring itself ”Worn” considers the material things that represent   love ”Ferris Wheel” savors an annual ritual that becomes a metaphor for embracing change. In the subtly dynamic ”I’ll Remember How You Loved Me,” Hemby muses upon the specifics that slip from her mental grasp and the affinities that remain deep in her neural net. ”The feeling hangs around in the wall of your mind, like a secret that I keep in a box under the bed,” she observes. Our recollections are shadow forces that we treasure and sometimes hide. As important as Hemby’s insightful, evocative lyrics  —   the songs were   with several of her Nashville   friends, notably Trent Dabbs  —   is the sound of Puxico, which defies country classification in ways similar to the artists for whom Hemby often writes hits, like Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town. Wrucke, who’s produced albums for Nashville auteurs including Lambert and David Nail, places Hemby’s delicate voice  —   the calm intonation of a trusted friend  —   within airy arrangements whose sonic reference points are both subtle and varied. Greg Leisz, a national treasure on pedal steel, threads his instrument through these tracks like the voice of Hemby’s subconscious. Alison Krauss is an obvious touchstone for Hemby and Wrucke, but they also stretch toward   sources like Sheryl Crow or the U2 of No Line On The Horizon. Plenty of musical country keepsakes are displayed here, too, from the fingerpicking in ”Cairo, IL” to the nod in ”Grand Restoration” to ”Will The Circle Be Unbroken.” Hemby wants to celebrate those circles that make up most of our lives, away from our family legacies and back toward them. Puxico is a labor of love that’s also a deeply insightful compendium of the stories we tell ourselves in order to preserve it."
"Ford Motor Co. ’s decision this week to cancel construction of an auto plant in Mexico has shocked that country, causing the peso to slump and stirring up outrage toward   Donald Trump. Anger is high toward the incoming U. S. president in the state where the Ford plant was under construction  —   and was slated to employ nearly 3, 000 local workers. Usually the dusty construction site of the   Mexican Ford auto plant is full of activity. Now only one large tractor can be seen grading roads at the   site, located outside the small town of Villa de Reyes in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi. Guards at the site’s entrance say the mood is very tense and that the situation is deeply discouraging. ”We all thought this was a   project,” says Juan Gonzalez, who had hoped to stay on when the Ford plant opened in three years. Gustavo Puente Orozco, San Luis Potosi’s secretary of economic development, says the news, while not totally unexpected, came as a shock. Donald Trump began putting a lot of pressure on Ford to pull out of Mexico during the campaign, but Puente says Ford officials in Mexico kept assuring him the project was moving forward, and he says construction kept going. Ford says market forces prompted it to cancel the Mexico plant  —   small cars, like the Ford Focus that was to be built there, just haven’t been selling well, especially with low gas prices. The scrapped project adds to a rough start to 2017 for Mexicans. Gas prices in the country spiked by as much as 20 percent in some parts of the country on Jan. 1, when the government lifted   subsidies. The peso dropped nearly a full percentage point on the Ford news, and there are fears that inflation is going to rise above 4 percent this year. Protests have broken out every day since the gas prices spiked, with demonstrators blocking major highways and thoroughfares in states throughout the country. Near the scuttled Ford plant in the nearby town of Villa De Reyes, residents are directing most of their anger about Mexico’s woes at the American  . As music blares from a food stall in the town’s small outdoor market, housewife Maria de Jesus Ramirez Martinez gets visibly angry when asked about the Ford plant closure. ”Trump is blaming us Mexicans for everything . .. and it’s not right . .. it’s just not right,” she says. Ramirez says the town was counting on those jobs and that without them, more Mexicans will head north to the United States to find work. San Luis Potosi has been a bright spot in Mexico’s otherwise sluggish economy with so many international companies here, unemployment is officially below 3 percent, and the region has been growing at twice the pace of the country as a whole. On Villa de Reyes’ small town plaza, Salvador Guerra, now retired, says he doesn’t want to see the state’s gains be undermined by Trump, who’s not even president yet. ”Imagine what he’s going to do to us once he takes power,” says Guerra. And Guerra says he’s just as mad at Mexico’s leaders, who he says haven’t done enough to stand up to Trump. On Wednesday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced a shakeup in his Cabinet, appointing a former finance adviser as the new foreign minister, who Pena Nieto says will push for a more constructive relationship. ”It should be a relationship that allows us to strengthen bilateral ties,” says Pena Nieto. And, he adds, one that doesn’t undermine the sovereignty or the dignity of Mexicans."
"When Donald Trump takes to Twitter, some companies shudder. This week, Ford Motor Co. said it would scrap a $1. 6 billion plant in Mexico in favor of expanding an existing one in Michigan. That happened on the same day the   tweeted criticism of General Motors for manufacturing its Chevy Cruze vehicles in Mexico. GM says only a small number of the cars produced in Mexico are sold in the U. S. but that’s a detail that may not register with the public. Economist Barry Bosworth of the Brookings Institution says of companies that produce consumer goods: ”They can’t afford bad publicity.” Bosworth notes that so far Trump’s targets are companies that are expanding or planning to build operations in Mexico. He has not singled out U. S. companies that built plants there long ago. ”He focuses in on these individual cases,” says Bosworth, ”but there doesn’t seem to be a rule.” In November, under pressure from Trump, heating and cooling firm Carrier Corp. a subsidiary of United Technologies, said it would keep hundreds of jobs in Indiana instead of moving them to a plant in Mexico. Who might be next? Bosworth says the Trump Twitter spotlight is shining the most on big companies with   household brands. Automakers are especially at risk because of the sector’s high volume of   trade, and because it is so vulnerable to consumer opinion. Bosworth says going after a maker of obscure chemicals or a small firm that makes car components doesn’t produce great headlines, nor does it move public sentiment. Trump’s focus is on finished products. ”If they’re not assembled, they can’t be identified in the terms of a specific model of a General Motors car,” Bosworth says. ”It doesn’t have the same public appeal.” Trump has talked tough on China trade as well, but Bosworth notes he has not gone after individual companies  —   Apple, for example, and its huge iPhone assembly operations there. China’s economy is almost as big as the U. S.’s, and it has the power to inflict lots of pain on U. S. companies, like Boeing  —   so interfering there could backfire for American workers. Bosworth says picking on Mexico is like fighting the weak kid on the playground: It’s less likely to elicit a retaliatory response. U. S. companies are the biggest foreign investors in Mexico, and U. S.  trade is worth about half a trillion dollars annually. ”It’s a much weaker economy,” Bosworth notes, ”much fewer options available to them.” Economist Derek Scissors at the American Enterprise Institute says retailers, banks and other service providers aren’t likely to be targeted. And, he says, he hopes the singling out of individual companies will stop once Trump takes office. ”When you’re president, you shouldn’t be bothering one company. You should be changing policies such as corporate taxes, to change the whole landscape,” Scissors argues. ”Getting down into the details can’t be done by Twitter.” He acknowledges that tweeting about trade does accomplish a few things. First, it appeals to Trump’s base. ”Probably the reason that he won the election is the effort to   manufacturing,” he says, ”not to accept it as inevitable that manufacturing will head overseas.” The tweets also telegraph a message, he says, not just to the specific companies Trump has targeted, but also to firms in other industries which might be thinking about expanding elsewhere besides Mexico. ”It’s not going to stop at very   manufacturers that consumers know about,” Scissors says. ”It will continue. He’s just sending the signal now to everyone, ’This is your chance to make an adjustment.’ ”"
"Wyoming has become a flash point in the debate over whether hundreds of millions of acres of federal public lands should be turned over to state hands. From Buzz Hettick’s place on the edge of the windswept college town of Laramie, it’s a short drive into the heart of these remote lands, vast tracts run by the federal Bureau of Land Management. On a recent, blustery morning, Hettick was scouting out an elk hunt in the Laramie range, a patchwork of private and public BLM land north of his home. ”A lot of wildlife uses public lands,” he says. So do big game hunters like Hettick. Hunting is big business in the rural West and Wyoming is no exception. A recent study estimated it brings in roughly $25 million into Albany County’s economy alone. Hettick is eager to show off this land  —   and talk about protecting access to it  —   to anyone who will make the trip. ”I just don’t see how people can look at this out here . .. and all they see is a dollar sign attached to it there’s a lot more than that,” Hettick says. When it comes to politics, those dollar signs and federal lands are inextricably linked in the West. There’s always pressure to lease more land to private producers of oil, gas, coal and, lately, wind. But avid sportsmen like Hettick, who lobbies for the national group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, now see a new threat. ”Anytime there’s even a whisper of anybody that wants to transfer federal lands to the states, you’re going to raise the ire and the hackles of the outdoor community . .. in particular hunters and fisherman,” Hettick says. This time it’s more than just a whisper. At their party’s 2016 convention in Cleveland last summer, Republicans included a provision in the RNC platform calling for the transfer of ownership of federal land to states. One of the biggest questions surrounding this is whether a rural state like Wyoming with a small budget can really afford to manage all this land. Groups like BHA worry the   states would be forced to sell it, which could endanger access to hunters or anyone else who likes to enjoy U. S. public lands. It’s not yet clear whether   Donald Trump endorses the idea. But his son, Donald Trump Jr. is an avid hunter and member of Hettick’s group. The younger Trump is said to have been influential in his father’s pick of Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who opposes the transfer, to be interior secretary. Nevertheless, Hettick isn’t hedging any bets. He says sportsmen are on offense. ”It’s the biggest battle that sportsmen are going to have to face in my lifetime,” he says. In Wyoming, that battle is starting in the legislature. Lawmakers are considering a proposed constitutional amendment that would lay the groundwork for Wyoming to own and manage federal public land by 2019, should the   Congress move ahead with the transfer. Hettick mobilized sportsmen from around the state to brave snowy roads and travel to the capital, Cheyenne, for a recent hearing. Clad in camouflage, they wore ”keep public lands public” stickers and lined up to testify against the proposed amendment. Cheers and woops erupted when one hunter at the hearing advised the committee that they didn’t support any of the bill’s language, ”because we don’t support the amendment.” Neither does Wyoming’s Republican Governor Matt Mead. In an interview with the Casper   recently, Mead questioned the legality of transferring federal lands in the first place. He also wondered how his state would pay for things like battling wildfires, a bill that’s usually picked up by the federal government. State Sen. Larry Hicks, who’s pushing the amendment, says he’s done the math. He says an   state like Wyoming can afford to take over the land because of the increased tax revenues the state will be able to reap from it. ”We run about a $3 billion budget and we’re sending a billion dollars of federal minerals back to Washington, D. C.,” Hicks says. ”That’s a 25 percent increase in our state revenues right off the bat.” His math may not take into account the booms and busts of natural resource prices. But for Hicks, this is about a lot more than economics. It’s a cultural battle. He says rural communities that depend on mining, logging and drilling on federal lands are suffering. ”A lot of people just feel like they have no more voice,” he says. People are moving out and schools are shutting down. Hicks says the federal government is too restrictive. ”It’s detrimental,” he says. ”There are multiple generations of families and they feel like that their heritage and their lifestyle has been stolen from them.” Republican or Democrat, bashing the federal government is popular political sport in Wyoming. And like any relationship, Wyoming’s relationship with Washington, D. C. is complicated. In quite a few small towns here, the federal government is the largest employer. And the state depends heavily on federal dollars for everything from highways to health care to education. A report commissioned by the legislature’s own committee considering the constitutional amendment noted that if the transfer goes forward, the state would automatically lose close to $30 million in federal dollars earmarked for infrastructure in counties that have large amounts of   federal public land. ”I see very little evidence that there’s a groundswell of support for it in the state of Wyoming,” says Greg Cawley, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming. Cawley has studied   government movements in the West, dating back to the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s. ”Every time the federal government does something that irritates Western ranchers, miners, what have you, this issue of transfer of the lands to the states is brought up again, dusted off and put forward,” he says. But there’s one big thing that makes this time around a little different, according to Cawley: the unpredictable political mood in the country right now. For a lot of Westerners, that hit home a few days before the election when a jury acquitted militia leader Ammon Bundy and his followers who led an armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. The Bundys said they were protesting federal ownership of public land. ”What we used to call, maybe five or six years ago, the fringe right . .. they’re starting to become more mainstream now,” says Buzz Hettick of BHA. ”That’s why we have to really ramp up the pressure we put on our politicians.” Hettick pledges that sportsmen will pressure Washington in even bigger numbers if the federal lands transfer proposal moves forward in Congress. But today, out in the Laramie range, he’s focused on a smaller quest. He’s hopped out of his pickup and set up his scoping lens on a tripod. ”If you look over at the top of this hill right over here . .. looks to be at least eight or 10 elk right there,” he says, his jaw a little clenched from the cold wind. The trip out here can be notched as a success. There are elk in these hills, maybe he’ll bag one just yet this season."
"”Free” is a word with a powerful appeal. And in the past year or so it has been tossed around a lot, followed by another word: ”college.” Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spent a lot of time talking about free tuition. And this week, the promise has been taken up by one of the largest public university systems in the country: New York state’s. Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled a proposal that would offer free tuition at   colleges for students from families earning less than $125, 000 a year. Called the Excelsior Scholarship, his plan  —   which needs approval by the Legislature  —   would grant full rides to qualifying students as long as they attend one of the state’s public   or   colleges. Cuomo’s proposal, in the lexicon of ” ” policymaking, is what’s called a ”last dollar” program. As NPR Ed explained this summer, that means students who are already eligible for federal Pell Grants must use them to pay for school. After that money is gone, the state pledges to fill in the gap. This method is the cheapest for the state, since students can draw on federal money first before taking state aid. With this type of plan, a larger share of funds from the new program is likely to go mainly to families who are relatively well off. As Robert Kelchen, a higher education scholar at Seton Hall University, explains on his blog: The benefits of the program would go to two groups of students. The first group is fairly obvious:   and    families. In New York, $125, 000 falls at roughly the 80th percentile of family income  —   an income level where families may not be able to pay tuition without borrowing, but college enrollment rates are quite high. The other group that may benefit, says Kelchen, are   students who are enticed by the clarity of the promise of ”free.” But New York’s proposal, like others, is likely to be controversial. In reality there’s no free college, just as there’s no free lunch. The real policy discussion is about how to best distribute the burden of paying for it  —   between individual families and the public at large  —   and, secondly, how to hold down the cost of providing it. All while leveraging the power of ”free” responsibly. Fueling a bubble, For many conservatives, the answer is simple. An education makes individuals richer, and individuals should bear the cost. ”The state should not subsidize intellectual curiosity,” said Ronald Reagan, back when he was running for governor of California. In recent times, the conservative position is perhaps best expressed by economist Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. In his books, articles and public appearances, Vedder argues that federal student aid is creating a bubble that allows colleges to raise prices indefinitely, and the only way to stop the cycle is to cut off public funding. Kevin Carey, now the director of the higher education policy program at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, made pretty much the same argument in the New Republic in 2012. He compared public universities to apple vendors: You, the apple vendor, look at the situation and say, ”Hey, the market price of an apple is still $1. Wouldn’t it be great if I could charge $1 for apples, but still get 40 cents from the government for every apple I sell?” . .. So you start raising prices by 3, 4, or 5 percent above inflation annually. In a world with no public subsidy at all for education, the only option left for free tuition would be something like the Starbucks plan  —   large corporations or wealthy donors footing the bill. And that kind of ”free” comes, generally, with a significant catch  —   like requiring students to work for a certain employer. The public piggy bank, At the other end of the political spectrum are those who see a large public obligation to pay for the education of citizens, to promote democracy, meritocracy and equal rights, among other things. They just can’t agree on how. Once upon a time, public university in this country actually was free, for the most part. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, from New York to California, states opted to charge no tuition or nominal fees. Here’s the catch. Until World War II, college was also pretty sparsely attended. In 1940, only about 5 percent of the population, most of them white men, had a bachelor’s degree. And the U. S. was the most educated nation in the world! The small numbers made tuition relatively cheap to subsidize. But starting with the GI Bill, the United States moved to a new model of ”mass” higher education. The expansion continued through the 1960s, with the Higher Education Act of 1965 establishing federal   programs. Suddenly, most high school graduates  —   men, women, black, white, new immigrants  —   aspired to a college degree. In defiance of the laws of economics, as the supply of college graduates went up, so did the demand for them, year after year. A college degree pretty much always meant you made more money. Graduates also paid more taxes, so the government got its money back in the long term  —   $6 for every dollar spent on the GI Bill, by some estimates. No such thing  Starting in the 1970s, there was a backlash to all this free money. In the economic slump, federal and state subsidies to higher education tightened. Enrollments declined. Loans, which were cheaper for the government, began to replace grants. Public universities responded to the decreased state subsidies by raising tuition. They responded to the increased availability of loan financing by raising tuition. They responded to the continued robust demand for higher education by raising tuition. They responded to the pressure to expand, adding new programs and majors and building bigger campuses, by raising tuition. Since 1978, public university tuition has climbed every single year, two or three times faster than inflation. Average student loan debt for a bachelor’s degree: $29, 400. Sara   of Temple University sums up the results of all this in a paper she wrote for the Lumina Foundation: Talented students are forgoing college because of the costs, students who start college are unable to complete because they cannot afford to continue, and even students who finish degrees may not realize all of the expected returns because of sizable debt burdens. The United States is no longer the most educated nation in the world  —   it’s the 12th. Most of the countries ahead of it have   public university options than the U. S. Perhaps most damning, the high cost of college in this country helps ensure that in too many cases, wealth trumps merit. The success rate in college for the   but   students is slightly better than the success rate for the     students. Found money,    college costs are hurting the most vulnerable. There are many different efforts to pacify the giant octopus. The new proposals bank on the fact that the federal government already spends lots of money on student aid: $47 billion in grants a year, $101 billion in loans (which are repaid) and another $20 billion in tax credits. The total of state, federal and private money going to defray the cost of tuition  —   that’s distinct from state appropriations directly to institutions  —   is $247 billion per year. Seems like with that kind of dough, there ought to be ways of buying better access and more equity. There’s substantial evidence that   students are less likely to even aspire to college because they think it’s too expensive. It affects things like their choice of math classes as early as sixth grade. That’s why so many of these programs have the word ”promise” or ”hope” in the name. The   bureaucracy is complicated to navigate. ”Free college” is a promise everyone can understand. Redeeming America’s Promise calls for offering a full scholarship to a public   or   college to every academically qualified student from families making no more than $160, 000 a year. Part of the money, they say, could come from Pell Grants and tax credits, which would no longer be needed. (This math has been challenged).   a scholar who studies access to higher education, argued in her paper last year for the Lumina Foundation that the federal   budget would and should go to pay for two years of universal free public college for all comers, including books, supplies, even a living stipend for those who need it. The fine print, Unfortunately, most attempts to defray the cost of college come with unintended consequences. For a good example, look no further than Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship. This statewide program, dating from 1993, offers high school graduates who meet certain requirements scholarships at a state university. At one time, about a dozen states had created similar models. According to this early look at the impact of the HOPE program, by Susan Dynarski for the National Bureau of Economic Research, ”Georgia’s program has likely increased the college attendance rate of all   to    by 7. 0 to 7. 9 percentage points.” Not too shabby. However, ”the evidence suggests that Georgia’s program has widened the gap in college attendance between blacks and whites and between those from   and   families.” Wait a minute. So a free tuition plan, instead of helping   and minority students, actually left them further behind? Yes, and that result has been seen in other states. It happens because these state programs require certain high school GPAs and test scores, and require that students maintain a certain GPA in college. And proportionately more   white kids meet those bars. Nothing left to lose, Most of the conversations about free college, as we’ve seen, are really about moving around piles of government money and other funds. Some folks are starting to talk about whether we can meaningfully lower the cost of delivering a college education, instead of or in addition to paying for it differently. Most of those conversations have something to do with technology. Some thought Massive Open Online Courses would be the Holy Grail: free,   college for everyone! But in that case, ”free” led to lower commitment. Completion rates for MOOCs hover around 5 to 7 percent. Blended programs, which are   and combine online learning with assistance from real people by phone or in person, seem to be able to hold down costs and get good results at the same time. Like Western Governors University, a nonprofit whose   program was the National Council of Teacher Quality’s   program in the country in 2014. It manages to charge less than the average public university without taking any public subsidy. The unique thing about education, and what makes it so hard to control the price, is that it’s not just a service or a good. It’s a process, and the learner takes an active role in creating its value. A college education may never be free, but for many people it will remain priceless. A version of this story was published on NPR Ed in June 2014."
"Updated 5:30 p. m. ET, The intelligence report on Russia’s interference in the U. S. elections concludes that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered an ”influence campaign” that aimed to help   Donald Trump. ”Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” the public version of the report from the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency states. ”We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for   Trump.” This is the first time the U. S. government has leveled these accusations directly at Putin, as NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly reports. ”It’s obviously a big deal to level that kind of charge at the head of state of a foreign country,” she says. The report does not weigh in on whether this ”influence campaign” changed the outcome of the U. S. election. Here are some of the report’s key findings: You can read the public version of the report here: On Oct. 7, the U. S. first formally accused Russia of hacking the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other U. S. political organizations. ”We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s   officials could have authorized these activities,” the joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Since then, intelligence officials have doubled down and expanded upon the accusations. ”We stand more resolutely on that statement,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, as NPR’s Brian Naylor reported. In December, the FBI threw its weight behind the CIA’s assessment, as NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported: ”The entire intelligence community, in fact, is now in alignment that the hacks were partly motivated to try and install Trump as president.”   Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed the assessment. Earlier Friday afternoon, he received a briefing on the intelligence report from Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey at Trump Tower in New York. In a statement, Trump called the meeting ”constructive” and added that he has ”tremendous respect” for the work of the intelligence community. He did not specifically blame Russia, saying it was one of a number of countries including China that are ”consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our government institutions, businesses and organizations.” Trump also stated that the hacks had ”absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.” Remember, the report specifically states that it did not ”make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.” It did say that the Department of Homeland Security ”assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.” Prior to today’s briefing, Trump told The New York Times he believes the continued attention on the cyberattacks is politically motivated. ”They got beaten very badly in the election. I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan,” Trump told the Times. ”They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it’s a witch hunt. They just focus on this.” The White House announced sanctions against Russia last month in response to the cyberattacks."
"Updated at 3:31 p. m. ET after briefing, After casting doubt on the legitimacy of U. S. intelligence (even referring to it as ”intelligence”)   Donald Trump was briefed Friday by the nation’s top intelligence officials on their investigation into Russia’s hacking attempts and interference in the U. S. presidential election. Director of National Security James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey briefed the   on their findings at Trump Tower early Friday afternoon. In a statement after the meeting, Trump called it a ”constructive” meeting, but none of it seemed to convince him that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s and Clinton campaign officials’ emails and broader attempts to try to influence the election. Instead, he noted ”Russia, China” and ”other countries” are ”consistently” trying to hack into U. S. installations. And he made sure to get in this point: ”There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.” Trump and his team continue to express doubts over accepting even the basic premise that Russia is responsible for the hacks and seem focused on the politics of opponents’ motivations. Earlier Friday, Trump dismissed the focus on Russian hacking as a ”political witch hunt.” ”China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Times. ”How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt.” Trump was talking about a breach of Office of Personnel Management computers two to three yeas ago. Other federal agencies and government outlets have been compromised as well  —   and those were reported on. But none of those events saw emails leaked publicly by a foreign adversary with the intent to influence an election. Trump and his team continue to defensively rail against the ”mainstream media,” seemingly believing that the real goal is to delegitimize Trump’s win. Trump is going to be the next president. He won. But national security is bigger than politics. Trump has expressed his anger on Twitter that a part of the report was leaked to The Washington Post and NBC News on Thursday night, including that U. S. intelligence ”picked up senior Russian officials” celebrating Trump’s win on election night, and that the U. S. has identified the Russians who provided the stolen Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, which published them. Trump tweeted that he is asking House and Senate committees to investigate the leak. Seventeen American agencies agree that Russia is responsible for hacking DNC and Clinton campaign official emails and leaking them to WikiLeaks. NPR has also confirmed that intelligence officials agree that Russia was doing so in an effort to undermine American democracy and with the hope that their efforts would elect Trump  —   though they didn’t expect it would actually happen. The intelligence report, which was presented to President Obama on Thursday, is expected to show the extent of Russia’s attempts to influence the election’s outcome. At a Senate hearing Thursday, Clapper said that hacking the committee’s computers and campaign chief John Podesta’s emails was just part of the Russian campaign, saying, ”It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news.” Trump, who has been skeptical of reports of Russian involvement in the election, questioned how NBC got ”an exclusive look into the top secret report he [Obama] was presented.” Appearing on CBS This Morning, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway called it ”disappointing” that there were leaks of the report to the media before ”we actually have a report on the alleged hacking.” Conway also asserted that ”people want a lot of America to see, to believe that Russian hacking influenced the election.” On CNN, Conway continued to express doubt about the evidence, even contending that ”the idea that somehow conclusive evidence has been out there in the public domain, provided to the   is  —   is simply not true.” That ignores the fact that Trump has been declining daily intelligence briefings and is one of two people, President Obama being the other, who could ask to see all of the evidence. The 17 agencies stated unequivocally Oct. 7, two months ago, that Russia was behind the hacks  —   and that the move was ordered by the highest levels of the Russian government. Conway also insistently contended, despite the findings of the intelligence community and without having seen the evidence, that Russia didn’t want Trump elected. ”The Russians didn’t want him elected,” she boasted in that same CNN interview. ”You know why? Because he has said very clearly during the campaign and now as   that he is going to modernize our nuclear capability, that he’s going to call for an increase in defense budget, that he’s going to have oil and gas exploration, all of which goes against Russia’s economic and military interests.” So what’s really going on here? It appears what’s getting under the skin of Trump and his officials is their view that the real implication with all this is to imply, if not say outright, that Russia handed Trump the election, thereby delegitimizing his presidency. ”They got beaten very badly in the election,” Trump told the Times. ”I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan. They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it’s a witch hunt. They just focus on this.” Conway contended Friday morning in that CNN interview that ”people are conflating alleged Russian hacking with the actual outcome of the election. It’s just nonsense.” Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer echoed that frustration on Fox this past weekend, when he said there was ”zero evidence” that Russia influenced the outcome of the election. ”The way the mainstream media is playing it up is that [Russia] had an influence on the election,” Spicer said. ”There is zero evidence that they actually influenced the election.” Whether the leaked emails actually mathematically helped Trump is likely immeasurable, but that is beside the point. Trump has refused to acknowledge Russia’s role. Instead, he has consistently, over several months, in fact, cast doubt that it was Russia at all, blaming it on a   man possibly in New Jersey, or maybe it was China or maybe no one understands ”the computers” at all. ”I think we oughta get on with our lives,” Trump said. But what Trump, as the future president, seems to have trouble accepting is that this is a national security issue, not a political one. Instead, the Trump team continues to focus, be driven by and be defensive about the politics. Trump’s team seems incapable of compartmentalizing and messaging on this basic point: that accepting the premise that Russia is responsible is not the same as saying it handed Trump the presidency. Maybe Trump began some acceptance of this Friday. He also told the Times, ”With all that being said, I don’t want countries to be hacking our country.” Trump said he had ”tremendous respect” for the intelligence community, but right now, the country is in a very strange position of having an incoming American president who, it seems, would rather believe adversaries over American intelligence when it contradicts his predisposed world view  —   or is in line with his domestic political opponents."
"Updated at 8:00 p. m. ET Saturday, The U. S. Attorney has charged Esteban Santiago, the man in custody for carrying out the deadly shooting at Fort   International Airport in Florida on Friday afternoon. At least five people were killed and six others were injured in the shooting, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. The suspect, Esteban Santiago, had been taken into custody ”without incident” by a sheriff’s deputy immediately after the shooting, Sheriff Scott Israel said at a news conference. Israel had said earlier in the day that ”at this point it looks like he acted alone.” The charges issued include: ”Performing an act of violence against a person at an airport,” ”using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence” and ”causing the death of a person through the use of a firearm in the course of a violation.” The maximum penalty carried with these charges is a possible death sentence. Santiago will have his initial appearance Monday at 11:00 a. m. before United States Magistrate Judge Alicia O. Valle in Fort Lauderdale. Authorities said Santiago took flights from Alaska to Minnesota, finally landing in Fort Lauderdale, where he took a firearm out of his checked baggage and ”began indiscriminately shooting,” as Israel put it. Santiago was interviewed extensively by FBI and Broward County sheriff’s office officials, Sheriff Israel said. George Piro, special agent in charge of the Miami field office, said at the news conference that it was too soon to say what the motive behind the attack was. ”We’re not ruling out anything, including the terrorism angle,” he said, adding that it was ”too early to truly know why he came to Florida.” Piro confirmed reports that Santiago, 26, had voluntarily gone to the FBI office in Anchorage in November and spoken with agents. News reports have said the suspect complained that an outside force was controlling his mind. Piro noted that the suspect stated that he didn’t intend to harm anyone. ”We looked at his contacts,” said Piro, ”did interagency checks and closed our assessment.” He says the agents turned Santiago over to local police, who took him for a mental health evaluation. NPR has not confirmed any details of the suspect’s mental health issues. Piro didn’t confirm news reports that Santiago was involved in a fight before the shootings. ”I’m not aware of an incident on the flight or at baggage claim,” he said. Sheriff Scott Israel described the weapon used in the attack as a   handgun and said it was too early in the investigation to say how many rounds were fired. The sheriff said the attacker didn’t make any statements while shooting. In addition to the victims who were killed or wounded by bullets, Israel said, some 30 to 40 people were taken to hospitals with other injuries. The airport aviation director, Mark Gale, estimated that authorities will have helped about 10, 000 people with transportation, food and lodging because of the incident. Police Chief Jesse Davis of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport says Santiago departed the Alaska facility on a Delta flight, having left a firearm in his checked baggage, as required. Davis tells NPR’s Richard Gonzales that Santiago did not draw attention to himself at the airport, was not previously known to the airport police and apparently was traveling alone. According to NPR’s Tom Bowman, Santiago is a    former soldier. Tom tells our Newscast unit: ”Military records show Santiago received a general discharge  —   rather than the top honorable discharge  —   from the Alaska National Guard in August because of poor performance . .. ”Santiago received an honorable discharge from the Puerto Rico National Guard in 2013 and served with those soldiers in Iraq in 2010 and 2011. He was a combat engineer, a job that includes clearing roads and detecting mines.” Tom reports that a U. S. official familiar with the investigation says, while serving with the Alaska National Guard, Santiago ”was AWOL on a number of occasions, would miss drills and was interviewed by Army criminal investigators at times for what they called ’strange behavior.’ ” Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who traveled to Fort Lauderdale on Friday afternoon, told reporters he had not asked the federal government for resources and had not attempted to contact President Obama. The governor said he had reached out to   Donald Trump and Vice   Mike Pence, who take office later this month. Later, Scott’s press office announced that he spoke with Obama following the news conference. National Security Council spokesperson Ned Price said the president ”extended his sincere condolences to the families and other loved ones of those killed,” said his ”thoughts and prayers are with the wounded,” and gave assurances that federal authorities would continue to help in the investigation. Israel said authorities were not releasing any information about the identities of those killed and injured. The sheriff’s office tweeted that those who were injured had been taken to a local hospital. Israel and Gale both said there was no evidence any shots had been fired elsewhere in the airport or by anyone except the suspect in custody. Previous reports had indicated there might have been additional shots fired on the airport property. Broward County Fire Rescue told the local CBS affiliate in Miami that a shooting was reported around 1 p. m. ET. The sheriff’s office tweeted that it received a call about a shooting at the airport around 12:55 p. m. The airport said on Twitter that: ”There is an ongoing incident in Terminal 2, Baggage Claim.” The airport has four   terminals, of which Terminal 2 is the smallest. It serves Air Canada and Delta Airlines. People who said they were inside the airport described seeing people running. Among those inside was former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who tweeted that ”everyone is running” after shots were fired, and that police said there was one shooter and multiple victims. Shortly after 1 p. m. Fleischer tweeted that police were not letting anyone out of the part of the airport he was in. Television images showed hundreds of travelers standing around the part of the airport where the planes park. The airport said it had temporarily suspended all services and asked travelers to contact air carriers directly about flight information. The Federal Aviation Administration said a ground stop was in effect at the airport due to the incident. In a statement about two hours after the shooting was reported, the FAA said flights were ”not arriving or departing” from the airport. The airport reopened Saturday at 5 a. m. according to The Associated Press, with many flights delayed or canceled. This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported early may turn out to be inaccurate. We’ll move quickly to correct the record and we’ll only point to the best information we have at the time."
"North Korea got 2017 off to a menacing start. In his New Year’s address, supreme leader Kim Jong Un warned that the nation was in the ”final stage” of preparations to test an intercontinental ballistic missile. A day later,   Donald Trump said the North would never develop a nuclear weapon capable of striking the U. S. ”It won’t happen!” Trump tweeted. Bombast aside, independent arms control experts agree that North Korea is moving rapidly to develop an ICBM. And many suspect it will test a missile capable of reaching the continental U. S. later this year. ”They are very far along in their ICBM testing project,” says Melissa Hanham, an East Asia researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. ”Probably we will see that they will do a flight test in 2017.” If the test were successful  —   a big if  —   North Korea would join a small club of nations with ICBMs, including superpowers like the U. S. Russia and China. North Korea is a notoriously closed society, but the government periodically releases images and videos of its missiles. Analysts pore over that scant material and use it to cobble together a mosaic of the North’s weapons program. Those reports, combined with public statements by officials in South Korea and the U. S. provide some sense of the North’s progress. And there was a lot of progress in 2016, Hanham says: ”There were so many tests, I need crib notes.” North Korea tested a new rocket engine, based on a Soviet design, that is more powerful than anything it has used before. It also tested a heat shield of the type needed to protect a nuclear warhead as it   Earth’s atmosphere. In June, it successfully fired a new Musudan missile. The Musudan’s range of up to 2, 500 miles is short of what’s needed to reach the U. S. but it appears to use some of the technology that would probably go into a larger ICBM. That ICBM has yet to be tested. Known to analysts as the   or   (”one of the challenges with North Korean missiles is that they don’t tell us what they’re called,” says Hanham) it first appeared in a military parade in 2012. Back then, the missile was so kludged together, it looked to some experts like it could be a decoy. But in the years since, photos of the ICBM showed features that suggest it is becoming a real weapon. The missile began as a clunky,   design, says David Wright, a rocketry expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It has since been redesigned as a simpler   affair. With the new engines tested this year, it would have a range of about 7, 500 miles, Wright says. ”That would start to bring things like Washington, D. C. into range.” Can Trump stop the test? Neither Hanham nor Wright thinks there are easy solutions available to the  . Attacking the missile before it’s launched would be an act of war. If the ICBM is tested to the south, as happened with North Korea’s space launches, then it will be out of range of the main U. S.   system based in Alaska. Smaller   interceptors are also unlikely to be able to shoot it down, Wright says. That leaves diplomacy, says Hanham. But Kim Jong Un has shown little willingness to negotiate. ”There are no good options, really,” Hanham says. ”That’s why previous administrations have struggled with it for so long.” A flight test will not mean that North Korea can conduct a nuclear strike on U. S. soil. For one thing, the North’s track record in testing new missiles is pretty bad, says Wright. He estimates the odds that this new ICBM will work are ”probably less than 50 percent.” And while the individual components may all be there, they still need to be combined into a single weapon, he adds. Many analysts believe the North has miniaturized its nuclear bomb. But Wright says it’s less clear whether a North Korean nuke could survive the   of a missile launch. Similarly, its   system for bringing the weapon back to earth could be highly inaccurate in its current design. Perfecting an ICBM as a weapon may take several more years. Still, Hanham believes that 2017 may be a watershed year for the North. Even an unsuccessful ICBM test would send a clear message. ”That’s going to be really scary,” she says, ”not just for the region, but the American public.”"
"Donald Trump is still two weeks from his presidential inauguration, but new Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer sounds ready to do battle with a   Senate, House and White House. ”We’re going to hold Donald Trump’s feet to the fire,” the New York Democrat told NPR’s Audie Cornish on All Things Considered while sitting in front of the fireplace near his desk. ”Our job is going to be to hold Donald Trump and the Republican majority accountable.” Schumer hasn’t quite moved into his suite of Capitol offices. Boxes are heaped in corridors and naked hooks poke from the walls of Schumer’s ornate chambers on the second floor. Just outside the windows is the inaugural podium being built and beyond it, the National Mall. Inside, amid the clutter, the new Senate minority leader is wasting no time defending Democratic policies and programs from the incoming administration and its congressional allies, even if he has less leverage than he had hoped to have. Schumer hinted at the Democrats’ relatively weak position, as Republicans move quickly to repeal Obamacare. He repeatedly said Democrats would not cooperate with any Affordable Care Act replacement if the GOP pushes ahead with repeal, but then allowed that ”there might be a thing or two” in competing Republican plans he finds appealing. He also brought negotiations into the open by putting public pressure on GOP senators from Maine and Alaska to vote against repeal. ”Now they want to eliminate the funding of Planned Parenthood,” he said, referring to a plan by House Speaker Paul Ryan to include such provisions in legislation undoing Obamacare, ”so people like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are having some qualms about this.” Schumer hinted at some of the legislative maneuvers Democrats may employ to stymie Obamacare repeal. ”We’ll have an amendment on the floor of the Senate, as we debate ACA,” he explained, ”that quotes Donald Trump and says we’re opposed to cutting health care  —   Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security for that matter.” Before his intelligence briefing today, the   told the New York Times that the attention devoted to Russian attempts to influence the election is ”a political witch hunt.” Schumer called that ”flip and glib.” ”Before you even get the briefing, you come to a conclusion  —   that’s not the way to govern,” he said. ”And I have said . .. that we can’t have a Twitter presidency. This is serious stuff, this governing, and to just be flip and glib and tweet . .. you’ve got to do a lot more. And certainly any president  —   Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative  —   should keep an open mind until they get the briefing.” Schumer also responded to Trump’s calling him a ”clown.” ”I didn’t tweet back a name  —   that’s derogating the debate,” Schumer said. ”I said I understand your anguish, Mr.   because you don’t know what to replace the ACA with. But instead of calling names, roll up your sleeves and come up with a replacement. So I’m not going to descend to  .”"
"Bernie Sanders thinks he has a pretty good idea why Hillary Clinton and Democrats lost in the 2016 election. ”Look, you can’t simply go around to wealthy people’s homes raising money and expect to win elections,” the Vermont senator, who gave Clinton a surprisingly strong run for the Democratic nomination, told NPR’s David Greene in an interview airing on Morning Edition. ”You’ve got to go out and mix it up and be with ordinary people.” That picks up on a criticism of Clinton devoting too much time to fundraising  —   and not enough to    campaigning in traditionally Democratic states, like Michigan and Wisconsin. In the general election, Clinton never visited Wisconsin after she became the nominee and visited Michigan late in the game. The two Upper Midwestern states swung narrowly to Trump: Wisconsin by slightly more than 20, 000 votes and Michigan by slightly more than 10, 000. During the primary, Sanders boasted of his   donations. ”The Democratic Party swallowed the bait,” he argued. ”They became hooked on big money.” The Vermont senator added that he believes Democrats have lost touch with the needs of everyday Americans. ”I happen to believe that the Democratic Party has been not doing a good job in terms of communicating with people in cities, in towns and in rural America, all over this country,” he said. Some have blamed Sanders, in part, however for Clinton’s loss. Young voters were drawn to his campaign, but many chose a   candidate in the general election. Although Sanders campaigned for Clinton, at times he had a hard time voicing   support for her. The kind of harsh criticism he leveled of Clinton on her Wall Street speeches and decrying her as part of the status quo, rather than building up her beliefs and policies (that certainly stand in stark contrast to Donald Trump) has irked party loyalists. That’s especially true, considering that although Sanders ran in the Democratic primary and caucuses with Democrats, he has declined to put the ”D” next to his name. He is back in the Senate as an independent. Sanders believes Trump’s message resonated with workers, like the ones in Wisconsin and Michigan, who were hit hard by the economic recession and haven’t yet recovered. It was a connection Democrats were largely unable to maintain. ”One of the reasons that Mr. Trump won is that we have millions of people who have given up on the political process, who don’t believe that Congress is listening to their pain,” Sanders said. ”What the Democratic Party has got to do is start listening.” In that way, Trump and Sanders are alike. Both tapped into the   current that permeated the 2016 election. When asked if he thought he would have been able to win the general election against Trump, Sanders brushed it off. ”I don’t think it helps to relive history,” said Sanders, whose campaign team touted polling during the primary that showed him faring better against Trump in    matchups. ”The answer is I don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s not worth speculating about. We are where we are.” Sanders sees Trump’s   tendencies as a potential opportunity, at least when it comes to the fight to preserve Medicare and Medicaid. Trump promised repeatedly throughout the campaign that he would not cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security if elected. Sanders wants to hold Trump accountable for that promise, regardless of what Republicans in Congress want to do. Sanders says Trump has a choice: ”Either he can have the courage and get up in front of the American people, or do it through a tweet, and say, ’You know what? Hey, I was just kidding. I was really lying. ’” Or Trump can tell his fellow Republicans that they’re wasting their time on legislation that cuts those programs. ”That would be the right thing to do,” Sanders said. ”And I look forward to Trump telling the American people that that is what he intends to do.” To press the issue, Sanders, along with congressional leaders, is calling on his colleagues to organize Jan. 15 rallies protesting threats to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid."
"Right now, a big chunk of Antarctic ice is hanging on by a frozen thread. British researchers monitoring the crack in the Larsen C ice shelf say that only about 12 miles now connect the chunk of ice to the rest of the continent. ”After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18 km [11 miles] during the second half of December 2016,” wrote Adrian Luckman in a statement Thursday by the MIDAS Project, which is monitoring changes in the area. The crack in question has been growing for years and is now a total of roughly 70 miles long. When the fissure reaches the far side of the shelf, an iceberg the size of Delaware will float off, leaving the Larsen C 10 percent smaller. ”This event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula,” Luckman wrote. Ice shelves are important because they provide a buffer between the sea and the ice that sits on land, in this case on the Antarctic Peninsula. Without a healthy ice shelf, water from melting glaciers can flow straight to the sea, raising the sea level. It’s normal for the front of an ice shelf to crack and break off, known as calving. But it’s unusual for that to happen faster than the ice shelf can refreeze. Some scientists worry that the missing piece will destabilize the whole ice shelf. A smaller ice shelf, Larsen B, completely splintered in a little over a month in 2002, a process that started with a similar crack. Another ice shelf, Larsen A, had disintegrated a few years before. ”Larsen C may eventually follow the example of its neighbour Larsen B,” wrote Luckman. ”If it doesn’t go in the next few months, I’ll be amazed,” he told BBC News. Larsen C is Antarctica’s   ice shelf."
"Michelle Obama used her last official White House speech to deliver a passionate pep talk to the nation’s young people, especially immigrants, Muslims and others who might feel slighted by the incoming Trump administration. ”Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don’t matter,” the first lady said, ”or like you don’t have a place in our American story, because you do.” Obama spoke at a celebration of school counselors from around the country. The annual event is one of a number of steps along with ”college signing day” that Obama and her husband have taken to encourage students to pursue higher education. ”Because let’s be honest,” the first lady said. ”If we’re always shining the spotlight on professional athletes or recording artists or Hollywood celebrities, if those are the only achievements we celebrate, then why would we ever think kids would see college as a priority?” A graduate of Harvard Law School like her husband, Michelle Obama stressed that to preserve and protect their freedoms, young people should get a good education, so they can be active and productive citizens. She added young people should not lose hope, even when they encounter the inevitable obstacles. ”It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and the life of this country,” Obama said. ”Our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may place on us.” At times, others have tried to place limits on Michelle Obama herself. In a TV interview with Oprah Winfrey last month, Obama described her surprise at being tagged during her husband’s first White House campaign as an ”angry black woman.” ”Wow, where did that come from?” Obama told Winfrey. ”I thought, ’Let me live my life out loud so that people can then see and then judge for themselves.’ ” After eight years in the White House, the first lady has won a favorable judgment from most Americans. She enjoys higher favorability ratings than her husband does. On Friday, she encouraged young people to be focused and determined, not afraid. ”When people see us for who we truly are, maybe, just maybe they, too, will be inspired to rise to their best possible selves,” Obama said. With her voice breaking, Obama recalled how her own father worked hard at a city water plant, hoping that one day his children would go to college and have opportunities he never dreamed of. ”That’s the kind of hope that every single one of us  —   politicians, parents, preachers, all of us  —   need to be providing for our young people,” Obama said. ”Because that is what moves this country forward every single day. Our hope for the future and the hard work that hope inspires.” ”That’s my final message to young people as first lady,” she said as the audience in the White House East Room stood and applauded. ”Lead by example with hope, never fear. And know that I will be with you, rooting for you and working to support you for the rest of my life.”"
"Counselors play a big role in helping students succeed: They help with scheduling, college applications and with issues like mental health. Since 2015, first lady Michelle Obama has honored a school counselor of the year in a ceremony at the White House. Friday, the honor goes to Terri Tchorzynski of the Calhoun Area Career Center in Battle Creek, Mich. where she works with   and   drawn from 20 public high schools in Calhoun County. Tchorzynski started her career as a high school English teacher, before getting her master’s degree in counseling  —   a role she says she ”always knew she wanted.” NPR Ed caught up with Tchorzynski about her work in Michigan and the important role she sees counselors playing in schools. Is it true that school counselors don’t like the term ”guidance counselor” anymore? Can you explain that? We use the term ”school counselor” now. We cringe when we hear the term ”guidance counselor.” It’s kind of that   model from years ago, the, ”I’m gonna guide you towards your college or career.” It’s from when people didn’t really understand what was going on with the whole realm of school counseling. But now with a school counselor, we’re much more than just the guidance counselor. So what is the role of a school counselor? There are three ways to break it down. First is college and career readiness, preparing our students for what life looks like after high school. If it’s college, then getting them focused on FAFSA completion, college scholarships and being academically ready. If it’s for a career, figuring out what pathways are appropriate for them and what careers are available to them that fit their interests and their skills. Second, we work in the   domain. This is more dealing with behavior, or with personal problems that students may have that impact their education. So we help them through those things so they can be successful in school. Third, we’ll call the academic domain. This is working with attendance or grades, or making sure students have enough credits to graduate high school. So we are people that work in mental health, that work in the academic domains, that work in college and career readiness. We use data! How do you use data? Can you give me an example? We use a lot of data in our building, so that our stakeholders have a clear picture of what we’re doing in the counseling department. Here’s an example about modifying behavior. At the beginning of every single school year we do presentations for every single one of our students about bullying and harassment, because we know that it’s an issue in our schools and it’s an issue with our students and we want to make sure that it’s addressed early. And then we start monitoring behavior referrals. Before we started all this, the behavior referrals were not set up a certain way. But as a counseling department, we wanted to know specifically, if there’s a behavior issue that’s connected to bullying or harassment, we want it marked. So we can start identifying if there are issues in certain programs  —   we don’t have classrooms, instead we call them programs. We created this tag in our student data system, so any time a referral went through about bullying and harassment, we were flagged. We could see when and where there were incidents and tailored our interventions based on that data. We’ve pulled out certain groups and done some positive support groups for specific students too. What’s one thing you’ve learned as a school counselor? A lot of times it’s very easy to get centered in on the students who come to your office all the time or the students that are very outgoing. They’re the A students that just want additional support. But there’s a large population of students that just don’t know to ask for help. Maybe they are     and so they don’t even know what they need to know in order to go to school. So I think it’s so important for counselors to think about the students that maybe don’t have a voice. We need to be the voice for students that don’t have the voice. It’s my job as a counselor to make sure that all these students, regardless of race, ethnicity, income or what kind of backgrounds they come from, it’s my job to give them the same support. So sometimes I may be more intentional about reaching out to those students because I know they won’t be the ones that are coming to me first. So I guess the advice is  —   be proactive. We’ve reported about the mental health crisis in our nation’s schools  —   and it’s important to note how important counselors are in helping students with those types of problems. Oh, definitely. Having our students and our families understand that that’s part of our role, is important. Some people just don’t understand that it is a part of what we do. It’s not just writing letters of recommendation and telling students where they should go to college. There’s also a big part of our jobs as counselors that focuses on the   side . .. there is a huge need for that now. We have those community contacts, so if I have families that are uncertain about local community agencies and how they can help, part of my role is to connect them with those agencies. What has been the biggest challenge in your career so far? As a school counselor I think the   part is really hard. It’s hard because students go through a lot of difficult things in their lives. And so when you’re dealing with student tragedies  —   student death or violence  —   or just the things some teenagers have to face, that’s really difficult. In my setting as a school counselor, there’s only so much that I can do. The more we can connect with outside agencies, that helps too, so then I can refer them out to a community agency that can help them even further. But that’s a difficult part of the job. It’s something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, because it’s challenging and sad. There’s a lot of things that our students have to deal with that are really difficult. Can you give me some examples of the things that have come up in the last seven years? Last year was a really difficult year for us. We had quite a few student tragedies. We actually lost one of our students to a car accident, and that obviously impacted all of us in our building. We have students that do   and suicide, unfortunately. A lot of what I see nowadays with teenagers is just homelessness and poverty. I have a lot of students that are   or    and for whatever reason, they just they can’t live in their home, and so they need to find somewhere else to live. Sometimes, they’re living with different friends, living day to day. That’s always a struggle, because as a counselor, I want them to be successful, but at the same time, they’re dealing with poverty and homelessness and trying to figure out where they are supposed to stay that night. So what keeps your spirits up? I just know that as a counselor, that’s why I’m there. That’s my role. The more students can trust me, and know that that is part of what I do and that I can help support them, the better. I always tell them, ”I don’t have this magic pill that makes everything go away.” But I’m a resource for them to help them in whatever it is that they need. Unfortunately, school counselors can be rare. In Michigan, where you’re from, the student to school counselor ratio is 732 to 1. The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 to 1. Clearly, that’s far from the norm. What are your thoughts on that? When you think about the personnel you have in your schools, school counselors are the ones that play the role in regards to impacting academic behavior and attendance. So if you don’t have a school counselor in your building, then there is a certain person that plays all of those roles and puts all those pieces together. It’s so important for people to understand that counselors are needed at every single level, kindergarten through 12th grade. Elementary students have just as many needs, so it’s just as important to establish early what a school counselor can do for students, In Michigan, elementary school counselors are very rare. In our county I think we have one school district that has one. In my own kids’ school, they have one that will float between three or four buildings. Counselors just can’t offer the services that are needed for those students when they just have such large caseloads."
"Prolific Indian actor Om Puri, who for decades appeared in films all over the world, has died at age 66 in Mumbai. Reports say Puri suffered a heart attack at his home early on Friday. Puri had roles in more than 300 movies in his career, NPR’s Rose Friedman reports for our Newscast unit. Rose says he began acting in Indian art house cinema in the 1970s and soon branched into British and American films, including Gandhi in 1982 and Charlie Wilson’s War in 2007. He appeared in the 2013 film The Reluctant Fundamentalist, in which he played a father struggling to pass on a sense of empathy to his Wall   son. Most recently, he starred alongside Helen Mirren in The   Journey, a 2015 film about a displaced Indian family that settles in a French village and opens a restaurant. Puri was a crossover star, as evidenced by the breadth of people mourning his death. The BBC reported that even media in Pakistan, with whom India’s relationship is often tense, are celebrating his life and career. The BBC wrote, ”[Puri] had recently spoken out against the ban imposed by India on Pakistani actors working in Bollywood films, following tensions over Kashmir,” telling an Indian TV channel, ”Pakistani artists are not terrorists.” In 2004, Puri received an honorary Order of the British Empire, an award established by King George V and given to individuals who have made distinguished contributions in their field. In 1990, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors, the Guardian wrote. Puri’s professional life was wildly successful, but his personal life had been turbulent in recent years. He separated from his wife, Nandita, after she wrote his biography in 2009, called Unlikely Hero: Om Puri. The book revealed explicit details about his sexual forays as a young man. Puri is survived by Nandita, whom he married in 1993, and their son. Less than a month before his death, Puri took to Twitter to reflect on his life and career:"
"It’s a fantasy that goes back centuries: a message in a bottle, carried ashore from   lands. Authors, artists and children alike have dreamed of such a gift from the sea. This time, though, it’s not a bottle that washes ashore. It’s eggs  —   thousands of little toy eggs. That’s what happened on the German island of Langeoog this week. Perched just off the North Sea coast, it found itself buffeted by an invasion of multicolored plastic eggs  —   much to the delight of local children, because the eggs contained toys. Police for the Lower Saxony region of Germany tweeted the evidence. Der Spiegel reports that police suspect the eggs came from a freighter that lost part of its cargo during an intense storm, which the BBC calls the worst to hit Germany’s northeastern coast since 2006. At any rate, what was lost now has been found, by many of the community’s littlest residents. The local mayor, Uwe Garrels, soon allowed the town’s local kindergartners to go pick up the toys, according to Deutsche Welle. ”The surprise eggs have found their way to freedom,” Garrels said, according to the news service, which cited broadcaster NDR. Of course, the joy of the moment wore off soon. ”At first I thought this was a wonder, because everything was so colorful and so on, but then we realized that this is a huge mess in the end,” Garrels said, according to The Associated Press. He also noted the plastic bags and other materials that have washed ashore on the island. (All of which, it must be said, can cause some very real problems for wildlife.) Still, all these little eggs contained an extra treat with their toys. Like the immortal bottle, they bore notes from afar. There was just one problem for the German children who received them: They were written in Russian."
"A Canadian doctor who is opposed to a widely used drug for morning sickness has fired another volley. Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, Dr. Navindra Persaud in the department of family and community medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, notes that an unpublished study that supported use of the drug, conducted in the 1970s, is seriously flawed. On the one hand, this paper is a triumph for scientific openness. Pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies often guard this information, making it difficult for scientists to draw independent conclusions about   research. And there are stories about drugs that have managed to get onto the market based on overly rosy interpretations of study results (think Vioxx, the   drug that was later pulled after it was linked to higher risk for heart disease). Academic researchers have been pushing for greater openness when it comes to raw data. But because the study was never published, it wasn’t even subject to the scrutiny of peer review back in the day. The study plays a peripheral role in determining the safety and efficacy of the drug, which was approved by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration in 2013. That new drug application made its case based on other studies, not the flawed data from decades ago. But the FDA did review the previous history of this drug, including the study that Persaud has called into question, and considered it supporting evidence. The FDA had no qualms about the safety of this drug, marketed in the United States as Diclegis. It’s a combination of two common    medications: an antihistamine and vitamin B6. There’s actually a long backstory about this pairing. In the 1950s, a somewhat different formulation that had three principal ingredients was marketed as Bendectin. In the   the drugmaker dropped one of the ingredients. But that came off the U. S. market in 1983. Lawyers saw the drug as a potentially rich target for product liability cases, and the drug company ultimately pulled the drug off the market to avoid lawsuits, rather than out of actual safety concerns. The Canadian company, Duchesnay, continued to market a generic version of the drug, rebranded as Diclectin in Canada. (It also makes Diclegis.) For every two pregnancies in Canada, doctors write one prescription for Diclectin, according to Persaud. The drug was heavily promoted by a prominent Canadian researcher, Dr. Gideon Koren, at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He received funding from Duchesnay. According to an   story in Maclean’s magazine, Persaud felt Koren had gone too far in pushing this drug. ”We are trying to provide patients and doctors with access to complete and accurate information so that they can make informed decisions,” Persaud told Shots in an email. ”This information may lead regulators like the FDA and Health Canada to revisit previous decisions,” he added. ”Patients and their clinicians may also make different decisions based on this information.” The FDA told Shots that it is reviewing the PLOS ONE paper. The drug has not been as heavily used in the United States (though the company did hire Kim Kardashian to promote it on social media, which drew a rebuke from the FDA). The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says pregnant women with morning sickness shouldn’t reach hastily for the pill bottle. It recommends first that women take a multivitamin eat dry toast or crackers drink fluids avoid bad smells, and take other basic steps to reduce morning sickness. Only if those measures fail does the group recommend a doctor’s visit to ask about the prescription. And women taking that step should be aware that, while the FDA approved the drug (to be prescribed only after simpler measures have been tried and found wanting) reviewers there weren’t impressed by its effectiveness, noting ”the treatment effect is small.” Using a   measure of nausea and vomiting called the PUQE score (who says scientists are humorless!) women taking Diclectin reported a 4. 7 point improvement, versus a 3. 9 point improvement for women taking placebo. So the drug was only marginally better than a placebo, but that was good enough for FDA approval.  You can email Richard Harris at rharris@npr. org."
"Russia’s recent cyber adventures have the hallmarks of an old Soviet specialty: disinformation. While many Americans have just awoken to the world of disinformation  —   sometimes known as ”fake news”  —   in the recent presidential election, Moscow’s efforts date back decades and have become increasingly prominent over the past decade as techniques have been updated for the digital age. The spread of disinformation through active measures was a central tactic of Soviet information operations as a way to influence foreign governments and their populations, undermine relations between nations, and weaken those who opposed communism. Dezinformatsiya, as Russians call it, is meant to instill fear and confuse audiences, blurring the lines between truth, falsehood and reality. Disinformation can spread conspiracy theories and reinforce ”filter bubbles” that isolate readers and viewers from alternative viewpoints and can create a cloud of confusion and paranoia. Spreading disinformation, I recently led an independent study on how Russia uses disinformation to influence ethnic Russians who live in former Soviet Union states. In our report, we highlight how disinformation is effective because it is quick, cheap and yields high rewards. We assessed that Russia has a number of tools in its disinformation toolbox  —   including its   Russian and   television network Russian Television, platforms such as the Sputnik news service that enable audiences outside Russia to subscribe to their services free of charge, and the deployment of trolls in the blogosphere and on social media. In some instances, Russia’s troll armies manage multiple fake accounts, and each account posts articles on social media 50 to 100 times a day. Even before the explosion of social media, the effects of Russia’s modern disinformation efforts could be seen during the 2008   war, when Russia used picture defacement to spread fake images and news stories. Russia hacked into Georgian infrastructure and the official website of   President Mikhail Saakashvili. More recently, in Ukraine, Russia spread many conspiracy theories and fake stories in 2014, during the Crimea crisis and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. In the latter case, Western sources have pointed to a Russian missile being involved and believe it was fired by either the Russians themselves or Ukrainian separatists allied with Moscow. Possible consequences, If unaddressed, Russia’s disinformation tactics will have at least three significant consequences for global stability. First, Russia’s disinformation machinery could inspire other countries, terrorists, transnational criminal organizations and individuals to emulate this behavior. An immediate effect could be attempts to disrupt the coming elections in Germany, France, Serbia, and the Netherlands. Different groups act for different reasons. Some purveyors of disinformation, like the Islamic State, have ideological motives. Others look at it as an easy way to make an extra dollar. In Macedonia, for example, young people found it lucrative to set up websites to share fake news that interfered with the U. S. election. Their motives were more economic than political. Second, disinformation can bleed into conspiracy theories that can instantly spread on social media and may have major national security implications. In December, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad tweeted incorrectly that Israel was threatening Pakistan with nuclear weapons after this disinformation appeared on AWD News, a   website. While the Israeli Defense Ministry questioned this claim, the defense minister’s tweet was reposted hundreds of times, spreading fake content within a matter of seconds. Earlier in December, stolen emails containing a brief exchange between John Podesta and the owner of a pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, in Washington, D. C. led to a fake news story that a child sex ring was being run out of the restaurant. A North Carolina man then drove to Washington and fired a gun, saying he wanted to rescue sex slaves he was convinced were harbored at the restaurant. Identifying disinformation, Third, Russia’s disinformation campaigns help highlight one of the biggest and most dangerous challenges in Western society: an inability to think critically about information. In a   news cycle and   universe, media consumers have developed an unprecedented need to access, process and spread information, be it true or not. But the youth in particular have a limited ability to identify fake news content. If information seems newsworthy and provides high entertainment value, few people will think hard before tweeting it out or posting it on Facebook. The challenge is further amplified when notable figures spread disinformation via social media, reinforcing the virtual conspiracy bubble. And when disinformation comes from those believed to be credible  —   such as friends, family and colleagues  —   it is even more likely to be treated uncritically, as factual information. Countering Russia’s disinformation will require a set of actions including debunking fake news, messaging and creating counternarratives for targeted populations both in the U. S. and globally who are sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s policies and strengthening individual and media literacy programs around the world. The muddling mix of rumors, lies and news has dominated our conversation to the point that we are no longer certain what is true. Citizens, news and social media outlets, both organizations and users, cannot fall victim to disinformation. We have a responsibility to think critically about the information and stories that are disseminated. Without doing so, we will continue to empower Russia and others to spread disinformation and propaganda, risk our security and create distrust in our society. Vera Zakem is a research scientist who leads initiatives on European stability, media and information influence at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization in Arlington, Va. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not represent the views of CNA or any of its sponsors."
"After a woman was   and died of her injuries in New Delhi in December 2012, the Indian government tried to set up swift and judicious ways to report and address such crimes. Fast track courts were set up, social workers and police were given sensitization training. Women were told things would be better when they stepped out.   four years and the country is buzzing angrily at how much has not changed. Women bringing in the new year in downtown Bangalore, the country’s cosmopolitan IT hub, were surrounded and groped by mobs of pushing, shoving, handsy men. Photos and videos captured that night show young women trying to push through crowds of up to 300 men pressing in on them. Some of the women were crying, some yelling, others were being defended by their friends. Many of the women said they used their shoes to beat off gropers. A short distance away, an emcee walked out of his event and stumbled upon 25 men threatening a group of women. According to some women on the scene, not only was the harassment frightening, the apathy of cops who looked away and didn’t intervene was worse. In the days that have followed, the official stance on the mass harassment has done somersaults. First the police vowed to punish the offenders and called on the victims to file police complaints. Three days later, the police said they found no street camera footage to support the claims of sexual harassment, although the police commissioner has since said there is ”credible evidence” of the attacks. And then came the remarks of home minister G. Parameshwara, one of the highest ranking officials in the state of Karnataka, of which Bangalore is the capital. He went on record to say: ”Youngsters . .. try to copy the Westerners not only in the mindset but even the dressing. So some disturbance, some girls are harassed, these kind of things do happen.” On January 3, Abu Azmi of Mumbai, the state leader of a political party, said on national TV: ”If my sister or daughter is roaming around on December 31 with random men who aren’t their husband or brother, I don’t think that’s right.” He added, ”If there’s petrol near fire, it will burn. If there is sugar, ants will come.” His words were highlighted in angry tweets. Trisha Shetty, a lawyer, is the   of SheSays, a nonprofit group that educates young women about their rights, especially in the areas of sexual violence. She said the responses from officials were reprehensible. ”We reject this sense of entitlement men have over women’s bodies, sexuality and spaces,” she said. And, she added, the display of such parochial mindsets from people in charge of ensuring safety in public spaces is a huge setback for women. Meanwhile, on social media the #NotAllMen hashtag started to trend the next day defending men who didn’t do it, arguing that women were generalizing their anger. Japleen Pasricha, who runs the Feminism in India platform, was a critic of #NotAllMen tweets: ”The #NotAllMen tag detracted from the conversation, hijacked the narrative, and moved it away from how to deal with what’s happening. We’re not saying all men do this, but we do know all women are harassed.” To counter it, Feminism In India and Pasricha dusted off the globally used #YesAllWomen hashtag. Their tweet inviting Indian women to share their stories of public harassment, assault and abuse has been retweeted more than 900 times, with at least 1, 000 responses, says Pasricha. Sharing stories publicly may not change too many minds (although one Twitter troll changed his handle to ”I’m sorry” after being taken to task for sexism) m says Pasricha, ”But, mainly we wanted to take the narrative back.” A petition has been floated demanding unconditional apologies from the politicians, and on January 21 solidarity marches will be held in seven cities: Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata, organized and supported by 18 organizations, including Take Back the Night and Why Loiter, under the umbrella hashtag #IWillGoOut2017, Will a march make a difference? In late 2012 and early 2013, protests and vigils took place across the country, but soon other issues overtook demands for women’s safety. ”In the wake of the Nirbhaya case [the 2012 rape] the nation was in fervor  —   taking to the streets, debating on various media outlets,” the organizers of the #IWillGoOut march told me in a collectively authored email. ”Some blamed her and her partner. Some fathers vowed to never send their daughters out again because the world was cruel to them. Is this how we deal with assault? By limiting the freedoms and mobility of half the population?” What’s more, cases of sexual attack are on the rise. Data shows that police reports of assault on women rose 92 percent from 42, 968 in 2011 to 82, 422 in 2015. But conviction rates declined by 5 percent. In Karnataka, the rate of conviction is 1. 2 percent. Sukriti Gupta,   at the Academy For Earth Sustainability, an environment education organization, said she’s still hopeful of making a difference. ”I strongly believe reclaiming public space, making our voices heard, is important to remind and encourage others, especially women, that there is a support system out there  —   that we have a right and a place in our country, at night, regardless of what we wear.” Plus, she said, ”the visual nature of marches can cross socioeconomic barriers and provide food for thought for those who are normally not engaged in   press such as women and young girls living in more conservative families and slum areas.” The organizers of the march told me that the Bangalore harassment was not an isolated incident: ”It is a visible part of systemic inequality that prevents, hinders and shames half the population from moving around their cities, their homes. It is time to stake a claim in our landscape and our rights to own the streets and go out!” India’s tourism minister expressed the opposite perspective in August 2016. After high profile rape cases across the country, some involving foreign tourists, in August 2016 Mahesh Sharma advised foreign visitors to avoid wearing skirts and venturing out at night: ”For their own safety, women foreign tourists should not wear short dresses and skirts,” he said, because ”Indian culture is different from the Western.” This attitude toward safety seems to have been a contentious issue even a century ago. The Twitter account for the Why Loiter group has shared a quote from 1905 that mocks how keeping women safe means locking them up rather than changing or punishing the attitudes that endanger them."
"Maintaining a   relationship can be difficult, but Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith have managed to do it  —   and they’ve become megastars in the process. They make up the band The xx, and they’ve been making music together since they were kids. The band’s two singers, Croft and Sim, met in preschool in a London suburb when they were only 3 years old. ”They had music classes, and I remember sharing a xylophone in that music class,” Sim says. ”I’ve also got pictures of it, so I’m sure I’m building memories off a picture.” Croft says another old photo of the two of them sticks out to her. ”There’s one of us standing on a bench as if we’re sort of on a stage. Oliver’s on the side that he stands on [when we perform] and I’m on the side that I stand on, which is quite a beautiful coincidence, I think,” Croft says. Their friendship with the third member of The xx, producer Jamie Smith, began a bit later, when the trio was 11 years old. The three formed a   and insular crew. ”I was starting out a new school, and Romy and Oliver had come to a new school as well,” Smith says. ”There were only a few people there that I liked, so I was quite happy just to stay us. I think just keeping your closest friends around is the best.” The trio released its debut album, xx, in 2009, and has sold millions of records since then. All three bandmates have grown in different ways: Smith released a solo album under the name Jamie xx Sim gave up drinking Croft got engaged. Now, the group has a new album called I See You coming out Jan. 13. Croft says one song on the new record, called ”Test Me,” touches on the challenges of close friendships. She says the lyrics describe ”a sort of hard time in our friendship, between Oliver and I  —   and a time when all three of us were quite distant from each other emotionally and geographically.” But Croft says those challenges led to some important changes. ”It sort of represents a new time of us actually talking about things rather than just pushing them down, and I think that was a good thing,” Croft says. ”Sometimes we would say things to each other in the music before we could say it to each other.” Croft, Sim and Smith shared these and other stories with NPR’s Ari Shapiro. Hear their full conversation at the audio link."
"On a bright Sunday afternoon last November, Anastasia Popova was picketing outside the Russian Embassy in Washington with a dozen other activists. ”Russia will be free! Russia will be free!” they chanted at the hulking white building on the other side of the street. The forlorn group of protesters held up signs calling for the release of a jailed Russian activist, Ildar Dadin, and displayed photographs of other people they called political prisoners in their home country. Under somewhat different circumstances, Popova, 29, might have been sitting inside the embassy looking out. She aspired to become a diplomat, but after getting involved in opposition politics in Russia, she had to make a choice. ”They told me: ’You can’t work for the government in the daytime and prepare protests against that government in the evening,’” Popova said. She chose politics  —   and joined the staff of Ilya Ponomaryov, one of the lone opposition voices in the Russian parliament. A time of uncertainty  Five years ago, Russia was in upheaval. Vladimir Putin’s decision to run for an unprecedented third term as Russia’s president was fueling street protests in Moscow and other cities. Politicians like Ponomaryov saw a potential opening to begin liberalizing Russia’s tightly controlled political system. Hopes for a thaw were soon dashed. Putin, who had been president from 2000 to 2008, and prime minister from 2008 to 2012, won the presidential election in March 2012. Many protest leaders found themselves facing lawsuits and jail time. In 2014, Ponomaryov was the only member of parliament to vote against annexing Crimea, which Russia had just seized from Ukraine. Russian authorities then started building a criminal case against him. Ponomaryov moved to the United States, and before long, Popova says she got a warning that she, too, should leave the country  —   immediately. ”That was the end of October 2014. And that was my personal Halloween, you know, when I found myself in the U. S. with just a suitcase, and I had no idea where to go next,” she said. A long tradition, Popova follows in a long history of Russian political exiles dating back to the 1800s. In the past century, there have been spurts of immigration from Russia to the U. S.: Jews escaping persecution, Russian aristocrats fleeing revolutionaries, and dissidents getting the boot from the communist regime. Russian applications for political asylum in the U. S. have increased for the fourth straight year, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Radio Free Europe. In the last fiscal year, 1, 912 Russians applied for asylum, the highest level in more than two decades. Exiles granted asylum may be safe from persecution abroad. But they’re also cut off from their homeland. ”Once they’re out, it’s actually quite difficult for them to have an influence back again,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. ”They run the risk of harming contacts, even family members, if they engage in overt political activity that in some way is involving organization of protest movements still in Russia itself.” Hill said that the Internet affords little help to effect change at home. ”I think social media does add a different ingredient, but what it creates is a sort of a parallel alternative community,” she said. ”It doesn’t necessarily translate to action on the ground.” Remaining in Russia, Someone who’s still trying to take action inside Russia is Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader refusing to leave. In late October he visited the U. S. to build bridges to members of Russia’s   diaspora. ”Sure, I agree, the risks are high. And from a certain point of view it probably is crazy to oppose Putin inside Russia. But somebody has to do it,” Yashin said in an interview in an Alexandria, Va. coffee shop. ”The Putin regime is happy to get rid of its opponents and does everything it can so that we leave,” Yashin said. ”That’s the reason I see my mission to do everything so that Putin’s critics stay in Russia. That’s why I haven’t left.” Yashin said many political activists left Russia after his friend, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, was assassinated outside the Kremlin in February 2015. As for Popova, she said exile was her only option. ”I believe that being in the U. S. and telling the U. S. government the truth about the political situation in Russia is more useful than just being tortured in jail,” she said. When it comes to dealing with Russia in the future, Popova had a message for   Donald Trump: Negotiate hard, don’t make any concessions as a sign of good will, and keep expectations low."
"The official Electoral College vote tally just concluded, but some Democratic House members decided to put on a bit of a show. More than half a dozen members rose at different points to object to the results of the election, citing Russian hacking, the legitimacy of the election and electors, voting machines, voter suppression and more. Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts was the first to rise. Amid grumbling from other members, Vice President Biden, who presided in his role as president of the Senate, gaveled the body to order. He noted that any objection must be in writing, signed by a member of the House and a member of the Senate. He asked McGovern if he had fulfilled all three. McGovern admitted the objection was not signed by a member of the Senate, and Biden threw it out. ”In that case the objection cannot be entertained,” Biden said, and Republicans stood and cheered. Jamie Raskin of Maryland interrupted later. Biden cut him off, read the requirements again and asked if his objection was signed by a member of the Senate. Raskin, too, admitted it was not. This went on with others. Biden grew increasingly curt. At times, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan could be seen laughing behind him. ”It is over,” Biden chided. Three protesters were escorted out of the House chamber. NPR’s Susan Davis reports that at least one was arrested. NPR’s Ron Elving notes that it all was a similar scene to one that played out in January 2001 after George W. Bush’s election, the Florida recount and the Supreme Court decision that stopped it. The vice president, who had to play Biden’s role then, was none other than Al Gore himself. The objectors were all from the House, many from Florida. After overruling several objectors the same way Biden did, Gore jokingly noted that it was becoming somewhat painful. ”This is going to sound familiar to you,” he noted, ” —  to all of us. ...”"
"A golden statue commemorating the plight of ”comfort women”  —   a euphemism for the Korean women and girls forced by the Japanese to work as sex slaves in   brothels during World War II  —   has caused a diplomatic row between Japan and South Korea. At the end of December, activists placed the golden statue of a young woman sitting in a chair in front of the Japanese Consulate in the southern city of Busan, South Korea. Local authorities initially removed the statue, citing a lack of permits, The Korea Herald reported. But after public outcry, authorities allowed the statue to be replaced and the district mayor held a press conference to apologize. Now, Japan is taking countermeasures. Speaking at a news conference Friday, Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, announced that the country is withdrawing both its ambassador to South Korea and the consul general at Busan. Suga also said Japan is pulling out of some   economic talks, according to state broadcaster NHK. Calling the situation ”extremely regrettable,” Suga said the statue is a break with the landmark deal in 2015 between the two countries over comfort women. That deal was billed ”final and irreversible,” ostensibly smoothing over the persistent source of strain between the two countries, as we reported. It ”included an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a billion yen (roughly $8. 3 million) fund to support the 46 surviving Korean women.” But some activists spoke out against the deal, as the BBC reported: ”Critics say it was reached without consultation with victims, did not contain Japan’s acknowledgement of legal responsibility, and did not provide direct compensation to the victims.” Suga also accused South Korea of violating ”the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires host countries to protect diplomatic missions from the impairment of their dignity,” NHK reported. Korea’s finance ministry said it ”regrets” that Japan suspended economic talks, including those focused on a potential currency swap deal, the Korea Herald reported. ”It is desirable that the two countries continue bilateral economic and financial cooperation regardless of political and diplomatic relations,” the ministry added. The Associated Press reported that another statue by the same artist has stood in front of Japan’s embassy in Seoul since 2011, prior to the agreement. And the BBC says that ”another 37 are thought to exist in South Korea, while in Australia a similar statue has sparked a row between Korean and Japanese community groups.”"
"  Donald Trump has promised to step back from his business interests when he takes office. He says he’ll let his two adult sons take the helm and that he won’t make any new deals while he’s president. While he’s unwinding some of his roughly 500 business deals involving about 20 countries as Inauguration Day approaches, many others are moving forward, causing concern about conflicts of interest. Most of the projects are licensing deals, says Joshua Kurlantzick, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”They pay Trump a fee and someone builds the resorts and they slap his name on it,” he says. ”So it’s not like he’s got his own skin in the game or he’s possibly going to be involved in shaping the resorts.” Still, Kurlantzick and others say any involvement by Trump in a project, even if it’s just his name, can create a conflict of interest  —   complicating any national security, foreign policy or economic concerns the U. S. has with a particular country. For example, in a $150 million project in Manila, Trump had received up to $5 million for the use of his name. This is in a country where human rights concerns have been raised as a result of President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal   campaign. More than 6, 000 people have been killed since Duterte took office in June. Robert Manning, a former National Intelligence Council official now with the Atlantic Council, says Trump has been reluctant to criticize Duterte’s human rights policies. ”Whether his business interests are a factor in that, I don’t know how you ascertain that. I think it would certainly give [Trump] a motivation,” he says. To further complicate things, Duterte recently named Trump’s main business partner in the $150 million Manila Trump Tower deal, Jose E. B. Antonio, as the Philippines special envoy to the U. S. on trade and economic policy. Manning says it won’t be illegal for Trump to interact with Antonio in his capacity as trade representative. ”It’s the sticky question of deciding where national interests stop and business begins, and vice versa,” Manning says. Trump has promised to keep his hands off his business empire while president. But Kurlantzick says Trump’s sons will have to build up strong relations with powerful people to help keep overseas projects moving. And this could be problematic. Kurlantzick cites an example in Indonesia, where the Trump Organization is involved in two resort projects. One of Trump’s Indonesian contacts was Setya Novanto, the speaker of the House of Representatives. He had to step down in December 2015 after being accused of corruption. ”He briefly gave up his post, which was like the equivalent of [House Speaker] Paul Ryan, last year, because he was caught on an audio trying to get a $4 billion payment from an American mining company,” Kurlantzick explains. In September 2015, during the presidential campaign, Novanto went to New York to meet with Trump  —   and accompanied him at a news conference, where Trump praised him as ”an amazing man” and a ”great man.” Stephen Gillers, an ethics professor at New York University Law School, says Trump needs to be careful not to erode public confidence. ”What we want to make sure of is that the deal our president cuts is solely for the benefit of the United States, that there’s no other interest that could be affecting his judgement, and that includes his own financial interests,” he says. The only way for Trump to do that, Gillers says, is to divest himself from all his business interests when he becomes president."
"  Donald Trump is nominating Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer, to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some who know him say Clayton is a good man for the job, but critics say his ties to big financial firms create too many conflicts of interest. The big question is whether Trump has chosen a fox to guard the henhouse. Clayton works as a lawyer for a firm that has represented Goldman Sachs for decades. He also represented Ally Financial and other financial firms when they struck settlements related to wrongdoing in the subprime mortgage scandal. And Clayton’s wife currently works for Goldman Sachs. ”I do think that having a chairman of the SEC whose spouse works at Goldman Sachs or another large investment bank is a serious problem,” says Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and the former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. Painter says Goldman and other big banks had their business models severely restricted by the   Wall Street Reform Act, and there is already pressure building to scale back that law during the Trump administration. ”The decision about whether to repeal   or how to enforce   and rulemaking under    —   all those decisions will have an enormous impact on Goldman Sachs,” Painter says. ”And to have Goldman Sachs have a controlling influence over the career of the SEC chairman’s spouse, I think could be an untenable situation.” Still, Painter says he is withholding judgement until he watches the nomination hearing process. Maybe there’s a way to resolve that and other conflicts. And he says just because Clayton is a Wall Street insider, that doesn’t mean he’d be a bad SEC chairman. ”There are plenty of good Wall Street people who could actually aggressively regulate Wall Street. They know where the bodies are buried they know where the reforms are necessary,” Painter says. So, is Clayton that kind of Wall Street insider  —   or the kind that would be soft on enforcement? ”What I understand about him is that he’s a very, very capable lawyer, very knowledgeable, practical and very ” says Bill McLucas, who was head of enforcement for the SEC under the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And, McLucas says, if Clayton makes it through the congressional hearing and vetting process, if past SEC chairs are any guide, ”once they are confirmed it is rare that the public interest is not their guiding principle.” Still, there are plenty of skeptics. Former Rep. Barney Frank says he sees more of the same here  —   a series of nominations by Trump of people who are too beholden to Wall Street. ”It is one more example of the biggest    I believe, in American history  —   namely Trump winning by claiming he was going to stand up to Wall Street and be tough and then becoming the best friend Wall Street and the opponents of regulation have ever had,” Frank says. Frank says the   law that bears his name gave the SEC strong powers to protect the financial system as well as everyday Americans who are buying stocks or buying their first home. But, he says, ”You cannot make laws that are  .” Frank says he’s worried that even if Republicans don’t have the votes ultimately to repeal laws such as   the appointments Trump is trying to make could still severely weaken regulation. And, Frank says, that could make the financial system and everyday Americans less protected from wrongdoing."
"Tilikum, possibly the most famous orca in the world, has died, according to SeaWorld Orlando. He was the subject of the influential documentary Blackfish, and outcry over his story prompted SeaWorld to stop breeding orcas in captivity. Tilikum was estimated to be 36 years old, SeaWorld said in a statement, which is old for a captive killer whale. He faced ”very serious health issues,” the park says, and had been declining for months. The orca died Friday morning surrounded by trainers and veterinary staff. A necropsy is required to determine the official cause of death, but he had suffered a ”persistent and complicated bacterial lung infection,” the park says, which had been treated by a range of medicines and therapies. Tilikum was 22 feet long and weighed more than 11, 000 pounds, according to The Associated Press. He was born off the waters of Iceland, captured and performed in captivity for decades  —   first at the   Sealand of the Pacific and then at SeaWorld Orlando. A prolific breeder, he sired more than 20 calves. But he became notorious for aggressive behavior. In the ’90s, he was implicated in two deaths: a trainer who drowned and a man who was found dead in his tank. Then, in 2010, he killed SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, holding her underwater until she died of drowning and blunt force trauma. In the immediate aftermath of that incident, the question was whether Tilikum would be put down, and whether he would return to performing, as he did in 2011. But then a 2013 documentary called Blackfish changed the narrative around aggressive behavior by orcas, and by Tilikum in particular. In the film, former trainers at SeaWorld criticized the park’s practices as harmful for orcas and dangerous for trainers. They argued that animals such as Tilikum behaved aggressively because of the stress and trauma of captivity. As NPR’s Greg Allen reports, animal welfare groups have long protested against marine parks holding killer whales in captivity at all. When Blackfish came out  —   and aired on CNN, where it reached millions of viewers  —   the public joined in the outcry. The park has denied allegations that it mistreated orcas, but it did shift its position on captive breeding. Greg reports: ”Orcas are an intelligent, social species that spend much of their life in family groups and in the wild range over thousands of miles. Advocates say holding these huge mammals in a tank is cruel. . .. ”Activists stepped up their campaign against SeaWorld following the release of Blackfish. Attendance dropped at the park, a decline the company attributed in part to public reaction to the film. In response, SeaWorld’s new CEO Joel Manby announced the company was ending its orca breeding program  —   making this the last generation of killer whales at its parks. . .. Following SeaWorld’s decision to end its orca breeding program, [Jeffrey] Ventre and three other former SeaWorld trainers issued a statement. ’We’d like to send love to Tilikum,’ they wrote. ’In the end, his message was heard.’ ” Members of the public and former SeaWorld trainers also called for Tilikum to be released back into the wild, but SeaWorld says its captive orcas could not survive in the open sea. Tim Zimmerman, who wrote about Brancheau’s death in Outside magazine and was a producer on Blackfish, told Greg there was a deep well of public sympathy for Tilikum. ”I think that’s the most amazing thing that comes out of Tilikum’s story,” he said. ”He killed three human beings. And yet when you learn about his life story, he does become the victim and you do sympathize with him.”"
"Officials in the West African nation of Ivory Coast say soldiers have overrun police stations and seized the country’s   city, Bouake. It has been six years since the West African nation emerged from a civil war, during which Bouake was the headquarters of the rebellion. NPR’s Ofeibea   said there were also reports of gunfire in two other cities, Daloa and Korhogo, and that it wasn’t clear whether the attacks were a mutiny by current or former troops. As Ofeibea reported for NPR’s Newscast unit: ”Troops reportedly seized weapons from police stations and took up positions at the entrance to Bouake. One soldier says former fighters integrated into Ivory Coast’s army were demanding bonuses of $8, 000 apiece  —   plus a house. . .. ”A statement from Ivorian Defense Minister   Donwahi has called on soldiers to remain calm and return to their barracks, to allow, he says, for lasting solutions to the latest crisis in Ivory Coast, which has recently been burnishing its democratic credentials.” A member of the national assembly representing Bouake, Bema Fofana, told the BBC that ”the soldiers did not appear to have a leader or spokesman, making it difficult to negotiate with them,” the broadcaster reported, and that ”most of the soldiers were former rebels who were integrated into the army after the civil war.” The BBC also reported that a resident who asked not to be identified said soldiers armed with automatic rifles ”fired at the offices of the state broadcaster in the city.” ”They are heavily armed and parading through the city of Daloa,” a student named Karim Sanogo told The Associated Press. ”Security forces have abandoned their posts. Everyone has returned home to seek shelter.” Earlier this year, a terrorist attack in a tourist city on the country’s coast threatened the fragile peace sought after the civil war. In March, militants from   in the Islamic Maghreb killed more than a dozen people at beach hotels, as we reported. ”This country, once an oasis of peace, security, stability and prosperity, is emerging from a devastating decade of political violence and a civil war,” Ofeibea reported at the time. ”The economy was on the rebound.”"
"An overwhelming majority of people disapprove of Republican lawmakers’ plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act without having a ready replacement for the health care law, according to a poll released Friday. And judging by the   and lobbying in the first week of the new congressional session, many health care and business groups agree. A poll released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 75 percent of Americans say they either want lawmakers to leave Obamacare alone, or repeal it only when they can replace it with a new health care law. Twenty percent of those polled say they want to see the law killed immediately. But Drew Altman, CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, says the poll shows lawmakers don’t have a strong mandate to repeal Obamacare. ”Most of the American people said they’re either against repealing it or they’re against repealing it unless Republicans put a replacement plan on the table,” Altman says. ”They want to see what comes next before they seen the ACA repealed.” Americans are about equally divided over whether Congress should repeal Obamacare, the poll shows. But of the 48 percent who want the law rolled back, about 60 percent want lawmakers to wait until they have an alternative plan. And Obamacare isn’t even people’s top health care concern. The vast majority  —   67 percent  —   say their top priority is finding a way to lower their health care costs. The poll findings come just days after Republicans in the Senate took the first step toward repealing President Obama’s signature health care law. They voted on Wednesday to move ahead with a budget resolution that will allow them to take funding away from Obamacare, which will effectively gut the law because the subsidies to buy insurance, and the penalties for not doing so, will disappear. Republicans say they intend to vote on repeal, but give the law time to sunset while they come up with a replacement that will give the millions of people covered under Obamacare access to insurance through some other vehicle. On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . said the replacement legislation would pass by the end of the year. But doctors, hospital groups, insurers and analysts are skeptical of that strategy. In letters, press releases and advertising campaigns, many organizations have made it clear that they want to see a replacement for the Affordable Care Act in place, or at least outlined, before Congress repeals the current law. A report released Dec. 6 by the American Hospital Association and Federation of American Hospitals warned that a repeal could cost hospitals hundreds of billions and said ”any reconsideration of the ACA should be accompanied at the same time by provisions that guarantee similar coverage to those who would lose it.” A letter sent Tuesday from the American Medical Association urged lawmakers to release details of their Obamacare replacement before repealing the current law. ”Patients and other stakeholders should be able to clearly compare current policy to new proposals so they can make informed decisions about whether it represents a step forward in the ongoing process of health reform,” the letter said. Dr. Andrew Gurman, president of the American Medical Association, says people should be able to evaluate the proposed Obamacare replacement before the current law is thrown out. ”People in this country need to understand what it is they’re being asked to substitute for what’s there now so they can have an informed opinion about whether it’s better or not,” Gurman says. And repeal and delay? ”We have a concern that that creates uncertainty in insurance markets and uncertainty in people about whether they’re going to have continuity of coverage,” Gurman adds. He says he and his members talk with lawmakers regularly. A separate study released Thursday projects that a straight repeal of the law could kill 3 million jobs across the country by 2021. That study, by the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, finds that about a third of those lost jobs would come from health care, and the rest would be in other industries such as retail, construction, finance and insurance. Total business output could be cut by as much as $2. 6 billion over four years, the report says. California, Florida and Texas would be most affected. Leighton Ku, the report’s lead author, says the debate over ACA repeal has focused almost completely on insurance coverage and has ignored the broader economic impact. ”The payments you make to health care then become income for workers and income for other businesses. And this spreads out,” Ku says. ”Health care is almost a fifth of the US economy, so as you begin to change health care, there are repercussions that go across all sectors.” Ku says he can’t estimate what economic impact Obamcare replacement would have because Republicans have yet to lay out their plans. ”It’s a mystery,” he says. Editor’s note: The Kaiser Family Foundation supports Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program that produces news reports heard on NPR and published on NPR. org."
"The Justice Department is issuing new guidance to federal agents on how to secure eyewitness identifications, an initiative designed to reflect decades of scientific research and bolster public confidence in the criminal justice system, NPR has learned. The policy has two major components: It directs U. S. investigators to document or record an eyewitness’s confidence in an identification at the very moment the ID is made, and it encourages federal agents to conduct ”blind” or ”blinded” photo arrays of suspects in which the agent leading the session doesn’t know which photo represents the prime suspect. ”We view this as an important step in doing everything we can to ensure the greatest reliability possible for the evidence we’re using at trial,” Deputy U. S. Attorney General Sally Yates said. Yates said the department based its guidance on research that supports the idea ”of just how important it is to get as much detail as possible about just how sure that witness is that this is the guy” long before any trial or court proceeding begins. Authorities also are leery of the idea that a person leading a photo array could, intentionally or not, provide cues to an eyewitness about whom they should select out of a photo lineup. Such practices have been blamed for encouraging faulty eyewitness identifications and contributing to the problem of wrongful convictions. That’s why DOJ is urging law enforcement to conduct   blind photo displays. ”If you don’t know, it’s virtually impossible verbally or nonverbally . .. to potentially be able to cue the witness,” Yates said. The guidance from Yates marks the first departmentwide policy for DOJ agencies, and it applies to such law enforcement components as the FBI, DEA, ATF and the U. S. Marshals Service. ”This DOJ memo reflects a series of best practices recommended by scientists based on research conducted over the past,” said Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia and author of a book about wrongful convictions. ”It adopts the recommendations of the 2014 National Academy of Sciences report. And it sends an important message that accuracy matters in criminal cases.” Garrett added that the procedures for lineups ”are well designed to be practical and to apply in many different types of criminal cases where eyewitnesses are important.” You can read the guidelines here."
"In the kitchen at Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, just north of downtown Detroit, Linda Carter and Shawnetta Hudson are in the final stages of making their newest jam creation:   preserves. Carter is meticulously wiping down tables while Hudson seals the lids on jars. Then comes the logo  —   a beautiful graphic of a black woman with afro hair made of strawberries. The kitchen is small and basic, but for the past year it has served as the hub of a   product called Afro Jam. ”The name Afro Jam and the logo are empowering, independent and strong,” Carter says. ”That’s what we want our community to be.” Carter, the food safety manager at the farm, recruited Hudson from the local community to help her keep up with making and selling the product. Strawberry, peach and blueberry are Afro Jam’s best sellers. ”Strawberry jam, that’s my thing,” says Hudson. ”And when Linda and I work together, we’re on point at all times.” Staying ”on point” is a goal of Carter’s. The jam venture has to be profitable. So in the past year the small group of about a   women, rotating volunteers and three paid employees has made an aggressive push to sell the spreads at summer festivals and farmers markets.   is a product of One Mile, a neighborhood arts and culture organization, and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating healthy local food sources for the surrounding community. The farm is a project of Northend Christian Community Development Corporation  —   both are managed by Jerry Hebron. It has a vegetable garden and an apple orchard. Hebron also oversees a weekly farmers market in the summer. Roughly 83 percent of Detroit’s population is black, an aftereffect of white flight that began in the 1950s. As the people left Detroit, so did the supermarkets  —   especially in poorer, blacker neighborhoods. Fresh fruits and vegetables became much harder to come by for many city residents. As a result, gardens started popping up in Detroit, which currently has roughly 1, 500 urban farms. Some are large and operate at an industrial scale others are single lots that have been turned into vegetable gardens for a few families. The idea for Afro Jam was born out of a need to generate revenue year round while also keeping the community involved, says Hebron. ”The community is at the root of everything we do,” she says. So Hebron began spreading the word at the farmers market: They wanted to start a new line of jams using old family recipes. Recipes for making preserves poured in  —   including some that had been handed down for generations. Constance King, 67, heard the call and was excited to share her mother’s recipe with the folks from Afro Jam. ”My mother brought her jam recipe [from the South] with her  —   it belonged to her mother and to her mother’s mother,” King says. ”I felt proud about being able to share that recipe. It’s a beautiful way of keeping my mother alive.” A lifelong resident of Detroit, King loves the city’s rich   history. Making biscuits and jam, she says, was part of the Southern black experience  —   they’ve been a staple at the Southern supper table since at least the   century. ”This [growing fruits and vegetables] is a good idea, it’s something we can do with all of this empty land,” King says. ”Our neighborhood used to be full of families  —   there was not a vacant block. There were hardware stores, delis and grocery stores. It was a   community.” King’s family is originally from Georgia but moved to Detroit in the 1940s during the Great Migration, when millions of   left their homes in the rural South in search of better jobs and an escape from harsh segregationist laws. Hebron says that among black Detroiters, the tradition of making homemade jams has largely fallen by the wayside in the modern era. Oakland Avenue Urban Farms used heritage recipes from seven different families  —   unearthing them from hiding places in attics and   recipe boxes. In the fall of 2015, the ladies of the farm set out to make their first batch of jam. Some of the recipes they received took days to make and weren’t practical for production. Carter and Hebron settled on strawberry jam as their first batch, which took several days and four people to make. ”We bonded over making jam, laughing and sharing old family stories,” Hebron says. ”Gathering is what it’s all about,” Carter says. ”There is nothing greater than bringing people together over food.” Proceeds from the jam venture go to Northend Christian CDC, a nonprofit that’s aimed at revitalizing Detroit’s North End historic district, where One Mile and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm are based. For Hebron, Carter and the rest of the women who make Afro Jam, this is a way to preserve the legacy of Detroit’s black families. ”It’s one of the most amazing projects I’ve ever worked on,” Hebron says. Martina Guzman is a journalist based in Detroit. She’s currently the race and justice journalism fellow at the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University."
"Talladega College isn’t known for its football team  —   because it doesn’t have one. But it does have a band  —   the   Marching Tornadoes. It is the pride of the campus in this small town about 50 miles east of Birmingham. The Presidential Inaugural Committee included Talladega’s band on its list of participants in the traditional inauguration day parade. But the invitation to Washington, D. C. stirred angst for some  —   because of   Donald Trump’s divisive campaign rhetoric. Talladega was founded by former slaves 150 years ago and was the first college in Alabama to accept   students. A debate erupted on campus and around the nation as to whether Talladega should go. Yesterday, college president Billy Hawkins announced the Marching Tornadoes will participate. Band member Darrious Hayes agreed with the decision. He’s been in the band since 2014, his freshman year, and sees the trip to the inauguration as an opportunity. He says this will be his first visit to the nation’s capital. ”The alumni don’t want us to go because of Trump,” says Hayes. ”But we’re saying it’s not because of Donald Trump. It’s because of the experience.” Participation in this inauguration is not popular for some Talladega alums like Shirley Ferrill, a 1974 graduate. She says what Trump said on the campaign trail is not consistent with the values of Talladega College. ”To have them take part in anything that smacks of support for Donald Trump makes me sick,” says Ferrill, Some members of other groups like the Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir have had similar concerns about performing in the inauguration. For Ferrill, this issue is bound up with Talladega’s history. ”I do care what others think about the college’s participation,” she says. ”I care about the reputation Talladega has established over 150 years and I think that reputation would be damaged by the college participating.” Ferrill launched an online petition calling for Talladega to decline the invitation. More than 1, 600 people signed it. No college administrators would answer questions about the decision to go. A Talladega spokeswoman did say it’s a good opportunity for students. The Talladega Marching Tornadoes played at an NFL game in New Orleans last year. But this performance at the 58th Presidential Inauguration will be its biggest ever."
"Starting next week, Norway will become the first country to switch off its nationwide FM radio network and convert completely to digital signals. The change was announced in 2015, and will take months to be fully implemented. The Norwegian government decided to make the transition in part because digital radio can provide many more channels for the same price  —   eight times as many, to be precise. Norway currently has room for just five national radio stations on its FM system  —   three public broadcasting channels, and two commercial channels. Other national radio stations, as well as some regional and local stations, are already using the digital system. Supporters of the switch also say digital radio will sound clearer than FM, or frequency modulation, and that the signal will be clearer in places where fjords and mountains interfere with FM signals. As we reported in 2015, the Norwegian government also says that digital radio is less likely to fail in extreme conditions, which lawmakers saw as an advantage for emergency preparedness. The CEO of Digitalradio Norway says the country’s FM network is antiquated and would need massive investments to maintain  —   so, to allow investment in digital radio, the FM network needs to be shut down. But NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports that the public in general isn’t happy about the decision to abandon FM entirely. ”A recent poll shows that   of Norwegians are against ditching FM,” he reports. ”Among the concerns: people may miss warnings for emergencies that are broadcast on FM. ”In addition, two million cars in Norway  —   a country of just five million people  —   don’t have digital audio broadcasting receivers. ”A digital adapter for an FM car radio costs about $170.” Reuters reports that the shutdown of FM signals will begin in the northern city of Bodø on Jan. 11, and extend across the country by the end of the year. Some local stations, however, will continue to transmit over FM signals until 2022, The Local reports. Norway’s transition to an   radio will be closely watched by other countries considering the same move. ”Among other nations, the U. K. plans to review the need for a switchover once digital listening reaches 50 per cent,” the CBC reports. ”That could be reached by the end of 2017 on current trends, Digital Radio U. K. spokeswoman Yvette Dore said.”"
"When Kayla Wilson was 15, her mom  —   Wendy Founds  —   was in prison serving a   term for felony drug charges. When Founds was 15 she started using drugs, and at some point became addicted to methamphetamines. ”When I asked Mom how she got started she told me that after her   died she was just mad at the world and mad at God, and that’s when she told one of her   that she wanted to get high,” Kayla said during a 2006 visit to StoryCorps with her grandmother, Teri Lyn  . When Founds got busted, she was at home, Kayla explained. ”And I think they were making dope and it had spilled on my younger sister. And it was just so heartbreaking to understand that this is what’s going on and this is how it’s going to be. When I saw her in prison it was horrible because you see her come out of the door in that white suit. And her hair was gone. And she loved her long hair and I just had to cry. And then having to say bye and holding onto her knowing you couldn’t take her with you was the most horrible experience I’ve ever had.” Back then, Kayla hoped that when her mom got out of prison, she would get to be a child for a change. ”Not have to worry about being the mature responsible adult,” she said. ”I think that it’ll really be nice.” Founds was released from prison in 2008. Ten years after Kayla’s StoryCorps visit,    Founds joined her daughter at StoryCorps to talk about the past. Like what she remembers about the day she got out of prison. ”I remember how you smelled, it was vanilla,” Founds said. ”And I remember the relief of, our lives get to really start from this point forward.” Kayla, now 25 and a high school teacher, remembers her mom’s apology. ”I think that was a defining moment for us, because I got to tell you what I’d always wanted to tell you which was that, you know, you can never make up for that time,” she said. Founds cried for days after that conversation, but says what she heard helped her become a better mom. Kayla also admitted wishing her mom was different back in those days. ”I can remember, you know, writing in diaries about how much I hated you because you chose drugs over me,” she said. But in the end, she forgave her mom. ”When you finally decided to get clean, it was obvious you were sincere,” she said. ”And you’re my mom, and as my mom, I loved you. I wanted that relationship. ”Sure would have been great to have [it] growing up, but I’m happy you’re here and I’m happy we’re where we’re at today,” Kayla continued. ”And I think what we’ve got is awesome considering where we’ve been. So I’m excited to see what happens next.” Founds, who lives with Kayla, helps counsel other parents struggling with addiction. She was granted a pardon by Gov. Asa Hutchinson for her felony convictions on March 4, 2016. Audio produced for Morning Edition by John White and Madison Mullen. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"The final chapter of the Obama economy drew that much closer to its end on Friday, with the final jobs report of the 44th president’s time in office. That report showed the 75th straight month of job growth, with employers adding 156, 000 jobs. Solid, but nothing flashy. In that way, it was emblematic of how the job market has generally fared since the worst of the Great Recession’s aftermath: chugging along, slowly but surely recovering. With the final Obama administration jobs day in the books, it’s a good time to look at how American workers have fared. Donald Trump will inherit a job market that is vastly rehabilitated from devastating lows just a few years ago. However, it has also undergone profound changes that have scarred many American workers. Unemployment: How low can it go? As Obama prepares to leave office, the unemployment rate is at 4. 7 percent, less than half of the peak it reached in October 2009. That decline is the result of a prolonged period of job growth. The administration has grown fond of showing off its prolonged run of job growth every month. For some perspective, here’s how big that job growth was: Obama averaged 109, 000 jobs per month. That’s far better than either President Bush experienced, but it’s well below the 242, 000 that Bill Clinton presided over in the roaring 1990s. For Reagan, it was 166, 000. Of course, President Obama came into office as the economy was plunging into a recession (a plunge that also drags down George W. Bush’s number). But even if you average out Obama’s 75 straight months of job growth, you get 199, 000 jobs per month, still shy of Clinton’s economy. In other words, the Obama recovery has been moderate, but remarkably steady. The question is how long that steady climb can continue uninterrupted. The unemployment rate is already near a   low, as Steven Russolillo at the Wall Street Journal pointed out this week, and there is some question among economists how low it can go. Wages finally climbing, Having a job is one thing. Having a job that pays well is another. And slowly through Obama’s tenure, those wages have inched upward. In fact, wages were one bright spot of Friday’s jobs report. Average hourly wages were up by 2. 9 percent in December. After several years of hovering around 2 percent, that’s welcome growth. Aside from meaning more money in workers’ pockets, wage growth serves as yet another sign of a tightening labor market, signaling that employers are willing to pay more to attract workers. Rising wages may inspire the Federal Reserve to take its foot further off the gas pedal in the coming months (that is, allow interest rates to rise)  —   a reminder that the economy isn’t exactly under the president’s control. (More on this later.) Labor force participation is low, but what does it mean? This one became a flashpoint in the presidential election, with Trump at times pointing out how much the labor force shrank under Obama. The main measure of this is the labor force participation rate  —   that is, the percentage of people who are either working or looking for work (that is, who are in the labor force). That figure was at 65. 7 percent in January 2009, at the start of Obama’s presidency, and today is at 62. 7 percent  —   a steep drop. And today, the figure is well below its 2000 high of 67. 3 percent. But it’s not clear how bad or how benign that change is. Many Americans are out of the labor force and entirely happy about it. Quitting work to retire, for example, is a totally nonalarming reason to leave the labor force. But then, there may be many people who, facing a tough job market, have given up looking for work. That’s not good, and it also happened for many Americans both during and after the recession. In the aftermath of the recession, economists have tried to figure out exactly how many people are voluntarily versus involuntarily out of the labor force. As of 2014, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that half the decline in the participation rate at that time had come from ”  trends” like aging  —   as baby boomers age, that means a large chunk of the population will naturally retire. But that left half of the decline a result of economic weakness and a slow recovery, in the CBO’s estimation. Should the participation rate hold steady or creep upward during a Trump presidency, that could keep the unemployment rate from dropping, as only Americans who are looking for work are counted as ”unemployed.” That would be one of those cases where a slightly higher unemployment rate could be a good thing. Improvement for   workers,   job growth over the course of the Obama presidency has far outstripped   job growth, as FiveThirtyEight’s Ben Casselman has pointed out. Of course, some of those people working part time want to be working part time, and some don’t. Another bright spot here is that the share of those workers who are involuntarily part time has fallen off. However, that figure is still a fair bit higher than it was prior to the recession (and that level was itself, in turn, higher than it was before the prior recession). That’s one place where there could still be some improvement  —   there are still about 1 million more of those involuntary   workers than there were prior to the recession. An economy more about doing than making, Politicians of both parties love to talk about manufacturing. Obama pushed manufacturing initiatives throughout his presidency, and Trump built much of his economic message during the campaign around singing the praises of America’s manufacturers. But when it comes to employment, the   share of the economy has continued to fall. Throughout the past few decades, the share of Americans who make things  —   people in manufacturing, mining, logging and construction  —   has fallen off, and that trend continued during the recent recession, finally flattening out toward the end. We present this chart over a longer time frame, which makes it a little bit of a cheat  —   this isn’t exactly a measure of Obama’s ”record on jobs.” Nor is it necessarily a measure of economic weakness in fact, manufacturing has, thanks to technological advances, maintained strong output while shedding workers. It’s a reminder that all the usual macroeconomic indicators (unemployment, wages, labor force participation, GDP) can quantify a lot of things in the economy, but you have to dig in to learn about the quality of that economy  —   what exactly is going on behind those numbers. This decline in   jobs doesn’t signal that the economy is getting worse or better  —   it’s just changing, in this case to become more focused on providing services, instead of goods. All of this is to say that Trump inherits a job market that is humming along comfortably, given how poor of shape it was in only recently. But it’s also an economy that has sharply moved away from manufacturing and other   industries  —   the very ones he pushed the most in the election. That change has hurt plenty of Americans, despite the job market’s improvement. Trump has tried to claim credit for several hundred   jobs here and there (credit that he doesn’t always deserve, as the Washington Post’s Philip Bump has reported) but bringing manufacturing employment back in a sizable way seems like a tall order for any president. Furthermore, alternative work  —   like driving an Uber or Lyft  —   continues to grow quickly as a share of the economy. That change could eventually require policy attention, as more workers take jobs that don’t come with benefits. But there’s another big caveat here. Presidents get lots of credit and blame for the economy’s performance, despite the fact that they don’t really have firm control over that performance. (If they did, why would recessions ever happen?) Yes, a president can push an economic agenda and in some cases push particular policies that end up having a sizable impact on the economy (see: the 2009 stimulus package, which undeniably had a positive impact). But they also need Congress to enact those policies. Not only that, but the Federal Reserve has its own set of controls  —   a set to which the president does not have access, despite some conspiracies of politically motivated Fed  . So, like Obama, whatever happens to the economy under Trump, he may not deserve whatever credit he may claim (and the same goes for whatever blame is thrown his way)."
"Updated at 5:30 p. m.  The Office of Government Ethics is raising alarm over the pace of confirmation hearings for   Donald Trump’s nominees, saying Saturday that they have yet to receive required financial disclosures for some picks set to come before Congress next week. In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,  . Y. and Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  . released Saturday, OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote that ”the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me” and that the current schedule ”has created undue pressure on OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials to rush through these important reviews. ”More significantly, it has left some of the nominees with potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues shortly before their scheduled hearings,” Shaub continued. ”I am not aware of any occasion in the four decades since OGE was established when the Senate held a confirmation hearing before the nominee had completed the ethics review process.” Shaub explains in the letter that the Ethics in Government Act requires that presidential appointments confirmed by the Senate obtain OGE certification of their financial disclosures prior to any congressional hearings. Such a process is ”complex” and ”” he notes, and takes ”weeks, not days” to ensure that the Senate has a clear picture of any possible conflicts of interest. A Senate GOP source, however, noted that in the past the OGE paperwork hasn’t always preceded hearings. For example, in 2001, Rod Paige, George W. Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Education, had his hearing over a week before the committee received the OGE paperwork. Senate committees are set to begin confirmation for several Trump nominees for Cabinet positions and other posts next week so that they can be voted on and sworn in as soon as possible after Trump takes office on January 20. Democrats have already charged that Senate Republicans are trying to hurry through hearings for the  ’s Cabinet, and the warning letter from the federal ethics watchdog gives that argument more weight. Schumer said in a statement that the OGE letter ”makes crystal clear that the transition team’s collusion with Senate Republicans to jam through these Cabinet nominees before they’ve been thoroughly vetted is unprecedented.” ”The Senate and the American people deserve to know that these Cabinet nominees have a plan to avoid any conflicts of interest, that they’re working on behalf of the American people and not their own bottom line, and that they plan to fully comply with the law,” Schumer continued. ”Senate Republicans should heed the advice of this independent office and stop trying to jam through unvetted nominees.” In a statement, the Trump transition team dismissed the OGE letter as overtly political and argued that ”the transition process is currently running smoothly.” ”In the midst of a historic election where Americans voted to drain the swamp, it is disappointing some have chosen to politicize the process in order to distract from important issues facing our country,” the Trump statement read. ”This is a disservice to the country and is exactly why voters chose Donald J. Trump as their next president.” Shaub said that his office would ”continue expediting our ethics reviews of the  ’s nominees to meet reasonable timeframes without sacrificing quality.” ”It would, however, be cause for alarm if the Senate were to go forward with hearings on nominees whose reports OGE has not certified,” he continued. ”For as long as I remain Director, OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials will not succumb to pressure to cut corners and ignore conflicts of interest.” In November, Shaub raised eyebrows when the OGE Twitter account posted odd tweets urging Trump to fully divest from his business interests. NPR later reported that it was Shaub himself who had personally directed the tweets. Tamara Keith contributed. "
"Updated at 5:52 p. m. One day after five people were killed at an airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. more details are coming to light on the suspected gunman: Esteban Ruiz Santiago, a U. S. military veteran. The    was arrested by police shortly after the shooting began at the airport’s baggage claim area. He is now at a Broward County jail, where authorities say he is being held on suspicion of murder. Authorities say there is no indication that Santiago worked with anyone else in planning or executing the attack. Santiago, who served as a combat engineer in the National Guard in Puerto Rico and Alaska, was discharged from service last year for unsatisfactory performance. Santiago was reported for several infractions like AWOLs, or absences without leave. During Santiago’s time with the Puerto Rico National Guard, he was deployed to Iraq from April 2010 to February 2011. The U. S. pulled troops from the country at the end of that year. His aunt, Maria Ruiz Rivera, tells The Record of New Jersey that after he returned, she noticed changes in his mental health. ”He lost his mind,” Ruiz Rivera told the newspaper in Spanish. ”He said he saw things.” Over the course of 2016, Santiago was repeatedly reported to Anchorage police for physical disturbances, according to the city’s police chief, Christopher Tolley  —   including two separate reports of domestic violence and strangulation in October last year. The next month, Santiago walked into an FBI office in Anchorage ”to report that his mind was being controlled by a U. S. intelligence agency,” said FBI special agent Marlin Ritzman, at a Saturday press conference. Tolley described them as ”terroristic thoughts,” in which ”he believed he was being influenced by ISIS.” Ritzman offered more detail: ”During the interview, Mr. Santiago appeared agitated, incoherent and made disjointed statements. Although he stated he did not wish to harm anyone, as a result of his erratic behavior our agents contacted local authorities, who took custody of Mr. Santiago and transported him to the local medical facility for evaluation.” Shortly after that, Ritzman said, ”The FBI closed its assessment on Mr. Santiago after conducting database reviews and interagency checks.” Agents found no ties to terrorism in during their investigation. In the course of the encounter at the FBI office, Tolley says Santiago had left a firearm in his car, along with his newborn child. When Santiago was checked into the mental health facility, his weapon was ”logged into evidence for safekeeping.” That weapon was returned to Santiago in December. Authorities said that as of Saturday they cannot confirm whether it was the same firearm Santiago used in Friday’s attack. Santiago arrived at the Fort   International Airport on Friday afternoon, having traveled on a Delta flight from Anchorage, with a layover in Minneapolis. Jesse Davis, police chief at the Anchorage airport, says Santiago checked a   handgun with TSA according to proper protocol, without drawing attention to himself. Upon landing, he retrieved that handgun from baggage claim, loaded the weapon in the bathroom and then opened fire in Terminal 2 of the Fort Lauderdale airport, according to authorities. ”He just kind of continued coming in, just randomly shooting at people, no rhyme or reason to it,” one witness told MSNBC, saying Santiago ”went up and down the carousels of the baggage claim, shooting through luggage to get at people that were hiding.” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel says it was approximately 70 to 80 seconds before a sheriff’s deputy confronted him. ”Indications are that he came here to carry out this horrific attack,” Piro said Saturday. ”We have not identified any triggers that would have caused this attack.” Piro added: ”It’s way too early for us to rule out anything.”"
"If you’ve never laid eyes on a dogfish  —   or tasted one  —   you’re not alone. Yep, it’s in the shark family. (See those telltale fins?) And fisherman Jamie Eldredge is now making a living catching dogfish off the shores of Cape Cod, Mass. When populations of cod  —   the Cape’s namesake fish  —   became too scarce, Eldredge wanted to keep fishing. That’s when he turned to dogfish  —   and it’s turned out to be a good option. The day I went out with him, Eldredge caught close to 6, 000 lbs. (Check out the video above.) ”It’s one of the most plentiful fish we have on the East Coast right now,” Brian Marder, owner of Marder Trawling Inc. told us. Fishermen in Chatham, Mass. caught about 6 million pounds of dogfish last year. So, who’s eating all this dogfish? Not Americans. ”99 percent of it” is shipped out, Marder says. The British use dogfish to make fish and chips. The French use it in stews and soups. Italians import it, too. The Europeans are eating it up. But Americans haven’t developed a taste for it. At least, not yet. The story of the dogfish is typical of the seafood swap. ”The majority of the seafood we catch in our U. S. fisheries doesn’t stay here,” explains Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, who leads the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And while we export most of what is caught off U. S. shores, what do Americans eat? Imported fish. About ”90 percent of the seafood we consume in the U. S. is actually caught or   overseas,” Kemmerly says. To sustainable seafood advocates, this swap doesn’t make much sense. ”We’re kind of missing out on the bounty we actually have here,” Kemmerly says. And, it’s not just dogfish. The Environmental Defense Fund has launched a campaign called Eat These Fish to tell the story of a whole slew of plentiful fish caught off our shores. The group is trumpeting the conservation success of U. S. fisheries. Some species have been brought back from the brink of extinction through a system of quotas and collaboration between fishermen, conservationists and regulators. They point to fish such as Acadian Redfish and Pacific Ocean Perch. ”If people start to buy these fish more, we can really drive some more economic success to   fishermen,” says Tim Fitzgerald of the Environmental Defense Fund. Sustainable seafood advocates want Americans to   our   habits. ”We import salmon, tuna and shrimp,” says Nancy Civetta of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. But ”we do not eat the [fish] we’re bringing to shore, right here!” Civetta says it’s good that fishermen have a market for their dogfish in Europe, but she argues we should be eating it here, too. She says a strong domestic market would strengthen the fisheries, making them less vulnerable to shifting preferences overseas. ”If we continue to import and buy from other countries, then our fishing industry could wither away,” Civetta says. And this would be a loss for coastal communities, she argues. So, is it possible to turn Americans onto dogfish? Chef Bob Bankert at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst thinks so. The university has contracted with Sea To Table, a company that connects domestic fishermen with chefs, universities and other buyers, to purchase dogfish. The campus serves 55, 000 meals a day and has made a big commitment to buying locally sourced foods. ”Being in western Massachusetts, we love to support the Massachusetts fisheries,” Bankert says. I watch as he grills dogfish fillets  —   ”it tastes great,” he vouches as he flips one over. We were curious to see if students agreed. We hung out for an afternoon as students sampled dogfish tacos, dogfish sushi and an Asian flash fry made with dogfish fillets and drizzled with wasabi mayo. ”Oh, it’s so good  —   amazing!” student Ruth Crawford told us as she finished off a taco. I asked her what the biggest appeal was. ”It’s new, it’s local, so healthy,” she told us. Some students were a bit turned off by the display of the whole dogfish  —   with its menacing shark appearance  —   that was showcased on the dining line. ”That’s scary looking,” one student told us as he walked by. Dining hall manager Selina Fournier says that’s where the storytelling comes in. When they saw the fish here today, she says, a lot of them didn’t know what to make of it. But once they learned more about   where it comes from, who caught it   and they got the chance to taste it, ”the whole association really . .. brings [the story] to life.” It’s not just universities that are promoting locally caught fish. Chefs, environmentalists and eaters across the country are embracing the concept of eating fish caught in a way that won’t lead to overfishing or environmental problems, while also supporting local fishing communities. The National Restaurant Association has named ”sustainable seafood” as one of its top 20 food trends for 2017. Sea to Table is about to launch a    online fish market. It’s scheduled to launch by the end of January. And this means that soon, Americans will be able to get dogfish and many other types of   species from U. S. fisheries delivered to our front doors. This story was reported as part of a collaboration with the PBS NewsHour."
"House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Thursday that Republicans will  —   once again  —   vote to cut off federal tax dollars for Planned Parenthood. They are planning to include the measure as part of a bigger upcoming bill to repeal pillars of Obamacare. This isn’t the first time that they have tried to pass this type of legislation  —   President Obama vetoed a similar bill last January. But with a Republican president about to take office, the party now has the best chance in more than a decade to get it signed into law. They also have a powerful legislative tool on their side: special budget rules that will let them offer their proposal on a measure that needs only 51 votes  —   meaning a Democratic filibuster can’t stop it. But the path to victory might not be totally clear, as   Trump’s position on abortion has wavered and allies of Planned Parenthood vow not to go down without a fight. Here are four key points to keep in mind as the parties gear up for a fight on Capitol Hill: 1. Planned Parenthood is not directly funded by the government, but it does receive payment from federal funds, This is a key distinction. While Planned Parenthood is not funded directly by the government, it does receive payment and grants from federal programs. Planned Parenthood’s clinics provide a number of health services, mostly for   women. And so consequently, the organization often bills Medicaid for reimbursement. It also receives funding through Title X, a federal grant program for family planning services. However, neither Medicaid nor Title X fund the abortion services, which many people associate with Planned Parenthood. Medicaid does have some narrow exceptions for this in the case of rape, incest or life of mother. And this gets at the heart of one of the nation’s longest running and divisive political debates  —   not only to what extent the federal government should direct its fiscal policy on women’s health matters, but whether abortion should be legal at all. 2. Planned Parenthood has become increasingly polarized: targeted by the GOP, championed by Democrats, Planned Parenthood has been a political target for years. But recently, the partisan polarization has gone beyond abortion rights and into any federal funds going to the organization. Republicans have more vehemently opposed Planned Parenthood in recent years for facilitating the transfer of fetal tissue for medical research. Concern over this practice led Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa to recently refer several Planned Parenthood affiliates to the FBI and the Department of Justice for further investigation. The issue of tissue transfer also became the subject of a select committee review, which released a heavily critical report this week. 3. Republicans aren’t quite sure Donald Trump is on their side  Republican lawmakers are confident in their effort, because for the first time in a decade, the party will control both chambers of Congress and the White House. But Donald Trump has a mixed record on Planned Parenthood. During the campaign, he praised the organization for doing ”very good work” for ”millions of women.” But he’s also supported cutting off federal funding. That said, Trump’s political inner circle is very much in favor of defunding the organization. Vice   Pence, for example, is a longtime leader in this effort with zero ambiguity in his record. He offered legislation to this effect when he was in the House. Speaker Ryan is also personally very much in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood. But Ivanka Trump may be the person to watch. She has been a moderating force for her father on many women’s issues. 4. Planned Parenthood is gearing up for a fight, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards took to Twitter to respond to the GOP’s efforts saying, ”Not without one hell of a fight, they aren’t.” Richards may well be pointing to Senate Democrats’ past successes at defeating this type of legislation. They’ve succeeded in the past, in part, because of Republican allies  —   Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski  —   who they will likely need to lean on again. Beyond Capitol Hill, Planned Parenthood has   experience organizing and a loyal constituency. It is also a sponsor of the women’s march planned to protest Trump’s inauguration this month in Washington, which some estimates project as many as 200, 000 women may attend. Plus, to an extent, it has public opinion on its side. Public polling has consistently shown that the majority of Americans oppose cutting off all funding for Planned Parenthood. So, there is certainly at least some potential political risk for Republicans."
"Emil Girardi moved to San Francisco on New Year’s Eve in 1960. He loved everything about the city: the energy, the people and the hills. And, of course, the bars, where Girardi mixed drinks for most of his adult life. About 10 years ago, the    New York native had a stroke and collapsed on the sidewalk near his Nob Hill home. Everything changed. ”I didn’t want to go out of the house,” Girardi recalled, adding he only felt comfortable ”going from the bedroom to the dining room.” He’d started to fear the city’s streets  —   and growing older. An    friend worried about his isolation and called a San   nonprofit called Little Brothers, Friends of the Elderly. The organization works to relieve isolation and loneliness among the city’s seniors by pairing them with volunteers. Little Brothers matched him with Shipra Narruhn, a computer software trainer who has volunteered with various organizations over the years, and became involved with Little Brothers after her mother’s death. The organization started in France after World War II and now operates in several U. S. cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Cathy Michalec, the executive director of the local nonprofit, said older adults often become less mobile as they age. Cities like San Francisco, because of hills, crowded streets or old housing stock, are difficult for many seniors. That can lead to isolation and loneliness, Michalec said. ”Those 50 stairs you used to be able to go up and down all the time, you can’t go up and down all the time,” she said. ”The streets are crowded and sometimes unsafe. . .. Sometimes, our elders say, it’s easier to stay in the house.” Across the nation, geriatricians and other health and social service providers are growing increasingly worried about loneliness among seniors like Girardi. Their concerns are fueled by studies showing the emotional isolation is linked to serious health problems. Research shows older adults who feel lonely are at greater risk of memory loss, strokes, heart disease and high blood pressure. The health threat is similar to that of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to AARP. Researchers say that loneliness and isolation are linked to physical inactivity and poor sleep, as well as high blood pressure and poor immune functioning. A 2012 study showed that people who felt lonely  —   whether or not they lived with others or suffered from depression  —   were at heightened risk of death. It also showed that 43 percent of people over 60 felt lonely. ”If someone reports feeling lonely, they are more likely to lose their independence and they are at greater risk of dying solely from being lonely,” said Dr. Carla Perissinotto, a geriatrician and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who authored the study. There can be many causes of loneliness, Perissinotto said, including illness, hearing loss or life changes such as retirement or the loss of a spouse. ”The usual social connections we have in younger life end up changing as we get older,” she said. Narruhn recalled that she and Girardi would just visit at his apartment, in the beginning. She’d tell him about her travels and her adult daughter. He’d tell her about his adventures in San Francisco. He described what the city was like as a young gay man, and told her about the friends he had lost to AIDS. They talked about music, books and cooking. ”I could tell from talking to him that he had a lot of interests,” she said. ”At one time, he was very sociable.” Gradually, Narruhn started bringing him music from Italy, India and Mexico. Girardi liked the songs he could snap his fingers to. Finally, Shipra convinced him to go out to lunch  —   and to visit a hidden,   staircase in San Francisco with her. ”Shipra came to see me, and came to see me and came to see me,” he said. ”Finally, she said, ’You have to get out of the house. ’” Soon, they were going to jazz shows, on walks and to the park. Narruhn said she invited Girardi to do eclectic things with her  —   chakra cleansings, Reiki healing sessions  —   and he was always game. Over time, his fear subsided. So did his loneliness. ”After she took me out of the house, then I didn’t want to stop,” Girardi said. There isn’t much research about the effectiveness of programs such as Little Brothers. But Perissinotto said they can help seniors build new social connections. Other efforts to address loneliness include roommate matching services in various states and, in the United Kingdom, a   hotline. ”Maintaining connections, that   thing, is actually really important,” Perissinotto said. ”It’s hard to measure, it’s hard to quantify, but there is something real. Even though we don’t have the exact research, we have tons of stories where we know it’s [had] an effect in people’s lives.” AARP Foundation also recently launched a nationwide online network to raise awareness about social isolation and loneliness among older adults. The network, Connect2Affect, allows people to do a   test and reach out to others feeling disconnected. AARP, the Gerontological Society of America and other organizations are hoping to help create more understanding of isolation and loneliness and to help lonely seniors build more social connections. ”Loneliness is a huge issue we don’t talk enough about,” said Dr. Charlotte Yeh, chief medical officer of AARP Services. ”There is a huge stigma.” One afternoon in November, Narruhn came by to take Girardi out to one of their favorite restaurants on Polk Street. The waiter greeted them by name. Over Italian food, they planned several more visits together. Girardi said he doesn’t fear growing older anymore. He’s surrounded by his new family. And by good music, he said, and ”snapping fingers.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. You can follow Anna Gorman on Twitter: @annagorman."
"Why do you do what you do? What is the engine that keeps you up late at night or gets you going in the morning? Where is your happy place? What stands between you and your ultimate dream? Heavy questions. One researcher believes that writing down the answers can be decisive for students. He   a paper that demonstrates a startling effect: nearly erasing the gender and ethnic minority achievement gap for 700 students over the course of two years with a short written exercise in setting goals.  Jordan Peterson teaches in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto. For decades, he has been fascinated by the effects of writing on organizing thoughts and emotions. Experiments going back to the 1980s have shown that ”therapeutic” or ”expressive” writing can reduce depression, increase productivity and even cut down on visits to the doctor. ”The act of writing is more powerful than people think,” Peterson says. Most people grapple at some time or another with   anxiety that saps energy and increases stress. Through written reflection, you may realize that a certain unpleasant feeling ties back to, say, a difficult interaction with your mother. That type of insight, research has shown, can help locate, ground and ultimately resolve the emotion and the associated stress. At the same time, ”  theory” holds that writing down concrete, specific goals and strategies can help people overcome obstacles and achieve. ’It Turned My Life Around’ Recently, researchers have been getting more and more interested in the role that mental motivation plays in academic achievement  —   sometimes conceptualized as ”grit” or ”growth mindset” or ”executive functioning.” Peterson wondered whether writing could be shown to affect student motivation. He created an undergraduate course called Maps of Meaning. In it, students complete a set of writing exercises that combine expressive writing with  . Students reflect on important moments in their past, identify key personal motivations and create plans for the future, including specific goals and strategies to overcome obstacles. Peterson calls the two parts ”past authoring” and ”future authoring.” ”It completely turned my life around,” says Christine Brophy, who, as an undergraduate several years ago, was battling drug abuse and health problems and was on the verge of dropping out. After taking Peterson’s course at the University of Toronto, she changed her major. Today she is a doctoral student and one of Peterson’s main research assistants.  In an early study at McGill University in Montreal, the course showed a powerful positive effect with   students, reducing the dropout rate and increasing academic achievement. Peterson is seeking a larger audience for what he has dubbed ” .” He started a   company and is selling a version of the curriculum online. Brophy and Peterson have found a receptive audience in the Netherlands. At the Rotterdam School of Management, a shortened version of   has been mandatory for all   students since 2011. (These are undergraduates  —   they choose majors early in Europe). The latest paper, published in June, compares the performance of the first complete class of freshmen to use   with that of the three previous classes. Overall, the ” ” students greatly improved the number of credits earned and their likelihood of staying in school. And after two years, ethnic and   differences in performance among the students had all but disappeared. The ethnic minorities in question made up about   of the students. They are   and   immigrants from   backgrounds  —   Africa, Asia and the Middle East. While the history and legacy of racial oppression are different from that in the United States, the Netherlands still struggles with large differences in wealth and educational attainment among majority and minority groups. ’Zeroes Are Deadly’ At the Rotterdam school, minorities generally underperformed the majority by more than a third, earning on average eight fewer credits their first year and four fewer credits their second year. But for minority students who had done this set of writing exercises, that gap dropped to five credits the first year and to just   of one credit in the second year. How could a bunch of essays possibly have this effect on academic performance? Is this replicable? Melinda Karp is the assistant director for staff and institutional development at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. She leads studies on interventions that can improve college completion. She calls Peterson’s paper ”intriguing.” But, she adds, ”I don’t believe there are silver bullets for any of this in higher ed.” Peterson believes that formal   can especially help minority students overcome what’s often called ”stereotype threat,” or, in other words, to reject the damaging belief that generalizations about   academic performance will apply to them personally. Karp agrees. ”When you enter a new social role, such as entering college as a student, the expectations aren’t always clear.” There’s a greater risk for students who may be academically underprepared or who lack role models. ”Students need help not just setting vague goals but figuring out a plan to reach them.” The key for this intervention came at crunch time, says Peterson. ”We increased the probability that students would actually take their exams and hand in their assignments.” The act of   helped them overcome obstacles when the stakes were highest. ”You don’t have to be a genius to get through school you don’t even have to be that interested. But zeroes are deadly.” Karp has a theory for how this might be working. She says you often see   students engage in   behavior ”to save face.” ”If you aren’t sure you belong in college, and you don’t hand in that paper,” she explains, ”you can say to yourself, ’That’s because I didn’t do the work, not because I don’t belong here.’ ” Writing down their internal motivations and connecting daily efforts to   goals may have helped these young people solidify their identities as students. Brophy is testing versions of the   curriculum at two high schools in Rotterdam, and monitoring their psychological   school attendance and tendency to procrastinate. Early results are promising, she says: ”It helps students understand what they really want to do.”"
"Classical composers have long had their patrons: Beethoven had Archduke Rudolph, John Cage had Betty Freeman. For contemporary opera composers, there’s Beth Morrison. She and her production company have commissioned new works from some of the most innovative emerging composers today. Morrison is not your typical moneyed patron, though. ”I didn’t come from money and I didn’t have money and I wanted to live in New York!” she says. She runs her empire from a     apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn. One bedroom in the apartment is for sleeping. The other is a workspace for her eight employees. ”I’ve always run the business from my home, maybe much to the chagrin of my board,” she says. ”For me, the decision is always really clear: I could spend $30 to $40, 000 on an office space every year, or I could put that into a commission.” Morrison has commissioned works from David T. Little, Mohammed Fairouz and Missy Mazzoli. Mazzoli, whose first opera, Song from the Uproar, was produced by Morrison, calls her a true individual. ”Beth has this famous boot collection that is just amazing  —   it blows my mind,” Mazzoli says. ”It’s sort of a symbol of this commitment of being an individual and to being an iconoclast and to doing things her own way.” Morrison says she follows her guts and her ears in her work. ”I won’t do anything unless I’m mad crazy about the music and the composer and really feeling like they’re contributing something to the field that is different,” she says. David T. Little says Morrison expressed this kind of excitement for his work Soldier Songs after she watched a video he sent her. ”[She] called me almost immediately and says, ’We have to do this piece. I don’t know where we’re gonna get the money, I don’t know how we’re gonna do it . .. but we have to do it! ’” he says. Little says this moment was a perfect illustration of how Morrison works: When she’s excited about something, she makes it happen. Their work together has continued: Last year, Morrison featured Little’s   opera, Dog Days, at Prototype, the annual festival she   (with Kristin Marting and Kim Whitener of the arts organization HERE) to showcase new work. The 2017 festival begins tonight in New York. Morrison doesn’t have her own theater. Instead, she partners with venues in New York and around the country to give works more than one hearing. ”[Composers] need their works to be seen by as many people as possible,” she says. ”I feel like I’ve succeeded  —   particularly with an opera project, ’cause they’re large and expensive  —   if we’ve been able to give two to five presentations of the piece in different cities.” One project that achieved success by this metric was Mazzoli’s latest opera, Breaking the Waves. Last fall, Morrison partnered with Opera Philadelphia to present the piece, and it’s now being done at this year’s Prototype festival. Kamala Sankaram, whose opera Thumbprint premiered at the first Prototype, will see it restaged at LA Opera this June, thanks to Morrison’s efforts. Morrison’s commitment to extending the life of her composers’ works has made them just as passionately devoted to her as she is to them. Sankaram says Morrison’s work is not easy. ”To make contemporary opera your business takes a lot of guts,” Sankaram says. ”I don’t want to go there too much, but there’s still a lot of sexism in our field, and so for her to do this on her own is really kind of astonishing.” Morrison’s current season includes five world premieres, nine tours and her annual festival  —   all funded and produced out of her   nonprofit. Her schedule is certainly packed, but she says championing new composers has been intensely rewarding work. ”It’s been thrilling to be a part of the launch of these incredible composers,” she says. ”It really has been this symbiotic relationship that I feel very grateful for.”"
"Even before Barack Obama moved into the White House, he and his team made a choice that made actually selling his policies to the public more difficult. In December 2008, Obama’s economic team gathered in Chicago to map out what would become the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ”A dispute, discussion, something breaks out at that meeting. We haven’t even come in yet,” said Austan Goolsbee, a professor at the University of Chicago, who was a top economic adviser in the early years of the Obama presidency. Goolsbee said there were two schools of thought about how to proceed. ”Doing something on the order of magnitude of the problem, which everyone understood is going to be a collection of a whole bunch of things and you’re going to have a hard time explaining it” was one option, Goolsbee said. Or, he said, others argued, ” ’Couldn’t we just pick one thing and just do that one thing?’ And that would be really easy to explain.” The economy was hemorrhaging jobs, and Obama’s economic team was afraid the country was on the brink of another Great Depression. The president chose to go big. Obama came into the White House eight years ago, hailed as the ”Great Communicator” because of his lofty speeches, but as he leaves office  —   and delivers a farewell address Tuesday night in Chicago  —   by his own admission, Obama hasn’t always been so adept at communicating his policies and achievements. He struggled to make the sell on the Recovery Act (known as the stimulus) the auto bailout and the Affordable Care Act. The man who will succeed him has chosen a decidedly different path.   Donald Trump has on multiple occasions hyped up announcements by companies that they will add a few thousand or even fewer jobs, declaring victory and getting lots of attention for relatively small wins, as compared with the size of the U. S. economy. Obama has overseen 75 straight months of job growth. Employers added millions of jobs during the course of his presidency, but Obama hasn’t been able to capitalize on that politically as well as his allies would have hoped. Obama signed the Recovery Act in February 2009. And in the speech he made that day, the challenges of explaining the behemoth $780 billion package were clear. ”Today does mark the beginning of the end,” Obama said, ”the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs.” He talked about the millions of jobs it would ”save or create,” a metric so squishy it proved hard for Obama to claim credit for it later and made it easy for opponents to criticize the stimulus as a failure. He spent most of the speech talking about ”investments.” ”Rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, repairing our faulty dams and levees, bringing critical broadband connections to businesses and homes in nearly every community in America,” Obama said in what was a long list of projects. ”Upgrading mass transit.” But Frank Luntz, who has advised Republicans on messaging, said in an interview with NPR that the word ”investment” can sound, for some, like code for   spending. ”There was real hostility early on,” Luntz said, ”a feeling that it’s just an expansion of Washington and nobody was going to benefit and everyone was going to get stuck with the tab.” Obama’s team overestimated Americans’ appetite for stimulus spending, Luntz argued. Republicans in Congress, who never supported the Recovery Act, repeatedly derided it as a ”failed   stimulus.” In reality, a big chunk of it went to tax cuts  —   and it helped pull the country out of the biggest recession since the Great Depression. In Obama’s   speech, the mention of those tax cuts came near the end. ”About a third of this package comes in the forms of tax cuts  —   by the way, the most progressive in our history,” said Obama to applause, arguing it would not only spur job creatio, but put ”money in the pockets of 95 percent of   families in America.” The way the tax cuts were distributed also limited any public relations benefit. The money just appeared in people’s paychecks as a smaller payroll tax deduction. ”Nobody realized, nobody understood and, so, nobody celebrated it,” Luntz said. ”There’s a simple rule in politics: If you don’t talk about it, no one knows you did it, and you get no credit for it. And that was the problem with the   component of Obama’s stimulus package.” The tax cut was carefully designed by the Obama administration to target   and   Americans. But it ultimately had little traction with the public  —   or with Republicans whom it was intended to help sway. ”At one point in the first year,” Goolsbee said, remembering a moment of great frustration, ”there’s a poll that comes out in which something like 60 percent of the country said that they were sick of the tax increases that had come from the stimulus, when, in fact, 95 percent had gone down.” Goolsbee said that is when he began to realize that reality was relative  —   something that has truly taken hold in American politics now. ”And at that point, you know the president was basically asking the economic team, ’What is wrong with you people?’ and I just felt like punching myself,” said Goolsbee with a laugh. Economists widely view the stimulus as having helped the economy avoid disaster. But politically, Obama got none of the credit for the tax cuts and a whole lot of grief for the spending. This was a pattern that would repeat itself throughout his presidency. As Trump prepares to enter the White House, his communications strategy is one of mass saturation, including   tweets on multiple topics. Will that work out better than Obama’s cool focus on facts and figures when trying to convince the public? Or as he works to repeal some of Obama’s policy achievements, will he have to adopt a different tactic to sell his proposals?"
"The end of 2016 marked a grim milestone in Chicago. More than 4, 000 people were shot over the course of the year, and 762 people were homicide victims, according to the Chicago Tribune. Those numbers are higher than the totals of New York and Los Angeles combined. To be clear, other cities, like New Orleans and Detroit, had higher rates of gun violence and murder on a per capita basis. But nowhere were the sheer, raw numbers as staggering as they were in Chicago. NPR’s Michel Martin spoke with a variety of voices in Chicago  —   those who have been personally affected by the violence people who have been involved in it themselves, and officials at the federal and local level who are trying to fix it. The story that emerged was one of frustration, and fear, with no clear silver bullet toward fixing the problem. But there’s also a sense of hope, even from those who have suffered the deepest. Illinois Congressman Danny Davis remembers exactly where he was when he got the phone call just a few weeks ago, in November. ”One of the police commanders was on the phone and he said, ’I have some bad news to tell you,’ Davis recalls. ”And I said, ’Bad news? Well, I’m pretty accustomed to bad news.” The longtime Chicago Democrat has performed eulogies for some two dozen young Chicagoans who have been killed. But this phone call was different. ”He says, ’I want you to just brace yourself. I understand that your grandson may have been shot. ’” Javon Wilson, 15, was killed in a dispute over shoes and clothes, according to police. Davis says it arose from a ”swapping group,” where kids borrowed each other’s clothes in a trading system. The    congressman choked back tears, as he recounted hearing the news. ”I couldn’t, for the moment, think. And by then, my son called, and I said, ’Oh yeah, I heard that Javon. ..’ (And my son) says, ’Daddy, he’s gone. ..’” Davis says he has no choice but to find some sort of silver lining out of this. He’s doubling down on his efforts to strengthen gun laws, and prevent similar tragedies from occurring again. That’s despite a   legislature, which has shown little appetite for stricter gun laws. ”There are millions and millions of people who think about guns the same way that I do,” Davis says. ”You know, one of my favorite songs, something by a guy named Sam Cooke used to sing   oh, it is so profound. ’It may be a long time coming, but I know some change is going to come.’ That’s the way I feel about this issue.” No consensus as to why Chicago has been hit hard by violence, Although there’s no consensus as to why Chicago has been hit so hard by violence, there are a few factors that officials point to again and again: Guns and poverty. ”You put those two volatile things together and you end up with folks with guns and no purpose in life and killing people for no reasonable purpose at all,” says Davis’ Senate colleague, minority whip Dick Durbin (D  —   IL). Durbin, among others, points out that geography might also play an important role in Chicago’s misfortunes. The city is seen as a centrally located hub for gun and drug trafficking. ”Our city of Chicago is awash in guns. They come in from every direction, from the suburbs, from Northern Indiana gun shows, from Mississippi for goodness sakes. They make it into the city. They’re confiscated in these gun crimes at a rate of about one an hour every day, every week, every month.” ”My wife said, ’Somebody has to do something.’ And I realized, I am somebody. I’m the senator from the state of Illinois. You know, I’m doing my best to understand what I can do from the federal level. But yes, I care, and a lot of people care. And this killing has to stop.”   Donald Trump is another voice suggesting federal intervention. Earlier this month he tweeted about Chicago’s violence, as he sees it. ”Chicago murder rate is record setting   4, 331 shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016. If Mayor can’t do it he must ask for Federal help!” Durbin, for one, says he’d be open to that sort of help. ”The mayor suggested an increase in the police department, and we need some federal funds to help us do that. We need resources and training and equipment. And [Trump] could help us do it. I hope he will.” Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office declined a formal interview request. But the city did make available Chicago’s recently hired police chief, Eddie Johnson, who spoke to Martin from member station WBEZ in Chicago: ”Chicago has a gun problem. That’s where our violence stems from. To be honest, Chicago isn’t out of control, but we have five police districts that are actually responsible for the majority of the increase in our gun violence this year. But I think one of the main factors that contribute to it is the fact that we do a terrible job of holding repeat gun offenders accountable for their crimes. ”The violence in Chicago is not just about what police are or are not doing. We have   issues. The economic support that we have to give these impoverished areas, the mental health treatment, better education, better housing   all of that stuff matters. ”But I tell you when it comes to morale, you look at what happened the other day when those beat officers found a young man wandering down the street. If they didn’t care and if morale wasn’t good, they didn’t have to stop and investigate that to the extent that they did to find out what happened.” Johnson was referring to yet another black eye for Chicago. Four teenagers have been charged with hate crimes, for allegedly kidnapping and torturing an acquaintance with special needs. Police say the victim was approached by police, after he escaped, looking disoriented and disheveled. Hate crimes not common, but social media use is, NPR’s Cheryl Corley, who is based in Chicago, says the story is grabbing headlines locally, as well as nationally, ”People are just really shocked by this. You know, what we know about the case is that it started off with the victim and a suspect he considered to be a friend hanging out.” The victim was white, and the black suspects allegedly used racial slurs against him. But Corley says the crime doesn’t really fit the pattern associated with much of the violence in the city, which has been fueled by gangs and guns. ”I think that the only thing that may be common with what’s happening with gun violence here is that the Facebook suspects used social media to broadcast what was happening,” she told Martin. ”And we often have cases where gang members here will post something on social media, often some sort of taunt, that sparks some of the gun violence that occurs here.” One way the incident may be similar to others, however, is that the victim knew his attackers. Some researchers, notably Yale professor Andrew Papachristos and Dr. Gary Slutkin of the University of Illinois at Chicago, say that nugget could hold the key to predicting, and eventually preventing violent crime in places like Chicago. ”So if I get shot, for instance, there’s a high likelihood that the people around me in my networks will also be victims and that, then, their friends will be victims. And their friends’ friends will be victims,” Papachristos tells Corley. ”It is contagious and that, when it’s managed as a health issue, you can rapidly drop it and sustain drops for long periods of time,” Slutkin adds. Slutkin heads a group called CureViolence. The group uses data to predict who might be involved in disputes, that might turn violent, and then sends ”interrupters” to try to stop things from escalating. But Corley reports the program has been mainly dropped in Chicago, due to funding shortages. The state’s ongoing budget woes have widely been blamed as another obstacle to stopping violence in the streets. In places like Austin on Chicago’s West Side, or Englewood and Chatham, on the South Side, there’s nothing abstract or academic about gang life. Gang life can be a death sentence, Edwin Day, Mario Hardiman and Andre Evans are all former gang members. All of them say their family structures were crumbling, and they were drawn to gangs for both structure, and safety. ”Most of the other people in the neighborhood were the pimps, drug dealers, dice shooters, ticket scalpers, some type of hustler, some type of, you know, shyster,” Hardiman told Martin. ”So I looked up to those characters and eventually became somewhat of a few of those characters myself   gambling and selling drugs, using marijuana.” Evans tells a similar story. ”I felt isolated, you know   the whole emotional thing. You’re just dealing with my emotions and not having my biological father in my life. ”That was the number one source of why I wanted to   why I got involved in (Gangster Disciple Nation). And I think the second reason was really to protect my brothers as well. You know, there would be a lot of times when, you know, people would be having hits out on my brothers or things happening to my brothers and just in a lot of ways, it was a way for me to protect them. Day recalls to Martin an incident where he was shot nine times in a gang dispute. DAY: Well, I was involved in gang life. I felt that there was others that was trying to do to me and my people bodily harm, and so we felt at the time that we would protect ourselves at all costs. And so there were times that I would pick up a gun and try to shoot people. I didn’t   I’ve never done it or I never shot anybody, but I have shot a gun and tried to shoot people. And the ironic thing about that, I guess, things come full circle. I was shot. And so. .. MARTIN: That’s part of the story, isn’t it? DAY: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. MARTIN: That people are as likely to be victims as they are to be perpetrators. Right? So why   what happened with that? Why did you get shot? DAY: And so what happened was   like I say   we were involved in gangs and drugs, and so you’re talking about monies being exchanged. And so that’s what changes. That’s where the violence heightens when you talk about drugs and monies and things of a sort. And so at this particular time, we were in what was called a gang war. And so guys would come in and try to shoot us and kill us, and we would kind of go back and forth try to shoot them and kill them. And so one particular night, I was in a home where we were kind engaging in all of this negative activity. I was leaving out and actually prepared to go and put my gear on to go and cause somebody else harm. And so unknowing to myself as I walked down the stairs, there was a guy that was waiting for me on the side of the building in the bushes or what have you. And he could have killed me. I will say that he could have killed me because he could have waited ’til I got to the bottom step and just kind of walk right up on me and shot me in the back of the head, but he didn’t. And I thank God for that. He waited until I kind of got to the edge of the curb, and he rose up out of the gangway and he started to shoot me. And so as I ran, I’m running across the street trying to get to my house, and I kind of catch one in the back of my leg. And I felt that and from then I continued to catch numerous shots   my back, my leg, my arms   all over. It was a total of nine shots that I ended up receiving. I can remember it kind of like it was yesterday. I was telling myself if I can just make it to the other side of the street, I’ll be fine. And so he continued to shoot, unload on me. And I did make it. I did make it to the other side of the street. And by the time I made it to the other side of street, I had caught so many shots that I just kind of collapsed right there. He was gone. I was down. And that’s what happened. Unintended consequences another problem, Another problem, according to experts and former gang members, is one of unintended consequences. When authorities cracked down on gang leadership  —   rank and file members no longer had gang hierarchy to ensure order. Large groups devolved into   factions. And that in turn led to chaos on the streets. ”When you have different factions, you don’t have leadership, and people can kind of run amok and do what they want to do,” Evans says. ”And they be like oh,    come from this block, so we going to mess with him like that, you know, just do random  ’  as they say, just because    comes from that side of the street per se. You know, and I had one of my best friends in high school who, you know, tried to join a gang, and they beat his jaw in with the gun.” Day, Hardiman, and Evans now all talk to   youth about avoiding the gang life. And despite their harrowing stories, they say they haven’t given up hope that things can get better, even if some young people in the city have. Hardiman says the government has to step up and help the black community. Evans advises young kids to find a legitimate ”hustle” to focus on, instead of turning to the streets. Day says the answer lies within every person in Chicago, who can either ignore the problem, hide from it, or try to stop it. ”I think that it starts by really having a love and a concern for someone other than yourself, to be able to go out and say, ’You know what? Let me go in and let me grab one. I’ll just grab it. It doesn’t have to be a whole group of young people, but let me grab one and talk to him.’ I think that it starts with love. It starts with compassion. It starts with caring for someone other than yourself. ’”"
"The morning of Oct. 18, 2016, the employees at La Divina, a taqueria and Mexican grocery in Buffalo, N. Y. were prepping for the lunch crowd  —   making salsa, grilling chicken and stocking the shelves with Mexican Cokes and Corona beer. Suddenly, agents from Homeland Security Investigations rushed in. ”I heard someone shouting, ’Don’t move! Don’t move!’ It was ICE,” says Jose Antonio Ramos, a    Mexican cook working illegally, in Spanish. ICE stands for U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ”I was in shock. I was complying with their orders, but they were mistreating us,” he says. ”They pointed guns at our heads. They pushed us on the floor and handcuffed us. They brought in dogs.” Beefy federal agents hauled out computers and cash registers while local news crews filmed. The raid of La Divina and three other restaurants under the same owner became one of the nation’s biggest immigration worksite actions in recent years. In all, 14 workers have been charged with civil and criminal immigration violations. Twelve more workers were found to be in the country illegally, but they were released because they didn’t meet the government’s enforcement priorities. The owner and his two managers are charged with harboring unauthorized immigrants. The federal criminal complaint alleges the trio provided workers with housing and transportation, paid them in cash off the books and avoided income taxes. Sergio Mucino, a    lawful permanent resident from Mexico City, owns the four restaurants ICE raided. During a recent lunch rush, Mucino is spotted making tacos behind the counter at La Divina with some newly hired workers. He declines to discuss the raid because his case is ongoing, but he is happy to talk about his menu. ”We try to offer authentic street tacos, make it more like a Mexican atmosphere,” he says as patrons line up to order ribeye and chorizo tacos. While Mucino is out on bail and reopening his restaurants one by one, most of his illegal workforce is out of a job and facing deportation. This was the aftermath of the raid despite an ICE statement that they were targeting the abusive employer, not his employees. Over at a lunch counter, Jeff Dugan, who works at a local marketing company, digs into a plate of chicken quesadillas. Dugan says he supports the ICE raid. ”I want the workers to be in good standing and . .. working under our laws and [well] taken care of,” he says, ”because when they’re not, they get put in subpar housing and they’re getting underpaid and overworked.” Thirteen hours a day, six days a week are what Ramos and his coworkers put in. They earned the equivalent of $6. 50 an hour  —   below the federal minimum wage. ”I guess my only complaint would be the long hours,” Ramos says. ”But you need to make money to eat and take care of your family. You have no choice.” The father of three children from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, wears an electronic ankle monitor and faces a civil violation for overstaying a work visa at a different restaurant that paid him even less. The city has rallied around the Buffalo restaurant workers who are facing removal. Churches are supporting them with food and rent assistance while they await their immigration hearings. Local sympathizers have demonstrated outside the ICE office in this Northern border city and circulated a petition asking federal authorities to let the workers go. An ICE spokesman defends the raid. He says they focused on Mucino, but during the course of the investigation they learned some of his workers had   the country after being deported, which is a felony. But some locals are asking if these relatively minor violations are a reason for federal agents to storm restaurant kitchens with handguns drawn and police dogs. ”It’s really small potatoes and so it really did shock this community,” says Nicole Hallett, an immigration law professor at the University of Buffalo. She represents four of the workers. ”I think it did shock the national immigration rights community.” Most immigration offenses are civil, not criminal, but there are exceptions. ”Criminal  ” is the charge when someone is previously deported or removed from the U. S. and comes back. Unauthorized immigrants who are deported often turn right around and make multiple attempts to   U. S. territory. ”But most of the time when someone gets charged with criminal   it’s because they have other criminal history,” says Hallett, puzzled. ”So [federal prosecutors] very rarely will indict someone with criminal   if that is the only thing that they have.” That’s what happened in Buffalo. Big,   worksite sweeps were common under President George W. Bush. President Obama has mostly taken a more   approach, such as auditing employer records to make sure all the workers have valid Social Security numbers. ”You need it all. You need audits, but you need an enforcement action now and again,” says a top ICE official in Washington, who asked not to be named. ”We’re trying to send that chilling effect to employers [to say] you need to think twice” about exploiting illegal workers. Yet Hallett says these raids can easily backfire. ”If one of your goals is to protect workers from exploitation, obviously arresting those workers as part of an enforcement action makes workers very afraid to come forward and report if there is exploitation happening,” she says. Obama’s Homeland Security team will be gone soon and there will be a new sheriff in town.   Trump and his advisers have talked about cracking down on unauthorized immigrants and the job magnets that attract them. It’s reasonable to ask if, under Trump, the Buffalo restaurant raid will become the norm rather than the exception."
"Nat Hentoff, the author of dozens of books and decades of columns, has died at 91. His son Nick Hentoff confirmed his father’s death on Twitter Saturday night. Hentoff was a writer for the Village Voice for 50 years. He also wrote for many publications over his lengthy career, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, United Media syndicate and Down Beat magazine. He frequently wrote about issues surrounding civil liberties  —   the Voice describes him as a ”civil libertarian.” His 1982 novel The Day They Came to Arrest the Book tells the story of a high school that seeks to remove the book Huckleberry Finn from the school curriculum and library over racism and other issues. A student from the school newspaper fights the effort  —   an allegory on censorship. He also was a lover and frequent writer on jazz music. From age 11, he was hooked on the genre after hearing the song ”Nightmare” by Artie Shaw coming through an open door at a record store. ”It just reached inside me,” Hentoff told NPR’s Guy Raz in 2010. ”I rushed into the store, ’What was that?’ ” Over the six decades he spent covering jazz, he attended plenty of performances and met many musicians. He ”got to be very good friends” with jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. At one point, he sat in on a recording session featuring Abbey Lincoln, Coleman Hawkins and Max Roach. ”The music just became part of you as you heard it,” Hentoff said of the experience. His most memorable show he attended was Duke Ellington ”with his full orchestra” at Symphony Hall in Boston, playing the jazz work ”Black, Brown and Beige.” ”It was the history of black people in the United States from slavery to the present,” Hentoff told NPR in 2010. ”And it was so extraordinary. At the end . .. people were so moved they could barely applaud until they gave a standing ovation.” Hentoff started writing for the Village Voice in 1958 until he was ”excessed” in 2008 by new managers. A few days after his firing, he told NPR that condolences he received from readers afterward were ”like reading one’s obituary while you’re still alive.” But he vowed to keep writing. In his final column for the Voice in 2009, he recalled advice he received from one of his mentors in journalism, the muckraker I. F. Stone: ”If you’re in this business because you want to change the world, get another day job. If you are able to make a difference, it will come incrementally, and you might not even know about it. You have to get the story and keep on it because it has to be told.”"
"Availability is the best ability for Keith ”Bang Bang” McCurdy. ”I’m waiting all the time for that call, because I know Justin Bieber may call me at three in the morning and I have to tattoo him at six. That has happened,” McCurdy says. Bang Bang is considered one of the most successful tattoo artists in the industry. The New   artist is credited for creating some of the most iconic tattoos on celebrities. Like fashion model Cara Delevingne’s simple yet   lion tattoo that sits on her index finger. And pop star Rihanna’s henna design that wraps across her wrist and drips down her fingertips. In fact, it was Bang Bang’s work of art for Rihanna in 2007, when he was just 19 years old, that helped to catapult his career. Now 29, Bang Bang reflects on his journey from Pottstown, P. A.  —   a city about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia  —   to how he got his big break. Keith McCurdy was born to teenage parents. His mother was a    high school dropout who worked at Domino’s Pizza, while his dad, who finished high school and went on to college, was scarcely around to father him, McCurdy recalls. This resulted in McCurdy being raised primarily by his mom. When he was 3 years old, McCurdy moved with his mom from Pennsylvania to a public housing unit in Delaware. There, his mom became an exotic dancer and he says this sometimes exposed him to a somewhat unsavory lifestyle. But the most challenging part, he says, was watching his mom struggle to put food on the table. That early hardship, however, forced McCurdy to grow up fast. In school, he struggled to keep up and was easily distracted by friends and the occasional recreational drug use. And while his dad was often absent from his life, whenever he did come around, he always stressed to McCurdy the importance of education. Thus, at age 13, tired of failing grades and getting into trouble, McCurdy heeded his dad’s advice to be a better student and convinced his parents to send him to boarding school in Connecticut. Leaving home for the first time, Two years later, McCurdy was thriving in boarding school. By now, he’d gotten his first exposure to tattoos and wanted one. His parents weren’t enthusiastic about the idea, but McCurdy struck a deal with them that if he made the honor roll, they’d let him get a tattoo. ”So I made the honor roll and I got a tattoo, and it was a great experience for me because it really fueled my interest more,” McCurdy says. He was 15 years old. By this time, McCurdy notes, he’d gained more   and discipline. It appeared that his life was on track. But then he did what he describes as ”something stupid.” He was gearing up for college, filling out applications and getting his portfolio together McCurdy was interested in graphic design. And despite finally getting his act together and excelling in school, McCurdy cheated on a Spanish test. This got him kicked out of boarding school. He found himself back in Delaware living with his mother and working   at Red Lobster, while trying to complete his high school diploma at a public school. Getting kicked out of boarding school was devastating for McCurdy. He’d liked it there, it inspired him and he felt like he was doing something positive with his life. It was also there  —   after he got his first tattoo  —   that he realized he wanted more. But with no money to pay for them, McCurdy thought of the next best thing  —   creating them from scratch. He felt that he could express himself through designing tattoos. McCurdy ordered a tattoo kit online and when it came in the mail, he walked into his mother’s kitchen, sat down and started to tattoo. ”And every day since, it’s with that enthusiasm and love, that I continued to tattoo,” he says. After three months of tattooing at home on himself and on everyone he knew, McCurdy landed a job at his dad’s friend’s tattoo shop outside a nearby trailer park. He quit his job at Red Lobster, dropped out of school and focused solely on tattooing. ”In hindsight it was a terrible decision, I mean it worked out, but man, I dropped out of high school to tattoo outside of a trailer park. And I tattooed guns on [my] neck and I had no choice other than to succeed at it,” McCurdy says. It was from tattooing the guns that McCurdy earned the nickname, ”Bang Bang.” He says the guns also symbolized that this was what he was going to do for the rest of his life. New York City has more skin, Still, McCurdy thought he could take his skills further than the trailer park tattoo shop. He wanted more. So he scoped the industry and studied his craft. He knew who the big players were, and he knew that if he wanted to grow he would have to leave his neighborhood. So McCurdy packed up and moved to New York City. ”New York City just has more people,” he says. ”So it was simply my thought that, well, there’s more skin, I’m going to go where the skin is  —   so if that’s my canvas I’m going to go there.” Upon moving to New York City, McCurdy had a hard time finding work. This    tattoo artist from Delaware found himself in the Big Apple going from tattoo shop to tattoo shop passing around his portfolio. He says many tattoo shop owners had a hard time believing that it was his work in the book because of how impressive it was to the eye. He had to find another way to stand out. ”When I moved to NYC I lost that funny little nickname,” he says. ”I didn’t tell people my name was Bang Bang, I told people my name was Keith. And the problem is Keith McCurdy isn’t really easy to remember, but nobody forgets Bang Bang. So I started telling people my name was Bang Bang and it was really great for me.” From then on out there was no more Keith McCurdy there was only Bang Bang. This is what she came for, After several months, Bang Bang finally landed a job at a grungy, dark basement tattoo shop on the Lower East Side. It was here where he’d meet the girl that would launch his career and forever change his life. A couple of months after he landed his first gig in New York, Bang Bang was tattooing in the basement when he recalls a group of five or six, tall, beautiful women walking into the shop. They asked the man at the front who was the best tattoo artist, the man said Bang Bang. Bang Bang’s coworker then told him that a singer wanted to get a tattoo. That singer was Barbadian   pop star, Rihanna. Rihanna, then 18, wanted a Sanskrit prayer etched along her thigh. The next day, Rihanna came into the shop with a reporter. They all sat down in the window of the tattoo shop storefront. Slowly, people began to gather around the window to watch. Bang Bang turned on his machine and started to ink Rihanna’s skin as the reporter interviewed her. ”For me, it was very difficult to make that tattoo. Because she’s talking and she moves a lot when she talks, and she’s speaking with her hands. And I’m like, ’There’s this girl who will not sit still, and everyone’s watching me, and I’m stressing out,’ ” Bang Bang says. In the end, the tattoo turned out great. Rihanna was happy, so all was good in the world. Word of mouth quickly spread Bang Bang’s success on the pop singer’s tattoo. This opened the door for more career opportunities, and Bang Bang made sure he was ready. He’s created a brand, a tattoo empire. ”Bang Bang” is no longer just his nickname, it’s the name of the store he opened where he now manages 16 artists. He’s Rihanna’s   tattoo artist, and has also inked celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Lebron James and Miley Cyrus, just to name a few. Through it all, Bang Bang falls back on one principle: being available. So much so, that for his first 10 years in New York, he didn’t take a vacation  —   and he’s made sure to not repeat the mistakes of his younger years in abusing alcohol or using drugs. ”I may need to fly across the planet because Lebron calls at 9 p. m. and I have to fly on this first flight the next morning,” Bang Bang says. ”I have to sort out my whole world to get it done, but saying yes and making sure I am able to do it is what really laid the foundation for the opportunities that came.”"
"The world of global health and development loves its buzzwords  —   a word or short phrase that sums up a problem or a solution, like ”food insecurity” or ”gender equity.” The problem is that buzzwords aren’t always clear to the average global citizen. And some folks in the development world don’t like them either. Here’s The International Development Jargon Detector to prove it. Still, the latest jargon can reveal a lot about trends and goals. We asked our sources and our audience on Twitter to share buzzwords from 2016 that are likely to be part of the global conversation in the year ahead. And we checked to see what words are trending. Here’s a sampling. A haze of air pollution  —   think pea soup fog but toxic. The word’s been around but resurfaced in the past few months after particularly bad airpocalypses in India and China. In December, Beijing issued its first red alert of 2016 after five days of smog was forecast. Schools were shut down, people wore surgical masks to filter out the fumes and flights were canceled because of poor visibility. There was even a trending hashtag, #themostserioussmog, which prompted citizens across Chinese social media site Weibo to share photos of their experience. Use it in a sentence: During airpocalypse, the wealthiest schoolchildren in Beijing can expect to play soccer under an inflatable   dome.  They’re not doctors or nurses. But they’ve received some basic training in medical skills and play a vital role in places where there’s a lack of health workers  —   often in remote parts of   countries but in the U. S. as well, where there are 48, 000 CHWs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In December, CHWs had their moment in the sun when Dr. Raj Panjabi won a $1 million TED Prize for founding Last Mile Health, an organization that uses CHWs to provide health care in isolated parts of Liberia. Use it in a sentence: By day, she runs a beauty salon, but by night, she’s a CHW, educating women about contraception. The act of collecting data and using it to predict or shape behavior  —   like keeping track of your steps with a FitBit so you can decide if you need to amp up your exercise program. The word’s been around for years but got new life in the global community last year as technologists started thinking of ways to use data, like disease outbreaks, DNA and financial transactions, to improve people’s lives. Some companies in China, for example, are feeding weather data into a computer with artificial intelligence software to predict   events  —   like an airpocalypse  —   in advance. Use it in a sentence: Activists are hoping that the datafication of air quality data can help bring more funding for   programs. Around the world, there are 1 billion people who live without power. They can’t automate agricultural processes like milling grain to produce more food to sell. They use carbon   cookstoves. They pay someone to let them charge their mobile phones. The term’s been floating around the global development space since 2011, when U. N.   Ban   made electricity access a global priority. It made headlines in February 2016 when U. S. lawmakers passed the historic Electrify Africa Act, promising to put 50 million Africans on the grid by 2020. Use it in a sentence: Some startups in Silicon Valley are fighting energy poverty by designing more affordable   lamps for people in the developing world.  A portmanteau of ”financial” and ”technology” used to describe emerging financial services like virtual currency, mobile banking and online payment systems. Last year, economists and developers started exploring how fintech might benefit the developing world. With just a mobile phone and an Internet connection, fintech makes it possible for people without bank accounts to save and send money  —   or get the loans they need to start a small business. Use it in a sentence: Thanks to fintech, a Nigerian worker in China can send money back to his family using his mobile phone.  Proof that you are a citizen in a country. Some 1. 5 billion people, mostly in Africa and Asia, are undocumented  —   limiting their ability to vote, get a job or inherit property. The need for NID has always been an important issue in global development, but over the past couple of years, there’s been growing momentum in Africa to ensure that all citizens have these important documents from birth. This April, countries will meet in Namibia for the third Government Forum on Electronic Identity in Africa, in the hopes of finding better ways to register citizens. Use it in a sentence: Sorry, madame, we cannot admit your    child to school unless she has NID. How ecosystems affect human health. In the face of climate change and rapid urbanization, it’s a topic that will continue to grow in the years ahead. Climate   droughts, for example, can cause crop shortages that lead to malnutrition. And cutting down forests to make way for housing can expose humans to harmful viruses that are carried by   animals. In December, The Lancet, a medical journal, created a new publication to help share research on the subject across the the global health community. Use it in a sentence: The dwindling bee population is a big planetary health issue  —   we need them to pollinate   crops that help humans stay healthy. A fancy acronym for drones and similar airborne robots. UAVs have been around awhile, but in the field of global health, the term got quite a lift in 2016. Aid groups are testing out UAVs to deliver everything from contraceptives to vaccines to the remotest parts. They’re even being used to help communities map flood risk by capturing aerial images of slums in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Use it in a sentence: Dust is a big problem for the UAVs that deliver health care goods over desert terrain in Ghana  —   it makes it hard for the remote pilots to see where the drone is flying.  Any other buzzwords you think we may have missed? Tweet at @NPRGoatsandSoda and share your words with us! "
"A week after a gunman killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub, the suspected assailant remains at large and secular Turks are feeling under attack. ISIS claimed the shooting, calling it an assault on what it called ”a pagan holiday.” The government’s pledge to defend all lifestyles hasn’t kept an atmosphere of fear from descending on some of Istanbul’s secular neighborhoods. By way of contrast, some Turks point to what happened in November 2015, when gunmen stormed Paris cafes and entertainment venues, killing more than 100 people. Parisians quickly rallied, saying the only response was to keep right on going out at night, which many did. In Istanbul, there was a similar call right after the New Year’s nightclub attack, but the response so far has been different. A well known Turkish writer and actor, Gulse Birsel, wrote a newspaper column urging people not to get lost in despair. ”Go out every night,” she wrote, ”to a movie, a play, hang out at a music concert.” The column has drawn praise. But in Istanbul’s more secular neighborhoods the response feels more like fear than defiance. Empty Tables, Fearful Customers, ”Beer Time” is a bar that occupies a corner just off the city’s major commercial thoroughfare, Istiklal Street. Songs from the pop charts of yesteryear are playing as bartender Selami, who like many Turks these days is cautious around reporters and gives only his first name, sits down to chat. He only has a couple tables to watch. He says in the past several years business has gone from bad to worse. ”There were the Gezi Park protests in 2013,” he says, referring to   demonstrations in nearby Taksim Square that were violently crushed by riot police. Then there was a bomb that hit tourists on Istiklal Street  —   after that, he says the place was almost empty. ”This New Year’s Eve we were actually packed,” he says. ”But then people started getting alerts on their phones about the nightclub attack, and in no time pretty much the whole street was deserted.” Selami jumps up as a quartet of students gets ready to leave. These days, he says, it’s mainly students who come here. His old regulars are nowhere to be seen, and the customers that do show up are jittery. ”I think it was yesterday, a woman came in and ordered a beer,” he says. ”She saw two foreign guys at another table and called me over. She pointed at one and said, ’Doesn’t he look like the nightclub attacker?’ People are starting to feel  .” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been trying to pull a divided country together, and says he won’t allow terrorists to harm anyone’s lifestyle, religious or secular. He told an audience of local leaders that he rose to power arguing for tolerance for pious Muslims in officially secular Turkey, and that same tolerance should extend to those with secular values. ”Just as it is wrong for people who cannot tolerate the call to prayer to trample on a preacher, it is wrong to use force against those who do not pray,” he said to warm applause. ”In Turkey, nobody’s life style is under systematic threat.” Secular Turks aren’t so sure about that. They’ve been feeling increasing pressure for years under Erdogan’s government, led by a party with roots in political Islam. Turkey’s head of religious affairs was one of the first to condemn the nightclub attack. Critics say that may be in part because the day before New Year’s Eve, he issued a sermon to be read in all mosques. It criticized   celebrations as not consistent with Muslim values. In the largely secular Cihangir neighborhood, home to Turks, foreign journalists and diplomats, a young man who gives his name as Aram take a break outside a   called Mellow. It looks like a cheerful shoebox of a place, but these days Aram says the mood is somber. Many of his Turkish customers are staying away, and too many of the expats who round out the cosmopolitan atmosphere here are dropping in to say goodbye. ”I remember one Italian guy who used to come here a lot,” he says. ”He’s lived here for 10 years, but he said he has to go home because he doesn’t feel safe here.” Another trend he’s noticed is people moving out of the neighborhood altogether.   Turks say secular values may be fiercely defended in Paris, but in today’s Turkey they’re merely tolerated, and then only sometimes. They’re hoping the president’s call for tolerance is more than just reassuring rhetoric."
"Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. Today the Sugars hear from a woman going through radical physical  —   and emotional  —   changes. She was ”extremely overweight,” but lost 100 pounds. Now she wants to have a ”grand adventure” and feels that her husband is holding her back. If you lose weight, do other parts of your life inevitably change as well? To help answer this and other questions, they’re joined again by Lindy West, a writer, editor and performer whose work focuses on pop culture, social justice and body image. She’s the author of Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. Dear Sugars, My husband and I got married four years ago. I was 28 and he was 31. It was the happiest day of our lives. We were excited for the future, happy in our relationship and ready to give marriage a go. We were also both extremely overweight. After marrying my husband, let’s call him Dylan, I began feeling motivated to make positive changes in my life. I changed my eating habits, started moving more, found a love for yoga and decided to become a yoga teacher. I lost 100 pounds. Dylan was supportive and encouraging the whole way through. He would cook me healthy dinners, celebrate my weekly weight losses (whether 1 pound or 5) and was my cheerleader throughout my year of yoga teacher training. He never left my side. He is the epitome of unconditional love. What they don’t tell you about weight loss is that after you lose a large amount of weight, an entire new world opens up for you. For the first time in 10 years, I am able to ride roller coasters. I can zip line, rock climb, kayak and paddle board without having to check weight restrictions first. I discovered hiking and found that nature makes me feel alive. I feel like a teenager again, Sugars. The world is mine for the taking, and I want to see it all. Dylan is ready to settle down. He wants to start a family. He wants to buy a house. He wants a garden and a yard for our dog. We will work at   jobs, come home to dinner every night and raise our children.  Those things sound lovely to me, but while they are what I wanted before, they are not even close to what I want now. I want to travel. I want to try new things. He’s willing to compromise with vacations and weekends of travel here and there, but I want more. I want a grand adventure. The ”next chapter” for us couldn’t look more different. I’ve changed so much while he’s stayed the same. I’m not even sure I want children anymore. So what now? I love this man, but I worry that if I’d been this person four years ago, I wouldn’t have gotten married. I feel like he is holding me back. I feel like I have a ball and chain. I feel selfish. I feel inspired. I feel like a jerk. I feel strong and confident and capable. I feel like I am ruining my marriage, like a terrible wife, but I feel amazing. I can’t imagine my life without Dylan, but at the same time, I don’t want to live with regrets. Signed, Lost in Love, Steve Almond: I’m not sure how much this has to do with weight. She seems like somebody who has gone through a radical shift in what she wants out of life. I’m not saying weight isn’t a relevant issue, but it seems much more fundamental that she wants to follow a different map. Cheryl Strayed: It’s really a fascinating dichotomy she’s set up. She sounds like somebody who allowed her body weight to make her world smaller than it should have been, and now she’s like, ”I want to have this gigantic life.” She’s so clear about this feeling of being held back. Subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio:RSSiTunesStitcher, Steve: Lost in Love, if you want to consider the possibility of remaining married to Dylan, then you have to talk with him. It sounds like the issues and differences in your priorities, and even what you inwardly feel toward him, are conflicting enough that you should be in counseling or individual therapy. I don’t think you’ve said to him, ”Sometimes I feel like you’re my ball and chain, and I just want to get away and have a big life, but you’re an anchor.” You’re not going to be successful in the marriage, or even moving out of the marriage, until you settle up and are honest with him. Cheryl: The final paragraph of this letter is fascinating. She says, ”I love this man, but I worry that if I’d been this person four years ago, I wouldn’t have gotten married.” This is interesting  —   the idea that you lose weight and then you’re a different person. Many years ago, I was a waitress and I worked with a woman who, over the course of the year that we were employed together, lost about 100 pounds. And it seemed like she was a different person. She went from being this kind of shy, reserved woman to suddenly showing up in these incredibly tight dresses and dancing on the tables. I remember watching this  —   not just a physical transformation, but the way she presented herself to the world. I ran into her years later, and she hadn’t gained back all of the weight, but she’d gained back enough of it. She was back to being that first person I met. Lost in Love, maybe this is a strange era where you feel like you’re out of the box that was both of your own making and that our culture defines for fat women. I think that you should be very careful as you make decisions based on this moment in your life. Lindy West: The way that our culture’s   narrative works is that weight loss is this magic ticket to a perfect life and all of your problems go away. If you read literature about people who’ve undergone really drastic weight loss, what you hear over and over is people saying, ”I discovered when I became thin that I had all the same emotional problems I had when I was fat. I had all the same   problems, all the same confidence problems.” It’s not magic. You still have to do all this work on yourself, emotionally and psychologically. It seems like she’s in this really electric moment, and it might be a good idea to take it slow and assess where she is and if she has realistic expectations about what being smaller is going to do for her life and for her problems more broadly. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear about a man who wants to talk about his girlfriend’s weight. Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail. com and it may be answered on a future episode. You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app."
"Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. Today the Sugars have advice for people in different situations. In the first, a woman writes that she thinks her boyfriend loves her, but he hasn’t said it outright. She says she doesn’t want to say it first and make him feel forced. Is it possible to express your love for someone without explicitly saying it? Then they hear from a man wondering about the importance of physical attraction in a relationship, and thinking about how societal standards of beauty may be affecting his perception of his girlfriend. Dear Sugars, I’ve been dating a wonderful man for just over a year. We’ve been officially a couple for just about six months. We have so much fun when we’re together, and he shows me that he cares in so many ways  —   sneaking quietly into bed so he doesn’t wake me, inviting me to his family holidays, lots of kisses and snuggles when we’re together, and saying ”I miss you” lots when we’re apart. We spend all of our free time together, and we’ve decided to move in together in a few months. We talk about everything. He shares his ambitions, his insecurities, and whenever we have a disagreement, we talk it out. He is more open about his feelings than anyone I have ever dated. He’s told me that I’m the person he feels closest to. But there is one thing he hasn’t shared  —   his love. While I feel it from him, he hasn’t uttered those three little words to me  —   ”I love you.” Each time our relationship has moved to the next level, I have been the proactive one. But on this front, I have held back. I am waiting for him to tell me he loves me before I say it. I’d like to know he loves me before we take the next step of sharing a home together, but I don’t feel comfortable asking, ”Do you love me?” If he said yes, I would feel like I had forced it  —   like he said it because he knew it’s what I wanted to hear. So Sugars, what do I do? Can I get him to express his love in words without disbelieving it? How long is too long to wait to hear ”I love you”? Signed, I Love Him, Cheryl Strayed: I Love Him, welcome to a   relationship. There’s the way that you want the other person to be or behave, and then there’s the way that they are. You need to negotiate these things. To me, it sounds like your boyfriend loves you, and you love him. He just assigns a very different value to those three words. Maybe, for whatever reason, ”I love you” is just not a thing that he has said to people in his life. Steve Almond: That’s such an important point. I come from a family that did not say ”I love you,” and I had to train myself to say it to people. When others say it, I feel uncomfortable. It’s as if there’s been a sudden intrusion of intense direct emotion that makes me feel frozen. Now, I can say it because I know that it’s shorthand, I Love Him, for all the things your boyfriend does for you. I imagine that if you explain to him that it’s personally meaningful, even if it makes him feel a little uncomfortable, you’ll find out what his relationship to that phrase is and whether it’s something you should be unsettled by. Cheryl: The two options I see are either, go ahead and say ”I love you,” and you’ll just have to let go of this archaic, sexist notion that he should be the person who says it first. Or, you say, ”I need to talk to you about something. I love you, and I am perplexed that you haven’t said you love me. I’ve been waiting for you to say it, and I don’t know why it’s important to me that you say it first, but it is.” Maybe your view on this is rooted in the feeling that you are the proactive one and the one who compels emotional growth in your relationship at each juncture. That’s something really important for you two to unpack, and I think this ”I love you” conversation could be a great portal into that deeper relationship. Dear Sugars, I’ve been with my girlfriend for about a year now, and I’ve never felt such a strong connection to someone. She and I have more in common than I’ve ever shared with a partner, and our relationship has progressed very quickly.  Subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio:RSSiTunesStitcher, The only problem is, when we first met, I didn’t feel as much of a physical attraction to her as I thought I should, but I decided that my attraction to her on all other levels was deep enough to overcome that. I thought that our physical chemistry would grow in time, but unfortunately, it hasn’t.  I feel terrible and shallow for even writing this down, and I can’t imagine how I could ever explain this to her without hurting her deeply. I’ve even felt some of my male friends imply (or say outright) that they thought I could ”do better.”  My question for you is: Am I doing the right thing in pursuing a relationship with this wonderful person and ignoring what I perceive to be totally invented standards of beauty? Or is physical chemistry the first and most important part of a real relationship? Sincerely, Struggling with Standards, Cheryl: Struggling with Standards, I think that you are up against two things that you have conflated into one. There is your physical attraction to your girlfriend and the physical and sexual chemistry you have with her, and then there’s the invented standards of beauty. Those are two different things. The person that you are attracted to and have chemistry with is not necessarily someone who fits into standards and conventions of beauty. So the first thing to think about is, do you have a powerful physical bond with this woman, or are you hung up? Is the thing that’s inhibiting you from having this bond the idea of what women ”should” look like? And if that’s the case, the great news about that is that it can be revised. You can say, screw the standards. I love sleeping with her, I love this relationship. Now if, on the other hand, it is a chemistry issue rather than a beauty standards issue, I think that you’re right to ask this question. If you don’t have a basic, real attraction to your romantic partner, I think that you need to rethink the relationship and maybe break up or become friends. I will say, if you decide to end this relationship, I really don’t think that you should say to your girlfriend that it’s because she’s not physically attractive enough for you. That’s a subjective opinion, and it’s one that will hurt her for a long time and probably affect her for many relationships. Steve: The pattern in my life has been, when I get involved with somebody, as I find out more about who they are and all the hidden beautiful things within them, they become more attractive to me. What’s unsettling here is that, for whatever reason, after a year, she hasn’t become more attractive to you. Being steeped in this youth and   culture mixes up our internal lives. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could separate out how much is chemistry and how much is an external standard? The problem is, we’ve internalized these things, and they become false sacred texts inside us. That is something you should question yourself about. At the bottom of it, you cannot fake chemistry. A year isn’t a short amount of time to figure out whether the underlying chemistry is there. But if it’s not, it’s not. Don’t waste her time or yours trying to fake it, because that’s its own kind of humiliation. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear more from people doubting love in relationships. Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail. com and it may be answered on a future episode. You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app."
"When I told my coworker that I was participating in a study that involved fasting, she laughed until she nearly cried. My boyfriend, ever supportive, asked hesitantly, ”Are you sure you want to try this?” Note the use of ”try” instead of ”do.” When I told my father over the phone, the line went silent for a moment. Then he let out a long, ”Welllllll,” wished me luck, and chuckled. Turns out, luck might not be enough. I like to eat. Often and a lot. Now, however, my eating habits have become more than a source of amusement for friends and coworkers. Now they are data in a study focusing on people with multiple sclerosis, like me. The pilot study, led by Dr. Ellen Mowry at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is looking at the impact of intermittent fasting on our microbiomes  —   the universe of trillions of microbes, mainly bacteria, that live in our guts. Intermittent fasting is pretty much what it sounds like. For six months, participants are allowed to eat during an   period each day. The remaining 16 hours we are limited to water, tea and coffee. No added sugar, cream, honey or sweetener. Several studies have suggested that the predominant bacteria in the guts of people with MS tend to be different than those in the guts of those without the chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease, according to Samantha Roman, the study’s research coordinator. Depending on their makeup, bacteria have the ability to soothe or trigger inflammation, potentially affecting the symptoms of MS and other diseases. Exactly how gut bacteria and inflammation are related, though, is not well understood. What researchers do know, Roman says, is that intermittent fasting is one of many ways to change the makeup of the microbiome, and it can quell the inflammatory symptoms of MS  —   at least in mice. To help shed light on the relationships between fasting and the microbiome and inflammation and multiple sclerosis in humans, researchers at Hopkins will inspect gut bacteria in study participants, before, during and after the   period of fasting. Two random mornings a week, Roman sends text messages, asking participants to photograph all of our food intake for the day. As a part of this study, I like to think that every bite I take may bring doctors one data point closer to easing the abdominal spasms that ebb and flow like a wave of knives, occasionally sending me to the emergency room. Every embarrassingly audible gurgle of hunger could be a signal that my microbial cohabitants are calming my immune system, muting the burning sensation that at times covers my skin from eyelids to  . Each   snack that I decline may help reduce the inflammation that has left my brain and spinal cord dotted with lesions that lead to those and other symptoms. It is a noble endeavor, I told myself as I prepared that first stool sample, and I have continued to remind myself of this lofty motivation every morning at 10 a. m. when inevitably, my stomach begins to growl. I’ll likely repeat the mantra at the end of the study, when I’ll need to prepare a second stool sample for comparison. Like so many such endeavors, this one isn’t easy. I took Roman up on her suggestion, and scheduled my periods of eating between noon and 8 p. m. I get home at about 7 p. m. several evenings a week after strength training, and there is no way I could go 16 hours without eating after the ordeal my trainer puts me through. I only started eating breakfast in the past few years. I figured I would slip back into that routine fairly easily. My first few days of fasting coincided with the presidential election and my car breaking down. These were   events. As it turned out, a little   helped out quite a bit. Thanks to the knot in my stomach, I had to force myself to eat. ”This is going to be a breeze,” I thought. Then came Saturday. After running several   errands  —   the butcher, the coffee shop, the grocery store  —   I was famished. So I did the sensible thing and bought a grilled cheese sandwich that was stuffed with crab dip. When I got home at about 2:30 p. m. I devoured it, then promptly fell asleep. I woke up two hours later in a panic  —   I only had a few hours left to eat! I wasn’t hungry, but just to play it safe, I ate a taco and some ice cream. In the first month and a half of the study, my symptoms have not changed much. I’m still fatigued, my hands and feet often feel as though they are on fire, and I have occasional muscle spasms in my feet. Still, things had been going well. I lost about 8 pounds (my regular diet includes more vegetables, less    grilled cheese) set a new PR at the gym, and slipped into a comfortable eating routine. Until my trip to Chicago. It was a wedding! What was I supposed to do? The answer, apparently, is drink. I did keep my food intake between noon and 8 p. m. But there was the snowy Christkindlmarket with its fragrant, sweet, hot mulled wine. And champagne toasts! And whiskey! Over three nights, I drank alcohol beyond my   limit three times. And then, in the most unexceptional place, for the most basic of foodstuffs, I hit rock bottom. After two hours of sleep, in Terminal E of O’Hare Airport at 7 a. m. I ate a bagel. I needed that bagel. I regret nothing. During that weekend, for the first time, Roman sent text messages two days in a row. Hesitantly, shamefully, I confessed to everything. The point of the texts is, after all, to determine how well participants stick to the program, as well as to have data to help determine if what we eat has any effect over and above when we eat. I have become the very reason I tend to   studies that rely on   data! I want to do better, for the opportunity to improve my health and for the integrity of the study. I’ll have to continue to remind myself of the nobility of this scientific endeavor, particularly in January, when I spend a week at the beach in Mexico. Brandie Michelle Jefferson is a communications manager and freelance reporter who loves a good science story. She’s on Twitter, too: @b_m_jefferson."
"By many standards, Mireille Kamariza is at the top of the world. She’s a graduate student at one of the world’s top universities, working on her Ph. D. with one of the world’s top chemists. And she’s tackling a tough problem  —   tuberculosis  —   that sickens nearly 10 million people a year. Earlier this year,    Kamariza and her adviser unveiled a potential breakthrough in fighting TB: a way to detect the culprit bacteria faster and more accurately. But for Kamariza, the fight against TB is not just about scientific progress and prestige. It’s personal. Kamariza grew up in the small African country of Burundi, where many around her were stricken with TB. A close relative lived with the disease for years  —   and eventually died from it. It was common for people in her town to get sick with TB and ”wait to see if you’d die  —   and if you survived, you’d just kind of live with it.” A World Health Organization report released in October states that an estimated 10. 4 million people were infected with TB in 2015, up from previous years  —   and 1. 8 million died from the disease. TB is still a stigmatized disease in Burundi, so Kamariza doesn’t want to be specific about her relative’s identity. But, she says, he most likely didn’t get treated ”because he didn’t know you could be treated, and even if he did know, [treatment] was far from where he was  —   and expensive.” Kamariza’s journey hasn’t been easy. In Burundi, it’s rare for girls to attend college  —   not to mention work with   scientists. ”Science was something that Europeans and Americans did,” she says. ”It was for other people  —   not for me.” When she was in high school, she didn’t have a clue about science careers. Neither did her parents. ”I never dreamed [Kamariza] would become a scientist because it is a career path that is unknown in Burundi,” says Denise Sinankwa, Kamariza’s mother. Sinankwa had her hands full when Kamariza was young. She and her husband were raising four kids during a bloody civil war. Nearly 300, 000 civilians were killed. The family moved a lot, and Sinankwa often worked multiple jobs to feed the family. But Sinankwa still pushed Kamariza to do well in school. She wanted her daughter to land a   job and be able to support herself. Kamariza considers herself lucky. She attended a   Catholic school, where ”things were more rigorous” than other public schools. The ”nuns’ school” instilled a mindset most of her peers lacked because generally girls ”were raised to be a wife,” she says. Kamariza wanted to pursue studies in the U. S. where her   brother had already landed. So, when she was 17, Kamariza packed up her belongings and traveled with her third brother half way around the world. She went to San Diego in the fall of 2006 and moved into a tiny studio apartment with her brothers. The four worked various jobs at grocery stores, restaurants, retail shops  —   ”whatever we could get to pay the bills,” Kamariza says. Their earnings also paid for classes at a junior college. Then Kamariza’s hard work started to pay off. At San Diego Mesa College, she found a   mentor. Her chemistry teacher, Saloua Saidane, was a fellow   African. Born to illiterate parents in Tunisia, Saidane was one of 12 children and knew what it was like to be a poor immigrant kid pouring herself into school as the only way to a better future. ”Kamariza was serene yet determined,” Saidane says. ”She worked hard. She saw the opportunity to have a good life, a life different from what she left behind.” Saidane started Kamariza’s journey into science. ”She really pushed me and kept motivating me and telling me I should aim high. Whatever she told me, I did,” Kamariza says. After quitting her job at Safeway to focus on school, Kamariza got into the University of California, San Diego, and began undergraduate studies. Through a National Institutes of Health diversity scholarship, Kamariza spent summers doing biology research. In 2012, she joined Carolyn Bertozzi’s lab  —   then at the University of California, Berkeley, now at Stanford University  —   as a graduate student. Kamariza wanted to focus on infectious disease. So she started brainstorming with another graduate student to figure out a quicker, better way to diagnose TB. They eventually came up with a new test that recognizes a sugar, called trehalose, that is uniquely found in TB bacteria. In the presence of a special substance, TB bacteria cells glow green, making the microbes easy to spot on microscope slides of an infected person’s mucus or saliva. Current TB tests are laborious and not very sensitive  —   some infections are missed. TB cultures are more reliable but take six weeks to produce a result. Kamariza  —   and other researchers elsewhere  —   are creating methods that could make TB diagnoses simpler and more accurate. Kamariza’s method looked promising this year when she and her colleagues tested it on a small batch of samples from patients in South Africa. But the tools are still in the developmental phase. Larger, more rigorous studies are needed for the method to be considered for use in clinics. Though unfinished, the research drew heavy crowds when Kamariza presented her data on a poster at a TB conference in September in Paris. Considering her improbable journey  —   from a child witnessing the tragedy of this disease to a young researcher contributing toward its eradication  —   ”the whole experience is surreal,” Kamariza says. ”A lot of hard work, a bit of luck, perseverance and relentless support from friends and family are what got me here,” says Kamariza, She hopes her experience can ”encourage others like me to pursue their passions, no matter the obstacles.”"
"Donald Trump has named his    to a top White House job. Jared Kushner will serve as a senior adviser to the president, and the transition team says he will work with incoming Chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Stephen Bannon ”to execute   Trump’s agenda.” The announcement also says Kushner will not receive a salary while serving in the Trump administration, which could help alleviate legal problems stemming from federal   law. Kushner, a    real estate developer and publisher of the New York Observer, has been married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka since 2009. When it was reported last week that they would be moving to Washington, D. C. it fed into speculation that one or both would serve as advisers in the Trump administration. ”Jared has been a tremendous asset and trusted advisor throughout the campaign and transition and I am proud to have him in a key leadership role in my administration,” Trump said in a statement, nothing Kushner’s success in business and politics, with his role in the inner circle of the  ’s 2016 campaign. In the statement, Kushner said, ”It is an honor to serve our country. I am energized by the shared passion of the   and the American people and I am humbled by the opportunity to join this very talented team.” Bringing family members into the White House may prove difficult, though. That’s because of a 1967   law, inspired by another famous family, as NPR’s Jim Zarroli recently reported: ”The   law was passed by Congress in response to President John F. Kennedy’s decision to appoint his brother Robert as attorney general, says Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. ” ’It was very controversial at the time. Lyndon Johnson in particular did not like that, and when he became president he helped shepherd this   law through the U. S. Congress,’ West says.” But it’s not entirely clear what that law means. Here is what the statute lays out, as NPR’s Ailsa Chang reported in November: ”A public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official.” The question now is what exactly ”agency” means, Chang reported. This question has come up before  —   in a 1993 case pertaining to President Bill Clinton, who appointed wife Hillary to head up a health care reform task force. In that case (which was not in fact about nepotism at all) the judge mentioned in his decision that the statute didn’t seem to apply to White House staff. But that still isn’t settled law, Chang also reported. ”There’s plenty of disagreement in the legal community about whether that bit from Judge Silberman’s opinion is legally binding because it wasn’t part of the reasoning for the central holding in the case.” But the fact that Kushner will not draw a salary could be key. Government ethics lawyer Ken Gross pointed out to NPR last November that the statute requires violators give up compensation, which he described as an ineffective way to enforce the law. ”So it sounds like you could have someone in an unpaid position, and then they’ve already suffered the penalty for violating the provision, and presumably, they would go on their merry way as an unpaid member,” said Gross at the time. Even leaving aside the appointment’s legality, it could also raise plenty of ethical questions. In a recent piece, the New York Times laid out the many possibilities for conflicts of interest to arise with Kushner in the White House. For example, the Times reports that Kushner ”played a pivotal role in persuading” Trump to appoint Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn  —   whose bank lent money to the Kushner Cos.  —   as director of the National Economic Council. Kushner’s legal counsel, Jamie Gorelick  —   who served as deputy attorney general during Bill Clinton’s administration  —   told NPR’s Jackie Northam on Monday that Kushner plans to divest from his real estate holdings in anticipation of serving in public office. ”He is going to restructure his business, so that he will no longer have any active involvement in Kushner Co. entities, which are real estate entities mostly in New York. He will divest a substantial number of his assets, and for any of those that remain he will abide by all the appropriate recusal requirements of the ethical guidelines,” Gorelick said."
"On behalf of the U. S. State Department, John Kerry has issued a formal apology for the department’s pattern of discrimination against LGBT employees during a period beginning in the 1940s and stretching for decades. Sen. Ben Cardin,  . had asked the secretary of state for such an apology in late November, calling the historical discrimination ”  and unacceptable.” The Washington Blade reported on Cardin’s request in early December, noting at the time that the State Department said it was preparing a response. The mass purge of gay staffers during the   century was known as the ”Lavender Scare,” which coincided with the ”Red Scare.” Author Eric Berkowitz, speaking to Terry Gross on Fresh Air in 2015, said the systematic discrimination against gay people in that era has ”gotten short shrift in the popular imagination.” At the same time as the persecution of alleged communists, ”there was no less energetic a hunt to root out what were called ’perverts’ . .. from the federal government,” he said. And it started in the State Department, explains David Johnson, the author of The Lavender Scare. He says that in the ’40s, the State Department was already systematically firing gay employees. Then, in 1950, Joseph McCarthy claimed to have a list of communists in the State Department. In an attempt to defend itself against the charges, the department pointed out that it was working hard to expel ”subversives”  —   by firing gay people. That disclosure kicked off the wider ”Lavender Scare.” ”The purges begin in the State Department,” Johnson says. ”And then in the politicized atmosphere of McCarthyism, they doubled down.” In 1953, years after the State Department began firing gay employees, Dwight Eisenhower instituted a nationwide ban on gay men and lesbians working for the federal government. Purges lasted for decades. Careers were destroyed, and some employees committed suicide, Johnson says. Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to Kerry on Nov. 29 to ask that in his last months as secretary of state, he address that history. Cardin said that more than 1, 000 people were dismissed from the Department of State for their alleged sexual orientation, and ”many more” prevented from joining the department through discriminatory hiring practices. As recently as the 1990s, he said, the State Department drove out personnel thought to be gay, calling them ”security risks.” Cardin urged Kerry to acknowledge the discrimination, apologize for it  —   and perhaps install an exhibit about it at the State Department’s museum. ”Of course, the measures we take today cannot bring back years of anguish or erase decades of institutionalized homophobia, but we can ensure that such injustices levied against the LGBT community are never repeated again,” Cardin said in a statement in early December. Kerry responded with a statement released Monday. He began by highlighting the State Department’s recent support for LGBT and intersex employees. Then he wrote: ”In the past  —   as far back as the 1940s, but continuing for decades  —   the Department of State was among many public and private employers that discriminated against employees and job applicants on the basis of perceived sexual orientation, forcing some employees to resign or refusing to hire certain applicants in the first place. These actions were wrong then, just as they would be wrong today. ”On behalf of the Department, I apologize to those who were impacted by the practices of the past and reaffirm the Department’s steadfast commitment to diversity and inclusion for all our employees, including members of the LGBTI community.” Human Rights Campaign Government Affairs Director David Stacy said in a statement that ”although it is not possible to undo the damage that was done decades ago, Secretary Kerry’s apology sets the right tone for the State Department as it enters a new and uncertain time in our country under a new administration.” But David Johnson, a history professor at the University of South Florida and the author of The Lavender Scare, says that while the apology is welcome and overdue, Kerry’s statement misrepresents the State Department’s role in the purge. ”The apology made it sound like the State Department was just one of many institutions that was discriminating against gay men and lesbians . .. that it was just sort of     1950s   discrimination,” he says. ”In fact, the State Department was unique in its level of homophobia,” he says."
"Seven years ago, the Navajo tribal council in southeastern Utah started mapping the secret sites where medicine men and women forage for healing plants and Native people source wild foods. They wanted to make a case for protecting the landscape known as Bears Ears, a place sacred not only to their tribe but to many other tribes in the region, going back thousands of years. In one of his final acts in office, President Obama late last month created the 1. 35   Bears Ears National Monument, a move that proponents say will safeguard the area’s ecology and guarantee food sovereignty for the region’s Native Americans. ”Up to 20, 000 Natives of various tribes live within 45 minutes of Bears Ears, including 10, 000 Navajos that live just across the border in Arizona,” says Gavin Noyes, director of the Utah Diné Bikéyah, the Navajo nonprofit that developed the initial draft of the monument proposal in 2013. ”It’s one of the wildest, most intact landscapes in Utah.”  About 16, 000 people live in San Juan County, where Bears Ears is located. Roughly half are Navajo, and many in the tribe lack running water and electricity, says Noyes. But the land still provides. Women hike into the hills to gather wild onions and sumac berries for soup. They bundle juniper branches to burn, so they can stir the ashes into their family’s blue corn mush. And they forage for piñon nuts, which saved tribes from starvation during times of drought. Native hunters seek deer and rabbits, while elders collect sage leaves to throw over the fire in the sweat lodge, purifying the air and the thoughts of those inside. And when doctors fail to cure ailments, healers look to the sky for bird medicine in the prayerful flight of a   hawk or a golden eagle rising over   mesas. Under the Bears Ears Monument designation, an intertribal coalition will partner with the U. S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to manage the area  —   which is slightly bigger than the state of Delaware  —   ensuring that tribes have access to food supplies and firewood. Such a partnership has never been attempted before in the 48 contiguous states. For whites, conservation is a matter of not using the land, Noyes says. For Natives, it means actively tending it as they have for generations. ”Our goal is to change how Americans view landscapes so that they include cultures” as well as plants and animals, he says. But not everyone sees Bears Ears as a sacred source of food and healing  —   instead viewing the area for its   and mineral potential, or for ranching. The Democratic president’s most prominent critics  —   many of them Republican lawmakers at the state and federal levels  —   are already calling on fellow Republican Donald Trump to reverse the order after he takes office. That’s something no president has done in the   history of the Antiquities Act, the law that allows presidents to designate monuments. Especially in Utah, many of Obama’s opponents would like to see the area stay open to potential energy extraction. Bruce Adams is a cattle rancher and San Juan County commissioner. Last year, Adams said that while it’s important to look out for the rights of Natives, the white ”people who came to the area in the late 1800s” need to survive, too. And for them, that means raising livestock, but also extracting oil, gas, copper and uranium. ”Why should one group of people be given consideration over the rest of us?” he said. The state’s top politicians are just as disturbed at the news. Utah Rep. Rob Bishop says in a video, ”Utahns will use every tool at our disposal . .. whether it is judicial action, legislative action or even executive action” to repeal the Bears Ears decision. Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes says his office is readying a lawsuit against the federal government. And Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent subpoenas to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, demanding all documents related to the Bears Ears designation dating to 2013. But even some tribal members worry that greater federal presence under the new monument designation will make it harder for them to access wild resources. They’ve been failed by the U. S. government before and aren’t inclined to trust it this time around. ”As Native American[s] we understand what broken treaties and broken promises mean. We’ve lived it for the last 200 years,” said Rebecca Benally, a Native American and the first woman elected to the San Juan County Commission, at a news conference. Benally has opposed the monument proposal from the start, saying the federal government should focus instead on paving the county’s 700 miles of dirt roads and lowering unemployment. The anger in Utah is part of the larger discord over public lands in the West, where almost half of all land is federally owned. But in the case of Bears Ears, the battle lines feel especially deep because of the fissures between Native peoples and the descendants of Mormon settlers. In 2015, members of the Utah Diné Bikéyah formed the Bears Ears intertribal coalition with five other tribes to draw up a plan to safeguard 1. 9 million acres from energy extraction. The coalition sent its plan to the San Juan County Commission, but nothing happened. The tribes claim discrimination, citing the fact that a majority of the commissioners are white. But county leaders say race had nothing to with it. ”San Juan County is the   county in the country. To say we don’t want to even look for oil is stupid,” former San Juan County commissioner Phil Lyman said. Lyman served 10 days in jail last year and was put on probation from the commission after he led an ATV ride over a Native American archaeological site to protest the closure of Recapture Canyon by federal authorities who sought to protect the artifacts. Ultimately, the county commissioners rejected the tribal proposal. Instead they sent their own plan, which maintained land for energy extraction, to Bishop and Chaffetz, who at the time were drafting a master proposal for managing Utah’s controversial public lands. Both Bishop and Chaffetz are part of the chorus of voices in the West calling for the federal government to cede control of public land to the states. Bishop is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and his biggest campaign donors are from the oil and gas industry, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Beginning in 2013, Bishop and Chaffetz conducted more than 1, 200 stakeholder meetings with energy companies, ranchers and environmentalists. The intertribal council says it was intentionally excluded. Last year, when the two politicians revealed their Public Lands Initiative, the tribes argued that large swaths of land in the Bears Ears had been left out, leaving it vulnerable to energy companies. Environmentalists raged that the bill favored fossil fuels. By the time the Public Lands Initiative was released, the intertribal coalition, convinced that it had no other choice, had reached out to Obama on its own. The bill failed to get to a floor vote before Congress adjourned for the year. The White House, though, kept talking with the tribes, and they got what they wanted. So too did the 71 percent of people in Utah who said they supported protecting Bears Ears, according to one poll. The Bears Ears Monument will cover 1. 35 million acres, less than the 1. 9 million acres that the tribal coalition had requested. And the final plan didn’t entirely ignore the Public Lands Initiative. For instance, the monument boundaries exclude the Daneros uranium mine, which mine operators say they hope to expand soon. Mining within the monument will be prohibited, but ranchers can still graze there, according to a statement by the Department of the Interior. Adams told reporters that San Juan County will join the state in suing the federal government over Bears Ears. Meanwhile, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch says he is scheduling a meeting with Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, Trump’s pick for secretary of the interior, to discuss what can be done about Bears Ears. And while no president has ever undone a predecessor’s monument designation, it’s possible Trump could try to be the first, even though some experts doubt he could win the legal case. Even if he doesn’t try, Congress could cancel the monument. It has done so in the past, but only 11 times  —   and only once in the last 50 years. This story comes to us from the Food  Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit investigative news organization where Kristina Johnson is associate editor. A version of the story first appeared in FERN’s Ag Insider."
"The week before Donald Trump takes the oath of office will set the stage for his entry into the Oval Office. Not only will at least nine of his Cabinet nominees begin their Senate confirmation hearings, but the   himself will face reporters at a   press conference, where he may address how he plans to separate his business interests from his presidency. On top of that, President Obama steps into the spotlight one last time, on Tuesday evening in Chicago, for a farewell address in which he’s likely to frame his legacy. In addition to the busy schedule, Trump has demonstrated in recent days his ability to upend what’s happening in Washington or move the financial markets with a tweet  —   whether he’s going off on intelligence agencies, deflecting claims against Russia, or taking aim at companies that could move the financial markets. Here’s a guide to what to watch for before Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. All times are Eastern. Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions is first up in the confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet picks, beginning at 9:30 a. m. Typically, there’s a lot of deference shown toward sitting senators, and the Alabama senator is   on Capitol Hill. But there will still be questions at his Judiciary Committee hearing about allegations that he once used racist language when he was a U. S. Attorney. Those allegations sank his hopes of a federal judgeship 30 years ago when he failed to win a Senate confirmation vote. Sessions has denied those allegations. He’ll also likely be asked about how he would handle civil rights cases, which have renewed scrutiny given the increased tensions between the police and many   communities in recent years. And he could also be pressed on whether he would prosecute Trump’s former opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, over her time at the State Department and her use of a private email server. ”Lock her up!” became a frequent chant on the campaign trail, but Trump has since abandoned that line and even admitted it was simply a campaign tactic. Retired Gen. John Kelly will also begin his confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Homeland Security at 3:30 p. m. Kelly is one of Trump’s less controversial nominees, but he’ll still face questions about Trump’s vaunted border wall proposal and other plans to curtail illegal immigration. On top of those confirmation hearings, the Senate Intelligence Committee has called a hearing for 1 p. m. on Tuesday where the heads of the CIA, FBI, NSA and the director of national intelligence will testify on Russian cyberattacks. That evening at 9, Obama will give his farewell address from McCormick Place in Chicago, where he held his 2012   victory party. With a Trump administration threatening to repeal or roll back some of the president’s signature accomplishments, such as Obamacare and climate change regulations, it’s a chance for him to defend his two terms. And while Obama has shown deference to Trump, whom he criticized as unequivocally unqualified and dangerous during the campaign, during the transition, he could still leave some words of rebuke or warning for his successor. Four more confirmation hearings are slated for midweek, but it’s secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson who is the most controversial of the slate. Beginning at 9:15 a. m. the former Exxon Mobil CEO will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he’ll be peppered with questions about his relationship with Russia and President Vladimir Putin. Plenty of tough questions are likely to come from the GOP side. Former Trump antagonists such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the 2016 primary candidate, along with fellow Republicans like Arizona Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, have raised plenty of questions about Tillerson’s qualifications. His business involvement in Russia has only been magnified in the wake of U. S. intelligence findings that Russia conspired to influence the election with hacks into emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Trump has been reluctant to accept those findings. Russia’s role into those cyberattacks will also come up at the confirmation hearing of Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s choice to lead the CIA. He’ll also face questions about Trump’s pointed criticisms of the intelligence community and reports that the   wants to scale back some agencies. Education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos won’t sail through a hearing either. Democrats don’t like her push for voucher programs and charter schools, and there’s plenty of questions about her financial disclosures and potential conflicts of interest, too. The least controversial nominee of the day  —   and perhaps of Trump’s entire proposed Cabinet  —   is likely to be Elaine Chao, Trump’s pick for transportation secretary. Not only has she been confirmed before, serving as labor secretary in the George W. Bush administration, but she’s also married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Sessions hearing before the Judiciary Committee will also continue on Wednesday with outside witnesses, including the head of the NAACP and a former attorney general, scheduled to testify. All of those consequential confirmation hearings could be overshadowed by Trump’s press conference at 11 a. m. in New York City. The   eschewed traditional rules throughout his unlikely campaign, and that continued into the transition by not holding the typical   press conferences. Trump had finally slated a press conference on Dec. 15 to detail how he would deal with his business interests, but canceled just days before. If the press conference on Wednesday stands, it will have been 167 days since his last press conference in late July  —   during which he encouraged Russia to try and find Clinton’s missing State Department emails. Trump had often mocked Clinton for going months without holding a press conference, and now he has done the same thing. Instead, Trump has taken to Twitter to try to influence the news agenda for the day and get his message directly out to the public, all while blasting the media. On Wednesday, he’s sure to face questions about his businesses and conflicts of interests, his recent comments about Russia, his criticism of U. S intelligence, his Cabinet picks and more. Trump’s pick for defense secretary, James ”Mad Dog” Mattis, will be the main event near the end of the week at his confirmation hearing at 9:30 a. m. before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The retired Marine Corps general still has to get a waiver to even let him lead the department  —   current law bars former officers from serving as secretary until they’ve been retired seven years, and Mattis only left the military in 2013. Many Democrats like the waiver, saying it protects the ideal of a military under civilian control. It’s only been approved once before, for Gen. George Marshall. Mattis, however, is   by both parties, and his opposition to torture is seen as a mainstream influence on Trump. Ultimately, he’s likely to get the waiver and to be confirmed. Ben Carson, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will also have his confirmation hearing at 10 a. m. before the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. While the famed retired neurosurgeon is likable, the big complaint over Carson is that he has essentially no experience in issues with the department he’s being tapped to lead. A top aide to Carson, who also ran for the GOP presidential nomination before withdrawing and endorsing Trump, had even said Carson wasn’t interested in a Cabinet position because he didn’t think he was qualified to lead a federal department. Billionaire investor and turnaround specialist Wilbur Ross will have his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation at 10 a. m. as well. Like Trump, he has taken positions against free trade and wants to renegotiate current deals."
"Darlene Hawes lost her health insurance about a year after her husband died in 2012. Hawes, 55, is from Charlotte, N. C. She ended up going without insurance for a few years, but in 2015 she bought coverage on HealthCare. gov, the Affordable Care Act marketplace, with the help of a big subsidy. ”I was born with heart trouble and I also had, in 2003,   surgery,” she says. ”I had   surgery. I have a lot of medical conditions, so I needed insurance badly.” After the results of the 2016 election came in, she was scared she’d lose her insurance immediately. For years, Republicans have vowed to scrap the health care law. The new Congress is already working on a plan to undo the Affordable Care Act. But they have not settled on how to replace the health care structure that Obamacare set up. Hawes is one of about 550, 000 North Carolinians who relies on the Obamacare marketplace for health insurance. She was relieved after she talked with an enrollment specialist last month who told her she can renew her policy for 2017. ”And I’m like, ’Oh my Lord, did she just say that?’ ” Hawes asks with a laugh. ”It’s just like a whole load of burdens just fell off of my back because all the years I haven’t been covered since my husband passed away  —   I don’t want to be sad again. I was very sad.” Most health care researchers and policy analysts agree not much is likely to change in 2017. ”Even the Republican Congress in one of their most recent bills to repeal it, they put in a   transition period, so that the premium subsidies and the other provisions of the law that are fundamental wouldn’t be repealed for a couple of years,” says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s. Some Republican leaders say repeal should happen immediately with a transition period to come up with a replacement. Still, the CEO of HealthCare. gov, Kevin Counihan, says he can’t guarantee coverage will remain. ”It’s not my place to promise anything about a new administration,” he says. ”But what I can tell you is not only are we moving forward, but our enrollment is higher than expected.” At the end of 2016, enrollment for 2017 plans spiked and as of the end of December, North Carolina has the   enrollment for 2017 plans among states using HealthCare. gov. Julieanne Taylor with Legal Services of Southern Piedmont is helping people sign up. She says about a third of them have asked about the election. ”But generally when we’re calling, people are really excited to have their appointment and come in and look at the plans for 2017,” she says. ”I think they’re mostly interested in how much they’re going to be paying.” In some ways, North Carolina is in tough shape. Premiums are going up and insurance companies have dropped out, leaving Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina as the only insurer in 95 percent of the state. Blue Cross actuary Brian Tajlili says it’s simply an expensive market that has older, sicker people who cost more to cover. ”There is continuing demand for services and continuing high utilization within this block of business,” he says. What he calls ”this block of business” means the customers who buy insurance on the exchange. It’s a small slice of the overall health insurance market, because most people are covered through work or Medicare. The overwhelming majority of consumers who buy coverage on the exchange get federal subsidies that greatly reduce what they pay. Still, it’s been a turbulent market for consumers and insurers. Over the past two years, Blue Cross has lost $400 million in North Carolina on that part of its business. Amid the   uncertainty, Tajlili says Blue Cross is committed to offering plans in 2017. ”2017 will be another pivotal year for us as we look at the individual market,” he says. One of Blue Cross’ new customers will be Sara Kelly Jones, 46, who works at Letty’s restaurant in Charlotte, N. C. She recognizes Obamacare isn’t perfect. But before the law, health insurance was a financial vise that kept tightening on her. ”I could not afford it at all,” she says. ”Every year it was going up $100 to $120, $150 a month. It got to the point where it was going to be at least $200 more a month than my mortgage.” But under Obamacare, Jones qualifies for a subsidy. Her premium will go up with Blue Cross, but she says she can afford it with that help. Jones says the political debate over the law ignores people like her. ”I’m terrified,” she says. She’s worried about the Republican Congress’ pledge to scrap and replace Obamacare without presenting a detailed proposal. ”If there had been any plan outlined that wasn’t just some vague, ’We’re going to replace it with something awesome,’ ” she says she’d rest easier. ”They have no plan! What on Earth are you going to do with all these people, myself included, that are counting on this?” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WFAE and Kaiser Health News. You can follow Michael Tomsic on Twitter: @michaeltomsic."
"Two law enforcement officers have been killed during a massive manhunt for a murder suspect in Orlando, Fla. Master Sgt. Debra Clayton radioed from a   shortly after 7 a. m. Monday, saying she was ”attempting to contact a murder suspect,” according to a statement from the City of Orlando. Other officers radioed two minutes later, reporting that an officer had been shot. The   veteran of the department died after she was transported to a hospital. Police are seeking Markeith Loyd in the murder of a pregnant woman named Sade Dixon last month. Loyd fled from the   and pulled into a nearby apartment building, where police say he fired shots at a sheriff’s deputy but did not harm him. Loyd then allegedly stole a car and escaped. This put a manhunt into motion for the suspect, described as ”armed and extremely dangerous.” During the search, authorities say, a sheriff’s deputy riding a motorcycle was hit by a car and later died. The deputy has been identified as Deputy First Class Norman Lewis, an    of the force. ”This is probably one of the toughest days for me in my career,” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings told reporters. ”Because not only did we lose an Orlando police officer today, we lost an Orange County deputy sheriff as well who was traveling on his motorcycle as a result of these broad efforts that we have underway.” Law enforcement is ”highly motivated to bring this suspect to justice,” the sheriff said. There is a reward of up to $60, 000 for information about the    Loyd. The Orlando Police Department says Clayton was married with a son. ”She was extremely committed to our youth and really, the community,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina told reporters. ”And she did so many different projects in the community. She organized several marches against violence by herself  —   that’s how committed she is.” The Orange County Sheriff’s Office tweeted that Lewis was a ”gentle giant” with a ”million dollar smile.” In a statement, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, ”These tragic deaths make clear the great risks that our brave men and women in uniform face each and every day, and the deep and abiding gratitude that our nation owes them for their service.”"
"The details of the story are unambiguously disturbing. Last week, a white    man from suburban Chicago was found walking in the cold, disoriented and bloodied. Four people, all black, had held him against his will for four hours, tied him up, and assaulted him while livestreaming part of it on Facebook. The young woman who recorded the video laughed and egged her friends on. One of the men took the knife that he waved in the victim’s face and cut off the man’s sleeves. One of his tormentors is seen on the video slapping him, and at one point, someone sliced at his hair and scalp with a knife, cutting him. His captors yelled ”F*** Donald Trump, nigga! F**** white people, boy!” According to the police, his attackers demanded a petty ransom ($300) from his mother. He finally escaped when several of his captors left to argue with a neighbor, and he was found by the police walking with one of the people in the video. Chicago’s superintendent of police described the victim as having ”mental health challenges.” His four tormentors, including one who was reportedly a school friend, now face kidnapping charges as well as condemnation from all corners. (President Obama told reporters that the incident in his adopted hometown was ”despicable. ”) But there was already a debate over how to characterize the kidnapping. Was it a hate crime? That’s not simply a legal question. In an earlier press conference, a police official demurred when asked whether this was a hate crime. He said the police had to determine whether the pronouncements in the video were ”sincere or just stupid ranting and raving.” That prompted angry backlash in some white circles, from those who felt that the case was being treated differently because the victim was white. ”If this had been done to an   by four whites, every liberal in the country would be outraged, and there’d be no question that it’s a hate crime,” Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, said on Fox News. The police did later file hate crime charges against the four suspects. ”There was never a question whether or not this incident qualified as being investigated as a hate crime,” police superintendent Eddie Johnson said. Under state law, both the victim’s race and his mental health  —   the police said he suffers from schizophrenia  —   were protected classes that made hate crime charges possible. ”It’s half a dozen of one, six of the other,” police Commander Kevin Duffin said. Whatever the reasons for the kidnapping, his captors cursed his whiteness. The legal specifics of the charges probably matter less than the message they send: Weren’t these kidnappers clearly racist? Didn’t they deserve the vilification that came with that description? In conversations about this case with friends and colleagues of color, I noticed that folks were straining mightily to avoid using the word racism, as if saying it might be an admission of something. I was squirming right along with them, and it took me awhile to figure out why. In some ways, this case being called a ”hate crime,” while a legal designation, might give people a rhetorical reprieve, as it allows us to talk about bias and violence without having to fight over the definition of racism. It reminded me of something Phillip Atiba Goff, who runs the Center for Policing Equity at John Jay College, told me a few weeks ago. ”One of the most important achievements of the Civil Rights Movement was to take the authority over moral character away from white men,” Goff told me. ”There’s no credential that [restores it]  —   having a black friend or relative is not sufficient.” Before then, white people were the only ones who could define what was righteous and correct  —   often at the expense of the rights and safety of black Americans. Goff said that the casting of racism as an evil worthy of condemnation made all the ways white people expressed their bigotry taboo. Those taboos are, in part, what people are referring to when they rail against political correctness. And while those new constraints certainly didn’t end racism, they suppressed behaviors that created space for people of color to live more fully in America. And that, to me, seems a big part of what we’re really discussing in stories like the one in Chicago, and what makes these conversations (and writing this) so discomfiting. In calling the kidnapping and assault racism, we’re staking claim to moral language  —   and uniquely powerful moral language  —   to which white people can’t easily lay claim, even in cases like the one in Chicago, which seems to qualify for the most vehement reproach available. And it’s why, I suspect, the folks of color I talked to seemed so visibly uncomfortable. Calling what happened in Chicago racism seems to cede at least some of that moral authority to the many people who we suspect are engaging in conversations about race and racism in bad faith people who want to push the conversation in the direction of a false, ahistorical equanimity. Is racism as expressed by centuries of white torture and discrimination the same as the racism of the four black people in Chicago? It’s a distasteful comparison. It’s as if you’re downplaying the misery of the young man in the video by reducing this conversation to semantics. But consider what’s already happening with folks from the   Internet, where people are holding up the Chicago case as the handiwork of black activist groups like Black Lives Matter (despite the complete lack of evidence that anyone involved in the kidnapping has ties to the organization). It seems that the people who have embraced this ridiculous claim  —   the hashtag #BLMkidnapping was used hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter  —   want to prove some kind of symmetry in American racism. One way to argue that the evil of racism is not uniquely wedded to whiteness is to argue that it is a moral failing that lives equally in blackness. It’s a notion that seems to be gaining traction even outside the fever swamps. Last year, two professors wrote in the Washington Post about their research showing that white Americans think   bias has been on the rise in recent decades, and that it now constitutes a bigger problem in the country than   bias. ”This perception is fascinating, as it stands in stark contrast to data on almost any outcome that has been assessed,” professors Samuel Sommers and Michael Norton wrote. ”From life expectancy to school discipline to mortgage rejection to police use of force, outcomes for white Americans tend to be  —   in the aggregate  —   better than outcomes for black Americans, often substantially so. (While a disturbing uptick in the mortality rate among   whites has received a great deal of recent media attention, it is worth noting that even after this increase, the rate remains considerably lower than that of blacks. )” It’s against the further legitimizing of this idea  —   that there are no distinctions to be made when we talk about racism  —   that I suspect folks are uncomfortably holding the rhetorical line, especially in this current political moment, rife with calls to validate white grievance. And it’s that sense of grievance that this video corroborates, regardless of whether it should regardless of how poorly it’s contextualized. Not that epistemology matters terribly much to the victim or his family. The video is chilling. It’s easy to go to an even darker place by imagining what might have happened to the victim had he not been able to escape. The captors wonder aloud about killing him. They are performing. They are talking back to their audience. One of the young women complains that there aren’t enough people watching. They livestream their torment of this man the way people might Snapchat themselves turning up at a club. It’s the kind of story that’s so random and unsettling that the desire for clear, moral parameters feels even more pressing. That’s why it’s worth wrestling over the language of racism, even if no words can make the event any more comprehensible, or, for the victim and his family, any less calamitous."
"In Venezuela, food has become so scarce it’s now being sold on the black market. One person tells the Associated Press, ”it’s a better business than drugs.” And the food traffickers are the very people sworn to protect Venezuela: the nation’s military. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gave the military complete control of the food supply last summer, after people began protesting in the streets over food rationing. Shortages had become so bad that people were even ransacking grocers  —   though many were largely empty. These days, hunger remains widespread. But if you venture into the black markets, you’ll find foods that aren’t available in the   supermarkets, ”where people would prefer to shop because it’s a lot cheaper,” says Joshua Goodman, the AP’s news director for the Andes. He was part of the AP team that investigated the food trafficking situation. ”These goods are only getting into the country because the military is importing them,” Goodman tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. ”And when you see the food sold at these makeshift markets, there’s usually military people standing by with weapons, watching over it all, if not actually selling the food directly.” And the military isn’t just running these black markets  —   it’s getting rich off them, Goodman says. Goodman spoke with Cornish about the findings of the AP investigation. An edited transcript of their conversation follows. How does this affect the price of food? Right now there are some things that are incredibly cheap in Venezuela but in incredibly scarce supply. If you’re one of the lucky people to get the food at the   price, you are doing quite well. But a lot of people can’t afford to spend an entire day in line at a state supermarket, only to find the shelves have already been emptied by the time they get through the door. So a lot of people do have to go to the black market to find food. It’s a very unfortunate situation. Something like 80 percent of the country right now says they have lost weight because of what they sort of joke is the President Maduro diet  —   the forced austerity upon the country. You found lots of examples of how, essentially, the military is getting rich off controlling the food supply  —   even when people are trying to bring food into the country.  We documented a case of a South American businessman. He admitted to us that he had paid millions of dollars in bribes over the years to bring food into the country. And he really didn’t care who he was paying, because the prices [at which] he was able to sell to the government were so sky high  —   something like more than double the international price for a shipment of corn, for example. And that made it very easy for him to pay kickbacks to government officials. And of course, that worked its way all down the food chain. This businessman specifically pointed to the food minister right now, who’s a military general, or people close to him having received the money that he was paying. Now what’s happened to people trying to bring evidence of this corruption to the president? Venezuela right now is a very opaque place. We don’t have a lot of info about the internal deliberations of the government. There are some people in the military who clearly are upset with this situation. However, there are some serious entrenched interests within the military who are politically important to President Maduro. He is a man who is a hanging by a thread. . .. He does not have the popularity of his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez. And the military for him has become an invaluable crutch in the face of mass street protests and sinking popularity and hyperinflation, almost. So this is a way to keep [the military] paid, frankly. Is that what’s going on? It’s a way to keep them fed, you could even argue. Because a lot of this food, I’m sure, is going to the families of the military, to feed their own families and friends. And yeah, it puts money in their pocket at a time when there really isn’t much money in the country. What has shocked you most about this situation? I think what has shocked me the most is the degree to which the military has really sullied its own reputation. They were seen by many as a disciplined force that could actually provide answers to the serious problems Venezuela is facing. Instead they seem to be much more   much more corrupt than I had imagined when we started this project. You’ve talked to a lot of officials in your story. For average Venezuelans  —   what are people saying about this?  They’re outraged. They know fully well that while they’re not eating, people are getting rich. This is an issue that touches the stomachs, literally, of every Venezuelan. A lot of Venezuelans who would be sympathetic to the government are very upset over this issue. And when they find out people are actually profiting from it  —   it’s a potentially explosive situation for the government."
"A powerful winter storm in California has brought down an ancient tree, carved into a living tunnel more than a century ago. The ”Pioneer Cabin Tree,” a sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park, saw horses and cars pass through it over the years. More recently, only hikers were allowed to walk through the massive tree. Over the weekend, a powerful winter storm slammed into California and Nevada, prompting flooding and mudslides in some regions. The Associated Press reports it might be the biggest storm to hit the region in more than a decade. On Sunday, a volunteer at the state park reported that Pioneer Cabin had not survived. ”The storm was just too much for it,” the Calaveras Big Tree Association wrote on Facebook. It’s unclear exactly how old the tree was, but The Los Angeles Times reports that the trees in the state park are estimated to be more than 1, 000 years old. Sequoias can live for more than 3, 000 years. The iconic tree was one of just a few   sequoias in California. The most famous was the Wawona Tree, in Yosemite National Park it fell during a winter storm in 1969 at an estimated age of 2, 100 years. The other remaining sequoia tunnels are dead or consist of logs on their side, the Forest Service says. However, there are still three coastal redwoods (taller and more slender than sequoias) with tunnels cut through them. They’re all operated by private companies, the Forest Service says, and still allow cars to drive through  —   one appeared in a recent Geico ad. SFGate. com spoke to Jim Allday, the volunteer who reported Pioneer Cabin’s demise. He told the website that the tree ”shattered” when it hit the ground on Sunday afternoon, and that people had walked through it as recently as that morning. Local flooding might have been the reason the tree fell, SFGate reports: ” ’When I went out there [Sunday afternoon] the trail was literally a river, the trail is washed out,’ Allday said. ’I could see the tree on the ground, it looked like it was laying in a pond or lake with a river running through it.’ ” ”The tree had been among the most popular features of the state park since the late 1800s. The tunnel had graffiti dating to the 1800s, when visitors were encouraged to etch their names into the bark. ”Joan Allday, wife of Jim Allday and also a volunteer at the park, said the tree had been weakening and leaning severely to one side for several years. ” ’It was barely alive, there was one branch alive at the top,’ she said. ’But it was very brittle and starting to lift.’ ” Tunnel trees were created in the 19th century to promote parks and inspire tourism. But cutting a tunnel through a living sequoia, of course, damages the tree. ”Tunnel trees had their time and place in the early history of our national parks,” the National Park Service has written. ”But today sequoias which are standing healthy and whole are worth far more.”"
"From head to toe, a first lady’s look is heavily scrutinized, and Melania Trump will be no exception. But Trump is no stranger to the spotlight: In 2005, she was on the cover of Vogue in her Dior wedding dress, and she’s modeled for Harper’s Bazaar and posed nude for GQ. She also once sold her own line of costume jewelry and watches on QVC. With the whole world watching, the first lady can make a fashion statement like no one else. She can also make a difference during the campaign. In October 2008, just days before the election, Michelle Obama appeared on The Tonight Show wearing a mustard yellow sweater and printed silk shirt. When Jay Leno asked her what she was wearing, she told him her outfit was from J. Crew. The audience roared with excitement: ”We ladies, we know J. Crew,” Obama said knowingly. ”You can get some good stuff online.” Chicago boutique owner Ikram Goldman worked as Obama’s fashion consultant at the time. She says, ”The idea of her being inclusive was very important, and I think it was important to other people who were looking at her to feel like they can have access to that as well.” Obama also championed young American designers like Jason Wu, whose career took off after she wore his   white chiffon gown to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural balls. Goldman helped select the gown but kept it a secret until that night. She says when Wu saw it on TV, he called her. ”He was crying. He was shocked. He was happy. He couldn’t believe it,” Goldman remembers. Obama was embraced by the fashion industry, but Melania Trump comes from it. A former model, Trump seems to have a preference for European designers. She’s often seen wearing such luxury brands such as Gucci and Dolce  Gabbana, most of which she reportedly bought off the rack. ”Expensive” and ”body conscious” are among the first words Robin Givhan uses when asked to describe Trump’s style. Givhan, a Pulitzer   fashion critic for The Washington Post, says, ”It speaks to a bank account it speaks to a particular kind of social life and it speaks to a particular tribe of women who exist in New York, in particular. . .. They lead very comfortable lives. . .. They have both the time and the energy to attend to themselves.” Givhan says Trump’s look has ”a polish to it, a glamour to it, but not in a particularly personal or individual way.” Like Michelle Obama before her, Melania Trump’s choices are already making an impact. For her speech at the Republican National Convention this summer, Trump wore an ivory, cotton and silk dress with sleeves that billowed at the elbows. The $2, 195 dress (by   designer Roksanda Ilincic) reportedly sold out in the days following Trump’s speech. Meanwhile, retailers in Washington, D. C. are getting ready for a very different style of first lady. The ladies consignment shop Inga’s Once Is Not Enough is something of an institution in the nation’s capital, especially for women who need to dress for   formal events on a federal government salary. Sorting through the racks, owner Inga Guen says she would love to dress Melania Trump. She pulls out an olive green Oscar de la Renta dress,   with ivory beading, and a black cashmere jacket with a fur collar by Valentino. ”She would look très chic  —   très, très, très chic  —   in this,” Guen says. Guen describes Trump’s style as daring and slightly eccentric with a European sensibility. She says she’s already had three new clients come into her shop who’ve been hired by the new administration. ”I have no idea how they heard about me, but I dressed them and they were so, so very happy to have met Melania Trump,” she says. Asked whether their style was anything like Trump’s, Guen replies, ”Au contraire, it was not similar to her at all. But I said, ’We have to put a little bit of oomph in your wardrobe right now, we have to be a little bit glamourous.’ ” Guen hopes to do business with Trump, but the fashion industry is splitting at the seams over whether to work with her. Some designers have said absolutely not others say it would be an honor to dress any first lady."
"A police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, has been suspended for 10 days after an inquiry into his forceful arrest of a woman and her two daughters in December. The arrest was recorded and streamed live on Facebook, as The   reported at the time: ”The events unfolded in southwest Fort Worth, where Jacqueline Craig called police to say a man had grabbed and choked her    son after accusing him of littering. But after an officer responded to the call, the two engaged in a heated argument as bystanders, including Craig’s relatives, looked on. ”In the nearly   video that’s now been viewed some 2. 5 million times on Facebook, the responding officer is seen questioning Craig, as she says the man should have spoken to her about her son. The video was posted by Porsha Craver, Craig’s niece who used a smartphone to film a screen showing the original footage  —   and who offers her own comments about the police encounter.” Immediately after the incident, the officer in the video was ”placed on restricted duty status by the Chief of Police” pending the outcome of an Internal Affairs investigation, the Fort Worth Police Department said. The Fort Worth   reported that the officer, William Martin was ”contrite” and ”sorry” about the incident, according to police Chief Joel Fitzgerald, who called the suspension ”significant punishment” during a news conference Monday. The newspaper continued: ”Both Mayor Betsy Price and Fitzgerald said the situation was an isolated incident. He said various videos were reviewed during the investigation. ’We left no stone unturned,’ Fitzgerald said. ”The chief said the decision to suspended Martin for 10 days was his, and some members of the department’s command staff disagreed, [saying] he should have been more lenient. ” ’But the buck stops here,’ Fitzgerald said. He said Martin showed neglect of duty and discourtesy. He said the officer will undergo training before he returns to duty.” Craig told the Dallas Morning News she wanted the charges against her dropped. The newspaper reported that the charges include interference with public duty, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and failing to provide identification. The   says the charges have been forwarded to the district attorney, who will decide whether to prosecute."
"  projects like the musical film La La Land and FX’s TV comedy Atlanta won big at Sunday’s Golden Globe awards. But the most powerful moment of the night belonged to Meryl Streep, who used her acceptance speech for the honorary Cecil B. deMille Award of the 2017 Golden Globes, to deliver a harsh rebuke of   Donald Trump and to advocate for press freedom. Recalling the moment Trump mocked a disabled reporter from The New York Times during a campaign rally, Streep labeled it one performance in the past year that ”stunned” her. There was nothing good about it, but it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it of out my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. In what The New York Times described as a brief telephone interview early Monday morning, Trump said he had not watched Streep’s remarks. But Trump said he was not surprised he had been criticized by ”liberal movie people,” and dismissed Streep as a Hillary Clinton supporter. Trump also denied, as he frequently has, that he intended to mock Times reporter Serge Kovaleski for his disability, the incident to which Streep was apparently referring. Just a few hours later, Trump reiterated his remarks to the Times in a trio of tweets. Streep also urged the audience to support the Committee to Protect Journalists to preserve an independent press, and specifically outlined the wide and varied birthplaces of many Golden Globe nominees and winners. ”Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners,” she said. ”And if we kick ’em all out you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.” Streep wasn’t the only one to take on the   less than two weeks before his inauguration. Host Jimmy Fallon joked at the show’s start that the Golden Globes were ”one of the few places left where America still honors the popular vote.” While accepting the award for best supporting actor in a limited TV series, The Night Manager   Hugh Laurie joked it would be the last Golden Globes ceremony, because the awards are chosen by an association with the words ”Hollywood,” ”foreign” and ”press” in the title  —   groups Trump has criticized in the past. These barbs capped an evening in which the Hollywood Foreign Press Association championed the musical film La La Land, handing it a record seven awards, including best director for Damien Chazelle, best actor in a musical or comedy for Ryan Gosling and best actress in a musical or comedy for Emma Stone."
"Sunday night’s Golden Globes were, in the great tradition of the Golden Globes, full of unexpected winners and a certain fondness for Hollywood itself. In this case, that fondness manifested itself in part through a sweep of the   film awards for La La Land, which  —   in case you haven’t yet heard  —   is about dreamers. Elsewhere, Meryl Streep talked Trump, Donald Glover cleaned up, Tracee Ellis Ross had her moment, and awards shows continued to be the gift that may not keep on giving, but certainly keeps on going. It’s just the beginning of awards season, but we’ll be with you till the end. Meanwhile, we’ll have a full episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour this Friday, covering Hidden Figures and the new One Day At A Time."
"Tom Hiddleston is trending on Twitter, and not for a good reason. Last night at the Golden Globes, he won a best actor award for the AMC series The Night Manager. But his acceptance speech didn’t go over as well as his performance. Hiddleston recounted a visit he made to see medics from Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan. He was serving as a humanitarian spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, and some of the medics ”wanted to say hello” because ”during the shelling the previous month they had   The Night Manager.” Hiddleston continued: ”The idea that I could . .. provide some relief and entertainment for people who work for UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Food Programme who are fixing the world in the places where it was broken made me immensely proud.” The internet showed no mercy. Sample tweets: Hiddleston is part of a long list of stars who’ve served as the celebrity face of a global goodwill organization. Today, the U. N. roster of celebrity advocates ranges from singer Selena Gomez to Indian cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar. This generation’s most famous U. N. goodwill ambassador, Angelina Jolie, has dedicated a significant portion of her time to the UNHCR’s work with refugees. Other nonprofits have celebrity advocates as well. So let’s step back from the Hiddleston flap and take a look at this phenomenon. What makes an ideal celebrity spokesperson? Are there some who are better than others? And how do NGOs  —   nongovernmental organizations  —   go about picking them? The U. N. has a long history of integrating celebrities in its campaigns, dating back to stage and screen star Danny Kaye, who linked up with the   UNICEF agency in 1954. Many who work in the international aid community point to the 1980s as the ”tipping point” when celebrities and NGOs really forged bonds. That’s the view of Sam Worthington, chief executive officer of InterAction, an alliance of   NGOs (InterAction has worked with the U. N. in the past). Consider the 1985 Live Aid concert, which produced the song ”We Are the World” to aid victims of the Ethiopian famine. A who’s who of the music industry sang a song that sold 20 million copies, with proceeds going to famine victims. Picking a celebrity to front a cause isn’t just a matter of approaching a hot star. First and foremost, a celebrity must be ”likable” with a stellar character, says Nanette Braun, chief of communications at U. N. Women. And of course there can be a payoff for the celebrity. In a media environment where a celebrity’s every move is photographed and analyzed, charitable work can help shape someone’s image.   Worthington emphasizes that passion is central to a successful partnership between NGO and celebrity. A track record helps to indicate this. Anne Hathaway, he says, named as a U. N. goodwill ambassador last year, is a good example of a person who has been outspoken for girls and women’s rights: Hathaway has held previous posts advocating against child marriage with the Nike Foundation and was the narrator of Girl Rising, a 2013 CNN documentary that followed seven girls around the world as they sought an education and better lives for themselves. But a previously held public stance can only go so far in indicating a celebrity’s commitment, Worthington stressed. ”The issue is finding a celebrity for whom the cause actually means something and an individual who is able to advance the cause,” he says. Rajesh Mirchandani, the vice president of communications at the Center for Global Development, agrees. But there is a down side, he notes: Celebrities can be distracting because of their celebrity. ”If they [celebrities] are too famous, or infamous, the media is going to be more interested in their personal doings than the project they are supposed to be fronting,” he said. An ”unlikely but powerful” example of a celebrity who has been able to walk the tightrope between offering an organization   publicity and awareness while also acting as a strong role model is actress Angelina Jolie, says Mirchandani. Jolie began her work with the UNHCR as a goodwill ambassador in 2001 after adopting eldest son Maddox while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in Cambodia and becoming interested in the local history of refugees. Jolie developed a focus on the needs of refugee women and emergency medical relief. In 2012, the U. N. offered her the rare distinction of ”special envoy,” recognizing her role in attracting attention to the refugee cause. But   matches don’t always work out. PETA, the animal rights group, once arranged for model Naomi Campbell to pose nude to promote its stance: ”We’d rather go naked than wear fur.” A few years later, Campbell was promoting fur for Dennis Basso. Then there’s the clueless celebrity. In 2013 a Telegraph reporter accompanying Downton Abbey star Elizabeth McGovern on a goodwill trip to Sierra Leone with the group World Vision wrote this: ”I ask about her new role as charity ambassador. She says that she has never been to Africa, and does not know what to expect. As if to prove this point, when we refuel in Dakar, Senegal, she gets mixed up and says we have stopped in Darfur, a region in western Sudan, some 4, 000 miles away.” Other celebrities are praised for their involvement. U2 singer Bono is cited by industry analysts as a model celebrity in his efforts to bring attention to poverty and disease in Africa. The ONE Campaign has been lauded by groups like the U. S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for helping pass the Electrify Africa Act of 2016, which would help bring electricity to 50 million Africans by 2020, and GAVI for helping to secure funding for vaccines. ”He really changed the way we think of celebrities and charities,” Worthington of InterAction remarks. Emma Watson, who sparkled in Hollywood with her turn as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise, has since marked herself as a vocal feminist with her #heforshe gender equality campaign after she was appointed a goodwill ambassador for U. N. Women in 2014. A video of her speech promoting the cause went viral and boosted not only Watson’s profile as an actress with a conscience but also the profile of U. N. Women. Indeed, celebrities have been the backbone of many fundraising and publicity efforts. The U. N. even has an office dedicated to brokering partnerships. But once the celebrity is chosen to represent their cause, it’s really up to him or her what to do with it. Commitments can vary, and there is no ruling authority that watches what a celebrity does. And there is always the danger of the Hiddleston backlash. ”In the best cases, the most enlightened celebrities understand that their fame and wealth is not the objective, but the platform from which to make a real difference in the world,” says Mirchandani, ruefully adding, ”If only they all did.” After Hiddleston’s remarks last night, it seemed that no one was talking about the work of Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan. They were just talking about . .. Tom Hiddleston."
"Beijing is launching a new police force aimed at tackling its persistent smog problem. This comes after a month of particularly severe air quality that left the capital and dozens of other Chinese cities blanketed in thick, brown smog. The city’s acting mayor, Cai Qi, announced over the weekend that the new environmental police force will crack down on polluters such as ”  barbeques, garbage incineration, biomass burning, [and] dust from roads,” according to the   Xinhua news agency. He didn’t offer any more specifics about the squad. Cai also announced other measures to tackle the persistent problem, including closing the city’s only   plant. In 2017, ”coal consumption will be cut by 30 percent to less than 7 million tonnes” and ”another 300, 000   old vehicles will be phased out,” the news agency reports. Cai said the city also plans to shutter 500 factories and upgrade 2, 560 others, according to the news agency. ”I totally understand the public’s concerns and complaints over air pollution,” Cai said, admitting that he checks the air quality index ”first thing in the morning.” China’s environmental problems are exacerbated by difficulties enforcing regulations. ”China’s ministry of the environment said during last week’s hazardous smog, inspection teams found factories resuming production, despite being given   orders,” NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports from Beijing. Rob explains the main drivers of China’s air pollution: ”China’s air pollution is mainly caused by   power plants and inefficient vehicles. While the government tries to answer public calls to address the issue, it’s also addressing the challenge of an economic slowdown and maintaining growth.” The environment minister, Chen Jining, said in a statement that he personally ”felt guilty” and ”wanted to reproach himself” about the smog. He added that it made people feel anxious. Last week, China issued its   red alert for fog in some northern and eastern regions, according to a ministry statement. As The   reported, some 72 cities were under pollution alerts. The pollution has deadly consequences  —   as we reported, the World Health Organization said 1, 032, 833 deaths in China in 2012 were attributable to air quality. That’s the highest in the world."
"In Georgia, lawmakers are set to pass a more than $20 billion budget this year and grapple with a failing hospital system. But Georgia, like many other states, faces a serious human resource problem in its Legislature: Salaries are often low and many   politicians can’t afford to be lawmakers. Former Georgia state Rep. LaDawn Jones loved serving in the General Assembly even as she juggled raising two kids and running a law practice. But she left after one term because the job didn’t pay enough. ”I absolutely believe that we need to increase the wage for legislators to keep up with the times,” said Jones. Lawmakers in Georgia make $17, 342 a year, plus a per diem for lodging and meals when the Legislature is in session and reimbursement for mileage. Serving in the Georgia Legislature is considered a   job, but it took much more of Jones’ time than that and she had to hire extra help for her law firm. ”If I really sat down and did the math I’m certain that the amount that I paid out was equal or more than what I received,” she said. Most state lawmakers don’t make much, While a few big states have   legislatures with higher pay (California pays lawmakers $100, 113 a year and Pennsylvania pays $85, 339) but in most states, legislators are paid like it’s a   job. According to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures, 30 states pay $30, 000 a year or less to legislators. New Mexico doesn’t pay lawmakers at all, while those in New Hampshire make just $200 per   term. Median household income in the United States was $55, 775 in 2015, according to the Census Bureau. ”Not paying legislators is like a very   pound foolish thing,” given the size of state budgets and complexity of issues that legislatures tackle every year, said Stanford University political scientist Neil Malhotra. That low level of pay also keeps many people from entering politics, said Malhotra. ”There’s very, very few working class people in legislatures. This might have something to do with why a lot of legislation does not seem very friendly towards working class people.” Even those with   jobs can find it hard to take several months off a year to work in a state capitol. Mike Dudgeon, chief technical officer at the video game company   Studios, is retiring from the Georgia General Assembly after six years as a state representative because he struggled to balance his professional and political commitments. ”Some people suggested that I sort of do the     and keep my seat in the Legislature and just do the bare minimum, just go down and vote and kind of do that,” said Dudgeon. ”But I just can’t do that, it’s not my personality. If I’m going to do anything I’m going to do it well.” No raise in sight, In Georgia, there’s no sign lawmakers will get a raise anytime soon. ”I’m not in favor of increasing legislative pay,” said David Shafer, a leader in the Georgia Senate. ”I don’t know that anyone serves in the General Assembly because of the pay, and I don’t know that we would attract a better legislator if the pay were higher.” That’s a perspective shared by lawmakers around the country, said Malhotra, because it doesn’t look good for politicians to vote to give themselves raises. ”People don’t want to pay politicians more money because they don’t like politicians very much,” he said. Both retiring lawmakers Dudgeon and Jones worry a big raise could spawn more career politicians. They like the idea of ”citizen legislators” who take time off from their jobs to meet at the state capitol for a few months out of the year, if they can afford it. While compensation for state lawmakers is relatively low, some draw salaries in fields closely related to their work in the Legislature, such as public relations and law. Others make up for years of low pay once they retire by quickly jumping to consulting and lobbying firms where compensation is much higher. As the new legislative session opens in Georgia, Jones wishes she could be in the mix. But Jones felt she ”could not dare ask my family to continue to make such a big sacrifice.” Instead, Jones plans to focus her political passions closer to home on local issues that she can afford to work on."
"Mothers should feel comfortable   infants in public, Pope Francis said on Sunday, even if they are in one of the most sacred spaces in Catholicism. Speaking at an annual ceremony to commemorate the baptism of Jesus, the pope addressed the families of 28 infants who were to be baptized in the Sistine Chapel. Some of the babies began to wail as the ceremony wore on, according to Vatican Radio: ”As the sounds of crying grew louder, the Pope joked that the concert had begun. The babies are crying, he said, because they are in an unfamiliar place, or because they had to get up early, or sometimes simply because they hear another child crying. Jesus did just the same, Pope Francis said, adding that he liked to think of Our Lord’s first sermon as his crying in the stable. ”And if your children are crying because they are hungry, the Pope told the mothers present, then go ahead and feed them, just as Mary breastfed Jesus.” This is not the first time the leader of the Catholic Church has expressed support for women who are  . As The Washington Post reported: ”During the same baptismal ceremony two years ago  —   in which he baptized 33 infants in the Sistine Chapel  —   he urged mothers to feel free to   their children if they cried or were hungry. The written text of his homily during that ceremony included the phrase ’give them milk,’ but he changed it to use the Italian term ’allattateli, which means ’  them.’ ” ”You mothers give your children milk and even now, if they cry because they are hungry,   them, don’t worry,” the pope said. Although the pope has repeatedly justified his position in the most traditional terms possible  —   harking back to the infancy of Christ himself, the stance on   does challenge norms in some churches. In 2014, the National Catholic Reporter published an article describing a mother who said she was told   during church was ”inappropriate.” In a 2012 Christianity Today article titled ”  in the Back Pew,” writer Rachel Marie Stone recalled, ”On a family trip to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, as I started to   my son in the sanctuary, I was whisked away by a security guard to the bathroom. ”Countless other Christian women, trying to feed their children without having to miss a sermon, have faced the disapproval of others who think breasts have no place in the sanctuary,” she continued."
"In South Korea, preparing for the worst has become a routine part of life. Twice a year, the country runs air raid drills in case of an attack by North Korea. Citywide sirens go off at 3 p. m. in the capital, Seoul. They’re supposed to bring the bustling city to a temporary halt. ”It’s a simulation of what will happen at a time of war,” says Jeong   a spokesman for Seoul’s Yongsan district. South Korea is still stuck in a technical state of war with North Korea, and has been since the North invaded in 1950. With Pyongyang’s ever more frequent missile launches and nuclear tests, Seoul  —   with a population of 10 million near the border  —   says it’s got to be ready. ”These drills are something every South Korean knows,” Jeong says. Drivers are expected to slow down and pull over  —   and most of them do. Pedestrians are expected to take cover. But it’s not clear that everyone outside knows they’re supposed to pretend an air attack is coming. On the day we witnessed a drill in late August 2016, there was a look of confusion among some folks on the streets when the sirens went off. Inside, government workers do know the drill. They have to, since they are the only ones required to take part in these each time. At the Yongsan district office, the lights go out at the   where people pay their taxes. Bureaucrats file downstairs to the lowest level of the underground parking garage. ”I think it will be over soon. Like about 10 minutes, 15 minutes,” says Will Park, who is interning at the district office. He grew up in the U. S. so this is his first air raid drill ever. We’re huddled with his   in the dark. ”I’m just following the directions . .. just moving with the flow,” Park says. And just as quickly as it started, the drill is over. The 300 or so employees of this district office take the stairs or the elevators and get back to work. So is this kind of drill really necessary? ”If we keep doing these drills, if war does happen, people will be able to deal with it without being too shocked,” says Jeong, the district office spokesman. The North Korean border is just a   drive from Seoul. Kim Jong Un ordered more than 20 missile tests last year alone. And since he has been in power, he has presided over three nuclear tests  —   two of them in 2016. ”In the event war breaks out, we can minimize the damage to human lives through repetitive practice,” says Jeong. That’s what preparedness is about: repetitive practice for a situation no one wants to see. Haeryun Kang contributed to this story."
"David Bowie had long wanted to make a record with a jazz band, and on Jan. 8 of last year, he realized his dream with the release of Blackstar. Two days later, he was gone. Donny McCaslin’s band helped him make that record, and now, a year later, we pay tribute to Bowie and Blackstar  by bringing McCaslin’s band to the Tiny Desk. It’s been exciting to see jazz find its way into the broader music world in recent years think Kendrick Lamar and   in general. Musicians such as McCaslin often play in their own small circuit, but have much to offer popular music. As a bandleader and sax player, he’s put out a dozen albums, the most recent of which is Beyond Now, with musicians Tim Lefebvre on bass, drummer Mark Guiliana and keyboardist Jason Lindner. Beyond Now was recorded after Blackstar, features a few Bowie covers and stretches the band’s own usual boundaries. For this Tiny Desk concert, you can hear an extraordinary group playing extraordinary music  —   including an instrumental version of ”Lazarus,” from Blackstar. Just as Bowie brought these musicians into his   world, I hope this set takes you down McCaslin’s jazz path. Beyond Now is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Donny McCaslin (saxophone) Jason Lindner (keys) Tim Lefebvre (bass) Mark Guiliana (drums). Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Nicole Boliaux Production Assistant: Anna Marketti Photo: Raquel  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Chances are your doctor has stopped taking notes with pen and paper and moved to computer records. That is supposed to help coordinate your care. Increasingly, researchers are also exploring these computerized records for medical studies and gleaning facts that help individual patients get better care. Computerized medical records are hardly new. Pioneers at one of the nation’s first HMOs, Kaiser Permanente, were using electronic medical records as far back as the 1970s and saw them as a big part of the future of medicine. ”The part of it that they didn’t envision that we’re envisioning now, is how proactive a role patients would be taking,” says Dr. Tracy Lieu, who heads Kaiser’s research division in Oakland, Calif. Medical records don’t simply store facts about an individual’s health. There’s a big potential for a database of medical records to be mined to help shape an individual’s treatment. ”Patients are always saying, don’t just give me the averages, tell me what happened to others who look like me and made the same treatment decisions I did,” Lieu says. ”And tell me not only did they live or die, but tell me what their quality of life was about.” Kaiser hasn’t put this concept into action, but it’s working toward it. Lieu has a prototype of how it could work. She scoots up to a keyboard in her office and types in ”pancreatic cancer.” That search function pulls up data from Kaiser’s long history of treating this disease. She can narrow that search by cancer type, stage, patient’s age and treatment options, to look at trends and outcomes. The records also include information about patients’ feelings and emotional states based on a   survey that patients routinely fill out. (Individuals are not identified in the database.) That provides a hint about how a person felt before, during and after cancer treatment. But it’s not as complete a picture as patients might want as they weigh their options about treatment choices. Unfortunately, getting that level of detail could be a challenge, because it requires much more data than doctors currently collect. ”If you’re a patient and someone says, ’Gee, we’d like you to fill out this   survey on a routine basis,’ you’re going to say ’Why?’ ” she says. ”’What will this get me? How will this help my care?’ ” Yet that information could be incredibly useful to other patients contemplating treatment decisions. Another piece missing from the Kaiser records is genetic information about patients. Here, the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania is making strides. It has sunk a lot of money and effort into adding gene scans to electronic medical records. It already has scans for 50, 000 patients in its system. Dr. David Ledbetter, the chief scientific officer, says that number is growing fast, toward a goal of more than 125, 000 patients  ” and beyond. ”Even though this is primarily a research project, we’re identifying genomic variants that are actually important to people’s health and health care today,” Ledbetter says. Geisinger patient Jody Christ volunteered to get the genetic screen during one of her routine medical visits. Her doctor had been concerned about her high cholesterol and told her to work on getting in shape. ”So I started to ride a bike and 10 minutes in, I would start to get a sensation down my left arm,” she says. That made the    from Elysburg, Pa. uneasy, so she stopped exercising. But last February she got a call from the program that had run the genetic testing. They told her she had inherited a genetic trait called familial hypercholesterolemia, and that was why she had persistently high cholesterol levels. The disorder makes the body unable to remove cholesterol from the blood, making patients more vulnerable to narrowing of the arteries at an early age. That genetic diagnosis led to a series of clinical tests through the spring. Toward the end of April, Christ took a stress test, which suggested serious heart trouble. A few days later, her heart vessels were scanned in the cardiac catheterization lab, ”and by May 5th I was having triple bypass surgery.” She feels much better today and is grateful that she had volunteered for the genetic test that revealed this serious problem. ”I feel they saved my life,” Christ says. Genetic testing like this (known as exome sequencing) is not routine because the tests typically cost a few thousand dollars. But Ledbetter says the prices are falling fast, and this year could even be in the $300 range. ”So we think as the cost comes down it will be possible to sequence all the genes of individual patients, store that information in the electronic medical record, and it will guide and individualize and optimize patient care,” he says. Doctors don’t know how to interpret most of the genetic results. But there are a few genetic variations, like Christ’s cholesterol marker, that are clear indications of serious health problems. Ledbetter said    variants like that have shown up in 3. 5 percent of the patients they studied recently. That means the test doesn’t provide actionable information for the vast majority of the people who get it. But ”that 3. 5 percent is going to grow,” Ledbetter says, as scientists learn to identify more genes that are associated with disease, and scientists identify more of those genes in their population. ”I don’t know what the final number will be, but it will be in the 5 to 10 percent range.” The hope, he says, is that it will help reveal the biology of more common forms of cancer and cardiovascular disease, and possibly more complex diseases like obesity and diabetes. Geisinger’s experiment, done in partnership with a company called Regeneron, which funds and performs the gene scans, is an important foray into the new world where genetic data merge with electronic medical records. ”The scientific community has been waiting to see what would happen here,” says Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University who researches cardiology and health care. He’s excited at the prospect of being able to look at physical symptoms in medical records and then look for genetic variations that could be responsible, but he says that the system is so far not at all robust. ”The quality of data [collected in medical records] is not necessarily research quality,” Krumholz says. Think of something as basic as the language in these medical records. The word ”shock” in a medical record could mean different things to different people. ”So I think it would be unfortunate if people felt that all of a sudden we had this remarkable treasure trove. There’s a long way to go to move from where we are now to where we need to be,” he says. The federal government is planning to recruit a million volunteers to expand this approach to research in its Precision Medicine Initiative, which has been rebranded as the ”All of Us” research program. The Department of Veterans Affairs started a similar effort in 2012. Scientists there have gathered a huge amount of data, which they are now starting to explore. But medicine is not yet at home in the world of big data, Krumholz says. ”Medicine’s got to catch up, and medicine’s got to understand how best to take advantage of all the information that’s been generated every day,” he says. The early experiences, at Kaiser, Geisinger and elsewhere, are helping find the path forward."
"French police have reportedly arrested more than a dozen people during raids linked to the   robbery of reality TV star Kim Kardashian West in Paris last October. During the robbery, a group of thieves burst into the private residence where Kardashian West was staying, held her at gunpoint, then escaped on bicycles with jewelry worth about $10 million. There’s some confusion about exactly how many people police have arrested  —   some French media outlets say 16, while others say 17. DNA left at the scene proved crucial to the investigation, one police official told Agence  . ”One of the DNA samples matched an individual known to police for robbery and criminal offences, who is considered a major thug,” the official told the news agency. He added that they were able to then ”build up a picture of the criminal network behind the robbery . .. adding that it stretched to Belgium.” Police arrested people during raids in Paris and in southern France, Agnes   a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, told The New York Times. She added that ”the oldest of those arrested was 72 and that several of the others were in their 40s, 50s and 60s, which suggested that they were part of an ’experienced” group,’” according to the newspaper. The police targeted those suspected of carrying out the robbery, along with intermediaries and those thought to be responsible for selling the stolen items, Le Figaro reports. Immediately after the robbery, a spokeswoman for Kardashian West said she was ”badly shaken but physically unharmed,” as The   noted at the time. Since then, she has kept a relatively low profile, but she tearfully recalled the ordeal in a promo video released Friday for her family’s reality TV show Keeping Up With The Kardashians. ”They’re going to shoot me in the back,” she recalled thinking as she was surrounded by her family members. ”There’s no way out. . .. It makes me so upset to think about it.”"
"When South Korea’s mountain town of PyeongChang hosts the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games next year, a white tiger and a black bear, respectively, will serve as mascots. They’ve been introduced as cuddly icons of Korean history and folklore. ”They are so cute and adorable, so I’m sure that you’re gonna fall in love with them,” Korea’s figure skating champ and former Olympian Yuna Kim said, in announcing the PyeongChang 2018 mascots in a promotional video. The ”adorable” Asiatic black bear is better known regionally as a moon bear, for the distinctive white crescent on its chest. It’s native to Korea and a symbol of the province where the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will be held. ”It’s a very unique and symbolic creature in Korea,” says Anna Jihyun You, a spokeswoman for the Olympics here. ”I can’t say . .. how far [these bears] go back [in folklore] but it’s really since a long time ago,” she says. But that place in history and lore hasn’t spared the actual bear breed itself from cruelty. An hour’s drive south of Seoul, you can find a   farm, one of 39 sprinkled across the country. Here, farmer Kim   keeps 230 moon bears in rusty cages. He breeds them and cages them for the legal minimum of 10 years. Then they’re slaughtered for their gall bladders. In East Asia, bear bile is believed to solve a host of health problems  —   from hangovers to heart disease. The bears are never let out. ”It’s true we don’t have play facilities for the bears,” Kim says. ”But in South Korea right now, almost all these bears are kept in cages.” A century ago that wasn’t true. Moon bears roamed freely in the mountains of Korea. But bear bile became such a   traditional medicine that today, the bears have been captured and farmed to near extinction. ”The way that these bears are farmed is particularly cruel,” says Jill Robinson, a veterinarian and founder and CEO of Animals Asia foundation. Her organization has been working, along with other nonprofits, to try to end the practice of   farming in China, Vietnam and South Korea. ”This is an issue that I sort of discovered way back in 1993 when I walked onto a   farm for the first time in my life and was just absolutely horrified by what I saw,” she says. ”Cages and cages all around me, with bears with the most miserable faces, with   catheters protruding from their abdomens. Their teeth cut back, their paw tips cut back so that they couldn’t hurt the farmers as they were extracting the bile.” Since then, South Korea has banned the practice of milking bears for bile while they are alive. But the animals are still living in captivity until they’re killed. The bear farmer  —   Kim  —   says he has come to enjoy the bears he keeps. But he has no other livelihood. ”Only by selling the bile can I maintain the business,” Kim says. ”So it hurts, it hurts me. I don’t even look at them when they’re being slaughtered. I feel really sad. I mean, you’re not a human being if you’re not sad about it.” That underlines the gulf between what’s happening to the actual Asiatic black bears and the   character of next year’s Paralympic mascot. While moon bear mascot ”Bandabi” glides his way down animated mountains in promo videos, the inspirations for Bandabi spend their days banging their heads against their cages. ”I just hope the Korean government does make that connection and finally gives its incredible species of bear the freedom they deserve,” Robinson says. Demand for bear bile has collapsed, which has led to the closure of many farms already. But nearly 800 moon bears still live in caged limbo in their native country. Haeryun Kang contributed to this story."
"Outgoing Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro’s office overlooks a stretch of the Washington, D. C. waterfront where several   apartment buildings are being built, in a city where affordable housing is in short supply and homelessness is a big problem. These are some of the same issues his successor will have to deal with as head of an agency that provides housing aid to 10 million   families. Castro has been in his post for 2   years. Before that, he was mayor of San Antonio, where he got some experience with housing and community development. He’s expected to be succeeded by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who says his main experience for the job was growing up poor. Castro says he and Carson spoke by phone about a week ago, but didn’t talk specifics. ”I just pledged that we wanted to make sure there’s a smooth transition, and to make sure that he has everything that he needs as he heads toward his confirmation hearing,” Castro says. At the confirmation hearing, which is scheduled for Thursday, Carson will likely face questions about whether he’s up for a job that he himself expressed reservations about taking, when it was offered by   Donald Trump. Castro thinks, like other secretaries before him, that Carson will grow to appreciate HUD’s role once he learns more about it. Still, he’s clearly worried that the new administration could roll back some key initiatives. Carson has strongly criticized a new HUD rule to get local communities to comply with the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which is intended to reduce neighborhood segregation. ”I’d be lying if I said that I’m not concerned about the possibility of going backward, over the next four years,” Castro says. Carson has called the new rule excessive government regulation. He’s also complained that government aid can make some people too dependent. Congressional Republicans have proposed time limits and work requirements for those getting housing assistance, to make them more  . Castro thinks that’s the wrong approach. ”The first things we need to do is to clarify misperceptions about the families who get HUD assistance,” Castro says. He says most are elderly, disabled or already working. ”I believe that the folks who live in public housing are ambitious, that they have tremendous potential and that we should invest in them. I don’t believe that we should go back to the   and scapegoating them and talking about doing away with HUD and so forth,” he says. Not that Carson has said as much. In fact, he’s said very little. His confirmation hearing will be the first real chance the public has to see where he stands on programs, including one of the Obama administration’s biggest achievements  —   moving tens of thousands of homeless individuals, mostly veterans, into permanent housing. That effort has had bipartisan support, but future funding is in doubt because Trump says he wants steep cuts in domestic spending. ”On the other hand, the   has talked about investment in infrastructure, investment in other things. And so, it’s possible that we’re in for a surprise,” Castro says. He won’t be around to find out. Castro is getting on a plane first thing on Inauguration Day, going back to San Antonio to work on his memoir."
"Though the great outdoors becomes more inhospitable when winter winds rise and temperatures drop, there’s nothing like wandering through an evergreen forest as snow squeaks underfoot. And once people have trudged stiffly back inside, they can keep those forests with them by imbibing one of the world’s many pine liqueurs. These liqueurs have been a longtime fixture in European hotels and ski lodges. Under the umbrella of ”schnapps” (essentially any strong, clear alcoholic drink with little resemblance to the sweetened stuff marketed as schnapps in the United States) Austrians have been brewing their own   varieties for generations. Yet it wasn’t until the early 2000s that these evergreen spirits finally made their way to America  —   2005, in particular, seems to be the magic year. Call it good market research or just good timing, but at least three major pine spirits made their U. S. debut that year. Any earlier and it’s likely that pine liqueurs might have swiftly been forgotten. Pushing against the sweet excesses and   flair of 1980s and ’90s bar culture (and drinks with names like the ”slippery nipple”) bartenders began reviving Prohibition Era classics like the Manhattan, martini and Negroni  —   all   drinks light on mixers and sugar. As this renaissance started to take off, bartenders became open to even more daring spirits and flavors that would help their menus stand out  —   and there are few flavors more distinctive to Americans than pine. Zirbenz, a   Alpine liqueur made from the fresh fruit of the Arolla Stone Pine, has been distilled by Austria’s Josef Hofer family in Styria since the late 1700s. Reaching this evergreen is no easy task. It grows at altitudes of roughly 4, 000 to 8, 000 feet, right up to the Alpine tree line, after which conditions become too harsh. Though Zirbenz is often enjoyed in the winter, the mountaineers who pick the fruit harvest it when it ripens in early July. Oregon’s Clear Creek Distillery also harvests the buds for its Douglas Fir Eau de Vie when they’re at peak freshness  —   early spring in the Pacific Northwest. In the 1990s, founder Steve McCarthy recalled the various pine spirits he’d tried in Europe and how he wanted to bring one to the United States. ”It was by far the most difficult of all our products to make because it’s not just ’crush, ferment, distill,’” says Jeanine Racht, Clear Creek’s national sales manager. Douglas fir buds didn’t have enough sugar in them for fermentation, so McCarthy turned to distillation. He soon got the flavor right but he wanted the liqueur to be green  —   with no added dye. ”Solving the puzzle was like a hobby for Steve,” Racht explains. By the time McCarthy was ready to send the Eau de Vie to market, 12 years had elapsed. In purely economic terms, the product shouldn’t exist. ”A lot of money went into it,” Racht says. Unlike many   animals  —   birds, butterflies, and Caribbean monkeys  —   humans are the MacGyvers of alcohol. The first evidence of a   ”drink” is a honey, rice and grape mixture that dates back to 7000 —  6600 B. C. Since then, humans have been experimenting to try to turn plants and crops  —   from bananas to wormwood  —   into some type of intoxicant. In the Mediterranean, mastiha, the resin from the mastic tree, has been used for cooking, chewing and drinking for centuries. Mastic is an evergreen, though it has leaves instead of needles and bears little resemblance to northern pine trees. When crushed, the resin releases a flavor reminiscent of pine or cedar. For more than 3, 000 years, people on the Greek island of Chios have been gathering the resin, which is also called the ”tears of Chios.” The tree is scored and the dried crystals are collected and cleaned. It’s a painstaking process that happens once a year at the end of summer. Today, one company, Skinos, makes the liqueur commercially. Though the product is sold in more than 20 countries, the United States is the biggest buyer. Because alcohol isn’t exactly a health food, pine’s beneficial effects are downplayed in the marketing of spirits. But Dram Apothecary, based in Colorado, makes an evergreen syrup from local trees that can be used for both alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. It’s high in vitamin C and is often used as an herbal remedy for colds or coughs. Yet, Dram founder Shae Whitney says, not all evergreen trees are alike. People who want to make their own pine syrup often turn toward Colorado’s local pine tree, the Ponderosa. ”It’s toxic,” says Whitney, adding that on social media she’s had to talk a few people out of making Ponderosa pine syrup. ”Trees are difficult to identify at different altitudes,” she explains. She purchased a Colorado tree guide on early outings to make sure her team was harvesting from the right kind of tree. Spiky pine needles may not have been humanity’s first choice for a spirit, but it’s no surprise that at some point in history, someone walked into the snowy woods with a hankering for a stiff drink and noticed that there was exactly one plant still alive. Tove K. Danovich is a journalist based in Portland, Ore."
"Updated at 6:55 p. m. ET, A jury has sentenced to death the man who murdered nine people in a Charleston church basement in 2015. The twelve jurors deliberated for about three hours before sentencing Dylann Roof, 22, to die. To impose the death penalty, they had to reach a unanimous decision. It is the same jury that found Roof guilty of federal hate crimes charges for entering Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015 and sitting among those at a Bible study in the basement before opening fire on the worshippers. The sentencing portion of the trial began Jan. 3 and ended on Tuesday. Survivors, family members of those killed and law enforcement officials testified for the prosecution about Roof’s crime, the lives he cut short and his apparent motives. Family members of Cynthia Graham Hurd, one of the victims, talked about Hurd’s love of books, which led to her work as a librarian, reported Charleston’s Post and Courier newspaper. After the sentence was announced, Hurd’s brother Melvin Graham told reporters outside the courthouse ”It’s a hard to say that this person deserves to live when [the] other nine don’t,” tweeted Post and Courier reporter Abigail Darlington. ”He was radicalized,” Graham continued. Another victim, Ethel Lance, was remembered as the matriarch of her family. The Post and Courier reported: ”The oldest of Lance’s children, the Rev. Sharon Risher, held up her hands in the witness stand and pretended to rip apart a piece of fabric representing her family. ” ’Nobody is there to keep us together, to keep the pieces together. Now we have tattered pieces,’ Risher said tearfully. ’And I know that would devastate her.’ ” FBI Special Agent Joseph Hamski, who led the federal investigation, told the jury that Roof had an account on the white supremacist website Stormfront. org under the username ”LilAryan” and posted messages in the months before the massacre, looking for other local people who shared his views, the paper reported. In his closing argument, which lasted about two hours according to South Carolina Public Radio’s Alexandra Olgin, prosecutor Jay Richardson argued that Roof deserved to die for his crime because he planned a deadly   attack in an attempt to incite further violence and had shown no remorse. Roof, who acted as his own attorney during the sentencing portion of the trial, called no witnesses and did not testify. He gave a brief opening statement, as we reported: ”He said it’s ’absolutely true’ that he chose to represent himself so that his lawyers would not present evidence of mental illness. ” ’The point is I’m not going to lie to you,’ Roof said. ’There’s nothing wrong with me psychologically.’ ” In a rambling,   closing statement on Tuesday  —   his last chance to address jurors before they decided whether to sentence him to die  —   Roof spoke about hatred. As the Post and Courier reported from inside the courtroom: ” ’Anyone, including the prosecution, who thinks I am filled with hate has no idea what real hate is,’ Roof said, speaking to jurors from a podium about eight feet from the jury box during his closing argument. ’They don’t know anything about hate.’ . .. ” ’They don’t know what real real hatred looks like,’ [Roof said]. ’They think they do, but they don’t really.’ . .. ” ’I think it’s safe to say that someone in their right mind wouldn’t go into a church and kill people,’ he said. ’You might remember in my confession to the FBI I told them I had to do it. Obviously, that isn’t true because I didn’t have to do it. I didn’t have to do anything. But what I meant when I said that was I felt like I had to do that.’ . .. ” ’Wouldn’t it be fair to say that the prosecution hates me since they are the ones trying to give me the death penalty?’ he said. ’You could say, ”Of course they hate you. Everyone hates you. They have good reason to hate you.” I’m not denying that. My point is that anyone who hates anything, in their mind, has a good reason.’ ” He ended by reminding jurors that they had each agreed to stand up for their opinions during deliberations, as Olgin reported, and that a death sentence would require a unanimous decision. Roof is facing separate murder charges brought by the state of South Carolina, which is also seeking the death penalty. A previous version of this article stated that trial was scheduled to begin Jan. 17, but it has been postponed due to uncertainty that the federal trial would not be completed in time. After the death sentence was announced Tuesday, Roof’s defense team released a statement suggesting Roof intends to appeal the sentence, saying ”Today’s sentencing decision means that this case will not be over for a very long time. We are sorry that, despite our best efforts, the legal proceedings have shed so little light on the reasons for this tragedy.”"
"Dylann Roof murdered nine people in a church basement in Charleston in 2015. He confessed to the massacre shortly after he was arrested. He didn’t testify at trial and no witnesses were called on his behalf before he was convicted of federal hate crimes. The most emphatic statements on Roof’s behalf came from defense attorney David Bruck. For weeks, the prosecution had presented evidence that Roof is a white supremacist whose violent racism drove him to kill black people. Bruck asked the jury to consider how the    came to believe the things he did. As NPR reported: ” ’There is hatred all right, and certainly racism, but it goes a lot further than that,’ [Bruck] said. ” ’Every bit of motivation came from things he saw on the internet. That’s it. . .. ’He is simply regurgitating, in whole paragraphs, slogans and facts  —   bits and pieces of facts that he downloaded from the internet directly into his brain.’ ” Bruck was referring to Roof’s assertion in his confession and in a manifesto that a Google search shaped his beliefs. So when Roof asked Google for information about race, what did the search engine show him? ”The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case,” Roof wrote in the racist manifesto he published online, a cached version of which was saved to Internet archive sites. Roof was 17 years old at the time, the same age Trayvon Martin was when neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed the unarmed black teenager in 2012. ”I kept hearing and seeing [Martin’s] name,” Roof wrote, ”and eventually I decided to look him up.” Roof wrote that he ”read the Wikipedia article” about the shooting and came to the conclusion that Zimmerman was not at fault. ”But,” he continued, ”more importantly this prompted me to type in the words ’black on White crime’ into Google, and I have never been the same since that day.” In a videotaped interview with FBI agents after he was arrested in June 2015, Roof told a similar story. He said that after hearing about Martin’s death he had ”decided to look his name up. Type him into Google, you know what I’m saying?” Roof told investigators he had read the Wikipedia article for Martin, and then, ”for some reason after I read that, I,” he paused before continuing, ”I typed in  —   for some reason it made me type in the words black on white crime.” ”And that was it,” Roof said. ”Ever since then . ..” he trailed off and didn’t finish the sentence. It is impossible to know what Roof saw when he typed those words into Google. The search engine does not make the details of its search algorithm public, and even if the exact date and location of Roof’s initial search were known (court documents suggest only that it was around 2013) there is no public archive of past search results. ”Even the Wayback Machine, which is maintained by the Internet Archive, does not preserve search rankings,” explains Robert Epstein, a psychologist who studies how people interact with search engines and who has published multiple studies about Google’s algorithm. ”You can find old versions of Web pages,” he says, but ”all this past stuff  —   search suggestions, search results  —   you cannot get to.” Epstein says the closest approximation of what Roof saw on Google begins with the search engine’s ”autocomplete” feature. Taking Roof’s statements at face value, he went to Google. com and typed the letters in his search term, one at a time. But he didn’t necessarily have to type all the letters in the search term, ”                .” NPR googled that phrase in December 2016 and January 2017, and found the letters ”      ” elicited this top autocompleted suggestion: ”black on white crime.” Users need only press enter to complete the search. Adding one letter to make it ”       w,” the top autocomplete suggestion remained the same, and the second was ”black on white violence.” The third and fourth were ”black on white crime statistics” and ”black on white racism.” The top autocomplete results for ”       w” were ”white on white crime,” ”white on white,” ”white on white acid” and ”white on white kitchen.” A spokesperson for Google told NPR in an email that ”autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity and freshness of search terms.” ”We do our best to prevent offensive terms, like porn and hate speech, from appearing, but we don’t always get it right,” the spokesperson continued and pointed to a June 2016 blog post by the search engine’s product management director, Tamar Yehoshua, saying Google had changed its algorithm to ”avoid completing a search for a person’s name with terms that are offensive or disparaging.” When Roof hit Enter for the search term ”black on white crime,” the search engine returned a list of websites. ”The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens,” Roof wrote.  The Council of Conservative Citizens is a white supremacist organization, according to the   League, which tracks hate groups. In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting, the ADL reported that multiple hate groups used inaccurate Internet posts about crimes against white people as a ”propaganda tool” for white supremacy. As the ADL reported: ”On May 11, 2012, the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) posted an article on its Web site that claimed that a New Jersey newspaper had ’censored’ the race of the alleged assailants in what it called ’savage mob attacks’ on five white concertgoers in New Jersey. The CofCC dismissed both the newspaper and police accounts portraying the incident as an ’isolated event.’ According to the CofCC, ’almost as alarming as the epidemic violent crime being perpetrated against white people is the blatant media censorship and   of the racial element of the incidents. ’” It’s impossible to know whether the Council of Conservative Citizens page that Roof referenced appeared at the top of the Google search results. Results for a given search term and the order in which they’re presented change over time. Google searches for ”black on white crime” conducted by NPR in December 2016 and January 2017 found the top results included multiple white supremacist websites, but didn’t include anything from the Council of Conservative Citizens. The top five results included the website New Nation News, which the   League says ”promotes the belief that ’voluntary racial segregation in all prisons is a constitutional right,’ ” and American Renaissance, a magazine put out by what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls ”a   think tank that promotes   studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites.” The first page of results also included an article published on the website The Root titled, ”Open Letter to White People Who Are Obsessed With    Crime,” and a link to a forum about ”Black on White Crime” on the   site The Daily Stormer. ”The top two positions in the search results matter the most,” says Epstein, who has studied click rates for search results. ”The top two draw 50 percent of clicks, and the numbers go down from there, so what’s at the top is extremely, extremely powerful.” In NPR’s test search, New Nation News was the second option, following a post from the conservative website dailywire. com. ”People equate the position of search results with how true they are,” Epstein explains. ”What’s higher is better. What’s higher is truer.” In December, an extensive article published by The Guardian publicized another instance of potentially inflammatory rhetoric on Google’s search engine. The newspaper pointed out that the search ”      ” suggested, among others, the autocomplete phrase ”are jews evil.” (The same final word was suggested for the search ”       .” The letters ”         ” suggested the phrase ”are muslims bad. ”) Google said it ”took action within hours” and changed its autocomplete results. The search engine company ”did not comment on its decision to alter some but not all those raised in the article,” the Guardian reported. NPR did the same search a few weeks later and got the suggested phrases ”are jews white,” ”are jews a race” and ”are jews christians.” There were no suggested phrases for ”      ” and ”         ” suggested only ”are muslims a race.” Some experts who study search engines and their implications for democratic society have suggested there is a disconnect between the stated mission of a free and open Internet and the reality of search algorithms, which come with all the messy biases of anything designed by humans. Internet law expert Frank Pasquale is among those who have advocated for search result algorithms in the U. S. to be regulated by the government. ”Though [dominant search engines] advocate net neutrality, they have been much less quick to recognize the threat to openness and fair play their own practices may pose,” Pasquale wrote in a 2008 paper. U. S. courts have repeatedly dismissed challenges to search engines’ editorial control over their search results, including a case in which the court upheld Google’s right to present what the plaintiff argued were ”biased search results that favor its own paid advertisers and   companies.” Courts have repeatedly cited the First Amendment, treating search engine companies as conduits for free speech on the Internet. Asked what, if anything, Google sees as its responsibility concerning potential hate speech in search terms and results, the spokesperson told NPR: ”The views expressed by hate sites are not in any way endorsed by Google, but search is a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. We do not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content, malware and violations of our webmaster guidelines, including spam and deception.” The company did not comment on the potential role of its Internet search in the specific case of Dylann Roof."
"Donald Trump met Tuesday with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. an environmental activist and known skeptic of childhood vaccinations. Kennedy has been a prominent voice in the   community, raising questions for years about a possible (disproven) link between a preservative in some vaccines and autism. Kennedy spoke to reporters after the meeting, which he said came at Trump’s request, and noted that he would be heading up a commission on vaccine safety and ”scientific integrity.” The Trump transition team, however, later said a commission is not quite baked, noting in a statement that Trump is at this point ”exploring the possibility of forming a commission on autism.” But the fact that Kennedy  —   who has lent his name and prominence to a controversial cause of whether vaccines, specifically the preservative called thimerosal, cause autism, for which there is no evidence within the scientific community  —   is part of that conversation, once again, reflects Trump embracing the fringe when it comes to the science of autism and vaccinations. During the presidential campaign, Trump argued that he knew a child of an employee who had gotten a vaccine and then ended up with autism. That’s despite the confluence of evidence to the contrary  —   from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the overwhelming scientific body of research. ”  Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policies,” Kennedy said, according to a pool report after the meeting at Trump Tower in New York, ”and he has questions about it. His opinion doesn’t matter but the science does matter, and we ought to be reading the science, and we ought to be debating the science. And that everybody ought to be able to be assured that the vaccines that we have  —   he’s very   as am I  —   but they’re as safe as they possibly can be.” The Trump transition team later released this statement: ”The   enjoyed his discussion with Robert Kennedy Jr. on a range of issues and appreciates his thoughts and ideas. The   is exploring the possibility of forming a commission on Autism, which affects so many families however no decisions have been made at this time. The   looks forward to continuing the discussion about all aspects of Autism with many groups and individuals.” Alarm from medical authorities, Kennedy’s announcement immediately provoked alarm among leading medical authorities. The American Academy of Pediatrics put out a statement reiterating that ”vaccines protect children’s health and save lives. They prevent   diseases, including forms of cancer. Vaccines have been part of the fabric of our society for decades and are the most significant medical innovation of our time. Vaccines are safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines save lives.” It’s a topic that has been hotly debated for two decades and has incited strong passions among some parents of children with autism. Out of these fears, some parents have decided to forgo vaccinating their children. As a result, some parts of the country saw a measles outbreak in 2015. There were ”more cases of measles in the first month of 2015 than the number that is typically diagnosed in a full year,” the New York Times noted. Of 34 California patients, 22 were of age to be vaccinated and never were six were babies too young to be vaccinated, NPR reported. It spread to more than a dozen states. Pushing conspiracies from the bully pulpit? Trump, who has peddled numerous conspiracies, picked up the   charge in a   way in a September 2015 debate. ”You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump  —   I mean, it looks just like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child,” Trump said, ”and we’ve had so many instances, people that work for me. Just the other day, 2 years old, 2    old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.” But that link Trump tries to draw is simple, convenient and false. Here was Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, in that same debate: ”We have extremely   proof that there’s no autism associated with vaccinations.” As NPR’s Scott Horsley   after that debate: ”Trump said all he’s really advocating is that vaccines be spaced out over a longer period of time, though the American Academy of Pediatrics says there’s no evidence that’s necessary.” The academy noted in its statement Tuesday, ”Claims that vaccines are linked to autism, or are unsafe when administered according to the recommended schedule, have been disproven by a robust body of medical literature. Delaying vaccines only leaves a child at risk of disease.” Discredited, The    link theory first came to prominence in 1997 with a   study in a British journal, The Lancet, which was withdrawn in 2010. It was authored by a surgeon, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who has since lost his license to practice medicine. (More on that here.) That very researcher met with Trump last summer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has categorically stated, ”There is no link between vaccines and autism.” As far as thimerosal specifically, the CDC wrote: ”Research shows that thimerosal does not cause ASD [autism spectrum disorder]. In fact, a 2004 scientific review by the IOM concluded that ’the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between   vaccines and autism.’ Since 2003, there have been nine   or conducted studies that have found no link between   vaccines and ASD, as well as no link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and ASD in children.” Most childhood vaccines have had just trace amounts of thimerosal in them for more than 15 years. The only ones that still have more in them are some flu vaccines. The CDC notes that the removal of thimerosal was done as a precaution and points out that there are flu vaccines without it also available. What’s more, some research suggests that autism develops in the womb. NPR noted in 2014: ”The symptoms of autism may not be obvious until a child is a toddler, but the disorder itself appears to begin well before birth. Brain tissue taken from children who died and also happened to have autism revealed patches of disorganization in the cortex, a thin sheet of cells that’s critical for learning and memory, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Tissue samples from children without autism didn’t have those characteristic patches.” A flawed messenger, Kennedy himself has come under fire for his facts and assertions on the potential link. Salon pulled completely from its website a story written by Kennedy in 2005 because of a series of factual errors. Salon noted that it published that piece ”that offered an explosive premise: that the   thimerosal compound present in vaccines until 2001 was dangerous, and that he was ’convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real.’ ” But the story,   with Rolling Stone, had to be pulled after ”we amended the story with five corrections (which can still be found logged here) that went far in undermining Kennedy’s exposé. At the time, we felt that correcting the piece  —   and keeping it on the site, in the spirit of transparency  —   was the best way to operate. But subsequent critics, including most recently, Seth Mnookin in his book ’The Panic Virus,’ further eroded any faith we had in the story’s value. We’ve grown to believe the best reader service is to delete the piece entirely.” Part of a broader pattern, Trump happened to take the meeting with Kennedy on one of the busiest days in politics, in one of the busiest weeks in politics, since the presidential election. Trump’s attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, is sitting for the first of two days of hearings questioning past allegations of racism and highlighting where he differs from the  . Meantime, there is another hearing happening related to Russian hacking and interference into the U. S. election at which the director of national intelligence and the director of the FBI  —   whom Hillary Clinton blames, in part, for costing her the election  —   are testifying on Capitol Hill. They said definitively that Russia was behind the interference and had the intent of undermining American democracy and trying to get Trump elected. More than half a dozen other hearings are taking place in the coming days, including for Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state  —   a hearing that is sure to be a proxy fight with Trump on the U. S. relationship with Russia. It all follows a pattern of Trump in (1) utilizing something of a chaos theory of politics in throwing as much news as possible in all directions meant to distract and make the salience of news diffuse, and (2) once again believing what conforms to a predisposed view. Consider the way he has handled Russian interference into the 2016 election: He and his team have cast doubt on U. S. intelligence findings that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and a Clinton campaign official with the intent to undermine American democracy and get Trump elected. Instead of treating that as a serious national security issue that demands a response, as most Republican elected officials have, he has focused on how there’s no evidence any hacking affected the outcome of the election. It’s a pattern likely to be repeated early and often in the Trump presidency."
"In giving his farewell address on Tuesday night in Chicago, President Obama will follow a tradition begun by America’s first president. George Washington offered a series of warnings, what he called a ”solemn contemplation.” His parting words have been deemed so valuable that they are read on the floor of the U. S. Senate each year, including his warning about the dangers of partisanship: ”It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with   jealousies and false alarms kindles the animosity of one part against another foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion.” The presidential farewell address became a fixture in the 20th century, right along with the arrival of television in American homes. In these modern farewell speeches, almost all of them talk about the difficulty of the job, and urge the American people to be nice to the next guy. ”I want all of you to realize how big a job, how hard a job, it is  —   not for my sake, because I am stepping out of it  —   but for the sake of my successor,” President Harry Truman said. ”He needs the understanding and the help of every citizen.” All the presidents look back on their years in office, some lingering on their legacies longer than others. There is pride at accomplishment  —   as expressed by President Ronald Reagan, who thanked the men and women of the Reagan revolution and talked of proving the pundits wrong. ”Once you begin a great movement, there’s no telling where it will end,” he said. ”We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.” But there is often talk of regrets, like not securing peace, says Gerhard Peters,   of the American Presidency Project. ”They are almost very respectful in the way they present their administration’s accomplishments,” Peters says. ”You know, at times they’re also very humble.” Peters says in most cases, it has been a president of one party handing the presidency off to a successor from the other party. And yet, ”They’re very graceful to their successor, and I’d expect President Obama to be, even though this has been a very political climate, this transition.” As with Washington’s address, many of these final speeches contain warnings. President Eisenhower coined a term: ”  complex.” ”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the   complex,” he said in 1961. ”The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” In modern times, presidents have used these speeches to argue for American leadership in the world, including President George H. W. Bush: ”We must engage ourselves if a new world order, one more compatible with our values and congenial to our interest, is to emerge. But even more, we must lead.” His son George W. Bush took up the same theme: ”In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism.” Many presidents, including Gerald Ford, talk with pride about the peaceful transfer of power and of the balance of power built into the American system of government. ”This often results in difficulty and delay, as I well know, but it also places supreme authority under God, beyond any one person, any one branch, any majority great or small, or any one party,” Ford said. ”The Constitution is the bedrock of all our freedoms.” Guard it and cherish it, he said. President Jimmy Carter said it could be tempting in times of tension and economic distress to abandon principles: ”We must never yield to this temptation. Our American values are not luxuries, but necessities  —   not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself.” American values come up again and again in these speeches. Listening to President Bill Clinton in early 2001, you could imagine President Obama striking a similar theme on Tuesday night: ”We must treat all our people with fairness and dignity, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, and regardless of when they arrived in our country  —   always moving toward the more perfect Union of our Founders’ dreams.” And ultimately, as so many have before him, President Obama will have to say goodbye."
"President Obama will address the nation for what’s likely to be the last time Tuesday night. He says the   address from his adopted hometown of Chicago will be a chance to celebrate the successes of the past eight years and to offer some thoughts on where the nation goes from here. The celebration could be  . While Obama can rightfully boast about a vastly improved economy and other changes during his tenure, the man who’s taking his place in the Oval Office has promised to reverse much of what Obama accomplished. And while the president remains personally popular, his Democratic Party is weaker than it was eight years ago, reducing its chances of protecting Obama’s legacy. The president outlined the highlights of that legacy in an open letter to the American people last week. ”By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started,” he wrote. Here’s a scorecard of some of the measures the president cited, along with some he left off: ”An economy that was shrinking at more than 8 percent is now growing at more than 3 percent,” Obama wrote in his letter. ”Businesses that were bleeding jobs unleashed the longest streak of job creation on record.” President Obama took office in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He leaves with an unemployment rate less than half of what it was during the depths of the downturn. U. S. employers have added more than 11 million jobs since Obama took office (and more than 15 million since the job market bottomed out in early 2010). After nearly a decade of stagnant wages, median household income jumped sharply in 2015. And last year’s wage growth was the strongest of the recovery. ”There’s the sort of rule about how you’re supposed to go, leave the forest nicer than you found it,” White House economist Jason Furman said last week. ”President Obama is definitely handing over an economy in much, much better shape than the economy he inherited.” The Recovery Act Obama pushed through Congress less than a month after taking office was roundly and repeatedly mocked by Republicans as a failure. But a majority of economists surveyed by the University of Chicago agree that the stimulus cushioned the blow from the recession. The Federal Reserve also took dramatic action to shore up the sagging economy. And the president’s controversial auto rescue (along with a bridge loan from the Bush administration) saved an industry that rebounded to enjoy record sales. ”Income gains were actually larger for households at the bottom and the middle [in 2015] than those at the top,” Obama notes. ”We’ve actually begun the long task of reversing inequality.” That could change, however, in a Trump administration. The   has promised a tax overhaul that would give the biggest tax breaks to those at the top of the income ladder. He’s also likely to unwind an Obama administration rule designed to make millions more   workers eligible for overtime pay. ”Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, another 20 million American adults know the financial security and peace of mind that comes with health insurance,” Obama wrote in his letter. ”For the first time ever, more than 90 percent of Americans are insured  —   the highest rate ever.”  The president’s signature health care law has expanded insurance coverage and broadened protections for those who were already insured. It has also encouraged changes in the way medical payments are made  —   to reward quality rather than quantity of care. And it has coincided with slower growth in insurance premiums for the majority of Americans who get their insurance through an employer. But the law  —   which passed with no Republican support seven years ago  —   remains deeply controversial. People buying insurance on the   exchanges saw premium increases averaging 25 percent this year. And Republicans have vowed to make repeal of Obamacare their first order of business as soon as they control both Congress and the White House, which they will now. ”We’ve drawn down from nearly 180, 000 troops in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15, 000,” Obama wrote. Obama first ran for the White House determined to end the war in Iraq while refocusing attention on Afghanistan. He ordered the successful special operations raid that killed Osama bin Laden. But an early troop surge in Afghanistan had only limited success in taming the Taliban. While the number of American troops in harm’s way has since been greatly reduced, Obama had to backtrack on plans to withdraw from Afghanistan altogether. And critics say the precipitous American troop withdrawal from Iraq left a vacuum there which gave way to the rise of the Islamic State. In 2014, Obama was forced to send some troops back to Iraq to address the threat from ISIS. Obama has steadfastly resisted   intervention in Syria’s civil war. Although the U. S. is the largest contributor of humanitarian relief, a wave of refugees from Syria has had a destabilizing effect throughout Europe. It’s possible that Obama’s abrupt decision in 2013 not to enforce his own ”red line” against chemical weapons emboldened Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well his Russian sponsor Vladimir Putin, who illegally annexed Crimea the following year. ”Over the past eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland,” Obama wrote. Sustained pressure on   and ISIS, along with diligent counterterrorism efforts, have prevented another spectacular, Sept.   attack. But as Obama himself has acknowledged, it doesn’t take much planning or sophistication for violent extremists to bring about carnage. It was shortly after a deadly,   attack in San Bernardino that Donald Trump called for a ban on foreign Muslims entering the country. That proposal later morphed into ”extreme vetting.” But the country has proved vulnerable to ”lone wolves” inspired online by extremists. It has seen those attacks and has had difficulty addressing the problem. ”Through diplomacy, we shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program [and] opened up a new chapter with the people of Cuba,” Obama wrote. ”Almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago.” The Iran nuclear deal, which grants Iran sanctions relief in exchange for strict limits and monitoring of its nuclear program, is one of the signature diplomatic achievements of the Obama administration  —   the result of painstaking negotiation involving half a dozen allies and adversaries. The deal remains controversial in this country and in Israel. Trump campaigned against it, but top scientists have urged him not to unravel it, saying the agreement has ”dramatically reduced the risk” of Iran quickly developing a nuclear weapon. Obama’s diplomatic thaw with Cuba also broke new ground, ending more than half a century of official isolation. Cuba has been slow to match the U. S. in liberalizing trade and travel restrictions. But the White House says its overture to Cuba has also helped improve relations with the rest of the Western hemisphere. America’s image in Europe and Asia has generally improved during Obama’s time in office, but it has suffered recently in Israel and the Middle East. Administration efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians went nowhere. And the sweeping trade deal at the heart of Obama’s push to raise America’s profile in the Pacific stalled amid political opposition here at home. ”Our dependence on foreign oil has been cut by more than half and our production of renewable energy has more than doubled. In many places across the country, clean energy from the wind is now cheaper than dirtier sources of energy and solar now employs more Americans than coal mining in jobs that pay better than average and can’t be outsourced.” Domestic oil and natural gas production have surged on Obama’s watch, largely as a result of the fracking revolution. In 2015, the U. S. relied on imported oil for less than a quarter of its total petroleum needs, the lowest level since 1970. Wind and solar power have seen rapid growth during the past eight years, though they still account for less than 6 percent of overall electricity generation. Coal and natural gas account for about 33 percent each, while nuclear power contributes about 20 percent. President Obama led an international effort to cut carbon pollution, resulting in the successful Paris Climate Agreement. But U. S. participation in that deal could be jeopardized by the incoming administration. Trump has tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate skeptic with strong ties to the   industry, to head the Environmental Protection Administration. Trump and Pruitt have both criticized the   rules at the center of Obama’s climate efforts. Obama also imposed more stringent energy efficiency standards for cars and appliances, though those could be relaxed by the incoming administration. ”The high school graduation rate is now 83 percent  —   the highest on record  —   and we’ve helped more young people graduate from college than ever before.” Obama boosted Pell Grants and made it easier for many college graduates to repay student loans. But the cost of a college education continues to rise faster than inflation. Obama was unable to sell Congress on his idea of universal preschool for   and      although preschool offerings have expanded at the state level.   achievement gaps between white and minority students persist. Obama also controversially, through stimulus funds, instituted the Common Core standards. His Education Department dangled millions of dollars to states to adopt more rigorous testing and teacher standards, which put a lot of pressure  —   and introduced a lot of confusion  —   into the system. Despite Common Core being developed by Republican governors, it became a target for Tea Party conservatives and   liberals. Proponents will argue that it introduced   accountability on teachers, though teachers, especially those teaching the most difficult populations, would argue they weren’t always given the supports they needed. Obama also controversially expanded charter schools, and the book is still out on their success. Obama also changed the conversation on higher education with a focus on community colleges that hadn’t been seen before. Scott Jaschik of Insider Higher Ed told PBS NewsHour that even though Obama didn’t get free tuition for community colleges, ”Eight years ago, people were not talking about the idea of free college. Now they are.” ”We’ve also worked to make the changing face of America more fair and more just . .. repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and advancing the cause of civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBT rights.” With help from Congress and the Pentagon, gay and lesbian members of the military can now serve openly, and their spouses receive equal benefits. The Supreme Court legalized   marriage in all 50 states in 2015. And the first bill signed into law by Obama made it easier for women to sue their employers for unequal pay. But a push last year by the Justice and Education Departments to protect the rights of transgender students was halted by a federal judge. In addition to protecting vast tracts of land and water as national monuments, Obama has also used his power to protect smaller parcels, commemorating Harriet Tubman, Cesar Chavez and the Stonewall Inn, where the modern   movement began. ”For all that we’ve achieved, there’s still so much I wish we’d been able to do, from enacting gun safety measures to protect more of our kids and our cops from mass shootings like Newtown, to passing commonsense immigration reform that encourages the best and brightest from around the world to study, stay, and create jobs in America.” Immigration reform and   legislation were two of the president’s priorities in 2013, after he won  .   legislation to expand background checks stalled in the Senate. The Senate did pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul, but it never got a vote in the House. Obama did use his executive powers to give young people brought to the country illegally as children a temporary reprieve from deportation. Obama also failed in his effort to raise the federal minimum wage (although 18 states and the District of Columbia have done so since 2013). And while the president has used his commutation power to shorten the prison sentences of more than 1, 000 nonviolent drug offenders, his push for more comprehensive   reform has stalled. Congress also blocked Obama’s bid to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, although the prison population has been substantially reduced on his watch, from 242 when Obama took office to around 50 today. President Obama’s personal popularity helped mask a sharp decline in the Democratic Party nationally over the past eight years. Republicans will soon control not only Congress and the White House, but more than   of state legislative chambers, and 32 out of 50 governor’s offices. The Democrats who follow Obama have a deep hole to dig themselves out of. But the outgoing president has remained upbeat. Shortly after the November election, he reminded reporters that, in 2004, when he delivered the speech that launched his national political career, Democrats lost the White House and were completely out of power in Washington. Two years later, they won back Congress, and four years later, he was sworn in as president. ”The running thread through my career has been the notion that when ordinary people get involved, get engaged, and come together in collective effort, things change for the better,” Obama said in his weekly radio address over the weekend. ”It’s easy to lose sight of that truth in the       of Washington and our    news cycles. But remember that America is a story told over a longer time horizon, in fits and starts, punctuated at times by hardship, but ultimately written by generations of citizens who’ve somehow worked together, without fanfare, to form a more perfect union.”"
"This post was updated at 1:15 pm ET. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions says he’s not a racist and that he’s been unfairly ”caricatured.” ”You have a Southern name you come from South Alabama, that sounds worse to some people,” Sessions said during the first day of his confirmation hearings to be the next attorney general of the United States. He forcefully defended his record, saying he ”did not” harbor the ”racial animosities” of which he’s been accused, saying they are ”damnably false.” Sessions, a Republican who has served in Congress for two decades, has had his nomination protested for his record on civil rights, voting rights and criminal justice. Those protests and accusations of racial animus stem from a pair of 1986 hearings that resulted in Sessions’ failed appointment to a federal judgeship. Back then, he prosecuted a   case  —   against black activists  —   that he lost unanimously. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, for one, who was a   attorney on the other side of that case, accused Sessions of a double standard for not trying to prosecute whites who attempted voter assistance, which is legal. Sessions made contradictory statements in two hearings within a month of each other before Congress, including whether he called a white   lawyer a ”disgrace to his race.” He also admitted back then that he once joked that he thought the KKK was OK until he learned they were smoking marijuana. He took a much more sober tone on Tuesday. He touted that he prosecuted a KKK leader who was executed, for example. ”I abhor the Klan and what it represents, and its hateful ideology,” Sessions said Tuesday. Of those 1986 hearings, he contended, ”I didn’t prepare myself well in 1986, and there was an organized effort to caricature me.” He noted that he is the same person today as then, but he’s perhaps ”wiser.” Recuses himself from further Clinton investigations, Sessions also said he would recuse himself from any Justice Department investigation into Hillary Clinton. He said his political statements threaten his objectivity, specifically his calling for a special prosecutor. He noted, ”Political dispute cannot turn into criminal dispute.” He added, ”This country does not punish its political enemies but no one is above the law.” Asked if he’d ever chanted, ”Lock her up,” at a Trump rally, Sessions said that he didn’t, ”I don’t think.” Waterboarding is ”illegal” Sessions also put himself at odds with   Trump, who has said he wants to bring back waterboarding or worse. But Sessions said that while there is a debate over whether waterboarding is considered ”torture” legally, he noted that Congress passed a law that make ”waterboarding or any other form of torture” is illegal.” The hearing is ongoing and will continue into Wednesday. Here are five things to watch for in this hearing, and Sessions’ prepared statement in his opening remarks are below: Opening Statement of Attorney   Jeff Sessions U. S. Senate Confirmation Hearing Tuesday, January 10, 2017 Washington, D. C. Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Feinstein, distinguished members of the Committee, I am honored to appear before you today. I thank you for the opportunity to respond to your questions as you discharge your duty in the appointment process prescribed by our Constitution. I also want to thank my dear friends, Senator Richard Shelby and Senator Susan Collins for their kind introductions. It is hard to believe, really, that the three of us have served together in this body for nearly 20 years. I want to thank   Trump for the confidence and trust that he has shown by nominating me to serve as the Attorney General of the United States. I feel the weight of an honor greater than I have aspired to. If I am confirmed, I commit to you and to the American people to be worthy of that office and the special trust that comes with it. I come before you today as a colleague who has worked with you for years, and with some of you for 20 years. You know who I am. You know what I believe in. You know that I am a man of my word and can be trusted to do what I say I will do. You know that I revere our Constitution and am committed to the rule of law. And you know that I believe in fairness, impartiality, and equal justice under the law. Over the years, you have heard me say many times that I love the Department of Justice. The Office of the Attorney General of the United States is not a political position, and anyone who holds it must have total fidelity to the laws and the Constitution of the United States. He or she must be committed to following the law. He or she must be willing to tell the President ”no” if he overreaches. He or she cannot be a mere rubberstamp to any idea the President has. He or she also must set the example for the employees in the Department to do the right thing and ensure that they know the Attorney General will back them up, no matter what politician might call, or what powerful special interest, influential contributor, or friend might try to intervene. The message must be clear: Everyone is expected to do their duty. That is the way I was expected to perform as an Assistant United States Attorney. That is the way I trained my assistants when I became United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. And if confirmed, that is the way I will run the Department of Justice. In my over 14 years in the Department of Justice, I tried cases of nearly every kind —  drug trafficking, firearms, and other violent crimes, significant public corruption cases, financial wrongdoing, civil rights violations, environmental violations, and hate crimes. Protecting the people of this country from crime, and especially from violent crime, is the high calling of the men and women of the Department of Justice. Today, I am afraid, that has become more important than ever. Since the early 1980s, good policing and prosecutions have been a strong force in reducing crime. Drug use and murders are half what they were in 1980. I am very concerned, however, that the recent jump in the violent crime and murder rates are not anomalies, but the beginning of a dangerous trend that could reverse the hard won gains that have made America a safer and more prosperous place. The latest official FBI statistics show that all crime increased nearly 4 percent from 2014 to 2015 with murders increasing nearly 11 percent —  the largest single year increase since 1971. In 2016, there were 4, 368 shooting victims in Chicago. In Baltimore, homicides reached the second highest   rate ever. The country is also in the throes of a heroin epidemic, with overdose deaths more than tripling between 2010 and 2014. Meanwhile, illegal drugs flood across our southern border and into every city and town in the country, bringing violence, addiction, and misery. We must not lose perspective when discussing these statistics. We must always remember that these crimes are being committed against real people, real victims. It is important that they are kept in the forefront of our minds in these conversations, and to ensure that their rights are always protected. These trends cannot continue. It is a fundamental civil right to be safe in your home and your community. If I am confirmed, we will systematically prosecute criminals who use guns in committing crimes. As United States Attorney, my office was a national leader in gun prosecutions every year. We will partner with state and local law enforcement to take down drug trafficking cartels and dismantle gangs. We will prosecute those who repeatedly violate our borders. It will be my priority to confront these crises vigorously, effectively, and immediately. Approximately 90 percent of all law enforcement officers are not federal, but local and state. They are the ones on the front lines. They are better educated, trained and equipped than ever before. They are the ones who we rely on to keep our neighborhoods, and playgrounds, and schools safe. But in the last several years, law enforcement as a whole has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the actions of a few bad actors and for allegations about police that were not true. They believe the political leadership of this country abandoned them. They felt they had become targets. Morale has suffered. And last year, while under intense public criticism, the number of police officers killed in the line of duty increased ten percent over 2015. This is a wake up call. This must not continue. If we are to be more effective in dealing with rising crime, we will have to rely heavily on local law enforcement to lead the way. To do that, they must know that they are supported. If I am so fortunate as to be confirmed as Attorney General, they can be assured that they will have my support. As I discussed with many of you in our meetings prior to this hearing, the federal government has an important role to play in this area. We must use the research and expertise of the Department of Justice to help them in developing the most effective and lawful enforcement methods to reduce crime. We must   and strengthen the partnership between federal and local officers to enhance a common and unified effort to reverse the current rising crime trends. I did this as United States Attorney. I worked directly and continuously with state and local law enforcement officials. If confirmed, it will be one of my primary objectives. There are also many things the Department can do to assist state and local law enforcement to strengthen and, in some cases, build the foundation for, relationships with their own communities where policies like   policing has been proven to work. I am committed to this effort and to ensuring that the Department of Justice is a unifying force for improving relations between the police in this country and the communities they serve. Make no mistake, positive relations and great communication between the people and police are essential for any good police department. In recent years, our law enforcement officers also have been called upon to protect our country from the rising threat of terrorism that has reached our shores. If I am confirmed, protecting the American people from the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism will continue to be a top priority of the Department of Justice. We will work diligently to respond to threats, using all lawful means to keep the American people safe from our nation’s enemies. Partnerships will also be vital to achieving much more effective enforcement against cyber threats, and the Department of Justice clearly has a lead role to play in that essential effort. We must honestly assess our vulnerabilities and have a clear plan for defense, as well as offense, when it comes to America’s cybersecurity. The Department of Justice must never falter in its obligation to protect the civil rights of every American, particularly those who are most vulnerable. A special priority for me in this regard will be aggressive enforcement of our laws to ensure access to the ballot for every eligible American voter, without hindrance or discrimination, and to ensure the integrity of the electoral process. Further, this government must improve its ability to protect the United States Treasury from waste, fraud, and abuse. This is a federal responsibility. We cannot afford to lose a single dollar to corruption and you can be sure that if I am confirmed, I will make it a high priority of the Department to root out and prosecute fraud in federal programs and to recover any monies lost due to fraud or false claims. The Justice Department must remain ever faithful to the Constitution’s promise that our government is one of laws, not of men. It will be my unyielding commitment, if I am confirmed, to see that the laws are enforced faithfully, effectively, and impartially. The Attorney General must hold everyone, no matter how powerful, accountable. No one is above the law, and no American will be beneath its protection. No powerful special interest will cower this Department. I want to address personally the fabulous men and women in the Department of Justice. That includes personnel in Main Justice but also the much larger number that faithfully fulfill their responsibility every day. As United States Attorney, we worked together constantly. The federal investigative agencies represent the finest collection of law officers in the world. I know their integrity and professionalism. I pledge to them a unity of effort that is unmatched. Together we can and will reach for the highest standards and the highest results. It would be the greatest honor to lead these fine public servants. To my colleagues, I appreciate the time that each of you have taken to meet with me  . As Senators, we don’t always have the opportunity to sit down and discuss matters face to face and so, for me, this was very helpful. I understand and respect the conviction that you bring to your duties. Even though we are not always in agreement, you have always been understanding and respectful of my positions. In that regard, if I am so fortunate as to be confirmed, I commit to all of you to that the Department of Justice will be responsive to the Congress and will work with you on your priorities, and provide you with guidance and views where appropriate. The Department will respect your constitutional oversight role, and particularly the critically important separation of powers between the branches. There is nothing I am more proud of than my 14 years of service in the Department of Justice. I love and venerate that great institution. I hold dear its highest ideals. If God gives me the ability, I will work every day to be worthy of this august office. You can be absolutely sure that I understand the immense responsibility I would have. I am not naïve. I know the threat that our rising crime and addiction rates pose to the health and safety of our country. I know the threat of terrorism. I deeply understand the history of civil rights and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our   brothers and sisters. I have witnessed it. I understand the demands for justice and fairness made by the LGBT community. I understand the lifelong scars born by women who are victims of assault and abuse. I understand that a wise and diligent Attorney General, who not only talks but listens, can play a key role in properly focusing the efforts of our nation’s   apparatus in ways that more effectively enhance public safety and minimize officer misconduct. I know it is essential for police and the communities they serve to have mutual respect. And, if I am so fortunate as to be confirmed as your Attorney General, you can be assured that I understand the absolute necessity that all of my actions must fall within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws that Congress passes. While all humans must recognize the limits of their abilities —  and I do —  I am ready for this job. We will do it right. Your input will be valued. Local law enforcement will be our partners. My many friends in federal law enforcement will be respected. I have always loved the law. It is the very foundation of our great country. I have an abiding commitment to pursuing and achieving justice and a record of doing just that. If confirmed, I will give all my efforts to this goal. I ask only that you do your duty, as you are charged by the Constitution to do it, and by the light that God has given you to do it. Thank you."
"The confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, the billionaire philanthropist who is   Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of education, has been delayed for almost a week. DeVos’ hearing was scheduled for Wednesday, but late on Monday night, the Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions announced it had been delayed until Jan. 17, next Tuesday. The move comes after Democrats had raised concerns about the wealthy philanthropist’s incomplete financial disclosures and unfinished ethics review, as Politico reported last week. The top Democrat on the HELP committee asked for a rescheduled hearing, saying she was concerned about ”extensive financial entanglements and potential conflicts of interest,” Politico says. DeVos submitted her financial disclosures to the Office of Government Ethics last month but has not yet finalized or signed the paperwork, Politico reported Friday. The Washington Post reports that DeVos’ ”vast wealth and considerable financial holdings have overwhelmed the bipartisan Office of Government Ethics,” which vets Cabinet nominees. The office has not finished examining DeVos’ investments for possible ethical concerns, the newspaper reported Saturday. But in announcing the delay, the HELP committee made no reference to concerns over conflicts of interest. Instead, the committee said the delay was ”at the request of Senate leadership to accommodate Senate schedule.” DeVos is a ”strong supporter of school choice” with ”limited experience with public education,” as NPR’s Eric Westervelt has reported: ”DeVos, 58, is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and helped push a failed 2000 ballot proposal to amend the Michigan state Constitution to create a voucher system for students to attend nonpublic schools. ”DeVos is chairman of The Windquest Group, a   investment management company. She is married to billionaire Richard DeVos Jr. the son of Richard DeVos, who   the home care products company Amway. ” . .. Largely unknown outside of Michigan political and philanthropic circles, her appointment signals that Trump intends to make school choice and a voucher plan for   families a centerpiece of his education agenda. ”School choice plans are controversial because in some cases they can allow families to use public funding for private schools. Critics say choice plans undermine public education, are often underregulated and can amount to profiteering.”"
"The tiny village of Newtok near Alaska’s western coast has been sliding into the Ninglick River for years. As temperatures increase  —   faster there than in the rest of the U. S.  —   the frozen permafrost underneath Newtok is thawing. About 70 feet of land a year erode away, putting the village’s colorful buildings, some on stilts, ever closer to the water’s edge. Now, in an unprecedented test case, Newtok wants the federal government to declare these mounting impacts of climate change an official disaster. Villagers say it’s their last shot at unlocking the tens of millions of dollars needed to relocate the entire community. ”We just need to get out of there,” says Romy Cadiente, the village relocation coordinator. ”For the safety of the 450 people there.” Cadiente spoke while in Anchorage recently, where he met with state officials about moving the village, which includes a school built in 1958 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that drew nearby subsistence hunters and fishers to settle. Coming to terms with climate’s impact on the Alaska Native village has been   for many. But a new village has been chosen 9 miles away, and several houses are already built. Cadiente says the problem is money: The Army Corps of Engineers has estimated it will cost $80 million to $130 million to relocate key infrastructure. ”The price tag on this village move is astronomical, and what we have right now is nowhere near,” he says. Many of Alaska’s villages are dealing with erosion and thawing permafrost. But Newtok’s needs may be the most immediate. It has already lost its barge landing, sewage lagoon and landfill. As river water seeps in and land sinks, it expects to lose its source of drinking water this year, and its school and airport by 2020. After years trying to piece together state and federal funding to relocate, Cadiente says Newtok has run out of other options. Usually, the president, with input from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, declares a disaster after a specific catastrophic event. But Newtok is asking for the declaration based on mounting damage from erosion and thawing permafrost over the past decade. ”My first reaction is, it’s exciting,” says Rob Verchick, who teaches disaster law and climate adaptation at Loyola University in New Orleans. He says Newtok’s request is likely a long shot. But he thinks it needs to be done. ”And I think that it is going to lead to a very important conversation that we need to be having,” he says. Verchick says FEMA has pushed communities to plan for climate change, but the federal government doesn’t have policies to deal with issues like relocation. As more places face the problem, Verchick says they  —   like Newtok  —   may need to get creative in seeking a legal solution. A recent change gave federally recognized tribes like Newtok the right to request a disaster declaration from the White House directly. Mike Walleri, Newtok’s attorney, argues that nothing in the law prevents the president from declaring a disaster for a multiyear event. ”You know, disasters are not planned,” Walleri says. ”They don’t come in one size fits all.” If there’s no money to relocate the whole village together, Newtok residents could be forced to scatter, with some even moving 500 miles away to Anchorage. George Carl, the    village council vice president, says it’s not just houses that are at stake, but his community, culture, Yup’ik language and identity. ”Being born an Eskimo from that village, you know, that’s my life,” he says. ”Place me to another village or city, it’s not for me.” The ultimate decision on whether to declare a disaster lies with the president. Newtok’s leaders hope to get an answer before President Obama leaves office next week. This report comes from Alaska’s Energy Desk, a public media collaboration focused on energy and the environment."
"West Coast crab fishermen just ended an   strike over a price dispute. But a more ominous and   threat to their livelihood may be on the horizon. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found a link between warming ocean conditions and a dangerous neurotoxin that builds up in sea life: domoic acid. Seafood lovers got a glimpse of that threat in 2015, when record high ocean temperatures and lingering toxic algae blooms raised the domoic acid in shellfish to unsafe levels, shutting down the West Coast Dungeness crab fishery from Alaska to Southern California for several months. Though less dramatic, the problem emerged again this season, when harvesting was again delayed for portions of the coasts. Domoic acid is a toxin produced by   a micro algae which can accumulate in species like Dungeness crab, clams, mussels and anchovy. It can be harmful to both humans and wildlife, including sea lions and birds. Remember the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds? It was inspired by a   incident of California seabirds driven into a frenzy by the neurotoxin. Although we’re starting to hear about domoic acid more often, it’s been on the radar of public health officials since a Canadian outbreak in 1987 killed three and sickened over 100. In mild cases, it can cause vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Severe cases can cause trouble breathing, memory loss, and even coma or death. In the case of Dungeness crabs, the food chain looks like this: The phytoplankton   produces the toxin domoic acid during an algae bloom. Zooplankton and filter feeders, like clams and mussels, then eat that phytoplankton. (Interestingly, not all shellfish react the same way. Mussels, for example, are able to rid themselves of the toxin within a few weeks, while domoic acid may linger in clams for several months, even up to a year.) Those delicious Dungeness crabs we like so much have a taste for clams, which is where domoic acid can be passed up the food chain to us humans. Officials are able to test for unsafe levels, keeping tainted seafood out of restaurants and away from seafood counters, but scientists haven’t been able to predict when natural algae blooms may take a toxic turn  —   until now. ”The record of domoic acid is now 20 years long, allowing us to look at it from a different perspective than anyone has previously,” says Morgaine McKibben, a Ph. D. candidate at Oregon State University and lead author of the new study. The researchers looked at   data collected from Oregon razor clams, copepods (zooplankton that drift with the currents and are studied to predict salmon runs) and recurring climate patterns known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and El Nino Southern Oscillation. And they were able to establish that domoic acid events, like those that have been impacting the West Coast Dungeness crab fishery, are strongly related to warm phases in the ocean. ”The most important takeaway from the study is that it’s telling us about changes in the food web based on   observations of changes in the oceans. It’s a very zoomed out view of how the food web responds to natural changes to ocean conditions. That’s very important when you talk about resource management,” says McKibben. These types of   records are somewhat rare in oceanography, she says, because ”it’s hard to find funding to keep consistent observations like this going.” And a future with more frequent domoic acid events seems likely, says says Bill Peterson, a NOAA senior scientist and   of the study. ”We’re having more and more of these warm ocean events and we’re going to have more domoic acid blooms each year. It might become a chronic problem,” he says. That paints a troubling picture for crab fishermen like Bob Eder of Newport, Ore. While domoic acid might go away for a year or two as a problem, it ”is something we’ll now be dealing with for a long time,” he says. He also worries about how future domoic acid events could impact exports  —   critically important to boosting the overall price of whole crabs. While Americans typically eat only the meat from the crab, Chinese consumers also eat what’s known as the ”butter” (or guts) of the crab, where domoic acid tends to be more concentrated. Officials from the California Department of Public Health say they test   for toxic phytoplankton at more than 100 sampling sites along the entire California coastline, and that 2015 was the first year domoic acid was found in crab meat. Oregon and Washington have similar sampling strategies, and have collaborated with California on Dungeness crab testing over the last two years. But Peterson thinks states vulnerable to domoic acid events should be doing even more testing. ”They should sample more often and over a wider . .. area,” says Peterson. ”Crab harvests are a huge money maker on the West Coast. You can’t have people think they’re going to get sick from eating crabs. Pretty soon [states] are going to have to sample more often and more places to keep better tabs on what’s going on in the ocean.” Patrick Kennelly, chief of the food safety section for the California Department of Public Health, says he’s confident the state’s monitoring program is strong and able to ramp up as needed. He notes that officials have already started testing Dungeness crab months before the season begins."
"Russia’s intelligence agencies compromised the networks of some   Republicans and their affiliated organizations, but not the current Republican National Committee or the campaign of   Donald Trump, top U. S. intelligence chiefs said Tuesday. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey and other spy bosses told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia ”harvested” information from Republicans but that it captured ”old stuff” and targeted RNC Web domains that were no longer in use. The testimony shed new light on a terse line in the intelligence community’s declassified report from Friday about Russia’s   campaign, in which Clapper and his compatriots said Moscow had also collected information from the GOP in addition to the reams of data it took from Democrats and then released to the public. Doesn’t that mean the Russians have the ability to release information about Republicans someday  —   even if it’s old? asked committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. ”Sure,” Clapper said. The prospect for such releases, along with other potential mischief by Russia involving U. S. or other elections, was one undercurrent in the hearing, the latest since Clapper’s office released the report. Senators warned that unless the U. S. acts strongly to deter such plots, they could intensify. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio raised a U. K. case in which Russian intelligence officers purportedly compromised the computer of a political enemy and then deposited child pornography on it. Local police were notified, they investigated, and the man was arrested and charged. What stops the Russians from doing something similar in the U. S. Rubio asked. Suppose foreign hackers got into the computer of a member of Congress, made some illegal bank transfers and then called the FBI? ”Congressman John    has been   and sure enough you’re arrested and charged and removed from the public discourse,” Rubio said. Isn’t that a danger here? he asked. ”It is certainly well within both their technical competence and their potential intent to do something like that,” Clapper said. Clapper and senators also said they expect similar Russian tricks in upcoming elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands. Clapper told Sen. James Lankford,  . that Moscow has interfered in the elections of ”a couple dozen” countries over time and that its meddling in the U. S. goes back to the 1960s. The   danger was part of another undercurrent in the session, in which Republicans cast the cyber breach of Democrats as a result of their own sloppiness  —   through the mishandling of passwords by Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta and their neglect of what Republicans called an old threat. ”This hacking business is ubiquitous. It has been since the Internet was set up,” Idaho Sen. Jim Risch said. Committee Chairman Richard Burr observed that neither Podesta nor the Democratic National Committee provided the FBI with the compromised devices so that investigators could examine them, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said he thought it was clear Hillary Clinton had lost because she ran a bad campaign, not because of Russian meddling. The Democrats on the panel, meanwhile, objected to what they perceived as more unfairness from Comey and the FBI. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Kamala Harris of California and Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, called on Comey to disclose publicly whether the FBI has investigated any connections between Trump’s camp and Russia. Comey said the FBI never comments publicly on open investigations. That angered the Democrats, given Comey’s disclosure to Congress that the bureau had reopened an investigation into Clinton days before the November election. Wyden pressed Comey to release what the FBI has investigated ahead of Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Harris and King echoed that call  —   but Comey responded each time that it was against the FBI’s policy. ”The irony of your making that statement here I cannot avoid  —   but I’ll move on,” King said."
"Hundreds of thousands of people tuned in to an   rescue operation of a deer hopelessly stuck on ice in Simsbury, Conn. The scared deer splayed on the frozen river was streamed live by several television channels on Monday, in some cases for more than three hours, as rescue workers tried to get it to safety. You can watch the full, agonizing rescue operation in this video  —   it begins about 2   hours in. It shows a rescue worker sliding the terrified animal to the side of the river. Then it took a team’s repeated attempts to lift the struggling deer up the bank. Local animal control officer Mark Rudewicz told NBC Connecticut that coyotes chased the deer onto the thin ice. The story has a happy ending, the station reports  —   the deer scampered back off into the woods. The whole saga brings to mind this beloved scene from the Disney classic Bambi: And incidentally, this deer isn’t the only animal getting into trouble on thin ice in the past week  —   here’s the story of a cow rescue in Oregon:"
"Recently, NPR brought you the story of one of 2016’s most successful musicians: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Last year, the Universal Music Group released a   box set of the composer’s works. Multiply that by the   sets sold worldwide as of early December, and you had 1. 25 million CDs. And that, we said, had given Mozart a hit release. Well, David Bakula says that’s not quite right  —   and he should know. He’s a senior vice president at the Nielsen Company, which collects the data that Billboard uses to make its charts. ”I’m afraid Mozart didn’t quite make it this year,” Bakula says, explaining that physical CDs and even digital downloads only are only a part of what determines an album’s chart success these days. In fact, thanks to the rise of streaming services, some artists can make waves on the charts without ”selling” anything at all. NPR’s Audie Cornish spoke with Bakula about how streaming has changed both the music industry and the language we use to understand it. Hear the full conversation at the audio link and read an edited version bellow. Audie Cornish: OK, so we and many other people were super wrong about this. What was the real   album of 2016? David Bakula: There was a little bit of confusion there: Certainly we don’t multiply the number of discs by the sale. When you do look at the total consumption for the year in terms of albums, you had Drake’s Views record being the top record of the year. In terms of sales, it was bested by Adele’s 25 record, which actually came out at the end of 2015 but continued to sell very well throughout the year. But when we talk about total consumption  —   the album, all of the songs that were purchased individually, all of the streams that happened  —   Drake was the biggest of the year. Help us understand that. Does the word ”sales” mean anything anymore? Or do you have to explain that you mean something more specific  —   physical CDs, digital sales. It means less and less, I think, every year. We are finding that audio   streaming is becoming a very big piece of the industry. If you look at the revenue that’s coming in, the album is still the main driver of revenue on a   basis. But we had over 250 billion audio streams last year, and even if you do multiply by a very small   rate, you still get a massive amount of money, to the point where   streaming is actually making up 38 percent of the total consumption. But in the meantime, you have traditional album sales down 16 percent, and digital single sales down 25 percent. So we’re just not buying music anymore  —   buying it to hold on to, anyway. Certainly: The technologically advanced consumer is realizing the value that is in streaming and is shifting over from sales to just access. Physical has some things holding it up  —   [you might] have a consumer that maybe hasn’t switched over to digital yet, but you also have a consumer that is in love with vinyl. That consumer is getting to be a significant piece of the physical business. This year, it was about 11 percent of the total physical business, so that LP buyer is still a very loyal buyer to physical products. So your DJs, superfans, completists  —   they will still go get the vinyl. Audiophiles  —   yeah, they love vinyl. You mentioned Adele and Drake had both had a good year. Chance the Rapper’s mixtape Coloring Book did pretty well, too  —   almost exclusively on streaming. Yes, it was exclusively on streaming, and that’s one of the really interesting things. The Grammy board is recognizing Chance for what he has done this year as well. Streaming is the only component to the charts that Chance the Rapper had this year, and he stayed on the Top 200 chart for 33 straight weeks and counting  —   he’s still on the charts. He’s had so much streaming this year that it’s the same equivalency as selling over 500, 000 albums. So at the end of the day, where does that leave our friend Mozart?  He’s not gonna be anywhere near the top of the charts. Again, because we don’t count it by disc, he’s going to show up with about 250 sales [in the U. S.] this year. I think he’s done all right. Mozart’s estate is doing just fine, sure."
"President Obama’s adopted hometown of Chicago is often the stage for pivotal moments in his career. He claimed victory in Chicago in 2008 and again in 2012. And it’s where he will give his farewell address on Tuesday night. Many Chicagoans use the word ”pride” when talking about Barack Obama. You can hear it in their voices. In this city, where   Donald Trump got only 12 percent of the vote, admiration for President Obama is strong. Kim Chisholm stood with thousands of others in the bitter cold this weekend to get a ticket to Obama’s speech. ”I’m so excited,” she says. ”History in the making. I never made it to the White House, but I will see him here in Chicago.” Chicago officials say there are pluses and minuses to having such close ties to the Obama administration. On Monday, the city won a federal grant for nearly $1 billion to upgrade a major portion of the city’s elevated commuter rail line. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first White House chief of staff, worked to make sure the funding came through before the administration changed hands. ”This will over the next four years create 6, 000 jobs in the city of Chicago,” he says. Illinois’ senior U. S. senator, Dick Durbin, says the city has been able to make significant infrastructure improvements with the help of federal funds, including   rail and upgrades to O’Hare International Airport. ”Time and again, the Obama administration has not forgotten where he came from,” Durbin says. ”[He] has not forgotten the city of Chicago.” That’s in part because the administration included a bevy of Chicagoans as Cabinet members and advisers, such as former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. Tuesday night’s speech and talk about an Obama legacy in Chicago are much more personal for some. Jacky Grimshaw worked in Chicago government under Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor, and was Obama’s   neighbor for years. She says the country’s first black president faced the same sort of opposition that Washington did and both men prevailed. ”And he put through the stimulus package that allowed communities across the country to deal with infrastructure projects that needed to get done,” Grimshaw says of Obama. Some community organizers take a more nuanced stance. Jitu Brown of the Institute for Educational Leadership says that while the president conducts himself with grace, he disagrees with many of his administration’s education policies. ”And I think the disappointment is in a president who started as a community organizer. I would have really hoped there would have been space to really listen to the voices of the people directly impacted,” Brown says. At Valois Restaurant, not far from the president’s Chicago home, customers can order a variety of Obama specials on the menu. Kimberly Barnes Staples was eating breakfast with her husband. ”For Chicago, specifically, he gave us a national profile,” she says. ”He showcased who we are as Chicagoans. He made us proud.” And Devi Austin, a retiree, says she personally benefited from policies Obama advanced. ”Because of the laws that he put in place for people who had just bought homes and was underwater, I got forgiven  —   forgiven, not modified  —   forgiven $60, 000,” she says. ”I will miss President Obama.” While some Chicagoans express disappointment that the president didn’t provide more help to deal with gun violence and gangs, others give him a pass, saying that’s a problem for the mayor, not the president. So as Obama says farewell, Patty McNamara, a museum consultant, says she will be watching wistfully. ”It’s kind of bittersweet,” she says. ”It’s going to be a tough transition, I’m afraid.” There will be a tangible Obama legacy for Chicagoans, though. His presidential library and foundation will be built on Chicago’s South Side. That means that even if the Obamas don’t return there to live, the president will remain engaged in the city that gave him his political start."
"When Barack Obama makes his farewell address Tuesday night, it will be one of the last times we’ll hear from the president, while he’s still actually the president. But before his political career, Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and the state director of Illinois Project Vote. And it was back then  —   in the 1990s, when Obama was in his late 20s and early 30s  —   that he first appeared on NPR. Here are highlights from some of those earliest appearances: In 1990, Obama was still a student at Harvard Law School and had just become the Harvard Law Review’s first black president when he was interviewed on Morning Edition. Obama discusses changes he hoped to initiate: At the time, Obama was 29 years old. He had worked for a few years as a community organizer in Chicago, before going to law school. Obama discusses what his plans are after serving as president of the law review: By the summer of 1992, Obama had gotten involved in politics. He was the state director of Illinois Project Vote. Bill Clinton was campaigning for president, with Hillary Clinton at his side. Meanwhile, Obama was 30 years old, and working on voter registration. Even in the 1990s, Obama was talking about something he references a lot now: getting people involved in politics and invested in institutions. Here he is on NPR’s Talk of The Nation in 1992: Another theme in these appearances: Obama talking about issues of race. It’s something he grappled with in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, and in this commentary on All Things Considered in October 1994. In it, he criticizes the book The Bell Curve by political scientist Charles Murray and psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein. That book was controversial for the way it linked race, genetics and IQ  —   and Obama called it ”dubious science.” Obama argued that the country needed to invest in public schools and   jobs, and provide what he called ”real opportunity” for black children. Listen to Obama’s commentary: Exactly 14 years after that commentary aired, Obama was campaigning in Pennsylvania. He was one week away from being elected the country’s first black president."
"One of the most fragile pieces of President Obama’s legacy in the aftermath of the 2016 election is the Affordable Care Act. Republicans ran on their   pledge to repeal it, and we’ll know soon whether  —   as promised  —   they make it their top priority in the new Congress, even without having released details on what would replace it. The history of the Affordable Care Act also provides a window into the earliest years of the Obama presidency. Fierce opposition from the GOP was there even before work on the legislation began, and that battle featured an early form of fake news  —   a tactic that became a prominent part of the 2016 election. Remember the ”death panels”? In 2009, when the health care law was still being written, Sarah Palin coined the phrase ”death panel” in a widely shared Facebook post. The headline of her post was innocuous enough, ”Statement on the Current Health Care Debate.” But that Aug. 7, 2009, social media post from the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate included a dire warning: ”The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ’death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ’level of productivity in society.’ ” Conservative   pages were on board. Talk radio, too. On his syndicated national radio program, Rush Limbaugh said of Palin, ”She’s dead right.” The specter of ”death panels” became an instant rallying cry for the   Tea Party movement, whose supporters crowded into town hall meetings that summer and shouted down Democratic lawmakers considering support for the Affordable Care Act. Republican members of Congress tapped into that anger. U. S. Sen. Chuck Grassley told a crowd back home in Iowa, ”We should not have a government program that determines you’re gonna pull the plug on Grandma.” ”Simply dishonest” As the summer of 2009 wore on, the president stayed above the fray. Anita Dunn, who was the White House communications director at the time, told NPR in a recent interview that the team didn’t take the attacks seriously at first, ”simply because they did seem so crazy.” But the president himself would need to directly respond. He went on the road, first to a   town hall in Portsmouth, N. H. where he said that this is how politics works sometimes, ”that people who want to keep things the way they are will try to scare the heck out of folks, and they’ll create boogeymen out there that just aren’t real.” Days later, in Grand Junction, Colo. Obama kept at it. ”The notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so that they can go around pulling the plug on Grandma? I mean when you start making arguments like that, that’s simply dishonest,” the president said. Ultimately, the Affordable Care Act was approved by the    Congress. The president signed it in the spring of 2010. Meanwhile, the allegations regarding ”death panels” would be ”Lie of the Year” by the   organization PolitiFact. The message that stuck, Dunn, currently a managing director at the D. C. firm SKDKnickerbocker, says that the early disinformation campaign had a lasting negative effect nonetheless. ”One of the hallmarks of the Affordable Care Act is that people don’t know what is in the bill, or realize the benefits they’ve gotten,” Dunn says, adding, ”a huge part of that is how it was defined early by the opposition.” She says the White House communications team learned from the experience. Rapid response became more of a priority. But Ruy Teixeira, a senior analyst with the Center for American Progress, says there’s another lesson from those early Obamacare battles that the administration  —   and Democrats  —   have been slow to learn: how to talk to white voters who do not have a college education. Those voters were once a key piece of the Democratic base, but Teixeira says they are now too often driven by a core belief that ”the government is up to no good.” The idea of death panels fit right into that narrative. But Teixeira says you can apply it to other issues as well. ”You’ve got to convince them you take their concerns seriously, you’re on their side,” he says, ”and the other people are not, and here’s exactly why.” That was a major weakness of Democrats in the 2016 election.    white voters rallied around Trump and his message that he  —   not the Democrats  —   is on their side. All along, Democrats considered such a claim by the billionaire businessman turned politician a kind of a fake news story of its own. But they still need to figure out how to counter it."
"Abra and Matt Schultz, both 32, recently built a house in a   neighborhood in Pottsville, Pa. Matt works as a carpenter foreman for a construction company. He and Abra, his wife, are right in Trump’s wheelhouse  —   Republicans in Republican Schuylkill County. The couple spent December trying to decide whether to buy health insurance or skip it for 2017. They voted for Trump because they were fed up with how much they are paying for health insurance. In   in the couple’s kitchen, Abra was sizing up their health insurance options. She showed off a thick notebook, along with a file folder with policy documents and notes piled as high as a stack of pancakes. ”Don’t touch my paperwork  —   don’t even try to touch it,” Abra joked to Matt. ”I get so stressed out about it. I’ll not pick one until the very last minute, like that deadline day.” Matt makes good money, but he usually gets laid off in the winter when construction slows down. For the past few years, he and Abra have bought coverage on HealthCare. gov, the Affordable Care Act exchange. But they’re in a tough spot. They make too much money to get a subsidy to help them pay for insurance. Subsidies are available only to those who make under 400 percent of poverty, or about $97, 000 for a family of four. But while the Schultzes don’t qualify for help, paying full price for health insurance stretches their budget to the limit. Two years ago, when they first signed up for insurance on the exchange, they were paying $530 a month for a plan they liked, Abra says. The price rose a little for 2016, but the options for 2017 went up a lot  —   about 30 percent on average in Pennsylvania. ”We have one for $881, one for $938, one for $984, like the deductibles are  —   look, these are insane,” Abra said, as she checked the exchange website for monthly premiums. ”The one that we would be stuck with would be the silver. This is $881. 50, and our deductible would be $7, 000.” It’s frustrating, she said, because she and her husband are relatively healthy and haven’t needed that much care. Add to that the cost of a separate partially subsidized insurance policy for their two children, and the family is expecting to pay at least $14, 000 in health premiums. Abra resented the mandate to buy health insurance from the beginning. And she liked what Trump said about the Affordable Care Act on campaign stops, like one in King of Prussia in November, just before the election. ”Obamacare has to be replaced, and we will do it and we will do it very, very quickly,” Trump said in his speech. ”It is a catastrophe.” Abra said she wouldn’t mind being in health insurance limbo while Trump and lawmakers debate the future of Obamacare. Larry Levitt, with the Kaiser Family Foundation, said he understands her frustration with the law. ”These are people who are playing by the rules, and doing the right thing, and they feel like they’re getting the shaft,” he said. No one likes higher and higher premiums, he says, but there’s a  . ”Before the ACA, to get insurance on your own, you had to fill out a medical questionnaire, and an insurer would only take you if you were reasonably healthy,” Levitt said. ”That kept premiums down, but it’s because sick people were excluded from the market altogether.” Levitt said the law’s goal was to to get insurance to a point where premiums only increase slightly every year while everyone can still get coverage, no matter their   condition. And, he says, any replacement plan devised by Republicans will have upsides and downsides, just like the Affordable Care Act. ”If this were easy, it already would have happened,” he said. Abra said she understands the broader picture, but she needs to focus on what’s best for her family  —   affordable health insurance. ”[Trump] just wants to fix what needs to be fixed, which I think is wonderful news,” she says. Abra did decide on a policy for her and her husband  —   she selected the plan that costs $938 a month because she wants to keep her current doctor. But if lawmakers eliminate the penalty for people who don’t get insurance, she might take a risk and drop the coverage. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WITF’s Transforming Health project and Kaiser Health News."
"Clare Hollingworth, the war correspondent who told the world of the outbreak of World War II, has died at 105. She died Tuesday evening in Hong Kong, according to   friend Cathy Hilborn Feng, who says Hollingworth ”had a smile before she left us.” Hollingworth was a rookie reporter when she landed the scoop of a century  —   she had been a journalist for the Daily Telegraph for less than week when she revealed German tanks were gathered at the Polish border, poised for an invasion. It was the start of an illustrious career in journalism that lasted some seven decades. The ”doyenne of war correspondents” lived the last few decades of her life in Hong Kong, where she was a regular at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. The club mourned her death on Tuesday, with President Tara Joseph calling her a ”tremendous inspiration.” Before her career as a journalist began, Clare Hollingworth helped thousands of political refugees fleeing Hitler’s forces to gain asylum in Britain. The BBC told the story in a piece last year: ”In 1938, a year before war was declared, thousands of refugees were flooding across borders looking for asylum. ”In response, Clare Hollingworth, a glamorous    political activist from Leicester, booked a Christmas holiday to Kitzbühel in Austria. ”She visited the     in December 1938 to carry out reconnaissance, and returned to the UK with a   visa in her passport.” With her visa in hand, Hollingworth could travel into Poland to provide aid to fleeing Jews, unionists and writers. Many of the refugees lacked documents and were in danger of being sent back into Nazi territory. Hollingworth’s   Patrick Garrett, who wrote a biography of his great aunt, wrote in the Telegraph that she used her ”noted pushiness and ability for wrangling with officials, skills that would later stand her in very good stead as a foreign correspondent,” to get the refugees papers, food, money and tickets to the U. K. She helped thousands of refugees reach Britain, Time reports, and the British press dubbed her ”The Scarlet Pimpernel” for her efforts. But the British government suspected she was letting in ”potential spies,” including communists. They put an end to her efforts in the summer of 1939. Back in London and looking for a new job, Hollingworth persuaded the Daily Telegraph to send her back to Poland as a reporter. Here’s how Time describes what happened next: ”Knowing that war may be imminent, and bolstered by the presence of a diplomatic flag, she borrowed her host’s car, and ’motored off alone into Nazi Germany’ to stock up on wine and aspirin. As she drove back along the border, a fabric partition separating the two countries flapped momentarily in the wind, exposing ’scores, if not hundreds of tanks’ in the valley below. And there was her first big scoop: the outbreak of World War II.” Her headline in the Daily Telegraph: ”1, 000 Tanks Massed on Polish Frontier 10 Divisions Reported Ready For Swift Stroke From Our Own Correspondent.” There were actually only nine divisions, Garrett notes  —   but ”not bad” for her first week on the job. Three days later, the invasion began. Hollingworth called both her editor and the British Embassy to alert them. The Guardian reports that the embassy staff didn’t believe her  —   so she held the telephone receiver out the window so they could hear the attack for themselves. It was a stunning start to an extraordinary career. Hollingworth continued to report for the next seven decades, from all over   Europe, then from north Africa and communist China and Palestine and Iraq and Vietnam, among other places. Colleagues particularly admired her work on the perilous, complicated Algerian War in the ’50s and ’60s, both Time and the Guardian write. She also uncovered a famous scoop related to Kim Philby, the ”third man” of Britain’s notorious ”Cambridge Five” group of Soviet spies. At a time when the British government was insisting Philby was not the spy in question, she discovered evidence suggesting he had quickly and covertly escaped to Russia. The scoop was so stunning that an editor at the Guardian refused to run it, fearing libel suits. Weeks later, she persuaded a deputy editor to run the item on page 7. ”Shortly afterwards the government admitted it believed Philby had indeed fled to Russia,” the Guardian writes. Hollingworth was a famously hard worker, obsessive and seemingly tireless. She loved covering war and conflict  —   one colleague told the Guardian that Hollingworth ”actually enjoys war. She’s not at all bloodthirsty, she’s actually very humane and kind, but she gets a huge kick out of it.” ”I enjoy action,” Hollingworth told the BBC. ”I enjoy being in a plane that’s bombing something, or being on the ground in the desert when they’re advancing.” ”She was always in the right place at the right time,” John Simpson, world affairs editor at the BBC, said in a video produced for Hollingworth’s 104th birthday. ”Who did the first interview with the shah of Iran? Clare Hollingworth. Who did the last interview . .. after he fell? Clare Hollingworth.” She later became a   correspondent for The Telegraph. In her early 90s, living a quieter life in Hong Kong, Hollingworth told the Guardian that she still didn’t consider herself retired she called in regularly to the London newsdesk. Toward the end of her life, most of her life savings were stolen by a fellow expat in Hong Kong, as the Telegraph reported at the time. But her   and biographer says she was able to maintain her ”independent lifestyle in Hong Kong, closer to her beloved Foreign Correspondents’ Club.” At her 105th birthday this past October, she was feted at the club by admiring journalists and friends. She also received a   message from Margo Stanyer, who had fled Hungary as a    in 1939. As the BBC reports, Hollingworth had helped Margo and her family arrange visas and travel to London. Some 77 years later, Stanyer, an      recorded a video message for Hollingworth. ”Thank you to Clare, again and again and again. I think of you a lot, until the end of my life,” she said, tearing up. ”Wish you all the best. Live for a hundred years again.”"
"Scientists have found the inspiration for a lifesaving tool in an unusual place  —   a children’s toy. The invention may soon help health care workers diagnose malaria in places where standard laboratory equipment is hard to find. Diagnosing malaria in the field isn’t all that difficult, but you need a device called a centrifuge that can spin a blood sample very quickly, causing different types of cells in blood to separate from each other. Most centrifuges are bulky, require electricity and are expensive. Because of that, many field hospitals in developing nations don’t have easy access to the technology. Manu Prakash, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University who developed the new tool, saw the need firsthand during a trip to Uganda. ”We were out in a primary health center talking to health care workers and we found a centrifuge used as a doorstop because there’s no electricity.” The workers said that they really needed a powerful centrifuge that they could use anywhere. And it needed to be cheap. When he got back to California, Prakash began experimenting with all kinds of things that spin, including toys. Toys might seem like a strange place to start, but Prakash didn’t think so. Who doesn’t love toys? And, he explains, ”Toys hide in them pretty profound physical phenomena that we just take for granted.” The researchers started to experiment with  . But the   didn’t spin fast enough to work as a centrifuge. Then they stumbled upon the children’s toy known as the whirligig, or buzzer. The toy is made of a disc that spins when a person pulls on strings that pass through the center. And it spins much faster than a  . The scientists clocked their version at 125, 000 revolutions per minute. According to the authors, that’s the fastest rotational speed reported for a   device. By comparison, the internal combustion engine of a Formula One race car rotates at about 15, 000 rpm. And so the paperfuge was born. The paperfuge is made out of paper coated in a polymer film that makes it extra strong, string and PVC pipe or wood. Blood samples are attached to the center disc and pulling the strings causes the cells to separate, just like in the more expensive electrical centrifuge. The samples can then be processed and tested for parasites. To prove that the paperfuge could work in the field, the researches took a prototype to Madagascar for a test run. It worked as advertised, allowing local health care workers to spin blood and test for parasites. Prakash and his colleagues reported their results Tuesday in Nature Biomedical Engineering. This isn’t the first time that Prakash has invented a   tool for use in   areas. A few years ago, his group also invented a $1 paper microscope called the Foldscope. The paperfuge is inexpensive, costing just 20 cents apiece to make. They can be made by hand or by machine, and the spinning disc can be made of paper or plastic. Using a desktop   printer, the study authors printed over 100 paperfuges in one day. That means if the paperfuge catches on, it could be relatively easy to make and distribute to   areas. Now that Prakash’s group has shown that it’s effective in identifying malaria, they are working on developing different variations of the paperfuge that could help diagnose other diseases."
"In 1889, Bethlehem Steel brought engineer Frederick Taylor on board in an attempt to streamline its vast operation. Taylor had recently invented a theory of ”time management” in which the same principles used to optimize machines was applied to people. Taylor stalked the floors of the Bethlehem plant armed with a stopwatch and a clipboard noting the time it took for workers to complete tasks, like loading iron bars onto waiting railcars. Taylor’s eventual recommendation to the company’s executives were simple: The workers should be made to do more in less time. Some 120 years later, the plan Taylor laid out for big business has now become internalized within us all. Called the ”Personal Productivity Movement,” it’s subtly woven into the fabric of our digitally mediated lives. That’s not a good thing. There is an argument to be made that our emphasis on personal productivity is not only slowly killing us, it’s also doomed to fail. In fact, this exact argument was made in a piece of   journalism by Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian late last month. Since my last book focused on the links between changing cultural ” ” and changing scientific conceptions of time, I found a lot to agree with in Burkeman’s piece. So, today, let’s spend a few moments unpacking our mania for personal productivity, its historical roots  —   and the reasons why it’s a long road to nowhere. Google ”personal productivity” and, pretty quickly, you’ll get the gist of what this movement means. There’s the ”The 7 Rules of Personal Productivity” and ”8 Simple Rules to Extreme Personal Productivity” and ”20 Suggestions to Boost Your Personal Productivity.” Clearly, there are a lot of rules. Here are a few of them: write things down avoid distractions schedule your email and social media checking balance focused work with focused rest. There are, not surprisingly, personal productivity apps to help you stick to these rules. Some will keep your lists and help you prioritize them. Others go further. For example there’s ATracker to help you track ”repetitive daily routines at work.” And Eternity Time Log that allows you to ”track many projects and   generate and export detailed hierarchical reports to know exactly where your time goes.” Burkeman correctly links the birth of this mania for efficiency and productivity with Frederick Taylor’s scientific time management. But while it was Big Business that kept workers ”at the sharp end” of Taylor’s proposals, in our digital age we have mostly volunteered to do that job ”to” ourselves. The reasons for this are manifold. Much of the gospel of personal productivity begins with an eye towards our jobs. Since we live in an age where you can answer   emails at 9 p. m. well, then, shouldn’t you? Are you risking your position by not answering it? As Burkeman puts it: ” In an era of insecure employment, we must constantly demonstrate our usefulness through frenetic doing.” But, as Burkeman shows us, the new and inherently unfair economic conditions driving the range for personal productivity won’t change its outcome. As he explains: ”An awkward truth about Taylor’s celebrated efficiency drives is that they were not very successful: Bethlehem Steel fired him in 1901, having paid him vast sums without any clearly detectable impact on its own profits. (One persistent consequence of his schemes was that they seemed promising at first, but left workers too exhausted to function consistently over the long term.) Exhaustion. That’s the key word. That’s why our personal productivity efforts are bound to fail in the same way they failed in Taylor’s day. In our modern, digitally rendered age we are all are caught by the promise that we can squeeze more out of our time. By abstracting life into a series of digitally manipulatable lists, we’re told we can optimize ourselves. In this way, we come to believe we really can get more quality parenting time, while still getting to the gym everyday, while still reading more books, while still learning to cook Indian food and so on and on and on. The list literally goes on forever  —   and that’s the problem. The list is a lie. What struck me most when I was writing my book about the braided evolution of scientific and cultural time was the role of invention in both. I found that every culture invented ways of parsing the day. These were what I called cultural  . They were nothing more than social constructions built from the imagination and the dominant technology each culture had at its disposal (i. e. rope and sail, gears and springs, wires and silicon chips). The real point was that none of them was any more real than other. A culture built on hunting and gathering would have one way of organizing the day, while one built on farming would have another. Neither was more ”true” than the other. But seen from within, each culture’s   was invisible. It seemed obvious. It seemed given. It just was. From that vantage point, our mania for personal productivity is just a reflection of the technology we’ve built our modern culture upon. Our machines now parse time in nanosecond chunks. They do more than earlier machines could because they make more time by moving faster. We, however, do not have that option. Even though our digital technologies give us tools to exactly meter time, it is not really our time. It’s not the kind of time we were born to as biological entities enmeshed in a living world. Burkeman rightly ends his essay by pointing out how much of our mania for personal productivity can be traced back to a much older impulse  —   a fear of death: ”The more you can convince yourself that you need never make difficult choices  —   because there will be enough time for everything  —   the less you will feel obliged to ask yourself whether the life you are choosing is the right one.” That is where the choice comes back to us. Every culturally imposed   is an invention. It’s something we made up. The   we dreamed up in building this new version of society has some great aspects, not because it allows us to do more things but because it allows us to do things we could not do before. That should be enough. We lie to ourselves if we think we can get more out of time. That’s because, ultimately, the time we get will always be all the time there is. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"Iran’s former president, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was buried Tuesday, and the large outpouring of grief at his funeral reflects the uncertainty facing Iranian moderates. Rafsanjani may have risen along with the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the U. S.  shah, but in later years, his pragmatic streak and respected position made him a leading voice of moderation. Rafsanjani was seen as one crucial pillar in the power base of President Hassan Rouhani, who won election in 2013 after the conservative Guardian Council rejected Rafsanjani’s own candidacy. The other major source of Rouhani’s support is another former president, Mohammad Khatami, who has effectively been under house arrest in recent years. Rafsanjani’s death, just months before Rouhani is expected to stand for   in May, leaves the moderate wing of Iran’s political establishment without one of its most important voices. ”It really does create a political vacuum in some ways,” says Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. With Rafsanjani gone and Khatami under wraps, he says, this hole has opened up at a crucial time. Ansari says the months ahead will be a real political test of whether Rouhani, who shepherded a controversial nuclear agreement with world powers past hardline opposition, has enough of a power base of his own to make up for the absence of Rafsanjani. ”You know, I have my doubts about it,” he says. ”I’ve never felt that Rouhani is as big a player as some of the previous generation.” At stake is Rouhani’s  —   and Rafsanjani’s  —   belief that Iran’s best hope for the future lies in outreach to the world and better relations with other countries, not the     often preached by Iran’s hardliners, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Rafsanjani’s legacy, In an appraisal in The New Yorker, Robin Wright wrote that Rafsanjani advocated better ties with the West, including America. Not long ago, he tweeted, ”World of tomorrow is one of negotiations, not the world of missiles.” A different take on Rafsanjani’s political legacy and the impact his absence will have on the political scene comes from Gary Sick, senior researcher at Columbia University’s Middle East program. ”Contrary to some of my colleagues, my guess is that Rafsanjani’s departure will have very little actual impact on the course of developments,” he wrote in a blog post. ”If I were in Rouhani’s shoes, I would certainly be sorry to lose an ally with such sterling revolutionary credentials. After all, the centrists need all the friends they can get,” he added. ”However, the outcome of the next election will depend on Rouhani’s ability to persuade Iranians that they are better off with the nuclear agreement and that he is capable of defending Iran’s interests better than any alternative choice.” Last year’s nuclear accord remains one of Rouhani’s chief accomplishments, and it has brought an infusion of cash, as frozen overseas Iranian assets were released. There have also been major commercial aviation deals and a notable increase in Iranian oil exports since the deal. But economists say the benefits have yet to trickle down to the Iranian street, where they might do Rouhani some political good. Presidential election in May  So far, Rouhani has not announced his intentions for the May elections, though supporters say he’s likely to run again. Thus far, only a few other candidates have announced. Analysts say former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ghalibaf may make another run. Hardliners are eager to make Rouhani a   candidate. The man he succeeded, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been mentioned as a possible contender, though a number of Iran analysts consider him unlikely to run. With Rafsanjani’s passing, the number of Iran’s founding revolutionaries still in roles of influence is shrinking. Some analysts see an imminent ”generational change” for the Islamic Republic. Ansari, for one, wonders if that change will mean more moderation  —   or less. ”I think the worry for some of us is that really, what you have with Khamenei and . .. many of those in the Revolutionary Guard, but also the political elite following on, [is a group that’s] much less interested in the West, and much more tied to a sort of Russian alliance,” he says. ”So it’s not at all clear that the change in guard will lead to a more moderating influence.”"
"Over the weekend and into Monday morning, a powerful storm in Nevada and Northern California resulted in mudslides and flooding, caused more than a thousand people to evacuate their homes, took out power lines and brought down a famous sequoia ”tunnel tree.” That storm is over, but residents can’t relax yet: Starting on Tuesday, a second potent winter storm is expected to hit the region. Emergency workers are taking advantage of the ”  respite from the rains,” as The Associated Press puts it, to rescue people stranded by the storm and assess the extent of the damage. Capital Public Radio in Sacramento reported that some places in the Sierra Nevada received more than a foot of rain over the   storm that ended Monday. A long stretch of Interstate 80 was closed after a   mudslide, the radio station reports. The weekend was relatively warm, The Los Angeles Times reports, which means some of the snow dropped by the storm melted quickly and contributed to floodwaters. Flooding was extensive, with some roads remaining closed on Monday. Placer County tweeted video of a big rig overturned on a road covered with standing water, and urged drivers not to disregard signs marking roads as closed. KQED reports minor flooding ”all over the [San Francisco] Bay Area,” with mudslides and fallen trees closing highways and major roads, and nearly half a million people losing power. California’s wine country was badly hit, The Associated Press reports the Russian River in Sonoma County rose to its highest level in a decade, leaving vineyards submerged ”with just the tips of vines visible in completely flooded fields,” the wire service reports. At least one person was killed in the storm, the AP writes: A woman was struck by a falling tree as she walked on a golf course on Saturday. Emergency crews have used boats and helicopters to rescue people stranded by floodwaters, according to the AP. They have a narrow window of time before the second storm hits the area on Tuesday. It has ”the potential for more heavy rain over the already very thoroughly soaked North Bay counties,” KQED reports. Capital Public Radio also warns of high winds, with gusts up to 50 miles an hour in the Sacramento Valley. This storm is expected to be colder, too, bringing more snow that will stick around instead of melting. The National Weather Service used an exclamation point in its official prediction for snow totals in the Tahoe area, above 7, 000 feet elevation: ”  feet!” The forecast also calls for 150 mph winds on ridge tops. The National Weather Service warns of ”dangerous and potentially life threatening blizzard conditions” possible in the Sierra Nevada. ”Strong winds will produce zero visibility in whiteout conditions along with high drifting snow,” the weather forecast office in Reno says. ”Even a short walk could be deadly if you become disoriented. Avalanche danger will remain high.” Widespread flooding and perilous blizzard conditions have authorities urging people to hunker down, stay safe and avoid travel. But there’s a silver lining to these clouds. California has been suffering through a lengthy, devastating drought. Two storms, no matter how intense, aren’t enough to undo years of persistent drought  —   but the LA Times reports that if the wet weather continues, ”2017 could prove a turning point for the epic dry spell.”"
"Sylvana Simons got her start as a soul music VJ on the Dutch version of MTV. She went on to anchor the evening news in the Netherlands, and performed on the local version of Dancing with the Stars. Simons, 45, is black and was born in the former Dutch colony of Suriname, in South America. Her family moved to the Netherlands when she was just one. She’s spoken out against the Dutch Christmas tradition of Black Pete, in which Santa’s helper is often played by a white person in blackface. That prompted someone to make a satirical music video about her, in which dancers in blackface sing, ”Oh Sylvana, why don’t you pack your bags and leave this country.” After that, someone photoshopped pictures of her face onto old archive photos of lynching victims from the American South. ”I’ve also received emails and written letters in which people described how they would like to see me killed, raped, burned alive,” Simons told reporters in a rare interview in early December. ”It’s been an ongoing thing for the past two years.” So Simons filed a police complaint, quit her media job  —   and went into politics. ”I have made this conscious decision to enter politics because I feel we are not just fighting racist people one by one,” Simons says. ”What we need is a change of the system. We live in a system that has been designed hundreds of years ago, not to serve everybody, but to serve the dominant white race.” Parliamentary candidate, Simons is running for parliament in the Dutch elections this March. At first, she announced her candidacy with a new Dutch political party called Denk, or ”think.” It’s one of the first parties in Europe founded by recent immigrants to represent their interests. Denk’s candidates include a Muslim woman who wears a headscarf, people of Turkish and Moroccan descent and black people like Simons. All of them say they’ve felt left out of Dutch politics, especially now that the     leader Geert Wilders is surging in the polls. ”People of color are not recognized as proper Dutch, and there is where the anger is, from people who are seen as   citizens, while they were born here,” says Sandew Hira, an economist and historian who leads the International Institute for Scientific Research, which studies colonialism and is based in The Hague. Denk, founded two years ago by two   members of parliament, says it wants to establish a national racism register to track hate speech, build a slavery museum in the Netherlands and ban portrayals of Black Pete. But the new party has already had some internal disputes. Over the Christmas holiday, Simons announced a surprise split from Denk, to start her own party. She told the Dutch media she wants to widen her political platform to fight for gay rights and fair hiring practices, and that Denk’s other members weren’t receptive. Denk’s leaders did not reply to NPR’s request for comment. Obstacles to integration, On a typical Sunday morning in a small Dutch town, parents cheer for their children on the sidelines of a youth soccer game. One of the dads points out his son playing for the visiting team, in blue jerseys. ”The blue team is from Haarlem, a bigger city, and the orange team is from [the smaller town of] Voldendam. If you look, the orange team, they’re only Dutch,” father Bulent Ozturk says. ”And the blue team, they’re all foreign  —   Turkish and Moroccan kids, mainly.” The Ozturk family has lived in the Netherlands for three generations, yet they still call themselves foreigners. ”I can’t explain what it means to be Dutch. Holland is a very small country. It doesn’t really have an identity,” Ozturk says. ”You could easily be talking about German or Danish identity, because they’re similar. I guess you can start talking about windmills and clocks and tulips.” Ozturk’s parents arrived from Turkey some 50 years ago, in the 1960s, as guest workers. At the time, Dutch companies were recruiting workers from rural parts of Morocco and Turkey. ”They came to do jobs that Dutch people wouldn’t like to do or they couldn’t find people to do. So they were very welcome,” Ozturk says. ”But I don’t feel at home here anymore.” He says he plans to vote for Denk in the country’s   election. ”It’s a shame that we don’t vote on a political basis, but on a race basis,” Ozturk says, shaking his head. About a million of Holland’s 17 million citizens are immigrants or their children or grandchildren  —   a potentially powerful group at the polls."
"The online classified website Backpage. com said it has suspended its adult ad pages, citing government pressure about the content being shared there. A 2016 Senate report called the website the ”largest commercial sex services advertising platform in the United States” and said that ”Backpage officials have publicly acknowledged that criminals use the website for sex trafficking, including trafficking of minors.” The report also accused Backpage of not complying with congressional requests for information about its revenue. On Tuesday, links to advertisements for escort services in U. S. cities linked instead to a press release from the company as well as links to the websites of organizations that advocate for free speech rights. In the press release, the company wrote it had suspended adult content as a ”direct result of unconstitutional government censorship”: ”For years, the legal system protecting freedom of speech prevailed, but new government tactics, including pressuring credit card companies to cease doing business with Backpage, have left the company with no other choice but to remove the content in the United States.” Escort advertisement links appeared to remain active for cities outside the U. S. including in Canada. Around the world, Backpage also hosts advertisements for goods and services other than sex, including child care, housing and auto parts. In October, the CEO of Backpage. com, Carl Ferrer, was arrested in Houston and dozens of law enforcement officers then searched Backpage’s Dallas headquarters, as we reported. ”Ferrer, 55, is charged with pimping a minor, pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping. Two controlling shareholders of Backpage  —   Michael Lacey and James Larkin  —   also are charged with conspiracy to commit pimping,” NPR’s Camila Domonoske reported. The website’s owners have faced similar charges in California and Washington, according to The Associated Press. The California complaint alleged Backpage. com didn’t just host ads for sex, some of which were trafficking minors, because the site helped advertisers write ads that would elicit clicks. ”The Washington state Supreme Court similarly ruled last year that the company didn’t just host the ads, but helped develop the content,” the AP reported. ”That ruling allowed a civil lawsuit to continue by three minors who attorneys said were in the seventh and ninth grades when adult professional sex traffickers used Backpage to sell them as prostitutes.”"
"Marketplace officials calculate a customer’s subsidy, so why is the customer held responsible for repayments? Why are so many of my prescriptions held up for authorization by my Medicare drug plan? Here are answers to some recent questions from readers. When I applied on the exchange for health insurance I had to predict my income. I submitted four paycheck stubs so they could figure out how much premium tax credit I qualified for. But they figured it incorrectly, and now I have to repay $8, 000 to the Internal Revenue Service. It was their error, but I’m told they’re not responsible. Is that legal? It is. When you apply for a marketplace plan, your premium tax credit is based on your own and the marketplace’s best estimate of your income for the upcoming year, using tax records and other available electronic data, or sometimes pay stubs as in your case. Especially for people who have multiple sources of income or whose income is variable, ”the projections are difficult” and verifying them ”can be tricky for the marketplace,” said Tara Straw, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Even so, it’s your responsibility to keep the marketplace informed if during the year your income is higher than expected so that the tax credit you’re receiving can be adjusted downward and you don’t get blindsided with a big bill at tax time. For most people who receive too much in subsidies, repayment is capped between $300 and $2, 500, depending on the person’s income and tax filing status. However, there’s no repayment cap for people whose income is above 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $47, 000). Unfortunately, it appears you fall into this category. I have a Medicare prescription drug plan with a $300 deductible. I don’t need many prescriptions, but the drugs I do need require prior authorization, meaning they make you wait three days after the doctor calls in the prescription to decide if they are going to cover it. This is true even for my routine drugs. My pharmacist says insurers are doing this more and more. Is that true? Your pharmacist’s impression is correct. The number of drugs for which insurers require prior authorization in Medicare   drug plans has been inching up for years, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. In 2016, 26 percent of the drugs that were listed in Medicare drug plan formularies, or preferred lists, required the insurer’s OK before they could be dispensed, up from 23 percent the year before. Insurers use other strategies to control drug spending as well, but prior authorization is the most prevalent. They may limit the number of doses of a drug that can be provided over a set period of time, for example, or require patients to try a cheaper drug in the same category before approving a more expensive one. Overall, the number of drugs that have some sort of ”utilization management” requirement, as it’s called, has more than doubled since 2007, to 41 percent. I plan to get married in June. I am currently enrolled in an Obamacare plan. Can I switch to my husband’s employer coverage right away after the wedding or do I have to wait until the next open enrollment period in the fall? You can switch right after the wedding. Marriage is one of several   events that creates a window of opportunity for people to change health plans, whether they’re covered on the health insurance exchange or by an employer. Other events include divorce and the birth or adoption of a child. It’s a good idea for your fiancé to notify his employer about the impending change before the wedding so the company can process it and you can avoid a gap in coverage, said Tracy Watts, a senior partner at benefits consultant Mercer. That way, your new coverage can start on the first day of the month following your wedding date. You’ll need to inform your current plan that you’re dropping that coverage on a certain date as well, of course. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter:@mandrews110."
"NPR’s YouTube channel, Skunk Bear, answers your science questions. This week, we picked one in honor of David Bowie. Bowie was born on Jan. 8 and would have turned 70 on Sunday. Tuesday, Jan. 10, marks the first anniversary of his death. Bowie filled his songs with references to space, and his first big hit, ”Space Oddity,” was released just days before humans first walked on the moon. So today we’re tackling a very   question from an anonymous Tumblr user: ”Can you tell me how long it would take to walk to the moon? Could I make it there in my lifetime?” Ridiculous, of course. What would you walk on? How would you breathe? Where would you put all the trail mix? But we decided to take the question seriously. If a human set out walking at a reasonable pace today, stopping to eat and sleep and take a day off once in a while  —   how long would it take to travel the distance that separates Earth and the moon? We attempt the trip  —   virtually  —   in a 360 degree environment. As you watch our video, you’ll be able to rotate your view by clicking and dragging (or by moving your mobile device*) to see the things a   hiker would see. What does Earth look like from the height of the Hubble telescope or from the height of a weather satellite? To help pass the time, we brought along some of Bowie’s music. It’s only right that his major hits serve as milestones on our way to the moon. You can submit your science questions to Skunk Bear here. (Maybe we’ll tackle, ”Is there life on Mars?” next.) Subscribe to our YouTube channel to follow the answers. *Unfortunately Safari doesn’t support 360   you’ll have to use the Chrome browser or the youtube app on an iPhone. "
"Things were already going pretty badly for Florence Manyande. Then one day last spring, while walking down the street, she was hit by a car. ”This woman saw, and she pulled me out of the road.” recalls Manyande, 50. ”She tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t talk then. I had a lot on my mind.” Her run of bad luck had begun in 2010, when Manyande’s husband skipped out on her and her three kids. ”I had no way to pay school fees for my children,” she says, and no way to pay rent. ”Even my relatives were shunning me. They couldn’t take me in because they said, ’We have our own problems. ’” By the time Manyande had her accident, she was thinking about killing herself. Then her fortune took a turn. The woman who found her, injured, on the road happened to be a health worker. She took Manyande to the clinic to get bandaged up. ”While I was there,” Manyande says, ”she introduced me to the Friendship Bench.” A Friendship Bench is quite literally a park bench  —   with a higher calling. In Zimbabwe, where Manyande lives, friendship benches are located on the grounds of medical clinics around Harare and other major cities. They’re a safe place where trained community members counsel folks struggling with what they, in the local Shona language, call kufungisisa (”thinking too much”) or what Americans call depression. Dr. Dixon Chibanda, a psychiatrist at the University of Zimbabwe, came up with the name Friendship Bench  —   or chigaro che hushamwari in Shona  —   back in 2006. In Zimbabwe, as in most places, there’s a lot of stigma around mental illness. Patients may feel uncomfortable with the idea of going to a mental health clinic. Traditionally, Zimbabweans with depression may see a healer about an exorcism  —   many view mental illness as a curse. And there is a shortage of professional help: 13 psychiatrists serve a population of 13 million. While completing his master’s in public health, Chibanda was looking for a solution. After speaking with various community leaders and health workers, he figured out that while people were loathe to head to a mental clinic and speak with a   medical professional about their mental health, they were generally willing to sit on a park bench and share their worries with someone within their own community, At these benches, community counselors and patients meet weekly to discuss intimate issues  —   and develop a plan to overcome difficulties. As part of the treatment, there are also group therapy sessions, when patients gather and sit around the bench. ”It’s all about empowering people to go and solve their own problems,” Chibanda says. The strategy seems to be working, according to a new study published in JAMA. The study followed 573 patients in Harare with anxiety or depression for a   period. Half of them received the standard treatment: A nurse spoke to them about what they were going through and prescribed medication as needed. The other half went to a Friendship Bench to meet with community members who’d been trained to give both    and group counseling. Six months later, half of those who received basic treatment still showed symptoms of depression, whereas only 13 percent of those who participated in Friendship Bench program still had symptoms. Mental health interventions often ”select good therapists and basically bus them in,” adds Dr. Melanie Abas, a psychiatrist at King’s College London and one of the study’s  . ”This is really one of the few examples where treatments for common mental health problems have been delivered by people who actually live and work in the community.” Most of the Friendship Bench counselors are older women who already command respect within their communities. And they’ve played a big role in stemming fears about seeking help for mental health issues, The counselors avoid the Western terms ”depression” and ”anxiety,” which to many might sound foreign and unrelatable. Instead, the counselors may suggest that someone has been ”thinking a bit too much” and guide them through the different stages of talk therapy, which in Shona are called kuvhura pfungwa (”opening of the mind”) kusimudzira (”uplifting”) and kusimbisa (”strengthening”). ”We use indigenous terms,” Chibanda says. ”These are words that people in the community can identify with.” Traditionally, Zimbabweans with depression may see a healer about an exorcism  —   many view mental illness as a curse, Abas notes. People are more likely to admit they’ve got mental health issues when offered the relatively   alternative of chatting on a park bench. The Friendship Bench initiative is now being expanded throughout Zimbabwe. So far, 27, 000 people suffering from common mental health disorders have tried the program. This strategy is not without drawbacks, Abas says. The community counselors require continual training and supervision, which is why they report to a district supervisor with more formal medical and psychological training. And funding is another issue. Right now, the program depends on grant money the researchers say that the government will eventually have to pitch in to sustain the program. Despite those complications, ”it’s just a great model, and it’s impressive,” says Brandon Kohrt, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University who wasn’t involved in the development of the Friendship Bench program or in the recent study. ”It’s often very stigmatizing to have to go to a mental health professional,” Kohrt says. ”So it’s great that their approach didn’t require people to go to a location  —   like a psychiatric hospital  —   that was seen as somewhere only really ill incurable people went.” The program also attests to the power of community, says Kohrt, and harnessing the community to support those suffering mental illness. He believes that ”the lessons from this can be applied globally, even in high income countries.” For Florence Manyande, at least, beyond helping her quell suicidal thoughts, the Friendship Bench has helped her build the sort of community she had been craving. At a group therapy session, Manyande says, ”I made a friend who introduced me to a sister who had accommodation.” No longer homeless, Manyande learned to crochet bags, which she now sells to make money until she can find   employment. ”My relationship with my relatives has also improved,” she says, ”now that I don’t go to their houses begging for money or food.” Most important, ”I realized at the Friendship Bench I have someone who is willing to listen to my problems,” she says. ”I was so happy about that.”"
"It’s still unclear whether Verizon will follow through on a $4. 8 billion deal to buy Yahoo’s core internet business, but if the sale is finalized, there’s a name for what will be left behind. For months, as the deal has made its way through negotiations and regulatory reviews, Yahoo referred to the hypothetical remains of its business as ”RemainCo.” Now, the company has unveiled a slightly less literal name: ”Altaba.” The Wall Street Journal explains the Altaba origin: ”Altaba’s remaining assets include Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo Japan. The name is a combination of the words ’alternate’ and ’Alibaba,’ a person familiar with the matter said.” As The New York Times points out, the name is very close to ”” a Pakistani scissors manufacturer. The sale would also bring big changes to Yahoo’s current leadership. According to a regulatory document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, six members of the company’s current   board would step down  —   including Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive. Eric Brandt, who joined Yahoo’s board in March 2016, would take over as chairman of Altaba’s board. He is a former executive at Broadcom, a semiconductor company. As of Thursday, Brandt took over as chairman of Yahoo’s board, replacing Maynard Webb, who had served in that position since 2013 and now becomes the chairman emeritus. According to the regulatory filing, the purpose of the change was ”to facilitate the transition of the Company to an investment company” following the sale to Verizon. But it’s still unclear whether the sale will go forward. Following revelations of multiple major hacks of Yahoo user accounts, Verizon said it would ”evaluate” the potential impact on the deal. Last week, AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong told CNBC that ”I remain hopeful the deal will close and I think we’ll see what the outcomes are of the Yahoo investigations in the meantime.” Verizon purchased AOL in 2015. Also last week, a senior executive at Verizon said the company was unsure about its plan to buy Yahoo’s Internet business. ”I can’t sit here today and say with confidence one way or another because we still don’t know,” said Marni Walden, president of product innovation and new businesses at Verizon, according to Reuters. Speaking at the Citi 2017 Internet, Media  Telecommunications Conference in Las Vegas, Walden said that if the deal does go through, ”we think it will take weeks at least. We don’t have a desire to have it drag on forever, that’s not our intent.”"
"Eduardo made a mistake 10 days before he turned 18 in New York City. ”Basically every single day, I relive that moment,” says Eduardo, who is now 32 and still regularly passes by the spot where he was arrested for the first and only time in his life. Police caught him selling cocaine on the sidewalk next to the apartment building he’s lived in since he was a kid. His plan, he says, was to make some money to pay for marijuana. Instead, it stalled his college years and landed him a     sentence in an adult prison. He convinced a parole board to let him out early after more than seven months. Still, he came home at 18 years old with a criminal record. ”Shortcuts, they won’t get you anywhere, man. Just give you a hard time,” he says. ”They’ll give you a lot of time to think.” He asked NPR to identify him only by his first name because he’s worried a future employer or landlord might find out about his criminal record. He says it’s cost him plenty of jobs since he left prison. ”The initial interview would go great, but towards the end when it was time to run that background check, that’s when reality hit,” he explains. ”I’ve heard the word ’no’ so many times. It’s hard, man. It’s hard to keep telling yourself you’re not going to give up.” But just before the new year, Eduardo finally got the phone call he had been waiting for. One of his attorneys called him late one night to tell him that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was granting him a pardon. It’s one of the first pardons in New York state for former offenders who committed a nonviolent crime when they were 16 or 17 and have stayed   for at least 10 years. Anyone convicted of a sex crime does not qualify, and pardons can be withdrawn if the recipient is  . Cuomo announced the first group of 101 pardons on Dec. 30, after creating the youth pardon program in late 2015. About 10, 000 people could benefit from this program for New York residents, according to an estimate from the governor’s office. So far, it’s received 260 applications. For Eduardo, receiving the governor’s pardon means the conviction record that’s haunted him into his early 30s is now sealed from the general public. Some government agencies that require a deeper background check through fingerprinting can still access his rap sheet. Still, sealing his conviction record could help get rid of many of the barriers to jobs and housing Eduardo and thousands of other former teen offenders have faced. ”They serve no good public safety function, and yet they really make it even more difficult for people to readjust to the community once they’ve completed their prison term,” says Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project. He says New York’s program could serve as a model for other states, including North Carolina. That’s the only other state like New York that charges   and    for all crimes not as juveniles, but as adults. Mauer adds that records in the adult justice system can be harder to seal than in the juvenile system. In fact, adult records about misdemeanors in New York are never sealed. ”You can be 16 years old, you can hop a turnstile, you can get convicted for theft of services, and that will be on your record the rest of your life,” says Laurie Parise, executive director of Youth Represent and one of the attorneys who helped Eduardo apply for Cuomo’s pardon. While many advocates for criminal justice reform hail the pardon program as an important way to help former teen offenders, they also see the need for pardons as a reminder that New York has one of the country’s toughest sentencing laws for teenagers. ”The real solution to this is for New York to raise the age,” says Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to proposals to change state laws so that   and    are tried as juveniles. ”That way kids will be treated as kids and not subjected to the scars of a criminal conviction. They’ll be more likely to be able to stand on their own feet.” Cuomo, a Democrat, supports reform efforts in New York. But lawmakers in the   state Senate have pushed back against recent proposals to raise the age of criminal responsibility, citing concerns about how a change would put more pressure on courts and housing for juvenile offenders. While they wait for a legislative solution, advocates at Youth Represent and other organizations are trying to find more former teen offenders in New York to apply for a second chance in time for the next round of pardons. ”We can’t continue to define young people by the worst mistake they ever made,” Parise, Eduardo’s attorney, says. ”We have to give people a chance.” Eduardo’s still waiting for his chance to become a health educator. Since finishing his prison sentence, he’s completed his associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees. For now, he’s working two jobs to help raise his    daughter. More than a decade later, memories of his arrest and time in prison still motivate him today. ”I tell myself, ’I am better than this.’ I am much better than what a piece of paper or what this judge has sentenced me,” he says. ”I know that this is not who I am.”"
"This has been updated at 10:00 pm ET with Clapper statement,   Donald Trump denounced as ”fake news” Wednesday reports that Russia had compromising information about him before the election. He also acknowledged for the first time that Russia was behind the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee, although he seemed to couch it later in the news conference by saying it ”could have been others.” In his first news conference since last summer, the   additionally said he would be handing over control of his businesses to his sons Donald Jr. and Eric refused once again to release his income tax returns and said his administration would reveal its plan to replace the Affordable Care Act as soon as his nominee for secretary of health and human services, Tom Price, is confirmed by the Senate. Trump said the unverified and unsubstantiated reports about the Russian intelligence were put together by political opponents, whom he called ”sick people.” The reports, he said, were ”a disgrace,” and he vehemently denounced BuzzFeed News, which published a   memo purportedly outlining the Russian intelligence, as ”a failing pile of garbage.” He also denied a question from a CNN reporter, which first broke the story of an intelligence report but did not publish the documents or the lewd details. But Trump didn’t answer a question as to whether his presidential campaign had been in contact with the Russian government, which the report alleged. CNN reporter Jim Acosta noted later on the network that reporters followed up on that point as Trump was heading to the elevators off camera, and Trump said no one ”associated with him or his campaign was in contact with the Russians” during the campaign. Trump was also critical of U. S. intelligence agencies for ”maybe” leaking the report to news organizations, charging that a meeting he had recently with the agencies immediately leaked out even though he had kept it secret from his closest staff. In the evening, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement saying he had spoken with Trump and they agreed the leaks were ”extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.” But Clapper denied the media got the alleged Russian evidence from his agencies: ”I emphasized that this document is not a U. S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.” During the news conference, Trump also talked about the hacking of DNC servers and said, ”I think it was Russia,” but he added ”it could have been others also.” U. S. intelligence publicly stated last October  —   and in congressional hearings and an unclassified report since  —   that the Russian government was to blame for the cyberattack. Trump called hacking ”bad” and said he would tell Russian President Vladimir Putin ”he shouldn’t have done it. I don’t believe he will be doing it more.” But he also said he would consider it ”an asset, not a liability,” if Putin likes him. ”I don’t know if I’ll get along” with the Russian leader, Trump said, ”I hope I do.” Trump also denied taking part in any salacious behavior in a Moscow hotel room, saying he always tells people to be very careful when he travels abroad, because ”you have cameras in the strangest places. You’d better be careful or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television.” Plus, he added, ”Does anyone really believe that story? I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way. Believe me.” Trump held his news conference in the   lobby of Trump Tower in New York, speaking alongside a table piled with manila file folders, which he said were the agreements he has signed giving control of the Trump Organization to his oldest sons. He introduced attorney Sheri Dillon, of the firm Morgan, Lewis  Bockius, who said that at Trump’s request she had designed a structure ”that will completely isolate him” from the management of the company. Trump is conveying leadership and management of the company to his adult sons and longtime Trump executive Allen Weisselberg. Dillon said the three will ”make decisions for the duration of the presidency without any involvement whatsoever” by Trump. Dillon also said the trust agreement ”imposes severe restrictions on new deals. No new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration” of Trump’s presidency. New domestic deals will be allowed, but they will go through ”a vigorous vetting process.” Trump will not be informed of such deals and will only learn of them if he ”reads it in the paper or sees it on TV.” And, she said, Trump will donate to the U. S Treasury all profits made from foreign governments who stay at his hotel. On health care, Trump said ”the easiest thing” would be to let the Affordable Care Act ”implode” this year, because of increased premium rates. He said Obamacare ”is the Democrats’ problem,” but that he will offer a plan to repeal and replace that is ”gonna take the problem off the shelves for them.” The plan will be ”far less expensive and far better,” he said, and will be submitted almost simultaneously as his HHS secretary is confirmed. Trump also revealed he will be nominating David Shulkin as secretary of the Veterans Administration. Shulkin is currently the No. 2 at the troubled agency and would be one of the first holdovers from the Obama administration. Trump called him an incredibly gifted doctor. Trump also took a shot at the U. S. pharmaceutical industry, which he charged ”has been disastrous.” He said drugmakers have been leaving the country left and right and that new bidding procedures are needed for the industry ”because they’re getting away with murder.” Trump’s comments caused drug stocks to fall on Wall Street."
"For the first time in 167 days,   Donald Trump held a   news conference. NPR’s politics team, with help from reporters and editors across the newsroom,   the speech. Portions of the transcript with added analysis are underlined in yellow, followed by context and fact checks below. Note: The transcript was updated throughout the press conference. While we are working to correct errors, it may contain discrepancies and typographical errors."
"Out of nowhere, a shocking video appeared on a Russian TV news program late one evening in March 1999. A surveillance tape showed a naked,   man who resembled Russia’s top prosecutor, Yuri Skuratov, cavorting with two unclothed young women. Neither was his wife. The ensuing scandal included a press conference by the head of Russia’s FSB security service at the time, Vladimir Putin, who made clear it was Skuratov in the video. Skuratov soon lost his job, not to mention his dignity. President Boris Yeltsin was apparently impressed with Putin’s handling of this episode. Yeltsin wanted to get rid of Skuratov, who was believed to be looking into Kremlin corruption. Several months after the video surfaced, Yeltsin named Putin to be prime minister, and a few months after that, Putin took over as president. The Skuratov case is a leading example of what Russians call kompromat, or compromising material used to discredit rivals in politics or business or just settle personal scores. From the Soviet playbook, Kompromat is straight from the old Soviet playbook and has often involved photographs and videos  —   real or fake. Russians often use it for internal battles, though it is also deployed to blackmail foreign diplomats serving in Russia. A diplomat lured into an affair might be willing to quietly cooperate with the Russia government rather than having a career and marriage upended. Now there are unverified claims that Russia may have compromising material on   Donald Trump. NPR and other news organizations have reported on the existence of the allegations since the story broke Tuesday evening. NPR has not reported the details since they are unproven. Trump denied the reports in a news conference Wednesday. The Kremlin also issued a denial, with Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov stating flatly: ”The Kremlin does not collect compromising materials.” While claims and counterclaims are still flying, what’s clear is that Russian kompromat does continue to thrive in the   era, aided by the march of cyber technology. Kompromat is considered part of the larger Russian espionage arsenal that also includes disinformation, fake news and computer hacking. U. S. intelligence agencies have blamed the Russians for hacking into Democratic Party emails to harm Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign. Russia has denied this. A long history, Russia even has a website, kompromat. ru, where anyone can pay the site to post embarrassing stories. Many are about alleged corruption and have already been published elsewhere but have not received much attention. The businessman who created the website, Sergey Gorshkov, said he came up with the idea from the Skuratov sex scandal back in 1999. He said his operation was purely business, not politics. In some cases, the site has provided the Russian government a convenient outlet when it wanted to leak material that would undermine a critic. However, the site also published allegations against figures in the Kremlin and the Russian government, angering many powerful officials. The Russian government, meanwhile, is still deeply involved in kompromat, according to analysts. Last year, a sex tape of opposition politician Mikhail Kasyanov was broadcast on   television. Kasyanov once served as prime minister to President Putin before turning against him. The tape came out five months before parliamentary elections, a disclosure seen as harming Kasyanov and his party in the polls. In other recent cases, Russian operatives have been suspected or accused of placing child pornography on the personal computers of individuals they were attempting to discredit. Russian Vladimir Bukovsky, 73, a longtime critic of Soviet and Russian leaders, now lives in Britain, where he faces charges related to child pornography. But the case was delayed while investigators checked to see whether the images on Bukovsky’s computer were placed there by an outside party, The New York Times reported last month, citing other similar cases. ”The whole affair is Kafkaesque,” Bukovsky told the newspaper. ”You not only have to prove you are not guilty but that you are innocent.”"
"Updated at 9:24 a. m. ET on Wednesday, Top U. S. intelligence officials have briefed leaders in Washington about an explosive  —   but unverified  —   document that alleges collusion between Russia and   Donald Trump, NPR has learned. The brief, which NPR has seen but not independently verified, was given by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain to FBI Director James Comey on Dec. 9. Details from it have been part of presentations by Comey and other intelligence leaders to Trump, President Obama and key leaders in Congress. On Tuesday night, Trump and his attorney named in the report separately characterized the document as untrue. Without mentioning the report directly, Trump tweeted, ”FAKE NEWS   A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” Wednesday, a Kremlin spokesman said the document was an ”absolute fabrication.” Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had no compromising material on   Donald Trump and that the document was a hoax intended to further damage U. S.  relations. Trump has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday  —   his first since one in July in which he quipped that Russia should hack materials related to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The alleged intelligence document appears likely to dominate the upcoming session.  NPR is not detailing the contents of the brief because it remains unverified, but it describes a concerted effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to cultivate a relationship with Trump and his camp. The document, which describes information provided by Russian government and other sources, details behavior by Trump that could leave him open to blackmail, as well as alleged secret meetings between Trump aides and Russian officials called to discuss the campaign against Clinton and potential new business relationships. The U. S. intelligence services declined to comment on Tuesday evening. Members of Congress on the Intelligence and Armed Services committees also declined to comment. Obama told NBC News on Tuesday in an interview ahead of his farewell address that he hadn’t seen the news reports and wouldn’t comment on classified information. He reminded Lester Holt that he ordered the investigation released Friday of Russia’s meddling in the presidential election and that the U. S. needed to continue strengthening its  . ”My expectation and my hope is that this work will continue after I leave that Congress, in possession of both the classified and unclassified reports, that the   and his administration  —   in possession of both the classified and unclassified reports  —   will take it seriously and now get to work reinforcing those mechanisms that we can use to protect our democracy.” Members of Trump’s camp issued their own denials separately from Trump. ”Once again these reports have no documentation,” Trump confidant Roger Stone told NPR. ”So far we have ’assessments’ and ’briefings.’ The special report prepared for Trump even noted that no evidence was included and that ’such documents are so top secret they must remain confidential.’ ” Attorney Michael Cohen, who is a key figure in the allegations detailed in the report, denied to The Atlantic on Tuesday evening that he had made a trip to the Czech Republic that it describes. ”I’m telling you emphatically that I’ve not been to Prague, I’ve never been to Czech, I’ve not been to Russia,” as reporter Rosie Gray quoted him on Twitter. Cohen posted a photo of his passport on his own Twitter account with the hashtag ”#FakeNews.” The timing of the appearance of the dossier is significant  —   following a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday about Russia’s campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election and ahead of Trump’s planned news conference. Democrats on Tuesday urged the FBI to reveal whether it is conducting any investigation into the Trump camp’s connections to Russia, but Comey rebuffed them. Separately, Sen. Al Franken,  . pressed Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee to become attorney general, about what he knew of Trump’s dealings with Russia. Sessions said he wasn’t aware of any activities and couldn’t respond. The dossier, which originated with a former British intelligence officer, does not contain the standard caveats or guidance about levels of ”confidence” that are common in U. S. intelligence community documents. It brought another twist in the sometimes surreal story about Trump’s historic political success. And it followed a hearing in which senators and intelligence leaders described the dangers of foreign mischief in the political systems of the U. S. and its allies. The   dossier could be a quintessential example. If it’s genuine, it tops what Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and other top intelligence bosses called an unprecedented spike in Russian meddling inside the U. S. If it’s phony, or parts of it are fabricated, it’s yet another turn in the hall of mirrors in which American voters have found themselves since Trump exploded onto the political scene, and debunking it could vindicate repeated denials by Trump and his aides that they have had improper relationships with Moscow. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was forced to resign after information became public about his ties to   leaders in Ukraine, which Putin invaded in 2014. Russian Foreign Ministry officials boasted in the press about their contacts with Trump’s camp. Manafort, for his part, denied the allegations. ”I have never had any ties to Russia or Putin,” Manafort told NPR in a text message. ”The references to me regarding speaking to [former Trump foreign policy adviser] Carter Page and Michael Cohen are totally wrong and not true.” Putin sent Trump a telegram after his election congratulating him on his win and reciprocating the overtures he had made about healing the relationship between the two nations. NPR correspondents Mary Louise Kelly, Carrie Johnson, Sarah McCammon and Tamara Keith contributed to this report."
"A federal judge in South Carolina formally sentenced Dylann Roof to death on Wednesday, one day after a jury recommended that he be executed for murdering nine people in a Charleston church. Under federal sentencing laws, the death penalty can be imposed only if all 12 jurors agree on it, and the judge cannot overrule the jury’s decision. Roof is the first person to be sentenced to death in a federal trial that included hate crimes charges, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Since 1988, three of the 81 people sentenced to death have been executed by the federal government. After he was sentenced, Roof asked for new attorneys, saying he did not trust his defense team, which includes multiple experienced capital punishment defense lawyers. During the guilt portion of the trial, Roof’s lawyers actively defended him, but Roof chose to represent himself during the penalty phase, with his attorneys providing backup counsel. U. S. District Judge Richard Gergel denied the request and gave Roof 14 days to file an appeal if he wishes. On Tuesday, lead attorney David Bruck suggested in a statement that his team intends to appeal the sentence. Before he read the sentence, Gergel opened the floor to dozens of family members and friends of those who died in June 2015. They addressed Roof directly, taking the stand and turning to face the    who kept his eyes down, according to reporters in the courtroom. Many of them asked Roof to look at them. He did not. All expressed anguish and frustration. Some described their hatred of Roof. Others voiced forgiveness. ”Dylann! Dylann! I know that you can hear me,” said Jamie Scott, whose nephew Tywanza Sanders was killed. ”I wish you would look at me, boy, but I know that you can hear me,” she was quoted as saying by Charleston’s Post and Courier. ” ’How dare you sit here every day looking   and acting like you did nothing wrong,’ ” the newspaper said Ashland Temoney yelled at Roof, who murdered Temoney’s aunt, DePayne Middleton. ”You are the biggest coward I have ever seen in my life,” Temoney told Roof. Felicia Sanders lost both her son and her aunt, Susie Jackson, in the attack, but she herself survived. ”I cannot shut my eyes to pray,” she said Wednesday. ”Even when I try, I cannot. I have to keep my eye on everyone that is around me.” ”Yes, I forgive you,” Sanders continued. ”That was the easiest thing I had to do. . .. But you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves. May God have mercy on your soul,” the Post and Courier reported. South Carolina Public Radio’s Alexandra Olgin said that family members in the courtroom embraced after the jury recommended the sentence on Tuesday. Olgin reported: ”Melvin Graham, the brother of victim Cynthia Graham Hurd, says there are too many senseless shootings in this country. ’I just want this to stop. I really do. I’m tired. Every time I hear about a shooting I cry. We have to stop this.’ ”Graham says he supports the death sentence for his sister’s killer. ”During the trial prosecutors repeatedly showed through Roof’s writings how much he hated black people. ” ’If Dylann Roof was named Abdul, we’d call him a terrorist and say he’d been radicalized. And he was radicalized! But not in the way some people think. Radicalized himself to believe this thing, and felt that he had to act on it, just like any other terrorist.’ ” As The   has reported, Roof told investigators that his beliefs about race were shaped by things he read on the Internet after an initial Google search for information about Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot and killed in 2012. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church member Marsha Spencer said the shooting left her ”broken.” ”What happened to you, Dylann?” she asked, according to a tweet by the Post and Courier’s Abigail Darlington, who was inside the courtroom. Before the final phase of jury selection in November, the judge ordered an evaluation of Roof’s competency to stand trial after his defense team brought up concerns. The competency evaluation was submitted to the parties in the case, but it has not been released to the public. Records from a hearing about that evaluation have also remained sealed  —   the judge believed the contents could potentially prejudice the jury  —   but are scheduled to be made public once the sentencing phase is over. Roof is facing separate murder charges brought by the state of South Carolina, which is also seeking the death penalty."
"Alt. Latino’s corner of the Latin music world gets better and better every year: The music continually explodes any idea of genre restrictions and constantly surprises. And it looks like 2017 is not going to disappoint. On this week’s show, we’ve got previews of stunning new records from familiar names (Cafe Tacvba, Dayme Arocena) and folks you should know about (Ani Cordero, Gabriel Garzon Montano). They sing in Spanish, they sing in English, they come from across Latin America and the U. S. The styles are as different as the cultures from which they come. What they have in common is that they redefine the notion of ”Latin music” in a way that almost makes the term obsolete. Almost. There’s still something that ties them all together and makes their music Latin: sabor. Listen in this week and hear it for yourselves. "
"Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson had a tense confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, clashing even with Republican members over his views on Russia, international human rights violations and the lobbying and   of Exxon Mobil when he was CEO. The    was an unconventional pick for   Donald Trump, having no former government service but plenty of international business experience. It’s that work with foreign governments, particularly Russia, that’s come under scrutiny. In 2013, the Kremlin awarded Tillerson the Russian ”Order of Friendship.” Predictably, many of the committee’s questions had to do with Tillerson’s views on how he would deal with Russia. Trump has expressed unusual admiration for the country and its president, Vladimir Putin, and openly desired a better relationship, even as U. S. intelligence has found that the country engaged in cyberattacks to meddle in the U. S. elections. Sen. Marco Rubio,  . had particularly sharp questions for Tillerson and sounded at times like he could be leaning toward opposing Tillerson’s nomination. At several points during Tillerson’s testimony, committee Chairman Bob Corker,  . interjected to try to help clarify his answers. Here are top moments from the   hearing: Aggressively pushed by Rubio in his initial round of questioning, Tillerson wouldn’t label Putin as a war criminal over the Russian military’s alleged involvement in the Syrian civil war in targeting and killing civilians. ”Those are very, very serious charges to make and I’d want to have much more information before reaching that conclusion,” Tillerson said. He also wouldn’t say whether he believes the Kremlin is behind the killing of journalists and Putin critics, saying he would need to see more classified information to make a determination. In a second round, Rubio pushed him on whether he viewed the Philippines and its president, Rodrigo Duterte, as human rights violators, but Tillerson dismissed news reports on atrocities there and in Saudi Arabia and its treatment of women. Citing his background as an engineer, Tillerson pushed back, saying he would simply need more information to make such a broad pronouncement and that, ”I’m going to act on factual information. I’m not going to act on what people write about in the newspapers.” ”My interests are the same as yours. Our interests are not different, senator,” Tillerson told Rubio. ”There seems to be some misunderstanding that I see the world through a different lens. I do not. I share all the same values you share and want the same things, the world over, in terms of freedom.” But overall, Tillerson still sounded a more hawkish tone against Russia than the incoming commander in chief he would serve. ”We aren’t likely to ever be friends. . .. Our value systems are starkly different,” Tillerson said of Russia, adding that, ”we need to move Russia from being an adversary always to being a partner sometimes.” The idea that Tillerson was in a unique position to be an intermediary to the country and smooth over relations, while also projecting U. S. strength and ideals, was something that witnesses speaking in support of his confirmation told the committee in introductory remarks. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who served in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, called Tillerson the ”right person at the right time” to work on U. S.  relations. Former Sen. Sam Nunn,  . an advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, said Tillerson’s past business relationships with Russia and with Putin were ”assets, not liabilities.” Tillerson also sounded a different tone from Trump on how he would have dealt with Russian aggression into Crimea. ”That was a taking of territory that was not theirs,” Tillerson said, adding that he would have recommended that Ukraine use its military assets to line up along the eastern border and that the U. S. and NATO should have also helped with supplies and air surveillance. Russia would have understood and responded to such a ”powerful response,” Tillerson said. Asked whether he believed U. S. intelligence reports that Russia was involved in cyberattacks intended to meddle in the U. S. elections, Tillerson said he had not seen the classified information but that the public report ”clearly is troubling.” He said it was a ”fair assumption” that Putin was directly involved. There were two more big breaks from Tillerson with his future boss. When asked about a potential ban on Muslims coming into the U. S. which Trump proposed during the campaign, Tillerson said he did ”not support a   rejection of any particular group of people.” And he also rejected the idea of any type of registry of Muslims in the U. S. too, saying, ”[You] would need to have a lot more information on how such an approach would even be constructed.” He also said he didn’t oppose the   Partnership trade deal, which Trump frequently railed against on the campaign trail and has pledged to abandon. On the Paris climate accord, Tillerson said the U. S. would be ”better served by being at that table than leaving that table” Trump has said he would pull the deal. The   chief diplomat was pressed multiple times on whether he believed in the efficacy of sanctions, especially when it came to Russia. As with Crimea, he said he believed there needed to be additional consequences, backing some type of military action along the border. But he also said that ”[when sanctions] are imposed, they, by their design, are going to harm American businesses,” although he did admit that they could be a ”powerful and important tool.” He said that at Exxon he had never personally lobbied against sanctions and that the oil company ”to my knowledge” had never ”directly lobbied” against sanctions. However, Politico reported last month that Exxon Mobil had in fact lobbied against a bill that would have made it harder for Trump to lift sanctions against Russia. After that admission, Democrats entered into the record evidence of the oil company’s registration to lobby on the sanctions, but Tillerson maintained he still had no knowledge of the actions. ”Were we lobbying for the sanctions or lobbying against the sanctions?” he asked Sen. Robert Menendez,  . J. during one line of questioning. ”I know you weren’t lobbying for the sanctions,” Menendez replied, incredulously. Tillerson later said that the company had ”participated in understanding how the sanctions are going to be constructed” in Russia, and his former company later tweeted out a statement to back that up. On other issues of what Exxon Mobil had engaged in  —   a company where he worked for 40 years  —   Tillerson also said he didn’t recall whether it had done business with Iran, Syria and Sudan. Tillerson also expressed his belief in climate change, but he wouldn’t answer whether he believed humans were contributing to it. ”The risk of climate change does exist and the consequences of it could be serious enough that action should be taken,” Tillerson said. But asked by Corker whether it was worsened by human activity, Tillerson demurred, saying that ”the increase in the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are having an effect” but that the ”ability to predict that effect is very limited.” Sen. Tim Kaine,  . his party’s nominee for vice president against Trump, also pushed Tillerson on reports that Exxon Mobil had misled the public over climate change. Tillerson initially dodged, but Kaine pushed on: ”Do you lack the knowledge to answer my question or are you refusing to answer my question?” ”A little of both,” Tillerson quipped."
"Update: This post was updated on February 16, 2017, and will continue to be updated as other appointments are made. At a Thursday press conference, Donald Trump named one more person to his list of cabinet nominees: Alexander Acosta, dean of the Florida International University College of Law and former member of the National Labor Relations Board, is now nominated to head the Labor Department. He is taking the place of Andrew Puzder, who dropped out of the process this week in part due to questions about his past employment of person in the country illegally (including taxes paid in that instance) and personal life. NPR is tracking Trump’s Cabinet as it grows, counting up the diversity and experience of his appointees, as well as a few specifics they might have in their resumes. So here’s what Trump’s Cabinet looks like by the numbers. Acosta’s nomination means that 21 of 22   positions (not counting the vice president) will have nominees  —   the CEA still doesn’t have a nomination for its chairman. For the sake of    comparisons, we’ve compared all of those 22 posts across five presidents’ initial Cabinets (for Trump we only count everything as a percentage of 21, as he has only chosen 21 people, and for Reagan and Clinton, we only count 21 appointees, as there was no Department of Homeland Security during their presidencies). Trump’s Cabinet breaks with a trend toward diversity, Of the 20 people he has chosen thus far, Trump’s Cabinet has 15 white men. That’s roughly in line with Ronald Reagan’s initial Cabinet. However, it’s also a swing away from a trend toward diversity over the last few presidents. President Obama’s Cabinet in particular gained notice for its relative lack of white men. To draw a line between white and nonwhite, we used Census Bureau race and ethnicity categories, though unlike the census, we counted all Hispanics as nonwhite (the Census Bureau counts Hispanic as an ethnicity and not a race, meaning a person can be white and Hispanic). Alexander Acosta is the first Latino appointee to the Trump cabinet. The Census Bureau’s system undersells diversity in some ways, though. For example, Obama Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, George W. Bush Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, and Clinton HHS Secretary Donna Shalala are all  . In the census, that counts as white, though some   disagree (and the Census Bureau itself is considering adding that category). Furthermore, it’s not that the trend toward diversity has been as steady as the above chart seems to show after all, these are just the presidents’ first Cabinets. President Obama took some criticism for a less diverse circle of advisers in his second term. Diversity can mean bringing different perspectives to the administration. Of course, white men can be empathetic and   as National Urban League head Marc Morial recently told PBS NewsHour, but many Americans also look to the Cabinet as a sign of whether they are  . ”The question is, do people feel their voices are heard? That’s really important, that communities feel someone is at the table with my point of view,” he said. Trump has chosen the outsider Cabinet, Of course, there are other types of diversity  —   geographic, socioeconomic and experience, for example. And while Trump’s team has been criticized for its economic profile (i. e. it includes multiple billionaires) it does break with usual Cabinet norms by being relatively light on established government figures. We’ve attempted to quantify this by classifying each Cabinet member by his or her most prominent jobs prior to joining the Cabinet (for example, Colin Powell had spent much of his working life in the military before joining George W. Bush’s Cabinet). This required more than a few judgment calls  —   Glenn Hubbard (George W. Bush’s CEA chair) had spent two years at the Treasury, but we decided he was primarily an academic, as he spent many more years in that field. Some of these are arguable: Was Hillary Clinton’s career more prominently in ”government”  —   that is, her time as senator  —   or as a first lady (which we’d classify as ”other,” a category that includes people who are in politics but are not officeholders, like Reince Priebus)? We made her one of the few listed as more than one, as she straddles the line between the two worlds. Here we can see not only whose Cabinets were particularly heavy with people from the public sector (Obama) or the business world (Reagan, Trump) but also where different presidents have broken with tradition. Trump, like most of the last five presidents, will have someone from the business world heading the Small Business Administration. However, he will be the only president out of these to have a defense secretary (Mattis) with a chiefly military background. True, Donald Rumsfeld had been in the military, but afterward he made a career of working in government, while Mattis remained in the military through retirement. For a more holistic count of these Cabinet secretaries’ careers, here is a breakdown of four different distinctions that Cabinet secretaries commonly hold. We counted up the initial Cabinet members who have had any experience in the military or government (at any level, from city to federal) as well as those who have served as CEOs or have earned Ph. D.’s. (This means these numbers will differ from those in the above table. Someone known best for government service may also have served in the military or have a Ph. D. or have been a CEO, for example  —   or even all four.) Once again, there were some judgment calls  —   does serving as the ”CEO” of Chicago Public Schools  —   as Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan did  —   really count as being a CEO? (We decided no we’re trying to count a type of business experience here, and public schools are a government entity. A similar but tougher call went into deciding that Timothy Geithner’s time as New York Fed CEO didn’t count either.) One other judgment call: we drew the line at Ph. D. s and excluded professional degrees, meaning that someone like Ben Carson, who of course studied extensively to be a neurosurgeon, would not be counted. There is also some debate about whether someone holding a law degree (a J. D. or juris doctor) should be considered a ”doctor.” For simplicity’s sake, we decided to draw our border at Ph. D. This is not meant to imply that these are the only four ways someone might be qualified to serve as a Cabinet secretary. Rather, these are four ways of measuring what type of a Cabinet a president has. A Cabinet that’s relatively heavy with academics (Obama, Clinton) might work and think differently than does a Cabinet with more CEOs (Trump, George W. Bush)."
"The U. S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in a dispute that advocates describe as the most important case involving public school special education in three decades. At issue is whether federal law requires public schools to provide more than the bare minimum in special services for children with disabilities. With millions of children qualifying for these services, the court’s ruling could have a profound effect. In the 1970s, Congress found that most children with disabilities were treated as   in the public schools, either ”totally excluded” or left to sit ”idly” in regular classrooms until they were old enough to ”drop out.” In 1975 Congress passed a federal law, since then strengthened multiple times, which requires school districts to provide an individually designed public education for each child with a disability so that he or she can learn with peers and achieve his or her individual potential. In exchange, the federal government provides some of the funds for these services. The question before the Supreme Court on Wednesday was what level of services the schools must provide. Must it be the bare minimum, meaning just enough for the student to show what the lower courts called just above ”trivial” progress, or is it something more? In an interview after the argument, Stanford Law professor Jeffrey Fisher, representing an autistic boy from Colorado and his parents, argued for something significantly more. ”The school district here is saying, so long as we give barely more than a de minimus benefit, just we teach you a little bit of something, that is enough,” Fisher said. ”We think that’s a recipe for   citizenship.” But Francisco Negrón, chief legal officer for the National School Boards Association, said that if the Supreme Court tightens the standard, it could cost some school districts lots of money. ”Congress promised basically 40 percent funding years ago, and it’s only historically been funded at 15 percent,” he observed. Inside the courtroom, Fisher argued that the standard specified by Congress in its most recent amendments requires sufficient services so that children with disabilities can keep up with their peers. Chief Justice John Roberts balked, noting that in this very case, the student’s disability was so severe that he could not keep up, even with the help of an aide. Fisher replied that when the school refused to provide more specialized services, the parents sent the boy to a private school for children with autism. When he made marked progress there, the parents returned to the school district, asking that some of the same expertise be provided in the public school. When the school refused, that’s when the parents sued the school district for the annual $70, 000 private school tuition. Justice Anthony Kennedy focused on what would be reasonable for a school district to pay. Fisher said most services do not cost much at all, but he conceded there are some extreme cases  —   like a child with a ventilator  —   where the costs are $30, 000 or $40, 000. Nonetheless, Fisher contended, costs ”can’t trump” what the law requires. Justice Stephen Breyer didn’t like the idea of a    standard. ”I foresee taking the money that ought to go to the children and spending it on lawsuits and lawyers,” he said. ”That is what’s actually bothering me.” Representing the school board, lawyer Neal Katyal maintained that Congress has not established a specific standard for compliance with the law rather, that it has established procedures for designing individual plans for each child. But, interjected Justice Elena Kagan, when there is a dispute, if the standard that has to be met is ”so low . .. so easy to meet,” then the question is whether the student is receiving a free appropriate education. ”You’re reading [the law] as requiring some benefit,” Chief Justice Roberts said. The other side, he continued, changing his inflection, ”is reading it as saying some benefit.” ”It makes a difference,” he observed. After all, Roberts said, a school district could provide five minutes a day special instruction, and that’s some benefit. But, he added, the law says ”significant, meaningful, whatever. It’s more than simply de minimus.” Justice Samuel Alito called all this ”a blizzard of words” meaning nothing. But by the end of the argument, there appeared to be a majority of justices willing to put more bite into the guarantee of a free appropriate public education for children with disabilities."
"Colin Ozeki, 17, doesn’t like to sugarcoat how autism spectrum disorder has affected his interactions with others, his emotions and his own  . He sees it as an issue to confront, something about himself to work on and improve in order to fully participate in life around him. He appreciates the adage, ”It’s a difference, not a disability.” But he disagrees with it when it comes to himself. ”I don’t think I would be at this place that I’m at right now if it weren’t for people acknowledging the idea that I had some kind of problem per se,” says Colin. ”I might have just been this confused person forever, and somewhat underdeveloped.” We know a lot more about children with autism spectrum disorders than we did just a decade ago, but nationwide students with autism are enrolling in college in relatively low numbers. Colin, now a senior at Millennium Brooklyn High School, has been part of a program in the New York City schools aiming to change that. It’s called ASD Nest (ASD refers to students with autism spectrum disorder) and he’s been with it his entire school career. A key underlying philosophy of the program is that education  —   the classroom  —   provides the most effective treatment for autism. The program, run jointly by the city’s Department of Education and NYU Nest Support Project, places students with autism who are capable of doing   work in classrooms with their   peers. The program came about in 2003 in response to poor academic outcomes among students with autism, including those like Colin, who were academically strong. Very few of these students were graduating high school, attending college and having careers. Nationwide, these numbers are improving, as public schools work to meet students needs and as more colleges create programs to support students with autism. Still, a small minority of these young people attend   colleges. Numbers are even low compared to students with other disabilities, such as learning disabilities or   issues. Colin is part of the first wave of students to participate in ASD Nest from kindergarten through high school. He benefited from a   model that had two teachers in the classroom, intensive behavioral support and extra help with social skills. He said that people did not begin to make sense to him until middle school. He struggled with behavioral outbursts, which are now rare. ”I don’t think very many students are being thrown in the hallway because they are stabbing themselves because of a schedule change,” he says with candor and dose of humor. When he started the Nest program, it was only in its 2nd year, at one New York City school. Nearly 15 years later, it’s grown to 39 schools, serving more than one thousand students. And there is now much more joy in Colin’s school life. He participates in class discussions and has true friends. He’s on track this year to graduate with an advanced diploma."
"There’s a new jungle Jedi out there. Scientists who discovered a new primate, which lives in eastern Myanmar and southwestern China, are such big Star Wars fans, they named the ape after Luke Skywalker. They also chose the name, skywalker hoolock gibbon, because the Chinese characters mean ”Heaven’s movement,” according to the BBC. The new species is also known as the Gaoligong hoolock gibbon, named for Mt. Gaoligong on the border between China and Myanmar. The word ”hoolock” refers to the   of gibbon, which live across much of Asia. Hoolocks are endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which keeps track of species around the world. The researchers estimate there are fewer than 200 skywalker hoolock gibbons living in China. So, what sets the jedi ape apart from his fellow gibbons? ”Notably, the shape of the eyebrows and the color of the eye rings,” write the authors in a paper describing their findings, published Jan. 10 in the American Journal of Primatology. According to the paper, all hoolock gibbons have white eyebrows and some have white beards, but the skywalker hoolock gibbon has distinctive downturned brows  —   they tend to make the fluffy animal look pensive  —   that stand out against the black fur of the head. The light (brow) against the dark, one might say. The paper also includes a full genetic comparison showing the skywalker species is genetically distinct from other hoolock species. Upon learning of the new species, actor Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, tweeted ”So proud of this! First the Pez dispenser, then the Underoos  U. S. postage stamp. .. now this! #GorillaMyDreams #SimianSkywalker #JungleJedi.”"
"When Noel Anaya was just a year old, he and his five brothers and sisters were placed in the California foster care system. He has spent nearly all of his life in that system and has just turned 21. In California, that’s the age when people in foster care ”age out” of the system and lose the benefits the system provides. That process becomes official at a final court hearing. Anaya, along with Youth Radio, got rare permission to record the proceeding, where he read a letter he wrote about his experience in the foster care system.  Walking into court for my very last time as a foster youth, I feel like I’m getting a divorce from a system that I’ve been in a relationship with almost my entire life. It’s bittersweet because I’m losing guaranteed stipends for food and housing, as well as access to my social workers and my lawyer. But on the other hand, I’m relieved to finally get away from a system that ultimately failed me on its biggest promise. That one day it would find me a family who would love me. Little things, like when my judge Shawna Schwarz mispronounces my name, serve as a constant reminder that, ”Hey, I’m just a number.” I often come away feeling powerless and anonymous in the foster care system. ”Well, I’m reviewing my notes and it looks like the first time I got involved in your case was back in 2003,” Schwarz says. ”You’ve been in the system a long time.” I don’t have any pictures of my five siblings and me together as babies. Not a single one. Which makes Throwback Thursdays (#TBT) a little challenging. My biological parents weren’t ready to be parents. My father was abusive. Eventually Child Protective Services got involved, and my siblings and I went into the foster care system. We were separated and shuffled between foster homes, group homes, shelters, and for at least one of my siblings, incarceration. That’s why it was really important to me to make a statement in court, going on the record about how the foster care system failed my siblings and me. ”You have been pretty much one of our more successful young adults. Is there any advice you’d give us?” Schwarz says. I clear my throat. To whom it may concern. This is the year that I divorce you, your grey hands can no longer hurt me, your grey hands can never overpower me, your gray hands can never tell me that you love me because it’s too late. . ..  I use ”gray hands” to describe the foster care system, because it never felt warm or human. It’s institutional. Opposite the sort of unconditional love I imagine that parents try to show their kids. Your gray hands just taught me how to survive in a world. We never learned how to love ourselves unconditionally. I’ve been with multiple foster families, I’ve been with multiple shelters. How does a person like me not end up with a family. . .. In an ideal world, being a foster kid is supposed to be temporary. When it’s stable and appropriate, the preference is to reunite kids with their parents or family members. Adoption is the next best option. I used to dream of it. Having a mom and dad, siblings to play with . .. a dog. But when I hit 12, I realized that I was getting old. That adoption probably would never happen for me. In the system, I constantly had new social workers, lawyers, and case managers, which left me vulnerable. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized one of the main causes for the turnover was because of low wages and overflowing caseloads. Even my lawyer is currently juggling 130 other clients. At 21 you happily kick us off to the curb and say good luck I wish you well, I wish you the best but don’t come back because we can’t take you in. I’ve seen too many of my people give up on the educational system. . ..  I had hoped to finish college by the time I aged out of foster care, but I’m still in my junior year. I’m committed to getting my bachelor’s, despite the odds being terrible. According to the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education, only somewhere between 2 and 9 percent of former foster kids complete their college degree. I hope that you hear my words. And I hope that you listen to my signal of distress. I thank you for giving me closure. Thank you.  As the judge reads her final orders closing out my case, I promise myself that I’ll leave all the rage I feel about the foster care system inside the courtroom. That I won’t carry that hate and frustration with me for the rest of my life. There’s one more thing I need before I leave the courtroom  ” for the judge to bring the gavel down on this chapter of my life. ”Is that it?” I ask. ”No hammer?” ”You want me to do the gavel?” the judge says. ”One time please.” ” Alright, I’ll do the gavel,” Schwarz says. ”You know we never do that in real life.” I felt goosebumps when the gavel slapped down on my judge’s desk. Happy because, I’m no longer cared for by a system that was never that good at actually caring for me. And I’m anxious, too, about what life might be like next. This story was produced by Youth Radio. You can learn about how children journey through the foster care system at their website."
"The outcome of the    Obamacare debate could affect more than you might think, depending on just how the GOP congressional majority pursues its goal. Beyond the Affordable Care Act’s marquee achievements like guaranteeing health coverage for people with   conditions and allowing children to stay on parents’ plans until age 26, the roughly   law created a host of other provisions that affect the health of nearly every American. Some of these measures are evident every day. Some enjoy broad support, even though people often don’t always realize they spring from the statute. Here’s a sampling of sleeper provisions that could potentially land on the   floor: 1. Calorie counts at restaurants and   chains, Feeling hungry? The law tries to give you more information about what that burger or muffin will cost you in terms of calories, part of an effort to combat the ongoing obesity epidemic. Under the ACA, most restaurants and fast food chains with at least 20 stores must post calorie counts of their menu items. Several states, including New York, already had similar rules before the law. Although there was some pushback, the rule had industry support, possibly because posting calories was seen as less onerous than such things as taxes on sugary foods or beverages. The final rule went into effect in December after a   delay. One thing is still not clear: Does simply seeing that a particular muffin has more than 400 calories cause consumers to choose carrot sticks instead? Results are mixed. One large   done before the law went into effect didn’t show a significant reduction in calorie consumption, although the authors concluded that menu labeling is ”a relatively   education strategy that may lead consumers to purchase slightly fewer calories.” 2. Private   pumping space at work    but going back to work? The law requires employers to provide women break time to express milk for up to a year after giving birth and provide someplace other than a restroom to do so in private. In addition, most health plans must offer   support and equipment, such as pumps, without a patient copayment. 3. Limits on surprise medical bills from ER visits, If you find yourself in an emergency room, short on cash, uninsured or not sure if your insurance covers costs at that hospital, the Affordable Care Act provides some limited assistance. If you are in a hospital that is not part of your insurer’s network, the law requires all health plans to charge consumers the same copayments or   for    emergency care as they do for hospitals within their networks. Still, the hospital could ”balance bill” you for its costs, including ER care, that exceed what your insurer reimburses it. If it’s a nonprofit hospital, and about 78 percent of all hospitals are, the law requires it to post online a written financial assistance policy, spelling out whether it offers free or discounted care and the eligibility requirements for such programs. While not prescribing any particular set of eligibility requirements, the law requires hospitals to charge lower rates to patients who are eligible for their financial assistance programs. That’s compared with their gross charges, also known as chargemaster rates. 4. Community health support from nonprofit hospitals, The health law also requires nonprofit hospitals to justify the billions of dollars in tax exemptions they receive by documenting how they go about trying to improve the health of the community around them. Every three years, these hospitals have to perform a community needs assessment for the area the hospital serves. They also have to develop strategies to meet these needs and update them annually. The hospitals then must provide documentation as part of their annual reporting to the Internal Revenue Service. Failure to comply could leave them liable for a $50, 000 penalty. 5. A woman’s right to choose her   Most insurance plans must allow women to seek care from an   without having to get a referral from a primary care physician. While the majority of states already had such protections in place, those laws did not apply to   plans, which are the type often offered by large employers. The health law extended the rules to all new plans. Proponents say direct access makes it easier for women to seek not only reproductive health care, but also screening for such things as high blood pressure or cholesterol. 6. Expanded therapy coverage for children with autism, Advocates for children with autism and people with degenerative diseases argued that many insurance plans did not provide care their families needed. That’s because insurers would cover rehabilitation to help people regain functions they had lost, such as walking again after a stroke, but not care needed to either gain functions patients never had, such as speech therapy for a child who never learned how to talk, or to maintain a patient’s current level of function. The Affordable Care Act requires plans to offer coverage for such treatments, dubbed habilitative care, as part of the essential health benefits in plans sold to individuals and small groups. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"When Donald Trump won the presidential election, he made a pledge to every citizen: that he would be president for all Americans. In the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, we’re going to hear about some of the communities that make up this nation, from the people who know them best, in our series Finding America. Gabriel Otero’s family has lived in Tucson, Ariz. for five generations. The region about 70 miles from Mexico has a complicated history. Lots of people have called it home. Otero is both Chicano and a member of an indigenous tribe, the Pascua Yaqui. At the Catholic Mission San Xavier del Bac, you can see this blending of Tucson’s heritage. Indigenous people, Latinos and people of European ancestry all worship there. It was founded more than 300 years ago, when the area belonged to Spain. Later, it became part of Mexico and finally the United States. For Otero, it is a sacred place. ”If someone’s ill, we visit ’em,” Otero says. ”If someone’s hungry, we feed ’em. That’s just our culture. It’s native, Hispanic, Mexican, Chicano. Our culture is very colorful, and you know, if you come here, you’ll feel that. And you’re gonna love it.” Use the audio link above to hear the full story. "
"Laura Marling’s latest taste from what may be her best album so far is ”Wild Fire,” a beautiful, breezy reflection on the universal search for identity and purpose. It’s an immediately arresting mix of spare, fluttering percussion and gospel harmonies with gently strummed acoustic guitars. Marling lets the song breathe and slowly open up. It feels like the dawn. ”Would you die to know how you’re seen?” Marling sings. ”Are you getting away with who you’re trying to be?” This is the second single the singer has released from her next   Semper Femina. She previously dropped the album opener ”Soothing,” which we featured on All Songs Considered. Semper Femina is due out on Marling’s label, More Alarming Records, March 10."
"There’s a   charity movement starting to take hold in neighborhoods across the country. Think of those ”little free library” boxes, but with a twist: These are small pantries stocked with free food and personal care items like toothbrushes and diapers for people in need. They’re found near churches, outside businesses and in front of homes. Maggie Ballard, who lives in Wichita, Kan. calls hers a ”blessing box.” ”I felt like this is something that I could do  —   something small that you know, would benefit so many people so long as the word got out about it,” she says. The bright red box is about 2 feet wide and is mounted on a post near the street. Ballard and her son check on it every day and restock as needed. ”My son is 6 years old, so it gives him a little chore to kind of watch it and see what comes and goes and who comes and goes, and maybe learn a little lesson from it,” she says. There’s a door on the front of the box but no lock, so anyone can take what they need  . In the beginning, Ballard was providing all of the food. Then word spread and donations from the community starting pouring in. Stacey Schwanke has stopped by with food donations a few times since the box went up in October. ”We dropped off some breakfast food, some pasta, some sauce, some crackers and some soups,” Schwanke says. The food pantry idea has been spreading through social media over the past six months. Ballard’s friend built hers after she saw a picture of one on Facebook. Similar ” ” food pantries have gone up across the country, in states like Oklahoma, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida and Minnesota. Much of it seems to trace back to Jessica McClard, who created what she calls the ”little free pantry” in northwest Arkansas. ”The products that are stocked are put directly inside the pantry and turnover is in about 30 to 45 minutes,” McClard says. ”The frequency of the turnover and the fact that other sites in town are also turning over that frequently, it suggests to me that the need is tremendous.” All of the items inside the boxes are free and there are no forms to fill out. Those using the boxes come and go as they wish. And that sense of anonymity is something you won’t find at traditional community food pantries. Ballard has seen only a few people using her pantry, because most visitors come when it’s dark. ”Most of the traffic is in the middle of the night, I would say between midnight and 7 in the morning,” she says. Ballard says it’s both awesome and sad to see the turnover of goods every day. On Christmas Eve she watched as a family of three opened her box to find a bag of bagels and started eating them right there. McClard says these   pantries are multiplying because of their simple concept. ”We’re all short on time and money, and this is a way that people can feel like they are making a difference,” she says. The food pantries come in all sizes. Some have religious connections and are located near churches. Others are adopted by businesses whose employees want to pay it forward. All are serving up food and supplies to anyone in need."
"For all of the terrible things that have happened to his city of Jalawla in northern Iraq, Yacub Youssef seems like a happy man. Youssef is the   director  —   essentially the mayor  —   of this small city just a few miles from Iran and about 90 miles north of Baghdad. ISIS occupied it in 2014, a few days after it took over Mosul. When the ISIS fighters were driven out two months later, Jalawla was left in ruins. As we walk around town, Youssef stops and jokes with residents in Arabic and Kurdish, kisses babies and laughs some more. He shows us a concrete bridge across the Diyala River, repaired after ISIS blew it up. It’s the town’s biggest achievement. ”If the government would have done it, it would have cost millions,” he says, and taken two or three years. Instead, he persuaded 35 local residents to kick in the $180, 000 cost and they repaired it in less than a year. Local contractors donated some of the labor. Jalawla is part of Diyala Province, controlled by the central Iraqi government. But it is part of a large swath of territory also claimed by the Kurdistan regional government, which broke away from Baghdad in 1991. When the Iraqi army retreated after ISIS attacked three years ago, Kurdish forces moved in and have made clear that they’re not leaving. Although both the Iraqi and Kurdistan governments claim Jalawla, neither has been willing to take responsibility for rebuilding it. ”I called Diyala [authorities] and they said, ’We can’t help you.’ The Kurdish Regional Government said they were going through difficult circumstances, so I had to search for another solution,” Youssef says. His solution was to ask townspeople to pitch in. In a country where people expect the government to provide jobs, health care, electricity, water and even land to build houses, this wasn’t easy. ”You need to convince the citizen to pay from his own pocket,” Youssef says. ”It’s not normal. He’s coming from a catastrophe  —   he sees his house destroyed, there’s no work and he’s been in a camp for two years, and you say, ’Give me’? It’s difficult.” Youssef, a former sports teacher, says once explosive experts cleared hundreds of explosives laid in the city, he brought families back in stages and persuaded them to clean up their own streets. Residents pooled money to buy neighborhood generators for electricity. His wife sold her jewelry to help repair the primary school, he says. Local electrical workers soon figured out how to restore Jalawla’s downed power lines and replaced missing transformers. ”I told the governor of Diyala we had electricity and he said, ’Where did you get it from? ’” Youssef says with a laugh. Students are back in school, which was repaired by residents after it was damaged in fighting. Townspeople even pooled their books for a book fair, to make sure every child had something to read. Youssef says those who rebuilt the bridge won’t get their money back, but their names will be recorded in history as having restored the ”Challenge Bridge.” Jalawla’s history, as well as its future, is complicated. In the 1970s and 1980s, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who saw Kurds as a threat, expelled hundreds of thousands of them from their homes in the north of Iraq and resettled Sunni Arabs in their place. The city is now 80 percent Sunni Arab. Youssef is paid by the provincial government, which gets its funding from Baghdad. But he is a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the area. ”I have to balance my relations,” he says. His own background helps. His father, a train conductor, is Arab. His mother is Kurdish. He is married to a Turkmen, the third biggest ethnic group in Jalawla. Youssef says he is Iraqi before he is Arab or Kurdish. ”When we first came back to Jalawla, it was in ruins. Desolate,” he says. ”The government offices were destroyed, the market destroyed, the houses burned . .. It would never occur to you that just a few months before, there were 63, 000 people living here.” His own office was blown up and his house leveled. But he says city officials discovered how much residents loved their city. And international organizations came to help. ”An organization came to us and said, ’Our funds are from Israel. I said, ’It doesn’t matter where you [are] from. I am grateful that you are coming to support Jalawla.’ It’s like my car is stuck in the mud. I will not ask where you are from and say, ’Don’t push the car because you are Muslim or Christian.’ I need someone to push it with me.” Here, as in other communities, families whose relatives join ISIS are barred from coming back. Youssef says he is negotiating with security authorities to allow those he knows are not a threat to return. On the main street, shopkeepers have repaired the damage and reopened. Ruffled white and pink wedding dresses flutter in the breeze outside dress shops. Omar Najeeb came back a year ago to find his storehouse of secondhand appliances completely looted. He says townspeople like Youssef because ”he works 24 hours a day. He is close to us.” Hadi Abid hangs up brightly colored head scarves in a corrugated iron stall. Asked if residents want to be part of Iraq or part of Iraqi Kurdistan, he shrugs. ”We don’t care if one side or the other provides our security,” he says, ”as long as our lives are back to normal.” As for Youssef, he says he is trying to figure out how to improve services and beautify the city. ”The city is our mother,” he says. ”From her, we learn and we progress. She gives us life. Our duty is to be good to our mother.”"
"Volkswagen has agreed to pay $4. 3 billion to settle civil and criminal allegations over its diesel emissions cheating scheme involving some 590, 000 vehicles in the U. S. The company has also agreed to plead guilty to three criminal felony counts. The settlement amount includes $2. 8 billion in criminal penalties and $1. 5 billion in civil claims, according to a statement from the Justice Department, which announced the deal Wednesday in Washington, D. C. The company also agreed to work with an independent monitor for a period of three years. ”For years, Volkswagen advertised its vehicles as complying with federal   measures, calling them clean diesel,” U. S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters. ”But our investigation has revealed they were anything but.” Volkswagen has admitted installing software in diesel vehicles that cheated on emissions tests, then lying about it to regulators. The Justice Department lists the three felony counts as: The plea deal is subject to federal court approval. ”This wasn’t simply the action of some faceless, multinational corporation,” Deputy U. S. Attorney General Sally Yates said. ”This conspiracy involved    individuals who used their positions within Volkswagen to deceive both regulators and consumers. From the start of this investigation, we’ve been committed to ensuring that those responsible for criminal activity are held accountable.” Six of the company’s   executives have also been indicted by a federal grand jury in Michigan in connection to the conspiracy, which unfolded over the course of nearly 10 years, the DOJ said. All are charged with ”conspiracy to defraud the United States, defraud VW’s U. S. customers and violate the Clean Air Act by making false representations.” Four are charged with further Clean Air Act violations, and four are charged with wire fraud. All of those executives are German nationals and five of them are currently in Germany, Lynch said. She told reporters it was too early to speculate how the case will proceed, but added that ”we’ve always worked very well with out German colleagues on various law enforcement matters.” One of the executives indicted, Oliver Schmidt, was arrested last weekend in Miami. The company said Tuesday that the settlement is subject to approval by ”competent U. S. courts” as by its management and supervisory boards, and boards of several affiliated companies. The EPA says the emissions scandal included Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche models with 2.  and 3.  diesel engines that were released from model years 2009 to 2016. All told, some 11 million vehicles worldwide were equipped with the cheat devices. In October, a federal judge signed off on a separate, $14. 7 billion settlement between VW, consumers and the U. S. government. Volkswagen agreed to pay as much as $10 billion to buy back or repair vehicles involved in the scandal and to pay nearly $5 billion in environmental remediation. That agreement was, as we reported, ”the largest civil settlement in automaker history, and the largest false advertising case the Federal Trade Commission has ever seen.”"
"In late October, just weeks ahead of the election,   Donald Trump made a quick detour to Washington for the official opening of his new   hotel, just a few blocks from the White House. During a   ceremony, Trump told the crowd that the   roughly $200 million renovation project at the historic Old Post Office Building was done ahead of schedule and under budget, thanks to what he called an incredible team of people  —   ”including hundreds of construction workers, electricians, maintenance workers and so many others who helped make this project a reality. They’re really the important ones.” Now some of those companies would like final payment for their work. Documents obtained by NPR show three   companies have filed liens against Trump International Hotel totaling more than $5 million. One company, Joseph J. Magnolia Inc. filed a $2. 98 million mechanic’s lien in December. According to the filing, the firm worked on the hotel from September 2014 to December 2016 and ”completed all plumbing, mechanical and HVAC work, along with site sewer, water, storm and water services.” AES Electrical Inc. based in Laurel, Md. says it’s owed $2. 075 million for its work on the hotel for the same period of time as Magnolia. Sterling, Va.  AD Construction filed a lien in November saying it was owed $79, 700. The firm’s lawyer, Richard Sissman, says AD is a small,   company that was subcontracting on the Trump hotel project. ”The nature of the work was . .. trim and casework and architectural millwork, wall base, crown molding this is all fine carpentry,” he says. Sissman says AD’s lien is relatively small compared to the other two, but it’s a lot of money to his client. ”On these big jobs these should be paid. It’s ridiculous that a   operator has to beg for its money,” he says. ”It’s put him in a very bad situation right now.” Trump has faced many liens  —   and lawsuits  —   for alleged nonpayment for work in the past. Steven Schooner, a contracts specialist with the George Washington University law school, says resolving the liens in this case could ultimately involve the federal government because it holds the lease on the building where the Trump hotel is located. ”The way the lease is structured, it said they may step in and discharge the lien but they’re not actually required to,” he says. Still, Schooner says as a rule, the government wants its tenants  —   like Trump International Hotel  —   to solve its own problems. Requests for comment from Trump’s communication team about the liens were not returned."
"Sometimes, in the process of recording music, a band’s sweat, calluses and grit go in one end and 0s and 1s come out the other with a sort of sterility that belies the original wild magic. It is difficult, and far more rare, to capture music burning with all the fury, fire and grit that make you fall in love with a live band in the first place. It is alchemy. And it’s achieved in spades by a band known as The Wooden Sky. In the title track from its fifth   record, Swimming In Strange Waters, the Toronto   transports you to frontman Gavin Gardiner’s home studio. Gardiner’s guttural and rousing vocals, the psychedelic swirl of screaming guitars and whirling organ and a rhythm section that feels at once deeply rooted and dangerously unpredictable are all mixed by the deft hand of John Agnello. You can feel it swelling into an almost uncomfortable wave of power  —   and that’s before you consider the intense and important story behind the song. ”’Swimming In Strange Waters,’” Gardiner says, ”is my attempt to come to terms with the anger I still have about my grandfather’s sexual abuse of my mother and its lasting effects on my family.” Listen, and listen again. Tucked in alongside the wailing guitars and warbling synths, you will find a brave poet is using his voice to make the unknown knowable  —   or, in his own words, an artist who ”feel[s] the weight of responsibility to act and make things better for the people to come.” That sense of responsibility has always been present for The Wooden Sky, which has previously written about the violence endured by indigenous women and whose upcoming record will include both a rallying cry against the Keystone XL pipeline and a song inspired by refugee families. This is a band that handles delicate subjects with psychedelic swagger and a depth of lyrical intelligence that is never too    but always powerful. Swimming In Strange Waters comes out April 7 via Nevado Music."
"Democrats don’t have too many opportunities to set the agenda in Congress right now. They don’t decide what bills are called for a vote, and, due to changes in Senate procedures, won’t be able to block any of   Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks without Republican defections. One thing Democrats can affect are the headlines coming out of the first wave of confirmation hearings. So on Tuesday, Senate Democrats did their best to pressure Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, nominee for attorney general, and Gen. John Kelly, nominated to lead the Department of Homeland Security, into distancing themselves from their likely future boss on key issues  —   and raise controversial statements Trump has made. The playbook worked, with questions from Democratic lawmakers leading to moments where Sessions disagreed with Trump’s initial campaign vow to ban Muslims from entering the United States, and Kelly doubting the value of a border wall as a deterrent to immigrants entering the country illegally. Here are six moments where Democrats (and one Republican) took digs at Trump as they questioned his first Cabinet nominees. While the Kelly and Sessions hearings were viewed as successes for both nominees, headlines like this are one reason why it’s advantageous for Senate Republicans and the Trump transition to have so many in such a tight window  —   so numerous statements like these compete for attention. Multiple   hearings will compete for attention again on Wednesday, as   Trump is scheduled to hold his first press conference since being elected. If Democrats force Rex Tillerson and other nominees to distance themselves from Trump, Republicans hope fewer eyes will be drawn to those statements. Here’s what’s on tap for Wednesday’s hearings: Russia has been dominating the headlines out of Washington  —   even in the hours leading up to Tillerson’s hearing  —   and that will likely be a major theme when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee questions Trump’s pick to lead the State Department. Rex Tillerson knows Russia well. As Exxon Mobil CEO, he has negotiated deals with a Russian energy giant, Rosneft, including a project to drill in the Arctic, which was put on hold because of U. S. sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its actions in Eastern Ukraine. With Exxon Mobil shareholder interests in mind, Tillerson opposed those sanctions. The ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin,  . plans to press Tillerson about how he would approach this topic now if confirmed as America’s top diplomat. ”I think you’re going to find that there’s going to be a great deal of interest as to whether Mr. Tillerson understands that he is no longer going to be CEO of Exxon Mobil but that he’s going to be secretary of state, the nation’s top diplomat,” Cardin told reporters on the eve of the hearing. Cardin was one of 10 senators to introduce the ”Countering Russian Hostilities Act of 2017.” The bipartisan legislation would impose more sanctions on Russia over its   as well as its actions in Ukraine and Syria. In his prepared remarks, Tillerson is to tell the senators that he’s ” ” about Russia and believes Moscow should be held to account for its actions. ”Our NATO allies are right to be alarmed at a resurgent Russia. But it was in the absence of American leadership that this door was left open and unintended signals were sent,” he plans to say. Activists are encouraging U. S. senators to also press Tillerson on his views about climate change and whether he will distance himself from the interests of an energy company, where he spent his entire career, often doing deals with autocratic states. ExxonMobil severed ties with Tillerson to clear up concerns about conflict of interest. That too will come under scrutiny.   Diplomatic Correspondent Michele Kelemen  Compared to the tough grilling Tillerson could get, Transportation   Elaine Chao is expected to breeze through her confirmation. Members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will likely have a lot of questions for Chao about highway, rail and aviation safety regulations, new technologies such as   cars and trucks, and most notably,   Trump’s call to invest up to a trillion dollars in the nation’s infrastructure. But tough questions seem unlikely. ”It should be a piece of cake,” the ranking Democrat on the committee, Bill Nelson of Florida, told Politico. Chao, 63, served as labor secretary for eight years under President George W. Bush, and previously in transportation posts during the first Bush and Reagan administrations. She’s considered experienced, politically savvy and has been praised by transportation industry groups. ”I don’t know if they could have found a more qualified, dedicated public servant,” said Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois who served as transportation secretary during President Obama’s first term. ”She knows how to run an agency and she will bring lots of experience and expertise,” LaHood told NPR recently. He also said she will be an ”outstanding secretary of transportation.” Chao is also a longtime Washington insider  —   seen as one key appointment who defies Trump’s call to ”drain the swamp.” As the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, she has close friendships with many of the senators who will be voting on her confirmation. So if any of Trump’s Cabinet choices are a sure bet to win confirmation, Chao is it.   Transportation Correspondent David Schaper  The Senate Judiciary Committee will continue its consideration of Trump’s nominee to be attorney general on Wednesday, though Sessions finished his testimony after a full day in front of his fellow senators on Tuesday. Outside witnesses will testify about the record of the Alabama senator on the second day  —   both for and against. The high profile supporters who want to see him lead the Justice Department include former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the head of the Fraternal Order of Police, Chuck Caterbury  —   in addition to law enforcement officials from Alabama. Civil rights groups are opposing the Sessions nomination, and the head of the NAACP, Cornell Brooks, and ACLU legal director David Cole will both testify on the second day of the Sessions hearing. Two of Sessions’ colleagues from Capitol Hill will also oppose him. Congressman John Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement, is expected to highlight concerns about whether Sessions will enforce civil and voting rights laws. So is Sen. Corey Booker,  . J. in an extraordinary step. His decision to testify against the nomination of a fellow senator  —   who has received a warm reception from many other colleagues  —   is being widely described as unprecedented.   Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson"
"Updated at 8 p. m. ET, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, broke with the   on many of his key campaign promises on immigration during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, including a border wall, Muslims coming into the U. S. and torture techniques. The former head of the U. S. Southern Command, Kelly agreed with a question from Sen. John McCain,  . over the strategy to defend the country’s southern border, both from immigrants crossing into the U. S. illegally and from drug traffickers, saying that a border wall would not be enough. ”A physical barrier in and of itself will not do the job. It has to be a layered defense,” Kelly said, calling for more human patrols and assistance from drones and other sensors. Kelly also stressed the need to work with other Latin American countries to forge better relationships to stop drug trafficking. Kelly agreed with McCain that waterboarding should continue to be prohibited and that the Geneva Conventions should be followed. ”I don’t think we should ever come close to crossing a line that is beyond what we as Americans would expect to follow in terms of interrogation techniques,” Kelly said. During the campaign, Trump pledged that he would bring back the controversial form of torture in order to fight terrorism. Kelly also said he had ”high confidence” in U. S. intelligence reports that found that Russia had engaged in cyberattacks in order to influence the U. S. elections. Trump has cast doubt on those findings. Pressed by Sen. Gary Peters,  . on whether it was lawful to conduct surveillance on mosques or create a database of Muslims in the U. S. Kelly agreed that would violate the Constitution. ”I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to focus on something like religion as the only factor,” Kelly said. The Department of Homeland Security is a sprawling enterprise, with a budget of some $40 billion and a   employees. Its responsibilities encompass everything from natural disasters (FEMA) to airport security (TSA) presidential security (U. S. Secret Service) the Coast Guard and cybersecurity. DHS agencies are also responsible for defending the nation’s borders and overseeing the immigration system. It’s those areas that are most in the sights of the incoming president, who has called for measures including a wall along the U. S. border with Mexico, the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants currently in the U. S. and ”extreme vetting” of immigrants wishing to enter the country. Trump said on the campaign trail that screening should be focused on those coming from ”some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism.” Those comments were an adaptation of the ban on Muslims entering the U. S. that Trump had proposed at the end of 2015. Asked by Sen. Kamala Harris,  . about deportation priorities, Kelly suggested that undocumented children who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would ”probably not be at the top of the list” and that he would ”keep an open mind.” Kelly said that the incoming administration’s immigration policy is still ”ongoing,” but that he has ”not been involved in those discussions.” Overall, Kelly was   by both Republicans and Democrats during his testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Ranking member Claire McCaskill,  . praised him during her opening statement and later tweeted that he was a ”good choice” to lead DHS. Kelly was introduced by McCain, Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations. Kelly was an adviser to Gates at the Pentagon. Gates praised Kelly, calling him ”one of the finest people I have ever known,” also saying, ”I would trust him with my life.” The    Kelly had appeared before lawmakers before, in his role as head of the U. S. Southern Command, which is responsible for military matters in the Caribbean, Central and South America. Kelly’s nomination is unlikely to be met with much opposition, and the questions on the committee bore that out. He has built up relationships with lawmakers who respect his service and his sacrifice. (Kelly lost a son to combat in Afghanistan.)"
"  Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he plans to nominate David Shulkin to be his secretary of veterans affairs, a position that requires Senate confirmation. Shulkin is currently the undersecretary for health at the VA, which means he runs the Veterans Health Administration. He was nominated for that position by President Obama in March 2015 and confirmed by the Senate that June. Shulkin’s official bio says he is a physician  —   a   internist  —   and was the chief executive or chief medical officer of several hospitals and hospital systems. He is also an entrepreneur who founded a health care information company called DoctorQuality. Notably, he is not a veteran. As NPR’s Quil Lawrence reported last month, the VA has always been headed by a veteran. ”I have no doubt Dr. Shulkin will be able to lead the turnaround our Department of Veterans Affairs needs,” Trump said in a statement following the announcement. ”Dr. Shulkin has the experience and the vision to ensure we will meet the healthcare needs of every veteran.” Last year, NPR and several member stations jointly reported on the flaws and failures of the VA’s ”Veterans Choice” program, which is meant to allow veterans to find private doctors. As the head of the Veterans Health Administration, Shulkin spoke with NPR about the experiences of veterans left waiting months for treatment under the program. ”When I hear stories like that, it’s completely unacceptable,” he told NPR: ”The first responsibility that we have to our veterans is to make sure those that need urgent care are getting care on time. ”This is a different VA. We’ve brought in people from the outside who have private sector experience. And what we’re saying is that we have to do business differently. . .. We know how to make this program work better.” Trump considered a series of possible VA secretaries before deciding on Shulkin  —   he said on Wednesday that he interviewed more than 100 candidates. Quil reported that the   met with Iraq veteran Pete Hegseth, who favors privatizing VA health care, as well as former Sen. Scott Brown,  . who is a National Guard veteran.   Republican Rep. Jeff Miller, who was the head of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, was a Trump adviser who was also considered a candidate. Both Politico and The Washington Post report that several possible candidates for VA secretary rejected Trump’s overtures. The secretary of agriculture and chair of the Council of Economic Advisers are the only   positions for which Trump still has not announced his choice of nominee."
"It’s been used to buy drugs. Guns. Child porn. And to launder money. But   institutions like the World Bank, UNICEF and USAID think it could be a force for good, helping the poorest of the poor. It’s a technology called blockchain  —   a global, online ledger that’s free for anyone to use and that isn’t regulated by any one party. Maybe you’ve heard of it. And maybe you don’t know exactly what it is. That’s because it’s not easy to define. Indeed, in a list of ”ins and outs” for 2017, the Washington Post included ”not being able to explain blockchain.” But we’ll try to explain it  —   and also explain the way it could be a boon to humanity. What’s the big deal?  By now, you’ve probably heard of bitcoin. It’s made headlines over the past few years for being the digital currency of choice for legitimate online purchases and money transfer  —   and also for laundering money and illicit purchases. It’s built on an underlying technology called blockchain  —   which is basically an online database that’s considered to be secure, private and generally hackproof. But blockchain has the potential to do more than send money. It can help people store information securely and permanently on the Web. For economists and technologists who work in the developing world, this opens up a world of opportunity. What if blockchain could be used as a force for good  —   a safe place, say, for a poor Kenyan farmer to store the documents that prove he really does own his land? How does it work, exactly? Imagine you have a bit of important information that you’d like to store on the Web, like a birth or health care record. You may choose to store it in one of many blockchain networks to keep those data safe. To do that, you must add your record to something called a ”block,” a chunk of data on the Web. But that’s just the first step. To be archived  —   in other words, to become a permanent record  —   your data must be linked to the ”blockchain” in a global network of millions of computers. Think of the blockchain as a 21st century version of the   paper ledger that businesses once used to keep track of their transactions. Once the block is linked to the chain, everyone in the network gets an updated copy. So if one computer gets shut down, that’s not a problem. The millions of others in the network have a copy of the blockchain, and your record is safe. But don’t worry. Your data, once on the blockchain, become what is known as ”” which means people can see that a transaction was made but won’t see any specifics. Here’s what else makes the blockchain so special: It cuts out the middleman. There are already lots of places where information can be stored online. Your bank keeps track of your financial transactions. Facebook is a compendium of what your friends are up to. The U. S. Patent and Trademark office keeps registration of new contraptions. In each of these cases  —   and many, many others  —   there is someone who owns and manages all that information. And that could present problems. First of all, that middleman is holding your data and in theory could do whatever he wants with the information  —   sell it to another party, for example. Some middlemen aren’t willing to serve everybody. Poor people, for example, might not have enough money to open a bank account. And there’s another problem: The middleman could also be hacked. Once your data are part of the blockchain, it’s difficult to change or remove those data. A group of special users in the network, called miners, help keep it honest by verifying the transactions. If that doesn’t happen, the blockchain won’t work. Some apps and software built using the technology have had weaknesses. In 2016, more than $50 million was siphoned from a project called the DAO. And in 2014, $480 million was stolen by hackers from a digital currency exchange called Mt. Gox. Still, experts believe that blockchain technology is more secure than any other system on the Web right now. ”Across all these computers, [these networks] are using the highest level of cryptography, infinitely more secure than the computer systems we have at the CIA and the Democratic National Party,” says Don Tapscott, author of Blockchain Revolution. He gave a TED Talk on the technology in August.  Why it could be a game changer, The nature of blockchain technology  —   that it’s secure, hard to mess with and open to both the rich and the poor  —   is precisely why it could be a game changer for people living in   countries or fragile states at risk of economic collapse, corruption or conflict, says Rosanna Chan, an economist at the World Bank. Say you’re a small farmer in Haiti. You’ve dutifully registered your land, which your family depends on for food and income, with the government. The paper copy of your registration was then filed in a storeroom. But the earthquake in 2010 destroyed all the municipal buildings where they were stored. Now you don’t have proof that you’re a landowner. Or let’s say the record of your registration is a digital file on a government database. It could be tampered with or erased, or maybe the database uses technology that is outdated or unsearchable. But if you filed your land deed in a blockchain, perhaps you could avert those problems. That’s why Chan, who formed the World Bank’s Blockchain Working Group in February, calls it a ”magic ledger.” On a small scale, some farmers are already storing land deeds on a blockchain. Bitland, a blockchain platform that registers land in Ghana, has filed 500 deeds since January 2016. The platform hopes to move to Botswana, Kenya and Uruguay next. Blockchain has other potential benefits. A platform called BitPesa is helping to speed up the flow of cash from businesses in China to their African employees, who then send the money back home to their families. The   startup, launched in 2013, uses bitcoin to facilitate   instant payments online. The old way of making payments is usually handled by finance companies like Western Union. It could take days and the sender might have to pay high fees. According to the World Bank,   Africa is the most expensive region to send money to, with average remittance costs reaching 12. 4 percent in 2012. There’s also a   startup called Grid Singularity that’s exploring how ”pay as you go” solar power in developing countries could be made more secure and efficient, with financial transactions recorded on a blockchain. And in February, Sony Global Education adapted blockchain to file academic records, showing its promise in the education space  —   an area the World Bank has been watching. But there’s one problem . .. People in     countries are ”in a poor position to adopt the technology,” says Brett Scott, author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance and a February paper on blockchain for the U. N. Research Institute for Social Development, an independent group within the United Nations. Right now, if people want to use a   platform, they need a computer or smartphone and an Internet connection. The majority of people in   Africa don’t have these things. The challenge, says Scott, is ”how do you make it function on a simple mobile phone?” Chan from the World Bank and others across the global development community are eager to work that out. ”Right now, it’s like we have a hammer. And we’re not sure what it looks like or how to use it,” she says. ”But we get the sense that this hammer is useful.”"
"Italy has been described as the world’s biggest   museum. And with illegally excavated antiquities, looting of unguarded,   churches and smuggling of precious artworks, it’s also an art theft playground. But thanks to an elite police squad, Italy is also at the forefront in combating the illicit trade in artworks  —   believed to be among the world’s biggest forms of trafficking and estimated to be worth billions. Italy’s Carabinieri for Protection of Italy’s Cultural Heritage recently sponsored an exhibit at Rome’s Palazzo Barberini museum, showcasing some of its biggest successes. A fifth grade class of a Roman elementary school came to see some 200 artworks that were stolen and then recovered. Lt. Sebastiano Antoci, a   veteran of the elite squad, told the kids how its investigations work. ”We tail suspects or use wiretaps so we can listen to the bad guys’ phone calls or we check their bank accounts. And when we’re out in the field,” he said, ”we look like everyone else, we don’t wear uniforms.” The   listened attentively to the art detective as he pointed to two medieval frescoes. ”We recovered the lamb in Switzerland,” he said, ”and the Christ in the United States. They’re back together again for the first time since they were stolen”  —   in 1978 from a small church in Guidonia, a town south of Rome. In 1969, Italy created the world’s first specialized police force to combat art crime. It now numbers 280 investigators who also safeguard artworks in regions struck by floods and earthquakes. The unit also combats antiquities trafficking fueled by conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan. At the Rome exhibit, Antoci showed the schoolchildren a marble sculpture that depicts a man and his two sons. It originates from the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra  —   which recently came under ISIS control. Adding to his knowledge of art history the excitement of a detective tale, Antoci tells the kids the story of the sculpture, which was tracked down as part of an investigation into financial irregularities and dates back some 2, 000 years. ”It’s a funerary sculpture,” he tells them. ”The terrorists smuggled it out of Syria and put it on the illicit antiques market. We tracked it down to an Italian businessman in Piedmont, who bought it just it a few months ago.” Gen. Fabrizio Parulli, the commander of this unique police force, explains what’s needed to become a good art sleuth. ”First of all, you need to be a good investigator,” he says. Speaking in his Rome office  —   located in a Baroque square that looks like an opera stage set  —   Parulli says his agents start as police officers and then get specialized training in art history, archaeology, restoration and recognizing counterfeit works. But the heart of the investigative work is done elsewhere, in a large barracks in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood. Sitting at a computer, Lt. Francesco Ficarella demonstrates the jewel in the crown of the cultural heritage protection squad  —   a database known as Leonardo, containing names and photos of close to 6 million registered artworks, mostly from Italy. Of those, 1. 2 million are listed as stolen, missing, illegally excavated or smuggled. Leonardo, he says, ”is a crucial instrument not only for our national police forces but also for those abroad  —   it’s the biggest artworks database in the world,” he says. The squad’s recovery record is high. In 2014, it managed to recover 137, 000 works with an estimated value of $500 million. Until they’re returned to the owners, recovered pieces are warehoused on the ground floor of the Trastevere building. Behind an armored door, tens of thousands of artworks are stored  —   wooden crucifixes, marble busts, bronze statues and hundreds of paintings, all carefully labeled. These recovered pieces serve as evidence in criminal cases that are still open. One of them, ”Leda and the Swan,” by 16th century painter Lelio Orsi, was auctioned for $1. 6 million in New York. Smuggled out of Italy, it was tracked down, thanks to cooperation from U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But there’s one piece that has eluded this elite art squad for almost three decades: a    canvas of the Nativity by the Baroque master Caravaggio. It was stolen in Sicily in 1969, the same year this special unit was created. Lt. Calogero Gliozzo says the painting’s whereabouts were known until the early 1980s. ”We know the names of the robbers and we know the Mafia family that was hiding it,” he says, ”but then there was a Mafia war and we lost track of the painting.” One Mafia informant told police he had heard that the canvas had been destroyed by rats at a farm where it was hidden. But here at the police squad, the art sleuths are convinced the masterpiece still exists  —   and that one day, they will succeed in recovering this No. 1 artwork on their most wanted list."
"It was on a routine patrol in 1986 that Steven McDonald’s life took a dramatic turn. McDonald, who was just two years into his service with the New York Police Department, and his partner confronted a trio of boys in Central Park. Within seconds, one of those teens drew a handgun and shot McDonald three times. That shooting left him paralyzed from the neck down. Yet his life was arguably shaped as much by those three bullets as by the three words he famously expressed afterward: ”I forgive him.” McDonald died Tuesday at the age of 59, after being hospitalized Friday for a heart attack. In the more than three decades after his paralysis, McDonald took on the stature of a    symbol of forgiveness  —   a police officer whose sacrifice was heralded by generations of mayors and institutions in New York City. ”No one could have predicted that Steven would touch so many people, in New York and around the world,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said in a statement. ”Like so many cops, Steven joined the N. Y. P. D. to make a difference in people’s lives. And he accomplished that every day.” Perhaps never more so than on the day his son, Conor, was baptized in 1987, roughly nine months after the shooting. In a letter read to the media by his wife, Patricia, McDonald wrote of his anger toward his shooter  —   and his hope for healing. ”I’m sometimes angry at the   boy who shot me,” she read, according to The New York Times. ”But more often I feel sorry for him. I only hope that he can turn his life into helping and not hurting people. I forgive him and hope that he can find peace and purpose in his life.” In the years that followed, McDonald opened and carried on a correspondence with the teen who shot him, Shavod Jones, who served 8   years in prison for attempted murder. The correspondence ended after McDonald ”turned down a request from Mr. Jones’s family to seek parole,” according to the Times, saying ”he was not knowledgeable or capable enough to intervene.” Jones died just days after his release from prison in 1995, from injuries sustained as a passenger during a motorcycle accident. McDonald went on to become something of an ambassador for the NYPD and for his Catholic faith. He met with Pope John Paul II, spoke to New York City classrooms,   a book on his recovery, campaigned for gun control and against stem cell research, even had an award named in his honor by the New York Rangers. The Rangers remembered him in a video tribute Tuesday night. He is survived by his wife and longtime caregiver, Patricia, and his son, Conor, who was an infant when McDonald’s famous statement was delivered. Conor McDonald was recently promoted to the rank of detective in the NYPD."
"”A Newborn Calf Isn’t Afraid of Tigers” is a typical chapter title in Lotus, Lijia Zhang’s compelling debut novel. Readers will find the entire text rich in Chinese proverbs, as well as folk wisdom of a more prosaic variety. Characters employ sage sayings in spoken form, as a kind of parlor game, and the author scatters aphorisms liberally throughout the narrative, with an effect that is both charming and   after the titular Lotus loses face, she keeps on going despite the hurt, because ”a cracked jar doesn’t mind being smashed again.” These lines could come across as stilted, but here they delight, as does so much of this sensitively drawn literary world. Lotus herself is a charmer her given name is Luo Xiangzhu, but she uses the nickname when working as a ji, or prostitute. She has escaped the provincial village of her birth, Mulberry Gully, and as a teenager journeyed a thousand miles south to Shenzhen, a seaside city just north of Hong Kong. Winding up in a red light neighborhood that she comes to call home, she enters the oldest profession on an inebriated whim. China’s Communists rejected prostitution as strictly a capitalist phenomenon  —   but it existed, and it reflected a class system the Party also tried to deny. At the top were ”second wives”  —   a version of the classic concubine. In descending order, came   call girls, dance hall workers, masseuses and street hookers. Lotus, occupying the lowest rung but one, thinks about ”how she had spent hours of her life . .. smiling her red smile at every passing man.” Burdened by the clichéd heart of gold, she builds her clientele at the Moonflower Massage Parlor, sending home money to bankroll her younger brother’s college education. Beautiful, modest and soulful, Lotus attracts the attention of an aspiring photographer and intellectual named Hu Binbing, or Bing. He becomes enmeshed in the lives of Shenzhen’s massage parlor denizens while doing a magazine photo essay Lotus serves as the star of the piece, identified only as ”Girl A.” An arresting image of her face launches Bing into new realms of fame and opportunity. Zhang delicately sketches Bing’s growing infatuation with Lotus and hers with him. They come together, fall apart, reunite. You root for them not necessarily as a romantic couple, but as two souls finding their true mission in life. But this is above all Lotus’s story, in which she fights her way out of the sex trade to become a beloved primary school teacher. Though the personal relationship remains in the foreground, the political and economic realities of modern China lend the novel greater depth, a heady mix that might be called  . The author has a light touch, even when delineating the underbelly of contemporary Chinese culture. She conducted research in the red light districts of Shenzhen, Dongguan, Beihai, Tianjin and Beijing, so there is a documentary verity to the telling, giving starch to fiction that might otherwise be flabby. Zhang also brings a personal stake to the book, dedicating it to her grandmother, who was sold to a brothel as a   ”flower girl,” or courtesan. Some first novels, especially those birthed in creative writing classes (Zhang, a former rocket factory worker in China, studied at the University of Iowa) go heavy on   poetic language. The author tries too hard and the reader suffers. The images Zhang gives us, in contrast, are uncomplicated, concise and touching. Young Lotus’s ”pencil was homemade, simply the broken end of a pencil’s lead discarded by her classmates, stabbed into a piece of soft wood.” Concerning Bing’s emotions, Zhang writes, ”He had been like an ant on a hot pan ever since the girls’ visit.” Book groups be advised: Readers will learn quite specific tricks of the trade. Lotus is undeniably earthy but thankfully spare, letting its characters, and its proverbs, do the talking. When Bing wants to get serious with Lotus, we hear about the development a proverbial way: ”What luck, this offer. A pancake fallen from the sky, as her grandma would say.” We can count ourselves lucky to get this glimpse into the fascinating world of Lotus. Jean Zimmerman’s latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin."
"In Weathersfield, Vt. a town once dotted with small milking farms, about 60 cows peacefully chew hay at their home on Fuller Farm. They are the last remaining dairy herd in Weathersfield, and they’ll be auctioned off this week. This is a growing trend in the changing dairy industry  —   in the state and beyond. David Fuller has been a dairy farmer here since 1977. He says it’s the life he’s loved since he was a small child. He says when he was a kid, his mom couldn’t figure out why he and his brother were throwing up grass. ”She let us go out . .. and there we were under the picnic table eating grass,” he says. ”She said, ’Why are you doing this?’ and I told her, ’I just want to be a cow!’ ” he laughs. He continues: ”How fun is that . .. and look where it got me!” Years later, Fuller says there is no longer enough money in running a small dairy farm. He says his children have their own careers and they don’t see a future in dairy farming. ”I think that the kids that grew up on small farms hear their parents always struggling with money,” he says. ”I think they all ask themselves, ’Why do I want to do that?’ So there wasn’t a transition to go to the family.” That’s the case with a lot of dairy farms in Vermont. Just a couple years ago, Weathersfield, which has a population of about 3, 000, had about 10 dairy farms. ”They were all small farms, and they all went the same way. Either a family member didn’t want to continue or there were economic reasons,” Fuller says. In 2010, Vermont had more than 1, 000 dairy farms, but by the end of last year there were just more than 800. According to a national census by the United States Department of Agriculture, in 1950 there were about 3. 5 million farms with milking cows. By 2012, that number had plummeted to 58, 000. Fuller says milk prices aren’t enough to sustain business these days. He gets about the same amount of money for his product as he did when he started about 40 years ago, while the cost of living has skyrocketed. ”When I started milking, my first check came from a company called Yankee Milk  —   that was $14 [per hundredweight of milk] in 1977 in May,” he says, looking over his cows. ”This last month, on the first check that we got for pay for our milk, they estimate the cost at $15. 50.” Diane Bothfeld, director of administrative services at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, says the prices of milk used to be based on national trends. That has changed. ”Now, it’s global,” she says. ”What’s happening in China, what’s happening in Australia and New Zealand. ’Oh, the European Union did this’  —   it is just global pressures on the prices for milk.” But Bothfeld says dairy products are still Vermont’s largest agricultural receipts. In a 2014 study on the economic impact of cows in the state, it was found that for every one cow, about $12, 000 was added to the state economy. ”[For every cow that leaves the state] there will be fewer trips to the hardware store or the feed store, or the tractor dealership doesn’t get as much business,” Bothfeld says. ”So it really does have an impact throughout the community.” Peter Vitaliano, chief economist for the National Milk Producers Federation, says the number of small   dairies around the United States has been steadily dropping for years. ”Since 1986, every year that number has dropped by between 5 and around 9 percent,” he says. However, milk production is not necessarily decreasing. While the dairy industry used to be run by individual families, Vitaliano thinks that today it is far more lucrative to run   dairy farms, with 500 cows or more. ”In the U. S. more and more milk is being produced every year,” Vitaliano says. ”If there are fewer farms and more milk, guess what? [That] means that the average farm is getting bigger  —   and that is indeed the case.” In 2012, the most recent year the USDA collected data, almost   of dairy farms had fewer than 100 cows, but those farms only produced about 14 percent of the nation’s milk. Vitaliano is optimistic about milk production and prices in the year to come, but like others, sees that the business model of the American dairy farm is changing rapidly."
"Facebook is unveiling a new journalism project Wednesday. No, the Silicon Valley giant isn’t hiring a team of reporters. Facebook says it wants engineers  —   the tech talent at local and global publishers  —   to   earlier on to develop technologies that make Facebook a more powerful platform to distribute news and discuss it. Facebook Live has become a visceral way to share breaking, even disturbing news  —   such as the death of    Philando Castile, who was shot by police minutes before his girlfriend began to   his dying in a car. (Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams. NPR has been invited to be part of the new project.) Facebook wants to build new tools that draw in audiences and drive engagement with news content. A senior official says the company is looking for a new mode of working with publishers, and that Facebook’s approach has evolved based on feedback it is getting. This move signals that news publishers are important to Facebook  —   and that the company plans to deepen, not lessen, its role in the news business. The company has not specified what new products are on the horizon, but the goals include helping local news outlets target their audience on the app, so that it’s easier for residents of a specific town to have a debate about high school football or a city council bill. Facebook also plans to experiment with letting news consumers become subscribers to their favorite news outlet  —   get a free trial  —   within the Facebook app. In recent months, Facebook has come under fire for distributing fake news and not having transparent editorial standards when it comes to what speech is permitted or censored. In today’s announcement, the company is not inviting the news industry to help solve those charged problems. Last week, Facebook hired former TV journalist Campbell Brown to lead news partnerships."
"On campuses today almost every educational interaction leaves digital traces. Assignments and feedback are given through online portals debates and discussions happen via learning management systems as well as in classrooms, cafes and dorm rooms. Those and other digital crumbs give technologists the opportunities to examine the processes, practices and goals of higher education in ways that were largely impossible a decade or so ago. We’ve reported here and here on Stanford physics Noble Laureate Carl Wieman’s ”active learning” revolution. Another     (is there something in the physics lab water?) named Timothy McKay sees great promise in ”learning analytics”  —   using big data and research to improve teaching and learning. McKay, a professor of physics, astronomy and education at the University of Michigan argues in a recent white paper, that higher ed needs to ”break down the perceived divide between research and practice.” There are privacy and ethical concerns, of course, which in turn has prompted fledgling codes of conduct to spring up. I reached out to Professor McKay, who also heads Michigan’s Digital Innovation Greenhouse, to dig deeper on how learning analytics work in higher ed. Give us an example of how new and better data is helping universities and professors understand students better. I’ll give you an example that’s drawn from my own experience. I’ve been teaching here at the University of Michigan for more than 20 years. Most of my teaching has been large, introductory physics courses . .. from 400 to 700 students. Now, the way universities have traditionally done this is to provide a kind of industrial approach, to go to that large group of people and to offer them the same materials, ask them to do the same kind of activities at the same pace, and evaluate all those people in exactly the same way. Everybody gets the same course. If it’s   it’s pitched perhaps for the median student in that class. It kind of works well for that median student, but it doesn’t work well for anybody else. What I discovered when I began to look at data about my own classes is something that should have been obvious from the start but wasn’t really until I examined the data. I came to understand just how different all the students in my class were, how broadly spread they are across a variety of different spectra of difference, and that if I wanted to teach them all equally well, it doesn’t work to deliver exactly the same thing to every student. You’re better able to personalize and   for students who might need help, who might have a different background, who might have a different perspective? Or different goals. A lot of times, the discussion will be about students who might be behind or   but it’s also true for students who are really excelling academically. They also need special kinds of attention. The first thing that happened for me was to open my eyes to the real challenge, the real importance of personalizing, even when we’re teaching at scale. Then what followed that was a realization that since we had, in fact, information about the backgrounds and interests and goals of every one of our students, if we could build tools, use information technology, we might be able to speak to every one of those students in different ways to provide them with different feedback and encouragement and advice. We’ve built this tool here called ECoach, which is a   communication system that allows us to speak to a student with detailed knowledge of their background, interests and goals, and be able to do that at scale. Some of that is automated, but you can tailor it to each student? It’s interesting. It’s automated in a way, but in another way, it’s all generated by people. The content that we are going to provide, the way we create it, is to sit down together and look at the kinds of people who are present in our classes and think about how we would change the message if one of those students sat down in front of us. We might be changing, of course, what we’re saying. Some students are very well prepared to take a physics class and, in fact, might have studied it for two years in high school before they get to my class. There’s one kind of message for them. There are other kinds of students who have never seen this subject before. And there, I might want to really focus on points like how taking a physics class is different from taking other kinds of classes that they have. We sit down and think about what we would say to these people if they sat in front of us, and technology like ECoach just enables us to say it to all the students, instead of just the few who can get appointments in our office hours. OK, say a bunch of freshmen in a 20th century American lit class, the papers they do for that class, is there relevant data there that could be useful in a learning analytics way?  Absolutely. That’s a great example of the new kinds of data that are emerging, the new forms of data. It used to be, when you and I went to college, that you wrote that paper for that class and you handed it in, perhaps, on typing paper. Right? The instructor took it and marked it up with a pen and handed it back to you, and then it was gone from the system. It left no record. The only record that it left, in fact, was the grade that your instructor wrote in a column in a little accounting book. Now, since those assignments are all turned in through online systems, it’s actually possible to go back after the class is over and examine all the work that students did. You could even imagine, for example, if you’d taught a course like that year after year, being able to begin to understand whether student writing was changing in any significant way over the year because that evidence remains. It exists, and it is possible to use it as input to the process of understanding and improving teaching and learning in a way that it didn’t used to be. It just was inaccessible before. What, if anything, changed in 2016 in higher ed learning analytics? Has it been more widely adopted? Has the kind of data you’re going after changed? A kind of tool that many, many institutions have adopted are tools that aim to make sure that they don’t fail to recognize students who might be in trouble. I would say that the first big application of learning analytics systems has been to notice when a student, even in a large institution, is running into the kind of difficulty that might be crucial for them, that they might fail a class or that they might drop out of a semester or that they might not complete their degree. A lot of institutions have done some really good work in using the data that they have to identify students who might be at risk, and then thinking carefully about how they might go to work to support those students to move them back to a track that’s leading towards success. Most of the time, the actions that have been taken are actually human actions. What we’re beginning to see is people putting this kind of information to work in richer ways. One example of that is the kind of coaching technology we’re building. It enables us to build on the experience of thousands of students who’ve taken these classes before, and share the lessons that are learned from that with each individual student. In 2016, schools got better at using learning analytics for more things than, ”Joe Smith is going to fail freshman physics. He might need tutoring. He might need an intervention.” Some schools are now looking at a broader range of things  —   from the idea of the college transcript to the admissions process?  Yeah. We are asking questions about our own admissions criteria. It turns out that many of our admissions, our sense of how we should do college admissions, is grounded as much in tradition as it is in evidence. We’re having a big conversation about what we reflect in the transcript. You know, the transcript is the famous, official record of a student, the things that a university provides to the world to reflect on the nature of their experience while they were in college. The transcripts we use right now really were invented in the early 20th century and are stuck in a very industrial mode of education and even in some kind of prior technologies. You know the way a transcript mostly lists with one line about every one of your classes? That was done so that the transcript would fit on a few pages, so that it could be folded up and stuck in an envelope and mailed to somebody. There’s really no reason in an information age to say that the record we keep that reflects on what you did in a class needs to be restricted to a single line on a page, right? If we could enrich that record: If, for example, in that literature class that you described, instead of just assigning a grade to a student, if we actually kept some of the work of the student as the object that represents what you did in that class. In other words, in principle it could be made available to people who wanted to know, What did you do in that class? You would approach writing that paper as a student in a very different way from the way you do today. The paper wouldn’t just be for the instructor, or you wouldn’t just be after the grade. You would actually be after producing a paper that you would be proud of showing to the world to represent what you did in this class. We’re really turning this kind of analytic approach to thinking about pretty existential questions about the nature of how we do our business on campus. I think in the next few years you’ll see a lot of change as campuses take advantage of the opportunity that all this information provides to better understand what’s going on. What would you say to a more traditionalist professor who says, ’My teaching is more art than science, and you have to be open to serendipity and improvisation, and I don’t want to be led around by my nose and big data?’ Harumph.  I totally understand this perspective. People who assert that are often quite correct. Another thing that has emerged in our understanding of the Michigan campus is that we teach an incredible variety of classes. We have 9, 200 classes on this campus, and they range in enrollment from one to 2, 000. They’re very different, one from the other. I would say that this kind of learning analytic approach is especially important in environments where we’re teaching a lot of people, where we’re teaching people who come from a wide variety of backgrounds or have a wide variety of interests and goals, and those environments are typically the places where we’re teaching kind of foundational classes when students come into a campus like this. Then there are a lot of teaching and learning environments where the best thing we can do is to put that expert faculty member in a room with 18 students. A really, truly great learning experience can happen there. So for those in big college classes, don’t fear the data?  I think they should not, because I think it has a lot to bring to help them. I do have colleagues who still are skeptical about this, and a part of the challenge for all applications of data across our lives is for us all to assess the way we feel about reducing experienced to a limited number of data points and then trying to learn from that. I think in most of our lives, we’ve seen that data perhaps in your Netflix recommender, it’s kind of useful. Right? It doesn’t solve all your problems, but it has a role to play. I think as we expose more and better ways to put data to work in support of students, we will see people get comfortable with the idea that, yeah, it does have something to bring to the table. It doesn’t solve every problem, but it does have an important contribution to make."
"President Obama awarded outgoing Vice President Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Thursday afternoon. Calling the former longtime Delaware senator ”the best vice president America’s ever had” and a ”lion of American history,” Obama gave his White House partner the surprise award in an emotional ceremony, initially billed as a farewell. After extolling the job that Biden has done, Obama ended it with the unexpected news that he was giving the vice president the nation’s highest civilian honor, with distinction  ” a designation most recently given to President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Gen. Colin Powell. ”To know Joe Biden is to know love without pretense, service without   and to live life fully,” Obama said. Overcome with tears and completely caught off guard by the award, Biden praised the president as ”remarkable man who did remarkable things for this country” who had truly treated him like an equal partner in governance. ”This honor is not only well beyond what I deserve, but it’s a reflection of the generosity of your spirit,” Biden told Obama. ”I don’t deserve this. But I know it came from the president’s heart.” The two have enjoyed an unusually close working relationship over the past eight years, and Obama himself even joked at the outset of the ceremony that ”this also gives the Internet one last chance to talk about our ’bromance.’ ” Throughout the ceremony it was evident not just how close the two men were but how close their families and staffs had become, and Obama said his ”family is honored to call ourselves honorary Bidens.” Obama has frequently said that picking Biden, his former primary rival, as his running mate in 2008 was one of the best decisions he ever made. Before accepting the nomination, Biden had spent more than three decades in the Senate, amassing a large portfolio and body of work, including stints as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. The president said, laughing, that the people of Delaware sent Biden to the Senate as soon as they could, electing him to the Senate at the age of 29 (he turned the constitutionally required age of 30 before he was sworn in). But before Biden could even head to Washington, his life would be marked with unspeakable tragedy for the first time. While Christmas shopping, his first wife and    daughter were killed in a car wreck his sons Hunter and Beau were injured in the accident. Biden considered resigning before he even took office but was persuaded not to. He was sworn into office at the hospital beside his sons, and for years he would famously commute back and forth every day on Amtrak to be with his family. Later on, he would meet and marry his   Jill, and they would have a daughter together, Ashley. In 2015, tragedy would strike the Biden family again when his eldest son, Beau, the former Delaware attorney general who was long seen as his father’s political heir, died at the age of 46 from brain cancer. The loss came as the elder Biden was weighing whether he should make his own run at the Oval Office to succeed Obama. Months later, the still very emotional vice president acknowledged his window had passed and said that he wouldn’t launch his own presidential campaign."
"In the closing weeks of 2016, an explosive document was floating around in media and security circles. Reporters tried, and failed, to verify the claims it contained  —   that Donald Trump colluded with Russia, and the Kremlin held lurid blackmail material as leverage over Trump. Reporting on the document, which was first compiled as opposition research, was rare and carefully vague. Meanwhile, a man named Christopher Steele was living quietly outside London. He was ”eating his favorite tapas and pottering around Victoria, home to his newly refurbished office,” The Guardian reports. He ran a private intelligence company, but aside from a spare LinkedIn page had almost no presence on the Internet searching for his name would bring up hits on a porn actor, a musician and a TV doctor instead. This week, everything changed. On Tuesday, CNN reported on the dossier’s existence and said it had been put together by a former British intelligence agent. Hours later, BuzzFeed published the document in whole (and Trump and the Kremlin issued prompt and furious denials). On Wednesday, one outlet after another  —   first The Wall Street Journal, then The New York Times and NBC and The Telegraph and The Guardian  —   identified Christopher Steele as the former MI6 agent and Moscow expert who assembled the dossier. The U. K. government asked the British media not to report the name, saying it put Steele’s personal security ”directly at risk,” but it was too late. Steele’s name was everywhere, and the man himself nowhere to be found. On Wednesday, he asked a neighbor to look after his cat, The Telegraph reports. He said he’d be gone for a ”few days.” The BBC reports that it was either Tuesday or Wednesday  —   and that it was actually three cats. Either way, Steele left his house early this week and ”hasn’t been seen publicly since,” NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports from London. ”No one showed up for work this morning at the offices of Orbis, the private intelligence consultancy Steele   in central London,” Frank reported Thursday. The Telegraph, citing an anonymous source, says Steele was ”horrified” when his nationality was made public. Now, the source tells the newspaper, Steele fears a Kremlin backlash and is ”terrified for his safety.” His wife and children were not at home as of Wednesday night, the Telegraph reports. The work of assembling the dossier was ”bold and high risk, in that it implicated both Trump and the Kremlin,” Frank notes. Steele, if he is indeed the author, would certainly know about the potential dangers. The Guardian reports that the former intelligence agent spent two years living in Moscow in the ’90s and continued to specialize in Russia during his later career at MI6. The newspaper writes: ”[Steele] was, sources say, head of MI6’s Russia desk. When the agency was plunged into panic over the poisoning of its agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, the then chief, Sir John Scarlett, needed a trusted senior officer to plot a way through the minefield ahead  —   so he turned to Steele. ”It was Steele, sources say, who correctly and quickly realised Litvinenko’s death was a Russian state ’hit.’ ” As you might expect with a story about a spook, all the published reporting on Steele relies heavily on anonymous sources. NPR has not independently confirmed any of these details. But according to all available accounts, Steele was   within intelligence circles both for his work at MI6 and for his private security work after he left the spy service. The Guardian reports that Steele, in his early 50s, is an Oxford graduate and was ”one of the more eminent Russia specialists” at the British spy agency. ”Former colleagues of Steele describe him as ’very credible’  —   a sober, cautious and meticulous professional with a formidable record,” the newspaper writes. Reuters reports that with Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele investigated corruption at FIFA and passed the information on to the FBI. It was that work that ”lent credence to his reporting on Trump’s entanglements in Russia,” Reuters writes, citing U. S. officials. The Guardian and The New York Times both theorize that to compile the   dossier, Steele probably didn’t travel to Russia but relied on inside contacts there. For the record, intelligence experts say they take the dossier seriously and that it was not meant as a hoax, but they caution that raw HUMINT  —   ”human intelligence”  —   is messy and always requires   and context. Experts see the document as important and potentially useful, which is not the same as believing the claims are factually true. The document ”does not contain the standard caveats or guidance about levels of ’confidence’ that are common in U. S. intelligence community documents,” NPR’s Philip Ewing reports."
"Updated at 4 p. m. ET, The Justice Department’s watchdog has launched a sweeping review of conduct by the FBI director and other department officials before the presidential election, following calls from Congress and members of the public. Top advisers to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton have blamed FBI Director James Comey, in part, for her loss in November. Now, federal investigators say they will examine whether public statements by Comey in July, October and November 2016 ran afoul of policies that caution officials not to influence the outcome of an election and to avoid making derogatory comments about people who haven’t been formally charged with wrongdoing. Comey has previously told friends and employees that he had few good choices in the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information on her private email server. In a statement Thursday, Comey said, ”I am grateful to the Department of Justice’s IG for taking on this review. He is professional and independent and the FBI will cooperate fully with him and his office. I hope very much he is able to share his conclusions and observations with the public because everyone will benefit from thoughtful evaluation and transparency regarding this matter.” Inspector General Michael Horowitz said he would not ”substitute” his judgment on the declination to prosecute Clinton for that of prosecutors and the FBI. And he said the review could expand based on what his investigators encounter along the way. Among the issues the IG will scrutinize: Former Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon called the inspector general’s announcement ”highly encouraging and to be expected given Director Comey’s drastic deviation from Justice Department protocol.” Fallon said the probe is ”utterly necessary in order to take the first step to restore the FBI’s reputation as a nonpartisan institution.”"
"So far, more than half of all U. S. states have legalized marijuana for medical use, and eight (plus the District of Columbia) have legalized the drug for recreational use. Varieties of cannabis available today are more potent than ever and come in many forms, including oils and leaves that can be vaped, and lots of edibles, from brownies and cookies to candies  —   even cannabis gummy bears. A report published Thursday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine analyzed more than 10, 000 studies to see what could conclusively be said about the health effects of all this marijuana. And despite the drug’s increasing popularity  —   a recent survey suggests about 22 million American adults have used the drug in the last month  —   conclusive evidence about its positive and negative medical effects is hard to come by, the researchers say. According to the report, that’s at least partly because the federal drug enforcement agency’s designation of the drug as a Schedule I substance  —   having ”no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”  —   entails so many restrictions that it has been difficult for researchers to do rigorous research on marijuana. We just need ”far more information,” Dr. Marie McCormick, chair of the NAS committee and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, tells Shots. Some of the highlights of her committee’s   report on marijuana include: Medical Benefits, Health Risks, ”The adolescent brain is very sensitive to these kinds of substances,” McCormick says. ”So they continue to use it  —   and may use it in increasing amounts  —   and are at risk for developing problematic cannabis use.” Erik Altieri, who directs the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says he thinks the legalization of marijuana by many states may actually reduce the problematic use of the drug by teens. ”That’s because we are taking marijuana off of the street corner,” he says, ”and out of the hands of drug dealers, who have nothing but incentive to sell to everyone and anyone.” Legalizing the drug, he points out, puts it ”behind the counter of a regulated business that has to check for ID, answer to the government and has oversight.” So far, states that have legalized recreational marijuana have not seen an increase in use among underage teens, Altieri says. ”By legalizing it and normalizing it,” he says, ”it’s become just another everyday thing that adults partake in  —   it doesn’t have that same draw to it that it used to.” Still, McCormick says, many health questions remain to be answered by better research. The increased legal availability of cannabis products in many states, and their increased potency, she says, make that rigorous research more important than ever."
"The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, from Fort Carson, Colo. has begun moving into Poland as part of the biggest U. S. military deployment in Europe since the end of the Cold War. It’s part of an Obama administration effort to deter perceived growing Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. The Kremlin isn’t happy. ”These actions threaten our interests, our security,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. ”Especially as it concerns a third party building up its military presence near our borders. It’s not even a European state.” But for Poles like retired metal worker Andrezej Kozlik, the American presence is something he’s come to yearn for since the fall of Communism in 1989. The    appeared oblivious to the icy temperatures on Thursday as he patiently waited at a sleepy border crossing 100 miles southeast of Berlin for the U. S. military convoy to arrive. ”We are very happy that the Americans are coming and supporting and protecting us,” Kozlik said. Like many Poles, he’s reluctant to name the country he wants protection from. A former tank man in 1974, in what was then Communist Poland’s army, Kozlik said he really wants to see an American tank up close. But only Humvees and support vehicles were in Thursday’s convoy. The brigade’s 87 tanks are being moved here gradually on trains and other heavy transport, according to U. S. military spokesmen. In the nearby town of Zagan  —   known for notorious POW camps the Nazis set up, including one featured in the 1963 blockbuster The Great Escape  —   officials and residents waving small American flags celebrated the arrival of what will be a continuous, rotational presence of U. S. and NATO armored brigades in Eastern Europe. The   is partly an attempt by President Obama to calm the nerves of NATO’s newer members after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and destabilized that country’s eastern flank. More recently, the Kremlin deployed   Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, a sliver of Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania, and conducted military exercises along its borders with former Soviet satellite countries. Russian officials insist the   is in response to NATO actions. Polish Army Maj. Gen. Jaroslaw Mika, whose soldiers will be training with some of the U. S. brigade’s 3, 500 troops, said he’s thrilled they are here. He added it’s important to ”be together, to build our common relationship and to provide more security”  —   not only for Europe, he said, but the world. U. S. Army Col. Christopher Norrie, who led Thursday’s convoy, was feted by Polish trumpets. He described the new mission as a ”cornerstone” to preserving freedom across Europe. ”To arrive at this point so swiftly is proof that when we work as a team . .. no challenge is too large to overcome, no distance is too far to cross, when the need arises,” Norrie said in Zagan. But whether   Donald Trump  —   who is highly critical of NATO  —   will withdraw the brigade after taking office is a question mark, said Michael Mazarr, associate director of the RAND Arroyo Center’s Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. ”I wouldn’t see that as likely very quickly, particularly given the likely role of general and secretary of defense nominee [James] Mattis in the process,” Mazarr said. It would be better, he said, ”to shoot above that target and go to Russia and say: ’Look, we’ve had a lot of misunderstandings lately, we recognize that some of what the United States and NATO have done may be perceived by you as provocative. Let’s find a way to work this out that might lead to some kind of an agreement where in a year, we’re pulling some of those troops back, but we’re doing it in concert with Russian withdrawals from the western military districts of Russia.’ ”That would seem to me to be the more likely and ultimately more productive kind of response of the new administration to this deployment,” Mazarr said. But in Germany, which is home to the U. S. Army in Europe headquarters, a new populist party with growing support from German voters, wants the American troops gone from Poland. The   of the Alternative for Germany party, Frauke Petry, argued that antagonizing Vladimir Putin hasn’t cut down on violence in Ukraine or Syria. ”NATO sort of surrounding Russia is not going to help,” she told NPR. ”It’s going to deepen the conflict. But I’m hopeful that Trump and Putin are going to end the situation.” Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, on the other hand, has said he hopes any effort to reconcile with Russia ”does not happen at our expense.” For now, military officials say the Fort Carson brigade will fan out across Poland and send some of its soldiers to the Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary to train with local troops there."
"The Affordable Care Act brought the rate of uninsured Americans to a record low 9 percent in 2015. It’s the major achievement of the controversial health care law and one the Obama administration likes to tout whenever it can. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell did just that in an interview with NPR on Tuesday. ”We have the lowest uninsured rate in the nation’s history,” Burwell said. ”Twenty million Americans have insurance that didn’t have insurance before the Affordable Care Act. For many people, they consider it just a basic part of their health care.” But many of those surveyed in a new   poll got it wrong. About half believed that the number of people without insurance had increased or stayed the same, or said they didn’t know what the law’s effect has been on insurance coverage. That was a failure of communication on the part of the Obama administration, says Bill Pierce, a senior director at APCO Worldwide, who advises health care companies on strategic communications. ”They needed to use the president more,” said Pierce. ”If this was his No. 1 achievement, and something he was proud of doing, it was the kind of thing that he needed to be out there and talking about all the time.” Democrats were better informed than Republicans, with 54 percent of Democrats saying the law had reduced the number of people without insurance, compared to 41 percent of Republicans. One problem, Pierce said, is that the law was passed in 2010 but didn’t go fully into effect for years. In that time, the website that housed the insurance exchange, the most public part of the program, failed. ”By the time the insurance rate started to fall, a lot of minds were already set,” he said. NPR’s poll was designed to gauge the public’s knowledge of some basic aspects of the U. S. health care system. The results come as Republicans on Capitol Hill are working to repeal the law. The Senate early Thursday morning passed a measure taking the first step toward dismantling the law. While many people in the poll were misinformed about the big picture when it comes to Obamacare, they had stronger knowledge about the details of the law. The majority of those surveyed know that the ACA protects people with   conditions from being refused coverage and that it requires insurance companies to pay for preventive care. However, the heated debate during the 2008 presidential race over   ”death panels” left a mark. About a third of those surveyed believed Obamacare places limits on    medical care and another half were not sure. Only 18 percent correctly said that no such limits exist under the law. Beyond Obamacare, many people had a good grasp of the overall quality of the U. S. health care system. The majority was aware that Americans generally pay more for health care than people in other countries and that even so, health care outcomes in the U. S. do not have ”the best results in the world.” The poll also reiterated findings from a separate survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation last week that showed that people are about evenly split on their view of the Affordable Care Act. Still, most people don’t want lawmakers to repeal the law until they have a replacement plan in place. Only 14 percent favor repeal without a replacement plan. That message seems to have gotten through to lawmakers. Earlier this month, Republican leaders in the House and Senate were advocating an immediate Obamacare repeal, with a slow phaseout while they consider ways to replace the law so people who have insurance can still get it. But many lawmakers walked those plans back this week in statements and via Twitter. Some, including   Donald Trump, said they did not want to see a repeal until a replacement is ready. ”We’re going to be submitting, as soon as our secretary is approved, almost simultaneously  —   shortly thereafter  —   a plan. It will be repeal and replace. It will be, essentially simultaneously,” Trump said in a news conference Wednesday. The poll surveyed 1, 011 adults on Jan. 4 and 5, 2017."
"At about 1:30 a. m. on Thursday, Republicans moved one step closer to repealing a law they have railed against since the moment it was passed nearly seven years ago. By a final vote of   the Senate approved a budget resolution that sets the stage for broad swaths of the Affordable Care Act to be repealed through a process known as budget reconciliation. The resolution now goes to the House, where leaders are hoping to approve it by the end of the week. The powerful tool sets up a fast track for repealing large parts of Barack Obama’s major domestic achievement the best guess is that the Senate is still several weeks away from largely repealing Obamacare. But as the process continues, large questions still loom over how  —   and when  —   Republicans will replace the health care law. An expedited repeal, starting with a    The vote took place during a session known as a ”  .” These     happen surrounding budget resolutions, which allow senators to propose unlimited amendments, as the New York Times’ Thomas Kaplan explained this week. The passage of the resolution kicks off the budget reconciliation process. That process is special because a reconciliation measure cannot be filibustered, meaning it allows the Senate to pass a bill with a simple majority (as opposed to needing 60 votes to overcome a filibuster). That’s good for Republicans, who hold 52 of the Senate’s 100 seats. Once the House approves the measure, which could happen as soon as Friday, committees from both chambers will meet to create instructions telling the budget committee what repeal should look like. Once repeal legislation is drafted, both houses can pass it with a simple majority, and then it would go to President Trump for signature. Should that repeal legislation pass both houses and be signed by a President Trump, it would cut out important provisions of Obamacare, but would still not repeal the entire law. Budget reconciliation only allows Congress to repeal parts of the bill  —   more specifically, the parts that deal with how much the government spends or taxes people. That means this process can’t repeal, for example, the parts of the bill that allow young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance or the rules saying companies couldn’t deny coverage for people with   conditions. But those are the parts of the law that end up costing a lot of money, while the parts that can be repealed through budget reconciliation  —   like the mandate that people have coverage (which is enforced through a tax) billions of dollars in Medicaid funds and subsidies for private coverage  —   bring money into the system to help balance out the cost equation. Democrats try to send their own messages, Democrats went into Wednesday night with a messaging plan: Use    to get Republicans on the record about what may come next. That plan consisted of proposing amendment after amendment to force Republicans to vote on Medicaid expansion, funding for rural hospitals, women’s access to health care and other popular programs. Democrats know this is a train they can’t stop. As the night drew to a close, all they could do was stage a protest. Senators aren’t supposed to give speeches during a vote, but Sen. Tammy Duckworth,  . a disabled Iraq War veteran, ignored the rule. As the presiding senator was gaveling for order, Duckworth said, ”For all those with   conditions, I stand on prosthetic legs to vote no!” The gaveling continued as Sen. Al Franken,  . said, ”I vote no on behalf of the more than 2. 3 million Minnesotans who can no longer be discriminated against because of the ACA!” What’s next (and when)? That’s complicated. .. Republicans are united on wanting to repeal Obamacare. But they’re more divided over the timeframe of that repeal, as well as what happens next. At one point, it appeared likely that congressional Republicans would take a ”repeal and delay” approach  —   that is, pass repeal legislation that would only be implemented far down the road, to allow time to craft a replacement for Obamacare. But now divisions are growing. House Speaker Paul Ryan this week said he would like a repeal and a replacement for Obamacare to come ”concurrently.” And in a Wednesday press conference,   Donald Trump indicated that he would like the two to happen in quick succession, though he didn’t provide much more clarity on that timeframe. ”It will be repeal and replace. It will be, essentially simultaneously,” he said, later adding, ”It will be various segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week  —   but probably the same day  —   could be a same hour.” Other Republicans, however, believe the process won’t be so abbreviated. ”I don’t see any possibility of our being able to come up with a comprehensive reform bill that would replace Obamacare by the end of this month,” said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson also seemed to say on Tuesday that the process could take a while, involving multiple intermediate steps. As he told WBUR’s Here and Now: ”If you had a bridge that’s about ready to collapse, you know, the first thing you would do is you’d start working to repair that bridge,” he said. ”You aren’t going to blow it up I mean, at least people have a bridge to use. Repair that so people can use it while you start building other bridges.” Collins is one of five Republican senators who this week proposed that the resolution provide more time for committees to craft their instructions. One big concern for Republicans here is repealing a law they detest without disrupting the lives of the roughly 20 million people insured because of that law, including 6. 4 million Americans insured through ACA exchanges. Americans definitely want some sort of change  —   in an   poll released Thursday, 38 percent said the ACA should be ”strengthened or expanded,” and close behind, 31 percent said it should be repealed and replaced. Meanwhile, only 6 percent said it should be ”left  ” (the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3. 5 percentage points). With reporting from Susan Davis."
"Tying a knot can be tricky. Just ask any kid struggling with shoelaces. And scientists have it even harder when they try to make knots using tiny molecules. Now, in the journal Science, a team of chemists says it has made a huge advance  —   manipulating molecules to create the tightest knot ever. ”Historically, knotting and weaving have led to all kinds of breakthrough technologies,” says David Leigh at the University of Manchester in the U. K. who notes that knots led to prehistoric innovations such as fishing nets and clothes. ”Knots should be just as important at the molecular level, but we can’t exploit that until we learn how to make them, and that’s really what we’re beginning to do.” The first molecular knot was created by chemist   Sauvage, one of three scientists who won last year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry for work in creating parts for future molecular machines. His knot had loops that made it look a bit like a   clover. This ”trefoil knot” is the simplest kind of knot possible, Leigh says, ”and then for the next 25 years, chemists weren’t able to make any   knots than that.” That’s surprising, he says, considering that mathematicians have come up with billions of possible knots. But in just the past few years, scientists including Leigh have managed to produce a few more complex knots. His team’s latest knot is the most intricate yet. It looks a lot like a Celtic knot and is designed to effectively tie itself in a test tube. Molecular strands wrap around metal ions that act like knitting needles and set up strand crossings in just the right spots. ”You can’t tie the knots by grabbing the ends and mechanically tying them like you would a shoelace in our everyday world,” Leigh says. ”Instead, you have to use chemistry.” Three molecular strands get braided together in this knot, he adds, ”and being able to braid, like you braid a girl’s hair in elementary school, allows you to make much, much more complicated knots and ultimately opens the door for weaving as well, which will be very exciting.” That’s because molecular weaving could produce materials with interesting new properties. ”It’s fantastic,” says Edward Fenlon, a chemist at Pennsylvania’s Franklin  Marshall College who has a special interest in knots but was not part of this research team. ”It’s really impressive that they’ve been able to go beyond some of the more simple knots with just three crossings.” This new knot has eight crossings, he says, and what’s more, it’s the tightest knot ever, which he says is defined by just ”the length of your rope, and then how complex the knot is, how many crossings you have.” In this case, the ”rope” is very short  —   just 192 atoms long, or 500 times smaller than a red blood cell, Leigh says. ”Knots are really fascinating objects or geometric shapes. They have always been around you observe them in art, in nature. As a Boy Scout you learn how to tie knots,” says Rigoberto Advincula, a chemist at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University, who notes that knots also are found in DNA and proteins. ”It’s one of the fascinating things to stretch chemistry in terms of your ability to make synthetic objects.”"
"It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it. NPR’s Kelly McEvers talks to Mike Sutter, food critic for the San Antonio   about his ”365 days of Tacos” series, in which he eats at a different taco joint every day for a year. He’s done it before, in Austin, where he ate more than 1, 600 tacos in 2015. But now he’s moved to San Antonio, and he’s finding that the taco scene there is a bit different, and in fact is tied to a cultural identity that spans back many decades. Kelly McEvers: My main question is not whether or not you can do this, because you’ve done it before. But why? Mike Sutter: If we want to take it from a health perspective, then we’ll look at the year that I did this before. I lost 10 pounds. I know that sounds completely counterintuitive, but a good reason to eat tacos every day is they’re pure protein, they’re wrapped in a light layer of carbohydrates and they’re farm fresh. We talk about the    movement  —   the taquerias have been doing that since time immemorial. Have you ever seen a taqueria open in the morning or a taco truck about to open at night? You see the cooks coming back with these giant bags of tomatillos and tomatoes and fresh jalapenos and these big vats of marinating pork. They’re cooking that to order. It’s healthy food. It was      before that was a popular thing in food. What kinds of tacos are we talking about? Breakfast tacos are generally available all day, but I’m not just going to stick with that, although one of my favorites is just a basic    taco in a good flour tortilla. I had that yesterday at a taqueria that you might have called ”fast food.” If fast food were like that, it wouldn’t have such a bad name. This was a taco that was stuffed with . .. these wonderful dirty potatoes and freshly scrambled eggs, and you really just had to wrap it with both hands to get it up into your mouth. What, for you, makes a good taco? The tortilla is the    point. If you’re not starting with handmade flour or corn [tortillas] you’re already doing it wrong. Whether it’s that fluffy and dusty flour tortilla that San Antonio loves, or the   corn tortillas from Austin taco trucks, if the tortilla’s wrong, the taco’s never right. I also look for faithfulness to the form. If you’re going to do a breakfast taco, cook the eggs to order. Let’s not just dip them out from a steam pan. If you’re going to do a bean and cheese, let’s have it in the right ratio so that it melts together and doesn’t squish out the sides. .. Food is all about ratios and that holds true with tacos. Is there one taco that sticks out, for good or for bad? A form that I hadn’t had a lot of exposure to was the puffy taco. Ask anyone from San Antonio and they’ll tell you it was born there, and a lot of people will tell you it was born at Ray’s  . I think the best taco I’ve had in San Antonio so far was the beef puffy taco from Ray’s  . You just take this nice pile of masa, flatten it out, fry it. It gets puffy and crisp but a little bit soft so you can fold it. And then you put that together, and it’s a perfect little taco purse. It’s dressed with lettuce and tomatoes and cheese  —   it’s got a little bit of a hybrid appeal to it. Are there enough taquerias in San Antonio to give you enough material for an entire year? There’s a broader discussion to be had about that, because tacos were a part of the fabric of life here long before popular food culture and media discovered tacos. So instead of that itinerant popularity of tacos, you’ve had people whose taquerias aren’t measured by months or years, they’re measured by decades. They’ve been in those buildings, and there’s history in the bricks. The hard part in San Antonio is going to be narrowing the list to 365. I had to work hard to get to 365 in Austin. How different are the tacos in Austin and San Antonio? The culture in Austin doesn’t go back quite as far, so what you’re looking at is taco trucks. So, it’s trucks vs. taquerias. In that yearlong series [in Austin] I must have gone to a hundred trucks. Half of those are gone already. Do you feel like in some ways you’re giving San Antonio its due? I think it’s time we paid tribute to the people who formed the bones of the San Antonio dining scene. We love to talk about the latest    bistro and what the hotshot chef guys are doing, but people who eat every day out of convenience and necessity  —   they’ve been going to these places since they were kids. They’ve been taking tacos in their lunchboxes, and there was a little bit of bigotry attached to that. Now it’s just time to recognize and give the same level of importance to the kind of food we eat every day instead of just on a special occasion. You’re a white dude. You’re in a Latino city writing about tacos. Is that an issue? I don’t think I have to be born in the blood to appreciate the form. I think if you approach it with respect, it doesn’t matter what your background is."
"Free speech advocates see   Trumps’s testy relationship with the media and his     tweets reacting to critics as evidence that he is  —   at best  —   insensitive to the First Amendment. And they say one recent controversy, the decision by Simon  Schuster to publish a book by social media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, has grown out of an atmosphere that encourages hate speech. Now, PEN America  —   an organization dedicated to defending the right to free speech all over the world  —   is starting to pay more attention to what’s happening on the home front. PEN is   a protest which will bring a host of   writers to the steps of the New York Public Library to protest threats to free expression. ”We need to be, as citizens, ready to come out,” says PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel, ”stand together for basic rights that six months ago we might have been able to take for granted, but that we no longer can.” Nossel sees these threats coming from several directions: The  ’s attacks on the press and his critics, the proliferation of fake news and the pattern of trolling on social media. ”People feel more free to speak their mind,” she says, ”even if it crosses what would have been considered boundaries of hatred or racism or misogyny, and so I think it then becomes incumbent on others to speak more loudly.” But the job of advocating for free speech has become ever more complicated in the age of social media  —   which Nossel says can be both an incredible tool for free expression and a threat to it. ”It has a dampening effect on the depth of discourse, it can lead to this online mobbing and trolling where someone who says something controversial is then targeted, ridiculed. So this is not about the government silencing speech, but it’s about speech silencing other speech.” Perhaps no one has crossed the line on social media more boldly than Milo Yiannopoulos, who was kicked off of Twitter after he spearheaded a nasty campaign against black actress Leslie Jones. Yiannopoulos likes to describe himself as a free speech fundamentalist: ”What the left wants to do is it wants to enable its extremists on its own side, the sexists and misandrists of feminism, the black supremacists of Black Lives Matter, they want to enable extremists on their own side, and silence the extremists on the other. Well, I don’t like the extremists on either side.” Yiannopoulos, an editor at the   Breitbart News, seems to take delight in infuriating people with remarks that are viewed as racist, misogynistic and  . So it’s not surprising that Simon  Schuster’s decision to publish his book drew strong criticism and calls for a boycott of the company. Dennis Johnson is the head of Melville House, a small independent publisher, ”Nobody in the protest is saying ’you have no right to be published,’” he says. ”’You have no right, Simon  Schuster, to publish this guy, and this guy, you have no right to be published’  —   nobody’s saying that. What they’re saying is, ’we’re shocked and we’re outraged that you would stoop so low to make a buck as to publish this purveyor of vile hate speech. ’” Johnson is highly critical of a statement issued by the National Coalition Against Censorship on behalf of a number of industry groups representing publishers, authors and booksellers. The NCAC says anyone has a right to call for a boycott of Simon  Schuster  —   but that such a protest will have a ”chilling effect” on publishing. Joan Bertin, executive director of the NCAC, says similar protests have already led to censorship: ”We know of instances in which books that contain certain kinds of content have been shelved, deferred, redacted, edited deeply to remove content that people might object to.” Both the NCAC and PEN America say the best response to hate speech is not more censorship. ”Trying to suppress hateful speech doesn’t make it go away,” says Bertin. ”I mean, I think the whole idea of free speech requires us to be active participants, and when we hear ideas that we think are bad and harmful, it requires us to say ’why,’ not just say ’shut up. ’” But publisher Dennis Johnson says another equally important right is at stake here: The right to protest. ”This is not about censoring right wing voices,” he says. ”This is about combating hate speech and its entry into the mainstream.”"
"The Environmental Protection Agency said Fiat Chrysler violated the Clean Air Act by allegedly installing and failing to disclose software in some 104, 000 cars and trucks that alters emissions. The automaker was required by law to disclose the software to regulators during the certification process but did not do so, the EPA announced Thursday. While the agency is still investigating the nature of these devices, it said the software results in increased emissions of nitrogen oxides. ”The software is designed such that during the emissions tests, Fiat Chrysler’s diesel cars meet the standards that protect clean air,” EPA Assistant Administrator Cynthia Giles told reporters on a conference call. ”However, under some other kinds of operating conditions, including many that occur frequently during normal driving, the software directs the emissions control system to operate differently, resulting in emissions that can be much higher.” That includes times when vehicles are ”driving at high speeds and for an extended period,” Giles added. The software was found in two models, according to the EPA: ”  model year 2014, 2015 and 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokees and Dodge Ram 1500 trucks with 3. 0 liter diesel engines sold in the United States.” The regulator said it has not yet made a certification decision for model year 2017. The EPA stressed that issuing a notice of violation is a first step as discussions continue with the company. It added that Fiat Chrysler might be liable for civil penalties and injunctive relief. Fiat Chrysler said in a statement that it was ”disappointed” by the notice of violation and ”intends to work with the incoming administration to present its case as resolve this matter fairly and equitable.” The company added that it has provided ”voluminous information” about its technology in response to EPA requests the EPA said the company has thus far failed to explain the devices. The vehicles remain legal to drive and vehicle owners aren’t required to take any action at the moment, the EPA says. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement that his office also plans to investigate the claims against Fiat Chrysler. The allegations appear reminiscent of the major Volkswagen diesel emissions cheating scheme, which has resulted in some $19 billion in penalties and compensation. Fiat Chrysler shares plunged after the EPA announcement and trading was briefly halted."
"Among the unusual elements of   Donald Trump’s Wednesday news conference was a   interlude in which an attorney took the podium and described Trump’s plan to address potential conflicts of interest between his businesses and the responsibilities of his office. The attorney, Sheri Dillon, outlined an arrangement by which Trump would turn over ”total control” of his worldwide business interests to his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, with whom he would not communicate about the family business. Dillon said real divestiture  —   selling the business or committing its assets to a blind trust  —   would be forcing him ”to destroy his business.” She said the   ”should not be expected to destroy the company he built.” Dillon went on to say that Trump’s empire ”is massive, not dissimilar to the fortunes of Nelson Rockefeller when he became vice president, but at that time no one was so concerned.” [Emphasis added.] It may have been the first time anyone has compared Trump’s wealth to that of the Rockefellers, but that was not ultimately the point. It was the last eight words of her remark of that moment that raised eyebrows, because Rockefeller’s wealth at the time was very much a concern to quite a number of people. Dillon might not be expected to have any personal recollection of the Rockefeller confirmation process more than 40 years ago, but the record is widely available. Rockefeller was picked to be the new vice president in September 1974, just weeks after President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in to succeed President Richard Nixon, who had resigned. Rockefeller, known as ”Rocky,” had been elected the Republican governor of New York four times and had run for president three times. He was also a grandson of the legendary John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Co, and founder of perhaps the largest and certainly the most famous family fortune in America. The   was a time of hypersensitivity to money issues in national politics, an era when ethics and   reform were front and center in Washington  —   partly because of the Watergate scandals that had driven Nixon from office. Rockefeller’s nomination was, in fact, the subject of extensive hearings that fall, not only in the Senate but in the House of Representatives as well. (The provisions of the 25th Amendment governing the presidential succession required a confirmation vote in both chambers of Congress.) Many conservatives saw Rockefeller as a liberal, especially on social issues, and did not fancy him a heartbeat from the presidency. Many Democrats saw his great wealth as a source of inevitable conflicts of interest. His confirmation was far from assured, especially after it was revealed he had used $2 million in personal or family funds to make gifts to senior aides, including Henry Kissinger (who had moved on to serve both Nixon and Ford in the White House and as secretary of state) as well as to finance the publication of a biography critical of a Democrat who had opposed his   as governor. Additional controversy arose over deductions he took on his federal income tax return, leading to an eventual settlement with the IRS for more than $900, 000. But Rockefeller disclosed his various assets and trust funds and placed all his assets in a blind trust  —   the kind of steps Trump has not been willing to take. And in a   session after that fall’s election, Rockefeller was confirmed by both the House and Senate. He served as Ford’s vice president but was not made part of the ticket when Ford sought a full term in his own right in 1976. Buffeted by opposition within the Republican Party, Ford dumped Rockefeller for Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. The   ticket lost in 1976. Rockefeller retired from politics and died of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 70."
"  Donald Trump took to Twitter again Thursday morning, this time to urge his followers to ”Buy L. L. Bean,” and support one of his campaign backers. ”Thank you to Linda Bean of L. L. Bean for your great support and courage,” he tweeted Thursday. ”People will support you even more now. Buy L. L. Bean.” The tweet came in response to public attention over Linda Bean’s political support for Trump. Bean, a board member and   of the   outdoor retailer and the granddaughter of company founder Leon Leonwood Bean, says she gave money to a PAC supporting Trump. The Associated Press reported that her donations totaled $30, 000  —   exceeding limits on individual contributions in a single year. (The news service says the PAC, Making Maine Great Again, initially reported Bean contributed $60, 000 but amended its filings.) Her political stance drew criticism and spurred calls for a boycott of the company under the hashtag #Grabyourwallet. That prompted the company to respond, noting that Linda Bean’s views did not reflect on the company or the views of other Bean family members. ”I think it’s a case of bullying,” Bean told Fox  Friends on Thursday. Since his electoral victory, Trump has used his Twitter account to criticize U. S. manufacturers considering expansion in Mexico. Responses to his tweets include criticisms that Trump is now advertising for his favored companies."
"At a Wednesday press conference,   Donald Trump and his lawyer described the steps the real estate mogul would take to separate from his business empire while in office. It wasn’t nearly enough, according to Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub. ”The president is now entering a world of public service,” Shaub said in a speech at the Brookings Institution. ”He’s going to be asking his own appointees to make sacrifices. He’s going to be asking our men and women in uniform to risk their lives in conflicts around the world. So no, I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president of the United States of America.” Trump said on Wednesday that among other moves, he would hand all management of his businesses to his sons, who would make no new foreign deals and would need an ethics review of any new domestic deals. Divestiture would require him to go much further. It would mean the sale of all of the president’s assets, with their value conveyed to a blind trust  —   and an investment portfolio of which he and his family would have no knowledge or control. Of course, no past U. S. president has had business holdings of the scale or complexity of the  ’s. Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon said at the press conference that would make divestiture unworkable, NPR’s Jackie Northam reported. ”The Trump brand is key to the value of the Trump Organization’s assets,” Dillon said. ”If Trump sold his brand, he’d be entitled to the royalties for the use of it.” And if the brand was mothballed entirely, the value of Trump’s holdings would crater, and they would have to be sold off in a fire sale. Nevertheless, that’s what Shaub said needs to happen  —   both to completely safeguard against conflicts of interest, and to set an example. ”The ethics program starts at the top  —   the signals a president sends [set] a tone across the executive branch,” Shaub said, adding that ”officials in any administration need their president to show ethics matters, not only through words but through deeds.” The ethics official pointed to the steps undertaken by Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, whose separation from Exxon Mobil reportedly will cost the former CEO about $7 million. ”Mr. Tillerson’s making a clean break from Exxon,” he said. ”His ethics agreement serves as a sterling model for what we’d like to see with other nominees.” Unlike the president, Shaub said, Tillerson worked closely with the ethics office to create his divestment plan. And it’s not just inside the government that the president’s example matters, Shaub said. The ethics program run by the executive branch, including presidential divestment, has been viewed as a gold standard internationally, he said, with the office frequently consulting with governments in the developing world to set up similar programs."
"After years of hints, shots across the bow and a few gentle suggestions, the Chargers have finally done it: Owner Dean Spanos announced that the NFL team will be leaving San Diego for Los Angeles, starting next season. ”San Diego has been our home for 56 years. It will always be part of our identity, and my family and I have nothing but gratitude and appreciation for the support and passion our fans have shared with us over the years,” Spanos said in a letter Thursday. ”But today,” he continued, ”we turn the page and begin an exciting new era as the Los Angeles Chargers.” The move will bring to a close the Chargers’   stay in the city. The team spent its inaugural year in 1960 playing in Los Angeles, as a member of the American Football League (which would merge with the NFL roughly a decade later). The first stop in LA didn’t last long the team moved to San Diego the following year. In the decades that followed, the Chargers made it to just one Super Bowl, which they lost to the San Francisco 49ers in 1995. In recent years, the relationship between Spanos and the city his team called home soured, as Spanos angled for public funds for a new stadium. The Chargers’ current venue, Qualcomm Stadium, opened in 1967 and now stands as one of the NFL’s oldest buildings. The City of San Diego was less than enthused about the prospect of paying for a new one. The standoff led Spanos to cast his gaze elsewhere, notably in a proposal with the Oakland Raiders to share a stadium in Carson, Calif. in Los Angeles County. That plan was rejected by NFL owners in a vote early last year. The ongoing dispute even made a recent appearance on Election Day ballots, when a referendum was put to San Diego voters. They dealt a convincing defeat to a   proposal that would have used hundreds of millions of tax dollars on a new stadium in downtown San Diego. While not necessarily a nail in the coffin, that vote renewed speculation that the Chargers and San Diego would soon part ways. LA, for its part, had suffered a professional football drought for more than two decades, since the Raiders and the Rams both left town in the  . Now, after the Rams returned last year, the city is suddenly flush with football teams  —   especially if you count perennial college powerhouses USC and UCLA. The newly minted LA Chargers will join the Rams in a $2. 66 billion stadium in Inglewood, reports the    . That stadium is scheduled to open in 2019 in the meantime, the Chargers will be playing at the StubHub Center in Carson, which will briefly earn the honor of smallest venue in the NFL. According to the paper, the Chargers will also have to pay the NFL a $550 million relocation fee  —   or, $650 million if they choose to pay in installments. San Diego fans, for their part, expressed disappointment and frustration, though not surprise. ”It hurts, but we will move on without them,” County Supervisor Ron Roberts told the  . ”San Diego is a great community and we are not dependent on the Chargers.” Lastly, by way of postscript, it must be noted: Bystanders on social media have not exactly been kind to the team’s new logo, which displays a white L and A on a blue background, a la the LA Dodgers  —   albeit with a little lightning bolt riff. We present these tweets without comment, merely as a reminder that the Internet might not be the best place to look for a warm welcome."
"A poem written by a Chinese surgeon lamenting the medical effects of smog, called ”I Long to Be King,” is going viral on Chinese social media. Told from the perspective of lung cancer, the poem takes an apocalyptic note: Happiness after sorrow, rainbow after rain. I faced surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, But continued to chase my dream, Some would have given up, but I will be the king. An English version of the poem (for full text, see below) ran in the October issue of CHEST Journal, a publication of the American College of Chest Physicians. Published in Chinese this month, the poem is now striking a chord on Chinese social media. ”I hope the government can look at this problem more and then immediately resolve it, otherwise everyone will move. Or we will die of cancer. Is this the final outcome we face?” asked one commenter on Weibo, China’s   social media platform. ”I’m infuriated. .. For the sake of GDP, can we simply ignore the health of our country’s people?” wrote another.   Not all commenters appreciated the poem though. ”Europe and the U. S. always most enjoy when Chinese people write about their own underside. The more coarse, the more backward, the higher the chance it wins attention,” complained one. The author of ”I Long to Be King” is Dr. Zhao Xiaogang, deputy chief of thoracic surgery at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital of Tongji University. Since the poem has taken off, he has been outspoken in the detrimental health effects of air pollution. ”The intense rise in lung cancer . .. is intimately related to smog,” Dr. Zhao told state media. In and around Beijing and Hebei province in China’s northeast last week, the concentration of air pollutant particles was more than 20 times higher than the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization. According to the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, the city saw 168 days of ”polluted” air in 2016. Cancer is the leading cause of death in China, claiming 2. 8 million lives in 2015. Lung cancer is the country’s leading form of cancer. The Chinese government, well aware of the simmering discontent, has resolved to clean up the country’s smog problem. Ambitious goals have been set to substantially reign in air pollution by 2020. And over the past year authorities have fined corporate polluters millions, going as far as detaining several hundred of them. Yet on Chinese message boards, some commenters don’t think the pollution will end any time soon. ”The Hebei countryside is all smog. It is terrible,” wrote one commenter. ”It is another way of showing how useless the government is.” Here’s the full text of I Long To Be King: I am ground glass opacity (GGO) in the lung, A vague figure shrouded in mystery and strangeness, Like looking at the moon through clouds, Like seeing beautiful flowers in the fog. I long to be king, With my fellows swimming in every vessel. My people crawl in your organs and body, Holding the rights for life or death, I tremble with excitement. When young you called me ”atypical adenomatous hyperplasia”, Then when I had matured, you declared me ”adenocarcinoma in situ”, When fully developed, your fearful denomination: ”invasive adenocarcinoma”. You forgot my strenuous journey to become the king. From tiny to strong, From humble to arrogant. None cared when I was young, But all fear me we when full grown. I’ve been nourished on the delicious mist and haze, That sweetly warmed my heart, Always loving when you were heavy drunk and smoking, Creating me a cozy home. When I was less than eight millimeters, I was so fragile, Waiting for a chance to grow up. Now, more than eight millimeters, I am more mature, And considered worthy of notice. My continuous growth gives me a chance to be king, As I break through layers of obstacles, Spanning the mountains and waters. My fellows march to every corner and occupy every region. My quest to become king was full of obstacles, I was cut until almost dead in childhood, Burned once I’d matured, And poisoned when older. Happiness after sorrow, rainbow after rain. I faced surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, But continued to chase my dream, Some would have given up, but I will be the king. I long to be king, with fellows and subordinates, I long to be king, to have people’s fear and respect, I long to be king, to dominate my domain, I long to be king, to direct your fate."
"Maracanã Stadium has been a fixture of the Rio de Janeiro skyline for decades. Opened just in time to play host to Brazil’s heartbreak in the 1950 World Cup, it underwent massive renovations to host . .. well, more heartbreak for Brazilians in the 2014 World Cup. Now the iconic soccer stadium, which also hosted Brazilians’ 2016 Olympic redemption, is suffering a heartbreak of a different kind: Rio’s soccer authority says Maracanã has fallen into a state of abandonment and disrepair. ”The worries over the present and the future of the stadium are only increasing,” the Rio de Janeiro Football Federation said in a statement, according to multiple media outlets. Since its last official use late last year, windows have been smashed, copper wiring stolen from the walls, seats torn out of their places entirely. Brazilian newspaper O Globo reports that looters even took off with a bust of journalist Mário Filho, for whom the stadium was given its official name  —   Estádio Jornalista Mário Filho. The playing field itself has been left to the ravages of time and theft, leaving it a     shadow of its Olympic self. Given the billions of dollars the country spent on its preparations for the World Cup and the Olympics  —   and the massive protests that spending elicited  —   the neglect of Maracanã, its jewel, has raised eyebrows among Brazilian soccer officials. But so far, few hands have been raised to fix the situation. Neither Maracanã SA, the firm currently under contract for the stadium’s upkeep, nor the Rio state government accept responsibility for the   cleanup and administration of Maracanã, according to O Globo. Both groups are said to blame the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee for having left the stadium in disrepair after the Summer Games. So the city’s four major soccer clubs that regularly make use of the stadium, such as Flamengo, have begun looking at alternatives to Maracanã for their upcoming games. Reuters reports the teams plan to meet with the football federation on Tuesday. But for federation President Ruben Lopes, the matter might be moot unless something significant changes. ”If there is not an immediate government intervention to stop the looting and the destruction of the Maracanã then it might not even be worth meeting on the 17th,” Ruben Lopes said, according to the wire service."
"A U. S. military investigation has cleared the U. S. forces of wrongdoing in fighting that left 33 civilians dead and 27 others wounded last year in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, saying that they acted in  . ”To defend themselves and Afghan forces, U. S. forces returned fire in   at Taliban who were using civilian houses as firing positions,” according to the U. S. military report published Thursday. The November firefight started when Afghan special operations forces and some U. S. military advisers entered the village of Boz in an attempt to capture Taliban leaders there. Taliban forces started firing at the troops from civilian buildings. As the joint forces began to take casualties, they called for U. S. aerial reinforcements. The investigation concluded that the air assets ”used the minimum amount of force required to neutralize the various threats from the civilian buildings and protect friendly forces.” The killed and wounded Afghan civilians are believed to have been inside the buildings as they were hit by airstrikes, though the reports states that ”no civilians were seen or identified in the course of the battle.” A Taliban ammunition cache exploded during the fighting, which may have also caused casualties, the report added. Local Afghan officials say the U. S. military’s count of the civilian toll is low, according to The Associated Press. ”More than 50 people, including women and children, were killed in the Afghan and U. S. forces’ attack in   Kandahari,” Toryalia Kakar, a deputy provincial council member, told the wire service. ”After the raid, Kunduz residents carried over a dozen corpses of the dead, including children and family members of the Taliban fighters, toward a local governor’s office in a show of rage,” the AP added. The U. S. military says two U. S. soldiers and three Afghan army soldiers were killed during the battle. Four U. S. soldiers and 11 Afghan army soldiers were wounded. More than two dozen Taliban members, including three of its leaders, were killed. A year before this battle, Kunduz was the site of a U. S. aerial assault on a Médecins Sans Frontières trauma center that killed dozens of medical staff and patients. The Pentagon disciplined 16 service members for the strike, which is says was caused by human errors, but concluded that it was not a war crime."
"Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered government agencies to expand access to contraception, especially for poor women. By 2018, he instructs, all poor households in the country should have ”zero unmet need for modern family planning.” Duterte’s executive order, signed Monday and announced on Wednesday, is the latest development in a long battle over birth control in the   Philippines. It pits the president, who says family planning is critical for reducing poverty, against the country’s Supreme Court and Catholic leadership. Four years ago  —   after more than a decade of debate, negotiations and lobbying in Congress  —   the Philippines passed a law guaranteeing universal access to birth control. But the full implementation of that law has been blocked by court orders and budget cuts. Birth control has long been available in the Philippines for middle class and wealthy women, but it is priced out of reach of the country’s poor. Abortion is illegal, with no express exceptions. More than half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Institute, and more than 90 percent of unintended pregnancies occurred in the absence of modern contraceptive methods. Polls show that most Filipinos support the Reproductive Health Law, which calls not just for access to contraception (subsidized or free, for poor couples) but also sexual health education and reproductive health care services. But it has been strongly opposed by the powerful Catholic Church. The law was immediately challenged as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court upheld some of the law, but imposed a restraining order limiting the contraceptive methods the government can distribute. Then Congress slashed the budget that was supposed to pay for free or   contraception in many communities. In November, the president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines thanked the high court for showing ”caution and circumspection” on the implementation of the law. Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas urged couples to ”shun the ways of selfishness” and avoid the ”mutual  ” of artificial contraception. Duterte’s order calls on a wide range of government agencies to ”intensify and accelerate” services that promote access to contraception. The order says more than 6 million Filipinas of reproductive age have no access to modern family planning methods, including 2 million women living in poverty. In a nod to the budgetary limitations, the order also calls for government offices to ”engage, collaborate and partner with” nonprofits and the private sector to fully meet demand for family planning resources. Duterte wants agencies to report back in six months on their progress, and factor expanded access to birth control into their future budget proposals. The president has made global headlines with his violent crackdown on the drug trade, which has killed thousands of people. The Catholic Church has joined international human rights watchdogs in criticizing the street killings, while Duterte remains popular among the general public. The famously blunt and frequently profane president has previously indicated his willingness to defy the Catholic Church on the issue of contraception, too. As the mayor of Davao City in the southern Philippines, he not only advocated for contraception, but he offered cash rewards for men who underwent vasectomies, The Associated Press reports. And he vowed to bring the same attitude to family planning to the national level, ”I will reinstall the program of family planning.” Duterte said in June, before taking office, the AP writes. ”Three’s enough.”"
"A storm system that dumped precipitation on multiple states in the West appears to be easing, but rivers have yet to crest and many communities are still digging out from record snowfall. The Pacific Northwest and Northern California were hit hardest beginning Tuesday, when rain flooded roads and prompted evacuations in multiple communities. The storms were the second major weather system to hit the region this week, as we have reported. But all that water has helped ease the region’s severe drought, according to the weekly U. S. Drought Monitor report released Thursday. The report said a wet week contributed to ”major drought improvements” in California as well as Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. A rainstorm in Southern California led the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood watch for Los Angeles County on Thursday, saying that rain during the evening ”could possibly trigger mud and debris flows in the recent burn areas” where the risk of erosion is high. A day earlier, the Los Angeles Fire Department said a   slab of concrete ”from the foundation and retaining wall of the home detached and [slid down a] hillside,” blocking a road. No one was injured. On Thursday, a winter storm warning also remained in effect for part of the Sierra Nevada, and a coastal flood advisory was issued for the San Francisco Bay Area, where king tides exacerbated flooding. In Sacramento County, Calif. 10 inches of rain fell in the foothills and 6 feet of snow in the mountains, reported Bob Moffitt of Capital Public Radio in Sacramento. Moffitt also reported that 20, 000 people in Placer County had lost power as of Thursday, and he spoke to county Emergency Services Manager John McEldowney, who said people are struggling to keep their driveways and rooftops clear. ”You want to keep huge amounts of snow off your roof because there have been cases where feet and feet and feet of snow on roofs have caused ” McEldowney said. In the mountains of Northern California and Nevada, the National Weather Service also warned there was a high risk of avalanches. Farther north, snow blanketed much of Oregon and more than 37, 000 people in the Portland area lost power. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that ”on average, [Portland] and surrounding communities received   inches of snow” on Tuesday and Wednesday. ”The reports are that there were hundreds of cars abandoned on the highways and dozens, if not hundreds of people stranded in their vehicles,” Portland Police Sgt. Christopher Burley told the member station. The station reported: ”The NWS had a tough time just keeping up with the changing forecast as the snow fell late Tuesday, said . .. meteorologist Clinton Rockey. ” ’What we saw across the region was a nightmare unfolding for the area. Snowfalls in the metro area, boy I tell you, it was really a lot of fun for us to figure out what’s going on,’ he said. ”The metro region saw the unusual phenomenon of what’s known as ’thundersnow,’ which is what it sounds like: a thunderstorm during a snowstorm.” Not even skiers could catch a break. In California and Nevada, so much snow fell on ski resorts that they couldn’t open. Woodward Tahoe ski area in California said it was closed Wednesday due to ”Snowpacalypse2017.” On Thursday, Nevada’s Mount Rose remained closed ”due to complications from the storm.” The snow was a relief for at least one living thing, however. At the Oregon Zoo, a polar bear appeared to be having a pretty great day."
"Six years ago, Don Cameron, the general manager of Terranova Ranch, southwest of Fresno, Calif. did something that seemed kind of crazy. He went out to a nearby river, which was running high because of recent rains, and he opened an irrigation gate. Water rushed down a canal and flooded hundreds of acres of vineyards  —   even though it was wintertime. The vineyards were quiet. Nothing was growing. ”We started in February, and we flooded grapes continuously, for the most part, until May,” Cameron says. Cameron was doing this because for years, he and his neighbors have been digging wells and pumping water out of the ground to irrigate their crops. That groundwater supply has been running low. ”I became really concerned about it,” Cameron says. So his idea was pretty simple: Flood his fields and let gravity do the rest. Water would seep into the ground all the way to the aquifer. The idea worked. Over four months, Cameron was able to flood his fields with a large amount of water  —   equivalent to water three feet deep across 1, 000 acres. It all went into the ground, and it didn’t harm his grapes. These days, Cameron’s unconventional idea has become a hot new trend in California’s water management circles  —   especially this week, with rivers flooding all over the state. ”This is going to be the future for California,” Cameron says. ”If we don’t store the water during flood periods, we’re not going to make it through the droughts.” Helen Dahlke, a groundwater hydrologist at the University of California, Davis, is working with a   farmers who are ready to flood their fields this year. ”We have test sites set up on almonds, pistachios and alfalfa, just to test how those crops tolerate water that we put on in the winter,” she says. There are two big reasons for these experiments. The first is simply that California’s aquifers are depleted. It got really bad during the recent drought, when farmers couldn’t get much water from the state’s surface reservoirs. They pumped so much groundwater that many wells ran dry. The water table in some areas dropped by 10, 20, or even 100 feet. Aquifers are especially depleted in the southern part of California’s Central Valley, south of Fresno. Flooding fields could help the aquifers recover. The second reason to put water underground is climate change. California has always counted on snow, piling up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, to act as a giant water reservoir. Water is released gradually as the snow melts. But because of a warming climate, California now is getting less snow in winter, and more rain. The trend is expected to intensify. But heavy rain isn’t as useful because it quickly outstrips the capacity of the state’s reservoirs and just runs into the ocean. Meanwhile, the state gets very little rain during the summer, when crops need water. ”We really have to find new ways of storing and capturing rainfall in the winter, when it’s available,” says Dahlke. There’s no better place to store water than underground. Over the years, California’s farmers have extracted twice as much water from the state’s aquifers as the total storage capacity of the state’s dams and   lakes. In theory, farmers could replace that water. Peter Gleick, a water expert and   of the Pacific Institute, says that after winter storms, there is enough water available to recharge those groundwater aquifers. The hard part, he says, will be getting the state’s farmers and irrigation managers to go along with the plan. Because it will require flooding hundreds of thousands  —   and possibly millions  —   of acres.  ”I’m cautiously optimistic that we can do this,” he says. But it’s going to require a different way of thinking. It’s going to require a lot of farmers and owners of ag land to be willing to flood land when the water’s available.” And Gleick says, even if this   flooding can be accomplished, it won’t be enough, by itself, to protect groundwater supplies. It will have to be accompanied by strict limits on how much water farmers can pump from aquifers. Groundwater  —   which until recently was almost completely unregulated  —   will have to be managed so that water is there when farmers really need it, when the rains don’t fall."
"The bustling Paris streets were rutted and caked in thick mud, but there was always a breathtaking sight to behold in the shop windows of Patisserie de la Rue de la Paix. By 1814, people crowded outside the bakery, straining for a glimpse of the latest confection created by the young chef who worked inside. His name was   Carême, and he had appeared, one day, almost out of nowhere. But in his short lifetime, which ended exactly 184 years ago today, he would forever revolutionize French haute cuisine, write bestselling cookbooks and conjure up extravagant, magical feasts for royals and dignitaries. Carême’s childhood was one part tragedy, equal part mystery. Born the 16th child to destitute parents in Paris in either 1783 or 1784, a young Carême was suddenly abandoned at the height of the French Revolution. At 8 years old, he worked as a kitchen boy for a chophouse in Paris in exchange for room and board. By age 15, he had become an apprentice to Sylvain Bailly, a   pâtissier with a prosperous bakery nestled in one of Paris’ most fashionable neighborhoods. Carême was a quick study in the kitchen. Bailly encouraged his young protégé to learn to read and write Carême would often spend his free afternoons at the nearby Bibliotheque Nationale poring over books on art and architecture. In the back room of the little patisserie, Carême’s penchant for design and his baking talent collided, as he shaped delectable masterpieces out of pastry, marzipan and sugar. In his teenage years, Carême fashioned edible replicas of the late 18th century’s most famous buildings  —   crumbled confectionery ruins of ancient Athens and pastry towers of Chinese fortresses with flowing trellises of appetizing greenery. Bailly displayed these opulent creations  —   often as large as 4 feet tall  —   in his bakery window. Carême’s creations soon captured the discriminating eye of a French diplomat, Charles Maurice de  . Around 1804, Talleyrand challenged Carême to produce a full menu for his personal château, instructing the young baker to use local, seasonal fruits and vegetables and to avoid repeating entrees over the course of an entire year. The experiment was a grand success and Talleyrand’s association with French nobility would prove a lucrative connection for Carême. French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was notoriously unimpressed by the decadence of early 18th century cuisine, but under pressure to entertain Paris’ high society, he too summoned Carême to his kitchen at Tuileries Palace. In 1810, he designed the lavish cake for the wedding of Napoleon and his second bride,   of Austria. Carême became one of the first modern chefs to focus on the appearance of his table, not just the flavor of his dishes. ”I want order and taste. A well displayed meal is enhanced one hundred per cent in my eyes,” he later wrote in one of his cookbooks. In 1816, Carême embarked on a culinary journey which would forever mark his place as history’s first celebrity chef. He voyaged to England to cook in the modern Great Kitchen of the prince regent, George IV, and crossed continents to prepare grand feasts for the tables of Tsar Alexander I of Russia. Never afraid to tout his own accomplishments, a boastful Carême made a fortune as wealthy families with social ambitions wooed him to their kitchens. Later, in his cookbooks, he would often include a sketch of himself, so that people on the street would be able to recognize  —   and adore  —   him. Carême’s gastronomic displays became the epitome of fine French dining they were bountiful, beautiful and ostentatious. Guests would fall silent in wonder as servants carried Carême’s elaborate creations into the dining hall. For a feast celebrating the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia’s visit to George IV’s Brighton Pavillion on Jan. 18, 1817, the menu featured 120 different dishes, highlighting eight different soups, 40 entrees (including Glazed veal with chicory and Jellied partridge with mayonnaise) and 32 desserts. As he traveled through the homes of early 19th century nobility, Carême forged the new art of French haute cuisine. Locked in stifling galleys, Carême conceived his four ”mother sauces.” These sauces  —   béchamel, velouté, espagnole and allemande  —   formed the central building blocks for many French entrees. He also perfected the soufflé, became the first chef to pipe his meringue through a pastry bag and introduced the standard chef’s uniform  —   the same   white coat and toque (tall white hat) still worn by chefs today. The white clothing conveyed an image of cleanliness, according to Carême  —   and in his realm, appearance was everything. Between meals, Carême penned cookbooks that would be used in European kitchens for the next century. His manuals, including Le Pâtissier royal parisien and the massive   L’Art de la cuisine française au   siècle (  completed after his death) first systematized many basic principles of gastronomy, complete with drawings and    directions. Long before television cooking shows, Carême walked readers through common kitchen tasks, instructing them to ”try this for yourself, at home” as celebrity American Chef Julia Child might do, many years later. In the end, however, it was the kitchen that did Carême in. Decades of working over coal fires in stagnant, unventilated spaces (to ensure his entrees would not get cold) had fatally damaged his lungs. On January 12, 1833, Carême died just before he turned 50. But in his lifetime, Carême, ever confident, could see beyond his short reign in the kitchen. He wanted to ”set the standard for beauty in classical and modern cookery, and attest to the distant future that the French chefs of the 19th century were the most famous in the world,” as he wrote in his papers. Decades later, Auguste Escoffier would build upon Carême’s concept of French cuisine. But in the very beginning, there was just Carême, the chef célèbre who exalted dining into art."
"Mice that kill at the flip of a switch may reveal how hunting behavior evolved hundreds of millions of years ago. The mice became aggressive predators when two sets of neurons in the amygdala were activated with laser light, a team reported Thursday in the journal Cell. ”The animals become very efficient in hunting,” says Ivan de Araujo, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University and an associate fellow at The John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven. ”They pursue the prey [a live cricket] faster and they are more capable of capturing and killing it.” Activating the neurons even caused the mice to attack inanimate objects, including sticks, bottle caps and an insectlike toy. ”The animals intensively bite the toy and use their forepaws in an attempt to kill it,” De Araujo says. But the aggressive behavior is reserved for prey. Mice didn’t attack each other, even when both sets of neurons were activated. The results hint at how the brain changed hundreds of millions of years ago when the first animals with jaws began to appear. This new ability to pursue and kill prey ”must have influenced the way the brain is wired up in a major way,” De Araujo says. Specifically, the brain needed to develop hunting circuits that would precisely coordinate the movements of a predator’s jaw and neck. ”This is a very complex and demanding task,” De Araujo says. The researchers expected to find these hunting circuits in mice because many mice kill and eat insects. And one species known as the killer mouse ”basically feeds on live prey, including sometimes even other mice,” De Araujo says. Sure enough, the scientists found one set of neurons in the amygdala, a structure involved in emotion and motivation, that became active when a mouse was pursuing prey. They found a second set of neurons in the amygdala that became active when the animal was biting and killing. Then the team used a technique called optogenetics to create mice in which both sets of neurons could be controlled using light from a laser. That gave the researchers ”an   switch for either or both of the circuits,” De Araujo says. ”When we stimulate [both sets of] neurons it is as if there is a prey in front of the animal,” De Araujo says. ”They assume the body posture and actions usually associated with real hunting.” Researchers have found evidence of similar hunting circuits in rats and other species, including humans, whose survival once depended on their ability to hunt and kill large animals."
"Once again this year, President Obama hailed the nation’s high school graduation rate as it reached another record high  —   a whopping 83 percent. ”When I took office almost eight years ago, we knew that our education system was falling short,” he said at a Washington, D. C. high school in October. ”I said, by 2020 I want us to be No. 1 across the board, so we got to work making real changes to improve the chances for all of our young people. . .. And the good news is that we’ve made real progress.” High school graduation rates in the nation’s capital, he noted, have grown faster than anywhere else in the country, from 53 percent to 69 percent. But as we’ve reported over and over again, those numbers are deceiving. While some states are working hard to get kids a diploma, others have lowered their standards or turned to questionable quick fixes. We’ve talked to a lot of experts on this. And from those conversations we’ve pulled seven things they say would improve how the graduation rate is tracked and reported  —   and that would actually measure student success. 1. Be transparent, ”My view is that any calculation of rates should come with an asterisk. They should provide summary tables to the public to account for all the students who have left for each reason. Then the public could better understand where students are going.”  —   Julian Vasquez Heilig, professor, California State University, Sacramento, 2. Go Moneyball, ”I’m struck by how much we know about people in sports and everything they do, and how little we know about kids. Obviously there’s an uncomfortable intersection between our desire for clear data and questions of privacy and whose responsibility this all is.”  —   John Gomperts, president and CEO, America’s Promise Alliance, which publishes the Building a Grad Nation report, 3. Insist on mastery, ”The increased graduation rate is a welcome trend, and appears to be (in part) the result of 20 years of reform, including the testing, accountability and reading instruction reforms of the No Child Left Behind era. But juking the stats is a disgusting abdication of responsibility, and laughably easy credit recovery programs can be just as pernicious. If credit recovery and second chances are going to mean anything, they have to be about students actually learning the material required for a high school diploma.”  —   Michael J. Petrilli, president, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 4. Follow students longer, ”No. 1, there needs to be greater collaboration between data systems at the   level and at the postsecondary level. In Baltimore, yes, we looked at our grad rate, but for our young people who stayed in the state of Maryland, we looked at how long it took them to graduate from college.”  —   Sonja Santelises, CEO of the Baltimore City Public Schools and a former senior vice president of   policy and practice at The Education Trust, ”For higher ed, we look at a   graduation rate, but for high school it’s four. Massachusetts is among the leaders in looking at   and   rates as well. Young people sometimes have to stop out to work or for other issues.”  —   Gomperts, 5. Look at more than just the grad rate, ”I don’t know how a district can move graduation rates in authentic ways and have that be the only data point.”  —   Santelises, ”Less obsession with just one number would probably be good.”  —   Gomperts, ”Emphasis on this one statistic masks variations that are quite important.”  —   Russell Rumberger, professor of education, University of California, Santa Barbara, 6. Coordinate with colleges to create a meaningful standard, ”How do you make sure the grad rate is reflecting what increased opportunities kids should have as a result of graduating?”  —   Santelises, ”What if what counted in a diploma in a state is what an institution of higher education in that state would recognize for admission?”  —   Gomperts, 7. Personalize the problem, In Baltimore, ”We had the heads of student support, school safety, school counselors  —   30 people in a room with the numbers flashed on a screen every two weeks. There are faces that match each one of those data points. We’re responsible for every single kid in the system.”  —   Santelises, A version of this story was published on NPR Ed in June 2015."
"Where the first day of Jeff Sessions’ attorney general confirmation hearing focused on what the Alabama senator’s relationship would be with the president if confirmed, the second day focused on his own past. Sessions, a former Alabama attorney general, has a reputation for being tough on crime, but civil rights advocates testified that his reputation was made on the backs of vulnerable groups. Lawmakers who have worked with him, on the other hand, said they knew a just and fair man. ”We must bend” the arc of the moral universe, The most impassioned pleas against Sessions came at the very end of the day, during a third and final panel that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said was the result of a special request from Sen. Dianne Feinstein. All six men on the panel were  . Three came to defend Sessions, and three to denounce him. ”His record indicates that we cannot count on him to support state and national efforts toward bringing justice to the justice system,” Sen. Cory Booker said. Booker, the first sitting senator to testify against a fellow senator during a confirmation hearing, said Sessions’ record shows he won’t protect people of color, women, LGBT communities, immigrants or voting rights. Booker ended his speech with a call to rally against injustice: ”The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve toward justice. We must bend it.” John Lewis, the Georgia representative and civil rights leader, also gave a passionate speech against Sessions, but he took a more personal approach. ”Those who are committed to equal justice in our society wonder whether Sen. Sessions’ calls for law and order will mean today what it meant in Alabama when I was coming up back then,” said Lewis, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. in 1965 and suffered a skull fracture at the hands of state troopers. Lewis cautioned against Sessions’ polite demeanor. ”It doesn’t matter how Sen. Sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you,” he said. ”We need someone who’s going to stand up, speak up and speak out for the people that need help.” Rep. Cedric Richmond, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, decried Sessions’ record. ”Simply put, Sen. Sessions has advanced an agenda that will do great harm to   citizens and communities,” Richmond said. He also added that having to testify at the very end of the panels ”is the equivalent of being made to go to the back of the bus.” The other three witnesses on the panel defended Sessions. All had worked with him at some point in his career: Two did legal work with him in Alabama and the other, William Smith, served as the first   general counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. ”After 20 years of knowing Sen. Sessions, I have not seen the slightest evidence of racism, because it does not exist,” Smith said. ”I know a racist when I see one, and I’ve seen more than one, and Jeff Sessions is not one.” Civil rights and the ”rights to be safe and secure” The NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union were both mentioned on Day 1 of the hearing, specifically because Sessions had called both organizations ” ” and ”” as NPR’s Nina Totenberg has reported. On Day 2, leaders from the two organizations got a chance to respond. NAACP President and CEO Cornell Brooks said his organization sees Sessions as ”unfit to serve as attorney general.” ”Sen. Sessions’ record reveals a consistent disregard to civil and human rights of vulnerable populations, including the   Latinos, women, Muslims, immigrants, the disabled, the LGBT community and others,” Brooks said. He focused mainly on Sessions’ voting record in the Senate, highlighting Sessions’ votes against the 2009 Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, among others. He ended by calling on the room to imagine an Attorney General Sessions presiding over ”Michael Brown’s Ferguson” or ”Freddie Gray’s Baltimore.” David Cole, the national legal director of the ACLU, asked senators to ”painstakingly probe the many serious questions that [Sessions’] actions, words and deeds raise about his commitment to civil rights and civil liberties.” Cole also highlighted Sessions’ move to charge three black activists with voter fraud when he was a U. S. attorney in Alabama in 1985. The case, which argued that the defendants had tampered with absentee ballots, was a factor behind Sessions’ rejection from a federal judgeship in 1986. At one point, Cole specifically brought up Sessions’ defense of Trump’s infamous comments about grabbing women’s genitals, caught on a hot microphone. At the time, Sessions said he wasn’t sure that action could be characterized as sexual assault. (In Tuesday’s hearing, Sessions said ”clearly it would be” sexual assault.) A survivor of sexual assault who testified on Wednesday said Sessions had minimized Trump’s comments and that made her concerned that victims may not want to come forward in the future. But, like the three who defended Sessions during the final panel, others stepped forward throughout the day to vouch for Sessions’ moral character. Former U. S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said he has ”no hesitation” that Sessions is prepared for the job before him: upholding the law and protecting Americans. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson agreed. ”Of all our important civil rights, the rights to be safe and secure in one’s own home and neighborhood is perhaps the most important,” Thompson said."
"The incoming Trump administration has found a job for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Trump team announced Thursday that Giuliani will ”be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend” on   matters. Giuliani was a surrogate and adviser to Trump during the campaign. He had reportedly been under consideration for a variety of   posts in the new Trump administration, including Secretary of State, a job he expressed interest in. But no such   post was offered. Now, Giuliani will be leading a team of experts from the corporate world because of his ”long and very successful government career in law enforcement, and his now 16 years of work providing security solutions in the private sector,” according to a statement issued by the Trump transition office. Giuliani himself, in a phone call with reporters, compared the issues with cyber security to cancer, saying if all the people doing cancer research were brought together, ”you might be able to cure it.” Giuliani said there’s an ”awful lot of research going on both here, in Israel, in Germany on cyber defense.” His job he said, will be to bring those experts to the   so they can share with him their solutions. Cyber security has become emerged as a key issue for the Trump team. U. S. intelligence agencies have fingered Russia for hacking email servers at the Democratic National Committee with the aim of helping the Trump campaign. Trump on Wednesday conceded Russia was behind the hacks (although it ”could have been others,” he said) but he denied they helped win him the election. He said he would create a panel that would recommend within 90 days steps to take to end what he called the new hacking ”phenomenon.” Giuliani said he will focus on bringing ”things the private sector (is) doing” regarding cyber defenses to the  ’s attention. Of course, corporations have not been immune from hacking either, as customers of Target and Home Depot who had their credit accounts stolen can attest, or employees of the Sony Corporation whose   were hacked. It’s not clear exactly what Giuliani’s title will be, and whether he will be paid for his advice. Giuliani is chairman of the   practice at the Greenberg Traurig law firm and has his own   company."
"The incoming Trump administration will look to tap private investment funds to help rebuild and expand the nation’s highways, railways, seaports and airports. That’s what Elaine Chao,   Donald Trump’s choice to be transportation secretary, told a panel of senators in a rather friendly confirmation hearing Wednesday. Chao, who served as labor secretary under President George W. Bush, and in top transportation posts during the first Bush and Reagan administrations, says the nation’s economic growth ”is jeopardized by infrastructure in need of repair, the specter of rising highway fatalities, growing congestion and by a failure to keep pace with emerging technologies.” She also acknowledged that the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is funded by gasoline taxes, is running out of money and may soon become insolvent. So Chao told senators on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee the country needs ”to unleash the potential for private investment in our nation’s infrastructure,” and look to innovative financing tools such as   partnerships. ”In order to take full advantage of the estimated trillions in capital that equity firms, pension funds and endowments can invest, these partnerships must be incentivized with a bold, new vision,” Chao says. ”This president has a bold vision,” which Chao says will be announced soon after Trump takes office Jan. 20. During the campaign, Trump often criticized the state of the nation’s transportation and urban infrastructure, and he promised to spend a trillion dollars repairing and expanding roads, bridges, railways, airports and other infrastructure. But experts question how much private financing many infrastructure projects can attract. Investors will only fund those projects that can generate a good return on that investment, such as roads and bridges that charge tolls. And Chao acknowledged as much during the hearing, saying ”for [  partnerships] to be truly effective, there needs to be revenue streams that need to be assured.” But she added that when it comes to funding the nation’s critical infrastructure repairs and upgrades, ”we all know that the government doesn’t have the resources to do it all.” Chao, 63, is among Trump’s     appointments. Senators of both parties praised the longtime Washington insider’s experience and expertise, and noted her friendship with them and their spouses. She was introduced at the hearing by her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who borrowed a quote from former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole when Dole introduced his wife Elizabeth at a confirmation hearing for the same job. Dole paraphrased Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale by quipping, ”I regret I have but one wife to give for my country’s infrastructure.” Chao thanked senators for their support, joking, ”I will be working to lock in the majority leader’s support tonight over dinner.” Though Chao has been criticized for her environmental record and by organized labor groups who say she too often sided with industry in enforcing labor and safety regulations, she is expected to easily win confirmation by the Senate. A wide range of transportation industry groups has praised her nomination."
"Menopause is a mystery to evolutionary biologists, but new insights could come from a   study of killer whales. In these whales, the explanation may lie in a combination of conflict and cooperation between older and younger females, according to a report published Thursday in the journal Current Biology. Killer whales are one of only three species known to have menopause  ” the others are pilot whales and humans. Researchers have long wondered why it was that these few species evolved to have females that spend so much of their lives unable to have babies. Killer whales start reproducing around age 15, but stop having calves in their 30s or 40s, even though they can live for around a century. A team led by behavioral ecologist Darren Croft of the University of Exeter decided to search for answers with the help of an unusual   study of killer whales in the Pacific Northwest. There, since the 1970s, researchers have carefully collected information on the births and deaths of individual whales that live in family groups. Contained within the data is an intriguing clue about why female whales may stop reproducing later in life. When older females reproduce at the same time as their daughters, who live alongside them, the calves of the older mothers are nearly twice as likely to die in the first 15 years of life. But when older mothers had calves in the absence of a reproducing daughter, their calves did just fine. ”It’s not that older mothers are bad mothers, that they’re not able to raise their calves as younger mothers,” says Croft. ”It’s that when they enter into this competition with their daughters, they lose out and their calves are more likely to die.” The competition may center on access to food, says Croft, because there’s good reason to believe older females feel more pressure to share their precious fish with the others around them. That’s because, in killer whales, females mate with males from other groups but then rejoin their families. That means when a new calf is born, its father is not around, and females start their lives in a situation where their relatedness to the group is rather low. As a female grows older and starts having calves that stay with her, however, she develops more kinship ties to those around her. ”It may be that older females are more likely to share, and younger females are less likely to share food,” says Croft. That would mean younger females would have more resources to lavish on their own calves. It’s clear that in these whales, older females play an important role in the survival of not just their own calves, but all of the family members they live with. ”If an old female dies, her son’s risk of dying in the year following her death is over eight times higher than if his mother was still alive,” says Croft, ”and these are adult sons, these are not juveniles, these are    fully grown males.” The idea that older females safeguard and enhance their genetic legacy by protecting and providing for their children and grandchildren has been an influential explanation for why menopause evolved. It’s known as the Grandmother hypothesis, and was developed by anthropologists who studied   cultures. But Croft thinks that alone isn’t enough to account for menopause, because other   social species, like elephants, have older females that help their group but continue to bear young until the end of life. ”Just the fact that these old females can store information and share that with the group and increase their survival doesn’t explain why they stop reproducing,” says Croft. Proponents of the Grandmother hypothesis, however, may not be so convinced that intrafamilial conflict plays an important role. Anthropologist Kristen Hawkes, at the University of Utah, says the killer whales are fascinating, but that they’re hard to study. ”They’re doing all kinds of stuff where you can’t see it, and even to get demographic data is just so tricky, because they’re all underwater and they’re ” she says. She points to one recent study on   in killer whales that found older females share fish with their older adult sons, perhaps to maximize the males’ ability to sire more babies. If that’s the case, she says, ”it’s not the older females and younger females in competition, it’s the older females contributing to the enormous success of their sons, and then those baby whales are all born somewhere else. They’re not competing, because their moms are elsewhere.”"
"If reading more in 2017 was one of your new year’s resolutions, Nancy Pearl is here to help. Every once in a while, the   librarian sends host Steve Inskeep a big stack of books. They’re generally ”  ” reads  —   titles she thinks deserve more attention than they’ve been getting. This year, the stack includes breathtaking thrillers, a   crime story, an unforgettable family tale, and more. Pearl tells Inskeep why she loves these novels, and why she thinks you will, too. These recommendations have been edited for clarity and length."
"Dogs are celebrated everywhere these days for the clever things they and their brains can do, and the science of dog cognition continues to soar in popularity. As a cat person, I can’t help but add that cats, too, show off their savviness for science. Now, some cognitive scientists are asking about another domesticated animal companion that’s been comparatively neglected: horses. Japanese scientists Monamie Ringhofer and Shinya Yamamoto of Kobe University have published online in the journal Animal Cognition the results of the first research to investigate how horses respond to the state of knowledge or ignorance of their human companions. The results are impressive. Ringhofer and Yamamoto designed research to test eight thoroughbred horses in a paddock at Kobe University’s equestrian club. The horses watched as a research assistant put a carrot in a food bucket. The bucket wasn’t accessible to the horses, only to a human caretaker. In one experimental condition, the human caretaker witnessed the food going into the bucket (knowledge state). In a second condition, the caretaker did not watch as the carrot was placed into the bucket (uninformed state). The horses’ responses were videotaped and compared between the two conditions. The horses used more visual and tactile signals with the uninformed than the informed caretaker. The horses increased how much they looked at, touched   lightly pushed the ignorant caretaker (compared to the caretaker in the know) to get them to realize where food was hidden. The authors acknowledge that   studies are needed. It’s an important result, though, because it points not only to advanced cognition but also to flexible cognition, with the horses adjusting their communicative behavior to the humans’ knowledge state. ”This study is the first to show that horses possess some cognitive basis for this ability of understanding others’ knowledge state in social communication with humans,” Ringhofer and Yamamoto write. Some   primates do this but, of course, horses are evolutionarily far more distant relatives of ours than chimpanzees. So what about dogs: How do they respond? Ringhofer and Yamomoto write that in a similar experiment carried out by other researchers, dogs didn’t do what the horses did  —   they didn’t look at, touch or push their caretakers. Instead, the dogs alternated their gaze between the uninformed human experimenter and the hidden food’s location. In other words, the dogs directed the humans’ attention also  —   just in a different way. It could be that it’s, perhaps, in keeping with their different evolutionary history as herding, hunting, service and rescue animals. Each species has in its own way   a skill leading to effective communication with humans. Science journalist and equestrian Wendy Williams, author of The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion, told me via email that: ”This   study has been a long time coming.” ”For most of the history of horse domestication, we’ve assumed that communications between humans and horses was unidirectional. Humans order. Horses obey. But in this study, we see that communication could be a   street. Horses do try to communicate with humans. Most of us just don’t try to learn their language.” Williams pointed out that social signaling is important among horses in a herd: ”Horses are highly social animals. In a natural state, they depend on each other for information that provides for the survival of the whole band. If a predator, for example, appears on the horizon, one horse immediately alerts the others through a wide variety of signals. Snorting, pricked ears and stamping are only a few of these signals. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t try to communicate with humans as well.” Lead researcher Ringhofer said, via email, that not all the horses responded during the experiment in the same way. This is interesting and also expected: Animals’ behavioral tendencies and personalities vary. ”Most horses used visual and tactile signals to request the [attention of the] caretakers. However, two horses seemed to use extra behavior. They stood near the caretaker and located their face in front of the caretaker (very close to the caretaker’s face). Then, both of them finally hit the caretakers’ face with their face,” Ringhofer said. Ringhofer couldn’t determine if the   was accidental or purposeful on the horses’ part, and so didn’t include it in her analyses. But she does wonder if those two horses might have come up with quite a startling way of social signaling! Direct comparison of intelligence across species doesn’t work well, because there is no single standard of what ”smart” means across differently evolved animals. Asking if horses and dogs are equally smart, then, doesn’t really make much sense. The bottom line here is all about the horses themselves. Together with other recent research showing that horses can use symbols to communicate with humans, this new study tells us that horses think carefully about what’s going on around them. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve, and her forthcoming book, Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat, will be published in March. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"UPDATE: Trump Team: Adviser Spoke To Russia Official The Day U. S. Sanctions Were Announced, The man tapped to be national security adviser to   Donald Trump, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, exchanged text messages and spoke with Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak, in December  ” around the time of the Obama administration’s response to Russian interference during the presidential campaign, a spokesman for Trump acknowledged Friday. But Sean Spicer, the spokesman and incoming White House press secretary, insisted all of this contact happened before President Obama announced the retaliation, and, as a result, Obama’s move to expel 35 Russian diplomats wasn’t a topic of conversation. This came in response to a Washington Post column from David Ignatius that raised serious questions about contact between Flynn and the ambassador. In the column, Ignatius writes he was told by a ”senior U. S. government official” that Flynn had called the ambassador several times on the day of Obama’s action. Ignatius then asks: ”What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U. S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U. S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about ’disputes’ with the United States. Was its spirit violated?” And it comes in a week in which the focus on Russia and Trump’s relationship with the country has been front and center. Spicer was asked about the column in a call with reporters, and that’s when he confirmed that contact had happened, but he said it wasn’t as described in the column. Here’s the timeline as described by Spicer:  —   ”Christmas Day, Gen. Flynn reached out to the ambassador, sent him a text and it said, ’I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I look forward to touching base with you and working with you, and I wish you all the best.’ The ambassador texted him back wishing him a Merry Christmas as well,” Spicer said.  —   ”And then subsequently on the 28th of December [the ambassador] texted [Flynn] and said, ’I’d like to give you a call, may I?’ ”  —   ”[Flynn] then took that call on the 28th and the call centered around the logistics of setting up a call with the president of Russia and the   after he was sworn in. And they exchanged logistical information on how to initiate and schedule that call. That was it, plain and simple.” President Obama ordered two Russian diplomatic compounds closed and 35 Russian diplomats expelled from the United States the next day, Dec. 29. Ignatius has updated his column to reflect what he was told by Trump’s team, which initially hadn’t responded to his request for comment. Here is what Ignatius wrote in the update: ”UPDATE: The Trump transition team did not respond Thursday night to a request for comment. But two team members called with information Friday morning. A first Trump official confirmed that Flynn had spoken with Kislyak by phone, but said the calls were before sanctions were announced and didn’t cover that topic. This official later added that Flynn’s initial call was to express condolences to Kislyak after the terrorist killing of the Russian ambassador to Ankara Dec. 19, and that Flynn made a second call Dec. 28 to express condolences for the   of a Russian plane carrying a choir to Syria. In that second call, Flynn also discussed plans for a   conversation sometime after the inauguration. In addition, a second Trump official said that Kislyak had initiated a call to Flynn to invite a representative of the Trump administration to a conference that would be taking place in Kazakhstan at the end of January the official didn’t provide a date for the   call.” A transition official confirmed to NPR that in addition to talking about logistics for a   phone call, the Russian ambassador also extended an invitation to the conference related to the conflict in Syria, which is set to take place in Kazakhstan. The transition official says no commitments about attending were made during the call. Additionally, the official couldn’t say whether there had been any contact between Flynn and the ambassador since Dec. 28. This could all be a whole lot of nothing, or it could be something more serious. It isn’t uncommon for ambassadors to try to reach out to incoming administrations. But critics have long raised concerns about Flynn’s relationship with Russia and in particular RT, the Russian     network (considered by the U. S. intelligence community to be a propaganda tool). Flynn made appearances on the network and even sat next to Putin at an event celebrating its 10th anniversary. It’s been a week of intense focus on Russia, First, there was the release of the unverified document claiming Russia has compromising material on the   and that there had been contact between Trump’s team and Russian officials during the campaign. Trump’s team has strongly disputed these unverified (and in some cases verified to be false) claims calling the document and those who reported on it ”fake news.” It came to dominate Trump’s first news conference since winning the election. In that same news conference, Trump said he did think Russia was behind the   hacking and document releases, but he also said, ”If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what folks? That’s called an asset, not a liability. Now I don’t know that I am going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do, but there is a good chance I won’t.” Then there were the confirmation hearings for Trump’s picks for national security positions. All expressed a harder line toward Russia and its leader than Trump has. And finally, there were two totally bizarre occurrences on Capitol Hill. Just as the man who hopes to become CIA chief was testifying and a senator was in the middle of asking him about Russian interference, the power went out in the building, cutting the feed to   which was televising the hearing. And, on the same day, as a congresswoman was making a speech on the House floor, again about Russia, the   live stream online switched to a feed of RT. ”This afternoon the online feed for   was briefly interrupted by RT programming,” a   spokesman said in a statement to NPR’s Susan Davis. ”We are currently investigating and troubleshooting this occurrence. As RT is one of the networks we regularly monitor, we are operating under the assumption that it was an internal routing issue. If that changes we will certainly let you know.”"
"Fleeing, unarmed people shot in the back. Mentally ill men and women, not suspected of any crime, stunned by a Taser while they lay on the ground. People already detained or incapacitated who were beaten, with police accounts falsely describing the force as necessary. A   report from the Justice Department details harrowing accounts of excessive force by the Chicago Police Department and highlights systemic failures that allow the violence to continue even as members of the public attempt to protest or report the brutality. The investigation was launched after the death of Laquan McDonald in 2014 put Chicago’s policing practices in the spotlight. Video released by court order showed a police officer shooting the black teenager in the back. The report found an ongoing ”pattern or practice” of unreasonable and excessive force  —   not a series of isolated events. And the violations are rarely punished, the DOJ says, as officers’ descriptions of encounters are taken ”at face value” even when there’s contradictory evidence. What does that mean for Chicago residents? The DOJ included a number of ”illustrative examples” of the police department’s systemic failings. Here’s what that pattern of excessive force looks like on the ground: Shooting at fleeing suspects, In ”numerous incidents,” Chicago officers chased and shot fleeing people who posed no threat to officers or the public, the DOJ says. In some cases, there was no basis even to suspect the person of committing a serious crime. ”The act of fleeing alone was sufficient to trigger a pursuit ending in gunfire, sometimes fatal,” the DOJ writes. In one case, the report says, police officers fired 45 rounds at a man who was running away, killing him. They claimed he had fired a gun at them while they were chasing him  —   even though they noted there was no gun found on the man. And there were these examples: ”In another case, a CPD officer chased a man who ran when an officer told him to stop, and then shot the man in the back of the leg. The officer claimed the man had turned to point a gun. After a thorough search of the scene, no gun was recovered. The man, who denied ever turning to face the officer, was found only with a cell phone. . .. ”In another case, a CPD officer fatally shot a fleeing, unarmed suspect in the back. The officer told investigators the suspect had turned around to point a black object. This account did not square with the location of the shooting victim’s gunshot wounds and appeared contrary to video footage that showed the suspect running away from the officer.” The department doesn’t have a foot pursuit policy for officers to follow. In all three of these cases, the department accepted the officers’ accounts and found the shootings justified. The DOJ also notes that the shooting of McDonald was a foot pursuit of a person who did not pose a threat, and it, like many other such chases, came to a ”tragic end.” Using Tasers against people who pose no threat, The report found a pattern of officers using Tasers in unreasonable situations, with the department generally not investigating the incidents at all. The DOJ said it was difficult to track this practice, because the department kept such poor records on it  —   but still, the report found numerous examples. Chicago police chose to use Tasers on: There’s no department policy on using Tasers on children, the DOJ found. Use of force as retaliation and against children, Officers sometimes hurt people as retaliation, the DOJ found  —   including retaliation against citizens who claimed a police stop was unlawful. They once used pain compliance techniques on a man who ”stiffened and locked his arms while they were arresting him for walking his dog without a leash and refusing to present identification.” The DOJ also highlighted an example of a    Latino boy who was riding his bike under his father’s supervision. A plainclothes officer, ”responding to a report of ’two male Hispanics running from’ the area,” pulled the child off his bike, handcuffed him and pushed him up against a fence, without explanation to father or son. ”The officer’s only apparent basis for this detention was the boy’s race, which is constitutionally unreasonable,” the DOJ found. Acceptance of officers’ accounts, in face of contradicting evidence, Time and again, the DOJ found, officers claimed their use of force was reasonable and the police department took their word for it  —   even in the face of video evidence showing obvious excessive brutality. Here’s just one example. Police officers falsely claimed that a woman had attacked them, the DOJ writes: ”In the video, officers can be seen aggressively grabbing the woman, who was being arrested for a prostitution offense, throwing her to the ground, and surrounding her. After she is handcuffed, one officer tells another to ’tase her ten             times.’ Officers call her an animal, threaten to kill her and her family, and scream, ’I’ll put you in a UPS box and send you back to wherever the       you came from’ while hitting the woman  —   who was handcuffed and on her knees. Officers can then be seen discovering a recording device and discussing whether they can take it. Supervisors approved this use of force and the officers were not disciplined until after the woman complained to [the Independent Police Review Authority] and produced surveillance video of the event.” Putting youths in danger as coercion, One section of the report is dedicated to dangerous and potentially unlawful tactics the CPD apparently uses to gain information about locations of weapons, gang activity or drug activity. The DOJ says its investigation indicates that officers will sometimes arrest someone for a   offense or on false pretense and refuse to let the person go until he or she gives up information about where police can find guns stashed illegally. If the person can’t or won’t give a location, the officers reportedly will ”take a young person to a rival gang neighborhood and either leave the person there or display the youth to rival members, immediately putting the life of that young person in jeopardy by suggesting he has provided information to the police.” One teenager reported his brother was dropped off in rival territory and told ”better get to running.” There’s video footage of officers standing around a car with a ”cowering teenager” detained in the backseat, as they allow other young men to crowd around the car and make gang signs. ”In addition to the likely illegality of this conduct, its impact on community trust cannot be overstated,” the DOJ writes. ”The fear and anger created by these practices was obvious when we talked with individuals who reported these experiences.” A disproportionate impact on people of color, The use of unreasonable force mostly burdens minority communities in Chicago, the DOJ found. Black and Latino communities in the city suffer from higher crime and have more contact with police  —   and thus experience more incidents of excessive force. The CPD was found to use force 10 times more often against black residents than against whites. The disparity is especially vivid when it comes to use of force against minors  —   83 percent involved black children and 14 percent involved Latino children. Many of the Justice Department findings will come as no surprise to communities of color. Echoing the words of residents and activists over the decades, the DOJ says that starting from a young age, Chicago’s minorities ”have a vastly different experience with police than do white people,” marked by negative and ”often tragic” interactions. There’s also ”routinely abusive behavior” toward minority residents of Chicago, the report found: ”Black youth told us that they are routinely called ’      ’ ’animal,’ or ’pieces of [s***]’ by CPD officers. A    black male reported that CPD officers called him a ’monkey.’ Such statements were confirmed by CPD officers. One officer we interviewed told us that he personally has heard coworkers and supervisors refer to black individuals as monkeys, animals, savages, and ’pieces of [s***].’ ” The DOJ found 354 complaints of Chicago officers using the  . Only four were sustained by police investigators  —   two because there were audio recordings, one because the officer admitted to it, and the last because the woman being berated was married to a police officer who took ”extraordinary measures to document the incident.” Some officers, including supervisors, have made discriminatory posts  —   like ”the only good Muslim is a             dead one”  —   on social media, often without repercussions. Meanwhile, white residents who file a complaint about police misconduct are far more likely to see a result  —   their complaints are 2   times more likely to be sustained than complaints from black or Latino people, the DOJ says. When it’s an allegation of excessive force, whites are three times more likely to find that the police department accepts their side of the story. In general, nonwhite residents reported persistent dehumanizing and demeaning treatment at the hands of the police, the DOJ says. One black teenager, asked what change he’d want to see in the CPD, said, ”Act like you care.” True scope of problem ”nearly impossible” to uncover, There are multiple reasons why the DOJ thinks the Chicago Police Department has an even bigger problem than this report describes. For one thing, there’s all those videos that call into question officers’ accounts. The DOJ expresses concern that many more officer accounts, in incidents where there isn’t video, might be similarly inaccurate. For instance, one officer wrote that a man had been struggling and kicking, requiring the use of force to control him. That kind of language frequently appears in    reports, the DOJ says. But video evidence showed the man had actually been handcuffed when the officer punched him multiple times. The officer’s partner didn’t report the incident, and his supervisors deemed the force justified. The DOJ implies it’s impossible to know how many similar incidents are never caught on camera. Police also use ”boilerplate” language to justify the use of force, with no details to allow investigators to evaluate the appropriateness of the force, and supervisors rarely review or investigate   incidents. Consider the officer who performed ”an emergency   maneuver to regain control” when an    woman was flailing her arms after a fight. The fact that the incident chipped her tooth suggests the true extent of force used, the DOJ says. The young woman  —   5 feet 4 inches and 120 pounds  —   complained to the department that the      officer said he ”didn’t give a      ” about her injury. He was exonerated without an interview. That case had an indicative injury. In many other files, the DOJ says it is ”nearly impossible for us to understand how much force officers used or whether the level of resistance justified the force used.” Missteps stretching from training through punishment, The failures of the Chicago Police Department start with the training of recruits and proceed all the way through to the punishment when incidents do occur, the DOJ says. Training is inadequate, the report states. For instance, the DOJ observed a training in deadly force that started 10 minutes late, ended 20 minutes early and was based on a    video  —   with information that was legally inaccurate and ”clearly out of date.” One recruit appeared to be sleeping through the class. When investigators interviewed recent graduates of the police academy, only 1 in 6 ”came close to properly articulating the legal standard for use of force,” the DOJ writes. Protocols to prevent excessive use of force are inadequate and often unenforced, the DOJ says. Violations are often not investigated. When the police department does open investigations, they are  —   with ”rare exceptions”  —   incomplete and unfair, the report says. Officers appear to collude with one another, not only following a ”code of silence” but actively falsifying reports and lying in testimony, the report alleges. Meanwhile, investigators ask leading questions, union representatives coach officers on what to say, and contradictory evidence is ignored or never pursued, the DOJ reports. Even when serious misconduct is uncovered, officers can frequently avoid significant punishment. The result, the DOJ says, is a system of policing that is less effective and more dangerous for police officers  —   and regularly violates the constitutional rights of citizens."
"The Justice Department says an investigation has found Chicago police are systematically violating the civil rights of people in the city through excessive use of force, poor oversight and inadequate training of officers. U. S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the investigation’s findings on Friday, saying the DOJ had concluded there was ample evidence the Chicago Police Department ”engages in a pattern or practice of the use of excessive force,” in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The abuse is most prevalent in the predominantly black neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West sides. The report cited numerous examples of unreasonable force, such as kicking a subject who ”balled his fists” and using a Taser against a suspect fleeing the scene of a ”minor property crime.” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said the investigation had found that officers shot people who presented no clear threat and ”tased” people who did not follow orders. Lynch said the city and the DOJ had agreed to enter negotiations about a   consent decree to guide reform within the police department. A federal judge also would need to sign off on any final agreement before it would go into effect. The Justice Department’s ”pattern or practice” investigation was launched more than a year ago, after a white police officer shot a black teenager named Laquan McDonald 16 times in October 2014, killing the    youth. Under court order in November 2015, the city released police dashcam video of the killing, prompting protests by activists who said the city had tried to cover up the shooting. The police officer, Jason Van Dyke, has been charged with murder and is facing trial. The department has moved to fire Van Dyke, as well as four other police officers for allegedly lying about the shooting. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel apologized for the killing and the handling of the video. ”That happened on my watch,” Emanuel said in December 2015, and he promised a ”complete and total reform of the system,” as The   reported. While the state court system is handling Van Dyke’s individual case, the purpose of the Justice Department review was to investigate how such incidents reflected the larger culture and practices within the entire department. Federal investigators said Friday that they had interviewed hundreds of people and combed through data about use of force and how the police department held those officers who used excessive force accountable. In September, U. S. Attorney Zachary Fardon said the investigation had grown into the largest such probe ever undertaken by federal authorities, according to The Chicago Tribune. It was unclear what immediate effect, if any, Friday’s announcement would have on the    practices of the Chicago Police Department. As the Tribune noted, ”It will be months before a consent decree would be worked out and filed in federal court.” Police departments have operated under consent decrees in cities ranging from Ferguson, Mo. to Newark, N. J. and just this week, Baltimore announced the details of a consent decree with its police department. Under President Obama, the Justice Department has increased the number of civil rights investigations into law enforcement practices, as Bloomberg has reported. But   Donald Trump’s nominee to become the next U. S attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has indicated he does not support consent decrees. At a Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Sessions said DOJ investigations into police departments ”can undermine respect for police officers.” He added, ”I think there’s concern that good police officers and good departments can be sued by the Department of Justice when you just have individuals within a department who have done wrong, and those individuals need to be prosecuted.” In a 2008 policy paper on consent decrees, Sessions described the agreements as ”one of the most dangerous, and rarely discussed, exercises of raw power” and said that ”in practice, a decree can last for many years  —   longer than the remedy that was needed.”"
"Next week, white nationalists like Jared Taylor will celebrate a moment they’ve been waiting decades to see, when Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. Members of the white nationalist movement were among the first to embrace Trump’s candidacy, and they celebrated after his election. ”Jan. 20 reflects a significant defeat for egalitarian orthodoxy,” Taylor says. Taylor promotes a very different orthodoxy, one in which race is central to innate abilities and national success. He is working to build a United States explicitly for white people. Trump arguably helps this by telling supporters that they’re the victims of a system rigged against them. ”I see Donald Trump as a kind of steppingstone. He is a step in the right direction in terms of understanding America and history and the world in essentially racial terms,” Taylor says. But white nationalist enthusiasm for Trump has fallen off substantially. Since the election, the     has splintered, and the movement now looks a lot less potent than it once appeared. To understand that, it helps to go back to the heady days just after the election. ”It’s too much winning! Could someone please just stop winning, I don’t want to win anymore,” Richard Spencer, who coined the term   told a room full of fellow radicals in November. Spencer said that Trump’s victory had just slingshot white nationalism into the mainstream. ”And even if we’re not quite in power yet we should act like it,” he said. But later that day, Spencer gave another speech, a fiery one that ended with some of the audience casting off any pretense of being mainstream. ”Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” Spencer shouted, raising his glass in a   toast to the audience. Some in the crowd responded with enthusiastic Nazi salutes, which captured media attention. ”Right after the election, I think it was euphoria,” says Kevin MacDonald, a retired evolutionary psychology professor at California State, Long Beach and another white nationalist mainstay. ”But as we get into it now, there’s more trepidation.” MacDonald says Trump’s appointments also have rattled the movement, especially his propensity for tapping rich Wall Street bankers. ”These are globalists in general. They love free trade, they love immigration  ” big red flags for us,” he says. And MacDonald says he is concerned about the reliance on generals and hawkish policy leading America into another Middle East war. ”Lot of trepidation, but the big silver lining is Jeff Sessions,” he says. MacDonald hopes Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, will clamp down on immigration. White nationalists also like the nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who is seen as being close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, a darling of the  . But despite its high hopes for the Trump administration, the radical right has largely gone to war with itself. Mark Potok, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, says much of what was once called the   has peeled away. ”I mean look, we are talking about a movement which spends literally more time attacking one another than they do attacking their enemies,” Potok says. No one has taken more fire from his ideological kinsmen than Spencer.   radicals have disavowed the   even called Spencer an operative bent on the movement’s destruction. In the media, he is always tied to those Nazi salutes. ”I think it’s good to be the person talked about, even when it’s negative,” Spencer tells NPR. ”Our ideas are entering the discourse.” But Marilyn Mayo with the   League argues that the   is watching its illusion of real world influence whither. ”At some point, they may have felt that they could influence policy in some way, but I think that was really a pipe dream for them because they really are a fringe movement, and they’re still a fringe movement,” Mayo says. A movement that sprang from obscurity with Trump’s election seems to be dropping back into the shadows even before Trump takes power."
"The website at the Office of Government Ethics went down Friday afternoon, apparently overwhelmed with traffic, as the agency and its director found themselves at the heart of a growing political fight. OGE website administrator Michael Hanson told NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben the site failure came as a result of the usually sleepy office’s website receiving 1 million visitors in just the last three days. Normally, it gets about 300, 000  —   in an entire year. There’s a reason the website’s traffic has spiked. The office’s director, Walter Shaub Jr. has been conducting an unusually public discussion about ethics with the   and the people he has chosen for his Cabinet. Just Friday afternoon, OGE sent out a tweet that seemed aimed directly at the  . Although the office didn’t respond to a question about why the tweet was sent out when it was, it came a day after Trump tweeted praise of a business and encouraged people to shop there. That makes the OGE tweet Friday read suspiciously like a subtweet of Trump. On Wednesday, the same day as Trump’s   news conference where he addressed his potential business conflicts, Shaub gave a speech at the Brookings Institution. Shaub  —   a political appointee of President Obama in his fourth of a   term and a career civil servant  —   described Trump’s announced plans to turn over management of his businesses to his sons as ”meaningless” as it relates to conflicts of interest. ”I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be president of the United States of America,” Shaub said. But that was far from his first   with the   and his prospective Cabinet. Over the weekend, Senate Democrats released a letter Shaub sent raising alarms about nominees who hadn’t completed their ethics reviews being scheduled for confirmation hearings. The ethics agency director ended the letter, ”For as long as I remain Director, OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials will not succumb to pressure to cut corners and ignore conflicts of interest.” The Trump transition team responded, saying this was a disservice, and charged, ”It is disappointing some have chosen to politicize the process in order to distract from important issues facing our country.” Late last year, the official OGE Twitter account went on a tweetstorm, written in a style meant to mimic Trump’s own Twitter voice, encouraging the   to divest completely. It turns out, as NPR first reported, Shaub personally directed those tweets. Divestiture is something ethics experts from both sides of the aisle have encouraged, but it isn’t required.    laws that apply to executive branch employees don’t apply to the president. Trump has made it clear he believes he is going above and beyond what is required by law, but Shaub and others have been quite critical of those steps, saying they are insufficient. This has caused something of a backlash from Republicans, including the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jason Chaffetz. In a letter to Shaub dated Jan. 12, Chaffetz wrote, ”Your agency’s mission is to provide clear ethics guidance, not engage in public relations.” The letter goes on to issue what some perceived as a threat, mentioning that the Oversight Committee has jurisdiction to reauthorize the office and asking Shaub to come in for a transcribed interview with committee staff by the end of the month. The top Democrat on the committee, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, says rather than a   session, he wants Shaub to testify in a public hearing and that Chaffetz was publicly attacking the ethics watchdog. ”The Oversight Committee has not held one hearing, conducted one interview, or obtained one document about   Donald Trump’s massive global entanglements,” Cummings said in a statement, ”yet it is now apparently rushing to launch an investigation of the key government official for warning against the risks caused by   Donald Trump’s current plans.” This also comes after House Republicans pushed to reduce the influence of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. Facing a backlash of criticism, they dropped that plan."
"When President Obama took office in January 2009, the country was on edge, the economy in  . The federal education law, known as No Child Left Behind, was also in need of an update after earning the ire of teachers, parents and politicians alike. In short, there was much to do. In time, that update would come, but President Obama’s education legacy begins, oddly enough, with his plan to bolster the faltering economy. Race To The Top, In the summer of 2009, Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that a small piece of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka The Stimulus, would be used to create a competitive, $4. 35 billion grant program for states. They would call it Race To The Top. The administration used the money to encourage  —   Obama’s critics would say coerce  —   states to embrace its education policies, including charter schools, college and   standards and evaluations of teachers using student test scores. The money arrived as many states had been brought to their knees by the Great Recession. Governors and state education agencies didn’t just want the extra money  —   they needed it, and agreed to big changes in hopes of winning it. While the grant program was voluntary, 46 states and the District of Columbia applied. Common Core, Race To The Top was a boon for the common standards movement and, specifically, for the controversial Common Core State Standards. While the learning standards in English and math were not developed by the Obama administration, the Education Department made the adoption of new college and   standards a key component of applying for the grant money. States didn’t have to adopt, but they knew that doing so would help their cause. Obama didn’t create the Core he   adoption. His administration also used $350 million to bankroll two testing consortia, PARCC and Smarter Balanced, that would develop standardized tests aligned to these new standards. Initially, most states signed on to one or the other, but, after years of blowback from Common Core critics, the consortia have hemorrhaged members, with many states keeping the Core but choosing their own tests. Today, the Common Core standards, or something very like them, are still used by the vast majority of states, though   Donald Trump has made clear he’ll do all he can to   the standards once and for all. Teacher evaluations, By 2011, it was clear that the key requirement of the No Child Left Behind law, that all children be proficient in reading and math by 2014, wasn’t just unrealistic but impossible. So the Obama administration began offering states a way out  —   a reprieve from the law in the form of a waiver. In return, though, states were required to do several things, none more controversial than this: Evaluate teachers using student test scores. The move infuriated many teachers and their union leaders and no doubt contributed to what would later become the ” ” movement. It also angered lawmakers on Capitol Hill who considered waivers an   around them. When Congress finally reworked No Child Left Behind in late 2015, renaming it the Every Student Succeeds Act, lawmakers notably decided not to require that states evaluate teachers using student test scores. Preschool, President Obama talked early and often about the importance of   preschool for all. He said this in his 2013 State of the Union Address: ”Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road. But today, fewer than 3 in 10    are enrolled in a   preschool program. Most   parents can’t afford a few hundred bucks a week for a private preschool. And for poor kids who need help the most, this lack of access to preschool education can shadow them for the rest of their lives. So tonight, I propose working with states to make   preschool available to every single child in America. That’s something we should be able to do.” Obama even proposed a $75 billion plan to provide universal preschool to the nation’s    but congressional Republicans balked at his pitch to pay for it: a   tax increase on cigarettes. Ultimately, as he did with Race To The Top, Obama used the promise of federal dollars to entice states to create or expand their   offerings. In 2014, the administration’s Preschool Development Grants spread more than $200 million across 18 states, expanding access to   preschool to 33, 000 children, according to the department. 83. 2 percent, The high school graduation rate hit an   high under President Obama, reaching 83. 2 percent in  . In October 2016, when Obama announced this latest uptick, he used the moment to reflect: ”When I took office almost eight years ago, we knew that our education system was falling short. I said, by 2020 I want us to be No. 1 across the board, so we got to work making real changes to improve the chances for all of our young people. . .. And the good news is that we’ve made real progress.” Now, it’s difficult to say how much credit Obama deserves for that progress. Some, to be sure. But the NPR Ed Team has also reported extensively on state and district strategies to artificially boost their graduation rates, including this recent ”black eye” for Alabama’s department of education. The    pipeline, Obama drew national attention to the issue of ”zero tolerance” discipline and argued that such policies disproportionately target black and Latino students for minor infractions like truancy, dress code violations and profanity. He vowed to have his administration  —   the Education and Justice departments  —   crack down on states and districts that had gone too far. It’s unclear how much of an impact this had on school disciplinary policies across the country, but some advocates who’ve spent years calling for an overhaul of these policies at the state level credit the Obama administration for bringing lots of attention to the issue. ESSA, As we mentioned, by the time Obama took office, the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind had alienated just about everyone with a stake in America’s schools. But few could agree on a fix and, even with Democrats in control of Congress early in his first term, Obama did not prioritize a rewrite. So the law stayed on the books until midway through his second term. By then, a consensus had formed around a few big fixes: 1. Annual testing and breaking those results down into specific groups of students is important and should continue, 2. But the federal government should no longer be the grand arbiter of how to measure school success or remedy failure, 3. Because that job, along with the adoption of standards and evaluation of teachers belongs to states, period. The ESSA is in many ways a repudiation of NCLB’s unrealistic expectations and   tactics. Though some civil rights groups worry that the new law devolves too much responsibility back to states who, in the past, have sometimes failed to protect the interests of their most vulnerable students. Higher ed, Soaring college costs and student debt were two major concerns for President Obama when he took office. During his tenure, the total amount of outstanding student loan debt for the first time exceeded a trillion dollars, prompting the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys to issue a warning: A ”student debt bomb” was on the horizon. Student debt  The administration moved quickly to bring relief. In 2009, the Education Department launched an ” ” repayment plan using students’ discretionary income after graduation. Students saw their monthly payments drop considerably. The administration also reduced the interest rate on Stafford Loans, the biggest   loan program, and put an additional $50 billion into Pell Grants for   college students, raising the award to its current maximum of $5, 775. These will be remembered as some of the most sweeping changes in the federal government’s oversight of higher education, in particular Obama’s decision to end the federal government’s partnership with banks and private lenders who for decades had issued   loans to college students. Instead of having to deal with private lenders and banks, borrowers and schools now deal with only one  —   Uncle Sam. The administration argued that by removing private lenders, the program would save over $60 billion that could be put back into more loans and grants. College scorecard, In 2013 Obama floated another controversial proposal, a federal ”rating” system designed to help students and parents compare colleges based on cost, financial aid and academic quality. Colleges would be required to disclose in a more   way things like student default rates, dropout rates, graduation rates. For the first time, institutions would also have to disclose their students’ earnings after graduation. Despite the pressure to hold higher ed more accountable for the hundreds of billions of dollars colleges get in federal funds, private and public institutions lobbied successfully to kill the rating system idea, saying that it was based on the wrong metrics and therefore would result in ”unfair comparisons.” While the rating idea didn’t fly, the administration compromised by creating a ”scorecard” that provides a wealth of data on colleges and costs, leaving students and parents to make their own comparisons.   crackdown, Obama came into office at a time of mounting concern over some   colleges and whether they were giving students their money’s worth. The administration worked with Democrats in Congress to create a plan that for the first time tied federal aid to something called ”gainful employment.” The idea is, if you’re going to pay an arm and a leg for a college degree, it should at least guarantee you a job with a living wage. Eventually this led to a crackdown on   colleges that were taking federal aid but too often saddling students with enormous debt and worthless degrees. In the end, President Obama’s efforts to expand access, lower college costs and introduce   reforms to higher education were overshadowed by a growing perception among many Americans that, for all its promise of upward mobility and opportunity, higher education is becoming too expensive and detached from the real world of work and good jobs. "
"The six faith leaders   Donald Trump has invited to pray at his inauguration come from diverse backgrounds, but they have something in common: All have personal ties to Trump or his family or have in some way signaled their approval of him, his politics or his wealth. The group includes an   megachurch leader from Detroit, a Florida woman known for her lavish lifestyle and preaching on ”abundancy,” a rabbi from Los Angeles, and a Hispanic evangelical  —   as well as Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham) and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York. Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, who leads Great Faith Ministries in Detroit, played a key role during the presidential campaign by inviting candidate Trump to visit his church. For Trump, it was a rare appearance before a black congregation. Presenting Trump with a Jewish prayer shawl during his visit, Jackson said, ”There are going to be times in your life that you are going to feel forsaken . .. but the anointing is going to lift you up.” With his invitation to Jackson to pray at his inauguration, Trump returned a favor. Jackson lives in a   mansion in Detroit and drives luxury cars. He preaches that being rich is not bad and that Trump’s wealth shows he is ”blessed by God.” Such teachings exemplify the ”prosperity gospel,” which holds that God rewards faithful Christians with financial success. It is a faith tradition with which Trump long has been associated. His ”spiritual adviser” is Paula White, who as the leader of New Destiny Christian Center near Orlando, Fla. is perhaps the best known prosperity preacher in the country. ”Every day you’re [living] your destiny, designed by God and discovered by you,” White said in a recent sermon. ”You’re either in a position of abundance, you’re in a position of prosperity, or you’re in a position of poverty. Now that’s in every area of your life. . .. You’re living abundant in your affairs of life  —   and that includes your financial conditions  —   or you’re living in poverty.” Not surprisingly, Donald Trump is drawn to those preachers who say that one’s wealth is a sign of God’s approval. Paula White has her critics in the evangelical world, some of whom consider her a heretic, but she endorsed Trump’s candidacy, and he reciprocated by inviting White to pray at his   ceremony. Another   evangelist who will be praying at the inauguration is Franklin Graham. During a recent interview with Lou Dobbs on the Fox Business Network, Graham said ”the hand of God” was evident in Trump’s election. ”I think God intervened and put his hand on Donald Trump for some reason,” Graham told Dobbs. ”It’s obvious that there was something behind this, and it was more than people understand. I just think it was God.” By appearing at Trump’s   Franklin Graham will be following family tradition: His    father, Billy, prayed at the inauguration of several presidents, from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, and Franklin prayed at the inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001. His inclusion as a prayer leader may also signal Trump’s comfort with Graham’s political positions. During his campaign, Trump focused a lot of attention on the threat from ”radical Islam,” a theme Franklin Graham also has emphasized. Shared political views may also explain Trump’s invitation to Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founding president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. In a recent television interview, Hier said it was ”outrageous” that the Obama administration chose not to veto a recent United Nations resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policy, echoing Trump’s own criticism. Hier, the first rabbi asked to pray at a presidential inauguration since 1985, says he will hit ”modern themes” during his inauguration appearance. ”It will be a short prayer, but it will reflect on the 21st century,” he says. Hier also has ties to the Trump world through Jared Kushner, Trump’s    and close adviser. Kushner’s parents are old friends with Hier and his wife. One indication of Trump’s unorthodox approach in choosing inauguration prayer leaders is the absence of any representative of mainline Protestantism, the dominant faith tradition of U. S. presidents throughout the country’s history. On the other hand, Trump is the first to invite a Hispanic evangelical leader, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and senior pastor at New Season Christian Worship Center, an Assemblies of God congregation in Sacramento, Calif. Rodriguez accepted the invitation despite some misgivings about Trump’s   immigration views. ”There was a bit of angst due to the fact that throughout the course of this campaign, the rhetoric and tone, as it pertained particularly to the immigrant community, did not line up with the ethos or the values of the NHCLC,” Rodriguez told NPR. He agreed to come to Washington for the inauguration after ”prayerful deliberation and discussion” and a conclusion that he could not pass up an opportunity to pray on ”the quintessential political platform on the planet.” Among Hispanic evangelicals, Rodriguez is one of the more conservative leaders. While he did not endorse Trump, he told NPR that he has heard a ”change of tone” from Trump in the past few weeks, and now has high hopes for better relations between Hispanics and the Trump administration. ”Thirty percent of Latinos voted for Donald Trump,” Rodriguez points out. ”There’s a great possibility that the   and his team have come to the realization that this constituency could be engaged successfully.” Generally, Trump’s selection of inauguration prayer leaders reflects his tendency to break with mainstream thinking  —   and the importance he places on loyalty. With his invitations, he has rewarded clergy members who support him politically, endorse his views, or even offer a religious approval of his great wealth. The least surprising prayer leader choice is Cardinal Dolan. Most U. S. presidents in recent years have asked a prominent Catholic bishop or theologian to pray at their inaugurations, and as fellow New Yorkers, Dolan and Trump have known each other for a long time."
"How much criticism can a single   episode of television sustain before it gets the ax? On Friday, we may have gotten our answer: An episode of the British comedy series Urban Myths  —   which drew widespread complaints for featuring the white actor Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson  —   has been canceled by Sky TV before it could air. ”We have taken the decision not to broadcast ’Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon,’ a   episode from the Sky Arts ’Urban Myths’ series, in light of the concerns expressed by Michael Jackson’s immediate family,” the European   company said in a statement. ”We set out to take a   look at reportedly true events and never intended to cause any offence. Joseph Fiennes fully supports our decision.” Those ”concerns” had been expressed quite bluntly by the late singer’s family on Twitter. For instance: The proposed show ”honestly makes me want to vomit,” Jackson’s daugher, Paris, wrote. ”No words could express the blatant disrespect,” tweeted his nephew, Taj. The episode was to depict Jackson on a  . 11 road trip across the U. S. in 2001, with Elizabeth Taylor, played by Stockard Channing, and Marlon Brando, played by Brian Cox. Intended to be a ”  look” at an event rumored to have actually taken place, the episode had been positioned as a satire by its creators. ”It’s a sketch about a story that could have been a legend or could have been true,” Fiennes told AFPTV in Rome early last year, though he, too, admitted he ”was shocked” that he was cast in the role of Jackson: ”You have to ask them as to why they would want to cast me.” The director of the episode, Ben Palmer, told The Guardian this week that the casting was based partly on the challenge of matching physical resemblance, partly on the basis of Fiennes’ performance. ”We were really looking for the performance that could unlock the spirit, and we really think Joe Fiennes has done that,” Palmer said. ”He’s given a really sweet, nuanced, characterful performance.” To be sure, though, the questions came fast and furious  —   especially since the announcement was made smack in the middle of last year’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy over a lack of diversity in the entertainment industry. And the release of the trailer for the upcoming season, which as you can see above features footage from the Jackson episode and others, did nothing to stem the criticism. It appears that trailer is the only glimpse we’ll get of the   episode."
"Lila Downs has spent her career exploring the furthest reaches of Mexican folk music. With a voice that borrows heavily from opera, Downs performs the kind of   mariachi singing that would fit right in at Mexico City’s Garibaldi Square  —   ground zero for mariachi. She can also coax the most tender moments from romantic boleros. But Downs is at her best when she and her band gather all of those influences to create   expression that breaks down musical barriers. Entertaining and inspiring, she’s as much a storyteller as a singer, and her   banter lays bare the Mexican soul, only to have it punctuated in song. Balas y Chocolate is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) (Spotify) (Google Play) Lila Downs (vocals, jarana) Paul Cohen (sax) George Saenz, Jr. (trombone) Hugo Moreno (trumpet) Marcos Lopez (seated percussion) Yayo Serka (seated drums) Rafael Gomez (electric guitar) Leo Soqui (jarana) Luis Guzman (bass). Producers: Felix Contreras, Morgan Walker, Maggie Starbard Audio Engineer: Brian Jarboe Videographers: Morgan Walker, Maggie Starbard, Morgan McCloy Production Assistant: Carlos Water Photo: NPR. For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"After   Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state made strong statements about China’s actions in the South China Sea, Chinese officials have responded with muted, measured statements  —   while   media have warned of the potential for conflict and retaliation. Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil CEO nominated to lead the U. S. State Department, had a confirmation hearing Wednesday. He told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China’s actions in the South China Sea were ”extremely worrisome” and compared them to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Beijing has claimed most of the South China Sea as its territory, a stance rejected by an international tribunal. China has also built artificial islands with military capabilities in the disputed territory. The U. S. has declined to take an official position on the competing claims, but periodically patrols the waters and emphasizes the need for international freedom of movement. Tillerson said the situation was a potential ”threat to the entire global economy.” Asked Wednesday whether he supports a more aggressive U. S. posture in the South China Sea, Tillerson said, ”You’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the   stops, and second, your access to those islands is also not going to be allowed.” Tillerson also sharply criticized China for failing to dissuade North Korea over its nuclear program. He said the U. S. ”cannot continue to accept empty promises like the ones China has made to pressure North Korea to reform.” ”Such rhetoric from Washington isn’t surprising,” The Associated Press notes. ”Past U. S. administrations have entered office seeking to get tougher on China, and failed.” China’s official response has been to play down the significance of Tillerson’s remarks, the AP reports: ”Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said tensions in [the South China Sea] had lessened and countries from outside the region should support efforts toward stability. ” . S. relations are based on ’    mutual benefit and   cooperation,’ Lu said at a daily briefing. ”If you take a look at [Chinese] President Xi Jinping’s call with Donald Trump after he won the election, you can see that the two countries do respect each other, and we agree with him that we should develop our relations based on mutual respect,’ he said.” But opinion pieces in   media have been blunt. An   in China Daily said Tillerson displayed ”undisguised animosity toward China”: ”Such remarks are not worth taking seriously because they are a   of naivety, shortsightedness,   prejudices, and unrealistic political fantasies. Should he act on them in the real world, it would be disastrous. ”As many have observed, it would set a course for devastating confrontation between China and the US. After all, how can the US deny China access to its own territories without inviting the latter’s legitimate, defensive responses?” A piece in The Global Times, meanwhile, said that ”unless Washington plans to wage a   war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish. . .. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories.” The Global Times is ”known for its hawkish and   editorials,” CNN notes, ”but analysts say it doesn’t necessarily reflect Chinese policy.”"
"The first of   Donald Trump’s nominees headed to Capitol Hill this week to begin their Senate confirmations. And while there were some tense moments and stumbles, overall his Cabinet picks were   and most should get quick confirmations as soon as Trump is sworn in next week. But the major theme that emerged in committee hearings was that some of the  ’s top   advisers revealed some major policy breaks with the future president on issues Trump championed and views he expressed on the campaign trail  —   from Russian hacking, torture, a Muslim ban and registry, mosque surveillance, NATO, the Iran nuclear deal, even infrastructure, deportations and that border wall. It demonstrates the potential constraints the   could run into if he seeks to implement some of the more provocative aspects of what he campaigned on. But it also raises questions of just how much Trump actually meant what he said when he campaigned and about the breadth of discussions he has had with his Cabinet picks on critical policy points. That lack of cohesion could lead to friction in the near future and potential difficulty governing  —   if the nominees carry their beliefs forward in their roles in the administration. The views, tempered or opposite of Trump’s, could also be a reflection of just how difficult it would be otherwise for a nominee to be confirmed by the U. S. Senate, espousing the kinds of boastful campaign opinions the   has expressed. Because there were so many, here’s a quick recap, all in one place, of this past week’s hearings: Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, The Alabama senator had the most exhaustive confirmation hearing of the week, stretching into two days. NPR’s Meg Anderson had a recap: ”Democrats don’t have the votes to stop Sessions’ appointment. Perhaps as a result, they focused primarily on fleshing out what Sessions’ relationship would be with the president as attorney general and reminded him of the importance of an independent Justice Department. Sessions spent a lot of the day reassuring his colleagues that he would follow the law, first and foremost, and expressing his disagreements with some of the  ’s more extreme proposals.” Sessions said he opposed bringing back waterboarding as an extreme interrogation technique, and he also said that he opposed other Trump campaign proposals of banning Muslims from coming into the U. S. amid terrorism concerns and also said he opposed any type of registry of Muslims either. ”And I think we should avoid surveillance of religious institutions unless there’s a basis to believe that dangerous or threatening illegal activity could be carried on there,” he added. Sessions’ record on race was a key focus, 30 years after his hopes of a federal judgeship were scuttled by the same committee over allegations he had used racist language as a U. S. Attorney. Sessions denied those allegations, reiterating that, ”I did not harbor the kind of animosities and   discrimination ideas I was accused of. I did not.” But that didn’t stop some of Sessions’ colleagues from taking an unprecedented step in testifying against his confirmation. Sen. Cory Booker,  . J. the first sitting senator to testify against a fellow senator during a confirmation hearing, said Sessions’ record ”indicates that we cannot count on him to support state and national efforts toward bringing justice to the justice system.” And Rep. John Lewis,  . a venerated   leader who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. told the Judiciary Committee that ”Those who are committed to equal justice in our society wonder whether Sen. Sessions’ calls for law and order will mean today what it meant in Alabama when I was coming up back then.” Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, The former Exxon Mobil CEO’s confirmation hearing was the roughest of the week. He faced grilling from members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee over his close ties with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, along with questions about lobbying and   during his four decades with the oil giant. Tillerson faced particularly aggressive questioning from Sen. Marco Rubio,  . a former Trump primary opponent. Rubio pushed the   chief diplomat on whether he would label Putin as a war criminal, while Tillerson dodged. He also pressed Tillerson on his views on   violations in the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, and Rubio was flabbergasted when Tillerson said he’d need more information to make such pronouncements despite widely available documentation of atrocities in both countries. Rubio hasn’t said yet whether he will support Tillerson’s nomination, which could be a major complication for his confirmation. Tillerson was also tripped up over his tenure at Exxon Mobil and whether the country had lobbied against Russian sanctions. He initially said he had no knowledge that the company had ever ”directly lobbied,” to which even a supportive Chairman Bob Corker,  . interjected that Tillerson had even called him about the sanctions at the time. Tillerson also claimed he didn’t recall whether Exxon Mobil had done business with Iran, Syria and Sudan during his tenure. But Tillerson did express some differences with Trump on key issues. He began by sounding a more hawkish tone toward Russia, and said he believes intelligence reports that the country was involved in cyberattacks designed to influence the U. S. elections. He also said he opposed a potential ban on Muslims coming into the U. S. and any type of Muslim registry, either. Tillerson also said he supported the   Partnership trade deal, which Trump has loudly opposed and pledged to abandon. Defense Secretary nominee James Mattis, Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon also struck a very different tone from the   on foreign policy, testifying Thursday that Russia was a major threat to the U. S. ”I’m all for engagement,” Mattis said, ”but we also have to recognize reality in terms of what Russia is up to.” And the retired   Marine Corps general also reiterated his strong support for NATO, an alliance Trump openly questioned and doubted on the campaign trail. Mattis said he believed Trump was ”open” on the issue and understood his steadfast position. ”My view is that nations with allies thrive, and nations without allies don’t,” Mattis said, calling it ”the most successful military alliance probably in modern world history, maybe ever.” Mattis also expressed acceptance of the Iran nuclear deal and said he believed it was likely workable. Trump has been hotly critical of the deal and has threatened to pull out of it. Senate and House committees, along with the full Senate, also approved a waiver to allow Mattis to serve as defense secretary. He only retired in 2013, while current law requires a wait of seven years to serve in that position. Homeland Security Secretary nominee John Kelly, Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, also broke with Trump on several key points during his Tuesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. On Trump’s seminal campaign promise, to build a wall along the Mexican border, Kelly acknowledged that ”a physical barrier in and of itself will not do the job. It has to be a layered defense” of human patrols, drones and other sensors. On the administration’s deportation policies, Kelly also broke with Trump, saying that undocumented children who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would ”probably not be at the top of the list” and that he would ”keep an open mind.” The former head of the U. S. Southern Command also repeatedly stressed working with other Latin American countries to better curtail drug and human trafficking. Kelly also said he opposed reinstating waterboarding and also said he had ”high confidence” in U. S. intelligence findings on Russian attacks on the elections. And Kelly said he opposed any kind of surveillance on mosques or any creation of a Muslim database, testifying that, ”I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to focus on something like religion as the only factor” when looking to prevent terrorism. CIA Director nominee Mike Pompeo, The Kansas GOP congressman Trump has chosen to lead the intelligence department also broke with the   opposing waterboarding as a form of torture. In this hearing, in which the power was lost and the   camera feed went down (just as they were talking about Russia) Pompeo also said he had confidence in the current U. S. intelligence program and said he agreed with their findings that Russia had tried to meddle in the elections, again putting him at odds with the man he would serve, NBC News reported: ”In his opening remarks, Pompeo took aim at Russia, saying that Moscow has ’reasserted itself aggressively, invading and occupying Ukraine, threatening Europe and doing nothing to aid in the defeat of ISIS.’ ”He later said, ’It’s pretty clear about what took place here about Russia involvement in efforts to hack information and to have an impact on American democracy. ’” Housing and Urban Development Secretary nominee Ben Carson, In the former famed neurosurgeon’s confirmation, it was a question of whether Carson had enough experience dealing with housing issues to lead the agency. He got a warm reception though before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Thursday. He told them that he wanted to oversee HUD because it’s not just ”putting roofs over the heads of poor people, it has the ability to be so much more than that.” Carson said he wants to use his role to to take ”a holistic approach” to help ”develop our fellow human beings.” NPR’s Brian Naylor reports Carson also ”would not say that housing properties owned by Trump won’t benefit from HUD programs” in a tense exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  .: ”Carson responded it would not be his intention ’to do anything to benefit any American,’ quickly adding that anything the department does ’is for all Americans.’ Carson said, ’If there happens to be an extraordinarily good program that’s working for millions of people, and it turns out that someone that you’re targeting is going to gain, you know, $10 from it, am I going to say ’no’?’ Carson asked. ’Logic and common sense probably would be the best way.’ ”Trump’s family made its fortune in real estate, and it still owns some rental properties in New York. Trump has refused to divest his assets, and Warren, who tangled with Trump during the campaign, charged the   is ’hiding his family’s business interests from you, from me, from the rest of America.’ ”In a later exchange, Carson said he would report to lawmakers on any dealings HUD has with properties owned by Trump or his family.” Transportation Secretary nominee Elaine Chao, The AP described Chao’s confirmation hearing as a ”lovefest,” which was a pretty accurate characterization. Yes, the former labor secretary in the George W. Bush administration had already been confirmed before and has a long resume that makes her qualified for the position, but the fact that she’s the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t hurt, either. NPR’s David Schaper reported that Chao talked about the ”bold vision” Trump has to rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure, but acknowledged that ”the government doesn’t have the resources to do it all.” What’s next? Two planned confirmation hearings for this past week were postponed. Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos will now testify Tuesday amid concerns over an incomplete ethics review and financial disclosures. The Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions said the delay was ”at the request of Senate leadership to accommodate Senate schedule.” Rep. Ryan Zinke,  . Trump’s nominee for interior secretary, will also have his confirmation hearing Tuesday. On Wednesday, a key hearing sure to garner lots of attention  —   Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, will have his confirmation hearing. Commerce Secretary nominee Wilbur Ross also saw his confirmation hearing delayed, pushed to Wednesday, also amid a paperwork delay. And on Thursday, Rick Perry testifies to convince senators why he should lead one of the three agencies he said he wanted to eliminate during his 2012 presidential run, the Energy Department."
"On Thursday’s Top Chef, the remaining nine chefs were divided into three teams. Each team was responsible for collecting a bunch of ingredients in a sort of scavenger hunt around Charleston, S. C. and then making them into a set of three dishes, one created by each chef. But earlier, chef Jamie Lynch had earned immunity in this big challenge by winning the smaller ”Quickfire” challenge. That meant that he was immune from being sent home if his team blew it on the   dishes. The way Top Chef works, the judges choose the worst team overall, and then the worst person from that team is sent home. That meant in this case that it might not be the worst individual dish of all nine, but it’s the weakest dish from the three that had the lowest average quality. But of course, if Jamie’s team were the weakest, it would have to be one of the other two who went home, since he was immune. The obvious problem with this setup was much more starkly presented a couple of seasons back, when there were only six chefs left. Similarly, they were divided into teams of three. And when chef Nick  —   who had immunity, just like Jamie did Thursday night  —   made a terrible dish that   dragged down his team and made it the weaker of the two, it meant that one of two people on his team who had made good food had to be sent home. What was worse was that the chefs on his team had tried to tell Nick that his ideas for his dish were bad, and he ignored them. And when they turned out to be right, he still stayed, and one of them, a chef named Stephanie who’d been strong all season, still left. When Nick eventually won, it was so profoundly unsatisfying that I wrote these words: ”It stinks. Fully, royally, pungently, and to high heaven.” It has a kind of procedural fairness (after all, everybody knew what the rules were!) but absolutely no sense of fairness. Jamie had a much shakier situation, ethically speaking. He had been assigned the worst ingredients to work with, specifically because he had immunity. It made a certain kind of sense: you can’t be eliminated, so you take the bullet and make something out of chicken breasts and peanut butter. Furthermore, according to the judges, his food was lousy, but so was his teammate Emily’s, meaning for her to go home wouldn’t have stung the way it did when it happened to Stephanie. (A confession: I still miss watching Stephanie. I always thought we’d be pals if we met. She was one of my favorites. I may still be angry about this. Can you tell?)   there were three teams and not two, making it less likely that one chef could drag an otherwise strong team all the way to the bottom the way Nick could by simply tipping the balance of badness toward his team away from one other. Are you with me? Still, despite having a much better claim to making use of his immunity and staying, Jamie gave up his immunity voluntarily  —   and he was sent home. He called it pride I call it that, plus a side of ”knowing how Nick wound up looking.” In a way, it seemed like a bad example of when a person should take this step, because Jamie wouldn’t have been using those lousy ingredients in the first place but for the fact that he was safe. That, again, makes him very different from Nick, who seemed to be simply too arrogant to listen to anyone except himself. Jamie was trying to take one for the team to begin with he wound up taking two. You could even argue his immunity win led directly to his elimination. Still, in effect, his argument was, ”I made bad food. I should get cut.” In reality television as in life, you’re always allowed to do more than what’s required of you. You’re always allowed to adopt a code beyond the one that’s imposed externally, or even the one everyone else has agreed to. In reality television, as in life, you can decide not to use advantages that you have, according to the rules of the game, ”earned.” You can decide how you want to play. You can decide the rules are a floor, not a ceiling. You can even decide you are there to make friends. And in fact, Jamie’s not quite done yet. There’s an   sideshow to Top Chef, called Last Chance Kitchen, where eliminated chefs battle each other until only one is left standing, and at some point later in the season, the one who emerges victorious  . So you could see Jamie again  —   that’s how Kristen Kish won, in fact. Kish was the frontrunner through most of season 10 until the ”Restaurant Wars” challenge that happens every season, when she was the leader of the team that failed. And despite having a pretty good argument that she wasn’t to blame for that failure, she took responsibility and was eliminated  —   but she came back through Last Chance Kitchen and won the whole thing. (The whole thing could have been avoided if Josie had just roasted the bones sooner! Okay, I might still be angry about this as well.) Give your neck tattoos a hug for me, Jamie. As a Stephanie fan, I appreciate you."
"This story is part of Kitchen Table Conversations, a series from NPR’s National Desk that examines how Americans from all walks of life are moving forward from the presidential election. The election of Donald Trump has many LGBT people worried that recent civil rights strides will be erased. In Phoenix, three people  —   two   gay men and a young genderqueer woman  —   meet for the first as part of NPR’s Kitchen Table Conversation series, brought together by their fears for the future. While Donald Trump has called himself a supporter of the LGBT community, many of his Cabinet picks  —   and his vice president  —   oppose LGBT rights. Moya  —   who is 52, gay, Latino and married  —   thinks Trump’s opinions can turn on a dime. So even though the   has said he’s ”fine” with the U. S. Supreme Court legalizing   marriage, Moya says he doesn’t believe it. ”I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. That uncertainty has Moya, Brendan Mahoney and Jenni Vega worried. They believe Trump has invigorated people who don’t want to understand them  —   and might even hate them. Mahoney is a    gay white man who’s been out since he was 19, while Vega is a genderqueer Hispanic woman. And their worry isn’t only for themselves, but for other people who are even more vulnerable: trans people, Muslims, those who are in the country illegally. Use the audio link above to hear the full story."
"This story is part of Kitchen Table Conversations, a series from NPR’s National Desk that examines how Americans from all walks of life are moving forward from the presidential election. In some ways, Desiree Armas is your typical high school senior. She’s getting ready to take the test for her driver’s license. And she’s applying to colleges. But Armas has a big secret. She rides the bus an hour each way to a magnet school miles away from her family’s apartment. And her friends don’t know that Armas and her parents are living in the country illegally. ”Only my best friend knows. No one else in school, besides my counselors,” Armas says. ”That’s something I don’t tell anyone. Because you never know.”   Donald Trump has pledged to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally. And that’s creating even more uncertainty for thousands of families. Many of those families  —   including the Armases  —   will travel to Washington, D. C. this weekend for a rally focusing on the rights of immigrants. Desiree Armas left Peru with her parents when she was 3. Today the family lives in a small, tidy apartment in   Elizabeth, N. J. Desiree’s mother, Olga Armas, says the family first arrived in the U. S. in 2002 and stayed to seek a better future for their daughter. ”The beginning was very hard,” Olga Armas says through a translator. ”It was difficult to come. We arrived here with nothing to a lot of uncertainty. No pans or pots or even a spoon.” In Peru, Olga’s   husband, Carlos, had a   job with an airline. In New Jersey, he gets up at 4 a. m. to load pallets at a paper warehouse. When his parents died, Carlos Armas couldn’t go back for their funerals. ”I withstood that because I wanted my daughters to stay in school,” he says through a translator. ”And my family to stay together here, that they continue to study.” Desiree is a   student. So the family was thrilled when President Obama introduced a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, allowing immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as kids to work and attend college. As soon as Desiree was old enough to apply, Olga Armas says, the whole family went to the lawyer’s office together to fill out the paperwork. ”My daughter was so happy, she cried,” says Armas. ”We cried, because my daughter can come out of the dark.” Desiree Armas says getting DACA made a huge difference. Her younger sister Kimberly, who was born in Florida, is a citizen. And Desiree admits, she’s a little jealous. ”I see my sister’s passport. And like, I don’t know, something about it just gets me all like sappy for some reason, that I can’t have one,” she says. ”But when I got my Social Security [card] it felt, like, so official. Like I was way more positive. I was more hopeful.” But Armas’ hopes may have suffered a setback on election night.   Trump has pledged to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, although he has also said he doesn’t want to break up families. And Trump has committed to rolling back President Obama’s immigration policies, including DACA. ”The truth is, people are in limbo,” says Olga Armas. ”We don’t know what will come [from] Trump’s words. But everybody is talking about it, there is lots of fear.” For Olga Armas, the fear is that what her family has gained could all go away. She’s volunteering with Make the Road New Jersey, an activist group that works for immigrants’ rights. She’s helping to bring protesters to Washington for this weekend’s rally. Without DACA, her daughter could still be accepted to college. But losing her legal status would make it harder for Desiree Armas to find the money for school, or to work at a job or internship once she gets there. She says kids with DACA want the same thing immigrants to this country have always wanted. ”What you have now, your parents had to fight for it,” Armas says. ”And that’s what our parents are doing. That’s what we are doing. Not just me, just so many other students that are    —   and deserve a chance to show what we got. And if you take that away from us, you will yank the dreams of future doctors and engineers and lawyers.” So Desiree Armas is anxiously watching her mailbox for two reasons. Acceptance letters from the colleges she’s applied to, and news about her future in this country."
"Many transgender people in the U. S. are rushing to change their designated gender on government documents before   Donald Trump takes office. They worry the next administration may take that ability away. There’s no indication so far that this is a priority for Trump. Mara Keisling with the National Center for Transgender Equality says Trump’s positions on trans issues are not clear. But she’s concerned about people he’s nominated for key positions in his administration. ”Virtually every  —   if not every  —   appointment he has announced so far has been an extremely   person,” says Keisling. She says trans advocacy groups around the country have been fielding calls from concerned people ever since the election. And they are not alone. ”The calls to our office have increased a lot,” says Benjamin Jerner, managing partner of the Philadelphia law firm Jerner  Palmer, which specializes in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender legal issues. States control many government documents, such as birth certificates and driver’s licenses, Jerner reassures his clients. A new president won’t affect those. Of more concern, he says, are gender designations on federal documents such as passports, immigration papers and Social Security accounts. Jerner says passports are the biggest concern because State Department rules could be changed relatively easily under a new administration. Deciding whether to change gender designations on documents can be an especially tricky question for parents of transgender children. Jerner recently held a legal clinic for such parents in Philadelphia and says 18 families showed up. ”I think that just tells you the level of fear and anxiety that’s out there,” he says. Among those attending were the parents of    Dylan, who was born a boy but  —   with her parents’ encouragement  —   has long hair, wears pink and lives as a girl. That fits with guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the leading U. S. group of doctors serving children. The general idea is that parents should support their child and not make any big decisions that could limit the child’s options in the future. That’s because some children who appear to be transgender early on are not when they grow up. NPR agreed to use only first names for Dylan and her family. Some groups consider it a form of abuse to allow a child to transition to the opposite gender  —   even though it’s in line with the AAP. Dylan’s parents  —   Marla and Jennifer  —   say other families have had child abuse reports filed against them after they were identified in news stories. Marla says Dylan has identified herself as a girl for as long as she could talk. ”It took us about three years to really sort out with Dylan what that meant,” Marla says. ”We kept telling her, ’Oh, there’s lots of ways to be a boy  —   you can be a fancy boy, you can be a sparkly boy.’ ” But Marla says Dylan steadfastly insisted she’s a girl. Marla says they plan to administer puberty blockers when Dylan reaches that stage. That will make it easier for Dylan to physically transition to female later if she chooses. Dr. David Levine, a professor of pediatrics at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, says this is a good approach. ”I predict this    is going to do great, because the parents are so on board and so supportive of their child,” he says. Levine says he’s not too worried that a Trump administration will make big changes that will affect transgender people. But he also is not opposed to parents who want to change their child’s gender designations now because, technically, that’s something that could be reversed in the future if it became necessary. Dylan’s parents had planned to change her gender on government documents when she got a driver’s license. Because of their concerns over the political climate, they are doing that now instead. So, on a recent evening  —   just as Dylan and her siblings were finishing up homework  —   a notary came to their home to witness Marla and Jennifer signing a short stack of papers. Once filed, they will change the gender listed on Dylan’s birth certificate, Social Security account and passport  —   when she gets one  —   to female."
"A Hungarian camerawoman who was caught on film kicking migrants running from police near the border with Serbia was sentenced to three years of probation. A judge said Petra Laszlo’s behavior ”ran counter to societal norms” and rejected Laszlo’s claim that she acted in  . Laszlo was not charged with a racially motivated hate crime instead, she was charged with ”breach of peace.” Her conviction carried a maximum   jail sentence, The Independent reports, but Laszlo will not serve time unless she violates the terms of her probation. Laszlo, who did not appear in court in person because she had received death threats, plans to appeal her conviction, The Associated Press reports. The wire service has more: ”The incident occurred near the border town of Roszke on Sept. 8, 2015, where Laszlo had gone to film migrants from the Middle East who were trying to pass through Hungary on their way west. While she was filming, several migrants broke through a police cordon and jostled her as they shot by. ”Laszlo responded by delivering a   kick to two people as they fled, including a young girl. Later, she appeared to trip a migrant carrying a child. ” ’It was all over within two seconds,’ Laszlo said. ’Everybody was shouting. It was very frightening.’ ” The court convicted her after a ”   examination of Laszlo’s actions,” the AP writes. Laszlo was fired after the video went public. She apologized but also vowed to sue Facebook as well as Abdul Mohsen, the migrant who was carrying his son and fell after Laszlo tried to trip him. NPR’s Lauren Frayer caught up with Mohsen last year in Spain, where he and his son moved after a Spanish man saw the video and offered him a job. ”Abdul Mohsen says he rarely thinks about Petra Laszlo,” Lauren reported. ” ’I don’t know, but I think she just doesn’t like refugees,’ Mohsen says, shrugging. ”He says he feels lucky to have escaped war in his hometown of Deir   Syria  —   now under siege by ISIS militants  —   and to have found work and asylum in Europe. So many other Syrians have not. . .. ”Mohsen is desperate to reunite with his wife and two other children, a son, 18, and a daughter, 13.”"
"The Japanese air bag manufacturer Takata has reached a $1 billion settlement with the U. S. Justice Department over a deadly defect in its air bags that led to a massive recall. At least 16 deaths, 11 of them in the U. S. have been linked to the defect. As part of the deal, which still needs to be approved by a judge, Takata agreed to plead guilty to the felony offense of wire fraud. Of the $1 billion total, $25 million will be paid as a fine to the U. S. government and $125 million will be used for restitution to people who are physically injured by the air bags. The remaining money will go to automakers that were defrauded by Takata, to cover the cost of replacing recalled parts. Three   executives at the company were also indicted on wire fraud and conspiracy charges, U. S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said at a news conference Friday in Detroit to announce the settlement. The three Japanese executives, Shinichi Tanaka, Hideo Nakajima and Tsuneo Chikaraishi, allegedly concealed deadly defects in the inflator inside the company’s air bags. In emails, they allegedly referred to submitting false reports of test data to automakers that were using their products, even after initial news reports that the inflators were failing and injuring people. The inflator contains ammonium nitrate, which can degrade  —   either over time or because of temperature fluctuations  —   putting the metal canister at risk for rupturing and sending shrapnel into the vehicle, McQuade explained. ”Corporations and individuals who cheat will be held accountable,” McQuade said. ”Cheaters will not be allowed to gain an advantage over those who play by the rules.” A total of nearly 70 million Takata air bag inflators have been or will be affected in a massive U. S. recall that began in 2008 and is scheduled to continue through 2018. As NPR’s Sonari Glinton has reported, ”automakers are allowed to sell the vehicles with the inflators under an existing order by NHTSA. But all of the vehicles using the air bags must be recalled by the end of 2018.” The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has called it ”the largest and most complex auto safety recall in U. S. history.” A congressional report released last summer found that despite the recall, at least four automakers  —   Fiat Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Volkswagen  —   were still using the type of Takata air bags responsible for the injuries and fatalities. In addition, NHTSA says the following vehicles have inflators at the highest risk of rupturing dangerously: The Department of Transportation has asked drivers to check the website SaferCar. gov to determine whether their vehicles are affected."
"Little white chips fly off in every direction with each blow of master ivory carver Li Chunke’s chisel. Gradually, the folds of a robe, tassels and hands of an ancient Chinese woman begin to emerge from a rough piece of ivory in front of him in his Beijing workshop. Li says nothing looks as smooth, nothing can be carved as intricately or expressively as ivory. Wood and jade are too brittle. ”Whether I’m carving animal or human figures, I try to express their feelings,” he says. ”That’s what Chinese consider most important.” He shows me a small piece made by one of his apprentices from a piece of scrap ivory. It shows a high mountain swathed in clouds, beneath which two elderly gentlemen sit under a pine tree playing a game of Go. One of the gentlemen strokes his beard, as if to say, ”Hmm, what’s my next move here?” For years, China’s government has argued that banning ivory would destroy   cultural traditions that carvers like Li and his apprentices preserve. But in December, Beijing announced it would phase out its ivory trade by the end of 2017. Environmentalists hailed the move as offering hope for the world’s dwindling number of elephants, as well as a fundamental shift in the way China’s government and people view the use of wildlife products. China is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s biggest ivory markets, if not the biggest, though the total value is hard to gauge. The country’s total consumption, according to one estimate, is about 13. 5 tons annually in recent years, most of it illegal. The existence of a legal ivory market in China has provided cover for black marketeers, who often pass off their wares as legitimately sourced. For the past 53 years, Li has worked at the   Beijing Ivory Carving factory. Li says every piece of ivory there is registered by the government, and comes from elephants who died naturally. None, he says, comes from poachers or smugglers, who have supplied a black market and driven elephants toward extinction. ”We ivory carvers hate elephant poachers,” Li says. ”I would never touch a piece of ivory from a poached elephant.” Li says that when he started his job at the factory in 1964, there was no smuggling. Then again, China’s economy had no private sector in those days. Nor was there an Internet, where a lot of ivory is now bought and sold. Li and others saw the Chinese ban coming. President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed in 2015 that both countries would do it. Environmental groups and celebrities have campaigned for years for a ban. ”When the buying stops, the killing can too,” former Houston Rockets center Yao Ming says in an ad for the group WildAid. The group has also enlisted British royal Prince William in its campaign. Steve Blake, WildAid’s acting chief representative in China, says his group does annual surveys in China, asking questions such as whether people know where ivory comes from and whether they would support a government ban on ivory. He says over 95 percent of his Chinese respondents back the ban. Last week, China’s national carrier, Air China, banned the transport of sharks’ fins as cargo. In a swipe at corruption, China had already decided to ban shark fin soup at official banquets in 2012, and Blake says imports and prices have since plummeted drastically. Last September, China also supported an international ban on trade in critically endangered pangolins. And, Blake notes, it is working to stop poaching of the totoaba fish, a food on which the endangered vaquita porpoise feeds in the Gulf of California. ”There have just been a lot of really encouraging signs in the past couple of months of China’s will to change this worrying trend of consuming endangered wildlife,” Blake says. ”And so they should be given a lot of credit.” Details about the ivory ban still need to be ironed out. It’s unclear what the government is going to do with existing ivory stockpiles  —   buy them or burn them. Meanwhile, the government has promised to find other work for the carvers, restoring ivory to be collected by museums. Carver Li Chunke says he’s not worried about his own survival. ”We’ve been prepared for this for a long time,” he explains. Plus, there’s another source of material he can rely on: ”We also carve mammoth ivory.” That’s right: The tusks of elephants’ woolly ancestors are still legal to buy and sell in China  —   if you care to go to Siberia and dig them up."
"Nuclear power plants are typically hulking structures made using billions of dollars of concrete and steel. But one company thinks that by going smaller, they could actually make nuclear power more affordable. NuScale Power based in Portland, Ore. has submitted a design for what it describes as a ”modular” nuclear power plant. Each module is a     nuclear reactor loaded with standard uranium reactor fuel. Modules would be assembled at a   facility and then delivered to power utilities and other clients. ”Miniature” in nuclear terms is still pretty big. The modules are small enough to fit on   trucks, but they would stand nearly nine stories tall. Moreover, a power plant would probably require several modules hooked together like giant batteries. Of course, they’d need to be operated by professional nuclear engineers. But the design  —   a radical departure from other nuclear plants  —   would also have advantages. Each module uses less uranium fuel, making a   meltdown far less likely. The fuel would be housed in a special containment vessel that would be submerged in a pool of water, an added safety feature. And rather than using pumps of the sort that failed during the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the reactor would circulate the water using natural convection. The company maintains the design is simpler and safer than existing reactors. NuScale formally completed its design submission to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday. The   application will now undergo a lengthy review by the NRC, which must approve the design before construction can begin. NuScale says its   reactor modules will be simpler and more affordable to build than a big plant. Placing several modules in a single location will provide the same power output as a commercial reactor, says Mike McGough, the company’s chief commercial officer. NuScale is already partnering with a consortium of Utah utilities to build a   power plant on land in Idaho owned by the U. S. Department of Energy. (The DOE is a partner in the NuScale project.) The company believes that   project can be completed for less than $3 billion. By comparison, a new   reactor at Watts Bar in Tennessee cost around $4. 7 billion and began operation in 2016 after years of delays. McGough says the company envisions the modules also could be used in other ways. For example, he says, they could be installed near wind turbines as backup when the wind isn’t blowing. Or they could be used by the military to power bases that need electricity even if the grid goes down. About a dozen clients in the U. S. and abroad are looking at the technology, he says. But not everyone is convinced smaller is better. Ed Lyman, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the electricity generated by a smaller reactor is more expensive than that generated by a larger one. Companies such as NuScale hope to offset the higher costs by saving on the cost of construction, but Lyman isn’t convinced. He worries savings will come at the cost of safety. He says NuScale wants to do things like reduce the size and strength of the reactor containment building and the number of personnel needed to operate the plant. ”NuScale is proposing major reductions in all of these areas relative to current NRC requirements for large reactors, based on the assertion that the reactor will be safer,” he says. ”We’ve eliminated a number of systems that are not required to protect the core of our plant,” McGough acknowledges. But he says that’s because the small, modular designs are inherently safer than large reactors. He believes the NRC review will clearly show that the modular designs can meet or exceed existing safety standards. The NRC will take its time to make sure the design meets its safety standard. McGough says the review will take over three years. If it wins approval, NuScale hopes to switch on its first plant by 2026."
"Vernon Dahmer was a black civil rights leader in the   when Mississippians were still required to pay a poll tax in order to register to vote. In January 1966, the successful farmer and businessman publicly offered to pay that tax for black people who couldn’t afford it. That night his house was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan. His wife and three of his children were at home. ”We didn’t think anybody would bother the children, but we were wrong, they intended to get all of us January the 10th, 1966,” Vernon’s widow, Ellie Dahmer, told their daughter Bettie during a recent visit to StoryCorps. ”That night, when I waked up, the house was on fire, and it was so bright and so hot. You was screaming to the top of your voice, ’Lord have mercy. We’re going to get burned up in this house alive.’ I raised the windows up, and then your father was handing you out the window to me.” They escaped to the barn to hide, sitting on bales of hay. ”I had burns over a good portion of my body, and I was screaming and crying because I was in pain,” recalled Bettie, who was 10 at the time. ”Daddy was burned so much worse than I was  —   when he held up his arm the skin just hung down  —   but Daddy never did complain, he was just concerned about me. I remember us going to the hospital.” Vernon and Bettie shared a hospital room, with Ellie sitting between the two beds. ”And he yelled my name real loud, and then he was gone,” she said. ”He knew that he might get killed, and he was willing to take the risk, but it was not worth it to me. I miss him so much.” Bettie, who is now 61, looks at the situation differently. ”Daddy wasn’t a man that wore a suit, he wore overalls. In Daddy’s world everybody had a job to do,” she said. ”Black people couldn’t vote, so I do understand why he did what he did. It meant a lot to him.” And that commitment he had to the cause is reflected on his resting place. ”Some of the last words he said was, ’If you don’t vote, you don’t count.’ That’s on his tombstone,” Ellie said. ”We made a tremendous sacrifice Bettie. I try to go on and live my life without thinking about it, but it’s a night I can never forget. It’s been over 50 years, and seems like it were yesterday.” Ellie Dahmer would go on to serve as an election commissioner in Hattiesburg, Miss. and the governor of Mississippi declared Jan. 10, 2016, ”Vernon Dahmer Day,” to honor the civil rights leader. Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jud   and Liyna Anwar.  StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"The Syrian government says Israel has attacked a military airport west of Damascus, and warns of ”repercussions” without promising any specific retaliation. The Syrian state news agency SANA reports that rockets fired by the Israeli air force caused a fire at the   airport just after midnight local time on Friday morning. The report did not identify if there were any casualties. Syria also accuses Israel of attacking the same airport with    missiles on Dec. 7, also causing a fire to break out, with no casualties. Syria accused Israel of supporting ”terrorist organizations” through the strike. Israel has not responded to the claims. Over the last few years, Israel has repeatedly been charged with bombing military facilities in Syria, including sites that reportedly contained   and   missiles.. It’s ”standard Israeli practice to not comment when such attacks happen,” NPR’s Emily Harris noted after one such reported strike in 2013. The strikes were reportedly prompted by concerns that heavy weapons are being transferred from Syria to Hezbollah  —   the   militant Islamist group on Israel’s northern border. Hezbollah, a Shiite group, has supported President Bashar   in Syria’s complex,   civil war. The Associated Press has more on the reported attack: ”Residents of Damascus reported hearing several explosions that shook the city. The Mezzeh airport compound, located on the southwestern edge of the capital, had been used to launch attacks on   areas near Damascus and has come previously under rebel fire. . .. ”Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently reiterated his government’s position to not get involved in the Syrian war.”"
"For the first time in Japanese history three women of different political persuasions are in positions that could be stepping stones to the prime minister’s office. It’s especially notable in Japan, where women’s labor force participation remains among the lowest among developed nations, and gender roles are  . ”Women have not really been coached or mentored or encouraged to take on leadership roles,” Kyoto University diplomacy professor Nancy Snow explains. ”Also, women aren’t allowed [culturally] to often show ambition, to sort of telegraph that.” Lack of childcare options in Japan  —   and the cultural pressure for women to take on household duties  —   means it’s the moms here who drop out of work. In official registries, married women to this day are listed, along with children, as part of a man’s household. If they’re single, part of their parents’ household. ”I think it really goes back to the social hierarchy, the way that [Japan has] been for decades,” Snow says. Women make up 43 percent of the labor force in Japan  —   with more than half of them in   jobs. That’s far below the 57 percent of working women in the U. S. Their roles in leadership are scant. But in the political realm, signs point to change. Tokyo is now led by its   female governor  —   Yuriko Koike. Japan’s new defense minister, Tomomi Inada, is only the second woman to ever hold the role. And the opposition Democratic Party in Tokyo is for the first time led by a woman. She’s a former journalist named Renho Murata. ”  years ago when I was a newscaster,” Renho tells NPR, ”I interviewed an important member of the ruling party. He said to me, frankly, that he doesn’t think wives should even speak about politics.” More than two decades have passed since that conversation, but today women still represent fewer than 15 percent of all seats in Japan’s parliament, lower than the U. S. where women make up 20 percent of Congress. Renho says she’s hoping to use her position to help get more women elected. ”We don’t have enough women to raise their hands,” she says. When asked what led her to raise her hand, she said she wanted to make change. ”It all began for me when I was raising two children. In a society that complains about not having enough children, the government wasn’t offering any support. That made me want to become a politician,” Renho says. She made it and was a longtime member of parliament before her party elected her its leader last summer. But cultural biases persist. Renho’s bra size was listed on her Wikipedia page. Mayor Koike was criticized during her race for wearing too much makeup. And   efforts to increase participation of women in higher levels of power have fallen short. The government conceded last year that it wouldn’t reach its goal of getting women in 30 percent of management roles by 2020. Women are so outnumbered in business that the fact they’re working at all is a story. It’s dismaying, says Nancy Snow. ”I look forward in this century, and it may take awhile, for it to be just the case that a woman is in power in government here or in industry and she just happens to be a woman,” Snow says. For now the few women in power are proving to be rather fearless. In a notable exchange with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month, Renho stood up against casino legislation that was rushed through Japan’s parliament. Facing the prime minister on the floor, Renho said, ”You appear to lie as easily as you breathe.” Abe seemed to chuckle, but didn’t respond. Mari Yamamoto and Jake Adelstein contributed to this story."
"If you are interested in food stories accompanied by overhead videos showcasing recipes involving just three ingredients, you would be better off reading something else. This is because when preparing dishes to accompany the new Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which premieres Jan. 13, the more complex the recipe, the more you’ll identify with the many trials and tribulations of the orphaned Baudelaire children as they try to unravel the mysteries surrounding them. Food is often a supporting character throughout the 13 books written by Lemony Snicket, the nom de plume  —   a fancy word that means ”pen name”  —   of Daniel Handler, starting with the bland boiled chicken, boiled potatoes and blanched string beans the children are fed at the home of Mr. Poe after the tragic demise of their parents in the first book, The Bad Beginning. No one really wants to eat boiled chicken, but luckily there are many other culinary inspirations to be found sprinkled across the series, including pesto lo mein, chocolate pudding and salmon puffs. Pasta puttanesca is perhaps the most   dish among Lemony Snicket fans  —   inspiring my own daughter when she was 8 years old to join me in the kitchen to discover capers and Kalamata olives this time around, she’ll be making the dish with friends while   the show at college. It’s the dish that Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire choose to make for the evil Count Olaf when he demands that they provide dinner for his theatrical troupe, allowing the children a cozy afternoon of cooking together before Olaf complains that they should’ve made roast beef. When cooking instructor Lynley Jones’ son began reading the series, she discovered an unexpected springboard, leading her to create ”A Series of Unfortunate Cooking Lessons” for children that she taught in 2015 in Montclair, N. J. ”I noticed that a lot of the stories he would share with me included some interesting food,” says Jones. ”In some books, the food was a    part of the narrative, like when the Baudelaires make pasta puttanesca in some cases, the food in the book is horrible, and adds to the Baudelaires’ misery.” The chilled cucumber soup found in the third book in the series, The Wide Window, exemplifies a truly bad meal, served by the children’s Aunt Josephine, who makes only cold food because she’s afraid of turning on the stove. As Snicket writes, ”On a cold day, in a drafty room, chilled cucumber soup is about as welcome as a swarm of wasps at a bat mitzvah.” Jones’ goal with her version of the cooking lesson, which was geared toward kids, was to show how not to make bad cucumber soup, no matter what time of year, calling her version ”Not Aunt Josephine’s Chilled Cucumber Soup.” ”I always want kids in my classes to learn to appreciate the difference between badly prepared food and bad food,” she says. ”The chilled cucumber soup in the book was horrible because it was badly made, not because chilled cucumber soup is inherently horrible.” Because the first season of A Series Of Unfortunate Events on Netflix encompasses books one through four, you could choose to focus on food that’s featured only in those books. But there are many dishes that you may want to throw in to foreshadow what’s ahead in Season 2  —   a favorite literary device of Lemony Snicket that’s well worth emulating. If you’re planning on hosting an ”ASOUE” watch party, channel your inner steampunk for appropriately     clothing and decor, being sure to sprinkle the dining table with teething rings, ribbons for tying up your hair and magnifying glasses. And, as for food, the inspirations are multitudinous  —   which, as you know, is a very long word that means ”endless.” Here are some    recipes to provide you with sustenance for the adventures ahead: Pasta Puttanesca   In The Bad Beginning, the Baudelaire children roast garlic, wash and chop anchovies, and pit olives to make a tangy, salty puttanesca sauce. Because they are fascinated by the many shapes of pasta that they find at the grocery store, you may want to cook up a variety of different pastas to create visual interest. Jones’ recipe is based on the one in the book if you can’t abide anchovies, try substituting chopped dried seaweed to impart a slightly fishy flavor. Coconut Cream Cake,  Things seem to be looking up in the second installment, The Reptile Room, when the children land on the doorstep of the utterly charming Uncle Monty, a herpetologist who welcomes them with a freshly baked coconut cake. Of course, this creamy bliss doesn’t last long, but the memory of the cake lingers. This coconut cake recipe from Ina Garten, host of the Food Network’s Barefoot Contessa, does the trick here, but I like to use a pillowy   Italian meringue frosting instead of the cream cheese frosting to lighten up a dreary world  —   just add a tablespoon of lemon juice to the sugar syrup while cooking. Chilled Cucumber Soup,  Poor Aunt Josephine. She’s so afraid of, well, everything, that she never seems to enjoy anything and is forever mourning her dear departed husband, Ike, in book three, The Wide Window. Sadly, Josephine’s cucumber soup is both watery and tasteless, which only adds insult to injury. Even in the depths of winter, a chilled cucumber soup can remind us of summer warmth, like this recipe from chef Andrew Zimmern of the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods  —   even though cucumbers are fairly tame. Aqueous Martini,  Skipping ahead to book six, The Ersatz Elevator, the children are sent to live with the   Esmé Squalor and her downtrodden husband, Jerome. Always concerned, as so many fashionistas are, with what’s in and what’s out, Esmé favors the Aqueous Martini  —   water served in a fancy glass and garnished with an olive  —   until Parsley Soda becomes all the rage. Your guests may appreciate the former more than the latter. Enchiladas with Red Tomato Sauce,  Now deemed criminals and on the run, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny land in The Vile Village, also the name of book seven, where they dodge a murder of crows and try to escape in a   mobile home operated by the kindly handyman Hector  —   who also introduces them to his homemade enchiladas. I’ve turned to Mexican chef Pati Jinich, of the PBS series Pati’s Mexican Table, for authentic inspiration here, with an enchilada recipe that has just enough bite to even please the toothy infant Sunny. I would tell you to enjoy this delicious repast while Count Olaf wreaks havoc on the charming Baudelaire children  —   but what would be the point? Prepare to be miserable, no matter how tasty the food."
"When President Obama gave his goodbye speech this week, one of  ’s most politically active stars was watching. Killer Mike is a rapper who actively campaigned for Bernie Sanders. So when he and fellow rapper   joined Morning Edition to talk about their new album from their group Run the Jewels, we had to get their take on the president’s farewell. Killer Mike says he did like when President Obama urged Americans to get more involved. ”When he started talking about activism, lacing up your boots, hitting the streets, I was actually live tweeting during it,” Killer Mike says. ”It sounds like someone has been listening to the OG: the old guy Bernie.” Clearly, neither artist is a Trump supporter. But they also say they aren’t dreading the transition. ”I don’t have a sense of dread, to be honest,” Killer Mike explains. ”And older black people I talk to don’t have sense of dread, who’ve lived under Nixon and who’ve lived under duplicitous presidents and governors before. So, no: What I have is a sense of what’s next. And what can we do to take care of ourselves.” At this point,   who happens to be white, chimes in. ”I think that it’s a mistake to let our history off the hook so much so to say the Trump is introducing the idea of dread into American culture,” he says. Social commentary is a big part of Run the Jewels, which takes its inspiration from   rap acts the two men grew up hearing in the 1980s and ’90s, a time when the war on drugs and crack cocaine were ravaging American cities. Killer Mike had had a   seat from his neighborhood in Atlanta. ”I saw the world change. I saw it go upside down, and the irony of it is the only people who were telling the truth about what was happening at that time was rappers,” he says. Today, they hope to carry the mantle. 2016 provided a lot of material  —   not least the Black Lives Matter protests sparked by several   shooting deaths of   by police.   notes that   racial tension set the tone for a song called ”Thieves! (Screamed The Ghost).” ”We unfolded a narrative in this one that we knew was important to get right,” he says. ”We wanted to make it an anatomy of a riot.” ”I think there is a pound of flesh owed in terms of this country making sure all of its citizens enjoy the constitutional rights that are promised,” Killer Mike adds. ”And because we don’t, we keep resetting to the same place of anger and fear and angst and explosions of that. The dead don’t rest. The soul’s gonna speak, based on the fact that this country is still not offering full justice.”"
"Philosophy isn’t natural science, that much is certain. But its relation to the sciences has been fraught  —   at least since science broke off from philosophy and became its own family of disciplines back in the 17th century. The very features of natural science that are markers of its success  —   specialization, experiment, mathematical tools, progress  —   are absent, or take a very different form, in philosophy. My own view is that philosophical problems are not empirical or scientific ones, but that they live cheek by jowl with them. Philosophy and empirical science are in constant dialog and a laboratory is as good a place as a seminar room to engage philosophy. Peter   whose new book is my topic today, is not the first philosopher to go even farther afield than the laboratory in pursuit of nature’s secrets. Daniel Dennett, to name one of  ’s avowed heroes, went to Kenya to study the vervet monkey in its natural habitat. Still, I think it’s worth pausing and taking delight in the stunning image of a philosopher descending the ocean blue in his quest to find other minds and to understand how they work! Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and The Deep Origins of Consciousness is not travelogue or tale of adventure in the great outdoors. It is a work of philosophy. There is no story, but there is an argument: Animal life is  . Many hundreds of million years ago, ”cells that were once organisms in their own right began to work as parts of larger units.” But this required coordination. The means of exchange or mutual influence that had once enabled distinct unicellular individuals to communicate, or at least interact, were now deployed within the boundaries of the more complex   beast. ”Sensing and signaling between organisms gave rise to sensing and signaling within them,” as the book notes. This, in turn, over evolutionary time, becomes the basis of the nervous system and, eventually, intelligence  —   and even consciousness itself.   has a lot to say about the evolutionary history of animals and even about how, from humble beginnings, we get human beings, along one lineage, and the octopus, along another. But I wish he had said something more about the mystery  —   for that’s what it is, at the heart of his story  —   of understanding how a clump of individuals gets put together in such a way as to become not just a collection of coordinated individuals but a genuinely new unity. Animal unity is something special. And, if he is right, it may be the key to understanding why there are nervous systems and, so, why there are animals like the octopus and like us. Later on in the book,   remarks that trees and other plants seem to exhibit a kind of unity different from, and intermediate between, that of mere collections and that which is displayed by animals. The tree is an agglomeration, in the sense that if you cut a part away and plant it, you get a new tree. An animal, in contrast, is some kind of an essential unity. The language of Other Minds is calm, spare and exact. It serves as a useful primer on more than one topic  —   the history of animals, the cognitive powers of cephalopods, the theory of consciousness, the environmental dangers posed by overfishing and the degradation of the waters. It gives us a remarkable description of the octopus settlement or compound  —   community?  —   that he and his colleagues studied closely over a long period in waters off Australia. He speculates that some piece of human detritus, something metal, fell to the sea floor and it provided an artificial shelter or den for an octopus the shell remains of scallops cast aside by the octopus then provided a ground better suited for octopus dens than the sandy bottom of the sea floor. This attracted other octopus, he continues, who, in turn, in the normal course of events, laid down more shell flooring  —   thus further enhancing the habitat and drawing more animals to the spot.   wonders whether Octopolis, as they dubbed the small piece of ocean ground, doesn’t give a glimpse of a possible octopus future in which otherwise fairly solitary creatures develop something like real social groups. Octopus sociality is made out to be something of a puzzle in this book. Like cuttle fish, the octopus are capable of fabulous and   changes of skin color. How they do this is a mystery. Not because the mechanisms of pigment change are poorly understood, but because these animals are (widely believed) to be color blind. Of what use to a   potential mate is a display of color? Actually, the puzzle is deeper even than this. The octopus also changes its color to camouflage itself. But how can it adjust its own color to the surrounding scene if it can’t perceive the colors of things around it?   has an ingenious and plausible answer to this question. But surely the most surprising, indeed, the truly shocking fact about the octopus that comes up in these pages is that most species of octopus only live 2 to 4 years.   frames this as a problem for evolution. Why would evolution go to the expense of giving   animals such magnificent smarts? The octopus, as   explains, is a curious, clever and inventive creature it has good eyesight (aside from the color vision) and is capable, in captivity, of recognizing and keeping track of individual people. Moreover, the octopus, and to some degree also the cuttlefish, are the only examples of big brains in the whole universe of invertebrate species. What’s the point, if the animals have such a short lifespan? Drawing on   evolutionary ideas,   offers a brilliant answer. I won’t give the details here, but the basic idea is pretty straight forward. Animals who live to an old age are less likely to carry mutations of the sort that are likely to kill them when they are young. Indeed, animals who suffer mutations whose harmful effects strike early on are unlikely to have offspring or are unlikely to have as many children as animals who live longer. It follows that there will be a tendency for whatever destructive effects of mutations there may be to manifest themselves, over evolutionary time, later and later in life. Of course, just how long a species will tend to live will reflect environmental conditions as well. Vulnerability to predators, for example, will cull parents who wait too long to have kids. Lifespan is thus likely to be tuned evolutionarily by this kind of environmental risk factor. Back to the octopus.   explains: ”They have ended up with their unusual combination: a very large nervous system and a very short life. They have the large nervous system because of what those unbounded bodies make possible and the need to hunt while being hunted their lives are short because their vulnerability tunes their lifespan. The initially paradoxical combination makes sense.” This is an ingenious and plausible account both of why animals don’t live forever, even though their cells are continuously made anew, and also of why, in particular, the octopus has such a short life span. But it is not quite the answer I was looking for. Or, rather, it is the right answer to the wrong question. What makes the fact that octopus die so young so very shocking is not the evolutionary puzzle of it, I think, but rather the fact that there is something in itself   and incomprehensible about the very idea that so much intelligence and understanding could be achieved in such a short life. For us, it seems, thought, understanding, wits, are tied up with experience and, so, with time. Octopus nous is freakish, like something out of science fiction. Which ties up with another theme of Other Minds.   remarks at the outset that contact with an octopus is the closest most of us will ever come to an intelligent alien. For the most part, reading this book, I had the feeling that this was not so. It isn’t that the octopus isn’t different from us. Long gangly arms, eight of them a boneless body that shifts shape and changes color. All this is strange. And there is no disputing the evolutionary facts. You have to go back 600 million years to meet the bilateral,   worm who is the common ancestor of both humans and cephalopods. This is a being whose cleverness took shape as a result of a very different history than that of ourselves. And yet, the octopus doesn’t come across as all that exotic or even all that wild. And this shouldn’t be that surprising when you stop to think that intelligence, wit, rationality, these are, as Dennett has stressed, interpretive notions. To see someone or something as intelligent is to view it as conforming to a certain way of acting. Rational beings are the ones that do what they should in light of what they need given what they know. The octopus, however playful or curious, is a smarty pants and for that reason doesn’t seem that remote at all. Until we come up against the startling fact of the brevity of octopus life, that is. It is here that I had the vivid sense that in encountering the octopus we are brought into contact not merely with an intelligent alien, but a truly alien intelligence. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Updated at 8 p. m. ET, Donald Trump lashed out at civil rights hero John Lewis on Twitter Saturday morning, a day after the Georgia Democratic congressman said in an interview he didn’t view the   as ”legitimate” amid questions of Russia’s interference in the U. S. elections. While Trump has a   tendency to take to social media to push back against any slight against him, such a   rebuke of Lewis and the criticism of his   district was jarring on the holiday weekend celebrating the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lewis was one of the original Freedom Riders and a top lieutenant of King’s, helping organize the March on Washington in 1963 and marching with King across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. in 1965, where his skull was fractured. Lewis said during an NBC interview on Friday that he didn’t view Trump as a ”legitimate president” after reports that Russia had worked to influence the election in Trump’s favor and to discredit Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Trump has largely dismissed those reports and questioned the validity of U. S. intelligence findings, frequently praising Russia and its president Vladimir Putin throughout the campaign and the election. Lewis also said he wouldn’t be attending Trump’s inauguration on Friday, making it the first he’s missed since he was elected to Congress in 1986. ”You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right,” Lewis told Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd. (Editor’s note on Jan. 17: Lewis’ communications director, Brenda Jones, has since corrected the record, noting that the congressman chose not to attend President George W. Bush’s first inauguration. That ”was also a form of dissent,” she told CBS News.)  Lewis used Trump’s attack as part of a fundraising plea from the Democratic National Committee and his own congressional campaign later on Saturday, writing in an email that, ”I’ve been beaten bloody,   fighting for what’s right for America. I’ve marched at Selma with Dr. King. Sometimes that’s what it takes to move our country in the right direction. We refuse to stop now. We’re not done fighting for progress. We’re ready for the next four years.” Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse, a frequent critic of Trump during the campaign, defended Lewis on Twitter. On Friday, he’d tweeted a message to Lewis asking him to reconsider attending the inauguration. Trump also claimed that Lewis’s   district was ”in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested).” As the Atlanta Journal Constitution notes, the district is about 58 percent black, 33 percent white and has a growing Hispanic population. It includes the   Atlanta International Airport, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the headquarters of Coca Cola and Delta Air Lines. It also includes several top colleges such as the historically black Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, along with Emory University and Georgia Tech. And while the district does have an 8. 2 percent unemployment rate, higher than the national average of just below 5 percent, more than 40 percent in the district have a bachelor’s degree or higher, higher than the national average. Even amid criticism, Trump doubled down on his remarks about Lewis later Saturday evening: Michigan Rep. Justin Amash had a curt response to that later tweet from Trump:"
"Just one day after Jennifer Holliday told the media she planned to sing at a welcome concert for   Donald Trump, the Tony   singer says she has reconsidered. Holliday will not be performing at the   event. She announced the turnabout in a letter provided to The Wrap. She wrote, in part: ”Regretfully, I did not take into consideration that my performing for the concert would actually instead be taken as a political act against my own personal beliefs and be mistaken for support of Donald Trump and Mike Pence. ”In light of the information pointed out to me via the Daily Beast article on yesterday, my only choice must now be to stand with the LGBT Community and to state unequivocally that I WILL NOT PERFORM FOR THE WELCOME CONCERT OR FOR ANY OF THE INAUGURATION FESTIVITIES!” Holliday, a Broadway actress best known for her   turn in Dreamgirls, in the early 1980s has sung for U. S. presidents on both sides of the aisle  —   including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and both presidents Bush. She says it was this role as a ”  songbird” that ultimately persuaded her to accept an invitation to sing at a Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration on Jan. 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration. ”I’m singing on the mall for the people. I don’t have a dog in this fight  —   I’m just a singer, and it’s a welcome concert for the people on the mall,” she told The New York Times on Friday, adding that she had voted for Hillary Clinton in the election. But ”if someone wants me to sing a national anthem or something,” Holliday told the Times, ”we think about America, and we go.” The announcement Friday drew a swift backlash on social media that astonished Holliday. ”I’m not singing for Donald Trump I’m singing to welcome the people of America,” she told Billboard, in an interview Friday defending the decision. ”He cannot be the only face that’s gonna represent us. And just to have all white people up there singing is not going to be a fair representation either. So you’re just saying don’t go? Really? I’m just very disheartened by it that it would be so much hate.” In her letter, which was addressed to ”MY BELOVED LGBT COMMUNITY,” Holliday says that calculus changed for her after reading a Daily Beast article that called attention to her lofty status as an icon in the LGBT community. The decision to perform in support of the incoming Trump administration represented ”an act that seems to defy everything her most passionate supporters stand for, and even issues she herself has supported throughout her career,” the Daily Beast argued. So, Holliday says, she reexamined her choice. And Saturday, she made that change of heart official. In her letter, she apologized for what she called a ”lapse of judgement,” and ”for being uneducated on the issues that affect every American at this crucial time in history and for causing such dismay and heartbreak to my fans.”"
"For the past 17 years, Sam Barsky has knit sweaters that depict places he’s seen around the world, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Stonehenge, Jerusalem’s Western Wall  —   even a field of electrical pylons. But what’s made Barsky an internet phenomenon, with well over a million hits on various websites, are photos of the knitter himself posing in front of a scene, wearing his matching sweater. With more than 100 handmade sweaters under his belt, the    says the only limitation he has is the  ’ time it takes to make one. ”This is what I enjoy doing, I like creating. I like replicating what I see in life, and what I anticipate seeing.” And that’s just where he finds his artistic inspiration. ”Pretty much any kind of iconic landmark or natural scene  —   anything, possibly  —   it could be in my dreams,” Barsky says. As for the electrical pylon sweater, ”I see them all the time, in all my routine travels around the local area,” he says. ”They’re everywhere, so pretty much anything that crosses my eyes is a potential sweater and the pylons are no exception.” For his next project, he’s setting his sights on a Groundhog Day sweater  —   featuring a groundhog on it, of course. Another ambitious knitting feat of his? Faces  —   he’s working on a Martin Luther King sweater, just in time for the civil rights leader’s birthday. Now that his art’s virality has garnered him new fame, Barsky says, ”I’m flooded with requests  —   so many I can’t even see all of them.” But he’s not quite up to fulfilling those requests, sticking to his own artistic direction that got him the attention in the first place. ”I’ve thought about it before, but I’ve realized early on, a long time ago, that it’s not practical for me to be a human sweater mill.”"
"Small classes. High standards. More money. These popular remedies for school ills aren’t as effective as they’re sometimes thought to be. That’s the somewhat controversial conclusion of education researcher John Hattie. Over his career, Hattie has scrutinized more than 1, 000 ”” looking at all types of interventions to improve learning. The studies he’s examined cover a combined 250 million students around the world. Out of that, he’s identified five common ideas in education policy that he says should be looked at with a critical eye. NPR Ed spoke with Hattie, a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, about each of these five ideas following the publication of his 2015 paper ”What Doesn’t Work In Education: The Politics of Distraction.” 1. Achievement standards. ”It seems very sensible. You set up minimum standards you want students to reach. You judge schools by how many reach them,” Hattie says. ”But it has a very nasty effect. All those schools who take kids in difficult circumstances are seen as failures, while those who take privileged students and do nothing are seen as successful.” By the same token, it seems to make sense to set achievement standards by grade level, but the further along students get in school, Hattie points out, the more of them are performing either behind or ahead of the schedule that’s been set. The alternative: a focus on growth and progress for each student, no matter where he or she starts. 2. Achievement tests.    schools, and countries, don’t necessarily give more standardized tests than low performers. They often give fewer. The alternative: testing that emphasizes giving teachers immediate, actionable feedback to improve teaching. 3. School choice. Many education reformers tout school choice as a tool for parent empowerment and school improvement through competitive pressure. But Hattie says his research shows that once the economic background of students is accounted for, private schools offer no significant advantages over public schools, on average. The same goes for charter schools. But there is one kind of choice that Hattie does believe makes a difference: teacher choice. Being able to select the best teacher for your child, Hattie suggests, could be truly empowering for parents  —   albeit a challenging strategy for a school to adopt. 4. Small class size. In the U. S. groups such as Class Size Matters are dedicated to the proposition that fewer students per teacher is a recipe for success. This, Hattie argues, would come as a surprise to Japan and Korea, which have two of the   education systems in the world  —   and average class sizes of 33. Hattie says reducing class size can have a positive impact. But that small class size needs to be paired with training and support for teachers to collaborate more closely with students, offer more personalized feedback and measure student improvement on a more granular level. 5. More money. Korea and Finland far outscore the U. S. on the international PISA exam, which tests learning in math, science and reading. And those two countries spend $60, 000 and $75, 000 respectively per student, for schooling from first grade through high school graduation. That compares with $105, 000 spent per student for the same block of time in the U. S. Hattie believes $40, 000 per student for these years of education is necessary for reasonable school performance. But above that, he sees almost no relationship between money spent and results earned. In his book Visible Learning Into Action, Hattie looks at the flip side  —   the ideas that do work in schools around the world. Boiled down, he says, the most effective ideas are those that empower teachers to collaborate closely with students and support them in continuously improving. A version of this story was published on NPR Ed in August 2015."
"Shelly Fields is a    white woman living in Richton Park, a racially diverse Chicago suburb. She says she’s raised her four daughters, who are biracial, to see people of all races as equal, just as her parents raised her. Fields doesn’t think that racism will ever disappear completely, but she’s hopeful that it lessens with each passing generation. ”The more biracial children there are, the more equality we see,” Fields said. ”The more people of color we see in positions of power  —   it will help to change the way people see race.” Her oldest daughter, Summer, is a    graduate of the University of Chicago. When she was in high school, Summer probably would have agreed that race relations were looking up. The ’90s and early 2000s were ”a   fantasy time” in Richton Park, Summer said. ”Being firmly in the middle of the Obama era  —   it [was] a moment of progress. It was validating.” Now, as the Obama era ends, she is of the mind that racism isn’t going anywhere. ”Racism always evolves, and will find a way,” Summer said. The question that Shelly and Summer are tackling has been posed in many forms for many generations. Will racism just die off with old bigots? Does the fate of race relations lie with the children? That idea has been milling about the public psyche for generations. It lives in that famous (if  ) line: ”I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr. said it eloquently in his ”I Have a Dream” speech, but we’ve heard that sentiment through the ages, from Thomas Jefferson to Oprah Winfrey. The belief that our children’s generation will be less racist gets repeated by teachers, parents, politicians and activists. And understandably so. Much of American culture is predicated on the idea that we can create a better future for our progeny, instilling in them values that we as a nation have often failed to uphold. In our small, very unscientific survey last month, Code Switch heard that conviction. We also heard just the opposite. We wanted to know if beliefs about the future of racism were held consistently in families from generation to generation. Here’s what we asked in our December callout: Will racism fade away when old bigots die?  Of the 120 or so people who responded, more than   said they did not think the next generation would usher out racism. And nearly the same number thought their answer would differ from their parents or grandparents. (There’s reason to think, given some more scientific national research, that there’s not really much difference between generations when it comes to racial beliefs.) But let’s get back to the Fields family. Summer Fields responded to our survey. She had no qualms saying that racism would be with us for the long run. She didn’t know exactly what her mom would say, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be that. Here’s what Shelly said: ”The further we get away from the idea that one skin color or race is better than the other, the better. Past generations had these ideas, and they were spread to the next generation and the next.” Shelly learned about race from her parents. When she was growing up, she said, they taught her never to judge other people based on skin color. That didn’t stop them from being cautious when she began dating outside her race and eventually decided to start a family with a black man. ”Once [my mother] found out I was pregnant, when it hit close to home, it was a different story,” Shelly said. ”She was afraid . .. She said, ’You’re gonna have a baby with dark skin and kinky hair.’ ”’She was afraid because she didn’t know [what to expect]. And I really didn’t know either.” But Shelly said that once her daughters were born, her parents were able to see firsthand that there was nothing to worry about. (She lives right behind her parents, and they’ve been heavily involved in each other’s lives.) She said that her neighborhood has always been racially mixed, and that her family has never really experienced racism there. That, she said, helped her parents move past some of their fears and double down on their belief that people of all races should be treated equally. ”They taught that to my daughters,” Shelly said. ”They and I showed my daughters, and I’m hoping that they’ll show their daughters and sons.” Summer isn’t quite as hopeful. As a high schooler, being surrounded by a mix of black, white, and multiracial classmates, it was possible for her to believe in a more uplifting future. After arriving at the University of Chicago, where less than five percent of the student body was black, her perspective changed. She started learning about things like race theory in her classes. The overwhelmingly white environment also affected how she thought of herself her identity suddenly felt more political. She found herself engaging and disagreeing more with her mom’s ideas about race. They’ve argued over things like trigger warnings and safe spaces (her mom says that’s not how the real world works) and about how to  . Summer thought of herself as biracial until she went to college. When she started referring to herself as a black woman, that became another point of contention. ”My mom doesn’t understand,” she said. ”She feels like that’s an affront to her.” While Shelly knows racism won’t disappear (”We still have families that teach the same things they were taught about judging people based on race,” she said,) she holds onto some optimism. Summer’s prognosis is a little bleaker. ”Our country’s whole identity is founded on the pillaging and murder of Native people and chattel slavery,” she said. It would help to acknowledge that, she said. She’s just not sure democracy could handle it. ”For us to call that out and admit it would be the first step,” Summer said. ”But it would destroy the whole project.” That generational dissonance seemed to be a common thread among the people we surveyed. We heard from a South Asian college student in Florida who said that because her parents chose to come to the United States, they’re more invested in the notion that America is a land of opportunity for all people. So they don’t get why so many people of color in this country fear police or don’t work their way out of poverty. ”My mom isn’t racist . .. but she doesn’t understand institutional racism,” she said. ”I have an understanding of [American] history that my parents don’t.” We also heard from a white elementary school teacher in New Jersey who’s hopeful because his white students idolize musicians and athletes of color. But he said his parents think the culture gaps between races are too large to ever overcome. At one point, he spoke to them about moving from his largely white neighborhood into one that was racially mixed. He thought he’d be comfortable there. Their response? ”No, you wouldn’t.” Much of the available public polling data suggests that millennials like the schoolteacher are not as different from Generation Xers or Baby Boomers as they might think. Kathleen Weldon, communications director at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University, said millennials tend to say they are more optimistic about race relations than their parents, and more broadly accepting of things like interracial friendships and marriage. But when questioned about specific policy issues tied to race, she said, millennials sound a lot like their elders. They don’t ”have different views on the [George] Zimmerman case, aren’t more aware of the disproportionate effect of HIV on the black community, are not more likely to think government should play a major role in the social and economic position of blacks, and are no more [or less] likely to think the [Voting Rights Act] is still necessary,” Weldon said. ”In other words, when it comes to perceptions and policy around race in the U. S. young Americans don’t look much different from older ones.” Jocelyn Wilks and her father, Elijah, expected their views to diverge significantly when it came to race and racism. But though they come from different generations, were born in different parts of the country, and even have different ideas of what they’ll call racism, their outlook is pretty similar. As a black man born in Mississippi in the early 1960s, Elijah lived with   racism. He was in fourth grade when his school integrated. When he was in high school, there was a black homecoming court and a white homecoming court, a black ”Mr. and Miss High School” and a white ”Mr. and Miss High School.” Those experiences inform his thinking about race. His daughter, he said, formed her opinions another way. ”I’ve never taught [Jocelyn] about racism,” Elijah said. ”I never had those conversations with her. I let her grow up and develop her own opinion of things. That was never taught in the home when I was growing up and I didn’t teach her that way.” Another difference between father and daughter, he said, is geographic. He was raised in Mississippi Jocelyn was born and raised in San Antonio. ”Where I grew up, you were either black or white,” Elijah said. ”In San Antonio, it’s predominantly Hispanic, and whites and blacks are minorities . .. It makes a huge difference.” Jocelyn is a    accounting student who lives just north of San Antonio. Her experience teaching   helped convince her that racism was going nowhere fast. During that time, Jocelyn heard a lot of nonsense from her students, like one boy who, after losing a basketball game, said his opponent’s ”genes were made to jump.” Jocelyn knew the children were getting those ideas from somewhere. ”When you’re 9 or 10 you can’t call bullshit on your parents,” she said. ”You take those racist statements as facts. . .. ”Kids pick up things that you don’t teach them. So if Mom treats a person of color poorly, the kid sees that and picks it up, because that’s their model.” Jocelyn said she and her dad have different ideas of what’s worth labeling racism. Born in a harsher time, his threshold, she said, is higher. ”It won’t be the small slights that people in my generation find to be racist,” she said. ”He thinks things are getting better, and they are better from when he was growing up. But it’s not the better that we’re looking for. He wouldn’t look at gentrification or housing segregation and say, ’They’re doing that on purpose, this is racist.’ It would be a church shooting, and he’d [say] ’That’s a hate crime.’ ”Dad says, ’It’s not fair that these people are getting killed and no one’s going to jail for it.’ And I say, ’It’s not fair, if your name is Shaniqua, that you have to work 15 times harder to get a job than anybody else. ’” But when they come back to that question that has been passed down through the generations  —   Will racism fade away when old bigots die?  —   Elijah and Jocelyn sound almost identical. Father: ”As new generations come into existence, it will be lesser and lesser, but I don’t know if it will ever end.” Daughter: ”As long as there’s racism in this generation, there’s going to be racism in the next generation. It might dwindle, but it won’t disappear.”"
"As their first major act of the new Congress, Republicans rushed approval of a budget resolution this week that sets up a framework for repealing Obamacare, but what exactly to replace it with is still a puzzle Republicans are piecing together. And it could take a while. ”We’re not holding hard deadlines, only because we want to get it right,” House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . told reporters this week. The budget resolution does include a Jan. 27 deadline for committees to report back with repeal legislation, but lawmakers have made abundantly clear they’re going to blow past that date. Ryan says Republicans will use their annual GOP retreat for a ”full, exhausting” conversation on how exactly to repeal and replace the law. The   approach is at odds with the increasing urgency of the rhetoric on the state of the Affordable Care Act. ”We are on a rescue mission to prevent Obamacare from making things even worse,” Ryan pledged. What do we know? Congressional leaders and   Donald Trump have pledged that repeal legislation and the GOP alternative to replace will occur at roughly the same time. Trump this week pledged it will happen ”essentially simultaneously.” The incoming president said they will not offer a plan until his nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, Rep. Tom Price,  . is confirmed. Republicans expect a significant amount of the repeal effort to come through executive action by HHS since much of the implementation of Obamacare was done through the same agency. In Congress, lawmakers say they want to use piecemeal legislation to address specific issues. There is stiff political resistance among Republicans to voting on one, sweeping legislative package. The Affordable Care Act was 2, 700 pages, and Republicans these days are generally distrustful of behemoth bills. They are too hard to explain to the public their constituents hate them and it’s too easy to tuck in provisions they might regret voting for down the road. Republicans have promised to keep intact some of the more popular provisions of the law. They say people with   conditions will still have access to health insurance, and that parents can keep their adult children on their health plans until age 26. House Republicans offered a broad outline for reform in 2016 that provides the foundation for what they will try and do this year. That plan repeals the individual mandate, which is a pillar of Obamacare. Instead, it would create new tax credits to incentivize individuals to buy insurance, but it wouldn’t penalize them if they don’t. Ryan discussed this at a CNN town hall on Thursday. ”We want to instead have tax credits, so that everybody can . .. take their tax credit and go buy a health care plan of their choosing,” he said. ”And that’s the other thing  —   we don’t want to make people buy something that they don’t want to buy. We don’t want to force them to buy all these different benefits.” There is also loose consensus in the House and Senate to remove mandates on essential health benefits that insurance plans must cover and let states decide minimum coverage. Republicans also plan to use the repeal legislation to cut off funds for Planned Parenthood, which received federal funds through Medicaid reimbursements for services. Planned Parenthood is a political target for Republicans, who oppose the health care provider, because they provide abortion services. Instead, Republicans want to redirect those federal funds to health clinics that do not offer abortion services. What Don’t We know? A lot. Broadly, there is a philosophical debate here about whether the federal government has an obligation to insure all Americans, or whether Americans should decide whether or not to have insurance. Republicans have pledged that no one who has insurance through the ACA will lose it, but without a mandate the number of insured Americans could drop. The other major challenge facing Republicans is cost. The party, at its core, is resistant to expanding federal entitlements and spending, but they have pledged to create better health care coverage options at lower costs. Those two promises are hard to reconcile, particularly for a legislative product that will have to be assessed by the Congressional Budget Office for its impact on the federal budget. Lawmakers say the most ambitious timetable to see a legislative product take shape is late February, although others caution that this debate could consume most of 2017. For all the Republicans’ ambitions on health care, there are still certain legislative realities they have to face. The most significant is in the Senate, where replacement legislation will likely need to pass a   hurdle, and that means bringing some combination of Democrats on board. That’s why GOP senators are taking a more measured approach. For instance, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chairman, Lamar Alexander,  . a key negotiator, has already taken Medicare off the table as part of any health care negotiations, because it would repel any Democrat from engaging in talks. What are the political calculations? Democrats advanced Obamacare after winning an election that delivered control of Congress and the White House. In hindsight, many top Democrats have reflected that the party tackled health care when the country was really aching for economic relief. ”Americans were crying out for an end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs not for changes in their healthcare,” Sen. Chuck Schumer,  . Y. reflected in 2014. Arguably, Republicans could be making the same mistake. The party is fresh off an election victory that delivered unified GOP control for the first time in a decade. But their dire warnings about Obamacare don’t always line up with the public’s view of the law. A recent   poll showed 38% of Americans support strengthening or expanding Obamacare 31% want it repealed and replaced 14% want it repealed and not replaced 6% want it left as is. Democrats think Republicans have   their hand. ”When you put pen to paper, all hell is going to break lose on your side,” Rep. Peter Welch,  . said during floor debate this week on the budget resolution, ”because you have to move beyond the rhetoric to figuring out how you’re going to pay to keep our kids on our health care plan, figuring out how to have to pay if we’re going to let folks with   conditions have health care. Those (problems) don’t solve themselves, and you don’t have a plan.” But doing nothing is also not an option, particularly for lawmakers in states where premiums are rising and insurer options are now down to a single provider. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky argued that Democrats face their own political risks by defending the current system. ”I would caution our Democratic friends to become the spokesmen for the status quo,” he said. ”It associates them with the fact that, after Obamacare, there’s still 25 million Americans who are uninsured,   are going up, deductibles are going up and premiums are going up. I would also remind them that (Obamacare) is the reason we had a great year in 2010, 2014 and again in 2016.”"
"President Obama and Vice   Mike Pence were both on Capitol Hill Wednesday, making competing cases for and against Obama’s signature health care law. Republicans have promised to make repeal of the Affordable Care Act their first order of business, once they control both Congress and the White House. Obama is urging his fellow Democrats to do what they can to preserve the law. If that fails, Democrats plan to hold Republicans accountable for any disruption the repeal may trigger. Both sides are trying to position themselves as the protectors of Americans’ health care, while branding the other party as a dangerous threat. As usual, the truth may be somewhere in between. Here we take a closer look at some of the claims being floated by both parties:   Trump got the ball rolling with a   tweet, cautioning that ”Republicans must be careful in that the Dems own the failed ObamaCare disaster, with its poor coverage and massive premium increases. .... .” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan echoed Trump. ”This law has failed,” Ryan told reporters. ”We know that things are only getting worse under Obamacare. This is about people paying higher premiums every year and feeling powerless to stop it. It’s about families paying deductibles that are so high it doesn’t even feel like you have health insurance in the first place. And in so many parts of the country, as you’ve always heard, even if you want to look for better coverage, you’re stuck with one option. One choice is not a choice. It is a monopoly. The health care system has been ruined, dismantled under Obamacare.” CLAIM: Obamacare suffers from ”massive premium increases”  FACT CHECK: True in some cases, but it’s also relative. Obamacare is also actually cheaper on average than the typical   plan. Many people shopping for health insurance on the   exchanges set up by Obamacare have seen   premium increases this year. The average cost of a benchmark plan rose 25 percent nationwide, but there was considerable variation from state to state. Premiums in Arizona jumped an average of 116 percent, while premiums in Indiana and Massachusetts actually went down. Most people buying insurance on the exchanges receive a government subsidy, which helps defray the cost. A study by the Urban Institute last year found that even without the subsidy, insurance policies sold on the exchanges cost about 10 percent less than the typical   plan. Exchange policies might seem more expensive, because part of the cost of workplace plans is typically paid by employers, and thus largely invisible to the employee. CLAIM: ”You’re stuck with one option” under Obamacare, FACT CHECK: Not true for the majority, but it has increasingly become the case. Obamacare insurance exchanges have grown less competitive, as some insurance companies have lost money and left the market. One in five customers on the exchanges had just one insurance company to choose from this year (up from 2 percent in 2016). Nearly 6 in 10 customers have a choice of three or more companies. The lack of competition, which can lead to higher prices, tends to be worse in rural areas and the South. Insurance companies have struggled, in part, because fewer young, healthy people have signed up for coverage than forecast. Backers of the Affordable Care Act say that could be remedied with more generous subsidies to encourage   or bigger penalties for those who fail to enroll. Obama also renewed the idea of a public insurance option to supplement private offerings. CLAIM: ”The health care system has been ruined, dismantled under Obamacare” FACT CHECK: Prices were going up at faster rates before Obamacare. Most Americans under age 65 still get health insurance through an employer, although the percentage has been slowly dropping. The cost of   coverage has gone up since passage of the ACA. But the annual price hikes were considerably larger in the decade before the law was passed. Some of the savings from slower premium growth have been offset by higher deductibles. While Republicans highlight the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats warn that repeal would be much worse. ”Instead of working to further ensure affordable care for all Americans, [Republicans] seek to rip health care away from millions of Americans, creating chaos in our entire economy,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday. He and his fellow Democrats offered a mocking slogan for the GOP: ”Make America Sick Again.” Schumer also suggested that repealing Obamacare would hurt rural hospitals, ”right in their heartlands. The minute they enact this repeal, [hospitals] are going to suffer dramatically,” he said. CLAIM: ACA repeal would ”rip health care away from millions” FACT CHECK: True, if Republicans don’t protect them or replace ACA with something that provides coverage. The Affordable Care Act has expanded health care coverage to some 20 million Americans through a combination of subsidized individual policies, expanded Medicaid, and allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plans. The uninsured rate has fallen to an   low of around 10 percent. Coverage would be higher still if 19 states had not refused to expand Medicaid. If the   Congress repeals the Affordable Care Act, many of those newly insured Americans would be at risk of losing coverage. In addition, millions more who buy individual insurance policies off the exchanges could be at risk, if that market is disrupted. The Urban Institute estimates as many as 30 million people in all could lose their health care coverage, doubling the uninsured rate. Republicans have promised an orderly transition as they work toward a replacement for Obamacare, and it’s possible the effective date for any repeal could be delayed for a number of years. Insurance companies, however, may be reluctant to participate once it’s clear Obamacare’s individual market is being phased out. CLAIM: Rural hospitals are going to suffer, FACT CHECK: True, if repealed outright, but it’s also because of the way the ACA was structured in the first place. The concern for hospitals reflects a   when the ACA was passed seven years ago. The government scaled back what it pays hospitals for treating Medicare patients and the indigent, with the expectation that would be offset by payments from millions of newly insured. Hospitals worry that if repeal of the law cuts insurance coverage, but doesn’t restore other payments, they could be left with a mountain of unpaid bills. The American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals urged Congress and the incoming Trump administration to either protect insurance coverage or replace the hospital payments."
"So now we know: This is how it’s going to be after Inauguration Day, too. When coverage falls afoul of Donald Trump, the     will feed the media itself into the news grinder. As Matthew Continetti wrote in the Washington Free Beacon, the new administration is going on permanent offense Trump will invert the usual equation to subject individual journalists and their employers to scrutiny and slashing attacks of the kind usually reserved for public officials. Trump started Wednesday’s cyclone of a press conference with a warning sheathed in seeming compliments: Thanks for the restraint in holding off on all those salacious and unproven allegations about my personal behavior, and the claims of collusion between my associates and the Russians! And don’t tick me off if you want any more of these press conferences. It had, after all, been a   since Trump last held one  —   a hiatus which he ascribed to his displeasure with reporting about him. Standing at a lectern in the atrium of the Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, Trump went on to denounce CNN (”Your organization is terrible. . .. You are fake news! ”) for editorial decisions made by BuzzFeed (which he called ”a failing pile of garbage”). CNN had reported that senior U. S. intelligence officials took the allegations seriously enough to brief President Obama and the    —   a story that sparked a firestorm but proved uncontroversial among most journalists to publish. It was unquestionably newsworthy. BuzzFeed, by contrast, had sparked industrywide debate in deciding to post the full file of unsubstantiated claim  —   compiled, apparently, by a former British intelligence officer working on behalf of Trump’s political foes in both parties. The site’s rationale was that posting allowed readers to make up their own minds, even as reporters raced to determine which allegations, if any, held up to scrutiny. Trump shouted down CNN’s Jim Acosta as the reporter repeatedly sought to ask Trump a question in response to his pointed critique. Afterward Sean Spicer, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, strode briskly up to Acosta and admonished him. Spicer later told me Acosta had been ”disgraceful, rude and inappropriate” in pressing Trump. Spicer also said that he had told Acosta ”if he did it again, I’d have him thrown out.” Trump’s rhetorical jujitsu and verbal attacks at times overshadowed the meat of the stories that drew his ire, including his camp’s alleged ties to the Russians and his business entanglements. Some of Trump’s aides ginned up some hollow stagecraft for the event: Trump stood near a table loaded with unmarked manila folders filled with sheets of paper as his lawyer explained why he would give control of his companies to his sons rather than sell his enterprises. Reporters never saw what the folders contained or learned what information they purportedly held. Even so, the question of conflicts of interest surfaced unexpectedly in the Trump Tower atrium, effectively a   mall. ”The blue curtain behind Trump didn’t quite obscure the booth where Ivanka Trump sells her fine jewelry,” the Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi noted minutes after the event wrapped up. ”You could see the mannequins where they normally have these diamond necklaces that Ivanka Trump is selling in Trump Tower. ”Even in their staging, they couldn’t quite get rid of the idea that Ivanka and all of the children  —   and Donald Trump  —   will have a massive conflict of interest,” Nuzzi said afterward. On Thursday morning, Trump picked up on Twitter where he left off: ”CNN is in a total meltdown with their FAKE NEWS because their ratings are tanking since election and their credibility will soon be gone!” Actually, CNN’s ratings are flying high right now  —   thanks in no small part to the controversy and conflict engendered by the   in the past year. And as for fake news, Trump himself has been a leading purveyor of false claims, from hoaxes over Obama’s birth to unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud. Some press critics have publicly wrestled with the need for new strategies and rules on how to cover this administration. I don’t think Trump’s arrival requires new strategies, but perhaps new tactics. Yes, reporters might benefit from standing by one another more, as some commentators have advised. They could reiterate questions posed by competitors who are frozen out, or, in the case of Acosta, who never did get to ask the question he sought, yielding time back to him. At minimum they could call out Trump and his aides on the practice  —   as Jake Tapper, then with ABC News, publicly did in sticking up for Fox News reporters and Washington bureau chiefs did in private exchanges with Obama aides. The media could benefit from adhering to first principles that probably should have been observed more attentively all along: Access matters less than   reporting away from the camera. And the press must recognize it can’t rely on other institutions to raise the right questions. (One congressional committee chairman, instead of serving as a check on the   suggested he would investigate a federal ethics official who said Trump’s moves to manage possible business conflicts were insufficient.) Away from the event, reporters joked nervously about what retribution their news organizations might experience in the future. The Trump campaign created blacklists of reporters and news organizations barred from interviews. (BuzzFeed figured prominently.) And yet Trump wants the media’s attention and craves its respect. Trump’s favorite media outlets depend on the vagaries of his mood. Among them one will likely find Breitbart News, the   conservative site which heavily favored Trump during the GOP primaries. The site’s former chairman, Steve Bannon, will be a top White House adviser to Trump. And Trump called on a Breitbart reporter during the news conference. Other likely Trump favorites include the New York Post (to which he has given myriad scraps about his personal life over the years) Fox News (which has named Trump fan Tucker Carlson to replace Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly) the National Enquirer (its parent company is run by a close Trump friend who authorized a $150, 000 payment to a former Playboy model to quash the story of an affair, according to the Wall Street Journal) the New York Observer (owned by his    Jared Kushner until this month) perhaps even   RT, the Russian propagandist network which had a correspondent cheerfully bellowing its initials a few feet from me on Wednesday in hopes of being called on. As it happens, Trump did not call on him. Yet Trump wants the established media’s attention and craves its respect. He gives interviews to The New York Times, even when rejecting the premises of their questions. And he monitors cable coverage more than any TV news agent. On Fox News Thursday evening, former New York City mayor, Fox News commentator and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani hailed a new media age ushered in by Trump: ”It is refreshing and it is very good for our democracy that we have a president that is trying to get us back to a free press.” Free to do what, one wonders."
"Once again, NPR finds itself in the uncomfortable position of reporting on unverified information, just as it did last year when WikiLeaks dumped troves of what it said were hacked emails taken from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and from top officials of the Democratic National Committee. In this case, the unsubstantiated information is contained in a   dossier about   Donald Trump, compiled last year at the behest of Trump foes —  first   Republicans, and then the Democrats. The dossier has been circulating in official Washington circles and among the press corps for some time. CNN reported on its existence earlier this week, with BuzzFeed quickly posting it in full after. Other news organizations followed with their own   reports that left out the specifics being alleged. NPR is among those that have not detailed the contents of the document. As Phil Ewing wrote for npr. org, ”it remains unverified, but it describes a concerted effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to cultivate a relationship with Trump and his camp. The document, which describes information provided by Russian government and other sources, details behavior by Trump that could leave him open to blackmail, as well as alleged secret meetings between Trump aides and Russian officials called to discuss the campaign against Clinton and potential new business relationships.” Other   and online characterizations have been similar, but even that broad description has provoked polarized listener reaction. My office and NPR have heard from those who think NPR is biased against Trump by reporting on even the existence of the dossier and the basic outlines of the information. Listener Scot Lee of Laporte, Colo. was particularly succinct: ”I am most disappointed that NPR leadership allowed the organization to fall into the trap of reporting unsubstantiated information.” Bruce Heida from Frederick, Md. raised the very good question of why NPR, in one report, ”failed to include the information that the memo was generated by operatives wishing to destroy Trump’s candidacy.” In the opposite camp are those who think NPR is treating the   too delicately by tiptoeing around the unverified information in the report, unlike when it reported much more extensively on the WikiLeaks material. Listener Michelle Wilson of Wyoming, Mich. wrote to my office, concerned about what she felt was a   noting that the WikiLeaks information, which was ”stolen and never authenticated,” was covered in detail, and yet NPR is not reporting specifics in the Trump dossier ”because NPR has not independently confirmed the allegations.” She continued: ”What conclusion should I draw from the difference in coverage? The options seem to be: 1. NPR learned something from the way it handled the WikiLeaks docs and is now trying to do better. 2. Mary Louise Kelly   her editor is more careful than [the NPR reporters covering WikiLeaks]. 3. NPR simply has a double standard in covering anything Clinton related versus Trump related. 4. NPR, like many other individuals and entities, fears crossing Trump by reporting unflattering information. Please educate me on the reasons for the difference.” I asked NPR’s standards editor, Mark Memmott, for his thoughts. Not surprisingly  —   since these are thorny issues  —   his response was similar to that when I asked him about the WikiLeaks reporting last fall. The word he used to describe both situations was ”awkward.” As he told me, the current story is still in its ”very early stages” and the audience is still getting familiar with it, so ”taking care to remind them about the questions regarding the authenticity of the information is important. That doesn’t mean we can dispense with such reminders as stories go on and on and the news becomes familiar. There were times in the WikiLeaks coverage where we probably should have remembered to include that information.” (NPR did indeed eventually stop including disclaimers on the WikiLeaks material and it should not have done that so quickly.) But, addressing the concerns of Wilson and others, Memmott rightly made a distinction between the two leaks. He said, ”The authenticity of the WikiLeaks wasn’t being disputed.” (As NPR reported at the time, ”The Clinton campaign has not confirmed that the hacked emails are real and NPR has not been able to confirm their authenticity, but the campaign has linked the hack to Russia and says Moscow is interfering with the election to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy.” Later, government officials implicitly confirmed that the material was real when they asserted the Russian government’s role in stealing it.) Memmott continued: ”Yes, the absence of an objection isn’t proof on its own of authenticity. But it is an important sign. Meanwhile, the content of the latest information is of a different nature than what was in the WikiLeaks. You’ve seen words such as ’scurrilous’ and ’compromising.’ Before a credible news outlet goes into detail about such allegations, it had better be confident in the information.” He continued, ”There’s no question, however, that there is news to report about the latest information. Intelligence officials felt its existence was important enough to tell the president and   about it. The   and his aides reacted very strongly to the posting of the information. As I say, it’s awkward.” My take: NPR’s reporting in this case has been careful so far. When a Cabinet nominee is being asked about a document in a public hearing the president and   have both been presented with it and the  ’s communications team makes a statement about it at a press conference, NPR needs to report on it, even while dancing around the details. The fact that Trump opponents compiled the dossier should be noted repeatedly, however. Yes, radio time limitations will mean that’s not always possible, but it’s not a detail that should be left by the wayside or always assumed. As for a  : I thought NPR   the WikiLeaks material, as the story took on a life of its own. So far, NPR has handled this latest disclosure cautiously  —   and appropriately."
"Donald Trump’s election early Wednesday as president  —   utterly unprecedented, utterly unexpected  —   caught the media  . The distance between the nation’s political press corps and its people has never seemed so stark. The pundits swung and missed. The polls failed. The predictive surveys of polls, the Upshots and FiveThirtyEights, et al. with their percentage certainties, jerked violently in the precise opposite direction of their predictions as election night progressed. And now journalists are confronted by the prospect of a president who avidly campaigned against them and has promised retribution at a time when many of the nation’s most important news organizations can least afford it. Let’s catalog just a few of the questions facing the nation’s news organizations: How will the media cover Trump? The nation’s journalists like to think of themselves as people who hold the powerful accountable, who are skeptical rather than cynical, constructive rather than carping, institutionally adversarial but not personally opposed. I don’t think that’s how the public thinks about the media. Not at all. The media have come off as petty, grasping and out of touch, all part of the great establishment party from which many Trump voters felt excluded. What’s even more problematic for the media is that Tuesday’s vote involves a repudiation of the idea that the nation’s top leader should care about the facts. On the trail, and throughout his public statements, Trump contradicted the record, the facts, and even himself without the blowback one would expect for a more experienced politician. Indeed, Trump has proved impervious to shame when presented with convincing evidence he is wrong. There’s no reason to believe he’ll care now. The press will have to consider how it can hold accountable someone who rarely if ever is willing to accept fault. During the general election season this fall, CNN’s   captions were often written to be puckish correctives of Candidate Trump’s frequent false claims. Will it continue to do so for President Trump? For many news organizations, journalism is commerce as well as public service. TV networks pushed for more primary debates because they could make money off those evenings. CNN made great riches by airing Trump at great unedited length on the campaign trail during the primaries: It booked an extra $100 million above what it would expect for an election year, attributed to the obsessive focus on Trump. CNN chief Jeff Zucker even boasted that the network’s ad inventory for election night was sold out in record time. Along the way, CNN, Fox News, NBC and other outlets yielded to all kinds of demands by Trump. As one example, Trump’s   on doing interviews by phone ensured he could control the tempo of the exchanges. As a man who prizes negotiation, Trump knew such demands would cement his   status. The transition and the start to the Trump presidency should be great for ratings in the same way the invasion of Iraq was: A strong contingent of the country will cheer it on. Another segment will look on with grave misgivings. And the stakes are enormous. Yet that’s just ratings and clicks. If Trump holds to campaign form  —   which is not certain, but there’s no reason to expect otherwise  —   news organizations will have to choose whether to lurch from outrage to outrage rather than identifying what’s actually occurring in the new Trump administration. Will news organizations acquiesce to a new day without acknowledging the distinctive and dislocating nature of the Trump administration? Will they take an adversarial but conventional approach to covering his White House? Or will they take on an almost oppositional stance? I don’t know  —   and I don’t think they do, either. How will Trump address the media? For the moment, put aside questions of partisan bias (not that Trump intends to). Think instead about the degree to which Trump rejects key values fundamental to journalism, undergirding a deeply held worldview. Trump barely gives lip service to transparency. It’s hard to foresee what kind of information the White House  —   or various federal agencies and departments  —   will give out under his watch. As a candidate Trump showed indifference or hostility to many civil liberties, which incorporate the freedom of speech, expression and assembly embedded in the media’s sense of self. Reporters were herded and penned up at Trump rallies, singled out for abuse, and blacklisted for critical stories, even as their editors negotiated for concessions that seem meager in retrospect. Trump has called for loosening libel laws to make it easier to beat news organizations in court. His Silicon Valley supporter Peter Thiel underwrote cases against Gawker that helped shut down the site and force the sale of its parent company. Rolling Stone and its parent company, Wenner Media, just lost a   libel case in a federal court in Virginia. Even though most cases involve state courts, and are therefore somewhat insulated from federal law, a president’s advocacy can shape laws in state legislatures across the country. Trump has also personally threatened to punish the owners of news organizations whose reports have proved embarrassing or critical. Trump threatened to sue The New York Times for reporting on his taxes. Trump said he would sue NBC for the release of the Access Hollywood tape from 2005 in which he bragged of assaulting women by grabbing their genitals and getting away with it because he is famous. (Trump later denied he had ever done so.) In May, Trump suggested to Fox News he might go after Amazon for unpaid taxes or on antitrust grounds because its founder and CEO, Jeffrey Bezos, personally owns The Washington Post. ”Every hour we’re getting calls from reporters from The Washington Post asking ridiculous questions,” Trump told one of the most sympathetic figures in media toward him, Fox News host Sean Hannity. ”This is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos. . .. Amazon is getting away with murder, taxwise. He’s using The Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don’t tax Amazon like they should be taxed.” (I should disclose here that my wife works at Audible, a fully owned subsidiary of Amazon.) In addition, Trump came out against the proposed ATT takeover of Time Warner (parent company of CNN). He also said as president he would have federal antitrust lawyers reconsider their 2011 approval of Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal as part of an assault on media concentration. Such a position is defensible but appears aimed at those owners of media outlets that he sees as providing hostile coverage. Trump has made no such remarks about the Murdochs’ twin media empires at News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, for example. None of this may come to pass. Trump notoriously hates losing. He made his name in the pages of the tabloid press and as the subject of gauzy interviews on entertainment TV shows. He loves being allowed to weigh in on serious matters in interviews with television news anchors. As the winner of the biggest prize of all he may invite the press in to chronicle his triumph. If he does, it is because the siren call of the klieg lights has won out over his anger. But it is hard for the media to rely on his insincerity for salvation. And now, a glance backward to help inform how to proceed. How did the media get this so wrong? The media became a player  —   an antagonist  —   on the trail, thanks to Trump and, he would say, thanks to the media’s coverage too. That may well have affected what people were saying to pollsters. Many states performed outside the margin of error of the projections. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight was off. The New York Times’ Upshot was badly mistaken too. People relied on misinformation spread instantly on social media as well as the shoutfests and jabberjaw punditry on cable news. And this occurred at the same time that unrelenting financial strains have hollowed out newsrooms across the country. Executives at News Corp. the New York Times Co. Gannett and tronc (formerly Tribune Publishing) have all reported deep declines in advertising revenues. Over time, reporters have only become more concentrated in Washington, D. C. and New York, as Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton wrote Wednesday. The   conservative columnist John Podhoretz, also the editor of Commentary magazine, mused on Twitter Wednesday that he might have to think about shutting down his social media account. ”[T]he Twitter echo chamber created a din for many of us that made it impossible to hear what was happening,” Podhoretz wrote. It’s ”perhaps unhealthy for chattering classes (me included) to live partly within this   cocktail party that reinforces things that maybe shouldn’t be reinforced and rewards facile conventional thinking rather than depth,” Podhoretz continued. ”Twitter is a bubble, or is a world of cliques.” Cenk Uygur, the leftist host of the Young Turks and a supporter of Bernie Sanders, predicted in July that Trump would beat Clinton based on a populist appeal tapping into voter anger against the establishment. He looks pretty good in retrospect. But he has for years been considered outside the acceptable norm of media voices. As the conservative political columnist Salena Zito wrote of Trump in September, ”the press takes him literally, but not seriously his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” She has been writing for months about the depths of Trump’s support. One such column in August was titled: ”Stumped by Trump’s success? Take a drive outside US cities.” This can be a period of great reconsideration by the press of how it operates, even as the stories arise all around us. News organizations can yield to mass distraction, and coverage can bounce giddily once again from one outrage and astonishing turn of events to another. It is a time for humility and taking stock. It is a time for listening to voters who unexpectedly turned to Trump and those who envision a very different form of America. It’s one of NPR’s strengths that it can draw on reporters from hundreds of member stations in states both red and blue. Our reporters consistently capture voters in their own voices. News organizations often struggle to do that. In the days and months ahead, I’d like to see less predictive punditry and much more reporting. God knows, the press has much to be humble about. I’d like to see much more careful coverage of Trump’s actual policies and the rules, regulations and laws that emerge. Now is the time to capture not just what Trump has to say, but what people are doing in his name.   years ago, as a rookie reporter in North Carolina, I witnessed an impromptu debate that broke out between two Duke University trustees about the point and power of journalism. An   law dean named Wilhelmina   praised Gene Patterson, a legendary Southern editor, for his leadership at The Atlanta Constitution, which chronicled the battle for civil rights despite opposition from segregationists.   said her family knew that the paper would not ignore the fate of Georgia’s black residents in the 1960s. Patterson, who died in 2013, replied that the newspaper had indeed reported despite pressure to look away  —   but there were limits to the paper’s influence. Despite the paper’s intense scrutiny of Lester Maddox, the combative segregationist was elected Georgia’s governor in 1966. The paper also covered his occasionally surprising policies. As The New York Times later noted, Maddox ”surprised many by hiring and promoting blacks in state government and by initiating an early release program for the state prison system.” So too does the press have to document developments as they unfold in the Trump presidency. His administration will require an unusually robust, muscular form of accountability reporting  —   tethered to fact and fairness, independent of political pressure."
"Charts can seem dull. But not to data scientist Tariq Khokhar at the World Bank. When he looked through a year’s worth of charts, graphs, maps and more, he was excited by the numbers. For example, although the world’s population has increased by 2 billion people since 1990, there are 1. 1 billion fewer people living in extreme poverty, under $1. 90 a day (highlighted in blue in the chart below). ”I’m amazed at the progress,” Khokhar says. In December, he worked with his colleagues to identify what he calls the 12 most ”popular and interesting” World Bank charts of 2016, which he highlighted in a blog post on the Bank’s website. The graphs, which range from how many people live without toilets to where the world’s youngest people live, reveal a few intriguing challenges our planet will face in the next few decades. Here’s a sampling of the charts that caught his eye. In the majority of countries, smoking rates have gone down in the past 15 years. But for 20 mostly   and   countries, they’ve gone up. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco smoking kills around 6 million people a year  —   and nearly 80 percent of the world’s 1 billion smokers come from the developing world. Not only is it a health issue, it’s an economic one.   illness or death deprives families of income  —   imagine if the breadwinner of a family gets sick and can’t work  —   and raises the cost of health care. In 2000, just 4 percent of the 5 billion people living in   and   countries had access to a mobile phone. In 2015, that number skyrocketed to 94 percent of the 6 billion people in that population  —   making it easier to find someone who might lend you their mobile phone than finding clean water or electricity. While a 2016 study from the World Bank says that mobile phones have boosted growth and expanded opportunities for some in the developing world (through apps that provide health care information or make mobile payments) not everyone benefits. Only about a third of the people who have access to a mobile phone have access to the Internet, which is necessary to use many of these mobile innovations. Spain, South Africa and Greece have some of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. In the pool of      who want to work and are available to work, or are actively seeking employment, more than half are unemployed. ”This is both a challenge now and in the future,” says Khokhar. A billion more young people will enter the job market in the next decade  —   and only 2 in 5 of them are expected to find jobs, he says."
"I don’t want to oversell this new version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I don’t know how not to. Everything that the movie version got wrong, this TV adaptation gets right. And not just right, but brilliantly. The difference is as stark, and as significant, as the difference between the movie and TV versions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer  —   where the writer of that story, Joss Whedon, took the reins and made a television version much truer to his original vision. Daniel Handler, who wrote the original series of Lemony Snicket books, has done the same thing here. And he’s enlisted, as his key   two   collaborators: Barry Sonnenfeld, of Pushing Daisies and The Addams Family fame, as the director of many of the episodes, and an executive producer. And as another producer, and the show’s central star, Neil Patrick Harris. This new   Netflix version, which is written by Handler, is inspiringly faithful to the original books, with two episodes devoted to each of the first handful of stories. The look, which comes from Sonnenfeld, is     fright mode  —   occasionally bright colors against oppressively grey backgrounds, aptly reflecting the mood of the stories. And these are sad, sad stories indeed. The narrative begins with three children being told their parents have died in a fire that burned down the family home  —   and goes downhill from there. These stories are cracklingly intelligent, and delightfully droll, and occasionally, surprisingly,    funny. They’re also so dark, they come with a warning attached  —   not just at the start, but throughout. In the books, these warnings are delivered by the alleged author, Lemony Snicket. He delivers the same deadpan warnings in the TV version, too  —   but for TV, Lemony Snicket appears throughout as a pessimistic,      narrator, sort of a   cross between Rod Serling and Eeyore. And he’s played by Patrick Warburton, whose delivery is as   and as inexplicably charming, as his disclaimers. Though Lemony urges viewers not to watch A Series of Unfortunate Events, I’m begging you to tune in. I haven’t had this much fun watching TV in quite a while. The three kids playing the unfortunate Baudelaire children, the story’s central heroes, are exceptional. Malina Weissman is Violet, the young teenage inventor. Louis Hynes is Klaus, the   bookworm and Presley Smith is Sunny, the expressive baby with very sharp teeth. Their chief nemesis is Count Olaf, an actor and schemer played by Harris, who adopts several guises and plots in hopes of stealing the family fortune the children will eventually inherit. Different stories and episodes are filled with delightful supporting players and performances. Alfre Woodard, as an easily frightened woman, has her most playful role in decades. Catherine O’Hara, Aasif Mandvi, Joan Cusack and others pop in and out, all having heaps of fun playing outrageous characters. No one has more fun, though, or is more outrageous, than Harris. He was a wonderfully camp, cartoonish villain back when he played the titular bad guy in Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s   Blog  —   but that was only a   for his evil ways in Unfortunate Events, in which he threatens the children who have been newly placed in his care. I don’t know how old children should be to watch this series  —   that’s a call, parents should make for themselves. But no one is too old. The tone of this show is utterly charming, and it never falters. It looks great, sounds great, takes   twists and turns and preserves all the quirky things that made the original book series such a treat. Even the long discourses on proper grammar, and the deeply buried clues and puns, are here. Harris even sings the show’s theme song, which changes each week to reflect the updated action but always ends by encouraging viewers to look away. Don’t you dare. Or you’ll be missing one of the best new TV shows in a long time."
"Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. Today the hosts are presented with a question that requires thinking about honesty, trust and judgment in relationships. A woman writes that the man she’s seeing recently confessed to having cheated in past relationships. She’s concerned  —   not that he’ll cheat again, but that he hasn’t expressed much regret for doing it in the past. Is she being too judgmental? Dear Sugars, I recently met a great guy I’ll call ”Richard” on a dating app, and we’ve been seeing each other pretty regularly for about a month. Recently, he shared with me that he would like our relationship to become exclusive and for us to be boyfriend and girlfriend. I’ve been single for about four years (I’m 30) and I would very much like to be in a committed relationship. I told him that I wanted the same thing, but that I’m still in the process of getting to know and understand him and I needed more time. Since then, we’ve shared details about our past relationships with each other. He revealed to me that he cheated on every girlfriend he ever had when he was in college and in law school. He says he has not acted this way for about seven years, and he has since had other girlfriends to whom he was faithful.  When he told me this, I tried to remain open and  . I asked him how he was able to rationalize this behavior to himself, and he said, ”To be honest, I just turned that part of my brain off.” He emphasized that he was much younger then and he was ”sowing his wild oats,” and that he wouldn’t cheat on me now because that simply isn’t what he wants. He wants someone to spend time with and be in a committed relationship with. He is a very    type and doesn’t mince words, so I take him at his word that he doesn’t have any plans to resume his cheating ways. However, there are a couple things that concern me about this. One is that he didn’t express much regret or  . It seemed as though he was saying his bad behavior suited his desires back then, but they don’t now, so he has cut them out. But what I want is a man who has values and principles that guide him through life  —   not someone who picks and chooses when doing the right thing suits him. The second thing is that some of his friends continue to cheat on their girlfriends or spouses. While he acknowledges that their behavior is scummy, it’s odd to me that he can be friends with people like that. I know this might sound super   but I can honestly say that the people I surround myself with are good people who do not cheat on their significant others. Am I judging him too harshly for cheating all those years back? Should I be giving him credit for being forthcoming about it? Or is it obvious that he doesn’t have a strong moral compass? I so would like for this relationship to work, but I’m not willing to commit to someone I don’t deem trustworthy. Sugars, what should I do? Signed, Too Judgy, Or Not Judgy Enough? Steve Almond: TJONJE, it sounds like what’s unsettling you is that this guy doesn’t have an adequate capacity to   and tell you, ”Not only did I do these things, but I know they’re wrong because they were hurtful to the people I was with.” Subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio:RSSiTunesStitcher, You believe his declaration, but there’s something untrustworthy about how he’s saying it. It’s like when you say to somebody, ”I’m sorry that upset you,” as opposed to, ”I’m sorry I said something that was clearly hurtful to you.” It feels like he disassociates a little bit. I think you need to have a talk about this before it goes any further and say, ”I know we talked about this and I know you think the issue’s over, but it’s not for me.” Cheryl Strayed: I think you’re being too judgy, TJONJE. I don’t mean to say that you don’t have some valid concerns. It seems to me that the most important concern is Richard’s sense of regret. I would want to know if he has really thought about the consequences of his actions. But I think that’s implicit in the fact that he told you about these things, and that he spent the past seven years not cheating on girlfriends. You ask if he’s trustworthy, but maybe you should ask: What does trustworthy mean to you? Does it mean never having made a mistake? Or does it mean telling you the truth about his life? If it’s the latter, you’ve got that. This man has admitted his past mistakes, even though he knows you feel judgmental about them. Would you rather that he doesn’t tell you those things? I’m not saying it’s OK to deceive and lie and cheat. But I am saying that a lot of people make mistakes within this realm of life, and it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re immoral. The guy I would be much more afraid of is the guy you met on the dating app at the age of 30 who claims to have an absolutely pure background. Lower those judgments. Open your mind and heart. Have some real discussions, and make yourself vulnerable. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear more from people doubting their relationships. Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail. com and it may be answered on a future episode. You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app."
"Gen. Michael Flynn,   Trump’s pick to be national security adviser, did speak to Russian ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak by telephone on Dec. 29, the same day the Obama administration announced measures retaliating against Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential campaign, two Trump transition officials confirm to NPR. This is different timing than the Trump transition had announced to reporters Friday morning. Transition spokesman and incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said then that Kislyak texted Flynn on Dec. 28, asking to talk. Spicer also said the text messages showed they wished each other Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and added they spoke by phone later that day, the 28, meaning they couldn’t have discussed the retaliation measures or Russia’s response. But now, the transition officials, including Spicer, confirm to NPR that was not correct. The phone conversation, initiated by the Russian ambassador, actually didn’t happen until the next day, Dec. 29, the same day as the retaliatory efforts were announced. David Ignatius at the Washington Post broke the story Thursday that Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador Dec. 29, although the transition said it actually happened the day before. AP published a report Friday night that supported Ignatius’ version. Spicer told NPR in a phone call late Friday night that he had misread the timing of Flynn’s texts Friday morning and that accounts for the discrepancy. Spicer said the call took place ”around the same time” as when the retaliation measures were announced, which was some time around 2 p. m. ET. But, he insisted that the details of the phone conversation did not change from what he said Friday morning and called it ”doubtful” that Flynn and the ambassador discussed the U. S.’s retaliatory measures or Russia’s potential response, because Flynn told Spicer they did not. The first hint that sanctions against Russia were coming was when President Obama said in an interview with NPR on Dec. 15, ”We need to take action. And we will.” The Washington Post then reported on Dec. 27 that action was imminent. By late afternoon the following day, multiple news sources were quoting government officials as saying the announcement would come on the Dec. 29. So Kislyak likely knew an announcement was coming when he asked to talk to Flynn. Another transition official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject matter, said the ambassador invited the Trump administration to participate in a conference in Kazakhstan on the conflict in Syria set for after the inauguration in late January. Were that to happen it could mark a concrete diplomatic shift in the relationship between Russia and the U. S. The Obama administration has opposed Russia’s aid to the Assad regime, essentially putting the U. S. and Russia on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war  —   even as they have attempted to coordinate on parts of it. Contact between an incoming administration and foreign ambassadors isn’t out of the ordinary. But the timing raises questions, especially in light of Putin’s decision not to respond to the U. S. retaliatory moves. No one can conduct foreign policy, except for the current U. S. government. If someone did, they would be in violation of the Logan Act, which states, in part: ”Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.” Others, including Reuters and Ignatius are reporting or have reported that there were multiple phone calls between Flynn and the Russian ambassador the day the sanctions were announced. NPR has not confirmed those contacts. The news comes hours after the Senate Intelligence Committee reversed course and said it would, in fact, investigate Russian interference in the election, including ”any intelligence regarding links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns.”"
"The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence say they intend to investigate the allegations of Russian meddling in the U. S. elections. In a joint statement, Sen. Richard Burr,  . C. chairman of the committee and Sen. Mark Warner,  . the   said ”we believe that it is critical to have a full understanding of the scope of Russian intelligence activities impacting the United States.” The announcement comes after   Donald Trump acknowledged that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic Party in the period leading up to his election. But Trump continues to deny that the hacking helped his election campaign. The senators promised a bipartisan inquiry into events that led to the Intelligence Community assessment released on Jan. 6. They said their inquiry will include, but is not limited to: ”A review of the intelligence that informed the Intelligence Community Assessment ”Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, ”Counterintelligence concerns related to Russia and the 2016 U. S. election, including any intelligence regarding links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns, ”Russian cyber activity and other ”active measures” directed against the U. S. both as it regards the 2016 election and more broadly.” The lawmakers said they’ll hold hearings on Russian intelligence activity, but also warned that much of their business will be conducted ”behind closed doors because we take seriously our obligation to protect sources and methods.” The committee will produce classified and unclassified reports on its findings. ”The Committee will follow the intelligence wherever it leads. We will conduct this inquiry expeditiously, and we will get it right. When possible, the Committee will hold open hearings to help inform the public about the issues,” they said. In separate comments, Burr said the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence already has held 10 hearings on Russia’s activity around the world. Warner invoked a more ominous tone, saying, ”This issue impacts the foundations of our democratic system, it’s that important. . .. If it turns out that SSCI cannot properly conduct this investigation, I will support legislation to empower whoever can do it right.”"
"Just months after a launch pad explosion thwarted its last attempt, SpaceX has successfully launched an unmanned rocket into orbit. The launch, which unfolded Saturday at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, marked a crucial  —   and expensive  —   test for the private space company in the aftermath of its recent, very visible misfire. Shortly after the launch, the   rocket detached its first stage, which subsequently landed safely on a platform in the Pacific Ocean. SpaceX   the entire process along the way. You can watch it here or play the video embedded at the top of this post. The Falcon 9 rocket is bearing 10 commercial satellites for Iridium Communications, which currently operates a network of dozens of mobile communications satellites in   orbit. SpaceX is under contract with Iridium to launch at least 70 satellites into orbit in a series of seven launches for the company  —   beginning with Saturday’s batch. The new satellites will replace the current network, in ”what will be one of the largest ’tech upgrades’ in history,” according to a press release from SpaceX. Still, a cloud of uncertainty hung over the launch, after an explosion left a wreckage of last September’s test in Cape Canaveral, Fla. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said at the time that the blast came while workers were still loading propellant into the rocket, though no one was physically harmed in the accident. In addition to destroying the rocket itself  —   a Falcon 9, like the rocket being launched Saturday  —   last year’s blast also obliterated a $200 million communications satellite. The Israeli satellite ”had been leased by Facebook as part of a project to bring   internet to parts of Africa,” NPR’s Rae Ellen Bichell reports for our Newscast unit. A   investigation by SpaceX dug into what went wrong  —   ”the toughest puzzle to solve that we’ve ever had to solve,” Musk said. That probe wrapped up earlier this month, concluding the accident ”was triggered by the failure of a   helium tank, one of three used to pressurize the second stage liquid oxygen tank,” according to CBS News. The Federal Aviation Administration then signed off on that investigation, approving the new licence for Saturday’s launch. Prior to last year’s accident, SpaceX had managed a string of   successes, including landing a Falcon 9 on a floating barge."
"This story is part of Kitchen Table Conversations, a series from NPR’s National Desk that examines how Americans from all walks of life are moving forward from the presidential election. Pennsylvania surprised a lot of people in November when voters abandoned a long history of electing Democrats for president and chose Republican Donald Trump. Jamie Ruppert, a    mother in Luzerne County, is among those who switched parties and voted for Trump. It’s an exciting time in Ruppert’s life: She has two toddlers and a baby due this summer. Her husband recently started a promising new job in the fossil fuel business  —   one that pays well enough that she can stay home with the kids. Ruppert and husband Jesse bought a modest house a bit over a year ago. It sits on two acres in a rural neighborhood outside   Pa. Life is pretty good still Ruppert thinks the country needs a change. ”I was always raised in a Democratic house,” says Ruppert, ”both of my parents voted Democrat for a long time. I voted Democrat for both elections for Obama.” But when Ruppert looks around her community, she sees a lot of problems. And she thinks Trump and his policies can help fix them. The coal industry is a good example. On the campaign trail Trump promised to put coal miners back to work. It’s not just the coal industry that has declined in northeastern Pennsylvania: There used to be garment factories, too. They relocated in search of cheaper,   labor in the South. For   workers in Luzerne County today, options are limited. A lot of Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton heard the slogan ”Make America Great Again” and recalled the country’s history of racism, gender inequality and opposition to LGBT rights. But many in Luzerne County, including Jamie Ruppert, heard that slogan and imagined the return of   jobs that pay enough to support a family. Still, Ruppert worries about that different view of Trump’s message she doesn’t want to be seen as a racist or a homophobe. ”I’ve always been for gay rights and always will be,” says Ruppert. She doesn’t support everything Trump said during the campaign but feels like he was being more authentic than Clinton. ”Tax cuts and helping the ’failing’ middle class is what got me behind him,” says Ruppert. Asked how her life would be different if Trump succeeds, Ruppert holds up a plastic container for toys. On the bottom it says ”made in U. S. A.” She says it would mean that her neighbors make more of the products she uses. Use the audio link above to hear the full story."
"Every child wants to grow up to be independent  —   to leave their parents’ home, find work, build a life of their own. But that seemingly simple step into adulthood can be a monumental challenge for children with developmental disabilities like autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, or any of a range of other such disabilities that affect about one in six American children, according to the U. S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of them remain dependent on their parents and families for support well into adulthood, or they end up living in a home under the care of professional caregivers. Only a fraction of adults with developmental disabilities end up finding steady employment. But some people are finding work and a path to   by working in the food industry. Parts of this industry are particularly   to many people with developmental disabilities, like Victoria Reedy of Schenectady, N. Y. Reedy is 23 years old and lives with her parents and two sisters. When I met her in her parents’ home, she was dressed casually in a sweatshirt and wore sparkly nail polish. She’s of average height now  —   about five feet five inches  —   but growing up, she says, she was a very small child. ”I was 6 years old, and the same size as my little sister who’s four years younger than me,” says Vicky. She has a condition called panhypopituitarism, which is a problem in her pituitary gland that causes it to not produce enough hormones, including growth hormone. Vicky’s condition affected the development of her brain as well. She struggled with a range of learning problems while growing up, and school felt extremely hard. ”I struggled at just about everything but art,” she says. ”I had a really hard time reading, [a] hard time writing, and learning things in general.” Her speech was affected, too. And she shied away from social interactions. As she grew up, she depended on her parents and a close friend for everything outside her home, from getting around to handling money. But today, Vicky is a very different person. She’s more confident and independent. She even takes the bus everywhere, all by herself. ”I take the bus just about everywhere I have to go, unless I’m traveling with Mom or Dad or any of my friends,” she says. That’s because a year and a half ago, Vicky got a job at a bakery in downtown Schenectady. Puzzles Bakery  Cafe in downtown Schenectady is bright and spacious. The winter sun filters through the glass door and windows and fills the front of the café. On the day I visit, it’s packed with customers sitting down for lunch at the small white tables lined on either side. Vicky is a senior café attendant here. She stands behind the counter, matching orders coming out of the kitchen, making sure the right order goes to the right tables. Vicky also handles customers herself sometimes. She trains interns, organizes food and clean tables when necessary. Some of her favorite tasks, though, involve working behind the scenes, in the kitchen. She loves doing dishes, slicing meat and cheese on an electric food slicer. It’s mechanical, somewhat repetitive work that takes time, but Vicky says she finds it satisfying. In the time that she has worked here, Vicky has even made new friends among her colleagues. Her colleagues say she has grown tremendously at the job. She’s now one of the few employees who have a key to the store, so she can open and close the café when necessary. Sara Mae Pratt, 26, is Vicky’s boss and the owner of the cafe. She says she’s very proud of Vicky. ”She’s come such a long way.” As have many of her other employees, who have some sort of a developmental disability. Pratt opened Puzzles Bakery  Cafe in April 2015 with the goal to employ people with special needs, who otherwise struggle to find jobs. ”There [are] not a lot of opportunities, certainly not in the way of employment,” Pratt says. Once they graduate from the school system, they often ”kind of fall off a cliff,” she says.  And statistics back up her point. According to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of   people with disabilities who are employed is about   of the percentage of people without any disability. And some 50 percent of people who are employed struggle to complete their tasks due to their disabilities, according to the BLS. Many face compensation gaps and discrimination at their workplace, according to the Arc of the U. S. A, an advocacy group for the developmentally disabled. The BLS also finds that those who are unemployed report many obstacles to finding employment, including the absence of sufficient and appropriate training. Pratt knew a lot of this from her personal experience. Her    sister, Emily, has autism. As her sister approached adulthood, she says, she and her parents worried what her sister would do once she graduated high school and no longer had any support from the state education system. ”I certainly struggled with what my sister will be doing for the rest of her life. She has a very long life ahead of her.” Her sister is too disabled to work  —   she recently moved out of their parents’ home and into a group home, where she could have    help. But Pratt wanted to help those who could work, to find a sense of   and purpose in their lives. Before deciding to open a café, she did a lot of research and found that working with food is a particularly good fit for many people with developmental disabilities. For one, ”food is very forgiving,” she says. ”If you mess up, [it’s] not a big deal. You can throw it away, try it again.” And it’s no surprise that Vicky enjoys simple, repetitive tasks like doing dishes and slicing and arranging food, she says. ”It can be quite therapeutic to kind of do the same thing day in and day out, and it’s something many people with developmental disabilities can actually excel at.” There is another factor about this work that helps people like Vicky overcome their struggles with social interactions. ”They actually get to take part in the creation of this food and bring it to the customer and see that smile on their face,” says Pratt. ”They’re seeing this day in and day out. That’s the really wonderful thing about food, it really connects people.” Similar bakeries and restaurants exist elsewhere in the country. Some, like Jack’s Bar  Grill in Arvada, Colo. employ people with special needs. Others, like Sunflower Bakery in Gaithersburg, Maryland, also train and then place such individuals at other businesses in the food service industry. Today, more than 50 percent of Pratt’s employees have a developmental disability, she says. That includes    Madaline Hannon, who has autism. She has limited vocabulary and according to her parents, she has always been painfully shy. Now, though, Hannon works four days a week at Puzzles. She only works three hours a day and spends a lot of it serving customers, mostly during the lunch rush. Dressed in a loose   jeans and a baseball hat, Maddy stands behind the counter, keeping an eye on every plate of food that comes out of the kitchen through a little window on the wall behind the café’s counter. She matches the food on the plate with the orders flashing on a little screen above the window, then she calls out the order loudly to find the right customer. ”Order for Mary Ann!” she says, holding a plate with a sandwich in her hands. When the customer raises her hand, Maddy walks over the plate of food to her, then wishes her a good day. She rarely makes eye contact, but she interacts with every customer as she serves them their plate of food. And she tells me she enjoys the work. She’s been working here for about a year and a half, and she says she now has big dreams for her future. ”I wanna work at Disney World, in a bakery,” she says. ”They have more gourmet stuff.”  Maddy still lives with her parents and unlike Vicky, she still depends on them to bring her to work and take her home at the end of her shift. So, I ask her if she’d be willing to leave her parents’ home and move out of Schenectady to pursue her dream. ”Definitely, yes,” she says with a smile.  Her mother, Kathleen Hannon says, this job has transformed her daughter. ”[The] Maddy that walked in here the first day probably didn’t say hello to people who’d come in,” she says. ”Today, she’s out there. I know she will talk to the customers. And we’ve seen a big difference at home. She’s happy!” The job has given Maddy a sense of belonging, she says. ”It’s her job. It’s her friends. It’s her responsibilities. And that’s important. We all want that. We all want to fit in. We all want to belong. We all want friends. And I think that’s helped a lot.” She says her daughter recognizes that she’ll always need extra support, but the job has made her realize how much she can do on her own. ”She’s wandering further and further away from us,” says Kathy Hannon. ”She’s looking for more independence.”  "
"At noon on Inauguration Day, precisely the moment Donald Trump is scheduled to be sworn as president, there will be another changing of the guard in Washington. The D. C. National Guard announced Friday that its commanding general, Army Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz, will be stepping down as of 12 p. m. on Jan. 20. As commanding general of the D. C. National Guard, Schwartz serves at the pleasure of the president  —   the only National Guard leader in the country to be appointed by the White House. As with other appointees, like members of the Cabinet, it is at the discretion of the incoming administration whether to keep Schwartz in command once Trump takes office. Still, the abrupt change in command is unusual for the D. C. National Guard, particularly on a day when the force  —   along with 5, 000 additional service members from around the country  —   will be working to maintain the security of the incoming president and those who have come to see him sworn in. ”My troops will be on the street,” Schwartz told The Washington Post, telling the paper that his removal was ordered by the Pentagon but that he doesn’t know who made the call. ”I’ll see them off but I won’t be able to welcome them back to the armory.” What’s more, it has been common for new administrations to hold on to the commanders appointed by the previous president. Schwartz himself was picked for his command by President George W. Bush in the summer of 2008 President Obama kept him on for the entirety of his two terms. Bush, in turn, kept Maj. Gen. Warren L. Freeman, a Clinton appointee, for his first two years in office. And President Clinton left Russell C. Davis  —   who had been appointed by President George H. W. Bush  —   in command of the force for nearly all of his first term. But it’s not the first time an appointee who served during Obama’s administration has been told to hit the road on Inauguration Day. Last month, the  ’s transition staff issued a mandate to all politically appointed U. S. ambassadors to leave their posts on that date, with no exceptions. As former diplomat Ronald Neumann told NPR’s Michele Kelemen, that move was also unusual  —   though by no means against the rules of the transition. ”Some administrations have left people a little longer if they didn’t have a successor right away or the kids were in school or something, for family and human reasons,” Neumann said, ”but there’s no requirement that they do so.” When Schwartz steps down on Inauguration Day, he will be replaced in the interim by Brig. Gen. William J. Walker, the commander of the D. C. Army National Guard’s land component."
"Editor’s Note: The photos in this story may be distressing to some viewers.  More than one year later, the photo that woke up the world to the Syrian refugee crisis remains indelible:    Aylan Kurdi lying face down on a sandy beach in Turkey. The Syrian boy’s lifeless body had washed ashore after the rubber boat carrying him and his family  —   to what they had hoped would be new lives in Greece  —   capsized. Now the image has become the focus of a study examining how a single photo of a single individual could stir the emotions and arouse public concern more powerfully than statistical reports of body counts, which at that point  —   five years into Syria’s civil war  —   had reached the hundreds of thousands. Until the photo appeared in September 2015, people did not seem focused on the humanitarian crisis in Syria. But Aylan’s photo mobilized empathy and concern, soon bringing in record donations to charitable organizations around the world to aid the victims. As the study shows, however, such immediate outpourings can be  . The number of average daily amount of donations to the Swedish Red Cross campaign for Syrian refugees, for instance, was 55 times greater in the week after the photo (around $214, 300) than the week before ($3, 850). By the second week, the donation totals had already begun to decline, but still topped $45, 400. After six weeks, the amount had leveled further, down to around $6, 500  —   less than in the previous weeks but nonetheless higher than the original figure. Still more promising, there was a   increase of the number of monthly donors signing up for repeated contributions, growing from 106 in August 2015 to 1, 061 in September 2015, with only . 02 percent of them opting out of the commitment by January 2016. From this, the study concluded, iconic photos may lead to some sustained commitment even beyond the immediate surge of donations. To learn more about how the photo powered our emotions, we spoke to the report’s lead researcher, Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychology professor and president of Decision Research, a nonprofit organization that studies human judgment,   and risk perception. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. How did you measure the emotional impact of this photo?  We looked at the number of Google searches for ”Syria” and ”refugees” and ”Aylan.” Before, there was very little interest in the Syrian refugee crisis. Afterward and for approximately the next month, the searches [for each of these terms] spiked. We also looked at donations to the Swedish Red Cross, which set up a fund specifically to aid the Syrian refugees. Not only did the photo wake people up to make an emotional connection to the situation in Syria. But where people had an avenue for action, like donating, they did. Why did this photo in particular carry such an impact? What is the psychology behind that? It is an open question why this photo among so many stands out. In my opinion, there are a number of things going on. One is that the child is very young, nicely dressed and looks like he could have been one of our own kids. Another is the situation: He is coming with his family seeking a new life, and they were so close yet not quite making it. That adds to the special story. Another element is that we don’t quite see his face, you see the side of his face, so you can project onto him the face of someone you know. You cannot distance yourself as easily. In your paper you mention other emblematic photos, like that of the naked    Vietnamese girl fleeing a Napalm attack. Is it easier to have empathy for one person who is suffering than to feel compassion for large numbers of people who are suffering?  It’s not that people are not compassionate. But that compassion has to be aroused, and the data shows that the photograph helped do that. In addition to the cognitive impact that [a humanitarian crisis] is happening, you have to [evoke] emotion and feeling. Emotion is a critical factor in helping us understand an event, and it is a motivator that impels action as opposed to just abstract thoughts. Writers know this [when they] impress upon us the importance of a larger issue by telling the story through the eyes of one individual. In other words, you can identify with an individual but not so easily with an abstract statistic? We call Aylan an ”identified individual victim.” It is similar to the way The Diary of Anne Frank and Eli Wiesel’s Night also helped galvanize attention to the Holocaust. Aylan’s photo provided a window of opportunity for individuals to give and to feel [empathy] for the situation, and that is good."
"By now, you’ve probably seen the photo of Aylan Kurdi, the    refugee from Syria who died with his    brother and mother after their small rubber boat capsized on its way to Greece. You might remember his Velcro shoes. His red shirt. His lifeless body lying face down in the sand. The image has opened a debate about the ethics of publishing photos of children suffering and dying. But regardless of one’s position, the photo is now part of a tradition  —   another iconic image of a child that has shaped our understanding of global events and that is likely to live on in our minds for years to come. ”When we see pictures of a dead or dying child, I don’t care who you are, where you are, you’re moved,” says Maggie Steber, a documentary photographer and longtime contributor to National Geographic who served on this year’s Pulitzer Prize selection jury. Steber cites photographer Nick Ut’s 1972 photo of a    Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc  —   often called ”Napalm Girl”  —   as one of the most influential images in history. In the photo, Phuc is running naked down the street after being burned by an explosion. She later recalled removing her clothes and yelling ”too hot, too hot,” as she ran along the road, her back so badly scorched that she spent more than a year in a hospital and required more than a dozen surgeries. ”For people to see that photo and to realize that that was really going on, and having television bring the war into people’s living rooms, that was powerful,” Steber says. She believes that’s partly what caused Lyndon Johnson to bring the Vietnam War to an end. In 2000, former Washington Post photographer Carol Guzy spent time at a refugee camp in Albania during the Kosovo crisis and took a photo that won the Pulitzer Prize  —   one of four in her career. It depicts a young boy being passed through a barbed wire fence at the border. ”It’s actually a joyful photo,” Guzy says. ”Families that had escaped ethnic cleansing did not know if their loved ones had survived or not [they] were lined up along that fence.” When one family saw relatives on the other side of the barbed wire, they celebrated and handed their young children back and forth while waiting to be reunited. Guzy says images of children are particularly moving. ”It’s something about being completely at the mercy of events happening around you, and being unable to protect yourself  —   children especially  —   that reaches the heart and soul of people,” she says. This year, New York Times photographer Daniel Berahulak won the Pulitzer for his image of    James Dorbor, a boy suspected of having Ebola, being rushed into a treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia. The men are wearing protective plastic suits and ”are carrying this tiny boy like he was a rag doll,” Steber says. Seeing how they hold him far away, ”without passion, without connection, was ” she says. Even after a long career as a photographer, Guzy says she is still deeply moved by tragic images  —   including that of    Syrian Aylan Kurdi. ”You would think you’d form some kind of immunity after working for three decades and seeing the worst of humanity,” she says. ”But in my case, I’ve actually become even more sensitive.” When she saw the image of him lying on the beach, ”I was breathless,” she says."
"With little power left in Washington, Democrats set out on Sunday to make a big statement against GOP efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act with rallies in dozens of cities. It’s also a step for the party toward regaining its footing after grassroots efforts in 2016 failed to keep the White House in Democrats’ hands. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate and whose populist candidacy in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary was boosted by a strong online following and   donations, headlined the day. He was recently named to a leadership post among Senate Democrats as chairman of outreach. Sanders used his vast email list from the campaign to help organize support for Sunday’s rallies in support of Obamacare, which stretched from an event led by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco to one featuring Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Boston. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley even led a    at the Utah State Capitol. Warren told an energized crowd outside Faneuil Hall in Boston, ”We knew these fights were coming, and now the first one is here.” In San Francisco, Pelosi insisted, ”We’re not going back.” Sanders and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer went to Warren, Mich. and although Schumer will soon be the most powerful Democrat in Washington, it was Sanders who was the star. Signs like, ”Don’t blame me   I voted for Bernie” dotted the crowd, and Schumer had to pause his speech for a chorus of ”Bernie, Bernie” cheers when Sanders walked on stage in the middle of the New York senator’s remarks. It’s no accident that Sanders and Schumer chose to hold their event in Warren. Surrounding Macomb County tells the story of Democrats’ 2016 woes. It went narrowly for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but last year Donald Trump carried Macomb County by more than 10 points over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump’s raw vote total in the largely white,   county   about 48, 000 votes   was more than four times his margin of victory in the   Democratic state. Both Sanders and Schumer believe Democrats can recapture   working class voters, and holding a rally in Macomb County to defend a healthcare program is one way to show voters who supported Trump that the Democratic Party is attentive to their concerns. Sanders told NPR last week that he could have gone to a lot of places: ”But Michigan is a great state. It’s a state where I did well in the Democratic primary. And is a state where Trump won.” He beat Clinton in the state’s 2016 primary. At Sunday’s rally, Schumer challenged Trump to keep a campaign promise not to cut entitlement programs as he fired up the crowd in support of the ACA. ”We’re gonna win this fight together  —   the American people and the Democrats in the Congress,” Schumer said. In reality, Republicans have enough votes to dismantle large parts of the Affordable Care Act, particularly elements that help fund the law, through a process that allows the Senate to pass budget measures with a simple majority instead of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster on most legislation. The GOP has 52 seats in the Senate. Democrats can play a bigger role in an attempt to repeal and replace the law   which would require 60 votes. That’s a dynamic Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow admitted when she spoke at the rally. ”They’ve got the U. S. House, they’ve got the U. S. Senate, they’re going to have the presidency. If they want to rip health care apart, rip Medicare and Medicaid apart, they can do that,” Stabenow said. Republicans point to big increases in health care premiums since the law was enacted, and the fact that many insurers are pulling out of healthcare exchanges created as part of the Affordable Care Act in some states. House Speaker Paul Ryan has also spoken in objection to the mandates on individuals and employers, as well as the taxes enacted to enforce and pay for the law, as evidence of ”bad policy that does not accomplish what it was designed to do.” Republican leaders, including Ryan and Trump, say they will not repeal Obamacare without a replacement at hand. So far, there is no clear plan from Republicans for how to replace the law, but Ryan insists that will be hashed out at the end of January when congressional Republicans hold a retreat in Philadelphia. Stabenow pointed to the face that Democrats’ best hope is to generate enough public support for Obamacare  —   or enough public concern about fully repealing it  —   for Republican lawmakers to see a repeal as politically dangerous. While Democrats point to the good the law has done, it’s clear they have struggled on the messaging front. A poll released by NPR and Ipsos last week showed that less than half of Americans  —   including just 54% of Democrats  —   knew that the law reduced the number of people without health insurance. But, while they would rather control the agenda, Democrats are beginning to discover something Republicans have known for the entirety of the Obama administration: It’s often easier to generate public support around a simplified voice of opposition, than it is to find the votes to create and pass a complicated piece of legislation."
"This week, the House and Senate took the first substantial step toward repealing Obamacare. Today, Democrats are holding rallies across the country, in an attempt to get some public momentum behind their longshot goal of blocking that effort. Congressional Democrats are organizing what they call a ”Day of Action,” with events scheduled from California to Illinois to Maine. And in a demonstration of just how much clout the   candidate in last year’s Democratic presidential primary now has within the party that he’s still not a member of, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will host the most   rally of the day, in Warren, MI. Sanders played a major role in organizing the Obamacare rallies, sending out information about the events to the massive email list he gathered over the course of the 2016 campaign. ”The goal is to rally the American people against a disastrous Republican proposal,” Sanders told NPR. He’s hoping the rallies are the first step toward an ”  ” communication strategy that could help Democrats cut into   Donald Trump’s powerful ability to set the daily political agenda. Since Congress came back earlier this month, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democratic leaders have been pushing back against Republican proposals by doing what they normally do: holding big press conferences, doing TV interviews, and making the most of their time on the Senate floor. Earlier this week, Senate Democrats talked late into the night about all the good they say Obamacare has done. And when the Senate voted to take the first step toward an Obamacare repeal early Thursday morning, many Democrats broke Senate rules by trying to explain their ”no” votes as they cast them. This is the typical minority party playbook. But it’s much harder to break through all the noise in an era where   Trump can basically reprogram cable news with a single tweet. Schumer is trying to get Senate Democrats more engaged on social media. But no one else in Washington has been able to dominate it like Trump. This clearly frustrates Sanders. He wants Democrats to reimagine how they get their message out, beyond floor speeches and press conferences. ”How do you mobilize millions of people,” he asked, ”and get them to understand that the Republicans are doing exactly the opposite of what the American people want?” That’s what this Michigan event and all of today’s other rallies are all about. Sanders tapped the massive email list he put together during his primary campaign, blasting out messages about the Michigan rally, and similar events across the country. He and Schumer will be trying to make their case in a state where Democrats typically did well with   voters  —   but faltered badly in 2016. ”There are many parts of the country that I could have gone to,” Sanders said. ”But Michigan is a great state. It’s a state where I did well in the Democratic primary. And is a state where Trump won.” Democrats are now out of power at pretty much every level of government. Party leaders are trying to figure out their strategy. But so are grassroots activists. One place many liberals are turning  —   an online guide called Indivisible. It’s basically a manual  —    written by former Democratic Congressional staffers  —   that lays out ways that Democrats could use Tea Party tactics to fight Trump. Ezra Levin, who helped write the document, said the Tea Party did one thing very effectively. ”If they were in Texas, they didn’t call members of Congress in California,” Levin said. ”They knew that they were constituents of people who had a voice in Washington. And they focused on their two Senators, and their representative.” That’s what this guide recommends to Democrats trying to figure out how to organize. It offers practical tips like, how to effectively call a lawmakers’ office, or how to best pressure a representative during a town hall. The guide’s been read nearly 4 million times. Levin said he wants readers to understand that it’s really easy for people to become politically active. ”This means getting a handful of your friends together, or joining an existing group. And just getting out there on a regular basis, at district offices or at member events. Or just making calls,” he said. That kind of grassroots spirit is what lifted Sanders’ surprising presidential campaign. It also got President Obama all the way to the White House. But when Obama tried to use his campaign apparatus and email lists to mobilize supporters in legislative fights, he had a mixed record. Now Sanders is trying to do the same thing. Today’s rallies will be the first test of how much momentum he still has."
"If repealing the Affordable Care Act is the Republican Congress’ job one, defunding Planned Parenthood is a close second. In fact, the two priorities might be paired. House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . told reporters Jan. 5 that efforts to defund the organization ”would be in our reconciliation bill,” referring to a measure Congress has put on a fast track in order to repeal major pieces of the health law. But just as Republicans are discovering that undoing the health law could be complicated, so too is separating the controversial reproductive health care provider from its federal funding. Efforts to hastily jettison Planned Parenthood from federal ledgers could actually jeopardize GOP efforts to repeal the health law. One problem is that Planned Parenthood gets its funding from several different government sources. According to the group’s most recent annual report, Planned Parenthood affiliates got $553. 7 million from federal, state, and local governments, accounting for almost half of its total funding. According to the organization, about 75 percent of that government support comes from the Medicaid program to pay for direct medical services provided to   patients, including contraception, cancer screenings and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment. The remaining quarter comes from other sources, primarily the Title X federal family planning program. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that the group gets approximately $390 million annually from Medicaid and $60 million from Title X. None of the funds from either program may be used for abortion, under longstanding federal prohibitions. Only half of the Planned Parenthood affiliates even offer abortion services, the group says. But it is still the largest single provider of the procedure in the nation, and that has made it a target for   lawmakers since the 1980s. In recent years, one of the most ardent foes of the organization has been Vice   Mike Pence. When he was a member of the House of Representatives, he led unsuccessful efforts to defund the program. As governor of Indiana, he was able to accomplish some of his goals. He also vowed to stop federal spending for Planned Parenthood during the campaign last fall. Yet federal lawmakers have been stymied in these efforts. One big reason is that taking away Planned Parenthood’s access to Medicaid funding would require a change in the federal law that guarantees most Medicaid patients with a choice to use any qualified provider. The Department of Health and Human Services has repeatedly warned states that have tried to evict Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs that they cannot legally do that because such a move would violate that law. And federal courts have consistently blocked states that have tried to end Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding. Changing that section of Medicaid law likely would require 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster by Democrats. Republicans currently have 52 votes. However, the budget reconciliation bill that is expected to be used to repeal portions of the health law operates under special rules. It cannot be filibustered and needs only 51 votes to pass. That presents two problems for Republicans. According to a 2015 Congressional Budget Office analysis, permanently changing the Medicaid law to make Planned Parenthood ineligible would cost more, not less  —   approximately $130 million over 10 years. That is because, said the Congressional Budget Office, taking away contraceptive access for some women would result in more pregnancies, and ”additional births that would result from enacting such a bill would add to federal spending for Medicaid.” That is not just theoretical. In 2013, Texas kicked Planned Parenthood out of its family planning program and gave up its federal funding. The result was fewer women using birth control and more babies being born, according to an analysis published last March in The New England Journal of Medicine. The second problem is political. While the House under GOP control has been strongly in favor of cutting off Planned Parenthood’s access to federal funds, there are a handful of Republican senators who oppose the idea. And a handful  —   three, to be exact  —   is all it would take to threaten passage of the health law repeal effort. ”Obviously I’m not happy that the speaker has decided to include the defunding of Planned Parenthood  —   an extremely controversial issue  —   in the (budget reconciliation) package,” Sen. Susan Collins,   told reporters earlier this month. A spokeswoman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski,   said ”she is concerned about defunding Planned Parenthood, as she is a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood and has opposed broadly defunding the organization.” Collins and Murkowski fought against the inclusion of a   defunding of the organization in a 2015 health law repeal bill that President Obama vetoed last January. Although neither senator has said she would vote against the upcoming budget bill if it includes the Planned Parenthood defunding, they join a growing list of Senate Republicans who in recent days have questioned the idea of repealing major portions of the health law before devising its replacement. Meanwhile, eliminating Planned Parenthood’s access to funding under Title X also would likely be addressed in an appropriations spending bill. The current spending bill for the Department of Health and Human Services (and most of the rest of the government) expires April 28. But rather than simply making Planned Parenthood ineligible, Republicans in the House have proposed doing away with funding for the entire    Title X federal family planning program. Instead, they would send the money to the nation’s network of community health centers. Last September, the   campaign released a letter to   leaders vowing to defund Planned Parenthood ”as long as they continue to perform abortions, and reallocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women.” At a CNN town hall Thursday night, Ryan expanded on that. ”We don’t want to effectively commit taxpayer money to an organization providing abortions. But we want to make sure that people get their coverage. That’s why there’s no conflict by making sure these dollars go to federal community health centers.” But that might not work either. ”For health centers, which currently serve about 25 million total patients, to have to absorb an additional 2 million people is totally impossible,” says Sara Rosenbaum, a health policy and law professor at George Washington University who looked at the issue in 2015. In some areas of the country, Planned Parenthood and community health centers may not overlap. Planned Parenthood says that in a fifth of the counties it serves, it is the only provider for   women. Asking community health centers to move into new areas, says Rosenbaum, ”displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how long it takes a new provider to move into a potentially new community.” Despite the difficulties, the shifts in political control this year leaves Planned Parenthood concerned about its future. While the organization has weathered funding threats before, ”it is very true when you have people like Mike Pence and Paul Ryan who have been laser focused for years [on ending funding] that they will make it a very high priority,” says Mary Alice Carter, Planned Parenthood’s vice president for communications. She says the organization is counting on the 2. 5 million patients it serves every year to make sure their elected officials know they oppose the defunding effort. Whether that will be enough remains unclear. Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Just days from the end of her tenure, Loretta Lynch took the stage Sunday at a historic Baptist church in Birmingham, Ala. to deliver her final planned speech as U. S. attorney general. ”We can’t take progress for granted,” Lynch told the congregation. ”We have to work. There’s no doubt that we still have a way to go  —   a long way to go.” In her speech, delivered on the eve of Martin Luther King Day, Lynch focused on her auspicious setting, Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. Last week, President Obama designated the church part of a new national monument commemorating the civil rights movement. It was at the church in 1963 that a Ku Klux Klan bombing left four black girls dead and 22 other people injured. ”It reminds us, as few places can, that freedom is not free,” Lynch said. ”And the price of freedom is constant vigilance.” She said she has seen the concerns that the progress made by King and others during the civil rights movement will be undone, ”that with the turn of the electoral wheel, we will be seen as children of a lesser god.” But she countered those concerns with a call to hope, saying she has seen the hard work of her colleagues, of police officers reaching out to community members, of activists raising their voices. ”We are Americans, and we have always pushed forward,” Lynch said, repeating a call to work that became something of a mantra: ”Every generation has to work.” The speech comes on the heels of a   Justice Department report on the Chicago Police Department, which concluded the department ”engages in a pattern or practice of the use of excessive force.” That report included ”numerous incidents” of shooting at fleeing suspects and observed ”routinely abusive behavior” toward minority communities in the city. In an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin before her speech Sunday, Lynch called the Chicago report ”emblematic of where our practice is: We try and look at the whole problem. ”We’ve got to look at the causes within the police departments,” she continued. ”We talk to community members who came in and told us their stories stories of pain, stories of loss  —   but also stories of police officers with whom they connected.” Asked about her regrets as she prepares to leave office, Lynch said again she regrets her unscheduled meeting last year with former President Bill Clinton, a conversation that raised questions about whether she could remain impartial during Hillary Clinton’s email investigation. She later said she would accept the FBI’s findings in the probe. But the Justice Department is ”more than the work of more than one group of people and the work of more than one administration,” she told Michel. ”The work that we do spans time, it spans generations and we build on it.” She added: ”We have to admit that change is hard and policing is changing a lot in this country. That being said, I still believe that the work that we have done has been positive.”"
"People planning to watch  —   or protest  —   Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities this week should prepare to maneuver through lots of security, including thousands of law enforcement personnel, National Guard troops, fences, magnetometers and   trucks. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson outlined the massive security preparations during a briefing at the Multi Agency Communications Center at a secret location in Virginia. From that room, dozens of representatives from an alphabet soup of different agencies will gather to monitor events starting Thursday, with a   ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, through Saturday’s prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. But the main focus will be Friday’s swearing in of the 45th president and the inaugural parade from the Capitol to the White House. Johnson says officials expect 700, 000 to 900, 000 spectators to attend the Inauguration Day ceremonies. He said 99 groups are expected to rally in favor of or against the new president. Johnson said officials ”know of no specific credible threat directed toward the inauguration,” but they’re taking no chances. Johnson said the ”global terrorist environment is very different” this year than it was during President Obama’s inaugurations in 2009 and 2013. He said law enforcement has to be concerned with homegrown violent extremism, acts of   lone wolves and people who have  . ”We’ve got to be vigilant, we’ve got to plan, we’ve got to prepare,” Johnson said. After terrorists drove trucks into crowds in Nice and Berlin last year, officials are protecting against a similar action in Washington. ”Hard perimeter areas,” where nongovernment vehicles will not be permitted, will be fortified by dump trucks, heavy trucks loaded with cement and with buses, Johnson said. ”That is a precaution that we are doubling down on in particular this inauguration.” There are also concerns about possible airborne threats. Noting the airspace above Washington is already   to drone flights (as well as most other air traffic) Johnson said unauthorized flights are ”something we have planned for, and there is technology to deal with it.” He would not say what that technology entails. Johnson said some 28, 000 officials will be dedicated to security for the inauguration, including Department of Homeland Security personnel from the Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard, as well as police from various departments in Washington, D. C. and from out of town, and some 7, 800 National Guard troops. Gates to the Inauguration Ceremony will open at 6 a. m. Friday. There will be sites for demonstrations along the parade route and on the National Mall. More information about the inauguration schedule can be found here."
"There’s a popular saying in Spanish  —   O todos en la cama, o todos en el suelo. It conveys a selfless commitment to equal treatment, and translates roughly like this: Either we all get the bed, or we all get the floor. Among many immigrants in the U. S. there’s been a feeling that when it comes to the spoils of U. S. immigration policy, the government has given Cubans the bed all to themselves, while it has relegated others  —   Mexicans, Haitians, Central Americans  —   to the floor. This is because of the       policy, which since 1995 has granted Cubans who touch American soil a privilege not afforded other immigrants who come without a visa: the right to stay and get on a fast track to citizenship. This special treatment ended this week when, in the final days of his administration, President Obama announced an abrupt end to the policy, a capstone to his    effort to   relations with Cuba. Effective immediately, Cubans arriving on U. S. soil without a visa will be treated just like any other immigrant. They will be turned away. This does not mean Cubans will stop coming. ”What it means,” said Florida International University political scientist Eduardo Gamarra, ”is that for the first time, we’re going to have undocumented Cubans. And how the Cuban community responds to that is going to be very interesting.” For decades, Cubans have occupied a rarefied station, particularly among the Latino population of the United States. Because those arriving in the U. S. after Fidel Castro’s ascension in 1959 were seen as fleeing political persecution, the U. S. generally allowed them to stay. In 1966, Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allowed Cubans to get green cards after being in the U. S. for two years, later reduced to a single year. Though the Cuban government opposed these policies, they were the status quo until 1994, when the U. S. agreed to amend the rules.     allowed only those Cubans who made it to U. S. soil to stay. Those caught at sea were to be turned away. The stated hope was that the threat of getting repelled would discourage Cubans from risking their lives on rickety boats. But they kept coming, and once here, a green card was pretty much ensured. Leaving their country has always carried risk for Cubans, as it has for other immigrants. But unlike for their counterparts, the specter of illegality and all its repercussions (see: the 2016 presidential election) has not applied to Cubans. They have never really had to worry, for example, about deportation once they’ve made it to the U. S. This privilege has affected in fundamental ways the identity that   have forged both in terms of their place in American society and in relation to other Latino groups. ”Cubans have never been, and have never seen themselves, as ’illegals,’ or even, particularly, as a minority group,” said Guillermo Grenier, a sociologist at FIU who is  . ”They have never seen themselves as anything other than added value to this country. It’s part of the Cuban exceptionalism narrative that is just as strong as the American exceptionalism narrative.” The dynamics here are complex. That stems in part from the fact that most of the Cubans who fled Castro’s regime soon after the 1959 revolution were political exiles, not economic migrants. They were of the largely white middle class whose property and businesses Castro seized and nationalized. Beginning in the ’60s, these exiles used their entrepreneurial drive to turn Miami into a vibrant frontier city. Over the decades, this set Cubans apart from many other Latinos in the U. S. who aside from tending to be economic migrants also lacked the legal status that would have allowed them to achieve their full potential. Even as the makeup of the Cuban influx began to change in the ’80s and ’90s  —   with more Cubans coming for economic reasons  —       allowed them a unique confidence in their place in the United States. ”That’s always been a schism impeding solidarity between Cubans and other Latino groups,” Grenier said. Though it has rarely led to   tension, it has been more evident at times, as it was last year when large groups of Haitians and   seeking asylum found themselves stuck at the U. S.  border while long lines of Cubans got through. ”The policy has clearly contributed to that,” Grenier said. The fact that   unlike other Latinos, have traditionally been a reliable conservative voting block has also contributed to this schism. And even as the   political center has shifted to the left in recent years, Grenier said, there is a   distance when it comes to issues like immigration between the young Cubans marching for immigrant rights and the Mexicans, Guatemalans and Colombians with whom they’re linking arms. ”It’s a feeling of solidarity with other Latinos and their plight,” Grenier said. ”You see young Cubans fighting for the other guy.” Grenier said he expects the end of     to gradually change notions of   identity as newer migrants become subject to the construct of ”illegality” that drives so much of the policy and rhetoric around immigration in the United States. While before, young Cubans were fighting for the other guy, ”now you’re going to be fighting for yourself,” Grenier said. ”You’re going to have a horse in the race.” Gamarra said Cubans in the U. S. are going to find their community stratifying in ways familiar to other Latino groups. ”You’re going to have privileged and nonprivileged Cubans,” he said. ”You’re going to find the phenomenon of people trying to demonstrate that they were here before yesterday. You’re going to find mad rushes to find ways to become documented.” At the same time, Gamarra says the end of     will not necessarily usher in a level playing field. Obama kept in place a policy that grants roughly 20, 000 visas to Cubans annually, a relatively large number for an island of 11 million people. Nonetheless, Gamarra said the policy’s end may strengthen solidarity between Cubans and other Latinos, ”because we aren’t all going to be on the bed together,” he said. ”We’re all going to be on the floor.”"
"This time last year, Stephanie Johnson was miserable. She was in her third year teaching special education at a junior high school in Lindon, Utah, about 40 minutes south of Salt Lake City. On the outside it looked like she was doing great. Her classes ran smoothly, students loved her, parents loved her, but like many special education teachers, inside she felt as though she was drowning. She said she thought about leaving all the time: ”I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just so much work. I just feel like I cannot do it.” It’s a very different Johnson I find this year at her new school, the Renaissance Academy, a charter school in the nearby city of Lehi. On a Friday afternoon, her classroom, which she shares with one other special education teacher, is empty of kids. Monday through Thursday, these two teachers instruct all of the school’s special education students. On Fridays, though, they have the classroom to themselves, meaning they’ll actually have the time to do the thing so many special education teachers find so difficult  —   the record keeping. ”There’s still a lot of work to do and I love that we have Fridays to get that done.” In fact, Johnson says she loves a lot about her new job. And there’s one person behind the scenes making that possible. In a cramped office down the hall, four filing cabinets loom over Kim Beck, the school’s special education director. Inside the cabinets, Beck keeps tons of paperwork on all special education students, required by law, showing they are receiving the help they need. ”I try to take most of that paperwork load off of the teachers, so it allows them to teach during the day,” Beck says. And she does much more. She tests students to see if they need special education services, or if they’re ready to move on. It’s also her job to schedule meetings with parents. ”I don’t think the paperwork in and of itself is too cumbersome,” Beck says. ”Where it becomes cumbersome is the teacher that’s teaching all day is now having to do that paperwork.” She says this division of labor might not work everywhere. ”You have to find a special ed person who likes paperwork and those are few are far between,” she says, adding, ”I do love paperwork.” This approach, dividing and conquering, wasn’t a directive from any school administrator. The teachers just made it happen, and it’s unique. Laurie VanderPloeg,   of the Council for Exceptional Children, says she is not aware of this happening anywhere else in the country. What she is aware of is this  —   special education teachers are spending the majority of their prep time on paperwork, ”in lieu of assessing and designing and delivering that specially designed instruction that they need to be providing to the students with disabilities.” From VanderPloeg’s perspective, that is taking a toll on student results. Johnson says the students benefit from the division of responsibilities  —   and so does she. She admits that she still stays late and comes in early, but the difference is that she gets to focus on teaching her students. She says a friend approached her at a party recently, commenting, ”Stephanie, have you been losing weight? You look so good. I don’t know, you just look so good.” Johnson replied, ”Oh, that’s my new job. That’s what you’re seeing on my face. It’s my new job.”"
"Iraqi forces are nearing what is expected to be the toughest part of the fight for the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. As troops push toward the river dividing the city, they face new tactics from Islamic State fighters adapting to an urban environment and the limitations of U. S. air and artillery support. The more densely populated west side of the historic city, with its twisting streets and covered market, is still in ISIS hands. But Iraqi   troops this week for the first time reached the east bank of the Tigris River that splits the city. ”We know ISIS very well by now and we knew it would take a long time,” Iraqi Gen.     told NPR in a recent interview near the front line. Saadi commands 12 battalions of   forces. He won’t say exactly how many troops are under his orders, but several thousand of his fighters have led Iraq’s battle against ISIS for the last two years, pushing them back on several fronts, from areas north of Baghdad to Tikrit to Fallujah and now in Mosul. The last time I saw Gen. Saadi was in Fallujah, as Iraqi forces took back that city in western Iraq last summer. He says ISIS is putting up a tougher fight in Mosul. The extremist group has held the Iraqi city since it overpowered the Iraqi army and police in June 2014 and declared it the capital of their   Islamic state, or caliphate. ”Their fighters in Mosul are tougher than they were in Fallujah,” says Saadi, over tea in an abandoned house in a village near the front line. ”In Fallujah, there were just fighters and a few car bombs. Here until now, they have detonated more than 250 car bombs just against my men.” As the fight has moved into more heavily populated neighborhoods and out of the open spaces of the countryside, he and U. S. commanders say ISIS is increasingly using drones. ”They are using them for many purposes,” says Saadi. ”One of the purposes is to track me.” He says the small drones bought on the market are used to help ISIS snipers and suicide bombers in targeting. ISIS has begun attaching explosives to larger drones. Mosul was a commercial center, filled with factories and workshops. ISIS has taken machine tool shops and converted them to manufacturing   mortars. It has built car bomb factories across the city and has welded steel plates onto vehicles to turn them into more lethal   bombs. Saadi shows us one of the locally made mortars. It’s almost indistinguishable from Iraqi army mortars apart from the black and white ISIS logo painted on it. The Iraqi   forces, trained by the U. S. are considered by the U. S. military to be the most professional in the Iraqi forces. Iraqi   troops are backed directly by U. S.  air support. The Iraqi army and federal police are supported by Iraqi air strikes. But as the fight moves further into the city, air strikes and artillery have limited use. ”Hospitals, mosques, schools, churches  —   those are all the places the US is not supposed to hit and all the places that ISIS is hiding in,” says Saadi. Although Iraq and international organizations have prepared camps for a flood of displaced Iraqis, relatively few have been able to leave. More than 700, 000 civilians are still living in west Mosul. In last year’s battle for Fallujah, military leaders believe ISIS fighters escaped with thousands of civilians, all of them fleeing when the Iraqi army opened up a corridor. In Mosul, Iraqi forces have surrounded the city and the battle plan has allowed no escape for anyone. Civilians now running out of food and water will be able to leave only as their neighborhoods are liberated. ”The civilians are a problem,” says Saadi. ”Their position near the front line makes us a little worried. It means we go slowly.” Near the airport in the Kurdish capital Erbil, the deputy commander of U. S. forces in Iraq tries to explain the complexity of the fight for Mosul. ”Picture any large metropolitan city on the U. S. East Coast  —   dense, older cities with smaller streets. And then picture having to eradicate all crime and any enemy force in there,” says Brig. Gen. Scott Efflandt. ”It requires street by street, house by house, room by room operation,” he said. ”There’s no quick way to do it. You have to walk, you have to climb stairs, you have to open doors and then repeat the process again and again and again and then when you’re doing that you have to leave someone behind to guard the area you just went through. ” That’s without U. S. troops on the frontlines. After the U. S. and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003, American forces spent eight years in Iraq. Mosul is the biggest urban battle involving the U. S. in years. However, unlike previous battles, most of the 5, 000 U. S. troops in Iraq aren’t anywhere near the line of fire. ”When we think of what we do in Iraq, it’s very difficult for people to understand we are not side by side with an Iraqi soldier shooting a rifle. It’s not what we are doing here,” says Col. Brett Sylvia, commander of the 2nd brigade, 101st Airborne Division  —   a force whose soldiers actually walked the streets of Mosul early in the war. Sylvia commands about 2, 500 troops advising and assisting the Iraqi military, mostly at tactical operations centers. At Camp Swift, the small U. S. base outpost near Makhmour in northern Iraq where Col. Sylvia is based, a steel door connects the base to the Ninevah Operations Command. Iraqi generals sit next to U. S. officers looking at surveillance feeds from coalition aircraft . ”Mosul is an area twice the size and twice the area of Washington, D. C.,” says Sylvia. ”It would be tough for anyone to execute. When you put it in perspective it’s impressive what they’ve been able to achieve so far.”"
"Iraqi forces have made a crucial step in the bloody quest to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, according to a spokesman for the country’s military. Iraqi Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool announced that the city’s university has been fully retaken from ISIS militants. Special forces, known in Iraq as the   Service, or CTS, raised the Iraqi flag above the campus Friday, the Associated Press reports  —   but the troops were still days away from claiming complete control. ”Iraqi forces entered the university grounds Friday and managed to secure more than half of the campus the next day amid stiff resistance from IS militants, who mainly deployed sniper and mortar fire to slow down the advancing troops,” the wire service adds Sunday. Iraqi military launched its campaign to retake the northern city  —   the last major Iraqi city still in ISIS hands  —   last October. The former Iraqi commercial center is the place ISIS leader Abu Bakr   first declared the caliphate, or Islamic state, shortly after the group captured it in June 2014. And it has been one of the central pillars of the militant group’s diminishing territorial claims. Earlier this month, Iraqi troops reached the Tigris River, which bisects the city, retaking much of Mosul’s eastern half. Yet, as Jane Arraf reports for NPR, the toughest fight is likely still to come. ISIS still holds the west side of the city, where more than 700, 000 civilians are believed to remain. Brig. Gen. Scott Efflandt, the deputy commander of U. S. forces in Iraq, tells Jane that part of the complexity of the fight ahead lies in the urban combat required: ”Picture any large metropolitan city on the U. S. East Coast  —   dense, older cities with smaller streets. And then picture having to eradicate all crime and any enemy force in there. ”It requires street by street, house by house, room by room operation. There’s no quick way to do it. You have to walk, you have to climb stairs, you have to open doors and then repeat the process again and again and again and then when you’re doing that you have to leave someone behind to guard the area you just went through. ” And they will continue to do so without the presence of American troops on the front lines. For now, CTS spokesman Sabah   tells Reuters the special forces are combing the university’s campus Sunday for remaining militants. ”The university is completely liberated and forces are sweeping the complex for any hiding militants,” Numan said. ”Most buildings are   so we’re being cautious.”"
"After its nearly century and a half run, Ringling Bros. and Barnum  Bailey Circus plans to shut down ”The Greatest Show On Earth.” The historic American spectacle will deliver its final show in May, says Kenneth Feld, the chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, the producer of Ringling. Feld announced the news on the company website Saturday night, citing declining ticket sales  —   which dipped even lower as the company retired its touring elephants. ”This, coupled with high operating costs, made the circus an unsustainable business for the company,” Feld says. Ringling has been phasing out elephants as a result of shifting public tastes and criticism from animal rights groups over the   of the animals. The company held its last show featuring elephants in May, before completely retiring the animals to its   conservation center in Polk City, Fla. established by Feld Entertainment in 1995. Elephants had been a circus mainstay almost as long as the circus itself has been a staple of American entertainment, since Phineas Taylor Barnum introduced Jumbo, an Asian elephant in 1882. But before the traveling exhibition evolved into a regular destination for wholesome family fun, Barnum ”made a traveling spectacle of animals and human oddities popular, while the five Ringling brothers performed juggling acts and skits from their home base in Wisconsin,” reports the AP. ”Eventually, they merged and the modern circus was born. The sprawling troupes traveled around America by train, wowing audiences with the sheer scale of entertainment and exotic animals.” The Feld family bought Ringling in 1967 and employs about 500 people for both touring shows ”Circus Extreme” and ”Out of This World.” Those employees were told about the closure after shows in Orlando and Miami, on Saturday night. ”The Felds say their existing animals  —   lions, tigers, camels, donkeys, alpacas, kangaroos and llamas  —   will go to suitable homes,” adds the AP. ”Juliette Feld says the company will continue operating the Center for Elephant Conservation.” In addition to the circus, Feld Entertainment also runs a number of   traveling shows, from Monster Jam and Supercross to Marvel Universe Live and Disney on Ice. Each year, Feld Entertainment’s live shows draw some 30 million attendees. Before it draws the curtain, the two touring circuses will perform a total of 30 shows over the next four months, in major cities including Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and Brooklyn."
"Celebrities, politicians and activists, ranging from Bernie Sanders to Hamilton creator Lin Manuel Miranda and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, are asking President Obama to grant clemency to a man who was part of a militant group that fought for Puerto Rican independence. Oscar López Rivera has been in federal prison since 1981, convicted for ”seditious conspiracy” to overthrow the the government of the United States, in relation to his membership in the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, or FALN. Between 1974 and 1983, the FALN claimed responsibility for more than 70 bombings in New York, Chicago and Washington, D. C. The bombings caused millions in property damage, dozens of injuries and five deaths. López Rivera’s supporters say he is a political prisoner serving an unjust sentence. His opponents say he is an unrepentant terrorist. Born in Puerto Rico, López Rivera moved to Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood as a teenager. He fought in Vietnam, where he earned the Bronze Star, but became disillusioned by the war and what he saw as U. S. imperialism. After the war, López Rivera worked as a community organizer in Chicago. He also became involved in activism around the cause of Puerto Rican independence. The more he researched Puerto Rican history, the more he became convinced that Puerto Rico was a colony of the United States. ”There were resolutions of the United Nations pointing out very, very clearly that colonialism was a crime against humanity and that colonized people have the right to   and to independence and to achieve it by any means necessary  —   including the use of force,” López Rivera said in an October telephone interview from the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. At some point in the 1970s, López Rivera became a member of the clandestine FALN. The group set off bombs at government and corporate buildings, and left communiques in phone booths calling for a ”free and socialist Puerto Rico.” The majority of the bombs damaged property without causing injuries or deaths, but not all of them. The FALN’s most deadly attack was in January 1975  —   the bombing of a crowded restaurant in New York’s financial district called Fraunces Tavern. The bomb killed four and injured 60, leaving law enforcement scrambling to find the perpetrators. ”It was truly the first truly clandestine terror organization that we confronted and we had no clue as to how to approach this,” said Rick Hahn, a former FBI agent assigned to the FALN case. ”They were very sophisticated and we didn’t realize it, and I think that was part of the problem we had in identifying FALN members  —   false hair items, reversible clothing . .. professional   kits, that sort of thing.” In 1976, the FBI found an apartment linked to López Rivera containing dynamite and FALN written materials. López Rivera went into hiding, and wasn’t apprehended until five years later. By then, police had also arrested 11 other members of the group. López Rivera was tried under what was then a rarely used statute, ”seditious conspiracy,” which means ”to oppose and attempt to overthrow by force the power of the United States government,” among other crimes. He was sentenced to 55 years, and later given an additional 15 after being convicted for a conspiracy to escape. ”They were sentenced not because of what they did but because of who they were politically,” said Jan Susler, López Rivera’s lawyer. ”Seditious conspiracy is really a thought crime. It’s agreeing to be part of challenging the United States government. And in this case it was agreeing to be part of the FALN.” In 1999, President Clinton offered to commute the sentences of most of the imprisoned FALN members  —   16 in all. López Rivera was offered a deal, but he refused it because, he says, not all of his   were included. Now, supporters like Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois are hoping Obama will use his pardon powers to let López Rivera go. ”I have never been an advocate of violence in order to meet your goals, but I also am a person who believes in justice and in fairness. He wasn’t indicted for murder, ” Gutierrez says. ”I can only deal in the realm of what a person was indicted for and convicted and, based on that, he should be able to come home.” His supporters often compare him to Nelson Mandela, who was also involved in an armed political movement and served a lengthy prison term. But not everyone agrees. ”I would love to ask people who support his release and say, If not a terrorist, what has Oscar López done to help the Puerto Rican people?” said Joe Connor, who was 9 years old when his father  —   a    banker at J. P. Morgan  —   was killed in the Fraunces Tavern bombing. ”I’m hearing he’s a freedom fighter, he’s done all these things, he’s not violent. But what did he do, if not be a terrorist? There’s no answer to it because he was a terrorist.” Connor says López Rivera does not deserve clemency because he hasn’t expressed remorse for his actions or the deaths caused by the FALN. The Fraunces Tavern bombing case has never been solved. López Rivera has denied involvement in its execution or planning. A petition to release López Rivera has over 100, 000 signatures, but organizers say they’ve gotten no indications from President Obama. In the official response to the petition, the White House said it ”does not comment on individual pardon applications.” López Rivera had said he will no longer condone violence in the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. But he says if he walks out of prison one day, he’ll walk out with his head high. ”I had made a decision . .. dealing with finding meaning and purposing life, and not living a life just to exist, you know. And the struggle for me is where I found meaning in life, and I knew that that would keep me strong, and it has,” he said. If Obama leaves him in prison, López Rivera is projected for release in 2023  —   when he’ll be 80 years old. This story was produced by NPR’s Latino USA, who will be releasing an   audio documentary about Oscar López Rivera later this month. "
"As seaweed continues to gain popularity for its nutritional benefits and culinary versatility, more people are skipping the dried stuff in the grocery store and going straight to the source: the ocean itself. At low tide on West Coast beaches, foragers hop between rocks looking for bladderwrack, sea lettuce and Irish moss to take home with them. Sea vegetable foraging has become so common, in fact, that you can take a class to learn what to harvest and what to avoid. ”Seaweed foraging is more popular than it used to be,” says Heidi Herrmann, owner of Strong Arm Farm in Healdsburg, Calif. ”With the rise of those little flavored snack packs of seaweed that kids eat in their lunches, seaweed is now a normal household word.” Herrmann commercially forages seaweed to sell to restaurants in places like Napa and San Francisco. She also leads seaweed foraging classes several times a year. The only equipment her students need is a pair of scissors and a bag to carry the seaweed. It’s one of many foraging classes offered along the West Coast. They can cost anywhere between $ $445, and can last for several hours or several days. Some include cooking lessons. Others teach how to harvest seaweed from a kayak. With or without a class, seaweed may be the safest food to forage. Unlike mushroom foraging, where many species can kill you, there are no deadly seaweeds. This has led to the idea that it’s safe to ”eat the beach,” which is not exactly true. Some seaweed should be avoided. For example, consuming a lot of acid kelp (Desmarestia ligulata) can cause intestinal distress. As with all foraging, research is key. ”Those general rules that say, ’All of this is edible’ or ’All of that is edible’ [are] a lazy person’s way of not having to know anything,” says John Kallas, a researcher and educator for Wild Food Adventures in Oregon. ”You don’t just blindly go out and gather stuff. Knowledge is what keeps you safe.” Still, as Kallas is quick to point out, the beach is full of edible seaweed. Many West Coast varieties are similar to   Asian seaweeds. This includes versions of nori, which the Japanese use in sushi kombu, the base for the broth dashi and wakame, commonly used in seaweed salad. There are also   varieties, like sea lettuce, a delicate green seaweed also used in salads. Then there’s bladderwrack, which looks like flattened deer antlers and can season meat or thicken sauces. Another example is dulse, which looks like red film tape and is commonly dried and flaked into dishes for seasoning. Even something as unappetizing as feather boa kelp can have surprising culinary applications. This aptly named kelp  —   it looks like something you’d wear to a costume party  —   has a leathery strap and small blades that give it a corrugated, leafy appearance. Not only are the leaflets edible, so are the hollow oval bladders that keep the plant afloat. ”The bladders are a great substitute for olives,” says Kallas. ”But when you bite them, they pop.” Seaweed is high in protein, and contains Vitamin B12, iodine and   fatty acids. It can be a natural source of MSG, which helps provide a savory umami flavor in dishes. As such, seaweed can flavor soups, thicken sauces, be baked into bread or cakes, or dried and eaten like potato chips. Dennis Judson, who leads seafood foraging classes for Adventure Sports Unlimited, recommends making pickles out of seaweed, particularly bullwhip kelp, which is a long tube with a ball at the end that looks like a whip. ”I cut it into strips, like little donuts,” says Judson. ”Then I put it in jars and pickle it. Then I put the pickles in Bloody Marys. They’re delicious.” Seaweeds are algae, not plants. They’re divided into three types: red, green and brown. (Kelp is a type of seaweed.) Like plants, seaweed uses photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy. While they can be harvested all year, they’re usually at the height of growth in spring and summer. They often grow rapidly, as much as two feet a day. Because of this, most seaweed can withstand ethical foraging. The important thing is to only take the   blades and leave the    —   essentially, the roots of the seaweed  —   intact so it can keep producing. It’s also important to check regulations before foraging, which can vary drastically based on location. Washington state requires a permit to forage, while Oregon restricts seaweed foraging to a season. California, on the other hand, allows personal seaweed foraging all year long, restricting it to 10 pounds per person a day. Both the California and Washington state departments of fish  wildlife report increased interest in seaweed foraging from the public. But while harvesting seaweed may seem new, it’s an ancient activity, stretching back thousands of years. For Herrmann, seaweed foraging is more than just gathering food. It’s about feeling connected to the past, and to nature. ”When you’re at the shore, you see all these colors and textures and creatures, so many questions come to mind,” she says. ”And it’s timeless in the sense that you’re collecting food in a way that has been done for so many years before you, in so many cultures and climates. So it feels like being in a long continuum, and the practices of gathering food in general.” Joy Lanzendorfer is a writer based in Petaluma, Calif. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and others. She’s on Twitter @JoyLanzendorfer."
"In 2009, the heavy metal band Disturbed received a Grammy nomination for its song ”Inside The Fire,” a   emotional track delivered with aggressive guitar riffs and raspy singing. Recently, the band received another Grammy nomination, but this time it was for a song with a very different sound: an acoustic cover of Simon  Garfunkel’s ”The Sound of Silence.” Lead singer David Draiman says the band’s drummer, Mike Wengren, had the idea: ”It had been something that his family had played in the background when it was time to do the chores at home,” Draiman says. Once they’d settled on the song, the group’s guitar player, Dan Donegan, urged his bandmates to depart from their signature sound in favor of something gentler. Melodic singing wasn’t out of the question for Draiman: When he was young, he trained to be a cantor, the singer who leads a Jewish congregation in prayer. ”I hadn’t attempted to go to that spot of my vocal ability for many years,” he says. ”Listening to the way my vocals sounded in that beautiful bed of music  —   and not having heard my voice in that way for so long  —   it was really just very, very overwhelming.” Disturbed’s latest album, Immortalized, is out now. Hear more from Draiman at the audio link."
"When Kennedy Odede was a kid, he lived on the streets of a slum in Kenya. He’d grown up in tough circumstances. His stepfather was violent. There wasn’t enough food to go around. He wasn’t sent to school. A friend convinced him he’d do better out on his own. He’d have his freedom, he’d be able to find his own food. So when he was around 10, Kennedy left home. His new world was a world of violence. He was caught up in gang fights. He remembers being stabbed in the arm: ”I still have the scar,” he says. Then one day, when he was 12 or so, he met Martin Luther King Jr.  —   on the pages of a book that an older friend at a community center gave him. ”I was looking for hope in my life,” says Kennedy, who’s now in his early 30s. ”When I read the story of Dr. King, it was a powerful story. Dr. King gave me a reason to believe you can change your own life and change your own community. His idea is that you don’t have to wait. Anyone’s path can change. For me that was really powerful.” On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we talked to Kennedy Odede from Kenya, where he started a nonprofit called Shining Hope for Communities. It runs a free primary school for girls and helps youth find jobs. (And in case you’re wondering, his name is an homage to John F. Kennedy: Odede was born a breach baby but survived, which his parents took as a sign he’d be a leader, ”so I had to get a leadership name,” he says.) The interview has been edited for length and clarity. What struck you about Dr. King’s life? The world was full of hatred at that time in America. But he didn’t allow darkness to conquer his life. He looked for light, he looked for hope. I admire people who, because of circumstances, could turn out to be negative and yet turned out for peace, to fight for justice. Violence was part of your life on the streets.  When I read about nonviolence, the lesson for me is that violence cannot solve problems, you know what I mean? Nonviolence is a powerful weapon. I was used to having to fight back, but when you’re nonviolent, it gives you peace of mind. I work in the slums now with young people. I go to tough neighborhoods and tell them my story and Dr. King’s story. What’s their reaction to the idea of nonviolence? People say nonviolence is a sign of weakness. What do you tell them? In my community there used to be a lot of men beating their wives. I tell people, they are the weakest men. I tell them, if you are strong, you don’t have to shoot. The weak people are violent. Peace is the most powerful tool to conquer your enemies. It confuses them. They are trying to make you be violent, and if you don’t react with violence, you’ve already won because you didn’t do what they want you to do. So what should you do if someone attacks you on the street to rob you? Ask the person, what do you want, do you want my phone? I believe you have to defend yourself, make sure nobody hits you, but I don’t think you can attack somebody because they snatch something from you. I see my friends who are killed when someone tries to snatch something and they fight back. Does Dr. King’s story have meaning to the youth of Kenya today? People say, ”Dr. King is old school, from the 1960s, we don’t need him now, we have to move on.” I think we need him more than ever. There’s a lot of violence in the world, and for me, violence doesn’t just mean you assault the other person’s body, it’s also what comes out of your mouth. Words that bring hatred  —   for me that’s violence. Dr. King didn’t divide. He wanted to listen. It’s a time to listen more and speak less. Do you have a favorite Dr. King quote? ”Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve . ... You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”"
"The last person to leave footprints on the moon has died. NASA reported that Gene Cernan died Monday at the age of 82, surrounded by his family. Gene Cernan flew in space three times, including twice to the moon. Cernan was big, brash and gregarious. And if he hadn’t been lucky, he could have missed his chance to walk on the moon. Cernan challenged himself his whole life. When he entered the military, he chose to be a naval aviator. Landing on an aircraft carrier is perhaps the hardest thing to do in aviation. Cernan did it because it wasn’t easy. He said he was constantly pushing himself to do better and be better. ”My dad always used to say, ’Just go out and do your best. You’re not going to be better than everyone at everything.’ And he was right,” Cernan said, ”I wasn’t. But he was also right one other time when he said, ’Someday you’re going to surprise yourself. Just do your best and someday you’re going to surprise yourself.’ ” Cernan’s final trip in space was also the final time NASA sent people to the moon, the Apollo 17 mission, which took off on Dec. 7, 1972. Four days later, Cernan landed the lunar module on the moon with astronaut Harrison ”Jack” Schmitt. Cernan couldn’t hide his enthusiasm as he exited the spacecraft, saying, ”We’d like to dedicate the first steps of Apollo 17 to all those who made it possible. Oh my golly! Unbelievable!” Decades later, Cernan reflected on that moment in a 2015 NPR interview, no less thrilled to be the last, rather than the first, to go there. ”The first steps had been made by others long before I got there. But those were my first steps.” Cernan is one of only three people to travel to the moon twice (Jim Lovell and John Young were the others). Before Apollo 17, he flew on Apollo 10, which was the mission just before the first lunar landing. On Gemini 9 in 1966, he conducted the second American spacewalk (which almost ended in disaster). Cernan had trouble controlling his body in the weightlessness of space. He became exhausted. His visor fogged up and he barely had the strength to get back into the capsule and close the hatch. ”Fate played another trick because I might not have come home from that flight. We didn’t know much about what we’re doing [yet].” Dreaming big and working hard were two things Cernan always did. He grew up in Chicago. Neither of his parents went to college, but he earned several degrees in engineering. Despite Cernan’s technical background, his time on the moon and in space forever altered his life. Cernan said he gained a new perspective, because ”when you leave the Earth, it’s not only technologically different  —   it’s philosophically different and it’s spiritually different.” Many astronauts had difficulty describing what it was actually like to be in space  —   not in the technical sense, but in finding the words to share that remarkable experience. He chronicled some of them in his 2016 documentary, Last Man on the Moon. ”Many of the astronauts didn’t really know how to describe that because that’s not what they were going there for,” said Francis French of the San Diego Air and Space Museum, who has written many books on the space program. ”Gene Cernan in the decades after his mission really reflected on that and he [very well described] what that’s like.” There’s something else about Cernan: He had the opportunity to land on the moon during an earlier mission, Apollo 16, as the pilot. But he turned it down, because he wanted to be commander, in charge of the mission. ”I sort of felt like I’d been an underdog most of my life,” he recalled. ”[Achieving the command of Apollo 17] I proved to myself that I was good enough. That I could get the job done. That was a big point in my life.” Cernan spent his   life trying to inspire young people. He once said, ”Dream the impossible  —   and go out and make it happen. I walked on the moon. What can’t you do?”"
"  years after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, many schools across the country either remain segregated or have  . Journalist Nikole   tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that when it comes to school segregation, separate is never truly equal. ”There’s never been a moment in the history of this country where black people who have been isolated from white people have gotten the same resources,”   says. ”They often don’t have the same level of instruction. They often don’t have strong principals. They often don’t have the same technology.” Still, when it was time for  ’ daughter, Najya, to attend kindergarten, the journalist chose the public school near their home in   Brooklyn, even though its students were almost all poor and black or Latino.   later wrote about that decision in The New York Times Magazine. For   sending Najya to the neighborhood school was a moral issue. ”It is important to understand that the inequality we see, school segregation, is both structural, it is systemic, but it’s also upheld by individual choices,” she says. ”As long as individual parents continue to make choices that only benefit their own children . .. we’re not going to see a change.”   adds that her daughter is thriving at school. ”I know she’s learning a lot,” she says. ”I think it is making her a good citizen. . .. It is teaching her that children who have less resources than her are not any less intelligent than her or not any less worthy than her.” On why she chose to send her young daughter to the public school in her neighborhood, One of the things I’ve done in my work is kind of show the hypocrisy of progressive people who say they believe in inequality, but when it comes to their individual choices about where they’re going to live and where they’re going to send their children, they make very different decisions, and I just didn’t want to do that. So for me it was a matter of needing to live my values, and not being someone who contributed to the inequality that I write about. On the importance of having students from different races and income levels in the public schools, The original mission of public schools . .. is this understanding that no matter where you come from, you will go into the doors of a school and every child will receive the same education. And no, my daughter is not going to get an education that she would get if I paid $40, 000 a year in   tuition, but that’s kind of the whole point of public schools. And I say this  —   and it always feels weird when I say it as a parent, because a lot of other parents look at you a little like you’re maybe not as good of a parent  —   I don’t think she’s deserving of more than other kids. I just don’t. I think that we can’t say ”This school is not good enough for my child” and then sustain that system. I think that that’s just morally wrong. If it’s not good enough for my child, then why are we putting any children in those schools? On the history of school desegregation since the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education  Brown v. Board happens, and the way that we’re taught it or the myth about it is immediately our nation repented and went into an integrated future together. That’s not what happened. There was massive resistance, and we don’t see real desegregation occurring in this country until 1964, and really most rapidly from 1968 on. . .. Then you see pretty rapid desegregation particularly in the South, but then that changes, and in 1988 we start to go backwards. So we reach kind of the peak of schools integrating, of black students attending majority white schools at the highest rates that they ever have in the country, and then we start to see school districts   which means black students are starting to go to schools that are more and more segregated. And school districts that had had a degree of integration are losing that integration. . .. On American resistance to desegregating schools and housing, When I started what I kind of call the segregation beat about five years ago . .. I think we had stopped talking about this as a problem. If you look at No Child Left Behind, which comes out of the Bush administration, that was all about giving up on integration in schools and just saying, ”We’re going to make these poor black and Latino schools equal to white schools by testing and accountability.” So no one was discussing integration anymore. I think it’s because . .. we never really wanted this. . .. It’s always had to be forced, and as soon as . .. our elected officials and our courts lost the will to force it, most white Americans were just fine with that. . .. One of the things that I really try to do with my work is show how racial segregation and racial inequality was intentionally created with a ton of resources. From the federal government, to the state, to city governments, to private citizens, we put so much effort into creating this segregation and inequality, and we’re willing to put almost no effort in fixing it, and that’s the problem. "
"Archaeologists have unearthed a unique pendant buried on the site of a Nazi extermination camp. They say that they know of only one other that is similar, which belonged to Anne Frank. Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial announced the find on Sunday, saying that they have ascertained the charm may have belonged to a girl named Karoline Cohn. ”Aside from similarities between the pendants, both Anne Frank and Karoline Cohn were born in Frankfurt, suggesting a possible familial connection between Frank and Cohn,” Yad Vashem said. ”Researchers are currently trying to locate relatives of the two families to further explore this avenue.” The charm bears Hebrew writing that says ”Mazel Tov” (Congratulations) the date 3. 7. 1929 (Cohn’s birth date) and the word Frankfurt. The reverse side has the Hebrew letter Hey, which is sometimes used to represent God, and three stars of David. The only difference between the two charms is the date of birth  —   separated by just three weeks, according to archaeologists. ”Based on searches that we carried out, the only name that fit in terms of her birth date was a Jewish girl by the name of Karoline Cohn, whose birth date is indeed July 3rd, 1929,” said Yad Vashem’s Joel Zissenwein in a video released by the memorial. ”And she was indeed on a transport that we recorded that departed from Frankfurt am Main to Minsk Ghetto.” Researchers found the pendant in Sobibor, a death camp in Poland where more than 250, 000 Jews were killed, according to The Associated Press. It was found in the area ”where victims undressed and their heads shaved before being sent into the gas chambers,” Yad Vashem said. Researchers think it slipped through floorboards in this area, remaining buried until archaeologists found it a few months ago. The Sobibor camp was razed to the ground by Nazis in an attempt to conceal their crimes. But recent excavations have uncovered the foundations of gas chambers and items belonging to the camp’s many victims. Frank died in 1945 at the   concentration camp in Germany. ”This pendant demonstrates once again the importance of archaeological research of former Nazi death camp sites,” said Israel Antiquities archaeologist Yoram Haimi. The researchers have also uncovered other personal items, such as a women’s watch and a star of David necklace. Haimi added: ”The items found here, bottles or dentures  —   all these things, even the most shocking among them  —   tell us the story of what happened here in the camp.”"
"European leaders are expressing alarm after U. S.   Donald Trump said the EU is ”basically a vehicle for Germany” and reiterated his view that NATO is ”obsolete.” Speaking about the EU, Trump said ”people want their own identity,” and therefore ”I believe others will leave.” He has previously applauded the U. K.’s decision last year to depart from the   bloc and repeated that sentiment, saying that ”I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing.” Trump made the comments in an interview published Sunday with the Times of London and Germany’s Bild newspaper. ”I’ve spoken today not only with EU foreign ministers but NATO foreign ministers as well and can report that the signals are that there’s been no easing of tensions,” German Foreign Minister   Steinmeier told reporters, according to Reuters. Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said reality was ”perhaps more difficult than what is going on on Twitter,” according to The Associate Press, in an apparent reference to the  ’s penchant for posting on social media. Trump’s opinions on NATO appear counter to those of his pick for Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General James Mattis. Mattis stated during his confirmation hearing last week that NATO ”is the most important alliance there is,” NPR’s Tom Bowman reported. Trump also repeated his earlier criticism that many NATO members ”aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying.” NPR’s Frank Frank Langfitt explains that ”Trump’s criticism that other NATO allies don’t pay their fair share is nothing new and he has a point.” Here’s more from Frank: ”NATO has set a goal that nations should spend the equivalent of 2 percent of their GDP on defense, but most don’t. However, the idea that the U. S.  —   the dominant military force in NATO  —   might not defend an ally frightened many in Brussels and beyond.” When asked directly about whether the U. S. will guarantee European security in the future, Trump simply replied, ”I feel very strongly toward Europe  —   very strongly toward Europe, yes.” Trump also stated that he was eager to make a trade deal with the U. K. saying his administration would ”work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly.” U. K. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson appeared to be the only EU leader who responded positively to Trump’s interview, according to The Washington Post. ”It’s very good news that the United States of America wants to do a good   deal with us and wants to do it very fast, and it’s great to hear that from   Donald Trump,” Johnson told reporters, the Post reported."
"Ernest Peterson has spent his entire adult life in Washington, D. C.  —   almost all of it in Shaw, a neighborhood of colorful row houses and   side streets about 2 miles from the White House. In Shaw, Peterson bought his first house and started a business. And, for 20 years, on the Saturday before Labor Day, he organized a community picnic at the elementary school near his house. Over the years, friends and neighbors moved away or got locked up. He lost touch with many of them. But despite living in Shaw for nearly 40 years, Peterson is increasingly starting to feel like an outsider in his neighborhood. ”I go outside, and these people who been here for 15 minutes look at me like, ’Why you here?’ That’s that sense of privilege they bring wherever they go,” he said in his front yard on a sunny Saturday in November. ”I been here since ’78. They been here six months or a year, and they question my purpose for being here.” In a city facing some of the most intense pressure on housing in the country, the feeling is not uncommon for many of Washington’s longtime residents. Even neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of poverty and crime  —   places once thought immune to the influx of newcomers  —   are being eyed by developers. At Brookland Manor, a housing development in Northeast Washington home to about 1, 200 mostly   residents, the landlord has stepped up evictions of poor tenants, according to reporting by The Washington Post, as the owners prepare to redevelop the property, often filing lawsuits for late rent payments totaling less than $100. (Update on Feb. 1: A representative from the development company told the Post they have always sued over unpaid rent and lease violations.) In neighborhoods south of the Anacostia River, so far largely left out of the district’s housing boom, activists are fighting to preserve   housing as developers anticipate a growing appetite for   units. But for Shaw, a neighborhood where newcomers began arriving more than a decade ago, gentrification is not a new reality. Now, several years into a period of dizzying demographic and physical change, longtime residents say they are still trying to negotiate a place for themselves in a neighborhood they’ve long called home. Home on P Street, In some ways, Peterson’s stretch of P Street looks a lot like it did when he came to Shaw in the 1970s after moving from North Carolina to attend law school at Howard University. The same two historic churches hug corners at either end of the street. The elementary school is a charter now, but the facade has remained mostly unchanged. Carlos Pyatt grew up across the street from where Peterson lives. Pyatt hadn’t been back to this block since he moved away in the early ’80s. When Pyatt looks back at his childhood on P Street, he remembers riding skateboards and bicycles, playing touch football and tag. The woman who still lives next door to Pyatt’s old house, now in her   remembers a less rosy picture  —   a period after the neighborhood’s heyday as a center for   culture and commerce, when Shaw was still reeling from the effects of the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and, later, the rise of crack cocaine. ”I left before the epidemic hit,” Pyatt said, surveying his old house for the first time in three decades. ”I had no idea that was going on. To me, it feels the same, but the people who haven’t left, they’ve seen it.” Pyatt’s old   neighbor bought her house for $42, 000 in 1981. In 2017, the property’s tax assessment was more than $888, 000. The city’s assessment of her home jumped nearly $150, 000 in the past year. Developers call her up constantly asking if she wants to sell. Even with all that equity, it can be hard to keep up with the property taxes on a fixed income, which makes the option to sell tempting. Many have taken the offers. Alex Padro, who represents Shaw on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, cites this trend as proof that longtime residents benefit from the community’s growth. ”They decided to take advantage of the     wealth creation opportunity and sold their family homes and moved to the suburbs,” he said. ”Grandpa and Grandma were no longer having to climb up several flights of stairs and they have a college fund for the grandkids.” While exploding home prices can generate windfalls for longtime owners who decide to sell, the upward direction of the housing market has also generated concerns about the availability of affordable housing in neighborhoods like Shaw. Even if longtime homeowners or renters aren’t displaced, the trend certainly constricts who is able to move in. Despite initiatives to preserve housing for   and   residents, census data from the neighborhood point to a period of major demographic change. In 1980, Shaw was 78 percent black. In 2010, the black population in the neighborhood had dropped to 44 percent. And that’s not just because more white people moved in, increasing the overall total population and driving down the neighborhood’s black majority. The actual number of black residents, not just their percentage of the population, has been consistently dropping over the past two decades as well. Home sales also illustrate what’s happening. In 1995, the median home price in Shaw was $147, 000. Today it’s $781, 000. In 1979, the average family income was $50, 089 when adjusted for inflation. Between 2010 and 2014 it was $145, 096. Curtis Smith, administrator at the historic Third Street Baptist Church down the street, said very few of his congregants still live in the neighborhood. Most commute in from the suburbs or elsewhere in the District. ”In the old days, maybe 80 percent could walk to the church,” he said. ”Now just turn that around.” Shifts like this one have meant that institutions such as churches preserve some of the few remaining ties drawing former residents back to the community. Smith hopes his church can serve as a centerpiece of the community, not just as a relic of the past. ”We’re trying to portray that we’re not the black church on the corner, but we’re the community church,” he said. Though every now and then someone who is not a longtime congregant will stop in for the free community movie nights or public forums on topics like neighborhood policing, it’s not often. Smith said that’s something churches throughout Shaw are grappling with  —   how to play a role in a community that looks less and less like their membership. A few blocks away, the owner of Hollywood Styles Barbershop is thinking through a similar set of questions. For decades, the shop has occupied this small brick storefront just off Seventh Street, a stretch of Shaw that typifies much of the change here. Convenience stores and Ethiopian takeout joints housed in   storefronts carry on next door to upscale coffee shops, bakeries and bars. Shop owner DeLonta Dickerson said barbershops are some of the few remaining businesses from the old Shaw. Like churches, barbershops can remain a link to the neighborhood long after people move away. The chrome and vinyl chairs lined up on each side of the small space have seated generations of the same families. Dickerson started coming here as a kid and took over the business in 2009 when the shop’s longtime owner died. Over the years, Dickerson has seen new condos rise on every corner and a subway station crop up across the street. He leases his storefront, and while he figures the owner could sell out to a developer one day, he doesn’t think about it much: ”I’m not sure if I’d go for another space, or if it’s something that I’d just want to leave behind.” Who benefits? For those longtime residents who remember Shaw as a   neighborhood pockmarked with empty lots and plagued by crime, rather than the hub of   commercial and cultural activity experienced by the generation before them, at least some of the improved resources and services such as lighting, a new library and a renovated recreation center are welcome changes. Dominic Moulden, who has been organizing residents in Shaw for 30 years and represents the tenants rights organization OneDC, said that doesn’t mean everyone benefits from the new amenities. ”If you can’t spend $100 to eat, $5 or $7 for coffee, you can’t buy anything in your own neighborhood,” he said. Peterson puts it this way: Poor   in Shaw had been asking for improved services for years, and it’s only now that white people with money and influence have moved in that they’re getting them. Resources are available now not because of who lives in Shaw, said Padro, but because the city’s tax base improved significantly over the past decade. As more people move into the city, its coffers are in a better position to fund new amenities and services. While the tax base may be in a different position than it was just a decade ago, Moulden said the city is still failing to meet the most basic needs of some residents, particularly when it comes to housing. A 2015 analysis of census data by the D. C. Fiscal Policy Institute found that the number of apartments with rents less than $800 per month  —   a number that represents 40 percent of monthly income for a family of four living at the poverty line  —   decreased by 42 percent between 2002 and 2013. That’s a decline of more than 24, 000 units. Padro says public strategy sessions, extensive committee work and community surveys have all been employed to bring everybody into the fold when big decisions are made. Virginia Lee, who is in her late 60s and has lived in Shaw for 17 years, says she still feels longtime residents have lost some political clout, especially when it comes to leverage at ANC meetings. She says   became less visible at meetings and she began to feel that her input wouldn’t be taken seriously. ”It’s a sense that I have as a black woman, that my voice has low impact,” Lee said. Building relationships, One week before Thanksgiving, dozens of   kids lined up in front of a stretch of long folding tables as volunteers heaped their paper plates with green beans, turkey and mashed potatoes. Three of the round banquet tables are crowded with older residents. Harold Valentine is one of them. He moved to Washington in 1981 from Boston, where he struggled to kick a drinking problem. He hasn’t had a drink since he moved to D. C. Valentine said this kind of event wouldn’t have happened a couple of years ago  —   at least not here at Kennedy. And the senior citizens? They would never have crossed the street at night to come to Kennedy. Valentine said this is a prime example of both the kind of positive change he has seen spring up in Shaw  —   and of the distance still left to go. Seated inside a quiet preschool classroom just off the recreation center’s front lobby, Valentine cites the programs that now occur here day and night, his pride for the former gang leader he mentored at Kennedy and who now serves as a member of the recreation center’s board  —   all proof, he says, that positive changes really are happening in Shaw. Valentine also wants the recreation center to be a gathering place for the whole community, though he realizes that dream is not entirely the reality yet. He’s not exactly sure how to get there, but said his idea for where to start is rooted in an old saying a pastor once told him. ”I wouldn’t go across the street for another program, but I’d go around the world for a relationship,” he said. That’s precisely what Valentine thinks Shaw needs. He’s optimistic about the progress, and says he is not trying to argue that improving life here won’t also require tangibles such as regulations, programs and money. What he is saying is that there has to be something more. For as much good as Valentine sees happening in his neighborhood, he recognizes there are real lapses when it comes to how people from different backgrounds interact with each other. The neighborhood’s changing demographics have created a space where identities such as race, age and class are constantly brushing up against each other. It’s a tension Shaw is still dealing with years after ”gentrification” began. ”Until I sit down and talk to you, we’re not going to get anywhere,” he said. ”I can say good morning to you, but unless I sit down and say, ’Where are you from?’ until I let you into my comfort zone and you’re not afraid of what happened once upon a time here in Shaw, there’s not going to be that cultural assimilation.” Derek Hyra, an associate professor at American University who has studied gentrification in Shaw, sees building bridges as at least partly a question of policy. Hyra suggests refining the Community Development Block Grant  —   federal funding allocated to cities each year for community development work, which fund projects such as affordable housing but can also go toward improvements like sidewalks or parking. He’d like to see some of that money support community gardens, arts programs or festivals  —   or whatever mutual interest the community identifies. Peterson wonders if, in the long run, that will really matter. Even if longtime residents are able to stay in their homes, he wonders what the community will look like once his generation begins to die out. ”I see very few people who look like me that will be here in the next five or 10 years,” he said. ”You can’t stop progress” Peterson wrestles with the nuance of the shifts he has seen in Shaw. That’s because he came here 40 years ago for many of the same reasons that people move in today. ”You can’t stop progress,” he said. ”I understand because we left, a lot of us black folks, in [the] ’30s, ’40s, and ’50, we left small towns to come to urban centers seeking employment. Same thing is happening now. There’s nothing in these small towns for these kids anymore.” That doesn’t mean he grants newcomers a free pass. Those conflicting feelings and experiences have left many lifers trying to reconcile the optimism they have for their neighborhood’s future with the pain inflicted by cultural or political alienation. For those whom the displacement hasn’t been physical, there is still a sense they have been somehow removed or pushed aside amid the tide of newcomers, or that there isn’t the sense of community there once was. ”You sometimes get the effect that nothing existed here before they came,” said Lee. ”All the goodness that has come with the gentrification and certainly the refurbishing and preserving of buildings . .. all that has come has been material in nature and very little has been done to preserve the human aspect of a city that’s being transformed. We have our gathering spots they have their gathering spots. The fact that we use the same sidewalks and streets has very little to do with ongoing communication.” When Valentine talks about the future he envisions in Shaw, he repeatedly uses words like integration and reconciliation  —   the act of making different beliefs compatible. He sees the process as both grand  —   such as his idea for a ”reconciliation square” designed to unite neighboring churches  —   and rooted in the    like the relationships he builds with people at the recreation center. That’s where Lee thinks it will start. ”Every day when I go out my door, I go out and figure just speaking to people who pass by is a way of inserting some humanity in the process,” she said. The type of grand ”reconciliation” Valentine talks about may not be possible. But many longtime residents of Shaw say they are confident any progress  —   in the integration of public spaces, in preserving cultural institutions, in crafting policies that preserve affordable housing and prevent displacement  —   will also require something that has often proved elusive here: a little bit of empathy."
"When Donald Trump won the presidential election, he made a pledge to every citizen: that he would be president for all Americans. In the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, we’re going to hear about some of the communities that make up this nation, from the people who know them best, in our series Finding America. The No. 48 bus runs through the Central District of Seattle. It’s a historically black community that Carla Saulter and Gabriel Teodros know well. It’s also a neighborhood that is gentrifying as Seattle has boomed in the past decade. During a ride on the 48, the two bus companions discussed the changes they’ve been seeing in their city. Saulter says riding the bus allows her to see how different parts of the city have changed physically and demographically. ”The thing about the 48 is that it goes through so many different communities,” Saulter says. ”Of course, over time, the riders of the bus [have] changed, and that’s one of the ways you can really see, just viscerally feel, the changes in the community, is that who’s riding the bus is so different now than it was even 10 years ago.” Use the audio link above to hear the full story. "
"Bobby Rush is one of the last living blues legends of his generation. He toured the South and the chitlin’ circuit in the ’50s and was often forced to perform music behind a curtain for white audiences. Shortly before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rush heard through fellow Chicago bluesman J. B. Lenoir about a Baptist minister and activist who offered hope: Martin Luther King Jr. In honor of Martin Luther King Day, Rush shares his memories about the early days of the civil rights movement, the harrowing racism he endured and the powerful message Dr. King delivered when they met in person. Listen and download the audio above."
Americans across the U. S. are celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. ’s legacy with a day of service. We reflect on his life and message by revisiting his celebrated I Have a Dream speech in its entirety.
"Noor Salman, the wife of Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, has been arrested on federal charges. Salman is charged with ”Aiding and Abetting by providing material support to a terrorist and Obstruction of Justice,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina said in a statement. On June 12, 2016, 49 people died when Mateen opened fire at Pulse in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U. S. history. He was killed in a firefight with police. Salman is due to make her initial court appearance at 9:30 a. m. Tuesday in Oakland, Calif. according to a tweet from the U. S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Florida. ”This is an example of the fact that investigations do continue long after they’re publicly discussed,” U. S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said during an interview with MSNBC. ”It was always our goal, and we said from the beginning, we were going to look at every aspect of this case, every aspect of this shooter’s life, to determine not just why did he take these actions, but who else knew about them, was anyone else involved, is there any other accountability that needs to be had here in this case.” Mateen and Salman married in 2011 in Contra Costa County, Calif. as The   has reported. She moved to the San Francisco area after her husband’s death, according to The Associated Press. ”I was unaware of everything,” Salman told The New York Times in a November interview. ”I don’t condone what he has done. I am very sorry for what has happened. He has hurt a lot of people.” In a statement to NPR, Salman’s attorney Linda Moreno reiterated that her client was not aware of Mateen’s plans: ”Noor Salman had no foreknowledge nor could she predict what Omar Mateen intended to do that tragic night. Noor has told her story of abuse at his hands. We believe it is misguided and wrong to prosecute her and that it dishonors the memories of the victims to punish an innocent person.” As NPR’s Dina   has reported, Salman has cooperated with authorities but there are inconsistencies in her story: ”For example, she said she didn’t know that the attack was coming, but she also told authorities that she tried to talk him out of the attack. She was with him when he bought ammunition last week. She actually joined him at the Pulse nightclub before the attack, although it’s possible she didn’t know that he was there to case the place. So a grand jury is looking at all of this. It’s not clear if they’ll bring charges, but they’re certainly considering that.”"
"It was the first day of school for Dan Lear’s three kids. In a scramble to get his boys to class on time, the Seattle lawyer wound up parking in a space he probably should have avoided. ”There was a fire hydrant, but the curb wasn’t painted and the fire hydrant was painted a kind of a funny color. And so I thought, and maybe it was wishful thinking, but I thought I would be OK to park there,” he says. Sure enough, Lear returned to a ticket. ”I was bummed! I mean, obviously no one’s really happy when they get a ticket but I went home, I put it on my fridge and I let it sit there cause I just didn’t want to deal with it,” he says. So he found something that would  —   DoNotPay, a free online ”robot lawyer.” It has helped drivers in London and New York City appeal parking tickets. It had just expanded into Seattle, and Lear decided to give it a go. He logged in and the DoNotPay bot asked Lear a series of questions  —   like where the ticket was issued and a description of what happened. Within minutes, he had a   letter to send to the city. The verdict? ”Ultimately, yeah, they let me off,” Lear says. The idea behind DoNotPay belongs to Joshua Browder, a    student at Stanford University who’s originally from London. He wants to expand the service into San Francisco, so he spends time doing field research, combing the streets, peeking at parking tickets and studying signs. He looks for confusing signage, like one he noticed on a recent visit near the city’s Mission District. ”There are two signs,” he says after his field trip. ”The first one says 7 to 9 a. m. and 4 to 6 p. m. you can’t park. And that one is fine and clearly marked. But then there’s a sign below it that says no parking up to 6 a. m. but there’s no start time. . .. It’s covered up, and it looks like it’s been covered up by the local authorities.” Browder’s bot has, so far, helped drivers overturn more than 200, 000 parking tickets in London, New York and Seattle. This month it will enter several more cities including San Francisco, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles, the capital of cars and traffic. In Los Angeles, about 40 percent of challenged citations are dismissed. DoNotPay’s success rate is 60 percent, according to Browder. It’s easy to see why drivers would flock to this service. But how do city officials feel? ”Currently, we have four   field investigators to do the investigations for signs and curbs in the city of Los Angeles,” says Wayne Garcia, parking operations chief for the city of Los Angeles. He says he’s anxious to see what will soon come through the mail, given how even a modest uptick in appeals could overload resources. But he admits there could be an upside. ”Our staff spend a great deal of time reviewing letters from motorists in trying to decipher what they’re actually contesting,” Garcia says. And that’s because most people just don’t write like lawyers. ”If this process will help the motorists really focus in on why they’re contesting their parking citation, it would also help our staff in reviewing the contested parking citation,” he says. Browder says he wants to ”level the playing field so anyone can have the same legal access under the law.” He also wants this kind of legal help to go beyond parking tickets. And in some cities he’s already done that  —   with   disputes and unexplained banking charges. Right now, he’s working on the bot’s ability to help refugees apply for asylum. ”If one day someone can have the same standard of legal representation as the richest in society then I think that’s a really good aim,” he says. And Browder says it’s all part of an even larger ambition to, one day, make justice free."
"  Donald Trump said he’s finishing a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act with a proposal that would provide ”insurance for everybody,” according to a report by The Washington Post. He did not get into any specific details about his healthcare plan during a telephone interview with the newspaper. But he did say it would be ”much less expensive” and would involve ”much lower deductibles.” Trump added that he does not plan to cut benefits for Medicare and that he does not want a   health care system. His plan will be revealed, Trump suggested, after the U. S. Senate confirms his nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, Rep. Tom Price, a Republican from Georgia. The Senate Finance Committee has not announced the timing of Price’s confirmation hearing yet. Still, Trump said he expects Republicans in Congress to replace Obamacare quickly with his plan and is ready to put pressure on lawmakers, telling the Post: ”I think we will get approval. I won’t tell you how, but we will get approval. You see what’s happened in the House in recent weeks,” Trump said, referencing his tweet during a House Republican move to gut their independent ethics office, which along with widespread constituent outrage was cited by some members as a reason the gambit failed. Trump’s comments come as Republicans continue their debate over how exactly to repeal and replace Obamacare, while Democrats have been holding rallies around the country in support of the existing health care law. Last week, GOP lawmakers approved a budget resolution that sets up a framework for repealing the Affordable Care Act. But House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . has said that lawmakers are not ”holding hard deadlines” for replacing the federal health policy."
"Prosecutors in South Korea have requested an arrest warrant for the de facto head of the nation’s biggest conglomerate, Samsung, on charges of bribery and embezzlement in connection with a swirling scandal that led to the president’s impeachment.  Investigators say Jay Y. Lee, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics and the scion of the one of the largest companies in the world, helped improperly direct company money to the confidant of President Park   in order to curry favor with the government. That confidant is now at the center of a criminal investigation and ongoing political scandal, and the president is awaiting a trial by a constitutional court on whether a resounding impeachment vote in parliament will result in her official removal. Prosecutors allege that Lee directed funds to Park’s friend, Choi   and in return won support from the administration for a controversial merger between two company affiliates. On Thursday, Lee appeared at the prosecutor’s office for questioning which lasted until Friday morning. Before the interrogation began, he said to a throng of cameras, ”I am deeply sorry, and I apologize to the Korean people for failing to put our best face forward due to this incident.” In a statement, however, the company denied the accusations: ”It is hard to understand the special prosecutors’ decision. Samsung has never given support or wanted reward in turn. In particular, Samsung cannot accept the special prosecutors’ claims that there was an illegal solicitation regarding the merger or the management succession. We believe the court will make a good judgment.” Already, lawmakers who supported the ouster of the president have spoken out in support of the charges. The culture of conglomerates, or chaebol, having outsized influence in politics and society has been one of the grievances of protesters who have been demonstrating against the president for months. ”This is a decision that values law and principle,” the Democratic Party of Korea’s spokesman Gi   said. ”Arresting Lee will save Samsung and the national economy. This is the beginning of a real and extensive chaebol reform. It’s a great opportunity to break apart the ugly relationship between politics and business.” Haeryun Kang contributed to this post."
"A group of scientists is gathering this week in the U. K. to discuss a slab of ice that’s cracking in Antarctica. The crack could soon split off a frozen chunk the size of Delaware. One glacier scientist, Heidi Sevestre, spent six weeks last year living on that giant slab of ice off the Antarctic Peninsula. ”It’s like being on a different planet,” says Sevestre, a glaciologist with the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She and her colleagues would get really excited whenever they saw a bird pass overhead because it was the only other sign of life around. ”Everything is gigantic, everything is white,” she says. And everything seemed so frozen and still. But it wasn’t. ”When you’re camping on the ice shelf, you have no idea that you’re on something that is floating and moving,” she says. The ice shelf is in constant motion: rising with the tides, splitting off icebergs at its edges, and growing again as inland glaciers feed it. The ice shelf Sevestre was studying is called Larsen C, and it now has a massive   crack running through it. ”The big rift is slicing the ice shelf from top to bottom,” Sevestre says. It’s now a third of a mile deep, and as wide across as 25 highway lanes. But this is not just another sad climate change story. It’s more complicated. ”A lot of things are going on deep inside the ice,” says Adrian Luckman, a glaciologist at Swansea University in the U. K. He’s also leading a project to track changes in the ice shelf. Luckman says climate change is certainly influencing this region. Larsen C used to have two neighbors to the north, Larsen A and Larsen B. As the air and water warmed, those ice shelves started melting and then splintered into shards in 1995 and 2002. But the crack in Larsen C seems to have happened on its own, for different reasons. ”This is probably not directly attributable to any warming in the region, although of course the warming won’t have helped,” says Luckman. ”It’s probably just simply a natural event that’s just been waiting around to happen.” Larsen C has a bunch of cracks. All ice shelves do. This particular crack has been around since at least the 1960s. The unusual part is that in 2014, this crack  —   and only this crack  —   started growing in spurts. Why? ”Well, that is a little bit of a mystery and that’s why it drew itself to our attention,” says Luckman. It left other cracks in the dust about 50 miles ago. Now, scientists are crunching satellite and radar data to figure out how. ”And that knowledge will be useful in helping us to understand other ice shelves and how they might respond to rifts coming into them,” says Luckman. One puzzling aspect is how it managed to plow through areas of softer ice, called suture zones, that bind the ice from neighboring glaciers into one giant sheet. ”There’s something different about that ice that slows it down or causes it to hang up for some period of time,” says Dan McGrath, a glaciologist at Colorado State University. But, starting in 2014, that soft ice did very little to slow down this rift. ”We need to get to the bottom of understanding what changed that allowed this rift to progress as it has, and will other rifts follow suit,” says McGrath, who spent four field seasons camped out on the Larsen C ice shelf. (At one point, bad storms kept him inside his tent for more than a week. ”Yeah, you’re peeing in a bottle,” he says. ”There were moments during those seven days that I questioned whether I should have studied tropical reef ecology. ”) Scientists are split on how important this crack is for the stability of the whole ice shelf. ”Just because this iceberg calves off, the ice shelf isn’t just going to collapse and disappear overnight,” says McGrath. Some say if this giant section breaks off, it won’t make a difference. Others think it could eventually cause the whole shelf to fall apart. ”I am cautiously worried,” says Ala Khazendar, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. ”Ice shelves are very important. They are the gates of Antarctica in a way, and the gatekeepers of Antarctica.” The ice shelves are already floating, so if they fall apart it does not immediately affect sea levels. It’s what they hold back  —   water from all the inland glaciers  —   that could be problematic. Khazendar says there are two possible scenarios. One, the iceberg will break off, he says, ”and nothing spectacular will happen for many, many years.” The glaciers will bulk it up with ice until it’s back to its former look. Or, two, this iceberg is just the first of many irreversible losses for Larsen C, which, in combination with enough warm summers, will be weakened and shatter like the previous Larsens. ”We shall see if that big calving leads to a collapse of the ice shelf. At the moment, this is still a big question mark,” says Heidi Sevestre. According to pessimistic estimates, if the ice shelf completely disintegrated and if all the water packed in those glaciers made their way to the sea, it could significantly raise global sea levels. ”It is quite a large impact, indeed,” says Sevestre. The    ice shelf experts gathered in the U. K. this week aren’t sure whether this more serious chain reaction will happen, but they are confident, at least, that the   chunk will come off. The crack only has about 10 miles left to go."
"Since he began running for president, Donald Trump has been talking about a smaller federal role in education. The confirmation hearings begin Tuesday for the person he has nominated to carry out his vision, Betsy DeVos. In her home state of Michigan, DeVos has been a powerful advocate of school choice and a larger private role in education. If confirmed, she’ll take over a huge federal bureaucracy of some 4, 400 employees and a $68 billion budget. To get an idea of what’s ahead, I reached out to a former Republican education secretary, Margaret Spellings. She ran the Education Department under George W. Bush, from 2005 to 2009, and was a leader in the implementation of his signature education achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act. Today, she is the president of the University of North Carolina system, with 17 campuses and more than 220, 000 students. She says she has not advised the incoming Trump administration on any official level, but she has met Betsy DeVos.  She also recently penned a joint letter with other former Education secretaries William Bennet and Rod Paige endorsing DeVos. Here’s an edited version of our conversation. How do you balance the federal, state and local roles in improving public education? This is something we’ve debated for a long time. It changes. We’ve seen the pendulum swing from a more muscular federal role like we had during No Child Left Behind in the Bush era, to times when the primacy was in the states, which is the case now [with the Every Student Succeeds Act]. We’re now in a phase where states can be incubators of innovation. But what specifically should the federal government do to make sure   minorities and kids with learning disabilities receive the best education possible? Isn’t equity the central issue here? We do not have equity without accountability and transparency. The reason we’ve moved the needle for poor and minority students is because we’ve cared enough to find out how they’re doing and made them a priority. When we walk back  —   and this is going to happen [under ESSA]  —   at the state level, now that we have this crazy quilt of accountability systems with a lot of fine print, we know who gets masked in the data. That’s what I’m going to be paying attention to. The federal role in education is, and has always been, a civil rights focus. Did the U. S. Education Department, under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, go too far in dictating or imposing education policies that weakened local control of schools? When we spend a lot of federal money, we ought to expect something for our money. But federal dollars on average make up no more than a small percentage of local school budgets. Right, but it’s billions of dollars. So we should know how well we are meeting the objectives of Title I [the government’s main aid program in   education] helping poor and minority students meet their full potential. In my book, accountability and transparency and measurement come into play. But we should take a lighter hand [in terms of solutions] and those [solutions] ought to be reserved for states. And frankly, in NCLB’s case, the federal intervention was oversold. There was a ton of local control in funding and policymaking. But you would agree that the federal government’s relationship with states was strained and adversarial? Well, one of the things I’m proud of with NCLB was that it was a public policy debate that involved compromise. The construct for NCLB was that we care about poor students. That we invest resources through a muscular federal role. Among the ideas in Donald Trump’s education agenda are school choice, ending the Common Core and shrinking or eliminating the Department of Education. Are those the right things to focus on right off the bat? The Department of Education should not be abolished. I do take the view that we need a   department of education focused on our neediest students. On Common Core standards, local control tells us that when states embrace standards, [federal officials] are not in a position to stop them. That ship has sailed. I can’t imagine that the administration would insist that states must abandon Common Core. On choice, it’s tricky to drive a policy agenda on something like choice when [the federal government represents] only 8 to 9 percent of school funding. How do you compel state and local taxpayers to spend their dollars on choice? That’ll be interesting to see. Having people vote with their feet makes a lot of sense, if we have the right kind of transparency, information and accountability. What do you think about Trump’s proposal to ” ” $20 billion in federal funds to create a voucher program? I think they’ll try to create a pot of money that mayors or governors would contribute to to create [vouchers]. That’s a possibility. Another possibility is   funds to support vouchers and school choice programs. Do you have any concerns about a possible drop in federal funding for early childhood education? States that have seen good results have invested heavily in early childhood education. So if we’re about results, that will continue. If I were to make a wager, I wouldn’t bet on a lot of changes for early childhood education programs like Head Start, but predicting Washington behavior is not prudent. The nation’s two big teachers unions have vowed to oppose Trump’s education agenda. How can Trump and his nominee, Betsy DeVos, avoid a big fight with unions? We do need to make a distinction between national teachers unions and teachers and what their concerns and issues are. Mrs. DeVos wants to hear from teachers. She knows what she doesn’t know, and I think she understands she needs to have good relationships to be a successful and productive secretary of education. I think her approach is going to be around the empowerment of individuals to vote with their feet to make meaningful choices. Most of our students are educated in traditional public schools, so [choice] is part of the solution but not a silver bullet. What about higher education  —   what are you concerns there? Where I would expect the Trump administration to focus is on workforce training, community colleges and people who need credentials more than BA degrees."
"President Trump and his team are filling approximately 4, 000 jobs in the federal government that are held by political appointees. Below is an index of the people appointed to Cabinet positions, key White House staff roles and lead positions at other prominent government agencies. Those requiring confirmation go through the following steps to officially get the job: nomination, Senate hearing, committee approval and, finally, a full Senate vote. (This chart was last updated on April 24, 2017.)"
"The final few days before   Donald Trump takes the oath of office will be filled with a flurry of congressional activity, as the Senate holds confirmation hearings for eight more of his Cabinet nominees. Most are expected to be fairly routine, but a few could be   affairs, including hearings for Education   Betsy DeVos and Scott Pruitt, Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing to confirm several new Cabinet members shortly after Trump is sworn in as president at noon on Friday. ”I’m hopeful that we’ll get up to six or seven, particularly national security team, in place on day one,” McConnell told reporters last week after meeting with the   at Trump Tower in New York. Last week’s hearings included several national security picks, including Defense   James Mattis, who sailed through his hearing and received a congressional waiver required due to his recent military service Secretary of   Rex Tillerson, who faced very tough questions  —   particularly from Republican Sen. Marco Rubio Attorney   Jeff Sessions, who had to defend his record on race against opposition from most Democrats and civil rights groups Mike Pompeo for CIA director and John Kelly, who was nominated to run the Department of Homeland Security. This week’s hearings are for more positions that oversee domestic policy, and discussions are likely to focus on issues like climate change and the role of public education. Here’s a rundown of what’s coming up: Betsy DeVos will have her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) committee at 5 p. m. It was postponed from last week amid concerns of incomplete financial disclosures and ethics review. The HELP committee, however, said the delay was ”at the request of Senate leadership to accommodate Senate schedule.” On Friday evening, the Washington Post reported that DeVos had left a $150, 000   political donation off of her disclosure forms. DeVos, a billionaire GOP donor who once chaired the Michigan Republican Party, is a vocal supporter of school choice and vouchers, but doesn’t have much experience in public education. She has gotten the support of many Republicans, including some who were very critical of Trump during the campaign, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush. Earlier on Tuesday, at 10 a. m. Interior   Ryan Zinke will have his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Montana Republican congressman was just sworn in to his second term and was a somewhat surprising choice for Trump, especially since he was considered to be a top GOP recruit to challenge Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester for reelection in 2018. He’s a former Navy SEAL commander who served in Iraq and was awarded two Bronze Stars. Zinke is a vocal defender of public access to federal lands, and even resigned his position as a delegate to the Republican National Committee after the party platform included support for transferring federal public lands to the states. However, environmentalists have been critical of his nomination he’s a supporter of coal, oil and gas exploration, and has backed building the Keystone XL pipeline. The middle of the week features four simultaneous confirmation hearings, all beginning at 10 a. m. The hearing for U. N. Ambassador nominee Nikki Haley before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will round out the testimonies of major members of Trump’s foreign policy team. The South Carolina governor was no fan of Trump during the primary, even directly criticizing him during her State of the Union response last year. That alone made her a surprise choice for the position, in addition to the fact that she has little foreign policy experience, so expect Democrats to grill her on international issues. She’s the daughter of Indian immigrants and was the first woman and the first minority to lead the Palmetto State. Georgia Rep. Tom Price will also testify before the HELP Committee on his nomination to be the Health and Human Services secretary, a position that’s sure to get more scrutiny as Republicans have begun pushing to repeal and replace Obamacare. Price is an orthopedic surgeon, who has been a vocal critic of the Affordable Care Act and proposed his own alternative. Even though he has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the New York Times reported that his nomination has, nonetheless, left many of the country’s medical professionals divided. NPR’s Scott Horsley reported that Price is under plenty of scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest as he seeks to overhaul the country’s healthcare system, but has recently taken steps to inoculate himself from many of his financial interests. The confirmation for Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, is sure to attract plenty of attention as he testifies before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He’s been a leading critic of the very agency he’s seeking to lead. Pruitt has been a leading opponent of President Obama’s environmental and climate regulations, according to NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce: His official biography calls him ”a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” He has repeatedly challenged the agency’s rules in court, and he has even sued the EPA for an allegedly cozy ”sue and settle” relationship with environmentalists. One profile noted that Pruitt would sue the federal government ”every chance he can get.” Pruitt is also a climate change skeptic, writing in National Review last year that: ”Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged  —   in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.” Commerce   Wilbur Ross will also have his confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which was also postponed from last week due to ethics paperwork delays. He’s a billionaire investor and turnaround specialist. And like Trump, Ross has been a vocal opponent of free trade and supports renegotiating current trade deals. Treasury   Steven Mnuchin will testify before the Senate Finance Committee at 10 a. m. on Thursday. The wealthy hedge fund manager and former Goldman Sachs executive was Trump’s chief fundraiser during the campaign. Mnuchin will face plenty of questions about his own financial interests and how he would plan to mitigate conflicts of interest if confirmed he’s promised to divest from as many as 43 companies and funds if confirmed, as well as step down from several corporate boards. However, the New York Times reported he won’t step down as an unpaid adviser for ”Steven T. Mnuchin Inc. ,” which manages his own investments. NPR’s John Ydstie also reports that Mnuchin’s time as chairman and CEO of the California bank IndyMac, which has ”been called a foreclosure machine,” is also sure to be a major focus of the hearings. Here’s what Ydstie reported in November: Mnuchin and his partners bought IndyMac on the condition that the FDIC agree to pay future losses above a certain threshold. They renamed the bank OneWest Bank and, after running it for six years, they sold it last year for a profit, estimated at close to $1. 5 billion. OneWest foreclosed on more than 36, 000 homeowners under Mnuchin’s tenure. Rick Perry will testify before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee at 10 a. m. as well on his nomination to be Secretary of Energy. The former Texas governor also briefly ran for president before withdrawing early on in the 2016 campaign he, too, was initially critical of Trump before endorsing him last May. The Austin   reports that Perry has cut ties with several oil and gas companies ahead of his hearing."
"The U. S. has released 10 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the Arab nation of Oman, reducing the detainee population to 45 in the waning days of the Obama administration. The freed prisoners were not identified by name or nationality, though the Oman News Agency, citing the country’s Foreign Ministry, reported that the 10 had arrived in the country on Monday for ”temporary residence.” Prior to Monday’s announcement, Oman had taken in 20 Guantanamo detainees over the past two years, and all of them were from Oman’s neighbor, Yemen. At its peak, Guantanamo had close to 700 prisoners. When President Obama entered office in January 2009, he immediately pledged to close the prison in Cuba, which was down to 242 detainees at the time. Many have been released to their home countries or to other nations over the past eight years. However, most of those still in Guantanamo are considered by U. S. authorities to be too dangerous to be released, and Congress has barred them from being brought to the United States.   Donald Trump recently called on the Obama administration to stop releasing Guantanamo prisoners. On Jan 3, Trump tweeted: ”There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.” The Obama administration promptly rejected Trump’s call. Trump said during the presidential campaign he would like to see additional terror suspects sent to the prison. ”We’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me, we’re gonna load it up,” Trump said last February."
"When Samantha Deffler was young, her mother would often call her by her siblings’ names  —   even the dog’s name. ”Rebecca, Jesse, Molly, Tucker, Samantha,” she says. A lot of people mix up children’s names or friends’ names, but Deffler is a cognitive scientist at Rollins College, in Winter Park, Fla. and she wanted to find out why it happens. So she, and her colleagues, Cassidy Fox, Christin Ogle, and senior researcher David Rubin, did a survey of 1, 700 men and women of different ages, and she found that naming mistakes are very common. Most everyone sometimes mixes up the names of family and friends. Their findings were published in the journal Memory  Cognition.  ”It’s a normal cognitive glitch,” Deffler says. It’s not related to a bad memory or to aging, but rather to how the brain categorizes names. It’s like having special folders for family names and friends names stored in the brain. When people used the wrong name, overwhelmingly the name that was used was in the same category, Deffler says. It was in the same folder. And there was one group who was especially prone to the naming  . ”Moms, especially moms,” Deffler says. ”Any mom I talked to says, ’You know, I’ve definitely done this. ’” It works something like this: Say you’ve got an armful of groceries and you need some quick help from one of your kids. Your brain tries to rapidly retrieve the name from the family folder, but it may end up retrieving a related name instead, says Neil Mulligan, a cognitive scientist at UNC Chapel Hill. ”As you are preparing to produce the utterance, you’re activating not just their name, but competing names,” he says. You flick through the names of all your other children, stored in the family folder, and sometimes these competing names win. Like in the classic scene from the TV show, Friends. When Ross says his wedding vows, he is asked to repeat his fiancée’s name, Emily. He says his former girlfriend’s name Rachel instead. Now Ross probably had both Rachel’s and Emily’s names in his mental folder of loved ones and a mental   ensued. And it’s not just human loved ones that are filed together. ”Whatever dog we had at the time would be included in the string along with my sister Rebecca and my brother Jesse,” Deffler says. So your family dog typically gets filed with other family members. This of course sparks the question  —   what about your family cat? ”You are much more likely to be called the dog’s name than you are to be called the cat’s name.” Deffler says. This implies that psychologically, we categorize the dog’s name along with our family member’s names, according to Mulligan. ”And we don’t do that with cats’ names, apparently, or hamsters’ names or other animal names,” Mulligan says. Maybe that’s why we call the dog man’s best friend."
"Over the past eight years, Michelle Obama  —   a former attorney with degrees from Princeton and Harvard universities  —   has dealt with a lot of cheap (and often mean) shots lobbed in her direction. But while she has her detractors, this first black first lady is widely admired  —   and not just for her famously defined arms (they even have their own Tumblr). So it’s not surprising that, in these last days of disco for the Obama administration, a few fans of the first lady would share their love for her in the   book, The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own, a collection of essays edited by author Veronica Chambers. These writers aren’t academically dissecting Obama in her role as first lady. No, these are FANS, so much so that some don’t need to call her by her last name. It’s just Michelle. Among them is a Top Chef, a jazzy jazz musician, and an original member of the Hamilton cast. Many of the essayists felt a connection, an intimacy with the first lady that Obama helped foster not just by being one of the people, but by reminding black Americans, as Chambers writes, that ”blackness is not burdensome, and we . .. have joy as a birthright.” In the book’s preface, film director Ava DuVernay declares, outright, that Michelle Obama’s mere presence in the White House was like taking a broom and sweeping out the dirt of past administrations. In one visit, Michelle supplanted the cartoons of Monica, Katrina and their representative presidencies, ripe with mishandled trust and low morals. In that one photo op, Michelle infused the image of the first lady with pride, panache and polish. Many of us saw a woman to be admired. A woman to be trusted. Scratch that. Many of us saw a Black woman to be admired. A Black woman to be trusted. There it is. Indeed. For many black women, writer Benilde Little sums up that feeling of pride meshed with admiration when she explains why she burst into tears upon seeing a   inauguration photo of the first lady in The New York Times: ”I’m just so happy,” Little writes. ”She’s just like me.” Little describes how Obama’s working    league background helped provide a more fully fleshed out portrayal of black women, something beyond the ”perfect pitch, high bourg or stone ghettoians.” While the first lady isn’t a product of the Jack and Jill set, we know her origin isn’t one of black pathology, either. Nope, her story is the norm for many black Americans: two   parents who pushed and encouraged her to aim high and do well, which she did. Then she got married and had some kids. Feminist Brittney Cooper put it real plainly in her essay: As    Michelle could correct   stereotypes of black women as neglectful parents and   welfare queens. She is, as blogger Damon Young writes in his essay, ”a regular black chick.” (He means that in a good way, trust me). While black Americans collectively saw her and saw our sisters and cousins and aunts and moms, we (black men) saw her and saw our classmates and our neighbors our coworkers and our colleagues. We saw the woman we wanted to approach, to court, to date, to commit to, to marry, and to start a family and grow old with, even if we didn’t actually realize we wanted to do any of those things before we saw her. In fact, Michelle’s   and sista girl realness comes up a lot, as writer after writer describes how she made the White House  —   and her husband  —   seem more relatable. Not all of the essays are perfect, but I don’t think readers will come away from this collection disappointed. They are reflections on a woman who feels like a good girlfriend to a large portion of the American public, though they only know her from afar. And the wistfulness in them brings to mind an oldie but goodie from Boyz II Men:"
"As President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice has grappled with with multiple crises  —   wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of the Islamic State, and cyber attacks blamed on China and Russia. Rice, who served as Obama’s United Nations ambassador during his first term, says there have been many successes over the past eight years. But she says her biggest disappointment has been the failure of the international community to stop Syria’s brutal civil war. ”I think all of us have profound regrets about Syria, because of the extraordinary human toll of the conflict, and the fact that the war has had consequences for Syria’s neighbors that are quite profound,” she said. As she prepares to leave office, Rice spoke with NPR Morning Edition host Rachel Martin in the West Wing of the White House. Obama articulated this red line that Syrian President Bashar Assad could not cross, and then he used chemical weapons and the U. S. did not respond. We were able to find a solution that didn’t necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria, in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished. Our aim in contemplating the use of force following the use of chemical weapons in August of 2013 was not to intervene in the civil war, not to become involved in the combat between Assad and the opposition, but to deal with the threat of chemical weapons by virtue of the diplomacy that we did with Russia and with the Security Council. We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile. But the fundamental problem of Syria persists, and that is that there’s an enormous human suffering. The conflict still rages and the United States, the international community, the U. N. Russia everybody else has not managed to find a negotiated solution. The Obama administration recently imposed sanctions against Russia for the cyber attack on our election. But the administration knew about the hack long before Nov 8. Why the delay? I think this is sort of a misunderstanding. We did what was the most important thing to do  —   back in October, on Oct. 7th, which was to inform the American people that indeed from the   judgment of our intelligence community and 17 intelligence agencies, that the Russian government at the highest levels was involved in cyber activity designed to influence the outcome of our election. So we wanted to the maximum extent possible inform the American people, but not to rush to react until the election had ended and we had plenty of time as we knew we would, depending on what evolved between Oct. 7th and the election itself, to calibrate what we thought was the appropriate response. I want to ask you about your successor, retired Gen. Michael Flynn. I’m not going to get into commenting on the views or the comments of my successor. My responsibility is to execute the most responsible, comprehensive, effective transition that we possibly can. That is the direction that President Obama has given and that’s what we’re doing. We’ve met for hours to try to share with our successors what we know about the challenges and the opportunities they’ve faced. We have prepared hundreds of briefing papers for General Flynn and his incoming team. Those conversations have been candid and constructive. I am not going to characterize what the next administration might do. I will ensure that we continue, up until noon on the 20th of January, to do all we possibly can, which is our sacred duty to the American people, to enable them to pick up the reins and to the greatest extent possible be ready to defend and secure this country on day one. Have you had conversations with Flynn about climate change? We’ve touched a bit on that but not in great depth. I think the incoming administration has said a number of different things on this topic. And I think we need to see where they land. It is manifestly in the interests of the United States to deal with the very real threat that climate change poses. And that’s why President Obama has worked so hard to reduce our own admissions and to lead internationally in forging the Paris climate agreement. And there are more steps that can be taken. We need to do that for our own interests, and I hope very much that as the incoming administration reviews both the domestic and international steps we’ve taken, that they’ll realize as well that it’s in our interest to continue with the Paris agreement and to deal with climate change as the real threat it actually is."
"More than a hundred female federal inmates, sentenced to   prison, have instead been held for years in two windowless rooms in a detention center in Brooklyn. Conditions for the women have been found to violate international standards for the treatment of prisoners. The problem in Brooklyn actually started in Connecticut, in what was the only federal prison for women in the Northeast. But the prison population across the country increased nearly   over the last 40 years, and men’s prisons were overflowing. In December 2012, the Bureau of Prisons decided to move the women out of the Danbury prison and move men in. The women were sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center, a jail in Brooklyn, until a new prison could be built on the site. The move was supposed to last 18 months. But nearly three years later, many are still stuck at MDC. ”We felt like we were animals that was taken to a pound and then that was it, they just closed the door and left us,” says Ramona Brant, 53. Brant was granted clemency by President Obama in February. Before that, she spent the first 19 years of a life sentence at Danbury for a nonviolent drug charge. She says it was OK  —   there were activities, jobs, access to the outdoors  —   until March 2014, when she and the others were moved to the jail. ”Little by little they started filling it up and before we knew it, it was 120 women in this one room, and it was unbearable,” she says. A report released by the National Association of Women Judges finds conditions for the women at MDC violate both the American Bar Association’s standards and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners. The judges said the women had no access to the outdoors and inmates complained of being unable to get appropriate medical care, especially gynecological care. At least one inmate was visibly pregnant. The warden told the judges the Bureau of Prisons couldn’t find doctors willing to work there. David Patton, executive director of the Federal Defenders of New York, the public defenders’ service for people who can’t afford a private attorney, says his organization has had issues with the facility for years. ”There have been maggots in the food,   mattresses, dryers that vent into the sleeping area, a lack of fresh air and recreation,” Patton says. Unlike Danbury, which is a   prison, MDC is a detention center, just meant to hold people while they await trial. ”Jails, like the MDCs, tend not to have the programming, the level of medical and mental health treatment and a whole range of other services that you find in a prison,” says David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. He points out federal courts have ruled that prisoners have the right to outdoor exercise. ”The Supreme Court has made quite clear that prison conditions that might be tolerable for a few weeks or even a couple of months can ripen into unconstitutionality if they go on for a sufficiently long amount of time,” Fathi says. Sister Megan Rice, 86, spent 13 months at MDC during her sentence for vandalizing a nuclear facility in Tennessee. She says without appropriate support, the women are denied any real shot at rehabilitation. ”They’re meant to be given opportunities to grow, to leave the prison as a more healed person,” she says. Neither the Bureau of Prisons nor the Justice Department, which oversees it, would talk on record about the conditions or the delay in returning the women to Connecticut. Meanwhile, the new Danbury facility is finally ready. The bureau says they began transferring inmates back last month."
"In one of his last moves in office, President Obama has commuted the   prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army private who leaked a massive trove of military secrets to WikiLeaks. The former intelligence analyst’s prison sentence has been shortened to expire on May 17, 2017, according to a statement from the White House. This commutation was issued along with 208 others, including one for Oscar   who was part of a militant group that fought for Puerto Rican independence. Obama also pardoned 64 individuals, including retired Gen. James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to federal authorities. Manning, a transgender woman formerly known as Bradley, had requested clemency from Obama and said her life was at risk in an   prison, as we reported. She has admitted to ”releasing more than 700, 000 documents, including battlefield reports and U. S. embassy cables.” Her lawyers at the ACLU expressed relief after the decision, saying that Manning has already served more time behind bars than any other whistleblower in U. S. history, and under difficult conditions. ”Since she was first taken into custody, Chelsea has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement  —   including for attempting suicide  —   and has been denied access to medically necessary health care,” said lawyer Chase Strangio in a statement. ”This move could quite literally save Chelsea’s life, and we are all better off knowing that Chelsea Manning will walk out of prison a free woman, dedicated to making the world a better place and fighting for justice for so many.” Amnesty International USA’s executive director, Margaret Huang, argued in a statement that the move was long overdue: ”Chelsea Manning exposed serious abuses, and as a result her own human rights have been violated by the U. S. government for years. . .. President Obama was right to commute her sentence, but it is long overdue. It is unconscionable that she languished in prison for years while those allegedly implicated by the information she revealed still haven’t been brought to justice.” House Speaker Paul Ryan released a statement protesting the commutation: ”This is just outrageous. Chelsea Manning’s treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets. President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable for their crimes.”  Sen. John McCain called the commutation a ”grave mistake” that may ”encourage further acts of espionage and undermine military discipline.” He added: ”Thousands of Americans have given their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq upholding their oaths and defending this nation. Chelsea Manning broke her oath and made it more likely that others would join the ranks of her fallen comrades. Her prison sentence may end in a few months’ time, but her dishonor will last forever.” It’s worth noting one name that did not appear on the list today: Edward Snowden. As NPR’s Carrie Johnson has reported, the NSA leaker, who is living in Russia, has also mounted ”a   bid for clemency.” Cartwright ”had been charged with falsely telling FBI investigators that he did not provide classified information for a book written by New York Times reporter David Sanger,” The   has reported."
"The education philosophy of Betsy DeVos boils down to one word: choice. The billionaire has used her money to support the expansion of public charter schools and private school vouchers. For more than three hours on Tuesday,   Donald Trump’s pick to run the Education Department handled tough questions on school choice, charters and the future of the nation’s schools from the Senate committee that handles education. In her opening remarks, DeVos made clear she doesn’t think traditional public schools are a good fit for every child. ”Parents no longer believe that a     model of learning meets the needs of every child,” she said. ”And they know other options exist, whether magnet, virtual, charter, home,   or any other combination.” The problem, say DeVos’ critics, is her faith in the free market, and that she thinks parents should be able to use   dollars to pay for alternatives outside the system. That led to this exchange with Sen. Patty Murray,  .: Murray: ”Can you commit to us tonight that you will not work to privatize public schools or cut a single penny from public education?” DeVos: ”Senator, thanks for that question. I look forward, if confirmed, to working with you to talk about how we address the needs of all parents and all students. And we acknowledge today that not all schools are working for the students that are assigned to them. And I’m hopeful that we can work together to find common ground and ways that we can solve those issues and empower parents to make choices on behalf of their children that are right for them.” Murray: ”I take that as not being willing to commit to not privatizing public schools or cutting money from education.” DeVos: ”I guess I wouldn’t characterize it in that way.” Murray: ”Well,” she said, laughing, ”okay.” Congress passed a big, bipartisan education law just a year ago  —   and, as the committee’s Republican chairman, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, pointed out during the hearing, vouchers didn’t make the cut. So he asked DeVos if, as secretary, she would try to push them onto states anyway. Her answer: ”No. I would hope I could convince you all of the merit of that in maybe some future legislation, but certainly not any kind of mandate from within the department.” Alexander is a strong supporter of DeVos, and began the hearing by saying he believes she is ”on our childrens’ side.” Also on DeVos’ side: former senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who introduced her and swung back at teachers unions and others who oppose her, in part, because the billionaire has never taught in, managed or attended a public school. In Lieberman’s words, it’s a positive that she’s not part of the ”education establishment.” ”Honestly, I believe that today that’s one of the most important qualifications you could have for this job,” he said. The committee’s Democrats were frustrated not just with some of DeVos’ answers, but also with Chairman Alexander  —   first because he chose to hold the hearing before the Office of Government Ethics could finish its review of her financial holdings, looking for conflicts of interest, and second because Alexander held senators to a strict,   time limit, prompting one of his colleagues to lament what he called ”a rush job.”"
"There hasn’t been a more controversial pick for secretary of education, arguably, in recent memory than Donald Trump’s choice of Betsy DeVos. The Senate confirmation hearings for the billionaire Republican fundraiser and activist from Michigan start today. DeVos is a champion of vouchers and expanding charter schools in a broader push for greater school choice  —   closely aligned with the views of the  . Her hearing was pushed back nearly a week because of Democrats’ concerns over her ”extensive financial entanglements and potential conflicts of interest,” as Sen. Patty Murray of Washington put it. She’s the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor  Pensions Committee, which will conduct the hearing. Here are five areas of questioning that are likely to come up: 1. Money, DeVos and her family have given more than a million dollars to sitting Republican senators, according to Federal Election Commission reports, as well as some $10 million more to superPACs and party committees. That has prompted numerous   groups, including End Citizens United, to call for some senators to recuse themselves on a DeVos confirmation vote. Given that DeVos once said she expects a return on investment for contributions, expect Democrats to challenge her on how the DeVos family has used its billions to support ballot measures, organizations, causes and politicians in Michigan, as well as some of the elected officials who’ll be sitting in front of her. 2. ESSA  Expect tough questions on   Trump’s call for redirecting some $20 billion in federal aid to school choice. Trump has yet to put any meat on the bones of that idea. DeVos will certainly be asked whether that idea might mean redirecting money from federal Title I programs for the poor and disadvantaged. Or whether the new administration will seek to reopen the Every Student Succeeds Act, which passed with rare bipartisan support in 2015. Supporters, however, say DeVos has the leadership and vision to radically shake up the federal education bureaucracy, foster change and further return power to the states. ”Betsy has worked for years to improve educational opportunities for all children,” is how Lamar Alexander,  . put it. He’s the former education secretary who chairs the committee. ”As secretary, she will be able to implement the new law fixing No Child Left Behind just as Congress wrote it, reversing the trend to a national school board and restoring to states, governors, school boards, teachers, and parents greater responsibility for improving education in their local communities.” 3. School choice, Even some proponents of expanding choice options are voicing fears that DeVos favors an unbridled approach to choice, with too little oversight and accountability. Michigan has one of the   charter programs in the country and critics point to Detroit’s troubles as one outcome of that. The state also has a high proportion of charter schools run by   organizations. That’s thanks, in part, to the advocacy and funding by DeVos, her family and the organizations they’ve supported. Sen. Murray put it this way in a release, after meeting with DeVos earlier this month: ”I continue to have serious concerns about her long record of working to privatize and defund public education, expand   private school vouchers, and block accountability for charter schools, including   charter schools.” GOP senators on the committee, meanwhile, seem thrilled that a strong advocate of greater school choice is before them. ”Looking forward to working with her,” Kentucky’s Rand Paul tweeted after DeVos was nominated. 4. Vouchers, Choice critics also worry that DeVos will push the federal government toward vouchers for private schools, a policy opponents say has amounted to a triumph ”of ideology over evidence.” ”If confirmed, would you use your position as Secretary of Education to promote the expansion of private school voucher programs in public education?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts asked in a   letter listing more than 40 issues and questions she plans to bring up. Conservatives, meanwhile, are elated that they have a nominee who they believe will stand up to teachers unions they see as major impediments to choice and change. 5. Higher ed, Where does DeVos stand on key higher ed issues of access, debt, affordability and accountability that got lots of attention during the presidential race? ”There’s not much to draw on there,” says Lauren Asher, president of The Institute for College Access  Success. During the campaign, Trump did tell supporters at a rally, ”If the federal government is going to subsidize student loans, it has a right to expect that colleges work hard to control costs and invest their resources in their students. If colleges refuse to take this responsibility seriously, they will be held accountable.” Asher hopes nominee DeVos voices support for continued tough oversight of   colleges, something the Obama administration prioritized. ”Making sure that students including veterans and service members should be protected from waste, fraud and abuse plays directly into college affordability,” Asher says. As the Century Foundation recently pointed out, Republicans have a long track record of standing up for the interests of students and taxpayers when it comes to higher education. DeVos is likely to get questions on one of the only higher ed proposals the Trump campaign outlined during the race: an   repayment plan for federal student loans that caps a borrower’s payment at no more than 12. 5 percent of his or her monthly income. Remaining debt after 15 years of payments would be forgiven under Trump’s plan. Sen. Alexander says that in higher ed, too, he’s hoping DeVos will reduce bureaucracy and help ”clear out the jungle of red tape that makes more difficult for students to obtain financial aid.”"
"Donald Trump loves superlatives: words like ”biggest,” ”best” and ”greatest” pepper many of his statements, whether at a microphone or on Twitter. But a recent poll lends him another, less attractive superlative: the lowest favorability rating of any incoming president in at least 40 years. That’s what a new ABC   Post poll shows, with only 40 percent of Americans currently viewing Trump favorably and 54 percent unfavorably. That’s the lowest favorability for any incoming president since at least Jimmy Carter in 1977 in that poll. (Carter’s data are the earliest the poll presented.) The   performer on this measure was George W. Bush in 2001, and his favorability rating was 16 points higher than Trump’s currently is. A new   poll bolsters this finding, showing Trump with 44 percent favorability (along with 53 percent unfavorability). (A Pew poll from last month had him at an even lower 37 percent.) Americans have a similarly dismal view of his transition  —   in both polls, only 40 percent of Americans said they approve of how Trump is handling his transition. According to the   Post data, that is likewise far lower than for other recent presidents. George H. W. Bush, Clinton and Obama all had transition approvals of 80 percent or higher. Even the relatively unpopular George W. Bush received 72 percent approval of his transition, according to the   Post data. (The CNN poll likewise found that only 40 percent of Americans approve of how the   is handling the transition.) Trump himself, of course, isn’t pleased with the latest numbers and used his favorite social media platform to voice his disapproval on Tuesday morning: Ironically, that kind of complaining about poll numbers may be helping to drive those poll numbers lower. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain raised this as a possibility on Tuesday. ”I think you can assume that it is because he seems to want to engage with every windmill that he can find, rather than focus on a large aspect of assuming the most important position on earth,” he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. ”And, obviously, apparently, according to the polls, many Americans are not happy with that approach, when he has not even assumed the presidency.” The tweeting itself hasn’t endeared Trump to many Americans. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that almost   of American voters believed that ”Trump should close his personal Twitter account.” Even Republicans were about evenly split, with 49 percent saying he should close the @realDonaldTrump account, compared with 45 percent who disagreed. Even this relatively low favorability, though, is an improvement over Trump’s midcampaign lows. As of April 2016, Trump’s favorability was only at about 28 percent, according to averages from RealClearPolitics. That average also trended upward after Election Day, when it was 37. 5 percent, though it has leveled off since   settling at just above 42 as of Tuesday. And Trump still won. What’s more, however ugly Trump’s numbers may be, he may take some small comfort that when he takes office, his administration won’t be the most unpopular institution in Washington  —   Congress’ approval rating is currently at 14 percent. And that Congress, controlled by Republicans, gives him wide latitude in starting out on policy."
"Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that the Obama administration is attempting to ”undermine the legitimacy” of   Donald Trump. U. S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russian government, at the direction of Putin, hacked several U. S. targets as part of an ”influence campaign” to shape the outcome of the election. More recently, an unverified document reportedly assembled by a former intelligence operative accused Trump of colluding with Russia, and the Kremlin of holding blackmail material as leverage over Trump. Both Trump and Russia have rejected the allegations. At a news conference with the president of Moldova on Tuesday, Putin was asked about the unverified dossier. He denounced it in ”colorful language,” as NPR’s Lucian Kim reports from Moscow. Putin ridiculed one of the more lurid accusations in the dossier in particular, and said the document illustrates how far Western political elites have fallen, Lucian reports. But he also rejected the broader accusations of Russian involvement. ”What we see is the continuing sharp domestic political struggle although the presidential elections are over and they ended with a convincing victory of Mr. Trump,” Putin said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency. He said the allegations of Russian interference cause ”enormous” harm to U. S. interests and are meant to ”bind the   by hand and foot” to prevent him from carrying out his campaign pledges. ”Look, how can anything be done to improve the  . S. relations if such [a] hoax as the interference of some hackers in the election campaign emerges?” Putin asked, according to TASS. Intelligence officials in the U. S. say they stand ”resolutely” behind their conclusion of hacking operations directed by senior officials in Russia, but much of the evidence they drew on for conclusion remains classified. Trump has openly challenged the intelligence community’s consensus on this issue, but last week said for the first time he ”thinks” Russia was responsible for the election hacks."
"Before Luke Whitbeck began taking a $   drug, the   ’s health was inexplicably failing. A pale boy with enormous eyes, Luke frequently ran high fevers, tired easily and was skinny all over, except his belly stuck out like a bowling ball. ”What does your medicine do for you?” Luke’s mother, Meg, asked after his weekly drug treatment recently. ”Be so strong!” Luke said, wrapping his chubby fist around an afternoon cheese stick. Luke now spends days playing with his big brother, thanks to what he calls his ”superhero” medicine, a drug called Cerezyme, which has saved his life. For the Whitbecks, finding a way to pay for the drug has been a   struggle. Their family business and its insurer cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, spreading the cost across the people it insures. Cerezyme is an orphan drug, which means it was created to treat a rare disease, one that affects fewer than 200, 000 people in the U. S. The orphan drug program overseen by the Food and Drug Administration is loaded with government incentives and has helped hundreds of thousands of patients like Luke feel better or even stay alive. But the    program has opened the door to almost unlimited price tags and created incentives for drugmakers to cash in, and to cash in repeatedly, a Kaiser Health News investigation shows. The explosion has burdened insurers as well as government programs like Medicare and Medicaid with drugs that cost up to $840, 000 a year that they have almost no choice but to pay for. The Orphan Drug Act has clearly spurred the creation of   drugs. And more are needed: The National Institutes of Health estimates that   million Americans, or about 1 in 10, suffer from a rare disease. All told, there are about 7, 000 of them. But the costs are adding up quickly. Annual sales from orphans are expected to grow 12 percent a year through 2020  —   a pace that   makers could ”only dream about,” market watcher EvaluatePharma said in its most recent orphan drug report. In 2014, the average annual price tag for orphan drugs was $111, 820 versus $23, 331 for mainstream drugs. What’s more, the number of orphan drugs is growing, and their total portion of prescription drug spending is growing, according to EvaluatePharma. Orphan drug sales worldwide are expected to account for just over 20 percent of all drug sales, excluding generics, by 2020. Europe and Japan have strong orphan drug programs as well. At Aetna, orphans are now the   part of the giant insurer’s spending on drugs and are driving up insurance premiums, said Dr. Ed Pezalla, Aetna’s former national medical director for pharmacy policy and strategy. For many drugmakers, orphan drugs look so profitable that they’re drawing attention from mass market drugs. ”Companies [are going] after the rare diseases . .. and a larger set of patients with other diseases [are] left behind,” said Alan Carr, a research analyst for Needham  Co. High prices are a reflection of the high cost of developing new drugs, said Anne Pritchett, vice president for policy and research at the industry lobbying firm Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. ”You may have a company that focuses on a rare disease area for 20, 30, years and never turns a profit [but] they keep at it,” Pritchett said. Others dispute that calculation. In a December report to Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services said orphan drugs cost about $1 billion to develop compared with $2. 6 billion for mass market drugs. The creators of the orphan drug program say the price spiral  —   and loopholes in the approval process  —   have undermined the spirit of a   law. ”What was intended for a good purpose can be used for a purpose that’s harmful to patients who can’t afford drugs,” said former U. S. Rep. Henry Waxman,  . a primary sponsor of the 1983 Orphan Drug Act. ”And it makes the whole cost of all of these pharmaceuticals much more expensive for everybody.” ”That’s not normal”  One winter day in early 2016, Meg Whitbeck stood in her Connecticut home holding a baby onesie. Meg’s days were filled with Luke spiking high fevers, rushing to the doctor’s office and watching her toddler struggle to keep food down. Just before slipping the onesie over Luke’s head, she paused. It was a   onesie Luke was 18 months old. ”That’s not normal. Babies fly through clothes the first year and a half of life,” Whitbeck said. As Meg lifted another onesie from Luke’s dresser, she took a deep breath as she realized: It was full of   and   clothes. Within weeks, Luke would be lying in a hospital bed at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital in Valhalla, N. Y. If handed a toy, he would hold it, but he lacked enough energy to play. Luke was diagnosed with Gaucher disease  —   a genetic condition that affects only about 6, 000 people in the U. S. Luke’s body lacked the glucocerebrosidase enzyme, and every cell in his tiny frame was becoming compromised. Luke’s liver and spleen were swollen, and without treatment his bones would eventually become fragile. Brain damage could follow. Some babies die before the age of 2, if they aren’t treated. Patients can live decades with enzyme replacement therapy. Dr. David Kronn, who heads the medical genetics unit at Maria Fareri, said Luke’s condition was ”quite severe” and he needed help fast. Luke immediately began treatment, but the family said it spent months uncertain whether its health insurer, Oxford Health Plans, which is owned by UnitedHealthcare, would cover the drug. The drug is made by Sanofi Genzyme and costs $6, 356. 69 for each treatment, the Whitbecks’ paperwork shows. ”At the time, there was a lot going on physically with Luke,” Meg Whitbeck recalled. In the first two months after his diagnosis, the family would receive bills and ”we were just putting it all in a pile.” In late April, the Whitbecks received a letter from the insurer asking for additional medical information to process the payments for Luke’s medicine. It was the first time, Meg said, that she became scared about how the drug would be paid for. She recalled wondering: ”How can something that’s going to keep my baby alive not be covered by insurance?” UnitedHealthcare spokeswoman Tracey Lempner said her company covered Cerezyme and the dosage suggested by the doctor from the beginning. Last May, the Whitbecks received a confirmation letter that UnitedHealthcare would cover the drug. Even then, though, the Whitbecks said they were required to get the coverage reauthorized at random intervals, ranging from three weeks to 10 weeks. And in late October, fear struck the family when a letter arrived saying Luke’s medicine was reauthorized for just one week. In an emailed statement, UnitedHealthcare said it granted a request in early November from Luke’s doctor to approve payment for a full year. The insurer declined multiple requests for interviews with executives. But Lempner stated in an email that ”specialty medications like these are among the greatest drivers of pharmacy benefit costs for all employers, individuals, insurers and the government.” At the request of Kaiser Health News, Express Scripts, which manages pharmacy benefits, analyzed the orphan drugs on its approved list, or formulary. Four orphans cost more than $70, 000 for a   supply, or $840, 000 annually. An additional 29 orphan drugs cost at least $28, 000 for a   supply, or more than $336, 000 a year. At those prices, the revenue for a an   maker can build up quickly: A $50, 000 orphan taken by 50, 000 patients could reach $2. 5 billion in annual sales a $300, 000 orphan for just 5, 000 people could hit $1. 5 billion a year. Just after Christmas, Biogen Inc. announced it would market Spinraza, its newly approved treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, for up to $750, 000 in the first year and $375, 000 in later years. Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges wrote in a note that the price could be ”the straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of the US market’s tolerance for rare disease pricing.” Executives at Express Scripts, the pharmacy that supplies Luke’s medicine, said orphan drugs like Cerezyme often have very few competing drugs that could help them drive down the cost. ”We have very little negotiating power because the pharmaceutical company can set the price and we have to be a price acceptor,” said Dr. Steve Miller, chief medical officer for Express Scripts. In the past year, the Whitbecks said, they have paid more than $17, 000 out of pocket for Luke’s medical care. Most of the cost falls on Oxford, the insurer that covers the 25 employees and their families where Drew works. The small company, owned by Meg’s side of the family, said medical coverage for its employees amounts to about $338, 000 a year, and employees don’t pay monthly premiums. The ultimate cost to the Whitbecks is unclear, but they fear the drug treatments, plus related care, could reach into hundreds of thousands per year if the reauthorizations ever stop. Meg has gone back to work part time as a dietitian, and the Whitbecks launched a fundraising effort called ”The Warrior Campaign” on social media, which shows they have raised nearly $12, 000 thus far. They also applied for $15, 000 in aid from Sanofi Genzyme’s patient assistance program. So far, the company has paid for a month of Cerezyme and provided guidance from a case manager, the family said. While she appreciates the support, Meg Whitbeck is daunted by the uncertainty of what the family has to come up with. ”We’re not going to not treat Luke, but we’re also never going to be able to pay these bills,” she said. ”It was almost laughable.” Much of the drug’s early development cost was paid for by the National Institutes of Health, according to a 1992 report from the congressional Office of Technology Assessment. The report notes that Genzyme spent about $29. 4 million on RD for the early version of the drug, Ceredase. The company quickly recovered those costs. Ceredase launched with a nearly $300, 000 price tag in 1991 as one of the most expensive drugs in the world. Cerezyme, a genetically engineered successor, came to market in 1994. French pharmaceutical giant   acquired Genzyme for $20. 1 billion in 2011. Sanofi Genzyme declined multiple requests for interviews. In an email, company spokeswoman Lisa Clemence said the company has raised the price of Cerezyme slightly since it launched and that relative to inflation, it is 33 percent less expensive today than 22 years ago. Asked how drug prices are set, Clemence emailed that it is ”determined by the clinical value they provide to patients and the rarity of the disease they treat.” Cerezyme is still the drugmaker’s     medicine, with nearly $800 million in 2015 annual sales, according to the French company’s annual financial filing. Despite competition, prices to treat Gaucher disease have not come down indeed, the newest drugs on the market are priced at about $300, 000 as well. Drew Whitbeck joked that, in the end, it all feels like Monopoly money to him. Meg would like the company to justify Cerezyme’s price. ”I totally get from a scientific point of view, what it takes to create, manufacture and deliver these medications,” she said. ”But why can’t they make it a little less expensive? What’s holding them back?”   specialty drugs, which include orphans, have seen ”incredible price increases the past few years, across the board,” said Craig Burns, vice president for research at America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents health insurers. AHIP, in a study led by Burns, found that the prices of 45 orphan drugs increased 30 percent, on average, from 2012 through 2014. Former U. S. Rep. James Greenwood, now president of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a trade group, said insurers are overstating the impact. ”The insurance industry likes to tell us that the reason our premiums [and] our copays and coinsurance are going up and our deductibles are going up” is high prices for orphans or other drugs, Greenwood said. ”It just isn’t the case.” The bulk of health care spending, Greenwood said, is for hospitals, doctors and nursing homes. Prescription drugs get attention, he said, because ”we are an easier target.”  Insurers, including UnitedHealthcare, try to mitigate the costs of orphans and other   drugs by requiring patients to pay a larger share, setting quantity limits and asking patients to try other less expensive drugs first, a process known as step therapy. Some believe that amounts to rationing. ”Nobody wants to talk about rationing, but there is already some of that anyway because of [the] levels of insurance that we have,” said   Milne, director of research at Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, ”What would God really think about this?”  In the early 1980s, Abbey Meyers was known on Capitol Hill as the housewife from Connecticut  —   an angry mother who wouldn’t put up with pharmaceutical companies ignoring her son’s illness, Tourette syndrome. A drugmaker had stopped producing medicine for the disorder, saying there weren’t enough patients to justify the cost. Meyers mobilized advocates, lawmakers and even TV actor Jack Klugman from the popular Quincy M. E. show to persuade Congress to pass the Orphan Drug Act. Under the law, companies with orphan drugs win some of the richest financial incentives in the regulatory world: a 50 percent tax credit on research and development in the U. S. fee waivers, and access to federal grants. In a 2009 webinar, an FDA official referred to the incentive package as ”our ’basket of goodies.’ ” Most important, once an orphan gains FDA approval, the agency guarantees it will not approve another version to treat that specific disease for seven years, even if the brand name company’s patent has run out. Now, three decades since the program started, Meyers is worried that corporate greed is ruining her legacy. ”They will set a price of $300, 000 a year for their drug for a fatal disease. And they’ll go to church every Sunday, and they will pray, and they’ll ask for God’s grace, you know?” Meyers said during an interview at her Connecticut home. ”I’m wondering, what does God really think about this?”  Epilogue  Just before Christmas, the Whitbecks coped with another health scare. There was a blockage in Luke’s chest port, an implanted catheter through which Cerezyme is delivered into his body each week. He needed surgery to fix it. He came down with pneumonia afterward but has recovered. ”I hope in 2017 there are no hospital admissions,” Meg Whitbeck said. Then she paused and recalled that the family hadn’t yet seen all the bills from the port surgery. The family’s savings disappeared in 2016. And the Whitbecks are still trying to figure out if they have to pay an outstanding $6, 000 bill for Cerezyme that appeared on the latest pharmacy statement. ”We’re not scared,” Whitbeck said, but ”when you’re a parent of a child with a chronic illness, you’re always walking on a tightrope. . .. Every day we have to give [Luke] the   and make sure everything is good. If it’s a good day, everything is like a normal family.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent newsroom that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN’s coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. KHN’s John Hillkirk, Heidi de Marco, Francis Ying, Lydia Zuraw, Emily Kopp, Elizabeth Lucas, Diane Webber and Marilyn Thompson contributed to this report. NPR’s Scott Hensley, Joe Neel and Meredith Rizzo also contributed."
"More than 30 years ago, Congress overwhelmingly passed a landmark health bill aimed at motivating pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs for people whose rare diseases had been ignored. By the drugmakers’ calculations, the markets for such diseases weren’t big enough to bother with. But lucrative financial incentives created by the Orphan Drug Act signed into law by President Reagan in 1983 succeeded far beyond anyone’s expectations. More than 200 companies have brought almost 450   orphan drugs to market since the law took effect. Yet a Kaiser Health News investigation shows that the system intended to help desperate patients is being manipulated by drugmakers to maximize profits and to protect niche markets for medicines already being taken by millions. The companies aren’t breaking the law but they are using the Orphan Drug Act to their advantage in ways that its architects say they didn’t foresee or intend. Today, many orphan medicines, originally developed to treat diseases affecting fewer than 200, 000 people, come with astronomical price tags. And many drugs that now have orphan status aren’t entirely new. More than 70 were drugs first approved by the Food and Drug Administration for mass market use. These medicines, some with familiar brand names, were later approved as orphans. In each case, their manufacturers received millions of dollars in government incentives plus seven years of exclusive rights to treat that rare disease, or a monopoly. Drugmakers of popular mass market drugs later sought and received orphan status for the cholesterol blockbuster Crestor, Abilify for psychiatric conditions, cancer drug Herceptin, and rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira, the   medicine in the world. More than 80 other orphans won FDA approval for more than one rare disease, and in some cases, multiple rare diseases. For each additional approval, the drugmaker qualified for a fresh batch of incentives. Botox, stocked in most dermatologists’ offices, started out as a drug to treat painful muscle spasms of the eye and now has three orphan drug approvals. It’s also approved as a mass market drug to treat a variety of ailments, including chronic migraines and wrinkles. Altogether, KHN’s investigation found that about a third of orphan approvals by the FDA since the program began have been either for repurposed mass market drugs or drugs that received multiple orphan approvals. ”What we are seeing is a system that was created with good intent being hijacked,” said Bernard Munos, a former corporate strategy adviser at drug giant Eli Lilly and Co. who reviewed the KHN analysis of several FDA drug databases. It’s ”quite remarkable that it has gone on for so long.” And the proportion of new drugs approved as orphans has ballooned. In 2015, 21 orphan drugs were approved, accounting for 47 percent of all new medicines, up from just 29 percent in 2010 in 2016, nine more orphans won approval, 40 percent of the total. (You can search a database of orphan drugs with a tool at the end of this story.) When a drugmaker wins approval of a medicine for an orphan disease, the company gets seven years of exclusive rights to the marketplace, which means the FDA won’t approve another version to treat that rare disease for seven years, even if the brand name company’s patent has run out. The exclusivity is compensation for developing a drug designed for a small number of patients whose total sales weren’t expected to be that profitable. But the exclusivity is a potent pricing tool. Drugmakers can charge whatever they want by shielding their medicine from competition. The market exclusivity granted by the Orphan Drug Act can be a vital part of the protective shield that companies create. What’s more, manufacturers can return to the FDA with the same drug again and again, each time testing the drug against a new rare disease. Critics have assailed drugmakers in the past for gaming the orphan drug approval process. But the extent to which companies have been winning approval for drugs that aren’t what advocates call ”true orphans” hadn’t been documented until the Kaiser Health News investigation. Munos said he was ”shocked” by the sheer number of mass market drugs being repurposed as well as those approved multiple times. Even agency officials said they weren’t aware of the scope of the issue. After reviewing KHN’s findings for two weeks, Dr. Gayatri Rao, director of the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development, said she ”appreciated the work” and expressed interest in studying how often drug companies are ”repurposing” a drug for a new rare disease, or taking ”multiple bites of the apple.” ”We are going to look into this,” she said, adding that she could consider a regulatory change. Rao pointed out that the ”repurposing” of drugs does have scientific and patient benefits. For example, cancer drugs approved for one type of malignancy can be tested and approved for others. Gleevec, a drug that revolutionized the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia, now has nine orphan approvals. But in a 2015 commentary published in the American Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dr. Martin Makary at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine focused on cancer drugs including Gleevec, arguing that the drug was never meant to serve an orphan population. Instead, Makary and his team wrote, drugmakers purposely identify small patient populations to gain additional approvals  —   a process he described as ”salami slicing.” ”By salami slicing the disease into subgroups, it allows them to get the orphan drug approval with all the government benefits and even some of the subsidies,” Makary said. The prices of such medications often rise because they have seven years without competition for a new set of patients, Makary added. The FDA has taken a different view of repurposing. ”We always talked about how we permit the second bite of the apple, third bite of the apple, as one small way to incentivize repurposing,” Rao said, noting that industry and patient groups have been pressing the FDA for even stronger incentives. ”Now, all of sudden, it seems like, wow, this practice may be driving up prices.” Novartis, which owns Gleevec, said in an email statement that the company is advancing research and following the science to ”bring the right treatments to the right patients based on unmet need, not the size of the patient population.” Two KHN reporters spent six months analyzing data and talking to lawmakers, patients, advocates, doctors and companies to understand how the FDA’s orphan drug program has evolved amid a national uproar over soaring drug prices.   Donald Trump vowed on the campaign trail to bring down prescription drug prices, and on Wednesday during a press conference he said the drug industry is ”getting away with murder.” The investigation examined how drugmakers use the law to their advantage  —   often with the guidance of former FDA officials  —   and have made the development of medicines that were once thought to be business backwaters into one of the pharmaceutical industry’s hottest sectors. Orphan drugs now account for seven of the 10   drugs of any kind, ranked by annual sales, according to EvaluatePharma. ”Orphans are wicked hot,” said Dr. Tim Coté, a former FDA official who now runs a consulting firm that advises drugmakers on orphan drugs. No one disputes that orphan drugs have helped or saved hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from debilitating or even fatal rare diseases. And drug industry officials say companies should be rewarded, not punished, for making those treatments possible and for pursuing new drugs that aren’t always an economic success. Research and development is ”long, costly, risky,” said Anne Pritchett, vice president, policy and research at industry lobbying group PhRMA. ”When you look at cystic fibrosis, it was 25 years to the development of an effective therapy . .. I think we would be concerned about anything that would undermine the current [orphan drug] incentives.” Former U. S. Rep. Henry Waxman,  . a champion of the 1983 Orphan Drug Act, takes a different view. ”The Orphan Drug Act has been a great success because many people with diseases that affect very few people now have drugs available to them,” Waxman said. ”But it’s been in some ways turned on its head when it becomes the basis of manipulating the system for the drug company to make much more money than they would in an open, competitive market.” Booming business  On a late summer day, Tim Coté sits in a corner office of his Sandy Spring, Md. consulting firm, Coté Orphan. He leans into his computer microphone to dispense insider knowledge about the orphan drug approval process on a webcast hosted by FDAnews, a trade news organization. Listeners have paid about $300 a head, but Coté said he wasn’t paid for doing it. The FDA is more flexible in evaluating drugs for rare diseases, he said, explaining that ”about half of them get through with just one pivotal clinical trial. Not so for common diseases.” The FDA, citing a report from the National Organization for Rare Disorders, said about   of orphan drugs were approved with one adequate and   trial with supportive evidence. It typically requires two or three such trials to approve a mass market drug. Coté also told the webinar audience that clinical trials for orphan drugs are usually smaller and the approval is a ”different scientific and regulatory experience.” Coté knows his stuff. He was Rao’s immediate predecessor as chief of the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development. It’s not unusual for government officials to leave the FDA and other regulatory agencies and obtain jobs as consultants or industry executives. Coté’s website, headlined ”The Inside Track,” notes that he oversaw applications that led to the approval of at least 150 orphan drugs when he was at the FDA and that his firm is now the largest submitter of orphan drug applications. ”We write the entire application,” the website for Coté’s company notes, adding that his staff of 25 includes regulatory scientists with deep knowledge and experience in FDA’s ”unwritten rules” regarding orphan drugs. Many of Coté’s more than 300 clients are small biotech companies  —   begun by researchers or even passionate parents who found investment backing. Parents Ilan and Annie Ganot, for example, started Solid Biosciences to find treatments and potentially a cure for their son with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Coté will guide them through the regulatory process since most don’t have the expertise. He can offer his expertise and develop an application that makes it easier for the FDA to designate and approve the drug. ”When you make the FDA smile, the value of your asset goes up. And that’s how the game is played,” he said in an interview, adding quickly, ”It’s really not a game because people’s lives are what is in balance.” Coté and other   officials play a vital role in helping drugmakers choose rare disease targets and get through the FDA approval process. A small cottage industry has grown around the Orphan Drug Act. Dr. Marlene Haffner, who preceded Coté in FDA’s orphan office, started her own consulting firm, too, to advise small and large companies on orphan drug applications. A third company is Camargo Pharmaceutical Services, led by industry veterans and former FDA officials, which advises companies focused on repurposing drugs for orphan approval. The firm tries ”to be in front of the FDA a lot  —   three to four times a month,” said Jennifer King, Camargo’s director of marketing. Fees for consulting on orphan drugs industrywide range from $5, 000 to $100, 000, depending upon the services provided, Coté said. Getting through the orphan approval process involves a series of steps. First, drugs must be designated by the FDA as potential candidates for approval. A company has to demonstrate that its drug is a promising treatment for a disease that affects fewer than 200, 000 patients. If the FDA agrees and makes the formal designation, financial incentives kick in, including a 50 percent tax break on research and development and access to federal grants. When drugs get orphan designation, companies often reap other financial rewards. Shares in publicly traded companies often rise on the news  —   sometimes soaring as high as 30 percent. That happens, in part, because orphans have a track record of being approved at much higher rates than drugs for common diseases. The 50 percent RD tax credit pays off, too. In 2012, one of the biggest orphan drug companies, BioMarin, received $32. 6 million from a combination of federal and state of California tax credits. BioMarin Spokeswoman Debra Charlesworth confirmed that the orphan credit made up the ”vast majority” of that deferred tax benefit. She also noted that credit ”has successfully fueled an industry that didn’t previously exist” and led to more rare disease research.   orphan drug tax credits cost the federal government $1. 76 billion in fiscal 2016  —   roughly what President Obama asked Congress to spend to fight the Zika virus before a $1. 1 billion expenditure was approved. And, because so many orphan drugs are under development, the U. S. could grant nearly $50 billion in tax credits from 2016 to 2025, estimates the Treasury Department. There’s a lot of creativity behind figuring out how to make a drug an orphan. In Coté’s webinar and in multiple interviews, he described many ways companies can win orphan status. They can test their drugs on children with adult diseases, such as schizophrenia, or find drugs for ailments like malaria that are uncommon in America. ”African sleeping sickness, horrible problem in Africa but not here, not in the U. S.,” Coté told his webinar audience. ”So a drug development effort that was aimed toward some of these tropical diseases can actually get all the benefits of the Orphan Drug Act.” Another popular strategy is to create     drugs that represent incremental steps forward. About 30 percent of Coté’s clients are companies looking to improve upon some other orphan drug ”which just made billions and billions,” he said in an interview. Repurposing an already approved drug is another strategy his firm promotes. In a video posted on his website in July, Coté explained the advantages for companies that can move directly into a clinical trial without much preparatory work because the drug’s safety has already been demonstrated. ”All you gotta do is establish that the product can work in this new orphan indication,” he said, adding tips on how to do it and still make money. ”That is not a true orphan drug”  Turning mass market drugs into orphans has been a familiar path for some of the most popular drugs ever discovered. AbbVie’s Humira is the   drug in the world, and most of its sales are in the U. S. where revenue reached $7. 6 billion through the third quarter of 2016 and $11. 8 billion worldwide, according to the company’s latest financial report. Humira was approved by the FDA in late 2002 to treat millions of people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. Three years later, AbbVie asked the FDA to designate it as an orphan to treat juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which, they told the FDA, affects between 30, 000 and 50, 000 Americans. That pediatric use was approved in 2008, and Humira subsequently was approved for four more rare diseases, including Crohn’s and uveitis, an inflammatory disease affecting the eyes. The ophthalmologic approval would extend the market exclusivity for Humira for that disease until 2023. When asked why AbbVie sought multiple orphan designations and approvals for Humira, the company declined to comment. Peter Saltonstall, executive director of the National Organization for Rare Disorders, said that Humira is ”not a true orphan drug.” But, he said, the company has ”the ability to go out and get orphan designation. That’s the way the law reads right now . .. they can do whatever they want to do.” It is difficult to say exactly how or if orphan exclusivity affects the price of Humira, which is a complex biologic drug and also has been protected by numerous patents. The drug has long been AbbVie’s top seller, accounting for 63 percent of its revenues, according to its most recent financial filing. EvaluatePharma notes in its recent report that Humira, as well as a handful of other top drugs, receive less than 25 percent of their sales from orphan uses. Still, if Humira’s orphan uses accounted for just 10 percent of annual sales, the revenue would surpass $1 billion. By stacking up a series of orphan disease approvals, one   exclusivity period leads into another, maximizing the length of a company’s monopoly.   Pharmaceuticals, for example, had some form of orphan exclusivity for Carnitor, a metabolic disorder drug, for more than 20 years. It received a second orphan approval four months before its first one was set to expire. And it won its third orphan approval, for an IV formulation of the drug, just one day before its second exclusivity period was set to expire in December of 1999. ”The sequence and timing of regulatory filings for Carnitor reflect the time required to conduct large controlled clinical trials, as well as evolving medical strategies and regulatory pathways pursued by different sponsors over many years,” said GianFranco Fornasini, senior vice president of scientific affairs at  . The FDA’s Rao said each new exclusivity period is disease specific and once any   period runs out, generics can come in. Gleevec, for example, won FDA approval to treat several kinds of rare cancer. All but one of its orphan exclusivity periods had expired by 2015, allowing two generics to enter the marketplace. But Gleevec still has exclusivity until 2020 to treat newly diagnosed Philadelphia   acute lymphoblastic leukemia in patients who are also on chemotherapy. It’s also true, Rao explained, that some of the drugs that go through the orphan process may not specifically treat a rare disease. For example, a very toxic cancer drug might may not work well in earlier stages because its risks outweigh the benefits. But the company may propose that it will help a smaller group of   cancer patients and win orphan approval just for that group. Former FDA orphan drug director Haffner said her FDA office worked on rules defining how companies could legitimately pursue approval for a small group of patients with a specific unmet medical need. ”People have played games with the Orphan Drug Act since it was passed,” said Haffner, who first took a job at drugmaker Amgen after leaving the FDA and then became an independent consultant. ”It’s the American way, I don’t mean that in a nasty way. But we take advantage of what’s in front of us.” In 2013, the FDA clarified the Orphan Drug Act’s regulations and said it wanted to avoid the possibility that some companies could ”potentially ’game’ approvals by seeking successive narrow approvals of a drug.” In reality, Rao said, the regulations did not really change ”much of what our practice was.” The agency wanted to address what Rao said were ”common misconceptions” and frequently asked questions, so officials changed wording in the regulations to better define exactly what could be considered an orphan drug. Breaking down larger, broader diseases into smaller groups is still allowed under certain conditions and companies can still win multiple orphan approvals for a single drug  —   even if the total population served rises above the 200, 000 mark. Amgen Inc. ’s Repatha won marketing approval and exclusive rights in 2015 for the orphan disease homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, which affects a population of about 300 people in the U. S. On the very same day, the drug was approved as a mass market drug to treat up to 11 million people with uncontrolled levels of LDL cholesterol, said Amgen spokeswoman Kristen Davis.  Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic, who ran a broader market trial on Repatha, said, ”It’s certainly not considered by any of us to be an orphan drug.” Safeguarding the prize, Considering the long history of what’s happened, Tim Coté acknowledges that there are ”some loopholes” in the Orphan Drug Act. Perhaps 3 percent or less of approved orphans were not in the ”spirit” of the law, he said. But Coté, rare disease advocates, patients and people in the drug industry expressed fear that changing the Orphan Drug Act or questioning its success would hurt the development of drugs for rare patients. Former U. S. Rep. Jim Greenwood, now president of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry trade group, said that concerns about high prices for orphan drugs aren’t justified. The incentives, he said, should not be altered because rare diseases are ”tragically killing and brutalizing mostly children.” Greenwood seemed unaware that dozens of orphan approvals stemmed from the repurposing of mass market drugs, like Humira or Enbrel, another drug developed first for rheumatoid arthritis. Still, he said, ”I would argue that the risk of losing incentives in the system far outweighs the benefit of trying to save a few pennies on the health care dollar.” It’s a sentiment that Coté and other advocates share. While talking about the $311, 000 annual   for cystic fibrosis drug Kalydeco, Coté said any parent whose child has the disease would be a big fan of the drug. ”The price point is justified because actually it has a dramatic effect on the children. Dead children . .. people are willing to pay a lot to prevent that,” Coté said. ”And that’s a real good thing that we have this drug. OK?” The first drug to specifically target the underlying biochemical defect of cystic fibrosis, Kalydeco is approved to treat a subset of patients who have specific mutations in their genes. Development of the drug was financed by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which sold its rights to sales royalties from Kalydeco and other cystic fibrosis drugs for $3. 3 billion in 2014. Others, including Henry Waxman, are far more critical and have tried to do something about it over the years. Waxman proposed multiple bills to rein in corporate profits by amending the orphan drug law that he sponsored, but none succeeded. The FDA has also tried, but failed, to keep corporations in check. In 2012, drugmaker Depomed Inc. filed suit against the FDA for refusing to give its drug Gralise seven years of market exclusivity as a treatment for pain related to shingles. Rao said the agency wanted to see proof that Gralise, a    pill, was clinically superior to other drugs, noting there ”were a bunch of other generics on the market” with different formulations and dosing requirements. Gralise’s active ingredient, gabapentin, is the same one as in Pfizer’s mass market blockbuster Neurontin, which is also approved for treatment of shingles pain. The FDA approved Gralise but denied seven years of exclusivity. In response, the drugmaker sued the agency and won its case, arguing that according to the law they didn’t have to prove their drug was clinically superior to gain the monopoly. Today, the drug is one of Depomed’s top products with sales of $81 million in 2015. And, in a recent proxy statement, Depomed listed ”protecting Gralise exclusivity” as a corporate objective under the category of ”enhance and protect future cash flow.” Its orphan exclusivity ends in 2018. Depomed spokesman Christopher Keenan said Gralise wanted patent exclusivity to block competition. But, Keenan said, ”had the patent effort failed on all fronts the Orphan Drug Designation would have been very important.” After reviewing KHN’s analysis, Rao said she wants to better understand why drugmakers are applying for multiple approvals and has asked for a    review of all orphan designations granted in 2010 and 2015. She said the agency lacks the resources to run an analysis of the entire orphan drug database. ”Our goal is to try to get it right,” she said. ”There are over 7, 000 rare diseases, likely more, the vast majority of which have nothing. . .. I want to ensure that we continue to keep our eye on that prize.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent newsroom that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN’s coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. KHN’s John Hillkirk, Heidi de Marco, Francis Ying, Lydia Zuraw, Emily Kopp, Elizabeth Lucas, Diane Webber and Marilyn Thompson contributed to this report. NPR’s Scott Hensley, Joe Neel and Meredith Rizzo also contributed. "
"The number of people 60 and older with student loan debt has quadrupled in the past decade, and older Americans now represent the   segment of the U. S. student loan market, according to a new report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As of 2015, more than 2. 8 million Americans over 60 had outstanding student loan debt  —   up from some 700, 000 in 2005. The vast majority are loans taken out by parents or grandparents to finance education opportunities for young people, with 73 percent of borrowers over 60 reporting that their student loan debt is owed ”for a child’s   grandchild’s education.” Many private student loans require students to apply jointly with a   or   the report notes, and more than half of   are over 55. The average amount owed has also increased dramatically. In 2005, the average amount owed by borrowers 60 and older was about $12, 000. In 2015, it was more than $23, 000. The increase in both the frequency and the magnitude of student loan debt has led to financial problems for some older borrowers. The CFPB report found multiple indications that people over 60 were struggling to repay student loan debt as they moved into retirement, including: Social Security is the only source of income for nearly   of people 65 and older. ”This means that benefit offsets may impose serious financial hardship for many of the affected older borrowers,” the report states. The conclusion by the CFPB is that older Americans are frequently in a poor position to handle paying back student loans on behalf of their children and grandchildren. ”Unlike their younger counterparts, who generally are expected to experience income growth over their lives, older consumers typically experience a decrease in income as they age,” the report concludes. For federal student loan programs, the CFPB recommends an ”overhaul” to help older Americans take advantage of   repayment plans. The report’s authors give the following example: ”Consider the case of a retiree whose income is limited to only her $1, 165 monthly Social Security check, which is the median Social Security benefit for an older consumer that depends on Social Security for all of her income. If this retiree has defaulted on a federal student loan, the government can deduct or ’offset’ $60 from her monthly Social Security benefit, reducing her annual income to $13, 240. ”However, by rehabilitating or consolidating her defaulted student loans, this same borrower would no longer be subject to the Social Security offset and would also become eligible for an   repayment plan. Given her low income, the [  repayment] payment formula would set her monthly payment amount to $0.” For private loans, the CFPB suggests lenders provide more and better information to students, parents and grandparents. ”Prospective cosigners would benefit from lenders and school financial aid officials providing counseling   effective information and communication regarding the liability that a   undertakes,” it says, but does not suggest federal regulation to mandate such practices."
"For several years, Oxfam International has released an annual report on global wealth inequity. The numbers were startling: In the 2016 report, Oxfam said the world’s richest 62 people owned as much wealth as the poorest 3. 6 billion. The numbers were also wrong, Oxfam announced Monday. Better data show that last year’s report should have said that just nine billionaires possessed as much wealth as the poorest half of the planet in 2016. And this year, Oxfam says, you only need eight megarich men to balance the scales with the accumulated wealth of 3. 6 billion people. The charitable organization’s executive director describes the disparity as ”obscene.” ”Inequality is trapping hundreds of millions in poverty,” Winnie Byanyima said in a statement. ”It is fracturing our societies and undermining democracy.” Oxfam’s   statistics, released shortly before the World Economic Forum began in Davos, Switzerland, are based on two sources: the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook, which looks at wealth distribution within countries, and Forbes’ annual list of billionaires, which evaluates the assets of wealthy individuals. The most recent Credit Suisse Databook used ”new and better data,” especially on the distribution of wealth in India and China, to conclude that the world’s poorest people possessed even less money than previously calculated. That meant a sudden shift in Oxfam’s numbers, too. The poorer half of the world consists of 3. 6 billion people with $409 billion, the group says. All the billionaires on the Forbes 2016 list  —   1, 810 people  —   possess as much wealth as a full 70 percent of the rest of the world, Oxfam concludes. Oxfam notes there are two common questions about its methodology. The first is whether the debt from wealthy people, like   U. S. citizens with large amounts of student loans, drags down the global wealth totals. Oxfam argues that the number of indebted   people is ”insignificant” on a global scale, and that the vast majority of people living in debt are actually poor, not just seemingly poor. The second is whether exchange rates distort the numbers, which are all converted into U. S. dollars for comparison’s sake. Oxfam says exchange rates have fluctuated over the years, while the disparity shown by Credit Suisse has been ”persistent.” ”By any measure, we are living in the age of the ” the organization writes."
"”People keep asking me, how close are we to going off the cliff,” says Dr. James Johnson, professor of infectious diseases medicine at the University of Minnesota. The cliffside free fall he is talking about is the day that   bacteria will be able to outfox the world’s entire arsenal of antibiotics. Common infections would then become untreatable. Here’s Johnson’s answer: ”Come on people. We’re off the cliff. It’s already happening. People are dying. It’s right here, right now. Sure, it’s going to get worse. But we’re already there.” His declaration came in response to a report of a woman in Nevada who died of an incurable infection, resistant to all 26 antibiotics available in the U. S. to treat infection. Her death was reported in the Jan. 13 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That kind of bacterium is known as a ”superbug,” which belongs to a family of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. In cases like the Nevada woman, who was infected with Klebsiella pneumoniae, the term ”nightmare superbug” has been coined because this particular specimen was even resistant to antibiotics developed as a last resort against bacterial infection. People in the U. S. have died from   superbug infections before. The CDC estimates that 23, 000 die every year from   infections. A British report, The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, estimates that globally, 700, 000 people die each year from infections that are  . In many of those cases, the infection’s resistance was discovered too late, perhaps before a   effective drug was finally initiated. In poor countries, those newer, more expensive antibiotics often are not available. The Nevada case is different in that resistance was discovered early in treatment, but even the drugs seen as the last line of defense didn’t work. ”This one is the poster child because of resistance across the board,” Johnson says. The woman described in the report was in her 70s and treated in a hospital in Reno. About two years ago, on an extended visit to India, she broke a thighbone, according to the report. She had several hospitalizations in India because of infections, says Dr. Lei Chen, of the Washoe County Health District in Reno and an author of the MMWR report. When the patient was admitted to the Reno hospital, health workers discovered that the bacteria specimen tested was resistant to a class of antibiotics called carbapenems  —     enterobacteria. ”Before, we could go to carbapenems, and they could reliably squash the bugs,” says Johnson. ”This case broke down even our last great gun.” The woman’s most recent hospitalization for infection in India had been in June 2016. She was admitted to a hospital in Reno in August, and state health department officials were notified that she had CRE. ”Lab results showed she was resistant to all 14 drugs we tested,” says Chen. Further tests at the CDC lab showed resistance to 26 antibiotics. She died in September of multiple organ failure and sepsis. ”This was my first time to see such a resistant pattern,” says Chen. CRE infections are rare in the U. S. The CDC does not require that hospitals report CRE cases but estimates that some 175 cases have been reported in the states as of January 2017. ”The majority of [CRE] cases still respond to one or two classes of antibiotics,” says Chen. CRE infections are more common in India and Southeast Asia. The reasons aren’t clear, but all infections spread more easily in parts of the world with inadequate sanitary facilities. Then, as people cross borders and board airplanes, the bacteria spread in the same way that brought CRE to Reno. That’s why Dr. Randall Todd, director of epidemiology and public health preparedness at the Washoe County Health District, says all hospitals should double down on preventive efforts, including a travel history. ”It’s important that health care providers and hospitals keep in mind that our world is ever shrinking,” he says. ”When someone comes in, it’s important to know where in the world they’ve been.” Then, if CRE or other resistant infections are diagnosed, the hospital can set up appropriate precautions, like isolating the patient, and immediately start lab tests to try to find an effective antibiotic. But in this case, there was no effective antibiotic. ”And we’re going to see more of these, from a drip, drip, drip of cases to a steady drizzle to a rainstorm,” predicts Johnson. ”It’s scary, but it’s good to get scared if that motivates action.” The action needed is to use antibiotics wisely, in people and in animals, so strains of bacteria don’t get a chance to develop resistance, says Johnson. And to continue research into development of new antibiotics. ”We do have some new drugs coming along, so there’s hope,” he says. But as new antibiotics become available, ”we have to use them selectively, not  .”"
"Most Broadway musicals that close after 16 performances barely prompt memories, let alone documentaries. But in 1981, the Stephen   Furth opus, Merrily We Roll Along, rolled along so bizarrely, it became the stuff of Broadway legend, worthy of a 2017  . Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened is a theatrically captivating documentary in which a director looks sideways at a musical that goes backwards. In the opening moments of the film, director Lonny Price is rummaging around in a cardboard box filled with film from an   special about Merrily. The special never aired  —   it was scrapped when the show closed so quickly  —   and he’s startled to find    footage of his younger self. Barely out of his teens, Price was cast as one of the show’s leads, along with a couple of dozen other     . Now as a   film director, he’s looking back at his own professional acting debut. Once he cues up the filmed interview, the kid staring back at him from the screen is a     innocent, thrilled to be cast in the first project director Hal Prince and   Sondheim tackled after their Broadway triumph with Sweeney Todd.  ”I walk around smiling all day,” he says. ”This show, if I never do anything again in the rest of my life, I will have had this moment. If I get hit by a truck the night after the opening, I don’t think I’ll care.” He was perfect casting for the exuberant youngster he was playing. You can hear it in his voice on the cast album, as he sings: ”It’s our time, coming through, me and you man, me and you.” This song, though, isn’t how the show starts it’s how it ends. Merrily We Roll Along is about college pals whose friendship sours over time, but as Price explains in voiceover, it’s told in a way that sweetens over time: ”The big conceit of the show is that it goes backwards,” he says. ”These unhappy characters start in their 40s, and in each following scene, it’s a few years earlier they’re a few years younger, a few years less bitter, less jaded, until finally at the end of the show they’re . .. optimistic and full of dreams, with no idea of what’s to come.” You could say that about the show’s creators, too. Prince and Sondheim were pretty young back then, and a string of Broadway hits  —   Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd  —   had not prepared them for what was about to happen with Merrily. Oh, it started out like a song  —   nothing but excitement in rehearsals, these gods of Broadway working with kids who idolized them. One youngster, Jason Alexander, remembers what it was like the first time there was an audience out front: ”I don’t think anything will ever top being behind the curtain just before the overture started at the first preview,” he recalls. (And that’s saying something  —   this is the guy who later played George on Seinfeld, after all.) But halfway through the first act, it all started coming apart. This going backwards thing, and kids playing adults . .. the audience didn’t get it. One cast member remembers whole rows getting up and leaving. Another remembers singing to the backs of people walking out, which she terms ”not a subtle cue” that the show had problems. This first part of Best Worst Thing will be absolute catnip for Sondheim fans  —   the ecstasy and the agony, as it were. And then, in the documentary’s second half, director Price does something unexpected. You think he’ll chronicle what happened to the show  —   which is basically that after it flopped, the creators figured out how to fix it so that it gets produced all the time now. Instead, he does what Merrily does: He concentrates on what everything from disappointment to wild success did to the people involved. Their trajectories are riveting, because Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened has all this footage of them when they were starting out  —   including that interview with the young Lonny Price, that the   Lonny Price was watching at the beginning of the film. He plays it again towards the end, and this time, you watch him watching. Couldn’t feel more different."
"When Morning Edition host David Greene spoke to DJ Khaled recently, there was simply too much good stuff to fit all of it on the radio. Fortunately, the show passed along to us an extended version of the interview, which opens with David explaining why this was the second time they set up an interview with the musician, producer and social media   . You should listen to the whole thing for yourself, because none of this sounds as intriguing in print as it does when DJ Khaled says it, but here are a few of the things you’ll hear. 1. When David clarifies that the ”keys” he talks about are not literal keys, but keys to success and greatness, Khaled says, ”Yeah, but there’s nothing wrong with having some nice keys that will inspire you on a chain, because I have one . .. it’s to remind me that the keys are so important.” 2. ”If you text me, I’m gonna hit you back with a key. With some type of key.” David asks what he would get back if he texted, ”Hey, what’s up? How’s New York.” Khaled: ”It’s a cold world. Bundle up.” And then he would add a key emoji, because of course he would. 3. If you follow DJ Khaled, you know that he frequently tells you that ”they” don’t want you to do whatever it is he’s telling you that you should do. Who, David asks, are they? ”They are the people that don’t believe in us, that want us to lose . .. that want us broke, that want us finished . .. they are the people that we need to stay away from. I remember, I had somebody actually come up to me and say, ’Khaled, you will be nothing, you know? Stop what you’re doing, you know? You’re just a DJ, you’re going to be local forever. You’re not going to be able to succeed.” 4. Hearing Khaled refer at one point to ”cloth talk,” David Greene of NPR’s Morning Edition asks what cloth talk is. ”Cloth talk is what we’re having right now. We’re having like serious talk.” David Greene: ”You and I are having cloth talk.” Khaled: ”Yeah, we’re having cloth talk, and it’s like having real talk, but authentic. You know? This is it.” 5. A lot of folks are familiar with DJ Khaled’s Snapchatted Jet Ski ”incident,” when he got lost in the dark during a trip to visit Rick Ross. (Take all that in for a moment.) But what you may not know  —   and what you did not hear on Morning Edition  —   is the way Khaled connects getting lost on a Jet Ski with having been at a very difficult moment in his life when he wasn’t sure he should have a baby. (Yes, really.) He also explains being pulled over by the Coast Guard  —   not for the first time. 6. Would you expect that Ed Sheeran helped DJ Khaled develop his Snapchat persona? Well, it’s true. Would you expect that Khaled first came to understand the power of his social media presence at an actual Apple store? He says this is also true. All this, plus a couple of   that you’ll have to listen carefully to even catch, in this Small Batch edition of Pop Culture Happy Hour."
"Britain’s prime minister said Tuesday that the United Kingdom will walk away from the European Union’s single market and unified court system, making a sharp break with its largest trading partner. In a speech delivered about six months after voters passed a referendum requiring Britain to leave the EU, Prime Minister Theresa May laid out a plan for what that split would look like, emphasizing limits on migration into the country. ”We will ensure we can control immigration to Britain from Europe,” May said, continuing: ”In the last decade or so, we have seen record levels of net migration in Britain, and that sheer volume has put pressure on public services, like schools, stretched our infrastructure, especially housing, and put a downward pressure on wages for working class people. As home secretary for six years, I know that you cannot control immigration overall when there is free movement to Britain from Europe.” The speech signaled that ”controlling borders and limiting immigration are more important that the benefits of free trade with the EU,” NPR’s Frank Langfitt reported from London. ”That will play well with the 52 percent of voters who backed Brexit last June,” he continued. ”But economists say, in the long run, it will make the U. K. poorer.” Tim Farron, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, told The Guardian that May’s plan would do ”massive damage” to the economy, and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told the newspaper that ”[May] makes all these optimistic statements, but every economic indicator in Britain is going in the wrong direction.” In arguing for a clean break from the EU, May said that ”no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain” in the complex negotiations necessary to untangle decades of integration with Europe. She explained that her plan was not based on ”partial membership of the European Union, associate membership of the European Union or anything that leaves us    . We do not seek to adopt a model already enjoyed by other countries. We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave. ”No, the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union,” she said. ”And my job is to get the right deal for Britain as we do.” Exactly what that deal could look like is still unclear. ”I do want us to have a customs agreement with the EU” that would govern trade with the European bloc, May said, but she added that when it comes to the details of such an agreement, ”I hold no preconceived position. I have an open mind on how we do it. It is not the means that matter, but the ends.” As The   has reported, the first step toward leaving the EU is for the U. K. to formally notify the European Union of its decision to exit, by invoking a provision known as Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, and instigating negotiation on the details of the exit that could last up to two years. May previously said she plans to begin the process by March. But before any plan moves forward, the U. K.’s Parliament must approve it, as we have reported, along with the other 27 EU member nations and the EU Parliament. ”Unless May does a complete   from here, any hope of full single market access for   Britain is more or less out of the question,” Kallum Pickering, senior Britain economist at Berenberg Bank in London, told The New York Times."
"The abortion rate in the United States fell to its lowest level since the historic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalized abortion nationwide, a new report finds. The report by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports legalized abortion, puts the rate at 14. 6 abortions per 1, 000 women of childbearing age (ages  ) in 2014. That’s the lowest recorded rate since the Roe decision in 1973. The abortion rate has been declining for decades  —   down from a peak of 29. 3 in 1980 and 1981. The report also finds that in 2013, the total number of abortions nationwide fell below 1 million for the first time since the  . In 2014  —   the most recent year with data available  —   the number fell a bit more, to 926, 200. The overall number had peaked at more than 1. 6 million abortions in 1990, according to Guttmacher. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the longstanding controversy around abortion policy, the meaning of the report is somewhat in dispute. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said efforts to help women get better access to contraception are paying off. She points in particular to recent improvements in the rate of unintended pregnancies, and a historically low teen pregnancy rate.  ”It shows that we’re finally doing a better job of helping women get access to birth control that’s affordable and that’s ” Richards said. As   Donald Trump prepares to take office, Richards is gearing up for a fight over federal funding for women’s health services provided by Planned Parenthood. Republican leaders in Congress have vowed to work with Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which requires contraceptive coverage for many women. ”We shouldn’t go backwards on access to birth control,” Richards said. Some   groups, meanwhile, argue the Guttmacher report shows new state restrictions on abortion are working. Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for Americans United for Life, said she has her doubts about the Guttmacher report  —   since the data come from surveys of abortion providers  —   but accepts the overall conclusion. She emphasized the impact of new regulations on clinics and laws requiring women seeking abortions to get an ultrasound, which she said are having a ”real, measurable impact on abortion.” ”These have been   and we see the abortion rate dropping in response,” Hamrick said. Hamrick said she believes abortion numbers are also falling in part because public sentiment is turning against abortion  —   although surveys by the Pew Research Center show opinions on abortion have been largely stable over the past two decades. The Gallup polling firm has found Americans largely divided on abortion in recent decades, with a majority labeling themselves ” ” in a 2015 survey. The Guttmacher report says abortion restrictions do appear to be a factor in the declining numbers in some states. But principal research scientist Rachel Jones, lead author of the report, said that’s not the whole story. She noted that abortion declined in almost every state, and ”having fewer clinics didn’t always translate into having fewer abortions.” A more important driver of the declining abortion rate, Jones said, appears to be improved access to contraception, particularly   birth control options like IUDs. She noted that women in the United States have been using the highly effective devices in growing numbers for more than a decade, and said the declining birthrate suggests more women are preventing unwanted pregnancies. ”Abortion is going down, and births aren’t going up,” Jones said.  Chuck Donovan, president of the   Charlotte Lozier Institute, called the drop in the abortion rate ”good news,” regardless of one’s political point of view. He said there are likely a number of factors behind the decline. ”By and large, this is encouraging for a country that obviously remains deeply divided and discomfited about the benefits of abortion to the public,” Donovan said. But when it comes to abortion, common ground is hard to find. The Guttmacher Institute’s Jones said the data may signal that some women who want abortions can’t get access. ”If there are women in these highly restrictive states who want abortions but can’t get them because there aren’t any clinics that they can get to, and that’s why abortion’s going down, that’s not a good thing,” Jones said. ”But we think the story that’s going on in a lot of situations, in a lot of states, is that fewer women are having unintended pregnancies and in turn fewer abortions, and that is actually a good story.”"
"A Nigerian military strike on a camp for internally displaced persons in northeast Nigeria has killed dozens of people, according to Doctors Without Borders. Teams from the organization, also known as Médecins sans frontières, said in a statement that they’ve counted 52 dead and 120 wounded as a result of the strike on the camp in Rann. They’re treating the injured and preparing to evacuate patients from the camp. The bombing was accidental and happened during an air force mission targeting Boko Haram insurgents in restive Borno State, according to tweets from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. ”This   attack on vulnerable people who have already fled from extreme violence is shocking and unacceptable,” Dr.   Cabrol, MSF director of operations, said in a statement. ”The safety of civilians must be respected. We are urgently calling on all parties to ensure the facilitation of medical evacuations by air or road for survivors who are in need of emergency care.” Photos from the camp released by MSF show rows of newly dug graves and   injured civilians waiting for treatment. Other civilians survey the damage and look through   ruins. The organization adds that its teams are ”in shock following the event.” The Nigerian air force has been intensively targeting the extremist organization in the northern area of the country. As NPR’s Ofeibea   has reported, up to 2. 5 million people have been displaced from the fighting. ”This is the first time during Nigeria’s   campaign against Boko Haram that the military has acknowledged a large number of civilians killed in a mistaken bombardment,” according to The Washington Post. ”It remains unclear how the military could have mistaken a camp with 25, 000 displaced people for a terrorist enclave.” Buhari pledged the federal government’s support ”in dealing with the situation and attending the victims.”"
"In an article last month on state goals for 2017, China’s Xinhua news agency reported, ”China has lifted 700 million people out of poverty through more than 30 years of reform and ” while aiming to ”lift” 10 million more in the coming year. For some, the verb choice conjures an image of the giant hands of a powerful and magnanimous government carefully extracting villagers from their rundown   homes and then delicately depositing them inside new urban apartments with modern amenities. Others, though, don’t give the expression much thought. The term has been used by China’s   media for more than a decade, long enough for Western media like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters (among others) to parrot it with regularity whenever China’s poverty alleviation goals reach a new high. But who’s really doing the lifting? Is it China’s government through policies that have created jobs, alleviated poverty in the countryside and provided social welfare to hundreds of millions? Or, as has been pointed out by skeptics, did Chinese people lift themselves out of poverty once Mao and his horrific political campaigns expired, allowing China’s leaders to replace terror and madness with rational economic policies that ensured people’s hard work is rewarded with capital? The question has inspired many a debate about the role of government policy versus the will of the individual in China, but whoever deserves credit (experts would argue both) credit is certainly due. What China  —   its government and its people  —   have achieved is unprecedented in human history: Around 700 million Chinese have worked their way above the poverty line since 1980, accounting for   of global poverty reduction during that period. (According to the World Bank more than 500 million Chinese lifted themselves out of poverty as China’s poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 6. 5 percent in 2012, as measured by the percentage of people living on less than $1. 90 a day). I’ve refrained from using the term ”lifted out of poverty” in the previous sentence, and what’s curious is that China’s state media does the same when reporting this news in Chinese to its own people. While China’s largest   news organizations routinely boast about China lifting its people out of poverty in their   editions, these same news organizations avoid the term in their native language. The Chinese name of the government’s   campaign is ”fupin kaifa” (扶贫开发) literally translated ”assist the poor and develop,” and   reports about poverty alleviation in the   media are peppered with terms like ”tuopin” (脱贫) ”shake off poverty,” ”jianpin” (减贫) ”reduce poverty,” ”xiaochu pinkun” (消除贫困) ”eliminate impoverishment” and ”zhaiqu pinkunmao” (摘去贫困帽) ”taking off the poverty hat.” ”Lifting” people out of poverty is nowhere to be seen. The term seems reserved exclusively for state media’s English language publications aimed at foreign readers. Why? One likely answer is a government bent on cleaning up its human rights record to the   developed countries of the West. Each year, China’s State Council releases a white paper on the country’s human rights progress, and poverty alleviation is usually    in the report. An editorial in the People’s Daily earlier this year complained that ”certain countries” don’t consider China’s poverty alleviation to be an achievement in human rights, writing that human rights have ”various manifestations due to different circumstances in different countries. In China, poverty alleviation, health care and social security are proof of the country’s progress in human rights.” It’s a point that’s hard to argue with, whoever is responsible for the heavy lifting."
"In a major speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Chinese President Xi Jinping positioned himself as a defender of globalization and free trade. It was the first time a Chinese head of state has appeared at the annual meeting of political and financial powerhouses, and the speech was one that would have been ”unthinkable” from former Chinese leaders, The Guardian reports. U. S.   Donald Trump, days away from his inauguration, was not in attendance at Davos, and Xi never uttered his name. But many of the Chinese president’s statements were clearly responding to rhetoric from Trump and his supporters, who have sharply rejected globalization and many existing trade deals. ”No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war,” Xi said at Davos, according to a Reuters translation. He compared protectionism to ”locking oneself in a dark room,” keeping out ”light and air” as well as any potential dangers. Xi said there’s ”no point” in blaming economic globalization for the world’s problems, many of which have nothing to do with global trade, The Telegraph reports. And even though some problems are linked to globalization, that’s ”no justification to write it off altogether,” the Chinese president said. He called for countries to maintain their commitments under the Paris climate accord Trump, during his campaign, promised that the U. S. would drop out of the pact. Overall, the speech ”underscored Beijing’s desire to play a greater global role as the United States turns inward,” Reuters writes. Other observers drew the same conclusion. Ambrose   of the Telegraph said Xi was ”throwing down the gauntlet” as Trump’s inauguration approaches. One expert told The Washington Post this could be seen as a turning point where China moved toward filling a ”global leadership role” that the U. S. has played for a century and now might be abandoning. While the speech was   by the crowd at Davos, according to The Guardian, there’s also a healthy dose of skepticism about China’s actual commitment to global free trade  —   let alone concerns over human rights or censorship. In The Wall Street Journal, before Xi’s speech, Andrew Browne anticipated that Xi would present himself as ”globalization’s great defender.” But he wrote that Xi’s vision of globalization is different than the cosmopolitan vision of many Davos attendees. Xi values national,   identity over multiculturalism, and ”insists on absolute state sovereignty,” Browne writes. Browne argues that Xi’s plan to invest in global trade infrastructure is intended not ”so much to collapse national boundaries as to pull neighboring countries into China’s geopolitical orbit.” In Fortune, Scott Cendrowski described Xi as idealizing ”a troubled China,” noting that while he presented China as being open for global trade, businesses that work in China express concerns over ”unfair regulations, unclear laws and Chinese protectionism.”"
"In a presidential campaign marked by harsh rhetoric, Donald Trump directed some of his strongest words toward China. He called the Chinese government a currency manipulator, threatened to impose tariffs on goods imported from one of America’s leading trade partners and repeatedly vowed to get tough on China. Now, as   Trump is sounding the same notes. He caused a veritable earthquake in U. S.  relations just by taking a call from Taiwan’s President Tsai  . This challenged the bedrock of U. S. relations, the ”One China” policy, under which the U. S. officially recognizes only the government in Beijing, though it also conducts business with Taipei. And at his confirmation hearing last week, Trump’s choice for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, unleashed another salvo. Though it was just one line in a   hearing, he suggested a Trump administration would be willing to wage a showdown over China’s recent island building in the South China Sea. ”We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island building stops,” Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ”And second, your access to those islands is also not going to be allowed.” Since 2013, China has built seven islands in the South China Sea. An international tribunal last year rejected China’s claims to those artificial islands  —   and its claims to much of the South China Sea. In the meantime, China has also militarized the islands by building airstrips and installing   guns on them. Since Trump is not yet in office, and Tillerson hasn’t yet been confirmed, it remains unclear whether Tillerson’s statement was a genuine policy position or just   rhetoric as Trump and his team prepare to assume power. A number of Asia analysts believe Tillerson likely misspoke or overstated the positions a Trump administration will take. ”What I think he meant was that we will not let the Chinese use these new airbases on these reclaimed islands to establish dominance” in the South China Sea, says Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Green, a former National Security Council senior director for Asia, says the Trump administration could increase the U. S. Navy’s presence in the South China Sea and the frequency of patrols  —   strategies the Obama administration pursued, but only to a limited degree. ”My guess is that [Tillerson] was referring to options such as that  —   but not stating that the U. S. would blockade or interdict Chinese ships approaching those islands,” says Green. Green says the lack of clarity may be due to the lack of seasoned policy makers in the Trump transition team and the limited input from the State Department. ”I think the process has been less conducive to a careful and thorough consideration of exact wording than in the past,” he says. The Chinese media was less charitable in its assessment. The China Daily called Tillerson’s remarks ”a   of naivety, shortsightedness,   prejudices, and unrealistic political fantasies.” So was David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. ”This is insane and totally unenforceable, not to mention very     probably not logistically feasible, and highly provocative and ” he says of Tillerson’s comments. Taken at face value, the remarks call for a Cuban Missile   blockade that would prevent the Chinese from accessing the islands they claim in the South China Sea. Doing that would be no easy task for the U. S. Navy. China’s Navy has been rapidly modernizing in recent years and while it is ”not going to be able to defeat the U. S. necessarily, they will certainly be able to punish U. S. forces in the region in a way they couldn’t before,” says Avery Goldstein, director of Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania. The danger is that a small incident in the South China Sea could quickly escalate into a major conflict. There is another way to look at Trump’s approach so far. Almost every recent U. S. president has said on the campaign trail that he would take a tougher stance with China. That list includes Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. ”This approach is not unprecedented,” says CSIS’s Green. ”Typically, what happens in every case is that within a few months or a year or two, the policy calibrates and they go back to the norm.” Goldstein, of the University of Pennsylvania, says Trump might be using tactics he learned in the business world, where you often stake out your toughest positions in the beginning. ”Perhaps this is just an attempt to gain bargaining leverage so that at some point, you make a deal that is better than the one you would’ve gotten if you’d been flexible at the beginning,” he says. It might work. Or backfire. China has come a long way in recent years and is increasingly assertive in the international arena. President Xi Jinping is no one’s idea of a pushover. ”The devil,” says Goldstein, ”is in the details. All we have so far are comments and tweets. Until they take office and formulate and implement policy, we can’t be sure.” Nishant Dahiya is NPR’s Asia editor."
"The first time I tasted chamoy was in the Mexican border town of Eagle Pass, Texas. At a street cart vendor, chamoy apples sat alongside elotes and tamales. The tart Granny Smith was rolled in a thick paste that was sweet, salty, spicy and sour all at once. As I took the first bite, I thought: ”There is no way this is gonna work.” But it did, and after that, the mere thought of chamoy made me salivate like a Pavlovian dog. I had to learn more about it. In Mexico, chamoy comes in many forms. Originally, it was a salted dried fruit (saladito) traditionally made from prunus mume, more commonly known as an ume plum (even though it’s technically a small, sour apricot). But other fruits like sour green mangoes or tamarind pods are common. Chamoy also comes as a sauce and seasoning powder, both spiked with Mexican chiles, as well as a golosina, or Mexican candy. It can be sprinkled on fruits and vegetables or drizzled on chips (especially tostilocos, tortilla chips topped with a variety of condiments). It can come as a    paleta (Mexican popsicle) or raspado (shaved ice). But this Mexican snack actually started off as a Chinese one, and took hundreds of years to work its way into popular Mexican culture. Rachel Laudan, the first food historian to track chamoy’s journey, explains that it is ”a Mexican rendering of see mui,” a salty, dried apricot common in China, as well as the inspiration for Japanese umeboshi, a pickled, salted apricot. Laudan isn’t sure when see mui came to Mexico, but says that Asians have been migrating to the country since the 1560s in Spanish ships that traded Chinese silk and spices for silver. Laudan only figured out chamoy’s Chinese heritage because she had lived in Hawaii, where she encountered crack seed, which is essentially chamoy’s sister. Crack seed is a salted, preserved   apricot that is cracked so the exposed seed will impart flavor. She learned that the Cantonese name for crack seed is see mui, and it came to Hawaii with Chinese plantation workers in the 19th century. See mui is pronounced ”see moy,” which sounds like ”chamoy.” Mexico reinvented chamoy as a sauce and candy with chiles, while Hawaii launched entire stores dedicated to crack seed made from different types of fruit. ”I moved to Mexico in the ” Laudan says, ”and all of my Mexican friends agree that chamoy . .. really wasn’t around [nationally] until 1990.” It spread in large part thanks to the major Mexican confectionery company Dulces Miguelito, which began   chamoy in the 1970s. ”It’s a very important flavor for Mexicans, especially if you grew up in Mexico,” chef Gabriela Camara says. She owns Cala and Tacos Cala in San Francisco, as well as several Mexico City restaurants. Camara grew up in both Mexico City and Tepoztlan, Morelos. She remembers eating Miguelitos chamoy on top of Cazares, spicy corn chips. Dominica Salomon, chef and owner of Cosecha in Oakland, Calif. agrees that ”It’s typical of the Mexican palate  —   they want all of the different taste buds going off at the same time. And chamoy ties all of that in.” Salomon grew up in Los Angeles, and her first taste of chamoy was saladitos. ”From as far back as I can remember, I always had a saladito in my mouth,” she shares. ”You’d have to keep it in your mouth a long time until it softened up so you could eat the dried fruit off of the seed.” But not all chefs like chamoy, especially because much of it is heavily processed. Silvana Salcido Esparza, owner of the Bario Cafe in Phoenix, has strong feelings against it. ”Ha, chamoy. I love to hate it,” she says. ”Sabritas [chips] is king in Mexico, and together with chamoy is making Mexico the most diabetic country in the world. And it’s nothing that can’t be produced naturally.” She teaches children to make chamoy from plum or apricot marmalade, ground chile de arbol, lime juice and sea salt. Norma Listman, a private chef and writer currently living in San Francisco, Nayarit, Mexico, agrees. She grew up eating chamoy candy and sauce on fruit, but as an adult feels it is ”processed . .. so I wanted to make my own.” Using tips from working in a Japanese restaurant that makes its own umeboshi, she blends   underripe ume plum with hibiscus flowers, dried chiles, lime juice, vinegar, honey, salt, water and rose water. It’s fitting that she uses an Asian pickle recipe as the base for her chamoy. It’s part of the reason she moved near the Bahía de Banderas, Mexico, a base for international trade. ”It’s full of Asian ingredients,” she says. ”I wanted to come here to study the huge Asian influence of the area.”  Since that first chamoy apple, my interest has grown into a   obsession. I carry a bottle of chamoy sauce in my purse, make Silvana Salcido Esparza’s dip for mandarins and mangoes, and rim tamarind margaritas in Miguelitos chamoy powder. I’ve even found a Japanese farmer that grows ume, so come spring, I will be making my own homemade version. That apple was the first step down the rabbit hole of chamoy, and I’m not looking back. Leena   is a San   food and culture writer. Her work can be found here. "
"Several times a month, you can find a doctor in the aisles of Ralph’s market in Huntington Beach, Calif. wearing a white coat and helping people learn about food. On one recent day, this doctor was Daniel Nadeau, wandering the cereal aisle with Allison Scott, giving her some ideas on how to feed kids who studiously avoid anything that tastes healthy. ”Have you thought about trying smoothies in the morning?” he asks her. ”The frozen blueberries and raspberries are a little cheaper, and berries are really good for the brain.” Scott is delighted to get food advice from a physician who is program director of the nearby Mary and Dick Allen Diabetes Center, part of the St. Joseph Hoag Health alliance. The center’s ”Shop with Your Doc” program sends doctors to the grocery store to meet with any patients who sign up for the service, plus any other shoppers who happen by with questions. Nadeau notices the    boxes in Scott’s shopping cart and suggests she switch to whole grain pasta and real cheese. ”So I’d have to make it?” she asks, her enthusiasm waning at the thought of how long that might take, just to have her kids reject it. ”I’m not sure they’d eat it. They just won’t eat it.” Nadeau says sugar and processed foods are big contributors to the rising diabetes rates among children. ”In America, over 50 percent of our food is processed food,” Nadeau tells her. ”And only 5 percent of our food is   food. I think we should try to reverse that.” Scott agrees to try more smoothies for the kids and to make real macaroni and cheese. Rack up one point for the doctor, zero for diabetes. A small revolution brewing, Nadeau is part of a small revolution brewing across California. The    movement has been around for decades, but it’s making inroads as physicians and medical institutions make food a formal part of treatment, rather than relying solely on medications. By prescribing nutritional changes or launching programs such as ”Shop with Your Doc,” they’re trying to prevent, limit or even reverse disease by changing what patients eat. ”There’s no question people can take things a long way toward reversing diabetes, reversing hypertension, even preventing cancer by food choices,” Nadeau says. In the big picture, says Dr. Richard Afable, CEO and president of St. Joseph Hoag Health, medical institutions across the state are starting to make a philosophical switch to becoming a health organization, not just a health care organization. That sentiment echoes the tenets of the Therapeutic Food Pantry program at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, which completed its pilot phase and is about to expand on an ongoing basis to five clinic sites throughout the city. The program will offer patients several bags of food prescribed for their condition, along with intensive training in how to cook it. ”We really want to link food and medicine, and not just give away food,” says Dr. Rita Nguyen, the hospital’s medical director of Healthy Food Initiatives. ”We want people to understand what they’re eating, how to prepare it, the role food plays in their lives.” In Southern California, Loma Linda University School of Medicine is offering specialized training for its resident physicians in Lifestyle Medicine  —   that’s a formal subspecialty in using food to treat disease. Research on the power of food to treat or reverse disease is beginning to accumulate, but that doesn’t mean diet alone is always the solution, or that every illness can benefit substantially from dietary changes. Nonetheless, physicians say they look at the cumulative data and a clear picture emerges: that the salt, sugar, fat and processed foods in the American diet contribute to the nation’s high rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of deaths from heart disease and stroke are caused by high blood pressure, tobacco use, elevated cholesterol and low consumption of fruits and vegetables. ”It’s a different paradigm of how to treat disease,” says Dr. Brenda Rea, who helps run the family and preventive medicine residency program at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. Choosing which foods to prescribe, The lifestyle medicine subspecialty is designed to train doctors in how to prevent and treat disease, in part, by changing patients’ nutritional habits. The medical center and school at Loma Linda also has a food pantry and kitchen for patients. Many people don’t know how to cook, Rea says they only know how to heat things up. That means depending on packaged food with high salt and sugar content. So teaching people about which foods are nutritious and how to prepare them, she says, can actually transform a patient’s life. And beyond that, it might transform the health and lives of that patient’s family. ”What people eat can be medicine or poison,” Rea says. ”As a physician, nutrition is one of the most powerful things you can change to reverse the effects of chronic disease.” Studies have explored evidence that dietary changes can slow inflammation, for example, or make the body inhospitable to cancer cells. In general, many lifestyle medicine physicians recommend a   diet  —   particularly for people with diabetes or other inflammatory conditions. ”As what happened with tobacco, this will require a cultural shift, but that can happen,” says Nguyen. ”In the same way physicians used to smoke, and then stopped smoking and were able to talk to patients about it, I think physicians can have a bigger voice in it.” This story originally appeared on the website of member station KQED in California."
"There’s the heroic,   medical care that saves us from crises. And then there’s the    incremental medical attention that doctors provide for weeks, months, years, even decades in the attempt to heal complex conditions. As a surgeon, The New Yorker’s Atul Gawande practices the heroic type of medicine. In his new article, ”Tell Me Where It Hurts,” Gawande examines the quieter side of health care. Chronic diseases including heart disease, cancer, Type 2 diabetes and arthritis have become the leading causes of death and disability in the U. S. Gawande argues that it’s time for the health care system to discover the heroism of ”the incremental.” Gawande discusses his article with NPR’s Robert Siegel, touching on the status of incremental medicine and what a shift in healthcare might mean for primary care in upcoming years. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Interview Highlights, On a case that shows the importance of incremental medicine, ”I start out the story with a man who has the worst chronic migraine headaches imaginable. He has suffered for decades with headaches on almost a daily basis: More days of the month with a terrible headache than not, to the point of throwing up. It’s hard to keep your job, hard to make things work. He’d seen all kinds of doctors who offered all kind of fixes, and nothing ever worked. But then he found a physician who saw him regularly over three years. Dr. Elizabeth Loder, whose career has been built on paying enormous attention to ’Let’s try a little something now, see what happens, tweak it again, tweak it again.’ The problem in our existing health care system is that it’s not made to put great value in opportunities that take time to pay off. What [the migraine patient] would have received in an emergency room would be a shot of morphine, a CT scan. ..and be sent on his way. Cured for an hour or two only to have it come back again later. But after three years [of working with Dr. Loder,] at the age of 62, his headaches were cured. And that’s the opportunity we’re missing.” On who decided emergency care should be most valuable, ”We all decided it. If you go back to the 1940s or 1950s, medicine was really only able to rescue. It was an amazing thing that we could bring on antibiotics like penicillin to cure bacterial diseases, or do operations to take care of problems like heart conditions. Primary care physicians couldn’t do much. We didn’t know high blood pressure was one of the biggest problems we have, much less how to address it. Fast forward to where we are now. Only half of people [with high blood pressure] have their blood pressure controlled and are receiving adequate treatment for it. And what it takes to control blood pressure is    incremental investment. And we don’t make it. We wait for the heart attack or kidney failure caused by the high blood pressure. It’s too little too late, and at great expense. We raid our commitment to maintenance and prevention to put money into that expensive back end rescue. And that’s what has to shift.” On what a rollback of Obamacare might mean for primary care, ”Obamacare put incentives in [health care] that strengthen and give resources to primary care clinicians to have more team oriented care, and even for people to reach outside the clinic and serve you virtually. Some areas of the country are already doing the majority of their visits by virtual means. [Clinicians] are in touch with you in many different ways. But that’s what we miss, that’s what’s at stake if we repeal legislation without replacement that keeps this kind of direction moving.”"
"Kenya is gearing up for what will no doubt be a contentious presidential election this August. That means the major political parties and coalitions have begun their     schemes. The ruling Jubilee Party had fireworks and confetti, and the newly minted opposition coalition, the National Super Alliance or NASA, decided to send supporters knocking on doors in search of millions of new voters. Mishi Mboko, an opposition member of Parliament in the NASA coalition, has a less conventional idea to encourage new voters: Women in areas where the opposition holds sway should refuse to have sex with their spouses unless they register to vote. ”Sex [is] a powerful weapon to make reluctant men rush to register as voters,” the Standard newspaper reports Mboko said. ”Women, this is the strategy you should adopt,” the paper quotes her as saying. ”It is the best. Deny them sex until they show you their voter’s card.” (Her own husband has already registered, Mboko told the paper). Now, the tactic is not new. Back in 2009, women’s rights groups in Kenya called for a weeklong sex strike to try to get   Mwai Kibaki and   Minister Raila Odinga to make peace and save a fragile coalition government. In Liberia, women went on a sex strike in the early 2000s as the country’s civil war came to an end. One of them was 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee. Since then, the idea of using a sex strike for political leverage has been tried by women in Colombia in 2006, 2011 and 2013 and in the Philippines in 2011. That same year, a senator in Belgium called a sex strike to force a deadlocked parliament into forming a government. So, does it work? In her 2011 memoir, Gbowee wrote that the Liberian sex strike ”had little or no practical effect.” But it certainly garnered the peace movement media attention and is still, she wrote, the thing everyone asks her about. It’s hard to say what effect the other sex strikes may have had, but the violence in Colombia receded, a government formed months later in Belgium and Kenya’s coalition survived. As for Kenya’s opposition voter registration drive, more publicity doesn’t sound  ."
"In the early morning hours of Nov. 10, not long after Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, Phillip Atiba Goff, the head of the Center for Policing Equity in New York, fired off an email meant to encourage his colleagues, who worried that their work was about to be sidelined. They had spent several years working with police departments, examining the use of force by officers and the role race plays in such cases. Their research had gained fresh attention and urgency as issues of race and policing moved to the forefront of the national conversation. And as people took to the streets to protest the   deaths of unarmed   following encounters with the police, the Obama White House met with organizers from the nascent Movement for Black Lives and convened a national task force on policing. Then Trump, who had run on a ”law and order” platform that was far less sympathetic to calls for police reform than it was to the police themselves, won the election. So Goff told his colleagues that their research into police use of force  —   an area around which there remains a frustrating lack of comprehensive data  —   was likely to matter even more. Policing, he told them, was likely to be the mechanism by which the country dealt with some of its most intractable political problems, like immigration and urban violence and, potentially, the targeted monitoring of certain communities. If newly emboldened law enforcement agencies were going to be involved in more aspects of American life, Goff said, many people  —   activists, researchers, policymakers, communities  —   were going to need as much information as they could get about what they were doing and how. ”I told them that our work was going to be more important than ever,” Goff told me in a phone conversation last month. The national debates over race and policing were rancorous and polarized under the Obama administration, which often strained mightily to validate the concerns of both police and the communities they policed. But in the wake of scathing federal investigations of major police departments, the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama to attorney general, and recent survey data showing stark racial and partisan divides on issues of policing  —   even among officers themselves  —   it seems that those debates are about to become even uglier. The civil rights division of the Obama Justice Department has opened 25 ”pattern and practice” investigations into local law enforcement agencies since 2009 that it said had a stated focus on ”systemic police misconduct rather than isolated instances of wrongdoing.” Some of those investigations ended in federal lawsuits meant to push those police agencies toward reform. (Under Obama, 11 law enforcement agencies entered into consent decrees, compared to just three under President Bush.) But during the confirmation hearing for Sessions, the Alabama senator questioned whether police departments were being treated fairly by the Obama administration’s Justice Department. ”These lawsuits undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing their work consistent with fidelity to law and fairness, and we need to be careful before we do that,” Sessions said last week. His intimation that incidents of police misconduct are driven by the behavior of a few bad apples lines up with the responses to a new survey of police officers released last week by the Pew Research Center. The overwhelming majority of the officers who responded to the national survey said that their jobs had become more difficult following several   incidents of police violence against black people. But Pew found some telling racial splits among the respondents: White officers, for example, were much more likely than their black colleagues to see the death of black people at the hands of police as ”isolated incidents rather than signs of a broader problem.” Most white respondents were skeptical of the motives of the protesters, with only about a third saying they felt protesters were demonstrating in order to hold officers accountable. White officers were much, much more likely to say that the country had made the changes necessary to bring about equal rights for black people: 92 percent of white officers felt this way only 29 percent of black cops said the same. But the timing of Sessions’ comments was remarkable, coming the same week that saw Baltimore enter into a consent decree with the DOJ after a federal investigation found that officers had regularly roughed up citizens of the predominantly black city when it wasn’t ignoring their calls for help. That same week, the federal government rushed to release a report highly critical of the police department in Chicago, contending that officers there regularly violated the rights of citizens  —   shooting at the backs of fleeing suspects, using tasers against people who posed no threat, and regularly using force against children. (Our colleague, Camila Domonoske, highlighted some of the most chilling findings from the   report here.) And as unsettling as those details were, they weren’t terribly different from the findings about police departments in cities like Albuquerque, N. M, Newark and Ferguson, Mo. all of which also entered into consent decrees with the federal government. We’ve yet to see whether those federal interventions into local policing will improve the relationships between the police and the policed. As the Washington Post found, consent decrees tend to yield mixed results because cities are so different  —   and it’s still not clear what will happen to the open investigations and consent decrees under the Trump administration. But one effect of these findings has been to corroborate the experiences of the residents in those cities  —   particularly those in communities of color  —   who have complained about the ways the police in their neighborhoods have long operated. If the pendulum of federal action is indeed swinging back to   days, the next Ferguson or Baltimore or Chicago will play out against an even more fractious backdrop in which there is effectively no official acknowledgment that there was a problem to begin with. By itself, removing that official vindication changes  —   maybe even jeopardizes  —   the prospects for police reform in the near term. ”Without the moral weight of the White House . .. behind reform, there is [markedly] less external incentive to change,” Goff told me on Sunday. ”There will still be some momentum. But not the urgency that allowed people to leave the streets and come to the negotiating table.”"
"A popular Pakistani musician and actor, Atif Aslam, is being hailed worldwide after he stopped a live performance on Saturday night to rescue a female fan who was allegedly being sexually harassed by a group of men at the concert. Videos of the incident shot by concertgoers are circulating online. Aslam stops his musicians   and in a mix of Urdu and English, begins berating the alleged harassers, who seem to be right in front of the stage. ”Wait a second,” the singer says angrily. ”Have you ever seen a girl? Your mother or sister could be here, too, huh?” He then instructs security to pull the young woman up onto the stage with him, saying: ”I’m going to rescue her.” Many fans are heard cheering the singer’s actions, chanting: ”Atif! Atif! Atif!” Aslam goes on to address the attackers directly again, saying: ”Act like a human being.” The show, in which Aslam was   with Sufi singing legend Abida Parveen, took place at the Institute of Business Administration, a highly ranked university in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. The show was organized by MUNIK, the school’s Model United Nations. Aslam is a household name in Pakistan and is   throughout the South Asian subcontinent. His video for the wildly popular Coke Studios Pakistan series, a tribute to the Sufi singers The Sabri Brothers, has been viewed on YouTube more than 56 million times. He made his acting debut in the 2011 film Bol  —   whose plot involves a family with a transgender daughter and which broke   records in Pakistan. Yesterday, the newspaper The Daily Pakistan reported in the aftermath of Saturday’s show that ”dozens of girls were molested and sexually harassed at the venue,” and citing an anonymous tipster, charged that students at the university who helped organize the show sold thousands of fake tickets to the performance, leading to chaos and lack of security. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn posted a number of social media accounts of what happened. One female concertgoer named Mahnoor Alamgir wrote on Facebook: ”Not a single girl escaped harassment unless she was with a male friend or husband. ..I’m utterly disgusted right now.” Another woman in the audience named Yusra Habib wrote on Facebook: ”You know something is terribly problematic when a singer has to stop in between his performance, spot harassment from within a massive crowd and ask his team to ’rescue the girl.’ You know its [sic] even more uncomfortable when three more girls have to be lifted on stage and taken away safely. It only goes on to prove that no matter how   our awaam [people] gets over this   and so called misogyny at public events, it is what we as a crowd need the most.” In many of the South Asian news accounts of this incident, the harassment and molestation of women is referred to by a common regional euphemism: ” .”"
"Last week, physicists at the National Institute for Standards and Technology reported they’d cooled an object to a million times colder than room temperature. It was a record for the   science of  . In this field, researchers inch ever closer to  —   but never reach  —   the state of absolute zero temperature. It’s a science that has some very cool (pun very much intended) applications including   gravity wave detectors for ”hearing” distant black hole mergers. But moving beyond these applications, why is   so hard to begin with? Why can’t we just get to absolute zero degrees and be done with it? The answer to this question drops us straight into one of the quantum universe’s most startling features: The world never rests. To see what this means, let’s remind ourselves about the meaning of ”temperature.” Without getting too technical (we should really be talking about entropy here) temperature for physicists is a measure of random motion. Imagine the gas molecules in the air around you are little cue balls of matter. The higher the air temperature, the faster those little orbs of matter will be ricocheting around the room, bouncing off the walls and each other. So cooling the air means finding some means to slow the molecules down. From this perspective, there there’s no conceptual reason why you shouldn’t be able bring them entirely to a halt. Do that, and the air would have a temperature of ”absolute zero” degrees (as measured in units called Kelvins. In Fahrenheit, this would be  . 67 degrees). But, it turns out, nature doesn’t work that way. The universe doesn’t ”do” zero temperatures because it doesn’t do zero motion. Thinking about matter and motion in the way we described above is what we physicists call ”a classical picture.” In classical physics, matter is made of tiny particles of ”stuff” and motion is just the change in the particles position with time. It all makes intuitive sense based on our experience of the world at the scale of baseballs and boulders. But a hundred years or so ago, physicists began probing the world on the scale of atoms. What they found was the classical, intuitive picture didn’t work well for explaining their experiments. In response, they developed a new kind of physics. In an astonishing burst of creativity, they kept key principles from the classical world  —   like the conservation of energy  —   but added new rules. One of these was the Uncertainty Principle, which essentially told us that reality is fuzzy at its root level. To be exact, certain pairs of properties  —   like motion and position  —   can never be known exactly. The Uncertainty Principle isn’t saying there’s something wrong with our instruments. Instead, it tells us there’s something wrong with our classical intuitions. In particular, when it comes to motion, it tells us it’s impossible to know the position and the motion of a particle exactly. The more you lock in the position of a particle, the wider the range of velocities the particle can have. So what does this have to do with temperature? Absolute zero should mean bringing particles to a halt. But that would imply you knew exactly where they were. You had them perfectly ”localized.” If that’s the case, then the Uncertainty Principle demands there must be some uncertainty in their motion. They can’t be perfectly known to be perfectly at rest. The deeper meaning of this this quantum logic is that the universe can never be at rest. There is a ”floor” to how much things can be slowed down (or cooled). It’s impossible to go below that floor (though scientists do get ever more clever in skirting its edges). The implications of this can get pretty strange. Imagine we put a particle, like an electron, in a box. Now we ask: What’s the lowest energy state of the electron + box system? In classical physics, it would just be the electron sitting there unmoving  —   i. e. zero motion, hence zero energy. But quantum physics won’t allow such a thing as zero energy (because of the Uncertainty Principle). Instead, the system has   ”ground state” energy with the electron bouncing back and forth between the box walls. That’s as low as you can go. The electron can’t be stopped. Take this idea further, and you get to the delicious idea of vacuum energy. There the Uncertainty Principle demands that there can be no pure and perfect vacuum with a state of zero energy. Thus, in quantum physics, the vacuum is not empty but is a seething froth of ”virtual particles” that are never manifested and yet have a verifiable effect on the particles we do see. No vacuum. No zero energy. No zero temperature. No common sense expectation about the world’s behavior. The discovery that the quantum world was the foundation for our   classical experience was a triumph of science. It was a validation of science’s ability to take us beyond our limited senses and limited concepts. There is no way to ”picture” this quantum world with our classical imaginations. Instead, what we found was a new frontier. At its root, quantum physics showed us that this world we inhabit is dynamic to its very core: buzzing, roaring, shuddering and trembling like an infinite Jackson Pollack painting. It is not just richer than we imagined, but stranger and more wonderful than we can imagine. That view, hidden in the impossibility of absolute zero temperature, is a gift that science has given us all. Now what are we to make of it? Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"The long arm of the pharmaceutical industry continues to pervade practically every area of medicine, reaching those who write guidelines that shape doctors’ practices, patient advocacy organizations, letter writers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and even oncologists on Twitter, according to a series of papers on money and influence published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine. The findings of the papers provide further evidence showing how conflicts of interest help shape health care, a subject ProPublica has explored through its Dollars for Docs series since 2010. (Check whether your physician receives money from drug or device companies through ProPublica’s search tool.) ”The very way we all think about disease —  and the best ways to research, define, prevent, and treat it —  is being subtly distorted because so many of the ostensibly independent players, including patient advocacy groups, are largely singing tunes acceptable to companies seeking to maximize markets for drugs and devices,” researchers Ray Moynihan and Lisa Bero wrote in an accompanying commentary. The papers published in the journal cover a variety of issues. 1) More than   of patient advocacy organizations that responded to a survey indicated that they had received industry funding in their last fiscal year. For most, the money represented a small share of their budget. But 12 percent said they received more than half of their money from industry. Most organizations reported having a conflict of interest policy, but a much smaller percent said that their groups had policies for public disclosure of those relationships. Fewer than 8 percent of respondents said their group ”perceived pressure to conform its positions to the interests of corporate donors or partners” and nearly 14 percent said their group had declined a contribution because of concerns about conflicts of interest. ”Although the amounts and proportions of financial support from industry are modest, the pervasive nature of industry support suggests the need for robust public debate about how to ensure that [these groups] serve the interests of their constituencies,” the authors affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic and other academic medical centers wrote. It called for greater transparency of funding sources by the groups. 2) Organizations that received funding from opioid manufacturers were less supportive of guidelines proposed by the CDC to limit prescribing of the drugs for chronic pain. More than 150 organizations formally submitted comments after the proposed guidelines were released in February 2016, and 80 percent of them were supportive, though some had recommendations for changes. Among the 45 groups that received money from opioid makers, though, the level of support was only 62 percent. And none of those groups disclosed their funding sources in their comments. (The CDC did not ask or require them to do so.) ”More people are dying than ever before from these products, and it’s important to know how the market is shaped by the spending of drug companies,” G. Caleb Alexander,   of the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness at Johns Hopkins University, said in an interview. 3) Two committees that developed guidelines for the management of high cholesterol and hepatitis C did not fully comply with standards set by the Institute of Medicine in 2011 to limit the number of   panelists. The Institute of Medicine required that fewer than half of guideline writers have commercial ties and that all chairs and   have no conflicts. But in both cases, at least one chairperson received money from industry and, in the case of the hepatitis C guidelines, a substantial majority of panelists also received money. Moreover, the authors noted, when separate committees with no commercial conflicts developed guidelines for cholesterol and hepatitis C, the recommendations were more conservative and called for less expensive   treatments. 4) Nearly 80 percent of U. S.   who use Twitter have financial conflicts of interest. The authors said their results raise questions about how conflicts should be disclosed and managed on social media. It recommended that, at minimum, physicians active on Twitter should disclose their industry funding in their biographies. A preliminary analysis of tweets by these doctors, not yet published, has shown that ”a sizeable percentage are tweeting about drugs that they have specific ties to,” oncologist Vinay Prasad, one of the authors of the study and an assistant professor of medicine at Oregon Health  Science University, said in an interview. ”Not a single one has disclosed so far, but we’ll find out.” A pharmaceutical industry trade group, in a statement, defended the relationships between companies and other organizations. ”Industry engages with stakeholders across the health care system to hear their perspectives and priorities,” said the statement by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. ”We work with many organizations with which we have disagreements on public policy issues, including on prescription medicine costs, but believe engagement and dialogue are critical. ”While we cannot speak for particular organizations, we have heard from many patients who are concerned about the growing    cost burden when trying to access needed health care services and treatments,” PhRMA said. In addition, there is broad recognition by the patient community of the significant unmet medical need that exists for many fighting devastating and debilitating diseases.” Moynihan and Bero, the authors of the JAMA Internal Medicine commentary, wrote that their primary concern is that patient groups actually speak for patients. Recently, when Mylan came under widespread criticism for the price of its EpiPen, patient groups were largely silent. ”To ensure a healthier patient voice in medical research, education, policy and practice, sponsored groups that want to be seen as independent and credible need to decrease their industry sponsorship and ultimately disentangle, gaining in authority what they lose in resources,” they wrote. Charles Ornstein is a senior reporter at ProPublica, an independent nonprofit newsroom based in New York."
"The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been suspended after nearly three years of fruitless work. The airplane vanished from radar on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board. Since then, nothing has been seen of the plane except for pieces of debris that floated far from the original focus. International search crews have examined more than 45, 000 square miles of the Indian Ocean, where experts initially concluded the plane was most likely to be located, to no avail. The search was suspended Tuesday, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports. ”The transportation ministers of Malaysia, China and Australia issued a joint statement, saying that despite their best efforts, the search had come up empty,” Anthony says. ”They added that their decision to suspend the search was not made lightly, or without sadness.” The search had been ”painstaking,” The Associated Press reports, with large ships dragging small vessels equipped with sonar through the ocean just above the seabed, and unmanned submarines examining any areas of interest detected by sonar. But more recent analysis suggested that the plane might never have been in the search area at all. A report suggested it may have been located slightly north  —   in a    section of ocean that hasn’t been searched yet. But the governments organizing and funding the search decided that information wasn’t specific enough to justify expanding the search zone, NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reports. ”It’s hard for victims’ families to accept that the authorities will not enlarge the search to the north, and that their loved ones may never be found,” Anthony says. Voice370, which represents the family members of the flight’s passengers and crew, issued a statement saying the group was ”dismayed” by the decision. ”Commercial planes cannot just be allowed to disappear without a trace,” the group said. ”Stopping at this stage is nothing short of irresponsible.” The search has been suspended unless ”new evidence emerges” that points to the plane’s precise location  —   something beyond the capabilities of current technology, the AP writes. In December, when the report suggesting the plane was farther north was first released, Geoff Brumfiel described what we know about the plane’s fate: ”Fragmentary evidence from military radars and ”pings” from the plane’s own satellite communications system suggested that the Boeing 777 executed a series of turns that eventually led it to the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. Authorities believe it crashed somewhere along a long arc of ocean, after exhausting its fuel supplies. ”In July 2015, a fragment of the plane washed up on the shores of La Réunion, a small island off the African coast. Since that time, more than 20 other pieces of debris have been recovered along beaches in places like Madagascar, Mauritius, Tanzania and South Africa. It has never been clear why the plane crashed in the first place. ”If the plane is never found, the reasons for its disappearance and crash will probably never be known,” the AP writes, ”though Malaysia has said the plane’s erratic movements after takeoff were consistent with deliberate actions.”"
"In a career that spans more than 20 years, Spoon has perfected a kind of ruthlessly airtight efficiency: Every few years, the Austin band returns with a new batch of perfectly compact     songs. As consistent as it is beloved, Spoon never fails to hit its mark  —   delivered forcefully, and with hooks for days. On March 17, Spoon returns with its ninth album, Hot Thoughts  —   and if the title track is any indication, that impeccably chosen palette’s got a few new colors. Thanks in part, no doubt, to Dave Fridmann joining the band as a   ”Hot Thoughts” has a rangy, swirly sparkle to it, portending an album that spreads out for a bit of a journey. 1. Hot Thoughts, 2. WhisperI’lllistentohearit, 3. Do I Have To Talk You Into It, 4. First Caress, 5. Pink Up, 6. Can I Sit Next To You, 7. I Ain’t The One, 8. Tear It Down, 9. Shotgun, 10. Us, Spoon’s Hot Thoughts comes out March 17 via Matador."
"Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin told reporters Tuesday morning that the suspect in the attack on the city’s Reina nightclub has confessed. Sahin identified the suspect as Abdulgadir Masharipov, born in 1983, a national of the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan. ”The terrorist has admitted to his crime, and his fingerprints also matched those found on the scene,” Sahin said. Sahin said there are strong indications Masharipov was acting on behalf of the Islamic State and had entered Turkey illegally on its eastern border. ”He’s received training in Afghanistan and speaks four languages,” said Sahin, ”a terrorist that has been well brought up.” The governor described an exhaustive manhunt involving the viewing of some 7, 200 hours of video footage and the use of 2, 000 police officers supported by Turkish intelligence. The search extended to central Anatolia and the Aegean coast. Sahin said 150 raids led to the detention of 50 people, two of whom were arrested and will face charges. There was speculation Marashipov had fled the country, perhaps to Syria. But ultimately he was arrested in an Istanbul suburb Monday night. Four others were taken into custody with him. The attack occurred early New Year’s Day in an upscale nightclub overlooking the Bosporus Strait. A gunman, apparently acting alone, killed 39 people and wounded dozens more. Most of the dead were foreigners. A photograph of Masharipov released by the government after his arrest shows him with an apparently bruised and bloodied face. Officials say Marashipov is being questioned in particular about possible accomplices, as well as any other attacks that may be planned in Turkey."
"As long as there has been a music industry, there have been attempts  —   both overt and clandestine  —   to manufacture hits. You can look as far back as the early 20th century, when musicians known as ”song pluggers” were paid to promote sheet music. During radio’s golden age, commercial brands often produced and underwrote live broadcasts, says media historian Cynthia Meyers. ”There were no advertisements during the music program,” Meyers says. ”They hoped that the audience would feel very favorably toward them for financing free radio programming.” Television took off in the ’50s, taking with it sponsors and stars. But radio remained vital thanks to disc jockeys like Alan Freed, who introduced audiences to new music  —   including rock ’n’ roll. As DJs became influential tastemakers, record labels plied them with cash payments and gifts in exchange for airplay. Media reports of these operations eventually led to congressional hearings. Hundreds of DJs were implicated and Freed was eventually fired and fined. In 1960, Congress amended the Federal Communications Act to require that    arrangements be disclosed on the air. But record labels quickly found workarounds, using independent radio promoters as middlemen to covertly fund airplay, contests, and giveaways. ”When you think about it,” Meyers says, ”the music industry was buying airtime just as brands were buying airtime, in order to promote their product, which was music recordings.” Things continued to change in the 1990s, when the consolidation of the radio industry ”corporatized” payola, according to Kevin Erickson of the nonprofit Future of Music Coalition. ”When we talk about payola, people have an image of somebody sliding a briefcase full of cash to a DJ,” Erickson says. ”That Alan Freed model’s not really how it works anymore.” Today, large media companies own most   radio stations. Payola investigations in the   led to   settlements by several major label conglomerates, as well as four of the nation’s largest radio station owners. Now, a new model of brand sponsorship has supplanted   payola. Dr Pepper’s ”One of a Kind Sound” is a series of artist promo spots, designed by the tech   Music Audience Exchange to look and sound like   album teasers. CEO Nathan Hanks says this approach allows major brands to reach specific demographic targets, all while less   bands gain valuable exposure. ”Artists are calling us months in advance, and they’re thinking about these partnerships as the marketing strategy for the single or for the album,” Hanks says. On an even larger scale, Pepsi launched ”The Sound Drop.” It’s a partnership with MTV, Shazam, and iHeartMedia  —   formerly Clear Channel Communications, the country’s largest radio station owner. The Sound Drop spotlights artists who are already on major labels and in rotation on iHeart Radio. ”It’s not a traditional spot,” says Emma Quigley, Pepsi’s head of music. ”It goes deeper because it’s telling you a story.” Sound bites from the artist are woven together with audio clips of the song being pushed, and aired on all of the iHeart stations playing that format. All told, the   spots air from 80, 000 to 110, 000 times over a   period  —   and that’s in addition to regular airplay of the single. ”We work with iHeartRadio at a pivotal time in the cycle of the single,” Quigley says, ”to connect the dots between the single that’s on air and in rotation and the artist themselves.” There is also a longer   for each artist, hosted on Pepsi’s YouTube channel. The only part of the campaign that resembles a conventional commercial is the banner ads Shazam runs on its app. Quigley insists that The Sound Drop isn’t advertising under the guise of entertainment. ”We’re not advertising anything,” she says. ”We are basically amplifying an artist so fans can find out more about that artist. That’s it. There’s no, ’That ad’s running, they have to play the track after the ad,’ or anything like that. It’s very clear that The Sound Drop is a   platform. But the star of that platform is the artist and that song.” The approach seems to be working: Pepsi’s first artist, Lukas Graham, just picked up three Grammy nominations, including song and album of the year."
"In some parts of the South, there’s an accent where every conversation sounds like a song. Brent Cobb, a native of the small town of Ellaville, Ga. doesn’t quite whistle through his teeth when he speaks, but he does push more air into his S’s when he sings. When he sings ”Solving Problems,” a song about a   bull session, at the NPR Music offices, the words shimmer like a tall glass of sweet tea in the   sun when he strings together a particularly consonant phrase: ”Conversation covers everything and in between, from Grandpa’s health to marrying good girls.” ”Solving Problems” comes from Shine On Rainy Day, his   debut produced by distant cousin Dave Cobb it’s nearly a decade in the making. Brent Cobb spent those years on Nashville’s Music Row, writing songs for the likes of Luke Bryan, Little Big Town and Miranda Lambert. But where most songwriters write for the performer, Cobb plainly says, ”If I write a song, they’re always for me. If someone wants to record it, I think they should record it.” Cobb is a conversational lyricist who dispenses normal but precisely crafted phrases amid    melodies. He skips from Merle Haggard’s ”Mama Tried” to family to making ”plans to do what we ain’t done yet.” He takes a funny story about his uncle and bends the truth a bit for the quiet holler ”Down In The Gulley.” His songwriting lineage shines through in ”Country Bound,” written by his daddy here, it features a bouncing solo from J Kott, whom Cobb jokingly calls ”our bass   guitarist.” Encouraged by the crowd to play one more song, Cobb closes with the sobering ”Shine On Rainy Day.” While he weaves plenty of wit into his lyrics, Cobb can devastate just as easily: ”Ain’t it funny how a little thunder make a man start to wonder, ’Should I swim or just go under? ’” Just as we struggle to find the silver lining in Cobb’s clouds, the song ends and he asks with a smile, ”What do we do now?” Shine On Rainy Day is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) ”Solving Problems” ”Down In The Gulley” ”Country Bound” Brent Cobb (vocals, guitar) J Kott (vocals, bass) Steve Smith (drums). Producers: Lars Gotrich, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Nicole Boliaux Production Assistant: Anna Marketti Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"President Obama’s final press conference was one of both reflection and subtle rebuke toward incoming   Donald Trump, defending voting rights and a free press, all while reassuring the American people that ”at my core, I think we’re going to be OK.” Obama did show some deference toward Trump  —   sidestepping a question about the more than five dozen Democrats in Congress who are boycotting the inauguration on Friday. ”All I know is I’m going to be there, and so is Michelle,” he said. And striking an upbeat tone at the end, Obama maintained that despite being disappointed that Democrat Hillary Clinton hadn’t won, there shouldn’t be dread ahead. ”The only thing that is the end of the world is the end of the world,” Obama said, quoting advice he had given his own daughters after the election. ”I believe in this country. I believe in the American people. I believe that people are more good than bad,” Obama said. But he did have some advice for his successor, warning Trump not to become isolated in the Oval Office and to rely on his advisers. ”This is a job of such magnitude that you can’t do it by yourself,” the president said. ”You are enormously reliant on a team.” And Obama said that while it was appropriate for the incoming Republican administration to make shifts in policy, he also warned that, ”if you’re going to make big shifts in policy, just make sure you’ve thought it through.” Obama said his   plans including wanting ”to be quiet a little bit and not hear myself talk so darn much.” But he did say there would be issues he wouldn’t hesitate to speak out on after he leaves office, if he believes the country’s ”core values may be at stake.” Obama said that would include ”systematic discrimination being ratified in some fashion,” an assault on voting rights, ”institutional efforts to silence dissent or the press” and ”efforts to round up kids who have grown up here and, for all practical purposes, are American kids, and send them someplace else.” Obama greatly defended the rights of a free press, seeming to be directly addressing tensions between the press corps and the incoming administration, which has floated moving reporters out of the White House and denying credentials to some reporters or publications. Obama acknowledged that at times he hasn’t been pleased with some of his coverage, but he told reporters that ”America needs you, and our democracy needs you.” ”You’re not supposed to be sycophants,” Obama said. ”You’re supposed to be skeptics you’re supposed to ask me tough questions.” But the subject on which Obama grew most passionate and the most defensive was the issue of voting rights. ”This whole notion of voting fraud is something that has been constantly disproved,” the president said forcefully. ”This is fake news.” He argued there was a racial component to such efforts  —   ”The reason that we’re the only country that makes it harder to vote is that it traces exactly back to Jim Crow”  —   but did also argue that while racial issues have gotten better during his presidency, ”we’ve got more work to do on race.” Obama also expressed hope that there would be more diverse chief executives to follow him in the White House, along with another black president. ”I think we’re going to see people of merit rise up from every race, faith and corner of the country,” he said. ”We’re going to have a woman president, a Latino president, a Jewish president, a Hindu president.” And he praised the ”transformation” that has taken place over LGBT rights over the past decade and said he was proud that his administration in some places had ”provided a good block downfield to help the movement advance.” Obama said that while he knew there would be challenges, he was hopeful those advancements weren’t ”reversible, because American society has changed [and] the attitudes of young people in particular have changed.” He also defended some of his final moves in office, including the controversial decision on Tuesday to commute Chelsea Manning’s   prison sentence. The president said that the Army private, who was convicted of leaking secret military information to WikiLeaks, had served a ”tough prison sentence” and that 35 years was ”very disproportionate” relative to sentences given to individuals in other similar cases. As for the U. S.’s decision last month to abstain from a U. N. Security Council vote that eventually passed condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Obama said that the status quo in the region was ”unacceptable.” ”I don’t see how this issue gets resolved in a way that maintains Israel as both Jewish and a democracy,” the president said. ”Because if you do not have two states, then in some form or fashion you are extending an occupation functionally, you end up having one state in which millions of people are disenfranchised and operate as   residents.”"
"President Obama gave his final press conference at the White House on Wednesday, just two days before Donald Trump’s inauguration. He reflected on his time in office and looked toward the incoming administration, ultimately concluding, ”At my core, I think we’re going to be OK.” NPR’s politics team, with help from editors and reporters across the newsroom, annotated his remarks."
"  Donald Trump’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services defended stock transactions he made as a member of Congress as ”above board,” while vowing he would not pull the rug from under any American with health care as result of replacing the Affordable Care Act. Rep. Tom Price, a Republican from Georgia, faced the first of two hearings he’ll have as the nominee for HHS secretary. Wednesday’s was before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. It will not vote on Price’s nomination that’s up to the Senate Finance Committee. But HELP committee members still asked tough questions of the nominee, focusing on Price and the incoming Trump administration’s plans to replace the ACA and on Price’s stock trades. Price acknowledged purchasing shares in an Australian firm, Innate Immunotherapeutics Inc, which makes experimental drugs, after learning about the company from a fellow GOP member of Congress, Chris Collins of New York. Collins, a member of the Trump transition team, is the company’s largest shareholder. Price told senators he studied the company and then bought his shares last year in a private offering. Price, who was a member of the House Ways and Means Committee at the time, was involved in drafting the 21st Century Cures Act, a provision of which would speed approval of drugs by the FDA. Democratic Sen. Al Franken said that over the past four years, Price traded over $300, 000 in   stocks, ”while at the same time sponsoring, advocating legislation that could affect the performance of those stocks.” But Price denied profiting from inside information, or benefiting from legislation he helped author. ”Everything that we have done,” Price said, ”has been above board, transparent and legal.” Republicans on the committee noted that other senators have invested in health stocks. Sen. Orrin Hatch said he resented the line of questioning, calling it ”hypocritical,” and Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas said Democrats were engaged in ”anger management.” The other major line of questioning was over efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Senators from both parties questioned him on the incoming administration’s plans. The   has vowed that he would provide ”insurance for everybody,” but Price was less sweeping, repeatedly saying that providing access to coverage was his goal. ”Nobody’s interested in pulling the rug out from under anybody,” Price said. But he offered few details about what the incoming administration will propose. Asked by Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders whether he agreed that health care was a right, Price answered, ”We are a compassionate society.” Sanders sharply disagreed. ”No, we’re not,” he said, noting child poverty rates, and how many seniors ”have nothing set aside for retirement.” And Sanders questioned whether Price’s commitment to providing access to health care was sufficient. ”I have access to buying a $10 million home,” Sanders said. ”I don’t have the money to do that.” Price also deferred when asked if he would commit not to cut funding for Medicare and Medicaid, as Trump has. He said the amount of money in the programs was ”the wrong metric” to use for judging the programs. ”What we ought to do,” Price said, ”is put forward the resources in order to take care of the patient.” There was a lighter moment. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado said he had asked Price, an orthopedic surgeon, to take a look at a balky knee during a meeting the senator had with the nominee. ”I’ve never shown my knee to any nominee before.” Price asked if Bennet had gotten an MRI yet. ”It’s today,” Bennet said. Price, 62, faces his second round of questioning from the Senate Finance Committee next week."
"  Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services is taking heat for his controversial stock holdings in companies affected by laws he has worked on and voted for. But federal records show several senators who will take part in confirmation hearings for Rep. Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, have substantial   holdings as well. At least six members of the two Senate committees tasked with questioning or confirming Price, who was trained as an orthopedic surgeon, hold shares in health care companies. A Kaiser Health News analysis finds that the investments, which include shares in companies such as Merck, Medtronic and Gilead Sciences, have been held by Sens. Thomas Carper,  . Bill Cassidy,  . Susan Collins,   Tim Kaine,  . Mark Warner,  . and Sheldon Whitehouse,  . I. ”This conflict of interest problem is one that members [of Congress] have danced around over a period of years much too lightly,” said former Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, who founded the Indiana University Center on Representative Government after spending more than 30 years in Congress. ”And I think it needs to be corrected in order to have confidence in the institution.” KHN examined the most recent annual financial disclosures for the 40 senators who sit on either the Finance Committee the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions or both. The HELP Committee’s courtesy hearing with Price is Wednesday, and the Finance Committee’s more pivotal vote has been scheduled for Jan. 24. About half the senators reported holding stocks in their households, but only six disclosed owning stocks in health and biomedical firms. Of the six, Whitehouse and his family have the most health stocks, split among various IRAs, education savings accounts and other accounts and belonging to Whitehouse, his wife and his children. In all, they disclosed between $402, 000 and $1. 3 million in   holdings in 2015. The disclosures don’t give exact numbers and instead include ranges. Price has been criticized following a Wall Street Journal investigation that found he traded more than $300, 000 in   stocks while serving on a health subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means. Democrats have called for investigations into whether Price made trades based on insider knowledge. Earlier this month, Trump transition spokesman Phillip Blando blasted Democrats’ hypocrisy and singled out Carper, Warner and Whitehouse for owning health stocks, calling for similar questions to be asked about their trades and holdings. He declined last week to comment further on the senators’ stock holdings. Price has told ethics officials he would divest his stock in dozens of publicly traded companies. Owning the stocks is legal, but not everyone agrees on whether it’s fair, said Tim LaPira, a political science professor at James Madison University, adding that the Senate is on average wealthier than the House. ”Of course they can invest their money as they please,” he said. The major concern, political analysts said, is that members of Congress will help pass laws to benefit companies in which they own stock. According to the Senate ethics rules, ”A Member, officer, or employee may not use his or her official position for personal gain.” Although insider trading has been illegal for members of Congress since 2012, it’s nearly impossible to prove, LaPira said. Research studies have shown that members of Congress tend to make higher returns on the stock market than the general public. ”We found that in general, they earn about 12 percent a year more than the average bear,” said Alan Ziobrowski, a retired Georgia State University real estate professor who published a 2004 study of Senate stock performance from 1993 through 1998. He did a similar study of House stock performance in 2011. He said members of Congress could have access to information that can aid in stock picking, including earlier notice that laws are about to change or additional information gathered from industry lobbyists. Ziobrowski said a   study by another researcher in 2013 found that members of Congress ”quit fooling around on the stock market” after his study of the Senate was released, but that no one has repeated his analysis since. Collins, Kaine and Whitehouse serve on the HELP Committee, whose jurisdiction includes measures pertaining to health, ”biomedical research and development.” Carper and Warner are on the Finance Committee, which deals generally with money and taxes. But it also handles ”health programs under the Social Security Act and health programs financed by a specific tax or trust fund.” Cassidy is on both committees. Since 2015, Whitehouse appears to have been an active trader and filed 10 periodic transaction reports in 2016. Annual reports for 2016 aren’t due until   but periodic reports must be filed within 45 days of a trade, according to the 2012 STOCK Act, which stands for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge. Around the time the House released its   version of the 21st Century Cures bill, which was intended to speed the FDA’s drug approval process, Whitehouse’s family purchased more stock in Gilead Sciences, which makes the pricey hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni. The Whitehouses’ Gilead purchases that month ranged from $4, 000 to $60, 000. The family also purchased shares of Amgen and Abbott. Whitehouse later voted in favor of the bill. The Gilead stock decreased in value following these purchases but got a slight bump up just before the bill was signed into law on Dec. 13. Some of the Gilead stock was sold about a week later. ”Senator Whitehouse does not direct his trading and doesn’t control the allocation of investments among different types of assets,” his press secretary, Rich Davidson, said in an email. When asked whether owning stocks could present an ethical conflict that could preclude Whitehouse from asking questions of Price, Davidson said, ”Sen. Whitehouse has no    input into either the management of his investment account or the decisions to trade individual holdings or types of assets. If we told him this, it would be news to him.” The family of Delaware Democrat Carper owned up to $285, 000 in health stocks, though they could total as little as $54, 000 due to the broad ranges in the reports. They are all in his wife’s name, but Hamilton said that’s irrelevant. His wife sold some of her stock in MetLife, a company that sells health and life insurance, on Dec. 15, according to his latest transaction report. In an emailed statement, Carper defended his record and said he believes   Trump’s Cabinet nominees should be scrutinized. ”I have been a public servant for more than three decades and have always submitted thorough financial disclosures about my family’s income and holdings,” he said. ”Any attempt to cast a shadow of impropriety on our financial decisions is inaccurate and unreasonable.” Maine Republican Collins and her family had between $78, 000 and $295, 000 in   stocks in 2015. They were held in her husband’s name. He sold all of his Express Scripts stock on Dec. 16, a few days after the 21st Century Cures Act was signed into law. Express Scripts is a manager of prescription benefits. Collins’ office did not reply to requests for comment. According to Lousiana Republican Cassidy’s annual disclosure, his wife owned between $1, 000 and $15, 000 in iShares US Pharmaceuticals, an   fund based on an index of the drug industry. Disclosure forms show that the family bought and sold other health related stock in 2016, including purchases of Johnson  Johnson, Abbott and Novartis shares in March. In October, Cassidy’s wife sold her stock in Johnson  Johnson and bought stock in CVS Health and Amgen. Cassidy’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment. KHN compiled a database of assets listed as ”corporate securities stock.” It included all stock owners in the immediate family, including spouses and dependent children. Two of the original 40 senators filed their reports on paper instead of electronically. The paper forms don’t classify assets as ”corporate securities stock,” so those had to be examined individually. Warner, who filed on paper, disclosed that his limited liability company, MRW Biotech Investors, holds between $250, 000 and $500, 000 in shares of Ziopharm Oncology Inc. Warner’s LLC invested in a venture capital fund that invested in Ziopharm before it went public.   percent of the investment company is owned by Warner’s trust. ”Sen. Warner’s investments are managed by an independent trustee, and have been since before he became governor of Virginia in 2002,” said Rachel Cohen, Warner’s press secretary. Kaine is new to the HELP Committee this year. His 2015 disclosure revealed that his children and their cousins collectively owned a trust set up by their grandmother that contained between $51, 000 and $115, 000 in health stocks, most of which were   Squibb. Amy Dudley, communications director for Sen. Kaine, said: ”Over the years, Sen. Kaine’s wife’s mother has placed stock shares from a number of companies into a trust account to help her ten grandchildren with college expenses. Senator Kaine makes no decisions about which stocks are deposited into his trust or how the deposited shares are managed and sold.” Editor’s note: This story was updated Thursday with comment from Sen. Kaine’s office. Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN’s coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation."
"Former President George H. W. Bush has been placed in intensive care for an acute respiratory problem, his spokesman says, and Barbara Bush has been hospitalized ”as a precaution.” The former president had breathing problems ”stemming from pneumonia,” spokesman Jim McGrath says, and was sedated before a procedure to clear his airway. He is in stable condition, McGrath says. The former first lady was experiencing fatigue and coughing, he says. Bush was brought to a   hospital on Saturday after experiencing shortness of breath. Earlier on Wednesday, McGrath said Bush had ”responded very well to treatments” and expressed hope that he would be released from the hospital soon. Bush, 92, is the oldest living U. S. president. (Jimmy Carter is a little more than three months his junior.) As The Associated Press notes, Bush ”has a form of Parkinson’s disease and uses a motorized scooter or a wheelchair for mobility.” Reuters reports that the elder Bush was hospitalized twice in 2014 and fell and broke a bone in his neck in 2015. His public appearances have been rare over the past two years, although he still attends   sports events (and occasionally throws the first pitch or flips the coin for a kickoff)."
"Former President George H. W. Bush wanted to be clear that there was no ill will keeping him from attending Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday. The    had decided to stay home weeks ago because of his advanced age and poor health. Bush is the only former president who will miss the ceremony. His son George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are all expected to attend along with their wives. The elder Bush was admitted to the hospital over the weekend and sent to the intensive care unit at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas on Wednesday as he battles pneumonia. His wife, Barbara, was also admitted to the hospital ”as a precaution” because of fatigue and coughing, her husband’s office said. A week earlier, Bush had written to Trump to express his regret and good wishes. Here’s the letter he sent on Jan. 10: Neither George H. W. Bush nor George W. Bush voted for Trump in November. The   defeated former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the GOP primary race  —   and lobbed consistent insults at him (namely ”  Jeb”). Despite any hard feelings from the 2016 primary, the former presidents are showing support as the new president takes office. Trump later tweeted his thanks and good wishes back at the former president."
"Chances are you or somebody you know has recently become the owner of an Instant Pot, the multifunction electric pressure cooker that can produce   pot roasts in less than an hour, as well as brown meat, cook beans without soaking, and even do the job of a rice cooker or crockpot. The Instant Pot   isn’t advertised on TV or in the newspapers, and yet it’s become a viral marketing success story, with owners often describing themselves as ”addicts” or ”cult members.” That’s the kind of    publicity Instant Pot founders dreamed of when they first began designing the countertop appliances. The Instant Pot electric pressure cooker has been around since 2010, but really became the buzz during the last six months of 2016. While the company’s electric pressure cookers are sold at   Target and Kohl’s, the bulk of its sales come from Amazon, driven by social media. Deep discounts on Amazon Prime Day and again on Black Friday, along with the viral online sharing of these sales, turned Instant Pot into a household name. With 215, 000 units sold on Prime Day alone, the Instant Pot Duo is Amazon’s   item in the U. S. market. Not bad for a company that does no TV or print advertising and only recently began the process of hiring a marketing agency. The   Ottawa,   Instant Pot Company was founded by a group of engineers, not chefs, in 2008. The team focused on designing the appliance’s microprocessor and thermal and pressure sensors, which improve safety over earlier stovetop and electric pressure cookers, hoping that the product would speak for itself. ”Cooking is very much a social behavior. If people make good food, they will be raving about it, including the tools used,” says CEO Robert Wang. In order to attract cooks from different cultures, the Instant Pot has preset buttons for making foods such as porridge, beans and yogurt. Instant Pot is savvy enough to know that social media is now part of    advertising. While the company does not sponsor paid content or promotions, it has provided free Instant Pots to 200 bloggers and cookbook authors who represent many styles of cooking, including Chinese, Italian,   and vegan. The company’s website and the booklets that come with the appliance prominently feature blogger recipes. Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta calls this ”sleeper” marketing, which gets a product in front of a small, influential group of people, instead of targeting the masses. This type of marketing is a method that may work for companies that don’t have a big budget to do an advertising blitz when a product first rolls out. ”The company has to have a little bit of patience,” Gupta says. ”Sometimes it catches on really quickly but sometimes it doesn’t. There are a lot of failures that happen with this kind of mechanism. If you are a small player, it’s a good strategy to try.” He notes a similar strategy used by the Blendtec company, which posted a YouTube video showing the company’s CEO using the blender to grind up an iPhone. ”As you can imagine, the video got shared,” says Gupta. ”But, it was consistent with the key value proposition of the product,” meaning that the hype reinforced what the appliance says it will do. Michelle Tam, author of the Nom Nom Paleo blog and cookbook, bought an Instant Pot in 2013 when seeking a faster way to make the bone broths and braised meats that are integral to her diet. ”I put a lot of Instant Pot recipes on my blog just because I use it myself,” she explains. Laura Pazzaglia, author of the cookbook and website Hip Pressure Cooking, has worked as a paid consultant to Instant Pot, producing demo videos, but she also works with other pressure cooker manufacturers. While kitchen appliance giants such as Cuisinart, Breville and Fagor also produce electric pressure cookers, Pazzaglia praises the Instant Pot’s convenient features, particularly the stainless steel inner pot. Of course, a catchy name doesn’t hurt either. ”Like Kleenex came to represent tissues and Xerox photocopiers, Instant Pot is coming to represent electric pressure ” says Pazzaglia. ”It’s both corny and fun and doesn’t come with any of the   and historical fear that the words ’pressure cooker’ bring about.” I’ll admit: I bought one of those Instant Pots on Amazon Prime Day last July. For me, the tipping point was seeing my friend, Lizz Porter, of the blog More Than Thursdays, posting about the $69 sale, a 30 percent markdown from its regular $99 price. Like many bloggers, Porter posts Amazon affiliate links on her website, as well as on her Facebook and Twitter feeds. She says approximately 50 Instant Pots were purchased through her links in the second half of 2016. I asked her if the income from those sales was a factor behind her social sharing. ”It’s all bonus money,” says Porter. ”I’d still share the Instant Pot even if I didn’t get commission, because it’s made that much of a difference for us. With the Instant Pot, I can still get dinner on the table even if I only have frozen meat at 6 p. m. and I don’t have to cook everything in the microwave!” The viral popularity of the Instant Pot even has seasoned digital marketing pros scratching their heads. Jim Lin, senior vice president and creative director of Ketchum Digital oversees social media engagement and influencer programs for the agency’s key clients, and he is surprised by how many parent bloggers are talking about the Instant Pot on social media  —   even when they are not being paid to promote it. ”What I think is the magic of this phenomenon was the fact that the Instant Pot owners have become almost like a club that every parent wants to be a part of,” says Lin. A search of Facebook turns up many Instant Pot community groups, including one run by the company with more than 300, 000 members. Others groups specialize in Whole 30, Weight Watchers, vegan, Kosher or Vietnamese cooking. New pressure cooker owners post questions, while veterans show off their creations, including the   bone broth and cheesecake recipes. ”Instant Pot caught a good wave,” says Lin. ”It could have easily gone the other way with one mishap that people talked about. That could have destroyed the brand reputation.” But Gupta believes consumers are sophisticated enough that a few bad reviews won’t hurt, as long as they are offset by positive ones. ”There’s a large number effect,” he says. ”On the average it will be reasonably close to the truth.” With a new model due to be released in sometime in 2017, the Instant Pot craze shows no signs of cooling off. Grace Hwang Lynch is a San Francisco Bay   journalist with an interest in race and how it affects everything, including food, entertainment and parenting. Her work has been published by PBS, PRI, Library Journal, Salon and xoJane. Follow her on Twitter: @GraceHwangLynch "
"Cold and flu season means plenty of parents are trying to figure out whether their kid is too sick to go to child care or school. It’s not always an easy call. Day care centers for younger children often have exclusion policies laying out exactly which symptoms should keep kids at home  —   more on those in a minute. But rules in elementary school and beyond are often looser and less definitive, says Gary Freed, a pediatrician and   of the University of Michigan C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. The poll’s national survey of 1, 442 parents of kids ages 6 to 18 released Monday found that the top factors in a decision to keep a child home are concerns that the illness will get worse or spread to classmates at school. Parents of older kids were also more likely to worry than parents of younger children about students missing tests or class time when making the       decision. Interestingly, only 11 percent said that not wanting to miss work themselves was a ”very important” factor in deciding whether a kid should stay home. Parents were more likely to keep children home for diarrhea, a single episode of vomiting or a slight fever than red, watery eyes or cold symptoms. ”A lot of this is a judgment call,” says Freed. But he says if it doesn’t seem like your kid is going to have a successful day at school, that’s a good starting point for keeping him or her home, even if the illness is not contagious. If your child is in day care, the decision may be made for you  —   and the exclusion criteria are not necessarily based on the best science. Freed’s colleague at the University of Michigan, pediatrician and pediatric emergency medicine physician Andrew Hashikawa, studies child care exclusion policies and says they vary from center to center, county to county and state to state. He has found, for example, that even in a state that endorses the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines for child care illness exclusions, day care policies didn’t reflect those guidelines. And you may be surprised by what those guidelines say. For example, the dreaded pinkeye is not a reason to keep a kid out of day care, according to the pediatricians. ”The vast majority are colds of the eye,” says Hashikawa. Vomiting is a reason to send a child home only if there are two or more episodes in 24 hours. A rash is no reason to keep a child out of day care unless it’s accompanied by behavior change, fever or drainage. And even a   fever in an otherwise   child over 6 months old is not a reason to call Mom or Dad or require a physician visit. But, you might ask, aren’t those kids spreading their germs? It would seem so, since babies and toddlers in child care experience more stomach bugs, colds and ear infections in their first two years compared with those who are cared for at home. ”The science really tells us that most disease is spread before the child gets sick,” says Hashikawa. Instead, the current goal of exclusion recommendations is to help kids recover. If they feel crummy enough that they can’t participate in activities or they require care beyond what child care staff can easily provide without compromising the health and safety of other kids, they should stay home. And temporary exclusion is recommended for some specific symptoms and illnesses, including a sudden change in behavior, such as lethargy or trouble breathing acute diarrhea for children still in diapers strep throat and chickenpox. When faced with a child excluded from care, 75 percent of parents say they’ve had to miss work, according to a poll from NPR, Harvard and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Nearly half said that impacted their job. And when kids are booted from child care unnecessarily, it’s not just a pain for parents. One study by Hashikawa and his colleagues found that 88 percent of parents sought medical care for their kids unable to go to child care, and a third needed a doctor’s note for their child to return. Cutting down on unnecessary exclusions, then, could save everyone time and money. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson"
"After Betsy DeVos’ Senate confirmation hearing yesterday  —   all three hours and change  —   we know a little more about Donald Trump’s pick to be the next education secretary. Appearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor  Pensions, DeVos faced questions on a range of issues, from private school vouchers and charter school oversight to guns in schools. We’ve reported extensively on DeVos’ background, her advocacy in Michigan and on the research behind school choice. Below, we’ve pulled out some of the highlights from her hearing (with a little context where needed): Local Control, ”  Trump and I know it won’t be Washington, D. C. that unlocks our nation’s potential, nor a bigger bureaucracy, tougher mandates or a federal agency. The answer is local control and listening to parents, students, and teachers.” This came from DeVos’ opening remarks, and succinctly captures her education philosophy: Limit the role of government in America’s schools and trust that the free market  —   and parent choice  —   will lead to innovation and improvement. Privatizing Public Schools, DeVos’ faith in the free market led to several tense exchanges, including this one with the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington: Murray: ”Can you commit to us tonight that you will not work to privatize public schools or cut a single penny from public education?” DeVos: ”Senator, thanks for that question. I look forward, if confirmed, to working with you to talk about how we address the needs of all parents and all students. And we acknowledge today that not all schools are working for the students that are assigned to them. And I’m hopeful that we can work together to find common ground and ways that we can solve those issues and empower parents to make choices on behalf of their children that are right for them.” Murray: ”I take that as not being willing to commit to not privatizing public schools or cutting money from education.” DeVos: ”I guess I wouldn’t characterize it in that way.” Murray: ”Well,” she said, laughing, ”OK.” Ideology Meets Legal Reality, The committee’s chairman, Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and former education secretary himself, asked DeVos whether she would try to push school vouchers onto states even though the federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, does not include or allow it. ”No,” she answered. ”I would hope I could convince you all of the merit of that in maybe some future legislation, but certainly not any kind of mandate from within the department.” Qualifications  Former senator  —   and former Democrat  —   Joe Lieberman introduced DeVos at the hearing. He has worked with her as a board member of her school choice advocacy group, The American Federation for Children. DeVos has never taught in, managed or attended a public school. ”I know that some people are questioning her qualifications to be secretary of education,” Lieberman said. ”And too many of those questions, to me, seem to be based on the fact that she doesn’t come from within the education establishment. But honestly I believe that today that’s one of the most important qualifications you could have for this job.” Grizzly Bears, Perhaps the strangest exchange of the evening came in response to this question from Sen. Chris Murphy,  .: ”Do you think that guns have any place in or around schools?” DeVos: ”I think that’s best left to locales and states to decide. If the underlying question is. ..” Murphy: ”You can’t say definitively today that guns shouldn’t be in school?” DeVos: ”Well, I will refer back to Senator Enzi [that’s Mike Enzi,  .] and the school that he was talking about in Wapiti, Wyoming. I think probably there, I would imagine that there is probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.” It’s important to note that Murphy represents Connecticut where, in 2012, a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Trump University And Gainful Employment,   Trump’s shuttered Trump University loomed large over this    between DeVos and Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  .: Warren: ”Do you support protecting federal taxpayer dollars from waste, fraud and abuse?” DeVos: ”Absolutely.” Warren: ”Oh good, so do I. Because now we all know that   Trump’s experience with higher education was to create a fake university which resulted in his paying $25 million dollars to students that he cheated. So, I’m curious about how the Trump administration would protect against waste, fraud and abuse at similar   colleges. So here’s my question, How do you plan to protect taxpayer dollars from waste, fraud and abuse by colleges that take in millions of dollars in federal student aid?” DeVos: ”Senator, if confirmed, I will certainly be very vigilant. ..” Warren: ”I’m asking how. You said you were committed. I’m asking how you are going to do that.” DeVos: ”The individuals with whom I work in the department will ensure that federal monies are used properly and appropriately, and I will look forward to working with you.” Warren: ”So you’re going to subcontract in making sure that what happened with universities that cheat students doesn’t happen anymore?” DeVos: ”No, I didn’t say. ..” Warren: ”You’re going to give that to someone else to do? I just want to know what your ideas are for making sure we don’t have problems with waste, fraud and abuse.” DeVos: ”I want to make sure we don’t have problems with that as well. And if confirmed, I will work diligently to ensure that we are addressing any of those issues.” Warren: ”Well, let me make a suggestion on this. It actually turns out that there’s a whole group of rules that are already written and are there and all you have to do is enforce them. So what I want to know is, will you commit to enforcing these rules to ensure that no career college receives federal funds unless they can prove that they are actually preparing their students for gainful employment and not cheating them?” DeVos: ”Senator, I will commit to ensuring that institutions which receive federal funds are actually serving their students well.” Warren: ”And so you will enforce the gainful employment rule to ensure that these career colleges are not cheating students?” DeVos: ”We will certainly review that rule.” Warren: ”You’ll review it? You won’t commit to enforce it?” DeVos: ”And see that it is actually achieving what the intentions are.” Accountability, DeVos has promoted the expansion of charter schools and private school voucher programs nationwide. Which led to this exchange with Sen. Tim Kaine,  .: Kaine: ”Do you think   schools that receive federal funding should meet the same accountability standards, outcome standards?” DeVos: ”All schools that receive public funding should be accountable, yes.” Kaine: ”Should meet the same accountability standards?” DeVos: ”Yes. Although, you have different accountability standards between traditional public schools and charter schools.” Kaine: ”But I’m really interested in this, should everybody be on a level playing field? So public, charter or private   schools, if they receive taxpayer funding, they should meet the same accountability standards?” DeVos: ”Yes, they should be very transparent with the information. And parents should have that information first and foremost.” Kaine: ”And, if confirmed, will you insist upon that equal accountability in any   school or educational program that receives federal funding whether public, public charter or private?” DeVos: ”I support accountability.” Kaine: ”Equal accountability for all schools that receive federal funding.” DeVos: ”I support accountability.” Kaine: ”Okay, is that a yes or a no?” DeVos: ”That’s a, ’I support accountability.’ ” Kaine: ”Do you not want to answer my question?” DeVos: ”I support accountability.” IDEA, If DeVos had a true stumble last night, it came shortly after the exchange above, when Kaine pivoted to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. The federal law requires schools to provide students with disabilities the same educational opportunities that they provide students without disabilities. Given the limited resources in many districts, the requirements of IDEA have often strained school budgets, and the law is now at the center of a U. S. Supreme Court case over just how far schools must go to meet the needs of their students with disabilities. DeVos, at least initially, appeared not to understand IDEA or how it works. Kaine: ”Should all   schools that receive taxpayer funding be required to meet the requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act?” DeVos: ”I think that is a matter that’s best left to the states.” Kaine: ”So some states might be good to kids with disabilities, and other states might not be so good. And then, what? People can just move around the country if they don’t like how their kids are being treated?” DeVos: ”I think that’s an issue that’s best left to the states.” Kaine: ”What about the federal requirement? It’s a federal law  —   the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Let’s limit it to federal funding. If schools receive federal funding should they be required to follow federal law  —   whether they’re public, public charter, or private?” At this point, DeVos attempted to invoke a Florida program that came up earlier in the    but Kaine insisted on a yes or no answer. Ultimately, DeVos answered: ”I think that is certainly worth discussion.” Later, Sen. Maggie Hassan,  . H.  : Hassan: ”Do you stand by your statement a few minutes ago that [IDEA] should be up to the states whether to follow it?” DeVos: ”Federal law must be followed where federal dollars are in play.” Hassan: ”So were you unaware, when I just asked you about the IDEA, that it was a federal law?” DeVos: ”I may have confused it.” Wealth And Political Contributions, Sen. Bernie Sanders,  . wanted to know about DeVos’ personal fortune. Sanders: ”Mrs. DeVos, there is a growing fear I think in this country that we are moving toward what some would call an oligarchic form of society. Where a small number of very, very wealthy billionaires control, to a significant degree, our economic and political life. Would you be so kind as to tell us how much money your family has contributed to the Republican party over the years?” DeVos: ”Senator, first of all, thank you for that question. I, again, was pleased to meet you in your office last week. I wish I could give you that number. I don’t know.” Sanders: ”I have heard the number was 200 million. Does that sound in the ballpark?” DeVos: ”Collectively? Between my entire family?” Sanders: ”Yeah, over the years. Yes.” DeVos: ”That’s possible.” Sanders: ”My question is, and I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think, if you were not a   if your family had not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions to the Republican party, that you would be sitting here today?” DeVos: ”Senator, as a matter of fact, I do think that there would be that possibility. I’ve worked very hard on behalf of parents and children for the last almost 30 years to be a voice for parents, voice for students, and to empower parents to make decisions on behalf of their children, primarily   children.” Sanders: ”Thank you.”  "
"In a few hours, longtime Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh’s presidential term will expire. But he is clinging to power as troops from regional powers reportedly amass at the border. International and regional powers are demanding that Jammeh step down and make way for his rival, businessman Adama Barrow, who won last month’ s presidential election. The African Union has stated that it will stop recognizing Jammeh as president after his term expires at midnight local time. (Gambia is five hours ahead of the U. S. East Coast.) And ECOWAS, the West African regional bloc, appears to be preparing to enforce the election result by force. The Nigerian air force said in a statement that it has moved ”a contingent of 200 men and air assets” to Senegal’s capital, Dakar, ”from where it is expected to operate into Gambia.” Senegalese forces also are poised to cross the border, army spokesman Col. Abdou Ndiaye tells Reuters. ”We are ready and are awaiting the deadline at midnight. If no political solution is found, we will step in,” Ndiaye said, according to the wire service. ECOWAS had earlier threatened military action if Jammeh refused to leave and is seeking ”the U. N. Security Council’s endorsement of its ’all necessary measures’ to help remove Jammeh from power,” The Associated Press reported. Gambia, ”a country of 1. 9 million people, is estimated to have just 900 troops,” according to the wire service. Jammeh, who has been president since he led a coup 22 years ago, initially accepted the result of the Dec. 1 election  —   but dramatically changed his mind a week later, saying that the results were void because of voting ”irregularities.” And earlier this week, he issued a   state of emergency. Parliament also extended his term for another three months earlier today, according to news reports, though that hasn’t appeared to ease the tension heading into tomorrow’s deadline. Meanwhile, it appears Barrow is preparing to be sworn in as president. It’s unclear where that ceremony would take place, as Barrow is in Senegal for his own protection. ”Our future starts tomorrow,” Barrow said in a tweet. Since Jammeh lost the election, ”Gambian authorities have arbitrarily arrested opposition sympathizers and closed four independent radio stations,” according to Amnesty International. The U. N.’s refugee agency says thousands of Gambians fearing violence have fled across the border to Senegal. Tourists are also evacuating the country and a correspondent with The Guardian is posting pictures of crowded halls in the capital’s airport, saying it is ”absolute chaos.” Tour operator Thomas Cook said it is operating extra flights in order to ”get our UK customers home from the Gambia as quickly as possible.” The company adds that it hopes to transport some 3, 500 people on 16 flights by Friday. The smallest country on the African continent is a popular destination for tourists seeking sandy beaches."
"The first results from a major project to measure the reliability of cancer research have highlighted a big problem: Labs trying to repeat published experiments often can’t. That’s not to say that the original studies are wrong. But the results of a review published Thursday, in the   journal eLife, are a sobering reminder that science often fails at one of its most basic requirements  —   an experiment in one lab ought to be reproducible in another one. And the fact that they often aren’t could have big health implications. Many exciting ideas in cancer research never pan out. One reason is that findings from the initial studies don’t stand the test of time. ”Reproducibility is a central feature of how science is supposed to be,” says Brian Nosek, who spearheaded this research at the Center for Open Science. Nosek is also a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. A few years ago, he organized a similar effort to examine research in his field. And his results garnered worldwide attention when   of the original findings in psychology couldn’t be reproduced. Nosek decided to explore the work from cancer biology labs after two   studies, from drugmakers Bayer and Amgen, reported dismal results when they tried to reproduce some cancer papers. Only 25 percent of the papers Bayer examined were reproduced. Amgen was able to replicate only six out of the 53 studies it examined. ”Those were earthshaking reports, in the sense that the community responded very strongly to these reports of challenges to reproduce some of these core findings,” Nosek says. But scientists at Bayer and Amgen wouldn’t say which experiments they examined, so their work raised many questions but left no way for scientists to answer them. ”The cancer reproducibility project in cancer biology was an attempt to advance that discussion with an open project,” Nosek says. This project is transparent about how it picked the studies to reproduce. It also published methods and study plans in advance. In collaboration with a California company called Science Exchange, the reviewers got grants to replicate key experiments from as many as 50   studies. (They will very likely run out of money before they’re able to complete that work, however.) They’ve now published the results of their first five attempts, in eLife. ”Three of the five show very, very striking differences from the original,” says Timothy Errington, a biologist at the Center for Open Science and collaborator in the project. As for findings from the other two studies, he says, ”I think you’ll get a lot of opinions about whether they replicate or not.” Errington says he was quite surprised by the results. In one case, the original scientists went the extra mile to help the labs doing the   studies reduce potential sources of error. ”The lab gave us the same drug. This is wonderful. Because that could have been a sticking point,” Errington says. ”They gave us the same tumor cells that they used.” Yet the replicating lab didn’t end up with the same results. Scientists have had so much confidence in two of the original studies that drug companies already have sunk millions of dollars into efforts to try the concepts out in people. But the   experiments for one of those didn’t validate the original results. The inevitable question is whether the original science was wrong, or whether the scientists who tried to repeat that work somehow got tripped up. The review project farmed out its actual laboratory work to commercial labs that perform experiments for the pharmaceutical industry, or to university ”core facilities,” such as centralized labs that do a lot of research on mice. Those labs generally work to standards required by the Food and Drug Administration. But research with living systems is never simple, so there are many possible sources of variation in any experiment, ranging from the animals and cells to the details of lab technique. And there isn’t even clear agreement about when a study’s findings can be considered to have been reproduced. Sean Morrison, an editor at eLife and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, says that by his count, two studies’ findings were substantially reproduced. The findings of one other were not, he says, and two others have results that simply can’t be interpreted. ”One of the difficulties of the reproducibility project is they have limited time and resources to spend on any one study,” Morrison says. ”As a result, they can’t go back and do these things over and over again when the first results turn out to be uninterpretable.” Errington agrees that the reproducibility project leaves that big question hanging  —   but the scientists don’t plan to answer it. ”As exciting as that is, and as important as that is  —   and we hope someone else will follow up on it  —   we’re more curious about, ’What does that look like when we do this across many, many, many studies.’ ” But Dr. Erkki Ruoslahti, at the nonprofit Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, Calif. is worried that the reproducibility project could do real damage. The reviewers couldn’t reproduce his original study but didn’t follow up to understand why. ”I am really worried about what this will do to our ability to raise funding for our clinical development,” he writes in an email to Shots. ”If we, and the many laboratories who have reproduced our results, are right and the reproducibility study is wrong  —   which I think is the case  —   they will not be doing a favor to cancer patients.” Dr. Irving Weissman, a professor of pathology and developmental biology at Stanford University, is also disappointed in how the reproducibility project handled his experiment. His paper reported finding a protein that’s present on all human cancer cells  —   a finding that Weissman says has been replicated many times in other labs. The reproducibility project chose to repeat a peripheral part of Weissman’s paper  —   an experiment involving mice, not human tissues. And, Weissman says, the replicating lab stumbled over an early step in the experiment, but plowed ahead anyway. Weissman says he offered to bring scientists into his lab to train them in the technique, but the Reproducibility Project didn’t do that. (That would undercut one of its goals, which is to see whether scientists working independently can verify published results.) It’s important to replicate important studies, Weissman tells Shots, ”but you can’t do it halfheartedly. You have to be serious about it.” Errington and Nosek hope people who hear about the project’s findings don’t jump to any conclusions about why individual studies came to different conclusions. They’re trying to look at the big picture across dozens of studies, the two scientists say, and they don’t place too much confidence in any single result. The reproducibility project is looking for patterns across cancer research and also trying to identify common reasons that labs might have trouble reproducing one another’s work. Are the directions offered in the methods section of a paper too sketchy? Or maybe experiments frequently work only under unusual conditions. Morrison, who is involved as a journal editor rather than a participant, says the entire reproducibility project is itself one big experiment. ”I think it’s too early for us to know whether this approach is the right approach or the best approach for testing the reproducibility of cancer biology,” he says. ”But it will be a data point, and it will start the conversation.” The conversation is important because the vast majority of treatment ideas that come from the lab fail when they’re tried in people. Cathy   a pharmacologist at the University of California, San Francisco, says scientists often don’t know why those clinical failures occur, ”and so that’s why I think studies like this are really, really important.” Unfortunately, Nosek says, there are few incentives today for scientists to repeat experiments from other labs. The rewards are for publishing new ideas, not the less glamorous, but still critical, work of verifying somebody else’s findings. ”If we’re going to take reproducibility seriously,” Nosek says, experiments that attempt to reproduce the findings of others ”need to be a valued part of scientific contribution.”"
"Sotheby’s says a 16th century Italian painting sold by the auction house for $842, 500 in 2012 is actually a modern fake, according to a complaint filed in U. S. District Court in New York on Tuesday. The auction house is suing the collector who consigned the painting, arguing that he must pay back at least the $672, 000 he personally made on the sale. Sotheby’s says its contract with the man, Lionel de Saint   allows the company to rescind the sale if a painting turns out to be a counterfeit. The painting, titled St. Jerome, had previously passed through the hands of an art dealer under investigation for allegedly trafficking multiple forged works. It was displayed at Vienna’s national gallery before it was auctioned off. The gallery identified it as the work of a man known as Parmigianino, an Italian Renaissance master who worked in Parma, Italy, in the early 1500s. By the time Sotheby’s received it in 2011, disputes among art historians had led many to conclude that the painting might have been created by someone close to Parmigianino, but not necessarily by the artist himself. One scholar, the auction noted in its catalog, thought the painting might actually be by another   Italian, Michelangelo Anselmi. But no one disputed the basic origin of the painting. It was more than 400 years old, everyone who examined it agreed. That is, until a man named James Martin turned his attention to St. Jerome. Martin, the investigator behind Sotheby’s complaint, is an art conservator and forensic scientist. One colleague referred to him as ”the ’rock star’ of his field,” in an interview with Art New England magazine. In October 2016, Martin’s art analysis company, Orion Analytics, shocked the art world when it reported a painting attributed to a 17th century Dutch artist appeared to be a forgery. It contained materials that had not been invented until the 20th century. What’s more, the Dutch painting had come from the same art dealer as another suspected fake, signaling a master forger might be at work. The Financial Times reported that the news sent the market for paintings by   Old Masters reeling. Sotheby’s acquired Orion Analytics in December and made Martin the head of its new Scientific Research Department. Meanwhile, the auction house had begun to suspect that St. Jerome might be a fake. It had passed through the hands of an art dealer named Giuliano Ruffini, who the court complaint notes ”is under investigation for selling a considerable number of Old Master Paintings that are considered to be modern forgeries.” Martin took pigment samples from 21 areas of St. Jerome, analyzing the composition of the paint and comparing the chemicals it contained with paints invented at different points in history. ”Each and every one of those samples (none of which were taken from areas of restoration) contained the modern synthetic pigment phthalocyanine green,” the complaint stated. That pigment was ”first used in paints nearly four centuries after Parmigianino died.” ”It’s one of the biggest scandals in my memory,” Richard Feigen, an Old Master art dealer in New York, told Bloomberg after last year’s revelations about forgeries in the market. ”It’s going to make people very wary, extremely careful about things they are offered and the sources of those things.” The St. Jerome complaint only exacerbates that concern. Bob Haboldt, a dealer in Old Master art, told The New York Times that Tuesday’s court complaint was ”a   call.” ”It’ll make people look at what they have on the wall or what’s on consignment or what’s been purchased in the recent past more closely. People are scrutinizing what’s in their collections, and I think that’s an ongoing process.” But, Haboldt told the newspaper, ”I don’t think it’ll shake up the market more than it already has, because if you notice, the sales results at auction and in the market haven’t changed.”"
"Leather jacket . .. over superhero tights. Maybe with the jacket sleeves pushed up to the elbows jauntily? Finished off with some leather driving gloves, for precisely no reason? It’s . .. a look. You can’t say it’s not. At least, it was a look, back in the bad old days of the benighted ’90s, when superhero fashion, like skiing, skateboarding, makeovers and underarm deodorant, got extreeeeeme. Sartorially speaking, the   combo doesn’t make any damn sense, it never has. Superhero costumes are supposed to reflect the beings inside them: bold, uncomplicated, iconic  —   design reduced to essential elements and vivid primary colors.   are athletic wear, after all, meant to allow for a full range of movement. They possess, one strongly suspects, wicking technology. Throw a jacket over that, and you just complicate things needlessly. You make superheroes look . .. fussy. Also a little chilly. (”AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE! NOT, YOU KNOW, NOW, BUT SOON! AFTER I’VE GONE BACK TO THE CAR TO GET MY DENIM! ”) Worse still, as I’ve mentioned before, you make them seem like they’re doing a tight five minutes about airline peanuts against the brick wall of a Chuckle Hut in 1991. But that’s how a great many superheroes started to dress in the ’90s, as a booming comics industry fed demand with a swelling roster of extreme! heroes given to    outbursts of violence  —   and sulking. The editorial thinking went: ”These new heroes are more complicated than our classic heroes”  —   (psst: They really, really weren’t, you guys)  —   ”so their look should reflect that. We’ll make them look contemporary, raw,   .” Which translated into: we’ll slap a bomber jacket on ’em and call it a day. (Yesterday I appealed to Twitter to help me remember the various superheroes who’ve rocked this regrettable look, over the years. At this writing, some 24 hours later, the names are still pouring in the count stands at a   47.) But time moved on, and the comics boom of the early ’90s busted, and the fashion for    superhero couture mercifully faded. Many heroes who’d sported that look came to their senses, in much the same way that you, eventually, got rid of your jorts. I’m assuming. But now, one of the ’90s heroes who defined the    era has returned with a vengeance, in a solo   comic in stores today. And, yes, he’s brought the jacket with him. That’s him, and it, right up there at the   of this post. But first, some quick background. Quicker Than A Ray Of Light, There’s been a superhero called ”The Ray” flitting through superhero circles, off and on, since 1940. He was created by writer Will Eisner and artist Lou Fine in the pages of Smash Comics #14, and his design was sleekness itself: glowing yellow skintight bodysuit, with an   fin on his head. Over the long decades since his debut, he’s bounced from one parallel Earth to another, a perennial   with broadly defined ”light powers” who hung out with a team of   heroes whose roster included a guy in a hazmat suit who could make his limbs blow up (the   Human Bomb) and nothing less than the personification of the American Spirit (Uncle Sam  —   not the cigarette  —   complete with soul patch, top hat, blue tails and stripey pants on his bandy legs). In 1992, writer Jack C. Harris and artist Joe Queseda introduced the original Ray’s son in a    . His deal: Young Ray Terrill grew up convinced he had a light allergy, and was kept in the dark  —   literally  —   about his true origins, lest strong sunlight trigger his light powers before he grew old enough to control them. Artist Queseda, awash as he was in the era’s   zeitgeist, added another element to this new Ray’s look. A jacket. And . .. what a jacket. Take a look at this thing. First of all, it’s both   and   in the way precisely no jacket should be. It’s epauletted and   all the way to Sunday in a way that’s meant to evoke a military uniform, although with that    color scheme . .. well. I’ll let my colleague Linda Holmes sum it up: ”If Sergeant Pepper were a character in The Bee Movie.” Also, fingerless gloves. You know, in case his heroic duties should require him to infiltrate the ”Love is a Battlefield” video. Beginning in 1994, this new,     version of The Ray starred in a successful solo series written by Christopher Priest and penciled (initially) by Howard Porter. It was promoted, in a highly unusual move, with a   ad featuring a photograph of a male model in full Ray regalia, which appeared in all of DC’s titles. Behold, 1994 distilled to its     essence! Since then, there have been two other versions of The Ray in DC Comics: Stan Silver, an   reporter, and Lucien Gates, a   lifeguard. Both of these   Rays had the good sense to lose the jacket. Ray, A Drop Of Golden Sun, But today, it’s the       version of The Ray who’s returning in a   comic that boasts the hilariously voluminous title Justice League of America: The Ray: Rebirth #1. Writer Steve Orlando and artist Stephen Byrne reintroduce the character, setting up his inclusion, next month, in the ranks of the Justice League of America. Orlando’s bisexual, and Byrne is gay, and their version of Ray Terrill is a       superhero. Most queer readers will welcome this development, while other readers will balk. Me, I find myself surprisingly conflicted. Don’t get me wrong  —   the issue is an admirable piece of work that retells his origin, sets up his worldview, establishes his New Normal and positions him in the DC Universe with energy and economy. And it leaves you with no small amount of good,   superheroic uplift. And yet, there’s something I couldn’t get past: that retcon. Not that’s he’s gay now I applaud that. But accepting that fact means I now have to force myself to also accept the notion that any   queer kid would design . .. that woeful, woeful jacket. I’ll let it go, eventually. I mean, take a look at the guy, below. HE sure seems happy with it. More’s the pity."
"These days, plenty of consulting firms make money peddling advice on cybersecurity. Only one is run by a man designated special adviser to the president of the United States. Earlier this month,   Donald Trump named former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who heads a cybersecurity practice at the   law firm   as his chief adviser on cybersecurity issues. Giuliani’s new title is more than just another notch on his resume. It’s also likely to be good for business. ”The way the world works, if you’re perceived as having proximity to power, that brings certain advantages,” says William Galston, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. Trump also named another longtime friend and supporter, billionaire investor Carl Icahn, his special adviser on regulatory issues. White House titles can be opaque, and ”special adviser” is an especially vague one, meaning whatever the president wants it to mean. ”These are people outside the government who the president trusts and wants to confer with, but who have no formal title and are not hired by the government, not paid by the government, don’t have a formal office, but who do have access to the president, because the president wants to listen to them,” says James P. Pfiiffner, university professor of public policy at George Mason University. Unlike other White House staff positions, ”special advisers” don’t have to comply with federal    laws, which means they can hold onto their day jobs. Icahn, for example, is a longtime investor with big stakes in many major companies that have business before the federal government, including Xerox, AIG and Allergan. ”I think there’s a significant cause for concern there. You have people who are going to be advising the president, apparently in an important way, on issues that directly affect their businesses,” says Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Bookbinder notes that because special advisers aren’t formal government positions, they’re not covered by    laws and the public has no way of knowing what role they’re playing behind the scenes. ”These people don’t need to be officially vetted. They don’t need to be confirmed and their arrangements are not in any official way scrutinized by Congress,” he says. In an interview on CNBC last month, Icahn dismissed concerns about whether it was appropriate to be advising the White House on regulatory hiring when he holds a stake in energy companies. ”I can understand saying that I shouldn’t be involved in owning these if I were making policy,” he responded. But, he went on, ”Is there anything wrong with me saying this guy is the right guy for this job at this time? And it doesn’t mean Donald is going to take my advice necessarily. I’m not the guy saying, ’He’s got the job. ’” Giuliani told Politico his role as Trump adviser would present no    and he said he would never use his White House access to lobby the president. But Politico said Giuliani ”acknowledged that he might have business ties with some of the people he connects to Trump, and that he might be discussing government and private issues with some people.” It quoted Giuliani as saying: ”Probably 95 percent I’ll have no connection with. If I happen to have a business connection with them, obviously I’d make them available also if they’re business leaders. .. We do cybersecurity for many people. We are doing very well, and this gives me a chance to get a lot of new players into the game and put them before the government so they can help the government.” But the question of how much Trump should rely on special advisers with outside business ties is a complex one. Galston, who served in the Clinton White House, says presidents regularly hear from a wide variety of people, many of whom have agendas. ”People give   advice to politicians all the time. If that were a criminal activity I think our jails would be even fuller than they are now,” Galston says. It’s the president’s job to sift through the advice he hears and determine what course of action is in the best interest of the country, he says."
"Last year, global warming reached record high temperatures  —   and if that news feels like déjà vu, you’re not going crazy. The planet has now had three consecutive years of   heat. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just released its annual State of the Climate report, which says it’s the hottest it has been since scientists started tracking global temperatures in 1880. A separate analysis, by NASA scientists, came to the same conclusion. The news comes as a confirmation hearing begins for Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has been nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt has ardently defended fossil fuels and fought against federal efforts to regulate greenhouse gases that warm the planet.   Donald Trump has professed   about climate change. Still, he once called it a hoax, and scientists have been worried by his picks for his transition team and administration, as well as by the questions asked about climate scientists at the Department of Energy. As the politics swirls around them, climate scientists keep churning out data. ”[Last year] was the warmest year on record, beating 2015 by a few hundredths of a degree, and together those two years really blow away the rest of our record,” says Deke Arndt, chief of the monitoring group at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, N. C. He says 2016 was about 1. 7 degrees Fahrenheit above the global average for the 20th century. ”And that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you take that and you average it all the way around the planet, that’s a big number,” Arndt says. The warming was truly global. ”Some part of every continent, and some part of every major ocean basin was warmest on record,” Arndt says, adding that in the United States, only Georgia and Alaska had   warmth but ”pretty much the entire country was above normal, and well above normal.” This represents   warming along with the   effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon, he explains, predicting that the streak of breaking records will probably end this year as those El Nino effects dissipate. But the   warming trend should continue to go up and, Arndt says, threatens new records almost every year. ”The   warming is driven almost entirely by greenhouse gases,” Arndt says. ”We’ve seen a warming trend related to greenhouse gases for four, five, six decades now.”"
"One of the big questions about extensively   tuberculosis is whether this severe form of the disease is on the rise due to a failure of medications or if it’s spreading through the air. A new study of more than 400 patients in South Africa finds, unfortunately, that the answer appears to be the latter. Airborne transmission is the driving force behind a spike in extensively   tuberculosis ( ) in South Africa, according to a report just published in the New England Journal of Medicine. ”The majority of the new cases,   of the cases in fact, were due to    transmission,” says Dr. Sarita Shah, lead author of the study. ”What was surprising is that previously the assumption had been that   resistant TB is primarily caused by failure to treat TB effectively. This [study] really overturns our thinking and provides the evidence that the vast majority of   cases are caused by direct transmission.” This means that if you’re sitting in a doctor’s waiting room next to a person with   who’s coughing and sneezing, you could catch a potentially fatal disease that in a best case scenario takes a year and a half of intense treatment to cure. ”Yeah, for XDR we are looking at 18 to 24 months of treatment,” Shah says. ”Six to 9 of those months are taking an injectable drug. It’s painful. It has side effects. For the remaining months, you’re taking other drugs with really difficult side effects.” These side effects include serious nerve damage, rashes, jaundice, vomiting, even permanent hearing loss. And patients who are treated have only about a 1 in 4 chance of successfully defeating the infection, according to the World Health Organization. The only good news is that the overall number of cases of   globally is still relatively low. WHO estimates that there were roughly 6 million new TB cases in 2015. Of those roughly 600, 000 were drug resistant, and 10 percent of those, or 60, 000, were extensively drug resistant. To be labeled   the tuberculosis bacterium has to be resistant to at least four of the most common antibiotics used against TB. As these bacterium develop more and more resistance to the current drugs, some strains of TB have become essentially untreatable. Which is incredibly worrisome to public health officials when you’re talking about a potentially deadly airborne disease. Dr. Shah, who’s with the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global TB branch. says this new study underscores the need to control tuberculosis early and to put in to place measures to stop airborne transmission, particularly in hospitals and clinics. This means diagnosing cases early and putting in place procedures to block transmission in   settings. Special ultraviolet lights can kill the bacteria, adequate ventilation can make it less likely to linger on a hospital ward. And getting people to wear masks can also reduce the chances of transmission. ”The treatment for   is really difficult, long and not very effective with the drugs we have,” she says. ”So prevention is really the key to stopping this epidemic.”"
"Thomas Graham, managing director of the Kissinger Associates consulting firm, doesn’t like to discuss speculation that he may become   Donald Trump’s next ambassador to Moscow. But the former diplomat and adviser on Russia in the George W. Bush administration does like to talk about something else: how to salvage U. S.  relations following accusations that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the November presidential election. For all of Trump’s praise for Putin during the election campaign, there is still no coherent line on how the incoming Republican administration plans to deal with Russia. Rex Tillerson, Trump’s pick to head the State Department, said last week that Russia ”poses a danger” to the U. S. Trump’s nominee to lead the Pentagon, James Mattis, went further, naming Russia as the first of America’s ”principal threats.”  Nikki Haley, Trump’s U. N.   said during her confirmation hearing Wednesday that Russia was ”trying to show its muscle” and couldn’t be trusted, while Senate Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham support even stiffer sanctions against Russia. ”Punish, punish, punish  —   to what end? What are we trying to accomplish? It seems like a substitute for a thoughtful policy,” Graham told NPR in a phone interview. ”It’s not about business as usual, but opening diplomatic channels and reducing the risk of unwanted confrontation.” Graham has no connection to the Trump transition team, but his views on Russia reconcile the different strands within the Republican Party  —   from the openly conciliatory to the outright hawkish. Graham, 65, is also a business associate of Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state who maintains frequent contact with Putin  —   and has reportedly met with Trump since the election. ”Normalization doesn’t mean cooperation but reestablishing normal diplomatic channels. It’s not a return to partnership,” Graham said. A downturn in relations, Russia’s relations with the Obama administration soured after Putin, who had sat out one presidential term as prime minister, returned to the Kremlin for an unprecedented third term in 2012. Things got worse when Russia annexed Crimea and fomented an armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine two years later. In response, the White House coordinated sanctions against Russia with the European Union and began rotating U. S. Army troops through NATO countries in eastern Europe. In the absence of decisive U. S. action in Syria’s civil war, Putin intervened militarily on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad, catapulting Russia back onto the world stage as a Middle East  . Charges that Putin ordered   to sway the U. S. election only increased the Russian president’s stature. ”The demonization of Putin is a reflection of our declining confidence in our own capabilities. It’s easier to blame Putin,” said Graham. ”He’s pursuing Russian national interests, but he’s not running world affairs.” Graham doesn’t doubt the intelligence community’s conclusion on Russian hacking or the Kremlin’s attempts to create rifts between the United States and Europe. ”Everything that sows disunity in Europe is beneficial to Russia because of the asymmetry in power between Russia and the West,” Graham said. ”At this point, we’re being manipulated by the Russians at very little cost to them. Things pop up, and we go into a frenzy.” Risks of isolating Russia, Western sanctions imposed on the Kremlin in 2014 may very well have forestalled more aggressive Russian action in Ukraine, Graham said. At the same time, he cautioned against further isolating Moscow. ”Simply increasing sanctions won’t resolve the Ukraine crisis. Secondly, it’s not in our strategic interest if the Russian economy is excessively weakened and Russia is driven toward China,” he said. ”We need to look at Russia in a global context.” Here Graham reflects the thinking of Kissinger, who said during his last visit to Moscow in February that ”Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.” Graham said Kissinger was pointing to the fact that Russia can help balance Chinese power in Central Asia and the Far East. Although Russia’s capabilities are unsustainable without an economic upswing, Graham said, the country will be a fixture in world affairs for the coming decades. ”It has significant military capability, as we’ve seen in the cyber sphere,” Graham said. ”It’s a major power and we have to deal with it. It will be part of a stable world order.” Graham said it was high time for a new Russia policy. ”It’s not the Cold War and it’s not the strategic partnership in the immediate   War period. Neither framework is adequate because the global context is different,” he said. ”The world order is shifting. We need to come to a new equilibrium.”"
"Russia is extending the residency permit of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked evidence of the NSA’s bulk data collection program. The Russian government announced the extension via social media, NPR’s Lucian Kim reports from Moscow: ”Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, posted on her Facebook page late Tuesday night. ”She ridiculed former deputy CIA chief Michael Morell for suggesting that returning Snowden to the US would be Russia’s perfect gift to   Donald Trump. ” ’The funniest thing,’ Zakharova said, ’is that Morell doesn’t know that Snowden’s residence permit was just extended by a couple of years.’ ” Snowden, who is under indictment in the U. S. is living in Russia under a grant of asylum, NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports. He has been in Moscow since 2013. This week, President Obama commuted the sentence of another famous leaker of state secrets: Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst who released hundreds of thousands of U. S. documents to Wikileaks. The president notably did not grant a pardon to Snowden, as The Associated Press reports: ”Snowden hasn’t formally applied for clemency, though his supporters have called for it. Yet the White House drew a distinction between the unapologetic Snowden and Manning. Manning, officials noted, has expressed remorse and served several years already for her crime.” Lucian notes that last month, a report by the House of Representatives was declassified and made available to the public. It concluded that Snowden has had contact with Russia’s intelligence surveys. ”Snowden rejected the report as riddled with ’obvious falsehoods,’ ” Lucian reports. Several human rights groups have asked Obama to pardon Snowden, and report they have delivered a petition signed by 1. 1 million people calling for such a pardon. They note that Snowden’s revelations exposed violations of the law, triggering reform."
"Last month, as China encountered some of its worst pollution yet, artists in Chengdu did something bold: They put   cotton masks over the faces of statues representing ordinary urbanites that dot a centrally located shopping street. This   act of protest triggered a big response. Riot police moved in to prevent   gatherings in this inland city, and stayed in place for days. Protesters were arrested. A man was detained for spreading rumors. How different things were a decade ago, in the coastal city of Xiamen. Throngs of people blocked central streets in an organized protest against a proposed factory, which local residents feared would pose health risks. Back then, the government did not arrest the protesters and actually gave in to their main demand. It   the project after a period of public consultation and open debate. The plan to build the factory in Xiamen was scrapped. The   Southern Weekly, China’s prime intellectual newspaper, named Xiamen’s citizens ”person of the year” and praised the protests in a story headlined ”With Courage and Ideals, They Light Up Our Future.” This was no isolated event. In other cities, similar big     struggles blocked development projects. In most cases, while movement leaders were eventually punished, the protests were allowed to run their course, local governments often acceded to participants’ immediate demands and there were relatively few arrests. What made the authorities so worried about December’s   Chengdu event? Why the swifter, more draconian reaction than 10 years ago? As China specialists who track environmental issues and protest, respectively, we see two things as particularly worth noting. The first is simply the passage of time. At the start of 2007, the year of the Xiamen demonstrations, China was an authoritarian country but one that was moving, albeit very gradually and sometimes glacially, toward becoming more open. As 2017 starts, by contrast, China is a country heading the other way  —   especially since President Xi Jinping’s rise. From year to year, rights lawyers in China have less room to maneuver, not more. The authorities have been ramping up censorship and tightening the reins on   publications, including Southern Weekly. Some infractions that vexed authorities in the past but were allowed to go on can no longer occur. The authorities have also been issuing more warnings lately about the need to protect the Chinese body politic from destabilizing political ideas, which a Communist Youth League website likened to a ”zombie virus” of the sort portrayed in horror films, delivering ”chaos” to the ”infected” society. This brings to mind official drives decades ago against what was tellingly described in China as ”spiritual pollution.” Contagion fears, The other thing to keep in mind when considering the protest and response in Chengdu is the way both   and   fears of contagion shape politics in today’s China. Despite  —   and sometimes because of  —   how China has been rising, the country has stayed a jittery place due to anxieties about the potential damage that can be done by the spread of things seen as dangerous.   contagion fears stem from the leadership’s sense, initially triggered by events such as the 1989 collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union’s implosion, that the  ’s endurance is precarious. As striking as its longevity is, those in charge feel that constant vigilance is necessary to guard against two possibilities. One   contagion scenario is of a   domestic movement, similar to those that have upended governments at various points in China’s past. The other, which undergirds the effort to stem the flow of imported ideas, is of a Chinese counterpart to a ”color revolution” like those seen in some   states.   contagion fears can drive very different sorts of protests, whose common denominator is anxiety about dangerous substances  —   like air pollution  —   moving from one place to another. When the focus is on a limited geographical area, the government often lets things run their course. When the potential reach of a struggle is broader, this   contagion fear links to the   worry about movements that spread widely. And the result is more likely to be swift repression. This brings us back to Chengdu. A seemingly mild expression of discontent, the artists’ action nevertheless tapped into widespread anxieties. The masking of statues had a much more encompassing  —   and thus threatening  —   implication than the single   NIMBY marches of the past: that no one is safe from toxic air. It had the potential to resonate with just about everyone in China. The spread of viral tactics, The simplicity of using smog masks to express this point was also important, especially in a country where cotton face filters are cheap and sold everywhere. It was easy for officials to imagine  —   especially with memories fresh of how powerful the ubiquitous umbrella became as a symbol of protest in Hong Kong in 2014  —   the Chengdu act stimulating copycat actions across China. Far from Chengdu, people could soon use smog masks to signal that they’ve had enough of the polluted air and have lost patience with the leadership for failing over decades to tackle it. Memes and symbolically charged poems about pollution can go viral  —   so why not tactics? Mao Zedong famously wrote of the ease with which a ”single spark” can start a wildfire. In more recent memory, the student protest wave of 1989 started on campuses in Beijing, spread throughout the city and encompassed workers and intellectuals alike. It culminated in a movement that rocked scores of urban areas. And in 1999, Chinese leaders were completely surprised when they discovered that a religious sect called Falun Gong had been able to amass supporters completely under their radar. The extent of the spread of what the authorities saw as a particularly dangerous sort of contagion  —   due partly to the group’s admiration for a charismatic leader  —   surfaced when Falun Gong organized a blockade with 10, 000 followers right in the center of Beijing, where all   leaders live. These are instances of contagious activism that China’s leaders dread. The lesson is clear in the minds of those on top: Keep discontent at bay keep it centered on local issues keep it from spreading. Xi’s risky strategy, And so we have a   that fears artists placing smog masks on statues. It is a   that has been trying to address pollution, knowing this a major source of public discontent. And it is a   that understands it needs the public to help its regulation of polluting factories, especially to help put pressure on local governments who have protected   industry. The   walks a tightrope, balancing the need to give sufficient space to citizens to help counter pollution with the compulsion to tightly control any sort of activism that could undermine its power. As Xi has squeezed the space for public expressions of discontent and participation, pollution continues to worsen. Rather than courageously waging a real war on smog, enlisting all citizens in the fight, Xi is betting on the risky strategy of restricting even the   actions  —   even, ironically, as he takes a higher profile symbolic role in the global climate change fight. If, in the end, his administration fails to reduce pollution, Chinese citizens will rightly be angry about their situation at home, no matter what China’s leaders are saying and doing in the global arena. These citizens may get bolder and bolder in pushing back against restrictions that keep them in dangerously polluted villages and cities without any effective means of resistance. Benjamin van Rooij and Jeffrey Wasserstrom are China specialists at the University of California Irvine. Van Rooij is a professor of law and director of the Long   Institute. Wasserstrom is a professor of history who holds a courtesy appointment in the Law School. Van Rooij has published widely on Chinese environmental issues, a subject he wrote about in a New York Times  . Wasserstrom recently edited The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China. Follow them on Twitter @jwassers and @benfuzi."
"The Spirit Of The Beehive’s new song, ”Ricky (Caught Me Tryin’),” opens abruptly, with a seasick melody that tipsily sways up and down in   motions and forms a hook as dissonant as it is catchy. As Zack Schwartz sings, ”Now I live alone in   walls, just waiting for the call,” he’s backed by   strumming and a crisp electric guitar that imitates each laconic vocal phrase right back at him  —   the way your younger sibling might snottily mimic everything you say from the backseat of the family car. Even amid the rising vocal harmonies and   distortion, that singsongy melody will affix itself to your brain. The song, from The Spirit Of The Beehive’s forthcoming album, Pleasure Suck, is emblematic of what the Philadelphia band does so well. Like the classic 1973 Victor Erice film that shares and likely inspired its name, The Spirit Of The Beehive has a way of juxtaposing the pretty with the messy, making taut songs that feel a little   with sudden,   outbursts that come when you least expect them. It’s an appealing, loose formula that band members Schwartz, Rivka Ravede, Phil Warner and Pat Conaboy explored on their 2015 EP You Are Arrived (But You’ve Been Cheated) and that has been further unleashed on Pleasure Suck. ”Ricky (Caught Me Tryin’)” alternates somewhat obliquely between anxiety and depression (”Ricky caught me tryin’ to get myself well   But I could never”) and listless indecision about the future: ”You don’t need a education, you can write   You don’t need to go to college   It’s only in your mind, just tell us where to sign,” Schwartz sings. In an email to NPR, Schwartz explains that he wrote the song after being approached by a label last year: ”It’s a fictional account of success after signing a record deal and then losing it all, told in reverse, lyrically.” That theme coalesces around the chant ”Maybe the money will save us all,” a foolishly hopeful line   as a shrugging, nihilistic stinger, just before giving way to a coda of sweetly chiming keys and a simple   beat. ”Ricky (Caught Me Trying)” arrives coupled with a music video by Nnamdi Ogbonnaya that fits the The Spirit Of The Beehive’s scrappy M. O. The freaky,   video crosses many aesthetics  —   comic zines and homemade punk posters, Lisa   Trapper Keepers and Molly   GIF art  —   and depicts a grotesque creature with bulging eyes,   hair and a surreal and hilarious mishmash of objects. (Look for the hippo lasers and cell phone rainbows  —   and, wait, are those flying lasagnas?) Amid all the bonkers images flashing on the screen, we actually gain a little sympathy for the character’s isolation  —   and, more than that, an admiration for the The Spirit Of The Beehive’s imaginative melding of lyrics and visuals. Pleasure Suck comes out March 24 via Tiny Engines."
"Jake Xerxes Fussell was raised on the traditional music of the   border, joining his folklorist father Fred on his trips to document local bluesmen and   alike. Now an established artist in his own right, the younger Fussell has a deep respect and affinity for the Southern folk vernacular, though he also maintains his childlike awe for it. In recent years, he’s moved from Oxford, Miss. to Durham, N. C. where he found a perfect home in local label Paradise of Bachelors for his   2015 debut. Produced by William Tyler, it yoked together vignettes of Southern life (”Raggy Levy,” ”Rabbit On A Log”) with an   groove that would please scholars and little kids alike  —   Fussell’s burly, winking voice is made for storytelling. From What In The Natural World, Fussell’s forthcoming second album, his cover of Jimmy Lee Williams’ ”Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing On A Sweet Potato Vine?” marks a move into more existential questions about nature. Fussell’s father often worked with the writer and documentarian George Mitchell, who recorded Williams’ work. ”Unfortunately I never met him but I heard George’s recordings of him early on and always liked them,” Fussell explains. ”’Peaches’ stuck with me since the first time I heard it  —   something about the absurdity of the lyrics but also this sort of serene, rhythmic approach to guitar playing. A lot of the blues guitar playing from southwest Georgia has this serene, droning quality. I don’t know how to explain it, really, but it’s very syncopated and can be quite powerful if you can learn how to get it going.” Fussell’s version of ”Have You Ever Seen Peaches” is a hair over six minutes long, but that drone could sustain it for hours. His is softer than Williams’ electric current, running unbroken and buoyant as a shoal of fish darting downriver, and counterbalancing his   picking. He’s tamed his debut’s coltish energy, now less a force of nature than someone keen to sync with its rhythms: When he asks, ”Have you ever seen peaches growing on a sweet potato vine?” a kickier repetition of the track’s chiming refrain seems to answer. At times of national crisis, writers and artists often revert to nature in search of something simpler, steadier  —   though Fussell’s revival of this song offers nothing as pat as answers for our current predicament. The song’s central question may have its origins in Bessie Smith’s ”Sorrowful Blues,” where the promise of illicit fruit acted like sensual, biblical bait to distract a   from pursuing petty crimes. Now, it feels more like a hopeful question about the possibility of surprise, and whether human nature can change. ”I can’t really say what the song is about,” says Fussell. ”I stay fairly faithful to Williams’ lyrics, and my guess is that his lyrics were probably a composite of floating verses from here and there. That’s the way songs work, at least in my experience: Some lyrics go away while others remain, and some only go away for a little while and come back later. Maybe sometimes you’re left with just a little fragment of something that used to be a long, nuanced narrative ballad. But that fragment becomes its own thing and takes on new meaning. The same thing can happen with certain musical elements. Fiddle tunes are like that. Songs develop lives of their own and this one is no exception.” What In The Natural World comes out March 31 on Paradise of Bachelors."
"The Obama administration is rushing to tie up loose ends before packing up  —   protecting the rusty patched bumblebee, ending the Cuba ”wet foot, dry foot” immigration policy, settling a fraud case over defective air bags and investigating police in Chicago. But in a series of cramped offices near the White House, a brigade of staff, volunteers and former interns is scrambling to read every letter sent to President Obama  —   especially the letters from children. And they will all get read  —   if not before noon on Friday, when power transfers to the Trump administration, then after, when Obama moves to new digs in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D. C. says Fiona Reeves, director of presidential correspondence. ”We have had a big uptick in kids writing to the president after the election, often in the vein of farewell letters, or reflective letters,” Reeves says. ”Or for older kids, ’I’ve grown up with you.’ ” The office gets about 700 letters a day, Reeves says. The team reads and sorts each by subject and picks out those they think the president should read. Obama gets 10 letters at the end of each weekday he’s at the White House, and each week a few of those are from children. He’ll continue to get those 10 letters until he leaves, Reeves says. ”We are hustling . .. but I think we will actually end up packing up some of the letters that we haven’t read through with the president, and he’ll maintain a small team to work through his correspondence,” she says. Some are personal and give the president a chance to dole out some tough love. Like the girl who wrote to complain that her parents wouldn’t let her get her nose pierced. ”She felt it was her right as an American, land of the free,” Reeves recalls. ”And he wrote back, ’This will be your right some day. This is not your right, at the moment.’ ” In another of Reeves’ favorites, a girl tells Obama she’s having trouble making friends. His response: Be kind and generous, and find an art or sport you like to meet people with common interests. ”But don’t worry,” he wrote. ”You’ll have a lot of friends in your life, and I’m one of them now.” Reeves says Obama has relished the    role. ”There are so many other things to deal with when you’re the president,” Reeves says. ”The idea that this little girl says ’How can I help make a friend,’ and he sits down and says, ’Oh, you know, it’s good you asked . ..’ ” But the president doesn’t always get lofty in his answers, she adds. Sometimes, ”It wasn’t so much, ’Dream big dreams,’ it was, ’Don’t let the bullies get you down.’ ” Many recent letters suggest ways for Obama to spend his retirement. ”He could be their basketball coach, or another one said, ’Come and be my dad’s golf coach’ or ’Come and be my nanny,’ ” says volunteer Patty Shinseki. ”But they all have wonderful advice for the president.” Children also write with their problems, says volunteer Michael R. Moore  —   health issues, homelessness, immigration status or families breaking up. Many are sent to other offices for followup, Moore says. ”You have to be tough” as a reader, he says, because the stories can be heartbreaking. ”Kids are amazing. They deal with stuff that would really bring you down in life, and they’re writing about it to the president.” Reeves and her staff say they get as much from the letters as the writers do from their responses. One boy, for instance, who sent a photo of himself in a shirt embellished in puffy paint, conveyed an inadvertent lesson in citizenship. ”I know it must be hard to leave the White House right now,” Reeves reads from the boy’s letter. ”But you should know there are a lot of kids who think like me, and we’re getting a little older every day.” ”He was saying, ’I’m a part of a country where people like me can help shape the direction we move in,’ ” she explains. ”It’s really cool to see from a little kid who still uses puffy paint.”"
"A   lawsuit accusing the Secret Service of discriminating against black agents appears to be coming to an end without a trial. The Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service and more than 100 agents have reached a settlement agreement, the department says. A court still needs to approve the settlement. The Washington Post reports that the agreement calls for the Secret Service to pay $24 million, including lump sum payments as high as $300, 000 per agent, but does not require the agency to admit wrongdoing. In a statement late Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said he was ”pleased that we are able to finally put this chapter of Secret Service history behind us. ”Had the matter gone to trial,” he wrote, ”it would have required that we   things long past, just at a time when the Secret Service is on the mend”  —   a nod toward embarrassing scandals and incidents at the Secret Service over the past few years. This lawsuit has been brewing for a long time. It was initially filed in 2000, on behalf of a handful of agents who said they were routinely and unfairly passed over for promotions while   white agents rose up the ladder. The alleged pattern of discrimination also included racial slurs unfair assignments, bonuses and hiring practices and retaliation against people who spoke up to challenge racial harassment. In 2008, a judge excoriated the Secret Service for making a ”mockery” of the law by refusing to cooperate in the suit. A Secret Service inspector admitted to destroying evidence relevant to the case. Then the case expanded from 10 plaintiffs to scores of them. NPR’s Giles Snyder reports that three years ago, the case was certified as a class action ”covering more than 100 black agents.” Ray Moore, the lead plaintiff in the case, spoke to NPR in 2007. According to court documents, Moore bid for more than 180 promotions between 1999 and 2002. At one point, the suit says, he was assigned to train the white agent who received the promotion he was denied. He told NPR he loved working at the Secret Service and believed in the mission  —   which is why he was continuing to serve as an agent while he was suing his employer. ”But at the same time, you know, I will let people know that the service has some legacy problems, and that is the institutional racism with the promotional and evaluation system,” he said. ”There are problems with that system, and that needs to be fixed.” At the time  —   nearly 10 years ago  —   NPR described the case as ”moving slowly.” Moore said he was in it for the long haul. ”It’s going to be a fight because this is a legacy problem that has been around for a long time,” he said. ”And, you know, people with power never give it up voluntarily.”"
"Jeff Sessions donned a ”Make America Great Again” cap and joined the campaign trail as one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters on Capitol Hill. But the proximity of the Alabama Republican to the   has got some Democrats worried about how he’d preside at the Justice Department. Sessions, 70, is in line to control the federal government’s vast law enforcement apparatus: Thousands of FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents dozens of U. S. attorneys across the country and the Office of Legal Counsel, an obscure but critical office that advises the executive branch on where to draw legal boundaries on issues from immigration to treatment of terrorism detainees. ”The office of attorney general is not a normal political office,” Sessions testified at his confirmation hearing last week. ”He or she cannot be a mere rubber stamp.” His colleagues on the other side of the political aisle are trying to hold Sessions to that ideal before they confirm him to the post. In a series of questions and a   letter, Democratic senators have been prodding the attorney general nominee to distance himself from the White House he’d serve. There’s ample precedent for a firewall between the president and prosecutors. Justice Department traditionalists grimaced when former Attorney General Eric Holder called himself President Obama’s ”wingman.” After a scandal in the Bush administration, in December 2007,   General Michael Mukasey imposed guidelines that limit contacts between the White House and the Justice Department about ongoing criminal and civil law enforcement issues. At Sessions’ hearing last week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,  . I. pressed Sessions on the document. ”Will you honor and maintain those procedures at the Department of Justice?” Whitehouse asked. ”I will,” Sessions replied. Later, Whitehouse, a former DOJ official during the Clinton administration, pointed out that Republican veterans of the Justice Department have been advising new leadership there to clean ”filth” out of the department and ”wash out the agency from top to bottom.” He said that conflicted with traditions about honoring the rights of career attorneys to carry out marching orders and act in accordance with their private religious beliefs. ”Does a secular attorney have anything to fear from an Attorney General Sessions at the Department of Justice?” Whitehouse asked. Sessions, who said his 14 years as a federal prosecutor marked the high point of his public service, said no and testified that he had plenty of respect for career professionals in the department. Whitehouse tried again: ”And a secular person has just as good a claim to understanding the truth as a person who is religious, correct?” The reply: ”Well, I’m not sure.” Sessions, who is a longtime member of the same Judiciary Committee that will vote on his nomination later this month, is still expected to win confirmation, largely along party lines. And with Democrats in the Senate minority, perhaps the most they can hope for is to pin down the next Attorney General on policies and promises for the next four years."
"Confirmation controversies kick off when the Senate Judiciary Committee convenes hearings Tuesday on the nomination of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. Sessions has repeatedly amended the Senate questionnaire he submitted to the committee last month. Among the changes is his answer to a question asking the nominee to list any ”unsuccessful nominations for appointive office.” In his original answer, Sessions failed to list the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination to be a federal judge 30 years ago. Tuesday’s hearing will almost certainly feature two accounts of the 1986 hearings, and oddly enough, both will be true. That’s because there were two sets of hearings  ” one that extended over three days and went so badly that Sessions appeared to be finished and a second a month later, called at the insistence of Sessions’ chief Senate supporter. At the first round of hearings in March 1986, Sessions made a number of damaging admissions. A month later, in April, he changed his testimony. ”Disgrace to his race” vs. ”I did not acknowledge it in any form” In March, for instance, he agreed that he had referred to a white civil rights lawyer as a ”disgrace to his race.” Sessions said that his best recollection was that he’d said, ”Well he’s not that popular around town. I’ve heard him referred to as ’a disgrace to his race.’ ” But a month later, Sessions changed his story. ”I am absolutely convinced that I did not call Mr. Blackshear a disgrace to his race, and I did not acknowledge it in any form,” Sessions declared.   groups ” ” or ”quintessentially American”? In March, Sessions conceded that he had referred to the NAACP, the National Council of Churches, and the ACLU as ” ” and ” .” He admitted that was, as he put it, sometimes ”loose with my tongue.” ”That’s probably something I shouldn’t have said, but I really didn’t mean any harm,” he added. At his second hearing, however, Sessions contradicted his earlier testimony. ”I know what I believe about these organizations,” he said, asserting that ”they are quintessentially American organizations they are not   organizations.” Joe Biden, then a senator on the committee, pressed the point, asking, ”Are you telling us that you, Jeff Sessions, at no time, [have] concluded that the National Council of Churches has engaged in   activities?” ”My opinion is they have not,” Sessions replied. ”They may have taken positions that I consider to be adverse to the security interests of the United States,” but in response to further questions, he said that does not make the organizations or their positions ” .” An incredulous Biden followed up: ”So you can have a position adverse to security interests of the United States and not be   is that what you’re saying?” ”Well, I, if you hold it in good faith, you’re not an   person or an   organization. No sir,” Sessions replied. Sessions tried to explain the reason for some of his changed answers by saying he had been taken by surprise in March. But under examination by Biden, he conceded that he had been informed well in advance about all the controversial areas of questioning. Still, Sessions said, the first round of hearings had left the wrong impression. ”I am not the Jeff Sessions my detractors have tried to create,” he proclaimed, his voice rising. ”I am not a racist I am not insensitive to blacks I supported civil rights activities in my state. I have done my job with integrity, equality, and fairness for all.” It’s a rare thing for the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote down a judicial nomination. Indeed, back in 1986 it was only the second time in nearly a   that the committee had vetoed a federal district court nominee. Two moderate Republicans joined the committee’s Democrats to kill the nomination in committee. But that was 30 years ago. Sessions’ chances for confirmation now are a lot better. After the 1986 rejection, Sessions remained the chief federal prosecutor in Alabama for five more years. Soon after, he was elected state attorney general, and two years later, he was elected to the U. S. Senate, where he was   three times, earned a reputation as one of the body’s most conservative members, and for much of 2016 was the only Republican senator to endorse Donald Trump. Sessions is personally   by colleagues on both sides of the aisle and of various political stripes. Indeed, one of the senators introducing him, and vouching for him on Tuesday, will be Maine’s moderate Republican Susan Collins, who has a voting record far less conservative than his."
"Hints have been trickling out since late in 2016, but the official word is here: The latest album from Dirty Projectors is   and due out Feb. 24 on Domino Records. Along with the announcement, which Longstreth made over Twitter, the band released a third song from the album, ”Up In Hudson.” Like the two previously released songs from Dirty Projectors, ”Keep Your Name” and ”Little Bubble,” the new song focuses on Longstreth’s voice in isolation, a stark contrast from the   vocals that have dominated Dirty Projectors albums for the last decade. Full track listing for Dirty Projectors is below."
"Two days before the election, Donald Trump stood before a large crowd in Sioux City, Iowa, and called onstage the   governor in U. S. history. ”I think there’s nobody knows more about trade than him,” Trump said of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. ”Boy, you would be our prime candidate to take care of China.” Branstad’s relationship with China goes back to 1985, when he was in his first term as governor and a young agricultural official from Hebei Province named Xi Jinping visited Iowa. The two hit it off. In the ensuing years, Branstad and Xi kept in touch, as the latter slowly ascended to China’s top leadership position and Branstad was elected back into the governor’s office in 2011, managing billions of dollars worth of the state’s pork, soybean and other exports to China. ”I had told Donald Trump on several occasions, ’Don’t say anything bad about China when you’re in Iowa,’” Branstad says, sitting in his Des Moines office. ”We have a great relationship there.” In Muscatine, 150 miles east of the capital, Sarah Lande looks at photos on the wall from Xi Jinping’s 1985 visit to her town as she walks through what’s now dubbed the  . S. Friendship House. It’s a modest, 1960s brick   house where the Chinese president stayed, sleeping in the bedroom of a young Star Trek fan. Two Muscatine residents have purchased the house and hope to make it an attraction for Chinese tourists. It’s already open to the public. Lande was part of the group that organized Xi’s first trip. She says Xi had read Mark Twain and fell in love with the Mississippi River, which borders Muscatine. ”And we found him jolly,” she recalls. ”A great smile.” Lande says Xi did not get a royal treatment in Iowa. ”One of the reasons we had homestays,” she says, was because ”everybody was a volunteer. People in the home, the potluck dinner . .. I think that really appealed to him.” Since then, Xi and Branstad have visited each other several times. Branstand keeps several tokens of their friendship, including artwork and photos, on display in his office. Branstad says he knows promoting Iowa to China is a vastly different job than being an ambassador between the two largest economies in the world. He’s hopeful he can find areas of cooperation. Branstad was a big supporter of the   Partnership, a   trade deal backed by President Obama, but Trump has called it a disaster, promising to back out of it. ”Maybe it can be renegotiated and China could be included,” says Branstad. ”That’s something I think should be looked at. Or the other thing to do would be bilateral agreements, like we’ve done with South Korea.” Before he tackles that, though, Branstad will need to negotiate what has become a very tense relationship between Washington and Beijing. The most recent spat began in early December, when Trump took a call from the president of Taiwan, an island with its own government, but which Beijing considers part of China. In response, China lodged a formal protest with the United States. Five days later, Trump’s appointment of Branstad as ambassador prompted the hint of a smile from a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, who called the Iowa governor ”an old friend of China.” ”This is a common quote in China, which signifies that this is somebody that China feels that they can trust,” says Ken Jarrett, a former U. S. diplomat in China who now heads the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. Branstad’s    relationship with Xi is important, Jarrett says, but as he starts his diplomatic post in Beijing, the more important relationship will be the one Branstad has with his new boss. The challenge, Jarrett says, will be interpreting Trump to the Chinese. ”Everyone is still in the stage of trying to understand how to interpret [Trump’s] tweets. This is not easy for Americans to do and is even more difficult for the Chinese to do,” Jarrett says. Branstad will also have to navigate what has become a complicated ”frenemy” relationship between the world’s two largest economies. ”He’s going to have, of course, major challenges, because the relations between the two countries right now are somewhat tense,” says   lawyer Lester Ross. Diplomatic landmines abound: China’s encroachment into the South and East China Seas. Cybersecurity. North Korean nukes. And now that China’s economy is in trouble, the Communist Party is tightening control over its people, their access to information and exposure to foreign influence. ”China has absorbed and embarked upon a fiercely   policy mix, under which foreign influence is regarded suspiciously no matter where it emanates from, no matter what its contents are,” says Ross. In short, there may be no more challenging time than now to be U. S. ambassador to China. And, says Peking University professor Zha Daojiong, the role of the U. S. ambassador has never been more confusing to China’s leadership. ”What kind of role is he here to play?” asks Zha. ”Is he here to represent a voice from the administration? Or is he going to be functioning as a bridge of sorts?” American ambassadors to China in the 1980s and 1990s were descendants of missionaries in Asia,   ”old China hands” with the ability to see China through the lens of history, philosophy and civilization. Then, around the turn of the century, a more politically savvy batch of top diplomats arrived with close connections to Washington. Zha misses the old days. ”Time has come for the ambassadorship to function as a bridge between the different voices of both societies,” he says. When asked to pass on advice for Branstad, Ross, a   China veteran, doesn’t skip a beat. ”Be prepared to work hard. Be prepared to travel the country to make a physical presence across the country and to accommodate and welcome Chinese cultural influence. Try to make a broad, popular impression on the Chinese people.” In other words, be the face of America to the Chinese people  —   something best done in person, not on Twitter."
"When I was a kid, Mom used to say, ”You know you’ve become an infidel when you forget the Fatihah.” The Fatihah is the preamble to the Quran, a prayer Muslims repeat five times a day. Mom used to warn me to be grateful for the practice. That on the Day of Judgment, Allah would call upon me to recite the Fatihah and I would realize that I had forgotten the words and know what it means to be a lost soul. While other kids went to soccer practice on the weekends, I went to a religious Farsi school, where prayer was homework and I heard the Fatihah all the time. They would check to see that I was praying correctly, and that I was emphasizing the right ”qh” and ”ha” sounds, and performing the correct poses and postures. Dad paid particularly close attention to my religious education. ”Don’t say ’God,’ ” he would order, if I was being flip. ”When people say ’God’ they’re thinking of a man god, and that’s as bad as idolatry. We shouldn’t turn people into gods. Say, ’Allah!’ Allah is the everything in the universe!” But a girl can block out only so much cultural influence. Even my Quran used the pronoun ”He” when it translated the Arabic words into English. And, when I imagined Allah, he always took the form of my dad, usually in the clouds, or he looked like some version of Santa. Then, at 12 years old, my preteen impatience hit. Prayer was homework that I had to do five times a day?! I wanted to go out and play. I used to love sitting down to lessons with Dad, but now I couldn’t wait for him to stop talking so I could turn the TV back on. Dad would scold me about rushing through homework, and when that was done he’d scold me for rushing through prayers. In silent protest, I’d sit on my prayer rug and daydream, trying to think of anything but Dad in my head telling me that everything I was doing wasn’t good enough. When Dad realized I was lying about finishing my prayers, I braced myself for a stern lecture. Instead, he told me, ”that is between you and Allah.” When I was in college, Dad saw me in a YouTube clip joking about being a   kind of Muslim he grimaced and said, ”Never put your leftovers in my fridge.” Despite other people’s perceptions of what should or should not be in contradiction with my Muslim identity, I never experienced that discord within myself. But I do get a little sad when anyone asks me if I pray. Truthfully, I just never saw the point of it. I couldn’t connect with the scripture and its archaic English translations. It wasn’t until recently, when I found myself in a mindfulness training class, that I sat for what felt like . .. prayer. I took the class with a couple of friends, hoping that it would help me manage stress and improve my communication with  . My friends and I carpooled there every Sunday night and learned about mantras, those mental scripts that can be used to protect your brain from itself. Words to recite in the times we feel impatient, to slow life down and remind ourselves that we don’t have control of everything. The practice helped. I left every class feeling calmer and more resolute. But at the same time, I found myself annoyed. The teacher kept telling us how wonderfully secular the program was, but I kept thinking about what it really meant: it had taken a religion  —   Buddhism  —   stripped it of its complex cultural ties and painful political history, appropriated it, commodified it and put it on   mugs and calendars, served back to us in easy ”secular” doses. And then the election happened. When people asked me if I thought the Trump administration would keep its promises to register Muslims, I could feel my rib cage constrict with worry, and without thinking I reached for the Fatihah. The words of comfort Dad taught me as a kid, and I couldn’t find them and I remembered Mom’s warning. I felt what it was like to be a lost soul. I don’t believe in hell. I don’t believe in being condemned. I don’t see myself as an infidel, but I do see myself as unmoored. I have this feeling of not being connected to my bones. When I needed it most, I reached for the words of the faith that I was raised with: that the universe is unified by a force of compassion. And I looked everywhere in the attic of my mind to find those words. Looking further and further back into memories of practicing prayer with my father before my preteen cool set in, and before years of being the ”  ” kind of Muslim had left me untethered. I closed my eyes, desperate to remember those words of comfort, and they weren’t there. When I heard that Donald Trump was our next president, it was the first time in my life that I understood what prayer was for. This is what I told my father. Then I asked him to teach me how to pray, again."
"When he takes the oath of office on Friday, President Trump will inherit a far different country than President Obama did eight years ago. It’s a nation that is far more solid in some ways (economics) and shakier in others (terrorist attacks). We have gathered together dozens of statistics to show how the nation that Trump inherits (and the rest of the world) has changed over time. Over the course of Obama’s presidency, one basic trend was clear across a variety of economic indicators: After he took office, things got worse before they got better. That’s not his fault, of course President Obama took office in the middle of a devastating recession, and he introduced a stimulus bill that helped pull the country out of its plunge. Since then, many areas of the economy have (slowly but surely) recovered nicely. However, many Americans remain permanently scarred by the recession. In addition, many structural problems (inequality, better incomes for men, whites and Asians than for other Americans) remain. One big way that politics has changed under President Obama: His party has lost major ground. A majority in both houses of Congress helped him pass major legislation early in his first term, like the Affordable Care Act and the   financial regulation reform law. But after that, Republicans gained ground, taking away Democrats’ hold on power. Democrats are now at their lowest point of power than at any time in nearly a century. Following an existing trend, violence in the U. S. continued to fall off during Obama’s presidency. However, there are some hints of trouble. There was a slight uptick in violent crime in 2016, especially in some cities, which may or may not simply be a statistical blip. There has also been a recent uptick in the shooting deaths of police officers, though levels are still lower than they were in the 1990s. Trump’s immigration proposals created some of his biggest headlines during the campaign: building a wall along the southern border and a proposed ban on Muslims entering the U. S. made waves as being particularly restrictive policies. In addition, he railed against bringing in more refugees. That means these numbers could change considerably, depending on how much he gets his way on immigration policy. As President Trump takes office, several dynamics from Obama’s presidency remain: Several thousand troops remain in Afghanistan and Iraq, although far fewer than when Obama came into office. But there are some new dynamics in the world that didn’t exist when Obama took office: The Syrian civil war rages on and North Korea has conducted more nuclear tests and China has acquired or built additional islands in the South China Sea. One more big change, of course, is that the U. S. now has diplomatic relations with Cuba. It’s unclear just yet how Trump will manage that transition. Perhaps the   statistic on the environment  —   the measure of global temperatures  —   remains troubling. Just this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the warmest global temperatures on record, the third   temperature in three years. The big health policy story of Obama’s years was (duh) Obamacare, which helped drive the uninsured rate down to historic lows. Not only that, but the rate of cost growth has slowed down. Still, costs of premiums continue to grow, and to keep costs controlled for customers, companies put a lot more emphasis on   plans. America continues to have some dismal stats in a few health areas. Adult obesity continues to climb, and the opioid epidemic is raging  —   deaths from overdoses grew by an astounding 69 percent between 2008 and 2015. Also potentially troubling, data show life expectancy declined slightly in 2015 (though that may be an aberration from the upward trend). However, there are a few bright spots, particularly among America’s youth: There has been a dramatic drop in smoking among high school seniors drug and alcohol abuse among teens is likewise at relatively low rates and childhood obesity appears to have leveled off. With data contributions from Joe Neel, Jennifer Ludden, Didrik Schanche, Larry Kaplow, Denice Rios, and Richard Gonzales."
"Earlier this week, the U. S. Department of Defense announced it had transferred 10 more Guantanamo detainees, this time to Oman. Now, 45 remain at the facility, leaving challenges on what to do with the prisoners for   Donald Trump. Back in 2009, on his third day in office, President Obama ordered the detention facilities at Guantanamo to be closed ”as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” The executive order also called for a review of the 240 detainees then held in Guantanamo. ”We concluded that 126 detainees would be approved for transfer. And that means transfer to another country, with security measures,” says Matt Olsen, the former head of Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force, which compiled and evaluated all the available information on the detainees. The files had never been brought together in one place. But the yearlong review also revealed how complicated the job of closing Guantanamo would be. It still wasn’t clear where to put those who could not be released  —   those who would be tried as war criminals, those considered too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute, as well as individuals in more ambiguous categories. In 2011, Congress began placing restrictions on Guantanamo transfers in its yearly defense authorization bill, effectively stopping the president from transferring the detainees to a U. S. facility. Even the detainees cleared for release were stuck in Guantanamo if they couldn’t return home. For example, there were dozens of Yemenis who had been cleared but couldn’t return to a country descending into a civil war. It was up to the U. S. State Department to find a country willing to take the men the U. S. would not. ”Rather than being the worst of the worst, there are some who have the worst luck because they were from Yemen  —   because they were from a country that they cannot go back to,” says Cliff Sloan, who served as special envoy for Guantanamo closure in 2013 and 2014. He was responsible for persuading other countries to accept the detainees. ”It’s a very interesting process talking to foreign governments about their willingness to accept detainees for resettlement . .. the conversations are difficult. There are many things to work out,” he says. The State Department won’t discuss details of the deals between the U. S. and foreign governments to take detainees, but they’ve ended up all over the world, from Kazakhstan to Uruguay. Ambassador Lee Wolosky, the current special envoy for Guantanamo closure, says one of the things that makes it difficult to persuade foreign governments to accept detainees is that old but sticky label, ”worst of the worst.” ”The fact that they have been labeled in a political discourse as the worst of the worst, which some of them are, but some of them aren’t. And the ones we’re moving out are not, but they’re lumped in there,” says Wolosky. ”That certainly makes the task of doing what we do, which is looking at each case and convincing our foreign partners to look at the facts of each case, more difficult, because of the labeling.” The dozens of detainees left in Guantanamo after Monday’s transfer include seven men being tried in military commissions, like Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as well as others whose actual value and danger are contested. Even if Obama had been able to serve a third term, it’s unlikely they’d be anywhere else. ”Until we are able to get a policy, a plan agreed to by a president  —   and by a Congress  —   to deal with the reality of, ’What are you going to do to . .. address that last group of really hardcore people who are down there?’ then this will stay open indefinitely,” says Chuck Hagel, who served as U. S. secretary of defense from 2013 to 2015. Trump has said he intends to start loading up Guantanamo with new war detainees  —   ”bad dudes,” in his words. Hagel says Trump will have plenty of opportunities to do just that. ”The reality is that we are at war. I mean, America is still at war after 15 years. So, as long as that’s the reality, we’re going to be dealing with Guantanamo. And what you do with those that you capture and you pick up, and . .. you have responsibility for.” There are still a handful of detainees who have been cleared for release in Guantanamo, and it’s possible the transfers could continue up until the moment Trump takes office. The new commander in chief has called for the transfers to stop, so any prisoners cleared for release when Trump takes office may end up stuck in Guantanamo indefinitely."
"When the Watergate scandal blew up in the 1970s, one of the things to emerge from its shadow was the Office of Government Ethics. And OGE usually works quietly behind the scenes to make sure that people who run the country have no financial ties that could influence their work. At its helm is a man named Walter Shaub Jr. a longtime ethics lawyer, who has been at OGE for a decade. And when you ask people about him, Shaub is described as careful,   even kind of boring  —   a government lawyer. That made it all the more surprising that he was the man who orchestrated a bizarre,   tweetstorm from OGE, saying things like ”Bravo!” and ”Brilliant! Divestiture is good for you, very good for America!”  —   despite Trump’s never promising any such thing. Under scrutiny, ”I was trying to use the vernacular of the  ’s favorite social media platform to encourage him to divest,” Shaub explained last week, in another unexpected situation  —   a   speech, added at the last minute to an event at the Brookings Institution. ”I wish circumstances were different and I didn’t feel the need to make public remarks today,” he said. ”You don’t hear about ethics when things are going well.” In a steady monotone, Shaub denounced Trump’s plan  —   to keep ownership of his business empire, but shift management to his sons  —   as inadequate and meaningless: ”The plan the   has announced doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the past four decades has met.” This campaign to get Trump to divest his businesses has put Shaub in the Republican crosshairs. House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz has accused him of partisanship and summoned him to a meeting, pointing out that his committee oversees OGE’s budget. Shaub, who declined NPR’s interview request, wrote back to Chaffetz this week, asking for a public meeting. But Chaffetz’s office says the meeting has now been set for Jan. 23  —   and it will be private. Democratic ranking member Elijah Cummings is slated to attend as well and has urged Chaffetz to open the meeting at least to other members of the committee. Ethics experts and editorial boards of The Washington Post and The New York Times have sided with Shaub. Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, says Trump should rein in Chaffetz and avoid escalating the matter. ”The worst thing is for Congress to start going after OGE on behalf of the president, make the president look terrible,” says Painter, now a professor at the University of Minnesota. Law vs. practice, Presidents are subject to several ethics rules, including bribery and insider trading laws and restrictions on gifts (emoluments) from foreign officials. But as Trump and his team often point out, legally, presidents are exempt from    rules that apply to their Cabinet members. ”The president, by law, doesn’t have conflicts. I mean, it’s somewhat of a silly discussion,” spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters last week, adding that Trump’s actions were already ”above and beyond” the legal requirements. However, historically, since Watergate, presidents have voluntarily complied with the same standards that apply to their nominees, who have to negotiate an ethics deal with OGE. Such a deal may mean sale of assets, dissolution of a business or recusals from some matters to avoid conflicts between personal interests and those of the nation. The Senate, which confirms presidential nominees, has traditionally reviewed these ethics deals after OGE signs off on them, though this year, OGE has raised concerns that the nomination hearings were moving faster than the agency’s ethics reviews. And fundamentally, ethics experts say OGE doesn’t have enforcement power and doesn’t do investigations. Any potential conflicts of interest would likely fall to Congress, the Justice Department or courts. So getting in a spat with OGE sends the wrong message  —   and any effort to push Shaub out of his job would be worse. ”Firing the head of the Office of Government Ethics is about the dumbest thing the president could do if he wants the public to have confidence in his ethics,” Painter says. Shaub’s term as OGE director runs into 2018. The next time Trump will have to deal with him is likely when the president submits his financial disclosures. OGE has to sign off on them."
"If there was going to be a moment of levity during Donald Trump’s Cabinet hearings, leave it to Rick Perry to provide it. The former Texas governor is the  ’s pick to be energy secretary, and he had a relatively smooth hearing with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. But it was his humorous exchange with Sen. Al Franken that may be the most memorable of his testimony. The Minnesota Democrat began his questioning by thanking Perry for coming by to chat with him prior to his hearing. ”Thank you so much for coming into my office. Did you enjoy meeting me?” the former Saturday Night Live comedian deadpanned. ”I hope you are as much fun on that dais as you were on your couch,” Perry responded. It took a beat, but both Franken and Perry realized how that could be interpreted. ”May I rephrase that, sir?” Perry quipped, breaking down in laughter, as did the rest of the audience and senators in the usually serious hearing room. ”Well, I think we’ve found our Saturday Night Live sound bite.” It’s not the first time Perry has provided fodder for comics. His first presidential bid in 2012 saw its demise after he infamously forgot the name of the third federal department he would want to eliminate as president. It was the Energy Department  —   the one he is now nominated to run. ”I can’t, the third,” Perry finally conceded after stumbling for several seconds. ”Oops.” SNL had fun with that infamous moment. Perry made a second bid for president this cycle, but his campaign never got off the ground, and he dropped out before the primary voting even began. He did find something to do, though, before Trump offered him this current one  —   as a contestant on Dancing With The Stars. He wasn’t successful in that either, but he did have a lot of fun doing it."
"When a solar company wants to test new technology, they bring their panels to the National Renewable Energy Lab near Denver. It’s a place where federal scientists can measure how powerful and   solar panels are, so consumers know what they are buying. ”A lot of times maybe people don’t even know how to evaluate new technologies appropriately. And so we have a lot of insight and knowledge into the market that can help with some of those decisions,” lab engineer Chris Deline explained. It’s just one of the Department of Energy’s 17 national laboratories, where research is    —   from fossil   energy, to understanding dark matter in the universe. Under the Obama administration, research and development dollars flowed into renewable energy. There is concern over the future of the labs as   Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, takes the hot seat at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday morning. Perry infamously called for the department’s elimination while running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and Trump and Perry have at times questioned climate science. Appearing at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N. H. as a presidential candidate in 2011, Perry said, ”The issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” Perry doesn’t have a background in science, but Ken Kimmell with the Union of Concerned Scientists said that’s not the issue: ”We do have a concern that a secretary who doesn’t fundamentally accept the science of climate change isn’t necessarily going to direct the assets of the Department of Energy towards advancing that mission.” On the other hand, Kimmell noted that wind energy took off during Rick Perry’s three terms as Texas governor between 2000 and 2015. It was part of Perry’s ”all of the above” energy approach. In one of his last public appearances, outgoing Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz stressed the importance of clean energy research. ”I think we have an innovation edge compared to most,” Moniz said. ”But we can certainly lose it if we don’t keep this focus. And that will lead to lost market share. That will lead to lost jobs.” Then there was that controversial questionnaire  —   the Trump transition team wanted the names of Department of Energy workers who attended climate change meetings. Moniz refused, and Trump’s team backed away. Last week, Moniz announced tougher measures for Department of Energy scientists to protect them from political meddling."
"When former Texas Gov. Rick Perry faces the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for his confirmation hearing on Thursday, his first test could be whether he remembers the name of the agency he’s been picked to head. The Department of Energy (DOE) is one of three agencies Perry proposed eliminating when he was running for president in 2011. During a debate, he successfully listed the Department of Commerce and the Department of Education. But he couldn’t bring to mind the name of the third agency  —   the Energy Department. ”That one moment in time doesn’t negate the fact that he was a successful governor who led a dynamic state,” says Perry’s former Chief of Staff Deirdre Delisi. Perry was the   governor of Texas  —   14 years over three terms. Since energy is such a big part of the Texas economy, supporters say Perry is an obvious choice for the Cabinet position. But the department is about more than energy. It also keeps the country’s nuclear weapons safe and oversees 17 national laboratories. Nuclear security is an area where Perry is likely to get questioned by senators, since he has had little experience with the topic. ”DOE is fundamentally a science, technology and innovation organization,” wrote current Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz in his Cabinet exit memo. Moniz is a nuclear physicist and his predecessor, Steven Chu, was a physicist. Chu shared with several colleagues the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics. Perry does not have a science background. It’s not a requirement  —   previous secretaries who were not scientists have served in the role. Delisi says the way Perry manages will compensate for his lack of scientific knowledge. ”His leadership style is to hire the best people and have them around him. And listen to all points of view and take them in before he makes a decision,” she says. But that doesn’t satisfy Perry’s critics. As a presidential candidate, Perry has questioned the science behind climate change. At one point he accused scientists of manipulating global warming data for financial gain. Among Perry’s critics, few are as colorful as Tom ”Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office. Referring to Perry, Smith says, ”He’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he flickers to life when somebody comes up and makes a campaign contribution to him.” Smith has known Perry for much of the former governor’s political career in Texas. When a conflict came down to protecting the environment or helping business, Smith says Perry reliably chose business. ”In Texas we have a saying that, ’You dance with them that brung you,’ ” says Smith. Look at Perry’s campaign contributions, and the oil and gas industry is at the top of the list. After his term as governor, Perry deepened those ties by serving on the board of several pipeline companies. He was a director at Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. Since being nominated, the Austin   reports, Perry has cut those ties. Smith and some environmentalists do have praise for Perry on one topic: wind energy. Texas is the largest producer of wind power in the country. ”When Gov. Perry took office in 2000, there was only 115 megawatts of wind power in his state,” says Jennifer Layke, global director of the World Resources Institute’s Energy Program. Now the state has more than 160 times the wind energy generating capacity  —   18, 531 megawatts, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Smith says that’s because as governor, Perry’s administration pioneered a program to build transmission lines from the windiest parts of Texas to the cities where the electricity is consumed. That encouraged companies to build new wind facilities because they were assured they could sell the electricity generated. Layke hopes that success will inform Perry’s tenure as energy secretary if the Senate confirms his nomination. ”On renewable energy and energy efficiency, we’re looking for a broad view that these technologies will continue to be supported by the federal government,” says Layke. As the hearing gets underway on Thursday, Layke says because of the job creation potential in renewable energy, she thinks that’s something Rick Perry and the Trump administration could get behind."
"Updated 5 p. m. ET, West African troops have crossed the border with Gambia in an effort to uphold the result of the country’s presidential election by force. The winner of the Dec. 1 vote, Adama Barrow, was officially sworn in as president at the country’s embassy in neighboring Senegal earlier this afternoon. But Gambia’s longtime leader, Yahya Jammeh, has refused to quit power despite mounting regional and international pressure. The battle for power between two men who both claim to be president of Gambia has plunged Africa’s smallest country into uncertainty. ”A newly sworn in President Barrow appealed to neighboring countries for help,” NPR’s Eyder Peralta reported. ”And now troops from Nigeria, Senegal and other countries have entered Gambia.” U. S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the United States supports the military intervention by ECOWAS, the West African regional bloc. ”We support it because we understand that the purpose is to help stabilize a tense situation and to try to observe the will of the people of the Gambia,” he said. U. S. forces are not involved, Kirby added, and U. S. citizens in Gambia are advised to shelter in place.  In Barrow’s inaugural speech, he emphasized the historic nature of his win: ”This is the first time since The Gambia became independent in 1965 that Gambians have changed their government through the ballot box.” Jammeh initially accepted the result of the Dec. 1 election. But a week later, he dramatically reversed course and claimed that the election results are illegitimate. He later announced a state of emergency, and on Wednesday, the parliament extended his term for three months. ”Exceptional circumstances have compelled me to be sworn here today,” Barrow said at the televised ceremony in Dakar. ”My right as a winner to be sworn in and assume the office of president is constitutionally guaranteed and irreversible. . .. I therefore call on all civilians and military personnel of the state to support my presidency, since it is built on a constitutional foundation.” Barrow, a businessman, vowed to pursue ”comprehensive reforms.” He fled to Senegal for his own protection  —   like thousands of other Gambians in recent weeks. Meanwhile, the U. N. Security Council has backed a resolution in support of the new leader. The council voted unanimously to adopt the resolution, which ”expresses its full support to the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) in its commitment to ensure, by political means first, the respect of the will of the people of The Gambia as expressed in the results of 1st December elections.” The resolution also stressed that Gambian defense and security forces have a ”duty and obligation to place themselves at the disposal of the democratically elected authorities.” T, The U. N.   said in a statement that he told Barrow he fully supports ”his determination, and ECOWAS’s historic decision, with the unanimous backing of the Security Council, to restore the rule of law in The Gambia so as to honour and respect the will of the Gambian people.” The African Union has stated that its recognition of Jammeh’s authority would end with the end of his term on Wednesday, at the stroke of midnight. On the streets of Gambia, celebrations have erupted in support of the new leader, as Eyder reports. ”I’m just really happy about Gambians celebrating in this fashion. And I really hope this peace and stability continues,” Omar Jallow, a lawyer in Gambia’s capital Banjul, tells Eyder. He adds that he ”knows there could be clashes between the foreign troops and Jammeh supporters.” Jammeh has an abysmal human rights record and has vowed to rule the country for ”a billion years.”"
"The months leading up to the 2016 presidential election were filled with   protest songs, most of them directed at eventual winner Donald J. Trump. The months since, as you might imagine, have been no quieter. The occasion of Trump’s inauguration Friday is inspiring weekend demonstrations and benefit concerts across the country, and more protest songs keep rolling out right alongside them. With less than 24 hours to go before Friday’s big event, Arcade Fire is teaming up with Mavis Staples to release a new song titled ”I Give You Power”  —   available only via Tidal, a streaming service in which the band has a financial stake. And, though Trump’s election has no doubt stoked strong opinions among all the musicians involved, this particular song sticks to the bare essentials like throbbing synths, a jittery beat, and a few general phrases that lead to an unmistakable message for all elected officials: ”I give you power   I can take it away.” Listen now, via Tidal: Though ”I Give You Power” appears to be a   single (with all proceeds going to the American Civil Liberties Union) Arcade Fire will also release a DVD of its 2015 documentary film, The Reflektor Tapes, on January 27."
"All Things Considered   Ari Shapiro is on a road trip leading up to the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20. He is driving through North Carolina and Virginia, on the way to Washington, D. C. These are two swing states that went in opposite directions in November, each by a close margin: North Carolina for Trump Virginia, for Hillary Clinton. As the country faces dramatic changes, we’re asking people what they want from that change  —   and what concerns them. From her desk in Roanoke, Va. Patrice Campbell books appointments for the 15 Planned Parenthood clinics across the region. Right after the election, she noticed a huge increase in calls, many of them asking for the same thing. ”We’ve seen where a lot of patients  —   I would say maybe 50 to 70 percent of patients  —   [are] eager to get in for   contraceptives,” Campbell says. ”So their focus is, I need to get an IUD before Jan. 20 because an IUD can last for five, even 10 years.” Jan. 20, of course, is Inauguration Day. Anne Logan Bass has been a clinician at this Planned Parenthood clinic for eight years. She says the election was tough for the entire staff. ”My mother actually called me, and she was asking how things were going, and I said, ’Mom it’s just, we’re all crying,’ and she said, ’Is everyone worried they’re going to lose their job?’ and I said, ’No, everyone is so worried about our patients,’ ” Bass says. For years, Republicans have tried to end federal funding that gets routed to Planned Parenthood, and they plan to try again after Donald Trump is in office. They object to the fact that the organization provides abortions among other health care services  —   even though federal funds do not cover abortion services. This clinic in Roanoke treats about 2, 800 patients a year. Nationally, Planned Parenthood says it treats 2. 5 million patients a year, and abortions make up 3 percent of the services. At the Sweet Donkey coffee shop in central Roanoke, Laura Rodriguez drinks tea while her    baby girl stares   at the world. Rodriguez describes herself as lower middle class, working as a waitress. She has no health insurance. ”I’m not a big fan of Planned Parenthood. I went there before for health issues, and they were extremely overpriced. I had to pay out of pocket, a lot of money,” Rodriguez says. Planned Parenthood says it uses a sliding scale for fees based on a patient’s annual income. Sarah Law  —   a registered nurse  —   sits in another corner of the cafe. ”I’m pretty conservative myself, and as far as abortions go, that’s a different subject. But as far as women’s health and Planned Parenthood, I think that does a lot of wonderful things for women that don’t have the means to get proper care that they need,” Law says. In other words, even though Law is opposed to abortions, she thinks Planned Parenthood provides important services. To her, the argument that the only way to limit abortions is to strip federal funding for Planned Parenthood ”doesn’t make any sense.” Figures released this week show that the U. S. abortion rate is at its lowest level since Roe v. Wade. And Law fears that without easy access to contraception, those numbers could go back up. As for Bass of Planned Parenthood, her hope for the next four years is to see more patients and increase access. Her greatest fear? ”That misinformation and inaccurate, unreliable information is going to continue to make our job hard.” Use the audio link above to hear the full story."
"On Friday, when Donald Trump puts his hand on a Bible and takes the oath of office, ethics experts say he may very well be in violation of a lease on one of his premier hotels. The Trump International Hotel is a grand dame of a building on Pennsylvania Avenue, just a stone’s throw from the White House. It has become something of a tourist destination in Washington  —   and a rallying point for protesters  —   since Trump won the election. This week, they snarled traffic in front of the hotel, and one demonstrator suffered serious burns after trying to set a fire outside the building. By Wednesday, two days before Inauguration Day, security guards stood behind barricades, allowing in only hotel patrons, specially invited guests and Trump himself, who stopped by Wednesday evening for dinner, as NPR’s Tamara Keith reports. An Instagram user who was there posted a video. Everyone else, including journalists, will have to wait until after the inauguration to get inside, guards said. But there’s other trouble for the hotel. Trump has a   lease with the U. S. General Services Administration (GSA) a government agency that owns the building where the hotel is located. The GSA contract explicitly says that no elected official of the government of the United States may hold that lease. Steven Schooner, a procurement specialist at George Washington University, says Trump will be in breach of that contract once he takes office. But he says Trump doesn’t seem to care. ”There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the Trump Organization has made any effort to resolve this problem in advance of the inauguration,” he says. Last week, Trump laid out his plans for restructuring his business empire while he’s in the White House. He said he would hold on to his roughly 500 business enterprises, spanning roughly 20 countries, but hand over    operations to his two adult sons. Trump also stated that he didn’t need to take these steps, as he would be insulated from any conflict of interest laws once he becomes president. While that’s true, he will be subject to the Emoluments Clause in the U. S. Constitution, which bars officeholders from accepting gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval. Schooner says if the Trump Organization holds on to the hotel lease, it sets up numerous conflicts of interest, even if Trump himself isn’t heading up daily operations. And once he becomes president, Trump will oversee the GSA  —   so he’ll be both landlord and tenant. Schooner says there are other problems, too. ”If foreign states, if lobbyists, special interest groups, pay price premiums at the Trump hotel to host their events, to stay and maybe rub elbows with the president’s children, that’s a problem,” he says. Trump’s lawyer, Sheri Dillon, disagrees. She said at a Jan. 11 press conference that people will not try to curry favor by staying at the hotel. ”Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and it has nothing to do with an office,” she said. Trump’s spokespeople declined NPR’s requests for comment. The GSA declined an interview. It said in a statement it needed more information from the Trump Organization about its new business structure before making a decision about the hotel lease."
"On the day before taking office,   Donald Trump arrived in Washington, D. C. to kick off inaugural festivities. His first stop: a leadership luncheon at his new   hotel, the   Trump International Hotel, blocks from the White House. The hotel has been the center of a debate over conflicts between Trump’s business interests and the presidency. Incoming White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday Trump’s use of the hotel for a reception shouldn’t come as a ”shocker” to anyone, and he even gave his boss’s hotel a plug. ”It’s an absolutely stunning hotel I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by,” he told the press briefing. Norm Eisen, former special counsel to President Obama for ethics and government reform, quickly tweeted that Spicer’s statement would be considered an ethics violation once Trump is in the White House.   Trump has a   lease with the U. S. General Services Administration, a government agency that owns the building where the hotel is located. The GSA contract says that no ”elected official of the government of the United States” may hold that lease. That provision has raised questions about what will happen to the lease once Trump takes office, but so far, the issue appears unresolved. Ahead of the inauguration, Trump is making good use of his Washington hotel. He also showed up for a quick dinner there Wednesday. At the Thursday luncheon, he praised his surroundings. ”This is a gorgeous room, a total genius must have built this place,” he quipped. The media  —   which have been barred from the hotel during the inauguration weekend  —   were allowed in briefly to cover the event."
"A   in downtown Tehran, Iran, caught fire and collapsed on Thursday, killing firefighters who were working inside the building. Reports suggest at least 20 firefighters died, and many more people  —   including firefighters and civilians  —   were injured. The horrifying scene was ”inadvertently shown live on state television,” The Associated Press reports, and left other firefighters and eyewitnesses crying in the streets. More people are believed to be trapped in the rubble, NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports, and rescue operations are ongoing. The   building that collapsed, the Plasco building, is the oldest   in Iran, he says. ”The building was opened more than 50 years ago and housed retail outlets and a large number of textile manufacturing shops, according to several Iranian media,” Peter reports. ”Some of the surrounding buildings were damaged in the collapse.” The AP reports that authorities said they had ”repeatedly warned tenants about blocking stairwells with fabric” that could be flammable and could block escape routes. Here’s more from the wire service: ”Firefighters, soldiers and other emergency responders dug through the debris into the night, looking for survivors. While it was not clear how many people were in the    building, witnesses said many had slipped through a police cordon while the fire burned to go back inside for their belongings. ” ’They asked us . .. using loudspeakers to evacuate the building, but some people went inside again, saying their precious documents, their bank checks, their entire life was in their shops,’ said witness Masoud Hosseini. ’They went inside to fetch those documents. I felt like they cared about their belongings, checks and money more than their lives. ” ’Firefighters went inside to bring them out, and then suddenly the building collapsed,’ Hosseini said.” The mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said the firefighters who died in the collapse were ”martyrs,” Reuters reports. Here’s more from the news service: ”The   Tasnim news agency said troops had been sent to help dig through the ruins. It said one of the first firefighters to be reached had demanded to be let back inside to save his colleagues. ”The agency quoted an official in the Tehran governor’s office as saying an electrical   had caused the fire, but there was no immediate confirmation of this. ”President Hassan Rouhani ordered an immediate investigation and compensation for those affected.” Search dogs were looking for survivors, and the rescue operation could last for more than two days, Reuters says, citing Iranian state TV."
"There’s been a lot of   chatter about who is performing at Donald Trump’s inauguration Friday  —   and who has refused, as well as who was or was not ever asked. For critics of the incoming administration, the travails of those trying to book these gigs have been the stuff of comedy and derision for Trump’s team, the stance  —   at least publicly  —   has been that the lineup is exactly what they have always envisioned for this event: an inauguration for the people, not for the stars. ”This is not Woodstock,” the inauguration’s director of communications, Boris Epshteyn, told CNN in December. ”It’s not summer jam. It’s not a concert.” One of the oddest moments of political spin came from Tom Barrack, the head of Trump’s inauguration planning committee. Using a particularly curious turn of phrase, he told a pool of reporters earlier this month: ”What we’ve done instead of trying to surround him with what people consider   is, we are going to surround him with the soft sensuality of the place.” Regardless of how Trump got to his list of eventual performers, a glance at the historical record reveals that tomorrow’s ceremony for the first president to emerge into public consciousness via tabloids and then reality television looks a whole lot like a throwback to inaugurations of an earlier era. Trump’s invitees for the   ceremony include the U. S. Marine Band, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, teen America’s Got Talent   and current classical crossover moppet, Jackie Evancho, and The Rockettes. (The disputes within the Rockettes organization and with James Dolan, the head of their parent company, Madison Square Garden, have become infamous. And the Mormon chorus, which has sung for five other presidents’ inauguration festivities, is weathering some heated internal backlash regarding the Trump performance. At least one member of the ensemble has quit.) In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett two days ago, Barrack reasserted that the inauguration planners had a specific vision in mind. When Burnett asked why Kanye West, who has expressed support for Trump and met with him in New York in December, wasn’t going to be performing, Barrack responded: ”We haven’t asked him. He’s been great, he considers himself a friend of the   but it’s not the venue. The venue we have for entertainment is filled out, it’s perfect. It’s going to be typically and traditionally American.” By that measure of what’s ”typically” and ”traditionally” American, Trump’s team is reifying certain parameters of what is worth memorializing and celebrating in American culture. The resulting lineup evokes nothing so much as the first inauguration of Richard Nixon, at another tumultuous time in American history. Nixon also invited both the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Marine Band to perform at his 1969 inauguration. Like Nixon, Trump has invited mostly white artists to mark his    —   choices that may have seemed culturally appropriate to the 1960s establishment but strike many observers as alienating and even bewildering nearly half a century later. That’s not to say that the   festivities didn’t have at least one moment of outright weirdness: James Brown sang ”Say It Loud  —   I’m Black And I’m Proud” at the   Gala two nights before Nixon’s inauguration in January 1969. Brown went on to endorse Nixon during his second presidential campaign in 1972, which led to boycotts and protests against his shows. (Over the course of his life, Brown’s political alliances wandered from Lyndon Johnson to Strom Thurmond.) If an event for Nixon could feature an anthem of black power sung by one of the biggest stars of the day, what would it mean if West performed ”Blood On The Leaves” or ”Black Skinhead” at one of the Trump events? The   feel to Trump’s roster feels especially discordant considering how much of the  ’s campaign relied on a populist message. Let’s look back to the Inauguration Day of another   incoming president: Andrew Jackson. The doors of the White House were opened during his inauguration in 1829 to let the public in to celebrate  —   and as legend goes, a mob scene, possibly fueled by alcohol, broke out. According to accounts of the day, the teeming crowd smashed glasses, broke furniture and ruined rugs. Putting the possibly drunken chaos of Jackson’s inauguration aside, there’s a longtime tradition of incoming American presidents inviting amateur ensembles to perform at their inaugurations  —   and the ”of the people” symbolism looms large. The start of Harry Truman’s second term was celebrated by a singing New York City cop turned professional entertainer named Phil Regan, who emceed the occasion and performed ”The   Banner.” Many presidents have invited young and amateur performers from their own communities. In 1977, Jimmy Carter invited students from several historically black colleges in Atlanta to sing ”The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Four years later, at Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, an amateur vocalist named Juanita Booker  —   the daughter of a sharecropper  —   performed ”The   Banner.” For many decades, music at the inauguration ceremony was the purview of military bands occasionally, and especially following World War II, incoming presidents have also welcomed accomplished opera singers to usher in their terms in   terms. That trend began with Dwight Eisenhower, who invited the black soprano Dorothy Maynor and the white tenor Eugene Conley to sing at his first inauguration in 1953. While popular musicians have long performed at the inauguration galas and parades, it’s only much more recently that they’ve appeared on Inauguration Day itself. For example, George W. Bush was serenaded by a cavalcade of video stars like Ricky Martin, Jessica Simpson and 98 Degrees, not to mention Destiny’s Child, at his inaugural ball in 2001. Even so, Bush took a more staid road when it came to his   ceremonies, with performers like the Marine Band, the Naval Academy Glee Club and students from the University of Louisville. Similarly, Bill Clinton went for musical selections and performers that telegraphed American heritage: For both of his inaugurations, Clinton, like Carter, invited choirs from historically black colleges as well as opera singers Marilyn Horne and Jessye Norman. The idea of pulling   superstars into the inauguration proper came to its fullest expression with our 44th president, whose first inauguration included Aretha Franklin and   Ma among the performers  —   and then whose second inauguration ceremony included James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson and Beyoncé (who, as previously noted, also performed for George W. Bush as part of Destiny’s Child). Historically speaking, it’s really President Obama who has been the outlier when it comes to adding splash and spangle to the pomp and circumstance of Inauguration Day. Trump’s team has tried to go with bigger   names for a concert Thursday afternoon called ”The Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration,” which will take place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It’s slated to feature country stars Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood, actor Jon Voight and rock act 3 Doors Down, who scored chart hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As of yesterday evening, the artists listed on the official website of the ”MAGA!” show included singer Jennifer Holliday (who in fact announced on Jan. 14 that she would not be performing, after receiving negative feedback from the LGBT community). Two days ago, soul legend Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave) signed onto the ”MAGA!” bill, telling the Associated Press that he requested to perform in Holliday’s place. The ”MAGA!” event also includes The Piano Guys  —   a quartet of YouTube stars. Like other featured performers The Rockettes and Jackie Evancho, who have publicly worked out their feelings about the Trump inauguration invitation, The Piano Guys decided to publish a statement in response to their fans. The Piano Guys are all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of   Saints, and the note refers heavily to their religious beliefs and historical precedent. In the statement (which is unbylined but is written in the first person) a member of The Piano Guys compares the group’s decision to that of the legendary black contralto Marian Anderson, who sang the national anthem at both Eisenhower’s second inauguration in 1957 and at John F. Kennedy’s in 1961. Anderson’s inauguration appearances were particularly resonant with meaning after she was denied a 1939 performance at Washington’s Constitution Hall. She subsequently delivered ”one of the most important musical events of the 20th century,” an   concert for 75, 000 at the Lincoln Memorial that was a watershed in American history. Regardless of the lack of parallels between Anderson’s situation and their status as a mostly white (and completely nonblack) group, the unnamed Piano Guy continues: ”We look to Marian Anderson  —   one of history’s bravest proponents of civil rights  —   an African American woman who sang for two inaugurations in a divided, segregated nation, despite being treated by many in that nation with unthinkable prejudice and baseless hatred. She once said, ’As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.’ ” Given the heavy scrutiny and criticism surrounding the performers who are performing at the Trump inauguration, it’s most interesting to watch these musicians lay out their arguments and calculus for their individual decisions, and grasp at context and meaning for their choices, in such public ways. What’s equally compelling is to see that despite Trump’s gift for stagecraft, talent for creating his own media cycles and proclivity for upending expectations and norms, his choices wound up being just so traditional."
"Later today, six people will enter a dome on a volcano in Hawaii that will be their home for the next eight months, as they simulate a future mission to Mars. It is the fifth such experiment run by the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA. The latest mission on Mauna Loa, which ended in August 2016, lasted a full year. It is known as the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or  . The goal of   is to test what it would be like for people to live on Mars, and what the project designers call ”team performance and cohesion”  —   or how a group of strangers might handle being stuck together for months on end. ”It could be a long trip to Mars despite recent bold assurances of faster rocket ships, or a long stay on the Martian surface,” a summary of the mission states. ”In either case, astronaut crews far from Earth will rely on a social resilience and team cohesion previously untested in deep space.” The new crew is made up of two women and four men  —   five American engineers and scientists and one British researcher  —   who were chosen from a pool of ” ” candidates. Like previous missions, the crew’s assignment is primarily behavioral  —   the team is trying to figure out how to handle social interactions and psychological burdens associated with being isolated with a small group of people. Unlike previous missions, the ability of crew members to make decisions on their own, without direction from ”earth,” will vary over the course of the eight months they spend living in the dome. The   team hopes to study how different amounts of ”control of their daily schedule and planning of crew involvement in mission tasks” affect group cohesion, according to the mission summary. Asked what advice she’d give to future   Mars inhabitants, former crew member and German physicist Christiane Heinicke said, ”Bring something to work on. Something meaningful to work on. One of your biggest enemies is boredom.” ”The other big enemies, of course, are the rest of the crew,” she said, laughing in a video posted to Twitter, as The   reported. As for what she learned about how to cope with living and working with the same five people all the time, Heinicke said emergencies play a surprising role in helping people get along. At one point, for example, the system for gathering and treating water broke. To simulate life on Mars, the team received water and food only every two and four months, respectively. ”Obviously, we need water, so we all needed to work on that as a group,” Heinicke recalled. ”If you had some arguments within the group . .. it really helps to have an emergency to work on together, because everyone has new motivation,” she said."
"Updated at 12:10 p. m. ET, An avalanche in central Italy has buried a ski resort, leaving about 30 people missing and prompting a frantic rescue effort. Three bodies have been recovered, The Associated Press reports, but the full extent of the death toll is not yet known. Children are believed to be among the missing. Rescue workers who arrived at the hotel found two survivors outside, but ”no sign of life” in the building, the AP reports. The avalanche appeared to be triggered by four earthquakes that shook the Abruzzo region on Wednesday, says Christopher Livesay, reporting for NPR from Rome. The disaster struck in the same mountainous region where a powerful earthquake last summer killed nearly 300 people. The impact of the avalanche was devastating. A firefighter described the hotel as ”swept away,” the Italian news agency ANSA reports, and some media reports suggest the entire building was shifted downhill by the snow. The Hotel Rigopiano is four stories tall, according to Reuters, but only the peaks of the roof and one row of windows are visible after the avalanche engulfed the building. It’s unclear exactly when the avalanche struck. The AP reports that as early as 5:30 p. m. local time on Wednesday, Giampiero Parete, a chef on vacation at the hotel, had called his employer to report the avalanche. He begged Quinto Marcella to alert rescue crews to save his wife and children, the AP reports: ”Parete had left the hotel briefly to get some medicine for his wife from their car, and survived as a result. ” ’He said the hotel was submerged and to call rescue crews,’ Marcella said, adding that he phoned police and the Pescara prefect’s office, but that no one believed him. ’The prefect’s office said it wasn’t true, because everything was OK at the hotel.’ ”Marcella said he insisted, and called other emergency numbers until someone finally took him seriously and mobilized a rescue, starting at 8 p. m. more than two hours later.” Parete was among the two survivors found outside, the AP reports. NPR had previously reported that the avalanche struck overnight, while residents were sleeping. The first rescuers to reach the hotel traveled on skis, ANSA reports, while more teams followed by helicopter. ”Narrow mountain roads and icy weather are hampering rescue efforts,” Livesay says. Footage of the hotel’s interior showed hallways filled with snow, skylights cracking beneath the weight of the snow above and walls that had been smashed through by the force of the avalanche. Here’s video, via The Guardian: Italian media are reporting that some guests at the Hotel Rigopiano managed to send text messages after the avalanche trapped them inside the hotel. One message, according to local media reports, came from a couple who said, ”Help, we’re dying of cold.” The AP notes that there are other rescue efforts active in the region, which ”has been pummeled by more than a meter (3 feet) of snow in recent days”: ”[Storms] have knocked out power and phone lines and blocked roads, isolating towns and hamlets. ” ’We have been abandoned by everyone!’ marveled one resident from the province of Teramo, Daiana Nguyen, on Sky TG24. ’They talk about sending in the army: Thirty to 40 men came with shovels. We need heavy machinery.’ ”Nguyen said people have been stuck in their homes for days.” Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has urged the authorities to ”multiply their efforts” and work to reach trapped people  —   both in the hotel and in the neighboring hamlets  —   as quickly as possible. This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported early may turn out to be inaccurate. We’ll move quickly to correct the record and we’ll only point to the best information we have at the time."
"Updated at 12:15 p. m. ET, U. S.   stealth bombers struck two ISIS training camps in the Libyan desert Wednesday night, the Pentagon said. U. S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said the camps housed ISIS fighters, many of whom had escaped the group’s former stronghold in Sirte, on Libya’s central coast. He added that officials are still working to assess the impact of the strikes, but they believe more than 80 ISIS fighters were killed. ”Importantly, these strikes were directed against some of ISIL’s external plotters, who were actively planning operations against our allies in Europe,” Carter told reporters Thursday. He added that the targets ”may also have been connected with some attacks that have already occurred in Europe.” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the precision strikes 45 kilometers southwest of Sirte were part of a mission that lasted more than 30 hours. As NPR’s Philip Ewing reports, the Pentagon picked stealth bombers that took off from Missouri ”as opposed to American units already in Europe  —   because they had so many targets to hit, and wanted to strike them all at once.” The mission was requested by Libya’s Government of National Accord, Cook added. The GNA is recognized by the United Nations and is one of several rival governments hoping to rule Libya. Cook played surveillance video of individuals that he described as ISIS members moving   grenades and shells in the targeted area. ”This certainly dealt a significant blow to ISIL’s presence in Libya,” Cook said. ”Was it a death knell for them in Libya? We’ll have to wait and see.” Libya slid into chaos since the ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The disarray has allowed militant groups such as ISIS to gain a foothold in the country. The U. S. military started attacking ISIS targets in Sirte last August at the request of the U. N.  government, as The   reported. The U. S. launched 495 precision airstrikes during the nearly   operation, dubbed Odyssey Lighting, according to the U. S. African Command. Cook referred to this mission as an extension of that operation."
"If you think that you wouldn’t be touched by a Republican overhaul of Obamacare because you get health insurance through your job at a big company, think again. Several of the law’s provisions apply to plans offered by large employers, too (with some exceptions for plans that were in place before the law passed in March 2010). It’s not yet clear how   Donald Trump and congressional Republicans plan to revamp the federal health law, known as the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. They have not agreed on a plan, and they do not have enough votes in the Senate to fully repeal the current statute. So they are planning to use a budgeting rule to disassemble part of the law, which will limit what they can change. But they also may seek revisions in important regulations and guidance that have determined how the law is implemented. Nonetheless, as tensions grow in Washington over the future of the health law, it is important to understand some of its effects on   plans. No copays for preventive services, The health insurance offered by big companies is typically pretty comprehensive, the better to attract and keep good employees. But Obamacare broadened some coverage requirements. Under the law, insurers and employers have to cover many preventive services without charging people anything for them. The services that are required with no    payments include dozens of screenings and tests, including mammograms and colonoscopies that are recommended by the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force routine immunizations endorsed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and a range of services that are recommended specifically for children and for women by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. The change that affects the most people on an ongoing basis is likely the requirement that plans cover without cost sharing all methods of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration. (There are limited exceptions for religious employers.) ”In terms of sustained costs, birth control is probably the biggest,” said Caroline Pearson, a senior vice president at Avalere Health. No annual or lifetime limits on coverage, Even the most generous plans often had lifetime maximum coverage limits of a few million dollars before the health law passed, and some plans also imposed annual coverage limits. The health law eliminated those dollar coverage limits. Annual cap on    payments for covered services, The health law set limits on how much people can be required to pay in deductibles, copayments or coinsurance every year for covered care they receive from providers in their network. In 2017, the limit is $7, 150 for individuals and $14, 300 for families. ”Many employers often had an    limit anyway, but this guarantees protection for people with high needs,” said JoAnn Volk, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, who has written on this issue. Adult kids’ coverage expanded, The law allowed workers to keep their children on their plans until they reach age 26, even if they’re married, financially independent and live in another state. Republicans have said they may keep this popular provision in place if they dismantle the law. Guaranteed external appeal rights, Consumers who disagree with a health plan’s decision to deny benefits or payment for services can appeal the decision to an independent review panel. The provision applies to all new health plans including those offered by   companies that pay their workers’ claims directly and who were previously exempt from appeals requirements. No waiting periods to join a plan  Employers used to be able to make new employees wait indefinitely before they were eligible for coverage under the company plan. No more. Now the waiting time for coverage can be no more than 90 days. No waiting periods for coverage of   conditions  Prior to the ACA, employers could delay covering workers’ chronic and other health conditions for up to a year after they became eligible for a plan. Under the ACA, that’s no longer allowed. As a practical matter, though, coverage of   conditions was rarely an issue in   plans, say some health insurance analysts. Repeal could reopen the door to that prohibited practice, however. Standardized plan descriptions, The law requires all plans to provide a ”summary of benefits and coverage” in a standard format that allows consumers to understand their coverage and make    plan comparisons.  Basic coverage standards for   plans, The health law isn’t as prescriptive with   plans about the specific benefits that have to be offered. They aren’t required to cover the 10 essential health benefits that individual and   plans have to include, for example. But the law does require that big companies offer plans that meet a ” ” standard, paying at least 60 percent of the cost of covered services, on average. Those that don’t could face a fine. Initially, the online calculator that the federal Department of Health and Human Services provided to help large employers gauge compliance with the minimum value standard gave the green light to plans that didn’t cover hospitalization services or more than a few doctor visits a year. Now plans must provide at least that coverage to meet federal standards. The result: Large employers generally no longer offer   ” ” policies with very skimpy benefits. If the health law is repealed, that could change. In some industries with   workers and smaller profit margins, ”they might begin to offer them again, and employees might demand it” to help make the premiums more affordable, said Steve Wojcik, vice president of public policy at the National Business Group on Health, a membership organization representing large employers. Although the law strengthened coverage for people in   plans in several ways, consumer advocates have complained about shortcomings. It aimed to ensure that coverage is affordable by requiring that individuals be responsible for paying no more than 9. 69 percent of their household income for individual employer coverage, for example. If their insurance costs more than that, workers can shop for coverage on the marketplaces set up by the health law and be eligible for premium tax credits  —   if their income is less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $47, 000). But the standard does not take into consideration any additional costs for family coverage. Consumer advocates also point to the wellness regulations as a problematic area of the law. The health law increased the financial incentives that employers can offer workers for participating in workplace wellness programs to 30 percent of the cost of individual coverage, up from 20 percent. Such incentives can effectively coerce people into participating and sharing private medical information, critics charge, and unfairly penalize sick people. ”It potentially allows [plans] to discriminate against people with medical conditions, which the ACA is supposed to eliminate,” said Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow Michelle Andrews on Twitter: @mandrews110."
"In a tense hearing Thursday morning, the new administration’s Treasury secretary nominee, Steven Mnuchin, faced scrutiny from Democratic senators concerned about him profiting handsomely off homeowners who lost their homes during the housing crisis. Mnuchin, whose career includes a   stint at Goldman Sachs and Hollywood movie production, got early praise from Republicans. But stiff questioning followed from Democrats for his role as CEO of a company that took over IndyMac Bank, now known as OneWest, which failed because of its bad home loans and later pushed through many controversial foreclosures, ultimately yielding massive profits for Mnuchin. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, called his practices ”predatory,” saying the bank foreclosed on 35, 000 homeowners. ”While Mr. Mnuchin was CEO, the bank proved it could put more people on the street faster than just about anybody else around,” Wyden said in his opening statement, referring to OneWest borrowers who came forward with stories of the bank refusing to modify loan terms that might have allowed thousands more troubled borrowers to remain in their homes. Wyden added, ”Treasury secretary ought to be somebody who works on behalf of all Americans, including those who still wait for the economic recovery to show up in their communities. When I look at Mr. Mnuchin’s background, it’s a real stretch to find hard evidence that he would be that kind of Treasury secretary.” Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, rushed to Mnuchin’s defense early, accusing the Democrats of obstructionism. ”Objectively speaking, I don’t think anyone can argue that Mr. Mnuchin is unqualified for this position, so I hope we don’t have those type of stupid arguments,” Hatch said. There is no evidence that any laws were broken in Mnuchin’s management of OneWest bank, he added. Given the press around OneWest leading up to the hearing, Mnuchin was prepared for this attack, saying he welcomed the opportunity to set the record straight. ”Let me be clear: My group had nothing to do with the creation of risky loans in the IndyMac loan portfolios,” he said, pinning blame on the previous leadership. Mnuchin said in many cases where loan modifications were not possible, it was because of bank, government or other rules that did not give him the flexibility to do so. As Treasury secretary, he said, he would work to change some of those rules. Mnuchin added that his investor group invested $1. 6 billion in the bank, in part to help increase modifications. ”We renamed the business OneWest bank and saved thousands of jobs.” Mnuchin’s group originally purchased IndyMac for $1. 55 billion from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2009, then ultimately sold OneWest to CIT Group in 2015 for $3. 4 billion. Mnuchin, 54, a divorced father of three children, followed his father’s footsteps to Goldman Sachs, where he worked for 17 years.   records show Mnuchin contributed to the political campaigns of many Democrats, though he was an early supporter of Donald Trump, having met him about 15 years ago, after Mnuchin left Goldman Sachs and started a hedge fund that later invested in at least two Trump real estate projects. More recently, he has been a money man in Hollywood, with a production company that produced The Lego Movie, American Sniper and Suicide Squad. Mnuchin’s appointment was controversial in part because it departed from Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign. As a presidential candidate, Trump vilified Wall Street bankers, arguing they were part of an establishment more allied with Hillary Clinton. One television ad featured video of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein appearing as Trump says in a   ”it’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.” On several key issues, Mnuchin seemed to differ from some of his party colleagues: During the hearing, Senate Democrats kept returning to how OneWest handled its portfolio of troubled mortgages. In one heated exchange, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown told Mnuchin, ”you’ve been rather defensive, probably for good reason, about this.” Mnuchin shot back: ”It’s not that I’m being defensive I’m proud.”"
"Noor Salman, the wife of the man who killed 49 people last June at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. has pleaded not guilty to two federal charges. Salman was arrested earlier this week and charged with providing material support to a terrorist and obstruction of justice for allegedly knowing about Omar Mateen’s plan to slaughter people at the nightclub. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U. S. history. Mateen was killed by police. Salman married Mateen in 2011, as The   has reported. She grew up in California and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area after her husband’s death. She entered her plea of not guilty before a federal judge in Oakland. ”[Salman] was represented by a local attorney for Wednesday’s hearing but eventually will hire Charles Swift, a Texas lawyer from the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America,” reported the Orlando Sentinel. ”[Swift] must first get permission to practice law in California.” In November, Salman told The New York Times she was ”unaware of everything,” saying, ”I don’t condone what he has done. I am very sorry for what has happened. He has hurt a lot of people.” She also told the Times that Mateen had abused her. Salman’s childhood neighbors, described her to The Associated Press as ”a sweet, pretty California girl with Palestinian roots” who grew up in the suburbs and met Mateen online, as we have reported. In the days after the attack, the information Salman told investigators sometimes seemed contradictory. NPR’s Dina   reported Salman ”said she didn’t know that the attack was coming, but also told authorities that she tried to talk [Mateen] out of the attack.” Dina also reported that Salman told investigators she was with Mateen when he bought ammunition the week before the massacre, and joined her husband at the Pulse club before the attack. But Dina pointed out ”it’s possible she didn’t know that he was there to case the place.”"
"On Sunday morning, a gunman at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Fla. perpetrated the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. He killed 49 people and injured more than 50. The city of Orlando has released the names of the identified victims, after notifying their next of kin. ”Our City is working tirelessly to get as much information out to the families so they can begin the grieving process,” reads the city’s statement. ”Please keep the following individuals in your thoughts and prayers.” This post will be updated with further information about the victims as we learn more. Edward Sotomayor Jr. 34, Sarasota, Fla. According to multiple social media profiles, Sotomayor worked as the national brand manager for Al and Chuck Travel, which describes itself as ”part of America’s largest gay owned travel company.” In an interview with The Associated Press, David Sotomayor, who identified himself as Sotomayor’s cousin, said Edward was a ”caring, energetic man.” Christina Copelli, who lives in Vienna, was on three cruises with Sotomayor. ”He was a lovely, kind guy who touched everyone who had the pleasure of meeting him,” she told NPR. ”I can’t believe he’s gone.” Stanley Almodovar III, 23, Clermont, Fla. Almodovar worked as a pharmacy technician, according to his Facebook profile. ”He made me feel like it was perfectly fine being who I was,” Almodovar’s friend Haze Ramirez told The  . She says they met at Pulse and ”clicked instantly.” ”You would know when Stanley entered a room,” she said. ”He can turn my mood by a conversation.” Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22, Guerrero, who had recently begun attending the University of Central Florida, had only recently come out to his family as gay, according to The Associated Press. In a conversation with the news service, his cousin Robert Guerrero said he opened up to his family just before the start of the year. ”He was always this amazing person [and] he was like a big brother to me,” Robert Guerrero told the AP. ”He was never the type to go out to parties, would rather stay home and care for his niece and nephew.” Eric Ivan   36, Orlando, Fla.   was the man everyone in his family asked for design advice, his cousin Orlando Gonzalez told The New York Times. ”He was very artistic,” Gonzalez told the Times. ”He was all about interior design.” The paper reports that the    ”goofball”  —   Gonzalez’s words  —   lived in downtown Orlando with his husband. Luis S. Vielma, 22, Sanford, Fla. ”Luis was by far the best person I knew,” his friend Will Randle told the Miami Herald. ”He inherently made us all better people by simply existing around us. Part of him will always live on in every good decision I make.” According to his Facebook page, Vielma worked at Universal Studios in Orlando, including on the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride. Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling mourned him on Twitter. Peter O.   22, Peter Ommy   went by ”Ommy,” his aunt told The Associated Press. ”Peter makes a difference everywhere he goes. He was a happy person,” Sonia Cruz told the paper. ”If Peter is not at the party, no one wants to go.”   went to Pulse with his best friend, Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, she said. Menendez also died in the attack. Luis Omar   20, Omar Capo was a passionate dancer, according to remembrances being left for him online. ”May the only time you rest,” Tamandra Diaz wrote, be after you ”make some kick ass choreo up in paradise.” His friend Julius Ortiz was with him at Pulse, but left shortly before the shooting. Ortiz told NPR’s Ari Shapiro that after the shooting began, he sent Capo text after text after text, trying to reach him. He also remembered Capo helping him out when he was in need. ”When I was in a very hard situation  —   because with my dad, I was staying with him and he kicked me out  —   he actually took me in for a little,” Ortiz said. Kimberly Morris, 37, Kimberly ”KJ” Morris was a bouncer at Pulse. She moved to Orlando this spring, from Hawaii, in order to help her mother and grandmother, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Before that, she played basketball at Post University in Connecticut and worked as a drag king and bouncer at a gay club in Massachusetts, NBC Connecticut reports. Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30, Eddie Justice was an accountant, living in downtown Orlando, who loved to eat and work out, The Associated Press reports. He woke his mother up shortly after 2 a. m. Sunday, with a text message: ”Mommy I love you.” Then: ”In club they shooting.” Mina Justice and her son exchanged messages for nearly an hour, the AP reports. Eddie Justice was trapped in a bathroom at Pulse as the hostage situation began. He asked his mother to call the police, telling her a man was shooting, lots of people were wounded. ”He has us,” he told her. ”He’s in the bathroom with us.” ”He’s a terror.” His death was announced Monday. Darryl Roman Burt II, 29, Burt was a financial aid officer at Keiser University in Jacksonville, the Florida   reports. ”He always had a smile on his face and was a very nice guy. He definitely leaves an impression and had a big personality, and he is missed,” campus President Lisamarie Winslow told the newspaper. Burt was a member of the Jacksonville Jaycees, a young professionals’ organization. ”Both socially and professionally he was always interested in making positive impact on people’s lives and in the community,” president Shawn DeVries said in a statement to NPR. ”If someone needed anything he’d usually just ask . .. where, when and what are the deadlines.” Burt was known for his colorful bowties, reporter Jenna Bourne has tweeted. Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32, A woman who identified herself as Drayton’s aunt posted on Facebook that Drayton had been at work when she was shot. Melody Maia Monet, a nightclub photographer, posted a photo of Drayton (center) taken on Friday, a day before the shooting. Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25, Laureanodisla, who studied at the University of the Sacred Heart in San Juan, Puerto Rico, performed in drag as Alanis Laurell. ”It is with deepest sorrow that we report that a member of the Drag community has lost their life due to the shooting at pulse night club in Orlando Florida,” states a Facebook post from the community page Drag Around the World. ”Alanis Laurell was a[n] amazing performer and a beautiful person inside and out.” Originally from Puerto Rico, Laureanodisla studied education at the university, according to a Facebook tribute page. He moved to Orlando three years ago to ”pursue a career as a dancer and choreographer,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. He’d gone dancing at Pulse with his roommates on Saturday, and his family grew alarmed when they didn’t hear from him after he texted them at 2:07 a. m. ET. ”What I have now is a pain beyond repair,” wrote cousin Lucas Daniel Acosta D’oleo. Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35  Born in Puerto Rico, Perez had lived in the U. S. since he was a teenager and worked at an Orlando Perfumania store. ”One of the customers Perez charmed at the perfume shop was Luis Daniel   who would become his longtime partner,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. Both were killed in the attack at the Pulse nightclub. Perez ”was a man full of life and joy who loved his friends and family above all things,” says a GoFundMe page set up by family members to raise money for his funeral. Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50  Originally from Puerto Rico, Velazquez worked at Forever 21 in Orlando and was a professional Jíbaro folk dancer, according to the Orlando Weekly. A friend told the paper that Velazquez was with friends at Pulse, when ”he and others were pushed up against the wall by [Omar] Mateen, who started shooting at the group.” ”My brother will never die,” his sister wrote on Facebook. ”He will be in my heart.” Amanda Alvear, 25  Alvear had gone to Pulse with her friend Mercedez Marisol Flores, and was among those who took refuge in a bathroom during the attack. Alvear posted a Snapchat video that documented the first moments of gunfire erupting at the club. Both she and Flores were killed. Older brother Brian Alvear told the Orlando Sentinel that his sister had spent the first part of the weekend shopping with his young daughters  —   ”She liked to make them look very good.” Amanda, who wanted to be a nurse, ”wouldn’t want anyone to spread hate for her,” he told the newspaper. ”She’d rather they spread more love, keep friends and family close, and have a good time doing it.” Martin Benitez Torres, 33  Torres, a student at Sistema Universitario Ana G. Méndez in San Juan, Puerto Rico, had gone to Orlando to spend time with family. He posted Facebook videos and photos sharing scenes from his holiday. The Orlando Sentinel reports that he was among several students from his school who were killed in the Pulse attack. ”I can’t believe it that my cousin is gone too soon. Going to miss that big smile always happy,” wrote Sonia N. Crapps on Facebook. ”I am a good man,” Torres wrote on his Facebook profile page, ”a fighter who gives everything without expecting anything in return, ready to fly high today.” Luis Daniel   37,   who grew up in Puerto Rico, had gone to Pulse with his partner, Jean Carlos Mendez Perez. Both were shot and killed at the club. The two had met a decade ago, when Perez sold   Cartier perfume at a Perfumania shop, according to the Orlando Sentinel. They fell in love soon thereafter. A friend in Pennsylvania, Daniel   paid tribute to   on Facebook as ”a wonderful young man full of life, who endured countless days of bullying while growing up, by cruel people calling him all sorts of horrendous homophobic slurs. He was the first person on this earth I came out to, and he always protected and loved his friends. His strength and character was always an inspiration to all of us.” Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26  Originally from Queens, N. Y. Flores studied literature at Orlando’s Valencia Community College and worked at Target, according to her Facebook memorial page. She’d gone to the Pulse club with her friend Amanda Alvear. Both were killed in the attack. ”I forgive the boy because I cannot take that hate in my life. My life is more important than hate,” Flores’ father, Cesar Flores, told reporters in Orlando. His daughter ”had so many dreams,” Flores said. ”We must all come together, we must all be at peace, we must all love each other, because this hatred cannot continue for the rest of our lives.” Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35  Xavier E. Serrano was a professional dancer and performed in shows for Disney Live! Matt Molandes, a friend of Serrano’s, tells NPR that Serrano helped Molandes accept himself as a gay person. ”Coming from a place where I was ashamed to be gay, watching . .. performers like Xavier helped me come out of my shell,” he says. ”Xavier lived in his truth, he was always happy even on days he wasn’t.” Serrano leaves behind a young son. Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25, Silva Menendez, originally from Puerto Rico, had moved to Orlando and was working for Speedway convenience stores while he studied health care management at Ana G. Mendez University in Orlando. Sonia Cruz, the aunt of another victim, Peter O.   told the Associated Press that Silva Menendez was best friends with her nephew and that the two had gone to the Pulse nightclub together on Saturday. Oscar A   26, Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31  Oscar   left, and his partner Simon A. Carrillo, right. Partners Simon Carillo and Oscar Aracena had recently returned from a trip to Niagara Falls, the Orlando Sentinel reports, when they headed to Pulse for a night out on Saturday. Both men died in the attack. According to a friend of both men, Norkis   the two had just purchased a home together. Another friend, Yamil Caraballo, who says he had known Aracena for three years, tells NPR that he was always happy and willing to help others. ”He was a great man and loved the Lord with all his heart,” Carabello recalls. ”He was amazing.” Ivonne Irizarry, who worked with Carillo at McDonald’s, told the Orlando Sentinel he loved to travel and took great pride in the quality of his work. Carillo loved dancing, biking and water skiing, the paper writes. Enrique L. Rios Jr. 25, Rios was on vacation in Orlando from Brooklyn, N. Y. In 2015, he enrolled at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, studying social work. A spokesman for the college, Richard Relkin, said in a press release, ”Sadly, his dreams were cut short by this senseless act of violence. The St. Francis College community mourns the loss of one of our own and offers prayers to his family and friends.” While he was in school, Rios worked at a restaurant at LaGuardia Airport. A   remembered his sense of humor. ”He had so much joy in him and was so funny,” Dorys Gonzalez wrote in a remembrance on Facebook. ”He was such a good person.” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio singled out Rios Monday night at the Stonewall Inn vigil in Manhattan. ”We lost a good young man from Brooklyn. A caring and loving young man, he was already serving others. He was attending nursing school while working with our senior citizens as a social worker. This is the kind of good human being we lost in Orlando, someone with a life ahead, making this world a better place,” said de Blasio. Miguel Angel Honorato, 30  Miguel Honorato was married with three children. The family lived in the Orlando suburb of Apopka, Fla. and according to Facebook he and his brother, Jose Honorato, worked together at FajitaMex Mexican Catering. Jose Honorato tells the Orlando Sentinel that his brother had gone to Pulse nightclub with three friends, and that all three of them had made it home safe. Javier   40, Known to his friends as ”Javi” Javier   was originally from Puerto Rico. Jose Diaz, a friend of the victim, tells the Orlando Sentinel that   was a salesman at a Gucci store at a mall in Orlando, and that his outgoing personality made   good at his job. ”He was always positive,” Diaz tells the Sentinel. ”He was very humble. He was a lovely friend.” Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19, Josaphat, still in his teens, is the   identified victim in the Pulse shooting. ”Like many    Jason Benjamin Josaphat had many interests and was just starting to chart his path in life, according to his family  —   he was computer savvy, loved to work out and had an interest in photography,” the Orlando Sentinel wrote. The Orlando native had recently graduated from high school and started college classes, Josephat’s uncle Christopher Long told the newspaper. ”He was always helpful, always willing to help someone in need,” Josephat’s aunt Josette Desile said. Josephat called his mother from the club after the shooting began, and stayed on the line with her as she called 911. ”She said she heard the shots getting closer,” Desile said. Cory James Connell, 21, Connell, a student at Valencia Community College, hoped to become a firefighter, his father James told CNN. Connell was at Pulse with his girlfriend, who was shot in the attack, but survived. ”Cory’s a good guy,” James Connell told CNN after the attack, before the family had learned of his fate. ”He loves everybody.” On Facebook, Cory Connell’s brother Ryan called him ”the superhero of our family.” ”God just got the best of angels,” he wrote. Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37, Luis Daniel Conde, 39, Partners Conde and Velazquez were together at Pulse when they were shot. ”Se fueron juntos como la pareja que son,” Facebook user Pipo Pere wrote  —   meaning ”they left together like the couple that they are.” Another Facebook user, Tulio Lopez, recalled them as ”two extraordinary human beings.” Conde and Velazquez owned a salon and spa together, the Tampa Bay Times reports, and had been business partners for a decade. ”They were both exceptional people,” Conde’s sister Lynette Conde told the paper. ”They were always helping each other.” Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24, Jonathan Camuy worked on the show La Voz Kids, produced in Orlando for Telemundo, NBC Miami reports. He was a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, according to president Mekahlo Medina. He’d joined the journalism association as a student in Puerto Rico before moving to Florida. Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32, Christine Leinonen drove to Pulse at 4 a. m. after she heard there was a shooting, The Associated Press reports. Her son, Christopher Andrew Leinonen, had been at the club  —   and after the attack, his friends had posted online that they didn’t know where he was. She stood on the street, sobbing, begging for word of her son. ”These are nonsensical killings of our children,” she said. ”They’re killing our babies!” Christine’s emotional appeal for news of her son aired on TVs around the nation. She said she was proud of Christopher, she told ABC News, saying he won a humanitarian award for founding the   alliance at his high school. She begged for the world to ”try to get rid of the hatred and the violence, please!” On Monday the confirmation came: Leinonen died in the shooting. Nightclub photographer Melody Maia Monet shared a photo on Instagram of Leinonen and his boyfriend, Juan Ramon Guerrero, who also died in the attack. She took the photo at a different nightclub on Friday, just one day before the shooting. ”I am haunted that I may have taken the last photo of them together,” she wrote. ”They were so beautiful.” Frank Hernandez, 27, His family called him Frankie. Frank Hernandez was at Pulse nightclub in Orlando with his boyfriend when the shooting began. According to the Miami Herald, by the time Hernandez’s teenage sister, Julissa Leal, made the   drive to Orlando from their childhood home in Louisiana, Hernandez was dead. ”I don’t want to say it, I don’t even want to believe it,” Leal writes on Facebook. ”I don’t understand why he had to be one of the many victims who didn’t make it. Why did it have to be him of all people. They took my big brother away from me, they took him away from us.”  Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33, Tomlinson was a lead singer in a cover band called Frequency. Earlier Sunday night, the Orlando Sentinel reports, he was singing at another nightclub, the Blue Martini. He was ”a vibrant and charismatic lead vocalist,” the paper writes. ”Orlando will miss his voice,” friend Jai Saint told People. ”The world will miss his voice.” Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49, McCool, a mother of 11 and grandmother of six, loved dancing the salsa and had gone to Pulse with her son Isaiah Henderson, 21. A Brooklyn native, McCool had moved to Orlando from California, according to the New York Daily News. ”A cancer survivor. A stellar mother. A proud and fierce advocate for her LGBT family. .. [She] tore up the dance floor when salsa or anything was playing,” actor Wilson Cruz, a relative, wrote on Facebook. McCool had become a beloved figure at the Pulse nightclub. ”She’s like the mom of Pulse,”   Carlos Rosario told a local news program. ”She supported us and was there with us the whole time.” At 12:04 a. m. Sunday morning, McCool posted a video from Pulse on Facebook  —   music blaring, colored lights flashing, couples dancing. Two hours later, she was still dancing when Omar Mateen began shooting. ”Brenda saw him point the gun,”    Ada Pressley told the Daily News. ”She said, ’Get down,’ to Isaiah and she got in front of him.” Two bullets struck McCool, and her son escaped with his life. ”She was shot dead,” Pressley told the paper. ”That’s how much she loved her kids. If it weren’t for her, he’d have been shot.” Angel L.   28, Angel   had been a Zumba instructor in Chicago until a few months ago, when he moved to Orlando. According to his employer, he was scheduled to start a new job in his new city on June 20th, working as an ophthalmic technician at the Florida Retina Institute.   was originally from Puerto Rico. His aunt, Leticia Padro, tells Univision that her nephew was ”very humble, respectful, [and] studious.” She says the family is making arrangements to transport his body back to Guanica, Puerto Rico for burial. Geraldo A.   25, He went by Drake. Ortiz was an actor, a dancer, and a proud Dominican, who was raised in the US and lived in Puerto Rico. He had studied law, according to his Facebook profile, at Universidad del Este in Carolina, Puerto Rico. After his death was confirmed on Monday, messages poured in over social media. ”God, my brother,” wrote one friend, Gregory Fabian, on Facebook. ”This isn’t fair.” Akyra Monet Murray, 18, Akyra Murray graduated with honors from West Catholic Preparatory High School in Philadelphia last week. Murray and her family were on vacation in Orlando to celebrate her graduation and visit Murray’s brother. ”Akyra was a respectful and   young woman who served as a natural leader to her teammate,” her basketball coach, Beulah Osueke, writes in a statement on the school’s website. ”Losing Akyra is heartbreaking.” Akyra Murray’s mother, Natalie Murray, tells NPR that Akyra called her parents just after 2 a. m. on Sunday. ”She called to tell us she had been shot, and at this point she’s frantic. She’s screaming, she’s crying, she’s [saying] ’Mommy please help me, I’m bleeding so bad. Please call the cops. Please help me, Mommy, please. ’”    Murray died of a gunshot wound to the arm, which severed a major artery. Murray had planned to attend Mercyhurst North East, part of Mercyhurst University in Erie, P. A. on a full basketball scholarship. Paul Terrell Henry, 41, Henry, a Chicago native, loved to dance and was great at pool, his boyfriend tells the Orlando Sentinel. Henry had ”such a loving spirit,” Francisco Hernandez told the paper. ”He wanted the best for me, to succeed and to help me make something of myself. I am definitely going to do that for him.” Facebook user Stephanie Gross, who said she used to work with Henry, posted in a remembrance that he was encouraging and ”always smiling.” ”I remember him for his infectious boisterous personality, pink Polo shirt, and huge belt buckles,” she wrote. Henry had two children, and his daughter had recently graduated from high school, The Orlando Sentinel wrote. Antonio Davon Brown, 29, Brown was a captain in the Army Reserves. The Army Times reports he was in the ROTC program at Florida AM University, where he earned a degree in criminal justice in 2008. Brown was deployed to Kuwait from April 2010 to March 2011, the Orlando Sentinel reports, citing U. S. Army Media Relations. Jane Brookshire worked for the 1st Infantry Division Sustainment Brigade at Fort Riley while Brown was serving there, before he left active duty and joined the Reserves. ”He was the one person who used to come to my office every day and make sure that I was having a good day,” she tells NPR. ”We would just sit there and talk and laugh,” she said. ”He was an amazing officer, friend and an absolute joy to be around,” she wrote. Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24, Sanfeliz lived in Tampa and worked as a personal banker at JP Morgan Chase, the Tampa Bay Times reports. A high school teacher of his told the Times Sanfeliz was ”the most positive guy I’ve ever known.” His family immigrated from Cuba in the ’60s and were very   the paper writes. ”My little brother and the most important person in my life has passed away,” Junior SanFeliz posted on Facebook. ”He was so strong, and was my rock through everything we ever went through. He was the light of my family.” Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21, Barrios Martinez had immigrated from Cuba to Florida in 2014, according to   news site Café Fuerte. His cousin, journalist Alvaro Alvarez, told Café Fuerte in Spanish that the   family was living in ”rage and anguish.” Alvarez lives in Chile, while Barrios Martinez’s father lives in Orlando and his mother lives in Cuba. Alvarez denounced the attack on the club and defended the right of his cousin and others at the club to ”live without apology.” Rodolfo   33, An employee since 2011 of Florida’s OneBlood blood donation center, Ayala ”had recently been promoted to supervisor of a team coordinating platelet products for patients,” according to People magazine. OneBlood saw many donors in the wake of the attack on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub. ”I can tell you that Rodolfo Ayala was a dedicated person who took pride in the fact that every day he had a chance to help save lives,” OneBlood supervisor Thomas Webster wrote on Facebook. Originally from San German, Puerto Rico, Ayala helped support relatives back home. ”He was a lab technician who moved to Orlando from Puerto Rico in pursuit of happiness,” wrote Yecenia Caban Jimenez, who knew him in high school. Coworkers remember Ayala as a loving and compassionate person, an avid dancer and a great fan of Ricky Martin. ”He was very proud of being a gay man in the community,” Adam Colon told People. ”No one could tell him different.” Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25, Tevin Crosby, originally from Statesville, N. C. owned a marketing firm, Total Entrepreneurs Concepts. He graduated from West Iredell High School in Statesville, and studied business at Strayer University South in Charlotte, N. C. His high school English teacher, Jacqueline Scott, tells the Charlotte Observer that, when he graduated, the staff voted Crosby one of its ”unsung heroes,” for his perseverance. ”I want people to know the laughter and the joy he spread,” she says. Crosby’s brother, Chavis, tells the Orlando Sentinel that Tevin was a great businessman. ”He was very ambitious,” Chavis says. ”Whatever goal he had in mind, he worked hard.” Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24, Solivan, who was known as Mary, is survived by her husband and two young boys. She went to Pulse Saturday night with a group including    William Sabad Borges, who was shot twice and survived, and friend Jonathan Camuy, who did not. ”We went there for a night of fun and instead she paid with her life,” sister Natalia Canlan wrote on a GoFundMe page set up for funeral expenses. ”Her smile lit up the room and her laughter brought a smile to your heart!” Borges wrote on Facebook that Camuy had died ”like a hero” while trying to protect Solivan. ”Jonathan’s body was found protecting my  ” he wrote. Borges told CNN that Solivan had favored going to Pulse: ”Let’s go to a gay club,” she told him, ”because they’re killing at the other clubs.” Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32, Paniagua was humble, cheerful and religious, friends and family told The Orlando Sentinel  —   and he loved to dance. ”He was loyal. He was always trying to do stuff to make you feel better,” said his friend Lorena Barragan, who met him in church. Paniagua was originally from Veracruz, the Mexican newspaper El Universal reports. Before news of Paniagua’s death had been announced, his cousin Jose Luis Paniagua spoke to Newsday as he waited for word to send to the rest of the family in Florida and in Mexico. He said they’d never expected something like his  —   not in America. ”We came here for a better life,” he told Newsday. ”We came because here in the United States there are many opportunities . .. and because we were fleeing, because in our country there was a lot of crime, violence and death . .. and we expect it should be more peaceful here.” Juan   25, Juan Chavez Martinez was remembered by a hotel housekeeper he supervised as ”kind and loving,” the Orlando Sentinel reports. ”There was nobody else like him,” Jose Crisantos told the paper. Martinez, who was from the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, was the youngest of six children, Mexican newspaper El Universal reports. ”He was the best brother,” his sister Fidela told El Universal in Spanish. ”He was always cheerful, and he was the one who supported my parents.” ”My heart is still breaking,” friend Tomas Martinez told the Orlando Sentinel. ”He had a lot of friends.” Jerald Arthur Wright, 31, His friends and coworkers knew Jerry Wright as a quiet, kind, and hardworking part of the ”Disney Family,” as many employees at Walt Disney World call the team there. Wright worked in the Emporium Shop at the Orlando theme park. A former coworker, Scott Dickison, tells the Orlando Sentinel that Wright that, ”Jerry was a great guy to work with. He was quiet but really wonderful with all the guests. He always had a smile on his face.” Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25, Roy Fernandez loved to sing and loved to dance. He described himself on Instagram as a dancer, stylist, and fashion enthusiast, and he frequently shared photos and videos featuring his own designs and choreography. Fernandez is originally from Ponce, Puerto Rico. A friend and manager at the apartment complex in Orlando where Fernandez worked as a leasing agent, Yolanda   tells the Orlando Sentinel that he filled the office with music. ”He sang Adele in the office until we couldn’t take it anymore. It just feels very quiet now.” Jean C. Nieves Rodriguez, 27, ”Just like a big teddy bear,” is how Orlando resident Ivonne Irizarry described her friend to the Orlando Sentinel. ”Whatever you needed, you could count on him.” Originally from Puerto Rico, Nieves Rodriguez loved the beach and cars. He attended Orlando’s Oak Ridge High and was general manager of a   service, according to the paper. ”He wanted to be the best at what he did, and he would work very hard to achieve that,” Irizarry said. ”Love by many Left behind with a broken heart his Mom and Sister and a family,” says a GoFundMe page set up to help cover funeral expenses. ”WE LOVE YOU JEAN. Fly high baby.” Editor’s note: We’ve updated the text to reflect that the Orlando attack represents the deadliest mass shooting in modern U. S. history, rather than in all of U. S. history. You can read more about our thinking here."
"Sweet potatoes are undergoing a modern renaissance in this country. While they have always made special appearances on many American tables around the holidays,   demand for the root vegetables has grown. In 2015, farmers produced more sweet potatoes than in any year since World War II. War Effort, ”A lot of things were hard to get during World War II, and potatoes were easier to raise than some of the other vegetables,” my grandmother Joyce Heise tells me. She grew up outside of Philadelphia. Her grandfather farmed potatoes, and their orange sister tubers, sweet potatoes. ”And then some things were rationed so you had to do with what the best you could,” she says. Regular potatoes and sweet potatoes were a staple in American victory gardens and on dining tables. Why? They were cheap and really easy to grow. Back then, we didn’t have sweets like we do now. So sweet potatoes satisfied that sweet tooth at a discount for Americans strapped for sugar and cash. By the end of the war, U. S. farmers were growing more than 3 billion pounds of sweet potatoes. But when soldiers returned home, people went back to work and the economy hummed. ”It became cheaper to buy russet potatoes than, you know, to grow your own sweet potatoes,” April McGreger says. She grew up on a sweet potato farm in Mississippi and wrote about the history of the root vegetable in her book Sweet Potatoes. ”At around the same time, we really had this sort of movement away from small farming families in the U. S. into working people in more industrialized jobs,” she says. ”That means people purchasing more of their food instead of growing it.” Industrialization of farming and the rise of processed foods left sweet potatoes in the dust. U. S. production dropped by a billion pounds within two years after the war and it bottomed out in 1980, with less than 1 billion pounds total, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Fad diets and trendy restaurants,   to the 2000s when the sweet potato began its ascension. One big reason: the fad diet. For anyone on the South Beach Diet, Paleo diet or Atkins diet, the hearty sweet potato was a godsend. Even TV personalities like Dr. Oz highlighted the magic of the vegetable. ”All these diets that have tons and tons of followers are really touting sweet potatoes as being this ’super food,’” McGreger says. As Americans were encouraged to cut sugar intake and eat more fiber and antioxidants, the sweet potato  —   chock full of vitamins  —   began to show up on plates again. With a long growing tradition and a climate suitable for cultivation, sweet potatoes are local to just about every farmer in the U. S. That makes them ripe for diners that care about eating local. Schools started serving them for breakfast and lunch. Top chefs incorporated them as a quintessential Southern food. ”Sweet potatoes are the darling of this local,    eating movement,” McGreger says. ”They’re a local ingredient that can be accessed 12 months out of the year.” Decline Of Tobacco, Global Demand, In 2000, Americans ate about 4 pounds of sweet potatoes per person. Today, it’s nearly double that, at 7. 5 pounds per person. McGreger says farmers noticed  —   especially tobacco farmers. ”Right now, the largest producer of sweet potatoes is North Carolina,” she says. ”Those are tobacco farmers that have switched to sweet potatoes because it’s a relatively good cash crop to replace tobacco.” Outside the country, global demand increased as well. ”In the last 10 years there has been a tremendous increase percentage wise of sweet potato exports,” says David Trinklein, an associate professor of plant sciences at the University of Missouri. ”A lot of them going to Europe.” Trinklein says the majority is going to Northern Europe and Great Britain where it’s too cool to grow sweet potatoes. Today, U. S. sweet potato farmers export about 11 percent of the total supply. Hungry Europeans, hungry Americans,   eaters, local foodies. Add up all of these factors, and U. S. farmers produced 3. 1 billion pounds of sweet potatoes in 2015. And it may not stop there. ”I think if they can develop new ways to market it, to eat it,” Trinklein says, ”there very well could be an increase.” This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration focused on food and agriculture. "
"The U. S. Department of Education has withdrawn a proposal that could have fundamentally changed the flow of federal dollars to schools that serve   students. ”The law is clear that it is unacceptable to systematically underfund   schools and fill the hole with federal resources,” explained Dorie Turner Nolt, a spokeswoman for the education department. ”While we worked tirelessly to put forward a regulation that implements that simple requirement and to incorporate the extensive feedback we received, we ultimately did not have time to publish a strong final regulation that lives up to the promise of the law.” This brings to an end a long and bitter fight between the Education Department, led by Secretary John B. King, Jr. and Sen. Lamar Alexander,   himself a former education secretary and current chairman of the Senate committee that handles education. ”This is an intolerable situation,” Alexander said of the Department’s   ”  ” proposal back in May, in a heated speech on the Senate floor. ”If the regulations are not consistent with the law, I don’t believe [states] should follow them,” he said. ”If the department persists, then the state should go to court to sue the department.” Why was Alexander so angry? The easy answer: Title I. That’s the $15 billion the federal government sends to districts to help schools that serve lots of   students. Alexander and King disagreed on how to enforce the new law governing Title I. It says that, to get federal money, districts have to prove a few things  —   among them, that they’re using state and local dollars to provide roughly the same services to kids in poor and   schools alike. ”Basically, schools within a school district have to be similar,” Liz King said in a May interview. She’s director of education policy at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. ”The idea here is that if they’re not similar, then these federal dollars are just going to fill in gaps.”  Everyone agrees that Title I dollars are not supposed to  . They’re meant to be extra  —   the technical term is ”supplemental”  —   for   kids who need them most. What the sides don’t agree on is how districts prove they’re not just filling gaps and that state and local resources are being spread fairly. The current system is not fair, King insisted at the time. ”What we see, as we look around the country, is districts where they’re actually spending significantly more in their   I schools than they’re spending in their Title I schools.” The Teacher Salary Gap, Nora Gordon, of Georgetown University, studies Title I and, when interviewed back in May, said much of that spending gap between poor and   schools comes from teacher salaries. ”  schools typically have more teacher turnover,” Gordon said. ”That means they have more novice teachers.” And novice teachers cost less. That matters because, believe it or not, most school budgets are based on staff positions instead of actual teacher salaries. To comply with the law, according to Sen. Alexander, districts have to show that all schools are getting their fair share of jobs, not dollars. As a result, schools may have similar   ratios, but   I schools often end up getting and spending more local and state money to pay for their more experienced teacher corps. The Education Department had hoped to change that. It proposed a way to require that districts prove their actual spending per student in poorer schools is equal to, or greater than, the average spent in   schools. But Alexander wasn’t having it. He insisted that Congress had debated whether to address this   spending gap and chose not to. To him, the law was clear: ”You’ve got to be spending a comparable amount of money in schools that get the [Title I] money and schools that don’t  —   except teacher salaries may not be included in that computation. That is in the law.” A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service appeared to back Alexander, finding that ”a legal argument could be raised that ED exceeded its statutory authority.” In response to the news that King had dropped the regulations, Alexander released this statement: ”I am glad the Education Department has listened to Congress and has chosen not to move forward with its proposed ’  ’ regulation. This proposal would have dictated from Washington how states and school districts should spend nearly all state and local tax dollars on schools in order to receive federal Title I dollars  —   which are only about 3 percent of total national spending on   schools. A regulation like this is not authorized by law in fact, it is specifically prohibited by law.” Unintended Consequences, The Education Department’s plan didn’t just bother Republicans. It worried Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. ”We don’t want to hurt one school to help another school. We have to help all schools,” Weingarten said when we spoke in May. Her concern was that, unless districts and states find new money for their poorer schools (and our School Money series showed how rare that is) their   schools would  —   under the Education Department’s proposal  —   have to make cuts. That could mean losing valuable programs or even transferring some of those more experienced (and expensive) teachers. ”And if you know other kids are gonna get hurt by this, why would you do it?” Weingarten asked. In this way, the Title I fight pitted pragmatism against principle. On one side were Weingarten and many of the nation’s school leaders, who said this attempt to level the playing field was   but would come at too high a cost to other kids and schools. In the opposite corner were the Education Department and advocates who argued: This was about protecting students’ civil rights. ”When is it ever OK to spend less money on the education of poor children than we spend on the education of   children?” Liz King asked. It’s a simple question. The answer is anything but."
"The Obama administration has dropped a controversial proposal that would have required all federally funded scientists to get permission from patients before using their cells, blood, tissue or DNA for research. The proposal was eliminated from the final revision of the Common Rule, which was published in the Federal Register Wednesday. The rule is a complex set of regulations designed to make sure federally funded research on human subjects is conducted ethically. The revision to the regulations, set to go into effect in 2018, marks the first time the rule has been updated in 26 years. The initial proposal that researchers be required to get permission before using a patient’s tissue sample for research came out of the desire to avoid repeating what happened to Henrietta Lacks, an American who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Some of the cells from Lacks’ cancer were kept alive for decades, used in research and for commercial purposes without her consent or her family’s knowledge. But scientists have argued that the mandate for consent in the initial Obama proposal was unnecessary and would hinder crucial research. ”That proposal received a lot of criticism,” says Dr. Jerry Menikoff, who heads the Health and Human Services Office of Human Research Protections, which announced the final decision. ”There was concern,” he says, ”that by implementing this new rule it would be harmful to the research enterprise, because it would make it harder to do research that is very, very useful.” The final decision was welcomed by scientists and universities. ”We are very pleased,” said Mary Sue Coleman, a biochemist and president of the Association of American Universities. ”It would have been an unworkable system. Every time you have to get consent, it adds costs and complexity to the system that would have affected millions of samples  —   and, we think, would have limited research.” Still, the decision to drop the requirement raised concern among others. ”We know that trust is a critical factor in folks participating in research,” says Debra Mathews, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University. ”And we’ve seen in recent years the impact of when that trust is breached. In order for the public to trust the scientific community, the scientific community has to demonstrate that it’s trustworthy. And a big part of that is asking permission.” Rebecca Skloot, a journalist and author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a popular 2010 book on Lacks, says the many readers she’s talked to over the years were taken aback by what happened to Lacks and her family. ”One of the most commonly asked questions,” Skloot says, ”is, ’this couldn’t happen today, right? They couldn’t just take cells from people without their knowledge and use it in research?’ My answer to that question is, ’Yes, this happens all the time.’ And people are always shocked by this.” ”Research has been changing in the way it takes place over the last quarter century,” Menikoff says. ”The type of research we do is different.” Big,   studies are much more common now, he says, and that calls for standardizing techniques and practices. ”The notion was: ’Let’s change the way we protect research subjects to fit with the type of research we do now.’ ” Most of the changes included in the revision were welcomed by scientists, including one that would require studies conducted at multiple locations to be overseen by a single, central ethics committee (with certain exceptions). Until now, it’s been common for each location to have a separate oversight panel. ”The bottom line,” Menikoff says, ”is the trial has to be conducted the same way across all those sites to be scientifically valid. Therefore, the ethical analysis of the study should be consistent across all the sites  —   it doesn’t make sense to have a separate ethical analysis at each site.” But that change raised concerns among some. ”The concern is that there may be inadequate protection for the subjects of the research at a particular site,” says Dr. Michael Carome, who heads Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, a consumer watchdog group. He and others argue there could be important cultural differences and other factors that vary among research subjects from site to site that require local oversight. ”They might have unique vulnerabilities in terms of their education level,” Carome says. ”Or they might be    subjects. And if there is only an English version of the informed consent form, that could lead to the subject at a particular institution not fully understanding the risks and the benefits.” The growing use of blood and cells to do genetic research also raises the possibility that the identity of the donors of those samples of blood and cells could be revealed inadvertently. The new rules will be phased in over the next several years."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Rock ’n’ roll so often boils down to simple pursuits: the search for love, sex, escape, revenge, satisfaction, or some signifier of freedom and home. But for Brian King and David Prowse of Japandroids, that central pursuit is often majesty itself. Listen to the Vancouver duo’s 2012 masterpiece Celebration Rock  —   one of the most appropriately titled albums of all time  —   and you’ll hear song after song fixated on a   intention to feel more, stay raw, let rip, and ”yell like hell to the heavens.” A natural resistance to aging and decline provides plenty of subtext, but really, the band specializes in anthems about the power and the glory of simply feeling alive. Japandroids’ new album is titled Near To The Wild Heart Of Life, so those themes remain in full effect from the opening drum fills of the title track. But the themes here are a bit more expansive: Released four and a half years after Celebration Rock, these eight songs are clearly the product of reflection, upheaval and the   that so often comes with travel and time off. The concept of home springs up repeatedly in Near To The Wild Heart Of Life’s first two songs, as the title track details a need to leave (”And it got me all fired up   to go far away”) and ”North East West South” paints a lovingly patriotic,   picture of Canada and its gravitational pull. Elsewhere on Near To The Wild Heart Of Life, King and Prowse let their sound meander a bit more than usual, as ”Arc Of Bar” sprawls out for seven and a half minutes, while the   ”True Love And A Free Life Of Free Will” weighs the imagined majesty of the unknown against the   comfort of contentment. If Celebration Rock was two guys’ way of romanticizing the messiness of a dramatic past  —   real and rediscovered  —   then Near To The Wild Heart Of Life is its natural sequel,   youth as a passageway to a new and better place."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Allison Crutchfield is used to leaving things behind. She and her twin sister Katie have been on the road for more than a decade now, first as p. s. eliot, then as Bad Banana. Later, Allison formed the     Swearin’ which would often tour alongside Katie’s established solo project Waxahatchee. Fleeting glimpses of cities,   house venues: These are givens to the naturally rootless DIY crowd for whom touring is a way of life, rather than a break from it. But when Allison’s relationship with one of her Swearin’ bandmates ended, the group went with it, along with a sense of certainty as she passed the midpoint of her 20s. ”I keep confusing love and nostalgia,” she sings in ”I Don’t Ever Wanna Leave California,” a standout track from her solo debut, Tourist In This Town. What’s worth holding on to from a dead relationship? What part of you dies with it  —   particularly when the relationship in question provided a rare constant in an itinerant life? These are the questions Crutchfield, who recently turned 28, attempts to answer on Tourist. She’s a liberated wanderer, dispatching vignettes from faraway cities, though the memories of her relationship snare her back in. ”I can’t enjoy Paris ’cause I can’t get away from you,” she sings in ”Sightseeing.” Back in her hometown of Philadelphia, in the close quarters of a shared group house, she has no space to call her own. ”We sleep in the same bed at opposite times,” she sings in ”Charlie.” In ”Dean’s Room,” she mainlines the euphoria of ”Just Like Heaven” and ”Dancing In The Dark” to celebrate a precarious moment of privacy: ”I dance around in Dean’s room while I have it to myself   But I feel like you’re always watching me.” Punk living arrangements may mean that Crutchfield has no physical space to call her own, but she carves out her own bold lane on Tourist, far from the scrappy   of her formative bands. Opener ”Broad Daylight” is so startling, you might check to see if you hit play on the right record. Singing a cappella, Crutchfield unleashes a regal trill that evokes Neko Case singing gospel, her voice as pure and strong as sunlight beaming through a   window. Her songwriting talents have long been assured here, she establishes herself as a gifted singer. Crutchfield often unleashes warm sighs that wash anxious songs with relief, but she also uses her voice to jarring effect. In ”Charlie,” she recounts how her ex would yell in her face and bite her neck ”’cause you like the way I feel in your teeth” with disquieting sweetness. ”Mile Away” is a brutal    —   ”You were spared rejection and it’s a dangerous thing   Now you wake up confident every single day”  —   where every seethed ”you” hits like a squarely aimed punch. (Here’s hoping Crutchfield one day puts her vivid Southern twang to use in a country record.) Crutchfield’s golden voice balances out the record’s darkly sparkling textures. She recorded with Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Mary Lattimore) and employed his full arsenal of obscure synthesizers while helping to bring a newfound sense of space to her naturally hooky instincts. ”Broad Daylight” has the bolshie energy of kids bouncing off the walls the middle of the record smooths out into gleaming   while anxious, flinty percussion runs away with the end of the album, which coincides with her tentative  . ”Even after a disaster, some things remain intact,” she realizes amid the     pop of ”Expatriate.” ”And I am worried, yeah, I still worry all the time   The things you used to hate about me are all heightened now   But I love myself, or I’m figuring out how.” In spite of Crutchfield’s admission that she’s constantly mistaking love and nostalgia, Tourist In This Town is sharp, unsparing and never actually sentimental. ”The waiter keeps interrupting you to keep the water glasses full,” she sings in ”Broad Daylight,” in a breakup scene where optimism is in short supply. She seems aghast in that song when her ex suggests she should ”go out and kill some memories,” but in ”. ..California,” she lines empty beer cans up ”as headstones” when she hears he’s gotten back together with an old flame. Rather than wallow, since there are hardly any good memories here to wallow in, she picks over the motives of her younger self: ”Was this based in love or was it based in admiration?   Was it mutual respect or was it the mutual frustration?” Wanderers can’t hold onto unnecessary dead weight  —   ”More than anything, I just wish I didn’t care,” Crutchfield sings in ”Chopsticks On Pots And Pans”  —   but try as she might, there’s no shucking this off just yet."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Amid social and political upheaval, it’s only natural to seek out interpreters who use screams, brush strokes and dance to articulate the intangible. It’s only natural that art responds in kind to its environment and the hostilities it faces. It’s only natural, if flippant and ignorant and unfair, to think that punk only thrives under such circumstances, as if musicians prefer oppression to freedom. But if punk’s natural form is protest, if punk’s rudimentary form is accessible to even the most musically deficient, if punk is the guardian at the gates yelling for truth and justice, then punk is never complacent. If any band has understood this in recent years, it’s Priests  —   born and bred in Washington, D. C. operating under the notion that nothing about American systems or society is natural. Nothing Feels Natural, the band’s first proper album after a couple of tapes, a 7” single and 2014’s Bodies And Control And Money And Power EP, isn’t a direct response to the state of the nation so much as a state of mind. For Priests, the personal has always been political the band recognizes that the self is fluid, and that how we interact with each other is just as vital as how we confront the world. That’s why Nothing Feels Natural, in 10 tracks that embody the spirit of punk  —   while fully embracing the RB, pop and experimental layers that course through the band’s discography  —   presents itself as a broken and abstract view of what it means to live in a broken and abstract society. With a spindly riff doubled down by guitarist G. L. Jaguar and bassist Taylor Mulitz, not to mention Daniele Daniele’s crisp and powerful drums, Katie Alice Greer sings, ”It’s a long movie, a long movie, and you are not you   You are not you,” in ”Appropriate.” It’s a bruising opener that injects space and chaos into Priests’ work  —   particularly in the song’s back half, a doomy Diamanda Galas slice of   skronk played by D. C. jazz musician Luke Stewart. The band is quick to pivot from the loud to the surreal with ”JJ,” a deranged   number that seems transmitted from an alien  . Perry Fustero bangs on an    piano, pulling Priests in and out of rhythmic orbit as Greer makes sense of a fractured relationship in cutaway lines, closing with the damning yet freeing, ”Whoever deserves anything anyway?   What a stupid concept.” This is an important conceit of Priests, and almost as important is the jagged line that gets the band there. Everything the group does feels like part of a concerted effort to deconstruct the binaries of civilization  —          —   and undercut the entitled structures that uphold them. Later on, ”Pink White House”   the binary of the American dream in some of Jaguar’s most scathing guitar work, but the fact that Greer   her way to this conclusion by way of an everyday relationship is by design: The   doesn’t exist. In a record that sees the band significantly step up its musicianship and experiments with songwriting  —   don’t miss the polyrhythmic ESG   of ”Suck”  —   Nothing Feels Natural’s finest moments are the unquiet ones. Guest musician Janel Leppin provides   guitar moans over a frantic rhythm section to set the mood of ”Leila 20” before G. L. Jaguar rips the feedback from a black hole. In that moment, it feels like several songs crashing in on themselves as the band settles into a dark   nightmare. The title track feels timeless  —   a mourning dream that floats like The Cure’s most tender moments. Greer, with a voice that’s evolved from a scream to a nuanced and soulful presence, gives a stirring, vulnerable performance that captures what it’s like to be lost and feel lost. Priests wrote ”Nothing Feels Natural” in the wake of an album that was originally recorded and scrapped in Olympia, Wash. the result captures the frustration of being stuck, not only as a band but as people. ”If I walk a hundred days   Does it mean I get to say you can’t talk to me that way,” Greer sings listlessly. But as she repeats ”that way” amid moody bass, heavily reverbed chords and Daniele’s drums, she begins to shout, regaining power, if only enough to continue: ”This is when I’d give a god a name   But to people in sanctuaries   All I can say is you will not be saved.” Nothing Feels Natural recognizes just that: an unsettled state of mind, and of society. In weeks and years to come, it will be tempting to historically pin the record to the election of a president who stands in direct opposition to the values of the band and many who surround it. Priests’ members were, are and will be vocal, organizing benefits and engaging in meaningful conversation with their fans and opponents. But Nothing Feels Natural moves beyond the trappings of an album that speaks to a specific time: It wants to keep speaking with us."
"A   career at Boeing comes to a close in April for engineer Dave Baine of suburban Seattle. Baine was already prepared to retire when Boeing sealed the deal by making him a buyout offer last week. ”It’s better than a gold watch,” he says. The deal is six months’ pay in a lump sum and extended health insurance. ”It’ll help the younger folks that want to stick around and help some of the older folks exit quickly and quietly,” he says. Boeing, the country’s single largest exporter and one of the corporate sponsors of Friday’s inauguration, enters the Donald Trump era with plans for buyouts and layoffs. This comes on top of nearly 11, 000 job cuts across the company last year, according to a union tally. The company’s PR department declined to say whether there’s a specific target number for job cuts this year. Most of the trims are coming from the commercial jetliner workforce in western Washington state. Boeing has a lot of planes on order, but new jet sales are slowing. Plus, Canada, Brazil and China are getting in the game, making for increased competition and pricing pressure. ”We’re not seeing any evidence of a serious downturn, but there’s just a lot more risk of a downturn materializing,” says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group. Aboulafia says Boeing is a prime example of the kind of major manufacturing company that will be in the spotlight under President Trump. He says the incoming administration creates additional risks as well as opportunities. ”Obviously anything that caused any kind of trade ruckus, particularly with China, that would be very bad news,” Aboulafia says. On the other side of the ledger, the prospect of higher military spending could help major defense contractors like Boeing. New fighter jets and a multibillion dollar contract to replace the aging Air Force One jumbo jets spurred a second    meeting between Trump and Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who said he left Trump Tower Tuesday feeling ”very encouraged.” ”We’re all on the same page here. Our objective is to provide the best capability for our country most affordably. We want to generate jobs in the U. S.,” Muilenburg said. Trump did not speak with reporters after Tuesday’s meeting. But the   was pretty candid about his strategy of pressing for cost concessions. ”It’s a dance,” is how Trump put it after a Twitter jab and an initial meeting with the Boeing chief right before Christmas."
"It took years of heated debate, but the federal government has finally decided just how much living space an organic chicken should have. It’s part of a new set of rules that cover many aspects of animal welfare in the organic food industry. But the biggest impact of the rule will be felt in the organic egg industry. Organic egg producers always were required to let their hens go outside. But the organic rules didn’t define exactly how much space the animals needed. So some organic egg producers built large chicken houses, containing tens of thousands of hens, while allowing those hens access only to a small enclosed porch, rather than pasture. Organic activists, such as the Cornucopia Institute, have accused those   organic egg producers of violating the spirit of the organic rules, and called on the USDA to crack down on them. According to the new rules, farmers must provide at least one square foot of outdoor space for each 2. 25 pounds of poultry in their flock. According to Jesse Laflamme, CEO of Pete and Gerry’s Organic Eggs, that translates to about two square feet per   hen, or about an acre for a flock of 20, 000. Elanor Starmer, who’s in charge of the USDA’s Agriculture Marketing Service Administrator, which runs the National Organic Program, said in a telephone call with reporters that ””this rule will level the playing field and provide clarity to the industry.” Laflamme, who also participated in the call, said that the rule also will help   farmers survive in the industry. ”This is an issue of concentrated organic production versus distributed organic production,” he said. According to a survey of organic egg producers that the USDA cited in its rule, about a quarter of all organic egg production currently comes from farms that don’t meet the new standard. But the USDA is allowing them a lengthy transition period to adapt. According to the new rule they’ll have up to five years to change their operations, building new houses or creating more pasture for their hens, if they want to keep selling certified organic eggs. The Organic Trade Association, which represents many of the largest organic food companies, praised the new rule, calling it ”not only welcome but essential” in order to strengthen consumer confidence in the organic label. But the rule also met some harsh criticism. The Cornucopia Institute, in a statement, called the rule ”(way) too little and (way) too late.” According to Mark Kastel, Cornucopia’s senior farm policy analyst, two square feet per hen is ”woefully inadequate” and is far less than organically raised hens in Europe get. On the other side of the debate, the National Pork Producers Council condemned the new rule as an ”unnecessary, unscientific midnight regulation.” Dave Warner, a spokesman for the pork producers, wrote in an email to The Salt that the new rule doesn’t affect many pork producers directly, because little pork is raised organically, but”we oppose the rule on principle and because it sets a bad precedent.” According to the NPPC, the National Organic Program has no authority to issue animal welfare regulations, because animal welfare is outside the scope of the law that established the organic program in the first place. In a statement, NPPC president John Weber said that ”this is precisely the type of executive branch overreach that Congress will reign in through regulatory reform.”"
"Among the many things President Obama will be handing off to his successor this week: stubborn wars in three separate countries. Obama came to office eight years ago vowing to end U. S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet   Trump stands to inherit the nation’s longest war ever in Afghanistan, as well as renewed fighting in Iraq that has spread to Syria. The outgoing president was reminded of the persistence of those wars at the   farewell ceremony the Pentagon put on for him him earlier this month at a nearby military base. ”Mr. President, we’ve been at war throughout your tenure,” said Gen. Joesph Dunford, chosen by Obama in 2015 to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ”That’s a period longer than any other American president.” That’s right: Obama is the first president to serve eight years and preside over American wars during every single day of his tenure. That’s not what Obama wanted or expected. But he reminded the troops seeing him off that thanks to a new approach he’s taken to those wars, the number of American forces involved in them has dropped sharply. ”Not by letting our forces get dragged into sectarian conflicts and civil wars, but with smart, sustainable, principled partnerships,” Obama said of the strategy he’s shifted to of training, advising and assisting local forces to do the ground fighting. ”That’s how we brought most of our troops home  —   from nearly 180, 000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan down to 15, 000 today.” Fewer forces, but protracted conflict, Of those remaining in the field, 8, 400 U. S. forces are in Afghanistan. That’s still more than the small residual force Obama had aimed to leave behind. Some of those American forces in Afghanistan are fighting 13 different groups that the U. S. considers terrorists. Others are training and advising Afghan security forces to fight the Taliban, which Washington does not formally consider a terrorist organization. ”When you look at the performance of the Afghan forces this year, it was a tough year,” said Gen. John Nicholson, the top U. S. commander in Afghanistan, at a December news conference held at Bagram Airfield. ”They were tested, but they prevailed.” Others take a dimmer view of the effort to shift the lead in fighting the Taliban to Afghanistan’s security forces. ”It’s basically playing  ” says John Sopko, who since 2012 has been the U. S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. While presenting SIGAR’s latest report at a military think tank in Washington earlier this month, Sopko described the Afghan National Security Forces as hobbled by corruption and poor leadership. ”We’re defining success by the absence of failure,” Sopko said of those forces’ ongoing attempts to retake territory lost to the Taliban. ”At a minimum, they’re playing defense, and are not taking the fight to the Taliban.” What’s more, a war that began with a U. S. invasion 15 years ago in October 2001 appears to have no end in sight. ”The situation in Afghanistan, in the rosiest possible reasonable analysis, is a stalemate,” said Stephen Biddle, a military analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations and George Washington University. The war, he added ”can only be sustained if the U. S. Congress keeps writing     checks to keep the Afghan National Security Forces in the field.” The rise of ISIS, And then there’s the war Obama has waged since 2014 against the Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria. ”These terrorists have lost about half of their territory,” Obama told troops at his Pentagon farewell ceremony. ”They are losing their leaders, towns and cities are being liberated, and I have no doubt this barbaric terrorist group will be destroyed  —   because of you.” Last month the top U. S. commander in Iraq, speaking at a fire base just outside Mosul that was held by Islamic State forces as recently as July, defended what many see as a   assault on the Islamic State forces holding that city. ”Any army on the planet, to include the United States Army, would be challenged by this fight,” said Gen. Stephen Townsend. ”The Iraqi army has come back from near defeat two years ago, and now they’re attacking this major city.” In neighboring,   Syria, at least 600 U. S. Special Forces are now on the ground, mainly to train and assist local rebel forces. The ultimate aim is to oust Islamic State fighters from Raqqa, the capital of the group’s   caliphate. Some experts doubt such an approach  —   arming and training an array of Syrians from often competing factions  —   will work. ”We’re losing, they’re winning,” says the Brooking Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon. ”They maybe don’t say it in quite those terms, because they like the fact that we’re still pulling the wool collectively over our own eyes, but the idea of defeating ISIS, replacing (Syrian President Bashar) Assad, and doing all this with a minimal American military investment, does not add up to a logical policy.” As for the incoming president, it’s not clear how he’ll fight these inherited wars. Trump barely mentioned Afghanistan during his campaign. It’s also unclear how he’d handle the   State campaign in Iraq and Syria. One clue may be found in what retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, told NPR last summer. ”Where is the king of Jordan, where’s the emirs of some of these other countries? ,” Flynn asked rhetorically about nations in the region he felt should be doing more to fight the Islamic State. ”They need to actually stand up and, internationally and publicly, condemn this violent form of this ideology that is operating inside of their bloodstream right now  —   and I don’t see it. And that’s where the president of the United States needs to place a different set of demands on these guys.” When Flynn uttered those words, Trump was just the Republican nominee for the White House. The   ’s recommended strategy for fighting the Islamic State had been characteristically blunt. ”I would just bomb those suckers,” Trump told a campaign rally in Iowa shortly before that state’s caucuses a year ago. As president and commander in chief, Trump soon will have the power to do so."
"A newly inaugurated Donald J. Trump delivered a fiercely populist and often dark address, promising to transfer power in Washington from political elites to the people and vowing to put ”America first.” Surrounded by members of Congress and the Supreme Court, the nation’s 45th president repeated themes from his historic and divisive campaign message, describing children in poverty, schools in crisis and streets pocked with crime and ”carnage.” ”For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,” Trump said. ”Washington flourished but the people did not share in its wealth. The establishment protected itself.” In his   remarks, he criticized an educational system ”flush with cash” that fails to fulfill its mission to students. He lamented factories left to rust while jobs flowed overseas. And he decried crime and gang violence, despite reports from the FBI and criminologists that the U. S. crime rate remains near historic lows. ”This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump said, amid cheers from the crowd. Moments earlier, with his hand on Bibles once used by Abraham Lincoln and his own family, Trump pledged to ”preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” completing an unlikely trajectory from   mogul to the nation’s 45th president. A crowd that stretched along the National Mall assembled under gray Washington skies to witness the ceremony. So did nearly every living former president, from Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush to Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, who was defeated by Trump last November after a costly and bitter campaign. Afterward, dozens of dignitaries walked through light rain into the Capitol for a   lunch program emceed by Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. The menu included Maine lobster and Gulf shrimp with saffron sauce and peanut crumble, Angus beef with dark chocolate sauce and potato gratin, and chocolate souffle with cherry vanilla ice cream. Trump and his vice president, former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, presided over the parade, which stretched a little under 2 miles from the U. S. Capitol to the White House. School marching bands, the Boy Scouts, veterans groups and 8, 000 members of the military participated. Also lining that route: Protesters representing 99 different groups. In sporadic exchanges at security check points across downtown Washington, protesters shouted: ”No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!” Others carried signs with such slogans as ”Fake 45.” But, so far, skirmishes appeared to be mostly free from violence. Not far from the White House, several hundred protesters clad in black ran through the streets, breaking windows and knocking over trash cans. Police fired pepper spray to subdue demonstrators. The Metropolitan Police Department reported at least 95 arrests, mostly on charges of rioting. Preparations for the event had been under way for months. Around 28, 000 officers are on hand to provide security for the event, including Secret Service, FBI agents, the Coast Guard, police departments and nearly 8, 000 National Guard troops. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said authorities had ”no specific, credible threat” directed at the proceedings. Meanwhile, at the White House, household crews are furiously preparing the mansion for its new occupants. Earlier in the day, camera crews spotted President Obama making one last visit to the Oval Office, slipping a letter in the desk drawer for his successor. Staff members at the residence presented the Obamas with two flags: one that welcomed them to the White House eight years ago another that flew over the building Friday morning, on their last day there. The Obama family headed to Palm Springs, California, Friday for a vacation. The formal   of power is now complete, as the Trump administration only begins to come into focus. Trump, who has had no experience in elective office, now controls a vast federal bureaucracy, including national security, international diplomacy, the economy, the environment and the justice system. He’s painted his governing agenda in broad strokes, promising to ”Make America Great Again” by bringing jobs back to the U. S. and deliver a tough message on the international stage. His remarks from the inaugural platform harked back to his campaign speeches: ”We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth and we will bring back our dreams.” Trump went on to blast ”empty talk” by politicians of the past. ”Now arrives the hour of action,” he said. Flanked by his extended family, his vice president, and congressional leaders, Trump took his first actions: signing papers for his cabinet nominees and proclaiming a national day of patriotism."
"Follow our live blog for news of the day, photos and videos from the National Mall and for analysis on what the events mean for the world."
Donald Trump is now the 45th president of the United States. NPR reporters and editors across the newsroom have annotated his inaugural address. Follow NPR’s full online coverage with our live blog.
"Updated at 7:30 p. m. ET, An inauguration protest in Washington, D. C. turned confrontational on Friday, as several hundred   protesters broke windows and police responded with pepper spray and a concussive device. The interim chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, Peter Newsham, said 217 protesters have been arrested, and 6 officers sustained minor injuries. Newsham, in a late afternoon news conference, said those arrested will be charged with rioting. He added that most of the protestors were peaceful, but that a small group of people seemed intent on creating mayhem. ”They began to destroy property and throw objects at people and through windows. A large percentage of this small group was armed with crowbars and hammers. Vehicles and store fronts were damaged. . .. [It] appeared the activities of this small group were organized and intentional,” he said. Of the 6 officers who were hurt, 3 sustained head injuries. Much of the violence broke out in Northwest D. C. not directly along the parade route. During clashes between police and protesters there, officers have used pepper spray in attempts to contain the protests, reports Patrick Madden of member station WAMU. Patrick says that earlier in the day, protesters were running through streets, breaking windows with hammers and knocking over trash cans. He says police, some wearing riot gear, chased the protesters on motorcycles and used the pepper spray and an unidentified concussive device to subdue the demonstration. At one point, a group of protesters charged and broke the police line, Madden reports. Newsham said officers used pepper spray to protect themselves. Video from the area, posted by veteran protest   Tim Pool, showed police tightly surrounding a group of people coughing from the pepper spray. Several people on the video identified themselves as lawyers who were observing the protest and said they were not participating in the protest when they were caught in the group of people being hemmed in by police. The   lawyers in the group were particularly vocal that their detainment was unjustified. Meanwhile, at checkpoints along the parade route and sites around downtown D. C. supporters of   Donald Trump gathered to celebrate the inauguration, while other   protests continued peacefully. Protests at the Navy Memorial  —   closer to the middle of the parade route  —   are loud but peaceful, according to NPR’s Pam Fessler. She reports that protesters are lined up along the route, across the street from Trump supporters, to ensure their ”voices are heard” when Trump passes by. NPR’s Jessica Taylor described some of the other protests on NPR’s live coverage of the inauguration: ”NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reports that there were dozens of protesters chanting ’No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!’ and ’We are united!’ in Spanish just outside the security checkpoint at 12th and E streets NW, a block away from the Trump International Hotel. ’They’re next to people waiting to be screened to enter the parade viewing area. One Trump supporter yelled back in response, ”Go Trump!” ’ Hansi reports. . .. ”Black Lives Matter protesters have positioned themselves outside D. C. police headquarters, according to NPR’s Joe Shapiro. Janaya Khan . .. led a group of about 80 people in a chant saying, ’That is not my president.’ ” At around 11:30 a. m. ET, a Secret Service spokesman said all demonstrations are ”under police control,” NPR’s Brian Naylor reports."
"As Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th U. S. president, protests, demonstrations  —   and a few celebrations  —   were underway in cities around the world. In London, demonstrators holding   signs gathered outside the U. S. Embassy on Friday evening. Earlier in the day, huge banners saying ”Build Bridges Not Walls” were hung across the city’s bridges, part of a U. K. campaign that that began after Trump was elected in November. In Berlin, protesters gathered outside the headquarters of a   party, the Alternative for Germany, whose leader, Frauke Petry, has been effusive in her praise of Trump. Many Israelis were supportive of Trump, who has nominated a supporter of West Bank settlements as his ambassador. Trump has also spoken out in favor of moving the U. S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Such a move would be provocative and anger Palestinians  —   who held protests in the West Bank. Demonstrators in the Philippines burned U. S. flags and rallied against Trump outside the U. S. Embassy in Manila. They demanded an end to U. S. troop presence in the Philippines. Trump has praised the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, whose ongoing   campaign has left more than 5, 000 dead since last June. Elsewhere, Trump’s new role was celebrated. In New Delhi,   Hindu supporters of the new U. S. president celebrated even before the inauguration by draping a garland of marigolds on Trump’s photo on Thursday. In Russia, says NPR’s Lucian Kim, ”People welcome Trump.” But, he notes, ”Russians actually have very little information on Trump, and they hear someone who’s saying the U. S. should just get along with Russia  —   what’s not to like about that?” Trump himself had little to say about the world outside the United States in his inauguration speech. ”We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world  —   but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first,” Trump said. ”We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones  —   and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.” Saturday will bring more demonstrations, with the Women’s March in D. C. and others like it around the world  —   one is even planned for the Antarctic Peninsula."
"As the White House transitions from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, in the   age that means another transition  —   of the @POTUS Twitter account. At 12:01 p. m. as Trump took the oath of office, the official presidential account switched to President Trump from Obama, who was the first president to use Twitter. All tweets from Obama’s term as president are archived under a new account @POTUS44. Twitter will automatically switch all 13 million followers of the   @POTUS account to follow both @POTUS44 and the new @POTUS account for Trump. But because Trump’s presidential twitter account is essentially brand new, the switch will take a little while. Trump will also keep his personal @realDonaldTrump account  —   just as Obama had maintained a personal @BarackObama account, which he will also keep. How Trump and his team will use the official and personal accounts is unclear and will presumably undergo White House protocol and security considerations. Trump’s takeover of the @POTUS account garnered attention on Twitter in part for its startlingly clean slate for the typically   Trump. But several users have pointed out another curious matter: Trump’s team appears to have chosen as the header image for the account a photo from Barack Obama’s inauguration, rather than Trump’s own. Official Twitter accounts of the first lady, vice president and other White House social media elements are similarly shifting over today, as the White House team has described in detail. And the main White House page has been transitioned as well. NPR’s Scott Detrow contributed to this report."
"Shortly before Donald Trump takes the oath of office on Friday, Mike Pence will put his hand on Ronald Reagan’s Bible and be sworn in as vice president. It’s a job that has varied in influence from administration to administration. So how will Pence cut his path? It was clear from the day he was introduced as Donald Trump’s pick for vice president that Mike Pence came second. Trump took a full 30 minutes to introduce Pence, but he spent most of that time talking about himself and his Democratic rival, before ending with a story about how Pence endorsed another candidate in the Republican primary. ”So even though he was under pressure, cause I’m so outside of the establishment it was the single best nonendorsement I’ve had in my life,” said Trump. In Washington, D. C. this week, Pence recalled getting invited to join the ticket: ”When the phone call came that night at the Indiana governor’s residence and that familiar voice came across the phone line, and he said, ’Mike, I’ve got an assignment for you and it’s going to be great.’ And I can testify that it has been.” Already they’ve proved to be an odd couple stylistically, with Trump turning to cable news or Twitter to say what he’s thinking, and Pence coming in behind to calm, clarify or just clean up. There was the time Trump tweeted at the ”overrated” cast of Hamilton for delivering a message to Pence at the end of a performance. Meanwhile, Pence was on CBS praising the musical and downplaying the kerfuffle. ”I wasn’t offended by what was said,” Pence said. ”I’ll leave it to others to determine whether it was the appropriate venue to say it.” And recently Trump warned congressional Republicans in a series of tweets to be careful as they moved to repeal Obamacare, moments before Pence met with those very Republicans. In a press conference afterward, Pence seemed to translate Trump’s tweets into congressional speak. ”Step 1 will be to repeal Obamacare,” he said. ”But as the   said today, and I admonished members of the House Republican conference today, it is important that we remind the American people of what they already know about Obamacare, that the promises that were made were all broken.” Republican Congressman Jeb Hensarling became friends with Pence when they served in the House of Representatives together. ”Yeah, he’s a different guy than the ” said Hensarling. ”But it’s very complementary, and they make an excellent partnership.” As Hensarling sees it, Pence has credibility with Trump, and the decision to put Pence in charge of the transition process is one sign of that. Hensarling says Pence also has credibility with Republicans in Congress because of his many years carving a conservative course in the House. ”  Trump has the vision,” he said. ”And what Mike Pence brings to the table as vice   is someone who knows Capitol Hill. So he can take Donald Trump’s vision, help translate into actual policy, legislative language, bill text  —   work it through the process so that it ends up back on Donald Trump’s desk so that he can sign it into law.” Pence plans to serve as the lead emissary between the White House and Congress. But how well that works may depend on the strength and durability of Pence’s bond with Trump, according to vice   and St. Louis University School of Law professor Joel Goldstein. ”A vice president’s usefulness to members of the House and the Senate depends on his or her access to the president,” he said. ”If the vice president’s not getting much face time with the president, or is out of favor with the president, then what’s the point of talking to the vice president?” When asked in a recent interview which vice president he is looking to as a model, Pence said he saw parallels to George H. W. Bush, who served under President Ronald Reagan  —   another    personality who came from outside of Washington promising to shake things up."
"For decades, U. S. authorities have been preparing to prosecute one of the world’s most feared drug traffickers, known as El Chapo. Friday, the Justice Department announced charges against Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzman following his extradition from Mexico to the United States. He landed Thursday evening on Long Island, N. Y. and Friday afternoon entered a plea of not guilty at a federal court in Brooklyn. ”Today marks a milestone in our pursuit of Chapo Guzman,” said Robert Capers, the U. S. attorney in Brooklyn. ”So who is Chapo Guzman? In short, he’s a man known for no other life than a life of crime, violence, death and destruction. And now he’ll have to answer to that. That’s who Chapo Guzman is.” The Associated Press described the scene: ”Holding his unshackled hands behind his back, Guzman appeared calm and collected as he gave yes and no answers, through an interpreter, to a judge’s questions.” In a statement, acting U. S. Attorney General Sally Yates called him the ”alleged leader of a   dollar,   criminal enterprise that funneled drugs onto our streets and violence and misery into our communities.” Prosecutors are seeking life in prison and a $14 billion forfeiture in drug proceeds and illicit profits from the drug trafficking kingpin. The   indictment accuses El Chapo of operating a continuing criminal enterprise that included murder conspiracy, other   crimes including   and use of firearms. ”As part of the extradition process, we had to assure the Mexican government that the death penalty would not be sought,” Capers said. The allegations date to the 1980s. Guzman, 59, is accused of leading the Sinaloa drug cartel, which became the world’s largest drug trafficking organization. The indictment alleges that Guzman ”directed a large scale narcotics transportation network involving the use of land, air and sea transportation assets, shipping   quantities of cocaine from South America, through Central America and Mexico, and finally into the United States.” The billions in profits were then ”laundered back to Mexico,” according to the court documents. Guzman, along with other cartel leaders, allegedly hired hit men ”who carried out hundreds of acts of violence, including murders, assaults, kidnappings, and acts of torture at the direction of the defendants.” The Mexican government has approved the U. S. request to prosecute these charges, which were filed in a federal court in New York, the Justice Department added. As NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports from Mexico City: ”Mexico had at one point said it would not extradite Guzman and would have him stand trial for his crimes at home. That was shortly after a second arrest in 2014. But the government reversed itself after being embarrassed by Guzman’s brazen escape from Mexico’s maximum security prison in the summer of 2015. ”From a hole that began [in the shower floor] in Guzman’s prison cell, the drug lord climbed down a ladder and then rode a rigged motorcycle through a   tunnel to freedom. Guzman remained on the run for nearly six months. During that time, he met secretly with Mexican actress Kate del Castillo and U. S. actor Sean Penn. ”Shortly after, though, and partly due to his meeting with the stars, Mexican officials caught up with Guzman, capturing him in January of last year. This time officials immediately began extradition procedures. Guzman’s lawyers have been fighting it ever since. He lost his final appeal this week.” El Chapo has eluded law enforcement for decades, as William F. Sweeney, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office, told reporters. U. S. officials vowed that Guzman won’t escape again. ”He’s about to face American justice. . .. And I assure you, no tunnel will be built leading to his bathroom,” said Angel Melendez, special agent in charge of ICE Homeland Security Investigations in New York City, NPR correspondent Joel Rose in New York contributed to this report."
"Set on an apparently tropical island, The Red Turtle (La tortue rouge) exalts the cycle of life and celebrates the beauty of nature. Yet this   animated fable could hardly be more anthropocentric. The man around whom the film revolves is introduced literally at sea, battling to survive the stormy waves of a   ocean. The sketchily drawn,   survivor soon washes up on a remote isle. It’s inhabited mostly by insects and crustaceans  —   the sand crabs provide   comic relief  —   although sometimes a larger creature comes ashore. Water and food are available, and shelter is not an issue, since the climate is warm. Nonetheless, the castaway endeavors to leave, building a succession of rafts that are quickly destroyed by an unseen force. Eventually, the man encounters the creature that’s preventing his escape. It’s a gigantic red turtle. Soon after, somehow, a woman appears. The pretty redhead’s arrival reconciles the exile to remaining on the island, and the couple raises a son. The trio’s existence is the human family in microcosm, without any pesky siblings or  . It could be said, though, that the sea turtles that offer assistance during emergencies are cousins.   Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit spent a decade making The Red Turtle, which is   (mostly on electronic tablets, not paper ones). It’s the first feature from a filmmaker who won an Oscar 17 years ago for Father and Daughter, a short that was also without words. Dudok de Wit was recruited and mentored by Isao Takahata, of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, which is best known for such tales of nature and transformation as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. The   collaboration’s supervising animator is   Lie, who worked on The Triplets of Belleville. The Japanese influence is apparent in both the movie’s look and its story. The script, by Dudok de Wit and Bird People   Pascale Ferran, features a bamboo forest and a catastrophic tsunami. The latter is one of several sequences that’s suspenseful enough for a   action movie. (Alas, Laurent Perez del Mar’s drippy score also gives off a   vibe.) For a wordless South Seas idyll, the movie is quite eventful. Panicky moments and angry outbursts contrast the leisurely pace of island life and the artfully rendered sea and sky. The animators don’t overplay the loveliness, preferring subdued colors punctuated by the occasional vivid blue. Red rarely appears, and the many dream sequences are as gray as the night from which they emerge. Unless, of course, the entire movie is a dream. After all, things occur here that would be impossible in a   cosmos. But if The Red Turtle is a fantasy, it’s not one in which man achieves concord with nature. Instead, after initially frustrating the castaway, the sea, the island, and their creatures accommodate themselves to him. Although viewers barely get to know the man, they can clearly see he’s the center of this   universe. That seems a curious outlook for movie that’s being released just as climate scientists report that 2016 was the third year in a row to be the hottest ever recorded."
"Updated at 12:45 p. m. ET, At least 10 survivors, including children, have been found inside the rubble of a ski hotel in central Italy that was engulfed by an avalanche on Wednesday, according to fire officials  —   and several of them have been safely removed from the remnants of the building. About 30 people had been in the hotel when the disaster struck. Many still remain missing, Christopher Livesay reports for NPR from Rome, while four others have been confirmed dead. The death toll is expected to rise. Tourists staying at the hotel had checked out and were waiting for roads to be cleared when an avalanche, possibly triggered by earthquakes on Wednesday, swept over and into the hotel. Two men had been outside the building when the avalanche began. One of them, Giampiero Parete, had gone to his car to pick up medicine for his wife and soon made frantic calls for help, saying his wife and children were trapped inside the resort. Both men were found alive  —   but until Friday morning, there had been no sign of life inside the   resort. On Friday, rescuers were overheard by The Associated Press saying over the radio that they had found people alive. Luca Cari, the spokesman for Italy’s national firefighting service, told both Reuters and The Associated Press that rescuers found 10 people in the building on Friday. After talking with the trapped people, firefighters and other rescuers began to free them from the snow and debris. The ANSA news agency says rescue operations proceeded in two stages, with six people being extracted  —   including two children  —   and then two more people. The AP, however, says that Cari reports only a ”few” survivors have actually been freed from the building, and rescue operations are ongoing to bring the rest to safety. The wire service reports that the ”incredible” discovery boosted the spirits of rescue crews: ”Video released by rescuers showed a boy, wearing blue snow pants and a matching ski shirt, emerging from the structure and crews mussing his hair in celebration. ”Next was a woman with a long ponytail wearing red snow pants. ’Brava Brava!’ the rescuers cheered. The survivors appeared fully alert and walking on their own. Both were helped down to a stretcher for the helicopter ride out.” The rescue was followed by an emotional reunion, according to Italian media. The woman was reportedly the wife of Giampiero Parete, the man who had stepped out to the car for medicine when the avalanche struck and called for help, and the boy was his son. ”Rescuers said the mother indicated her    daughter Ludovica was also alive amid the debris nearby and rescue workers immediately set to work to find her, too,” the AP reports. ”Italian media said Parete and wife and son hugged at Pescara hospital, where the woman and child were taken, apparently in good condition. From very early on, rescue crews knew that at least some people had survived the initial disaster  —   a few people buried alive sent text messages, according to reports in Italian media on Thursday. ”Italian daily La Repubblica reports that one of those texts read, ’Help, help, we’re freezing to death,’ ” Livesay says. But rescue operations have been challenging. Those inside the hotel were trapped by 17 feet of snow as well as by the rubble, the AP reports. Walls were collapsed by the force of the avalanche, and entire one wing of the hotel was pushed downhill. Transport has also been hampered by the narrow,   roads in the region. The first rescue teams arrived on skis the next wave, by helicopter. Attempts to reach the region by vehicle have been slow, according to the AP, with snow piled 10 feet high and a 5.  stretch of road able to take only   traffic. ”By late Thursday, only 25 vehicles had arrived, along with 135 rescue workers, and civil protection authorities said part of the night was spent trying to widen the road,” the AP writes. Rescuers are also fighting against the clock, Livesay reported earlier. ”Chances of survival are waning amid nightfall and plunging temperatures,” he says. Meanwhile, even as rescue operations are ongoing, Italian media and officials are already considering the question of responsibility. ”State prosecutors have launched an investigation to find out if the disaster could have been averted,” Livesay reports. ”An avalanche warning had already been in effect, so the question is: Why wasn’t the hotel evacuated before the avalanche, when it’s at the base of a snowy mountain in an area that’s prone to earthquakes?”"
"A British police watchdog is investigating an incident last Saturday in Bristol in which an officer fired a stun gun at a black man who has served as a   adviser for local law enforcement. Judah Adunbi, 63, was incapacitated after a confrontation with two officers who apparently mistook him for someone wanted by police. In fact, Adunbi has volunteered as a member of an independent advisory group for Avon and Somerset police, a panel established to improve relations between police and the local communities of color. A neighbor recorded the incident on video, shown above. ”Avon  Somerset police officers used the Taser on a    man in Colston Road, Easton at around 9. 10am,” the Independent Police Complaints Commission said in a statement released Friday. ”A complaint from a member of the public who witnessed the aftermath of the incident was voluntarily referred to the IPCC by the force on 19 January.” In the neighbor’s video, two officers are seen stopping Adunbi outside his home as he was walking his dog. They refer to a wanted man they are looking for, and ask him for his name. Adunbi refuses to give his name several times as he attempts to enter his front gate. Like everyone in the U. K. Adunbi has the right to withhold his name when stopped by officers, according to Avon and Somerset Police guidelines. After a break in the footage, the video shows one of the officers apparently pulling Adunbi out of the gate by the arm. Immediately after that scuffle, one of the officers uses her Taser on Adunbi. Once on his back, Adunbi appears to toss his wallet to the ground beside them, telling the officers to look at his ID as they handcuff him. ”You are under arrest for assault,” one of the officers tells him. The charges were later dropped, the BBC reports. ”The way I fell, on the back of my head, I was just paralyzed,” Adunbi later told the British broadcast network ITV. ”I thought that was it. I thought they were taking my life.” He says his fear stemmed partly from a similar confrontation with police. In 2009, ”he won a wrongful arrest case against Avon and Somerset Police and was awarded compensation,” according to the BBC. Since then, Adunbi has been a volunteer with the Bristol IAG, one of several groups that serve ”a vital role in helping us build trust, confidence and better relationships, especially with our diverse communities,” according to the Avon and Somerset police. ”It’s a little distasteful in my mouth,” Adunbi told The Guardian. ”To know that one of the founder members of the independent advisory group, which was created some years ago in order to improve the relationship between the   community and the constabulary, and to be treated like this, it’s difficult.” Chief Superintendent Jon Reilly, Bristol area commander for the Avon and Somerset police, says the force voluntarily referred the complaint about Saturday’s incident to the watchdog IPCC. He said he would like to answer further questions but could not, given the ongoing investigation. According to ITV, he added: ”I want to reassure the community the whole incident was captured on   camera. Both officers were wearing it. ”And we’re determined to understand what happened. That’s why we’ve referred it, voluntarily, to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for them to assess whether an independent review is necessary. ”We work really hard to work positively with all communities and I can see no reason why that should change.” The IPCC has asked members of the Bristol community to come forward if they have any further information. The group said it has not yet spoken to the two officers involved."
"All Things Considered   Ari Shapiro is on a road trip leading up to the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20. He is driving through North Carolina and Virginia, on the way to Washington, D. C. These are two swing states that went in opposite directions in November, each by a close margin: North Carolina for Trump, Virginia for Hillary Clinton. As the country faces dramatic changes, we’re asking people what they want from that change  —   and what concerns them. A group of about a dozen students from Liberty University gather in a parking lot in Lynchburg, Va. on Thursday, hours before the sun comes up. The students at the conservative Christian school look ready for church: The men wear neckties the women are in high heels. Some of these students were   voters in November one knocked on 10, 000 doors for the Republican Party in Wisconsin. All of them are Donald Trump fans, and they are heading to Washington, D. C. to watch his inauguration. ”I’m just super excited to get involved in politics and see something historical,” says    Andrew Watkins. Kayla Bailey, also 18, says she hopes a Trump administration can bring some relief to West Virginia, her home state. ”We’ve seen a really big decline in our economy, and a lot of people are addicted to drugs and don’t have any hope any more,” she says. ”And so I’d really like to see sort of my home state get better because after eight years it’s been a really hard process to watch people suffer.” They pile into a caravan of cars, and after a   drive from Lynchburg, the Washington monument appears on the horizon. Use the audio link above to hear the full story."
"For decades, Donald Trump both toyed with and coyly denied any interest in pursuing the presidency  —   until his   campaign of the 2016 election. But if you go back and watch old clips  —   and by old, we mean    —   you hear a young Donald Trump sounding very much like the current Trump. Common themes include his view that trade wasn’t fair, that the world has long laughed at America and countries have taken advantage of U. S. generosity while refusing to pay their ”fair share” for all the U. S. does globally. Trump does something else in these interviews. Talking to Playboy magazine in 1990, for example, he accurately predicts where his strongest support would come from should he ever decide to run for office  —   the working class. Here’s journalist Glenn Plaskin, who wrote the Playboy story, recalling what Trump said when asked who would support him for the White House: ”When I walk down the street, those cabbies start yelling out their window. . .. The working guy would elect me they like me.” Here are six clips of Trump from the 1980s and ’90s that make the point: 1. 1987, CNN’s Larry King: A    Donald Trump said of leadership and trade: ”I was tired, and I think a lot of other people are tired of watching other people ripping off the United States. This is a great country. They laugh at us. Behind our backs, they laugh at us because of our own stupidity. Our leaders  —   what we have, we have a Persian Gulf situation today. . .. Billions and billions are paid getting oil for Japan, and they are paying nothing for it, essentially they’re paying nothing for it.” More: ”I believe it’s very important that you have free trade, but we don’t have free trade right now.” And Trump even leveled a cryptic allegation against former New York Mayor Ed Koch: ”I think, probably, over the next period of time, something’s going to come out where he will not be the mayor of the city of New York hopefully much longer.” The New York Times noted in Koch’s obituary in 2013 that he ”was a bachelor who lived for politics. Perhaps inevitably there were rumors, some promoted by his enemies, that he was gay. But no proof was offered, and, except for two affirmations in radio interviews that he was heterosexual, he responded to the rumors with silence or a rebuke. ’Whether I am straight or gay or bisexual is nobody’s business but mine,’ he wrote in ’Citizen Koch,’ his 1992 autobiography.” Trump told King that he accepted an invitation to appear in New Hampshire, understanding full well what that would imply to his potential desire to run for president. 2. 1988, Oprah: Back then, Trump was critical of Japan, and this criticism echoes the way he talks today about NATO. He told Oprah Winfrey: ”I’d make our allies pay their fair share.” He took a hard line with the Middle East, saying: ”Kuwait, they live like kings. The poorest person in Kuwait, they live like kings. And yet they’re not paying. We make it possible for them to sell their oil. Why aren’t they paying us 25 percent of what they’re making? It’s a joke.” Asked if he’d run for president, Trump said: ”I just probably wouldn’t do it, Oprah. I probably wouldn’t, but I do get tired of seeing what’s happening with this country, and if it got so bad, I would never want to rule it out totally, because I really am tired of seeing what’s happening with this country, how we’re really making other people live like kings, and we’re not.” More about a presidential run and winning. He even uses his signature ”believe me:” ”I think I’d win. I tell you what, I wouldn’t go in to lose. I’ve never gone in to lose in my life. And if I did decide to do it, I think I would be inclined  —   I would say, I would have a hell of a chance of winning, because I think people  —   I don’t know how your audience feels, but I think people are tired of seeing the United States ripped off. And I can’t promise you everything, but I can tell you one thing, this country would make one hell of a lot of money from those people that for 25 years have taken advantage. It wouldn’t be the way it’s been, believe me.” 3. 1988, Letterman: Here he spoke to Letterman just after the presidential election. He said he thought Bush would win and thinks he’ll do a good job. But he again used Japan as his punching bag in talking about trade deficits and made the U. S. ally into an economic boogeyman: ”We are living in very precarious times. If you look at what certain countries are doing to this country, such as Japan. I mean, they’ve totally taken advantage of the country. . .. I’m talking about the [trade] deficits. They come and they talk about free trade. They dump the cars and the VCRs and everything else. We defend Japan for virtually nothing, which is hard to believe. So when I see all that I get very nervous, but I think George Bush is going to do a great job, and he’s going to straighten  —   hopefully  —   he’ll straighten it out.” Letterman then wondered aloud whether there was ”any way a guy like you could go broke.” The crowd gave a huge laugh, and Trump said he would like to think he could weather any storm. But little did he  —   or Letterman  —   know that just three years later, Trump would file his first of four bankruptcies over two decades. That was for his hotel and casino in Atlantic City, N. J. the Taj Mahal, which Trump touted on the show as a project he was building that he believed would be a ”tremendous success.” Trump continued to flirt with the idea of running for president down the road, despite denying he would. Trump seems to preview a version of what would eventually become his 2016 ”Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. ”I’m not sure you want to see the United States become a winner. Do you want to see the United States become a winner, David?” Letterman shot back: ”The United States is and always has been a winner for my money, Don.” 4. 1990, Playboy magazine: Take a look at this March 1990 Playboy interview. Lots of politics in here, including Trump’s response to a question about how he’d handle an international crisis, perhaps involving nuclear weapons: ”And how would President Trump handle it? ”He would believe very strongly in extreme military strength. He wouldn’t trust anyone. He wouldn’t trust the Russians he wouldn’t trust our allies he’d have a huge military arsenal, perfect it, understand it. Part of the problem is that we’re defending some of the wealthiest countries in the world for nothing. . .. We’re being laughed at around the world.” In many of these clips, the ”Vintage Trump” is the ”Current Trump.” He’s a future candidate floating a future campaign slogan  —   and maybe an inaugural address. 5. 1999, Larry King: As he came to do during the 2016 campaign, Trump touted the polls. But he also echoed the dichotomy of Trump  —   a frustration with some in the media, but also the understanding that he needs them he used King’s show to break news. First, the frustration: ”All that’s happening now is people are coming out with polls. It was sort of interesting, the one sort of negative poll I had was on Newsweek, and they put me on the cover, so I said, how could you write a poll, how could you do a poll like this, and I’m on the cover of Newsweek? And, you know, it was just one of those things. But the polls have been unbelievable.” But then right after that. .. ”So I am going to form a presidential exploratory committee, I might as well announce that on your show, everyone else does. But I’ll be forming that, effective, I believe, tomorrow, and we’ll see. We’re going to take a very good, strong look at it.” And there was the trademark bombast: ”I have a lot to lose, Larry. I’m the biggest developer in New York, by far. I’m doing more, as you know from being here, a lot. I’m doing more than any  —   I’m building   buildings all over the place, and we’re just doing a lot, and we’re doing great. The city’s the hottest city, and I’m the hottest developer in the hottest city in the world right now.” But also the foundation of an outsider message, critical of politicians: ”Other guys, you know, they run. Pat Buchanan, what is he  —   you know, he’s not giving up anything. What’s he doing? And, politicians when they run, they run from one office to another it’s the same thing, they answer different calls. I’m giving up a lot if I decide to run.” Buchanan was running for the Reform Party nomination  —   the same one Ross Perot had in 1992 and 1996. Trump, master of the insult, showed his ability to go for the low blow against a potential opponent: ”I believe I can get the Reform Party nomination. I don’t even think it would be that tough, it’s going to be Buchanan. And I think he just blew himself up with the book, and his love affair with Adolf Hitler.” Trump said the priority for his exploratory committee was to take a hard look at whether he could actually win the presidency as the Reform Party candidate, not just compete. He never climbed out of single digits in    against George W. Bush and Al Gore, and Trump eventually dropped his bid. Trump also spelled out some of his philosophy with King. He said that, even though he’s a Republican, he’s pretty ”liberal” on social issues, notably health care. He said he believes, in fact, in ”universal health care” and agreed that it was an ”entitlement from birth.” ”I’m quite liberal, and getting much more liberal, on health care and other things. I really say, what’s the purpose of a country if you’re not going to have defense and health care. If you can’t take care of your sick in the country, forget it. It’s all over. I mean, it’s no good. So I’m very liberal when it comes to health care. I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better.” Remember when Trump told the Washington Post recently that his goal was ”insurance for everybody?” It’s something other Republicans have been trying to walk back  —   and Trump remains a wild card. Trump also had lots of criticism for both parties: ”I think that nobody’s really hitting it right. The Democrats are too far left. . .. The Republicans are too far right. I don’t think anybody’s hitting the chord. Not the chord that I want to hear and not the chord that other people want to hear.” Trump talked about Ronald Reagan as a president who had a certain ”style and class,” which he called a ”really big part of being president.” But he also hinted at when he thought the country was great  —   under Eisenhower in the 1950s, which happens to be when he was a child: ”Eisenhower, I don’t see him too much on lists of great, great presidents, but it was a nice time in the country. The country had a prestige, and he had a certain, you know, demeanor. He was a quality, class act. There are certain people who have that.” Trump also knocked NAFTA and U. S. trade policies: ”I’m not an isolationist. What I am, though, is  —   I think that you have to be treated fairly by other countries. If other countries aren’t going to treat you fairly, Larry, I think that those countries should be  —   they should suffer the consequences.” Trump argued: ”We could reduce taxes and take care of health care, and it would be beautiful, and you’d have plenty of money left over.” He hinted at his potential constituency later on  —   ”workers:” ”The workers are the ones that really like me. I’ve often said, the rich people hate me, and the workers love me. Now, the rich people that know me, like me, but the rich people that don’t know me, they truly dislike me.” Trump also said he believes in one term as president: ”I do like the concept of one term, I want to run one term, and I want to do the right job  —   straighten out Social Security, get the trade deficits in order and lower taxes.” He has not made that pledge during this campaign. Harking back to that 1988 Oprah Winfrey interview, Trump told King that ”Oprah would be my first choice” for vice president. Not quite Mike Pence, so . .. some things change. 6. 1999, Trump on NBC’s Meet the Press with Tim Russert: Trump echoed some of the same sentiments from his appearance on Larry King, said he was serious about running. But he also addressed dating various women, that his second wife, Marla Maples, came out against him running. And Trump defended his past statements about women and his companies’ bankruptcies. He also   on North Korea, seeming to advocate for preemptive action. Trump said the most important issue facing the country was controlling the ”nuclear problem,” otherwise the economy won’t matter so much. And Trump struck a familiar tone on immigration: ”Too many people are flowing into the country,” he said, ”and we have to take care of our own first.” But Trump has clearly changed on some issues, notably abortion. Back then, he said he was ”very  .”"
"Frantic diplomatic efforts are underway to persuade longtime Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh to step down and make way for the newly   and democratically elected president, Adama Barrow. Jammeh is facing a sizable military threat if he refuses to go. West African troops crossed the border into Gambia on Thursday and say they are prepared to remove him by force. NPR’s Eyder Peralta reports that the approximately 7, 000 troops from Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana Togo and Mali stopped before they reached the capital. They encountered no resistance. Jammeh had a midday deadline set by the ECOWAS West African regional bloc  —   but that has come and gone, Eyder adds. Mauritanian President Ould Abdel Aziz and Guinean President Alpha Conde flew in Friday and are making a   attempt to persuade Jammeh to leave peacefully. It’s not clear if there is a new deadline for Jammeh to leave. ”It’s out of the question that he stays in place,” Marcel de Souza, head of an ECOWAS commission, told Reuters. Jammeh, who has ruled the smallest country on the African continent since he led a coup 22 years ago, initially accepted the result of the Dec. 1 election. It appeared Gambia was poised for its first peaceful transition of power since independence. But a week later, Jammeh dramatically reversed course and said the election result was void because of ”irregularities.” He is isolated and faces overwhelming international pressure to quit power. The African Union no longer recognizes his authority. The U. N. Security Council issued a resolution Thursday in support of his rival, Barrow, who was sworn in at the Gambian Embassy in neighboring Senegal. U. S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters the same day that the U. S. supports the military intervention by ECOWAS. ”The streets of Banjul are still empty shops and markets are still closed,” BBC’s Thomas Fessy reports from the capital. ”There’s an anxious wait here though people feel the end of this political crisis is near.” Some 45, 000 people fearing violence have fled from Gambia to Senegal, according to a report by the U. N. refugee agency. It adds that more than 75 percent of those who have fled are children. ”The next few days will be critical and more people may leave the country if the current situation is not resolved peacefully soon,” UNHCR warned."
"The Asian Football Confederation says it found out that a dozen   soccer players playing for East Timor were registered using phony birth or baptism certificates. Now, it has booted the East Timor team out of the 2023 Asian Cup. The players involved in the scheme played in 29 matches, which included World Cup qualifying games. The Football Federation   has been ordered to forfeit those matches and was fined $20, 000, with an additional penalty of $56, 000 suspended for a probationary period of two years.  The probe found that documents for 12   players were falsified to show that they had at least one parent born in East Timor. The AFC launched the investigation in June, in collaboration with FIFA, the game’s governing body. It’s not clear whether the players themselves were involved in the document doctoring. ”The investigations made no finding regarding the validity of the   citizenship held by those footballers,” the AFC stated. ”That is a question for the state authorities of  .” ”East Timor has already been eliminated from the current World Cup, and now faces being expelled from 2022 qualifying in a separate FIFA disciplinary case,” according to The Associated Press. East Timor is a tiny country with a population of approximately 1. 2 million people. The players with fake documents ”helped the nation to its first ever win,” the BBC reported. It has had a total of five wins in just under 14 years, the broadcaster added. The East Timor national team is sometimes ”jokingly called the Little Samba Nation for its rapid, and sometimes suspect, naturalization of Brazilian players,” according to The New York Times. Striker Patrick Fabiano, one of the players with fake documents listed today, told the Times in 2015 that he ”received an invitation from them and they say: ’We give the passport, you play for us. ’”"
"  Donald Trump takes office on Friday having largely failed to address concerns about the many conflicts of interest posed by his business interests. Although Trump has settled a few of the outstanding legal and regulatory disputes hanging over him, he remains in the unusual position of presiding over countless policy decisions that will affect his own businesses. ”There’s an issue about whether the president and his family will use the presidency for ” says Robert Weissman, president of the advocacy group Public Citizen in an interview with NPR. But, Weissman says, ”The most important part of the problem is how these conflicts will affect  . That is an inescapable and pervasive problem. It doesn’t matter whether or not Donald Trump is operating in good faith. So long as he has these conflicts, he can’t not know what he owns and he also can’t not know how policy decisions will affect his businesses.” Since his election, Trump has settled a   dispute with the National Labor Relations Board over a unionization drive at hotels in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. He also settled a   suit by customers of Trump University for $25 million. The   has also said he wants to close the   Trump Foundation, although he has been blocked from doing so for now by the New York Attorney General’s office, which is investigating the charity. But Trump has indicated he will continue to own his many U. S. and foreign businesses, and has rejected calls to sell them and put the proceeds in a blind trust. Instead he says he will hand them over to his grown sons to manage. ”Don and Eric are going to be running the company. They are going to be running it in a very professional manner. They’re not going to discuss it with me. Again, I don’t have to do this,” he said at a Jan. 11 press conference. But that falls well short of addressing the ethical conundrum he faces, say numerous critics from both major parties. ”Stepping back from running his positions is meaningless from a conflicts of interest perspective. Nothing short of divestiture will resolve these conflicts,” Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, said earlier this month. Trump has dismissed such concerns, saying presidents are exempt from the federal statute barring White House officials from profiting off their positions. ”First and foremost, I don’t know how many times it can be stated: The president by law doesn’t have conflicts. I mean, it’s somewhat of a silly discussion,” incoming White House spokesman Sean Spicer said at a press conference last week. But critics note that Trump’s business interests pose other legal concerns. For example, Trump owns real estate properties in foreign countries backed in some cases by overseas banks, a potential violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. ”He has enough money. His family has enough money. It’s time to do the job he asked the American people to elect him to do,” Richard Painter, ethics adviser to former President George W. Bush, said in an interview with NPR this month. One big outstanding legal issue involves the considerable debt held by Trump’s businesses, some of which was lent by foreign banks overseen by U. S. regulators. Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien addressed the issue in an interview with NPR this month: ”He owes over a billion dollars to about 150 institutions across Wall Street. He’s going to be regulating all those banks. He plans to push through an aggressive deregulation of the financial services industry. It’s going to be impossible for him to pursue those goals without people questioning whether or not he’s doing them in the service of his own business needs.” Another potential conflict involves the fate of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D. C. which was built on the site of a former post office. As NPR’s Jackie Northam has reported: ”Trump has a   lease with the General Services Administration, or GSA, which owns the building. The GSA contract explicitly says that no elected official of the government of the United States may hold that lease.” That means Trump will be in violation of the lease as soon as he’s inaugurated, but it remains unclear whether the GSA will challenge his ownership, especially since the agency will have to answer to Trump himself. Spicer shrugged off concerns about the hotel on Thursday, when he was asked by a reporter about Trump’s plan to hold a luncheon at his new Washington hotel on the day before his inauguration. Critics say that by doing so, Trump is lining his pockets by promoting his own property. ”He’s very proud. It’s an absolutely stunning hotel. I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by. But I don’t think the idea that   Trump is having a reception at the Trump Hotel should be a shocker to anybody,” Spicer said."
"  Donald Trump plans to hit the ground running. He could sign his first executive orders within hours of taking the oath of office. ”I’ve asked my transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on Day 1 to restore our laws and bring back our jobs,” Trump said in a videotaped message in November. ”It’s about time.” Vice   Mike Pence echoed that message in a meeting with reporters on Thursday. ”Our job is to be ready on Day 1,” Pence said. ”We are all ready to go to work.” The incoming president has promised to: Trump, who is accustomed to completing projects ”on time and under budget,” will try to bring an unfamiliar business discipline to the nation’s capital. He may find that Washington is not as nimble or responsive to orders from the chief executive as his   business. His first couple of days will also be filled with ceremonial celebrations: the inaugural parade, Friday night balls and a Saturday church service. The real workout for the new president and his pen could start Monday. ”We’ll be doing some pretty good signings on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday,” Trump said during his news conference last week. Trump plans to nominate a new Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia within his first two weeks in office. He’ll also direct military commanders to develop plans for battling the Islamic State and cyberattacks. And he’ll codify his ”swamp draining” restrictions on government officials later going to work as lobbyists. But the new administration’s initial priorities will focus on three areas: 1. Trade, Throughout the campaign, Trump repeatedly criticized U. S. trade deals and promised to renegotiate or scrap agreements such as NAFTA. ”We will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores,” he said in his November video. Trump has also warned that companies that move jobs overseas but want to sell products domestically could be hit with a steep import tariff or ”border tax.” Congressional Republicans have shown little support for raising tariffs. Rather than punishing companies that leave the U. S. GOP lawmakers prefer to reward those that stay, with lower corporate tax rates. Still, if Trump is determined to send a signal with targeted tariffs, he has the authority to impose them on his own. ”The president has a lot of power in this country,” said Simon Johnson of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a   think tank in Washington. ”It looks like President Trump wants to use some of that power relative to trade and particularly goods coming into the United States.” Johnson conceded that Trump’s tough talk could be merely a scare tactic, aimed at encouraging domestic manufacturers to stay put. He cautioned if Trump were to follow through on his tariff threat, it would raise prices for U. S. consumers. And other countries could respond with their own tariffs, discouraging U. S. exports. ”We need to have a conversation about how to have better jobs for more people in the United States,” Johnson said. ”But saying we’ll scrap the trading system or saying we’ll slap massive tariffs when we feel like it, that is actually back to the trading system of the 1930s. That did not have good overall economic outcomes either for America as a whole or for most American workers.” Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, agreed that the broad   tariffs of the 1930s were a drag on the U. S. economy and shouldn’t be repeated. Ross took a nuanced position on protectionist measures during his confirmation hearing this week. ”I am not  . I am ” Ross told the Senate Commerce Committee. ”But I am   trade. Not   that is to the disadvantage of the American worker and the American manufacturing community.” 2. Energy regulations, Trump has accused the outgoing Obama administration of stifling development of fossil fuel energy. While oil and natural gas production have surged over the last eight years, Trump insists that has happened despite government roadblocks. ”I will cancel   restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale energy and clean coal, creating many millions of   jobs,” Trump said in his November video. ”That’s what we want. That’s what we’ve been waiting for.” The Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency hold considerable sway over energy development through access to public lands and environmental regulations. Fossil fuel producers expect Trump’s team to relax some of the restrictions they faced during the Obama years. ”Just as he’s been able to impose additional regulations and burdens on industries, likewise a new administration or a new president can reverse that course or at least make them smart,   regulation and make them so they’re not so unduly burdensome,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute. The incoming Trump administration could also give a green light to energy infrastructure projects that were blocked by executive actions on Obama’s watch. ”Things like Keystone XL pipeline, Dakota Access pipeline,” Gerard said, ”we expect he’ll take some early action on a variety of those fronts to really free us up and allow us to achieve our energy potential.” 3. Affordable Care Act, The incoming administration says repealing and replacing Obamacare will be its ”first order of business.” And the House and Senate have already taken the first steps toward repealing large pieces of the health care law. But while doing away with Obamacare was always a popular applause line at Trump’s campaign rallies, the incoming administration has also promised to move carefully to avoid further disruption in an already fragile insurance market. ”Nobody is interested in pulling the rug out from under anybody,” Trump’s nominee for health secretary, Tom Price, said this week. ”We believe that it is absolutely imperative that individuals that have health coverage be able to keep health coverage.” The need for a viable replacement plan for Obamacare was underscored this week when the Congressional Budget Office warned that partial repeal without replacement would leave tens of millions of people uninsured and cause a spike in insurance premiums. Congressional Republicans are considering a variety of replacement plans and hope to reach a consensus on one at their retreat later this month. Trump, meanwhile, told the Washington Post he has nearly completed work on his own plan to replace Obamacare. He says he is keeping the details under wraps until Price is confirmed."
"”The Oath.” It sounds like the name of a book, and indeed, there have been many volumes with that name. But none more relevant this week than The Oath specified in the Constitution for the president of the United States when he takes office. The 35 words in Article II, Section I, of the Constitution read as follows: ”I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The presidential oath is the only one spelled out in the Constitution, and is the shortest. Interestingly, not included in the Constitution are the words used at the end by many presidents: ”So help me God.” For much of this country’s history, it was said that George Washington was the first to use those words, but that may be more fiction than fact. It turns out that the source for that story was a biographer who claimed to have attended the inauguration at age 6 and to have heard Washington say those words. But none of the very detailed contemporaneous accounts of the inauguration mention the first president adding ”so help me God,” and the writer who popularized the notion decades later, Washington Irving, was famous for making things up. Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath on Friday, and the   will use his personal, family Bible and the Lincoln Bible. It appears that swearing on a Bible has not been universal. In 1825, John Quincy Adams took the oath on a law volume containing a copy of the Constitution Theodore Roosevelt used no Bible in taking his first oath of office in 1901 and some sources report that after President Kennedy was assassinated, a Catholic Missal was used to swear in Lyndon Johnson because no Bible could be found for the quickly arranged ceremony on the plane before it took off from Dallas to return to Washington, D. C. On that day, Federal Judge Sarah Hughes swore in Johnson. The Constitution does not specify who will do those honors, though by tradition it is the chief justice, with another justice swearing in the vice president. On Friday, Justice Clarence Thomas will swear in Vice   Mike Pence. The trivia question for the day is: How many presidents were sworn in four times? The answer: Two. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected and sworn in four times. And President Obama, through error and fluke, was sworn in four times. The error, in 2008, was the chief justice’s. He had memorized the oath, and in a written copy, marked the places where he would pause, and emailed the marked version to the designated congressional staffer handling these matters. But as Jeffrey Toobin reports in his book, The Oath, the card never made it to Obama’s staff. And at the ceremony things quickly went awry, with Obama interrupting where he thought the first pause would be, whereupon the chief justice, relying on his memory, became flustered and said some of the words in the wrong order. The ensuing blogosphere furor suggesting that Obama was not president provoked the White House counsel, Gregory Craig, into deciding that it would be the better part of valor to do the whole thing over again. So, two days later, Chief Justice Roberts, on his way home from work, stopped at the White House to do just that. Obama’s second inaugural oath was also administered twice because Jan. 20 fell on a Sunday, and by tradition when that happens, the new president has been sworn in privately on Sunday, and again for the public ceremony on Monday."
"Just over 10 weeks after the idea was first proposed in a Facebook post, tens of thousands of protesters are heading to the nation’s capital for the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday. Similar marches are planned in more than 600 other cities and towns around the world. But the largest is expected to take place in Washington, D. C. less than 24 hours into the presidency of Donald Trump. Organizers are expecting around 200, 000 marchers to gather on the National Mall. To accommodate the throng of visitors, Washington’s Metro subway system will add trains and open two hours early  —   at 5 a. m.  —   on Saturday. A   rally is expected to kick off the march near the National Museum of the American Indian. It will feature speeches by Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem and the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, as well as musical performances by artists including Janelle Monáe, Maxwell and the Indigo Girls. While the initial idea was formed as a protest of the presidential election results, organizers say the march is not all about Trump. Instead, they say they’re marching to remind the country about the need to expand and protect the rights of all women. Their demands span from paid family leave and affordable access to abortion and birth control to accountability in cases of police brutality and a higher minimum wage. Besides a debate over policy issues, the march has also generated a discussion about race and feminism. ”This march was initially put together by white women, and a lot of women of color felt they weren’t part of the conversation,” explains Carmen Perez, one of the march’s national organizers who has been highlighting challenges specifically facing women of color, including those in the immigrant and LGBT communities. There has been some pushback against the organizers’ emphasis on race, and some participants say they have decided to drop out of the march in protest. But Perez says she and other organizers hope discussing racial inequities will encourage marchers to find common cause with activists of different backgrounds. ”We can’t continue to work in isolation. We can’t continue to be ” she says. ”We have to make sure that we look up, that we begin to really coordinate our efforts.”"
"Mars has been on a lot of minds lately. The success of Andy Weir’s science fiction novel The Martian  —   and Ridley Scott’s subsequent film  —   helped rekindle interest in the Red Planet. And now, National Geographic’s TV series Mars is going even further in giving us a plausible look at what a Martian colony in the near future might look like. It’s perfect timing, then, for the publication of Martians Abroad. The novel is the latest from New York Times bestselling author Carrie Vaughn, best known for her Kitty Norville urban fantasy series. But rather than involving werewolves in   America, Martians Abroad sets its sights on the   solar system of tomorrow. That said, most of Martians Abroad  —   as the title states  —   doesn’t take place on Mars at all. The majority of the action takes place on Earth. Polly Newton is a typical teenager  —   that is, a typical teenager living on Mars’ Colony One, where her mother is the director of operations. She sends Polly and her twin brother Charles to Earth to attend Galileo Academy, a prestigious school full of the scions of the most powerful families in the solar system. Polly and Charles are the first Martians to enroll at Galileo, partly because Mars is less wealthy and seen as a bit of a hick planet. (Not that Polly wants to go to Earth in the first place  —   she’s forced to abandon an upcoming internship as a starship pilot, something she desires more than anything.) Polly’s reluctance turns to ambivalence after she and her cliquish classmates  —   with whom she has plenty of friction  —   have to defend themselves against mysterious peril at Galileo. A conspiracy is afoot at the school, and Polly and her peers are the target. It’s a setup familiar to any Harry Potter fan, but Vaughn keeps the intrigue at a leisurely simmer, giving Polly enough space to gradually cope with the travails of a new planet. Born and raised on Mars, her body is thin and frail compared to the muscular Earth kids who are accustomed to three times the gravity she’s used to. And another kind of gravity starts to bear on her: the responsibilities of becoming a good student, a good sister, and ultimately, a good leader. Despite being mostly set on Earth, Martians Abroad offers plenty of particulars about the potential for living on Mars in the future. In lavish, well researched detail, Vaughn paints a vivid portrait of technological advances and pioneering spirit. What she doesn’t do is slather her vision in grit. Countering the current trend of dystopian science fiction, Martians Abroad is hopeful, thoughtful, and fun. Polly’s universe isn’t a perfect one, but neither does Vaughn feel the need to put her into the most miserable situation imaginable the action, like the angst, is predominantly light. Even when Polly dreads going to Earth, which she assumes will be ”old, grubby, crowded, archaic, backward, stifling,” she strives to adapt and make the best of her situation. And the feminist overtones of the story are subtly handled. She’s surrounded by a futuristic society full of confident, capable women  —   whom she desperately wants to emulate. Martians Abroad is a refreshingly optimistic change of pace, but it makes no secret about its precedents. It’s an open homage to Robert Heinlein’s juveniles, as his novels with adolescent protagonists were called  —   and one of those juveniles in particular, 1963’s Podkayne of Mars. The parallels are numerous. Heinlein’s heroine goes by the nickname Poddy. Her brother’s name is Clark. And they’re both sent abroad from their Martian home. It’s this loving,   vibe that helps make Martians Abroad so endearing. Harking back to a more innocent time  —   but without downplaying the tribulations of contemporary adolescence  —   Vaughn has crafted a tribute to the power of science fiction, evoking a giddy sense of wonder and adventure about space exploration, technology, and human ingenuity. And, yes, even about being young."
"Two famous ancient structures in the city of Palmyra have been destroyed by ISIS forces, Syria’s antiquities chief says. The Tetrapylon and the facade of the city’s Roman theater have both been almost completely demolished, the official says, according to NPR’s Alison Meuse. ”Activist Khaled   who is from Palmyra, shared satellite imagery to Twitter, which appears to confirm the scale of the damage,” Alison reports. ”The face of the Roman theater is a pile of rubble and only four of the Tetrapylon’s 16 columns appear to be standing.” Alison notes that this is the second time over the course of Syria’s   civil war that the Islamic State has seized control of Palmyra. ISIS first captured the ancient desert city in 2015. The extremist group held it for more than a year before the Syrian government seized it back  —   and then lost it again last month. The first time ISIS claimed Palmyra, they reportedly slaughtered men, women and children in the streets. They beheaded the    scholar who was the director of antiquities in the city. And they devastated the UNESCO World Heritage Site’s antiquities and monuments, unleashing what NPR’s Frank Langfitt called, ”an orgy of demolition.” ”Using dynamite, fire, bulldozers and pickaxes, the wrecking crew targeted      temples, monuments and stone statues,” Frank wrote last year. ISIS often claims it destroys ancient sites because it considers the   art works heretical. But the group reportedly loots antiquities for profit, and as Washington Post reporter Liz Sly told Morning Edition in 2015, ISIS gets ”masses of publicity every time they blow up or destroy something that is valued by the world.” When government troops recaptured Palmyra in 2016, they discovered the extent of the damage. The famed Temple of Bel was blown to pieces. The Temple of Baalshamin was destroyed. Artifacts in the museum were smashed. The iconic Arch of Triumph was in ruins. After the last ISIS occupation of Palmyra, NPR’s Kevin Beesley noted that while the damage to the city’s historical sites was massive, ”some of the major structures remain.” For instance, he said, the ancient Roman theater was still standing  —   but now that, too, has been destroyed."
"  women are more likely to be infected with HIV than other women, and many don’t know it. So public health officials and advocates are trying to get the word out about PrEP,   prophylaxis. It’s a daily medication that helps prevent HIV infection. ”This is all about empowering women, especially black women, by giving them sexual health options and also embarking on a path of research,” says Linda Blout, president of Black Women’s Health Imperative, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D. C. The organization is helping to launch the capital’s first citywide program to promote use of PrEP among women. The medication, which is sold under the brand name Truvada, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012 to prevent HIV infection. Research conducted in Africa, where HIV transmission in heterosexual couples is common, found that it is effective in preventing HIV infection when one partner is HIV positive. If the daily pill is taken consistently, it can reduce the risk of HIV infection by up to 92 percent. In the U. S. the first priority was to get Truvada to men who have sex with men, who accounted for 83 percent of new HIV diagnoses in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the drug isn’t just for men, says Dr. Eugene McCray, director of the CDC’s Division of   Prevention.   women represent the highest percentage of HIV infections among women, McCray says. ”That is alarming, and we at the CDC are working to address the issue by spreading knowledge. But in order for us to do that, we also need to encourage   women to get tested.” According to the CDC,   women make up 62 percent of women diagnosed with HIV in the U. S. White women account for 18 percent, with Latinas at 14 percent. McCray says the CDC is planning in the upcoming months to produce campaigns targeted at black women that educate them on their risk and how PrEP can be used as a preventive measure. Women in the nation’s capital face a higher risk because about 2 percent of residents are already infected with HIV, making exposure more likely. In addition, Blout says, social issues like incarceration and poverty tend to increase the risk of HIV within the black community. In addition, Blout also says there is a lack of empowerment among black women to ask their partners to either get tested or wear a condom. McCray agrees. ”Many women do not know the status of their partners and they are weary of asking them to get tested,” he says. ”A lot of the issue has to do with misinformation or simply not being informed at all,” says Nancy Mahon, executive director of the MAC AIDS Fund, which is providing financial support for the effort. ”When it comes to PrEP, many people still don’t even know it exists, especially heterosexuals. Many black women we’ve spoken to felt puzzled about why we were addressing how this drug is available to them. A component of the issue is that the drug is hard to obtain without a doctor.” One of the challenges in getting women educated about PrEP is that primary care providers such as   often aren’t aware of it. That problem is compounded with   patients who don’t always get regular doctor visits and preventive care. ”The other problem here is that it generally takes five to 10 years for consumers to become socially acquainted with any drug,” McCray says. ”That’s why we’re trying to push the information associated with PrEP to the communities in dire need of it.” The push includes a D. C. Department of Health ad campaign that says: ”#PrEPforher: Dominate your sex life.” ”Women simply don’t know the drug exists,” Blout said. ”When they eventually do find out about it, they’re angry at their doctors for not telling them about it. It’s really about giving women the agency to protect their health.” That includes information on using condoms or other methods to ensure safe sex, especially among married couples. ”These are all factors that increase the exposure to HIV for black women,” Blout said. According to Blout and Mahon, much of the program’s effort will concentrate on getting health care providers and public health clinics   about the drug. Continuing education will be provided to health officials and providers in D. C. this year. ”That’s the starting point,” Blout says. The program was officially introduced on Dec. 1 by D. C. Mayor Muriel Bowser as part of her     plan for combating the HIV epidemic in the capital. The plan’s name entails having 90 percent of D. C. residents being aware of their status, 90 percent of D. C. residents who are diagnosed with HIV seeking treatment, another 90 percent who are already under treatment achieving viral load suppression and a 50 percent overall decrease in new HIV cases. The program faces its biggest obstacle right as it rolls out, Blout says. ”Stigma is our hardest hurdle.” Mahon agrees. ”This is a problem when it comes to PrEP and women, because it’s highly been stigmatized as a ’gay drug’ or an easy way to promiscuity.” Outreach to women and health care providers will, she hopes, ”get the open conversation going with a group of people who don’t even know they need to have this particular conversation.”"
"One of the   overseas successes for Disney is grounded in a   story out of India. The film, released in late December, is called Dangal  —   Hindi for ”wrestling competition.” It follows two sisters born in the highly traditional north Indian state of Haryana  —   a place where women often veil their faces and where in 2015 India’s prime minister launched a campaign against a longstanding practice of terminating a pregnancy because the fetus is female. With the coaching of their father, the girls  —   Geeta and Babita  —   grew up to become   wrestlers. In the past four weeks Dangal has reportedly become the   grossing film in   cinema, earning more than $70 million in ticket sales, according to the Bollywood box office site koimoi. com. The film is being distributed in other locations, including North America, where it’s passed $10 million in revenues. The movie might never have been made had it not been for Divya Rao. Then part of Disney India’s creative team, Rao had a passing familiarity with the wrestling family. An article she saw in a newspaper sports section stuck with her. At her urging, Disney picked up the story, teamed with Indian writer and director Niteshi Tiwari and produced the runaway hit. The star power of one of Bollywood’s most popular actors, Aamir Khan, helps account for the movie’s powerful draw. Khan plays Geeta and Babita’s potbellied father, former wrestling champion Mahavir Singh Phogat, whose youthful dreams of gold medal glory had eluded him. Early in the film, he tells his pregnant wife, ”What I couldn’t do, our son will. He will win gold for our country.” That anticipated baby boy turns out to be a girl, and Phogat would eventually have three more daughters. Those initially dashed hopes are reignited years later when his eldest two girls beat two boys to a pulp for calling them names. Realizing their athletic potential, Phogat flouts taboos about women competing in the sporting arena and sets about molding Geeta and Babita into wrestling champions. All of India knows how this story ends: Geeta and Babita respectively took a gold and silver medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and have been winning international accolades ever since. But what intrigued the film’s   and director Nitesh Tiwari is: ”Why in India is there so much bias against having a girl child?” ”Why is there so much desperation only to want a boy?” Tiwari asks. ”The movie aims at trying to change this mindset  —   that a girl is as a beautiful a gift of God as a boy.” The film sprawls across Haryana’s rural landscape and sparkles with engaging characters, including a nephew who narrates the film and provides comic relief. Tiwari says the creators consciously deployed plenty of humor because he says the ”issues are heavy,” and the ”audience should be enlightened as well as entertained.” But Tiwari also hewed closely to a delicate family dynamic, including a sometimes contentious relationship between Geeta and her father. ”And those fights still happen between the father and the daughter,” Tiwari jokes. India was perhaps primed for a film that grappled with the struggles of girls. The treatment of young women has been a central theme in the country’s politics and media in recent years  —   forced by horrific and   incidents like the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi in 2012. Indian film critic and journalist Anna M. M. Vetticad says Indian   are eager to see women on the screen portrayed in a new light. She says the success of Dangal is excellent news ”for those who believe that the hero stalking the heroine, extreme objectification of women, all of the things which have been Hindi film staples so far, are not the only thing that the entire audience wants.” The film’s release also follows the 2016 Rio Olympics, where women on India’s national team won the country’s only two medals  —   including female wrestler Sakshi Malik, also from Haryana, who brought home a bronze. Over a   athletic career, Indian badminton champion Damayanti Tambay says she senses a shift in her country, with female athletes venerated in a way they haven’t been before. She says the female Olympians returning from Rio were welcomed home as ”goddesses.” Babita Kumari Phogat, one of those Olympians, credits her father for getting her and her sisters ”out from under the veil” that cloaks many girls in Haryana. The patriarch of the first family of Indian wresting has in fact trained all four of his daughters in the sport and contributed to Haryana’s reputation as a breeding ground for India’s best wrestlers. But the family’s biggest victory, Babita says, is inspiring parents to believe in their daughters. This is a victory for the girls and women who were kept behind those veils, she says, and the victims of ”female feticide in Haryana.”"
"Barack Obama took to the podium in the press briefing room on Wednesday, the    day of the first black presidency, and after eight years of that becoming increasingly normal, the moment made it all start to seem strange again. So this whole black      thing really happened, huh?  It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of a black man in the White House was a side detail in a movie about the apocalypse, a righteous fantasy in an implausible TV thriller, or the   premise of Dave Chappelle skits. And it was a while into the primaries in 2008 before even black Democrats, who had been loyal to Bill and Hillary Clinton, thought he was viable enough to take seriously. And even when they did, lots of people openly worried that to elect him was to invite his assassination. But there he was on Wednesday, a dude from the South Side of Chicago, sporting one of the sharpest caesars in the history of the planet, trying one last time to calm the nerves of a jittery, divided nation. And President Obama seemed confident that the Oval Office would not be, once again, occupied by an unbroken parade of white dudes. ”We’re going to have a woman president,” Obama said at the presser. ”We’re going to have a Latino president. And we’ll have a Jewish president, a Hindu president. You know, who knows who we’re going to have? I suspect we’ll have a whole bunch of mixed up presidents at some point that nobody really knows what to call them.” Now, Barack Obama enters private life once more, this time as a towering historical figure. Over the last few weeks on the Code Switch podcast, we’ve tried to game out what has happened to race in America over the last eight years, and what Obama’s presidency might mean for race relations in the future. What we heard from our guests was that race shaped both support and dissent for Obama, raised the stakes of his success, exposed the constraints of his office, and made the whiteness at the center of American politics permanently visible. All presidencies matter, but none in modern American life will have similarly animated, reflected or collided with so many of the   cultural and social forces at play in the country. Obama’s faith in the inevitability of more American presidents of color was a good example of what Tressie McMillan Cottom might have called Obama’s misplaced faith in white folks. Cottom, a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University and one our podcast guests, underlined this paradox for us: Obama’s optimism about the country’s capacity to overcome its racial divisions  —   a byproduct of his remarkable personal story  —   made it possible for him to be elected. But, she said, it also led him to underestimate the vehemence of the opposition to his administration, which was punctuated by U. S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s ( . C.) 2009 outburst at a joint session of Congress. ”I still had a little bit of innocence left about how deference for the office of president could protect Barack Obama,” she said. ”But to think that in the face of all that pageantry that you could still scream ’You lie!’ and wag your finger at the president of the United States, that was probably the end of the last shred of innocence I had about how this was going to work. Then I said, ’Oh, this is going to work just like everything else works in this country.’ ” What did Wilson’s rude disrespect have to do with race? The architects and cheerleaders of the Republican party’s policies are, with a few exceptions, white people. The voters they turn out in midterm and presidential elections are, with a few exceptions, white people. Their opposition to the president and to Democrats didn’t need to be racist in order to be racialized. Those demographic facts were true long before Obama, but his presidency and the monochromatic opposition party arrayed in lockstep against him certainly seemed to cast those dynamics into sharper relief. There was no way to unsee it. Not that folks didn’t try. As we pressed these issues in the podcast conversations, I kept thinking about Ray and Arlene, an older, white Montana couple my colleague Shereen Marisol Meraji interviewed in the weeks before the election. They had settled into a comfortable,   retirement, so they weren’t competing with anyone for jobs, and there were few immigrants, of either the documented or undocumented variety, in their virtually   town. Yet, they said that the dangers presented by immigrants and Muslims, and a nagging fear that the culture was changing in ways they didn’t care for, was the most important issue to them. But they weren’t racist, they told Shereen. And they said that they never thought about race  —   that America didn’t have any problems with race. That was, until Obama came along and started making everything about race. That last bit, to me, seemed impossible to believe. But Whitney Dow, the creator of The Whiteness Project, told us right before the election that he wasn’t surprised at all to hear someone say that. ”[When] these guys said, ’Well, I never think about race, but now, every time I look up and see the president, I have to think about race,’ it’s a reminder about this tension [between] how you see yourself and what you know yourself to be,” Dow told us. He’d said he’d felt some of the same disorientation whenever he got a Christmas card with the First Family’s picture on it. The family in the White House had always looked like people Ray and Arlene might ostensibly know. Now that they didn’t, the whole thing caused folks like them a lot of disquiet, which they had a hard time articulating. That discomfort wasn’t always so apparent. Obama was massively popular when he was sworn in in 2009 Americans, even those who didn’t vote for him, seemed to be feeling good about the historic presidency  —   and, for some, good about themselves for feeling good about it. But there came a moment just a few months into his first term when the notion of a black man as president became real. That’s when Obama waded into a minor controversy around an ugly encounter between a noted Harvard historian (and, importantly, a black guy) and a local police officer, who was white. ”I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that,” Obama said. He went on: ”But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of   and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.” It was a question about a   that in an alternate universe a President John McCain probably wouldn’t have been asked about. It was an answer that in that alternate universe President McCain certainly wouldn’t have given. It was an    moment, but nonetheless surreal  —   the most powerful official in the country candidly acknowledging that capricious, unnecessary police contact was a fact of life in communities of color. And it was that moment, as Jamelle Bouie of Slate pointed out to us on the podcast, that Obama’s approval rating among white Americans took a nosedive. No one knew it at the time, but the Harvard fiasco would be Obama’s   foray into issues about race in America, and race and policing in particular. If Americans were scandalized by his remarks about that incident, it’s little wonder that his responses to stories like the shooting death of Trayvon Martin would be so polarizing. The ”beer summit” that followed was a trifle, one of those weird, facile ”conversations” that we too often insist upon following some racial controversy. But it laid bare the tensions between the office of the presidency and the blackness of the man in it, and augured how difficult it would be for him, and for all of us, to easily reconcile those two ideas. Yep, this black presidency was really happening. If Obama’s blackness mussed up white folks’ notions of the presidency and their relationship to it, his blackness also complicated the ways black folks critiqued the White House. ”I’m not the president of Black America,” Obama famously said in 2012 when pressed during his   campaign on issues of race and inequality. ”I’m the president of the United States of America.” And even while his approval ratings remained extraordinarily high among black folks, those numbers belied a more complicated story. For one, he was almost certainly being judged against the alternative the Republican brand is radioactive among black people, and so a dizzying array of black political inclinations is flatly expressed as electoral support for Democrats. That had all sorts of effects on Democratic politics. Even when black lawmakers disagreed with Obama, he was often much more popular than they were in their own districts, and by criticizing him they ran the risk of being seen like they were enabling his opponents. ”If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Emanuel Cleaver, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said about black unemployment in 2011. ”There is a   reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.” Here’s a thought experiment: Would the rise of the Movement for Black Lives have occurred had Obama never been president? The question gets to the matter of how much the current state of race relations in the country lies at his feet. Some months ago, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Harvard historian, pointed me to an idea from political theory called ”the revolution of rising expectations.” It holds that people don’t take to the streets when things are at their worst, but when things are starting to get better  —   just not fast enough. This idea is often used to explain the outbreak of riots among black folks in the 1960s the passage of civil rights legislation meant that people could finally envision the prospect of equality and at the same time see that it remained distressingly out of reach. The organizers of the loosely affiliated groups commonly lumped into Black Lives Matter were mostly millennials who were invested in complicating ideas about blackness. They rejected the respectability politics that older folks like President Obama would often invoke. They explicitly interlaced their calls for racial justice with other causes: sexual orientation gender class. And yet, he was the first presidential candidate for whom many of these newly activated people had ever voted. Obama’s presence, a sign of the gains that black folks had made in American life, had raised their expectations. It’s fair to say that many of the most heated racial debates of the Obama era were neither loosed by him nor coincidental to him. ”[As] much as symbolic thresholds matter  —   at lower frequencies where people live  —   the old race and class problems of structural inequality, normalized stigma, and everyday brutalization, especially at the hands of police, persist,” Nikhil Singh, one of our podcast guests, wrote in 2015. ”Mass protest against the impunity with which black men and women . .. have been killed recently, are bringing the contradictions of the    era to a head. Obama does not deserve credit for this, but he is a symptom.” So what will Obama mean to Americans and race going forward? Here are some wild prognostications of my own, since you asked: Outside of the strictures of the White House, Obama will become more pointed about issues of racial justice. He will probably travel a similar trajectory to   black figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali, both of whom became more beloved, particularly by white Americans, as the details of their battles against justice receded from memory. (Like them, Obama will then be held up as both an example of black excellence  —   and when useful, invoked as a cudgel.) And in the retelling of the last eight years, we will impose upon him a simplicity that was never even close to true. In the   I can’t help thinking about that saying the old folks have: You have to be twice as good and run twice as fast to get half as far. That’s either a lament about the drag of racism on black life or a   set of instructions on how to deal with it, depending on who’s saying it and when. Obama got very, very far, very, very fast  —   farther than all but a few dozen white men in the history of the republic. Everyone in that cohort arrived with a tremendous amount of   literal and political capital, and exceedingly good fortune. Shortly after Donald Trump’s election, a friend joked that the ”twice as good” maxim had been based on extremely conservative arithmetic. There’s no way a black candidate with Trump’s temperament or backstory, no matter how exponentially better he or she was, could be a credible candidate for national office. Perhaps. It’s also probably true that no black candidate without Barack Obama’s specific temperament and backstory could have been a credible candidate for the nation’s highest office. Looking back with us on the podcast, Jamelle Bouie of Slate wondered if, when it came down to it, the only person who could have been the first black president of the United States was Barack Obama. And still, his patriotism was questioned. His citizenship was questioned. The litigation of his legitimacy  —   of his Americanness  —   in the end, may have been the blackest thing about the first black presidency. ”Putting Obama’s politics aside . .. he is an   educated constitutional lawyer, who seems to be a moral and upright American example in every way you can imagine,” Bouie told Shereen and me. ”If Barack Obama isn’t good enough for some of these people, then none of us are.”"
"For many pregnant women, understanding what seafood is safe and healthy, and what should be avoided because of mercury concerns comes with a lot of  . In part, that’s because the federal government’s advice on the matter, first issued in 2004, has long been criticized as unclear. That guidance has included advice on how much seafood to eat, and which species pregnant and nursing women should avoid over concerns about mercury contamination. But critics say the government advisory has done more harm than good, scaring many pregnant and nursing women (and let’s be real  —   pretty much everyone else) away from eating seafood altogether. The problem is real. According to a spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration, the agency analyzed fish consumption data from more than 1, 000 pregnant women in the U. S. and found that 21 percent of them ate no fish whatsoever in the previous month. And those who did eat fish consumed far less than recommended by the Dietary Guidelines: Some 50 percent ate less than 2 ounces a week and 75 percent ate less than 4 ounces. This week, in the waning days of the Obama administration, the FDA and Environmental Protection Agency issued an update to the advice, listing more than 60 species in a chart that ranks fish as a ”best choice,” ”good choice” and ”choices to avoid.” The goal is to make it easier for    to feel confident about the type of seafood they include in their diets. The new advice recommends consumers choose a variety of fish to eat. And it comes with an    illustration of what an appropriate portion size should be: 4 ounces for an adult, the full size of your palm and 2 ounces for children aged    —   which is more like the inside cup of your palm. And while expectant mothers have long been warned to stay away from shark, King mackerel, swordfish and tilefish from the Gulf of Mexico, now there’s three new species on the list of what to avoid: marlin, orange roughy, and bigeye tuna. But, not everyone is thrilled with the new advice. ”You can put this in with the Chelsea Manning pardon, it’s that controversial,” says Dr. Tom Brenna, a professor of human nutrition at Cornell University and a member of the government’s 2015 Dietary Guideline Committee. Brenna and other critics say the new advice doesn’t always jibe with the agency’s own scientific findings. For instance, a 2014 report from the FDA looked at the net effects of eating commercial fish during pregnancy on the neurodevelopment of growing babies. The report found it would be safe to eat 61 ounces of halibut a week. (That’s about 15   servings.) But the new advisory from the FDA suggests that halibut be limited to just once a week. ”They’re completely ignoring their own [2014] report,” Brenna says. ”It’s a terrible, awful message. They’ve ignored the nutrition science and at best, they’re ranking the amount of mercury.” And Brenna argues that splitting tuna into three different categories muddles an already complex message even further. Bigeye tuna (often known as ahi) falls on the ”avoid” list, while albacore and yellowfin are listed as ”good choices,” and canned light tuna, which includes skipjack, is listed as a ”best choice.” ”People won’t see there’s a difference between the types of tuna, they’ll only see that tuna is on the list,” Brenna says. Meanwhile, others worried the new advice might prompt pregnant women and small kids to eat too much tuna. ”If pregnant women or small kids followed the new advice from the government on mercury and tuna[,] they could easily consume more mercury than is safe for developing brains,” Lisa Lefferts, a senior scientist with The Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a statement. In an email to NPR, FDA spokesperson Peter Cassell says it’s important to note that this guidance is targeted to certain women and young children. ”We took a cautious and highly protective approach in determining which fish belonged in each category and are comfortable with the limits we are providing.” While mercury looms large when we’re talking about pregnant women and seafood, it’s not the only contaminant of concern. The new   chart lists both wild striped bass and bluefish as ”good choices,” meaning one serving a week is OK. But striped bass and bluefish on the East Coast have been known to have high levels of PCBs, which can build up in the fatty tissues of fish and bring health risks to humans, says Tim Fitzgerald of the Environmental Defense Fund. That’s why, to cite one example, depending the fish’s size, Maryland’s consumption advisory recommends women limit meals of striped bass to as little as one serving a month  —   far less than the new   advisory recommends. The FDA maintains that its final consumption recommendations were based on rigorous scientific analysis. Agency spokesman Cassell says the FDA believes the recommendations will instill confidence, not uncertainty. Brenna disagrees. ”I think the advice they’re giving is not based on the evidence in their own detailed report,” he says, ”and that it confuses everyone.” Clare   is a journalist based in San Diego who covers food policy and sustainability issues. "
"Last year, Georgia’s former governor, Sonny Perdue, called up a farmer named Gary Paulk for some advice about planting blackberry bushes. Paulk thought it was a prank. ”I picked up the phone and he said, ’Gary, how you doing? This is Sonny Perdue,’ ” Paulk recalls. ”And I said, ’Yeah right, and I’m Mickey Mouse.’ ” Paulk says he apologized when he realized it actually was Perdue on the line. Perdue is now Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of agriculture, and Paulk expects that he’ll keep calling farmers for advice, and maybe just conversation. The    Perdue has deep roots in agriculture. He’s the son of a farmer and ran three businesses in the industry. Along with a farming and garden supply company, and a shipping company that operates through the Savannah port, Perdue ran AGrowstar, a company that buys and sells grain throughout the southeast. Perdue, a veterinarian by training, joked that the dirty nature of job qualified him to be governor. While in office he regularly visited clinics to spay and neuter cats and dogs. ”I don’t get to do this every day,” Perdue told a local paper. ”When you have a governor who’s a veterinarian and can draw a little bit of attention to the issue, it’s still very important.” When Perdue was Georgia’s governor, Paulk, who grows muscadine grapes, which are often used to make a sweet Southern wine, served on Perdue’s agriculture advisory commission. ”He took a very   approach to it,” Paulk says. ”He took it very serious, and took our advice to him very seriously.” As Paulk describes it, his advice to Perdue as governor was similar to what organized farm groups want Perdue to accomplish today, as head of the USDA: Loosen regulations, increase public awareness of agriculture, and boost trade. ”He comes from the farm and he’s very familiar with agriculture and how important it is to not just Georgia’s economy but the American economy,” says Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation and a native Georgian himself. Duvall, who was previously head of the Georgia Farm Bureau, says Perdue has an ”  policy” when it comes to farmers. But while farmers like Paulk and DuVall praise their former governor, environmental and consumer safety groups have a harsher assessment. Neill Herring, a   environmental lobbyist in Georgia, says Perdue focused on a certain kind of people in rural areas: ones with money. ”He was focused on people who were comfortable,” says Herring. ”Those were his constituents, those were the people who he aimed to please, and I think he did.” As governor, Perdue was caught in a more than a few scandals involving his businesses and personal property deals. He convinced the state legislature to spend millions on a fishing museum just miles from his home that hasn’t attracted as many visitors as expected. The New York Times called it a symbol of wasteful spending. Perdue attracted national attention during a drought in 2007, when he held a prayer for rain on the steps of the Georgia state capitol. ”I’m here today to appeal to you and to all Georgians, and all people who believe in the power of prayer, to ask God to shower our state, our region, our nation with the blessings of water,” he said. After the announcement of Perdue’s nomination, national environmental groups unleashed a chorus of criticism. ”It seems like he’s well poised to gut agriculture regulations that protect independent farmers, workers and consumers so that agribusiness can continue to prioritize profits above food safety, farmer livelihoods, worker safety and the environment,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch. Duvall says the criticism of Perdue is simply wrong. ”I have hunted with Sonny Perdue,” says Duvall, ”He’s just a really good guy, and I know that he appreciates the natural resources that we have in this country.”"
"Standing on the steps of the U. S. Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon, Simon Tam, the bassist and frontman of the   rock group The Slants, was fired up. He’d just watched as most of the eight justices questioned whether the government should back his right to use his band’s name, which is a racial slur. ”If the government really truly cared about fighting racist messages they would have canceled the registrations for numerous white supremacist groups before they even approached our case,” he told a crowd of reporters. Tam had just emerged from the oral argument for Lee v. Tam, in which a representative of the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office insisted that Tam couldn’t register the band’s name because it was disparaging toward Asians. Tam maintains that the whole point of his band  —   and his advocacy  —   is to empower   and subvert stereotypes. His case, which has become inextricably linked to the battle over the Washington Redskins name, has put some   activists in a complicated position. While they’re inclined to stand behind a fellow advocate pushing for equity for   they wonder: At what cost? Would aligning themselves with The Slants put them in league with people pushing to protect a name that’s offensive to Native Americans? Tam says he sees his trademark effort as another form of activism as paving the way for others who want to reclaim words through registered trademarks. ”We grew up and the notion of having slanted eyes was always considered a negative thing,” he said. ”Kids would pull their eyes back in a   gesture to make fun of us . .. I wanted to change it to something that was powerful, something that was considered beautiful or a point of pride instead.” Tam said he’s had a lot of time to think about ”what ifs.” Like, what if the case was used to support the Redskins? ”At the end of the day, I’ve become more comfortable with that notion,” Tam said. ”Because we’ve been so obsessed with punishing villains like [Redskins owner] Dan Snyder, we don’t realize that there is this impact on bystanders. Those bystanders, in this case, would be the marginalized groups who have been trying to get their own trademarks registered. And to me, it’s more important to protect those communities than to worry about one racist guy getting his football team.” (Snyder contends that his team’s name is not racist and that it actually honors Native Americans.) The communities Tam is talking about protecting include the biker organization Dykes on Bikes, which won federal registration for its name but not its logo, and Heeb media, a Jewish publication that won registration for its newspaper but not its clothing products. But his advocacy strategy is exactly what concerns some activists. While groups spanning the ideological spectrum including the Cato Institute, the Asian American Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed amicus briefs backing The Slants, a small cohort of activists isn’t so sure. ”[Tam] casts himself as a First Amendment hero in a way that doesn’t really make sense given what is really at stake,” Robert Chang, executive director of Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, wrote in an email. Chang’s group filed an amicus brief in support of the trademark office. ”And he ignores . .. the impact that his case will have on the   effort of Native American activists with regard to the Washington football team. In much of his public commentary, he focuses on how he thinks the law was applied unfairly to him, in a racially discriminatory manner. He could have limited his legal theories and legal challenge to focus on that.” Instead, Chang said, Tam’s trying to invalidate the law ”that permits the government to deny federal registration, and the government’s imprimatur, to the Washington football team.” Cecelia Chang, legal director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) said that the uptick in racially and religiously motivated hate crimes over the last year underscores what’s at stake. ”There’s a real world cost to normalizing that kind of speech, particularly in a country of immigrants,” she said. In an amicus brief she filed on behalf of AAJC, which supports neither party, Chang acknowledged that many of the people behind the brief are fans of The Slants and generally ”support efforts to reclaim and   derogatory terms, but believe that socially progressive reclamation movements are not an excuse to open federal trademark registration to vile epithets and hateful marks.” The justices are expected to issue a ruling by June. Just hours after he left the Supreme Court, Simon Tam and his band were at a gathering in northwest Washington, D. C. Tam told a small crowd about his journey into   activism and on to the nation’s highest court. Then he and his band members broke out some instruments. They began to play a new song from their recent album. They call it, ”The Band Who Must Not Be Named.”"
"There’s no room for ambivalence when you perform Bob Dylan’s ”Masters Of War.” Among the earliest major contributions by our current Nobel laureate in literature  —   first published as sheet music in Broadside magazine in 1963, and then included on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan that spring  —   the song is a blunt object, liturgical in its cadence and damning in its censure. That’s true even on this gracefully bobbing live version by Charles Lloyd  The Marvels, with Lucinda Williams on guest vocals. Lloyd is a tenor saxophonist and flutist long associated with a    agenda: He lived in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, moving in a bohemian circle that included Dylan. Near the end of that decade he found great success as a jazz mystic among hippie seekers at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Williams, who happens to be playing the Fillmore this Friday and Saturday, hails more from   and rugged country, but her connection with Lloyd doesn’t feel arbitrary. She had already played ”Masters Of War” with the saxophonist and his band a few times before this performance, which took place in late November, on Lloyd’s home turf in Santa Barbara, Calif. The two artists have different relationships with the song, which lends a small but useful tension to their interactions. Lloyd, who played an instrumental version on his recent album I Long To See You, has said that he first connected with the song by way of the folk singer Odetta. Her take on ”Masters Of War,” on the 1965 album Odetta Sings Dylan, is indignant but calm, above the fray. Williams, more of a hardboiled   takes the rage and spite of the lyrics and goes to town. When she sings, ”You ain’t worth the blood that runs through your veins,” you can almost feel the withering heat of her glare. And, like Dylan, she puts raw feeling into the delivery of the words, making them bristle and growl. (A reviewer for the Santa Barbara Independent called her performance of the song here ”a climax of purposeful protest. ”) As for the other members of the band  —   Bill Frisell on guitar, Greg Leisz on pedal steel, Reuben Rogers on bass and Eric Harland on drums  —   they keep the song grounded but light on its feet. Frisell, who has had ”Masters Of War” in his own repertory for years, turns his peekaboo chords and arpeggios into a running commentary, while Harland finds room to buckle and thrash. Just as there’s a clear message in the song, about the cynical profit motive of the   complex, there’s some obvious intentionality behind the timing of this track’s release. Williams and Lloyd see fit to let Dylan’s words do the talking  —   up to the bitter end, which has the narrator standing and gloating over a metaphorical grave. As Dylan put it in a conversation with Nat Hentoff, for the liner notes of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan: ”I don’t sing songs which hope people will die, but I couldn’t help it with this one.” ”Masters Of War” is available now via Blue Note."
"John Marboe is a Lutheran pastor who grew up admiring his local garbage collectors in Alexandria, Minn. When times were lean for his family, he decided to take on some shifts hauling trash. At StoryCorps in Minneapolis, Marboe tells his    daughter, Charlie, that he’s been hauling trash since she was about 8. ”Did I ever tell you the story about when I pulled up to an intersection and there was a mother and her little children and her littlest boy just started waving and I was waving,” he says. ”And the mother looked up at me with this kind of concerned look and then grabbed her son. It was almost as though, ’No, that’s not something you’re going to want to be.’ ” ”I think, to me, as your kid, I’m not embarrassed when people say like, ’Oh, what does your dad do?’ And I’m like, ’Oh, he’s a pastor, he’s a garbage man,’ ” Charlie says. Marboe, a Lutheran pastor in St. Paul, Minn. is also an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota, teaching youth and spirituality, and he received his Ph. D. in mythological studies in 2011. He took the trash collector job because he was unemployed and needed to support his family. Marboe keeps hauling trash because it’s important. ”I don’t know if I want to say it’s more important, but it’s differently important. You’re doing something for people, and I think especially, I’m aware of that when it’s hot out, when it’s really smelly, when there are a lot of maggots,” he says. ”But as a garbage man, I probably know more about people on my route than their pastor does  —   because their trash tells a story.” Marboe remembers once he found a note written on the back of an envelope. It said, ”I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I just can’t stand the pain anymore.” ”I looked at it and I thought, ’You know what? I’m paid here to take out the trash, not to intervene in people’s lives based on what I find.’ As a pastor, all I could do was say a prayer,” he says. Charlie’s first sentence was ’It all goes,’ and that, Marboe says, has special relevance to trash collection and life. ”’It all goes.’ And to do the trash, it’s sort of a reminder that every small thing that we ever do for other people is valuable, even if it might be really small and unnoticed,” he says. Audio produced for Morning Edition by Liyna Anwar. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"Gene Demby of NPR’s Code Switch team is in our fourth chair this week as we start by trying to make sense of all our reactions to HBO’s new drama The Young Pope. The cardinals! The intrigue! The smoking! The . .. unexpected animal cameos! It’s a really interesting show that has us a little perplexed in places, so please join us as we try to figure out whether we like it or not. We do like Hell Or High Water, the 2016 modern western starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges. Even if you’re not a fan of westerns or movies about bank robbers, it’s grounded by great performances both large and small, and it intersects with current financial policy issues in a very interesting way. As always, we close the show with what’s making us happy this week. Stephen is happy about another entry in his March To The Oscars, Glen is happy about a comic and a Netflix show, Gene is happy about a comedy series he also found on Netflix, and I am happy about a   special  —   which is also on Netflix. (These are the coincidences that arise when you don’t talk in advance about who’s happy about what, by the way. It wasn’t, like, Be Happy About Netflix Week.) Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: the show, me, Stephen, Glen, Gene, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus and pal for life Mike."
"xXx, in case you’ve forgotten, is the other action series that Vin Diesel started with director Rob Cohen (Stealth, Alex Cross) in the cultural desert of the early aughts, promptly abandoned, and then limped back to (after producers churned out one or more   installments). On his sabbaticals from the xXx and Fast  Furious franchises, Diesel  —   a performer often hailed as a ”visionary” by impartial observer Vin Diesel  —   lent his visionary skills as producer and star to more personal (and visionary!) genre flicks like A Man Apart, The Chronicles of Riddick and The Last Witch Hunter. Those all tanked, but the Fast films got progressively sillier and more popular once Diesel, the prodigal star, returned. So what does he need with xXx: Return of Xander Cage, a   featuring visual effects, jokes, and a grating   sensibility that even in 1999 would have felt dated? It’s got time for neither definite articles nor the suggestion that anything could be more totally extreme or subversive than a   action flick about a    man in jorts on a skateboard. Diesel’s protracted reign as an action star has always been a puzzle. His burly frame is most persuasive as a   platform for tattoos. He does not run or fight very fast, or furiously, or convincingly. (And the stunt double or doubles who perform his highway skateboarding,   skiing, and, um,   stunts here do not much resemble him, at least not in the cold, clear light of of IMAX.) He is as convincing an action hero as Sir Roger Moore was,   years ago. Sure, Diesel looks a little sturdier. But it doesn’t much matter that by Diesel’s present age, Moore’s body was already being held together only by a delicate exoskeleton of talcum powder and hairspray. Diesel’s character, Xander Cage (!) knows that hairspray  —   like ”suits” (as he calls his bosses) like sleeves, like hair itself  —   is for losers. What Diesel is sort of good at is what Laurence Olivier was good at: monologuing. It’s no accident that Diesel’s work as the voice of Brad Bird’s gentle cartoon The Iron Giant is the performance of his career. But xXx Part iIi doesn’t give him any monologues! And its dialogue, courtesy of screenwriter F. Scott Frazier (who did not write The Great Gatsby) often sounds as though it’s been run through Google Translate. A sample: ”He just took out the best of the best like it was Sunday brunch.” That    effect is sort of fitting, because like the Fast series, the   has generously exXxpanded and diversified its supporting cast to reduce its reliance on Diesel. Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen, contemporaneously starring in the equally diverse, infinitely better Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, has a strong role as Cage’s  . Thai martial arts star Tony Jaa is on hand too, as one of the bad guys, and his hands are blindingly fast. These two are   martial artists, but director D. J. Caruso cuts their fights in the way he would were he attempting to disguise the limitations of a far clumsier performer. (Vin Diesel, say.) Also on Team Cage are Ruby Rose from Orange Is the New Black as a sniper, Scotsman Rory McCann from Game of Thrones as a. ..   and   Canuck Kris Wu as a D. J. As in: someone who spins records in nightclubs. You might reasonably ask what possible need an ostensibly covert,     squad has for a DJ, and the answer, I’m afraid, is that you could not possibly be totally extreme enough to understand. Anyway, this bizarrely credentialed team is tasked with recovering a device called . .. Pandora’s Box. (When Mission: Impossible III christened its MacGuffin ”The Rabbit’s Foot” 11 years ago, and declined to ever say what it really was, that was a smart joke.) You keep thinking maybe Xander Cage  —   everyone refers to him by his first and last name in this movie, presumably in deference to the degree of his    extremity  —   will shoot someone with Chekhov’s Gun or even cut a fool with Occam’s Razor, but no. There are no   jokes in Vin Diesel movies. We’re told, in a     expository scene that even the great Toni Collette (as an NSA official) can’t pull off, that Pandora’s Box can be used to hack into any computer on Earth. So what the bad guys decide to use it for is . .. plucking satellites out of orbit and dropping them on top of buildings, like so many anvils in a Road Runner cartoon. But that’s not remotely how orbital mechanics work, you protest. Save it, you   Poindexter! This movie is just a little too exXxtreme for you. This is not a film that subtly suggests anything, but one of the things it insists upon most loudly is that women who are approximately 45 percent of Diesel’s age cannot keep their hands off him. (Former The Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev ends her character’s introductory scene by volunteering her safe word.) Collette is a mere five years younger than Diesel, so naturally her character is portrayed as a   harridan. Collette has a long resume of complex roles in real movies, and she looks like she’s composing an angry   to her agent even as she’s delivering her lines. Maybe she took this job because she always wanted to visit Detroit. (xXx: Return of Xander Cage was filmed on location in Toronto, the Dominican Republic, and Detroit.) I eventually lost track of the bits, scenes, and lines xXx iIi had ripped off wholesale from films as various and sundry as Point Break (v. 1991) Lethal Weapon 3, True Lies, and even Captain America: Civil War. At one point Dobrev likens the hunt for Pandora’s Box to looking ”for a needle in a stack of needles,” which is both a mixed metaphor and a   nod to another film wherein that exact expression is spoken: Saving Private Ryan. That    Oscar winner featured a      Diesel in a small but memorable supporting role. It was possible to believe then, as it was with Sylvester Stallone after Rocky, that a brilliant career awaited him. But when two roads diverged in the wood, Vin Diesel choose the path of most total extremity. He looks at peace with his choice."
"Updated at 4 p. m. ET, The National Mall has flooded with pink, as demonstrators descend on the nation’s capital Saturday for the Women’s March on Washington. Just one day after President Trump’s inauguration, marchers from across the country have gathered in the city to protest his agenda and support for women’s rights. The event opened with a rally, to be followed by the march proper  —   which had a path laid out from a starting position near the U. S. Capitol to its endpoint near the Washington Monument. The city’s metro system reported 275, 000 rides as of 11 a. m. According to metro officials that’s eight times more than a normal Saturday. Reuters adds that the number is also ”82, 000 more than the 193, 000 rides reported at the same point on Friday,” the day of Trump’s inauguration. In fact, the number of marchers swelled to the point of prompting reports there would be no space for a formal procession  —   a claim rebutted by organizers Saturday afternoon in a statement. ”We are marching,” reads the statement. ”We are marching straight ahead toward the Washington Monument to the ellipse of the White House.” The event grew from humble origins  —   a simple Facebook invitation after Election Day  —   to the much more massive demonstration seen Saturday. By the time marchers hit the streets, the Women’s March on Washington developed a broad platform of progressive political positions, a slate of celebrity performers and a series of sister marches planned across the world  —   on all seven continents. For protester Amy Jackson, though, the matter was simple: She just wanted to ”make her voice heard,” she tells NPR’s Marisa Penaloza. Jackson, who traveled to D. C. from Chocowinity, N. C. to be part of the march, said, ”It was very important to be here today.” Among the crowd that gathered for the rally outside the National Museum of the American Indian, NPR’s Sarah McCammon reported signs supporting a wide array of causes  —   from women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, to Black Lives Matter and excoriations of xenophobia. One thing seemed to be almost universal, though: The pink knitted caps known as ”pussyhats” among the marchers, in protest of Trump’s past comments about women. Popular as they may have been, the pussyhats were not the only costume worn by marchers. Others wore their causes on their sleeves, dressing in attire to call attention to issues like Native rights and environmental fears. In video Sarah recorded a block or two from the main rally, it appears there were marchers in a menagerie of outfits. Meanwhile, at a nearby metro station, NPR’s Pam Fessler reported the mood among the demonstrators has been more festive than protests Friday. Most of the demonstrators are women, Pam says, but some men have joined the march, as well  —   including one man carrying a sign reading: ”This is what a feminist looks like.” From the main rally stage, musicians and speakers addressed the crowd in an event that lasted some five hours  —   more than two hours longer than anticipated. The reason for that overflow was partly its smattering of surprise guests. Beyond the planned performances and speeches from figures like Janelle Monáe and Gloria Steinem, others including Madonna and Alicia Keys took the stage. ”It was woman that gave you Dr Martin Luther King Jr. It was woman who gave you Malcolm X. And according to the bible, it was a woman who gave you Jesus,” Monáe told the crowd, according to The Guardian. What began simply as opposition to Trump has developed a   list of demands, which organizers published as a platform prior to the march. But above all, organizers say, is the principle that ”Women’s Rights are Human Rights and Human Rights are Women’s Rights.” That statement is pulled directly from a speech Hillary Clinton delivered more than two decades ago in Beijing. Clinton tweeted her support for the march Saturday, expressing thanks ”for standing, speaking  marching for our values.” Arriving at that platform was not always a smooth process, though. NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reports there has been disagreement between organizers about how to treat issues of race. ”This march was initially put together by white women, and a lot of women of color felt they weren’t part of the conversation,” Carmen Perez, one of the march’s national organizers, told NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang. ”We can’t continue to work in isolation. We can’t continue to be  . We have to make sure that we look up, that we begin to really coordinate our efforts.” Ultimately, more than 200 organizations  —   ranging from Planned Parenthood and the NAACP, to Amnesty International and the    —   partnered with the Women’s March on Washington. For Darcy Sawatzki, a demonstrator attending the march with her daughter, Delia, what matters most is showing up. ”I think showing up and paying attention is sort of one of the bare minimums of citizenship,” Sawatzki told NPR’s Brakkton Booker. It’s not her first march she has also participated in Black Lives Matter protests. She said it’s not unease with the new president that inspired her to march. ”I’m not here out of anger or fear, I’m out here for determination, for participation and hope that together we can make a difference.”"
"Updated at 6:10 p. m. ET, As the Women’s March on Washington has swelled in support, attracting attention and supporters in the   to Saturday’s demonstrations, its name has become something of a misnomer. Sister marches have been organized in all 50 states, several U. S. territories and countries around the world. They have tried to express solidarity with the aims of the original march: opposition to President Trump’s agenda, and support of women’s rights and human rights in general. Given the quirks of time zones, many of those marches kicked off before the event that inspired them. In Sydney, London, New Delhi, and other cities, demonstrators broke out their signs and pink hats before even their compatriots in D. C. could. Straight from NPR and member station reporters on the ground: Here’s a glimpse of the marches Saturday  —   across the country, and around the world. ”It is shoulder to shoulder” in Boston Common, WBUR’s Deborah Becker tells Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday. She describes the rally there as a ”sea of pink,” referring to the pink knit caps that have become distinctive of the Women’s March on Washington. The caps have come to be known as ”pussyhats,” in reference to a tape in which Trump bragged about assaulting women by grabbing their genitals. Deborah reports that the message of the Boston protesters is one of solidarity with the primary march in Washington. They bear signs not only protesting Trump, but supporting a range of issues  —   from climate science to women’s access to abortion and birth control. Both Massachusetts senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, addressed the rally in Boston. ”I’m here to fight back!” Warren told the crowd. ”We are in marches to say we are fighting back. That’s who we are.” In what the Chicago Tribune is reporting to be the largest crowd outside of Washington, Chicagoans gathered at Grant Park on Saturday morning with plans for a rally, followed by a march. In the end, the march portion of the event was cancelled by the organizers when they determined there were too many people to march safely. ”Our march route is flooded. There is no safe way to march. We are just going to sing and dance and make our voices heard here,” march   Ann Scholhmer told the crowd, according to the Tribune. If participants were disappointed, they didn’t show it. Organizer Liz Radford told the crowd, ”We called, and you came. We have flooded the march route. We have flooded Chicago.” Thousands marched through the British capital Saturday in what was billed as a women’s march, but was ostensibly an   rally. Marchers walked about 2 miles from the U. S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square to Trafalgar Square, within eyesight of Big Ben. The event ran for more than three hours and the size of the crowds easily dwarfed political rallies in the   to last summer’s Brexit vote here. As in other cities around the world, protesters carried signs criticizing America’s 45th president. Many signs read ”We Shall Overcomb,” referring to the U. S. president’s signature  . ”Trump Special Relationship? Just Say No,” read others, referring to the historically close diplomatic ties between the U. S. and the United Kingdom. Many in this cosmopolitan, multicultural city  —   which voted heavily against the U. K. leaving the European Union  —   were already upset by Trump’s election in November. The president’s ”America first” inaugural speech only fueled alarm here. A British software engineer named David said he watched the speech with officemates yesterday in stunned silence. ”It was a harrowing, chilling experience,” David said, as he stood in front of London’s National Gallery overlooking the rally in Trafalgar Square. ”The sense of nationalism and protectionism was there and there was quite a sinister undercurrent.” David, who did not offer his last name, said he was disturbed by the insularity of the Trump’s address, elements of which reminded him of the positions espoused by the political   here in the U. K. ”There is a movement in Britain called ’Britain first,’ ” he said, ”which is a terrifying, horrible   group.” The march in London was among a number of   rallies across Western Europe on Saturday, including cities such as Berlin, Paris, Belfast and Copenhagen. ”I’ve never seen so many people standing in one place in Los Angeles in my life, and that includes   Dodger Stadium,” NPR’s Ina Jaffe tells Michel Martin on Weekend All Things Considered. As the demonstrators marched from one rally in Pershing Square to another rally outside City Hall, Ina says a single street could not contain all of them. Instead, marchers had to proceed down three parallel streets. Supporters there brought up LGBTQ rights, religious freedom and women’s rights, Ina reports  —   including one marcher who held up a sign with a picture of Carrie Fisher, which read: ”A woman’s place is in the resistance.” For a march fueled in part by dissatisfaction with President Trump, it seems only natural that the protesters finished their procession nearby Trump Tower on Saturday. WNYC reporter Sarah Hayley Barrett tweeted that marchers shut down whole stretches of Madison Avenue, as they spilled off the planned route and took alternate paths to Trump Tower. Shumita Basu, a producer with WNYC, noted that in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, where many of the protesters converged, the march was a ”sea of pink hats, signs.” ”There’s been a steady stream of marchers” in the streets of downtown Raleigh, reports Jess Clark of member station WUNC. ”It spans the spectrum  —   protesters represent diverse issues, diverse backgrounds.” She notes that she has seen men in baseball caps, women in hijabs and several people in those distinctive pink caps. ”The massive crowd has taken over the downtown area, shutting down several streets in the process,” The Associated Press reports from Raleigh. The news service notes marches and rallies are taking place in cities across the state, including Charlotte and Asheville. The march in Mexico City began at the U. S. Embassy and proceeded to the Angel of Independence monument. But, as NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports, the march was so large, the crowd of demonstrators stretched from one landmark to the other. Carrie says the march comprised a mix of Americans and Mexicans, who appeared to be protesting Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto as much as President Trump. Peña Nieto has dismal approval ratings in his own country a recent poll showed only 12 percent of Mexicans approve of the job he’s doing. The chants  —   shouted in both Spanish and English  —   focused not only on the two leaders, but women’s rights and gender equality, as well. In Sioux Falls, the women’s march has focused partly on American Indian rights, reports Kealey Bultena of South Dakota Public Broadcasting. Chants of ”Native lives matter” rippled throughout the march. ”We want to protect Mother Earth, first of all, for the future generations and also we have our human rights as women,” marcher Julia Brown Wolf told Kealey. Brown Wolf had traveled from the Crow Creek Indian Reservation for the demonstration. ”You know, we have to think in seven generations ahead.” Kealey reports Brown Wolf marched with her granddaughters. ”She does not want them to face discrimination for being a woman or a Native American,” Kealey says. Demonstrators gathered in the city’s Hyde Park carrying signs with slogans like ”Bridges not walls,” and ”A woman’s place is in the revolution.” As protester Stef Vogt told The Sydney Morning Herald, ”We want to send a sign to the women in the U. S. that we’re all in this together.” But participants also say this isn’t just about Trump. ”Women’s rights are not about women,” musician Amanda Palmer told a the marchers. ”They’re about everyone. My son and husband are feminists.” In Buenos Aires, American expats and locals held signs and wrote messages across their bodies as they gathered for a rally in support of the women’s march. Local organizers echoed the guiding principle behind the march in Washington, D. C.  —   that ”Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights.” While some protests are principally marching to express solidarity with the demonstrators in the U. S. others are directly raising issues of misogyny on a more local level. In New Delhi, protesters carried signs reading ”I will go out,” to protest sexual harassment in public spaces. The Sundance film festival is underway in the city, but women, men and children still stepped away to trudge down Main Street in the blustery snow. Many of the filmmakers and   in Park City for the annual event came to protest Donald Trump’s presidency and to defend women’s rights. They chanted slogans such as ”Love Not Hate, Make America Great” and ”We live in Trumpled Times.” Then they rallied as the snow flurried around them, with comedian Chelsea Handler and actress Maria Bello among the speakers. Longtime activist Dolores Huerta, who’s the subject of a documentary that premiered at the festival, led the crowd in chanting, ”Si se puede, Yes, we can.” Jessica Williams, who stars in one of the feature films premiering at the festival, told the crowd that her ancestors fought for her to be where she is  —   to ”stand in the snow in front of a bunch of white people in Uggs.” ”I grew up thinking (the) civil rights movement already happened,” said Williams. ”This election is a wake up call. The silver lining is, we are here . .. in literally 21 degrees supporting each other.” And all the way from Baltimore, the Lethal Ladies of Bliss step team, featured in a new documentary premiering Saturday, roused the crowd with   chants of resistance. There were even ”marchers” in Antarctica. Linda Zunas, a reseacher in a remote corner of the continent called Paradise Bay, told The Independent that she organized a group of 30 people with banners reading ”Penguins for peace” and ”love from seven continents.”"
"On his first full day in the White House, President Trump went to the CIA presumably to try and offer an olive branch to members of the intelligence community he often maligned over their conclusions that Russia had conspired to influence the U. S. elections. Instead, he falsely denied that he had ever criticized the agency, falsely inflated the crowd size at his inauguration on Friday, attacked the media and told intelligence officers gathered to, ”Trust me. I’m like a smart person.” It was a rambling speech that was reminiscent of many of his campaign rallies. But Trump did begin by praising the work that CIA officers do and the danger they put themselves in every day, saying they would be instrumental in ”making us safe” and ”making us winners again.” He made the speech in front of a wall of 117 stars representing those in the agency who had lost their lives in service. He called the memorial ”very, very special” and said he had enjoyed touring the building prior to the speech. ”There is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump,” the president boasted, referring to himself in the third person. He said that the agency sometimes hadn’t gotten the backing they deserved from the White House, and promised that ”you’re going to get so much backing, maybe you’re going to say, ’please don’t give us so much backing’”  —   adapting a line he said many times during the campaign. He ended his remarks by telling those gathered that, ”I love you. I respect you. There’s nobody I respect more. You’re going to do a fantastic job. We’re going to start winning again, and you’re going to lead the charge” in helping combat ISIS. He praised his pick of Rep. Michael Pompeo,  . to lead the CIA, who is slated to get a confirmation vote by the full Senate on Monday. Trump called Pompeo a ”total star” and a ”gem” and said he may have been his most important Cabinet pick. Referencing his ”running war with the media” and calling them ”among the most dishonest human beings on earth”  —   a line which got laughs and applause from the crowd of CIA officers  —   he claimed that the press had misreported what he’s said in the past. ”They sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community,” Trump said. ”And I just wanted to let you know, the reason you’re the No. 1 stop, it is exactly the opposite, and they understand that.” In the wake of the intelligence community’s findings that Russia engaged in cyberattacks intended to influence the elections in favor of Trump, he’s accused them of leaking information to the press, likening it to ”Nazi Germany.” He’s repeatedly cast doubt on their findings, and after a Washington Post story in December reported the CIA conclusions, he said in a statement that, ”These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” But Trump continued bashing the media, launching into a tirade claiming that the crowd sizes during his inauguration yesterday were being misrepresented. ”We had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed,” he said. ”I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, they show an empty field. I said, wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, it looked like a million, a million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there.” ”It went all the way back to the Washington Monument,” Trump claimed. There are no official crowd estimates available for Friday’s inauguration the National Park Service stopped doing so after inaccurate estimations of the Million Man March in 1995. But according to aerial photos and multiple NPR reporters on the ground, the crowd was nowhere near the Washington Monument. The mall area near the monument was sparsely populated, and Trump didn’t offer any verification for where the 1 million to 1. 5 million estimate came from, or for knocking down one news report’s estimate that there were only 250, 000 people in attendance. Trump also claimed that the rain should have scared people away, ”But God looked down, and He said, ’We’re not going to let it rain on your speech,’” and that, though he ”got hit by a couple of drops” when he started his speech that the rain ”stopped immediately . ..and then it became really sunny.” In fact, neither of those claims is true, and it was raining during Trump’s speech and remained overcast and cloudy. Trump also touted his electoral win, saying that he had tremendous support from the military and said he would ”guarantee a big portion” of people at his CIA speech voted for him. In fact, the military and the intelligence community are two separate entities. Several CIA veterans tell NPR they’re unconvinced that the speech can undo months of bitter relations. ”CIA’s employees are professionals and will serve the First Customer to the best of their ability, but they certainly aren’t fools,” said former CIA analyst Aki Peritz. ”They’ve all heard the hostile rhetoric directed at them from Donald Trump. .. and one prepared kumbaya speech isn’t going to change the real concerns CIA’s workforce  —   from the 7th floor to the greenest trainee  —   have with their new boss.” Paul Pillar, the CIA’s former top analyst for the Middle East, seconded that view. He said his former colleagues will welcome the gesture of a Presidential visit, ”but a single visit and a few nice words will not outweigh prior public disparagement. Unwarranted accusations about leaking and comparisons to Nazis are not the sort of attack that is easily forgotten.” ”Much depends on whether Mr. Pompeo sees and performs his role as the White House’s envoy and overlord, or instead as the leader of the agency with everything leadership implies, regarding identifying with the institution,” Pillar said. ”All that remains to be seen.”"
"Making good on his promise to get started on ”Day 1,” President Trump and his administration got right to work on Friday, taking steps to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and announcing the reversal of their predecessors’ plans to reduce mortgage insurance premiums on federally insured home loans. The new president signed an executive order to ”minimize the economic burden” of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act pending its repeal, allowing government agencies not to enforce regulations that impose a financial burden on a state, company or individual. Republican lawmakers have previously said that any repeal of the law would be immediately followed by a replacement, so that anyone who is insured through the ACA will not lose health insurance in the transition. But as NPR’s Alison Kodjak reports, the executive order is broad enough that it might dismantle key provisions of the ACA before a plan for replacement is ready. Reversal on housing insurance premium reduction, Within an hour of Trump’s swearing in, the Federal Housing Authority also announced the reversal of planned cuts to interest premiums on FHA mortgages. Outgoing HUD secretary Julian Castro had ordered the reduction not two weeks before, estimating that the change would save eligible homeowners an average of $500 a year. In a statement Senator Chuck Schumer said, ”In one of his first acts as president, President Trump made it harder for Americans to afford a mortgage. Working class Americans, struggling Americans  —   now it’s harder for them to get a mortgage.” The Senator added in a tweet that ”it only took an hour for those populist words delivered on the steps of the Capitol to ring hollow.” Revamping of Whitehouse. gov, Visitors to whitehouse. gov Friday afternoon noticed some immediate changes. Pages on climate change, LGBT issues, civil rights, and health care, have been replaced with pages on an ”America First Energy Plan,” ”America First Foreign Policy,” ”Bringing Back Jobs and Growth,” and ”Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community.” Department of Justice Decisions, Also just a few hours after inauguration, the Department of Justice requested and was granted the postponement of a hearing scheduled for Tuesday in a case challenging a Texas voter ID law. The department was scheduled to argue that the state law intentionally discriminated against Latino and   voters. ”It’s a very disappointing outcome,” Myrna Perez, Director of the Voting Rights and Elections Project at the Brennan Center for Justice, said Saturday in a phone interview. Perez is one of the litigators on the case. ”This case has been in the courts for the better part of four years, and the people of Texas deserve an expeditious recovery of their constitutional rights.” The Justice Department also requested, and was granted, a delay for an initial hearing on a sweeping police reform agreement with the Baltimore Police Department. This comes just over a week after the city of Baltimore and the Justice department announced that they had reached a   deal to attempt to mend the broken trust between the community and police after the death of Freddie Gray, and address systemic problems of excessive force and discrimination a DOJ investigation found in an investigation. In an opinion from the Office of Legal Council, it concluded Friday that the appointing of President Trump’s    Jared Kushner to a White House position did not fall under the prohibition of nepotism, because of the president’s special hiring authority. Kushner stands behind the new president in photos as he signs his first executive order  —   beside another new addition to the Oval Office: gold drapes."
"President Donald Trump, fulfilling a campaign promise to start to repeal Obamacare on Day 1, signed an order directing federal agencies to waive enforcement of large swaths of the law. The   order allows the head of the Department of Health and Human Services or any other agency with authority under the law, not to enforce regulations that impose a financial burden on a state, company or individual. It’s so broad it could allow many of the law’s provisions, including many of taxes it imposes on insurers and the requirement that individuals buy insurance, to die from lack of enforcement. The order is an important political act for Trump, who pledged throughout his campaign that he would act quickly to roll back the health care law. Its reach, however, depends upon exactly which provisions he decides to target. The order comes as Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price,  . is awaiting his confirmation hearing and vote, which could come within days or weeks. It’s unclear how much of this order could be carried out before Price, if he’s confirmed, is installed at HHS. Trump’s order also pushes one of his favorite health care ideas  —   to allow insurance companies to sell policies across state lines  —   by encouraging ”the development of a free and open market in interstate commerce for the offering of healthcare services and health insurance, with the goal of achieving and preserving maximum options for patients and consumers.” It lands just as members of Congress are working to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump and Republican lawmakers have promised that any repeal would be followed immediately by a replacement for the law and they’ve said that anyone who has insurance through the ACA will not lose it in the transition. ”While President Trump may have promised a smooth transition, the Executive Order does the opposite, threatening disruption for health providers and patients,” said Leslie Dach, director of the Protect our Care Coalition, a group of organizations trying to save the Affordable Care Act. Health policy analysts have warned that repealing the unpopular parts of the law such as the taxes or individual mandate could lead to the collapse of the individual health insurance market. This executive order could allow those provisions to be rolled back before a replacement bill is ready. Republicans in Congress have laid out a number of broad road maps for a new health care law but have yet to reveal a specific bill that would show how many people will get insurance coverage or how much it might cost."
"Along with the oath of office at the Capitol on Friday, a much quieter part of the presidential handover took place, as the federal government’s websites changed hands. Different administrations have used the White House website to highlight their programs and priorities ever since that site was founded in 1994. And much as the Trump team will fill the empty picture frames in the White House with what it wants, it likewise has highlighted its policy priorities on its website. The Trump site, for example, now lists his six policy positions, as opposed to the Obama administration’s breakout of broad topic areas. But the same as many protested Trump’s inauguration in person, there was plenty of Internet outcry on Friday about topics like climate change and LGBT rights being ”scrubbed” from the site. But as Snopes pointed out on Friday, ”It’s inaccurate to say that these terms were specifically scrubbed from the site by Donald Trump,” as Trump’s policy action items have simply supplanted Obama’s. Indeed, Trump’s site does mention the climate, albeit not in the way that advocates for combating climate change would like: ”President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan.” However, one of Washington’s    policy topics right now (perhaps the top policy topic)  —   health care  —   is not currently in Trump’s ”Issues” list. The   and many Republicans in Congress have repeatedly stressed their desire to repeal and replace Obamacare. The @POTUS Twitter and White House Facebook accounts were likewise handed over on Friday. However, the digital transition will not be complete for some time. The Trump White House website has maintained the look of the Obama site, maintaining its typefaces and color schemes, with a fuller style change coming later this year, as Politico reported Thursday. One notable holdover from Obama’s site is the ”We, the People Petitions” section, which links to a tool with which the public can propose petitions. That tool thus far reflects how polarizing the new president is. As of Friday afternoon, three petitions had been proposed: one calling to ”immediately release Donald Trump’s full tax returns, with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance,” another proposing to ”divest or put in a blind trust all of the President’s business and financial assets,” and another to ”let American farmers grow hemp once again to create jobs and rebuild the rural economy.” The site says that petitions need to hit 100, 000 signatures within 30 days to get a White House response. As of press time, they had 28, 409, 6, 351, and 190 signatures, respectively. The department websites have likewise shifted to reflect the new administration to varying degrees. The alterations reflect both the changeover in personnel  —   as with the removal of departing Secretary Ernest Moniz’s ”exit interview” on the Energy Department website’s front page  —   and the changes in policy. The Labor Department’s website is an example of this. As of Thursday, that site’s front page featured the Obama administration’s fiduciary rule  —   which requires financial advisers to act in the best interest of their clients  —   and overtime rule, which broadened the number of workers who would be required to be paid overtime (a federal court blocked that rule in November). Those rules both drew sharp criticism from conservatives. Today, the featured posts are the department’s occupational outlook handbook  —   a regular Labor publication  —   and a retirement savings education campaign. Likewise, some of the pages about Obama administration policies are gone. That   link  —   which led to a page about how ”conflicts of interest can take a bite out of retirement savings at any age”  —   now redirects to a page on ”saving fitness worksheets.”"
"As promised, President Trump got to work on Day One, spending some time in the Oval Office in between the inaugural parade and a trio of formal balls. Trump signed an executive order Friday night directing government agencies to ”ease the burdens” of Obamacare while the new administration and Congress work toward repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus presented Trump with the order, which he described as: ”An executive order minimizing the economic burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act pending repeal.” It’s not clear what kind of relief the executive order envisions. Trump also signed paperwork authorizing the elevation of two new Cabinet secretaries. The Senate voted this evening to confirm Trump’s nominees for defense secretary, James Mattis, and homeland security secretary, John Kelly. Trump called his first day in office ”busy, but good.” ”A beautiful day,” he added, before changing into formal wear for a round of celebratory balls. Also Friday evening, Priebus was preparing a memo for all federal agencies, ordering a freeze on government regulations. It was not immediately clear whether that order would apply retroactively to regulations in the pipeline from the outgoing Obama administration. Trump was joined in the Oval Office this evening by his national security adviser, Mike Flynn    and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and campaign manager turned counselor Kellyanne Conway. The new president is already putting his mark on the workspace. Crimson drapes in the Oval Office have been replaced with gold. Obama’s rug, featuring inspirational quotes such as, ”The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice,” has been swapped for a new floor covering. And a bust of Winston Churchill once again occupies a place of honor. The Churchill bust had been removed during the Obama years, replaced by a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. That bust is still there."
"Donald Trump had already emerged as the likely presidential nominee of the Republican Party back in April when he gave a foreign policy speech pledging that ”America First” would be ”the major and overriding theme of my administration.” It was a phrase guaranteed to prompt a reaction. Surely the two words sounded good together, but where had we heard them together before? And then, once again, the phrase stood out on Friday  —   front and center in President Trump’s inaugural address: ”We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first  —   America first.” As a businessman, Trump has been famous for nothing so much as his penchant for   and promotion. As a candidate, he rediscovered a slogan others had used (Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign had buttons that said ”Let’s Make America Great Again”) and made it his own. He now appears to be doing something very similar with ”America First,” a battle cry with more than a little history behind it. Assuming he is aware of at least some of that history, Trump is demonstrating his confidence that his adoption of a phrase can supersede its past. The phrase made an appearance with an exclamation point (”America First! ”) as the slogan of Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign in 2000. Buchanan had been an aide to Reagan and a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and sought the Republican nomination for himself twice in the 1990s. But in the millennial year, Buchanan shifted his attention to the Reform Party. Along the way, Buchanan proposed pulling out of the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in addition to opposing military intervention overseas. Trump, too, briefly sought the 2000 Reform Party nomination. In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump alluded to a book Buchanan had written arguing that the U. S. was beguiled by Great Britain into opposing Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany in World War II. (The book was titled: Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War.) Trump told NBC’s Tim Russert that Buchanan was ”a Hitler lover” and the choice of ”the really   wacko vote.” For many, Buchanan’s isolationism and revisionist views of World War II harked back to the America First Committee, the largest national organization opposing U. S. involvement in World War II prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Formally organized by students at Yale in 1940, it attracted a wide variety of activists and was bankrolled by several major corporate leaders. Automaker Henry Ford was on its board for a time. Most in the AFC wanted to avoid seeing the U. S. drawn into the European war the way it had been dragged into World War I in 1917. But some of the group’s leading lights also saw efforts to involve the U. S. against Nazi Germany as a plot led by the British and by ”the Jewish races”  —   a phrase used by the AFC’s most famous spokesman, Charles Lindbergh, the    hero. In April of this year, Williams College professor Susan Dunn wrote for CNN that it was ”extremely unfortunate” that Trump ”chose to brand his foreign policy with the noxious slogan ’America First,’ the name of the isolationist, defeatist,   national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.” The AFC, and opposition to entering World War II, all but vanished after Pearl Harbor, and Lindbergh retreated from public life. But some of the AFC’s other major figures later emerged as   internationalists, supporting the United Nations and other forms of global cooperation. While the AFC was the most prominent promulgator of ”America First” in memory, it was not the first: The phrase had gained political cachet during World War I as well. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson was struggling to win a second term in the White House, and he was no better than an even bet against Republican challenger Charles Evans Hughes. The Great War was raging on the Continent, and Wilson leaned toward helping Great Britain and France. But such an alliance was vigorously opposed by many Americans  —   especially German and Irish immigrants and their descendants. Wilson ran on a platform of strict neutrality. His most famous slogan was ”He kept us out of war,” a boast that would turn ironic when he asked Congress for a declaration of war just a month after his second inauguration. But the 1916 Wilson campaign also used the theme ”America First” on printed flyers and posters, tapping into national pride as well as isolationist sentiment."
"People traveled to Washington, D. C. from around the country to witness the transition of power to the 45th president of the United States. Amid celebration and clashes, a few faces stood out. Watching giant screens, blocks away from the incoming president, these people braved crowds and weather to watch history being made. Ken Crider and his wife, Penny, Age: 51, City of Residence: Detroit area, Crider has a hat signed by Ted Cruz. Well, it began that way. Crider, an elector for Michigan, sported a wide cowboy hat spotted with signatures, mostly of political figures, while attending the inauguration. ”Once I got Ted Cruz’s signature on here as a guest, being as my wife was a delegate, I started walking around the convention center, seeing how many I could get.” These include Rudy Giuliani, Ben Carson and   President Donald Trump, to name a few. Kara Zielinski, Age: 20, City of Residence: Washington, D. C. student at George Washington University, Zielinski wiped away tears as Trump made his oath. She said she didn’t think there was any cause for celebration she said she felt ”very disturbed” by the new administration. ”Any surrealism that people were feeling was wiped away. This is real. This isn’t going away.” Even so, she believes it was important to attend the event as part of the ”American experience.” ”I wanted to hear what he had to say and see how it goes,” she said. ”And I do live in D. C. now, so I can’t really ignore it.” Russell (left) and Wayne Bargiel, Ages: Russell, 65 Wayne, 61, City of Residence: Maywood and Saddle Brook, N. J. The two brothers have had their fair share of inaugurations. Though they can’t remember the exact number each have attended, Russell believes he’s seen six. They have no party affiliations, but like to see the festivities. And for whoever the next president may be after Trump, the two say they hope to see him or her sworn in. ”I’m planning on it,” Russell said. ”God willing.” Firas Nasr, Age: 23, City of Residence: Washington, D. C. Nasr is the founder of Werk For Peace, a queer grassroots organization that uses dance to promote peace. By 8:30 a. m. he was leading a group of supporters in dancing in the front of an entrance gate at F and 11th streets. This is his first time protesting at a presidential inauguration and he says he’s very happy with the turnout. ”We have completely blocked the checkpoint to get in. And we are here, we are queer, and we will dance. Hallelujah.” Liam Quidore, Age: 18, City of Residence: Southern California, student at Yorba Linda High School, As Presidents Trump and Obama took their car ride from the White House to the Capitol, Quidore watched the screen on the National Mall with friends. After flying across the country to attend, he was initially a little nervous about the day’s event, but ultimately felt being at the inauguration was surreal. ”I think it’s a     chance to be able to experience this kind of thing, especially at my age. And I really appreciate the opportunity that I have to be able to see something as great as this in person.” Marlene Dickey, Age: 77, City of Residence: Amissville, Va. Dickey can’t remember the only other inauguration she attended, when she was a child, but she knows she wanted to be here for this one specifically. In the next presidential term, she said, she’s looking for a lot of change: health care premiums coming down, encouragement of the right to life, and a   for many businesses. ”I just wanted to be here because I think it’s a historical moment. I just wanted to support him.” Roger Scott (left) and Daniel Shaw, Ages: Scott, 48 Shaw, 38, City of Residence: Washington, D. C. Inaugurations are not a new thing for Scott. He said he’s attended several inaugurations, always as a protester. ”Democrat or Republican, both parties are taking orders from the same billionaires and millionaires,” Scott said. ”And so we’re here to say that we’re going to fight that every step of the way.” Amy Kelash, Age: 54, City of Residence: Gilman, Minn. Kelash and her friends joked about attending the inauguration at a New Year’s celebration. And the next day, they decided something so that the   idea didn’t have to stay a joke. In the end, the friends took a   bus ride to get to D. C. and Kelash says she feels ”overwhelmed with pride for the country.” ”We’ve never done anything like this before. None of us have ever been in Washington. We milk cows. We come from a town [with] a population of 211 people, so this is overwhelming.” Timothy Moore, Age: 18, City of Residence: Cleveland, Ohio, Moore is no stranger to selling Trump paraphernalia he says he’s been to approximately 30 Trump rallies, where he sold buttons,   and other goods. He was hoping to make $5, 000 dollars by the end of the inauguration, but at 7 a. m. he was still waiting on large crowds to show and buy his wares. ”I’m expecting millions. Where they at?”"
"  President Donald Trump and wife Melania Trump ended a busy Inauguration Day with a visit to three balls in Washington. The Liberty Ball and Freedom Ball both took place at the Washington Convention Center. The Trumps took the stage first at the Liberty Ball shortly after 9:30 p. m. ”Well, we did it,” Trump began. ”We began this journey and they said we  —   we, and me  —   we didn’t have a chance. But we knew we were going to win.” Trump thanked his supporters, along with his wife Melania and Vice President Mike Pence. ”We want to see great things happen for our country,” Trump said. ”We want to make America great again and we will.” Their first dance was to musicians performing the Frank Sinatra song ”My Way.” The first lady’s dress at the inaugural ball, which often ends up in a museum, was a joint effort of designer Hervé Pierre and Melania Trump. A little over 45 minutes later, according to The New York Times, the Trumps headed over to the Freedom Ball. And their first dance was, once again, ”My Way.” The final stop was the Salute to Our Armed Services Ball at the National Building Museum. Many of the attendees were service members in full uniform. The president, first lady, vice president and second lady each danced with a service member. During the ball, Trump addressed service members in Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan via a live video link. ”You have somebody that’s going to be right alongside you,” Trump said, per DoD News. ”We’re going to do it together. Honestly, not only the support you’ve given me, but the courage you show is incredible, and it’s going to be appreciated. It’s going to be appreciated more than ever before.” The night closed with Trump and Pence cutting a giant red, white and blue cake  —   with a saber."
"When the transition from President Obama to President Trump happened officially at noon ET, a lot changed, including the White House website. Waiting on the new website were six priority areas laid out, including on foreign policy. The entire foreign policy section is literally just 220 words, so it’s hard to draw more than a thumbnail sketch about Trump’s foreign policy. But it gives the first hint of something of a Trump doctrine. Echoing his inaugural address, ”America First” is the organizing theme. To that protectionist point, there’s a whole section on trade. And Trump specifically laid out three points on his approach to the world and his priorities: 1. Defeating ISIS2. ”Rebuild” the military3. ”Embrace diplomacy” . .. ”We are always happy when old enemies become friends. . ..” 1. Defeating ISIS, On defeating ISIS, however, it still remains unclear what Trump will do exactly. ISIS was the top concern for Republican primary voters, and his tough rhetoric helped him in the campaign. He declared he would ”bomb the s*** out of them” but would not lay out a plan. He said he wanted to be ”unpredictable.” He never committed to a ramping up of ground troops. But he mentioned the possibility of as many as 30, 000 troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. That’s nowhere close to the number of troops the U. S. had at the height of the Iraq war, but  —   if Trump followed through  —   it would represent a significant ramping up of U. S. involvement. Currently, there are only about 600 American military personnel in Syria, about 8, 400 in Afghanistan and almost 6, 000 in Iraq. Russia is also a critical player in Syria. Trump, of course, has said he would be reaching out to Moscow to help fight ISIS and hopes the Russians are helpful. 2. Rebuild the military, Trump has repeatedly harped on this throughout the campaign, but the context here is important. The U. S. spends $596 billion a year on its military. That’s about three times more on its military than all other NATO countries  —   combined. While spending, adjusted for inflation, has declined some during the Obama administration, the U. S. remains the largest and most capable military in the world. NPR’s Phil Ewing   this notion here in April of last year. 3. ”Embrace diplomacy”  —   ”we are always happy when old enemies become friends” Trump said his foreign policy would be ”based on American interests.” The new president has been very  . He has actually been against U. S. trade policies for decades the rhetoric has remained the same since the 1980s. But back then the bogeyman was different  —   today, he talks of China back then, it was Japan that he said was dumping its cars and VCRs. Trump also noted that he would ”embrace diplomacy,” that the U. S. would ”not go abroad in search of enemies,” but ”that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies.” The turn of phrase  —   ”we are always happy when old enemies become friends”  —   could be interpreted somewhat provocatively. It could raise eyebrows politically, given Trump’s praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout the campaign and his grudging acceptance that Russian meddling was responsible for the hack and leaks of Democratic emails. ”I think it was Russia,” Trump said in his first press conference since being elected before adding later: ”All right, but you know what, it could have been others also.” On ”old friends” becoming ”allies,” ironically, it is precisely America’s closest allies  —   Japan, South Korea and most of NATO  —   who are most queasy about Trump’s provocative talk that has questioned the utility of these   relationships. NPR International Editor Will Dobson and Middle East Editor Larry Kaplow contributed to this post."
"The inauguration of President Donald Trump was a divisive event, as the protests in Northwest D. C. showed. But a few blocks southeast, another battle was unfolding on the inaugural stage. Not between Republican and Democrat, but between a man and his poncho. Light rain began just as Trump started in on his remarks. Fortunately, many in attendance came prepared. Former first lady Michelle Obama and former second lady Jill Biden shared a bubble umbrella. First lady Melania Trump had one, too. Other attendees had translucent ponchos. Former President George W. Bush went that route, but it didn’t work out exactly as planned. As much as he tried, he just couldn’t seem to get the poncho to cooperate, and the Twitterverse couldn’t let it go. Bush shouldn’t worry though it’s not the first time a Republican has got himself into some trouble with a poncho. Back in 2012, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney was criticized for making fun of some NASCAR fans for wearing the rain gear, saying: ”I like those fancy raincoats you bought. Really sprung for the big bucks.” If history is any guide, will the dreaded poncho make another splash on the political stage four years from now? Or will it be bubble gum? (Watch closely behind Melania Trump as another former Texas governor, Rick Perry, struggles to blow a bubble.)"
"Here’s a quick roundup of some of the   you may have missed on this week’s Morning Edition. Inked, Don’t cry for me, Susanna. Cry for the   Charger fans and their    tattoos. As Morning Edition host Rachel Martin said, the San Diego Chargers announced that they’re moving to Los Angeles for the 2017 season. And unfortunately, their fans are not moving with them, but their fans’ tattoos? Well, that’s a little bit tougher. Tattoo parlors are coming to the aide of the fans though. Think of them as   quarterback, coming to to relieve the other two after a catastrophic 3 quarters. The parlors are offering discounts to help people get through this ”painful endeavor” by refashioning the Chargers icons into something else. Turns out team love isn’t forever, only diamonds are. Waddle, waddle, Put one foot in front of the other and soon you’ll be walking out the door. Well, unless you’re this swan. As Morning Edition host David Greene said on Monday one swan decided to ruffle some feathers of those on a commuter train outside of London. For two miles the swan waddled along the tracks with the train slowly crawling behind it. After a much delayed commute, the British news site Metro reported one man got onto the tracks and waved his laptop at the swan who was finally captured. Before you go there, no harm came to the bird. It was released and apparently apologized for its transgressions. Now mosey along. There’s nothing else to read about birds here. No Scrubs, She don’t want no scrub. A scrub is a shark that can’t get no love from her. Honestly, that’s what I believe Leonie said. As Morning Edition host David Greene said on Tuesday, Leonie is a proud zebra shark mom, who gave birth to three baby sharks last year. But unlike the campfire song ”Baby Shark,” these babies did not have a daddy shark. In fact, Leonie didn’t have any contact with a male shark before this set of three was born. So here’s a fun fact: the British magazine New Scientist reports that occasionally some animals that reproduce sexually can also reproduce asexually. Sharks are included on this list. However, this usually happens when a female hasn’t made contact with a male before. That’s not the case with Leonie. She had many little baby sharks with a male partner. He probably tried to holler, again, but his game was kinda weak and Leonie decided she didn’t want any of his time and she went her own way. Paint paw prints  Your child couldn’t paint that, but maybe your bear could. This is, assuming of course, if you had a bear. Then maybe your child could sell your bear’s paintings to potential buyers at exhibit openings. And then your bear would hibernate? Yes, you’re with me now. Now as Morning Edition host Rachel Martin said on Wednesday, that is basically how one Finnish painter operates. Juuso  —   the artist himself  —   is a   brown bear and he has his paintings on display in Helsinki. Eleven original works of art can be seen and some of his prints could be yours. That is if you’re willing to spend some cash as some of his prints have sold for more than $4, 000. Yeah, that’s not chump change. What’s better? Some paintings feature some bits of Juuso’s fur.   though it’s   cool."
"Hundreds of thousands of Americans are now working as contractors for the rapidly growing   industry, specifically for the largest companies, Uber and Lyft. But a new survey, released this week, finds that Lyft, with its fluorescent pink mustache symbol, is more popular with drivers. More than 75 percent of Lyft drivers said they were satisfied with their experience, while less than half of Uber drivers said the same. Lyft is a significantly smaller company, but its drivers made more money. According to the survey, Uber drivers averaged $15. 68 per hour, while Lyft drivers made an average of $17. 50. Plus, Lyft also prompts passengers to tip. This was one of the findings from a survey of 1, 150 drivers, one of the largest polls of the sort. It was conducted through the blog, podcast and YouTube channel known as The Rideshare Guy, by the founder Harry Campbell with help from researchers at Stanford University. Declining pay, While the   companies are enormously popular and often much cheaper than a taxi, Campbell and his team have previously reported that the prices have been declining. Those price drops may be increasing the valuations of the companies, but Campbell says they are taking their toll on drivers who must work longer hours to make a living wage. ”What that means for drivers is that they are driving further for the same income,” Campbell says. ”Ultimately they aren’t making more than they would in a service job at McDonald’s or Burger King.” The drivers are contractors rather than employees of the companies, and their wages are determined by how many rides they do in a day. But the survey also found that the most valuable element, after pay, was the flexibility of hours. ”You can take the day off without asking your boss,” Campbell says. So overall, he says, ”for drivers the situation isn’t terrible, but it isn’t improving.” The survey dovetails with a $  settlement that Uber just reached with federal regulators who charged that the company misled drivers by exaggerating how much they could earn and encouraging them to lease cars through a ’ ’ program that turned out to be not as   as advertised. Different demographics  The driver survey also found that drivers tend to be a lot older than their passengers. Close to 30 percent are between 51 and 60 years old, and another quarter are older than 61. Campbell says some of this reflects the fact that many retired people drive to supplement their social security or pension. But Campbell believes this might also reflect a darker trend: age discrimination. More than 53 percent of drivers are   which is 20 points above the national average. ”You have these older   drivers,” Campbell says, ”where it’s a difference between no job and a job. .. This is one of their only options.” On the upside, the survey illustrates how the ride hailing companies  —   which accept virtually anyone as long as they meet eligibility requirements  —   are slowly breaking the mold for women. Close to 20 percent of drivers are female, compared to about 1 percent among taxi drivers and chauffeurs. Unfortunately, women still make less than man, by close to $2 an hour. Though Campbell suggests it might be because a lot of female drivers are ”uncomfortable driving Friday and Saturday nights, when demand is highest but there are a lot of intoxicated passengers.” Campbell says ultimately some drivers manage to get the system to work better for them than others. For instance, some drivers might have more   cars or lower car payments, which raises their profit margins. But for others, the numbers just don’t add up. According to the survey, about half of all   drivers quit after just one year."
"It can be difficult to know what to say when a friend is struggling. The conversation is hard to even start. Maya Cohen, a   student at Tulane University, says she knows better how to intervene after playing a video game created to help people learn how to recognize signs of psychological distress like depression, anxiety and substance abuse, and get them professional help. Like all incoming students at Tulane, Cohen had to participate in an online conversation simulation game titled ”  For College Students.” The purpose is to teach empathetic conversation skills. In the game, you play Jesse, a friend of Travis, a depressed young man who’s been failing his classes. Jesse notices that Travis hasn’t been the same lately, and goes to his apartment to see how he’s doing. Checking in is the kind of supportive effort that friends ideally do for one another, and the game is supposed to encourage more of that. We hear out each other’s burdens. Friends are the first bulwark of support when times are a little rough or when something’s deeply wrong. We might pride ourselves on the advice we give, the shoulders we offer, the general ”being there” for our friends. But our skill at doing that varies, says Glenn Albright, a psychologist at Baruch College at the City University of New York and cofounder of Kognito, the company that developed the game. ”It’s the sad reality that a lot of people don’t know how to help people,” he says. ”How to identify those who are struggling, to approach them, talk to them and give them a level of comfort.” Albright thought that the right conversational training program could help people help those around them. ”You’re talking about 40 percent of college students reporting systems of depression where they say it’s interfering with their functioning,” Albright says. Kognito’s first simulation, released in 2009, focused on   conversations. The company has since developed over a dozen simulations. Many focus on peer conversations, like the game that Cohen played others address   or family interactions. At the end of the conversation, participants get examples of how to sensitively suggest mental health services. In simulations for medical professionals, that might mean managing care collaboratively with other health professionals. Kognito grounds all of these simulations in psychological counseling methods such as motivational interviewing, which stresses conversation techniques like using   questions and listening and reflecting on what someone says during a conversation. ”[This] is really trying to engage the other person in dialogue, understand what’s happening and what’s influencing their behavior,” says Marlyn Allicock, a health behaviorist at the University of Texas in Dallas who is not involved with Kognito. ”Those skills are really grounded in empathy.” In the game that Cohen played, when Jesse relates to the things his friend is saying, Travis responds much more warmly. If Jesse is brusque during the conversation, Travis clams up. ”They’ve done a really nice job modeling a person’s behavior,” Allicock says. The games also shows things that might push people apart, Allicock notes. Giving unwarranted advice, for example, might give the impression that you think you know better than your friend. ”Those are things that push people away,” Allicock says. ”I’m not going to open up to you if you’re saying, ’You’re not doing this right.’ ” Cohen says she didn’t realize any of this until she started playing through the Kognito simulation. ”A speech bubble came up with tips,” she says. One says using ”I” statements is good, but not when a judgment is attached. That reminded Cohen that when a friend of hers would complain about something, Cohen would make a judgment. ”I would approach her and be like, ’I think you’re overreacting,’ ” she says. Cohen, 19, says she kept thinking back to one time last year when she feels she really should have talked to her friend. She got a screenshot of text messages that her friend Angie had sent to her boyfriend. We aren’t using her last name to protect her privacy. The reason will become clear later in this story. ”[Angie] was texting her boyfriend saying, ’I feel none of my friends care about me. Would anybody even notice if I was gone?’ ” Cohen says. She was worried, and wanted to ask Angie about it. ”I just didn’t know how to start that conversation. And once I did I wouldn’t know how to continue it.” Instead, Cohen brought the text to her school counselor, who pulled Angie out of class. ”At the time I was really mad because I was like, so depressed, and now you’re making my life harder,” Angie says now. ”They added this entire like new situation.” Angie, 18, says that at the time she was considering killing herself. The counselor’s intervention got her the help she needed, but the fact that none of her friends tried talking to her first made her upset. Cohen feels like it put a strain on their relationship, even after they made amends. ”We could never go back to how we were before,” Cohen says. After the Kognito training, Cohen says she’d been thinking a lot about how she could have handled the situation better. At the very least, she says, she could have gone to Angie first to check in on her, talk to her and find a way to get her help, but with her consent. ”That would have been more inclusive of Angie,” Cohen says. Angus Chen is a freelance writer based in New York. Find him on Twitter @angrchen."
"In its   history, Gallaudet University in Washington, D. C. never had a deaf female president  —   until a year ago. Roberta Cordano is the first deaf woman to lead the school. Gallaudet is a liberal arts university devoted to deaf and    students. Classes are taught in American Sign Language, and all students and faculty are required to know how to sign. But president Cordano never attended a deaf school herself. ”I grew up during a period of time when it was believed that American Sign Language was what they called a monkey language,” Cordano says, speaking through an interpreter provided by Gallaudet. While the interpreter translates rapidly, Cordano whispers out faintly in English as she signs. Cordano grew up surrounded by other Deaf people. Her parents and older sister are Deaf and so were many of her childhood neighbors. Her hometown of Delavan, Wisc. is where the Wisconsin School for the Deaf is located. But even though her father was a teacher there, her parents sent her to the local public school. ”They wanted to make sure their children were going to do well,” she says. ”At that time, it wasn’t really understood that American Sign Language was a language in and of its own right.” Going to a hearing elementary, middle and high school made Cordano a pro at reading lips and pronunciation. She never had an interpreter in the classroom. In hindsight, Cordano says school was exhausting. ”I had worked all day long trying to understand people and focus so much on what they were saying and then figuring out what I was trying to be taught.” Cordano says she had to work twice as hard as her peers just to keep up. But she didn’t burn out. When time came to choose a college, Cordano decided to stay in a hearing environment. She went to Beloit College for undergrad and the University of   for law school. She broke with family tradition her parents and older sister are alumni of Gallaudet. ”They understood the value of understanding and appreciating the richness of both worlds,” Cordano says. While Cordano enjoyed her college and law school experience, she was often the only deaf person in the room. Her experience is contrastingly different from the lives Gallaudet students lead on campus. ”It’s like another country,” says freshman Ariella Dramin, who also spoke through a Gallaudet interpreter. ”It would be nice if we had our own country, but we don’t.” Dramin is fourth generation deaf. She says being deaf should be seen as a culture, not a disability. It’s a concept, she adds, that many people outside of Gallaudet don’t understand when they meet her. ”I hate when people at a store try to say something to me and I say, ”I can’t hear you,” and they have this pity face,” she says. ”We’re a community, we’re fine. We have a language.” American Sign Language flourishes at Gallaudet. Students chat with their peers in the lunchroom and as they walk through the hallways to class, carrying out their conversations with their hands and facial expressions instead of spoken words. Gallaudet feels like any other college campus, just quieter. While Gallaudet is the only university devoted solely to the deaf and hard of hearing, the Americans With Disabilities act requires all universities to provide interpreting services. But   Savannah Hobbs chose Gallaudet because she didn’t want to rely on someone to translate for her. She didn’t enjoy having an interpreter in elementary school. ”The interpreter doesn’t go with me to lunch. I was completely left out of any kind of conversation,” she says. ”Here, not only can I have my own conversation at lunch, but I can just look over to a table and see what other people are talking about because everyone’s using the same language.” There’s a long history of Gallaudet students insisting deaf people are as capable as the hearing. In 1988, Gallaudet students led massive protests calling for the school to appoint its first deaf president. The Deaf President Now protests were successful and the university has maintained a tradition of having a deaf leader ever since. Despite her deaf upbringing, Cordano brings an outsider’s perspective to Gallaudet. Most of her private and professional life has been in hearing environments. Her wife and two children are hearing, and most of the jobs she’s had before coming to Gallaudet  —   she’s done everything from lead healthcare companies to serve as the assistant attorney general of Minnesota   were in a places where she, as a deaf woman, was a minority. ”When I moved to Minnesota, I actually saw the model of bilingual education,” Cordano says, referring to schools where deaf and    students receive equal instruction in both English and American Sign Language. Cordano helped start two charter schools following this model. ”I grew to love and respect that model so much because I realized it was an option I was never given.” Cordano never had a deaf school experience of her own where she could sign to her classmates and peers. But she doesn’t feel like she missed out. She considers herself an inherent optimist. ”I think I’ve always navigated two worlds,” Cordano says. ”And I’ve cherished both worlds.”"
"In the Central Valley, there’s a bumper sticker you see all over the place. It’s shaped like California, and reads ”My job depends on Ag.” In California, that agriculture depends on immigrant labor. Many farmers in the state supported President Donald Trump despite his   stance on immigration. So as the new Trump administration takes office, what’s the thinking of those involved in the region’s biggest industry? Just after the workday ends, men in dirty jeans and work boots stream into a small record store in the farming town of Mendota. Racks of CDs and music posters line the walls, but nobody’s browsing. The guys are in line to use the store’s wire transfer service. They’re sending money home to families in Mexico and El Salvador. ”We just came in from the fields  —   nine hours pruning pistachio trees,” says a   man in a   sweatshirt. He’ll say only that his name is Pablo because, like all the farm workers I talked to for this story, he’s in the country illegally. I ask him what he thinks of Trump’s tough talk on immigration. Pablo’s answer includes a strong, derogatory word. ”You think a gringo’s gonna be pruning pistachios?” he asks me in Spanish. He says in his 17 years working the California fields, he’s seen only Latinos  —   mostly immigrants  —   doing this work. So he’s not buying the idea that he’s taking away a job from a U. S. citizen. I also visit Steve Murray’s farm outside Bakersfield, where a few workers are crouched among rows of strawberries that will sell at farmers markets around the region. As Murray watches them work, he explains why he needs foreign workers. Even though this area has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, Murray says he has a hard time finding people to pick his fruit. He didn’t vote for Trump, and he says his business would suffer if the new administration carries through on plans for mass deportations of immigrants. ”When the economy went south  —   what was that, in 2007, 2008 and 2009  —   and jobs dried up, there were people that returned to Mexico and didn’t come back,” he says. ”It’s hard to imagine that things could get much worse.” An hour north, near Porterville, dairy farmer Tom Barcellos is feeling more optimistic. He tells me he met Trump, and he’s betting the  ’s   side will win out. ”Of course you heard about him saying ’build a wall,’ ” Barcellos says. ”Well, what he told us is that wall is going to have a door in it, and we’re going to talk to the right people that want to come in and work, and they’re going to have an opportunity to do that.” There’s already an agricultural guest worker program  —   the   visa program. And use has gone up steadily over the past five years, as fewer workers enter the country illegally. But every farmer I talked to complained about it, calling it cumbersome and expensive. Some experts speculate a Trump administration might strip away worker protections and create a program that’s more favorable to employers. Barcellos says Trump assured him that people who have been working in the United States for years will have a chance to get temporary visas, too. But, Barcellos says, ”Citizenship . .. that’s a different animal and let’s not mix up the two.” A path to citizenship doesn’t seem likely under Trump. And not every farm worker I spoke with wants U. S. citizenship. Take    Eugenio. I meet him while he’s pruning pistachio trees on Murray’s farm near Bakersfield. Eugenio’s wife and kids are in Mexico. ”So I make a little money, then go back to Oaxaca, where I’m building a house,” he says. Eugenio tells me he’s crossed the border eight times illegally. But he says border security is so tight now he hasn’t been home to Mexico in five years. ”I’m trying to figure out how to come with a work visa,” he says. ”I’d really like that.” Then there are people like Elfego, who’s working on a tree nearby. He doesn’t like the idea of visas. He’s been in the United States 17 years. His family is here. ”What would happen if Trump starts giving visas to people over there?” he asks. Elfego worries legal guest workers from Mexico would replace him. ”What happens with those of us who are here? He’ll deport us because we’re illegal,” he says. Some worry the future under President Trump could bring more immigration raids, less enforcement of farmworker protection laws or the forced use of   a government tool for checking employment eligibility. For now, the only thing certain is that the Central Valley’s $35 billion agricultural economy depends on policies that balance the needs of both growers and workers. This story comes to us from NPR member station KQED in California. It first aired as part of The California Report."
"At Goats and Soda we’re always watching the developing world. A group of international photographers is doing the same thing  —   but from a drone’s perspective. We mined the website dronestagram (think Instagram for drone pics) for the most riveting drone photos of the developing world from the past year. Here are a few of the   images we came across and the stories behind them. An island home  Zorik Olangi grew up on Malaita, which is part of the Solomon Islands in Oceania. He’s now a postgraduate trainee in obstetrics and gynecology in nearby Papua New Guinea but returns home often  —   along with his drones, which he flies as a hobby to take aerial photos. ”Coming from a rural remote area, I always wondered what my island looks like from the air,” Olangi says. He says the village pictured here, Lilisiana, is known for its expert sea navigators and fishermen  —   and its shell jewelry. In fact, Olangi tells us, shells from this region were used for thousands of years as currency. The homes pictured, according to Olangi, are built from mangrove trees found in nearby forests and have roofs stitched from palm leaves. He says they could be built so close to the lagoon’s edge because the waves break far from the shore. Over the years, Olangi has seen more homes built out of modern materials and families placing a greater emphasis on education. His big fear for his island is climate change. ”My only worry is that the sea levels are rising and these villagers will surely be affected.” Romanian sheep, seen from the sky  Professional photographer and videographer Szabolcs Ignácz captured this shot while on assignment for the World Wildlife Fund in his home country, Romania. He passed this herd of sheep along the road in the village of Marpod, in Romania’s Sibiu County, and launched his drone to take this photo (and some mesmerizing video, which can be seen at his website, DroneMob). Ignácz says Marpod is in the heart of Transylvania, where traditional Saxon houses nestle in the mountains. ”I might compare it to the Shire from Lord of the Rings,” he says. Many of the 800 or so residents are farmers, Ignácz says, noting that some have found success moving into organic farming and tourism. ”Lion’s Rock” towers above a Sri Lankan jungle, Jerome Courtial, a French travel and aerial photographer based in London, traveled to Sri Lanka with the intention of photographing the ancient palace and fortress complex of Sigiriya. Known as ”Lion’s Rock,” the UNESCO World Heritage site towers above the surrounding jungle. To launch his drone from the ideal place, Courtial tells us, he hiked through dense jungle, surrounded by hostile monkeys. Cambodian children couldn’t believe what they saw,  This image was captured by Christopher Honglin of Mauritius while on a trip to Cambodia with his girlfriend  —   and his DJI Phantom 3 drone. When the couple visited Tonlé Sap River region, Honglin says: ”Kids were in awe at the sight of the drone. We wanted to share how their village looked from the top. They couldn’t believe their eyes.” For more drone images from around the globe, visit dronestagram. "
"With no shortage of material to work with, Saturday Night Live satirized a packed week in American politics, reiterating themes imparted by critics for months. The episode kicked off by lampooning Russia’s role in influencing the U. S. election. Cast member Beck Bennett brought back smug shirtless Vladimir Putin, the star of Saturday’s cold open, to assuage America’s fears about their new president, in a speech carried by RT, the Russian   outlet. ”You are worried that your country is in the hands of this unpredictable man. But don’t worry, it’s not,” he smirks. Just look at Russia, suggests SNL’s Putin, whose administration also started out on a road of skepticism. ”Many Russians were skeptical of me at first too, but today, no one seems to hear from any of them,” he says. ”It’s like they’re gone.” The same day millions of American women marched to protest an administration they believe threatens their rights, Bennett’s Putin says that we must simply look to the satisfaction of Russian women to ease our fears. Enter Olya, Kate McKinnon’s subservient Russian character, reading from a scripted statement detailing her contentment under Putin’s leadership. Olya returns, from outside the window behind him, wearing a pink ’pussyhat,’ gesturing ”I’m watching you,” at her leader. SNL made fun of the low attendance of Friday’s inauguration, the central topic of discussion at the White House Briefing Room earlier Saturday evening, when White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer accused media outlets of downplaying crowd sizes. But what may have genuinely quelled American viewers more were diplomatic words from the week’s host, comedian Aziz Ansari. Ansari’s monologue fell in line with a larger trend among soapbox comedians, who aim to argue a broader social message first  —   to what’s often their already solid fan base  —   and to elicit laughter second. As NPR Politics reporter Jessica Taylor notes, ”The most nuanced takes on the election have come from   comedians,” like Dave Chappelle’s hosting stint the weekend after the election and now, Aziz Ansari the day after the inauguration. ”We’ve always been divided by some of these big political issues. It’s fine,” the comedian said. ”As long as we treat each other with respect and remember that ultimately, we’re all Americans, we’ll be fine.” Dubbing him the ”Chris Brown of politics,” Ansari said we shouldn’t demonize all of Trump’s supporters. Like the fans of the pop star who beat former girlfriend Rihanna, some supporters rallied behind Trump for his ideology (in Brown’s case, the tunes) not his character. Laying out the day’s events as a reason to stay hopeful, Ansari continued, ”Change doesn’t come from presidents, change comes from large groups of angry people. And if day one [of Trump’s presidency] is any indication, you are part of the largest group of angry people I’ve ever seen,” he cracked. ”Yesterday, Trump was inaugurated  —   today, an entire gender protested against him.” The next   sketch of the night featured Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway (McKinnon, again) in a   parody. Dodging questions in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper (Bennett) McKinnon’s Conway pivots instead to perform a musical number about her newfound celebrity in the political world. Next up, the show’s ”Weekend Update” segment took on the week’s leftover news headlines. In exchange for the ”Update” anchor’s usual humorous twist to cap off each news item, Michael Che frequently leaned on a reaction image of Michelle Obama depicted with a   glance, adding a curt ”Hmph.” The many faces of the former first lady on Inaguration Day, which suggest she broke her poker face, have been circulating social media. The   show closed with a sentimental tribute to the 44th president. Cecily Strong, joined a couple verses later by Sasheer Zamata, sang ”To Sir, With Love,” in front of a backdrop of a    photo of Barack Obama. The scene echoed the show’s   episode, featuring Kate McKinnon’s solemn double tribute to a freshly defeated Hillary Clinton and the late singer Leonard Cohen. The screen faded to black with the message, ”Thank You President Obama.” Viewers on Twitter lamented the absence of resident Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin, who has previously said he’s ”trying to shed the Donald Trump cloak.” Hopefully Baldwin’s   will give some solace to the new president, who has criticized SNL as ”Unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse. Sad.”"
"A top aide to President Donald Trump says he won’t release his tax returns, insisting that voters aren’t concerned about the issue. ”The White House response is he’s not going to release his tax returns,” said Trump’s senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, on ABC’s ”This Week.” ”We litigated this all through the election. People didn’t care,” Conway added. During another interview on NBC’s ”Meet The Press” Conway also repeatedly clashed with host Chuck Todd over estimates of crowd size at Friday’s inauguration, saying the difference between media and administration officials amounted to ”alternative facts.” ”You’re saying it’s a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” she said. Conway also pushed back hard against suggestions that Spicer had deliberately misrepresented crowd size, telling Todd, ”. .. if we’re going to keep referring to our press secretary in those types of terms, I think that we’re going to have to rethink our relationship here.” (Conway’s interview with Todd begins shortly after the 6:53 mark.) Conway’s comments about the President’s tax returns seem to represent a departure from Trump’s earlier statements, which indicated that he would release his returns, if not for the fact that he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. In September, after   presidential candidate Mike Pence released his own tax returns, Pence’s spokesman noted, ”These returns are being released with the full support of Mr. Trump who plans to release his tax returns upon completion of a routine audit.” During his Jan. 11th press conference, Trump said, ”I’m not releasing the tax returns because, as you know, they’re under audit.” He added, ”You know, the only one that cares about my tax returns are the reporters, OK? They’re the only ones. ..I won. I mean, I became president. No, I don’t think they care at all. I don’t think they care at all. I think you care.” An ABC   Street Journal poll released earlier this month indicated that 74 percent of Americans want Trump to release his tax returns, including 49 percent of his own supporters. In addition, about 217, 000 people had signed an online petition calling for the returns to be released as of   Sunday. U. S. presidents are not required to release their tax returns, but they have regularly done so since the 1970s, as a gesture of transparency. Trump’s refusal to do so has been widely criticized by critics who say his many domestic and foreign financial ties need to be scrutinized more carefully. ”The   did not release his tax returns. Every other candidate for president has released his tax returns, but he didn’t want to. And he apparently won’t, and we just have no idea where the financing is coming from for all these companies he owns all over the world, all these interests,” said Richard Painter, ethics adviser to former President George W. Bush, during an interview on NPR’s ”Fresh Air” earlier this month. The Conway interview came one day after Trump excoriated the media over reports about how many people showed up to watch his   saying journalists are ”among the most dishonest people on earth.” During a visit to the CIA, Trump said as many as 1. 5 million people showed up for the inauguration, and Spicer later added that it was ”the largest to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” But aerial photographs indicate a much smaller crowd, and ridership on the Washington D. C. subway system was down from President Obama’s second inauguration in 2013. While Trump himself had offered an estimate of crowd size, Conway said it wasn’t possible to count the number of people attending, saying, ”I don’t think you can prove those numbers one way or another. There’s no way to quantify crowd numbers.” That echoed comments made by Spicer himself, who said the National Park Service no longer gives official estimates of crowd size. However, he then went on to give detailed estimates of the crowd size."
"Donald Trump’s first day in office has been marked by much of the same discord that characterized his campaign. In the hours after his inauguration, the newly   President began some of the work of governing  —   even as hundreds of thousands of people gathered in cities across the country, and around the world, to protest Trump’s presidency. Women descend on Washington, Many women brought their families to the main Women’s March in Washington, D. C. which began with a rally with the U. S. Capitol in the background. Heather Ba from Chapel Hill, N. C. said she came with four generations of her family, including her own    son. ”We came to show our disapproval of our new president, and I think also to draw attention to women’s issues,” Ba said. She said she believes President Trump to be ”psychologically unwell and not fit to be president,” and said she was considering becoming more involved in local politics during the next few years. Erika Abril came to Washington from Leesburg, VA. with her two teenage daughters. ”I just want them to be part of this  —   making history,” she said. The family is originally from Ecuador, Abril said, and she’s alarmed by some of Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants and minorities. ”It’s just hard to be out of a country that sometimes you don’t like what is happening in there, and then coming here thinking that everything’s gonna be okay, and then not knowing what is going to come,” she said. ”That is the hardest part.” Abril and her daughters held a sign that read, in Spanish, ”Respect my existence or expect my resistance.” Her    daughter, Maria Emilia Proano, expressed frustration and disbelief that such a march felt necessary. ”We shouldn’t be doing this, because we should already be equal to men and everything.” Mothers, daughters, and sisters, They were far from the only multigenerational family at the March. Kristina Apgar, 31, came from Brooklyn, New York to march with her mother, Ruth Apgar, and    sister, Samantha Apgar, who lives in Connecticut. ”I would be here no matter what by myself, but the fact that my mom and my sister are here and we’re all united fighting for women’s rights and inclusivity for all Americans, it means so much more,” Kristina Apgar said. Ruth Apgar remembers a time when she ”put up with a lot in the workplace,” and she said she doesn’t want her daughters to struggle like she did. ”I’m not going back to the good old days, because quite frankly, they were not good old days for me,” she said. Men, too, While the crowd that filled the streets for multiple blocks was mostly female, there were men among the marchers. Eugene Beckley, a software developer from Ellicott City, MD. said he was thinking of his mother and female cousins when he came to the march. He said he’s worried about the impact of Trump’s administration on women’s rights. ”Feminism in general is only going to grow and be more supported by men supporting it,” Beckley said. Not just women’s issues, While the Women’s March was billed as a display of unity among people concerned about the tone set by the new administration, it hasn’t been without internal conflicts. Women describing themselves as   feminists have expressed disappointment about not being allowed to be official partners for the event, whose platform supports abortion rights. And concerns have surfaced about the representation and inclusion of minority women, prompting organizers to stress that the march was also a platform for demonstrators concerned about issues ranging from racial inequality to climate change. Stefani Peart, an   student at George Washington University from East Orange, N. J. said she felt the march ultimately succeeded at bringing diverse groups together. ”Being able to stand out here and see people of all races, all ethnicities come together to fight for the same common cause of just women’s rights in general is something that needs to happen more often. ”And the fact that we’re doing it right now just shows how [united] we are as a nation as much as Trump is trying to divide us.” Her classmate, Arion Laws, is also  . The Charleston, S. C. native said she came to send Trump and his administration a message. ”They’ve basically insulted every single minority,” she said. Laws said she hoped the large crowds in Washington and across the country would send a message: ”I just want him and his administration to know that no, you can’t silence us, and we won’t be silenced.” Protests beyond the Beltway, In addition to the main event in Washington, D. C. women and their supporters protested across the country and around the world. Marches were held in several major European cities, Mexico, Thailand, and India, among other places. Protestors in the United States who couldn’t make the trip to Washington organized their own hometown events. Thousands turned out in larger cities like Boston and Chicago, while many smaller cities like Sioux Falls, South Dakota, saw substantial turnouts given their size. President Trump starts working Friday, visits the CIA on Saturday, As protestors marched through the streets of Washington, D. C.,Trump made an official visit to CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA. where he praised the CIA, railed against the media, and talked up the size of the crowd at his inauguration: ”a   area, all the way up to the Washington Monument, was packed.”  That’s despite the fact that aerial photos of Trump’s inauguration showed substantial empty space on the National Mall. In his first hours in office, Trump also took several official actions, including revamping the WhiteHouse. gov website and signing an executive order to ”minimize the economic burden” of the Affordable Care Act. Soon after Trump took office, the Justice Department requested and was granted the delay of two hearings on controversial issues one involved a voter ID law in Texas, and the other was a hearing related to a police reform agreement in Baltimore."
"The streets of Washington looked vastly different the day after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration than they did the  . Instead of the largely white crowds that lined Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, people of all colors, classes and ages filled the streets for what’s being called the most diverse march for women’s rights ever. The Women’s March On Washington drew tens of thousands to the nation’s capital to press for protection of women’s rights, including reproductive health care, LGBT issues and equal pay. ”Sister marches” held concurrently in every state across the nation, (and in several cities abroad) added to the numbers and the diversity. But all that diversity came with a cost: racial tension  —   not just around the march itself, but around the feminist movement, who leads it and why. Some bemoaned the discord as a distraction from the march, saying on this occasion, ”we should all be women first.” Grace Hong is not surprised. A professor of Asian American and Gender Studies at UCLA, Hong says for decades, white women didn’t have to consider any interests beyond their own because ”historically, the category ’woman’ has, implicitly, meant white women.” The call to put womanhood above all else, Hong says, is based on the idea that ”critique and dissent undermine a unity that’s based on the lowest common denominator: Find the one thing everyone has in common.” The fact that the feminist movement was so white for so long, says Ashley Farmer, is the reason so many women of color steered clear of it. Farmer is a historian at Boston University, and concentrates on   women’s history. She says women of color noticed when their interests and needs didn’t get a full hearing. ”When we actually get down to representation or creating a list of demands or mobilizing around a set of ideas,” Farmer says, ”it tends to be that white   or   women’s priorities get put above the rest.” It was that way in the 1850s, when some feminists split over whether to champion abolition or women’s rights. (That’s when Sojourner Truth gave her famous ”Ain’t I A Woman?” speech at a women’s rights conference in Ohio.) It was that way in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when ”Sisterhood is Powerful” became a rallying cry  —   but with very few exceptions (Flo Kennedy, Shirley Chisholm, Eleanor Holmes Norton) brown and black sisters were very much on the sidelines. It’s why some   women, like writers Alice Walker and bell hooks, chose to refer to themselves as ”womanist,” not feminist. They refused to divorce their race from their gender. (They were intersectional before intersectionality as a term came into existence, created by black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.) Today, ”womanist” also resonates with a younger generation of feminists, not all of them black. Dolores Arredondo, a marketing executive with Wells Fargo, in Los Angeles, has been calling herself a womanist for years, in direct response to what she saw as white feminists’ exclusion. ”I just remember this history of the feminist movement,” Arredondo shrugs. ”I can see the history, and none of them looked like me.” Arredondo attended the Los Angeles march with her    daughter Sophie. Brenda   says she’s not hung up on labels. The director of the California regional office for the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group,   says she’ll answer to most anything  —   feminist, womanist, whatever  —   but she has another term she prefers: chingona. ”It means badass!” she says, gleefully. ”A chingona is someone who is not afraid to stand up for what they believe in, somebody that’s happy to shake things up when needed.” Chingonas, she says, get things done. And they come in all races and genders. The Women’s March on Washington started out pretty white, but quickly added young women of color in positions of leadership. They’re three of the four main organizers, and a lot of attention has been paid to how diverse this march has been in contrast to earlier ones. But even as the march’s diversity was being celebrated, it was also causing tension. When ShiShi Rose, a young black Brooklyn blogger, wrote an Instagram post advising white women allies that ”now is the time for you to be listening more, talking less.” She suggested they become more conversant in culture beyond the mainstream standard. Some white women were so offended that they cancelled plans to attend the march. Margo Jefferson doesn’t have much patience with that. A Pulitzer   cultural critic for The New York Times for years, (and part of the Artist Table of creatives and celebrities who participated in the New York sister march) Jefferson remembers being one the few early black feminists who called themselves that. (”Of course I was lonely back then,” she admits. ”It was harder for black women to make a feminist movement in the 1970s. ”) Jefferson advises white women who were offended by Rose’s post to ”Sit back. You’re associated with a history that has to do with being bossy and   and bigoted in some ways. I can see how that would rattle, and even anger you,” she says gently. ”But I do not consider it reason enough to cancel an attendance at a march like this. Get over it.” Julie Wittes Schlack is a Boston writer and corporate executive who was neither rattled nor offended by criticism from women of color. If the movement is going to progress to the next level, Schlack believes, white feminists like her are going to have to deal with some hard truths. They are right to be proud of their contributions to women’s progress in this country, she says, but more needs to be done. ”The benefits of our work so far around things like reproductive rights aren’t conferred equally across all women,” Schlack points out. ”And that’s what I think younger feminists, feminists of color, particularly, are trying to wake us up to.” The issues are broader, messier, more intersectional: race, gender, class, nationality, immigration status, everything is connected. The   Schlack refers to won’t just benefit women of color, points out Boston University’s Ashley Farmer: ”When you make something that accounts for the most oppressed, everybody’s life tends to get better.” But that process may have bumps from time to time. UCLA’s Grace Hong believes the discord around today’s marches may, in the end, be good for feminism: ”Maybe the point is to not all agree,” she says. ”Maybe the point is to do these kinds of things so that you can have the tough conversations.” And maybe, she says, these marches are the next step toward having those tough, but necessary, talks."
"Donald Trump took the oath of office on Friday before a crowd speckled with red, many of them wearing the campaign’s famous ”Make America Great Again” hats. Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington in downtown D. C. drew a crowd with vastly different political beliefs, but there was one similarity, as the sea of people was peppered with pink,   ”pussyhats.” The (mostly) homemade hats were a sly reference to lewd comments Trump made in a 2005 Access Hollywood tape leaked a month before the election. And they also echoed some of the traits that experts said made the Trump hat so effective for the winning candidate. Marchers on Saturday said they liked the hat because it unified them around one general message. ”I think this woman who put this together is frickin’ brilliant and a genius because it’s such a political, simple statement: a pink hat, and all you have is the pussycat ears,” said Mellicent Dyane, 50, a casting director from New York City, wearing a neon pink hat as she watched the rally. ”It speaks volumes.” In that sense, the pussyhat has some of the same traits that made the ”Make America Great Again” hat work: it sends a very particular political message, one that is simultaneously unifying and antagonistic. The Trump ”Make America Great Again” implies that somehow, someone (perhaps the political establishment, especially from the party in power for the last eight years) allowed America to no longer be great, and that the wearers are banding together to get that greatness back. Despite not bearing a slogan, the ”pussyhats” have their own clear target of criticism, explains one expert. ”It doesn’t have the words on the hat like the ’Make America Great Hat’ does, but the name of the hat evokes memories of this [Access Hollywood] tape that has a message that the people who made this want to convey,” said Todd Davies, associate director of Stanford’s Symbolic Systems program. But the hats were intended also to be unifying for women (and the men who came to support the march). Following an election where Donald Trump effectively used masculinity as a campaign strategy, the pussyhats are unabashedly feminine, in that they are pink and homemade (not to mention that they reference a derogatory term for the female anatomy). That’s by design: the ”Pussyhat Project” website explains that ”knitting and crochet are traditionally women’s crafts,” adding, ”[knitting] circles are powerful gatherings of women.” The similarities don’t end there. Both hats represent a kind of backlash: one by a group of people who believed they were ignored political outsiders, and the other by people who recently suffered a stinging election defeat. In addition, simplicity is arguably a central goal of both hats, albeit to different ends. The Trump hat’s plain red background with white Times New Roman lettering ”represented [an] everyman sensibility,” as FastCo Design’s Dianna Budds explained this year. Likewise, most pussyhat patterns are simple  —   one article promised viewers they could learn how to sew a hat ”in the time it actually takes to ironically watch The Bachelor”  —   allowing some crafters to crank out and distribute many. While the red caps and pink knit hats invite comparison, they aren’t perfect analogues of each other the homemade pussyhats, in shades ranging from fuchsia to powder pink to mauve (and a few that weren’t pink at all)  —   were naturally not as uniform as the   Trump hats. Again, the Pussyhat Project characterizes that as a feature rather than a bug, allowing people to be unique and diverse in their designs. (Likewise, the homemade hats helped people connect with one another  —   marchers on Saturday reported getting hats from their grandmothers, wives, state legislators, and even strangers on the street.) Importantly, though, the pussyhat has a long way to go to reach the power that the Trump hat has. Extolling the red trucker hat as the ”symbol of the year 2016,” Davies wrote about what made it stick. ”Lots of things can be symbols,” he said. ”but relatively few things actually are. Being a symbol is an acquired status that gets established through use.” The pussyhats could simply become a memento for marchers, as opposed to something they continually wear. After all, Trump rallies gave supporters regular reasons to get together and don their hats, eventually making the caps familiar to many Americans. The pink hats very easily might never reach that point. At least for now, the pussyhats and trucker hats fulfill the basic role of identifying tribes. Saturday afternoon,   families ate in restaurants alongside   marchers. Without even talking, they knew exactly which team they were on."
"Updated at 9:00 a. m. ET  The Trump Administration spent its first full day in office taking shots at the media and arguing about crowd sizes at Friday’s inauguration. Press secretary Sean Spicer delivered a fiery broadside against the Fourth Estate from the White House Briefing Room Saturday evening, claiming that reporters had engaged in ”deliberately false reporting” in the past 24 hours since President Trump took the oath of office. And, after berating the press, he walked away without taking any questions. ”Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall,” Spicer claimed. He blamed new floor coverings on mall areas that ”had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual.” And Spicer claimed that fences and magnetometers going further back than ever prevented ”hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the mall as quickly as they had in years past.” However, CNN reporter Ashley Killough tweeted out a photo showing that floor coverings had in fact been used at Obama’s second inauguration. Spicer correctly said that the National Park Service does not do crowd estimates any longer, so that there was no official estimate to rely on, and NPR has made no official estimation of crowd size because official figures aren’t available. But then Spicer went on to make his own estimate on the crowd size and incorrectly claimed that the number of people who used the Washington D. C. Metro on Friday had outpaced the number of people who used the service during President Obama’s second inaugural. In 2009, 317, 000 people had, in fact, used the Metro by 11 a. m. according to WMATA, as Spicer cited. But the White House press secretary then claimed that 420, 000 people had used the Metro on Friday by 11 a. m. only 193, 000 people had ridden Metro. For the whole day on Friday, 570, 000 people used the system, but in 2013 there were 782, 000 riders and 1. 1 million riders in 2009  —   both much larger than Trump’s inauguration. ”This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration  —   period  —   both in person and around the globe,” Spicer said in another unverifiable claim. Spicer’s own math was that there were 250, 000 people in the immediate area of the inaugural dais at the Capitol, and another 220, 000 from 4th Street to the media tents. Spicer then claimed there were another 250, 000 people from the media tents to the Washington Monument. ”All of this space was full when the president took the oath of office,” Spicer said, claiming the entire area from the Capitol to the Washington Monument was full. However, aerial photographs show that claim is false. The area just in front of the Washington Monument was sparsely populated and far from full, as confirmed by photographs and from NPR’s reporters on the ground. Trump tweeted Sunday morning that the television audience was larger than the second inauguration of Barack Obama in 2013. Ratings from Nielsen showed an audience of 30. 6 million on Friday. Their ratings from 2013 back up Trump’s assertion, with an audience of 20. 5 million. Past inaugurations measured by Nielsen that exceeded the audience for Trump’s inauguration include Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, Ronald Reagan’s in 1981, Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Richard Nixon in 1973  —   the only president to have a larger audience for his second inauguration than his first since these ratings have been compiled. The dispute over crowd size came Saturday as thousands and thousands of women and men gathered in D. C. and in major cities around the country and the world to participate in the Women’s March on Washington to protest Trump’s agenda on women’s rights and his past statements degrading women. Trump himself had made similar claims disputing crowd estimates earlier on Saturday when he traveled to the CIA to address intelligence officers. The president said he believed there was anywhere between 1 million and 1. 5 million people on the National Mall as he delivered his inaugural address, and he also falsely claimed it stopped raining and the sun came out just as he started speaking when, in fact, the rain continued and the day remained overcast and cloudy. Spicer lectured reporters for not focusing more on Trump’s CIA speech, telling them ”that’s what you folks should be writing and covering instead of sowing division about tweets and false narratives.” Spicer also complained about a report from pool reporter Zeke Miller of Time Magazine on Friday that Trump had removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office. Miller later admitted he had made a mistake, apologized and reported that it had ”been obscured” by a Secret Service agent and a door.” President Trump himself also attacked Miller over that mistake in his speech at the CIA. Spicer claimed that report was ”irresponsible” and ”reckless,” but in fact the press secretary had tweeted Friday night that he accepted Miller’s apology. Spicer ended with an unprecedented warning that they would hold the press accountable and go around them when necessary. ”The American people deserve better, and as long as he serves as the messenger for this incredible movement,” Spicer said of the president, ”he will take his message directly to the American people, where his focus will always be.”"
"Republicans plan to turn control of Medicaid over to the states as part of their replacement for the Affordable Care Act, according to an adviser to President Donald Trump. Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to Trump, told NBC News’s Sunday Today with Willie Geist, that the health care law that will replace Obamacare will turn Medicaid  —   a joint   health insurance program for the poor  —   into a block grant program. The change would mean the federal government would give money to the states to implement Medicaid as they see fit. ”Those who are closest to the people in need will be administering it,” Conway said in the interview, which was recorded the Thursday and Sunday. ”You really cut out the fraud, waste and abuse, and you get the help directly to them.” Medicaid is now funded by the federal government and states together and it has an   funding stream, meaning it pays for all health costs to which its beneficiaries are entitled under the law. Conservatives who are concerned about the impact the growth in health care spending will have on the federal and state budgets have advocated block grants as a way to cut the Medicaid costs. But many health policy analysts say that block grants could lead to reductions in care. ”A Medicaid block grant program would institute deep cuts to federal funding . .. and threaten benefits for tens of millions of   families,” said Edwin Park, vice president for Health Policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, in a report on the group’s website. Block grants can take several forms. Under one scenario, the federal government would offer a fixed sum of money to each state, which would grow with inflation. Since the rate of overall inflation is typically lower than inflation in the health care sector that leads to an erosion of spending over time. And such a fixed block grant means less money is available when the economy is suffering and more people qualify for Medicaid benefits. Another scenario offers states an allowance for each beneficiary. Under such a plan, spending would increase in bad economic times to cover the additional people who need care. However, overall benefits could still fall over time, depending on how the program accounts for rising health care costs. Conway didn’t give details about how a block grant program would be structured. Medicaid grew under former President Barack Obama, who gave states the option of expanding eligibility for the program to millions of people who live above the poverty line.   states and the District of Columbia have expanded their programs. Republicans who are advocating repeal of the Affordable Care Act haven’t said whether they will force those states to roll back their Medicaid programs. Conway also reiterated Trump’s promise that ”everybody” will have insurance coverage under his Obamacare alternative. ”President Trump has said that people will not go without coverage. And he means that,” she said. ”That is certainly part of the official plans that are being worked on.” However, she said that health care for all didn’t mean the president advocates universal coverage or a   health plan. ”What he means is that no one will go without coverage,” Conway said. ”There will be ways for people to access affordable, quality health insurance if they’d like to get it.” Conway said voters can also expect an Obamacare replacement to include wider use of health savings accounts, which allow people to save money   to help pay for their medical costs. Critics say such accounts don’t help   people who struggle to pay health insurance premiums because many don’t have extra money to put aside. Also, they often pay little or no income tax, so such an account doesn’t give them a boost.  Health savings accounts, depending on how they’re structured, can help wealthy people however. That’s because they allow people with high incomes and who pay a high rate of high tax to shelter more of their money from federal taxes."
"This post has been updated to include more information about the evaluation work done by GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.  It seems like a  . Before you spend big bucks on a massive effort to improve life for the world’s poorest  —   say, distributing millions of free bed nets against malarial mosquitoes, or offering thousands of women microloans as small as $200 to start small businesses  —   you should run a smaller scale test to make sure the idea actually works. After all, just because a project sounds good in theory doesn’t mean it’s going to pan out in practice. For instance, what if giving out the bed nets for free makes people less likely to value them? Maybe you should charge a fee on the theory that while less people would get the nets, those who do will be the ones who see a need for them and will therefore take the trouble to actually use them. And what if some totally different method wouldn’t achieve better results for less money? For instance, maybe the key to lifting women’s incomes isn’t helping them start a small business but helping them land a salaried job? Yet for decades, questions like this have been left unanswered. Instead health and development aid for the world’s poorest has largely been designed based on what seems reasonable, rather than what can be proved with hard evidence. Since the early 2000s, however, a growing movement of social science researchers have been pushing   to do ”impact evaluations” of their programs. That’s a phrase used in the world of aid that means checking whether your program is achieving its ultimate objective  —   say raising incomes or reducing disease. In particular, these scientists have been arguing for the use of what they call the   of proof: the ”randomized controlled trial.” In an RCT you randomly divide the people you’re studying into at least two groups. One gets the intervention you want to test. The second, an otherwise identical ”control group” of subjects, doesn’t get the intervention. Then you compare the results for each group to see what difference, if any, the intervention made. Over the last decade there’s been an explosion in the number of RCTs being done to measure health and   efforts, and they’ve helped settle some major debates about what works and what doesn’t. (As it turns out, offering bed nets for free as opposed to at a price, appears to be extremely effective. On the other hand, while microloans may have all sorts of uses, the evidence suggests that lifting people’s incomes over the long term is not one of them.) Despite these successes, the researchers who advocate this approach  —   they’re sometimes called ”randomistas”  —   also worry that RCT’s are still not being deployed frequently enough, and that even when they are done, policy makers often fail to apply the lessons. This sense of mixed progress was evident at a recent conference organized by the Washington, D. C.  tank Center for Global Development, where some of the most prominent randomistas gathered to take stock. Just ten years ago one of the most active centers of RCT work was running about 70 impact evaluations worldwide. Today the number it’s completed or currently has underway tops 800. That’s according to Abhijit Banarjee a professor of economics at MIT who helped found the center  —   the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, or    a network of affiliated researchers at nearly 50 universities who set up RCTs in the fields of global health and poverty that was started in 2003. And when you include the work of groups beyond   the number of impact evaluations of global health and poverty programs that are completed and published each year has risen steadily in the last decade from about 50 per year to 500 per year, said Emmanuel Jimenez. He’s director of the International Impact Evaluation Initiative, or 3ie, an NGO that maintains a searchable database of findings in addition to providing $83 million to fund studies since 2008. Rachel Glennerster, Executive Director of   credits the rise of RCT’s not just to funding organizations like 3ie but other research nonprofits that conduct them. Today, she said, major   players ranging from the World Bank and USAID  —   the main U. S. government agency responsible for development programs  —   all have departments that use impact evaluations in one way or another. ”What encourages me is that we’ve built a whole kind of ecosystem of groups who are trying to move this forward,” said Glennerster. But like other randomistas, she also worried that that the number of RCTs is still paltry compared to the number of development programs that governments, international organizations and NGOs are carrying out. Even at the World Bank and USAID, only a small portion of projects are subject to impact evaluations, agreed Amanda Glassman, chief operating officer and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Every year, her group does an exhaustive review to identify   health programs that made a big impact. Of about 250 that they looked through this past year, ”only 50 used rigorous methods to establish the attributable impact. And none of the very largest programs in global health had done any impact evaluation” of the type she argues are needed  —   including two major international nonprofit organizations: Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis as well as GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance. This doesn’t mean the health products that these health programs use  —   medicines or vaccines, for instance  —   haven’t been proven effective through, say, medical trials or studies of what happens to the incidence of disease when you vaccinate a certain population, explained Glassman. Officials at GAVI note that the organization also tracks the increase in vaccination rates and decline of diseases in areas where it works, using a number of official data sources. Measuring impact ”is a major part of how the organization operates,” says Hope Johnson, director of Monitoring and Evaluation for GAVI. Glassman says that’s not enough when ”the challenge isn’t just the biological effect of a pill or vaccine but how to get those pills or vaccines to those who need them.” One question, for instance: Is it more effective to do an intensive   campaign in which health workers armed with vaccines fan out across a community than to provide routine vaccinations at health clinics. Then there’s the question of how much attention   are paying to the results of the RCTs that are being done. Banarjee noted that RCTs have at least already ”fundamentally changed our understanding” of some key issues in aid  —   the limits of microloans as a tool for ending poverty, the advisability of offering not just bed nets but all sorts of other preventive health products like de worming pills and chlorine treatments for water for free or heavily subsidized prices. But in many cases, the information generated by RCTs isn’t used to improve aid. Jimenez, of 3ie, described an internal review done by the World Bank  —   where he used to work  —   which found that only about half of impact evaluations done on Bank projects were even cited in the final reports on those projects. So why do some RCT’s make an impact while others vanish without a trace? One important lesson: collaboration with local governments is critical. Researchers need to work more directly with the   who implement aid programs, said Jimenez. Several speakers at the conference described successful experiences doing this: A team from   has worked with Indonesia’s government to test and then roll out measures to curb corruption in a rice distribution program that serves 66 million people. And researchers from the   institute RTI have been helping the government of Kenya design new teaching techniques to improve reading and math skills in elementary schools. To make these partnerships with policymakers work  said Jimenez, researchers might sometimes need to put their personal career interests on the  . For instance, researchers often prefer not to publicize their results until they’re ready for publication in a prominent journal. But that can take months. Instead said Jimenez, researchers need to be ”getting results out when the   need it.”  ’s Banarjee said that figuring out how to collaborate with governments is such a priority that   recently launched a whole branch dedicated to doing just that  —   it’s called the Government Partnerships Initiative. Otherwise, he said, ”a lot of good ideas don’t get implemented. And I think that’s really a tragedy.”"
"Many in the science community have expressed concern about the lack of science literacy demonstrated by the new Trump administration. A look at the administration’s statements and actions related to five key issues that are informed by science  —   anthropogenic climate change, vaccines, evolution taught in public schools, environmental science and protection of public lands, and human rights  —   bolsters that concern. As the new administration takes office, here’s a look at statements made and actions taken by the Trump team  —   and a check against the science. Climate Change, In Nov. 2012, Donald Trump tweeted that climate change was a creation of the Chinese. More recently, in a May 26, 2016, speech in North Dakota, he vowed to dismantle the international Paris Accord. Trump’s pick to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has said there is a viable ”debate” about   science and has encouraged ”dissent” about it, leading The New York Times to call him a   denialist. During his confirmation hearings Wednesday, however, Pruitt acknowledged there is ”some” role of human activity in climate change. Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson said he doesn’t see climate change as an imminent national security threat. Here, provided by NASA, is a compendium of statements from science associations showing the consensus that   trends from the last 100 years are  . How is ”a consensus” defined?   percent of   scientists agree on this fact. Vaccines, Environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a vaccine skeptic that is, he takes seriously the possibility that routine vaccinations for childhood diseases might cause autism. Kennedy met with Trump last week, afterward noting that the meeting had come at Trump’s request, and said that he would lead a   vaccine safety panel. Since then, the Trump team has clarified that the forming of this panel is a possibility and not a certainty. By contrast, here is an absolute certainty: Any link between vaccines and autism is false, as the CDC unequivocally states. As noted by NPR’s Domenico Montenaro: ”. ..the fact that Kennedy  —   who has lent his name and prominence to a controversial cause of whether vaccines, specifically the preservative called thimerosal, cause autism, for which there is no evidence within the scientific community  —   is part of [this] conversation, once again, reflects Trump embracing the fringe when it comes to the science of autism and vaccinations.” On Wednesday, an editorial in Nature underscored just how very solid the science is against any link between vaccines and autism: ”There is already ample evidence that vaccines do not elevate the risk of autism. A 2015 study of more than 95, 000 children found no association between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and an increased risk of autism  —   even among children with a family history of the disorder.” Evolution Taught In Public Schools, Unlike anthropogenic climate change, the teaching of evolution in public schools was not mentioned (as far as I can determine) during the campaign or its aftermath. Back in 2009, however, Pence told TV interviewer Chris Matthews: ”Do I believe in evolution? I embrace the view that God created the heavens and the Earth, the seas and all that’s in them.” What matters, however, is not Pence’s personal belief but whether he (and Trump) would vigorously defend the teaching of evolution in   science classes  —   without the ”equal time” teaching of creationism, which is not science. Pence did address this question, in the same interview with Matthews: ”I think, in our schools, we should teach all of the facts about all of these controversial areas and let our students, let our children and our children’s children decide based upon the facts and the science.” There is no controversy about evolution, though. There is no doubt that, like all other life on Earth, we humans have evolved and continue to evolve. And as I have argued here before, we fail our children unless we teach them precisely that. The National Center for Science Education is, as its website proclaims, ”the only national organization devoted to defending the teaching of evolution in public schools”. (The NCSE also promotes   science, as 13. 7’s Tania Lombrozo has noted.) The NCSE website includes page after page of fabulous resources giving the facts of evolution. The Smithsonian’s Human Origins program offers equally excellent information about the timeline and details of human evolution. Environmental Science And Protection Of Public Lands, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Interior is Ryan Zinke, who declared during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday that climate change is not ”a hoax.” He also said that he is against selling of public lands to the states, which would increase the risk of development on those lands. On both counts, this is somewhat encouraging news for environmental science. Zinke’s remark that humans ”influence” climate change does, though, seriously underestimate the scientific conclusions that I have noted above about anthropogenic climate change. And crucially, as The New York Times reported: ”Mr. Zinke also emphasized his support for drilling, mining and logging on federal lands, activities strongly opposed by many environmental groups.” Environmental science specifies threats to the environment from oil and gas drilling, including disruption of wildlife migration routes oil spills that hurt animals’ health and pollution that negatively affects ecosystems’ health as well as scenic views and night skies. When these activities, not to mention mining and logging, occur on public lands  —   on range lands, in or near national forests and near national parks  —   the costs to animals, plants and the land itself have the the great potential to be severe. From a scientific perspective, then, Zinke’s record is mixed at best. Human Rights, Trump has mocked disabled people, denigrated the character of people from Mexico and, according to the global   organization Human Rights Watch that just last Friday cited Trump as a threat to human rights, ran a campaign ”fomenting hatred and intolerance.” Trump’s policy proposals, the new Human Rights Watch report said, ”would harm millions of people, including plans to engage in massive deportations of immigrants, to curtail women’s rights and media freedoms, and to use torture.” My field of anthropology, which embraces science, can help here. Anthropology tells us that our species, Homo sapiens, is only 200, 000 years old that we evolved physically and cognitively in Africa and that, wherever we may live in the world, human populations are equal in our ability to learn and in our essential humanity. Of course, anthropology is also about taking the time to live among, closely observe and, most importantly, listen to people in other cultures, other neighborhoods, other streets within a neighborhood, even other rooms within an apartment complex. The idea is to learn. When we reject xenophobia and cultural stereotypes in favor of open looking, listening and dialogue, we come to recognize the varied ways we may express our common humanity. We humans are not   to behave in any certain fixed way, even within a population an anthropological perspective tells us that the circumstances that surround us greatly influence our behavior. To a great degree, in terms of our compassion or our cruelty to others, we choose who we become. Tania Lombrozo, writing here at 13. 7, noted that now is the time to expand our circle of moral concern to include people of all backgrounds  —   a conclusion that fits beautifully with an anthropological outlook. And I have added animals to that moral circle. The onset of the Trump administration can and should be considered a time of opportunity: Here is the moment for us to collectively increase not only our compassion, but also our science literacy, and that of our children. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve, and her forthcoming book, Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat, will be published in March. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"It’s not fair to compare the 2004 film Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events to the new Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events. But let’s do it anyway. Both film and TV show adapt the first three volumes in the wildly popular and manically melancholy series of books for children written by Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) though the Netflix series covers the fourth book as well. Both are   six ways to Sunday, with muted brown and somber gray soundstages standing in for expressionistically bleak landscapes and baroquely decrepit mansions. Both feature beloved actors in   roles (Film: Billy Connolly! Luis Guzman! Catherine O’Hara! TV: Patrick Warburton! Aasif Mandvi! Catherine O’Hara!) and both attempt to achieve the singular tone of the books. It’s the specificity of this tone that made the books such a success. As Handler himself has noted, it owes a great deal to Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey. There is a deliberate,   achingly Anglophilic quality to the prose dreadful events are related in a manner engineered to keep us at an emotional distance. Characters and story beats are   at, readers are admonished to skip pages ahead, and constantly given schoolmarmy vocabulary lessons. As a result, the mood of the books is waspish, even arch, but never grotesque. ”Whimsically dark” is a narrow sliver of narrative real estate to build a story on, yet it’s there that ASoUE lives. It’s the Netflix series that comes closest to achieving that tone, for two reasons. One, it foregrounds Lemony Snicket. Jude Law played him in the movie, but chiefly in  . The Netflix series turns him into a kind of omnipresent, lachrymose host played with deadpan,   solemnity by Patrick Warburton. In the series, Snicket is constantly stepping into the shot to impart some new nugget of depressing information, or express concern at something that has just happened, will soon happen, or is happening. He’s like Rod Serling at the beginning of The Twilight Zone, if an episode ever featured Neil Patrick Harris in drag. Snicket’s physical presence turns out to be important. In the movie, Law’s   did much of the same work, or tried to, but having Snicket literally step into the proceedings to warn us about what we’re about to see next feels exactly like those moments in the books when Snicket’s narrator would admonish us for reading him. But the big reason it all works? Neil Patrick Harris’ evil Count Olaf. Look, it will likely not surprise you to learn that the acting choices Harris makes as the villain of the piece are generally smaller than those made by Jim Carrey in the film. The film was big, and Carrey made it bigger, and it’s hard to fault him for it. As written, the character of Count Olaf is an     after all he’s operatically evil. And when called to do so, Harris can twirl with the best of them: He can lean into Olaf’s dastardliness with a fervor that chews its way through the scenery, and the props, and much of the craft services table to boot. Mostly though, Harris’ Olaf vibrates at a lower frequency. When he’s not being performatively nasty, he seems merely . .. annoyed. Tetchy. Distracted. Impatient. Vexed at the world for not appreciating him. It’s smaller, and feels truer, than anything Carrey managed to find in the character. It’s also variation on Harris’ Dr. Horrible  —   a guy who can turn it on when he needs to, but whose malice seems like an act. Maybe that’s why his vaunting lust for the Beaudelaire fortune doesn’t seem so much   as . .. something to do. Should we get another season of the series that takes us further into the books, those smaller, humanizing aspects Harris is injecting into this cartoonish villain will pay off in ways I probably shouldn’t spoil. But I keep thinking of a scene in one of the later episodes of the TV series, in which Olaf is asked why he does the things he does, why he torments the three Beaudelaire orphans so much. ”Because it’s fun,” he says. I buy that NPH sure looks like he’s having a blast."
"Since it opened 50 years ago, the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic has been a refuge  —   for everyone from flower children to famous rock stars to Vietnam War veterans returning home addicted to heroin. Strolling through the clinic halls in San Francisco, Dr. David Smith, the medical organization’s founder, points to a large collage that decorates a wall of an exam room affectionately referred to as the Psychedelic Wall of Fame. The 1967 relic shows a kaleidoscope of images of Jefferson Airplane and other legendary counterculture bands floating in a dreamscape of creatures, nude goddesses, peace symbols and large loopy letters. ”That was made by a woman who had just taken LSD,” Smith says. ”She stayed here for a very long time and put all that up. It lasted as long as her LSD trip.” He continues on to what was once called the ”bad trip” room, where clinic staff would talk clients down during acid trips gone awry. Fundamentally, Smith and others say, the organization has remained true to its roots in counterculture, still offering free care in a deliberately nonjudgmental atmosphere. But it is also drastically different: It is now the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics  —   plural  —   and part of a    conglomerate with the decidedly   name of HealthRIGHT360. All told, HealthRIGHT 360 serves approximately 40, 000 patients each year via a wide range of programs, including reentry services to ease the transition of formerly incarcerated adults and teens into life outside jail, residential and outpatient drug treatment, mental health care and medical and dental care. In 2014, it purchased a    building at 1563 Mission Street in San Francisco as additional space, to offer all of these services under one roof. The organization also serves patients in neighboring San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. It’s been a long journey from Smith’s early days running a standalone clinic. When his clinic first opened, it operated 24 hours a day with an army of volunteer physicians from the University of California, San Francisco, and Stanford University. The one paid staffer was a nurse. The first year’s budget was her salary: $25, 000. The clinic had what Smith describes as a ”guerilla pharmacy.” Pharmaceutical representatives, he says, would load up their trunks with medication samples and drop them off at the clinic, where a team of UCSF volunteer pharmacists bottled up the medication and shelved it. ”Our first exam table was my kitchen table,” he recalls. Decisions were made by consensus. Even the janitor weighed in, Smith says. Back then, iconic music promoter Bill Graham organized benefit rock concerts  —   featuring performances by George Harrison and Janis Joplin  —   to help keep the clinic afloat financially. Smith remembers when Joplin overdosed on heroin, and the clinic rushed over an ”overdose team” armed with naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of opiates. ”We zipped out there,” he says, ”and reversed her overdose.” Smith says he saw many Vietnam veterans returning from the war in the early 1970s who were addicted to heroin. They felt ostracized, he says, by what was then called the Veterans Administration, and headed to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury and its clinic, which by then offered comprehensive medical care and a drug detox program. The influx of veterans led to federal grants to Smith’s clinic from the Special Action Office on Drug Abuse Prevention. ”That began the government funding era in the 1970s and ensured our survival,” Smith says. In the 1980s, a young woman named Vitka Eisen came to the Haight Ashbury clinic struggling with heroin addiction, and learned firsthand the value of the personal attention the clinic offered. ”I went there for detox at least nine times,” she says. ”I never felt shamed or judged. They always acted like they were glad to see me.” Her trust in the staff, she says, led her to kick her heroin habit and return to school. She eventually earned a doctorate in education from Harvard University. Today Eisen is CEO of HealthRIGHT360. By 2011, like many   nonprofits, the organization Smith helped start in the 1960s was deeply in debt. So it merged with Walden House, a respected San   addiction and mental health treatment program, which wanted to offer comprehensive medical care to its patients. The merged nonprofit adopted the name HealthRIGHT360. By joining forces, Eisen says, Walden House and the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics were able to weather the extraordinary financial expense of shifting their organizations to electronic health records, a requirement of the Affordable Care Act. With the network in place, she says, it’s been easier to train and add new providers as HealthRight360 has expanded. The merger also allowed the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics to erase its debt in a year. Between 2011 and last July  —   when the organization merged with Prototypes, a Southern California women’s drug treatment center  —   HealthRIGHT360 acquired five other community clinics in Northern California and now offers treatment at 40 sites up and down the state. Ben Avey, assistant director of external affairs at the California Primary Care Association, says such mergers aren’t new, but they have accelerated under the Affordable Care Act. At the individual clinics that comprise health systems like HealthRIGHT360, ”they speak your language, know your culture, understand the situation you’re coming from,” Avey adds. As CEO, Eisen led the consolidation that streamlined HealthRIGHT 360. ”We have one board, one human resources department, one finance department, one payroll department and one executive,” she says. The annual revenue is $110 million.   the city, county, state and federal governments all reimburse HealthRIGHT 360 for providing patient services, as do commercial health insurers. But ties to the early days remain. The early treatment of concertgoers evolved into San   Rock Medicine, which is now part of HealthRight360. Staff members set up medical clinics   at rock concerts, circuses and fairs in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, providing medical treatment that garners $1, 038, 000 annually from the venues. The nonjudgmental attitude of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics’ staff toward patients also continues to this day, according to    David Smith, (no relation to the clinic founder) who has been coming to the clinic since the 1980s and says he’s always felt welcomed and accepted. This was true, Smith says, even when he was homeless in the early 2000s. ”It didn’t matter if I was dirty,” he says. ”I didn’t have to feel like I couldn’t come in here because I wasn’t in the proper state of cleanliness  —   which was, unfortunately, the case for quite a bit of time.” Kaiser Health News, is an editorially independent part of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. Laurie Udesky is an   freelance journalist based in San Francisco. On Twitter: @laurieudesky. "
"To revisit the box office numbers for 1988 is to remember when movies that made a lot of money looked entirely different than they do now. Rain Man grossed more money domestically than anything else that year. It was followed in the top 10 by Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Coming To America, Big, Twins, Crocodile Dundee II, Die Hard, The Naked Gun, Cocktail, and Beetlejuice. Only one sequel in the bunch. That’s two adult dramas (if you count Cocktail, which . .. maybe?) seven comedies, and Die Hard. In 2016? Rogue One, Finding Dory, Captain America: Civil War, The Secret Life Of Pets, The Jungle Book, Deadpool, Zootopia, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, and Sing. Five action franchise entries and five kids’ movies, and that’s it. It was back in that more    environment that the 15th biggest movie of the year was Beaches, starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey as best friends who meet as girls under the Atlantic City boardwalk and remain friends right up until  —   spoiler alert  —   one of them dies. (If you think about it, that’s how any friendship ends if it lasts long enough. Again, spoiler alert.) Beaches is often remembered as the epitome of the weepie, the hankie movie, the sniffler, whatever you want to call it. In fact, it’s more interesting than that and contains more angular and painful moments than that, but what people remember is the crying and dying. It makes sense, in a way, that Lifetime would remake it almost 30 (gulp) years later with Idina Menzel and Nia Long as CC and Hillary. They’re both solid actresses who have been wonderful in lots of roles over the years, and the film is directed by Allison Anders, who’s directed a lot of TV but also the films Gas Food Lodging and Grace Of My Heart, both of which are strong stories about interesting women. But unfortunately, the remake, which airs on Saturday night, winds up representing the flatter,    film people remember, rather than the film that really was. One of the problems is just timing: the Lifetime film has 90 minutes to do the work of a theatrical film that ran two hours and three minutes. Entire plot elements are dropped, and the opening sequence in which the girls become friends is much shorter, making it much harder to believe that they formed a bond that carried them through years of    all the way to adulthood. And while it’s hard to be critical of child performers, there’s nothing in that opening sequence anywhere near as arresting as it was when the young Mayim Bialik, doing the seemingly impossible by plausibly being a young version of Bette Midler, sang ”Glory of Love” with a feather boa. Here, young CC is simply an ’  young busker who doesn’t have a permit, rather than a precocious,   kid in feathers who’s first seen puffing on a cigarette. From the very beginning, she doesn’t have the original CC’s huge personality, and Hillary’s instant fascination with her makes much less sense. More generally, the biggest problem is that the two women are too similar in this version. In the original, Hershey is so chilly and patrician and Midler is so Bette Midler that the contrast is obvious and stark. But Menzel and Long are playing very similar women here  —   they’re both smart, direct, conventionally beautiful, elegant adults. There’s none of the sense Hershey so convincingly conveyed that Hillary is often embarrassed, particularly in the presence of the man who becomes her husband, by CC’s joyful vulgarity. And similarly, Menzel has none of Midler’s visible insecurity about how she’s viewed by a friend who’s become a proudly droll sophisticate. The fights in the original Beaches are scary and ugly they’re raw and hurtful, and you understand how they could lead to long estrangements. Here, the stakes just never feel quite high enough. This version seems to build their conflict around professional success, which is less compelling than in the original, where their conflict was largely about cultural positioning  —   about who was classy and who was not, and why. Without that conflict, all you have is a couple of pretty ordinary fights between women who seem at all times naturally   to each other. And unfortunately, the lack of nuance in the portrayals of young CC and Hillary in the prologue carries through to the role of Hillary’s daughter (Sanai Victoria) who is written without the resistance to CC that you get from Grace Johnston in the 1988 film, so that she’s nothing but cute and perfect and sweet all the time. In the original version, CC’s unlikely relationship with Hillary basically echoes in her relationship with Hillary’s daughter  —   Midler’s CC doesn’t seem, and doesn’t feel, like a natural mother. But Menzel’s CC seems almost as much of a natural as Long’s Hillary is. To answer one obvious question: Yes, Menzel sings ”Wind Beneath My Wings.” She also sings ”Glory Of Love.” But the quirkier musical numbers from the original, including not just Midler’s odd ”Oh Industry” but the wonderful bauble ”I’ve Still Got My Health,” her very sad rendition of ”I Think It’s Going To Rain Today,” and the memorable ”Otto Titsling,” find no substitutes. So while you get Idina Menzel singing The Pretenders’ ”I’ll Stand By You,” her musical theater talents are set aside in a way Midler’s were not. The point isn’t that a remake has to walk in the footsteps of the original  —   in fact, it can’t and shouldn’t. But when you remove the parts of a film that make it interesting, you have to put in other elements to make the new one interesting in a different way. You have to put something back for everything that you remove. One lesson here is that memorable ”weepies,” like memorable anythings, are harder than they look. Over time, things flatten in our cultural memory, until attempts to recreate them based on what endured in that memory are likely to fall short for reasons that feel nebulous. Saturday night’s new Beaches, unfortunately, doesn’t amount to much. But go back to the original  —   it’s more interesting than you remember."
"President Trump is now filing the documents needed to remove his name as top executive at his companies, finally making good on a promise to leave management by Inauguration Day. He may be a couple of days late, but public documents show Trump is making changes at the helm of his businesses. For example, a filing from Florida’s Department of State, entered Monday, shows son Eric Trump as president of Trump International Hotels Management LLC. In March 2016, Donald J. Trump had been registered as president of the company. That sort of management shift was confirmed in numerous documents that began appearing online throughout Monday afternoon. The filings don’t show a change in ownership, just a replacement of Donald Trump as the top executive. The Trump Organization may have gotten a nudge from a weekend report by ProPublica, an independent nonprofit news service. It had contacted officials in Florida, Delaware and New York and found no indication that Trump had begun transferring management to his sons. White House spokesman Sean Spicer was questioned Monday about whether Trump would release documents verifying the president had resigned from his businesses. Spicer said Trump has ”resigned from the company as he said he would before he took office,” adding ”he’s taken extraordinary steps to ensure that that’s happened.” It’s believed Trump has more than 500 business entities, so   them all could take some time. He did manage to sever ties with his businesses in the United Kingdom in time for his inauguration Friday. Meanwhile, one of Trump’s newest ventures  —   the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D. C.  —   had a rough first couple of months. The luxury hotel just blocks from the White House may have been sold out for inauguration festivities last week, but it lost more than $1. 1 million in its first two months of operation. The hotel lost $334, 000 in September and $825, 000 in October. The Trump Organization had estimated a $84, 000 loss in September and $481, 000 profit in October. Those figures come from the federal General Services Administration, which owns the historic building that houses the hotel. GSA information was obtained by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. Reps. Elijah Cummings, Gerald Connolly, Peter DeFazio and Andre Carson asked the GSA for any correspondence it has had with the Trump Organization. They want to see how the federal agency is addressing an ”apparent breach” of the hotel’s lease agreement. When the Democrats got the GSA information, they released it to the public on Monday. The lease explicitly says ”no elected official of the government of the United States” may hold that lease. The letter said the documents did not give any reason why the hotel’s income levels for its first two months were so far below the company’s own projections, although September was a soft launch for the   hotel. There were no figures from November, when Trump won the presidential election, until now. One of the concerns ethics analysts have is that the hotel could create a conflict between Trump’s business and his presidency. For example, foreign governments, lobbyists and special interest groups may stay at the hotel, just blocks from the White House, as a way of currying favor with the president. Trump’s lawyers say he will hand over any of the hotel’s profits to the U. S. Treasury Department. NPR intern Lucia Maffei contributed to this report."
"Updated at 12 p. m. ET, A team of ethics experts and legal scholars filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday morning that says President Trump’s overseas businesses violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars presidents from taking money from foreign governments. The group says it is asking the court ”to stop Trump from violating the Constitution by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments” with ties to Trump interests. The lawsuit states that: ”These violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause pose a grave threat to the United States and its citizens. As the Framers were aware, private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders, and entanglements between American officials and foreign powers could pose a creeping, insidious threat to the Republic.” The lawsuit cites numerous examples of how Trump stands to make money by doing business with companies and other entities linked to foreign government. For example, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which is owned by the Chinese government, is a tenant at Trump Tower in New York, and its lease is due to expire during Trump’s term, the suit says. This could mean that the Chinese government will be in negotiations with the Trump Organization to renew the lease. Another tenant is the Abu Dhabi Tourism  Culture Authority, which is owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, the lawsuit notes. The suit also says that Trump collects royalties from his TV show The Apprentice and its various spinoffs, many of which air on broadcast networks owned or controlled by foreign governments. It also cites numerous examples of Trump properties in Indonesia, Turkey, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Scotland that require various government permits and exemptions. ”When Trump the president sits down to negotiate trade deals with these countries, the American people will have no way of knowing whether he will also be thinking about the profits of Trump the businessman,” according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is part of the suit. CREW says in the suit that it has been harmed by Trump’s conflicts of interest because as a   watchdog, it has been forced to put more time and resources into opposing and publicizing them. The legal scholars and former White House ethics officials filing the lawsuit include Richard Painter, ethics adviser to President George W. Bush Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine and Supreme Court litigator Deepak Gupta. Former Obama administration ethics adviser Norman Eisen told Morning Edition recently that Trump’s business ties violate the Emoluments Clause in numerous ways: ”We need travel no further than a few blocks from the White House, the Trump Hotel. There’s been controversy now about whether or not they’re pressuring governments to leave other hotels in Washington and come to their hotel. ”Whether those allegations are proven or not, there can be no question that the Trump Hotel in D. C. is aggressively seeking business from foreign governments. Once Mr. Trump takes the oath of office, that will be a violation of the Constitution.” It remains to be seen how the lawsuit will be received, because the courts have never ruled on how the Emoluments Clause relates to the president. Trump’s lawyers have already indicated they will oppose the suit. As The New York Times noted: ”The president’s lawyers have argued that the constitutional provision does not apply to   payments, such as a standard hotel room bill, and is intended only to prevent federal officials from accepting a special consideration or gift from a foreign power.” ”No one would have thought when the Constitution was written that paying your hotel bill was an emolument,” Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon told a news conference earlier this month. ”This is purely harassment for political gain, and, frankly, I find it very, very sad,” Trump’s son Eric told the Times."
"Updated at 5:15 p. m. ET. President Trump acted on Monday to keep a signature campaign promise: withdraw the U. S. from the   Partnership. Trump’s action is mostly symbolic. As he signed the memorandum in the Oval Office, Trump said, ”We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” adding it’s ”a great thing for the American worker.” Trump also signed two other presidential memorandums (a pool report, and the original version of this story, referred to these actions as ”executive orders”). One imposes a hiring freeze on federal workers, except for military positions and in the case of national security. The other action reinstates the   Mexico City policy, a rule that began in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was president. As NPR has reported, the policy ”blocked federal funding for international family planning charities unless they agreed not to ’promote’ abortion by, among other actions, providing patients with information about the procedure or referrals to providers who perform it.” The TPP, as it’s known, is a trade agreement with 12 Pacific Rim nations. It was never ratified by the U. S. because of congressional opposition but was strongly backed by the Obama administration. It would create a free trade area stretching from Japan to Chile, and it was seen as an effort to create a counterweight to China, which is not a party to the agreement. During the campaign, Trump called the TPP ”a horrible deal” and a ”potential disaster” that would hurt U. S. workers and companies. His action on TPP is Trump’s first effort to address the concerns over trade that helped propel him to the Oval Office, and there are many more expected. He is expected to begin talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In a meeting with business leaders Monday morning, Trump said, ”We want to make our products here.” He also vowed to retaliate against businesses that close U. S. factories in favor of foreign plants. ”If you go to another country,” Trump said, ”we are going to be imposing a very major border tax.” Trump said that right now, ”we don’t have free trade because we’re the only one that makes it easy to come into the country.”"
"For President Trump, the easy part is over. During the 2016 campaign, Trump slammed the U. S. national security and foreign policy establishment as run by people who were ”so dumb,” ”predictable” and played for ”a bunch of suckers.” Now he owns it. Trump’s inauguration makes him responsible for responding to hot spots and crises around the world  —   challenges that scale from the risk of an individual terrorist attacking inside the U. S. to the danger of a nuclear standoff with Russia. The new president is still assembling the team that will help him. Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last Thursday the new administration has asked more than 50 senior deputy and assistant leaders to stay in place through the transition, including Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work Brett McGurk, the top U. S. envoy for the fight against ISIS, and Nick Rasmussen, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. As the Trump team continues to take shape, here are seven tough international challenges it will face. 1. North Korea,  The Defense Department won’t confirm press reports that North Korea could soon   a ballistic missile that might be capable of hitting the U. S. with a nuclear warhead. But Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the military would be ”ready” no matter what. He urged Pyongyang not to misread the change of authority in the U. S. as an opening to make what he called a ”provocative act.” ”We’ll continue to be prepared as we go through this transition,” Cook said. North Korea has demonstrated that it can detonate nuclear weapons and that it can fire ballistic missiles. It’s now trying to build a weapon small enough to fit on a missile effective enough to hit the U. S. or on one of its existing rockets that could target South Korea or Japan. The U. S. has treaty alliances with both nations, and they host some 80, 000 U. S. troops. Although the North has attempted and failed launches in the past, national security watchers in Washington warn that the unsuccessful tests are ultimately productive because they help Pyongyang learn. As NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly reported, intelligence officers in Washington warn the North Korea nuclear missile threat is the one that doesn’t get enough attention. 2. China, Trump’s dealings with China might be the most consequential bilateral relationship of his presidency, given the size of the economic, diplomatic and military intricacies. They’re off to a rocky start. Beijing was angry about Trump’s   phone call with the president of Taiwan  —   which was seen as a challenge to the   ”One China” policy. Then there was the seizure of a U. S. underwater drone from an oceanographic survey ship that helps the U. S. Navy search for foreign submarines. China returned the ”glider” after Washington demanded it back, but it was another reminder by Beijing that it considers the East and South China Seas its own, even though the U. S. and the other countries in the neighborhood say they are international waters with competing claims. China has been building up reefs and creating artificial islands in the area to bolster its claims of ownership. Washington says none of that construction changes the laws that keep the waterways open. But tension seems likely to remain a recurring theme. 3. Afghanistan,  Trump and his new aides have barely spoken about their plans for America’s   war, which has now gone on for more than 15 years. Barack Obama hoped he could end his presidency with only a small detachment of U. S. troops there, but gains by the insurgent Taliban forced him to freeze the planned drawdown and hand Trump a deployment of more than 8, 500 troops. New combat units are gearing up to deploy to Afghanistan this year to fight insurgents for ground the U. S. has already gained and lost, especially in the south. The dilemma is that Afghanistan’s government probably can’t survive without American financial and military support. Trump suggested in an interview last summer that the security situation might mean he had no choice but to continue with the   American deployments to Afghanistan. ”I think you have to stay and do the best you can,” he told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. ”Not that it’s ever going to be great, but I don’t think we have much of a choice.” 4. Iraq, The Pentagon says Iraq’s army  —   with significant American support  —   is making progress in its fight against the Islamic State. The terrorist group is at risk of losing its northern stronghold in Mosul, the last city that is even partly under its control. But even if the heavy fighting ends in Iraq, there will be political challenges for the U. S. the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government based in Irbil. Who will be in charge? Who will provide security? What role will neighboring Turkey and Iran play in Iraq? Can Iraq’s mostly Shiite government provide credible governance to the Sunni areas? If Iraq reverts to the sectarian divisions so prevalent before the rise of ISIS, that could undermine any battlefield victory over the extremist group. 5. Syria,  The buildup of forces has begun for an assault on the Islamic State’s capital of Raqqa, in northern Syria. With no support from the host government and no major nearby bases from which to support the combatants, the effort depends on small groups of American special operators training and arming thousands of local Kurdish and Arab fighters. The Pentagon under Obama said it was confident it could make the effort work, but Trump and his choice for defense secretary, retired Gen. James Mattis, may seize the opportunity to step things up. Mattis recently said he wanted to ”energize” the war. Mattis did not give specifics, but the U. S. could, for example, give American warplanes greater latitude in attacking ISIS  —   although that could also bring greater risks of civilian casualties. Or the new administration could deploy more U. S. forces beyond the current 600 or so special operators now in Syria. The potential upside is that more American power could deal a decisive blow to ISIS. The potential downsides are the risks to American forces and local populations, and the ultimate question about what comes next  —   whether the U. S. would wind up trying to extricate itself from another Middle Eastern war. 6. Libya,  Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U. S. has deplored ”ungoverned spaces” around the world. Yet the U. S. helped create another one in Libya, which has been lawless since 2011, when the U. S. and European military operations helped rebels oust dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Libya has become a refuge for Islamic State fighters, and American troops have responded with airstrikes and other operations. The latest took place Jan. 18, when Air Force   Spirit bombers killed an estimated 80 ISIS fighters in desert camps outside the coastal city of Sirte. The U. S. is supporting one of the groups that hope to form a new government in Libya, but under Obama it did not make a major effort. Trump’s team must decide how much energy it wants to expend on trying to establish order in Libya. 7. Eastern Europe,  The nations of Eastern Europe are nervous. Russian forces invaded Ukraine in 2014, and others, including Poland and the Baltic States, worry they could be next in the crosshairs. Trump says he wants a better relationship with Russia and that if, based on public comments, Russian President Vladimir Putin likes him, that’s a plus. What Eastern European nations fear is they’ll be the ones paying the price for any rapprochement. Obama committed to new demonstrations of military support for the Eastern European members of NATO, including regular rotations of troops for training exercises. Trump must decide whether to keep that up. And he is facing renewed pressure from the NATO allies and some advocates inside the U. S. to go even further and commit to full, permanent military bases. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, an Arizona Republican, asked Mattis at his confirmation hearing about whether he would support a ”permanent military presence in the Baltics.” Mattis said he would. Squaring that outlook with Trump, along with Mattis’ vocal support for NATO, will be one of the biggest stories of the first months of the new administration. Trump himself is sanguine about the world scene he will encounter, as he told The New York Post this week. ”I don’t think we’re going to be tested,” he said. ”I’m not a game player. They understand me.”"
"President Trump began his first full workweek in the White House by hosting a breakfast ”listening session” with business executives. In his opening remarks, Trump largely stuck to traditional Republican themes of lower taxes and reduced regulation. But he also reiterated his threat to impose a border tax on companies that move jobs overseas  —   a plan with little support from the president’s fellow Republicans in Congress. Trump said he hopes to hold similar meetings with business leaders on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly. ”We’ll get to know each other very well,” he told executives, including CEOs from Ford, U. S. Steel, Dow Chemical and Under Armour. The president renewed his campaign promise to reduce the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 or 20 percent. He suggested that for many businesses, a reduction in government regulation would be even more valuable. ”The problem with the regulation that we have right now is that you can’t do anything,” Trump said. ”It’s out of control. It’s gotten out of control.” The incoming administration has already ordered a freeze on new government regulations. Eventually, Trump said he’d like to eliminate about   of the existing rules. He argued that it’s possible to do that while still safeguarding workers and the environment. ”I’m a very big person when it comes to the environment,” Trump said. ”But some of that stuff makes it impossible to get anything built.” Trump sees both tax cuts and regulatory relief as ways to make doing business in the United States more attractive. ”What we want to do is bring manufacturing back to our country,” he said. ”It’s what the people wanted. It’s one of the reasons I’m sitting here instead of somebody else sitting here.” The United States has about 5 million fewer manufacturing jobs today than it did in 2000. The decline of   factory jobs contributed to Trump’s victory in Rust Belt states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Economists say most of the jobs losses result from automation, which allows American factories to churn out more products with fewer workers. But Trump tends to highlight   factory work that’s relocated to   countries such as China. He once again promised to punish American executives who shift jobs overseas. ”A company that wants to fire all of its people in the United Sates and build some factory someplace else, and then thinks that that product is just going to flow across the border into the United States, that’s not going to happen,” Trump said. ”They’re going to have a tax to pay, a border tax.” ”Some people would say that’s not free trade,” he added. ”But we don’t have free trade now,” pointing to barriers that other countries often erect to block U. S. imports. Congressional Republicans have been cool to Trump’s call for a border tax, which would complicate international supply chains and raise prices for U. S. consumers. But Trump told American business leaders there’s a simple alternative. ”All you have to do is stay,” he said. ”Don’t leave. Don’t fire your people in the United States.”"
"A doctor handed Melissa Morris her first opioid prescription when she was 20 years old. She’d had a cesarean section to deliver her daughter and was sent home with Percocet to relieve   pain. On an empty stomach, she took one pill and lay down on her bed. ”I remember thinking to myself, ’Oh, my God. Is this legal? How can this feel so good?’ ” Morris recalls. Soon, she started taking the pills recreationally. She shopped around for doctors who would write new prescriptions, frequenting urgent care clinics where doctors didn’t ask a lot of questions and were loose with their prescription pad. Morris’s path started with Percocet and Vicodin, commonly prescribed pain medications for acute injuries and illnesses. When those drugs no longer got her high, she switched to Oxycontin pills. Then she started injecting Oxycontin. After that, she got her hands on Fentanyl patches, a highly addictive and potent opioid. She’d chew on them instead of applying them to skin as the package directed. When doctors got wise to Morris’ shopping tactics, her supplies of the pills diminished, and she turned to heroin, instead. She started stealing to fund her addiction. Morris then got into the drug trade herself, dealing methamphetamine and other illicit substances, to raise money to buy more heroin. ”You can buy a gram of heroin for 50 bucks,” she says. It’s relatively cheap. ”That’s why so many people here have turned to heroin.” Morris lives in Sterling, Colo. a city of 14, 000 that’s a   drive northeast of Denver. The biggest employer is a state prison. Since 2002, the death rate from opioid overdoses in Logan County, which includes Sterling, has nearly doubled, according to data analyzed by the Colorado Health Institute. Morris says she has known at least 10 people in her community who have overdosed on a mix of drugs in the last few years. Sterling is far from unique. Rural areas and small cities across the country have seen an influx not only in the prevalence of prescription opioids, but in illicit ones like heroin. According to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in more than 33, 000 deaths in 2015  —   four times as many   deaths as in 2000. A recent University of Michigan study found the rates of babies born with symptoms of withdrawal from opioids rising much faster in rural areas than urban ones. Like Morris, many new heroin users find themselves using the drug after getting addicted to prescription drugs first. The CDC reports three out of four new heroin users report abusing prescription opioids prior to trying heroin. In the U. S.   deaths more than tripled between 2010 and 2015, with 12, 989 heroin deaths in 2015. As the drug use reaches into more communities across the country, researchers are scrambling to both diagnose what causes some people and some regions to be more susceptible to opioid abuse, and to devise solutions. Dr. Jack Westfall, a family physician and researcher at the University of Colorado and with the High Plains Research Network, works with a network of rural clinics and hospitals in the state. He says many doctors on the Plains are feeling frantic. ”We don’t know what to do with this wave of people who are using opioids,” he says. ”They’re in the clinic, they’re in the ER, they’re in the hospital. They’re in the morgue, because they overdosed.” For more than a decade, opioids have been a key part of a rural doctor’s pain management for patients, Westfall says. Treatment options are often fewer in a rural area alternatives like physical therapy may not be available or convenient, so drugs are a prime option. Some researchers think larger economic, environmental and social factors leave rural Americans at particular risk, says University of California, Davis, epidemiologist Magdalena Cerdá. After the 2008 recession, rural areas consistently lagged behind urban areas in the recovery, losing jobs and population. ”You have a situation where people might be particularly vulnerable to perhaps using prescription opioids to   a lot of symptoms of distress related to sources of chronic stress  —   chronic economic stress,” Cerdá says. Plus, the specific types of jobs more prevalent in rural areas  —   like manufacturing, farming and mining  —   tend to have higher injury rates. That can lead to more pain, and possibly, to more painkillers. In some ways, the social structures of rural regions contribute to the spread of illicit drugs, says Kirk Dombrowski, a sociologist at the University of  . ”One of the things that is counterintuitive to most of what we think of as [being part of life in] a small town is that rural people have much larger social networks than urban people,” Dombrowski says. In some cases, his research suggests, rural residents know and interact with roughly double the number of people an average urban resident does  —   giving rural people more opportunities to know where to access drugs. ”So some of those social factors of being in a small town can definitely contribute,” he says. ”It’s not a fundamentally rural problem,” says, Tom Vilsack, Barack Obama’s secretary for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, who led the Obama administration’s interagency push to curb opioid abuse. ”But it’s a unique problem in rural America because of the lack of treatment capacity and facilities.” That lack of treatment is definitely a problem in Sterling, where patients often have to drive a long way to get care. Melissa Morris relies on Suboxone, a prescription combination of buprenorphine and naloxone that’s used to help wean people off heroin or other opioids. Morris says she doesn’t get high when taking it, but does avoid the vomiting, diarrhea and sweating that comes with opioid withdrawal. She puts it under her tongue to let it dissolve and take effect. Morris, who has been off heroin since 2012, makes a   drive to a clinic to pick up her supply of Suboxone. It’s in short supply in many rural communities, in part because few rural doctors have gone through the required training to prescribe it. There’s there’s a   waiting list to get an appointment with the only doctor in Sterling who is certified to prescribe the drug, Morris says. Other areas of Colorado’s eastern Plains have no doctors at all who are legally able to dispense Suboxone. A new effort from University of Colorado researchers could help there, with plans to train 40 primary care doctors, their clinical care teams, and nurses in Colorado’s Plains and southern San Luis Valley. Morris acknowledges that close social ties in her town may have contributed to the spread of opioids there opioid users, she says, tend to ”stick up for each other.” Those bonds can spread drug use quickly, but they also cut other ways, she says. Just recently she recruited two   friends to the clinic she goes to weekly for treatment. ”I used to sell them pill and heroin,” says Morris, who is now helping these friends get clean. ”And so I do have hope. I’ve seen those success stories.” This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a collaborative public media project reporting on important stories in rural America."
"Ajit Pai, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, will be the country’s new chief telecommunications regulator. He’s a proponent of limited government and a   approach to regulations. Pai’s promotion within the FCC under the administration was long rumored and confirmed on Monday by his office. In a statement, Pai said he looked forward ”to working with the new Administration, my colleagues at the Commission, members of Congress, and the American public to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans.” On Twitter, Pai also added: ”There is so much we can do together to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans and to promote innovation and investment. From broadband to broadcast, I believe in a   version of Jefferson’s 2nd Inaugural: we are all Republicans, we are all Democrats.” Pai is a longtime Washington lawyer who has worked in the Senate, at the Justice Department and the FCC and had a stint at Verizon before becoming an FCC commissioner in 2012. As a regulator, he voted reliably against many policy proposals by former Democratic Chairman Tom Wheeler, including the contentious and   move to establish   net neutrality rules. Under Wheeler, the FCC moved to impose the     and   rules on Internet service providers in a way that put them under the   regulatory regime. (The agency’s Democratic majority later moved to leverage new oversight powers to set the first privacy restrictions for the ISPs, which Pai opposed.) Though the net neutrality rules  —   after years in limbo  —   have now been affirmed in court, Pai and his fellow Republican FCC commissioner Mike O’Rielly have indicated plans to revisit those Internet regulations as well as other FCC rules. ”In the months to come, we also need to remove outdated and unnecessary regulations,” Pai said in a speech in December. ”The regulatory underbrush at the FCC is thick. We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation.” The FCC is an independent   commission whose majority usually flips in party affiliation depending on the party of the president, who nominates the members. With a Republican majority under Pai  —   who has often made the case for   solutions  —   the FCC is expected to chart a deregulatory and fiscally conservative approach. As The New York Times points out, Pai’s view of competition in telecommunications drastically differs from that of his predecessor: ”Mr. Pai has said web firms such as Google and Facebook are competitors to wireless, cable and broadcast companies in voice calls, messaging and streaming video. The F. C. C. under Mr. Wheeler, Mr. Pai said, strapped too many rules on internet service providers without providing real evidence that consumers were harmed without regulations.” As commissioner, Pai put personal focus on several telecom issues, including a push to connect more rural communities to   Internet and a quest to help struggling AM radio stations. His FCC speeches were also known for clever pop culture references. In statements, industry groups praised Pai for his integrity and   leadership. Consumer advocacy groups decried him as reactionary and  . ”While he doesn’t always agree with our industry on every issue, he is both thoughtful and willing to listen,” the Internet Association chief, Michael Beckerman, said."
"On Jan. 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump became the 45th president of the United States. Between the inauguration Friday and the Women’s March on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people came to the nation’s capital to bear witness, protest and show support. Ten NPR video journalists spent two days around Washington, D. C. documenting the events. Here’s what they saw."
"Multiple destructive storm systems damaged property and killed at least 19 people over the weekend, and continued to batter much of the U. S. with rain, snow and wind today. All 19 reported deaths were in the South, where apparent tornadoes ripped through towns over the weekend, damaging and destroying buildings in multiple states. ”Trailers are just flat, just laid on top of people,” Debbie Van Brackel, a volunteer EMT in Adel, Ga. told the Atlanta   on Sunday. ”You need a bulldozer to pull it off. Trailers are upside down.” The newspaper reported that 15 people died in the southern part of the state, including seven people in a mobile home community in Adel and four people in the town of Albany, Ga. Patrick Marsh of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. told The Associated Press that 39 possible tornadoes were reported in the Southeast over the weekend. Of those, most were reported in Georgia. The governors of Mississippi and Georgia both declared states of emergency for portions of their states where the destruction was most profound. Mississippi Emergency Management Agency officials confirmed that an EF3 tornado struck three counties in the state, killing four people and injuring more than 50 in Forrest County, according to The   newspaper in Jackson. All four fatalities were in the town of Hattiesburg, the paper reported. In Palm Beach County, Fla. where the Sun Sentinel reported the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning overnight, the school district’s Twitter account announced that one of the county’s high schools would be closed Monday due to ”apparent tornado damage.” The NWS warned of winds as strong as 55 miles per hour on Monday morning. Also over the weekend, a separate rainstorm soaked Los Angeles and surrounding communities in Southern California. On Monday morning, a National Weather Service flash flood watch was still in effect for Los Angeles and Ventura counties. ”Coastal areas of Los Angeles County were among the hardest hit, with Long Beach Airport setting a new   rainfall record, 3. 87 inches,” the Los Angeles Times reported. ”The intense rain was too much for local roads. Sunday afternoon, both the 110 Freeway in Carson and the 710 Freeway in Long Beach were shutdown due to extreme flooding that left cars stranded like islands in a lake.” ”Today was very intense,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brett Albright told the Times on Sunday. ”It’s not a normal event.” The rain eroded hillsides, some them already weakened by wildfires, causing multiple mudslides. The Times noted that multiple cities had issued evacuation orders for neighborhoods near recent burns, including in Duarte, Santa Clarita and parts of hilly Santa Barbara County north of Los Angeles. A hill that broke away in Sierra County, Calif. buried most of a road, according to Caltrans, the state’s transportation agency. In Topanga Canyon north of Los Angeles, falling debris closed the road through the canyon on Sunday. At higher elevations, the precipitation fell as snow, closing Interstate 80 completely for a period overnight. And in the Northeast and   another storm was dumping rain and snow and battering coastal cities with wind on Monday. In New York City, ”A   warning is in effect until Tuesday, and with up to four inches of rain possible over the next couple of days, a flood watch and coastal flood advisory will take effect this afternoon,” The New York Times reported Monday. The National Weather Service warned of gusts up to 45 miles per hour for parts of Maryland, including Baltimore, and snow in the western part of the state all week. A winter storm warning is in effect for parts of central New York state and Pennsylvania until midday Tuesday, and the National Weather Service warned roads would be ”very dangerous,” asking residents in the affected areas to travel only in emergencies. Around State College, Pa. the NWS predicted between 6 and 10 inches of snow."
"If you book a tour of   Holland, the guide may take you to Volendam. It’s a picturesque village north of Amsterdam, with cobblestone streets, tulips and a little old lady selling the local delicacy, smoked eels, from a kiosk at the end of the pier. Volendam is a small but prosperous place, with waterfront homes and sailboats tied up at the docks. There’s almost full employment, and very few immigrants. About a dozen people NPR stopped on the street all used the same words to describe their town:  . Traditional. A good place to raise kids. It’s also a stronghold of the Netherlands’   Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders. He’s famous for     rhetoric. He promises to pull the Netherlands, one of Europe’s most prosperous countries, out of the European Union, if he’s elected this March. And he’s leading in the polls. ”It’s the same as [Donald] Trump. We never expected him to be U. S. president. But a little bit of revolution also here in the Netherlands is not wrong,” says Theo Stirk, who owns a   factory in Volendam. When you hear about populist movements, the stereotype might be America’s Rust Belt, where Trump carried the vote, or old mill towns in the north of England  —   many of which voted for Brexit, the British departure from the EU. But some of the same political ideas are gathering support in Volendam. It’s a bit of a contradiction for the Dutch, who’ve long defined themselves as open to the world  —   as history’s naval explorers and international bankers. The Netherlands welcomed and took in Jews more than 500 years ago, after the Spanish Inquisition. The world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia, used to be a Dutch colony. But many Wilders supporters in Volendam say globalization has gone too far. ”The Netherlands’ economy is founded on different people [since] the Middle Ages,” says Stirk, the fish factory owner. ”But if you allow them to come into your country, you must ask them to fit in our society and do the same things we are doing.” Stirk says he thinks religious Muslims don’t fit in and pose a threat to liberal values that have become synonymous with Holland: equality, gay rights, legalized drugs. On the sidelines of a youth soccer game at the Volendam field, coach Wem Krockman says he supports banning immigration because the Netherlands, with 17 million people, is already one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. ”You see all the fugitives coming by boats to Italy, to Turkey? They are looking for jobs, they are looking for houses,” Krockman says. ”There’s only one man in Holland who says, ’Take care, in 10 years, we’ll have a problem.’ We think he’s right.” That one man, he says, is Wilders. In his political speeches, the   leader invokes nostalgia for places like Volendam  —   for the traditional Holland many tourists come to see. But those traditions are fading. And it turns out the old Dutch identity the   likes to play up is pretty hard to define. Standing not far from Krockman is one of the soccer dads from the visiting team, Bulent Ozturk, who happens to be from an immigrant family. The Netherlands, Ozturk says, may be famous for tulips, clocks, wooden clogs and windmills, but its culture is similar to those of nearby European countries, like Germany or Denmark. In those countries, just like in little Volendam, there’s an increasingly vocal nostalgia for a white, Christian past that doesn’t include people like Ozturk. The   leader Wilders is riding that sentiment, and is forecast to win the most votes in the Netherlands’ election this March."
"Even though studies show kids whose fathers take an active part in their lives are less disruptive and better adjusted socially, most programs that aim to up parenting skills are geared towards mothers. And a lot of dads aren’t eager to sign up for parenting classes. So researchers at New York University created a parenting class for dads that wasn’t called a parenting class. Instead, it was pitched as academic readiness training for preschoolers. But the fathers, who were mostly     residents of New York City, did improve their parenting skills. And their children’s behavior language acquisition got a boost, too, the study finds. ”When someone tells you they’re in a parenting course, the first thing that comes to your mind is, ’Well, what’s wrong with their parenting?’ ” says Anil Chacko, an associate professor of counseling psychology at New York University and lead author on the study. ”It assumes there is some deficit present.” This study, published last week in the Journal of Clinical Child  Adolescent Psychology, recruited 126 fathers from three Head Start centers. (Head Start centers provide programs that look to increase school readiness in young children from   families.) From there, fathers were either asked to participate in eight weekly sessions lasting 90 minutes each, or put on a waitlist as a control. The program, Fathers Supporting Success in Preschoolers: A Community Parent Education Program, was deliberately framed as an   program for children and not as a parenting class. And because men are generally more reluctant to talk about their problems to others  —   from their physical health problems to their parenting insecurities  —   a program that took the focus from their potential deficits as parents to improving their kids’ academic potential was probably much more appealing, Chacko says. That could account for the whopping 79 percent attendance rate for the sessions, a number Chacko says is high for parenting programs for dads. In each session, fathers in groups of around 10 watched short videos of other fathers reading books with children, but with obvious, exaggerated errors. A father might count the wrong number of cows on a page, and ignore when the child counts the cows correctly. Then, the dads discussed how those mistakes could affect children. After the eight weeks of sessions, in which dads also read books together with their children both in Head Start and at home, both father and child benefited. Based on researchers’ observations and parent questionnaires, dads’ parenting skills —  like establishing routines, rewarding good behavior and ignoring   behavior —  improved by at least 30% compared to the dads on the class waitlist. Children’s overall behavior improved, too. And standardized tests showed a 30% increase in the children’s language development and school readiness. ”I’m very glad to see research on fathering and the engagement in men of child care and child development,” says Michael Addis, a professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts who was not involved with the work. ”It is understudied historically as a culture we have associated parenting with femininity.” He adds that this can make it difficult for men to present themselves as involved fathers, and is often why men get left out of parenting studies. While the findings are positive in the context of shared book reading, Chacko says his team also encouraged fathers to analyze other situations in daily life the same way. They are hoping that this could further improve kids’ social, emotional, and behavioral development. The researchers also note that while the methods in parenting programs typically don’t vary too widely, the way they’re presented to the community is crucial. While this presentation was successful in a particular slice of New York City’s population, it may not have reached families in other cultures or socioeconomic backgrounds. ”The challenge is not the science. We have a good sense of what the key parenting skills and behaviors are,” Chacko says. ”The real challenge is engaging parents  —   and it’s a huge challenge.”"
"Six million years ago, giant otters weighing more than 100 pounds lived among birds and water lilies in the wooded wetlands of China’s Yunnan province. That’s according to new research from a team of scientists who discovered a   cranium of the   species in an open lignite mine in 2010. They recently published their findings in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. The researchers concluded that this   prehistoric creature is ”two to three times larger than any modern otter species,” Denise Su, the head of paleobotany and paleoecology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, tells The  . The fossilized cranium was nearly complete, but flattened to about an inch and a half thick. ”The bones are pretty fragile, so we couldn’t really reconstruct it physically,” Su said. ”So what we did is we took CT scans of the cranium, and then we digitally reconstructed it.” The cranium was particularly interesting because it revealed that the animal’s teeth had ”some badger features,” Su explains. The species name Siamogale melilutra, is a nod to that  —   in Latin, meles means badger and lutra means otter. And the completeness of the cranium provided the researchers with important information about how otters evolved, Su said. It shed light on a dental mystery in particular. The giant otters possessed large bunodont, or   teeth. Scientists have wondered whether different species of otters inherited these teeth from a common ancestor, or evolved them separately because they were eating similar things  —   a process known as convergent evolution. But by comparing this specimen to modern and other fossil otters, Su says they found ”these bunodont teeth actually arose at least four different times within the greater otter lineage.” That finding suggests they emerged because of convergent evolution, rather than inheritance from a common ancestor. The scientists initially found other bones from the species in 2009, including an upper arm bone. Su remembers looking at that bone and thinking, ”This looks like an otter but it’s huge. . .. Is this really an otter?” There are big questions about why the animal was so large and how it moved on land and in water. ”A lot of times in modern carnivores, the large size is partly due to subduing prey, so their prey is bigger and the carnivores also get bigger,” Su explains. But the scientists think that this animal likely ate small creatures such as mollusks  —   so, ”why the big size?”"
"Updated at 3 p. m. ET on Jan. 27, There has been a lot of arguing about the size of crowds in the past few days. Estimates for President Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March a day later vary widely. And for crowd scientists, that’s pretty normal. ”I think this is expected,” says Mubarak Shah, director of the Center for Research in Computer Vision at the University of Central Florida. Shah says he encountered something similar during mass protests in Barcelona, Spain a couple of years ago. ”The government was claiming smaller number than the opposition was claiming,” he says. Counting quarrels have popped up during previous events in the U. S. as well. During the Million Man March in 1995, the National Park Service estimated the crowd to be far smaller than the organizers claimed. The controversy led Congress to bar the Park Service from doing head counts on the National Mall. The reason that disagreements frequently arise is that there’s no foolproof way to get an accurate head count of a large crowd. Decades ago, crowd estimates were done by people who simply looked at photographs of an event. They would count the number of people in one small area of a photo, then extrapolate that number to estimate the entire field of view. This method was inaccurate, though, in part because some areas might have lots people packed together, while others would have just a few people with large spaces between them. Computers have improved counting somewhat. They don’t suffer fatigue the way humans do, and a computer doesn’t have any political bias, Shah says. But even computers have limits, says Dinesh Manocha of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They have no problem sorting a few people who aren’t packed together. But when you have big crowds, like those seen across the country in the past few days, it gets tricky. ”When it’s more than 100, 000, we just can’t estimate right. We don’t have an answer today,” he says. It often comes down to image resolution. Manocha says even professional cameras only capture about 40 million pixels. So if there are one million people, each person will appear as a   smudge. A company called Digital Design  Imaging Service, is actually trying to make an estimate of attendance at the Womens’ March. They used   cameras attached to a tethered balloon to take photos of the marchers. Even with his   surveillance system, Curt Westergard, the company’s president, says he doesn’t expect to get a precise figure. Clouds meant the company couldn’t supplement their own photos with satellite images. And the number of people changed constantly throughout the day. ”Our main goal really on this just to ascertain a rough order of magnitude,” he says. ”So if somebody says a million vs. 100, 000 we can easily prove one or the other.” On Friday, Westergard said his company estimated some 440, 000 people were on the National Mall and surrounding streets for the Women’s March. The firm will also share its raw data so that others can try to make their own estimates. ”We can and do make all of our data transparent. We put it online,” he says. ”If you don’t like what we said, count it yourself, and here’s the data.”"
"LeRoy Rodgers spends plenty of time in the Florida Everglades  —   mainly in airboats. He works for the South Florida Water Management District. On a recent day, he eases his boat alongside a tree island. He doesn’t like some of the changes he’s seen, so he pulls a pair of clippers from a bag and hops over the side. Rodgers will need the clippers to cut a path through the Old World climbing fern that has almost swallowed the island. ”A   deer trying to make your way through this,” he says. ”You can see how difficult it would be.” The fluorescent green fern is everywhere. It cascades from trees, its vines weaving a thick mat near the ground obstructing every step. Florida has long battled invasive species: Burmese pythons, feisty lizards from Argentina, Cuban tree frogs. Now another pest is tormenting the state: the Old World climbing fern. The tenacious fern is toppling trees as it swamps the state. It also threatens to derail a national wildlife refuge. Rodgers says the tree islands dotting the sawgrass prairie here in the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge are where birds and other wildlife forage and nest. He takes the fern in his hand. ”That’s where the spores are produced. . .. You see they’re everywhere,” he says. ”So there are spores by the billions all around us right now, and that’s the other part that makes this plant so invasive.” The Old World climbing fern first appeared in Florida as an ornamental plant and is native to Africa, Asia and Australia. With no natural predators here it grew unchecked. The fern stands to take down more than tree islands. Its grip on Loxahatchee has prompted the state to threaten to terminate its lease authorizing the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage the land. That’s strenuously opposed by environmental groups in a region where a   environmental restoration is underway, the nation’s largest ever. ”I think it is the worst invasive species that Florida has faced in a very long time,” says Cheryl Millett of the Nature Conservancy. Millett considers herself on the front line of the fern’s march north. She is part of a team of government agencies and private landowners monitoring its spread in central Florida. She steps among the pine trees of an   conservation area in a residential neighborhood near Orlando. The fern flows from trees like a waterfall. Crews control the fern by spraying it with herbicide and hacking at it with machetes, leaving the vines overhead to die. It’s exhausting work. Back in Loxahatchee, the South Florida Water Management District’s Rodgers says biologists are trying other ways to corral the fern  —   including experimenting with a moth and mite found where the fern originates and that feed only on the plant. A longer version of this story is available at WMFE."
"Early in the morning of March 24, 2016, a    Palestinian shoemaker named Imad Abu Shamsiyeh was having coffee with his wife, Fayzia, at their home in the West Bank city of Hebron. They heard shots being fired outside. Instead of seeking cover, they grabbed Abi Shamsiyeh’s video camera and ran to the roof of their house. He immediately started filming, zooming on the street below. ”I saw someone lying on the ground,” Abu Shamsiyeh says. ”I wasn’t sure if he was Israeli or Palestinian. Blood was gushing from him.” The man was Abed Fatah   a    Palestinian who had been shot and badly wounded after he stabbed an Israeli soldier. Sharif lay nearly motionless. Then a soldier shot him in the head from close range. Abu Shamsiyeh sent his video to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, which verified and published the video on its website. ”One of the aspects of the video that is quite shocking is seeing how apathetic the other soldiers are, like nothing has happened,” says B’Tselem spokesman Amit Gilutz. ”Like a very casual thing to take place, shooting a Palestinian who is laying on the floor motionless in the head.” The video went viral. It was shown during the trial of Sgt. Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier who shot Sharif. A military court convicted Azaria of manslaughter earlier this month. The court will hear arguments on sentencing Tuesday. The case deeply divided Israelis. Polls show most want Azaria pardoned. Abu Shamsiyeh, a father of seven, says he’s been filming violence in Hebron for five years, spurred by what’s happened to his own family. ”My daughter was injured by settlers, my two sons and wife were attacked and put in jail, I was attacked and put in jail,” he says. ”We’ve been the target of a lot of violence by the sheer fact that we live here.” They live practically adjacent to an enclave of Jewish settlers near the center of Hebron, a sprawling city of more than 200, 000, the largest in the West Bank. The proximity breeds conflict between the two sides, but Abu Shamsiyeh tells young Palestinians that cameras are much more powerful weapons than stones, knives or fists. ”We want to change that in our children,” he says. ”We tell them, use your camera to show what’s happening here. Do not use violence.” Abu Shamsiyeh uses a video camera donated by American activists and volunteers with a Palestinian group called Human Rights Defenders. He used to volunteer with B’Tselem, which he admires for archiving the work of volunteer videographers like himself. At a recent training session at his home, Abu Shamsiyeh shows two young girls how to film a steady video using their phones. Nida Abu Haikal, an    in a glittery red sweater, lives near a military checkpoint. She says she had a revelation after she got into a fight with a settler boy a couple of years older than her. ”[He] said bad words to me,” she says. ”I got mad and hit him. But what did that do? Nothing. He actually hit me back and pulled my hair. I should have just taken a picture.” But the videography now works both ways. Just down the street, Israeli settler Tzipi Schlissel is also taking video. She’s zooming in on a Palestinian man arguing with an Israel soldier who’s asking for his ID. ”This Arab man getting close to the soldiers, it could be some provocation,” she says. The Palestinians ”come and try to yell at the soldiers and doing some provocation, so I’m prepared. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes it’s really things that are not good.” Schlissel’s father, a prominent rabbi, was stabbed to death in 1998 by a Palestinian. ”I see what they’re doing, taking pictures and videos of us, taking things out of connections,” or context, she says. Schlissel posts her own videos on YouTube. She says she wants more settlers here to document violence, especially after Abu Shamsiyeh’s video of the soldier got so much attention. ”I can’t do it all the time and I can’t be everyplace always, but I think this is part of the war now,” she says. Abu Shamsiyeh says he’s received death threats because of his video but will keep on filming. In the coming weeks, he’s also training students at four schools in the Hebron area to use cameras to document conflict."
"It is a very attractive truffle. It’s made of the usual ingredients  —   cocoa butter, sugar, chocolate  —   with a    addition. Thirty grams of dried tomatoes from Nigeria. And it was served at the World Economic Forum last week in Davos, Switzerland, with a very specific goal in mind: ”to raise awareness on food waste and hunger,” as stated in a press release. That’s a big job for a bonbon  —   and it’s the reason for the tomatoes. According to U. N. sources, up to 75 percent of the 1. 5 million tons of tomatoes harvested in Nigeria each year are ”lost.” That can mean a number of things, from rotting in the field to falling off the truck on the way to market. The Roca brothers, three Spanish chefs who are U. N. goodwill ambassadors, created the chocolate. ”We are exploring food preservation techniques, such as the dried tomatoes used in this chocolate that can reduce food waste and create new market opportunities for young farmers,” explains Joan Roca, one of the brothers. ”Preserving tomatoes is our first goal.” They named the candy ”Bombon Kaduna.” Bombon is the Spanish spelling of bonbon. Kaduna is a big   region in Nigeria. We interviewed some experts on food and hunger to get their thoughts on the candy campaign. ”It strikes me as a kind of silly representation of concern about global hunger,” says Christopher Barrett, a professor at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and author of a paper titled ”Food loss and waste in   Africa.” We got a similar reaction from Mark Bittman, the cookbook author who is now a lecturer at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, specializing in health policy and food issues: ”I mean, come on!” Bittman finds no fault with the recipe. Using food that might otherwise be wasted is a good thing, he agrees. And tomatoes can be sweet and chewy, so why not add them to a truffle? But, he says, ”This is not a recipe that is going to have any impact on world hunger and on poor and starving people. What they need is money to buy food.” The U. N. defends its candy: ”There is nothing trivial” about finding new ways to use local ingredients and, in the process, cutting down on food waste, a spokesman said. But does reclaiming ”lost” food really help feed hungry people? ”As stated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,” the U. N. spokesman told Goats and Soda, ”up to   of all food in the world is spoiled or squandered. This is unacceptable at a time where almost a billion people suffer from hunger.” Barrett isn’t sure statistics about food loss can ever be 100 percent accurate because food is lost or wasted in so many ways that are hard to track. If a bag of tomatoes falls off a truck, who notices? And sometimes food loss is unavoidable, he points out  —   say, if the product becomes unsafe to consume. He also does not think reclaiming lost food is a top priority in the war against hunger. ”We couldn’t find a single study demonstrating that dollars spent on food waste reduction after harvest are dollars well spent,” says Barrett. Why not spend the money on other   goals that will help farmers and hungry people, he suggests: say, breeding   into rice or paving a road so farmers can more easily get their food to market. But despite these concerns, maybe the chocolate fulfilled its mission. Its aim was to get people talking about hunger  —   and that’s exactly what we’re doing in this blog post."
"For a man with a mural of an oil refinery in his office, deciding to sue the oil and gas industry wasn’t an easy choice. But it was a necessary one for Guy McInnis, the president of Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish, just south of New Orleans. On a recent day, McInnis stands overlooking Lake Borgne. Now an open lake, the area was once prime wetlands and marshlands that protected St. Bernard from storm surge. It took a big hit during Hurricane Katrina. Oil companies would dig through the marshy area to get to their shallow water wells. ”They would dig a ditch to get their boat to the oil well, and that ditch was not replaced or filled in at the end of the time that they used that oil well,” McInnis says. These small channels created mazes through the marshes that eventually eroded into open water. New projections say Louisiana is losing land much faster than officials thought. Each mile of land that washes into the Gulf of Mexico costs the state industry, infrastructure and populations are all disrupted. Now, it has a plan to fight coastal land loss, but needs an estimated $90 billion to do it. An oil and gas state, Louisiana has long relied on money from offshore sales to fund part of its budget. But the $90 billion price tag will require support from Congress. That’s why the state’s new Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, is urging officials like McInnis to sue oil and gas companies for that damage. ”Before we can ever have any hope of asking taxpayers around the country to come to Louisiana and help us restore our coast, we have to be able to show them that we did everything that we could, reasonably, that is within our power,” Edwards says. ”And certainly, you can’t do that if you don’t hold those people accountable who damaged the coast to begin with.” Edwards has said all the coastal parishes should file suits, or he’ll do it for them. But the governor’s controversial idea is facing roadblocks. Some parishes are resistant to suing the companies, which include powerhouses like ExxonMobil and Shell. On top of this, the state attorney general is attempting to stop the process. Gifford Briggs, the acting president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, an industry lobbying group, says he doesn’t think the lawsuits are necessary. ”We believe these lawsuits are driving investment out of Louisiana into other states and other communities [and] that it’s harmful to Louisiana,” he says. Briggs says the state should do its job by enforcing its own   permit requirements, rather than turning to the courts. It’s bad for business, he says. Gov. Edwards’ top lawyer, Matthew Block, disagrees. ”This is not about demonizing the oil and gas industry,” he says. Although oil and gas is the most important industry in the state, ”that does not mean that we cannot hold the oil and gas industry responsible for destruction of the coast,” Block says. By some estimates, oil companies cause 60 percent of Louisiana’s land loss. If one or more of the suits succeeds, the industry could owe billions of dollars. Rob Verchick, an environmental law professor at Loyola University, says these suits could set an example. Many other states face problems like land loss and erosion. ”And they are struggling right now to address these issues,” he says. ”And so these lawsuits are going to occur whether our lawsuits in Louisiana go forward or not.”"
"  people have been arrested across Europe for allegedly trafficking stolen art and archaeological relics, according to Spanish police who led the investigation. Interpol and the U. N.’s culture agency, UNESCO, helped in the investigation, as did the European policing agency Europol and the World Customs Organization, according to a statement by UNESCO. The statement noted the arrests took place back in November, but were not made public until late last week. Neither Spanish authorities nor the international bodies involved in the investigation said why they had not previously disclosed the arrests. Lauren Frayer reported for NPR from Madrid: ”Spanish police say the suspects are members of criminal gang that trafficked stolen art and archaeological relics. They have been under investigation for months, by law enforcement from 18 countries, led by Spain and Cyprus. ”Altogether, police say they have recovered about 3, 500 pieces of stolen art  —   including Byzantine relics and an Ottoman tombstone in Greece. Among those found in Spain were 19 artifacts stolen from an archaeology museum three years ago. Police have not issued a complete inventory, but said most of the artifacts were taken from countries at war.” UNESCO said authorities in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria,   Herzegovina, Cyprus, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland and the U. K. all participated in the investigation. The operation was known as ”Pandora.” Spanish authorities recovered some of the coins pictured above by tracing online sales, but ”would not confirm where the arrests were made,” The New York Times reported. ”In the southern Spanish city of Murcia, the police recovered about 500 archaeological pieces, including 19 stolen from the city’s archaeological museum in 2014,” the Times wrote. UNESCO said 92 new investigations had also been opened, following searches conducted as part of the Pandora operation."
"For years now, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we’ve been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games. So we’re running an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective. I have always loved Westerns. When I was a kid, I’d watch them with my dad. Saturday afternoons on the couch in the living room. In the weird formlessness of Sunday nights. He had a kind of magic, my dad. This ability to squirm around in the upper reaches of the cable channels and, like he had some kind of personal   deal with the gods of static and strangeness, pull down all kinds of oddities. I watched Jeremiah Johnson with him a dozen times, and A Man Called Horse. I saw Duck, You Sucker! when I was too young to understand anything more than the motorcycles and the dynamite and The Missouri Breaks when I was too young to understand anything at all. I still consider The Outlaw Josey Wales one of the most perfect American stories ever told. But it isn’t my favorite. No, my favorite Western of all time? The grand horse opera that eclipses them all? That would be Red Dead Redemption. No, really. I’m at least 95 percent serious here, and I will fight you. Among all video games, it remains (at six years old now, with a sequel in the works) one of the most physically gorgeous and emotionally layered. Look, if we take as fact that Westerns are the American literary counterpoint to the   and circular repetition of the Campbellian Hero’s Journey in European high fantasy  —   that, like jazz or cubism, the Western exists to turn classical form inside out in an attempt at telling a truer story by beginning with the hero, broken by his labors, and attempting (almost always) to get a fresh throw of fate’s dice  —   then Red Dead is a bonafide masterpiece. As John Marston  —   tragic hero,   farmer’s son, a thief and murderer trying to buy forgiveness by thieving and murdering now for different masters  —   I have ridden with Mexican revolutionaries and been betrayed by my best friends. I have watched the buzzards circle over men dead by my hand and the sun rise over distant mountains, played   poker with an ace always tucked in my boot, and crouched behind a Gatling gun, sighting through the smoke. Red Dead Redemption is my favorite Western because it is all Westerns  —   because there is no trope, no archetype, no theme or motif that it doesn’t lift, polish and spin into its huge tale of love, violence, revenge and salvation. It begins (in an opening chapter called, aptly, ”Exodus In America”) with a train ride. With the embodiment of Western modernity carrying the scarred and sullen gunslinger into an onrushing future he is unprepared to face. Marston is being escorted against his will by government agents to the frontier town of Armadillo where his task  —   the sole driving force of a   plot  —   is laid out. As a young man, Marston ran with a gang of outlaws. Bad men who did bad things. He escaped, married, had a son. But now, if he ever wants to see his family again, he must hunt down and kill or capture his former friends at the behest of the government. Which he attempts, straight off. He finds one of them and offers him the chance to surrender. At which point Marston is killed. Or nearly killed, anyway. Shot in the belly and left to die, he is rescued (by a   packing rancher’s daughter) and set on his path with a pure and righteous fury. No child set   to gain knowledge, slay monsters and bring home boons, Marston is a monster himself,   now seeking an honest vengeance against other monsters. The game milks this simple plot architecture across hours and days and months. But rather than appearing thin, Red Dead uses every opportunity to deepen the connections between characters thrown together by circumstance and to gild its skeletal frame with what eventually becomes a remarkable tale of freedom versus servitude and the senselessness of violence used to solve violence begetting only more violence. And it does it all with dialogue  —   or most of it, anyway. What the game can’t accomplish with beautiful, mournful music cues and   gunslinging, it does with a series (dozens, hundreds) of conversations on horseback or front porches, brilliantly written, blazing with style and instantly recognizable voices. The acting is stellar, but Red Dead lives and dies by its words  —   by the lilt of the drunken Irish   and the gruff, bloody philosophy of the grizzled old sheriff. Even knowing how it ends (as Marston does, right from the story’s first moments) Red Dead, like all great Westerns, has a velocity of narrative that is, ultimately, undeniable. There is badness in the world, and it must be met with badness. There is innocence, and it must be defended fiercely. There is a world out there that is moving on  —   spawning revolution upon revolution, a glorious modernity that will outpace us all  —   and it must be met  . In talking of his son, Marston says it himself, speaking his wish for a future beyond the pixels of his narrative universe: ”He ain’t gonna to be no frontier gunslinger, killing and running in no gang though. That way’s over. Railroads and government and motor cars and everything gone and done away with all of that.” And of course, by the end of his story, it has gone and done away with John Marston, too. Jason Sheehan is an   a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book."
"Every day, Border Grill restaurant at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas uses a case of tomatillos and at least a case of cilantro. The tomatillos go into dishes like the pozole verde, a spicy stew with chicken and hominy. The cilantro goes into the green rice, the guacamole, the Yucatan pork roasted in banana leaves and just about everything else. ”The Mexican kitchen is very produce heavy,” says Border Grill    Mary Sue Milliken. A lot of the ingredients that she and partner Susan Feniger use most frequently also suffer the greatest in transit. Radishes, jicama, that delicate cilantro, they all die so fast, Milliken says. Nearly every last piece of produce in the kitchen and on the plate at Border Grill’s two Las Vegas locations comes from somewhere else. Most of it is trucked in from California  —   farm to table, with some freeway in between. But as winter takes hold across the country, a new farm is working to change that. Come spring, Milliken and other chefs like her will be able to source fresh fruits and vegetables harvested blocks from the Las Vegas Strip. Last July, Urban Seed broke ground on its first farm, an assemblage of   greenhouses located on a small plot of land smack in the center of Las Vegas. Eventually the space will hold six    greenhouses  that will produce 25 different crops, from bell peppers to beets to alpine strawberries. If an agriculture company launching in the desert sounds counterintuitive, that’s entirely the point. ”The whole world thinks Vegas can’t grow food,” says Rachel Wenman, vice president of Urban Seed. ”We really feel that if you can grow food in Las Vegas, then you can grow food anywhere.” Urban Seed will be the largest local farm in terms of yield, but isn’t the first company to attempt farming in the desert. An Australian farm made headlines last fall for growing produce using   greenhouses and seawater desalinated onsite. The Sahara Forest Project has constructed   greenhouses in Qatar and is working on a new farm in Jordan. In Las Vegas, the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension has a   outdoor research orchard, and Las Vegas Herbs grows hydroponic microgreens in a    greenhouse.  Urban Seed, however, is taking a different approach. The company’s strategy for growing in Las Vegas, where summer temperatures regularly top 110 degrees and annual rainfall amounts to just over four inches, is based around a proprietary aeroponic system focused on producing large amounts of food using limited space and resources. The growing system layers plants vertically, but unlike the vertical indoor farms catching on in other cities, its Las Vegas location will be single story and will rely on the area’s plentiful sunlight  —   not artificial LED lights. To develop Urban Seed’s technology, a team of growers and engineers spent years in research and development, testing various indoor farming methods like aquaponics and hydroponics. Eventually they arrived at their current model, where plants are stacked inside of   and grown aeroponically, with roots suspended in the air and water and nutrients delivered via fog. Each varietal gets its own custom nutrient mix, a   smoothie to mimic optimal growing conditions. ”They get the exact environment, the exact nutrients that they need,” says Wenman. Each   is also a closed loop that recaptures and recycles excess moisture. While a conventionally grown head of lettuce uses about 13 gallons of water to reach maturity, in an Urban Seed greenhouse, lettuce will grow on just 22 ounces, based on testing of the technology at facilities in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Arizona. Stacking the plants also maximizes growing space. In a    area, Wenman projects that Urban Seed will be able to grow more than 500 heads of lettuce in 30 days, compared with roughly 50 lettuce heads that might grow during that time on a traditional outdoor farm. That number might sound hyperbolic, but it’s actually pretty conservative when you compare it to estimates for vertical indoor farms currently getting lots of buzz. In Newark, for example, AeroFarms claims    yields that are 130 times those of field farms. ”In the same amount of space indoors, you can raise 10 to 100 times what you can do outdoors,” says Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor emeritus at Columbia University and author of The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century. Although Urban Seed’s founders call their model a vertical farm, Despommier  —   who literally wrote the book on the subject  —   doesn’t think the term applies because its buildings in Las Vegas are single story. The key benefit to growing indoors is the controlled environment: no variance in weather, water, temperature or humidity, no pesky insects, no pests raiding the field for free snacks. When that indoor farm is placed in an urban center, there’s also no   shipping, cutting down on the carbon footprint and allowing food to be harvested at peak ripeness, when it tastes the best and packs the most nutritious punch. With about 42 million annual visitors and a local population of around 2 million, as a test market, Las Vegas is ripe for new sources of produce. ”The longer the produce has to sit in the field and then in the warehouse and then [go through] three or four middlemen and then, finally, getting into the hands of chefs, the more flavor that is lost along the way,” says Border Grill’s Milliken, who is part of Urban Seed’s culinary advisory board. When the company begins harvesting in spring or early summer, its first customers will be chefs who’ll turn the morning’s harvest into the evening’s menu. ”Just by virtue of the proximity and the freshness it should be better than everything I’m buying, says Milliken. ”Having that proximity gives us an opportunity for the flavor to be enhanced so much.”"
"The American Library Association announced its annual children’s book awards Monday. While the Caldecott and Newbery medals are the best known of these honors, this year, one of the   awards might attract the most attention. That’s because the Coretta Scott King Award for best   author went to Rep. John Lewis and his collaborator Andrew Aydin for March: Book Three, the third installment in the civil rights leader’s graphic memoir. Lewis’ book also won three other awards from the library association  —   the first time an author has won that many awards in a single year. In November, March won a National Book Award. But more recently, it was in the news after Lewis questioned the legitimacy of President Trump’s election. Trump later tweeted that Lewis is ”all talk  —   no action.” That provoked a passionate defense of the congressman from Georgia who has worked his entire life for civil rights  —   and helped push his book to the top of Amazon’s   list. A Coretta Scott King Award is also given to the best   illustrator, and this year’s went to Javaka Steptoe for Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist   Basquiat. Steptoe also won the prestigious Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book. His book tells the story of Basquiat who began his career as a graffiti artist, rose to prominence in the 1980s and died at the age of 27 from a drug overdose. The Newbery Medal for outstanding contribution to children’s literature went to Kelly Barnhill for The Girl Who Drank the Moon, a fantasy novel for middle school readers. A review in The New York Times compared it to such classics as Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz. Books that win the Newbery and the Caldecott sometimes do go on to become children’s classics. Past winners of the Newbery include A Wrinkle in Time and Bridge to Terabithia. Caldecott winners include Make Way for Ducklings, Where the Wild Things Are and The Polar Express."
"BADBADNOTGOOD made a name for itself by reworking songs from the likes of Nas and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, eventually catching the attention of Odd Future leader Tyler, the Creator. The masses took notice in 2015 when the group produced an entire LP for Ghostface Killah, Sour Soul. BADBADNOTGOOD has been called a   ensemble, but its foundation is clearly jazz, which provides a gateway to countless genres. On IV, the group allows that gateway to widen, adding soul and funk to the repertoire. Still only in their 20s, the band’s members never seemed intimidated by the intimate nature of the Tiny Desk if anything, it accentuated their enthusiasm. This was their zone. They played three selections from IV  —   including ”Cashmere,” which only slightly veered from the studio version, and ”In Your Eyes,” which features Charlotte Day Wilson’s vocals. The tight arrangement allowed Wilson to hover gently above the instrumentation, showing off the band’s most promising work to date. It was a pleasure to have BADBADNOTGOOD at the desk for IV  —   and exciting to imagine what’s in store for V, VI and beyond. IV is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) ”And That, Too.” ”In Your Eyes” (Feat. Charlotte Day Wilson) ”Cashmere” Alexander Sowinski (drums) Chester Hansen (bass) Leland Whitty (sax, flute, guitar) James Hill (piano) Charlotte Day Wilson (vocals). Producers: Bobby Carter, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Colin Marshall, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jenny Gathright Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"As congressional Republicans begin work on repealing the Affordable Care Act, many of the nation’s governors want to make sure that their state budgets don’t take a hit during the dismantling process. They’re most concerned about Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor that’s run jointly by the states and federal government. As a result of a Supreme Court decision, states were allowed to decide whether they would expand Medicaid under the ACA 14 million people have gained health insurance coverage through Medicaid since eligibility for the program was expanded. While 19 states declined the expansion, primarily because of the opposition of Republican governors and lawmakers, 11 Republican governors did choose to expand the program. Now they’re lobbying to keep their citizens covered and billions of dollars of federal Medicaid money flowing. Among them is Ohio Gov. John Kasich who, along with several other Republican governors, met with GOP members of the Senate Finance Committee last week for a   discussion about the health care law. Kasich has been anything but quiet on the subject. In a letter to congressional leaders, Kasich recommended that Medicaid expansion not be repealed, while indicating he’s open to some changes, such as in income eligibility. Kasich urged Congress in an   on Time. com to pass an Obamacare replacement at the same time as a repeal. ”For the millions of Americans who have gained health coverage since 2010, it’s safe to assume that their idea of fixing Obamacare does not involve ripping away their own health care coverage without a responsible alternative in place,” wrote Kasich. ”If I had to pay for my medical costs, I wouldn’t be taking no medicine” Evelyn Johnson is among those who would be affected were the ACA repeal to also roll back the Medicaid. She sat in the back of the cafeteria at a social services   center in Cleveland last week as a pair of health care navigators made calls to help people sign up for Medicaid. ”So far I’ve got a pair of glasses. They’re going to do my teeth,” she said of the benefits she has received since getting health insurance. Johnson, who lives with a friend, does not have children and works as a baby sitter, would not have been eligible for   insurance before the Medicaid expansion, when it was limited largely to   children, parents and people with disabilities. Now, anyone whose income is at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line, about $16, 000 a year for a single person, is eligible. Without insurance, Johnson said she would not be able to afford the prescription drugs she needs. ”If I had to pay for my medical costs, I wouldn’t be taking no medicine,” she said. ”There’s no way. I take too many pills.” About 700, 000 Ohioans have signed up for expanded Medicaid since January 2014. Since the Affordable Care Act came into effect, Ohio’s uninsured rate has fallen to 6. 5 percent from 15 percent in 2012. Unpopular position with Republicans  Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid was unpopular with Republicans. He fought his own party and sidestepped the state Legislature to get the expansion done. At an event with business leaders this month, Kasich argued that it has been a good deal for the state. ”If they don’t get coverage, they end up in the emergency room, they end up sicker, more expensive. I mean, we pay one way or the other,” Kasich said. ”And so this has been a good thing for Ohio.” Also defending their decisions to expand Medicaid are such Republican governors as Rick Snyder of Michigan, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Gary Herbert of Utah. ”So if all of a sudden, that goes away, what do we tell these 700, 000 people? We’re closed? Can’t do that,” Kasich said at the business event. Medicaid covers about 1 in 4 people in Ohio. If the expansion is rolled back, it will mean fewer payments to doctors and hospitals. ”You pull on one thread, you topple the whole tower,” said John Corlett, who ran the Medicaid program in Ohio under the previous Democratic governor. ”There’s nothing to say that the program can’t be improved, that it can’t be made better,” said Corlett, who now runs a think tank in Cleveland called the Center for Community Solutions. ”But just to say we’re going to get rid of all of it, and then we’ll figure out how to make it better, I think would be really disruptive. It’d be disruptive to healthcare providers, to patients, to insurance companies.” Changes coming? Even if the Medicaid expansion remains, the new Trump administration may make major changes to it in the future. Last year, Ohio asked the federal government to require beneficiaries to pay into health savings accounts, a request the federal government denied. ”I think that with the constellation in Washington the way that it is, that there’s going to be an awful lot of opportunities,” said Greg Lawson, a senior policy analyst with the Buckeye Institute, a conservative think tank in Ohio that opposed expansion. Lawson would like to see limits on federal spending per state, and he hopes Ohio will be able to add a work requirement for some beneficiaries. ”I don’t think you’re going to see the light switch probably just get turned, and one day it’s all going to just disappear,” he said. ”I think what you’re more likely to see is major structural changes to the program that over time that will have budgetary impacts.” But it’s not clear yet what shape those changes will take or whether the governor who expanded Medicaid here will support them."
"When Ali Andrew Li was born on Jan. 7, he was gently placed on his mother’s chest, where doctors cleaned and examined him and covered him with a warm blanket. ”I just loved it,” his mother, Salma Shabaik, a family physician who lives in Los Angeles, says. ”It was really nice to have the baby right there beneath my eyes where I could feel him, touch him, kiss him.” That was different than the birth of her son Elias two years ago he was whisked away to a bassinet to be examined. And unlike Elias, who cried a lot after delivery, Shabaik says Ali stopped crying ”within seconds” after being placed on her chest. Kangaroo mother care has been widely used worldwide to care for premature babies, and it’s gaining popularity in caring for healthy full term babies like Ali as well. It is as it sounds: Like a kangaroo’s pouch, mothers hold their naked newborns on their bare chest for the first few hours of life. At Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center where Ali was born, the technique is routinely practiced for healthy mothers and newborns. The baby gets to know their mother immediately, says Dr. Larry Gray, behavioral and developmental pediatrician at Comer Children’s Hospital, University of Chicago Medicine. ”The baby gets landed in a trusting environment,” he says, reassuring them that life outside the womb can also be ”soft, comfortable and warm.” The benefits are many, according to Dr. Lydia   Lee, an   at UCLA. Not only is the baby happier, she says, but his or her vitals are more stable. Body temperature, heart and breathing rate normalize more quickly. The close contact also allows the baby to be exposed to the same bacteria as the mother, which can protect against allergies and infection in the future. Infants who receive kangaroo care breast feed more easily, Lee says, and their mothers tend to breast feed for longer periods of time, which is ”all good.” Babies also seem to suffer less pain. Almost 20 years ago, Gray studied how babies respond to a heel prick to draw blood, a procedure that screens newborns for genetic disorders. He found that when healthy newborns had kangaroo care, there was less facial grimacing and crying suggesting pain, compared to babies who had been swaddled and had the procedure in their bassinets, ”sort of alone.” One of the first places to show how this technique can help preemies was Colombia in the 1990s. There, hospitals with no access to incubators and other equipment often sent home preemies with no expectation that they would live. But doctors were surprised to see that babies whose mothers carried them close, skin to skin, not only survived but thrived. This was a ”serendipitous magical finding,” says Gray, suggesting that    contact acted something like a ”natural incubator.” Gray also points to the work of Myron Hofer, a psychiatrist with Columbia University Medical Center who studies attachment between mother and infants. Hofer coined the term ”hidden regulators” that pass between mother and baby. It’s not just that mother and baby are together, Gray says, but also that the mother is in some way ”programming the baby, the breathing, temperature and heart rate.” That ”magic” can also happen between baby and father, too, says Gray, if there’s    contact. And if mothers or babies are very sick and have to be isolated, Gray suggests mothers take any opportunity to hold their infant skin to skin. Even a little bit of kangaroo contact, he says, can be beneficial."
"The main players in Syria’s   civil war are meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, Monday for talks that were arranged by Russia. The discussion seeks to bolster a   agreement that hasn’t ended violence in Syria, but officials say they don’t expect a breakthrough. U. N. envoy Staffan de Mistura is playing a role at the talks, which will run through Tuesday. As the meetings got underway Monday, Russia’s Tass news agency reports that Russia, Iran and Turkey plan to sign an agreement to ”create a trilateral mechanism” that will enforce the   that was reached at the end of December. From Beirut, NPR’s Alice Fordham reports: ”The talks are the latest of many in Syria’s nearly   civil war, but they’re unusual in that they do not have significant presence from the United States or the United Nations. Regional powers Russia and Turkey, with backing from Iran, arranged the discussions. The talks are meant to build on a recent   although representatives of the government stress they don’t have high expectations for a breakthrough.” The American ambassador to Kazakhstan is at the talks at Russia’s invitation, the AP reports. The news agency adds, ”For the first time in internationally sponsored talks, Syrian armed groups  —   not political  —   are leading the opposition. Thirteen rebel factions, including from the   Free Syrian Army, sent delegates.” As the talks in Astana begin, the U. N. is launching a conference in Helsinki aimed at supporting Syrian refugees and delivering humanitarian aid to some 13. 5 million people in Syria. From Moscow, NPR’s Lucian Kim reports that the Kremlin has sought to depict the talks as complementing the U. N.’s attempts to end a crisis that it says has affected more than 22 million people. ”Russia says the main goal of the talks in Kazakhstan is to firm up a   that went into effect at the end of December,” Lucian says. According to Tass, Russia and its partners in the Syrian talks say they’ll also support the upcoming U. N. talks between the two sides of the conflict those sessions are scheduled to be held in Geneva on Feb. 8."
"On his first day on the job, President Trump made some changes to the Oval Office he installed gold drapes and moved some statues. First Families have some leeway to make changes to the White House, and that includes changes to its art collection. It can take many hands  —   or eyes  —   for one work of art to make it into the White House. Take, for example, the large painting the Obamas hung in what’s called the Treaty Room. ”It’s an unbelievably energetic, beautiful sort of thing, in which a black horse whose body is only somewhat defined is seen running across a kind of crimson field,” says curator Mark Rosenthal. Titled Butterfly, the painting is one of a series of horse paintings by American painter Susan Rothenberg. Rosenthal had admired it since the   and when he became a curator at the National Gallery of Art 20 years later, he remembered the painting and set out to acquire it. But for that, he needed money. So he convinced Texas donors Nancy and Perry Bass to purchase it for the museum. ”I had met them once or twice  —   barely knew them,” Rosenthal says. But what he did know was that they were ”revered conservationists.” Rosenthal thought the picture of the horse might speak to them. It did, and the painting entered the National Gallery’s collection. So how did the painting end up in the private quarters of the White House nearly 15 years later? The National Gallery’s current staff preferred not to be interviewed. But Rosenthal says, typically, the new first family sends someone there, and to other museums, to pick out art for their private living quarters. ”It might be a friend, it might be a decorator . .. but it was someone designated by the president and first lady to come to the National Gallery of Art and choose work . .. ” Rosenthal explains. ”It’s very much [like] a kid in a candy store.” When it comes to the public spaces in the White House, the rules are different. In the early 1960s, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy helped bring some order to the process of how art should enter the White House and be paid for. For decades, it was pretty haphazard, says art historian William Kloss. ”In the 19th century in particular, one of the ways Congress had to express their unhappiness with a particular administration incoming was to give them little or no funding for new furniture or new rugs or anything that was needed,” Kloss explains. ”So on more than one occasion, they held a big sale on the White House lawn so they could raise funds for new furnishings.” Today, those funds come from The White House Historical Association, a   that raises money from private donations and the sale of merchandise such as books and Christmas ornaments. Former White House curator Betty Monkman started out at the White House in 1967, a few years after President Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order establishing the curator position. She says the goal is to collect work by and about Americans, and there were gaps in the collection. ”We only had copies of a lot of 19th century paintings,” Monkman says. She was always on the lookout at auctions for rare life portraits of people like John and Abigail Adams. (”Which we still have not acquired because there are so few of them out there,” she says.) As curator, she was also looking for paintings that represented the nation’s different regions. A New Mexico gap, for example, was filled in during the Clinton administration with a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe. First ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama also modernized the collection. Obama acquired a vibrant abstract work by the late Alma Thomas, the first   woman in the permanent collection. Bush acquired a painting by   artist Jacob Lawrence for the White House Green Room. In 2008, Bush told   that the White House should showcase American traditions, but also stay relevant. ”The White House goes on, and history continues to be made here,” she says. ”I also want the White House to reflect more modern presidents and more modern times.” It’s too soon to say what impact Donald and Melania Trump will have on the White House art collection. But former curator Mark Rosenthal says these decisions are worth watching. ”What a person or family chooses to live with is incredibly telling about their openness to visual experiences,” he says. ”One ought to be expanding one’s horizons all the time.” The White House is actually an accredited museum, with a curatorial staff and a committee dedicated to its preservation. So if the Trumps do decide to add to its collection, they’ll have plenty of help."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. At his best, Ty Segall is a master songwriter trapped in the body of a punk  —   although the limitations of his   rock actually keep him grounded and focused rather than restricted. The California bandleader’s prolific output over the past decade has grown increasingly ambitious in its own humble and   way at the same time, he refuses to set aside the gnarled riffs, spilled booze and busted knuckles of his most blistering work. That hasn’t changed on his latest album (his second, after one in 2008, to bear the name Ty Segall). What’s different is an even more ardent attempt at confining chaos and squeezing catchy, catastrophically massive pop gems out of it. ”Break A Guitar” busts the album wide open right at the outset, as it harnesses a thunderous   stomp that barely conceals huge hooks and Segall’s supple,   melodies. ”Take my guitar   I’ll be at the bar,” he sings at the end, adding a   twist to an otherwise swaggering demonstration of rock ’n’ roll overconfidence. The distortion grows even more corrosive in ”The Only One,” whose dueling guitar leads (between Segall and his longtime second guitarist Emmett Kelly) erupt gloriously into a fugue of frenzied abandon. ”Thank You Mr. K” ups the ante even further, succumbing to a    attack that chugs along at the breakneck speed of a bad, bleak trip. But Ty Segall does more than throttle and thrash. ”Talkin’,” a pointed parable about   is wrapped in softly strummed acoustic guitars. ”Orange Color Queen” picks up on the same vibe, but with a more reflective bent like a daydream on a rowboat in the middle of a   river, the song meanders through a vivid landscape of heartache while Segall does his best impression of a warbling angel. Mikal Cronin, the group’s bassist (and an excellent bandleader in his own right) joins Segall on vocals in ”Take Care (To Comb Your Hair),” another acoustic song whose plaintive, plucky tendencies shift deliriously from folky tenderness to needling,   riffage by song’s end. The album’s most ambitious moments, though, appear in ”Warm Hands (Freedom Returned).” At   minutes, it’s a break from Segall’s standard      hand grenades heroically, it doesn’t waste a second in its pursuit of   synthesis, starting out as a   ball of snarling menace before dissolving into a wonderfully sparse, spacious jam. ”Papers” may not be as ambitious, lengthwise, but it stretches Segall’s canvas in a different way. Keyboardist Ben Boye’s piano is given a more prominent spot in the complex arrangement, and the entire song reflects a   sense of sophistication, complete with cryptic lyrics and elusive melancholia. Segall’s role models are still as plain as day  —   Marc Bolan, Ray Davies and Syd Barrett chief among them  —   but on Ty Segall, he’s taken yet another strong step toward turning retroactive garage rock into high art."
"Samsung announced the results of a   investigation into why its Galaxy Note 7 phones spontaneously caught fire last summer, pinning the blame on faulty batteries. The bungled launch led to a recall of 2. 5 million devices and losses totaling more than $2 billion. The root cause, according to an internal investigation conducted with the help of outside experts, was battery short circuits. Both companies that supplied batteries for the Galaxy Note 7 had separate issues leading to the fires, Samsung says, in part due to the rush to replace the originally exploding phones with new ones. The company did not name its battery suppliers. ”The comprehensive responsibility lies with us. We did not thoroughly vet the parts that were assembled for us,” said DJ Koh, the head of Samsung’s sprawling mobile unit. In a packed press conference at its offices in southern Seoul Monday, the world’s biggest smartphone maker again apologized to customers around the world for the bungling of its product release. Phones were initially recalled and replaced, but the replacement devices also began to catch fire. Presentations at the announcement by outside investigators backed up Samsung’s findings, which indicate batteries from supplier A were shorting because of a design flaw or in some cases a lack of insulation tape. And batteries from supplier B  —   which were issued in the replacement phones following the initial recall  —   were catching fire because of a separate manufacturing defect. ”We wanted to proceed quickly to change the batteries swiftly, out of concern for the consumers,” Koh said, explaining why the company rushed to replace the faulty phones. ”We are very sorry to the consumers for not having vetted the B batteries thoroughly. At the time the B batteries didn’t exhibit the problems that A batteries did, but in retrospect the B batteries had a different issue.” U. S. safety authorities are conducting their own investigation into this matter. Customers and investors will be closely watching how the company adjusts to prevent another fiasco of this size. Samsung announced a new ” ” product safety protocol that it says will ensure quality of its products going forward. It is set to release the Galaxy S8 device, the closest competitor to the Apple iPhone, in the coming months. The Note line may be forever discontinued. Meanwhile, tomorrow the South Korean giant will announce its   earnings, which is expected to be the company’s best performance in three years, despite the loss on the Note 7 devices. The uptick is thanks to robust sales of chips and screens, analysts say. Haeryun Kang contributed to this post."
"The Los   singer known as MILCK knew she wanted to do something memorable for the Women’s March in Washington, D. C on Saturday. So she contacted a small group of other singers from across the country to coordinate a flash mob performance of MILCK’s song ”Quiet,” an emotional rallying cry for   and unity. The group of women rehearsed together via Skype and rendezvoused in D. C. where they performed a cappella versions of ”Quiet” several times during the march. Israeli director Alma Har’el captured part of one of the performances and posted it to her Twitter account and Facebook page, where it’s accrued more than 8 million views. The performance is unadorned and profoundly moving, capturing at least part of the mood that settled on the march, with a balance of defiance and love. MILCK says she wrote the song as a way of exorcising her own history of physical and sexual abuse. ”With this song, I feel like I’m finally allowing my truest inner self to be expressed,” she said in a prepared statement announcing the song, which was officially released days before the weekend marches. ”In this time of fear, propaganda and discrimination, it is critical for our individual and collective voices to be heard. With this song, I’m saying I am NOT the woman who is going to stay quiet where there are figures who promote oppression. I want to encourage others to give a voice to whatever they may have silenced, political or personal.” Here’s the official studio version of ”Quiet.”"
"The Trump administration is pushing forward with plans for two major oil pipelines in the U. S. projects that sparked nationwide demonstrations and legal fights under President Barack Obama. President Trump signed documents inviting the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline to resubmit a proposal for the project, which the Obama administration rejected in 2015, and instructing the Army to expedite the review and approval process for the section of the Dakota Access Pipeline that hasn’t been built. ”We’re going to renegotiate some of the terms, and if they’d like, we’ll see if they can get the pipeline built,” Trump said of the Keystone XL pipeline. ”This not a done deal,” Bill McKibben of the group 350. org, which has lobbied against pipelines for years, said in a statement. He called the pipelines ”unwise and immoral” because they contribute to climate change. Trump also signed a document requesting a federal plan to incentivize the use of U. S.  pipes for pipeline projects. The lobbying group representing the petroleum industry issued a statement in favor of the policy reversal. A spokesperson for the TransCanada company, which proposed the Keystone XL project, said the company was preparing to resubmit a proposal. Energy Transfer Partners, which is building the nearly completed Dakota Access Pipeline, did not immediately comment. Both the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline provoked protests from a diverse group of citizens concerned about the climate impacts and potential environmental contamination from the projects, as well as the safety of their routes across large swaths of the country and the mechanisms by which the federal government approved those routes. McKibben promised to fight the president’s move, saying, ”The last time around, TransCanada was so confident they literally mowed the strip where they planned to build the pipeline, before people power stopped them. People will mobilize again.” A portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline is under review by the Army Corps of Engineers, which announced last week that it was gathering information for an environmental assessment of a crossing under the Missouri River in North Dakota  —   an area that the nearby Standing Rock Sioux tribe says is sacred land. Demonstrators, sometimes numbering in the thousands, set up several camps on occupied land near the proposed crossing site beginning last summer, in support of the Standing Rock Sioux. The tribe filed a lawsuit against the federal government to block the pipeline, which was retracted earlier this month. The protests diminished after the Army Corps blocked the final permit in December and announced it would reassess the pipeline route, taking into account concerns about the risk of water contamination and allegations that the tribe was not adequately consulted about a route that violated sacred land. On Tuesday, the tribe released a statement through the American Civil Liberties Union, promising to take legal action against the federal government. ”Trump’s decision to give the   for the Dakota Access Pipeline is a slap in the face to Native Americans and a blatant disregard for the rights to their land,” it stated. The tribe also addressed the president’s stated plan to streamline what he called the ”incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process” for environmental reviews of pipeline and manufacturing projects. ”The Trump administration should allow careful environmental impact analysis to be completed with full and meaningful participation of affected tribes,” the Standing Rock Sioux wrote in its statement. Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota released a statement praising the president’s actions, calling the pipelines ”crucial energy infrastructure projects” and saying they would create jobs. Amy Sisk of Prairie Public Radio was at the site on Tuesday and reports that demonstrators remain camped on the North Dakota prairie near the site where the Dakota Access Pipeline’s slated to cross under the Missouri River. ”They’re living in winterized tents, tepees and wooden structures, many keeping warm by fireplaces installed inside their makeshift homes,” she tells us. ”Demonstrations have slowed this winter in the wake of the December announcement that the Army Corps of Engineers would launch a new environmental review of the pipeline. Word that Trump has begun the process of expediting this review and advancing the project spread quickly through camp Tuesday. For many, this did not come as a surprise. ”Protesters vow to continue their stand against the pipeline. But the camp’s future is in limbo, amid flooding concerns after a heavy winter snowfall. And the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has asked protesters to leave. Some I talked to are moving to higher ground so as to avoid the floodplain, yet continue the fight as the Trump administration weighs in.”"
"President Trump on Tuesday gave the   for construction of two controversial oil pipelines, the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access. As he signed the paperwork in an Oval Office photo op, Trump said his administration is ”going to renegotiate some of the terms” of the Keystone project, which would carry crude oil from the tar sands of western Canada and connect to an existing pipeline to the Gulf Coast. The pipelines had been stopped during the Obama administration. The State Department rejected a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, and President Obama ordered work halted on the Dakota pipeline after Native American groups and other activists protested its route near culturally sensitive sites in North Dakota. Trump said the Keystone XL pipeline will mean ”a lot of jobs, 28, 000 construction jobs, great construction jobs.” In a statement, TransCanada, the pipeline’s owner, said it ”appreciate( s) the President of the United States inviting us to   for KXL. We are currently preparing the application and intend to do so.” Trump also signed a decree that the pipelines will be built with American steel, ”like we used to in the old days,” and two others: one that he said will streamline ”the incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process and reducing regulatory burdens for domestic manufacturing,” and another he says will expedite environmental reviews and approvals ”for   infrastructure projects.” ”We can’t be in an environmental process for 15 years if a bridge is going to be falling down or if a highway is crumbling,” Trump said. The president’s actions quickly reignited the debate over the pipelines supporters say the pipelines will lead to lower energy costs and create jobs, while environmentalists argue they will lead to the release of more   carbon into the atmosphere. The reaction from lawmakers was swift. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Trump’s actions to advance the pipelines will ”put the   profits of the fossil fuel industry ahead of the future of our planet.” But North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp said Trump’s actions ”are a needed step” toward the goal of an     North American energy strategy. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which protested the Dakota Access pipeline, said it will take legal action to fight Trump’s decision, saying the pipeline ”risks contaminating tribal and American water supplies while disregarding treaty rights.” In remarks to automakers on Tuesday morning, Trump proclaimed himself an environmentalist, but added, ”It’s out of control, and we’re going to make a very short process, and we’re going to either give you your permits or we’re not going to give you your permits, but you’re going to know very quickly.”"
"Hundreds of people around the country are still suffering from complications linked to injections of tainted medicine produced at a Massachusetts pharmacy in 2012. A nationwide outbreak of fungal infections was tied to the shipment of nearly 18, 000 contaminated vials of   methylprednisolone, a steroid, made by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass. Barry Cadden, an owner of the pharmacy, is now on trial in U. S. District Court in Boston. He faces federal charges that include racketeering and   murder. He pleaded not guilty. The trial, which began Jan. 9, is expected to last two or three months. Federal prosecutors say the steroids were mixed in unsanitary conditions with expired ingredients. Bruce Singal, Cadden’s attorney, declined to comment. In court, he has said that Cadden oversaw the company’s operations, but didn’t work in the facility’s ”clean rooms” or mix the drugs that harmed people. ”He is not a murderer and he is not responsible for their deaths,” Singal said, according to the Associated Press. The outbreak of fungal infections tied to injections with contaminated medicines killed at least 64 people and sickened about 700 more. A report about the public health investigation and response published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2013, said the outlook for ”patients remains uncertain. Although many case patients have completed antifungal therapy and their conditions are currently stable or improved, relapses of infection are possible.” Many people who got sick after the injections are still waiting for compensation checks from a legal settlement with the compounding pharmacy. Several people who became sick after injections talked about their lives since then. None has testified in the case but some have plans to attend the trial. Here are excerpts from conversations with them. Bill Thomas, 62, of Lowell, Mich. The last injection  —   the steroid injection that I got in my spine  —   was for pain in my legs, pain and numbness, due to spinal cord injuries. During the course of the next few days, I felt like I was coming down with the flu . .. I had trouble remembering things. I came down with an incredible headache that didn’t go away. I had terrible neck pain, and my eyes were very sensitive to light. I’ve gone from being a person who walked two or three miles a few times a day. . .. I used to go out a lot in wilderness areas and did backpacking. And now I only leave the house a couple times a week. I’m always tired and always in pain, I can’t think. I get confused easily. . .. I can’t read like I used to. Justice needs to be done here. Tremendous harm was done to a great many people, and that should not be forgotten. Angela Farthing, 46, of Maryland, I had fungal meningitis and was admitted to the hospital. When I was released, I ended up having a stroke and developed a brain aneurysm. I was readmitted, and I was there for almost another two months. . .. I got very sick. I was vomiting all the time, had horrible headaches every day. I lost a good 30 pounds I went down to 100 pounds. . .. I missed about a year of work. And it was discovered later that I’d developed an abscess in my spinal cord. I had to have that surgically removed. But they could not get all of the abscess out, because they said if they would have sliced any deeper, they could have paralyzed me or I could have lost bowel or bladder function. [My husband] really suffered quite a bit when I was diagnosed. He had to take care of me, he had to bathe me, he had to change me, he had to do my IV. . .. He had to take over cleaning the house and cooking and taking care of our dogs. . .. He was a recovering alcoholic, and unfortunately, he stopped going to AA meetings and he succumbed to his addiction. Kathy Pugh, daughter and caregiver for her mother, Evelyn March, 85, of Pinckney, Mich. [My mother had] an abscess in her back on her spine at the site of the injection of the tainted medicine. Now she’s not doing well at all. It’s pretty much   pain. She went from being a very vital woman with just sporadic problems with her back, to where she’s bedridden in a hospital bed on oxygen, looking up at the ceiling. That’s her life  —   occasionally trying to watch TV, but she finds it hard to concentrate for a very long length of time. That’s one of the side effects of the antifungal medication, which it was ’take or die.’ ” Evelyn March,  My life’s   compared to what it was. I don’t understand why things can be allowed to happen like that. Getting old is bad enough, but then to put something else on to it. . .. I hope [Barry Cadden] gets his butt burned. I mean he, he, . .. well, I’d better shut up, because I’d probably say more than I should say."
"It might have been the first place they looked. When federal authorities raided an apartment in Westborough, Mass. earlier this month, they found money hidden under the mattress  —   approximately $20 million. Photos show a box spring stuffed with bricks of cash that were seized during a Homeland Security investigation linked to a pyramid scheme involving a company called TelexFree. Agents found the money after they arrested a Brazilian national named Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha, who was charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering. The    admitted to federal agents that he was in the U. S. to facilitate a money transfer to a founder of the company, court documents state. TelexFree, which sold    phone service, ”was really a massive pyramid scheme,” according to court documents. ”It make little or no money from selling VOIP, but took in millions of dollars from people signing up to receive financial bonuses from advertising and recruiting.” Federal authorities executed search warrants against the company in 2014  —   and court records state that ”about 965, 225 people lost money when TelexFree collapsed, their losses totaling about $1, 755, 927, 755.” One of the founders fled to Brazil another pleaded guilty and admitted the company was a pyramid scheme. In the aftermath of the Massachusetts company’s collapse, TelexFree executives in Brazil allegedly plotted to retrieve money left behind. Rocha is said to be one of those people, sent from Brazil. He traveled to the U. S. in January and June 2016, but money   were cancelled both times, according to court records. On New Year’s Eve, Rocha arrived in New York, allegedly for another attempt. He was arrested in Massachusetts on Jan. 4 after he met a ”cooperating witness at a restaurant in Hudson, Mass. and allegedly gave him $2. 2 million in a suitcase,” according to the Department of Justice. Later that day, agents found the cash in an apartment Rocha had visited. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. On Monday, a federal magistrate judge said he posed a flight risk and ordered him detained pending trial. ”There is no incentive for him to remain in the United States, and every incentive for him to flee given the strength of the case against him,” she wrote."
"On a frigid winter night, a man wearing two coats shuffles into a brightly lit brick restaurant in downtown Madrid. Staff greet him warmly he’s been here many times. The maître d’ stamps his ID card, and the hungry man selects a table with a red tablecloth, under a big brass chandelier. The man, Luis Gallardo, is homeless  —   and so are all the diners, every night, at the city’s Robin Hood restaurant. Its mission is to charge the rich and feed the poor. Paying customers at breakfast and lunch foot the bill for the restaurant to serve dinner to homeless people, free of charge. It’s become Spain’s most   lunch reservation. The restaurant has poached staff from luxury hotels. Celebrity chefs are lining up to cook once a week. For paying clients, the lunch is fully booked through the end of March. The restaurant opened in early December, and is run by an    Catholic priest, Ángel García Rodriguez, whom everyone knows simply as ”Padre Ángel.” ”I want them to eat with the same dignity as any other customer,” Father Ángel says. ”And the same quality, with glasses made of crystal, not plastic, and in an atmosphere of friendship and conversation.” Outside, there’s a sign listing the house rules: Patrons are allowed to sing as they please, as long as it doesn’t disturb other customers. They can use the free wifi and borrow a cell phone if they need to make a call. They’re free to bring their own food and order only drinks, if they prefer. Or they can take over the kitchen for a birthday party or other special celebration. As founder of Messengers of Peace, a local charity, Padre Ángel has also converted an abandoned church nearby into a sort of community center. It’s the only church in Madrid that’s open 24 hours a day  —   with free coffee, television and places for patrons to sleep. He or a colleague celebrates Mass there daily. On the night NPR visited, the Robin Hood waiters served mushroom consommé, followed by roast turkey and potatoes. For dessert, there’s a choice of vanilla pudding or yogurt. Gallardo, the man in two coats, says the meal reminds him of Christmases past, before the accounting firm he ran went bankrupt and he had to lay off 60 employees. He shows NPR some photos on his cell phone of a dining table holding a huge spread of sweets and a bottle of French wine. He says the photos were taken two years ago at his home, which he has since had to sell to pay debts. ”We were just like any other family,” says Gallardo, 48, shaking his head. His wife has now left him. He lives on the street now, sleeping in ATM machine alcoves. As for his future, he says: ”My future is now. I can’t even talk about tomorrow. I’d like to know, but I don’t what it holds.” Spain’s economy may be out of recession, but its effects are lingering. Unemployment still hovers near 20 percent. The Robin Hood Restaurant feeds more than 100 needy people each night, in two shifts. Back in the kitchen, the restaurant’s dishwasher has just broken down. A volunteer plunges her hands into the sink and starts washing plates by hand. ”Some of our diners are very educated, and some are a bit ashamed to be here,” says Nieve Cuenca, a retiree who comes to help out in the kitchen once a week. ”I love this work. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she says,   in soapy water."
"Like any college student, Vanessa Ramirez never expected chemotherapy would be part of her busy school schedule. ”I don’t have any history of cancer in my family, so it wasn’t something I was on the lookout for,” Ramirez says, sitting outside the library of her alma mater, Arizona State University, in Tempe. Ramirez was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was 23. Now, more than a decade later, she’s healthy and so are her children. ”But there are also emergencies that happen,” Ramirez says, explaining the priority she places on health insurance. ”I have two young kids who are running around. They are rambunctious. I have a daughter that loves to climb trees.” After dealing with her own serious illness at such a young age, Ramirez doesn’t take health care for granted. And the Affordable Care Act made her feel secure that she and her kids would be covered. She bought insurance through HealthCare. gov, even with her   condition, and her children got covered, too. ”I want them to be able to have health insurance and doctors to monitor them, in case something unfortunate comes up,” Ramirez says. Ramirez has coverage via the exchange, and her kids are covered through the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is for working families who don’t quite qualify for Medicaid. Arizona’s version is called KidsCare. State lawmakers froze KidsCare enrollment back in 2010 Arizona was the only state without an active program. But last year Obamacare helped revive the program by covering the entire cost in Arizona and a handful of other states, at least through 2017. ”A lot of people don’t realize that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act could wipe out KidsCare, that we just got back,” says Dana Wolfe Naimark with advocacy group Children’s Action Alliance. In the months since Gov. Doug Ducey and the legislature reopened KidsCare last year, enrollment has already surpassed 13, 000. But now Naimark worries about the fallout if the ACA is repealed. ”It would be up to the state legislature whether they could invest state dollars to keep it going, or whether the coverage would go away,” Naimark says. In recent years, Arizona has had one of the highest rates of uninsured children in the country. But Obamacare has begun to change that, bringing coverage to thousands of kids. Arizona was also one of the   states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA  —   but only after fierce infighting among Republicans in the Arizona legislature about growing federal influence. Conservative critics of KidsCare also retained some control over the budget of the program when they reinstated it state law will halt or shut down Medicaid expansion and KidsCare anytime federal funding dips too low. ”Whenever you take a look at some of these   Washington approaches, you really do lard up these insurance policies with a lot of benefits that individuals and families really would not go out and buy on their own,” says Naomi Lopez Bauman director of health care policy for the conservative Goldwater Institute. Her organization sued to stop the state’s Medicaid expansion. One of the proposals favored by Republican leadership is giving states a fixed amount of money, called a block grant, and letting them have more say in who and what they cover, in terms of health care. Bauman says the state, if given enough flexibility, could save money with such a system. The question, she says, would be, ”How do you make it easier and better for individuals and families to get the coverage and care that best meet their own needs and preferences?” But other conservatives say changing how these programs are funded could backfire. Heather Carter, a Republican state representative who lives in north Phoenix, voted for Medicaid expansion and for restarting KidsCare. ”What I hope does not happen is that decisions are made nationally that actually penalize us for being efficient and effective, long before the Affordable Care Act was in place,” Carter says. Arizona already has one of the   Medicaid programs in the country, she says. And Medicaid officials in Arizona caution that block grants could actually shortchange the state, because it has a fast growing population and a large share of people living on incomes that are around the poverty line. Less federal funding would likely force lawmakers to cut back services. ”We will have to make very difficult decisions in Arizona on who will  —   and who will not  —   receive coverage,” Carter says. If states lose the extra federal funding they received to expand Medicad and KidsCare, it would cost Arizona hundreds of millions of dollars to keep everyone on Medicaid covered to the same degree they are now. And even Democrats who support broad health coverage  —   including Senate Minority Leader Katie Hobbs  —   concede that’s not realistic. ”I don’t see anyone in the state coming forward and saying, ’Oh, we’ll cover this,’ ” Hobbs says. ”Because we don’t have the money to do it.” Arizona has more children enrolled in the federal marketplace than almost any other state. If you add in Medicaid and KidsCare, roughly 130, 000 kids or more could be at risk of losing their health care coverage if Congress doesn’t come up with a replacement that is similar in scope. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with KJZZ and Kaiser Health News."
"At the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Clinic in Scarbro, W. Va. oxygen tubes dangle from the noses of three miners slowly pedaling on stationary bikes. All of these men have black lung  —   a disease caused by breathing in coal dust. Over time, the dust coats the lungs and causes them to harden. Hard lungs don’t easily expand and contract, and that makes it difficult to breathe. ”You try to get air in them, and they don’t want to cooperate with you as they did before,” says retired miner James Bounds, speaking with great effort. Not every coal miner gets black lung, just as some smokers don’t get cancer. But for those who do, Bounds says, the disease is devastating. ”There’s no cure at all,” he says. ”It keeps getting harder and harder until one day, I guess, you take your last breath and they won’t expand for you no more.” Bounds is one of about 38, 000 miners or eligible survivors  —   usually a spouse  —   currently receiving black lung benefits. The benefits are compensation for the physical damage Bounds sustained while doing his job. It took him 4   years to get approved, despite the fact that his lungs are so bad he has to stop moving to talk. But now the qualification process is supposed to move faster. The Affordable Care Act includes special provisions that make the process of getting black lung benefits easier for coal miners. If the ACA is repealed, gaining these benefits could become much more difficult, effectively harming a group of people that President Trump has promised to protect. Debbie Wills coordinates the black lung program for Valley Health primary care system. She says that prior to the ACA, it was almost impossible to qualify for the compensation benefits. Coal companies pay the benefits, and also pay into a federal trust fund that pays when coal companies can’t. Wills says the process of getting benefits was arduous for miners. ”Coal company lawyers would doctor shop around the country and find two, three, four, five, seven doctors to say, ’Yes this miner is disabled, but it’s not because of black lung,’” she says. The Affordable Care Act includes something called the Byrd Amendments. One shifts the burden of proof  —   instead of miners having to prove that mining caused their black lung, the coal companies have to prove that mining didn’t. ”You still have to prove the 100 percent disability, which is hard,” says Wills. ”But if you can prove that, and if you’ve worked 15 or more years or longer in the mines, then you’re entitled to a presumption that your disease arose from your coal mine employment.” Another part provides lifetime benefits to certain dependents who survive the death of a miner, if the miner had been receiving the benefits before death. If the ACA is repealed without a replacement, cases that were approved after the ACA went into effect could be reopened, leaving the miner or survivor vulnerable to losing the benefits. And, the burden of proof may shift again, making it difficult for applicants to qualify. Earlier this month, both the House and the Senate introduced resolutions to preserve the Byrd Amendments from a broader ACA repeal. Rep. Evan Jenkins   . Va. an ACA opponent, introduced the measure in the House. ”I am a firm believer that Obamacare is already in a death spiral and desperately needs to be fixed,” Jenkins says. ”While we are going to work to improve our health care system, I feel strongly about my resolution to make sure that the presumption relating to black lung is contained in whatever is the end product of this work this year.” This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Kaiser Health News."
"Over the years, music fans have slowly filled in details about a   mostly anonymous collective of Detroit studio musicians known as The Funk Brothers, who were the backing band for many of Motown’s hit songs. Less documented is what these musicians did when they were not in the studio. Recently, the archive label Resonance found a tape of Funk Brothers guitarist Dennis Coffey playing live with a trio at a Detroit nightclub in 1968. They’ve now released the recordings as Hot Coffey in the D: Burnin’ at Morey Baker’s Showplace Lounge, an album that offers one answer to the question, ”How did Motown happen?” Detroit in the 1960s was alive with music. When the musicians of Motown finished recording for the day, they could often be found performing in local nightspots. Label founder Berry Gordy has said that the city’s musically diverse club scene was essential to the label’s success: Musicians like Coffey used these recurring gigs to develop not just skills, but also a sensibility. If there is a ”Detroit sound,” it has to do with the way the rhythm players interact: They lay back, follow each other’s moves and even seem to breathe together. This approach didn’t originate in the Motown studio. It developed over countless nights, in small venues the one where Hot Coffey was recorded. These live tracks are some distance from the   Motown  . Still, you can hear the shared DNA: As Coffey and his trio dig in and work the groove, they bring the energy that was expected in the Motown studio to an ordinary night in a club."
"Sen. Jeff Merkley,  . tried to test whether President Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget believed in facts or ”alternative facts” during a confirmation hearing on Tuesday. With the incoming Trump administration repeating falsehoods about the size of crowds at the president’s inauguration, Merkley asked Rep. Mick Mulvaney,  . C. to look at two    photos  —   taken at roughly the same time during former President Obama’s inauguration in 2009 and Trump’s just last week  —   to gauge which, in fact, was bigger. ”I’m not really sure how this ties to OMB,” Mulvaney said, somewhat puzzled. But he did concede that ”from that picture, it does appear that the crowd on the   side [for Obama’s first inauguration] is bigger than the crowd on the   side.” Merkley assured Mulvaney there was a reason behind his riddle  —   he wanted to know if, as OMB director, the South Carolina Republican would be truthful in his budget presentations and recommendations to the president. ”The reason I’m raising this is because budgets often contain buried deceptions. . .. This is an example of where the president’s team, on something very simple and straightforward, wants to embrace a fantasy rather than a reality,” Merkley said. ”Are you comfortable as you proceed as a key budget adviser presenting falsehoods as simply an ’alternative fact’?” the Oregon senator continued, referring to Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway’s assertion on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that White House press secretary Sean Spicer was simply giving ”alternative facts” to rebut evidence of smaller crowd sizes for Trump’s inauguration. What Spicer presented were assertions riddled with inaccuracies. Mulvaney, still sounding somewhat perplexed over the unusual line of questioning, assured Merkley that he was ”deadly serious about giving you hard numbers I intend to follow through on that” if confirmed as OMB director."
"Updated 10:57 a. m. Updated 9:53 a. m. Updated 9:25 a. m. When the nominees for the 2017 Academy Awards were announced this morning, La La Land racked up 14 nods, tying records held by Titanic and All About Eve. Martin Scorsese’s Silence received only a single nomination for cinematography, while the small but critically praised   film Hell or High Water performed above expectations, with nominations for best picture, best supporting actor (Jeff Bridges) and original screenplay. Call it Oscars Slightly Less White: Unlike last year, when no people of color managed to secure acting or directing nominations, the Academy nominated Denzel Washington for lead actor in Fences, Mahershala Ali and Dev Patel for supporting actor in Moonlight and Lion, respectively, Loving’s Ruth Negga in the lead actress category, and Viola Davis (Fences) Naomie Harris (Moonlight) and Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures) were nominated for best supporting actress. Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins was also nominated for best director. ABC will telecast the 89th Annual Oscar Awards ceremony on Sunday, Feb. 26. BEST PICTURE, First Impressions: If you loved La La Land and were worried that the buzz around it was peaking too early for it to make a strong showing at the Oscars, the raft of nominations it received this morning will either allay your fears, or cement them. One the one hand, it shows, yet again, how much Hollywood loves movies about movies  —   on the other, we’ve now got 33 whole days for the film’s detractors to feed the palpable, and growing, backlash. Otherwise, no particular surprises here. Except: Notable Snubs?: The poor showing of Martin Scorsese’s Silence isn’t a surprise, if you’ve been following Oscar prognosticators, but it’s striking. ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE, First Impressions: If there’s a surprise here, it’s Mortensen, if only because Captain Fantastic came and went so quickly. This is likely shaping up into a battle between Affleck and Washington. Notable Snubs?: Joel Edgerton’s performance in Loving was powerful but inwardly directed, and there may be room for only one   performance (Affleck) on this list. ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE, First Impressions: Florence Foster Jenkins is a chewy role, and Streep attacks it with Streepish verve, while Portman’s performance as Jackie O. risks something by running right up to the edge of satire before retreating to find something smaller, and real. Negga ensures that audiences register the love between Richard and Mildred Loving in a nuanced, grounded way that never feels cloying, and Stone makes the most of some lovely moments in La La Land. But in Elle  —   a challenging, uncompromising film  —   Isabell Huppert is icy and ferocious, and she earns our sympathy while remaining unlikable. That is, as they say in acting conservatories, a neat trick. Notable Snubs?: Just about everyone expected to see Amy Adams in here for her quiet but hugely emotional performance in Arrival. And personally, I’d have loved to see Annette Bening in here, because she does so much in 20th Century Women that’s small and quiet, unshowy and true. ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE, First Impressions: Hedges is a slight surprise here, but you can’t say he didn’t earn his place. Ali is heavily favorited. Notable Snubs?: Many expected Hugh Grant to earn a nod for Florence Foster Jenkins. ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE, First Impressions: Williams made the very, very most of her relatively brief screentime, as did Harris, Kidman and Spencer. But screentime doesn’t matter to Oscar voters (ask Judi Dench) emotional weight does. And by that metric, there’s no contest  —   this is Davis’s to lose. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM, First Impressions: Kubo has a great story, The Red Turtle is achingly beautiful, Zootopia is wildly popular (which doesn’t hurt) and delivers a message (ditto) Moana is the juggernaut that is Moana, and My Life as a Zucchini . ... I haven’t seen My Life as a Zucchini. Notable Snubs?: Many expressed surprise this morning that Finding Dory failed to make a showing here, which makes it the second Pixar film in a row (after 2015’s The Good Dinosaur) to fail to earn a nomination. CINEMATOGRAPHY, First Impressions: Silence’s only Oscar nomination this year. COSTUME DESIGN, DIRECTING, First Impressions: Jenkins is only the fourth   director to be nominated for an Oscar in the   history of the ceremony. Notable Snubs?: Directors of four of the nine films nominated for best picture  —   Fences, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures and Lion  —   didn’t make the cut, here. Neither, as noted, did Scorsese. DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE) First Impression: Depending on whom you talk to, the O. J. doc is either heavily favorited or  —   because most people saw it on T. V. not in a movie theater  —   a longshot. That may depress its votes, allowing the widely praised I Am Not Your Negro to take home the Oscar. DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT) FILM EDITING, FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM, First Impressions: A Man Called Ove is a   while The Salesman is . .. not particularly interested in pleasing crowds. This will be interesting to watch. MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING, First Impressions: The West Coast just woke up to a world in which the phrase ”the   Suicide Squad” is a thing people can say, with their mouths. MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE) First Impressions: Probably La La Land’s to lose, particularly if the voters don’t go for it in the major categories. MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG) First Impressions: Two songs from the same movie hasn’t happened in a while, so they might split the vote. But the real story here is that   Miranda, of ”How Far I’ll Go,” is one O short of an EGOT. Voters might want to be a part of that milestone. PRODUCTION DESIGN, First Impressions: The Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! makes its only appearance in the 2017 nominations. SHORT FILM (ANIMATED) SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION) SOUND EDITING, SOUND MIXING, VISUAL EFFECTS, WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY) First Impressions: The screenplay categories offer a chance for both Moonlight and La La Land to get a victory on Oscar night, in case one or the other runs the table  —   but don’t count out the goodwill that’s still gathering behind Hidden Figures. WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY) First Impressions: I love that The Lobster got a nod  —   but then, the screenplay categories are historically where films too weird for the Academy get recognized. 20th Century Women isn’t weird, exactly, but it’s pleasantly shaggy and unconventional in structure. That said, if La La Land takes this award, you’re probably looking at a sweep."
"”I never thought I can make a film for Oscar!” says Khaleed Khateeb. Khateeb is a volunteer for the Syria Civil Defense forces, rescuing those caught in the crossfire of the civil war. He began filming scenes of the rescue missions and posting them on YouTube. When filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel decided to make a documentary about the group, he got in touch with Khateeb, gave him training and better camera equipment and told him to keep on filming. Today, it was announced that the   Netflix film, which features Khateeb’s footage, has been nominated for an Oscar in the short documentary category. ”I feel we let all the people around the world . .. know what is going on in Syria,” he told us after hearing of the nomination. We spoke to Khateeb last September about his work on the film and we interviewed von Einsiedel as well. That story is below."
"With so much focus in the early days of the Trump administration centered on GOP plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, it’s easy to forget that Republicans are planning another ambitious goal this year  —   overhauling the entire federal tax code. ”Very few predicted President Trump’s election with Republican majorities in both the House and Senate would move us to closer to   tax reform than at any point in the last 30 years,” House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady,   said Tuesday in a speech previewing the House GOP’s strategy at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. The last major overhaul of the tax code was in 1986, under President Reagan and a split control of Congress. Brady chairs one of the more powerful committees in the House, with vast jurisdiction over the tax code, trade bills and health care. His panel is also working on legislation to repeal certain aspects of Obamacare, and it will play a key role in whatever the replacement plan ultimately looks like. But Republicans are arguably more prepared for a potential tax overhaul, which they have been formulating for years. Former Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp,  . authored an overhaul in 2014, but it was lobbied into defeat and never received a vote in Congress. Brady sees lawmakers ”moving forward aggressively” to enact tax reform in 2017. ”Tax reform is truly one of those     opportunities. We are committed to seizing it in a very bold way,” he said. The broad outlines of the plan include dramatically lowering corporate and business tax rates to the lowest in history. It would also allow businesses to write off the full cost of new capital investments, meaning   returns on purchases related to new software, equipment, technology and the like. Republicans also want to end what they call the ”Made in America” tax on U. S. exports, also known as the border adjustment tax. President Trump has criticized this GOP proposal as ”too complicated.” The controversial proposal seeks to boost U. S. manufacturers by taxing imports but exempting exports from taxation. ”It will be a   for our businesses and our economy as a whole,” Brady said. He voiced frustration often aired by lawmakers that border adjustment taxes mean, for instance, that it is cheaper for companies to buy Chinese steel than American steel or to buy foreign oil over American oil. House Republicans also want to lower tax brackets for individuals and families, and Brady reiterated a   GOP pledge to create a tax system where most people can file a single page of paperwork the size ”of a postcard.” Brady also called for a ”bust up” of the Internal Revenue Service, and to redesign the agency into three service units designed to provide customer service for individual, family and business tax questions. The House GOP plan, of course, faces several roadblocks. The most significant is the U. S. Senate, where top Senate Republicans are moving more cautiously and have indicated they would like Democratic   for a legislative overhaul of this magnitude. Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch,   is expected to offer his vision of tax reform in a similar address next week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also indicated he prefers any tax overhaul to be revenue neutral, meaning new tax laws would shift the tax burden but would not change the amount of money coming in to the federal government. The House GOP’s plan, as outlined, would add to the deficit in that it would very likely result in less revenue coming in, but Republicans believe their tax overhaul would generate significant economic growth to make up the difference. But deficit hawks were also given a fresh cautionary warning from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office Tuesday. Its latest   budget outlook forecasts deficits will continue to grow over the next decade, adding an additional $10 trillion to the public debt if no changes are made. Maya MacGuineas, head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, which advocates for centrist budget reforms to balance the budget, said in a statement that the current trajectory is ”an unsustainable path” and requires   policymaking in Washington. ”Policymakers should not go into debt denial with hopes that unrealistic growth and rosy projections will save the day,” she said."
"The Women’s March, which drew millions of demonstrators to city streets on every continent (including Antarctica) this past Saturday, was historic for its numbers and deeply striking in its planetary solidarity. The various marches were a flare for a new movement, galvanized by a shift to the right in national and international politics. The video for ”Work,” a song released by Toronto singer Charlotte Day Wilson late last summer on her CDW EP, is a minimalist piece that alludes, silently and elegantly, to the nascent movement quickly calcifying around it. Its simple premise, ”people commuting to work as a moving portrait” as director Fantavious Fritz puts it, amounts to a soundless scream washed  —   outside of Wilson’s striking red  —   in earthen hues tuned lovingly to Wilson’s wide, bright, humid voice. (Joining BADBADNOTGOOD for a song during the band’s recent Tiny Desk concert, her innate talent, laid bare and uncorrected, is made plain.) It’s worth examining how interpretations of the song were likely far different around its release than at the present moment. For example, the line, ”I won’t let go   till I’ve got what’s mine” shifts and glides, in retrospect, to accommodate and address this new, maybe darker, reality. It likely won’t be the last time. ”I really wanted to use shooting the video as an opportunity to organize an afternoon of camaraderie with an amazing group of women, genderqueer and trans folks from my community in Toronto,” Wilson, who identifies as queer, writes. ”People got to know each other, make new friends and bask in the powerful energy that occupied an otherwise ordinary, mundane space.” It’s simply, beautifully, the latest example."
"At first glance, the snapshots featured on yolocaust. de look like any other ordinary selfies. People are smiling, dancing, juggling or striking a yoga pose. But if you move the mouse over an image, the background switches to    stills showing scenes of Nazi concentration camps. Suddenly, the pictures become profoundly disturbing. People are pictured dancing on corpses or juggling in mass graves. The photo montage series is   Israeli satirist Shahak Shapira’s response to visitors snapping what he sees as frivolous selfies at Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Germany’s national Holocaust memorial site. His project has sparked a debate over where to draw the line in an age in which most experiences are filtered through the lens of a smartphone and shared online. The name of his website  —   ”Yolocaust”  —   is yet another provocation, with its reference to the acronym ”you only live once.” Shapira, 28, was born in Israel and emigrated to Germany at 14. His maternal grandfather narrowly escaped the gas chambers when Polish Christians hid him from the Nazis. His paternal grandfather, Amitzur Shapira, was one of 11 Israeli athletes murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Shapira takes umbrage at what he sees as the mindless behavior of posting selfies at a site marking the extermination of 6 million Jews. His aim, he tells NPR, is not to shame people or join the rampant backlash culture that dominates social media  —   but to ”make people stop and think about where they are in the moment” and what it means to visit a memorial. Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, an unrelenting grid of 2, 711 concrete slabs located near the Brandenburg Gate, is ”a place for reflection,” Shapira says, ”not just another backdrop for goofy selfies.” Shapira had been thinking about the Yolocaust project for about a year before he launched it last week  —   the day after Bjoern Hoecke, a member of the   populist Alternative for Germany, or AfD party, called the memorial a ”monument of shame” and called on Germans to stop atoning for the Nazi past. Hoecke’s remarks sparked widespread outrage in a country where facing up to Nazi crimes is ingrained in the culture and education system. Even Frauke Petry, the AfD’s leader, has distanced herself from Hoecke, describing him as a ”burden for the party.” But she did not overtly criticize his remarks, and on Monday, the AfD leadership decided against throwing Hoecke out. Hoecke’s rhetoric is widely considered an election campaign tactic, part of an AfD strategy of ”targeted provocations.” Although the AfD is not represented in Germany’s federal parliament, this could change when voters go to the polls in September. Shapira says his website is not a direct response to Hoecke’s outburst but is propelled by his own concern about the political shift to the right in Europe and the U. S. In this vein, Shapira’s uncomfortably tweaked selfies recall the   photo montages of Berlin artist John Heartfield, who, wanted by the SS, fled Germany in 1933. Heartfield’s    political art appeared on the covers of   publications in Germany, ridiculing Hitler and condemning the horrors of the Third Reich. Like Heartfield’s jarring montages, Shapira’s images are intended to shock, to agitate and challenge behavior  —   in this case, unthinking selfie habits. They’ve certainly received attention. Shapira’s website immediately went viral, receiving more than 1. 2 million hits within its first 24 hours. Shapira says he has received thank you emails from Jews around the world who lost family members in the Holocaust, as well as emails from history teachers and Holocaust researchers planning to use the website in their lessons and lectures. The German tabloid BZ Berlin called the idea ”as simple as it is ingenious,” but praise has not been universal. Some newspapers, like the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, questioned the acceptability of using images of the dead in such a fashion. The British   weekly New Statesman voiced similar concerns  —   but about the   not victims of the Holocaust. Calling the project ”worryingly sensationalist if not censorious,” it asked whether publicly shaming visitors to the memorial  —   which is what many see Shapira as doing, regardless of his insistence otherwise  —   ”risked shutting people out.” The memorial’s architect, Peter Eisenman, told Der Spiegel when it opened in 2005 that he didn’t expect visitors to be overly reverent. ”People are going to picnic” at the monument, he told the magazine. This week, in reaction to Shapira’s website, Eisenman seemed unperturbed by selfies taken at the site. He told the BBC: ”People have been jumping around on these pillars forever. I think it’s fine.” While Berlin’s Holocaust memorial lists behavior it deems inappropriate for visitors  —   including jumping off the concrete slabs  —   some have questioned the ethics of Shapira’s own online conduct, since the selfies he has altered on his site have been plucked from people’s public social media profile pictures without permission. Those who find their photos on his site can request to have the images taken down. As of Tuesday, most people had done so, and Shapira says he has complied with the requests. ”Almost everybody apologized,” he says. Shapira hopes the remaining selfie owners get in touch. He expects the site to be empty in a couple of days. That, he says, will be its ”ultimate success.”"
"Saying she doesn’t want other kids to suffer the way she did, supermodel Hanne Gaby Odiele has announced that she was born intersex  —   and she wants to ”break the stigma” that can lead to intersex children having surgery to align them with the male or female gender. ”I’m excited to let the world know I’m intersex,” Odiele says, in a sequence of videos produced with the advocacy group interACT. In them, she tells intersex children to ”embrace your uniqueness.” She also urges parents and doctors to allow intersex children to determine their own identities. ”People want to put us in a box  —   male or female  —   but in reality sex is on a spectrum,” she says. ”Intersex is just proof of that.” Odiele was born with androgen insensitivity syndrome  —   a condition in which a person is born with both X and Y chromosomes, but the person’s body does not respond to male hormones, according to a description by the National Institutes of Health. ”Like most intersex kids, I’ve been subjected to irreversible, unconsented, unnecessary surgeries,” Odiele says. ”These surgeries have caused way more harm than good.” Discussing her surgeries in an interview with USA Today, Odiele says she underwent a procedure when she was 10 to remove undescended testes and then had vaginal reconstructive surgery eight years later. According to the NIH, undescended testes ”have a small chance of becoming cancerous later in life if they are not surgically removed.” In her message about AIS, Odiele says such surgeries shouldn’t be carried out at an early age. Odiele, 29, has been among the world’s elite models for the past 10 years, appearing on the cover of Vogue and walking in fashion shows for Marc Jacobs, Chanel and Prada, among others. Along the way, she has also won fans for her enigmatic style that draws on street fashion. Last summer, the Belgian model married her longtime boyfriend, John Swiatek. ”Intersex people should be able to make their own choices about their bodies,” Odiele says in one interACT video. ”I’m speaking out because it’s time this mistreatment comes to an end. It caused me way too much pain.” Saying that being intersex is roughly ”as common as being born with red hair,” the supermodel discussed being intersex in an Instagram video, leading many viewers to praise her for her bravery. Some of them had never heard of Odiele, or of being intersex. But one comment came from another person who was born with AIS. Here’s what that person had to say: ”I have AIS and I’ve hidden it from most of my family and all my friends  —   from the outside I look like any normal girl but feel ashamed of this secret because of society  —   I’ve learnt to love me and my body, but I can’t control what others think so I hide it from the world. .. I admire you so much for this, you are amazing xxxx.” In another video, Odiele addresses the parents of intersex kids: ”Just love your child. There’s no rush. Take your time, get informed. Get connected with other parents that’ve been in your shoes. Don’t make any drastic decisions. Let your own child decide for what it wants to do or be.” In that video, Odiele also speaks to intersex children, telling them, ”You can be whoever you want, whatever you want. Just be you.” As for how common it is for babies to be born intersex, estimates generally range from 1 in every 1, 500 to 1 in every 2, 000. As the American Psychological Association notes, intersex children are sometimes misdiagnosed  —   ”and government agencies do not collect statistics about intersex individuals.” In a recent publication about intersex children, the group also acknowledged that there’s a wide range of opinions on performing surgery to alter children’s genitals to make them less ambiguous. The APA adds, ”At this time, there is very little research evidence to guide such decisions.”"
"This week, Donald Trump told members of Congress that he would have won the popular vote, were it not for 3 to 5 million votes cast against him by ”illegals.” And when asked about it at the Tuesday press briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer affirmed that ”the president does believe that.” But there is no evidence. No, you’re not having deja vu. Yes, he has made this claim before. Yes, many outlets (NPR included)   it. And other   Republicans have not come to Trump’s aid in defending his   claims. ”I’ve seen no evidence to that effect. I’ve made that very, very clear,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters, according to The Hill. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday offered a sharper rebuke, saying that he wants Trump to either say that the election was fair, or provide evidence that it was not. ”I am begging the president, share with us the information you have about this or please stop saying it,” he said, adding: ”As a matter of fact, I’d like you to do more than stop saying it I’d like you to come forward and say, ’Having looked at it, I am confident the election was fair and accurate, and people who voted voted legally.’ . .. If he doesn’t do that, this is going to undermine his ability to govern this country.” In the era of persistent misinformation and conspiracy theories  —   some of them repeated by the president himself  —   repeating the ( ) facts is important. So here’s a   our fact check again, starting with some bold typeface: The Trump team has yet to provide evidence of widespread voter fraud. Back in November, Donald Trump tweeted something similar to what he told lawmakers this week, saying (without providing evidence) that he ”won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He later also alleged, once again without evidence, that there was ”serious voter fraud” in three states. Those are some heavy accusations. When asked for evidence shortly thereafter, Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser for Trump’s campaign, did provide two sources. However, those proved to have some major problems. One, an analysis of survey data published on the Washington Post’s   blog, Monkey Cage, estimated that ”6. 4 percent of   voted in 2008 and 2. 2 percent of   voted in 2010.” However, that study drew heavy criticism from other scholars, who both saw weaknesses in the authors’ methods and the survey they used. In addition, one of the authors of that heavily criticized study himself later rejected attempts to use that study to prove fraud. ”On the right there has been a tendency to misread our results as proof of massive voter fraud, which we don’t think they are,” wrote Old Dominion University political science professor Jesse Richman in a blog post. In another post, he further pointed out that even if one did extrapolate from his study, it does not imply that illegal votes would have affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, because it simply was not a close election. Though Trump won the electoral vote, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. Miller also cited a 2012 Pew Charitable Trusts report on the state of states’ voting systems. And that report did reveal some troubling statistics. For example, it found that 2. 8 million people are registered to vote in more than one state and that 24 million registration records ”are estimated to be inaccurate or no longer valid.” That means voting systems could definitely be modernized in some ways. However, that is not at all evidence of fraudulent voting, as the study’s main author pointed out on Twitter (highlighted by the Washington Post’s Fact Checker): And importantly, while voting systems could be (and have been) improved more, there are rules in place that keep people from being quickly purged from registration lists  —   simply moving from one state to another or dying won’t instantaneously remove a person from the list. ”So what has happened is that this notion that voter registration lists can possibly be 100 percent accurate at any point in time is a complete fiction,” Lorraine Minnite, author of The Myth of Voter Fraud, told NPR in November. ”It’s not allowed under federal law to be that way.” This is not to say that voter fraud doesn’t happen it does. However, it is not widespread. Bigger problems to come? Trump’s willingness to make (and repeat) untrue claims, demonstrated in just the first few days as president, have provided a taste of the challenges the media could face in holding the administration accountable in the coming years. As I wrote in September, repeated false claims create a difficult situation for journalists. On the one hand, we could continue to write refutations every time one of these inaccuracies is repeated  —   but that means repeating an untrue claim. On the other hand, we could refuse to repeat the claim  —   but that means allowing one of the most powerful voices in the nation to make the claim repeatedly unchecked. Aside from the   remarks, press secretary Spicer gave other false statements about the inauguration over the weekend. Photos of the National Mall from 2009 and 2017 clearly show Obama’s first inauguration with far more attendees. To explain the lower attendance at the Trump inauguration, Spicer made untrue claims about Mall ground coverings and inauguration security, offering   explanations for that attendance to anyone who wants them. He also later said he was referring to audience overall, including online streaming of the event. And for anyone who is firmly dug into their positions, those positions can be remarkably immovable. Beliefs, as political scientist Brendan Nyhan wrote in a 2016 paper, ”seem to be closely linked to people’s worldviews and may be accordingly difficult to dislodge without threatening their identity or sense of self.”"
"President Trump’s inner circle got one more member  —   CIA Director Mike Pompeo. The Senate confirmed the former Kansas congressman’s nomination to the post Monday night. It came after Trump went to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Saturday to laud the spy agency and blast Democrats for delaying a vote on Pompeo’s nomination. (That was the same event where the president said he was at ”war” with the media and falsely claimed to have 1 million to 1. 5 million people in attendance for his inauguration.) Technically, CIA director is not part of the president’s Cabinet, but it is a   important position. Currently, just two of Trump’s Cabinet nominees have been confirmed  —   his Defense and Homeland Security secretaries. His Cabinet moved a few more steps closer to being rounded out Tuesday when four nominees got approval votes from Senate committees: Ben Carson to head Housing and Urban Development, Elaine Chao for Transportation, Wilbur Ross for Commerce and Nikki Haley for U. N. ambassador, who went on to be confirmed by the full Senate. Two key nominees, which faced questions from Democrats over personal finances, testified Tuesday: Rep. Tom Price,  . for Health and Human Services secretary before the Senate Finance Committee and Rep. Mick Mulvaney,  . C. to be the president’s budget director before the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Despite the lack of confirmations at this point  —   and despite some controversies  —   all of Trump’s nominees are expected to sail through with little difficulty. That’s thanks to a rules change implemented, ironically, by Democrats when they were in the majority. In 2013, Democrats were frustrated by Republican obstruction of   federal court appointees. So   Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada eliminated a rule requiring 60 votes to move a nominee to a vote by the full Senate. (The move does not apply to Supreme Court nominees or legislation.) There are a handful of these Trump nominees one could point to who might not have been able to gain enough Democratic votes to be in Trump’s Cabinet if the   threshold were still in place. Think: Betsy DeVos, who showed little depth on education policy, for Education State nominee Rex Tillerson because of his oil company background Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions, due to questions about his views on race and his commitment to voting rights Labor nominee Andy Puzder because of his   chains’ employee policies Steve Mnuchin, now in line to be Treasury secretary, for profiting off the foreclosure crisis and possibly others, whom Democrats might have voted down, might have been pulled or possibly never brought forward. The process can be confusing, so here’s a quick primer on the steps it takes to become a member of the president’s Cabinet, followed by where each nominee is in the process: 1. Nominated by    2. Senate hearings before relevant Senate committee, 3. Voted out of committee  —   if a majority of the committee votes for the nominee, it goes to the Senate floor for a vote by the full body. (A caveat here: the Senate majority leader can bring a nominee to the floor for a full Senate vote even if they do NOT get the approval of the relevant committee. It’s rare, but it’s happened in the past.) 4. Confirmed by full Senate in floor vote, For more on each nominee, check out NPR’s list of Who’s In The Trump Administration. Note: Director of National Intelligence and CIA director are technically not considered   according to the Presidential Transition Guide put out by the Center for Presidential Transition, but because they are important posts, they are also listed below for where they are in the process. Confirmed, Voted out of committee, Senate hearings complete, Nominated"
"Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013, is coming back to life  —   on television. A new   series, from Sony Pictures Television, recounts how Chavez rose from obscurity to carry out a socialist revolution in his homeland. But even before hitting the airwaves, the series, called El Comandante, has sparked controversy  —   because it shows how Chavez set the stage for Venezuela’s current crisis. Colombian actor Andres Parra plays Chavez, the firebrand leftist who ruled Venezuela for 14 years. To prepare for the role, he listened to 400 hours of Chavez’s speeches and worked with a voice coach. His bulky frame,   wig and prosthetic chin make him a dead ringer for the Venezuelan strongman, right down to his mimicking of Chavez’s insults of former President George W. Bush as a ”donkey” and ”the devil.” In an earlier Colombian TV series, Parra played drug lord Pablo Escobar. But he finds Chavez even more fascinating. While the Venezuelan leader was dying of cancer, ”He made this speech,” Parra says. ”It was [a] nine hours, 46 minutes speech. Without pee or drinking or anything. It was a way, like, to show people, ’I’m here. I came back. And I’m strong.’ ” In El Comandante, Parra first depicts a young, idealistic Chavez escaping poverty by joining the army and being elected president with the backing of Venezuela’s poor. Eventually, Chavez morphs into a   authoritarian. The series suggests his rule laid the groundwork for the food shortages, hyperinflation and political polarization plaguing Venezuela today. Looking back on the Chavez years has proved highly emotional for Henry Rivero, the series director, who grew up in Venezuela. ”It’s been very hard for me,” he says. ”I cried a lot, most of the time. Because, you know, you understand how tough [was] the situation we went through all those years.” The 60 episodes of the series  —   which premieres in Latin America this month and on Telemundo in the U. S. in the spring  —   are being filmed in Colombia due to the hardships of working in neighboring Venezuela. What’s more, that country’s socialist government has branded the project a hatchet job. ”They are going to emphasize the bad and make the world think that Hugo Chavez was a barbarian,”   lawmaker Diosdado Cabello said in a recent speech. Meanwhile, Venezuelans who despise Chavez have also come down hard on the actors. ”They say I should be ashamed of myself for acting in this series,” says Vicente Peña, a Venezuelan who plays a military attache in El Comandante. But for Parra, playing Chavez is the role of a lifetime. ”It shows you so much things about the human tragedy,” he says. ”Of how we change. You see ambition but at the same time you see compassion. He has everything. For an actor, that’s delicious.”"
"Father John Misty is back with another opus. Like his previous two solo albums, Pure Comedy is epically orchestrated and vast in its scope, with   observations on fame, social media, technology and the overall state of humanity. In announcing the new album, Father John Misty shared a video for the title track, a lengthy dissection of what he calls ”the comedy of man.” While the video includes images of politicians and scenes from the past presidential election, Father John Misty says ”Pure Comedy” is about so much more. ”There’s nothing political about ’Pure Comedy,’ ” he tells NPR Music in an email. ”Unless that’s what the viewer wants, even with all the gratuitous footage of political figures. The video is only ’about Trump’ in that the video is about human beings.” ”Pure Comedy” also appears to take on everything from big pharma, global warming and natural disasters to religion, gluttony and human folly in general. Pure Comedy is due out April 7 on Sub Pop Records."
"You’ve probably heard of antibiotic resistance  —   germs that can resist the drugs designed to wipe them out. Now there’s a new kind of resistance to worry about  —   fungal infections that are resistant to treatment. The fungal infection in question is Candida auris, which can cause infections in the mouth, genitals, ears, wounds or, worst of all, the bloodstream. While other species of Candida can lead to the same kinds of infections, Candida auris is getting worldwide attention because, according to a study in the February 2017 journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, some cases have proved to be resistant to all three classes of drugs available to treat fungal infections. The first reported case was in Japan in 2009 but it has now been found on five continents. Fungi like yeast and mold develop resistance to the antifungal medications used to treat them in the same way bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics: Drugs kill most germs, but some resistant germs are left to grow and multiply. Misuse of antibiotics and antifungal drugs promotes the spread of these resistant germs. The problem with antibiotic resistance is   and widespread. But resistance to all available antifungal drugs ”is something we haven’t seen previously,” says Dr. Cornelius J. Clancy, chief of infectious diseases at the VA Pittsburgh Health Care System. All species of Candida can trigger a potentially   infection, says Dr. Riina   researcher at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, England, and an author of the study. The danger occurs when the fungal infection enters the bloodstream, leading to sepsis  —   the body’s overwhelming response to an infection, which can slow blood flow, damage organs and sometimes cause death. It appears that C. auris puts people at greater risk of sepsis than other species of Candida, says Richardson.  The microscopic spores produced by fungi are present in the air and soil, so most infections begin on the skin or in the lungs. They’re largely harmless, but they can be dangerous for people with weakened immune systems, like cancer or AIDS patients. The infection can spread in health care settings if beds and medical equipment have been contaminated, though it rarely spreads directly from patient to patient. No one knows whether C. auris has spread by traveling with patients or on object surfaces, on planes, for example  —   or developed simultaneously in various parts of the world. Because microbes can react to changes in the environment, says Richardson, it’s possible that other species of the Candida bug, stressed perhaps by exposure to radiation or antibiotics or disinfectants, changed their form and became C. auris. ”It appears they might have emerged independently in different places,” says Clancy, author of an editorial, ”Emergence of Candida auris: an International Call to Arms,” in the Jan. 15 journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.  So far, there have been relatively few cases of C. auris around the world, 24 of them reported in the States. Richardson said the death rate after infection approaches 60 to 70 percent, though the patients also had other serious medical problems, like cancer, so may have died of their underlying disease. Some of the patients were treated successfully with antifungal medications. But a study of 54 samples of C. auris from patients found that 50 of the samples, in lab tests, did not respond to fluconazole, an oral medication that is the   treatment for other species of Candida and the most commonly used antifungal drug. Overall, 22 of the samples were resistant to both fluconazole and a second line of defense, injection of a drug called amphotericin B. And two of the samples were resistant to all three available classes of antifungal medications, including echinocandins, the newest class of drugs administered by IV. The new bug has other traits that make it hard to stop. Most bugs dry up and die without moisture, so they’ll die if a hospital room is cleaned and left empty for a day or two. C. auris can survive a day or more of dryness ”and when it wakes up with moisture, it’s still normal,” Richardson says. And traditional cleanup strategies like wiping surfaces with conventional disinfectants failed to clear hospital rooms and equipment of the fungal infection. In the United Kingdom, one disinfectant, a form of bleach, was found to work. ”You have to wash and scrub, and not just put alcohol gel on equipment,” Richardson says. The CDC urges hospitals to contact state public health authorities if they suspect cases of C. auris and to initiate infection control techniques such as patient isolation. That’s possible in developed nations, but most poor countries lack the DNA sequencing equipment to even diagnose C. auris, says Clancy. This new species of fungal infection has the potential to become a serious public health challenge  —   a threat similar to that of antibiotic resistance. ”There’s no reason for panic,” Richardson says  —   but there is reason to give full respect to this potential threat."
"Rarely has a U. S. president been so willing to use his platform as both bullhorn and cudgel to exert public pressure on individual companies. But one of the hallmarks of President Trump’s approach to economic policy since his election has been his willingness to publicly endorse  —   and shame  —   companies in order to advance his message. The new president’s frequent use of social media has created an entirely new kind of   channel, one that companies are trying to exploit, in particular by touting their hiring announcements. Last week, Trump publicly thanked Walmart for its ”big jobs push” after the retailer last week released details of a hiring and capital spending plan that it had originally announced in October before the election. Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son parlayed his Dec. 6 meeting with the   elect into several supportive tweets from Trump. Ford, General Motors, Hyundai Motors and its affiliate Kia, have all made investment announcements referencing Trump’s tax or economic policies. ”They’re using Trump as a marketing channel,” says Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He says it’s a new paradigm, both for the president and for major company brands. ”Companies didn’t used to feel like they could curry favor with a president through making some moves like this, but today’s day and age it seems like a possibility so companies are exploring it,” Berger says. Trump’s prime focus has been the auto industry, where he has named individual companies and brands as possible targets for higher tariffs on cars made in Mexico. On Monday, during his first meeting with business leaders, Trump called out Ford CEO Mark Fields and the company’s decision to scrap plans for a $1. 6 billion in Mexico in favor of expanding in Michigan. ”Mark was so nice with the plant, I wanted to sit next to him,” Trump told the business executives. Trump criticized Ford’s rival, General Motors, earlier in the month because it manufactures some Chevy Cruzes for U. S. sale in Mexico. But then last week, GM said it would invest an additional $1 billion in the U. S. and Trump thanked the company in a tweet. GM spokesman Patrick Morrissey acknowledges that with U. S. job creation in the spotlight, ”this was good timing for us to share what we are doing.” It is not yet clear how Trump’s Twitter account might shape decision making for companies going forward. Many of the investment plans Trump has tweeted were planned  —   or even originally announced  —   well before the election. Take, for example, Fiat Chrysler’s announcement to increase its U. S. investment by $1 billion  —   which garnered a ”thank you” tweet from Trump this month. CEO Sergio Marchionne told reporters that investment decision was made more than a year ago, and that the attaboy from Trump wasn’t anticipated. ”None of us have had a tweeting president before,” Marchionne said at a Dec. 9 press conference. ”It’s a new way of communication, and I think we’re going to have to learn how to respond.” In most cases, companies are capitalizing on investment and hiring decisions that were set in motion well before Trump’s election. Berger, the Wharton marketing professor, says it’s not clear that companies will change investment decisions based on favorable tweets. ”Whether we’ll see companies actually changing their behavior, you know, actually doing different things or moving jobs in one way or another because of him, that’s a little bit more costly, and I think we will see some of that, but not as much as firms taking advantage of old news and recycling it,” Berger says. But the new president’s approval ratings are already low, so could companies see a backlash for trying to curry favor? It’s certainly possible, Berger says, but if Trump is endorsing the companies, and not the other way around, there’s less chance it could backfire."
"After a presidential campaign that divided the country on immigration, some of the most fervent   advocates say their views and agenda have now moved into the mainstream under President Donald Trump. His appointments, including top White House advisers and his nominee for attorney general, are powerful allies who support suspending the U. S. refugee resettlement program  —   the largest in the world  —   or an outright ban on accepting refugees from ” ” countries. From now on, ”I think you are going to see a very different attitude to the whole program and the whole problem,” says Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy and a leading   advocate. In Barack Obama’s Washington, Gaffney  —   described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as ”one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes, gripped by paranoid fantasies about Muslims destroying the West from within”  —   was considered on the fringe of the refugee debate. But no longer. ”I would put the work we do up against anybody who is in the mainstream,” Gaffney says. He bristles about charges that he is Islamophobic, saying, ”The Southern Poverty Law Center is being used to suppress people who are telling the truth.” A book rack outside Gaffney’s office displays more than a dozen of his center’s publications and pamphlets, with titles like Shariah, the Threat to America and Refugee Resettlement and the Hijra to America, claiming to document Muslim colonization of America. See No Shariah argues that the Muslim Brotherhood has gained undue influence over American policy makers, including the White House, FBI and Justice Department. These publications supply the talking points for a national   and   campaign. ’Do The Right Thing’ One battleground is in Rutland, Vt. where some 25 Syrian refugee families are on track to resettle this year. The first two Syrian families arrived earlier this month. The controversy surrounding their resettlement has attracted widespread domestic coverage and reporters from Denmark and Canada. Rutland became a microcosm of the national debate after Mayor Christopher Louras, the grandson of Greek immigrants to Rutland, announced in April that his town would become a host community for refugees. The   mayor says he saw an opportunity to ”do the right thing” and rebuild the community, which he describes as ”96 percent white and very much trending older.” The town of nearly 16, 000 has lost residents since 2000, and seems unable to attract new jobs or young people. An opioid crisis has crippled some neighborhoods. Louras says Syrian refugees would be a boost for the aging town, just as immigrants from southern and eastern Europe boosted Rutland’s fortunes a century ago. But there is opposition, and not just locally. ”The   people heard about it and they came to stir the pot. It was nasty and we are sorry it got so ugly,” says Lavinia Limon, who heads the U. S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants, one of nine private agencies contracted by the State Department to resettle refugees. ”This is a definitely a national campaign,” she says, referring to the wave of   activists who came to Rutland. ”Smaller towns seem to be their target.” Rutland has also attracted the attention of the influential conservative website Refugee Resettlement Watch. The site claims 6 million readers and its editor, a Maryland woman named Ann Corcoran, says resettlement of refugees is a form of ”infiltration” and is ”seeding” the country for the promotion of Islamic law, or sharia. Several state legislatures are considering bills to ban sharia. The whole issue is ”spurious,” Limon emphasizes, because elected lawmakers, not refugees, write the laws. ’Rutland First’ A month after Rutland’s mayor announced the town would welcome Syrian refugees, the ”Rutland First” group appeared on Facebook. The group’s aims were contained in a bold,   manifesto: ”Rutland before Refugees.” Timothy Cook, a Rutland physician and one of the group’s founders, contests the mayor’s view that Syrian refugees can remedy the town’s economic woes. ”It seems a little delusional,” he says as he stands in front of his medical office on a cold and foggy January night and points out businesses long closed along Rte. 7, a major thoroughfare in town. In May, soon after the mayor’s announcement, Cook invited James Simpson, a national   and   activist, to speak at the local library. Simpson, a former analyst for the White House Office of Management and Budget, spoke to a full house at the library in an event livestreamed by Rutland’s public access channel. His book, Red Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America, charges that the ”progressive left and Muslim extremists” aim to undermine and ultimately abolish the U. S. Constitution through Muslim resettlement and immigration. He calls the vetting of refugees and immigrants by U. S. security agencies a ”sham.” ”I am not Islamophobic,” Simpson insists. ”I am concerned about national security and the costs of the [refugee] program. I’m concerned about the secrecy and the unilateral way it’s imposed on communities.” Louras  —   who says there was nothing secret or imposed about Rutland’s application to host refugees  —   says the conversation in Rutland changed after Simpson’s visit. The language got rougher, more xenophobic. ”It certainly provided some false narratives and alternative facts that some people here locally glommed onto to justify their own positions.” But he also says the debate in Rutland was ”reflective of the national mood and the national level of discourse that Donald J. [Trump] was peddling.” ’Rutland Welcomes’ The roughness, for now, has somewhat abated. When refugees arrive in Rutland, they are likely to note signs around town featuring a white heart pierced by a thin black arrow. It is the symbol for ”Rutland Welcomes,” a   group with hundreds of volunteers who have pledged to help in any way they can and organized as soon as the mayor announced that refugees would arrive. Since the State Department approved the arrivals in September, volunteer committees have filled warehouses with donated household goods, clothing and kitchen supplies. They organized school registrations for the children and lined up translators for the adults. Recently, they set up Arabic classes taught once a week by linguists from nearby Middlebury College. ”I see no reason to believe that they won’t be successful, ”says Louras. ”They want to integrate into the workforce and that’s the story of our community. That’s what the southern and eastern Europeans did 100 years ago. ” Tim Cook, the local physician, sees these newcomers and thinks about Rutland’s past. His family arrived here more than 200 years ago. He acknowledges immigrants shaped Rutland for good. But this time, he believes it’s different. ”We have a community that is steeped in   culture,” he says. ”The idea of having a bizarre chess game where you are just going to drop people here, I have a problem with that.” For now, though, Cook accepts that Syrian refugees will become part of the community. ”I will do everything I can to help them succeed,” he tells me a week after the first families arrived. ”I’ll offer medical care. I will do whatever I can do.” He knows his position will surprise those who’ve followed his vocal opposition, but says those who are surprised should note New England culture. ”That,” he says, ”is what Vermonters do.” But he’s still hoping the new president will abolish the refugee program before more Syrians arrive."
"After her tweet about President Trump’s youngest son sparked anger and resulted in her suspension, Saturday Night Live writer Katie Rich has apologized. Rich says she regrets the tweet that she now calls ”inexcusable.” Rich, who’s one of around 30 writers listed in Saturday Night Live’s credits, issued her apology Monday about the tweet that was evidently meant to be humorous but was widely criticized for attacking a   . A person familiar with the situation tells NPR that the suspension was levied shortly after Rich’s tweet during Friday’s presidential inauguration, and that the suspension is indefinite. Rich deleted the tweet a few hours after it was published. ”I sincerely apologize for the insensitive tweet,” Rich wrote Monday. ”I deeply regret my actions  offensive words. It was inexcusable  I’m so sorry.” The tweet prompted an online campaign calling for Rich to be fired. On Monday, media news site Deadline was the first to report that Rich had been suspended from her job writing for the ”Weekend Update” news segment on Saturday Night Live, the NBC show that’s often traded barbs with President Trump. By trying to make a joke about Trump’s son, Rich broke a longstanding convention that places the children of politicians  —   and especially those of presidents  —     to ridicule or attacks. In the era of social media, that convention has been tested more frequently in recent years. In 2014, Republican congressional staffer Elizabeth Lauten resigned after she posted comments on Facebook that sharply criticized Malia and Sasha Obama for their appearance as their father conferred the traditional presidential pardon upon a turkey at Thanksgiving. After Trump took the oath of office on Friday, those who came to Barron Trump’s defense over the weekend included Chelsea Clinton, who wrote, ”Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does  —   to be a kid.”"
"I would argue that the most successful novel of the First World War is not A Farewell to Arms, or even All Quiet on the Western Front, but rather one that’s rarely classified so: The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Like several other British veterans of the trenches  —   CS Lewis and David Lindsay come to mind  —   Tolkien chose to explore the inhuman horrors of the Great War through the allegory of mythology. In fiction, poetry, or memoir, he never explicitly addressed his time on the Somme. And neither does a new novel by his grandson, no matter the ”inspired by the   experiences” copy on the dust jacket. Simon Tolkien dedicates No Man’s Land to his grandfather, inviting the question: Is this the book that J. R. R. was unable to write? In style, theme, and tone, the answer is no. But who can blame Simon for not even trying to put words in the mouth of his legendary relative? Our protagonist is Adam Raine, no   for J. R. R. except in the most basic ways. Raine grows up on the streets of London, moves to coal country in northern England, and then is taken in by the landed lord of the manor. His story is one of serial strife  —   the picket lines, union strikes, mining accidents, grinding want, and Downton Abbey politics of early 20th century Britain  —   even before he enters the war. ”Luck ain’t a word we knows the meanin’ of,” says a working class friend. This is not a war book, then, but rather David Copperfield Goes to War. Only in its central third does this novel of manners and civil discord do an about face and march directly to the front lines in France. The shift is sudden, as if the book, like British society, didn’t believe the war would really come until it did. Simon Tolkien is at his best capturing the jingoism of   England, the smothering sense of duty and obligation heaped on young men, the peer pressure and public calls of cowardice, old women in the streets lecturing   boys to get to the front. It is a sentiment completely foreign to contemporary American culture  —   now, we deem not enlisting the smart choice, like Donald Trump (as he declared in an election debate) is smart not to pay his taxes. But Raine and every one of his friends eventually sign up, if only because ”anythin’s better than that bloody mine,” as one says. Raine’s victimhood shifts, from class and poverty to idiot generals and the guns trapped in the system, one tragedy after another befalls him. Raine finds the Great War by turns grisly and romantic. The soldiers on   duty vomit in their gas masks because the flies, ”clustered so thickly on the rotting flesh that they looked like black fur, were so drunk from feasting that they crawled rather than flew away, leaving their white maggot progeny behind.” And yet, at the same time, he sees his fellow soldiers ”go over the top again and again, inspiring their men with a nonchalant bravery that left him   with admiration.” There is truth in this duality, no matter how    it feels today, knowing how two world wars will turn out. In the book’s last third, coincidence and cliché play an unfortunately large role. But such quibbles miss the point. This is a   an opera, a costume drama to binge watch. Simon Tolkien knows how to keep a story moving, and he does it well. Brian Castner’s newest project is The Road Ahead,”a   anthology of short stories featuring veteran writers. "
"As the Beijing Kunlun Red Stars hit the ice to face off against a team from Moscow, tension is high. A win tonight is crucial to make it to the playoffs in the Kontinental Hockey League, or KHL, Russia’s top professional hockey league, second only to the U. S. National Hockey League in talent. But hardly anyone in the   Beijing arena understands the stakes. In fact, there’s hardly anyone here a vast majority of the seats are empty. Zhang Cuihua, a   old granny, takes up three seats with bags of knitting supplies. Someone gave her free tickets, and she figured a hockey game was a good excuse as any to knit a sweater. ”I tried to get my son’s family to come with me, but they weren’t interested. I haven’t seen a hockey game in 20 years  —   I forget the rules. I can’t figure it out. One team is Russian, but who’s the other team?” she asks me. That’s your Beijing team, I tell her. She looks up from her knitting and squints through oversized spectacles. ”Oh. But they’re all foreigners! China’s no good at hockey,” she concludes, returning to her knitting. After China won its bid to host the 2022 Olympics, President Xi Jinping vowed to get 300 million of his people ”on the ice,” an initiative to encourage winter sports. Energy tycoons in China and Russia quickly made a deal to create Beijing’s first professional hockey club, and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing for the signing ceremony with Xi last June. Kunlun Red Star was born  —   the first Chinese club to join Russia’s premier KHL league. China’s team has 18 players from Russia, Finland, Canada and the United States. There are a few Chinese nationals, but none of them can compete at this level and they rarely see ice time. Team CEO Emma Liao says sponsors, many with close connections to China’s government, have already covered the $30 million cost needed to run the Red Stars. Now comes the hard part: educating the public about the team  —   and about hockey, for that matter. ”Nobody really knows what is hockey,” Liao says with a sigh. ”So our job is to educate the audience [about] what is hockey, why it’s so attractive and why they should come to watch the hockey game.” Few people have done this more than Mark Simon, a Canadian hockey coach who’s worked for years to raise awareness about the sport in China and now volunteers as an assistant for the Red Stars. On this particular day, he’s juggling an order for new jerseys with a hospital visit to the team’s goalie, who’s out with an injury. Simon says he wasn’t sure what to think when he first heard about the team. ”Great idea  —   KHL. China, Russia, you know, the Communist brothers and all the stuff. I mean, I get it,” he says. ”But I still thought, you know, it’s early. To expect that you’re going to fill an   rink is insane.” Simon says the Red Stars have already broken a KHL record for lowest attendance at a single game  —   550 people. The sparse crowds can make for an awkward   experience, when the team’s   cheerleading squad’s cheers are swallowed by the void of a   arena. Or when the announcer  —   who Simon complains doesn’t know a thing about hockey  —   begins an exuberant cheer for the Red Stars two seconds after the opposing team scores. A group of spectators from Finland is amused, and a little confused. They say the game would be better if they were drunk. But tight security rules prohibit alcohol inside the arena. They’re the only audience members I meet who’ve actually bought tickets. Peter Solonen, one of the Finns, says he’s never seen a hockey game with such good talent attract so few fans. ”They’ve still got something to learn,” he says with a laugh. ”You don’t see hockey anywhere else but inside the stadium. Nowhere else. That is weird.” It may be weird, but for Red Stars player Zach Yuen, it’s a dream come true. He was the first   defenseman drafted by the NHL, and he’s chosen to come here now, to play in his homeland. ”When I was growing up, I never had a role model,” says Yuen. ”It would’ve been cool to have a role model to look up to. Just to know that it’s possible. Because the entry to hockey is tough for sure, culturally. In China, there are kids that watch our games and hopefully, I can live up to that and be a role model for them.” Kids like Yuan Zhongfan, who’s practicing with his team in Shanghai, could use a role model. The    loves hockey, but he’s not sure how supportive his parents will be when he gets older. ”My mom wanted me to learn swimming, but I wasn’t tall enough. There was a hockey rink nearby, so we picked that,” he says. Yuan says his dream is to play for the Chicago Blackhawks. I ask him what his parents think about this. ”They don’t think it’s possible,” he says, ”because no Chinese player has made it to the NHL.” Yuan’s parents have never heard of Zach Yuen, and they don’t know much about the Red Stars  —   who, as it happens, lost their big game and have likely lost their chance to make it to the playoffs. But China’s government is dreaming big about hockey. And no matter how obscure the sport is today, if he works hard, this    from Shanghai may someday get a shot at his dream, too."
"The Dow Jones industrial average cruised past another milestone Wednesday  —   the 20, 000 level, further evidence of the long bull market that has lifted share prices since the depths of the financial crisis. The index closed at a record 20, 068. Since the November elections, the Dow and the broader SP 500 are up 9. 5 percent and 7. 4 percent, respectively. The stock market rally has been remarkably durable so far, withstanding the banking crisis in Europe, the Brexit vote, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, periods of disappointing growth in the U. S. and the polarizing U. S. presidential election. Crossing the 20, 000 threshold isn’t significant in itself. It’s simply a number. But it’s a round one with all those juicy zeroes. So let’s take a moment to examine why stocks have done so well in recent years, why the Dow is an imperfect proxy for the market and why the bull market hasn’t changed the economic fortunes of most Americans. The crisis, the Fed and the corporate moneymaking machine, Over the long term  —   meaning decades or even a century  —   stocks are by far the   financial asset. Adjusted for inflation, stocks have returned an average of 7 percent a year. That’s better than bonds and far preferable to stashing money in a savings account or under a mattress. But in 2009, the depths of the financial crisis, the stock market was a terrifying spectacle, a place where money went up in flames. After topping 10, 000 for the first time in in 1999, the Dow plunged to 6, 547 on March 9, 2009. Fear permeated markets everywhere. It seemed plausible that the banking system might never recover, putting financial capitalism at mortal risk. Almost no one wanted to be in the market. But by then, the seeds of recovery had already been planted. The TARP rescue, whatever its faults, stabilized the banking system. And the Federal Reserve had put in place an extraordinary policy  —   keeping interest rates near zero  —   that ultimately made stocks extremely attractive. The basic idea behind the Fed policy was simple. If the interest rate you get on safe assets such as bonds is essentially zero  —   who wants that?  —   investors will eventually put their money back into real estate and stocks. And that’s exactly what has happened. The great stock market rally roughly coincides with the Fed’s   policy, which has been in place since 2008. At the same time, corporate profits have come storming back since the financial crisis, and company earnings are closely correlated to stock market performance. So if you want to understand Dow 20, 000  —   the Fed and corporate balance sheets are the best place to start. Why the Dow? The Dow isn’t the entire stock market. Not even close. It’s a weighted average of just 30 major stocks, including Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Apple and  . Financial professionals pay closer attention to broader indexes such as the SP 500 or the Russell 2, 000. But for much of the media and in everyday conversation, the Dow is often the default, the old standby, cited by force of habit. It’s even used as shorthand for how the market is doing. That’s a mistake. Because it only represents the fortunes of 30 big companies, the Dow doesn’t tell an investor anything about the world of startups or the midsize firms that employ so many Americans. The Dow doesn’t include Facebook, Amazon or Google’s parent company, Alphabet. The stock market isn’t the economy, The stock market has recovered a lot better from the financial crisis than the overall economy. Economic growth has been sluggish since the Great Recession, averaging only about 2 percent. Wages have been stagnant. But the stock market has yielded handsome returns, benefiting institutional investors and households with the means to invest in stocks. All this has contributed to the growing disparities between affluent Americans and everyone else. For those who have maxed out contributions to 401( k)s or socked away money in a brokerage account, the stock market has been a godsend. But only 52 percent of Americans have money in the stock market, matching the lowest rate in 19 years, according to a Gallup Poll from April. In 2007, according to that same poll, 65 percent reported investing in the market. Based on those Gallup numbers, many Americans lost faith in the market at exactly the wrong time  —   just as it was staging a powerful comeback. Another discouraging side note: The stock market rally could be sweetening the retirement portfolios of ordinary Americans. But those portfolios tend to be skimpy, meaning ordinary investors don’t get much bang from their stock market bucks. In 2015, the median balance in retirement accounts was just $26, 405, according to Vanguard, one of the largest managers of retirement plans. What about that crazy election? The stock market was jittery in the days immediately before the election. And according to research by two prominent economists, the market dipped when Donald Trump’s election prospects improved in betting markets. They even predicted that the SP 500 would be 12 percent lower with a Trump victory than a Clinton win. And for a few hours after Trump clinched the presidency, stock market futures plunged, falling by as much as 5 percent. But prices quickly recovered, and the market has enjoyed an unanticipated Trump rally that began Nov. 9, the day after his victory. It’s impossible to pinpoint a single reason for the   bounce. Some analysts point to Trump’s promises to spend big on infrastructure and cut taxes, moves that could juice the economy. How long will it last? Trick question. Only fools say they can predict where the stock market is going. What is known is that a single event can trigger a stock market    —   like a military confrontation, a bank failure or a big jump in oil prices. But this market rally has withstood many unsettling events. So who knows?"
"Politics may be at play in the appearance of a draft presidential order that could revive the CIA’s ”black site” prisons, one former CIA director says. The appearance of the document, first reported by the New York Times, drew an immediate outcry from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as CIA veterans. The draft order calls for a review of the interrogation practices permitted under current U. S. law and whether the CIA should reopen its   network of overseas prisons. But former CIA Director Michael Hayden says he thinks it is more about sending a message than laying serious plans. ”My instinct is this is a way of reflecting the tough language from the campaign, not a commitment to change anything,” Hayden told NPR. ”I cannot imagine a CIA director saying, ’It’s going to be OK to open a future black site.’ I mean, we’re not doing this again.” President Donald Trump endorsed outlawed interrogation methods during the presidential campaign, telling a crowd in South Carolina: ”Torture works, OK, folks? Believe me. It works, OK? And waterboarding is your minor form, but we should go much stronger than waterboarding.” Trump repeated his support for waterboarding in an interview with ABC News scheduled to air on Wednesday evening, according to previews released by the network. But he also told anchor David Muir that he would defer to Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo about whether to use it. Lawmakers who oversaw the CIA’s previous interrogation and detention programs were quick to criticize the proposals. ”The president can sign whatever executive orders he likes,” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. ”But the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who oversaw the production of a   classified report on CIA detention and interrogation programs during her tenure as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also offered a scathing response. ”Reconstituting this appalling program would compromise our values, our morals and our standing as a world leader  —   this cannot happen,” she wrote. ”I encourage President Trump to not sign the damaging and dangerous executive order that has been circulating. Read the [Senate] report, declassify it and let the American people see for themselves how the program failed to work  —   I believe they will never want to go there again.” Rebuilding the CIA’s network of secret prisons would very likely meet resistance from the agency itself, where many officers feel they were hung out to dry after being asked to take on the job of detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. At Pompeo’s Jan. 12 confirmation hearing, senators grilled him, demanding to know whether the CIA was definitively out of the torture business. ”If you were ordered by the president to restart the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques that fall outside of the Army Field Manual, would you comply?” asked Feinstein. ”Absolutely not,” Pompeo replied. ”Moreover, I can’t imagine that I would be asked that by the   or  .” But in written answers to   questions by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pompeo steered a somewhat different course. Pressed  —   again by Feinstein  —   on whether he would commit to refraining from any steps that would bring back waterboarding or other   enhanced interrogation techniques, Pompeo wrote: ”I will consult with experts at the Agency and at other organizations in the U. S. government on whether the Army Field Manual uniform application is an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country or whether any rewrite of the Army Field Manual is needed.” In other words, Pompeo says he will confer with the CIA officers who now report to him on whether the current interrogation rules work. And if not, he’s open to changing them. That review could get underway if Trump signs the draft order revealed on Wednesday. The president argues that U. S. national security officials have their hands tied. On his visit to CIA headquarters on Jan. 21, he told the assembled intelligence officers and analysts that ”we’re going to do great things. . .. We have not used the real abilities that we have. We’ve been restrained.” Supporters say the time is right for the U. S. to take another look at the restrictions Congress imposed during the tenure of President Barack Obama, which limit soldiers, intelligence officers and other interrogators to the techniques spelled out in the Army Field Manual. ”I support very much the idea that we’re going to review  —   and that’s what the executive order does,” said Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican in the House and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. Her father was a key member of President George W. Bush’s administration when it ordered the use of torture after the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. Terrorism suspects were jailed in secret in foreign countries  —   including Afghanistan, Thailand and Lithuania  —   and chained, beaten and subjected to other such treatments as interrogators demanded information. ”I do support enhanced interrogation,” Liz Cheney told reporters in Philadelphia. ”I think that it’s something that clearly has helped us in the past to prevent attacks and save lives and so I was glad to see President Trump take that step.” People still caught up today in the aftermath of the   decisions, however, called that a bad idea. James Connell, an attorney for alleged Sept. 11 plotter Ammar   said at the Guantanamo Bay detention center on Wednesday that one reason the trials there are taking so long is the complications caused by the use of brutal interrogations. Defendants like Baluchi argue the government cannot use evidence it extracted from them by torture, but U. S. national security officials say such men are too dangerous to let go. So they have languished in limbo in Guantanamo for years. ”What this case has demonstrated, if it’s demonstrated anything, is that torture makes criminal cases virtually impossible to prosecute,” Connell said. ”In fact, it’s fair to say that torture and due process are mutually exclusive.” NPR Correspondents Susan Davis and David Welna contributed to this report."
"Updated at 5:50 p. m. ET, President Trump has signed two executive orders related to immigration and border security, moving ahead with his plans to build a wall along the U. S. border with Mexico and to deport people who are in the country illegally. Trump signed the orders at the Department of Homeland Security Wednesday, shortly after the agency’s new leader, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, was sworn in. ”Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders,” Trump said in an address at the Homeland Security Department. The move comes less than one week before Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is slated to visit Trump in Washington on Jan. 31. Trump emphasized that the actions were in partnership with Mexico. ”The secretary of homeland security, working with myself and my staff, will begin immediate construction of a border wall,” Trump said. News that the border wall plan is moving forward was criticized by Amnesty International USA, whose executive director, Margaret Huang, said, ”This wall would say that those from outside the United States, especially from Latin America, are to be feared and shunned  —   and that is just wrong.” Trump said in an interview with ABC News that the U. S. will be ”reimbursed at a later date” by Mexico for the costs of building the wall  —   an idea that Peña Nieto flatly rejected earlier this month. The cost of building such a wall has been estimated at at least $12 billion and perhaps $15 billion for a   barrier. Roughly a third of the U. S.  border is currently blocked by a fence, as NPR’s John Burnett has reported: ”According to an    estimate by the Government Accountability Office, the border fence cost the government $3 million to $4 million a mile to build. Estimates for additional fencing  —   in harsher terrain  —   could surpass $10 million a mile.” The border wall is included in an executive order titled Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements. It calls on Kelly to ”identify and, to the extent permitted by law, allocate all sources of Federal funds for the planning, designing, and constructing of a physical wall along the southern border.” The directive calls for hiring more Border Patrol agents and prioritizing the prosecution of criminal offenses related to the Southern border. It also expands detention capacity  —   a move that could increase the use of private   prisons. The Justice Department had already beefed up border prosecutions under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The new action suggests law enforcement will be more empowered to prosecute for minor offenses and remove those in the country illegally. A second executive order, titled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, directs the departments of Homeland Security and Justice to withhold federal funds from   sanctuary cities. In that action, Trump is also restoring the Secure Communities Program  —   which had ceased to operate in 2014 after being used by both the Bush and Obama administrations to force state and local governments to share fingerprints and other data to help federal officials identify unauthorized immigrants. Several states and cities sought to opt out of that system, which was also criticized for sometimes resulting in cases of mistaken detention of U. S. citizens. One critic of Trump’s executive orders, Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said there are better ways to keep the country safe than to crack down on sanctuary cities. ”Pressuring local law enforcement to take on immigration responsibilities undercuts the very oath they take to ’serve and protect’ the entirety of their community. Smart law enforcement is built on intelligence gathering and trust, which are dramatically undermined once the cop on the corner is asking victims of crime about their immigration status,” he said. Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors immigration limits, said in an email that the administration’s battle with sanctuary cities is just beginning. ”Who will blink first —  cities or the federal government? Cutting off their money is step one. LA and New York will not change their policies. This will play out for years,” he said. Wednesday’s executive order also seeks to force other nations to take back criminals in the U. S. illegally by using leverage such as withholding U. S. visas. And it will allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to more aggressively arrest, detain and remove people from the U. S. It also calls for the hiring of 10, 000 additional immigration officers. The order also will create an ”Office for Victims of Crimes Committed by Removable Aliens,” aimed to support these victims and their families. The order does not detail exactly how these victims will be supported but states that the office will ”provide quarterly reports studying the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States.” The actions come one day after the president tweeted about new immigration policies, saying Tuesday night, ”Among many other things, we will build the wall.” Construction of a border wall was a keystone of Trump’s presidential campaign. Questions still surround the details of the plan for a wall  —   chief among them, how the undertaking would be paid for. A law already exists that experts say gives Trump the authority to start building the wall. It is the Secure Fence Act of 2006. It was bipartisan and overwhelmingly supported during the Bush administration. The 2006 law envisions both physical barriers and   features, like sensors and cameras. It also mentions a   fence  —   but that fence was never built, and the legislation didn’t include money to pay for one. Ten years later, the process could begin in earnest."
"From the start of his campaign, after he descended the golden escalator to give his announcement speech, Donald Trump promised to build a wall along the U. S.’ Southern border. Now, Trump is taking the first steps toward keeping that promise, with an executive action that calls for building that wall. In line with his campaign theme of tightening laws on immigration, that action will call for other measures, such as hiring more Border Patrol agents and expanding detention space. Here’s a quick primer on Trump’s wall  —   how long it would have to be, how much it will cost and what Americans think about it. The situation right now, Trump is no stranger to   and he has voiced different opinions on how he wants the border barrier to look. When CBS’s Lesley Stahl asked him if he would ”accept a fence,” he answered, ”For certain areas I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate.” Then at his Jan. 11 press conference, he took a harder line: ”On the fence, it’s not a fence it’s the wall,” he told reporters. ”You just misreported it. We’re going to build a wall.” Remember, for the record, he said  —   ”For certain areas I would.” Should he decide to accept some fencing, he has existing fencing to add onto: As of late 2015, there were 652. 7 miles of border fence along the roughly    border. Along with that head start on the barrier, he also appears to have a head start on the legislative side. When Republican Rep. Luke Messer recently claimed that the fence is authorized, and that it only needs to be funded, PolitiFact ruled it ”True.” A November 2016 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service bolsters that finding: ”DHS’s current policy not to deploy a substantial amount of additional fencing, beyond what is expressly required by law, appears primarily premised on policy considerations and funding constraints, rather than significant legal impediments,” writes the author (whose name was redacted from the report). Still, there are other logistical hurdles. For example, there’s the pesky issue of private land ownership. When the U. S. government was building the fence from 2008 to 2010, the Border Patrol ”had to enter into negotiations or begin condemnation proceedings with landowners,” as NPR’s John Burnett reported in  . And even then, years after the construction, some lawsuits were still ongoing. Another potential legal barrier exists in a    treaty, as the AP reported on Wednesday: ”The Trump administration also must adhere to a   border treaty with Mexico that limits where and how structures can be built along the border. The 1970 treaty requires that structures cannot disrupt the flow of the rivers, which define the U. S.  border along Texas and 24 miles in Arizona, according to The International Boundary and Water Commission, a joint U. S.  agency that administers the treaty.” The cost: high. An actual wall could cost $15 billion to $40 billion, A member of President Trump’s own party criticized the cost of a wall on Wednesday. Texas Republican Rep. William Hurd, who represents a district featuring a lengthy border with Mexico, said in a statement, ”The facts have not changed. Building a wall is the most expensive and least effective way to secure the border.” Here are some basic facts on cost: Trump will need to find funding, and he very well may need a lot of it. While Trump at one point estimated the cost of his wall (or   combination) to be $8 billion  —   which he later revised to $10 billion to $12 billion  —   it could easily be much higher. Were he to, in fact, try a wall, the cost could be much higher. One estimate from MIT found that a   wall would cost anywhere between $27 billion and $40 billion. Another estimate from research and investment firm Bernstein put it at $15 billion to $25 billion. Of course, a fence could be far cheaper than a wall. The nearly 653 miles of wall built thus far cost around $2. 3 billion, the DHS said in 2015 congressional testimony. That comes out to around $3. 5 million per mile. Multiply that out across 1, 300 more miles, and it comes to around $4. 6 billion. But there’s a big caveat here: That could easily be a very conservative estimate. Estimating how much a border fence costs isn’t simply a matter of miles times dollars, because some miles of border fence cost far more than others. A 2009 analysis from the Government Accountability Office found that as of late 2008, pedestrian fencing had cost the government an average $3. 9 million per mile  —   but that costs ranged from $400, 000 to $15. 1 million per mile. Likewise, vehicle fencing averaged $1 million per mile but ranged from $200, 000 to $1. 8 million per mile. And costs vary depending on who’s doing the estimation. One 2009 analysis from the Department of Homeland Security estimated that as of late 2008, it would cost $6. 5 million per mile for pedestrian fencing  —   that is, fencing primarily meant to block people attempting to cross the border on foot. Vehicle fencing came out to $1. 7 million per mile. Prices can vary for a number of reasons for example, the fence is far taller in some places than others, and different materials are used in different spots. Geography also plays a part in determining cost. Along some stretches of the border, like rough mountain ranges, costs could exceed $10 million per mile, as Burnett has reported. The cost also depends upon who is doing the building. Commercial builders are more expensive than if the U. S. depends upon the military to build the fence. And then other costs could easily arise  —   for example, the cost of legal proceedings from all those dealings with landowners mentioned above. Cost considerations are less of a worry if Mexico will pay for the wall, as Trump has claimed it would. But he is unlikely to be able to make that happen without a massive fight, as Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto seemed to indicate earlier this month. ”It is evident that we have differences with the new United States government on some issues, such as a wall that Mexico absolutely will not pay for,” Peña Nieto said, as quoted by the Guardian. ”At no time will we accept anything that goes against our dignity as a country and our dignity as Mexicans.” Most Americans are opposed to the wall, Many Trump supporters were fervent supporters of a border wall (as evidenced by the loud chants of ”Build the wall” at his campaign events). However, polls suggest that Americans as a whole aren’t thrilled about a border wall. A recent ABC News poll found that only 37 percent of Americans are in favor of building it. It’s not that Americans aren’t concerned about immigration, of course 72 percent of Americans want to ”deport undocumented criminals,” according to the ABC News poll. Likewise, a Pew Research Center poll from late November and early December found that large majorities of Americans support a variety of immigration policies: 77 percent said it’s ”somewhat” or ”very important” to have stricter enforcement of visa overstays, and 73 percent said the same of preventing unqualified immigrants from receiving government benefits, for example. Meanwhile, only 39 percent said the same of building a border wall. Indeed, majorities supported other policies that run counter to the Trump immigration agenda, including allowing people who entered the country as children to stay, as well as supporting a path to legal status."
"Mary Tyler Moore played the girl who could turn the world on with her smile. The actress is beloved for two TV roles: the single young professional Mary Richards on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and before that, the earnest homemaker Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Moore died Wednesday at the age of 80, her longtime representative told NPR. ”Today, beloved icon, Mary Tyler Moore, passed away at the age of 80 in the company of friends and her loving husband of over 33 years, Dr. S. Robert Levine,” Mara Buxbaum said in an email. ”A groundbreaking actress, producer, and passionate advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Mary will be remembered as a fearless visionary who turned the world on with her smile.” In 1995, 25 years after The Mary Tyler Moore Show first aired, the actress clearly recalled shooting the scenes for its memorable opening credits. ”It was freezing cold,” she told WHYY’s Fresh Air. ”It was in Minneapolis in January, I think. We didn’t know what we were doing  —   we were just there to grab a lot of footage that shows a young woman’s exuberance [over] being in a new city.” The final opening credits showed Moore’s character tossing her hat in the air. With it, she’s tossing out all the baggage of her last life and starting over in the newsroom of Minneapolis’  . Moore plays Richards as young, polite and very determined. In the first episode, when crotchety news director Lou Grant, played by Ed Asner, asks Richards about her age and relationship status during a job interview, she challenges his line of questioning. ”You’ve been asking a lot of very personal questions that don’t have a thing to do with my qualifications for this job,” she says. ”It was the most powerful moment in theater I’ve had, because she played it so beautifully,” Asner told NPR in 2001. ”The audience was going ’  ’ at that moment.” By the time Moore appeared in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, she was already an experienced comedic actor and producer. Her production company MTM Enterprises (formed with her second husband, Grant Tinker) was also responsible for the sitcoms Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show and WKRP in Cincinnati. Moore had learned her craft while playing homemaker Laura Petrie for five seasons on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Her chemistry with her   husband, played by Dick Van Dyke, was so electric that CBS insisted her character had to be a single woman on her later show  —   the network didn’t want viewers to think they had divorced. Van Dyke cheerfully admitted this to NPR in 2011: ”Around the second season, we would try to rehearse and begin to giggle for no reason. And a psychiatrist said, ’You have a crush on each other.’ And I realized that’s true! And I think it showed on the screen. I think that’s why people thought we were really married because we had a wonderful connection.” Laura Petrie also wasn’t the typical 1960s housewife people were used to seeing on TV. ”Laura actually had opinions of her own,” Moore said. ”And while she was asserting herself, she also didn’t make Dick Van Dyke look like a dummy. I mean, society’s expectations at that point still said, ’Hey, wait a minute, lady, you only go so far here.’ But I think we broke new ground.” The character also wore capri pants in a time when skirts and heels were the height of TV fashion. Moore proved she could wear what she wanted and also sometimes take the comic lead to Van Dyke’s straight man. She said she had always been a fan of the comedian Nanette Fabray, and she channeled Fabray to conjure up those trademark comic tears. ”There was definitely a cracking in the voice and an inability to maintain a tone and a certain amount of verbal yodeling that took place,” Moore said. In her real life, the actress was not the single,   Mary Richards that America embraced. The real Mary was married by the time she was 18. She was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. but she grew up in Los Angeles with a mother who battled alcoholism, a problem that later afflicted Moore and both her siblings. ”I probably never was really    drunk,” Moore recalled. ”And I certainly never drank during the daytime, but I wasted a lot of my time and I forgot a lot because I didn’t remember much of what happened the night before.” Moore channeled some of that unhappiness for her role as a grieving mother in 1980’s Ordinary People, a performance that earned her an Academy Award nomination. To this day, however, it’s her comedy that endures. In downtown Minneapolis, there’s a statue of her as Mary Richards twirling her cap  —   a moment of hope and promise, frozen in time."
"An article in an online publication accusing Facebook of suppressing the Women’s March in its trending topics caused a little tempest on social media over the weekend. Facebook says it did not intentionally block any story and is revealing a new way its   algorithm will now operate. Paul Bradley Carr, writing for online outlet Pando, on Saturday posted what he said were screen shots of his Facebook pages at the height of the worldwide marches, which brought more than a million people into the streets around the globe to protest the agenda of the Trump administration. Despite images and stories from the marches filling many people’s personal Facebook feeds and the day’s media coverage, Carr’s screenshots showed no signs of the march in Trending Topics  —   a feature supposed to reflect popular discussed topics. And Carr says he discovered he was not the only one who didn’t see the Women’s March reflected on Trending Topics, accusing Facebook of trying to cozy up to the Trump administration. A very unscientific poll by this reporter found that among people in my Facebook and Twitter network most did see the Women’s March or something related trending on their page. However, a few did not. According to Facebook, the Trending Topics  —   seen to the right of the main news feed on desktop and in search on mobile  —   are ”based on a number of factors including engagement, timeliness, Pages you’ve liked and your location.” (Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams.) Facebook representatives told NPR that the reason why some people did not see the march as trending had to do with the algorithm behind the feature. Although it took into account major news events and what’s popular on the site, it also accounted for the preferences of each person. It’s possible that Carr’s algorithmic profile indicated he wouldn’t be interested in the Women’s March. In addition, some people may have seen trending topics they didn’t realize were about the Women’s March. For example, Ashley Judd and Madonna were trending  —   both women gave speeches at the main march in Washington, D. C. And, Facebook says, none of this will happen in the future. As of Wednesday, the company has once again changed its trending algorithms. Personal preferences are now out of the equation. ”Facebook will no longer be personalized based on someone’s interests,” Facebook says in a press release. ”Everyone in the same region will see the same topics.” For now, a region is considered a country, so everyone in the U. S. should see the same topics. The latest algorithm changes are part of Facebook’s ongoing effort to curtail the spread of fake news. Some fabricated stories show up in Trending Topics, despite often originating on sites with no history of visitors and getting no coverage from legitimate news media. It’s a lucrative business, explored by NPR in November, when we tracked down one notorious   creator. The new algorithm would make hoax articles less likely to trend because it will look at ”the number of publishers that are posting articles on Facebook about the same topic,” accounting for coverage by multiple news outlets, Facebook says. According to Facebook the new algorithms will also make it easier for those who did not realize that the trends for ”Ashley Judd” or ”Madonna” were related to the marches to understand the context around those posts. Trending topics will now feature a headline below each topic name. The company says the changes are not a response to complaints about trending during the Women’s March. Facebook says they have been in the works because its users  —   like Carr  —   actually expect and want to see trending topics related to the most     events. Of course, algorithms are programs. While Facebook may hope that its new approach will appease critics such as Carr, the proof will be what happens in the real world of people’s Facebook pages. ”I do give them credit for acknowledging, at least, users’ concerns over this,” says Carr, who called Facebook’s change ”a positive step.” But, he added, ”we’ll see how it works in practice.”"
"Bangladesh. Myanmar. Benin. Somalia. Haiti. Ireland. South Sudan. Iraq. One by one, 59 immigrants from 29 countries rise before a federal judge in a Kansas City, Mo. courtroom and proudly state their country of origin. Some have brought their young children, who watch from the audience. All look eager and intent. This is a big moment: They are about to become U. S. citizens. In 2017, hundreds of thousands of immigrants are expected to be naturalized as U. S. citizens in ceremonies around the country, much like this one. Judge Arthur Federman looks out at the rows of faces and smiles. ”It’s rare that we have an occasion in the courthouse where everyone leaves happy,” he tells them. ”Hopefully, this will be one of those days.” Erkin Rahimov, 54, and his wife, Limara, 42, are sitting in the front row, along with Erkin’s    daughter from his first marriage, Sabikha. Erkin and Limara immigrated to the U. S. from Uzbekistan Sabikha came from Ukraine, where she was raised by her mother. All three will become citizens today. The evening before the ceremony, the Rahimovs invite us to join them for dinner at their home, a spare, tidy duplex in Kansas City, Mo. Limara has prepared a feast: the flavors of Uzbekistan, transported to the Midwest. There’s rice pilaf studded with beef: ”The Uzbek national dish!” Limara explains. Also on the table: a tangy beet salad, pickled cabbage, eggplant and homemade bread. Limara pours green tea from a beautiful Uzbek teapot   and enameled deep blue and gold. ”We don’t have guests often,” their son Murad says, ”but when we do, we give it our all.” And the Rahimovs have much to celebrate. In 2009, after many years of trying, Erkin and Limara won the green card lottery to immigrate to the U. S. So, in March 2010, they left behind their life in Uzbekistan, a harsh authoritarian state. They landed in Kansas City with their two sons  —      Rasool and    Murad  —   and not much else. ”I remember when we came to Kansas City with two small kids and three suitcases. It was challenging,” Erkin recalls. ”The first days we were sleeping on the carpet. We just put sheets on it.” For pillows, they used their clothes. Then, he says, ”slowly, slowly we started to work and buy some stuff.” Now, after seven years in the U. S. the Rahimovs own their home. They recently bought property outside the city where they plan to go on weekends and grow fruits and vegetables. They just leased a new car, a Hyundai Elantra. Erkin is a civil engineer. He works for a Canadian company that makes harvesting equipment, traveling throughout Missouri and Arkansas to train dealers and mechanics. Limara taught math and physics in Uzbekistan. Now she works with children at an   program, and she is studying for a degree in computer science. Their sons are thriving. Rasool, now 7, is a Pokémon fiend and has test scores above grade level.    Murad, who spoke no English when he arrived in the U. S. is an honors student on an accelerated track through high school. He loves astronomy his dream is to work for NASA. ”It’s amazing that my parents managed to get me and my little brother here for us to have a really bright future ahead of us,” he says. ”I’m really proud of my parents!” When Erkin and Limara become U. S. citizens, their children, Rasool and Murad, will automatically become citizens, too. The Rahimovs say they’ve always felt welcome in this country. By way of example, Erkin tells this story: One day, soon after the family arrived in Kansas City, Murad missed the bus to elementary school and came home crying. The school principal, hearing about the mishap, came by in his own car to pick Murad up and ferry him to school so he wouldn’t miss a day. ”It was amazing,” Murad says. ”He’s just a really good person.” Even though the Rahimovs came to the U. S. as legal permanent residents with green cards, the step of becoming citizens carries real meaning for them. They’ll be able to vote, and, as Limara puts it, ”take part in the fate of the country.” Looking forward to the ceremony, Limara says, happily, ”We will be, I think, real Americans, right? We will be part of the United States.” Asked what America symbolizes to him, Erkin replies instantly: ”Freedom. Freedom! Even my name means freedom.” He explains that erkin, in Uzbek, is translated as independent or free. Erkin and Limara Rahimov share a family history etched with sadness. They each have parents who were Crimean Tatars. They were among the Tatars who were forcibly deported from Crimea in 1944 in a mass expulsion, on orders of Josef Stalin. The Rahimovs know well that freedom is something to be cherished. On the morning of the naturalization ceremony, the Rahimovs arrive at the courthouse. Erkin is wearing a somber suit and tie Limara, an elegant black wool dress. Sabikha has flown in from New Jersey late the night before to join them in becoming citizens. She is a financial analyst with an M. B. A. and recently took a job with a company in New Jersey. ”Almost to the finish line, right?” Sabikha says as they approach downtown. ”Well,” she adds, laughing, ”maybe just new beginning actually!” Inside courtroom 8C at the Charles Evans Whittaker U. S. Courthouse, the 59    wait expectantly. They’ve already been through months of preparation: They’ve been fingerprinted, had background checks, been interviewed and have taken an English and civics test. Now the final step of the process has come. They raise their right hands and in unison, recite the oath of allegiance, pledging to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States. A chorus of global accents fills the room. ”Congratulations!” says Federman. With that oath complete, they are officially U. S. citizens. For Federman, conducting these ceremonies has special resonance. As he tells the immigrants, he is himself the child of naturalized citizens. His parents survived the Holocaust and Nazi concentration camps and went on to forge a new life together in America. ”We need to recognize that we are a nation of immigrants,” Federman tells the courtroom. ”And in the same way I told you my family story, I hope that you will tell your story to us and to our children, so that we can all appreciate the great diversity that makes up our country.” As Erkin Rahimov listens to the judge’s words, he gently dabs away tears that roll down his cheeks. ”Thank you very much for being my fellow citizens,” Federman concludes, ”and for pledging today as you did to uphold our Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees to each of us.” Soon after, the Rahimovs leave the courthouse, their eyes sparkling. They’ve already registered to vote and are holding copies of the Constitution and small American flags. ”I’m so excited!” Sabikha says, gleefully. ”I want to make this country better. It gave so much to me. I want to give back.”"
"Opponents who spent months resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline were disheartened by President Trump’s decision Tuesday to ”expedite” construction of the controversial project. Dave Archambault, the chairman of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, called the move ”reckless and politically motivated.” Jamil Dakwar of the American Civil Liberties Union said it was ”a slap in the face to Native Americans.” Earthjustice, the law firm that represents the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, described it as ”legally questionable at best” and vowed to take the Trump administration to court. But as much as Trump’s move has been criticized, opponents of the pipeline say it wasn’t a surprise. ”It’s disappointing, but it’s not unexpected,” said Ruth Hopkins, a reporter at Indian Country Today who was born on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and has been part of the resistance for months. ”This is not the     just because he signed those orders. . .. Our hearts have been in this continuously, and we’ve just been waiting to see what would develop, and trying to prepare ourselves the best we can.” Trump signed an executive memorandum that supersedes the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision in December to halt construction. He also signed a memorandum inviting the company TransCanada to resubmit an application for building the Keystone XL  —   a proposed pipeline that   Barack Obama vetoed in 2015. Environmental activists and thousands of protesters, including Native Americans from more than 100 tribes, have resisted both pipelines. They have argued that the Dakota Access Pipeline, a   project cutting through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois, would jeopardize the primary water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and the millions of people who get their drinking water from the Missouri River. They also say that pipeline construction would damage sacred sites, violating tribal treaty rights. Energy Transfer Partners, the construction company responsible for the Dakota Access Pipeline, has contended all along that the pipeline is safe and passes through no land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux. On Sunday, the company shared an article on its website headlined ”Even the Standing Rock tribe is sick of the Dakota pipeline protesters,” which predicted that DAPL would ”finally have an ally in Washington and we can get back to business.” A White House press release on Tuesday said that Trump’s executive orders were in line with his campaign promise to ”reduce the burden of regulations and expedite high priority energy and infrastructure projects that will create jobs and increase national security.” The statement said that construction and operation of Keystone XL would create tens of thousands of American jobs, and that the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline and other pipelines is ”critical to a strong economy, energy independence, and national security.” For months, environmentalists, activists and tribes from across the country have been opposing construction of DAPL through lawsuits, demonstrations and civil disobedience. But while protesters considered the Army Corps of Engineers’ actions last month a victory, celebrations came with an asterisk. The people engaged in the fight against the pipeline knew that whatever reprieve they were getting was likely to be temporary. When construction was halted, Hopkins tweeted, ”Those at camp are being encouraged to stick around because it’s expected that Dakota Access will drill anyway, without permit.” There are still ways for people to fight the pipeline, Hopkins said Tuesday. People can call their senators and members of Congress to express their opposition, she said. They can take their money out of the banks that have financed DAPL. They can spread awareness in their communities and on social media. And, she said, there are still people living in weatherized tents at the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota, where snow and ice cover the land. Allison Renville is one of those people. A member of the Lakota Nation, she’s a media consultant and   activist who has spent a lot of time at the camp over the past year. Renville agrees that divestment and community engagement are going to be key to preventing DAPL construction from going forward. ”Not only do I have faith in God, but I have faith in my people,” she said. ”On the ground, we’ve had 10, 000 people come in and learn to be organizers, [and by] . .. taking courses in nonviolent direct action and learning to set up a camp, utilizing tools, they’ll be able to get anything accomplished.” Following the massive women’s marches held around the country over the weekend, some   activists remain optimistic that political mobilization will be a safeguard against any actions the president might take. ”Coming off of the weekend where so many gathered to send the message . .. that President Trump and all that he stands for cannot be normalized, I think that resonates in the air for many people,” Nellis   said. A Navajo woman, she is the director of the Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Program for the Sierra Club. She said Trump’s actions affected her personally, and that his presidency is a threat to the rights of Native people across the country. Trump, she said, will ”run into confrontation every step of the way.” ”And people are feeling stronger to fight back against bad decisions like this,”   said. ”There’s a strength and there’s a solidarity that’s brewing that will rise up and put President Trump on notice: That we deserve better, we demand more, and we’ll do everything we can to get it.”"
"Like millions of Americans, I watched the new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, as he tried to convince reporters and viewers last weekend that President Trump’s inauguration was the most watched ever  —   ”both in person and around the globe, period!” Spicer made his case even though photos of the National Mall show that attendance was much smaller than at Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, which  —   incidentally  —   I covered. The next day, on NBC’s Meet the Press, White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway tried to persuade host Chuck Todd that Spicer was using ”alternative facts.” When Todd pressed Conway on Spicer’s falsehoods, she responded: ”Chuck, if we’re going to keep referring to our press secretary in those types of terms, I think we’re going to have to rethink our relationship.” To most viewers, that sounded like a threat. To me, all this sounded like standard operating procedure in authoritarian China, where I’d spent a decade as a reporter. The White House seemed to be using the same tactics the Chinese government routinely uses against the foreign press corps: Make false claims to support an alternative narrative. When challenged, threaten reporters  —   and then try to delegitimize them. Like the new White House, the Chinese government has tried over the years to convince citizens not to believe their own eyes. For instance, when smog enveloped Chinese cities, the government would insist it was really just fog. This tactic grew increasingly absurd as air reached staggeringly toxic levels and people faced   scenes that no propaganda campaign could overcome. The Chinese government is much more candid about its air pollution crisis these days, but still tries to manage reality and mislead citizens. Earlier this month, the government ordered provincial officials to halt smog warnings and then censored news of the order when it leaked. The continued mendacity only angers Chinese people and makes them more cynical. Some people have turned to demonstrations, with government responses varying from tolerance to crackdowns. People put surgical masks on sculptures in December to protest smog in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The government countered by deploying riot police. When under fire, another favored tactic of the Chinese government is to misdirect and then try to discredit the press corps. Conway took a similar approach last weekend. Faced with repeated questions on Sunday about Spicer’s false statements, she went on the offensive, criticizing a Time correspondent who had mistakenly reported that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office. Conway’s criticism was legitimate. The reporter, Zeke Miller, explained that the bust had been obscured from his view and corrected his report. He publicly apologized. But Conway wouldn’t let it go and insisted the mistake reflected a deeper journalistic bias against Trump. ”Why was it said in the first place?” she asked. ”Because everyone is so presumptively negative.” Since Saturday’s debacle, Spicer has tried to improve his relationship with reporters, but continues to complain that the press is unfair. On Tuesday, he repeated that President Trump maintains he would have won the popular vote had not 3 million to 5 million ”illegals” voted. There is, once again, no evidence that happened. Even as the president keeps making false claims that many fellow Republicans reject, he continues to attack the integrity of the reporters who challenge him. In a speech last weekend at the CIA, he called members of the news media ”among the most dishonest human beings on earth.” This reminds me of the way the Chinese government has spent years impugning the honesty of the international media and suggesting it is part of a broad Western conspiracy to keep China down. Last year, Wang Qiu, a member of China’s legislature and head of   broadcaster China National Radio, claimed that 60 percent of Western media reports smeared China. In 2013, Li Congjun, the president of the   New China News Service, urged the country to fight against   plotting by foreign reporters. ”Some hostile Western forces and media do not want to see a prospering socialist China,” Li wrote in the Communist   People’s Daily. This relentless assault on the image of foreign reporters has been very effective.  In 2012, I interviewed a man named Zhang about a bridge collapse, which everyone in town attributed to government corruption. Zhang’s mother insisted on attending the interview and repeatedly told him not to speak with me because she thought my sole motive was to malign China and the Communist Party. ”An opportunist like you is what they need,” she told her son. I responded to all of this the way I’d recommend journalists covering President Trump do: Get out of the office as much as possible, report and spend a lot of time listening to ordinary people about their concerns. To help overcome distrust, I even created a free taxi cab service in Shanghai so I could randomly meet Chinese and interact with them outside the framework of a traditional interview.  Reporters in China are accustomed to    threats from the government. So when Conway told Chuck Todd, ”We’re going to have to rethink our relationship,” that felt familiar to those who’ve been warned by Chinese authorities to be more ”objective” or risk not having their visas renewed. Since 2012, China has expelled two foreign reporters, but long waits for visa renewals have improved. Pressuring journalists is common in other authoritarian states in Asia, too. Nguyen Phuong Linh, who spent five years as a reporter for the Financial Times and Reuters in Hanoi, said Vietnamese authorities phoned her frequently about stories they didn’t like. ”Every time I quoted someone who said something against the official statement, they said, ’No, your fact is not fact,” says Nguyen, who now lives in Singapore, where she’s a political risk analyst. Government officials also pressured her. They’d say, ”’I think we have to reconsider our relationship,’” Nguyen recalls, ”exactly like Kellyanne Conway just said.” Nguyen, who grew up in Haiphong, in northern Vietnam, always thought the United States was a ”dream journalism environment” for someone like her who’d grown up under a repressive government. But when she watched Meet the Press on Sunday, she was shocked. ”I was telling myself: ’Jesus, this is America! It’s not Vietnam. ’” Frank Langfitt is NPR’s London correspondent. He served as NPR’s Shanghai correspondent from 2011 to 2016 and as the Baltimore Sun’s Beijing bureau chief from 1997 to 2002."
"There’s an active debate inside newsrooms, and particularly within the NPR newsroom, about how to characterize the statements of President Trump when they are at odds with evidence to the contrary. That debate began during the presidential election campaign. For example, in 2015, candidate Trump claimed that when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, ”I watched in Jersey City, N. J. where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down.” The claim was never substantiated and NPR said so. But we didn’t call him a liar. In September 2016, Trump got into a tiff with an   pastor, the Rev. Faith Green Timmons of Bethel United Methodist Church in Flint, Mich. Timmons had criticized Trump for failing to keep his remarks to her congregation, as promised, nonpartisan. Trump later had his own version of that event. Our reporter Scott Detrow was there. He reported what he saw and heard, and that didn’t back up Trump’s account. Back then some listeners asked why NPR didn’t just report that Trump was a liar. This week that same question is being posed to NPR. This time, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly reported on Trump’s   visit to the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va. the day after his inauguration. Despite his tweets comparing the intelligence services to those of Nazi Germany, Trump told his audience he is with them ”a thousand percent.” He also said that the media were to blame for making up the feud between him and the intelligence services. Kelly said, ”It’s provably not true. In that same speech out of the CIA this weekend, Trump also falsely inflated the size of the crowd at his inauguration.” Now many listeners want to know why Kelly didn’t just call the president a liar. On Morning Edition, Kelly explains why. She says she went to the Oxford English Dictionary seeking the definition of ”lie.” ”A false statement made with intent to deceive,” Kelly says. ”Intent being the key word there. Without the ability to peer into Donald Trump’s head, I can’t tell you what his intent was. I can tell you what he said and how that squares, or doesn’t, with facts.” NPR’s senior vice president for news, Michael Oreskes, says NPR has decided not to use the word ”lie” and that Kelly got it right by avoiding that word. ”Our job as journalists is to report, to find facts, and establish their authenticity and share them with everybody,” says Oreskes. ”It’s really important that people understand that these aren’t our opinions. . .. These are things we’ve established through our journalism, through our reporting . .. and I think the minute you start branding things with a word like ’lie,’ you push people away from you.” Oreskes acknowledges that other news organizations have made a different decision, most notably The New York Times, where he worked for more than two decades. The Times uses the word ”lie” in this headline about Trump’s repeated claim that millions of votes cast by immigrants who are in this country illegally prevented him from winning the popular vote. As the Times and NPR have reported, there is no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud."
"There have been no executive orders yet to undo President Barack Obama’s signature climate plan, but many officials and environmental groups consider it as good as dead. The Clean Power Plan is on hold while a legal battle plays out, and even if an appeals court upholds it  —   a decision could come any day  —   the Trump administration is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court. The state of New York decided to forge ahead anyway. Like a number of other mostly liberal states, it is continuing with efforts to drive down the carbon emissions that drive climate change. In the upstate village of Canton, dairy farmer Rick Moore shows off the solar thermal array tucked next to his slouching red barn. It’s a cloudy, slushy day, but ”you still get rays that still help heat it up,” Moore says. The system warms the water that runs through the solar tubes. Moore then uses the water to spray down his milking equipment. He says it will save him $1, 000 a year, and help reduce the carbon emissions he says are changing the climate here. ”We had winters when I first started, that you had three feet of snow and cold for two weeks at a time,” he says. ”You’re not seeing that nowadays.” New York state paid for nearly the entire system. It sees Moore as a tiny piece of a puzzle that adds up to getting half of the state’s power from renewables by 2030, even without a federal mandate. The Clean Power Plan would have required energy plants to cut their carbon emissions, leaving it up to each state to figure out how to reach a specific reduction target. The plan was supposed to be the main way the U. S. carried out its commitment under the historic Paris climate deal. But after it was announced in 2015, about two dozen mostly conservative states sued the Obama administration to block it. Still, New York has not only stuck with its own plan to reduce carbon pollution, it’s now doubling down on its goal. ”We are not going to stop until we reach 100 percent renewable because that’s what a sustainable New York is really all about,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said earlier this month. New York is pouring billions into everything from solar to smart power grids, electric car charging stations to huge offshore wind farms. In fact, Cuomo just announced the nation’s largest offshore wind project. The state already gets almost 25 percent of its power from renewables, mostly from hydropower dams. Critics say the next 25 percent is the big lift. Cheap natural gas has driven down power prices. So much, says Gavin Donohue of the Independent Power Producers of New York, that existing renewables, like wind, hydro and biomass, need more state help to stay in business. ”What’s guiding all of our policy development here in New York is not cost, not efficiencies, not reliability, but what gets us to some magical CO2 number to show that we’re a national leader,” he says. Another complication could be Cuomo’s recent announcement to shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant, near New York City. But the state says it plans to replace that with another kind of   power, including more wind farms. It also plans to add transmission lines to carry hydropower from Quebec. North Dakota looks to clean up coal,  North Dakota led the legal challenge against Obama’s Clean Power Plan, and many there were happy to see it put on hold. The state gets   of its electricity from thousands of tons of lignite coal, among the most polluting sources of energy. For that reason, the climate plan would have required bigger emissions cuts than almost any other state, some 45 percent. ”North Dakota had to be   of that way by 2022,” says Randy Christmann with the North Dakota Public Service Commission. ”That’s only a few years away and there’s no way we were getting there.” The state would likely have had to add hundreds of wind turbines and shut down coal mines and plants. Jason Bohrer, with North Dakota’s lignite coal trade group, says it’s great the Clean Power Plan is likely gone with the new administration. But ”Donald Trump is not the   for the coal industry,” he says. ”This doesn’t fix everything. It just gives us the opportunity to provide solutions.” Bohrer says public demand and market forces are fueling a boom in cleaner energy. Cheap wind power has grown into North Dakota’s   electricity source. So even though the pressure’s off to curb emissions, the state is looking to clean up coal as a way to save jobs. The state and the coal industry have sunk millions into developing a coal plant that reuses the carbon dioxide it creates. The aim is zero emissions. If it works, Dave Glatt with the state health department thinks this could bring the state close to that ambitious 45 percent reduction target. ”We may not hit it necessarily on the exact timelines that the Clean Power Plan was looking at,” he says. ”But I do think that that’s something we should look at. Can we achieve that or even go beyond that?” This year, North Dakota will craft its own energy plan, hoping coal and renewables can  . Paris Climate deal not enough, It’s not clear if market forces can get the U. S. all the way to its goals under the Paris climate deal. They may take a long time to play out, and climate scientists say a   shift to clean energy needs to happen urgently. Still, few energy experts can imagine building another U. S. coal plant. Operators must plan decades into the future, they say, and even if the Trump administration won’t tackle carbon emissions, a future president likely will. Obama’s Clean Power Plan was also an easy lift for some, and many states are already close to meeting their goals. But globally, the Paris climate deal is not nearly enough. The U. S.  —   like other countries  —   would have to do much more to keep carbon emissions below the point where scientists say they will have disastrous consequences. So far, there’s nothing to suggest the Trump administration plans to make that extra push. David Sommerstein is a reporter for North Country Public Radio. Amy Sisk reports for Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focused on America’s energy issues."
"California Gov. Jerry Brown is vowing to lead the nation on climate change, as the Trump administration pulls back. But the Trump administration could get in California’s way. In his annual State of the State speech, California Gov. Jerry Brown had one key message about climate change: perseverance. ”We cannot fall back and give in to the climate deniers,” Brown said. ”The science is clear. The danger is real.” And just as President Trump took the oath of office on Friday, California acted, releasing its latest plan for tackling climate change. This includes renewable energy and putting millions of electric cars on the road. It’s a challenge Brown first made in December, when climate scientists from around the world met up in San Francisco. The mood at the conference had been dismal. Scientists were worried about losing federal funding for research and even the NASA satellites that collect basic climate data. Brown declared that should Trump turn off the satellites, California would launch its own. And that wasn’t the only warning Brown had for the Trump administration. Brown has spearheaded his own international climate agreement with more than 160 cities and states. California, he said, is the 6th largest economy in the world. ”We got the scientists,” he said. ”We got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight. We’re ready to defend.” And playing defense may well be in California’s future. The state has rules limiting carbon pollution from cars, but it can’t have those rules without permission from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. That came up at the nomination hearing last week for Scott Pruitt, who could run the EPA. California Sen. Kamala Harris asked Pruitt if he could uphold the state’s special permission  —   its waiver  —   for tougher car rules. ”Senator as you know, administrators in the past have not granted the waiver and in fact have granted the waiver,” Pruitt said. ”That’s a review process . ..” He said he would not know his intention without going through the process. This is not a new fight for California. In 2007, the Bush administration denied the state’s request to have tougher pollution rules for cars, saying it would create a patchwork of regulations. California took the federal government to court, but before the case was decided, Obama was elected. California got its waiver. Michael Wara, a professor at Stanford Law School, said this isn’t just about California. ”The first legal disputes are going to be about cars,” he said. ”And I’d be surprised actually if we didn’t see those disputes.” Thirteen other states have adopted the same clean car standards. But the bigger question, Wara said, is a political one. ”How a Pruitt EPA responds to some of these issues with California is really going to test Scott Pruitt’s and the administration’s commitment to conservative values,” he said. Pruitt sued the EPA as the attorney general of Oklahoma. He argued his state had the right to set its own environmental rules. ”So that logic would seem to imply that California should have the right to set its own agenda,” Wara said. ”But we’ll see how that trades off against the desire to roll back regulations related to greenhouse gases.” This is something California will be watching closely, with lawyers at the ready."
"If you want to move into 2017’s second month with some fun, Chicago   Nnamdi Ogbonnaya offers a good place to start. ”dOn’t turn me Off,” the latest single from his upcoming record DROOL, drips with positivity. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to gather all your best friends and take on the world, and it might just be the soundtrack to your 2017 breakout moment. Ogbonnaya’s aesthetic is quirky and eclectic. A wobbly,   sound winds through the track, lending the production extraterrestrial vibes. But an irresistible groove, combined with Mal Devisa’s singular voice on the hook, brings the listener down to earth and injects the song with its central testimony: Confidence is key. ”I’m ready to glow . .. I’m ready to grow,” Mal Devisa sings. Throughout the song, Ogbonnaya doubles up his voice in octaves it’s as if he’s giving each verse its own cheering squad. This choice feels fitting, given what he tells NPR about the track: ”The song is about surrounding yourself with positive people and becoming confident in yourself,” he says. JD AKA ThrashKitten rounds out Ogbonnaya’s team  —   he joins the track for a verse that overflows with   in lines like ”Even unplugged, I still got the power.” The song is about having fun and feeling yourself  —   but it also delivers a warning about the importance of art and the artist’s indomitability: ”Bringing the Holy of Holies down to the darkest   That’s just the job of an artist,” Ogbonnaya sings. ”Don’t even get me started.” DROOL comes out March 3 via   and Sooper."
"The U. S. men’s national soccer team is back in action with a game against Serbia on Sunday. It’s a   friendly, meaning it’s not part of any official competition. But it will provide a first look at the team under its new head coach or, more precisely, its new old head coach. Bruce Arena coached the team from 1998 to 2006. He has won more games with the U. S. men’s national team than any other coach, and is the only person to lead the U. S. at two World Cups, including a quarterfinals appearance in 2002. His long and successful career includes multiple NCAA championships at the University of Virginia and several titles in Major League Soccer, the U. S. men’s professional league. Now he’s back, on a rescue mission of sorts. Last November, the U. S. lost its first two matches in the final round of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup. After the defeats, head coach Jurgen Klinsmann was fired. Arena was hired with a specific mandate: get the team to Russia for next year’s tournament. Failure to do so would mean a big step backwards for a men’s team that’s played in every World Cup since 1990. Coalescing at January Camp, The first step was bringing together 32 players for what’s known as January camp in Carson, Calif. All the players were from the MLS. Top U. S. players playing overseas weren’t able to attend because their seasons are underway. The second week of camp opened on one of those southern California days in January that laughs at the calendar. The sky was blue and cloudless. The morning temperature crept toward 70 degrees. And on a lush, green soccer field at Carson’s StubHub Center, the U. S. national team scrimmage was all chatter and speed and energy. After the two qualifying losses in November  —     to Mexico and a   embarrassment to Costa Rica  —   the Americans dropped to the bottom of the region’s hexagonal. That’s the   World Cup qualifying group. The U. S. men’s team is not among the world’s best. Still, the results were dispiriting: The team didn’t play like a team. Two months later, on that beautiful winter day in Carson, the ailing patient looked better. ”I wouldn’t say it’s that bad,” Arena said. ”You know, we’re not in triage right now. We’re in, maybe, primary care. Obviously it’s not an easy situation being down at the bottom in the hex right now, but our aim is to make up for lost ground  —   real quick.” A new set of priorities, The next qualifying matches, against Honduras and Panama, are two months away. Until then, Arena has a couple of priorities. ”We want to get our defending right,” Arena said. The team’s defense looked weak against Mexico and Costa Rica, so he’s putting some emphasis on that during the camp. Building a team probably is Arena’s main priority. This has been one of his strengths during a long coaching career. ”Bruce has an aura,” U. S. veteran midfielder Michael Bradley said. ”When he walks into a team, he has a way about him and a way of working that I think engages everybody and motivates every guy to play for him and to really go after things.” Midfielder Graham Zusi talked about Arena’s ability to communicate with his players. ”Every day he lets us know what the mission is for training,” Zusi said. ”Every now and then we’ll have a quick meeting after lunch, as well, just to kind of recap.” Asked whether those communication skills were missing with Arena’s predecessor, Klinsmann, Zusi laughed. ”I thought we weren’t talking comparisons here,” he said. Tapping domestic vs. international players, In fact, players were advised before camp opened not to publicly compare Arena to Klinsmann. But comparisons were inevitable. Klinsmann’s firing in November followed several years of criticism: about his game tactics, about his preference for choosing national team players with international experience over players with experience in MLS. It’s understandable  —   Klinsmann played and coached in his native Germany and he experienced what any soccer fan knows: the best of the sport is overseas. Arena coached MLS teams for a number of years, most recently the L. A. Galaxy from 2008 to 2016. He’s been more open to having MLS players on the national team. In fact he brought to camp some MLS players who were overlooked by Klinsmann. According to a U. S. team official, Klinsmann also liked to make players uncomfortable. When they competed for roster spots, he didn’t want them feeling like anything was guaranteed. Arena, on the other hand, talks about relating to his players  —   although he’s hardly an ”      ” kind of coach. At practice, he lets players know in no uncertain terms when things aren’t working. ”Too sloppy there guys,” he yelled during one drill. ”Keep the ball on the ground!” And while the practice was high speed, physical and keenly competitive, there was a lighter feel as well. A U. S. soccer official watching from the sidelines noted the players ”didn’t look nervous.” As they scrimmaged, Arena yelled ”if you make a mistake, you make a mistake. But make an aggressive mistake.” Destination: Russia, 2018, In 2002, Bruce Arena led the U. S. men to the World Cup quarterfinals. It was the team’s second best finish in history  —   and the its best finish since the very first World Cup in 1930. Now, 15 years later, his initial goal, at least, is much more prosaic: just to make it to the tournament next year. There are eight matches left in the final round of qualifying. Though it’s not time to panic yet, there is an urgency to the upcoming qualifiers. The games against Honduras on March 24 and Panama four days later aren’t  . But Arena says the U. S. needs to at least get four points. That means a win, which is worth three points, and a draw, worth one point. Any more losses, and it might just be time to panic."
"Widespread fears about the future  —   including concerns about politics, the economy, the environment and   nuclear war  —   have led some people to prepare for ways to defend themselves. The ”survivalists” include some Silicon Valley executives, who worry about the tech future they have helped to create. Journalist Evan Osnos, who recently wrote about doomsday prep for the super rich for The New Yorker, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that tech survivalists are stockpiling weapons and food, and, in some cases, preparing luxury underground bunkers. ”They feel a sense of fragility in our politics,” Osnos says. ”Our politics have become disorderly . .. and [the tech survivalists] look at it and think, ’Well, we’re not entirely sure that our institutions are as sound as we’ve always assumed they are.’ ” While researching his article, Osnos spent the night in the Survival Condo Project, a   luxury underground apartment complex north of Wichita, Kan. The complex is designed to be   with hydroponic vegetables, its own fish farm and renewable energy sources. ”[The project] was developed by somebody named Larry Hall . .. and what he realized was that there was a certain kind of buyer out there . .. who would be willing to spend, in this case, about $3 million for an apartment underground, or $1. 5 million for half an apartment,” Osnos says. ”Larry Hall has sold every unit in it except one for himself.” On the kinds of scenarios the survivalists are worried about, Some of the things that they talk about are the kind of stuff of ordinary disaster movies, but there is some real element to it. The idea that there could be a pandemic, if the Ebola virus, for instance, had affected a much larger part of the population, or an earthquake on the San Andreas in San Francisco, that’s not a completely unreasonable fear. Or the possibility of some sort of civil unrest. They take what they’ve seen in some American cities and extrapolate onto a larger scale and they said, ”Well, what would happen?” . .. And then there’s another piece of it, which is specific to technology, and that is a fairly prevalent fear in this community, which is that the growth and the development of artificial intelligence, which has become such a big subject of discussion, the idea that you will soon have a car that has no driver, that this kind fundamental change in the American labor force will continue to produce tensions particularly between people who are losing their jobs and people who are responsible for the technology that is bringing about that change. . .. Max Levchin who was a   of PayPal, is the CEO of Affirm, a lending startup, who is opposed actually to this trend of survivalist thinking but is surrounded by it. He said what people worry about is, to use Max’s word, ”the pitchforks,” and by that he means the idea that the sort of tension that we saw with the Occupy movement a few years ago would take on a wider, more virulent form. On the fragility of our digital systems, including GPS, If you’re somebody who works in technology then you got into that business in part because you tend to think about how systems fit together. As one CEO of a    technology company put it to me, ”The truth is, is that our lives today are dependent on systems that are integrated, interdependent in ways that they simply weren’t even 20 or 30 years ago.” To give you an example, he said, ”The food that’s on the shelves in our grocery stories depends on a supply chain that depends on GPS and GPS, the Global Positioning System, depends to some degree on the Internet, and the Internet depends to some degree on another system known as DNS, and each one of those is vulnerable in its own way. ”... He’s a highly rational person. . .. He said, ”Look, I’m not rushing out and declaring that the end of the world is near, but what I am saying is that it is,” in his view, ”logically rational to talk about the fragility of these digital and electrical systems, which are really second nature and largely unexamined as we go about our daily lives.” On how the survivalists come from both sides of the political spectrum, One of the surprises to me was that this was not something that was occupying one political wing or another, it seems to actually draw from both sides. Traditionally most survivalists would describe themselves as libertarians somewhere out typically on the conservative end of the spectrum  —   they put a high premium on   on distance from government. But there is a new element here, which is partly reflected in the success and the candidacy of Donald Trump, and that’s the idea that . .. in the case of Donald Trump, somebody who defies all of the conventional expectations and descriptions of politics, the sorts of experience required, the kind of standard to which he would be held for accuracy in what he says  —   all of the things that we used to assume would be absolutely fundamental about politics, those no longer obtain at the moment. On the election and the ”creeping disrespect” for American institutions, Antonio García Martínez, who worked at Facebook, later was an adviser to Twitter, in the midst of the presidential campaign when it was getting really toxic between supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, he decided to buy five acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest, and he brought in generators and solar panels and as he put it, ”thousands of rounds of ammunition,” because as he says, ”When a society loses its founding myth, the thing that holds it together, well then it can descend into chaos.” . .. What he was referring to was something you hear across these conversations and that’s the idea that we are ultimately held together by a kind of commitment to the United States as a functioning entity. It’s a sort of consensus, a belief that our politics are possible, that it’s worth participating, that our institutions are sound, that the president, for instance, will abide by the Constitution, that the courts will have the say over the things which the constitution allows them to govern, so what they feel, the survivalists in Silicon Valley and in finance circles in New York who are expressing this view, is that they are worried that there’s been this creeping disrespect for fairly basic institutions in American life, the things that people used to believe were sources of authority."
"President Trump has said he won’t do any new foreign deals while in the White House, but that won’t stop new Trump hotels from springing up across the United States. Bloomberg News reports that Trump Hotels CEO, Eric Danziger, has revealed the company is planning a major expansion of its luxury properties, as well as some of its new   Scion hotels. Danziger, speaking after a panel discussion Tuesday at the America Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles, said Trump Hotels will be looking to triple its luxury properties in this country. ”There are 26 major metropolitan areas in the U. S. and we’re in five,” Danziger is quoted as saying. ”I don’t see any reason that we couldn’t be in all of them eventually.” Danziger told the panel that cities up for consideration include Dallas, Seattle, Denver and San Francisco. He said only the luxury Trump hotels will be in the major metropolitan areas, while the Scion properties will be in secondary and tertiary cities. The first of the   hotels is due to open later this year. ”Both brands and any others we create will have a domestic emphasis for the next four or eight years,” Danziger told the audience. A spokesperson for Trump Hotels, who did not want to be identified, would not say how long these expansion plans have been in place, but added that business opportunities look positive. ”We see significant growth opportunity in the United States for both our hotel brands, ” the spokesperson said. On Jan. 11, Trump announced that while he would maintain ownership of his business empire, he’d address ethical concerns by turning over    operations to his two adult sons. That plan fails to end concerns that Trump could profit from his presidency, according to law professor Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at Washington University in St. Louis. Even when his sons manage the operations, the wealth stays in the Trump family, she notes. ”This demonstrates how inadequate and frankly laughable Trump’s plan for conflicts of interest is so far,” she said. ”Trump plans to exploit the power and prestige of the presidency for his own financial benefit,” she added. And Trump critics can point to another example of how the presidency is enriching the Trump Organization:    Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla. this month doubled the cost of membership. Bernd Lembcke,   ’s managing director, told the New York Times, there’s been ”a sudden surge in requests” for membership applications. The initiation fee to join the club, which was $100, 000, is now $200, 000. Lembcke, who could not be reached for comment, told the Times that the fee had been $200, 000 before 2010, when it was cut in half in response to the recession. In separate news, Politico reported Wednesday that an electrical contractor  —   AES Electrical, based in Laurel, Md.  —   has filed a lawsuit against Trump’s Washington hotel for $2 million. The contractor says Trump has not paid bills for ”nonstop” work done to open the luxury hotel inside the federal Old Post Office Building last year. The suit, filed in D. C. Superior Court, says the company was told to rush work on electrical and fire alarm systems ahead of a visit by   Trump in September."
"”I understand things visually, by finding them in paint. I don’t know if my dyslexia causes me to be this way, but I have a feeling it does.”  —   Rachel Deane, painter. We know lots of facts about dyslexia: It’s the most common reading disorder. It changes the way millions of people read and process information. But we know much less about how it feels to people who have it. How it shapes your   your confidence and how people see and react to you. And so I reached out to some really creative people  —   artists who have dyslexia  —   to talk about this. One of the most fascinating things I heard is that dyslexia plays a big role in their creative process. Some said their struggle with written words informs their art, and that the struggle to express ideas they can’t in writing makes their art unique. I asked six of these artists to show me through their work what dyslexia is like. Here’s what they came up with.  Gudrun Hasle, fine artist, Copenhagen, Denmark, School was a daily nightmare. Teachers thought I was lazy rather than dyslexic, and at that time if you were dyslexic you were considered plain stupid. I was given books for    when I was  . Finally, I sort of just gave up on the whole thing and began to injure myself by cutting into my skin. I never graduated school, which is very unusual in Denmark. I use my dyslexia in everything I do. It’s my technique. It began as an accident. When I started to attend the Art Academy in Denmark, I painted a painting and added some texts. I had no time to correct the spelling, so the next day all the other students and professors were trying to read their way through my uncorrected text, and suddenly they were dyslexic. They were having a hard time reading my words. I thought to myself, hmm, this is a very interesting and effective tool. I turned the whole thing around. But it was a giant leap for me to make this change. Since then, I never correct anything. And sometimes the wording is correct  —   by accident. Website   Instagram, Ash Casper, designer and illustrator, New York, My struggle with dyslexia doesn’t define me, and I have never felt defined by it. It was just something that I dealt with and overcame to get where I am today. Art was the answer for me. Many people deal with dyslexia on a daily basis, but they don’t let it define them. Dyslexia isn’t some disability that makes you a struggling student for the rest of your life, it is simply a hurdle that some people must jump in order to succeed. Website   Instagram, Rachel Deane, painter, Providence, R. I. I think that my relationship to my dyslexia manifests itself indirectly in my work. My paintings represent the way I see and process the world, the way I learn information. I learn visually and through narratives rather than by memorization or other standard education practices. I saw a large retrospective exhibition of (the artist Pierre) Bonnard at the Musée d’Orsay a couple of years ago and was blown away by his use of color and texture. I could not walk away from the exhibition without purchasing the large, heavy catalog. My Bonnard book protects me visually and emotionally. I think this example shows the way I think, the way I process. I understand things visually, by finding them in paint. I don’t know if my dyslexia causes me to be this way, but I have a feeling it does. Website   Instagram, Nick Fagan, fine artist, Columbus, Ohio, COME COME represents an attempt to find the area where communication breaks down into something more abstract. For me, language has always been somewhat of a struggle. The inability and difficulty to express myself through writing has been a particular struggle. In my work, I try to see these flaws as a new way of showing language by breaking it down into the physical lines to demonstrate how words are actually made. I collapse letters and words together and break them apart into a new way of expression. Website   Instagram, Leslie Chavez, photographer, Austin, Texas, This piece represents my emotions toward my dyslexia. Every day I am stressed, dispirited and fed up because I never feel satisfied with my work  —   whether it’s academic, my campus jobs or an artistic project. In the back of my mind, I have a voice telling me, ”You’re not enough, you can’t fit in with the others.” That’s when those emotions rise up and overwhelm me. I work twice as hard as other students to understand what they were able to pick up quickly. Thankfully, my professors are flexible with my learning disability, but once I’m done with school, I won’t have that help. I have to blend in with everyone else and pretend my learning disability won’t affect my job. Those feelings will always be there with me, by my side. Website   Instagram, Mel Jarvis, illustrator, Detroit, This little piggy didn’t need to read the book to know how to outwit the Big Bad Wolf! I wish people didn’t think dyslexia was only about mixing up letters. There are other frustrating effects, like memorizing verbal tasks, difficulty learning though written text, even the emotional frustration that comes with the whole package (just to name a few). I feel dyslexic creatives aren’t much different than other creative people, but all dyslexic people are very creative. Website   Instagram, "
"On Tuesday night, President Trump threatened to intervene in Chicago’s law enforcement, citing the number of shootings and murders there in 2016 and 2017. It wasn’t clear what type of intervention the president was referring to in a tweet he sent out Tuesday evening saying he ”will send in the Feds!” if Chicago ”doesn’t fix the horrible ’carnage’ going on.” As in many major American cities, the federal government is already deeply involved in Chicago’s approach to fighting violent crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has, among other units, a   homicide squad, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives investigates ”violent offenders, career criminals, gun traffickers and gangs” in the city. The Department of Justice announced earlier this month that it had found a pattern of abuse within the Chicago Police Department, and is working with the city government to reach an agreement in which the federal department will oversee the city’s police. Speaking on WTTW, Chicago’s local PBS station, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday that ”there’s a lot the federal government can do” to combat violent crime in the city. He cited the need for federal gun control legislation and asked for federal funding for additional police officers. Emanuel also said the federal government should be ”investing in neighborhoods that are   by poverty” and become ”a breeding ground for violence” by putting federal funds toward   and summer jobs programs. Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson also issued a statement, saying, ”The Chicago Police Department is more than willing to work with the federal government to build on our partnerships with D. O. J. F. B. I. D. E. A. and A. T. F. and boost federal prosecution rates for gun crimes in Chicago.” This is the second time this month the president has tweeted about violent crime in Chicago, and the White House’s website, updated by the new administration, specifically mentions the issue. In each reference, the president and his administration have included specific numbers to illustrate Chicago’s problem with violent crime. On Tuesday, the president quoted numbers originally reported Monday by The Chicago Tribune. ”As of early Monday, at least 228 people had been shot in Chicago so far this year, a 5. 5 percent increase from the 216 shot in the same period time last year. There have been at least 42 homicides, up 23. 5 percent from the 34 homicides from the same period in 2016,” the newspaper reported. The newspaper tracks homicides in the city, and noted that its numbers were higher than those reported by the Chicago Police Department because they include ”shootings on area expressways,   shootings, homicides in which a person was killed in   or pending death investigations.” But while Chicago led the nation in the absolute number of murders last year, the raw number tells only part of the story. Chicago’s   per capita murder rate, which is better at capturing human risk because it takes into account the total population, is well below that of other cities, including St. Louis and Baltimore, a review of the FBI’s most recent crime data reveals. ”Chicago’s homicide rate is not among the nation’s highest  —   but the number of deaths last year, 762, was the worst the city had seen in years and far exceeded those of New York and Los Angeles,” reported NPR’s Cheryl Corley. Although the FBI’s data is the most comprehensive national source of information, the Pew Research Center has noted: ”Fair warning: The FBI stats are compiled from reports by local police agencies that serve populations of at least 100, 000, and for various reasons  —   including the fact that not all agencies reported data every year  —   can be difficult to compare meaningfully across cities or time periods.” Member station WBEZ in Chicago has been revisiting families affected by homicides in 1998, the last time the city had more than 700 murders. See more of their work here."
"It’s a shocking statistic that caught the world’s attention last week: Just eight men own the same wealth as 3. 6 billion people living in poverty  —   that’s half the population of the planet. It comes from a new report by Oxfam, using 2016 data from Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Databook and the Forbes billionaires list. While the stat dramatically shows the ”sheer magnitude of the gaps between the rich and poor,” says economist Francisco Ferreira of the World Bank, it doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t, for example, ”tell us whether inequality has changed over time,” he says. Or ”include other dimensions of  ” like health or education, says Diana Alarcon, chief of the development and policy unit of the U. N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. There are other ways to examine global inequality, they say. Here are three sets of data from Ferreira and Alarcon that put Oxfam’s figure into context. Income inequality has declined over the past 25 years  Oxfam’s stat shows what people own, not what they earn, says Ferreira. If you look at the income levels around the world, you’ll find that inequality in global incomes has steadily declined over the past 25 years. To measure income inequality in a population, the World Bank uses something called the ”Gini index” (named after Italian statistician Corrado Gini, who developed the formula). A Gini score of zero in a country or region means that everyone has the same income  —   for example, workers in a utopian commune. A score of 100 means all the income in let’s say, a kingdom, is earned by a single person, like the king. The Gini index for most countries hovers around 30 to 50. The most unequal countries in term of income distribution, according to the Bank, have Ginis above 60. (Note: In the chart, the figures are expressed in decimals). The Bank’s global Gini index reveals a downward trend when it comes to income inequality. In 1988, the Gini index worldwide was 70. In 2013, that number was 62. 5. Researchers credit the overall decline to a few things. Globalization has helped create new jobs and boost income for people in many parts of the world. Government investments in basic services like health care, education and pensions, as in the case of Brazil, have improved people’s chances of success in life. And progressive tax programs on corporations and the wealthy have narrowed the gap between the rich and poor in countries like Chile and Mexico. Still, economists aren’t totally optimistic. ”It’s clear that the levels of inequality are deeply disturbing,” says Ferreira. ”But recent progress shows that it’s possible for countries to reduce inequality if they choose to.” Asia has benefited the most  While globalization and other factors have helped reduce income inequality over the past couple of decades, it’s only ”created a lot of wealth and richness and income” in a few parts of the world  —   namely, Asia, says Alarcon. Rapid economic growth in China and India have helped boost incomes in the region. According to a 2015 report on inequality by UNDESA, a person living in Asia could only expect to earn 14 percent of the average citizen’s income in a developed country. In 2014, that number nearly doubled to 25 percent (although that’s still just a quarter of the average income in a developed country). If you remove Asia from the equation, you’ll see a very different story in the rest of the developing world. You’ll find that ”for the average Joe, they haven’t seen much improvement to their standard of living,” says Alarcon. Wealth alone doesn’t determine quality of life  How much a person earns or owns is not the only indicator of   says Alarcon. You also have to look at access to education, proper housing, health care and decent jobs. ”In those dimensions of development, progress has been made,” she says. ”Although large inequalities remain.” For example, more children around the world are in school than a generation ago. According to the U. N.’s Report on the World Social Situation 2016, the ratio of children enrolled in primary school was 93 percent in 2015, up from 84 percent in 1999. Advances in health care have helped increase chances for child survival and improved life expectancy around the world. Between 1990 and 2015, the yearly number of deaths in children under five declined from 12. 7 million to 6 million. And people are living longer. In 1990, the average life expectancy was 65 years. In 2015, it bumped up to 70. Money may not be the only thing that matters, but it sure helps. ”If wealth and income distribution improved, achievement on quality of life would improve faster for a larger group of people,” says Alarcon."
"Geneviève Castrée died in July. She made deeply searching music as Ô Paon and Woelv, and illustrated comic books with the same emotional intensity. She was also the wife of Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum and the mother of their child. A Crow Looked At Me, written and recorded last fall, is an   response to Elverum’s past year, and today brings its first song, ”Real Death.” Since July, I’ve kept coming back to a longer essay I’ve been writing about Castrée, Elverum and death, and now there’s a blunt piece to add  —   one I thought would come and wasn’t sure how to handle. I’m still writing that essay, but for now, here’s a note from Phil Elverum himself about A Crow Looked At Me: Why share this much? Why open up like this? Why tell you, stranger, about these personal moments, the devastation and the hanging love? Our little family bubble was so sacred for so long. We carefully held it behind a curtain of privacy when we’d go out and do our art and music selves, too special to share, especially in our   imbalanced times. Then we had a baby and this barrier felt even more important. (I still don’t want to tell you our daughter’s name.) In May 2015, they told us Geneviève had a surprise bad cancer, advanced pancreatic, and the ground opened up. ”What matters now?” we thought. Then on July 9, 2016, she died at home and I belonged to nobody anymore. My internal moments felt like public property. The idea that I could have a self or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea left over from a more   time before I was a   a caregiver, a   a griever. I am open now, and these songs poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house. I make these songs and put them out into the world just to multiply my voice saying that I love her. I want it known. DEATH IS REAL could be the name of this album. These cold mechanics of sickness and loss are real and inescapable, and can bring an alienating, detached sharpness. But it is not the thing I want to remember. A crow did look at me. There is an echo of Geneviève that still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this obliteration. That’s why. A Crow Looked At Me comes out March 24 on P. W. Elverum  Sun."
"On Wednesday morning, activists from Greenpeace unfurled a massive yellow and orange banner with the word ”Resist” on a tall crane behind the White House. ”We climbed up the crane this morning, and occupied it and locked and chained ourselves in,” the environmental group’s board chairman Karen Topakian, 62, told The  . We reached her as she was chained and locked high up on the construction crane with six other activists. ”I have a long, long history of fear of heights,” she said. ”As much as I have a fear of heights, I decided that I would do this because the risks are so great and so tremendous at this point with this administration.” Topakian, who lives in San Francisco, said the environmental group’s protest aimed to send a message against Trump’s plans and actions that he has already carried out. His positions on climate change, immigration and religious minorities motivated this protest, she said, among many other issues. She is lesbian and said she was also concerned about LGBT rights under the Trump administration. Images of the Greenpeace protest were widely shared on social media. Topakian and the other activists had been up on the crane for at least nine hours, about three blocks from the White House. A group of police were waiting below, she said, and the activists had agreed to ”come down ourselves.” The D. C. Metropolitan Police department said they blocked several streets this morning because of the incident. ”While we respect everyone’s right to protest, today’s actions are extremely dangerous and unlawful,” it said in a statement. A carpenter at the site, John Evans, said that the activists ”must have arrived before workers showed up at 5 a. m,” according to The Associated Press. Evans told the wire service that the activists suspended high above appeared experienced: ”Look how organized they are. They have the same equipment that I use every day . ..They’re professionals. Amateurs couldn’t stay up there that long.”"
"Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency who want to publish or present their scientific findings likely will need to have their work reviewed on a ”case by case basis” before it can be disseminated, according to a spokesman for the agency’s transition team. In an interview Tuesday evening with NPR, Doug Ericksen, the head of communications for the Trump administration’s EPA transition team, said that during the transition period, he expects scientists will undergo an unspecified internal vetting process before sharing their work outside the agency. ”We’ll take a look at what’s happening so that the voice coming from the EPA is one that’s going to reflect the new administration,” Ericksen told NPR. Ericksen did not say whether such a review process would become a permanent feature of Trump’s EPA. ”We’re on Day 2 here. . .. You’ve got to give us a few days to get our feet underneath us.” Any review would directly contradict the agency’s current scientific integrity policy, which was published in 2012. It prohibits ”all EPA employees, including scientists, managers and other Agency leadership from suppressing, altering, or otherwise impeding the timely release of scientific findings or conclusions.” It also would likely have a chilling effect on the agency’s ability to conduct research on the environmental issues it is charged with regulating. Ericksen’s comments come just days after Trump’s team ordered agencies to limit their external communications to the public. Employees at the EPA, the Department of Agriculture and the Interior Department, among others, have been instructed not to post on social media accounts. At the EPA, the staff was told not to speak to the news media. Ericksen said it’s not abnormal for administrations to limit outward communication during their transition while they work toward getting different branches on point. Trump’s nominee for EPA administrator, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, is still awaiting confirmation. It’s also not abnormal for administrations to restrict access to government scientists. In 2013, a statement by the Society of Environmental Journalists called the EPA under   Obama ”one of the most closed, opaque agencies to the press.” ”It’s certainly the case that every administration tries to control information, but I think that what we’re seeing here is much more sweeping than has ever been done before,” said Andrew Light, the distinguished senior fellow in the Global Climate Program at the nonpartisan World Resources Institute. ”And in particular, it’s noteworthy that it seems to be aimed at a cluster of   agencies that primarily work on the environment and climate change.” While previous administrations have restricted government scientists’ communications to the public, controlling their scientific conclusions is far more rare. Perhaps the most notable case came in 2003, when the administration of President George W. Bush tried to alter the climate change section of a major EPA report on the environment. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which tracks such issues, changes included the deletion of a 1, 000 year temperature record and insertion of a study funded by the American Petroleum Institute. Many federal agencies employ scientists to help conduct research. Those findings are crucial in ensuring that regulations and government policy are based on the best information available. Data collected by federal scientists is also used by state and local governments as well as private industry. The EPA’s policy, like those of other technical agencies within the government, is designed to encourage its scientists to participate in the scientific process. To that end, the agency’s official policy is to ”encourage publication and presentation of research findings in   professional, or scholarly journals and at professional meetings.” There’s a growing concern in the scientific community and among environmental organizations that the new administration might take aim at climate change research in particular. Trump has previously called climate change a hoax created by China to hurt the U. S. economy, though he later said he had an ”open mind” on the issue. In the weeks before his inauguration, groups of scientists rushed to copy and preserve federal public climate data out of fear that it would be purged. Ericksen said that under Trump, the EPA will focus on its ”core mission, which is to protect the environment and protect human health.” When asked if climate change fit into that, he repeated that they’ll focus on the core mission. Pressed further about whether specific research on issues such as climate change could be withheld, Ericksen told NPR that ”it’s premature to comment on a hypothetical before we’ve even had the time to look at what’s currently happening in the [agency].”"
"Tom Coleman is busy pruning branches off pistachio trees that aren’t budding at an orchard just north of Fresno, Calif. He farms and manages more than 8, 000 acres of pistachios across the state. ”Here’s an example of some hanging down nuts from last year that just wouldn’t come off because of the position on the tree, so we want to remove that,” says Coleman. Coleman worries these trees won’t get enough sleep this winter. Crops like pistachios, peaches and almonds need a certain amount of cold weather every year. This is what the agricultural industry refers to as chill hours. Frigid temperatures between 32 and 45 degrees help set buds that will turn into flowers in spring, then into fruits and nuts in summer. The problem is that there is a decrease in the amount of hours needed for tree crops to reach these temperatures. Coleman’s trees need more than 700 hours of sleep every winter, but for the past four years, many have slept less than 500 hours. ”And as result of that, they do not bloom uniformly. When they don’t have uniform bloom, it can dramatically reduce the yield,” says Coleman. This is a problem that farmers are facing across California, and if it continues, the prices for these products could go up. Multiple University of California studies predict that within 30 to 50 years it may be too warm to grow many tree crops where they now flourish. Agricultural scientist Eike Leudeling found that climate conditions in California by ”the middle to the end of the 21st century will no longer support some of the main tree crops currently grown.” He says farmers will either need to find alternative crops or establish ways to mitigate warming temperatures. UC Davis researcher Hyunok Lee, whose study was published in the journal California Agriculture, found that winter temperatures are increasing more than at any other time of year. Her model looks at the year 2050 in Yolo County. ”Our agriculture will continue,” Lee says. ”But if you look at . . . 20 years or 30 years, the pattern may change a little bit, crops may move a little bit north.” She says tree crops like walnuts would be harmed the most, but annual crops like tomatoes could benefit from rising temperatures. For growers with huge investments in trees that have life cycles of 25 years or more, this is a big deal. Farm adviser David Doll, of the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, is trying different things to get the trees more sleep. He has experimented with overhead sprinklers and even painting the trees white with liquid clay to reflect sunlight. ”This is something that could impact a lot of farmers over the next 10 to 40 years,” Doll says. ”It’s already impacting farmers on random given years across the state.” This problem is so prevalent that   deniers really can’t get away from it. Crops have failed because of warming temperatures. (Doll explains more about chill hours here.) In 2015, California’s pistachio industry was hit hard by a lack of chill hours. As a result, the crop was nearly split in half. The UC system and the pistachio industry have invested about a million dollars to figure out how to cope with warming temperatures. UCANR farm adviser Craig Kallsen is trying to breed a pistachio tree that needs less sleep. ”We’re trying to use the other species of pistachios to see if we can come up with something that has a   requirement. It’s pretty hypothetical at this stage,” Kallsen says. ”We made quite a few crosses this spring and we actually hope to put a trial in a   area.” It’s not just pistachio trees that aren’t getting enough shuteye. Kern County farmer Steve Murray says his cherries may suffer this year because of a warmer winter. ”Initially it was looking like 2017 was going to be a disastrous year, because not only were the trees not getting chilling, they were actually heating up,” Murray says. ”When the sun hits the wood, the temperature of the wood can be 20 and even 30 degrees warmer.” Murray says the only real solution is for the temperature to drop. And to complicate the matter, many researchers and farmers say there isn’t enough understanding about why the trees need sleep. Plus, a decrease in the amount fog in the region also keeps trees from staying cool. That has to do with rain. Back on Coleman’s 160 acres of pistachios, it has rained so much that a large creek has formed in the middle of his property. He’s hoping the ground is saturated enough for fog to form this winter, which would lower the temperature around his trees. ”The fog is a good thing because it keeps a uniform cooler temperature on the ground, but we just haven’t seen that over that last several years  ” even with the rain,” says Coleman. For Coleman the facts are evident: The climate is warming and he has to adapt his practices. ”I know that there are people that think that global warming is not man made, but regardless we have to deal with it. I think that making plans around it is necessary,” says Coleman. These trees that he’s prided himself on since the ’70s could live well beyond him and his children. He’s taking warming temperatures seriously, because what happens with the climate today could mean severe cuts or total crop loss in the coming decades. The story comes to us from KVPR, an NPR member station in Central California."
"No, it’s not a cover of ”Danger Zone” or ”What A Fool Believes,” but, yes, the Kenny Loggins and the Michael McDonald guest on the first single from Thundercat’s newly announced Drunk. ”Show You The Way” is a smooth piece of funk balladry that is at once ridiculous and sincere, announcing each singer before his verse  —   It’s ya boy, Thundercat Tell ’em how you feel, Kenny Ladies and gentlemen, Michael McDonald. And you know what? All three of them sound great and sound great together: different and generational hues of tender soul cascading across Thundercat’s crystalline production. ”These are guys that I’ve listened to and where I felt that I’ve learned that honesty in the music,” Thundercat tells Red Bull Music Academy. ”Kenny Loggins is one of my favorite songwriters.” McDonald joined the song at Loggins’ suggestion. Thundercat continues, ”I think one of the most beautiful moments of it was realizing how amazing Michael McDonald was. He would go through so many ideas and have so much to offer.” Drunk comes out Feb. 24 on Brainfeeder. Thundercat starts a U. S. tour on Feb. 12. "
"”Missed it by that much”  —   that could have been the simple explanation after American skier Robby Kelley lost control just before the finish line in a slalom race in the Alps in Austria on Tuesday night. But after Kelley crashed, thousands of people cheered him on as he hiked back up the hill to finish his run. ”I just want to cross the finish line every time I go,” Kelley said after the race, in comments relayed by the U. S. Ski Team. ”I basically always hike. It’s something I’ve always done. My parents told me to never give up, so I wanted to cross that finish line.” Kelley had the finish line in sight on his second run at the Schladming Night Race, but when his skis went sideways after a tight turn, the rest of him followed, sending him airborne before crashing down the mountain. But Kelley, who has skied as part of   Redneck Racing and is known for his unique approach to skiing, wasn’t done. After his momentum carried Kelley next to the finishing gate, he picked himself up and began sidestepping back up the mountain. And with that, the crowd that had been largely silent upon seeing him crash began cheering for Kelley to reach the gate that he’d missed. ”I’m tired  —   very tired  —   but it was worth it!” Kelley said afterward. ”It was a great feeling to cross the finish line here. This is the best race of the year. I would have liked to be 48 seconds faster than I was, so I’m a little disappointed.” Kelley, 26, was the top American finisher in the Alpine Skiing World Cup slalom event, with other U. S. skiers either not finishing or failing to reach the race’s second run. Today, the Vermont skier’s refusal to quit is winning fans far beyond the Alps, after he posted a video of the unusual finish on his Facebook page. ”I am a high school ski coach and I preach to my kids that you NEVER quit,” one fan wrote. ”Thank you so much for showing such a great example at the highest level! !!! You ROCK. ..and I hope you crush the rest of the season!” This isn’t the first time Kelley has drawn attention for his unusual style in 2014, he published a video of himself tackling a local run in Vermont  —   but in the summer, schussing over grass and ferns, in his ski suit."
"In a monastery tucked away in a quiet back lane of Bangalore, India, Benedictine monks of the Vallombrosian Order are using their European connections to meet rising demand for fresh,   cheese in this South Asian country. As Western lifestyle and cuisine gain popularity in India, there is a growing legion of cheese lovers. Most cheese, however, is imported and expensive, as well as adding to the cost of international cuisine at local restaurants. For more than a decade now, the Vallombrosians, who originated in Vallombrosa, a picturesque small Italian town not far from Florence, have been meeting this demand by producing a small but steady supply of Italian cheese. ”We have to spend time in contemplation, but we also have to work to sustain our activities and community living. Ora et Labora [pray and work] as per Saint Benedict’s rule,” explains Father Michael, who, at 15, was among the first Indians to join the order in 1988. As an early Vallombrosian monk in India, it fell upon Father Michael to find viable,   work options. ”Back in Vallombrosa, the priests make table wines and herbal liqueurs, but we felt it wasn’t appropriate for India,” says the monk, referring to the country’s conservative attitude towards alcohol  —   particularly when mixed with religion. Monasteries in Europe have been making their own cheese for centuries, and many regional specialties like Roquefort, Muenster and tête de moine (Monk’s Head) are traditionally monastic cheeses. And yet, it did not occur to Father Michael to take up   because cheese is not part of the mainstream Indian diet. But indigenous cheese variants do exist, particularly in the Himalayan region, where communities produce small varieties of both soft and hard cheeses with the milk and buttermilk of sheep, yak, cow and dzomo (the hybrid of cow and yak). The monks in Bangalore only realized the potential for   as a business when an Italian businessman with ties in India  —   the monks refer to him as a friend of the monastery  —   complained to them that it was impossible to find good mozzarella in India, while pizza and pasta joints were aplenty in the big cities. Father Michael, who spent several years in Italy as a liturgical scholar, speaks fluent Italian. He tapped into his connections to import used machinery from Italy and traveled there to learn more about the art. After the monastery started producing cheese, he began to make cold calls to local restaurants, offering to send them samples, which included a small range of Italian cheeses like mozzarella, bocconcini, ricotta, burrata and mascarpone. That was 13 years ago. Today, Father Michael has a steady bank of upscale restaurants and luxury hotels as clients  —   not just in Bangalore, but also in Mumbai and Delhi. Presently, the monastery produces about 220 pounds of cheese per day. The cheese is also sold in select outlets in Bangalore, but as Francesca Cossa Valentini, an Italian expat who has lived in the city for several years, says, ”It is not easy to find Vallombrosa cheese, but it’s pretty good.” Valentini laments the lack of variety in some   retail packs: ”Italian cheese is not just mozzarella and ricotta.” The monks have been   their sales and distribution strategy over the years, and they prefer to sell to restaurants, because most Indians who do eat Western cuisine do so at restaurants. Only a small number experiment with cooking international dishes at home.   Ema Trinidad is an expat based in Bangalore. Originally from the Philippines, Trinidad has lived and traveled to several countries, including the United States. ”I love cheese and I really missed it after moving to India about 10 years ago,” she says. ”Good cheese was really expensive.” Trinidad says she discovered Vallombrosa cheese while dining at one of the restaurants at JW Marriott  —   which in India is a luxury brand  —   in Bangalore. ”The cheese was so fresh and tasty. I remember specifically asking the chef where I could find such good Italian cheese in India,” recounts Trinidad. Making fresh cheese in India that tastes authentic is not easy, and Father Michael has had his fair share of hurdles. Initially, the Benedictine tried to make cheese in his hometown of Kottayam, a city in a neighboring state in southern India which remains hot and humid through the year. ”It was a complete failure,” says the priest who then moved to Bangalore, which has a more moderate, cooler climate. The monks also discovered that milk, the key ingredient for   continues to be among the most adulterated food products in India. After trying several suppliers, who delivered milk of varying quality, the monastery bought a herd of buffaloes. But they found that managing them was quite a hassle.   ”We pay much more than the market price to ensure that our milk is free of adulterants. Even then, there have been times when the cheese simply does not set and we have to discard the product,” says Father Michael. Vallombrosa cheese may be the answer to the prayers of many   Indians, expats and chefs seeking fresh, local products, but not everyone’s a fan. ”It was very hard to find good cheese when I started out, and to be honest, even now it is not easy. Hard and   cheeses are still being imported, but good quality fresh cheese is still a nightmare,” says Ritu Dalmia, a celebrity Indian chef who is famous for making Italian food more accessible to Indians through her restaurants, books and cooking shows. ”I have only tried Father Michael’s burrata. Maybe it had traveled some distance, so unfortunately it was not very good,” says Dalmia, who is based in Delhi, some 1, 300 miles away from Bangalore. And do the monks themselves ever get to enjoy the cheese they make? Occasionally, when there is some left, the novices are served   cheese with chapathi or Indian flat bread for breakfast, says Father Michael. Like everything else about this   order in India, the answer reflects a confluence of two distinct cultures."
"David Betras realized Hillary Clinton’s odds of winning the presidency were in peril  —   back in March of last year. Betras, the chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party, lives in an area of Ohio that traditionally votes for Democrats. But during the Ohio primary, Betras saw 18 people on his own precinct committee defect and cross party lines to vote Republican. ”Why did they vote for Donald Trump?” Betras asked rhetorically, and in the next breath answered his own question, ”’cause Donald Trump  —   I don’t get it, but, amazingly, a man that s**** in   toilets  —   was talking more to working people than the party’s  .” Quick fact check: While some apartments in Trump Tower do have   bathroom fixtures, there’s no evidence of a gold toilet. But you get the point: Betras was frustrated with his own party, that it could not appeal to   voters while running against a New York billionaire. ”We were stressing the wrong messages. ’Stronger Together’  —   that’s real nice,” Betras said, referring to Clinton’s campaign slogan. ”Let’s sit around and sing, ’Kumbaya,’ but that really doesn’t get anyone a job, does it?” The future for Democrats is fuzzy. Following President Obama, the first black president, the party is having something of an identity crisis. Clinton lost, in part, because she wasn’t able to appeal to white,   voters, who were a crucial pillar of the party for decades. But minority activists warn that people of color have been a growing key to Democratic success for years  —   yet still don’t have the influence they feel they deserve. While many in the party were encouraged by the massive turnout for the Women’s March Saturday, which was bigger than the crowd that showed up for Trump’s inauguration the day before, Democrats have no clear leader and no unified policy direction. Democrats suffered a stunning defeat in November, capping off a disastrous string of defeats during the Obama years. Democrats have lost more than 1, 000 state legislative seats in that time, dozens of congressional and governors seats  —   and are at the lowest point of their power than at any time in the last century. In this   moment, Democrats can’t even agree on why the party lost. Some, like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s chief rival for the nomination, say Democrats focused too much on identity politics and need to return to their economic roots. Others point out that identity politics is a necessary part of the game. They argue that Trump was playing to his own base of white identity politics and that black voters, for example, were among the most loyal Clinton supporters, so the party should not abandon them and cater to whites. And yet others insist that economics and race are not mutually exclusive choices, that it is possible to focus on both simultaneously. Figuring out that balance is going to be central to the party’s survival, as it currently wanders in the political wilderness. ”Off message”: Concerns over economy, white,   ignored, Betras, the county chairman, was so deeply frustrated by what he was seeing, he typed up a memo and sent it to the Clinton campaign in Brooklyn. ”I told the campaign they were in trouble with   workers,” he said with urgency. He tried to warn the campaign that if it ”didn’t retool [its] message,” it would lose not only Ohio, but also other states with influential white,   voting blocs, like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Betras said no one ever responded to his memo. And Clinton went on to lose exactly as he had predicted. It was the first time a Democrat had lost Ohio and Pennsylvania since 1988 and the first time a Democrat had lost Wisconsin since 1984. A big reason for that was the bleed with   voters in the Mahoning Valley. Three counties make up the valley  —   Mahoning and Trumbull in Ohio and Mercer in Pennsylvania. Clinton suffered     swings in each county from Obama’s performance in 2012. ”We could have saved those states, had they taken my damn memo [and] at least tried to do what I suggested for them to do . .. start talking to these people about their jobs,” Betras said. Clinton’s loss shocked many Democrats across the country, but it didn’t surprise everyone in Ohio, a traditional battleground state where Clinton suffered one of her largest defeats. She lost by more than 8 percentage points, the worst loss for a Democrat there since Michael Dukakis lost it by 11 in 1988. ”I’m not shocked that Hillary Clinton lost,” said Precious Samuel, 29, a labor organizer in Cleveland. ”I saw the loss a mile away.” In Northeast Ohio, Democrats said they saw the warning signs. And, so now, as Democrats look to rebuild, they also see lessons the national party can learn from Ohio. ”Here’s the irony of it  —   all our local Democrats crushed the Republicans,” Betras said, ” ’cause we’re talking to those voters, we know how to talk to them.” He, like other Ohio voters, pointed to the popularity of Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan (who tried unsuccessfully to challenge Nancy Pelosi, who won yet another term as the Democratic House leader). But Betras said the familiarity and trust many voters felt for local Democrats didn’t translate to Clinton on the national level. ”The people here thought  —   wrongly  —   the national Democratic Party cared more about where someone went to the bathroom than whether or not these people had a job,” Betras said. ”And so, we’re  .” Betras insists for most voters, the economy is the primary concern. And he is worried the Democratic National Committee doesn’t understand that  —   that it has become too coastal, too elite and too disconnected from middle America. His prime example of the elitism he sees in his own party is the criticism he heard from some Democrats when Trump misrepresented the number of jobs in the Carrier deal. ”I don’t care if it was a bad deal,” Betras argued, ”he was fighting for someone’s job. That’s what we used to do, right?” Betras said the pushback seemed horribly out of touch with   voters. And the Mahoning Valley is home to thousands of   folks, many of them white people who voted for Trump in November. ”Those are our voters,” Betras said. ”Those are the people’s issues we should be fighting for.” ”Time for progressives to reclaim the party” Leo Jennings III, a    Democratic consultant and former union organizer, grew up in the shadow of the Ohio steel mills. But those days are long gone, he said, in between bites of country toast and bacon at the Golden Dawn restaurant in Youngstown. ”There’s no one around this area who believes for two seconds that the steel mills are coming back, because we all watched them flatten. . .. They’re gone,” he said. ”But what they see is the rich getting richer and no opportunity for them to go to work.” Jennings, a Sanders supporter during the primaries, said the only way his party can start winning again is by adopting a more progressive economic agenda. ”I think we’ve left a lot of people behind by this belief in trade,” Jennings said. ”I think it’s time for the progressives to reclaim the party.” He added that in a year when people wanted to shake up the system, Clinton was the poster child for the status quo. Plus, he added, she didn’t have credibility among many voters on issues like income inequality and wage stagnation, because of her   on the   Partnership. Jennings, like Sanders, thinks the party needs to focus on   issues above all else. ”If we don’t start talking about the things that we can do to make it better for all   voters, we’re bankrupt as a party,” Jennings argued. Jennings added that   whites and blacks are affected by the same financial woes and that the Democratic Party needs to start talking about the economy in a way that rises above race. ”I mean, I don’t think you have to abandon identity politics,” Jennings said, ”but, at the same token, you have to talk to the issues that motivate the traditional Democratic base, because it’s been decades where they feel as if they’ve been ignored.” Both Jennings and Betras fundamentally believe race and class are not mutually exclusive  —   they say the dichotomy between identity politics and the economy is a false choice. ”I hate the [phrase] ’white, working class,’ ” Betras said, ”and I reject that notion that somehow the white,   needs are different from the   needs.” For both men, it’s a matter of prioritizing the discussion. They see a focus on the economy as a way to ensure the party remains a ”big tent.” A warning not to ”go and pander back to white Americans” About an hour and a half west of the Mahoning Valley, in Cleveland, Chinemerem Onyeukwu, 23, part of a group called Ohio Young Black Democrats, echoed that message. He, too, wants a more progressive party. ”If the Democratic Party wants to be around in the future, they need to go left,” said Onyeukwu, an organizer for the state’s coordinated campaign that worked to elect Clinton. Onyeukwu, like the Democrats in the Mahoning Valley, also thinks the party needs to focus more on the economy. He points out that’s how a man named Barack Hussein Obama won Ohio  —   twice. But ”progressive” politics for Onyeukwu is more than just the economy. He wants a party that is progressive socially  —   and culturally. He thinks the party could start winning again by investing more in young voters. ”The Democratic Party has not done a good job in developing the next generation of policymakers, of advocates, and activists, and politicians,” Onyeukwu said. He feels that Republicans have made more of concerted effort than Democrats to develop a bench. He is worried that Democrats are going to keep running what he called ’  campaigns despite Clinton’s loss. ”The people that they’re talking about running in 2020  —   they need to be in a retirement home, just old heads,” he said, quickly adding, ”And, I don’t say that to like be ageist . .. [but] these people have sat at the top for so long, they don’t even know what’s going on in the rest of America.” A few other members of the Ohio Young Black Democrats nodded in agreement. ”Hillary’s not the problem,” said Samuel, the labor organizer. ”The democratic process is the problem. And, making sure people feel included.” Samuel said the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to understand its audience. And for Onyeukwu, that audience includes many people of color. So he wants a party that also continues to push for more progressive policies on race. ”I want to guard against the Democratic Party, because they feel that they lost because white men and white women did not vote for Democrats,” Onyeukwu said. ”I want to make sure that we do not abandon minority demographics to go and pander back to white Americans.” Onyeukwu is concerned that identity politics has become increasingly taboo in some Democratic circles. ”As a party,” he said, ”you should be robust enough to have multiple conversations with multiple groups of people at the same time.” ”People of color are the base of the Democratic Party” This debate over identity politics gets people like Jessica Byrd frustrated. She is an Ohio native who now leads a group called Democracy in Color, which calls for Democrats to invest more in minorities. ”We’re talking about identity politics as if the only people who have an identity are people of color when we know that white men . .. that’s an identity too,” she said. ”That’s who came out and voted for Donald Trump.” Byrd believes Democrats need to figure out how to create the most inclusive party possible. And, for her, that means not just expanding the tent, but also looking inside the tent. She noted that people of color have been key for Democrats to win elections for years  —   and yet, she believes they have not been given an influential enough voice in the party. She said without doing so inevitably hurts enthusiasm and   activism. ”The lack of diversity in the Democratic Party,” she said, ”means that we aren’t meaningfully able to engage in the conversations on the ground that actually get people to care about voting.” She added, ”People of color are the base of the Democratic Party it is our home. The difference, though, is  —   we’re not allowed to make any decisions there.” She argued that power dynamic needs to change, especially at a moment when the party is rebuilding. ”In a time where we are rebuilding our home, and we’re like deciding what’s going to go on the walls and what kind of couch we’re gonna sit on,” she said, ”we want everybody to come to our housewarming, [but] we also want to make some decisions about what that vibe is like.” Byrd said the party doesn’t need a huge overhaul  —   it just needs to do a better job connecting with the people already in the Democratic Party, particularly minorities, to make sure they show up on Election Day. Byrd argued part of what’s getting lost in this moment of Democratic introspection is the technical failures of the Clinton ground game. Clinton lost Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by fewer than 78, 000 votes combined. Winning all three of those states would have put Clinton over the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Clinton didn’t make a single campaign stop in Wisconsin and did not pour in the kind of resources necessary to win Michigan. In each of those states, Clinton underperformed President Obama with young voters. Byrd, who worked on the Obama campaign in Ohio, said it takes extensive organizing and    conversations for Democrats to engage their base voters. ”We have to get back to believing that those resources being spent on human beings,” she said, ”having conversations with other human beings, is meaningful.”"
"As promised, President Trump has moved to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. It’s a concern for those who might be left without health insurance  —   and especially for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which may have to pick up some of the slack. Carrie Farmer, a health policy researcher at the Rand Corp. says 3 million vets who are enrolled in the VA usually get their health care elsewhere  —   from their employer, or maybe from Obamacare exchanges. If those options go away, she has no idea just how many of those 3 million veterans will move over to the VA. ”I would expect that the number of veterans using VA health care will increase, which will only provide a further challenge for VA to provide timely and accessible care,” Farmer says. The VA has already seen a surge in usage in the past year, straining what has long been an overtaxed system. That could get worse if the agency can’t fill vacancies. Trump signed a federal hiring freeze this week, and while national security is supposed to be exempt, the VA is not. White House spokesman Sean Spicer called it a ”broken” system. ”The VA in particular, if you look at the problems that have plagued people, hiring more people isn’t the answer. It’s hiring the right people,” Spicer told reporters on Tuesday. Just hours after the White House emphasized that there would be no exemption for the VA from the hiring freeze, the acting secretary of the agency, Robert Snyder, seemed to issue a contradiction. ”The Department of Veterans Affairs intends to exempt anyone it deems necessary for public safety, including   caregivers,” he said in a statement. David Shulkin, Trump’s nominee to lead the VA, in the past has stressed an urgent need to hire more caregivers. Shulkin has run the VA’s health administration for the past two years, and he told NPR this past fall that negative attention to VA caused a 78 percent drop in applications there. ”We have 45, 000 job openings. That’s too many,” Shulkin said. ”I need to fill every one of those openings in order to make sure that we’re doing the very best for our veterans.” Shulkin said the VA performs as well or better than private health care systems, but he said that long before he was asked to join the Trump administration."
"President Trump met with executives of the Big Three U. S. automakers, the latest in a parade of business leaders to visit the White House in the first few of days of the Trump administration. The president told the executives of General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler on Tuesday that he was going to make it easier for them to invest in the country. ”We’re bringing manufacturing back to the United States, big league,” Trump said. ”We’re reducing taxes very substantially and we’re reducing unnecessary regulations.” The president assured the executives that his administration will be among the most   in the world. But Trump also has been threatening companies that move U. S. jobs and factories to other countries. During the transition,   Trump began singling out companies  —   including Carrier, Ford and GM  —   that were planning investments in Mexico that involved moving American jobs. In a tweet about GM, Trump promised a big border tax on Chevy Cruzes shipped from Mexico into the United States. He repeated that threat to corporate leaders Monday. ”A company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States, and build some factory someplace else, and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border into the United States  —   that’s not going to happen,” Trump said. ”They’re going to have a tax to pay, a border tax, substantial border tax.” Trump has suggested the tax could be 35 percent to 45 percent of the value of the product. Exactly what form the tax would take is unclear. House Republicans have their own idea: They’ve talked about a steep   tax on all goods coming into the country, as part of their plan to overhaul the tax code. But both Trump and his nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, have said that’s not what they’re contemplating. During his confirmation hearing Thursday, Mnuchin said that what Trump has suggested is that, for certain companies that move jobs out of the U. S. ”there may be repercussions,” including ”taxing” products they try to move back into the United States. But Trump doesn’t have the authority to do that, says Steve Charnovitz, an international trade specialist at George Washington University Law School. Charnovitz says it would be illegal for Trump ”to impose a tax or a tariff on a company merely because it moves its production outside the United States” and seeks to import goods into the U. S. from Mexico. Charnovitz says presidents do have authority to levy tariffs on individual nations and products, but not on individual companies. Trump might try to target a specific company without naming it by defining the product in detail, for instance, a       car, but Charnovitz says that tactic would likely get struck down by federal courts. The bigger issue, says Charnovitz, is that ”it’s a crazy idea.” Charnovitz says Trump campaigned on making American great again, but ”he’s offering these counterproductive trade policies that can only make it worse for the U. S. economy and for American workers.” That’s because his policies will likely lead to less trade, and most economists believe trade boosts growth and benefits consumers and most workers. That said, Charnovitz acknowledges that he can understand why workers who lost their jobs to trade voted for Trump. ”The Obama administration did a terrible job in trying to explain the benefits of trade,” he says. And, Charnovitz says, for decades the federal programs that were supposed to help workers and communities hurt by trade have not done a good job."
"Updated at 6:45 p. m. ET, The Trump administration is considering alternative ways to pay for the border wall, backtracking on the president’s   promise that Mexico would foot the bill. A White House spokesman said one idea taking shape is to apply a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico, as well as other countries with which the U. S. has a trade deficit. That would effectively saddle U. S. consumers with a significant portion of the wall’s cost, estimated at $15 billion or more. Trump’s spokesman Sean Spicer did not offer details about how the import tax would work, but he said it could be adopted as part of comprehensive tax reform. After the idea sparked controversy, Spicer later walked back the idea, saying that ”it could be a multitude of things.” The tax could be 20 percent or 18 or 5, he said, adding that he wasn’t trying to be ”prescriptive.” Trump discussed the plan during a meeting in Philadelphia with congressional Republicans. Even floating this idea amounts to a remarkable capitulation by the new president, who was insisting as late as Wednesday that Mexico would bear the cost of the border barrier. Mexico’s refusal has already created friction between the countries. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto abruptly canceled a planned meeting with Trump next week, a decision that the U. S. president tried to explain as mutual. Mexico is one of America’s top trading partners, with more than $500 billion worth of goods flowing across the Southern border each year. Spicer argued that adding a 20 percent surcharge to imports from Mexico would quickly cover the cost of the wall. ”This is the beginning of this plan to make sure it’s done right,” Spicer told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One. ”It clearly provides the funding and it does so in a way that ensures that the American taxpayer is wholly respected.” The suggestion drew a swift rebuke from at least one Republican senator, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, who said it would be a bad idea to do anything that raises the price of Corona, tequila or margaritas. (Graham’s family used to own a bar.) House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office contended the White House and Congress were on the ”same page.” ”We have been and continue to be on the same page about tax reform that supports American jobs and American goods,” Ryan aide AshLee Strong told NPR’s Susan Davis. That’s because Ryan has proposed a ”border adjustment” tax that would affect the ”corporate tax rates applied to goods and services consumed in the U. S. but not applied to goods and services exported,” a Republican Capitol Hill source added. The plan would allow corporations to subtract export sales when calculating their tax bill, but companies would not be allowed to deduct the cost of imports. Under the current tax code, export sales are taxed, and import costs are deductible. If Trump is embracing Ryan’s plan, it would be a reversal. Just 10 days ago, he told the Wall Street Journal that a ”border adjustment tax” was ”too complicated.” ”Anytime I hear border adjustment, I don’t love it,” Trump said. ”Because usually it means we’re going to get adjusted into a bad deal. That’s what happens.” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said the plan raises questions. Spicer brushed aside suggestions that much of the cost would be passed on to American consumers who purchase   goods. He argued that cost would be outweighed by the reduction in illicit border crossings. ”What it’s going to do is lift up the wages of American workers,” Spicer said. ”Right now we’ve got an influx of cheap labor. It’s going to put the American consumer back,   to make sure that American workers get lifted up as well.” Back in Washington, after the original comments, Spicer said, ”I don’t think our job right now is to roll something out   be prescriptive it’s to show that there are ways the wall can be paid for. Full stop.” He added that he was trying to address ”questions about how the president could pay for the wall.” He said, ”The idea is to show that generating revenue for the wall is not as difficult as some might have suggested.” But ”there’s nothing to roll out, so the idea of asking for details on something, we’re not there yet.” Spicer also suggested that building the border wall would produce savings elsewhere in the federal budget. ”I think we’re going to save additional money that we would have had to spend on tracking down illegal immigrants and on immigration,” Spicer said. ”So it’s actually a huge win for the American taxpayer and for American security when you look at the kind of plan that’s coming to fruition right now.” Trump actually wants to increase spending on immigration enforcement. In addition to the wall, he has ordered the hiring of 15, 000 new Border Patrol and immigration officers and the construction of new detention facilities."
"President Trump said if Mexico won’t pay for the wall, Mexico’s president shouldn’t bother coming to Washington, D. C. next week. So Mexico’s president cancelled his trip. Mexicans are outraged by Trump and support their president’s decision."
"”Buckle up. We’re ready to go to work,” Vice President Pence told Republican lawmakers at their annual retreat in Philadelphia on Thursday. With a GOP administration in place for the first time in eight years, congressional leaders have mapped out an ambitious legislative agenda, with goals to have bills to repeal and replace Obamacare, overhaul the tax code and build a wall on the U. S.  border, all before lawmakers break for the annual August recess. ”We’ve been working with the administration on a daily basis to map out and plan a very bold and aggressive agenda to make good on our campaign promises and to fix these problems,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters gathered here for the party’s annual   GOP policy retreat. Pence and President Trump joined the lawmakers here on Thursday. The agenda will test the party’s commitment to small government and a fiscal conservatism that in recent years has rejected any new spending without corresponding cuts in the federal budget. Trump’s promises to expand health care coverage and spend more on the nation’s ailing infrastructure systems  —   while cutting taxes for businesses and individuals  —   will be hard to reconcile with competing GOP commitments to balance the budget and reduce the nation’s debt burden. Nearly all congressional Republicans are   fiscal conservatives. But Trump has shown support for vast new federal spending  —   like that $1 trillion infrastructure proposal  —   and an indifference to deficit spending if it can spur U. S. economic growth. For instance, Republicans largely agree that tax cuts do not need to be paid for and consider them economic stimulus. Ryan would not say Republican policies won’t increase the deficit in the short term, but he reiterated a   commitment to paying for new spending. ”We are fiscal conservatives. If we’re going to be spending on things like say, infrastructure, we’re going to find the fiscal space to pay for that in our spring budget,” he said, referring to the annual budget resolution. Republicans are already working to provide Trump with $12 billion to $15 billion in new spending to fund his call to finish a border wall with Mexico. Congress is expected to use an upcoming defense supplemental spending bill to include new border funds. The supplemental spending bill is considered ”emergency” spending and does not require spending offsets. Ryan and McConnell declined to answer repeated questions about whether the wall would be offset in the federal budget. Trump has insisted Mexico will reimburse the U. S. for the costs, through undetermined new measures affecting trade and tax policy with Mexico. Leaders say they are on the ”same page” as the Trump administration on an agenda that has expanded to the first 200 days in part to accommodate extra scheduling burdens in the Senate related to the confirmation process for Trump’s Cabinet and an upcoming Supreme Court nominee. Ryan and McConnell struck a more cautious tone to reporters on their timeline for moving legislation. ”We don’t want to set arbitrary deadlines on things. We want to get things right,” Ryan said. ”The speaker understands the challenges of getting things through the Senate,” McConnell added. ”That’s been true for 240 years. But we’re aware of those challenges and we think we can move forward.” However, in a presentation to lawmakers on Wednesday leaders outlined a 2017 program that included a specific timeline, including: Congress also wants to pass laws affecting federal flood insurance, veterans health care and financial regulations by the end of the year. Lawmakers are also anticipating further executive actions from the Trump administration on immigration and health care. The ambitious agenda is being pushed by Trump, who has told lawmakers he wants quick action on his priorities. ”President Trump comes from a different world,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,  . told reporters. ”Out in the business community, he likes things done fast, and he’s going to continue to push them.” On Thursday, the president did. ”We have to deliver,” he told lawmakers. ”This is our chance to make major and lasting change.”"
"This week, President Trump’s transition team put new restrictions on government scientists’ freedom to communicate. The restrictions are being characterized as temporary, and some have already been lifted. But climate scientists, in particular, are on edge because the federal government generates a huge amount of data on climate. That information is used in everything from farming to weather forecasting and insurance. Take the example of a single agency: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA operates 17 environmental satellites, along with myriad instruments that collect data on land and in the oceans. When you add NASA’s satellites and instruments and scientists, as well as those at other agencies, you get the country’s biggest source of climate data  —   by far. Those data are the main way we know what’s going on with the climate, says Greg Asner, who studies forests at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. ”Nobody has databases like NOAA nobody has instrumentation networks like NASA,” Asner says. ”Without it, we will go blind. It’s like turning off the lights  —   we’re not going to know what’s happening at the Earth scale.” The government’s role doesn’t stop with just collecting data. Federal scientists analyze the information and eventually release it to the public in reports such as the National Climate Assessment. There have been three so far, and a fourth is due out next year. The assessments are required by law. Scientists from several federal agencies, including NOAA, write them. Ocean scientist William Sweet at NOAA is currently working on the section about sea level rise. ”Sea level rise is already happening and the impacts can be felt,” Sweet says. But those impacts, he notes, are not the same everywhere. ”The ocean is not a bathtub. It may rise in one place it may drop in the other,” he says. Ocean currents and wind patterns distribute ocean water unevenly. And coastlines actually move up and down  —   sometimes it’s a   response to the retreat of glaciers during the latest ice age, and sometimes it’s from people draining groundwater. That ”vertical land movement” influences how far inland water will encroach. Sweet says research prepared for the new assessment shows that the East Coast and parts of the Gulf Coast, for example, will experience even higher sea levels than the world average. And that world average? It could be 8 feet higher than it is now by the end of the century  —   about a foot and a half higher than predicted in the latest assessment, in 2014. That’s the   scenario. Sweet says it probably will be less  —   a lot depends on how much more carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere and how much of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melts. In the short term, he says, the assessment will provide news you can use. For example, there’s been an uptick in abnormally high tides  —   these cause ”sunny day” flooding that occurs even when there’s no storm. ”At what point do these damaging, disruptive tidal flood events become the new norm?” Sweet says. He adds that the latest climate assessment will help answer that question by pinpointing where and how often these   tides will hit. Local municipalities can use this information to prepare by deploying pumps,   streets or even building sea walls. That’s just a small part of what’s in the assessments. They also cover everything from drought to extreme rain and snowfall. So what happens if the Trump administration tries to censor this huge scientific enterprise? Peter de Menocal, the dean of science at Columbia University, says there just isn’t any substitute for what federal climate scientists produce. ”The United States, I think, has the   and some of the top talent in climate science and engineering in the world,” he says. ”The concern is that that brain trust, that amazing compendium of knowledge is going to disappear.”"
"If Twitter accounts fall silent in the woods, can they still make a sound? Turns out, yes  —   lots. Tuesday afternoon, a new Twitter account called ”AltUSNatParkService” appeared and began tweeting out facts about climate change, support for the National Parks and comments in opposition of President Trump, who has called climate change a hoax created by China. All this came in response to the news of new orders to limit outward contact with the public, including bans on social media postings, at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service. The EPA was ordered to enact a temporary media blackout as the Trump administration transitions its team into the agency roles. The rogue tweeting started at the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, as the park’s verified Twitter account tweeted in defiance with facts about climate change, such as: ”Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650, 000 years. #climate.” The messages took Twitter by storm, but were later removed. This led to a public outcry over what many took to suggest was censorship of the accounts. The National Park Service responded with a statement that blamed ”a former employee who was not currently authorized to use the park’s account”: ”The park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized their account had been compromised. At this time, National Park Service social media managers are encouraged to continue the use of Twitter to post information relating to public safety and park information, with the exception of content related to national policy issues.” In true Twitter fashion, the removal of climate change tweets from the official account gave rise to a wave of rogue accounts, including ”BadlandsNPSFans” and ”BadHombreLands NPS”  —   the latter referring to Trump’s ”bad hombres” comment during a presidential debate. Both accounts post about science and climate change, as well as in opposition of Trump’s policy proposals, with BadlandsNPSFans directly skewering Trump and his team. In both cases, it is unclear who is running these accounts. The AltUSNatParkService account, for its part, grabbed the spotlight on Wednesday, racking up some 600, 000 followers in the span of 24 hours. The account claims to be run by current park rangers, which NPR could not confirm. The location of this group is also unclear as they made references to Mount Rainier in Washington as well as the local Washington, D. C. time. NPR reached out to the   ”unofficial resistance team” for a comment, but did not hear back. The official National Park Service communications office also did not respond to requests for further comment. The official NPS Twitter account found itself in hot water last week, too, when it was asked to stop tweeting after sharing images comparing the crowd size of Trump’s inauguration to that of former President Barack Obama in 2009."
"Heavy precipitation is erasing years of extremely dry conditions in parts of California, with the latest federal report showing that just over 51 percent of the state remains in drought  —   and no areas have the worst rating, ”exceptional drought.” It’s the first time since January of 2014 that no part of California was in the exceptional drought category, according to the U. S. Drought Monitor report from weather and agriculture experts. In January of 2016, more than 40 percent of the state had that unwelcome distinction. Currently, nearly 39 percent of California is also free of the more benign ”abnormally dry” status  —   which, one year ago, covered the entire state. The change wrought by heavy rains is striking, as seen in a series of    photos of key reservoirs complied by member station KQED. Drought conditions persist mainly in the south, affecting nearly 25 million people, according to the drought monitor. And Dan Cayan, a climate researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, tells KQED that while some areas have already received a winter’s worth of water, the risk of drought shouldn’t be discounted. ”I’m a little reluctant to say the drought’s over, even though conditions have markedly improved,” says Cayan, citing the need to replenish groundwater aquifers. Relief from the drought has come at a cost, as powerful and drenching storms also brought flooding, mudslides and damage  —   including to the iconic ”Pioneer Cabin Tree,” the sequoia that was carved into a tunnel in Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Since Oct. 1, precipitation is running well above normal levels across the state, according to the National Weather Service. The agency’s office in Sacramento adds that wet conditions are likely to return next week."
"  has a message for the Trump administration: There is no such thing as an ”alternative fact.” There are facts, and then there are falsehoods. That memo was at least implied this week when the dictionary publisher tweeted the definition of a fact just hours after Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on Meet The Press and referred to statements by White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the inaugural crowd size as ”alternative facts.” Later,   threw another dig at Conway by tweeting an alternative definition of the word ”fact.” The idea for those tweets came from the dictionary’s Trend Watch feature, Lauren Naturale, social media manager at   told Vox. com. When people are looking up a word at a higher rate than usual as related to an event,   shares that trend and adds context on the word’s meaning and how it was used. ”Four people were involved in writing and editing the ’fact’ article, and none of us felt like we shouldn’t report the story  —   choosing not to report that trend would have been much more political than continuing as we always have,” Naturale told Vox. ”If you don’t believe that words matter, why are you consulting a dictionary?” On Monday,   subtly scolded the Trump team again, this time in response to a spike in searches for the word ”claque.” The searches were likely in response to reports that the people who cheered Trump during his visit to CIA headquarters were not actually agency staffers but Trump supporters invited for the occasion. These types of tweets are nothing new for  . Throughout the presidential campaign,   developed its funny style of delicately trolling Trump on social media. When Trump accused China of stealing a U. S. drone back in December, calling the act ”unpresidented,”  ’s Twitter account mocked the   for misspelling ”unprecedented” and making up a new term. Trump corrected himself and deleted the tweet, but by then   had already tweeted ”Huh” as its word of the day. During the presidential debates,   also threw some shade at Trump’s unique rhetoric. After Trump’s comments referring to ”bad hombres,” the dictionary’s site saw a surge in searches for the word ”ombré” but was quick to point out the difference between the two words. ”Hombre” is the Spanish word for ”man,” while ”ombré” refers to ”having shades or colors that fade into each other.” And the dictionary publisher attempted to set the record straight on a major perplexing question of the campaign: Did Trump say ”bigly” or ”big league”?   highlighted that ”bigly” is in fact a real word, but concluded that Trump was using ”big league” as an adverb, which is uncommon. Despite all of this mocking, Naturale clarifies that  ’s social media strategy goes beyond that. She says it reflects  ’s quirky identity while furthering its goal of sharing knowledge as experts on language. On Sunday  —   one day after the Women’s March drew millions of people worldwide  —     tweeted the definition of ”vanguard” with a GIF of Sylvia Rivera, a transgender activist. ”Smart people are curious about the world, and smart people are curious about the other people who live in that world,” Naturale told Vox. ”Our Twitter reflects that attitude.”"
"It’s no secret that NPR has a soft spot for haiku. Springtime, social media, the Super Bowl, even, um, grindcore? If it’s a story worth covering, it’s entirely possible we’ve squeezed it into 17 syllables. It turns out we’re not the only ones who are sweet on the ol’   . The   a weekly newspaper based in Indianola, Miss. has been turning some of its police reports into haiku. And this week, the paper started publishing the curious little jewels on Twitter. ”In an effort to reach the new era of     millennials, we have begun publishing a ’Crime Haiku of the Week,’ ” the newspaper tweeted Wednesday. And so began the stream of   tweets. Charlie Smith, the    publisher and editor of The   tells NPR he started the haiku last month, as a way to liven up the newspaper’s most popular section. ”Cops and Robbers,” a   summary of crime reports in the area, is often the part of the paper readers flip to first  —   but it usually ends up being just a big gray block of text. Smith figured a haiku would be an amusing way to break it up. So every Wednesday, on deadline, Smith decided to take one of those reports and sum it up in haiku. Then . .. silence. Smith says he received no feedback from the paper’s readers at first. He was thinking about giving it up, but he got support from one important fan. ”My mom told me she loved it,” Smith says. ”I couldn’t let her down.” He says it was only when he put the haiku on Twitter this week, rounding up all the poems he’s written so far, that the audience at large took notice. Some faithful readers have even submitted haiku of their own. ”I think it’s finally found the right medium,” he says."
"An underground pipeline that runs through multiple Midwestern states has leaked an estimated 138, 000 gallons of diesel fuel, according to the company that owns it, Magellan Midstream Partners. Clay Masters of Iowa Public Radio reported diesel leaking from a   underground pipe was initially spotted in a farm field in   Worth County, Iowa, on Wednesday morning. Officials from the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency and Iowa Department of Natural Resources joined representatives of Magellan and other local officials at the site, Masters reported. ”It’s a big one  —   it’s significant,” Jeff Vansteenburg of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources told the Des Moines Register. ”The product is under pressure, so as soon as a leak develops, it starts coming out pretty fast,” Vansteenburg said at a Wednesday evening news conference. ”Vacuum trucks are sucking up as much liquid as they can and taking that down to Magellan’s terminal. . .. Once they’ve recovered all the free product that they can then they will go in and remove contaminated soil.” Vansteenburg said the diesel had not reached nearby Willow Creek or a wildlife protection area. A safety plan submitted by the company to the U. S. Department of Transportation in 2014 lists the pipeline, which runs through Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, as a transport route for multiple refined oil products, ”including Diesel, Gasoline, Jet fuel, Natural gasoline, Naptha, Propane, Natural Gas, Butane.” Maps of the pipeline were redacted from the public version of the report. The leak occurred when the pipeline ruptured and diesel sprayed out, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources told the Register. More than a foot of snow has fallen since Monday in some parts of   Iowa. As of Wednesday afternoon, cleanup crews had sucked up ”about 25, 000 gallons of diesel and a   mixture,” reported the Globe Gazette newspaper in Mason City, Iowa. Another pipeline operated by Magellan leaked near Decatur, Neb. last October, according to the Omaha   which reported that a ruptured pipe carrying anhydrous ammonia killed one person and led to the evacuation of 23 households. In 2010, the company agreed to pay a $46, 200 penalty for violating the Clean Water Act, after an estimated 5, 000 gallons of diesel spilled into a creek near Milford, Iowa. That year, Magellan was also fined $418, 000 for a   gasoline spill in Oklahoma. In November, the company temporarily shut down its pipelines in order to inspect them after an earthquake in Cushing, Okla. damaged several buildings, as we reported. As the public media project Inside Energy has reported, ”According to data from federal regulators, there is actually a low probability of a pipeline accident. But when there is an accident, the impact can be huge.” The project also created a map of all the pipeline spills reported since 2010. Inside Energy also reported last year on what it called the ”chronically underfunded and understaffed regulatory agency,” the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, that oversees pipelines in the U. S.: ”According to PHMSA, the agency has 533 inspectors on its payroll. That works out to around one inspector for every 5, 000 miles of pipe. A government audit in October [2016] found that that PHMSA is behind on implementing new rules. It has 41 mandates and recommendations related to pipeline safety that await rulemaking.” The PHMSA makes searchable information about where pipelines are in the U. S. broken down by county, available at its website."
"There they were, Greenpeace activists hanging from cranes in the sky. The banner, reading ”RESIST,” unfurled within sight of the White House after President Trump froze EPA grants and ordered the environmental agency to remove   research from its website. It was a potent image Wednesday, perhaps setting a tone for years to come. Working under the Saltland moniker, Rebecca Foon calls her second solo album, A Common Truth, a meditation on climate change. The Montreal cellist and composer works in climate justice and has been a member of Esmerine, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra and Set Fire To Flames, and has recently toured with Colin Stetson’s Sorrow orchestra performing Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony. Here, Foon places her focus on the acoustic and processed sounds of her cello to represent a natural world in flux. ”I Only Wish This For You” layers somber cello loops with equal parts elegance and anger, swooping one moment and crashing the next. With a voice equally suited to opening petals and opening wounds, Foon sings to the earth like a mother to a newborn, beaming with hope while gripped with fear. But she also offers an alternate form of resistance: transformation. Oh, to what end, How to break, This vicious cycle of greed, A fight, Transformation, I only, Wish this for you, A Common Truth comes out March 31 on Constellation."
"Donald Trump took aim at Chelsea Manning in an early morning tweet on Thursday. The tweet appears to refer to an   published in The Guardian on Thursday morning, in which former Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning criticizes former President Obama as having been too willing to attempt compromise with his political opponents and being insufficiently progressive. She did not, however, call Obama a ”weak leader” in so many words, as Trump’s tweet might suggest. Manning leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 and was subsequently sentenced to a   prison term. After seven years in prison for Manning, President Obama commuted that sentence last week, just before leaving office. Manning acknowledged that Obama’s opponents were unusually obstinate, writing that the former president ”faced unparalleled resistance from his opponents, many of whom wanted him to fail.” However, Manning excoriated Obama for, in her eyes, compromising too much on health care and foreign policy, and she called for ”a strong and unapologetic progressive” to lead the United States. It wasn’t clear whether Trump’s tweet was intended to come to Obama’s defense  —   Trump, after all, has slammed the former president on many occasions. Rather, it may have been an opportunity to both criticize Manning and draw attention to criticism of Obama  —   criticism coming from someone whom Obama recently prevented from serving around 28 more years in prison, no less. Likewise, it’s not clear whether Trump’s tweets were inspired directly by the Guardian column. The tweets came minutes after a Fox News report that could easily have prompted them, as CNN’s Brian Stelter tweeted. Reporting on the column, Fox and Friends First’s Abby Huntsman said that ”the disgraced former Army private is slamming President Obama as a weak leader with few permanent accomplishments,” while the words ”ungrateful traitor” appeared at the bottom of the screen, as Mediaite pointed out. This wouldn’t be the first time that Trump’s tweets correlate with Fox News segments. As BuzzFeed’s Brandon Wall pointed out earlier this week, a recent tweet about violence in Chicago may also have been inspired by a segment on the O’Reilly Factor."
"What makes North Korea feel so oppressive? If you ask its   defector in decades, the answer is censorship. Thae Yong Ho, who was until last summer a Pyongyang envoy in London, argues that increasing the flow of information into the North is what can sow the seeds of popular discord to bring down the Kim Jong Un regime. Thae had served in London for 10 years, and previously in Denmark, before he defected to South Korea last summer with his wife and two sons. He spent several months being questioned and debriefed by South Korean intelligence before settling into his new life in Seoul, where bodyguards accompany him most hours of the day. ”When we got out of the embassy, I told [my sons] that now I’m going to cut the chain of slavery and you are a free man,” Thae said at a Wednesday news conference in Seoul. His   and    sons’ first concern was whether they could freely browse the Internet. ”You can go to the Internet, you can do Internet games whenever you like, you can read any books, watch any films,” Thae said he told them. That’s not the way of life in North Korea, where fewer than 1 percent of the population has Internet access. Foreign books, films and information are banned  —   and TV only broadcasts propaganda. Breaking down the censorship and surveillance state from within, Thae believes, is the only way to bring down North Korea’s nuclear   leader. With information comes education, Thae says  —   and that can lead to a popular uprising. ”Once they are educated to that level, I am sure they will stand up,” Thae told reporters. A shortwave radio station called Free North Korea Radio has been delivering information from outside the country since 2005, broadcasting from the second floor of a multipurpose building just outside Seoul. ”The power of radio has been huge in advancing the cause of freedom and human rights,” says Suzanne Scholte, head of the American group that partners with the station. Free North Korea Radio puts out at least an hour a day of programming, produced by North Korean defectors for their fellow North Koreans to hear. ”This is a critical way for them to understand that the North Korean defectors living in South Korea are working for freedom and rights, providing them with information but helping them to understand that the source of their misery is Kim Jong Un. And their true ally is the people of South Korea and the people of America,” Scholte says. This kind of tactic is far more effective than any military action, Thae, the defector, said. Any surgical or preemptive strike on the North in an attempt to eliminate its nuclear facilities would only turn South Korea  —   a longtime U. S. ally where 28, 000 American troops are based  —   ”into ashes,” he told reporters. And the power of information explains why the Pyongyang regime is so resistant to moves like propaganda loudspeakers on the border, he said. ”[The] Kim Jong Un regime is trying to prevent and is trying every possibility to stop the influx of outside information,” Thae said. Information flows into the former Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc, he said, were key to crippling those systems more than two decades ago. And the many tactics to spread information into the North are working, he said. ”The leaflets, USBs with films [stored on them] can be introduced to North Korea. So the ways of educating North Korean people for people’s uprising is also evolving,” Thae said. Despite the total surveillance state in   North Korea, he said, those with the means simply pay off the officers who catch them watching or listening to outside information. ”So even this surveillance system is getting more and more corrupted,” Thae said. But that’s also giving information an opening to get into a notoriously closed country. Haeryun Kang contributed to this story."
"As the Trump administration is expected to overhaul America’s immigration system, some policymakers suggest looking north to Canada. That’s because Canadians see immigration as critical to their economic success. The nation has invited in so many immigrants that today,   of the population is  . Yet Canadians don’t seem to wrestle with   nativism that has erupted in the U. S. and Europe. In Toronto, scanning a business directory shows how multicultural the city is: the Association of Bulgarian Engineers, the Canadian Network of Iranian Architects, the Association of Filipino Canadian Accountants. Half the population was born under another flag. ”If you ask me where I’m from, I say I’m from Canada. And if you ask me what’s my nationality, I say Jamaica,” says Michael Thomas. He’s a      of the Caribbean Corner, a warm,   grocery in the frigid precincts of downtown Toronto. He arrived in Canada 30 years ago. For him, Toronto’s astonishing multicultural character is a global village. ”I love it,” Thomas says in his island lilt. ”I see the world in one place.” Canada knows what it wants:   workers and business entrepreneurs like Thomas. As such, Canada assigns points to prospective newcomers for job skills, education and language proficiency. They don’t even call them immigrants. ”In Canada, we do refer to immigrants as ’new Canadians,’ ” says Margaret Eaton, executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council. ”Because there is that expectation that they will come here and that they will stay. And our country, unlike others, actually provides a path to citizenship.” The night Donald Trump won the election, the Canadian immigration website crashed from the crush of panicky U. S. residents and citizens considering relocation. The next day, Rene Berrospi, a   immigration lawyer in Toronto, started getting calls, emails and Facebook messages from immigrants living in the U. S. ”I have a person who contacted me, her husband is black and also Muslim and they want to immigrate here because they see that Canada is more welcoming,” Berrospi says. ”I know there is the American dream, but people are now thinking in the Canadian dream.” ’Our identity has never been stronger’ Yet Canadian immigration is not based purely on   hospitality. This northern colossus  —   the second largest country on the globe  —   has only 36 million people. Eaton says a low national birthrate creates Canada’s immigration imperative. ”We are not replacing ourselves. So we are always relying upon bringing new immigrants into the country, but it even has more urgency now,” Eaton says. ”If we want to maintain our standard of living, we are going to have to be bringing even larger numbers of immigrants.” The United States, which admits more legal immigrants than any other country, has a different approach. Here, it’s all about family reunification: bringing in spouses, parents, children and siblings who live abroad. But consecutive Congresses have failed to update the immigration program for 27 years. Foreign nationals can wait more than a decade for a green card. The lottery system for worker visas is overburdened. And 11 million unauthorized immigrants live in the shadows. ”The biggest contrast between the U. S. and Canada,” says Chris Alexander, Canadian minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship from 2013 to 2015, ”is that we have reformed our immigration system continuously, intensively, for a decade at a time when the U. S. has been facing gridlock.” Alexander is currently running to lead the Conservative Party. He says Parliament continually tweaks the immigration system because it’s a national priority. ”The consensus in Canada that immigration is part of our economic future and that part of our identity has never been stronger,” he says. About 300, 000 permanent immigrants come into Canada every year. That’s equivalent to about one percent of its population, one of the highest ratios in the world. Ashot Verdanyan and his wife, Lora Yekhstyan, are the kinds of immigrants Canada prizes. They live in a cozy apartment in a heavily multicultural Toronto suburb. They came over from Armenia as part of the skilled worker program. He teaches English she’s an industrial engineer. ”We find that the American immigration system hasn’t been flexible,” Ashot says. Before migrating to Canada, they both lived in Iowa for nine years getting advanced degrees. ”The Canadian system is much more flexible in terms of immigration. Canada’s system is very organized. We wanted to stay in the United States, but even given our credentials, we were unable to do that, because we were restricted.” When they arrived in Canada six years ago, Yekhstyan says the government had programs in place to help them transition. ”You don’t have any family, you don’t have any friends, you don’t have anything here in Canada,” she says ”You can go straight to the newcomer centers, and they will give you support.” This is not to say every immigrant has a job waiting for them. It’s common to find doctors and engineers driving taxis in Canada. Eaton of the Immigrant Employment Council says she hears complaints about employers turning down immigrant job applicants because they lack ”Canadian experience.” ”And that can become a bit of a code word for ’I didn’t like your accent. We didn’t think you would fit in,’ ” she says. An E pluribus unum shifting north? Some parts of Canada are more welcoming to newcomers than others. ”I don’t care what people look like. I don’t care if they’re black, brown or yellow. It doesn’t matter. But don’t try to change our culture,” says John Duggan, an oilfield truck driver who lives in St. Catharines, a town near Niagara Falls. He’s digging into an omelet at Angel’s Café. Though Duggan himself was brought to Canada as a child from Ireland, he is critical of the   policies of the liberal prime minister, Justin Trudeau. ”I have no problem with people wanting to come here, but . .. charity begins at home. I watched Mr. Trudeau giving brand new jackets to [immigrants] coming over,” he says. ”I have no problem with that. But we have people here freezing and they need the same stuff but they have a hard time getting it.” One reason there’s not more social tension over immigrants is because Canada doesn’t struggle with illegal immigration. This nation has fewer than 150, 000 unauthorized immigrants. The United States  —   with its illegal border crossers and visa over stayers  —   has millions. It’s partly an accident of geography. ”We are lucky to have the United States. And we have only one land border,” Alexander says. ”We have Russia to the north of us. We have Danes [and] they’re not people swimming in from Greenland.” These days, Canadians are taken aback when they look south. They see the climate of fear and anger that has broken out in America toward   and Muslim immigrants. ”Canada has looked at the United States in many ways as an example of a welcoming society,” says Laura Dawson, director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D. C. ”And it’s disheartening for many Canadians to see the United States be so fearful, to be so xenophobic and not to be more welcoming to other folks in the world.” Some Canadians wonder if that most American motto  —   E pluribus unum  —   out of many, one  —   has moved north."
"Last week, the first two of an expected 25 Syrian refugee families arrived in Rutland, Vt. a scenic,   town of 16, 000 people. Now that President Trump is expected to call for a temporary ban on Syrian refugees entering the U. S. these families may never be joined by the 23 others. For some in Rutland, that’s welcome news. But others say this rural community desperately needs the youth and diversity refugees would bring. The two Syrian families  —   four adults and five children  —   arrived without fanfare, at night. They were exhausted after two days of travel from Turkey. Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras, a champion of refugee resettlement, helped both families move in with host families. The newcomers hope to have their own apartments soon.  ”As our new neighbors were fleeing for their lives, coming to a new home a half a world away to rebuild those lives, they needed to understand that they were welcome,” he said. Speaking through an interpreter this week, members of one family said they felt relieved to be in Vermont. ”At first, we came here, and we were surprised by the very, very, warm welcome by the people of Rutland,” one Syrian said. ”The mayor, our caseworker, our host family, all came and welcomed us, and since then, it never stopped, and people have just welcomed us and helped us in every way.” Last year, Louras applied on behalf of Rutland to receive the Syrian refugees, beating out several other Vermont towns to do so. Since then, volunteers in town have been active for months, gathering donations and furniture for the new families, taking free Arabic classes and attending seminars on Middle Eastern history and Syrian culture. The local high school is planning a Syrian dinner to help introduce the refugee families to their new community. Despite all the excitement and goodwill, there remains an uncomfortable divide over bringing Syrians to town. You get a sense of it at the local farmers market, where vendors sell everything from kombucha and winter vegetables to steaming cups of mulled cider. Some in the crowd worry about the vetting process for refugees  —   is it strong enough? Others are more concerned about the cost of refugee resettlement and how it will affect city and school budgets. Local school officials and the mayor have assured residents that the newcomers won’t be a burden or cost local taxpayers more, but many are still not convinced. Michael Spafford, 51, took a break from selling fudge to admit he’s torn by the issue. ”I know the mayor and I know his family,” says Spafford. ”I know they were from Greece. And my family was from Italy. I get that America is   to all the people from different countries and that we’re a melting pot. But what I’m concerned about is, I know people who are living in the woods because they’re poor and homeless, and I know veterans who aren’t getting proper care.” Spafford says he can’t forget something President Trump said recently, ”that America is giving money out to so many other countries and so many areas. I can’t help but think we should be taking care of our own first.” Spafford pauses. ”I know that comes across as selfish,” he says, ”and my heart aches for the refugees. But my heart also aches for the locals, our own, first.” Refugee proponents  —   and there are many in Rutland  —   counter it’s not an   dilemma. But it’s a debate that’s been raging for months. Back in April, when Louras announced plans to bring in the refugee families, many were surprised. Rutland has never taken in refugees before. The mayor emphasized that helping Syrians was the right thing to do. But he also believes refugees can help solve a problem: Rutland’s shrinking population. Lyle Jepson, executive director of the Rutland Economic Development Corp. says the city’s population is expected to decline by 10 percent to 16 percent by 2030. Most of that drop will be among those younger than 50. ”What that means is we’re entering a crisis period,” says Jepson. ”We are retiring, we are living much longer and there are fewer people coming in to replace us.” Vermont’s median age, 42, is the   in the country. Only Maine skews older. A report by the Vermont Chamber Foundation projects that the entire state will need nearly 11, 000 new employees every year until 2040 to replace retirees and fill new jobs. ”We hear people say our children are leaving because there are no jobs here,” Jepson says. ”But we need to change that narrative  —   because there are jobs here.” He says young, motivated refugees would be a welcome part of the talent pool in Rutland. The newcomers from Syria include people who are multilingual. One of the refugees holds a degree in French literature. Depending on their skills, Jepson says they might find work with local hotels, nursing homes, the nearby Killington ski resort, the regional hospital or local GE plant. Back at the farmers market, Josh Squire wraps up a sale at his vegetable stand. The    farmer moved to Rutland from Delaware, which he describes as much more culturally diverse. Rutland, he says, would benefit from more diversity.  ”Different ideas can spur a new business, and that new business brings in money for the economy. Those people who are working in that new business can now come to my business and, like, it’ll spread. So having even a couple hundred more people in our little town, it’s going to make a big difference for us,” he says, smiling. But his shoulders sag as he admits that he worries if the U. S. scales back its refugee programs, Rutland’s first two Syrian families could be the last."
"A federal judge in Ohio has rejected the state’s   lethal injection protocol on the grounds that one of the drugs, the sedative midazolam, is not sufficiently humane in its effects. The drug has been used during multiple botched executions in Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma and Alabama, as The   has reported. After five days of hearings, U. S. District Court Magistrate Judge Michael Merz blocked three upcoming executions in a decision issued Thursday morning, writing that the ”use of midazolam as the first drug in Ohio’s present   protocol will create a ’substantial risk of serious harm’ or an ’objectively intolerable risk of harm.’ ” In December, Arizona announced it would no longer use the drug in executions, member station KJZZ reported. Ohio was the first state to use midazolam as an execution drug. Ohio first used it to kill Dennis McGuire on Jan. 16, 2014, in an execution that took 24 minutes and during which ”McGuire started struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds which lasted for at least 10 minutes,” according to a witness. The plaintiffs in the Ohio case are the next three people scheduled to be executed in Ohio in the first part of this year. Ronald Phillips was scheduled for execution on Feb. 15, Gary Otte on March 15 and Raymond Tibbetts on April 12 according to the Ohio Department of Corrections. Their executions have been put on hold as a result of Thursday’s decision. In court filings, the prisoners argued that the use of midazolam violated the Eighth Amendment and amounted to a reversion to a ”more primitive, less humane execution method,” citing past executions involving the drug in which prisoners appeared to struggle, regain consciousness, writhe and die slowly over the course of minutes or even hours. Ohio’s lethal injection statute requires ”a lethal injection of a drug or combination of drugs of sufficient dosage to quickly and painlessly cause death.” The U. S. Supreme Court ruled   in 2015 that using midazolam for executions did not violate the Constitution. However, as Judge Merz noted in his decision, the high court did not ”logically imply that it can never be proven that midazolam presents an objectively intolerable risk of harm.” As a result, Merz felt his court was free to evaluate the potential harmfulness of midazolam, despite the higher court’s previous ruling. As we reported, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Supreme Court’s majority opinion that ”the prisoners failed to identify a known and available alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain, a requirement of all Eighth Amendment   execution claims.” Merz wrote that such a method exists in the form of barbiturates, which were the lethal injection drugs of choice until pharmaceutical companies began blocking their sale for executions, as The   also has reported. Merz wrote in Thursday’s decision: ”All the parties and witnesses in this case agree that use of a barbiturate, either as the first drug in a   protocol or as the sole drug, would be preferable to the current Ohio protocol in that it would eliminate the side effects observed in   executions identified in the lay testimony and would also eliminate (or at least reduce to a constitutionally acceptable level) the risk of subjecting the inmate to severe pain.” ”The question, then, is the availability of barbiturates,” he continued, explaining that there is no legal requirement that barbiturates be available in order to qualify as an alternative execution method. The state will decide whether to appeal the decision. There are currently 140 people on death row in Ohio."
"Esteban Santiago Ruiz, the    man arrested shortly after the shooting at Fort   International Airport on Jan. 6, has been indicted on 22 counts by a federal grand jury. Santiago allegedly killed five people in the baggage claim area of Terminal 2 after retrieving a weapon from a checked bag and loading it in the bathroom. Mary Louise Amzibel, Michael John Oehme, Olga M . Woltering, Shirley Wells Timmons and Terry Michael Andres all died, according to the indictment. The indictment includes five counts of ”violence at an international airport resulting in death,” as well as numerous weapons charges for allegedly firing a Walther   pistol. U. S. law specifically prohibits, and specifies federal jurisdiction over, the unauthorized use of weapons inside an international civilian airport. The provision was part of the massive Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. As NPR’s Colin Dwyer reported, Santiago served as a combat engineer in the National Guard in Puerto Rico and Alaska, and was discharged from service last year for unsatisfactory performance. Colin also reported: ”During Santiago’s time with the Puerto Rico National Guard, he was deployed to Iraq from April 2010 to February 2011. The U. S. pulled troops from the country at the end of that year. ”His aunt, Maria Ruiz Rivera, tells The Record of New Jersey that after he returned, she noticed changes in his mental health. ” ’He lost his mind,’ Ruiz Rivera told the newspaper in Spanish. ’He said he saw things.’ ”Over the course of 2016, Santiago was repeatedly reported to Anchorage police for physical disturbances, according to the city’s police chief, Christopher Tolley  —   including two separate reports of domestic violence and strangulation in October last year. ”The next month, Santiago walked into an FBI office in Anchorage ’to report that his mind was being controlled by a U. S. intelligence agency,’ said FBI special agent Marlin Ritzman, at a Saturday press conference. Tolley described them as ’terroristic thoughts,’ in which ’he believed he was being influenced by ISIS.’ ” Addressing Santiago’s mental state briefly, the indictment alleges the crime was committed ”after substantial planning and premeditation,” and accuses him of ”intentionally” killing five people and that his actions ”constituted a reckless disregard for human life.” Santiago is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges on Jan. 30, according to a press release by the Department of Justice."
"President Trump says he wants a swift and complete victory over the Islamic State, and he inherits the battle at a moment when the extremist group is losing ground in Iraq and Syria. The group’s   caliphate is looking increasingly fragile. Could 2017 be the year the U. S. and its allies break the back of ISIS? Progress is being made in the war against the Islamic State, according to analysts. But they caution that the U. S. is likely to face a recurring challenge in the Middle East: how to turn battlefield gains into a comprehensive political solution. ”The quickest way to lose against ISIS would be declaring victory too soon,” says Jessica Lewis McFate of the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D. C. ”ISIS is fighting a multigenerational war, and we need to think that way as well.” Trump heads to the Pentagon on Friday for his first meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the war with ISIS is expected to be at or near the top of the agenda. Here are several key questions to watch this year: 1. Will Trump take a radically different approach than Barack Obama? Their rhetoric is diametrically opposed, but it’s not clear how that will translate into policy. Obama’s watchwords were patience, restraint and a limited American role. He took a lot of heat from Republicans who said he didn’t do enough to roll back ISIS. Yet since he ordered the U. S. air campaign in the summer of 2014, ISIS has lost most of its territory in Iraq, and chunks in Syria as well. Trump’s inaugural address didn’t mention ISIS by name, though he said his administration would ”unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.” Trump hasn’t laid out details, such as whether he wants to add to the roughly 6, 000 American military personnel in Iraq and Syria, where they are training, advising and carrying out the air campaign. They’re often close to the front lines or soaring above them, but they’re not supposed to be in ground combat. Escalating the air campaign is an option, with caveats. After some 17, 000 U. S. airstrikes over the past couple of years, ISIS targets are increasingly hard to find, and ISIS members often seek shelter by clustering in civilian areas. ”There are not a whole series of targets we have simply not hit. That’s not the case,” Deborah James, who just stepped down as Air Force secretary, told U. S. News and World Report. ”What we have been very careful about is making sure we know what we’re hitting, and taking care to hit what we intend to hit.” 2. Should Iraq and Syria be viewed as two separate wars? The U. S. focus is on ISIS in both countries, but the wars are at different stages right now. ISIS has been greatly weakened in Iraq. The northern city of Mosul is its last stronghold, and after four months of fighting, ISIS has been driven out of the eastern half of the city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River. A major battle is looming in the densely packed western part of the city, which could also involve months of fighting. If ISIS is driven out of Mosul, it would be a diminished threat, though it could still press on with its campaign of car bombs that target Baghdad and several other key cities. In Syria, ISIS has lost ground but still controls large parts of eastern Syria, including Raqqa, its de facto capital in the desert. The U. S. is working with Arab and Kurdish fighters, and they have come as close as 17 miles from Raqqa. But all forecasts point to a long, hard slog to uproot ISIS. And ISIS is just one faction in the hugely complicated Syrian war. ”ISIS is still in a very good position in Syria because everyone else is in a bad position,” said Lewis McFate. ”Right now, it’s hard to see a good political future for any of the actors.” 3. How is ISIS responding in its weakened state? The Islamic State is ambitious and unpredictable. Its ambition was on display during its rapid expansion in 2014, as it gained men, money and territory, seemingly by the day. All these resources have been shrinking for the past year or more. ISIS has more trouble attracting new recruits, partly because Turkey has tightened its border with Syria, the main gateway for foreign fighters. When ISIS was surging, it paid regular salaries to its fighters. The group looted Iraqi banks and sold oil from Syrian wells it captured. Those sources are drying up after sustained attacks. ”We are destroying [ISIS’] economic base,” Brett McGurk, Obama’s point man on the group, said last month. ”Their fighters are not getting paid, and we have multiple indications of that,” added McGurk, who has remained in his post during the early days of the Trump administration. However, the group has been full of surprises and that’s why it’s expected to remain dangerous. Major terror attacks in Turkey and Europe have demonstrated the group’s reach, and as it loses ground at its core in the Middle East, lashing out abroad is a way to show it’s still relevant. Counterterrorism officials warn that fighters in Syria and Iraq could flee from the collapsing former Islamic State and continue to pose a terror threat in the West. ISIS also has a habit of returning to places where it was dislodged. ISIS recaptured the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra last month, several months after it had been driven out. For good measure, it recently destroyed part of Palmyra’s most famous Roman ruins. 4. What about ”the day after?” What’s the plan if ISIS is defeated? In Iraq, the path ahead is relatively clear. Not easy, but clear. Obama’s approach envisioned an Iraqi government and military that would own the fight against ISIS. Iraqis will play the lead role and that will give them the strength and credibility to take control after the fighting. The Iraqi government will have to rebuild cities, unify the country and guard against a return to sectarian feuds. Previous governments failed miserably, and this one might, too, but at least there’s broad agreement on the aim. In Syria, the puzzle has many more pieces, and it’s not clear if any of them fit together. If the U. S. and its allies dislodge ISIS, some party would still need to take political control in eastern Syria. If the U. S. doesn’t want to occupy the region  —   and there’s no sign it does  —   the Trump administration would have to find someone who could hold it. The limited options would include the hodgepodge of local factions that are at odds with President Bashar Assad’s government, which might have its own designs on the region. And relative calm in eastern Syria doesn’t mean peace will break out in the more heavily populated western part of the country. That’s where the Syrian government, with its Russian and Iranian allies, is still at war with multiple rebel groups. Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him on Twitter @gregmyre1."
"The minute hand on the Doomsday Clock ticked closer to midnight Thursday, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said it’s seeing an increase in dangers to humanity, from climate change to nuclear warfare. The group took the ”unprecedented” step of moving the clock 30 seconds closer to midnight, to leave it at 2   minutes away. The setting is the closest the symbolic clock has come to midnight since 1953, when scientists moved it to two minutes from midnight after seeing both the U. S. and the Soviet Union test hydrogen bombs. It remained at that mark until 1960. ”Make no mistake, this has been a difficult year,” Rachel Bronson, executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said as the new setting was announced Thursday. Explaining its move, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board said: ”Over the course of 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change . .. This   world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a U. S. presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.” The board criticized President Trump further, saying that ”even though he has just now taken office, the president’s intemperate statements, lack of openness to expert advice, and questionable cabinet nominations have already made a bad international security situation worse.” Last year, the Doomsday Clock’s setting didn’t change from 2015, when it jumped two notches to three minutes before midnight  —   the closest it had been to midnight since the early era of   hydrogen bomb testing. Created in 1947, the Doomsday Clock was conceived by scientists who had participated in the Manhattan Project. Initially seen as an indicator of the likelihood of disastrous nuclear conflict, it now also includes other threats, such as climate change, biological weapons and cyberthreats. It’s the first time in the Doomsday Clock’s   history that the advisory board has adjusted the clock by 30 seconds. The decision to advance the clock was announced at the National Press Club, where speakers included board members former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Thomas R. Pickering and physicist Lawrence Krauss. A simultaneous event was held at Stanford University that featured California Gov. Jerry Brown, former Secretary of State George Schultz and former Defense Secretary William Perry. ”Facts are stubborn things,” Krauss said, ”and they must be taken into account if the future of humanity is to be preserved.” The Doomsday Clock, physicist Lawrence Krauss said at Thursday’s event, offers ”a rare opportunity to reach the global public directly.” Urging members of the public to speak to their political leaders, he added that important decisions about humanity’s future shouldn’t be left to a few men. ”President Trump and President Putin, who claim great respect for each other, can choose to act together as statesmen, or act as petulant children, risking our future,” Krauss said. His direct comments sparked the first question after board members had made their initial statements, as Tracy Wilkinson of The Los Angeles Times asked Krauss, ”You said this shouldn’t be left in the hands of one or two leaders making crazy statements. I know you mean Trump, but is the second person Putin?” As Krauss answered yes, another panel member, Thomas Pickering, added, ”Good guess.”"
"It seems readily apparent that the writer of a book titled Bad Feminist would register significant disagreement  —   to put it politely  —   with a writer who has called feminism ”bowel cancer.” But when Roxane Gay realized she was to be published on the imprint of the same publisher that recently signed Milo Yiannopoulos to a   book deal, she made that disapproval quite clear. ”I can’t in good conscience let them publish it while they also publish Milo,” Gay told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday. ”So I told my agent over the weekend to pull the project.” That project, currently titled How to Be Heard, had been set to publish through TED Books, a Simon  Schuster imprint. Yiannopoulos, a tech editor at Breitbart News, has drawn significant backlash for consistently provocative statements on the conservative website  —   and for getting banned from Twitter last year. That ban followed his prominent role in the gamergate controversy and a campaign of racist and abusive messages directed at Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones. Yiannopoulos, for his part, has dismissed the criticism as politically motivated and as an attempt to silence dissenting opinions. Late last year, another Simon  Schuster imprint  —   Threshold Editions, which is geared toward conservative readers  —   agreed to a book deal with Yiannopoulos worth $250, 000, according to multiple media reports. That news didn’t sit well with a lot of Simon  Schuster authors. So much so, in fact, that the publisher’s president and CEO sent a letter reassuring them that ”we do not support or condone, nor will we publish, hate speech.” Others in the publishing industry also voiced their distaste with the deal. Dennis Johnson, head of the independent publisher Melville House, explained his reasoning to NPR’s Lynn Neary: ”Nobody in the protest is saying, ’You have no right to be published. You have no right, Simon  Schuster, to publish this guy, and this guy, you have no right to be published’  —   nobody’s saying that. ”What they’re saying is, ’We’re shocked and we’re outraged that you would stoop so low to make a buck as to publish this purveyor of vile hate speech.’ ” It didn’t sit well with Gay either, she said in her statement, but at first she thought she didn’t have anything to do with it  —   until she remembered TED Books’ association with the publisher. ”I was supposed to turn the book in this month and I kept thinking about how egregious it is to give someone like Milo a platform for his blunt, inelegant hate and provocation,” Gay said. ”I just couldn’t bring myself to turn the book in.” Though she acknowledged that TED Books and Threshold are different imprints, with different staffs and intended audiences, Gay said the link between them through Simon  Schuster was still too much for her. She found herself ”fortunate enough to be in a position to make this decision”  —   so, she said, ”I’m putting my money where my mouth is.” Gay said she has not yet found a new publisher for her project."
"Girls in the first few years of elementary school are less likely than boys to say that their own gender is ”really, really smart,” and less likely to opt into a game described as being for   kids, research finds. The study, which appears Thursday in Science, comes amid a push to figure out why women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields. One line of research involves stereotypes, and how they might influence academic and career choices. Andrei Cimpian, a professor of psychology at New York University and an author of the study, says his lab’s previous work showed that women were particularly underrepresented in both STEM and humanities fields whose members thought you needed to be brilliant  —   that is, to have innate talent  —   to succeed. ”You might think these stereotypes start in college, but we know from a lot of developmental work that children are incredibly attuned to social signals,” Cimpian says. So they decided to look at kids from ages 5 to 7, the period during which stereotypes seem to start to take hold. The researchers conducted a series of experiments that included 400 children. In one, they took 96 kids and asked them a series of questions about brilliance and gender. For example, they were told a brief story about a person who was ”really, really smart” and then asked to pick the protagonist from four photos, two of men and two of women. Across the various questions,    boys said their own gender was smart 71 percent of the time, compared to 69 percent of the time for girls. Among    the numbers were 65 percent for boys and 48 percent for girls. And among    it was 68 percent for boys and 54 percent for girls. ”The surprising thing is that already, by age 6, girls and boys are saying different things,” says Sapna Cheryan, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington who wasn’t involved with the research. ”Before they’ve heard of physics or computer science they are getting these messages.” Another experiment showed that even as older girls were less likely to associate their own gender with brilliance, they (correctly) assessed that at their age, girls were more likely to get good grades in school. And another experiment asked   and    about the appeal of two similar imaginary games, one intended for ”children who are really, really smart,” and one for ”children who try really, really hard.” Girls were less interested than boys in the game aimed at smart kids but interest was similar in the game for hard workers. The research can’t explain how these messages are getting to kids or how they could be changed, says Cimpian. He is planning a   study of young children that would measure environmental factors, including media exposure and parental beliefs. That would give a better idea of what factors predict the emergence of stereotypes, and what levers are available to change attitudes. Research does suggest that role models might ”inoculate” women and members of other underrepresented groups. So the movie Hidden Figures, about female   mathematicians at NASA during the late 1950s and early 1960s, could inspire girls and teens of color to pursue STEM fields. But it’s also important to step back and ask what the goal of any intervention should be, says Cheryan. Girls, after all, were split about evenly in associating brilliance with their gender, she notes. The boys were more likely to make the association with their own gender. So do girls need help in thinking more like the boys, or vice versa? Cimpian says it’s important not to fall into the trap of always assuming it’s the girls who need to change. But he says that girls at this age are usually overwhelmingly positive about their own gender, so any deviation from that baseline may suggest the beginning of negative attitudes. Another approach is to change the characterization of the academic fields themselves, namely that certain areas require inborn brilliance rather than hard work. ”Stereotypes are all about who has an innate ability,” says Cimpian. If kids were instead exposed to the idea that success comes not because of fixed ability, but because of hard work over time (a   ”growth mindset,” the idea developed by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck,) maybe those stereotypes would lose their punch. Kids might also benefit from being exposed early on to fields like engineering, which aren’t typically studied in high school, to demystify them, says Cheryan. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson."
"It’s been 14 years since the Williams sisters last played for the Australian Open title  —   but they’ll do it again on Saturday, in a final that showcases two of the most successful careers in tennis. At 36, Venus Williams is the oldest Grand Slam finalist since Martina Navratilova’s run to the Wimbledon final in 1994. For now at least, the Australian Open’s final bracket is strictly for the   club. On the men’s side, Roger Federer reached Sunday’s final with a   victory over Stan Wawrinka. At age 35, he’ll face either Rafael Nadal or Grigor Dimitrov, who play on Friday. The women’s final ”won’t be an easy match. I know that it won’t be easy,” Venus said after earning her spot. ”You have to control yourself, then you also have to hopefully put your opponent in a box. This opponent is your sister, and she’s super awesome.” Her sister Serena is indeed super awesome. At age 35, she’s the   player in the world and will play in her eighth Australian Open final after beating Mirjana   in just 50 minutes. World No. 1 Angelique Kerber didn’t reach the semifinals after losing to American CoCo Vandeweghe  —   who fell to Venus Williams in three sets Thursday. With a combined age of 71 and the experience of decades of elite tennis, both of the Williams sisters are motivated to win this final. Their only other meeting for the Australian Open title came back in 2003, when Serena won. For Venus, the match is her first Grand Slam singles final since Wimbledon in 2009. And while she has seven Grand Slam singles titles in her career, she’s never won the Australian Open. For Serena, the final brings a chance to break the tie for most Grand Slam titles  —   22  —   that she currently shares with Steffi Graf. The mark is a record in the Open era."
"When I was 9 years old, suddenly finding out I would have to inject myself with insulin and watch what I ate every day was quite a heavy load. But Mary Tyler Moore gave me hope that I was gonna make it after all. Back then, in 1973, she was the only famous person I knew with Type 1 diabetes. She never looked depressed or unhappy  “ quite the opposite. Daily shots couldn’t be that bad, I reasoned, if Mary can do it and still turn the world on with her smile. Moore, who died Wednesday at the age of 80, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 33, just as The Mary Tyler Moore Show was getting off the ground. She would become a double hero for me, as much for the strong single   character she portrayed on the show as for her real life, lived so fully with Type 1 diabetes. Moore spent decades advocating for diabetes research and for people with diabetes, including testifying in front of Congress and public service campaigns for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, now known as JDRF. (The organization has set up a website for people to post tributes to Moore.) Soon after my diagnosis, I wrote her a letter telling her how much she had helped me accept my diabetes. Weeks later, I received a beautiful autographed photo of her. The autograph was preprinted, but still . .. Maybe she’d actually read my letter! In August 1997, I had the chance to meet her when she spoke during a ceremony held at Georgetown University in Washington, D. C. to announce three   projects related to diabetes, including one specifically for Type 1.   Bill Clinton thanked Moore for her ”long, tireless and selfless efforts” and was whisked off at the end of the event. But she stayed, chatting with attendees. I shyly approached her and introduced myself as a medical journalist living with diabetes and writing about it for doctors. She shook my hand warmly. When I told her that I’d written to her as a child, she touched my arm and anxiously asked, ”Did I reply?” When I told her that indeed she’d sent me a photo, she exclaimed, ”Oh, thank goodness!” Moore was a pioneer in not only going public with her diabetes, but taking it on as a cause, says Desmond Schatz, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Florida. ”She used her position, one of tremendous respect in the world, to raise awareness about Type 1 diabetes,” he says. ”She has inspired and encouraged so many.” She also served as a stoic model of acceptance of the disease, which which in her case meant taking four insulin injections a day and constant monitoring in an effort to keep her blood sugar in check, all while keeping up with the demands of a showbiz life. Later, as she developed complications from the condition, she spoke candidly about that as well. Schatz, who is immediate past   of the American Diabetes Association, for which Moore also advocated, says: ”Some people deny it. She was never in denial. For her it was ’I have it, and I have to deal with it.’ She dealt with it.” Many celebrities with diabetes have followed Moore’s advocacy lead, including Nick Jonas, Bret Michaels, Patti LaBelle and Tom Hanks. Other prominent advocates include Olympic gold medalist swimmer Gary Hall, Jr. Miss America 1999 Nicole Johnson, and Miss Idaho 2014 Sierra Sandison, who famously wore her insulin pump on her bikini for the state pageant and won. But Mary Tyler Moore was out there first, and always with a smile. Miriam E. Tucker is a freelance journalist specializing in medicine and health. You can follow her on Twitter @MiriamETucker."
"Mary Tyler Moore, who died Wednesday, wasn’t just beloved. She was the kind of beloved where they build you a statue. Moore’s statue is in Minneapolis, where her   character, Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, worked for the fictional television station WJM. She’d already won two Emmys playing Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, but Moore cemented her icon status when Mary Richards walked into that job interview. Even if she got off to a rough start with Lou Grant, her    boss, who kept a bottle of whiskey in his desk. He wanted her to join him for a drink. She asked for a Brandy Alexander. He didn’t mean a Brandy Alexander. Mary Richards was not TV’s first working woman, or its first woman on her own. But before Mary, if you saw a woman without a partner at the center of a TV comedy, she was probably a widow, like Diahann Carroll’s single mom on Julia or Lucille Ball on the show she did after I Love Lucy, which was, perhaps unsurprisingly, called The Lucy Show. Mary didn’t have a living husband, a dead husband, an   or even a permanent boyfriend like Marlo Thomas did on That Girl. It wasn’t that she didn’t want one. Jennifer Keishin Armstrong wrote Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, a history of the show. And in 2013, she told NPR how Mary stayed single for so long: The show tried out some possible boyfriends, but ”no one was good enough for her.” Mary may not have found that exactly right guy, but she did have an apartment, a job, friends and a sex life. In fact, she was on birth control, as the audience learned in November 1972, when Mary’s parents were visiting. Her mother cheerfully called out, ”Don’t forget to take your pill.” Mary and her father both answered, ”I won’t.” Comedies about single women with all kinds of lives would become staples of both broadcast and cable: Laverne  Shirley, Murphy Brown, Living Single, Sex And The City, and now Girls and Insecure  —   but Mary and her best friend Rhoda were there first. Mary had bad dates before Rachel and Monica on Friends did, Mary had to get the show on the air before Liz Lemon on 30 Rock did, and Mary struggled with a gruff but loving boss before Leslie Knope on Parks  Recreation did. I talked to Rachel Bloom, the star and   of the CW’s Crazy  . She told me one of the things she most appreciated was that Moore was funny on her own. She responded to ”the idea of someone being a funny ingenue,” she says, ”in that she was funny as well as the people around her. And that it was a woman cracking jokes, not just, like, the woman being the straight man for dudes cracking jokes.” Women mattered behind the scenes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, too. They had roles as writers and directors. And Moore and her   Grant Tinker set up MTM Enterprises to produce the show  —   you might remember the logo with a mewing cat where the MGM lion would have been. That company produced not just The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda and Lou Grant, but The Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. Minneapolis’ Mary Tyler Moore statue was moved indoors in 2015, away from its home on the outdoor Nicollet Mall, to make way for construction. But later this year, it’s scheduled to return. And once again, tourists will copy Mary Tyler Moore’s pose, and they will throw their hats in the air."
"1. Don’t. 2. No Seriously, Netflix: Do Not. This is a thing for which no one  —   no one  —   was clamoring. There’s still time to turn back! I’m the creepy guy at the beginning of the horror movie, imploring you not to enter the abandoned   from the     for a swim, at night, alone. You don’t have to do this. Save yourselves! . .. Ok. Ok, you’re not gonna let this go? You’re really going to revive Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which ran on Bravo from 2003 to 2007, on which five gay men  —   the waggish Carson, the raffish Thom, the nerdy Ted, the sexy Kyan, and also Jai was there  —   made over hapless straight men in five key areas, respectively: Fashion, Design, Cuisine, Grooming and . .. Other? Fine. It’s both wildly unnecessary, and, according to my calculations (detailed for your    betterment of the whole damn world at the bottom of this post, under ”Notes on Reboots and Probability”) premature. But fine. Go nuts. Here’s my third piece of advice, then. 3. Find New Hosts.  Looks like you’re already on this. You’ve announced that the original Fab Five may make return appearances in some form, but you’ll be looking for fresh blood to make quips. And drink. And come up with their own weird ways to say ”push up your sleeves.” And teach straight guys how and why to abjure overhead lighting, and how to make a simple pasta dish, and shave with the grain, and [note to self: come back later and insert whatever the hell Jai did, here]. In a very real sense, Queer Eye offered a crisp slap in the complacent,   face of the   archetype, which (not coincidentally) the wider culture of the  ’00s was then eagerly embracing. Like so many makeover shows, QEftSG said, simply: ”Look, just try.” The key difference, of course, was to whom that advice was directed for once, it wasn’t women being lectured about the sundry patriarchal standards they were expected to uphold, it was . .. the patriarchy itself. ”Look, you lazy, schlubby,   lout,” it said. ”You must make an effort. For your girlfriend, for yourself: Try harder than sweatpants.” That was the gig, and original Fab Five acquitted themselves admirably. But the world’s changed. 4. You Know What, Let’s Revisit That Whole ”Don’t” Idea. There was always something reductive and retrograde about the premise, admit it. The notion that there’s only one ”Queer Eye”  —   one kind of gay man, in this case, who can dependably be expected to wax fabulous about food and furniture and fashion and haircare and [wait, was it getting tickets to shows? I think Jai was about getting tickets to shows] is flatly wrong. I say this as a gay man who subsists on turkey breast sandwiches and lives to avoid shopping. Our numbers are legion. (Quick, true story: back when Queer Eye premiered, my     and I used to watch it every week with friends. We had drinks, we laughed, we   over the obtuseness of the     . We knew it trafficked in stereotypes  —   gleefully so  —   but because the show clearly did so intentionally, it seemed harmless. Very early in the show’s run my partner and I found ourselves at a party at which a gay couple we’d never met absolutely lit into the show even used the  . ”Gay minstrelry,” one of them sniffed we winced. He followed that up with another unfortunate, reductive  : ”Middle America sees that show and thinks we’re not real people, we’re just mincing stereotypes, we’re all the same. It makes them think that every gay man just thinks and talks about gay this and gay that.” I attempted to steer the conversation to other matters by asking what he and his boyfriend did for a living. Which is how I learned they were professional figure skating judges.) 5. Put The Queer In Queer Eye, Already. Pursuant to item 4, above: Maybe listen to queer   Adam Goldman, who yesterday tweeted, in reaction to the Queer Eye announcement: ”How about queer eye for the queer guy? There are some basic gay                         out here.” Amen. Also: I volunteer as tribute. Lord knows I could always stand with a good lecture about, like, beard conditioning or whatnot. The culture, as seen on TV, has changed since 2003. There are still a lot of straight   taking up space at its center, of course, but there are more queer people, more people of color, more women jostling for space as well. The QE reboot, if you insist on it happening, has to reflect that. Yes, the show was silly, and frothy, and fun. But it also never truly lived up to its title. It claimed to hold a queer eye up to (hapless, indolent, doesn’        ) nature  —   but in fact the eye in question was always, invariably, that of very specific, loftily urbane and comfortably urban gay male experience. Queer means a lot more than that. So could the show. 6. Bring It. The original Queer Eye premiered on Bravo just a few months after the U. S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and it ended amid the 2007 troop surge. As such, it served a demonstrable purpose, over and above teaching a bunch of mooks in hockey jerseys how to follow a basic moisturizing regimen. It was a release valve for a kind of collective national anxiety. Ten years later, we’re living through another anxious time. This one lacks the clear focus of a specific military action it’s all around us, in the air we breathe. So if you’re going to do this, Netflix, do it big. 7. Or, Maybe, Don’t. I’m just saying: You haven’t started casting yet. There is still time to turn back from this path and keep the original show preserved in amber  —   tasteful, bespoke,     amber, with its sleeves forever, freshly zhuzhed. The graph reproduced below is the product of my advanced,   calculations in re: the percent probability that a given property (often, but not exclusively, a TV show) will get rebooted in 2017. The algorithm in question, which I fed into vast banks of computers using a series of punch cards, describes a graceful bell curve which is real, and all like, scientific, and was in no way just scribbled on the back of a dry cleaning receipt. So we’re clear on that. Here’s the gist: The probability that a given property will be rebooted depends upon the year it first premiered. As we go back in time from 2017, this probability increases steeply to reach a peak in 1995, and then falls off more gradually. Because science is why. Thus, the section of the curve wherein this probability exceeds 50% (the dotted horizontal line) extends between 1986 and 2001. Clip and save for your records. You will find it useful. This means that the probability that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, premiering as it did in 2003, would get rebooted this year stood at 40%. Which is to say: it wasn’t likely, but the possibility was real, considerable. Weirder things have happened, with an even smaller probability."
"Editor’s Note: On Jan. 31, Philip Glass turns 80. We’re marking the event by asking a few of his collaborators and colleagues to write about him and his music. Paul Simon contributed lyrics to a song from Glass’ 1986 album Songs from Liquid Days. Look for essays this week from Errol Morris, Nico Muhly, David Lang and Laurie Anderson. It’s difficult to choose one Philip Glass piece and call it a favorite. My mind immediately goes to the first time I saw Einstein on the Beach at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera  —   the beauty of the productions and the live orchestra had a unique power that left an indelible memory. But then, the films Koyaanisqatsi and Kundun allowed the music to prevail in a manner equally as powerful in a cinematic context. Of Glass’s recordings, the 2006 live performance of Music in 12 Parts is exceptional and inspiring for its accuracy, and the sheer stamina required of the ensemble to do justice to this monumental   long piece. As a musician, I am fascinated by Glass’s use of repetition and symmetry. The way he subtly breaks patterns by changing time signatures, or playing different time signatures (a three against two) to interrupt the repetition before it numbs the mind. It allows the listeners to swim in an almost   state until a new musical motif is introduced. As an orchestrator, Glass has an ear for unique combinations of sounds, like in his piece Voices written for organ and didgeridoo. His symphonic works, too, combine or contrast instruments and voices in a distinctive way: Strings and woodwinds merge with synthesizers played at a level of intensity usually associated with rock music. His use of what he calls an ”end piece”  —   a short coda which does not recapitulate the melodic lines of the larger preceding piece  —   is an idea that he used beautifully to conclude my song ”The Late Great Johnny Ace.” That end piece concept has found its way into my arrangements for live shows, as the band plays a related but original addition to a song, allowing me to shape endings to sequences of songs, or to set the environment for the next tune. Philip Glass’s thinking has been pervasive in several other music genres beyond his classical home, rightfully earning him credit as the most influential of modern classical composers."
"When   Coates’ new Black Panther comics hit shelves last year, they proved to be more of a challenge than a treat. That’s no wonder, actually: If you ask a writer who specializes in picking apart the knotty mesh of   experience (Coates won the National Book Award for 2015’s Between the World and Me) to pen your comic book, you have to expect the result to be somewhat daunting. The new Black Panther incarnation certainly is that. This second volume of Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet  —   which takes its title from a Pulitzer   book about   political history  —   is just as dense with crisscrossed narratives, tangled motivations and previously established plotlines as the first volume was. Which is appropriate, considering the Panther’s place in the history of comics: Created in 1966, he was mainstream comics’ first black superhero, an avatar of racial progress. And racial progress has never been simple. (It can be bestselling, though, as Coates demonstrated when Vol. 1 became one of 2016’s top comics.) Coates, who won a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 2015, clearly sees his project here as similar to  —   and overlapping with  —   his work writing about race in America. ”I understand the need, particularly among black fans, to see T’Challa . .. restored to a certain place,” he told io9’s Evan Narcisse last year. ”This is like in my bones. I feel a deep responsibility to history.” The inescapability of history is just one of Coates’   themes in this book. He’s also got a hearty distaste for the rule of one over many  —   even when the One is the Black Panther, a. k. a. T’Challa, rightful king of the mythical African nation of Wakanda. This volume finds the mysterious prophet Zenzi and the warrior Tetu  —   leaders of the insurgent group known tellingly as ”The People”  —   still at odds with T’Challa. He’s still a slippery, morally ambiguous protagonist, using force to thwart democratic rebellion and seeking advice from a devils’ council of counterterrorism experts, even as he frets,   about his destiny. One of the strongmen sums T’Challa up with surprising acumen: ”Your problem is schizophrenia,” he says. ”You lack the will to follow your own mores. Return to your true nature, and your country will be as peaceful as any of ours.” What is that nature? The strongman and his fellows believe it’s essentially imperial, but T’Challa’s true heart actually seems to be both greater and less than that of a monarch. As Zenzi puts it, T’Challa ”does not want to be a king. He wants to be a hero.” (No wonder he’s spent so much time, as one character says, ”gallivanting with Avengers” over the years.) This volume sees the addition of some  —   but only some  —     levity along with equally galvanizing   buttkicking. But the problems that marred episodes   are still in evidence. Coates, a philosopher at the core, too often allows his characters to get lost in their thoughts, and the action on the page sometimes takes a backseat to their   rumination  —   which is a shame, considering the quality of Black Panther’s artists. Chris Sprouse, Karl Story and Laura Martin beautifully conjure the Wakandan world. The textures are satiny, the action scenes inventive and the characters richly delineated. While T’Challa pursues his labyrinthine quest, his sister Shuri is   on a plane of Wakandan collective memory. Here she encounters the myths of   Wakanda, and here Coates’ storytelling is particularly satisfying: He tells of Ife, enslaved and deprived of her power of flight Oronde, the boy who raced a cheetah and Sologon, the queen who led warriors and told her son, ”Spirit of iron makes skin of stone.” Coates has a knack for aphorisms. Another one that resonates is the sage Changamire’s accusation to the rebels: ”You kill what you cannot control, break what you cannot bend.” Wise words like these suggest the rebels and T’Challa may eventually find some path to reconciliation. It’s hard to see a way, but presumably the author of Between the World and Me can envision one. However violent and conflicted Wakanda’s current story, Coates still says ”there is no fist wide enough to hide the sky.” Etelka Lehoczky has written about books for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Salon. com. She tweets at @EtelkaL."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Mauro Remiddi is broadening his horizons. Four years ago, the   New   musician released his critically acclaimed debut   Strange Weekend, which was assembled in a basement in Brooklyn. Two albums later, he’s issued Microclimate, and the backdrop is much vaster. Prior to recording it, Remiddi traveled to locales as   as Barbados, Bali and Big Sur, among others, soaking up perspectives and environments in an attempt to infuse his new album with a different sort of depth. His prior work has never skimped on emotional richness, but on Microclimate, he’s setting that introspective impressionism within a context as large as nature itself. ”Like a tiny whisper   Like a distant shore,” Remiddi sings in a wispy, elfin voice at the start of ”The Earth Before Us,” the opening song on Microclimate. It’s a brief song full of acoustic guitars and gentle pulses of beauty, and it sets the tone for the excursions, both internal and external, to come. From there, the record wanders far and wide. As their titles imply, ”Big Sur” and ”Kookaburra” draw from the artist’s specific experiences in faraway places, but rather than functioning as musical travelogues, they capture sketchy portraits filtered through a lens of longing and wonder. Ethereal   guitar coalesces into an aquatic lull in ”Big Sir,” while Remiddi sings, ”Burned leaves beneath the trees   It’s getting dark, my body spins.” Meanwhile, ”Kookaburra” evokes that bird’s Oceania home, complete with a subtropical sway and a heady dose of magic realism: ”Mechanical birds flying by, flying by   A second moon in the sky   Cities hanging     Oh, if you could see them now.” That’s exactly what Remiddi does: He makes you see the places he’s encoded in song. Splitting the difference between ambient electronic music and the musings of a traditional   he infuses ”The Greatest View” and ”Bring Me To The River” with soaring, atmospheric imagism. Finely crafted and achingly tuneful, ”Accelerating Curve” plays with trippy stereo tricks and traffics in screeching, psychedelic dynamics, adding a   dose of muscularity and heft to his otherwise delicate compositions. This isn’t an   album as soft and breezy as it can get, Remiddi keeps a careful eye on incorporating both tension and release, both apprehension and bliss. The album’s final two songs, ”The Poets Were Right” and ”Zero Frame Per Second,” sum up Remiddi’s captivating marriage of verse and visuals. Amid plaintive piano and minimalist blips, he uses his featherweight voice as a vehicle, singing of islands and illusions, beginnings and inevitable extinctions. Many journeys and attempts to commune with nature delivered Mauro Remiddi to Microclimate. If the album’s hushed, lush grandeur is any indication, that connection was a profound one."
"Testosterone Rex is extinct. That’s the central conclusion of a fascinating new book by University of Melbourne psychologist Cordelia Fine. Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society hit the bookstores Tuesday. ”Testosterone Rex” is a nickname for the view that women and men are essentially different, owing very largely to biology. The hormone testosterone is, in this view, a biological agent that makes men more liable to seek a variety of sexual partners, more prone to   and so on. Pretty much everyone agrees these days that nature and nurture both play a role in how humans develop. Nonetheless, Fine writes, Testosterone Rex is still a powerful perspective that gives much greater weight to nature when it comes to gender. She describes it like this: ”Of course there is variability  —   not all men are identical, nor are all women. But amid all the ’noise’ of individual differences, a male or female ’essence’ can be extracted: characteristics of maleness and femaleness that are natural, immutable, discrete, historically and   invariant, and grounded in   biological factors.” I’ve frequently taken up against this overly simple view, here at 13. 7, for example with regard to anthropologist Melvin Konner’s claim that women are biologically superior to men. It’s way too simple to think there’s any straightforward   binary in the first place. So Fine’s bold writing  —   ”Testosterone Rex misrepresents our past, present, and future it misdirects scientific research and it reinforces an unequal status quo”  —   naturally appeals to me. Fine has written a book that’s not only   and convincing but also, at times, delightfully humorous. Where else, after all, would we find the startling phrase ”cichlid testes are a social construction”? Cichlids are fish. According to Fine, only some male cichlids manage to set up a territory to which they may lure females for breeding. Unlike others who lack such a territory, these successful males ”sport bold splashes of red and orange, and intimidating black eye stripes.” They also have significantly larger testes (the site where testosterone is produced) and more circulating testosterone than the   males. Here’s the relevant news though: Put a territorial male in a tank with a larger territorial male, and within days his bold colors vanish and his testes shrink. When a   male is put into a tank with only females and smaller males, his testes enlarge. It’s the social circumstances that the fish find themselves in that sculpt their anatomies and their behaviors. Or, to put it Fine’s way, cichlid testes are a social construction! More than cichlids, humans interest Fine. As she did in her prior book Delusions of Gender, Fine crams Testosterone Rex full of scientific studies about human gendered behavior and interprets them skillfully. Readers familiar with the history of science will appreciate Fine’s takedown right at the outset of the supposedly universal principle (stemming from British biologist Angus Bateson’s famous fruit fly experiments) that males across numerous species are evolutionary selected to be philanderers and females to be coy. We now know that in many species, males can be choosy and females quite capable of sexual activity way in excess of what’s required for reproduction. When it comes to humans, yes, Fine says, on average men report a greater interest in casual sex than do women. But according to a   British study of more than 12, 000 people ages   the most common number of sexual partners for both men and women was . .. one. That answer held whether the respondents were asked to report for the previous three months, the previous year, or the previous five years. Both men (80 percent) and women (89 percent) also said they preferred to be in a sexually exclusive relationship. What about the   studies done on college campuses that show men are far more likely than women to accept the request of an   unfamiliar peer (actually a research confederate) to come over to their apartment or even to go to bed together? Here Fine is at her best, registering this objection (among others): ”What this study is actually primarily showing is women’s lack of interest in being murdered, raped, robbed, or inflaming the interests of a potential stalker. ... Social realities mean that women and men in these studies are simply not participating in the same experiment.” Over and over, Fine takes us through studies to show how gendered behavior is immensely influenced by our social circumstances.   is often presented as an inherently male trait, to take another example. Yet it’s much more complicated than that. In one study, more than 1, 500 U. S. households were surveyed, with the finding that women, on average, perceived higher risks in society across the board. When the researchers looked beyond gender to ethnicity, however, they discovered that one group saw society as safer than any other: white males. ”What on first inspection seemed like a sex difference,” Fine writes, ”was actually a difference between white males and everyone else.” One of Fine’s most striking overall conclusions is worded this way: ”Every newborn human inherits gender constructions as an obligatory part of their developmental system.” I asked Fine via email to elaborate on this point. She said: ”Animals don’t just inherit genes, but an entire ’developmental system’: depending on the species, this might include a particular habitat, a mother, playmates and, in the case of humans, a rich cultural legacy. Developmental biologists have recognized for a long time that the   developmental system can provide reliable, stable and critical inputs for the development of adaptive traits  —   meaning that ’adaptive’ doesn’t necessarily imply genetically determined.” This breaking of the link between what is adaptive and what is genetically determined  —   realizing that a whole development system is inherited by humans as well as by other animals  —   is highly significant for our understanding of human gender behavior. Why is this more nuanced picture comparatively slow to catch on? Fine said: ”In psychology we still tend to focus on statistical significance rather than functional difference: what does this result mean in practice, in real life, or for our theory? Meanwhile, sex differences research usually (as the term suggests) focuses on difference rather than similarity, size, or shape, and this influences the kinds of explanations that come to mind. For example, when we make a generic statement like ’men are more financially   than women,’ then men’s greater average testosterone exposure seems like an obvious explanation. But when we, more accurately, say, ’On some financial tasks, but not others, some men, from some cultures, in some contexts, with some   are more financially   than some women,’ we no longer think, ’It must be the testosterone!’ Reading Testosterone Rex, it becomes disturbingly clear the degree to which gender researchers do their work via a bedrock assumption that everyone is either male or female, and heterosexual. Fine mentions intersex individuals and gay individuals  —   and briefly asks us to think twice about the ”  male versus female binary.” But, still, I thought she might have pushed harder on this point. Doesn’t such a limited view as taken up by gender researchers make for poor gender science? To this point, Fine emailed me: ”I agree that it’s critical that scientific models of sexual differentiation take account of the true array of developmental outcomes, and gender scholarship has and should play a vital role in this.” Meanwhile, Fine says that we need to push back against simplistic Testosterone Rex thinking about gender because it too often translates into sexism that holds women back from being seen as   people with all sorts of desires and aptitudes and skills. This intertwining of good science and gender activism makes Testosterone Rex a timely book. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve, and her forthcoming book, Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat, will be published in March. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"Once more, the National Mall has swelled with demonstrators. Just a week after President Trump’s inauguration at the Capitol and six days after the Women’s March on Washington,   opponents were raising their voices in the nation’s capital. The annual rally they call the March for Life attracted demonstrators from across the country Friday. The demonstration, which has been held each year since the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973, is celebrating a seminal moment in its   run: a speech from a sitting vice president. ”Life is winning in America!” Mike Pence told the audience. It was a phrase he repeated often during his brief speech, emphasizing the electoral victories of   candidates. That includes President Trump, in particular, who asked his vice president to attend the rally, according to Pence. Americans now have ”a president who I proudly say stands for the right to life,” Pence told the crowd. And Pence wasn’t the only representative from the White House on the rally’s schedule. Presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway also addressed the demonstrators. ”It is no coincidence that the first right cited in the Declaration of Independence is the right to life,” she said. ”It is a right it is not a privilege it is not a choice. It is  .” Though he was not there himself, Trump tweeted a message for protesters earlier in the day: ”To all of you marching  —   you have my full support!” The demonstration had explicitly religious overtones. It opened with a Christian rock concert and featured a prayer led by Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York. Amid the crowd, which began gathering hours early for the rally, NPR’s Sarah McCammon noted that many of the protesters’ signs quote biblical verses  —   among a spate of other signs calling for defunding Planned Parenthood. ”We demand the immediate eradication of abortion,” the musical group Transform DJs told the crowd as they opened the day’s program. ”As we follow Jesus, this atrocity will stop with us.” At a rally rippled with chants of ”We are the   generation,” Sarah noted there seemed to be a wide range of ages among the demonstrators in attendance. As Sarah has reported, the brief interlude between this rally and the march that flooded the same spaces last Saturday makes for an abrupt juxtaposition. Among the many pillars of the platform published by organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, ”open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people” was central. And while some groups are participating in both demonstrations, the overlap in people attending both isn’t expected to be large. ”I think we’re a pretty different march  —   we’re a   march,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini told Sarah. The day’s schedule opened with an hourlong rally and segued into a march toward the Supreme Court and Capitol buildings, where demonstrators were asked to visit their congressperson to advocate for their cause. It kicks off a weekend of associated marches planned in several other U. S. cities, including Salt Lake City, Denver and Austin, Texas."
"Marchers  —   many of them women  —   are descending on Washington, D. C. to send a message about abortion to the Trump administration and the   Congress. If that sounds like déjà vu, it’s not: What the organizers call the March for Life is a protest against legalized abortion, unlike the Women’s March last week, which included support for abortion rights in its platform. A different kind of march, ”I think we’re a pretty different march  —   we’re a   march,” said March for Life President Jeanne Mancini. The March for Life is also an annual event, held each year since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide. This year’s march and rally come less than a week after the Women’s March, which was organized on social media largely as a protest against President Trump’s campaign rhetoric. While the marches in Washington and around the world focused on an array of issues including LGBT rights and the environment, reproductive rights were a major focus. Vice President Pence and presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway are scheduled to speak at the Friday rally. A statement from the March for Life pointed out that Pence will be the first vice president in history to speak at the march.  Can feminists be ” ”? That juxtaposition has opened up a larger debate about how women who consider themselves ” ” fit into the feminist movement. The issue became a point of tension surrounding the Women’s March after a handful of   activists said they were planning to attend. In a statement, organizers apologized for initially including the   group as a partner, stating that the march’s ”platform is   and that has been our stance from day one.” The group New Wave Feminists, a   ”  feminist” organization, was initially granted partnership status in the Women’s March, only to have that status rescinded when it became clear that the group opposed abortion rights. Destiny   La Rosa of New Wave Feminists said she was ”certainly disappointed” but had ”no hard feelings” about that decision. ”The march on Saturday was AMAZING,”   La Rosa wrote afterward in an email to NPR. ”I honestly can’t begin to describe how wonderful it was. It was so positive, no negativity, so much support.”   La Rosa said she is also attending the March for Life in Washington. Another   group, Students for Life of America, also wanted to have a presence at both marches, said President Kristan Hawkins. She said they walked with the crowds of women in pink hats carrying banners that read, ”Abortion Betrays Women” and ”We Don’t Need Planned Parenthood.” Hawkins said some of the marchers tried to block their banners at one point, but overall, ”We had some really good interactions.” Among marchers, a search for some common ground, For some   supporters, there is room for disagreement on the issue among those who identify as feminists. Kristie Hewitt, 49, came to the Women’s March from Lansing, Mich. She said she is worried about the potential for cuts to federal funding for women’s health services at Planned Parenthood under the Trump administration. ”I really believe in women’s reproductive rights. I cannot quietly go back to the 1950s,” she said. But Hewitt said she was OK with marching alongside women who disagree. ”I think anybody has a place in this movement we’re all here for the same reason  —   women’s rights  —   and I think there’s a place for everybody,” Hewitt said. ”And we all need to sit down at the table and talk, and have a conversation as to what’s the best for everybody.” Battles over contraception, abortion  But in terms of policy, the disagreements are stark. Already, abortion opponents are seeing some of the actions they want from Trump and the Congress, including a presidential memorandum banning federal funding for groups overseas that provide or ”promote” abortion. Other goals, said Hawkins of Students for Life, include cutting federal funding for reproductive health services at Planned Parenthood, which Hawkins said is ”in the fight of their lives.” ”So it’s even more important that   are there, they show up, and they show this administration in Washington that we’re paying attention,” Hawkins said. March for Life organizers are expecting ”tens of thousands” of marchers in Washington, Mancini said, along with dozens of smaller, local marches being held around the country in the early months of 2017. The goal, she said, is to mobilize   activists around the country to put pressure on elected leaders to carry forward their agenda. Mancini’s top priorities include making permanent the federal ban on public funding for abortions and a ban on late abortions. State laws banning abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation have been found unconstitutional in federal court. That’s why a major concern for   groups is to see Trump follow through on his pledge to social conservatives to appoint judges who align with their views. Trump has promised to announce his nomination to replace late U. S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia next Thursday, a move activists on both sides of the abortion debate will be watching closely."
"British Prime Minister Theresa May, the first foreign leader that President Trump has hosted at the White House, joined Trump in a joint press conference at the White House on Friday. In addition to discussing NATO and trade, Trump was asked about his relationship with Mexico and his views on the use of torture. NPR reporters have annotated the remarks."
"President Trump spoke by phone to President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico for an hour on Friday, according to statements by both leaders. Peña Nieto was scheduled to visit the White House on Jan. 31. But on Wednesday Trump signed an order to move forward with a wall along the Mexican border and insisted that Mexico would eventually pay the bill. On Thursday, Peña Nieto canceled his planned visit to the U. S. without giving a reason. According to a statement released by Peña Nieto’s office after Friday’s call, the two leaders did discuss security along the border between their two countries. ”With regard to the payment of the border wall, both Presidents acknowledged their clear and very public differences in position on this sensitive issue and agreed to resolve these differences as part of a comprehensive discussion of all aspects of the bilateral relationship,” an unofficial translation of the statement read. ”The Presidents also agreed at this point not to speak publicly about this controversial issue.” The White House released a statement saying, ”With respect to payment for the border wall, both presidents recognize their clear and very public differences of positions on this issue but have agreed to work these differences out.” Asked about the call at a news conference on Friday, Trump said the call had been ”very good” and that ”we are going to renegotiate our trade deals and we are going to renegotiate other aspects of our relationship with Mexico and in the end I think it will be good for both countries.” Trump also noted the trade deficit with Mexico, saying: ”I have great respect for Mexico. I love the Mexican people. I work with the Mexican people all the time, great relationships. But as you know Mexico with the United States has outnegotiated us and beat us to a pulp through our past leaders. That made us look foolish.” On Thursday, a White House spokesman said one potential way to pay for the wall could be to apply a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico, as well as other countries with which the U. S. has a trade deficit. ”That would effectively saddle U. S. consumers with a significant portion of the wall’s cost, estimated at $15 billion or more,” NPR’s Scott Horsley reported."
"Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will congratulate President Trump on his election, in what the Kremlin says is the first phone call between the two since Trump was inaugurated last weekend. The call is slated for Saturday evening Moscow time  —   which is eight hours ahead of U. S. Eastern. In other phone calls on Saturday, Trump will speak with France’s President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says. As for the call with Russia, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says it’s too early to say what the two leaders will discuss. But possible topics include the U. S. sanctions that were levied over accusations that the Kremlin backed hackers seeking to tamper with the recent presidential election. And with both Trump and Putin having spoken of a closer U. S.  relationship, a plan for a personal meeting might also be discussed. ”This is the first telephone contact after President Trump took office, so one can hardly expect from such a telephone conversation any substantive contacts on all the issues on the agenda,” Peskov said, according to   Tass media. Peskov urged reporters to be patient. Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway tells CBS that Trump and Putin will likely talk about common interests and fighting terrorism. News of the conversation between Trump and Putin comes as reports emerge from Russia that two senior officers of the cyber intelligence unit of the Federal Security Service (the FSB, the successor to the KGB) have been arrested on treason charges, setting off speculation that the moves could be linked to hacking attacks in the U. S. as Radio Free Europe reports. Those arrests, and this weekend’s phone call, are playing out amid a backdrop that includes ”unverified claims that Russia may have compromising material” on Trump, as NPR’s Greg Myre reported earlier this month. Trump has denounced those claims."
"President Trump met with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday, his first    meeting with a foreign leader since he took office a week ago. With the United Kingdom preparing to leave the European Union, May is looking for a trade deal with the U. S. ”I am convinced a trade deal between U. S. and U. K. is in national interest of both countries,” the prime minister said at a White House news conference with Trump after their meeting. ”I think Brexit is going to be a wonderful thing for your country,” Trump said. ”I think when it irons out you’re going to have your own identity and you’re going to have the people that you want in your country, and you’re going to be able to make free trade deals without having somebody watching you and what you’re doing.” The two leaders also touched on the future of NATO, the   War II military alliance between the U. S. and Europe. During his campaign, Trump repeatedly criticized NATO, calling the organization ”obsolete.” He also suggested that America might not defend fellow NATO countries that didn’t help reimburse the U. S. for the cost of its troops and bases in Europe, as NPR’s Frank Langfitt has reported. But during a speech Thursday to Republicans gathered in Philadelphia, May argued that U. S. support was crucial, saying, ”America’s leadership role in NATO  —   supported by Britain  —   must be the central element around which the alliance is built.” At the news conference, May said, ”On defense and security, we are united in our recognition of NATO as the bulwark of our collective defense,” adding as she turned to Trump, ”Mr. President, I think you confirmed that you’re 100 percent behind NATO.” Trump did not address NATO. Asked whether his seeming change in position should be seen as genuine, he said, ”I really don’t change my position very much.” Ahead of the meeting with Trump, May faced political pressure at home over their relationship. ”Critics in Parliament said she should be more skeptical before cozying up to the new American president,” Frank reported. One member of Parliament from Scotland, Pete Wishart, expressed particular concern about Trump’s stated support for torture. ”When a United States president backs torture as an instrument of policy, when particular religions are picked out for exclusion, when women’s rights are set back for decades, should this country not be just a little more cautious before accepting this Trumpian embrace?” Wishart said. Asked about the issue on Friday, May did not directly address the issue of torture, confirming that, ”there will be times we disagree,” and arguing that the ”special” relationship between the two countries, referred to at least a dozen times during the news conference, allowed for ”open frank discussion” on a range of topics. A 2005 law bans the cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of military detainees. On Friday, Trump appeared to say he would defer to his defense secretary on the issue of torture: ”We have a great General who has just been appointed Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis, and he has stated publicly that he does not necessarily believe in torture, or waterboarding, or however you want to define it  —   enhanced interrogation I guess is a word, a lot of words, a lot of people would like to use. I don’t necessarily agree, but I will tell you he would override because I’m giving him that power.” The president continued, ”I happen to feel it does work. I’ve been open about that for a long time. But I am going with our leaders and we’re going to win with or without, but I do disagree.”"
"Updated 5:30 p. m. ET, President Trump paid his first presidential visit to the top brass at the Pentagon on Friday afternoon and announced his intention to provide a wide range of new resources for the U. S. military. ”I’m signing an executive action to begin a great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States,” the president said in a brief ceremony that included the swearing in of the new defense secretary, James Mattis. ”We’re developing a plan for new planes, new ships, new resources, and new tools for our men and women in uniform,” Trump added, though he did not provide additional details. The president signed a separate order that freezes visas and immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries, a move that had already drawn heavy criticism as word began to leak out earlier this week. ”I’m establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America,” Trump said. Earlier Thursday, Trump said he still believes that torture works as a way to extract information from detainees, but that he would defer to Mattis, who opposes such measures. ”I don’t necessarily agree,” Trump said, following a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May. But, he added, referring to Mattis, ”He will override, because I’m giving him that power.” During his Pentagon visit, Trump met with Mattis and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his first such gathering with senior military leaders at the Pentagon since he became commander in chief a week ago. By all appearances, Trump and Mattis have a good relationship and share a belief that the military could use more manpower. However, a number of their stated positions have been at odds. For example, Mattis is a strong believer in   U. S. alliances, including NATO, which Trump has called obsolete. The president also has sent contradictory messages with his own statements. While calling for a   military, which currently has an annual budget of some $600 billion, Trump has also pointed to expensive programs, such as the   Lightning II. The   fighter is the most expensive ever, with a price tag currently pegged at around $130 million per plane. Trump says the cost needs to come down. Trump has also called for a   military campaign against the Islamic State, though he did not mention the extremist group in his brief public remarks. During the election campaign, Trump boasted that he had a secret plan to crush the Islamic State. At times, he sharply criticized the generals he now commands, but he also said he would give them a month to come up with a new plan to fight ISIS. The president repeatedly dismissed   Obama’s military campaign against ISIS as insufficient. ”The last administration had a strategy that was more of an indirect approach, and it was certainly a   approach,” retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”I think President Trump might be looking for something with some quicker results and that could put some new options on the table.” Obama ordered an air campaign against the extremist group in the summer of 2014 as ISIS was surging across Syria and Iraq. The U. S. military, working with local forces, has pushed the Islamic State out of all Iraqi cities except Mosul, where an offensive has been underway for the past four months. ISIS has also lost territory in Syria, though it still holds key cities and towns in the eastern part of the country. The U. S. currently has about 6, 000 military personnel in Iraq and Syria, including trainers, advisers and special operators. Under Obama, the U. S. focus was on the air campaign, and the U. S. forces are not supposed to be involved in combat. The U. S. forces have been guided by the mantra of working ”by, with and through” local forces in Iraq and Syria, rather than having a large U. S. force leading the way. Trump could ”certainly use more military force. He could elect to put American boots on the ground in larger numbers,” Barno said."
"The first week of the Trump administration has been marked by a flurry of executive actions  —   and lots of bombast and argument with the press. President Trump’s executive actions  —   in the form of orders and memorandums, which differ slightly  —   aim to show that President Trump will deliver on the promises made by Candidate Trump. And the actions hit on many of the most contentious issues in American politics: Trump moved to repeal the Affordable Care Act, remove roadblocks from the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, impose a hiring freeze on federal employees, withdraw the United States from the   Partnership, build a wall along the U. S.  border and withhold federal funds from   sanctuary cities. Along the way, Trump and his surrogates claimed to have drawn the   inauguration crowd (he didn’t) said that 3 million to 5 million votes were illegally cast (no evidence of that) softened his stance toward the CIA and said that he would announce his pick for the Supreme Court next week. The Senate approved four of his nominees for   positions, and 10 others have finished their confirmation hearings and await votes. And it comes as congressional Republicans huddle to figure out a legislative way forward with the new president. Here, we take a look at the biggest issues and where they stand, one week into the Trump presidency: Within hours of being inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to ”ease the burdens” of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. The order allows the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, or any other agency with authority under the law, to not enforce regulations that impose a financial burden on a state, company or individual. What are the consequences? It’s not totally clear yet. The order is so broad that it’s possible it could dismantle key parts of the ACA before a replacement plan is ready owing to a potential lack of enforcement of some of the tax provisions like the mandate, the requirement that if you don’t have health insurance, you have to buy it. That’s despite previous statements from Republican lawmakers that a replacement plan would immediately follow repeal. What happens next? The action adds a lot of confusion to an already complicated system. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, hasn’t yet had his confirmation hearing or vote. He will be responsible for administering the program and exchanges run by the federal government for states that opted not to create their own systems. Price is an opponent of the ACA, and congressional Republicans are vowing to repeal the law. But they haven’t yet settled on an alternative. Trump has also confused matters with a pledge to offer ”insurance for everybody,” though congressional Republicans say they assume he means ”access” for everyone. On Wednesday, Trump signed two executive orders related to immigration and border security, shortly after the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, Marine Gen. John Kelly, was sworn in. ”Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders,” Trump said. What are the consequences? The move communicated that Trump planned to follow through with his    plan to build a border wall, estimated to cost $15 billion or more. The fallout was immediate: Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled a planned visit to Trump in Washington next week. What happens next? Trump and Congress need to figure out how to pay for it, for starters. Though Trump has repeatedly said he would make Mexico pay for the wall, on Wednesday he told ABC News that the U. S. will be ”reimbursed at a later date” by Mexico for the costs of building the wall. Congressional Republicans vowed to come up with the funding during a policy retreat Thursday in Philadelphia, though they did not specify how. On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that one way the administration is considering paying for the wall is via a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico  —   a cost that would mean that U. S. consumers would, in fact, pay for the wall. Ironically, that was part of a congressional plan that Trump, less than two weeks ago, derided as ”too complicated.” Hours later, the White House walked it back, saying there are many funding options being considered. On Monday, Trump told congressional leaders in a bipartisan, bicameral meeting at the White House that that he would have won the popular vote, were it not for 3 million to 5 million votes cast against him by ”illegals.” When asked about it at the Tuesday press briefing, Spicer affirmed that ”the president does believe that.” It was revealed by the New York Times that Trump is partially basing his belief on a story he heard thirdhand from a professional golfer, born in Germany, who wasn’t allowed to vote in Florida and claimed there were people in line behind him who looked like they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. After NPR’s Mara Liasson pressed Spicer at a White House briefing on why the president wouldn’t call for an investigation into something that could be the biggest scandal in U. S. history, Trump tweeted, in fact, that he would. On Thursday, Spicer told reporters Trump will issue an executive action calling for a probe of voter fraud in the coming days. What are the consequences? Trump’s insistence that massive voter fraud occurred would seem to set up a showdown between the White House and. .. the evidence. So far, no evidence of significant voter fraud has come to light. What happens next? At this point, it’s unclear. The White House insists it will issue an executive action to launch an investigation, but it’s uncertain what form a probe would take. Would it be run by the White House? Would the Justice Department take it up (even though the Justice Department is supposed to operate independently of the White House)? The U. S. has already conducted a voter fraud investigation, by the way, during the Bush administration  —   and found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, turning up only 120 people charged and 86 convicted. On Tuesday, Trump signed five executive actions relating to the Keystone XL pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline, using American materials when building pipelines, reducing regulations for domestic manufacturing, and ”expediting environmental reviews and approval for   infrastructure projects.” What are the consequences? The pipelines had been stopped during the Obama administration. Trump’s actions mean that the owner of the Keystone XL pipeline could apply again for a construction permit, and it did exactly that Thursday night. Trump also encouraged the Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the review and approval process for the section of the Dakota Access Pipeline that hasn’t been built. What happens next?  The Dakota Access issue will probably head back to federal court: The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said it will take legal action to fight Trump’s decision, saying the pipeline ”risks contaminating tribal and American water supplies while disregarding treaty rights.” Demonstrators remain camped near the site where the Dakota Access Pipeline is slated to cross under the Missouri River. On Monday, Trump signed a presidential memorandum imposing a hiring freeze on federal workers, with exceptions for military positions and national security. What are the consequences? The ramifications are immediate: The freeze is now in effect and is scheduled to last 90 days. It’s expected that by then, the Office of Management and Budget will have a   plan for shrinking the federal government. The impact, though, is  . The federal government employs some 2. 8 million people, more than 80 percent of whom live outside Washington, D. C. Maryland or Virginia. What happens next? The next steps are for the exceptions to be hammered out the memorandum states that ”the head of any executive department or agency may exempt from the hiring freeze any positions that it deems necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities.” That could give agency heads at least some flexibility to hire as needed. Other exceptions could also emerge. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, has 45, 000 job openings, and Trump’s nominee to lead the VA had said he needs to fill those openings  to serve veterans."
"I’ve heard the same story from both our previous Tiny Desk Contest winners: They weren’t going to enter the Contest until someone encouraged them to do it. Well, the entry period closes at 11:59 p. m. ET this Sunday, Jan. 29. So here I am telling you: Enter! Maybe you think your video will take too long to make  —   that you need professional camera work, a crew or special editing skills. You don’t. You can do this. Last year’s winner, Gaelynn Lea, shot her video on a smartphone. The year before, Fantastic Negrito shot his on an iPad. It doesn’t have to be a whole big production  —   that’s not what the Tiny Desk is about, anyway. This is about your song and your performance. So long as we can hear and see you (and there’s a desk!) then you’re doing all you need to do. That means you can pull out your phone right now and shoot a valid entry. It won’t take long! Your musical path may be wandering it may not take off in this one moment. But it could. And if it doesn’t, we hope that this community gives you the strength to keep going, to further refine what it is about your music that makes it your own. Take a chance."
"”Rogue” accounts that have the look of those by real federal agencies are spreading like wildfire on Twitter. The AltUSNatParkService Twitter account has gained more than 1 million followers and inspired the creation of many more ”unofficial resistance” accounts for specific national parks and other entities, including accounts like Rogue NASA and AltUSForestService. Some of these accounts  —   this list has compiled more than 80 of them  —   initially claimed to be run by members of these organizations, but many have since altered their descriptions, or in the case of the alternative National Park Service have said the account was handed off to environmentalists and activists. But that’s just it. These are all claims. None of the account owners have come forward and identified themselves. Instead, they are choosing to remain anonymous and continue tweeting out facts about climate change and directly opposing the Trump administration. While the accounts are making news with their defiant tweets and stances against President Trump, it should be noted that accounts of this type are not new. In fact, this has been happening for years as people have created accounts to mimic the language and tone of a North Korean News Service as well as more comedic accounts for fictional television characters like Tina from Bob’s Burgers. What’s different about the number of rogue accounts that have come about as a result of the Trump administration’s apparent gag orders on some federal agencies is that this form of expression could be a logical way to oppose a media blackout. There are several accounts related to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has reportedly been targeted by the Trump administration over its climate research. Accounts like @ungaggedEPA and Stuff EPA Would Say list similar missions: to ”flood the Web with real climate facts” and say things the EPA ”is unable to tell you.” So even if these accounts are just run by supporters and not actual members of the agencies, do they still serve a purpose? Probably. It’s true that most senators or congressional representatives probably don’t spend a ton of time looking for constituents on Twitter. So some of these accounts are encouraging their followers to take action by calling their congressional representatives and providing scripts for what to tell their lawmakers. Additionally, and much like last weekend’s Women’s March on Washington, these accounts have given rise to what is being called the Scientists’ March on Washington, an event that is still being organized but has already fostered communication between regional groups. Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist in Tucson, Ariz. writes about weather and climate. While he hasn’t been able to identify any of the rogue account owners, he has found people in his area he can meet up and collaborate with on ways to be active in their resistance. He says he sees the creation of these accounts and dissemination of the facts on climate change as being in the public interest. ”I think that it’s natural that scientists would want to retain their political power and say. ’This is not OK and we as scientists want to stand up for   policy and spreading the truth that human activity is changing the climate,’ ” Holthaus says. As for now, it seems like most of the accounts just want to continue to share facts and spread the information that’s available. A few of them include jokes, or snarky comments aimed at Trump, but all of the actual participation that they are advocating for is normal, and really just advocating for participatory democracy."
"Ben’s Chili Bowl, a D. C. restaurant famous for its   celebrity   and ties to the civil rights movement, is preparing for some redecorating. This week, the restaurant painted over the giant mural of Bill Cosby, Donnie Simpson, Chuck Brown and President Barack Obama that has lived on its outside walls since 2012. Kamal Ali, one of the restaurant’s owners, said his customers have been talking about that mural for a long time, arguing over who should or shouldn’t be featured. Now, he said, it’s time to let the public decide. ”We’d like people to tag the mural with positive sentiments of healing the country. And the world,” he said. ”We just had the inauguration, lots of protests, the Women’s March, which was huge, and then there’s the Black Lives Matter movement, with police brutality and those things going on. So it just seemed like an appropriate time.” The beloved restaurant is asking fans and customers to vote on who should be depicted on the new mural. The list of new possibilities includes 59 artists, celebrities, activists, athletes, politicians and chefs: everyone from Gandhi to Kevin Durant to Nikki Giovanni to Rachael Ray. There are some local D. C. heroes, too, like Charlene Drew Jarvis, a longtime public servant and former president of Southeastern University. There are international superstars, like Michael Jackson and Oprah Winfrey. Voters can also write in their own suggestions if they aren’t inspired by anyone on the list. Already, over 5, 000 people have voted in the online poll, which will stay open through the end of February. Fans have begun to weigh in on Twitter, with a strong contingent pushing to keep Obama on the wall. Some want women to finally be represented  —   a fact that Ali said is reflected in the poll, which includes 21 women. The owners of Ben’s Chili Bowl hope to have a decision made in March, and the new mural is slated to be up by April 1. But even after the public has spoken and the new mural goes up, Ali expects the discussions to continue. ”All over ” he said."
"With open enrollment season for buying health coverage under the Affordable Care Act ending Tuesday, it seemed like an apt time to talk with folks in charge of some of the state insurance marketplaces created by the federal health law. It’s the fifth year these marketplaces, also called exchanges, have been running. The marketplaces are the   option for people under 65 who don’t get health insurance through work or qualify for Medicaid. This time around, there’s a   wrinkle: The Trump administration has halted advertising and outreach for HealthCare. gov, the federally run exchange, in the last week of enrollment, when   typically surge. But the states that control their own exchanges also control their own promotion and, for now, their destiny. All told, 11 states and the District of Columbia run their own marketplaces. Under the ACA, the marketplaces were supposed to become   businesses within a few years, supported by fees insurers pay to offer plans on the sites. But the election of Donald Trump as president and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress mean that proposition, like the rest of the health law, is now in doubt. Here’s what five exchange chiefs are looking at now and for the future.  Peter Lee, executive director, Covered California  More than 5 million Californians  —   about a quarter of all Americans now covered under Obamacare  —   gained insurance either through Medicaid expansion or on the state’s exchange, called Covered California. With the Affordable Care Act now on the political chopping block, California has a lot to lose. But Covered California’s executive director, Peter Lee, says he is planning for a different scenario. He hopes to position California as a leader in a new model for health coverage nationwide. ”I do think that we have a number of the ingredients of what can make the individual market work,” Lee says. ”And we want to take those lessons to members of Congress and to policy leaders.” In particular, Lee believes California’s   approach is one that would be ”in sync, philosophically, with many of the things I hear from Republican and Democratic members of Congress and the Trump administration.” ”We have about 1. 4 million Californians shopping in our marketplace picking private plans with the leg up of federal tax credits that make health care affordable to 90 percent of them,” Lee says. California’s marketplace has had its share of problems. A reliance on inaccurate provider directories left some consumers exposed to    medical bills. Consumers also complained about narrow networks that left them unable to choose the doctors they wanted. But overall, the state is considered an ACA success story, thanks in part to innovative approaches, including state discretion to choose which insurers could operate in its market and then to negotiate premiums and benefits with those insurers. ”It’s a   market solution,” Lee says. ”Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat or independent, it’s a   solution that has a lesson for the country.” Still, Lee’s hopefulness is tempered by the knowledge that California faces a loss of $20 billion in federal funds if the promised Obamacare repeal happens without a replacement that preserves Medicaid expansion and premium subsidies. Under that scenario, Lee says, ”people would have their health insurance pulled out from under them in droves.” ”The whole issue of repeal without replace is cataclysmic not just for California or Californians but for any of the 20 million Americans that have coverage because of the Affordable Care Act,” he says. Even in the face of a ”very fuzzy” future, Lee says he is focusing on the present, which includes shepherding more than 300, 000 Californians newly enrolled in health care into 2017 coverage. He also wants to get the word out on parts of California’s plan that can be adopted elsewhere. ”There have been some things that have not worked great with the Affordable Care Act there are some things that have worked pretty darn well,” Lee says. ”Let’s make sure the laboratory of the states is a laboratory that’s sharing the lessons of success and failure with one another.” Stephanie O’Neill, freelance reporter based in Ojai, Calif. Donna Frescatore, executive director, NY State of Health, The New York state health exchange is fielding its busiest enrollment period yet, even with the uncertainty about the health law’s future. A repeal of the Affordable Care Act, without significant replacement, could cost 2. 7 million New Yorkers their health insurance and the state $3. 7 billion, according to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office. ”We believe that the stakes here in New York are dramatic  —   for consumers, for our health care delivery system and for our state budget as well,” says Donna Frescatore, executive director of NY State of Health, New York’s marketplace. Losing ”momentum” is one of Frescatore’s main concerns. Between 2013 and 2015, the uninsured rate in New York was cut in half, falling from 10 percent to 5 percent, according to the state’s health department. ”We talk to moms who are concerned because their children have   conditions and they’re afraid coverage might no longer be available. We talk to   New Yorkers who fear that the premiums could increase to the 2013 levels  —   over $1, 000 a month for an individual policy,” Frescatore says. Without financial support from the federal government, premiums may increase. Options may revert to health insurance plans as they were in New York before the ACA. ”New York had a number of very strong consumer protections in place before the Affordable Care Act, including guaranteed issue,” says Frescatore. ”People could get insurance regardless of whether or not they had a medical condition or illness, as well as other consumer protections. We’ll maintain those protections.” But without an individual mandate bringing enough people into the insurance pool and no financial assistance, she adds, the price of plans is ”just out of reach” financially for many consumers. For now, the New York exchange continues outreach to enroll consumers and reassure them that policies won’t be disrupted throughout 2017. ”At this point, without knowing more details about repeal or replacement, what we’re really focused on is getting people coverage that they deserve,” Frescatore says. Karen Shakerdge, WXXI and Side Effects Public Media, Jim Wadleigh, CEO, Access Health CT, Connecticut was an early adopter of the ACA. After the law was enacted, the state expanded Medicaid ahead of schedule to cover roughly 200, 000 more people a year. For this year, more than 100, 000 people enrolled in coverage they found on the   exchange, with nearly 80 percent getting subsidies. But while the exchange may have been attractive to many consumers, it was less appealing to insurers. Two of the four original insurance companies in the marketplace are no longer in it. Now, with an uncertain future ahead, Access Health CT CEO Jim Wadleigh says he has one hard goal in mind as he thinks beyond 2017: ”What can we do to help make the business environment that our carriers are in easier for them to be more successful?” Insurers have told Wadleigh that they lose money on customers who miss open enrollment periods and go through special enrollment  —   the process reserved for people with big life events or job changes that merit new insurance. ”What the carriers are telling us is, these customers are coming in . .. finding a reason that they have a life event because they’re sick, get services, and then drop out,” he says. That’s an expensive pattern. This week, Wadleigh is asking his board to approve a plan to ramp up enforcement. ”If we can do a better job enforcing the special enrollment, we think we can reduce the premiums by potentially 6 percent to 10 percent,” he says. Another way to reduce costs? Shrink provider networks. So, let’s say you live in Hartford. Do you really need to pay for a plan that covers a doctor’s visit in Danbury? ”Customers are telling us they would go with a network choice option, or a narrow network, if it was cheaper   had a lower deductible,” he says. That chance, he says, could save another few percentage points in premiums. Third, Wadleigh says he is considering changes that would push more of the cost of emergency room visits to consumers, hoping to deter frequent ER fliers. The question is whether all of this will work. Wadleigh says he thinks it will. He already has had discussions with existing carriers that are curious whether other insurers are looking to get into the marketplace. ”So what that is telling me is that the carriers think that we’re making changes in the positive direction,” he says. ”And we expect that other carriers would be interested in joining our exchange with that.” Whether they do  —   and whether the exchange will even be around for them to join  —   is still very much unclear. Jeff Cohen, WNPR, Louis Gutierrez, executive director, Massachusetts Health Connector, A near record number of Massachusetts residents are signing up for coverage through the state’s online insurance market, the Health Connector. Enrollment is running 32 percent ahead of last year as the Jan. 31 deadline approaches. Around 47, 000 people who didn’t have insurance through the exchange last year have purchased insurance for 2017. So many members, physicians and others in the health care world were stunned when Louis Gutierrez, who runs the exchange, said he couldn’t guarantee coverage through the end of 2017 for the nearly 240, 000 enrollees so far. ”I don’t want to be in the business of speculating or making commitments about things I can’t personally control,” Gutierrez says. ”I don’t think any of us really know” what’s going to happen with the repeal of the ACA. Gutierrez says he is not predicting precipitous changes but adds that he ”can’t speak to the future. Every day is a good day of coverage.” Health insurers, which are threatening to pull out of exchanges in some states, aren’t the main concern in Massachusetts. Gutierrez says he is hearing very little from the state’s ”mature and stable market.” Most plans that sell insurance through the Health Connector are nonprofits based in the state. And they may have less reason to worry that healthy members will flee, leaving insurers to cover the high costs of ill members. Massachusetts residents would still be required to buy insurance, by state law, even if the ACA mandate is repealed. But if federal funds shrink or disappear, it’s likely coverage would become very expensive for the 178, 000 men and women who expect to receive subsidies or tax credits for insurance purchased through the exchange. ”We’re interested in maintaining broad and affordable access to coverage,” Gutierrez said, but ”that will depend on the shape of any subsidies that change or happen in the new scheme.” Many Massachusetts residents are wondering whether the state could revert to the law passed in 2006, which became a model for Obamacare. The individual mandate is still on the books, but the employer mandate and other elements were replaced with provisions in the federal law. Martha Bebinger, WBUR, Kevin Patterson, CEO, Connect for Health Colorado, The view from Kevin Patterson, the CEO of Connect for Health Colorado, might be summarized as sunny with storm clouds on the horizon. ”I think we’re feeling like things are going really well,” he says. Patterson says enrollment numbers for 2017 are running 15 percent ahead of last year. But two things are clouding the future. First, the new Trump administration and congressional Republicans are vowing to undo Obamacare. Second, the Colorado exchange is under fire from state lawmakers. As soon as the legislative session got underway in January, Republicans unveiled a bill to repeal the exchange altogether. They are expected to zero in on a recent federal audit that found the exchange improperly spent millions in federal funds and called for refunds. Patterson says the exchange has made many changes and disagrees with the recommendation to refund the money. The exchange is expected to survive the legislative turmoil, but it still faces the possibility of federal subsidies disappearing under a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But Patterson believes the exchange could carry on. ”I do think there are things that we’ve learned that could be applied in a new era or whatever   is,” he says. Still, he worries an Obamacare repeal without a timely, adequate replacement could cause some insurers to pull out of the exchange or charge higher rates. Already consumers saw premiums go up and choice go down this year. And this is pressing  —   insurers have to file rate requests in Colorado in May. ”So the clock is ticking,” Patterson says. ”Somebody has to give us a little more guidance I think to the industry around what the new world is going to look like. And I think the sooner we do that the better it is for every consumer.” But, beyond 2017, he says, the exchange could look to expand its other lines of business beyond the individual marketplace. That could include helping small employers and public sector employers not in the marketplace figure out insurance packages and benefits. ”I think that’s somewhere where we can show some more value,” he says. Colorado’s exchange is also flirting with the possibility of working with neighboring states, particularly those in the Mountain time zone. ”We’re kind of used to working together as Western states on problems that are really unique to us,” Patterson says. ”That’s where I would start.” John Daley, Colorado Public Radio, This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, local member stations and Kaiser Health News."
"The fireplace is on. A couple of westies are running around excitedly. And two tables are set in the dining room. The dinner party on this brisk winter night in Maplewood, N. J. has a distinctly foreign flare: chicken shawarma and falafel are on the menu. And while the conversation includes typical talk about work  —   it also deals with war. ”Every day is becoming terrible,” explains Hayder Alqaysi, who fled Baghdad with his mother and sister. ”You understand what I mean? I cannot live there.” This is what is known as Syria Supper Club, in which Muslim refugees from Syria and Iraq join groups of mostly Jewish New Jerseyans for dinners that are part fundraiser, part cultural exchange. Women from the refugee families cook the elaborate feasts the Americans host the meals. In January alone, 14 meals have been scheduled, all with different cooks. Hosting this week is Kate McCaffrey, a member of Montclair’s Bnai Keshet synagogue, which has organized various efforts to help refugees from Syria and Iraq acclimate to the New Jersey community. ”This refugee project really came out of a sense of outrage over the refugee crisis last summer,” says McCaffrey, an anthropology professor at Montclair State University. ”I was reading the news and it was so upsetting, seeing all these people at sea, drowning at sea, and feeling our country was doing nothing. I reached out to the rabbi and said: ’What are we doing?’ ” Among the first actions taken by McCaffrey and Melina Macall, her partner on this project, was a Christmas Eve dinner that Bnai Keshet hosted in 2015 in which Syrian Muslims and New Jersey Jews feasted on the traditional American Jewish Christmas meal of Chinese food. The synagogue later hired one Syrian woman to cater monthly Saturday lunches after Shabbat services  —   now, there is talk of having her cater bar and bat mitzvahs. It’s that talent for cooking among many of the Syrian women who have settled in places like Paterson and Elizabeth that inspired the Syria Supper Club idea: How about these women cook dinners at Americans’ homes, enabling them to meet their new neighbors while making some   money in the process? ”We have multiple objectives to this. One part is to fundraise,” McCaffrey says. Attendees sign up online and pay $50 to attend the meal. The money goes to the Syrian cooks so they can buy the food  —   then the women keep the rest. Given the difficulty their husbands have had in finding work in New Jersey and the limited resources provided by the federal government and charitable organizations, the funds are critically helpful. ”But I think in addition to that we are providing some affirmation of their talents, of their capabilities, of their humanity in a political climate where they’ve been demonized. And for the guests it’s an opportunity to get outside their bubble to meet people different from them.” When dinner is served, the Syrian women sit down and eat with the guests, often along with other refugees who have become friends with the organizers. Language barriers are overcome with laughter, Google Translate and volunteer translators  —   tonight, it’s Mazooz Sehwail, an Arabic professor at Montclair State University. It took three days for the cook on this night, Khlood Al Nabelsi, to prepare a delicious   Syrian dinner. The presentation, with   vegetables and spices sprinkled in a pattern on top of the hummus, makes dinner guests gasp as they gather around the table and introduce themselves. ”My name Khlood, from Syria,” Al Nabelsi says. ”Me, happy. I am happy for cooking.” Dinner guests tell Al Nabelsi  —   and Alqaysi, an Iraqi refugee here with his mother and sister  —   about how they themselves are the children and grandchildren of Jewish refugees who fled countries in Europe beset by war, persecution and religious strife. ”The symbol of America, the Statue of Liberty, the poem engraved on the bottom, says: ’I lift my lamp beside the golden door,’” says Sheila Fisher of Fort Lee. ”And let’s all hope America leaves the golden door open.” Over dinner, there are questions, like: Why is Al Nabelsi keeping her jacket on while she eats? The answer isn’t totally clear, but it leads to a conversation about how some refugees lack heat in their new apartments. Later a simple question about how to say ”cheers” in Arabic warrants an explanation about Muslim restrictions on alcohol. And like at any dinner, there’s talk about work. Alqaysi, who earned a degree in electrical engineering before he left Baghdad, just started working at the   at a Dunkin Donuts in New Jersey. He has funny stories to tell about trying to understand American coffee orders, handing over as many as 10 sugars and distinguishing between whipped cream and with cream. Alqaysi unabashedly says that he wants American friends social isolation is a challenge in the refugee community. ”I want to make more friend, because I don’t have friend,” he says. ”I need to know this culture. I want talk to them, like I talk to you.” President Trump, who once vowed to end immigration of all Muslims, including refugees, isn’t mentioned at dinner. There isn’t any talk of Gov. Chris Christie, who described    Syrian orphans as potential national security threats. Nonetheless, one of the Jewish guests, Melissa Polaner, has politics on her mind. ”It’s important for me to express my political views in this way, and it’s important for me to express my religious views in this way  —   to make people understand that Jews and Muslims have so much in common and there are so many more things that connect us than separate us,” she said. ”And a lot of that gets lost in the national dialogue, but when you are sitting across from someone at the table, it’s easy to remember that.” After dinner, several of the women are in the kitchen cleaning dishes and kibbitzing. McCaffrey, who grew up Catholic and converted to Judaism when she married her husband, threw herself into this work after her children graduated from high school. She constantly texts with dozens of refugees, helping with problems big and small. On this night, she finds out that one of the cooks in the Supper Club just lost her father. Their home was bombed in Homs, Syria. McCaffrey turns around and makes some tea for Al Nabelsi, who will soon be heading back to her apartment, where her husband is babysitting their three children. Before she leaves, in broken English and with help from a translator, Al Nabelsi strains to show her deep appreciation for McCaffrey. ”I’m speechless in here about her kindness,” she says. ”She’s the person who does not differentiate between different sects, different religions  —   a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim. She loves to help humans regardless of their religion.” Dinners for the Syrian Supper Club are booked through March. This story comes to us from member station WNYC in New York."
"Updated 2 p. m. ET, President Trump’s freeze on immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries cites the potential threat of terrorism. But here’s the twist  —   it doesn’t include any countries from which radicalized Muslims have actually killed Americans in the U. S. since Sept. 11, 2001. The president’s executive action, which he signed Friday at the Pentagon, applies to these countries: Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Sudan. Yet no Muslim extremist from any of these places has carried out a fatal attack in the U. S. in more than two decades. In contrast, here are the countries of origin of radicalized Muslims who carried out deadly attacks in the U. S. beginning on Sept. 11, 2001: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Russia and Kyrgyzstan. The two lists are completely distinct, raising questions about the reasoning behind the White House plan. ”These seven countries were identified by the Obama Administration as needing further travel scrutiny,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. ”There are 46 other countries with Muslim populations that are not part of this and I think that’s an important thing to note.” But there were many critics. ”I think this is an overreaction,” says Charles Kurzman, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, who has tracked Muslim extremism in the U. S. for years. ”We just haven’t seen a large number of   answering the call to revolutionary violence that the   Islamic State and other groups have been pitching at them,” he adds. The nations on the White House list include several mired in civil wars, as well as those that host extremist groups. All have had fraught relations with the U. S. American drones or warplanes have conducted airstrikes in five of the seven. The executive action read: ”Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter our country.” Existing visa restrictions, Citizens from the seven nations in Trump’s order already faced great difficulty in obtaining visas, gaining refugee status or immigrating to the U. S. ”The U. S. immigration vetting system is extremely thorough. That is perhaps why we’ve seen so little violence by immigrants and refugees in the United States,” said Kurzman. ”As someone who brings over international students, international scholars for conferences and training programs, I know how hard it is to get even extremely upright folks through that system.” The 19 terrorists on the hijacked planes used in the Sept. 11 attacks were from four countries not on the new White House list: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. Since then, radicalized Muslims have carried out a number of deadly attacks in the U. S. The precise count varies among groups that track the terror threat, but most groups cite fewer than 10 lethal attacks and fewer than 100 deaths, including New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. The deadliest single attack was at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last June, which left 49 dead. The man responsible was Omar Mateen, whose parents were from Afghanistan, though he was born in New York. Afghanistan is not on the White House list. In a few cases,   nationals have carried out lethal attacks. They include Tashfeen Malik, who, along with her husband, was responsible for the San Bernardino, Calif. shooting that claimed 14 lives in December 2015. She was born in Pakistan but spent most of her life in Saudi Arabia until she came to the U. S. in 2014 on a fiancée visa to marry Syed Rizwan Farook. He was born in Chicago, to a family originally from Pakistan. Neither Pakistan nor Saudi Arabia are on the White House list. Similarly, the Boston Marathon bombing was carried out by two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev. Tamerlan was born in the Soviet Union (now southern Russia) and Dzhokar was born in Krygyzstan. Those countries are not on the White House list. Here’s a list of attacks linked to radicalized Muslims in the U. S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks:"
"It was a bright hot day in June. Or possibly July. And the clocks almost certainly weren’t striking thirteen, because they don’t do that in this country. But it WAS the summer of 1984. I was 9 years old, and my father was handing me a   paperback with an   white and green cover his old college copy of George Orwell’s 1984. ”Here,” he said. ”I think you’re ready for this.” My dad has always had a weirdly inflated sense of my intellectual abilities. And I was captivated, instantly. I have this pet theory that some books, the ones you encounter as a child and read over and over again, somehow work themselves into your mental DNA so that everything you encounter later in life contains ghostly references to whatever that original text was  —   tubes of saccharine tablets in the grocery store, mystery meat in the high school lunch room, red scarves, glass paperweights, cold April days, rats, the number 101 in any context so many things have that tingle of association. Not that I understood even vaguely what the hell was going on in 1984 the first time I read it. But I was sucked down deep into Orwell’s strange gray world, so different from   ’80s America. To a    stuffed full of fantasy novels, Orwell’s   ability was the big draw the sights and sounds and  —   unfortunately sometimes  —   smells of Airstrip One were alien but vividly real. (Though the less said here about the scene in the holding cell with Parsons and the lavatory pan, the better.) And that’s the thing: I was so caught by that world that I revisited it again and again, at least once a year, all the way through college. Every time I   it, something new would unfold itself from the pages for me  —   first, the tragedy of Winston and Julia, and the way that love is sometimes just naivete. Then, when I was 12, my dad the former political science professor explained totalitarianism to me  —   I was mostly impressed with myself for being able to pronounce the word, never mind understanding the concept, but it added a new dimension to what had become my favorite book. On the next   I began to understand the way language shapes thought, and how Orwell’s villainous Inner Party is determined to eradicate concepts like freedom by removing the ability to speak about them  —   powerful ideas for a budding writer. And finally somewhere in my   I found myself reading the ’Goldstein’s Book’ chapters instead of skipping them as too complicated, and the whole structure of a society built on constant warfare clicked into place here were the ideas driving this world I was so fascinated with, and they made scary sense. The adjective ”Orwellian” gets tossed around with abandon these days. It’s become such a cliche that the intensity of the original experience, the layers of thought and meaning, can get lost in the noise  —   so I invite you to pull up a chair (in that little alcove the telescreen can’t see) pour yourself a glass of oily ersatz Victory Gin, and dive in. You, too, will find yourself rolling down that glorious corridor. You, too, will love Big Brother."
"The government of Chile says wildfires that have killed at least 10 people are the worst blazes in the country’s history. Several firefighters are among the dead. ”We have never seen anything on this scale, never in the history of Chile,” President Michelle Bachelet said earlier this week, after her administration declared a state of emergency. ”The truth is that the forces are doing everything humanly possible and will continue until they can contain and control the fires.” Reporting from Rio de Janeiro, NPR’s Philip Reeves said Thursday that hundreds of thousands of acres have been destroyed in the southern and central parts of the country and that an entire town was incinerated. ”Reports say flames ripped through a place called Santa Olga, burning down its kindergarten, post office and about 1, 000 homes,” he said. At least one body was recovered from the ashes in Santa Olga, according to Deutsche Welle, and about 6, 000 residents fled the city as the flames moved in. ”This is an extremely serious situation  —   of horror, a nightmare without an end,” the mayor of the coastal city of Constitucion told the German broadcaster. ”Everything burned.” The   flames have laid waste to forests and vineyards, Phil reported. Chile is a major exporter of wine and grapes and has a growing timber market. While fires are common in Chile at this time of year, ”these have taken on disastrous proportions, thanks to prolonged drought, strong winds and unusually hot weather,” Phil said. In addition to local weather patterns, which themselves are shaped by global climate change, a review of Chile’s wildfires published in November in the journal Global and Planetary Change warned the ”pattern, frequency and intensity” of wildfires in the country ”has grown at an alarming rate” in recent years, in part because of intensive forest management practices that led to a large amount of flammable fuel in the country’s forests. As of Thursday morning, Chile’s National Emergency Bureau was tracking 100 active fires covering about 920 square miles, 30 of which have been contained, according to The New York Times. The newspaper reported: ”In total, 4, 000 people  —   including firefighters, troops and national forestry bureau officers  —   and 46 aircraft have been deployed to combat the fires, according to the National Emergency Bureau. ”Some residents, lacking any training or protective gear, have used tree branches and bottles of water to try to douse the flames.” The Chilean government has appealed for international help. The U. S. Embassy in Santiago said earlier this week that the U. S. government was donating $100, 000 ”for the local procurement and delivery of firefighting equipment, such as chainsaws and weather monitoring tools requested by the National Forestry Corporation.” The U. S. Agency for International Development and the U. S. Forest Service sent four people to ”assess the situation and advise local authorities.” On Wednesday, a privately owned Boeing 747 ”supertanker” plane arrived in Santiago to help control the fires from the air. Such planes are capable of dumping 20, 000 gallons of flame retardant, Wired magazine reported. The aircraft is owned by Colorado Springs, Colo.  Global SuperTanker Services, according to The Gazette newspaper. The paper reported that the mission, including a   crew, was paid for by Fundación Viento Sur, which is part of the Walton Family Foundation and run by Ben Walton and his   wife, Lucy Ana Walton de Avilés. The New York Times reported the price tag for the supertanker was $2 million. The plane is being deployed in the Maule region, north of the destroyed town of Santa Olga, according to Deutsche Welle."
"Much has been written about the 20 million people who gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and what could happen to these patients if the ACA is repealed without a replacement. But some people don’t realize that hospitals nationwide could take a big financial hit on several fronts, too. First, it’s likely that fewer patients would be able to pay their hospital bills, health policy analysts say, so the institutions would be stuck with that bad debt, as they were before Obamacare. ”If the Medicaid expansion goes away wholesale, and things go back to the way they were before this expansion was in place, a lot of those hospitals would see an increase in their uncompensated care costs,” says Rachel Garfield, an analyst with the Kaiser Family Foundation. The American Hospital Association estimates that hospitals across the U. S. could lose more than $160 billion from the reduction in Medicaid revenue and the increase in unpaid medical bills. Then there’s this: The ACA has used financial incentives to encourage hospitals to experiment with ways to improve their care of patients, while reducing health care’s cost. That sort of experimentation has included a sizable upfront investment by many hospitals. Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, for example, signed agreements with physicians and insurers to create accountable care organizations, in hopes of saving money in the long run. With an ACO, insurers pay doctors for making sure the patient is getting the best and most appropriate care, instead of paying for every test and procedure a doctor does. ”We have now more than 20 different programs,” says Dr. Timothy Ferris, an internist and medical director of the Mass General Physicians Organization. ”Video visits, electronic consultation with specialists, home hospitalization, [and] programs for patients with diabetes and heart disease. I would be worried that a repeal of the ACA would undermine our ability to invest in services for our patients.” Ferris acknowledges that most of those experiments haven’t yet saved money. But they need more time to work out the kinks safely, he says. ”One of the things that it’s difficult for people outside of health care to appreciate  —   particularly politicians  —   is how long it takes to make significant improvements in the delivery of care,” Ferris says. ”You have to be very careful when you make changes.” Ferris says the threatened repeal of the ACA makes him worry ”that the progress we’ve made over the past five years would be threatened.” Many other hospitals across the country have invested in accountable care organizations  —   often overhauling their medical records systems, hiring staff and creating new services. Dennis Keefe, head of a large hospital chain called Care New England in Rhode Island, says he, too, worries about the future of his ACO, Integra. ”I think, if there’s a real change in direction away from these alternative payment models, we will be assuming risk to care for a population,” Keefe says. ”We have invested enormously to be successful in this area.” But these seismic changes in the way hospitals do business were predicated, he adds, on   support from the federal government  —   support that might disappear if the ACA is repealed. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with NPR, Rhode Island Public Radio and Kaiser Health News. The Kaiser Family Foundation supports Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program that produces news reports heard on NPR and published on NPR. org. "
"American composer Philip Glass turns 80 years old on January 31. To mark the occasion, we asked several of Glass’ colleagues and collaborators to pick a piece of his music and write about it. You can read essays on NPR Music by Paul Simon, filmmaker Errol Morris and composers Nico Muhly and David Lang. We also asked Laurie Anderson. She wrote about Glass’ piano Etude No. 10, saying she finds ”new ways to breathe” each time she plays it. We also wanted to talk to her about first meeting Glass and collaborating with him in the blossoming communal arts scene of writers, dancers, sculptors and composers in lower Manhattan in the early 1970s. Some of the music that fueled that artistic cooperative came from Glass, the young experimenter who held extended rehearsals in his SoHo loft. Anderson recalls listening to those musical marathons for eight hours in a row, staring at the ceiling and letting the sound wash over her. In 1981, the song ”O Superman” became a hit for Anderson, first in the U. K. and helped launch her career outside of Manhattan’s art circles. She’s since made albums, films,   pieces and written books. She married Lou Reed in 2008. She continues to collaborate with Glass on projects and in concert. Anderson says she’s continually inspired by Glass’ generosity, open mind and fresh ideas  —   even when those ideas sometime push her to uncomfortable places. In the interview, which you can listen to as an All Songs +1 podcast, she recalls a time after Reed’s death in 2013 when she was rehearsing with Glass and he asked her to find some tape of Reed’s voice to work into a new piece. She felt it wasn’t the right time. But after Glass insisted, she realized how powerful the music became and they have performed it in concert several times. Listen to a   discussion about Glass’s music, the SoHo artistic community and why we are ”collapsing under the weight of our own stories” at the listening link above, and read edited highlights below. ”It’s looping around on itself in ways that my own mind does. I began to listen to Phil’s music at the same time I began to meditate, so they’re forever bound together for me. Also, I found I could listen to Phil’s music in a way I’d never listened before, which was in a kind of meditative state. Not expecting it to do giant crescendos and then loop back to the theme, but to be persistently there.” ”I found it completely fascinating and I’d never heard anything like it before, and I went to many, many of those rehearsals in the early ’70s and, as many artists did, we would go and listen to eight Farfisas at   levels. And we would lie on the floor and look at the ceilings of these lofts, and after eight hours later, we would just leave. I remember the sculptor Sol LeWitt saying, ’I do my best work at Phil’s rehearsals. ’” ”If I’m working late at night on my own music, now and especially in the past, I’d be working late until I almost started hearing in a different way and became less interested in rules and more in just the pure sound. And that comes from duration, I think. I feel that with Pauline Oliveros’ music and with much of Brian Eno’s music. I feel it with Phil’s music  —   it’s very immersive. And of course, of those three, Phil is the more driving one. He’s got a propulsive thing. In a way, it’s really just keeping you in place and awake. When I say driving, you’re not going anywhere.” ”OK, this is SoHo when it was completely dark. No street lights and no stores. We were all doing our lofts, so we were driving pickup trucks, wearing work clothes. At that time none of us thought we would ever be professional artists or that anyone would ever pay us for doing any of this. So it was this really crazy innocent moment. ”We also believed that we were about to change the world. So we had this megalomaniacal idea about what we were doing in this   crazy downtown scene, which involved sculpture, dance, music, writing  —   all kinds of things. And maybe at that time, you could say there were 300 artists in SOHO. Probably not more were living and working there. It was a really tiny group. We all knew each other, and we all helped each other. ”So for Phil’s rehearsals, if people needed help carrying amps upstairs, I would do that. It was a very egalitarian time. And it’s easy to forget this, but it wasn’t that far from the ’60s. There was a complete counterculture that didn’t really need the official culture. It was very isolated from it. We had our own drugs, our own food, our own music, our own dances, our own clothes  —   our own everything.”"
"I’m in the middle of tapping out an email to my dad, deleting and retyping sentences. On Friday night I’ll cook an abridged Chinese New Year Eve dinner, I write. Maybe I’ll cook noodles (symbolizing happiness, longevity) or dumplings (symbolizing wealth). I don’t tell him what I’ll do exactly. This is the first time in my adult life, apart from drinking parties organized under the guise of making dumplings for Lunar New Year, that I’ve paid attention to this holiday. My dad is unbothered by the truncated menu. In his email back to me, he focuses more on the train he’ll take to New York, the one after 3 p. m. when the station offers free parking. Chinese New Year had always felt to me more like stiff spectacle than warm family tradition, and fleetingly, I feel guilty for hijacking his holiday by moving it from his place to mine. I’d invited him because it was time for a visit and because I didn’t want to make the   trek to his house in Connecticut. I wonder if, with my laziness, I’ve sped up the generational   of customs that comes when a kid assumes more leadership in a family. Like hosting a Lunar New Year dinner. I also wonder if I’m cheapening a tradition. When you’re the child of immigrants, assuming ownership of rituals you don’t cherish is fraught. How, if at all, do you carry this tradition forward? The Lunar New Year of my youth: Dad pushes our kitchen table to the center of the room. He’s clearing space for the family to stand and pray. He and mom coat the table with platters of fish (symbolizing surplus, prosperity) black moss noodles (more prosperity) roast duck, poached chicken with ginger and scallion oil. Before we eat, my parents set out framed photos of our dead relatives (symbolizing filial duty, I guess) next to the food offerings.  Earlier in the day, my sisters Stephanie and Caroline and I trim our hair (symbolizing good luck) fold joss paper into bullions and cut up tissue paper into teeny shirts and pants. My parents set the paper on fire to send to the ancestors, a flaming postal service for the dead.  We light incense. Clasping the puffing sticks in our palms, we bow three times (symbolizing . .. I don’t know) and dispose of them outside on the back deck. The smoke from the incense licks our eyeballs and clings to our winter jackets, which we wear throughout the night (symbolizing we’re cold).  We light more incense, bow over and over and over for each dead relative, then walk out back into the snow and drop the smoldering sticks in a   Folger’s coffee can. Years later, when my mom dies, we add her photo to the altar. I make tissue dresses for her, which my dad burns. This is the only day he acknowledges her presence and her death. I don’t really get this holiday, but I bow three times. I eat the fish, the noodles, the duck, the chicken. I don’t buy what it symbolizes, but it means something. As I do several times each week, I called my dad on my way to the subway station. We talked logistics for Friday. I told him we could burn incense on my fire escape, which could defeat the purpose of fire escapes. (Our neighbors called the cops one Lunar New Year when they thought our house was on fire.) ”If there’s one thing I cook, what should it be?” I asked him. ”Well,” he said, ”fish.” He launched into a brief but    ramble about how in Chinese, the word for fish, yú, is a lot like the word for prosperity, yúshēng. I was  . My lifelong    of having to cook food that looks back at me had returned. Why didn’t I just suggest we go to a Chinese restaurant, like so many other   and gorge ourselves on an elaborate spread? And I didn’t even want to think about getting on the F train and smelling up a subway car with the perfume of dead fish. How do I carry this tradition forward? I asked friends and strangers on Twitter how they celebrate the holiday. I got a lot of tweets about   red envelopes and the glutinous rice cake called nian gao (symbolizing more money, more status, healthy children). It seemed like their family’s versions of the New Year are kind of . .. joyful. But I needed more. I wondered what the holiday meant in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Chinese immigrants were first coming to the U. S. How did they do things back then? How did they handle this generational   thing? I turned to NPR’s researchers for help and got a virtual stack of articles. They were mostly brownsplainy and   stories about parades and firecrackers. But one article from 1913 in The San Francisco Call caught my eye. The reporter wrote that the holiday was a ”fizzle.” On Chinese New Year, the writer noted, the stores in Chinatown must remain closed per tradition. But ”the younger spirits —  revolutionists —  wanted to keep the stores open and neglect the celebration,” the reporter wrote. ”These young republicans held their celebration, observing the Gregorian calendar.” It seems that this day has always been divided by generation. To see if my   angst was legitimate, I asked Janelle Wong. She’s the head of the Asian American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She crunched some numbers from a 2012 Pew Research Center report, and I saw I wasn’t so unique. She told the story of assimilation with five numbers. ”Among Chinese Americans, over 85% of   immigrants celebrate the Lunar New Year,” she wrote in an email. ”The proportion who celebrate LNY falls to about 80% among   Chinese Ams and further down to about 60% by the  . In comparison, about 80% of   Chinese immigrants celebrate Thanksgiving, and this rises to over 90% of   and close to 100% of the  .” All across the country this weekend, major cities with established Asian populations will roll out Lunar New Year parades with great fanfare, including some big ones in San Francisco, New York, Washington D. C. and Las Vegas. There will be dragon dances on Chinatown streets that are narrowing with gentrification. I will be in my old Brooklyn apartment with my dad, burning incense on my fire escape. I called him for the second time this week. I wanted to know how he felt about me hosting. My dad’s not big on feelings, and he responded by talking about the weather how he might have to bail on our plans if it snowed. I tried again. Was he happy that I’m hosting the New Year dinner this time? I could hear his shrug through the phone. Yeah, he said eventually, sounding close to happy, this is how ”culture gets propagated.” It’s odd to think about traditions propagating. They aren’t exactly cultivated the way a plant cutting spawns more plants. To me, it’s like they’ve been jammed into some generational paper shredder. They emerge on the other end, made of the same wood pulp. Just . .. different. Clearly, I was in a Lunar New Year Crisis (symbolizing guilt) so I called Russell Jeung. He’s a San Francisco State University professor who wrote a book about sustaining faith traditions. In a call that felt part Dear Prudie, part Dear Professor, Jeung helped me through my LNYC. He told me this is normal that a lot of people he talked to for his research said that  —   while they celebrate the holiday  —   they ”don’t understand a lot of the meanings behind the practices.” What’s left, Jeung said, are things done for ”food and fun.” There are no scriptures or doctrines that teach people how to do Lunar New Year, and that’s the beginning of Jeung’s explanation for why I might be experiencing what he called ”dissonant acculturation.” Here’s the rest: Like Lunar New Year. It was hard to know if I should be comforted that my ”dissonant acculturation” is really out of my hands that the forces of American culture make it tough to hold on to this tradition. ”Should I feel guilty?” I asked Jeung toward the end of our conversation. It always comes back to guilt. ”No!” he said. Then he reconsidered. ”Well, yes. Because that’s part of the process. It’s not guilt, it’s gratefulness. Or, maybe it’s guilt over . .. lack of gratefulness. That’s part of the ritual. That’s actually the useful function of these rituals to use shame and guilt so you become more moral.” Not the best sell for someone on the fence. In a wave of remorse or nostalgia or something, I text my sisters. I tell them that I don’t usually do anything for the holiday. I tell them that I don’t trim my hair. I usually don’t even bother with the food. I feel bad acknowledging this. Stephanie, the oldest, is the first to text back. ”I think the burning things and ceremony are soothing and comforting,” she writes to me and Caroline. ”I like buying into the Chinese superstitions because it somehow makes me feel prideful of being Chinese. . .. It’s like honoring being Chinese, and whoever taught it to you.” Later that night, I try to decide which photo of my mom I should use when my father and I pray. It connects us to a past we shouldn’t forget. I don’t know if I’ll ever buy into the symbolism behind Lunar New Year. But I made the trip to Fei Long Market in Brooklyn on Thursday. And I bought the damn fish."
"At any other time of the year, Shengping Lane bustles with life. But the Lunar New Year holiday is near, half the city has left for their hometowns and Shanghai has returned to the Shanghainese. The only vendor left in the alley sells calendars, but soon he’ll pack up, too. It’s the time of year when Shengping Lane lives up to its name: 升平 or ”Rising Peace.” It’ll soon be the Year of the Rooster, and Yuan Shuizhen is preparing chicken feet in her tiny kitchen for the big meal. The    wipes her hands, retreats outside and plops down on a chair along the side of the alley to chat with friends. ”All the outsiders have left for home,” says Yuan, leaning over to peer down the narrow lane. This is the time of year when hundreds of millions of Chinese workers return to their hometowns. Nearly half of Shanghai’s 26 million people weren’t born in Shanghai, and many of them have already left. ”It’s much quieter this time of year  —   less crazy,” Yuan says. Her two friends nod. The three grannies go through a list of food they’ll make for their families: Beef, fish, dumplings, hotpot. After a meal with family, they’ll go to the Buddhist temple to pray and burn incense. ”When I was young, we’d go to the cemetery to worship our ancestors,” says Yuan. ”Then we’d cook one pot of rice, serve it in small bowls, and we’d eat it for the next five days. Now we cook meals every single day. Life has improved.” Yuan’s friend Ni Jindi agrees, but the    still grumbles about her grandchildren. They’re all working professionals, and they rarely have time to visit their grandmother here in the lane. This is the only time of year she gets to spend time with them and her  . ”They’re leaving on the third day of the holiday to go travel somewhere,” says Ni with a wave of her hand. ”I don’t know exactly where they’re going. I’m too old. I’ll stay here.” She’ll have company. Her two friends are   too, whose families will also fly somewhere exotic after the first of the year: Japan, Thailand, the United States. With their relatives gone and the holiday setting in, Rising Peace Lane will grow even quieter, with just the chatter of three grannies sharing memories."
"The day after his inauguration, President Trump placed a call to the acting head of the National Park Service, Michael Reynolds. ”I can confirm that the call took place. I can’t comment on the content of the conversation,” National Park Service spokesman Tom Crosson said in an email to NPR. Trump reportedly was upset over the agency’s retweeting of    photos that unfavorably compared the crowd sizes at his and former President Obama’s inaugurations. The retweet was later removed. ”It was a, ’What’s going on?’ type of thing,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told The New York Times on Thursday night. ”Why is the National Park Service tweeting out comparison photos? That was the bigger issue there.” The Washington Post, which first reported the phone call, said Trump ordered Reynolds to provide photos of Inauguration Day crowds on the National Mall on Jan. 20, with the intent of proving the media ”had lied in reporting that attendance was no better than average.” As NPR’s Jessica Taylor reported on Saturday: ”Press secretary Sean Spicer delivered a fiery broadside against the Fourth Estate from the White House Briefing Room Saturday evening, claiming that reporters had engaged in ’deliberately false reporting’ in the past 24 hours since President Trump took the oath of office. And, after berating the press, he walked away without taking any questions. ” ’Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall,’ Spicer claimed.” Speaking Saturday at CIA headquarters, Trump referred to his ”running war with the media” and called reporters ”among the most dishonest human beings on earth.” Talking about the crowd that attended his inauguration, Trump said, ”I looked out, it looked like a million, a million and a half people.” The National Park Service does not give official crowd estimates. The president also said of the crowd, ”It went all the way back to the Washington Monument.” But as Jessica reported: ”According to aerial photos and multiple NPR reporters on the ground, the crowd was nowhere near the Washington Monument. The mall area near the monument was sparsely populated, and Trump didn’t offer any verification for where the 1 million to 1. 5 million estimate came from, or for knocking down one news report’s estimate that there were only 250, 000 people in attendance.”"
"President Trump tweets a lot. With tens of millions of followers on Twitter, Trump proposes policy, shares his latest actions and reacts to the news. But 140 characters rarely gives the full context. During the president’s first 100 days in office, we attempted to do just that for key tweets."
"Rafael Nadal has reached the final of the Australian Open, where he will face longtime rival Roger Federer in a matchup that answers the prayers of tennis fans eager to see a ninth Grand Slam final between the pair. Nadal outlasted Grigor Dimitrov in a nearly   match Friday. ”For me, it’s a privilege” to face Federer again, Nadal said after his semifinal. By reviving a rivalry that began in earnest when they slugged it out in the 2006 French Open, Nadal and Federer, now 30 and 35, respectively, provide a bookend to the women’s bracket, where Venus and Serena Williams will play in the Australian Open’s final for the first time since 2003. The   Nadal needed a gritty win over No. 15 seed Dimitrov to reach the final, winning     7( 7) (5) 6( 4) (7)  . Nadal had been poised to win in four sets  —   but Dimitrov used his mobility and a booming serve to prolong the match at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena, and his creativity and lashing backhand gave Nadal fits. Nadal was on the losing end of two key challenges late in the match, as in the final sets, two of Dimitrov’s angled shots  —   one on either sideline  —   were shown to have caught a sliver of the line. Fate seemed to turn against Nadal in the final set, as Dimitrov held serve by using a        shot (after losing his footing near the net) to set up a baseline winner that Nadal couldn’t reach. But after both players held serve through the set’s first eight games, Nadal finally broke through to go up  . One day earlier, Federer had booked his spot in the title match with his own   victory over Stan Wawrinka. On Sunday, Nadal will appear in his first Grand Slam final since the 2014 French Open  —   and Federer will be trying to break a drought of his own: He hasn’t won a Grand Slam since Wimbledon in 2012."
"Niya Kenny pulled out her cell phone and began recording. It happened in 2015, after a classmate had refused to hand over her own cell phone during class and was being pulled from her chair by a police officer based at their school, Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S. C. When Kenny loudly protested and, like her classmate, refused to hand over her phone, she too was arrested. The charge: disturbing a school. Kenny’s story is one of several featured in a new investigation from Education Week, ”Policing America’s Schools,” exploring the debate over school discipline, the role of police officers in schools, and why it is that black students are arrested at disproportionately high rates in much of the country. Education Week will roll out the results of its investigation over the next few weeks, including the tool below that allows users to explore their state and   data more closely. In the   school year, according to a new analysis of federal data by the Education Week Research Center, black students accounted for 16 percent of students enrolled in public schools but 33 percent of arrests in those schools. In 10 states, black students’ share of arrests in schools with at least one arrest exceeded their share of enrollment by at least 20 percentage points. NPR Ed spoke with Education Week staff writer Evie Blad about the project. The interview below has been edited for clarity. What stood out to you from the investigation’s findings? That the disparities we see in arrests and discipline referral rates are most persistent for black students across a majority of states. Just looking at arrests in 43 states and Washington D. C. black students made up a larger share of students arrested than they did the population in schools that had at least one arrest. So, they’re more heavily represented in the group of students that face contact with law enforcement in schools. In most states, there are a couple hundred arrests. In some, the number is small enough that it doesn’t take a lot to move a percentage point. But we found that, in 28 states, the share of arrested students who are black is at least 10 percentage points higher than their enrollment in schools that arrested students. And in 10 states, the gap is at least 20 percentage points. There’s a pretty big difference between their representation and their share of arrested students. And the same is true for referrals to law enforcement. What did you find in terms of a student’s likelihood of being in a school with a law enforcement officer? At both the middle school and high school level, black students are most likely to be in a school with a   law enforcement officer. At the high school level, in general, officers are more common. So, 74 percent of all black students were in schools with an   officer, followed by 71 percent of both Hispanic and   students, 65 percent of Asian students, and 65 percent of white students. In a middle school, it’s about 59 percent of black students, and the next lowest group is Hispanic students at 49 percent, followed by white students at 47 percent. So, the disparity is a little more severe. Elementary school police officers are far less common so there’s a little bit of a closer clustering of races. Do we know whether a student who attends a school with a law enforcement officer is, for that fact alone, more likely to be arrested? It would be hard to look at this one piece of federal data and draw that conclusion definitively because there are so many differences between schools. But other researchers have explored this. There’s some research that came out in the last year that compared student arrests based on specific offenses, like vandalism, fights without a weapon  —   things like that  —   at schools that were demographically similar. They found that the rates were higher if a school had a   officer. In theory, schools that have officers should be treating them like the officers you would call in off the street. So, if I have an officer and a student is doing something wrong, would I call    for this student’s behavior? But, civil rights groups feel that schools aren’t setting clear enough boundaries for officers and some of them are getting involved in routine discipline. Some [groups] also feel that the hiring of law enforcement and the push for school security are driving resources away from student supports like counselors and social workers who might be able to remedy some of these issues before they escalate. One of the things that interested me about your reporting is the fact that some states have codified tougher penalties for being disruptive in class, which may lead to higher arrest rates for students doing things that, in many places, would not justify a call to   . Right. So, that’s been a big focus in recent years. In 2015, one video that got a lot of headlines was of a girl being arrested in South Carolina. A   officer pulled her out of her chair and dragged her across the floor before arresting her. The charge that she and her classmate [Niya Kenny] were arrested under was disturbing a school, which is a South Carolina law. A lot of folks argue that it was originally written to apply to people who came in from the outside and disrupted public schools but that it’s often applied to students. That law specifically limits things like obnoxious behavior. [Kenny] is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the disrupting a school law in South Carolina. In other states, folks argue that laws against disorderly conduct are applied pretty broadly and subjectively  —   both in schools and on the street and that, if you have any kind of an implicit bias, that’s where it will come into play. Interesting. Can you think of other states that have laws like this? It’s a little difficult to spell out because the laws have different names. But they’re pretty broadly spread throughout the country. Some states have done a better job of issuing guidance through their departments of education to help schools put boundaries around how those laws are applied. But in many states, the complaint is that, if things are too subjective and too broad, then there’s not enough consistency in how they’re applied. Where do we stand now on practices being used in schools to not only minimize arrests but suspensions too? People tend to think of arrests as a safety issue and suspensions as a discipline issue. But I think a lot of folks would tell you that this is all kind of on a continuum of how schools a.) deal with student behavior and b.) approach their climate. How do they support students and remedy their behavior so that it doesn’t continue if they do something wrong? There’s been a big push in recent years to explore how schools handle things like classroom removals  —   if there’s a way to reduce suspensions and expulsions. Rather than sending a student home for misbehavior, doing things like restorative practices. That means asking students to sit with their peers to discuss the Why behind their behavior and how it affected them and to find a way to stop doing it in the future. That is hard work for schools. It requires   from administrators and teachers. It requires a lot of training and a lot of thought and a lot of work. But some researchers argue that it’s a more effective way of ensuring that students behave better in the future and that discipline is fair in resolving these situations."
"Frauke Petry is a paradox. The petite    German chemist with a pixie cut is well known for being tough as nails, chewing out journalists and wresting control of the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party a couple of years after it was founded. But Petry looked a little lost as the AfD hosted last weekend’s summit of Europe’s populist stars next to the Rhine River in Koblenz. She shifted awkwardly onstage next to charismatic National Front leader Marine Le Pen, her   ally from France, who posed with Dutch isolationist phenomenon Geert Wilders as he snapped selfies on his smartphone. Petry’s party and its counterparts across Europe are seeing an unprecedented surge in support. Wilders’ Freedom Party is now polling ahead of its rivals in the Netherlands, where elections are scheduled in March. Le Pen has a shot at the French presidency a month later. AfD has managed to win seats in more than half of German state legislatures over the past couple of years and is expected to do the same in parliamentary elections this fall. That’s the most support any nationalist faction in Germany has received since World War II. Compared to the fiery oratory of Le Pen, who riled up the largely German audience at the summit with predictions of a populist toppling of the EU, Petry drew more polite applause with her speech that sounded rather like a history lecture on the declining state of Europe. She’s more relaxed and conversational when I meet her in Leipzig, arriving in jeans with her youngest child, Tobias, in tow. The elementary   boy is recovering from a cold and clings to her legs as she coaxes him to unpack his toys at a colleague’s desk and play. Petry tells me she married her   boyfriend, Marcus Pretzell, right before Christmas. He’s a member of the European Parliament and head of the   Westphalia AfD branch. The party recently announced that she’s pregnant with their first child, which is her fifth. Call it practicing what you preach: Petry believes Germans having more children is the way to solve the worker shortage and other problems resulting from her country’s aging population, rather than relying on immigration as the government does currently. ”It will be hard because you cannot force people to have children, obviously, and we do not want that anyway,” she says. But she’d like to see the government provide financial incentives to encourage German couples ”to have more children, to start having children earlier”  —   in their 20s, rather than in their 30s or later. As to why she thinks Muslim asylum seekers are a danger to Germany, Petry suggests reading Machiavelli. ”The principles of migration have always been the same,” she explains. ”It’s a question of period of time, process and numbers, and if migration population in the long run [outnumbers] the ethnic population of this country, the country will disappear, it will change dramatically. And that’s what we see when we talk about illegal migration today in Germany and Europe.” Petry claims to have no problem with Muslim immigrants who have assimilated into German society. But she completely rejects Chancellor Angela Merkel’s claim that Islam belongs to Germany. ”If you talk about the religious differences, we do have serious problems with Islam and it’s much easier to integrate someone from France, or from Poland, from Spain, from Britain or from wherever in Europe, into a European culture like the German culture than someone from a Middle East country,” she says. ”I think that’s obvious.” The fear of German extinction is something Petry and her AfD party have successfully used to rally support in local elections over the past couple of years. Martin Kroh of the German Economic Research Institute in Berlin says that is not how the controversial party started out. AfD was founded in 2013 by economists, business leaders and academics who opposed German bailouts of the Eurozone. Their criticism of Merkel and the EU resonated with many Germans who were fed up with their country footing the bill for the euro debt crisis. Even so, AfD failed to get enough votes to meet the 5 percent threshold required to enter the German parliament in 2014. The following year, Petry and her allies took over. ”The party changed from this moderate, economic Euroskepticism to more   populist statements and also   positions, and also being more conservative on family policies,” Kroh says. A Jan.   Jan. 23 poll by the German research firm INSA for the German newspaper Bild shows 14. 5 percent of German voters plan to cast ballots for Alternative for Germany in national elections this September. Many of the votes are shifting from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic   bloc. According to the poll, the bloc’s approval rating dropped to 32. 5 percent and if it keeps declining, Merkel will have a tough time forming a new coalition government. Her political allies are worried enough to have taken stances against migrants and the European Union that sound a lot like AfD’s positions. Petry smiles when I ask her about that. ”These ideas have already been there for quite a while, but they were called racist or xenophobic or something else,” she says. ”Politicians of all the other parties realize that all the   solutions up to now haven’t worked.” Still, Petry is pushing her party to tone it down, especially when it comes to  . The AfD is considering kicking out its Thuringia branch head, Bjoern Hoecke, for recently condemning the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. He told supporters in Dresden on Jan. 17: ”We Germans are the only people in the world who would plant a monument of shame in the heart of their capital.” Le Pen, Wilders and other European populist leaders say Petry should be the next German chancellor. But she isn’t prepared to address a run in our interview. ”Our party has to enter the German parliament, first of all,” she says. ”And I’m willing, and my party is willing, to change the political situation in Germany and in Europe. Anything else apart from that is way too early to discuss.” She’ll likely need a parliamentary majority to become chancellor because  —   like Wilders’ Dutch opponents  —   no mainstream German party is willing to partner with Petry or her AfD."
"Some say you have to have loved and lost to appreciate the beauty of the bolero. Since its inception in Cuba in the early 20th century, the music has been designed for thoughtful and emotional consideration of the joys and pains that come with loving someone so intensely, it becomes like a religion to adore that special someone (an actual bolero lyric). When the members of Richmond, Virginia’s Miramar first heard the music of Puerto Rican composer Sylvia Rexach, they were intrigued that she wasn’t as well known as other popular bolero writers. So they came up with an album’s worth of her songs to cover, and have been wowing audiences across the country with their exquisite renditions of her songs. When they pulled into NPR to play behind Bob Boilen’s desk, Miramar’s members made time stop with a performance that swept us off our feet, ably backed by friends of theirs from Richmond who played gorgeous string arrangements behind the band. So turn the lights down low, clear out the   carpet and find your dance partner for this one. Dedication To Sylvia Rexach is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) ”Sin Ti” ”Estatua” ”Urgancia” Rei Alvaresz (vocals, maracas) Laura Ann Singh (vocals) Marlysse Simmons Argandoña (piano, organ) Hector Barez (percussion) James Farmer (bass) Sebastian Cruz (guitar) Ellen Riccio (violin) Treesa Gild (violin) Kimberly Ryan (viola) Schuyler Slack (cello). Producers: Felix Contreras, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Nick Michael, Kara Frame, Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"You may remember Mary Johnson from a 2011 StoryCorps conversation with a man that could have easily been her enemy. She spoke with Oshea Israel, the man who murdered her son, Laramiun Byrd. Mary met Oshea while he was serving time in prison for the crime. After his release, they became close and sparked a remarkable relationship. ”My natural son is no longer here. I didn’t see him graduate. Now, you’re going to college,” she said to Oshea back then. ”I’ll have the opportunity to see you graduate. I didn’t see him get married. Hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to experience that with you.” ”Just to hear you say those things and to be in my life in the manner that which you are, is my motivation,” Oshea said. ”You still believe in me. And the fact that you can do it, despite how much pain I caused you, it’s amazing.” Since that interview she has been telling her story in local churches. She also fell in love and in 2015, married a man named Ed Roy. He had served time in prison, and later, also lost a son, Mandel. ”We met when my first born and my one and only son was murdered,” Ed tells Mary in a recent StoryCorps conversation. ”And a couple of my daughters had asked me to go to the church to hear you speak.” He says he wasn’t ready to forgive, but he was at a loss. ”Like I shared with you, I thought God took my boy and was punishing me for my own crimes. I had joined the gangs early and pulled my first armed robbery at 11 years old. With you being there, I saw hope. You took me under your wing. That’s why I called you my angel,” he says. Just before they got married, Ed says he had a dream. ”Your son was saying, ’Yeah, Mom! Alright!’ You know, ’Right on!’ And my son was saying, ’Yeah, Dad! ’Bout time you got it right!’ Ed says. Oshea served as a groomsman at their wedding. ”He is my spiritual son,” Mary says. The anniversary of Laramiun’s murder is Feb. 12. ”That empty hole’s always going to be there in our hearts,” Ed says. ”But I feel like when we together and we able to listen to one another’s heartbeats. It says a lot.” ”I’m thankful, I really am,” Mary says. ”You’re a good man.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jasmyn Belcher Morris and Liyna Anwar. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"As the toll of the opioid epidemic grows, scores of doctors have lost their licenses and some have gone to prison. Pharmacies are being sued and shuttered. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are under investigation and face new rules from regulators. But penalties against companies that serve as middlemen between drug companies and pharmacies have been relatively scarce  —   until recently. In the past month, two major drug distributors, also known as wholesalers, have formally agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle claims that they failed to report suspicious orders for controlled substances to the Drug Enforcement Administration, as required by law. McKesson Corp. the largest such company in the U. S. agreed Jan. 17 to pay a $150 million fine. And in late December, Cardinal Health reached a $44 million settlement with the federal government. That’s on top of another $20 million that Cardinal Health agreed this month to pay the state of West Virginia, which has been among the hardest hit by opioid overdoses. Other distributors have also agreed to pay smaller amounts to West Virginia within the past few months. AmerisourceBergen, for instance, will pay $16 million. ”Have the distributors gotten the message? I would hope so,” said Frank Younker, who worked at the DEA for 30 years and retired as a supervisor in its Cincinnati field office in 2014. ”The distributors are important. They’re like the quarterback. They distribute the ball. . ..There’s plenty of blame to go around.” The death toll from drug overdoses topped 52, 000 in 2015, including 33, 000 involving an opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the epidemic began with prescription pills, it is now being driven largely by heroin and various synthetic opioids. The fines, some of which had been in the works for years, come as news organizations have raised questions about the significant role distributors have played by failing to stop or report pharmacies that appeared to be dispensing more pills than seemed reasonable. The Charleston   reported in December how drug companies shipped nearly 9 million hydrocodone pills over two years to one pharmacy in the town of Kermit, W. Va. population 392. All told, the newspaper reported, drug wholesalers distributed 780 million pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone in the state over six years. ”The unfettered shipments amount to 433 pain pills for every man, woman and child in West Virginia,” the story said. The Washington Post reported in October how DEA leadership delayed and blocked enforcement actions as the overdose epidemic grew. Civil case filings against distributors, manufacturers, pharmacies and doctors dropped from 131 in fiscal 2011 to 40 in fiscal 2014, the Post reported. Immediate suspension orders (the toughest sanction the DEA has) fell from 65 to 9. Later, the Post reported why that may have been: The drug industry had hired dozens of officials from the DEA, leading some current and former officials to ask whether the industry sought to hire away those who presented ”the biggest headaches for them.” In response to written questions for this story, the DEA said it has always held distributors ”accountable for preventing the diversion of controlled and abused prescription drugs, including the opioid painkillers.” Asked if its recent fines were too little, too late, the agency replied, ”We don’t think so. We hope large fines such as this one [against McKesson] will get the attention of the companies’ leaders and stockholders and prompt them to be responsible corporate citizens, because people are dying as a result of the diversion of the opioid drugs they sell, and that can’t continue.” In statements released when the distributors finalized their settlements, the companies said they have improved their performance in recent years. McKesson noted that the settlement covers reporting practices dating back to 2009. ”Since 2013, McKesson has implemented significant changes to its monitoring and reporting processes,” the company said in a statement. As part of the settlement, the DEA will suspend the registrations of four of McKesson’s distribution centers, on a staggered basis, blunting the effect of the punishment. ”Pharmaceutical distributors play an important role in identifying and combating prescription drug diversion and abuse,” John H. Hammergren, chairman and chief executive officer, said in the statement. ”McKesson, as one of the nation’s largest distributors, takes our role seriously.” The DEA had previously taken action against McKesson in 2008 for failing to report suspicious orders, a factor cited in the latest fine. Cardinal Health’s fine was the last aspect of a 2012 settlement with the DEA, which included a   suspension of its Lakeland, Fla. distribution center. ”These agreements allow us to move forward and continue to focus on working with all participants in addressing the epidemic of prescription drug abuse,” Craig Morford, its chief legal and compliance officer, said in a statement last month. Federal prosecutors who worked on the McKesson case said that distributors play an important role in the overall system in which controlled substances get distributed. ”What Congress envisioned is that there would be gatekeepers along the way in this closed system,” said Kurt Didier, an assistant U. S. attorney in Sacramento, in an interview. ”It starts with the physician writing the prescription and the pharmacist filling the prescription. In between, you have entities like the distributors. ”In this overall scheme, a distributor is obligated to report to DEA prescriptions or orders that it views are suspicious,” Didier said. The agencies regulating the industry have had their own problems. The   reported that the West Virginia pharmacy board didn’t pay much attention to its own rules requiring that wholesalers report such orders. The board also had not examined reports from distributors regarding suspicious orders by pharmacies, nor had it shared those with law enforcement. For its part, the DEA also has been faulted several times by the Government Accountability Office for, among other things, how it sets annual quotas for the amount of controlled substances that can be produced, the information and guidance it provides to the entities it regulates, and how it uses confidential informants. Jim Geldhof, who retired in January 2016 after more than 40 years with the DEA, most recently as a manager in the Detroit field office, said the recent fines are important, but he wonders if they will make any difference. ”It’s going to be pretty hard to undo the damage that’s been done,” said Geldhof. ”Do they get it? I don’t know. I don’t have a real lot of faith in industry frankly.” ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom based in New York. You can follow Charles Ornstein on Twitter: @charlesornstein."
"When the Oregon Shakespeare Festival asked playwright Lisa Loomer if she’d be interested in writing a play about Roe v. Wade, she was understandably skeptical. The 1973 Supreme Court decision, which legalized a woman’s right to an abortion, marked a historic moment, but more than 40 years later the issue is far from settled. Loomer says she wasn’t sure Roe v. Wade would make good theater, so she started reading about key players on both sides of the issue. She says, ”That, for me, was the story of the divide in American culture. I thought [Roe v. Wade] was a great prism for looking at that divide.” But Loomer knew her play needed to be  . She says, ”I wanted people to feel, as they watched the play, that their point of view was represented, if nothing else because that helps people be more open and willing to hear another point of view.” The result, Roe, is currently playing at Arena Stage in Washington, D. C. It opens by introducing its two main characters: Norma McCorvey, aka ”Jane Roe,” the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, and Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued the Roe side of the case. McCorvey was a        who, in 1969, found herself poor and pregnant for a third time. The play shows her pleading with her doctor to give her an abortion. She tells him she tried to get it done illegally, but the place she went to ”looked like a ghost town, like somebody’d moved out of there real fast. There was blood all over the floors, roaches, sheets like filthy rags.” Her doctor’s response: ”Maybe you should have thought about consequences before you got pregnant for a third time.” Weddington was also in her 20s, but she was a very different person. The daughter of a Methodist minister was one of only 40 women at her Texas law school of 1, 600 students. As it happened, she already knew a lot about abortion: She’d had one in Mexico, something she didn’t reveal until years later. In 1970, Weddington and another young female attorney filed a suit in Texas that challenged the state law on behalf of all Texas women seeking an abortion. The Supreme Court heard the case in 1971, and the play puts the audience in the middle of the action. In Roe, the lawyers make their arguments facing the audience, and audio of the real justices’ responses (acquired from Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute) plays from the back of the theater. Loomer says, ”I thought it would be more dramatic than actors onstage, and more daunting for Sarah [Weddington] to face the voices of the real judges.” The case was reargued in 1972, and the Supreme Court didn’t rule in favor of Roe until 1973  —   far too late for McCorvey to get an abortion. But the play doesn’t stop there  —   it goes on to explore the personal and public battles that ensued. Weddington joined the Texas House of Representatives and continued to speak out for a woman’s right to choose McCorvey worked in abortion clinics, but then reversed her position on the issue and became involved in the   rights organization Operation Rescue. In one scene, an Operation Rescue activist named Ronda tries to talk a woman out of getting an abortion. She explains that when she got pregnant with her daughter, her fiancé wanted her to abort. She says, ”I was in my doctor’s office and I happened to see a picture in one of those pamphlets they give you. I saw the precious little hands and feet. And no, I may not be a scientist or a medical person, but I have eyes just like you do, and no one, no one could tell me that this was a fetus and not a human being.” Loomer’s play is full of nuance and complexity. When one character’s account doesn’t line up with another’s, the characters break the fourth wall to explain the discrepancy. No one is portrayed as flawless or a hero everyone is human. And that’s what theater is for, Loomer says. ”I think of the theater as a place where we come together, sit together in the dark, to contemplate an issue from a very, very human point of view.”  Roe may be a history play (it’s part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s groundbreaking series American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle) but, according to Loomer, so much of what happens in it is still happening right now."
"Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts during a routine test on the launchpad. The accident shocked NASA as the agency was rushing to meet President Kennedy’s 1961 challenge to have men on the moon by the end of the decade. The test was a dress rehearsal for the Apollo 1 crew  —   Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The ultimate goal was to check out the command module, NASA’s first   spacecraft that would take astronauts to the moon. The crew was rehearsing the real launch, which was about a month away. They were suited up and in the capsule running through checklists and testing equipment. But something sparked in the   environment. Within seconds, the capsule filled with flames, smoke and toxic gases. NASA Engineer John Tribe was working in the control room when it happened. ”It was incomprehensible to us how on earth we could have a fire in the cockpit,” Tribe says. The astronauts were killed almost instantly. The entire incident lasted less than five minutes. ”We had imagined the worst, we’d hoped for the best, it was not to be, ”Tribe said. ”We’d lost three of our team.” The accident halted the Apollo program as NASA scrambled to figure out what went wrong. Reporter George Alexander was one of only three journalists allowed to visit the capsule after the fire. ”What burned? I’d have to say just about everything that was in there except for these few odd bits and pieces,” Alexander said. ”Like a page which had only its edges slightly browned. This bit of parachute harness. But everything else burned.” The capsule was pressurized with 100 percent oxygen. In that environment, something not considered a fire hazard was extremely combustible. The hatch of the capsule opened inward, making it difficult for the crew to open it. After the accident, there were hundreds of significant changes to the capsule and safety procedures. The redesigned capsules would use a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, reducing the fire risk. And a new hatch was designed that could be opened in just five seconds. Only 21 months later, NASA sent humans back into space aboard Apollo 7. And less than a year after that, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed Apollo 11 on the moon. Astronaut Michael Collins was also on that mission. He says if the fire on Apollo 1 hadn’t happened, it’s likely a similar accident would have occurred in space  —   and that could have led to the program’s cancellation. ”Without it, very likely, we would have not landed on the moon as the president had wished by the end of the decade,” Collins says. The successes of the Apollo lunar program overshadowed the loss of the crew. For 50 years, NASA kept the Apollo 1 command module locked up  —   until now. Beginning Friday, the hatch from the burned capsule will be put on public display at the Kennedy Space Center as a tribute to the sacrifices of Grissom, White and Chaffee."
"Updated at 5:40 a. m. ET Sunday, Federal Judge Ann Donnelly in Brooklyn, N. Y. granted a request by the American Civil Liberties Union and issued a stay late Saturday on the deportations of valid visa holders after they have landed at a U. S. airport. The ruling by Donnelly temporarily blocks President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration signed Friday. According to NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang: ”In her order, Judge Ann Donnelly cited ”substantial and irreparable injury to refugees,   and other individuals” from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen, as well as a strong likelihood that deporting these individuals would violate ”their rights to Due Process and Equal Protection guaranteed by the United States Constitution.” The stay will last until a court hearing is held on the merits of this case brought by the ACLU and other legal organizations. It applies to ”all people stranded in U. S. airports,” according to a statement by the ACLU. They say the stay will affect 100 to 200 people detained at U. S. airports or in transit. The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement a few hours later, saying it ”will continue to enforce all of the president’s Executive Orders in a manner that ensures the safety and security of the American people.” The department continued: ”The president’s Executive Orders remain in place —  prohibited travel will remain prohibited, and the U. S. government retains its right to revoke visas at any time if required for national security or public safety. The president’s Executive Order affects a minor portion of international travelers, and is a first step towards reestablishing control over America’s borders and national security.” In response to the order, in Chicago, all remaining detainees were freed after being detained by Customs and Border Protection agents at Chicago O’Hare International Airport Saturday. At least 16 people were detained most had legal status and green cards, NPR’s David Schaper reports. In Virginia Saturday night, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a temporary restraining order affecting 63 people detained at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D. C. It ordered authorities to ”permit lawyers access to all legal permanent residents being detained” at Dulles, and said authorities are ”forbidden from removing” the permanent residents for seven days. Also Saturday, Judge Thomas S. Zilly of the U. S. District Court of the Western District of Washington at Seattle granted an emergency stay of removal for two people, which orders authorities not to remove them from the country pending a hearing later this week. Reuters reported that a senior Homeland Security official said roughly 375 travelers were affected by the order: One hundred and nine in transit to the United States were denied entry into the country and another 173 people were stopped by airlines from boarding an aircraft to the United States. The original story continues below: President Trump’s executive order on immigration is sending shockwaves across the U. S. and the globe. Just one day after he enacted a ban on the admittance of all refugees to the United States, temporarily freezing immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries, confusion, chaos and fear are roiling international airports. Refugees are being barred from boarding U. S.  flights. Immigrants are being detained at U. S. airports. Protests are rising up at JFK and Los Angeles airports. Thousands of leading academics have signed a petition denouncing Trump’s actions. And top technology companies whose staff have been affected, are criticizing the move by the president. To cement the exigency of this move, on Saturday afternoon the State Department issued the following statement. ”Urgent Notice: Executive Order on Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals, JANUARY 27, 2017, Urgent Notice Per the Executive Order on Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals signed on January 27, 2017, visa issuance to nationals of the countries of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen has been suspended effective immediately until further notification. If you are a citizen of one of these countries, please do not schedule a visa appointment or pay any visa fees at this time. If you already have an appointment scheduled, please DO NOT ATTEND. You will not be permitted entry to the  . We will announce any other changes affecting travelers to the United States as soon as that information is available.” Earlier in the day, several Iraqi refugees in Cairo, who had been cleared for resettlement in the U. S. were blocked from boarding their flight to New York City. And in Iraq, NPR’s Jane Arraf reported that ”members of Yazidi minority, one of the biggest victims of ISIS, were prevented from boarding despite having visas.” Green card holders  —   legal permanent residents of the U. S.  —   are also included in the ban, according to a senior Trump administration official. The official says they will need a    waiver in order to return to the U. S. if they are currently outside the country. Almost 200 Google employees affected, NPR’s Aarti Shahani told our Newscast that the CEOs of leading technology companies are taking a stand. ”Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to staff on Friday that the executive order affects at least 187 of his employees and that it’s, quote, ”painful to see the personal cost” of this move by the president. He said the company is ”upset” about any immigration restrictions that prevent ”great talent” from coming to the U. S. ”Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his facebook page that ”We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat.” ”Travis Kalanick, chief of Uber, wrote in an email to his staff (and posted on Facebook) that about a dozen employees were affected, and that this ban will impact many innocent people. He said it’s an issue he plans to raise this Friday  —   when he goes to Washington. He is part of President Trump’s business advisory group.” Expedia, Inc. a U. S. company that owns and operates several global travel brands, also issued a statement in response to Trump’s order. In an email sent to NPR from its director of policy communications, Philip J. Minardi he noted that CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said: ”Ours is a nation of immigrants. They are at our roots they are our soul. The President jeopardized that with the stroke of a pen. As Expedia, Inc. we will do everything we can to protect and help our employees and travelers. That’s our job. Hopefully our government can do its job thoughtfully and with respect for our immigrant past.” Detained at airports, At major U. S. airports, NPR’s Kirk Siegler reports international refugee assistance groups are sending attorneys and translators to support new arrivals who are being detained. Two Iraqi men were held at Kennedy Airport in New York on Saturday. The ACLU and other legal organizations filed a writ of habeas corpus for the two men Saturday in an attempt to obtain their clients’ release. One of those men, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was later released from detention on Saturday, U. S. Rep. Jerry Nadler tweeted. Both Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi had been granted U. S. visas after the federal government ”deemed both Petitioners not to pose threats to the United States,” the court filing reads. The filing says both men are being held at the airport by Customs and Border Protection ”solely pursuant to an executive order issued” Friday. ACLU attorney Cecilia Wang tells NPR that Darweesh had arrived with his wife and child, but that he was held behind as his family was permitted to proceed. For his part, Alshawi’s wife and child live in Houston with green cards, Wang says. Brandon Friedman, a U. S. Army veteran and former Obama administration official, explains to NPR’s Scott Simon that Darweesh worked with him as a translator during his service in Iraq. Darweesh was ”approved for a special immigrant visa, given for his time and service to the U. S. government,” Friedman says. Late Friday, Friedman began tweeting about his opposition to Trump’s order, as well as a photo showing a pair of men he said helped his team and were ”no longer welcome in the U. S.” ”Hameed was one of the first people to sign up to work with us. He helped interpret, he hooked us up with things that we needed and helped us generally get through the communities that we were operating in in Iraq,” Friedman tells Simon. ”And he put his life on the line. He risked his family’s life to do that.” In a joint statement, Reps. Nadler and Nydia Velazquez say they are continuing to work for the release of 11 other people still held at the airport in New York. News of both sets of detainments follows on the heels of Trump’s Friday order, which also halted all refugee admission to the U. S. Trump’s freeze on immigration applies not only to people from Iraq and Yemen, but also Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. ”Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter our country,” the executive order reads. Order shuts door to all refugees, NPR’s Scott Horsley explains further: ”The order shuts the door to all refugees for four months and suspends entry of Syrian refugees indefinitely. It shrinks the overall refugee program by more than half. Trump told a Christian broadcaster that preference will be given to Christian refugees from the Middle East.” Colleges and universities around the U. S. have been advising students from the seven listed countries  —   including lawful permanent residents  —   not to leave the U. S. until there is further clarity on the new rules. Students at Princeton, Stanford and Chapman University, among others. reported letters from their respective schools recommending caution. The Chronicle of Higher Education noted one Iranian student in Yale’s Ph. D. program who says he may be stranded after leaving the U. S. for a research trip. As NPR’s Greg Myre reports, Trump’s executive order ”doesn’t include any countries from which radicalized Muslims have actually killed Americans in the U. S. since Sept. 11, 2001.” Greg notes that the countries of origin of radicalized Muslims who have killed Americans on U. S. soil, beginning on Sept. 11, are instead Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Russia, United Arab Emirates and Pakistan."
"Even as President Trump takes steps to restrict visitors from some   countries, he and his family continue to do business in some of the others. Ethics experts question whether that might indicate conflicts between Trump’s business interests and his role as U. S. president. The executive action, ”Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States,” targets seven nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Trump has no business interests in those countries. One other thing they have in common, as NPR’s Greg Myre writes: ”No Muslim extremist from any of these places has carried out a fatal attack in the U. S. in more than two decades.” The 19 terrorists in the Sept. 11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, Myre points out. They are among the   countries not affected by Trump’s immigration freeze, but where Trump does business. He has significant commercial interests in Turkey and Azerbaijan, is developing properties in Indonesia and Dubai, and has formed companies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. His daughter Ivanka said in 2015 that the company was looking at ”multiple opportunities in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Saudi Arabia  —   the four areas where we are seeing the most interest.” Critics said it appears that Trump is picking favorites, overlooking terrorist links in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey that have their own history of terrorism. And there appear to be    questions, which could raise legal and constitutional concerns for the Trump White House. Norman Eisen, a former ethics adviser to President Obama and a current fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told NPR in an interview: ”I don’t believe that our Constitution allows the president to order State Department and other U. S. government employees to discriminate between otherwise identical people, favoring those from countries he likes because they give him unconstitutional foreign emoluments, and punishing those from other countries that do not pay such personal and illegal tribute to him.” Emoluments are gifts. A provision of the U. S. Constitution, called the emoluments clause, prohibits U. S. officials from taking gifts of value from foreign officials or governments. Eisen said of Trump: ”Normally he would, of course, have freer rein legally in these foreign policy, immigration and refugee matters, but his open and notorious violation of the Constitution changes that. This is the corrupt misconduct of a medieval potentate, not an American president.” Speaking with NPR Friday, Eisen said the executive action may lead to lawsuits, for example by American citizens whose family members are now barred from joining them in this country. ”These decisions about who to let in and not to let into the United States can now be challenged, because there’s an unconstitutional basis for the president’s decision,” he said. The Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, hit the same point harder, saying Trump was ”  U. S. foreign policy”: One might think that Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the two countries that nearly all the   hijackers came from  —   and which are currently known to be backing ISIS and other terrorists, in Saudi Arabia’s case, and facing serious terror attacks on their own soil largely in response to government repression, in Egypt’s  —   would be included in Trump’s twisted analysis as potential sources of terrorism. But no, those countries were ignored. Conflicts of interest? Nah, just a coincidence."
"On Friday, an executive order was released that indicated the United States is banning the entry of Syrian refugees and temporarily suspending immigration for anyone from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. To me, this policy looks to be based on nothing but prejudice against Muslims. This has happened before. In 1939, the United States refused entry to another group of refugees: Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. Refugees are by definition the most vulnerable people among us. Families don’t choose to sacrifice everything they have and leave their homes unless their homes become like the mouth of a shark. Scapegoating people who are fleeing for their lives is an inhumanity that no person with a heart should be able to defend. Here is how Afghanistan, my family’s home for a thousand years, became like the mouth of a shark. In 1979, a decade of   ”cooperation” turned into a   occupation. Dissent was not tolerated. Tens of thousands of people  —   teachers, laborers, farmers, preachers and students  —   were rounded up and tortured in a newly completed prison,    outside Kabul.   government officials who did not immediately pledge allegiance to the new,   regime were rounded up, too. My grandfather, Gen. Ghulam Farooq Khan, was one of them. From 1964 to 1975, he had served as Afghanistan’s equivalent of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of the armed forces, before becoming president of Afghanistan’s war college. The Soviets twice imprisoned him, for months at a time, at one of their secret prisons. They kept him in solitary confinement, starved him, deprived him of his medication and tortured him via electroshock. Despite their best attempts at coercing him, he refused their offer to make him king if he publicly supported the occupation of Afghanistan. Every morning, my aunt would go to the    prison and wait with a pair of fresh clothes and his heart medication in the hopes that the guards might give it to him. They never did. Every evening, she would return to see if he would be among the prisoners who were released that day. Every night, my family ate dinner in silence, not knowing if his body would be delivered to their door. Slowly, other family members began to disappear as well: generals, doctors, writers. We later learned they were kept in the same prison. Some of them even communicated with each other. Some of them never made it out. One relative began an   newsletter that another aunt would surreptitiously throw into people’s backyards at night. The Soviets began to call my aunt ”The Scorpion.” My uncles had to go into hiding. My grandmother couldn’t leave the house. Shortly before I was born, after my grandfather had been released from prison a second time, he died of a heart attack. My grandfather’s death in 1984 was a turning point. His rank in the government certainly had made our family a target for the Soviets  —   but it also meant that those loyal to the former government respected my grandfather and tried to help our family as an act of solidarity. Without that protection, my family became even more vulnerable. By 1988, members of our extended family had already begun to leave the only country they ever knew. It was simple: There was blood in the water and it was only attracting more sharks. The regime began to raid our homes, looking for contraband that could prove we were spreading insurrection. To fool them, my mother would hide my grandfather’s hunting rifles and military paraphernalia in the large barrels of rice we kept in our pantries. On the nightly news, there were rumors of air raids. My family was told that homes with electricity would be targeted because planes could spot them in the night sky. I think of Aleppo when I remember my grandmother sewing heavy black curtains to hang on the windows lest the light betray us. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, mujahideen factions tried to fill the vacuum the Soviets left. It was the beginning of Afghanistan’s descent into civil war, which led later to the arrival of the Taliban, who would bring with them a way of life no one in my family would recognize as Islam. It was clear we had been lucky enough to make it this long, but now we had to leave. I remember those last days before we left in 1990. I was five, but when you see your family trying to say goodbye to their world and prepare for a new one, that’s something you never forget. Mujahideen were launching rocket attacks in our city. I remember riding in my father’s Volkswagen that was the same color as that special blue I’ve only seen in Kabul skies, when a rocket flew past my head. I remember looking for loose tiles in our bathroom floor with my aunt. She was holding the only valuables our family had left, a photo album of pictures of my grandfather. They had sold everything else to get money for the plane tickets out of Kabul, the forged exit papers that would fool the authorities into letting us leave and bribes for the smugglers. She told me that she wanted to find a safe place to hide the photos, somewhere a thief wouldn’t look. I remember her saying when it’s safe again, when we return, at least we will know no one will have thought to look under the bathroom floor. She was convinced we’d come back in a month, maybe a year at most. I remember my father ripping open my mother’s coats to replace the shoulder pads with   cash that we would need along the journey. Finally, we left. I can’t properly explain the connection my family has to that land. ”Home” isn’t the right word. What’s the word for a land that has your blood in its soil and whose soil is the flesh that makes up your body? Whatever that word is, that is what we were forced to leave. We didn’t know where we were going. We weren’t looking for a ”better life,” we were just looking for life. Our journey out of Afghanistan took us to India, Pakistan, China. Finally, we boarded a plane from Tokyo to San Francisco. We landed at SFO  —   my mother, my father, my grandmother and me. In the airport, we claimed asylum and were brought before a judge that same day. I was separated from my parents because each of us had to be interviewed separately. I remember looking at the judge and saying the only English word I knew: ”Water.” He granted us asylum. My parents and I were naturalized and became citizens in 2000. But today’s refugees will not be so lucky. Why? Because my family was lucky enough to seek refuge in a small window of time dominated by a fear of the Communist Party, not a global religion of 1. 6 billion people. Because some are afraid that the Syrian or Yemeni or Libyan or Sudanese or Iranian or Iraqi family fleeing conflict or persecution is instead coming to take our jobs or threaten our way of life. I’m an American, and that is not my morality. I hope it isn’t yours, either. History will judge us. Bilal Askaryar helps manage the Turquoise Mountain: Artists Transforming Afghanistan exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries. He holds a master’s degree from the American University School of International Service. He arrived in the United States as a refugee fleeing the war in Afghanistan when he was 5 years old."
"President Trump’s temporary ban on the admission of refugees is not going over well with the churches and religious organizations that handle most refugee resettlements in the United States. ”The faith groups are going to kick and scream and object to every aspect of this disgusting, vile executive order,” says Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, a Jewish refugee society. ”[It] makes America out to be something that it is not. We are a country that welcomes refugees.” Of the nine agencies that resettle refugees in the United States, six are   groups. ”Each one of us brings together a network of communities, of social service agencies, of churches, of synagogues that are working on welcoming refugees to our communities,” Hetfield says. ”It’s so much better for refugees to be welcomed by members of a faith group than by government bureaucrats.” For Jewish and Christian groups, the commitment to help refugees reflects their understanding of God’s commandments. Throughout the Hebrew Bible  —   the Old Testament to Christians  —   the Israelites are reminded that they were themselves aliens once, in the land of Egypt. The book of Leviticus, for example, dictates: ”The alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you you shall love the alien as yourself.” Such guidance continues in the New Testament: The book of Matthew quotes Jesus as telling his followers, ”I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing.” Such passages have inspired the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which has resettled a   refugees and migrants since its founding in 1939. ”It is deeply ingrained in our faith and our understanding of the Bible that we’re called to welcome the stranger and love and serve our neighbors,” says LIRS President Linda Hartke. ”Not the neighbors that we choose, but the neighbors that God gives to us.” The idea of prioritizing Christian refugees, as President Trump says he wants, does not come from Hartke’s church or from other Christian groups. The news that Trump wants to close the door to refugees, especially from Syria, has alarmed those Lutheran congregations that were prepared to accommodate refugees. ”My phone is ringing off the hook,” Hartke says, ”from people in local churches who want to know when they can receive a refugee family. Those are hard calls to take  —   to have to tell people that the president’s decisions will likely mean that there won’t be refugees that they can be welcoming in the months and perhaps years ahead.” Hartke says the faith groups active in refugee resettlement have been ”strategizing” in recent days over how to respond to the president’s executive action. Their views vary. ”It’s important that we not see this as a partisan issue,” says Sean Callahan, president of Catholic Relief Services. ”Some people may see this as challenging the president, but he got elected on the basis of statements [about refugees] that he made. What we need to do is clarify what those promises actually mean. We have found that the refugees who have come to the United States have been thoroughly vetted. . .. They have been placed in homes, and actually it’s been an enriching experience as opposed to a threat. We need to do a better job of getting these stories out.” Trump’s decision to halt the refugee flow has more support among evangelicals  —   most of whom voted for him  —   but it is not exactly a blanket endorsement. The executive action on refugees came as thousands of people were in Washington for what   opponents call the annual March for Life rally. Several speakers at an Evangelicals for Life conference, however, emphasized that their broader concern was the promotion of human dignity. ”If [the refugee ban] is a temporary pause to create a screening process that helps find people who are trying to get in to do harm to this country, I understand that,” says Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family. ”But I would also support a robust program to   immigration, because that’s what this country is built upon, and it’s a great Christian tradition to bring people who are hurting.” Trump’s executive action did get wholehearted support from Franklin Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham. Graham, who participated in Trump’s inauguration, told the Huffington Post that a suspension of the refugee program and sharp limitations on immigration from some   countries did not strike him as challenging God’s commandments. ”That’s not a Bible issue,” Graham said."
"President Trump signed a record number of executive orders and presidential memoranda his first week in office  —   a total of 14 compared to President Obama’s 13. But something is noticeably absent from those directives  —   ethics for the executive branch. Update, 5:32 p. m. Jan. 28: Today, President Trump signed an executive order with ethics guidelines for the executive branch. We don’t yet have the language of the proposal, but the White House says it contains a   ban on lobbying after leaving the administration, and a lifetime ban on lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. When we get the legal language, we’ll write a separate story comparing it to similar actions from past presidents. (The original story continues below.) Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama all took executive action their first week in office to send a signal to the American public about their commitment to ethics. President Bush signed a presidential memorandum about the standards of ethical conduct, including no conflicts of interest, no solicitations of gifts and a reminder of laws that say senior government employees can’t immediately lobby the agencies they worked for. President Clinton’s first executive order, signed Jan. 20, 1993, said senior executive branch employees couldn’t lobby their former agencies for five years. It also said that they couldn’t engage in activity on behalf of a foreign government or political party  —   ever. Sound familiar? It’s very similar to Donald Trump’s calls on the campaign trail to ”drain the swamp.” His proposal was almost exactly the same as President Clinton’s order  —   a lifetime ban on executive officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government and a   ban on those officials becoming lobbyists upon leaving the administration. But now a week into his presidency, Trump still hasn’t made his   policies official. Although his transition team did announce that people serving in the administration would have to sign a strict ethics pledge, it’s not clear whether that has happened. When asked whether President Trump had plans to sign an executive order on executive branch ethics, an administration spokeswoman said she had nothing to announce at this time. Instead, Trump’s directives focus on showing that he’s keeping his other campaign pledges. He signed a memorandum withdrawing the United States from the   Partnership, as well as directives to undermine the Affordable Care Act, temporarily halt refugee resettlement in the United States, revive the Keystone XL Pipeline, and build a wall on the U. S.  border. According to Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration at Portland State University and author of By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action, the language in Trump’s directives has been more bold than is typical. ”If you look at that language, right after the first paragraph or so, when it gets into the policy stuff, you can see that a lot of it is right out of the campaign,” he says. Cooper also says that executive actions are to be expected in the early days of an administration. ”In terms of scope and content, the first few things he’s done are pretty dramatic. In some of the previous administrations, we’ve seen a lot of symbolic things happen right away, responses to campaign promises, but in this case, clearly, he’s going after some of the most controversial issues.” But just because a president signs an order on something he pledged during the campaign, doesn’t mean it will become a reality. President Obama, for example, never was able to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, despite signing an order to do so his first week. And as for those ethics directives, presidents can grant and have granted waivers."
"The U. S. Justice Department said it has ”no comment” on whether its Office of Legal Counsel has reviewed any of President Trump’s executive orders, which have met with criticism this week because of vague language and possible conflicts with legal precedents. The department’s own website says: ”All executive orders and proclamations proposed to be issued by the President are reviewed by the Office of Legal Counsel for form and legality, as are various other matters that require the President’s formal approval.” The OLC, a small but powerful unit within Justice, advises the executive branch on constitutional questions and the limits of executive power. It is frequently called upon to decide complex problems, especially when two different agencies are in conflict. During the George W. Bush years, it drew criticism for opinions that paved the way for harsh detainee interrogation tactics. During the Obama administration, the office blessed the legality of weaponized drone strikes against an American citizen overseas. Earlier this month, a career lawyer in the office concluded that Trump’s hiring of    Jared Kushner for a top post in the White House did not violate federal   law. The prospect that administration lawyers are not reviewing a series of executive orders flowing out of the White House in its first week is raising eyebrows in legal circles. ”OLC is supposed to review all executive orders for legality before they are issued,” Matthew Miller, a former spokesman for the Obama Justice Department, pointed out on Twitter in response to this reporter. ”Longstanding practice under admins of both parties.” In fact, Miller said, under a   federal rule, the president is supposed to submit proposed executive orders and proclamations to both the Office of Management and Budget and the Attorney General, who reviews the materials for both ”form and legality.” The White House in years past has at times bypassed the OLC altogether on sensitive matters of national security or has overruled informal, oral advice from lawyers there. For instance, in 2011, the Obama White House rejected the judgment of Justice Department and Pentagon officials and decided it had the authority to continue military operations in Libya without seeking approval from Congress. Legal scholars and veterans of the OLC said the ultimate legal power resides with the president himself. And, they said, at times during a transition to a new administration, the coordination between the Justice Department and the White House on issues of law and policy can take time to mature. Still, Walter Dellinger, who headed the OLC during the Clinton administration, said it’s ”essential that any order issued by the President be reviewed for lawfulness by the career lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel. That is not a task that can be left to White House staff if we are going to be a nation of laws.” Officials at the Constitutional Accountability Center, a   public interest law firm and think tank, said Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department, Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, should answer questions about whether he’ll ”commit to requiring OLC to perform its   role of reviewing such orders in the future.”"
"Opponents of abortion rights are more likely to be Republican than Democratic. And Donald Trump was the   rights presidential candidate in the 2016 election. But that doesn’t mean the 2017 March For Life on Friday was exactly a Trump rally. The red Make America Great Again hats that speckled the crowd at Trump’s inauguration last week were few and far between, and marchers ranged from enthusiastic Trump supporters to people who fear what his presidency might mean  —   despite his opposition to abortion. Multiple attendees said the rally was not about politics. Rather, they said, it’s about one thing only. Abortion is the top voting issue for Sue Thayer, 57, who runs what she described as a ”  pregnancy center” in Storm Lake, Iowa. She’s an independent, and for her, she said, the issue transcends party. She spoke of meeting members of the Democrats for Life at a local hotel. ”And I was like, ’Oh, we know there’s two of you,’” she said, hastening to add, ”That’s a joke.” For her, party is far less of a priority than abortion. She said she told a recent Democratic Party caller to her house that she’d happily donate to any candidates opposed to abortion rights the party might have. ”There aren’t very many [Democrats],” she said. ”So typically my first issue in voting is, are they  ? But typically that lines up with the Republican Party. I vote based on abortion.” Another   quickly shut down NPR’s questions when we asked her about her political party. ”I would rather not even talk about that,” said Mary Lou McGrath, a    massage therapist from Pawling, N. Y. ”I really am here because not, ’Why not?’ More like, ’Why? Why wouldn’t I stand for life over death?’ So that’s really why I’m here today.” She added, ”It totally transcends politics. I really hate politics.” The crowd was not entirely apolitical. Make America Great Again hats and Trump scarves and winter hats were in the mix, but finding them required some searching. Vice President Mike Pence and Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway represented the White House, addressing the rally crowd. But the attendees weren’t all sold on Trump’s   credentials. His past wavering on the issue made some nervous. ”I’m praying for him that it’s not just a matter of expediency,” said Father Don Bedore, a Catholic priest from Kansas. ”And the future will tell. I mean, it’s hard to look into another person’s heart and see what’s there.” Craig Eller, a    government worker from Chesapeake, Va. who said he considers himself a conservative, said of Trump’s abortion positions, ”Yes, of course it concerned me during the election, and I’m just going to wait and see. I support anyone who supports life. I don’t know what’s in Donald Trump’s mind, but I know that I believe that a child in the womb is a member of the human family, and I’m going to do what I can to make other people, help them recognize that as well.” Not that everyone in the crowd shared that kind of doubtfulness. For many   opponents, a Trump presidency, combined with a   Congress and a Supreme Court that already has one opening, is an exciting prospect. ”I think it’s our best chance really since Roe v. Wade to turn things around and have more of a culture for life,” Thayer said. Trump is expected to announce his Supreme Court nominee Thursday to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. NPR’s Nina Totenberg has reported that the pick is down to three, all conservatives. For her part, Thayer knows very well that it’s possible to change one’s mind on abortion. She worked in a Planned Parenthood clinic before becoming an   opponent, so when asked if Trump’s positions on abortion rattled her  —   he once called himself ”very  ”  —   she empathized. ”I was   and now I’m ” Thayer said. ”And so no, that doesn’t scare me at all.” Hannah Millershaski, 18, wearing one of Trump’s signature red hats, said she was excited about the possibility that Trump might appoint Supreme Court justices who would oppose abortion rights. ”I see a great future for America with him in office,” she said. While   opponents are more likely to be Republican than Democratic (and advocates are more likely to be Democratic than Republican) views on the issue don’t fall neatly along party lines. According to an October poll from the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of Republicans believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, leaving    who believe it should be legal in all or most cases. Likewise, 18 percent of Democrats believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases  —   a small but by no means insignificant share. That means that some of the abortion opponents at the march didn’t exactly fall in line behind all of Trump’s policy choices. Father Bedore is one of them, and he worries about immigration in particular. ”I’ll be honest, where I live, and in my ministry, I encounter a lot of Hispanic families, a lot of people that come up from Mexico, wonderful people,   people, and they work hard. They have a place,” he said, adding that some of the immigrants he knows are in the country illegally. ”I know people who have been in the process for 15 years, 18 years, and nothing has happened. And it’s not fair to them, and that’s one area that I really want to see some work done.” Likewise, those Democrats Thayer met at the hotel were represented at the march. Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats for Life of America, attended with others from her group. Like many Democrats, she was not exactly excited about Trump’s win. ”I wasn’t optimistic about what he could do for the country,” she said. But she still appreciates his   opposition, and this Democrat is still hopeful on a few other issues. For example, she is still hoping that some parts of the Affordable Care Act, like allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance, will be maintained under a Trump presidency. In addition, she is hopeful on one women’s issue in particular. ”Oddly enough, I actually have a greater hope of passing paid maternity leave under the Trump administration,” she said, ”simply because his daughter made that a big priority. And I think we have a real opportunity there.”"
"Tennis star Serena Williams has taken her   23rd Grand Slam singles title with a win against her sister Venus at the Australian Open Saturday. The win moves Serena to the top spot in the number of major tennis titles during the Open era, which began in 1968. It’s Serena’s seventh Australian Open victory, winning     against her older sister. She now returns to the No. 1 spot after losing that ranking in September to Angelique Kerber. Despite an intense game in the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, the two sisters were all smiles and compliments in the   ceremony. ”There’s no way I could be at 23 without her,” Serena, 35, said of her sister. ”Thank you Venus for inspiring me to be the best player I can be.” ”Serena Williams. That’s my little sister, guys,” Venus said. ”Your win has always been my win.” The last time the two sisters faced off for the Australian Open was in 2003, which resulted in a win for Serena. She now has a   career record against Venus, which includes a record of   of Grand Slams, The Associated Press reports. With a combined age of 71, the sisters made up the oldest women’s Grand Slam final. At 36, Venus was the oldest Grand Slam finalist in 23 years. ”I really elevated my game somehow,” Serena told ESPN afterward, saying she still thinks she’s in the prime of her career. ”I really wanted to get to 23 so bad, more than you can imagine” she added. The Australian Open continues Sunday, when Roger Federer is scheduled to face off against Rafael Nadal in the men’s final."
"Michael Glatze was a hero to the gay community. And then he was a villain. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, he was a leading advocate for LGBT rights, a devoted student of queer theory, and an editor at the influential XY magazine. Then, after a health scare at 29, he renounced his gay identity, embraced Christian fundamentalism, married a woman, became a pastor of his own church, and started calling his old friends ”abnormal.” As Glatze pivoted from one sexual and religious identity to another, his own motivations remained inscrutable he was, and remains, a true iconoclast in an era where the kind is practically extinct. How can one man embody such extremes within himself? If we could answer such a question, we’d be closer to understanding how such extremes can coexist in the same country in the first place. I Am Michael, a dramatization of Glatze’s life based on a New York Times Magazine story by his former friend and colleague Benoit   finds a way to speak authentically to both halves of its subject’s journey, and refuses to judge any of it. This was the right decision, even if it sometimes feels like   Justin Kelly is taking the easy way out of tough questions in the process. James Franco plays Glatze with his usual mercurial air, smartly deployed so that each of his actions, no matter how contradictory, comes to feel sincere in his eyes. Despite some wooden line readings, Franco gives himself fully to the challenge of rendering Glatze with truth and resolve. If you had the misfortune of seeing his most recent performance as a repulsive, infantile tech bro in Why Him? then this is a welcome reminder he can be a fearless and sensitive actor. After an opening in which Glatze ”counsels” a confused gay teenager to choose to be straight, the film flashes back to a galvanizing moment for gay America: the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. Living in San Francisco with his   boyfriend Bennett (Zachary Quinto) Glatze recognizes at that moment an urgent need for young gay men to know they aren’t alone in the world. When Bennett’s new job moves the pair to Halifax, they invite a third into their bedroom (Charlie Carver) and embark on a new   tour of gay youth to make a documentary and, ultimately, break ground on Young Gay America magazine. One of the things that defines Glatze as a character is how he dives into everything with utter conviction, and at first it’s not all that apparent that something may be eating at him inside. But when a sudden rush of panic attacks lands him in the hospital, and he finds himself revisiting memories of his dead parents, it’s enough to instill in him the kind of panic that accompanies those seeking an afterlife. He would like to get to Heaven, a place whose American ambassadors in the 2000s insisted was only for heterosexuals. Once Glatze decides to abandon his partners in Halifax and seek a new purpose for himself, we, along with Bennett, must square the image of the man we’ve come to know in the film’s first half  —   passionate, principled, proud  —   with the one who emerges in the back half, who abandons everything to attend Bible school in Wyoming as the film circles back to the state a full ten years after Shepard’s death. ”I’m not an ’ .’ I’m just me,” Glatze tells his new girlfriend, Rebekah (Emma Roberts) a fellow Bible scholar. And indeed, Kelly’s script is careful to show its protagonist as only himself, on the outside of communities looking in, whether on a brief detour to a Buddhist meditation retreat or sparring with his instructor at Bible school. The film nestles a powerful point about belonging and trying to live in accordance with one’s own truth, though an   on clunky dialogue and Glatze’s narration (via his blog posts) can make things feel too plodding and telegraphed. I Am Michael is being released a full two years after its Sundance premiere, despite the presumably marketable participation of Franco, Quinto, Roberts, and executive producer Gus Van Sant. (In the interim, Kelly and Franco   on a very different    queer story: the   crime drama King Cobra.) One assumes the long wait was due to the film’s uncompromising subject matter, since explicit sex and explicit prayer don’t often mix onscreen. But perhaps it’s good fortune we’re seeing this movie emerge in a 2017 America. Two years ago, it would have been easy to simply interpret the movie as another one of Franco’s playful public tweakings of his own sexuality. Today there’s more meat to the story. Glatze’s journey across an entire ideological divide to find the best version of himself, on what the film insinuates may be a fruitless quest, now happens in the context of a country that is doing the same, with an outcome just as uncertain. Perhaps, in this sense, he was a prophet."
"Republican lawmakers meeting in Philadelphia this week say they want their replacement of Obamacare to be done by spring. There is no consensus on a plan yet, but several Republicans in Congress have already circulated proposals that could reduce or eliminate features of the federal health law that have benefited older Americans. Here are some examples: Prescription drugs, The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicare’s prescription drug benefit. Before the ACA, people on Medicare had to deal with a gap in that insurance coverage that came to be known as the doughnut hole. That’s the point at which Medicare would stop paying part of the cost of drugs, and beneficiaries would have to buy them at full price. Then, when the patient’s    costs reached a level deemed to be ”catastrophic,” Medicare would start paying most of the cost of the drugs again. A 2011 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that when patients had to pay full price, they’d skip some of their prescribed medications  —   and that could, potentially, result in sicker patients and higher costs for Medicare. Gradually, the ACA has been closing the doughnut hole coverage gap. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, beneficiaries have saved more than $23. 5 billion in prescription drug costs. It’s unknown if this program would be maintained in a Republican plan that replaces the ACA. Medicaid, Medicaid is commonly thought of as the program that provides health care for the poor. But it also pays for   care for a lot of older people, including the majority of nursing home residents. One idea in some of the Republican proposals for replacing the Affordable Care Act is to turn Medicaid from a guaranteed benefit into a block grant to states. States would get a fixed amount of money from the federal government, and could make their own decisions on how to spend it. That’s an idea that’s been popular for some time among conservatives such as House Speaker Paul Ryan. They argue that states know their needs better than Washington does, and the block grant would give states flexibility in meeting those needs. Critics fear this could do away with many protections that federal law currently provides for vulnerable older people. They also worry about what might happen in an economic downturn, when the demand for Medicaid goes up, but the amount of federal money allocated for it stays the same. For example, would states have to choose between cutting services for poor children versus cutting programs for the frail elderly? Limiting the cost of insurance premiums for older adults, Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could charge people in their 50s and 60s many times more than they’d charge a younger person for the same policy. The affordable care act put a limit on that. Now Insurance companies can only charge older people three times as much as they charge people a few decades younger. But the various GOP replacement proposals either set higher limits  —   five or six times higher  —   or they don’t have any limits at all. A study sponsored by the Rand Corporation and the Commonwealth Fund found that if older Americans were charged five times more for insurance than younger people, about 400, 000 would no longer be able to afford to buy health insurance."
"Just as President Trump takes power promising to ramp up oil and gas production, a sudden resignation in a key agency threatens to put such projects on hold across the United States. On Thursday, Norman Bay, one of just three current members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said he would resign effective Feb. 3, even though his term isn’t up until next year. His announcement came shortly after Trump decided Bay’s fellow commissioner, Cheryl LaFleur, would serve as the Commission’s new chair. ”I think [Bay] was perhaps disappointed that Commissioner LaFleur was elevated above him,” says Carolyn Elefant, an energy lawyer who represents landowners negotiating with pipeline companies. After Bay’s abrupt decision, Elefant says she’s ”heard in some FERC circles he’s being criticized for that.” The resignation could mean costly delays for some major pipeline projects. The independent agency oversees the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil. It’s supposed to have five commissioners, but Bay’s departure leaves FERC with just two  —   not enough for the required quorum to make decisions. Some projects that have been through years of regulatory review and were nearing the finish line could now be in limbo for months. That includes new multibillion dollar transmission pipelines intended to alleviate a glut of natural gas in the Appalachian basin. If approved, they will supply markets including the East Coast, Midwest, Gulf Coast and Canada. It’s unclear what impact the FERC delay might have on the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, which Mr. Trump aimed to green light through executive actions this past week. Williams Partners’ Atlantic Sunrise pipeline is among those awaiting final word from FERC. The pipeline would ship gas from northeastern Pennsylvania southward and connect into a larger network of existing lines. ”The president clearly recognizes that natural gas infrastructure is critical to U. S. economic growth, job creation and expanding the American manufacturing base,” says Williams spokesman Chris Stockton in an email. ”We believe this administration will prioritize filling the commission’s vacancies so that critical natural gas infrastructure projects like Atlantic Sunrise can be approved.” The project has faced intense criticism from local opponents, who recently built encampments and are working with activists who participated in the protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. On Friday the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, a trade group representing pipeline operators, sent Trump a letter urging him to act quickly to fill the vacancy. ”The most significant barrier to building this infrastructure is often the permitting and approval process,” wrote INGAA president Donald Santa. ”We must have a functioning FERC to move forward with building this critical energy infrastructure.” Even if the president chooses someone quickly, the process will likely take several months  —   the appointment requires Senate confirmation. Sen. Lisa Murkowski ( ) chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, says she will make it a top priority. ”After next week, FERC will need a full complement of commissioners as soon as possible so that it can tackle the important work on its busy docket,” Murkowski said in a statement. ”The senate’s challenge will be to promptly consider, without undue delay, FERC nominations once they are received.” In the meantime the agency’s Acting Chairman Cheryl LaFleur says the next few days before Bay leaves will be busy ones. ”The commission is working to get as many orders out as we can in the time we have left with a quorum,” she says. ”I am confident that, with the strong team we have here at the commission, we can continue to do our important work.” This story is from StateImpact Pennsylvania, a collaboration between WITF and WHYY covering the fiscal and environmental impact of Pennsylvania’s energy economy"
"It’s been a strange week. Tensions are high. If you haven’t yet, you should probably take a break to watch Migos rap a children’s book. Llama Llama Red Pajama is a story by Anna Dewdney about a baby llama getting tucked in for bed by his mama. Migos is the   rap crew responsible for ”Bad and Boujee,” a catchy trap anthem that is currently the No. 1 song in the country. (Culture, the group’s second album, is out today.) The moment that turned the     single into an ersatz lullaby came Monday at the studios of Los Angeles radio giant Power 106, where morning host J Cruz asked MCs Quavo, Takeoff and Offset if they’d try reading the book over the beat to their hit on air. Migos isn’t the first to do this: The Cruz Show has lately made Llama Llama Red Pajama a regular gauntlet for artists in the interview chair, who are asked to recite the words in their signature cadence and embellish as they see fit. D. R. A. M. and Jeezy both accepted the challenge and did fine, approaching it with humility and quiet bemusement. Both clips were served to YouTube for easy sharing  —   but neither has had a fraction of the impact of Migos’ appearance, retweets of which number more than 100, 000. So what is it about this one? For one, it’s an uncanny match of performer and material. Migos’ flow is a genre unto itself, deadpan observations that fly out of the speakers in bursts of   staccato. The trio’s songs hammer words and phrases into new meaning by way of sustained, ardent repetition. Llama Llama Red Pajama has that DNA in its title alone, a phrase whose inherent rhythm can be shouted into a slogan  —   compare its meter to ”Liar, liar, pants on fire” or ”Remember, remember, the 5th of November.” And as in the rest of Dewdney’s Llama Llama series, the book is full of   internal rhyme, the kind a child trips over at first and then becomes determined to master. The three rappers make their way through the text easily because it’s in an aesthetic language they already speak. But perhaps more important is the atmosphere in the room, which is a mixture of delight and anticipation  —   because no one there, from the DJs to the entourage to the group itself, knows what’s going to happen from one line to the next. Watch the artists’ faces as the song gets going: They might be smiling, but they aren’t joking. Handed a task that’s ludicrous on its face, they treat it with the focused intent a rising MC devotes to the   freestyles that are a more traditional rite of passage on rap radio. And because they take it seriously, the door is opened to the kind of magic moments you see in disciplined improv: One player introduces a setup (”Mama kisses baby’s hair”) the next carries it forward (”The mama, the mama, the mama, the mama”) and the last takes it home (”Whoo! MAMA. ”) They know their roles instantly, without a word of preparation. One can’t help wondering what Dewdney, who died in September, would have made of this reading. We do know her work was meant for children to hear aloud: There’s a   joy in the shapes of these words, waiting to be loosed by an eager voice (watch the author’s own performance if you need proof). That Migos, who has built a career on the most sensuous contours of the English language, could unlock the same joy in adults is both lucky and very, very funny. But it isn’t at all surprising."
"Oxford, Miss. is a town steeped in Southern identity. ”In many ways this is an archetypal Southern town,” says John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, which is based in Oxford. ”There’s a courthouse square at the center, there are beautiful homes with rolling lawns framing it.” And there’s the University of Mississippi, known as Ole Miss, a campus once rocked by deadly riots over racial integration. To some, Oxford might seem an unlikely place for a native of India to achieve star status as a chef. But Vishwesh Bhatt  —   or Vish, as everyone calls him  —   isn’t exactly cooking Indian food. He’s the chef at Snackbar, an upscale restaurant that serves Southern and French food with a twist. He uses traditional Southern ingredients, like catfish, grits or mac and cheese  —   but he prepares them using flavors and techniques of his native India. Think garam masala home fries, daal hush puppies and his signature dish: okra chaat. Bhatt throws thin slices of okra into a   basket for about a minute, then tosses them with tomatoes, cilantro, chiles, chopped peanuts, lime juice, salt, pepper and chaat masala, a zesty spice mix used in Indian street food. The result is savory, crunchy, tangy  —   it’s both Southern and Indian. For Bhatt, food has been a bridge between the two Souths he’s called home: the American South, and the Global South. Bhatt was born and raised in Gujarat, India. When he was 17, his family moved to France briefly before coming to America. Their first stop was Austin, Texas. He was 9, 000 miles from home. Everything was different  —   until he went to the supermarket. ”And there were beans and tortillas and I was like, wait, I know what all these things are. I didn’t know a tortilla was a tortilla, to me it was a flat bread, and I was like, I recognize this,” Bhatt recalls. Chiles, cumin, cilantro  —     cooking shares many of the same ingredients as the Indian food he grew up with. ”I loved it,” Bhatt says. ”That was where I first made the connection between how similar things were between India and the U. S.” Food became a way for Bhatt to make himself at home in his new country. When he went to college in Kentucky, he studied political science, but he also learned to cook. It was a matter of survival: The dining hall fare was so bad, he says, he really had no other choice. Luckily, he did have some tools. ”My mom had sent me with like a thing of spices, a tin of spices,” he says, you know, mustard seeds, tumeric, some garam masala.” He still has it. Bhatt wasn’t flying completely blind in the kitchen. As a child, he had spent countless hours helping his mother prepare large family feasts back in India. It was mostly busywork like shelling peas, he says, but those family meals were formative. ”Everything leading up to the meal to me was fun,” he recalls. ”As a kid, it was the one time I felt I was a part of things.” The adults around him, he says, were often having conversations he didn’t understand, ”but this, I understood.” Soon enough, Bhatt was hosting his own dinner parties for college friends. He says it felt natural. ”It was therapeutic, almost,” he says. ”This was a way for me to become part of this larger group.” But it took Bhatt more than a decade to realize cooking was his true calling. In the meantime, he moved on to graduate school at Ole Miss in Oxford. And that’s where he met John Currence, a celebrated Southern chef and restaurateur who eventually became Bhatt’s mentor and boss. Currence remembers Bhatt as a constant presence at his restaurant. ”He was curious and he just really liked to eat,” Currence says. Currence says Bhatt had a natural talent  —   he cooks in a way that’s intensely personal. ”You know, Vish is so beautifully influenced by the food of his family, particularly his mother,” Currence says. But Bhatt wanted to explore other cuisines, too, so he ended up going to culinary school in Miami. After that, he cooked French food. And Southern food. And Caribbean food. Even a little English food. But for years, the one thing Bhatt didn’t want to cook professionally was . .. Indian food. Currence has known Bhatt for more than 20 years, and from time to time, he says, he would suggest that Bhatt open an Indian restaurant.  ”Vish’s sort of stock reply was, ’But I don’t ever want to be the cliche Indian guy in a small Southern town in a little bitty Indian restaurant,’ ” Currence says. Still, when Currence tapped Bhatt to be the executive chef of Snackbar, which opened in 2009, those Indian influences finally started creeping into Bhatt’s menus. It wasn’t exactly intentional, Bhatt says. ”You move forward and then you realize you want to leave what you are  —   or what you think you are  —   behind, but that’s always a part of you,” Bhatt says. It doesn’t really go away.” Currence, who owns Snackbar, still remembers one particular dish: A Keralan fish curry served with a Southern staple  —   collard greens  —   that came finely chopped and creamed in a coconut milk Indian saag. ”I was literally moved to tears,” Currence says. ”Here I was, experiencing that moment where an individual becomes a chef. ”It has been the most beautiful evolution,” Currence adds. ”And it was at that point that people started talking about that restaurant as a place of significance.” In the years since, Snackbar has become a favorite hangout for the Oxford community, a sort of clubhouse for locals like Julia Jimenez. ”I come for happy hour maybe once, every other week  —   more if I can talk my husband into it,” Jimenez, who was dining with three friends, says with a laugh. (Also among the diners that night: a crew from Southern Living magazine.) Now, at age 51, Bhatt is a   finalist for best chef of the South from the James Beard Awards  —   considered the Oscars of the food world. For Bhatt, the recognition is still surprising. ”It’s insane. I mean, I still have trouble believing it,” he says. Bhatt says he very much considers himself a Southerner. ”This is home,” he says. ”This is where I’ve spent more time than anywhere else.” Edge of the Southern Foodways Alliance  —   which is part of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss  —   says Bhatt’s food tells a larger story about the South. ”Just the hint of okra and the knowledge that okra is beloved in West Africa, beloved in India and beloved in the American South  —   those connections in a way spin out a story of Southern culture,” says Edge. ”It both confirms what you think about the South and subverts it at the same time. That’s what’s great about his food,” he adds. It’s food rooted in the Southern past, while also pointing to where the South is going, as a strong economy attracts immigrants from all over. ”We live in a place that is changing rapidly and I think for the better,” Edge says. ”The South is not losing anything in those changes  —   it’s gaining much. It’s gaining okra chaat.” And it’s people like Vish Bhatt who keep the taste of the American melting pot ever evolving. The radio version of this story includes music from blues musician Mississippi Fred McDowell. It was recorded by William Ferris and is part of the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "
"Despite his 22 years in LaGrange, Ga. Louis Dekmar had not heard of Austin Callaway  —   but some members of his community knew Callaway’s story well. Callaway, a      in police custody, was abducted at gunpoint by a mob. Hours later, Callaway was discovered with five bullet wounds in his head. He died shortly afterward in the hospital. The police department did not pursue an investigation into the lynching. A grand jury’s only comment on it was to recommend better jail cell locks. That was Sept. 8, 1940. On Thursday Chief Dekmar, a white man, stood before a gathering at Warren Temple United Methodist Church, and he apologized. ”As LaGrange police chief, I sincerely regret and denounce the role our police department played in Austin’s lynching, both through our action and our inaction,” Dekmar told the assembly. ”For that, I’m profoundly sorry. It should never have happened.” Dekmar was joined during that remembrance by Mayor Jim Thornton and other authorities in the town. The full remembrance was   on Facebook by LGTV LaGrange Television for viewers outside the bounds of the church, and can be watched in the video above. Dekmar’s speech begins at about the   mark. It was a moment long in coming  —   nearly   of a century, in fact. For Dekmar, the path to this apology began several years ago, when he learned of a comment one elderly black woman made to another while waiting to see detectives: ”They killed our people,” the woman said. It was only after some research that Dekmar learned of Callaway’s story. And it was only with the help of the NAACP, local politicians and LaGrange College that a formal remembrance of Callaway could finally come together. He tells NPR that the comment shared between the two women hammered home a crucial point for him. ”Despite the fact that very few people are alive today that were alive then, the attitudes about the police department  —   and the attitudes as it relates to the city government in general  —   is influenced by those experiences which are passed down through generations,” Dekmar says. And those memories, and the distrust of law enforcement that they engender, create a filter between the police department and the community. He says that’s why moments like Thursday’s ceremony, however tardy they are in coming, remain necessary. This is particularly true given the racial makeup of the community in LaGrange, which is about 48 percent  . Dekmar says law enforcement in the area is about 14 percent black, though he says his department has worked hard to improve diversity within its ranks. Resentment toward police persists among members of the local black community, he says  —   ”and rightfully so,” given the memories of lynchings like Callaway’s. ”Apology is never enough,” Kristen Reed, who attended the remembrance, told reporter Sam Whitehead of Georgia Public Broadcasting. ”I don’t think an apology is ever enough for a murder or for a lynching and for the injustice that followed.” Still, after the ceremony, Reed noted the rarity of such a moment. ”For them to feel the need to say they were sorry sends a message, especially in a climate like this,” Reed said. And for Dekmar, it’s that small step that matters. ”We don’t expect ever to erase the past,” he says. ”But what I hope last night will do is interrupt the past.”"
"Updated at 7 p. m. ET, By the time the sun rose on Sunday in the U. S. the chaotic weekend set in motion by Trump’s executive order on immigration was beginning to give way to greater clarity  —   in some respects, at least. That order  —   which temporarily bars citizens from seven largely Muslim countries, as well as all refugees, from entering the U. S.  —   was blocked in part by a federal judge in Brooklyn on Saturday night. Addressing a lawsuit brought by two Iraqi men detained Saturday in New York, Judge Ann Donnelly issued a stay that would temporarily prevent federal agents from deporting anyone who entered the U. S. with a valid visa. Three additional federal district courts have issued orders of more limited scope pertaining to President Trump’s executive order on immigration. Trump, for his part, issued a statement Sunday defending his executive order. ”America is a proud nation of immigrants and we will continue to show compassion to those fleeing oppression, but we will do so while protecting our own citizens and border,” Trump said in his statement. ”The seven countries named in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror. To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting. This is not about religion   this is about terror and keeping our country safe.” It should be noted that the executive order signed Friday tells officials to ”prioritize” people suffering from   persecution  —   provided that those people are members of a ”minority religion” in the   countries covered under the ban. In many of those countries, Christianity is the main minority religion. Meanwhile at major international airports, both across the U. S. and around the world, Trump’s defense and the judge’s ruling did little to ease the maelstrom of protests, outraged politicians and lawyers scrambling to offer legal help to refugees who had been blocked or detained. From the detainees to the protests, from the administration’s defense to questions of what happens next  —   here is what we know Sunday. Trump’s executive order bars citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. That includes those who hold green cards as legal permanent residents of the U. S. to enter the country, they will need a    waiver, which officials say will be granted as long as there is no evidence of the person presenting ”a serious threat to public safety and welfare.” That last detail came as a surprise to Hessam Noorian and his wife, who were detained for more than five hours with their    son at Chicago’s O’hare Airport. She is a citizen he has a green card. They had been returning from a trip to Iran when they heard President Trump might ban travel by refugees, the couple told NPR’s David Schaper. ”But I didn’t know this applied to green card. I thought as long as you have green card, then you’re are safe, you are fine,” she said. After they had been questioned and searched by authorities, they were released. Others, like a traveler from Iraq who spoke with NPR’s Jeff Brady, remain less certain. His wife said he was detained at Philadelphia International Airport. A   later, as she spoke with Jeff, she had still not been able to reach him to learn what had happened. At the same airport, federal authorities deported two families from Syria despite legal paperwork to enter the U. S. On Sunday, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney announced that the rest of the passengers detained Saturday would be released, and that ”all new passengers arriving today will be treated the same as they would have been prior to the executive order.” At least 63 people were detained at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D. C. And a lot of unanswered questions linger on Sunday, according to NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang. Hansi offers more details on what appears to be a deepening struggle between immigration attorneys and the Customs and Border Protection there: ”Immigration attorneys at Dulles International Airport say they’re having difficulty getting access to any detainees as granted by an order by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va. ”They say Customs and Border Protection officials are telling them detainees on site are not allowed to speak to the lawyers here. Lawyers say they are considering filing a motion saying that federal officials are not complying with the judge’s order.” In Seattle, lawyers ”were able to spare at least two people placed on a departure flight back out of the U. S.,” reports Liz Jones of member station KUOW. ”But at least one refugee from Somalia was deported.” Sara Assali of Allentown, Pa. told Bobby Allyn of WHYY that she had been expecting six members of her Orthodox Christian family from Damascus, Syria, on Saturday. That reunion had been 14 years in coming, Assali said, and all six had finally obtained their visas in 2015. But Assali said U. S. Customs and Border Patrol detained her family members and told them they would need to fly instead to Doha, Qatar, or risk losing green cards and visas. ”We weren’t expecting this because we paid everything. The green cards have been paid for, the visas have been paid for, everything has been approved,” Assali said. ”To suddenly be told, ’No, you no longer qualify to enter the country,’ it kind of comes as a slap in the face.’ ” By the end of Saturday, protesters had gathered outside several airports and inside baggage claims to register their objection to Trump’s executive order. Mayor Marty Walsh addressed the demonstrators outside Boston’s Logan International Airport, asking them to ”join us” and ”stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters.” At New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, where The Associated Press reports 12 refugees were detained Saturday, the protests assembled early in the day and gathered momentum by nightfall. ”I never thought I’d see the day when refugees, who have fled   countries in search of a better life, would be turned away at our doorstep,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement supporting the demonstrators. ”This is not who we are, and not who we should be.” The international airport in Charlotte, N. C. drew protesters on Saturday, as well. The demonstrations there grew more acrimonious than most, as six people were arrested after police and protesters ”engaged in a brief skirmish,” reports Nick de la Canal of member station WFAE. But the Rev. Jay McKinnon, an organizer of the Charlotte protests who spoke to de la Canal, said he would not be dissuaded from further protest. Trump is ”doing what he said he would do,” McKinnon said Saturday. ”It’s a resistance to that  —   to his policies, to him thinking that this is okay in our name.” In his statement, Trump cited ”what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months,” in defending his own executive order  —   which bans refugees from all over the world for 120 days. Trump’s order also bans Syrian refugees indefinitely. Republican leaders in both houses of Congress have backed up the president. On ABC’s This Week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he supports a tightening of the vetting process, according to Reuters. The news service reports that McConnell added: ”I also think it’s important to remember that some of our best sources in the war against radical Islamic terrorism, are Muslims, both in this country and overseas. . .. We need to be careful as we do this.” On Friday, House Speaker Paul Ryan released a statement praising Trump as ”right to make sure we are doing everything possible to know exactly who is entering our country.” His spokesperson, AshLee Strong, also told The Washington Post, ”This is not a religious test and it is not a ban on people of any religion.” Trump has told the Christian Broadcasting Network that preference will be shown to Christian refugees from the Middle East, where most of the seven banned countries are located. On Sunday, he again singled out Christians from the Middle East in a tweet, saying, ”Christians in the   have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue!” ”What do we say to the family of someone who gets killed because we didn’t take these steps?” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Sunday on This Week. ”Protecting this nation and our people is the No. 1 priority of this president and our government.” Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, told CBS News that 109 people were detained on Saturday, ”most of whom were moved out,” and an additional 170 people were stopped before they could get on planes to the U. S. Priebus appeared to offer contradictory statements on whether green card holders are affected by the executive order  —   first appearing to say the temporary ban does not apply to them, then walking that statement back when asked to clarify. Some GOP lawmakers sounded a more critical note than the administration, however. ”It is clear from the confusion at our airports across the nation that President Trump’s executive order was not properly vetted,” Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a joint statement, noting media reports that the administration consulted little or not at all with the departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security before signing the order. ”Such a hasty process risks harmful results. We should not stop   holders from returning to the country they call home. We should not stop those who have served as interpreters for our military and diplomats from seeking refuge in the country they risked their lives to help. And we should not turn our backs on those refugees who have been shown through extensive vetting to pose no demonstrable threat to our nation, and who have suffered unspeakable horrors, most of them women and children.” Trump responded to the statement by tweeting that McCain and Graham are ”sadly weak on immigration.” ”The two Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. Initially, British Prime Minister Theresa May was noncommittal in her judgment of the executive order. On a diplomatic trip in Turkey on Saturday, May deferred to Trump, telling reporters only that ”the United States is responsible for the United States’ policy on refugees.” Overnight, however, the line from 10 Downing Street drew a slightly sharper contrast. ”Immigration policy in the United States is a matter for the government of the United States, just the same as immigration policy for this country should be set by our government,” her office said through a spokesperson, according to The Guardian. ”But we do not agree with this kind of approach and it is not one we will be taking.” German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, speaking at a news conference in Paris, ”questioned how such orders could be imposed by a country that embraces Christian values like the U. S.,” NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Berlin. Still stronger rebukes came from the countries listed on Trump’s immigration freeze. ”President Trump is dealing with Iraq as if the U. S. had no relationship with the country,” Razaq   a member of Iraq’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told NPR’s Alice Fordham. ”When in fact the US leads an   coalition working to improve Iraq’s armed forces and thousands of American soldiers, officials and advisers are operating there.” Others in Iraq took an even harder line, Alice reports. ”A spokesman of a powerful bloc of paramilitary forces says all Americans should now be banned from Iraq, and all Americans in Iraq should be deported,” Alice says. In a series of tweets, Iranian Foreign Minister   accused the U. S. of hypocrisy, calling the executive order ”a gift to terrorists.” ”Collective discrimination aids terrorists,” Zarif said, ”by deepening fault lines exploited by extremist demagogues to swell their ranks.” NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports Iran is promising reciprocal action against Americans seeking Iranian visas  —   ”but Zarif says unlike the U. S. move, it will not be retroactive, meaning U. S. passport holders with valid Iranian visas will be allowed in,” Peter says. The temporary stay issued by the federal judge in Brooklyn appears to cover as many as 200 people across the country, NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports. But that stay, which addresses only those who traveled to the U. S. before the immigration freeze was enacted, means only that they cannot be deported immediately. Carrie breaks it down: ”Judge Ann Donnelly found that sending the travelers home could cause them irreparable harm to the refugees and no harm to the us government. The judge didn’t make a broad ruling about the constitutional claims in the case.” The Department of Homeland Security says that it intends to continue enforcing the order, and that it retains the right to revoke visas. The department ”will comply with judicial orders,” U. S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. But the statement noted that ”approximately 80 million international travelers enter the United States every year. Yesterday, less than one percent of the more than 325, 000 international air travelers who arrive every day were inconvenienced.” As far as enforcement is concerned, Hansi says that many of the passengers and lawyers at Dulles Airport outside D. C. are taking a ”   approach” as they try to figure out the implications of the temporary stay on the ground. In the meantime, protests against the executive order were organized for Sunday in at least half a dozen cities across the country, including New York City, Houston and Washington, D. C. directly outside the White House."
"Leaders in the U. S. technology sector say President Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from some   countries will sow confusion in their businesses and undercut the diversity that has been a linchpin of the industry’s growth. The CEOs of Google, Twitter, Facebook and Apple all issued statements condemning the ban and complaining that the order was pushed through so quickly it left great uncertainty about the status of some of their best employees. ”Apple would not exist without immigration, let alone thrive and innovate the way we would do,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a message to his staff. ”I’ve heard from many of you who are deeply concerned about the executive order issued yesterday restricting immigration from seven   countries. I share your concerns. It is not a policy we support.” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai wrote a memo to his employees that was highly critical of Trump’s order. He warned that it could prevent at least 187   Google employees from entering the United States and orders staff members who are traveling abroad to return to the United States immediately. ”It’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues,” Pichai wrote. ”We’re upset about the impact of this order and any proposals that could impose restrictions on Googlers and their families, or that could create barriers to bringing great talent to the US.” Dean Garfield, CEO of the Industry Technology Information Council said: ”This decision came without comment or advance notice and has injected a tremendous amount of uncertainty for a wide range of people, including employees within the tech sector.” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also said he was concerned about the impact of the executive order, noting that his wife Priscilla’s parents were refugees China and Vietnam, and his own   had come to the United States from Germany, Austria and Poland: ”We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat. Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans less safe by diverting resources, while millions of undocumented folks who don’t pose a threat will live in fear of deportation. ”We should also keep our doors open to refugees and those who need help. That’s who we are. Had we turned away refugees a few decades ago, Priscilla’s family wouldn’t be here today.”"
"President Trump’s executive order on immigration late Friday ignited nationwide protests  —   and a slew of legal challenges. At least four federal judges across the country have blocked part of the order and temporarily ensured refugees and travelers who reached U. S. soil would not be deported. Here’s an explanation of what happened so far and what could come next. The order suspended new refugee admissions for 120 days. It capped the total number of refugees allowed into the country this year at 50, 000, far lower than the Obama administration had allotted. And travelers from seven countries  —   Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia  —   are barred for 90 days. Border Patrol agents and lawyers said the order and statements by top White House officials have not made clear how Green Card holders, or lawful permanent residents, are to be treated. The American Civil Liberties Union sued in Brooklyn over the detention of two Iraqi clients at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Late Saturday, Judge Ann Donnelly issued a temporary restraining order barring the deportation of as many as 200 people. Judge Donnelly cited ”irreparable harm” they would face, and she demanded that the Trump administration provide a list of all affected refugees and travelers. Later, a federal judge in suburban Virginia ordered that travelers be allowed to consult with volunteer attorneys. And another judge in Massachusetts ruled the travelers not only were free from deportation, but that those being held must be released from federal detention. There are reports from pro bono lawyers that border agents may not be complying with some of those directives from the federal judiciary. White House officials said the policy is designed to protect U. S. borders and to restrict the entry of terrorism suspects. The Department of Homeland Security said fewer than 1 percent of the average 325, 000 people who journeyed to the U. S. on Saturday were ”inconvenienced.” DHS said the president’s order remains in place and ”the U. S. government retains its right to revoke visas at any time if required for national security or public safety.” On NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said Green Card holders would not be affected ”moving forward,” but he went on to say that they would ”be subjected to further screening” at the border. The president has sweeping authority on matters of immigration. Federal law allows the president to suspend people or classes of people if he determines their entry is ”detrimental” to the nation. But a 1965 update to that law, the Immigration and Naturalization Act, clarifies that people should not experience preferences or discrimination on account of their ”race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence.” Trump’s order appears to grant some religious preference to Christians and to target seven   countries, though his order points out that people from those countries had already been singled out for extra vetting during the Obama years. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, immigrants rights groups and other advocates are likely to file more lawsuits in the coming days on the grounds that the order violates the 1965 immigration law, the right to due process, and the First Amendment clause that bars Congress from establishing a religion, among other things. White House officials insisted they did not set out to create a ”Muslim ban.” But Trump associate Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that Trump had reached out to him and others about how to make such a ban, which Trump proposed on the campaign trail in December 2015, legal. And the son of national security adviser Michael Flynn tweeted about a ”Muslim ban,” as well. Those statements could be used by refugee advocates to demonstrate the administration’s intent. Democrats argue that key offices within the State Department and the Justice Department were in the dark about the immigration order before it was made public. They want to know if Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, the nominee to be attorney general, advised Trump on the order  —   and whether Sessions will commit to making sure Justice Department lawyers are consulted in the future. The Senate Judiciary Committee is supposed to vote on Sessions’ nomination on Tuesday. If he passes that vote, Sessions could be confirmed by the full Senate by the end of the week."
"President Trump has reorganized the National Security Council by elevating his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and demoting the director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bannon will join the NSC’s principals committee, the top interagency group for discussing national security. The National Security Council is the staff inside the White House that coordinates   by the president on such matters, in coordination with outside departments including the State Department and the Pentagon. It’s an unusual decision, NPR’s Mara Liasson reports. ”David Axelrod, for instance, who had a similar job as Bannon in the Obama administration, never sat in on principals meetings,” she added. When such figures seen as part of the political wing of the White House have participated in broader National Security Council meetings, it has sparked sharp criticism from the national security establishment. Former White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said last year that President George W. Bush instructed his top political adviser, Karl Rove, never to appear at a National Security Council meeting. It wasn’t that Bush didn’t value Rove’s counsel, Bolten said  —   clearly he did. ”But the president also knew that the signal he wanted to send to the rest of his administration, the signal he wanted to send to the public, and the signal he especially wanted to send to the military, is that, ’The decisions I’m making that involve life and death for the people in uniform will not be tainted by any political decisions,’ ” Bolten remembered. Before joining Trump’s inner circle during the 2016 campaign, Bannon was the head of Breitbart News, a   media outlet that has promoted conspiracy theories and is a platform for the   movement, which espouses white nationalism. Bannon was extremely influential during the first week of the administration  —   he is said to be part of a small group inside the White House driving the flurry of executive actions this week, Mara has reported. Some of those orders have provoked criticism that Bannon and other administration officials are not coordinating with other agencies on major policy changes, Mara says, such as the chaos and detentions at airports following Trump’s executive order on immigration. The NSC principals committee is defined as ”the   senior interagency forum for considering policy issues that affect the national security interests of the United States.” It’s chaired either by national security adviser Michael Flynn or homeland security adviser Tom Bossert and now includes the secretaries of state, defense and the Treasury, plus the attorney general, White House chief of staff and the president’s chief strategist, which is Bannon’s position. On the other hand, the director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will now attend Principals Committee meetings only when ”issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed,” according to the presidential memorandum issued on Saturday. As NPR national security editor Philip Ewing explains, Trump ”is shaking up the wonky process by which the executive branch makes its toughest decisions on national security  —   the big question is how much that will matter.” Here’s more: ”On paper, these are big changes: Past administrations ran their National Security Councils with a Great Wall of   between the political team at the White House and the nonpartisan specialists who help with  . The explicit inclusion of Bannon means that Trump’s top adviser on messaging, strategy and other partisan issues means he could also be part of decisions about policy toward adversaries, military actions and other such decisions. ”What does it all mean, in practical terms? It’s too soon to say. Former national security council staffers say their    meetings and process were not governed by whatever formal instruction issued by their respective presidents. Political staffers from the White House have attended meetings in the past. The committees invite who they think they need to invite given the topics under discussion  —   something that will likely continue under [national security adviser Michael] Flynn.” Attorney John Bellinger, who served on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, told NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered on Sunday that presidents structure the National Security Council in the ways they think work best for them. ”There’s no law against the president taking advice from anyone he wants,” Bellinger said. He also said the headlines about the ”demotion” of the Joint Chiefs chairman and the director of national intelligence were overblown. Bellinger said time would tell how the council practically operates under Trump and Flynn, but that some of its dealings legitimately might not need to involve those leaders  —   when leaders meet to plot their strategy for responding to a hurricane, for example. Top security officials from the Obama administration are blasting the decision. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served under Obama and George W. Bush, called the demotions a ”big mistake” in an interview with ABC News. ”I think that they both bring a perspective and judgment and experience to bear that every president, whether they like it or not, finds useful,” Gates said. Former national security adviser Susan Rice called the move ”stone cold crazy.” In a sarcastic tweet, she said: ”Who needs military advice or intel to make policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK?” White House press secretary Sean Spicer responded in an interview with ABC News. ”That’s clearly inappropriate language from a former ambassador,” Spicer said. ”We are instilling reforms to make sure that we streamline the process for the president to make decisions on key, important intelligence matters. You’ve got a leader in Gen. Flynn who understands the intelligence process and the reforms that are needed probably better than anybody else.” Spicer also defended Bannon’s qualifications. ”Well, he is a former naval officer. He’s got a tremendous understanding of the world and the geopolitical landscape that we have now,” Spicer said. Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told CBS News, ”I am worried about the National Security Council. Who are the members of it and who are the permanent members? The appointment of Mr. Bannon is something which is a radical departure from any National Security Council in history.” McCain added that, ”One person who is indispensable would be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in my view.”"
"Updated at 6:55 p. m. ET, They began Saturday as a series of   demonstrations outside several major airports. But by Sunday, the protests against President Trump’s temporary immigration freeze had leapt from those airports to squares and plazas in cities across the U. S. Outside the White House, in Boston’s Copley Square and Battery Park in New York City, immigrant advocacy groups have organized protests to register their discontent with the executive order Trump signed Friday. That order bars all refugees from entering the U. S. for 120 days, as well as citizens of seven largely Muslim countries for 90 days. The freeze also applies to green card holders, who are legal U. S. residents they will need a    waiver to enter the country, which officials say will be granted so long as there is no evidence of the person presenting ”a serious threat to public safety and welfare.” ”Protecting this nation and our people is the No. 1 priority of this president and our government,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Sunday, arguing that the immigration ban is the best way to do that. Groups of protesters across the country disagree with that assessment  —   so much so that they make their objections readily evident with signs and chants, rallies and marches in at least a   different cities. With the help of NPR and member station reporters on the ground, here are some postcards from Sunday’s major protests. ”A lot of people say they had a visceral reaction when they heard the news either Friday or Saturday,” says Jack Lepiarz of member station WBUR. Reporting from Boston’s Copley Square, Jack tells NPR’s Lulu   that the plaza, which is roughly the size of a football field, has been packed with protesters of the executive order. ”They say there need to be more protests like this,” Jack says, referring to conversations he had with demonstrators there. ”It’s almost a show of force, as one woman said, where you get the bodies out there and tell the people in office that this is not OK.” Meanwhile, outside the White House, the crowd of protesters rippled with the chant ”no hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here,” according to NPR’s Parth Shah. NPR’s Parth Shah reports the crowd has rippled with the chant ”no hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here.” ”I did not think it would be me I thought it would be refugees,” University of Maryland student Lames   a protester in D. C. tells NPR’s Wynne Davis. ”Because I am here as a guest, I am here as a visitor. I am not a threat to the country. It was really a shock . .. I didn’t expect it to be students, as well.” Kebsi, who is from Yemen, says that Saturday night she told her parents that under the order, she cannot see them for the next two years  —   because if she leaves the country, she will not be able to return to finish her degree at University of Maryland. Others, like D. C. resident and middle school teacher Trisha Sanghavi, echoed the sentiment heard by Jack in Boston. ”This is what D. C. is going to look like every weekend now,” Sanghavi told NPR. Chris Chester of WAMU reports that what began as a rally outside the White House has now transformed into a march toward the Capitol. Mayor Bill de Blasio was among a slate of speakers  —   also including Sens. Cory Booker and Chuck Schumer  —   to address the crowd that packed Battery Park from end to end. ”We cannot just luxuriate in our freedoms and our liberties,” Booker told the crowd. ”We must earn them by fighting to expand them to all citizens and all people.” Chuck Schumer made note of his middle name Ellis, a reference to New York’s Ellis Island, the famous gateway for immigrants to the U. S. in the early 20th century. Protesters also made the most of their setting in Battery Park, which is the launch point for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Many people dressed in variations on the theme of Lady Liberty, bearing fake torches and hats depicting the iconic monument, according to NPR’s Kat Chow. Even as demonstrators have taken to the streets in several cities, protests continue to pack major international airports in the U. S. The arrivals hall at Los Angeles International Airport filled not only with signs and loud chants  —   well before the protest’s scheduled start time  —   but also with a number of lawyers, NPR’s Kirk Siegler reports. He notes attorneys scattered throughout the crowd holding signs of their own, only these signs are offering their free legal services for those who could use them. And there may indeed be some who do. Some distressed family members are in the gathering too, Kirk reports. He says it is believed that there are still people detained behind the main gates. By a quirk of coincidence, the protest in Houston was held outside the George R. Brown Convention Center  —   where festivities were well underway for next week’s Super Bowl in the city. Laura Isensee of member station KUHF says it made for a surreal juxtaposition, as football fans in Houston Texans jerseys walked past chanting protesters with signs. She reports that among the crowd were members of a nearby church, just out of a Sunday service, along with members of the Muslim community and Black Lives Matter activists. The protesters numbered more than 1, 000, according to the Houston Police Department. Outside the departures area of the city’s major airport, as well as inside by the ticketing counters, protesters packed into a peaceful demonstration, reports Kabir Bhatia of WKSU. He says the mood of the crowd was almost joyful, as protesters chanted slogans and occasionally ”parted the Red Sea” to allow travelers to enter the airport. ”I’m just so glad,” one girl, a Syrian immigrant, told the crowd with a megaphone. ”It just blowed up my heart when I saw everyone’s here for the same reason I am.” Thousands of people gathered at   adding their voices to protesters all over the country, in response to President Donald Trump’s immigration order. On Saturday, 11 people with green cards were detained at customs but they were all released. Our WABE member station reporter Molly Samuel spoke with some of protesters, among them, Kathy Taasoobshirazi, a pediatrician whose parents emigrated from Iran. ”I just want people to know that Muslim people are not terrorists. Iranian people are not terrorists. We love America, we’re proud to be Americans, but we’re proud of our culture, too. We deserve the same rights and we are contributing to society,” Taasoobshirazi said. Also among the thousands who chanted, cheered, and held up signs on Sunday was Ashley Loftin fromn Decatur who came to the protest with her mom. ”We always say come to America, here’s the American dream. And by the whims of one person they just changed everything, and I don’t think that’s fair,” Loftin said. Brian Levenson also added his voice, noting it’s the first time he’s joined a protest. ”Usually it feels like either there are enough voices, or there’s enough opposition built into our system that I don’t really have to worry about it. But, man, I am worried. I am really worried.” Congressmen John Lewis and Hank Johnson, Mayor Kasim Reed, and a state senator were among the officials who came to the airport over the course of the weekend."
"Hundreds were detained at airports around the country Saturday in a chaotic and confusing day following President Trump’s Friday night executive order temporarily banning Muslims from seven countries. It spurred protests and backlash  —   even from some in Trump’s own party, for either mismanagement of the rollout of the order or the values it represents. But one thing Trump’s executive order did  —   and why many are referring to it as a Muslim ban  —   is indicate a   for Christians. Here’s the controversial language: Trump hinted that he would be prioritizing Christians before the order was released on Friday. Here’s the transcript of Trump’s exchange with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody: BRODY: ”Persecuted Christians, we’ve talked about this, the refugees overseas. The refugee program, or the refugee changes you’re looking to make. As it relates to persecuted Christians, do you see them as kind of a priority here?” TRUMP: ”Yes.” BRODY: ”You do?” TRUMP: ”They’ve been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.” It’s true that 99 percent of the 12, 587 refugees from Syria admitted in 2016 to the U. S. were Muslim and less than 1 percent were Christian. That would outpace Muslims’ population in Syria, which is 93 percent. But that’s based on 2010 numbers. With the civil war going on and the millions who have been displaced, it’s nearly impossible to tell exactly what the most current percentages are. Another possible reason for the lower percentage of Christians being admitted from Syria to the U. S. is the protection they have received from the Assad regime. As the Christian Post reported in 2015: ”Christians, who have been caught in the crossfire of the Arab Spring and civil war, have found a measure of protection under Assad’s dictatorship. In October, the Catholic Herald reported on comments from one of Syria’s leading Christians who said [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s intervention, while possibly motivated by selfish reasons, is helping and giving hope to Christians.” Why would Assad do that? His regime loves to paint itself as a protector of minorities, and there are still a large number of Christians in the Syrian capital of Damascus, for example, where Assad’s government is centered. What’s more, if the implication is that the U. S. is not admitting Christian refugees or that the U. S. is making it difficult, that’s not true at all. In fact, the number of Christian refugees to the U. S. in 2016 was almost equal to that of Muslim refugees  —   37, 521 to 38, 901, according to the Pew Research Center, which is basing its numbers on figures from the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump took to Twitter Sunday morning to defend himself on the need to prioritize Christians. He said they were being ”executed in large numbers,” reiterated his call for ”extreme vetting” and warned of the U. S. turning into Europe, which has dealt with terrorist attacks and bombings since the rise of ISIS: The Obama administration did formally accuse ISIS of carrying out a genocide against religious minorities, including Christians in Iraq and Syria. Offices at the State Department have been involved in the U. S. response, though this did not include putting Christians at the top of the line for the U. S. resettlement program. But here’s the reality: While Christians in Iraq and Syria have been killed by ISIS, Muslims have been the group’s victims far more frequently and represent the strong majority. Shiite Muslims are killed by ongoing waves of ISIS bombings of Shiite neighborhoods, and Shiite members of Iraq’s security forces have been victims of mass ISIS executions. But even as ISIS claims it fights for Sunni Islam, fellow Sunni Muslims have also been killed and displaced in greater numbers than Christians. That is in part because ISIS operates mostly in Sunni areas. Hundreds of thousands of Sunnis have been displaced from ISIS areas, as Sunnis, who try to oppose the group or have ties to the Iraqi government, are targeted. And Muslims have fought ISIS more than anyone else. This includes Kurdish Sunnis and Arab Sunnis and Shiites, who are on the front lines and often allied with U. S. advisers in the battle against ISIS, as well as Turkmen Muslims. Some of the most horrific videos from ISIS have shown the killing of Sunni Muslims who have fought the group, like a Jordanian pilot and Turkish troops shown burned alive. Certainly, it’s the case that Christians were terrified of ISIS and fled. ISIS has desecrated churches and shrines. Some Christians have lived in   areas and paid a tax to the terrorist group. And there have been Christians killed and kidnapped  —   88 Eritrean Christians from Libya who were kidnapped by ISIS in 2015 two months after 28 Ethiopian Christians were executed 262 Assyrian Christians kidnapped from the Tel Tamer area in Syria and held for ransom 50 killed in Tel Tamer in suicide bombings. But that pales in comparison with the mass murder of Muslims  —   massacres in Iraq 1, 700 Iraqi air force cadets executed or missing from Camp Speicher, a former American military base near Tikrit the slaughter of hundreds of the   tribe in Syria and the massacre of Syrian army POWs at Tabqa in 2014. That’s not to mention the hunting down of Yazidis. As far as Europe goes, there is an ocean between the U. S. and Europe, and the U. S. already has very strict procedures in place for refugees, as NPR’s Brian Naylor has reported. NPR’s Jane Arraf also contributed to this post."
"Less than 24 hours after White House press secretary Sean Spicer had spouted numerous falsehoods about inauguration crowd size and more, Kellyanne Conway went on NBC’s Meet the Press to defend him. In the process, the counselor to President Trump coined a phrase that’s now destined to follow Trump throughout his presidency  —   ”alternative facts.” The Trump administration’s pushback on easily verifiable facts is unprecedented and shows that the Trump we saw on the campaign trail and in debates  —   who was freewheeling with facts and assertions and often peddled wildly exaggerated claims  —   had not changed once he took the oath of office. And it’s only Week 1. Below we’ve rounded up some of the White House’s assertions here that are exaggerated or just flat out false. President Trump told members of Congress during a Monday evening meeting that there were 3 million to 5 million illegal votes cast in last November’s election.  In an interview with ABC News’s David Muir on Wednesday, he repeated those claims, saying that, ”You have people that are registered who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states. You have people registered in two states. They’re registered in a New York and a New Jersey. They vote twice. There are millions of votes, in my opinion.”  THE FACTS: This is not true, no matter how many times Trump and his surrogates repeat it. The administration has never provided proof of this claim, and the studies they have cited do not, in fact, support the claim. Even the authors of those studies have said that the studies are being misused by Trump. Analyses do show that a tiny bit of voter fraud does happen, but there is no evidence of voter fraud on this scale that would be a scandal of ”astronomical proportions,” as NPR’s Mara Liasson said to Spicer this week. Trump also pointed to a frequently cited Pew study as evidence, which Muir pushed back on, saying correctly it showed ”no evidence of voter fraud.” Trump said the author was ”groveling again. You know, I always talk about the reporters that grovel when they wanna write something that you wanna hear but not necessarily millions of people wanna hear or have to hear.” THE FACTS: That Pew 2012 report does show that 2. 8 million people are registered to vote in more than one state and that 24 million registration records ”are estimated to be inaccurate or no longer valid.” But that is not evidence of fraud unless people vote in both states. And the author is not ”groveling” when he simply pushes back because his report is taken wildly out of context and twisted into falsehoods. It is not a felony to be registered in two states  —   in fact, several Trump family members and advisers are registered in two states. ”No, no, you have to understand, I had a tremendous victory, one of the great victories ever. In terms of counties, I think the most ever or just about the most ever. When you look at a map it’s all red.”   —   Trump to ABC, Jan. 25, THE FACTS: Trump did have an overwhelming victory, countywise. But he still lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. And his Electoral College victory ranked 46th out of 58 presidential elections. ”He won overwhelmingly with 306 electoral votes, the most since any Republican since Reagan. He’s very comfortable with the depth and breadth of the support that he got from the American people and the 33 states that voted for him, the nine of 13 battleground states, the 2, 600 counties. He’s very, very pleased with that.”  —   Spicer at Jan. 24 briefing, THE FACTS: While Trump should have gotten 306 electoral votes according to the state by state results, he in fact will only end up with 304 because two electors in Texas defected when Electoral College voters cast their ballots Clinton had several defectors, too. And Trump’s victory wasn’t the largest GOP win since Reagan  —   George H. W. Bush won 426 electoral votes in 1988. ”I got a standing ovation. In fact, they said it was the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl and they said it was equal. I got a standing ovation. It lasted for a long period of time. What you do is take  —   take out your tape  —   you probably ran it live. I know when I do good speeches. I know when I do bad speeches. That speech was a total home run. They loved it.” Trump in ABC interview  ”I had a standing ovation like you wouldn’t believe. ...They actually  —   they were standing from the beginning. They didn’t even sit down. It was one standing ovation, the whole thing.” Trump in interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Jan. 26, THE FACTS: Trump never told the CIA officers to sit at the beginning of his speech, and it’s standard protocol without a directive from the president, they wouldn’t have sat down, as Huffington Post’s S. V. Date explains. And there were about 400 staffers at the speech. There were 71, 088 fans who attended the Super Bowl last year where Manning led the Denver Broncos to the championship. So, no  —   it was not ”equal” to the reception Manning got by any measure or standard, and it’s not clear who ”they” are that Trump claims made this false claim. ”I had the largest audience. I did. I had the largest audience. If you add the television, you add all the sources, the largest audience in the history of inaugurations. I did. They try and demean it so much. And when you look at pictures  —   I would love to show you a picture, when I was in that speech, I looked at, it was a sea of people and they want to demean it. I don’t even know when that picture was taken by the way, to be honest with you. But it wasn’t taken from where I was. They take a picture from the back, from the Washington Monument, a backward picture. They are so demeaning and they are so dishonest.” Trump interview with Hannity, THE FACTS:    photos taken during the same time frame of Trump’s inauguration and President Obama’s inauguration clearly show a larger crowd eight years ago along with empty areas along the mall, as we debunked earlier in Spicer’s weekend tirade. According to Nielsen, 30. 6 million people watched Trump’s inauguration  —   which is certainly notable  —   but 38 million people tuned in for President Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. It’s tougher to determine how many people streamed the inauguration, which has grown as a platform in eight years. But CNN reported they actually had a larger streaming audience for Obama’s inauguration than Trump’s. And as for the ”backward” picture  —   the Obama photo was taken from the exact same angle. ”Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair.” Trump’s interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jan. 27, THE FACTS: This Pew Research study shows that roughly the same number of Muslim refugees and Christian refugees were admitted to the U. S. in 2016. And while Christian refugees from Syria were admitted in far less numbers than Muslim refugees from the same country, they make up only about 5% of the population in Syria. As the Washington Post   finds, when looking at Iraqi refugees, Christians made up about 15% of those admitted to the U. S. even though they make up less than 1% of the Iraqi population. As Glenn Kessler of the Post writes, ”The basic fact is no one understands why there is such a disparity. The president could highlight that situation without suggesting that something nefarious is going on.” ”Chicago is like a war zone. ...when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can’t have that.” Trump in ABC interview, THE FACTS: As the Chicago Tribune reports, police records show that, ”Not only did no homicides take place in Chicago during Obama’s address of about an hour Jan. 10, but the official Police Department records and the Tribune’s crime database show that no shootings at all occurred over that time frame.” ”Here in Philadelphia, the murder rate has been steady  —   I mean just terribly increasing.” Trump speaking to the GOP House retreat in Philadelphia on Jan. 26, THE FACTS: There were just 277 homicides in Philadelphia in 2016, down from 280 the year before, the Washington Post reports. And that is steadily down from 10 years ago when there were 391 murders in 2007. While there have been 27 murders so far in 2017  —   10 more than this time last year, as the Post notes, ”that is too small a sample size to say violence is ’terribly increasing. ’” ”And the President’s top priority is to retain and attract American jobs, which have already seen happening through his actions on Carrier, Sprint, General Motors and so many more.” Spicer on Jan. 23 press briefing, THE FACTS: When Trump touted back in December that he had saved 1, 000 Carrier jobs from going to Mexico  —   a frequent campaign stump speech promise when he was in the Midwest  —   it was hailed as evidence that his aggressive approach to keeping manufacturing jobs would work. In fact, the Carrier deal saved less than half of the jobs there, though the broader deal did also save jobs at the United Technologies’ factory elsewhere in Indiana. However, some of those Carrier jobs will eventually be lost to automation. Ultimately, about 1, 000 jobs will still move to Mexico. The deal also included $7 million in tax breaks for the company, which even vocal Trump supporter Sarah Palin called ”crony capitalism.” After Trump called out GM for making their Chevy Cruze in Mexico, the company pointed out that the main model sold in the U. S. is manufactured in Ohio. The company later announced they would move a production for parts from Mexico to Michigan, adding 450 jobs, and also moving more IT jobs back to the United States. Trump claimed credit, but GM leaders said the move had been planned for a long time. ”. ..buy America and hire America is at the core of the president’s plan to create an economy that works for everyone. ..” Spicer on Jan. 23 press briefing, THE FACTS: Many of Trump’s own signature pieces sold at his clubs and clothing from his daughter Ivanka’s clothing line are made overseas. ”This memorandum counters through dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years.”  —   White House press secretary Sean Spicer during afternoon briefing, THE FACTS: There were nearly 2. 8 million federal workers when Obama took office. As of December 2016, there were just a little more than 2. 8 million. That’s not exactly a dramatic increase, as this chart shows. The only dramatic increase happened in April 2010, when the government hired hundreds of thousands of temporary census workers, which happens every 10 years."
"Next Friday, the Labor Department will issue its first jobs and unemployment report of Donald Trump’s presidency. Forecasters expect little change in the jobless rate, which was 4. 7 percent in December. That’s down from 10 percent during the depths of the recession in late 2009. Trump repeatedly claimed during the campaign that the federal government was understating the real unemployment rate. ”Don’t believe these phony numbers,” Trump told supporters early last year. ”The number is probably 28, 29, as high as 35 [percent]. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent.” Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, echoed that sentiment during his confirmation hearing. ”The unemployment rate is not real,” Mnuchin told the Senate Finance Committee. ”I’ve traveled for the last year. I’ve seen this.” The Labor Department actually publishes a variety of unemployment statistics, though none comes close to the figures Trump cited. The headline number of 4. 7 percent counts only those who have actively looked for work in last four weeks. A broader measure of unemployment counts anyone who has looked unsuccessfully for work in the last year. That figure was 5. 7 percent in December. Adding in   workers who would prefer to work   brings the figure to 9. 2 percent  —   the government’s most comprehensive measure of unemployment and  . None of these jobless measures counts people who have dropped out of the labor force altogether. The labor force participation rate  —   currently 62. 7 percent  —   has fallen 3 percentage points since former President Obama took office eight years ago. Some of that decline is a result of demographic trends, as aging baby boomers retire voluntarily. The drop may also reflect lingering fallout from the Great Recession. If you counted everyone who’s not in the labor force as ”unemployed,” you would get a jobless rate of 37. 3 percent. But that’s obviously inflated, as it includes retirees, college students and voluntary    parents. Stronger wage growth might pull more people back into the labor force, and more   policies might encourage    parents to return to work. The aging population, however, will continue to put downward pressure on workforce participation. That will make it difficult for the new president to achieve his goal of adding 25 million jobs over the next decade. For comparison, the country added 15. 5 million jobs under President Obama from the trough of the recession in early 2010. Today, the economy is closer to full employment, so there’s much less slack to take up. The jobs report coming out next Friday reflects employment and unemployment around Jan. 12, so this is really the final assessment of the Obama administration’s job record. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a press conference he doesn’t expect Trump to give the new report much attention: ”He’s not focused on statistics as much as he is on whether the American people are doing better as a whole.”"
"A tiny     device might someday make taking antibiotics safer and more efficient. Think of it as a tiny submarine scooting around inside your stomach, fueled by the acid there. Oral antibiotics are commonly prescribed   drugs. Once an antibiotic is swallowed, it takes a trip to the stomach, where there’s lots of acid. That stomach acid can break chemical bonds in the antibiotic and deactivate it. To keep that from happening, doctors often prescribe   medications like Prilosec or Prevacid. But they can cause side effects such as headache, diarrhea and fatigue. So scientists at the University of California, San Diego, came up with a device designed to both reduce stomach acid and deliver medication without the side effects. The swallowable device reacts with stomach acid release of tiny hydrogen bubbles. The bubbles scoot it around the stomach, and a magnesium core reduces acidity as it goes. The tiny device is covered by a special polymer, like a jacket, that is sensitive to changes in the acidity. Once the acid in the stomach is neutralized, the polymer dissolves and the submarines unload their antibiotic payload. The micro submarine is only 20 microns across, about   the width of a human hair. It might sound like an episode of The Magic School Bus, the cartoon series that miniaturized children so they could explore inside the body, but the authors think it could be a big improvement in drug delivery. The study was led by Joseph Wang, the chair of nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego. He says that the way that the scooting submarine delivers the drug actually helps the drug work better. ”This active movement of the carrier improved the therapeutic efficiency in addition to the neutralization of the stomach [acid).” The device isn’t ready for use in humans yet, but preliminary testing in mice shows that it’s safe and effective, at least there. The study was published Jan. 20 in Angewandte Chemie International Edition."
"When MoniCa Singh, then 19, went to visit her parents in Lucknow, India, in 2005, she had just finished her first year at the National Institute of Fashion Technology in New Delhi. She hoped to complete her degree and pursue a career in fashion design. Then her life changed in a flash. As she was driving down the street, a   acquaintance waved and motioned her to roll down her car window. Over the years, she had refused his persistent marriage proposals but his sociable gesture seemed to signal that was in the past. So why not? Suddenly, two bicyclists carrying a bucket pulled up beside her and spilled its contents over her face, hands, legs and body. The burning sensation was, she remembers, excruciating. Was it hot coffee, she wondered before passing out. When she awoke in a hospital trauma unit, she learned it had been sulfuric acid  —   the highly corrosive and potentially fatal chemical that has become a weapon used by spurned men to disfigure and injure the women who have said no to them. The two bicyclists were convicted the acquaintance was not. Singh’s traumatizing experience was not a singular event. Approximately 1, 000 acid attacks are reported yearly in India, according to the Acid Survivors Trust (ASTI) with more no doubt unreported due to fear of reprisals and the unlikelihood of successful prosecution. Acid violence occurs worldwide, the organization notes, but with greatest frequency in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Colombia, Pakistan, Nepal and Uganda. For these victims, the road to recovery, physical and mental, is long and rocky. Victims can suffer extensive facial and body disfigurement, lose their sight and experience severe depression and anxiety, fearing others will shun their scarred appearance. Yet acid attacks survivors are finding the courage to reclaim their lives  —   and seeking to raise public awareness and help stop future attacks. Their strategies include taking to the fashion runway, sharing their experiences in comic books and appearing in video resumes that show potential employers they are far more than their scars. After more than a decade and nearly 50 reconstructive surgeries, Singh has managed to forge a new path  —   actually, several paths, as a professional in fashion design, as an advocate who raises awareness of   violence and reaches out to survivors  —   and this fall, as a comic book heroine. Priya’s Mirror tells the story of four   acid attack victims  —   one of them Singh  —   in a fictional context. After being attacked, they’re imprisoned in a castle by a villain. The superheroine Priya rescues them by using a secret weapon, the Mirror of Love. Designed as a   comic book with interactive videos and animation viewable with a smartphone app, the comic book was funded by the World Bank. The Mahendra Singh Foundation, the   violence nonprofit that MoniCa Singh leads, was a  . Acid attack survivors have also, in the past months, become fashion models as well as role models, walking the runways in New York and London. At New York’s Fashion Week, FTL Moda’s runway show featured    Reshma Bano Qureshi, whose path to the runway began two years ago with near tragedy. At the age of 17, accompanied by her sister, she was en route to Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, India to take exams. Suddenly, the two women were accosted by the sister’s   and two of his friends. Her sister’s hands were burned Qureshi herself lost one eye and suffered severe facial scars. She thought of suicide. Then she met Ria Sharma. After coming across photos of acid attack survivor while she was completing her degree at the University of Leeds, Sharma was inspired to found Make Love, Not Scars, the   nonprofit that assists acid attack survivors. She began visiting Quershi and helped   funds for surgery. She also asked Qureshi to participate in a public service ad campaign for #EndAcidSale, produced by the firm of Ogilvy and Mather. An online video features Qureshi giving a seemingly ordinary   and beauty tutorial. Until, that is, she compares the two minutes needed to put on blush to the mere three seconds in which a face can be scarred forever. The video, released in   was aimed at gaining visibility for acid attack victims  —   and getting signatures for a petition for the enforcement of the ban on the open sale of acid in India. The goal was 25, 000 signatures it garnered 300, 000. The success of that video led to the invitation for Quershi to participate in the New York fashion show, where she appeared in a stylish white gown decorated with multicolored geometric panels. Ilaria Niccolini, president of the fashion company FTL Moda, welcomes models like Qureshi and others who don’t fit the usual fashion model. ”Beauty is hidden in places that we wouldn’t necessarily look,” she says. Make Love, Not Scars has also teamed up with Ogilvy and Mather for another online campaign, ”Make Skills, Not Scars.” The portal began in late November with nine video resumes of acid attack survivors and it is dedicated to aiding acid attack survivors on their path to  —   literally  —   showing their faces to the world. ”I love making people look beautiful,” intones Mamta [her last name is not given] in a calm, melodious voice as she looks into the camera. She presents herself as an experienced    beautician looking for a job in Delhi, where she lives. But her   eye and the discolored abrasions on her face and neck tell the story of a different experience, as an acid attack survivor. ”I know what you’re thinking,” she says. ”I could have just written all this down and sent it to you. But I wanted you to see my face too. So that when I’m working to make you look beautiful you don’t look away. That’s why I made this video CV.” And that message is reaching the public. A   BuzzFeed India video featuring Mamta with the Indian   comedian Tanmay Bhat has attracted over 750, 000 views."
"President Trump isn’t the first wealthy New York businessman to hold a high public office. Nelson Rockefeller, an heir to one of America’s greatest fortunes, served as the state’s governor in the 1960s, and then vice president in the   in the Ford administration. More recently, billionaire Michael Bloomberg served as mayor of New York City, where he held office for 12 years. To avoid conflicts of interest, Bloomberg cobbled together a plan for disentangling his private interests from his public office  —   but without surrendering ownership of his business empire. Now Trump appears to be trying to follow a similar path. Ethics experts say that using the Bloomberg template won’t be good enough because Trump’s two roles  —   one as president and the other as business owner  —   will come into perpetual conflict, with more serious consequences that could reach far beyond just one city. Still, the new president may see many similarities between his own situation and Bloomberg’s. For example, Bloomberg, who governed as an independent after his 2001 election, repeatedly said he did not consider himself a politician. Instead, he would say he was a businessman spending some time in politics. Bloomberg saw his lack of political experience and business background as a strength  —   believing it gave him more credibility with some of New York’s most powerful companies. During his   run, Bloomberg told New York Magazine, ”Most of the guys that run these big firms, they’re my age. And because of my company, there’s a credibility. They respect somebody who’s not a politician, who’s trying to get things done.” Trump’s campaign rallying cry was that the country needs someone who can ”make good deals.” Like Trump, when Bloomberg was elected, he faced many questions about how he would separate himself from his sprawling business empire, known as Bloomberg L. P. That firm did deals with many of the wealthiest and most powerful companies in New York City  —   including investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. To address some of his conflicts, Bloomberg resigned from the boards of many cultural institutions. But much like Trump, he refused to put his ownership stake of his namesake company into a blind trust. At the time, his stake was worth around $5 billion, which, according to Politico, is about the same as Trump’s estimation of his current net worth. Bloomberg recused himself from    decision making, as Trump has promised to do. But Bloomberg’s managers were not relatives, whereas Trump has appointed his two sons to run his business. Bloomberg, in accordance with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) ruling, reserved his right to participate in any talks about selling the company. That is where the similarity between the two billionaires ends. Although critics suggest Bloomberg was not truly successful in preventing conflicts between his business interests and his mayoral role, he was able to satisfy the COIB requirements without divesting. In contrast, Trump is not following recommendations from the U. S. Office of Government Ethics, which works like the COIB, but on the federal level. OGE publicly asked the new president to divest, or at least put his assets in a blind trust not ruled by a family member. Trump says he will not do that, even though presidents traditionally follow OGE guidance. OGE Director Walter Shaub has been highly critical of Trump’s plan. Speaking at the Brookings Institution earlier this month, Shaub denounced it as inadequate and meaningless, saying: ”The plan the   has announced doesn’t meet the standards of the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the last four decades has met.” So the bottom line is: Even if Trump follows Bloomberg’s precedent for managing assets, he is rejecting the recommendations of the ethics officials who guide his public office. That may open up Trump to far more criticism than Bloomberg ever faced."
"Updated 9:30 a. m. Jan. 29, In signing an executive order imposing tough ethics standards on executive branch employees, President Trump followed a path laid by the two Democratic presidents who preceded him, almost word for word. ”This is a   lobbying ban,” Trump said at the ceremony where he signed this and two other orders. ”It’s a   ban now, and it’s got full of loopholes, and this is a   ban.” He joked that the senior staff standing near him for the signing had ”one last chance to get out” before they would have to stick to limits on lobbying laid out in the directive. ”This was something, the   ban, that I have been talking a lot about on the campaign trail,” Trump added. By the end of his campaign, supporters were chanting ”drain the swamp,” so this order, like many of his others in the past week amounts to Trump trying to show he’s keeping a campaign pledge. But what Trump is doing is derivative of what his two immediate Democratic predecessors did. On his first full day in office, Jan. 20, 1993, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order titled, ”Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees.” Twenty four years, a week and a day later, President Trump signed an order bearing the exact same title. But the similarities don’t stop there. As Trump’s team drafted his order on ethics, they appear to have borrowed heavily from the language used in orders signed by both Clinton and President Obama. Obama also pulled from Clinton, in parts and the ethics directive signed by President George W. Bush is nearly identical to the one signed by his father twelve years earlier. But that’s less surprising given those were presidents using the language of their predecessor from the same party. Perhaps more importantly, Trump not only seems to be lifting from Democratic presidents’ language, but they are presidents he has condemned, including for not ”draining the swamp.” ”The story here is not the copying per se, it is the claim Trump has been making that he is doing something really different, new, and righteous when, apparently, in many respects he is actually copying Democrats he so thoroughly condemned as corrupt,” said John Woolley, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and   of the Presidency Project. The irony, he points out, is that those Democrats had also promised their own version of draining the swamp in response to the Republican president who preceded them. Clinton ended up revoking his order in his final weeks in office, allowing his appointees to go straight into lobbying after all. And the Obama administration granted some waivers to its ethics order. It remains to be seen, of course, if Trump sticks hard and fast to his ban. Trump criticized Clinton for backing off the ban during the 2016 presidential campaign. ”President Clinton did what the Clintons always do  —   he rigged the system on his way out,” Trump said in a statement in October of last year. ”Clinton lifted the executive order so the Clintons and their cronies like John Podesta could start raking in cash.” (Podesta was Clinton’s chief of staff in the White House, founded a lobbying and public affairs firm with his brother and later became Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.) The Trump administration did not reply to a request for comment. ”When a new president’s executive order deals with a subject of operational concern to multiple administrations, it’s not surprising that the president’s lawyers would look to previous iterations as models,” wrote Peter Shane, an Ohio State University constitutional law professor, in an email to NPR after reviewing the overlapping language. Shane focuses on separation of powers law and the application of law to the presidency. ”For a Republican president, reiterating the restrictive obligations prior Democratic presidents imposed on their appointees has the double advantage of using provisions vetted by other lawyers and apparently deemed acceptable to the political opposition,” Shane added. Below, we were able to trace back each bullet point in section one of Trump’s order to either Clinton or Obama  —   nearly verbatim. For clarity, Trump’s order language is in bold, Clinton’s is in italics and Obama’s is plain text: Trump:  ”Section 1. Ethics Pledge. Every appointee in every executive agency appointed on or after January 20, 2017, shall sign, and upon signing shall be contractually committed to, the following pledge upon becoming an appointee:” Obama: ”Section 1. Ethics Pledge. Every appointee in every executive agency appointed on or after January 20, 2009, shall sign, and upon signing shall be contractually committed to, the following pledge upon becoming an appointee:” Clinton: ”Section 1. Ethics Pledges. (a) Every senior appointee in every executive agency appointed on or after January 20, 1993, shall sign, and upon signing shall be contractually committed to, the following pledge (”senior appointee pledge”) upon becoming a senior appointee:” Trump:  ”As a condition, and in consideration, of my employment in the United States Government in an appointee position invested with the public trust, I commit myself to the following obligations, which I understand are binding on me and are enforceable under law:” Obama: ”As a condition, and in consideration, of my employment in the United States Government in a position invested with the public trust, I commit myself to the following obligations, which I understand are binding on me and are enforceable under law:” Clinton: ”As a condition, and in consideration, of my employment in the United States Government in a senior appointee position invested with the public trust, I commit myself to the following obligations, which I understand are binding on me and are enforceable under law:” Trump:  ”2. If, upon my departure from the Government, I am covered by the   restrictions on communicating with employees of my former executive agency set forth in section 207( c) of title 18, United States Code, I agree that I will abide by those restrictions.” Obama: ”4. Revolving Door Ban Appointees Leaving Government. If, upon my departure from the Government, I am covered by the post employment restrictions on communicating with employees of my former executive agency set forth in section 207( c) of title 18, United States Code, I agree that I will abide by those restrictions for a period of 2 years following the end of my appointment.” Trump:  ”3. In addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraphs 1 and 2, I also agree, upon leaving Government service, not to engage in lobbying activities with respect to any covered executive branch official or   Senior Executive Service appointee for the remainder of the Administration.” Obama: ”5. Revolving Door Ban Appointees Leaving Government to Lobby. In addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraph 4, I also agree, upon leaving Government service, not to lobby any covered executive branch official or non career Senior Executive Service appointee for the remainder of the Administration.” Trump:  ”4. I will not, at any time after the termination of my employment in the United States Government, engage in any activity on behalf of any foreign government or foreign political party which, were it undertaken on January 20, 2017, would require me to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended.” Clinton:  ”3. I will not, at any time after the termination of my employment in the United States Government, engage in any activity on behalf of any foreign government or foreign political party which, if undertaken on January 20, 1993, would require me to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended.” Trump: 5.  ”I will not accept gifts from registered lobbyists or lobbying organizations for the duration of my service as an appointee.” Obama: ”1. Lobbyist Gift Ban. I will not accept gifts from registered lobbyists or lobbying organizations for the duration of my service as an appointee.” Trump:  ”6. I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.” Obama: ”2. Revolving Door Ban All Appointees Entering Government. I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.” Trump:  ”7. If I was a registered lobbyist within the 2 years before the date of my appointment, in addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraph 6, I will not for a period of 2 years after the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment or participate in the specific issue area in which that particular matter falls.” Obama: ”3. Revolving Door Ban Lobbyists Entering Government. If I was a registered lobbyist within the 2 years before the date of my appointment, in addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraph 2, I will not for a period of 2 years after the date of my appointment: ”(a) participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment, ”(b) participate in the specific issue area in which that particular matter falls or, ”(c) seek or accept employment with any executive agency that I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment.” Trump:  ”8. I agree that any hiring or other employment decisions I make will be based on the candidate’s qualifications, competence, and experience.” Obama: ”6. Employment Qualification Commitment. I agree that any hiring or other employment decisions I make will be based on the candidate’s qualifications, competence, and experience.” Trump:  ”9. I acknowledge that the Executive Order entitled ’Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees,’ issued by the President on January 28, 2017, which I have read before signing this document, defines certain terms applicable to the foregoing obligations and sets forth the methods for enforcing them. I expressly accept the provisions of that Executive Order as a part of this agreement and as binding on me. I understand that the obligations of this pledge are in addition to any statutory or other legal restrictions applicable to me by virtue of Government service.” Obama: ”7. Assent to Enforcement. I acknowledge that the Executive Order entitled ’Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel,’ issued by the President on January 21, 2009, which I have read before signing this document, defines certain of the terms applicable to the foregoing obligations and sets forth the methods for enforcing them. I expressly accept the provisions of that Executive Order as a part of this agreement and as binding on me. I understand that the terms of this pledge are in addition to any statutory or other legal restrictions applicable to me by virtue of Federal Government service.” Clinton: ”2. I acknowledge that the Executive order entitled ’Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees,’ issued by the President on January 20, 1993, which I have read before signing this document, defines certain of the terms applicable to the foregoing obligations and sets forth the methods for enforcing them. I expressly accept the provisions of that Executive order as a part of this agreement and as binding on me. I understand that the terms of this pledge are in addition to any statutory or other legal restrictions applicable to me by virtue of Federal Government service.” Interestingly, when it came to picking language for the ”waivers” section of the order, Trump’s team chose the language used by Clinton, with one notable exception. Trump’s executive order doesn’t require waivers to be published in the Federal Register, meaning it will be harder for the public and press to determine whether the Trump administration is taking advantage of the loopholes written into the executive order. Obama’s order didn’t require the waivers to be published in the Federal Register either, but the Obama administration had a practice of posting them on the internet and required an annual report from the Office of Government Ethics. Trump’s doesn’t contain the reporting language. Trump:  ”Sec. 3. Waiver. (a) The President or his designee may grant to any person a waiver of any restrictions contained in the pledge signed by such person. ”(b) A waiver shall take effect when the certification is signed by the President or his designee. ”(c) A copy of the waiver certification shall be furnished to the person covered by the waiver and provided to the head of the agency in which that person is or was appointed to serve.” Clinton:  ”Sec. 3. Waiver. (a) The President may grant to any person a waiver of any restrictions contained in the pledge signed by such person if, and to the extent that, the President certifies in writing that it is in the public interest to grant the waiver. ”(b) A waiver shall take effect when the certification is signed by the President. ”(c) The waiver certification shall be published in the Federal Register, identifying the name and executive agency position of the person covered by the waiver and the reasons for granting it. ”(d) A copy of the waiver certification shall be furnished to the person covered by the waiver and filed with the head of the agency in which that person is or was appointed to serve.” Ethics watchdogs are offering a mixed reaction to the Trump executive order. In a joint statement Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Chair Norman Eisen and   Richard Painter say that ”while there are things to like in the Trump [executive order] it tears two major loopholes in the Obama executive order on ethics it replaces.” They say it removes Obama’s ban on lobbyists going to work for the agencies they had lobbied and also gets rid of revolving door restrictions on people who don’t go on to become registered lobbyists but do work to ”influence the system.” Eisen and Painter call it ”shadow lobbying.” They conclude that ”Mr. Trump’s [executive order] while it has some positive features, does not live up to his promise to drain the swamp.”"
"Biologist Shaun Clements stands in the winter mist in a coastal Oregon forest, holding a small vial of clear liquid. ”We should be safe mixing it now, right?” he asks his colleague, Kevin Weitemier, above the sound of a rushing stream a few feet away. Weitemier brings a second vial, full of stream water. In deliberate, seemingly choreographed movements, they pour the liquid back and forth between the small containers, mixing two, then three times  —   never spilling a drop. The two move out into the cold stream with the vials. Clements is in the main stream, while Weitemier stays closer to shore. At the same moment, they tip the containers on end. Two trillion particles of   DNA fall into the rushing water. It’s an experiment to figure out how far and how quickly environmental DNA  —   or ”eDNA”  —   travels in different kinds of streams. Big Idea, Occasionally a big idea comes along that promises to revolutionize the world  —   think about things like   cars. For biologists  —   especially those who work with fish and other aquatic plants and animals  —   eDNA is one of those big ideas. The technology is starting to revolutionize how we protect native animals and ensure invasive species don’t take hold. The easiest way to understand eDNA is to imagine yourself relaxing in a steamy hot tub. As you’re soaking, a bubble splashes water into your mouth and you spit it out. A day’s worth of dead skin sloughs off. Finally, toasty warm, you get out of the tub. The   broth left behind is full of your DNA. It has become part of the larger environment. And long after you’re gone, that DNA could be detected  —   if someone knew what to look for. The same holds true for any organism in any body of water. ”All these little critters out there, they’re shedding DNA from their skin cells, urine, feces,” Clements explains. Clements works for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. He says Oregon has a lot of waterways and the state doesn’t have the resources to fully monitor endangered fish, look for invasive plants or check in on all the other native species, potentially including mammals like river otters, beavers and bats. With eDNA, doing all of this could get much cheaper and easier. ”Just by taking a water sample, you can tell somewhere in basin above you, there was this range of species and something about their relative abundance,” he says. And this potential has fisheries biologists excited for what lies ahead. ”Environmental DNA sampling really can be a game changer,” says U. S. Forest Service fisheries biologist Mike Young. So Many Variables, Young says biologists and fisheries managers in the West are already really good at using eDNA to find the threatened species bull trout in small streams. That’s because he and other scientists have been working for years to figure out exactly what it means to find bull trout DNA in a water sample. They know what a positive detection indicates about bull trout presence and relative population numbers. ”But let’s say we’re trying to sample to detect western pearl shell mussels in larger stream. .. or Pacific lamprey, or trying to find invasive species in reservoir,” Young says. ”Each water will come with its own probability of detection that’s specific to that species and habitat pair.” DNA will travel differently depending on the habitat and the species. Where and how much DNA there is can be affected by the speed and direction of the water, the amount of sunlight, the number of   bacteria and the season it is. And this is only a partial list. There are multiple variables that still need to be tested. Scientists are only really beginning to scratch the surface. Even so, the technology is beginning to prove its worth for bull trout monitoring in the West and for keeping track of invasive Asian carp, which pose a huge threat to the Great Lakes region. ”We don’t have to know everything about it [eDNA] to make it useful  —   as long as we’re accounting for errors,” says Caren Goldberg, an ecologist at Washington State University. Refine, Refine, Refine, The work of refining the science of eDNA is what Clements is doing out in the woods near Alsea, Oregon. After dropping the synthetic DNA into the stream, he and Weitemier jump in their car and bounce along a logging road to the pink flag marking their fourth collection site, about a   downstream. ”I wasn’t sure I was going to be the person standing in the stream, but I thought there was a possibility,” says Weitemier, who drew the proverbial short straw. Like other scientists in place at the team’s three other collection sites, Weitemier will be   in the   stream for the next hour, taking water samples at regular intervals to see if they can capture any of the DNA released upstream. ”There was a lot of DNA in there  —   trillions of DNA particles. But that was being diluted into millions of liters of this stream,” says Weitemier. ”So we might only recover a very small proportion. .. especially [where] I was sampling at the farthest point from where we put it in.” The samples will be taken back to the Oregon Hatchery Research Center to be filtered. Then the filters will be taken to the Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing at Oregon State University, where Weitemier works. Even if they did capture the synthetic DNA, other issues could arise. ”The test we use to recover them may not be sensitive enough to see them. But we don’t know. That’s what we’re testing,” he says. But if all goes as planned here, and OSU is able to detect the DNA, Clements will repeat this experiment throughout Oregon. He’ll use the information he gleans from the field tests to figure out how the agency can start using eDNA to monitor and manage fish and wildlife. ”Scientists always say more data is better, managers always say we need to know now,” he says. ”So, we anticipate that along the way we’ll learn a lot.” This story comes to us from Oregon Public Broadcasting and EarthFix, an environmental journalism collaboration led by Oregon Public Broadcasting in partnership with six other public media stations in Oregon, Washington and Idaho."
"The Kremlin has given a positive readout of the   phone call Saturday between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Putin’s overture to the United States to join forces in the fight against international terrorism was the main subject of the   conversation, while thorny issues such as alleged Russian   on U. S. political parties or economic sanctions on Russia weren’t mentioned. Russian state television welcomed the change in tone between Washington and Moscow following open hostility in the last weeks of Barack Obama’s presidency. ”The conversation was supposed to return substance and sense to the   dialogue,” Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign relations committee in Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, was quoted as saying. ”By all appearances that’s what happened.” Although there was widespread speculation that Trump might propose easing U. S. sanctions on Russia during the call, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency that the subject had not come up. The main topic of the call was how to defeat ISIS, according to statements released by the White House and the Kremlin. ”The two leaders emphasized that joining efforts in fighting the main threat  —   international terrorism  —   is a top priority,” the Kremlin said. ”The presidents spoke out for establishing real coordination of actions between Russia and the U. S. aimed at defeating ISIS and other terrorists groups in Syria.” Putin has been talking about forming an international coalition against terrorists since a speech he gave at the United Nations in September 2015, days before Russia entered the Syrian civil war on behalf of President Bashar  . Trump’s memorandum on devising a plan for defeating ISIS, also signed Saturday, orders U. S. security agencies to include the ”identification of new coalition partners in the fight against ISIS and policies to empower coalition partners to fight ISIS and its affiliates.” Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, cautioned that previous U. S. administrations also tried to use the common threat of terrorism as a way to   relations with Putin. ”It didn’t work under Bush. It didn’t work under Obama,” Lukyanov told NPR. ”There is a big question mark whether it will work now with Trump because the general atmosphere is totally poisoned by the deepest mistrust since maybe Cold War times.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer tweeted a photo of Trump on the phone with Putin. He also spoke with other world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In the picture, Trump is seen together with National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Vice President Mike Pence and strategist Steve Bannon. Peskov said before the talk that Putin would be taking the call with Trump alone. While the White House readout was one paragraph long, the Kremlin statement was considerably more detailed. The conflict in Ukraine was only mentioned in passing, after other issues such as the situation in the Middle East and nuclear nonproliferation. Putin’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014 was the reason why the U. S. and the European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in the first place. ”Everything we know about Trump is very, very clear,” said Lukyanov. ”He’ll never do anything just without a return. He believes in deals. And of course he’ll use sanctions for a deal.” Putin, for his part, would never ask for the lifting of sanctions, Lukyanov said. Instead, it’s likely sanctions relief would be part of a grand bargain. In their conversation, Putin reminded Trump that Russia was an ally in the two world wars  —   and said Russia considers the U. S. the most important partner in fighting international terrorism. But even if Putin can win over Trump, the new U. S. president faces staunch opposition to rapprochement with Russia within his own party. Some Republicans in Congress want to write existing sanctions against Russia into law  —   and impose new ones because of alleged Russian interference in the U. S. presidential election."
"Whether you travel for work or pleasure, you have probably experienced travel fatigue  —   the distinct exhaustion that comes from too little leg room, bad air, bad food and stress endured while traveling. Travel across time zones is more disrupting, still. Jet lag, as we know it, can make you tired but unable to get to sleep, unable to stay asleep once you get there, disoriented, dizzy, emotionally vulnerable  —   and it can upset your stomach. (For a general discussion of jet lag and travel fatigue, see this.) So it isn’t exactly surprising that jet lag takes a toll on the performance of professional athletes  —   specifically Major League Baseball pitchers  —   who travel across multiple time zones, as was detailed in an article published Monday in one of the world’s top scientific journals, PNAS. It would be surprising if it were not the case. But the real story here isn’t baseball. The real story is jet lag. Jet lag is hard to study outside the laboratory. How do you quantify the effects of the disruption to our circadian rhythms to which travel across time zones can give rise? There are so many variables. Diet, alcohol, class of travel, as well as other circumstances  —   such as whether you have to work at the other end or whether you can rest  —   will all make a difference to your experience of jet lag. Enter baseball. Pro ball players are measured, analyzed, counted and made statistical to the greatest degree possible. Every bit of data is counted up, stored and processed. Major League Baseball is just about as documented as it is possible for a human activity to be. Crucially, for the purpose of this study, baseball players travel a lot for their work and they frequently travel across as many as three time zones. Whether you give a hoot about baseball or not, baseball is a data set unlike any other, if you aim to make a   analysis of the ways disruption to the body’s clock affects what humans do. The study’s authors mined 20 MLB seasons  —   well over 40, 000 games  —   to tease out the precise effects of jet lag on performance. And they came up with some pretty interesting results. One finding is that jet lag affects both home and away teams, but that the offensive performance of the home team is more adversely affected by jet lag. Away team performance did not seem to suffer as much offensively. Why not? The authors speculate that ”the away team has a more structured daily schedule when away from home than does the home team returning home.” And they add that this dichotomy between home and away may be less in evidence with defense because pitchers, ”especially starting pitchers who play every fifth day, have a more structured schedule leading up to their start irrespective whether they are home or away.” Given this, it is somewhat surprising that they also found that both home and away teams, under the influence of jet lag  —   and controlling for home team advantage as well as the difference of playing in different ballparks  —   showed a marked increase in the number of home runs they allowed. This is puzzling, to me anyway, because, as they authors note, this is best explained by difficulties experienced by pitchers as a result of jet lag. There was another finding that didn’t surprise me much because it matches my own travel experience so well: The effects of jet lag are noticeably worse traveling west to east than in the opposite direction. Arguably this is because it is the shortened day of eastward travel that produces the disruption to the circadian clock. Some of this is news baseball teams can use. For example, as the authors suggest, ”a starting pitcher scheduled for a game in which the team is   might travel to the game location a few days ahead of the team, to adjust to the new time zone.” Is there news the rest of us can use in these findings? Maybe this, in the authors words: ”Rather than uniform effects, these results reveal surprisingly specific effects of circadian misalignment on athletic performance under natural conditions.” Could this be true of the effects of jet lag on the rest of us, too? I don’t mean that we’ll all start allowing more home runs. But maybe jet lag’s affects for us regular people could turn out to be ”surprisingly specific”? Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Donald Trump is not only the U. S. president he’s also a golf industry giant. And like other golf course operators, he has a stake in the legal wrangling over a new environmental rule that could dent industry profits. Here’s where Trump is different from his peers: He gets to name the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and this week, the president may appoint a nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court, which soon will hear a case involving the environmental rule. The situation highlights the conflicts between Trump’s two roles  —   one as president, the other as business owner. Although he has stepped back from    management of his companies, he has not sold off his stake in the Trump Organization. His sprawling business empire includes a dozen golf courses in the United States alone. The jewel may be Trump National Doral, just outside Miami. It’s a resort with a hotel and a spa. At a campaign event in October, Trump said he was especially proud of Doral’s four golf courses. ”As you know, the Blue Monster is one of the great courses of the world,” he said. But like any golf course, it is subject to various regulations. And there’s a pending rule that the golf industry hates. In 2015, under the Obama administration, the EPA and U. S. Army Corps of Engineers finalized the Waters of the United States rule to apply clean water regulations to thousands of new streams, lakes and wetlands. Under the rule, the Blue Monster  —   and all golf courses in the U. S.  —   would be subject to closer federal regulation. The rule is opposed by a long list of industries, including manufacturers, farmers and golf course owners like Trump. They have been filing lawsuits that have put the rule on hold. Bob Helland, with the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, says the average golf course has over 11 acres of streams, ponds and wetlands that could be affected. Under the rule, courses may now need federal permission before applying fertilizer or pesticides. ”Many of our routine activities would be deemed as a discharge into waters of the United States and could not move forward without getting a required permit,” Helland said. Trump’s course superintendents are members of Helland’s association. Now, in his role as U. S. president, Trump has pledged to roll back the new environmental rule. His nominee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, is also a staunch opponent of the Waters of the U. S. rule. As Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt filed a lawsuit to overturn it. For the Trump administration, overturning the rule isn’t something that can be done through executive order. The EPA would have to restart the lengthy rulemaking process, according to Jon Devine, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. ”Repealing a rule requires a full public process and has to be justified by the law and the evidence available. And in the case of the clean water rule, that’s going to be rough sledding for the Trump administration,” he said. This month, the Supreme Court decided to weigh in, agreeing to hear a case that will determine which federal court has jurisdiction over the rule. It’s possible Trump’s nominee to the court will hear the case. Larry Liebesman, a former EPA and Justice Department lawyer, says any further action will likely be put on hold until there’s a Supreme Court ruling on jurisdiction. ”It gives the administration a little down time to figure out how to handle the situation. It also suggests that maybe Congress may step in and legislate on this issue as well,” says Liebesman, now a consultant with Dawson and Associates. With the threat of a presidential veto gone now, opponents of the rule are hoping Congress takes action to kill the rule. This month, Republican Sens. Joni Ernst from Iowa and Deb Fischer from Nebraska introduced a resolution to begin that process."
"At the State Department, there is an easy  —   and usually private  —   way for employees to register their concerns about U. S. policy. It’s called the ”Dissent Channel.” And today, an unusually large number of foreign service officers are using it. A dissent cable says Donald Trump’s temporary visa and refugee ban ”runs counter to American values” and could be ”counterproductive.” The White House says it consulted for ”many weeks” with the State Department before issuing its executive order on Friday, temporarily banning visas for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries and suspending the U. S. refugee resettlement program. State Department officials who were involved in the refugee program deny this. One retired ambassador, Laura Kennedy, says the executive order did not read as though it had been reviewed by State Department lawyers or by consular or refugee officials. ”It is just, as the dissent message makes clear, inconsistent with values, with security aims of the administration, with process, with any number of things,” Kennedy says. The Dissent Channel was set up during the Vietnam War era as a way for foreign service officers and civil servants to raise concerns with upper management about the direction of U. S. foreign policy, without fear of retribution. The cables are sent to the State Department’s policy planning director, who distributes them to the secretary of state and other top officials, who must respond within 30 to 60 days. There are typically about four or five each year. ”Freedom from reprisal for Dissent Channel users is strictly enforced,” according to the State Department. During her   State Department career, Kennedy never signed a dissent cable herself. She remembers one time in the 1990s when more than a dozen diplomats raised concerns about U. S. policy in the Balkans. Last year, about 50 foreign service officers criticized the Obama administration for failing to do enough to protect civilians in Syria. But this executive order, titled ”Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” is generating much more attention. ”I know that many serving officers were horrified by this message,” Kennedy says, referring to the order. The draft dissent cable  —   which has been published by the Lawfare blog  —   points out that the overwhelming majority of attacks on U. S. soil are committed by   or naturalized U. S. citizens, individuals who have been living in the U. S for decades or since birth. And it points out that terrorist attacks carried out by foreign nationals entering the U. S. on visas have come from countries that are not included in the ban, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. On Monday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer was dismissive of the dissent cable. ”I think they should get with the program or they can go,” he said. All this comes at a time when the Trump administration has cleared out top management positions at the State Department without naming anyone new to replace them. Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, is still awaiting confirmation."
"Former President Barack Obama has criticized President Trump’s immigration and travel ban issued on Friday, saying through a spokesman that he is ”heartened by the level of engagement” over the weekend in opposition to the action. ”In his final official speech as President, he spoke about the important role of citizen[s] and how all Americans have a responsibility to be the guardians of our democracy  —   not just during an election but every day,” Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said in a statement. ”Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.” It is the first public comment from Obama since he left office just over a week ago and departed for a vacation in Palm Springs, Calif. In his final press conference, Obama signaled he would give the new president some deference but that he wouldn’t hesitate to speak up if he believed the country’s ”core values may be at stake,” including ”systematic discrimination being ratified in some fashion.” The former president apparently felt that was in fact happening with Trump’s executive order, which blocked travelers from seven countries, all of which are    —   Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia  —   for 90 days. New refugee admissions are suspended for 120 days, while Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely. Trump also signaled in a weekend interview with the Christian Broadcast Network that he would give priority to Christian refugees over Muslim refugees. The administration has maintained that the sweeping actions don’t constitute a Muslim ban, though. ”With regard to comparisons to President Obama’s foreign policy decisions, as we’ve heard before, the President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion,” the statement from Lewis added. There was confusion across the country over the implementation of the ban, which blocked some valid visa holders from entering and detained many people who had legal status and green cards. Protests sprang up at major international airports, and on Saturday night a federal judge issued a temporary stay blocking the deportation of valid visa holders. Trump has argued that his new policy is ”similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.” However, as the Washington Post points out, that was in response to a specific threat after Iraqi refugees had been found to be colluding against U. S. troops. And the refugee process was slowed, not halted."
"Holding up papers with highlighted text, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said little has changed as it relates to the National Security Council between the Trump, Obama and Bush administrations. He thundered of ”identical language” between (parts of the) 2017 and 2009 memos organizing the NSC. And he went further when it came to George W. Bush’s administration. ”The makeup of the Principals Committee from 2017 is exactly as it was in both 2017 as it was in 2001,” Spicer boasted, brandishing the texts in both hands. ”100 percent identical, except we add the word also.” But that’s not true. President Trump and this White House have come under scrutiny and criticism in some corners in recent days for elevating chief strategist Steve Bannon to the Principals Committee of the NSC and demoting the director of national intelligence as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In fact, Trump’s Principals Committee, as compared with Obama’s, does exactly that (bolding and italics ours for emphasis): Trump 2017, ”The PC shall have as its regular attendees the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff, the Assistant to the President and Chief Strategist, the National Security Advisor, and the Homeland Security Advisor. The Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall attend where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed. The Counsel to the President, the Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget may attend all PC meetings. . ..” Obama 2009  —   Presidential Policy Directive  —   1, ”The NSC Principals Committee ( ) will continue to be the senior interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security, as it has been since 1989. The National Security Advisor shall serve as Chair, and its regular members will be the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, the Chief of Staff to the President, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor, the Deputy Secretary of State, the Counsel to the President, and the Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs shall be invited to attend every meeting of the  . . ..” Compared with George W. Bush’s, Trump’s has far more people in the Principals Committee. The director of national intelligence and the Homeland Security Department did not exist yet. And, of course, there was no ”chief strategist” designated on the Principals Committee: George W. Bush 2001  —   National Security Presidential Directive  —  1, ”The NSC Principals Committee ( ) will continue to be the senior interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security, as it has since 1989. The   shall have as its regular attendees the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Chief of Staff to the President, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (who shall serve as chair). The Director of Central Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall attend where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed.” Bush’s initial organizational order forming the NSC (above) designates that the CIA director and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would attend on an   basis. But that was before Sept. 11. ”In effect, after   the practice was they were in almost every meeting,” David Rothkopf, CEO and editor of the FP group, which publishes Foreign Policy magazine, told NPR’s Scott Horsley. ”The structure changed again in the Obama administration. And the big difference between this NSC and past NSCs [is] not really with regard to that particular issue.” The bigger issue is Bannon. Having the president’s chief strategist designated to be on the Principals Committee is a departure from any past administration. Yes, Obama adviser David Axelrod regularly attended NSC meetings, as Spicer has said. But Axelrod noted he never sat in on a Principals Committee meeting. He tweeted: ”I sat on sidelines as observer on some issues 2 gain an understanding of decisions. Bannon’s new ground.” Axelrod expanded on that defense in an   on CNN. com: ”As a senior adviser to President Obama in 2009, I had the opportunity to witness the fateful deliberations of his National Security Council Principals committee over the strategy the U. S would pursue in the war with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I was not a member of the committee. I did not speak or participate. I sat on the sidelines as a silent observer with [former White House press secretary Robert] Gibbs because we would be called upon to publicly discuss the president’s decision on that critical matter and the process by which he arrived at it. ”We knew our presence chagrined some of the principals but, acting on the president’s instructions, we were there to gain a thorough understanding of what would be one of the most important judgments he would make as   . Our access also came with limits. We were barred from some of the most sensitive meetings on the   policy review so as not to inhibit discussions. Beyond that, Gibbs and I did not attend regular meetings of the NSC Principals committee or their deputies nor were we invited to weekly meetings on terrorist threats. . .. ”In elevating Bannon to sit with the Secretaries of Defense and State and other key national security figures on the NSC principals committee, President Trump has blazed new ground. Bannon will exercise authority no political adviser has had before. He will be a full participant, not an observer, in national security deliberations. ”Under the president’s announced structure, Bannon has eclipsed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence on the National Security Council. Indeed, Bannon already has emerged as the president’s most trusted adviser on global affairs, an area in which Trump has little expertise. It was Bannon who guided the drafting of Trump’s controversial immigration order. According to reports, the Secretary of Defense and director of Homeland Security were not consulted the State Department was caught unawares. . .. ”Ten days in, this much is clear: Steve Bannon is playing a role in national security and foreign policy for which there is no precedent. And for better or worse, he already is making an impact.” Rothkopf notes that Bannon, the former head of   nationalistic website Breitbart, ”has been given a very substantial   portfolio despite very little experience in that area and a permanency on the NSC. ”And I think if you give somebody with no experience and a political agenda, and a dubious one at that, a permanency, it casts the   participation of the chairman of joint chiefs and director of national intelligence in a very different light, because it’s saying, ’We are not prioritizing professional expertise we’re prioritizing political agenda.’ ” NPR’s Maya Fitzpatrick contributed to this post."
"It was an executive order in 1942 that created the system forcing Americans of Japanese descent to live in internment camps. Days after President Trump used an executive order to dramatically shift U. S. immigration policy, Fred Korematsu Day is attracting special attention  —   including as the subject of a Google Doodle. Korematsu fought a discriminatory federal program all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court  —   and lost. Years later, he was awarded America’s highest civilian honor. As NPR has reported: ”Korematsu was born in Oakland, Calif. but his U. S. citizenship didn’t keep him from being arrested for refusing to be relocated to an internment camp in 1942. He challenged his arrest in court, and two years later the case made its way to the Supreme Court. ”Korematsu challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, the decree that forced the relocation of people of Japanese descent to internment camps. The court ruled in favor of the government and against Korematsu in what is now widely considered one of its worst decisions. The majority of justices claimed the detentions were not based on racial discrimination but rather on suspicions that   were acting as spies.” In 1983, the U. S. District Court in San Francisco formally vacated Korematsu’s conviction. At the time, he told Judge Marilyn Patel that instead of a legal pardon, he wanted to be assured the U. S. government would never again take such an action. ”If anyone should do any pardoning,” he said, ”I should be the one pardoning the government for what they did to the   people.” Over the weekend, the civil rights hero’s daughter, Karen, who leads the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, told member station KQED that she didn’t know of her father’s stand until she learned about it in high school. ”He simply said it happened a long time ago and what he thought he did was right and the government was wrong, and I could just see this hurt go over his face,” she told KQED. She added, ”Why should he go to a prison camp when there were no charges, there was no day in court, there was no access to an attorney?” A welder whose family ran a flower nursery in California before they were forced to leave and live in a Utah camp, Korematsu died in 2005. Since then, several states have enacted laws to celebrate his birthday, Jan. 30. California was the first state to adopt the Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution. Signed by  . Arnold Schwarzenegger, the 2010 law recognizes ”the importance of preserving civil liberties, even in times of real or perceived crisis.” When he awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, President Clinton praised him for being someone whose stand for civil rights helped the lives of millions of Americans, comparing him to names on landmark civil rights cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. But as The Atlantic has noted, the Supreme Court’s Korematsu decision ”belongs to what legal scholars describe as the   of American constitutional law  —   a small group of Supreme Court rulings universally assailed as wrong, immoral, and unconstitutional. Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Buck v. Bell, and Korematsu form the  ’s core legal scholars sometimes include other decisions as well.”"
"Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is among the tech firms that are critical of the Trump administration’s executive order barring Muslim immigrants from certain countries. This weekend, Google   Sergey Brin took part in protests at the San Francisco International Airport. Today, the Google Doodle  —   the picture that appears on the home page of the search engine  —   provided a subtle reminder of what happens when the U. S. targets a group of citizens because of their national origins. The Doodle is an illustration of Fred Korematsu, the civil rights activist and survivor of the internment camps where the U. S. government put   during World War II. In 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order that incarcerated more than 115, 000 people of Japanese descent. The order was based on fears that in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the heritage of these Americans meant they might be spies for the enemy. Korematsu, the son of Japanese immigrants but born and raised in Oakland, Calif. was 23 when the order came down. He went into hiding but was eventually arrested for refusing to report for relocation and sent to an internment camp with his family in Utah. His conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States. Decades later in 1976, President Gerald Ford ended the executive order and apologized for the internment saying in part that ”  were and are loyal Americans.” And in 1983, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned as the court reconsidered the motivations behind the order. Five years later, President Ronald Reagan signed The Civil Liberties Act of 1988, citing ”racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a lack of political leadership” as the real reason for the internment. Today would have been Korematsu’s 98th birthday. (He died in 2005.) It is officially recognized as Fred Korematsu Day in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida. But Google’s choice to make him the focus of the Google Doodle doesn’t seem like a total coincidence. The Trump administration says that the executive order banning entry from certain Muslim countries isn’t targeted at all Muslims, but the order also says that refugee claims by religious minorities from those countries should be given priority for entry. And Trump suggested to the Christian Broadcasting Network that he wants to give priority to persecuted Christians. At least someone at Google must think there are parallels between what happened to the Japanese during World War II and the questions that Muslim Americans are facing today about their loyalty to the U. S. And they aren’t alone in seeing the parallels. The actor George Takei has started a Care2 petition asking Americans to stand up for Muslims. Takei, who is gay and   is best known for his role as Sulu in Star Trek. He was also held, along with his family, in one of the internment camps for  . Google CEO Sundar Pichai was among several tech executives who have denounced Trump’s immigration ban. In response, Pichai has created a $2 million fund to help refugees, calling it the company’s ”largest campaign ever.” Google Doodles have occasionally taken heat from conservatives for being liberal leaning. Past Doodles have included historical civil rights leaders such as Cesar Chavez, the founder of the National Farm Workers Association, and Yuri Kochiyama, who was friends with Malcolm X and showed support for controversial figures such as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro."
"Updated at 1:30 p. m. ET, Police in Quebec City have arrested a suspect following a shooting at a mosque there that left six people dead and wounded eight others Sunday night. After initially saying they had two suspects in custody, police said Monday that they determined one of the men was instead a witness. According to Canadian authorities, a gunman opened fire inside the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre around 8 p. m. ET, as about 40 people were gathered for evening prayers. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec Province Premier Philippe Couillard have described the shooting as an act of terrorism. On Monday, Trudeau delivered a formal address to the House of Commons. ”These people were just that  —   people, ordinary Canadians. They were brothers, uncles, fathers and friends,” he said. ”These were people of faith and of community, and in the blink of an eye, they were robbed of their lives in an act of brutal violence.” He added: ”We will not close our minds. We will open our hearts. . .. let us strive to be the best version of ourselves in these dark hours.” In a statement late Sunday, Trudeau said he felt ”tremendous shock, sadness and anger” upon learning of the shooting. ”We condemn this terrorist attack on Muslims in a centre of worship and refuge. . .. It is   to see such senseless violence. Diversity is our strength, and religious tolerance is a value that we, as Canadians, hold dear. ”  are an important part of our national fabric, and these senseless acts have no place in our communities, cities and country. Canadian law enforcement agencies will protect the rights of all Canadians, and will make every effort to apprehend the perpetrators of this act and all acts of intolerance.” Police have not released details about the suspect in custody, or what motivated the attack. ”Why is this happening here? This is barbaric,” the mosque’s president, Mohamed Yangui said to reporters, according to the AP. Yangui was not inside the mosque when the shooting occurred but said he received frantic calls from many who were inside at the time of the gunfire. Mohamed Labidi, the mosque’s vice president, told the wire service that a university professor and a businessman were among the victims. They were shot in the back, he said. Reuters reports that ”incidents of Islamophobia have increased in Quebec in recent years.” Here’s more from the news service: ”The   or niqab, became a big issue in the 2015 Canadian federal election, especially in Quebec, where the vast majority of the population supported a ban on it at citizenship ceremonies. ”In 2013, police investigated after a mosque in the Saguenay region of the province was splattered with what was believed to be pig blood. In the neighboring province of Ontario, a mosque was set on fire in 2015, a day after an attack by gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris.” Last June, during the holy month of Ramadan, as the CBC reported, someone also left a pig’s head at Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre, where Sunday night’s attack took place. ”Tonight, Canadians grieve for those killed in a cowardly attack on a mosque in Quebec City,” Trudeau said. ”My thoughts are with victims  their families.”"
"Refugee advocates and resettlement groups spent a chaotic weekend struggling to adapt on the fly, with families in the air and no official guidance on President Trump’s executive order that bans refugees from around the world. ”There’s no way to get guidance, nothing is coming down from the top. It was chaos at the airports,” says Melanie Nezer, the vice president of policy and advocacy of HIAS, a global Jewish nonprofit that protects and resettles refugees. Her group tried to intervene in individual cases over the weekend. By Sunday, advocates said they had received State Department assurances that some refugees already in the pipeline will be admitted through this Friday, extending the deadline by one week for those with travel documents  —   ”refugees in transit,” says Nezer. The extended deadline hasn’t been announced officially yet, adding to the uncertainty of a process that seems to change by the hour. The extended deadline could allow entry to around 800 refugees, ”but not refugees from the seven countries,” says Nezer, referring to a presidential order that blocks citizens of seven   countries from entering the U. S. for 90 days: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. More than 50 percent of Muslim refugees admitted to the U. S. last year came from Syria and Somalia. An email circulating among official resettlement agencies and obtained by NPR says those arriving this week ”will be allowed entry to the U. S.” But the State Department has not confirmed a change publicly. The shifting application of Friday’s presidential executive order underlines the ongoing confusion and comes after a weekend of panic for refugee families who had waited years to clear security checks for resettlement in the United States  —   only to be detained or deported upon arrival. ”We have two cases next week now we are hopeful,” Nezer says. Refugee agency officials say they are sending legal teams to the airports in case of detentions. Chris George, who heads IRIS, a refugee resettlement office in New Haven, Conn. told NPR in an email that he was alerted by Church World Service, one of IRIS’s partners, to expect arrivals this week from Afghanistan and Colombia. One refugee whose future is at stake is    Sardar Hussain, an Afghan orphan who has waited for years for resettlement. The Taliban killed his entire family when he was 13. The Lutheran Community Services in Spokane, Wash. finally accepted him in a program for unaccompanied minor refugees. ”I am very worried,” Heike Lake, with the Lutheran group, said late Friday. She feared Hussain would be barred from a Monday flight to the U. S. But Lake was alerted late Sunday that the State Department’s extension for refugees in the pipeline would apply to Hussain, who is now expected to arrive in Spokane on Monday and will become a resident in a foster home. The State Department’s deadline extension could give a reprieve to some 800 refugees who will be resettled in the United States, refugee advocates say. Then the program will be frozen for 120 days. After a weekend of nationwide protests, criticism from   groups and some backlash within the Republican Party, President Trump defended his order, saying the U. S. will show compassion to those fleeing oppression. But he insisted that he is ”protecting our own citizens and border.” He argued that his policy is not a Muslim ban, ”as the media is falsely reporting,” but ”about terror and keeping our country safe.” ”The Muslim ban is in effect,” counters HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield, reached by phone on Sunday at a   rally in Washington, D. C. He believes the executive order ”killed the refugee program” and says, ”We are making a lot of noise. We are going to try to litigate it.” On Saturday, a federal court for the Eastern District of New York issued an emergency stay for travelers with valid green cards and visas, but the order did not come in time for some refugees, Hetfield says. Hetfield tried but failed to intervene on behalf of a Syrian mother traveling with two young children. She had been granted approval to join her husband in Connecticut after a   separation. ”She went through all the vetting,” Hetfield says, and boarded a   flight before the order was signed on Friday. But she was prevented from taking a transit flight in Kiev after the order became official. ”So now, she’s stuck with no legal recourse,” Hetfield says. ”It’s incredibly cruel. I don’t recognize this country.” A   program to resettle religious minorities from Iran is also on hold, Hetfield says. ”It’s not   the majority are Christians,” he said, with around 2, 000 people resettled every year for the past two decades. But Iran is one of seven countries from where visas are now blocked. But the official resettlement tally shows the number of Christian refugees is roughly equal to Muslims. The president carved out an exception for religious minorities in his executive order. ”They’ve been horribly treated,” Trump said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Friday. ”If you were a Muslim, you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible.” But the ”Christian exception” still has to be approved by the secretary of state and Department of Homeland Security on a ”case by case” basis, Hetfield said. The impact of the executive order has already been profound on individual lives  —   from the Iraqis who worked for the U. S. military and intelligence services to a Sudanese doctor at the Cleveland Clinic who was barred from   to the United States on Friday. A Syrian clarinetist, a legal immigrant touring with cellist   Ma, does not know if he will be able to return to his Brooklyn apartment at the end of the tour."
"Surprise and a desire for retaliation are some of the reactions to President Trump’s temporary ban on travelers from seven   countries. The ban, abruptly imposed Friday, led the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a   body that’s based in Saudi Arabia, to call on the U. S. to ”maintain its moral obligation to provide leadership and hope at a time of great uncertainty and unrest in the world.” Expressing its ”grave concern” about the policy, the group said that refugees ”have been adversely and unjustly affected”  —   and it added that the policy also plays into the hands of extremist groups that have accused the U. S. of waging war on Muslims. The ban on people traveling from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia is slated to last for 90 days. In addition, new refugee admissions are suspended for 120 days and Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely. Here’s a rundown of reactions from countries that now find themselves on an undesirable U. S. list: Iraq, ”Iraqis seem shocked by the ban” imposed by one of its allies, NPR’s Alice Fordham reports on today’s Morning Edition. Parliament has approved a plan for a reciprocal ban on Americans, which would need cabinet approval before taking effect, Alice says. She adds that Iraq’s former ambassador to the U. S. Lukman Faily, says he’s been told he can’t travel to the U. S. The ban shows ”swagger and an arrogance,” influential Shiite cleric Muqtada   says, noting that Americans are allowed to freely enter many countries  —   including those on its banned list. How the order goes over in Iraq is especially important because that country’s government has been a key ally to the U. S. in the war on ISIS. Iraq is also home to about 6, 000 U. S. troops who are aiding domestic forces on the front line against ISIS. Iran,   IRNA news agency complained of ”U. S. terrorism double standards,” noting that Saudi Arabia is not on Trump’s list. As NPR’s Greg Myre pointed out, the radicalized Muslims who carried out deadly attacks in the U. S. beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, came from these countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Russia and Kyrgyzstan. None of those countries are on Trump’s list. Tehran will ”take reciprocal measures” against U. S. nationals who want to travel to Iran, First   Eshaq Jahangiri promised Monday. The Foreign Ministry calls the ban ”insulting,” while also saying any retaliation will be ”proportionate” and will be made ”while respecting the American people and differentiating between them and the hostile policies of the U. S. Government.” Syria, The country’s government so far hasn’t released an official response to Friday’s order. However,   SANA media highlighted international criticism of Trump’s immigration ban and the U. S. president’s low approval ratings in a new Gallup poll. SANA cited calls from the international community and American protesters for Trump to reconsider the ban. A month ago, Syrian President Bashar Assad had praised Trump’s approach to terrorism and said that the new U. S. president would be a ”natural ally.” As NPR’s Deb Amos noted, ”More than 50 percent of Muslim refugees admitted to the U. S. last year come from Syria and Somalia.” Yemen, Attempts to ”classify Yemen or its citizens as a possible source of terrorism are illegal and illegitimate,” the government says. The Foreign Ministry said that while it is ”aware that such action is the sovereign right for the United States, however, identifying specific countries as potential sources of terrorists . .. needs more assessment and revision.” Yemen also characterized a deadly U. S. raid that was carried out Sunday as ”state terrorism committed by the United States under the pretext of fighting terrorism.” That raid targeting   in the Arabian Peninsula resulted in the death of a U. S. service member as well as 14 militants, officials say. But the Pentagon is looking into reports that it also killed women and children  —   including the    granddaughter of Nasser    —   a former Yemeni minister of agriculture whose son, killed by the U. S. in 2011, was an   proselytizer. Sudan, America’s envoy in Khartoum was summoned by Sudan’s Foreign Ministry to hear the country’s protests against Trump’s decision, which came at a time of increasing cooperation between the U. S. and Sudan. Sudan’s government has been working to be taken off the U. S. list of state sponsors of terrorism  —   just weeks ago, President Obama eased economic sanctions against the country that had stood for 20 years. ”The Sudanese citizens living in the United States are known for their good reputation, respect for American laws, and their lack of involvement in radical and criminal acts,” the government says. Somalia  The government so far doesn’t appear to have issued a formal response, but Somali native Mo Farah, a decorated Olympian and British citizen who lives in Portland, Ore. criticized the ban, which he said cast doubt on whether he can return to his family after training in Ethiopia. Farah said via Facebook: ”It’s deeply troubling that I will have to tell my children that Daddy might not be able to come home  —   to explain why the President has introduced a policy that comes from a place of ignorance and prejudice.” Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees live in Kenya. NPR’s Eyder Peralta, citing the U. N.’s refugee agency, reports that some 26, 000 Somalis in Kenya are undergoing the official process of trying to gain permission to settle in the U. S. Roughly half have already been interviewed by U. S. immigration officials. After Trump’s election in November, Somalia congratulated the new president and said it hopes to strengthen relations, saying Somalia’s government and people ”enjoy strong bilateral ties with the USA built on mutual respect, trust and partnership.” Libya, We’re not seeing an official response from the struggling nation. The ban came weeks before a conference on U. S.  relations is scheduled to be held in Washington, D. C."
"Saira Rafiee boarded a plane in Tehran this weekend on her way to New York. She had been visiting family in Iran and needed to get back to the U. S. in time for classes at City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where she is a Ph. D. student in political science. But, as a result of President Trump’s executive order restricting the travel of citizens from seven   countries, including Iran, Rafiee says she was detained in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and, after nearly 18 hours, sent back to Tehran. Rafiee did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment, but she posted publicly on Facebook: ”. ..I have no clue whether I would ever be able to go back to the school I like so much, or to see my dear friends there. But my story isn’t as painful and terrifying as many other stories I have heard these days. I know an Iranian student in the US, who was planning to go back to Iran to see her sister who has cancer probably for the last time, but had to cancel her trip because of this order. A dear friend of mine, a Columbia Ph. D. student, went to Canada on Friday to be with his fiancée for the weekend, and is not able to go back to his studies and work, back to his scholarly life. I know many students who are outside the US, doing fieldwork for their dissertation, and have no clue whether they can finish their studies after studying for many years. ..” Allan Wernick, a law professor who runs an immigration resource center at CUNY, calls the situation a ”crisis,” noting that CUNY has more than 100 students from the affected countries who are here on student visas. ”I refer to CUNY as the most   university in the country,” he says, with as many as 40 to 50 percent of the university’s half a million students immigrants or the children of immigrants. Throughout the weekend, similar stories emerged from other U. S. universities. Mohammed Abdi, an anthropology Ph. D. student at Yale, holds a U. S. Green Card and was in Dubai awaiting a visa to continue his field research in Kabul, Afghanistan. But, as a result of the executive order, he’s worried he cannot return to the U. S. Nor can he stay in Dubai for more than 15 days. And, because of his previous work as a human rights activist, he says he can’t safely return to his home country of Iran. ”It’s very ambiguous,” Abdi told NPR Ed via Skype. ”I am essentially stateless.” Undergraduates have also been affected by the new restrictions, including Niki Mossafer Rahmati, an MIT engineering student and member of the sorority, Sigma Kappa. She was leaving her parents in Iran, headed back to the U. S. for the start of the semester, when she was detained in Qatar. Like Rafiee, Rahmati was ultimately returned to Iran and described the experience on Facebook: ”. ..My inbox is flooded with messages and emails of love and support. I am truly speechless, grateful and proud to [be a] part of the MIT community. I have never been subjected to any form of religious or racial discrimination at MIT. Our community is extremely diverse, inclusive, supportive and accepting of individuals and their backgrounds. But I cannot believe all this love is coming from the same country that banned me from entering its borders just a couple of hours ago. ..” The number of students detained at airports in the United States was not immediately known, but Narges Bayani, a graduate student at New York University, was released on Sunday after being held for several hours at John F. Kennedy International Airport. ”I am in awe and absolute admiration of the solidarity of the American people in response to such inhumane and discriminatory regulations. It feels like a sweet personal victory over hate,” she posted on Facebook. Universities and academic organizations largely condemned the travel ban and vowed to assist their students in returning to the U. S. David Elwell, director of MIT’s International Students Office, told MIT’s student newspaper that his office was ”deeply disturbed” by the new policy. Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, said in a prepared statement: ”American institutions of higher learning are united in their distress on behalf of our international students and faculty, and in their reliance on our communities’ most fundamental values of accessibility and open dialogue. Our educational mission and the welfare of our community members are directly at stake. National security is of the utmost importance, but we are steadfast in asserting that this goal can be achieved while maintaining respect for core academic  —   and American  —   values.” Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana and current president of Purdue University, said the executive order is ”a bad idea, poorly implemented” and he called on Trump to ”promptly revoke and rethink it.” Alongside their educational mission and the welfare of students and faculty, many U. S. institutions of higher learning have significant revenue at stake if the United States becomes less welcoming to international students. According to the Institute of International Education, more than a million international students attend U. S. institutions, and because of their status, they do not receive most federal or state financial aid. This includes an estimated 17, 000 students from the countries currently covered by the travel ban: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen."
"Humans have had to face death and mortality since since the beginning of time, but our experience of the dying process has changed dramatically in recent history. Haider Warraich, a fellow in cardiology at Duke University Medical Center, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that death used to be sudden, unexpected and relatively swift  —   the result of a violent cause, or perhaps an infection. But, he says, modern medicines and medical technologies have lead to a ”dramatic extension” of life  —   and a more prolonged dying processes. ”We’ve now . .. introduced a phase of our life, which can be considered as ’dying,’ in which patients have terminal diseases in which they are in and out of the hospital, they are dependent in nursing homes,” Warraich says. ”That is something that is a very, very recent development in our history as a species.” Prolonging life might sound like a good thing, but Warraich notes that medical technologies often force patients, their loved ones and their doctors to make difficult, painful decisions. In his new book, Modern Death, he writes about a patient with   dementia who screamed ”kill me” as a feeding tube was inserted into his nose. ”This is probably one of the encounters that I had in residency that I have been unable to shake from my memory,” Warraich says. ”I think if you ask any physician, any nurse, any paramedic, they’ll have many such stories to tell you.” On the importance of having a healthcare proxy, living will and advanced directive  One of the biggest problems that we face in not only modern society, but in societies of olden times as well, is that people have always been very afraid to talk about death. In many cultures it is considered bad luck to talk about death and it is thought to be a bad omen. I think to some extent that extends to this very day. But . .. I think having a living will, having an advanced directive, or perhaps most importantly, having a designated healthcare proxy, someone who can help transmit your decisions to the team when you’re not able to do so, is perhaps the most important thing that we can do for ourselves as patients and as human beings. On giving CPR and knowing when to stop giving CPR, One of the things about CPR, Terry, is that almost everyone in medicine knows how to start CPR, when to start CPR, really what to do in CPR under even complex situations, but the one thing that almost no one really teaches us, and there are no guidelines for, is when to stop CPR. I think in some ways that is one of the biggest challenges that we in medicine face all the time. . .. I was actually working in the hospital last night and it was about 3 in the morning and I was called by one of my other colleagues who was another cardiology fellow, he asked me, ”Haider, I need your help. I have a patient that we are doing CPR on,” and he wanted some help from me. So I walked over to the intensive care unit, and the patient was in her 60s. . .. There was an entire team in the room doing chest compressions on this woman, and they had been doing it for an hour and a half at that point, much, much, much longer than most CPRs last. . .. At the same time while this CPR was ongoing, the patient’s family member, her daughter, was outside the room, and she was crying. . .. Even though we could give her all the information . .. that wasn’t perhaps what she was looking for, because what we were asking her to think about or to do was one of the hardest things anyone has to ever bear, which was, ”Do you want us to stop CPR?” And that’s the type of thing that I don’t think any of us can ever prepare for, especially when it’s our parent that’s involved. On why he wrote a book about dying, I really wanted to find answers to some very, very basic questions, like what are the implications of the sort of life extension that we have achieved? What is the role of religion, not only a patient’s religion but a physician’s religion when it comes to dealing with the end of life? How is social media affecting how people experience the end of life? . .. So many times I’ve found myself in the room where there are people who were so much more experienced in life than I was, yet knew so little about death and dying. And so I wanted to write a book so that people could go into those really, really difficult places and feel like they’re armed with information, that this isn’t a completely foreign territory for them and that in some way could help them navigate and deal with the sort of difficult situations that lay ahead for them. On the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act, It is very unfortunate that health is so politicized in this country, because it doesn’t have to be. Health and wellness aren’t red or blue, and they shouldn’t be, but unfortunately that is where we are. I hope that when policies are being enacted in DC, patient’s voices, those who have benefited from the ACA, those who have gained insurance, those voices are not lost in the midst of all of this political activity. On immigrating to the U. S. from Pakistan, I came to the United States in 2010 and [until now] have only lived in an America in which Barack Obama was the president. I think in some ways Trump’s victory has really shaken me, because of how invested I was in the idea that America is a special place, it’s a truly multicultural society. And I’m still trying to understand, I think like so many others, just exactly what happened. Especially as a writer and as a physician I’ve tried to separate myself from my identity as a Muslim. I’d rather be known as a    who happens to be Pakistani, rather than a young Pakistani Muslim immigrant who happens to be a doctor and a writer, but I don’t know. Given how things are changing, I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to set that narrative for myself. That’s a scary thought  —   to live an identity that is so politicized even when you wish for it to not be."
"In elementary school, you learn there are three branches of the federal government. But if you had looked on the new Donald Trump White House website before Monday morning, you would have only seen two: the executive and legislative. From Jan. 20 until about 11 a. m. Monday, perhaps one of the key differences between Barack Obama’s White House website and President Trump’s was the exclusion of a Web page for the judicial branch. The judiciary did not appear on a general menu leading viewers to main pages, such as the pages for the executive and legislative branches. But after Monday’s update, the page almost exactly matches that of the page under Obama’s administration. This addition comes after many people commented about the nonexistent page on social media this past weekend. Websites like the National Archives and the Internet Archive allow viewers to look back at the White House sites from previous administrations. Should someone want to see exactly how it looked under presidents Clinton, Bush or Obama, they can access the ”frozen in time” sites. Other changes under President Trump include climate change and health care being bumped from the ”Top Issues” list. And LGBT rights was taken off the site. And a Spanish version of the site is yet to come. As Politico reported, the Trump White House will be keeping a design and shell similar to the website under Obama  ” ”with a larger reboot planned a bit later in 2017.” Cecilia Mazanec is the NPR digital news intern."
"A muted statue of the Virgin Mary received the revelers, a few hundred of New York City’s fortunate elite, as they navigated the recesses of the dark, cool caverns underneath the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side. An orchestra struck up the first chords of the ”Blue Danube.” The ladies were careful not to lean against the slanted, peeling walls and the men minded their coattails. Amidst the stacks of wine crates stamped ANTHONY OECHS  CO. couples began to waltz. A bottle of fine champagne was passed around as a waiter produced a tray of crystal glasses. Overhead,   Packards and Hudsons motored along at a roaring 20 mph. It was July 11, 1934, and as The Pittsburgh Gazette eagerly explained, ”the dry era” was finally over. It was a celebration of new beginnings. When the Anthony Oechs wine distributors moved to the Brooklyn Bridge’s wine cellar, dormant for almost two decades  —   the vaults would once again do what they had been built to do when they were established in 1876, seven years before the bridge was even opened for travel. The wine cellars had originally been constructed as a sort of compromise. As chief bridge engineer, Washington Roebling (and his father John A. Roebling before him) developed plans for a roadway connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan, the question loomed over what to do with two establishments that were in the path of construction. On the Brooklyn shore of the East River, Rackey’s Wine Company was doing steady business, and on the Manhattan side, Luyties  Co. sold its liquor to thirsty New Yorkers. Roebling saw an opportunity to offset some of the bridge’s massive $15 million construction costs. It was an ingeniously perfect fit. The design of the bridge would allow for two wine cellars, one on each shore, along with several other vaulted chambers, to be incorporated into construction. The chambers would be rented out to local businesses, which used them mostly for storage, to help pay off the city’s debt. Roebling’s plan worked, both architecturally and financially. According to The New York Times, as the bridge was erected in the 1870s, the wine vaults were built ”beneath the ramps that lead up to the anchorages, within the arched granite and limestone approaches that span the intervening streets.” Over the course of the next 40 years, several different liquor vendors would utilize the cellars below the bridge. City records indicate, for example, that in 1901, the ”Luyties Brothers paid $5, 000 for a vault on the Manhattan side of the bridge,” located at 204 Williams St. while in Brooklyn, ”A. Smith  Company” forked over $500 a year to rent a wine cellar from 1901 until 1909. Storing wine under the bridge made perfect sense. The caverns below the   granite entrances were dark and consistently cool, ideal places to house even the most delicate vintage Bordeaux, Burgundy or Champagne. And as the vaults became home to wines from across the globe, the dingy walls of the cellars were enhanced to reflect that heritage. The winding maze of caverns was transformed into a painted ”labyrinth” with the names of French streets —    Les Deux Oefs, Avenue Des Chateux Haut Brion —   stenciled overhead. Over time, the cellar walls were festooned with illustrations of provincial Europe designs of sinewy leaves and purple grapes trailed along the stucco in subdued hues. Later, the waltzing guests of 1934 would take a turn surrounded by cellar walls which displayed   quotations, such as this one, attributed to either Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, or Johann Heinrich Voss, a German poet: Who loveth not wine, women and song, He remaineth a fool his whole life long. No one remembers exactly when the statue of the Virgin Mary made its way to the small alcove in the Manhattan cellars. Legend has it that a vendor may have transported the stone figure, plucked straight from the Champagne cellars of Pol Rogers in Epernay, France. Those who saw the Madonna statue watching over the bridge’s caverns likened the ethereal scene to Italy’s Grotto Azzurra, or the Blue Grotto of Capri. The statue mysteriously disappeared sometime around 1942, but the sobriquet lingered. By the late 1910s, as America debated the vices of liquor, the wine was moved out and the cellars were converted into newspaper storage. But the end of Prohibition in 1933 enticed new wine distributors. The storied celebration on July 11, 1934 was held in honor of Anthony Oechs  Co. ’s move into the bridge’s   caverns. Champagne once again flowed through the Manhattan vaults. For just a few years, the era of the Blue Grotto would be reborn. After World War II, for logistical reasons, the city of New York would take over permanent management of the cellars. But the rare few who have been allowed to visit the historic cellars in the past half century say they can still sense the spirits that once occupied the extraordinary space. If you squint hard enough, they claim you can make out a final homage to the cellars’ past imprinted in the 1930s on the crumbling wall: ”Legend of Oechs Cellars: These cellars were built in 1876, about seven years prior to the official opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883. From their inception, they housed the choicest wines in New York City.”"
"Screening for lung cancer using   CT scans can save lives, but at a cost: Tests frequently produce   false alarms and prompt unnecessary procedures. A study from the Veterans Health Administration lays out the considerable effort required by both patients and doctors to undertake screening. ”I have heard people say ’what’s the big deal, it’s just a CT,’ ” says Dr. Linda Kinsinger, who ran the study at the VA. ”But I think what we tried to show is it’s a lot more than just a CT.” Federal officials and other medical groups recommend   CT scans to look for lung cancer among people at risk, generally those over the age of 55 who have smoked at least the equivalent of two packs a day for 15 years. The tests typically cost $300, and they aren’t always covered by insurance. Screening does identify cancers, but in the vast majority of cases the test produces false alarms. In the VA study, which was published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, 4, 246 patients were eligible for screening. About half of them declined to take the test, even though it was offered at no cost. Of those who took the test, about 55 percent of them were told that they had lung nodules, which often involved   appointments and further scans. But very few of those nodules were actually real problems. In the end, the screeners identified 31 cases of lung cancer, about 20 of which were in the early, most treatable stage. The study involved eight of the 150 or so VA hospitals, and was designed to assess the overall benefits and potential harms of setting up a screening program in a large medical institution. So is it a good idea? ”I think it’s a close call,” Kinsinger says. There was a benefit to the 20 or so patients out of this large initial population who had their cancer detected while it was likely to be treatable. ”But that has to be weighed against the amount of effort on the part of both patients and staff, and the anxiety, the worry, that a false alarm will cause among patients,” she says. ”I think a lot of people have a much rosier view of screening in general than the facts bear out,” says Dr. Rita Redberg, editor of JAMA Internal Medicine and a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. ”Very few people are actually helped by screening, and a lot of time there are a number of harms.” Another study published in the same issue found that many people getting CT screens are actually at low risk for lung cancer. Dr. Jinhai Huo and colleagues at the MD Anderson Cancer Center compared screening rates before and after 2011, the year of a key study that supported the idea of   CT screening for lung cancer. ”Once a [radiology] center has the ability to do this screening, they like to use their technology to do as many people as possible,” Redberg says, ”and it seems that   people who are really unlikely to get any benefit and are much more likely to get harmed are getting screened in higher numbers than in the   people who are supposed to be screened.” Dr. Jorge Gomez, a spokesman for the American Lung Association and an oncologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, says that while screening   people doesn’t make sense on a population basis, it sometimes makes sense for individual patients. And as for the experience at the VA, Gomez says medical teams that have learned to interpret the results of scans can generally weed out   results without resorting to biopsies or other invasive   tests. ”There is a concern for unnecessary procedures at institutions where they don’t have the expertise in reading these scans,” he says. And he acknowledges not everybody has the luxury of going to the     institutions that do this best."
"One consequence of Republican gains in the 2016 elections is playing out at the state level where organized labor appears likely to face big setbacks in the coming months. Within days of convening this month, Kentucky lawmakers passed ”  ” legislation that prohibit labor unions from forcing   members to pay fees to the union. It’s the 27th state with such laws. State legislatures in Missouri and New Hampshire are also actively debating similar bills that could become law by February. If all three states succeed in enacting ”  ” bills, it would be the most states rolling back union power in one year since 1947, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Success in New Hampshire would also make it the first state in the Northeast with a ”  ” law. The bills are a further reflection of organized labor’s falling clout. Just 10. 7 percent of American workers belonged to a labor union in 2016, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from 20. 1 percent in 1983, when the agency began tracking the data. Over time, the legislation is also likely to further reduce the   clout of Democrats, who rely on union money and volunteers during election years. ’Personal Freedom’ Last fall, Republicans held onto the New Hampshire statehouse and their candidate, Chris Sununu, was elected governor. After that, GOP lawmakers quickly sprang into action. They passed a ”  ” bill in the state Senate this month with just one vote to spare, despite boisterous opposition from union members. The legislation now heads to the House, where Republicans hold a   majority. ”This is the Live Free or Die State. So we are about personal freedom, we are about personal liberty,” said state Sen. Andy Sanborn, a Republican. ”What makes a stronger statement than reaffirming the fact that you are not being compelled to have to pay into a union if you don’t want to pay into it?” In Missouri, enactment of the policy became inevitable after Republican Eric Greitens captured the governorship last year. The political newcomer made signing ”  ” a major priority. ”We miss jobs every year and we miss businesses every year because of not being  ” said state Rep. Holly Rehder, the Republican who sponsored the bill in the Missouri House. It’s an argument echoed in New Hampshire, where business executives have said they plan to give the state another look if it passes ”  .” ”This law would provide a solid foundation for New Hampshire to begin building a reputation as a state that welcomes companies, along with the jobs, economic stability and growth that come with them,” said Tom Sullivan, an executive at firearms maker Sturm, Ruger and Co. during a recent hearing. ’Free riders’ Still, just   of New Hampshire’s approximately 62, 000 union members work in the private sector with the other   belonging to   unions (think teachers, government employees, public safety workers). With 9. 4 percent of the workforce belonging to a labor union, New Hampshire is in the middle of the pack for union membership among U. S. states. Opponents argue the laws create what’s called a ” ” problem where   members reap the benefits of collective bargaining, such as higher wages and better benefits, without paying for it. ”It’s just like you and I going out one night for a couple of beers. I choose the bar, we go out. We both have a couple of drinks,” said Bobby Jones, which AFSCME Local 3657, a government worker union, ”And then when the bill comes out, I pull out my wallet, and you don’t reach for yours.” While Republicans and Democrats spar over the economic impact of the bill on wages and employment levels, its most visible impact may be during election season. Unions spent millions to successfully elect former governor Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, to the U. S. Senate even as they fell short in the gubernatorial race. ”Some people do view it as Republican payback against the role of unions in elections,” said Dean Spiliotes, a political scientist at Southern New Hampshire University. ”If you are reducing the level of funding through cutting their dues, that’s going to have political impacts.” With reporting from Jason Rosenbaum of St. Louis Public Radio."
"What becomes of a town when its heyday has passed? What convinces young people to stay when good jobs vanish? Those are questions many towns across America have been trying to answer for years. And they were on my mind when I headed to Independence, Kan. with a dwindling population that’s now below 9, 000. It’s in the southeastern corner of the state, not far from the Oklahoma border. Independence has much to boast about. It’s where Mickey Mantle played his first season of professional baseball, in 1949. It’s the hometown of one of the first monkeys to be sent into space: Miss Able, in 1959. At its peak in the early 20th century, with oil and gas money fueling prosperity in Independence, it was said to have more millionaires per capita than any other city in the U. S. Now, if you’re from Independence, you still wear that name with pride. Just about everyone we talk to tells us it’s a great place to raise children. People are especially proud of their annual Neewollah festival. It’s Halloween spelled backward. Dating back to 1919, it’s held every October and is said to be the oldest and largest festival in the state. They’re proud to be the hometown of playwright and novelist William Inge, who wrote Bus Stop Come Back, Little Sheba and Picnic set in small Midwestern towns much like Independence. Their hometown author is celebrated in the annual William Inge Theatre Festival, which has attracted marquee names like Steven Sondheim and Neil Simon as honorees. Big city folks plunked down in rural Kansas. ”And then they marvel at cows, as you bring them back into town!” says Kym Kays, laughing. I find Kays and her early morning women’s walking group chatting over cups of coffee at Ane Mae’s coffee shop. They tell me that in a town like this, you tread carefully when talking politics. ”We do express our opinions, but then we kind of back away politely,” Sarah Wilson begins. ”We are Kansas polite! We are a Kansas polite community!” adds Kays. ”Good ol’ Midwest,” Sheri Hesse chimes in. ”It’s kind of like,’Yes, I feel this way, but I understand how you feel.’ Because we’re a small town, and we all have to get along,” Wilson concludes. A couple of blocks away (most things in Independence are just a couple of blocks away) we stop in at the storefront office of the weekly Montgomery County Chronicle. It’s a tiny operation. Editor Andy Taylor reports just about all of the stories himself and shoots photos. At 5 a. m. every Thursday, he’s the guy who picks up the papers from the print shop and delivers them. If you get the Chronicle, chances are Taylor has touched your paper. He’s a fifth generation Kansas newspaperman. ”There’s ink in the blood, that’s for sure,” he says. ”And I still love going in the press room at night. Just getting that smell in your nose is wonderful.” To get a sense of what Independence once was and is now, Taylor and his wife, Amy, lead us on a walking tour of the town. The main business street in town, North Pennsylvania Avenue, is lined with   brick buildings dating back to the early 20th century. Some buildings bear the family names that built this town’s prosperity. They’re carved in stone at the top: Pugh, Burns, Reynolds. ”Growing up in this part of the country, this town was full of businesses,” Taylor says. Now, the street is a shadow of what it once was. ”For rent” signs are taped to storefront after storefront. Taylor points out what has disappeared. ”We used to have a J. C. Penney department store over here. That’s now gone,” he says. ”We had a furniture store, Wesco furniture  —   it’s gone. We had RadioShack, it occupied two storefronts  —   it’s gone. A Hallmark store  —   it’s gone. Sporting goods store  —   it’s gone. We had a clothing store, department store  —   it’s gone.” But the biggest body blow came in October of 2015. ”We’re the first town in Kansas in well over 25 years to lose a hospital,” Taylor says. Mercy Hospital was confronting a shrinking patient base. ”There weren’t enough fannies in the hospital beds,” as Taylor puts it. It had a hard time hanging on to doctors. Hospital officials said another key factor in the closure was Kansas’ decision not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Taylor recalls the meeting where he heard the news that Mercy Hospital would be shutting down. ”There were 18 mouths in that meeting, and they all dropped to the floor. ’You’re closing down the hospital?’ ” ”It was a complete shock,” Amy Taylor adds. ”It’s sad. That’s where our daughter was born.” ”Not just that,” Taylor says, ”but it was a great, great company. And ugh, it still kills me.” Right before the hospital closed its doors, the hospital staff asked Andy Taylor to take their picture one last time. ”I literally cried when I looked through my viewfinder,” he says, ”because I knew most of those people. And I knew they were people who would be gone.” The repercussions of the hospital closing are huge. ”What happens at 3 in the morning?” Taylor asks. ”What if you’re a local company or industry and your worker at the midnight shift breaks his fingers or gets them mangled. Or you’re in a car wreck. What do you do? Wow. Your answer is, you better hope your ambulance has a lot of gas in it.” Mercy Hospital  —   as well as the oil pipeline company, Arco, which shut down its headquarters here in the 1990s  —   were major pillars supporting the community. Philanthropy flowed through them. They sponsored events. Pumped money into schools and churches. Walking past the old   Arco building, Taylor says: ”Their payroll was huge in this community. The nicer houses that were built and the banks that loaned the money  —   it was all interrelated. Anything that worked for the good of Independence came from places like this. ”Now, we’ve just relegated ourselves to becoming a satellite town for some other community,” he continues. ”That means migration out. I never thought I’d see the day when Independence, Kan. would see people having to go elsewhere to get their basic services.” Now that many of those   professional positions have vanished, Taylor says, ”We’ve evolved downwardly, I guess. Backwards.” According to Taylor, nothing has come in to replace those jobs. ”Once all that old money dies off and leaves town, that really hurts,” Taylor explains. ”There’s that old theory that when grandma and grandpa die, the funeral is at 2 o’clock, the family is at the bank at 3 o’clock, and they’re out of town with that money at 4 o’clock. And I’ve seen that happen many times.” That’s a problem facing so many rural towns where opportunities are slim: brain drain. The best and brightest leave and don’t look back. For Independence to thrive, I figure it has to find a way to hang on to kids like   Gabe Schenk, age 12. I meet him at the Valley Victors   Club’s annual soup supper: 32 crockpots, all in a row. Gabe promises me that his crockpot holds the best homemade taco soup, and it is indeed delicious. The secret to cooking, Gabe tells me? You have to talk to your food. ”I had a very long philosophical talk to the chili,” he says,  . ”What is the meaning of a chili’s life?” And did the chili answer? ”He’s the strong silent type.” Gabe says his goal is get get straight A’s in school. He’s memorizing the periodic table, and when prompted, eagerly rattles off the elements: gallium, germanium, arsenic, selenium. . .. Gabe tells me his dream is to be a storm chaser or meteorologist. When he was younger, a tornado came through and ripped the roof off his house. He recalls that the sky that morning was a really cool green color. ”And I thought it was kinda like scary, but then amazing at the same time,” he says. ”If I’m going to study the big storms, this is the place to be!”"
"Last fall, President Obama, on his final trip to Asia, stopped in Laos for the annual ASEAN summit of Southeast Asian leaders. While there, he pledged millions to help clean up a legacy of U. S. involvement in Laos: unexploded bombs. They were from the 1960s and 1970s  —   bombs the U. S. dropped in during its campaign to prevent the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Vietnam was the most visible part of that war. Over half a million U. S. forces fought there at one point over 50, 000 were killed. Cambodia got coverage  —   and protests  —   during the   U. S. bombing campaign there. But Laos, sandwiched between Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, and with a population no greater than Los Angeles, received relatively scant attention. Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, paints a vivid portrait of America’s     war in Laos in his new book, A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA. As the title suggests, the war in Laos got relatively little attention, in part, because it was handed over to a newly formed CIA to run. It started off small, with a few CIA officers training and arming allies from the Hmong hill tribe and ethnic minority to act as a guerilla force. By the end, some 14 years later, the Hmong were fighting pitched battles against the Communist insurgents and their North Vietnamese allies. To help them, the U. S. dropped more bombs in Laos than it had during all of World War II. At the heart of Kurlantzick’s deftly paced book are conflicted CIA operatives and the Hmong  —   led by the charismatic Gen. Vang Pao  —   who did the bulk of the fighting on behalf of the U. S. But what the book does best is examine the CIA’s transformation from an   organization to a   one. As Kurlantzick explained in a phone interview, Laos in the 1960s became ”a great place for the CIA to have a war. Not necessarily a good place for anyone else involved. Because what ultimately transpired was that in Laos, the CIA went from a spying organization,   agency, to one capable of managing and conducting and overseeing a quite substantial conflict. In other words, an organization with war capacities.” What was the CIA like before it took on the war in Laos?  The CIA had only been around for about 15 years, and even though it had done some things that had received significant notice, it was still a very small organization. The war in Laos was an enormous boon for the CIA in that it raised its bureaucratic profile and boosted its budget. It remains the largest covert operation in U. S. history. So by the time the war was over, the CIA had established itself as a really significant player in the Washington establishment. Why did that establishment decide to hand over the war in Laos to the CIA? It was in a climate in which the U. S. public was sort of tired of   war. After the Korean War, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations embraced covert war as a major part of U. S. foreign policy. They both very much saw covert war as a means to advance aims without having to pay the price in public opinion. And soon that war morphed, didn’t it?  At the beginning, there were some good ideas by the Americans  —   they wanted to make it a relatively small operation, almost a guerilla operation to kind of fight for Laos’ sovereignty. As the war went on, the desire of the Laotians  —   mostly ethnic Hmong who did the fighting  —   and the U. S. diverged. The U. S. aim as the war went on basically became: use Laos as a charnel house, where most of the reason for the fight was to occupy North Vietnamese Army and to kill as many North Vietnamese as possible  —   the theory being that then, they could not be involved in the fight in Vietnam. The conflict in Laos ended in defeat in 1975. The Communists won. They remain in power decades later. How was this viewed inside the CIA? I think the war was  —   and continues to be  —   viewed as a success in that they held off, as much as was possible, Laotian Communist and North Vietnamese advances for a significant period of time. It also allowed the CIA to develop paramilitary capabilities. And the war gave the CIA a much more significant place at the U. S. foreign   table. So the CIA ended up with a bigger role. In the post   world, that role has expanded even further  —   for example, with its drone program. Is there a difference between when the military handles a campaign and when the CIA does? Overall, the use of the uniformed military, for all of their significant flaws, can allow for greater oversight by Congress and the public, for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike special forces or the CIA, they are not required to take pledges of silence on their activities. So their activities are more clearly documented. Also there’s usually a clearer chain of command in the military and a more clear code of ethics. Finally, the military is usually more accountable in its budgeting and its oversight to Congress. Is there an upside to having a militarized CIA? Let me begin by saying that I think the current administration  —   despite their fights over intelligence and analysis  —   appears to be very much in favor of expanding paramilitaries, both from the CIA and the special forces. The upside for the executive branch is that they are using forces that they don’t need to tell Congress and the American people about. They are not using conventional war, so less Americans would be. .. . ..in harm’s way? Yes. But there’s a downside to that. The less you put your own people in harm’s way, the more you’re able to make decisions that can be revolutionary because you don’t have skin in the game. This interview has been edited and condensed. Nishant Dahiya is NPR’s Asia editor. Follow him on Twitter @nprnishant."
"The leader of the Philippine National Police said Monday that the agency’s   units would be shut down and the deadly crackdown on people who use and sell drugs would be suspended. Instead, the crackdown will temporarily shift to inside the police force itself. ”We will cleanse our ranks . .. then maybe after that, we can resume our war on drugs,” police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa said, according to the BBC. Since President Rodrigo Duterte took office last summer, more than 7, 000 suspected drug users and dealers have died in extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. Earlier this month, investigators revealed that a Korean businessman had been kidnapped by   officers and strangled to death at the national police headquarters, The Philippine Star newspaper reports. The officers ”later extorted ransom money from his family under the pretense that he was alive,” according to The New York Times. The businessman’s killing prompted protests in Manila. Phelim Kine of Human Rights Watch wrote that it was an ”ominous indicator of the breakdown of rule of law” under Duterte, and that ”Philippine police have good reason to believe that they can literally get away with murder.” Dela Rosa announced that a   force would be created to catch, and potentially kill, corrupt officers, the Los Angeles Times reports. ”You policemen involved in syndicates, let’s see what happens now. Fight back so you’ll end up dead,” Dela Rosa said. ”You will be killed by this   task force.” ”We have to focus our effort toward internal cleansing and by the time we have cleansed the national police, the president will determine that and he will instruct us to go back to our war on drugs,” the newspaper quoted Dela Rosa as saying. Duterte campaigned on the promise of death to drug dealers, saying he would dump their bodies into Manila Bay and allegedly encouraging citizens to shoot drug dealers. ”Forget the laws on human rights,” he told supporters in a speech before election day. Once he was sworn in, promises hardened into policy. ”Do your duty, and in the process, you kill 1, 000 persons, I will protect you,” Duterte told police on July 1, the day after he was sworn in, Michael Sullivan reported for NPR. In September, an admitted former assassin testified that Duterte had ”personally ordering extrajudicial killings  —   and, in one case, pulling the trigger,” while he was mayor of Davao City, as The   has reported. The United Nations has condemned Duterte’s ”apparent endorsement of extrajudicial killing, which is illegal and a breach of fundamental rights and freedoms.” The Obama administration largely steered clear of the issue, even after Duterte preemptively, and profanely, scolded   Obama for even considering bringing up the issue in an upcoming meeting. That meeting was subsequently canceled. As we have reported, Duterte said he hopes to get along with President Trump, and has appointed real estate magnate Jose E. B. Antonio as a special trade envoy to the U. S. It’s worth noting that Antonio is the man building Trump Tower Manila."
"Four years after Medicare officials agreed in a landmark court settlement that seniors can’t be denied coverage for physical therapy and other skilled care simply because their condition isn’t improving, patients are still being turned away. As a result, federal officials and Medicare advocates have renewed their federal court battle, acknowledging that they cannot agree on a way to fix the problem. Earlier this month, each submitted ideas to the judge, who will decide  —   possibly within the next few months  —   what measures should be taken. Several organizations report that the government’s initial education campaign following the settlement has failed. Many seniors have only been able to get coverage once their condition worsened. But once it improved, treatment would stop  —   until the people got worse and were eligible again for coverage. Every year thousands of Medicare patients receive physical therapy and other treatment to recover from a fall or medical procedure, as well as to help cope with disabilities or chronic conditions including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s diseases, stroke and spinal cord or brain injuries. Although the settlement removes the necessity to show an improving health condition, it doesn’t affect other criteria and limitations on Medicare coverage. ”We still regularly get calls from people who are told they are being denied coverage,” said Peter Schmidt at the National Parkinson Foundation, based in Miami. Denials sometimes occur because physical therapy providers use a billing code that still requires the patient to show improvement. Although Parkinson’s is a degenerative brain disease, Schmidt said physical therapy and exercise can help slow its progress.  The agreement, approved in 2013, settled a   lawsuit against the Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services filed by Center for Medicare Advocacy and Vermont Legal Aid on behalf of five Medicare beneficiaries, including Glenda Jimmo, and six nationwide patient organizations. Coverage doesn’t depend on the ”potential for improvement from the therapy but rather on the beneficiary’s need for skilled care,” the Jimmo settlement said. In August, U. S. District Court Chief Judge Christina Reiss in Vermont ordered the government to work with the beneficiaries’ attorneys to strengthen its education campaign about the policy aimed at companies that process bill, claims reviewers, providers, appeals judges, people who staff the   help line and others. (Beneficiaries, however, weren’t included.) After working during the fall, both sides acknowledged this month they could not reach a compromise on the best path for getting the message out. ”There was a   kind of mythical policy that Medicare contractors put into place that said Medicare only pays for services if the patient could progress,” said Roshunda   director of regulatory affairs for the American Physical Therapy Association. ”It takes extensive effort to erase that.” Medicare’s proposals include such educational efforts and a special webpage with ”frequently asked questions” spelling out the proper procedures for handling claims. The government would also issue a clear statement confirming that Medicare covers physical, speech and occupational therapy along with skilled care at home, and in other settings, even if the patient has ”reached a plateau”  —   a term seniors still hear  —   and isn’t improving. Attorneys for the seniors want to monitor how Medicare officials implement these new measures and have offered to write the policy statement disavowing what’s known as the ”improvement standard.” They also want the government to repeat its 2013 conference call with providers, contractors and others involved in the process in order to correct mistakes, according to papers filed with the court Jan. 13. ”The major problem for us is that they do not want the plaintiff’s counsel to have any say or involvement in what they do,” said Gill DeFord, litigation director at the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Connecticut. ”We think that’s exactly the reason the educational campaign was so riddled with inaccuracies in the first place.”  But in its filing, the government said, ”The Plaintiffs’ plan seeks to address perceived deficiencies that were specifically not guaranteed under the [settlement] Agreement.” It added accepting the advocates’ plan ”would also grant their counsel undue control in developing CMS educational materials and an outsize role in CMS’s corrective action efforts.” A Medicare spokesman declined to comment under agency protocol because the case is still pending. The settlement affects care provided by a trained professional in a patient’s home, nursing home or the provider’s private office that is medically necessary to maintain the patient’s condition and prevent deterioration. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can follow Susan Jaffe on Twitter: @susanjaffe."
"More than 1. 3 million people have signed an official U. K. petition to prevent President Trump from making a state visit to the U. K.  —   and the number continues to grow. ”Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the UK in his capacity as head of US Government,” the petition states, ”but he should not be invited to make an official State Visit because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.” The U. K. Parliament will consider this petition for a debate, because it has surpassed the threshold of 100, 000 signatures. British Prime Minster Theresa May, while she was in Washington, D. C. last week, actually already extended an invitation to Trump on the queen’s behalf, and he has accepted. Today, according to the BBC, 10 Downing St. reiterated that the visit is still on: ”The USA is one of this country’s closest allies, and we look forward to hosting the president later this year.” It added that the visit is ”substantially in the national interest,” according to The Guardian. The petition gained steam after Trump issued an executive order Friday that freezes admission into the U. S. for all refugees and temporarily blocks entry to citizens and dual nationals from seven   countries. From London, NPR’s Frank Langfitt said Trump’s travel ban has proved embarrassing to May. Here’s more: ”On Friday, she became the first foreign leader to meet the new president at the White House. After news of the travel ban broke, though, May was slow to respond. Leading critics to say she’s been too eager to cozy up to Trump. A protest against the travel ban is planned today outside Downing Street.” Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said Trump ”should not be welcomed to Britain while he abuses our shared values with his shameful Muslim ban and attacks on refugees’ and women’s rights.” He added that May would be ”failing the British people if she does not postpone the state visit.” The petition’s authors explained their rationale like this: ”Donald Trump’s well documented misogyny and vulgarity disqualifies him from being received by Her Majesty the Queen or the Prince of Wales.” Last year, Parliament held a similar debate in response to a petition calling for Trump to be banned from the U. K. after he proposed ”a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” while on the campaign trail, as the Guardian reported. ”MPs described him as a ’fool’ a ’buffoon’ and a ’wazzock’ in the lengthy parliamentary debate in January last year”  —   but decided not to block him."
"Barack Obama spent much of his tenure scaling back the   ”war on terror” he inherited from George W. Bush. In a few short days, President Trump has again set the U. S. on a more visible and confrontational course in dealing with the threat of terrorism. Trump has temporarily frozen immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries, igniting protests outside the White House and at airports around the country. He’s ordered a comprehensive new plan be placed on his desk, within 30 days, on how to swiftly defeat the Islamic State. And Sunday, the U. S. military carried out a rare ground mission inside Yemen, where an estimated 14   members were killed, according to the Pentagon  —   though other reports also cited civilian deaths. One Navy SEAL was killed and three were injured, the first military casualties during Trump’s administration. White House officials are eager to tout what they describe as a more aggressive approach. Trump has ”hit the ground running, had a flurry of activity, to do exactly what he said he was going to do,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told ABC News’ This Week. ”We’re going to protect our country and our people.” Obama oversaw a nation at war every day of his   presidency  —   something that had never happened before. However, he tried to deploy a small U. S. military footprint, and the limited air campaigns in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere emphasized restraint and patience. While Trump’s policies are still taking shape, he is stressing his counterterrorism efforts even as they invite criticism. His aides say the moves are necessary because Obama wasn’t doing enough. Trump’s critics, including some Republicans, say he may be overreacting and warn about the damage to America’s image. Republican senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Trump’s immigration freeze ”may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.” A new plan for ISIS, Trump said during the presidential campaign that he had a secret plan to defeat ISIS and that he would ask the Pentagon for a new one. In a presidential memo Saturday evening, Trump took the second route. ”The United States must take decisive action to defeat ISIS,” he wrote. He called for a new, comprehensive plan that would be presented to him by Defense Secretary James Mattis within a month. It’s not clear whether this will lead to additional U. S. forces on the ground. About 6, 000 Americans are assisting local fighters in Iraq and Syria. The Americans are advisers, trainers, special operators and part of the air operation, but are not   fighters. Deployments of U. S. ground troops would accelerate the campaign against ISIS. But Obama rejected this approach after the large ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade. The Americans currently in Iraq and Syria have sought to work ”with, by and through” local forces rather than take the lead themselves. Trump’s memo also asked for recommended changes to the rules of engagement ”that exceed the requirements of international law regarding the use of force against ISIS.” Translation: the U. S. has often called off planned airstrikes due to the possibility of civilian casualties. Trump’s memo points to the possibility of fewer restrictions and a more aggressive bombing campaign against ISIS fighters who often try to shield themselves in civilian areas. Clearing the way for such military action in Syria and Iraq could yield more battlefield victories and speed the advance of allied forces fighting ISIS. But it could also put more American troops in danger and increase the risk to civilians. A raid in Yemen  The raid by the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 in central Yemen was a rare instance where U. S. forces were inserted for a ground operation in the nation ravaged by civil war. The U. S. has mostly conducted drone strikes and assisted Saudi Arabia with its much larger bombing campaign. The operation targeted a compound in Bayda Province belonging to   in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, considered  ’s most dangerous affiliate. The action did not go smoothly. An   Osprey aircraft carrying the special operations forces had a hard landing and was then intentionally destroyed by the Americans to keep it out of hostile hands. The White House and the military described it as a success and cited intelligence collected about possible future attacks. NPR’s Alice Fordham cited Yemeni officials and citizens saying civilians were among those killed in the raid. They say the dead included the    daughter of Anwar   the fiery American cleric and   supporter killed in Yemen in a 2011 U. S. drone strike. ”The U. S. A. is committing crimes, you know, especially under this new administration,” Dr. Nasser   the father of Anwar and grandfather of the girl, told NPR. The American forces ”attacked a village at midnight with women and children sleeping,” he said. ”These actions really make things difficult in the world.” The U. S. military said they take such allegations seriously, but had not opened an investigation at this stage. Immigration freeze, In Washington, Spicer linked the Yemen operation and the immigration freeze, describing them as part of the combined efforts addressing the security threat. ”That’s why this [immigration] order is so important,” he told ABC. If troops ”are going to go out there and put their lives on the line, [the government must] do our part, to make sure we’re not going to have an open door, to allow people to march right into our country.” But critics took a different view on the possible consequences. ”There is a propaganda gift in the executive order for those who would do damage to the United States. ISIS wants nothing more than to be able to say to Muslims around the world that American doesn’t want them,” David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, told NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. ”I’m afraid this executive order plays into their hands.” Miliband said the U. S. has been highly successful in preventing extremists from entering the country, and the latest step wasn’t necessary. ”We argue that the executive order is founded on a myth  —   which is that there’s no security vetting. There is security vetting. It’s an average of 12 to 18 months,” Miliband said. ”It’s an American success story.” Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"It’s been a busy week for President Trump’s pen. Since taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, Trump has signed more than a dozen executive orders and memorandums in an effort to   his policy agenda and begin to deliver on some of the promises he made during the campaign. But why is the president’s directive to build a wall considered an ”executive order,” whereas greenlighting the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines are ”memorandums”? And how is all of that different from issuing an ”executive action”? The authority to issue executive orders and memorandums doesn’t appear in the Constitution, and that’s partly why the definitions are a little hazy, according to the Congressional Research Service. Nevertheless, the authority to issue both is considered an inherent aspect of presidential power. An order is a call for the executive branch to take a specific action or to change an existing practice, explains Phillip J. Cooper, a professor of public administration in the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University in Portland, Ore. If the president has the authority to issue that directive, whether from the Constitution or statute, then it becomes legally binding. However, Cooper says, ”if there’s a clear piece of legislation that says, ’No you can’t do this,’ a president can’t pick up a pen and get around it.” In essence, a president can’t sign an executive order that violates existing law. Once a president signs an executive order, it’s sent to the Federal Register for an identifying number, and then published. That’s a key step that isn’t legally required with executive memorandums. ”There are no legal processes required for issuing a memorandum,” Cooper says. ”A president doesn’t have to do anything, doesn’t even have to publish it if he or she doesn’t want to. With an executive order, presidents must publish.” The Obama administration started publishing public memorandums on the White House website, and the Trump administration has followed suit. But, Cooper says, that is something they choose to do, and what’s available on the website now may not include all of the new administration’s memorandums. Executive orders and memorandums are often conflated. ”In the last few administrations, particularly since the Clinton years, presidents started using the two interchangeably,” says Cooper. In a January 2000 memo to   Bill Clinton, the Justice Department wrote, ”It is our opinion that there is no substantive difference in the legal effectiveness of an executive order and a presidential directive that is not styled as an executive order.” While presidents have treated executive memorandums as just as binding as executive orders, Cooper says, ”there really is not a clear body of case law or statutes on that.” As for ”executive actions,” Cooper says the phrase is very generic. He explains that executive actions are ”merely a category” of different policy tools that presidents often use  —   including executive orders and memorandums  —   that has no separate legal meaning itself. Regardless of the word appearing after ”executive,” if his first week in office is any indication, it seems President Trump’s pen won’t be getting a rest any time soon."
"President Trump signed another executive order Monday morning, fulfilling another campaign pledge, this one to eliminate two federal regulations for every new regulation enacted. Trump signed the order during an Oval Office photo op, saying, ”We’re cutting regulations massively for small business and large business,” adding, ”This will be the biggest such act our country has ever seen.” The order stipulates: ”Unless prohibited by law, whenever an executive department or agency (agency) publicly proposes for notice and comment or otherwise promulgates a new regulation, it shall identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed.” Trump said earlier Monday that he wants to eliminate ”a little more than 75 percent” of the regulations now on the books. ”We don’t need 97 different rules to take care of one element,” he said. The directive exempts regulations relating to the military, national security and foreign affairs. Business groups applauded Trump’s order. The National Federation of Independent Business calls it ”a good first step on the long road toward eliminating    regulations.” Environmental groups however were dismayed. Center for Biological Diversity director Kieran Suckling called the new policy ”as dumb as it gets.” In a statement, Suckling said, ”So you’ll protect my drinking water but only in exchange for allowing oil drilling in national parks and more lead in my paint?” Rolling back regulations has long been a goal of Republican and Democratic administrations, but it’s not easy, as we’ve reported. There are some 80, 000 pages in the Federal Register, where all federal rules are published. But in order to repeal a regulation, a federal agency has to go through the same notice and comment rule making process used to formulate new regulations. And that generally takes at least a year. There is a workaround for newly enacted regulations, the Congressional Review Act. It gives lawmakers the opportunity to repeal regulations approved in the last 60 days of the congressional session. But that, too, is a   process, and given the Senate’s need to act on Trump’s nominations, it’s likely that only a relatively few regulations will be repealed in this manner. One is likely to come up this week. House leaders say they will attempt to repeal the stream protection rule, an Obama administration regulation that forbids coal companies from dumping rocks and other debris created by mountain top removal mining into nearby streams. Republicans and the coal industry say the regulation threatens jobs. The Natural Resources Defense Council says   removal mining, in which ground is blasted to access coal seams below, has been responsible for the destruction of 2, 000 miles of streams in Appalachia."
"This is a guest post from WNYC’s Note to Self podcast, which explores the effects of technology on our lives. Its   Privacy Paradox Project starts on Feb. 6 and you can sign up below or on the WNYC website. You know how you should behave online. You should have strong passwords. You should think carefully before you post. And you should read the privacy policy before you click ”Agree.” But reading the privacy policy of every website you visit would take you about 25 days a year, according to Carnegie Mellon researchers. No wonder we don’t bother. And yet, in a Pew Research poll, almost   of Americans said the right to control who can access what information about them is ”very important.” If we care so much about protecting our personal information and feel uncomfortable about giving it away, why do we keep doing it? Researchers call this conundrum the ”privacy paradox.” And we at Note to Self are hoping to help you solve it. We’re launching a   experiment at privacyparadox. org, with challenges and   to help you gain control over your digital information, and set some boundaries about how you want to live online. On the site, you can learn more about the project, including a quiz to find your privacy personality. Or, you can just sign up right here to join  —   for five days, you’ll get a newsletter with action steps, tips and the podcast. When we surveyed 2, 000 of our listeners, people said their biggest concern was the safety of their bank account details and Social Security numbers. But they also told stories of more personal privacy lost. One man’s   hacked his social media accounts and delivered what she claimed was evidence of adultery to his commanding officer. Another woman was haunted by fertility ads online after researching her upcoming ovarian surgery. Even listeners with no specific tale to tell said they feel unsettled knowing their every click and ”like” is tracked, quantified  —   and sold. Tech companies make money off of our online behavior  —   what Shoshana Zuboff refers to as our ”digital exhaust.” Zuboff, author of the upcoming Master or Slave?: The Fight for the Soul of Our Information Civilization, calls this economic model ”surveillance capitalism,” and she says Google was one of its pioneers. ”The fastest way to make money,” she says, ”was to take our data, to translate it into predictions about us, and to sell it to somebody else.” This tracking is getting more and more sophisticated. Advertisers have moved way past cookies. Now, companies are using digital ”fingerprinting,” using your computer’s address, your browser, and dozens of other data points to pinpoint who you are. Other companies analyze the punctuation, words and tone you use in emails to profile your personality. Facebook breaks its users down into more than 50, 000 different categories, such as ”ethnic affinity” or ”pretending to text in awkward situations,” so advertisers can pinpoint their marketing. There are upsides to all this data collection, for individuals, and maybe for us all. You might get the perfect coupon, right when you need it. You may never run out of detergent, because your Amazon Echo knows when you’re low. Researchers are using big data to tackle climate change, cancer and more. So, we’re not telling you to go incognito. This is not about tinfoil hats and tossing your phone. We love the Internet and all its shiny things. But that doesn’t mean we can’t set some limits. In the   interactive project, we’ll help you understand where your personal information goes online, weigh the   and then make more thoughtful digital decisions. Tackling digital privacy can feel overwhelming. So let’s do it together."
"Mika Peck, a conservation ecologist at England’s University of Sussex, was frustrated. He’d been researching and publishing papers for years on the   of the Ecuadoran   spider monkey, and not much was happening to change the primate’s extremely threatened status. Not much, that is, until he started connecting the monkeys to gourmet chocolate. Both monkeys and cacao flourish in the Chocóan rain forests of northwestern Ecuador (el Chocó)  part of a rain forest network that runs along the Pacific Coast, from Panama to Peru. El Chocó is home to about   of the   spider monkey population, but that population is dwindling. The environmental group Rainforest Trust estimates that there are only about 250   spider monkeys left on the planet, making them among the most endangered primates ever recorded. That’s because locals in this remote region, trying to earn a living over the past few decades, cut down the trees for lumber that the spider monkeys relied on for shelter and food. And subsistence farmers routinely cut wide swaths through the forest to plant cacao. The monkeys, who live most of their lives in the high canopy of the rain forest, became more vulnerable to predators, including humans, who hunt these   for their meat. Most of the people living in and around the Washu region of el Chocó subsist on cacao farming. ”Their main product is chocolate,” Peck says. ”You can’t believe how hard they work and how much they get for it. That’s the biggest reason they clear the rain forest.” What they got for it, at least back in 2005, when Peck and his colleagues launched a primate research network in the region, was actually very little. Although the cacao they grew was the   arriba variety, a unique   bean grown only in Ecuador, it was mixed with cacao of poorer quality and eventually turned into what we might politely call industrial chocolate. (We’re talking the stuff of cheap Halloween and Easter candy.) Peck realized he needed to convince the farmers to stop cutting down the trees to save what was left of the spider monkeys. ”The deal was, ’Don’t chop down the forest and we’ll give you a better price and ecologically minded buyers for your chocolate,’” Peck recalls. After some serious   research, Peck found Samuel von Rutte, a Swiss native who moved to Ecuador decades ago to become a cacao farmer. Von Rutte runs a cacao farm in Quevedo, in central Ecuador, and is renowned for his expertise in drying and fermenting cacao. After evaluating the Washu chocolate, he realized it could be developed into   product. And if better farming practices were adopted, the chocolate could be marketed to more environmentally minded buyers. Von Rutte led training sessions for the family cacao farmers in the Washu region and bought some of the first beans, Peck says. As Von Rutte was helping cacao farmers get better prices for their beans, Peck and his colleagues were working to increase interest in conservation, training local parabiologists (field researchers without advanced degrees trained to collect data) and running education programs. For both farmers and monkeys, it’s starting to pay off. A small group of farmers working with Peck’s Proyecto Washu conservation team produced about five tons of cacao last year, says Peck’s colleague, Nathaly Sylvana Urbina Bermudez, a native of Colombia. The farmers used to get about $1 per kilo, but now they are guaranteed $3. 50 per kilo for the next three years, thanks to a deal between the conservation group and the French   chocolatier Bouga CacaO. Bouga takes the   chocolate and turns it into fine chocolate products. NPR was able to get some of the 75 percent organic chocolate negro (dark organic chocolate) produced by Peck’s conservation group. It sells for about $3 a bar and its packaging features an artist’s rendering of the   spider monkey. The chocolate has a clean, mildly floral bite, with a slightly bitter aftertaste. A couple of squares would make a good   treat. It’s not yet easy to buy, but the team is working on that, Peck says. Meanwhile, the change in the Washu region is real. Whereas the farmers used to talk only of the poor price they received, they now swap success stories. ”They’re kind of becoming experts in cacao. They have conversations about their quality. . .. They used to do it just to live,” says Urbina, who has lived and worked in the region for the past two years. ”Now they can teach and they are experimenting,” she adds. And the monkeys? Peck and his colleagues established a conservation lab in an area called the Tesoro Escondido Spider Monkey Reserve. As of this past June, the reserve had purchased 1, 100 hectares of forest to preserve. Thanks to data from animal cams they have set up around the area and drones monitoring the farms, the scientists are optimistic about the monkeys’ future. ”The chocolate is high quality,” Peck says. ”And its sale would support the conservation work of the Washu Project, once they have established a more solid commercial link for sales.” The team may even venture into emerging markets for its chocolate. ”There is not a   component as yet, but that is something we would like to trial,” says Peck.   cacao is a radically different operation. It can yield less cacao than from open fields, so it can be a tough sell to farmers. But it is more resilient to drastic weather conditions  —   the shade retains moisture and reduces weeds. And it leaves more trees standing for monkeys, birds and other animals, according to a 2012 study in Conservation Letters, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology. Perhaps most important to farmers,   cacao may also fetch a higher price. There are other benefits to raising awareness about the connection between human and monkey habitats. As the rain forest sustains the primates, the primates also sustain the forest, Peck says. Spider monkeys in particular are important   in lowland forests like the Chocó. A study published this summer in the International Journal of Tropical Biology and Conservation looked at two different rain forest areas and found evidence suggesting that an area with more primates has richer and denser saplings. ”Maintaining intact wildlife populations, with special emphasis on primates due to their vulnerability and   movements, appears to be necessary to maintain plant diversity in these forests,” the study says. Saving the monkeys, preserving the rain forest, and securing a good price for     chocolate? That seems like a recipe for a sweet victory."
"Utopian communities don’t fare much better in fiction than they do in real life. As the plot usually unfolds, a brave new world loses its luster fast when the failings of its founder are exposed, or when the community itself begins to morph into a cult. Think of Lauren Groff’s Arcadia or Carolyn Parkhurst’s Harmony, two recent novels that have imagined alternative communities and their inevitable  . How could it be otherwise in fiction? As the Talking Heads told us, ”Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.” A novel about heaven, about a successful utopia without sin or tension, would be pretty dull, indeed. Fortunately for us readers, the experimental ideal community that Kevin Wilson brings to life in his second novel, Perfect Little World, has the delicious makings of a mess from its very inception. Wilson broke out with his 2011 debut novel, The Family Fang, about two married,   artists who deploy their children as props in their performance pieces. That novel was ingenious  —   a whirlwind of screwball comedy, art and sad realizations about the limitations of family. Wilson is still thinking hard about the idea of family in Perfect Little World. This is in some ways a calmer, less quirky novel, but what Perfect Little World loses in eccentricity, it gains in emotional depth. Wilson’s story focuses on Isabel ”Izzy” Poole, a smart,   high school senior in Tennessee who falls in love with her depressed art teacher and becomes pregnant. Izzy’s mom is dead, her alcoholic dad is just barely scraping by, and her   is too entangled with his own demons to be of any use. Izzy, who’s a quietly compelling character, has decided to keep her baby. She comes to the attention of something called The Infinite Family Project. Cooked up by a child psychologist named Dr. Grind and funded by a billionaire who cherishes happy memories of being raised in a caring orphanage, the project aims to place 10 infants and their parents in a     commune for 10 years. The children will be raised by all the adults, and for a long stretch, they won’t know who their biological parents are. The aim is to see if both adults and children are happier and healthier when the pressures of child rearing are widely distributed. Young as she is, Izzy knows this mega blended family is probably doomed, but single motherhood isn’t looking like a walk in the park either. Here’s her rationale for taking a chance on the project: [Izzy] thought, for the millionth time, of her future as it lay before her without the aid of this project, working two jobs to make ends meet, her son in the cheapest day care she could find, so tired at the end of the day that her baby felt like an unbreakable curse, failing each and every day until the bottom fell out of the world. Wilson richly imagines the mundane details of life in the futuristic compound, as well as the bumpy personalities of the other parents, all of whom, except Izzy, are coupled. A year in, a research assistant to Dr. Grind declares: ”The kids are going to be great the parents are the unstable element.” That’s partly because the adults have trouble figuring out what they are to one another: ”Brothers and sisters?” ”Second cousins?” One night, as Izzy and some of the other parents are sitting around drinking whiskey smashes, another mom suggests that they’re all ”like the cast of Gilligan’s Island.” One of the fathers points out: ”There was a lot of sexual tension on that show.” Uh huh. The snake has been let into this   Eden, which is soon rocked by illicit   the likes of which Ginger, the Professor and Mary Ann dared not even dream of. Wilson is such an inventive and witty writer, that it was only after I’d finished Perfect Little World and was no longer caught up in the story, that I realized how many ideas he raises here, how many kinds of family arrangements he scrutinizes, among them biological, chosen, nuclear, communal, broken and bandaged. The utopian Infinite Family Project may be flawed from the   but Wilson’s ”perfect little world” of a novel pretty much lives up to its title."
"Cancer researchers are testing whether a generic drug that has been used for more than 40 years to treat parasitic infections may also help fight cancer. The tests of mebendazole are part of a growing effort to take a fresh look at old medicines to see if they can be repurposed for new uses. I first learned about mebendazole several years back when my son came home from camp with a gross but common infection: pinworms. My pediatrician prescribed two doses of mebendazole, and two weeks later the infection was gone.   a couple of years, and I was surprised to find on clinicaltrials. gov, the federal database of medical trials, that mebendazole was being investigated as a potential cancer drug. Curious, I contacted Gregory Riggins, a cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins University who is testing the safety of mebendazole as a potential cancer treatment. He invited me to his lab in Baltimore. Riggins took me inside and showed me cages of cancer research mice. A few years back, he said, his idea to test mebendazole started here. Some of the lab animals got infected with pinworms, the same parasite my son had. The veterinarian at Johns Hopkins treated the whole colony of mice with an animal version of mebendazole. The drug staved off the parasite, but it also did something surprising. Before the mice were treated for pinworms, Riggins and his team had implanted cancer cells into the animals’ brains. But after the mice got the pinworm drug, the cancers never developed. ”Our medulloblastoma stopped growing,” Riggins says. He found out that other researchers were conducting animal studies to see if the drug had effects on lung cancer and melanoma. So he got funding to do two Phase 1 studies to test whether mebendazole is safe to use in brain cancer patients, one in children and another in adults. So far the drug appears to be safe and well tolerated by patients, Riggins says. That would be expected, given that it has been used for decades around the world to treat pinworms. ”Based on the preclinical studies it looks like it has promise,” says Tracy Batchelor, director of the division of   at Massachusetts General Hospital, who is not involved in the research. ”The next step is to look for a benefit in a Phase 2 trial.” That would test whether mebendazole has any effect on cancer in people. Riggins hopes to conduct that sort of trial in adult brain cancer patients. At a time when it can cost a billion dollars to develop a new drug, the idea of repurposing existing drugs is appealing, according to Bruce Bloom. He’s the president and chief science officer of Cures Within Reach, which has helped to fund Riggins’ research. Bloom points to research on metformin, a diabetes drug that’s being looked at as a potential treatment for a dozen different kinds of cancer and also tuberculosis. A common blood pressure drug, propranolol, is also being studied. ”It’s not likely that mebendazole or any other single repurposed drug is ever going to cure cancer,” Bloom says. But he envisions the possibility that combinations of repurposed drugs might help the body to manage cancer. Any use of mebendazole as a cancer drug would be years away, if it proves to work at all. Most drugs that emerge from Phase 1 trials never deliver the   benefits. And in an odd twist to a complicated story, the cost of mebendazole in the U. S. has skyrocketed in recent years. Though it remains very affordable in most countries, the wholesale cost of a 100 mg tablet in the U. S. has risen from $4. 50 in 2011 to $369 in 2016, according to Truven Health Analytics. The dynamics that led to the price hike were in play before interest rose in the drug as a potential cancer treatment, analysts say. In 2013, Amedra Pharmaceuticals bought marketing rights to mebendazole from Teva Pharmaceuticals. It already owned rights to another key generic antiparasitic drug, albendazole. ”At that point, anyone who has had a high school or undergraduate economics course would be able to explain the price hike,” says Joey Mattingly, an assistant professor in the department of pharmacy practice and science at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy who studies generic drug pricing. That leaves people with pinworm infections with the choice of two expensive prescription medications or cheaper    options. ”Pinworms are exceedingly common,” says Rachel Orscheln, an assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Washington University and St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The CDC estimates 40 million people are infected in the U. S. annually. Orscheln says the people most likely to be infected are children and people who are living in group settings such as nursing homes. ”There are certain cases where we do need to prescribe this medication,” says Orscheln. But at the higher price, she says, ”I’m very disinclined to prescribe [it].” She says    drugs such as   or pyrantel, can work just as well in children, so ”I’m very likely to steer people in that direction.”"
"When Christopher Gallant was featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, the testimonial came from none other than Elton John, who said, ”When I hear his voice, I just lose it.” The two even performed Gallant’s song ”Weight In Gold” together back in September. Gallant performed a   version of that hit when he came to the Tiny Desk earlier this month, and preceded it with another of his   songs, ”Skipping Stones.” Written with Jhené Aiko, that tune radiates sultry intensity and passion here, the talented Dani Ivory (who’s performed as a touring member of Imagine Dragons) sits in for Aiko. Ology, Gallant’s 2016 debut, is up for a Grammy next month  —   for Best Urban Contemporary Album  —   and another of its   highlights opens this   set. On the record, ”Bourbon” is produced with a funky,     drum track, but here, a steady drum beat grounds the hypnotic song just as well, if not better. Best of all, ”Bourbon” gets a welcome bonus at the Tiny Desk: a guest rap by Saba, a charismatic rising star and frequent Chance The Rapper collaborator. Ology is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) ”Bourbon” (feat. Saba) ”Skipping Stones” (feat. Dani Ivory) ”Weight In Gold” Gallant (vocals) Wes Switzer (bass) Dani Ivory (keys, vocals) Dylan Jones (guitar) A. J. Novak (percussion) featuring guest rapper Saba in ”Bourbon.” Producers: Suraya Mohamed, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Colin Marshall, Kara Frame Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"In a post published last week, Adam Frank argued for the importance of public facts, and of science as a method for ascertaining them. He emphasized the role of agreement in establishing public facts, and verifiable evidence as the crucial ingredient that makes agreement possible. Today, I want to consider two additional aspects of science as a method for ascertaining public facts  —   that is, the facts that we should all accept together. The first is that scientific conclusions can change. And the second is that scientific methods can change. Far from undercutting the value of public facts, understanding how and why these changes occur reveals why science is our best bet for getting the facts right. First, the body of scientific knowledge is continually evolving. Scientists don’t simply add more facts to our scientific repository they question new evidence as it comes in, and they repeatedly reexamine prior conclusions. That means that the body of scientific knowledge isn’t just growing, it’s also changing. At first glance, this change can be unsettling. How can we trust science, if scientific conclusions are continually subject to change? The key is that scientific conclusions don’t change on a whim. They change in response to new evidence, new analyses and new arguments  —   the sorts of things we can publicly agree (or disagree) about, that we can evaluate together. And scientific conclusions are almost always based on induction, not deduction. That is, science involves drawing inferences from premises to conclusion, where the premises can affect the probability of the conclusions but don’t establish them with certainty. When you put these pieces together, the alternative to an evolving body of scientific knowledge is a  . To embrace a static body of scientific knowledge is to reject the potential relevance of new information. It’s a commitment to the idea that a conclusion based on all the evidence available is no better than a conclusion based on the subset of evidence we happened to obtain first. If a changing body of scientific knowledge is unsettling, this alternative is untenable. A second feature of science is that scientific methods are continually evolving. Many of us learned ”the” scientific method in grade school, a    procedure for doing science. But this   approach to science is oversimplified and misleading. Scientists employ a variety of methods, and these methods are refined as we learn more. New technologies, like telescopes or brain imaging devices, allow us to ask new questions in new ways. But equally important, strategies for analyzing data and drawing conclusions change as well. Statistical methods improve, as do experimental designs. The randomized controlled trial is a scientific innovation a way to draw better conclusions about cause and effect. A   experiment is a scientific innovation a way to prevent subtle psychological processes from influencing the results. What drives this methodological innovation? And what makes the outcome a set of methods we should trust? In an undergraduate course that I’m teaching this semester, we introduce students to an unconventional definition of science. The course, Letters  Sciences 22: Sense and Sensibility and Science, comes from an interdisciplinary collaboration between a philosopher (John Campbell) a social psychologist (Robert MacCoun) a    physicist (Saul Perlmutter) and a cognitive scientist (me). On the first day of class, Prof. Perlmutter defines science as a collection of heuristic tricks that are constantly being invented to   our mental weaknesses and play to our strengths. On this view, science isn’t a recipe, it’s a warning. The warning is this: We are fallible. But recognizing our fallibility, we can do better. Once we learn that placebo effects can occur, we design drug trials to compare drugs against placebos. Once we learn that repeated statistical significance testing can inflate the probability of a false positive, we build in corrective measures. And we shouldn’t wait for these lessons to fortuitously come along we should vigorously seek them out. A common theme in the course, concludes Perlmutter, is that science is about actively hunting for where we are wrong, for where we are fooling ourselves. Scientific methods thus evolve alongside scientific conclusions, and the engine that drives this change is remarkably simple. In an essay published earlier this month at Edge. org, I argue that science is powerful because it involves the systematic evaluation of alternatives. To determine which evidence is worth pursuing, we consider which alternatives are plausible, and we seek out evidence that will discriminate between them. As we encounter new evidence or new arguments, we evaluate the possibility that alternative conclusions are now better supported, and alternative methods better guides to the truth. Scientific thinking isn’t just a tool for working scientists it’s an approach to getting the facts right by entertaining all the ways we might get the facts wrong. Only when viable alternatives have been eliminated can we be pretty confident we’ve got something right. So let me end with a plea. The plea isn’t for people to accept any particular scientific consensus, or any particular public fact. It’s a plea for people to embrace the value of considering alternative possibilities, and evaluating those possibilities against the best evidence and arguments at our disposal. And it’s a plea for us to do so together, with the kinds of evidence we can verify and share, and the kinds of arguments we can subject to public scrutiny. And if you’re not convinced, please consider the alternatives. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Writer Laurie Frankel has written a novel about a family with five boys in which the youngest feels he’s something entirely different  —   a girl. It’s called This Is How It Always Is, and it’s a story that’s close to Frankel’s heart because she’s living it: Her own child was born a boy and now identifies as a girl. That’s where the similarities end. Frankel tells NPR’s Rachel Martin, ”The nice thing about my life is that it’s pretty boring, which is really how you want your life to be  —   but not how you want your novel to be. So in fact, this really is . .. very, very made up.” On how she reacted when her child first expressed an interest in being a girl, She wanted to wear a dress  —   and she was a he at the time  —   and we said OK. It didn’t inspire panic. It didn’t seem to be anything to be worried about or alarmed about. It seemed like pretend. . .. She was 6, she had just turned 6, and it seemed like she was just playing and having fun. And she was just playing and having fun and trying things on. It’s just that it stuck. On striking a balance between letting kids express themselves and protecting them, I think that putting all of your faith in the   powers of your small children is probably not the best way forward for anyone. In the book what happens is that they feel their way through, and I think that that’s what all of us do in parenting in general. You make a judgement call and you take your best guess and you take a shot and you hope for the best. And if it works that’s wonderful and if it doesn’t then you modify. That’s what parenting is, is figuring out that balance between letting your kids be who they are and protecting them from the world they have to live in. . .. Sometimes I feel like letting my kid out of the house every morning is the hardest thing I do all day. And, again, I think that’s the hallmark of parenting: No one out there in the world is ever going to love my kid or get my kid as much as I will, and yet I gotta let her go every day anyway. On what she hopes readers will get out of her book, I think it is a topic that scares people and I think that in part that’s because they haven’t met anyone  —   or they don’t know that they’ve met anyone  —   who is impacted by these issues. There are a lot of transgender people and there are even more people who are gender nonconforming, and these little kids are just kids. They are the least scary people you can imagine. So one of the things that I hope is that people who read this book will read it and forget about the transgender issues and just be in the embrace of this family and realize that this family is like all families: They love and they keep secrets from one another and they protect one another and they struggle with how to do that and they have these challenges. And it’s hard, but it isn’t scary and it isn’t abnormal at all. Oh how her daughter feels about the book, She loves it. She thinks that all books should be written about her. She cannot actually imagine why I would ever consider writing a book about anything else. And she’s a big reader, but it is a book for adults. It is not appropriate for her. But I am certainly mindful of the fact, and was while I was writing it, that she will read it someday. And I hope that she will love it, of course, but I also know that she will see that it’s  —   that it really is not about her. It’s really very fictionalized. And I hope very much that the plot and heartbreak and drama and near misses that happen in this novel, I hope that they will never happen to her."
"On June 27, 2015, David Byrne  —   never one who shies away from a grand gesture  —   paired 10 color guards with   musicians, including the Beastie Boys’   Devonté Hynes,   and St. Vincent, on the stage of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for a show he called ”Contemporary Color,” which is now a promising documentary of the same name. If you’re not familiar with color guard, you’re not alone: Byrne told the New York Times he estimated it was ”completely unknown to 98 percent of New Yorkers.” For the uninitiated, color guard is a form of beautifully melodramatic     choreography. (Virginia’s McLean High School has a helpful introduction in the form of its   recruitment video.) While a Times review of the ”Contemporary Color” live show was mixed, the documentary’s ability to examine the interior lives of the performers, the history of color guard and the jubilation backstage promises an entirely more revealing, and resonant, portrait. The movie, which won the Documentary Cinematography Prize at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, is clearly aiming for the heart’s bullseye: an intended palliative for this difficult modern moment. ”We need an antidote, and here it is,” as Byrne put it in a statement released in conjunction with the trailer. ”The world is better than we think it is.”"
"Updated at 4:15 p. m. ET, Homeland Security officials are defending the Trump administration’s executive order on immigration and refugees, along with its implementation. At a news conference Tuesday, DHS Secretary John Kelly said the order creates a ”temporary pause” as officials ”assess the strengths and the weaknesses of our current system.” He was adamant in saying that the order ”is not  —   I repeat  —   not a ban on Muslims.” The controversial executive order suspends   admissions for 120 days and blocks travelers from seven   countries  —   Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia  —   for 90 days. Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely. The Trump administration immediately faced legal challenges from advocacy groups that say the order is discriminatory toward Muslims, an accusation that Kelly denied. At least one U. S. state, Washington, has filed a lawsuit seeking an emergency stay of the order. The executive order, issued Friday, has also garnered criticism for its chaotic and seemingly uneven initial implementation. ”I think it’s fair to acknowledge that communications  —   publicly and interagency  —   haven’t been the best in the initial rollout of this process,” said Kevin McAleenan, acting commissioner of U. S. Customs and Border Protection. However, the officials largely defended the order’s implementation, saying they immediately took action to implement provisions. One area of confusion has been the status of green card holders, or lawful permanent residents, from the seven countries. McAleenan says they developed a waiver process ”over a matter of hours Friday night to Saturday afternoon”: ”Under the executive order, Section 3, there’s a provision for granting waivers when it’s in the national interest. So lawful permanent residents are technically covered in the executive order as immigrant visa holders. We worked quickly with counsel to devise a waiver process. ”The secretary has given guidance that returning residents, their status as an LPR in the U. S. is dispositive, that it’s in the national interest to welcome them home. So once we got that guidance, we were able to delegate the authority to grant a waiver out to the field and were able to clarify with the carriers that these folks were allowed to board.” In the first 72 hours of the order, McAleenan says, 1, 060 lawful permanent residents obtained such waivers, in addition to 75 waivers for ”immigrant visa and nonimmigrant visa holders.” He adds that 721 travelers with visas from the seven specified countries were not allowed to board. Now, he says, green card holders and special immigrant visa holders are able to board flights and ”will be processed for a waiver upon arrival.” Other travelers from the seven countries won’t be able to get on U. S.  flights and will be ”referred to the Department of State for further process.” The executive order allows for refugees to be considered for waivers if they were already in transit and if denying entry would cause ”undue hardship,” McAleenan says. He adds that ”872 refugees will be arriving this week and we’ll be processing them for waivers through the end of the week.” Another source of confusion has been the status of dual nationals. McAleenan says those travelers will be ”assessed at our border based on the passport they present, not any dual national status.” For example, he says, a citizen of both the U. K. and one of the listed countries can present a U. K. passport and not be subject to the order. Kelly denied reports that DHS was caught off guard by the order, stating he had been expecting it for the past year and a half to two years because of Trump’s comments during his campaign. He says he learned ”probably Thursday” that the order would be signed the following day and notes that ”certainly, if you really, you know  —   if you really want to know what was in the executive order, just read the newspaper the day before and you’d find out.” ”People on my staff were generally involved,” Kelly adds. Trump has called for ”extreme vetting,” and Kelly sketched out some of the measures he says officials are considering: ”When someone comes in and asks for consideration to get a visa, it might be certainly an accounting of what websites they visit. It might be telephone contact information so that we can see who they’re talking to.   ”But again, all of this is under development. But those are the kind of things we’re looking at  —   social media. We have to be convinced that people that come here, there’s a reasonable expectation that we don’t know who they are and what they’re coming here for and what their backgrounds are.” As for when the travel freezes will be lifted, Kelly states: ”I would be less than honest if I told you that some of those countries that are currently on the list may not be taken off the list anytime soon.”"
"President Trump has issued an executive order temporarily banning travel from seven   countries. The move, which has raised a series of legal questions, sparked protests around the country as people who had previously been approved to come to the United States were being detained at airports. Here is the order in full, annotated by NPR journalists."
"Officials in a number of states have spoken out against President Trump’s recent executive actions on immigration. On Monday, Washington state became the first to file a lawsuit against the administration, seeking a restraining order to stop enforcement of the ban. ”If successful it would have the effect of invalidating the president’s unlawful action nationwide,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said of the lawsuit, according to member station KNKX. Citing the most recent U. S. Census Bureau data (from 2015) the suit says Washington is currently home to more than 7, 200 noncitizen immigrants from Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan and Yemen  —   the seven nations listed in Trump’s immigration ban. In its court filings, the attorney general’s office included statements Trump made as a candidate dating back as far as December of 2015. That’s when his campaign issued a statement titled, ”Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration,” which called for ”a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Trump’s immigration ban, the lawsuit says, ”is separating Washington families, harming thousands of Washington residents, damaging Washington’s economy, hurting   companies, and undermining Washington’s sovereign interest in remaining a welcoming place for immigrants and refugees.” Over the weekend, Ferguson was among more than a dozen Democratic attorneys general who signed a statement in which they pledged to fight what they called an ”unconstitutional order.” Other states are likely to take action against the ban, either on their own or by joining Washington’s suit. In Massachusetts, for instance, Attorney General Maura Healey’s office says she is planning to challenge the order in New York, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s office is filing to join a federal lawsuit against President Trump that was originally filed by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. The Washington suit names as defendants President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, and Acting Secretary of State Tom Shannon, along with the federal government. The Washington lawsuit also includes several media reports and interview transcripts about Trump’s ban, including his interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that was promoted under the headline, ”Brody File Exclusive: President Trump Says Persecuted Christians Will Be Given Priority As Refugees.” Filed in federal court in Seattle, the Washington documents include an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order, saying irreparable harm will result from Trump’s executive action that bans travel from the seven   countries and suspends the U. S. refugee admissions program. Announcing his lawsuit against the immigration ban, Ferguson said, ”We are a country based on the rule of law and in a courtroom it is not the loudest voice that prevails, it’s the Constitution.” When it imposed the immigration ban, the Trump administration cited concerns about potential terrorism threats it has also noted that only a portion of the world’s   countries are on the banned list. But as NPR’s Greg Myre reported, the executive order ”doesn’t include any countries from which radicalized Muslims have actually killed Americans in the U. S. since Sept. 11, 2001.” Trump’s action on Friday set off a weekend of protests, legal challenges and confusion as travelers and border security personnel tried to adjust to a new set of rules. And on Monday, after the acting attorney general refused to defend the order, she was fired."
"Here’s a test as to whether the Trump administration’s travel ban on refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries is truly driven by security concerns or reflects a prejudice. As I see it, the Trump ban on travel and immigration to the U. S. which is permanent for Syrians, should exempt children 10 years of age or younger. Nearly half of Syrian refugees already resettled in the U. S. are children under 14. In 2015, Republicans argued that Syrian refugees pose a security risk and hence they opposed President Obama’s efforts to allow a few thousand of them into the U. S. They argued that we should learn from Europe that terrorists hide among these immigrants. In response, Democrats argued that any such limitations would violate our shared ideals as Americans, and that prolonged vetting can ensure that these refugees will not endanger us. To leapfrog this debate, I suggested that the United States should invite 25, 000 Syrian families to each send one of their children under the age of 10 to the United States. Here, they would stay in foster homes until the end of the war. Their parents could reclaim them at any time and would be asked to leave instructions about whether their children should be claimed by relatives or adopted if the parents perished in the war. I took it for granted that nobody could claim that young kids pose a security risk. I pointed out that there is a precedent for this sort of action. During Operation Peter Pan, also known as Operation Pedro Pan, a large number of unaccompanied Cuban minors were brought to the United States between 1960 and 1962. The program was created by the Catholic Welfare Bureau. Initially, the children were required to have a visa to enter the United States. However, on Jan. 3, 1961, the State Department announced that Cuban minors no longer needed such visas. Several major American corporations helped finance the accommodation of these children. One of those children was Mel Martinez, who grew up to become a U. S. senator and the first Latino chairman of the Republican Party. As one who escaped Nazi Germany as a Jewish child, I also pointed to the Kindertransport program, which allowed Jewish children to leave Germany if other nations would take them. Britain agreed to shelter about 1, 000 of these children from 1938 to 1940, on the assumption that the children would leave the country once the war was finished. In 2016, I wrote to 10 law firms in Washington, D. C. and asked them if they would, as part of their pro bono program, turn this idea into a draft bill. Covington  Burling responded, and their attorney did the job. He also sent the draft bill to several members of Congress, and I wrote to others. In the last hours of the 114th Congress, Rep. Mike Honda, a Democrat from California, introduced The Save the Children Act of 2016. It would have granted temporary visas to 25, 000 Syrian children between the ages of 3 and 10. These visas would expire six months after our government determines that hostilities have ceased and a durable peace process has begun. The grace period will allow time for the families of the children to   their households in Syria before the children return. The State Department would determine when the war is over, and the Department of Health and Human Services would ensure that the foster homes are safe for children. Bills, of course, die when a Congress expires. Rep. Honda lost his seat in last November’s elections. I hence visited with the staff of some senators and met with a House member to see if they would introduce the bill into the current Congress. In the few days that have followed, no action has been taken so far. The main issue, I was told, was who will pay for the costs involved. I recently wrote to nine major charities to ask if they would foot the bill. I had done this once before, when I served as a senior adviser to the Carter administration, and sought to raise funds for taking care of the 125, 000 Marielitos who suddenly arrived in Florida from Cuba in 1980. At that time, the charities were more than willing. Indeed, Catholic Charities took care of most of these immigrants. The new ban on travel suggests that waiting for Congress to act may be the wrong way to proceed. I see no reason, if the Trump administration is sincere that its concern is security, that it would not make an exception for Syrian children. Otherwise, one cannot but conclude that it is acting mainly on ideological or political grounds. Indeed, given the harsh rhetoric and flood of harsh measures, making an exemption for children would help the new Trump team to show that somewhere, under all this bluster and swagger, there is a functioning heart. Amitai Etzioni is a university professor at The George Washington University, where he is director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. He is the author of many books, including The Active Society."
"Updated at 1:50 p. m. ET. Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee boycotted planned votes on Tuesday morning to advance the nominations of two Trump Cabinet nominees. The committee was to begin voting at 10 a. m. on the nominations of Georgia Rep. Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Treasury   Steven Mnuchin. Committee rules require that at least one member of each party be present for a vote to proceed. If and when the committee does vote, their confirmations would still need the approval of the full Senate. In a press briefing Tuesday afternoon, White House spokesman Sean Spicer called the Democrats’ actions ”outrageous.”  ”It’s unfortunate Senate Democrats remain so out of touch with the message that the American people sent this past November,” Spicer told reporters. ”The people want change President Trump is delivering that change.” Price has been under a cloud of controversy for weeks over questions about whether he properly disclosed stock trading of a biomedical company, which says the congressman was able to purchase with a discount, according to the Wall Street Journal. As for Mnuchin, he faces more questions about his role in the foreclosure crisis as the head of OneWest Bank. As NPR’s Yuki Noguchi reported when Mnuchin testified before the committee earlier this month, he was grilled by Democrats ”for his role as CEO of a company that took over IndyMac Bank, now known as OneWest, which failed because of its bad home loans and later pushed through many controversial foreclosures, ultimately yielding massive profits for Mnuchin.” The Columbus Dispatch reported over the weekend that Mnuchin ”flatly denied in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee that OneWest used ’ ’ on mortgage documents. But records show the bank utilized the questionable practice in Ohio.” Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown said, ”We are not going to this committee today because we want the committee to regroup, get the information, have these two nominees come back in front of the committee, clarify what they lied about  —   I would hope they would apologize for that  —   and then give us the information that we all need for our states.” Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch,   opened the committee meeting by saying he was ”really disappointed” by the Democrats’ decision to boycott. ”These two nominees are going to go through regardless,” Hatch said. ”Let’s not treat people like this. I think some of this is because they just don’t like the president.” Other Senate committees moved ahead on votes to approve Trump’s nominees to lead the departments of Energy, Interior and Education, as well as Attorney   Jeff Sessions. Hatch said he couldn’t remember Republicans treating nominees from Democratic presidents this way. In response to that and other such assertions from the GOP, many Democrats are raising the fact that Republicans refused to hold hearings last year on President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland. President Trump is set to announce his pick to fill that seat Tuesday night. Democrats are under increasing pressure from their party’s voters to obstruct the Trump administration however they can. At a demonstration led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last night in front of the Supreme Court to protest President Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees, some demonstrators said they wanted Democrats in Congress to block every Trump nominee, though they have limited power to do so. In a statement on the delay, Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said, ”Until questions are answered, Democrats believe the committee should not move forward with either nomination.”"
"President Trump has made his pick to fill the ninth seat on the Supreme Court. So now what? Trump’s pick of Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia sets in motion a confirmation process that is expected to drag out for at least two to three months, if not longer. Republicans say the duration of what is expected to be a bitter partisan fight will depend entirely on how obstructionist Democrats choose to be. Democrats say the timing depends on how reasonable, or ”mainstream,” Trump’s pick is. Gorsuch has sterling legal credentials, but Democrats are already picking apart some of his more controversial decisions and promising a fight. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has said he expects the new justice to be sworn in sometime in April. But that’s if everything goes smoothly. Two questions will determine the pace of the process: Will Senate Democrats seek to block the confirmation, and if so, what is Plan B for Senate Republicans? ”The Senate should respect the result of the election and treat this newly elected president’s nominee in the same way that nominees of newly elected presidents have been treated,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the floor Monday, already gearing up for the battle. ”And that is with careful consideration, followed by an    vote.” McConnell pointed to two examples under Democratic presidents. ”We had two nominations in the first term of President Clinton  —   [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg and [Stephen] Breyer,” said McConnell. ”Both got    votes. There was no filibuster. We had two nominations in the first term of President Obama  —   [Sonia] Sotomayor and [Elena] Kagan. No filibuster.    vote.   president.” Here are five basic steps to get a Supreme Court justice confirmed, Regardless of how rapidly Republicans want to wrap up the process, there are a few steps that must occur at a minimum before any Supreme Court nomination is confirmed. These are the steps Grassley estimates will take at least a couple of months. 1. Referral to the Judiciary Committee, After Trump names his choice, the nomination is referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee has 20 members. There are 11 Republicans and nine Democrats. Because it takes a bare majority of committee members to approve a Supreme Court nominee for a full Senate vote, Democrats lack the votes to block Trump’s nominee at the committee level. 2.   research, Before the confirmation hearing, both Republican and Democratic committee members will conduct research into the nominee’s background. The nominee must fill out an extensive questionnaire, which is crafted by the top Republican and Democrat on the Judiciary Committee  —   Grassley and ranking member Dianne Feinstein of California. Senators will pore over the nominee’s past speeches, public statements, press clippings, writings and, if the nominee is a judge, judicial opinions. Also during this time, the nominee starts making the rounds on Capitol Hill to pay courtesy visits to senators. 3. Confirmation hearing, This hearing can take several days  —   with at least a couple of days for the Judiciary Committee members to directly question the nominee, and additional days to question outside witnesses. After the proceedings, senators may submit further questions in writing for the nominee to respond to. 4. Committee vote, The committee votes on whether to approve the nominee and then ”reports” its ”recommendation” to the full Senate. 5. Full Senate vote, The full Senate vote is where things could get dicey for Republicans. Democrats can force Republicans to gather 60 votes in the Senate before the nominee is confirmed. There are 52 Republicans in the Senate. That means Democrats can effectively block  —   or ”filibuster”  —   the confirmation if fewer than eight Democrats support Trump’s pick for the high court. Next steps for Democrats, There is deep resentment among Senate Democrats about last year’s refusal by Senate Republicans to hold any confirmation hearings for Judge Merrick Garland when President Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court. The seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death has remained unfilled for 11 months. Senate Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon has already vowed to filibuster any Trump pick that isn’t Merrick Garland. He told Politico that Republicans are now trying to fill ”a stolen seat.” Other Senate Democrats have been less explicit about whether they would block the confirmation at this point. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has repeatedly said he will oppose any nominee who is not ”mainstream.” Other Democrats are echoing that sentiment. ”I just think it should be somebody like Merrick Garland to show, for the first time in the Trump administration, a willingness to be bipartisan for somebody that lost the popular vote,” said Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio on Monday. But there were signs after Trump made his pick that Democrats do not think Gorsuch is in the mold of Garland. And Democrats are signaling that Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travel from seven   countries and suspending refugee admission will figure into confirmation hearing. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement, in part, shortly after Trump made his pick public: ”In light of the unconstitutional actions of our new President in just his first week, the Senate owes the American people a thorough and unsparing examination of this nomination. I had hoped that President Trump would work in a bipartisan way to pick a mainstream nominee like Merrick Garland and bring the country together. Instead, he outsourced this process to   interest groups. This is no way to treat a   branch of government, or to protect the independence of our Federal judiciary.” Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, another member of the Judiciary Committee, said before the pick, ”A Supreme Court nominee, if willing to respond, should indicate that they regard this executive order as unlawful and unconstitutional.” But Blumenthal added that there was no single issue that will entirely determine his position. Could Republicans go ”nuclear”? President Trump said last week that he thinks Senate Republicans should strip from Democrats the power to block Supreme Court nominees. But McConnell isn’t embracing the advice at the moment. In fact, McConnell has been asked many times about whether he will change the filibuster rules this year  —   invoking the   nuclear option  —   so that it would take only a bare majority of senators to confirm a Supreme Court nominee, rather than the required 60. In response to this question, McConnell has simply expressed his confidence that Trump’s nominee will be confirmed. When former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option in 2013  —   and changed the Senate rules so it would take only a bare majority of senators to confirm all nominees except Supreme Court picks  —   Republicans were furious. They called Reid’s move foolhardy, pointing out that one day Democrats would suffer the consequences of the rules change when they end up in the Senate minority with a Republican in the White House. That day has arrived. And now Republicans potentially have the power to further change the rules so the minority can’t even block a Supreme Court nominee. However, it takes 51 votes in the Senate to employ the nuclear option. And Republicans may not have the votes. Already one Republican  —   Susan Collins of Maine  —   says don’t count on her vote. ”I am not a proponent of changing the rules of the Senate,” said Collins on Monday evening. ”I hope that common sense will prevail and that we will have a normal process for considering this nominee.” Vice President Pence could supply the 51st vote for Republicans to invoke the nuclear option. But without Collins on board, Republicans can lose only one more vote."
"President Trump is set to announce his pick for the U. S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, fulfilling a promise he made to social conservatives on the campaign trail to name someone like the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon whose seat has been vacant for almost a year. The White House moved up the announcement by two days, a step that observers saw as an attempt to change the subject away from the president’s controversial immigration order. The order has provoked widespread criticism in the U. S. and among allies abroad, not to mention among leading Republicans in Congress. Whoever the president selects, the confirmation hearings are likely to set up a   attack from Democrats on some of Trump’s immigration policies. The leading contenders for the nomination are said to be three federal appeals court judges: all very conservative, all relatively young, all millionaires and all nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush. The two who seem to be at the head of the line are Neil Gorsuch, a      judge on the appeals court based in Denver, and Thomas Hardiman, a popular    judge on the appeals court based in Philadelphia. Hardiman is said to be   by Maryanne Trump Barry, the president’s sister, a judge on the same Philadelphia court. Gorsuch and Hardiman seem in some ways to be the flip sides of each other: Gorsuch is a scholarly Ivy Leaguer and Hardiman is a longtime litigator with lots of experience trying cases, who is said to have a ”practical approach.” The diplomatic Ivy Leaguer, Gorsuch, a Colorado native, is proof that you can acquire a personality that is diametrically different from your parents. His mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, was a highly controversial,    head of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Reagan administration, and known for being quite the bomb thrower. But lawyers and judges alike describe her son as unfailingly polite, diplomatic, a good listener and a good colleague  —   to the point of being obsequious. Gorsuch is a reliable conservative on social issues. His   votes are in decisions siding with challenges to regulations requiring employers to provide birth control coverage for women under the Affordable Care Act. He earned his undergraduate degree at Columbia University, where he   a newspaper aimed at rebutting what he considered the dominant liberal and ”politically correct” philosophy on campus. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he also earned a doctorate in legal philosophy at Oxford University, where he studied as a Truman Scholar. In private practice in Washington, D. C. Gorsuch represented mostly corporate clients, and in 2005 he became principal associate attorney general in the Bush administration Justice Department. A year later, Gorsuch was nominated to the 10th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he has earned a reputation as a cerebral conservative with a flair for vivid and clear writing that is similar to  —   though not as sharp in tone as  —   Justice Scalia’s. He is known as a critic of a   Supreme Court legal precedent that requires courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous language in broad statutes. In that sense, he is more conservative than Scalia, who supported that precedent. The ”down to earth,”   Amendment nominee  In contrast to Judge Gorsuch, Judge Hardiman is not an Ivy Leaguer, but as one of his friends put it, he went to the ”Catholic Ivy Leagues”  —   Notre Dame University for his undergraduate degree and Georgetown for his law degree, where he helped put himself through school driving a cab. He was initially nominated by President George W. Bush to the federal district court in Pittsburgh and was later elevated to the Philadelphia appeals court. His conservatism has demonstrated itself most prominently in gun cases, where he has ruled often in favor of the right to bear arms. For instance, he dissented from a decision that upheld New Jersey’s restrictive law on who may receive a permit to carry a gun. The Supreme Court left that decision in place by refusing to review it. It did review  —   and uphold  —   a decision Hardiman wrote declaring that jails were justified in conducting strip searches of individuals arrested but not yet convicted of any charge, even a minor traffic charge. Hardiman is one of those people who is   by associates of all political stripes. He is described as ”down to earth” and smart he is, as a friend put it, ”a closet scholar.” He ”knows the Hobbes and Lockean philosophy behind the Federalist Papers.” Friends and associates describe him as ”a devout Catholic,” one who ”knows Thomas Aquinas.” Several people noted that because of his many years as a trial lawyer and trial judge, he has more experience trying cases than most of the other Supreme Court justices. The nominee who would cause an uproar  The third contender for the vacant Supreme Court seat is Alabama’s William H. Pryor Jr. who sits on the federal appeals court based in Atlanta. He was the   favorite going in, in part because he is a protege of Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for attorney general. But Pryor’s record is by far the most controversial. Among other things, he called Roe v. Wade the ”worst abomination” in American jurisprudence. As Alabama state attorney general, Pryor urged the Supreme Court to uphold state laws that criminalized private consensual homosexual conduct. While Judges Hardiman and Gorsuch were both confirmed without dissent, Pryor was blocked by Democrats and was only confirmed in a later deal. So a Pryor nomination would undoubtedly spark a major donnybrook. Democrats, of course, are in the minority in the Senate, which must confirm the president’s nominee. Many Democratic senators view the Supreme Court nomination as one that was stolen from them when Republicans, in a   move, refused for almost a year to even consider President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the seat left vacant when Justice Scalia passed away. Already, some Democrats are promising to filibuster any nominee. The filibuster is still in place for Supreme Court nominees, meaning it would take 60 votes to confirm. But Republicans could change that rule pretty much any time they want. Some Democrats may want to save that card for the next battle  —   when, if there is a vacancy, President Trump would likely be replacing, not a conservative like Scalia, but a more liberal justice, thus changing the balance on the Supreme Court for decades."
"From the Black Lives Matter movement to environmentalists trying to stop new oil pipelines to the recent Women’s March against President Trump, the past year has been filled with large, often spontaneous protests. Now the reaction to those protests is appearing in a number of   statehouses across the country, where lawmakers are introducing proposals to increase penalties for those who block roadways while protesting. A bill in Iowa was inspired by a protest against Donald Trump shortly after the November election. More than 100 demonstrators blocked traffic on Interstate 80, just outside Iowa City, Iowa, stopping traffic on the busy trucking route for almost a  . ”You’re not just stopping traffic,” said Republican state Sen. Jake Chapman about his bill, which would apply to people blocking highways with speeds posted above 55 mph. Violators could get a felony and spend five years in prison, plus a fine of up to $7, 500, ”You’re impeding law enforcement ability to get to call where there could be serious   situations,” said Chapman, who also works for an ambulance service. National pattern, Opponents of the bill call it an attack on free speech. ”Republicans have taken over state legislatures across the country and they appear interested in punishing people with different views than theirs,” said Democratic state Sen. Joe Bolckom of Iowa City. In North Dakota, where protests have gone on for months over construction of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, a lawmaker has introduced a bill that would allow motorists to run over and kill any protester obstructing a highway as long as the driver did not do it intentionally. Bills that would increase penalties on unauthorized protests have also been introduced in Michigan and Washington. Last week in Minnesota, a House committee approved legislation that would increase penalties and charge demonstrators the cost of policing protests. After the fatal shooting by police of Philando Castile, Black Lives Matter protests blocked busy interstates in the Twin Cities. Republican state Rep. Nick Zerwas cited the cost of responding to protests for taxpayers as justification for the bill.  ”These individuals have broken the law,” Zerwas said at the hearing. ”It is against state statute to be on the freeway.” The hearing became heated when John Thompson, a friend of Castile, testified, telling lawmakers the protesters were trying to focus attention on the issue of police killings. ”You know what they were doing? They were asking for all you guys to come out and say what is it we can do to help you,” Thompson said. ”Not one of you came out!” Free speech concerns,  As protests continue to ramp up nationwide, Rita Bettis, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, says elected officials should be protecting free speech rights. She says bills like the one in her state do the opposite.  ”In our country where the government’s power flows from the people, peaceful protest is a source of democratic strength, not a weakness, and it deserves to be protected and cherished,” Bettis says. ”Not attacked.” Advocates like Bettis say if a few states can reduce a demonstrator’s ability to block traffic, it could have a chilling effect on Americans’ right to protest. Tim Nelson of Minnesota Public Radio News and Amy Sisk of Inside Energy contributed reporting to this story. "
"A key Senate committee voted Tuesday to approve the nomination of Betsy DeVos, a school choice activist and billionaire Republican donor, to be secretary of education, despite the fierce objections of Senate Democrats, teachers unions and others. There’s much speculation as to exactly how she might carry out President Trump’s stated priority of increasing school choice. A significant clue comes from the American Federation for Children, the advocacy organization DeVos chaired until she was nominated. AFC supports both publicly funded charter schools and even more so, ”private school choice”  —   publicly sponsored programs that give families money to spend on tuition at private schools. Last fall, AFC issued a report ranking the existing private school choice programs. There are 50 of them, located in 25 states and Washington, D. C. by AFC’s count. AFC included only those programs that explicitly allow students to attend religious schools. DeVos, whose family has long supported causes associated with the Christian religious right, has publicly called education reform a way to ”advance God’s kingdom.” The program that AFC ranked No. 1 in that report was Florida’s tax credit scholarships. So it’s a good one to take a closer look at if you want a model of how choice programs might work in a   Education Department. It unites three broad concepts that DeVos is friendly toward: 1) Privatization 2) religious education and 3) a   approach to accountability for private schools. Most people are familiar with voucher programs, where state dollars go to pay for tuition at private schools. These programs have faced constitutional challenges in Florida and elsewhere, among other reasons, because they direct public money to religiously based organizations. In a scholarship tax credit program, however, the money bypasses state coffers altogether. Corporations or individuals can offset state tax liability by donating to a private, nonprofit scholarship organization. The money from this fund is in turn awarded to families to pay for tuition at private schools. The   structure is especially significant when considering what could happen under DeVos in the Trump administration, because it could be a way to promote school choice on a federal level without writing big checks. ”There isn’t that much money that is fungible from the federal education budget,” points out Samuel Abrams, an expert in education policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Florida program, created by the Legislature in 2001, has been popular. In the   school year, 92, 000 students received scholarships, a 17 percent increase from the year before. The state’s scholarship organization, Step Up for Students, announced that the recipients were overwhelmingly   and Hispanic, with incomes just above the poverty line. Over 70 percent of the scholarships are directed at religious, primarily Christian, schools. AFC awarded high marks to Florida’s program for its broad eligibility, reaching families with incomes of up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level for the generosity of the tax break to donors, a    match with a cap that increases automatically each year and for the large size of scholarships, nearly $6, 000. However, not everyone is a fan. The Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers union, sued to challenge the program in cooperation with the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and other groups. The suit was dismissed in the lower courts, which said the union and the other parties did not have standing to challenge it. This month, the Florida Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Mark Pudlow, a spokesman for the union, argues that the fund violates Florida students’ constitutional right to a ”uniform education.” That’s because schools that receive scholarship funds ”don’t have to follow the state curriculum, don’t have to participate in testing, don’t have to hire certified teachers. They don’t have to follow the same rules.” The AFC awarded Florida’s program 26 out of a possible 28 points for accountability. The private schools are required to administer a standardized test of some kind, though not necessarily the state test."
"An archaeologist has launched a citizen science project that invites anyone with an Internet connection to help look for evidence of archaeological site looting. The platform, called GlobalXplorer, presents users with satellite images of Earth’s surface. ”Looting is one of the most common ways archaeological sites around the world are destroyed,” explains the archaeologist behind the project, Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. ”By marking satellites where you think you see looting, you’re helping to protect sites and save our common cultural heritage.” Parcak is a space archaeologist, meaning she specializes in what satellite images can tell us about past civilizations. The GlobalXplorer project is funded with the $1 million TED Prize that Parcak won last year. She explained early plans for the project to NPR’s Ari Shapiro last year. People who log on to the site are shown square satellite images of the Earth’s surface  —   the current area they are crowdsourcing is in Peru  —   and are asked to decide whether there is or is not evidence of looting pits on the ground. Looters find an area of interest and then dig numerous large holes or even bulldoze whole areas, the website explains. In so doing, looters in search of valuable artifacts destroy the context that helps archaeologists understand past cultures. A training video explains how to tell   looting pits from other holes in the ground: ”Although it may seem like an easy distinction between a large deep hole in the ground and bush, you can actually sometimes be hard to tell them apart,” the training video warns. Parcak also reminds people who join the project that it’s good to be skeptical. ”It’s just as valuable to mark a tile as negative for looting as it is to identify potential looting because it helps us narrow the search,” she explains. The project is set up such that dozens of people will typically look at each image, mitigating the effects of each layperson’s impressions. Peruvian archaeologist Luís Jaime Castillo is coordinating with the Peruvian government about potential findings from the project, should it turn up actionable evidence of archaeological looting in the country, according to National Geographic, which is supporting the project, ”Most people don’t get to make scientific contributions or discoveries in their everyday lives,” Parcak told National Geographic. ”But we’re all born explorers, curious and intrinsically interested in other humans.”"
"If you get malaria somewhere in the tropics and end up in a British hospital, the treatment is pretty simple. Or at least it used to be. The recommended treatment in the U. K. for ”uncomplicated” malaria (that’s a case where you’re pretty sick but not on death’s door) is an   drug combination called  . The patient takes a few pills over the course of three or four days, the drugs kill the malaria parasites and everybody feels better. That’s why, over the last decade and a half, artemisinin has become the   drug to beat back the most common malaria infections both in British hospitals and across much of the developing world. Recently, however, malaria parasites have started to adapt so the drugs won’t knock them out. Resistance to   medications has been slowly developing in Southeast Asia. And now these malaria wonder drugs look like they may be starting to lose their mojo in Africa, too. Late in 2015, health officials in Britain for the first time came across a cluster of malaria cases that refused to succumb to  . The patients were travelers who had returned from three different African countries  —   Angola, Liberia and Uganda. After being treated with   each patient appeared to be cured. Then the parasitic infections came racing back. ”It was very surprising,” says Dr. Colin Sutherland, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. ”We might not get too concerned about the occasional treatment failure. But when four cases come along at once, it does make us think we’ve got something important that we need to investigate. Interestingly at about the same time Swedish colleagues reported a similar finding in Sweden.” In an article published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Sutherland and his colleagues document the four cases. Part of what is useful to researchers about these U. K. cases is that the patients were in Britain when their malaria cases rebounded. None of them had left the country after initially being treated. So when the malaria parasites   in their systems, the doctors were able to quickly realize that the   drugs had failed. The patients were subsequently treated with different drugs. ”Because our patients were living in a country where we don’t have malaria, we knew it had to be the same parasites that weren’t adequately treated the first time around,” says Sutherland. That’s not the case in Africa, where people live with malaria on a    basis. So if they get sick again, he says, ”it’s difficult to determine if maybe they just got another mosquito bite.” There’s been concern about the potential development of artemisinin resistance in Africa  but very little concrete evidence that it’s happening there. These cases in the U. K. show that strains of malaria are emerging in Africa that can’t be cured with the most common drugs to treat the disease. But Sutherland urges caution: ”It would be unwise for us to sit here in Europe and say, oh, we’ve got four cases so Africa’s got a problem. But the public health impact in Africa could be enormous. It’s a clear message that we need to now put in place the right kind of studies in Africa [to track resistance].” Malaria remains one of the most troublesome diseases in the developing world. According to the World Health Organization there were more than 200 million cases in 2015 and roughly 430, 000 deaths from the disease. The good news is that efforts against malaria, including   bed nets and   treatments, have cut the rates of malaria transmission particularly in Africa significantly over the last 15 years with the total number of cases in the world dropping by a third and malaria deaths being cut in half."
"Tuesday is the last day of open enrollment for health coverage for 2017 under the Affordable Care Act. And while Republicans in Congress are working to repeal the law, it’s not at all clear what might replace it. During the campaign, President Trump suggested a nationwide insurance market that would allow insurance plans to be sold across state lines. The idea has been kicking around for years, and some states have tried it, including Rhode Island, where it didn’t work too well. All Things Considered’s Audie Cornish talked to Christopher Koller who was the Rhode Island’s insurance commissioner when this option was offered. On the roadblocks of allowing    health insurance options, It’s very hard to have interstate insurance. It means that a state has to accept the rules of another regulator. That means if a Rhode Island insurer was licensed in Massachusetts, we have to say that whatever they do in Massachusetts is good for us here in Rhode Island. It also requires significant work to coordinate rules and regulations. Insurance regulators are reluctant to take on this task. Let’s say Rhode Island didn’t allow limited benefit health plans. . .. If we were to allow insurance to come in from a state that allowed those plans, and they sold them in Rhode Island, you’d have insurers offering policies that were against the laws and policies set forth by Rhode Island legislature. . .. And if insurers are going to sell across state lines, you’ll see more variation among states which makes it harder to coordinate and for insurers to operate across state lines. On how health insurance compares to other lines of insurance, It’s not [comparable]. There’s a big difference between a hospital and an auto body guy repairing your car. We have a lot more auto body guys than we have hospitals. We don’t compel auto body makers to take care of our car if we can’t pay for it, but we compel hospitals to treat people if they can’t afford to pay for it. We look at health care very differently from auto insurance. On why    health insurance can’t compete with local, In Rhode Island we have one hospital system that has 80 percent of births in the state. [Insurers] need that in [their] network to be competitive. And I can tell you that if a national insurer walked into that hospital, and said, ’Will you contract with us?’ the hospital would have no reason to give the insurer any discount compared to local established health plans have already. That national insurer can’t offer a competitive product."
"It’s perhaps the unlikeliest symphony orchestra in the world  —   an   ensemble from a strict Muslim society where it’s often dangerous for young women to step outside of their homes unescorted. It’s called Zohra  —   the name of a music goddess in Persian literature, according to its founder. And they were performing at an unlikely venue  —   a hall attached to Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a   ruin in western Berlin commemorating the horrors of World War II. It’s just steps from where Berliners experienced their first   terror attack six weeks ago. But to Ahmad Naser Sarmast, 54, of Kabul, the Afghan musicologist who founded the orchestra, the venue for their    European concert made sense. Sarmast is on a mission to restore his country’s rich music tradition decimated by decades of war. He told Sunday’s largely German audience that the location resonated with him and his 30 female musicians, who range in age from 14 to 20. Sarmast  —   himself a survivor of a suicide bombing in Kabul in 2014  —   dedicated the concert to the 12 people who were killed in the German attack. He added that the orchestra members would try and ”wash away with the beauty of music the blood spilled on the streets of Berlin.” The orchestra’s European tour started at the World Economic Forum in Davos in   and ends Tuesday night in the eastern German hamlet of Weimar. An   orchestra was an idea that came from female students he taught. Sarmast said a couple of years ago he initially thought of maybe a    member ensemble, but that there was so much interest that it quickly evolved into the   orchestra. Sarmast bragged that many of its members, who are students at his Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul, are not only the first in their families, but sometimes the first in their province to play musical instruments. According to the ANIM Web site, Afghan children wanting to come to his school audition after they finish third grade and are tested on their musical aptitude. Half the spaces are dedicated to female students and homeless or orphaned children. The ”Zohra” members performing in Berlin dressed in traditional embroidered costumes and brightly colored headscarves  —   many of them in the green, red and black of the Afghan flag  —   played traditional South Asian instruments like the sitar and its ancestor, the Afghan rubab and the   tabla, as well as European inventions like the piano, violin and oboe. Negin Khpolwak, one of Zohra’s two female conductors, said she gets a tad nervous every time she steps into the spotlight but that the music quickly soothes her. ”I see the smile on the girls’ faces when they play and I don’t think about anything else,” Khpolwak explained in Dari. ”You want the concert to go off perfectly. My whole attention is on that.” The petite woman is 19 and belongs to Afghanistan’s   and   Pashtun ethnic group. She hails from the restive eastern province of Kunar and sacrificed a lot to get to where she is. Khpolwak said because her village had no schools and her family couldn’t afford to pay for her education, her father took her to live in a Kabul orphanage, where Sarmast’s school has recruited some of its students. ”But it wasn’t until this trip that I learned how valuable we are to Afghanistan and to our people,” she added. ”We can raise their voice through our music.” Their soothing mix of Afghan folk songs and Western classics like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony reflect Sarmast’s vision of reestablishing not only Afghanistan’s musical tradition but infusing classic and newer Western influences. ”I want to make music part of every (Afghan) school curriculum but that takes time,” he said. So does creating an Afghan faculty at his school, so for now he still relies on Western educators and foreign donations to help train his staff and students. The U. S. Embassy in Kabul is one of his program’s key donors. As to why Sarmast risks the ire of Afghan society by training and featuring female musicians in concert, he told me it’s not a choice. ”Afghanistan should move on the same path as every other nation goes,” he declared. ”And the girls and the women of Afghanistan should also enjoy the freedom that . .. other girls and women are enjoying outside of Afghanistan. ”We can’t build a democratic society in Afghanistan if we will be neglecting half of the population of this nation,” he added. And he thinks they’re doing a better job than their male counterparts. ”To me it seems right now that the Zohra orchestra probably will become the [first] national orchestra of Afghanistan, because they are much more disciplined” than his male students, he said. Given the unusual nature of the orchestra, security is a concern. Since Sarmast’s own   experience in the Kabul suicide attack, he is hypervigilant about looking for any potential threat to his young charges, including on social media and on Afghan broadcasts. ”We are working in an environment where we have millions of supporters, but we also have some very vocal . ..enemies who are very much   minded,” he explained. Khpolwak said threats won’t keep her from playing. Nor will it deter her fellow female conductor, Zarifa Adiba. The    declines to reveal her ethnicity, explaining: ”I’m Afghan and before being Afghan, I’m Muslim and before being Muslim, I’m human.” She was born in   Ghazni province, one of many regions where girls are more likely to marry young than attend school. But she had other ambitions. ”The thing that I loved was music from my childhood and my mother is a great supporter of me and she told me, what you love, go ahead and find out. I had kind of view about pop singing rock singing and I wanted to be a pop singer actually,” Adiba explained. She was a latecomer to ANIM, starting in the ninth grade. There she discovered music was more than singing and that girls could play musical instruments, too. She started with the flute: ”It was so beautiful,” she explained, but soon began exploring other instruments. ”All of them were cool . .. but the viola was . .. was so attractive me,” she said. ”There was just one boy and one girl playing the viola and I said I wanted to be the second girl playing viola.” Adiba said she’s loved playing in Europe this month but is eager to go home, especially after learning that an uncle, who had always disapproved of her playing, recently told her mother how proud he is of his niece. ”I’m happy that at least I changed my family,” she said, adding, her fellow musicians, too, ”are going to change their families and when their families are going to change, you can have a society which is changed.”"
"In Chicago, where the number of shootings last year soared, it’s often young people who become both perpetrators and victims. The Cook County Juvenile Justice Center holds about 200 to 300 young residents awaiting trial at the Temporary Detention Center. Among these residents are Leonard and Nigel, both 17 years old. Because of the rules of the juvenile court, Nigel and Leonard’s full names and specifics about their cases can’t be disclosed. The two, along with several other detainees, were part of a summit in the Chicago area where participants shared strategies about how to decrease violence. Last year in Chicago, there was a huge jump in the number of murders and injuries by gunshot more than 760 murders and more than 4, 000 people injured by gunshot were recorded. Leonard said the violence isn’t always about gangs fighting over drugs or turf. ”Some people do it just to make a name for [themselves] to try to get some fame or something,” Leonard said. ”Some people do it because they actually lost people. .. or they are forced into it.” Some are forced because they are trying to avenge a friend’s death, he said. Most of the young people at the detention center are male. The most common offenses are violation of probation, aggravated battery and unlawful use of a weapon. Nigel said while revenge is often a motive behind some of the violence, peer pressure can also be a factor. ”I get mad at the fact that there’s a lot of kids out here that are so incredibly smart and they look at the other person with all the money and girls that don’t go to school and want to be just like ’em when you could be way more than that,” he said. Leonard and Nigel said they’ve learned at the detention center how to resolve differences or difficulties they may have in the street. Nigel said he wants to be a welder or a juvenile justice activist. Through counseling and other programs, he said he was able to find himself at the center when he couldn’t in his neighborhood. ”What prevents that is you don’t got nobody trying to show you,” he said. ”You never had anybody to tell you. Its people in here that actually care about us, and they tell us and teach us about how we can do better and there’s more to life. Most people out there, all they know is the corner, all they know is the block.” There’s often a collision of issues for   youth in long neglected areas: homelessness, mental illness, high levels of poverty. What’s missing in the neighborhood, Leonard and Nigel said, are mentors and role models who can steer young people the right way. Other detainees called for limits on guns, more neutral zones in neighborhoods, more after school programs. But Leonard said for young people trying to stay out of the streets, more recreational opportunities and sports programming are crucial. ”We got one recreation center, but the gym only go from 6 to 8,” he said. ”And if it’s on a school day, they’ll open it up from 2 to 8. So what’s left, the streets?” Leonard Dixon, who spearheaded the summit and is the supervisor of the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, said he agrees. ”One of the things that I think communities have to understand: recreation is for kids what work is for adults,” Dixon said. ”That’s how they learn how to get along.” Nigel added that actual work is also needed. In some of the city’s impoverished areas, the unemployment levels rival those set during the Great Depression. It’s important for young teenagers to have jobs, Nigel said. ”They can’t even get a good job, you know what I’m saying, to provide for them,” he said. ”OK, they get a job over the summer, and after the summer, now what you gon’ do?” Equally important is making sure the funding for jobs and   programs stays intact, the young detainees said. Officials with the juvenile justice system will continue to make a coordinated effort to stem violence in Chicago, they say. They will pay close attention to the voices of the young people who are surrounded by violence every day."
"In the coming year, scientists are hoping to reintroduce the Socorro dove to Socorro Island, a place where the bird has died out. Socorro, the ancestral home of the dove, is part of an island group off the west coast of Mexico nicknamed the Mexican Galapagos. In the 1920s, the California Academy of Sciences noticed island birds and animals were disappearing fast. So the academy sent an expedition to Socorro with instructions to bring back live doves. Juan Martinez, a scientist with Mexico’s Institute of Ecology, hiked the same terrain as the researchers a century ago. He said he plans to slowly reintroduce the doves to the wild. ”We’re going to camp in that area, where you see the green and the red,” Martinez said. ”In that area is a heavier forest and is where they found the Socorro doves. That’s why all this exercise is helping us find the locations. The best place to bring them back is a similar place where they found them.” The original expedition brought back 17 doves and sent them to zoos and aviaries across the United States and Europe. The plan was to breed them in captivity. But although they survived at the zoos, they died off on the island. ”Here on Socorro you have introduced sheep, introduced cats and introduced mice,” Martinez said. Cats and mice preyed on the birds and their eggs. But the biggest problem, Martinez said as he pointed to the hillside, was the sheep. ”That’s probably the highest point where they completely removed vegetation,” Martinez said. The sheep chewed and trampled their way through the forest, destroying the Socorro dove’s home. ”And at the end, all of that material goes to the sea and it is tons and tons of soil that were lost by the impact of sheep,” Martinez said. Martinez, along with his team, has spent the past several years aggressively removing sheep and replanting native trees. There’s also ongoing work to rid the island of cats and mice. But even with all that work, Martinez said reintroductions are full of uncertainty. Michelle Reynolds, a biologist for the U. S. Geological Survey and a reintroduction specialist, said to expect surprises when returning the doves to Socorro. She said she knows of Hawaiian ducks that were moved from one island to another, only to take off over the open ocean and never be seen again. ”There could be a new threat, one that didn’t exist when the species used to live there,” Reynolds said. For example, she said, avian diseases, such as West Nile, are more prevalent now. It’s also unknown how captivity might have changed the birds. The doves might have lost traits needed to live in the wild. ”You might lose some aggression you might lose vigilance,” Reynolds said. ”There’s lots of characteristics that can change over many, many generations in captivity.” Martinez said this might seem like a lot of work for one small species on a tiny island. But other birds on this island are teetering on extinction, he said. He and other scientists believe the effort to return the doves to Socorro will also help the other endangered species. ”It’s not restoration by restoring or reintroducing one species,” Martinez said. ”At the end what you want is to restore the ecological interactions that interplay on the island. And once you do that, the island will go back to its original course.” This reintroduction is a process scientists a century ago might never have imagined. Martinez might not even see the end of it. It could be decades before the doves can flourish on their own. It’s a long, difficult and costly effort. But Martinez said he believes it’s ultimately worth giving the doves  —   and the island  —   another chance."
"At the northern border of Somalia and Ethiopia, a group of teenage boys forced two girls  —   aged 14 and 16  —   into a car, drove them to another location, stripped them and raped them. The incident occurred on December 6. This weekend, a community court charged the perpetrators with thousands of dollars in fines, as well as up to 200 lashes and 10 years in jail. That’s an unexpected outcome in a country where the perpetrators of rape often pay a small fine and walk free. The case didn’t get much attention until   when a video that the boys filmed of the gang rape surfaced online. People all over Somalia responded on social media with messages of outrage as well as sympathy for the victims. A Somali activist group’s GoFundMe campaign raised over 10, 000 pounds ($12, 000) to help one of the victim’s family  —   who fled town for fear of being ostracized  —   establish itself in a new city. And women’s rights groups called for an unusual step: legal action. They urged authorities in the   region of Puntland in Somalia, where the assault occurred, to enforce a new law passed there in September 2016, that for the first time criminalizes all sexual offenses and calls for jail sentences of up to 10 years for rape. Traditionally, many Somali communities settle rape cases though a system of justice called heer. Clan elders would generally arbitrate such cases. As a settlement, the perpetrators often compensated the victim’s family with camels or other livestock. The government is still figuring out how to implement its new Sexual Offenses Act, says Puntland’s minister of women and family affairs Anisa Mumin, who recently visited the victims’ families. She says both law enforcement officers as well as judges must be trained to handle sexual violence cases with sensitivity. And the government hasn’t even begun setting up forensic labs to collect and analyze DNA evidence in rape cases. As a makeshift measure, the community established a special court to handle this rape case, based on Sharia law  —   with five Muslim religious leaders serving as the judges. Puntland government authorities attended the trial as observers and sanctioned the trial. A local women’s rights group called the Galkayo Center helped advocate for the two teenage girls. The verdict, delivered Sunday, resulted in a $4, 620 fine, 200 lashes and 10 years in jail time for one perpetrator. Each of the other four convicted teens received slightly lesser sentences  —   with fines of up to $3, 500, as well as lashes and five to eight years in jail. The court chose lashings as part of the punishment  explains Puntland’s minister of justice Salah Habib Jama Mohamed, because it wanted to shame the perpetrators ”as they shamed the girls.” It’s a first step toward harsher sentencing in cases of domestic violence and rape, Mumin says  —   though ideally, future cases will go through the government’s formal court system. ”It’s quite encouraging,” she says. She hopes this case will embolden the government’s efforts to quickly, fully implement its new law. Getting the law passed was itself a long, complicated process, says Puntland’s minister of justice Salah Habib Jama Mohamed. ”This is a law that is harmonized between the Islamic Sharia, the cultural norms as well as the international laws,” Mohamed says. Lawmakers consulted more than 250 clan elders and religious leaders throughout the region, he says, to gain their support and approval. ”Puntland is a communal society,” he adds. ”So if the elders are behind the new law and the scholars are behind it, the community will accept it.” But it’s not so easy to change cultural norms, says Aparna Polavarapu, an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, who specializes in international human rights law in   Africa. And resolving rape cases in a formal court system isn’t necessarily a perfect solution. ”It’s very difficult for people to go before the formal court,” Polavarapu says, especially in rural parts of Africa where the nearest government office may be miles away. And, she adds, ”the judgment is not always seen as legitimate by the clan.” That’s why involving community leaders in the lawmaking process is a good start, Polavarapu says. Outreach and awareness campaigns can also help. ”I’ve seen local magistrates in South Africa, for example, go out and talk to community leaders.” In Puntland, one big challenge is the stigma attached to rape survivors. ”I believe [that’s why] there’s still people who prefer to deal with it in the traditional way,” says Nikolai Botev of the United Nations Population Fund. Traditionally, rape cases would be settled privately, he notes: ”The clan eldership would know what has happened, not necessarily everybody else. But once it is reported to the authorities, the case becomes public.” The U. N. is supporting the local government’s efforts to change the public discourse around rape. ”In an ideal world  —   and we are still far away from that ideal in Somalia  —   communities would support these girls,” Botev says. For now, the Puntland government is helping the families of both girls find a new community where they can permanently resettle. ”In Somalia, but also all over the world, even the U. S.  —   when a woman is raped, she is stigmatized,” says Mumin. ”Changing that will take a long time.”"
"An executive order protecting gays and lesbians who work for federal contractors ”will remain intact” at President Trump’s direction, the White House says. The move could allay concerns that Trump might end recently adopted protections against an   workplace. The White House announced the move in a relatively short statement early Tuesday, saying that the president ”is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community.” The announcement comes after reports that the White House was considering a new executive order that would undo former President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive order that gave new protections to gay and transgender people. When it was signed, the order applied to 28 million workers  —   roughly a fifth of America’s workforce. In today’s statement, the White House says, ”The President is proud to have been the first ever GOP nominee to mention the LGBTQ community in his nomination acceptance speech, pledging then to protect the community from violence and oppression.” Trump’s decision largely conforms with his election campaign, in which he didn’t often seek to highlight either gay rights or restrictions. The new president’s plan for his first 100 days didn’t mention taking actions to strip LGBTQ rights or protections, but Trump did list as his first priority the canceling of ”every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.” While the persistence of the executive order suggests Trump agrees with Obama’s action, civil rights activists have worried that the president might appoint a U. S. Supreme Court justice who has ruled against gay rights. At 8 p. m. ET Tuesday, Trump is scheduled to name his pick to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. After Trump’s election, activists on both sides of the issue wondered how his administration might treat legal claims of ”religious liberty,” a phrase that has been invoked by those who oppose LGBTQ discrimination protections and, in many cases, gay marriage  —   and who say that adjusting to new federal laws requires them to compromise their beliefs."
"Media mogul Oprah Winfrey has a new gig  —   starting this fall, she’ll appear as a special contributor on CBS’ 60 Minutes. ”There is only one Oprah Winfrey,” the news magazine’s executive producer Jeff Fager said, according to CBS News. ”She is a remarkable and talented woman with a level of integrity that sets her apart and makes her a perfect fit for ’60 Minutes.’ ” Winfrey’s collaboration coincides with the storied program’s 50th season. The network did not provide details about how long she would contribute to the show, or the types of issues she will cover. Winfrey called 60 Minutes the ”bastion of journalistic storytelling.” She added: ”At a time when people are so divided, my intention is to bring relevant insight and perspective, to look at what separates us, and help facilitate real conversations between people from different backgrounds.” Winfrey’s groundbreaking talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, went off the air in 2011. For decades, it was the highest rated talk show in America. ”She has said all the time that she doesn’t miss the    of the show, but what she does miss is storytelling and connecting with people, women in particular,” her longtime friend Gayle King said on CBS This Morning. ”And being able to meet and talk to them and interact with them. That’s what she misses. So to me, this is a perfect marriage.” Winfrey has had plenty to keep her busy since her show went off the air, between her production company, Harpo Productions, and the cable network she founded, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. She is also on the Weight Watchers board of directors and has numerous philanthropy projects."
"Recent high school graduates in Tennessee are already allowed to attend community college at no cost. Now Gov. Bill Haslam is looking to expand the   program to provide free community college educations to adults, as well. Haslam, a Republican who has been in office since 2011, made his pitch at Monday night’s State of the State address. Afterward, he tweeted, ”Let’s be the Tennessee we can be.” The pitch was   by members of both parties, as the governor pushes toward his goal of helping Tennessee have 55 percent of its 6. 6 million citizens hold a postsecondary degree or certificate by the year 2025. The state currently needs 871, 000 postsecondary degrees or certificates to reach that goal, Haslam’s office says. And it would help if free access to community college is given to adults  —   including the 900, 000 Tennesseans who have taken some college classes but didn’t get a degree. ”Since the fall of 2015, Tennessee has provided free community college for new high school graduates,” Nashville Public Radio reports. ”Money for the program, known as Tennessee Promise, has come from a variety of sources, including federal Pell Grants and the state lottery.” Haslam’s initiative seems to have bipartisan support, with the NPR member station reporting that Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh responded by saying: ”Actually I had hoped that we would do that earlier. But I’m glad to see him doing that now.” A billionaire whose father started the Pilot chain of gas stations and truck stops, Haslam was the president of his family’s business before starting his political career as the mayor of Knoxville. Tennessee’s efforts to make it easier to get a degree led former President Barack Obama to choose the state as the site for a speech about making community colleges   in early 2015. The idea of providing free community college education has spread in recent years. Around the U. S. the institutions vary widely, with yearly costs that range from $1, 420 in California to $7, 530 in Vermont, as NPR’s Ed blog reported last summer. Along with Oregon and Minnesota, Tennessee is one of three states with free community college programs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Kentucky approved a similar program last year other states are considering their own plans. Haslam’s education plan earned a standing ovation at Monday night’s address, but as Nashville Public Radio notes, many protesters were also at the Capitol, holding signs and chanting to register their anger over President Trump’s immigration policies and to inform legislators that they would be watching their actions."
"Before they get to work on reforming the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Congress and the White House might want to take a closer look at the last time they tried it  —   a $16 billion fix called the Veterans Choice and Accountability Act of 2014, designed to get veterans medical care more quickly. NPR and local member stations have been following that money, including the $10 billion for vets to get care outside the VA system. The Choice Act also channeled about $2. 5 billion for hiring more doctors, nurses and other medical staff at VA medical centers. The goal of the hiring money was to address a simple math problem. The number of veterans coming to the VA has shot up in recent years, and the number of medical staff has not kept pace. The idea was that more caregivers would cut wait times. But an investigation by NPR and local member stations found that: the VA has about the same number of new hires as the VA would have been projected to hire without the additional $2. 5 billion the new hires weren’t sent to VA hospitals with the longest wait times and the VA medical centers that got new hires were not more likely to see improved wait times. San Diego’s   dilemma, San Diego’s experience is typical. The Southern California city is home to one of the largest concentrations of    veterans, and when the Veterans Choice Act passed, the San Diego VA had some of the country’s worst wait times for mental health care in particular. The act was meant to help former soldiers like Charlie Grijalva, who was diagnosed with PTSD when he was still in the Army. Back in 2014, Grijalva lived with his wife, Gloria, in Imperial Valley  —   about two hours from the VA hospital in San Diego. After spending 18 months deployed in Afghanistan, and a year in Iraq, he started having suicidal thoughts. The VA tried to help him. Early in 2014, the doctors there seemed to get his prescription right. By summer, his psychiatrist had left the VA, but Grijalva was transferred to a nurse practitioner. He missed an appointment in September 2014, according to records provided by the VA, but the new provider agreed to refill his prescription over the phone. Because San Diego’s wait times were so long, under the new Choice program, Grijalva qualified to see a private doctor outside the VA system. He had an initial consultation with the private psychiatrist near his home, but he didn’t live to begin treatment. In December 2014, his medication ran out. Grijalva had a young family and a new baby on the way. His wife said he insisted on giving his kids a magical Christmas. ”He said, you know, ’I want to do what I did as a kid,’” Gloria Grijalva said. ”Play some Christmas music. Have the kids decorate the tree, drink hot chocolate. . .. Even though he was feeling the way he was, he wanted to have that kind of Christmas for his kids.” It wasn’t to be. A few days before Christmas, his wife found him. He had hanged himself a few hours after he texted her, ”I love you.” ”He has told me when he was at his lowest that [he] ’didn’t want my kids to see me like this I don’t want to put my kids through this,’ ” she said. His VA records show Grijalva went to one last appointment at the VA in San Diego, scheduled in December. His medication arrived just before his death. Around the time of his death, the VA was just beginning to implement the Veterans Choice Act. San Diego seemed like a prime candidate to get extra staff. But the NPR and local member station analysis of the VA’s own data show that San Diego got far fewer new staff members than it requested, and also fewer than many other VA centers that didn’t have such bad wait times. No logical staffing pattern, The VA data show no logical pattern for distributing the 12, 000 doctors, nurses and other medical staff hired under the Choice Act. David Shulkin became head of the Veterans Health Administration after that law passed, but has been overseeing the reform since 2015. Last fall, he told NPR that the Choice hires were based on a survey of VA medical centers. ”Our goal is to get [the medical centers] the health professionals that they need. So that’s the Choice money. We wanted everybody to go out and execute on it, and to use that money as quickly as possible because we have a sense of crisis,” said Shulkin, who has been nominated to become secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. His confirmation hearing is expected this week. He also said the VA focused on places where the staff was most needed.   medical centers were ”prioritized” among the VA’s 168 hospitals. But the VA data show that prioritized medical centers didn’t always get more resources than others. Los Angeles was prioritized and got only about 108 new hires from the Choice money. Dallas, a similarly large center, got almost three times as many (298) even though Dallas was not ”prioritized” and didn’t have particularly bad wait times. Albuquerque, N. M. and Cincinnati have about the same volume of appointments. But Albuquerque had among the worst wait times in the country for mental health, while Cincinnati was among the best. The VA’s data show both received the same number of psychiatrists from the Choice money. Wait times across the board have not come down, though the VA says that’s because of a continuing surge in demand from patients. And Shulkin stressed that wait times are not the most important measure of health care. He says efficiency is up and the number of veterans waiting for urgent care has shrunk from tens of thousands to a mere dozen or two. Still, it was the long wait times  —   and the harm they did to veterans  —   that drove Congress to pass the Choice Act. Slow hiring in a tough market, Doctors and nurses are scarce nationwide. In the economic centers where many vets live, medical professionals often find better offers at private hospitals. And in rural or remote areas, there often are very few doctors or nurses available to work at either VA or private hospitals. Shulkin knows that his hiring process is cumbersome. ”The complexity of hiring puts us at a disadvantage with the private sector. We are very fortunate that people wait and turn down private sector jobs because this is where they want to work and this is the mission . .. but frankly we have to be competitive,” he told NPR last fall. Shulkin came to the VA from the private sector, he said, to get the department in step with best practices. He has succeeded in getting some salaries up to   levels. But the roughly $2. 5 billion from the Choice Act resulted in a net gain of only a few thousand doctors and nurses, across a system that serves about 9 million veterans. That’s partly because the VA’s process is so slow that about 13 percent of candidates drop out during the   lag time after they are hired. NPR and local member stations spoke with more than half a dozen current VA employees about this problem, but none agreed to be quoted. Almetta Pitts is a former VA employee who used to work at the VA in Seattle. Waiting to start that job nearly left her broke. ”It took about six months. And so I had to think about ways to just put my money together to be able to really be able to pursue this job,” she said. Pitts liked the VA. She interned at the VA in Seattle while pursuing her master’s in social work. Her mother, an Army vet, was already working there as a federal police officer. After a series of interviews, Pitts was notified she had been hired. ”I received my acceptance letter and it did inform me that I started that September and I was like ’Oh my gosh, I’m so excited,’ but . .. ’Wow, it’s like May.’ ” During the four months of waiting, Pitts moved back in with her mom to save money until the job started. She ended up working for the VA for 13 months and was laid off. At the time, Human Resources offered to help find another job at a VA out of state. She loved her work helping traumatized veterans, but Pitts decided she had to move on. Budget shuffling, Another reason the $2. 5 billion bump didn’t seem to raise the VA’s staffing levels may have more to do with Washington bureaucracy than health care. NPR found that the rate of increase in VA staff after the Choice money was not noticeably different than past years without it. The Choice hiring money from Congress mostly replaced, instead of augmented the VA’s normal hiring budget, which freed up less restricted money to take care of other needs. Shulkin defends how the money was spent. ”When you’re given a budget you face a number of new stresses on those resources. You have increases in pharmaceuticals, you have your wage increase, you have your leasing cost increases, you have IT increases. So without the Choice money, we would not have been able to have maintained the type of hiring that we were doing and expanded the type of hiring we were doing,” Shulkin told NPR in December. This sort of budgeting strategy is common in Washington, according to Phil Carter, of the Center for New American Security. ”It makes complete sense for a   bureaucracy to hire with that money first. I think VA hired staff with this money will all intention of improving access and quality. I think the VA leadership found it harder to do that,” he said. Carter says that the VA has a difficult time projecting what needs it will have across a system of 168 hospitals nationwide, and that the VA may just have been hiring at its maximum capacity in a tough market. ”But I don’t see malice here, just the basic inefficacy of American bureaucracy,” Carter said. But some Republicans in Congress do see something more malicious  —   a shell game to free up money from congressional restrictions. A spokesman for the House Committee on Veterans Affairs said: ”It was a money grab, with no plan on where to put people and VA used the funds to fill existing vacancies for the most part.” NPR’s Juan Elosua contributed to this story. This story is part of a project we’re calling ”Back at Base,” in which NPR  —   along with public radio stations around the country  —   is chronicling the lives of America’s troops where they live."
"Bob Dylan is about to release a triple album of classic songs. These are not his classics  —   Triplicate continues Bob Dylan’s passion for making new recordings of the Great American Songbook. From the list of 30 songs, so many recorded by Frank Sinatra, it’s easy to see Bob Dylan’s love of classic American music and his desire to be a DJ, curator and singer of the great American song from before and not long after World War II. The three discs is thematically titled and arranged: Disc 1: ’Til The Sun Goes Down features songs of life in its autumn days, of memory and time now past. Songs include, ”Stormy Weather,” Trade Winds” and ”September of My Years.” Disc 2: Devil Dolls features songs of fairly hot love and love gone cold, including ”As Time Goes By,” ”The Best is Yet To Come” and ”Here’s that Rainy Day.” Disc 3: Comin’ Home Late begins with a song Frank Sinatra made famous, ”Day in, Day Out,” about love and how the promise of love magnifies the beauty of life and ends with a song Billie Holiday made famous, questioning life’s meaning and finding it in the hopes of love. Triplicate will continue a running investment in classic American songs, following Dylan’s 2015 album Shadows In The Night and last year’s Fallen Angels, both made up of new versions of songs recorded by Sinatra. Personally, I’ll always find this a most curious and unpredictable role for Bob Dylan, its oddness magnified by our current political divide. Having lived through those divided days when his songs were our rallying cries, this unpredictable present tense is surreal for me. Earlier this month we heard Lucinda Williams and Charles Lloyd take up and remake an impassioned version of his ’60s song ”Masters of War.” Today we have Bob Dylan singing ”I Could Have Told You,” a song that came out when Dylan was 13 years old, first sung by Frank Sinatra in 1954. (You can hear that song at the audio player on this page.) Written by Carl Sigman and James van Heusen, it’s a tune about a fleeting love affair with a straying woman. The rendition is sweet, with a lovely pedal steel keeping it sad and filling the role that a string arranger and players would have picked up sixty years ago. Neither I nor anyone else could have told you Bob Dylan would put out a triple album of these tunes when he was 75. Triplicate is set for release in multiple formats including vinyl on March 31. See the album cover and complete track list below: Disc 1  —   ’ Til The Sun Goes Down, Side 1: 1. I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plans2. September Of My Years3. I Could Have Told You4. Once Upon A Time5. Stormy Weather, Side 2: 1. This Nearly Was Mine2. That Old Feeling3. It Gets Lonely Early4. My One and Only Love5. Trade Winds, Disc 2  —   Devil Dolls, Side 1: 1. Braggin’2. As Time Goes By3. Imagination4. How Deep Is The Ocean5. P. S. I Love You, Side 2: 1. The Best Is Yet To Come2. But Beautiful3. Here’s That Rainy Day4. Where Is The One5. There’s A Flaw In My Flue, Disc 3  —   Comin’ Home Late, Side 1: 1. Day In, Day Out2. I Couldn’t Sleep A Wink Last Night3. Sentimental Journey4. Somewhere Along The Way5. When The World Was Young, Side 2: 1. These Foolish Things2. You Go To My Head3. Stardust4. It’s Funny To Everyone But Me5. Why Was I Born"
"Four days after its signing, President Donald Trump’s executive action that temporarily bans travel from citizens of seven countries continues to make waves. While at least one poll shows slightly more public support than opposition for the president’s policy, American and British musicians  —   including John Legend, Grimes, Queens of the Stone Age, and Nicki Minaj  —   have criticized the order. Electronic producer Four Tet, a. k. a. Kieran Hebden, took a more subtle approach. The influential DJ updated his     Spotify playlist with artists with roots in countries affected by the travel and immigration order, which encompasses Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Hebden’s list includes   oud player Rahim   who was tortured by Saddam Hussein’s regime before becoming an American citizen Iranian artists including singer Simin Ghanem, Iranian singer and songwriter Martik Kanian and guitarist Kourosh Yaghmaei and Somalian artist Hasan Adan Samatar who was given a lifetime achievement award from the Somali community in Minneapolis in 2010  —   among many others. ”It’s basically a place for me to share things I’m listening to, and is becoming a good personal archive of music I’ve enjoyed,” he told NPR Music. ”I think the rise of fascism is deeply disturbing.” The list also includes Omar Souleyman, a Syrian singer who collaborated with Hebden in Brooklyn several years ago. That collaboration ”not being allowed anymore got me thinking about it,” Hebden tweeted."
"So last year was pretty strange, right? I know you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about  —   aliens. I’m talking about other civilizations on other worlds. What I’m really referring to are some of the remarkable   in SETI, humanity’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The last 18 months have made for a bumpy and exciting ride for those who are serious about the science of SETI. To help us understand what’s going, I spoke with two experts. Jill Tarter holds the Bernard Oliver Chair at the SETI Institute. She is a pioneer in the field, having led the development of its science with precision, acuity and creativity. And, of course, one can’t forget to mention that she was the inspiration for Jody Foster’s character in the movie Contact. I also spoke with Jason Wright an associate professor of astronomy at Penn State. Wright represents the tip of the spear of a new generation of researchers who count SETI among their interests. So to begin our ”Year in SETI” review, let’s start with an amazing object known as the WTF star. That’s short for ”Where’s The Flux.” Astronomers found the WTF star by accident in their search for exoplanets using the Kepler space telescope (it was actually found via a   citizen science project). Exoplanets are worlds orbiting distant stars. Until 20 years ago, no one knew if they even existed. An exoplanet will show itself in the Kepler data when it passes between its own sun and us. They make nice, regular dips in the star’s brightness once every orbit. But the WTF star was anything but regular. It dimmed and brightened in ways no one had ever seen before. It was crazy weird  —   and it just got weirder. Looking at old astronomical photographs, it appeared that the WTF star was also gradually losing brightness in a way that was unprecedented. By studying more recent observations, astronomers were apparently able to confirm the star’s slow fade. ”It’s really weird,” says Jason Wright. ”The fact that it has stayed weird despite a huge amount of attention by a lot of very smart astronomers has cemented this as an interesting puzzle worth solving.” Jill Tarter agrees: ”The WTF star is interesting. There’s obviously nothing that we can see that tells us the data is not credible or this isn’t a serious effort.” Now, most likely, all this crazy weirdness has a natural explanation  —   something like comets passing between the star and us (or something else). One of Wright’s contributions was to map out the different families of explanations for the WTF star. Among these possibilities were ” ” explanations, like huge machines orbiting the star. Work was even done to calculate the properties an orbiting artificial structure would be need to make the WTF star appear so abnormal. When the media caught wind of this, they  —   and the public  —   went bonkers. It made news everywhere. CNN headline’s was typical: ”Discovery of Strange Star Could Mean Alien Life.” Maybe a story with the term ”Alien Megastructures” even crossed your Facebook feed. Now, let’s be clear. It’s overwhelmingly probable that the WTF star is NOT (I repeat NOT) orbited by alien megastructures. Wright and others don’t believe they’re seeing alien megastructures. They were simply including it as one possibility in their big bag of possibilities. ”It is an explanation of last resort,” Tarter says. ”Past history has gotten us accustomed to having natural phenomena turn out to explain anomalies.” So, whatever causes its weirdness, the WTF star deserves attention. But there were two other SETI stories last year that didn’t deserve attention and they tell us something important, too. First was a   radio pulse caught by a Russian telescope. Then there was a study claiming to see a few hundred stars with weird light pulses. In both cases, other scientists were quick to point out how shaky the claims were. ”The Russian telescope was a wild signal just waiting to happen,” Tarter says. According to Tarter, the Russians looked at a particular star 39 times and only once got an event that seemed interesting from the SETI perspective. It was essentially a   event. ”One out of 39 is going to really down weigh the credibility,” Tarter says. The other paper claiming hundreds of stars with unusual, and perhaps   light pulses also fell flat with scientists like Tarter and Wright. ”That paper went through more than one journal and took a long time before it got published,” says Tarter, indicating her skepticism. But that didn’t stop some in the media from jumping on the stories. Many major news outlets carried them and, while most pointed out the skepticism of other scientists, the fact that it made the news at all tells us something interesting: The discovery of the WTF star’s weirdness, the two false alarms and most importantly, the public’s reaction to it all shows that we may be entering a new era when it comes to thinking about intelligent life in the universe. ”One of the things that really surprised me this year,” Tarter says, ”is how almost desperate the media is to have a detection. They’re so eager. It’s probably our fault, that is, the exoplanet community, because we keep saying Earth 2. 0 is right around the corner. We keep talking about habitable zones and all this sort of thing without telling the story that it’s going to be a very long time between here and there.” Tarter is right. Because of Kepler, we now know that each star in the sky has its own planets just like our sun. That is, in itself, a new and   discovery. What follows from this discovery is that we’ll be spending a lot of time from now on staring hard at all those planets and doing all the hard science needed to understand them  —   and their possibilities for life. That means there are bound to be surprises, and we’ll need to be prepared for them. One of those surprises might even, maybe, possibly, have something to do with other civilizations. So when you put it all together, it’s probably time for us to get past what Wright calls ”the giggle factor” when thinking about life  —   including intelligent life  —   on other worlds. And that brings us to another bit of SETI news. A year or so ago, the privately funded Breakthrough Initiative gave $100 million for doing serious, sober SETI science. That is really good news because the bottom line is things really are changing in our study of planets and life of all kinds. But it’s not going to be like the movies. ”I think people expect that the discovery of aliens is going go like it did in Contact, where the discovery of the signal and the confirmation of the signal happened in, like, a   period,” says Wright. So what Wright and Tarter are saying is: Please be patient. Real science is slow and steady. Doing it right will take our time, our dedication, our keenest skepticism and our sharpest intelligence. That’s what it will take to answer one of humanity’s oldest questions: Do other civilizations like our own exist on other worlds? Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"When Egyptologist Howard Carter opened King Tutankamun’s tomb in 1922, the first thing he saw was, ”Gold  —   everywhere the glint of gold,” according to his diaries. Unlike silver or iron, gold neither corrodes nor tarnishes. There are few more recognizable signs of wealth than to take everything you own and cover it with gold. Both France’s Palace of Versailles and President Donald Trump’s walls and furniture and doors are gilded with it. Guests at Trump’s penthouse might grab a candy out of a solid gold dish or sip their breakfast orange juice from a gilded cup. Whether jewelry, household items or architecture  —   humans have found a way to plate it with gold. Not even food has managed to escape our obsession with this precious metal. Though decorative gold ranges from 10 to 24 karats  —   a measurement that tells the purity of gold versus other metals in the substance  —   it must be 23 or 24 karats by law to be edible. In this nearly   pure form, gold is biologically inert and can pass through the body without being absorbed. Because gold is tasteless, odorless, devoid of nutritional value, impermanent (when used in edible form) and quite valuable, there’s no better marker of wealth and power than putting it in your mouth. A   book of royal household expenses cataloged a payment for ”four hundred and a half of eggs” that were boiled, painted and covered with gold leaf. In Melitta Weiss Adamson’s book, Food in Medieval Times, she writes of gilded piecrusts, fowl with   heads and feet, and even animals that were so thoroughly leafed they were as much statuary as main course. In Italy, gold was so frequently consumed at noble feasts that the city of Padua had to limit its use to one or two courses or else face a   gold shortage. ”It takes something ordinary and makes it extraordinary,” says Lynn Neuberg, director of the food and beverage product line at Easy Leaf, a company that makes metallic leaf  —   gold in particular. Though sales of edible gold leaf have been fairly steady since starting the line in 2004 (the company has been making decorative gold leaf for 60 years) Neuberg says there’s been a significant jump in the past year. ”I think it’s a matter of chefs and pastry chefs and bar chefs wanting to be more creative,” she explains. ”Everyone wants to call attention to the beautiful cocktail they’ve created or their beautiful soup or beautiful sushi they’re wrapping in gold.” And with gold, a little bit goes a long way. In general, the days of conspicuous consumption may be dying along with McMansions, but in America and abroad, the tradition of edible gold is still bright. Many restaurants, likely for publicity, have created a dish of newsworthy expense featuring gold. In 2012, a New York City food truck sold a $666 ”douche burger” that wrapped truffles, lobster, caviar and a beef patty inside six sheets of gold leaf. Margo’s Pizzeria on the Mediterranean island of Malta sells a pizza for nearly $2, 000 that has 100 grams of white truffle and, you guessed it, gold. Last year, even Pizza Hut had its own golden ticket  —   a Super Bowl promotion in which a limited number of   pizzas came crusted in gold leaf. New York City’s Serendipity 3 is home to multiple extravagant dishes featuring edible gold. A     sandwich, hamburger, and a   $25, 000 sundae have all won Guinness World Records for ”most expensive” dish in their categories. Their ”Golden Opulence” sundae (a steal at just $1, 000) is covered in $  to $  of edible gold, according to the restaurant’s creative chef, Joe Calderone. ”It’s over the top, but we also call it an edible work of art,” he says. He believes that the look of gold, rather than its value, is what makes it such a coveted ingredient. ”If gold leaf were a    it would still be beautiful and I would still use it.” While these dishes are all more ”publicity stunt” than ”fine dining,” there are some people working with edible gold who truly let its artistic qualities shine through. Alma chocolate in Portland, Ore. is best known for its original line of icons  —   such as the Virgin of Guadalupe or the Hindu deity Ganesha  —   rubbed with gold. It would be easy to mistake them for   folk art from Mexico instead of chocolate. Alma’s founder, Sarah Hart, had to learn both the art of making chocolate and gilding food when she first started crafting these edible icons. She says it’s a painstaking process: ”People don’t understand the labor intensity and the time to make them. To gild each one takes 10 to 15 minutes.” In some ways, the beauty of these chocolates has backfired. ”People often don’t even eat them,” Hart says. Recently she got a note from a customer who had purchased a chocolate for her mother five years ago. The woman’s mother had placed it on her home altar, where the daughter found it after her mother died. ”She took a picture and sent it to me,” Hart says. The chocolate  —   still gold but slightly less edible after five years  —   was pristine. Tove K. Danovich is a journalist based in Portland, Oregon."
"When I told folks in Kansas that I was going to be in the southeastern corner of the state, everybody said, you’ve got to go see Big Brutus. What’s Big Brutus? It is the world’s largest electric shovel. So we headed to West Mineral, Kan. You can see it on the horizon from miles away. At the very top, it’s 160 feet, or like a   building. Our guide is Betty Becker, 75. She’s the manager of Big Brutus and the mining museum  —   and she’s been working here since the place opened in 1985. Big Brutus weighs 11 million pounds  —   that’s 5, 500 tons. He’s painted bright orange and once had the job of scooping rock and dirt off the coal seam in a strip mine. Each bucket load could fill three railroad cars. ”It took 52 men about 11 months to assemble,” explains Betty. The cost, back in 1962: $6. 5 million. Big Brutus worked 24 hours a day for 11 years. When the Pittsburg  Midway coal mine shut down in 1974, Big Brutus dug his last pit in West Mineral. They backed Brutus out and parked the giant in the fields. It would have cost too much to dismantle, so they just left it right where it stood. We climb up a metal staircase until we’re five stories off the ground. The boom goes up another 100 feet or so. You used to be able to climb all the way up there, too. Some people even got married up there, but not anymore. We turn the corner and find the   compartment, where the shovel operator would sit  —   with a nice view of Kansas farmland from up high. It took huge amounts of power to run this electric shovel. ”They plugged it in just like you plug in an electric lamp or something.” explains Betty. Betty Becker’s father drove a coal truck at the mine, hauling coal from the pit to the cleaning plant. ”He passed away on the job,” she says. ”So he was at work, and we got a call to come to the hospital, and he was gone.” She pauses. ”So anyway, but that was . .. in 1966. That was a long time ago.” Betty tells me when the mine shut down in the ’70s, it was devastating for this community. ”West Mineral got quite a bit smaller because people had to go other places for, you know, work,” she says. ”And then we lost our school, and just how little towns are gone   they’re not as popular anymore. But Big Brutus will be here forever.” And after all this time, she’s grown awfully fond of the monster machine. ”Yeah, it’s like part of my family,” she says, laughing. ”A big part!”"
"Updated at 4:45 p. m. ET, U. S. officials say Iran   a ballistic missile on Sunday, the first known test since President Trump took office  —   which could provide an early assessment of how the new administration will interpret and enforce the terms of the international deal to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities. In a statement to the media on Monday, Iran’s foreign minister insisted that Iran’s missile program is not part of the nuclear agreement, even as he declined to confirm or deny the missile test. NPR’s Peter Kenyon reported that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the missile program is purely defensive. Sen. Bob Corker,  . the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a statement calling the test a violation of a U. N. Security Council resolution passed as a side agreement to the 2015 nuclear deal. The statement did not provide any additional information on the reported test, instead linking to a Fox News article quoting unnamed U. S. officials. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that he did not know the ”exact nature” of the test, including the type of missile used. Members of the Security Council met to discuss the missile launch on Tuesday afternoon, NPR’s Michele Kelemen reported. U. S. Ambassador to the U. N. Nikki Haley told reporters that the Trump administration had confirmed that Iran launched a   missile on Sunday, calling it ”completely unacceptable.” ”What I told the rest of the Security Council members is we are only as good as if we enforce what happens,” Haley said. The nuclear deal between Iran and six countries, including the U. S. was reached in July 2015 and required Iran to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. The specific issue of ballistic missile tests came up during the nuclear negotiations. A U. N. Security Council resolution in 2010 had expressly prohibited Iran from ”any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches.” In the final days before the nuclear deal was reached, the biggest remaining obstacle was Iran’s desire to have U. N. weapons and missile sanctions rolled back, as The   reported.   of State John Kerry eventually agreed to a   side agreement to the nuclear accord. In place of an outright prohibition on missile tests, the agreement stated that Iran was ”called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.” A recently released status report on the nuclear deal and missile program from the International Crisis Group think tank described the missile language as ”” and concluded: ”Controversy and concerns over issues outside the nuclear accord, mainly Iran’s growing regional posture and   tests, have often overshadowed that the [nuclear accord’s] two key components  —   restricting and rigorously monitoring Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions relief  —   are working and delivering concrete results.” Acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner told The Associated Press on Monday that the U. S. was looking into whether Sunday’s reported missile test violated the side agreement, and that the U. S. would ”hold Iran accountable” if it did. The disagreement about what is and isn’t allowed under the agreement cuts both ways. After the nuclear deal lifted many sanctions on Iran last year, the U. S. government imposed new sanctions specifically targeting the country’s ballistic missile program, as we reported. ”Iran and the U. S. disagree over whether such penalties violate the nuclear accord,” NPR’s Camila Domonoske reported at the time. Iranian officials warned the U. S. that financial penalties would be viewed by Iran’s leader as a violation of the nuclear deal, but U. S. officials contended that    sanctions fell outside the accord. President Trump has attacked the nuclear deal. Addressing the   group AIPAC in March during the presidential campaign, he said, ”My No. 1 priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” Later, however, Trump advocated for renegotiating some parts of the deal or treating it as he would a bad business contract, ”policing that contract so tough that they don’t have a chance,” Peter Kenyon reported last fall."
"Breaking news is everywhere, 24 hours a day. And now, it’s made its way into an art gallery as well  —   in an exhibit called ”Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media.” In Los Angeles, a Getty Museum show examines artists’ reactions to mass media in decades past. The exhibit includes more than 200 photos and videos, from 17 different artists. They’re not photojournalists  —   these artists take the work of photojournalists, and turn it into something else. They appropriate images of terrorism, war, natural disasters. For two of the artists, the Vietnam War is a major theme They lifted deeply disturbing images from magazines, newspapers, TV screens, and collaged or manipulated them to reflect their horror at the war. (Caution: As you scroll down further, you’ll come to some of those disturbing images.) Martha Rosler clipped a Life magazine color photograph of a handsome 1960s living room, and on top of it, pasted a shot of a devastated, Vietnamese man carrying his   child. The sobering juxtaposition brings the war into the American living room. ”Often these images from Vietnam were appearing in the exact same issues as these interior scenes,” explains Arpad Kovacs, who curated the show. A reader could easily flip through the magazine and miss one or the other. But the artist intervenes. ”What it does is it makes America confront two different realities. . ..” says Kovacs. ”It’s very political, it’s very aggressive. But it’s meant to be. You know, a lot of these pictures initially circulated in underground magazines. These are pictures that are not on the fence. They really stake a claim and stand for something.” Rosler was a student of John Baldessari  —   the    artist is an iconic figure in the Los Angeles art world, with works in major American museums. He, too, manipulates photographs, adding text, and lettering. He once had students in his Conceptual Art class react to undated, uncaptioned news photos he pinned to a bulletin board. In one news picture, a uniformed man kneels, bending his face to the ground. He could be kissing the ground, or smelling the grass. ”You don’t know,” Baldessari says. Which is exactly the artist’s point  —   he wanted his students to ponder what was going on in the photo. Meaning is slippery, Baldessari says. There’s clear meaning, though, in the newspaper photographs Donald Blumberg uses in his art. During the Vietnam years, he had a photo show at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Police occupied the campus during an   student protest. A flying wedge of cops ran by, chasing the students. ”They were trapped in the stairwell of the campus and beaten with clubs,” Blumberg says. And for him, that was the last straw ”in thinking I was going to be a decorative, fine art photographer, doing beautiful photographs for people to look at.” He started clipping news photographs that captured the disaster in Vietnam. He enlarged, and then photographed page one of the New York Daily News  —   a photo of the massacre in the town of My Lai, with the headline, ”GI Shot Child, Walked Away.” Another headline reads ”Grenade Is Cut From Prisoner’s Face,” with the   of that face, and the lieutenant who dug out the live grenade with his pocket knife. Around each story, Blumberg shows a thick dark black frame  —   the black is in memoriam, like the black ribbon worn after a death in the family. ”I like to be as political as I can,” Blumberg says. ”One of the ways of being political is through my photography.” Every day we are bombarded by photographs  —   more images than we can possibly absorb. For Donald Blumberg and other photographers in this exhibition the magic of still photography is that it stops time. It gives viewers the chance to really look and think about what’s happening in our world. ”I think good art is always about something difficult. Art is more than a pretty picture,” Kovacs says. ”Good art is about sort of challenging the status quo and making a statement.” Through their photographs, these artists are bearing witness for future generations  —   those who weren’t there when the news actually broke."
"It’s the last day to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. And at   Health, a community health center near downtown Washington, D. C. people have been streaming in looking for help choosing an insurance plan. Katie Nicol is a senior manager who oversees the five   navigators whose sole job is to help people sign up for insurance coverage. ”We’ve been busy, you know, consumer after consumer all day,” she said in an interview Monday. She expects to be busier Tuesday. That may be surprising, given all the uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act. Not far from   Republicans in Congress and President Trump are working to dismantle the health care law. Members of the House and Senate earlier this month took the first steps to repeal the ACA. Trump followed suit, issuing an executive order that asked his agency heads to do all they could to ease what he called the law’s ”burdens” on companies, insurers and individuals. So this could be the last enrollment day ever for Obamacare, which first provided coverage in 2014. Even so, as the midnight deadline to sign up for coverage approaches, Nicol says demand for insurance hasn’t waned. ”Our volume has been the same as it has been in past years,” she said. That tracks with the latest numbers released by the Department of Health and Human Services. As of Jan. 14, 8. 8 million people had signed up for coverage  —   slightly more than last year. Those numbers haven’t been updated since Trump moved into the White House on Jan. 20, so it’s unclear whether enrollments have picked up or slowed. At   Nicol says, her clients are worried about what’s next. ”We definitely have a lot of people coming in with a lot of anxiety surrounding the ACA and whether it’s still gong to be here just through the end of the year,” she said. She says they are reassuring people that insurance is available now and likely will continue to be available through the year. As for next year, who knows. That’s because Republicans have spent the last few months talking about repealing and replacing Obamacare, but details of a new plan have been sparse. The concern about the future that Nicol sees in D. C. is showing up across the country, says Jennifer Sullivan, vice president for programs at Enroll America, which works to get people affordable health insurance. ”Between action in Congress and actions from the new administration, consumers are confused,” she says. ”We are hearing that consumers are concerned and need clarification of what’s available.” In recent weeks, several polls have shown that with Obamacare threatened, more people view it more favorably. That’s likely at the top of the mind of many Republicans who are grappling with how to replace the ACA with a program that will insure at least as many people as the ACA."
"  health plans have been around for decades, bridging coverage gaps for people who are between jobs or have recently graduated from school, among other things. After the Affordable Care Act was enacted, some people gravitated toward the   plans because they were willing to trade comprehensive coverage for a cheaper sticker price  —   even if it meant paying a tax penalty for not having the comprehensive coverage required in the law. Sales increased sharply. Now, as Republicans look for ways to loosen the health law’s coverage requirements and explore the possibility of not enforcing the requirement that people have health insurance, sales of   plans may be poised to grow even more. If that happens, consumer advocates say it could be bad for consumers. As the policies’ name suggests,   plans provide coverage for a limited period, often six months or less. They generally don’t cover such things as   conditions, maternity services or prescription drugs. The policies typically have maximum coverage limits of about $1 million. Insurers can turn people down if they’re sick and may decide not to renew someone’s policy. All of these practices are prohibited in plans that qualify as individual insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Precisely because of these limitations, however, the premiums are typically a lot cheaper than those for   coverage. In the fourth quarter of 2016, the average monthly premium a shopper would pay for a   plan sold through eHealth. com was $124, compared with $393 for someone who bought a regular Obamacare plan and didn’t qualify for premium subsidies. When the health law passed, insurers increasingly began offering   plans that stretched the definition of ”short,” sometimes providing coverage for as long as 364 days. ”Carriers were exploiting a loophole in the law that defined a health insurance plan as one that was 365 days,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. ”If they were shorter they didn’t have to comply with ACA protections.”   plans serve a tiny but growing proportion of the roughly 22 million people who have coverage on the individual market. At the end of 2013, before the health law’s major reforms took effect, there were approximately 108, 800 people covered by these policies, which earned premiums of $97. 5 million, according to figures from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Two years later, roughly 148, 100 people had   plans and premium earnings had grown to $160. 5 million. Some insurers have taken notice. Online health insurance vendor Health Insurance Innovations launched Agile Health Insurance in the spring of 2015 to focus on sales of   plans. In the third quarter 2016, Agile sold 21, 000   policies. ”These   plans are not regulated like Obamacare plans, so carriers have a lot of flexibility in benefits and pricing,” said Sam Gibbs, Agile’s executive director. ”It’s almost like the old individual market before the ACA.” Not all insurers embrace widespread sale of   plans. ”The big health insurance companies are really mixed on this,” said Timothy Jost, professor emeritus at Washington and Lee University School of Law and a close watcher of the health law. ”They see this as a seriously destabilizing force in the market, this crap coverage.” Last October, the Obama administration issued a final rule that would make it more difficult for consumers to buy   plans to substitute for regular Obamacare plans. The regulation, which takes effect April 1, said   plans must be less than three months in duration. People can request a renewal of the policies, but insurers can turn them down. The policies and related materials also have to prominently display a warning that they don’t satisfy the law’s requirement that people have health insurance. Some hope that the rule may be changed or rescinded by the Trump administration or overturned by the new Congress under the   Congressional Review Act. Neither option can happen at the stroke of a pen, however. Health insurance brokers and agents would like to continue to sell     plans. ”Our folks do a lot of business with   plans,” said Marcy Buckner, vice president of government affairs at the National Association of Health Underwriters, an industry group. The regulation is one that the group will request that the Trump administration rescind. ”In most areas [a   plan] is cheaper, and it’s some consumers’ way of saying, ’I don’t need all of those things,’ ” said Buckner. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow Michelle Andrews on Twitter: @mandrews110"
"He was Russia’s Mad Monk. A pale, bearded, wiry, horny,   debauch who was the preeminent power broker of the Romanov dynasty in its waning years. A party fiend, a drinker, a healer and a prophet who was poisoned, shot, drowned, and burned by his enemies. But was he really? The answer is, we will never know. The life of Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian peasant who, through a charismatic combination of spiritual and sexual power, rose to become chief mentor to Alexandra, the last czarina of Russia, is such a thick borscht of fact and fiction that it’s hard to distinguish the truth from the lies. But historian Douglas Smith, in his magnificently researched new book, Rasputin: Faith, Power and the Twilight of the Romanovs, attempts to do precisely that. It’s a herculean task, for as we soon learn, even when it comes to something as seemingly uncontroversial as food, there are competing versions of the truth. Did Rasputin have a sweet tooth? Was he a glutton who feasted on champagne,   expensive fish, and caviar? Did he really lick his fingers at the dinner table and hold them out for the grand dames of Saint Petersburg’s salons to kiss? As Rasputin’s notoriety spread and his hold over the lonely and impressionable empress tightened  —   she fervently believed he could soothe and protect her hemophilic son and heir to the throne, Alexei  —   whispers about him being a wicked, orgiastic cultist began to grow, as did his list of enemies. It was put about that the rube who once slurped on cabbage soup and raw garlic now glutted himself on the finest fruit, fish, caviar and champagne. It turns out that while Rasputin’s love of fresh fruit  —   oranges, strawberries  —   was real enough, the rest of the menu was made up. ”He did not eat too much or rich, heavy foods,” says Smith. ”He kept a simple table. It may have at times been loaded with fancy foods and drink, but these were gifts from admirers and petitioners trying to curry favor. He liked ukha  —  fish soup  —   and dark bread, radishes, onions and other plain vegetables. He drank tea, like nearly every Russian. Also, note that Rasputin never became fat or really even portly. His body remained trim his whole life.” His table manners, it is true, were alarming. His beard was flecked with food, he licked the spoon before using it to serve others, tore the bread and fish apart with his fingers and wiped them on the table cloth. Some were revolted by his crudeness, others saw it as part of his charm, and it’s quite possible that he exaggerated his gaucherie to set himself apart from the effete and mannered aristocracy. He cast such a spell on his worshipful female followers that they were known to kiss his freshly licked fingers, and vie for the leftover crusts of bread on his plate. It was Rasputin’s rootedness, however, that made him sensitive to the hunger pangs of ordinary Russians. He immediately recognized that the serpentine bread lines in Saint Petersburg  —   the food transportation system had broken down as a result of the First World War  —   were dangerous and contained the seeds of revolution. Genuinely stricken to learn that corn was rotting in the imperial warehouses while the people starved, he sent telegrams to Czar Nicholas II, who was away fighting the Germans on the front line, begging him to increase food supplies. But Nicholas  —   despite Rasputin’s missives, the labor strikes, the 300 percent inflation, and simmering anger in Moscow and Petrograd (the city ’s new name that replaced the   Saint Petersburg)  —   did nothing. Rasputin tried to get Alexandra to distribute food in the streets to show that she felt the people’s pain, and though she seemed agreeable, it never happened. He even wrote to senior government officials appealing for action  —   short, unpunctuated notes that testify to the sincerity of his pleas: kind dear apologies forgive me much meat is needed, let Piter [Petrograd] eat, listen help rosputin, kind dear apologies allow oats taken, much woe in zlaenburg province, lots of oats, Petrograd cart drivers are worried, that’s not good, Siberia is full of lard please feed Petrograd and Moscow, ”His notes were often scribbled and hard to decipher. His grammar and spelling were atrocious. His meaning was often hard to make out,” says Smith. ”But yes, Rasputin was very serious about the food problems in Petrograd. The czar did not heed his advice, regrettably.” Rasputin proved fatally prophetic. The February 1917 Russian Revolution was ignited by food riots, when hungry marchers stormed the legendary Filipov Bakery, whose delectable black breads, piroshky, kopeck buns, and chocolate cakes were daily delivered to the czar’s palace. The Cossacks, called out to quell the riot, refused to open fire. A petulant Alexandra, sounding like Marie Antoinette, relayed it all in a letter to her husband: ”They smashed Filipov’s bakery completely. . .. A hooligan movement, young boys and girls running about and screaming that they have no bread, only to excite. ..” By then, Rasputin, whom Alexandra lovingly called ”our dear Friend,” had been dead for two months  —   murdered in the early hours of Dec. 30, 1916 (Dec. 17, according to the Russian calendar then in use). Which brings us to his sweet tooth. Several biographies state that Rasputin was exceedingly fond of sugar  —   with one even citing his black teeth as proof. But his daughter Maria flatly states that her father disliked sweets. A trivial point of discrepancy  —   except that it has a bearing on how he died. The standard version is that Rasputin’s murderers, a group of monarchists led by Prince Yusupov, knowing of his supposed weakness for sweets, laced cakes and wine with cyanide and served them to him, and, when he miraculously survived the poison, shot him dead. So whom do we believe? Smith is unequivocal. ”I believe his daughter,” he says. ”The stories that he loved sweets come from    sources. Black teeth? Hard to say. I’ve never seen a single photograph of him with his mouth open. The love of sweets belongs, I would say, to the realm of myth.” And while it’s true that the    Rasputin was lured to a cellar and served cake and wine on his last night (perhaps Yusupov  Co. bought into the   myth as well) while Yankee Doodle played on the gramophone, neither contained any poison. The autopsy report said as much. ”As I write in the book, either no poison (real or fake) was used, or it was substituted for something else  —   maybe   aspirin,” says Smith. ”The entire description of the murder, which comes to us from the memoirs of Prince Yusupov, is highly unreliable, if entertaining.” Rasputin’s excessive fondness for Madeira is undisputed. ”Go on, drink, God will forgive you,” he would urge his dinner companions. ”I love wine,” he declared in 1916, by which time he had become a functioning alcoholic. His daughter Maria, while admitting that her father’s drinking was out of control, said he was far from a typical  . ”She noticed,” writes Smith, ”how he never spoke so beautifully about God as when he was drunk.” Nor dance so well. After a few glasses, Rasputin was known to leap to his feet in his tall, patent leather boots and dance with ecstatic abandon to the music of three minstrel gypsies who accompanied him to his evening parties. What comes as a surprise then, is to learn that the Madeira Monk supported the temperance movement, speaking out against the scourge of vodka and endorsing the Sobriety Society in his village. Smith spotlights this paradoxical nugget: ”I would not say I’m the first to write about this, but no previous biographer has explored it in such depth,” he says. ”It is a definite puzzle, given his own troubles with the bottle in his latter years. I’m still not fully certain how much of the press coverage about his support for the temperance movement was genuine or ’fake news.’ It’s difficult to say for certain.” Smith’s comprehensive biography portrays an intriguingly multifaceted figure who enjoyed power and had a seductive vitality, but who was also an earthy and compassionate family man. It’s a far cry from the demonic Rasputin of the irresistibly catchy 1978   song, with its fantastical claim that   Rasputin was a ”lover of the Russian queen” and ”Russia’s greatest love machine.” The former is salacious gossip. The latter is hard to prove, but in the succinct words of another historian, Robert K. Massie, ”He would send out for prostitutes late at night as people might send out for pizza.” Nina Martyris is a literary journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"President Trump has gotten his man at the State Department. Rex Tillerson was approved by a   vote Wednesday in the Senate. Four senators who caucus with the Democrats crossed the aisle and joined all of the Republicans in voting for Tillerson. They were Democrats Mark Warner of Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, as well as independent Angus King of Maine. Tillerson, the former head of Exxon Mobil  —   the world’s largest and most powerful oil company  —   will now guide American foreign policy and be tasked with enacting Trump’s world view. That worldview, however, isn’t entirely clear. Trump has expressed nationalistic and protectionist views and even isolationist tendencies, but he has also said the U. S. needs to do more about ISIS. He has promised to ”bomb the s*** out of them” and suggested it could potentially take 30, 000 troops to defeat them. In addition to his controversial travel ban instituted in the first days of his presidency, Trump has ordered the U. S. out of trade deals, threatened import tariffs with America’s adversaries (China) and allies (Mexico) questioned the importance of NATO, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, said he thinks torture works and, during the campaign, floated the idea (that he later seemed to walk back) that perhaps more countries should have nuclear weapons to defend themselves without the U. S.’s help. Tillerson will be tasked with defending the United States under Trump around the globe, while walking the line when he disagrees. Tillerson faced tough questioning from Republicans and was almost derailed because of his relationship with Putin. But Tillerson talked tough in those hearings about Russia and, unlike Trump, said he fully believes Russia was responsible for the hacks and leaks of the Democratic emails during the presidential campaign. Tillerson, who has no diplomatic experience aside from his myriad international business ties as Exxon Mobil’s chief, will be tasked with overseeing the State Department bureaucracy. He is not   in the State Department, but those who have briefed him are sounding fairly upbeat about his management style. As CEO of Exxon Mobil, he oversaw a vast company with employees working in dozens of countries. The difference is that Exxon Mobil has one goal: drilling for oil and making money for shareholders. His job at the State Department may be especially complicated by apparent unrest in the ranks. NPR has reported that some 900 State Department officials signed a letter that went viral within the agency decrying Trump’s visa and refugee ban as not making America safer. And the White House isn’t making the task of internal diplomacy any easier for Tillerson. White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Tuesday urged American diplomats to ”get with the program” or go. But dissent is ingrained in State Department culture. In fact, the American Foreign Service Association, the professional association, gives awards every year for it. The State Department’s manual says there can be no retribution for employees who use the dissent channel, and some in Congress concerned about Spicer’s comments are now looking into ways to codify those protections. Trump, though, doesn’t exactly welcome dissent. While the new president is known for surrounding himself with differing factions  —   and even appeared to encourage his Cabinet nominees to have different points of view in their confirmation hearings  —   he also fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama holdover at the Justice Department, for speaking out against and refusing to defend the travel ban, and he said he has a ”running war with the media.” ”So much of the media seems to be the opposition party,” Trump said Wednesday, echoing his chief strategist Steve Bannon. He added, ”They’re very dishonest people.” At the State Department, Tillerson will be hearing from diplomats who are worried about where the Trump administration is heading and whether he and Trump will overlook human rights abuses in countries where Americans want to do business. So, the mood in the State Department is uneasy. The Trump administration nudged out several professional diplomats even before naming anyone to replace them. One example is Tom Countryman, a career foreign service officer who was acting undersecretary for arms control. He was on NPR’s Morning Edition Wednesday, where he echoed a very powerful retirement speech he gave Tuesday to the State Department. He noted that State employees proudly serve in both Republican and Democratic administrations and implied they are feeling sidelined now. ”We still have a duty,” he told the State employees. ”You have a duty  —   to stay and give your best professional guidance, with loyalty, to the new administration, because a foreign policy without professionals is  —   by definition  —   an amateur foreign policy. You will help to frame and make the choices. Because that is what we do. Our work is little understood by our fellow Americans, a fact that is sometimes exploited for political purpose. When I have the opportunity to speak to audiences across this amazing land, I explain, ’We do not have a Department of State, we do not have a foreign policy  —   because we love foreigners. We do it because we love Americans.” He also said something that directly relates to Trump (and perhaps even Tillerson). Countryman drew a distinction between business and diplomacy, and he seemed to dispute Trump’s foundational view of America. ”Business made America great, as it always has been,” Countryman said, ”and business leaders are among our most important partners. But let’s be clear: Despite the similarities  —   a dog is not a cat baseball is not football and diplomacy is not a business. Human rights are not a business. And democracy is, most assuredly, not a business.” He added, ”We want Americans to prosper, to sell the world’s best food and the world’s best products everywhere in the world. We want Americans to be protected and safe when they are abroad, whether they are missionaries, tourists, students, businessmen or (for those of you who have done consular work) the occasional false Messiah.”"
"Last week, President Trump signed an executive order suspending   admissions for 120 days and blocking travelers from seven   countries  —   Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia  —   for 90 days. Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely. The move caused immediate controversy, sparking protests in cities and airports around the U. S. as federal authorities began enforcing the ban, preventing hundreds of travelers from boarding planes over the weekend. Other travelers and refugees landing in the U. S. have been detained or sent back. Federal judges quickly weighed in to issue temporary stays, and the future of the executive order will very likely be determined in court. The Trump administration has also come under criticism from scores of countries, including close allies. At the same time, a recent poll by   shows public opinion narrowly backing Trump’s action, with 49 percent of Americans agreeing with the order while 41 percent disagreed. NPR and dozens of member stations wanted to help the public understand where its lawmakers stand on the issue. Collectively, we searched for public statements on Twitter and Facebook, on lawmakers’ websites and in interviews with us in public media or other news organizations. We did this for each of the 536 members of Congress  —   100 senators, 435 voting members of the House, and the District of Columbia’s nonvoting House delegate. Overall, strong partisan lines are clear on the issue, with Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly opposed to the new travel restrictions many of them joined in the airport protests, and some called it a ”Muslim ban.” On the Republican side, members generally support the order, although significant numbers did not make public statements. A few Republicans, especially in the Senate, stated their opposition or offered mixed messages, with some critical of how the order was carried out. A few observations and notes on how we undertook this project:"
"Senate Republicans and conservative groups quickly rallied behind President Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, as Democrats focused on lingering anger over another jurist: Merrick Garland. ”I had hoped that President Trump would work in a bipartisan way to pick a mainstream nominee like Merrick Garland and bring the country together,” Sen. Patrick Leahy,  . a top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement in which he pledged a ”thorough and unsparing” confirmation process for Gorsuch. Democrats’ lingering anger over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to block any consideration of President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court almost a year ago is critical to understanding why Gorsuch’s nomination is likely to play out as an angry, partisan battle over an otherwise highly regarded jurist. Another Democrat, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, had already announced he would filibuster Trump’s nominee before it was made public. ”There is only one person in America who is a legitimate selection: Judge Merrick Garland,” Merkley said in a fundraising appeal Monday. By late Tuesday, another four Senate Democrats had already announced they would oppose his nomination: Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts. ”Before even joining the bench, he advocated to make it easier for public companies to defraud investors,” Warren wrote on Facebook. ”As a judge, he has twisted himself into a pretzel to make sure the rules favor giant companies over workers and individual Americans. He has sided with employers who deny wages, improperly fire workers, or retaliate against whistleblowers for misconduct. He has ruled against workers in all manner of discrimination cases. And he has demonstrated hostility toward women’s access to basic health care.” Warren’s opposition will help galvanize progressive activists and groups against the nomination. ”Rewarding Republicans’ unprecedented obstruction of President Obama’s nominee would be a total abdication of responsibility by Senate Democrats that would haunt them for the rest of their careers,” said Murshed Zaheed, political director for CREDO, a progressive communications company.   groups, including EMILY’s List and NARAL were also gearing up to oppose Gorsuch’s nomination. Senate Democrats are already battling the Trump administration over his Cabinet picks, a factor that has amplified partisan anger on Capitol Hill less than two weeks into the new administration. ”It is time to get over the fact that they lost the election,” McConnell said Tuesday of Democrats’ delay tactics. While Democrats’ can’t filibuster Trump’s Cabinet nominees, they can still force a   hurdle on Supreme Court nominees, and they intend to do so. Gorsuch’s nomination is likely to reignite debate over the ”nuclear option” in the Senate and whether the majority should force a rules change in the Senate to lower that threshold to 51 votes, as Democrats did in 2013 for all   Court executive branch nominees. McConnell generally opposes invoking the nuclear option, but an unpredictable political climate awaits. For their part, Republicans are lining up behind Gorsuch, who is cast as an intellectual heir to the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. ”By all accounts, he has the right temperament and experience for the job,” said Sen. Marco Rubio,  . who argued Republicans just won the White House and maintained control of Congress in an election in which Trump campaigned specifically on nominating a conservative to the court. ”On the issue of this Supreme Court nomination specifically, the American people gave the president and the   Senate a mandate to choose a successor to Antonin Scalia,” Rubio said. McConnell noted that Gorsuch’s 2006 nomination to the appellate court was approved by voice vote in the Senate, and he called on senators to ”respect the result of the recent election” and ultimately allow a vote on the nomination. Republicans have 52 votes in the Senate, and barring something unforeseen in the confirmation process, the party is likely to be unified behind Gorsuch. Senate Republicans say Gorsuch’s nomination could be ready for a Senate vote by early April, citing past confirmation timelines. Democrats have already indicated they’re in no rush. ”Judge Gorsuch has a long record, and it will take time to conduct a thorough review,” said Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein of California. ”At a time when public trust in our institutions is at an   low and our country is bitterly divided, a thorough and fair review is vitally important.”  "
"President Trump has two words of advice for Mitch McConnell when it comes to confirming Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch: ”Go nuclear.” Trump was referring to the   nuclear option, whereby the Senate leader would change the chamber’s rules to prevent Democrats from filibustering the nominee. The president told reporters at the start of a White House meeting with conservative activists who support the nomination that Gorsuch ”will be a great justice.” He said it would be ”very dishonest” for Senate Democrats, who previously backed Gorsuch when he was nominated to serve on the U. S. Court of Appeals, to oppose him now for the Supreme Court. McConnell has previously stated that the decision whether to eliminate the filibuster is his and not the president’s decision and has indicated a reluctance to end the filibuster’s use unless absolutely necessary. To break a filibuster requires 60 votes, and the Republicans hold 52, meaning eight Democrats would also need to vote to end debate. ”If we end up with that gridlock” in the Senate, Trump said, he would tell McConnell, ”If you can, Mitch, go nuclear.”"
"President Trump has selected federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill a Supreme Court seat that has sat vacant for nearly a year, setting up a blockbuster confirmation hearing that could put the new White House’s domestic political agenda on trial in the U. S. Senate. The selection fulfills an early campaign promise by Trump to nominate a solidly conservative judge with a record of strictly interpreting the U. S. Constitution. Gorsuch, 49, sailed through an earlier confirmation process for a spot on the federal appeals court in Denver. Only weeks after his nomination in 2006, the Senate confirmed him by voice vote. The American Bar Association rated him as ”unanimously well qualified” at the time. Gorsuch has a sterling legal pedigree. He clerked for two Supreme Court justices, Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. He also served as a clerk on the second most important appeals court in the country, in Washington D. C. for conservative Judge David Sentelle. Like Justice Antonin Scalia, whom he is in line to replace, Gorsuch has cultivated a reputation as a memorable and clear author of legal opinions. He also considers himself to be an originalist. Lawyers who practice before the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, where Gorsuch currently works, said he is a popular and approachable judge. SCOTUSblog, the leading Supreme Court blog, described some of Gorsuch’s parallels to Scalia as ”eerie.” ”He is an ardent textualist (like Scalia) he believes criminal laws should be clear and interpreted in favor of defendants even if that hurts government prosecutions (like Scalia) he is skeptical of efforts to purge religious expression from public spaces (like Scalia) he is highly dubious of legislative history (like Scalia) and he is less than enamored of the dormant commerce clause (like Scalia),” the blog wrote. Among other rulings that came to national attention, Gorsuch sided in favor of ”religious freedom” claims made by the Little Sisters of the Poor and the owners of the craft company Hobby Lobby, who challenged language in the Affordable Care Act that required them to pay for contraceptive coverage for employees. The Supreme Court backed those Hobby Lobby challengers, in a divided vote, in 2014. In a lecture to the conservative Federalist Society in Washington more than three years ago, Gorsuch elicited laughter from the audience as he quoted from the 1853 Charles Dickens novel Bleak House, referenced the work of the late novelist David Foster Wallace, and discussed irony and the law. ”Like any human enterprise, the law’s crooked timber occasionally produces the opposite of the intended effect,” he said. ”We turn to the law earnestly to promote a worthy idea and wind up with a host of unwelcome side effects that do more harm than good. . .. We depend upon the rule of law to guarantee freedom, but we have to give up freedom to live under the law’s rules.” Off the bench, Gorsuch in 2006 published a book called The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, criticizing the practice and defending the ”intrinsic value” of human life. He also contributed to The Law of Judicial Precedent last year."
"The remains of the world’s most destructive stone marten are now on display at a museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands. On Nov. 20, 2016, the animal hopped over a fence at the $7 billion Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, touched a transformer and was electrocuted by 18, 000 volts. The marten died instantly. The collider, which accelerates particles to near the speed of light to study the fiery origins of the universe, lost power and shut down. ”There must have been a big flame,” said Kees Moeliker, the director of the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and the man behind its Dead Animal Tales exhibit, where the preserved marten is now displayed. ”It was scorched. When you’re not really careful with candles and your hair, like that,” he explained. ”Every hair of this creature was kind of burned and the whiskers, they were burned to the bare minimum and especially the feet, the legs, they were cooked. They were darker, like roasted.” ”It really had a bad, bad encounter with this electricity.” The November incident wasn’t the first time a marten has sabotaged the vast scientific instrument. In April 2016, an animal originally thought to be a weasel and later guessed to be a marten, which is in the weasel family, appeared to have gnawed through a power cable, as we reported. (OK, to be fair, maybe that animal was really the world’s most destructive marten.) ”This was big news [in April]. The collider was out of work for a week, so they had other things on their mind than an excited museum director in the Netherlands,” explained Moeliker, who said he could understand why staffers at the collider weren’t able to provide him with the animal’s corpse. When it happened again in November, he was ready. ”We had a couple of people who got interested in the request from April, and we contacted them and they made sure [the corpse] wasn’t destroyed,” Moeliker said. He outfitted a car with a small refrigerator that plugged into the vehicle’s cigarette lighter, bought a block of ice at a local supermarket and drove to France’s border with Switzerland to pick up the carcass. ”It was in good condition,” he said. ”Well, for an electrocuted marten it was in good condition.” The exhibit also houses a sparrow that was shot to death after knocking over 23, 000 dominoes in the Netherlands in 2005, sabotaging a world record attempt. And a seagull that died after it flew into an ambulance. And a mallard duck known in the scientific community for its documented history of homosexual necrophilia. And a hedgehog that died after it put its head into a McDonald’s McFlurry cup and could not escape. And then there’s the smallest critter in the collection. A few years ago, Moeliker started collecting pubic lice after two British doctors alerted him that the animal might be endangered by habitat destruction associated with modern personal grooming habits. Moeliker said he has since provided specimens of human pubic lice to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. ”The things we get are so surprising,” Moeliker said. ”Just before the stone marten we had a fish that lodged himself in the throat of a man.” The man had deliberately swallowed the catfish as part of a game with friends  —   they had reportedly worked up from goldfish to larger, more exotic species. But he didn’t know it was an armored catfish. When it entered the man’s throat, the catfish raised spines to defend itself, which did not save its life but did put the    man in the hospital for a week. ”I never thought we would get a fish . .. that had qualifications to be part of this show,” Moeliker remarked. ”Let me be clear, I prefer all wildlife to be happy and flying and crawling around alive,” he explained of the museum’s approach to the Dead Animal Tales exhibit. ”But if [an animal] has a story attached to it [that] shows how and when animal and human life collide, then they are welcome here. It’s only going to increase, the collisions between man and animal. We more and more share the same environment, the same habitat. Nature strikes back. We have to get used to it.”"
"The U. S. Embassy in Chile says it is sending an additional $740, 000 for protective equipment and firefighting tools, as the country continues to battle more than 70 active wildfires that have killed at least 11 people in the past two weeks. The latest contribution, announced Tuesday, brings the total wildfire aid to Chile from the U. S. government to $840, 000, including $100, 000 promised last week after Chilean President Michele Bachelet declared a state of emergency. Some of the U. S. funds were used to purchase personal hygiene kits for residents of the town of Santa Olga, on the central coast, which was completely destroyed by a fire last week. As The   reported: ”At least one body was recovered from the ashes in Santa Olga, according to Deutsche Welle, and about 6, 000 residents fled the city as the flames moved in. ” ’This is an extremely serious situation  —   of horror, a nightmare without an end,’ the mayor of the coastal city of Constitucion told the German broadcaster. ’Everything burned.’ ” ”We have never seen anything on this scale, never in the history of Chile,” Bachelet said last week. ”The truth is that the forces are doing everything humanly possible and will continue until they can contain and control the fires.” Drone footage published by the BBC over the weekend showed the skeletons of homes caught in the paths of blazes in the central region of Maule. The forest floor appeared white with ash, with only the charred remains of trees. About 20, 000 people are currently deployed to fight the blazes, including backcountry and local firefighters, military personnel and volunteers, according to Chile’s public safety department. According to Chile’s foreign ministry, at least 13 countries have sent people to help fight the wildfires, which are concentrated in the central and southern part of the country. The U. S. has sent four people, as has Japan. Panama, Russia, Colombia, Brazil, Portugal, Mexico, Peru, Spain, France, Venezuela and Argentina have all sent 20 or more firefighters. Argentina contributed the most manpower, with 130 people on the ground in Chile as of Wednesday. The Brazilian military has contributed a   aircraft to help fight the fires from above. The Russian government also sent an aircraft, according to Chile’s public safety department. As The   reported, a privately owned Boeing 747 ”supertanker” plane arrived last week in Santiago from Colorado, paid for by Fundación Viento Sur, which is part of the Walton Family Foundation and run by Ben Walton and his   wife, Lucy Ana Walton de Avilés. Earlier this month, NASA released images of the smoke from the fires, which is visible from space. The agency noted that the number of fires has increased in the past two years, going from ”roughly 5, 200 forest fires per season in the decade between 1990 and 2000, according to a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization,” to ”more than 6, 700 fires during the 2015 —  16 fire season.”"
"Hours after Israel approved 3, 000 new settlement homes in the West Bank, Israeli security forces moved to evacuate settlers from an illegal outpost there, sparking scuffles. There’s been a clear uptick in the rate of settlement approval since Donald Trump was sworn in as U. S. president less than two weeks ago  —   and Trump is expected to be supportive of settlement expansion. Last week, Israel announced that it planned to build 2, 500 more homes for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Before that, it approved permits for 560 units in East Jerusalem. Settlements are seen as an obstacle to peace, an impediment to any future   deal, and are widely condemned by Palestinians and by the international community. There are many types of settlements  —   some are essentially large towns approved by the Israeli government, while others such as Amona, where the evacuation operation began midday Wednesday, are outposts built without government approval. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that Amona, located near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, ”was built on private Palestinian land and must be demolished,” The Associated Press writes. ”It set Feb. 8 as the final date for it to be destroyed.” ”On Tuesday, the Israeli army ordered residents to leave the outpost within 48 hours,” Haaretz reports. Today, police climbed the hill to initiate the operation, setting off a tense standoff and skirmishes with settlers and their supporters. Joanna Kakissis, reporting for NPR, was at Amona and this is what she saw: ”Many of the protesters traveled from other towns to prevent the evacuation of some forty families who have built their homes on this hilltop. ”They burned tires, slicked the roads with oil and helped families barricade themselves inside their homes. ”Ayelet Vidal, a    book editor and mother of four, sipped tea near her bookshelf. She said she’d stay until security forces physically carried her out.” Sixteen police officers and two civilians were injured in the melee, Haaretz says, adding that ”evacuation efforts were expected to last through the night.” Yesh Din, an Israeli organization that fought against the illegal outpost in court, hailed the start of the operation in a post on Facebook. ”We hope security forces and residents of the outpost will keep to a peaceful and   evacuation of the outpost,” it says. The group posted pictures of Palestinians who own the land, and said: ”After being prevented from accessing their land for twenty years, they are waiting to return.” The evacuation of Amona has been repeatedly delayed. Israeli authorities likely wanted to avoid the sort of violent clashes that occurred there in 2006 when troops attempted to dismantle eight empty homes. As NPR reported at the time, more than 300 Israeli soldiers and settlers were injured in the ensuing violence. Israel’s parliament is also expected to receive legislation next week which would ”retroactively legalise dozens of outposts,” according to Reuters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports that proposed law, the wire service reports. Israeli   hardliners are finding reasons to celebrate these days: ”We have lost the battle over Amona but we are winning the campaign for the Land of Israel,” tweeted Naftali Bennett, leader of the   Jewish Home Party, according to Reuters. ”We are in a new period in which life in Judea and Samaria are back on track,” Defense Minster Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement, according to Haaretz. Judea and Samaria is the biblical name for the area that makes up the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has started ”urgent discussions” over the escalating pace of settlement expansion plans, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an reports."
"President Trump used the occasion of a meeting with   supporters to launch into another attack on the news media Wednesday. At a photo op at the top of his meeting for Black History Month, Trump said that ”a lot of the media is actually the opposition party,” echoing a statement made by his adviser, former Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen Bannon, a few days ago. ”They really have to straighten out their act,” the president said, adding, ”We won so maybe they don’t have the influence they think.” Trump singled out CNN, which he said he doesn’t watch. ”I don’t like watching fake news,” he said, adding, ”Fox has treated me very nice.” In his remarks at an event billed as an ”African American History Month listening session,” Trump cited the erroneous  —   and quickly corrected  —   ”pool” report on Jan. 20 that the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. that President Obama had placed in the Oval Office had been removed. Trump called it fake news and said ”the statue is cherished.” He said he was proud of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall, where, he said, people can learn about King and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, whom he called ”an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job that is being recognized more and more, I notice.” Trump also likened his announcement last night of his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, to introducing a new product in the marketplace, calling it ”such a good launch.” Trump said his nominee was ”outstanding in every way. I think he’ll be very   it was a big evening, a very big evening.” Sitting next to Trump at the morning meeting was his nominee to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson. Trump said heading up HUD is a ”big job that’s not only housing it’s mind and spirit.” Trump said his administration is ”going to work very hard on the inner city” and that Carson will be ”doing that big league, big time,” adding, ”that’s one of his big things that he’s going to be looking at.” Trump also returned to his election results, saying he ”ended up getting substantially more than other candidates who had run in the past years.” Among those attending the meeting was Darrell Scott, pastor of the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland and, as Scott put it, a ”black Trump supporter.” Scott said he had been contacted by ”some of the top gang thugs in Chicago for a  .” The gang leaders reached out to him, Scott said, because they associated him with Trump. ”They respect you,” Scott told Trump. ”They believe in what you’re doing.” Scott said the gangs want to ”lower the body count” in Chicago, which has one of the nation’s worst murder rates. Updated Feb. 2 at 5 p. m. ET, Scott has since walked back his comments to Trump, after being criticized on social media. He said the ”gang thugs” that had met with him were actually three community activists, including Corey Brooks, who endorsed Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and was appointed to the state’s Tollway board. Our original post continues: Trump responded that what is happening now in Chicago ”shouldn’t be happening in this country,” adding that if officials there don’t act, then ”we’re going to solve the problem for them.”"
"As concerns over player safety mount, the national governing body for youth and high school football is considering a version of the game that could look radically different from what football fans might expect. It’s a leaner, less   game, focused on fostering   athletes and cutting down on the kinds of     hits that can leave parents cringing in the bleachers. It is also, for now, just a glimmer in the eyes of its creators at USA Football: The organization will be introducing new rules in a pilot run at select youth football programs across the country for the fall season. Here’s a breakdown of what players and parents can expect from the modified game, as told to NPR by USA Football Communications Manager Tom Yelich: Yelich bills the modified version of the game as the next step in developing youth football. ESPN, citing 2015 data from the Sports  Fitness Industry Association, reported that about 1. 23 million kids ages 6 to 12 played tackle football in 2015 in the same year, about 1. 1 million kids in the same age group played flag football, a   version. For Yelich, the new rules might offer a third way  —   a bridge between these two ends of the football spectrum. But he’s also careful to note these rules are still in development, by no means mandatory and currently without plans for a wide rollout. That will depend on how the pilot program goes, Yelich says. For USA Football, it appears be an attempt to protect its youngest players  —   who Yelich says can be as young as 7 or 8  —   and assuage parental fears about their safety, more and more scientific evidence points toward the lasting health problems incurred while playing the sport. As NPR’s Shots blog has reported, players are at relatively high risk of concussion in games and, somewhat surprisingly, even more so in practices. Concussions and repeated blows to the head have been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease  —   a link that the NFL’s top health and safety officer acknowledged at a congressional roundtable last year. ”The earlier they started playing, the worse their brains fared later on,” Robert Stern, director of clinical research at the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center at the Boston University School of Medicine, told The New York Times. ”To me, it makes sense we would want to do everything we can to reduce or eliminate purposeful hits to the brain,” Stern continued. ”But if the culprit is the repetitive hits to the brain, that’s the starting point for making changes.” The modified game now under consideration would not be the first program instituted by USA Football in an attempt to curb injuries. In 2014, the nonprofit organization launched Heads Up Football, a series of primarily   clinics intended to teach players better form in tackling. That program  —   which the Times says has been less effective than hoped for  —   aims to reduce injuries by reforming the players. The new abridged version would aim to reduce them by reforming the rulebook instead."
"What’s the best time for students to have recess? Before lunch, or after? What happens if it rains? If students are misbehaving, is it a good idea to punish them by making them sit out recess? Those are just a few of the issues addressed in new guidelines designed to help schools have good recess. The recommendations come from a group called SHAPE (Society of Health and Physical Educators) America and from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recess might seem simple  —   just open the doors and let the kids run free. But only eight states have policies that require it, according to last year’s Shape of the Nation report. And when researchers started looking, they found very little consistency or guidance about what makes recess effective. The new guidelines, in two documents, offer educators a list of 19   strategies and a template to show them what a good recess policy looks like. Some of the suggestions seem obvious, like ”promote a physically active environment” or ”designate spaces for outdoor and indoor recess.” But there’s a point there. Without a designated indoor space, for example, schools might just cancel recess when it’s raining or snowing. Oh, and the answers to those other questions above? Before lunch is better, the guidelines say, because recess can make kids hungry, and thus more likely to eat healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. And maybe they won’t throw food away uneaten. And they say recess should never be used as punishment, because it deprives students of physical activity  —   which can be a   outlet. ”There’s a lot that has to be squeezed in[to] that time a student is in class,” says Michelle Carter, senior program manager at SHAPE who helped develop the guidelines. ”I don’t think there’s a value placed in recess and physical activity.” The guidelines seek to impress on schools that recess isn’t just downtime for educators or playtime for students. Research has shown that play helps students pay attention in class, prevents bullying and develops social and emotional learning. An evolving process  One school that has tried to put these guidelines into practice is Thomasville Primary School in Thomasville, N. C. The researchers at SHAPE and the CDC used the   through third grade school as a case study in developing the new policies. Alyson Shoaf, the school’s active living wellness coordinator, says the guidelines helped make recess part of the curriculum. ”There was really just nothing out there to help the   people support and implement this stuff,” she says. Before the new policy, Shoaf says, recess was often withheld from students as punishment. Teachers might be looking at their phones and not paying attention. And sometimes, students got into arguments. The new approach brought several key changes: creating special zones on the playground where teachers monitor students, scheduling teachers for recess duty and giving students access to the entire playground. The goals? More structure, more freedom and more fun. Initially, Thomasville’s principal wasn’t too wild about the idea. ”Absolutely not,” said principal Angela Moore. When Shoaf first brought the idea to her, Moore says the program seemed too structured, and she thought it would force the students to play games that didn’t interest them. But Moore says she changed her mind when she saw how much more active students were at recess. And how much more the teachers were involved. The numbers prove it was working: Schoolwide discipline referrals, she says, have declined  —   from more than 100 last school year, to 24 so far this year. If that pattern continues for the rest of the school year, Moore notes, it would be a roughly 50 percent drop. Alyson Shoaf says some teachers needed extra convincing, too. ”This was a process. It did not just happen overnight,” Moore says. ”And it’s still a process.” No equipment? No problem, A concern at some schools  —   especially in   neighborhoods  —   might be whether a structured recess program would require a lot of expensive equipment. Not so, says Michelle Carter of SHAPE. She’s a former physical education teacher, and she knows the struggle educators face when there are minimal resources. ”You don’t need equipment to have recess,” Carter says. ”If you have a place for them to go and you have adult supervision and this plan in place, you can have recess for students.”"
"Heading a soccer ball is both a fundamental skill and a dynamic way to score a goal, but research says it could be causing concussions along with player collisions. Players who headed a lot of balls, an average of 125 over two weeks, were three times more vulnerable to concussion than those who headed less than four in that time period, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Neurology. These   players reported having concussion symptoms like headache, confusion and even unconsciousness. This adds more cause for concern regarding traumatic brain injury in soccer, a sport already notorious for high concussion rates. The cause of these concussions, though, has been disputed. One study showed   contact was to blame for 69 percent of concussions in boys and 51 percent in girls. So some argue that changing the rules to limit heading would only reduce concussion by a small amount. ”Before banning heading, the focus should be to enforce existing rules prohibiting   contact,” says Dawn Comstock, an injury epidemiologist at the University of Colorado’s School of Public Health who was not involved in the study. ”That’s the main risk for head injury in soccer.” Still, others say that the risk that comes with headers is worth limiting as well —  especially when the effects of repeated,   head impacts aren’t exactly crystal clear. ”Over a quarter of a billion people play soccer all across the world,” says Michael Lipton, a professor of radiology and   sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and lead author on the study. ”So it’s key to understand the long term effects of headers, a skill unique to the sport.” Lipton adds that the smaller, more frequent impacts like those from heading a soccer ball often sneak under the radar compared to violent collisions, but they could still pose significant threats to brain health. To unearth what symptoms accompany heading a lot of soccer balls, Lipton and his colleagues had 222 amateur adult soccer players take web surveys over a   period. The surveys asked questions like whether they played indoors or outdoors, how many headers they did, if they unintentionally hit their heads and if they had any subsequent symptoms like headaches or confusion. After crunching the numbers, Lipton and his colleagues found that players who headed more had more concussion symptoms, a risk separate from aggressive player collision. Still, the work still bolsters the notion that soccer concussions are caused by    contact, which Lipton says shouldn’t come as a surprise. Overall, 35 percent of study participants reported accidentally hitting their head against other players or objects like goal posts. Another 16 percent said it happened more than once. These occurrences also produced symptoms of concussion in many participants, but Lipton reiterates that player contact and heading pose two individual risks to brain injury. As for the physical effects repeated   head impacts have on the brain, Lipton says it’s still unclear —  though his 2013 study found some players who headed over 1, 000 times a year had tiny structural changes in their brains. He’s planning to work more with the players from his most recent study to see if and how their brains change over time. To minimize any risks associated with   head hits, some organizations have taken steps to limit heading in soccer leagues. And the concern grows for kids, as research shows their concussion symptoms linger around longer than adults’ and likely pose risks to their brain development. For that reason, some youth leagues saw heading eliminated for players 10 and under. As for a universal soccer   to limit headers, Lipton says they’ll need more evidence before tackling the world’s favorite sport. Comstock says she hopes this research doesn’t make parents pull their kids from soccer teams. ”The benefits of sports greatly outweigh the potential that any child will sustain an injury.”"
"Genetically engineered crops are nothing new. But emerging technology that allows scientists to alter plants more precisely and cheaply is taking genetically engineered plants from the field to the kitchen. The first version of the Arctic Apple, a genetically modified Golden Delicious, is headed for test markets in the Midwest in February, according to the company that produced it. It is the first genetically engineered apple, altered so that when it is cut, it doesn’t turn brown from oxidation. Okanagan Specialty Fruits, based in British Columbia, Canada, wouldn’t say exactly where the apples will first be sold, but says the target consumers are those interested in convenience. ”The rapid expansion of the   industry  —   bagged carrots,   salads  —   has led to explosive growth of fresh cut produce,” says Neal Carter, president of the company. ”I can cut this up for my kid’s lunch box . .. and it doesn’t go brown and they’ll actually eat it.” The Arctic Apple is one of the first foods often termed a ”genetically modified organism” (GMO) to be marketed to consumers, not at farmers. And it’s a sign of how the science of genetic engineering is evolving. The first genetically engineered crops were global commodities like corn, soybeans and cotton. They were ”transgenic,” meaning they were resistant to pesticides or insects after scientists transferred new DNA into the plants. ”We were taking DNA sequences from another, often   species, and moving it into plants,” says Sally Mackenzie, a plant geneticist at the University of  . In contrast, new crops are ”cisgenic.” They work within a plant species’ own genome. ”The next generation of technologies, those being implemented now  —   including the new apple  —   we’re not introducing foreign DNA any longer,” Mackenzie says. The Arctic Apple uses a technology called RNA interference, sometimes called gene silencing. The target is the gene in the apple that controls production of the enzyme that makes it turn brown. When scientists add an extra strand of RNA, that gene is effectively switched off, or silenced. ”We’re basically   a gene that’s already within that apple,” Mackenzie says. ”So I see that as entirely different. And I think it’s important for the average consumer to recognize technologies have moved on.” Advances like gene silencing and other gene editing methods, like CRISPR technology, make biotech   cheaper and more precise than the first generation of genetically engineered crops. New technologies are also less expensive for companies when it comes to federal regulations, as the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration require fewer costly tests. Huge companies like Monsanto have dominated the industry, Mackenzie says, in part because of the high cost of regulations. Old biotech crops were aimed at big commodities in large part because it was a sure way to recoup that investment. Engineered plants that don’t introduce new genes don’t face the same regulatory hurdles. Groups critical of GMO technology want to see stronger regulations in order to evaluate potential   impacts of biotech crops on health and the environment. Federal agencies are reviewing their rules around GMOs to catch up with the technology. Under the current regulatory structure, however, it is more economically viable, Mackenzie says, for smaller biotech companies to market their own innovations. ”You’re going to see more and more traits coming out that are really consumer friendly, designed to respond to consumer demand,” Mackenzie says. Corn will still get plenty of attention from plant breeders, but more companies may shift their focus from field to fridge. Most genetically engineered crops are processed into ingredients in foods, so when we eat them they are a few steps removed from the field  —   think soybean oil in salad dressing or corn syrup in soda. When the Arctic Apple hits the produce aisle, however, it will be one of the first GMOs to reach consumers directly, but it is not the only one. A   Rainbow papaya is already on the shelf. So is Simplot’s   russet, called the Innate potato. The fruit company Del Monte has approval for a pink pineapple engineered to carry more lycopene, an antioxidant that supports the body’s defense system. The labels on packages of Arctic Apples won’t say much about GMOs. They will have a   snowflake logo, and a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to reach a website with information about the science. That fits within the framework of a GMO labeling law passed by Congress last year, but it makes genetic engineering in food less obvious than many consumer groups have called for. The vast majority of consumers support clear labels on foods that contain GMO ingredients, just as the vast majority of scientists agree that they are safe to eat. For stores that may sell biotech fruits and vegetables, it pays to be up front with shoppers that these foods are genetically engineered. ”Transparency is what everything is about,” says Joan Driggs, editorial director of Progressive Grocer which covers the grocery business. ”Any retailer or manufacturer has to be transparent with their customer.” The big question for the biotech industry: Once consumers know how these apples are created, will they care? The Arctic Apple’s test run will last through March. Okanagan Specialty Fruits expects a wider commercial release this fall. This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration focused on food and agriculture. "
"International humanitarian aid organizations say the travel restrictions issued by President Donald Trump on Saturday could have a dramatic impact on how they operate. The Trump executive order temporarily bars all refugees and suspends  —   for the next 90 days  —   entry to the U. S. by citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The White House says the order was intended to protect the nation from ”foreign terrorist entry.” But the order raises many questions about the ability of aid workers to move around quickly and freely if they have ties to any of the banned countries. ”To function, humanitarians need visas and access,” says Sam Worthington, CEO of InterAction, a coalition of global aid groups. We spoke with several aid groups that work in the listed countries about the possible effects on their workers. 1. Aid groups are restricting employee travel. The executive order is clear about restrictions for anyone holding a passport from one of the seven restricted countries  —   and about exceptions. Some visa categories, like diplomats and U. N. workers, are excluded. But there’s a lot of ambiguity in the executive order on how individuals  —   U. S. citizens or otherwise  —   can travel to and from the seven banned countries, says Nick Osborne, vice president of international programs for CARE, a global aid group. At the least, Americans traveling to and from those seven countries could face scrutiny when returning to the U. S. In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus said: ”If you’re an American citizen traveling back and forth to Libya, you’re likely to be subjected to further questioning when you come into an airport.” CARE has asked its U. S. government contacts to clarify the executive order, wrote Holly Frew, CARE’s emergency communications manager, in an email to NPR. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the order, CARE has placed immediate travel restrictions on their staffers. For example, U. S.  employees from the seven nations aren’t being authorized to leave the country at this time. As an added precaution, U. S. citizens employed by CARE, either at home or abroad, are not to travel to any of the seven countries, wrote Frew. Oxfam, an international charity organization, says they’ve had to rearrange travel plans for American employees and nationals of the listed countries. The group is concerned about   impact on the movement of staff, says Emily Bhatti, press officer of Oxfam America, The lack of clarity could make it hard for groups to quickly deliver aid if a crisis were to arise. For CARE, the brewing food crisis in Somalia is top of mind. ”We need to be able to deploy staff within 72 hours,” says Osborne, citing the need for    employees like water and sanitation experts or logisticians who can map out food transport. ”If we can’t do that, people are going to suffer.” 2. For the next 90 days, aid workers who are citizens of the seven banned countries will not be able to travel to the U. S. In many countries, local staffers make up much of the crew that operates aid projects on the ground  —   especially in countries where ongoing conflicts put foreign nationals at risk. Many times, these employees have crucial,    knowledge that shapes aid strategy. These staffers come to the U. S. for many reasons. Save the Children, for example, brings experts from various countries to meet with members of Congress and U. N. officials, share knowledge with American colleagues and tell their stories to journalists  —   including NPR reporters. Last March, to mark the fifth anniversary of the Syrian civil war, Save the Children brought in an expert from a partner organization in Syria that specializes in education, health and nutrition. ”Jiddah,” as she was called  —   she used this alias for safety reasons  —   shared the conditions children and families were facing in the besieged areas. This March, the group was planning to bring to the U. S. two Syrian experts on mental health to speak at the launch of a report on the effects of civil war on children. The travel ban would make this virtually impossible. Since the executive order was signed, Oxfam has had to cancel upcoming visits from citizens of the listed nations, says press officer Bhatti. Skype and phone calls are no substitute for real    engagement, says Michael Klosson, vice president of policy and humanitarian response at Save the Children. These encounters, he says, are ”much more meaningful than strangers meeting over a conference call.” 3. Trump’s ban could cause other countries to place travel bans on U. S. workers. There’s a chance the seven countries may restrict Americans from entering their countries. If that were to happen, aid workers would likely be affected. Unlike diplomats or U. N. employees, aid workers don’t have special visas that ensure safe passage when traveling. ”In today’s environment, where the U. S. is issuing executive orders that put up barriers, we could expect that Sudan or Iraq or others will begin to make it more difficult for individuals who are providing aid to come to their countries, too,” says Worthington of InterAction. In response to the executive order, Iran and Iraq have both called for reciprocal measures. In a statement earlier this week, the foreign affairs ministry of Iran called the restrictions ”insulting” and said they would take ”proportionate legal, consular and political action and . .. will take reciprocal measures in order to safeguard the rights of its citizens.” The Iraqi government is considering suspending visas for American citizens. Currently, the group has one American employee working in logistics in Mosul, where he manages aid sites and procures aid goods to distribute. ”What would we do if that staff member [leaves the country and] can’t get back to Iraq?” says Klosson of Save the Children. ”Where can we find that expertise that the staff member has?”"
"Many travelers were detained in airports after President Trump signed an executive order that temporarily prohibits people from seven   countries from entering the U. S. The order caused widespread chaos and confusion at airports as protesters crowded terminals and agencies struggled to interpret the new rules. Caught in the middle were the airlines, which were not only dealing with passengers denied entry, but with their employees who might violate the travel ban, too. ”We actually did have some flight attendants who were detained in the process, flight attendants who can legally fly in and out of the country today for U. S. airlines or who are based in the U. S.,” says Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. ”These flight attendants, we have to remember that they are subject to background checks, they are subject to a security clearance that is required for them to do this work,” she says. Not only must airlines enforce stringent  . 11 screening for their employees, but flight crew members who aren’t U. S. citizens already need a special visa to enter the U. S. Now airlines are scrambling to juggle staffing to assure no flight crew members working U. S.  flights are from the seven countries singled out in the executive order. ”I think the order really came out as something as a surprise, both in its breadth and its speed to the airline community,” says independent airline industry consultant John Strickland. ”Airlines are by their nature global businesses,” he says. ”They employ people from many countries and passport origins.” Strickland says the executive order is especially difficult for airlines, such as Qatar Airways and Emirates, that are based in the Middle East. Those companies now have to quickly check the birthplaces and backgrounds of all their crew members, to make sure that those from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are not working on flights headed to the U. S. ”When you’re talking about a   airline with crews in different parts of the world and aircraft in different parts of the world, that’s really somewhat like jelly trying to get your hands on it,” he says. Airlines had no advance notice of the president’s action, says Jason Sinclair, spokesman for the International Air Transport Association. ”The executive order was issued without prior coordination or warning, causing confusion among both airlines and travelers,” he says. ”It also placed additional burdens on airlines to comply with unclear requirements, to bear implementation costs, and to face potential penalties for noncompliance.” Those costs include airfare refunds to customers who are told they cannot board, or who cancel because of the chaos. Airlines want clarity from the administration, and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly tried to provide some on the new travel restrictions in a news conference Tuesday. Kelly denied reports that even he wasn’t given details of the executive order until the president signed it, and said it will remain in place. ”We cannot gamble with American lives,” he said. ”I will not gamble with American lives.” Kelly suggested some of the new restrictions could be extended, and that some of the countries currently on the list may not be taken off of it anytime soon."
"Days after fire destroyed the Victoria Islamic Center in Victoria, Texas, donations to rebuild the mosque have passed $1 million. And that’s only one part of the support the mosque has received: Four churches and a synagogue say Muslims are welcome to hold services in their buildings. ”Our hearts are filled with gratitude for the tremendous support we’ve received,” wrote campaign organizer Omar Rachid, who attends the mosque. ”The outpouring of love, kind words, hugs, helping hands and the financial contributions are examples of the true American Spirit and Humanity at its best with donations coming in from all over the world.” With donations far surpassing the center’s goal of $850, 000, the fundraising page does indeed show a wide range of donors  —   including, on Wednesday, a man who described himself as an atheist Jew. ”But I send you my very best wishes and solidarity,” the donor, Vincent Graff, wrote. ”From one human to another, here’s to hope and kindness.” The financial support mirrors the Texas community’s efforts to support the mosque and its congregation. Hours after a raging fire gutted the building in the darkness of early Saturday, hundreds of people gathered for a prayer rally at the site. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, though the mosque has previously been targeted by vandals. With a congregation of fewer than 150 people, the mosque’s building was never insured, the Victoria Advocate reports. The newspaper’s Jon Wilcox, who reported from the scene as the mosque burned, told Texas Standard that it looked like an inferno. Later, he watched as supporters met to show solidarity. ”The reaction there was just overwhelming,” Wilcox said. ”Lots of tears. Very emotional. Support at that rally and also outside the rally . .. four churches and a synagogue in Victoria have offered the mosque to allow them to use their own property for worship services.” Discussing his synagogue’s offer to host Muslim services, Robert Loeb, the president of the town’s Temple B’Nai Israel, told the Forward website that in Victoria, ”everyone knows everybody. I know several members of the mosque, and we felt for them.” The synagogue’s offer prompted a Muslim woman who lives in Texas to write on the temple’s Facebook page, ”On behalf of the Muslim Community, I would like to thank you.” She later added, ”I am proud to call you all my brothers and sisters. Thank You!”"
"Updated 1:15 p. m. ET, A day after Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee boycotted votes to advance the nominations for President Trump’s nominees to lead the departments of the Treasury and Health and Human Services, the panel’s Republicans met in a surprise meeting Wednesday morning and voted to suspend committee rules to vote on those nominees without Democrats present. Sen. Orrin Hatch,   the chairman of the Finance Committee called the Democrats’ boycott ”the most pathetic thing.” Opening the meeting, Hatch said, ”We took some unprecedented actions today due to the unprecedented obstruction on the part of our colleagues.” Democrats consider the move in violation of longstanding rules on the finance committee, which require one member of each party present. Sen. Sherrod Brown,   posted a photo of empty seats in the committee room and said the Democrats were standing with people ”hurt by the abusive practices of Mnuchin’s bank.” Democrats boycotted yesterday, saying they had new ethical questions about both Treasury   Steven Mnuchin and HHS   Tom Price, as we reported: Price has been under a cloud of controversy for weeks over questions about whether he properly disclosed stock trading of a biomedical company, which says the congressman was able to purchase with a discount, according to the Wall Street Journal. As for Mnuchin, he faces more questions about his role in the foreclosure crisis as the head of OneWest Bank. As NPR’s Yuki Noguchi reported when Mnuchin testified before the committee earlier this month, he was grilled by Democrats ”for his role as CEO of a company that took over IndyMac Bank, now known as OneWest, which failed because of its bad home loans and later pushed through many controversial foreclosures, ultimately yielding massive profits for Mnuchin.” The Columbus Dispatch reported over the weekend that Mnuchin ”flatly denied in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee that OneWest used ’ ’ on mortgage documents. But records show the bank utilized the questionable practice in Ohio.” Hatch defended both nominees this morning. ”Dr. Price’s account of the investment hasn’t really been substantially refuted, let alone disproven. But, my colleagues claim that their misinterpretation of his testimony is grounds for an indefinite delay on his confirmation,” he said. Hatch also said the Mnuchin controversy is moot because there is ”no fixed definition” of  . Consumer advocates and the financial services industry have differing views on the term. Democrats have insisted that their issue with these nominees is strictly the issues they’ve raised, though Hatch accused them of being ”ready to leap off whatever cliff” that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asks them to. Schumer broke with   Senate decorum yesterday by voting against Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for Transportation Secretary. She was approved  . The minority party, with virtually no legislative power to block Trump Cabinet nominees as was illustrated this morning, is under pressure from liberal voters to do whatever they possibly can to stop Trump’s nominees from being approved. Democrats did stage another boycott against the committee vote for Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, who sued the agency over   regulations as Oklahoma Attorney General and has expressed skepticism of climate change. That vote was supposed to occur Wednesday morning in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. GOP committee chairman Sen. John Barrasso,  . called the move ”political theater,” and said there would not be a vote today, declining to force a vote in the way Hatch did. He also said Democrats were simply stalling because they don’t like Pruitt’s views. Sen. Tom Carper,  . said he didn’t like that Pruitt would not definitively say whether he’d recuse himself from the lawsuit by the State of Oklahoma that he had filed as attorney general against the EPA if he were leading the agency. The real fight could come now with Trump’s nomination of a Supreme Court justice. Federal Judge Neil Gorsuch will need 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle needed for confirmation. That threshold was removed for lower court nominees and cabinet positions in 2013. While the Democrats boycotted the Price and Mnuchin committee votes, they did allow other panels to move ahead on Trump nominees including Betsy DeVos for education secretary, Rick Perry for energy secretary and Ryan Zinke for interior secretary. Democrats have delayed the final floor vote on Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, but Rex Tillerson was set to be confirmed Wednesday afternoon."
"When House and Senate Democrats held a rally Monday night to oppose President Trump’s executive order on refugees and immigrants, the crowd wasn’t all on their side. Pockets of, ”Do your job!” jeers broke out, as did chants of ”Walk the walk.” A vocal wing of Democrats’ progressive base is growing increasingly frustrated that the minority party can’t seem to do much to stop Trump’s agenda. In fact, several progressive activists view the bipartisan votes for Trump Cabinet picks, like Defense Secretary James Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, as signs that many Democrats are failing to put up a fight. That’s despite contentious confirmation hearings and the Trump White House complaining that it’s not getting its nominees through faster. Democrats are hamstrung when it comes to stopping the Cabinet picks. Aside from procedural delays, the elimination of the filibuster (the   threshold to advance nominees) has meant Democrats are powerless to fully stop Trump’s picks unless multiple Republicans oppose them, too. No Democrat appears immune to the criticism, Even Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren found herself writing a defensive Facebook post after being criticized for voting for Ben Carson’s Housing and Urban Development nomination in committee. And despite taking the unprecedented step of testifying against the fellow senator’s nomination in committee, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has found himself answering Twitter critics demanding to know whether he’ll stand up to Sen. Jeff Sessions’ nomination as attorney general. Protesters disrupted an event organized by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse this weekend, and on Tuesday night, a rally titled ”What The F*** Chuck” was scheduled for outside Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Brooklyn home. A liberal Tea Party? In nearly every Senate office, phones are ringing off the hook with pleas to vote no  —   or do more to try to block Trump’s picks. Democrats argue that the bulk of Trump’s Cabinet picks are being delayed, and that less controversial nominations, like Mattis’ are being treated much differently than   Trump picks, like Rep. Tom Price for Health and Human Services secretary or Steve Mnuchin for Treasury. But that appears to be falling on deaf ears. A lot of the outreach has been prompted by the Indivisible Guide, an organizing project launched by former Democratic congressional staffers that is aimed at mimicking the successful Tea Party movement, but on the Democratic side. In the wake of Trump’s executive action on immigration and refugees, Indivisible organizers put together a conference call, urging people to ask their senators to do everything they can to walk back Trump’s order. ”One thing we want to make clear is, if you’ve got what you think is just a good, progressive senator, and they’ve made a nice statement saying they don’t support the ban, that’s not enough,” Indivisible   Ezra Levin told the call. ”And they can do much more. There are Senate procedural tools available to them that if they chose to implement them, they could slow down the Senate, or even stop all action in the Senate, which will go a long way to actually ending this ban.” Feeling the pressure, The fact is, many Democrats are appalled at the idea of grinding the government to a halt. Talking about the party’s tactics Tuesday, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown made sure to clarify that ”there’s not a plan to   or slow things down the way that Mitch McConnell did on   everything” when McConnell was the Republican minority leader. Still, as base pressure has ramped up, Senate Democrats appear to be changing their tactics. Schumer made waves in the   Senate on Tuesday by voting against Elaine Chao’s nomination as transportation secretary. In addition to being a member of multiple previous Republican administrations, she’s also married to McConnell. And Tuesday morning, Brown and other Democrats on the Finance Committee boycotted a meeting, in order to deny a quorum call and block votes for Price and Mnuchin. That’s not a permanent fix for Democrats. The committee will eventually meet, and the two nominees will likely be confirmed. But unlike Trump’s Cabinet, Democrats still do have filibuster power when it comes to Neil Gorsuch, the president’s pick for the Supreme Court. ”Make no mistake, Senate Democrats will not simply allow but require an exhaustive, robust, and comprehensive debate on Judge Gorsuch’s fitness to be a Supreme Court Justice,” Schumer said Tuesday night in a statement. The real test of whether Democrats are listening to these calls for more   stances? Whether and when the caucus allows for an actual vote on the court nominee."
"It’s an Indian dish you’re unlikely to find in India. Bunny chow is essentially a kind of bread bowl. You take a loaf of white bread, hollow out the middle and fill it with a curry, either vegetarian beans or some type of meat. But not rabbit. The name ”bunny” comes from the corruption of an Indian term referring to merchants. The dish has its origins in Durban, South Africa’s   city. ”It’s not known by Indian communities outside of South Africa,” says Rajend Mesthrie, a linguist at the University of Cape Town who has looked into its history. There are only a handful of places in the U. S. where you can order bunny chow. It’s a   dish that remains best known in its hometown. But bunny chow is classic fusion cuisine, in the sense that it resulted in the meeting of two disparate cultures  —   if not necessarily a happy meeting. There are many stories about how bunny chow originated, but the one cited most often describes it as a totally portable dish served up to black people under apartheid, South Africa’s 20th century system of racial separation. ”Bunny chow started as a way of selling food to black people who weren’t allowed to eat in certain restaurants during apartheid,” says Ameera Patel, a novelist who lives in Johannesburg. ”The bread was used as a holder, or a plate, so that nothing needed to be returned after eating.” Indians started coming to South Africa in large numbers during the 19th century. At first, starting in the 1860s, Indians were brought as indentured servants to work in the sugar cane fields around Durban. They were followed soon after by ”passenger Indians,”   because they paid their own way, coming to work as artisans or merchants. In those days, Indian cooks couldn’t find all the ingredients they used at home. The spice mix in a Durban curry remains distinct from what you’d come across in Delhi. And South African Indians made do with white bread flour as a substitute for chickpea or rice flour. In Imraan Coovadia’s novel, The Wedding, the    couple practically subsists on bunny chow after arriving in Durban in the 19th century. But Mesthrie and other scholars suggest that the dish was most likely created many years later, probably after World War II. ”I had no idea of the history of it,” Coovadia concedes. ”It was part of the Durban life I knew growing up.” Coovadia notes that the vast array of Indian cultures and castes were flattened upon arrival in South Africa. There, everyone became just Indian. The term ”bania” came from the Sanskrit word for merchant. ”From the ’bania man shop’ came the ’bunny man shop,’ and from bunny man shop came the bunny chow,” says Dilip Soni, a jewelry maker in Durban. Soni says the story he heard growing up was that beggars would come at the end of the day to ask for leftover food. The cooks didn’t have time to make them sandwiches, so they would dig out some bread and fill it with curry. Billy Mowbray, whose father opened the Victory Lounge in Durban in 1948, confirms that account. The more commonly told story, however, involves apartheid. The system, which was formally put in place in 1948 and ended a   ago, not only separated black and white people, but also Indians and ”colored” people (still the term used for   individuals in South Africa today). Every major city in South Africa has its ”suitcase sandwich,” some overstuffed creation that’s a meal put between slices of bread, such as the Gatsby in Cape Town or kota in Johannesburg. The very term kota suggests a link to bunny chow, Mesthrie says, because it’s a corruption of ”quarter.” Bunnies are generally ordered by size, such as a quarter loaf or half loaf. You would say ”quarter mutton” to order a quarter loaf of bread filled with lamb. ”There’s a whole range of all this food, a quarter loaf of bread dug out and filled with chips and bologna or all sorts of combinations,” says Panashe Chigumadzi, a Zimbabwean novelist and essayist who lives in South Africa. She notes that these dishes speak to the degradation of the black diet under apartheid, with the cheapest cuts, such as chicken feet and sheep’s heads, morphing over time into delicacies. ”This is a heart attack in a quarter loaf of bread,” Chigumadzi says. Mowbray says most of his black customers don’t order bunnies because they’re too expensive, even though, by American standards, they’re a huge bargain. (A mixed veg or sugar bean bunny sells for 15 rand at the Victory Lounge, which is about $1. 10, while the braised mutton goes for 48 rand, or about $3. 50.) ”The black regular workers around here, it’s quite pricey for them,” Mowbray says. ”They get a quarter (loaf of) bread and butter in the center, with a cup of tea. That’s fine for them.” Black workers subsisting on bread and soda for many meals are common all over the country. Even today, Coovadia says, there’s something transgressive about white people ordering   black or Indian bunny chows. ”It’s an exotic eating adventure,” Coovadia says. ”If you’re respectable, you definitely don’t eat with your hands.” Theoretically, it’s possible to eat a bunny chow with a knife and fork, but that’s like a New Yorker eating a slice of pizza using utensils. There’s an ad that’s been airing on Lotus FM, an Indian station in Durban, in which a couple argues about whether it’s ever OK to eat a bunny with a knife and fork. ”No, not each one to his own!” the man insists, arguing that some things are just beyond the pale. The ad turns out to be a public service announcement, noting that violence against women and children is also entirely unacceptable. Eating a bunny, with the sides of white bread growing increasingly soggy, can quickly turn messy. Zane Drew, one of the owners of Amawele’s South African Kitchen in San Francisco, worried about trying to sell bunny chows to his downtown food court clientele when the shop opened three years ago. ”You’ve got to eat bunny chow with your hands,” he says. ”This is the financial district and everyone is wearing suits and all that.” In South Africa, curries are contained within the bread loaf. At Amawele, the meat and sauce are served overflowing the sides. Nevertheless, it’s become a popular item. On a recent Friday afternoon, customers ordering it ranged from Americans who’d never heard of it before but found it intriguing on the picture menu board, to a young woman from South Africa who’s been living in San Francisco as a nanny and was overjoyed to be encountering her first bunny in a year. ”It blew up, bigger than we expected,” Drew says. ”Way bigger. I’m really proud it’s selling the way it does.”"
"When scientists first read out the human genome 15 years ago, there were high hopes that we’d soon understand how traits like height are inherited. It hasn’t been easy. A huge effort to find   genes so far only explains a fraction of this trait. Now scientists say they’ve made some more headway. And the effort is not just useful for understanding how genes determine height, but how they’re involved in driving many other human traits. At first, these problems didn’t seem to be so complicated. The   monk Gregor Mendel discovered that traits in his garden peas, like smoothness and color, could be passed predictably from one generation to the next. But Joel Hirschhorn, a geneticist at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Broad Institute, says it became evident that most stories of inheritance were not so simple. Height turns out to be a prime example. ”People’s height didn’t behave like Mendel’s peas,” Hirschhorn says. ”It wasn’t like they you had two tall people and they’d either have a tall [child] or a short [child]. Often the child was partway between the parents.” Scientists explained this 100 years ago, when they realized that height was influenced by many genes, and each makes a small contribution. So when the human genome was sequenced, scientists like Hirschhorn thought they could plumb that data to track all the height genes, and finally understand how height  —   and in fact most other human traits  —   are shaped by our genes. That effort started slowly. But now, Hirschhorn says. ”for height there are about 700 variants known to affect height, each of them usually with a pretty small effect on height, usually like a millimeter or less.” That massive global effort has involved studying the genes of more than 700, 000 volunteer subjects. Even so, the traits they’ve found only explain about a quarter of the inherited height factors. And, frustratingly, for most of those variants scientists have no idea what they actually do. Mostly the variants crop up in mysterious bits of DNA between genes on our chromosomes. That makes it hard to figure out their roles. So Hirschhorn and his army of colleagues, who reported on the effort Wednesday in the journal Nature, tried a new tack. Their study focused only on variants that are directly in the genes themselves. By knowing that the genes do, they can understand better how variants might influence height. For example, one is in a gene that influences hormones that regulate growth. The variants within genes are uncommon, but some have a remarkably large influence on height. ”We found some that, if you carry them, you might actually be an inch taller or an inch shorter, as opposed to just a millimeter difference that we found with the previous variants,” Hirschhorn says. Scientists are still very far from identifying all the genes involved with stature, but these new findings do help them better understand the natural biochemistry that influences height. So far most of our understanding of height has come from scientists who study children who have abnormal growth patterns, according to Constantine Stratakis, a pediatrician and scientific director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. ”There are rare experiments of nature that have told us these genes are involved in the regulation of growth,” he says. In fact, he discovered one of those rare genes, linked to a trait called gigantism. ”It leads to babies that double or triple their length in the first year of life,” he says. These natural experiments have been most useful for treating height disorders, but Stratakis hopes that eventually the   methods will provide leads for future treatments. The bigger lesson here is figuring out how the biology of a complex trait like height really works. Rare variants can sometimes make a big difference, ”but most of the time it’s all about systems that interact that define how an organism behaves, or grows, or has a disease, develops a trait and so on,” Stratakis says. ”And although it’s humbling to see the complexity, at this point it’s not unexpected.” Hirschhorn and his colleagues are expanding their already massive study of 700, 000 subjects. That approach has drawn skepticism from some scientists, who think it’s a waste of effort. David Goldstein, a professor of genetics at Columbia University, says an expanded effort could ultimately implicate every gene in existence, and that hardly helps scientists narrow down the biological factors that contribute to height. It’s likely scientists will never be able to figure out what these hundreds of common variants do to influence height, Goldstein says. Instead, a much better strategy is what Hirschhorn used in this latest study: looking for rare variants that pack a big punch. Hirschhorn is undeterred. ”We probably won’t get all of the way to explaining 100 percent of the genetic factors, but in some sense that’s not really our goal,” Hirschhorn says. ”Our goal is to use the genetics to do our best at understanding the biology.” To that end, Hirschhorn and his colleagues are not just looking at height they’re digging into traits that make people susceptible to diabetes and obesity."
"As Congress weighs repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the home state of Vice President Mike Pence Tuesday sought to keep its   Medicaid expansion under the federal health the health law. Indiana applied to the Trump administration to extend a regulatory waiver and funding until Jan. 31, 2021, for its package of incentives and penalties that are intended to encourage   Hoosiers on Medicaid to adopt healthful behaviors. Beneficiaries pay premiums, get health savings accounts and can lose their benefits if they miss payments. Though Pence now supports the health law’s repeal, the Healthy Indiana Plan that he established in 2015 as the state’s governor has brought Medicaid coverage to more than 350, 000 people. The architect of the plan was health care consultant Seema Verma, who has been nominated to head the Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services. Without Trump administration approval, federal money for Indiana’s expansion will run out Jan. 31, 2018. Indiana officials said the Medicaid expansion would continue even if Washington follows through on a Republican proposal to distribute federal Medicaid funds through a block grant program that would give states more flexibility in setting benefits and eligibility levels. State officials refused to say whether the expansion would continue if Congress repealed Obamacare and eliminated funds for Medicaid expansions. If that happened, it’s unlikely states would have the money to make up for the lost federal aid. Indiana’s effort to continue its Medicaid expansion demonstrates how states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act  —   even   ones  —   are counting on additional federal dollars to pay for those expansions. It also reflects deadline pressure: They can’t wait for Congress to finish its debate over the future of the health law because they need to set budgets and programs now for next year. According to Indiana’s request, continuing the Medicaid expansion will cost Indiana $1. 5 billion but bring $8. 6 billion in federal funding from 2018 to 2020. ”Indiana has built a program that is delivering real results in a responsible, efficient, and effective way,” Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, said in a statement. ”I look forward to maintaining the flexibility to grow this remarkably successful tool and to preserve our ability to respond to the unique needs of Hoosiers.” Several other states including Kentucky and Ohio are considering adopting features of Indiana’s Medicaid plan. Tuesday’s filing continues most core elements of the Healthy Indiana Plan, but also expands beneficiaries access to substance abuse treatment and adds incentives for members to quit smoking, use chronic disease management programs and take part in voluntary job referral and training programs. ”Certainly I think the new administration would give the waiver a friendly reception,” said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University. ”But again that doesn’t answer the question about whether the money is going away,” if Congress repeals the health law and the Medicaid expansion. Rep. Susan Brooks,  . broke the news of the waiver submission plans at a House committee hearing on Medicaid on Tuesday. ”It’s an outstanding program that I hope folks on both sides of the aisle see it is a way to save and help people who truly need it, and it can be replicated,” Brooks said. Some Republican plans to scrap and replace the Affordable Care Act don’t include a Medicaid expansion. Republicans have argued for years that the Medicaid program is broken and   adults who gained coverage under the expansion should not be covered. Under expansion, states received additional federal funding to expand eligibility to everyone with annual incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $16, 000. Holcomb isn’t the only Republican governor counting on Medicaid expansion and the additional federal funding continuing at least through 2018. Ohio Gov. John Kasich proposed a budget Monday that maintains expansion coverage for 700, 000 individuals. But Kasich plans to switch from a traditional Medicaid expansion to a more conservative version that will require beneficiaries to pay more out of pocket. This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization. You can follow Phil Galewitz on Twitter: @philgalewitz."
"If the last few years are any guide, one group that may find itself in the crosshairs of Rep. Tom Price, President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is an influential panel of medical experts. The U. S. Preventive Services Task Force, a group of mostly physician and academics from top universities, reviews medical practices to see whether they are supported by research and evidence. Under the Affordable Care Act, the USPSTF’s recommendations have been used to guide private insurers. If the group gives a test high marks, insurers are required to cover it. If it doesn’t, they are free not to. But letters reviewed by ProPublica show that Price twice pushed HHS to quash the task force’s recommendations to limit widely used cancer screenings. The panel said that the screenings too often led to unnecessary biopsies and other harmful treatment. Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee boycotted a Tuesday vote on Price’s nomination, citing unanswered ethics questions. In 2011, Price and other lawmakers signed a letter asking the head of HHS to ”push for the withdrawal” of the panel’s draft prostate screening recommendations. The panel was made up of ”bureaucrats,” the letter said, and decisions about prostate testing were best left to doctors and their patients. ”This recommendation jeopardizes the health of countless American men,” the letter said. The task force went ahead and in 2012 recommended that men of all ages forgo using blood tests to search for prostate cancer. The recommendation didn’t apply to men with a history of prostate cancer. Three years later, Price signed two letters protesting the task force’s proposed recommendations that mammograms be given every two years for healthy and   women between the ages of 50 and 74, and by individual choice for women between 40 and 49. Other groups, including the American College of Radiology, recommend starting mammograms at 40 and having them every year or two. In May 2015, Price and other lawmakers wrote that the USPSTF recommendations ”would jeopardize access to screenings.” In June, a second letter signed by Price and others with the GOP Doctors Caucus, went further, urging the head of HHS to ensure the recommendations weren’t finalized. The recommendations, the letter said, could ”result in thousands of additional breast cancer deaths.” Despite the complaints, the mammogram recommendations were issued in 2016. Proponents praised them as the fruit of the task force’s independent and   approach. But the guidelines raised the ire of a much more powerful constituency: the urologists and radiologists who made billions of dollars off the testing and related procedures. ”The dirty underbelly of screening is that it’s a great way to get more patients,” said Dr. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy  Clinical Practice and a close observer of the task force’s work. ”The financial underpinnings are huge.” The health care industry spends more money lobbying Congress than almost any other sector, according to the tracking site OpenSecrets. org. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, took in $479, 000 in health professional donations in the 2016 campaign cycle, one of the largest sums to any member of Congress. To be sure, the industry has a host of more pressing concerns, from the ACA and Medicare and Medicaid to the cost of drugs. But the task force’s recommendations have continued to draw complaints by lawmakers who received financial support from the industry. In November, lawmakers bashed its screening recommendations during a hearing of the health subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The task force ”can deprive patients of lifesaving services,” said Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican from Texas who received nearly $611, 000 from health professionals in the 2016 campaign cycle. His colleague, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who received $259, 000 in donations from health professionals in the 2016 campaign cycle, predicted equally dire outcomes. The task force, she said, ”turned its back on over 20 million women by finalizing erroneous guidelines that would limit access to mammograms.” Earlier this month, Blackburn   legislation that would, among other things, add specialists to the panel. The group currently consults with specialists in the areas they are reviewing. Critics of the proposed bill say specialists are not ideal to perform the task force’s broad array of evidence reviews, and adding them could create conflicts of interest. ”There is considerable support for ’draining the swamp’ in Washington,” Welch wrote in testimony he submitted for the hearing. ”But there is no swamp currently in the task force. Please don’t create one.” Questions sent to Price’s office were answered by Ryan Murphy, who is currently an HHS adviser. Murphy was most recently communications director for the House Budget Committee, of which Price is chairman. ”Dr. Price’s concerns  —   shared by others as you noted  —   were with specific recommendations made by the task force,” Murphy said. ”As a physician, Dr. Price knows firsthand the value of scientific research as well as how important it is to ensure patients and their doctors are able to make choices regarding treatments that they agree are in the best interest of the individual patient.” Price has embraced task force findings that recommend more treatment. In 2014, for example, he   a letter to the HHS secretary and the Medicare administrator asking that Medicare expand its coverage for lung cancer screenings for smokers based on task force recommendations. With the shifts in power both in Congress and under the Trump administration, proponents of the task force fear setbacks in the   push for   medicine. The task force has 96 current recommendations, which it routinely updates. Its $11. 6 million budget is funded through HHS’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which has been on the lawmakers’ chopping block in the past. If confirmed, Price or congressional Republicans could reduce the task force’s influence or independence, or cut its funding. ”Science is really under attack,” said Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition. ”We’ve spent decades building a scientific and research infrastructure and community all in order to produce the evidence that will save lives. Sometimes the science doesn’t give us the answer we would like, but it actually gives us the facts and the evidence.” While some disagree with the task force’s recommendations, its work is in line with a global push toward   medicine and with the guidelines of some other groups. The International Agency for Research on Cancer says there isn’t enough evidence to recommend for or against mammograms for women between 40 and 49. Like the task force, the American College of Physicians says mammograms should be an individual decision for women between the ages of 40 and 49 and be provided every other year at the patient’s request. The task force and others found widespread screening often led to false positives, painful biopsies and   operations for patients who were not actually at risk of cancer. Unnecessary screening also contributes to an overtreatment epidemic that the Institute of Medicine has estimated costs $210 billion a year. Dr. Kirsten   chairwoman of the task force, is a internist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. She said the attacks by Blackburn and others risk misleading patients about the effectiveness of screening for patients who are not at risk and are free of symptoms. ”Patients and clinicians need to understand the benefits and the harms so they are empowered to make the best decisions for themselves,”   said. Regardless of what happens politically, she said, patients and doctors will still need   recommendations to make informed decisions. The   work of the task force could be ”endangered” because the panel is caught up in the political fight around the ACA, said Dr. Sheldon Greenfield executive   of the Health Policy Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine. ”It wouldn’t surprise me if it does become a casualty.” The worst outcome, he said, would be for health care in the United States to revert to the way it used to be. The old joke is that doctors ignore science and say, ”I know best,” Greenfield said, trumping   medicine with ” ” medicine. Marshall Allen is examining how waste and overtreatment are affecting patients and raising the cost of care. If you have evidence of wasted health care dollars, please email him at marshall. allen@propublica. org."
"Georgia Republican Tom Price, who is   Trump’s choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services, is suddenly drowning in questions over the investments he has made while serving in the House of Representatives. The issue: Did Price use his position to influence the stock prices of companies he had invested in? Or, alternatively, did he buy shares in companies ahead of actions in Congress that might boost their value? Price says he followed all congressional ethics rules. But a handful of   trades, and his apparent affinity for companies involved in health care, have raised concerns about his investing habits. Price has served as the Chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee and a member of the   Ways and Means Committee. As an orthopedic surgeon, he is a member of the health care and doctors caucuses. Any way you slice it, he has been deeply involved in making health policy. Phillip Blando, a spokesman for Trump’s transition team, said in an email to Shots Thursday, ”Dr. Price’s investment agreements for the   accounts provide the brokers with 100% investment discretion. He provides no direction regarding the investments in those three accounts.” A broker directing investments doesn’t mitigate the appearance of conflict, says Rob Walker, the former chief counsel to the Senate and House ethics committees. ”You can follow the rules and still enter into situations where the public and the press might have questions about whether there are divided loyalties, and conflicts between the personal interest and the public interest,” Walker told Shots. So here are three problems Price is facing. 1) Innate Immunotherapeutics, Price owns shares in this   biotech company worth as much as $100, 000. The concern among Democrats in the Senate is that he may have bought those shares while having access to confidential information. Price told Sen. Patty Murray (D. .) during a hearing Wednesday before the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, that he heard about the company, which is trying to develop drugs to treat multiple sclerosis, from Rep. Chris Collins, (R. . Y.). Price said he researched the company, thought it was a good investment and bought a small amount of the stock in April 2016 on the open market. He later bought more shares, between $50, 000 and $100, 000 worth  —   in a   private placement, when stock is offered to a select group of   investors. The fact that Collins serves on the company’s board and is one of its largest shareholders raises questions about whether he may have had inside information that he shared with a select group of people. Since Price bought the second round of stock, the price has nearly quadrupled, according to Bloomberg. Price told Murray that he didn’t believe he got any inside information from Collins. 2) Zimmer Biomet, In March 2016, Price bought 26 shares in this   company, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of replacement hips and knees. Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare was testing   ”bundled payments” for joint replacements, under which a hospital receives a flat fee for all the care surrounding the surgery  —   including the cost of the implant. The idea was to give hospitals an incentive to negotiate for lower prices for the replacement knees and hips that Zimmer Biomet and its competitors make. Less than a week after buying the shares, Price introduced a bill called the HIP Act that would have suspended the pilot program. Democrats on the Senate health committee, including Elizabeth Warren (D. .) and Al Franken (D. .) suggested Price bought the shares knowing his actions would soon boost the value. Price told the committee he wasn’t aware he owned the stock because his shares are managed by his broker, who buys and sells on his behalf. In heated questioning during Wednesday’s hearing, Warren made it clear that Price’s holdings weren’t in a blind trust and that he was regularly informed about the specific stocks his broker bought and sold. She also outlined several actions Price took after he was notified that he owned Zimmer Biomet stock to advance the HIP Act, including convincing several colleagues to sign on to support the bill. ”I’m offended by the insinuation, senator,” Price said to Warren in one of the more heated moments of the hearing. 3) Other Trades In Health Care Stocks, In December, The Wall Street Journal reported that Price traded in more than $300, 000 in shares of companies involved in health care over four years. Price, as head of the House Budget Committee and a member of the   Ways and Means Committee, has influence over health care legislation, such as the Affordable Care Act and programs that include Medicare and Medicaid. Price disclosed all the holdings to the House Clerk’s Office. Those disclosures are made regularly and the Journal compiled hundreds of pages of data and analyzed the trades. Price hasn’t disputed the paper’s findings. In his agreement with the Office of Government Ethics, he said he would sell his stock in 40 companies, including Zimmer Biomet and Innate Immunotherapeutics. ”We have agreed to every single recommendation that they’ve made to divest of whatever holdings we have that might even give the appearance of a possible conflict,” he said. The OGE made clear on Twitter Wednesday that it works with incoming members of the incoming administration to avoid future conflicts, but doesn’t investigate accusations of past misconduct. ”These trades were disclosed on his periodic transaction reports,” Walker said. ”That doesn’t mean that they were   or   by an ethics official.” He said to avoid an appearance of conflict, members of Congress should keep their investments to mutual funds, or in a blind trust."
"We all love a good redemption story: We’re front and center to watch our heroes get knocked down, and then we cheer for them to triumphantly rebound. What we’re witnessing with Shelly    —   a. k. a. D. R. A. M.  —   is the culmination of a story marked by resilience and stubborn strength. Making a hit record in the music industry is extremely difficult, and in 2015, D. R. A. M.’s debut single ”Cha Cha” was on the brink of exploding. It was getting played in clubs across the country and bubbling on the charts the Beyhive even got a hold of it. Then Drake’s ”Hotline Bling” happened. The reports are conflicting as to the inspiration for the record, but there are glaring similarities in the sound of each. ”Hotline Bling” was even originally billed as the ”Cha Cha” remix by Beats 1, where the song made its debut. Needless to say, ”Hotline Bling” practically swallowed ”Cha Cha,” but D. R. A. M. didn’t whine about it. He addressed it and went back to the drawing board, crafting another smash. ”Broccoli” became one of 2016’s biggest hits while setting up the release of his debut album, Big Baby D. R. A. M. We recently invited D. R. A. M. to NPR to lend us his jovial spirit and brighten our workday after all, his primary aim is to spread love through music. He was jarred by the Tiny Desk setting for a moment before the cameras started rolling. He’s accustomed to touching every corner of the stage, but like a pro, he walked to the desk, activated his signature smile and bounced through various highlights from his catalog. D. R. A. M. whose name stands for Does Real Ass Music, wrote his first selection, ”Cash Machine,” right after he’d received his first big music check. Don’t you know that I got that bag, And best believe my mama straight, I sent some bands to Tatiana, And if I brought you out I’ll pay your way,  What twentysomething doesn’t feel this way once they step into some money? The crowd beamed more with each performance, leading up to a climactic rendition of ”Broccoli.” The energy is all fun and games, but his talent is no joke: ”Broccoli” is nominated for a Grammy this year, right alongside ”Hotline Bling.” A victory would provide a fitting end to this chapter of D. R. A. M.’s career, but regardless of the outcome, he’s already victorious: Far removed from the ”Hotline Bling” shadow, he’s already creating bigger songs and more memorable moments, like this one at the Tiny Desk. Big Baby D. R. A. M. is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) D. R. A. M. (vocals) Rogét Chahayed (keys) Taylor Dexter (drums) Wesley Singerman (guitar). Producers: Bobby Carter, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Colin Marshall Production Assistant: Jenny Gathright Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Imagine that one day you’re kicked off Facebook. It happens, regularly. You may not know why exactly. It looks like an algorithm may have done it  —   and now you need to reach a human being at the company to get back on. NPR has interviewed more than two dozen users in that situation  —   all people who rely on Facebook to do their work, make their living. Their stories, which we’ll share in a separate article, made us wonder: If you needed to reach Facebook, what would you do? Many people would go online and search for ”Facebook customer service.” We tried that, and got this number:   . It was prominently displayed as the top search result on Google. Google even made it a ”featured snippet”  —   that is, a result highlighted in a box at the top, enhanced to draw user attention and lend credibility. Please do not call it. You will get someone real  —   just not from Facebook. The first time NPR called, someone picked up and then put the phone down  —   maybe on a table. You could hear mumbling in the room. It felt suspicious. So NPR gave the number to Pindrop, a company that specializes in phone fraud. A Pindrop researcher, who has to remain anonymous for his work, called up and recorded as he pretended to be a Facebook user in distress. A call center operator named ”Steven”  —   who, according to Pindrop analysis, is based in India  —   says: ”Thanks for calling Facebook.” He is pretending to be a Facebook employee. The Pindrop researcher plays along and explains he is locked out of his Facebook account. He needs help getting reactivated. ”Steven” gives him very unusual advice: Go to a   or a Target. ”Just walk up over there and tell them to provide you an iTunes card. OK? And on the backside of that iTunes card there would be a   security code.” Maybe you see where this is going. Steven continues: ”You need to call us back on this same number and provide me that   security code so that I can activate that access and we’ll be giving you the password for your new  —   for your old account.” This is a scam. The top Google search result for ”Facebook customer service” led to a person asking for codes on iTunes gift cards. This is a   method of stealing from innocent people online. (Both Apple and the Federal Trade Commission have issued alerts about it.) That   ”Facebook” line was not just on Google. That number and others have been circulating on Facebook itself, on pages where users are asking for help, for at least a year. In one instance, a user asked whether the number was valid and a member of the company’s Help Team responded: ”There isn’t a number to contact Facebook. . .. It sounds like the email or notification you saw is likely a scam.” It’s unclear whether the Help Team member reported it to her superiors to investigate. ”Wow. Wow. Wow. That’s crazy,” says Marty Weintraub, founder of Aimclear Marketing. He wrote a leading industry book on Facebook advertising, long before the rest of the world realized the company would dominate the Internet economy. ”This is an astonishing result.” He also wrote a book on how to manipulate search results, to get your brand or product up on top. He knows that companies monitor their search results, to see what their customers want, and that criminals and competitors try to exploit powerful brands. These are standard practices. What Weintraub finds astonishing is that a term as basic as ”Facebook customer service” slipped through the cracks. ”It’s not like somebody’s searching for ’Hey, what color are Mark Zuckerberg’s socks?’ It’s not like it’s something that’s off the beaten path,” Weintraub says. ”So one would think that a company as large as Facebook would be monitoring [the] search engine results page for a major query surrounding their services.” According to Google data, ”Facebook customer service” gets searched, on average, about 27, 000 times a month in the U. S. Weintraub says that is sizable, that Facebook should have known about it ”almost the first minute” it came up, and that the company should have guarded its users. ”I’d be so scared,” he says. ”These are people who are looking for help with the product and they’re getting scammed. OMG.” NPR informed Facebook and Google about the scam line. Facebook said that it has been investigating the group associated with this   number for some time that this group is targeting many platforms and that it’s up to Google to explain why it displays certain search results. A Google spokesperson said in a statement that the company has taken steps to remove the fraudulent number. Neither company explained how the prominent search result went unnoticed. And to be clear, Facebook does not have a phone number for regular users to call. It does have an online help center, located here. (Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams.) NPR’s Aarti Shahani has started a page on Facebook for people to share concerns about the platform. It’s called Tell Zuck. If you use Facebook for work, and find you’re unable to reach the company, tell her your story at www. facebook. . "
"It was a dramatic market entry for the iPhone 7 last year. Many Apple customers grumbled when Apple took away the headphone jack and gave everyone an adapter to plug earbuds into the Lightning, or charging, connector. But everyone seems to have adjusted. Apple sold 78 million iPhones over the holiday season. In an earnings call, CEO Tim Cook indicated Apple could have sold more of them if it had enough in stock, says Gartner Research analyst Brian Blau. ”That was encouraging news,” Blau says. ”That means that there’s   demand out there, and that means that it’s very possible that that demand will be continued into this quarter.” Apple has more than a billion activated mobile devices around the world. Along with the increased iPhone sales, it’s also bringing in more revenue from its app store, iTunes and cloud services. Cook mentioned the current U. S. political climate in connection with future growth. He seems to believe it’s likely that Congress and the Trump administration will make it less pricey for Apple to bring billions of dollars back into the U. S. by decreasing the tax penalties. Apple is expected to move into creating original film and TV content. Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey says he could imagine a way for Apple to spend that money. ”Perhaps investing in a major studio in the U. S. in such a way that you can start making original content right away. Having more of that money here locally to do that would be one way to spend that money,” he says. Earlier this week, Cook was less sanguine about the Trump administration. He criticized it for the executive order banning immigration from some countries, which would affect some Apple employees."
"It’s been a tense week for immigrants and people of color throughout the country, but there was some good news in California: a new study by the advocacy group National Council of La Raza points out that the state’s Latinos, as a group, are doing much better in many areas. ”Latinos in the Golden State: An Analysis of Economic and Demographic Trends” reveals an increase in the median household income for the state’s Latinos, and a decrease in their poverty rate. Median incomes for California Latinos rose more than $5, 000 annually, and the poverty level dropped 2. 4 percentage points (a larger dip than for the state’s   white households). And more Latino children now have health insurance: between 2013 and 2014, California ”had the largest decrease in the number of uninsured Latino children,” according to the study. The state’s drop in those numbers accounted for a 44 percent drop in uninsured Latino children nationwide, although the report points out ”the Latino child uninsurance rate (4 percent) is still double that of   White children (2 percent).” Further, children who have access to health care are an indicator that covered children ”are more likely to surpass the economic status of their parents than those who lack coverage.”   enterprises are also on the rise: ”The number of businesses owned by Latinos in California increased by 43. 9 percent between 2005 and 2011.” They generated $98. 9 million in gross receipts in 2012, a 23 percent increase from $80 million in 2007. Since 1990, Latino purchasing power rose by 367 percent to $320 billion. Part of the increased prosperity may be attributable to more Latinos earning college degrees, a figure that increased by 25 percent from 2011 to 2015, nearly three times the increase for   white Californians (8. 8 percent). There was a similar bump for associate’s degrees earned in the same period. News for   Latinos is more sobering. While almost half of all students in California classrooms are Latino, less than half of Latino fourth graders were reading at grade level in 2015. (In comparison, over   of white fourth graders had   proficiency.) The math gap is even greater, with 17 percent of Latino fourth graders on or above math proficiency in 2015. Latinas also fall behind in key indicators. They have the highest poverty rates in the state, with just about 22 percent of those 18 and over living in poverty, according to La Raza’s report. The rate of Latina poverty is twice as high as   white women. Many are single mothers facing the high costs of rental housing and child care —  two things which sometimes add up to 74 percent of their monthly income. In general, California has some of the highest housing costs in the country, which might be a contributing factor to Latino homeownership stalling since 2012, as the report points out. (And according to the Center for Responsible Lending, the subprime mortgages offered to many minority families meant from   the collapse of the state’s superheated housing market in 2008 left many homeowners underwater  —   especially Latinos and African Americans. ) Because the state is 39 percent Latino, a group that skews younger than the general population, they represent a large and growing portion of the state’s economy and tax base. Arguably, the economic health and prosperity of California  —   and other states with similarly large Latino populations  —   will be intrinsically tied to its Latino contingent for the foreseeable future."
"Some physicists, mind you, not many of them, are  . They see the world or, more adequately, physical reality, as a lyrical narrative written in some hidden code that the human mind can decipher. Carlo Rovelli, the Italian physicist and author, is one of them. Following his   Seven Brief Lessons in Physics, a book that the author himself was surprised to see becoming so popular, Rovelli has a more ambitious book out (written before Seven Lessons). In Reality Is Not What It Seems, he describes his view of reality  —   the poem he has spent a career attempting to decipher. His writing style is enchanting, as lyrical as a book on physics allows one to be. His references to other poets, in particular Dante and Petrarch, exude patriotic pride and the understanding, unfortunately rare in most physics departments, of the deep connection between the sciences and the humanities as twin partners in the human struggle to find meaning in a puzzling and mysterious universe. How could one face the vastness of space and the shortness of life and not wonder about our place and purpose? Writing a   popular book on his ideas about quantum gravity  —   the theoretical attempts to bring together Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity and quantum physics, Rovelli had to rethread the   path of the historical roots of modern physics, starting with   Greece and advancing, through Galileo, Kepler and Newton to Einstein and quantum physics. But he does so with a fresh new look, showing a knack for summarizing difficult ideas in short and effective sentences. When describing how Einstein gave physical reality to Newton’s inert and empty space, Rovelli writes, ”the gravitational field is space. ..it is a real entity that undulates, fluctuates, bends, and contorts.” When describing the strange new world of quantum physics, where we can only claim the reality of a particle through its interactions with others, he writes, faithful to the ”relational” interpretation of quantum mechanics: ”It is only in interactions that nature draws the world.” Or, ”The world of quantum mechanics is not a world of objects: it is a world of events.” Rovelli sees the world as his (justly) beloved Ionian philosopher Anaximander did around 600 BC, as an eternal flow between events, some, like rocks or people, more ”monotonous” (durable) than the ones belonging to the fleeting reality of quantum processes. The nature of reality is a very tricky subject. Can we make sense of it, get to the end of it? Or are we so imprisoned in our own ways that, like the slaves in Plato’s Cave, we can’t break loose of our chains? In my The Island of Knowledge, I traced humanity’s evolving views of the world, also from the   to modern times, focusing precisely on the elusiveness of the very concept of reality and how it depends on our human perspective. To state, or believe, that the science we do brings us closer to a final, underlying truth seems to be as wrong historically as it is naïve philosophically. As Heisenberg memorably wrote, ”What we observe is not nature, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” The way we see the world shapes our narrative describing it. Even through the objective lens of science, it is still the human view of the world. If science is the best way we have to avoid being fooled by our perceptions, it still reflects those perceptions. The human touch is in everything we create, science included. To a certain extent, Rovelli’s view reflects this, as he retells the evolution of our answer to the question ”What is the world made of?”  —   what philosophers would call ontology. In Newton’s time, it was space, time and particles. After quantum physics and Einstein, it is spacetime and quantum fields. This is where the tension lies  —   and where we go to the edge of what we know, without any certainty of what comes next. It is here that hypothetical ideas such as string theory and loop quantum gravity, Rovelli’s favorite answer, appear as the next step into the deeper aspects of physical reality. And it is here that passions and preferred world views often cloud one’s judgement, biasing this or that goal with a sense of purpose that is undeservedly deemed unique or unavoidable. We are most blind at the end of knowledge, the boundary between knowing and  . What’s the big problem with quantum gravity? On the one hand, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity has equated space and time with the gravitational field, an entity that stretches and contorts in response to matter and energy. This is physics with a notion of continuity, applied at large scales, tangible to us humans, even if with weird effects like   times and black holes in space. On the other, it’s quantum fields, the notion that the very substrate of what we call matter and radiation is emergent from different kinds of quantum fields, electron fields, quark fields, photons and the like. Quantum fields offer an uneasy compromise between the continuous and the granular, where the particles we observe are excitations of underlying continuous fields, little energy lumps that bash against one another and with the particles of the detectors we use to measure them. Their reality is revealed as they interact, as Rovelli so clearly describes. The challenge is to somehow bring the notion of granularity to spacetime, bring the discrete to the continuous. This is the problem that has baffled theoretical physicists for at least half a century. Rovelli describes as masterfully as one can the basic ideas behind loop quantum gravity, how if we take the granularity of spacetime seriously, the concepts of space and time as we understand them dissolve  —   and we are left with a network of linked loops representing the fields that we attribute, at large distances, to spacetime. Applying techniques from quantum physics to the volume and area of space, it is possible to show that there is a finite spectrum of possible volumes and areas, a quantization of space itself, just as the energy levels of the electron are quantized in an atom. I was surprised that in the preface he claims his book is a first on the subject, even if he lists two others in the bibliography at the end. Both are very worthwhile Martin Bojowald’s Once Before Time: A Whole Story of the Universe and Lee Smolin’s Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. Since Rovelli has worked with Smolin, I find the inconsistency curious. The construction is incredibly ingenuous and Rovelli proceeds to apply it to many different situations. The only point of caution here, and one that surely defenders of both loop quantum gravity and string theory would consider so heretical as to be certainly wrong (but I advance it here anyway) is that all arguments that we have to quantize gravity, that is, to quantize spacetime, are based on analogy. Why do we need to quantize spacetime? Because spacetime is a field and all fields must be quantized. However, one could imagine that Einstein’s theory is a beautiful description of physics that is only effective at large enough spatial scales, that there is no quantum granularity of space that even though spacetime is described as a field, it is a very different kind of field from those describing matter and radiation fields, stuff that actually bashes into one another. In short, gravity is different. Reductionist arguments by analogy should be taken with a grain of salt. So, why try to do it? Apart from analogy, the usual answer goes as follows: because within the Big Bang picture of modern cosmology, as we go back sufficiently close to the beginning of time the universe itself becomes a quantum entity. This is quite possible, but we aren’t sure it’s an extrapolation. An alternative that has gained a lot of traction in the past few years is that the universe goes through a bounce near the initial time and its size never crosses the quantum barrier. (Of course, there are both loop quantum gravity and string theory solutions with bounces but we don’t really need these theories to find it.) Another reason usually given for quantizing gravity is that black holes are unstable objects and evaporate, losing their masses slowly. If we follow this process to its conclusion, what happens when a black hole disappears? What’s left at its very center or inner core? I’m bypassing a lot of subtleties here, but we could easily argue that we don’t know enough about black holes, and certainly about the final stages of their evaporation, to be sure that quantum gravity effects are present. It may very well be that black holes don’t completely evaporate, that something new and unexpected happens below a certain size, including a puff of radiation and particles well before it reaches the length scale where quantum gravity effects become important. (The Planck length, for the experts.) Whatever your take on this very complex issue  —   to quantize gravity or not, loop quantum gravity or superstrings or. .. Rovelli’s book is a gem. It’s a pleasure to read, full of wonderful analogies and imagery and, last but not least, a celebration of the human spirit, in ”permanent doubt, the deep source of science.” Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"President Donald Trump’s ”America First” pronouncements will frame the first major international trip of his administration this week, as Defense Secretary James Mattis visits South Korea and Japan. Trump’s disruptive approach to foreign policy may challenge an already shaky government in Seoul, Mattis’ first stop. ”I think visiting Korea to continue with the existing agendas is an   action that in a way, ignores the Korean people’s will,” protester Kim   says. She and others are spending much of this week outside the Korean Ministry of Defense, demonstrating against the coming visit. The current South Korean government may not last past the next few weeks. The defense minister who will meet with Mattis, and the acting president, are appointees of an impeached president, Park  . They’re placeholders, until the president’s impeachment trial is over. ”So, this is a real dilemma,” says John Delury, professor of international relations at Seoul’s Yonsei University. ”It’s a real dilemma for the Americans because they’re going to have a series of conversations with someone who really doesn’t speak for the South Korean public.” Among the Korean public there is distrust of the new Trump administration on Korean matters. Mainly because Trump’s statements have been, in the eyes of many South Koreans, inconsistent. Trump has said that he would be willing have a burger with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un  —   but also that the U. S.  South Korea alliance is stronger than ever. ”Trump was unexpectedly elected as the president,” protester Oh   says. ”But his eccentric actions are just unpredictable.” Which leads to another major question for the trip. ”Does Secretary Mattis actually speak for President Trump? Who’s really calling the shots on American foreign policy? Those are also huge questions that affect [South Koreans’] fate,” says Delury. A fate that matters for the entire region. And given the nuclear weapons just across the border, it matters for the world. ”The Korean peninsula is arguably the security fault line for Asia. You need to be very careful in your approach,” Delury says. Both key U. S. allies  —   South Korea and Japan  —   are hoping for some clarity in what that approach will look like under Trump. Haeryun Kang and   Gong contributed to this story."
"President Trump may be breaking many of the rules in Washington, but the tradition of   politics shows no sign of ending anytime soon. A   of Trump’s campaign aides have formed a nonprofit group called America First Policies to support and promote the president’s agenda, The Associated Press reported Monday. ”Some of the same   individuals who put their energy into getting Mr. Trump elected are now going to be part of a   group to go out there and help with the agenda, help the White House to be successful,” said Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital and data director. Also involved are Katrina Pierson, who served on the campaign’s communications team, and deputy campaign manager David Bossie, who also headed the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, as well as Nick Ayers and Marty Obst, advisers to Vice President Pence. The group appears to be a 501( c)(4) ”social welfare” organization. Federal law allows such groups to raise money in unlimited amounts without revealing the donors’ identities. They’re allowed to participate in politics, but it cannot be their primary purpose. In recent campaigns, 501( c)(4) s have become a major conduit for undisclosed money. Among the most famous of these groups is Crossroads GPS, which was founded by Karl Rove to promote conservative causes. ”You have a situation in which people who are accurately perceived as key political advisers to a sitting president are going out and raising money for a group that does not have to disclose their donors,” says Meredith McGehee, chief of policy, programs and strategy at Issue One, a nonpartisan group that works to reduce the influence of money in politics. ”And they’re doing it, and everyone who is giving understands the wink and the nod, that if you want the person in power to know that they’re playing on your team, to get the gratitude and support that president’s ambitious policy goals, you’re going to give to this entity,” she adds. Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a progressive group, says America First Policies differs from other 501( c)(4) s in that it is tied to a sitting president and aims to promote his agenda. But that is not unprecedented, Weissman says. ”When it’s designed and structured so that it can take   contributions from secretive donors, it’s a method for those people to channel money into [the president’s effectively] permanent campaign, with an expectation of reciprocal benefits. But the public will never know about it and moreover, if we did know about it there’s not much we can do about it,” Weissman says. Another group, Organizing for Action, promotes former President Barack Obama’s agenda, but it voluntarily reveals its donors."
"French authorities are investigating allegations that conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon hired his wife for what was essentially a sham position. He is accused of putting his wife, Penelope, on his parliamentary office payroll and paying her about $900, 000 of taxpayer money over a   period, according to the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaine. Fillon also reportedly hired two of his children. Hiring one’s spouse is not illegal, reports NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley, but ”there’s little evidence she actually worked.” ”The growing scandal is damning for a candidate whose greatest asset was his integrity and Catholic family man image,” Eleanor says. She adds that Fillon has denounced the allegations and is asking fellow conservatives to stay loyal to him. The Guardian reported Tuesday that French police had searched the lower house of parliament and that Fillon and his wife were questioned separately for five hours on Monday by   officers in connection with the allegation. Fillon’s support among French voters has faltered, based on a poll conducted Sunday and Monday, according to Reuters, which could hurt him in the rounds of voting in April and May, where he has been widely expected to face either   nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen or centrist Emmanuel Macron. The same poll found support for Le Pen had grown, despite separate allegations of misconduct. Le Pen has been asked to pay back more than $320, 000 to the European Parliament because two of her aides in Brussels were actually working for her campaign in France. She has denied any wrongdoing. Le Pen is a serious contender for the presidency, as NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reported in a story last week about the candidate and her National Front party platform: ”Though Le Pen calls Islamic fundamentalism one of the biggest dangers facing France, she says she is not  . Le Pen says there are two kinds of Islam and one is completely compatible with French values. ” ’Practicing Muslims, like Christians and Jews, have never posed a threat to French values,’ she says. ’But there’s another political fundamentalist, totalitarian Islam that wants sharia [Islamic] law over French law. And this is the one I will fight without mercy.’ ”Le Pen has made no secret of her admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. She says he always has the interests of Russia and the Russian people in mind, which is the way it should be. Le Pen supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea after what she called a legitimate referendum.” Eleanor says the scandals, particularly the accusations against Fillon, have boosted the fortunes of Macron, President Francois Hollande’s former economic minister who left the Socialist Party to run as an independent."
"Toward the middle of Paul Auster’s new novel, 4 3 2 1, young Archie Ferguson, recovering from a car accident that could have killed him, quotes the satire Candide to his optimistic girlfriend. ”You’re beginning to sound like Dr. Pangloss,” he complains. ”Everything always happens for the best  —   in this, the best of all possible worlds.” It’s hard for Ferguson to believe that he’s living in the best of all possible worlds. And he shares this belief with the three other iterations of him that make up Auster’s bold, remarkable novel. The Ferguson quoting Voltaire to his girlfriend is just one of four Fergusons: ”Identical but different, meaning four boys with the same parents, the same bodies, and the same genetic material, but each one living in a different house in a different town with his own set of circumstances.” 4 3 2 1 follows all four Fergusons from their births to a Jewish family on March 3, 1947, in Newark, N. J. (Auster himself was born in the same city, exactly one month earlier.) Each chapter is divided into four numbered sections, corresponding with each different version of Ferguson. They’re the same person, in a way, but their lives follow dramatically different paths. One dies at 13, struck by a falling tree limb during a thunderstorm his sections after that are left blank. There are a few constants among the different Fergusons. In each iteration, his father is a retailer and his mother is a photographer though their careers, and their relationship, have varying degrees of success. And each Ferguson has feelings for the beautiful and intelligent Amy  —   in one version, they have a   romance, in others, she ends up Ferguson’s stepsister and   respectively. Auster’s novel is never boring, but it can get confusing, especially at the beginning of the book  —   readers will likely find themselves flipping back: Is this the Ferguson whose father was killed in a fire, or the one whose father expands his store into an empire and thrives? But the differences become more clear as the book progresses and the Fergusons start making drastically different choices from one another. Despite its publication date, 4 3 2 1 is very much a novel of the 20th century. The Fergusons all bear witness to the assassinations and riots that marked the 1960s and ’70s, but Auster wisely chooses not to make Ferguson a Forrest   character, implausibly present for every significant historical moment. He also gives each iteration a subtle   about their parallel existences: One of them, at a fairly young age, thinks ”One of the odd things about being himself . .. was that there seemed to be several of him, that he wasn’t just one person but a collection of contradictory selves, and each time he was with a different person, he himself was different as well.” There aren’t many authors who could pull an   novel like this off, and it’s a little surprising that Auster manages to do it so well. That’s not because he’s not a great writer, but he’s never been known for his loquacity or long, flowing sentences before. But he’s a gifted observer, and his writing is so energetic, he makes it work with passages like this: ”Adolescence feeds on drama, it is most happy when living in extremis, and Ferguson was no less vulnerable to the lure of high emotion and extravagant unreason than any other boy his age . ..” Occasionally, Auster goes on a little too long  —   the novel is perhaps a bit longer than it needs to be. And his exuberant writing can get the best of him, like when he describes two teenagers kissing: ”. .. a delicious slobber of flailing tongues and clanking teeth, instant arousal in the rambunctious nether zones of their postpubescent bodies . ..” (There’s no accounting for taste, of course, but I probably don’t need to read the phrase ”rambunctious nether zones,” evocative though it may be, ever again.) Nonetheless, it’s a stunningly ambitious novel, and a pleasure to read. Auster’s writing is joyful, even in the book’s darkest moments, and never ponderous or showy. ”Time moved in two directions because every step into the future carried a memory of the past,” one of the Fergusons muses, ”. .. and while all people were bound together by the common space they shared, their journeys through time were all different, which meant that each person lived in a slightly different world from everyone else.” Auster proves himself a master of navigating these worlds, and even though all might not happen for the best in any of them, it’s an incredibly moving, true journey."
"Kristian Bush is one of the most successful artists in country music, both as a songwriter and part of the duo Sugarland. But his latest venture, Troubadour, is a musical  —   about country music in the 1950s, and a relationship between a star and his son. When it comes to collaboration, Bush says he’s open to just about anything  —   ”If you ask nicely.” That’s how he and Atlanta playwright Janece Shaffer ended up connecting on the project. ”I wrote him an email and we met for breakfast,” Shaffer says. ”By the end of breakfast, he’d written the first song for the show, ’Father to the Son. ’” Troubadour is a story about family and legacy  —   familiar themes in many country songs. The idea for the musical came from a clothing exhibition at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. ”It started out with church wear, dark clothes, dark pants, white tops, string ties, very, very plain,” Shaffer explains. ”And then there was this moment in the exhibition where it exploded with color and decoration and rhinestone  —   I wanted to know what happened at that moment.” That moment was in 1951, when tailor Nudie Cohn’s embroidered and   outfits began to catch on with country and western musicians. Director Susan Booth says a character based on Cohn was the original focus of Shaffer’s story. ”But it was an idea and it wasn’t yet a   narrative, and we talked for a while and she went away,” Booth says. ”And she came back and  —   all of a sudden  —   the story of the tailor was the story of a father and a son. It was a moment of profound transition musically, personally, and aesthetically. And I was in.” In Troubadour, reigning king of country Billy Mason is nearing retirement. His son Joe sings backup in his father’s band, but is looking to break out on his own. To convey a story that’s so intrinsic to Nashville, Booth says, it was important for the actors to have   stories that reflected those of the characters they would portray. So the   theater company held auditions in Nashville. Radney Foster, who plays Billy Mason, has had Top 40 country hits and songs recorded by Dixie Chicks and Keith Urban. He’d never acted before landing his role in Troubadour, he wasn’t used to the    of rehearsal, where it’s okay to fail. ”It’s really going to come down to my best effort to get the playwright, the composer, and the director’s vision in front of people,” he says. ”It feels weird to crash and burn in front people. I’m not used to that!” While Foster is steeped in the traditions of country, the playwright and composer come from more contemporary worlds. But Kristian Bush says it didn’t take a whole lot of work to find the sound of another era  —   not with Google on his side. ”[I] went out and started typing in obvious things, like ’country music in 1949,’” Bush says. ”So, I didn’t really have to go dig through bins.” Bush wrote 16 songs for Troubadour, 14 of which made it into the final show. Foster says it was a little strange at first to perform music written by someone else. But when he first heard the title song from the show, he was in.  ”Because that song is my life,” he says. ”And I think it’s really any other  ’s life.”"
"The tribal delegation visiting Sheikh Abdelraouf   was still talking in the very early hours of the morning last Sunday when his nephew, Abdullah, noticed strangers approaching on foot across the rocky, inhospitable terrain of central Yemen. ”Who are you?” Abdullah called out into the night. ”Who are you?” The men shot him dead. Startled by the gunfire, the Dhahab family scrambled to take up its own weapons and defend its house. According to accounts by locals, this was the way the battle began with U. S. special operations forces and some of their allies, which would unfold over several hours on the ground  —   and end with an aerial bombardment. By dawn, one American sailor was dead and three other service members were injured. Locals say numerous civilians, including women and nine children, were among the Yemenis killed. The U. S. military has opened an investigation, and U. S. military officials tell NPR that civilians were indeed among the victims. Taken together, claims and counterclaims from the U. S. military and local residents described a chaotic operation, one that drew sharp criticism from Yemeni officials who usually support the U. S. The aftermath of the raid shows the potential dangers if the U. S. military relaxes its current restrictions about using force and protecting civilians, which President Donald Trump has asked the Pentagon to review. One local man, Sadeq   was monitoring the battle from his village about 3 miles away, in constant telephone contact with men from his tribe who were visiting the Dhahab family. American officials described the raid as an attack on a compound. But Jawfi’s description was of a family house in a village with similar houses, albeit one with guard posts, where people were  . The Dhahabs and other families fought against the American raiders, who called in air support. The bombardment struck houses in which families were sheltering. Jawfi told NPR that 24 people were killed and provided a list of names including nine men, six women and nine children. He has served on a body known as a   committee, which works with the U. S.  Yemeni government in coordination with the United Nations to try to quell violence in the troubled country. NPR previously reported the death of the    daughter of   terrorist Anwar  . She lived with her grandfather in the capital, Sanaa, but was visiting her mother, who is Abdelraouf  ’s sister. The fighting also claimed the life of a Navy SEAL, Chief Special Warfare Operator William Owens. Other U. S. troops were injured when their aircraft   as part of the operation. On Wednesday, President Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base to take part in the transfer of Owens’ body from the military to his family. The casualties were the military’s first under Trump, who approved the special operations raid after planning began in November under his predecessor, Barack Obama. The battle and its aftermath, described to NPR by U. S. national security officials as well as the local witnesses, are the subject of a new investigation by the U. S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East. Although the Americans are continuing to look into what happened, CENTCOM Wednesday acknowledged ”regrettably that civilian   were likely killed.” By around 5 a. m. Sunday, the raiders were gone and the skies were clear, locals said. Abdullah   a tribal sheikh who lives in the village and confirmed much of Jawfi’s account, watched the attack from his house. ”I walked out of my house when it was over and began burying the dead,” he said. ”By noon, we were done.” Taissi said he counted about 28 bodies. Abdelraouf was among the dead, as was his brother, Sultan, and a tribal sheikh named Saif  . In Washington, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the raid  —   which he called ”very, very well thought out and executed”  —   had yielded valuable intelligence about   in the Arabian Peninsula. The local witnesses disputed that, saying the special operations troops never entered any buildings to take any computers or documents. Spicer said 14 of those killed were AQAP terrorists. Sadeq   also disputed that Abdelraouf   was a member of AQAP  —   though he did not deny family connections with the group. ”Look,” Jawfi said, ”there were brothers who had connections to   this is true.” But the three Dhahab brothers he named were already dead before Sunday’s raid  —   two killed by drone strikes and one by a fourth brother. Jawfi said Dhahab was working with the displaced Yemeni government that the U. S. and its allies have been supporting against Houthi rebels, who are armed and supported by Iran. In fact, Jawfi said, Dhahab had just returned from a trip to Maarib province to collect money to pay the salaries of   fighters. The Yemeni government’s foreign minister condemned the attack. A spokesman for the armed forces confirmed to local news media that Dhahab had been working for them. ”Abdelraouf   was not a terrorist or connected to any radical group,” said Mohsen Khasrouf, the spokesman. ”We are surprised this has happened.” Reuters, on the other hand, reports that AQAP called Abdelraouf a ”holy warrior.”  Also conflicted: Women in the compound may have started out as bystanders but became combatants when they took up weapons from the dead men, said one senior U. S. military official. Thus they would have posed a threat to the special operations raiders, complicating the issue of which casualties were civilian. Central Command may answer some of these questions in its investigation, but given the highly sensitive nature of U. S. special operations, the information may not become public. Trump has criticized Obama for being overly cautious against   and Trump’s national security advisers have suggested that he could lift current restrictions intended to avoid civilian casualties. Spicer suggested Thursday that the loss of life in Sunday’s raid was justified. ”When you think of the loss of life throughout America and institutions and in terms of the world, in terms of what some of the individuals could have done, I think it is a successful operation by all standards,” he said. The complex and risky nature of such raids is underscored by the death of a senior American special operator, the deaths of children and the fine line between being a legitimate tribal sheikh and one allied with a U. S.  government. Yemen has been in chaos since the fall of its government in 2011. As the poorest Arab country, it had always struggled, but its civil war has reduced it to the level of a failed state in which its onetime government,   Houthi rebels,   and other groups all are struggling for power. The U. S. has continued its   series of counterterrorism operations against AQAP throughout the conflict, while supporting a campaign of Saudi and other Arab airstrikes against the Houthis. But human rights groups have called the Saudi operations brutal, causing indiscriminate deaths of civilians as well as combatants. And a Saudi blockade of Yemen has created one of the world’s worst food crises, putting millions of people on the brink of famine. So far, Trump has not outlined a plan to try to put Yemen on a sustainable footing over the long term. Administration officials are, however, focused on the security dangers they see there, including the threat to the West from AQAP and the local danger posed by Iran’s use of the local Houthis. A suicide boat attack this week damaged a Saudi warship in the Red Sea, and last year, Houthis using   weapons launched missile attacks on United Arab Emirates and U. S. warships. On Wednesday, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn cited these and other ”malign actions” by Iran when he announced the United States was putting Tehran ”on notice.” The next time the Iranians launch a ballistic missile, attack ships or engage in similar actions, a senior administration official warned, the United States will take unspecified ”appropriate action.”"
"When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived at the State Department for his first day on the job, he made a point of visiting two walls in the entryway that pay tribute to fallen foreign service personnel. ”They died in service of causes far greater than themselves,” Tillerson told the hundreds of employees who packed the C Street lobby at Foggy Bottom. ”As we move forward in a new era, it is important to honor the sacrifices of those who have come before us, and reflect on the legacy that we inherit.” It was a message many diplomats needed to hear, after the White House called on ”career bureaucrats” to ”get with the program” or leave, remarks that were meant to target those who have expressed dissent over recent Trump administration moves. Tillerson’s visit was also in stark contrast to President Trump’s speech in front of a memorial at the CIA, where the president spent more time trashing media coverage of his inauguration than remembering career professionals who died on the job. At the State Department, there are 248 names on the memorial plaques, the first of which was unveiled in 1933 by Secretary of State Henry Stimson. According to the American Foreign Service Association, which maintains the plaque walls, these Americans died in 64 countries. Recent additions include Anne Smedingoff, a foreign service officer killed in Afghanistan in 2013, and the U. S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, killed in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. Tillerson spent a few extra moments reading the names of Benghazi victims. ”The safety of every single member of our State Department family, regardless of where he or she is posted, is not just a priority for me. It’s a core value, and it will become a core value of this department,” Tillerson told his staff. He also alluded to the dissenting views about the Trump administration’s suspension of the refugee program and the temporary ban on visitors from seven mainly Muslim countries. ”Each of us is entitled to the expression of our political beliefs, but we cannot let our personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team,” he said, assuring them that he would tap into their expertise. The   Texan and former CEO of Exxon Mobil promised to run the State Department efficiently. He also showed his humorous side, when he explained that he was late because of the morning’s National Prayer Breakfast. ”People felt the need to pray a little longer,” he said to laughter."
"Updated at 7:30 p. m. ET, Despite the religious underpinning of the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump couldn’t resist settling a score. He slammed former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his successor as host of Celebrity Apprentice, for poor ratings. He also got in a dig at the show’s creator, Mark Burnett, who introduced Trump at the breakfast. ”We had tremendous success on The Apprentice, and when I ran for president, I had to leave the show. That’s when I knew for sure I was doing it,” Trump began. ”And they hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster. And Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again.” ”And I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings, OK.” Burnett was critical of Trump during the campaign, saying, ”I am not now and have never been a supporter of Donald Trump’s candidacy. I am NOT ’ .’ Further, my wife and I reject the hatred, division and misogyny that has been a very unfortunate part of his campaign.” Schwarzenegger responded in a video on Twitter with a provocative proposal: ”Why don’t we switch jobs? You take over TV because you’re such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job and then people can finally sleep comfortably again, hmm?” The tone  —   given the usual sobriety and apolitical nature of the gathering of religious leaders, lawmakers and other dignitaries  —   was stunning, if not unsurprising given how Trump has long ignored the usual rules. Trump did get to a serious point, pledging to ”totally destroy” a law that bars political activity by churches and other religious institutions. Referring to the ”Johnson Amendment,” an Internal Revenue Service rule that forbids clergy to preach politics, Trump said he ”will get rid of and totally destroy” the amendment and ”allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.” Trump also made a reference to a report in the Washington Post that he had a contentious phone call with the prime minister of Australia, one of the nation’s closest allies. ”When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it,” Trump told the breakfast gathering in Washington, D. C. on Thursday. ”We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. It’s not going to happen anymore.” Trump referred to the controversial temporary ban on travel from seven nations and the pause in immigration he has implemented. ”We want people to come into our nation,” he said, ”but we want people to love us and to love our values, not to hate us and to hate our values.” Many religious leaders have been critical of the refugee ban. The Johnson Amendment is named for  . Lyndon Johnson, who proposed the rule forbidding   institutions such as churches to become involved in politics. It was imposed in 1954. Trump promised several times during his campaign to revoke it. He has not said how or when he intends to follow through on his pledge. Trump called the annual gathering a testament to the power of faith and one of the great customs of the nation. He said he hopes ”to be here seven more times with you.”"
"Ruffling U. S. ties with one of its closest allies, President Trump is sharply criticizing an   agreement with Australia  —   a deal that also reportedly prompted the American leader to tell Australia’s prime minister that his was the ”worst” phone call Trump received after his inauguration. Late Wednesday night, the president vented his anger on Twitter, saying: ”Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!” As the Australian Broadcasting Network notes, Trump’s tweet ”incorrectly labels refugees ’illegal immigrants’ and cites ’thousands’ of people instead of 1, 250.” The deal concerns refugees, many of them children, who’ve been housed in offshore detention centers on Nauru and other islands. The arrangement has been controversial in Australia, particularly after incidents of abuse emerged. Speaking to a radio station in Sydney, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he’s aware Trump doesn’t like the agreement, but, he added, the question is will he commit to honor the deal. He has given that commitment.” Turnbull says he’s disappointed that details about his communication with Trump were leaked  —   and while acknowledging that the talk was ”very frank and forthright,” he has dismissed the version of events reported by some outlets, that the American president hung up on his Australian counterpart. ”The report that the president hung up is not correct,” Turnbull told Sydney radio station 2GB. ”The call ended courteously.” After news of the apparent rift emerged, Sen. John McCain said he called the Australian ambassador ”to express my unwavering support for alliance” with the country that he described as one of America’s oldest friends and allies. The two allies, McCain noted, have fought together from World War I to Vietnam and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. From Melbourne, Louisa Lim reports for our Newscast unit: ”The trouble started during an acrimonious telephone call between Trump and Turnbull. The U. S. president had spoken to four other world leaders. But he told Turnbull this was the ’worst call by far’ and ended it abruptly, according to The Washington Post.” Louisa adds, ”This episode has already added weight to calls for Australia to   its decision to host U. S. Marines.”"
"Just how bad is the state of the nation’s highway infrastructure? So bad, tires on FedEx trucks last only half as long as they did 20 years ago, as they deteriorate rapidly from crumbling pavement and get more flats from gaping potholes. ”We’re using almost 100 percent more tires to produce the same mileage of transportation,” FedEx Chairman and CEO Fred Smith told the U. S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Wednesday. ”Why is that? Because the road infrastructure has so many potholes in it, it’s tearing up tires faster than before.” In addition, ”the cost of congestion is getting worse,” Smith continued. ”It’s preventing   deliveries” for his and other businesses whose growth is dependent upon   orders and rapid,    delivery. The House committee is beginning to lay the groundwork for what is expected to be a massive infrastructure proposal from the Trump administration in coming months. The president has said he will spend up to $1 trillion rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges, tunnels and airports but has offered few specifics. The hearing was intended to outline the vast need for infrastructure improvements and start discussing ways to pay for it but therein lies the rub. There is almost universal agreement that there’s a great list of things in need of repair, whether seaports or airports, railways or waterways. But few in Congress, especially in the majority party, seem willing to back specific taxes or fees to fund infrastructure. ”Finding the money is the   gorilla in the room,” said Republican Rep. Brian Babin of Texas. Democrat Peter DeFazio of Oregon reminded fellow committee members that the Highway Trust Fund is running out of money because the current 18. 4 cents per gallon federal gas tax falls far short of funding present needs. DeFazio says the existing highway and transit spending plan already relies on ”gimmicks” and ”funny money that we’ll never see.” The Trump administration has floated a plan to use tax credits to lure private investment in infrastructure projects, but experts say that can work only for projects such as toll roads that will generate a revenue stream to pay off investors. And none of the corporate chief executives testifying before the committee Wednesday said they believe such   partnerships could generate anywhere near enough revenue to meet the infrastructure needs. ”We at Federal Express support an increase in the gas tax,” said Smith. But he quickly added that his company is rapidly moving toward using more electric, hybrid electric and natural gas fueled vehicles, which would not pay traditional gasoline and diesel taxes. So he says his company would support a tax on vehicle miles traveled, tolls or   pricing, which would charge all highway users. Others testifying before the committee, including David MacLennan, CEO of agribusiness giant Cargill BMW of North America CEO Ludwig Willisch Mary Andringa, CEO of   manufacturer Vermeer Corp. and   President Richard Trumka, expressed support for increased user fees to pay for fixing up, rebuilding and expanding the nation’s infrastructure. But a coalition called the Alliance for   Interstates, which includes the American Trucking Associations and the   Independent Drivers Association, asks committee members to ”reject tolling of existing interstates as a financing method.” Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, a Republican from Pennsylvania, told The Washington Post this week that adding tolls to existing interstate highways is a political nonstarter. Such opposition to tolls, combined with ”no tax increase” pledges signed by many Republicans, reduces the prospects for any increase in motor fuel taxes, frustrating some Democrats. DeFazio suggests his proposal for a small increase in the gas tax that is indexed to inflation would have few political consequences. ”Gas would go up 2 cents a gallon,” he said. ”Anybody think they’re going to lose their election over that?” Near the end of the hearing, which lasted more than three hours, Democratic Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada said it ended up sounding like too many hearings in Congress in years past. ”We’re having the same conversation,” she said. ”I keep hearing the same rhetoric without action.”"
"It’s tempting to keep the computer running late and promise yourself an extra 30 minutes of bed rest in the morning. It’s tempting to do it again the next night, too. But sleep inevitably loses out to getting up early for school or work. There’s a simple way to combat this: End all artificial lights at night for at least a weekend and drench your eyes in natural morning light, says Kenneth Wright, a professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and senior author on a study on resetting sleep cycles. The most straightforward way of doing this is to forbid any electronics on a camping trip. In the study, published Thursday in Current Biology, Wright reports on the latest of a series of experiments where he sent people out camping in Colorado parks to reset their biological clocks. Small groups of people set out for a week during the summer, an experiment published in Current Biology in 2013. This most recent study shows the results of camping a week in winter and once over a winter weekend. Others stayed at home to live their life. Along with sleep, Wright kept track of people’s circadian rhythms by measuring their levels of the hormone melatonin, which regulates wakefulness and sleep. Before each camping trip, Wright says that he noticed something odd about the study participants’ melatonin levels. In general, melatonin makes us feel tired. Levels of the hormone rise a couple of hours before we sleep, and they fall right when we wake up. ”In the modern environment, those melatonin levels fall back down a couple of hours after we wake up,” Wright says. ”Our brains say we should be sleeping several hours after we wake up.” The participants’ sleep and wake times were slightly out of step with their internal clocks, like constantly being a little jet lagged. But after people got back from a   camping trip, the jet lag was gone. ”[Melatonin] would go down at sunrise and right when people woke up,” Wright says. And people’s entire sleep schedules had shifted earlier so that they were going to bed and rising two or more hours earlier than they had been before camping. Those who had gone camping for just a weekend had their sleep schedules shifted by a little less than an hour and a half. Why this happens probably has to do with how drastically different an environment lit by light bulbs and laptops is from one of sun and starlight. Outside, ”you are pretty constrained by natural   cycles and the intensity and light spectrum that you see in nature,” says Dr. Phyllis Zee, director for the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University who was not involved with the study. Natural light, particularly morning sunshine, which is enriched with blue light, has a very powerful influence on setting internal clocks. That bright light can affect our circadian rhythm is nothing new, Zee says. But this collection of studies make very clear how an artificially lit environment at night can push our sleep timing further back, while bright,   light can train our circadian rhythms to sync earlier in a way that is actionable. Sleep doctors will often suggest that people use a light box indoors in the morning to simulate dawn, but’s not always as effective as real dawn. ”I actually have used that [summer camping] study to treat some of my patients,” Zee says. ”We see people who can’t fall asleep until 4 am. It can be very difficult to use this light box in the morning and avoid light at night. So you say, okay, there’s this camping thing.” If camping is not your thing, Zee suggests trying to copy a natural   cycle, at least on the weekend. ”Over 60 percent of the shift can happen over a weekend. It’s pretty amazing,” she says. ”We can on weekends or days off go out or sit by the window and just expose ourselves to a natural   cycle.” And in a perfect world, homes, schools and offices would have artificial light that could mimic the spectrum and the intensity of natural light. ”As a new design philosophy, think about light as important as having clean air,” Zee says. ”It’s possible. It’s totally possible.” Angus Chen is on Twitter @angRchen"
"Researchers in Hawaii have captured dramatic footage of a ”firehose” of   lava plummeting down a cliff into the Pacific Ocean, sending fragments of lava and clouds of gray smoke into the sky. It’s coming from the big island’s Kilauea volcano, which has been erupting since January 1983. On New Year’s Day, about 21 acres of rock from the Komokuna lava delta collapsed. After that, ”the exposed lava tube continued to feed a cascade of molten rock down the steep sea cliff,” according to the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. That’s what we’re looking at now. It goes without saying that a tube of   lava is extremely dangerous. In the footage, the hot lava hitting cooler water continually explodes, sending off fragments of molten lava and volcanic glass in all directions. The USGS said last week that large bursts have sent the spatter ”about twice the height of the sea cliff.” The lava stream has appeared to narrow in the past few days. National Park representatives have set up a viewing area for the stream of lava, where visitors can see it from a safe distance through binoculars or a telephoto lens. Meanwhile, the researchers are concerned that the cliff itself continues to be unstable. They’re noticing a widening crack, ”making the site extremely dangerous for anyone who ventures too closely to the ocean entry by land or by sea.” Researchers can actually hear grinding noises coming from the crack, and they’re warning that it ”could collapse at any time.”"
"The United Nations is warning that Somalia could soon be facing a famine without urgent international action, raising concerns about a repeat of 2011’s famine which killed more than a quarter of a million people. The country is in a severe drought after two seasons of weak rainfall, the U. N. said in a statement. ”In the worst affected areas, inadequate rainfall and lack of water has wiped out crops and killed livestock, while communities are being forced to sell their assets, and borrow food and money to survive,” the U. N. says. ”If we do not scale up the drought response immediately, it will cost lives, further destroy livelihoods, and could undermine the pursuit of key   and peacebuilding initiatives,” said the Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq. The number of people in need of assistance is rising rapidly. In September, that figure was at 5 million people  —   now, it’s over 6. 2 million. There are growing concerns about the possible human toll, but de Clercq emphasized that at this point, famine is not a foregone conclusion. ”A drought  —   even one this severe  —   does not automatically have to mean catastrophe if we can respond early enough with timely support from the international community,” he said. The U. N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Somalia representative, Richard Trenchard, pointed out some of the warning signs: ”Labour prices are collapsing local food prices are rising food availability is becoming patchy animal deaths are increasing and malnutrition rates are rising, especially among children.” Conditions are particularly severe in the rural area of Puntland, he said. And as NPR’s Gregory Warner explained, it’s rare for a famine to officially be declared, and can come after much of the damage has already occurred: ”Consider Somalia, a country that’s been mired in war and chaos for more than two decades. When [the U. S. government’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network] declared famine there in 2011, aid money poured in, as did television cameras. The famine was quickly defeated. ”But by the time the Somali famine was officially declared, at least half of its 260, 000 victims had already died. So by the time conditions become so dire that they warrant the famine label, it can be too late.” Somalia also faces regular militant attacks from the      group. The country is currently going through a historic political process. It has sworn in a new Parliament and is in the process of planning presidential elections."
"  bodegas across New York City’s five boroughs shut their doors at noon ET Thursday to protest President Trump’s executive order barring travelers from seven   countries. Under the order signed last Friday, travelers from not only Yemen but also Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria are barred from entering the U. S. for 90 days. The order also suspends admissions of new refugees for 120 days. For Sulaiman   who works at the Best and Tasty Grocery on 143rd Street, the travel ban sends the message that he is not welcome here. Audi was born in Yemen but has been in the U. S. since 2002. ”We’ve been here over a decade, and we’ve never posed any threat to anybody. We’re just here to make a living,” he told Annmarie Fertoli of NPR member station WNYC. Audi says he has started the application process to bring his wife and baby to the U. S. But he doesn’t know what happens next. Debbie Almontaser, who organized Thursday’s bodega protests, says about 1, 000 shops are participating. She says that restaurants and other stores have also closed in solidarity. ”The message that the merchants are sending is that they are part of the American fabric and the Muslim ban has devastated them and their families,” says Almontaser, who is of Yemeni descent. She too, is personally affected by the new travel restrictions. ”My   ’s wife is still stuck in Jordan,” she told me. ”She was awaiting her visa and now because of the ban she won’t be able to join him and her children.” At Best and Tasty Grocery, a sign greeted customers. It read: ”In support of our family, friends and loved ones who are stranded at U. S. airports and overseas, we are closing our business today.” Alina Babar, a hospital worker and regular customer, expressed sympathy for the strike. ”I think it’s brave of them to take a stand,” she told WNYC, ”and I think they have every right to do it, and I think that they feel like they’re being treated poorly.” Many bodega workers and their supporters have gathered for a rally at in Brooklyn Borough Hall in solidarity with the   community."
"A large crowd turned out to see Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day Thursday, waiting to learn whether the animal saw his own shadow on Gobbler’s Knob. Phil was in an unusually feisty mood, but once he settled down, he saw his own shadow, officials deemed. As aficionados of the annual ritual will know, that means we’re in for six more weeks of cold weather, and as the prediction was read out in in Punxsutawney Pa. a sign was held aloft reading, ”We love Old Man Winter.” But other groundhogs did not agree with Phil’s assessment. In particular, Staten Island Chuck  —   owner of the highest accuracy rating (at 80 percent) among prognosticating rodents  —   informed a New York audience that we would see an early spring. And to the north in Nova Scotia, Shubenacadie Sam concurred with Chuck. We’ll note that Sam seems to have the most polished media presence among his peers: When the door to his little house slid open this morning, he quickly emerged and sprinted across his snowy enclosure, delighting the crowd. It was the 131st time Punxsutawney Phil has shared his meteorological ideas with a grateful nation, and this time around, the information was  . His eponymous day seemed to sneak up on Phil, and despite more than an hour of loud music and the adoring shouts of human admirers that preceded the sunrise event, his handlers had to grapple with the groundhog so he could have his moment in the sun (or shade). Phil’s rambunctious behavior could be interpreted as a sign that he’s connected to a larger animal collective conscious  —   one that might recall that in olden times, the Gobbler’s Knob celebration included eating the star rodent, as NPR intern Cecilia Mazanec reports. ”But as Phil rose in popularity, he moved off the menu,” Cecilia notes. The event in Punxsutawney is a party, with officials wearing top hats onstage and many in the audience wearing groundhog hats made of brown fleece. For the record, it was around 30 degrees at the event this morning. To awaken the groundhog, the crowd chanted ”Phil! Phil! Phil! Phil!” The door on his   lair was unlocked. And then, on the count of three, his handlers (wearing protective gloves that they would sorely need) brought Phil out. ”He’s squealin’ he’s hollerin’!” the emcee said, before concluding, ”Phil is feisty!” The animal, known in his hometown as ”the seer of seers,” was then displayed to the crowd before being placed on a stump to determine whether he might see his own shadow. An official decree was then read aloud, declaring our cold future. If you just like the movie Groundhog Day and don’t know what the fuss is about, here’s a video for you."
"The famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow Thursday and saw his shadow. As the legend goes, the sighting gave us six more weeks of winter. (If he hadn’t seen a shadow, we would have been rewarded with an early spring.) But why is a groundhog predicting the weather for us in the first place? Here are a few tidbits of information about groundhogs and the day that celebrates their meteorological skills. Predicting new weather came from old tradition  A celebration of future weather conditions existed long before groundhogs were involved. Originally, the idea sprang from the ancient Christian celebration, Candlemas Day. It fell between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and clergy would bless candles and pass them out to people. Like Groundhog Day, if skies were sunny, people could expect a longer winter. And if the day was cloudy, warm weather was soon to come. Eventually, a hedgehog was brought into the mix, only to be later switched out for a groundhog. In the 1880s, however, groundhogs served as both the celebration and a meal: Members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club hosted the annual February celebration, along with a groundhog hunt in the summer. But as Phil rose in popularity, he moved off the menu. It’s not just Phil, and it’s not all about weather, From Pennsylvania’s less famous Grover the Groundhog to North Carolina’s Sir Walter Wally to New York’s Staten Island Chuck, there is no shortage of groundhogs called upon to predict the weather. Washington, D. C. even has Potomac Phil, a stuffed groundhog, though it’s unclear how a dead groundhog is able to see his shadow. But while we’re focused on the weather, it turns out there’s another reason male groundhogs pop their heads out their holes on Feb. 2. Stam Zervanos, emeritus professor of biology at Penn State Berks, in Reading, Pa. told National Geographic that these guys are looking for love: ”At this time of year, males emerge from their burrows to start searching for the females. The females come out probably seven days later and stay just outside of their burrow or maybe just inside their burrow.” After the male groundhogs lock down the address for their fave female groundhog, everyone heads back to their own house to burrow in some more. As Zervanos told National Geographic: ”In March, they all emerge together, and that’s when mating occurs. The males know exactly where the females are, [so] mating can occur very rapidly.” Crunching the numbers, Punxsutawney Phil is by far the most famous among these rodents, as his predictions are heard around the country. But how accurate are his forecasts? Since 1988, Phil’s predictions have only been correct about 46 percent of the time, according to USA Today. In comparison, Staten Island Chuck’s accuracy rate of 80 percent is nearly double that of Phil’s. In 2009, Staten Island Zoo’s Doug Schwartz told Time that Phil may be more popular, but Chuck had better numbers. ”You want accurate readings, you go to Chuck,” he told the reporter. But the members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s Inner Circle, who care for Phil and help plan the event every year, claim he is correct 100 percent of the time. The language and many lives of Punxsutawney Phil, According to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, the chubby rodent we see every year on Feb. 2 is the same one that has been making predictions for more than 131 years. (We have no idea how they ate Phil back in the day, and kept him alive for nearly two centuries too.) Every summer, Phil takes a sip of the ”elixir of life”  —   a secret recipe, of course  —   and it gives him seven additional years of life. Maybe he’s used that extra time to perfect his ”Groundhogese,” a language only understood by the president of the group’s Inner Circle. The current president, Bill Deeley, has been a member of the club since 1986. Each year Phil whispers his prediction to Deeley, who then translates it for the world. Last year, Phil told Deeley that springtime warmth was on its way. This year, the rodent of the hour advised we keep our hats and mittens handy. Cecilia Mazanec is a Digital News intern. "
"When Phil Connors, Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day, wakes up at 6 a. m. to an alarm clock playing Sonny and Cher’s ”I Got You Babe,” it sounds like a lovely and chipper musical start to a regular day. That is, until  —   spoiler alert  —   Connors gets stuck in a time loop that forces him to relive that day over and over and over again, and therefore start the morning listening to Sonny and Cher. Every. Single. Day. In honor of Groundhog Day, we figured we’d ask: If you had to wake up and relive the same record every day, over and over, for the rest of your life, what would it be? Here are what some of your   pals wouldn’t mind hearing on loop for all time."
"For the second time in as many days, a Senate committee’s GOP leadership has bypassed a boycott by Democrats to advance President Trump’s Cabinet nominees. The Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted the second meeting in a row to confirm Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA. Committee rules say that two members of the minority party must be present for a vote, but chairman John Barrasso,  . suspended the rules so Pruitt’s nomination could pass the committee with only Republican votes, and he passed  . Pruitt will still need to be confirmed by the full Senate, which appears likely. A Democratic aide from the EPW committee says they recognize that the move is ”allowable under Senate rules” even if it’s unprecedented for the committee. Upon reconvening the committee, Barrasso said: ”It is disappointing that they chose that course of action. We will not allow it to obstruct.” Hearings on Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, Rep. Mick Mulvaney,  . C. were moving ahead Thursday morning. Pruitt has faced fierce opposition from Democrats. He sued the EPA as Oklahoma’s attorney general and was asked during his confirmation hearing on Jan. 18 by Sen. Edward Markey,  . whether he would recuse himself from cases he was a part of. Pruitt’s response was that he would ”follow the guidance and counsel” of ethics lawyers at EPA, which was not a satisfying answer for Democrats. Democrats say they have not received full answers on Pruitt’s record and positions. The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Tom Carper,  . sent a letter to Barrasso on Monday requesting more records from Pruitt’s time as Oklahoma attorney general, as well as more complete answers on his positions regarding clean air and water regulations. ”It’s unacceptable and sets a dangerous precedent for the committee to allow him to stonewall on these important questions,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley,  . in a statement from committee Democrats after the vote on Thursday. ”This committee has conducted an extremely thorough and fair process of reviewing attorney general Pruitt’s nomination,” Barrasso said on Thursday. ”That includes a hearing of unprecedented length, number of questions and timely responses from the nominee.” In the past, Pruitt has questioned climate change. Here’s what the EPA nominee told senators at his confirmation hearing: ”Let me say to you, science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity in some matter impacts that change. The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact, and what to do about it, are subject to continuing debate and dialogue. And well it should be.” Democrats boycotted a hearing to vote on Pruitt’s nomination Wednesday. Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee did the same to block votes on Trump’s nominees to lead the Department of the Treasury as well as Health and Human Services earlier this week. On Wednesday, Finance Committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch,   suspended committee rules to approve those nominees without Democrats present. Delaying nominees is the most Democrats can do. Due to rule changes in recent years, Cabinet positions can clear the Senate with a simple majority, as opposed to the   threshold required on most legislation and Supreme Court nominees  ” setting up a big fight in the months ahead of Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Antonin Scalia. There is growing frustration among some Democratic voters that their leaders are not doing enough to block nominees. At a rally held Monday night by congressional Democrats to protest Trump’s executive order to pause the entry of refugees from all nations and immigrants from seven   countries, some in the crowd demanded action in addition to the words being offered. ”That’s just like the Republicans did for Obama, only this time with a good cause. They should really be fighting for everything they can do to hold up the administration,” Tom Johnson of College Park, Md. told NPR. In addition to boycotting committee votes, Democrats have delayed other Cabinet nominees on the Senate floor. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was confirmed Wednesday night after Democrats forced two full days of deliberation. Without the filibuster, Democrats have been unable to block any Trump nominees so far. The only one that looks to be in serious trouble is Betsy DeVos, the nominee to lead the Department of Education. An advocate of school choice, she lost the support of Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska on Wednesday. She has no support from Democrats, and if one more Republican opposes DeVos she will not be able to be confirmed."
"The U. S. Treasury Department has modified sanctions against Russia, allowing U. S. companies to interact with Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the FSB. The sanctions were imposed by the Obama administration on Dec. 29 in the wake of Russia’s meddling in the U. S. presidential campaign, and were meant to deprive the FSB of access to some technologies. NPR’s John Ydstie reported that some U. S. tech companies complained the policy limited their ability to sell their products to   parties in Russia, ”because the FSB controls the licensing needed to sell consumer products including things like cellphones and tablets.” The change announced today allows companies to do limited business with the intelligence agency in order to acquire those licenses. He also reported that ”a senior Treasury official who also worked on this issue during the Obama administration says the action represents a technical fix to avoid unintended consequences.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at a news conference that it was ”common for Treasury, after sanctions are put in place, to go back and look at specific carve outs for different industries or products and services.” During a Thursday meeting with Harley Davidson executives at the White House, President Trump was asked about easing sanctions against Russia and replied, ”I haven’t eased anything.” During a brief background call with reporters, a senior Treasury official said the department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control, which oversees sanctions, had begun to get complaints from U. S. companies on Dec. 30, and that the change covered mostly consumer devices and consumer software. The senior treasury official confirmed that there was a cap of $5, 000 per company per year on fees that could be paid to the FSB in order to obtain the necessarily licenses to sell their products, and that no exports are allowed to Crimea, which Russia took over in 2014."
"More than 70 people were arrested on Wednesday afternoon near the proposed route of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, as Western lawmakers expressed opposing views on the future of the $3. 8 billion project. The Morton County Sheriff’s office said it had arrested approximately 76 people who were camping on land the sheriff’s department said was privately owned, north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and south of the pipeline’s proposed crossing under the Missouri River. The   Last Child Camp was near the larger, and still occupied, Oceti Sakowin Camp established last year on nearby federal land, according to a Facebook post yesterday by Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, one of the groups that have organized protests against the pipeline. Across the Cannonball River, the Sacred Stone Camp is also still occupied by protesters. Construction of the final piece of the nearly   pipeline is awaiting approval from the U. S. Army. On Jan. 24, President Trump signed a memorandum encouraging the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the review and approval process, and earlier this week the Army said that it had been directed to expedite its review of the route, which requires an easement to cross under a portion of the Missouri River north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. ”These initial steps do not mean the easement has been approved,” the Army wrote in a statement. As we reported, on Jan. 18 the Army announced it was gathering information for an environmental impact assessment and that it would accept public comments through Feb. 20, according to a notice published in the Federal Register. It was unclear what, if any, effect the presidential directive will have on that process. On Wednesday, three Democratic senators, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Jon Tester of Montana,   a letter to the president saying they were ”deeply concerned” and arguing that truncating or overriding the environmental review process would be illegal. All three are members of the Senate Indian Affairs committee. ”Long standing legal precedent requires the United States to uphold its trust responsibility to tribes and to protect the lands and resources that were guaranteed to them by treaty,” they wrote. ”By ’expediting’ this process and proceeding without appropriate consultation and pushing for a predetermined outcome, the United States would be turning its back on its most solemn trust responsibility with the Tribe.” Other members of Congress disagreed. Rep. Kevin Cramer,  . D. repeatedly referred to the ”approval” of the pipeline project, tweeting, ”Start your engines. #DAPL #Approved” on Tuesday. ”Got word from the White House today and the Dakota Access pipeline now has its final green light,” he said in a video posted to Twitter. Sen. John Hoeven,  . D. the current chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs committee, issued a statement celebrating the imminent approval of the easement. Meanwhile, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe promised to ”vigorously pursue legal action to ensure the environmental impact statement order issued late last year is followed so the pipeline process is legal, fair and accurate.” As of Thursday, no formal legal action had been announced. The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, Dave Archambault II, requested that the president meet with tribal leaders, and he challenged the president’s authority to change the ongoing environmental review process. ”President Trump, the [Environmental Review Statement] is already underway,” Archambault wrote. ”This change in course is arbitrary and without justification the law requires that changes in agency positions be backed by new circumstances or new evidence, not simply by the President’s whim.”"
"Updated at 12:15 p. m. ET on Feb. 1, Sen. John Hoeven,  . D. said Tuesday that the acting secretary of the Army had directed the Corps of Engineers to ”proceed with the easement” necessary for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. If it’s granted, the easement under review would allow the pipeline to cross under a federally controlled section of the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. On Wednesday, the Department of the Army said in a statement that it had been directed to expedite its review of the easement request, but that ”these initial steps do not mean the easement has been approved.” The directive is in line with President Trump’s Jan. 24 memorandum encouraging the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the review and approval process. ”The Assistant Secretary for the Army Civil Works will make a decision on the pipeline once a full review and analysis is completed in accordance with the directive,” according the Army statement. On Jan. 18 the Army announced it was gathering information for an environmental impact assessment, and that it would accept public comments through Feb. 20, according to a notice published in the Federal Register. It was unclear what, if any, effect the presidential directive will have on that process. The project, which is slated to carry North Dakota crude to Midwestern refineries, has drawn protesters who say oil might leak from the structure and contaminate water supplies, and that construction is disturbing lands sacred to the Sioux tribe. In December, the Obama administration ordered a pause for an environmental study, but President Trump moved soon after his inauguration to support the pipeline, along with the Keystone XL pipeline for Canadian crude. Hoeven said he had spoken with both acting Secretary of the Army Robert Speer and Vice President Pence about the easement: ”This will enable the company to complete the project, which can and will be built with the necessary safety features to protect the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others downstream. ”Building new energy infrastructure with the latest safeguards and technology is the safest and most environmentally sound way to move energy from where it is produced to where people need it.” Hoeven also said he is working to get additional funds for law enforcement at the site. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has fought against construction of the pipeline for months, with members and supporters living on the site, trying to block construction. The tribe said it will continue its battle: ”[The announcement] is . .. not a formal issuance of the easement —  it is notification that the easement is imminent. . .. ”The Army Corps lacks statutory authority to simply stop the [environmental study] and issue the easement. The Corps must review the Presidential Memorandum, notify Congress, and actually grant the easement. We have not received formal notice that the [study] has been suspended or withdrawn.” Rep. Kevin Cramer,  . D. said in a statement that the pipeline is an ”important piece of energy infrastructure enhancing America’s energy security and putting North Dakotans and Americans back to work. President Trump has proven to be a man of action and I am grateful for his commitment to this and other critical infrastructure projects so vital to our nation.” Amy Sisk of Prairie Public Broadcasting contributed to this report."
"Humans get along pretty well with most microbes. Which is lucky, because there are a lot more of them in the world than there are of us. We couldn’t even live without many of them. But a few hundred have evolved, and are still evolving, to exploit our bodies in ways that can make us really sick. These are the microbes we call germs. Think plague, flu, HIV, SARS, Ebola, Zika, measles. This is a series is about where germs come from. In this first of three episodes, we see what our early encounters with germs may have been like  ” and how germs first got the upper hand. Next up: Episode 2: The Golden Age of Germs, What do you want to know about pandemics? Share your questions by submitting them in our special tool here. Our global health team will answer some of them in an upcoming story. . "
"During a   span, a team of primatologists witnessed 15 daytime births in wild gelada monkeys residing in the grasslands of   Ethiopia. It’s unusual to witness daytime births. Most monkeys and apes give birth at night, probably because it’s adaptive for new mothers to have time to rest and recover from labor before having to keep up during group travel and, possibly, confront predators. It’s still unclear why these 13 live births and two stillbirths  —   a small percentage of the overall births that occurred during the decade of observations  —   took place during the day. It may be because this   band of about 200 monkeys provides extra protection for new mothers through its sheer numbers, thus, to some degree, relaxing selection pressure against daytime births. Behavioral biologist Nga Nguyen and her colleagues in the Guassa Gelada Research Project describe the births in a new paper in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The paper provides ”the most detailed account of behaviors surrounding birth for any wild nonhuman primate to date.” Two issues taken up in the paper are particularly fascinating: How do the behaviors of experienced mothers (nine of the 15 geladas) differ from those of   mothers? And how does the geladas’ birth process compare with that of humans? On the first question, Nguyen et al. write this: ”At Guassa, gelada mothers with prior experience delivering at least one other infant were more likely to: a) give birth later in the afternoon b) give birth away from conspecifics c) manually assist infants out of the birth canal and d) consume the placenta following delivery of the infant.” These learned behaviors seem likely to confer advantages, as the researchers explain. Giving birth later in the day allows more recovery time staying away from the group might cut down on aggression from other females during labor guiding the fetus out of the birth canal reduces the risk that the infants might fall to the ground and eating the placenta may result in ingestion of a dose of   opioids. In humans, placentophagy almost never occurs  —   though exceptions do exist  —   and this is just one way in which we humans aren’t typical when it comes to primate birth. Women in labor usually have active help from birth assistants and, in fact, human birth is a social event or ritual visibly important to our whole family  —   maybe even our whole community. This isn’t so for the monkeys. This divergence attests to the intensification of our social and community bonds throughout the period of human evolution. Other differences are related to the evolution of bipedalism in the human lineage. Most of the gelada infants in this study (11 of 15) were born   with head and neck extended. Human babies are typically born with the top of the head appearing first and directed toward the mother’s spine, or as it’s sometimes called ”facing backwards” (as chimpanzees’ babies may be as well) with the neck flexed. Our   birth presentation happens after what Nguyen et al. describe as ”a complex series of rotations” as the fetus travels through the birth canal. That precise sequence happens because women, owing to our bipedal gait, must birth   babies through a pelvis that is narrow, with bony projections that protrude into the birth canal. Back in the 1980s, I studied how infant baboons in Kenya learn from their elders what foods to eat. Among my most memorable moments during those 14 months was rejoining my study group in the early morning to discover an       baby clinging to a monkey mom’s chest. I never was lucky enough to witness an actual birth, though, and so I was curious to know what that experience felt like. C. Barret Goodale,   on the AJPA paper who had witnessed two of the births, recounted this about one of them by email: ”I was following the geladas across the   grassland and was climbing out of a valley when I noticed [female monkey] Belle was adopting a strange stance and whipping her tail around in a peculiar way that I had never seen before. The realization that Belle was about to give birth struck me with a weight of responsibility and importance, and I responded by documenting every detail of the process I could, to the point of being painfully focused and even detached from myself during the event. Meanwhile, Belle’s family members continued to graze and grunt as though nothing spectacular was occurring, suggesting that this event is one, of only a few, that a female gelada bears alone.” Niina Nurmi, another   who had witnessed three of the births, also was struck by the isolation of the birthing females: ”While the geladas are habituated to human presence and data are being collected on subjects surrounded (most of times) with their group members, the birth events were characterized by a sense of vulnerability because while the other group members often kept moving further, the behavioral options of the individual in labor appeared to be limited by [her] condition. I recall feeling affected by the seeming calmness of the individuals giving birth, albeit the actual level of their inner discomfort or stress remained unknown to me.” Lead researcher Nguyen reflected on what the broad significance of this work might be: ”Like nearly every female mammal the world over, human females alone carry infants internally, give birth to them, and provide much (if not most) of their care after they are born. And like our primate cousins, human females give birth to   kids, and must somehow maintain ties with their friends and families even after giving birth, while being largely (or wholly) responsible for the   of their newborns. These are some of the challenges that human females share with their primate brethren, and research like ours highlights the ties that bind us to each other.” So, yes, specific differences are documented in how monkeys give birth versus women. But meaningful similarities exist, too, for female primates in these major life events. The ties that bind us in evolutionary perspective? I couldn’t have said it better. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve, and her forthcoming book, Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat, will be published in March. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"Federal health officials may be about to get greatly enhanced powers to quarantine people, as part of an ongoing effort to stop outbreaks of dangerous contagious diseases. The new powers are outlined in a set of regulations the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published late last month to update the agency’s quarantine authority for the first time since the 1940s. The outlined changes are being welcomed by many health lawyers, bioethicists and public health specialists as providing important tools for protecting the public. But the CDC’s increased authority is also raising fears that the rules could be misused in ways that violate civil liberties. The update was finalized at the end of the Obama administration and was scheduled to go into effect Feb. 21. But the Trump administration is reviewing the changes as part of its review of new regulations. So the soonest the changes could go into effect has been pushed to the end of March. Under the old rules, the CDC’s authority was primarily limited to detaining people entering the country or crossing state lines. The agency was also limited to quarantining people who had one of about a dozen diseases, including cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis, plague, smallpox and yellow fever. Yet even then, the CDC rarely exercised these powers and generally deferred to state and local health officials. With the new rules, the CDC would be able to detain people anywhere in the country without getting approval from state and local officials. The agency could also apprehend people to assess their health if they are exhibiting medical problems such as a high fever, headache, cramps and other symptoms that could be indicative of a dangerous infectious disease. ”Because of the breadth and scope of the definition of ill persons, CDC can target a much wider swath of persons to assess and screen,” says James Hodge Jr. a professor of public health law and ethics at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Hodge says the new rules are ”really necessary,” given the potential threat that infectious diseases pose. Some others who have studied the issue agree. ”The CDC has been operating its infectious disease powers under really antiquated regulations,” says Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. But other attorneys say they fear the new rules give the CDC too much power  —   with insufficient safeguards to protect an individual’s rights. ”It could represent a great danger to Americans’ health and civil liberties,” says Wendy Parmet, a health policy lawyer at Northeastern University. For example, she says, the rules would allow the CDC to hold someone in quarantine for 72 hours before their case is subject to review. And that review would be conducted by the CDC itself instead of an outside, objective entity. ”The concern,” Parmet says, ”is that unless these regulations are carried out with care, and by people who [base their actions] on science, they can be used to trammel the civil liberties of Americans.” Parmet is especially concerned that the CDC’s enhanced powers would take effect just as the Trump administration is assuming control over the agency. ”A lot of the signals we’ve received from President Trump suggests he may be inclined to not always listen to the science,” Parmet says, ”and to ground policy in what I guess we’re now calling ’alternative facts,’ instead of scientific facts. That’s scary.” When contacted by NPR, officials at the federal Department of Health and Human Services would only confirm that the new rules are under review they declined further comment. NPR also contacted the CDC, but the agency has not made anyone available to discuss the new quarantine powers. ”My worst fear is we have a replay of Ebola and we have, say, President Trump assert the policy he thought we ought to have when he was citizen Trump,” says Scott Burris, a professor of law at Temple University. During the   Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Burris points out, Trump tweeted that American health workers who got sick while treating victims should be prevented from returning to the United States for medical care. Some public health specialists fear the CDC’s new powers could backfire on efforts to prevent disease. For example, some sick people might hide their symptoms for fear of being detained. ”The   scenario is that people may try to evade these procedures by, say, taking medicines to reduce their fever, or be afraid to report it if they are feeling ill on a plane,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, a research epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. ”We don’t want to drive cases underground by putting measures in place that seem as though they carry some penalties associated with them,” Nuzzo says. Gostin agrees that the rules are imperfect and that quarantining anyone is a very serious step. ”It’s really a quite, I would say, draconian public health measure,” he says. ”The most draconian measure, because it allows you to literally imprison somebody who you don’t know for sure is a danger to the public.” But quarantines also can be key to stopping an outbreak, Gostin says. He believes the new rules give the CDC   flexibility. ”We know that the United States is vulnerable to a whole range of infectious diseases that are circulating around the world,” Gostin says. ”But we don’t know which one will be next. And so when something sweeps up on our shores, we don’t want to have delay and have political debate.” While he agrees the civil liberties protections in the new regulations should be even stronger, Gostin argues they’re better than relying on the protections in the old rules. The new president is a   ”germophobe,” Gostin notes. ”If you’re a germophobe, then you’re going to overreact and the last thing we want in the face of a public health crisis is overreaction,” he says. ”And I think having rules in place that are modern at least will provide some buffer against the whims of an administration that may overreact.”"
"They are just three little words  —   ”health savings accounts”  —   but they are generating a lot of buzz as Republicans contemplate plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Expanding the use of these accounts, based on a   conservative view that consumers should be more responsible for their health care spending, is a part of almost every GOP replacement plan under consideration on Capitol Hill. Here’s the theory behind HSAs: Making consumers bear a bigger upfront share of medical care  —   while making it easier to save money   for that purpose  —   will result in more judicious use of the health system that could ultimately slow rising costs. While the details of the current proposals differ, they all generally seek to allow larger   contributions to the accounts and greater flexibility on the types of medical services for which those funds can be used. Some include tax credit subsidies to help fund the accounts. Supporters say premiums for the insurance linked to an HSA are lower, and they like HSAs’ trifecta of tax savings: no taxes on contributions, the growth of the funds in the account or on their withdrawal if spent on medical care. But skeptics note the tax break benefits wealthy people more than those who earn less. Still, expect to hear a lot more about HSAs in the coming months. Here’s a rundown of some of the basics: How do HSAs work? HSAs currently must be paired with qualifying health insurance plans that have annual deductibles of at least $1, 300 for individuals or $2, 600 for a family, although surveys show average deductibles are generally higher than those minimums. Unlike some other types of insurance, the consumer pays the full cost of most doctor visits, drugs or hospital stays until the deductible is met. There are some exceptions for services deemed preventive, such as certain vaccines, prescription medications or cancer screenings. To pay for those deductibles and other medical costs, consumers can make   contributions to the HSA account. This year, that allowable amount maxes out at $3, 400 for individuals or $6, 750 for families, and unused portions can roll over to the following year. The amounts in the HSA grow   similar to retirement accounts. Some employers who offer   insurance contribute to the accounts on behalf of their employees. Money in the funds moves with the policyholders, even if they change jobs or insurers, similar to how workers can take their 401( k) retirement fund to a new employer. Still, polls have shown that most Americans already have little or no money saved for an emergency, so skeptics say they are not likely to embrace medical accounts. ”Americans who are struggling to afford health insurance right now don’t have the money to set aside,” said Maura Calsyn, managing director, health policy, at the Center for American Progress. ”Raising the limits is essentially just providing   individuals with a greater tax benefit and doesn’t do anything to increase coverage.” Critics also point out that older or sicker people could blow through their entire fund every year and never accumulate any savings. How would they change under GOP proposals? Several proposals  —   including the Better Way white paper authored by House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . would increase HSA contribution limits. Ryan’s plan would allow the   contributions to total as much as the insurance plan’s annual deductible and    maximum. For families, that could be more than $14, 000 a year. Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s Obamacare Replacement Act would get rid of the upper limit on contributions entirely. It would also allow the accounts to be coupled with any type of insurance, not just   plans. What services can HSA funds cover? Currently, money in the accounts can be used only for certain health costs, such as deductibles, copayments for doctor visits, hospital care and other    costs. The funds cannot be used to pay premiums on health insurance plans. Both the Ryan proposal and one from Rep. Tom Price,  . the physician nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services, would allow the funds to be used to pay fees directly to doctors, for ”concierge care,” which refers to arrangements in which consumers pay annual or monthly fees for special coverage that provides quicker access, longer visits or, in some cases, all primary care services. Christopher Condeluci, an attorney and former counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, said Republicans might seek to loosen the rules around what services are exempt from the deductible, potentially to incorporate medical care important to people with chronic illnesses, such as annual eye exams for people with diabetes. ”That would recognize that there are individuals who are high medical utilizers and   plans just are not appealing to them . .. unless you can change the definition to make them more appealing,” he said. How common are HSAs? An estimated 26 million Americans  —   policyholders and their dependents  —   are covered by some type of   plan. That’s a small share of the overall 178 million who have coverage through their jobs or purchased on their own, but it has steadily grown since HSAs first became available in 2003. Among employers who offered insurance last year, about 24 percent had   plans, with average annual deductibles of $2, 295 for single policies and $4, 364 for families, according a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) Paul Fronstin, with the Employee Benefit Research Institute, noted that the slow   is similar to most trends in health benefits. Now, he said, with the GOP focus on changing the health system, ”we could see an acceleration of that trend.” How much do they cost and what are the advantages? Eligible health plans may have lower premiums than other types of insurance because of their higher deductibles. Policy experts and economists say the accounts might make people better consumers of health care because they have more ”skin in the game” and are more likely to shop for the best prices on drugs, medical care or hospitalizations  —   and avoid running to the doctor with the sniffles. ”It makes people more conscious that the health care they are getting is being paid for with real dollars and not coming out of the ether,” said Joe Antos with the American Enterprise Institute. What are the disadvantages? For one thing, it isn’t easy for people to comparison shop on the prices for medical care. And, consumers don’t always make good choices. Among those with HSAs, overall spending on medical care does indeed go down, Fronstin and other researchers have reported. But they also uncovered a disturbing trend: at least in the first year or two, policyholders cut back on everything, including   services they should really seek. ER visits go up. And many even forgo screening exams  —   such as mammograms or other cancer tests  —   even though they are specifically excluded from the deductible and are therefore ”free” to the consumer. Bypassing preventive or other care could lead to higher costs in the future. Follow Kaiser Health News’ Julie Appleby on Twitter: @Julie_appleby."
"Updated at 6:40 a. m. ET, A planned appearance by   commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was canceled Wednesday at the University of California, Berkeley, after a group of protesters shot fireworks at police, broke windows, started fires and threw barricades. It’s far from the first time a Yiannopoulos speaking event was canceled because of protests, which occur regularly at his events. In a statement, the university said: ”The violence was instigated by a group of about 150 masked agitators who came onto campus and interrupted an otherwise   protest.” It said that at the time more than 1, 500 protesters were gathered outside the event. ”This was a group of agitators who were masked up, throwing rocks, commercial grade fireworks and Molotov cocktails at officers,” UC Berkeley Police Chief Margo Bennet told The Associated Press. Police put the campus on lock down for several hours. There were no reports of arrests or serious injuries, according to the AP. On Twitter Thursday morning, President Trump questioned future federal funding for the school, saying it ”does not allow free speech.” Sukey Lewis of NPR member station KQED captured images of the demonstrations. Protesters marched down the street with banners reading, ”Become Ungovernable” and ”This Is War.” According to the university, the talk was canceled and Yiannopoulos was ”escorted from the building and left campus” about two hours before the planned start time of 8 p. m. Yiannopoulos is an editor for the   website Breitbart News, which has promoted conspiracy theories and has been described by its former chief as ”the platform of the  .” The   is an   movement widely seen as espousing white supremacist and   views. Among other things, Yiannopoulos has equated feminism to ”bowel cancer.” He was banned from Twitter for inspiring racist tweets against actress Leslie Jones. The cancellation isn’t unprecedented. Yiannopoulos’ appearance at UC Davis was canceled on Jan. 13 after protests, and UCLA revoked an invitation to speak Thursday, according to The Associated Press. A man was shot outside a scheduled Yiannopoulos event at the University of Washington on Jan. 21. In an interview with Fox News afterward, Yiannopoulos blamed the violence on ”the left that is terrified of anyone who they think might be persuasive or might be interesting or might take people with them.” He continued: ”You know, I am not a scary   you know, kind of   as some of the posters claim. They put those things on posters to try to legitimize their own violence against me and against my supporters. Instead, I’m just sort of libertarian, gay,   provocateur who likes to, you know, present interesting arguments. . .. [The left] just cannot tolerate anyone popular on campus who does not subscribe to their own crazy views.” The tension between free speech and provocation has been a constant point of discussion and disagreement at many college campuses, including UC Berkeley. Yiannopoulos’ talk was ”the subject of much controversy here on campus, with people calling for the speech to be canceled and saying there’s no room for his message here,” KQED’s Lewis says. One protester held a sign reading: ”Hate makes spaces unsafe so why should we make safe spaces for hate?” ”On the other hand, Berkeley is also known as a bastion for the Free Speech Movement” of the 1960s, Lewis notes. The university said that while ”Yiannopoulos’ views, tactics and rhetoric are profoundly contrary to those of the campus,” it is committed to the ”enabling of free expression across the full spectrum of opinion and perspective.” The Berkeley College Republicans sponsored the event. ”The Free Speech Movement is dead,” they said in a statement. ”Today, the Berkeley College Republicans’ constitutional right to free speech was silenced by criminals and thugs seeking to cancel Milo Yiannopoulos’ tour. Their success is a defeat for civilized society and the free exchange of ideas on college campuses across America.” The UC Berkeley police tweeted that the lock down had been lifted shortly before 11 p. m. local time, and announced that classes and business will go on as scheduled Thursday."
"Sure, we all know the adage: ”The best things in life are free.” So why doesn’t anyone advertise them? We’ve got ads for deodorant, luxury cars and snacks  —   why not ads for sunshine, balmy breezes and children’s laughter? That’s the question we put to our listeners way back in 1972, challenging them to write some very noncommercial commercials and then producing a handful of our favorites. With a little help from our Research, Archives and Data Strategy team, we dug up that    dusted it off and retooled the challenge for more modern times. Go ahead, we told you in December, sell us something wonderful we can’t buy. More than 2, 000 people responded  —   with pitches for bonfires, breezes, silence and simple kindness . .. the list would last all day. As difficult as it was, though, we could pick only five of our favorites to produce with sound effects and professional narration to broadcast on All Things Considered. Here are our favorite little nuggets of joy, polished and posted here for your listening pleasure. Scroll down for all of them  —   or if you’d like to hear just one, click the link on an item below to go directly to its ad. PunsEar scratchesTreesNothingYummy words, From Maya Khurana of Chicago, Are plain old   jokes just not funny anymore? Is the classic ”Why did the chicken cross the road?” not getting laughs like it used to? If so, try puns! Puns come in all types, such as: What do you call in alligator in a vest? An investigator, Or, If a friend starts telling bird jokes, remind him toucan play that game. Side effects may include:Groaning, your friends getting annoyed, wanting to make more puns, making puns in random conversation, forgetting other kinds of jokes existed, and people judging you. Ask your common sense before trying puns, if the situation does not call for them, it may result in many annoyed looks. If you are in need of a new kind of joke, try puns! They may be cheesy, but the results are grate. From Carrie Ghose of Columbus, Ohio, Hi! Your dog here. I see you’re sitting down, reading a magazine. Have you given much thought lately to . .. Ear Scratches? Here, let me help you by nosing aside that distraction and positioning my head right under your palm. There . .. isn’t that better? That article was bumming you out anyway. My silky fur and the way I’m   my eyes in pleasure right now have been clinically shown to bring down your blood pressure  —   and add years to your life! Wait, no, don’t pick that back up. To get the full benefit of Ear Scratches, doctors recommend continuing for 90 consecutive minutes. Oh all right, how about three? There, much better. Ear Scratches: Yeah, that’s the spot. From Adam Drake of Broken Arrow, Okla. I used to worry about what I was breathing in . ..Oxygen? Nitrogen? Carbon dioxide? And then I discovered Trees. *Whispered* Trees. Yes, natural trees, with their photosynthetic respiration helping to produce just the right blend of breathable atmosphere that our bodies need. *Whispered* Trees. Trees may not be right for everybody. Side effects include tree houses, tire swings, fruit, shade, and woodworking. Please consult your biome before selecting a tree. Not every tree is right for every biome, enjoy trees responsibly.   safe and effective: Trees  —   now with chlorophyll! Available on a planet under you. From Jennifer Harmon of Belle Isle, Fla. In a world . .. where everyone’s on and no one’s unplugged. Where being busy is a badge . .. of honor. Where the race from the gym, to the office, to the carpool and to the kitchen is unrelenting. When your spouse asks, ”what should we do for dinner?” And your boss demands, ”I need this ASAP.” Every. Single. Day. And silence and solitude is only achieved When. Your. Phone. Battery. Dies. We bring you a new kind of hero: Nothing. **Triumphant music begins** Yes. Nothing. No phone, no Netflix, no cooking, no laundry. No scrolling, Snapchat, soccer snacks or swiping left . .. or right. Nothing is here to save you. (Seriously though, Nothing. Do it.) Coming to a   you this February. From Maggie Monaghan of University Place, Wash. For a better life, try saying some yummy words. If you’re feeling blue and need a smile, try the fun and fizzy words: schnitzel, papyrus, echinacea, vavavoom! If winter makes you crave a little warmth, roll the kitchen words around: cardamom, ginger, pepperpot, spice. Alluring words are always fun, as sensual in your mouth as chocolate truffles: kumquat, redolent, shimmer, dusk. And don’t forget the penny words, small and common: love, thanks, coffee, hello. Yummy words. Which one will you choose today? Audio produced by Mallory Yu. Thanks to NPR’s Research, Archives  Data Strategy team (RAD) which has been digitizing NPR’s archival content, for uncovering the audio from the original project. That tape  —   like 150, 000 hours of audio from the early days of NPR  —   had been stored exclusively on    tape and CDs, before our RAD team embarked on a project to preserve it."
"The late Justice Antonin Scalia may not have been the original originalist, but he popularized what had once been a fringe legal doctrine. He argued for it both on and off the U. S. Supreme Court and brought originalism into if not the mainstream then at least into the center of legal debate. Judge Neil Gorsuch, who is nominated to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Scalia’s death, is a   disciple of Scalia’s crusade. Indeed, in a recent speech, he recalled how he wept on the ski slopes of Colorado upon learning of Scalia’s death. So what is originalism? Scalia famously described it this way: ”The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.” What drove the increasing acceptance of originalism on the Supreme Court was Scalia’s uncompromising commitment to his personal judicial philosophy and the growth of the conservative Federalist Society in academia, spawning, in turn, more and more advocates of the theory. Also significantly contributing was the luck of the Supreme Court draw. From 1980 on, Republican presidents got the chance to fill seven seats on the Supreme Court, and at each rotation, the new justice was more conservative than the person he or she replaced. That, too, reflected the increasing conservative drift of the Republican Party, with evangelicals and other social conservatives gaining more power and influence. Scalia and other justices have embraced originalism as a way to check what they viewed as the growing and unbounded power of the judiciary. They contended that if policy changes take place, the changes should come through the democratic process rather than through the unelected courts. At a 2016 lecture at a law school, Gorsuch said the ”great project of Justice Scalia’s career was to remind us of the differences between judges and legislators”: ”To remind us that legislators may appeal to their own moral convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future. But that judges should do none of these things in a democratic society. That judges should instead strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be —   not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best.” There are no transcripts of the framers’ conversations while they drafted the Constitution, so no one knows precisely what they were thinking as they wrote it. There are, however, records of the ratification debates, which originalists rely on to determine intent. ”The modern version of originalism is looking for the original public meaning of the Constitution and isn’t looking for subjective framers’ views, so the views of the ratifiers, in that case, is more important,” said Todd Gaziano, senior fellow in constitutional law at the Pacific Legal Foundation. Critics of originalism contend that its advocates pick and choose when they are willing to defer to the elected branches. They note that originalists have been willing to strike down federal laws adopted by large congressional majorities, invalidating laws and reversing decades of legal precedents governing campaign finance regulations and voting rights, for instance. The living constitutionalists’ take on originalism, Gorsuch has stressed, as have other originalists, that the job of a judge should be to ”look backward” at what the Founding Fathers meant at the time they wrote and ratified the Constitution. Onetime constitutional law professor Barack Obama summarized the critique of that theory this way in his book The Audacity of Hope: ”Anyone like Justice Scalia, looking to resolve our modern constitutional dispute through strict construction, has one big problem: The founders themselves disagreed profoundly, vehemently, on the meaning of their masterpiece. Before the ink on the constitutional parchment was dry, arguments had erupted not just about minor provisions, but about first principles not just between peripheral figures, but within the revolution’s very core.” Those critical of originalism argue that a static interpretation of the law lags behind society’s progress. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, currently the Supreme Court’s leading liberal voice, embraces the idea of a ”living Constitution,” a notion disdained by originalists as too flexible. ”As I see it, it isn’t the Supreme Court that is deciding for the whole society, like an imperial ruler,” she said at an event in February 2014. Speaking of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, she said, ”there hasn’t been any major change in which there wasn’t a groundswell among the people before the Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on the inclusion in the equality concept of people who were once left out. ”It was a huge embarrassment that racism persisted in our country, that our troops in World War II until the very end were separated. I think that World War II made inevitable the change with respect to the status of racial minorities. And it was the same way with women’s increasing demand to count as full citizens.” Sparring on the Supreme Court over constitutional interpretation, Some of the most discussed and controversial Supreme Court decisions come down to the justices’ disagreements as to whether the Constitution should be viewed as a ”dead” or ”enduring” document, as Scalia called it, or a ”living” one. Those disagreements were never more apparent than in a series of decisions about gay rights written by the usually conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is often dubbed the swing vote on the Supreme Court because he sometimes votes with the court’s liberals. In a decision striking down a Texas law that criminalized private, consensual ”homosexual conduct,” Kennedy asserted that the Founding Fathers did not specify all liberties because they expected that list to change. ”They knew times can blind us to certain truths, and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress,” Kennedy said while summarizing his opinion from the bench. ”It is the promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter,” he said. Scalia dissented, declaring, ”It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war, and in particular, in that battle of the culture war that concerns whether there should be any moral opprobrium attached to homosexual conduct.” The    cases also divided along similar lines. ”The dynamic of our constitutional system is that individuals need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right,” Kennedy said from the bench in announcing the 2015    opinion. In his dissent, Scalia included a scathing footnote on Kennedy’s opinion. ”If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: ’The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,’ I would hide my head in a bag.” Chief Justice John Roberts, reading his dissent from the bench, said policy arguments for   marriage are compelling. ”But allowing unelected judges to strike down democratically enacted laws based on rights that are not actually written in the Constitution raises obvious concerns about the judicial role,” he said. Leave it to the democratic process, said Roberts."
"In Washington, D. C. the cognoscenti confidently predict that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will be easily confirmed. But both supporters and opponents are chastened by the predictors’ embarrassingly wrong prognostications over the past year. And that is presenting Senate Democrats in particular with a strategic dilemma. Ron Klain has been a key Democratic player in four Supreme Court confirmations, first overseeing two Republican nominations in the early 1990s as a top staffer for  . Joseph Biden  —   who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee  —   and later promoting two of President Bill Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees while serving as a top White House aide. A filibuster is likely, and likely futile, Klain expects that most Democrats will end up voting against Gorsuch. But the strategic question is whether the Democrats will try to block the nomination with a concerted filibuster, which takes 60 votes to break. ”The reality is there’s going to be a filibuster,” Klain says. ”It takes only one senator to start a filibuster, only a handful to sustain it.” His guess is that there are more than a handful who will launch a filibuster, and everyone will have to wait to see where the votes fall. ”I think this is Round 1 of a   fight,” Klain says. ”We’ll see what Round 15 looks like.” Future Senate and Supreme Court seats could be at risk, A filibuster could cost the Democrats dearly if Republicans decide to exercise what’s called the ”nuclear option” and get rid of the filibuster altogether for Supreme Court nominees. ”What they lose is, this is their one chance to make this into a big issue, to get attention,” observes Richard Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine. He suggests it might be smarter to save the political clout for the time when any of the court’s three oldest justices  —      Ruth Bader Ginsburg,    Anthony Kennedy, and    Stephen Breyer  —   might retire. If any of them were to leave during the Trump administration, he notes, that ”would really change the balance of power on the court.” Klain, the Democratic operative, acknowledges that the calculus is complicated. ”I do think that the level of toxicity and anger among    Democrats is at an   high,” he says. ”[The American public has] been ahead of the senators every step along the way here in the last couple of weeks. ”We’ve seen, for Cabinet nominees  —   some who seemed like they were going to be easy to get confirmed, have large numbers of Democratic voters  —   we’ve seen that vote tally peel back every day,” he says. Hasen, who closely follows social media, agrees the danger for Democrats is real. ”If [Senate Democratic leader Charles] Schumer and the other Democrats roll over, what is potentially likely to happen is that there will be some Democrats on the left who will try to primary these senators  —   who will try to act like a Tea Party on the left and try to enforce some ideological discipline on senators who are not willing to take a broader stand,” Hasen says. That could have dire consequences for Democratic numbers in the Senate in the election two years from now. In 2018 Republican incumbents are defending only eight Senate seats, while Democrats are defending 23  —   10 of them in states carried in the 2016 election by Donald Trump. ”This is going to put them in a very difficult spot,” Hasen continues. ”It could be that by the time we get the 2018 elections, the Democrats could lose more seats, and will have even less power in the Senate than they have now.” That, he says, could mean ”now is the time to take a stand, while you still have some powder left to use.” Neal Katyal, who served as the government’s chief advocate in the Supreme Court during the Obama administration, says he understands Democratic rage regarding the GOP’s unprecedented refusal for almost a year to even consider Obama’s nominee for this very Supreme Court seat. ”But in this world we are in, what I care most about is a judge who’s going to be independent from the executive and call it like he sees it,” Katyal says. ”And that’s how I see Judge Gorsuch.”"
"Algonquin, Ill. is a Republican stronghold. The growing town of 28, 000 is about an hour’s drive northwest of Chicago in McHenry County, the only one of six in the metro area to vote for President Trump. At Short Stacks, a small diner on Main Street, Ginger Underwood sits at a table with her two adult daughters. She voted for Donald Trump and says that, so far, she is glad she did. ”I think Trump is doing exactly what he said he was going to do when he ran for office,” she says. ”So that’s fine with me, that he’s doing what he’s doing.” It’s been 12 days since Trump was sworn into office and between a flurry of executive actions and his choice for the U. S. Supreme Court, it has been a whirlwind of activity. Underwood, who does volunteer work for a local environmental group, says she has no worries about the pace of executive actions during Trump’s first days  —   and, in fact, likes them all. But she does say she wishes the president would be more, as she says, tactful, when he does things like imposing restrictions on people traveling from seven predominantly Muslim countries. ”Not just suddenly doing it with no notice  —   not surprising his fellow Republicans,” she says. Both of Underwood’s daughters are independents, and neither voted for Trump. Jessica Underwood, 40, says she’s trying to come to terms with the new administration. But the horse trainer says she’s not a sore loser. ”He won fair and square,” she says. ”I’m not impressed, but now I feel we have to live with it.” Her sister, Dana, 43, is less accepting. ”All these decisions affect people’s lives,” the professional musician says. ”I can’t get past the fact that we’ve elected somebody who deals with conflict by tweeting.” After hearing what her daughters had to say, Ginger says she recently decided she’s actually a Libertarian all three agree they would have voted for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. No more Obamacare, There’s also agreement at a nearby table, where retired teacher Trudy Kirsch, 64, is eating lunch with her son John, 32. ”I think he’s doing great  —   absolutely wonderful,” Kirsch says. Kirsch says she is pleased with Trump’s pick of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, even though she anticipates strong opposition. She likes Trump’s push to get rid of Obamacare and his intention to build a wall at the U. S.  border, ”And if there was not a problem with people coming over illegally, we would not need the wall,” Kirsch says. ”But if it’s broken, then we need to start looking at other options on how do you fix it.” John Kirsch, who has owned and run a landscaping business for four years, agrees that Obamacare needs to go, saying that he has struggled with rising health insurance premiums. He also says he appreciated Trump’s promise to cut taxes on small businesses and his quick executive action to cut regulations. ”He’s changing all the rules, and I love it” At Anthony’s Barbershop down the street, proprietor Anthony Orlandino is joking with a friend while he trims his hair. The    has had his shop on Main Street for 14 years. ”You know what he’s got going for him  —   he’s got Twitter going for him,” Orlandino says. ”Now he can actually put it out. ’Here’s what I got  —   don’t listen to the media, this is what I’m doing.’ ” And Orlandino says he simply likes Trump’s style. ”He’s a businessman, not a politician,” he says. ”Politicians have gotta talk from both sides of their mouth, gotta please everybody because they want votes. He don’t have to. He’s saying, listen, this is the way it’s going to be. He’s changing all the rules, and I love it.” Divided on travel ban, In the parking lot outside of a Meijer grocery store, a few cars have Obama bumper stickers on them. But Annette Jones, who’s helping her granddaughter load groceries into the car, is a Republican who voted for Donald Trump  —   and she is, as she puts it, ”ticked” about the executive order on travel restrictions. ”I thought he was doing good until he stopped all these people from coming in, and had them all at the airport. And I think that’s wrong,” she says. ”So now it’s like . .. wait and see, what else he’s going to do.” But Angela Fletcher, a    social worker who also voted for Trump, says that executive order doesn’t bother her at all. ”I’m happy with him,” she says. ”I know that’s not the popular answer, but I like it, and don’t have any issues with things he’s done so far, I guess.” Fletcher, like many Trump voters in this small town, says she appreciates that the president is moving quickly to turn many of his campaign promises into policy."
"Aggrieved at what they perceive as acquiescence to President Trump’s agenda, liberal demonstrators have begun taking a page out of a doctor’s playbook: They are making house calls. On Tuesday night, more than 4, 000 protesters signed up to pay a visit to the Brooklyn apartment of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The Facebook event  —   bluntly named ”What the f*** Chuck? !”  —   called on the New York senator to show ”no appeasement, no dealmaking, no collaboration.” As protesters crowded outside the apartment, fresh off a walk from a nearby plaza, they made their frustrations plain with chants of ”Don’t sell us out.” At the rally, attendees unfurled a banner reading ”#ResistTrumpTuesdays,” a reference to a coalition of liberal organizations planning weekly protests. Schumer’s not the only one to get this treatment. In   California on Sunday, a group of protesters headed to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s house in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. ”Hey hey, ho ho, Jeff Sessions  —   just say no!” the demonstrators chanted, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. FiveThirtyEight has ranked Feinstein among the Democratic senators who have shown the most support for Trump’s nominees. Feinstein’s voting record so far didn’t sit well with the protesters outside her home, or with progressives at large. Among the Democratic base, there is not exactly a climate for compromise at the moment. As NPR’s Scott Detrow explained, liberal protesters are following a familiar, if surprising, model: the Tea Party movement’s. ”A lot of the outreach has been prompted by the Indivisible Guide, an organizing project launched by former Democratic congressional staffers that is aimed at mimicking the successful Tea Party movement, but on the Democratic side. ”In the wake of Trump’s executive action on immigration and refugees, Indivisible organizers put together a conference call, urging people to ask their senators to do everything they can to walk back Trump’s order.” Through   protests, pressure on politicians and a few front lawn demonstrations, the Tea Party effectively rolled back Democratic gains in Congress in 2010 and stymied many of President Obama’s policy proposals. And like the Tea Party’s, progressive demonstrations against Democratic representatives already appear to be showing results. Schumer surprisingly voted against Elaine Chao, a Trump pick who had been considered a   for transportation secretary (and ultimately still was). And on Sunday, demonstrators in Rhode Island confronted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse about his vote in favor of Mike Pompeo for CIA director. When Whitehouse came outside, he was handed a list of upcoming votes and a bullhorn. Whitehouse went through the list, eliciting cheers each time he promised a ”no” vote. And the movement shows no signs of relenting, as evidenced by lawmakers’ voicemail machines. North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, for instance, reported being contacted by some 1, 400 of her constituents  —   95 percent of whom objected to Trump’s education secretary pick, Betsy DeVos, according to Reid Epstein of The Wall Street Journal. NBC News reports Va. Sen. Tim Kaine received some 25, 000 calls and letters against DeVos, while in the state next door, W. Va. Sen. Joe Manchin received more than 800 calls on Monday alone about a variety of nominees, according to USA Today."
"The first time   chef Jamal Hashi put camel meat on his menu in Minneapolis, it didn’t go well. He tried grinding it into a burger and using chunks of it in a spicy stew, but no matter, the texture was bad and the sales were worse. ”It was like chewing on a patty of rubber bands,” he said of the burger. At its best, camel meat tastes much like lean beef. But certain cuts can be tough, and if the meat comes from an old camel, it can also taste gamey. Hashi had used a shoulder cut, and neither he nor his customers were happy with the results. Camels may first have been domesticated in the region around Somalia, where they have long been prized for their nutritious milk and meat, and as a mode of transport in the arid environment. ”We are a people who constantly travel,” says Hashi. ”This is our livestock.” Which is why Hashi wanted to bring the  ’s meat to Minneapolis, home to the largest population of Somalis in America. So, four years later, he tried again  —   in 2010. At the time, Hashi owned Safari Express, an East African grill at Minneapolis’ Midtown Global Market. But it was when he applied for a booth at the Minnesota State Fair  —   a place famous for crazy creations like Spam sushi and   Snickers  —   that Hashi thought to reintroduce the traditional ”meat of kings” to an American audience. When the fair gave him the green light, Hashi purchased two tons of wild camel from R. W. Meats, a   halal importer and a leading distributor of camel meat in America. This time, Hashi served the camel   style: a skewer of spiced, ground meat mixed with egg and breadcrumbs. It was a hit. He sold out of camel meat in four days. Soon after, he started offering the ”The Hashi Burger” at Safari Express, and began ordering a pallet of meat every few months  —   each of which arrived from, of all places, central Australia. To understand how Australia became the world’s No. 1 source for camel meat  —   soothing the culinary homesickness of thousands of Somalis in Minnesota along the way  —   you have to understand why camels are a problem in the outback: They’re totally feral, and have caused huge headaches. In the   the British introduced   Arabian camels from Pakistan and India to help with transport across the vast, arid landscape of Australia. The animals proved hardy and reliable, but with the arrival of the railroad in the early 20th century, the camels became obsolete and were freed. Unchecked by predators, their population swelled. ”By the late 1990s, it had become obvious that something had to be done,” says Quentin Hart, former manager of the Australian government’s Feral Camel Management Project (AFCMP). Though camels tend to roam in small groups, they congregate en masse to look for water during dry spells. That notion of camels storing water in their humps? Not true. The humps store fat, and while this is a good source of energy for trekking across arid landscapes, Hart says it is ”a bit of a myth” that camels can survive for a long time in extreme conditions. Like any animal, they get thirsty. And when they get thirsty, they get desperate. In 2009, 6, 000 thirsty camels stormed the outback town of Docker River, population 350. The creatures, each of which can weigh a thousand pounds or more, butted into water tanks, tore faucets from walls, overran the town’s airstrip and stranded terrified residents in their homes. A study found that camels also did a great deal of damage to the region’s biodiversity and environment, trampling vegetation and stunting plant regeneration. And when they died in or near water sources, their carcasses fouled drinking water for Aboriginal communities. A few months before the Docker River stampede, the Australian government put up the equivalent of about $15. 5 million to launch the AFCMP, a   effort to manage more than a   camels loose in the countryside. With helicopters and marksmen, Australia culled some 135, 000 camels between 2009 and 2013, and processed another 15, 000 for human consumption. The meat camels were slaughtered according to halal standards, then shipped to places like Dubai, home to camel hot dogs and the world’s first   chocolate company, and Minnesota. Still, wrangling wild camels in remote areas isn’t easy, and it continues to frustrate both suppliers and buyers today. The central question, according to Hart, is whether the quantity and quality of the wild meat is reliable. To ensure the stability of camel commerce in the   he believes the animals would have to be domesticated. But with no strong incentive for cattle ranchers to pursue camel meat  —   in Australia, it fetches a market price comparable to beef but costs more to produce  —   a farmed future seems far off, says Hart. That said, eating feral camels does have environmental benefits. It’s in line with researchers who urge a ”pestatarian” diet  —   eating animals that are environmental pests  —   as a sustainable alternative to a diet of mainstream meat. And it’s one arguably more palatable than eating insects or   burgers. Wild game is free of antibiotics and growth hormones, and tends to be leaner than its farmed relatives. Before Hashi and his family fled Somalia at the start of the civil war in the 1990s, he grew up in the capital of Mogadishu and spent summers in a nomad town just north of the city. He remembers drinking lots of camel milk, which is low in fat and full of Vitamin C, and eating camel meat, which is low in saturated fat and high in protein. Hashi plans to highlight the meat  —   using camel trim, a tender cut from below the camel’s hump  —   in   camel sliders at his newest Minneapolis restaurant, which is slated to open in late February. Many Somalis in Minneapolis treat camel as they would back home: as a celebration food. Randy Weinstein, owner of R. W. Meats, says many of his clients place two orders a week: the first for goat and beef, and the second with the addition of camel, to serve at weekend weddings and other events. Weinstein started importing camel about 15 years ago, after Somali retailers in the Twin Cities expressed a longing for the taste of home. Now his wife calls him the ”camel king,” and he is expanding his inventory to include   camel meat. The majority of his sales are to halal shops and restaurants in areas where the Somali population is growing, such as Portland, Maine, or Seattle. Weinstein believes that Somali chefs in those places could bring camel to a larger audience. ”The challenge is getting mainstream America to open their eyes to this product,” says Weinstein. But he has faith this will happen in the next few years, as East African dishes become more common in America’s food scene. At Safari Express, which is now owned by one of Hashi’s brothers, the camel burger isn’t cheap  —   it costs $13. 50 with a drink and fries  —   but Jamal Mohamed, a cashier, says it is still the   item, typically selling about 40 a week. Garnished with grilled pineapple, peppers, onions and a generous dousing of creamy ”secret sauce,” the   patty is soft and juicy and tastes a lot like beef. Anastasia Flemming, a frequent customer at Safari Express, hasn’t ordered the burger, but says she’s been converted after having a bite of her friend’s. ”I’d come back for it,” she says. Erica Berry is a writer based in Minneapolis. Find her online at @ericajberry. This story was produced in collaboration with the Food  Environment Reporting Network (FERN) a   investigative journalism organization."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Since the Tuareg guitar band Tinariwen from Mali was launched into the international stratosphere nearly 20 years ago, it’s become something of a rite of passage for rock musicians to guest on their albums. This time around, for Elwan (Elephants) their eighth international release, they’re joined by Kurt Vile, Mark Lanegan (formerly of Screaming Trees) Alain Johannes (formerly of Queens of the Stone Age) and guitarist Matt Sweeney, who’s worked with everyone from Will Oldham to Run The Jewels. But that’s all a sideshow: The main draw continues to be Tinariwen itself  —   with the band’s swirling guitars, rhythms inspired by the gait of camels and gutturally declaimed poetry. The band has become globally peripatetic  —   partly due to their   touring, but also because the situation in their home community in northern Mali continues to be incredibly dangerous and culturally toxic. As a result, the recording sessions for Elwan were split between the Paris suburbs, a studio in Joshua Tree, Calif. and a southern Moroccan town called M’hamed El Ghizlane, an oasis very near the Algerian border and home to its own Saharan music festival. Time and turmoil have both taken a serious toll  —   and the new music on Elwan reflects that hard reality. When Tinariwen started coming into the eye of international tastemakers nearly two decades ago, the band’s political thrust revolved more around the Tuareg people’s struggles to achieve political and social equality within the various Saharan countries they inhabit  —   and their   push toward   possibly even by establishing their own nation. As on past albums, the group’s lyrical concerns focus on the Tuareg, their culture and their people’s tenuous future. The tenere  —   the desert itself  —   is not just a backdrop or even subject matter in their songs. Usually performing in their native language, Tamashek, they sing direct addresses to those endless sands. In fact, the band’s name, Tinariwen, is just the plural of ”tenere” in Tamashek. Listen to the beginning of Elwan’s second track, ”Sastanaqqam” (I Question You): ”Tenere,” they sing, ”can you tell me   of anything better   Than to have your friends and your mount   And a   goatskin, watertight . .. To know how to find water in   The unlikeliest of places?” But the chaos, warfare and corruption of the last several years has been tremendous. They’ve endured seeing a fellow ethnic Tuareg tried in The Hague for war crimes against cultural monuments in northern Mali, watching a former friend of the band emerge as a key leader of the Islamist group Ansar Dine, and even having a member of their own band kidnapped by Ansar Dine (and later released). Even this week, the news continues to be discouraging: Mali’s vaunted Festival in the Desert, which served as a major launchpad for Tinariwen  —   and which had been organized entirely in secret to take place this past weekend  —   was cancelled at the last minute by government officials, due to terrorism fears. Unsurprisingly, Tinariwen’s message has grown more bitter than on past albums. ”The strongest impose their will   And leave the weakest behind,” they sing on the track ”Tenere Taqqal” (What Has Become Of The Tenere). ”Many have died battling for twisted ends   And joy has abandoned us, exhausted by all this duplicity.” The song also includes another telling line that references the album’s title: ”The tenere has become an upland of   elephants (elwan) fight each other   Crushing tender grass   underfoot.” And yet  —   there is still sweetness, and hope, on Elwan. There are outright love odes like ”Hayati” (My Life) which is sung in Arabic, and songs like the spare solo ”Ittus” (Our Goal) a    composition performed by one of the group’s founders, Hassan Ag Touhami, that is just three lines long: ”I ask you, what is our goal?   It is the unity of our nation   And to carry our standard high.” One of the album’s most rollicking songs on Elwan is ”Assawt” (The Voice Of Tamashek Women). It’s a paean to Tuareg women that calls for their freedom  —   a summoning that still rings out clear and true over the desert sands."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Jesca Hoop first attracted national attention in the early ’00s, when her unusual backstory  —   the daughter of musical Mormons, she’d served a long stint as nanny to Tom Waits’ kids  —   helped fuel critics’ interest in songs that always seemed to be coming at you sideways. Albums like Hunting My Dress and The House That Jack Built, both of which hold up incredibly well, left Hoop constantly on the verge of a major breakthrough that never quite materialized. Last year, though, she got a big lift in the form of Love Letter For Fire, an   collaboration with Iron And Wine’s Sam Beam. In addition to reaching a new audience  —   and, in the process, finding her a new label home  —   that record found ways to highlight Hoop’s idiosyncratic songwriting voice, as well as her gift for distinct phrasing. She keeps Love Letter For Fire’s momentum alive with Memories Are Now, a   collection that further showcases Hoop’s enviable capacity to surprise. Take the voices she brings to Memories Are Now’s title track: The song could just as easily be the work of a sister act like Lily  Madeleine, Joseph or First Aid Kit  —   the kind of group where impeccable voices weave in and out, complementing each other with improbable precision  —   but it’s just a showcase for Hoop, whose voice sounds alternately soaring, breathy, wearily assertive and, in the backing vocals, downright heavenly. (Later, at moments in ”Simon Says,” her layered voices conjure images of a   country duo.) In both content and construction, Jesca Hoop’s songs practically burst with ideas: They’re as strange and smart and heartfelt as they are gorgeous, and that’s saying something."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Chuck Prophet’s   new collection, Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins, begins with a celebration of the enigmatic   rock curiosity who sang ”I Fought The Law” in 1964 and then, shortly after the song took off, was found dead in his car at age 23. Fuller’s death remains a mystery, and perhaps as a result, his song and story has resonance for record geeks like Prophet. He begins the second verse of ”Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins” by talking about the experience of listening: ”I hear the record crackle, the needle skips and jumps,” he   as pedal steel guitar careens   overhead. That leads to Prophet’s central confession, and the record’s animating theme: ”I never saw a movie that moved me half as much.” With that, we’re off, riding shotgun down some mythic highway with a rock true believer who is not sure of much beyond the primacy of two     and a handful of raggedly hacked chords. On this journey, the   old Prophet  —   whose discography includes the pioneering psychedelic Americana of Green on Red and a stack of strong solo albums  —   is not hunting for transcendent wisdom. He’s just taking in the view, with occasional detours into communication breakdowns (”Coming Out in Code”) and assorted other paradoxes of life (the rousing ”Rider or the Train”). Prophet has described his new work as ”California Noir.” With a few exceptions  —   the gloriously leering ”Your Skin,” a gem of a song that recalls X at its most impassioned  —   the record bears little resemblance to the stylized L. A. noir of James Ellroy novels. It’s murky, coated with fog and shadows  —   in some ways, it picks up where Prophet’s   history of San Francisco, 2012’s Temple Beautiful, left off. Its narratives are often dark: Several songs are set in the aftermath of gun violence  —   one pays homage to Alex Nieto, a Bay Area man killed by police another tells of the tragic encounter between a shopgirl with a song in her heart and a brutal ”Killing Machine” who offs people at a store as casually as others buy gum. Mostly, though, Prophet is drawn to the romance of rock culture  —   the enduring ritual that boils down to ”drop needle, seek redemption.” (Indeed, your enjoyment of Bobby Fuller may depend on your tolerance for rock songs about enjoying rock songs.) Prophet has been on the road forever, he’s spent lifetimes amongst its traveling circus of savants and misfits. Sometimes his passion gets misplaced: The album’s most obvious misstep is ”Bad Year for Rock and Roll,” which deserves an award for stating the obvious, over and over again. Its chorus ends with a telling couplet: ”I wanna go out, but I’ll probably stay home.” It’s an odd moment, especially since the rest of Bobby Fuller deals with what happens when you don’t stay home. The unsparing, possibly autobiographical ”We Got Up and Played” finds Prophet and band standing around after soundcheck, facing the prospect of another night in a grimy club. Prophet goes acidic as he sketches the scene’s    aspects  —   the cast of characters includes ”the bartender standing in the middle of the street with his pants around his neck.” It’s slightly sordid, sure, yet the song captures something fundamentally compelling about people who, despite long odds and great indifference, climb onto a stage and attempt to create music night after night. ”We plugged in our guitars and tried to make it rain,” Prophet sings with all the wistfulness his   voice can muster. The song comes near the end of the record, after he’s used the guitar to make it rain, and hail, and everything else. The ragged,   sound makes clear that he doesn’t want the gold commemorative watch or bonus points for surviving the rock ’n’ roll gauntlet. All he wants is the chance to go out and do it some more."
"Updated at 4:30 a. m. ET Saturday, A federal judge in Seattle has issued a nationwide temporary stay against President Trump’s executive order that prevented citizens of seven mostly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Judge James Robart acted to stop implementation of the order while a case brought by the states of Washington and Minnesota is heard. The White House issued a statement Friday night, saying the Justice Department will appeal the Seattle judge’s action: ”At the earliest possible time, the Department of Justice intends to file an emergency stay of this outrageous order and defend the executive order of the President, which we believe is lawful and appropriate. The president’s order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people. ”As the law states, ’Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.’ ” The White House soon amended the statement, deleting the word ”outrageous.” After the judge’s order, Qatar Airways announced on Saturday it would allow passengers who are nationals of the seven affected countries and all refugees with a valid U. S. visa or green card to travel to the U. S. according to a statement on the company’s website. The airline said it made the change after direction from U. S. Customs and Border Protection. The State Department said earlier Friday that it had already revoked some 60, 000 visas, so even if the stay survives appellate review, it’s not clear whether many travelers from those countries will be immediately free to enter the country. The State Department said today ”roughly 60, 000 individuals’ visas were provisionally revoked” as a result of Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order barring refugees from seven countries. That number is considerably lower than the number given by a Justice Department attorney, who said today in federal court in Virginia that 100, 000 visas were revoked as a result of the order, as Carmel Delshad of NPR station WAMU reported. Both numbers are much larger than the figure provided by the Department of Homeland Security earlier this week. Kevin McAleenan, acting commissioner of U. S. Customs and Border Protection, told reporters on Tuesday that 721 people with visas had not been allowed to board airplanes to the U. S. in the first 72 hours after the order went into effect. An additional 1, 135 people with visas were granted waivers to enter the country, he said. The 100, 000 figure came out during a hearing for two lawful permanent residents from Yemen who filed a lawsuit after arriving at Dulles International Airport last Saturday. The two men allege they were detained and coerced into giving up their immigrant visas before being put on a return flight to Ethiopia, Delshad reported. ”U. S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said that it was clear to her the temporary travel ban on seven   countries went into effect too quickly, and not a lot of thought went into it,” and she issued a   extension of a temporary order barring the deportation of green card holders from Dulles Airport, Delshad reported. The executive order bans people from traveling to the U. S. from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for three months, suspends   admissions for 120 days and bars Syrian refugees indefinitely. State Department spokesman Will Cocks says the executive order doesn’t mean a visa holder already in the U. S. is in the country illegally. Asked, by way of example, about a hypothetical Iranian student currently in the U. S. he said such a student ”likely has a visa that could have been revoked. However this has no impact on legal status on those in the U. S. So they are not here illegally.” New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Minnesota and Washington state all have sued the federal government regarding the order. Eric Schneiderman, the New York state attorney general, described the order signed a week ago as ”unconstitutional, unlawful, and fundamentally ” reported The Guardian."
"A terrorist video released on Friday by the Pentagon to show what it called intelligence gleaned by the recent raid in Yemen actually was made about 10 years ago, it acknowledged. Defense officials canceled a briefing they had called to discuss the value of the information recovered from Yemen and took the video off the website of the U. S. Central Command. They circulated clips from a video that showed how to prepare explosives without knowing it had already been public. However, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Defense Department spokesman, stuck by the Pentagon’s main argument:   in the Arabian Peninsula remains dangerous and wants to recruit and train people to attack the West. ”Even though the video is old, it shows their intent,” he told reporters. But defense officials declined to release any other, newer intelligence they said was in computers recovered by the American and allied special operations troops who attacked the Yemeni town. The messaging kerfuffle turned an ongoing counterattack into a damp squib. Critics in Congress and within the national security establishment  —   speaking without identification in press reports  —   have called the Yemen raid botched. They accused the White House of hurrying troops into an operation with bad intelligence, or pressing commanders to go ahead with a raid after it lost its element of surprise. Spokesman Sean Spicer began to return fire on Thursday: The initial planning began in November, he said, and then the military and intelligence community worked to refine it in the succeeding months through the transition. With a strong case for action, Spicer said, the only thing needed was a moonless night in Yemen, which fell after President Trump’s inauguration. Trump ultimately authorized it on Jan. 26. SEAL Team Six and its partners attacked the AQAP target early on Sunday, as NPR’s Alice Fordham and Tom Bowman have detailed. The U. S. says some 14 terrorists were killed in the operation, which also claimed the life of an unknown number of civilians  —   including women and children  —   and Navy Chief Special Warfare Operator William Owens. An American   Osprey aircraft also   injuring its crew, and U. S. troops went on to deliberately destroy it to keep it from being compromised."
"Donald Trump has been president for two weeks, and he is already facing dozens of lawsuits over White House policies and his personal business dealings. That’s far more than his predecessors faced in their first days on the job. The lawsuits started on Inauguration Day, and they haven’t let up. Most of the   lawsuits filed so far relate to the travel ban on refugees and nationals from seven   countries that Trump ordered on Jan. 27. They were filed in 17 different states by doctors, professors, students, people fleeing violence and Iraqis who have worked for the U. S. military. Some were detained in American airports for hours over the weekend others were barred overseas from boarding planes bound for the U. S. Two Syrian brothers with visas to enter the country say they were turned around at Philadelphia International Airport and sent back to Damascus. Human rights organizations and attorneys general in five states jumped aboard some of the suits, and their lists of legal grievances were long. They alleged violations of the First, Fifth and 14th Amendments, which guarantee religious equality, due process and equal protection under the law, as well as denials of asylum and discriminatory visa processing. San Francisco sued over Trump’s directive to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities. Lawyers representing the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued over Trump’s alleged conflicts of interest. Deepak Gupta told NPR last week that the lawsuit could have broad implications. ”This is about testing the proposition that the framers really meant it when they said the president has to have undivided loyalty to the American people and should not have financial entanglements with foreign governments,” Gupta said. The White House is fighting all the lawsuits. Trump says the ethics suit is ”without merit” and argues that the immigration orders are necessary to keep the country safe. This flurry of litigation goes far beyond what other administrations faced. At the same point in Obama’s presidency, his administration had been sued just five times. The George W. Bush White House faced only four. ”The Trump administration may set records in terms of the number of lawsuits filed against the administration, or against President Trump personally,” says Jonathan Turley, who teaches at the George Washington University Law School. Turley knows firsthand about suing the president. He was lead counsel in a case brought by Congress that successfully challenged part of the Affordable Care Act. Legal challenges like that one have become basically standard procedure in Washington. Princeton University political history professor Julian Zelizer says that in an era of heightened partisanship, executive orders are an increasingly popular way to make policy. The Obama administration used them. Now the Trump administration is doing the same. According to Zelizer, Democrats and their allies are pushing back the only way they can: in court. Just like Republicans did. ”When a president releases an executive order, one of the instant responses is to try to tie it up legally,” Zelizer says. ”Opponents of President Trump are looking to what the Republicans did in the last few years as a road map forward. Conservatives know this can be an incredibly effective tool to stop presidents from doing things that you don’t want them to do.” Trump is no stranger to litigation. He has been a defendant and a plaintiff in thousands of lawsuits as a real estate developer and reality TV star. His general legal strategy? Fight back. ”When I get sued, I take it right  —   just take it all the way,” Trump said during the campaign. ”You know what happens? If you settle suits, you get sued more.” In November, though, the    did settle lawsuits related to Trump University. Some of the lawsuits from Trump’s business career will follow him into office. Turley of George Washington University said that, too, is novel  —   and could be a distraction for the White House. ”Those lawsuits that are found to have merit and are based on President Trump’s personal conduct are likely to be something of a nuisance,” Turley said. The lawsuits over Trump’s executive orders could be huge obstacles to his agenda for years to come. Court hearings on the challenges over his travel ban are getting underway across the country."
"”You don’t look like you’re from around here,” a young Adolphus Busch is told as he arrives in America from Germany to pursue his dream of making beer. So begins Budweiser’s new Super Bowl ad, released earlier this week into an ongoing political maelstrom over immigration. The ad depicts the company’s founder trudging through swamps and mud, surviving a steamboat fire and being greeted with outright hostility before getting to St. Louis and meeting Eberhard Anheuser  —   i. e. the Anheuser in  . Despite the beer giant’s protestations that the ad is not political, it has hit a nerve among conservatives for taking a seemingly   stance at a time of widespread protests against President Trump’s ban on travelers from seven   nations. But lost in all the brouhaha is the true story of the 19th century German immigrants behind the rise of American brewing. First, let’s start with a little historical nitpicking with that ad. Historian Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer, says that when Busch arrived in St. Louis, he didn’t just run into Eberhard Anheuser  —   he married his daughter and took over the small brewery that Anheuser, a prosperous   had acquired. Also, neither Anheuser nor Busch was the source of the original Budweiser. Ogle says the Bud brand was started by one of Busch’s friends, Carl Conrad. Busch eventually bought Budweiser from Conrad  —   but that happened in the 1880s, long after he had already become a successful brewer. But there’s one thing in the Budweiser ad that rings true to history: the   immigrant hostility that Busch is depicted enduring on the streets. ”Go back home!” a man tells him angrily. While we don’t know whether Busch himself ever walked through such hostile crowds, Ogle says the 1850s were certainly an era marked by ”xenophobic turmoil.” Busch was part of a large wave of German immigrants, including Frederick Miller and Frederick Pabst, who helped build American brewing in the  . The   nation was in the middle of a great debate over what it meant to be an American. And it was seeing a huge influx of immigrants  —   not just from Germany, but Ireland, too. ”Both the Irish and Germans came from cultures where alcohol was a respectable habit,” says Ogle. Many   Americans were worried about how all those newcomers, and their customs, would affect national identity, Ogle says. That’s partly what gave rise to the temperance movement. It wasn’t just about condemning alcohol, it was about defining the moral character of America. ”That was a serious culture clash,” Ogle says. ”And it did fuel a really strong Prohibition movement.” Many Germans who came over set up beer halls in towns with large German enclaves, like St. Louis, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. ”Americans thought of it as disreputable  —   only   people drank,” Ogle says. ”If you went into a tavern, you were going into the seventh circle of hell.” This was the 1840s and ’50s, when America was still debating the great question of slavery, and whether to legalize it outside the South. Ogle says many   whites in the North who organized against the expansion of slavery did so, in part, out of fear that they’d be competing for   jobs. These   whites were   for the same reasons, she says. ”There were pitched battles in the streets where people were saying, ’You don’t belong here. Go home. We don’t want any more immigrants, ’ ” Ogle says. The Republican Party was born in Wisconsin in this climate, she says, to combat the expansion of slavery into the Western territories, but also as a way for German immigrants to stand up for themselves. ”In Milwaukee [the Republican Party] was made up of German immigrants who were determined to protect immigrant rights and who wanted to end slavery,” she says. As for Busch, he became an American citizen and was extremely proud of it, Ogle says. He died before the start of World War I  —   when   sentiment became rampant in the U. S. His wife, Lilly Anheuser Busch, suffered a terrible indignity. Suspected of being a German spy, she was forced to undergo a   exam  —   body cavities included  —   by order of the attorney general on her way back from visiting relatives in Germany. And his family was denounced in newspapers as   their loyalties to the nation openly questioned. One other thing to note: Many of those German immigrants of the   century were essentially refugees. They were fleeing constant warfare in Europe and came to America in search of stability. So while Budweiser’s ad represents a glowing representation of the American dream, the truth is more complicated and, in fact, reflects a history of immigration that reverberates today. ”Right now a little history is valuable for just about everything,” Ogle says."
"One of the problems with bats, if you’re a robotics expert, is that they have so many joints. That’s what robotics researchers at the University of Illinois   and Caltech quickly learned when they set out to build a robot version of the flying mammal. ”Bats use more than 40 active and passive joints, [along with] the flexible membranes of their wings,”   Chung of Caltech told Popular Mechanics. ”It’s impractical, or impossible, to incorporate [all 40] of these joints in the robot’s design.” Or as biologist Dan Riskin of the University of Toronto put it to PBS, ”bats are ridiculously stupid in terms of how complex they are.” ”They have a shoulder that can move in all the ways that an insect one can, but then they have an elbow, and a wrist, and five fingers and a thumb that controls part of the leading edge of the wing membrane.” Chung is the lead author on a paper that made the front cover of the latest issue of the journal Science Robotics (Riskin was not part of the study) in which Chung and his team describe their design for a robotic bat that uses onboard electronics to mimic the swerving and diving of the real animal. It’s name is Bat Bot, or B2 for short, and it gets away with just nine joints. ”Arguably, bats have the most sophisticated powered flight mechanism among animals,” the paper states. The researchers wrote that the complexity of bat wings in flight drew them to the animal as a model for flying robots. The magazine IEEE Spectrum has been following   progress on the bat bot for years, and explained this week: ”Bats can do some absolutely amazing things: Besides being able to perch upside down (which is tricky if your initial condition is rightside up and flying) they can actually catch insects in their wings and carry them back home. The researchers mentioned both of these capabilities, saying that they’re specifically working on the   perching thing, but our guess is that catching insects (or anything else) in midair is probably not going to happen soon, especially if the robot is intended to keep flying after it happens. ”But while B2 may not be able to replicate everything that a real bat can do (yet) it’s already helping us to understand how real bats work: You’ll have a lot of trouble trying to convince a real bat to fly the same path 10 times in a row to see how it moves its wings to maneuver, but a robot will quite happily do all of the experiments you could ever want.” This video from Caltech shows how the team tested the robot over an enormous net. In addition to looking cool and helping us understand the secrets of flight, the team argues in its paper that   robots could have advantages over drones powered by rotors. They have soft wings, so the potential for injury might be less, and bat bots could be quieter than whirring rigid drones."
"Here’s an abridged list of phrases you might not expect to be spoken in anguish by a chess    announcer: And yet, here was British grandmaster Simon Williams, uttering his astonishment as the women’s chess world champion effectively threw her match in just five baffling moves at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival. Hou Yifan, a Chinese grandmaster so accomplished she’s earned the nickname ”Queen of Chess,” turned her skills against herself spectacularly in her 10th and final match at the event. Her loss to India’s Lalith Babu was so decisive, in fact, that it begged explanation. After the match, Hou offered one freely: She was ”really, really upset” for the ”unbelievable and weird pairings” that meant seven of her 10 opponents during the event were women. Hou, who currently outpaces the   female player by 68 points, recently left the women’s chess circuit for mixed events where she can compete against men, who fill every spot in the world’s top 100 rankings. ”It would allow me to focus on the top level, on the ’men’s’ field,” Hou told ChessBase magazine of her decision last year. ”I could try to become stronger, to be more efficient, as there would be no obligation to play the women’s tournaments anymore.” When she found herself competing against other female players in the lion’s share of matches at Gibraltar, Hou was frustrated. In her   interview, she says she brought her concerns to the event’s ”chief arbiter” on Tuesday, to no avail. So she decided on a very public display of protest: throwing her final match. ”I just hoped that attention could be coming to the final decisive round,” Hou said. ”And what I also hope [is] that the pairings  —   you know  —   for the future event should be like a 100 percent fair situation.” And she certainly drew attention: Besides the flabbergasted Simon Williams, the festival’s tournament director, Stuart Conquest, called Hou’s game the ”biggest crisis” in the festival’s history, according to The Telegraph. Brian Callaghan, the festival’s organizer, was nonplussed. He says the matchup drawings ”come out of machines,” dismissing allegations of any intentional unfairness. ”These pairings are not made by people,” Callaghan said Thursday. ”I understand: If I was in her shoes, and I suddenly pulled a draw of six girls one after the other, I would say also, ’What is going on here?’ But clearly nothing was going on. It’s coming out of a machine.” Callaghan said Hou is still ”very popular with me and very popular with the tournament,” but also added: ”I’m sorry for Yifan, because I think she let herself down a little bit today.”"
"President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders have been working to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. And the millions of Americans who have health insurance through the Obamacare marketplaces aren’t the only ones wondering about their fate. Leaders of insurance companies are, too. Sabrina Corlette, a research professor the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University and colleagues interviewed executives at 13 different insurers to get their perspectives in this moment of uncertainty. Their report was published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Urban Institute. All Things Considered’s Audie Cornish talked with Corlette Friday about the findings. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Interview Highlights, On what worries insurers most about repeal and replace  The big issue across every insurance executive’s mind is the uncertainty. Particularly concerning is the potential that two legs of the ACA’s   stool might get knocked out. You have number one, subsidies that help people afford insurance premiums and, number two, a mandate that helps get healthy people to enroll in health care. Congress has threatened to repeal both of those things. And if that happens, insurers are going to need to leave the market, because they won’t be able to make a go of it. On how uncertainty affects insurance plans, First thing to know about insurers in the Obamacare marketplace is that they’re not monolithic. We talk to large national carriers,   nonprofits, local   provider plans, all really coming at this from different perspectives. Some are very committed to staying in the market and serving populations, others not so sure. But across the board they all said we cannot tolerate uncertainty. There comes a certain point where they can’t price the product high enough to account for the uncertain environment they’re in. And they have to make those decisions right now because they’re putting together their [2018] products for review process starting in May. My guess is, when they come out in May we’ll see some pretty big price hikes because the uncertainty they feel in the policy world from Congress and the White House will play out into the premiums that people will ultimately pay. On what provisions of Obamacare need to remain, One thing we heard over and over was the need to maintain some form of incentive for healthy people to sign up for coverage. The Obamacare approach has had a penalty for people who don’t enroll, which has been very controversial in Congress. But insurance companies will tell you they don’t think it was a strong enough incentive. They feel like it needs to stay or replaced with something at least as strong to get people to sign up. On if insurers will fight to keep healthy people in the system, Whether or not they’ll fight for a specific mandate, I’m not sure. But they’ll fight for the balance of healthy and sick. If [that’s not there] if it’s a market that just allows sick people to come in without healthy people, it’s not a workable market. Another thing they could do is say, ’If you’re getting rid of the original mandate you have to allow us to go back to the days when we can deny people insurance if they have a health issue.’ Because you can’t have it both ways. On whether insurance companies want to revert to   times, No, not at all. Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies were in many ways the bad guys. People didn’t like them because they denied coverage to sick people and charged more. Now I think their public image has improved. Everyone gets covered, even with preexisting conditions. I don’t think they want to go back to the days when they were the bad guys. On the other hand, I don’t think they feel that Obamacare was a perfect law. They found plenty to criticize. But my sense is that they’d rather see improvements to basic structure rather than starting back from scratch."
"Clergy across the country are sermonizing about events in Washington, D. C. For Rev. Adam Hamilton, that is both a challenge and an obligation. Hamilton founded the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas in 1990, hoping to attract what he describes as thinking Christians with little or no engagement with their faith. The congregation began meeting in the chapel of a funeral home. Today, it’s a   church with a membership of more than 20, 000. It’s the biggest Methodist church in the country, and it has been cited as one of the most influential churches in America. The new sanctuary that’s about to open at the main campus just outside Kansas City hosts the largest single stained glass window in the world. Hamilton tells NPR’s Robert Siegel he didn’t set out to claim that record. But he did set out to build a church that will serve as a house of worship for a century, if not more. ”We’ll baptize 30, 000 babies in here,” he says. ”We’ll give 30, 000 children their   Bibles. This congregation over the next 100 years will give away 50, 000 units of blood, 10 million pounds of food. And over the next 100 years, we’ll give between $4. 5 and $6. 5 billion to ministries outside the walls of our church.” Hamilton is in the midst of a series of sermons he calls ”Unafraid: Living with Courage and Hope.” On Sunday, his focus will be fear related to the direction of our country. He will touch on President Trump’s executive action temporarily barring refugees and citizens of seven   countries. ”So part of it’s just dealing with fear,” Hamilton says. ”You know, our fear of President Trump, our fear of the whirlwind of activity  —   so if you tend to be    there’s a great deal of fear there  —   and I want to address that and say, ’We need to be a careful about overreacting, and being people who are stirring up fear.’ ” On Trump’s executive actions on immigration, One of the things that struck me was that President Trump was doing exactly what he said he was going to do when he was running for office. And it was clear to me that a lot of people would feel safer because of this. I didn’t personally feel safer. I think, I felt this adds to a perception of America that might further support the feelings of more radical jihadists who would say well, ”Here America’s showing its true stripes.” . .. But I can understand why some people would feel that way. On the decision to talk about refugees in his sermon, Well, I knew actually as of Friday night (Jan. 27) that I would be saying something, but I chose not to address it in church immediately after that on Sunday because I felt like I didn’t know enough yet. And I had people who were disappointed that I didn’t talk about it in church immediately after that. And part of my thinking was, ”If every time President Trump issues an executive order that I might question on Friday, I change my sermon to preach out about it, I’m going to be preaching about President Trump every Sunday for the next four years.” And our congregation is divided. We have some folks who are Trump supporters. We have folks who were not Trump supporters. The Trump supporters [are] like, ”Please don’t talk politics every Sunday. Don’t bring your personal opinions into the sermon every week.” And other folks are like, ”Why aren’t you speaking out? Why aren’t you saying something?” On what he plans for his next sermon, I will also be speaking specifically about refugees, so I’ll be reminding them of what the Scriptures say about the refugee, the immigrant, the alien in your midst. What does the Bible teach us about how we react to people who are in troubled situations? You know, what does it mean to be concerned for those who can’t speak up for themselves? Then let’s ask the question, how would Jesus define greatness? If we’re really trying to be a nation that is great. On how he feels speaking to a divided congregation  When you have a congregation like ours that’s divided on both sides of the political spectrum and conservative, progressive and a whole lot of people in between, the question is how do I continue to be pastor for all of these people? And how do I help them hear each other? I mean, part of the challenge in the last presidential election for Democrats is they were tone deaf to the concerns of people who were on the right, and lost an election they thought they had in the bag. And I think that’s true in the congregation. That I’ve got to be able to understand why are some people saying, ”Finally, we’ve got a president who’s doing something,” while other people are fearful and saying or angry and saying, ”We have to go protest.” I want to help both sides be able to hear the legitimate and sometimes not necessarily legitimate concerns of the other. My aim is not to see 40 percent of my congregation walk away saying, ”I don’t know if I want to come back.” And I’ve said to pastors across the country, I’ve said, ”It’s easy to irritate people. It’s harder to influence people.” My hope is that I’ve influenced people on both sides to come together and find out, OK what’s reasonable, what makes sense, and then what is in keeping with the Gospel. How does where we go, you know, when we walk out of the church and are thinking about this, influenced by our faith in Christ?"
"At lunch hour, the line stretches out the door at Taqueria del Sol on Atlanta’s west side. Inside, the tiny kitchen is a swirl of activity. ”This is my crew,” says   and chef Eddie Hernandez. ”They’re all from Mexico.” The menu is a hybrid of cuisine from his native Monterrey, Mexico, and   Southern cooking, like tangy turnip greens seasoned with red chilies and     peas. ”The food can get us together,” Hernandez says, ”and make us think differently about each other.” Hernandez and his partner, Mike Klank, have been running restaurants together since 1987. They’ve seen presidents come and go. ”I hope President Trump turns out to be better than I expect him to be,” Klank says. ”I hope that he turns out to be more reasonable and centrist than he is.” Klank says there should be a better system for businesses to sponsor immigrants, not more obstacles. The partners describe themselves as conservative economically, but liberal socially. They’re doubtful this administration will bridge those views. ”Every four years we go through the same thing,” Hernandez says. ”A lot of promises and nothing gets done.” Atlanta is a majority Democratic city in Republican Georgia, and it has long fashioned itself the cosmopolitan business capital of the southeast. It is home to major corporations like Delta and   but it is also a center for small business. The city ranks second behind New York among cities with the most   owned companies. And since 2000, metro Atlanta’s Hispanic population has more than doubled. Latino businesses line the busy Buford Highway  —   a main artery that stretches from Atlanta to the suburbs. Eduardo Fernandez is ordering lunch at the food court at Plaza Fiesta, an indoor marketplace that caters to Hispanic shoppers. ”They call it El rinconcito de nuestro pueblo,” he says. ”A little corner of our little town.” Fernandez is an advertising and marketing consultant, and has an online bilingual rock radio station. ”My show is called ’Que Onda,’ ” he says. ”It’s like, ’What’s going on with that?’ ” Sitting near the kids’ carnival area in the mall, Fernandez says he is concerned by some of the executive orders Trump has signed. ”I’m worried about his orders and ideas, and things that he’s implementing,” Fernandez says. ”His attitude.” Fernandez was born in Laredo, Texas, but spent his childhood freely crossing the border to be with family in Mexico. He says Trump is moving recklessly, harming   relations between the two countries. Fernandez is particularly alarmed by what he perceives as an effort to single out certain groups. ”For me that’s evil,” he says. ”You can have an issue with me. You can have an issue with Mr. Jones. But you cannot have an issue with all white people, or all gays, or all Muslims. That’s not Christian.” Fernandez has watched the turmoil over the executive order limiting visitors from seven mostly Muslim countries. He says he doesn’t think Trump thought through the implications of making good on his campaign promises at such a frenetic pace. ”I will give him that,” Fernandez says. ”He’s doing what he promised.” Fernandez says he’s unsure what the new administration will mean for his business, so for the short term he won’t be looking to expand. But some small businesses are banking on Trump’s policies to help them. Michael Flock is the founder and CEO of Flock Specialty Finance, an   company in the     lending market. He’s optimistic Trump will curtail what he calls onerous regulations imposed during the Obama administration. ”We needed some regulation because in this industry of debt collection there are a bunch of cowboys, and we needed some new rules,” Flock says. ”But in America, sometimes we go too far.” He says middle market firms like his have been squeezed, so he welcomes Trump’s promise to roll back the red tape and cut taxes. ”I wasn’t for him initially,” Flock says. ”I’m a     Republican.” Flock’s   office on the perimeter of Atlanta is lined with portraits of Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican reformer. That’s how Flock sees President Trump. ”I think he’s a radical reformer,” he says. ”I think we need major change. And I think it takes somebody outside the government to do that.” Flock says Trump has potential ”if he can stay focused.” He worries Trump’s apparent vanity and penchant for tweeting could prove to be unnecessary distractions. It’s already a distraction for one young entrepreneur. ”I’m pretty much just embarrassed to have him as my president,” says Latasha Kinnard, CEO of Start Young Financial Group. ”I don’t reject him but having him has me be embarrassed.” Kinnard says she used to work in finance for a large corporation, but now has her own business that encourages young black professionals to build wealth. ”I grew up on the south side of Chicago,” she says. ”Seeing people struggle with money was something that was just built into my life, and I wanted to tackle that.” Kinnard says she often votes Democratic, but she doesn’t think either political party serves her interests. Her expectations for the Trump administration are pretty low. ”There is a lot of fear,” Kinnard says. ”Not just nervousness or anxiety, but just flat out fear that Donald Trump isn’t fit to run the country simply because of a lack of empathy for the people who make up this country.” She checks off a litany of worries  —   health care, immigration, the idea that alternative facts have a place in political discourse. But Kinnard says she believes Trump’s presidency can serve as a   call for people to take their civic duties seriously when they see just what’s at stake."
"Konstantin Kosachyov, the head of the foreign relations committee in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, is in a hurry to get U. S.  relations back on track. The morning after Rex Tillerson was sworn in as secretary of state, Kosachyov invited two dozen experts on the United States to the Federation Council in downtown Moscow. ”We’re not expecting a road covered with roses in our bilateral relations, though clearly there’s a window of opportunity,” Kosachyov told the academics and former diplomats who packed a   conference room. ”Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that he’s ready to build ties with Russia on a new, pragmatic basis.” Relations between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers are at their lowest point since the Cold War ended 25 years ago. The Obama administration imposed sanctions after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014  —   and more recently accused the Kremlin of interfering in the U. S. presidential election. Moscow claims the U. S. and its European allies have been motivated by ”russophobia” and a desire to remove Russia as an independent actor from the world stage. Kosachyov emerged from his   brainstorming session with a list of recommendations on how to approach the Trump administration. Russians largely welcomed the election victory of Donald Trump, who has often spoken of improving relations with Russia. Tillerson’s confirmation came as even more positive news, as the former ExxonMobil CEO built close ties to Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft, and was awarded the country’s Order of Friendship in 2012. ”I definitely do not consider Mr. Tillerson as a   American politician,” Kosachyov told NPR. ”He will not be an easy partner for Russia. But we do not seek easy partners, we seek pragmatic partners, and I believe that we have a chance.” Russian experts view Trump’s victory not as a fluke but as a ”systemic change,” according to Kosachyov. They expect domestic politics also to dominate over foreign policy in western European countries, following elections later this year. Russia should seize the initiative in pushing cooperation in the most promising areas, such as nuclear arms control and fighting international terrorism, Kosachyov said. Increased trade is another priority, though that will be difficult without a loosening of the sanctions regime. On Thursday, the U. S. Treasury Department announced it would allow some companies to do limited business with the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, which fell under sanctions imposed by   Obama in December. The Trump administration says the move was a technical adjustment and does not signify a lifting of sanctions. ”A crisis of confidence is the main aggravating factor in   relations,” Kosachyov said. While he is well aware of bipartisan opposition in Washington to a rapprochement with Russia, Kosachyov said he would reach out to friendly members of Congress during the annual Munich Security Conference in two weeks. Like many Russians, Kosachyov believes the world could have slid into war had Hillary Clinton become president. Many people feared she would have pursued an aggressive policy toward Russia and the Middle East. At least that risk has been eliminated with Trump’s election, he said, and now a summit meeting between Trump and President Vladimir Putin should be organized as soon as possible. ”If we start to work well together with the U. S. we’ll be able to hold back the Americans from possible mistakes,” Kosachyov said. After all, he said, President Trump may not fully realize the consequences of his proposed actions  —   like moving the U. S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv or recognizing Taiwan as an equal to China."
"In the days leading up to today’s announcement of additional U. S. sanctions on Iran, the U. S. and Iran have made claims and   as to whether Iran’s ballistic missile test on Sunday violated a U. N. Security Council resolution and the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, including the U. S. ”Iran is playing with fire,” President Trump tweeted Friday morning before the sanctions were announced. Trump’s National Security Adviser, Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, earlier said the missile test was ”in defiance of” U. N. Security Council Resolution 2231 endorsing the Iran nuclear deal. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called the test an outright ”violation.” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, meanwhile tweeted that Iran is ”unmoved” by U. S. threats and has the right to defend itself. So did Iran violate the agreement or not? Most nonproliferation experts would say Iran certainly defied the spirit of the U. N. resolution, but technically didn’t violate it  —   because it contains no prohibition against such testing, as one of its predecessors, passed in 2010, specifically did. Here’s what the two resolutions say on the subject, with highlighting added: U. N. Security Council Resolution 1929, from 2010, says the Security Council ”decides that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology, and that States shall take all necessary measures to prevent the transfer of technology or technical assistance to Iran related to such activities.” In Resolution 2231, passed in 2015, the Security Council endorsed the nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA. It terminated the provisions of the 2010 resolution and added language deep in one of the annexes saying: ”Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology, until the date eight years after the JCPOA Adoption Day or until the date on which the IAEA submits a report confirming the Broader Conclusion, whichever is earlier.” As diplomatic terms of art, ”shall not”  —   which appeared in the 2010 resolution  —   represents a clear and enforceable prohibition, whereas being ”called upon” not to do something is more ambiguous. Here’s one way to look at it: When Iran tested ballistic missiles in the fall of 2015, while Resolution 1929 was still in effect, it was doubtless in violation of a Security Council stricture. But when it tested its missile on Sunday, under the new Resolution 2231, Iran was essentially ignoring the Security Council’s advice  —   not violating a directive. Conservative critics of the nuclear agreement argued strongly against the language change, calling it a dangerous   of the international position on Iran’s ballistic missile program. Iran has long maintained that its missile tests don’t violate Security Council resolutions because there are no nuclear warheads involved and Iran’s conventional defenses are its own business. But both the 2010 and 2015 resolutions do warn against testing missiles that ”could be capable” of carrying a nuclear warhead. ”For its part, Iran says it never agreed to missile restrictions in the JCPOA and claims its missile tests do not violate Security Council resolutions because they are not designed to carry nuclear warheads. This is absurd,” former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz argued in The National Review last year. ”Iran’s missile program is widely believed to be a delivery system for nuclear warheads. If Iran were telling the truth, it would be the only nation in history without a   program that nonetheless developed missiles with a range of 2, 000 kilometers or more. Iran is not building   missiles to carry warheads full of dynamite or to fire monkeys into space.” In fact, the Obama administration had argued for keeping in place the stronger prohibitory language of Resolution 1929, but it lost that argument when its negotiating partners wouldn’t back the Americans up. ”When Mr. Obama sought to include a prohibition on ballistic missiles in the Iran deal, or at least extend a previous Security Council resolution banning them, not just Russia and China but even our European allies in the nuclear negotiations refused,” former Obama White House official Philip Gordon explained this week in the New York Times. ”They argued that the ballistic missile ban was put in place in 2010 only to pressure Iran to reach a nuclear deal, and they refused to extend it once that deal had been concluded.” The question remains, what next? In a short briefing paper on Iran’s missile testing, analysts at the Iran Project, a   group including former diplomats say the challenge for President Trump is to ”constrain Iran’s missile testing while maintaining the U. S. and Iranian commitment to the JCPOA, the most assured way to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.” The Security Council scheduled ”urgent consultations” on Iran’s missile test earlier this week. Gordon, the former White House official, noted that Iranian presidential elections this spring will likely prompt hardliners to stake out a position of defiance in the missile dispute. The stage would seem to be set for tough rhetoric to escalate, he wrote, including the possibility of terrorist attacks on Americans in the Mideast."
"Updated at 2 p. m. ET, The U. S. Treasury Department announced additional sanctions on Iran on Friday, less than a week after a ballistic missile test prompted the Trump administration to accuse Iran of violating an international a weapons agreement. The newly announced sanctions target people and businesses the U. S. government says support Iran’s ballistic missile program and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard   Force, according to a Treasury Department statement. They are in line with previous sanctions, implemented over what   Barack Obama called Iran’s ”violations of human rights, for its support of terrorism and for its ballistic missile program.” The acting director of the Treasury unit in charge of sanctions, John Smith, said the latest sanctions do not violate the international nuclear deal reached with Iran in 2015, which required Iran to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions. A top Treasury Department official tells NPR’s Michele Kelemen that the actions are part of the U. S. efforts to counter Iranian ”malign activity abroad.” The public text of the sanctions lists 12 companies and 13 individuals, blocking assets and prohibiting U. S. citizens from dealing with them. Among the individuals, four are listed as Iranian citizens, two are Lebanese, one is Chinese, and one holds a passport from the island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. It also announced changes to previous, unrelated sanctions on a 14th individual. The businesses are based both inside and outside Iran. According to the Treasury Department, the sanctions target: ”several networks and supporters of Iran’s ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities in his   and   network, an Iranian procurement company and its   network, and five individuals and entities that are part of an   procurement network.” Hours before the sanctions were announced, President Trump addressed Iran in a tweet, writing, ”Iran is playing with fire  —   they don’t appreciate how ’kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted an hour later that ”we will never use our weapons against anyone, except in  .” While U. S. and Iranian officials have both stated that the missile test did not violate the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, the U. S. contends that it did violate a side agreement governing conventional weapons. On Friday, the U. S. State Department released a statement saying that it believed the test was ”inconsistent with UN Security Council Resolution 2231.” That resolution, which replaced an outright prohibition on missile tests, used language calling upon Iran ”not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology,” as The   reported. National Security Adviser Mike Flynn said a day later that former President Barack Obama had gone too easy on Iran, but that ”as of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.” Flynn also listed the administration’s grievances with Tehran, including its test of a ballistic missile and what he said were attacks by proxy forces in Yemen on U. S. and Middle Eastern ships, as we reported. One of the incidents he appeared to be referring to occurred in October 2016, when U. S. Navy ships off Yemen’s southwestern coast came under missile attacks twice in four days. According to the Pentagon, the missiles came from an area controlled by Houthi forces, who are fighting against the government of Yemen and who the U. S. government says are backed by the Iranian government, which is supplying weapons to the rebel group. But it was unclear who ordered October’s missile launches, as NPR’s Philip Ewing reported. Houthi leaders denied the attacks, and Tehran has denied U. S. accusations that Iran is supporting Houthi forces. Nonetheless, the U. S. carried out airstrikes against what the Pentagon said were radar installations in   areas. In December, Congress extended U. S. sanctions against Iran originally imposed in 1996 until 2026."
"In 2000 Andrew Harding became   Africa correspondent for the BBC, based in Nairobi. Soon he was making regular trips to one of the most perilous corners of the continent: Somalia. Wracked by war, famine and   strife since the early 1990s, the country would soon be assailed by a new menace: Al Shabab, a radical Islamist terrorist group. A decade and many trips later, a fortuitous meeting in Mogadishu with Mohamud ”Tarzan” Nur, a   Somali orphan turned   activist, led Harding to his first book, The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia. The narrative pieces together Nur’s astonishing biography and follows him when he became mayor in 2010 and tried to restore confidence and bring back investment to the battered Somali capital. (He got his nickname from a teacher at his school who found him hiding   in a tree outside his dorm room when he should have been at breakfast.) Harding is now based in Johannesburg, where he works   for the BBC. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You’re one of a handful of Western correspondents who’ve been in and out of Somalia on a regular basis for the past decade. At what point did you consider writing a book about it? I always thought about this access that I had as being something special and that it might be the source of a book. But when I started to get to know Tarzan, I realized that there was a much better book to be done than an account of my 15 years covering Somalia. Tarzan’s story took over the project. What was it about him that appealed to you? He was this    character, and drama seemed to gather around him. He speaks English and he has a Western veneer, which makes him talk in very accessible style. He said ”yes” to the project without preconditions, and I knew almost immediately that he meant it. He was a man unafraid of speaking to journalists, unafraid of speaking the truth. I realized here is a guy whom I could dig into and I would not be facing death threats, or legal threats. You rapidly establish Tarzan as somebody who plays    with his own biography, and later on suggest that as Mogadishu’s mayor, he was quite corrupt. Did this tarnish the experience of writing about him? Frankly, as somebody trying to write a book rather than an article, I was delighted by his ambiguities, delighted when I realized that there were big question marks about his life. A lot of Somalis have said, ”Why have you written about that scumbag?” I don’t think he is a scumbag. I would much rather write about someone with murky areas and complexities, particularly when I’m trying to write about a country as murky and complex as Somalia. I didn’t want a pure hero. What did Nur do to restore confidence? He became this catalytic figure  —   an enabler  —   someone who could cut through the bureaucracy and the corruption. And foreign governments like Britain could see that. So it was the mayor’s office that oversaw the erection of solar powered street lights  —   which transformed the city. And clearing the accumulated rubbish of 20 years, too. Most journalistic accounts of Somalia focus on the   apocalypse, but you present a detailed portrait of the country during its peaceful,   heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. What drew you to that period? I was infinitely more interested in the extraordinary past of Somalia than in the stuff that I already had already reported on a lot. When one digs into the past and understands how optimistic and successful [Somalia] was in the 1960s and 1970s, one starts to care about the place. How difficult was it to report this book in Somalia? What’s been interesting is the way that one discovers how to operate, to report, to survive in Mogadishu. On the streets, you have to work incredibly fast. You keep your movements unpredictable, never stay on the streets for more than a few minutes, listen closely to your security and not spend too much time with people who are likely to be targets. I spent very little time under Tarzan’s protection  —   a few evenings, a few trips around town when he was mayor. Tarzan was a target, and to travel around with him was dangerous. Any close calls? Once I went with Tarzan to settle a dispute with some soldiers who had set up an illegal checkpoint on the edge of town. On the way back, we split from the mayor’s convoy, and minutes later, his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb. The soldiers at the rear of the convoy were killed. When you’re in an armored car the sound outside is muffled, so we didn’t hear about it until we got back to our base. Mogadishu is still a dangerous, highly unstable place. What did Tarzan manage to accomplish during his time as Mayor? His legacy still depends on what happens in the next few years. If Somalia continues with its uneven progress, I think that he’s the guy who set the scene for the return of the diaspora, for the possibility of proper government in Mogadishu and an end to anarchy. But if it collapses again his achievements will mean very little. What was his reaction to the book? I don’t think he has yet finished reading it. He’s not a reader, nor is his wife. I know some passages moved him intensely  —   particularly the stuff about his childhood  —   and his children told me that they discovered so much more about their father. They had no idea their parents had, more or less, eloped. I know there will be elements that he’s unhappy with, but as a politician he will take the fact that he’s had a book written about him as plus. What’s he up to now? He is one of about a dozen candidates for the presidency of Somalia, though his chances are very slim. I think he acknowledges it. By all accounts, this is very corrupt process and he doesn’t have money behind him. "
"Oscar season is upon us, and very often, it’s a time when a lot of energy goes into analyzing a few races and a few of the   films as they square off against each other. We’ll be doing that too in a couple of weeks, in our annual Oscars roundup. But first, we wanted to celebrate the season in a different way: by looking at some of the categories that sometimes fly a little under the radar, ours included. First up, we have a segment surveying the five   documentary features: 13th, Ava DuVernay’s examination of race and criminal justice I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck’s marvelous piece based on the work of James Baldwin that Bob Mondello (our fourth chair this week) and I have raved about since September O. J.: Made In America, to which we devoted a full segment earlier Fire At Sea, a deliberate meditation on life on a Sicilian island that often becomes a landing spot for refugees and other migrants and Life Animated, a film about a man with autism who finds avenues of communication in Disney films. All are very much worth watching, and we try to draw some distinctions in style and tone, mostly in service of telling you that . .. well, these are all very much worth watching. Our other segment today takes us into the Foreign Language Film category, where we all watched The Salesman, Iran’s entry into the Oscars this year from director Asghar Farhadi  —   who previously won for A Separation, but who won’t be present to accept this year because of the travel and visa ban that currently doesn’t allow him to enter the United States. As always, we close the show with what’s making us happy this week. Stephen is happy about a comedy about which I’m proud to say he concluded I was right. Glen is happy about having interviewed someone he literally has wanted to talk to since his youth. Bob is happy about the memoirs of a man he’s long admired. And I’m happy about a great, great book and a great, great poem. Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: the show, me, Stephen, Glen, Bob, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus and pal for life Mike."
"Dionisio Yam Moo stands about      tall, and his skin is weathered from years in the tropical sun. A ”proudly Mayan” farmer, he grows corn, beans and vegetables on a   farm in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The farm is surrounded by dense tropical forest, and crops grow amid fruit trees in thin soil, with the peninsula’s limestone bedrock protruding in places. Yam Moo farms using a traditional, rainfed practice called milpa, which has long involved cutting and burning patches of forest, planting crops for a few years, then letting the   land regenerate for up to 30 years, before cultivating it again. Milpa has enabled generations of farmers like Yam Moo overcome the Yucatán’s poor, thin soil and grow a stunningly diverse set of crops  —   multiple varieties of beans, squash, chili peppers, leafy greens, root vegetables, spices and corn, the plant at the heart of Mayan identity.  In recent years, however, Yam Moo and other Yucatán milperos have struggled to keep their farms alive. Climate change has brought erratic rainfall, making the growing season less predictable. Yam Moo says he has always planted his corn in May. But in 2015 for example, he says the rains didn’t come until August. And then it flooded. He lost most of his crop, he says. Because milpa farming depends entirely on rainfall, which is never fully predictable, ”there has always been a level of uncertainty, and the Maya have dealt with that for millennia,” says José Martínez Reyes, an anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts Boston. ”But with climate change, I think that uncertainty has grown exponentially.” Years of unpredictable rainfall and failed crops pushed Yam Moo to find a solution, and it’s one that could in turn help fight climate change. Along with other farmers in the area, he developed a modified milpa called ”milpa maya mejorada” or ”improved Mayan milpa.” Yam Moo no longer cuts down new forests, but he still grows the same diversity of crops. And he has incorporated into the ancient practice a host of modern techniques that help him farm despite the more unpredictable rains. A recently installed irrigation system, which relies on an   rain water collector (the Yucatán has almost no surface water) ensures that Yam Moo can survive droughts. And he has found that by tilling in compost, chicken manure and other organic additions, he can grow far more crops per hectare. The added nutrients keep the soil healthy and productive, meaning he doesn’t need to clear new ground as often, or perhaps at all. In 2015, after the rains ended in late summer, he replanted corn in a nearby field, arranging seeds in tight rows with the aid of a small garden tiller, and added organic fertilizers to boost yields. Later that year, he planted beans and vegetables. ”As long as you keep feeding the soil, the soil will feed you,” he says. Today, he’s back on his feet, feeding his family with what he grows on his plot. He hopes that his success can be a model for the more than 70, 000 Yucatán milperos who, like him, are facing the punishing effects of climatic changes. Yam Moo’s efforts have gotten some   attention. As part of a project funded by the U. S. Agency for International Development and private donors, the environmental group Nature Conservancy (TNC) is providing technical and financial support to get more farmers to adopt improved milpa. By helping farmers like Yam Moo adapt to the changing climate, TNC hopes to fight climate change, by reducing the deforestation traditionally involved in milpa: the practice is estimated to cause up to 16 percent of the deforestation on the peninsula. At a larger scale, the project aims to help Mexico receive payments from private companies and governments of developed countries to combat climate change. ”We’re addressing drivers of deforestation with     practices that are good for the producer, that are good for the ecosystem, and that mitigate climate change risks,” says Mariana Vélez Laris, a local coordinator for TNC. The organic fertilizers and reduced burning help soil microbes thrive, she says, while sparing forests and the many species that thrive in them. The improved milpa project is still small, with only   milperos in the area participating. But the staff at TNC has big hopes for it  —   they see it as a key tool to reforest much of the Yucatán peninsula. As milperos transition away from    practices, TNC hopes that forests can now regrow and soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  As it is, milpa had been on the decline for decades, even before the effects of climate change hit farmers hard. The expansion of cattle ranching and   mechanized agriculture, the Yucatán’s two largest sources of deforestation, has dramatically reduced land available for milpa. Moreover, younger generation of Mexicans have opted for other professions, laments Silvia Teran, an anthropologist at the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya (Museum of the Mayan World) in Merída. Many go to work in the tourist resorts of Cancun and Tulum, or the kitchens of San Francisco and Dallas. ”There is almost no connection now between young people and the milpa,” she says. Despite these challenges, milpa has been witnessing a revival in recent years, as tourists and Mexican consumers have started to seek organic, locally grown alternatives to industrial food, says Teran. In the town of Oxkutzcab, milperos sell attractively packaged pepitas, or squash seeds. Others use milpa primarily to feed their families, but sell honey made by the bees that fertilize the crops. A nascent ”back to the land”  movement has begun drawing young people from the city into milpa farming. The tradition’s merits have even been lauded by celebrities like Mark Bittman, and are now being embraced by Mexican state and federal governments that once discouraged the practice. But the revival remains precarious. Farmer Gualberto Casanova says milperos lack money to invest in improved milpa. Historically, milpa required little capital and equipment  —   just a machete or ax to fell trees, and a hoe to loosen the soil for planting. Improved milpa, by contrast, requires fertilizers, garden tillers and irrigation supplies, which most milperos, who are poor, subsistence farmers, can’t afford. ”If we had water, we could produce all year round,” Casanova says. While the Mexican government has provided modest subsidies, the   payments that Yam Moo, Casanova and other milperos hope to receive have yet to materialize. Whatever hopes organizations like TNC might have, improved milpa is not a ”magic bullet,” cautions anthropologist Reyes. He says commercialization schemes promoted by outside groups can backfire, either because the market they are supposed to supply doesn’t exist, or because they create too much competition among producers, undercutting the prices of their goods. For farmers who use milpa primarily for subsistence, however, milpa maya mejorada ”might be the way to go,” he says. ”I see it as a positive initiative.” For Yam Moo, the proof was in his hand as he harvested his crops this past October, which will provide a large fraction of the food his family, which includes his children and grandchildren, needs for the coming year. He hopes his success can convince fellow milperos to take a chance on investing in in this modernized milpa, and in the process, spare valuable forests. ”If this patch is enough for me and my family,” he says, ”why would I go cut down more?” Gabriel Popkin is a freelance journalist based in Maryland. His reporting for this story was supported by the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources and the Society for Environmental Journalism."
"For some time, the public has known that Donald Trump does a lot of his tweeting himself, from the account @realDonaldTrump, and from an Android smartphone. But many cybersecurity experts believed that would change once Trump took the oath of office, because White   communication devices are much more secured  —   and stripped down  —   than the smartphones the rest of us use. In fact, former President Barack Obama once compared his official White House smartphone to a child’s toy. ”It doesn’t take pictures, you can’t text,” Obama told Jimmy Fallon in 2016. ”The phone doesn’t work. You can’t play your music on it. So, basically, it’s like  —   does your    have one of those play phones?” A few recent reports indicate that President Trump might still be tweeting from his old Android, and he may not even be following all the security protocols he should. Unsecure smartphone, Soon after Trump’s inauguration, an enterprising hacker found that Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account was still tied to the Gmail account of a staffer, a move seen as insecure. (The account now seems to be connected to more official and secure White House email accounts.) And a January article in The New York Times reported that Trump continues to tweet from an ”old, unsecured Android phone.” Several cybersecurity experts told NPR, if that’s the case, it’s not good. ”Donald Trump for the longest time has been using a insecure Android phone that by all reports is so easy to compromise, it would not meet the security requirements of a teenager,” says Nicholas Weaver, a computer scientist at the University of California at Berkeley. Weaver doesn’t have any   knowledge of the security standards on Trump’s phone. But he says knowing that a sitting president has an insecure Android, ”we must assume that his phone has actively been compromised for a while, and a actively compromised phone is literally a listening device.” Other cybersecurity experts didn’t offer predictions that dire, but half a dozen of them told NPR that if Trump is still using an unsecured Android, even if only to tweet, malware could infiltrate the phone’s camera or microphone, or even use geolocation to tell hackers the president’s whereabouts. Melanie Teplinsky, a privacy expert at American University, says even without those   scenarios, just hacking into Trump’s Twitter account alone could wreak havoc. ”Another concern is that someone tries to influence stock markets or politics through the use of a Twitter account by making false posts,” she says. No comment, NPR reached out the White House for comment on Trump’s tweeting and smartphone use. We asked a few questions: The administration gave no answers to those questions, and no confirmation or denial of all those reports that Trump is using an unsecured device. But deputy White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham tells NPR, ”We don’t comment on security protocols of any kind.” The absence of a clear statement from the White House on the security of Trump’s communications, matched with the continued reports of unsecured smartphone use, has led some to accuse Trump of hypocrisy. ”He and so many during the campaign were so critical of Secretary (Hillary) Clinton for what they felt were inappropriate practices,” says Michael Sulmeyer, director of the Cyber Security Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. ”And it really is the height of hypocrisy to . .. on day one, be doubling down on the exact type of behavior they had no problem riling up the base with.” Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, says: ”If President Trump is carrying around an unsecured Android phone, that’s 1, 000 times worse than using a personal email server.” Seeking solutions, To ensure that President Trump can tweet securely, he’d have to use a smartphone that ”cannot speak on the general Internet,” Weaver says. ”It has to basically cut itself off from the rest of the world to be secure.” But Bill Anderson, CEO of security firm OptioLabs, says there might be another option: Security professionals in the federal government should use this moment to find a way for security and technology to keep up with the   . ”I think the challenge is for the security people that are supporting White House communications to improve their capability to secure the platform,” Anderson told NPR. ”That platform could let him tweet and yet not be at risk. So, they need to catch up with what you can actually do with technology, not just say ’no.’ ” Rubin says, in that regard, Twitter could help. ”If I were Twitter,” he says, ”I would set up a separate, encrypted channel that I would give all of the credentials and the keys to the president to use.” A spokesperson for Twitter said the company doesn’t comment on individual accounts. But Rubin imagines a verification system created by the White House and the company, in which Twitter would confirm each @realDonaldTrump tweet before it was sent. But Rubin points out, that strategy would only secure the president’s Twitter account it would do nothing to change the vulnerabilities of an old Android smartphone."
"The streets of Dadaab in northern Kenya are crowded with people and cars. You find refugees selling goats and shaving ice. The biggest refugee camp in the world is basically a mega village. The mostly Somali refugees sell pots and pans and make colorful headscarves on manual sewing machines. In one store, a group of refugees are having an intense conversation. It is, of course, about President Trump. With the stroke of a pen, the new U. S. president threw thousands of lives into disarray when he temporarily suspended refugee resettlements and travel from seven   countries. Here in Dadaab, the U. N. High Commission on Refugees’ office estimates that about 26, 000 of the roughly 280, 000 refugees at the camp have been affected by the new American policy. ”I can’t believe that a   president would resort to targeting people because of their faith,” said Khalif Abdi Nur, 60. Nur and his family were supposed to be resettled in the United States. They had been waiting for nine years and then were told last month to get ready to go. They got tested for tuberculosis, they got treated for parasites, they sold things  —   their house and their shop  —   to buy rolling suitcases, which are something, they thought, every American should have. The Nurs also let themselves start dreaming about Texas, which would be their new home. ”I felt like I could wear a cowboy hat,” Nur said. And even though Texas is known for heat, he imagined a cold place with snow, far away from the arid landscape of Dadaab. His daughter pulls out one of the rolling suitcases. It’s black with a broken handle and stuffed with clothes  —   even a sweater. All those dreams, Nur said, ”only to be left in the dust and sun.” His wife, Hallima Bulle, is sitting just across the room and cuts in. ”I dreamed of an America where we could be normal people,” she said. ”A place where we wouldn’t have to be hand fed by an aid group like children. A place where we could have the chance to make our own fate.” At Dadaab, it feels as though the U. S. refugee ban has stopped all normal life. The offices here for the International Organization for Migration, usually a bustling spot with refugees working through the bureaucracy of getting resettled, are empty. And everyone I spoke to seemed to be at a loss. That seemed true even for Jean Bosco Rushatsi, head of operations at the UNHCR’s office here. He said the U. N. is trying to make arrangements to fly about 200 refugees from Nairobi back to Dadaab. When they left last week, they thought it was for their new homes. Many of them sold everything they owned, and now they’re about to come back to nothing. They’re about to start all over again. Rushatsi said the U. N. will find each of them a piece of land and some building materials  —   twigs, sticks and sheets of plastic  —   to build a home. ”It’s really devastating for some but, you know, they have to face it,” he said. ”That’s unfortunate but there is no alternative solution right away.” Gabriella Waaijman, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s regional director for East Africa, said this is a part of the global trend to ”demonize” refugees. It’s a tragedy, but it’s more than that, she said. It’s a story about one of the richest countries in the world rejecting what she said are its obligations under international law. ”So what are you doing? You’re putting additional pressure on developing countries that are already bearing the biggest burden of the refugee crisis,” Waaijman said. ”Its a very, very selfish position that the United States is taking.” Rushatsi said he’s also worried that there’s more to come. The Trump administration has been talking about cutting U. S. contributions to the U. N. and other multinational organizations. Because of the funding woes, the U. N. has already had to halve the food ration it gives to refugees at Dadaab. If more U. S. funding goes away, he’s not sure what will happen to the camp. Away from the bustle of the market, I meet Carlos Tresfeya. He’s Ethiopian and his wife, Zemzem Siraji, is Somali. They’ve also spent nine years waiting to be resettled in the United States. They were done with their fingerprints and their interviews, and were just waiting for a flight out. Now they don’t know what their fate will be. ”Only God and Trump knows,” Tresfeya said. ”Our hope is just in their hand. . .. First to God, second to Trump.” I ask him if any of this makes him angry. ”What will I bring if I am just angry?” he answered. ”I don’t have any power I’m voiceless.” Tresfeya gets up and walks across the camp, where each house is surrounded by fences made of braided twigs. They look like something a bird would make. Before getting to his house, he passes an evangelical church and an Orthodox one where he worships. He sits on his bed, and slowly all five of his kids come to sit there with him. Tresfeya and his wife, Siraji, are   people. They fell in love at the camp and decided to live together despite their religious differences. Sariji was disowned by her family, and they’re still considered outsiders at the camp. Tresfeya said his kids keep him going. ”For example this guy,” he said, pointing at Fouez, his    son. ”I’m expecting a lot from him. He’s going to do something. He repairs the radio. He sets satellite dishes, repairs mobile [phones. ]” But Tresfeya knows that here in Dadaab, Fouez won’t find success. All five of his children, he said, can’t go to school at the camp because they’re picked on. They have a Christian dad and a Muslim mom, so they’re ostracized. Siraji said that all her family wants is to move to a place that will accept them. But now their only hope, they say, is for President Trump to change his mind."
"Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, is under fire after making the false claim that Bowling Green, Ky. was the scene of a massacre carried out by Iraqis. Conway made the claim in an MSNBC interview that aired Thursday night, in which she argued in favor of President Trump’s immigration and refugee ban. In trying to make her case, Conway also accused the media of not covering a massacre on U. S. soil that was perpetrated by terrorists posing as refugees. Friday morning, Conway suggested in a tweet that the claim had been an honest mistake. The city of Bowling Green says it appreciates the clarification, with Mayor Bruce Wilkeson stating, ”I understand during a live interview how one can misspeak.” In the interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Conway defended Trump’s order to freeze the flow of travelers and refugees from seven   countries. The travel ban, Conway said, is ”narrowly proscribed, and also temporary,” and is aimed at making America safer. The senior member of Trump’s staff, who is credited with introducing the concept of ”alternative facts” to America’s discourse, then said: ”I bet, there was very little coverage  —   I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a   ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized  —   and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. I mean, most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.” In this case, as a growing number of people are pointing out, most people don’t know that purported ”new information” because it describes something that did not transpire. Conway’s claim is being ridiculed on Twitter and elsewhere, with fake tributes emerging to honor the nonexistent tragic event. Some of them invoke the hashtag #JeSuisBowlingGreen, playing off of expressions of empathy over actual terrorist attacks that transpired in recent history. The remarks also briefly set off confusion over whether Conway was referring to Bowling Green, Ky. (home of Western Kentucky University) or Bowling Green, Ohio (home of Bowling Green State University) some 400 miles away. Friday morning, the White House adviser tweeted that she was referring to the town in Kentucky, along with a link to an article about Iraqis arrested on terrorism charges in 2011. We’ll note that no Iraqi has carried out a deadly attack in the U. S. since the U. S.  invasion of their country in 2003, though many Iraqis were involved in the insurgency that killed American troops. And as NPR’s Greg Myre has reported, Trump’s list of nations whose citizens are barred from entering the U. S. ”doesn’t include any countries from which radicalized Muslims have actually killed Americans in the U. S. since Sept. 11, 2001.” As criticism poured forth Friday morning, Conway said in a tweet, ”Honest mistakes abound.” That statement highlights a dilemma in today’s America: When public officials become known for promoting inaccuracies  —   and fake news is blamed for misinforming people  —   the task of distinguishing honest mistakes from calculated misstatements becomes more complex. This morning, Conway also complained that an NBC reporter had contacted her about a separate story  —   but hadn’t asked her to clarify her remarks about Bowling Green. ”Not cool, not journalism,” she wrote. In another tweet that soon followed, she wrote, ”Honest mistakes abound.” Setting aside Conway’s claim of a massacre, the more widely accepted version of a known   national security event in Kentucky goes something like this: Two Iraqi men who entered the U. S. as refugees and lived in Bowling Green were arrested in 2011 and charged with supporting a terrorist group. Despite acquiring Stinger missiles, guns and explosives that they believed to be real, neither Waad Alwan nor Mohanad Hammadi planned an attack in Kentucky instead, they tried to send the weapons and money to   in Iraq. And rather than being radicalized in the U. S. both men admitted to being involved in IED attacks on U. S. vehicles in Iraq. At the time, national security experts said the case revealed ”an alarming gap in the screening process” for refugees, as NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported. ”U. S. Homeland Security officials say the Alwan case exposed gaps in the screening process at the start of the Obama administration,” Johnson reported in 2011 (when they were arrested, both men had been in the U. S. for around two years). ”Nowadays, they say, applicants undergo a lot more scrutiny, and their names are run through more terrorist watch lists and other intelligence databases.” In 2013, Alwan and Hammadi were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences  —   a life term for Hammadi and a   term for Alwan. ”Both defendants were closely monitored by federal law enforcement authorities in the months leading up to their arrests,” the Justice Department said. ”Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.” As for Conway’s claim that President Obama declared ”a   ban on the Iraqi refugee program,” a look at the events of 2011 shows that after the terrorism arrests, the administration slowed down but did not halt the process. The White House was criticized that summer for what The New Yorker called an ”excruciatingly slow” process of approving Iraqis’ visas. At the end of the year, the State Department said it had admitted more than 9, 300 Iraqis  —   half the number of the previous year. Part of that slowdown was blamed on tighter security screenings that began at the start of 2011."
"Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had many unusual aspects, not the least of which was the huge amount of money it funneled into Trump’s own businesses. And now there’s a new twist: Such payments can continue indefinitely because he’s already declared himself a candidate for   in 2020. Documents filed with the Federal Election Commission show that Trump’s 2016 campaign paid millions of dollars to fly on his aircraft, compensate his relatives for unspecified campaign activities and rent space in Trump properties, including Trump Tower in New York, the Trump golf club in Bedminster, N. J. and Trump’s    resort in Florida. How much money did the campaign pay in total? Politico did the calculations and came up with a figure of $12. 8 million as of Dec. 31, 2016. Such payments are not illegal. Federal law allows campaigns to compensate businesses owned by candidates for any goods and services provided. But the amount of money Trump’s campaign funneled to his own businesses is on a scale rarely if ever seen before, says Norm Eisen, ethics adviser to former President Barack Obama. ”It’s customary for campaigns to provide some reimbursement, but we have never seen anything like this. It merits close scrutiny,” Eisen told NPR. He said the watchdog group he chairs, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is ”poring over the records to make sure the charges are justified and legal.” CREW recently sued Trump alleging that his overseas business interests violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars presidents from accepting payments from foreign governments. Campaigns are supposed to pay ”fair market value” for goods and services they use, but determining what that is can sometimes be difficult, says Larry Noble, general counsel of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. ”Sometimes it causes problems. The question is, what is fair market value? We’ve never seen it on this kind of scale,” he said. Noble notes that last month, Trump took the unusual step of announcing his candidacy for   in 2020. Most presidents wait to do so until after the midterm congressional elections, he said. Because Trump announced so early, he can continue to take in campaign contributions and use some of them to compensate his businesses, Noble said. On the other hand, by announcing early, Trump will also be subject to numerous restrictions on his activities, he said. ”Now that he’s declared he is a candidate, you get to look at his activities to see if in fact he’s doing something as a candidate versus as a president, and if he’s doing it as a candidate, it has to be paid for out of campaign funds that are subject to limits and prohibitions,” Noble said. He notes that presidents often are called upon to speak on behalf of other candidates or attend other political party events. ”When he goes out and gives those speeches, people are going to watch and see whether he talks about his campaign or his candidacy  —   and if he does, it’s a campaign event, and not just a political event for anther candidate or an official government event,” Noble said."
"Blood is red to the naked eye. Under a microscope, it depends. This isn’t because it isn’t really red, but rather because its redness is a macroscopic feature. Human blood is red because hemoglobin, which is carried in the blood and functions to transport oxygen, is   and red in color. Octopuses and horseshoe crabs have blue blood. This is because the protein transporting oxygen in their blood, hemocyanin, is actually blue. The blood of a vulcan is green, according to the story anyway, and this is presumably because the stuff that carries oxygen in the vulcan’s blood is green. But our blood is red. It’s bright red when the arteries carry it in its   state throughout the body. And it’s still red, but darker now, when it rushes home to the heart through the veins. I bring this up because I’ve noticed that there are a fair number of people  —   some of the 7th graders my son goes to school with, some teachers, too, who ought to know better, as well as lots of people who have published online  —   who say that blood inside the body is sometimes blue. Blue? Here is some evidence that this isn’t true. When I was 12, I was in an accident and my left wrist was ripped open so that I could see into my arm. Everything was red. Blood was shooting out of my arteries and sloshing out of my veins. And all of it was red. Here’s another piece of evidence. If you get blood drawn, the liquid that comes from your vein into the vacuum sealed container is, plainly, red. We also know why it is red, as already noted. It’s red because of the red blood cells (hemoglobin). Blood does change color somewhat as oxygen is absorbed and replenished. But it doesn’t change from red to blue. It changes from red to dark red. It is true that veins, which are sometimes visible through the skin, may look bluish. Why should this be so? Click here if you want the full story. But the short of it is this: It has to do with the way tissue absorbs, scatters and reflects light. (I think this also explains why your lips look blue when you get cold.) But if you were to open one of your veins, or cut your lip, even when you’re cold, there’d be nothing blue at all about the liquid that would pour forth. Maybe it is the fact that veins look bluish that explains the myth that blood is blue as it flows through the veins? Or could the answer lie elsewhere? By convention arteries are drawn red in textbooks and veins blue. Could it be that people have taken this to be a guide to their actual color? I think this is worth understanding. It’s a politically neutral example of a bit of falsehood that seems resistant to information. At a time when ignorant people openly challenge scientific knowledge about such important matters as the safety of vaccines or the dangers posed by the burning of fossil fuels, it seems worthwhile to try to understand why some bad ideas are so immune to revision. Here’s a hypothesis: The problem is not outright ignorance. You can imagine children  —   who may have never seen an accident, or been cut, or had blood drawn or taken a biology class  —   who might gullibly believe that blood is blue, because someone told them so. Even people who have been cut, or have witnessed an accident scene, or had blood drawn, cleave to the conviction of blood’s sometime blueness. Such conviction and confidence when everything  —   when all the evidence  —   speaks loudly against, can only be the result of some prejudice or bias. But what? Why? A little knowledge, it turns out, can be a dangerous thing. It’s hard to disprove a falsehood when it seems to fit so seamlessly with other true, if poorly understood, propositions. That’s what’s going on here, it would seem. Take a little blood chemistry, exposure to textbooks and the sight of your own naked arms, and you get a perfect ecosystem in which to nourish a manifestly false belief. Thanks to Ulysses Noë for adding to this discussion. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"It’s been nearly two decades since the Japanese horror movie Ringu introduced the world to a new kind of specter, a   ghost with stringy black hair and the   movements of a body that looked like its bones had been reversed and rearranged. (For   fans, it’s something akin to Elaine Benes dancing on Seinfeld.) A sudden influx of   flooded genre festivals and indie theaters and a wave of early 2000s Americanizations followed, starting with the 2002 hit The Ring and continuing with films like The Grudge, Dark Water, and One Missed Call. The trendlet had nearly run its course by the time The Ring Two cashed in three years later, and audiences seemed content to leave it at that. Until now, apparently. Nearly 12 years after the sequel, Rings has arrived to answer all the questions audiences can’t possibly remember having asked. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a   revival  —   the genre cycles through its past as frequently as any  —   but Ringu and The Ring are rooted in an era when VHS was the dominant format, and the specific qualities of the cassettes and the images were important to their visceral effect. After all, the hook of The Ring series is that people who watch an unmarked tape have seven spooky days to live before a ghost emerges from a well on the TV screen and drags them into the hereafter. It’s not really a   or streaming sort of idea. Nevertheless, the makers of Rings  —   which is to say none of the directors, screenwriters, or cast members of the previous incarnations  —   try their best to update to Version 2. 0. After an opening stinger on an airplane, where a passenger sweats through the last few minutes of his seven days, the film settles on Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) a college professor who picks up an old VCR from a street vendor. (He’s told that its previous owner died in a plane crash two years earlier.) When Gabriel brings the machine home and hooks it up to his TV, he discovers a mysterious tape inside and decides to check it out, after which he gets the dreaded phone call telling him he has a week to live. From there, the professor makes the format change from VHS to a digital file and he manufactures his own viral sensation as a way of sparing his own life. As each new student watches the video, they become the focus for Samara, the murderous ghost, and so they in turn expose another student to it for temporary protection. (The rules are similar to It Follows, a vastly superior horror film from a couple years ago.) When one of the affected students, Holt (Alex Roe) goes missing, his girlfriend Julia (Matilda Lutz) tracks him down and they venture off together to a mysterious, childless town to understand what happened to Samara and figure out how to lift the curse. Because of the   rule, the big scares are generally limited to the bookends, when Samara finally crawls out of the well and does her grisly business. The first American version of The Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski, proved extraordinarily effective in making that long second act count, shifting nimbly from a shocker to a chilling gothic mystery, steeped in the cloudy ambience of the Pacific Northwest. Rings pursues the same strategy, with Georgia a frugal substitute for Washington State, and the notion of a childless town with a secret is a potent one, especially when a hulking Vincent D’Onofrio turns up as its most eccentric resident. But Rings cannot make sense of the hodgepodge of old and new mythology, which confuses a Samara origin story that had already been settled in the other entries. Director F. Javier Gutiérrez and his screenwriting team abandon Gabriel and his nefarious operation on campus, but they struggle to fill the time with anything more than exposition and the occasional   to jostle the audience awake. At one point, an umbrella is opened in front of the camera. It’s the biggest shock in the movie."
"Of all President Trump’s Cabinet choices, only one currently seems at serious risk of being denied confirmation by the Senate. The confirmation of Betsy DeVos as education secretary is a question mark after two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, announced they plan to vote against her. The Senate cut off debate Friday after a procedural vote. Assuming no other GOP defectors, and no Democrats who cross over to support her, this could place Vice President Pence in the unprecedented position of casting a tiebreaker vote early next week to push the president’s nominee through. Jeff Sessions’ confirmation as attorney general is also being held up so he can vote for DeVos as the senator from Alabama. DeVos is one of several billionaires named to Trump’s Cabinet. She’s not the only one seemingly lacking in background knowledge or qualifications to run a major federal bureaucracy: Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon with no prior governmental experience, has been named to lead the housing agency. Nor, with a record that favors vouchers over public schools, is DeVos the only appointee to have seemingly opposed the agency she is now poised to run: Rick Perry famously said he wanted to abolish the Department of Energy, and Scott Pruitt sued the Environmental Protection Agency more than a dozen times. Yet it is DeVos’ nomination that has spawned massive opposition across the Internet, and from both sides of the aisle. Heidi Hess runs campaigns for CREDO, a mobile phone company with an activist arm that has been backing progressive causes for 30 years. When Trump’s Cabinet picks were announced, CREDO held a strategy meeting and chose a ”top terrible” list of appointees, dubbed the #SwampySeven in reference to his vows to ”drain the swamp.” But, Hess says, nobody has gotten people as enraged as DeVos. Activists made 30, 000 phone calls to Senate offices and smashed CREDO’s record for petition signatures, she said. ”A million and a half is just unprecedented,” she says. ”It’s another scale of magnitude.” So why has DeVos garnered such strong opposition? Sen. Lamar Alexander, one of her biggest proponents in Congress, has written that her opponents are ”grasping at straws” and simply ”resent” her support for choice. Several conservative media outlets have pointed out that Murkowski and Collins have received donations and support from teachers unions. The people who have been organizing against her have a few other theories. Americans like their public schools, Nine out of 10 students in this country attend public school. And national polls consistently show that a majority of Americans, across the aisle, approve of their neighborhood schools. They oppose closing them down, even when they are  . So DeVos’s rhetoric about replacing ”failed” public schools with charters and vouchers may have rubbed many people  —   even Trump supporters  —   the wrong way. ”It’s not just Democrats. There are a lot of Republicans and independents who don’t want DeVos. [They want] public education,” says Zephyr Teachout, a Democratic activist, who has been organizing in opposition to all of Trump’s Cabinet picks. This may be especially true in rural states like Collins’ Maine and Murkowski’s Alaska. School choice is harder to implement in more sparsely populated parts of the country, where children may ride a bus long distances to the local school. ”I have heard from thousands, truly, thousands of Alaskans who have shared their concerns about Mrs. DeVos,” Murkowski said on the Senate floor. Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, which has received funding from DeVos’ family foundations, sees a different force at work. He says the unions’   organizing power is what’s really being flexed. ”Every red state has an active, engaged network of teachers and allies willing to light up the switchboard.” Even some choice advocates don’t like DeVos’ brand of choice, Some   proponents like Hess, and Eva Moskowitz of the Success Academy charter network, a Democrat, have publicly supported her. But other   backers, including philanthropist Eli Broad and the Democrats for Education Reform, have nevertheless opposed DeVos. ”As important as choice is, that by itself isn’t the answer,” says Shavar Jeffries, the president of DFER. ”A strong commitment to accountability is key.” On that issue, opponents focused on a key exchange in her hearing when Sen. Tim Kaine, D. Va. pressed her as to whether charter, public and private schools should be held to the same accountability standards. ”Well, no,” was her final answer. In addition, says Jeffries, ”Her Michigan record gave pause to a lot of folks.” Many charter schools in Detroit, where DeVos backed a variety of free market choice measures with less oversight than elsewhere, have underperformed public schools. She seemed uniquely unprepared, Many critics cite DeVos’ much criticized performance at her confirmation hearing, videos of which have circulated widely. She has never taught in, worked in or sent her children to a public school, and many opponents believe it showed. She seemed not to understand elements of a major federal education law  —   the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. When Sen. Maggie Hassan,  . H. asked, ”were you unaware when I just asked you about the IDEA that it was a federal law?” DeVos responded, ”I may have confused it.” ”The more people who watched her performance in that hearing, the more they see how   DeVos is to do the mission, the more outraged regular Americans have gotten,” says Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. ”DeVos is the least qualified, the most   and the most hostile to public education of anyone who’s ever had that role.” Is gender at play? DeVos is one of just two female Cabinet appointees. The other, Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary, served in a previous administration, making her one of Trump’s most uncontroversial picks. ”It could be the gender thing,” says Hess. ”If it had been Republican senators treating a Democratic nominee the way Al Franken treated her, the gender story would have been much more prominent.” Hess was referring to harsh questions at DeVos’ confirmation hearing from Franken, a Minnesota Democrat. ”I was kind of surprised  —   well, I’m not that surprised  —   that you don’t know this issue,” Franken said at one point when questioning DeVos about methods of evaluating student performance. Thurston Domina, an associate professor of education policy at the University of North Carolina, circulated a letter opposing DeVos’ nomination that was signed by more than 500 education scholars. ”I think there’s a gendered thing,” to how harshly DeVos has been judged, he says. ”She’s no more clueless or ideologically awful than some other appointees, but we have a cultural role for a man who’s sort of a cowboy and comes in.” A woman who looks clueless, he argues, gets no such slack: ”She’s a lady who lunches.”"
"President Trump signed two directives on Friday, ordering a review of financial industry regulations known as   and halting implementation of a rule that requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. Trump himself made his intentions clear in a meeting with small business owners Monday. ”  is a disaster,” Trump said. ”We’re going to be doing a big number on  .” These executive actions are the start of a Trump administration effort to reverse or revise financial regulations put in place by the Obama administration and seen by Trump and his advisers as onerous and ineffective. Based on the description given by the administration official who briefed reporters, the directives the president is expected to sign Friday won’t immediately do a big number on the law. The directive will instruct the Treasury secretary to meet with the agencies that oversee the law to identify possible changes. ”Americans are going to have better choices and Americans are going to have better products because we’re not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year,” said National Economic Council director Gary Cohn in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Cohn, who was president and COO at the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs before joining the administration, added, ”The banks are going to be able to price product more efficiently and more effectively to consumers.” The president of the nonprofit Wall Street watchdog Better Markets issued a statement blasting Friday’s actions. ”The American people trusted candidate Trump when he said he was going to protect them from Wall Street’s recklessness, but President Trump has betrayed that trust,” Dennis Kelleher’s statement says. ”He is unleashing Wall Street on Main Street, which is exactly what the financial protections of Dodd Frank were put in place to prevent.” Hinting at where the administration might expect the review to lead, the official said that under the Obama administration, ”some of the rules may have even been unconstitutional, creating new agencies that don’t actually protect consumers.” That is an allusion to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the consumer watchdog bureau which Republicans in Congress opposed from its very creation and was the subject of a   fight over its leadership and structure. ”This is not an attempt to undo ” the administration official insisted before going on to explain that some of the work of changing regulations, including the   Volcker Rule to mitigate risks, could be done through personnel, putting   people in charge at agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission. It isn’t clear yet how long the review would take, but the official says every aspect of the law will be considered. A second directive would call on the Department of Labor to defer implementation of an   rule, known as the Fiduciary Rule, requiring financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients in retirement planning. The deadline for implementation was supposed to be April. Echoing arguments of the financial services industry, the Trump administration official said the rule would have unintended consequences if allowed to go forward. The industry says the rule will make it harder for advisers to serve   clients. Backers of the rule say it will prevent advisers from gouging customers by selling them inappropriate,   products. Once the review is complete, the official said, it’s possible the Labor Department could determine the rule is completely unnecessary. This rule has been heavily lobbied and some financial industry organizations had been pushing for the Trump administration to delay it. Key provisions of     passed in 2010, is made up of many provisions across many different regulatory agencies, some of which  —   like the Labor Department’s Fiduciary Rule  —   have yet to be implemented. The intent of the law was to implement comprehensive safeguards to monitor and regulate financial institutions so their potential failures would not pose a risk to the entire economy.   established some key new institutions and rules:"
"On the internet, we can be anonymous, hitting up a dating site as ”smooth0perator1” in hopes of a   or subtweeting frenemies under the comfort of an inscrutable avatar. In The Internet, Syd Tha Kyd wanted to be anonymous, or at least not the center of attention. It’s one part defense mechanism and one part shruggie emoticon, downplaying her singer status as just someone in the band instead of someone out front. That equal dynamic has served the RB and soul band well, allowing its players to make some wildly funky and thoughtfully layered music as a unit, especially on 2015’s Ego Death. Dropping the honorary used while DJing and engineering Odd Future, Syd steps out like it ain’t no thing with Fin. She makes her initial reservations about going solo seem more like another project, another product. ”This album is not that deep, but I feel like this is my descent into the depth I want the band to get to,” Syd told The Fader in October. ”For me, this is like an   thing  —   maybe get a song on the radio, maybe make some money, have some new s*** to perform.” But it’s clear from the album’s very first moments  —   a digital clang dropped from a cloud of synths, a robotic sigh still so high from a long hit  —   that Syd can smoke out the quiet storm. While she worked with producers   Rakhi,   and fellow Internet member Steve Lacy on Fin, the beats and the words all are driven by Syd. She has an affinity for the ’90s RB singers who kept their emotions open and voices close, like Aaliyah (see ”Know”) or the ladies in TLC (”Smile More,” ”Nothin’ To Somethin’”)  —   embracing the limitations of their range, but finding the core of the performance via   confidence. Syd herself alternates between a chill drawl and a   head voice, but generally keeps everything  . The slithering ”All About Me” has Syd     in a syrup of braggadocio disguised as group support (”People drowning all around me   So I keep my squad around me”) while the sultry ”Body” slinks a woozy   jam. These are the thematic valleys of Fin: hit up your crew when things get rough, and love on your honey with some respect and tenderness. All things considered, that’s not a bad place to be."
"With stories about politics and international affairs dominating the news cycle, it can be easy to miss what’s going on in the world of music. To help with that, NPR Music has a Friday roundup of what was on its radar this week. Of course, even the music industry has had its sights trained on politics musicians and other industry players around the globe responded forcefully this week to President Trump’s executive action on immigration. But a brief,   respite arrived Wednesday with the week’s biggest music news. In two words: Beyoncé. Twins. Jacob Ganz, senior editor at NPR Music, spoke with NPR’s Audie Cornish about that announcement and some other highlights from this week. Listen at the audio link for their full conversation and dive deeper with the links below."
"Editor’s note: This story contains references to child pornography that some readers may find disturbing. It’s tempting to think of Facebook as pure entertainment  —   the dumb game you play when your boss looks away, or your date goes to the bathroom. But that’s underestimating how powerful the Facebook empire has become. For some, the app is more important than a driver’s license. People need it to contact colleagues, or even start and build businesses.  It’s hard to know how many people rely on Facebook for work, but NPR interviewed dozens who do. Their stories reveal an unsettling fact: This Silicon Valley giant  —   one that has woven its way into the lives of more than a billion people  —   can be a black box, silent about how it makes decisions. While some have been frustrated about censorship, for a number of users, there is another concern  —   livelihood. Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and author of The Attention Merchants, says it’s as though Facebook were an industrial park. Users started setting up offices in the park, using the roads to travel, treating it like a public utility. But legally, it’s private. So when Facebook shuts off the road that goes to your shop, or puts in a new toll, he says, ”That’s it, you’re done.” Two very different people  —   one is a   in Florida, the other an investigative journalist from Zimbabwe  —   got stopped in their tracks as they were doing their work on Facebook, because of the company’s decisions and refusal to talk,   . That caused them tangible harm. Their stories illustrate how much Facebook controls people’s access to the online world, and how opaque the company is about this power. A fascinating cottage industry, Tim Lawler considers himself a regular American. ”If Bruce Willis and The Rock had a baby, it would look like me,” he says. He doesn’t have a computer science degree from Stanford, yet he managed to make a   salary on Facebook. His job is something you’ve likely never heard of before: He makes and shares memes  —   those dumb, funny pictures you see all over the Internet  —   for money. Lawler previously worked as a manager for   but he lost his job when his store got bought out. He was 40, a tough age to make a career change. He first got on Facebook just for fun. He had a regular account. Then one day he decided to try out a special feature  —   to make something called, simply, a ”page.” Anyone can do it. It takes just a few seconds. Lawler made one in honor of a personal passion: skulls. ”I think that skulls are just a universal symbol of our either mortality or immortality and every person that’s ever been around in this world, past, present or future, has a skull,” he explains. Turns out, it was a stroke of brilliance. Lawler built a base of 350, 000 fans  —   fellow  . And then he started making more pages for more passions, amassing about 4 million ”likes” total. (By comparison, NPR’s Facebook page has 5. 6 million likes. So Lawler is a serious   shop.) His most popular page was called ”Unlawful Humor”  —   an edgy title, but with PG content. One day, a Facebook friend told him she was making money off one of her pages, and he should get in on the business. Here’s how the money part works: Just like Google and Facebook get paid to post advertisements (in your search and your news feed) Lawler gets paid to posts ads too  —   in his Facebook page  —   by a third party, an entity known as an ”affiliate link” company. In the complex world of online advertising, these companies are middlemen between big brands like Home Depot and publishers. It’s a standard practice for businesses on Facebook to post these advertising links. He’ll share a link  —   it could be for a juice company or a news site  —   and every time a fan clicks on that link, he gets less than a penny. But the money adds up. Lawler made anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars a day, to $1, 000. Last year he raked in about $100, 000. (He showed NPR proof of his earnings.) Before it became lucrative, Lawler felt he had a knack for this work because he saw celebrities sharing his memes. In 2010, according to a former senior employee, Facebook had only 100, 000 of these pages. Now, according to two employees, there are roughly 60 million. And they’re a vital part of the corporate strategy. To keep growing, Facebook needs people to do more than set up personal accounts. It needs small businesses to set up digital shop. That brings in more traffic and opens the doors to Facebook mediating (and getting a fee for) financial transactions. If Facebook is the publisher, the most dedicated page owners are the army of reliable writers. They post multiple times an hour. NPR interviewed dozens of people who operate pages. It’s an intriguing world of niche interests. Mikael Giagis started ”The Ultimate 80s” (he loves Molly Ringwald) Cole Larocque started ”Wicked Diesels” and Jason Karpowich did ”Fool Injected  ” (they love their cars) Jess Eagon Cook started ”Mommy Doesn’t Have a Filter Honey” (to help cope with motherhood) John Sweeney had ”102. 7 WSNR” (to promote his Internet radio station). Maureen Camfield, a nurse, started a page for the brokenhearted. It was called ”Broken, Beaten and Scarred But Not Giving Up.” We often hear how the Internet is full of bullies. Camfield says there are so many lonely people online who just want a friend, you can build a real business by being kind. She’d sometimes refer a fan on her page to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and get a message in return like: ”You helped. You made a difference. I wanted to kill myself that night and I didn’t.” It all comes crashing down, The technology sector gets criticized for killing jobs, for having robots and algorithms replace human labor. These page owners sound like success stories  —   exactly the people Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would want to brag about. While algorithms take over boring, repetitive work, Facebook is making new work that is creative. This is the very promise of technology. But that is not where this story goes. Lawler and the other page owners listed above got shut down. Lawler remembers he was sitting on his couch, posting to his Facebook pages. And all of a sudden, he saw a stream of notifications: ”This page has been unpublished. This page has been unpublished. This page has been unpublished. This page has been unpublished. And I was like, ’Oh my God.’ ”  He remembers the date: Oct. 25. Around the same time, others tell NPR, they received similar, generic messages. They’d violated Facebook’s Terms of Service and their pages are not allowed to operate. The notices did not state what the person did wrong exactly, what the offending posts were, or whether there was a way to rectify the situation (to get the page back). They read like form letters. When Lawler opens his Facebook account, he can still see his old pages (the rest of the world can’t). It makes him sad ”because there’s nothing happening over there. All that’s happening is I’m [losing] likes that I built,” he says. You could say tough luck. Facebook is a free app. People don’t pay, and they’re not entitled to use it. But Lawler and others did pay. Facebook makes money in different ways. The company sticks its own ads on pages  —   meaning the ads other businesses pay Facebook to place. And it charges page owners to ”boost” a post  —   pay $5 to get your post in front of more people. (Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams.) Lawler paid thousands of dollars in ad money. He thought it was a kind of a safety valve. When you advertise, you get a point person, a human at Facebook. Lawler tried reaching that person, and even got a call back  —   which he missed. His emails to Facebook went unanswered. In April 2016, Facebook posted a new rule online stating that users have to get special approval from corporate headquarters to post advertisements independently. Furthermore, Lawler got dozens of notices that his account was sending out spam. Facebook declined to discuss the specifics of any case, citing privacy concerns. Lawler says he didn’t know about this new rule (Facebook didn’t tell him) and the spam notices he got are just little   that disappear in seconds. If he were in bad standing, he figured, someone in the advertising department would have warned him  —   and not let him keep paying to promote his page. Trying to track a child abuser, The difficulty in reaching the company to have access restored doesn’t just affect people who created pages. In Zimbabwe, about 8, 000 miles away from the Florida   there is a user named Sandra Nyaira, an investigative journalist. On June 17, 2016, she received three photographs. ”Horrible, horrible pictures,” she says. They were of two young girls, perhaps 7 years old. They are on a bed, being sexually abused by a man. It’s shot at such an angle that you can see the fear in the girls’ eyes. ”When I received the pictures I was pained,” she says. ”I actually cried because I looked at them and I was like, ’Who does this?’ Obviously these kids were being abused by someone who was very, very close to them.” According to news sources in Zimbabwe, the man took his phone to a repair shop and a clerk saw the photos in the photo gallery. Here in the U. S. if you saw such images, you might go to the police. But in Zimbabwe, Nyaira says, people don’t trust the police to do their jobs. That’s how she wound up with the photos. She’s an   reporter, and she wants to get justice done. Nyaira reached out to a woman in Zimbabwe’s Parliament, a feminist who demanded an investigation and who went on Facebook to talk about the case. In less than 24 hours, Nyaira recalls, they had launched a national discussion. ”So many women in Zimbabwe  —   women activists and ordinary women  —   started following the debate, and speaking with her, responding to a debate on Facebook,” she says. Facebook users contacted Nyaira, to ask how they could help. A fellow journalist said he could tap his sources and get officials he knows involved in the search. So Nyaira decided to share the photos with him on Messenger (Facebook’s private chat tool). That was a big mistake. Almost instantly, Facebook’s computer software deactivated her. She thought to herself, ”Oh no! The bots think I’m distributing child pornography.” She felt mortified. ”Why did you do that? You start blaming yourself, but not for doing anything wrong really for trying to help,” Nyaira says. She needs Facebook for her job. It’s how she communicates with sources and promotes her stories. She told herself: It’ll be OK. I’ll just contact the company and explain. But she realized she couldn’t reach a person at Facebook. There’s no hotline to call. So she filled out a form on the website, which asked her to scan and upload a copy of her passport. She did that and still got a generic rejection. Nyaira became more worried. ”OK, I have sent Facebook my passport information, so what are they going to do with it? Are they going to go to the police without even talking to me about why they have blocked my account?” She feared she could be arrested. In desperation, she turned to one of the most powerful institutions she knows: Harvard University. She used to be a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, and even sat at a luncheon with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg there. Nicco Mele, the center’s director, reached out to a friend at Facebook and basically said: ”Hey, is there anything you can do to help us? I can vouch for Sandra. She is the real deal. She wasn’t doing anything untoward or anything bad.” Mele assumed the matter would get resolved quickly. But that didn’t happen. He reached out to a second friend at Facebook thinking: c’mon. This is silly. And then ”nothing happened,” Mele says. A few weeks after learning of Nyaira’s case, NPR happened to be at Facebook headquarters to interview the head of the Messenger app about an unrelated topic. And at the end, we brought up her case. Without hesitating, Messenger head David Marcus said he’d look into it. ”Of course, and generally those are cases that are really easy to resolve because we have a really good team that looks into these cases and resolves them generally pretty quickly, so I’m shocked that in this specific case it wasn’t done,” he said. ”But of course, I’d be more than happy to help solve that.” Facebook is now in the process of contacting Nyaira directly about her account. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, a man was arrested as the alleged pedophile. As the country talked about it on Facebook, Nyaira  —   whose work helped lead to his capture  —   could not join in. After months of being off the app, she sometimes receives messages from colleagues who wonder why she has disappeared and whether she has left the news industry. In different emerging markets  —   like India, Nigeria and Zimbabwe  —   Facebook leaders make the case that the social network is a tool that helps local economics grow. Nyaira says if Facebook is marketing itself as a vital service, not just a recreational habit, it owes it to users to have local call centers  —   as other multinationals do. But it’s unclear how much Facebook is willing to invest financially in reliable customer service. Consider the numbers. Facebook is worth about $387 billion, and it has about 16, 000 employees. Meanwhile, Comcast, which is worth about $180 billion, has 126, 000 employees  —   so less than half the market cap, but nearly eight times the workforce. Comcast is not exactly the gold standard, but it does have a way for a human customer to reach a human customer representative. Blocking the roads, A few years ago, a joke started floating around in geek circles about Facebook. It went: You have to use Facebook, out of biological necessity, because if you don’t use it, you don’t make friends. If you don’t make friends, you don’t date. And if you don’t date, you don’t get to reproduce. That is not the reality, yet. But the insight  —   that Facebook is far more powerful than we think, and than the company lets on  —   stands. Ashkan Soltani is a privacy researcher and software engineer (who has also won a Pulitzer Prize and served at the Federal Trade Commission under the Obama administration). He thinks Facebook leaders downplay the company’s power. While they broadcast their user numbers, they don’t disclose how much people rely on Facebook. If the company revealed data showing Facebook is the primary mechanism by which people communicate online, Soltani says, ”that would be a very precarious thing for them to say, particularly given competition law and all the responsibilities with it.” Many people fear technology is destroying jobs, not creating them. This year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a New Year’s resolution on his page: He’s going to tour Middle America  —   visit the 30 states he hasn’t visited yet  —   and talk to real people about their concerns. Columbia’s Tim Wu, when asked what he would say to the CEO on tour, poses these questions: ”What are you doing for the economic development of Middle America? What can you offer them other than a chance to see their friends’ kids and make ad revenue off people’s children? He can do better. He can do better.” He’s asking not just about individual cases, but about how Facebook  —   one of the 10 most valuable companies on Earth  —   sees its role in promoting commerce and creating opportunities for others.  A few months ago, onstage at Stanford University, Zuckerberg got asked pretty much the same thing by former President Barack Obama. Zuckerberg did not talk about Facebook’s role. Instead, he defined the word ”entrepreneurship.” ”You know the most effective entrepreneurs who I’ve met care deeply about some mission and some change that they’re trying to create. And often they don’t even start because they’re trying to create a company,” he said. Of course, lots of people do want to create a company, earn a living and use Facebook to help them do it. Zuckerberg will have many more opportunities to explain to them how  —   even if  —   Facebook can help as he tours the U. S. NPR requested an interview with him, to discuss the situation of users who rely on Facebook for work. The company declined. NPR’s Aarti Shahani has started a page on Facebook for people to share concerns about the platform. It’s called Tell Zuck. If you use Facebook for work, and find you’re unable to reach the company, tell her your story at www. facebook. ."
"When we asked listeners to write commercials for the little,    joys that enhance our lives, we noticed something interesting. There were a few themes that came up often  —   but then, there were also a few contributions that genuinely took us by surprise. They were commercials for things and experiences that literally none of our 2, 000 other ad writers brought up. But they resonated just the same. A day after we announced five of our favorites  —   and released the audio versions that aired on All Things Considered  —   we can’t help returning to the golden trove of Ads for Nicer Living for just one more post. Consider these the honorable mentions: a celebration of some of the great entries that caught our eye  —   the ads that, quite literally, were one of a kind. From Melissa Morgan of Fremont, Calif. The lush touch of luxury at your fingertips. Perfectly designed to sumptuously caress every curve and soften the edges of even the hardest surface. Anciently evolved, yet modernly minimalist. Experience moss, the     Persian carpets of the plant kingdom. With a legacy of understated elegance which has outlasted millennia, moss adds a subtle touch of chic to every occasion. Filled with   opulence and the classic look of emeralds, the cracks in your sidewalk have never looked better. Moss: nevermore a drab slab. From Jaclyn Schillinger of New York City, Oh no! The toasterStill on. The breadStill in. Toasted? !Ohhhhhhhhh yes. BURNT TOASTFa la la la la la laBURNT TOASTFa la la la la la laThe mistake just teasesbecause its CRUNCH just pleases . ..And that never ceasesto amaaaaaze me. BURNT TOASTFa la la la la la la, Scrumptious! Delicious! Delightful! The beauty of the imperfection. Leave that toaster on a smidge too long andtry it for yourself today. From Rose Szabo of Richmond, Va. This public service announcement reminds you that it’s time to talk to the person about the thing. Got a minor complaint that’s growing because of how long it’s gone on? Wanting to ask an important question about your future? Curious whether someone you love feels the same way as you? If you know it’s important to you, and you know something needs to be said, now is the time to say it. Talk to the person about the thing. Be kind, be specific, and be quick about it. Life is short. Talk to the person about the thing. From Stephen Lee Thompson of Chicago, Life can be so complex. Work! Family! Friends? Who can keep up? Well, thank goodness! Things just got much simpler when Your Friend Called to Cancel the Plans You Already Forgot About. Brought to you by Disorganization and Positive Reinforcement, Your Friend Called to Cancel the Plans You Already Forgot About has more than 100 years of satisfied customers . .. All the way back to your  ! **Sounds of a telegraph**   Woman: What does it say, Harold?   Man: Why! The Joneses can’t make it tonight.   Woman: BULLY! We’re not even dressed. Your Friend Called to Cancel the Plans You Already Forgot About! **Sigh** Also from the makers of Your Friend Called to Cancel the Plans You Already Forgot About, try: Lucky Guess and That Was a Close One. Disorganization and Positive Reinforcement: You can trust us . .. because it happened that one time. From Don Greenfield of Wynnewood, Pa. **Door slams** Him: Hi, I’m back! Her: (lifeless): Hey. ..Him: Boy, you sound really down  —   is everything OK? Her: I dunno, I’ve just been droopy all day. Him: I know that feeling. But I know just what you need. Try listening to the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream! Her: Mendelwho? What’s a Scherzo? Him: Don’t worry about any of that  —   just listen to it! Her: Well, I guess it can’t hurt. Him: Come on, try it . .. **Music begins** Him: There, I see a little smile on your face already. **More music** Him (humming to the music):       . ..Her (starting to giggle): Hey, stop that! Him (continuing to hum):      ! Together:      ! **Both begin laughing** Her (through the laughter): This stuff is great! He: Works for me every time! **More music and laughter** Narrator: Felix Mendelssohn’s Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: raising spirits since 1842!"
"Updated at 4:13 a. m. ET Sunday, President Trump’s travel ban remains suspended, after the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit denied a Justice Department request to stay the suspension of President Trump’s order. The court asked opponents of the ban to respond to the Trump administration’s appeal by Sunday at 11:59 p. m. PT the court asked the Justice Department to respond by Monday at 3 p. m. PT. The denial comes a few hours after the Trump administration filed an emergency motion requesting an ”immediate administrative stay” to block the Feb. 3 ruling in Washington state that temporarily suspended Trump’s immigration ban. In a court filing, the Department of Justice argued that the court’s nationwide blocking of Trump’s order was ”vastly overbroad” and should be stayed pending the administration’s appeal. It said the court’s injunction ”  the President’s national security judgment.” Earlier Saturday, the Department of Justice filed a notice to appeal the court ruling. The notice and request were filed to the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the Feb. 3 ruling by Judge James Robart in Washington state. The original story continues below, On Friday night, a federal judge in Seattle temporarily halted the enforcement of President Trump’s executive order on immigration. By Saturday, federal officials had announced they would be complying with the ruling, and airlines said they would resume boarding travelers covered under the ban. The Department of Homeland Security ”has suspended any and all actions implementing the affected sections of the Executive Order,” a department spokeswoman said in a statement. Accordingly, department officials are no longer flagging travelers simply because they are from the seven   countries temporarily barred by Trump’s order. Meanwhile, a State Department spokesperson tells NPR that officials with the department are also adhering to the decision. The department has provisionally revoked somewhere between 60, 000 and 100, 000 individuals’ visas, according to different accounts under Saturday’s announcement, the State Department says that move has been reversed  —   and that ”individuals with visas that were not physically cancelled may now travel if the visa is otherwise valid.” Those whose visas were cancelled using a physical stamp have to apply for a new visa at a U. S. embassy or consulate. The State Department said it is working closely with DHS and legal teams on complying with Judge James Robart’s decision, which suspends the nationwide enforcement of Trump’s order while a case brought by the states of Washington and Minnesota is heard in court. That decision also blocks the implementation of the executive order’s provisions related to refugee admissions, a State Department spokesperson said. The department is now restarting the paperwork process for refugees to come to the U. S. Trump, for his part, tweeted a broadside Saturday morning against Judge Robart. ”When a country is no longer able to say who can, and who cannot  come in  out, especially for reasons of safety . security   big trouble!” Trump tweeted. In a subsequent tweet, Trump derided Robart as a ”  judge,” whose decision ”is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Robart, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, is the federal judge presiding over the U. S. District Court in western Washington state. In a statement released Friday, the White House also called Robart’s stay an ”outrageous order.” Later, as NPR’s Rebecca Hersher noted, the statement was soon changed to remove the word ”outrageous.” But the thrust of the message remained the same: The White House said the Justice Department will challenge the judge’s decision. In the meantime, airlines have quickly responded to the court order. Qatar Airways, which services many of the predominantly Middle Eastern countries barred by Trump, announced that it had been directed by U. S. Customs and Border Protection to board nationals with valid documents from Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The airline also noted: ”All refugees seeking admission presenting a valid, unexpired U. S. visa or Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) card (Green Card) will be permitted to travel to the United States and will be processed accordingly upon arrival.” But Qatar Airways wasn’t the only airline to release such an announcement Saturday. Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline, announced that on the basis of the federal court ruling it would also permit the affected travelers to fly to the U. S. ”However,” Lufthansa was careful to note, ”short notice changes to the immigration regulations may occur at any time. The final decision regarding immigration lies with the US authorities.” In Cairo, airport authorities received a notification Saturday from U. S. officials that they should also halt the enforcement of Trump’s travel ban. And Reuters reports that Emirates and Etihad Airways said Saturday they would do so, as well. Meanwhile, in the U. S. multiple media outlets report that CBP spoke with U. S. airlines on a conference call Friday, informing them that after the federal judge’s ruling that it was ”back to business as usual.” CNN adds: ”The government was in the process of reinstating visas, the [airline] executive said, adding that airlines would start removing travel alerts from their websites and getting messages out to customers to notify them of the change.” On Friday, NPR’s Rebecca Hersher reported that there have been differing accounts of how many visas, exactly, have been revoked since the executive order: ”The State Department said [Friday] ’roughly 60, 000 individuals’ visas were provisionally revoked’ as a result of Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order barring refugees from seven countries. ”That number is considerably lower than the number given by a Justice Department attorney, who said today in federal court in Virginia that 100, 000 visas were revoked as a result of the order, as Carmel Delshad of NPR station WAMU reported.” Beyond the case brought by the states of Minnesota and Washington, three other states  —   Massachusetts, New York and Virginia  —   have also sued the federal government over Trump’s executive order."
"Judge James L. Robart did not have to actually rule on the legality of President Trump’s executive order barring people from seven countries from entering the United States. In granting a temporary restraining order, the judge essentially had to decide that: In other words, he decided there was more harm letting the ban continue than there was blocking it until the full case could be heard. But Robart certainly tipped his hand on whether he thought the ban was justified. He questioned Department of Justice lawyer Michelle Bennett, who was representing the Trump administration, asking, ”How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals from those seven countries since  ?” The Sept. 11 attack was one of the rationales behind the executive order, according to the Trump administration. ”I don’t know the specific details of attacks or planned attacks,” said Bennett, who is from the DOJ’s Civil Division. ”The answer to that is none, as best I can tell,” said the judge. ”The rationale was not only ” Bennett said. ”It was to protect the United States from the potential for terrorism.” Congress gives the president wide latitude in foreign affairs, which includes granting visas. ”The court doesn’t get to look behind those determinations,” she added. But the judge answered: ”I’m also asked to look and determine if the executive order is rationally based. And rationally based, to some extent, means I have to find it grounded in fact instead of fiction.” Temporary restraining orders generally last up to 14 days. They can be extended, but the idea is to hold a full hearing on an injunction instead. Of course, a higher court can overturn the restraining order in the meantime. Who is the judge? Robart has a history of saying what he thinks. He was nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2003 and confirmed unanimously in a   vote by the Senate in June 2004. Before that, he was a lawyer in private practice in Seattle. He has worked with   youth in that city and, before becoming a judge, represented refugees from Southeast Asia. Last year, Robart presided over a case alleging excessive force by Seattle police brought by the Obama administration’s Justice Department. During a hearing, he used FBI statistics to note that police use of deadly force in cities in the U. S. involved 41 percent of black people, despite their being only 20 percent of the population living in those cities. Robart took a breath and said, ”Black lives matter.”"
"It’s only the second week of the Trump administration, but there has been a continued tension with facts. In his first week, the president boasted about his inaugural crowds and doubled down on false claims that there were millions of illegal voters who swayed the results of the popular vote. This week, the White House pushed back on claims about the immigration and travel ban the president signed an adviser used a Kentucky massacre that never occurred to make an argument the press secretary thundered over ( )”identical” National Security Councils and the president referred to refugees as ”illegal immigrants” and kept touting the size of his electoral win, including support from black voters and Latinos.  1. ”It really is a massive success story in terms of implementation on every single level.”  —   senior administration official Sunday on the   ban and its implementation, Scenes at major international U. S. airports in the U. S. showed the implementation of the order rocky. There was confusion about whether it applied to green card holders and U. S. legal residents. A    boy was detained for hours. More than a dozen congressional Republicans broke ranks and criticized the rollout of the order, even Trump allies. ”We all share a desire to protect the American people, but this executive order has been poorly implemented, especially with respect to   holders,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker,  . said in a statement. Some agencies or officials who would be tasked with implementing it weren’t briefed with sufficient time before the order was signed. Trump defended that in a tweet saying he didn’t want to give bad dudes a heads up: 2. ”These seven countries, what about the 46   countries that are not included. Right there, it totally undercuts this nonsense that this is a Muslim ban.”  —   White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Fox News Sunday, It’s true that the words Muslim or Christian never appear in the executive order. And it’s true that it doesn’t ban all Muslims around the world. But the order does effectively ban Muslims from seven   countries and prioritizes Christians (and conceivably other religious minorities). Trump himself in December 2015 called for ”a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Trump supporter and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Fox News on Sunday that Trump originally wanted a Muslim ban but asked how to do it legally so it became about dangerous countries instead of religion. ”When he first announced it,” Giuliani said, ”he said, ’Muslim ban.’ He called me up, he said, ’Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it  —   legally.’ ” Trump himself stressed in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Christians would get special priority. The countries on the list are not just   they are all almost entirely Muslim, as the Boston Globe’s Matt Viser pointed out: 3. ”My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months. The seven countries named in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror.”  —   President Trump, in a statement on Facebook defending his policy, The Trump administration defended its choice of the seven countries by pointing out that the Obama administration had identified them as ”countries of concern,” but unlike Trump’s order, Obama’s did not bar people from entering the U. S. The Obama change stemmed from two Iraqis who were arrested in Kentucky (more on that later in the week). Their fingerprints were found in Iraq on an improvised explosive device targeting Americans. That caused the Obama administration to slow down the process of admitting Iraqis, but it never stopped it. 4. ”I mean New York Times has called me wrong from the beginning. They actually apologized to their readers. They lost a lot of subscriptions because  —   not because the readers even like me. They say ’how inaccurate could you be?’ ”  —   Trump, in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network on Sunday, Trump has made similar claims about the Times ”apologizing” before, but such claims continue to not be true. As we recently wrote in a fact check about a Trump tweet: ”New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Executive Editor Dean Baquet did write a letter to readers after the surprising election conclusion examining the paper’s coverage. In the note, they acknowledged that ’after such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?’ And a column from the paper’s public editor (or ombudsman) Liz Spayd, pointed out problems with its   vertical that predicted that Hillary Clinton had an 80 percent chance of winning the election. She also argued that the paper’s reporters could have done a better job of tapping into ’the sentiments of Trump supporters.’ ” However, neither of those pieces constitutes an apology. 5. ”And we did better with the Latino community. . .. Better than Romney, better than just about for a long way.”  —   Trump to CBN, Sunday, Trump received 28 percent of the Latino vote, according to 2016 exit poll data compiled by CNN. Romney received 27 percent of the Latino vote in 2012. The margin of error on each of those polls is plus or minus 3 percentage points, according to Edison Research, the organization that conducted the polls. As far as performing better with Hispanics than past candidates, that’s not really true, either. John McCain received 31 percent of the Latino vote in 2008, and in 2004, George W. Bush received 44 percent of the Latino vote  —   a figure that is often pointed to as a   mark for Republicans with that demographic. 6. ”And the   I got 84 percent of that vote. And they voted in big numbers.”  —   Trump to CBN, Sunday, It’s not clear where Trump got this number. It’s true that   tend to be more conservative than other Latino voters. But at least in the state with by far the most   the Trump share of the vote wasn’t nearly this high. According to the Pew Research Center, just over half (54 percent) of   in Florida  —   home to   of all   eligible voters  —   voted for Trump. In fact,   voters have grown less Republican over the years. According to Pew, nearly   of   were Republican or   as of 2002. As of 2013, it was just 47 percent. NPR has reached out to the White House for a source on this figure but did not receive a response. 7. The president tweeted blame at Delta Airlines on Monday. But while Delta did experience an outage that affected many flights on the ground, that problem was reported on Sunday night. Those delays began well after protests started breaking out at airports across the country on Saturday in response to Trump’s executive order on refugees, which was issued on Friday. 8. ”The Principals Committee is merely the NSC minus the president. The idea is that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the DNI are being downgraded or removed is utter nonsense.”  —   Spicer on Monday, The Principals Committee under George W. Bush, whom Spicer referenced in his briefing, indeed did not specifically include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the director of national intelligence (or, at the time, the director of central intelligence, as the DNI did not exist yet). Rather, the Principals Committee said that the DCI and chairman would ”attend where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise” were going to be discussed, as NPR’s Domenico Montanaro pointed out in a fact check this week. However, the DNI and chairman were regular members under the Obama administration, according to one February 2009 memo. Here is the text of that list: ”The NSC Principals Committee ( ) will continue to be the senior interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security, as it has been since 1989. The National Security Advisor shall serve as Chair, and its regular members will be the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, the Chief of Staff to the President, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” The latest action from the White House is clearly different, moving the DNI and chairman back to attendees only at certain meetings: ”The PC shall have as its regular attendees the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff, the Assistant to the President and Chief Strategist, the National Security Advisor, and the Homeland Security Advisor. The Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall attend where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed. The Counsel to the President, the Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget may attend all PC meetings.” In addition, Stephen Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, is now a regular attendee of the Principals Committee. That is one big way in which Trump’s NSC really is not like Obama’s or Bush’s. 9. ”He’s aware of what people have been saying. But I think, by and large, he’s been praised for it.”  —   Spicer at Monday’s press briefing, referring to the White House Holocaust Remembrance Statement that left out any mention of the Jewish people, Only white nationalists were celebrating the carefully parsed statement, with controversial   leader Richard Spencer praising it as the ”  of the Holocaust.” According to Politico, the White House even nixed a State Department statement that did mention Jewish victims. White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks defended the wording of the original statement, noting that while 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, 5 million others were also killed, including ”priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical disabilities, communists, trade unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, anarchists, Poles and other Slavic peoples, and resistance fighters.” That is true, but the express purpose of the Holocaust was to exterminate the Jewish people, and minimizing that has been the goal of Holocaust deniers, white nationalists and  . The Holocaust Memorial Museum criticized the statement, noting that ”Millions of other innocent civilians were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, but the elimination of Jews was central to Nazi policy.” The Republican Jewish Coalition (which is heavily backed by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson) also called out the wording, saying, ”The lack of a direct statement about the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust was an unfortunate omission. History unambiguously shows the purpose of the Nazis’ final solution was the extermination of the Jews of Europe. We hope, going forward, he conveys those feelings when speaking about the Holocaust.” 10. ”It’s not a Muslim ban. It’s not a travel ban. It’s a vetting system to keep America safe.”  —   Spicer briefing, Tuesday, Several administration officials  —   including Spicer  —   called this a travel ban, as this CNN video shows. President Trump himself tweeted that it was a ban, though Spicer claimed that was because ”he’s using he words that the media is using.” In a tweet one day after Spicer tried to make this factually inaccurate defense, Trump again called it a ban. 11. ”If you remember I wasn’t going to do well with the   community, and after they heard me speaking and talking about the inner city and lots of other things, we ended up getting  —   and I won’t go into details  —   but we ended up getting substantially more than other candidates who had run in the past years.”  —   Trump remarks at an African American History Month listening session, Wednesday, Trump received 8 percent of the   vote in 2016, compared with the 6 percent received by Mitt Romney in 2012 and the 4 percent received by McCain in 2008. So he registered better numbers with   than the past two Republican candidates. However, George W. Bush received the support of 11 percent of   in 2004 and 9 percent in 2000. So Trump isn’t right here. Given margins of error, Trump performed roughly as well as the last handful of Republican candidates with   voters  —   perhaps better than Obama’s opponents did, but nothing out of the ordinary. 12. Trump tweeted of ”thousands of illegal immigrants” that the Obama administration agreed to take in from Australia. But, as we explained over at our Tweet annotator, they are neither ”thousands” nor ”illegal immigrants.” There are about 1, 250 people, who are seeking asylum  —   refugees who have fled their home countries seeking safety  —   many of whom are children. NPR’s   blog has more. 13. ”It’s hard to ever call something a complete success, when you have the loss of life or people injured, but I think when you look at the totality of what was gained to prevent the future loss of life . .. it is a successful operation by all standards.”  —   Spicer on Thursday, That is starkly different from the way the New York Times described it the day before. ”As it turned out,” Eric Schmitt and David Sanger wrote, ”almost everything that could go wrong did.” CENTCOM said the U. S. recovered information helpful to counterterrorism analysts. Spicer said the operation yielded valuable intelligence about   in the Arabian Peninsula. But NPR’s Alice Fordham and Tom Bowman reported that ”local witnesses disputed that, saying the special operations troops never entered any buildings to take any computers or documents.” NPR: ”The U. S. military has opened an investigation, and U. S. military officials tell NPR that civilians were indeed among the victims. Taken together, claims and counterclaims from the U. S. military and local residents described a chaotic operation, one that drew sharp criticism from Yemeni officials who usually support the U. S. The aftermath of the raid shows the potential dangers if the U. S. military relaxes its current restrictions about using force and protecting civilians, which President Trump has asked the Pentagon to review.” The Times: ”The death of Chief Petty Officer William Owens came after a chain of mishaps and misjudgments that plunged the elite commandos into a ferocious   firefight that also left three others wounded and a $75 million aircraft deliberately destroyed. There are allegations  —   which the Pentagon acknowledged on Wednesday night are most likely correct  —   that the mission also killed several civilians, including some children. . .. ”[T]he mission’s casualties raise doubts about the months of detailed planning that went into the operation during the Obama administration and whether the right questions were raised before its approval. Typically, the president’s advisers lay out the risks, but Pentagon officials declined to characterize any discussions with Mr. Trump.” 14. ”I bet, there was very little coverage  —   I bet it’s   information to people that President Obama had a   ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized  —   and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. I mean, most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”  —   Conway on MSNBC’s Hardball, Thursday. There was no ”Bowling Green massacre” at all, and Conway has acknowledged she misspoke. She asked for ”grace” for the mistake. Conway was referring to the two Iraqi refugees referenced in Point 3. But neither had planned or executed an attack in Kentucky. Conway’s further assertion that President Obama had a   ban on Iraqi refugees is also false. The White House slowed down the approval process but did not halt it altogether. (In her tweet, she also notes something repeatedly used by Trump and others in the administration  —   a mistake a Time reporter made, reporting that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office. He quickly corrected the mistake.) NPR’s Sarah McCammon and Domenico Montanaro contributed to this report. "
"The unrest in Ferguson, Mo. following the death of Michael Brown in summer 2015 drew renewed scrutiny to police violence and revealed just how little the public knew about its pervasiveness. At first, there were widespread calls to address what officers looked like since Brown was   and the officer who shot him is white. The dominant theory was that if police departments better reflected the racial makeup of the communities they served, incidents of police violence would decrease. Maybe, the thinking was, another result would be less friction between officers and the public. This rationale seemed intuitive, and Ferguson offered fertile ground for testing the theory. In 2015, two in three residents in the city of 21, 000 were black, but only three officers in the   force were. This disparity appeared as a tangible underlying factor that may have contributed to Brown’s death. In the years since, a somewhat clearer picture about who is killed in police encounters has emerged thanks to reporting by the Washington Post, The Guardian, and Mapping Police Violence project. Today, data overwhelmingly confirm that black people are involved in and are victims of   killings at greater proportions than any other racial group in the country. But even as more research explores the role of race in police violence, the findings have been inconclusive and sometimes contradictory. A new study that will be published in the next edition of the Public Administration Review will complicate that body of research even more. ”What we find is evidence that [having] more black police officers probably doesn’t offer a direct solution to this problem,” Sean   a political scientist at Indiana University and one of the study’s authors, said. Indeed, the researchers concluded that as the ratio of black officers in police departments rose  —   up to a certain threshold  —   so did the number of fatal encounters between officers and black residents. ”Any small group will sometimes be the strongest proponents of [the larger organization’s] norms and values, and people will sometimes see that as the mechanism to be seen as legitimate,”   said. The tipping point appears to be 25 percent. When black officers reach that ratio in the force, the rate of fatal   incidents levels off. The study also found that once a police department became about 40 percent black, the trendline flipped  —   the more black officers a department has after that point, the less likely the incidence of fatal encounters with black people. But the study suggests that what departments really need isn’t just to simply add more black officers, but to reach a critical mass of black officers. In fact, so many black officers that they would be overrepresented relative to the local black population. (Very few local police departments reached that   mark. The researchers looked at the 100 largest cities in the country, and only 15 had police forces with that proportion of black officers.) So, why would adding black officers to the ranks drive up the number of fatal incidents? One reason,   said, is that black officers might be tougher on black citizens because they are especially invested in stopping crime in black neighborhoods. But he also said that in institutions where someone belongs to a distinct minority, they are often more likely to adhere to the cultures of the organization to prove they belong.   said that despite the study’s findings, there are other reasons that a police department may want to increase the number of black officers on the force. But the findings raised an unsettling question: might a city like Ferguson, in attempting to diversify its police force, actually unintentionally foster conditions that lead to more violent interactions between black people and the police? That question gained steam after events in Ferguson in part because of lack of data. ”We have bad numbers on policing, but you can get somewhat decent numbers on [local] demographics,” Phillip Atiba Goff, director of the Center for Policing Equity at John Jay College in New York, said. But Goff also said the logic behind that correlation isn’t interrogated enough. ”I think the assumption is that racism can’t exist in black people, and so if we have more black police, we’re just going to have different results.” The work of quantifying the racial gradients that may impact police violence will likely keep researches like   breaking down numbers for many years to come."
"The Trump administration says it is suspending all refugee admissions to the United States until it can come up with a plan for ”extreme vetting.” So what could that mean? Refugees are already subjected to multiple interviews and a security vetting by nine U. S. law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies that check their backgrounds, social media activity and the reasons they fled their countries. The process usually takes 18 months or more, according to resettlement agencies. But some of those who helped form President Trump’s policies on refugees are upfront in saying this is not actually about stricter security screening. It’s about something else. ”It means a kind of ideological screening to keep out people who hate a free society even if they are not violent,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that supports tighter controls on immigration. Krikorian met with Trump during the campaign and backs the president’s executive order as a ”corrective” to the vetting system in place during the Obama years.  President Trump signed an executive order suspending the State Department’s refugee assistance program for 120 days until ”extreme” vetting can be put in place. In an interview with NPR, Krikorian said he backs an ideological test that poses questions for refugees in the vetting process including, in his words, ”Do you think it’s okay to kill apostates? Do you think it’s okay to throw gays off of buildings? Or if Islam’s Prophet Muhammad is insulted, there should be a punishment?” If a refugee says yes to any of these questions, says Krikorian, ”Then we don’t want you here.” Trump’s executive order on immigration appears to refer to these views by declaring the United States should keep out those with ”hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles” and ”those who would place violent ideologies over American law.” This is all of intense concern for refugee advocates. The most pressing refugee need today is among Syrians  —   some 5 million have fled the country’s civil war. The vast majority are Muslim. ”It’s clearly ” says Muna Jondy, a Michigan immigration lawyer of Syrian descent who’s been fielding frantic calls from refugee families in the U. S. whose relatives are now barred from joining them. She points out the refugee screening process already targets those with extreme Islamist views via   vetting, which checks for links to radical Islamist groups.  But the president appears to echo opinions of a web of supporters who have warned about the wider ”dangers” of Islam and more recently have called for rigorous ideological vetting. His national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, has called fear of Islam ”rational” and equates Islam with a political ideology. One of the most outspoken of these supporters is Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Policy Studies and a leading   advocate. Human rights groups have described Gaffney as a conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe, but his views have gained traction in the Trump administration. Trump cited his work during his campaign. In recent interview with NPR, Gaffney laid out his view that Islam is a national security threat not only because of violent jihadists, but because of what he sees as ”this stealthy, subversive kind of jihad” practiced by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Gaffney claims the Brotherhood’s stealth aim is to impose sharia, or Islamic law, in the U. S. Gaffney supports an ideological test for refugees to ”ensure they are not creating this sharia agenda, that they are not going to part of the Muslim Brotherhood or part of the networks that engage in radicalization.” In a broad sense, tests of attitudes aren’t unprecedented. Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, notes that an ideological test for newcomers is ”deeply embedded” in U. S. history. The U. S. barred anarchists in 1903. During the Cold War, she says, ”It was people who believed in communism. It’s still in our law.” But Meissner points out these ideological tests have not had the desired outcome, because over time, the tests ”have proven to be poorly equipped to actually predict what people are going to do.” And it gets more complex when the beliefs straddle the line between politics and religion. Meissner compares Trump supporters’ fear of sharia law and their view that it’s at odds with the U. S. system with the fears and debates surrounding the candidacy of John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. Kennedy was Catholic and his detractors feared that if elected, the American president would be taking orders from the Pope. ”Then, JFK made his   statement about his personal faith and his responsibility to the civil system,” Meissner says. For Muslim activists, the idea of a test targeting their beliefs is alarming. Wilfredo A. Ruiz, a Muslim convert and spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, says invasive and subjective questioning about religious beliefs already takes place at airports by border patrol agents. ”The questions are now more specific,” he says. ”Are you Sunni or Shiite? Are you acquainted with Wahhabism? Do you have a Quran in your luggage?” Ruiz says he’s filed dozens of complaints in the past few weeks with the Department of Homeland Security for what he calls intrusive questioning of Muslim travelers. His clients often comply, he says, handing over their passwords to cell phones and social media because refusing would result in a long wait and missed flights. ”People need to know this is going on,” he says, noting that civil liberties groups are working together, sending squads of lawyers to airports in support of passengers detained for questioning. ”They no longer see it as a Muslim cause,” he says. ”Jews, Hispanics,    —   everyone is asking, who’s next?”"
"In today’s   media climate, who has time to wait for the Super Bowl to actually see the commercials? There are a few advertisers who will make us wait until the Big Game to see their wares  —   Snickers plans a live commercial with Adam Driver which will be Must See TV whether it works or not. Weeks ago, many advertisers started posting online teasers, previews and actual commercials airing in Sunday’s game. (Beermaker   reportedly held a ”media briefing” on its ads strategy with journalists last month). Makes sense. These companies are paying up to $5 million for 30 seconds of advertising time to the Fox network for space in a game that is often the   TV event of the year. With that much at stake, a media strategy that doesn’t include some   day viewing seems like a missed opportunity. Just like with TV shows, ads that move audiences can tell us a lot about what values inspire or alarm us. And those notions can change on a dime  —   I’m betting   never expected its inspiring story about the immigration struggles of founder Adolphus Busch to be seen as a dig at President Donald Trump. But it’s tough to watch scenes in its ad titled ”Born the Hard Way,” where Busch initially faces angry Americans telling him, ”you’re not wanted here. .. go back home,” without thinking of Trump’s executive order on immigration and the fiery debate it has kicked off. Here’s a look at some of the most interesting Super Bowl commercials coming Sunday  —   including a few that are compelling for reasons their creators likely never intended. Bud Light: Ghost Spuds. The Weird But Kinda Works award goes to Budweiser for its ad featuring the ghost of its former Bud Light mascot, the party dog Spuds MacKenzie, voiced by actor Carl Weathers. At first, it’s odd to be reminded that the dog which actually played the original Spuds in late 1980s ads is no longer with us. But watching the ”ghost” lead a schlubby guy to realize the value of friendship through beer is kinda entertaining  —   and pretty much the spirit of a lot of Super Bowl revelry. Audi: Daughter. As the father of three daughters, I was all in for this ad featuring a young girl beating several boys to win a downhill cart race while her dad voices fears about how sexism will affect her, asking, ”do I tell her. .. she will automatically be valued as less than every man she meets?” By the time the screen announces ”Audi of America is committed to equal pay for equal work,” I’m drying my eyes and thinking about a vehicle upgrade. Ford: Go Further. Complaints about commercialism may seem quaint these days. But it’s still jarring to see Ford use Nina Simone’s rendition of the civil rights anthem ”I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” to illustrate scenes where people are frustrated by being stuck in traffic or locked out of the house. When Simone sang about wanting to ”break all the chains holding me,” I don’t think she meant sidestepping traffic  .   USA: Easy Driver. One notch down the commercialism disappointment scale, we find the   ad featuring Peter Fonda. Stories about Baby Boomers selling out are nothing new. But it’s still odd to see a guy who once embodied ’60s counter culture in Easy Rider star in a commercial with hordes of bikers acting like knuckleheads until they are struck dumb by the sight of a relatively   Fonda, peeling out of a parking lot in a $350, 000   Roadster. Insult to injury: the commercial was directed by Fargo’s   filmmakers, Joel and Ethan Coen. Honda: Yearbooks. Lots of celebrities are doing lots of interesting ads (it seems like New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski pops up in every other commercial). But my award for Best Use of a Big Name goes to this ad, which animates old, mostly embarrassing high school yearbook photos of celebrities like Robert Redford, Amy Adams and Viola Davis to tell viewers dreams really do come true. Even for guys geeky enough to try rocking the pornstar moustache Steve Carrell sports in his photo (”You think any of these folks believed that I’d make it?” he asks. Surely not.) Squarespace: Who is JohnMalkovich. com? I’m always telling journalism students to get ownership of their name as a URL for their websites soon as possible. So it was a tickle to see John Malkovich in this ad begging a fisherman to let him have his own name back. Extra points to Malkovich for always being willing to poke fun at his own eccentric image. Febreeze: Halftime #BathroomBreak. We all know what happens in bathrooms across the country between the halftime whistle and halftime show. Do we really need a TV commercial to remind us some air freshener may be needed? 84 Lumber: The Journey Begins. This   ad features a   mother and her young daughter enduring loads of hardships  —   jumping on trains, walking long distances, crossing rushing streams  —   to reach their destination. The company has said Fox rejected the original version of the ad, which included images of a border wall similar to the one President Trump has promised to erect between Mexico and the U. S. Now 84 Lumber’s website promises it will feature the full ad at halftime, with ”content deemed too controversial for TV.” The   version which will air on Fox Sunday certainly humanizes people who are too often reduced to stereotypes in today’s immigration debates. I don’t know how much lumber this ad will sell, but it will surely earn loads of attention."
"Earlier this week, Sen. Marco Rubio,  . complained that he was in the dark about the Trump administration’s restrictive new policies affecting immigrants, refugees and other travelers from seven   countries. Rubio said he had been flooded with questions about cruise liners and airport travel, but didn’t have many answers: ”In fact my staff was told the State Department, as of today, was ordered not to talk to Congress about this issue.” ”That cannot be a permanent position,” said Rubio. ”We expect answers here fairly soon, because we have constituents calling.” The Trump White House has taken such direct, adversarial aim at the news media that it may obscure a more fundamental concern of transparency advocates: whether the administration is constricting the flow of reliable information to the public. For the record, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the department had been in contact with lawmakers and would ”provide information and assistance as we are able.” Left unsaid: The White House shared little information with officials at State, Homeland Security and other departments and agencies. White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not reply to a request for comment about the administration’s approach about distributing information. Rubio’s constituents and the broader public were left without the information they needed to function. Officials in the United States and abroad had travelers detained without disclosing where they were being held, leaving loved ones, colleagues and even lawyers in the dark. Sen. Cory Booker,  . J. said a federal customs official hung up the phone on him. The bedlam over immigration  —   which triggered lawsuits, and on Friday night a federal judge’s stay  —   is a case study in how a failed flow of information affects how society functions and judges its government. Even some officials sympathetic to the impulses leading to Trump’s immigration policy, such as Rubio, say the way it was handled will affect its results. ”I think he’s going to try to persuade the public overtly that they’re better off ignorant.” On the campaign trail, Trump was a dogged advocate for accountability and disclosure. Where were Hillary Clinton’s speeches behind closed doors to Wall Street financiers, he asked? Why had she used private email servers instead of ones maintained by the government? What had Clinton done as secretary of state for her foundation’s donors? Once elected, Trump has shown little inclination to embrace transparency for his own administration. ”I think we’re going to be seeing some real     moves here,” said Lucy Dalglish, dean of the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism and former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. ”It’ll be more along the lines of the president’s standing up at a rally somewhere and saying, ’Who needs this information? It’s the evil media that wants to know this information, you don’t need it. No!’ And I think he’s going to try to persuade the public, overtly, that they’re better off ignorant.” Indeed, last month Trump told reporters at a press conference in Manhattan that journalists are the only people who care about his tax returns  —   though he previously had promised to disclose those forms once federal authorities are done auditing them. (Trump has not released any documentation proving he is in fact being audited, for that matter, and IRS officials, who do not publicly confirm specific audits, say there is no requirement he keep his returns confidential during an audit.) In recent weeks, top aides have said Trump will not release his tax records at all, saying reporters instead should look at the   federal disclosure forms that were released during the campaign. Shuttering or scrubbing online channels, During this week’s outcry over immigration, the delay in putting out the specific terms of the new policy led to mass confusion at airports around the world. No one was clear on the policy’s implications  —   or even, initially, on its language. Transparency advocates point to other warning signs as well. Trump toughened ethics rules for White House staffers, yet he ditched a rule from the Obama years that posted the names of all staffers who received exemptions from ethics requirements. In addition, in the first days of the new administration, some government agencies were directed to stop using social media channels. Others changed or dropped web pages, even those conveying scientific information some of their tweets and posts were seen as taking digs at the new president for such positions as his rejection of established science on climate change, for example. Each presidential transition triggers a centralization of public relations messaging, but this development raised flags with transparency advocates. ”The administration continues to be in what feels like campaign mode,” says Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, ”not only in terms of how they’re communicating with the press and the public but also assaulting the press and denying information to the public.” Don’t like the data? Legislate it away. Howard’s advocacy group takes the position that a country’s government functions most honestly and effectively when its citizens know precisely what’s going on. Howard’s concerns for the digital age boil down to a list like this: Howard noted that one bill proposed in the U. S. House of Representatives would shut down gathering information on housing discrimination. Other proposals circulating inside the administration could limit what research would be funded to monitor climate change. ”That kind of   of government information has the potential to take away our ability to create shared facts about what’s changing in our society, and to have an informed public debate about what should be done,” Howard said. Secrecy as security, The flow of information to the public often seesaws back and forth between presidencies. In recent decades, Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama pursued more expansive definitions of freedom of information Republican George W. Bush restricted it. Yet even as Obama made more databases digitally available, reporters say agencies during his tenure often jealously guarded their information. Trump appears to be putting his thumb back on the scale, Dalglish said. ”This feels to me a lot like the atmosphere we were facing immediately after ” Dalglish said. ”There was just a much bigger move toward pushing secrecy in the name of security.” At an event at the Sundance Festival, New York Times investigative reporter James Risen also pointed to the priority placed on national security by the George W. Bush administration after the September 2001 terror attacks. Prosecutors during the Bush years, and then especially under Obama, pursued leaks cases in ways that discouraged sources from sharing information with news organizations. A record number of reporters found themselves in court facing legal jeopardy. ”It can be overwhelming to be a citizen and try to digest and interpret all of this [information] on your own,” Dalglish said. ”But we expect our citizens to go to the ballot box and make decisions about how we’re going to govern ourselves and how we’re going to treat each other in this society. ”If we don’t have access to timely, quality,   information,” she said, ”we will not have the ability to go to the polls and make those decisions.”"
"Helen was 82. She’d survived both breast cancer and outlived her husband. One summer day she began bleeding from her colon and was admitted to the hospital. We assumed the worst  —   another cancer. But after she endured a series of scans and being poked with scopes, we figured out that she had an abnormal jumble of blood vessels called an arteriovenous malformation in the wall of her colon. The finding surprised us, but the solution was clear: Surgery to remove that part of her colon should stop the bleeding once and for all. The operation went well. But afterward Helen’s lungs filled with fluid from congestive heart failure. Then she caught pneumonia and had to be put on a ventilator in the intensive care unit. Her medical problems and our treatments had simply stressed her aging organs beyond their capability. On morning rounds I took inventory: Helen had a breathing tube in her throat connected to the ventilator a large IV in her neck a wire inserted into her wrist artery to measure her blood pressure a surgical wound drain and a bladder catheter to collect her urine. Helen was tethered to our ICU, with no clear sign of when or even if she would leave. Helen’s only daughter was distraught —  both about her mother’s condition and because she had never discussed what her mother would want in such a situation. Helen was living out the fate of millions of Americans who don’t clearly state their medical wishes with an advance directive. Only about a quarter of American adults have an advance directive, according to a 2014 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. I found myself wishing we could just stop our   press on Helen. The humane thing to do, it seemed to me, would be to stop aggressive medical treatment and let nature take its course. After nearly two weeks of intensive care with no improvement in her condition, Helen’s daughter instructed us to stop the mechanical ventilator. She died an hour later. Stories like Helen’s occur in ICUs all over the country every day, unfortunately. Often these situations are flashpoints of tension between the hopes and expectations of families and the realities seen by the medical team. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If we lessen the stigma around death as an unmentionable topic by forcing ourselves to talk to our loved ones about what we want at the end of life, we can vastly diminish the amount of energy and suffering that come with trying to prolong life when nature tells us otherwise. Many of us in the medical profession who have seen the futility of cases like Helen’s take steps to avoid spending our dying days in a hospital that way (or in a hospital at all). As Dr. Ken Murray wrote in a 2011 essay, doctors die differently, often forgoing invasive and expensive treatment. This approach is different than the one taken by most Americans, but shouldn’t be, he argued. We know that Medicare typically spends a lot on people near the end of life. Medicare spending on inpatient hospital services in 2014 was seven times higher for people who died (’decedents’) that year than those who survived. I’ll admit that this is a bit of a tautology, because people sick enough to die from chronic illnesses and complications related to aging are much more likely to make ample use of their health insurance. But in my view, the crux of the problem is the wide mismatch between what people say they want (to die at home) and where they wind up (still dying mostly in hospitals and nursing homes). As a result too many American deaths are still overly medicalized, robbing us of our chance at a peaceful passage. The trend is moving in the right direction, however, as more of us express our care goals and die at home or in hospice. One strategy is to imagine a point in your life when fighting to stay alive would be counterproductive. Would it be when you had advanced dementia and couldn’t recognize your family? What if you lost your ability to feed yourself? Work backward from there, and remember that when it comes to medical care, less is often more. At that key point, your directive could limit your health care to seeking comfort rather than an attempted cure. You’ll have to be decisive about foregoing   treatment, because of the inertia of the health care system and reluctance from our loved ones. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist, famously offered this viewpoint in a 2014 article titled, ”Why I Hope to Die at 75.” Emanuel’s argument led to pushback. Many people, like my parents, were offended at the idea of giving up on life at 75. But that’s not what Emanuel was actually arguing. He didn’t write the story’s headline, which more accurately would have been something like, ”Why I Plan to Stop Screening Tests at Age 75 Because They’re More Likely to Hurt Me Than Help Me.” I checked with Emanuel, now 59, to see if he’d had any change of opinion. ”The article reflects my view,” he replied by email. ”I am stopping . .. colonoscopies and other screening tests at age 75. I am stopping statins and other medications where the rationale is to extend my life.” He said he’s not trying to provoke. ”It is my view. It is provocative only because other people find it so.” Having cared for many patients like Helen, who wind up in a vortex of intense medical care, I find what Murray and Emanuel have suggested to be highly appealing. That said, it’s important for those of us looking to   death to remember that is our choice. Many people opt instead to do everything to stave off death. The message is simple: Think deeply about what you want beforehand. Then tell your family. Share it with your doctor. We truly want to honor your wishes. John Henning Schumann is an internal medicine doctor and serves as president of the University of Oklahoma’s Tulsa campus. He also hosts Studio Tulsa: Medical Monday on KWGS Public Radio Tulsa. You can follow him on Twitter: @GlassHospital."
"In the kitchen of a vacation rental in southern California, family pictures form a collage on the refrigerator. On closer inspection the photos are of multiple families, and many of the women in the photos are sitting together around the kitchen table nearby. The photos are from their weddings or pictures of children. This is a typical, makeshift family scrapbook at an American Widow Project retreat. During the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the women seeking help from the group were young, with husbands who had been killed in combat. Today the widows contacting the organization are older, and their husbands aren’t dying abroad  —   they’re dying on American soil. ”I have to say, I haven’t genuinely laughed as much as I’ve laughed with these ladies, and shared things that . .. that I know that they understand,” says Erin Murzyn. At 43 years old, Murzyn wondered if she would be the oldest widow, and on the first day of the retreat she was nervous. ”A lot of widows, military widows are young,” Murzyn says. ”[I thought] am I going to be the only suicide widow? Like, is everyone else going to be KIA?” She wasn’t the oldest or the only widow whose husband killed himself, rather than being killed in action. Group facilitator Erin Dructor says she started noticing a trend a couple years ago when the majority of women contacting the nonprofit reported they had lost their husbands to suicide or terminal illness. ”Each event is about 70 percent   [widows],” she says. Dructor got involved with the American Widow Project a decade ago after her husband, Army Sgt. Blake Stephens, was killed in Iraq. Back then, she says, the women’s stories often began the same way: With two uniformed men in the driveway or on the porch. ”Now, it’s almost like the widows are finding their husbands, or family members are finding their husbands,” Dructor says. In Murzyn’s case it was her brother who told her that her husband, retired Marine Master Sgt. Russell Murzyn, had committed suicide. He was 44. ”He did leave a letter and he put in the letter that his head hurt so bad,” Murzyn says. ”And he didn’t feel he could be fixed.” Russell had served two tours in Iraq and was being treated by the VA when he died. His widow says she didn’t realized how bad things had become  —   that he was a wonderful new father and kept his feelings inside to protect those he loved. ”Russell was that Marine that other Marines looked up to,” Murzyn says. ”He was the guy that they went to with problems.” Like Murzyn,    Jenny Much is attending her first American Widow Project retreat. ”I was pretty tore up one night and I  —   just crying, sobbing, or whatever  —   and I went online searching for military widow communities,” Much says. Her husband, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jason Much died of brain cancer in July. He was 44. When he was diagnosed she asked him ”Sweetie, what do you want to do? If we have a year, what do you want to do? Do you want to travel the world?” ” ’He’s like ’Really?  —   I’ve been all over the world. I want to stay home and watch football,’ ” she says. For more than two decades, Jenny Much was a Navy wife. Two months after her husband died she moved out of her house, bought an RV and drove across the country visiting friends in the military community. But she soon realized she was not a part of the   world anymore. Now, the women of the American Widow Project are her adopted military family. ”The inspiration I get hearing their stories  —   and they can talk about their late husbands and laugh, and tell stories, and cry, and that’s helping me.” Much says. ”I have hope. That’s the word  —   I have hope.” And hope is what Much is taking with her from this retreat. After a few months in the RV, she’s now thinking it might be time to put down roots  —   and start looking for a new home."
"The latest, remarkable misstep of a Cabinet nominee who has misstepped plenty came in answer to a simple question: ”Why do you think their performance is so poor?” asked Senator Patty Murray,  . in a written question to Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Education Department. ”Their” refers to virtual schools, of which DeVos has been an outspoken champion. The ”poor” refers to a large body of research  —   study after study after study  —   that raises serious questions about the quality and efficacy of schools that attempt to educate   students through the computer, without traditional access to teachers or classrooms. In response, DeVos wrote: ”High quality virtual charter schools provide valuable options to families, particularly those who live in rural areas where    schools might not have the capacity to provide the range of courses or other educational experiences for students. Because of this, we must be careful not to brand an entire category of schools as failing students.” Then comes the misstep, first detailed by Columbia University professor Aaron Pallas in this opinion piece for The Hechinger Report, followed by Ben Herold reporting for Education Week. ”The following virtual academies have   cohort graduation rates at or above 90 percent,” DeVos wrote, listing some apparent success stories: ”Idaho Virtual Academy (IDV A): 90 percent, Nevada Virtual Academy (NVV A): 100 percent, Ohio Virtual Academy (OHV A): 92 percent, Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy (OVCA): 91 percent, Texas Virtual Academy (TXVA): 96 percent, Utah Virtual Academy (UTV A): 96 percent, Wisconsin Virtual Academy (WIV A): 96 percent” There’s just one problem with these numbers, Pallas points out. They’re wrong. The Nevada Virtual Academy, for example. Its graduation rate for the class of 2015 wasn’t 100 percent. It was 63 percent, according to Nevada’s own school report card. Ohio Virtual Academy’s 92 percent graduation rate? Try 53 percent. Utah Virtual Academy’s 96 percent rate? Cut it in half. You get the point. Where did DeVos get these inflated numbers? Questions to the Trump administration went unanswered, but they appear to have been lifted verbatim from this report by K12 Inc. the   company behind the online schools listed. DeVos herself was once an investor. It would not be the first of her answers to senators that appear to have been borrowed without citation. K12 Inc. has already responded to the controversy, explaining that its numbers are ”the graduation rate of continuously enrolled high school students  —   those who enrolled in ninth grade and remained enrolled until twelfth grade. This is not the federal graduation rate and our report makes that clear.” If it’s not the federal graduation rate, as DeVos suggested it is, what is it? ”It’s a fictitious rate,” says Russell Rumberger, professor emeritus of education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. ”It ignores almost all of the students who transfer out or drop out.” As K12 Inc. acknowledges, the rate it published only accounts for students who persisted, remaining enrolled for four years. The federal rate, on the other hand  —   known as the   cohort graduation rate  —   requires schools to account for all students who transfer or drop out. In short, DeVos’ numbers implied that few students had dropped out of these virtual schools when the actual rates, reported by states, suggest otherwise. ”I think this was a mistake,” says Michael Petrilli, President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a   education think tank. ”It’s impossible to argue that most online charter schools are   because most are performing abysmally.” Petrilli should know. He once worked for K12 Inc. and, under his leadership, Fordham has studied Ohio’s virtual charter schools extensively. It’s not just Ohio, either. Herold was also part of a sweeping Education Week investigation of cyber charters nationwide titled ”Rewarding Failure.” K12 Inc. chooses not to use the   federal graduation rate because, the company argues, it isn’t an accurate measure of success for many virtual schools. ”High numbers of   students and high mobility rates adversely impact the   graduation cohort rate for online schools,” according to that 2016 K12 Inc. report. That’s a reasonable argument and worth debating. Virtual schools often cater to vulnerable students  —   kids who transfer repeatedly or may not intend to stay for four years. ”I agree that the   cohort graduation rate is limited for schools that enroll   kids,” says Rumberger. ”Imagine students who walk in the door reading at a   level. It’s much more challenging to get that student to graduate in four years, and I don’t think schools should have to.” DeVos, however, did not make that argument in her written response to Sen. Murray’s question. She did something else entirely. Instead, DeVos built an argument for virtual charter schools on language apparently taken  —   without citation  —   from a report written by a   company with a huge stake in the industry. In the process, DeVos either knowingly or unwittingly mischaracterized the official graduation rates of virtual schools, making them look more successful than they are and making online learning, in general, look like a reliable pathway to student success when research suggests it is anything but. Clarification: This post has been updated to make clearer who first reported details of DeVos’ virtual charter school mistake."
"Mike McCloskey, who runs one of the biggest dairy operations in America, is driving down a road in Puerto Rico in an unusually reflective mood. ”This is a full   story, right?” he muses. ”I was raised here, had such a fantastic childhood.” He ticks off other way stations in his life: Mexico, California, New Mexico, and Indiana. Along the way, McCloskey built an empire of milk. Now, the dairy business has brought him back home again. McCloskey came to Puerto Rico when he was 7 years old. He was born in Pittsburgh, but his mother was Puerto Rican. She moved back home with all six of her children when her husband died. ”I remember very clearly arriving to Puerto Rico, meeting this huge family,” he says. His mother had nine siblings. There were dozens of cousins. For young Mike, it was like ”arriving in paradise.” One uncle, a veterinarian, made a huge impression. He’d bring Mike and other cousins along on his truck, visiting farms. ”A day out with him was full of adventures,” McCloskey says. He felt comfortable with farm animals right away. ”Not only was I comfortable, somehow at that young age I just got interested in food production,” he says. It launched Mike McCloskey’s journey. He became a veterinarian, working with dairy farmers, in Mexico, after his mother got   to a Mexican businessman. Then he moved to the U. S. for a veterinary residence at the University of California, Davis. In California, he met his wife Sue. Before long, they were in the dairy business for themselves. They bought a whole series of dairy herds, each one bigger than the last. The first was 300 cows. Today, they own a herd of fifteen thousand cows at Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana. At the same time, McCloskey pushed the boundaries of milk quality, reducing levels of bacteria in milk far below what federal standards required. ”We believed that the consumer really cared about that,” he says. He did it by keeping cows healthier, and by chilling the milk immediately after it comes from the cows. He also had a secret advantage. In recent decades, most   dairy farms have come to rely on workers from Mexico. And McCloskey, effortlessly bilingual, felt at home with his workers. He says his time in Mexico helped too. ”Working as a veterinarian in Mexico, I lived up in the hills,” he says. ”I lived in the ejidos [communally owned village farms]. I knew everything about them, just talking with them and asking where they’re from. I could identify deeply with them. And they’re very loyal people.” With easier communication between owner and workers, McCloskey’s farms ran more smoothly. Cows got better care. The McCloskeys reached a turning point in 1994. They were running a big farm in New Mexico, and Mike got into a fight with the cooperative that bought and processed their milk. He wanted the whole   to adopt the same methods he was using to produce cleaner,   milk. ”They wanted nothing to do with it,” he says. ”No interest. They saw no value in it.” There was a meeting at which the coop leaders basically told McCloskey to mind his own business. ”I was there when he came home,” Sue McCloskey recalls. ”We got out a map and we drew a circle 400 miles around our farm.” They started calling farmers and retailers within that circle, looking for partners, thinking that ”there have got to be vendors and buyers out there who are looking for quality, who are looking for transparency, and who are looking for something that they can talk to their consumers about,” says Sue McCloskey. They created their own milk cooperative, called Select Milk Producers. Today, it’s one of the   dairy cooperatives in the country, and one of the  . Dairy insiders call it the most aggressive   in the industry. It sells $2 billion worth of dairy products a year. It’s   of one of the largest cheese plants in the world   Southwest Cheese, in eastern New Mexico. It’s set up a joint venture with the   Company, called fairlife, that sells a kind of reformulated milk with higher protein and calcium. Sue McCloskey came up with that idea at their kitchen table. I ask McCloskey what drives him to move from place to place, trying new things? ”I don’t know,” he says. ”You just look at this and think, ’I can do this better.” Sue McCloskey doesn’t have any better explanation. ”You’ve got to think that there’s just something internal, that you’re just not happy unless you’re moving things around,” she says. Now, Mike McCloskey has come up with a new idea, a new dream that’s brought him back to Puerto Rico, to an abandoned sugar cane plantation right beside a beach where he played as a boy. He takes me there. It’s beautiful. McCloskey looks more relaxed than he has all day. ”We used to walk this beach when we were seven, eight, nine years old, with the local fishermen. We’d do   here. We used to fish here,” he says. McCloskey and his cousin Manuel Perez, who’s also a veterinarian, take me on a drive though part of the property. Eventually, they plan to plant a new kind of pasture here, with nutritious grasses, adapted to the tropics, that scientists developed in Brazil. Right now though, part of the land is overgrown with tough, fibrous, tropical grasses, six feet tall. Other parts are   because the old drainage ditches are clogged. ”We couldn’t even get in here initially, McCloskey tells me. ”This was incredible down here. It was all flooded. You couldn’t get around.” McCloskey and Perez and a small band of employees are working to clear the land and rebuild the drains. Then they will bring in cattle   a new genetic type that produces lots of milk, but can also tolerate tropical heat and insect pests. They want to prove that a dairy can be just as efficient in the tropics as in Indiana. ”We believe that the right breed [of dairy cow] and the right pasture can really revolutionize milk production in the tropics,” McCloskey says. ”Not only in Puerto Rico! We’re looking at this as a possibility for great changes all through the tropics.” It’s a daunting challenge, he admits. But it’s nothing new for him and Sue, doing things that haven’t been done before. And it would be especially sweet, he says, doing it here. ”I have a great love for the island, and its people, and my family here. And to end up doing that exact thing that I’ve loved doing for the last 50 years one more time here is quite exciting.” It unites two different kinds of dreams. There’s the classic American dream of moving on to something bigger and better. But there’s also an older, more personal dream, of coming back home."
"The day my dad first got Snapchat, he couldn’t figure out how to send photos. And when he approached me later that day, asking if I had gotten his snap, my siblings and I discovered he’d been sending all his photos to Team Snapchat, expecting them to do the rerouting. We all laughed about the fact that he just didn’t get it. But my dad doesn’t seem to be the only one. ”Every time I try to use it, I feel like my father must have felt when I was 9 years old and challenged him to a game of Sonic the Hedgehog,” Will Oremos, Slate’s senior technology writer, wrote in 2015. Last year, The Wall Street Journal published a story, How to Use Snapchat, in which writer Joanna Stern, then 31, lamented: ”Snapchat makes me feel old.” And Bloomberg’s profiled Snapchat in a piece called ”How Snapchat Built A Business By Confusing Olds.” Older users shouldn’t feel bad. Maybe Snapchat just wasn’t intended for them. After all, they’re not in Snapchat’s target audience. On Thursday, NPR’s Alina Selyukh wrote that Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, was hoping to raise at least $3 billion by going public. In its filing for an initial public offering, the company says people 18 to 24 are the largest age group among Snapchat’s 158 million daily active users. And on its website, the company says that ”on any given day, Snapchat reaches 41% of all 18 to 34   in the United States.” Among all the financial data in the filing, Snapchat provided a set of detailed instructions about how to use the app. It includes diagrams of Snapchat’s different pages and walks through the purposes of each page with clear directions on how to perform certain actions, like making a Snap. ”Making a Snap is simple,” it says in the camera section. ”Users either tap the Camera button to take a photo, or hold the Camera button to record a video up to ten seconds long.” Showing people how to use the app could come in handy if Snap hopes to broaden its user base. Snapchat makes almost all of its money through advertising. But, Bloomberg reports, Generation Z and millennial audiences tended to dislike and ignore ads: ”If over time advertisers find targeting young people through the social platforms less efficient than going after adults, Facebook, with its diversified platforms, will absorb any negative effects. Snapchat will find it far harder.” And with Snapchat’s growth rate slowing, Wired says analysts have ”expressed concerns about how large Snapchat’s user base can grow.” In order to become a better investment opportunity, Snapchat may have to broaden its audience. In this case, the instructions might be necessary for the app in attracting an age group that, without direction, finds it difficult to use. After all, it’s not a younger audience that needs to be told ”making a Snap is simple.” They already know it is. Cecilia Mazanec is the NPR digital news intern."
"Johnstown, Pa. is famous for a few things: a big flood in the 1880s that killed many of its residents, having been a robust steel and coal town, and more recently, suffering from a rapidly declining population. The town is nestled in a river valley of the Allegheny mountains of Western Pennsylvania. Cambria County, home to Johnstown, chose Barack Obama during the 2008 election, but went heavily for Donald Trump in 2016. Michael McGough was born and raised in the area and says President Trump scares him, especially after seeing what he’s done his first two weeks in office. McGough is a retired county worker and a registered Democrat who generally votes the way the town used to. ”This has always been a very heavy Democratic area. It was for a long time. And then the coal mines slowly started going under,” he says. Now most of his friends and neighbors vote Republican. McGough thinks overall the city is in better shape than it was when he was a kid, even as jobs have been lost and people have left. Back then, he says, you could see a haze over the city and a fine dust on the cars in the morning from the industrial pollution in town. He’s worried what could be ahead for Johnstown, and the planet, with a climate skeptic in the White House. And there are still remnants of that prosperous, yet sully, city. Along the edge of the Conemaugh River sits a vast, mostly abandoned, steel mill called Gautier. At one point, decades ago, Gautier employed 11, 000 people. Today it has just about one hundred employees. Back then, operations at the mill were so consistent the lights were always on. There were no switches to turn them off. Jackie Kulback has been the company’s CFO for a decade. Before then she worked at an air compressor company which she says shipped its jobs to Reynosa, Mexico, after NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement  ” which President Trump opposes. ”I saw people’s lives change, and not for the good,” she says. Many economists say that automation has cost far more industrial jobs than trade deals, but the bottom line here is an unemployment rate higher than the national average, and wages that are lower. She says she saw the need for change under the Obama administration and that moved her to get active in politics. Now she’s the chair of the Republican party here and campaigned hard to get President Trump into office. So far she’s been impressed with him. ”Jobs trump everything,” she says. Though she can’t say for certain that the President’s economic prescriptions will work, she’s willing to give them a try. As for Trump’s travel ban, keeping out people from seven majority Muslim nations, she points out that the Flight 93 Memorial is very close to Johnstown. ”That hit close to home” she says, acknowledging that even though the   hijackers were from countries outside the ban, she feels the need to further secure U. S. borders. Alan Cashaw is the head of the local NAACP and helps to run a modest store near the steel mill called Greater Prospect Store. Cashaw says his expectations weren’t high for President Trump and so far the new president has met those low expectations. When it comes to race relations in Johnstown, Cashaw says he thinks the change in the White House has emboldened some people to commit racist acts. A couple of weeks ago, on Martin Luther King Jr. day, someone drove around town carrying an effigy of a hanged Dr. King in the back of a pickup truck. A sign on the back of the vehicle also read, ”In Loving Memory of James Earl Ray,” the man who assassinated King. To Cashaw, there’s a silver lining to that cloud. A long dormant   coalition has been energized and is reacting. Despite his disappointment with Trump, he says he knows the country will survive. ”We’re the country.” Carolyn Sharp works the cashier at a Lebanese restaurant, owned by an immigrant in town. She voted for Trump. ”I feel like maybe somebody who has a little more power and has a big mouth can actually get some words across,” she says. And she approves of the president’s early steps to keep some people out of the United States, even though she comes from an immigrant family herself. She’s Serbian. ”My grandma had 14 brothers and sisters and her parents came over here, and they’re on the wall in New York on Ellis Island.” It’s clear she feels those contradictions. She says she read on Facebook about a local man whose brother was kept out of the country by the president’s travel ban and it bothers her. But like others here, she’ll give the new president time."
"On her latest album Sing It Now: Songs of Faith and Hope, country veteran Reba McEntire went through hundreds of songs from her history, picking and choosing the ones that touched her heart the most. One of them is the iconic worship tune ”Jesus Loves Me,” which, in a way, was the first song McEntire was ever paid to perform. ”I was in Cheyenne, Wyo. with my family. We were staying at the Frontier Hotel, and back then they didn’t have televisions in the room, so everyone would congregate down in the lobby,” she says. ”They got my older brother Pake to go up and sing a song to entertain everybody. He sang ’You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog.’ One of the cowboys gave him a quarter, and I thought, ’Whoo, I want in on that!’ So I got up there and sang ’Jesus Loves Me’ . .. and I got a nickel.” While McEntire has come a long way from earning a nickel per show, her creative relationships with family and Christianity are as strong as ever. ”I Got the Lord on My Side,” a song from the new album, even features a   credit from McEntire’s own mother. ”The band and I had listened to what we had just recorded and we were making some changes,” she explains. ”Momma said, ’Can I make a suggestion?’ I said, ’Well sure, what?’ She said, ’Instead of saying on the second verse, ’I’m so happy,’ why don’t you say, ’Oh you’re happy, you’ve got the lord on your side?’ And I said ’Dangit, why didn’t I think of that? ’” Hear the rest of Reba McEntire’s interview with NPR’s Scott Simon at the audio link."
"After three quarters, this game looked for all the world like a rout by the Atlanta Falcons. They were up  . Their quarterback Matt Ryan, who just won the regular season MVP on Saturday night, was playing like an unstoppable Super Bowl MVP, too. Then, something unbelievable happened: The New England Patriots came back. The heroics of quarterback Tom Brady, the suddenly stiffened spine of the Patriots defense and one catch by Julian Edelman that defied both gravity and belief  —   by some incalculable logic, they combined to bring New England to a tie that few people would have thought imaginable just 15 minutes before. They scored 25 unanswered points to send the game into the first overtime in Super Bowl history. And after the Patriots won the coin toss to receive the first possession, their efficient march down the field toward yet another score seemed almost an afterthought. The Patriots won  . It was a game that etched Brady’s place in football history. If he and his coach, Bill Belichick, were not already considered the best   at their respective roles, it certainly won’t be difficult to make an argument for that now. Sunday’s win marks the pair’s fifth Super Bowl win together. We were here right along with you all night,   the big game and  —   because we’re NPR  —   writing a little poetry while we were at it. Click here to head straight to the live blog below. Last year, we covered the game almost entirely in haiku. This year, our colleagues at WBUR had some more of their own  —   and we invited you to do the same using the hashtag #SuperBowlHaiku. We retweeted some of our favorites as the night went along. But before we got started, we fulfilled a little promise. When we wrapped up last time around, we posed a question: ”Next time, limericks?” Well, here’s the ditty with which we marked the start of the game. (Don’t mind the slant rhyme.) Sure, by now the Pats are all old hands  —  But can Falcons at last reward fans? Ryan’s shown he can sling, Brady’s got all the rings . ..Still, both keep interrupting the ads. Scroll down for a glimpse of the historic game as it unfolded  —   plus a few more limericks while we were at it. Update at 10:15 p. m. ET, Just like that, what looked like a rout has given way to what may be the greatest comeback in New England Patriots history. Tom Brady marched just about the whole length of the field to set up a goaline carry for James White, which the running back punched into the end zone to bring their deficit to just two points. (Along the way, wide receiver Julian Edelman made a breathtaking catch on a ball he trapped against a defenders leg  —   a play that kept the drive alive.) And the Patriots converted another   try to knot the game up at 28. For those keeping note at home, that makes for a flabbergasting 25 unanswered points for the Patriots. Welcome to the first overtime in Super Bowl history, ladies and gentlemen. Update at 9:45 p. m. ET, Is that a glimmer of hope we detect? New England’s defense forced a huge turnover,   Atlanta’s Matt Ryan to take over the ball in Falcons territory. With just a couple efficient    throws, Tom Brady’s Patriots spanned the short field easily. But what’s perhaps more important: They also converted their   try after the score, bringing themselves to within eight points of the Falcons  —   in other words, just one score away, potentially. Interesting note, as we eye the dwindling time on the clock: There has never been a Super Bowl that has gone into overtime. Might we see that streak broken tonight? Update at 9:23 p. m. ET: Intermission No. 3, Three quarters down, just one more to go. A stalemate in the third leaves the Patriots hoping for a miracle. ’Twas a tale of two quarters in one:A Falcons touchdown leaves Pats fans stunnedPats take one to the bankJust before their kick shanked . ..Suppose it’s a bit better than none. Update at 9:10 p. m. ET, Sometimes, simply nothing goes your way. The Patriots cobbled together a scoring drive  —   their first touchdown of the game  —   only to see their kicker, Stephen Gostkowski doink the ball off the upright, missing the point after. NPR’s Tom Goldman notes Pats fans in the stands   and shaking their heads at the same time. Still, it’s reason to hope: a score of   looks a whole lot better than just  . And it’s difficult to count Tom Brady out of any game, no matter how steep the road ahead appears. Update at 8:58 p. m. ET, Patriots fans, avert your eyes. After New England stalled on its opening drive of the half, Atlanta wasted no time in making them pay. A long strike to wide receiver Taylor Gabriel was the marquee play on a drive that proceeded like clockwork. Blink, and you just might have missed the Falcons pick their way toward the end zone to make it  . Though for some New England fans, covering their eyes may very well be advisable at this point. Update at 8:49 p. m. ET, It was a crucial moment to reclaim some momentum off the bat at the start of the first half  —   but the Patriots didn’t do much with their prime field position. After inching forward just a little, New England ended its drive with yet another punt. First and 10, Atlanta. Update from Otis Hart of NPR Music: Dispatch From The Halftime Show, Otis fills us in on Lady Gaga’s performance: ”The Super Bowl 51 halftime show started above NRG Stadium’s open roof, where Lady Gaga began her   medley with two songs even more popular than ’Poker Face.’ The pop star born this way  —   Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta  —   stood against the Houston skyline and sang excerpts from ’God Bless America’ and ’This Land Is Your Land.’ ”The   beginning, which also included a quote from the Pledge of Allegiance, was hinted at during a press conference on Thursday when Lady Gaga said she wanted to try unite America by focusing on inclusiveness and equality. To help drive home the message, the studio wizards at the Super Bowl swirled an assortment of drones depicting blue and red stars in the background before finally forming the American flag. ”That’s when Gaga jumped. Attached to two cables and in a silver, sparking outfit, she descended from the roof to the top of a metal pyre, and the real show began. Gaga ran through most of her big hits  —   ’Poker Face,’ ’Born This Way,’ ’Telephone,’ ’Just Dance,’ ’Bad Romance’  —   while racing up and down an assortment of stairwells. She left politics on the roof, even stating before the beginning of her recent single, ’Million Reasons,’ that ’we’re here to make you feel good.’ (She also   a quick hello to her parents.) ”She ended the performance after ’Bad Romance’ by dropping her mic and catching a   football as she jumped off camera. There were no ’Left Shark’ moments this year  —   just a solid spectacle.” Update at 8:35 p. m. ET, NPR’s Tom Goldman asked Patriots fan Mark Hartnett, a Boston native, for his reaction to the first half. Tom says it took Hartnett a full five seconds to respond, before finally saying simply: ”Dumbfounded.” Hartnett’s face was expertly painted  —   half red, half blue, separated by a black line down the middle. And he was frank with Tom about the facepaint. ”It’s going to dissolve pretty easily with my salty tears later.” Update at 8:05 p. m. ET: Intermission No. 2, Well, that sure changed fast. Knotted at zero to begin the second quarter, the Falcons and Patriots immediately took separate directions. A   field goal put the Pats on the board before halftime  —   but that’s not likely to assuage their worried fans. The deficit remains daunting at  . Another break, another little limerick to sum things up: Once a drought? So much for that saga. Forgive a misstep from this blogger. Ryan is on a tear  —  A Patriot’s nightmare. Now halftime: Here comes Lady GaGa. Update at 7:50 p. m. ET, What was a promising Patriots drive unraveled remarkably quickly, as a pressured Tom Brady threw into double coverage  —   and ended up watching Falcons defensive back Robert Alford take his pass 82 yards in the opposite direction for a touchdown. The   puts Atlanta up   and leaves the Patriots on the ropes. Prior to that drive, the Patriots were staring up at a steep challenge to come back after that interception, they may be just doing their best to avoid a rout. ”The shock was palpable,” NPR’s Tom Goldman says from the stands in Houston: utter joy from Falcons fans, while the New England faithful fell to silence. Update at 7:36 p. m. ET, Make that  . Atlanta’s offense is looking all but unstoppable at this point. Julio Jones, once again, shed defenders left and right on that drive  —   even making one   catch on the sideline with grace worthy of a ballet dancer. Then, the moment the Patriots try to   him . .. Matt Ryan makes them pay with a long touchdown toss to tight end Austin Hooper. At the moment, it’s looking like the big question is less which team will win, and more which Falcon most deserves the MVP  —   Ryan or Jones? Of course, there’s a whole lot of football left to play. Update at 7:22 p. m. ET, Fresh off a turnover forced by rookie Deion Jones, Atlanta marched down the field on a few huge gains, notching the first touchdown of the game. It’s   Falcons’ advantage. Matt Ryan and his   No. 1 receiver, Julio Jones, gashed the Patriots defense on two big throws, leaving Devonta Freeman to add another jewel to his increasingly gaudy stat line. Freeman waltzed into the endzone untouched. Meanwhile, LeGarrette Blount, the Patriots running back who coughed up the football to set up the Falcons’ scoring drive, is left to reflect on a rare mistake: He had been   for 16 games straight before the  . Update at 7:07 p. m. ET: Intermission No. 1, One quarter down, and we’re still  . Why not mark the moment with another limerick? It’s supposed to be a big shootout? You’d be forgiven for having doubtsA couple successesNot too many messesBut so far, a big ol’ scoring drought. Update at 6:50 p. m. ET, One unsuccessful drive each, but the Patriots have emerged the worse for the exchange. A big run from Falcons running back Devonta Freeman gave Atlanta an advantage in field position, backing Tom Brady and co. up against their own end zone. But the Patriots have begun chipping back toward center field on the strength of a few big throws. This is expected to be an issue all game for the Falcons, whose defense is not nearly as strong as its weapons on the offensive side of the ball. Update at 6:30 p. m. ET, Well before fans and players packed the stadium in Houston, Pope Francis released a message for all the millions who would be watching the game. ”Great sporting events like today’s Super Bowl are highly symbolic, showing that it is possible to build a culture of encounter and a world of peace. ”By participating in sport, we are able to go beyond our own  . And in a healthy way  —   we learn to sacrifice to grow in fidelity and respect the rules. ”May this year’s Super Bowl be a sign of peace, friendship and solidarity to the world.” Update at 6:22 p. m. ET, NPR’s Tom Goldman is at the game, and he says one thing stands out immediately: ”It’s a PATRIOTS CROWD!” Attempts at starting up a   chant in the crowd have been petering out  —   only to bow beneath the loud roar of Pats fans in Houston’s NRG Stadium, Tom notes."
"Finally, today, they will play football. The Atlanta Falcons take on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 51. After an NFL season of sagging TV ratings, it’s expected today’s game, in Houston, will do what Super Bowls always do  —   turn 60 minutes of football into a national holiday. Everything about the Super Bowl is supersized: from the money it generates to the buildup in the host city. Super Bowl week is a kaleidoscope of massive crowds, celebrity sightings and huge events. But for journalists, it can also be a collection of small, incongruous moments  —   that somehow fit together. There’s the nuclear code. There are state secrets. And then there’s the Super Bowl game plan. Of the three, the game plan may be the most difficult to penetrate. Especially when dealing with New England head coach Bill Belichick. Normally   with the sports media, Belichick’s lips reach maximum tension when the Super Bowl rolls around . .. and this is his record seventh appearance. Here’s a snippet from Friday’s pool report after Patriots’ practice: ” ’Everybody’s got a job to do,’ Belichick said. ’Nobody can do anybody else’s job. We all have to do what we each have to do.’ ” Thanks coach. During a media availability with the Falcons, in their first Super Bowl since 1999 and only their second ever, I figured the newbies might go where Belichick wouldn’t. I chose my prey carefully, singling out defensive back Brian Poole, a mere child at 24. ”This is the last [media availability] before the game on Sunday,” I said. ”I’m going to give you a chance to reveal your strategy for stopping Tom Brady.” ”I can’t give you the strategy,” Poole answered. ”Can you get close?” ”No, I can’t do that.” I tried an end run. ”OK, can you tell me, in general, what you do against a guy like Brady? We’re talking about probably the greatest quarterback ever.” ”You just stick to doing what you do,” Poole said. ”Don’t try to do too much. Stick to the plan. Focus on you. Your team, your game plan. Just execute.” ”Uh Brian? That’s very vague,” I said. ”You didn’t give me any details.” ”Exactly.” Good for Brian Poole. He did his job. I, like everyone else, will figure out the game plans, during the game. At least Brian Poole wasn’t sitting at a table. When teams meet the media, as the Falcons did at the Memorial City Mall ice arena, there’s a hierarchy. Usually the head coach and quarterback or another star player hold a short press conference. About 10 other top players appear on risers  —   Poole was on one  —   and most of them attract a pack of reporters. The rest of the players are at tables. And a lot of them spend the time, nearly an hour, on their phones, reading newspapers, chatting with each other. The fact that no one’s interviewing them doesn’t reflect a lack of importance to the team. But in the   NFL, a punter doesn’t rate with a wide receiver. And a table ain’t a riser. Patrick DiMarco was a table guy. As I sit down to talk to him, DiMarco folds his newspaper and extends his hand. He’s in his fourth year with the Falcons, and has the quintessential   job. He’s a fullback. That’s the player who lines up in the backfield between the quarterback and running back. ”Just go out there and clear holes,” he says, describing his duties. ”Clear holes,   and when your number is called, make a play, catch the ball, make somebody miss. Drop your shoulder and bring that physical presence to the game.” When you see a running back electrify a crowd with a touchdown run, it’s sometimes a fullback who made the block that helped send the running back on his way. The cheers are for the player who scored. That’s OK with DiMarco. ”Our success is due to the success of the guys behind us,” he says. ”So having guys like [Falcons running backs] Devonta [Freeman] and Tevin [Coleman] behind us, you know they make us look good.” DiMarco and his fellow fullbacks are cut from the same cloth as offensive linemen  —   players satisfied with doing the grunt work. DiMarco says it creates a camaraderie around the league. The cheers they might not get from the crowd? They give to each other. ”I think there are only 24, 25 fullbacks in the NFL [out of 32 teams] he says. ”After games, we seek out each other and say ’Hey dude, so happy to see you. Good luck the rest of the year. You’ve been playing awesome.’ ” As the Super Bowl approached, DiMarco says the images in his head weren’t of confetti fluttering down from the stadium rafters or hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. They were of the work ahead, the process he hopes will lead to the trophy. They were, typically, images of himself clearing paths to victory. When Patrick DiMarco goes to work Sunday at Houston’s NRG Stadium, Kimberly Archie will be in the stands watching. And cheering. And trying to forget how the sport left a hole in her life. Archie’s son, Paul Bright, died in 2014 at the age of 24. He was in a motorcycle accident. But Kimberly Archie says her son died from football. Paul started playing as a    in Pop Warner  —   youth football  —   and he played into his freshman year in high school. After he died, his mother was suspicious about his erratic behavior leading up to the accident. She’d become knowledgable about   brain injury after working with plaintiffs in a massive lawsuit that was recently settled between retired NFL players and the league. Archie asked researchers at Boston University to study her son’s brain. It showed he had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, the brain disease depicted in the film Concussion. The discovery led Archie to   a lawsuit last year against Pop Warner. Archie was at a Super Bowl party Saturday hosted by legendary sports agent Leigh Steinberg. It was his 30th annual Super Bowl bash  —   and like almost all of the previous occasions, the drinks and finger food were mixed with social consciousness. An hour before the party’s scheduled start time, there was a panel discussion on brain trauma in football and the military. Steinberg first advocated for concussion awareness back in the 1980s, long before the issue became   news. At the party, he talked about the ”crisis of confidence” he had, signing young men to play a game that had the potential to damage their brains. He reconciled his feelings by pushing for more knowledge about the subject. Kimberly Archie was not on the panel, but she spoke afterwards about her son. ”He played eight years of Pop Warner,” she said, ”and only one year of high school. In fact, he only played three plays in one high school game. It was a real  . You don’t have to have a concussion, you don’t have to play in high school, college or the NFL, to be exposed to   brain damage that can kill you.” The Pop Warner youth football organization has taken steps in recent years to limit contact in practice and outlawed particularly dangerous blocking and tackling drills. Archie said that beyond the lawsuit, her efforts to improve youth sports safety are gaining momentum. She said they’re being fueled by mothers who’ve had similar experiences. ”There’s nothing like a mom who’s buried her child,” she said. ”You’re not going to shut them up. You can threaten them, whatever. It’s not going to matter.” As she spoke, at the party, giant video screens in another room showed heroic, slow motion footage of the Falcons and Patriots. Archie pointed to one of the screens. ”I promised my son I’d take him to a Super Bowl,” she said, ”which I never got the chance to do. So [my daughter and I] are going now. We’re going to go to the game and be a part of the experience and try to look beyond the brain damage. . .. It’s a   thing.”"
"In case you haven’t heard, a few dozen guys are planning to play a football game in Houston on Sunday. It’s kind of a big deal. Such a big deal, in fact, that by the time the Atlanta Falcons line up opposite the New England Patriots for Super Bowl LI, you may already have Tom Brady’s name seared into your psyche  —   not to mention a fair share of   commercials. Between the story lines, the betting lines and even the lines of scrimmage, it’s easy to see why the big game might leave your head spinning. That’s why we’re here. Check out a few numbers  —   I swear it’s just a few!  —   that may give you a better sense of what’s at stake Sunday. They may also give you some plum trivia to toss around with a knowing smirk among friends at a viewing party. At any rate, all this counting will be excellent practice for the   bean dip you may be downing later in the day. The number of Super Bowls the Atlanta Falcons have won in the more than 50 years the organization has been around. In fact, it has been nearly two decades since the Falcons even made an appearance in the championship. Back in 1999, Denver Broncos great John Elway was still playing  —   though he would retire after beating the Falcons for his second, and final, championship ring as a player. For context, ABC News also helpfully reminds us that the last time the Falcons were in the Super Bowl, fears of Y2K were still a thing. When coach Bill Belichick and co. step onto the field Sunday night, their organization will be breaking a record: New England has appeared in nine Super Bowls, the most for a single team in NFL history. They’ve still got a little ways to go before they match the record for most Super Bowls won, however. The Pittsburgh Steelers own those heights, with six wins  . Belichick and his future Hall of Fame quarterback, Tom Brady, have appeared in a breathtaking seven Super Bowls together since 2002, so perhaps they’re not as far off as it appears. But there’s a downside to all of those appearances: If they lose on Sunday, they’ll be tied with the Broncos for most losses in Super Bowl history, at five. That’s the   set by SpotsLine on how many points both teams will score, combined. CBS Sports points out that number is the highest ever for a Super Bowl. Ladies and gentlemen, strap in: This means we may very well be in for a shootout. This is a weird one, dredged up by ESPN Stats  Information. It’s the number of games that Patriots running back Dion Lewis has played with the team in the past two seasons. They didn’t lose any of them. OK, this one may be cheating  —   but it’s still worth noting. As you may recall, the NFL had a little fling with good   Arabic numerals at the big game last year, dubbing it Super Bowl 50. It was the first time since the NFL began using Roman numerals in 1971 that the league decided to dabble in Arabic digits. But why, exactly? Turns out the league wasn’t all that comfortable leaving that L all alone  —   and they realized that discomfort 10 years earlier. ”When we developed the Super Bowl XL logo, that was the first time we looked at the letter ’L,’ ” Jaime Weston, the leagues vice president of brand and creative, told ESPN last year. ”Up until that point, we had only worked with X’s, V’s and I’s. And, at that moment, that’s when we started to wonder what will happen when we get to 50?” Add an I, though, and all is well once more with Roman numerals."
"A federal appeals court denied President Trump’s attempt to restore his travel ban on refugees and visa holders from seven   countries Sunday morning, sending people scrambling to board planes while it is legal once again for them to enter the country. The court set a timeline for the next developments, while also denying the immediate stay Trump asked for as part of his appeal against a Seattle judge’s ruling that suspended the president’s travel ban on Friday. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has asked those opposed to the ban to file their opposition to Trump’s appeal by 3 a. m. ET Monday (11:59 p. m. PT Sunday) and for the Justice Department, representing Trump’s administration, to reply to that by 6 p. m. ET Monday. For now, however, previously approved refugees and green card holders from the seven countries listed in the ban are able once again to enter the U. S. William Lacey Swing, the director general of the United Nations International Organization for Migration, told NPR his agency is hoping to resettle between 1, 800 and 2, 000 refugees who had already been approved prior to the ban. ”It’s quite complex now,” Swing told NPR’s Lulu   on Sunday. ”But you can be sure from our side that we’re going to do everything possible to get them on those flights, to take advantage of this window of opportunity . .. unless of course, the courts change things once more.” Refugees, visa holders begin boarding flights, Airport officials in Cairo say a total of 33 U. S.  migrants from Yemen, Syria and Iraq have boarded flights on their way to the United States, according to The Associated Press. The 33 hadn’t previously been turned away, but were migrants rushing to take advantage of the window offered by the Sunday ruling. Ahmed   an accountant from Damascus with two daughters, a    and a    told NPR they were driving to the airport in Amman last week from the northern Jordanian city of Irbid when they received a call telling them their flight was canceled. The IOM called again Sunday asking if he would be willing to leave for the U. S. on Monday. ”I told them of course, I’m ready,” Durah said. ”I sold everything and our bags are still packed.” By Sunday afternoon, the family was booked on a flight scheduled to leave Monday morning. He said his wife’s uncle in Atlanta had rented a house for them there and paid the rent six months in advance. It was less clear whether the IOM in Lebanon was starting to reschedule flights for refugees. Amin Khayat had been scheduled to leave on Friday for Detroit with his wife, five children and his    mother, who has cancer. ”They stopped her chemotherapy because we were traveling and then when the flight was canceled, the hospital said it was sorry but it couldn’t restart it,” Khayat told NPR by phone from Beirut. Khayat is an electronics repairman from Damascus and said he had given up their rented apartment and taken the children out of school. He said he tried calling the IOM on Sunday, but since it was a weekend, he couldn’t reach anyone. Iraqis accepted for resettlement under a special program for military interpreters and employees of U. S. companies in Iraq were told earlier in the week they were cleared to leave. ”The embassy called me and said it was OK for me and others like me to travel,” said Fuad Sharif Suleman, an Iraqi Kurd deported back to Iraq last week from Cairo while he and his family were en route to New York. Reached by telephone just before he boarded the plane in Irbil early Saturday, Suleman said his children  —   ages 19, 17 and 10  —   were a little bit nervous but excited about their new home in Nashville, Tenn. Suleman said there had been an outpouring of support in the U. S. after he was sent back to Iraq. ”I had friends in Nashville, but now I have a lot more,” he told NPR. President Trump and his administration’s response, Trump hasn’t said anything publicly Sunday about the federal court’s decision to deny his stay request. He penned a flurry of tweets Saturday, however, aimed at Seattle Judge James L. Robart and his original decision to temporarily lift the travel ban while a case brought by the states of Washington and Minnesota is heard. The tweet illustrates a key difference in opinion between Trump and his supporters, and the people working to vet and place refugees in America. Swing, the director general of the IOM, said it’s hard for him to imagine a stricter vetting process than the one already in place prior to the ban. The refugees he is hoping to relocate to the U. S. while the travel ban is lifted have already made it through that process. ”You have eight U. S. government agencies who are vetting them,” said Swing. ”They are looking at six different security databases, they’re doing five different background checks. They have three separate   interviews, and then two   reviews of all that. ”So far, the problem has been that since   the security has been so strict that you’re talking about at least 18 months until you can travel.” The White House obviously sees it differently. In a statement on Friday, Trump’s administration announced its intention to appeal the decision to lift the ban, adding, ”The president’s order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people.” More than a dozen legal challenges have been filed against the ban around the country, according to The Washington Post, and just one judge, U. S. District Judge Nathan Gorton, has indicated he was willing to let Trump’s order stand. Reporters asked Trump about the appeal outside his private    resort in Florida, on Saturday night. ”We’ll win,” he said, and briefly paused. ”For the safety of our country, we’ll win.” You can find the court documents related to the Trump administration’s appeal and the original decision to temporarily lift the ban here."
"A baby hippopotamus, born prematurely at the Cincinnati Zoo, has struggled to stand, eat, gain weight and breathe. But on Sunday morning, the zoo announced ”encouraging news from hippo headquarters.” Baby hippo Fiona, now in stable condition, has taken her first wobbly steps. Fiona was born at the zoo on Jan. 24, six weeks early. She weighed 29 pounds, when baby hippos are normally   pounds, the zoo says. She was too weak to stand and couldn’t nurse on her own. The zoo has provided    intensive care to keep her alive. On Tuesday, when the zoo gave the hippo her name, they warned that she was ”not out of the woods yet.” But ”every baby needs a name,” they said. The zoo explained that Fiona was being nursed close enough to mom Bibi and dad Henry that they could all hear and smell each other. The baby hippo has spent time in a pool, first with noodles to support her weight and then standing on her own. She was   with a combination of her mother’s milk and formula, as zoo staff worked to teach her how to nurse on her own. She struggled with a poor suckling response. ”She still has a long way to go before she’ll be strong enough to be reunited with her mom,” curator of mammals Christa Gorsuch said in the update on Tuesday. ”She needs to learn how to nurse on her own, walk, swim and get a lot bigger.” The little hippo’s fight to survive caught the eye of another team of caregivers. On Thursday, the zoo announced it had received ”a package from the preemie team at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital that included signed superhero capes, a   baby book, a stuffed hippo, a beautiful note and much more.”"
"On display at the ”Photography and Discovery” exhibit at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. is a photo of two men dressed in traditional Arab garb in a carpeted room (above). They’re smoking a pipe. It’s a beautiful photo, but it’s not from the Middle East. It was shot in a studio in London by photographer Roger Fenton. The men in the photo are white Europeans, dressed up and posing as Arabs. The whole thing is staged  —   as are several of the exhibit’s images. The photos were taken in the 19th and early 20th centuries, roughly the first 75 years of photography. This was also a time of rising European colonial power. European empires needed justification for subjugating vast swaths of earth, and photography could frame the Arab and Asian world in a way that supported the empire, says Ali Behdad, a professor of literature at UCLA and author of Camera Orientalis: Reflections on Photography of the Middle East. Take the photo of the pyramids at Giza, shot by prominent   photographer Francis Frith. The pyramids are in the background, and the surrounding sands are desolate save for two picnickers and a pack animal. The terrain is majestic and the pyramids tall and timeless, if crumbling slightly. Like the photo of the pipe smokers, this photo was staged. The picnickers are members of Frith’s photography crew, as the museum label notes. And the people of Giza  —   the third largest city in Egypt  —   are nowhere to be seen. ”It’s to make it seem this place is a historical ruin that needs to be fixed up by Europeans or appropriated by them,” Behdad says. The British occupied Egypt 20 years after the photo was taken. Because of the camera’s eyewitness quality, people believed that what they saw was true, says Luke Gartlan, a professor of art history at the University of St. Andrews. The museum takes care to explain the story behind the images, says Jay Clarke, the exhibit curator. Labels beside the exhibited photographs identify when white men engaged in brown face, and the photos of crowded France beside a barren Burma add to the idea that some countries were barely populated. ”The exhibition certainly does present a Eurocentric view,” Clarke says. ”We only recently began to collect works by   artists.” The idea of using photos to make a political statement, meanwhile, continues to this day. In the Middle East, Behdad says, news and contemporary photography often depicts Arabs as ”terrorists, people who oppress their women. That perpetuates the kinds of policies of exclusion that we see in Europe, Holland, France and the United States now. It’s about image. It’s about perception.” But in recent years, there has been more and more photographic and video documentation from people in developing countries. Video blogs from locals in besieged Aleppo flew across the world through news coverage and social media, for example. ”Our history has always been written by people other than us, specifically in photo,” says Sima Diab, a   photojournalist based in Cairo. ”In the last six to 10 years, however tough it’s been, [news and life in the Middle East] has been documented extensively by locals.” That’s a far cry from the days when two white Europeans could pose as Arabs in a London studio. But whether this new wave of photos will have the same influence as the images of the past is still an open question."
"President Trump’s first two weeks in office have been a sprint, not the start of a marathon. If the rapid pace and, sometimes, hourly developments of executive orders, news, controversies and more have left you exhausted, you’re not alone. If you’re finding it hard to remember just everything that’s transpired too, we’re here for that as well. Here’s a quick recap of the highlights  —   and lowlights  —   of the first 14 days of Trump’s nascent presidency. On his first full day as president, Trump went to the CIA to try to mend fences with the intelligence agency he repeatedly maligned during the campaign and the transition. (He blamed the media for creating the feud, but his own tweets disprove that.) While standing before a memorial at the agency, he argued over the crowd size at his inauguration, making false assertions that run counter to aerial photos of the event and NPR’s own reporters on the ground. He also claimed it stopped raining during his inaugural address, when it did not. Hours later, new press secretary Sean Spicer made his first appearance in the White House briefing room to double down on those falsehoods about crowd size. He cited wrong numbers for Metro usage in D. C. and also falsely said that floor coverings used for the first time on the National Mall made photos show where there were gaps, when in fact such coverings had been used before. After delivering his fiery broadside, Spicer left without taking any questions. While all that was happening, the Women’s March on Washington protesting Trump and his policies toward women drew thousands and thousands of people  —   and the   Metro ridership day ever, second only to President Obama’s first inauguration. Protests weren’t just limited to D. C. though  —   similar events happened across the country that also drew massive crowds. And the protests even went worldwide, happening on all seven continents. The White House should have been in cleanup mode after Saturday’s first rocky day in office, but instead on the Sunday shows spokespersons doubled down on false claims about crowd size and more. Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway argued on NBC’s Meet the Press that Spicer had simply provided ”alternative facts” when making his arguments  —   a moniker that looks primed to persist throughout the Trump administration. The biggest news happened when Trump met that evening with both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, reviving his unfounded claims that there were between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes cast in the 2016 election that caused him to lose the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. This would continue to be an issue for the rest of the week (more on this below). Trump also signed an executive order reinstating the ”Mexico City” policy, a global gag rule prohibiting international nongovernmental organizations that provide or talk about abortion services from receiving federal funding. He also signaled his intent to withdraw from the   Partnership trade agreement and instituted a federal hiring freeze except for the military. Spicer had his second outing with the press, still in a largely defensive crouch. He blamed the press for trying to ”undercut the tremendous support” for Trump and doubled down on his insistence that Trump’s was the   inauguration ever, though given difficulty in counting streaming numbers, that’s hard to back up. Ethics experts filed a lawsuit in court alleging that the president was in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution because of his overseas businesses, Spicer repeated Trump’s unfounded assertions that there was widespread voter fraud during the U. S. elections but provided no further proof of why the president believed that. Trump approved construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, which had both been stopped during the Obama administration amid outcry from environmental groups. Other executive orders directed the Commerce Department to review how federal regulations might be impeding U. S. manufacturers. Trump signed two executive orders keeping one of his top campaign promises, ordering the U. S. government to begin construction of a wall along the Southern border with Mexico. He asserted that while the U. S. government would have to front the money, Mexico would pay it back. (Mexican leaders have said they will not.) Trump also directed the Homeland Security and Justice departments to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities. In his first interview as president, Trump doubled down (tripled down?) on his unproven belief that there were millions of illegal voters. ”You have people that are registered who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states. You have people registered in two states. They’re registered in a New York and a New Jersey. They vote twice. There are millions of votes, in my opinion,” he told ABC’s David Muir. Studies Trump cited offer no proof of such voter fraud. And he also incorrectly claimed it was illegal to be registered in two states it’s not illegal unless someone votes in two states, because often voter rolls are not quickly updated. In fact, it turned out some Trump aides and family members were registered in multiple states. Trump traveled to Philadelphia to address the GOP congressional retreat, where he delivered a relatively   speech promising Obamacare repeal and to crack down on violent crime, and touting his executive actions on immigration and trade. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled a planned trip to the U. S. amid Trump’s continued assertion that his country would repay the U. S. for the border wall. One possibility to recoup the investment from Mexico that the White House floated was a 20 percent import tax, which, as NPR’s Scott Horsley reported, ”would effectively saddle U. S. consumers with a significant portion of the wall’s cost, estimated at $15 billion or more.” Trump gave his second interview, to a friendly source, Fox News’ Sean Hannity. He again boasted of his crowd sizes during his inauguration and talked about the (still unproven) allegations that there were millions of illegal votes cast in November. He also told Hannity he continues to believe waterboarding works and talked about bringing it back, though it is outlawed in the U. S. as torture. His new defense secretary, retired Gen. James Mattis, has said he does not believe waterboarding is effective and has reiterated it is illegal, as have top GOP congressional leaders such as Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump signed an executive order blocking travelers from seven countries, all of which are    —   Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia  —   from entering the U. S. for 90 days. New refugee admissions are suspended for 120 days, while Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely. There was confusion at airports whether or not the ban includes those with valid U. S. visas, green cards or people from those countries who are permanent residents. Protests began at airports as travelers were detained. Trump hosted his first foreign leader at the White House  —   British Prime Minister Theresa May. She pushed for a future trade deal with the U. S. The two held a joint news conference, where May said Trump had reaffirmed his support for NATO  —   though he has questioned whether the U. S. should be in the alliance in the past. The annual   event called by its proponents the March for Life drew thousands more demonstrators to the National Mall. Vice President Pence and Conway both spoke. Protests continued at airports across the country amid confusion over Trump’s travel ban. Immigration attorneys began offering their services pro bono. Late on Saturday, a federal judge issued a stay on the deportations of valid visa holders after they have landed in the U. S. in response to an ACLU lawsuit. Trump reshuffled the National Security Council, elevating controversial chief strategist Steve Bannon to be a permanent member of the Principals Committee, giving him equal billing with other   officials. The director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are typically permanent members, will now only attend when pertinent issues are being discussed. Trump called several foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also had a tense call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, though details would not be reported until later in the week. The president told Turnbull it was ”the worst call by far” that he (Trump) had had that day, and the two clashed on the Obama administration’s deal to accept refugees from the country. Trump signed several executive orders  —   an ethics order banning administration appointees from ever lobbying foreign governments and from federal lobbying for five years after they leave office. He also directed the administration to develop a ”comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS.” A U. S. Navy SEAL was killed during a raid in Yemen targeting   militants, the first military casualty of Trump’s administration. Later in the week, questions were raised over how the operation  —   which also is believed to have killed several civilians  —   was carried out. Protests continued at airports over the Trump administration’s travel ban. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates (a holdover from the Obama administration) announced she would direct Justice Department lawyers not to defend Trump’s travel ban. Hours later, the president fired her, naming Dana Boente, the top federal prosecutor in suburban Virginia, as the interim attorney general until nominee Jeff Sessions is confirmed by the Senate. More Republicans continued to speak out against Trump’s travel ban, voicing concern over its implementation. Former President Barack Obama broke his silence since leaving office, saying through a spokesman that ”American values are at stake.” Trump signed an executive order that says for every regulation the executive branch proposes, two others must be repealed. Trump nominated federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The evening ceremony in the White House’s East Room was arranged for suspense, which gave it the aura of a reality TV show in some ways. Conservatives praised his pick, which was a major campaign issue after Senate Republicans refused to take up former President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, for much of 2016. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn made a surprise appearance at the daily press briefing to announce that the Trump administration was putting Iran ”on notice” after the country conducted a ballistic missile test. Trump and daughter Ivanka traveled to Dover Air Force Base for the return to the U. S. of the remains of Navy SEAL William ”Ryan” Owens, who was killed over the weekend in the Yemen raid. The AP reported that during a call with Mexican President Nieto last week, Trump threatened to send in the U. S. military to stop the ”bad hombres down there.” Mexico denied the remarks. Celebrity Apprentice creator Mark Burnett introduced Trump at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. During his remarks, Trump called out the low ratings of the NBC reality show he once hosted and criticized the new host, action star and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. ”And I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings, OK,” the president said. Trump also pledged at the breakfast to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits   groups, including religious ones, from wading into politics. A federal judge in Seattle temporarily halted Trump’s executive order on immigration and travel from some   countries. The order is effective nationwide. New sanctions were announced against Iran, following up on the administration’s earlier threat against the country. Trump signed two executive orders directing the review of the   financial regulations and halting implementation of another federal rule that mandates financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients. Airlines resumed allowing travelers once affected by Trump’s travel ban to come to the U. S. Trump, who was at his    resort in Palm Beach, Fla. for the weekend, tweeted, ”The opinion of this   judge, which essentially takes   away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Because of the ”terrible decision,” he later added on Twitter, ”many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country.”"
"President Donald Trump tweeted on Monday that the chaos in airports over the weekend was Delta Airlines’ fault —  along with protesters and ”the tears of Senator [Chuck] Schumer.” He sent those tweets a little after 7 a. m. By 9:30 a. m. Delta Airlines’ stock was down 1. 6 percent. Meanwhile, an algorithm was raking in money from those tweets. T3, an advertising company in Austin, Texas, built the ”Trump and Dump Bot” to analyze Trump’s tweets and play the stock market when he says something bad about a company. They donate the money they make to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Here’s how the bot works, according to T3 president Ben Gaddis. First, Trump tweets, and the bot checks to see if Trump is tweeting about a   company. The bot does a ”sentiment analysis” of the tweet, looking for words like ”big problems” and ”caused by.” Then it gives the tweet a sentiment ranking. For Trump’s tweet about imposing a border tax on Toyota’s plant in Mexico, the ranking was 17. 9 percent —  very low, according to Gaddis. If the sentiment ranking is low enough, the bot heads to   as fast as possible and borrows stock in the company Trump is tweeting about. This all happens in less than a second. The bot then sells its   stock before the company’s shares tank. Then, when the stock is down, it buys back those shares at a cheaper price. When Delta Airlines stock dropped, the ”Trump and Dump Bot” made a 4. 47 percent profit. Still confused? Here’s a video T3 made to explain it. T3 is currently the only company talking about using a bot in this way, but Gaddis thinks other companies are doing or trying to do something similar. Gaddis doesn’t think profiting off a company’s   with President Trump is bad —  especially when the profits are donated. ”President Trump tweets something negative, we save a puppy,” Gaddis said. ”That’s something I think everybody can get behind.”"
"Republicans want to eliminate one of the nation’s newest national monuments. Former President Barack Obama created the 1. 3   Bears Ears National Monument in Utah just days before he left office. At the center of the brewing legal fight is a relatively obscure federal law called the Antiquities Act that dates back to President Teddy Roosevelt, who famously used it early and often. It was meant to protect ancient artifacts and ruins that at the time were being pilfered from western lands. It also allows for a president to protect these sites and the lands around them as national monuments, without going through Congress. ”Under the Antiquities Act, there is no ability of having any input,” says Rep. Rob Bishop,  . Bishop, who chairs the powerful House Committee on Natural Resources, has emerged as one of the act’s biggest critics. ”No one ever gets to have a say, you don’t work out things in advance,” Bishop says. ”It has to be a gotcha moment where the president unveils something unilaterally.” Bishop wants the Trump administration to also act by executive order, and either shrink Bears Ears or nullify it altogether. Bears Ears connects a huge protected corridor that links several monuments that ultimately bring you to the Grand Canyon. The land is also considered sacred to Native American tribes. ”It is the wrong size,” Bishop says. ”It does not take into account the various uses that the land can do.” That’s the big rub for Bishop. A national monument designation generally means new development  —   like oil and gas drilling, expansion of cattle grazing  —   is off limits. Only the existing leases that are grandfathered in can be developed. What Bishop is talking about doing, overturning a national monument of this size, has never been done before. Only a handful of smaller historical monuments have been shut down or transferred over to state management. The law here is murky, according to University of Colorado law professor Mark Squillace, an expert on the Antiquities Act. ”The way that the Antiquities Act is structured, it essentially authorizes the president to proclaim, but not to modify or revoke, national monuments,” Squillace says. Under the act, only Congress can revoke a national monument outright. But Squillace isn’t sure the Utah congressional delegation has the votes. ”It turns out that the designation of national monuments is very popular with the public,” he says. It’s not yet clear what the new administration’s move will be on Bears Ears, if there’s one at all. During his Senate confirmation hearing, the president’s nominee for interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, told lawmakers that the Antiquities Act doesn’t authorize a president to rescind a monument. ”Legally, it’s untested,” Zinke said, adding that he thought the public has generally benefited from a lot of national monuments. Economic studies have shown rural towns around them often see increases in tourism and recreation business. But Bishop isn’t buying it in Utah. ”In the name of saying we’re doing something for everyone, you actually hurt people, especially those who live in that particular area,” Bishop says. San Juan County, home to Bears Ears, is often the poorest county in Utah. Bishop wants more local control of federal public land. He’s also one of the biggest supporters in Congress of the idea that most all federal public land should be turned over to states to own and manage. An analysis by the Center of Responsive Politics however found that he gets more campaign donations from outside his home state than any other lawmaker in the House, much of that coming from energy and agribusiness. One thing is clear: the fight over the future of the Bears Ears National Monument extends far beyond Utah. At the Utah state capitol last week, Cynthia Wilson of the Navajo Nation protested the state Legislature’s passage of a resolution condemning Bears Ears. ”As indigenous people, this is nothing new to us, we have always been attacked over our ancestral lands,” Wilson told KUER. ”We’re going to keep defending this monument.” Many tribes are pledging to mobilize from around the country and get to Utah to fight for the protection of Bears Ears, if needed."
"   Yazan   sits on the floor next to a kerosene heater playing with a phone app that sings the alphabet in English. The first grader recites the letters in an Arabic accent certain to quickly disappear if he and his family, Syrian refugees, make it to the United States. After two years of waiting and background checks,  ’s parents and their three young children were accepted for U. S. resettlement and were due to fly this past week to New York. When they were told their trip had been canceled because of the Trump administration’s ban on Syrian arrivals, they had already sold all the   furniture they had painstakingly accumulated in two years in Jordan. They had packed their clothes and an album of photos from their home in Aleppo, Syria into big black duffle bags to start their new life. The father, Rafiq   a high school geography teacher in Syria, had pored over the itinerary  —   Amman to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Chicago and Chicago to New York. And then to Syracuse in upstate New York. ”I looked it up on Google maps and I read that it’s an industrial city. . .. I was told there was lots of work there,”   says. ”It doesn’t matter if it’s the kind of work I did at home. I will do anything.” The   are among hundreds of Syrian refugees in Jordan accepted for resettlement in the United States who have been left stranded  —   at least for now  —   by the travel ban. Rafiq and his wife Ghada Dibo were among the last Syrian refugees allowed into Jordan two years ago before it closed its borders to the refugees next door. The small country has taken in more than a million refugees  —   more than half of them Syrian. When the fighting worsened in Aleppo, the couple left home with two young children, traveling through the desert at night to evade checkpoints to reach safety. Their youngest child, a bubbly    girl, was born in Jordan. They ended up in the industrial city of Zarqa. Most refugees aren’t allowed to work in Jordan.   runs the risk of being arrested by picking up occasional work in construction to pay their rent. ”I don’t feel secure here,” he says. ”I am always afraid of the possibility of being deported back to Syria. We are always watching what we say. Even on Facebook we make sure not to write anything critical.”   34, says he has never met an American. Asked what he knows about the country that was to be their new home, he says: ”We know there is democracy and freedom. My friends who are there say you feel like you are a human being  —   a citizen. You have rights. No one can oppress you. Even the children have rights.”   has taken an English course offered by a Japanese organization in Amman and believes he’d learn the language quickly. It would be easy for the children, he says. As Yazan listens to the alphabet and numbers, his 4 and a    little sister Media goes to sit next to him and sings along. The   apartment with paint peeling off the concrete walls is empty except for a single kerosene heater and the television that   was able to buy back. Neighbors have lent them foam mattresses to sleep on the floor. ”The kids have been saying, ’in America we’ll do this, in America we’ll do that,’ ” says their mother. Media was particularly excited at the thought of having her own room. Yazan wants to be a policeman. His parents say he started stuttering after being frightened by the sound of jets in Syria and he still doesn’t talk much. Ghada Dibo says she didn’t know what to tell the children about why they weren’t going. ”My daughter asked, ’Mama where are our things, why don’t we have them? Why aren’t we going to America?’ and then she started to cry,” she says. Dibo says she herself broke down and cried. ”I feel like a huge disaster has happened to us. . .. We can’t afford to replace the things we sold and we have been left with nothing. No one is explaining anything to us.” The day after the travel ban was rolled back by a U. S. court, the family had not been notified of any new travel date. Over the weekend, they received a call from an aid agency to see if they could travel on Monday, but they haven’t confirmed that they’re traveling.   says he had heard that Canada had offered to take in the Syrian refugees who were to be resettled in the United States. ”Maybe they will let us go to another country  —   to Europe or Canada,” he says."
"The scientific community has been roiled by the Trump travel ban. Like tens of thousands of residents of the seven   countries, scientists have been stranded  —   cut off from their labs, worried they won’t be able to attend upcoming conferences. And even though the ban has been temporarily reversed by a court order, they are uncertain about what the future holds  —   and the implications for their work. Consider the case of Ph. D. candidate Hanan Isweiri. She left her lab at Colorado State University to fly home to Libya after the death of her father. She was expected back in Colorado 10 days ago. But on her return trip to the U. S. she was stopped while trying to catch a connecting flight in Jordan. When she reached the gate, she and her    son, Tameem, were told they couldn’t board the plane due to the new U. S. travel restrictions. Hanan has a valid   visa, and her son is a United States citizen. When she called officials at Colorado State University, they told her to stay put. ”They asked me to not go anywhere until they got this exception, or something, for me,” Isweiri told NPR last Thursday. A lot has changed since then. Following the court order to reverse the ban, the State Department and other agencies began accepting visas like Isweiri’s. Late Saturday night, she made it back into the U. S. Even with the temporary relief, the ban has hurt the scientific community, says Rush Holt, a physicist and a former member of Congress who now heads the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His organization will hold its annual meeting, in Boston, later this month, and the uncertainty is taking its toll. ”The head of the world academy of sciences, which is headquartered in Trieste, Italy, sent a letter saying he is canceling his plans because he is Sudanese and didn’t expect to be able to travel,” Holt explains. He says the freedom to communicate and collaborate with people around the world are fundamental principles for science. ”If you want science to thrive  —   and you’d better want science to thrive, because that benefits society in so many ways  —   you really have to defend these principles,” Holt says. Even scientists from the seven targeted countries who are still in the United States have been negatively affected. Maryam Zahedian, a grad student in chemistry at Indiana University in Bloomington, is originally from Iran. She worries this is the start of something terrible. ”All this news, it just makes us so nervous, I cannot even focus for like 30 minutes,” Zahedian says. ”Doing my research, I will go back and check the news, check the Facebook to see if there is any new thing. I don’t want to stay longer here if it’s going to be like this.” It’s too early to say whether the ban will return. Opponents say it’s unconstitutional. President Trump has vowed to see it reinstated. In the meantime, scientists, and many others, feel left in limbo."
"The dynamic, sometimes evil and always enthralling Victor Newman has been a mainstay of CBS’ daytime soap The Young and the Restless. The character is played by actor Eric Braeden, who is marking his 37th year on the show. Braeden also has a new memoir out called I’ll Be Damned. In it, he shares stories from his career and his childhood in   War II Germany. He tells NPR’s Lulu   ”I was born in 1941 in a town called Kiel on the Baltic Sea. And that was a center for [the] building of warships and submarines, and hence it was obviously a target of Allied bombers.” On his father, who died when Braeden was 12, He belonged to the [Nazi] Party and he was mayor of the town that I grew up in, which was outside of Kiel. And as far as I knew, [he was] a very loving figure. Never saw him in uniform. I just was devastated when he died. On how he learned about the Nazi era and the Holocaust, I found out in   here in Los Angeles. . .. [There] was a movie theater and they played a documentary called Mein Kampf, a Swedish documentary. And I went because I was kind of homesick I said, ”Oh, that’s a German title.” I honestly had not grown up knowing anything about Mein Kampf or really the Nazi era, except that Germany had lost the war. My early impressions were of English tanks coming through the village and arresting my father. So that was arguably the most shocking and, I would say, epiphanous moment in my young life, and awakened an enormous interest in history and politics. On why he hadn’t learned about the Holocaust sooner, The second world war was not discussed in German history classes until the ’60s, and I left in ’59. And in the middle ’60s they began to really become aware, in Germany, of the dreadful stuff that happened in concentration camps. Before then, it was not discussed. I don’t remember discussing it, except once when I was a teenager. I walked home from school with a schoolmate and he said  —   I was about 14, I think, 15  —   and he said, ”I gotta tell you a secret.” I said, ”Oh? What is it?” He says, ”I’m Jewish.” And I didn’t quite know what to do with that. So I went home to my mother  —   my father had been dead by then about two or three years. I said, ”So and so . .. said that he was Jewish. What does that mean?” And she just made a big sigh, and she says, ”Oh, what one did to the white Jews is unforgiveable.” By that I assume she meant the German Jews. That is the extant of my conversation about that subject matter until much later. On moving to the U. S. in 1959 and how he ended up in Los Angeles, First, I dissected cadavers at the John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas, where a cousin of mine, a German cousin of mine, was a doctor. Then I ventured from that to Montana. I was a cowboy on a ranch outside of Missoula. Then I took that river trip [down the Salmon River] in Idaho with a promise that we would make a documentary film and with that film we would come to California. And I said, ”I’m in,” nevermind it was called ”The River of No Return” for a reason. So that’s how, by Greyhound bus, I then . .. came to Los Angeles I think in the fall of ’60. On why he’s stayed with The Young and the Restless for so long, The reason I stayed was after about five years, I think, four years, I became increasingly disgruntled with playing this rather   character. And then Bill Bell, the head writer, came up with a storyline for me that I played on a Christmas Eve show with my   wife, Nikki, played beautifully by Melody Thomas Scott still. And she sort of asks this mystery character, Victor Newman, about his childhood and about Christmas. And he has reluctant feelings about Christmas and then finally kind of breaks down and tells her that he grew up in an orphanage where he was left at the age of 7 by a destitute mother who had been left by a drunken father. And once I played that scene, I walked into my dressing room and I said, ”Now I’m staying,” because it opened up a huge world of possibilities."
"It took a car bomb to get the funds to renovate Egypt’s Museum of Islamic Art, but three years later, a restored museum with modern galleries has reopened to showcase the museum’s historic treasures. The 2014 explosion outside police headquarters near the   museum in downtown Cairo heavily damaged the stone and wood façade and smashed 179 priceless objects. ”We cried so much when we first saw it, because really, what you see standing here was all in pieces on the floor,” says Shahinda Karim, a professor of Islamic art at the American University in Cairo. The exhibits reflect the culture of an Islamic world that, at its height more than 1, 000 years ago, stretched across Central Asia, the Middle East and north Africa to continental Europe. Cairo was one of its capitals. Inside the renovated museum, dark gray walls, marble floors and new lighting highlight gleaming glass display cases and towering architectural pieces  —   including intricate wooden panels with repeating patterns of interlocking geometric shapes. As she leads a tour through the museum, Karim points out the silver work on a huge 18th century mosque door engraved with the name of the Jewish silversmith.   incense burners embellished with diamonds sparkle in display cases. But the real treasures are pieces displaying craftsmanship that reached its height in the capitals of the Muslim empires. There are   Persian carpets so finely woven they are almost   and exquisite miniature paintings of palace life that illustrated ancient manuscripts. There’s also an engraved astrolabe  —   one of the first devices used to navigate by the stars. At the opening ceremony on Jan. 19, Egypt’s antiquities minister, Khaled   called the reopened museum a victory over terrorism. Sufi dancers dressed in billowing white robes whirled to religious chants and the music of drums, tambourines and reed flutes. The U. S. government provided funds to help restore the museum façade, while the United Arab Emirates paid for the   museum renovation. With 4, 400 pieces on display and more than 5, 000 more in storage, the museum houses among the largest and widest ranging collections of Islamic art in the world. ”The bombing damaged 179 masterpieces of Islamic art,” says museum director Ahmed Shoukri, standing next to an    Syrian glass bottle glued back together. He says museum staff managed to repair all but 10 of the pieces. The exhibits illustrate a shift from figurative art to an emphasis on calligraphy and geometric and floral designs that is the hallmark of Islamic art after the 9th century. While some conservative Gulf Arab countries consider depictions of people or animals blasphemous under Islam, Karim says the Quran does not ban figurative art. ”There is nothing in the Quran that says you cannot have [a] figurative representative. It says you cannot have idols,” she explains. ”If I pray to that statue, it’s an idol. If I don’t, it’s art.” Karim, who is Egyptian, believes the museum will show people a different side of the religion. ”I think the reopening of the museum is extremely important because there’s been so much negative propaganda” about Islam, she says. ”I think it will show people that this was one of the most advanced cultures  —   and how better to see it than through art?” The exhibits also illustrate skills that declined with the industrial age and waning empires, when craftsmen could no longer spend months on a single piece. ”Today, how long can an artist work on one piece?” she says. ”Before it was the sultans paying for these pieces. Who is going to pay for this now?”"
"For animals lovers, adopting a cat or dog is easier than ever these days. There are now countless websites through which one can adopt one of these cute, furry creatures. Unfortunately, however, while many of these animals find caring homes, scores of them still end up in shelters, where they are often put to sleep. This trend is changing in Richmond, Va. Five years ago, more than a third of the animals that came to Richmond’s   animal shelter were put down. Today, the shelter is boasting record high adoptions  —   nearly 90 percent. Christie Chipps Peters is the director of Richmond’s Animal Care And Control department, and she told NPR’s Lulu   the secret to their success in keeping animals alive and finding them loving owners. On how she brought down the euthanasia rate by 40 percent within her first year at Richmond’s Animal Care And Control  We had some changes to make. We made a few quite quickly. I would say the first two things that we did right off the bat, is we sort of put a stake in the ground and said, ”We’re not euthanizing any animals for space and we’re going to do everything we possibly can to allow people to come and take them so that they get to leave the shelter alive. Another thing that we did immediately was that we extended the hours that our shelter was open. You know, for working families, being open from 1 p. m. to 5 p. m. does not accommodate animals leaving alive. In addition, people prior to my arrival could just show up at the animal shelter and expect their animal to be taken from them. . .. We put in place a very structured program to try and help people keep their animals. Since we are the only open admission shelter in the city of Richmond, that means that we take care of every single animal that is in need. So if our officers are out and we have to seize 40 dogs, we need to make 40 cages at the shelter available. And previously, that would just mean that 40 animals would lose their lives. Now, we would put a post on Facebook and say, ”We’ve taken 40 animals, we need to find 40 of our dogs that are in house, foster homes. Can you please help?” On whether social media has transformed how they get the word out about animals in need of a home,  It has completely transformed our operations and I’m hopeful that others would jump on the bandwagon. In the past, animal control agencies and open admission agencies have sort of put a cloak over the unpleasant side of our jobs. And while that is, unfortunately, a very real part of our job, the reality is if you’re able to share your story and tell the truth and allow the public to see completely your operations and how you’re doing things, and ask for help, the response has been incredible.  On whether they got any pushback for being so open about the status of animals in house  We have. It was interesting, because you know, I said, we’re just going to tell the truth and put it out there and we had a couple people that had messaged back, ”I’m sorry to see that there is even one animal euthanized.” And while we do understand that, it’s not the reality of the job that we do. We are an open admission center, so our officers are taking in animals who have really harmed other people or they’ve killed other pets. And these are not animals that could be put back into the community for safety concern. And, or animals that are so badly abused, or badly injured that we are unable to fix them. For those animals that come in that you know, are breathing their last breath as they’re being carried into our shelter, the kindest thing that we can do is to perform euthanasia. So I think that it just provides us a platform for every person that says, ”Uh, I don’t like to see the ugly side of your job,” it gives us an opportunity to explain the truth of the matter."
"The Department of Justice has filed a brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, responding to a legal challenge to President Trump’s executive order on immigration. The court is set to hear oral arguments by phone on Tuesday at 6 p. m. ET, in the next critical legal test of whether the president’s decision to ban travel by people from seven   countries and halt refugee resettlement in the U. S. will be upheld. In their brief, Justice Department lawyers write that the executive order is ”a lawful exercise of the President’s authority over the entry of aliens into the United States and the admission of refugees.” Last Friday, Judge James Robart, a federal judge on the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Washington state, imposed a nationwide temporary restraining order against the order. That decision effectively blocked the implementation of the travel ban, and now the Justice Department is seeking to reinstate it. On Saturday, the 9th Circuit denied the Justice Department’s request to stay the suspension and allow enforcement of the ban to continue. Lawyers for Washington state had argued that the executive order hurt residents and businesses in Washington, along with students and faculty in the state university system. The state also argued the ban is unconstitutional because it discriminates against Muslims. The White House has countered that the executive order does not mention any faith group by name and that the president has broad powers when it comes to national security and immigration. In its brief, the Justice Department also argues that Robart’s decision in the district court was ”vastly overbroad, extending far beyond the State’s legal claims to encompass numerous applications of the Order that the State does not even attempt to argue are unlawful.” Trump took aim at Robart over the weekend on Twitter, diminishing him as a ”  judge” whose decision ”is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Robart was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate."
"Senate Democrats held an   session Monday night into Tuesday morning in a   effort to try to stop President Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, from being confirmed. Among those who took to the floor was Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who said it was ”difficult to imagine a worse choice to head the Department of Education.” ”Betsy DeVos doesn’t believe in public schools,” Warren said. ”Her only knowledge of student loans seems to come from her own financial investments connected to debt collectors who hound people struggling with student loans, and, despite being a billionaire, she wants the chance to keep making money on shady investments while she runs the Department of Education.” During DeVos’ confirmation hearing, Warren pushed the nominee on how she would ”protect against waste, fraud and abuse,” citing Trump University, a   organization that was at the center of a $25 million settlement agreement in November. Right now, DeVos just barely has enough votes to get confirmed. Two Republican senators  —   Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins from Maine  —   both announced last week they won’t support her nomination. That means there’s a   split right now, with Vice President Pence expected to break the tie with a vote slated for Tuesday afternoon. The tactic from Democrats can’t stop a vote from happening Cabinet members are no longer subjected to a   threshold to end debate. Instead they’re hoping the overnight rally of sorts will give members of the public more time to call in and pressure their representatives to rethink their position. ”I know for a fact there are other Republicans who are feeling the heat and could come around,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Monday afternoon on the Senate floor. DeVos has become one of Trump’s most controversial nominees, eliciting strong public backlash and prompting thousands of phone calls, letters and emails from voters urging senators to oppose her nomination. A major GOP donor and former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, DeVos has no previous experience in public education, though she has been a longtime champion of of school choice and vouchers. She also had a rough confirmation hearing last month that seemed to expose her weaknesses and inexperience. She was tripped up when asked about accountability standards and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Those missteps were even lampooned on Saturday Night Live over the weekend. The delay in voting on DeVos has also had a domino effect on another of Trump’s nominees. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the president’s pick for attorney general, is still needed to cast a critical vote in DeVos’ favor. So his confirmation vote can’t be held until the education nominee is moved through. The Senate is also primed to vote this week on Georgia Rep. Tom Price’s nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as Steven Mnuchin for secretary of the Treasury. Democrats don’t have the votes to stop either one, but they have been exhausting the maximum amount of time on the floor to debate nominees, stretching the process for each one out over a couple of days. GOP leaders have threatened to keep the Senate in session into the weekend to get all of those nominees confirmed this week."
"Suddenly, people are more in favor of the Affordable Care Act than are against it. For the first time, more people believe Obamacare is a good idea than think it is a bad idea, as a recent NBC   Street Journal poll showed. Another poll from Fox News shows a similar pattern, as the New York Times’ Margot   and Haeyoun Park pointed out in a story Wednesday. ”  Poll shows   love for Obamacare,” blared a CNN headline the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration. There are a few reasons the balance might be tipping: It may be that growing participation in Obamacare has slowly tipped polls. It may be that Democrats’ messaging that millions might lose coverage is sinking in. But a particularly compelling theory could mix in with either or both of these: relative deprivation. Relative deprivation describes being deprived of something a person feels entitled to. For example, they used to have it, expected to have it, or see that others have it. The theory helps explain this political moment of anger in America  —   whether it’s the rise in popularity of Obamacare (in part because many on the left who didn’t think it went far enough see the law threatened) why people are marching in the streets to protest the new president and even why Trump won in the first place. Relative deprivation is the primary force driving political rebellion, as political scientist Theodore Gurr theorized in his 1970 book Why Men Rebel. That gap  —   between what people think they should get and what they think they will realistically get  —   creates discontent, he writes, and that discontent ”is the basic, instigating condition for participants in collective violence.” When   advocate Saru Jayaraman told the Washington Post about the pain workers feel when they lose existing benefits, she was talking about this type of discontent. ”Very few restaurant workers before the ACA had anything at all,” she says. ”When you have [insurance] then you start to deal and treat things that have been a problem for a very long time. When you cut it off, it’s almost worse” than never having insurance at all. The newfound acceptance of Obamacare isn’t quite ”collective violence,” of course. But it is a remarkable change of heart around a   policy. The Times’   and Park point out that the demographics of who, exactly, is upset about the potential for repeal say a lot about why they are upset. Support for the law has grown across many subgroups, but the largest movements appear to be in   groups. Those people may not have loved Obamacare, but they worry more about its repeal. Suddenly, the fear of losing Obamacare has grown big enough to trump ambivalence about the law. Relative deprivation was a major strategy for Trump, It’s maybe not the most   of theories  —   threaten to take something away from people that they think should be theirs, and they get mad. But it is an elegant explanation for so much of the turmoil of the current political climate, when many groups seem to fear they could be losing out on what they once had. Emily Kalah Gade invoked the idea of relative deprivation this week at the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, explaining why she thinks the Women’s March had such strong appeal: People took to the streets on Saturday not because of new issues, but because values and protections they thought they could safely rely upon were under threat. The sense of impending loss of power has been simmering for years among particular demographics. For example, some white men  —   especially those who have lost economic clout  —   have felt this way for years, as sociologist Michael Kimmel observed in his 2013 book Angry White Men.  ”Revolutions are made not by those with ’nothing left to lose,’. .. but precisely by those with something to lose  —   and a fear that they are, in fact, about to lose it,” he wrote. Again, that book was written in 2013, two years before Trump ran for the presidency. But Kimmel argues that idea plays a big part in explaining how Trump won the presidency in the first place. Trump again and again drew attention to disappearing   jobs in auto factories and coal mines, saying that with his help, America could regain those lost opportunities. ”These guys, their fathers, their grandfathers, their   they all made a bet. The bet was, ’If I take this job in heavy industry, in the steel mill, auto factory, I can buy a house I can support a family,’” Kimmel told NPR in late 2016. ”These guys, they made the same bet that their fathers and grandfathers made, and they lost the bet,” as they watched those mills and factories close, he continued. Indeed, Trump’s entire campaign was about bringing back a theoretical, fading, ”great” America. Relative deprivation is also behind the recent protests, Now that Trump has won, entire other classes of people feel threatened and are taking to the streets, as Gade points out. Many at the Women’s March, for example, voiced a fear that women might lose the ability to obtain abortions, as well as a more amorphous fear of losing respect and social standing they have gained over time. Many women felt a real threat in the fact that America chose a president who had, at one point, bragged about groping and kissing women. Likewise, many immigrants and Muslims are speaking out against Trump’s executive action banning travel from seven   countries, and many also turned out at protests against the ban. This is not to say that people protest only for their own personal good. It’s entirely true that many, many people in the streets are protesting on behalf of others. Many   and   are out protesting the ban on travel from   countries, for example, and plenty of men showed up for women’s marches worldwide  —   because their moral foundation of what they believe America is supposed to be is being threatened. It’s also worth observing that the protests aren’t just about women and immigrants many have also been about ( ) Democratic politics. The recent protester cries of, ”Do your job!” at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were the cries of liberals begging sympathetic legislators to seize whatever meager power they still have. The left isn’t 100 percent unified, but the power of relative deprivation has helped more or less bridge what was one of the bitterest political divides  —   between many Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton supporters. After Democrats lost a presidential election (plus some Senate and House races) that almost every forecaster saw as a likely win, the divided party suddenly seemed to come together, as one organizer of the women’s march told CNN. ”We have already proven that Hillary and Bernie Sanders supporters can work together against fascism, xenophobia and racism,” said Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. Nothing unites, it seems, like the sense of vulnerability that comes from a blistering defeat. Who can wield it better? Relative deprivation is all about two things: expectations and whether they can be met. And all politicians play the expectations game  —   they make promises, then try to deliver on them. However, much of Trump’s political success is arguably because he plays this game so well and so heavily. He continually tells people that they are unjustly ignored (America’s ”forgotten men and women”) or missing out on what they once had (”All of the men, we’re petrified to speak to women anymore”). It was a campaign built on the narrative of being an outsider, punching up at the people in power (nevermind that he’s a billionaire himself). Now, he’s in power, and the question is whether Trump can deliver on expectations. He has had an   first two weeks with his travel ban, promise to build a wall and rollback of regulations. He even has made moves to show that he’s bringing back a handful of those lost   jobs. But four years is a long time. If some of those who supported him don’t see their own personal economic prospects improve, they could jump ship. The same goes for the suddenly   Obamacare: Trump at one point raised expectations that he would make sure there was ”insurance for everybody” (though his fellow Republicans worked to tamp that down afterward). Now, he and his party have to deliver, one way or another, or they could face the anger of a country whose expectations have changed since the law was passed."
"First, we had a candidate and a campaign like no other, then an election and transition like no other. We should have expected President Trump’s first two weeks in office to be just as dizzying as they have been. Yet Trump lovers and haters alike have stood by, mouths agape. Editorialists have worn out the words ”whirlwind” and ”firehose,” just as they had recently burned through ”unprecedented.” What has flummoxed official Washington about President Trump more than anything else is his almost manic determination to do things he said he would do  —   and to do as many of them as possible all at once and right now. In almost any daylight period of his first fortnight, he has signed at least one executive order upending some element of national policy, indulged in at least one personal feud, disputed at least one news story as it was widely reported and vented his emotions in at least one Twitter outburst. Flying off to Florida for his first ”working weekend,” he left the nation’s capital, and the nation itself, panting for breath. Trump is now the focal point not only of national political events, but of national attention, period. When was the last time football was so overshadowed in the media the week before the Super Bowl? Even on the day of the Super Bowl, Trump was making news by defending Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Fox News and by taking to Twitter to blame a judge ”and the court system” if there is another terrorist attack in the U. S. Trump drives the conversation more constantly than any president before him, with his deeds by day and his tweets at dawn. He does it with his most significant action to date  —   nominating Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court  —   and a day later he does it by using the National Prayer Breakfast to make fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ratings on NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice. With Gorsuch, Trump made the one move most certain to unite and delight his voters in his first days in office. If all goes well, Gorsuch should be confirmed and on the bench by late April  —   in time to be the crown on Trump’s first 100 days. But if the behavior of the first fortnight is any indication, by then we will all be talking about something else, or several somethings else, that the man once known as ”The Donald” has done. ”New sheriff in town” goes global, Lest we forget one of his earliest and most famous pledges, the new president wasted no time issuing an order initiating work on a wall on the border with Mexico. He also threatened to impose a 20 percent border tax that would, he said, force Mexico to pay for the wall. The Mexican president then canceled a planned visit to Washington. Trump later called him and said the U. S. would send troops if Mexico could not handle its own ”bad hombres.” The new president also made good on promises to pull out of the   Partnership, a trade deal that has been in the works for years, substituting talk of a special trade relationship with Great Britain. He made it clear that any previous agreements by the U. S. would be subject to review. One such agreement struck by the Obama administration apparently riled up the new president during his first conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The U. S. had told Turnbull it would take 1, 250 refugees off his hands this year, a deal Trump denounced as ”dumb” in the truncated and tumultuous phone call. Australia has been the most consistent backer of U. S. policy on the world stage for the past century. In other highlights, the president’s first flurry of foreign outreach reportedly included a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a call the White House said was not recorded. In their Super Bowl Sunday interview, Fox host Bill O’Reilly asked about Trump’s avowed respect for Putin, whom O’Reilly called ”a killer.” President Trump shot back: ”There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?” Promise keeping leads to problems, But if delivering on promises has a satisfying ring to it, Trump’s actions themselves have also had repercussions  —   often beyond the intended. His flurry of executive orders and pronouncements began on the afternoon he made his inaugural address. He said the Affordable Care Act (”Obamacare”) would no longer be enforced where it burdened a person or a business. There, he seemed to say, done. Of course, neither the White House nor the majority party in Congress is quite prepared to offer a replacement to the ACA just yet, so the health insurance companies wonder who will square the circle on costs. But Trump has set the nation’s new course, and for the rest, well, time will tell. So it was with a rash of other shifts in policy as well. The new president instituted a federal hiring freeze and said any proposed new regulation would have to be accompanied by the killing of two old ones. He froze some government research into climate change, restarted the Keystone oil pipeline project, and temporarily shut down some federal departments’ social media accounts. Perhaps the greatest controversy thus far has arisen from Trump’s sweeping order barring entry to the U. S. for anyone coming from any of seven predominantly Muslim countries. Coming one week into the new administration, the order also suspended the nation’s refugee program in general, blocked Syrians indefinitely and placed other new restrictions on immigration. Although the White House denied this was a ”Muslim ban,” it was close enough to please those supporters who wanted it to be precisely that. Longtime backer Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, said the idea had always been to have a Muslim ban and the president had asked to be shown ”the right way to do it legally.” In other words, it played as another campaign promise kept, perhaps the most salient yet. That was surely the tone in the president’s own Twitter messages on the subject, in which he continued to call it a ban even this weekend. No one should forget that Trump first moved ahead in the polls among Republican candidates for president in December 2015 when he proposed a ban on all Muslims entering the U. S. And it was clear from polls and interviews that these moves were resonating with Trump’s legion. Whatever else polls may show about the current political moment, Trump’s voters are still with him and his hard base could not be more excited. Pushback scales up quickly, At the same time, there has been pushback on a Trumpian scale. The day after he took the oath of office, hundreds of thousands marched in protest in Washington, D. C. and other major cities in the U. S.  —   thousands more in Europe. A week later, when the travel ban was announced, it caused chaos and confusion in international airports around the world. Protesters soon arrived to add their voices. Soon, businesses and schools were objecting as well as human rights activists. Cable TV filled with images of families torn asunder. Then on the next Friday, a federal judge in Seattle issued a restraining order against the entire executive order. On Saturday night, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (that has jurisdiction over several states on the West Coast) let the judge’s ruling stand pending further proceedings. The president reacted with outrage, on Twitter. ”What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, came come into the U. S.?” Of course, not ”anyone” can come into the U. S. at least not through an airport or border port of entry, and that has been true for a long time. But on Sunday, the president was tweeting again: ”Just can’t believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and the court system. People pouring in. Bad!” The Justice Department (where one uncooperative acting attorney general, Sally Yates, had already been fired and replaced) got busy on an appeal. But in the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security went back to admitting people from the targeted countries and the State Department went back to issuing visas. Other executive actions may also find disfavor once they are more widely known, especially where they may seem to contradict Trump’s campaign promises rather than fulfill them. One such order struck at the effort to give consumers greater leverage in dealing with investment brokers who manage their retirement money. Snuffing the   ”fiduciary rule” was only one of several moves that helped bank stocks put yet another leg on the ”Trump rally” that propelled the Dow Jones Industrial Average up over 20, 000 again on Feb. 3. There was also an order scrambling the ”principals committee” of the National Security Council, dropping the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence but adding presidential chief strategist Steve Bannon. This followed a series of   moments with both the retiring DNI (Gen. James Clapper) and the exiting CIA director (John Brennan). If we are thinking here about points to remember, many Americans may one day look back on these two weeks as the time they realized how important Bannon was to Trump, his election and his plans to govern America. Time magazine marked the emergence of Bannon as the central White House figure by putting him on the cover, calling him both ”The Great Manipulator” and ”the second most powerful man in the world.” Bannon had, indeed, begun to look like the power behind the throne, the gray eminence behind much of what Trump was prioritizing  —   a rival in influence to Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Kushner is seen as the most trusted intimate, Priebus as the conduit to Congress and party leaders. Bannon is also notable in that his background is in finance (Goldman Sachs as well as his own firm) and the media, having been a publisher of the   ”platform for the  ” Breitbart. com, which has been a haven for white nationalists and a variety of conspiracy theories. He and his close adviser Steve Miller are generally regarded as the architects of the inaugural address and the blitzkrieg of policy moves that followed. Bannon is also seen as a flash point in the new White House’s media relations. He has told the news media in general to ”keep its mouth shut” and be chastened by their failure to anticipate Trump’s victory in the election. Arguing over ”alternative facts” But Bannon has not been alone in his open animosity toward the traditional news media. What had been a difficult relationship during the campaign has persisted into the governing phase of the Trump phenomenon. On Day 1 of the new regime, an almost absurd controversy arose over the size of the crowd in attendance on the National Mall at Trump’s   which Trump and his spokesman called the largest in history. Photographs, transportation records and other evidence suggested the crowd was substantially smaller than for the Obama inauguration in 2009. Trump sent his press secretary out on a weekend afternoon to dispute all other sources of information and insist on the president’s version. Another White House counselor, pollster and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, later referred to the ”alternative facts” about the crowds offered by the White House. A few days later, in his first meeting with congressional leaders, Trump insisted that campaign totals showing him losing the popular vote by 2. 8 million were wrong because ”between three and five million” people voted who were not citizens. The state authorities in charge of this process immediately said this was not possible. Indeed, every study done by officials or academics has found little or no evidence of actual voter fraud. Trump said he would order a major investigation of the matter, but no such probe has yet begun. Stunners relegated to minor mishaps,  It is difficult to assess how a given story would have played in the media, or in memory, had it happened at a different point in time. How would the country have reacted if the first days of any other presidency had included a nasty firefight in a foreign country that killed a U. S. Navy SEAL and a substantial number of civilians? Or if the senior career staffers at the State Department had decided to retire, almost en masse? How would the country have reacted had either of the last two presidents issued a proclamation on Holocaust Remembrance Day that failed to mention Jews? And would that story have had legs if it turned out the State Department draft of that Holocaust message had indeed included a reference to Jews that went missing from the White House version? What if another president, having campaigned on support for expanded Israeli settlements on the disputed West Bank, suddenly said 5, 500 such units ”would not be helpful” to peace talks? What if that president also suddenly softened support for moving the U. S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? In our particular point in time, stories such as these can scarcely find space or time in the media. Even stories that seem to gasp for air find oxygen in short supply. The new president remains popular among Republicans, and intensely so among that harder base of backers who voted for him in the primaries. These supporters could not be more gratified by the first two weeks of the Trump presidency if he had finished it by walking across the Potomac. More generally, however, polls find the new president getting no bounce at all from taking office. Gallup and   put his approval in the low 40s, CBS News’ poll had him at just 40 percent. The election of 2016 should have taught us not to place too much faith in polls. But it is hard not to notice these numbers are the lowest for any new president since polling began. Someday, we may look back and be amazed at how high President Trump soared from a poor start. Or we may say the first report card was a portent of what was to come for his presidency. In any event, we are not likely to forget how it began."
"There’s a moment in the Broadway musical Hamilton where George Washington says to an exasperated Alexander Hamilton: ”Winning is easy, young man. Governing’s harder.” When it comes to health care, it seems that President Trump is learning that same lesson. Trump and Republicans in Congress are struggling with how to keep their   campaign promise  —   to repeal Obamacare without leaving millions of people without health insurance. During the campaign, Trump promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act immediately upon taking office. Last month, in an interview with The Washington Post, he said he had a replacement law ”very much formulated down to the final strokes.” But on Sunday, he dialed back those expectations in an interview with Fox News. ”It’s in the process and maybe it will take till sometime into next year, but we are certainly going to be in the process. It’s very complicated,” Trump said. He repeated his claim that Obamacare has been ”a disaster” and said his replacement would be a ”wonderful plan” that would take time ”statutorily” to put in place. And then he hedged the timing again. ”I would like to say by the end of the year, at least the rudiments,” he said. Trump’s recent hesitation comes as Republicans in Congress tame their rhetoric surrounding the health care law. Sen. Lamar Alexander,  . chairman of the Senate health committee, said he’d like to see lawmakers make fixes to the current individual market before repealing parts of the law. ”We can repair the individual market, which is a good place to start,” Alexander said on Feb. 1. He has also urged his colleagues to leave the other parts of the health care sector  —   Medicare, Medicaid and the employer market  —   alone. Throughout the campaign, and over the six years since the law passed, Republicans in Congress have vowed to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act. But in the time since the law went into effect, it has helped as many as 20 million people get insurance who didn’t have it before, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Just last week, the open enrollment period for 2017 ended and HHS reported that 9. 2 million people bought insurance through the federal government’s insurance marketplace  —   slightly lower than last year but still a large number. About 3 million more people likely bought coverage on   exchanges, based on enrollment in past years. In addition, about 10 million people qualified for health coverage because of the expansion of Medicaid in most states. That left Trump and Republicans, the day after the election, facing the choice of fulfilling their clear promise to repeal the ACA and the reality that doing so could leave millions of people without access to health care. At that time the public seemed to gain a new appreciation of the law once it was actually threatened with repeal. In recent weeks, several polls have shown that more people view it more favorably than they did before the election. Another reality Republicans have had to face is that, even though they control both houses of Congress and the White House, their ability to repeal the ACA is limited. That’s because Democrats in the Senate can block bills using their filibuster power. But laws dealing with taxes and the budget are protected from filibuster, so Republicans can roll back many Obamacare provisions because they involve tax credits and federal spending. That leaves lawmakers having to build a new health care system that works within the general framework of the Affordable Care Act. They can get rid of subsidies to help people buy insurance, but the law creating   insurance exchanges, for example, will still be on the books. That’s why Alexander and a handful of other Republicans are beginning to talk about repairing the current system. Currently, not enough young healthy people have signed up for coverage to offset the costs to insure sicker, older people. The result is that premiums have risen and insurance companies that lost money pulled out of many markets. But not everyone is on board. House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . said last week in an interview on Fox that repairing the health care system means ”You must repeal and replace Obamacare.”"
"What’s going to happen to the federal health law? The quick, accurate answer is that no one knows. But amid the uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act, states still have to manage their insurance markets. Most states have muddled through the 2017 enrollment season without making changes. Minnesota, for its part, took three unusual actions that are worth a closer look. In January, Minnesota: Here’s more. The Bailout, In response to some of the highest premium hikes in the country —  50 to 67 percent, on average —  Minnesota lawmakers passed a bailout for people who earn too much to qualify for the Affordable Care Act’s federal tax credit. The $300 million law will cut monthly premiums by 25 percent for about 125, 000 Minnesotans. Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton has backed the measure since October, saying the ACA is ”no longer affordable to increasing numbers of people.” But passage wasn’t assured, as both houses of Minnesota’s Legislature are controlled by Republicans. The bill passed in January and is supposed to go into effect by April 30, and will be retroactive to the beginning of the year. It is thought to be the second time a state has offered up state tax money to stabilize an insurance marketplace created by the health law. (Alaska came up with a $55 million bailout in 2016.)   Coverage, A failed amendment to the Minnesota legislation sought to strip dozens of   essential benefits from health plans, with the expectation that   coverage would cost less. Republican Minnesota State Rep. Steve Drazkowski offered the amendment. ”What we’re doing is trying to create an environment that, if and when the ACA goes away, that Minnesotans will have the freedoms they need in order to start to bring some   competition, some free market ingenuity and innovation into the health insurance market,” Drazkowski said, adding that he was trying to eliminate the current, ”      dictating set of mandates.” Drazkowski’s amendment caught the eye of   and former Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services administrator Andy Slavitt, who tweeted about it. The list of benefits that consumers could choose to have covered  —   or not  —   under Drazkowski’s amendment included maternity care, diabetes treatment and mental health care, among others. Some items on the list are very specific: Lyme disease, prostate cancer screening and outpatient surgery. ”Telling people, ’Only buy what you need,’ implies that people know that they’re not going to need the emergency room or that there’s not going to be an addiction problem in their family,” Slavitt said. ”I don’t think we, as a country, want people to not have access to the services they need.” Dayton and other Democrats opposed the amendment and it was dropped from the final legislation. But Slavitt said it’s a cautionary tale about   catastrophic plans that cover little or no basic care. He doesn’t dispute the notion that the individual market needs help, but he says offering extremely limited plans amounts to   ”gotcha” insurance. ”This is the most blatant one I’ve seen,” Slavitt said, of the failed amendment’s approach. But other amendments did make it into the final law, including a provision that changes Minnesota’s longstanding state laws requiring HMOs to be   . The new law allows      HMOs to sell health plans in Minnesota. Dayton said these measures were not well thought out. ”I think it is unnecessary and unwise to rush the reforms added to this bill, without proper public review or full consideration of their consequences,” said Dayton. A   Public Option? Minnesota is one of a handful of states that offers a   basic health plan for some   class residents. Called MinnesotaCare, the plan provides subsidized health coverage to about 100, 000 Minnesotans. Eligibility for a family of four is capped at $49, 000 per year. Dayton wants to open the plan to all to all Minnesotans, with higher income residents paying full price for their coverage. ”This public option could offer better benefits than any policies presently on commercial markets, more options for people to keep their doctors and clinics and less expensive than what is available today,” said Dayton during an announcement of his annual budget plan last week. Dayton says allowing people with higher incomes to buy MinnesotaCare coverage, paying full freight, would reduce prices and increase competition on the individual market. Supporters of the ”public option” say it could provide better coverage and cost less because the government could take advantage of its buying power to negotiate better deals with insurance companies. Opponents say expanding government’s role in health care is a bad idea. As he campaigned for the presidency, Donald Trump said a public option would drive away private insurers, ”leaving Americans with fewer options and eventually no choices but a   plan.” The   bailout is just the beginning of what are expected to be broader health insurance reform efforts in Minnesota. Among them is a renewed call for   health insurance that is not expected to be   in the state’s Republican legislature. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Minnesota Public Radio and Kaiser Health News."
"The innovation of synthetic fleece has allowed many outdoor enthusiasts to hike with warmth and comfort. But what many of these   nature lovers don’t know is that each wash of their jackets and pullovers releases thousands of microscopic plastic fibers, or microfibers, into the environment  —   from their favorite national park to agricultural lands to waters with fish that make it back onto our plates. This has scientists wondering: Are we eating our sweaters’ synthetic microfibers? Probably, says Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto, St. George. ”Microfibers seem to be one of the most common plastic debris items in animals and environmental samples,” Rochman says. In fact,   studies have shown that these synthetic microfibers  —   a type of plastic smaller than a millimeter in length and made up of various synthetic polymers  —   have popped up in table salt in China, in arctic waters and in fish caught off the coast of California. These tiny fibers make up 85 percent of human debris on shorelines across the globe, according to a 2011 study. They’re basically inescapable. So it’s not unlikely they’re finding their way into the human diet, especially in seafood. In an effort to increase transparency and minimize pollution from their products,   clothing company Patagonia, popular for its   vests, pullovers and jackets, has started to partner with research groups to get to the bottom of how these fibers might be affecting both wildlife and human health. Last year, the company worked with a research group led by Patricia Holden, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on a study to quantify microfiber release in washing machines. The group ran both   and   polyester fleece jackets through the wash without detergent to get a handle on the mass of microfibers shed each time. The results, published in September of last year in Environmental Science and Technology, were  . Each wash of a jacket shed microfibers up to 2 grams. (For reference, a paperclip weighs 1. 5 grams.) Also, each fleece jacket released seven times more fibers when washed in a   washing machine versus a  . The dryer traps extra fuzz in the lint filter, says Holden. ”But in the washer, [the microfibers are] carried down the drain.” From there, they end up in wastewater treatment plants, where many fibers can’t be filtered out and are released into the environment. Holden notes that this is just one pathway microfibers take into the environment. There could be additional pathways that scientists have yet to understand, she says. And then there is the larger question: Are these tiny synthetic fibers harmful to humans and wildlife? The answer is still fuzzy. Some research indicates certain wildlife might be affected: Two studies showed that ingesting microfibers leads to increased mortality in water fleas and makes common crabs eat less food overall. But it’s unclear what effects, if any, they have on you and me. So the question for us is: Do we choose to eat seafood, knowing that we’ll probably get a few microfibers woven in? Or do we quit seafood altogether on the chance that they could have adverse health effects? ”I have no doubt that every time I eat oysters and mussels I eat at least one microfiber,” says Rochman, who studies microplastics in marine habitats and continues to indulge in seafood. ”I see dust in the air and we inhale that. The question is, at what point does it become a problem? Here, the benefits outweigh the costs.” Gregg Treinish, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Adventure Scientists, has a different take. ”If you’re eating fish, you’re eating plastic,” Treinish says. ”There’s no proven causal relationship with health issues, but I don’t want to spend the next 50 years eating it and then learn I shouldn’t have been.” Holden, Rochman, Treinish and others all agree that we don’t understand everything about how microfibers traverse ecosystems and what they do inside human and wildlife bodies. But to minimize pollution in the first place, there are   solutions we can adopt. Treinish rigged his washing machine with a filter designed for septic systems, hoping to catch some microfibers before they escape into the waterways. So far, he has filled two Nalgene water bottles with the filtrate. He continues to use the filter. And he suggests a simpler solution: Just wash your fleece less often. ”Obviously I’ll wash my jacket if a kid throws up on it,” Treinish says, ”but not if I just wore it once. It’s important what individuals do. I hope that doesn’t get lost.”"
"It’s been a long week for the Assali family. The Assalis are Syrian Orthodox Christians. They are not refugees. But when they arrived last week with visas and green cards, they were put back on a plane to Qatar. Then they got word that as green card holders, they would be allowed into the U. S. On Monday morning at Kennedy Airport in New York, Ghassan Assali and his family stood clutching each other, waiting for a glimpse of their six relatives. ”I’m too emotional, you know,” Ghassan said. ”I’m gonna cry.” The six grabbed their luggage from baggage claim and everyone embraced. It was an emotional reunion 13 years in the works. It was supposed to happen last weekend, but President Trump’s executive orders disrupted those plans. Matthew Assali and five others were detained and put on a plane back to the Middle East. ”On the plane, all of us was very scared, and we don’t know what happened,” Matthew said. ”We played by the rules. We don’t do anything wrong.” Assali’s brother and other family members live in Allentown, Pa. He’s long wanted to join them and escape his   country. ”For better future, for better opportunities,” Matthew said. A lawsuit on behalf of the Assalis, which the government didn’t oppose, and the support of elected officials made the second trip successful. Still, on this flight to New York,    Sarah Assali felt nervous. As she spoke, her aunt, Sarmad, translated her words from Arabic to English. ”She was very scared, and really worried that they weren’t going to make it here, even though they were on the road,” Sarmad said. ”She’s very thankful to everyone that helped them get here.” Outside JFK, Republican Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who has criticized Trump’s actions on immigration, said the Assalis’ story shows that many Americans want to welcome Syrians to resettle here. ”We’re celebrating the rule of law today,” Dent said. ”We’re celebrating fairness and justice. And most of all, we’re celebrating a wonderful family.” The celebration will continue in Allentown. The family dinner Sarmad planned last week will happen Monday. ”And hopefully tomorrow is a new day, where we start with school registration, and we build our future,” Sarmad said. It’s a future she hopes will one day take them back to their native Damascus, but as long as the Syrian conflict continues, they’ll keep building their lives in the United States."
"President Trump’s executive order on immigration restricting travel to the U. S. for travelers from seven   countries led to a firestorm of criticism, lawsuits and injunctions by five federal judges staying the order. But questions remain about who can and can’t come to this country. Among those caught in the confusion are a number of prominent musicians, whose personal lives  —   and livelihoods  —   have been put on hold. Omar Souleyman is a Syrian singer who in recent years has collaborated with Björk and performed at the Nobel Peace Prize concert. Five years ago, he moved to the southeast of Turkey to avoid the war at home in Syria. Souleyman has a new album on the way, and he was planning a U. S. tour to promote it. He’s toured the U. S. 16 times before. This time around, says his manager, Mina Tosti, they were planning tour dates in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Arizona, and were in the thick of planning an appearance at the SXSW festival in March as well. The visa paperwork for this trip was already well underway when the executive order was announced. When Tosti visited the homepage of the U. S. Embassy in Ankara last week, she saw this notice: ”’If you already have an appointment scheduled,’” she reads aloud, ”’please DO NOT ATTEND.’ Capital letters.” She says there’s an unspoken message behind those words: ”You are not welcome. Do not come near us.” Now that the order is in limbo, Tosti is not sure what to do. Neither is immigration lawyer Matthew Covey, who heads a U. S. nonprofit called Tamizdat that advocates for foreign artists and helps facilitate their visa applications. ”For the arts, it’s really not a resolution at all,” Covey asserts. ”Because at least for performing arts programmers, the temporary restraining order is just that. We don’t know when or if it will disappear, and we’ll go back to the ban. So if you’re running a performing arts organization here in the U. S. and you’re trying to figure out who to book for June, July, even for March  —   there are very few presenters who are going to risk contracting with an artist from one of the seven countries now for any point in the foreseeable future.” Among those left hanging are some of the world’s top musicians. Kayhan Kalhor is a virtuoso of the Persian kamancheh, a bowed stringed instrument. Kalhor is a   Grammy Award nominee and a longtime collaborator of cellist   Ma. Kalhor was born and raised in Iran, but he is a Canadian citizen  —   and he lives in California. Right now, he’s on tour in Iran. Isabel Soffer was hoping to help him tour the U. S. in May. She’s an American who produces concerts and festivals across the country and works extensively with artists from the Middle East. ”So many of these incredible artists from all over the world are doing this dance,” Soffer observes, ”because so many of them have complex lives based around mobility. Where do they belong? Where do they live? What passports do they have? How do they function?” Mahdyar Aghajani is an Iranian producer and composer   in this country for his score for the film ”No One Knows About Persian Cats”  —   a ” ” about Iran’s banned underground music scene. ”Until two years ago,” Aghajani says, ”we were considered satanists.” He’s now based in Paris. Speaking via Skype, he says he still manages a   collective called Moltafet back home. ”They cannot work in Iran,” he says, ”because the government is against them, so they’re illegal. They cannot officially monetize their music.” So Aghajani was hoping to bring Moltafet to the U. S. to reach both the Iranian diaspora here and mainstream   fans. ”And we had so many states [as] part of the tour,” Aghajani says, ”and now this thing has put everything on hold, basically, because half our plan is now nothing.” Aghajani says that as an Iranian artist, he’s already had to figure out how to knock down official hurdles. And he thinks that what he and his friends have gone through can be a model for others. ”The borders, they cannot stop us,” Aghajani says. ”Right now, with all this technology, we don’t have to physically be there to do a show. I mean, you’ve got projection to hologram to augmented reality, virtual reality, all these streaming services. There’s so many technologies right now that we have access to, that I think the artists should be creative, like they shouldn’t be scared or hopeless or anything like that. Imagine if I had this mentality  —   we had Ahmadinejad. I know Trump is very bad and everything, but Ahmadinejad was way crazier, I think!” For now, attorney Matthew Covey of the organization Tamizdat is offering to prepare and file visa applications, pro bono, for artists from any of the seven countries named in the executive order, no matter what happens."
"The Netherlands was the first to ask to be second . .. but they certainly weren’t the last. Take a moment to think back to President Trump’s inauguration. (It’s tough to remember, we know. A lot has happened since then.) In his speech, Trump delivered the following memorable line: ”From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.” The phrase ”America First” has a long history tied to isolationism and   as NPR’s Greg Myre and Scott Simon have recently explained. But for one Dutch comedy show, the phrase carried something else . .. Opportunity. On Jan. 23, just days after the inauguration, Zondag Met Lubach posted an ”introduction video about the Netherlands,” narrated in a    . The video promoted Dutch language, culture and landscapes, offering biting commentary of Trump along the way: ”This is the Afsluitdijk. It’s a great, great wall that we built to protect us from all the water from Mexico. . .. ”In December we’ve got this scandalous tradition of Black Pete. It’s the most offensive, the most racist thing you’ve ever seen. You’ll love it, it’s great. ”We also have a disabled politician for you to make fun of. . .. ” ”We totally understand it’s going to be America First,” the video concluded. ”But can we just say, The Netherlands Second? Is that okay?” That was two weeks ago. The video went viral, racking up more than 20 million views on YouTube. And in the last four days, a host of other nations created matching videos in a strange satirical contest to win the No. 2 spot in Trump’s heart. Switzerland threw its hat into the ring, by way of SRF Comedy . .. Denmark, by Natholdet . .. And many more, as videos, often produced by comedy TV shows, have poured in  —   from Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Portugal. On Monday, Italy and Croatia chimed in. Morocco made a pitch for a   nation to take the slot. A website, EverySecondCounts. eu, popped up to keep track of all the ”entries.” The videos are a mix of straightforward national pride  —   Switzerland praising its mountains, the Netherlands and Germany espousing the virtues of their languages  —   and a     emphasis on national shames. In the original video, the Netherlands highlighted its racist Christmas blackface tradition (which is real). Switzerland, for its part, presented this: ”We also love to treat our women badly. Love it. We didn’t let them vote until 1971. In some places even until 1990. We grabbed them by the civil rights. And they let us do it! It was great.” ”Just like you, we had one of the best slavery businesses in the 17th century,” Morocco submitted. ”We also have the best TV channels in Morocco. Our state TV station even teaches women how to cover up bruises due to domestic violence.” And then there’s Germany, of course: ”Great leader, so smart, great hair, great suit, look at his suit. He made Germany great again. The media totally loved him. Wrote only nice things about him. Great guy. Total winner. His book a bestseller,” the narrator drones, over photos of Adolf Hitler. ”Steve Bannon absolutely loves him,” he says. And upon occasion, the videos strike a serious policy note. ”And last but not least, we’ve got a great, great, great dependency on the United States,” the original Dutch video intoned. ”It’s huge. If you screw NATO you’re going to make our problems great again. . .. Please don’t.” You can watch more of the videos below, and keep an eye on Every Second Counts for new entries. Rumor has it entries from Spain, Slovakia and Australia are on their way."
"Charles Lindbergh became an instant American hero when he piloted the Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris in 1927, the first person to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic. Lindbergh was an icon in Europe as well, and he moved to England in the late 1930s. By 1941, though, he was back home, touring the U. S. as the leading voice of the America First Committee  —   an isolationist group of some 800, 000 members that claimed England was trying to drag America into a war he thought it should avoid. ”I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England regardless of how much assistance we send. That is why the America First Committee has been formed,” Lindbergh said in 1941, just months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that launched the U. S. into World War II. A few momentous years later, after the devastation of the war, isolationism was out of fashion. Instead, America became the driving force in establishing a global web that defines the world to this day  —   NATO, the United Nations, a strong U. S. military presence in Asia, open seas, a host of trade agreements. These arrangements are now being challenged by President Trump. He has often described them as a burden the U. S. should shed, and he has distilled his approach into the phrase ”America First.” ”From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first,” Trump said at his inaugural on Jan. 20. Trump has never made the connection to Lindbergh and his group, and there are both similarities and differences. In foreign policy lingo, Lindbergh and his group were isolationists. They wanted to keep the U. S. out of most foreign entanglements. Trump is more commonly described as a unilateralist  —   someone who thinks the U. S. can be engaged around the world, but on its own terms, unconstrained by alliances or multinational groups like the United Nations. Still, Trump, like Lindbergh before him, argues the U. S. should not be the world’s policeman. Ian Bremmer, head of the Eurasia Group, which analyzes global risk, explained Trump’s worldview this way in an interview with NPR: ”The U. S. should not be promoting its values internationally. It should not be telling other counties how they run themselves. The multilateral institutions that the U. S. has had a significant role in are part of that problem.” A focus on burdens, Trump has plenty of company in attacking the global status quo. Liberals and conservatives argue that institutions like the U. N. and NATO should, at minimum, be restructured to keep up with a world that has changed dramatically since they were established. Critics also point to U. S. military actions that have resulted in inconclusive wars at enormous costs. ”Many Americans looked at the policies of the past decades and saw that the U. S. acting as the global sheriff did not benefit them,” Bremmer said. ”It was trillions of dollars wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan, with thousands of American lives lost . .. and they don’t want to see that anymore.” Trump has talked mostly about disrupting the world order, without saying what would replace it. Yet if the U. S. simply recedes from its superpower role, Russia, China and Iran and others would gladly step in to fill that void, according to many analysts. ”The international order that America created is now under unprecedented threat from multiple directions,” retired Gen. David Petraeus warned recently on Capitol Hill. Petraeus said the U. S. still has the resources to be a superpower, but he worries about ”something perhaps even more pernicious  —   a loss of   resolve and strategic clarity on America’s part about our vital interest in preserving and protecting the system we sacrificed so much to bring into being.” Trump has focused on the burdens rather than intangible benefits that the U. S. received by working to shape the world in its image for decades. He argues that NATO allies aren’t pulling their weight, those U. S. troops in Asia since World War II are too expensive, and trade agreements are costing American workers their jobs. ”For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries, while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military,” Trump declared at his inaugural. Lindbergh changes course, Lindbergh once expressed similar sentiments. ”The doctrine that we must enter the wars of Europe in order to defend America will be fatal to our nation if we follow it,” he said in 1941. But then came Pearl Harbor, and that changed everything. Lindbergh’s movement collapsed  —   and he not only backed the U. S. war effort, he joined it. Although he had civilian, not military status, he still manged to fly more than 50 combat missions in the Pacific. And after the war was over, he was often back in Europe, supporting the U. S. effort to rebuild the Continent. Every president faces unexpected crises, and as Trump sets his course in a volatile world, his own interpretation of America First may also be challenged. Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1"
"Editor’s note: This piece includes quotes from James Baldwin in which he uses a racial slur. Fimmaker Raoul Peck’s   documentary I Am Not Your Negro features the work of the late writer, poet, and social critic James Baldwin. Baldwin’s writing explored race, class and sexuality in Western society, and at the time of his death in 1987, he was working on a book, Remember This House. It was never completed, but his notes for that project became the foundation for Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro. Among those notes was a letter J Baldwin wrote to his literary agent, Jay Acton, in 1979. In that letter, he wrote that he wanted to explore the lives of three of his civil rights movement contemporaries and close personal friends: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. ”I want these three lives to bang against and reveal each other as in truth they did,” he wrote, ”and use their dreadful journey as a means of instructing the people whom they loved so much who betrayed them and for whom they gave their lives.” Peck had been wanting to make a film about Baldwin for years, but he says it felt like an impossible one to make. When he first read Baldwin’s letter, he knew he had the basis for that film. ”I had access to those notes, which for me was the real opening I needed to address the film I wanted to make  —   which was how do I make sure that people today come back to Baldwin and the important writer that he was, and the important words that he have written, and [have] this   confrontation with reality today with words that he wrote 40, 50 years ago?” The   filmmaker has been a fan of Baldwin’s writing since he was a teenager. ”He helped me understand the world I was in,” Peck says. ”He helped me understand America. He helped me understand the place I was given in this country.” And Peck wanted to do the same with I Am Not Your Negro. In the documentary, he weaves together archival images and footage to illustrate the impact Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X had  —   the ways in which they were different, and perhaps more importantly, the ways in which they were alike. Peck says MLK Jr and Malcolm X are often portrayed as being polar opposites in the civil rights movement, but at the times of their deaths, they had in fact become increasingly interested in economic injustice and the class disparity. ”One of the important parts of this story is that both of them were leaving the race issue, because they understood that it was just one side of the battle,” Peck says. ”It’s about class  —   how in this country, the classes reproduce themselves. If you’re born rich, you have a 99% chance to stay rich. If you are born poor, you have a 99% chance to stay poor. That’s the big great story of the American dream. It was always the dream of a minority.” But I Am Not Your Negro isn’t just a history of the civil rights movement, or its key players. The film also examines, as James Baldwin did in his writing, institutions of racism and the ways they have been upheld throughout the years in American society by people in power, even by Hollywood, through stereotypes and erasure. ”Leaving aside the bloody catalogue of oppression which we are, in one way, too familiar with already. What this does to the subjugated is to destroy his sense of reality,” Baldwin said. ”This means, in the case of an American negro, born in that glittering republic. And the moment you were born, since you don’t know any better, every stick and stone, every face is white, and since you have not seen a mirror, you suppose that you are too. It comes as a great shock around the age of 5 or 6 or 7 to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians  —   when you were rooting for Gary Cooper  —   that the Indians were you! It comes as a great shock to discover the country which is your birthplace, and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you.” Peck says Baldwin deconstructed Hollywood, ”and all the soft power that Hollywood means, and the lies that is also transported in those films. This is something that we need to confront ourselves with.” Indeed, confronting ourselves is at the core of I Am Not Your Negro. When Peck began working on the film ten years ago, he meant to rely mostly on Baldwin’s words. As he worked, however, the narrative shifted. ”It became scarier and scarier because I realized I was making a film where the reality was galloping even quicker than I was making it. At the time, my concern was, how do I put these important words of James Baldwin on the front row? You know, how do I make them accessible to the new generation? And as I was editing this film, we started to have those images of young black men being killed  —   of the resistance, of Black Lives Matter, of young people again going on the streets to protest. And it was incredible to see. It’s happening again, almost the same words and the same anger. And then you see that, my God, nothing have changed fundamentally.” So Peck turns Baldwin’s words into a mirror on modern audiences by juxtaposing the archival tape of the civil rights movement, or Baldwin’s speeches and television appearances, with carefully chosen contemporary footage. As Baldwin speaks about the possibility or impossibility of a black president, Peck plays tape from the first Obama inauguration. As Baldwin talks about how black people have seen the ”corpses of your brothers and sisters pile up around you, not from anything they have done  —   they were too young to have done anything,” the film shows photographs of Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin. And, in a 1963 television segment titled ”The Negro and the American Promise,” as Baldwin speaks about the way Malcolm X validates protesters’ existence, a young black protester shouts ”I am” on the streets of Ferguson in 2013  —   and Baldwin muses, ”There are days  —   this is one of them  —   when I wonder, how precisely are you going to reconcile yourself to your situation here, and how are you going to communicate to the vast heedless, unthinking, cruel white majority that you are here?” Raoul Peck says that Baldwin always spoke directly to his audiences  —   then and even now  —   and his words were frank and direct without being cruel. Baldwin put the onus of change squarely on people in positions of power and privilege. ”What white people have to do,” Baldwin said once, ”is try to find out in their hearts why it was necessary for them to have a nigger in the first place. Because I am not a nigger. I’m a man. If I’m not the nigger here, and if you invented him, you the white people invented him, then you have to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. Whether or not it is able to ask that question.” Because, as Baldwin wrote, ”not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed if it is not faced.”"
"Updated at 10:30 p. m. ET  President Trump, in another broadside against the news media, on Monday accused ”the dishonest press” of failing to report terrorist attacks. But in a list put out by the White House later Monday evening, many of the attacks cited, such as the attack the Orlando night club shooting last June and 2015 attacks in San Bernardino, Calif. and Paris were extensively covered by the media around the clock. Speaking to troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, the headquarters of the U. S. Central Command, Trump cited a series of recent attacks and then added, ”It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even reported, and in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t even want to report it.” Trump told the troops that the media ”have their reasons, and you understand that,” but didn’t elaborate beyond that. Trump initially cited no examples of the media’s failure to report terrorist attacks. Onboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington with the president, press secretary Sean Spicer said terrorist attacks ”aren’t exactly covered to a degree on which they should be” and said they would release a full list of examples soon. Late Monday evening, the White House did just that. According to a White House official, the point they were trying to make ”is that these terrorists attacks are so pervasive at this point that they do not spark the    coverage they once did.” ”If you look back just a few years ago, any one of these attacks would have been ubiquitous in every news outlet, and now they’re happening so often . .. that networks are not devoting to each of them the same level of coverage they once did,” the administration official continued. PolitiFact rated Trump’s claim as ”Pants on Fire,” writing that they ”found no support for the idea that the media is hushing up terrorist attacks on U. S. or European soil. The media may sometimes be cautious about assigning religious motivation to a terrorist attack when the facts are unclear or still being investigated. But that’s not the same as covering them up through lack of coverage. There is plenty of coverage of in the American media of terrorist attacks.” Numerous journalists have been killed by terrorists, including freelance reporter James Foley, who was the first American to die at the hands of ISIS, in 2014. Many others have died covering fighting related to the war on terrorism, including NPR photographer David Gilkey and interpreter Zabihullah Tamanna, who were killed last June while covering the fighting in Afghanistan. The Committee to Protect Journalists keeps a tally of journalists killed each year. Here’s the entire unedited (we did not fix misspellings, for example) list of 78 attacks from September 2014 to December 2016 provided by the White House: MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, September, 2014, TARGET: Two police officers wounded in knife attack, ATTACKER: Abdul Numan Haider, TIZI OUZOU, ALGERIA, September, 2014, TARGET: One French citizen beheaded, ATTACKER: Jund   in Algeria, QUEBEC, CANADA, October, 2014, TARGET: One soldier killed and one wounded in vehicle attack, ATTACKER: Martin   OTTAWA, CANADA, October, 2014, TARGET: One soldier killed at war memorial two wounded in shootings at Parliament building, ATTACKER: Michael   NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA, October, 2014, TARGET: Two police officers wounded in knife attack, ATTACKER: US person, RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA, November, 2014, TARGET: One Danish citizen wounded in shooting, ATTACKERS: Three Saudi   ISIL members, ABU DHABI, UAE, DATE: December 2014, TARGET: One American killed in knife attack, ATTACKER: Dalal   SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, December, 2014, TARGET: Two Australians killed in hostage taking and shooting, ATTACKER: Man Haron Monis, TOURS, FRANCE, December, 2014, TARGET: Three police officers wounded in knife attack, ATTACKER: Bertrand Nzohabonayo, PARIS, FRANCE, January, 2015, TARGET: One police officer and four hostages killed in shooting at a kosher supermarket, ATTACKER: Amedy Coulibaly, TRIPOLI, LIBYA, January, 2015, TARGET: Ten killed, including one US citizen, and five wounded in bombing and shooting at a hotel frequented by westerners, ATTACKERS: As many as five   members, RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA, January, 2015, TARGET: Two US citizens wounded in shooting, ATTACKER: Saudi   ISIL supporter, NICE, FRANCE, February, 2015, TARGET: Two French soldiers wounded in knife attack outside a Jewish community center, ATTACKER: Moussa Coulibaly, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, February, 2015, TARGET: One civilian killed in shooting at a   rally and one security guard killed outside the city’s main synagogue, ATTACKER: Omar Abdel Hamid   TUNIS, TUNISIA, March, 2015, TARGET: 21 tourists killed, including 16 westerners, and 55 wounded in shooting at the Bardo Museum, ATTACKERS: Two   extremists, KARACHI, PAKISTAN, April, 2015, TARGET: One US citizen wounded in knife attack, ATTACKERS:   ISIL supporters, PARIS, FRANCE, April, 2015, TARGET: Catholic churches targeted one civilian killed in shooting, possibly during an attempted carjacking, ATTACKER: Sid Ahmed Ghlam, ZVORNIK, BOSNIA, April, 2015, TARGET: One police officer killed and two wounded in shooting, ATTACKER: Nerdin Ibric, GARLAND, TX, USA, May, 2015, TARGET: One security guard wounded in shooting at the Prophet Muhammad cartoon event, ATTACKERS: Two US persons, BOSTON, MA, USA, June, 2015, TARGET: No casualties one police officer attacked with knife, ATTACKER: US person, EL GORA (AL JURAH) EGYPT, June, 2015, TARGET: No casualties camp used by Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) troops attacked in shooting and bombing attack, ATTACKERS: Unknown number of   members, LUXOR, EGYPT, June, 2015, TARGET: One police officer killed by suicide bomb near the Temple of Karnak, ATTACKER: Unidentified, SOUSSE, TUNISIA, June, 2015, TARGET: 38 killed and 39 wounded in shooting at a beach frequented by westerners, ATTACKERS: Seifeddine Rezgui and another unidentified attacker, LYON, FRANCE, June, 2015, TARGET: One civilian killed in beheading and explosion at a chemical plant, ATTACKER: Yasin Salhi, CAIRO, EGYPT, July, 2015, TARGET: One killed and nine wounded in VBIED attack at Italian Consulate, ATTACKER: Unidentified ISIL operatives, CAIRO, EGYPT, July, 2015, TARGET: One Croatian national kidnapped beheaded on August 12 at an unknown location, ATTACKER: Unidentified   operative, PARIS, FRANCE, August, 2015, TARGET: Two civilians and one US soldier wounded with firearms and knife on a passenger train, ATTACKER: Ayoub   EL GORA, EGYPT, September, 2015, TARGET: Four US and two MFO troops wounded in IED attack, ATTACKER: Unidentified, DHAKA, BANGLADESH, September, 2015, TARGET: One Italian civilian killed in shooting, ATTACKER: Unidentified, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, September, 2015, TARGET: One police officer wounded in knife attack, ATTAKER: Palestinian national, EL GORA, EGYPT, October, 2015, TARGET: No casualties airfield used by MFO attacked with rockets, ATTAKER: Unidentified   operatives, PARRAMATTA, AUSTRALIA, October, 2015, TARGET: One police officer killed in shooting, ATTAKER: Farhad Jabar, RANGPUR, BANGLADESH, October, 2015, TARGET: One Japanese civilian killed in shooting, ATTAKER: Unidentified, HASANAH, EGYPT, October, 2015, TARGET: 224 killed in downing of a Russian airliner, ATTAKER: Unidentified   operatives, MERCED, CA, US, November, 2015, TARGET: Four wounded in knife attack on a college campus, ATTAKER: US person, PARIS, FRANCE, November, 2015, TARGET: At least 129 killed and approximately 400 wounded in series of shootings and IED attacks, ATTAKERS: Brahim Abdelslam, Saleh Abdeslam, Ismail Mostefai, Bilal Hadfi, Samy Amimour, Chakib Ahrouh, Foued Mohamed Aggad, and Abdelhamid Abaaoud, DINAJPUR, BANGLADESH, November, 2015, TARGET: One Italian citizen wounded in shooting, ATTAKER: Unidentified, RAJLOVAC, BOSNIA, December, 2015, TARGET: Two Bosnian soldiers killed in shooting, ATTAKER: Enes Omeragic, SAN BERNADINO, CA, US, December, 2015, TARGET: 14 killed and 21 wounded in coordinated firearms attack, ATTAKERS: Two US persons, LONDON, ENGLAND, UK, December, 2015, TARGET: Three wounded in knife attack at an underground rail station, ATTAKER: Muhyadin Mire, DERBENT, RUSSIA, December, 2015, TARGET: One killed and 11 wounded in shooting at UN World Heritage site, ATTAKER: Unidentified   operative, CAIRO, EGYPT, January, 2016, TARGET: Two wounded in   shooting outside a hotel frequented by tourists, ATTAKERS: Unidentified ISIL operatives, PARIS, FRANCE, January, 2016, TARGET: No casualties attacker killed after attempted knife attack on Paris police station, ATTAKER: Tarek Belgacem, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, January, 2016, TARGET: One police officer wounded in shooting, ATTAKER: US person, HURGHADA, EGYPT, January, 2016, TARGET: One German and one Danish national wounded in knife attack at a tourist resort, ATTAKER: Unidentified, MARSEILLES, FRANCE, January, 2016, TARGET: One Jewish teacher wounded in machete attack, ATTAKER: 15   Ethnic Kurd from Turkey, ISTANBUL, TURKEY, January, 2016, TARGET: 12 German tourists killed and 15 wounded in suicide bombing, ATTAKER: Nabil Fadli, JAKARTA, INDONESIA, January, 2016, TARGET: Four civilians killed and more than 20 wounded in coordinated bombing and firearms attacks near a police station and a Starbucks, ATTAKERS: Dian Joni Kurnaiadi, Muhammad Ali, Arif Sunakim, and Ahmad Muhazan bin Saron, COLUMBUS, OH, US, February, 2016, TARGET: Four civilians wounded in machete attack at a restaurant, ATTAKER: US person, HANOVER, GERMANY, February, 2016, TARGET: One police officer wounded in knife attack, ATTAKER: Safia Schmitter, ISTANBUL, TURKEY, March, 2016, TARGET: Four killed and 36 wounded in suicide bombing in the tourist district, ATTAKER: Mehmet Ozturk, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, March, 2016, TARGET: At least 31 killed and 270 wounded in coordinated bombings at Zaventem Airport and on a subway train, ATTAKERS: Khalid   Ibrahim   Najim Laachraoui, Mohammed Abrini, and Osama Krayem, ESSEN, GERMANY, April, 2016, TARGET: Three wounded in bombing at Sikh temple, ATTAKERS: Three identified minors, ORLANDO, FL, US, June, 2016, TARGET: 49 killed and 53 wounded in shooting at a nightclub, ATTAKER: US person, MAGNANVILLE, FRANCE, June, 2016, TARGET: One police officer and one civilian killed in knife attack, ATTAKER: Larossi Abballa, KABUL, AFGHANISTAN, June, 2016, TARGET: 14 killed in suicide attack on a bus carrying Canadian Embassy guards, ATTAKER:   operative, ISTANBUL, TURKEY, June, 2016, TARGET: 45 killed and approximately 240 wounded at Ataturk International Airport, ATTACKERS: Rakhim Bulgarov, Vadim Osmanov, and an unidentified ISIL operative, DHAKA, BANGLADESH, July, 2016, TARGET: 22 killed, including one American and 50 wounded after   siege using machetes and firearms at holy Artisan Bakery, ATTACKERS: Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Khairul Islam Paye, and Shafiqul Islam Uzzal, NICE, FRANCE, July, 2016, TARGET: 84 civilians killed and 308 wounded by an individual who drove a truck into a crowd, ATTACKER: Mohamed Bouhlel, WURZBURG, GERMANY, July, 2016, TARGET: Four civilians wounded in axe attack on a train, ATTACKER: Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, ANSBACH, GERMANY, July, 2016, TARGET: At least 15 wounded in suicide bombing at a music festival, ATTACKER: Mohammad Daleel, NORMANDY, FRANCE, July, 2016, TARGET: One priest killed in knife attack, ATTACKERS: Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Nabil Petitjean, CHALEROI, BELGIUM, August, 2016, TARGET: Two police officers wounded in machete attack, ATTACKER: Khaled Babouri, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA, August, 2016, TARGET: Two killed and one wounded in knife attack at a hostel frequented by Westerners, ATTACKER: Smail Ayad, COPENHAGEN, DENMAKR, September, 2016, TARGET: Two police officers and a civilian wounded in shooting, ATTACKER: Mesa Hodzic, PARIS, FRANCE, September, 2016, TARGET: One police officer wounded in raid after VBIED failed to detonate at Notre Dame Cathedral, ATTACKERS: Sarah Hervouet, Ines Madani, and Amel Sakaou, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, September, 2016, TARGET: One civilian wounded in knife attack, ATTACKER: Ihsas Khan, September, 2016, TARGET: 10 wounded in knife attack in a mall, ATTACKER: Dahir Ahmed Adan, NEW YORK, NY SEASIDE PARK AND ELIZABETH, NJ, US, September, 2016, TARGET: 31 wounded in bombing in New York City several explosive devices found in New York and New Jersey one exploded without casualty at race in New Jersey one police officer wounded in shootout, ATTACKER: Ahmad Khan Rahami, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, October, 2016, TARGET: Two police officers wounded in stabbing, ATTACKER: Belgian national, KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT, TARGET: No casualties vehicle carrying three US soldiers hit by a truck, ATTACKER: Ibrahim Sulayman, MALMO, SWEDEN, October, 2016, TARGET: No casualties mosque and community center attacked with Molotov cocktail, ATTACKER: Syrian national, HAMBURG, GERMANY, October, 2016, TARGET: One killed in knife attack, ATTACKER: Unknown, MANILA, PHILIPPINES, November, 2016, TARGET: No casualties failed IED attempt near US Embassy, ATTACKERS: Philippine nationals aligned with the Maute group, COLUMBUS, OH, US, November, 2016, TARGET: 14 wounded by individuals who drove a vehicle into a group of pedestrians and attacked them with a knife, ATTACKER: US person, N’DJAMENA, CHAD, November, 2016, TARGET: No casualties attacker arrested after opening fire at entrance of US Embassy, ATTACKER: Chadian national, KARAK, JORDAN, December, 2016, TARGET: 10 killed and 28 wounded in shooting at a tourist site, ATTACKERS: Several gunmen, BERLIN, GERMANY, December, 2016, TARGET: 12 killed and 48 wounded by individual who drove truck into a crowded market, ATTACKER: Anis Amri, Domenico Montanaro contributed."
"Moriah, N. Y. is a tiny, sleepy place on the shore of Lake Champlain. Not so long ago, this was a major industrial port. Iron ore carved out of the hills here was packed onto train cars and barges. That iron ore helped build America’s cities, but ”then it all came to an abrupt halt,” Tom Scozzafava says. Scozzafava grew up in Moriah and now serves as town supervisor. He remembers the good times and he remembers the summer the good times stopped. ”1971, the miners  —   600 of them  —   went home for their annual August vacation and they were never called back,” he says. It didn’t just happen in one town or one state. Beginning after World War II and accelerating in the ’70s and ’80s, rural economists say much of small town America began a painful decline, shedding jobs and losing population. These are the parts of America where voters felt like Donald Trump was speaking directly to them. ”The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” President Trump said in his inaugural address. ”Rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.” Critics pounced on the president’s language, suggesting it was too bleak, too apocalyptic. But rural policy experts like Dave Swenson say it’s pretty accurate for a lot of small town America. Swenson studies rural communities and economic development for the state of Iowa. ”  of our 99 counties [in Iowa] have posted population declines,” Swenson says. ”Those folks have had to migrate.”   Young people moved away to the cities, main streets dried up. Swenson says people left behind feel angry, humiliated. ”What’s left out in many of these places are the people that were unable to migrate, people who were unable to find new occupations or   themselves into new trades,” Swenson says. The question now is whether Trump’s policies and ideas can change things, driving jobs and investment and people back to places like rural Iowa or Moriah, N. Y. Rural experts who spoke with NPR are skeptical. They say taking a tougher line with China or Mexico likely won’t cause a surge of new manufacturing in small towns. ”About 65 to 80 percent of the manufacturing losses in our country are directly related to automation and technology,” says Chuck Fluharty, who heads an organization called the Rural Policy Research Institute. Those kinds of job cuts can’t be reversed by tariffs or trade deals. Fluharty says what rural America needs is an investment in what he describes as human capital, health care and education. He also says small towns need to open their doors to immigrants. ”The rural regions that will thrive in the future are the ones where that diversity is strongly expressed,” Fluharty says. But efforts to create any kind of path to citizenship for undocumented families living in rural America seem unlikely to move forward. Rural economists say the new administration could boost some regions in the short term with big investments in infrastructure, roads and bridges. Parts of the country could also see a boom from increased oil or gas production. Still, most policy experts think the   trends hurting small towns  —   urbanization, globalization and mechanization  —   won’t change much under President Trump. And if he can’t deliver on his promise to make rural America great again, this could be one of the biggest political challenges he faces."
"Lancaster, Ohio, the home of the Fortune 500 company Anchor Hocking, was once a bustling center of industry and employment. At its peak following World War II, Lancaster’s hometown company was the world’s largest maker of glassware and employed more than 5, 000 town residents. Though Anchor Hocking remains in Lancaster today, it is a shell of its former self, and the once thriving town is beset by underemployment and drug abuse. Lancaster native Brian Alexander chronicles the rise and fall of his hometown in his new book, Glass House. ”People are genuinely struggling,” he tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies. ”The economy of the town is struggling, not because there’s high unemployment, [but] because the employment that there is all minimum wage, or even lower than minimum wage.” Fairfield County, in which Lancaster is located, went 61 percent for Donald Trump in the presidential election  —   a fact that Alexander attributes to the candidate’s message of disaffection. Alexander says on Election Day one Lancaster woman told him she voted for Trump because she wanted ”it to be like it was.” On how Lancaster was once deemed an   town, After World War II, Forbes devoted almost its entire 30th anniversary issue to Lancaster, Ohio, of all places, and positioned Lancaster as the epitome and the apogee of the   town  —   a sort of perfect balance between large industry, agriculture [and] small businesses, like retail and merchants and so on. . .. And everything was in this state of almost Utopian equilibrium, and for the most part it really was like that. Which is not to say there were not problems. There’s always been problems, there’s always been   scandals, and there’s always been an element of poverty, a fair amount of drinking in Lancaster. My grandfather used to say  —   he was an old glass man from western Pennsylvania  —   and when he would come to visit he would say that he never saw a town with more churches and more bars. . .. So it was not free of problems, but it was really, from my life, very much like Leave it to Beaver, quite honestly. On how Anchor Hocking contributed to the fabric of the town during its heyday, You had a core of   sophisticated people who made good livings working right downtown at the corner of Broad and Main Street, and more importantly, in some ways, their wives  —   remember this is ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and into the ’70s  —   their wives typically didn’t work at a   job outside the home. They threw themselves into the town. So they did hospital benefits, they did benefits for preserving the old Antebellum homes in Lancaster, they did vaccination drives, they made sure the sidewalks got repaired, the streets got paved, they attended city council meetings. This was a core of civic leadership. On the 1987 acquisition of Anchor Hocking by the Newell Corp. It was a hostile takeover. It’s still a little bit mysterious exactly how hostile it was, but they buy it in a hostile takeover, and the first thing they do is fire all of the executives and close down the headquarters. So now you have gutted a core group of people that were active in the life of the town. As one person in Lancaster, an   who I interviewed said, ”It ripped the heart out of this town.” So you’ve taken away the executives, you’ve taken away their wives, their families. . .. [It was] devastating for the town. And the new incoming people, the people Newell picked to run Anchor Hocking never lived in Lancaster they all lived in Columbus. There’s a   belief, unshakable belief, that Newell instructed its incoming executives to not live in Lancaster, so as not to be involved in the United Way and other Lancaster civic activities. I could not find any proof of that, but you cannot shake Lancasterians’ belief that that was, in fact, the case. . .. Workers will tell you that Newell was not a bad employer. They were not necessarily unhappy under Newell. It wasn’t the same it was less of a family atmosphere. Workers who are hourly people and salaried people all say the same thing. They say that the company became somewhat more efficient, that they made money, they made money for Newell, that they were not unhappy under Newell, but it didn’t feel like the old Anchor Hocking, and it never would again. On how what happened in Lancaster reflects a larger trend in capitalism, When you can pay a foreign worker a third or less of what you’re paying a unionized flint glass worker in Lancaster, that’s an element, but it’s far from the only one. We seem to have this   belief that this is all some sort of natural evolution, like how the dinosaurs died. But what I’m trying to argue in the book is that some of this, at least in part, results from a series of conscious decisions [by] politicians, economists, business people, financiers. On what Lancaster is like today, The houses, for example, are not quite as well kept up as they used to be. The west side, which has always been the working class side of town, is even more disheveled than it used to be. . .. Parents are in jail, so grandparents or aunts or uncles have the kids. I saw just the other day a map of the state of Ohio that showed the percentage of kids who are now a part of the social service system and what the percentage of their parents who are opiate users. In Fairfield County, 58 percent of the kids who are in the system, their parents used opiates. The county next door, Hocking County, it’s over 70 percent. So now you’ve got drugs in the community, which are an escape from all this sort of stuff. . .. The best thing going for Lancaster is how much people love their town, and they want it to work. But they’re up against some very tough situations. On Lancaster voters supporting Trump in the presidential election, I think partly Trump has already fulfilled at least one expectation, and that is to sort of express this sort of generalized anger and aggressiveness that they wish they could [have] and Trump, I think, is sort of their pilot in doing it for them. Ultimately, I think they’ll find that to be empty, but I can’t be sure."
"Why does female genital mutilation (FGM)  —   a practice that the U. N. has classified as violence against women  —   remain so entrenched in parts of the globe? Researchers in Bristol, England, have come up with a new theory. They looked at data on more that 60, 000 women over the age of 40 in five West African countries who had at least one daughter. And they found that in cultures where the practice of cutting all or part of a woman’s external genitalia is prevalent, cut women, compared to uncut women, have more babies who survive. ”In societies where cutting is the norm, being cut gives women social status and more social support among women,” says Janet Howard, lead author of the article and anthropology professor at the University of Bristol. ”They have more and better marriage opportunities”  —   and thus a better chance of bearing children. The study appears on Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. In many African and some Middle Eastern countries, more than 200 million women and girls have undergone some form of genital cutting as a    ritual, according to the World Health Organization  —   and another 3 million girls are at risk of being cut each year, most of them under the age of 15. The practice has no health benefits. And its harms are  : severe bleeding and pain, infection, problems urinating, and even death, according to WHO. Over a lifetime, FGM can diminish sexual pleasure, lead to problems in childbirth, produce chronic urinary tract infections and cause depression and other mental health problems. For decades, governments and public health advocates have worked to educate people about the medical harm caused by FGM. Still, it remains widespread even as some countries pass laws to stop it, international organizations set goals to eliminate it and education efforts stress its dire health consequences. Those efforts compete with strong cultural beliefs that if a woman is not cut, she is unclean and must be ostracized by her community  —   and, in some societies, should not marry. So a woman who is not cut has a reduced chance of marrying and bearing children, says Katherine Wander, professor of anthropology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, and author of an accompanying News  Views commentary in the journal. In those circumstances, ”not being cut is a detriment” to bearing children, says Bettina   professor of anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not part of the study. In societies where almost every woman is cut, even if an uncut woman manages to find a husband, she’s ostracized by other women, says Wander. ”When women who are not cut marry into a family with a cutting tradition, they’re treated quite horribly,” she says. ”They’re made fun of. People won’t eat the food they prepare. They’re called dirty and spiritually impure. The primary source of conflict is not with their husband but with other women in the household, who look at them with disgust.” A common strategy to reduce FGM, says Howard, is to educate groups of people, hoping to bring about a consensus that cutting is bad. ”The idea is the group changes all together, they all put down their knives and agree not to cut,” she says. ”This paper suggests that we shift our focus from the risks associated with cutting  —   most people have heard those messages already,” Wander says. A first step for public health advocates, she says, might be something as simple as building friendships among cut and uncut women through singing or dancing or based on common concerns like food or water supplies. The idea is that building social networks would lead to the next step, she says: ”talking about the benefits girls and women realize from their cut status and then providing other ways to realize those benefits.”"
"In Afghanistan, the number of civilian casualties reached an   high in 2016, the United Nations reported Monday. Nearly 11, 500 civilians were killed and wounded in the country last year  —   including more than 3, 500 children. It is an overall increase of 3 percent compared with 2015, which was the previous   since the U. N. began systematic documentation in 2009. Among children, the latest numbers represent a staggering 24 percent increase in injuries and deaths. Most of those child casualties came from fighting between different groups in heavily populated areas however, there was also a sharp increase because of unexploded land mines, rockets and other remnants of war. ”The U. N. blamed most of the civilian casualties on the Taliban, but it also documents an increasing number of attacks perpetrated by a   franchise of Daesh or ISIS,” Lisa Schlein reported for NPR’s Newscast unit. The U. N. attributed 899 civilian casualties to ISIS last year, up from 89 in 2015. ”After nearly 40 years of conflict in Afghanistan, U. N. officials warn Daesh is now surfacing as another deadly element in this endless war,” Schlein reported. The rise of   militants only adds another layer of instability and violence to what was already a brutal war between the government and militants. As the U. N. report published Monday makes clear, the Afghan military and police were responsible for killing or injuring some 2, 300 civilians, while NATO forces that are no longer engaged in a combat mission nonetheless were responsible for killing or injuring more than 220 civilians. The report highlighted one incident in particular, questioning whether NATO airstrikes in a densely populated part of the city of Kunduz in November 2016 complied with international humanitarian law: ”International humanitarian law obliges all parties to the conflict to do everything feasible to cancel or suspend an attack if it becomes apparent that the target is not a military objective or the attack may be expected to cause disproportionate harm to civilians. . .. ”In this regard, the use of airstrikes in a densely populated village during the night that resulted in 68 civilian casualties, including the deaths of 26 women and children and the injury of 23 others raises serious concerns.” Children are especially vulnerable. ”On 17 October, I was walking in my village when I heard a horrible explosion,” a    boy from Kunduz told U. N. investigators, who included his words in their report. ”I really don’t know what happened. Now I realize I have lost one of my legs. My brother says I was injured as a result of a   improvised explosive device detonation.” The U. N.  ’s special representative for Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, said at a news conference Monday that he was ”particularly concerned” about the dramatic increase in the number of children being injured and killed by fighting, and also by unexploded landmines, shells and rockets left behind in populated areas. A    girl in Baghlan province told U. N. investigators the following story last July: ”Yesterday, I was playing with other children on the streets near our house in the village. I saw our neighbor, a boy who later died, holding something made of metal. I knew that it was something explosive. He told all of us ’I’m going to detonate it.’ ”I slapped him on his face and told him ’don’t do it!’ and then I moved further away from him. He began hitting the object with a stone. It exploded. I fell unconscious and I don’t know what happened next.” The explosion killed four children and injured three more, including the girl who recounted the story. ”The disproportionate rise in child casualties resulted mainly from an overall 66 percent increase in civilian casualties from unexploded remnants of war,” explained Danielle Bell, the human rights director for the U. N. mission to Afghanistan. Bell said the vast majority  —   86 percent  —   of people killed and injured by   unexploded ordnance were children. Because Afghanistan has suffered    conflicts for decades, there are unexploded military remnants from multiple conflicts. But Bell and her team found a direct correlation between casualties from exploded ordinance and areas with the heaviest ground fighting in recent years, and concluded that the majority of casualties were the result of military remnants from the conflict that began with the U. S.  invasion in 2001. The Afghan government has taken steps to identify and remove landmines and other leftover explosives, including   demining teams. However, the U. N. report found 20 incidents of violence against deminers last year by Taliban and   militants, which ”hindered demining efforts, creating further risks for civilian communities.”"
"When the country elects a Republican president, and there’s an opening on the U. S. Supreme Court, that president will nominate a conservative to fill the seat. The question is: What kind of a conservative? There are different kinds of conservative judges, from the pragmatist to the originalist. Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s nominee, is a   originalist. The late Justice Antonin Scalia spent decades on the Supreme Court promoting originalism, which he defined this way: ”The constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.” Judge Gorsuch, who would succeed Scalia if confirmed, has a similar but less blunt way of putting it. In a 2016 speech, he declared that while legislators should consider policy questions and moral convictions in shaping the law, judges should do neither. Rather, ”judges should instead strive to apply the law as they find it, focusing backwards, not forwards,” on the original meaning of the Constitution when it was written 230 years ago. Todd Gaziano, senior fellow in constitutional law at the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, explains originalism this way. ”The text is the best evidence,” Gaziano says. ”If a phrase in the Constitution is unclear, we look to how that phrase was used in other contexts.” Originalists try to decipher whether the phrase was a ”term of art” at the time, or look to contemporary dictionary definitions. At the announcement of his nomination last week, Gorsuch cited as his first mentor one of the Supreme Court justices he clerked for, Byron White. White, however, was a very different kind of conservative. He was a pragmatist, observes Allan Ides, who also clerked for White and is now a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. ”Originalism is kind of odd when you think about it,” Ides comments. Rather than ask the judge to consider the consequences of a decision, advocates of originalism want the judge to focus only on ”what would have been done 200 years ago. ”It’s a peculiar theory that I think the public is attracted to because it sounds so simple and so true, but it’s completely false,” Ides contends. Ides notes that Justice White was one of the two dissenters from the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade abortion decision. But he looked forward as well as back. ”And if you read his opinion, part of it is very pragmatic,” he observes, adding that White argued the decision would not work and went too far. ”Pragmatism, it can embrace a wide range of points of view, it’s just that it’s based on reality. So my objection to Gorsuch is I don’t like the way he thinks. I don’t think he thinks broadly enough.” Ides says Gorsuch is stuck in the ”narrow tunnel” of originalism. Ides adds that originalists aren’t the only judges who look to the original meaning of the Constitution. Liberal judges do that, too they look at the text and structure as well. Indeed, when the Supreme Court ruled   that the Constitution guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun, both the majority opinion, written by Scalia, and the dissent cited historical records to make their case. Both, Ides contends, used history in an adversarial way. ”But they’re both plausible interpretations of the history and the text,” Ides said. ”It just shows it’s kind of an empty technique. It pretends to be something it isn’t.” Ides sees the conservative agenda on the court over the past 10 to 20 years as aimed at limiting the power and role of the federal government. The potential ultimate irony is that for the Trump administration and its aggressive use of federal and executive power, that could be bad news."
"If you were outside in the Midwest at around 1:30 local time this morning, you might have received quite a shock. A meteor streaked across the sky in a vivid, bright green flash. It set off sonic booms that were loud enough to shake houses in   Wisconsin, as National Weather Service meteorologist Jeff Last tells The  . Take a look at this video, captured on a police dashcam in Lisle, Ill.: The meteor was visible in much of eastern Wisconsin and far northeast Illinois, Last says. He says the object likely broke up and that pieces might have ended up in Lake Michigan, though it is ”probably going to be impossible to tell” exactly what happened. Last says it is ”relatively rare to see one this vivid”  —   he says meteorologists see video like this every year or every other year from somewhere in the U. S. The American Meteor Society tracks reports of meteor sightings, and says that it received more than 200 today. Most of those reports were in Illinois and Wisconsin, but there were also sightings in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, New York, Kentucky, Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. So why the bright green color? ”It’s probably the interaction of the material in the meteor and the friction, the heat that is a result of the friction as it moves very, very rapidly through the atmosphere,” says Last. The AMS explains that the makeup of elements can impact the color we see. For example, it says the element nickel can cause a meteor to appear green. Meteors traveling at high speeds can ”intensify certain colors compared to others,” it adds."
"How could the first Super Bowl of the Trump era escape politics? It couldn’t. If you were just watching the game on TV, the politics were mostly subtle. Sure, there were the political ads. There were ads for everyone from NASCAR to Airbnb, which has taken on President Trump’s travel ban. But Madison Avenue seemed to care more about who won the popular vote than who won the election. The overtly political ads celebrated diversity, globalism and immigration  —   there was even one about The Wall that wasn’t allowed to show The Wall. There was social commentary packed into a contrasting pair of    ads  —   one from Audi where a father thinks to himself about all the social limitations he won’t let into his daughter’s mind, followed by a lighter ad for Mr. Clean where the husband does the cleaning. A pregame   ad brought back from 2014 featured ”America The Beautiful” sung in many different languages, which drew plenty of divided reaction. Then there was that hair ad proclaiming, ”America, we’re in for at least four years of awful hair.” For the   it’s not just a matter of how many people voted for which party last year, though. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin offered a reminder that areas that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 produce nearly   of the country’s economic output  —   a pattern that goes a long way to explain Trump’s victory. Back inside NRG Stadium in Houston it was a light touch. Things started with the   reemergence of former President George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara, who were both recently hospitalized, to conduct the coin toss. In a brief moment, cast members from the Broadway smash hit Hamilton took a jab at patriarchy, asking the Almighty to ”crown thy good with brotherhood. .. and sisterhood. .. from sea to shining sea.” (Vice President Mike Pence was again in the audience for the cast’s performance, but there was no booing this time.) The game began as kind of a shocker. The dynastic Patriots were faltering. The Atlanta Falcons were surging all through the first half, and Nate Cohn of The Upshot sent up a prophetic stat: Halftime approached with a lot of questions about tone. Lady Gaga was the lone star in the Texas night sky, emerging on the roof of the stadium with a constellation of   drones behind her. It was a collection of red drones and blue drones, at first divided, coming together as one to resemble the American flag. Before the game, Gaga had told reporters, ”I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country, as one of love and compassion and kindness.” She is no fan of Trump, but she didn’t really go there on the stage. The symbols were present throughout her performance  —   most notably singing ”Born This Way,” with its message of inclusiveness across all lines of race, sexuality and gender. Hillary Clinton liked it. But if you weren’t into the message, it was easy enough to sit back and enjoy the singing and spectacle. Lady Gaga was using a live mic, but there were no   moments. So that was it. If halftime came and went without controversy, then it seemed that the impossible had happened. The first Super Bowl of the Trump era came without politics slathered all over it. Oh, if only. Perhaps it was all teed up from the start  —   Bleacher Report, for example, framed the game as ”more than a game, but a clash of cultures.” It quoted players anonymously saying they were rooting for the Patriots because of Trump. Even a Patriots player said if they won, he would boycott the trip to the White House. Team owner Robert Kraft and star quarterback Tom Brady are friends with Trump. Brady stirred controversy during the season because a ”Make America Great Again” hat was spotted in his locker. Meanwhile, the Falcons’ owner spoke out against Trump’s immigration ban. Somehow, the Super Bowl was destined to become a rehash of the 2016 campaign. There was no way the Patriots could come back, right? They were down by 18 at the half, and the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history had been just 10. It wasn’t even within the margin of error. Well, New England came out of the locker room ready to claw back in the second half. The Falcons, with their   lead, as interpreted by the statisticians, were about to face their own version of the blue wall. Danny Amendola was prepared to Make The Patriots Great Again. The improbable      conversions. The first overtime in Super Bowl history. The Patriots did everything they needed to do, and there just weren’t enough votes left in Detroit or the Philly suburbs to turn it around. If you were inside the often insufferable world of Beltway Twitter Sunday night (that many of us inhabit) there was no risk of missing out on the joke. OK, I’ll admit, it was hard to resist. The president, of all people, was mum on Twitter during the game after a weekend of blasting a ”  judge” over blocking Trump’s immigration order. In the end, Trump  —   who got pretty close with a prediction of an   Patriots win  —   was excited for his victorious friends Brady, Belichick and Kraft. And, as for the experts, well, again we were hearing that probability ain’t perfect. We have reflected in the past on whether social media ruined the 2016 election. It would be grossly out of proportion to suggest that the political rabbit hole some on Twitter went down last night ruined anything  —   especially when you see how happy Gronk was."
"The federal conspiracy trials against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his followers is beginning on Monday, with jury selection for the trial of six of Bundy’s supporters. The cases, stemming from a 2014 armed standoff against federal agents in Nevada, are unfolding in several stages. Bundy and his four sons are among the 17 total defendants but won’t be immediately entering the courtroom. Instead, the first phase involves six of Bundy’s followers, each facing up to 101 years in prison, according to The Associated Press. The six men  —   from Idaho, Arizona and Oklahoma  —   have been ”characterized as the least culpable ’followers and gunmen’ among the 19 men arrested a year ago,” the AP writes. (Two of the men arrested already pleaded guilty to conspiracy, the news service explains the other 17 men are the defendants in the current case.) ”They’re not the Bundys,” an attorney for one of the men tells the AP. ”But realistically, this is a Bundy case. The outcome of this trial affects the other two.” The underlying conflict that led to the armed standoff in Nevada goes back decades. Since the ’90s, Bundy had refused to pay required grazing permits and fees to the U. S. government  —   the government says he owes about a million dollars, all told. A court ordered him to remove his cattle from federal lands. NPR’s Kirk Siegler explains what came next: ”It all boiled over in April of 2014 when federal agents came to round up hundreds of his cows near his ranch in the Nevada desert. ”They were met by the the armed Bundy militia, some on horseback, waving American flags. Interstate 15 was blocked. Guns were drawn and things got extremely tense. Federal agents in   combat fatigues eventually stood down. . .. Cliven Bundy wasn’t arrested until almost two years later.” Bundy’s arrest early last year came about because of another     armed standoff between   militants and the U. S. government. Two of his sons, Ammon and Ryan, were leading an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in early 2016. Cliven Bundy flew up to join them, and was arrested in Portland, Ore. In the months since, the Malheur occupiers surrendered  —   and then, in a surprising court decision, several occupiers were acquitted of charges that they conspired to keep federal employees from doing their jobs. The result emboldened the Bundy militia in Oregon, as Kirk reported at the time. And it may have prosecutors on the Cliven Bundy cases rethinking their strategy, Kirk reports. He spoke with Rick Pocker, former U. S. attorney for Nevada, who said, ”The pressure is really on the government. ”If there’s two straight acquittals, of individuals who engage in pretty much the same conduct and it’s very confrontational, that could embolden a lot of folks on the right wing of the ideological spectrum,” Pocker told Kirk. And there’s another wrinkle in the cases, the AP reports: ”The government may also have to overcome a potentially damaging new BLM inspector general ethics and conduct report, made public this week. ”It said the Salt Lake   land management supervisory agent who headed the Bundy cattle roundup misused his position during the 2015 Burning Man festival in northern Nevada, and manipulated a hiring process so a friend could get a bureau job.” In general, jury selection will be important in this case as a whole, Kirk reports sentiments on the federal government and land issues can vary widely between rural and urban communities. Jury selection is expected to take several days."
"Plants that feed on flesh have fascinated scientists going all the way back to Charles Darwin, and researchers now have new insight into how these   evolved. Even plants that evolved continents away from one another rely on strikingly similar tricks to digest their prey. ”The pathways to evolving a carnivorous plant, and in particular, to a pitcher plant, may be very restricted,” says Victor Albert, a biologist at the University at Buffalo. In the journal Nature Ecology  Evolution, he and his colleagues say they’ve found genetic changes related to carnivory in Australian, Asian and American pitcher plants. Unlike the famous Venus flytrap, which has jaws that snap shut, pitcher plants trap insects by luring them into a   leaf with slippery sides. Once bugs fall in, they don’t make it back out. Instead, they get stuck in a liquid that breaks down their exoskeleton and flesh, giving the plant the nutrients it needs to survive in a   environment. Scientists have long wondered how   plants like these developed such an unusual lifestyle. ”It’s kind of counterintuitive that a plant is actually using an animal for some of its food,” says Albert, who says he has been fascinated by carnivorous plants since he was a kid. ”We usually think of animals, such as ourselves, as using plants.” To explore genetic changes that might allow plants to catch and digest prey, Albert and his colleagues first focused on the Australian pitcher plant. This plant has two different types of leaves  —   plain old leaves that photosynthesize and specialized leaves that form into the   pitcher. The researchers sequenced the plant’s DNA and then looked to see which genes were turned on in each type of leaf. ”What we found is that certain genes are only on in the pitcher leaf, or preferentially on in the pitcher leaf, and that some of these very likely have to do with the trap development,” Albert says. The researchers also took samples of fluid from this plant’s traps to analyze the stew of digestive enzymes and other proteins, and compared it to fluid from the unrelated American and Asian pitcher plant species. They also looked at digestive juices in another carnivorous plant, a sundew, which has leaves with sticky little hairs that trap insects like flypaper. What they found is that all of the plants seemed to rely on similar enzymes  —   despite the fact that these plants evolved independently. ”In a number of cases, the very same genes from noncarnivorous ancestors have been recruited for carnivorous purposes,” says Thomas Givnish, who studies plant evolution at the University of Wisconsin. What’s more, the genes seemed to have been tweaked in similar ways  —   presumably because they’re all doing similar jobs to help the plants consume their prey. ”So it’s a really unique study and the first of its kind,” Givnish says. Some of these enzymes originally existed to help plants defend against stresses like fungal infections but got repurposed for eating bugs. One example, Albert says, is called chitinase: ”The chitinase that was originally probably evolved in defense from fungal chitin was repurposed, so to speak, to attack and break down the chitin of insect exoskeletons.”"
"This Sunday, Feb. 12, is Darwin Day, an international day of celebration commemorating the birth of Charles Darwin and his contributions to science. It’s also an excuse for   and   events around the globe, and for all of us to take a moment to appreciate the value of science and the wonders of the natural world. As you prepare to celebrate, here are a few things you might want to know about Darwin  —   some insights new and old to impress your friends and family. 1. Darwin developed the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Studies consistently find that many Americans  —   including college students and even   teachers  —   misunderstand critical features of how the process works. You can read through common misconceptions here, or review the key ingredients for natural selection  —   heritable variation that leads to differential reproduction  —   in this easy   created for 13. 7. 2. Darwin wasn’t only a meticulous observer of the natural world, he was also a careful reader and a diligent   when it came to his own habits. Beginning in 1838, Darwin kept a notebook in which he recorded the books he was reading. From 1837 to 1860, he reported reading 687 distinct works of English  . These years span an important period in the development of his thinking, from his return to England from the Galapagos Islands to the publication of On the Origin of Species. What can we learn from the reading habits of a creative and enormously influential scientist? A new paper by Jaimie Murdock, Colin Allen and Simon DeDeo offers the first quantitative analysis of Darwin’s book list, investigating the extent to which his decisions about what to read reflected exploration. That is, to what extent was Darwin systematically exposing himself to ideas that might be surprising in light of what he’d previously read? And to what extent did these habits change throughout this period of his career, as his Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was beginning to take shape? To answer these questions, the authors used techniques from machine learning, statistics and information theory to analyze the full text of most books on Darwin’s list, yielding   representations of the content of each book and a quantitative method for estimating the overlap in general content across books. The analyses revealed distinct epochs in Darwin’s reading habits, including an initial period in which he delved more deeply into topics he had already encountered, and a final period, leading up to the publication of On the Origin of Species, in which he engaged in greater exploration. Rather than narrowing his focus or shielding his theorizing from new ideas, his later years were marked by breadth and novelty. 3. Darwin shared his birthday  —   Feb. 12, 1809  —   with another revolutionary figure: Abraham Lincoln. Where the first transformed how we understand ourselves in relation to other species, the second changed the way we understand ourselves in relation to other humans. In an essay adapted from his book Angels and Ages, writer Adam Gopnik encapsulates Lincoln’s and Darwin’s monumental contributions like this: ”Lincoln and Darwin can be seen as symbols of the two pillars of the society we live in: one representing liberal democracy and a faith in armed republicanism and government of the people, the other the human sciences, a belief that objective knowledge about human history and the human condition, who we are and how we got here, exists. This makes them, plausibly, ’heroes’.” So take advantage of Feb. 12 to celebrate Darwin, the human sciences, and scientific discovery. And, if you’re so inclined, tip your hat to Lincoln, too. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Like any good pair of twins, Run the Jewels have a freaky sort of unspoken fraternity. When   and Killer Mike strode in with their usual uniforms  —   Mike in a gold chain as thick as a garter snake, El in a fitted Yankees cap and pair of   sunglasses  —   the two didn’t have to do as much as nod to one another before upending three tracks from their latest LP, RTJ3, in strange and perfect symbiosis.   (née   née Jaime Meline)  —   rapper, producer, and   godfather of the backpacker scene of the  ’s  —   and Killer Mike  —   known for guest features on tracks by Atlanta’s Dungeon Family in the   solo work in the    ’00s, and perhaps most widely for his very public support of Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign last year  —   have   each other in a supergroup that somehow seems to get better, louder, and more pertinent since their start in 2013. They represent an ideal evolution of underground   to mainstream success, mixing a fundamentally activist animus with   production without losing a speck of vital force. On an unseasonably beautiful day in D. C. Run the Jewels was sweaty and sulfuric,   with one another in an exchange so slick, easy, and conspiratorial, it felt like we were in on their shared language. Run the Jewels 3 is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Killer Mike (vocals)   (vocals) Trackstar the DJ (DJ) Producers: Abby O’Neill, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Nick Michael, Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"By the time Kay Schwister got her diagnosis last summer, she couldn’t talk anymore. But she could still scowl, and scowl she did. After weeks of decline and no clue what was causing it, doctors had told Schwister  —   a    vocational rehab counselor and mother of two from Chicago  —   that she had an incurable disease called   disease, or CJD. The disease was shrinking Kay’s brain, and riddling it with holes. She would likely live only a few more weeks, the doctors said. It was a diagnosis that no one could ever want. But the fact that Schwister was able to get a firm diagnosis while still alive is a relatively new development that represents a step forward in understanding a group of devastating neurological disorders. And, some biochemists say, it could lead to better ways of diagnosing brain diseases that are much more common, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. For Kay Schwister, it all started in the spring of 2016, when she started getting headaches and feeling dizzy all the time. Aging, she told herself, just didn’t feel very good. Over the next few weeks, she got steadily worse. ”She got to the point where she was so nauseous and so dizzy that she stopped driving and actually stopped working,” says her husband, Tim Schwister. By the time Kay entered the emergency room last June, her speech had changed. She was enunciating things in a strange way, and finishing each sentence on a really high note. Doctors drew blood and spinal fluid and tested it for things like multiple sclerosis and mercury poisoning. Those tests came back negative. Soon, Kay couldn’t talk or walk. ”Not knowing what we were dealing with was probably one of the hardest things to ever go through in life,” says Tim. ”We really wanted to know what we were up against, and if there was anything that we could do.” Ultimately, Kay’s doctors ordered a newly developed test for   disease  —   a very rare condition that’s thought to kill about 1 in a million people worldwide every year, including about 300 deaths annually in the U. S. That test came back positive. About a month after Kay entered the hospital, the Schwisters had their answer. It was ugly, but still an answer. Normal proteins in Kay’s brain had started misfolding, bending themselves into an unnatural shape and coaxing other proteins to do the same, like some kind of malicious origami. These misshapen proteins, known as prions, formed clumps in the brain, causing neurons to die. ”It’s almost as if it starts to turn certain portions of your brain off,” says Tim. The vast majority of CJD cases worldwide are like Kay’s, popping up for no apparent reason. Other cases seem to be inherited. A very small number of patients have contracted the illness through close contact with material from an infected person’s brain or nervous system  —   during certain transplant procedures or via contaminated surgical equipment, for example. And another form, variant CJD, is the human version of mad cow disease, and has been linked to eating infected beef. The last known time someone in the U. S. got CJD from contaminated surgical tools was in 1976 the last known U. S. death due to CJD acquired from infected human tissue was in 2014, says Safar, likely acquired years before from contaminated human growth hormone. There is no cure or treatment for CJD. All Tim could do for his life partner of 35 years was to try to make her as comfortable as possible. Still, having a diagnosis spurred the many people who loved Kay into action, Tim says. Family and friends flew in from all over the country to visit. She was rarely alone. ”Every day, it was nonstop,” Tim says. ”People that were there to visit with her, just to try to keep her spirits up.” She never went home. Kay Schwister died within seven weeks of entering the hospital. Until recently, families like the Schwisters wouldn’t have known what their loved one was suffering from until it was all over, when an autopsy might have shown that the brain was smaller than expected. Under a microscope and using a special stain, a pathologist would have seen holes in the brain, along with tangles and clumps of misfolded proteins. But diagnosis after death is too late  —   not just for the patient and families, but also for researchers trying to study potential therapies to slow down or stop the progression of the disease. These same diagnostic frustrations apply to some of the most common forms of dementia, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, which are also associated with protein misfolding. ”The trouble with many of these diseases, some of which are incredibly prevalent, is that it can take months or years [to diagnose],” says Byron Caughey, a biochemist at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont. a part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. A previous spinal fluid assay for CJD could identify brain cell injury, but not the cause of that injury. That’s why Caughey recently teamed up with scientists in Italy, Japan and the U. K. to develop a different test. It’s called   which stands for ”    conversion.” The test, developed a few years ago and still available via only a few laboratories, harnesses the bad protein’s ability to induce normal, neighboring proteins to take on its twisted form. The test takes about 90 hours and involves getting a sample of spinal fluid, shaking it up with normal proteins and waiting to see if the normal proteins misfold. Caughey and some Italian scientists have even figured out how to avoid the spinal tap they can make the test work with a sample of cells taken from deep inside a patient’s nostril, from a spot that is separated from the brain by just a bony partition. ”So, we now have the ability to collect a little bit of spinal fluid or nasal brushing from patients while they’re still alive, and with quite a high degree of certainty, tell whether or not they have a prion disease,” says Caughey. In several studies now, he says, the   test has sensitively and specifically identified CJD prions in symptomatic patients the test has since been distributed to CJD surveillance centers in multiple countries. ”Technologically, it’s a major new paradigm for testing protein misfolding,” says Dr. Jiri Safar, director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and one of Caughey’s collaborators. Since the center started using the assay in April 2015, it has tested more than 5, 000 samples from patients referred by doctors scattered around the U. S. Canada and Mexico. And within that group, Safar says, about 500 people tested positive for CJD. The assay costs about $50 to run. ”It’s a major game changer,” says Safar, who hopes wider use of the test in suspected cases will help to completely eliminate the already scant possibility of transmitting CJD through infected blood or organs. Caughey, Safar and colleagues reported in late November in the journal Annals of Neurology that a   version of their test was just as effective in diagnosing the disease as an autopsy or biopsy of a living brain (which is another diagnostic option, but a risky, invasive one). Alison Green, a biochemist at the University of Edinburgh in the U. K. is now working on a modified version of the test that has been shown capable of detecting Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia. ”It’s very important, because there is no other diagnostic test for Parkinson’s disease,” Green says. ”It’s purely a clinical diagnosis at present.” Parkinson’s is a chronic and progressive movement disorder that eventually includes symptoms of dementia in an estimated 50 to 80 percent of cases. Diagnosing it sometimes requires years of observation, at which point a patient has already lost a lot of neurons. In a small study published last summer, Green used a version of   that looks for   (a protein that’s associated with Parkinson’s) on 20 people who had a Parkinson’s diagnosis, and 15 people in a control group. ”And you can get a nice,   positive result after 120 hours,” she says. Nineteen out of 20 patients with Parkinson’s were correctly identified, and there were no false positives. Green is now replicating the study with 110 subjects. If the test proves to be as reliable as it was in her first study, Green says, it could become an important diagnostic tool for doctors to rapidly identify a patient’s ailment and start therapies as soon as possible, when they might still make a difference. ”A lot of these drugs or therapies are being introduced way too late because patients aren’t diagnosed early enough,” Green explains. ”And they may be effective treatments if you give them earlier.” She’s also applied for funding to develop a test that would look for abnormal   peptides, possible indicators of Alzheimer’s disease. The ultimate goal, says Green, is to have a whole bank of   assays so that patients with any kind of undiagnosed dementia can get answers. Knowing the prognosis earlier, she says, could give some patients and families more choices. ”If you have early onset dementia, do you really want to spend the last few years of your life working, or do you want to take early retirement?” says Green.   And even for diseases that have no option of being slowed or reversed, she says, a firm and accurate diagnosis can still offer something essential to families  —   a spur to move beyond tests and treatments. ”We really, truly wanted to know if there was something that we could do for her,” says Tim Schwister of his wife, Kay. The diagnosis let him and his sons know that chasing further treatment at that point wouldn’t help, and that the best they could do was to turn their attention to making Kay comfortable, and spending time with her. The diagnosis also helped the Schwisters connect with other families who’d gone through the same experience. In a time of such great loss, Tim says, ”it’s nice to know that you’re not alone.”"
"Stand in the center of this house and you’ll find yourself in the living room and the dining room. And the bedroom. Oh, and also the kitchen. At 500 square feet and designed to hold as many as six people, the house makes for quite a tiny home. But for many, it’s just enough for now. Since flooding in West Virginia last June killed at least 23 people and destroyed more than 5, 000 homes, residents have been struggling to find adequate housing. These small homes, built by high school students in nearby vocational schools, may be the solution. Dakota Carte, a student working on the building project at Carver Career Center in Charleston, stands inside one of the houses, gesturing to different areas in the house. There’s a loft for sleeping up top. Then there’s a hot water tank, a fridge and a stove, all in close proximity. ”This is a tiny house, so everything is a little compact,” Carte says. The entire structure is a little bigger than a generous   closet. Because so many West Virginia families are still struggling, the school board decided students would build tiny homes for flood victims rather than working on bookshelves or birdhouses. ”Folks in West Virginia were still suffering even though all the press had gone away,” said Kathy D’Antoni, who oversees the state’s vocational schools. For the project, the schools received $20, 000 from the Board of Education, along with significant contributions from neighboring communities. So far, 15 homes have been built. By participating, students can learn practical skills like carpentry, electrical work and plumbing. Emily Glover, a student at Marion County Technical Center, worked on construction with classmates after school. ”You learn everything from laying it out to actually building it,” she said. One of these homes will belong to Brenda Rivers, who lost her house to the flood last June. For months, she lived in a camper on the back of her daughter’s property. She had partial flood insurance and received assistance from the federal government to help pay off her mortgage. Even then, she couldn’t afford the down payment for another home. Her son offered her a mobile home, but she said she couldn’t find anyone to move it. ”The weather was getting bad, and I said ’Just let me have my tiny house until spring or summer,’” she said. Rivers said she can’t imagine living in the tiny home  . (It is pretty tiny, after all.) But for her and other families benefiting from the project, the houses are a tiny but altogether significant step in regaining a home."
"Stories about black women whose employers asked them to cut their dreadlocks or to trim their big afros have surfaced with more frequency in the last few years. Now a new study confirms that many people  —   including black ones  —   have a bias against the types and styles of natural hair worn by black people. The ”Good Hair Study” was conducted by Perception Institute, which describes itself as ”a consortium of researchers, advocates and strategists” that uses emotional and psychological research to identify and reduce bias in areas such as law enforcement, education, civil justice and the workplace. The study resulted from a partnership with Shea Moisture, a   hair and body products company, and aimed to better understand the connection between implicit bias and textured hair. The Good Hair Study asked over 4, 000 participants to take an online IAT, or implicit association test, which involves   photos of black women with smooth and natural hair, and rotating word associations with both. According to the study, ”a majority of people, regardless of race and gender, hold some bias towards women of color based on their hair.” But the results also indicate that this bias is learned behavior, and can be unlearned. In the study, millennials of all races came across as more accepting of textured hair. And ”naturalistas,” women who choose to wear their hair natural, ”showed either no bias or a slight preference for textured hair.” Some key findings confirm that black women suffer more anxiety around hair issues, and spend more on hair care than their white peers. They are almost twice as likely to experience social pressure at work to straighten their hair compared to white women. The study also concludes that, ”White women demonstrate the strongest bias  —   both explicit and implicit  —   against textured hair.” They rated it as ”less beautiful,” ”less  ” and ”less professional than smooth hair.” However, white women who are in contact with black women naturalistas demonstrated lower levels of bias. Given that white women make up a large majority of the 38 percent of female managers who decide what looks are appropriate for work, legal conflicts sometimes ensue. And courts tend to rule in favor of employers in such cases. Noliwe Rooks, a Cornell University professor who writes about the intersection of beauty and race, says for some reason, natural black hair just frightens some white people. ”I have yet to come across an actual court case . .. where the texture of hair for another racial group has reached the point of a court case,” she said. The good news is that natural hair has become increasingly popular, as black women decide to give their hair a break from chemicals and heat. The Boston Globe reported that ”sales of hair relaxer dropped from $206 million in 2008 to $152 million in 2013.” At the same time, demand for products for natural hair began to increase. Tellingly, beauty companies outside the black beauty and hair industries began to notice. Carol’s Daughter was bought by L’Oréal in 2014. Today, numerous      companies have lines for naturally curly hair. There are even online curl pattern charts that ”grade” curls’ looseness or tightness to guide the towards products that will work best for her. It seems the naturalistas are making inroads. Certainly, popular culture is infused with images of women with natural, unstraightened hair: Tracee Ellis Ross, Yara Shahidi and Marsai Martin have all gotten praise for frequently going au naturelle on their hit show  . Esperanza Spaulding reigns over her bass with a towering Afro. NBC viewers reeled when Tamron Hall traded her slick pixie for a little curly fro in 2014. So for younger people, natural hair is just that  —   a natural, obvious thing to wear. Even the U. S. Army got on board after an initial stumble. If trends signal what’s ahead, workplaces may eventually become safe havens for natural hair, which has endured as a touchstone in racial politics for far too long."
"Most of us have reached for a painkiller, at one time or another, only to discover the date on the label shows it has expired. But what does an ”expiration” date on medicine really mean? Is it dangerous if you take it anyway? Less effective? It turns out that date stamped on the label actually means a lot. It’s based on scientific evidence gathered by the manufacturer showing how long the drug’s potency lasts. Companies expose their medications to different environments, different temperatures and humidity levels to see just how long it takes for the medication to degrade to the point that its effectiveness is compromised. The general rule, says pharmacist Mike Fossler, with the American College of Clinical Pharmacology, is that once a drug is degraded by 10 percent it has reached ”the end of its useful life.” If you take it months or even years past the expiration date, it’s unlikely to do you any harm, he says it just might not do you much good. That may not be a big deal if you’re treating a headache, but if you’re fighting a bacterial infection with antibiotics like amoxicillin or ciprofloxacin, for example, using less than fully potent drugs could fail to treat the infection and lead to more serious illness. Pharmacist Mohamed Jalloh, a spokesman for the American Pharmacists Association, says there’s an even bigger reason not to rely on old drugs: antibiotic resistance. When you inadvertently ”underdose” yourself by taking antibiotics that aren’t full strength, he says, you run the risk that the bacteria you’re battling will figure out not only how to defeat this weakened drug, but other antibiotics, too. At least 23, 000 people each year in the U. S. die from infections that have become resistant to antibiotics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ”If your medicine has expired, don’t use it,” concurs Ilisa Bernstein, deputy director of the office of compliance in the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. That goes for    drugs, as well as prescription meds. Check the expiration date before even buying those pain relievers or allergy tablets, some pharmacists advise  —   the same way you check your milk. Buy the one with the date that’s furthest away. ”Once the expiration date has passed,” Bernstein says, ”there is no guarantee that the medicine will be safe and effective.” Of course, even new drugs can quickly lose potency if they’re not stored properly. Get those pills out of the bathroom ”medicine cabinet” now, pharmacists say. The steam from your shower or shave kills pills fast. ”Medicines like the kind of environment that people like  —   a little dry and not too hot or cold,” Fossler says. And, of course, don’t take medication to the beach or leave it in a hot car. Like humidity, heat degrades a medicine’s active ingredients. Some medications are more vulnerable than others, so check the label. Insulin, certain immunotherapy drugs, and some children’s pain relievers and cold remedies require refrigeration and protection from light. And compared to capsules and tablets, ”liquids are not as highly preserved,” says Barbara Kochanowski, a scientist with the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. Liquid drugs can more easily become contaminated with bacteria and fungus. Anytime you see a change in the color, odor or consistency of a drug  —   such as a cream turning into a runny solution  —   consider it a red flag, Kochanowski says, and consult your pharmacist. It’s probably time to toss that medication. Some drugstores, hospitals with pharmacies, drugmakers and   centers have been authorized by the federal government, in recent years, to serve as ”  ” sites for some drugs that are expired, or no longer needed. You can check the FDA and Drug Enforcement Agency websites for their latest guidance on the safest ways to dispose of various drugs."
"Pinball is big business in Japan. Known as pachinko, the   industry is dominated by Korean Japanese, an immigrant community that has been unwelcome and   for generations. Min Jin Lee’s new novel Pachinko is about much more than the game. It’s about the story of one family’s struggle to fit into a society that treats them with contempt. Lee got the idea for her book when she was still a college student. It was 1989 and she went to a lecture by an American missionary who had been working with the Korean Japanese in Japan. He told a story about a    boy who committed suicide. After his death the boy’s parents found his school yearbook. ”And in this yearbook several of his classmates had written things like: Go back to your country,” Lee says. ”They had written the words: die, die, die. The parents were born in Japan, the boy was born in Japan. . .. That story just really could not be more fixed in my brain.” Lee, a   was determined to tell the history of Koreans in Japan. She lived there for a while and interviewed many Korean Japanese to get a sense of what life was like for them. She decided to tell their history through a multigenerational family story. ”I was very interested in history but I also thought, you know, history is not that interesting sometimes and it can feel a bit medicinal,” she says. ”I wanted . .. to give these people flesh and blood in the same way that people that I know have contradictions and betrayals and deaths and marriages and the kind of texture of life.” The story begins in the early 20th century when Korea is already under Japanese rule. A young girl named Sunja is growing up in a small fishing village on a tiny Korean Island. She falls in love with a good looking, older man from the mainland. When she becomes pregnant he tells her he is already married. Sunja is saved from disgrace by a Christian minister staying at her family’s boarding house who offers to marry her and take her to Japan. ”She’s a child, she’s 16,” Lee says. ”When she goes to Japan she simply has no idea what’s going to wait for her. And to be frank, most Koreans really didn’t know that this was going to happen. They didn’t know that the history would turn out this way.” The impoverished Koreans who left their occupied homeland didn’t find life much easier in Japan. Sunja has two sons and her husband takes care of them both. But when he is arrested for preaching Christianity, her life becomes even more difficult. She and her children survive World War II but then the Korean War breaks out. With the war and partition of Korea, it becomes almost impossible for Sunja to return to her homeland. Twenty years later she still yearns for what she has lost. After the war the pachinko parlors start popping up all over in Japan. Both of Sunja’s sons find work in the noisy pin ball dens which are often run by Korean Japanese. ”The Korean Japanese could not find legal employment for . .. seven or eight decades,” Lee explains. ”Even now they have great difficulty finding jobs in certain sectors. So, in pachinko they were able to find a kind of employment haven.” Though they may have found employment, and in many cases, financial success, that didn’t necessarily translate into respect. Despite its popularity, the Japanese look down on pachinko parlors as gambling dens with connections to criminals. Even so, one of Sunja’s sons thrives in the business. But her firstborn, Noa, never comes to terms with the circumstances of his life. ”Noa really is symbolic,” Lee says. ”He is an emblem of so many people that I met who wanted very desperately to just belong. And they would do everything they possibly could within legal channels to be considered a respectable human being.” As a naturalized American who feels she belongs in this country, Lee says it is hard for her to understand that generations of Koreans have never been fully accepted in Japan. But many of the Korean Japanese she interviewed dismissed her concerns. They have adapted to living in Japan even if their presence there is still not fully embraced."
"Updated with arguments, A   panel of the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals had tough questions Tuesday for both sides arguing over the future of President Trump’s executive order barring refugees and citizens of seven   countries from entering the United States. Arguing for the administration, August Flentje, special counsel to the assistant attorney general, urged the judges to stay a temporary restraining order issued by District Judge James L. Robart of Seattle. His order last week put the Trump travel ban on hold. Flentje argued that the plaintiffs, the states of Washington and Minnesota, did not have standing to challenge the president’s action because the executive order was ”well within the president’s power.” That led to a skeptical question from Judge Michelle Friedland, who asked, ”Are you arguing, then, that the president’s decision in that regard is unreviewable?” Flentje paused before saying yes. The attorney for the states challenging the travel ban also faced a grilling. Noah Purcell, solicitor general for the state of Washington, opened by saying that it’s the judiciary’s role to check abuses by the executive branch. ”But the president is asking this court to abdicate that role here, to reinstate the executive order without meaningful judicial review and to throw this country back into chaos, ” he said. Judge Richard Clifton wondered whether the states could really prove that Trump’s ban amounted to an attempt to ban all Muslims from entering the country. ”I’m not entirely persuaded by the argument if only because the seven countries encompass only a small percentage of Muslims . ..,” said Clifton. ”I have trouble understanding why we’re supposed to infer religious animus when in fact the vast majority of Muslims would not be affected as residents of those nations.” Purcell responded that ”to prove religious discrimination we do not need to prove that this order harms only Muslims, or that it harms every Muslim.” The legal arguments lasted just over an hour. They were conducted over the phone since the three judges preside in three different states. In his closing statement, Flentje, perhaps sensing that the court leaned away from the administration’s position, argued that the temporary restraining order on the president’s travel ban was too broad and he urged the judges ”to stay the injunction or to limit it to the presentation of the state of Washington.” Here’s our original post: The 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Tuesday evening over whether President Trump’s travel ban should remain on hold or go back into effect. Trump’s executive order temporarily barred visa holders from seven   countries, as well as all refugees, from entering the country. It was signed on Jan. 27 and quickly challenged by an array of lawsuits. One of those cases resulted in a temporary restraining order, blocking the ban  —   for now  —   from going into effect. It’s that restraining order, not the ban as a whole, that lawyers will be arguing over Tuesday. The arguments before a   panel will be held by telephone at 6 p. m. ET (3 p. m. PT) and you can listen live online. Here are a few things to know before the arguments get going: How did we get here?  Trump’s original executive order (which we’ve annotated here) bars travelers from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia for 90 days, suspends new refugee admissions for 120 days, and blocks refugees from Syria indefinitely. The White House denies that this amounts to a ”Muslim ban,” as Trump called for during the presidential election. But all seven of the listed countries are majority Muslim. The order calls for the eventual prioritization of refugee claims from people of ”minority religions” in their country of origin  —   and in an interview Trump said that Christians from the Middle East would be prioritized. On Jan. 30, Washington became the first state to sue the administration, arguing that the order is discriminatory and violates the Constitution as well as federal law. (The lawsuit is one of many challenging the travel ban.) That case  —   with Minnesota joining Washington  —   resulted in Judge James L. Robart siding with the states in granting a temporary restraining order that blocked the ban from being enforced until the court case could move forward. The Department of Justice asked the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately reinstate the ban. The court refused to immediately intervene but asked the states and the DOJ to make more arguments for and against the restraining order. Both sides have filed briefs to try to make their case and will be presenting them again in oral arguments Tuesday night. What’s at stake Tuesday? The appeals court will not decide the overall legality or constitutionality of Trump’s travel ban. The only thing under consideration Tuesday is the temporary suspension of the travel ban. If the court upholds the temporary restraining order, then the ban will continue to not be enforced as the court case moves forward. If the court sides with the U. S. government, the ban will go back into effect for now  —   and the case against the order will still move forward. On the law and policy blog Just Security, Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman  —   who served in the Justice Department under President Barack Obama  —   notes that the court’s decision might not actually be that exciting. ”Just so that everyone’s expectations are not unduly raised (and then dashed),” he writes, there’s ”a very real possibility” that the court won’t consider the merits of the case at all. A temporary restraining order can’t usually be appealed, as the government acknowledges. The DOJ argues that it is able to appeal this one, based on technical reasons involving the difference between a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction. Lederman says the judges might well focus on that procedural distinction  —   whether it can be appealed in the first place  —   instead of other elements of the case. What are the arguments on each side? Aside from the procedural element (which relies on riveting questions like what counts as an adversary hearing, and how long the TRO will be in effect) the two sides are arguing over who is more likely to win the overall case over Trump’s travel ban. The likelihood of winning is a factor in determining whether a temporary restraining order is appropriate. The DOJ cites the president’s broad authority on immigration issues as a reason the government is likely to win this case, eventually. The states, meanwhile, say they’ll win, based on their evidence that the travel ban was designed to discriminate on the basis of religion and violates the right to due process. Then there’s the question of ”irreparable harm.” Washington state originally asked for the restraining order because it argued the travel ban was actively harming its residents. The federal government, meanwhile, argues that suspending the ban is causing harm by violating the separation of powers and exposing citizens to risk, and also because it amounts to ”judicial  ” of the president’s judgment on national security. (The state says the temporary restraining order just restores the status quo from before the ban, and that the DOJ’s argument ”makes no sense. ”) The DOJ also argues that even if it were appropriate, the temporary restraining order should have been imposed more narrowly, rather than nationwide  —   while the states say a nationwide halt was necessary to protect residents who might travel through a port of entry anywhere in the country. Who are the judges who will decide?  The arguments on each side will be presented to a   panel of the 9th Circuit: William Canby Jr. Richard Clifton and Michelle T. Friedland. Canby was appointed by Jimmy Carter, Clifton by George W. Bush and Friedland by Obama. What happens next? As the appeals court considers the DOJ’s request to reimpose the executive order, the case continues to move forward at the district level. A host of other lawsuits challenging the executive order are also unfolding across the country  —   The Hill reports that there are more than 50 such lawsuits brought by state attorneys general, religious groups and individuals. Eventually, one of the cases might well make it before the U. S. Supreme Court. Bob Ferguson, the attorney general of Washington state, told NPR’s Michel Martin he sees that as ”entirely possible.” As NPR’s Nina Totenberg has reported, Senate Democrats have signaled that the executive order might factor into confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee for the court’s open seat, as they weigh his position on the legality and constitutionality of the travel ban."
"Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly took the blame for the rocky rollout of President Trump’s travel ban on people from seven mostly Muslim countries. Kelly defended the ban in an appearance before the House Homeland Security Committee, which he labeled a ”pause,” as lawful and constitutional. But he said he should have given lawmakers a heads up before the president signed the order. ”This is all on me,” Kelly contended. ”I should have delayed it just a bit, so I could talk to members of Congress particularly the leadership of committees like this to prepare them for what was coming.” Kelly rebutted criticism from lawmakers upset with how some travelers were reportedly treated at airports the weekend the order was put in place. He said no one was forced to stand for hours at a time and that the Customs and Border Patrol Agents under his command behaved professionally. He said the temporary immigration ban was needed because vetting in the affected nations was ”loose” and that many of the countries on the list were failed states. Asked why Saudi Arabia, where most of the   hijackers came from, was not on the list, he said they have ”very very good police forces and intelligence forces, so we know when someone comes here from Saudi Arabia who they are and what they’ve been up to.” Democrats pushed back. Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, the senior Democrat on the panel, argued that the ban could put Americans at risk. Pointing to a picture of a young Somali girl holding a teddy bear, Thompson said she had been vetted ”for years.” Suspending the admission of people like her ”does nothing to make us safer,” Thompson said. ”To the contrary,” the executive order ”makes America less safe by serving as a recruitment and propaganda tool for terrorist groups.” Kelly said thousands of people who fought alongside ISIS in Syria could have the kind of papers that would allow them to get into Europe and then to the U. S. Kelly seemed to suggest judges might be too isolated to rule properly on the issue. He said he ”had nothing but respect for judges,” but ”in their world it’s a very academic, very almost in a vacuum discussion.” And Kelly added, ”Of course, in their court rooms, they’re protected by people like me.” Kelly also said it’s possible some terrorists have already entered the country while the court stay has been in place, but that no one will know until they act  —   or, as Kelly put it, ”until the boom.”"
"Outside the federal courthouse in downtown Seattle last Friday afternoon, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson suddenly found himself in the national spotlight after federal Judge James L. Robart had just imposed an immediate, nationwide halt to President Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees. As camera shutters clicked, Ferguson played David to Trump’s Goliath. ”The law is a powerful thing,” Ferguson said. ”It has the ability to hold everybody accountable to it and that includes the president of the United States.” Now, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing Ferguson’s case against the Trump administration a decision is expected later this week. In the space of a few days, Ferguson, a Democrat just beginning his second term, has gone from unknown state attorney general in the far corner of the country to making national headlines. He told member station KUOW in Seattle it was an ”unusual experience.” ”I mean CNN called my    mother in Seattle trying to track me down so they could talk to me on Friday night for example,” Ferguson said. Professional chess player, Ferguson and his team moved swiftly after Trump issued his executive order. Within 72 hours, they had drafted a lawsuit and rounded up declarations of support from   companies like Amazon and Expedia. Ferguson compared the pace to his time on the professional chess circuit in Europe playing under the clock. ”This is what reminds me of that,” he told KUOW. ”When constitutional rights are involved you have to be willing to move quickly and play in that ’time trouble’ as a lawyer that’s what our team is doing.” Approximately 100 companies, more than a dozen states and 10 former   national security, foreign policy and intelligence officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, have put their support behind Ferguson’s lawsuit. Ferguson got help rounding up that backing from Harold Koh, a law professor at Yale University. Koh says the effort began in earnest when a mutual friend put him in touch last Saturday with Washington state Solicitor General Noah Purcell, who works for Ferguson. ”And then suddenly it’s, ’Gee can you file something by tomorrow?’ and it’s on Super Bowl weekend too and I’m a big Patriots fan so my thought [is] try to get this done before the kickoff,” Koh joked in a phone interview. Soon the former U. S. officials were emailing around a draft   declaration that condemned Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees as ”unnecessary” and harmful to U. S. national security and foreign policy. Koh says to file the declaration with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the former officials took pictures of their signatures with their phones and emailed the photos to submit to the court. Unlikely foil, Ferguson might seem an unlikely foil to the new president. At 51, he still has a boyish face framed by glasses and a mop of dark hair. But longtime Democratic political consultant Christian Sinderman, who has worked for Ferguson, says in many ways he has been preparing for years for a moment like this. ”You know there’s a Harry   quality of Bob Ferguson, the glasses, the serious intent and the sense of almost destiny in standing up for what’s right and the little guy,” Sinderman said. This isn’t the first time Ferguson has gone up against the federal government in court. He repeatedly sued the Obama administration over the pace of cleanup at the Hanford nuclear site in southeast Washington. Hanford is home to 56 million gallons of radioactive waste left over from plutonium production during World War II and the Cold War. More recently, Ferguson has made headlines at home by calling for a repeal of the death penalty and for proposing a ban on   assault weapons. ”Higher ambitions” Ferguson grew up the sixth of seven children in a Catholic family in Seattle. His mother was a special education teacher and his father worked at Boeing. At the University of Washington, Ferguson was student body president. Before attending law school at New York University, he and a college friend, Brian Bennett, spent six weeks driving around the country with the goal of seeing a game at every Major League Baseball stadium. ”It was a   trip in my   old Honda hatchback and we made it to each one. My car broke down a few times, a number of stories along the way but we did actually make it to each ballpark,” Bennett said, recalling the trip recently. Bennett, now an attorney himself, describes Ferguson as fiercely competitive in everything he does. He noted that Ferguson won his first campaign for public office in 2003 by defeating the chair of the King County Council in Seattle  —   a fellow Democrat. Even before his lawsuit against the Trump administration, Ferguson was viewed as a likely candidate for Washington governor in 2020. Sinderman believes Ferguson is a tactician who looks for opportunities to both make a difference and make a name for himself. ”Since Bob first came into public life in Washington state, it’s been clear that he’s got higher ambitions than the current office that he’s working in,” Sinderman said. While Ferguson has vowed to take the case to the U. S. Supreme Court if necessary, it is also apparent that he and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee are prepared to go to court again if the Trump administration issues more executive orders on issues like immigration, climate change, voting rights or health care. As Inslee told The Washington Post recently, ”This is what the resistance looks like.”"
"Updated at 4:45 p. m. ET, The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has granted an easement allowing the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under the Missouri River north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, paving the way for construction of the final 1. 5 miles of the nearly   pipeline. In doing so, the Army cut short its environmental impact assessment and the public comment period associated with it. In a Jan. 18 notice published in the Federal Register the Army had said it would accept public comments on the project through Feb. 20, still nearly two weeks away. On Jan. 24, President Trump signed a memorandum encouraging the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the review and approval process, and last week the Army said that it had been directed to expedite its review of the route. In a letter to Congress announcing the decision, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army Paul Cramer cited the president’s memorandum, saying that ”consistent with the direction” in the memo, his agency would ”waive its policy to wait 14 days after Congressional notification before granting an easement.” He wrote that the Army would officially grant the easement as soon as Wednesday afternoon, at which point the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, would be able to begin construction. The letter noted that the nature of the project  —   which involves drilling a horizontal hole under a part of the Missouri River known as Lake Oahe for a   diameter pipe  —   does not require a separate construction license. That gives opponents of the pipeline very little time to pursue legal action, as the Standing Rock Sioux promised to do after the president’s memorandum was signed. In a Jan. 31 statement, the tribe said it would ”vigorously pursue legal action to ensure the environmental impact statement order issued late last year is followed so the pipeline process is legal, fair and accurate.” A request by the tribe to halt the project was not granted by a U. S. district judge, as the Chicago Tribune reported. The director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, which has helped organize demonstrations against the pipeline since last summer, released a statement promising to fight the Army’s decision. ”The granting of an easement, without any environmental review or tribal consultation, is not the end of this fight  —   it is the new beginning,” he wrote. ”Expect mass resistance far beyond what Trump has seen so far. . .. Our tribal nations and Indigenous grassroots peoples on the frontlines have had no input on this process.” On Tuesday morning, a post to the Facebook page for the Oceti Sakowin encampment south of the pipeline route told supporters of the protesters to submit public comments to the Army’s environmental assessment page. After the Army’s decision was announced, a post to the Facebook page for the nearby Sacred Stone Camp said, ”PLEASE, THIS IS OUR LAST STAND.” More than 70 people were arrested last week near the pipeline’s route, when the Morton County Sheriff’s office moved people off what it said was privately owned land."
"The confirmation today of Betsy DeVos as the 11th U. S. secretary of education brought angry denunciations and firm pledges of support  —   no surprise for a Cabinet nominee who had become a lightning rod for Americans’ views about their public schools. Here’s our roundup, with excerpts from reactions around the country: First, DeVos herself tweeted shortly after her confirmation: And this tweet from Vice President Pence, who cast the   vote in the Senate: President Trump tweeted his congratulations: The teachers unions, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union with 3 million members, issued this statement: ”Americans across the nation drove a bipartisan repudiation of the   agenda for students and public education. Today’s outcome marks only the beginning of the resistance.” And here’s Randi Weingarten, president of the 1. 6   American Federation of Teachers: ” . .. DeVos shows an antipathy for public schools a   embrace of private,   alternatives and a lack of basic understanding of what children need to succeed in school.” Education groups, The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools: ”We believe that Secretary DeVos will put students and families first and we look forward to working with her to ensure each child has access to a   public school and a safe and supportive environment in which to learn.” Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, who now leads the Foundation for Excellence in Education: ”Under Secretary DeVos’ leadership, I am confident the federal government will loosen its grip on our education system and return power to the states and parents where it rightfully belongs.” Todd A. Cox, director of policy for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.: ”[DeVos] demonstrated a breathtaking dearth of qualifications to lead the Department of Education. From her lack of understanding of and commitment to basic education policy and legal obligations under critical federal civil rights laws, she demonstrated time and again that she was not fit to serve as Secretary of Education.” John B. King Jr. is the incoming president and CEO of The Education Trust and DeVos’ predecessor as education secretary under President Obama: ”Throughout the confirmation process, The Education Trust expressed concerns about Betsy DeVos’ commitment to fully embracing public education and to using the full range of tools at the Secretary’s disposal. . .. As the former Secretary of Education, I sincerely hope that Ms. DeVos will work hard to prove these concerns wrong and will lead the Department in a manner that protects fundamental civil rights and promotes opportunity and achievement for all students.” Conflicting views from the Senate, Lamar Alexander,  . is the chairman of the Senate committee that handles education and a former secretary of education: ”I championed Betsy DeVos because she will implement the new law fixing No Child Left Behind the way Congress wrote it: to reverse the trend toward a national school board and restore local control of Tennessee’s public schools. Under her leadership, there will be no Washington mandates for Common Core, for teacher evaluation, or for vouchers.” Sen. Al Franken,  .: ” . .. she is the most incompetent   nominee I have ever seen. Last night, I urged my Republican colleagues to oppose her nomination, because if we cannot set party loyalty aside long enough to perform the essential duty of vetting the President’s nominees, then I don’t know what we are even doing here.” The PTA, From a statement by National PTA President Laura Bay: ”National PTA is committed to working collaboratively with Secretary DeVos and the Department of Education to . .. advance policies that ensure all children reach their highest potential. Critical progress has been made to improve education, provide educational equity for all children and make sure every child is prepared for   success. We cannot go backward.” The National School Boards Association, From a statement by Thomas J. Gentzel, executive director and CEO: ”This is a pivotal time in public education and our nation’s school children deserve the best education possible. We must and we can enhance public education by working together to find and implement the best ideas to accomplish this.”"
"Today the Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos as President Trump’s education secretary,  . Vice President Pence had to cast an unprecedented   vote, after hearings that became fodder for Saturday Night Live after angry constituents swamped Senate offices with 1. 5 million calls a day after two Republican senators defected and Democrats held the floor overnight in protest. The    philanthropist and activist from Michigan takes over the leadership and management of a federal bureaucracy with 4, 400 employees and a $68 billion annual budget. Now, the question is: How much will actually change for the nation’s 50 million public school students and 20 million college students? Perhaps her opponents should take a deep breath. The federal role in education policy is limited. Less than 10 percent of funding for   schools comes from the feds, for example. That said, here’s what we’ll be watching in the coming weeks and months. On the higher ed side, The Higher Education Act is up for reauthorization. Three issues that may come up early in a DeVos Education Department: the role of   college costs and enforcement of Title IX (which governs sex discrimination, including sexual assault cases). On the   side, The headline here is: More state   power. Regular readers of our NPR Ed blog know that the main   education law was reauthorized last year as the Every Student Succeeds Act, ESSA, which covers annual testing, among other things. The new law gave more authority to the states, at the expense of the federal government, to identify and remedy failing schools. The Trump administration has already paused the process of ESSA implementation. Republicans in Congress have moved to use a   law called the Congressional Review Act to throw out the new accountability rules altogether. That leaves states in a situation that some Democrats and advocates have dubbed ”chaos and delay.” Other groups, including the National Governors Association, have said they welcome having still more authority at the state level. Some civil rights advocates have raised concerns that, in the absence of a strong federal hand, some states will be less vigilant than others in identifying and correcting historic educational inequities of race and class. DeVos’ responses to Sen. Patty Murray,  . in her controversial written questionnaire, indicate that she comes down on the side of states’ rights: ”It is necessary and critical for states to have flexibility to determine how to identify and improve schools.” DeVos’ department may take a leaf from Arne Duncan’s book and set up a competitive grant program that encourages states to expand school choice. If so, we’ll likely be hearing more about the benefits of private, virtual, religious and   schools. The school reforms DeVos backed in Michigan have favored   charter school operators. And her husband previously held financial stakes in the   and online K12 Inc. whose numbers she (erroneously) cited  in defending virtual schools in her written answers to the Senate. The organization she chaired, the American Federation for Children, favors both vouchers and a device called ”tax credit scholarships,” which allows companies to offset tax liability by funding students to attend private schools. In Florida, which the AFC has called out as a model program, 70 percent of these scholarships go to religiously affiliated schools. "
"This story is part one of a   investigation. Read part two here. Ellen Bethea sat alongside her husband’s hospital bed after doctors told her that Archie, the man she had been married to for almost five decades, wouldn’t make it. ”As soon as everybody else was asleep and I was sitting there with him, he passed on,” she remembers. ”So I think he kind of waited for me to be with him.” Bethea says her husband had several health problems and died of liver disease. Later that day in November 2015, the staff at the hospital near her Jacksonville, Fla. home asked Bethea something she hadn’t prepared for: Which funeral home did she want to use? Bethea had never planned a funeral before, but knew of only one in town  —     Funeral Home of Jacksonville. Some of her family and friends had used it and, she said, it had a good reputation. She and her family went there the next day. After meeting with a staff member, they walked out with a bill of over $7, 000. Bethea provided a copy of the itemized funeral bill to NPR. One thing quickly stood out, but only if you know something about Jacksonville’s funeral market. The cost of Archie’s cremation  —   $3, 295  —   was more than twice the amount charged elsewhere in Jacksonville by the company that owns  . The cremations are done in the same place and in the same way. In a   investigation into pricing and marketing in the funeral business, also known as the death care industry, NPR spoke with funeral directors, consumers and regulators. We collected price information from around the country and visited providers. We found a confusing, unhelpful system that seems designed to be impenetrable by average consumers, who must make costly decisions at a time of grief and financial stress. Funeral homes often aren’t forthcoming about how much things cost, or embed the information in elaborate package deals that can drive up the price of saying goodbye to loved ones. While most funeral businesses have websites, most omit prices from the sites, making it more difficult for families to compare prices or shop around. NPR reporters also found it difficult to get prices from many funeral homes, and federal regulators routinely find the homes violating a law that requires price disclosures. In Jacksonville,   and several other businesses in and around Jacksonville are part of a large,   portfolio of about 1, 500 funeral homes and several hundred cemeteries. The owner and operator is Service Corporation International (SCI) a   company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The   firm claims 16 percent of the $19 billion North American death care market, which includes the U. S. and Canada. Company documents say it has 24, 000 employees and is the largest owner of funeral homes and cemeteries in the world. In Jacksonville, SCI sells cremations under the    Memorial brand at large, luxurious funeral homes. The company also sells them for lower prices at   storefront outlets under other brands such as Neptune Society and National Cremation Society. In communities around the country, it’s common to find wide swings in prices for funeral services. ”That to me, starts to cross a line into consumer deception,” says Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a death care industry watchdog group based in Burlington, Vt. Slocum was talking generally about markets such as Jacksonville, where a company’s centralized crematory handles remains from a variety of differently branded outlets  —   from posh funeral homes to humble storefront cremation societies. The cremations are all the same, but some will cost much more than others, depending on where the consumer made the arrangements, and which of the company’s brand names appears on the invoice. ”You only get that lower price for the cremation society if you happen to know that it exists and is owned by the same business,” Slocum says. ”I’m not saying they’re doing something illegal, but I am questioning whether or not we can really say, ’Oh, they give a much higher level of service.’ ” The cremations arranged through all those outlets are performed in a large crematory at 517 Park St. in Jacksonville. The crematory’s supervisor, Troy Brown, wrote on his LinkedIn profile that the Park Street facility serves 14 funeral homes. ”Direct cremation is the same no matter where you go,” says Slocum. ”When we’re talking about situations where some consumers do not know or can’t find out that that same business offers the same service at a lower price, maybe at a similar location, that is when I would have a problem with it.” But Scott Gilligan, a lawyer for the National Funeral Directors Association, says comparing the two cremations is ”like saying all weddings are the same.” ”Just like if I want a hamburger at a gourmet place, it’s the same hamburger I’m going to get at McDonald’s. But it’s going to cost more because of the atmosphere, because of what is being done. It’s choices,” Gilligan says. According to Gilligan, when consumers choose a funeral home, they’re generally not making that decision on price. They’re looking at other factors, such as reputation and location. When it comes to identical services, such as Jacksonville’s cremations, which have different brand names and different prices, Gilligan says: ”Well, that is simply someone offering a service, or offering a division, which is going to cater to people who are looking for the price.” One thing the storefront and the larger funeral homes have in common is an upselling strategy. Both try to sell consumers packages that bundle together multiple goods and services. This makes all of the funerals more expensive. Bethea says it happened to her. ”Well, actually, I think they only showed us one package that they had,” she says. That package, known as the Honor Cremation Service, included a number of extra charges, including $495 for stationery and $345 for an Internet memorial. That price premium is a problem the federal government has tried to fix with ”the Funeral Rule,” a regulation in place since 1984. It requires itemized price lists. But funeral directors are still free to emphasize packages in the sales process, as they did with Bethea. ”You know, Archie didn’t have hardly very much life insurance  —   maybe 5, 000  —   and I had, you know, a little bit of money in the bank, and it took everything.” SCI, whose officials declined to speak with NPR for this story, tells consumers in sales materials that buying a funeral package saves them money. But company executives tell investors a different story. In a presentation to Wall Street investors last year, the company said consumers spend an extra $1, 900, on average when they buy a package, versus an ”a la carte” funeral. For some context, the national median cost of a funeral with a burial, not including cemetery costs, is over $7, 000. SCI CEO Tom Ryan told investors: ”Think about society today. We are in a hurry, right? Everybody is on the clock . .. What we find is when we deliver these packages, people tend to spend more money because they’re buying more products and services.” He added that consumers, in fact, like the packages. ”And most importantly, we survey our customers, and the highest customer satisfaction scores come from people that select the packages. So we know we’re doing the right thing. The packages allow us to do that for all parties involved,” Ryan said. Company executives told analysts in July they’re rolling out a new    system that also increases   revenue. Packaging goods and services under multiple brands and setting different prices for identical services are strategies the company uses in many of its markets, which span 45 states and the District of Columbia. In Raleigh, N. C. for example, the company’s full service funeral home and storefront cremation office are across the street from each other. Crossing that street can save you  —   or cost you  —   $1, 895. Riley Beggin of NPR, Brian Latimer and Emily Siner of Nashville Public Radio, Marisa Demarco and Ed Williams of KUNM, and Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma contributed to this story."
"Updated at 4:50 p. m. ET, A wall of dangerous storms is moving across the South, threatening communities in their path with high winds, severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. The National Weather Service warned of severe thunderstorms and hail along the Mississippi coast and issued a series of rapidly updated tornado warnings for parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. The NWS New Orleans Office is updating its Twitter account here with information for the U. S. Gulf Coast. The governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, declared a state of emergency after severe storms moved through the southeastern part of the state. Earlier Tuesday, the National Weather Service confirmed that multiple tornadoes touched down in and around New Orleans. The website for the electricity utility in New Orleans, Etergy, showed that more than 15, 000 customers had lost power. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told The Associated Press that dozens of people reportedly suffered minor injuries, and a spokesman for the city’s Emergency Medical Services described those injured as ”walking wounded.” At 11:33 a. m. CT, the NWS office for New Orleans tweeted, ”Dangerous tornado on the ground in New Orleans East. Take Shelter IMMEDIATELY! !!” Kimberly Chaney told the AP she was trying to record a video of the tornado when her mother pulled her inside their home. ”Four of them huddled in a middle bedroom as the twister hit, knocking down part of the roof and blowing out the windows,” the news service reported. ”[Chaney] says their cars all were totaled, and her niece is worried because her computer was damaged with her homework stuck inside.” ”[Chaney] says she told her: ’It’s a natural disaster. Your teacher will understand.’ ” Images of the area published by the New Orleans   showed funnel clouds, hail and dark skies. A video taken in one neighborhood showed twisted metal and downed trees, emergency vehicles and power lines crisscrossing debris. The newspaper reported at least one injury in New Orleans East. Outside Baton Rouge, local ABC affiliate WBRZ reported that two mobile homes were ”completely gone,” posting photos to Twitter of twisted metal in a tree and a toothbrush standing upright in the grass. Homes were damaged in the city of Donaldsonville, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where photos shared on the official town Twitter account showed a home without a roof, and wood and metal in the road."
"At a roundtable meeting with county sheriffs on Tuesday morning, President Trump repeated a false statistic about the U. S. murder rate that he repeatedly deployed on the campaign trail. On multiple occasions Trump has suggested the murder rate is at a historic high, a claim that has been repeatedly debunked. In fact, the murder rate is currently at less than half its peak. But here’s what Trump said to the county sheriffs at the White House on Tuesday: ”. .. the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that?   years. I used to use that  —   I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised, because the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, from 45 to 47 years.” According to the FBI, the murder rate for 2015, the last year for which data are available, was 4. 9 per 100, 000 people. Every year between 1965 and 2010, the FBI reported a higher rate than that. In some cases, it was much higher. In 1974, 1980, 1981 and 1991, the murder rate was at least twice as high as the 2015 rate. Then it dropped dramatically: From 2010 to 2014, the murder rate reached   lows, dropping from 4. 8 out of 100, 000 down to 4. 4. Last year, the FBI recorded an increase  —   back up to 4. 9. As NPR reported, that was a   rise of 11 percent. Trump repeated inaccurate statements about the murder rate several times on the campaign trail. But he got it basically right in his victory stump speech, when he noted that ”the murder rate has experienced its largest increase in 45 years”  —   as we noted in our fact check, that increase was, in fact, the biggest in 44 years. But he got it wrong again at the sheriffs’ gathering. Even with an 11 percent annual increase, murder rates remain lower than at almost any point in the last 47 years."
"At a gathering of sheriffs at the White House on Tuesday, President Trump joked about destroying the career of a Texas politician who is trying to set limits on an   police practice. The remark came after a participant at the sheriff’s roundtable raised the issue of asset forfeiture  —   that’s when the government seizes ”suspicious” assets and keeps them, even if the person who had the item was never convicted (or even accused) of a crime. The resulting funds often go directly into police budgets. Taking property from people who haven’t been convicted of a crime is legal, but controversial. ”Police confiscate cars, jewelry, cash and homes they think are connected to crime. But the people these things belong to may have done nothing wrong,” NPR’s Laura Sullivan explained a few years ago. ”Prosecutors say the seizures are helpful tools to combat drug dealers and drunken drivers,” Laura wrote. ”But for people who haven’t committed a crime, the cases are expensive to contest and often disproportionately affect people without means or access to a lawyer.” One sheriff at the gathering mentioned that some critics have said the practice violates due process, and called for limits. Trump responded: ”I’d like to look into that . .. There’s no reason for that,” suggesting that only ”bad people” would want to reform or limit asset forfeiture. A few minutes later, the following exchange occurred, as transcribed by the White House: PARTICIPANT: Mr. President, on asset forfeiture, we got a state senator in Texas who was talking about introducing legislation to require conviction before we can receive their forfeiture. THE PRESIDENT: Can you believe that? PARTICIPANT: And I told him that the cartel would build a monument to him in Mexico if he could get that legislation. THE PRESIDENT: Who is the state senator? Want to give his name? We’ll destroy his career. (Laughter.) Okay, thank you. The remark made national headlines. The sheriff did not give a name. But one state senator in Texas who introduced such legislation, and could plausibly have been the subject of the conversation, told the Dallas Morning News, ”I don’t know the sheriff. Quite frankly, I don’t pay much attention to what Trump says anymore.” The sheriff who raised the issue, Harold Eavenson of Rockwall County, told the newspaper he didn’t take the president literally and thought he was just being ”emphatic.” ”He was making a point about how much he opposed that kind of philosophy,” Eavenson told the Dallas Morning News. ”I appreciated what the president said. I can assure you that he is on our side.”"
"A widely used blood test to measure   trends can give imprecise results, depending on a person’s race and other factors. This test means diabetes can sometimes be misdiagnosed or managed poorly. Doctors have been cautioned before that results from the A1C test don’t have pinpoint accuracy. A study published Tuesday underscores that shortcoming as it applies to people who carry the sickle cell trait. Glucose levels in the blood rise and fall all the time, so it can be tricky to look at a single exam to diagnose diabetes or manage the disease in people who have it. But one test gets around this problem. The A1C test measures sugar that binds to hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells. It provides an average of blood sugar over the past three months, ”so this has turned out to be an incredibly powerful test, both for the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes,” says Dr. Anthony Bleyer, a kidney specialist at the Wake Forest School of Medicine who was not involved in the study. The problem is that the test results can vary, depending on circumstance. For example, people with anemia may get inaccurate readings. So do people who carry unusual types of hemoglobin, the best known being sickle cell trait. Eight to 10 percent of   carry the sickle cell trait. But only people who inherit two copies of the sickle cell trait, one from each parent, develop the disease. And a few years ago, scientists realized that A1C readings for   typically don’t match those from whites. They are generally higher. ”The test was really standardized based on white individuals, and there were just a small number of   individuals in that study,” Bleyer says. And while the difference isn’t large, it can matter a lot, especially for people who are close to the line that defines diabetes. Someone who appears to be just under the line and diagnosed as having prediabetes may in fact have a higher level of A1C, which would push them into a diagnosis of diabetes. Vagaries in these readings can also be misleading for people whose treatment is guided by this test, because doctors may be overly aggressive in controlling blood sugar, to the point that a patient can end up with seriously low blood sugar. In a report published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, scientists at Brown University and the National Institutes of Health examined data from two large studies to compare test results of   with and without the sickle cell trait. The studies used standard A1C tests that had previously been shown to give low readings for people with the sickle cell trait. The scientists were surprised to find how big a difference it made. About 4 percent of the people in the study who carried the sickle cell trait were diagnosed with diabetes, but they expect a test corrected for bias would have identified about 7 percent  —   nearly twice as many people. ”We were really shocked by that, honestly,” says Mary Lacy, a graduate student at Brown University and lead author of the study. ”That’s huge!” Likewise, they found 40 percent fewer cases of prediabetes than they expected among people carrying the sickle cell trait. The test readings are only off by a few tenths of a percentage point, but that was enough to push many people below the cutoff points that indicate diabetes or prediabetes. This observation is one reason doctors should be cautious in interpreting A1C results, researchers say. ”Doctors generally take the test fairly literally,” says Tamara Darsow, senior vice president for research and community programs at the American Diabetes Association. ”How much this impacts care and the interpretation of A1C results I think is variable.” The association’s guidance document cautions doctors that the A1C tests can be off by plus or minus 7 percent among people with unusual hemoglobin traits. As the new study underscores, that is more than enough variability to affect a diagnosis. So instead of making a snap diagnosis, particularly for   doctors could additionally run some more traditional   tests. Those aren’t influenced by race or sickle cell status (though they can vary for other reasons). ”Information together from all of these tests can be much more powerful than those taken in isolation,” Darsow says. The American Diabetes Association would ultimately like to come up with more concrete treatment guidelines, but for now their word to doctors is this: Be aware this is an issue and use your best judgment."
"Beatrice Sanchez and Mariana Arias drive around their city,   N. C. in search of a very specific population of residents: Latinos with prediabetes. The two women, both bilingual and Hispanic, are recruiting participants for a Type 2 diabetes prevention study called ”La Comunidad,” a   local version of the landmark Diabetes Prevention Program trial that staved off diabetes through changes in diet and physical activity in about 50 percent of study participants. The results of that study suggested it was possible to fight a disease that affects about 29 million Americans without drugs and their side effects. It was more effective than using a common diabetes drug called metformin, which cut that number by just 30 percent. The Diabetes Prevention Program is ”still the gold standard,” says Mara Vitolins, an epidemiologist at Wake Forest University Medical Center in   who is leading La Comunidad. When the results of the Diabetes Prevention Program were first published, Vitolins was eager to test this concept in her own city, but cost was a big challenge. The program required six months of    counseling with case managers trained in nutrition or fitness, followed by personal visits every month for another year and a half. The first two years of intervention amounted to more than $2, 600 per person. To reduce the cost, Vitolins decided to focus on a part of the earlier program that relied on group counseling for her   study, called Healthy Partnerships in Preventing Diabetes (HELP). ”The whole idea was to take something that was extremely expensive and find every way that we could to make it more community friendly and that it can be sustained,” she says. HELP replaced case managers with community health workers and group meetings to help participants lose weight and bring their blood sugar levels down. It worked. The   study, which was completed in 2011, met goals close to or the same as those reached by the DPP for about a third of the cost —  $850 per person. But the study was small, with only 301 participants, so it was impossible to tell if it lowered participants’ risk of developing diabetes. And the HELP study had another shortcoming. Though it was designed to reach a   underserved population, it included very few Latinos, a group that makes up about 15 percent of   residents. Latinos are more susceptible to developing diabetes at a young age according to CDC data from 2011, the average age for diabetes diagnosis among whites was 55, but 49 for Hispanics. To reach the Latino population, Vitolins launched La Comunidad in 2014, translating the HELP program materials into Spanish. But she knew she needed to do more than just change the language. So she hired Arias and Sanchez as recruiters and ambassadors to the city’s Latino population, which includes undocumented immigrants. ”We’ve got to establish communication,” says Sanchez. ”We’re targeting a group of people that are very cautious.” The team determines whether the participants’   levels are high enough to be classified as prediabetic. Some are turned away because they are pregnant or unknowingly already have   diabetes. Pregnancy was not an issue in Vitolins’ former study because the average HELP participant was 60 years old, says Vitolins. But most of the people joining La Comunidad are in their early 40s. ”We’re finding that the Latino community, especially the women, are qualifying at a younger age.” The project team is also finding that more Latino women than men qualify for the program. They speculate that Latino men may have more physically active lifestyles, keeping them from developing prediabetes. After qualifying, La Comunidad participants meet with a registered dietician. They also visit an outpatient clinic for general health assessments and blood work every six months for two years. The first recruits finished in May. But the bulk of the work happens during group meetings, which are held weekly for the first 24 weeks. After that, members gather once every other month for the rest of the study. Topics cover everything from basic nutrition to what kind of shoe is best for particular workouts. Group members share their own advice and experiences. One woman could not afford to buy prepared food, says Carmen Vazquez, a health adviser who helps lead the group meetings. Despite limited resources, she still manages to eat healthy and exercise. So far, she’s lost 40 pounds. ”She has been an example to the rest,” Vazquez says. The meetings help participants become aware of how foods and activities affect their bodies. ”One of the major emphases of the program is to be sure people take control of their own life,” says Vazquez. Information may have been missed because of health disparities, language barriers or just lack of education, and ”We are trying to fill that gap.” Vazquez is quick to point out that she and the other health advisers are laypeople  —   in fact, her background is in fashion. Vitolins says this is one of the keys to making the program affordable. ”It didn’t matter that the person leading it didn’t have a high school degree. It’s the fact that that person can communicate a message.” The ultimate goal of studies like La Comunidad, Vitolins says, is to determine whether   techniques are helpful from both a health and medical reimbursement perspective. In March, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that Medicare would cover preventive programs that meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) requirements, such as data reporting. Vitolins agrees that   programs must have good data to support their use. ”We’re testing before we say everyone who’s in the Latino population should use this approach,” she says. ”We want it to be effective.” Not everyone shares Vitolins’ enthusiasm. Richard Kahn, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says it’s too early for Medicare and health insurance companies to be covering such programs, since they delay diabetes rather than prevent it totally. ”The question which is unanswered is whether that delay actually makes a difference,” Kahn says. Another question is whether weight loss in the first few years of a program makes a difference if participants just gain it back, which many do. ”We need more studies about how the body regulates weight.” In the meantime, Vitolins focuses on getting the message of diabetes prevention out to people who may not know their risk. Estimates vary depending on how blood glucose is measured, but the CDC reports that 86 million Americans are prediabetic, and many don’t know it. ”With the numbers that we think are out there, every single program that shows efficacy should be at the table,” Vitolins says. Amanda B. Keener is a freelance science journalist who writes for Nature, The Scientist and PBS. org."
"If a refugee commits a crime, will a federal judge have blood on his hands? President Trump says yes. After Judge James L. Robart temporarily blocked an executive order that stopped all refugees as well as visitors from seven   countries, the president wrote on Twitter: ”Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and the court system. People pouring in. Bad!” That’s an emotionally charged line, but problematic. If ”something happens,” and if anyone is blamed, the person most likely to be held responsible is the president. It’s his job  —   not a judge’s job  —   to defend the country within the confines of the law. Before going further, we should note that the risk of ”something happening” because of the court ruling is limited. The judge’s temporary move does not allow very many people into the United States. Well before the ruling, the president’s temporary travel ban for refugees and travelers from seven   nations had partly collapsed amid protests and administrative chaos. Huge categories of people initially affected, such as green card holders and Iraqis who aided the U. S. military, are now being let in regardless of the judge’s instructions. The people still affected were ordinary visa holders from the seven nations plus refugees, who were not coming in huge numbers to begin with. Now some can come, but only after the U. S. has vetted them using techniques refined since Sept. 11. Terrorist attacks in the U. S. in recent years have not been linked to refugees or visitors who were radicalized in the seven countries targeted by Trump’s order. But suppose that ”something happens” with one of the new arrivals. Who knows an individual could become radicalized. It would be understandable for some to blame the ”court system” —   understandable but wrong, according to Charles Fried, a Harvard Law professor. Fried was the solicitor general  —   the government’s official lawyer before the U. S. Supreme Court  —   during the Reagan administration. ”If [an attack] were to happen it would be the fault of the law,” Fried told NPR’s Morning Edition, ”because the judge would have determined that the law requires this.” The job of the courts is to interpret the law  —   not to bend it to the demands of public officials. The president is still the one who coordinates military, intelligence and law enforcement assets to stop terrorist attacks and is supposed to figure out how to do so properly. Some presidents have tried to operate outside the law when national security demanded it. In 1952, for example, President Harry S. Truman memorably asserted, ”The president has the power to keep the country from going to hell.” That was his rationale for seizing control of the American steel industry. The Korean War was underway, steelworkers were threatening to go on strike, and Truman said federal control was essential to continuing the production of war material. His move was challenged before the Supreme Court, which was unmoved by Truman’s case. The court found no law under which the president could seize private property in the way that he had done and rejected his seizure by a   vote, even though several justices had been appointed by Truman himself. But here’s the rest of the story: Despite the court ruling, the country did not ”go to hell.” The United States did not lose the Korean War. Truman had to find other ways to get his job done within the law. He is remembered today as a strong president. Trump now faces the challenge Truman did. Of all the possible issues on which he could have focused the attention of Homeland Security officials at the start of his administration, he chose the travel ban. Now that his initial plan has been temporarily blocked, he can fight in court and hope for a more favorable ruling. (Fried, by the way, thinks Trump might get it.) He can ask Congress to change the law. Or he can conclude that travel bans are not so smart after all, and ask counterterrorism specialists for better ideas. No matter what happens, his job doesn’t change, and citizens, who are his employers, expect him to do it. While the president does not have ”the power to keep the country from going to hell” in any way he likes, he does have the responsibility to keep the country from going to hell while acting within the law. Upholding the Constitution is itself part of keeping the country from going to hell. Whatever happens, another saying by Truman will apply: ”The buck stops here.”"
"Israel’s parliament has passed a law that retroactively legalizes almost 4, 000 settler homes built unlawfully on private Palestinian land in the West Bank, a move that critics say is a massive blow to any future peace deal. The Knesset approved the legislation in a   vote Monday evening, at a time when Israel has ramped up plans for settlement expansion in the West Bank. It has announced plans for thousands of homes since President Donald Trump was inaugurated nearly three weeks ago, to the cheers of Israeli hardliners. Settlements are broadly viewed as an obstacle to peace by Palestinians and the international community. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz describes the measure as a ”  bill.” Rights groups have vowed to challenge it at the country’s Supreme Court. The U. N. says settlements on land captured by Israel nearly 50 years ago are illegal under international law. Some settlements in the West Bank were built with prior Israeli government approval the homes in question in this law were built in illegal outposts on Palestinian land. According to the Knesset, the Palestinian landowners would be forced to accept compensation, either financially or in the form of ”alternate plots.” The vote is another major victory for Israeli  . According to The Associated Press, Israeli Cabinet Minister Yariv Levin called it ”a first step in a series of measures that we must take in order to make our presence in Judea and Samaria present for years, for decades, for ages.” Judea and Samaria is the biblical name for the area that makes up the occupied West Bank. Even as Israel   plans for thousands of new settlement homes and has now retroactively approved others, it began the process of demolishing the illegal Amona outpost last week, sparking scuffles between settlers and security forces. Like the homes described in the new law, Amona was built without prior government authorization. However, the text of the legislation specifically excludes Amona and any other buildings that previously received final demolition orders from the courts. The measure caused an outpouring of scathing criticism from the U. N. human rights groups, Palestinians and other members of the international community. Israel’s own attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, has called the law unconstitutional and said he ”will not defend it in the Supreme Court,” according to the BBC. ”This is a political decision. and the political message from the Israeli prime minister and his very extreme coalition is that they’re not heeding the law of the international community,” Hussam Zomlot, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told NPR’s Joanna Kakissis. ”Tonight it became clear that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is willing to compromise the future of both Israelis and Palestinians in order to satisfy a small group of extreme settlers for the sake of his own political survival,” said the Israeli human rights group Peace Now. ”By passing this law, Netanyahu makes theft an official Israeli policy and stains the Israeli law books.” U. N. Mideast envoy Nickolay Mladenov said it ”opens the floodgates to the potential annexation of the West Bank,” according to the AP. ”It will have a drastic legal consequence for Israeli and for the nature of its democracy,” he said. ”It crosses a very, very thick red line.” The beginning of Trump’s term has appeared to embolden  ’ plans for settlement expansion. Last week, the White House issued a statement saying that it does not consider settlements ”an impediment to peace,” but it added that ”the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond the current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.” According to Reuters, a White House official stated that the Trump administration will now ”withhold comment on the legislation until the relevant court ruling.”"
"When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967   War, no Israeli citizens had lived in the territory for nearly two decades, since an earlier war. But in 1968, a small group of religious Jews rented rooms at the Park Hotel in Hebron for Passover, saying they wanted to be near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, one of the holiest sites in Judaism (as well as Islam and Christianity). The Israeli government reluctantly allowed them to stay ”temporarily.” From that beginning, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews now reside in the West Bank, citing religion, history and Israel’s security among their reasons for being there. But the Palestinians, along with the rest of the world, see their presence as one of the key obstacles to a peace agreement and the creation of a Palestinian state. The issue returned to the headlines when the United Nations Security Council recently voted 14 to 0 to condemn Israeli settlements. The United States, which often vetoes resolutions critical of Israel, abstained and allowed the resolution to pass. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded angrily, unleashing a stream of accusations against the Obama administration. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry defended the U. S. position Wednesday in a lengthy speech that repeatedly admonished Israel over settlements. Here are seven key things to know about the settlements: 1. Settlements are growing rapidly, The term ”settlements” may conjure up images of small encampments or temporary housing, and many have started that way. But they now include large subdivisions, even sizable cities, with manicured lawns and streets full of   villas often set on arid hilltops. Israel is constantly building new homes and offers financial incentives for Israelis to live in the West Bank. When the Israelis and Palestinians first began peace talks after a 1993 interim agreement, the West Bank settlers numbered a little over 100, 000. Today they total around 400, 000 and live in about 130 separate settlements (this doesn’t include East Jerusalem, which we’ll address in a moment). They have grown under every Israeli government over the past   despite consistent international opposition.   leaders like Netanyahu have actively supported them. Moderates and liberals have also allowed settlements to expand, though usually at a slower rate. The settler movement is a powerful political force, and any prime minister who takes it on risks the collapse of his government. You can click here to see data on the settlements and a detailed map from Peace Now, an Israeli group that is opposed to settlements and closely monitors them. 2. Settlements complicate efforts for a   solution, Critics of settlements say they’ve intentionally been established in every corner of the West Bank, giving the Israeli military a reason to be present throughout the territory and making it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. The settlement locations and the roads that connect them make Palestinian movement difficult. The settlements are just one of many obstacles to a peace deal. Drawing boundaries, the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees, and myriad security questions  —   including terrorism  —   are equally challenging, if not more so. And as the settlements grow, it will be increasingly difficult to remove a large number of them, a tactic known as ”creating facts on the ground.” 3. The distinction between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Shortly after the 1967 war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank and had a population that was then entirely Palestinian. Israel declared the entire city to be Israel’s ”eternal and indivisible” capital. No other country recognizes Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, with the United States and others saying the city’s status must be determined in negotiations. This is why the U. S. and other countries have never moved their embassies to Jerusalem. Most are in Tel Aviv. The Palestinians, meanwhile, claim the eastern part of the city as their future capital. Around 200, 000 Israelis now live in East Jerusalem. Combined with the roughly 400, 000 settlers in the West Bank, about 600, 000 Israelis now live beyond the country’s 1967 borders. That’s nearly 10 percent of Israel’s 6. 3 million Jewish citizens. While the Israelis tend to speak of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as two separate entities, the Palestinians regard them as a single body  —   the occupied West Bank. 4. What does Israel say about settlements? The settlers and their supporters cite the Jewish Bible, thousands of years of Jewish history, and Israel’s need for ”strategic depth” as reasons for living in the West Bank. They also note that Israel took the territory from Jordan, which has since relinquished its claim to the West Bank. Therefore, the settlers argue, there is no legal sovereign in the territory. However, no country, not even Israel, considers West Bank settlements to be sovereign Israeli territory. As we noted, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and administers it as part of Israel. But Israel has never annexed any other part of the West Bank. The settlers want to be formally incorporated into Israel, but that would ignite a major controversy. For now, Israel regards the West Bank as ”disputed” territory that has been under the Israeli military since the 1967 war. 5. How about the Palestinians? From some Palestinian cities, there are clear views of Israeli settlements  —   and new construction  —   on nearby hillsides. And in most settlement neighborhoods, there are wide areas of empty hillside closed to Palestinians, which Israel says are necessary buffers for security. Palestinians see them as visual proof that their   independent state is being taken from them. Palestinian leaders have opposed peace talks in recent years while, as they see it, Israel is building on land that is part of those talks. 6. Has Israel ever dismantled settlements? Yes, on a few occasions, most notably in 2005, when it removed all 8, 000 settlers from the Gaza Strip. Israel decided these small, isolated settlements were too difficult to defend in a territory where the Jewish residents accounted for less than 1 percent of the population. The evacuation of the settlements was deeply divisive within Israel, and Israel’s security forces had to drag some settlers from their homes kicking and screaming. The episode demonstrated that Israel could remove settlers, but it also showed how much friction it creates inside Israel. 7. What are the proposed solutions? Kerry on Wednesday outlined the general approach: land swaps. Under this scenario, the largest Jewish settlements, which are near the boundary with Israel, would formally become Israeli territory. In exchange, Israel would turn over an equal amount of its current land that would become part of a Palestinian state. In addition, settlements deep in the West Bank, far from Israel, would be disbanded. It would be a difficult political move for an Israeli prime minister, but it would also be difficult for a Palestinian leader to accept a peace deal without removing settlements. Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1, Larry Kaplow is NPR’s Middle East editor. Follow him @larrykaplow"
"Women with breast cancer who are at high risk for having a BRCA mutation that raises cancer risk often don’t get genetic testing, or even a chance to speak with a genetic counselor who’d help them weigh the necessity of such a test, a study finds. Mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancers, and women with close relatives who have had those cancers are considered at higher risk of having BRCA mutations themselves. Both the National Cancer Institute and the United States Preventative Task Force recommend that those patients talk to a genetic counselor about whether or not to get the BRCA test. But the study that surveyed newly diagnosed breast cancer patients found that while 80. 9 percent of   patients wanted testing, only 39. 6 percent had had a counseling session, and 50. 9 percent had a genetic test. The test results could help guide treatment, as well as future efforts to prevent more cancer. When asked why they didn’t get tested, the majority of the 773   patients said it was because their doctor didn’t recommend it to them. Just 13. 7 percent of them said the test was too expensive, and 10. 7 percent said they didn’t want it. The researchers say this suggests a disconnect between oncologist and patient, whether it be assessing BRCA risk isn’t on the physician’s radar, or that they just don’t find it important. The study surveyed 2, 529 women overall. ”Those numbers were really striking to us,” says Allison Kurian, an associate professor of medicine and health   at Stanford University, breast cancer doctor, and lead author on the study, which was published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. ”This really emphasizes the importance of cancer doctors in this process, and that patients get evaluated and tested the way they should be.” Kurian notes that the study only got the patient side of the story, not the physician side, so it’s unfair to assume the doctors are the sole cause of this disconnect. But by making genetic tests and counselors more available to patients at risk for BRCA, and making physicians more aware of the mutations’ implications, the gap between the need for and accessibility of genetic testing in these   patients will shrink, she says. Hospitals need to make sure breast cancer patients are screened for BRCA if they need it, says C. Anthony ”Tony” Blau, a professor of hematology at the University of Washington who specializes in breast cancer and was not involved with the study. The screening shouldn’t be on the patient or the oncologist, he says, but rather ”it should be part of the system. Hospital administrators don’t typically do things that save patients’ lives, but this could be one of those things.” Testing for the genes even when patients are already diagnosed with breast cancer and are at high risk for BRCA can be helpful, says Kurian. ”Knowing a patient has BRCA1 or 2 affects how we treat the cancer she has,” she says. ”We might give her different medications or different surgery options.” That knowledge can also help physicians keep an eye out for ovarian cancer, which occurs 11 to 17 percent more often in women with BRCA mutations and is difficult to diagnose early. It also lets oncologists keep an eye out for new cancers and treat them more effectively. ”Cancers sneak up on you,” Kurian says. If a woman is flagged during BRCA screening due to her family history, ”finding out she has a BRCA gene would let us start screening her as early as 25 years old. If we do find a really tiny cancer, she’ll probably do a lot better and need less therapy in the long run.” And because the BRCA mutations have a    chance of being passed down from parent to child, a patient carrying BRCA1 or BRCA2 is likely to pass it down to further generations as well. In screening breast cancer patients for BRCA risk, ”the implications aren’t only for the patient presently affected by breast cancer,” Blau says, ”but for their families and generations of descendants. The potential impact is enormous, and missing the opportunity to test for it is a big deal.”"
"Comedian and actor Irwin Corey, for whom the word ”however” was the perfect opening line, has died at age 102. With an impish grin and wild hair, Corey was a nightclub and   fixture who worked with stars from Jackie Gleason to Woody Allen. His admirers ranged from Damon Runyon to Lenny Bruce. Corey died Monday evening, his    tells NPR. The comedian had been sick earlier this year  —   but he’d been sent home from the hospital after seeming to recover. His last meal, she said, consisted of ice cream and egg drop soup. It’s impossible to provide a short explanation of Corey’s surreal brand of comedy, which was most potent when delivered in his seemingly nonsensical stream of non sequiturs. But the breadth of his career hints at his creative genius: Who else could have appeared in the 1976 film Car Wash, two years after accepting a National Book Award on behalf of the reclusive Thomas Pynchon? Billed as ”the World’s Foremost Authority,” Corey’s guise as an   professor offered a way to poke fun at multisyllabic jargon and those who use it. When political or scientific authorities seemed to annex a chunk of language, there was Corey to claw it back  —   a very human antidote to our complicated modern times. ”Sometimes, I forget what I’m talking about in the middle of a word,” Corey said at his 100th birthday party, which was attended by WNYC contributor Jon Kalish. Corey mixed social commentary into his playful approach to language  —   as at his birthday party in 2014, when he said, ”Ten years ago, we had Johnny Cash. We had Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Today, 10 years later, there’s no cash. There’s no hope. There’s no jobs.” Here’s how legendary theater critic Kenneth Tynan once described Corey: ”a cultural clown, a parody of literacy, a travesty of all that our civilization holds dear and one of the funniest grotesques in America. He is Chaplin’s clown with a college education.” Born in Brooklyn, N. Y. in 1914, Corey and his brothers and sisters grew up in the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum. After extreme poverty forced their mother to put her children in the home, she paid a monthly fee to help provide for them. Corey’s   beliefs led to him being blacklisted in the 1950s. Decades later, he was found to be panhandling in a Manhattan street. He told The New York Times that he donated all the money he collected to charity  —   often, to a cause that benefits children in Cuba. As Corey explained, he was asking for change around the corner from his home, navigating East 35th Street with his walker, handing out free newspapers and, over the years, collecting tens of thousands of dollars. When a reporter asked him why he hustled for change, he seemed confused. ”Why?” Corey repeated  —   and after a pause, he said, ”I want to help people out.”"
"Everyone expects Congress to change the Affordable Care Act, but no one knows exactly how. The uncertainty has one group of people, the homeless, especially concerned. Many received health coverage for the first time under Obamacare now they’re worried it will disappear. Joseph Funn, homeless for almost 20 years, says his body took a beating while he lived on the street. Now, he sees nurse practitioner Amber Richert fairly regularly at the Health Care for the Homeless clinic in Baltimore. At a recent visit, he mentioned that he’d been having some chest pains. ”And when exactly did you quit smoking?” Richert asked. In December, he said, when he moved into his first apartment in decades. That was a big change for the   . Last winter, Funn was living outside and trudging through deep snow for days. His left foot got so swollen, he could hardly walk. ”It was frostbite,” he recalled. ”I thought when you had frostbite, it’s like when you turn purple and blue. But when I came to see Dr. Amber, she said, ’No, that’s when they have to cut something off.’ So I was like, ’Whoa!’ ” Funn was admitted to the clinic’s convalescent center to be treated. The staff also signed him up for Medicaid, the government’s health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Like many people who are homeless, Funn was uninsured. But under the Affordable Care Act, Maryland is one of 31 states and the District of Columbia that expanded Medicaid to cover nondisabled childless adults. Health Care for the Homeless President Kevin Lindamood said that before Obamacare, only 30 percent of the patients they saw had health insurance. The group provides health care to people without homes as well as others who are in transition to more settled lives. ”Now [it’s] 90 percent of our clients, from 30 percent insured to 90 percent insured, either through Medicaid or Medicare,” he said. ”That’s a transformation.” He said the change allowed Health Care for the Homeless to open new clinics, including one for dental care, and to double the number of clients that can be seen. The group also hired more outreach workers to encourage homeless people to come in for help. Homeless advocates have argued that better health coverage should eventually reduce costly emergency room visits. They also say coverage can help people get off the streets by dealing with chronic problems, such as mental health issues, that might keep them outside. Lindamood said his clients are now worried. ”We’re working with very vulnerable people who are now coming to us, hearing the news in general and saying, ’Wait a minute, I just got access to care. Does this mean I’m going to lose it?’ ” he said. Republicans have promised to replace Obamacare but haven’t said how. President Trump has said no one will lose coverage. But White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has also said the administration hopes to turn Medicaid into a block grant  —   meaning states would get a set amount of money, along with more control over how to spend it. The approach has supporters. ”I think there’s a good case to be made that states will have more money to devote to the truly needy folks, because states will be more aggressive, in reining in wasteful expenditures, reining in unnecessary expenditures, reining in fraud,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian CATO Institute. But others are skeptical. Barbara DiPietro, policy director for the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, says block grants will likely mean less federal funding for Medicaid, forcing   states to make tough choices about whom to cover. ”So when we talk about no one will lose coverage, that’s heartening,” said DiPietro. ”But the details are always very important. What does that coverage look like? The population we serve typically falls through the cracks.” Almost 900, 000 patients are served by Health Care for the Homeless projects around the country. At the end of 2015, two years after Obamacare went into effect, about half those patients had Medicaid coverage. Joseph Funn said losing Medicaid would be a hardship for him, but he also thinks there are a lot of people on the streets of Baltimore who are worse off than he is. ”I can see them cutting me and giving the money to the people that need the most help,” he said. Now that he has his own apartment, he plans to get healthier so he won’t need as much care."
"If you’ve heard of interval training, you can probably thank Martin Gibala, professor and chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, whose research has helped popularize the   exercise technique. Interval training comes in many different flavors, but the general idea is to alternate periods of relatively intense exercise with recovery, either   exercise or rest. It can be a much more efficient way to get the benefits of exercise than longer workouts at an easier pace, says Gibala. And it’s not only for athletes it’s been studied in sedentary adults and people with heart failure, Type 2 diabetes and other ailments. In his book The One Minute Workout: Science Shows a Way to Get Fit That’s Smarter, Faster, Shorter, which comes out Tuesday, Gibala explains the physiology and history of interval training and includes a dozen workouts. And yes, one of them is based on just one minute of hard exercise (with another nine minutes of   recovery periods and  ) which in a small study conducted by Gibala and colleagues improved markers of health comparably to a   session of steady, moderate exercise. We talked to him about the benefits of and misconceptions about interval training. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. When people talk about interval training, what do they mean? Broadly, there are two main types. High intensity interval training, or HIIT, would be intensities that are generally higher than what we see in public health guidelines. It’s a heart rate exceeding 80 percent of a person’s maximum, but not going all out. Sprint training is harder than that  —   an   pace. Which provides the bigger benefit? Clearly there’s a   between intensity and duration. The more intense the effort, the less duration required to reap the benefits. So sprint training is the most efficient, but it’s not for everyone. It’s less widely studied. We know a lot more about the adaptations the body makes with HIIT. Do we know what’s going on in the body to make these short bursts of exercise effective compared to longer sessions? I’ll talk about the muscles, since that’s what I know most about. The underlying cellular and molecular events largely seem to be similar. You want to create more mitochondria, to increase the capacity of muscles to burn sugars and fats. You can trigger that in different ways. You can do moderate intensity exercise, which continuously stimulates the muscle for a prolonged period of time. Or you can do short, very intense bursts of exercise. Or you can do something in between. Generally speaking, the results are the same. The fuel gauge can slowly drop over time or drop really quickly if you step on the gas really hard. The same basic process is triggered, but in less time with intervals. What is the biggest misconception or myth you see about HIIT? People tend to view intervals only as this         very intense exercise. That either scares them off or it makes them think that type of exercise isn’t suitable for them. The point I try to make is that interval training comes in different flavors. Even with interval walking, there’s some evidence that it’s the better way to go in terms of blood sugar control and boosting fitness [than steadier, slower walking]. But of course you should check with a doctor before starting a new exercise program. [People with unstable angina, for example, are not likely good candidates for interval training.] In some quarters, I see a move to demonize traditional cardio. That’s clearly wrong. The public health guidelines are based on great science, but only about 15 percent of the population is listening. So I want to give people more menu items to choose from. What if you are training for a 10K or even a marathon? Can you get by with interval training? Could you run a marathon by only training with intervals? Yes, but I’m not sure you’d run the best marathon that’s in you. Elite athletes will still use a blend of about 80 percent traditional   continuous training and about 20 percent interval training. It goes back to time efficiency. If time is restricted, it’s a good way to train. But there are health risks of higher intensity exercise, especially for older people or those with health issues. What should people watch out for?  I talked to Paul Thompson (the director of cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut) about this. He says that if it comes down to remaining sedentary or doing something, you’re better off doing something. But acute exercise [temporarily] elevates the risk of an adverse event. That’s more than offset by lowered risk during the rest of the day, when you’re not exercising. But you don’t know if you’re silently at risk. So it comes down to common sense. If you’re older or just starting out, gentler forms of intervals are a good way to benefit. There’s competing evidence on whether interval workouts are more or less appealing for people than slower exercise: They can save time, but are also more uncomfortable. How do you get over that?  Even I don’t want to do it every day! Sometimes I want to go for a walk in the woods with my dog. But people have a misperception that exercise is only good if you have 45 or 60 minutes at a time. You can fit exercise into life, rather than structuring life around exercise. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson."
"As he wends his way through the crowded alleys of a   neighborhood, Jakarta Gov. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama stops to pick up a young Muslim girl in a headscarf, as residents and reporters snap pictures. He stops at a local mosque, where an all   team strikes up a groove with drums and tambourines to cheer him on in his campaign for  . None of his supporters seem to mind that Basuki, commonly known by his Chinese nickname, ”Ahok,” is Christian and an ethnic Chinese  —   the first time such a person has governed the capital. Why should they? Indonesia is proud of its reputation as not only the world’s most populous   nation, but also the most tolerant and moderate in the Islamic world, home to millions of Hindus and Christians as well as Shiite, Ahmadiyya and other minorities within Islam. But even as he campaigns for the governorship, Ahok is standing trial, accused of blasphemy against Islam. If convicted, he faces a maximum jail term of five years, and very few people charged with this offense in Indonesia manage to beat the rap. Last September, Ahok told a group of fishermen that politicians who quoted from the Quran to say they should not vote for a   were lying to them. But he also told the fishermen to vote their conscience. Ahok, who has a reputation as a blunt speaker, later apologized, saying he had no intention of insulting the Quran or Islam. But some Muslims took offense, and hundreds of thousands took to the streets in three massive rallies against Ahok that convulsed central Jakarta in November and December. Demonstrators continue to congregate at the courthouse where Ahok is on trial. Coils of barbed wire and riot police separate   and   protesters. ”God said, ’Do not vote for someone outside your group to become your leader,’” says Helmy, who goes by one name, selling Islamic flags at the protest. ”So it is forbidden for us to vote for a  .” Many Indonesians dismiss the ethnic and religious overtones of Ahok’s case, describing it as simply a   political contest. One of Ahok’s biggest critics has been former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Though retired, he remains a formidable power broker. And his son, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, is Ahok’s chief rival in the election. Ahok’s case has also uncovered   racial tensions and stereotypes. Many of his critics fear that Indonesia is at risk of political and economic domination by a minority of Chinese elites. Ethnic Chinese account for about 1 percent of Indonesia’s population. Under the dictator Suharto’s rule, they were subject to discriminatory policies, including a ban on public displays of Chinese language and culture. Since Suharto’s fall in 1998, Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese have made a comeback, even as the   protests have been accompanied by an increase in racial epithets aimed at Ahok and other Chinese. Many other Indonesians believe Ahok’s case cuts to even deeper constitutional issues that define Indonesia as a nation. In a lunchtime interview in the midst of a busy day of campaigning, Ahok says that Indonesia has already made these choices. The nation decided at its founding in 1945 to be a secular republic, based on the concept of ”unity in diversity.” ”They want to develop another ideology here in this country,” Ahok says of the Muslim hardliners pushing for his conviction. ”They want to force the implementation of Islamic law in this country. That means they want to dig up our present foundation and build another one. How come?” Rather than being angry at his situation, though, he says he’s proud his case is putting these crucial questions before the Indonesian public. ”I’m happy that history chose me for this position,” he says. ”You couldn’t buy it.” Ahok was not elected to his current position. He was Jakarta’s vice governor until 2014, when  . Joko ”Jokowi” Widodo was elected president and Ahok automatically took Jokowi’s former post. Jokowi’s trajectory is one that Ahok has said he wouldn’t mind following. Like Jokowi, Ahok has built his official track record and popularity by providing services and reforming government. Ahok has cleared slums, including Jakarta’s infamous red light district, cracked down on endemic official corruption and shored up the capital’s crumbling infrastructure. As Ahok campaigned his way through her neighborhood near East Jakarta’s Cibubur River, Muntema, a resident who goes by just one name, smiled approvingly. ”I’m very grateful that when we get sick, we no longer have to pay for health care,” she says. ”Also, the river here used to flood when it rained, but now that doesn’t happen since the governor sent workers to dredge it.” Ahok himself says although helping the poor is very important to him, his real aim in politics is to offer Indonesians a sort of civics lesson: ”How to educate the people to vote for the clean, transparent and professional politician.” Those who support Ahok and Jokowi see them as representative of this new breed of politician. And some analysts see Ahok’s trial as the revenge of the old breed. ”This is the deep state of Indonesia reacting to an outsider president,” says Andreas Harsono, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Jakarta. By ”deep state,” Harsono means an alliance of the military,   Muslim organizations, paramilitary groups and government bureaucrats. The deep state, Harsono adds, exists beneath the institutions of Indonesia’s democracy, as well of those of other Southeast Asian nations, where younger voters are demanding more political participation from the entrenched elites who have governed their countries since the Cold War era. Particularly worrying, Harsono notes, are reports that the Indonesian military has been giving military training to the Islamic Defenders Front, a vigilante group that has been at the forefront of the protests against Ahok. A similar alliance of the military and Islamist groups in 1965 led to the worst political violence the country has ever seen: a purge of suspected communists that killed up to a million people. The verdict in Ahok’s trial is likely to come sometime after next week’s gubernatorial election. Even if he wins that election, he faces a maximum   jail term if convicted of blasphemy. Whether Ahok could then serve out his term as governor is unclear."
"The wall of silence in Indonesia surrounding one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century is beginning to fall apart. A forthcoming report by Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights estimates that a purge of suspected communists during the   killed between 600, 000 and 1 million people. The violence reshaped Indonesia’s political landscape and affected the course of the Cold War, just as the U. S. was escalating its fight against communism in Southeast Asia. ”We conclude that there have been gross human rights violations, which can be classified as crimes against humanity,” says Yosep Adi Prasetyo, the commission’s deputy chairman. He says the report places the blame squarely on Indonesia’s military dictator Suharto, who died four years ago. ”We found that the military and police were involved in the killings, as well as forced disappearances, rape, forced movement of people, torture and other crimes,” Prasetyo says. A major general in the Indonesian army at the time, Suharto ousted Sukarno, the revered Indonesian independence leader and the country’s first president, in the wake of the kidnapping and killing of senior Indonesian generals on Sept. 30, 1965. Suharto blamed those murders on the Indonesian Communist Party, then the largest in the noncommunist world. Suharto also suspected Sukarno of complicity in the killings, which the perpetrators said were to prevent the generals from launching a coup attempt against the president. The military, under Suharto, then ordered that communists be hunted down. Survivors Fight To Clear Their Names, In central Jakarta, a handful of survivors live together in a nursing home. Every week, they gather outside the Presidential Palace to demand justice. At the time of the purge, Bujiati, who goes by just one name, was a village chief on the rural outskirts of Jakarta. She had previously worked as a factory worker for the   consumer goods firm Unilever. ”If you were diligent and worked hard, people would accuse you of being a communist,” she recalls. Bujiati, now 86, survived six years in a prison, and later in a hospital ward for mental patients and a leper colony. Tumiso Nitikarjita Lukas was then a   law school student. Like many young people his age, he supported Sukarno. For this, he was arrested and tortured. But he refused to admit to being a communist because, he says, he wasn’t one. ”The government must admit the barbaric acts it committed against its citizens and provide rehabilitation and compensation,” he says. ”We are still waiting. Our demands are not like what you see broadcast in the news. We keep it simple.” After his arrest, Tumiso was exiled to a remote island where he planted rice, built roads and cleared forests until his release in 1979. After that, he worked secretly as a tutor. People implicated in the   campaigns are still barred from working as teachers or civil servants, and in one of the most respected of Indonesian professions: puppet masters. Communism And The Cold War, Tumiso believes Indonesian authorities wanted him to confess to being a communist in order to get assistance from the U. S. government. At the time, the U. S. government was openly supportive of Suharto. It feared that Indonesia, with its big oil reserves, large population and strategic location, would be the next ”domino” to fall to global communism. ”The end of Sukarno was of great significance in terms of the Cold War for the Western powers,” says Katharine McGregor, an Indonesian history expert at the University of Melbourne in Australia. ”And for that reason, people also saw things more in black and white terms of ’it’s just communists being killed’  —   there wasn’t a lot of outcry from the Western world.” There has long been speculation that the CIA assisted in the   purge, but hard evidence is lacking. McGregor notes, however, that there is much clearer evidence of U. S. government support for an   rebellion by dissident army officers on Indonesia’s outer islands in 1958. In particular, Indonesian forces shot down a   bomber over Indonesian territory and captured its pilot,    American Allen L. Pope, along with documents linking him to the CIA. Indonesia sentenced Pope to death but later handed him back to the U. S. Many Opponents To Investigation, The   purge of 1965 effectively eliminated Indonesia’s political left wing. Under the three decades of Suharto’s authoritarian rule that followed, Indonesia was a     country without independent women’s rights groups, effective trade unions and other civil society institutions, and few channels for citizens to participate in politics. Even today, efforts such as the human rights commission’s to   the killing of communists face opposition from people such as Tribowo Soebiandono, the vice head of a group of military family members. ”We believe that we must still maintain vigilance against the threat of communism,” he says, speaking at his group’s office. ”This country is on the brink of collapse. Honestly, corruption is rampant. I don’t want to go pointing any fingers, but we can figure it out for ourselves.” Mainstream Islamic groups have also protested the National Human Rights Commission’s report and opposed any   of the killings. The commission’s study says that at the time, the military mobilized members of these groups to help kill communists. The Islamic groups and the communists were at odds over ideology, and over the Islamic establishment’s large landholdings, which were a target of the communists’ land reforms. A Question Of Justice, It is too early to tell whether anyone will be put on trial for the killings, or whether victims or their families will get any compensation. Human Rights Commission’s Yosep Adi Prasetyo says the commission’s mandate was simply to investigate, and it had enough trouble just doing that. ”It’s going to be difficult because the president’s    is one of the perpetrators that must be held accountable for the massacre and other crimes,” he says. Current Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s    was a general who played a major part in the campaign to eradicate communists. The general himself estimated that the purge killed some 2 million people. Indonesia is sometimes held up as an example of one of Asia’s more successful transitions from authoritarian state to democracy. Myanmar, for example, is looking to Indonesia as it begins its own such transition. Whether anyone is ever held to account for their crimes, and whether the victims ever get any justice, the victims say they have one overriding concern: that their country learn from its mistakes and avoid repeating this horrific episode in the future."
"In the foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, a gravel road leads to a    fence. Type in a key code, and a gate scrapes open. Undo a chain to get behind another. Everything here is made of metal, because the residents of this facility are experts at invasion and destruction. They’re wild pigs, aka feral swine, wild hogs or Sus scrofa. And biologists at the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins have invented a promising new way to track the invasive animals by looking for tiny traces of them in mud and water. Biologist Morgan Wehtje points to a boar who’s asking her to scratch his bristled back. At 280 pounds, he weighs about as much as an NFL tight end. ”His name is Makunakane, which means ’Big Papa’ in Hawaiian,” says Wehtje. The smaller pigs, like a female named Bobbie Socks, weigh about 150 pounds. They’re dense and compact, says Wehtje, ”which is why if they were to run at you they’d take you out.” Wehtje and her colleagues study the biology and behavior of these pigs, which were raised in captivity. They’re playing in the snow and scoping out the fence with their wet snouts. But their wild, much less cuddly counterparts are destroying the landscape in most U. S. states  —   inflicting an estimated $1. 5 billion in damage per year. These animals will eat anything, from rows of corn to sea turtle eggs, to baby deer and goats. ”People don’t realize that wild pigs are voracious predators,” says Jack Mayer, a biologist with the Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S. C. who has studied wild pigs for 40 years. ”They will run down and kill and eat lamb, sheep, goats, calves, domestic chickens.” And more. ”Pigs will eat humans,” says Mayer. ”It’s been documented in combat, remote area homicide situations and plane crashes. Pigs will go in and feed on human carcasses.”  They are ”opportunistic omnivores,” Mayer says. ”If they can get their mouth around it and it has a calorie in it, they will eat it.” In Texas, feral pigs are tearing up suburban yards. In Louisiana, they damaged levees by digging for food. Pigs came to North America 500 years ago with early explorers as a source of food. Centuries later, the Eurasian wild boar was introduced to parts of the U. S. by sports hunters, and today’s feral swine are ”a combination of escaped domestic pigs, Eurasian wild boars, and hybrids of the two,” according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Once female wild pigs are about 6 months old or so, they can produce as many as a dozen offspring per year. For a number of reasons that haven’t been completely nailed down, their populations have really exploded in the last 30 years, Mayer says. There are now at least 6 million wild pigs across the country, with established populations in 35 states. State and federal legislators have funneled a lot of money into controlling and eliminating these animals because of the trail of destruction they leave behind. But controlling them can feel like an infuriating game of    because they move a lot, reproduce quickly and are smart enough to learn to avoid traps and bait. They’re also sneaky. ”These things are very secretive,” says Mayer. ”A lot of people didn’t know about wild pigs until they walked out their front door on Sunday morning and saw that it looked like somebody on drugs had rototilled their yard.” But the pigs may have met their match. Kelly Williams, a biological science technician at the National Wildlife Research Center, is going   on these hogs. She and her colleagues at the National Wildlife Research Center have recently developed a way  to keep tabs on the animals without ever even laying eyes on them. All she needs is a scoop of water. ”So, for example, right now in New Mexico the forest service is out collecting water for me,” says Williams. ”All they have to do is carry around a little Nalgene bottle, scoop up a water sample and ship it back to me.” Pigs love water and mud. They drink it, play in it and roll in it to keep heat and bugs away. When they do, they leave bits of themselves behind  —   drool, skin cells, hair and urine  —   like a wildlife crime scene. Each of those bits contains pig DNA. ”We know pigs are pretty messy, dirty animals, so they might shed more DNA than a coyote lapping up water or something,” Williams says. She worked with wild pigs at the National Wildlife Research Center to identify these tiny bits of DNA  —   called ”environmental DNA,” or eDNA  —   which can sometimes be detectable up to a month after a pig has visited a site. Ecologists have used eDNA to monitor invasive fish in the Great Lakes and endangered whale sharks in the Arabian Gulf. Williams’ colleagues developed a version to track the presence of Burmese pythons in Florida. Wild pigs are one of the first land animals to be tracked so extensively using eDNA. Williams starts with a bottle of dirty water, mixed with a solution to preserve the DNA inside. ”Sometimes it looks like chocolate milk,” she says. ”Sometimes it looks like lemonade.” Williams spins down all the solids in the liquid sample, amplifies the DNA inside, and compares what she finds to 125 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA that could only belong to a pig. At the end, she gets an answer: ”Yes, pigs were here,” or ”No, they weren’t.” She then passes the results along to people like Brian Archuleta, a wildlife biologist with the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in New Mexico. Archuleta has a goal for the new year: wild pig annihilation. ”Total elimination by the last day of September of this year,” he says of his goal. Archuleta is not joking. He covers eastern New Mexico, which is not only thousands of square miles of desert, mountains and sand dunes, but also right next to Texas, which is teeming with pigs (not to be confused with javelina, a smaller, unrelated species native to the Americas). To track wild pigs in his region, Archuleta used to have to repeatedly send people out across deserts and mountains to place cameras, use dogs to sniff them out, and bait traps with tubes of corn. ”The eastern side of New Mexico is a big place  —   lots of country. We are looking for a needle in a haystack,” says Archuleta. But recently, he just had a few people go out and collect water, and then shipped the samples to Kelly Williams. With the results he got back he was able to narrow the search to about 10 square miles in the desert, and another small area in the mountains. Next, Archuleta booked a helicopter, hired some sharpshooters and flew over the areas where pig DNA had been found. They shot eight hogs in one place and 13 in another. ”There are unknown places in New Mexico that I’m sure have pigs that we just don’t know about,” he says. He’s hoping the new eDNA sampler will help him find every last one. Meanwhile, Kelly Williams is already on to her next challenge. She’s working on a way to use eDNA to track another elusive species  —   the Nile monitor. These hissing,      lizards are expanding their reach in Florida. They eat endangered owls for breakfast."
"Updated at 10:25 a. m. ET on Feb. 7, A newly released report by Amnesty International alleges a widespread and systematic attack by Syria’s government against its civilian population, including murder, torture, enforced disappearances and extermination carried out at a military prison called Saydnaya. The report’s executive summary opens with this grim description: ”Saydnaya Military Prison is where the Syrian state quietly slaughters its own people. The victims are overwhelmingly ordinary civilians who are thought to oppose the government. Since 2011, thousands of people have been extrajudicially executed in mass hangings, carried out at night and in the utmost secrecy. Many other detainees at Saydnaya Military Prison have been killed after being repeatedly tortured and systematically deprived of food, water, medicine and medical care. The bodies of those who are killed at Saydnaya are buried in mass graves. It is inconceivable that these   and systematic practices have not been authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government.” ”Every week, and sometimes twice a week, groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their cells, taken over to another building on the grounds of the prison and hanged to death,” report author Nicolette Waldman told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. ”On top of this, the conditions at the prison . .. are actually calculated [to] deliberately [subject] detainees to inhuman, repeated torture and the deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care so they are dying in massive numbers even on top of these hangings,” she explained. Reports of torture and disappearances in Syria are not new. But the Amnesty International report says the magnitude and severity of abuse has ”increased drastically” since 2011. Citing the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, the report says ”at least 17, 723 people were killed in government custody between March 2011 and December 2015, an average of 300 deaths each month.” The victims  —   political dissidents, journalists, doctors and aid workers  —   were perceived opponents of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Waldman called on the Assad regime’s most powerful ally, Russia, to use its influence to stop what she called ”war crimes.” ”We can’t be sure about what kind of efforts Russia has made [already],” she said. ”However, as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council . .. it’s very difficult to believe that they could be supporting this type of massive crimes against humanity and war crimes.” On the basis of its own investigation, Amnesty International estimates that between September 2011 and December 2015, between 5, 000 and 13, 000 people were executed without legitimate trials at Saydnaya. The report says the organization has no evidence of executions after December 2015, but based on information that the facility is still being used to imprison dissidents, ”there is no reason to believe the executions have stopped.” The   report includes graphic details of systematic beatings, rapes and psychological degradation, not to mention the denial of food, water and medical care. Omar, a former detainee, described it this way: ” ’[A]t night, we could hear them beating them again with the tank belt [an improvised tool made out of tyre tread, which is attached to a wooden handle] and the green pipe. We knew the sounds that each made. First we were thinking the people were being released or taken to the civilian prisons. But at midnight, we heard the sound of torture again, and we thought they were dying, because the sound of the torture was so strong. They were beating them in a monstrous way.’ ” ”I think some of the most chilling aspects of the research, for me, was hearing the same exact procedures [multiple times],” said Waldman. ”This is how you corroborate these testimonies, because basically people saw and heard different aspects of the same thing happening again and again.” The report is based on a yearlong investigation, beginning in December 2015, of the violations reported at Saydnaya. The organization interviewed 84 people in total, many with firsthand experience at Saydnaya including 31 former detainees, four prison officials or guards and 22 family members of former or current detainees, as well as Syrian judges, lawyers and doctors familiar with the facility. All but two interviews with witnesses were conducted separately, says the report. Most interviews were conducted in southern Turkey, with others in Lebanon, Jordan, Europe and the United States. The Amnesty International report says the organization attempted to contact the Syrian government in January 2017 about the allegations raised in its report. But the organization has received no response."
"When Mana Heshmati isn’t working as an engineer, she’s cooking traditional Iranian food through her ” ” Peace Meal Kitchen, a   dining series based in Detroit. It’s a way to expose diners to her Iranian heritage and dispel misconceptions about the often misunderstood country. She held her first   in April to the delight of fans who ranged from the city’s   foodies to Iranian nationals who were craving a taste of home. Her dinners mostly feature traditional Persian cuisine, but she’s also delved into other misrepresented regions, such as an   event last fall. But a mission that started as a culinary cultural exchange has shifted in the wake of President Trump’s executive order barring travel from seven   nations. ”With the election,” she says, ”[the dinner series] is transforming into a platform to positively impact the community.” At a   over the weekend, Heshmati’s Peace Meal Kitchen filled a bar in Detroit’s Eastern Market district with the herbaceous aroma of traditional ghormeh sabzi, a Persian beef stew with herbs and spinach.  Outside the door of the bar waited long lines of diners, all hungry to show their solidarity with immigrants affected by the executive order, which calls for restrictions on travelers from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. They feasted on sabze khordan, a salad of fresh herbs, radish and sheep feta served with fresh   barbari, an Iranian flatbread, seer torshi, a side dish of aged pickled garlic, and other dishes. In all, Heshmati and the event organizers raised more than $700, most of which is going to the ACLU of Michigan. They sold out of food within two hours. Peace Meal Kitchen is just one of hundreds of food businesses across the country that are taking the opportunity to raise funds for the ACLU, which in the days since Trump made his announcement has raised more than $20 million nationally. Metro Detroit is home to one of the largest Muslim immigrant populations in the country, including large concentrations of Iraqi, Yemeni, and Iranian immigrants, many drawn over the years to jobs in the automotive industry. More recently, parts of the area have welcomed a small number of Syrian refugees. Among the diners at Saturday’s event were Norris Howard and Latasha James, who heard about the dinner from a Facebook page. ”I grew up here and am so familiar with Middle Eastern food and culture,” says Howard, 29. ”To have something like this, we would be remiss to not support it.” James says she has   friends who, even though they were born in the United States, have encountered instances of discrimination when wearing a traditional hijab. ”To hear the intolerance, the stigma, it’s just so sad,” she says. Carolyn Anahid, 54, of suburban Troy, Mich. went to the dinner with her   husband and their two adult daughters. While not normally the types to hit up the city’s trendy   scene, the family says Peace Meal Kitchen’s cause seemed necessary. ”My daughter mentioned it, and that part of the profits would be going to the ACLU, so we immediately said we’re going to be supporting this,” says Anahid. Anahid says her family’s first reaction when Trump announced the travel restrictions was to check in with anyone they knew who might be impacted. ”For everybody who cares about this, there’s that electric reaction of, ’Oh, my god, where is everybody, what’s going to happen next?’ ” For the     Heshmati, using food as a means of discourse is a more organic, less intimidating way of addressing issues about identity and politics. ”Food has always been used as a bridging tool throughout many cultures throughout history,” says Heshmati. ”It takes out some of the stigma of some of the politics. It helps people reach a new level of understanding about a different culture. Food makes everything approachable.” Serena Maria Daniels is a freelance journalist based in Detroit."
"Many resettlement agencies are relieved refugees can once again come to the U. S. now that a federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that suspended the refugee program. So far, the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a request by the Trump administration to restore the temporary refugee ban. But this open door to refugees could close at some point depending on what the courts decide. Many refugees and workers at resettlement agencies are stuck in limbo. ”I don’t know how long I will have this job, because we are thinking there will be some layoffs if this continues,” says Omar Mohamed, a case manager for Church World Service of Lancaster, Pa. Local agencies worry they will no longer get the federal funding they need to provide services not only to new arrivals, but also to refugees still getting settled into their new country. Mohamed says there’s still a lot of work for case managers to do with refugees after they move into their new homes. ”Everything is new to them  —   this new culture, new people, new language,” he says. ”We have to teach them from zero.” Mohamed Muhumed’s family arrived in the U. S. about three weeks ago. He recently moved into a   apartment in Lancaster with his wife and their four children. An orphan at three years old, Muhumed fled Somalia and waited 23 years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia to be resettled. In 2014, after multiple interviews and security screenings, he finally moved, by himself, to central Pennsylvania, where he now works as a   driver. His wife and children joined him in Lancaster 10 days before Trump announced his temporary ban on refugees. ”I feel very, very happy,” says Muhumed, who adds that his family had ”good luck” to arrive before Trump’s executive order. In Philadelphia, Paw Wah doesn’t know if she’ll ever see her family reunited. She escaped persecution as a member of the Karen community, an ethnic minority in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Last year she moved out of a refugee camp in Thailand with her husband and their three young children, leaving behind their eldest daughter. Wah was planning to make a meal of fish paste, vegetables and soup to welcome her daughter to Philadelphia in late January  —   until Trump issued his refugee order. The flight to the U. S. for Wah’s daughter was canceled and hasn’t been rebooked yet, according to staff at the Nationalities Service Center, a refugee resettlement agency in Philadelphia that would help her once she gets off the plane. Betsy Jenson coordinates donations and volunteers for the agency. She says that while they’re waiting for more refugees, they’re certainly prepared, given the uptick in donations of clothing, furniture and household goods they’ve received since Trump’s election. They’ve also heard from a lot of people in Philadelphia who want to help. ”We actually just closed off our volunteer applications for the moment, just because we’ve sort of reached capacity,” Jenson says. In Lancaster, a group of leaders from different refugee communities recently met to discuss what more they can do. ”We, the refugees and immigrants that are qualified to vote, we have to show at the polling stations in numbers, because politicians look at numbers,” said Joseph Sackor, a former refugee who fled civil war in Liberia before he became a U. S. citizen. Sackor added that it’s time for more refugees to register to vote once they get citizenship and to reach out to elected officials  —   for themselves and for others hoping to build a new life in America."
"In fiction we seek a paradox, the familiar in the foreign, new realities that only this one particular author can give us. Pachinko, the sophomore novel by the gifted   Min Jin Lee, is the kind of book that can open your eyes and fill them with tears at the same time. Pachinko, for those not in the know, is one of the national obsessions of Japan, a dizzying cross between pinball and a slot machine, wherein small metal balls drop randomly amid a maze of brass pins. There’s a comic feel of Rube Goldberg to the device, but the final effect is oddly mesmerizing. The urge to play can quickly become an addiction, and of course the game is a perfect metaphor for the ricochet whims of fate. Owning pachinko parlors becomes a way for the clan depicted in the novel to climb out of poverty  —   but destiny cannot be manipulated so easily. We are in Buddenbrooks territory here, tracing a family dynasty over a sprawl of seven decades, and comparing the brilliantly drawn Pachinko to Thomas Mann’s classic first novel is not hyperbole. Lee bangs and buffets and pinballs her characters through life, love and sorrow, somehow making her vast, ambitious narrative seem intimate. ”History has failed us, but no matter,” she writes in the book’s Tolstoyan opening sentence, hinting at the mix of tragic stoicism that is to come. During the second decade of the 20th century, as Korea falls under Japanese annexation, a young   fisherman named Hoonie marries a local girl, Yangjin, ”fifteen and mild and tender as a newborn calf.” The couple has a daughter, Sunja, who grows to childhood as the cosseted pet of their rooming house by the sea in   a tiny islet near the Korean port city of Busan. As a shy, vulnerable adolescent, Sunja is the prey of a formidable   gangster named Koh Hansu. With features that make him look ”somewhat Japanese,” and elegant   fashions such as ”white patent leather shoes,” Hansu embeds himself deeply into the remainder of Sunja’s life. He’s a Godfather, but also something of a fairy godmother. Most importantly, he provides a financial buffer when the family relocates to Osaka, Japan. Lee deftly sketches a     but oftentimes harsh new world of a Korean immigrant in imperialist Japan. Sunja gives birth out of wedlock to Hansu’s son, her shame erased at the last minute by marriage to a patrician,   pastor. The entwined destinies of the gangster’s bastard and a second child, the son of a preacher man, become an engine that drives the story forward. Amid the nightmare of war, the people of Osaka deal with privations. ”City children were sent alone to the country by train to buy an egg or a potato in exchange for a grandmother’s kimono.” Sunja and her beloved    Kyunghee have set themselves up in business making the flavorful national specialty of Korea, kimchi. Pickled cabbage serves as mode of survival, rising to symbolic importance alongside the pachinko game itself, organic and homey where the other is mechanical and sterile. The cultures, Korean and Japanese, clash. Sunja’s son, Mozasu, who owns pachinko parlors, will level with his best friend over fried oysters and shishito peppers, in a passage that lies at the heart of these characters’ dilemmas: ”In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastard, and in Japan, I’m just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make, or how nice I am.” Lee is at her best describing complex behaviors and emotions with unadorned,    language. ”Isak knew how to talk with people, to ask questions, and to hear the concerns in a person’s voice and she seemed to understand how to survive, and this was something he did not always know how to do.” There are horrors in Pachinko  —   a lengthy prison term is marked by gruesome torture  —   but the core message remains ultimately one of survival and hope. ”Pachinko was a foolish game,” Lee writes, ”but life was not.” The reader could be forgiven for thinking that the reverse might also be true. This is honest writing, fiction that looks squarely at what is, both terrible and wonderful and occasionally as bracing as a jar of Sunja’s best kimchi. Jean Zimmerman’s latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin."
"White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is known to have cultivated ties with   parties in Europe, like the National Front in France. He also seems to have forged an alliance with Vatican   who oppose Pope Francis’ less rigid approach to church doctrine. The New York Times reported this week on Bannon’s connections at the Vatican. Before becoming White House chief strategist, Bannon  —   who is Catholic  —   was the executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he called a ”platform for the  .” That’s a movement associated with white nationalism. During a visit to Rome a few years ago, Bannon struck up a friendship with the American Cardinal Raymond Burke, a traditionalist who has emerged as one of Pope Francis’ most vocal critics. Bannon hired Thomas Williams, an American former priest, as Breitbart’s Rome correspondent. Williams belonged to the conservative Legion of Christ, which was roiled by scandal when it was revealed its founder had been a pedophile. Williams recently told his own story on an Italian TV talk show: In 2003, he fathered a child, but he kept it secret until he was outed by a news report. He then left the priesthood and married the child’s mother  —   who is the daughter of the former U. S. ambassador to the Vatican, Mary Ann Glendon. In July 2014, Bannon addressed a conference that was held inside the Vatican but was sponsored by a conservative Catholic group. Speaking via Skype, Bannon painted an almost apocalyptic vision of the state of the Western world. ”We’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which, if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting.” A barbarity, Bannon added, that would completely eradicate ”everything we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2, 000, 2, 500 years,” and which he clearly spelled out a few minutes later: ”We are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it.” This is language that Pope Francis has never used. The pope has repeatedly urged European countries to welcome migrants  —   who are, in the majority, Muslim  —   and he has championed the rights of the poor. A year ago, Francis criticized candidate Donald Trump for wanting to build a wall along the border with Mexico, saying, ”A person who thinks only about building walls . .. and not building bridges is not Christian.” But that’s not Bannon’s worldview. While most Breitbart reports on the pope have been neutral, headlines about the pope when Bannon was in charge included: While Breitbart and Bannon seem to be making common cause with Roman Catholics who are on the outs with this pope, these Vatican   are not very powerful. Nevertheless, Pope Francis’ supporters inside the Vatican worry that following Trump’s election victory, the pope is a little more isolated  —   a lonely progressive on the global stage. They say this has emboldened his critics both within and outside the Vatican, who have become more vocal. For example, just last week, mysterious   posters cropped up around Rome. The photo showed the pope looking uncharacteristically very grouchy, and the unidentified author  —   using a Roman street dialect  —   accused him of acting in an authoritarian manner and showing lack of mercy, despite the fact that Francis has made ”Mercy” the unofficial slogan of his papacy. Francis has not reacted. But in a surprising move, on Sunday, he issued the very first papal blessing for the Super Bowl. It was a video message in his native Spanish  —   not in Italian, which he usually uses for official messages  —   in which he said such a sporting event ”shows that it’s possible to build a culture of encounter and a world of peace.” The Italian media labeled the message ” .”"
"The racial wealth gap has been measured and studied for decades. One fact has remained the same: White families build and accumulate more wealth more quickly than black and brown families do. The reasons for this are multiple and  . They start at slavery and traverse the historical and deliberate exclusion of people of color from the economic institutions and government programs that helped white Americans build wealth and pass it on to successive generations. Segregation and redlining by banks made it impossible for many black and Latino families to secure mortgages, for example. The GI Bill, which helped establish an American middle class by helping veterans pay for college and buy homes after World War II, mostly excluded people of color. The results are stark. In 2013, the median white family held 13 times as much net wealth as the median black family and 10 times as much wealth as the median Latino family, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. Just a decade earlier, the disparity was 7 to 1 for black families, and 9 to 1 for Latino families. A study released this week by the   think tank Demos offered new points of analysis on the disparity, one of which was particularly sobering. In comparing the wealth held by   white families to that held by black and Latino families with two parents, the authors found that: The median   white family had roughly twice as much wealth as the median black or Latino family with two parents. This ratio is interesting for a couple of related reasons. First, it demonstrates that the financial advantages that come with marriage, like having two earners, qualifying for tax breaks for dependents, and the ability to share expenses, are insufficient to close the racial wealth gap. Second, as the study points out, the data call to mind Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s controversial 1965 report ”The Negro Family.” In it, he attributed poverty among   to the structure of black families and the fact that many were headed by single mothers. Moynihan argued that the widening gap between black Americans and white Americans would persist so long as ”the deterioration of the Negro family” did. This premise has often been used to advance the argument that personal responsibility and social respectability are the solution to racial and economic inequity (see: Bill Cosby, et al. ). Yet decades of research have demonstrated that this is a faulty premise and cannot explain away the racial wealth gap. The Demos study reiterates this point. ”Family structure does not drive racial inequity, and racial inequity persists regardless of family structure,” the authors note. ”The benefits of intergenerational wealth transfers and other aspects of white privilege . .. benefit white single mothers, enabling them to build significantly more wealth than married parents of color.” The study uses available data to illustrate other ways that have proved inadequate to close the racial wealth gap. Attending college, working full time, spending less than whites  ” none of these have been enough to help black and Latinos even begin to achieve parity with white Americans in this regard."
"Two lawyers, three judges, thousands of ordinary Americans: On Tuesday night, oral arguments in Washington v. Trump attracted an unusually large audience for   legal proceedings. The case centers on President Trump’s controversial executive order that would temporarily bar all new refugees from entering the U. S. as well as visa holders from seven   countries. Those restrictions are currently not being enforced, after a federal judge granted the states of Washington and Minnesota a temporary restraining order blocking the travel ban from going into effect. It was that temporary restraining order  —   not the travel ban itself  —   that was being debated in the arguments Tuesday night before three judges on the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But along the way, the lawyers and judges raised a number of larger issues  —   some of which, for the many nonlawyers listening along, might require a little context or explanation. Here are a few key questions that were raised, directly or indirectly, during the arguments: How many Muslims would be affected by the travel ban? (And does it matter?) During oral arguments, Judge Richard Clifton suggested that the seven countries named in President Trump’s travel ban make up less than 15 percent of the world’s Muslim population. Clifton’s ”quick penciling,” as he described it during the hearing, is close. Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen made up just more than 12 percent of the world’s Muslim population in 2010, based on NPR’s analysis of the latest data compiled by the Pew Research Center. During the hearing, Clifton questioned whether the travel ban could be considered religious discrimination against Muslims if the majority of Muslims worldwide were not affected. Here’s how Washington state Solicitor General Noah Purcell responded: ”Your honor, the case law from this court and from the Supreme Court is very clear that to prove religious discrimination, we do not need to prove that this order harms only Muslims or that it harms every Muslim. We just need to prove that it was motivated in part by a desire to harm Muslims.” Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, says there is case law that backs up Purcell’s argument. ”There is no precedent for the ridiculous suggestion that discrimination against members of a religious group becomes constitutionally acceptable whenever only a small percentage of that religious group is victimized,” Tribe tells NPR. ”The entire course of jurisprudence under the Religion Clauses is incompatible with any such arithmetic approach to the issue.” What rights do noncitizens have under the U. S. Constitution? As he wrapped up his initial remarks, August Flentje, special counsel to the assistant attorney general, said that in some cases, noncitizens have ”no rights” that the state of Washington could try to protect. Cornell University Law School professor Stephen   says that’s basically true. He explains that the constitutional rights of noncitizens exist on a sort of spectrum. ”At one end of the spectrum someone who’s never been to the United States, even for visiting Disney World, really has no rights,” he tells NPR. ”On the other end of the spectrum would be somebody who’s been given a green card . .. they have a lot of constitutional rights.” But it’s more complicated than that. It matters where someone is. Someone in the U. S.  —   even illegally  —   has constitutional rights, such as the right to due process and the freedoms under the First Amendment,   says. Even people who aren’t in the U. S. and never have been might have ties to a U. S. resident or citizen who has rights of his own  —   as the state of Washington pointed out in its arguments. What are the limits of presidential power? The Department of Justice argues that the president has broad powers when it comes to immigration and national security. In court filings, and again in oral arguments, the DOJ suggested that it was inappropriate for judges to ” ” the president’s judgment on national security issues. But the judges seemed to be interested in the limits of those presidential powers, as well as when ” ” would be called for. ”Could the president simply say in the order, we’re not gonna let any Muslims in?” asked Judge William Canby. Flentje replied several times that that’s not what Trump’s executive order does. ”I know that,” Canby said. ”But could he do that?” He kept pushing for an answer to his hypothetical question. Flentje conceded that a different plaintiff  —   specifically, a ”U. S. citizen with a connection with someone seeking entry”  —   might be able to sue for religious discrimination in that situation. What proof is there that Trump’s travel ban is motivated by concerns over terrorism  —   and what evidence that it’s meant to block Muslims?  The Justice Department argues that the temporary travel ban on travelers from seven mostly Muslim countries is necessary to protect U. S. national security. But Judge Michelle Friedland pushed the government to support that claim. ”Has the government pointed to any evidence connecting these countries with terrorism?” Friedland asked the Justice Department’s lawyer. Flentje said that there is no such evidence on the record in this case. But he did mention   an Islamic militant group based in East Africa that the U. S. government considers a terrorist organization. And he pointed out that Congress and the Obama administration had already authorized heightened security for visitors from these countries. Meanwhile, when Purcell argued on behalf of the states, Clifton asked him to lay out evidence for the states’ allegation that the order, which doesn’t mention Islam or Muslims by name, is actually motivated by religious bias. Purcell had described the evidence of intent as ”rather shocking” but didn’t go into detail. Friedland pointed out that the state included evidence in its briefs  —   including remarks from Trump associate Rudy Giuliani about what he said was the administration’s desire to impose a Muslim ban ”legally.” What might happen next? While Tuesday’s hearing veered into questions of constitutional law, the federal appeals judges are deciding only whether to reinstate Trump’s travel ban while the legal battle over his executive order continues. The 9th Circuit panel said it won’t be making a decision on Wednesday, but the ruling could come later this week. If the   panel decides to bring the travel ban back, lawyers for Washington state and Minnesota could ask a lower court to grant a preliminary injunction to, again, suspend the ban, which could be issued as early as Feb. 18, according to this court filing. Regardless of what the appeals judges decide, the case is likely to end up before the U. S. Supreme Court."
"President Trump addressed the legal battle over his immigration ban on Wednesday morning, saying the courts ”seem so political.” Speaking to a gathering of sheriffs and police chiefs in Washington, D. C. Trump said he had watched television coverage of the oral arguments before the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday night ”in amazement” and that he ”heard things that I couldn’t believe.” A   panel of the appeals court is weighing a ruling by a lower court judge that blocked Trump’s ban while the case proceeds it is expected to issue its ruling later this week. ”I don’t ever want to call a court biased,” Trump said, adding, ”but courts seem to be so political, and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what’s right.” Trump said he would not comment on the statement made ”by certainly one judge.” But, Trump said, ”right now we are at risk because of what happened.” He said that if the judges wanted to ”help the court in terms of respect for the court, they’d do what they should be doing.” Trump read parts of the statute that he says gives him authority to issue the ban on travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations, as well as a temporary halt in refugee admissions. ”A bad high school student would understand this anybody would understand this,” he said. The executive order has been the target of dozens of lawsuits, including the one that prompted the stay. Addressing criticism that the ban was rushed with no notice to either the affected travelers or the federal agents who had to enforce it, Trump said he had suggested there be a   notice but that ”the law enforcement people said to me, ’Oh you can’t give a notice,’ ” because then people are ”going to pour in before the toughness takes effect.”"
"Customers who walked through the door of Everyman Espresso, a cafe in New York’s East Village, last weekend got a pitch at the   counter to support a fundraiser to help defend immigrants. ”We’re donating 5 percent [of our proceeds] to the ACLU in response to the travel ban,” Eric Grimm, a manager at the cafe, explained. Grimm was referring to the executive order issued by President Trump restricting people from seven   countries from entering the U. S. Over 800 cafes around the country participated in the weekend fundraiser, which was the brainchild of Sprudge, a coffee publication and event organizer. Organizers say at least $400, 000 was raised  —   though only   of the cafes have reported their tallies, so they expect that number to keep rising. ”I think it speaks to the wider moment we’re in right now,” Jordan Michelman of Sprudge told us. It’s a way of saying ”immigrants are welcome here,” says Sam Penix, the owner of Everyman Espresso. Penix says he wants to remind people that ”we’re a nation of immigrants, a city of immigrants.” And restaurants and cafes depend on immigrants as employees, too. The food industry is often the   to employment for immigrants. An estimated one in four restaurant workers are   according to an analysis done by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United using data from the Census’ American Community Survey for 2015. And the vast majority of farm workers are immigrants, many of whom are in the U. S. without legal authorization. The U. S. food supply depends on immigrants. Ben Hall, a chef and   of the Russell Street Deli in Detroit, says lots of people don’t realize this. ”We can’t run a business without labor,” says Hall. Hall has designated his deli as a sanctuary restaurant, which is a nationwide movement aimed at promoting   workplaces and helping protect workers from discriminatory acts based on their immigration status, gender, religion or other factors. It’s not just independent cafes and restaurants speaking up. Big brands have jumped in, too. Just After President Trump’s travel ban was announced, Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz wrote to all his employees assuring them ”we are doing everything possible to support and help” employees who are impacted by the travel ban. For example, Starbucks is offering free legal advice to employees with questions about immigration status. And the company announced plans to hire 10, 000 refugees over the next five years. The CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, who is   sent an email to her employees after the travel ban was announced. ”We are an incredibly diverse organization, comprised of men and women from all walks of life and every corner of the globe  —   including the countries impacted by this new policy,” Nooyi wrote. Her email affirmed the value of diversity. ”PepsiCo remains a place where everyone feels welcome and anyone can succeed. These are values we will never abandon,” Nooyi wrote. She pledged to remain ”steadfastly committed to the safety, security and   of all our associates.” As food companies decide how and whether to weigh in, some brands are finding that speaking up for immigrants and inclusion is good for business. ”This is a very important time and we really want to be part of this conversation,” says Sepanta Bagherpour, director of marketing at Nando’s   a chicken restaurant chain. (He’s South African.) The company is currently promoting its Everyone Is Welcome campaign. Nando’s has 38 restaurants in the U. S. and 1, 200 internationally. When I walked by one of the Washington, D. C. locations, I noticed a big, bold sign in the storefront window that read: ”Nando’s   is an immigrant employing, gay loving, Muslim respecting, racism opposing, equal paying,   restaurant.” Bagherpour says the Nando’s brand  —   which began in South Africa in the waning days of apartheid  —   is built on social commentary. And he says this campaign has been good for business. The company says that traffic and sales have jumped compared to the same time last year. But taking sides in this national conversation has its risks. ”We’ve definitely seen push back,” says Russell Street Deli’s Ben Hall. After he was featured in a national business story on the sanctuary restaurant movement, he was slammed on social media. There were comments such as: ”I’ll never ever eat in your restaurant,” and ”I only want my food [to be] made by an American.” Hall says he was taken aback, but he realizes this conversation elicits strong feelings on both sides. And, in the end, despite the negative comments on social media, his deli has been more crowded than usual for this time of year."
"School traffic never bothers Max Schneider. In the airplane he takes to class every day, his commute is pretty easy. It’s nearly 7:30 a. m. when a small,   Piper Saratoga plane takes off from the mainland in Port Clinton, Ohio. Pilot Bob Ganley is on his way to pick up students heading to school. His first stop is Middle Bass Island, about a mile away from the school. Instead of a bus stop, Max’s father is dropping him off at the Middle Bass airport to meet the plane. On Western Lake Erie, there are only a few inhabited islands. The school on Middle Bass closed in 1982. So Max and four other students go to    School, located on South Bass Island. Their school bus will be this Piper plane. Ganley has two students to pick up: Max, a   and Cecilia, a  . After landing in   ’s airport, Max and Cecilia walk to a large yellow van waiting in the airport’s empty parking lot. They join two teachers who flew over from the mainland earlier. In the summer, golf carts and bikes carry thousands of tourists across these streets. But this time of year, there are only about 400 people on the island. Max’s mother, Katie, teaches English here. Her family lives on Middle Bass, but during the winter, she rents a place near school just in case the plane is unable to fly. ”If they know there’s weather coming in, they’ll stay just because they don’t want to be late for school or miss out on school,” she says. A   flight to school on this island costs the Middle Bass school system nearly $100 per student each day. But Katie Schneider, who pays her own fare each week, says she and her husband have never considered making the move to   . ”Middle Bass is our home,” she says. ”That’s where he grew up that’s where he was raised. That’s where our family history is.”    School is much like any other school on the mainland. There are state tests,   clubs and even prom. But    Superintendent and Principal Steve Poe says it’s the smallest public school in the state. ”We have 81 students   through 12,” he said. ”Average class is about a   to eight students. That makes us unique with the individual attention our kids get.” Max’s   class has only three students. And his sister Lucy’s   class has just five boys and three girls. Because they live across the lake from most of their friends, Max says they try to make the most of their days at school. ”Living on the island, I don’t get to hang out with a lot of the kids a whole lot because I’m usually back on Middle Bass, and you can’t hang out when there’s a mile of water between you,” he says. Air transport also comes into play when it comes to the school’s sports teams. The entire community shows up for games to cheer on the    Panthers. It all seems like a normal school event until an announcer thanks people from the opposing team for bringing milk to the island. That’s right: milk. That’s something even more appreciated when living on an island three miles from the shore."
"Sunrise, sunset: light into darkness, darkness into light. This perpetual cycling through archetypal phases of yin and yang, light slapstick and dour melodrama, is what lends Batman his unique mutability. His fellow heroes are a more stolid lot. They tend to pick a lane and stick with it. Not Batman. Dude’s ephemeral. A veritable will o’ the wisp, that guy. For 78 years we nerds, devout students of his endless adventures, have witnessed him phasing through this   cycle on the comics page. But when it comes to shaping the idea of Batman  —   how he exists in the public consciousness  —   it’s TV and movies that matter. And it’s possible to see that same cycle at work there, too, if you know where and how to look for it. Every turn of the cycle occurs for a reason, as a reaction to the phase that came before. 1966: Camp Crusader, The ’60s Batman television series starring Adam West brought the Caped Crusader before the eyes of the wider world in a huge way. A huge, goofy way. The network and studio executives behind the series didn’t create the show out of any particular love for the character. In fact, they considered Batman  —   and superheroes, and comics themselves  —   to be disposable junk culture. They approached the creation of the series from the outside: producer Bill Dozier read a few Batman comics, and decided to reproduce them exactly  —   but with a tone that treated them like serious drama, like Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in tights. They made him a square, a cop in a cape, a   representation of the Establishment. He drank milk, lectured Robin about pedestrian safety, and would never think of   the Batmobile. That tone, and the campy silliness it engendered, made the show a sensation, albeit a   one. Everything about the show’s approach angered Batman’s hardcore fans, however, and their resentment would live on long after the series went off the air. It was so strong, in fact, that it threw a long shadow from which Batman is only now beginning to emerge. 1989:   Throughout the ’70s and ’80s the Batman of the comics existed as a spirited refutation of everything the ’60 TV series had stood for. This new Batman was a brooding loner (Robin had shipped off to college) who haunted the urban night. It was this Batman that director Tim Burton picked up on, in creating the 1989 Batman film starring Michael Keaton. His Dark Knight was truly dark, and somber, and goth  —   and also, with respect to to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman  —   kinda kinky. 1990s: Camp Strikes Back, When director Joel Schumacher took over the series, he attempted to pull Batman back into the light, although the light in question was neon pink. In homage to the 1960s series, he upped the campy archness, restored Robin to the mix and  —   in a move that has enshrined him in nerd infamy  —   slapped some nipples on the sculpted musculature of the  . The reaction of the hardcore   was swift and savage. They took to the nascent internet to demand that future films treat the character as seriously (read: as grimly and grittily) as the comics had been doing for years. After a brief fallow period, they got their wish. 2000s: Batman, Bedimmed, Director Christopher Nolan’s   beginning with Batman Begins, seemed like a mission statement for the complete refutation of Schumacher’s Batman  —   and by extension, of the ’60s series as well. By leaning into a rugged,   vision that prized somber practicality over anything that smacked of stylization or  —   God forbid  —   flair, Nolan gave the hardcore fans the Batman they loved in the    comics. This was a Batman who would be taken seriously (read: who was very, very serious). The fans proved fiercely protective: Several critics who dared to suggest that the somberness of Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, in particular, smacked of bloated pretension were greeted with death threats. 2017: LEGO My Ego, And so we come to The LEGO Batman Movie, which is just the latest attempt to bring the broody Batman out of his cave, into the light and sun of the upper world. But this attempt is fundamentally different. The creators of the 1966 TV series brought condescension to Batman. Tim Burton brought a determination to remake the character in his own,   outsider image. Schumacher brought camp and areolae. Nolan brought a grayscale dourness. Every one of them came at the character from the outside, and imposed their vision on top of him. The screenwriters and director of The LEGO Batman Movie, on the other hand, come at him with 1. a very specific comedic sensibility and 2. a deep, deep, deep knowledge of the character’s history that, it turns out, is indistinguishable from love. Their Batman is something else, as well  —   something important: a complete tool. He’s a jerk who takes himself far too seriously, a brooding loner who insists, at every opportunity, upon his own consummate awesomeness. This is not merely a characterization  —   a ”way in” to the character they’d teach in screenwriting classes. It is a pointed critique of the dour, sulky, militantly humorless Batman that has existed in the public consciousness for nearly 40 years. It is also, more to the point, a slap in the face of the hardcore fanboy culture around him, a culture that insists only one ”true” version of the character exists, and stubbornly clings to the conviction that they ”own” Batman. Which is to say: It’s a reminder  —   a not particularly gentle one  —   that this stuff was always supposed to be fun. Consider this, as well: The plot of this movie involves Batman learning that being a dark, disaffected, brooding loner isn’t enough. He needs to make human connections, needs to let other people in. In a very real sense, it’s about Batman transitioning from an arrested adolescence as a sulky goth, brooding alone in his room, into an adulthood that requires him to join society. Which is probably why, despite the movie’s deep, abiding and aggressive silliness, The LEGO Batman Movie stands as the most emotionally mature Batman film yet made. It’s also one that might  —   that just might  —   manage to end the eternal cycle of   Batman, once and for all. Because no matter how savagely it lampoons the Dark Knight as an egotistical jerk, it so clearly comes from a place of deep knowledge that even the   fanboy will have no choice but to respect it. Nolan, Burton, Schumacher, even the creators of the 1960s Batman TV series were outsiders looking in the team behind LEGO Batman are not. And that matters, because of a very simple, abiding truth first recorded, I believe, by Pliny the Elder, namely: Game recognize game. In other words: I strongly doubt that any     will be able to gin up much in the way of frothing nerdrage over a film that includes a frickin’   cameo."
"Used to be, you could count on two fundamental truths: 1. Superheroes were jocks. 2. People who loved superhero comics were nerds. Sweeping generalizations to be sure, and they grew steadily less and less true every time, over the last 75+ years, superheroes escaped the comic book page for radio, television and movies, where they found themselves embraced by a wider, less obsessive audience. Yet superheroes remain physically attractive, impossibly fit, and they tend to dress to highlight their low   .   global audience, on the hand, belong to a stubbornly   species that’s less hot, more indolent, and far, far lumpier. So while simple   explains some of the superhero’s appeal, there’s always been more to it. Because for as long as superheroes have been around, their creators have striven to make them relatable. Mostly, this takes the form of infusing these perfect specimens and their dazzling abilities with generous doses of     . That’s the Marvel formula, famously: great powers, great responsibility . .. and great agita. That approach quickly bled out to DC’s heroes as well. Today, on movie screens, DC’s heroes glower at one another from deep inside black clouds of shame and regret. And even on the comparatively sunny spate of DC superhero shows on the CW (Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow) beautiful heroes get put through familiar trials marked by guilt, jealousy, and feelings of inadequacy. That’s one way to make us care about superhero stories. It’s the default approach. Another way  —   one adopted by NBC’s sitcom Powerless, premiering tomorrow (Thursday the 2nd) at 8:30 ET  —   is to sideline the superheroes altogether, and instead focus on the mundane, lumpish humans who get caught up in their wake. Here’s To The People Who Flinch, From the genre’s earliest days, creators would often shift a story’s point of view from that of the title’s nominal star to a supporting character, bit player or background extra. The opportunity to tell a story entirely from the perspective of Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Alfred the butler or even an   doggedly working to defeat his city’s resident   served to add   variety to the formula. More recently, entire comic book series have featured these   views of worlds in which powerful beings fly overhead. In the ’80s, Marvel’s Damage Control by Dwayne McDuffie and Ernie Colon focused on the workers who repaired property damage caused by   brawls. The 1994   Marvels, by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, examined the Marvel universe through the eyes of one newspaper photographer. In 1998 DC’s Chase by Dan Curtis Johnson and J. H. Williams III followed a government agency tasked with keeping humans safe from   threats, while 2002’s Gotham Central by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, Michael Lark and others revolved around the detectives and beat cops who picked up the pieces left by Batman and his enemies. Powerless doubles down on this       narrative approach in a way that, while dutifully checking familiar sitcom boxes, manages to inject some   brightness into a genre long dominated by a steroidal glumness. The show’s opening credits serve as mission statement: On a series of iconic comic book covers, the camera pushes past the big jamoke in tights hogging the spotlight to find some hapless background bystander, scrambling for safety. Here, those hapless bystanders are represented by the jaded,   staff of Wayne Securities. Owned by the   Bruce Wayne but run by his preening, incompetent cousin Van (a twitchily funny Alan Tudyk) Wayne Securities is a tech firm losing the battle for market share against Lexcorp, whose products it habitually rips off. This is because the assorted lab techs in its Research and Development department (Danny Pudi, Ron Funches and the very funny Jennie Pierson, who’s not featured in the opening credits but deserves to be) have lost their competitive drive after years of having their ideas serially rejected. Enter: Emily (Vanessa Hudgens) the plucky but     new Head of Research and Development, determined to get her team to innovate  —   and to like her. Both prove uphill battles. The bones of this thing are familiar  —   there’s a lot of Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope in Emily’s dogged eagerness, a generous amount of The Office’s Michael Scott in Van Wayne’s doofy   and the whole         angle will seem very familiar to those still carrying a torch for the late, lamented Better Off Ted. But if you’re a new workplace comedy determined to find itself, you’d be well served to draft off those three shows in particular. The cast hasn’t jelled, yet, though there’s every indication that Hudgens’s Emily and Christina Kirk’s sardonic office assistant will fall into a nice chemistry. There’s pleny of Easter Eggs for the nerds in the audience: a   ’   cameo by Marc McClure (Superman the Movie’s Jimmy Olsen) as Emily’s dad a newspaper headline reading ”  Luthor Vows to Make Metropolis Super Again,” and a bit appearance by Starro the Conquerer (DC Comics’ resident giant  ). These elements work best when they’re breezed past, and work considerably less well when the show slows down to wink at them. There’s been some   behind the scenes (creator Ben Queen departed before production began) there’s a disjointed quality to the opening scenes especially (marked, unfortunately, by the   of main  ”I know what you’re thinking”   cliche that promptly, and mercifully disappears) and the show’s special effects are not, particularly. But that’s okay. Because the minute this show becomes about its special effects, it will be over. If this show is going to work, it’s going to have to stick to what this first episode does best: remain inside the office, with the people who staff it, and leave the    —   and the dour depressiveness  —   outside."
"Seattle’s City Council has voted to not renew its contract with Wells Fargo, in a move that cites the bank’s role as a lender to the Dakota Access Pipeline project as well as its creation of millions of bogus accounts. As a result, the city won’t renew its contract with the bank that expires next year. The unanimous vote will pull the city’s more than $3 billion in annual cash flow from the banking giant, the council says. Seattle says the bidding process for its next banking partner will ”incentivize ’Social Responsibility. ’” Not long after Seattle’s vote, the City Council in Davis, Calif. took a similar action over the pipeline. It voted unanimously to find a new bank to handle its roughly $124 million in accounts by the end of 2017. On the same day the two cities moved to cut ties with Wells Fargo, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers granted an easement allowing the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under the Missouri River north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. As NPR’s Rebecca Hersher reported, that clears the way for construction of the final 1. 5 miles of the nearly   pipeline. ”Protests in Seattle against the Dakota Access Pipeline project have been large and frequent, often organized by local tribal members,” member station KUOW reports. ”Protesters, many of them Native people from Washington state, share the concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which says the pipeline would threaten tribal water supplies, land and cultural sites.” Wells Fargo has been in the headlines since last fall over a scandal involving bank employees creating fake accounts in customers’ names to bolster performance results and boost bonuses. While other banks are also involved in the pipeline deal, Wells Fargo’s recent history seems to have helped make it a target once again. Seattle’s plan to stop its dealings with Wells Fargo comes months after the city canceled a $100 million bond deal between its electric utility and the bank. That took place last fall, when the treasurers of California, Illinois and other entities said they would freeze their dealings with the bank  —   in some cases, for a   period. Wells Fargo’s commercial banking manager for Washington state, Mary Knell, tells KUOW that she’s disappointed in Seattle’s new move, noting that the bank is bound by its contract with the pipeline project. Knell tells KUOW that the bank has ”enhanced our due diligence on projects such as this to include more research into whether indigenous communities are affected and that they have been properly consulted.” Socialist City Council member Kshama Sawant, who spearheaded Seattle’s move away from Wells Fargo, says a rally against the bank is scheduled for this weekend. And after noting that Wells Fargo is ”one of the six primary financiers of the   private prison industry,” Sawant ended a statement about the bill’s initial passage earlier this month with a note of caution, saying, ”All of the big banks are terrible, and, as long as we have capitalism, our contracts will be with institutions that put corporate greed over human need.” Days before Seattle held an initial vote on divesting from the bank, Wells Fargo announced plans to donate $500, 000 to five of the city’s nonprofit groups that work to revitalize Seattle neighborhoods. When Seattle Council member Debora Juarez spoke of voting against Wells Fargo, she repeatedly cited a need for integrity  —   even as she acknowledged the small direct impact Seattle’s move will likely have. ”For a company whose deposits totaled more than $1 trillion last year, it’s a drop in a very big bucket,” Juarez said in a statement. ”But for Seattle, a City whose budget is approx. $4B. voting to withdraw our funds . .. money that covers the biweekly payroll of $30 million for about 12, 000 employees  —   is an opportunity to send a message.” In Davis, the city’s report on the possibility of cutting ties with Wells Fargo noted that Philadelphia and Minneapolis are also considering the same move. As for Seattle’s future options, KUOW reports: ”It’s not clear which financial institutions the city will work with in the future. More than a dozen other banks are connected to the pipeline, including CitiBank, ING, Chase and Bank of America. ”City Council members including Sawant, Mike O’Brien and Lisa Herbold are interested in contracting with a credit union or   public bank. Both of those options, however, would require a change to state law.” In addition to complaints about the pipeline and its business practices, Wells Fargo was hit with a lawsuit at the end of January that accused the bank of ”illegally denying student loans to young immigrants who are protected from deportation and allowed to work and study in the U. S. under a program created by former President Barack Obama,” as member station KPCC reported."
"The words were those of Coretta Scott King, widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But they resulted in a rarely invoked Senate rule being used to formally silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  . On the Senate floor Tuesday night, Warren read aloud from a letter Scott King wrote in 1986, when King objected to President Reagan’s ultimately unsuccessful nomination of  . S. Attorney Jeff Sessions to a federal district court seat. Sessions, now a Republican senator from Alabama, is President Trump’s nominee for U. S. attorney general. Warren was speaking in the debate leading up to Sessions’ likely confirmation by the Senate on Wednesday evening. King wrote that Sessions used ”the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens”  —   and that was the line Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would later cite in his objection. ”I call the senator to order under the provisions of Rule 19,” McConnell said after interrupting Warren’s speech, in which he said she had ”impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama.” That objection came nearly 30 minutes after Warren was initially warned about impugning Sessions by Sen. Steve Daines,  . who was presiding over the Senate at the time. Rapping on the presiding officer’s desk, Daines had initially cut Warren off some 20 minutes into her speech. ”The senator is reminded that it is a violation of Rule 19 of the standing rules of the Senate to impute to another senator or senators any conduct or motive unworthy or becoming [sic] a senator,” Daines said, apparently reading from a note on his desk. ”Mr. president, I don’t think I quite understand,” Warren replied. ”I’m reading a letter from Coretta Scott King to the Judiciary Committee from 1986 that was admitted into the record. I’m simply reading what she wrote about what the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be a federal court judge meant, and what it would mean in history for her.” Daines said his interruption was a ”reminder” that didn’t necessarily apply to what Warren had just said. ”However,” he continued, ”you stated that a sitting senator is a disgrace to the Department of Justice.” Warren replied that the comment seemed to have been made not by King, but by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy  —   whom she also quoted  —   ”although I would be glad to repeat it in my own words,” she added. Without mentioning that the flagged statement had been made before Sessions was a member of the Senate, Daines  —   repeating the words of a female staff member who seemed to be reading aloud  —   sought to clarify the rule’s scope. ”The rule applies,” he said, relaying the staffer’s words, ”to imputing conduct or motive through any form or voice.” He added, ”Form of voice includes quotes, articles, or other materials.” Warren replied, ”So, quoting Sen. Kennedy calling   Sessions a disgrace is a violation of Senate rules? It was certainly not in 1986.” ”In the opinion of the chair, it is,” Daines said. As Warren began to speak, he added, ”And the senator is warned.” That formal warning set up the later interruption  —   and the forced termination of Warren’s remarks. Warren sought another clarification, as to whether she is allowed to ”accurately describe public views” and statements about Sessions. Again taking cues from the same staff member whose words he repeated, Daines replied, ”The chair has not made a ruling as respect to the senator’s comments. The senator is following process and tradition by reminding the senator of Massachusetts of the rule and the things of which it applies.” ”So, can I continue with Coretta Scott King’s letter?” Warren asked. ”The senator may continue,” Daines replied  —   granting a permission that would turn out to be  . Some 23 minutes later, as Warren spoke about Sessions’ vote against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, McConnell addressed the chair to object to Warren’s remarks  —   specifically, her earlier quoting of Coretta Scott King’s words. By that time, Warren had finished reading King’s letter more than 10 minutes previously. As The Associated Press reported: ”Quoting King technically put Warren in violation of Senate rules for ’impugning the motives’ of Sessions, though senators have said far worse stuff. And Warren was reading from a letter that was written 10 years before Sessions was even elected to the Senate. ”Still, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell invoked the rules. After a few parliamentary moves, the   Senate voted to back him up. ”Now, Warren is forbidden from speaking again on Sessions’ nomination. A vote on Sessions is expected Wednesday evening.”"
"When Senate Republicans silenced Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  . during debate over the nomination of Jeff Sessions to serve as attorney general, they sparked a furious response  —   but also used a rule that’s meant to encourage civil debate. Senate Rule 19 includes this prohibition: ”No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” While there is much room to argue Warren’s specific case, the rule itself is one that many of us would do well to live by. First, the facts. Warren spoke on the Senate floor. She criticized Jeff Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama and the nominee to lead the Justice Department. Warren read a letter from Coretta Scott King, written in 1986 as Sessions sought a post as a federal judge. Martin Luther King Jr. ’s widow had questioned Sessions’ work as a federal prosecutor: ”Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.” As she read the letter, Warren was warned by Sen. Steve Daines,  . who was presiding over the Senate at the time. Warren asked Daines how it could be improper to quote a letter from the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. and she was allowed by Daines to continue reading the letter. Later in Warren’s remarks about Sessions, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader from Kentucky, appeared in the chamber to stop Warren for violating Senate Rule 19 and the Senate, in a   vote, supported McConnell. Warren was silenced —  at least on the Senate floor —  though she was soon reading the letter again on social media. According to Senate Republicans, Warren impugned the ”conduct or motive” of Sessions, who is expected to be confirmed as attorney general Wednesday night. Warren’s supporters saw a stifling of dissent, and asked how the mere reading a letter could violate the rule. It’s a fair question: Can’t a senator refer to the public record? But set aside her specific case for a moment, just to focus on the purpose of the rule. Rule 19 forbids an especially corrosive form of verbal combat. Any student of interpersonal relations knows that questioning another person’s motives escalates an argument. Think about the difference between saying ”You’re wrong” and ”You deliberately lied.” Or consider the last two words of a line spoken by a furious husband in the comedy A Christmas Story: ”You used up all the glue . .. ON PURPOSE!” This reality applies to politics. Think of President Trump this week, who made a false claim about the media  —   that the media fail to cover terror attacks  —   and then suggested nefarious motives. ”It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported,” the president said, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. ”And in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.” Rule 19 is meant to prevent this sort of   statement, at least on the Senate floor. Granted, such a rule can seem hopelessly outdated in an era of acid remarks on social media. It can also seem like a needless luxury at this moment when the political stakes are so high. We all need a full and ruthlessly honest debate. If there was ever a time to avoid tiptoeing around the issues, that moment surely is now. But we also need civil debate. And in the Senate, lawmakers have learned to sting each other within Rule 19. If they have an insult to fling at another member, they simply disguise it as a compliment. In 2001, as a reporter covering the Senate, I witnessed a particularly brilliant exchange on the floor between the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy and Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. Kennedy fiercely criticized Hatch’s position. Hatch responded by saying Kennedy was wrong, and then adding a few lines of ”praise.” ”[Reality] doesn’t stop bombastic arguments, nor should it. I love them myself. I love to see the distinguished senator from Massachusetts get up there and everybody’s almost positive he’s going to blow a fuse before he’s through. He has a right to do that, and I admire him for doing it. I admire the way he supports his special interests. And I love my colleague, as very few in this body do.” Senators on the floor, and onlookers in the gallery, burst out laughing. Nobody missed Hatch’s point. Nor did anybody call out Hatch for a violation of Rule 19. Sen. Kennedy offered his own lines about Sen. Hatch. When the exchange was over, Kennedy  —   who was an old friend of Hatch  —   walked over and hugged him."
"A day after Senate Republicans invoked a conduct rule to end Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s speech against the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions as U. S. attorney general, a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King urging the Senate to reject Sessions’ nomination as a federal judge is gaining new prominence. Warren was reading aloud from the letter by King, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when she was interrupted by the presiding chair of the Senate, who warned her of breaking Rule 19, which forbids members from imputing to a colleague ”any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” The warning mentioned Warren’s earlier quote of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who had called Sessions, then a U. S. attorney, a disgrace. But it was King’s letter that  —   more than 10 minutes after Warren finished reading it aloud Tuesday night  —   prompted Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to call her out of order. That resulted in Warren being silenced on the Senate floor. In his objection, McConnell cited King’s accusation that Sessions had used ”the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.” Consisting of a short introductory note and a formal statement, King sent her letter to Sen. Strom Thurmond, who chaired the Judiciary Committee, in March of 1986. In it, she urged senators not to confirm Sessions  —   whose nomination did indeed fail. King’s letter was posted online by The Washington Post. Early in her statement, King wrote, ”Mr. Sessions’ conduct as U. S. Attorney, from his   voting fraud prosecutions to his indifference toward criminal violations of civil rights laws, indicates that he lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge.” Toward the end, she wrote, ”Based on his record, I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made everywhere toward fulfilling my husband’s dream that he envisioned over twenty years ago.” The contents of King’s letter have been circulating for some time now  —   it made headlines last month, as Sessions faced confirmation hearings for the post in the Trump administration."
"As part of our celebration of Black History Month and   culture, we turn this week to how the influence of Africa has been interpreted in various Latin and Caribbean cultures. The music of West Africa, where a majority of those enslaved in the Americas came from, was diffused through both an indigenous and Spanish filter to become the distinct sounds and rhythms that we know today. Cumbia, bachata, mambo and son jarocho are all quite distinct from each other and are still very vibrant expressions of tradition. But, more importantly, they also inform and influence a tidal wave of new expression, mixing with   electronic, rock and jazz to form the musical bedrock of Alt. Latino. In this week’s show, we dive into the vaults of Smithsonian Folkways, the   record label dedicated to American folk traditions of all kinds. Our guide is Folkways curator emeritus Dan Sheehy, who knows a thing or two about   music and culture: He has traveled extensively to produce many of the great recordings in the archive. Don’t think that this music and these recordings are dusty museum relics. Musicians throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and the U. S. make this a living, breathing document of where we come from and who we are today. And while the history and musicianship of these songs are certainly worthy of intense scrutiny, don’t forget that it is all basically dance music! So you can listen to the songs individually below, or boogie down with this funky mixtape, where the songs flow from one to the other for optimal dancing pleasure. But I suggest you loosen up a little first: That traditional merengue is quite fast and will definitely challenge your   skills."
"The International Committee of the Red Cross says six of its staff members were shot dead and two are missing after their convoy was attacked by unknown assailants in Afghanistan. The Red Cross workers were on their way to deliver livestock materials when they were attacked near the town of Shibergan in the northern province of Jawzan, close to Afghanistan’s border with Turkmenistan. Reuters reports that the area has been pounded by snowstorms in recent days. The ICRC says ”it is not yet clear who carried out the attack or why.” The provincial police chief, Rahmatullah Turkistani, tells The Associated Press that the attack ”was likely carried out by Islamic State militants, who have a presence in the area.” The news service adds that no group has claimed responsibility for the attack and that the Taliban says it was not involved. The ICRC has worked in Afghanistan for 30 years, NPR’s Greg Myre reports. He says its neutrality ”is widely respected, with rare exceptions. But the group says it’s putting aid operations on hold while it assesses the attack.” ”We need to understand more clearly what happened,” ICRC Director of Operations Dominik Stillhart tells the BBC. ”But. .. this is one of the most critical humanitarian contexts and we will definitely do everything to continue our operations there.” ICRC President Peter Maurer says, ”These staff members were simply doing their duty, selflessly trying to help and support the local community.” He adds: ”This is a huge tragedy. We’re in shock.” Greg reports that ”civilian casualties have been on the rise throughout Afghanistan, and this shooting came just a day after a suicide bomber struck at the Supreme Court in Kabul, killing at least 20.”"
"There’s no way to avoid it. As the cost of college grows, research shows that so does the number of hungry and homeless students at colleges and universities across the country. Still, many say the problem is invisible to the public. ”It’s invisible even to me and I’m looking,” says Wick Sloan. He came to Bunker Hill Community College in Boston more than a decade ago to teach English full time. He says it felt like he quickly became a   social worker, too. ”When I first got here, I was always told that we should never miss a chance to give students food,” he says. ”I foolishly thought at the time they meant Doritos and cookies. It’s protein that they’re after. It’s crazy.” Bunker Hill is home to one of 25 food assistance programs on Massachusetts’ public college campuses. That leaves just four public campuses across the state without one. One   student at Bunker Hill, whose name we aren’t using to protect her safety and privacy, was living in a shelter in Boston last summer when she first decided she wanted to enroll in classes here. But she says that shelter didn’t feel safe. ”If I wanted to get good grades, if I wanted to get a good education, I needed to be at a slightly safer shelter,” she says. She was put on a long waiting list for a bed at a youth home and finally got in after six months. That’s when she enrolled at Bunker Hill. Now she’s majoring in math. ”I knew that I really loved learning, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to fit into the education system.” She says she has been pleasantly surprised by Bunker Hill, though. ”This is a really good place to figure out where you might go with your education,” she says. Across the country, college administrators are increasingly seeing students like her. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin surveyed more than 4, 000 undergrads at community colleges across the country. The results? Twenty percent of students reported being hungry, 13 percent homeless. Sara   a sociologist who led the research team, says it’s not just that college students need to work while in school. ”It’s that they’re working, and borrowing,” she says, ”and sometimes still falling so short that they’re going without having their basic needs met.”   says she believes state and federal governments should work together to help college students find a place to live and something to eat so that they’re ready to learn and, eventually, graduate. ”Most people think, ’Well, if you’re really poor, and you really don’t have money to eat, you can get food stamps,” she says. ”What they don’t know is that for a college student, who doesn’t have children, to get food stamps requires that they work 20 hours a week.” And that’s exactly what the   student from Bunker Hill has managed to do. She’s putting in 20 hours a week at a physics lab close by and has recently saved enough to rent an apartment with two roommates. She says she still needs help affording tuition and transportation. ”I don’t really need a whole lot of this or that. It’s nice, but what helps me the most is people thinking that I’m going to make it.” And her classmates and professors, she says, who allow her to feel like a normal college student."
"Student parent. Ever heard that term? It’s used for a student who is also a parent, and there are nearly 5 million of them in colleges around the country. That’s over a quarter of the undergraduate population, and that number has gone up by around a million since 2011. It can be really, really expensive to be a student parent, especially if you need to pay for child care while you’re in class. In some states, child care for an infant can cost as much as $17, 062 a year, according to a report by Child Care Aware of America. Add that on to the   cost of college tuition  —   both private and public  —   and the financial strain of getting a college education becomes a huge burden for   parents. So much so that only a third of student parents get a degree within six years, often citing mounting debt as a reason for dropping out. ”What it comes down to is that college becomes a bit of an impossibility for a   parent who needs child care to go to school,” says Barbara Gault, vice president and executive director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, an organization that’s done a lot of research on student parents. The primary source of federal aid for child care nationwide comes from something called the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG)  —   specifically for   parents and families. A block grant means that every state can develop its own eligibility requirements, which means it’s tricky to know if you qualify. States have unique   rules attached to the CCDBG  —   basically a bunch of extra hurdles student parents have to clear. Gault, along with a team of other researchers at IWPR, recently compiled requirements from all the states to get a snapshot of what student parents are up against. Here’s what they found: Gault says these restrictions are tough, but points out that even if they were revamped and a student parent could easily qualify, the demand for CCDBG money is really high. Student parents must spend time on waiting lists that can take months, even years. ”We need bigger solutions to these problems,” says Gault. ”These rules and restrictions in a way just exemplify how little we’re thinking about the educational needs of parents.” The landscape isn’t completely bleak for student parents. A few states have their own funding set aside specifically for   student parents  —   Minnesota has had a grant available for almost 30 years. A handful of colleges offer free child care. And if   Donald Trump follows through on his daughter Ivanka’s call for child care reform, that could help out student parents, too. But while grant and subsidy money can be helpful, it’s usually just a drop in the bucket. Even for student parents who are able to get federal funding for child care, most are still paying thousands of dollars out of pocket, Gault says. And where do college students usually get pocket money? Student loans."
"If President Trump wants to keep his promise to send new detainees to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, there’s plenty of room. ”We haven’t received any orders to take additional detainees in,” says Navy Capt. John Filostrat. ”But if given the order, we could go ahead and comply.” Filostrat, a spokesman for the island lockup, took reporters on their first tour of Guantanamo’s prison camps since Donald Trump became president. It was a ”windshield tour,” meaning journalists could only view the camps from outside the high,   topped and   fences that surround them. Still, this was a rare opportunity to see how things looked around the same prison that President Obama during his last months in office had raced  —   unsuccessfully  —   to empty. Trump wants the opposite. He warned during the presidential campaign that the U. S. is threatened by a lot of ”bad dudes” whom he’d send to Guantanamo if they were captured. And since his election, his administration has circulated a draft order that could pave the way for a new generation of inmates. The first thing that strikes you about Guantanamo’s officially designated ”Detention Center” is how provisional the place still looks 15 years after the first captives were brought there. Metal shipping containers and tents are the only housing for a rotating guard force that, despite the dwindled prison population, still numbers around 1, 100  —   about 27 guards per current inmate. ”This was an expeditionary mission,” Filostrat says. ”Expeditionary means overseas, so it’s a temporary overseas Joint Task Force that’s been going on for 15 years  —   that’s the conundrum.” The dilapidated state of things reflects conflicting policies. Both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama sought to shut down Guantanamo’s prisons. Congress, bowing to constituents who opposed any transfers of Guantanamo inmates to the U. S. passed laws making it all but impossible to do that. But far from winding down, Guantanamo’s prison complex these days is gearing up. Construction projects suggests its ”expeditionary” era is ending and the notorious prison complex may be there to stay. A new permanent dining facility for troops is being built to replace a ramshackle improvised chow hall. Part of Camp 5  —   a lockup with isolation cells for ”noncompliant” captives  —   is being converted to a hospital wing. Cement mixers ply the roadways. Another thing that jumps out is the stark contrast between the sprawling scale of Guantanamo’s prison camps, the staff who runs them and the relative handful of prisoners. Camp 6, which can house as many as 175 people, now holds 26. Five of them were deemed eligible for transfer to another country by an     board, but Trump has made clear he wants no more prisoners leaving Guantanamo. Camp 5, next door, is empty  —   but it could hold roughly 80 prisoners. So even though Guantanamo received its last new captive in March 2008, today it could accommodate about 200 more. U. S. government officials did not give a precise number of vacancies, and some people stuck in Guantanamo’s limbo do not believe Trump should try to fill them. ”I think it’s an awful, awful idea,” says Colleen Kelly. Her brother, William Kelly Jr. died at the Windows of the World restaurant at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. For nearly five years, she has watched a newly constituted military commission so mired in pretrial wrangling that it has so far failed to bring to trial five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the attacks. If the U. S. does capture terrorism suspects under Trump, it should charge, hold and try them in the United States, Kelly said. ”We have a system of justice in this country that has been tried and tested,” she says. ”For more than 250 years, it has served us well. And the military commission, as much as there is an earnest effort by the prosecution, it’s all untested  —   and to have that continue on and on, it’s an awful idea.” The military commissions have led to only eight convictions. Three of those rulings have been overturned entirely three more, partially. Ten Guantanamo inmates are at some stage of a military commission proceeding. Seven of them have yet to see their cases even come to trial. All 10 of those who stand charged before a military commission are being held, along with five others, at a secret site known as Camp 7  —   not part of the windshield tour. Spokesman Filostrat says journalists are not allowed to view Camp 7, even from the outside. ”It’s classified,” he says. ”I can’t even tell you where it is. I’ve never been there myself.” All of Camp 7’s occupants have been designated ”high value detainees.” They share another dubious distinction: According to a synopsis of a Senate study of the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program, all were previously held and harshly interrogated at ”black sites,”   clandestine prisons in various countries worldwide. As a result, while five men in Guantanamo are facing trial and possible death penalties for plotting mass murder, the U. S. government is now being pushed by the defense to provide classified evidence that those men were subjected to interrogation methods widely seen as torture. In short, as the government is prosecuting the defendants, the defendants are prosecuting the government. ”What this case has demonstrated, if it’s demonstrated anything, is that torture makes criminal cases virtually impossible to prosecute,” says James Connell, attorney for Sept. 11 defendant Ramzi bin  . ”In fact, it’s fair to say that torture and due process are mutually exclusive.” The case of the accused Sept. 11 plotters has paradoxically become the biggest criminal proceeding in American history and one of the most obscure and  . ”When cases involve torture, they are also going to be festooned with a lot of secrecy, in order to protect the people who engaged in the torture,” says David Nevin, lead lawyer for accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ”That slows down discovery, it slows down investigation, it slows down the nature of the trial and the hearings and everything  —   it slows everything way down.” Other relatives of Sept. 11 victims are, like Kelly, frustrated with the slow pace of justice, but they stand by the military commissions process, which has been revised three times. ”They need to take as long and be as painstakingly thorough as possible,” says Marvina Baksh, whose brother Michael Baksh died in the airliner attacks on the World Trade Center. ”I guess that’s just something we have to, in this instance, wait for the fruit to ripen and then it’ll be all good.” Baksh was speaking at a news conference in Guantanamo after watching, as a guest of the prosecution, the war court meet for just three hours in a session that had been scheduled to last two weeks. ”Please know that justice will be done in the end,” Brigadier Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor, assured Baksh and four other victims’ family members. ”And until then, we will not rest.” Trump’s draft executive order on Guantanamo calls for ”swift and just trial and punishment” of the accused. That has not been the chief prosecutor’s experience. ”I believe that we’re going as fast as the statute, and the procedures we have, enabled it to go,” Martins says. Asked whether Trump wants him to remain as Guantanamo’s chief prosecutor, Martins is laconic. ”I’m here indefinitely,” he says."
"A surprise winner has been declared in Somalia’s presidential election  —   Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, a former prime minister and the popular favorite who was running against the incumbent president. Somali lawmakers cast their votes in a heavily fortified airport in a country plagued by regular militant attacks. Twenty candidates were whittled down to three after the first round  —   including the incumbent, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who had been accused of  . According to the U. N. Assistance Mission in Somalia, Mohamud won the most votes in the first round, followed by Farmajo, a former prime minister and the eventual winner. ”And even though the process was rife with corruption from all sides, a vote for Farmajo is seen as a vote against corruption,” as NPR’s Eyder Peralta reports from Nairobi, Kenya. Mohamud has conceded defeat. This is not an ordinary presidential election, Eyder says. Parliamentarians cast ballots, not ordinary citizens. Security is a huge concern in the face of ongoing   militant attacks, and the capital Mogadishu is on lockdown, with major roads blocked to traffic. However, he adds: ”That this is taking place is still remarkable. The process has involved more Somalis, and in particular more women than even before, and it will put in place the final piece of Somalia’s central government. And that’s important, because Somalia hasn’t had a functioning central government since warlords overthrew the country’s dictator 26 years ago.” This is the culmination of a process that took months, as Reuters reports. It ”began with 14, 000 elders and regional figures choosing 275 members of parliament and 54 senators,” who then chose a president. The process has its critics. As Eyder reports, it’s been delayed four times because ”the security situation, corruption, political infighting, made sure that the government wasn’t ready to hold a nationwide election.” Eyder says   groups have accused parliamentarians of selling their votes  —   particularly to Mohamud, who allegedly used government funds to buy them. If he had won, Eyder adds, activists would say that ”would send the message that corruption still rules in Somalia.” The Associated Press describes Somalis crowded around TVs, watching the process unfold. ”I hope they will not choose bribes over the interest of the people.” Ahmed Hassan, a    university student, told the wire service. ”We need an honest leader who can help us move forward.”"
"Ever since Donald Trump was elected president in November, questions have been raised about the lease he signed to operate a luxury hotel in the Old Post Office Building in Washington, D. C. The lease specifically says the lease holder cannot be a federal elected official. So critics repeatedly have called upon the federal General Services Administration to enforce its agreement, and make President Trump walk away from his deal to run the Trump International Hotel. But Trump appears to have come up with his own way of trying to solve the lease problem: He has created a revocable trust  —   and parked his vast business interests in it. The purpose of the trust is to create a firewall against    allegations and to, in effect, remove himself from direct management of his businesses, such as the D. C. hotel. Documents now show that the president’s son, Donald J. Trump Jr. is the new president of the company operating the D. C. hotel. A GSA spokeswoman contacted by NPR had no comment on the status of the lease now that Trump has stepped back from direct management of his businesses and moved them into a trust. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But the new arrangement has only escalated the criticism because the trust’s tax ID number is Trump’s Social Security number, and Trump ”has the power to revoke the trust” to reclaim direct ownership. In other words, even if his sons or other business associates are named as the officers of the various businesses, the profits flow back to one person: Donald J. Trump. In fact, one of the documents says, ”The purpose of the trust is to hold assets for the exclusive benefit of Donald J. Trump.” Documents show that Trump resigned from positions in 488 entities as they were shifted into the revocable trust, and the trustees are his son Donald Jr. and the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. All of this has ethics experts fuming. Law professor Steven Schooner, who teaches government contracting law at George Washington University, says Trump is still benefiting from the lease, even though the hotel now comes under the revocable trust. Schooner says it’s ”far too easy to funnel money directly to the president and his family” via business deals involving the hotel. He raises another potential conflict: Under the lease, the hotel’s rent is to be renegotiated annually, based on financial performance. A GSA worker would calculate the new rent. The worker’s ultimate boss, the GSA administrator, is a presidential appointee. ”It’s an impossible position to put a GSA employee in,” Schooner says. Trump is unique among U. S. presidents in the extent of his businesses, an international array of buildings, golf clubs and merchandise emblazoned with his name. Sheri Dillon, an attorney for Trump, said at a Jan. 11 press conference that the president ”instructed us to take all steps realistically possible to make it clear that he is not exploiting the office of the presidency for his personal benefit.” Ethics experts say Trump’s actions since then have fallen short. ”Donald Trump is managing his affairs in a way that enables, and frankly invites, people and companies and countries to send money his way, through his businesses, in an attempt to influence him and thereby influence U. S. government policy,” said Kathleen Clark, who teaches governmental ethics law at Washington University in St. Louis. Richard Painter, who served as White House ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, said that foreign governments, U. S. corporate lobbyists and others may choose to do business with the Trump hotel, as well as other businesses, in an effort to curry favor with the White House. Painter says the revocable trust is no solution only divestment will work. ”The president does not seem to want to do that, and he’s going to have to deal now with the conflicts of interest that come with ownership of these businesses. And some of those conflicts are illegal.” Painter is involved in a lawsuit alleging that taking money from foreign governments would violate the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause."
"The official address of Toronto’s Trump International Hotel and Tower is 325 Bay St. in the middle of the city’s financial district. Think of it as Canada’s answer to Wall Street. But the hotel’s entrance is actually around the corner. So instead of seeing a grand facade bearing the Trump name, what you see from the prestigious Bay Street side is a loading dock. This is just one of the many miscalculations that have undermined the Trump International Hotel and Tower, even before construction began in 2007. The soaring,   glass and granite building has been plagued by financial setbacks, construction problems and legal woes. Investors have lost millions of dollars and have sued Donald Trump and the hotel’s developers. The Trump project was developed by Talon International, a Toronto real estate development firm run by two   entrepreneurs. Alex Shnaider owned the company and Val Levitan ran the    operations. Back when the idea for the project was first hatched, Toronto did not have a   hotel. There was a growing demand for hotels with lots of marble and granite, fine linens, luxurious spas and restaurants, says Susan Pigg, a former real estate reporter with the Toronto Star who covered the saga of the Trump hotel. ”It looked great at the time because it was such a novelty for the city. Trump was a big, big name, it looked like it would be a huge success,” she says. ”But the whole thing was doomed to failure.” Pigg says right off the bat, there were problems with the site. The hotel plus tower is built on a small parcel of land wedged between two smaller buildings. She says the site was so rocky, construction crews couldn’t tunnel down as far as they would for building a   in another part of the city. The building needed to be tethered underground, Pigg says, and parking was shifted to the first few levels. Part of the problem is that neither Shnaider nor Levitan had experience in hotel operations or construction. So it’s not surprising there were problems, says Toronto City Councillor Josh Matlow. ”There were parts of the building itself that fell down onto the street and actually shut down parts of our downtown at times, because there were concerns about the structure’s integrity,” he says. The developers signed a licensing agreement with Donald Trump similar to the ones for other hotels the president has been involved in. Trump has no ownership stake in the Toronto building. But his company, the Trump Organization, has a   management contract for the property, and Trump licenses his brand  —   his name  —   for a fee. Investors bought condominiums in the tower that could be rented out by the hotel. The investors claim they were promised   occupancy rates and returns on their investment. Toronto lawyer Mitchell Wine says those never panned out. Collectively, the investors lost millions of dollars. Wine represents 27 investors, and many are members of Toronto’s Korean community who speak very little English. ”I remember asking them through interpreters, ’Why did you invest in this?’ And all they said back was ’Trump, Trump, The Apprentice,’ ” he says. Wine says his clients felt the sales pitch misrepresented the project. He says they looked at the glossy brochures. They knew about Trump buildings elsewhere and thought he had the Midas touch. ”He’s splashed all over the marketing,” Wine says. ”My clients thought he was building the hotel, because he certainly gives you the impression that it’s his hotel.” Wine’s clients sued Trump and the developers. A lower court threw out the suit. But an appeals court ruled last year that the lawsuit could proceed. The Trump Organization has maintained that President Trump is not liable because he never signed a contract with investors. If the lawsuit does proceed, it may be difficult for investors to recoup their money. The Trump hotel is now in receivership and up for sale. Journalist Susan Pigg says the development was built for about $500 million, and it’s going for far less now, about $300 million. ”I’m not even sure they’ll get that,” she says, ”because who would buy a hotel like that, even at a discount, with all these lawsuits outstanding and no idea how this is going to be resolved?”"
"President Trump’s approval rating with voters may be the lowest on record for an incoming chief executive. But in one way at least, his popularity is improving a bit. The value of Trump as a commercial brand, although still very low, has ticked up since August, according to the Reputation Institute, which measures the worth of various business brands. As a brand name, Trump’s ”reputation pulse score” went from 31. 7 in August to 39. 1 in   says Stephen   vice president and managing director for the United States and Canada. Trump, the brand, is seen as aggressive, selfish and ambitious but also friendly, stylish and elegant,   says. The pulse score attempts to measure the public’s emotional connection to various brands, by determining how much esteem, trust, admiration and respect respondents feel toward them. ”It’s a proxy for the degree to which you love the person or company,”   says. The improvement in Trump’s score since last summer appears to suggest that his presidency is having an impact on his business ventures. Seeing Trump in a presidential setting has solidified his support among those already predisposed to like him, especially men, Republicans and those over 70,   says. ”I think he’s probably benefited in many ways from the association with the presidential scene,” he says. ”[To] those individuals who really buy into brand Trump, it’s a further endorsement that he is very much a status symbol in what he represents to them.” Since his   campaign for president got underway in 2015, Trump has taken numerous opportunities to showcase his various properties, appearing often at Manhattan’s Trump Tower and the new Trump International Hotel in Washington, D. C. During his transition period, he interviewed potential Cabinet officials at his golf club in Bedminster, N. J. This past weekend, Trump attended a Red Cross ball at his    resort in Palm Beach, and he watched the Super Bowl at the nearby Trump International Golf Club. The fact that Trump likes to frequent his own properties is no surprise to Michael D’Antonio, author of The Truth About Trump. ”He’s really a creature of habit, and is accustomed to living in this cocoon that he created a long time ago. He doesn’t really take the risk of encountering people and situations that are unfamiliar,” D’Antonio says. But it’s not lost on Trump that the publicity he receives as president is also very good for the brand he has spent years cultivating, D’Antonio says. ”I don’t think he’s let go of his interest in these brands at all. His supposed detachment from the business interests of the Trump Organization isn’t real. He’s very much invested in these enterprises. He remains the beneficiary of them. He’s a brand builder by habit, and the brand is his personality.” To be sure, Trump’s brand value remains very low outside his base. The Reputation Institute considers any rating below 40 as ”poor,” which means Trump’s pulse score is in the lowest category."
"It was a familiar scene for many in New Orleans East, part of the city’s Ninth Ward. ”As helicopters hovered overhead and emergency response vehicles streamed into neighborhoods, it reminded them of [Hurricane] Katrina,” reported Tegan Wendland of member station WWNO in New Orleans. ”The area was hit hard by that storm, and now many families will have to rebuild again.” ”This house looks like it belongs in a Third World country somewhere. If you was to walk through and walk around, you would think a bomb went off,” Terry Eubanks told Wendland, standing outside her apartment. Eubanks was at the nail salon when the storm hit. Her apartment was completely destroyed. Officials said at least seven tornadoes touched down in the state on Tuesday, the biggest of which hit New Orleans East. The   newspaper created this map. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said Tuesday that more than two dozen people had been injured in the city, with additional injuries reported in other parts of southeastern Louisiana. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency on Tuesday. After an aerial tour over the affected area, he told reporters he was ”even more impressed that so few people were injured and there was no loss of life.” The National Guard is on the ground in the eastern part of New Orleans, helping clear roads of debris, prevent looting and protect returning residents from downed power lines, Maj. Gen. Glenn Curtis told reporters. Emergency responders were going house to house on some streets, checking for people who need help and marking homes with   x’s and o’s to show they had been searched. Cathy McGraw’s home was badly damaged, she told the  . She spent Tuesday night in a Red Cross shelter at a local recreation center and said she planned to return there on Wednesday night. ”Ain’t got nowhere else to go,” McGraw told the newspaper. Speaking to WWNO, Adriann Mitchell described the damage to her elderly parents’ home. ”The ceiling is caved in. The front window is out. And there’s just water all over,” she said. ”It’s just a mess.” Landrieu said at a news conference Tuesday that the affected area encompassed about 5, 000 properties, and that the city’s emergency workers would transition from rescue to recovery operations going into Wednesday. ”There are a lot of families that lost everything,” he said. As helicopters moved overhead on Tuesday, resident John Spears told the   he was not impressed with the city’s immediate response. ”The city is a day late and a dollar short,” he told the newspaper. ”They should have people out here picking up debris right now.” In addition to the tornado that damaged New Orleans, tornadoes also touched down in Livingston Parish, near Baton Rouge, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and near four other southeastern Louisiana communities. National Weather Service forecaster Mike Efferson told WWNO that big storms are common in the South this time of year. ”It’s not extremely unusual,” he explained. ”The unusualness is just the strength of the tornadoes. We usually don’t get a lot of very strong tornadoes, but it looks like this one produced a lot of damage over a large area.”"
"Sure, the dictionary’s a resource designed to give an accurate accounting of words in all their many shapes and sizes, their definitions and their spellings. But whatever finality a dictionary’s thick binding implies, it’s destined to beg adjustment just as soon as it has been set, as words take shape, wither from disuse or simply fall in and out of favor. Case in point: With this week’s addition of more than 1, 000 words,   will likely have to plan on a few more pages for its next print edition. That means we’ll just have to make space on our shelf for such a big book made bigger by humblebrag  —   ”to make a seemingly modest,   or casual statement or reference that is meant to draw attention to one’s admirable or impressive qualities or achievements.” It also means we’ll finally see our   belief in truther  —   ”one who believes that the truth about an important subject or event is being concealed from the public by a powerful conspiracy”  —   finally vindicated by its addition. And while they may not add up to a fully fledged conlang  —   or an ”invented language”  —   a few decidedly   terms like snollygoster, bokeh and mumblecore have also found happy endings nestled among  ’s new entries. Though, not to throw shade on poor snollygoster, but the looping oddball of a word for ”a shrewd, unprincipled person” isn’t all that new once a regular in the dictionary, it ghosted from the pages of  ’s abridged Collegiate Dictionary more than a decade ago for its diminished use. It turns out even a word often used to call politicians dishonest isn’t everlasting. Credit Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly with its surprising revival,   says. ”This time, the lexicographers were wrong,” the dictionary admits in something of a mea culpa. But then, perhaps such a reversal shouldn’t be that surprising at all. ”This is a significant addition of words to our dictionary, and it reflects both the breadth of English vocabulary and the speed with which that vocabulary changes,” Lisa Schneider, chief digital officer and publisher at   says in a news release. To get a sense of that breadth, lexicographers ranged from the campus (safe space and microaggression) to the halls of power (SCOTUS and FLOTUS) from courts and rinks (airball and  ) to the teeming Petri dish of language that is social media (  and  ). Still, given  ’s recent penchant for political trolling, the most useful word for the dictionary may simply be an old  : snark. Here’s a glimpse of some more of the words, phrases and acronyms just added to the dictionary."
"This story is part two of a   investigation. Read part one here.  Shortly after Ed Howard’s father was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer and given six months to live, Howard and his sister Kathy   sat down and talked about what to do. One worry was their dad’s funeral arrangements. They decided Kathy would call around to some funeral homes to figure out how much their father’s arrangements would cost. ”I’d say, about three weeks later over the weekend I got a call from her nearly in tears,” Howard recalls. ”And she said that she had spent pretty much all day on the phone and on the Internet, simply trying to price funeral services, and she couldn’t do it. She actually just couldn’t get a straight answer about what products and services were being offered and how much they cost.” That’s not supposed to happen. A federal regulation called the Funeral Rule is supposed to protect consumers who have lost loved ones. Among other things, it requires funeral businesses to provide potential customers with clear price information. But an NPR investigation found that the rule goes only so far in protecting consumers, and that its promise of transparency often goes unfulfilled. After hearing his sister’s story, Howard confidently told her that he would take care of the price inquiries. After all, he wasn’t just any consumer. He’s a lawyer specializing in consumer issues for the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego. He’s also the group’s head litigator and lobbyist. Getting the information, he thought, would be pretty easy. It wasn’t. ”It took me as a longtime lawyer and a professional consumer advocate literally an   day just to get a solid list of what funeral services were offered by nearby funeral establishments and how much they cost. Eight hours,” he says. Howard’s problem may have been frustrating, but it isn’t new. The funeral industry has been consciously nontransparent since at least the 19th century, when the National Funeral Directors Association prohibited its members from advertising in the newspaper. As recently as the 1960s, the association barred members from advertising prices. It agreed to end the ban in 1968, only after being sued by the U. S. Department of Justice. That culture of secrecy persists in what’s now known as the death care industry. A kind of strategic ambiguity about prices is part of the business model. ”The consumer stands firmly in 1951, because that seems to be the technological level and the transparency level that the majority of American funeral homes are stuck at,” says Joshua Slocum, executive director of the death care watchdog Funeral Consumers Alliance. ”In an era when you can go online and look up the price range for products as trivial as eraser caps for a pencil to a new smartphone, good luck finding anything from your local funeral home websites,” he says. In the   days, the Federal Trade Commission’s Funeral Rule sought to fix that lack of price transparency, as well as rein in a variety of other abusive and   practices occurring in the industry. The Funeral Rule, enacted in 1984 after years of resistance by the industry, requires that funeral businesses give consumers an itemized price list when they talk to them in person, and give them clear price information when they ask for it over the phone. The itemized list, known as the general price list, is meant to help consumers pick and choose what they want and filter out what they don’t. In recent years, federal regulators shopping undercover have found about 1 in 4 funeral homes break the rule and fail to disclose price information. That’s even though they risk large fines from the federal government. Slocum and others say it’s time to bring the disclosure requirements into the age of mobile platforms, searchable data and social media. Price lists, they say, should be online. Mandating that on the federal level would require an amendment to the Funeral Rule by the FTC. ”Remember, the rule dates back to the 1980s it’s a   rule,” says Lois Greisman, a lawyer with the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection division. In July, Slocum’s group and the Consumer Federation of America asked the FTC to revise the rule, which it called ”antiquated,” to require online price disclosures. But just as it did in the days of   and big hair, the FTC may once again get resistance from the industry if it considers the requirement. ”I have to think that most of this is going to be market driven,” says Scott Gilligan, a lawyer for the National Funeral Directors Association. The industry group represents more than 20, 000 funeral directors around the country. ”If people want price information on websites, funeral homes are going to respond by putting it out there,” Gilligan says. ”But I’d rather do that because that’s my business decision than do it because I’m afraid of getting fined $40, 000 by the federal government.” At least one entrepreneur believes there is demand for online price information. ”We’re hoping that we can disrupt the funeral industry,” says Will Chang, who heads a Silicon Valley startup that has collected thousands of funeral home price lists and posted them on his site, Parting. com. He put together a team of workers to pose as consumers and repeatedly call funeral homes until, he says, most of them turned over their price lists. ”Sometimes it took months, and sometimes we couldn’t even get the prices at all,” Chang says. ”But we were able to get about 75 percent of all the funeral homes across the United States. Chang says he was shocked that many funeral directors wouldn’t even use email and preferred fax machines. In NPR’s investigation, we found that, too. The resistance Chang faced in getting the price lists means it could be challenging to keep them up to date. So, his strategy is to persuade funeral directors to partner with his site and pay him a referral fee. Some have reacted badly, even threatening to sue him. But others have been receptive. ”A lot of these funeral homes now have, you know, younger funeral directors in their 30s or 40s, and they totally get what we’re doing, and they’ve completely embraced us. So we feel very good about the direction of where the funeral industry is heading,” Chang says. In looking at the data he has collected, Chang found wild swings in prices for similar services. In our analysis of prices in several NPR   markets, so did we. In the Nashville, Tenn. area, for example, the minimum fee for using a funeral home varied from less than $1, 000 to more than $4, 000. The cost of a simple cremation in that market started below $1, 000 and topped out at $2, 700. Surveys by Slocum’s group have also found large price swings in numerous markets. Since the Funeral Rule was last amended 23 years ago, there’s little evidence that the rule has made the industry more competitive or   for consumers, even as it has mandated price disclosures. U. S. Department of Labor data analyzed by NPR show that since the Funeral Rule was last amended in 1994, prices have been going up faster than the rate of inflation. As for Howard, the consumer advocate who suddenly became a consumer, he went to the California Legislature in 2011, a year after his father died at age 76. He lobbied to get the state to require funeral businesses to post general price lists online. At first, the California Funeral Directors Association opposed the move. But a compromise bill passed and took effect in 2013. California funeral homes now must either post their price lists online or at least post a list of their products and tell consumers that a price list is available on request. Slocum’s group has found that most California funeral homes chose to post their actual price lists. Both he and the industry’s Gilligan say it’s too early to gauge the law’s effect on pricing and competition. Howard wants the federal government to act as well. ”The FTC really, really, really needs to get off its south pole and bring itself into the 20th and 21st centuries, and make this modest requirement a national requirement,” he says. Riley Beggin of NPR, Brian Latimer and Emily Siner of Nashville Public Radio, Marisa Demarco and Ed Williams of KUNM, and Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma contributed to this story."
"He called himself an ”edutainer.” He had a knack for explaining difficult concepts  —   global inequality, climate change, disease and poverty. He used maps, humor and props like storage boxes and colored stones to tell the story of our world and to advocate for the poor: ”Health cannot be bought at the supermarket. You have to invest in health.” Hans Rosling, the medical doctor, professor of international health and statistician who found joy in hard facts, died on Tuesday from pancreatic cancer in Uppsala, Sweden, surrounded by family. He was 68. Rosling had a colorful way of teaching. ”I can show you! Let me show you the world,” he said in an interview with The Guardian in 2013, using stacks of   bricks to show the narrowing gap between the world’s rich and poor. I had the privilege of seeing Rosling in person at a conference in Dar es Salaam in 2013. He gave an abridged version of the famous TED Talk he gave in 2006, which painted a positive view of development. He showed us that life is getting better for more people, if we only bothered to look at the numbers. ”Data is often better than you think,” he said in that TED Talk. In front of his PowerPoint presentation projected on the wall, he jumped and pointed from data point to data point, excited and breathless, like a tornado. His enthusiasm was infectious. The room was filled with global health bureaucrats and government workers who had probably seen it all  —   but he had captured their attention completely. And mine, too. Rosling, the   of the Gapminder Institute, a global development ”fact tank” in Sweden, definitely made statistics entertaining  —   but above all, he educated the world about itself. Here’s a collection of some of his most popular video presentations. The best stats you’ve ever seen  200 countries, 200 years, 4 minutes, Global population growth, box by box, Where are the Syrian refugees? Why did Ebola spread in West Africa?  Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine, What’s your favorite Hans Rosling video? Share with us on Twitter at @NPRGoatsandSoda. "
"As Republicans move to overhaul the health law, should people bother paying the penalty for not having health insurance when they file their taxes this year? Or will they be able to sign up on the exchange for 2018 after their COBRA benefits end? Here are some answers to recent questions from readers. I didn’t have health insurance for part of last year and thought I’d get stuck paying a penalty. Now the new administration is talking about not enforcing the insurance requirement. Could I really be off the hook at tax time? As long as the   individual mandate  —   which requires most people to have health coverage or face a tax penalty  —   is the law of the land, you should pay the fine for not having coverage in 2016 unless you qualify for an exemption, said Tara Straw, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Straw also manages a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance site, part of an IRS program that provides free tax filing services for low and   taxpayers. Straw said she has heard that some tax preparers are advising people either not to pay the penalty or to delay filing because they anticipate changes in the law. Bad idea. ”It’s not a thing a reputable tax preparer would do,” Straw said. ”The requirement that people have health insurance or an exemption [from the mandate] is still in effect.” The confusion stems from uncertainty over Republican officials’ comments that they may do away with the individual mandate when they overhaul the health law. In addition, President Trump signed an executive order in January that required federal agencies to waive or exempt health   provisions that would impose costs or penalties on individuals, to the extent permitted by law. One strategy that has been discussed has been to broaden the hardship exemption so more people would qualify for it, which the secretary of health and human services has the authority to do. However, Straw says that approach might run into trouble. ”A hardship has to mean something, you can’t say that everyone has a hardship,” she said. ”Complying with the law is not considered a hardship.” Some experts say changing the rules now could create even more confusion, since some people have already filed their returns. Those taxpayers might have to file amended returns, an extra expense if they use a tax preparer. ”Since the 2016 tax season is already underway, I would think it unlikely that the Treasury Department would say, ’Don’t bother paying the penalty,’” said Mark Luscombe, a principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax  Accounting, an information services company. I’m currently on a COBRA plan that ends on Dec. 31, 2017. Then I was going to choose a plan on the exchange for 2018. If the exchange exists in 2018, do you think there would be a special enrollment period allowed for new   like me when my current coverage ends? Under the health law, people who have certain life changes, including losing other types of health insurance such as COBRA, are entitled to a special enrollment period to enroll in coverage on the exchange. But in your case, you wouldn’t actually need a special enrollment period because your COBRA will end during the regular annual open enrollment period that is scheduled to run from Nov. 1, 2017, to Jan. 31, 2018. (This coverage comes from a federal law that generally allows people who lose or leave their jobs to stay on the company insurance plan for up to 18 months if they pay the full price of coverage.) Republican proposals to replace the health law typically include provisions that guarantee people will be able to buy coverage when COBRA or other coverage ends, said Timothy Jost, a professor emeritus at Washington and Lee University Law School who has examined and written about the proposals. Insurers are skittish, however, about some of the Republican ideas, such as eliminating the individual mandate, and the continuing uncertainty about what the individual market will look like next year. At this point it’s unclear what type of coverage will be available. ”The question is: Are the exchanges in place, are the subsidies in place and will premiums be affordable for those who don’t have subsidies?” said Laurel Lucia, manager of the health care program at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. ”And will there even be an option to buy individual insurance in some parts of the country if no insurers are participating?” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter:@mandrews110."
"Colin   opens the door to his greenhouse in Mt. Vernon, Wash. and a rush of warm air pours out. ”Basically, it’s summer all year long here,” he jokes.   a PhD student at Washington State University, and WSU professor Steven Jones have developed a new species: a cross between wheat and its wild cousin, wheat grass. They call it Salish Blue. Their goal was to make something that’s like wheat but grows back year after year. ”What it has to do is it has to work well for farmers, and it has to work well in the rotations and then it has to provide some sort of economic and nutritional value to the community,”   explains. Normal wheat dies every year, and farmers have to till the soil and plant new seeds. Not only does that mean more work, but the process also causes erosion, which makes farmland less healthy and can carry sediment and agricultural chemicals into nearby waters. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union claimed it had created a plant exactly like wheat that kept regenerating itself year after year. ”It almost seemed like a superweapon,”   says, ”so the U. S. and Canada started their own programs to try to develop perennial grain crops based on wheat.” But the Soviets were bluffing  —   ”and here we are in 2017 and still no perennial grain crops on a wide scale,”   says. That’s where Salish Blue comes in. It’s a perennial,   grain that adapts to wet weather, and it’s different from previous attempts because it’s genetically stable, says Oregon State University researcher Michael Flowers, who was not involved in the study. ”The exciting part is we now have something,” Flowers says, ”and the breeders can start putting selection pressure and selecting for those traits that we want to keep.” Not far from Washington State University’s Mount Vernon lab, Dave Hedlin has a   farm where he grows vegetables and feed for organic dairy cows. He currently has a research plot of Salish Blue on his land. ”It’s kind of a   thing,” he says. ”It’s pretty leggy. Some will be four feet or five feet off the ground, and some will be three feet off the ground.” Hedlin says he could use something like Salish Blue as winter food for dairy cows. The grain is not yet ready for human consumption, at least not broadly. That said,   has made bread and cookies and shortbread out of it. And pancakes. ”Pancakes are my favorite thing to do with it,” he says. Because some of the seeds are blue instead of red or white like traditional wheat, the pancakes have a blueish tint to them. So, if Salish Blue takes off, we could all soon be eating blue pancakes. This story comes to us from member station KUOW and EarthFix, a public media partnership."
"To go to space we need math. Lots of it. Most of us look in awe at the towering rocket ship strapped to the launching platform and forget the tremendous amount of work it took for it to get there  —   and, from there, to get into Earth’s orbit and beyond. Engineering, math, physics, chemistry, computer science: It’s all there, waiting for  . Now, travel back to 1961, when the U. S. A. was behind the Soviet Union in the space race. It all started with Sputnik, a  . silver ball, 23 inches in diameter, launched into orbit by the Soviets on Oct. 4, 1957. Less than a month later, the Soviets launched Sputnik 2, with the dog Laika as passenger. Getting to the moon and putting humans into orbit was the next logical step. A sequence of space flights from the U. S. and the Soviet Union followed. This was no friendly competition. At the height of the Cold War, space was seen as the new frontier, the place to dominate  —   or be dominated. The stakes got higher when the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth on April 12, 1961. This is where the hit movie Hidden Figures begins, in the heat of the race. NASA had been founded only three years earlier. The pressure, both political and public, to succeed was enormous. National pride was in the balance. Plus, in the midst of Cold War paranoia, who knew what the Soviets were planning to do ”up there?” The movie paints an accurate picture of the political expectations of the time, the widespread fear. But its beating heart is the science done by three   ladies, all brilliant at what they did. Aspiring engineer Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) accidentally spots a fault in the   tiles of an experimental capsule. In the movie version, NASA was segregated in 1961. To go to the bathroom, human ”computer” Katherine Goble (played beautifully by Taraji Henson) had to scamper half a mile across the Langley Research Center facility. The amazing mathematician, the first ”colored” woman in the team, couldn’t even drink coffee from the same coffee maker as her peers. These people computed launching and   trajectories by hand! And Goble was an absolute marvel at this, to the surprise, and even disgust, of her envious   colleagues. Hidden Figures was deservedly nominated for best picture. Nice to see long mathematical equations flowing on a tall blackboard in a movie that has been so successful in the box office. I confess my embarrassment, while watching the movie, for not knowing any of this story. I mean, this is a true story every little boy and girl, especially girl, should know. How could I have missed this? The third in the group, Dorothy Vaughan, played movingly by Octavia Spencer, fought in vain to be promoted to supervisor, a job she was already doing in practice. Her break finally came when NASA bought an IBM 7090 electronic computer that no one, apparently, knew how to program. Dorothy, with a knack for mechanical contraptions (yes, computers at the time had many moving parts, levers, tapes, and connecting wires and plugs) learns how to set it up. A visionary, she borrows a book about FORTRAN at the public library, the programming language people still use today for launching rockets. (With some modifications of course.) She gains everyone’s respect and gets her promotion as supervisor of the programming department, bringing her other ”colored” girls with her. The movie builds up its narrative from connecting the three stories, playing with historical accuracy to get its message across. In reality, NASA wasn’t segregated when it substituted NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in 1958. Dorothy Vaughan was promoted to supervisor in computing in 1949. Mary Jackson completed her engineering degree in 1958, becoming NASA’s first black female engineer. Katherine Johnson had been in the Flight Research Division since 1953 and moved into the Space Task Group when it was formed in 1958. Her boss, played in the movie by Kevin Costner, was not Al Harrison but Robert Gilruth. John Glenn did ask her to check on the IBM   calculations. So, the amazing thing here is that the true history of these three women is even more remarkable and trailblazing than the one portrayed in the movie. What the movie does, and does beautifully, is weave their professional and personal lives together, humanizing them, showing how science and deep emotions and feelings are perfectly compatible, something many tend to dismiss. The movie is a celebration of the human spirit, of the power of individual determination and drive, and of the need for a nation to stand together, to look beyond racial and cultural differences in order to face a new challenge. There is much ugliness portrayed in the segregated Virginia of the early 1960s, a somber echo of a past that is still so present and, in a new incarnation, that threatens to destabilize this nation once again. If there is a central lesson in the movie, it is that united we win that what makes America great is not segregation and intolerance, but openness and inclusiveness. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"FX’s Legion is a superhero TV show that resists admitting it is one. Which is both the most satisfying and frustrating thing about it. Here’s the setup: David Haller is a   guy who hears voices in his head. It’s driven him to drugs, occasionally criminal behavior and a suicide attempt. (Alert TV fans will recognize the actor playing David as Dan Stevens, who was   hunk Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey). Stevens cops a twitchy earnestness  —   and a pretty good American accent  —   as David, who has lived for years in a mental institution, but is ready to try life on the outside. We see him endure a visit from his sister and meet a cute fellow inmate whom he grows to like very much, even though she hates to be touched. Turns out, the voices in David’s head belong to other people. He’s a mutant who can hear others’ thoughts and control matter with his mind. The question that remains for David and the rest of the characters in Legion: Has he been fooled into believing he was schizophrenic by his unusual powers, or is he mentally ill in addition to being one of the most powerful mutants around? This is FX’s first collaboration with Marvel Television, and it takes place in the same fictional universe as the   franchise. It takes some kind of stones to partner with the leading purveyor of    entertainment and create a show which downplays its roots in the superhero world so thoroughly. As the first episode progresses, we realize David is in the clutches of evil government guys who may know more about his powers than he does. It’s a story we’ve seen many times before in movies like E. T. and Netflix’s surprise hit Stranger Things: An innocent with amazing abilities flees a brutal institution. Hopefully, David won’t have to escape on a flying bicycle. But Legion the TV show is created by Noah Hawley, the mind behind FX’s amazing adaptation of the movie Fargo. So the predictable nature of its plotting is often balanced by powerful visuals and unorthodox storytelling. In one scene, David destroys a kitchen with his mind, flinging utensils, food and appliances around in a detailed,   shower that the viewer  —   and several characters  —   can walk through like a   display. It’s a stunning sequence, in line with the show’s bold, seriously stylish visual sense. But it also looks a lot like ”freeze frame”   sequences seen in lots of commercials  —   and in films like The Matrix. Similarly, the pilot’s opening sequence shows David’s struggles with his powers, depicting his slide from a smiling kid winning soccer trophies to a teen who blows out the windows of a police car with his mind, as The Who song ”Happy Jack” plays as soundtrack. The scene is awfully reminiscent of the opening to another superhero movie, scored by another rueful ’60s tune: Watchmen. (That film’s credits were set to the Bob Dylan tune ”The Times They Are  ’ ”.) Unlike Fargo, which can sometimes feel like it is observing characters from a distance, Legion often puts the viewer squarely inside David’s head. But because of his mental issues, sometimes we’re not sure what we’re seeing. Is it a memory, or something happening to him now, or a vision of something happening elsewhere? That’s the same kind of confusing ”is it real or isn’t it” storytelling used in shows like Mr. Robot and Westworld. In the comics, the character Legion is the son of   leader Charles Xavier. He’s a powerful mutant with multiple personalities, and each one boasts a different power. Hawley seems to have charted a different course for his TV version, though I hold out hope that we may see Professor X on the small screen this season or next. FX’s Legion seems to want it both ways: to draw comic book fans with a story set in the   world, while avoiding some of the classic elements of the genre for people who don’t usually watch superhero movies and TV shows. Another new show, NBC’s Powerless, attempts a similar move, building a workplace comedy around the   people who have to cope with the smashed buildings and derailed trains left behind when superheroes clash with villains. It’s a tricky dance these shows are trying, because most of these stories are ultimately about the hero pulling it together enough to beat the bad guys. And you only need to look at Fox’s tired,   drama Gotham to see what can happen on a superhero show without the hero. Over its first three episodes, Legion seems very good, but not quite great. It’s a visually impressive program with a narrative style that just might revolutionize the superhero series on TV. But first, it has to elevate its core story above the kind of plots we’ve already seen so many times before. And it wouldn’t hurt to just admit it’s a show about superheroes, already."
"Seeing a great work of art might quicken your pulse, but now New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is hoping you’ll break a sweat, too. The Met is currently offering a ”Museum Workout”  —   part performance, part workout, part art tour. On a recent morning, 15 of us gather in The Great Hall before the museum opens. We line up behind two tour guide dancers  —   both wearing sparkly cocktail dresses and sneakers. A guy with a portable speaker stands nearby. He presses play, and with disco propelling us forward, we power walk, we punch the air, we daintily jog through the otherwise empty Met at 9 in the morning. There’s a lot of light, a lot of antiquity . .. and some stink eye. Museum security looks like they’ve never seen anything like this. ”We were approached by the Metropolitan Museum to make a dance,” explains Monica Bill Barnes, one of the workout leaders. ”We counteroffered, and asked to make a led tour that’s a workout.” Barnes’ dance company wanted to get people moving in the Met  —   and jumping jacks and yoga poses seemed a lot easier than teaching amateurs a complicated dance routine. ”It’s one of the most expansive spaces in New York City,” Barnes says. ”And to be able to move through all the different galleries, and the rooms and the spaces that they’ve created felt like such an incredible opportunity.” We power through a hall of busts  —   some with heads, some headless  —   in the fastest tour of a museum you’ll ever take. Most of the workout is spent jogging past priceless, important artwork, but we do slow down a few times. We pause to do squats in front of John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, a portrait of a beautiful, pale woman in a long black gown  —   and I can’t help but laugh. Barnes absolves me, though. ”We’re sort of purposefully combining things that you don’t naturally put together,” she explains. Laughter is part of what she’s going for. After all, when you laugh, she says, that ”opens you up to experience things differently.” Speaking of ”different,” it took Monica Bill Barnes  Company more than two years to get the Met on board with this idea. ”It’s really, ’How many inches are you from that work?’ ” Barnes says with a laugh. ”That’s where we had to do a lot of good, careful conversations.” The patience and planning paid off four weeks of the workouts sold out immediately. And I caught a few museum guards dancing along with us. Turns out, a little music and movement really can make you see things differently."
"Painter David Hockney once said, ”It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.” On Thursday in London, a major retrospective at Tate Britain will give visitors the chance to see 60 years of the English artist’s ”doings.” Oils, acrylics, sketches, photographs, smartphone drawings  —   Hockney has worked in every medium. He’s one of the   contemporary artists and his works sell for millions. To get to Hockney’s studio you go up, up, up a winding canyon road in the Hollywood Hills. It’s a neighborhood studded with stars’ homes  —   George Clooney, Kevin Costner and Marlon Brando back in the day. Hockney’s studio has five easels, some comfy armchairs and white walls brightened with his works. Never mind the ashtrays  —   the floor is carpeted with Davidoff cigarettes, chain smoked   down, then stubbed into dark brown smears. (To make sure it’s really out, ”I always stub it out with my foot,” he says.) There are some splotches of blue paint on the floor  —   and more on the artist’s khaki pants. Hockney stands at a table turning the pages of a brand new Taschen publication called A Bigger Book  —   a nod to his famous 1967 work, A Bigger Splash. Two feet tall and a foot and a half wide, the $2, 500 tome includes reproductions of 450 of his paintings. Inside you’ll see LA swimming pools, palm trees, flowers, his dachshunds, the Grand Canyon, portraits of rich and not rich friends, landscapes in the U. S. and Yorkshire, designs for opera sets. He won’t linger over any of them and doesn’t pause to answer questions. He keeps turning, leafing through a life’s worth of works in vivid blues, greens, oranges and fuchsias. This is art he made from age 16 through his late 70s. He’ll be 80 in July and he still paints every day. He probably can’t not paint. Wreathed in cigarette smoke, he says the Tate show will be the largest retrospective he has ever had  —   after all, this one includes 20 more years of work. And as for whether there will be a big party for him in London? ”I’m not that keen on parties,” he says. ”I’m too deaf for them. I can’t really go to them. I don’t like all the fuss being made. I like doing the pictures  —   that’s what I like. But once they’ve been done, that’s it.” He doesn’t go out much now. Crowds are too noisy. Losing his hearing has been an isolating experience. ”I’m not very good at listening now,” he says. When he was younger, he was a lively fixture at parties and friends’ gatherings. Not so anymore. ”I can’t stand it and I just have to leave and go home and sit in a quiet bedroom,” he says. ”That’s what I do. Then I read. . .. That’s my life now. That’s what it’s going to be.” This is a portrait of the artist as a    man  —   still with a twinkle in his eye, and plenty of joyous pictures left to paint. He still sees the world in the colors of Oz  —   hues so vibrant and alive that they look  . What creative person doesn’t question whether he or she has anything left to say? David Hockney goes into his studio every day and has   conversations on canvas, on paper, in photos, iPads. And art lovers across the world keep listening."
"Political statements are easy to see when they’re on signs or buttons or in tweets. But then there are those that are hidden from view, until you log in to the right place. For example, when you look for new   networks to get online. President Trump’s supporters and opponents have expanded their battlefield even to the choice of their own   names  —   identifying their networks according to what they think of the president. Examples range from the   followed by Trump’s name to the acronym ”MAGA ” which stands for ”Make America Great Again  .” Although some may dismiss the practice as irrelevant,   names could give a political statement to a far broader audience than sweater pins, bumper stickers or even tweets. After all, the average lifespan of a tweet can be just a few minutes. And these days politics is the kind of divisive topic that could easy ruin a family dinner, so many people decide to discuss it only with others who think the same. On the other hand, we constantly bump into perfect strangers’   spheres, either through their smartphones or routers. As any frequent flier knows, turning on the   search and browsing the names of available networks in a crowded waiting room can be a humorous diversion. Also, it’s not strange at all asking for the local   name and password when a friend invites us to come over. Answers may reveal something surprising, funny, or even shocking about our host. According to data from market research firm Strategy Analytics, 61 percent of U. S. households have   networks installed. Some owners like to choose witty (or wannabe witty) names for their network, such as ”Martin Router King” or ”FBI Surveillance Van.” Reddit has countless posts about this phenomenon.   names may refer to movies, music and pop culture, such as ”Routers of Rohan” (Lord of the Rings) ”Connecto Patronum” (Harry Potter) or ”  is in the air” (the song ”Love Is in the Air”). In other cases, people name their   to send messages to family members (”Mom, use this one”) landlords (”Kyle, fix our dishwasher”) or neighbors (”Get your own damn  ”). While some people get extremely creative while choosing their   name, others don’t miss the chance to send a clear political message. One recent example is ”Black   Matters,” spotted on Reddit after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2012,   wireless coverage mapping company OpenSignal built a database of almost 75 million routers worldwide and searched for the occurrence of the word ”Obama” in their names. The result was a map of the political sentiment about   Barack Obama, who at that time was campaigning for a second term. From ”Vote Obama in ’12” near Los Angeles to ”Obama Care Doesn’t Care” in Queens, New York, the   names were pretty revealing of their owners’ political views. In the case of   names, it all started far before Election Day. Last August, a   network named ”Clinton Email Server” popped out at a Trump rally in Austin, Texas. Ironically, the network didn’t require any password. Clearly, it called to mind Hillary Clinton’s controversial use of an unsecured server. A list of ”  ideas for Trump supporters” appeared on Twitter shortly after. On Election Night, the   provided for members of the press at Trump’s event at the New York Hilton Midtown also took a clear stand about the expected outcome. The name of the network was ”Trump2016” and the password ”DJT4thewin.” After Trump had become   a hotspot name was changed to ”Trump Won! HipHipHooray,” according to this tweet. In Colorado, a group of roommates renamed their network simply ”Trump!” At least one of them was not happy with the change, and tweeted her disappointment. Have you spotted a funny, a controversial or a political   name in your neighborhood? Tweet us! Lucia Maffei is an NPR business desk intern."
"Updated at 7:50 p. m. ET, A federal appeals court has unanimously rejected a Trump administration request to allow its travel ban to take effect. The   appeals panel declined to overturn a lower court’s order suspending the president’s ban against entry into the United States by refugees and travelers from seven   nations. The travel ban was put on hold by federal district Judge James L. Robart of Seattle, who issued a nationwide restraining order on Feb. 3. Robart said that the two states challenging the ban, Washington and Minnesota, had shown that their residents and universities were harmed by Trump’s action. The administration then asked the appeals court for an emergency stay of Robart’s restraining order. But the judges dismissed the administration’s request, saying that it had to show that it is likely to succeed in the trial court on the merits of its appeal. ”[We] hold that the Government has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, nor has it shown that failure to enter a stay would cause irreparable injury, and we therefore deny its emergency motion for a stay,” wrote the panel. President Trump tweeted his reply, indicating he will appeal. Trump also spoke briefly with reporters outside his press secretary’s office after the ruling was announced and, as reported by Reuters, called the decision political and predicted the administration would ultimately win. The result is a rebuke to the White House. In oral arguments heard on Tuesday, the panel vigorously quizzed attorneys both for the administration and for the state of Washington, the lead plaintiff, which originally filed the suit challenging the travel ban. The solicitor general for the state of Washington, Noah Purcell, argued that the travel ban is discriminatory and violates both federal statutes and the U. S. Constitution. He told the court that the judiciary’s role is to step in and check the abuses of the executive branch. But August Flentje, special counsel to the assistant attorney general, argued that the president has the ultimate authority to protect the national security and that his action in that regard  —   namely, the travel ban  —   was unreviewable by the courts. In their ruling, the judges were unequivocal. ”There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our democracy,” the court wrote. The judges also said that the administration had also failed to show it would suffer ”irreparable injury” if its travel ban were not allowed to go back into effect. Acknowledging the government’s interest in combating terrorism, the judges nonetheless wrote, ”The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States. Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the Government has taken the position that we must not review the decision at all.”  The states challenging the president’s travel ban won on virtually every issue, says Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. ”The order was unanimous. The panel found that the states had standing, that the executive order was reviewable by the court, that the U. S. was not likely to succeed on the merits and that it had not shown that a stay was necessary to avoid irreparable injury,” said Tobias. In a news conference, Purcell declared victory. ”What we argued is it’s the role of the courts to say what the law is, and to serve as a check on the executive branch, and that’s what the court has done in this opinion, in this excellent opinion, with this   careful, thoughtful opinion that seriously considered all the government’s arguments and rejected them,” he said."
"Archaeologists from the U. S. and Israel say they have found evidence that a 12th cave was used to store Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient manuscripts dating back to the time of Jesus. ”This exciting excavation is the closest we’ve come to discovering new Dead Sea scrolls in 60 years,” Oren Gutfeld of The Hebrew University said in a statement about the discovery. ”Until now, it was accepted that Dead Sea scrolls were found only in 11 caves at Qumran, but now there is no doubt that this is the 12th cave.” Since the late 1940s, when the scrolls were found in caves in the cliffs along the Dead Sea, scholars have studied them for insights into the history of the Hebrew Bible and the origins of Christianity. As NPR has reported, ”The scrolls appear to have been hidden in the desert near Qumran in the West Bank by a Jewish sect known as the Essenes that existed around the time of Jesus.” Although the 12th cave, excavated by a team from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Liberty University in Virginia, had previously been mapped, this is the most detailed study of its contents. ”Although at the end of the day no scroll was found, and instead we ’only’ found a piece of parchment rolled up in a jug that was being processed for writing, the findings indicate beyond any doubt that the cave contained scrolls that were stolen,” Gutfeld explained. ”The findings include the jars in which the scrolls and their covering were hidden, a leather strap for binding the scroll, a cloth that wrapped the scrolls, tendons and pieces of skin connecting fragments, and more.” Looters also left behind flint blades, arrowheads and a stamp seal made of a stone called carnelian, which offers clues about when and how the cave was used over the centuries. ”I imagine they came into the tunnel. They found the scroll jars. They took the scrolls,” Gutfeld told the BBC. ”They even opened the scrolls and left everything around, the textiles, the pottery.” ”Thank God they took only the scrolls,” he told The Washington Post. ”They left behind all the evidence that the scrolls were there.” In 2011, Google and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem made five of the hundreds of Dead Sea manuscripts available to the public online, as we reported."
"Cary Dixon’s    son has struggled with opioid abuse for years. At first, Dixon says, it was hard to know how to support him as he cycled through several rounds of treatment and incarceration. She says her life revolved around his addiction. ”It’s kind of like you’re on a parallel track with them,” she says. ”You wait for the next crisis you wait for the next phone call. You’re upset when you don’t get a phone call. You’re just  —   you’re desperate, and you’re in a state of fear and anxiety so much of the time.” Dixon, 52, is a former nurse who now runs a contracting business with her husband in Huntington, W. Va. At a 2015 forum on addiction in Charleston, W. Va. she told   Barack Obama that addiction doesn’t just harm a person  —   it hurts a whole family. ”We neglect our marriages. We neglect other children in our home, who are thriving, because all of our attention is focused on addiction and substance abuse,” said Dixon, who later was invited by Obama to attend the 2016 State of the Union address as a special guest. The Dixons are not alone: They live in one of the cities hit hardest by the national opioid epidemic, in the state with the highest rate of   deaths. In 2015, Huntington’s fatal overdose rate was nearly nine times the national average. Now, Cary Dixon wonders what the Trump administration will mean for families like hers. She says she voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November, and she’s worried about President Trump’s talk of repealing Obamacare. She’s especially concerned about preserving the law’s coverage for alcohol and drug addiction treatment. ”I know that the Affordable Care Act needs [to be] tweaked, but to be repealed and to lose the gains that we’ve made would be harder on our community,” Dixon says. ”We’re trying to dig out of this hole.” And then there is the question of who will be covered: West Virginia expanded Medicaid under the health care law, adding more than 200, 000 people to the public insurance rolls  —   a 62 percent increase over the state’s   Medicaid enrollment. If the law is repealed, and the expansion money goes away, those new enrollees could lose their access to basic health and mental health care. Dixon’s friend Bob Hardin, whose son has fought alcoholism for decades, shares her concerns. They met through a support group for family members of people struggling with addictions. Hardin, who is 73 and retired, has mixed feelings about the ACA, but he worries about any change to federal policy that would take away access to addiction treatment. ”It works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn’t. But at least it’s there,” he says. Hardin wrote in Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio on his ballot last fall, but he’s hopeful President Trump will deliver on his promise to put more Americans back to work. He wonders if more jobs also might help people here keep busy, and off drugs and alcohol. Hardin spent years working in Baltimore before returning to Huntington, and he has seen the   economy shrink while the addiction epidemic has grown. ”The change is phenomenal from when I left and when I came back,” Hardin says. ”It’s a tough place to get a job.” In addition to promising to strengthen the economy, Trump also campaigned on a promise to stem the flow of opioids into the United States by building a wall along the U. S.  border. Both Hardin and Dixon are skeptical of that idea. ”A wall is not gonna stop them from doing what they do. And if you build a wall, they will adapt,” Dixon says. As West Virginia continues to fight the opioid crisis, Dixon says the state will need practical solutions, like more beds in drug treatment facilities, and reliable access to health care."
"Decorations are sparse at Recovery Point, a residential treatment center in Huntington, W. Va. That’s why the bulletin board covered with photos of men stands out. The men spent time here, but didn’t survive their addictions. They’re all dead now. ”We keep a constant reminder in here for individuals who come into our detox facility. We have, ’But for the grace of God, there go I,’” says Executive Director Matt Boggs, pointing to the words on the board. Boggs, 35, would know. He started as a resident here five years ago, looking for a way out of addiction and homelessness. Recovery Point runs four facilities in West Virginia, offering nonmedical detox and   residential treatment to people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. In Huntington, about 100 men at a time live in this former elementary school building in a   neighborhood. There’s plenty of demand for facilities like this one West Virginia consistently leads the nation in drug overdose deaths. President Trump and other candidates addressed the nationwide addiction crisis many times on the campaign trail, sometimes with testimony from family members of those affected. Now, people who have been affected by the crisis, including the residents of Recovery Point, are looking to the president for help. Terry Lilly, 36, came to Recovery Point from Charleston, W. Va. Lilly was a computer programmer and then a manager at a nationally known company. He didn’t get hooked on heroin until his 30s, when he was playing music in bars and decided to give heroin a try, out of what he describes now as ”morbid curiosity.” ”It scratched my itch,” he says. ”It helped me deal with the emotional problems that I wasn’t dealing with, so it didn’t take long for me to give away my career, my house, my car.” Lilly’s recovery has been full of stops and starts. This time, he has been clean for four months. As he looks to the future, he’s worried about politicians’ talk of repealing the Affordable Care Act. He gets health insurance through the federal Medicaid program, which was expanded under the ACA and now covers more than half a million West Virginians  —   more than   of the state’s residents. ”I’m not in a position to pay for that right now, but I have been in the past and I would like to be in the future,” Lilly says. ”So I really feel like this time in my life is what those programs are for, when I need a helping hand.” Medicaid doesn’t pay for treatment at Recovery Point the facility is mainly funded by grants and donations, and run in part by residents like Lilly who have already completed several months of treatment. But Boggs, the program’s director, says Medicaid provides basic health care for many of the residents here, and essential mental health care for issues that can complicate their recovery. If Republicans repeal Obamacare as they’ve promised, Boggs says he hopes there’s an equivalent replacement ready to go first. Some residents are hoping the federal government will address the challenge of   society with a criminal record. For    Jarrod Book, of Akron, Ohio, an alternative sentencing program is giving him a chance to clear his drug conviction. He says he’d like to see the new administration champion sentencing reform. ”Like nonviolent drug offenders who maybe, you know, messed up a little bit in their life,” Book says. ”If it wasn’t for something like that, I wouldn’t be here.” Book says he hopes the attention presidential candidates showered on the opioid epidemic during the campaign will help to destigmatize the problem. Aaron Pardue, 28, of Pocahontas, Va. hopes the publicity will bring more funding for treatment in communities across the region that are overwhelmed with need. ”For me it just seems like it’s a shame that it takes the politicians and the celebrities and all the bigwigs in this country, for it to start happening to them personally, before it becomes an issue for them to start dealing with it,” Pardue says. But Pardue, who has been clean for 15 months, says he can’t think too much about what the politicians might do. He needs to focus on his recovery. ”I mean I haven’t been living on Saturn or anything,” he says. ”I know what’s going on, but that’s one less distraction that I need right now.”"
"After President Trump blocked U. S. aid money from supporting any group that provides or ”promotes” abortion in other countries, The Netherlands announced it would launch a fundraising initiative to support any affected organizations. Now, several other countries  —   including Sweden, Finland, Belgium and Canada  —   have signaled their participation. The ”She Decides” fundraiser is the latest development in an international aid dispute that  —   as NPR’s Nurith Aizenman explained  —   has been playing out for decades. It centers on the ”Mexico City policy,” which blocks U. S. aid from being sent to any international group that provides or ”promotes” abortion. That can include providing information about abortion. Since 1973, the U. S. hasn’t allowed international aid money to directly fund abortions. The only question has been if groups can receive funds for other initiatives. And that has depended on who is in office  —   Republican presidents enforced the Mexico City policy, while Democratic presidents didn’t. When Trump entered office one of his first actions was to bring back the policy. As Nurith wrote last month, he also appeared to expand it: Previous versions of the policy only stopped family planning aid from being distributed to affected charities, while Trump’s memorandum seems to apply to all global health funding. Nurith wrote that it’s far from clear exactly how much money is potentially affected. The U. S. spends more than $600 million specifically on reproductive health, but spends much more  —   billions of dollars  —   on global health overall. ”It remains to be seen how much of that goes to groups that currently provide or promote abortion as defined by the policy  —   and that would opt to give up U. S. aid dollars rather than falling in line,” Nurith wrote. Shortly after Trump reimposed the policy, The Netherlands launched the ”She Decides Global Fundraising Initiative,” soliciting donations for reproductive health care in developing countries. It was explicitly designed to counterbalance the effect of the U. S. policy change. Funds raised by the initiative ”will be made available to organizations affected by the Mexico City Policy,” according to a website for the effort. In addition to inviting private donations, the Netherlands also pledged more than $10 million and said it would be working with other governments to boost the available funds. Since then, Denmark and Belgium have also pledged aid, bringing the total to more than $30 million, Deutsche Welle reports. And on Thursday, Sweden joined those three countries to announce an international conference related to the initiative, scheduled for March 2. ”We will mobilize political and financial support and show that there is a counterweight to the worrying developments we are seeing in the U. S. and in other parts of the world,” Swedish deputy prime minister Isabella Lövin said in a statement. (You may remember Lövin from a tweet showing her signing legislation while surrounded by women, apparently as a rebuke to the image of Trump signing the Mexico City policy memorandum while surrounded by men.) Canada is also participating in the launch, officials confirm to NPR. Reuters reports that Finland, Luxembourg and Cape Verde have also signed on to the initiative. Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, tells NPR that other countries working to counteract the impact of the policy doesn’t change the key fact, for   groups, of American funds being withdrawn. ”Other countries are free to do what they want,” she says. ”The principle of the matter is that the United States is not endorsing abortion.” The ability of international aid groups to raise funds from other sources, in general, has been mentioned by   groups as a point in favor of the Mexico City policy, as Nurith reported last year. Nonprofit groups, meanwhile, say it’s ”enormously disruptive” to have a funding source cut off suddenly, even if other funds are later available."
"It’s President Donald Trump’s first official act on the abortion issue. On Monday, the new president signed a presidential memorandum reinstating the ”Mexico City” policy  —   barring U. S. aid from any group that provides or ”promotes” abortion overseas. The policy dates to 1984, when Ronald Reagan unveiled it at a United Nations Conference in Mexico City. The Trump version is even broader than the incarnations that previous Republican presidents have adopted. What does this mean in practice? To help make sense of it we’ve put together an FAQ. What were the rules on the U. S. funding of international abortion before Trump’s executive action? U. S. law has actually long prohibited the use of U. S. aid dollars to directly pay for abortions overseas. Specifically, in 1973  —   in reaction to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion  —   Congress adopted the   Helms Amendment to the law governing U. S. aid. That provision states that ”no foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.” A foreign government or aid group that gets U. S. funding can still provide abortions overseas. But to do so it would have to use money from  . S.  sources. So what, exactly, is the Mexico City policy? The policy, as first implemented by Reagan, went further than the Helms Amendment in two key ways: First, it holds that if a group wants U. S. funding it must promise not to use monies even from other sources to provide abortions. Second, the group must also agree not to ”actively promote” abortion. In practice this has covered not just advocating for laws in favor of abortion rights but informational activities such as providing patients with referrals, counseling or information about the procedure. In contrast to the Helms Amendment, the Mexico City policy does not apply to foreign governments, only to nongovernmental groups that work overseas. So a   medical center could be eligible for U. S. funding even if it were to provide or ”actively promote” abortion. Since Reagan introduced the policy, every time the U. S. presidency has changed party hands, the incoming leader has reversed his predecessor’s position. In what way is President Trump’s version of the policy possibly more expansive?  The original version was specifically limited to family planning aid disbursed by USAID. Trump’s memorandum calls for extending the rules to ”global health assistance furnished by all departments or agencies.” How much aid money is at stake? As of this writing, the full implications are not clear. The U. S. spends more than $10 billion annually on global health  —   including $607. 5 million specifically on reproductive health. And it remains to be seen how much of that goes to groups that currently provide or promote abortion as defined by the policy  —   and that would opt to give up U. S. aid dollars rather than falling in line. But opponents of the policy are already warning that many groups will be forced to give up their funding. Adrienne Lee, a spokeswoman for abortion rights advocacy group PAI, says there would be ”devastating” consequences for the impoverished women for whom these groups provide a whole range of health services, including many unrelated to abortion, such as access to contraception. If the consequences to the people they serve are so severe, why wouldn’t these groups just agree to the terms of the policy and keep their funding? Here’s what Allison Marshall, director of advocacy for International Planned Parenthood, one of the largest recipients of U. S. reproductive health aid, has told NPR. She says that even though the group stands to lose about $100 million over a   to   period, complying with the policy would compromise the care it can offer. ”We’d have to stop telling women and girls when they came into our clinic what their options are,” she says. ”And we can’t do that.” What do supporters of the policy say?   groups like the Family Research Council and the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops argue that aid organizations that are willing to comply with the policy will spring up to fill any gaps that result. And they say the policy is needed to ensure that U. S. taxpayers are not supporting abortions overseas. Arina Grossu of the Family Research Council says, ”There’s a fungibility factor. The only way to protect taxpayer money from going for abortion is by reinstating the Mexico City policy.”"
"It’s a policy battle that has been playing out over three decades. In 1984,   Ronald Reagan imposed an   rule  —   known as the ”Mexico City policy” after the city where he announced it. The rule blocked federal funding for international family planning charities unless they agreed not to ”promote” abortion by, among other actions, providing patients with information about the procedure or referrals to providers who perform it. Since then, every time the U. S. presidency has changed party hands, the incoming leader has reversed his predecessor’s position on the ban. President Clinton lifted it in 1993. President George W. Bush reinstated it in 2001. And President Obama rescinded it once more in 2009. Will   Trump continue the pattern by reimposing the policy? Trump hasn’t taken a public position thus far. But when it comes to several domestic abortion questions he’s aligned himself squarely with   groups. His pick for vice president, Mike Pence, is a staunch abortion foe  —   as is his nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, Georgia congressman Tom Price. Trump has also promised to appoint what he’s called ” ” justices to the U. S. Supreme Court, who presumably might favor overturning Roe v. Wade. And he has said he would sign legislation banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and ending federal funding for Planned Parenthood’s U. S. activities. (Those federal funds go toward services that Trump has praised Planned Parenthood for providing, such as birth control and cancer screenings. But he’s said the organization should nonetheless be defunded because it uses other, nonfederal funds to perform abortions at its affiliated health centers.) Based on these stances, when it comes to the Mexico City policy, ”it’s widely expected that President Trump will put it back in place,” says Jennifer Kates, vice president and director of Global Health  HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. At issue is not whether the United States can use foreign aid money to fund abortions overseas. U. S. law has prohibited that since 1973, when Congress adopted the   Helms Amendment. Rather, with the Mexico City policy, President Reagan took that prohibition a step further: He issued an executive order that barred funding for groups that ”perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.” The term ”actively promote” has been defined to include both taking public positions in favor of laws and policies that protect abortion rights as well as informational conversations between health care clinicians and their patients, notes Alison Marshall, director of advocacy for International Planned Parenthood Federation, which stands to lose funding under the ban. ”When a woman or girl  —   and bearing in mind this could be somebody who suffered from   violence or who has been married as a child underage  —   would go to see a health provider it would mean the provider could not talk to them about abortion, could not provide information, could not provide a referral to another provider [to perform an abortion],” says Marshall. And so, she says, each time the policy  —   which opponents have dubbed the ”global gag rule”  —   has been imposed, a large share of the nonprofit groups that work in the field have opted to give up U. S. support. Among   groups, however, there is staunch support for the Mexico City policy. Deirdre McQuade is a spokeswoman for the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is among the   groups urging Trump to reinstate the ban. It ”embodies the modest, widely accepted proposition that abortion is not family planning and should never be promoted as such,” says McQuade. ”Without the Mexico City Policy in place, the U. S. is currently exporting the destruction of life as a solution to challenges faced by families in developing countries. Poor women in developing nations don’t want help aborting their children. They’re calling for food, clean water, housing, education and medicine for their families.” McQuade adds that organizations that provide ”authentic health care services that honor the dignity of poor women and their families,” including screenings for cancer and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, should have no trouble complying with the policy. And groups that choose to give up their federal funding could seek private support, she says. For instance, she contends that when President George W. Bush reinstated the policy, IPPF ”was able to raise millions of dollars from private sources quickly.” Marshall counters that ”it was enormously disruptive because we faced enormous budget cuts very suddenly. And not just for [our group] but for other nonprofit providers, clinics had to be closed, staff had to be laid off. We just weren’t able to offer the family planning services to the women and girls who needed them.” Obama’s reversal of the Mexico City policy was accompanied by a new U. S. focus on women’s reproductive health in poor countries. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, the U. S. budget for the 2016 fiscal year included $607. 5 million in funding for reproductive health internationally, enabling an estimated 27 million couples in poor countries to get access to birth control and preventing about 11, 000 maternal deaths. A large share of that money goes to IPPF. If the Mexico City policy were to be reimposed, Marshall says, the organization would lose about $100 million over a   to   period for services it provides to women in 20 developing countries. These services mainly include care that is not related to abortion. But Marshall says complying with the terms of the Mexico City policy in order to keep U. S. funding is not an option IPPF would consider. ”We’d have to stop telling women and girls when they came into our clinic what their options are,” she says. ”And we can’t do that.” The Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment on this article."
"Ten thousand years ago, at the dawn of the agricultural revolution, many of our worst infectious diseases didn’t exist. Here’s what changed. With the rise of agriculture, for the first time in history humans were living in close contact with domesticated animals  —   milking them, taking care of them and, of course, eating them. All that touching and sharing gave animal germs plenty of chances to get inside us. Take measles. Researchers think that up until about 5, 000 years ago, it didn’t exist. But its older cousin rinderpest, a cattle disease, did. When humans began spending so much quality time with cows, little rinderpest germs started jumping over into us. And a few of the germs had a mutation that allowed rinderpest to evolve from a cattle disease into measles, a deadly human virus. As if that weren’t bad enough, something else was happening around this time that supercharged the degree of damage this new measles virus could do. It has to do with the magic number of 500, 000. When the world’s first cities hit the   mark, it meant that there were now enough humans living together that measles and other germs had a steady and potentially endless supply of humans to infect. Along with measles, scientists think other nasty diseases such as mumps, diphtheria, scarlet fever and whooping cough all evolved to live permanently in humans around 3, 000 B. C.  But our ancestors had no idea what the problem was  —   or how to fix it. See how humans finally get a clue, in Episode 3, coming Feb. 16. If you missed Episode 1, ”Early Encounters,” here’s your chance to catch up: What do you want to know about pandemics? Share your questions by submitting them in our special tool here. Our global health team will answer some of them in an upcoming story."
"Updated at 8 p. m. ET, Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to President Trump, may have violated federal ethics rules Thursday when she urged shoppers to buy Ivanka Trump’s retail brand, following the decision by several retail companies to drop the line because of poor sales. ”Go buy Ivanka’s stuff, is what I was [saying]  —   I hate shopping and I’m going to go get some myself today,” Conway said in an interview on Fox  Friends. ”This is just [a] wonderful line,” she added. ”I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.” Her comments drew sharp criticism from the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Jason Chaffetz. ”That is absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong. It is over the top,” Chaffetz told reporters. Chaffetz and the committee’s ranking minority member, Democrat Elijah Cummings, asked the U. S. Office of Government Ethics in a letter to determine whether disciplinary action should be brought against Conway. ”Conway’s statements clearly violate the ethical principles for federal employees and are unacceptable,” the letter said. ”In this case, there is an additional challenge, which is that the President, as the ultimate disciplinary authority for White House employees, has an inherent conflict of interest since Conway’s statements relate to his daughter’s private business,” it said. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday that Conway had been ”counseled” over her remarks. Conway, interviewed later Thursday, again on Fox, said she would have no comment on the counseling but had ”spent an awful lot of time with the president of the United States this afternoon and he supports me 100 percent.” Federal ethics rules bar executive branch employees from profiting off their positions, but the statute exempts the president. Conway, however, is a White House employee, and her comments urging people to buy the products appear to violate the rules, says Kathleen Clark, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. ”The ethics regulation says government employees must not endorse any product, service or enterprise,” Clark told NPR in an interview. She added: ”The broader rule is that government employees shouldn’t use public office for private gain. They shouldn’t use it for their own personal private gain or for somebody else’s private gain. Public office should be used for the good of the public, for the good of the country, for the good of the government, rather than singling out her boss’s daughter’s enterprise and encouraging people to shop Ivanka.” Clark also noted that Trump’s tweet Wednesday about his daughter was retweeted by someone from the official White House account @POTUS. ”That was a violation of the ethics regulation if it was done by anybody other than the president or the vice president. But even if the president himself did that, it was improper, because there he is using a government resource for his own personal vendetta,” she said. Meanwhile, the progressive group Public Citizen urged the U. S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate whether Conway’s comments violated the rules. ”Anyone harboring illusions that there was some separation between the Trump administration and the Trump family businesses has had their fantasy shattered,” said Robert Weissman, the organization’s president. ”Kellyanne Conway’s   advertisement for the Ivanka Trump fashion line demonstrates again what anyone with common sense already knew: President Trump and the Trump administration will use the government apparatus to advance the interests of the family businesses.” In the Fox interview, Conway suggested retailers are dropping the line because of politics. ”They’re using her, who’s been a champion for women in power and women in the workplace, to get to him. I think people can see through that,” she said. T. J. Maxx and Marshalls told employees last week to stop using signs promoting Ivanka Trump’s brand and mix in her products with others the store sells to make them less prominent. Nordstrom has also said that it would no longer sell Ivanka Trump jewelry and clothing because sales have been disappointing. Neither the company nor Ivanka Trump’s brand released any sales figures. The line is still carried by other retailers. After Nordstrom’s decision, President Trump himself tweeted that his daughter ”has been treated so unfairly” by the chain, and his son Donald retweeted an article Thursday about angry store customers cutting up their credit cards. It’s not clear how shoppers will react to the clothing controversy. Outside a Marshalls store in Washington, D. C. a housewife from Argentina wasn’t impressed by all the controversy. ”If I like it, I buy it. If I don’t, I don’t,” said Andrea Ponzio, 47. ”It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t buy it because of any politics.” NPR intern Lucia Maffei contributed to this report."
"A bit more than a decade ago, President George W. Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, found his credibility in tatters after it became clear he had misled reporters about the leaking of the name of a CIA operative. Even though he arguably had been set up by    White House aides, McClellan resigned some months later. Why? Establishing trust between the White House press secretary and the reporters he or she works with every day is critical. As former Bush speechwriter David Frum tweeted advice for the new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer: ”The smart press secretary will remember: He is rationed one lie per career. Use it wisely.” ”So why do it?” NBC’s Chuck Todd asked, urgently, insistently, repeatedly on Sunday. Why send Spicer out there to pick a fight with the press in the first full day of the Trump administration? Why have him make so many easily disproved statements all at once? Todd sought answers in vain on Sunday’s Meet the Press from Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President Trump. She suggested that the hostility from reporters may force her to rethink her relationship with the press. Yes, Time magazine reporter Zeke Miller, serving as a pool reporter during a quick visit to the Oval Office, wrongly reported that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. on display during the Obama administration had been removed it hadn’t. Miller retracted the report and apologized publicly, saying his view of the bust had been obstructed. But Spicer and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus argued the incorrect report proved the media’s intentional unfairness to Trump. Conway called that bust bust fake news, as in an intentional hoax by all available evidence, it wasn’t. It appears to have been a reporter’s mistake, and a sloppy one. Would that government officials or Trump aides correct and apologize so promptly for their accelerating number of untrue statements. Take it as a given that the new president doesn’t have thin skin  —   he has no skin at all. Trump proved that once more in his own tirade against reporters at the CIA on Saturday. Trump said journalists had falsely reported a schism between the president and his intelligence services, though Trump himself had earlier compared the agencies’ behavior toward him to the policies of Nazi Germany. And Trump, together with his aides, accused the media of understating crowd sizes, poll numbers and ratings for his inauguration  —   all to allegedly lessen his stature. Many White Houses resemble an extension of their campaigns. This White House has to date made little rhetorical accommodation in the shift to governing. Trump labored to prove his crowds and ratings exceeded those for Obama and for Saturday’s protest marches. This singular campaign endures in office. And I think that accounts for the blasts at the press, even more than the   reactions Trump brings to perceived slights. In the White House as during the campaign, Trump and his top aides attacked the press, attacked dissenters and attacked facts. Each fundamentally serves as an underpinning of democracy. Each attack agitates journalists and delights his most ardent fans. As Todd pointed out, Spicer’s complaints were largely petty: They were about crowd sizes. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace called the White House’s obsession with crowd sizes ”ridiculous.” But it put the press corps on notice in the most public way that the White House would treat it as an adversary  —   just as Trump did during the campaign. It serves to rally his core supporters. It sows confusion among the reporting ranks, as many journalists were sent to   such things as lawn mats and magnetometers. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple argued Sunday on CNN that the Trump strategy is to challenge the small assertions so that it can dispute huge exposés to undercut them. The media cannot afford to overreact. They cannot get lost in the minutiae. And yet reporters also cannot let one falsehood after another fly past unimpeded  —   especially ones that clearly carry such importance inside the Oval Office. McClellan lost his job amid a scandal that involved the invasion of Iraq, personally vouching that White House aides had not disclosed the name of a CIA agent married to a critic of intelligence used to justify the invasion. They had. Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff was ultimately convicted of federal charges. On Saturday, Spicer marched out to mislead reporters and the public about a topic of no real consequence. What he had to say wasn’t plausible from the moment he opened his mouth. It was about the attack, not the substance. CNN did not carry his remarks live, offering a detailed dissection of his misleading and untrue statements afterward. It’s what real reporting looks like (and is a sharp contrast to the long, live broadcasts of Trump’s primary rallies that helped fuel his nomination). Conway, for her part, told NBC’s Todd that Spicer was offering ”alternative facts,” though he did not make an argument based on other evidence but served up untrue information. Whether presidential delusions or strategic lies, these claims were made in the face of   countervailing evidence. But the real action is away from the assertions about crowd size and indeed away from the White House briefing room itself. The press, charged with helping the public make sense of those who govern, should pay close attention."
"Ask anyone about his or her health care and you are likely to hear about doctors, hospitals, maybe costs and insurance hassles. Most people don’t go straight from ”my health” to a political debate, and yet that is what our country has been embroiled in for almost a decade. A study published Thursday tries to set aside the politics to look at what makes or breaks health insurance markets in five states. Researchers from the Brookings Institution looked at state markets, thinking that if the goal is to repair or replace the Affordable Care Act with something better, then it would be good to know what worked and what failed. ”The political process at the moment is not generating a conversation about how do we create a better replacement for the Affordable Care Act,” says Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who spearheaded the project. ”It’s a really hard problem, and people with different points of view about it have got to sit down together and say, ’How do we make it work?’ ” The researchers looked at California, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas, interviewing state regulators, health providers, insurers, consumer organizations, brokers and others to understand why insurance companies chose to enter or leave markets, how state regulations affected   and how insurers built provider networks. ”Both parties miss what makes insurance exchanges successful,” says Micah Weinberg, president of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, who led the California research team. ”And it doesn’t have anything to do with red and blue states and it doesn’t have anything to do with total government control or free markets.” Despite the political diversity of the five states, some common lessons emerged. Among them: Health insurance markets are local, Insurer competition varied widely within states, with the most dramatic differences between urban and rural areas. The more populated regions tend to have more insurance competition and   plans than rural areas. Fewer people live in rural areas, which means there are fewer hospitals, doctors and other health providers. As a result, insurance companies that do business in those regions have less power to negotiate prices with local providers, who are more likely to be the only game in town. ”Insurance companies don’t make money [in many rural areas] because they can’t cut a deal with the providers that will be attractive to the customers,” Rivlin says. ”And there just aren’t very many customers, so it’s not obvious what to do about that.” Republicans, including the Trump administration, have suggested that the sale of insurance policies across state lines is one way to boost competition. But that may be easier said than done, Rivlin says. ”The insurance companies would still have to have local providers,” she says. ”So a company in New York can’t easily sell in Wyoming unless it has providers lined up in Wyoming.” Consolidation kills competition  Consolidation includes hospitals buying physician practices and large medical centers, and big hospitals buying up smaller hospitals. California offers a prime example of this. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where consolidation has reduced competition among hospitals and physician groups, consumers have fewer choices and higher premiums than those in Los Angeles, where consolidation hasn’t yet gobbled up so many providers. Underestimating demand from sick people really hurt, Insurance companies did not have any idea who would buy policies through the exchanges in the early years. And as it turned out, a lot of those previously uninsured sick people  —   more than insurers and policymakers had expected  —   raced to get coverage. As a result, researchers found, many plans incurred losses, with some companies reporting claims that were 50 to 100 percent greater than the premiums they collected. Making matters worse, a mechanism in the health law to reimburse companies for such losses in the early years proved inadequate. That caused a lot of them to leave the marketplaces. Under Obamacare, insurance companies could no longer deny coverage or charge higher rates to those with   medical conditions. And during the first two years of the exchanges, insurers simply didn’t know how to price their policies because they’d rarely dealt with people who hadn’t been insured before, the researchers found. In Michigan, six of 16 insurers withdrew. And in regions of Texas and North Carolina, which had between five and nine insurers, only three remained. Some consumers may be ”gaming” the system, Three of the states  —   Florida, North Carolina and Texas  —   reported that generous special enrollment rules allowed many consumers to delay enrollment into a plan until they needed health care. And in Michigan and North Carolina, researchers found that some people signed up for a policy, used it, then dumped it when they had received the care they needed. That ended up leaving insurers stuck with expenses and fewer premiums than they’d anticipated. ”The challenge is some of the rules that were set up around the ACA made it easy to game the system, frankly,” says Lanhee Chen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who was not involved in the study. Along with tightening the rules around special enrollment periods, Chen says he would like to see a return to   pools for the sickest Americans, the idea being that removing the most costly consumers from the general risk pool will allow carriers to lower premiums for everyone else. But   pools, which a majority of states operated before the ACA, are hugely expensive, Rivlin says. Another solution, she says, might be found by making sure a strong reinsurance mechanism provides payments to insurers that take on more costly customers. Narrow networks appear to be the new normal, By the third year of the exchanges, insurers in all five states are offering more narrow networks on the exchange than the plans that give access to more doctors and hospitals. These smaller networks of providers allow insurers to give more patients to participating providers in exchange for lower prices. But it also means consumers have fewer choices when choosing providers. It’s a trend that started before the Affordable Care Act, and one that appears to be taking hold in nearly every market as insurers search for ways to keep premiums down. The sky may be falling, but many carriers are still doing well  One   chapter in the Obamacare story involves those carriers that are making enough of a profit to reduce 2017 premiums. ”About half the insurers are making a ton of money on [the exchanges] and that’s how markets work,” Weinberg says. ”The idea that there should be winners and losers in a particular marketplace is something that Republicans should certainly feel comfortable with.” Medicaid   plans come out winners  Researchers found that regional insurers that originally went into business to care for those with Medicaid  —   the health insurance for the poor and disabled  —   are filling gaps after insurers fled in many markets. Molina Health in California, WellCare in Florida, Community Health Choice in Texas, ”appear to have thrived in the ACA marketplace environment,” the study says. Rivlin says the success of these plans is likely due to their experience caring for a   often very sick population. They already had   networks of local providers that allow them to provide care at a lower cost. As 2017 premiums went up, consumers became more willing to enroll in these more affordable,   plans. California leads the pack, In the Golden State, which fully embraced all things Affordable Care Act, competition remained stable with 11 insurers offering coverage and only one  —   UnitedHealth  —   dropping out completely. And 2017’s average premium increase, while about 13 percent, was about half of the national average. Part of California’s success, Weinberg says, is due to its   approach in deciding which insurers may join the market. And it got involved in negotiating the price of plans, which helped keep a lid on premiums compared with other states. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR and Kaiser Health News."
"Premiums for Obamacare plans sold by New Mexico Health Connections could rise as little as 7 percent next year, said Martin Hickey, the insurance company’s CEO. Or they might soar as much as 40 percent, he said. It all depends on what happens in Washington. Such is the vast uncertainty about how the Trump administration and   Congress are approaching their promises to repeal, repair and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. There is ”pretty massive confusion,” said Hickey, whose   plan is one of the few nonprofit insurance   created by the ACA to still be in business. ”The more uncertainty they create, the higher the rates” will be for 2018, he said. Insurers have a hard enough time making the normal predictions of who will get sick and how much care will cost. Now the usual fog of rate setting is compounded by the possibility that basic rules of coverage could get overhauled or even disappear before anything takes their place. Consumers and patients could ultimately pay the price. The stakes include how much plans sold through the health law’s online marketplaces and similar coverage will cost in 2018  —   or even whether insurance will be available. Challenges during the recently completed enrollment period, in which some carriers canceled plans and rates rose 20 percent on average, increase the urgency, executives say. ”This is nothing less than a nightmare scenario for the carriers,” said Robert Laszewski, a former insurance executive and consultant who works with large plans. ”The Republicans don’t seem to understand that they’ve got to stabilize the market.” Coverage for 2017, which has already been finalized, won’t change. People covered through   insurance or the private Medicare plans for seniors won’t be much affected by the uncertainty. In some states, preliminary 2018 rates are due in less than two months. But prospects for policymaking clarity recede each day that Republicans deliver contradictory messages or fail to agree on a plan, industry officials say. While some in the party want to go slow on an overhaul and ensure they’ve thought out a replacement before abolishing the health law, others favor immediate repeal. If the administration and Congress scrap the ACA’s coverage requirement for most people or its subsidies helping people buy care, the market could deteriorate or collapse, say insurance consultants and executives. A month ago President Trump told The New York Times that Obamacare is ”a catastrophic event,” adding, ”we have to get to business” in repealing it. On Feb. 5, he seemed to advocate a more measured approach, telling Fox News that ”at least the rudiments” of a replacement would be in place by 2018. Even that could spook insurance executives contemplating plans for next year in the Obamacare marketplaces, also known as exchanges. They want to know the rudiments of a replacement plan now and details not much later. ”I don’t think there’s a real clear path to repeal or replace or repair or anything,” said Kevin G. Fitzgerald, an insurance lawyer with Foley  Lardner. ”Some of our clients will probably move forward on the assumption that something will happen to maintain the exchanges more or less the way they are. Others may pull out early.” Big, national insurers have said it would be hard to commit to the marketplaces next year unless they get a much better idea of what they’ll look like. Several had already scaled back coverage for this year, leaving many parts of the country with only one company selling through the marketplaces. Continued uncertainty could prompt even those holdouts to bail, said Fitzgerald. ”If in those states those carriers decide, ’We’ve lost enough and we’re going to sit this year out,’ there are no exchanges,” he said. ”And that certainly is a possibility.” The Trump administration has proposed regulations, initiated in the last days of the Obama regime, intended to steady the market. Tweaks may include crackdowns on sick consumers who join plans outside   periods and allowing insurers to charge slightly more for older members, Huffington Post and Politico have reported. Those changes  —   plus assumptions that Republicans will eventually have a replacement plan helping Obamacare patients maintain coverage  —   could reassure insurance companies, said Dan Mendelson, CEO of Avalere Health, a consulting firm. ”I’m not saying it would be completely ” he said. ”You probably would see some plans get out of the market. But if plans start to believe there’s a   solution, they’re going to want to stay in because getting in and out of the market costs money.” What industry really wants is certainty government will continue helping consumers pay for coverage  —   one of the most contentious and uncertain aspects. For two years the   House of Representatives has legally challenged one type of subsidy  —   federal payments to reduce    costs for   income consumers. The Obama administration defended the subsidies in court, but insurers worry that Trump officials could drop the defense or that a judge could declare the payments illegal. Industry interest in the suit ”is incredibly high,” said Todd Van Tol, a partner with Oliver Wyman, a consultancy with many insurers as clients. The disappearance of those subsidies, he said, ”would likely trigger a fairly significant insurer pullback in fairly rapid order.” Even the most publicly minded insurers might cease offering individual Obamacare plans if an uncertain market threatened their financial stability, said Ceci Connolly, CEO of the Alliance of Community Health Plans, a trade group of nonprofit carriers. ”We want to be able to do this, but if there’s potential for significant losses it would be irresponsible to maybe do it,” she said. ”There seems to be a growing recognition of the challenge ahead and also the need for stability, but boy  —   this clock is coming up fast.” Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can follow Jay Hancock on Twitter: @jayhancock1."
"Updated at 2:49 p. m. ET, An Arizona woman who has lived in the U. S. for more than two decades was arrested Wednesday night after her regular   with immigration officials and has been deported to Mexico. She was sent to Nogales, Mexico, on Thursday, reports Katherine Fritcke of member station KJZZ. Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos’ deportation  —   which has been protested by dozens of activists, some of whom were arrested late Wednesday  —   is a glimpse of how immigration enforcement is changing under the Trump administration. She had had a deportation order against her for several years but was not considered a priority for deportation during the Obama administration. But two weeks ago, President Trump issued an executive order changing deportation priorities Garcia de Rayos is believed to be one of the first people deported under that expanded enforcement. The New York Times reports that Garcia de Rayos, now 35, was just 14 when she ”sneaked across the border” from a poor district in Mexico into southern Arizona. Her lawyer tells Fritcke that she missed the cutoff for DACA status by four months. Garcia de Rayos married a man who is also in the country illegally, and they had two children, who are U. S. citizens. In 2008, Garcia de Rayos was arrested while she was working at a water park, during a raid carried out by   County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. (Arpaio’s workplace raids have been challenged in court as unconstitutional the case is ongoing.) In 2009, she was convicted of possessing false papers. In 2013, ICE says, an order for her deportation was finalized. But Garcia de Rayos was allowed to continue to live in Arizona, under supervision and with regular   with ICE, as member station KJZZ reports. You may remember that former President Barack Obama instructed the Department of Homeland Security to prioritize some deportations over others. He told immigration authorities to focus on people in the country illegally who were convicted of certain kinds of crimes  —   including aggravated felonies, terrorism or gang activity. Crimes directly related to immigration status weren’t a priority, he said. In 2014, Obama said the goal was to deport felons, criminal and gang members, ”not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” (Obama still deported more people than any previous U. S. president, and last year The Marshall Project reported that most of those deportations involved people with no criminal conviction or whose only conviction was  .) But on Jan. 25, Trump issued an executive order that instructed the secretary of homeland security to ”prioritize for removal” anyone in the country illegally who has been convicted of, or even just charged with, any criminal offense. That’s ”far broader” than Obama’s system, as The Atlantic reported. Garcia de Rayos realized the situation had changed when she walked into the ICE offices for her   on Wednesday. The Times reports that an activist suggested she could go into into hiding or find refuge at a church, but she ”decided to face the odds.” ”The only crime my mother committed was to go to work to give a better life for her children,” Garcia de Rayos’ teenage daughter said, according to the Times. Then Garcia de Rayos and her lawyer entered the building, as supporters gathered outside the building. They waited for hours. In the evening, a van attempted to drive away from the ICE office. Immigration activists identified Garcia de Rayos inside and sat on the ground around the vehicle,   the confrontation on Facebook. Several of the protesters were arrested. The group of demonstrators blocked the van’s movement for a while, but it later left the ICE office through a different route. On Thursday, Garcia was deported. Her daughter Jacqueline spoke at a press conference Thursday. ”To me it’s sad, seeing what this world has come to, seeing that this world has so much hate,” she said. ”Seeing my mom in that van, it’s unexplainable.”"
"Tuesday was a busy day for education policy. Betsy DeVos, you may have heard, was confirmed as secretary of education with an unprecedented tiebreaker vote. The House of Representatives also voted to throw out a lot of rules that were decided on just last year. These rules tell states how to comply with the new federal education law with regard to identifying and improving underperforming schools, as well as evaluating   programs in higher education. And Rep. Thomas Massie,  a Republican representing Kentucky’s 4th District, introduced a bill in the House as well. Here is the text of that bill, in full: ”The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.” Speculation about DeVos and what her leadership might bring has generated millions of clicks this week. For insight on these other two developments, I called up David Schoenbrod. He’s a professor at New York Law School and the author of several books about the congressional role in crafting law and regulation. Spoiler alert: The Education Department is unlikely to be eliminated, particularly by a bill that declines to specify who or what would take over its $68 billion annual budget and the functions of data collection, oversight, civil rights enforcement and student aid, among others. ”Whatever you think about the Department of Education, the idea you could eliminate it with a   bill is just posturing,” Schoenbrod says. ”Posturing is not something that’s just done by Democrats or by Republicans. It’s done by both.” This issue is personal for Schoenbrod. Back in the 1970s, Schoenbrod was staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, fighting for Congress to ban lead in gasoline  —   which made its way into air, water and the bloodstreams of children with harmful and deadly effect. Because legislators did not specify a timeline or a mechanism, he argues, enforcement was delayed by a decade. ”They voted for the symbolism but didn’t want to take responsibility for how it was done,” Schoenbrod says. In the field of environmental law, this form of kicking the can down the road is known as ”symbolic legislation.” The fate of these regulations, part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, is a slightly different matter. But it’s also something that Schoenbrod has experience with. The House is invoking an obscure power granted by something called the Congressional Review Act. As our colleagues at Planet Money recently explained, this 1996 law gives Congress the power to nullify any regulation passed in the last 60 days, with the president’s signoff. This basically comes into play only when there is a changeover of government, as we have now. President Trump has already paused the implementation of these ESSA rules, and the White House has reportedly said that he will sign the revocation if it passes the Senate. Will it? The lead senator on education issues is Lamar Alexander. The Tennessee Republican chairs the powerful committee that handles education. His office declined to say what he might do, but referred us to the public statements he made when these rules were finalized. He didn’t like the   one. On accountability, he said, ”I will carefully review this final version before deciding what action is appropriate.” Noted. Schoenbrod has long advocated for requiring Congress to vote on the details of how laws are implemented. ”The Constitution was against taxation or regulation without representation,” he argues. But the Congressional Review Act as it now exists is different. It just gives Congress the power to throw the rules out, not the responsibility for making new ones. In this case, if the House bill passes the Senate and receives the president’s signature, it will then be up to the states to decide how to fulfill ESSA when it comes to defining, and correcting, schools that consistently perform below expectations. This ”could disrupt the progress states have made over the past year to transition to ESSA,” says Chris Minnich, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, ”unless the U. S. Department of Education acts quickly and provides states with the clarity they need around the implementation of the law.” Given the upheaval, most states will wait until September of this year to submit their final accountability plans, which will be unlikely to go into effect until the   school year, says Jeremy Anderson, president of the Education Commission of the States. Making their own policy, rather than simply enforcing federal rules, would be ”a big heavy lift for the states. It’s a totally different mindset.”"
"Updated at 3:20 p. m. ET  President Trump started the day by blasting a Democratic senator who revealed criticism of Trump from his nominee to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Judge Neil Gorsuch told Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal that he found President Trump’s recent attacks on judges to be ”demoralizing” and ”disheartening.” Gorsuch made the comments during a private meeting, and a member of the Supreme Court nomination team escorting Gorsuch through the   meetings also confirmed the remarks to NPR’s Tamara Keith. Even though Gorsuch’s team confirmed the comments, Trump says they were ”mischaracterized.” He also attacked Blumenthal for exaggerating his military service. While running for Senate in 2010, he was discovered to have falsely said that he had served in Vietnam. Blumenthal described his meeting with Gorsuch on Wednesday by telling reporters, ”He certainly expressed to me that he is disheartened by the demoralizing and abhorrent comments made by President Trump about the judiciary.” Gorsuch has been meeting with senators in preparation for confirmation hearings. Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska revealed even stronger comments by Gorsuch when they met. ”He got pretty passionate,” Sasse told MSNBC on Thursday. ”He said, ’Any attack on any of’  —   I think his word to me was  —   ’brothers or sisters of the robe is an attack on all judges. ’” Trump’s attacks on the judiciary are highly unusual for a sitting president. Gorsuch has been a member of that branch of government as a federal judge since 2006. Senators will be considering whether he will remain independent should he be on the Supreme Court. Trump began his latest attack last Friday with tweets disparaging federal Judge James L. Robart, who temporarily blocked the president’s ban on immigrants from seven   countries. Trump first called Robart a ”  judge,” called his ruling ”a terrible decision,” and then suggested Robart would be responsible if a terrorist attack should occur. At the Thursday afternoon press briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer doubled down on the assertion that Gorsuch wasn’t specifically talking about Trump’s tweet about the ” ” Judge Robart, pointing to a statement from former Sen. Kelly Ayotte,  . H. who is helping Gorsuch. ”The judge was very clear that he was not commenting on a specific matter,” Spicer asserted, though it’s unclear why the Supreme Court nominee would bring up criticism of judges unless to talk about the president’s recent statements that did just that. And the statements also contradict Sasse’s account of their talk. On Tuesday, three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments about whether to lift Robart’s temporary block on the president’s executive order. Wednesday morning, Trump switched his attack to them, or at least one of them whom he did not name. The president told a gathering of chiefs of police and sheriffs that he doesn’t understand how any judge could rule against him. ”And I don’t ever want to call a court biased, so I won’t call it biased. And we haven’t had a decision yet. But courts seem to be so political and it would be great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what’s right,” Trump said. The statement Trump referred to is the federal law granting a president authority to restrict who enters the United States. Trump’s attack on Blumenthal refers back to a controversy during the senator’s 2010 campaign. The New York Times uncovered at the time that Blumenthal said at a 2008 event honoring veterans and service members, ”We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.” Except Blumenthal had received several deferments from going to Vietnam, and served in the Marine reserves, though not overseas. Blumenthal later apologized and said he meant to say, ”I served during Vietnam.” Blumenthal responded to Trump’s tweet in an interview on CNN, and Trump was apparently watching. The president sent out another tweet falsely claiming CNN didn’t ask Blumenthal about the controversy over his military record. Jessica Taylor contributed."
"This is day six without police patrolling the streets in Espirito Santo, a state in southern Brazil. And hundreds of army troops have not been able to quell a spasm of deadly violence there that has reportedly killed more than 100 people. ”This is happening because the state’s police are  —   in effect  —   on strike because their family and friends are blocking access to their stations, in a protest over low pay and poor conditions,” NPR’s Philip Reeves reports from Rio de Janeiro. Police are prevented by law from striking themselves, according to the Wall Street Journal. ”Espirito Santo is generally seen as a safe, and fairly quiet, place   compared to Brazil’s big violent cities,” Philip says. But now, ”schools and shops are shut, and some residents are saying they’re too frightened to leave their homes.” The governor has requested hundreds of additional federal army troops to try to regain control. A spokeswoman for the police union told Reuters that the homicide rate now stands at six times the state’s daily average. In addition to the murders, ”merchants say some 250 stores have been sacked” and ”video has captured shootings and robberies in broad daylight on city streets,” the Journal reports. The state retailer association estimates the chaos has cost local businesses about $28. 87 million since the start of the crisis, according to Reuters. Brazil is in the middle of a major economic recession  —   as we’ve reported, it’s the worst in generations. That’s likely a root cause of this current lawlessness, according to the Journal. The state government ”has aggressively cut spending to offset lower commodity prices” and the shutdown of four   processing plants ”has exacerbated the budget woes.” Meanwhile, there are rising concerns that the breakdown of law enforcement could spread to other cities. ”If we don’t tackle this   it will be here today and across Brazil tomorrow,” Espírito Santo Gov. Paulo Hartung told reporters, according to the Journal. ”We need a lot of cohesion and firmness.”"
"Thousands more troops and billions more dollars are needed to break the war in Afghanistan out of a ”stalemate,” the top U. S. commander in Afghanistan warned Congress on Thursday. Army Gen. John Nicholson also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that outside powers have increased their meddling in Afghanistan over the past year, especially Russia, in ways that make it tougher for the U. S.  government in Kabul to make and keep gains against insurgents. That’s why the U. S. and its allies must send more troops and spend more money to help the Afghan military become more effective at attacking and defeating its enemies and keeping control of the ground they capture. ”Offensive capability is what will break the stalemate in Afghanistan,” Nicholson said. He did not detail exactly how many additional troops are needed. The general’s testimony launched America’s     war back onto front pages. The conflict has been going badly but has been largely overshadowed by the historic presidential campaign and inauguration of President Trump. The new administration’s policy on Afghanistan is a question mark it seldom came up during the election. When Trump visited the military headquarters at U. S. Central Command responsible for the war on Monday, he did not mention it. Nicholson’s high profile warnings to Congress on Thursday put Afghanistan back at the top of the agenda for Trump and national security adviser Mike Flynn. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain,  . complained bitterly Thursday that the deadlock Nicholson described was the fault of former President Barack Obama. In 2012, Obama decided to settle for ”Afghan good enough,” leading to a steady withdrawal of American combat troops. There are still more than 13, 000 NATO troops  —   including 8, 400 U. S. service members  —   deployed to Afghanistan, but McCain said he’s been warning all along that the force is too small. What Nicholson called a stalemate, McCain said, ”was predicted  —   predicted  —   by those of us who know something about warfare.” Afghanistan is dealing with many of its same longstanding problems. Its weak, often shambolic central government cannot survive without heavy international financial support. Its military, which Nicholson said is improving, cannot win decisively against insurgents in key places or contested ground  —   and takes such heavy combat losses that it cannot get up to its full authorized strength. Nicholson urged Congress to increase support for Afghanistan’s U. S.  and trained air force, which he said would help it turn the tide. Even so, the Taliban’s leaders can still repair to their safe havens in the tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan. They enjoy protection from the criminal Haqqani Network in places such as Quetta, out of the reach of major U. S. combat power. Some challenges are new, however: Iran has begun to support the Taliban in Western Afghanistan, Nicholson said, and it’s also recruiting Shiite Afghans to join its campaigns against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, ISIS also wants to spread roots inside Afghanistan itself. The Kabul government is fighting a nascent ISIS presence as it also fights the Taliban, but Nicholson said Russia has begun claiming that isn’t so. Moscow has begun ”a public effort to legitimize the Taliban,” Nicholson said, that is aimed at undermining Kabul among its own citizens and warning neighboring countries that ISIS could spill over into their nations as it did in the Levant. ”This is a false narrative,” Nicholson told senators. He alluded to ”reports” about Russia supporting the Taliban directly. Later, he added: ”I believe its intent is to undermine the United States and NATO.” He pointed out that U. S. and Afghan forces have killed a number of ISIS leaders in Afghanistan, as well as terror bosses from   who continue to use ungoverned spaces there to plot attacks as they did before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The counterterror mission is working, Nicholson said. That has the troops, drones and resources needed. But he said the U. S. and NATO need to send more troops to continue training Afghanistan’s regular troops, so they can resist the Taliban’s attacks, keep control of territory and reverse the ”stalemate.”"
"Updated on Feb. 10 at 1:40 p. m. ET. If President Trump were to call a meeting of his Cabinet today, he wouldn’t need a very big table. Or, he’d have to invite a bunch of Obama administration holdovers serving temporarily in acting roles. With the Senate’s confirmation this week of Betsy DeVos as education secretary, Jeff Sessions as attorney general and Tom Price to lead Health and Human Services, Trump now has just seven members of his Cabinet confirmed. By this point in 2009, President Obama had 12 Cabinet members in place and President George W. Bush had his entire   Cabinet. The Senate confirmation process has been unusually slow. According to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office, Trump has the fewest Cabinet secretaries confirmed at this point in his presidency than any other president at least since World War II. ”You can’t play in the Super Bowl if you don’t have your team on the field,” said Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that is tracking the Trump administration’s progress in getting staffed up. ”They are in the Super Bowl,” Stier said of the Trump administration. ”They are running the most important organization on the planet, and they don’t have their team on the field. They don’t have their critical people in place and that’s vital to being able to do their jobs appropriately.” The Trump administration would like to place the blame firmly on Democrats in the Senate. ”It would help if the Democrats weren’t working overtime to unnecessarily block our very qualified nominees so that we could put leadership in place at each of the agencies,” said White House principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in an email. But that is only part of the story. Facing pressure from an activated base, Democrats have   Trump’s nominees. In remarks on the Senate floor, Democratic Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York described Trump’s nominees as ”a historically unqualified Cabinet.” Trump went with a number of picks who had little or no experience in the agencies they would be tasked to run. In some cases the nominees actively worked against the missions of the agencies. Another thing that slowed down the process: Candidates for Cabinet posts are typically   working with the Office of Government Ethics to identify and unwind potential conflicts of interest before their names are even announced. But that didn’t happen this time. Two   picks still haven’t completed that process. And that’s only talking about the very top level. ”There are an extraordinary number of appointed positions that require Senate confirmation that the Trump administration has yet to even name somebody on,” said University of Akron political science professor David B. Cohen. ”I mean, we’re talking about almost 700 key positions.” So far just 35 have been named, says Stier of the Partnership for Public Service. ”If they don’t focus on getting great people in place that understand how to use government effectively,” he says, ”they won’t get done what they say they want to do and they won’t respond well to the crises that will inevitably come up on their watch.” But Trump is about on pace with Obama in terms of naming people for those spots, and even ahead of other previous presidents. Stier says vacancies near the top of agencies are undesirable but certainly aren’t unheard of. In 2009, he says, the Treasury Department didn’t get its No. 2 official confirmed until May  —   which he wants to make clear was a very bad thing, in the midst of the financial crisis. A White House official tells NPR the administration is not behind in picking undersecretaries and deputies, pointing to the past two administrations where many   appointments didn’t happen until late February or March."
"For all the talk of Hollywood smut rotting the moral fabric of society, it’s worth noting that, when the public demanded the industry embrace a franchise whose only claim to fame was smut, it chose instead to keep things  . Fifty Shades of Grey, the first book in E. L. James’s massively popular trilogy of   erotica that began life as Twilight fanfiction, gave Universal Pictures a golden ticket to push the boundaries of sex in mainstream cinema. Lord knows the fanbase wasn’t clamoring for the story. Yet when Sam  ’s adaptation hit theaters in 2015, it submitted too much: to studio insistence not to push the film past an R rating to James’s limp, insipid plotting (though not, blessedly, to her grotesque ear for dialogue) and, ironically for a movie whose pivotal scene is a contract negotiation, to a stipulation in lead Jamie Dornan’s contract that the audience would never see laconic ubermensch Christian Grey’s  . In short, the film was impotent. Now the contracts are out again for the sequel, Fifty Shades Darker, and they must have been   because it was filmed    with a concluding entry set to hit theaters next year. Dornan and Dakota Johnson, as the   now corrupted college grad Anastasia Steele, have returned, as have their mostly nude bodies  —   beholden to the same magic camera keeping her parts on full display while leaving his out of frame. But   is out, having reached a creative impasse with James that was likely far more emotionally intense than the chemistry between Johnson and Dornan. In her place is James Foley, whose varied filmography includes relevant romance thrillers like Fear and After Dark, My Sweet as well as Glengarry Glen Ross, another film about folks desperate to, shall you say, get down to business. The second film is marginally better than the first, because it’s marginally kinkier. Whereas in more innocent times Ana ran out on her billionaire beau as soon as he exposed her to his whipping side, here she lets him guide her (and us) to far more insidious activities, including a bit with beads at a masked ball recalling the far smarter recent arthouse hit The Handmaiden. True deviance may remain outside the range of shades visible to this franchise, but at least Foley gets to shoot these escapades coherently, without the endless   and   that flogged the first entry’s attempts to titillate. (We still have to make do with Johnson’s parade of arched backs and flabbergasted   as our only roadmap of the actual dirty deeds, but hey, it beats hearing about Ana’s ”inner goddess. ”) After walking out on her man at the end of the previous film with a gesture that redefined ”anticlimactic,” Ana has landed an assistant job at a Seattle indie publisher. But she slowly allows herself to be pulled back into Christian’s orbit, once the businessman makes clear he no longer has any interest in the dominance contract he spent the entire first movie pestering her to sign. As Ana lets Christian back into her life, despite her efforts to maintain her stature as an independent woman, she can’t put a cork on his need to dominate her every move: The man deposits large sums into her bank account without permission, has his company buy hers to give himself power over her place of work, and provides her with an endless wardrobe of   designers for the aforementioned masquerade. Even when she fends off her boss’s advances and takes his place as the publisher’s fiction editor, she only does so with Christian’s aid: one male CEO calls another, and suddenly the young woman’s sexual harassment horror story can be believed. These tweakings of relationship power dynamics are intriguing, especially once Ana internalizes all this and still chooses to venture into her boyfriend’s infamous ”Red Room” herself. But the film soon sidelines them for a    look into Christian’s past, a. k. a. ”Why am I turned on by weird stuff? There must be a simple psychological reason.” All the burn marks on his chest, the entirely unconvincing moans he makes in his sleep (Dornan remains as charismatic as an ironing board)  —   they point to a childhood characterized by paternal abuse, an addict mother who died young, and an icy older friend who saw fit to molest him as a teenager, thereby informing his lifelong approach to women. This   Elena Lincoln, is given the obvious nickname ”Mrs. Robinson,” and is played with a small flicker of Anne   camp by Kim Basinger. ”He needs a submissive in life, not just in the bedroom,” she growls at Ana, words of true emotional heft if ever any existed. Mixing elegance with filth onscreen is not an easy feat, and production designer Nelson Coates is to be commended for deftly balancing both. The   silliness of a masked ball blends with the infantilizing sensation of doing the nasty on your man’s childhood bed the   wonders of a boat sailing through Puget Sound clashes with the full, lurid kink arsenal of the Red Room. But none of this can cover up the essential thinness of James’s books, already stretched like gruel by the halfway point, when the narrative starts sagging uncontrollably. (The screenwriter this   Niall Leonard, is James’s husband.) False dramas perk up, then fade away. One of Christian’s former submissives (Bella Heathcote) appears, then vanishes, to demonstrate how this bad boy drove all his old lovers mad. A death scare in a helicopter is far too silly to be anything other than a  . This series, we are learning, is not truly for adults. If it were, we could do away with the     tendencies more common among the   book adaptations (like, er, Twilight). So Darker, like its predecessor, barely qualifies as a movie. But it’s not meant to be a movie, is it? What we have is   softcore: Story of O with a Taylor Swift theme song. And while the sequel may be dirtier than the first one, in the world this series seeks to inhabit, it’s still child’s play. Perhaps Fifty Shades Freed will venture even more into the world of smut, but the good money’s on Universal getting out of the game without fully giving into its inner goddess. Might as well hang up the whips now."
"President Trump met with airline executives on Thursday morning and had a message they were happy to hear, vowing to roll back regulations, lower corporate taxes and modernize the air traffic control system. Trump said his private pilot, ”a real expert” and a ”smart guy,” has told him that the government has been buying the wrong type of equipment in its   effort to upgrade the current control system. He said U. S. airports ”used to be the best, now they’re at the bottom of the rung.” He also said there are no fast trains in the U. S. ”but if you go to China, you go to Japan, they have fast trains all over the place.” The Obama administration pushed to invest in   rail in the U. S. but was met with resistance from Congress and several state governors. Trump said the U. S. has an obsolete ”plane system, obsolete airports, obsolete trains, we have bad roads,” vowing his administration will change all that. ”You’re going to be so happy with Trump,” the president said. Airline CEOs have long expressed frustration with the country’s airports, an airline expert told NPR’s David Schaper ahead of Thursday’s meeting. ”Airlines have been voicing complaints for a long time about the taxes their passengers pay and infrastructure falling behind, you know, but today’s meeting is a little unprecedented,” Joe Schwieterman of DePaul University said. [They’ll] actually have a new president’s ear who’s made some comments that he’s willing to think big.” The president reiterated past remarks that the U. S. has spent trillions in the Middle East and ”got nothing”  —   not even ”a little tiny oil well.”  Trump also announced he would unveil his tax reform plans in the next two or three weeks, vowing, ”It will be phenomenal.”"
"Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives Thursday in Washington for talks on Friday with Donald Trump, an effort by this longtime Asian ally to get a better read on the way forward with the unpredictable new U. S. president. The trip comes just a week after the Trump administration made its first appearance overseas. U. S. Defense Secretary James Mattis traveled to South Korea and Japan to reassure them of the security alliance between the U. S. and the Pacific countries. ”We had very candid, frank, but very warm discussions,” Mattis said. He struck a friendly tone with leaders in Japan and South Korea and his   positions diverged from Trump’s comments during the campaign, when he criticized the amount Tokyo pays for hosting some 50, 000 U. S. troops. ”Why don’t they pay 100 percent?” Trump said last August. ”Japan has been a model of   of burden sharing,” Mattis said. He also played down the possibility of any U. S. military action over contested islands in the East and South China seas, saying issues should be ”left up to the diplomats.” ”I don’t see any reason right now to think we cannot maintain stability in the   region, especially with China,” Mattis said. While Mattis was making his   trip, his boss, President Trump, was criticizing Japan in the press and on Twitter. In an interview, Trump accused Japan of manipulating its currency to help its exports, and took aim at Japanese carmaker Toyota for planning to build a plant in Mexico. ”There’s always this thing in the Trump team of the good cop and the bad cop. Mattis is the good cop and Trump can be the bad cop, so maybe it’s all for theater. Who knows?” says Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Tokyo’s Sophia University. ”Trump tweets something and the whole conditions are going to change. So we are getting into a situation that is really not accountable. Trump is not held accountable to anybody in any significant way at the moment.” Japan denies deliberately devaluing its currency, the yen. Abe said ahead of his Washington trip that he would explain Japan’s monetary policy in this week’s talks. It’s part of a summit that’s expected to be heavy on trade issues. ”What Abe has to impress [on] President Trump is basically money, basically jobs. We in Japan will invest X amount of money in the U. S. as long as you have our back in Asia. You have our back against North Korea, you have our back against China,” says William Pesek, the   editor of Barron’s Asia. To get the security Japan wants, Abe will present a package of ideas for investing as much as $150 billion into U. S. infrastructure, including   rail projects. President Trump made improving infrastructure a key campaign pledge. ”We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports. That, believe me, folks, is what our country deserves,” Trump said in a speech last August, But some of Abe’s ideas are expected to be projects that are a tough sell in the U. S. Trump may want to see   rail, but buyers in American states and cities are skeptical. ”Americans have never been all that interested in   rail,” Pesek says. ”This is a repackaging of what we’ve seen before. There’s nothing new or innovative here. What’s different is you have a very transactional government now in the U. S. You have a transactional [Japanese] prime minister, and it will be interesting to see the extent to which they can strike deals.” The   will be conducted in a traditional setting  —   at the White House  —   but will move on to Trump’s private golf resort in Palm Beach, Fla. That’s where the two leaders are expected to continue their discussions over a round of golf."
"With the Dakota Access Pipeline now cleared to cross under a reservoir in the Missouri River, one of the two Native American tribes fighting the pipeline has filed a legal challenge to the plan, according to the Associated Press. The Cheyenne River Sioux ”filed a legal challenge in federal court in Washington, D. C. on Thursday,” the AP says. Along with the Standing Rock Sioux, the tribe has taken a stand against the pipeline on the grounds that it poses a risk to their water supply and would infringe on sacred land. The move comes one day after Energy Transfer Partners, the builders of the pipeline, formally received an easement from the Army Corps of Engineers. That prompted the company to start drilling beneath Lake Oahe, the reservoir in the heart of the disputed area. ETP spokeswoman Vicki Granado says the company expects to complete work in that portion of the pipeline within two months  —   and that it could be in service within three months. The pipeline consists of some 1, 172 miles of   diameter pipe that will carry crude oil from North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. As NPR’s Rebecca Hersher reported this week, the Army’s public statements about the pipeline changed markedly after President Trump was inaugurated: ”In a Jan. 18 notice published in the Federal Register the Army had said it would accept public comments on the project through Feb. 20, still nearly two weeks away. ”On Jan. 24, President Trump signed a memorandum encouraging the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the review and approval process, and last week the Army said that it had been directed to expedite its review of the route.” After the Army Corps of Engineers granted the easement, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s chairman, Harold Frazier, issued a statement that promised to carry on the legal fight. ”It is clear that the coyotes which have been hiding in the shadows are taking advantage of this full lunacy,” Frazier wrote. ”We will have to renew our fight and spend more of our precious resources resisting this onslaught yet again.” The heated dispute over the pipeline has resulted in   at its proposed path  —   along with a campaign calling for people and public entities to cut ties with the banks that are funding the pipeline project. As we reported Wednesday, that campaign led two cities  —   Seattle, Wash. and Davis, Calif.  —   to pull more than $3 billion in annual business from Wells Fargo."
"Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly says the U. S. needs to ”do a better job to vet” residents of seven   countries that the Trump administration has temporarily banned from entering the U. S. In an interview with Morning Edition host Rachel Martin, the retired Marine Corps general said the ban, which has been blocked by a district court order that is now being reviewed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, ”is not based on religion in any way.” He said the seven countries  —   Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya and Yemen  —   are unable to vet their citizens and ”provide us with information that we’re comfortable with.” Kelly said the administration is considering requiring residents of the seven countries to provide lists of the websites they’ve visited and their passwords, to enable officials ”to get on those websites to see what they’re looking at.” Kelly said some of the other ”ballpark things” that his department is considering include looking at applicants’ social media use ”to see what they tweet,” as well as financial information and cellphone contacts so that officials can check the numbers against databases kept by the U. S. and the European Union. Kelly took the blame for the rocky rollout of the travel ban, and as he said in a hearing on Tuesday, he admitted he should have prepared congressional leaders ahead of the policy’s implementation. He told NPR that in the future he will tell administration officials, ”OK, give that to me and I will roll it out and I will tell you how I’m going to do it.” Kelly said the rollout will include notification to select members of Congress and the press. Kelly showed a willingness to work with the news media that has not been evident from some other members of the Trump administration. It is ”very important to engage the press,” he told NPR, ”because if you engage the responsible press, they will help you write an accurate story.” It may ”not be the story you want,” Kelly said, ”but it will be an accurate story.” Kelly said ”the great success” of the U. S. has been people from diverse backgrounds coming here ”following every kind of religion,” or ”not following any religion at all.” Asked about President Trump’s comments that his promised border wall was ”getting designed right now,” Kelly said he is traveling to the Southwest this week to speak with Customs and Border Protection agents. He said those he has spoken with so far have asked for a barrier they can see through so they can react quicker. ”You can’t build it all at once,” he said, but the administration is deciding ”where to put it immediately given financing” and construction capacity. Kelly said any wall ”has to be backed up by people, and it has to be reinforced, if you will, by technology.” As the former commander of U. S. Southern Command, Kelly said it ”breaks my heart” when he hears about people from Central America who have lost their lives trying to enter the country: ”It’s a humanitarian thing to me to somehow create an environment that deters them from leaving.” Kelly said the U. S. ”has a moral responsibility” to help people in those nations economically, with investment. He also said the drug demand in the U. S. is creating most of the problems in countries to the south, and even ”if we don’t care about” drug use here, ”we ought to care about what it does to other countries.”"
"Luther Strange will go from being Alabama’s attorney general to being the state’s junior senator, as Gov. Robert Bentley says he will appoint Strange to the seat vacated by Sen. Jeff Sessions  —   who’s slated to be sworn in as the new U. S. attorney general Thursday morning. ”I am greatly honored and humbled to accept the appointment to Alabama’s Senate seat vacated by Senator Jeff Sessions,” Strange said in a news release from the governor’s office. ”Senator Sessions’ commitment to public service is nearly unparalleled in Alabama history and his departure from the Senate leaves tremendous shoes to fill.” In choosing Strange, Bentley is making the pick many had expected. But the situation has also been a topic of talk both inside and outside of Alabama, because Strange has worked on several prominent legal cases  —   including an inquiry into allegations that Bentley had an affair with an aide and possibly used state funds to either facilitate the relationship or cover it up. Those allegations led to an effort to impeach the governor last year  —   an effort that was put on hold in November at the request of Strange, who said his office was conducting its own investigation. A special election to choose the permanent holder of Sessions’ vacated Senate seat will take place in 2018. Bentley and Strange are planning to address the media at 10 a. m. ET Thursday, the governor’s office says. Strange ”is expected to be a conservative voice in the Senate much like his predecessor,” NPR’s Debbie Elliott says. ”He’s chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, and has been active in   fights against federal environmental regulations, Obamacare and transgender bathroom directives.” Strange filed Alabama’s appeal against federal court rulings that made   marriage legal nationwide  —   although the state’s chief justice at the time, Roy Moore, was the most outspoken public critic of that change. In addition, Strange served as the   coordinating counsel for the Gulf Coast states in the litigation and   settlement stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Both Strange and Bentley were first elected in 2010. There have been calls for Bentley’s resignation since last March, when allegations of an affair were made by the recently fired head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. As Debbie reported last spring, ”Bentley, who is 73, denies a physical affair. But he has admitted to making inappropriate remarks to his    former senior political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason. And tape recordings of those conversations have been made public.”"
"The Senate has confirmed President Trump’s nominee Jeff Sessions to be the next attorney general, bringing an end to a bitter confirmation fight that has dredged up past accusations of racism against the Alabama senator. The vote was largely along party lines,   with only centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia voting yes. Sessions himself voted ”present” on his own nomination. During the past month, Democrats have brought up the past allegations of racism against Sessions, which sank his nomination by President Ronald Reagan three decades ago to be a federal judge. The  . S. attorney admitted he had made insensitive remarks and called some top civil rights groups such as the ACLU ” .” In his confirmation hearing, Sessions pushed back, saying that his comments were taken out of context. ”I did not harbor the kind of animosities and   discrimination ideas I was accused of. I did not,” Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee, though he admitted that, ”I didn’t know how to respond and didn’t respond very well” during his first failed confirmation. However, his nomination had drawn some strong and unprecedented rebukes from his colleagues across the aisle. Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  . was formally silenced by the Senate after she read a letter Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in 1986 objecting to Sessions’ ultimately unsuccessful nomination to the federal bench. The unusual rebuke came because of a rule barring senators from using ”any form of words impute to another Senator.” Last month, Sen. Cory Booker,  . J. became the first sitting senator ever to testify against a fellow senator’s confirmation, arguing he has concerns regarding Sessions’ commitment to defending minorities, the LGBT community and voting rights. Rep. John Lewis,  . the legendary civil rights leader with whom Trump got into a spat just before his inauguration, also testified against Sessions. Sessions is the former Alabama attorney general and was first elected to the Senate in 1996. He is one of the most conservative senators in the GOP conference and has been an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration. It was that shared worldview that led Sessions to become the first senator to endorse the billionaire real estate mogul back in February 2016. One of Sessions’ former top aides, Stephen Miller, left his office to work for Trump’s campaign and is now a senior White House adviser for policy who has had a heavy hand in crafting many recent executive orders. With Sessions’ confirmation, Trump will have one of his closest allies at the Justice Department at a critical time when the president needs help defending his controversial immigration and travel ban in the courts. Last month Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, after she announced she would not defend his executive order on immigration, replacing her with Dana Boente, the top federal prosecutor in suburban Virginia. Now, Sessions will assume the role of overseeing the defense of the executive order that halts people from seven   countries from coming into the U. S. and stops any resettlement of Syrian refugees. Over the weekend, a federal judge temporarily blocked the ban from taking effect. On Tuesday night, Washington v. Trump was heard before the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the Department of Justice argued that the president has wide purview over immigration and implementing national security measures and that the ban should be reinstated."
"Updated at 6:35 p. m. ET, On Thursday, a   panel of the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous ruling that upheld a lower federal court’s decision to temporarily block a Jan. 27 executive order on immigration. The order suspends   admissions for 120 days, bans Syrian refugees indefinitely, and blocks travelers from seven   countries  —   Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia  —   for 90 days. The order also capped the total number of refugees allowed into the country this year at 50, 000, far lower than the 110, 000 that the Obama administration had allotted, as we’ve reported. In a tweet, President Trump signaled that his administration would appeal. On Friday, an administration official told NPR’s Tamara Keith that the White House is reviewing every option, including a possible appeal to the Supreme Court on the lower court’s temporary restraining order, and the administration is confident it will win on the merits of the case. The official also says the White House expects to issue other executive orders ”that will keep the country safe from terrorism.” Here are five key takeaways from Thursday’s   ruling: 1. White House DENIED,  From the judges’ ruling: ”[We] hold that the Government has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, nor has it shown that failure to enter a stay would cause irreparable injury, and we therefore deny its emergency motion for a stay. . .. ”For the foregoing reasons, the emergency motion for a stay pending appeal is DENIED.” Lawyers for the Justice Department argued that the ban on travelers from the seven countries needed to be reinstated as a matter of national security. The 9th Circuit panel did not accept that argument, writing, ”The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.” 2. Administration’s ”shifting interpretations” didn’t help, The judges said the court could not ”rely upon” statements by White House officials about how the executive order would be implemented, given the changing initial statements about whom the order would affect. From the ruling: ”At this point, however, we cannot rely upon the government’s contention that the executive order no longer applies to lawful permanent residents. . .. Moreover, in light of the government’s shifting interpretations of the executive order, we cannot say that the current interpretation by White House counsel, even if authoritative and binding, will persist past the immediate stage of these proceedings.” Since the executive order was signed, different officials have offered varying guidance about whom it affects. For example, the initial word was that green card holders, those who are permanent legal residents in the U. S. would be barred, but the Department of Homeland Security later said green card holders could come and go if they obtained waivers. Last week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer announced that White House Counsel Don McGahn had issued ”authoritative guidance” and that green card holders ”no longer need a waiver because if they are a legal permanent resident they won’t need it anymore.” The judges also questioned how the federal government was making decisions on the implementation of the travel ban, writing, ”The White House counsel is not the president, and he is not known to be in the chain of command for any of the executive departments.” 3. Judiciary has authority to review Trump’s order, Attorneys for the Justice Department said both in briefings and during Tuesday’s oral arguments that courts lack the authority to review the president’s travel ban, as NPR’s Joel Rose reported. But the court wasn’t swayed by the argument that the president’s order is unreviewable. From the ruling: ”[T]he government has taken the position that the president’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections. . .. There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy. ”It is beyond question, that the federal judiciary retains the authority to adjudicate constitutional challenges to executive action.” 4. States can challenge the ban, The states of Washington and Minnesota argued in their lawsuit that individuals, businesses and universities were directly hurt by the travel ban. ”For example, professors from the state university system who were overseas when that order took effect . .. could not get back into the country,” NPR’s Joel Rose reported. The judges agreed that the states had a right to challenge the president’s executive order on those grounds. An attorney for the Trump administration had argued on Tuesday that the states do not have standing to challenge the executive order because it was ”well within the president’s power.” From Thursday’s ruling: ”We therefore conclude that the states have alleged harms to their proprietary interests traceable to the executive order. The necessary connection can be drawn in at most two logical steps: (1) the executive order prevents nationals of seven countries from entering Washington and Minnesota (2) as a result, some of these people will not enter state universities, some will not join those universities as faculty, some will be prevented from performing research, and some will not be permitted to return if they leave.” 5. Religious discrimination claim wasn’t considered, The issue before the   panel was fairly narrow: whether or not to overturn the lower court’s temporary restraining order. The lower court’s decision was based in part on the states’ claim that the executive order discriminated against refugees on the basis of their religion, and in so doing violated the Constitution. While Thursday’s ruling didn’t really consider that issue, the   panel did acknowledge what it called the ”serious nature” of the religious discrimination claim: From the ruling: ”Washington also alleged that the Executive Order was not truly meant to protect against terror attacks by foreign nationals but rather was intended to enact a ’Muslim ban’ as the President had stated during his presidential campaign that he would do. ”The Government has not shown that it is likely to succeed on appeal on its arguments about, at least, the States’ Due Process Clause claim, and we also note the serious nature of the allegations the States have raised with respect to their religious discrimination claims. We express no view as to any of the States’ other claims.” Here’s the full text of Thursday’s ruling."
"President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be spending their weekend getting to know each other at    in Palm Beach, Fla. And that’s really the purpose of the     club: to allow people to socialize at a spectacular estate built nearly a century ago by a wealthy heiress. The White House says the president will personally pick up the tab for his guest’s visit, thereby avoiding a violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. That clause forbids U. S. officials from taking payments from foreign governments. Still, Trump will get something from the Abe visit: global attention to his exclusive club, which has fewer than 500 members. Robin Bernstein has been a member since the Trump club opened in 1995. ”It’s exquisite,” she says. ”Everything is done to perfection, from the imported stones from Europe. I don’t think Marjorie Merriweather Post spared any expense when she designed and had it built.” The magnificent home was built in the 1920s to be a  . With its   roof, arched doorways and soaring tower, it’s been described as a ”Moorish fantasy.” When Post, whose family made a fortune in the cereal business, died in 1973, she left her home to the federal government for use as a ”winter White House.” Several years later, the high expense of maintaining the property led the government to return it to Post’s foundation, and it was put up for sale. In 1985, Donald Trump became the buyer, picking up the estate and an adjacent beach property for some $10 million. Darrell Hofheinz, who covers real estate for the island’s paper, the Palm Beach Daily News, says Trump got a deal. ”If you can imagine 17 acres that has been really beautifully maintained,” he says. ”The house itself  —   the estimates ranged 124 rooms  —   the rooms have soaring ceilings. The stonework from the exterior is amazing. Plus, it has a tower.” From the tower, the view extends from the Intracoastal Waterway to the ocean, hence the name   . In Spanish, it means ”sea to the lake.” In 1995, Trump converted the residence into a private club with tennis courts, its own beach, a dining room and guest rooms for members. Recently, the club doubled the price of memberships to $200, 000. Trump also put in a ballroom, helping make the club a prime venue for Palm Beach society. Bernstein says, ”I’ve been to concerts there  —   Bocelli, Beach Boys, Kenny G, Jay leno. Throughout the years, it’s just been really fun.” Charities pay a hefty fee to hold their events at   . Hofheinz, of the Palm Beach Daily News, says, ”I think sometimes people forget that private clubs are open to make money, and that’s what President Trump opened the club to do.” For groups that hold fundraisers at    Trump’s presidency has created problems. The American Red Cross had to defend its decision to hold its event last week at the club. The   Cancer Institute is going ahead with its fundraiser later this month but is promising to avoid ”controversial venues” in the future. For Palm Beach residents, Trump’s decision to make    his ”winter White House” is a turning out to be a headache. Trump’s visit last weekend shut down the island’s main thoroughfare, paralyzing traffic and hurting businesses during the tony enclave’s peak season. The town’s former mayor, Jack McDonald, says locals are starting to understand what hosting a president means. ”I’ve actually seen some comments from members of the club who are very upset about what this has become. And it’s going to get worse,” he says. Palm Beach officials say they’re working to improve traffic when Trump is in town. And he’s doing his part. He’s putting in a helipad to get him from the airport to his estate without a motorcade."
"Updated at 2:30 p. m. ET, At a joint news conference Friday, President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sought to shed any perceptions of mistrust between two countries that have been longtime allies. In no uncertain terms, both leaders upheld their friendly relations  —   both diplomatic and personal  —   as an alliance with a bright future. The U. S.  friendship is the ”cornerstone of peace and stability in the Pacific region,” President Trump told reporters gathered in the East Room at the White House. The news conference capped a morning of discussion between Trump and Abe in the Oval Office, and it anticipates a round of golf they plan to play Saturday at Trump’s    resort in Palm Beach, Fla. During Trump’s second visit from a foreign leader since taking office, both men covered some of the lingering questions Trump has raised about their countries’ alliance  —   from security agreements to monetary policy. ”Bilateral cooperation is essential,” Trump said  —   a point echoed later by Abe, who promised to ”deepen bilateral relations” by establishing a   dialogue by their respective   . Key to that cooperation, both leaders asserted, will be Japanese investment in the United States. That includes a promise from Abe that Japanese automakers will create jobs stateside, and that Japanese money and technical   will help the U. S. infrastructure spending promised by Trump  —   including a lighthearted pitch for the maglev trains that have become iconic in Japan. As NPR’s Elise Hu reports, that promise is part of a    Japan hopes to effect with regard to another key issue. ”To get the security Japan wants, Abe will present a package of ideas for investing as much as $150 billion into U. S. infrastructure, including   rail projects. President Trump made improving infrastructure a key campaign pledge.” Those issues of security, mentioned by Elise, were also brought to the fore Friday by both leaders. ”Thank you for hosting our armed forces,” Trump told Abe at one point  —   a shift in tone from his presidential campaign, during which Trump lamented that Japan and other allies ”do not pay us what they should be paying us, because we are providing a tremendous service and we’re losing a fortune.” Elise notes that U. S. Defense Secretary James Mattis also took a friendlier tack in his visit to the country last week, when he said that ”Japan has been a model of   of  .” On Friday, Trump similarly emphasized Japan’s security in the region, mentioning his ”very warm conversation” Thursday with Chinese Xi Jinping  —   and the good relations that may come of it  —   as being of   benefit to Japan. He and Abe both asserted the importance of ”freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea, where Japan has been unnerved by perceived Chinese encroachment. Of course, even at a conversation nominally about   relations, Trump could not escape questions about his travel ban, which has been put on hold while a lawsuit works its way through federal court. On Thursday night, the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary restraining order that suspended the ban. ”We will continue to go through the court process and, ultimately, I have no doubt we will win that particular case,” Trump told reporters Friday. He also suggested the administration would be announcing something related to ”additional security for our country”  —   though he did not clarify. Meanwhile, however, he was content to laud the ”good bond, good chemistry” he is developing with Abe. ”I’ll let you know if it changes,” Trump added, ”but I don’t think it will.”"
"Updated at 3:45 p. m. ET, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. in December included a discussion of U. S. sanctions imposed by   Barack Obama, according to new reports that contradict what the White House has said about the matter. The sanctions included the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats when they were announced in late December, they drew a notably muted response  —   and no retaliation  —   from Moscow. Citing current and former U. S. officials, The Washington Post reports, ”Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were interpreted by some senior U. S. officials as an inappropriate and potentially illegal signal to the Kremlin that it could expect a reprieve from sanctions that were being imposed by the Obama administration in late December to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election.” The question of the contacts’ legality largely rests in the Logan Act, which bans unauthorized U. S. citizens from communicating with a foreign government ”with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government . .. in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States.” The Logan Act was passed in 1799  —   but there are no recorded prosecutions under the law. It’s been known that Flynn had contacts  —   text messages and at least one phone conversation  —   with the Russian ambassador before President Trump’s inauguration. The White House has said nothing improper took place, although its explanations for those contacts have shifted. In an interview this week, Flynn twice flatly denied discussing sanctions with Kislyak, the Post says. But the newspaper adds that Flynn’s spokesman later gave a more nuanced response, saying that Flynn ”indicated that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.” The topic has evolved over time: When NPR’s Tamara Keith reported on the issue on Jan. 13, she said, ”Sean Spicer, the spokesman and incoming White House press secretary, insisted all of this contact happened before President Obama announced the retaliation, and, as a result, Obama’s move to expel 35 Russian diplomats wasn’t a topic of conversation.” Those sanctions were announced on Dec. 29 within hours of saying all of Flynn’s contact with Kislyak had taken place on Dec. 28, Spicer clarified to NPR that a phone call between Flynn and Kislyak had taken place ”around the same time” the retaliation was announced. As to whether the two discussed the U. S. sanctions   a potential Russian response, Spicer told Tamara it was ”doubtful.” After Obama imposed the sanctions, a retaliation seemed certain. Russia’s Foreign Ministry mocked the U. S. president online and recommended an   expulsion of 35 American diplomats. But Russian President Vladimir Putin said, ”We will not expel anyone”  —   and invited the children of U. S. diplomats to visit the Kremlin’s Christmas tree, as NPR’s Lucian Kim reported. Lucian added, ”Putin said in his statement he will work to restore  . S. relations based on the policies of incoming President Donald Trump.” On Sunday talk shows last month, when Vice President Pence was asked about the controversy, he said on CBS’s Face the Nation that it was ”strictly coincidental” that Flynn and the ambassador spoke around the time the sanctions were levied  —   and, he added, ”they did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.” Today, an administration official tells NPR and other news outlets that Pence had based his response on conversations he had with Flynn as he prepared to appear on the show. Responding to the most recent reports about Flynn, California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the allegation that Flynn might have secretly discussed ways to undermine U. S. sanctions ”raises serious questions of legality and fitness for office.” And if Flynn or other officials have misled the public about the matter, Schiff said, ”his conduct would be all the more pernicious, and he should no longer serve in this Administration or any other.” As the story of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak emerged last month, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence announced it would investigate allegations that Russia meddled in the U. S. elections the FBI has also been looking at the charges. The ranking Democrat on that Senate panel, Sen. Mark Warner, released a statement Friday saying the new reports ”underscore both the gravity and the urgency” of its investigation. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, who’s filing a story on the Flynn allegations for today’s All Things Considered, says she has reached out to senior Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence committees. Rep. Devin Nunes of California declined comment through a spokesman. As of Friday afternoon, she hadn’t heard back from Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina. Pence and others in the incoming administration dismissed reports that members of the Trump team had been in touch with Russian officials during the presidential campaign. Shortly after the election, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted telling a news agency, ”I don’t say that all of them, but a whole array of them, supported contacts with Russian representatives.” Flynn’s relationship with Russia has drawn questions before  —   particularly after the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency shared a table with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a gala in Moscow for the   news channel Russia Today. On Friday, the Kremlin delivered a rather unenthusiastic denial of the Post’s story. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, reports   TASS media, ”said his understanding is that ’there were certain conversations (between Flynn and Kislyak)’ though ’it is better to double check the information in the Foreign Ministry.” ”Other than that the information is not correct,” Peskov added, according to TASS. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly contributed to this report."
"President Trump and his top aides can’t seem to shake the Russian bear that follows them around. It put its paw on the scales of the U. S. presidential election last year, according to the U. S. intelligence community. It cost Trump his   manager, Paul Manafort. And now the connections between Trump’s camp and Moscow might mean that another top aide, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, could be sent off to Siberia  —   metaphorically. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff of California, said Friday that if reports are accurate about Flynn’s contact with Russia’s ambassador ahead of sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama late last year, ”he should no longer serve in this administration or any other.” If more Democrats  —   or, critically, Republicans  —   join Schiff in calling for Flynn to step down, Trump could have the first big staff crisis of his new presidency. How did we get here? What might happen next? Here are the five things you need to know about the unfolding imbroglio over Trump, Flynn and the Kremlin. 1. Mike Flynn’s conversation, The story begins before the Trump administration even took office, as the outgoing Obama administration was wrapping up a last bit of ugly and difficult business. Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered his intelligence agencies to wreak havoc in the U. S. presidential race, America’s top spies concluded. They did so by hacking into the email accounts of Democratic and former national security leaders and releasing what they stole. With the investigation concluded and the case made in public, Obama was under pressure to retaliate. He did so by expelling some Russian spies operating under diplomatic cover, closing sites they were using outside Washington and New York, and imposing economic sanctions on Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU another spy service, the FSB and their top leaders. Meanwhile Trump, Flynn and     Mike Pence and the administration in waiting were getting ready for the inauguration and their own assumption of responsibility. On Christmas Day, before Obama announced his punitive measures against Russia, Flynn communicated with Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak. That they talked is not in dispute. The issue is what they said. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that their discussions included, if not a warning by Flynn about the pending new sanctions, a promise that whatever Obama did, Trump could undo once he was in office. If Flynn was negotiating with the Russians on behalf of an administration not yet in power, that could technically be against the law  —   though it’s a law no one has ever been prosecuted for breaking, the Logan Act. The conversations also expose the Trump administration to more charges about secret collusion with Moscow. A spokesman for Flynn told the Post that he didn’t remember all of what was discussed and that it’s possible sanctions might have come up. But on Jan. 15 Pence said categorically on CBS’s Face the Nation that Flynn and Kislyak did not talk about sanctions. 2. The Watergate rule, One of the oldest saws in Washington runs like this: ”The   is worse than the crime.” A senior administration official told NPR on Friday that Pence’s comments on Face the Nation were based entirely on the vice president’s discussion with Flynn  —   in other words, that Flynn owns the substance of what the White House said publicly in explaining his contact with the Russian ambassador. America’s intelligence services monitor the communications of foreign agents, and the detail about Flynn’s communication with Kislyak was reported (also in the Post) even before Trump took office. The Trump transition team said Flynn had only wished the ambassador Merry Christmas. Then the Trump camp said the two were making   arrangements for a phone call between Trump and Putin. The Trump team talked about an invitation from Moscow for the U. S. to join   peace talks about the war in Syria. The timing of the conversations, as Pence explained on television on Jan. 15, was ”strictly coincidental.” Now Flynn has said they may have talked about sanctions, but he doesn’t remember, and Pence is taking himself out of it, saying all of this is on Flynn. What also isn’t clear is what Trump might have known or when he knew it. Did Trump order that these conversations take place? Or was Flynn acting on his own? 3. What we don’t know, What hard evidence exists about any of this? The Washington Post and New York Times quote unnamed current and former national security sources who say they know what Flynn and Kislyak discussed  —   is there a transcript somewhere? A recording? Flynn’s explanation to the Post that he doesn’t remember the full discussion only raises eyebrows given that Putin responded to Obama’s démarche by taking the high road. Instead of retaliating by expelling Americans or taking other such measures, Putin did nothing. Is that because he knew he would get a better deal from Trump? ”It is regrettable that the Obama administration is ending its term in this manner,” Putin said at the time. ”Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family.” Trump weighed in on Twitter with praise for Putin, calling him ”very smart!” If the White House knows there is a recording, or a transcript or other information about Flynn’s contacts that substantiates the news accounts, Flynn could become too hot to handle. If it believes he can ride this out, it does not want to hand Democrats any kind of victory. 4. Palace intrigue, Trump’s White House team is still getting its sea legs. Trump is the unique president to never have held a government or military job and is still learning the basics of how the federal behemoth works even as he also tries to wield it to achieve his goals. Part of that unsteadiness is a scramble inside the president’s inner circle to determine who gets access to him and who has his imprimatur when acting with people outside the White House. Flynn, who had Trump to himself as national security aide during the presidential campaign, now has more competition from Defense Secretary James Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, chief strategist Steve Bannon and others. The leaks, responses and counterleaks in the press and on TV are the public face of an internal struggle for power. Compounding the difficulties for Flynn are resentments that may still be simmering against him across the Potomac River in the U. S. intelligence community. Obama fired Flynn after a chaotic run as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, during which he is said to have made enemies with his   in the Defense Department and at least one rival spy service: the CIA. Flynn appeared to get the last laugh when he befriended a presidential hopeful who won a surprise victory and brought him into the White House. But to the degree there are unsettled scores within the intelligence community, his troubles might not be over. 5. Where does it all lead?  Trump has never hidden his admiration for Putin or his public desire to improve America’s relationship with Russia. He  —   and voters  —   knew that Flynn had traveled to Russia after leaving his DIA job and had appeared on Russia’s   propaganda arm, RT. Americans accepted the outcome of the election as legitimate and many supporters welcomed what they viewed as the   disclosures by WikiLeaks of information stolen by Russia’s hackers. The political dilemma for Trump, however, is that Russia turns into a bad penny, popping up everywhere and never giving him room to maneuver on his own. Separately this week, Reuters reported that Trump didn’t know about the 2010 New START (strategic arms treaty) when he spoke to Putin on the phone  —   then denounced it anyway. The top U. S. commander in Afghanistan warned Congress about Russian meddling in Afghanistan, which he said was intended to undermine NATO. Russia has increased its military attacks in Eastern Ukraine. Trump risks appearing as though all he does is react to initiatives taken by Putin. The other political danger for the White House is losing control of the story. Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the news reports ”underscore both the gravity and the urgency” of his committee’s investigation into ties between Trump and Russia. And his colleague Chris Murphy,  . said separately he is glad at least one other investigation is taking place  —   the one being done by the FBI. NPR correspondents Tamara Keith and Tom Bowman contributed to this report."
"The sudden deportation Thursday of an Arizona woman who had regularly checked in with U. S. immigration authorities for years has prompted a stark warning from Mexico’s government. Mexican nationals in the U. S. now face a ”new reality,” authorities warned in a statement. ”The case of Mrs. [Guadalupe] Garcia de Rayos illustrates the new reality that the Mexican community faces in the United States due to the more severe application of immigration control measures,” the statement reads. ”For this reason, the entire Mexican community should take precautions and keep in touch with the nearest consulate, to obtain the necessary help to face this kind of situation.” Mexico is urging its citizens in the U. S. to ”familiarize themselves with the different scenarios they may face and know where to go to receive updated guidance and know all their rights.” Garcia de Rayos, 35, had lived in the U. S. for more than two decades and her two children are both U. S. citizens. The   has reported on the details of her case: ”In 2008, Garcia de Rayos was arrested while she was working at a water park, during a raid carried out by   County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. (Arpaio’s workplace raids have been challenged in court as unconstitutional the case is ongoing.) In 2009, she was convicted of possessing false papers. In 2013, ICE says, an order for her deportation was finalized. ”But Garcia de Rayos was allowed to continue to live in Arizona, under supervision and with regular   with ICE, as member station KJZZ reports.” That changed when she appeared for a   on Wednesday, as activists and supporters rallied outside the ICE office. The next day, she was deported to Nogales, Mexico. Her deportation is seen as a sign of President Trump’s more aggressive deportation priorities compared with Barack Obama. The former president had prioritized the deportation of people who were convicted of crimes such as aggravated felonies, terrorism or activity in a criminal street gang.   offenses were deemed lower priority. But Trump’s executive order on immigration, issued on Jan. 25, significantly broadens the government’s deportation priorities. It includes people in the U. S. illegally who ”have been convicted of any criminal offense,” ”have been charged with any criminal offense,” ”have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense” or ”are subject to a final order of removal,” among other criteria. ”So certainly the scope of the executive order, if interpreted broadly, would be large enough to encompass most if not all of the unauthorized population,” Randy Capps of the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute tells NPR’s Adrian Florido. Immigration advocates like Marisa Franco from the advocacy group Mijente fear that this is the start of a pattern. ”The battle lines have been drawn. We know that this case will be replicated in many places across the country,” Franco told reporters on a conference call. ”And we think it’s critically important for communities to take a stand.” Lawyers and activists say Garcia de Rayos’ deportation could make others in her position scared to speak with immigration authorities. In fact, her attorney Ray Ybarra Maldonado told Adrian that he will advise clients in the same position to seek sanctuary in a church. ”Or if you do show up, this is what’s going happen to you. But that’s gotta be the advice, because it’s no fun walking someone to the slaughter,” he said. Garcia de Rayos, flanked by her children, spoke to reporters in Nogales late Thursday. ”I’m doing this for my kids so they have a better life. I will keep fighting so they can keep studying in their home country,” she said, according to The Associated Press. ”We’re a united family. We’re a family who goes to church on Sundays, we work in advocacy. We’re active.” ”It’s a nightmare having your mother taken away from you,” her son Angel tells Fronteras. ”The person who is always there for you. Seeing her taken away in a bunch of vans like she was a huge criminal. It feels like a dream. But it’s reality and we have to face it. We have to keep on fighting for what we want. And yeah, we’re going to support our community and our mother. We’re going to keep on fighting.”"
"Migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean are sending more money to their families back home than ever before. These annual ”remittances”  —   as they’re called by analysts  —   topped $69 billion in 2016, according to central bank data compiled in a new report by the   Dialogue, a Washington, D. C.   . The money has been a lifeline for the national economies of many countries in the region since at least the 1990s, when Manuel Orozco, a political scientist who authored the report, first began tracking remittances. They climbed steadily since then, only to plummet when the Great Recession hit the U. S. economy in 2008. But they began to rise again in 2012. The 2016 tally is the highest amount on record and an increase of nearly 8 percent over 2015. About 40 percent of the money goes to just one country  —   Mexico  —   practically all of it sent by migrants in the United States. The recent surge is all the more notable because migration from Mexico has slowed to a crawl  —   with the number of migrants in the U. S. increasing by just 1 percent between 2010 and 2016 to a total of 11. 8 million. Also, says Orozco, the median amount that any given Mexican migrant sends hasn’t changed  —   about $300 at a go, 14 times a year, most commonly through a money transfer company such as Western Union. So what accounts for this surge in cash to Mexico? Orozco explains that a much larger share of Mexicans already in the United States are now wiring money back. In 2010 fewer than half of Mexican migrants sent money home. Today   do. Orozco can’t be sure why. Though he regularly does   surveys of Mexican migrants, ”I haven’t asked that question,” he notes. A possible explanation, he says, is that many Mexican migrants who would have gone back to Mexico are now staying put in the United States. His survey research indicates that from 2011 to 2016, the median length of time a Mexican migrant has lived in the United States increased from seven years to 12. Some migrants are deterred by rising violence back in their hometowns, says Orozco. Also, he says, for migrants who are in the United States illegally, stricter U. S. border enforcement under the Obama administration has raised the stakes of going home. Many now worry that if they leave the United States they’ll never be able to get back in. Whatever their reasons, Orozco posits that the fact that more Mexican migrants are remaining in the United States means many people who previously would have simply brought cash home in their pockets may now be sending it via money transfers. The growing importance of remittances is particularly significant in light of proposals that President Trump has floated to confiscate or otherwise target this flow in order to pressure Mexico into paying for an expansion of the border wall. During the campaign, Trump discussed various versions of the idea  —   including some that could potentially impact remittances to all countries, not just those to Mexico. As much as such a move would affect Mexico  —   for which remittances account for just over 2 percent of GDP  —   the ramifications could actually be greatest for the region’s poorest, most   countries. Remittances make up nearly 20 percent of GDP for Honduras and El Salvador, for instance. And in the case of Haiti they account for  ."
"When author Viet Thanh Nguyen was 4 years old, he and his family fled South Vietnam and came to the U. S. as refugees. That’s about the same age his own son is now  —   and Nguyen wonders if his child will ever know the feeling of ”otherness” that he knows so well. ”I think it’s a very valuable experience,” Nguyen tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro. ”I wish, not only my son, but everybody, had a sense of what it is like to be an outsider, to be an other. Because that’s partly what gives rise to compassion and to empathy  —   the sense that you are not always at the center of the universe.” The refugee and immigrant experience is central to Nguyen’s fiction, and he weaves pieces of his own story into his new short story collection The Refugees. Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2016. On how Americans didn’t want to accept Vietnamese refugees either, Every new refugee to a society  —   whether it’s to the U. S. or some other place  —   is subjected to fear. They are the new outsider population, the new other. People of all backgrounds have a short memory  —   so when it comes to the Vietnamese, Americans now tend to think of [them] as being a particularly successful minority or refugee population that’s assimilated fairly well. They forget that 40, 50 years ago Americans . .. did not want to accept these Vietnamese refugees who they saw as completely foreign. Now there are new foreigners, Syrians and other people from the Middle East, people of Muslim backgrounds and the sense among many Americans is: Wow these people are completely different from us and they are not like the Vietnamese who are much more assimilable. And I think that’s very, very doubtful. I think the majority of these new foreigners, if given the opportunity, will . .. be able to assimilate and deal with American culture. Right now we are subject to a kind of new xenophobia that prevents us from seeing that. On the two lives that all immigrants live, There’s that sense of duplicity  —   the sense that there’s something happening within the community, the ethnic community within the family home  —   and there’s a different life that’s being lived outside among Americans. You have to wear a different face when you’re interacting with the larger culture and you can be more of yourself at home, or in the local market, or in the local church, speaking your own language. That was my sense growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in San Jose, that I could totally see that my parents were different at home versus how they had to speak and how they had to comport themselves when they were with Americans. On his family’s immigrant experience, There’s one short story in The Refugees that is based on my family’s life and it’s the only piece I’ve written up until that point that incorporated anything autobiographical. . .. The story ”War Years,” about the child of refugee shopkeepers and what happens to that family  —   that is drawn very much from my life and the lives of my parents. It was a very difficult story to write because I think my parents lives are worthy of writing about. I don’t think my life is worthy of writing about. It is a dark story and that was pretty much what it was like to be a Vietnamese refugee in San Jose in the 1980s that the politics of the war was not won, the war was not finished. People might like to think the war is done when a ceasefire is signed, but for most people who live through a war, it goes on for decades.  On how politics follows immigrants to their new countries, In the 1980s the struggle in the Vietnamese refugee community was still very much over the fact that people thought the war could still be fought again. People were suspicious of the possibility of Communist infiltrators and that meant that there was a lot of fear in this community that your neighbor might be a Communist, that you better not be seen as a Communist. And on top of that, again, people were just trying to build their lives and yet they were still struggling under the shadow of trauma and the legacy of violence that they brought over with them. On how his son’s experience will differ from his own, I came over when I was four . .. my journey, my initiation into memory, into consciousness happened in the refugee camp in the United States in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa. So I’m very much defined by this refugee experience, of this sense of loss  —   of losing a country, of being separated from my parents once I came to the United States, and living a life of that I felt to be a life of privation even though my parents provided so many material things. I look at my son and he has pretty much everything he could possibly ask for and want for and I don’t wish to deny him those kinds of things  —   but that means he will have a vastly different sense of security, of place, of identity than I had when I was his age."
"The Environmental Protection Agency’s presence at an environmental conference in Alaska this week was cut in half, after the Trump administration’s transition officials ordered the change. The agency had helped to plan the Alaska Forum on the Environment  —   but days before it was to start, word came that half of the EPA’s 34 planned attendees wouldn’t be making the trip. ”We were informed that EPA was directed by the White House transition team to minimize their participation in the Alaska Forum on the Environment to the extent possible,” forum director Kurt Eilo says. The change has created awkward scenes at the conference, particularly at events meant to highlight the EPA’s role in Alaska, a state known for both its pristine ecosystems and its oil production. More than a thousand people attend the multiday event in downtown Anchorage each year, and the EPA is normally a major partner. This year, agency officials were scheduled to take part in about 30 sessions on everything from drinking water and sanitation in rural Alaska to climate change adaptation. In an emailed statement, EPA transition official Doug Ericksen says the decision to cut back is an effort to limit excessive travel costs. He says a review last week found that EPA spent $44 million on travel last year, including sending employees to 25 outside conferences. When officials learned that 34 employees were slated to attend the Alaska event, they slashed the number to 17. ”This is one small example of how EPA will be working cooperatively with our staff and our outside partners to be better stewards of the American people’s money,” Ericksen said. Some EPA staff whose plans to attend the conference were revoked would have come from Seattle or Washington, D. C.  —   but Eilo said others are based just blocks away from the downtown Anchorage site. Eilo himself was an EPA enforcement officer when he founded the Alaska conference two decades ago. He says this is the first time he can recall this happening. While he understands the impulse to review travel spending, he says the cutbacks also raise a red flag. ”There’s a lot of uncertainty among folks here at the forum,” Eilo said. ”There’s concern about the tribal programs, there’s concern about how we’re going to address things like climate change in the next upcoming administration.” As the Alaska Dispatch News reports, one panel discussion that was to feature six EPA staffers Tuesday instead included two EPA representatives. While the topic had originally been planned to center on the agency’s grant system, the officials instead fielded questions about changes at the EPA. The order to reduce staff numbers at the conference is the latest sign of a shift in priorities for the EPA under a new president. Days after President Trump’s inauguration, Ericksen said the agency’s scientists will likely need to have their work reviewed on a ”case by case basis” before it can be made public. On Thursday, the fourth day of the weeklong conference in Anchorage, attendees kicked snow off their shoes as they walked into the Dena’ina Center. Many were unaware that the EPA presence had been slashed. Organizer Elio acknowledges that the agency worked hard to minimize disruption from the change in plans. In the end, only one of the conference’s more than 100 sessions had to be canceled. The conference drew attendees who had flown in from Alaska’s rural communities where the EPA works with tribes to fund programs on drinking water, sanitation and trash collection. Breakout sessions focused on issues such as brownfield cleanup, emergency response and dealing with coastal erosion due to climate change. Billy Maines is the environmental coordinator for the Curyung Tribal Council in Dillingham, Alaska, who also serves as an adviser to EPA Region 10 on its tribal programs. He said the agency’s direct assistance to Alaska’s rural communities is vital. ”They’re trying to take up and clean up their dumps, landfills, trying to recycle and get what waste goes into their communities, out of their communities,” he said. Maines and others worry the cutback on conference attendees might be a sign of broader, and more painful, budget cuts to come. Trump’s nominee for EPA chief is Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who has criticized  —   and repeatedly sued  —   the agency he’s now in line to lead. Pruitt’s nomination was advanced to the full Senate last week, after Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee refused to attend meetings that were meant to hold confirmation votes on Pruitt. During his confirmation hearing weeks earlier, Pruitt said his past actions had been made out of concern for his home state and that if he were to lead the EPA, his decisions would be dictated by ”the rule of law.” Pruitt, who has questioned climate change, also sought to answer critics who have faulted him for that stance, saying in a January hearing: ”Let me say to you, science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity in some matter impacts that change. The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact, and what to do about it, are subject to continuing debate and dialogue. And well it should be.” Rachel Waldholz reports for Alaska Public Media."
"Science is knowledge. The practice of science is nothing more, and nothing less, than the earnest and thoughtful work of figuring things out, of trying to understand, of learning how things work. Scientists are people committed to this practice, or to a community of shared practice. They work together to understand. And understanding is a thing of immense power. If you understand why the car has stalled, for example, you can fix it. And if you know when the tide will ebb, you can escape the harbor. Science, thought of this way, is plural. It has shared tools, to be sure, such as observation, testing, the use of math and statistics. But science is as varied as the different phenomena that there are. The actual work of scientists in different fields  —   from protein crystallography to epidemiology to conservation biology to astrophysics  —   is splendidly varied. Some scientists I know are concerned about the generally   of scientific knowledge in America today. And they are downright   when they encounter, especially among politicians, people who challenge the value of science as a source of knowledge and, so, as having a role to play in policy deliberations. How can you decide what to do  —   how can you know where, when or how to intervene  —   if you don’t understand what’s going on? Science is knowledge. Why would you reject the good faith effort to understand? There is, however, a second meaning of the term ”science.” I am thinking of the industry of science and its institutions. Let’s call this ”Big Science.” Big Science is not just simply knowledge or the good faith pursuit of knowledge. Big Science is not only the handmaiden of policy, ready to serve in an advisory role. Big Science is, itself, the product of policy decisions. After all, funders choose to support some areas of research and not others. Moreover, a lot of research is not entirely disinterested. For example, a good deal of science is done in the pursuit of profit (e. g. in the drugs industry). I think we need to keep this in mind when we try to understand the widespread mistrust of science. I know many people, for example, who don’t trust research funded by the tobacco industry, or by the pharmaceutical industry. These doubters are not   they are not   in that sense. They question whether the science that is getting pushed is trustworthy, whether it is really the result of the   pursuit of knowledge rather than the ambitious drive to secure patents, for example. I know people who use homeopathic medicines. When I bring to their attention the fact that there is no good science supporting the effectiveness of such remedies, they respond with general anxiety that the drug testing industry is dominated by vested interests in the pharmaceutical industry. Again, it isn’t that they challenge science they mistrust Big Science. Big Science has somehow gotten a bad name. Again, this is what drives the   anxiety. While there is no doubt that there are ”science doubters” who irrationally speak out against vaccines, outright ignorance is playing a bigger role, as well as a general lack of education on risks. I wonder whether behind the irrational doubt, ignorance and fear of vaccines, there isn’t something  —   like a fundamental mistrust in the people in white coats  —   telling them it’s OK. Perhaps the problem is less the belief in bogus science about vaccines and this harm or that  —   and more the doubt about the impartiality of those who insist that there are not any such links. Ditto for genetically modified foods. Mistrust of Big Science seems to flourish at both extremes of our political community. I suspect that the mistrust that drives skepticism about GMO food, vaccines, and claims made on behalf of drug companies is the same mistrust of Big Science that leads some to dispute the claims of climate science, for example. The issue isn’t science. The issue is trust. Now, I am an unabashed admirer of science. Science is knowledge. Knowledge is good. I celebrate the culture that makes it possible to educate people to do what scientists do. And there is no doubt that science is of immense cultural value. Economic, military, commercial, medical. The U. S. is the power it is today in large measure thanks to its achievements in science and engineering since the middle of the last century. So, how do we combat popular mistrust of science? An obvious first step, it seems to me, is that science, or Big Science, would do well to own its past failings. There are ample examples of bad science, dangerous science. Race and gender have been allowed to play an insidious role in the history of medicine, even the very recent history, for example. From the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the use of black soldiers to test the effects of mustard gas. Or consider the case of Walter Freeman, inventor and popularizer of the transorbital (” ”) lobotomy as a treatment of mental illness he travelled around the country performing more than 3, 000 of these procedures. His mentor, Egas Moniz, who was one of the inventors of what came to be known as the lobotomy, was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine on the basis of this work in 1949. And we know that claims made on behalf of drugs by their manufacturers must be viewed cautiously. Also, the last few years have seen numerous scandals in science  —   from the Harvard psychologist who fabricated results to the growing appreciation that, at least in some regions of science, it has proved difficult to replicate findings. And then there is the fact that there are simply open problems. The problem of consciousness, for example, is widely thought to be one of the major outstanding problems facing science. The problem of consciousness, obviously, is a problem for biology. So there are mysteries at the heart of even an established science. And as my colleagues Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser here at 13. 7 have written, there are profound and unsettled questions about how to move forward and make progress in fundamental physics. This is not a bad thing! God forbid there were no more open questions. My point here is that we need to offer a   view of the fact that science has a history: It is a human endeavor and it is not without blemishes. But probably the best thing we can do to gain trust in science is just to do more science, to do it better, and to carry on. Science requires no apology. Science is not a special interest. Science is the honest pursuit of knowledge, after all. The alternative to science is ignorance. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Updated at 7:40 a. m. ET, By the time Ceree Morrison found hundreds of pilot whales washed ashore on a remote beach in New Zealand 250 to 300 of them were already dead. The rest remained alive on Farewell Spit, a long strip of land that hooks from the country’s South Island into the sea. The scene was devastating. ”You could hear the sounds of splashing, of blowholes being cleared, of sighing,” Morrison told The Associated Press. ”The young ones were the worst. Crying is the only way to describe it.” All told, about 416 pilot whales had stranded at Farewell Spit before they were found Thursday night, the New Zealand Department of Conservation said in a statement. Even in a country with one of the highest stranding rates in the world  —   about 300 dolphins and whales a year beach themselves, according to marine conservation group Project Jonah  —   the DOC says this is the third largest single stranding ever recorded in New Zealand. Farewell Spit, in particular, is ”sometimes described as a whale trap,” the AP notes. ”The spit’s long coastline and gently sloping beaches seem to make it difficult for whales to navigate away from once they get close.” As the tide rolled in Friday, hundreds of volunteers in the region attempted to send the surviving whales back to sea, pushing them out as the water rose high enough to do so and forming a human chain to try to block them from returning to the beach. Of the survivors, about 50 successfully swam back into the bay, while about 80 to 90 were restranded, the DOC says. No single cause for strandings is known, Project Jonah says, though the group explains that some factors are thought to include navigational errors, injuries from sonar blasts or fishing nets, and strong social bonds that can draw whole pods to follow wayward individuals into danger. The AP reports that volunteers were able to refloat about 100 whales on Saturday. The wire service notes that some whales that were refloated on Friday beached themselves again, but the Saturday morning tide may keep the latest group at sea."
"In New Orleans, hundreds of families are trying to put their lives back together after a tornado touched down in New Orleans East on Tuesday. It tore up homes and businesses in a predominantly black neighborhood that was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. People like Aretha Conley are hoping it will be easier to rebuild this time around. Conley and her husband saved for years to buy their house on Read Boulevard. They each worked two jobs and took out loans. Conley’s favorite place in her small,   home is the backyard. ”I love to barbecue,” she says. ”I love to give parties.” But now, her backyard is decimated. Tuesday’s tornado smashed down her fence, and pieces of her neighbor’s house are stuck in a tree. Half of her roof is gone, and the windows are busted out. She’s just thankful no one died. As cleanup workers drive loaders through the street, scooping up debris and fallen trees, Conley takes stock of the damage. ”Got up Tuesday, bring my granddaughter to school, going to work, thinking everything’s going to be OK,” she says. ”And come home to this.” When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Conley’s house took four feet of water. But she and her husband fixed it up and stayed put. They loved the neighborhood. There are a lot of people like her here it’s about 95 percent black. And that’s something State Sen. Wesley Bishop is proud of. He was at an emergency shelter where victims were sleeping on cots and picking up hot meals, water and cleaning supplies. ”Basically our black   you’ll find a lot of folks concentrated in New Orleans East,” he says. ”Mostly homeowners and things along those lines, who’ve just worked extremely hard.” But life changed after Hurricane Katrina. Many people moved away and never returned. And many businesses in this part of town never reopened. That makes life difficult for people like Conley. ”Like, the weekend when I want to go out to eat  —   me and my husband  —   we have to travel so far to go to eat because there’s nothing out here,” she says. There’s a   and some strip malls but not much else. And Bishop resents that. ”People shouldn’t have to go outside of this area to try to get the basic goods and services that they need,” he says. He’s worried after this recent tornado because he says his district didn’t get enough help from the government following Katrina. They got a few nice things, like help rebuilding schools and a big, beautiful sports and recreation facility. But the facility has been put to use as an emergency relief center, overflowing now with displaced families. Conley is staying with her daughter for now. They’re hoping it will be declared a federal disaster. ”I hope it’s better this time,” Conley said. ”I hope it’s real better.” And she hopes this time, it’s different. This time, she hopes New Orleans East gets the   help it needs."
"President Trump is defending the Jan. 29 Yemen raid, in which an American Navy SEAL was killed, as a ”winning mission.” He is also lashing out at Republican Sen. John McCain, who called the raid a ”failure.” Trump chastised McCain for talking to the media about it, saying it ”only emboldens the enemy,” and whacked McCain for not knowing ”how to win anymore.” The tweets come after almost a week of debate on the success or ”failure” of the raid. U. S. officials say they were able to gather helpful intelligence and that 14   militants were killed. But there were also multiple problems: The operation, the first authorized of the Trump presidency, also raises serious questions about the planning and   of the current occupant of the Oval Office, as well as the truthfulness of information coming out of the White House. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Feb. 2 that the raid was planned last November  —   under the Obama administration  —   and that the goal of the mission was to get information. But neither is true, NPR’s Tom Bowman reports. Rather, the specific place of this eventual raid was identified in November as one to focus on. (Other potential places were also identified.) ”The goal of the raid was ” Spicer said Tuesday, ”and that’s what we received, and that’s what we got. That’s why we can deem it a success.” But the U. S. would not send in SEAL Team Six, the premiere   commandos, to pick up some cellphones and computers, a U. S. official told Bowman. Part of the effort was to get top   in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, leaders. While more than a dozen militants were killed, a top target, Qassim   either slipped away or was not at the location. Rimi is the leader of AQAP, seen as a top recruiter and the    terrorist in the world. Bowman confirmed that Rimi was ”one of the objectives,” along with disrupting planning and plotting, in addition to collecting material. What’s more, a U. S. official expressed concern that Trump made the decision over dinner. This should have been decided with rigorous debate in the Situation Room, the official said. Many remember the iconic photo released by the White House of former President Obama surrounded by advisers during the raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. The concern with the Yemen raid is the impression that this decision was made too cavalierly. ”Everything that could go wrong did” Last week, the New York Times reported that ”almost everything that could go wrong did” in the raid. NPR reported that it was ”described as chaotic” by local residents and it is under investigation by the U. S. military. Spicer, however, said it was ”a successful operation by all standards.” McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, though, characterized the raid as a failure. That led to another defense by Spicer on Tuesday. He called it ”highly successful. It achieved the purpose it was going to get  —   save the loss of life that we suffered and the injuries that occurred.” On Wednesday, he went further, swatting at McCain, and claimed an apology was due. ”I think anybody who undermines the success of that raid owes an apology and [does] a disservice to the life of Chief Owens,” Spicer said. McCain responded with an anecdote from his time serving during the Vietnam War, during which he was held as a prisoner of war for more than five years: ”Unfortunately, the prison had been evacuated. But the brave men who risked their lives in an effort to rescue us prisoners of war were genuine American heroes. Because the mission failed did not in any way diminish their courage and willingness to help their fellow Americans who were held captive. Mr. Spicer should know that story.” McCain’s daughter Meghan leapt to Twitter to defend her father Thursday. Trump has taken on McCain before, showing little respect for McCain’s service. Despite McCain’s years as a tortured POW in Vietnam, Trump questioned McCain’s American hero status. ”I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said in July of 2015, shortly after announcing his run for the presidency. The New York Times, citing U. S. officials, also reported, ”Yemen has withdrawn permission for the United States to run Special Operations ground missions against suspected terrorist groups in the country. . ..” The AP, however, citing an official statement from Yemen’s foreign minister,     didn’t go as far. Mekhlafi called for a ”reassessment” of the raid, but he said it was ”not true” that there was a demand for a halt in U. S. operations. ”Yemen continues to cooperate with the United States and continues to abide by all the agreements,” Mekhlafi said. Spicer contended at Wednesday’s briefing, ”American lives will be saved because of it. Future attacks will be prevented.” That may be how the raid is ultimately judged. The binary choice of success or failure in this instance is a false one. But the raid clearly did not go as planned  —   and the public posture of the White House does not indicate it sees lessons to be learned for the future."
"When last spotted in his indigenous habitat, John Oliver was sharing his perception of 2016 and what was to come: a dystopian hellscape. All for laughs. Or largely for laughs, anyway. The    British comedian is host of HBO’s   Last Week Tonight, and he embarks on a new season on Sunday night after a   layoff. In an interview with NPR, Oliver reluctantly concedes that President Trump will define the shows this season. Oliver carries a distinctly liberal sense of humor and a distinctly serious sense of purpose about his satire in an age when politics, journalism and entertainment have often not just blurred definitions but have swapped numbers, apartment keys and Netflix passwords. Which leads him to such topics as opioid abuse, sketchy credit report company practices, pharmaceutical pricing, school segregation, Brexit, corruption in international soccer. ”If you described that, you wouldn’t watch it,” Oliver says. ” ’Look, here’s 20 minutes on civil forfeiture.’ That’s a hard pass for me.” Oliver says he’s trying to make comedy out of worthwhile subjects, generally apart from the politics in play. ”We want to look at the issue and its components first, and then much later on, maybe cast an eye on the politics attached to that issue,” he says. In the interview, Oliver talks about the ”alchemy” that occurs when he knits together the work of his comedy writers and his researchers (drawn from such journalistic outfits as The New Yorker magazine and the investigative site ProPublica) why facts matter more to him as a comedian than the president he’s about to lampoon the importance of Jon Stewart to his career (”the L. Ron Hubbard to my Tom Cruise”) and what truly gives him joy on the air. On what’s funny, There are some things that will always be funny. Teenagers falling off skateboards: funny. Nut shots: funny. Breaking wind: funny. The world cannot change those. Those three things are columns upon which humor is built. . .. When I heard that Hitler had problems with flatulence, it’s funny. Does that make him a funny man? No. It means he had funny moments when his rear end was speaking louder than his mouth. Now in terms of what is funny in terms of politics, that is a much more complicated question. . .. Sure, that’s going to be my world for the rest of this year. On facts and Trump  I care about facts the way I care about oxygen and imbibing enough water a day to live. Everybody should care about facts. That is something all of us should agree on. That is what we’re wrestling with at the moment [with President Trump] right? It feels interminable to kind of talk about in theory other than to say we’re trying, we’ll give it a go, and we’ll see. It affects everything. . .. [There] is a long, revolting history of politicians wanting to use facts in a misleading way, or in the best way to advance their agenda. This I think is different. This isn’t just misleading, this is turbocharged. And the thing I’m much more concerned about is his sweeping dismissal of the press, which is not us, right? It’s not comedy. . .. Because the media is a very convenient scapegoat at the best of times. But it is going to need to be rigorously defended because we are about to need it more than we have done in quite a long time.  On what works for the show, We generally traffic in things that are not immediately funny, right? We will bring a joke to something. So lots of the stories that we have focused on are not funny at the first, second, or 34th glance. Really, you know, whether it’s like chicken farmers or encryption or multilevel marketing  —   these are not immediately funny stories. Our job is to make them funny. . .. When we feel we’re doing what do what we do best, it’s highlighting stories that perhaps are   or have been   and where we can show people things they haven’t seen before. . .. One of the things that we looked at last year was the fiduciary rule in retirement savings, which, again, sounds like not a half an hour of television that you would be anxious to fall over yourself to watch. . .. Lots of the issues that we’re most attracted to are relatively timeless, right? They’re not necessarily issues that have been thrown up that week. And the problem with the electoral process being so long is that everything is presented as being a binary choice between two political parties. And that’s obviously absurd. But issues are far more complicated and there’s often much more overlap between two sides that could occasionally be diametrically opposed.  On why Oliver delayed satirizing Trump in the 2016 election cycle, The problem is it’s  . A presidential campaign sucks all the oxygen out of people’s attention span. And there was a lot more interesting things happening than presidential politics in 2014. . .. We didn’t want to get sucked into just reacting to what people were lazily talking about on the television because it was easy  —   the horse race. So the Sunday before Super Tuesday we wanted to make the case that if Donald Trump wins Super Tuesday, history points to the fact he will be the Republican candidate, at which point he is a significant political figure. We need to reckon with that. . .. Then we wanted to start engaging seriously with his policies. So we did a episode on the wall [along the border with Mexico]. He said he’s going to build a wall. You should take that seriously. This is now a significant political figure. How much is that going to cost? It’s going to cost a lot more than he says it’s going to. How effective it’s going to be? It’s going to be a lot less effective than he claims. . .. Right now, you might think he’s not going to build the wall. I don’t know what would make you think he’s not going to do it. On why his comedy fails without reporting, [It’s] like alchemy. That’s the ingredients with which we make this show. . .. At its best, you’re taking depth of research and then writers who can find a way to articulate that immensely complicated information in a funny, palatable way. . .. We rigorously   absolutely every single thing in the show. Not just the things that you see over my shoulder, not just any statistic that you see in a clip on screen, but, you know, we independently   everything that appears as a fact. So if there is someone saying on TV, ”I was screwed over by a car loan company because I signed this loan,” we will speak to the local news source to say, ”Does the person have documentation for that? Did you get it? If they don’t, or they don’t know, we will try and find that person and if we can’t back it up we won’t use it. So we are we are   so deeply, down the process  —   way more deeply than anybody needs to care about, other than the fact that it matters to me, and to all of us that we do it because you can’t build jokes on sand or they collapse. . .. If you’re talking about important things that’s the very baseline of what you should be doing. . .. Any joke is worthless if it’s built upon a lie. . .. Sometimes we’re taking swings so big that if we get something wrong we’re in serious trouble. . .. If we get something wrong there that’s going to be the last show we ever do. On Jon Stewart’s influence, I started doing   in college and writing comedy and I loved it. And then at some point I wanted to start blending what I really cared about and what I loved doing the most. And so that was politics  —   not necessarily in the party politics sense of the word. One of the people I admired most in the world at that point was Jon Stewart. And so he was the gold standard in my head of what you could do with comedy about the news. . .. There was a lot of horrendous versions of The Daily Show in England, but not resembling what he was doing in terms of . .. quality. And so to get hired by him was kind of to be hired by like some version of a hero or a mentor. . .. I kind of learned at his feet. He is the L. Ron Hubbard to my Tom Cruise  —   let me immediately retract that comparison. On being called boring by Trump, By any rational metric, I am boring. [He claimed] we invited him multiple times to be a guest on our show and he would never appear on our very boring, very   show and the second half of that is an opinion. Again, I’ll probably agree more than I disagree with him there. But the first half is just demonstrably a lie. And I think even in one of our stories last year, we tried to articulate just how confusing it is to be on the receiving end of a lie that confident, because he seemed absolutely sure. And I was as sure that I had never invited him. But then I wanted to check. . .. It was just a totally empty lie which doesn’t matter at all, except for the fact that person with the tendency, the tenacity and the confidence to make that lie is now leader of the free world and has the ability to lie about things that matter a lot more than appearing as a guest on someone’s very boring, very   show. On what brings him joy, The most joyful our show ever gets I think is when we traffic in   stupidity. So whenever we’re able to waste HBO’s resources to a borderline shameful extent, that is where we’re really happy. . .. Building an entire   Supreme Court for dogs, that made me so happy that so many adults with real talent and applying real time to that decided to build this for no reason other than the fact that we thought it was funny. And . .. that set was so beautiful  —   I can’t tell you how intricate and beautiful it was and how long it took to get each dog in the outfit and get the fake paws out. And it was so funny. So I guess at its root that is where we are the happiest: whenever we do something so magnificently silly that you can’t quite believe you’re getting away with it."
"On Wednesday morning, a Red Cross staffer in Afghanistan pushed his vehicle’s panic button. Three Red Cross vehicles were heading to meet up with a convoy of trucks carrying ”winter feed”  —   food for livestock  —   in the remote northern province of Jowzjan in Afghanistan. The plan was for the Red Cross staff to help distribute the 1, 000 tons of feed, which is critical for farmers. In the winter, there’s nowhere for their animals to graze. Before the vehicles got to the distribution point, they were ambushed by armed men. The panic button sent an alert to Red Cross offices in Kabul, but efforts to reach the staffers by satellite phone and other means failed. ”We couldn’t get hold of them,” says Thomas Glass, head of communications for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan. Eventually, community elders, who keep in touch with the Red Cross office in Kabul, reported what little information they had. Six Afghan nationals were shot and killed  —   the driver of each vehicle and field staff accompanying them. Two additional field staff are missing the Red Cross is ”desperately” searching for them, says Glass. To learn more, we spoke to Glass, age 37, a Swiss national who’d worked in the country from 2010 to 2012 and returned to Kabul for his current tour of duty in October. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. What do you know about the attack? It’s extremely hard to have exact information. We don’t know the number of men, we don’t know the motives, we don’t know who is behind this. An Afghan official in the area said it was a group with ties to ISIS. We actually don’t know. We don’t have confirmation. Is there any chance this was just a random occurrence, that the attackers didn’t realize they were attacking Red Cross vehicle? The vehicles are clearly marked. This has all the signs of a deliberate attack. Red Cross workers have been attacked before in Afghanistan. But the loss of 6 lives at one time seems like another level of violence. It’s definitely a step further. We have 30 years of continuous presence in Afghanistan. So we are   we are respected for our work. To have such a despicable attack, it’s shocking. We’re completely devastated. We’re having a hard time understanding why and how this happened. How do you decide if it’s safe to send out staff in an area where there’s conflict? We communicate with all parties in the conflict, all the weapon bearers. We notify them. We receive security guarantees. If it’s not safe to go, we don’t go. If it is deemed safe enough, we will try. The Red Cross has a full plate in Afghanistan, supporting health care,   work, sanitation efforts and much more. The ICRC has now issued a statement that activities are suspended until Tuesday  —   and possibly longer. Certain activities, such as the treatment of patients at medical facilities, will continue. But any movement in the field, including the transfer of   to hospitals, is on hold. Do you think the Red Cross might pull out of Afghanistan? We have to regroup, to get a sense of what happened  —   and how to continue our work without jeopardizing the safety and security of our staff. It’s clear that we’re not leaving Afghanistan. We are here for the Afghan people. So many innocent people are trapped by this conflict. We can’t leave them behind, that’s for sure. NPR experienced a loss in Afghanistan last year, when photographer David Gilkey and interpreter Zabihullah Tamanna were killed. And Afghanistan has the most attacks on aid workers per year  —   101 attacks in 2015. What do you make of this?  It’s not just in Afghanistan. War and conflict brings out the worst in people. And the work of humanitarian workers and journalists has become increasingly not just difficult but dangerous. We’ve seen more and more deliberate targeting of aid workers and journalists. Does a tragedy like this make it hard to sleep? These last few days have been so incredibly intense that as soon as my head hits the pillow I’m out. But I’m up at 4. The six victims were Afghan nationals. What has the reaction been among Afghans? What strikes me most is the resilience of the Afghans and the Afghan colleagues. This attack reinforces the belief that we need to continue our work, in the name of our deceased colleagues we need to persevere. Is there any one interaction with an Afghan that stands out? I went to a shop, and the shop owner come up to me, shook my hand and embraced me, shared his condolences and told me, ”This is not the true Afghanistan.”"
"There’s a vibrance to the current music of Esmé Patterson that I wasn’t expecting, having listened to her previous band Paper Bird. Gone are the banjos and remnants of folk music, and in their place are electric guitars  —   sometimes fierce and, here at the Tiny Desk, somewhat understated. She’s a relative newcomer to the guitar, making it part of her songwriting only since leaving Paper Bird. But all of this instrumentation is meant to be supportive, not  . At the heart of these songs, from her album We Were Wild, is a reach for independence: I can’t sit still ’cause I’m no mountain, I can’t sit so still ’cause I’m no mountain, I can’t sit still forever, I’m no mountain, I’m human, I’m human  If there’s a thread that ties Patterson’s songs together, it’s discovering who you are and standing strong. She’s doing that well  —   with a powerful and sensitive band that’s got her back. We Were Wild is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Esmé Patterson (vocals, guitar) Alex Koshak (drums) Jeremy Averitt (bass) Jake Miller (lead guitar) Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: NPR. For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Like many awards shows, the Grammys are about more than just honoring artistic achievement: They’re also about anointing ambassadors for a music industry that’s forced to evolve as quickly and constantly as trends and technology mandate. Of course, the awards also attempt to represent dozens of   genres, from traditional pop to EDM to country to jazz to Latin music to classical to rap and beyond. The farther the Grammys stray from artists who dominate the mainstream cultural conversation   Top 40  —   your Adeles and Beyoncés and Chainsmokerses  —   the more narrowly they’ve historically cast their lot. Which is how an artist like modern bluegrass   Alison Krauss can become the most awarded singer in Grammy history with 27 trophies to her name when the Grammy voters think of bluegrass and   music, they think of Krauss and a handful of others rather than beating the bushes or scanning the press for discoveries. Same goes for Bonnie Raitt and blues in the early ’90s, or Metallica and metal for decades. When the Grammys decide that an artist qualifies as a genre ambassador  —   and, by extension, an industry ambassador  —   the trophies tend to pile up by the literal armload. Nowhere is the phenomenon of ambassadorship more easily spotted than in country music, which typically  —   but not always  —   merits at least one annual spot in the   Best New Artist category. There, it’s possible to get a clear read on whom the industry at large views as the face   future of country. In the past five years, the category has produced nominations for The Band Perry (2012) Hunter Hayes (2013) Kacey Musgraves (2014) Brandy Clark (2015) and Sam Hunt (2016) and this year features two choices in Kelsea Ballerini and Maren Morris. (No country artist has actually won the award since the Zac Brown Band in 2010.) Less frequently, an anointed country    —   setting aside Taylor Swift, who used to more evenly straddle the worlds of country and pop  —   turns up as an Album Of The Year nominee, like Lady Antebellum in 2011 and Chris Stapleton last year. But in 2017, Album Of The Year offers up the Grammys’ grandest country surprise in recent years. Many could have predicted Best New Artist nods for Morris and Ballerini  —   both of whom share some pop crossover appeal  —   but few anticipated Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide To Earth competing against four of the year’s true juggernauts: Adele’s 25, Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Justin Bieber’s Purpose and Drake’s Views, all of which dominated A Sailor’s Guide To Earth (and most other records, for that matter) in sales, airplay or streams last year. Though Bieber got the lion’s share of the blame  —   as Bieber so often does  —   for keeping David Bowie’s Blackstar out of contention, Simpson’s record is the real dark horse here. Given how often the Grammys’ chosen genre ambassadors meet at a safe midpoint between critical acclaim and sales success, Simpson’s nomination  —   for a record that’s barely nudged country radio’s playlists, and for an artist who’s taken hard public swipes at the Nashville establishment  —   is a remarkable and welcome surprise. Maybe the Kentuckian’s philosophical and occasionally psychedelic musings drift far enough afield from country to qualify as rock and roll his Metamodern Sounds In Country Music was, after all, nominated for Best Americana Album in 2015. (For what it’s worth, A Sailor’s Guide To Earth is up for Best Country Album this year, nominated against Brandy Clark, Loretta Lynn, Maren Morris and Keith Urban.) But if Sturgill Simpson has become this year’s topmost anointed country ambassador, he’s done so without the full embrace of the Nashville establishment  —   and that makes his Album Of The Year nomination truly, well, bold. Ballerini or Morris could just as easily have taken that spot, and it wouldn’t have shocked very many people. So, can Sturgill Simpson  —   already arguably the Grammys’ biggest surprise this year  —   pull the biggest upset of all and actually close the night with an Album Of The Year trophy in his hand? It’s unlikely, but it sure isn’t impossible. Consider the last time Beyoncé was up for this award, back in 2014: She was up against three other massively popular   in Sam Smith (like Adele this year, considered a frontrunner) Ed Sheeran (like Bieber, a massive pop star) and Pharrell Williams (like Drake, a ubiquitous   presence). The winner that year? Beck’s Morning Phase, a languid dark horse with appeal for the Grammys’ older and more   voters. Given the likelihood that Adele, Beyonce, Bieber and Drake cannibalize each other’s voting blocs, history could well repeat itself Sunday night. If he pulls off that upset, Sturgill Simpson will be more than just country music’s latest   ambassador. He’ll become, at least for a while, the biggest story in music."
" ’s relationship with the Grammys began with a mutual dis. The year was 1989 and the Recording Academy, in recognizing the genre for the first time, decided rap’s revolution would not be televised. Will Smith, then known by his stage moniker the Fresh Prince, took it as a ”slap in the face,” the rapper said at the time. He and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s cuddly hit ”Parents Just Don’t Understand” went on to win the inaugural rap performance category, beating out industry peers J. J. Fad (”Supersonic”) LL Cool J (”Going Back to Cali”) Kool Moe Dee (”Wild Wild West”) and    (”Push It”). But they weren’t present to collect their award. Along with LL and    Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince boycotted the big show. Nearly 30 years later, the Grammy Awards have yet to get hip (replacement surgery). The bad rap is warranted when it comes to the Academy’s   failure to acknowledge the genre’s most deserving acts. The only thing worse than the blatant omissions over the years has been the clueless inclusions  —   particularly in the   history of the best rap album category. Exhibit A: It took OutKast three classic LPs to earn a nomination (not including the group’s debut, released before the category was introduced in 1996) yet in 2015 the   Iggy Azalea got a nod fresh out the box. And poor Macklemore. The dude is still living down his 2014 win over Kendrick Lamar’s classic   debut, Good Kid, M. A. A. D. City. He apologized to Lamar for that win this year, he declined to even enter the race for his   album, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, for consideration. Swayed by commercial juggernauts and great white hype more often than critical acclaim or street fame, the stars rarely align to produce such undisputed winners as Eminem (The Marshall Mathers LP) Kanye West (College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy) or Lamar (To Pimp a Butterfly). But this year may be different. Despite a wack record of consistency, the rap albums category casts a wider net than years past. Plus, it summarizes one of the biggest trends in the industry. In wildly divergent ways, five of the six nominees  —   Drake, Chance the Rapper, West, DJ Khaled and De La Soul  —   collectively tell the story of  ’s digital dominance and disruption in 2016. One thing’s for certain: They don’t want DJ Khaled to win. When the radio    made the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek last March, the online headline read, ”How Snapchat Built A Business By Confusing Olds.” Khaled, then 40, appeared in the accompanying photo looking slightly perplexed himself. Becoming the King of Snapchat is a #majorkey to Khaled’s nomination. With a personality as seismic as his anthems, the radio    gained around six million followers in six months. He posted everything on the social media network from ”major key” affirmations to his misadventures while temporarily lost at sea one night on a jet ski. By fashioning himself into a ubiquitous digital presence, he expanded his fanbase and attracted a younger demographic. It’s translated to real currency in today’s attention economy. Already bigger than life in   he suddenly became recognizable by soccer moms  —   and surely some of the Recording Academy’s voting bloc. It reflects a new industry reality in which music is viewed less as viable product than promotional. In such an environment, the king of   is already the winner. Bless up. If history is any indicator, Drake’s a  . The Grammys love a crossover star. And nobody crossed over in 2016 like the Golden Child. The numbers don’t lie and he racked them up across multiple platforms. In addition to being named the   artist in Spotify history last year  —   with more than 4. 7 billion streams in total  —   Views and ”One Dance (feat. Wizkid  Kyla)” reached No. 1, respectively, on Apple Music’s top albums and songs lists for 2016. Those rankings further magnify  ’s distinction as the most popular genre in the world, according to analytics released by Spotify in 2015. The album cover of Views, featuring Drake sitting atop Toronto’s Canadian National Tower may have turned out to be a photoshop fake job, but the 6 God’s digital reign is real. No one in this category had a crazier year than ’Ye. The   tour rants. The wifey Kim K’s diamond heist. The blue contacts and rainbow sherbet hair dye. The speculation fueled over his mental state. The hospitalization attributed to exhaustion. And, lest we forget, the puzzling Donald Trump photo op. Dude was all over the place. Maybe we should’ve seen it coming, considering the erratic and unprecedented rollout of The Life of Pablo. By design or disaster, Kanye wound up creating a new paradigm for digital albums: the neverending    enabled by access restricted to streaming platforms. Leave it to the producer whose signature sound revolved around manipulated soul samples to stretch the limits of streaming technology. ”Ima fix wolves,” he tweeted the day the album was released exclusively on big bro Jay Z’s Tidal platform. Little did we know at the time that his tinkering  —   whether substituting a new chorus here, or adding a new song there  —   would amount to a listening experience as annoying as it is groundbreaking. Kanye’s   approach to patching together an album well beyond its release date extended the life of the project. ”Life of Pablo is a living breathing changing creative expression. #contemporaryart,” he tweeted a month later. No doubt. As the first artist of any genre to receive a Grammy nomination for a   release, Chance the Rapper has already made history. He’s up for seven awards, including best rap album, though Chance prefers to call Coloring Book a mixtape. It’s more than semantics. The distinction between the two has blurred in recent years as artists such as Drake and Future have released mixtapes that contractually count as studio albums. For too long, the culture allowed industry dictates to distinguish a mixtape of original material from an album simply because a major label wasn’t profiting from the product. But with mixtapes increasingly surpassing the quality and popularity of label releases, thanks in part to their availability via digital distribution channels, the industry is trying to get in where it fits. The funny thing is how Chance, who shows no signs of relinquishing his independence, has become a digital darling. His   exclusive stream on Apple Music made Coloring Book the first   album to crack the Billboard 200. Instead of making money from album downloads, he relies on tours, merchandising and deals with the likes of Apple to generate revenue. He’s designed a new blueprint for artistic control while simultaneously being the populist favorite. The Recording Academy literally rewrote its rulebook for him, so his chance of winning is pretty strong. De La Soul’s first new album release in 12 years has the honor of being the first digitally crowdfunded   album to earn a Grammy nod. The group raised $600, 000 via Kickstarter, six times more than its original asking price. The oldest act in the category, De La’s inclusion is ironic for altogether different reasons. This is the same group whose classic back catalog remains in limbo, unavailable on digital platforms, due to the prohibitive costs associated with their classic   LPs. De La’s 1989 debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, contains more than 60 samples, and those that were cleared were done so via agreements that predate digital streaming. Making them legal for today’s market could require costly renegotiations with copyright holders that Warner Music, current owner of De La’s back catalog, has declined to pursue. To add another wrinkle, the group produced And the Anonymous Nobody by recording 200 hours of material from their road band, Rhythm Roots Allstars, then sampling it to construct backing tracks. You’d almost have to be a De La fan to appreciate the unintended wit. Oddly enough, the wild card in this category isn’t a digital disruptor at all, but an artist whose release pretty much followed the traditional model. Easily among the top rap albums of 2016, Schoolboy Q’s Blank Face LP is also a breakout release for Q, an MC whose evolution has been woefully overlooked in part because his TDE labelmate, Kendrick Lamar, has emerged as the most important rapper of his generation. But being ”the yin to Kendrick’s yang,” as Pitchfork called him upon the release of his latest LP, comes across in superb fashion on Blankface. He’s a   gangsta with a sense of humor and   honesty. In a sense, a win for Schoolboy could be viewed as a win for the entire vanguard of   underrepresented artists who found ways to circumvent the mainstream in 2016  —   from Detroit’s trippy outlier Danny Brown to Atlanta’s rising   21 Savage to Chance the Rapper collaborator and Chicago ingenue Noname. Then again, I’d be less surprised if Schoolboy decided to play hooky from the Grammys altogether."
"The Fred Hersch Trio brings a seductive and crafty intelligence to its version of ”We See,” the Thelonious Monk tune. Articulating its melody at the piano, Hersch slips in a few leisurely pauses, which slow down and stretch out the form. Then, in the bridge, he ratchets up to twice the speed, evoking the frenetic whir of the factory machinery in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. The track suggests a clever, affectionate tribute to an enduring work of art  —   and that’s before Hersch even gets around to his jaunty yet exploratory piano solo. On Sunday, Hersch could conceivably win a Grammy for that solo, and another for Sunday Night at the Vanguard, the album on which ”We See” appears. Hersch is a veteran Grammy nominee, and he’d be a deserving winner. But along with a high level of artistry, his nominations this year attest to a persistent and pervasive truth in jazz: When it comes to glittery recognition from the Recording Academy, as with broader popular acclaim, the scale is usually tipped in favor of standards. This year’s nominee pool for Best Improvised Jazz Solo also includes pianist Brad Mehldau suavely gliding through Cole Porter’s ”I Concentrate On You,” and guitarist John Scofield taking a postbop trot through Hank Williams’ ”I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Joey Alexander, the    piano wunderkind, earned his seat at the table this year with ”Countdown,” a John Coltrane composition long understood as the jazz equivalent of an Olympic qualifying trial. These nominees underscore the point, reminding us of the outsize influence that a standard repertoire can hold  —   especially among a constituency searching for some criteria by which to judge. If you know ”We See”  —   a   Monk tune that nonetheless comes with the imprimatur of an acknowledged giant  —   you’re prepared to grasp the particular achievement of Hersch and his trio: Their tweaks to the song flatter your understanding, delivering a wink and a nudge. Grammy voters like that feeling, at least as much as the rest of us do. What makes a jazz standard, exactly? Broadly speaking, they’re songs in   circulation, including but not restricted to much of what we call the Great American Songbook. Jazz musicians have long grown up with this repertoire, internalizing its lessons. ”Not learning these songs puts a jazz player on a quick path to unemployment,” writes critic Ted Gioia in his 2012 book The Jazz Standards, an explicit attempt to formalize a canon. But there’s a lot more to jazz than any standard framework can accommodate. Most of the vital work now being done involves original music, in a range of expression and style. This is the benchmark rewarded by commissioning bodies, arts institutions and the more adventurous pockets of the listening public. Consider the 2016 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll, compiled by Francis Davis. A survey of almost 140 active jazz critics worldwide, it’s among the closest things we have to an official consensus. And the best jazz album last year, according to the poll, was Old Locks and Irregular Verbs, a stormy new suite by multireedist Henry Threadgill, who also won the Pulitzer Prize for Composition last year. As with   Wadada Leo Smith, who had two albums in the Top 5, and guitarist Mary Halvorson, who came in at No. 4 (and topped my own list) Threadgill is an artist for whom the word ”original” doesn’t seem remotely sufficient. The implicit assumption is that artists like Threadgill are excluded from the Grammy conversation because of an Academy bias toward aesthetic conservatism. There’s truth to that, and not just in the jazz field. But I’ve come to believe that the issue also has a lot to do with a recognizable yardstick for accomplishment  —   or, as it happens, the lack thereof. A voter attempting to apprehend Old Locks and Irregular Verbs would have to accept the album entirely on its own terms, which of course is to Threadgill’s credit as an artist (but to his detriment at the Grammys). In addition to Hersch’s Sunday Night at the Vanguard, this year’s contenders for Best Jazz Instrumental Album include Scofield, whose Country For Old Men is a more intrepid excursion than its title would suggest pianist Kenny Barron, whose Book Of Intuition is a superb trio outing, far from complacent or ”safe” and Mehldau for Nearness, an intimate yet searching duo album with saxophonist Joshua Redman. What these albums have in common, beyond the   name value, is the inclusion of tunes that almost any   Academy member would know. Mehldau and Redman dig into some Monk, as does Barron. Scofield’s album makes unlikely jazz standards out of beloved old country songs. There are originals here too, but the presence of familiar signposts means that even a casual listener can trace his or her way through the form. It’s no accident that pianist Herbie Hancock, one of the most   jazz artists in history, received most of his awards for reinventions of one sort or another: George Gershwin, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell. His two most recent awards were for The Imagine Project, an   crossover summit of an album, featuring a slew of pop covers. (His first two awards were in the RB field, beginning with his knockout win for ”Rockit. ”) In light of such   precedent, it’s always worth noting the exceptions. In the category of Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, among releases devoted to Monk and The Beatles, you’ll find a pair of suites that stake out very different places in the political discourse: Real Enemies, by Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society and Presidential Suite: Eight Variations On Freedom, by the Ted Nash Big Band. But the real outlier may be back in Best Improvised Jazz Solo, where Ravi Coltrane is nominated for a lithe, impassioned soprano saxophone performance on the title track of In Movement, his album with bass guitarist Matthew Garrison and drummer Jack DeJohnette. ”In Movement” is a spontaneous composition, forged out of   interplay among the musicians. Beginning with a light shower of bass arpeggios and a blinking rhythmic loop, the piece gradually assumes a mood of shadowy intrigue, through which Coltrane’s soprano sweeps like a searchlight. The track is captivating, and duly celebrated: In Movement came in at No. 3 in the NPR poll. It would be a bold choice for a Grammy win, but don’t hold your breath. The only standard it represents is a standard of excellence, and that by itself often only gets you so far."
"Tom and Dick Smothers came to CBS in 1967 not really intending to lead or support a revolution. They just got caught up in it  —   and they happened to have a network program, with some 30 million viewers, on which they criticized the war in Vietnam, celebrated rock ’n’ roll music and satirized politics and politicians. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which premiered 50 years ago this week, got its message out slowly and sometimes sneakily at first. A lot of it came through the music and the hot new acts booked to perform on air. Over the run of the show, it was like a series of anthems from the counterculture  —   from Buffalo Springfield singing ”For What It’s Worth” to the Beatles singing ”Revolution”  —   with the American TV debut of The Who, and the West Coast cast of Hair, and Dion singing a song about assassinated heroes in between.  The Beatles didn’t appear live to sing ”Hey Jude” and ”Revolution.” They’d gotten disinterested in touring by 1968, so they made these new things called videos, and gave them to only one TV program in the United States. Not to The Ed Sullivan Show, which had helped launch Beatlemania and the British invasion four years before  —   but to the Smothers Brothers. That same year, George Harrison of the Beatles showed up unannounced  —   not to sing, but to support Tom and Dick in their fight against the CBS censors. By then, the fights had become almost legendary. Tom confessed to Harrison that on American television, they didn’t always get the chance to say what they wanted to say, and Harrison advised, ”Whether you can say it or not, keep trying to say it.”  At first, the censored bits were silly, like an Elaine May sketch about, ironically, censorship. But quickly, the jokes became political, and battle lines were drawn. CBS was like a stern parent, placing more and more restrictions on a rebellious teenager  —   and Tom, especially, got more rebellious. He and brother Dick and the rest, including head writer Mason Williams (who unveiled his hit instrumental ”Classical Gas” on the show) put more meat and meaning into the program  —   or tried to. A skit poking fun at LBJ got the president to call CBS Chairman William Paley in the middle of the night to complain  —   which, in turn, led to Paley asking the show to ease up on its presidential satire. In return, Paley agreed to break the   blacklist on folksinger Pete Seeger, who appeared in 1967 to sing, as part of an   medley, a new song he’d written called ”Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” an obvious allegory about the Vietnam War and Johnson himself. CBS cut the song, Tom went to the press to complain  —   and the following year, in a triumphant performance, Seeger was asked back. It was during this appearance that he was allowed to sing his song about soldiers trying to ford an unexpectedly deep river.  Other segments produced for the show never saw the light of day  —   or, at least, the prime time of night. For its first show after the   1968 Democratic National Convention, Comedy Hour had Harry Belafonte sing a medley of calypso songs, with reworked lyrics to reflect the disarray and dissent in America  —   while news footage of police brutality and student protests was projected behind him.  That never made it to air. Nor did a comic sermonette by comedian David Steinberg, whose mortal sin, to CBS, was making fun of religion at all. His first sermon got more negative mail than anything in the history of TV up to that point. When Tom asked him back, CBS ordered there be no sermon. Steinberg delivered one anyway  —   about Jonah and the whale. Not only was that sketch cut, but the entire show was pulled from the air  —   and shortly thereafter, the Smothers Brothers were fired. They took CBS to court for breach of contract and eventually won a settlement close to $1 million, but they lost their platform. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour influenced all satirical political shows that followed, from Saturday Night Live to Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Samantha Bee. Comedy Hour also contributed one of the best political satires ever  —   a literal running gag in which series regular Pat Paulsen ran for the presidency. The Comedy Hour lasted into the early months of the Nixon administration, which were prefaced by the brothers’   promise, in a    manner, to ”lay off the jokes” toward the   . .. at least for a while. On their final show, Dick read a letter he and Tom had gotten from former President Johnson. These days, President Trump responds to Saturday Night Live skits with angry tweets. Back then, Johnson, reflecting on his treatment by the Smothers Brothers, responded by writing: ”It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or   that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”  Happy anniversary, Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and thanks for everything. "
"The music industry can thank Glenn Miller’s record label for the idea of gold records.   years ago today, his song about a train trip became the world’s first   hit. ”Chattanooga Choo Choo” is about a man going home, and promising his sweetheart he’ll never roam. By February 10, 1942, more than 1. 2 million copies of the song had been sold  —   and that was no small thing, the biggest seller in years. The record label, RCA Victor, celebrated by presenting Glenn Miller with a trophy during a live radio broadcast. ”I think everyone listening in on the radio should know, Glenn, it actually is a recording of ’Chattanooga Choo Choo,’” announcer Paul Douglas explained to Miller on air. ”But it’s in gold, solid gold, and is really fine.” Miller’s honor started a   tradition of labels awarding their own artists framed gold records. Then, as rock and roll’s rising popularity changed the record industry, new trade organizations formed, according to music historian Robert Oermann. ”One of them was the Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA,” Oermann says. ”And this is where the idea of an outside certification firm comes in.” In 1958, ”Catch a Falling Star,” by Perry Como, earned the first RIAA gold. Meanwhile, Glenn Miller’s gold changed its namesake city. Chattanooga’s Terminal Station used to be the city’s passenger rail hub, and narrowly avoided the wrecking ball. Then entrepreneurs transformed it into a hotel where actual train cars serve as rooms. The city’s tourism chief, Bob Doak, says the song became Chattanooga’s calling card. ”Kids of all ages, including adults, love to come in for the novelty of spending a night in a train car,” Doak says. The developers picked an obvious name  —   the Chattanooga Choo Choo  —   capitalizing on the song that Glenn Miller first turned to gold 75 years ago."
"Not surprisingly, artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings felt especially daunted by the chance to adapt renowned   writer Octavia Butler’s beloved Kindred for a new graphic novel edition. ”It was like, this is awesome, we got this project, it’s, like, our dream project! Yayyy! ,” Duffy said. But excitement quickly turned to panic. ”I have to do what now?” he also said to himself. ”Octavia Butler is . .. one of the greatest American writers to live, period,” Jennings said. ”She was literally a genius. The way that she would use metaphor and allegory and how she tackled some of the most horrific things about human existence through science fiction and fantasy? She was a master storyteller.” Butler, who died in 2006 at the age of 58, was the first   writer to receive a MacArthur ”Genius” grant and the recipient of several Hugo and Nebula awards. ”I think that Kindred, even though it was written in 1979, is still a very prescient and very important book, particularly if you look at the political landscape now in America,” Jennings said. The novel tells the story of Dana, a black woman who time travels from 1976 to the antebellum South to rescue a white slave owner who turns out to be her ancestor. The novel tackles themes that, at the time, were almost taboo for anyone to write about, much less a black woman: raw and vivid depictions of slavery the complex   relationship black heroines interracial relationships, and the   effects of slavery on America. ”It actually resonates in a particular way now even more because of some of the obvious tensions around race, class, gender, spirituality that still exist in our country that have never been dealt with,” Jennings said. In 1993 Butler spoke to NPR about her acclaimed work. ”When I wrote Kindred, which is unmistakably of special interest to black people, I had a lot of trouble. All of a sudden, 15 publishers couldn’t find a place for it,” she said. ”They just had no idea how to sell it as what it was.” That’s partly why Duffy and Jennings knew they had to get this right. To get started, Duffy read the novel again four or five times, making notes with each reading, and doodles in the margins. ”My first draft of the script I wrote super fast, I wrote it in like two and a half months or so because I felt like, alright, we got the contract, let’s get moving,” he said. But he admits it wasn’t very good. When he sent it to their editor she ”cut it to shreds.” After editing rounds to ensure the plot and main character arcs were in place, Jennings started illustrating the book, which Duffy would eventually letter. To visually differentiate the time periods in which Butler set the story, Jennings used muted colors for the present and vibrant ones for the past. ”In a sense, she was trying to state how slavery and the remnants of it and the relevance actually, too, are still with us today, and they still sit with us. Dana becomes really comfortable with being in that space and that’s really disturbing,” Jennings said. Working through periods of sleep deprivation and extended time away from their families was a huge challenge for the two collaborators. ”Overall, I think we did a good job of at least keeping enough of the back story that you would identify with those characters, that they were still complex and human in the way Butler wrote them,” Duffy said. Jennings said illustrated works of fiction are extremely powerful storytelling tools. ”You want teens to young adults to pick up this book and say, ’Hey, this is really, really disturbing, and beautiful, and I want to know about this woman. I want to know more about this person and how she writes and why she was writing what she was writing,’ ” he said. In its illustrated form, Kindred receives a new identity of sorts, while retaining all of the complexities, politics, and moral questions that propelled its author to literary icon status. And the nascent social upheaval of the last couple of years has likely rendered its potential audience more receptive to a work that is challenging and imaginative while remaining grounded in a personal quest for identity and survival."
"When a writer passes before her time, readers and fans often mourn not only the loss of her presence in the world, but the loss of the words she may yet have written. Such was the case when, in 2006, speculative fiction writer Octavia E. Butler died unexpectedly at her home in Seattle. Butler is one of the most celebrated authors in the genre, her novels and short stories regularly graced with Hugo and Nebula awards. She was the first speculative fiction writer to receive the MacArthur ”genius grant,” a prize whose name perfectly summarizes Butler’s work: She was a genius. It’s depressing to know that there will never be another new Octavia E. Butler novel to read. However, Butler’s papers went to Huntington Library, where scholar Gerry Canavan is even now poring over them, unearthing fragments of the novels and stories she was working on. At some point during the excavation, two short stories emerged: ”A Necessary Being” and ”Childfinder.” Both written in the ’70s, one was apparently left unpublished by Butler herself, the other part of a famously unreleased anthology. Both are finally seeing the light of day in an   called Unexpected Stories. The first story, ”A Necessary Being,” is fantasy set in a world where leadership is biologically determined and leaders are utterly necessary to the proper functioning of society, even when they are unwilling and forced into it. Characters struggle with the tension between biological imperative and personal choice and freedom, a theme Butler would return to many times in later works. In sensibility, it resonates with another of Butler’s stories  —   ”Bloodchild”  —   though the plots are entirely different. In that story, a human boy struggles with his role as a future host for alien offspring  —   a role that will mean his death even as it helps ensure the comfort and survival of his loved ones. But while the young alien host has no real choices, the characters in ”A Necessary Being” seize agency at the first opportunity. ”Childfinder” is a story avid Butler fans have been waiting to see for a long time. She wrote it at the famed Clarion workshop in 1970 and sold it to her mentor, Harlan Ellison, for his anthology The Last Dangerous Visions. It was her first sale she said it made her feel like she ”was on [her] way as a writer.” Unfortunately, The Last Dangerous Visions never saw the light of day, so ”Childfinder,” like many of the stories Ellison bought, has been sitting in his possession, unpublished, for over 40 years  —   until now. The story starts out with a quote from what appears to be an anthropological or history text, speculating that psionic (i. e. telepathic) ability in humans has the potential to ”bridge   divisions of race, religion, nationality, etc. as could nothing else.” The idea that some science fictional catalyst, be it telepathy or an alien attack, will erase boundaries or eliminate prejudice is a common trope in genre literature. And you can find plenty of writers who base the foundation of their fictional worlds on this optimistic ideal. But even here as a young writer, Butler admits to a generally pessimistic outlook in ”Childfinder” there’s little hope that this   human solidarity can be achieved so easily. That’s not to say the story itself is pessimistic or hopeless  —   it’s certainly not. It’s a realistic view of the future of the human race through the eyes of a black woman in 1970s America, suffused with a quiet revolutionary spirit that perfectly suits the author’s style. There are also echoes of her Patternist series  —   novels about networked telepaths who control the human race. Perhaps ”Childfinder” was the initial seed? In both stories Butler is able to create a whole world and a whole history out of very few words, by centering them on women who suffer no illusions about the worlds and circumstances they live in. She addresses race and class   as well as in metaphorical terms. And as Walter Mosley points out in his introduction, she was doing this ”[l]ong before [she] changed the face of science and speculative fiction, the landscape of the potentials of literature.” Though all too short, Unexpected Stories offers a   glimpse into Butler’s rich writing style and her genre sensibilities as they formed. It’s a must read, not just for Butler fans but for all lovers of speculative fiction. K. Tempest Bradford is a speculative   writer by night, a technology journalist by day, and an activist blogger in the interstices."
"As a rule, it’s considered less than desirable to have a   bomb buried deep in the ground near your property. Even less so when that property is a gas station. Yet that’s precisely what residents in Thessaloniki, the   city in Greece, discovered last week. And it’s precisely why some 72, 000 of them are scheduled to be evacuated from the city Sunday, as authorities seek to defuse and extricate the World War   weapon. Reuters reports it is the largest peacetime evacuation in the country’s history. Local authorities say the bomb  —   which was buried 16 feet deep, according to The Associated Press  —   was uncovered by a gas company crew that had been working on the station’s underground tanks. Though local and international media reports vary, the bomb is believed to be between 150 and 250 kilograms  —   roughly the size of weapons commonly dropped by bombers during the war. The weapon is ”ordinary” and fairly familiar to the group preparing to defuse it, officials say. The defusal unit has already ”deactivated dozens of similar bombs found at Thessaloniki’s Macedonia international airport, along the [Trans Adriatic Pipeline] route and other areas,” according to the   News Agency. During World War II, as well as the Greek Civil War that directly followed, combatants considered the major port city of Thessaloniki a position of strategic importance. The deputy regional governor, Voula Patoulidou, says officials are taking every possible precaution. A significantly smaller evacuation, which involved several hundred people last Friday, was called off after officials realized it would not be sufficient. On Tuesday they finalized a new plan, which covers everyone living within a range of 1. 2 miles around the bomb  —   including 62, 000 people in   in the northwest of Thessaloniki, and another 10, 000 from a nearby neighborhood, the AMNA reports. While the defusal efforts are underway in the evacuation area, the Greek news service says all gas stations there are expected to empty their tanks, all business activity will be halted and the entire area will be covered under a state of emergency. Officials aim to complete the defusal by 10 a. m. local time Sunday. Reuters reports they will be mobilizing about 100 buses and vans to remove residents to local gymnasiums, stadiums and cafes while they wait."
"A few days before Rex Tillerson’s confirmation as secretary of state, Tillerson’s Danish counterpart stood before an audience at a Copenhagen conference on the future of diplomacy and announced he would soon be naming a new ambassador. That would hardly be news  —   except this ambassador will not be heading to the U. S. or any other country. Instead, he or she will be serving as Denmark’s chief diplomatic connection to the tech industry at large. Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen says the new post is a nod to reality, an acknowledgement that the digital world  —   big data, artificial intelligence, the Internet of things  —   now has more impact on people’s    lives than most nations. ”Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and so on  —   they have, in fact, economies which are as big as countries,” Samuelsen tells NPR. ”Instead of sit[ting] down and wait[ing] to see what will happen, we have to negotiate with them and try to find solutions.” Those solutions, for example, could address issues of data management, individual privacy and security. ”Of all the data assembled in the world until now, half of it has been assembled in the last two years,” Samuelsen says. This is why he says tech and digitization must become an urgent foreign policy priority, requiring a designated diplomat. The details surrounding the new post are nebulous. Samuelsen isn’t saying when it will be filled, or by whom or what kind of resources the ambassador will have  —   leading skeptics to call it ”symbolic.” The Danish newspaper Politiken reported that the director of Microsoft’s Danish office welcomed the announcement of digital ambassador, but wondered about the choice of title. ”We represent an industry and can hardly be equated with a nation,” Marianne Dahl Steensen told the paper. Denmark has attracted more than $1 billion in recent investments by Facebook and Apple, each of which is building a huge data center in different corners of the country. Samuelsen’s announcement, critics say, is an attempt to ride that wave by highlighting the country’s digital savvy to other   investors. University of Copenhagen political scientist Martin Marcussen says this kind of ”niche diplomacy” is nothing new. He cites similar  —   if not ambassadorial  —   moves by nations to emphasize their own capabilities in health, say, or science. What Marcussen does see as significant is the timing: The minister’s announcement comes just as traditional diplomatic channels around the world are feeling shaky. ”People in Europe, in particular, they’re wondering what to do about an expansionist Putin. What about the isolationist Trump? What about the refugee and immigrant crisis?” he says. ”And the question is which game  —   which diplomatic game  —   should we now be playing? And here comes this fresh thought that there is an alternative game out there, the commercial game, to be played.” While Marcussen says he does not want to ”neglect the importance of digital development,” he is wary of the new digital ambassador post as a culmination of a general trend toward commercially focused diplomacy  —   as opposed to what he calls ”classic diplomacy”  —   that he’s seen grow since the financial crisis. ”When you ask an ambassador to communicate with transnational companies, you make the implicit claim that these companies have the same status as sovereign states,” he says. ”That in itself could be questionable in normative terms and practical terms . .. There are two different logics in the private sector and public sector.” The new ambassador will be working closely with other Danish ministries. Rasmus Holm Thomsen, with the country’s Ministry of Industry and Business, says his Foreign Ministry counterparts are ”heavily engaged in the business agenda” and maintain a ”close and substantial cooperation” with his office when it comes to promoting Danish interests. But Samuelsen insists that the digital ambassador will be neither a sales gimmick nor a   to traditional,    diplomacy. He calls the timing in relation to global events ”pure coincidence.” Rather, he sees his ministry’s new post as a proactive approach to a changing world and an industry that is unique in cutting across so many other sectors. It is a move, he predicts, ”that a lot of other countries will follow.” Whether the tech industry actually wants that is another matter."
"It was June 1973. Claudia Maraviglia was working at a bank. Bill Dewane, a bank customer, had recently suffered a serious spinal cord injury that left him partially paralyzed.  ”I was a teller, and you came in to cash a check and you had like, a denim shirt on, and it was partially open, and you had this nice long hair. You were so cute. And I remember I gave you too much money, ’cause I got so flustered,” Claudia says. ”But then you came back about an hour later, and you said, ’You gave me too much money. Do you want to go out with it tonight?’ and I said, ’Well, then I’ll get in trouble, so let’s go out and I’ll pay for it.’ ” Bill says he didn’t let her pay. They got engaged about three months after they started dating. ”For me it’s just a very physical thing,” says Bill, 67. ”I mean, my skin would get all tingly, and you made me happy. You still make me happy.” ”Were you worried at all about marrying a man with a disability?” he asks Claudia, 66. ”I really wasn’t. I just felt like you were still you. Your accident was pretty traumatic and you’ve always said you’ve changed after that,” she says. Before his accident, Bill says, he wasn’t very nice. ”I was a hard ass,” he says. ”I was not the type of person that I think you would have wanted to meet. But you get a chance to lay in bed for six months and   who you are. It was . .. an opportunity to change the way I was.” ”Your most enduring trait to me is your determination. You just will not give up,” Claudia says. ”I notice our daughters have that, too.” Bill says he suspects Claudia puts him first. ”No, I put us first,” Claudia says. ”What’s best for us.” ”You’ve said that, but my disability, it’s getting worse. You should opt out,” he says. ”That’s what for better or for worse means,” she says. ”What are you hoping for us as we enter this final chapter?” ”The little pillow that you have that says, ’If you live to be 100, I’d like to be 100 less one day,’ ” he says. ”Yeah, but I don’t want that,” she says. ”Well, I’m sorry. You look at the mortality tables,” he says. ”You statistician you,” she says, laughing. ”You’ve very loved. I hope you know that  —   even though you are sometimes a pain.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Kerrie Hillman.  StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"About a   drive east of St. Louis is a complex of earthen mounds that once supported a prehistoric city of thousands. For a couple of hundred years, the city, called Cahokia, and several smaller   like it flourished in the Mississippi River Valley. But by the time European colonizers set foot on American soil in the 15th century, these cities were already empty. Scientists cannot seem to agree on what exactly led to the rise or the fall of this Mississippian American Indian culture, a group of farming societies that ranged from north of the Cahokia site to   Louisiana and Georgia. Possible explanations have included massive floods and infighting. But a recent study heaps new evidence on another theory, one contending that changing climate, and its influence on agriculture, were the forces that made the cities flourish, then drove them to collapse. Cahokia was the largest, and possibly the cultural and political center, of the Mississippian cities, says archaeologist Timothy Pauketat from the University of Illinois, who wasn’t involved in the new study. Researchers have noted that these cities started building roughly around the time of an unusually warm period called the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. And they began declining when the global climate abruptly cooled during a time called the Little Ice Age. ”But paleoclimate records from this region weren’t really sufficient to test that hypothesis,” says Broxton Bird, a climatologist from Indiana   University Indianapolis, and lead author on the study. The new evidence comes from ancient layers of calcite (a form of calcium carbonate) crystals buried between layers of mud in Martin Lake in nearby Indiana. The oxygen atoms in each layer of calcite contain information about the amount of rainfall the summer that the layer formed. A higher proportion of oxygen 18, a heavier isotope of the element, suggests greater rains, providing researchers with a    record of rainfall reaching back hundreds of years. According to these lake sediments, the Central Mississippi Valley started getting more rain in the 900s. And that’s when corn started thriving. A few decades later, skeletons from several Mississippian cities start showing a distinct carbon isotope signature from corn that suggests people were not only eating corn but eating lots of it. ”That comes at right around 950 and that’s around the time the population at Cahokia explodes,” Bird says. This is around the same time that the city’s great earthwork pyramids started rising. Beside the massive,   Monk’s Mound is a grand plaza that was used for religious ceremonies and for playing the American Indian sport chunkey, involving distinctive stone discs later unearthed by archaeologists. ”[Corn production] produces food surpluses,” says Bird. And that allowed the Mississippians to build a society with complex recreation and religious practices, he says.  Cahokia became so notable at this time that other Mississippian chiefdoms may have begun forking off or springing up from its success, says Pauketat. Those other cultural centers were probably copying Cahokia, he says. But the good times didn’t last. Just a couple of centuries after the Mississippian cultures reached their prime, the medieval warming trend started to reverse, in part because of increased volcanic activity on the planet. Around A. D. 1200, weather patterns across North America shifted, and a transcontinental jet stream that once pulled   rains from the Gulf of Mexico began funneling cold air from the   Arctic. ”We switch to profound drought at A. D. 1350,” Bird says. It was the start of the Little Ice Age. The dry spell wouldn’t break for up to 500 more years, according to the Lake Martin calcite sediments. The weather became poor for growing corn. On top of that, previous work from other researchers suggests that as the midcontinent and regions east of the Mississippi River became drier, lands west of the river became much wetter. Rains inundating its western headwaters might have caused massive flooding at Cahokia, stressing the already faltering farms. ”This area hadn’t been flooded like that for 600 years,” says Samuel Munoz, a paleoclimatologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute who did this research but wasn’t part of Bird’s study. As food resources dwindled in the face of an unforgiving,   drought, Bird thinks the Mississippians’ political atmosphere began destabilizing. ”The signs of conflict don’t really start in earnest until resources become scarcer after A. D. 1250,” he says. ”Not just more palisades and burned villages but actual skeletal injuries, decapitations, raids and things like that.” With mounting bloodshed and increasing food scarcity that must have followed the dramatic change in climate, Bird thinks the Mississippians abandoned their cities and migrated to places farther south and east like   Georgia, where conditions were less extreme. Before the end of the 14th century, the archaeological record suggests Cahokia and the other   were completely abandoned. It may not be the whole story, though, says Pauketat. ”I do accept [the climate argument] to some extent, but this   treatment suggests people become passive and their rise or collapse depends on how much it rains.” Instead, he points to other social and political factors that could have driven the rise or fall of Mississippian cultures. The people who built Cahokia, for instance, had a choice spot for city building, he says. ”It just so happens that some of the richest agricultural soils in the midcontinent are right up against that area of Cahokia.” Perhaps the prime location  —   and not just the amount of rain  —   helped the city come to prominence, he says. Cahokia seems to also have been an important religious center for the Mississippians. On top of many of the earthwork mounds were temples and sacrificial sites, some with evidence of human sacrifices. That could also have contributed to Cahokia’s success, as groups of people from miles around may have migrated to be near this divine spot, Pauketat says. As for the city’s downfall, it might have succumbed not just to climate but also to warfare for cultural or territorial reasons. If it is true that Cahokia was a magnet city for many peoples, ethnic or cultural barriers between different groups could have led to political tension, he says. Then, the fall of Cahokia might have had a domino effect on other Mississippian   that depended culturally and politically on Cahokia, he adds. It’s possible that climate change and food insecurity might have pushed an already troubled Mississippian society over the edge, says Jeremy Wilson, an archaeologist at   and a coauthor on the paper. ”The climate change we have documented may have exacerbated what was an already deteriorating sociopolitical situation,” he says."
"It’s basically three chords banged out on a piano for 4 minutes. No drums, no guitars, no samples. But then: there’s her voice. Haunting. ”Here is your princess   here is your horizon”  —   Aldous Harding repeats the line as a mantra, as a truth, as a reality. It’s as if the gift of life is right here, with all its beauty and its limitations. At least that’s how I see it. Aldous told me in an email that ”I want the interpretation of ’Horizon’ to be left up to the individual. It’s for everyone, it’s pretty straightforward.” The video, directed by Charlotte Evans and produced by Evie Mackay, is equally stark, a   beautifully aged woman dressed in white, dancing in a field with a thinned baton, as if it and here were the horizon. Cut to a much younger woman, in black and red eyeliner, emphasizing the desperate look and intensity of what lies ahead of her. The young woman is Harding, a New Zealander. The other woman is her mother. ”I was listening to the demo at mum’s place and she just got up and started doing her thing. I was transfixed, actually. I thought about how it might look on film, an older version of myself dancing, with honour, to a song sung by essentially the same face. I asked her how she would feel about being in my video and, at first, she wasn’t interested. ’No one wants to see an old woman do improvised stick work darling.’ I eventually convinced her that she was indeed still beautiful and was the right fit. We chopped up her dances with shots of me and this is what we were left with.” This single is her first for 4AD, produced by the English producer John Parish, whose name you’ve likely seen on albums by PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse Rokia Traore and Tracy Chapman. Harding has some U. K. shows coming up soon, before jumping across the pond for a U. S. tour, starting with SXSW."
"U. S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz,   faced boos and jeers from Utahns in his home district during a rowdy town hall Thursday night in the suburbs outside Salt Lake City. More than 1, 000 people packed into the auditorium of Brighton High School for the noisy forum, with hundreds more stuck outside. Amid   shouts and interruptions, Chaffetz was asked about everything from his controversial public lands bills to efforts to defund Planned Parenthood to President Trump’s executive order temporarily prohibiting travelers of seven   countries from entering the United States. But the issue those in attendance raised most was Trump himself, and whether Chaffetz, as head of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, planned to investigate the president’s potential business conflicts as vigorously as he did Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Chaffetz reiterated his position that Trump, as president, is exempt from conflict of interest laws and that he would not abuse his authority as committee chairman to go on a ”fishing expedition.” Chaffetz later added that he had sent a letter on Thursday to the Office of Government Ethics drawing issue with Trump aide Kellyanne Conway’s recent endorsement of merchandise marketed by the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump  ” but that did little to appease the crowd. One person who identified herself as a retired Salt Lake City teacher asked Chaffetz what his ”line in the sand was” pertaining to Trump’s many controversies, to which the congressman replied, ”the law.” Organizers brought ”Agree” and ”Disagree” signs to hold up during the meeting, but most stuck to yelling, booing and the occasional ”Do your job!” chant. Chaffetz was elected to his fifth term representing Utah’s 3rd Congressional District last November. The enormous, largely rural district includes portions of Salt Lake City’s suburbs and the city of Provo."
"Susan Collins has broken both of her ankles. She broke her left one when she was running in high heels to the Senate chamber because she so desperately refused to miss a vote. The Maine Republican has the   voting streak in the Senate, by the way, after fellow Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa. ”He has a longer streak, but I’m the only one who’s never missed a single vote,” said Collins in a recent interview in her office, referring to Grassley missing votes early in his Senate career. Not that she’s keeping track. Collins, at 64, broke her right ankle just several weeks ago  —   when she slipped on black ice on her doorstep in Maine. And now, you’ll find her gliding through the halls of Congress in a motorized scooter. At the scooter’s maximum speed, a reporter would need to run to keep up with the senator. (This was confirmed when we took her scooter for a   outside her office this week.) And these wheels came just in time  —   because Collins is getting chased down by hordes of reporters lately. The success of President Trump’s agenda will depend in large part on how unified Republicans are in a very narrowly divided Senate. And that’s why all eyes are once again on Collins of Maine. On health care, on Cabinet nominees, on potentially changing Senate rules to push through a Supreme Court confirmation  —   as a Republican who hovers near the political center, Collins has once more found herself center stage.   and almost always smiling  —   even when she’s causing her party headaches  —   Collins is the Republican vote both sides watch. So in a chamber divided 52 to 48, with the most polarizing White House in modern history, her Republican colleagues say it matters more than ever now if Collins is a ”no” vote. ”I think Senator Collins hits above her weight in terms of her influence on the body because she is willing to reach across the aisle,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. ”She’s not as ideological as a lot of members of the conference. And when you have 52 votes in the United States Senate, it doesn’t take much to change the balance of power.” That was evident when Collins was one of two Republicans who opposed Betsy DeVos to be education secretary, which led to the first   vote in history by a vice president on a Senate confirmation. Collins is also leaning against drastically changing Senate rules  —   invoking the   ”nuclear option”  —   to let Republicans confirm their Supreme Court nominee with 51 votes instead of the usual 60. On health care, she’s wanted to slow down repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and she’s   the only Republican bill that gives states the option of keeping Obamacare. ”Susan is used to being in this territory. This isn’t the first time she has been willing to put aside party labels to do what she thinks is best for her state and for the country,” said Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. ”I think she’s one of the few senators around here who understands the way you get to progress is through compromise.” Democrats say Collins will be a key player if there’s any hope of the Senate being a check against President Trump. ”We have hope that we can continue to appeal to her. We don’t always win our case with her. She’s ” said Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois. ”But she has the courage to step up and do things that are unpopular. Many on the other side do not.” Feeling the Pressure, Last November, Collins wrote in a vote for House Speaker Paul Ryan for president. She now says she does want to see Trump succeed, but she’s spoken out against him many times already since the election. She’s criticized Trump’s executive order on refugee resettlement and his decision to give Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, a permanent seat on the National Security Council principals committee. ”Our country is more divided than any time I have ever seen in the years that I’ve been in public life. And I’m very concerned about that,” said Collins. ”I feel a special obligation, given the divisions in our country, to try to find a path forward on the many contentious issues that we’re facing.” Collins says being the deciding vote is nothing new  —   she’s been a moderate throughout her 20 years in the Senate. But the spotlight is a lot more intense these days. ”I do feel more pressure,” said Collins. ”This is not a completely unfamiliar role because I have been a deciding vote many times in the past  —   and it’s never a comfortable position  —   but I can’t tell you the number of people in Maine and elsewhere who have come up to me and have said to me, ’Are you going to be there for us? Are you going to protect us? ’” She’s literally caught in the middle. In northern Maine, Trump won by 11 points. In southern Maine, Hillary Clinton won by 14 points. She acutely hears both sides of the fight right within her home state. Collins grew up in the small northern town of Caribou, where both her parents served as mayor and where her family has operated a lumber business since the 19th century. Her father went on to serve in both houses of the state legislature. ”I understand, coming from northern Maine, that Donald Trump’s message really resonated with people who had lost their jobs due to poorly negotiated trade deals and are feeling disenfranchised, and are feeling that they’ve been left behind,” said Collins. ”And in the more prosperous southern part of the state, which is more diverse ethnically, I understand the concerns that people have about refugees, for example, and minority populations that have come into our state.” Maine has produced a long line of moderate politicians. But the other senator from Maine, independent Angus King, says being moderate now, in such a politically charged climate, can be much harder. ”Because people from both sides are so passionate. You know, ’if you’re not 100 percent for me, you’re against me.’ People are being pulled to the edges. You rarely see huge rallies of moderates,” said King, laughing. ”And moderate, by the way, doesn’t mean you don’t have views. It just means your views aren’t predictable ideologically one way or the other, and you’re trying to follow the facts where they lead and reach your own conclusions.” And there’s power in that. The saying ”all things in moderation” takes on a special meaning in the Senate  —   where it takes only a handful of moderates to change any outcome."
"President Trump met with a group of senators Thursday at the White House  —   six Democrats and four Republicans  —   in an attempt to build support for his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Trump especially   to two of the Democrats: Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The president sat between them at lunch. ”Today we had a needed bipartisan discussion that will hopefully help our country by enabling the president and Congress to work together to get results,” Heitkamp said afterward. Manchin echoed his colleague, calling it a ”very productive meeting.” The two centrist lawmakers have a lot in common: They both represent states Trump won big in 2016. They are both up for   next year. And they’re both on the White House’s short list of potential   allies in a narrowly divided U. S. Senate. Trump’s overtures to Heitkamp and Manchin started shortly after Election Day. They were invited to Trump Tower for early    and Trump flirted with, but ultimately passed on, tapping them to serve in his cabinet. They’ve also been rare voices of Democratic support for some of Trump’s early actions, including advancing approval of two oil pipelines. Heitkamp and Manchin are two of 10 Democrats running for   in 2018 in states that Trump won. That makes them potential swing votes in the Senate this year, not just on the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation process for Neil Gorsuch, but on any number of Trump’s legislative priorities. Trump will be confronted with one of a president’s most frustrating roadblocks in Washington: the reality that most major legislative actions require 60 votes to get through the Senate. The White House’s charm offensive also extended Thursday to Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, who likewise represent states Trump won by  . This group of Red State Democrats also includes Claire McCaskill of Missouri, another state Trump won by double digits. McCaskill did not visit the White House Thursday. The other five Democratic senators to watch represent familiar battleground states: Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bill Nelson of Florida, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan  —   all states with large white   voting blocs which swung hard in favor of Trump and the Republican Party, and which Democrats desperately want to win back in time for the midterms. While Trump carried Ohio by eight points, the remaining four senators are in more competitive states that Trump won by narrow margins of two points or less. Since Trump’s victory, congressional Democrats have said that if Trump follows through on his campaign promises to negotiate better trade deals, protect entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, support paid family leave policies and spend more on infrastructure, he will likely find Democrats willing to negotiate on what have traditionally been parts of their party’s platform. But skepticism is growing among Democrats that Trump will buck the Republican Party on those issues. Two of these Red State Democrats, Brown and Baldwin, have already declared opposition to Gorsuch’s nomination for the Supreme Court, and they are staking out positions more in line with the party’s progressive wing. McCaskill has avoided Trump but aligned with other Republicans: She has linked up with Sen. John McCain,  . as a voice opposing Russia in Congress. And so far, Democrats have largely stuck together when the partisan heat was on, such as their unanimous opposition to Betsy DeVos’s nomination for Education secretary. Democrats are similarly lining up to oppose Georgia Rep. Tom Price for Health and Human Services secretary. Heitkamp announced her opposition to Price Thursday afternoon, shortly after the White House meeting. (One notable exception: Manchin was the lone Democrat to support Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general.) The Gorsuch nomination fight will be one of the earliest test battles for how persuasive the White House can be with these Democrats, and which ones are willing to work with a deeply polarizing president. It’s a political balancing act that these 10 Democrats will face for the next two years. Each senator, of course, will have calculations to make on how a given issue will resonate at home. But the challenge remains the same: Will voters in 2018 be more inclined to   a Democratic senator who found ways to work with the Trump administration, or who joined the growing Democratic Party movement to resist him at every turn?"
"President Trump recently described Frederick Douglass as ”an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.” The president’s muddled tense  —   it came out sounding as if the   abolitionist were alive with a galloping Twitter following  —   provoked some mirth on social media. But the spotlight on one of America’s great moral heroes is a welcome one. Douglass was born on a plantation in Eastern Maryland in 1817 or 1818  —   he did not know his birthday, much less have a   birth certificate  —   to a black mother (from whom he was separated as a boy) and a white father (whom he never knew and who was likely the ”master” of the house). He was parceled out to serve different members of the family. His childhood was marked by hunger and cold, and his teen years passed in one long stretch of hard labor,   fatigue, routine floggings, hunger, and other commonplace tortures from the slavery handbook. At 20, he ran away to New York and started his new life as an   orator and activist. Acutely conscious of being a literary witness to the inhumane institution he had escaped, he made sure to document his life in not one but three autobiographies. His memoirs bring alive the immoral mechanics of slavery and its weapons of control. Chief among them: food. Hunger was the young Fred’s faithful boyhood companion. ”I have often been so pinched with hunger, that I have fought with the dog  —   ’Old Nep’  —   for the smallest crumbs that fell from the kitchen table, and have been glad when I won a single crumb in the combat,” he wrote in My Bondage and My Freedom. ”Many times have I followed, with eager step, the   when she went out to shake the table cloth, to get the crumbs and small bones flung out for the cats.” ”Never mind, honey —  better day comin,’ ” the elders would say to solace the orphaned boy. It was not just the family pets the child had to compete with. One of the most debasing scenes in Douglass’ first memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, describes the way he ate: ”Our food was coarse corn meal boiled. This was called mush. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush some with   others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most he that was strongest secured the best place and few left the trough satisfied.” Douglass makes it a point to nail the boastful lie put out by slaveholders  —   one that persists to this day  —   that ”their slaves enjoy more of the physical comforts of life than the peasantry of any country in the world.” In truth, rations consisted of a monthly allowance of a bushel of   corn, pickled pork (which was ”often tainted”) and ”poorest quality herrings”  —   barely enough to sustain grown men and women through their backbreaking labors in the field. Not all the enslaved, however, were so  . Waiting at the ”glittering table of the great house”  —   a table loaded with the choicest meats, the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay, platters of fruit, asparagus, celery and cauliflower, cheese, butter, cream and the finest wines and brandies from France  —   was a group of black servants chosen for their loyalty and comely looks. These glossy servants constituted ”a sort of black aristocracy,” wrote Douglass. By elevating them, the slave owner was playing the old    trick, and it worked. The difference, Douglass wrote, ”between these favored few, and the sorrow and   multitudes of the quarter and the field, was immense.” The ”  multitudes” did what they could to supplement their scanty diets. ”They did this by hunting, fishing, growing their own vegetables  —   or stealing,” says Frederick Douglass Opie, professor of history and foodways at Babson College, who, of course, is named after the activist. ”In their moral universe, they felt, ’You stole me, you mistreated me, therefore to steal from you is quite normal.’ ” If caught, say, eating an orange from the owner’s abundant fruit garden, the punishment was flogging. When even this proved futile, a tar fence was erected around the forbidden fruit. Anyone whose body bore the merest trace of tar was brutally whipped by the chief gardener. But if deprivation was one form of control, a far more insidious and malicious one was the annual Christmas holidays, where gluttony and binge drinking was almost mandatory. During those six days, the enslaved could do what they chose, and while a few spent time with distant family or hunting or working on their homes, most were happy to engage in playing sports, ”fiddling, dancing, and drinking whiskey and this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most agreeable to the feelings of our masters. . .. It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas.” To encourage whiskey benders, the ”masters” took bets to see who could drink the most whiskey, thus ”getting whole multitudes to drink to excess.” The nefarious aim of these revels was to equate dissipation with liberty. At the end of the holidays, sickened by the excessive alcohol, the hungover men felt ”that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum.” And so, Douglass wrote, ”we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field  —   feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery.” Douglass sounds even angrier at these obligatory orgies  —   he calls them ”part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery”  —   than at other, more direct forms of cruelty. ”It was a form of bread and circus,” says Opie. ”Slaves were also given intoxicated drinks, so they would have little time to think of escaping. If you didn’t take it, you were considered ungrateful. It was a form of social control.” When he was about 8 years old, Douglass was sent to Baltimore, which proved to be a turning point. The mistress of the house gave him the most precious gift in his life  —   she taught him the alphabet. But when her husband forbade her to continue  —   teaching slaves to read and write was a crime  —   she immediately stopped his lessons. It was too late. The little boy had been given a peek into the transformative world of words and was desperate to learn. He did so by bartering pieces of bread  —   he had free access to it in Baltimore, the urban codes of slavery were less harsh than in rural Maryland  —   for lessons in literacy. His teachers were white neighborhood kids, who could read and write but had no food. ”This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge,” Douglass wrote in one of the most moving lines in Narrative. ”This also shows the ingenuity of enslaved people,” says Opie, ”and how they tricked and leveraged whatever little they had to get ahead.” Today, when one thinks of Frederick Douglass, the image that springs to mind is of a distinguished,   man in a   suit. It is difficult to imagine him as a   boy garbed in nothing but a coarse,   shirt, sleeping on the floor in a corn sack he had stolen. As he wrote in Narrative, ”My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes.” It is a heartbreaking image  —   redeemed by one little word, ”pen.” A pen that he wielded with passion, clarity and irony to gash the life out of slavery. Nina Martyris is a journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"Jabar Mousa was 15 when he first met the Jewish settlers who would move near Dura   his Palestinian village in the central West Bank. It was 1977, and he and two friends were walking on a nearby hill. That’s where they saw a group of young men in yarmulkes. ”We stop and asked these young men, who are you?” says Mousa, now 56. ”And they said, ’We are students of the yeshiva. We study in a school in Beit El. ’” Beit El is Hebrew for ”House of God.” The yeshiva students were camping out at an old Jordanian army base after Israel captured the West Bank in 1967. But they believed they were near the site where the biblical Jacob dreamed of angels going up and down a ladder to heaven. ”So this is considered a holy area, a holy site,” says Chaim Silberstein, a Beit El councilman. ”Therefore, the return to Beit El is considered a return to 4, 000 years of Jewish history.” Silberstein, who was born in South Africa, moved to the settlement  —   near the West Bank city of Ramallah in the hills north of Jerusalem  —   in 1985. ”I was 24 and wanted to study Judaism,” he says, ”and the yeshiva gave me dormitory, a mobile homes to live in.” Back then, 150 families lived here. Now there are about 1, 200  —   about 7, 000 people total. Beit El is a slice of Jewish Orthodox suburbia. It has clinics, a steakhouse, a   school, 20 kindergartens and a roundabout with sculptures of pomegranates, figs and grapes. The U. N. considers settlements illegal. Breaking with Obama administration policy, President Trump’s administration has said it doesn’t see them as a barrier to peace  —   though Trump was quoted Friday in an Israeli paper saying, ”I’m not someone who believes that advancing settlements is good for peace.” Since Trump was inaugurated, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved more than 3, 000 new settler homes, including at least 20 in Beit El. Chaim Silberstein says he hopes for hundreds more. ”The greatest smell for people that want to build is the smell of mud and dust and earth,” he says. ”I believe within the next few months, possibly, we could begin to see some bulldozers working in Beit El.” The American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva has raised millions of dollars for the seminary here one of the group’s fundraisers is David Friedman, Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel. Trump’s    and Trump himself have made donations. Those in Beit El who’ve met Friedman, including Hillel and Nina Manne, like him, but don’t expect the bankruptcy lawyer and son of an Orthodox rabbi to drastically change the life of Jewish settlers like them in the West Bank. ”The U. S. State Department isn’t going to change that quickly,” Hillel Manne says. The Mannes own a winery that produces about 20, 000 bottles a year and exports to the U. S. Europe and South Africa. There’s also a factory that makes tefillin, or phylacteries, containing parchment scrolls that Jewish men wear on their heads during morning prayers. The verses inside are handwritten by Yoni Framowitz, the resident Torah scribe. ”I’ve never met David Friedman,” he says. ”I know nothing about him other than the tefillin he wears he purchased here.” ”Whoever can help us live what’s in the Scriptures and fulfill the promise of this land, that’s very good,” says Avraham Babad, whose family runs the factory. But what’s been good for Beit El has not been good for everyone. The settlement sits right in the middle of the West Bank, partly on land that used to be farmed by Palestinians, and is one reason why Palestinians see settlements as a threat to their independent state. Jabar Mousa, who saw the young yeshiva students walking on a hill 40 years ago, is now on the council of Dura   the nearby Palestinian village. At the village well, where women fill up plastic bottles with water, Mousa’s friend, a    olive farmer named Abdul Jabbar Abdel Azzis, points to the roofs of Beit El homes and a fence cutting off land Israelis label a closed military zone. ”See that land, that part under the rocks there, on top of the hill?” he says. ”That’s my land, which I cannot access.” He climbed the hill 17 years ago, just to see what it felt like to stand there, even though he was afraid he’d get shot. ”I only stayed for a few minutes,” he says. ”And then I ran down the hill like a thief. On my own land, I felt like a thief.”"
"The Trump administration continued to play loose with facts in week three. President Trump took aim at one of his favorite targets  —   the media  —   accusing them of not reporting terrorist attacks. The very list of attacks the White House released hours later contradicted those claims. Trump again cited incorrect statistics on the country’s murder rate, though a day later he did use the right numbers. Press secretary Sean Spicer had his own ”Bowling Green massacre” moment when he referred multiple times to a terrorist attack in Atlanta that never happened. And at the end of the week, President Trump again brought up false claims that there were illegal voters in the November election. But the number of false claims we’re finding have decreased this week. We’ve highlighted eight issues or statements below. And throughout the week you can find us annotating the president’s tweets for more context, too: ”It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. In many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that.” Trump speaking on Monday to U. S. service members at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. claiming that the media weren’t covering terrorist attacks and may have ulterior motives for doing so, Later Monday night the White House put out a ( ) list of 78 attacks to back up that surprising allegation from the president. But instead their list included many   terrorist attacks that had, in fact, drawn    media coverage, such as the June 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting and recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif. and in Paris and Nice, France. As Politifact noted, ”the media reported on every one of the incidents in some fashion, except an alleged October 2015 nondeadly attack in Egypt that we could not independently verify. Whether the media covered the events enough is a matter of opinion, but it would be wrong to suggest the events weren’t covered at all.” In an interview which aired Monday with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, Trump claims only 109 people were affected by travel ban, The chaos that the   executive order unleashed two weeks ago was way more   than that. Politifact found that, ”On top of 60, 000 valid visas affected by the order, there could be an additional 64, 000 admitted refugees barred entry to the United States. That’s nearly 1, 140 times as many people as Trump claimed.” Trump in a Tuesday meeting with U. S. chiefs of police and sheriffs: ”I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised because the press doesn’t like to tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, 45 to 47 years.”  Trump has made similar incorrect claims about the murder rate many times and has been fact checked on it many times. As NPR’s Camila Domonoske reported this week: ”According to the FBI, the murder rate for 2015, the last year for which data are available, was 4. 9 per 100, 000 people. Every year between 1965 and 2010, the FBI reported a higher rate than that.” On Wednesday, Trump correctly cited murder statistics the day after making the mistake, meriting a CNN headline. White House press secretary Sean Spicer cites a   Atlanta terrorist attack, These claims in fact came last week but gained attention this week. CNN broke down how three times, Spicer talked about a terror attack in Atlanta. The Atlanta police department told CNN that they had ”no record of an Islamic attack in the City of Atlanta,” and that the last terror attack had been the 1996 Olympic bombing which was done by a U. S. citizen protesting abortion rights. This week, the White House confirmed that Spicer had meant to refer to the recent night club shooting in Orlando. Trump attacks CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Twitter  CNN’s Chris Cuomo interviewed Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Thursday morning about Blumenthal’s reports that Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch had called Trump’s attacks on the judiciary ”demoralizing.” Trump then tweeted that Cuomo had not asked Blumenthal about a   controversy, in which Blumenthal had falsely stated that he served in Vietnam. Cuomo responded by showing that he had, in fact, asked Blumenthal about his past falsehoods. Yemen raid  —   success or failure? The first military raid that Trump ordered as president has been the subject of much controversy after it resulted in the death of nearly   civilians and U. S. Navy SEAL Ryan Owens. Spicer defended it in his Tuesday briefing, calling it ”highly successful” and said that ”anybody who undermines the success of that raid owes an apology and [does] a disservice to the life of Chief Owens.” He was referring to Arizona Sen. John McCain, who had characterized the raid a failure. Trump swiped back at McCain, a former Vietnam POW on Twitter. As NPR’s Domenico Montanaro, Tom Bowman and Danielle Kurtzleben reported, ”The binary choice of success or failure in this instance is a false one. But the raid clearly did not go as planned  —   and the public posture of the White House does not indicate it sees lessons to be learned for the future.” Also, Trump has repeatedly called into question the success of the Iraq War where thousands of U. S. soldiers died. Ivanka Trump and Nordstrom  Trump called out the retailer on Twitter this week after they decided to stop selling his daughter’s fashion line, and later Spicer characterized the decision as a backlash against the president’s policies. However, Nordstrom said they made the decision over a month ago ”based on performance.” They told NBC News in a statement that, ”Over the past year, and particularly in the last half of 2016, sales of the brand have steadily declined to the point where it didn’t make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now.” The Washington Post’s Fact Checker gave Trump’s claim four pinocchios. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway then took the defense of Ivanka Trump a step further, actively hawking her goods on a Fox News appearance. NPR’s Jim Zarroli has more on the conflict of interest quagmire those statements opened for the government employee. Trump brings up voting fraud allegations  —   again  It had been a while since Trump brought up his (  ) allegations of widespread voter fraud, and the investigation he promised during his first week in office has never materialized. But Politico reported that, Thursday, in a meeting with 10 senators about his Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump again trotted out the wild accusations. According to the site, Trump claimed that both he and former New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who is helping to shepherd Gorsuch on Capitol Hill, would have won if not for ”thousands” of voters ”brought in on buses” from neighboring Massachusetts to vote ”illegally” in the Granite State. Trump lost New Hampshire and Ayotte lost her bid for  . New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner told the Boston Globe that there was no proof of busses of illegal voters at polling places, ”suggesting that an unusually large number of voters would have drawn attention.” Trump also went on to claim that if Ayotte had not distanced herself from Trump during the campaign she would have won. Ayotte initially said she wouldn’t endorse Trump but would vote for him, but after an explosive    video of Trump making vulgar remarks surfaced, Ayotte said she would write in Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence instead. Ayotte actually ran far ahead of Trump in New Hampshire, losing to Democrat Maggie Hassan by just 743 votes. However, Trump lost the state to Democrat Hillary Clinton by 2, 736 votes."
"It’s not often you get a chance to come    with that person who made a nasty comment about you on Facebook. But one interviewee from our Kitchen Table Series got a chance to do that. Jamie Ruppert of White Haven, Pa. was featured in a story that aired in January. She’s a swing voter and like much of Luzerne County, where she lives, Ruppert switched from voting Democratic in the past to casting her ballot for Trump in 2016. When the story was posted on NPR’s Facebook page it received more than 6000 comments. The underlying theme from Rupper’s critics was that she had been duped into voting from Trump. We reached out to 10 people on Facebook who posted nasty comments directed at Ruppert. Only two responded. One of them happens to live in the next county over from Ruppert. Amy Whitenight, of Bloomsburg, Pa. posted this comment: ”Yeah, I was a little angry at the time,” says Whitenight. She says that was right before Trump’s inauguration. If she commented now, Whitenight says, ”It probably wouldn’t have been so angry.” Ruppert calls Whitenight’s comment ”hurtful” and says, ”She’s basing my intelligence off of one decision. That’s just . .. so judgmental and very unfair.” Whitenight agreed to meet with Ruppert    for a conversation. It turns out the two have a lot in common. They grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, are in their 30s, they’re nurses (Whitenight is a registered nurse and Ruppert is a licensed practical nurse) and they’re moms. Both Ruppert and Whitenight voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. But in 2016 Whitenight chose Hillary Clinton and Ruppert chose Donald Trump. ”I feel like Trump supporters have gone and voted for Donald Trump for the pretty packaging. They are seduced by his words,” says Whitenight. She also believes Trump voters aren’t aware of the consequences of the president’s policies. Whitenight points to Trump’s recent travel ban on immigrants from seven mostly Muslim countries. She says news of that affected an Indian colleague at the hospital where she works. ”He had his daughter come up to him and she was afraid that people were going to hurt her and think she was Muslim,” says Whitenight. Ruppert thinks the parent should assure the child that she is safe. And she says, ”People are making mass panic where there doesn’t need to be mass panic.” Responding to the claim that Trump voters didn’t understand the consequences of their vote, Ruppert says she knew what she was getting with Trump. She liked that he talked about stricter immigration policies and bringing   jobs back to the U. S. ”I was tired of not seeing Americans come first,” says Ruppert. As we sit down to figure out why these two people with so many similarities voted differently, the conversation turns into a debate over welfare programs. Both women have benefited from them. Whitenight says as a single mom she needed help while in school studying to be a registered nurse. And she says programs have helped her friends too. ”They now have college degrees. They are now considered middle class, so, I think that’s a good thing,” says Whitenight. ”But you took the system and you bettered yourself,” says Ruppert who counters that not everyone does that. ”There are career welfare people,” says Ruppert. Whitenight responds, ”I’m always flabbergasted that people are so upset by helping people and feeding people and make sure people have housing.” ”You’re right, there’s nothing wrong with helping people who want to be helped,” says Ruppert. But she objects to helping people who are ”just walking around with their hand out.” The direction of the conversation prompts Whitenight to ask, ”Why do you let other people’s situations bother you so much?” She points out that only a small portion of tax dollars go to welfare programs. This conversation was important because it uncovered an experience Ruppert had a few years back that appears to have played a big role in her decision to vote for Trump. At the time she lived in a rough neighborhood of   Pa. ”I had two white guys pull up in front of my house, start shooting up heroin at 5 o’clock in the afternoon,” says Ruppert. At the time Ruppert says her family was struggling financially. There was a subsidized apartment building nearby that attracted crime and  . Ruppert says she saw people driving away in nice cars and it upset her that people who broke the rules appeared to be doing well. At the end of our conversation Ruppert concludes that she voted for Trump because she’s fed up with the current state of the country. She believes Whitenight voted for Clinton because she’s afraid of Trump. Whitenight agrees, but adds that they’re both afraid  —   just of different things."
"A   restaurant in New York City debuted a new dish last week that’s getting a lot of buzz. It’s a burger made entirely from plants. This isn’t just another veggie knock off. The rap is that this burger looks, cooks and even bleeds like the real thing. The Impossible Burger, as it’s known, is the culmination of a dream for Pat Brown. For 25 years, Brown was a professor at Stanford University. He was one of the stars in his field, studying a range of biomedical topics. ”Genetics and genomics . .. cancer research  —   nothing to do with food,” says Brown. But about seven years ago, his work took a turn when, during a sabbatical, he decided to tackle what he saw as a really big problem for the planet: animal livestock farming. ”The use of animals as a technology for food production is the most destructive technology on Earth,” Brown says. It’s a strong position. But he says there’s a lot of science to back him up. Think of all U. S. crop land.   of all the calories produced from the crops are used for animal feed to produce meat, dairy and other animal products. Livestock production also uses lots of water and is a major contributor to climate change. Animal farming produces about as many greenhouse gas emissions as the entire Southern Hemisphere, for example. The ecological footprint of meat production is not sustainable, Brown argues. But the obvious problem is this: Billions of people around the world love meat. We’ve been eating it for thousands of years. ”You’re not going to get people to change their diets. You know, stop eating meat, fish and dairy  —   ain’t gonna happen,” Brown says. After all, veggie burgers have been around a long time and they certainly haven’t replaced beef in people’s diets. Now, what Brown wanted was to literally   the taste of beef  —   without cows. So he started by deconstructing the composition of meat, down to the molecular level. ”Why does meat taste like meat? We had to take on that question,” he says. There had to be something that gave beef its unmistakable flavor. Early on, he and his team homed in on one compound in the blood of cows. It’s called heme. You and I have it, too  —   in the hemoglobin in our blood. ”Heme is responsible for the bloody flavor of raw meat, and you generate this explosion of flavor and raw meat when you cook it,” Brown explains. He says discovering this was the key to his quest, because it turns out that plants have heme, too, but in very small amounts. For instance, soybeans have heme in their roots. So to   the taste of beef, Brown had to figure out how to produce heme from plants in vast amounts. To do that, he and the scientists he works with isolated the gene that produces heme in soybeans and put it in yeast, which ferments in a big steel tank. ”It’s just like making beer, basically,” Brown says. ”You grow vast quantities of this. It’s scalable and [has a] very low environmental footprint.” The end result is a juicy burger made entirely from plants. Brown has lots of people excited about his burger. Bill Gates has invested in his   Impossible Foods, which is already supplying burgers to seven   restaurants, including the   Public in New York City. Just last week, chef Brad Farmerie put Brown’s burger on the menu at Public and a second restaurant where he’s executive chef, Saxon + Parole. Farmerie prepares one for me to sample. In the skillet, the patty looks remarkably similar to ground chuck. As he puts one in a hot pan, he tells me that, in addition to all that heme, the patty also contains bits of wheat and potato protein to add bulk. ”It looks, cooks and sizzles like beef,” he says. ”And when I flip it over, you’ll be amazed. It caramelizes like beef as well.” After a few minutes in the pan, Farmerie nestles the burger in a bun and tops it with a béchamel sauce and truffle paste, then hands it to me to taste. Of course, with the   treatment, it’s undeniably delicious and, I can vouch, it’s juicy like a real burger. ”I like it a lot  —   I think it has that nuttiness you get from good beef. I think it has great moisture, great mouthfeel,” Farmerie says. Farmerie is known for his unusual and fancy meat offerings, like kangaroo and sweetbreads. So his customers weren’t expecting a bleeding plant burger. ”This would be a surprising place to find it,” says Phillip Duff, a customer sitting at the bar. At my request, he tries one. ”This is a tasty burger,” he says, but he notices the texture is a little different. ”It kind of falls apart a bit.” The burger is on the Saxon + Parole menu for $17, which seems on par with other items on the menu. When I asked Duff how much he thought people would pay for it, he replied, ”I think this would sell about the same price as a regular burger.” To charge a premium, Duff says, the makers will have to work hard to tell the story that this burger is better for the Earth, because he doesn’t think the taste alone will stand out for people. If you never told people what’s in the burger, Duff says, ”they quite literally would not know.” But that’s exactly what Pat Brown wants  —   for his burger to be so tasty that it’s indistinguishable from a regular beef burger. He knows he has to bring the price down. Eventually he wants to   beef, even if it takes him years to get there. Next month Impossible Foods plans to debut the Impossible Burger at a regional burger chain based on the East Coast. At first, it’ll only be sold at one location, but the goal is to expand to more franchises."
"Federal immigration authorities launched a new wave of raids and other actions in several states over the past five days aimed at sweeping up people who are in this country illegally. It’s not known how many people were rounded up across the country, but immigration advocates say they’ve received reports of raids in California, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New York and Kansas. The ICE operations are the first to take place since President Trump issued his Jan. 26 executive order expanding the priorities for enforcement. President Trump has promised to deport 2 to 3 million immigrants with criminal records, but immigration experts say that while the Department of Homeland Security estimates there are 1. 9 million ”removable criminal aliens” in the United States, only about 690, 000 are in this country illegally and have been convicted of a felony or serious misdemeanor. Preliminary reports from southern California give an indication of the scope of the ICE operations. An official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in southern California, David Marin, called the actions routine ”surge operations” that target ”priority cases,” in other words, people in this country illegally who have criminal convictions. ”We made 161 arrests, and of those 161, 151 of those had prior criminal convictions. . .. The majority of them were felons and those felons which had prior convictions included sex offenses, domestic violence, assault, robbery and weapons violations, just to name a few,” said Marin in a press teleconference held late Friday. Marin said that of the ten others, five had impending deportation orders or had been deported and had illegally returned to the United States. The remaining five had no criminal records, but were in this country without documents. Immigrant advocates dispute officials’ claims that the operations were routine. ”What they’re trying to do is a really concerted effort to instill fear and terrorize our communities,” said David Abud, an organizer with the National Day Labor Organizing Network based in Los Angeles told NPR. ”It’s a way in which Trump and ICE are retaliating against sanctuary jurisdictions,” he added. As we reported in the   the majority of people in this country illegally are concentrated in 20 metropolitan areas in the country. The Washington Post quoted one immigration official who was not authorized to speak publicly because of the sensitive nature of the operation as saying, ”Big cities tend to have a lot of illegal immigrants. They’re going to a   environment.” There were anecdotal reports of ICE staging traffic checkpoints and random sweeps of people suspected of being here illegally. ICE’s Marin called those reports ”dangerous and irresponsible.” Marin declined to discuss any connection between the raids and the president’s recent executive order, except to say that the operations had been planned for weeks before that order was issued."
"Americans are used to the hurly burly of political and legal debate. But presidents historically have been careful about criticizing individual judges or their motives. However, President Donald Trump tweeted and railed against the judges who have ordered a temporary halt to his ban on people entering or returning to the U. S. from seven mostly Muslim countries. The president’s rhetoric left many lawyers and historians on both the right and left aghast, or at least scratching their heads. Trump’s fighting words, In the space of one week, President Trump has belittled all four judges who have ruled against him so far in the travel ban case. He referred to Judge James Robart, a George W. Bush appointee who temporarily suspended the travel ban, as a ”  judge” whose decision was ”ridiculous.” In a   tweet, Trump added, ”If something happens, blame him.” When the case was heard by an appeals court panel, Trump told a group of police chiefs that even a ”bad high school student” could understand the ban was authorized by law. ”Courts seem to be so political and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what’s right,” he said. ”And that has to do with the security of our country.” The next night when the appeals court judges, including another Republican appointee, ruled unanimously against him, Trump responded combatively. ”It’s a political decision and we’re going to see them in court,” Trump said. Presidents, for the most part, avoid public feuds with courts for a practical political reason. ”Trump’s statements are extremely ” observes Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. ”The more he says the courts are biased or will rule against him because they’re stupid,” comments Blackman, ”it subconsciously increases the chances that they will rule against him.” The history of presidential restraint, There is a more serious reason Trump should avoid criticizing judges too, Blackman says. Under the U. S. system of three branches of government, the judicial branch  —   the courts  —   ultimately are the checks on the legislative and executive branches when they exceed or even abuse the limits of their power. Understanding that, presidents going back to the founders have largely refrained from personal attacks on judges. President Thomas Jefferson, for instance, avoided publicly berating Chief Justice John Marshall about decisions limiting the power of the executive and the legislature. ”Jefferson spoke privately about what he called Marshall’s ’twistifications’ of the law, but he didn’t do it publicly,” says James Simon, the author of four books about the court and the presidency. Jeff Shesol, author of a book about President Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous court packing plan, makes a similar observation about the New Deal president. Roosevelt tried and failed to increase the number of Supreme Court justices so he could appoint more who agreed with him. ”Privately, Roosevelt was very bitter about his treatment at the hands of the Supreme Court,” Shesol explains. ”But even at the height of the court fight, he never allowed it to get personal in the way we have heard recently from Trump.” Modern presidents  Modern presidents have followed a similar path. For instance, President George W. Bush was hardly pleased when the Supreme Court repudiated the system the Bush administration set in place for dealing with ”enemy combatants” captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. After the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had the right to challenge their detentions in court, Bush said tersely, ”We’ll abide by the Court’s decision. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.” President Barack Obama was widely criticized in 2010 for similar remarks about a campaign financing decision, mainly because he chose to comment at his State of the Union address, which the justices attend. Days later, Chief Justice John Roberts said the State of the Union had ”degenerated into a political pep rally.” The tradition is that while presidents are free to criticize court decisions, they should avoid personal attacks on judges. Why? Because judges have no actual power. They have no power of enforcement, no troops to carry out orders, no power of the purse. Which gets at the ultimate worry about Trump. Our system of laws depends on not just lowly citizens, but presidents as well, abiding by court rulings. Throughout our history, the Supreme Court has been inserted into national crises, often preventing presidents from doing what they want to do. Indeed, sometimes the Supreme Court’s verdicts are not vindicated by history. And yet, presidents have complied with those rulings. Less than a month into Trump’s presidency, many leading lawyers and scholars are worried. Professor Blackman fears that if Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch is confirmed and ends up ruling against the president, the next Trump nominee would be ”a crony.” Others wonder what would happen if the mercurial Trump loses the travel ban case or another big one. Would he be so sure of his cause that he would refuse to comply? That would undoubtedly provoke a constitutional crisis. Refusal to obey a Supreme Court order would normally be grounds for impeachment. But author Shesol worries that in ”our   environment, there’s an open question whether the president’s own party in Congress would actually stand up and say, ’This is unacceptable. This is grounds for impeachment.’ ”"
"If you just so happened to crane your neck skyward at night this week  —   or better yet, if you craned your neck downward to look in your telescope  —   you probably caught quite a show. The night sky has been busy lately: A full moon, known by the Farmer’s Almanac as a ”Snow Moon” since it happened in February, took center stage on Friday night. Nevertheless, it still got over shadowed by Earth  —   literally, as a matter of fact. For several hours in the early evening ET, the outer edge of Earth’s shadow darkened the face of the moon for observers in most of the world. Yet remarkably, even this rare moment didn’t make for the week’s main event. That honor goes to the Comet     which has been streaking across the night sky this week. While the comet has been visible to astronomers for months, this weekend it has been making its closest approach to Earth  —   more than 7 million miles away. In fact, Comet 45P’s approach is Earth’s closest encounter with a comet in more than 30 years, according to Scientific American. To observers with telescopes, the comet stood in vivid green among the stars. And to observers using   technology, like Slooh’s worldwide system of telescopes, that light actually streaked across the sky  —   as it does in this image. But if you have missed the comet entirely this week, have no fear: Slooh recorded its progress live on Friday night. You can track Comet 45P  —   even if a bit belatedly  —   in the video posted on the group’s Facebook page."
"When President George W. Bush overhauled immigration rules after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, he received broad public support, bipartisan backing in Congress and a cooperative judiciary. The U. S. was a country genuinely fearful of more terrorism. Contrast that moment with President Trump’s temporary immigration freeze, which shares similarities with Bush’s actions. Yet Trump’s executive order has inspired widespread protests, congressional opposition and multiple legal challenges, including Thursday’s defeat in a federal appeals court. Why the radically different response today? By most yardsticks, the U. S. has been largely successful in preventing terrorist attacks at home for the past 15 years, and a president invoking national security must now clear a much higher bar in making his case, according to many analysts. ”THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” Trump tweeted on Thursday night, though his administration has not cited any specific threat. Different monitoring groups have slightly different numbers, but most say that since 2001, radicalized Muslims have carried out fewer than 10 deadly attacks, resulting in fewer than 100 deaths in the U. S. Almost all the attackers were U. S. citizens. And among the seven mostly Muslim countries in Trump’s order, no one from those nations has carried out a deadly terrorist attack in the United States in at least four decades (In a few cases, attackers from those countries caused injuries, but no deaths. ). ”Right after   there was a sense, for almost everyone, that the system had failed,” said Daniel Byman, a terrorism analyst at Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution. ”Now, many years later, there’s a lot more [security] in place,” he added. ”There’s a lot of skepticism when people call for dramatic new actions in the name of national security.” Bush’s actions vs. Trump’s order, With clouds of dust and debris still hanging over lower Manhattan, Bush closed the nation’s airports on Sept. 11, halting all domestic and international air travel for two days. Regular flights then resumed, though   airport security measures were put in place, many of which still remain in effect. More than 700 men, mostly Muslim immigrants, were rounded up nationwide and detained for months, in many cases. Most were ultimately deported for immigration violations, though none was linked to terrorism. Men from mostly Muslim countries faced a much harder time getting visas to the U. S. However, the Bush administration did not seek an outright ban  —   even a temporary one  —   on Muslims or anyone else traveling to the United States. A year after the attacks, the Bush administration set up a screening system that focused on men from five mostly Muslim countries  —   Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Sudan. The program, known as the National Security   Registration System, or NSEERS, was later expanded to include travelers from 24 mostly Muslim nations, as well as North Korea. The program gave extra scrutiny to men from these countries, and they often faced lengthy questioning before boarding planes and when arriving in the U. S. A separate part of the program required men from those nations who were already living in the U. S. to check in with American authorities. ”We could not, after   find a single judge in the country who was receptive to seeing a challenge to those actions. They were all seen as justified in the name of national security,” said Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute, which follows migration issues worldwide. Over the next decade, government officials said the program helped uncover criminals and illegal aliens. But critics cited its high costs and pointed out that it never led to a terrorism conviction. The Obama administration first suspended, and then effectively dismantled the program. Trump’s executive order, signed on Jan. 27, has echoes of the Bush program. The president includes the same five countries as originally targeted by the Bush administration, as well as Somalia and Yemen. While the Bush program focused on men 16 and older, Trump is seeking a   freeze on all immigrants from seven countries, a   freeze on refugee admissions worldwide and an indefinite freeze on Syrian refugees. A different mood, Although the plans have some parallels, the country’s mood has changed, and the way the presidents rolled out their measures were sharply different. ”The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them,” Bush told a joint session of Congress nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks. Trump’s White House insists the president’s order is not a Muslim ban. However, that’s what Trump called for during the presidential campaign and critics say he has created the impression his actions have at least as much to do with religion as fighting terrorism. To measure how extensively the country’s immigration system has been restructured, with an emphasis on national security, consider the Department of Homeland Security. It didn’t exist in 2001, but now has 240, 000 employees and a $40 billion annual budget. DHS and many other government departments and agencies collect vast amounts of data that they share with each other  —   and other countries. The U. S. takes photos and fingerprints of virtually everyone arriving by air and sea and this has created one of the world’s largest databases. ”We have a much more robust system of vetting people for their terrorist threats than we had on ” said Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute. The results  As we noted, deadly terrorist attacks in the U. S. have been rare, and those carried out by foreigners exceedingly rare. The deadliest case involving someone who slipped through the immigration system was Tashfeen Malik. Born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, she came to the U. S. in 2014 on a fiancee visa. She and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, shot 14 people dead in San Bernardino, Calif. in December 2015. Yet neither Pakistan nor Saudi Arabia is on the list of seven countries named in Trump’s order. No one from these countries has carried out a fatal terrorist attack in the U. S. for many decades, possibly ever. The libertarian CATO Institute went back to 1975 and did not find any such lethal attacks. There have been a few   attacks, most recently in Columbus, Ohio, last November, when Somali refugee Abdul Razak Artan injured 11 people in a stabbing rampage at Ohio State University before being shot dead. ”No vetting system is perfect,” said Byman. ”But if you look at those who have been arrested for suspicions of being linked to the Islamic State, for example, the vast majority have been American citizens.” Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"During his campaign, Donald Trump criticized President Obama for his reluctance to use the words ”radical Islamic extremism.” One of Obama’s key   programs was just called ”Countering Violent Extremism,” with no reference to Islam. The Trump administration may now want to refocus that program exclusively on Muslim extremists. The Obama program made no reference to Islam largely because it didn’t want to suggest that terrorism, even by Muslim extremists, had its roots in religion. Salam   president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, took some credit for that Friday when talking about the terminology via Facebook Live. ”MPAC has been involved from the Bush administration years to say we cannot single out religion when we’re talking about terrorism,” Marayati says. ”We cannot use religious labels when talking about terrorism.” The question now is whether the Trump administration will watch its words diligently. White House spokesman Sean Spicer was asked last week about reports that the countering violent extremism program will now be called countering Islamic extremism. He did not refute them. ”I don’t think it should be any surprise that the president, when it comes to rooting out radical Islamic terrorism, which is what that initially was supposed to be focused on, he is going to make sure that that is a major focus of his  —   keeping this country safe,” Spicer said. The debate over whether to associate terrorism with Islam strikes author Graeme Wood as somewhat odd. In his book The Way Of The Strangers: Encounters With The Islamic State, Wood argues that ISIS is in fact a movement rooted in Islam and that it should be so recognized. On the other hand, he thinks the Trump administration’s insistence on using the term radical Islamic extremism makes little sense. ”What we see now is a complete reversal from a strange and pointless refusal to describe ISIS in religious terms at all now giving way to an equally strange and pointless belief that by calling the problem radical Islamic extremism, that will have any effect on the problem itself,” Wood says. Except perhaps, Wood says, to make the problem harder to deal with. ”I think a lot of Muslims who were at least willing to work with the United States on some of these issues in a soft nonmilitary way will see this as yet another example of the Trump administration intentionally alienating them, that is, looking for ways to single out Muslims as uniquely threatening,” he says. For example, when the White House this week distributed a list of terrorist incidents, it included only those in which Muslims were involved, with no mention of white supremacist attacks. The Obama administration’s countering violent extremism program distributed money to mosques and other organizations that worked with Muslims. One goal was to support efforts with troubled youth who might potentially have been attracted by extremism. Marayati says that kind of collaboration with the federal government may now be in danger. ”Some civil rights groups have said, ’We should not take the money,’ and we’re listening to them, but I assure you, other people  —   and it’s about    —   are saying, ’No, these are our tax dollars, and you should use it to help the community,’ ” Marayati says. Marayati’s group has taken federal government money, and he says it is now considering whether it should continue to do so if the Trump administration singles out Muslims and Islam in the way it is reportedly considering."
"About a third of Tennessee students who graduated from high school in 2015 did so without earning the necessary credits. That revelation came late last month in a report by the state’s education department  —   a report meant to explore why so many Tennessee students are having trouble in college. For the first time, state officials led an audit to see whether graduates were fulfilling the state’s graduation requirements. One in three was not. The state requires graduates to take at least 22 high school credits, the report explains, ”including four English and math courses, three science courses, four social studies courses, and two foreign language courses.” Where were students coming up short? According to the report, ”most commonly, students were missing either the two foreign language credits or the specific required social studies courses. For social studies, some students had taken a sufficient number of classes but failed to complete the exact courses specified by state policy.” This comes just a few months after Tennessee took a bow for steadily improving its high school graduation rate. In the   school year, the state raised its rate by nearly a percentage point, to 88. 5 percent. So far, this is not yet a scandal as it was in Alabama when, late last year, the state’s new superintendent of education criticized high schools for giving unearned diplomas and his own department for poor oversight, saying ”this is not one of those situations where it’s just smoke. There is in fact fire.” ”In working with our districts and in looking at the data, we just haven’t seen evidence of that kind of bad behavior here yet,” says Nate Schwartz, Tennessee’s chief data officer for education. ”It might still come out. And, if it comes out, I would argue that our willingness to publish this report about ourselves provides some evidence that we’d be willing to say it if we find it. But I don’t think we’ve found it yet.” Here’s what they have found: Students were getting the correct number of credits in most cases  —   just not the right ones. Tennessee education officials blame the failure on a combination of factors, including data entry errors, a lack of teachers and counselors, and genuine misunderstandings about graduation requirements. In 28 percent of Tennessee high schools, fewer than half of graduates met the state’s requirements. These were often smaller schools that, while they offered all the necessary courses, are less able to provide the structure, oversight and counseling needed to keep students on track. Students who failed to earn the proper requirements were less likely to enroll at a   institution the next fall. In Tennessee, most   schools require a foreign language for admission. ”I sometimes ask questions that maybe people think I should know the answer to,” said Wendy Tucker, a Tennessee State School Board member, during a recent presentation of the report to the board. ”Are we saying that a third of our high school graduates didn’t actually meet the requirements to graduate, under the law, but got diplomas?” Tucker, a former education adviser to Nashville’s mayor, paused, incredulous. ”I’m just having a hard time reconciling ’requirement’ with ’didn’t do it,’ ” she continued. ”This could explain some of our   success issues if kids are graduating without actually meeting the requirements.” Tennessee public school students’ average score on the ACT college entrance exam is below both the national average and the state’s own standard for college and  . Tennessee officials say the graduation problem now has their full attention and that it can’t happen again. They’re even looking into making it harder for students to get a waiver that allows them to bypass foreign language requirements. Education Commissioner Candice McQueen says she plans to take ”some pretty drastic measures” to ensure a Tennessee diploma remains meaningful. As for the students who have already left the system underprepared, the state has no plans to reach out to them individually, either to let them know they failed to meet the state’s requirements or to change the diploma they received. ”It is a district’s responsibility to verify students have met graduation requirements and issue diplomas,” said Tennessee Education Department spokesperson Sara Gast. ”And from the state’s perspective, based on our current understanding of these situations, we would not retroactively revoke a student’s diploma.”"
"On New Year’s Eve, 2006, Christine   Lee developed a splitting headache. She was 33, and her world turned upside down  —   as in, she literally saw the world upside down. Suddenly, she could hold things in her mind for only 15 minutes at a time. She was a writer who now couldn’t recall words or craft sentences. She remembers looking at the phone and thinking to herself: What is the phone number for 911? Days later, she learned she’d had a stroke. ”I had a     memory, like Dory the fish in Finding Nemo,” Lee wrote in a Buzzfeed essay chronicling her experience. ”My doctors instructed me to log happenings with timestamps in my Moleskine journal. That, they said, would be my working   memory. My memento to my mori.” Lee used those journals to reconstruct her experience in a new memoir called Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember. She talks with NPR’s Scott Simon about the silver linings of memory loss and the unexpected grief that came with her recovery. On what it’s like to have a   memory, You don’t even fathom the magnitude of your loss  —   or at least I didn’t. I couldn’t plan for the future. I couldn’t think of the past. I had no regrets. So it’s literally living in the moment. I was experiencing something that people go to yoga and Zen retreats to achieve. So it was quite pleasant. It was not pleasant for the people around me. But in that period of my recovery, where I couldn’t remember everything, I think I was incredibly at peace and happy. On having an ”invisible” disability, It was frustrating. On the one hand, you want people to know: Hey, slow down for me. Hey, I’m going through a crisis. On the other hand, I was also privileged to be disabled in a way that wasn’t visible. So people also didn’t treat me any differently. So it was very isolating. . .. When I told people that I was sick and I needed them to slow down, along with that came this need to explain my position and I . .. felt a lot of resentment for having to do with that. On experiencing depression during her recovery, When I was in the hospital recovering I got literature that said that depression is a part of recovery from stroke . .. and I remember thinking: What? No. I’m going to be so happy when my brain is better. When people get sick there’s a lot of grieving involved. Even when we have the flu we get bummed out about things we’re missing out on  —   the fact that we can’t get up out of bed, and our lost capabilities at that time. But when people get really sick, nobody really counts the fact that there’s an immense amount of grieving in recovery. That’s a part of almost every recovery from illness or setback, and yet I was still blindsided by it. I was still completely sad that I knew that I wouldn’t be the same person again. On her ”old self” and her ”new self” I really wanted to be back to my old self, but to this day I’m not that old self. I’m a new self. So that lesson has really helped me with other life setbacks. After I had my child and had postpartum depression and was gathering my life back up again, the stroke helped me figure out where I was again. It helped me understand that I wouldn’t ever be the old Christine, before motherhood  —   that I would be the new self, the new me. On a marriage that fell apart, I think my husband really mourned my old self and he wanted the old me again. That year he happened to have several setbacks of his own . .. life was overturned with the death of his mother. I don’t think he came to the same conclusion I did. And so our paths started diverging, until one day . .. years later, they’d completely diverged without my knowing it. . .. I’m still sad about that. I’m still sad that there are these huge casualties of having been sick. That’s separate [from] the fact that I’m still grateful to him for having been there and for being a person who knows the old me. Because that helps, you know, that that old me still does exist in his mind. On being unable to trust her own memory, I remembered things that did not happen. . .. That was part of the reason I so diligently kept up a journal because I was so afraid that I would remember things wrong. So I wrote everything down. Even if it was nonsense  —   so that even my nonsense would be documented. I took a great number of pictures and photographs throughout my recovery as well because I knew that my memory was no longer reliable. On the experience of   those journals, There were parts of my journal that surprised me. I thought that I’d waited days to call my parents about my stroke. But in my journal I read that I’d called them the same day. . .. I was writing the memoir right after my postpartum depression and after my marriage fell apart. . .. I think at any other time reading that journal would have had an incredible emotional wallop, to have to be reliving it in that way, and it would have felt more immediate. But at that time, it was a way to figure out additional lessons from that experience to get me through both [writing] the memoir and [getting through] my life at that time. It was very gratifying, and it was as if my old me was speaking to the new me and telling me that things would be OK."
"This is a new era for U. S. relations with the European Union. Gone are the days when the U. S. was more supportive of European integration than some Europeans are. The European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, is expecting a more businesslike, ”transactional” approach with President Donald Trump, who has been skeptical of the EU and backs the British exit plan. ”We do not interfere in U. S. politics . .. and Europeans expect that America does not interfere in European politics,” Mogherini told reporters at the end of her trip to Washington. She says she raised concerns about the man rumored to become the next U. S. ambassador to the EU, Ted Malloch, another supporter of Brexit and someone who has suggested the European Union ”needs a little taming.” ”I was told there is no decision taken on the next U. S. ambassador to the European Union,” Mogherini said, adding that she explained to U. S. officials that all EU member states have to agree to accredit a foreign ambassador. ”That has to be taken into consideration,” she stressed. The European Union’s foreign policy chief met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as well as several White House advisers, including President Trump’s    Jared Kushner. Kushner is taking the lead on Middle East policy and Mogherini says she talked to him about the possibility of reviving   peace talks and where the EU stands on that. She’s also pressing the Trump administration not to walk away from the nuclear deal with Iran, which she oversees. ”The deal is working and we need to preserve it this way,” she said, adding that she was reassured by what she heard in her meetings. Mogherini says she also got reassurances from the Trump administration that the U. S. will continue to push Russia to implement an international peace plan on Ukraine before easing sanctions. The U. S. has made clear that it will maintain sanctions related to Crimea unless Russia returns the peninsula to Ukraine. Officials, though, have carefully left open the door to easing other sanctions, related to Russia’s actions in Eastern Ukraine and its cyberattacks in the U. S. The State Department did not issue a statement about Secretary Tillerson’s meeting with Europe’s top diplomat."
"Marvin Lemus hated the skin he was in when, as a child, he didn’t see himself represented on TV or in the movies. So when he was 8 years old, he decided to become a filmmaker. Lemus is the   director, creator and   of   a dramatic comedy that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The web series tackles the housing crisis and gentrification of Boyle Heights in East L. A. It follows seven Latino characters as they grapple with identity and change, including the paradox of being both gentrifiers and the gentrified. ”I was trying to create something that I wished I could have seen growing up,” Lemus, who is still shopping his show around, said. ”I grew up with such a huge identity issue. Basically, I was whitewashed. I wanted to be white my entire life because I never saw myself on screen. The people that did look like me were cholos or gardeners. It made me reject my culture.” Today, platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Netflix allow a new generation of millennial creatives to produce original digital shows with people of color both in front of and behind the camera. For some of these writers and directors, the traditional   gatekeepers are irrelevant. For Lemus, having a seat at the head of the table allows him to make critical decisions, like shooting   in Boyle Heights, a historically Latino neighborhood. The cast and crew are predominantly Latino, and Lemus says they provide fresh, authentic perspectives with the characters they create. There’s the Mariachi band member just trying to get by, and the queer Latina social worker straddling the class and ethnicity line. Lemus uses comedy to spotlight such difficult issues. ”Our people are funny,” he said. ”We talk so much sh*t and we clown on each other. Because our lives are hard we have to. We can’t be morose about it we have to keep pushing forward and laugh with it. And I wanted that to be represented.” Hollywood has struggled with diversity. And though the entertainment industry has recognized more people of color lately with Golden Globe and Oscar nominations, it isn’t enough, said Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. Hunt heads an initiative called the Hollywood Diversity Report. The latest report revealed that 90 percent of scripted cable shows in 2014 were directed by white people, and white actors claimed close to 87 percent of lead roles in films. ”Hollywood is not providing diverse audiences what they want,” Hunt said. ”So people are going elsewhere, i. e. the internet. Let’s face it audiences now are becoming overwhelmingly diverse.” Young and ambitious people of color bursting with creativity don’t tend to wait, says Fatimah Asghar, a South Asian Muslim poet. She wants to see herself reflected in the media, so she’s writing herself in. Asghar, a   screenwriter, is following a path similar to Issa Rae, creator of HBO’s Insecure. Asghar wrote a script, called up some artist friends, and created Brown Girls, a web series she’ll release later this month on Vimeo. Brown Girls is a drama focused on the friendship between Leila, a queer South Asian writer, and Patricia, who Asghar describes as a ”sex positive” black musician. Set on the south side of Chicago, the story follows their personal and financial struggles. The majority of the cast and crew are women, queer, and racially diverse. Asghar felt the need to tell her own story because, ”sometimes you literally don’t see an extra who’s a person of color and a lot of that goes unchallenged and unquestioned. She said of her characters: ”They are struggling and they are messy. They can’t get a grip on their lives sometimes. But at the end of the day, their love for each other and the joy in their lives and communities keeps them going.” Asghar said that such close relationships and complex characters are especially necessary right now. ”I think that joy can be a real savior and real weapon.” If the success of show creators like Issa Rae is any indication, independent producers who start out on the internet can often find a way into more established network. Rae started her web show, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, on YouTube in January 2011 while at a temporary office job and with zero budget. By the fourth episode, she had more than 60, 000 viewers and had raised $50, 000 on Kickstarter to finish the season.   six years: In December, Rae earned a Golden Globe nomination for Insecure, which airs on HBO. But as more artists see the internet as fertile ground for launching shows, Hunt said, the issue of net neutrality presents both promise and possible obstacles. Currently, internet service providers have to give content providers the same level of access, whether the content is coming from a network like ABC or a streaming service like Vimeo. As long as that is the case, Hunt said, writers and directors like Lemus and Asghar will thrive. ”If net neutrality is protected,” he said, ”I predict there will be more independent production on the internet, and I think Hollywood will have to respond, because they will be losing market share to millennials and other groups. ”We’ve been fed for so long [a] white point of view, basically. I want to be able to speak to my experience, and it’s something I don’t get to see often. . .. That’s why it’s important to be in the room, at the table, and push back.” But if net neutrality disappears,   and independent shows may find it difficult to compete with industry giants. ”And the mainstream will be allowed to continue to dominate the way that things are made,” Hunt said."
"The day began with grim resolve, as volunteers descended upon a remote New Zealand beach to try to send some 100 beached pilot whales back to sea. By   local time, most of those whales  —   the survivors of country’s   stranding on record  —   had successfully swum back into Golden Bay. It could have been a happy ending to a story that began tragically, with some 300 whales found dead after more than 400 stranded earlier in the week on Farewell Spit, a thin strip of beach that arcs like a bent finger into the waters north of New Zealand’s South Island. The volunteers’ celebrations did not last long, though. Another large pod, composed of approximately 200 whales, stranded just hours later near the original site. The members of that second group appear to be different from the original survivors, which had been tagged before being refloated. None of the new whales bore those tags, NBC News reports. For the volunteers, it was a heartbreaking close to a Saturday filled with hope and hard effort. In two rescue attempts earlier in the day  —   both led by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation and Project Jonah, a group dedicated to protecting marine mammals  —   volunteers had managed to send about 80 of the 100 survivors from the original group back to sea. It was no easy task. It is common for whales, once they have been refloated, to nevertheless strand again shortly afterward on the same shore, according to the DOC’s Andrew Lamason. ”We are trying to swim the whales out to sea and guide them, but they don’t really take directions, they go where they want to go,” Lamason told The Guardian. ”Unless they get a couple of strong leaders who decide to head out to sea, the remaining whales will try and keep with their pod on the beach.” To combat this tendency, the volunteers formed a human chain in the water to block the whales’ return  —   despite warnings that a shark was possibly in the area. And their early efforts were largely successful: Of the original 100, only 20 returned to shore. The 20 that restranded would need to be euthanized ”to relieve their suffering,” the DOC said in a statement, explaining that ”unsuccessful attempts at refloating the whales would likely lead to more injury and stress to them and prolong the whales’ suffering.” Still, the outcome was largely positive  —   for a few hours, at least. Then, the new pod came ashore nearby on the same beach. Experts with the DOC and Project Jonah do not know the precise reason for such mass strandings, one after another. Farewell Spit has been occasionally described as a whale trap, since its unusual shape and shallow waters often impair the echolocation of whales rounding the South Island’s northern tip. ”It’s a very difficult place if you get lost in there and you are a whale,” the DOC’s Herb Christophers told the BBC. And once one whale gets lost, the rest of the pod can follow into the same danger, led by that whale’s distress calls. DOC ranger Mike Ogle posited a different theory on a local radio broadcast, reports The Independent, which notes Ogle suggested a shark may have been to blame. ”There’s one carcass out there with some shark bites in it  —   but not a big one, just a small one, but quite fresh bites,” Ogle said, according to the British paper. ”So yeah, there’s something out there.” Nevertheless, the rescue efforts continue. The DOC put out an urgent call for more volunteers to renew the efforts on Sunday. The agency also reminded prospective volunteers: Don’t forget to bring your wetsuit, bucket and sheets."
"Patients in Alexandria, La. were the friendliest people Dr. Muhammad Tauseef ever worked with. They’d drive long distances to see him, and often bring gifts. ”It’s a small town, so they will sometimes bring you chickens, bring you eggs, bring you homemade cakes,” he says. One woman even brought him a puppy. ”That was really nice,” he says. Tauseef was born and raised in Pakistan. After going to medical school there, he applied to come to the U. S. to train as a pediatrician. It’s a path thousands of   medical students follow every year  —   a path that’s been around for more than half a century. And, like most   physicians, Tauseef came on a J1 visa. That meant after training he had two options: return to Pakistan or work for three years in an area the U. S. government has identified as having a provider shortage. He chose to work with mostly uninsured kids at a pediatric practice in Alexandria. ”That was a challenge,” he says. ”But it was rewarding as well because you are taking care of people who there aren’t many to take care for.” And the U. S. medical system depends on doctors like Tauseef, says Dr. Andrew Gurman, president of the American Medical Association. He worries that if President Trump’s executive order on immigration takes effect, it will mean parts of the country that desperately need medical care may not have a doctor. ”International medical graduates have been a resource to provide medical care to areas that don’t otherwise have access to physicians,” he says. ”With the current uncertainty about those physicians’ immigration status, we don’t know whether or not these areas are going to receive care.” According to the AMA, today there are about 280, 000 international medical graduates in the U. S. That’s about 1 in 4 doctors practicing here. Some are U. S. citizens who’ve gone abroad for medical school, but most aren’t. ”They don’t all have permanent visas, and so a lot of them are concerned about what their status is going to be, whether they can stay, whether they can go home to visit family and still come back, and the communities they serve have similar questions,” Gurman says. And the care provided by the graduates of foreign medical schools is, by and large, top notch. A study published Feb. 3 in the journal The BMJ, formerly The British Medical Journal, shows Medicare patients treated by doctors with degrees from  . S. medical schools get just as good care  —   and sometimes better  —   than those treated by graduates of American medical schools. The immigration uncertainty is hitting medical schools at a tough time. Dr. Salahuddin Kazi is in charge of recruiting top students from across the world for the University of Texas Southwestern residency program. ”Typically we have 3, 000 people applying for our 61 positions  —   of those 3, 000, at least half of them are international medical graduates,” he says. Applicants find out their program match in March and usually start working in June. That gives them about 90 days to get a visa. Kazi worries this year that won’t be long enough and that students from countries included in the travel ban won’t be admitted. ”That would create hardship for the hospital, for us and for our remaining residents,” he says. ”They’ll have to pick up more shifts or give up vacation.” Pediatrician Tauseef left Louisiana two years ago but continues to care for   patients at Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic in Dallas. Six of the 30 physicians who work at this clinic are from other countries. Tauseef says they’re all educated to do the same thing. ”As a physician, being a foreign medical graduate, U. S. medical graduate, a Muslim doctor, a   we are trained to look for signs and symptoms,” he says. ”We do not look at anybody’s color we are not trained to look at anybody’s religion or ethnicity.” Tauseef, who has been in America for 13 years, says he will apply for U. S. citizenship in March. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KERA and Kaiser Health News."
"Amnesty International released a report this week that may make you wonder how much of what we conscientiously report as important news truly is by comparison. The human rights group, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, says as many as 13, 000 opponents of Bashar Assad have been hanged in the Saydnaya prison on the outskirts of Damascus. It is worth repeating that number: as many as 13, 000 people, hanged to death. The researchers interviewed 84 people, including former guards, a military judge, and 31 people who were held in two buildings of the prison. The witnesses say once or twice a week, 20 to 50 prisoners were taken from their cells and told they will be transferred elsewhere. Instead, they were taken to a basement to appear before a military judge for two or three minutes  —   just enough time to be condemned to death. The death sentence was signed by the minister of defense, who was deputized to sign by President Assad, says the report. The men and women were hanged in the middle of the night. Their bodies were reportedly taken to a military hospital, where officials registered their deaths as a heart failure or respiratory disorder. ”It is inconceivable that all of the top officials did not know about it,” says Nicollete Waldman of Amnesty. ”This was a policy of extermination. ”There is no reason at all to expect that the hangings have stopped,” she added. Amnesty International says it has tried to get a response from Syrian officials, but received none. Aerial images of the prison published this week seem to show the mass graves reported by witnesses. To be sure, the report also says some rebel groups have committed human rights abuses. But not nearly on the same scale as the Assad regime. ”What we have uncovered is beyond anything else we have seen,” says Waldman. At least 4. 8 million Syrians have already fled their country in fear for their lives, and are scattered around the world. More than 400, 000 civilians have already died in the war. The United Nations and the United States have often condemned the Syrian regime for committing war crimes against civilians, including using chemical weapons, sexual violence and starvation. But they have also urged rebels and the Assad regime to negotiate to end the civil war, a war in which the regime, with Russian support, seems to have the upper hand. If those who oppose the regime have been hanged as a matter of routine, why would any Syrian come back home?"
"This year, ”music’s biggest night” will be missing more than a few of its biggest stars. Despite multiple nominations, Kanye West, Drake and Justin Bieber are reportedly skipping tomorrow evening’s Grammy Awards. Bieber has called the show ”irrelevant.” Frank Ocean didn’t even bother to submit his acclaimed album Blonde for eligibility he told The New York Times the Grammys don’t represent people like him. Newcomer Kelsea Ballerini, however, says she’s excited to be up for Best New Artist, alongside Chance The Rapper, The Chainsmokers, Anderson . Paak and another country star, Maren Morris. ”Just the fact that me and Maren are both in that category, I think, is really cool,” she says. ”I definitely know that Nashville feels like it’s a big win regardless of who actually gets the award.” Ballerini   the   song ”Peter Pan,” which she performed at the Country Music Association Awards. She’ll be performing at the Grammys for the first time. ”I feel like my peers tipped their hat to me. And that really makes me feel validated as an artist,” Ballerini says. ”It makes me feel like a cool kid.” Another country artist, Lori McKenna, has four Grammy nominations this year, including one for ”Humble and Kind,” a song she wrote that became a hit for Tim McGraw. ”I wrote that as a prayer for my kids,” McKenna says. ”It’s a list of things I wanted my kids to know I wanted them to know.” (The lyrics include: ”Hold the door, say please, say thank you   Don’t steal, don’t cheat and don’t lie   I know you got mountains to climb, but   Always stay humble and kind. ”) McKenna won for Best Country Song last year, and says that win was a   for her career. ”It lets you make your own path a little bit more. It lets you scale back if you need to, or make something bigger if you need to,” she says. ”It allows you to streamline your career a little bit so you can be more creative if you need to, or be with your family more if you need to.” McKenna says she’s elated that from now on, she’ll be known as a Grammy winner. She and others hope that honor leads to more records, more money, more gigs, more fans. ”It’s also very important for people working with you,” says French composer, performer and record producer   Jarre. ”These days, artists are surrounded by managers, by labels and people giving lots of energy and time and hope and love into what you do.” Jarre has composed film scores, and helped pioneer electronic music in the 1970s. But he’s never won a Grammy. This year he’s up for Best   Electronic Album. ”Electronic music was born in Europe and then invaded the world,” Jarre says. ”So it shows that when the Grammys are recognizing somebody in the electronic music field, it’s actually not only for the U. S. market, but really for the international audience. So it is important, obviously.” Winning a Latin Grammy four years ago made Gaby Moreno a star throughout Latin America, especially in her native Guatemala. This year, Moreno’s fifth album, Illusion, is nominated for Best Latin Pop Album at the mainstream Grammys. ”The Grammys means the general market to me. And so, I dunno, for me it’s a bigger deal, ’cause you’re there with the really big names in the music industry  —   you know, like Adele and Beyoncé,” Moreno says. ”It opens doors for a lot more opportunities, and for myself personally, it just motivates me. ” Moreno’s album was produced by Gabriel Roth, who was also bandleader, bass player, songwriter and producer for Sharon Jones  the Dap Kings. They were nominated for a Grammy in 2014, and Roth says winning would have meant a great deal for his band’s late singer. ”I think for Sharon it was tied into a bigger goal of hers, which was basically to kind of reclaim soul music, reclaim RB,” Roth says. Roth, himself himself a   winner for producing Amy Winehouse and Booker T. Jones, is less invested in the Grammys. ”It’s a baloney award, man,” he says. ”Everybody in the industry votes for the record they worked on, or the record their friend worked on, or the record that they got an email that their friend said that you gotta vote for this record. You know, they’re not good records that are winning Grammys. It’s like a   popularity contest.” But jazz pianist and bandleader John Beasley says the Grammys mean more than just the televised awards: The organization’s foundation takes music to schools and helps struggling musicians. Beasley leads a   big band called MONK’estra, whose tribute album to Thelonious Monk is nominated in one of the jazz categories. ”This year is Thelonious Monk’s centennial, so we’re hoping it creates more awareness for Monk’s music,” says Beasley. ”He was underappreciated during his time. A lot of the music was composed 80 years ago, and it still sounds fresh. This music is still living and breathing right now.” Beasley is also competing in one of the arrangement categories with    Jacob Collier, who’s up for two awards. As in his version of The Flintstones’ theme song, Collier sings all the vocals and plays the instruments himself. The   band started out as a YouTube sensation. ”I hope that the Grammys will instill a sense a sense of faith in people who want to do things their own way and are wondering if that’s a valid way of doing things,” he says. Collier is also rooting for his friend Chance the Rapper, whose mixtape Coloring Book is nominated for Best Rap Album. Chance’s record was commercially released only as an online stream  —   meaning that if he wins, it’ll be Grammy history."
"There are many interests World Cafe doesn’t have in common with this Sunday’s Grammy Awards  —   golden gramophones,   couture and sappy speeches among them. But there’s one interest we do share: We’re always on the hunt for the ”best new artist.” Before making our predictions for this year’s Best New Artist, we took a deep dive into the category’s history to see how some past winners fared in their subsequent careers. Turns out this is an award full of scandal, surprise and many questions. Is winning Best New Artist at the Grammys the kiss of death for a musical career, as 1977’s winner, Starland Vocal Band, or 1998’s, Paula Cole, might have you believe? What happened to Milli Vanilli’s 1990 trophy after Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus were outed as phonies and stripped of their title? And this year, does World Cafe favorite Chance the Rapper have a chance? Or will he be smoked by a band that Esquire recently called the Nickelback of EDM? Listen above as we attempt to answer these questions. Below, enjoy a Spotify playlist featuring all the Best New Artist winners since 1959. And on Sunday, root for whoever you like  —   or don’t like."
"White House adviser Stephen Miller doubled down on the Trump administration’s groundless claims of voter fraud in New Hampshire  —   and across the nation  —   during in an interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. Earlier this week President Trump claimed, with no evidence, that voters from Massachusetts were bused to New Hampshire to vote illegally. A member of the Federal Election Commission called it an ”extraordinarily serious and specific charge” and asked Trump to ”immediately share his evidence with the public.” On This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Miller, a senior White House policy adviser, to provide that evidence. In fact, he asked three times. Miller said the show was ”not the venue” to supply evidence, but repeated the baseless claim multiple times. He said in part: ”I can tell you that this issue of busing voters into New Hampshire is widely known by anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics. It’s very real. It’s very serious.” New Hampshire’s secretary of state has said there is no proof of buses appearing at polling places, and that a large number of voters arriving like that would have attracted attention. As Politifact noted in November, New Hampshire law requires voters to either show valid ID or have their photo taken and sign an affidavit swearing to their identity. If they sign the affidavit, a confirmation letter is sent to their address to check that it is correct. The New Hampshire voting fraud claims are a variant on a frequently repeated Trump claim of nationwide voter fraud  —   which is also unfounded. But Miller stood by those claims too, saying in part: ”The White House has provided enormous evidence with respect to voter fraud, with respect to people being registered in more than one state, dead people voting, noncitizens being registered to vote. . .. I’m prepared to go on any show, anywhere, anytime, and repeat it and say the President of the United States is correct 100 percent.” The White House has not provided ”enormous evidence” of massive nationwide voter fraud. Trump has repeatedly claimed that widespread fraud in the 2016 election led to ”millions” of fraudulent votes, causing Hillary Clinton to win the popular vote. As NPR has reported several times, there is no evidence to support this allegation. ”This is not true, no matter how many times Trump and his surrogates repeat it,” NPR’s Jessica Taylor and Danielle Kurtzleben reported on Jan. 29. ”The administration has never provided proof of this claim.” Former Trump staffer Jason Miller did cite two sources, claiming they backed up Trump’s allegations. But Danielle took a close look at those sources and found they do not support Trump’s claims. Here’s what she wrote on Jan. 24: ”One, an analysis of survey data published on the Washington Post’s   blog, Monkey Cage, estimated that ”6. 4 percent of noncitizens voted in 2008 and 2. 2 percent of noncitizens voted in 2010.” However, that study drew heavy criticism from other scholars, who saw weaknesses in the authors’ methods and the survey they used. ”In addition, one of the authors of that heavily criticized study himself later rejected attempts to use that study to prove fraud. ” ’On the right there has been a tendency to misread our results as proof of massive voter fraud, which we don’t think they are,’ wrote Old Dominion University political science professor Jesse Richman in a blog post. ”In another post, he further pointed out that even if one did extrapolate from his study, it does not imply that illegal votes would have affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, because it simply was not a close election. Though Trump won the electoral vote, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. ”Miller also cited a 2012 Pew Charitable Trusts report on the state of states’ voting systems. And that report did reveal some troubling statistics. For example, it found that 2. 8 million people are registered to vote in more than one state and that 24 million registration records ”are estimated to be inaccurate or no longer valid.” ”That means voting systems could definitely be modernized in some ways. ”However, that is not at all evidence of fraudulent voting, as the study’s main author pointed out on Twitter.” You can read a more   analysis of both the Monkey Cage post and the Pew survey here."
"President Trump played golf this weekend, but he wanted to make it clear that he was not just kicking back and relaxing. ”The President enjoyed hosting Prime Minister Abe on the golf course today, which was both relaxing and productive,” the White House said in a statement. ”They had great conversations on a wide range of subjects.” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe joined Trump at his    Club in Palm Beach, Fla. for the weekend, and the two played a round with South African golfer Ernie Els at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla. on Saturday. The press was not allowed to cover Trump’s outing, though The Washington Post obtained some cellphone video of the president appearing to tee off on Saturday. It’s important for Trump to let it be known that his golf outing is a working golf outing, lest he be charged with hypocrisy. Tee times have been a source of partisan attacks on presidents in recent years. Trump himself was a vocal critic of the amount of time President Barack Obama played golf, falsely suggesting in 2015 that Obama played 250 rounds in one year. Politifact noted that the figure was Obama’s golf record over seven years. ”I don’t have time for that. I love golf, I think it’s one of the greats, but I don’t have time,’ Trump said at the time. Throughout Obama’s term, Trump would tweet often when his predecessor was out on the course, which Obama was fairly regularly on weekends and while away from Washington on vacation  —   as Trump critics were quick to point out this weekend. Obama spoke of using sports for relaxation in 2014. ”When I need to relax and clear my head, I turn to sports. Whether it’s a   basketball game  —   and I’m much slower than I was just last week  —   or more sedate pastimes like golf,” Obama said. Obama’s golf habit was once defended by President George W. Bush, who faced his own criticism over playing golf during wartime. Bush told the Golf Channel in 2013 that it was ”good” for Obama to play golf. ”I know the pressures of the job, and to be able to get outside and play golf with some of your pals is important for the president. It does give you an outlet,” Bush said. President Bush stopped playing golf altogether during the first year of the Iraq War, though Bush’s claim of exactly when he stopped playing was later questioned. ”I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the    playing golf,” Bush explained to Politico in 2008. Bush said he decided to stop playing golf after word of a particularly devastating bombing in Baghdad that claimed the life of a senior U. N. official came to him on a Texas golf course in August 2003, though his last recorded round as president was two months later. As for Trump, he’s golfing sooner into his term than either of his two immediate predecessors  —   though neither owned their own golf resorts, to be fair. Politico recounted recently that Obama didn’t golf until four months into his presidency and Bush waited more than five months. Trump spent several hours at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. last weekend, though the White House declined to say whether he was actually playing golf. Following his outing with Abe on Saturday, Trump went to Trump International on Sunday. But the White House took care to put out a schedule of meetings that the president was taking, to ensure that no one was under the impression he had time for 18 more holes."
"Saturday Night Live got political again this week with several sketches lampooning members of the Trump administration, featuring Melissa McCarthy and Alec Baldwin reprising their roles as White House press secretary Sean Spicer and Donald Trump, respectively. After her    debut as Spicer last Saturday, McCarthy delivered a performance that arguably beat the original. And Alec Baldwin returned for hosting duties  —   his record 17th time, more than anyone else in the   history of the sketch comedy staple. In the show’s cold open, which you can watch in the video above, the SNL producers answered the prayers of McCarthy fans. Setting the scene at a White House press briefing, ”Spicey” was back at the presidential podium. ”I’m calm now and I will remain calm,” Spicer says. ”This is a new Spicey!” McCarthy’s Spicer pulls out a gigantic piece of gum, unwraps it, rolls it up and uses both hands to stuff it into his mouth, laboriously chewing. When asked by a reporter about President Trump’s plans now that an appeals court has put his travel ban on hold, Spicer dismisses the question, soon afterward saying, ”Don’t eff with me, Glenn!” to the New York Times’ Glenn Thrush (Bobby Moynihan). In a dig at what some Trump critics call an underlying racism behind some policies, Spicer pulls out dolls to demonstrate how ”extreme vetting” of refugees and travelers would work. Showing a Barbie, symbolic of a ”nice American girl,” Spicer says, ”We know she’s OK because she’s blonde.” Then out comes Moana, a doll of one of Disney’s latest characters, a teenage Polynesian girl with noticeably darker skin than the Barbie doll. ”Uh oh,” says McCarthy’s Spicer, ”slow your roll, honey.” The TSA doll pats Moana down. ”And then we’re going to read her emails and if we don’t like the answers  —   which we won’t  —   boom, Guantanamo Bay!” Spicer lists the terrorist attacks that the media ”never even write about,” including ”the Bowling Green massacre  —   OK not the Kellyanne one, the real one! . .. The slaughter at Fraggle Rock!” McCarthy’s Spicer objects to a reporter questioning his statistics after he comments on the murder rate in Chicago, saying, ”Eighty percent of the people in Chicago have been murdered.” Spicer pulls out a leaf blower to blast at a reporter. Before making a getaway on a motorized podium, he remarks, ”That was me just blowing away their dishonesty.” Baldwin’s return to hosting, The New York audience greeted host Alec Baldwin with resounding fanfare as he returned to center stage for his monologue. In his opening comments, the    actor took cast member Pete Davidson on a trip down memory lane as the show flashed back to April 21, 1990, for his very first time as host. ”I can’t believe that’s you, I mean you were so handsome,” Davidson says. ”You should have been in movies.” ”I’ve been in movies,” countered Baldwin, adding that he has a new one coming out. ”That’s animation so they can’t see you, very smart,” Davidson says. Baldwin even reflected on the classic NPR parody, ”The Delicious Dish,” where he introduced his character Pete’s ”Schweddy balls” to the NPR ladies. In the next sketch to take a dig at the Trump administration, Kate McKinnon, who seems to be playing everyone these days, portrayed Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway in a dark Fatal   presentation. In a sketch, McKinnon’s Conway is a psychotic stalker, showing up in the home of CNN anchor Jake Tapper (Beck Bennett) clad in lingerie and threatening him with a knife in order to be back on TV again. CNN reportedly declined to have Conway as a guest over concerns of her ”credibility.” Putin, Sessions mocked as well, The regular ”Weekend Update” news segment, hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che, started with a barrage of jokes about the Trump administration’s controversies of the week. In one barb, Colin Jost says that the country has sworn in ”our new Confederate general  —   sorry, attorney general,” in Jeff Sessions. In a 1986 letter that gained new attention thanks to Sen. Elizabeth Warren last week, Coretta Scott King said Sessions used ”the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.” During ”Weekend Update,” Kate McKinnon was back  —   yes, again  —   as Elizabeth Warren. Around 12:30 a. m. Baldwin finally reprised his Donald Trump character on a sketch of The People’s Court. It was Trump against three federal judges who ruled against him over the travel ban. ”I want the ban reinstated, also I want $725!” he says. When time comes to call a character witness, Donald Trump Jr. begins to stand, only for a shirtless Vladimir Putin (Beck Bennett) to burst through the door. ”He’s an amazing person, he knows me better than anymore,” Putin says of Trump. The final Trump reference was a video featuring Leslie Jones, an   woman, trying her skills impersonating Donald Trump, only for show head Lorne Michaels to tell her it’s a  . Thanks in part to the show’s skewering of Trump, NBC says SNL is getting an average of 7. 4 million viewers for each episode, and reaching the show’s biggest audience in 22 years."
"Everyone loves a cheap eats list. A treasure map to $1 tacos! $4 banh mi! $6 pad Thai! More often than not, the Xs that mark the cheap spots are in the city’s immigrant enclaves. Indeed, food media is never so diverse as when it runs these lists, its pages fill with names of restaurateurs and chefs of color. These lists infuriate me. Before I became a restaurant owner, I spent my childhood in my relatives’ pho restaurants. Because of that, I have deep compassion for and understanding of the pressures facing immigrant restaurateurs. I watched my aunts and uncles work   days, only to charge   prices for their food. And I also witnessed the grueling hours that their employees put in, also at   wages. It is a cruel reality that immigrant enterprise is powered by the cheap labor of fellow immigrants. Restaurant workers are already among the lowest paid workers in America. Many   workers rely on public assistance to make ends meet. Often enough, restaurant workers could not afford to eat at the restaurants where they work. And at the bottom of this system are the employees of the restaurants on these cheap eats list. American enterprise has long been a gateway to the American dream for many immigrants. But much of it was also built on exploited labor. Enslaved   built Southern plantations. Chinese immigrant workers built the railroads. Latino migrant farm workers are the backbone that turned California into America’s agricultural powerhouse. This view of people of color as sources of ”cheap” labor bleeds into our restaurant culture: Immigrant food is often expected to be cheap, because, implicitly, the labor that produces it is expected to be cheap, because that labor has historically been cheap. And so pulling together a ”cheap eats” list rather than, say, an ”affordable eats” list both invokes that history and reinforces it by prioritizing price at the expense of labor. At my restaurant, an appetizer of spring rolls is $7. A chicken banh mi with   mayo and a side of fries or slaw is $12. A chicken pho is $11. I use sustainably grown chickens the vegetables are from the farmers market. My staff are paid well over minimum wage. Generally, though, my prices are compared not to other restaurants that use sustainable ingredients and work towards paying their workers a living wage, but to Vietnamese restaurants where bowls of pho run $7, banh mis are $3 (or you can buy two and get one free). And because of that focus on price above all else, I’ve been criticized for being too expensive. I’ve been told flatly by Yelpers, customers and food reviewers that my restaurant is too expensive ”for Vietnamese food.” I’m fully aware of the irony here: My family and I came to the U. S. as refugees in the 1970s and ’80s. My relatives, like so many immigrant entrepreneurs, did what they had to do with their restaurant to survive and created a business model that worked for their time. That business model became the dominant model. It continues to be the dominant model. That business model is the one the ultimately traps the entrepreneur who would like to break out of this mold. I have worked hard to combat the underlying racism that drives so much of the ”celebration” of ”cheap eats,” and I believe that consumers and food media can play a large part in this fight. We need to rethink the very idea behind cheap eats lists. We need to recognize that the narratives we tell ourselves about immigrant resourcefulness and tenacity also makes us willfully blind to the human cost that makes the $3 banh mi possible. These lists are part of a broader restaurant culture that devalues labor and ignores the consequences of that devaluation. And these lists make it difficult for immigrant businesses  —   and I include my own here  —   to break out of the trope that equates communities of color with cheap food and cheap labor. I don’t see treasure in cheap eats. Restaurants where workers are paid fairly and the food respected? That’s the true treasure. Diep Tran is the chef and owner of Good Girl Dinette, a popular Los Angeles diner serving local, seasonal Vietnamese comfort food. This essay was crafted in response to a summit on racism and difference in food, staged at Rivendell Writers Colony by The Southern Foodways Alliance and Soul Summit.  "
"Prince’s music is a guide to this thing called life. Over the course of his impossibly fruitful career, the Minneapolis maestro fleshed out a philosophy grounded in the belief that humanity’s purpose is to realize the unity of body and spirit, through pleasure, relationships and music itself. It’s all laid out musically in his manifesto ”D. M. S. R.,” from 1999: ”Take a deeper breath and sing along with me,” Prince exhorts, ”Dance music sex romance!” In honor of Prince’s Warner Bros. catalog returning to Spotify and other streaming services Sunday, we’ve created four playlists to highlight the fundamentals of the Prince ideology. DANCE features some of his funkiest tracks, designed to move you on the dance floor. MUSIC highlights Prince the virtuoso, the great crafter of riffs and melodies and the experimentalist. SEX  —   that’s  . And ROMANCE shows the Purple One at his most heartfelt and dreamy: a lover who believed in a better world created one soft touch at a time. This is Prince, never 2 B 4gotten: the man who made music divine. Get ready to sweat with these very funky tracks. Godly guitar solos, fantastic falsetto, synth parts that redefined what popular music can do  —   it’s all here in this playlist of Prince’s most virtuosic moments. No one got nasty better than Prince. These tracks highlight his erotic inventiveness. Songs to make lovers swoon and smile  —   this selection highlights the Prince who believed in love above all else."
"It has been a week of heartbreak on New Zealand’s Farewell Spit, with an unexpectedly happy twist. In two separate mass strandings, more than 650 pilot whales beached themselves on the thin strip of land  —   and over 350 of those died there over the past few days. When volunteer rescuers left the beach for the night Saturday, hundreds of survivors from the second stranding remained ashore. Then something curious happened: When the people returned Sunday morning, almost all the surviving whales were gone. All but 17 had left the beach and returned to the waters of Golden Bay overnight. ”We had 240 whales strand yesterday in the afternoon and we were fearful we were going to end up with 240 dead whales this morning,” Herb Christophers, a spokesman for New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, told Reuters. ”But they   in other words the tide came in and they were able to float off and swim out to sea.” At high tide Sunday, volunteers managed to send the remaining 17 survivors back to sea. Project Jonah, a marine conservation group helping to lead rescue efforts, said the 17 whales had rejoined the large pod of more than 200 whales about a mile offshore. It was a remarkable reversal of fortune. On Saturday, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation had put out an urgent call for help, but by Sunday, Project Jonah announced that there would be no more need for volunteers. The day’s good news offers a happy end to a story that at times seemed unrelentingly tragic. The initial stranding, discovered earlier in the week, had left more than 400 pilot whales on Farewell Spit, a skinny beach that arcs for miles from New Zealand’s South Island into the sea. Though the area is notorious for whale strandings, few people had seen one of this scope before it was the third largest on record in the country. Experts posit a range of reasons for why mass strandings like these happen, from disorientation caused by sonar blasts and odd land masses to a desire to protect injured members of the pod. But no precise cause is known. At any rate, hours after volunteers had sent some 100 of the initial survivors back to sea Saturday, a separate large pod of another 200 whales came ashore. It was a tough sight for many of the volunteers. ”People seem to have an emotional attachment to marine mammals,” Christophers told The Associated Press. ”They’ve been singing songs to them, giving them specific names, treating them as kindred spirits.” After Sunday’s success, many of the volunteers gathered to sing a waiata, or a traditional Māori folk song, in honor of the newly departed whales. The work is not over, however. Even after whales have escaped their stranding, they occasionally will return to beach themselves again unless prevented. And then there is the issue of the hundreds of whales that died on shore earlier in the week. Andrew Lamason, another spokesman for the DOC, told the AP they may tether the corpses to stakes in the shallow water to prevent them from floating into bays near people’s homes."
"Valentine’s Day is a time to celebrate romance and love and   fealty. But the origins of this festival of candy and cupids are actually dark, bloody  —   and a bit muddled. Though no one has pinpointed the exact origin of the holiday, one good place to start is ancient Rome, where men hit on women by, well, hitting them. Those Wild And Crazy Romans, From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain. The Roman romantics ”were drunk. They were naked,” says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile. The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival  —   or longer, if the match was right. The ancient Romans may also be responsible for the name of our modern day of love. Emperor Claudius II executed two men  —   both named Valentine  —   on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A. D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day. Later, Pope Gelasius I muddled things in the 5th century by combining St. Valentine’s Day with Lupercalia to expel the pagan rituals. But the festival was more of a theatrical interpretation of what it had once been. Lenski adds, ”It was a little more of a drunken revel, but the Christians put clothes back on it. That didn’t stop it from being a day of fertility and love.” Around the same time, the Normans celebrated Galatin’s Day. Galatin meant ”lover of women.” That was likely confused with St. Valentine’s Day at some point, in part because they sound alike. Shakespeare In Love, As the years went on, the holiday grew sweeter. Chaucer and Shakespeare romanticized it in their work, and it gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe. Handmade paper cards became the    in the Middle Ages. Eventually, the tradition made its way to the New World. The industrial revolution ushered in   cards in the 19th century. And in 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Mo. began mass producing valentines. February has not been the same since. Today, the holiday is big business: According to market research firm IBIS World, Valentine’s Day sales reached $17. 6 billion last year this year’s sales are expected to total $18. 6 billion. But that commercialization has spoiled the day for many. Helen Fisher, a sociologist at Rutgers University, says we have only ourselves to blame. ”This isn’t a command performance,” she says. ”If people didn’t want to buy Hallmark cards, they would not be bought, and Hallmark would go out of business.” And so the celebration of Valentine’s Day goes on, in varied ways. Many will break the bank buying jewelry and flowers for their beloveds. Others will celebrate in a SAD (that’s Single Awareness Day) way, dining alone and binging on   chocolates. A few may even be spending this day the same way the early Romans did. But let’s not go there."
"Red roses are a unique product  —   a commodity worth double the price for a very short,   period: Valentine’s Day. To cash in on this demand, flower growers have to figure out how to make millions of roses bloom exactly the right amount, at exactly the right moment, in the middle of February  —   get them from farms in Africa and South America to your doorstep. On today’s show: the logistical miracles and wild risks behind getting red roses to your Valentine. Music: Mary J. Blige’s ”Roses.” Find us:       Tumblr."
"Early one morning, the week before Betsy DeVos’ confirmation as education secretary,    Allison Kruk was dropping her boyfriend off at the Philadelphia airport when she decided to swing by the office of her U. S. senator and give him a piece of her mind. Kruk was a Hillary Clinton supporter, and the nomination of DeVos ”just felt like a low blow,” she says. ”I had been calling and emailing and writing letters about how I thought she was incredibly incompetent, regardless of your position on school choice.” Kruk spent 2   hours in the office of Sen. Pat Toomey,  . before she was finally escorted out by security, but not without an official audience scheduled on the Monday before the vote. Over the weekend, she collected 11, 000 signatures on a petition from educators all over the state, plus letters from parents and teachers, all of which she  . When Toomey nevertheless cast his vote for DeVos, Kruk’s reaction was immediate: She decided to run for school board. By all accounts, the election has sparked a surge of political interest among young Democrats and progressives. Similar upwellings have happened after other presidential campaigns, such as the Tea Party movement’s surge after Barack Obama’s election in 2008. ”Since Betsy DeVos’ confirmation, we’ve had a flood of people come and say specifically, ’I want to run for school board to protect the schools in my hometown,’ ” says Amanda Litman,   of Run for Something, a newly launched progressive political action committee dedicated to drafting Millennials for   races from state legislatures on down. Run for Something offers advice, introductions and, for some candidates, help with fundraising. NPR Ed spoke with four young   school board candidates from around the country. All say they were influenced by the national energy around politics and education, but each says there was a more traditional motivation: to help kids in their communities. 1. The Princeton grad, Newtown Township, Pa. Allison Kruk is a financial journalist who moved to Newtown Township, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, after college. She and her boyfriend have no children, but she interned in schools and tutored in New Jersey prisons throughout college. It wasn’t until she spent that weekend collecting letters from people concerned about problems that touch public schools, from gun violence to worries about immigration, that she thought of herself as someone who could make a difference through politics. ”I don’t just want to sign an online petition or write a post on Twitter or Facebook,” says Kruk. ”I want to be on the ground. Involved on the local level.” She notes that Democrats didn’t even put up a nominee in Newtown Township’s 2015 school board elections. ”That’s something that Democrats and progressives more generally are realizing is essential to build a political movement.” 2. The son of survivors, Glendale, Calif. Shant Sahakian, 31, grew up in Los Angeles County in one of the largest Armenian communities in the United States. Glendale is proud of its diversity, which also includes Hispanics,   Koreans and Filipinos. And it’s proud of its public schools, which are separate from the LA Unified School District. Sahakian’s first son was born one day before the presidential election last fall. ”We came home on Election Day, I ran over to the polls, voted, and I was holding my son as I was watching the results thinking, ’What have I done? What am I bringing you into?’ ” The election solidified his decision to ”graduate to a new level of public service” by running for school board. Sahakian founded a software company at the age of 14 that he still runs today. His platform centers on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) career pathways expanding   immersion and requiring financial literacy. ”With California being so underfunded, what we’re missing is a vision of where public education needs to go,” he says. ”I’m hoping my technology experience and business background will help bring direction so it’s truly a 21st century education.” Having DeVos as education secretary troubles Sahakian, but also increases his resolve. ”It’s a little bit concerning that she’s going in with so little experience,” he says. ”I’m worried about what changes are going to come down the pike that we at the local level have to figure out how to manage to and continue to give a solid public education.” 3. The mental health advocate, Jefferson City, Mo. When they moved to Jefferson City, Victoria Sterling, 32, and her fiance were ”excited about putting down roots,” she says, and eventually adopting a child. But the people she met advised her to choose private schools. ”I saw that there was a lack of trust in the school system,” she says. ”People are concerned about whether taxpayer dollars are being used wisely.” Sterling declared her candidacy for school board on Jan. 3. For her, she says, it wasn’t DeVos or national politics, but local issues that inspired her. Her platform is transparency: She wants to   all school board meetings to the public. And she plans to apply the skills from her day job, as an abuse and neglect investigator for the state’s department of mental health, to investigate and correct any mismanagement. Jefferson City voted   for Trump the school board election is nonpartisan, and Sterling prefers not to disclose her political affiliation. ”National politics is having a divisive effect on education issues,” she notes. She adds that, in talking with local voters, even those who advocate choice or send their own children to the many parochial schools, she is able to make the case that strong public schools are important: ”Public education builds our future workforce, and the school scores are what people look at when they decide whether to live here.” 4. The second generation, Norristown, Pa. Shae Ashe just turned 27. He was born and raised in this borough northwest of Philadelphia, and his mother served on the school board for a dozen years. With many residents of the diverse district renting their homes, he says, the local property tax base is slight. Plus, hundreds of local students attend charter schools up to 10 miles outside the district, which further cuts into the funding for those who remain. ”A lot of people here in Norristown understand that, with the way we are struggling with funding, that we’re one of the districts that’s going to feel an immediate impact of DeVos and her push for vouchers and more charter schools,” he says. Ashe says he’s the kind of born political animal who does   drives for fun on the weekends. He also started a local nonprofit to run community cleanup projects. He says that, since the election, a couple of his friends have gotten interested in running for office, too. ”They are supportive and inspired. I tell people, you need to have more involvement in your local government, no matter your age. Whatever Trump may do is one thing, but what happens on the local level is affecting your daily life.”"
"South Korean defense officials and the U. S. Strategic Command say North Korea   a ”  or  ” ballistic missile early Sunday morning local time, which flew eastward for about 300 miles from the west coast of North Korea, over the peninsula and landed in the Sea of Japan. This marks the first missile test by the Kim Jong Un regime since October, and the first during the new Donald Trump presidency. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, appearing in a hastily arranged press conference with Trump following the test, said the move was ”absolutely intolerable” and called on North Korea to fully comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions, which forbid Pyongyang from these types of tests. ”The United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent,” Trump said, and took no questions. The U. N. resolution  —   and repeated sanctions  —   have failed to curb the Kim regime, which   missiles more than 20 times last year, and more than 50 since Kim Jong Un became leader five years ago. South Korea convened an emergency national security meeting Sunday morning in response to the launch. South Korea’s Acting President Hwang   said Seoul will work with the international community ”to punish [the North] accordingly.” ”North Korea’s repeated provocations show the Kim Jong Un regime’s nature of irrationality, maniacally obsessed in its nuclear and missile development,” the South’s foreign ministry said in a statement. While the missile tested Sunday did not have the range to reach farther than Guam, North Korea has been racing ahead in developing its nuclear program. North Korea watchers have been on alert for a possible intercontinental ballistic missile test. An ICBM, as it’s known, could be loaded with a nuclear warhead and, if successful, could reach the continental United States. As NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel noted last month: ”Independent arms control experts agree that North Korea is moving rapidly to develop an ICBM. And many suspect it will test a missile capable of reaching the continental U. S. later this year. ”They are very far along in their ICBM testing project,” says Melissa Hanham, an East Asia researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. ”Probably we will see that they will do a flight test in 2017.” The test comes as the nascent Trump administration’s policy on North Korea remains unclear. Trump’s team is said to be undergoing a    review of existing U. S. policy on Pyongyang, which President Barack Obama reportedly told Trump during the transition should be the top foreign policy priority on the table for the U. S. Haeryun Kang contributed to this post."
"Remember when 1992 was the Year of the Woman? Yeah, that was a thing, although   Sen. Barbara Mikulski shrugged it off at the time, saying, ”Calling 1992 the Year of the Woman makes it sound like the Year of the Caribou or the Year of the Asparagus. We’re not a fad, a fancy, or a year.” With the women’s march prompting some to ask whether 2017 will be the ”next year of the woman,” Monday’s the day to celebrate the best unofficial holiday made just for women: Galentine’s Day. What’s Galentine’s Day, you ask? It’s only the greatest gift we’ve ever gotten from Leslie Knope, the unfailingly earnest bureaucrat at the helm of the NBC series Parks and Recreation, describing it thus during Season 2: ”Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it,  . Ladies celebrating ladies. It’s like Lilith Fair, minus the angst. Plus frittatas.” Knope may have highlighted frittatas, but any fan of the show knows that waffles are her true love, making waffles our top choice to anchor any Galentine’s Day meal. It also can’t be a coincidence that a Swedish holiday known as Våffeldagen (Waffle Day) just happens to fall on Vårfrudagen (Our Lady’s Day)  —   clearly, women and waffles were meant to be celebrated together. Text your gal pals now and get ready for the perfect Galentine’s Day celebration Monday night. Here’s how. As Knope would say, ”I am a goddess, a glorious female warrior.” Or, alternatively, ”Uteruses before duderuses. Ovaries before brovaries.” Until Galentine’s Day is finally declared a national holiday, let’s just call this the Year of the Waffle. Kristen Hartke is a food writer based in Washington, D. C."
"We planned to have Lena Dunham, creator and star of HBO’s Girls, as our Not My Job guest this week, but a snowstorm kept her from joining us at the last minute, so we quickly had to find someone without Thursday evening plans. Late Show host Stephen Colbert very graciously jumped in to play our game, but we didn’t have time to write new questions for him, so we’ll just ask him all the questions we planned to ask Dunham. He’ll take a quiz called ”Let’s hug it out, bro!” Three questions about the   show Entourage for the creator of Girls . .. no wait . .. for comedian Stephen Colbert . .. whatever. Click the audio link above to see how he does."
"”The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.” This motto of the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers during World War II neatly sums up a particularly American way of looking at hard work. No matter what the challenge, Americans have always had a penchant for just rolling up the sleeves and digging in. The idea goes something like this: ”It’s my job, no one else’s. Now, let me get on with it.” I’ve have been thinking a lot about Americans and our jobs this week, since the announcement of the March for Science was made. If you haven’t yet heard the news, what started as a suggestion on Reddit a couple of weeks ago quickly blossomed into a   movement for a nationwide march in support of science. The event is scheduled to take place on April 22. But there is a lot to unpack here. A recent   by coastal ecologist Robert Young argued that the march was a bad idea. He cautioned: ”Trying to recreate the pointedly political Women’s March will serve only to reinforce the narrative . .. that scientists are an interest group [who] politicize their data, research and findings for their own ends.” I worry that Young may be right. The last thing science needs right now is to let itself get pinned as supporting one political position over another. The whole point of science is that evidence should win over everything, regardless of the opinions you walked in the door with. But as anyone reading this blog over the last seven years knows, we’ve been watching with alarm as a new force has emerged in the relation between science and politics: denial. We have often discussed how, after World War II, politicians of all parties understood that science was vital to the national good. Science provided input on policy decisions  —   and that was as far as it should go. If you, as a politician, didn’t like that input, you could talk values or economics or any of the many other   things that went into  . What you did not do, however, was call the science a hoax. You didn’t do that because it would, eventually, undermine the whole scientific enterprise that the nation needs so badly. Not anymore. American scientists now find themselves in a strange new world of denial, fake news and alternative facts. That new reality is what got me thinking about the March for Science and how we Americans feel about doing our jobs. See, the thing about scientists is that we love what we do. Doing science is an honor. It’s a privilege. Most of all, it’s a solemn responsibility that we take very, very seriously. And what is it that we do? Well, you could fill a few textbooks with an answer to that question. But, for me, it can be distilled down to three lines: Find the evidence, that lets everyone see, how the world works. That’s it in a poetic nutshell. Our job is to understand how things work so we can make things better  —   so we can make America better. Our job is to do the science that lets Americans stay healthy, lets our prosperity grow and keeps the nation secure. Oh, and it’s also our job to blow America’s collective mind every now and then with amazing stuff like landing a robot on Mars. And, really, we just want to do our jobs. It’s a measure of how bad things have gotten that there is talk of this March for Science at all. Do we really want to have to book a room at some hotel for the march? No, we’d really rather spend all night (we love  ) figuring out what’s wrong with that vacuum pump on the  . Do we really want to spend a day walking around holding up a sign that says ”Science Is Our Children’s Future”? Well, we certainly want people to understand how deeply that’s true. But given a choice, we’d rather get the new satellite data loaded up on the computer so we can start doing some spectral analysis. The point is simple. Doing a job that is of value to your community and your nation is what makes us great as nation. That’s what Americans have always wanted to do. That’s all we American scientists want to do, all day and everyday (which is kind of frustrating for our spouses). We just want to do our jobs and we want to do them as best we can. That is why I will be marching  —   even though I’d much rather spend the day doing science, doing my job. There is a lot to discuss about the March for Science and what it means. But the fact that the nation has gotten to this point at all says a lot about what has gone wrong  —   and just how wrong it has gotten. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"Updated at 9:59 a. m. ET Feb. 14, President Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned late Monday night amid allegations he inappropriately talked about U. S. sanctions with a Russian official, and later allegedly misled     Pence about the conversations. Flynn spoke with the Russian ambassador in December, before Trump was inaugurated. Flynn issued a statement through the White House Monday evening that said he had made numerous phone calls with foreign officials to facilitate the transition, and made a mistake in what he told Pence: ”Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the Vice President Elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology.” Trump has named an acting national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Joseph Kellogg. Almost immediately upon Flynn’s resignation, names began to surface of potential replacements. The leading contender is retired Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, a former U. S. Navy SEAL who once worked for the National Security Council and now works as an executive for Lockheed Martin. Other contenders are Kellogg, who has been temporarily elevated from the position of chief of staff in the National Security Council and who is vying to keep the top security spot permanently. Former CIA Director and retired Gen. David Petraeus is also in the mix. Petraeus fell from grace during the Obama administration after he was accused of sharing classified information with a woman who was his biographer and with whom he was also having an extramarital affair. In the wake of Flynn’s exit from the new administration, lawmakers in Russia sought to defend him and said his absence from the White House would damage relations with the Kremlin, the Washington Post reported early Tuesday. Flynn’s   resignation capped a confusing evening in which the White House sent mixed signals about the embattled presidential adviser’s fate. White House press secretary Sean Spicer had said the White House was ”evaluating the situation” when it comes to Flynn. But, just an hour earlier, a senior Trump adviser, Kellyanne Conway, said on MSNBC that the president continued to have ”full confidence” in Flynn. Notably, however, Trump declined to express that same sentiment. When asked by White House reporters in a scrum in the West Wing if he had ”full confidence” in Flynn, Trump deferred to a statement to come. (Trump did, however, express full confidence in Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. ”Reince is doing a great job,” Trump said. ”Not a good job. A great job. ”) ”Look at the statement, look at the statement,” Trump said. Spicer was asked if he had the statement and read it: ”The president is evaluating the situation. He’s speaking to the vice president  —   to Vice President Pence, relative to the conversation the vice president had with Gen. Flynn and also speaking to various other people about what he considers the single most important subject there is, our national security.” The comments and confusion come after days of speculation that Flynn could be on the outs given that he may have lied to or misled Mike Pence when Pence was vice  . Flynn has denied that he talked to the Russian ambassador about sanctions President Obama leveled back in December. Pence went on Sunday shows and echoed what Flynn told him. But Flynn backed away from the comments. Through a spokesman, he told the Washington Post ”that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.” Spicer told NPR a month ago that it was ”doubtful” Flynn and the Russian ambassador talked about the sanctions, because that’s what Flynn told him. But he left open the possibility that they could have talked about the sanctions. So it’s possible that Flynn may have misled both the incoming vice president and press secretary about the extent of his discussions with the Russian ambassador. Flynn has also already been the subject of accusations of mismanagement at the National Security Council. The New York Times reported over the weekend on the NSC, painting a ”chaotic” scene: ”Officials said that the absence of an orderly flow of council documents, ultimately the responsibility of Mr. Flynn, explained why [Secretary of Defense James] Mattis and Mike Pompeo, the director of the C. I. A. never saw a number of Mr. Trump’s executive orders before they were issued. One order had to be amended after it was made public, to reassure Mr. Pompeo that he had a regular seat on the council. ”White House officials say that was a blunder, and that the process of reviewing executive orders has been straightened out by Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff.” With Flynn now gone, it remains to be seen whether and how the Trump administration can bring some order to the NSC  —   and what the broader implications of the early staff shakeup may be both politically and in terms of national security. NPR’s Arnie Seipel contributed to this post."
"President Trump was elected to upend Washington, but in the first few weeks, there have been stumbles and missteps. During the campaign, Trump shook up his staff more than once, and some allies are advising him to do the same now."
"Updated at 6:25 p. m. ET, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 680 people in raids across the U. S. last week, approximately   of whom had prior criminal convictions, according to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. The convictions were for offenses ”including, but not limited to, homicide, aggravated sexual abuse, sexual assault of a minor, lewd and lascivious acts with a child, indecent liberties with a minor, drug trafficking, battery, assault, DUI and weapons charges.” The Department of Homeland Security did not specify how many of the convictions were for the most serious crimes, like homicide and sexual assault in regional fact sheets, ICE provided more detailed information on only 15 arrested individuals. It’s also unclear whether the 75 percent statistic includes more minor crimes than the examples listed. The raids prompted an outcry from immigrant rights advocates, concerned about the scale and synchronization of the raids  —   which they described as unusual, despite ICE’s characterizations of the operations as ”routine”  —   and by shifts in practice compared with previous ICE operations. For instance, last week’s ICE arrests included ”collateral damage,” or people who were picked up despite not being targeted in the operations  —   because, for example, they were in the same place as a person who was targeted, and did not have documentation. Individuals swept up in this way are presumably among the quarter of those arrested that Kelly did not identify as having a criminal conviction. Immigration activists had also expressed concern over what kinds of crimes could lead a person to be a target for deportation. Kelly’s statement notes that some of the people arrested had convictions for serious crimes such as homicide and sexual assault, but it’s not clear how many of the arrests were for those crimes and how many for crimes such as drunken driving. President Trump’s executive order on the deportation of ”criminal aliens” allows a person to be targeted for deportation over any crime. It’s unclear from Kelly’s statement whether any   crimes like immigration offenses are included in the 75 percent tally. Joseph Villela, the director of policy at the immigrant rights group CHIRLA, told NPR on Sunday night that his organization had reports of people being arrested in the raids who would not have been prioritized for deportation before. ”There were individuals that had, first, no criminal conviction  —   second, maybe a minor conviction  —   but third, some of them had a previous deportation order and that was what made them a priority,” he said. ”This is a shift that reflected [President Trump’s] executive order. ”’ Villela said there was a lack of transparency from ICE officials about how many people were affected by the raids, and that at one point CHIRLA’s legal team received false information about a client’s whereabouts. He described a ”deficit of trust” between advocacy groups and the enforcement agency. ”Forgive us for not believing 100 percent of what [ICE] are saying when in the field . .. they were not forthcoming in regards to the real numbers of individuals that were affected,” he said. While Trump has characterized the raids as fulfilling a campaign pledge to deport ”criminals” in the country illegally, immigration officials have maintained that the series of actions were just business as usual  —   in some cases, saying the operations were planned months in advance. That discrepancy continued on Monday. During a joint news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump praised Kelly and said the raids were fulfilling a campaign promise. Meanwhile, Kelly characterized the raids as ”consistent with the routine, targeted arrests carried out by ICE’s Fugitive Operations teams on a daily basis.” The Trump administration has also said that in deporting people in the country illegally, the focus is on threats to ”national security and public safety.” The statement from Kelly characterized recent arrests using slightly different terms. The 680 individuals arrested ”pose a threat to public safety, border security or the integrity of our nation’s immigration system,” he wrote."
"Groups that resettle refugees in the United States are facing uncertainty, disarray and possible deep budget cuts as a result of President Trump’s executive order on immigration, even after a California appeals court has temporarily halted enforcement. Here’s why: The federal appeals court that blocked the president’s travel ban on people from seven   nations did not directly rule out two provisions in the executive order. Refugee resettlement agencies are scrambling to figure out what they will do if those provisions survive. The 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges did not address perhaps the most sweeping provision in the Trump order  —   the deep cuts in the numbers of refugees allowed to come to the U. S. President Trump slashed the refugee quota for fiscal year 2017 by more than half, to 50, 000. In addition, the court did not rule on a provision that would make it easier for states and cities to veto refugee placements. ”You don’t need to have a moratorium to slow the refugee resettlement program to the point where it dries up and withers on the vine,” says Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch’s refugee program. In the short term, refugee advocates have hailed the court ruling, which halted the Trump administration’s   pause in the refugee program and indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. More than 2, 000 refugees, already vetted and approved for travel, have arrived since the ruling was handed down on Feb. 9. But over the weekend, according to refugee advocates who shared the official guidance with NPR, the State Department alerted resettlement agencies that new arrivals will end on March 3. ”What you are going to have is a culture of saying no,” warns Frelick. On the campaign trail, the president vilified refugees as agents for terrorism, but ”there’s no evidence actually to support that whatsoever,” Frelick says. For decades, the refugee resettlement program has been a partnership between the State Department and nine private, voluntary agencies all but two are   groups. Together, they form a nationwide bureaucracy for resettlement. The State Department must first clear refugees for arrival. Then the voluntary agencies coordinate    resettlement, meeting once a week to figure out which group will assist specific individuals or families, and where the refugees are likely to thrive. Placement depends in part on finding an existing immigrant community from the same country and people who share a refugee’s cultural background, religion and language. There is extensive coordination with state and local officials, something required by federal law, says Saba Berhane, program director at the U. S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, one of the nine agencies. ”We are required to consult quarterly,” she says. The agencies also work with local officials so refugees can apply for social services. Denise Lamourex, the state refugee coordinator for Vermont  —   which has resettled more than 6, 000 newcomers over 25 years through the federal program  —   told NPR via email that she meets often with ”the voluntary agencies and the ethnic   organizations to coordinate services.” Now, that coordination is in disarray. Berhane says the sheer numbers involved are daunting. ”Once we start talking about adjusting the number from 110, 000 to 50, 000, it’s not as simple as saying, ’Let’s just switch a few numbers on a spreadsheet and call it a day,’” she says. Every day that passes without her group knowing what is happening, she says, increases the challenges that will emerge when refugees do arrive. The reduced arrival number will mean all the voluntary agencies will have to conduct a reassessment, says Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of the Jewish   HIAS, another of the nine voluntary agencies. ”We staff up for specific populations,” he explains. ”Syrians need Arabic speakers, Congolese need French speakers. It takes different cultural skills. It’s difficult to change gears quickly.” Despite a recent claim by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who said, ”There’s no information shared with the governor before a refugee is located in the state,” Hetfield insists there is constant discussion between state coordinators and refugee agencies. ”Any indication otherwise is false,” he says. Hetfield worries that giving governors the power to veto arrivals, one of the things Trump wants to do that the 9th Circuit ruling did not address, could unravel the resettlement program. Trump has directed the Homeland Security secretary to ”devise a proposal” to give state and local governments ”great involvement in the process of determining the placement of refugees in their jurisdictions.” Shifting the authority from the State Department to Homeland Security to place refugees in local communities ”would be a new precedent,” says Stephen   an immigration law professor at Cornell. ”Many states have sued, saying they should not be required to admit refugees, but those lawsuits so far have failed in federal court,” he says. In late 2015, after terrorist attacks in Paris, a majority of Republican governors vowed to block Syrian refugees from their states, but did not have the authority to stop the federal program. Vice President Mike Pence, then governor of Indiana, took his opposition a step further. Pence moved to block federal funds from the refugee program in Indiana. But a federal court barred the move. Late last year, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision ruling that Pence’s action constituted discrimination based on national origin. ”It would go against the federal role if states could say, ’Not in my backyard’ and have veto power,” says  . At the same time, resettlement offices may have to downsize. The funding the State Department allocates to refugee resettlement agencies is based on the number of refugees each organization resettles. ”We have people that are hired specifically as refugee case workers,” says Mark Hetfield. ”If no refugees are arriving and if we are not getting funding to employ them, then we have to let them go and we lose our infrastructure to resettle refugees. That’s a huge issue.”"
"Every year, several themes emerge in the videos submitted to the Tiny Desk Contest. There are the obvious, important ones: the vast amount of undiscovered talent in this country, the inventiveness with which you bring desks into your music and the clear joy that coming together around music brings us all. And then there are the animals. In this Contest, we’ve seen them in spades. So, we thought we’d honor them in a little supercut of some of our favorites. Watch the video above! Meanwhile, in other Tiny Desk Contest animal news, we’re glad to announce this week’s theme for our      vote: Pups Of The Tiny Desk Contest! This vote is separate from the Contest judging process, but it’s another way for you to enjoy some of the many great videos we received while we work on choosing the overall Contest winner. Read up on the nominees below, then head over to the Tiny Desk Contest site to cast a vote for your favorite dog of the Contest."
"President Trump says he is looking at ”tweaking” portions of the North American Free Trade Agreement that deal with trade between the U. S. and Canada. Trump spoke at a brief news conference after meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House on Monday. Trump said U. S.  trade is ”a much less severe situation” than trade with Mexico. Trudeau pointed out that Canada is the largest trading partner of 35 states in the U. S. and that trade between the two countries is responsible ”for millions of good paying jobs on both sides of the border.” The two leaders also addressed immigration, where their differences are far greater. Trump praised Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, whose department oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and which last week conducted what it termed ”targeted enforcement operations” that resulted in 680 arrests. Trump said he promised during the presidential campaign to ”get the criminals out, the drug lords, the gang members,” and said, ”We’re getting them out.” Trudeau said his country, which has accepted nearly 40, 000 refugees from Syria in the past year, ”has always taken our responsibility toward security very seriously and our allies including the United States understand this focus very well.” But, he said, ”the last thing Canadians expect is for me to come down and lecture another country on how they choose to govern themselves.” He said his role is to govern in a way that reflects Canadians’ approach ”and be a positive example in the world.” Trump also said North Korea, which announced it had launched a ballistic missile over the weekend was a ”big, big problem,” and that the U. S. ”will deal with that very strongly.” He did not elaborate. Neither of the two U. S. reporters called on during the press conference asked Trump about the launch."
"One of the sons of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky faces child sexual abuse charges in Centre County, Pa. NPR’s Jeff Brady reported that the charges against    Jeffrey Sandusky come more than four years after his father was convicted of child sexual abuse. ”Jeffrey Sandusky was charged with 14 counts that include child sexual abuse and child pornography. His adoptive father, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, was convicted in 2012 of abusing 10 boys,” Jeff reported. ”The elder Sandusky is serving a prison sentence of up to 60 years but maintains he is innocent.” Sandusky and his wife, Dottie, have six adopted children. One son, Matthew Sandusky, said in 2012 he had been abused by his father he testified against Sandusky and later told his story on Oprah. Dottie Sandusky and the couple’s other five children said in a statement following Matthew’s accusation that they never saw any indication of ”anything inappropriate.” A preliminary hearing in Jeffrey Sandusky’s case is scheduled for Feb. 22. Of the 14 charges against him, 12 allegedly occurred in 2013."
"Researchers have created mice that appear impervious to the lure of cocaine. Even after the genetically engineered animals were given the drug repeatedly, they did not appear to crave it the way typical mice do, a team reports in Nature Neuroscience. ”They didn’t keep going into the room where they received the cocaine and they seemed to be just as happy exploring all around the cage,” says Shernaz Bamji, a professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. ”Addiction is a form of learning,” Bamji says. And somehow, these mice never learned to associate the pleasurable feelings produced by cocaine with the place where they received the drug. The result was startling because the scientists thought these mice would be especially susceptible to addiction. ”We repeated the experiment several times to see if we had made a mistake,” Bamji says. The reason for the team’s surprise had to do with proteins that affect learning. The animals had been genetically engineered to produce high levels of proteins called cadherins in the brain’s ”reward circuit,” which plays an important role in addiction. And genetic studies have suggested that people with high levels of cadherins are more susceptible to drug addiction. Cadherins act a bit like glue, binding cells together. Usually this glue enhances learning by strengthening the connections, or synapses, between brain cells. The reward circuit is involved in both the sensation of pleasure triggered by addictive drugs, and the craving that propels addicts to seek out these drugs. So the researchers expected the mice with extra cadherins in the reward circuit to become instant addicts. ”We thought, hey, more glue, stronger synapses, more learning, more addiction,” Bamji says. ”But what we actually saw was the opposite.” A close look at the brains of the mice showed why. It turned out that too much glue was actually gumming up the synapses in the reward circuit so they couldn’t get stronger. As a result, the mice never learned to crave cocaine, even though it made them feel good. The finding may help explain why certain people are susceptible to addiction, says Bamji. ”Addiction is not just bad judgment, but really is more to do with our biology and our biochemistry,” she says. And the results also suggest that it may be possible someday to treat addiction by changing the way learning occurs in certain areas of the brain."
"The image that won the 2017 World Press Photo of the Year award was described by one jury member as the ”face of hatred.” It shows a shouting,   gunman standing in an art gallery in Turkey’s capital, one hand holding a weapon, the other pointing to the sky. On the ground next to him is the crumpled body of his victim, Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov. Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici, who happened to stop in at the gallery in Ankara on his way home from work on Dec. 19, 2016, was just a few feet away from the shooting and documented the harrowing event. ”I remember thinking: ’I might be killed or injured, but the Russian ambassador has been shot. This is very big news, so as a journalist it is my responsibility to stand and do my work,’ ” Ozbilici said in an interview with World Press Photo’s Witness magazine. ”Even if I was killed, there would still be photos.” Jury members made it clear there was a difficult debate over whether selecting the photo might send the wrong message. ”In the end we felt that the picture of the Year was an explosive image that really spoke to the hatred of our times,” jury member Mary Calvert said in a statement. ”Every time it came on the screen you almost had to move back because it’s such an explosive image and we really felt that it epitomizes the definition of what the World Press Photo of the Year is and means.” For juror João Silva, this photo gives a sense of the current global moment: ”I feel that what is happening in Europe, what is happening in America, what is happening in the Far East, Middle East, Syria, and this image to me talks of it. It is the face of hatred.” But the jury’s chairman, Stuart Franklin, has publicly stated that he found the choice morally problematic. In an opinion piece published in The Guardian, he said he admires Ozbilici’s bravery and skill, but voted against his image. Franklin says his reasons highlight a debate that dates back millennia: ”Placing the photograph on this high pedestal is an invitation to those contemplating such staged spectaculars: it reaffirms the compact between martyrdom and publicity. . .. ”To be clear, my moral position is not that the   photographer should be denied the credit he deserves rather that I feared we’d be amplifying a terrorist’s message through the additional publicity that the top prize attracts.” Calvert told The New York Times that jury was ”rewarding the photographer, not rewarding the crime”  —   and the image is a powerful, historically relevant record of our current moment. Ozbilici told Witness that his work ”represented a long tradition of good, independent journalism and good news photos.” And that makes him ”happy and proud  —   proud of all good journalists, those living and those who have been killed doing their work, at a time when people are trying to manipulate the media, and the quality of journalism is often ignored.”"
"Russia is supporting  . S. insurgents in Afghanistan  —   and through them, terrorists, top U. S. national security leaders say. What isn’t clear is why. The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, stopped short of detailing everything the U. S. knows about the Russian return to Afghanistan in an appearance before a Senate panel last week. But he did confirm some lawmakers’ accounts of what U. S. intelligence has established about the relationship. ”If Russia is cozying up to the Taliban  —   and that’s a kind word  —   if they are giving equipment that we have some evidence that the Taliban is getting . .. and other things that we can’t mention in this unclassified setting? And the Taliban is also associated with  ? Therefore Russia indirectly is helping   in Afghanistan,” said Sen. Bill Nelson,  . ”Your logic is absolutely sound, sir,” Nicholson said. Terrorist groups use the Afghan Taliban insurgency as a ”medium” in which to operate, Nicholson said, as   did before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U. S. The disclosures about Russia’s operations in Afghanistan, which Nicholson said are increasing after they resumed last year, could complicate any effort by President Trump to work more closely with Moscow on fighting terrorism. Trump has said he wants Washington and Moscow to do more against the Islamic State in Syria  —   a goal that already was problematic because Moscow mostly has not been targeting ISIS there. Still, Trump ordered his national security team to present him with a new plan to defeat ISIS, one that could include options for closer cooperation with Moscow, as soon as next week. The revelation that Russia is covertly supporting U. S. enemies in Afghanistan makes the political case for increasing a counterterrorism partnership that much trickier. And it further expands the global chessboard on which Moscow is playing against the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin could be serious about expanding Russian influence in Asia Minor. He could be hedging against the potential wavering of current international support for Afghanistan. Or he could be making mischief simply to win concessions elsewhere by Europe or the United States. There’s some evidence that he may be prepared to turn up the heat: The German newspaper Die Zeit reported that Russia is recruiting mercenaries to fight abroad. Russian memories about sending regular troops to Afghanistan might still be too raw after the Soviet Union’s disastrous 1980 invasion, as the German paper wrote. So sending mercenaries could enable Putin to put de facto forces on the ground there with a lower public profile. Or, it may not come to that. Nicholson told Georgia Sen. David Perdue, a Republican, that he believes Putin only views the insurgent groups as a convenient means to irritate the West. ”I think it’s to undermine the United States and NATO,” Nicholson said. Moscow isn’t only supplying Taliban fighters covertly. It is also talking openly in the region about how the Kabul government, supported by the U. S. doesn’t want to fight the Islamic State  —   but the Taliban does. That is not true, Nicholson said  —   the Afghan army and the U. S. are fighting ISIS in Afghanistan, and have reduced its footprint with raids and airstrikes. Also, the ISIS of Afghanistan has little to do with the core group led from Syria, he said. It’s mostly made up of Pakistani and Uzbek extremists who ”rebranded” themselves. The upshot of it all, however, is that Russia and the United States have effectively switched roles in Afghanistan: In the 1980s, American CIA officers supplied weapons to   rebels who were fighting the   backed government and the Soviet troops supporting it. Today, 15 years after the American invasion, Russia has begun helping the Taliban against a weak   government still supported by NATO troops and airpower. The war is in ”stalemate,” Nicholson told the Senate panel, and he needs thousands more troops to help train the Afghan military to continue to improve as a fighting force. The Afghan air force also needs more aircraft, training and funding, he said, before it can give Kabul a decisive edge over insurgents."
"A bus packed with elderly tourists flipped onto its side on a highway exit ramp Monday evening in Taiwan near the capital, Taipei, killing at least 32 people, according to multiple news reports. ”The passengers, most of whom were senior citizens, were returning home from a tour of cherry blossoms at Wuling Farm in Taichung,” according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency. A total of 44 people reportedly were on board the bus, and all are believed to be Taiwanese. The fire department told Reuters that area hospitals were treating 12 people injured in the crash. It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the vehicle to crash. ”It happened on a curve, so the bus flipped and that could be due to excess speed,” Tu   a Taipei city official, told the AP. ”The whole frame of the bus changed shape, got crushed and left no openings.” Photos from the scene show a crane attempting to lift the damaged    bus. Others show bodies lying in rows, covered in white cloth. Last July, a tour bus carrying visitors from mainland China caught fire, killing all 26 people on board, as The   reported. An investigation later concluded that the driver was suicidal and lit the fire himself, according to the BBC. And just this month, Reuters reports that ”another Taiwanese tour bus carrying Chinese tourists crashed into a bridge in southern Taiwan, injuring some passengers.”"
"The area around a huge dam at California’s   reservoir is in a state of emergency, with some 180, 000 residents ordered to evacuate the area Sunday out of fears that part of Oroville Dam could fail. A glimmer of hope arrived late Sunday night, when officials said water had finally stopped pouring over the dam’s emergency spillway. The secondary spillway was in use because the main spillway had developed a huge hole, stressed by the need to release water accumulated from California’s wet winter  —   and brought to a new crisis point by last week’s heavy rains. ”So the lake rose 50 feet in just a few days,” Dan Brekke of member station KQED tells Morning Edition, ”and got up to this emergency spillway which had never been used since the dam went into service in 1968. And on Saturday morning, it began pouring over there.” Residents of the area some 70 miles north of Sacramento were placed under evacuation orders around 4:30 p. m. Sunday, after the reservoir rose to a record level  —   more than a foot above what’s considered ”full”  —   and its main spillway struggled to provide relief and its auxiliary spillway was seen at risk of failing. At the time, officials said that dangerous flooding could be just hours away. Even as the evacuation orders were issued, officials had reason to hope that Lake Oroville would soon begin to recede, due to a drop in the amount of runoff water entering the lake and a dry weather forecast. But the reservoir’s infrastructure was struggling to cope. ”The lake is considered full at 901 feet [above sea level] and it’s at that level that it began pouring over an emergency spillway early Saturday,” KQED reports. The lake kept rising, surpassing its ”full” level by more than a foot. Last night, Lake Oroville’s water level finally dropped below 900 feet around midnight, in a trend that has continued into Monday morning. As for the residents and evacuees, Brekke says he has seen many confused, scared people  —   one woman’s son, he says, compared the evacuation to a zombie apocalypse. And another woman said she’s still worrying over the family members who weren’t able to leave. That resident, Marilyn McKinney, told Brekke: ”My    is still there with her sister, who is bedridden, but we’ve got her in a wheelchair. They were supposed to be sending an ambulance or someone to help transport her out. And nobody has shown up for her yet. She called 911, and 911 said they weren’t sending anybody else out.” Overnight, evacuation centers and shelters were still being outfitted with beds and blankets. Gov. Jerry Brown issued an emergency order last night to help with the process, which saw shelters erected at fairgrounds to handle the thousands of people leaving Oroville and other downstream areas. While the waters are receding and dry weather is expected for Monday and Tuesday, the region in Northern California could get another round of rain later this week, when forecasts are calling for several days of rain. The Oroville Dam incident has sparked questions about how to repair the dam’s spillways  —   and whether other structures in California and beyond are similarly vulnerable. After the main spillway developed a   hole, the auxiliary spillway also began to erode, sparking Sunday’s evacuation. Flood control expert Jeffrey Mount, of the Public Policy Institute of California and the University of California Davis, says the auxiliary spillway at Oroville had never been tested  —   always a challenge with emergency equipment  —   and that it will be very expensive to repair. ”The weaknesses were revealed immediately in the design, and it threatened to collapse,” Mount tells Morning Edition. ”I can tell you that this event will cause us to do some   about the amount of money we’re spending on infrastructure  —   maintenance, particularly  —   here in California,” Mount says."
"After a newspaper investigation concluded that   of all sexual assault complaints in Canada were dismissed as ”unfounded,” or baseless  —   a far higher percentage than for other types of crime  —   police forces across the country are revisiting old cases. In total, police forces are reviewing more than 10, 000 rape and assault allegations that were dismissed as ”unfounded,” The Globe and Mail reports. The newspaper previously reported that from   more than 27, 000 such cases were given that designation, meaning they effectively disappeared from the Canadian justice system. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are reviewing all such cases from 2016 as well as a ”sample” of previous allegations, the CBC reports. A number of local police forces are revisiting old cases, as well  —   sometimes voluntarily, the broadcaster says, and sometimes at the demand of a civilian oversight board. The police chief of London, Ontario, has apologized to victims, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his administration would ”do more” on the issue. The flurry of responses were prompted by an investigation published by the Globe and Mail earlier this month. The newspaper found that the number of sexual assault cases dismissed as ”unfounded” was unusually high compared with other alleged crimes. The categorization means no crime had been attempted or committed. Such cases don’t factor into a police force’s crime statistics. Because the number of unfounded cases wasn’t made public, reporter Robyn Doolittle sent hundreds of freedom of information requests to police forces across Canada. She found that nationwide more than 19 percent of sexual assault cases were dismissed as ”unfounded”  —   nearly twice the rate for physical assault, and far higher than the rate for other crimes. Here’s more from the Globe and Mail’s original report: ”True unfounded cases, which arise from malicious or mistaken reports, are rare. Between 2 per cent and 8 per cent of complaints are false reports, according to research from North America, the United Kingdom and Australia. The Globe’s findings suggest that police in Canada are closing a disproportionate number of rape cases as unfounded, a phenomenon that distorts the country’s crime statistics. ”Inflated unfounded rates create the impression that police receive fewer complaints of sexual assault than they actually do. In turn, that gives the appearance that more complaints lead to an arrest.” The report also found ”vast discrepancies” between jurisdictions  —   meaning that a person who reported a rape had very different odds of being believed by police officers, depending on where she or he lived. Police in Windsor, Ontario, dismissed 3 percent of assault allegations as unfounded in London, Ontario, police dismissed 30 percent. Winnipeg police ”unfounded” just 66 of 3, 483 allegations. Police in Saint John, New Brunswick, dismissed 312 of 617. Most people whose cases were closed as unfounded were never told by police that their allegations had been dismissed. In some cases, police marked the cases as baseless without conducting interviews with witnesses or suspects. In one incident more than a decade ago, police dismissed as ”unfounded” the case of a    girl who had been impregnated and told police the father was a    man. Authorities discredited her account, apparently without ever conducting a paternity test. The Globe’s investigation opens with the 2010 story of a college student in London, Ontario, who told police she was raped  —   outdoors, with bystanders taking photos or videos as she told the man to stop, she said. In a videotaped interview, a police detective told her that her clothes weren’t ”torn or anything,” erroneously said that her account of a sudden blackout while drinking wasn’t plausible, and suggested she ”maybe the sex was consensual” and she was more upset by the voyeurism. A suspect was contacted and ”warned,” police said, but the case was closed as unfounded. That case was reopened by police after the Globe approached the police force for comment."
"The 59th annual Grammy Awards brought a pair of sweeps: a likely one for a dearly departed star, a surprise for the reigning queen of pop  —   and more performances than anyone will likely remember tomorrow. As she did in 2012, Adele swept her ”general category” nominations (the night’s headline trophies)  —   but five years ago she wasn’t up against what many considered to be one of the year’s most definitive and universally lauded pieces of work: Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Beyoncé has won neither record or album of the year  —   Adele is the first to twice sweep the album, record and song of the year categories. As she accepted the penultimate award of the night, record of the year, Adele looked at Beyoncé and said, ”You move my soul every single day.” Beyoncé didn’t make it out of the front row of the audience for the three final awards of the night, and Adele would be back to the stage moments later to accept Album of the Year for 25 as well, upsetting Lemonade. Adele herself admitted Lemonade was a ”monumental” work and mentioned being unable to accept the Album of the Year award (before accepting it). By the numbers, the night’s other big winner was David Bowie, who posthumously took every award he (and package designer Jonathan Barnbrook) was nominated for, including best rock song and best rock performance for his deeply affecting and   ”Blackstar” from the album of the same name, which won best alternative music album, best recording package and best engineered album. The arrival of the night went to Chance the Rapper, the   rapper who has shepherded his career independent of the   system. Chance was named best new artist  —   and thankfully ignored the show’s     music during his acceptance of the night’s first trophy. Later, winning the award for best rap album for Coloring Book, he somewhat notably gave a   to   streaming company SoundCloud, not Apple Music, which paid him a fair chunk of change for a window of exclusivity for Coloring Book. Independent is as independent does. More than most years, a black cloud whorled over this year’s Grammys, the show’s 59th iteration and one that followed a year of remarkable loss for popular music after the deaths of Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, Merle Haggard and many others . .. but also a year that began amidst a deeply polarized political climate, one that many artists, we can reliably assume (Madonna, for sure) are lamenting. Ahead of the telecast many wondered whether the Grammys would get political. (One only needed to look to Kendrick Lamar’s performance last year for the answer, regardless of longtime producer Ken Ehrlich’s   diplomacy.) Jennifer Lopez was the first of the night to make a statement, however oblique, saying: ”At this point in history, our voices are needed more than ever,” before doubling down, quoting from Toni Morrison’s essay, ”No Place for   No Room For Fear.” Katy Perry, who stumped for Hillary Clinton, ended a performance of new single ”Chained to the Rhythm” bathed in a projection of the preamble to the Constitution  —   a gesture that seemed less overtly political than one that simply acknowledged politics exist. Orange Is The New Black’s Laverne Cox, introducing Metallica and Lady Gaga’s fiery performance of ”Moth Into Flame,” referenced the upcoming Supreme Court hearing of a case centering around students’ right to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Even Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, who generally steers clear of even a whiff of politics, jumped into the fray, if meekly. Portnow referenced ”the things”  —   music principally, we can assume  —   that bring us together and help to cohere our ”more perfect union.” Then, more customarily, Portnow called for reforms to the consent decrees which dictate songwriter remuneration and copyright laws that regulate usage of music. Even Johnnie Walker, in a   whiskey ad, retained Chicano Batman to sing ”This Land Is Your Land,” touching on Trump’s executive order around immigration. Solange (who made NPR Music’s favorite record last year) introduced A Tribe Called Quest, who alongside Anderson. Paak and Busta Rhymes, performed a medley that kicked off with ”Can I Kick It?” before Busta Rhymes popped up to ”President Agent Orange and his unsuccessful attempt at a Muslim ban,” then moving into ”We The People” from Tribe’s newest record, We Got It From Here. .. Thank You 4 Your Service.   ended the utterly monumental performance with repeated calls to ”resist”  —   it was the most fervently and successfully political presentation of the night. Not to be outdone, Beyoncé meteored a crater of personal and political empowerment. Her mother, Tina Knowles, introduced a reliably gargantuan and beautifully produced performance, which began with the rhetorical question: ”Do you remember being born?” The production design referenced the Virgin Mary, Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I, with little singing for a extended period of time before Beyoncé settled into a pillowy rendition of ”Love Drought” and ”Sandcastles.” There, too, were the flowers that accompanied that   Instagram post. As my colleague Rodney Carmichael wrote: ”This is   #blackwomanmagic.” ”There is a curse,” Beyoncé whispered in a   voice over, ”that will be broken. .. now that reconciliation is possible. .. if we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious.” Later, accepting the award for best urban contemporary album for Lemonade, she said her work seeks ”to confront issues that make us uncomfortable  —   it’s important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty.” Sturgill Simpson, backed by Daptone Records’ house band The   (and, it seemed, a few friends) delivered arguably the most purely perfect musical performance of the night, singing ”All Around You” with striking commitment. Equally striking was Bruno Mars’   tribute to Prince, which began with the indelible prayer of ”Dearly beloved. ..” and ended with Mars ripping a (nearly)   guitar solo. There were flubs: Adele stopped her tribute performance of George Michael’s ”Fastlove” as it was getting going, swearing and apologizing before jumping back into the 1996 hit. ”I don’t want to do this like last year,” she said, referencing the broken piano of 2016. The song choice was   elegiac, though didn’t engage with the unbridled joy of Michael’s best work. As for the rest: A mildly disappointing performance of ”Hello” from Adele, who opened the show just prior to a very brief bit of slapstick and rapping that served as host James Corden’s introduction. There was a surprisingly sharp turn from previously stilted performer The Weeknd (with assistance from Daft Punk) an ’80s synth jams straight out of Top Gun (Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban performing ”The Fighter”) and a bizarrely empty new      Iver jawn from Ed Sheeran. Neil Diamond, Keith Urban, Faith Hill, Jennifer Lopez, Tim McGraw and Jason Derulo sang ”Sweet Caroline” with Corden in a makeshift iteration of the ”Carpool Karaoke” segments on his late night show. Diamond looked, perhaps was, a little lost. Katy Perry’s performance perhaps unintentionally referenced the mirrored picket fence sculpture by Alyson Shotz at upstate New York sculpture park Storm King. Gary Clark and William Bell (who won for best Americana album) performed the blues standard ”Born Under a Bad Sign,” written by Bell and Booker T. Jones and first recorded by Albert King in 1967 for Stax Records. The show remained as reliably corrugated as ever  —   as it will until entropy catches up with it. Looking to the Grammys for substantive, not glancing, engagement with challenging times, as Ann Powers addressed recently, is a waste of time. The show is comfort food delivering the same faces, the same voices, the same melodies and shimmering gowns. Perhaps next year, when the awards return to New York for the first time since 2003, the show will let itself change as much as the world around it has. But probably not."
"My Twitter feed is still roiling. As I write this, it’s been mere moments since my friends and colleagues (and a few assorted celebrities) started taking a break from praising the 2017 Grammys’ most vital and viral performances  —   A Tribe Called Quest, Beyoncé, The Time, a bonkers Lady   mashup  —   to fume about Adele’s sweep of the night’s top three prizes. The pop star won Album Of The Year for 25, as well as Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year for ”Hello,” and filled the night’s final speech with notes of regret that she’d just beaten Beyoncé (of all people) in all three categories. As we soak up the rich, creamy silence that follows the end of every awards show, here are 10   takeaways from the 2017 Grammy Awards. (We’ll post a Pop Culture Happy Hour Small Batch discussion by midday tomorrow look for it on this page or in your podcast feed.) 1) There’s much to unpack in Adele’s speech, but among other things, I think she understands the degree to which history will not be kind to that Album Of The Year win. While nowhere near as controversial as Macklemore sweeping Kendrick Lamar a few years back  —   25 is highly regarded, and ”Hello” has been a juggernaut for 16 months now  —   Lemonade is far more ambitious, tells a richer story, and retains greater relevance in the cultural conversation. Adele knows she beat a classic album, and to her credit, she devoted much of her final speech to acknowledging as such. 2) Compared to other recent awards shows  —   most notably the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards  —   the politics were surprisingly muted Sunday night. Paris Jackson shouted out the #NoDAPL protesters and Katy Perry said a few unkind words about Donald Trump, but only one performance really sustained a tone of resistance: a furious medley by A Tribe Called Quest, Anderson . Paak and Busta Rhymes. 3) Though nowhere near as thematically bold, Lady Gaga and Metallica paired up for an enjoyably intense hot mess of a performance  —   James Hetfield’s mic went out early, robbing him of his first couple verses  —   that seemed engineered to produce what the show likes to call a ”Grammy Moment.” Compared to some of the night’s waterier performances, it was a welcome jolt. 4) Speaking of wateriness, Lukas Graham (whose ”7 Years” was heavily nominated) and Kelsea Ballerini (who lost Best New Artist to Chance The Rapper) drew arguably the evening’s least desirable time slot: the moments before Beyonce presided over a grand,   set in which she performed ”Love Drought” and ”Sandcastles.” Visibly pregnant with twins, Queen Bey needed about five seconds to extinguish any and all memories of what had come before it. 5) It was hard for most nominees to stake out much space to shine, given the degree to which Adele and Beyonce dominated the proceedings. The two not only won multiple Grammys on Sunday  —   Beyonce took Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video for ”Formation”  —   but their performances also sparked some of the most conversation. Adele performed twice Sunday evening, opening the telecast with ”Hello” and later paying tribute to George Michael with a take on ”Fastlove” that needed to be aborted and started over. (Visibly flustered, Adele quickly apologized the crowd’s reaction could best be summed up as, ”Dude, you’re Adele. Do whatever. ”) 6) Though he couldn’t topple Adele for Album Of The Year, Sturgill Simpson had a nice night, winning Best Country Album and making a fine appearance alongside The   who pop up several times on his A Sailor’s Guide To Earth. The set even kicked off with a nice little momentary tribute to Sharon Jones, one of the many amazing musicians who’d died since the 2016 telecast. 7) Bafflingly, Merle Haggard didn’t fare nearly as well country performances dotted the evening, yet the late legend received only a single mention, during the ”In Memoriam” montage. (Over his name, producers played ”Okie From Muskogee,” a song about which Haggard was publicly ambivalent.) 8) Chance The Rapper won big: He took home the   Grammy for a   album, winning Best Rap Album (for Coloring Book) Best Rap Performance (”No Problem”) and Best New Artist (for which he beat out The Chainsmokers, Anderson . Paak, Kelsea Ballerini and Maren Morris). As a bonus, Chance gave one of the night’s most riveting performances: a medley of ”How Great” and ”All We Got” that featured a guest appearance by gospel giant Kirk Franklin, among others. 9) The night’s tributes to Prince yielded the monumentally welcome return of The Time, who performed ”Jungle Love” and ”The Bird”  —   both of which Prince cowrote  —   before giving way to a take on ”Let’s Go Crazy” by Bruno Mars. Mars had the star power, sure, but if one young person googles ”the time jungle love” tonight, the entire evening will have been worth it. Teach the children well, people. 10) Finally, the members of Twenty One Pilots accepted their award for Best Pop   Performance  —   for the ubiquitous ”Stressed Out”  —   by stripping down to their underpants before taking the stage. This may or may not have actually happened. I’m pretty tired."
"The full list of winners from the 59th annual Grammy Awards: Record Of The Year: WINNER: ”Hello”  —   Adele”Formation”  —   Beyoncé”7 Years”  —   Lukas Graham”Work”  —   Rihanna Featuring Drake”Stressed Out”  —   Twenty One Pilots, Album Of The Year: WINNER: 25  —   AdeleLemonade  —   BeyoncéPurpose  —   Justin BieberViews  —   DrakeA Sailor’s Guide To Earth  —   Sturgill Simpson, Song Of The Year: WINNER: ”Hello”  —   Adele Adkins  Greg Kurstin, songwriters (Adele)”Formation”  —   Khalif Brown, Asheton Hogan, Beyoncé Knowles  Michael L. Williams II, songwriters (Beyoncé)”I Took A Pill In Ibiza”  —   Mike Posner, songwriter (Mike Posner)”Love Yourself”  —   Justin Bieber, Benjamin Levin  Ed Sheeran, songwriters (Justin Bieber)”7 Years”  —   Lukas Forchhammer, Stefan Forrest, Morten Pilegaard  Morten Ristorp, songwriters (Lukas Graham) Best New Artist: WINNER: Chance The RapperKelsea BalleriniThe ChainsmokersMaren MorrisAnderson . Paak, Best Pop Solo Performance: WINNER: ”Hello”  —   Adele”Hold Up”  —   Beyonce”Love Yourself”  —   Justin Bieber”Piece By Piece (Idol Version)”  —   Kelly Clarkson”Dangerous Woman”  —   Ariana Grande, Best Pop   Performance: ”Stressed Out”  —   Twenty One Pilots”Closer”  —   The Chainsmokers Featuring Halsey”7 Years”  —   Lukas Graham”Work”  —   Rihanna Featuring Drake”Cheap Thrills”  —   Sia Featuring Sean Paul, Best Pop Vocal Album: WINNER: 25  —   AdelePurpose  —   Justin BieberDangerous Woman  —   Ariana GrandeConfident  —   Demi LovatoThis Is Acting  —   Sia, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album: WINNER: Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin  —   Willie NelsonCinema  —   Andrea BocelliFallen Angels  —   Bob DylanStages Live  —   Josh GrobanEncore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway  —   Barbra Streisand, Best Dance Recording: WINNER: ”Don’t Let Me Down”  —   The Chainsmokers featuring Daya”Tearing Me Up”  —   Bob Moses”Never Be Like You”  —   Flume featuring Kai”Rinse  Repeat”  —   Riton featuring  ”Drinkee”  —   Sofi Tukker, Best   Album: WINNER: Skin  —   FlumeElectronica 1: The Time Machine  —     JarreEpoch  —   TychoBarbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future  —   UnderworldLouie Vega Starring. ..XXVIII  —   Louie Vega, Best Contemporary Instrumental Album: WINNER: Culcha Vulcha  —   Snarky PuppyHuman Nature  —   Herb AlpertWhen You Wish Upon a Star  —   Bill FrisellWay Back Home: Live From Rochester, NY  —   Steve Gadd BandUnpsoken  —   Chuck Loeb, Best Rock Performance: WINNER: ”Blackstar”  —   David Bowie”Joe (Live From Austin City Limits)”  —   Alabama Shakes”Don’t Hurt Yourself”  —   Beyoncé Featuring Jack White”The Sound Of Silence”  —   Disturbed”Heathens”  —   Twenty One Pilots, Best Metal Performance: WINNER: ”Dystopia”  —   Megadeth”Shock Me”  —   Baroness ”Slivera”  —   Gojira”Rotting in Vain”  —   Korn”The Price Is Wrong”  —   Periphery, Best Rock Song: WINNER: ”Blackstar”  —   David Bowie, songwriter (David Bowie)”Burn the Witch”  —  Radiohead, songwriters (Radiohead)”Hardwired”  —   James Hetfield  Lars Ulrich, songwriters (Metallica)”Heathens”  —   Tyler Joseph, songwriter (Twenty One Pilots)”My Name Is Human”  —   Rich Meyer, Ryan Meyer  Johnny Stevens, songwriters (Highly Suspect) Best Rock Album: WINNER: Tell Me I’m Pretty  —   Cage The ElephantCalifornia  —      —   GojiraDeath Of A Bachelor  —   Panic! At The DiscoWeezer  —   Weezer, Best Alternative Music Album: WINNER: Blackstar  —   David Bowie22, A Million  —   Bon IverThe Hope Six Demolition Project  —   PJ HarveyPost Pop Depression  —   Iggy PopA Moon Shaped Pool  —   Radiohead, Best RB Performance: WINNER: ”Cranes in the Sky”  —   Solange”Turnin’ Me Up”  —   BJ The Chicago Kid”Permission”  —   Ro James”I Do”  —   Musiq Soulchild”Needed Me”  —   Rihanna, Best Traditional RB Performance: WINNER: ”Angel”  —   Lalah Hathaway”The Three Of Me”  —   William Bell”Woman’s World”  —   BJ The Chicago Kid”Sleeping With The One I Love”  —   Fantasia”Can’t Wait”  —   Jill Scott, Best RB Song: WINNER: ”Lake By the Ocean”  —   Hod David  Musze, songwriters (Maxwell)”Come and See Me”  —   J. Brathwaite, Aubrey Graham  Noah Shebib, songwriters (PartyNextDoor Featuring Drake)”Exchange”  —   Michael Hernandez  Bryson Tiller, songwriters (Bryson Tiller)”Kiss It Better”  —   Jeff Bhasker, Robyn Fenty,   Glass  Natalia Noemi, songwriters (Rihanna)”Luv”  —   Magnus August Høiberg, Benjamin Levin  Daystar Peterson, songwriters (Tory Lanez) Best Urban Contemporary Album: WINNER: Lemonade  —   BeyoncéOlogy  —   GallantWe Are King  —   KINGMalibu  —   Anderson . PaakAnti  —   Rihanna, Best RB Album: WINNER: Lalah Hathaway Live  —   Lalah HathawayIn My Mind  —   BJ The Chicago KidVelvet Portraits  —   Terrace MartinHealing Season  —   Mint ConditionSmoove Jones  —   Mya, Best Rap Performance: WINNER: ”No Problem”  —   Chance The Rapper Featuring Lil Wayne  2 Chainz”Panda”  —  Desiigner”Pop Style”  —   Drake Featuring The Throne”All The Way Up”  —   Fat Joe  Remy Ma Featuring French Montana  Infared”That Part”  —   ScHoolboy Q Featuring Kanye West, Best   Performance: WINNER: ”Hotline Bling”  —   Drake”Freedom”  —   Beyoncé Featuring Kendrick Lamar”Broccoli”  —   D. R. A. M. Featuring Lil Yachty”Ultralight Beam”  —   Kanye West Featuring Chance The Rapper, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin   ”Famous”  —   Kanye West Featuring Rihanna, Best Rap Song: WINNER: ”Hotline Bling”  —   Aubrey Graham  Paul Jefferies, songwriters (Drake)”All The Way Up”  —   Joseph Cartagena, Edward Davadi, Shandel Green, Karim Kharbouch, Andre Christopher Lyon, Reminisce Mackie  Marcello Valenzano, songwriters (Fat Joe  Remy Ma Featuring French Montana  Infared)”Famous”  —   Chancelor Bennett, Ross Birchard, Ernest Brown, Andrew Dawson, Kasseem Dean, Mike Dean, Noah Goldstein, Kejuan Muchita, Patrick Reynolds, Kanye West  Cydel Young, songwriters (Kanye West Featuring Rihanna)”No Problem”  —   Chancelor Bennett, Dwayne Carter  Tauheed Epps, songwriters (Chance The Rapper Featuring Lil Wayne  2 Chainz)”Ultralight Beam”  —   Chancelor Bennett, Kasseem Dean, Mike Dean, Kirk Franklin, Noah Goldstein, Samuel Griesemer, Terius Nash, Jerome Potter, Kelly Price, Nico ”Donnie Trumpet” Segal, Derek Watkins, Kanye West  Cydel Young, songwriters (Kanye West Featuring Chance The Rapper, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin   ) Best Rap Album: WINNER: Coloring Book  —   Chance The RapperAnd the Anonymous Nobody  —   De La SoulMajor Key  —   DJ KhaledViews  —   DrakeBlank Face LP  —   ScHoolboy Q The Life of Pablo  —   Kanye West, Best Country Solo Performance: WINNER: ”My Church”  —   Maren Morris”Love Can Go To Hell”  —   Brandy Clark”Vice”  —   Miranda Lambert”Church Bells”  —   Carrie Underwood”Blue Ain’t Your Color”  —   Keith Urban, Best Country   Performance: WINNER: ”Jolene”  —   Pentatonix Featuring Dolly Parton”Different for Girls”  —   Dierks Bentley Featuring Elle King”21 Summer”  —   Brothers Osborne”Setting The World On Fire”  —   Kenny Chesney  P! nk”Think Of You”  —   Chris Young With Cassadee Pope, Best Country Song: WINNER: ”Humble and Kind”  —   Lori McKenna, songwriter (Tim McGraw)”Blue Ain’t Your Color”  —   Clint Lagerberg, Hillary Lindsey  Steven Lee Olsen, songwriters (Keith Urban)”Die A Happy Man”  —   Sean Douglas, Thomas Rhett  Joe Spargur, songwriters (Thomas Rhett)”My Church”  —   busbee  Maren Morris, songwriters (Maren Morris)”Vice”  —   Miranda Lambert, Shane McAnally  Josh Osborne, songwriters (Miranda Lambert) Best Country Album: WINNER: A Sailor’s Guide to Earth  —   Sturgill SimpsonBig Day in a Small Town  —   Brandy ClarkFull Circle  —   Loretta LynnHero  —   Maren MorrisRipcord  —   Keith Urban, Best New Age Album: WINNER: White Sun II  —   White SunOrogen  —   John BurkeDark Sky Island  —   EnyaInner Passion  —   Peter Kater  Tina GuoRosetta  —   Vangelis, Best Improvised Jazz Solo: WINNER: ”I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”  —   John Scofield, soloist”Countdown”  —   Joey Alexander, soloist”In Movement”  —   Ravi Coltrane, soloist”We See”  —   Fred Hersch, soloist”I Concentrate On You”  —   Brad Mehldau, soloist, Best Jazz Vocal Album: WINNER: Take Me To The Alley  —   Gregory PorterSound Of Red  —   René MarieUpward Spiral  —   Branford Marsalis Quartet With Special Guest Kurt EllingHarlem On My Mind  —   Catherine RussellThe Sting Variations  —   The Tierney Sutton Band, Best Jazz Instrumental Album: WINNER: Country for Old Men  —   John ScofieldBook of Intuition  —   Kenny Barron TrioDr. Um  —   Peter ErskineSunday Night At The Vanguard  —   The Fred Hersch TrioNearness  —   Joshua Redman  Brad Mehldau, Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album: WINNER: Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom  —   Ted Nash Big BandReal Enemies  —   Darcy James Argue’s Secret SocietyPresents Monk’estra, Vol. 1  —   John BeasleyKaleidoscope Eyes: Music of the Beatles  —   John DaversaAll L. A. Band  —   Bob Mintzer, Best Latin Jazz Album: WINNER: Tribute To Irakere: Live In Marciac  —   Chucho ValdésEntre Colegas  —   Andy GonzálezMadera Latino: A Latin Jazz Perspective On The Music Of Woody Shaw  —   Brian Lynch  Various ArtistsCanto América  —   Michael   Wallace La Orquesta Sinfonietta30   Trio Da Paz, Best Gospel  : WINNER: ”God Provides”  —   Tamela Mann Kirk Franklin, songwriter”It’s Alright, It’s OK”  —   Shirley Caesar Featuring Anthony Hamilton Stanley Brown  Courtney Rumble, songwriters”You’re Bigger [Live]”  —   Jekalyn Carr Allundria Carr, songwriter”Made A Way [Live]”  —   Travis Greene Travis Greene, songwriter”Better”  —   Hezekiah Walker Jason Clayborn, Gabriel Hatcher  Hezekiah Walker, songwriters, Best Contemporary Christian Music  : WINNER: ”Thy Will”  —   Hillary Scott  The Scott Family Bernie Herms, Hillary Scott  Emily Weisband, songwriters Track from: Love Remains”Trust In You”  —   Lauren Daigle Lauren Daigle, Michael Farren  Paul Mabury, songwriters”Priceless”  —   For King  Country Benjamin Backus, Seth Mosley, Joel Smallbone, Luke Smallbone  Tedd Tjornhom, songwriters”King of the World”  —   Natalie Grant Natalie Grant, Becca Mizell  Samuel Mizell, songwriters”Chain Breaker”  —   Zach Williams Mia Fieldes, Jonathan Smith  Zach Williams, songwriters, Best Gospel Album: WINNER: Losing My Religion  —   Kirk FranklinListen  —  Tim Bowman Jr. Fill This House  —   Shirley CaesarA Worshipper’s Heart [Live]  —  Todd DulaneyDemonstrate [Live]  —  William Murphy, Best Contemporary Christian Music Album: WINNER: Love Remains  —   Hillary Scott  The Scott FamilyPoets  Saints  —   All Sons  DaughtersAmerican Prodigal  —   CrowderBe One  —   Natalie GrantYouth Revival [Live]  —   Hillsong Young  Free, Best Roots Gospel Album: WINNER: Hymns  —   Joey+RoryBetter Together  —   Gaither Vocal BandNature’s Symphony In 432  —   The IsaacsHymns And Songs Of Inspiration  —   Gordon MoteGod Don’t Ever Change: The Songs Of Blind Willie Johnson  —   (Various Artists) Best Latin Pop Album: WINNER: Un Besito Mas  —   Jesse  JoyIlusión  —   Gaby MorenoSimilares  —   Laura PausiniSeguir Latiendo  —   SanalejoBuena Vida  —   Diego Torres, Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album: WINNER: iLevitable  —   ileL. H. O. N. (La Humanidad O Nosotros)  —   Illya Kuryaki  The ValderamasBuenaventura  —   La Santa CeciliaLos Rakas  —   Los Rakas Amor Supremo  —   Carla Morrison, Best Regional Mexican Music Album (Including Tejano): WINNER: Un Azteca En El Azteca, Vol. 1 (En Vivo)  —   Vicente FernándezRaíces  —   Banda El Recodo De Cruz LizárragaHecho A Mano  —   Joss FavelaGeneración Maquinaria Est. 2006  —   La Maquinaria NorteñaTributo A Joan Sebastian Y Rigoberto Alfaro  —   Mariachi Divas De Cindy Shea, Best Tropical Latin Album: WINNER: Donde Están?  —   Jose Lugo  Guasábara ComboConexión  —   FonsecaLa Fantasia Homenaje A Juan Formell  —   Formell Y Los Van Van35 Aniversario  —   Grupo NicheLa Sonora Santanera En Su 60 Aniversario  —   La Sonora Santanera, Best American Roots Performance: WINNER: ”House of Mercy”  —   Sarah Jarosz”Ain’t No Man”  —   The Avett Brothers”Mother’s Children Have A Hard Time”  —   Blind Boys Of Alabama”Factory Girl”  —   Rhiannon Giddens”Wreck You”  —   Lori McKenna, Best American Roots Song: WINNER: ”Kid Sister”  —   Vince Gill, songwriter (The Time Jumpers)”Alabama at Night”  —   Robbie Fulks, songwriter (Robbie Fulks)”City Lights”  —   Jack White, songwriter (Jack White)”Gulfstream”  —   Eric Adcock  Roddie Romero, songwriters (Roddie Romero and The Hub City  )”Wreck You”  —   Lori McKenna  Felix McTeigue, songwriters (Lori McKenna) Best Americana Album: WINNER: This Is Where I Live  —   William BellTrue Sadness  —   The Avett BrothersThe Cedar Creek Sessions  —   Kris KristoffersonThe Bird  The Rifle  —   Lori McKennaKid Sister  —   The Time Jumpers, Best Bluegrass Album: WINNER: Coming Home  —   O’Connor Band With Mark O’ConnorOriginal Traditional  —   Blue HighwayBurden Bearer  —   Doyle Lawson  QuicksilverThe Hazel Sessions  —   Laurie Lewis  The Right HandsNorth And South  —   Claire Lynch, Best Traditional Blues Album: WINNER: Porcupine Meat  —   Bobby RushCan’t Shake The Feeling  —   Lurrie BellLive At The Greek Theatre  —   Joe BonamassaBlues  Ballads (A Folksinger’s Songbook: Volumes I  II)  —   Luther DickinsonThe Soul of Jimmie Rodgers  —   Vasti Jackson, Best Contemporary Blues Album: WINNER: The Last Days of Oakland  —   Fantastic NegritoLove Wins Again  —   Janiva MagnessBloodline  —   Kenny NealGive It Back To You  —   The Record CompanyEverybody Wants A Piece  —   Joe Louis Walker, Best Folk Album: WINNER: Undercurrent  —   Sarah JaroszhSilver Skies Blue  —   Judy Collins  Ari HestUpland Stories  —   Robbie Fulks Factory Girl  —   Rhiannon GiddensWeighted Mind  —   Sierra Hull, Best Regional Roots Music Album: WINNER: E Walea  —   Kalani Pe’aBroken Promised Land  —   Barry Jean Ancelet  Sam BroussardIt’s A Cree Thing  —   Northern CreeGulfstream  —   Roddie Romero And The Hub City   Wanna Sing Right: Rediscovering Lomax In The Evangeline Country  —   (Various Artists) Best Reggae Album: Ziggy Marley  —   Ziggy MarleySly  Robbie Presents. .. Reggae For Her  —   Devin Di Dakta  J. LRose Petals  —   J BoogEverlasting  —   Raging FyahFalling Into Place  —   RebelutionSoja: Live In Virginia  —   Soja, Best World Music Album: WINNER: Sing Me Home  —     Ma  The Silk Road EnsembleDestiny  —   Celtic WomanWalking In The Footsteps Of Our Fathers  —   Ladysmith Black MambazoLand Of Gold  —   Anoushka ShankarDois Amigos, Um Século De Música: Multishow Live  —   Caetano Veloso  Gilberto Gil, Best Children’s Album: WINNER: Infinity Plus One  —   Secret Agent 23 SkidooExplorer Of The World  —   Frances EnglandNovelties  —   Recess MonkeyPress Play  —   Brady Rymer And The Little Band That CouldSaddle Up  —   The Okee Dokee Brothers, Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books  Storytelling): WINNER: In Such Good Company: Eleven Years Of Laughter, Mayhem, And Fun In The Sandbox  —   Carol BurnettThe Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo  —   Amy SchumerM Train  —   Patti SmithUnder The Big Black Sun: A Personal History Of L. A. Punk (John Doe With Tom DeSavia)  —   (Various Artists) Unfaithful Music  Disappearing Ink  —   Elvis Costello, Best Comedy Album: WINNER: Talking For Clapping  —   Patton Oswalt. ..America. ..Great. ..  —   David Cross American Myth  —   Margaret ChoBoysih Girl Interrupted  —   Tig Notaro Live At The Apollo  —   Amy Schumer, Best Musical Theater Album: WINNER: The Color Purple  —   Cynthia Erivo  Jennifer Hudson, principal soloists Stephen Bray, Van Dean, Frank Filipetti, Roy Furman, Scott Sanders  Jhett Tolentino, producers (Stephen Bray, Brenda Russell  Allee Willis,  ) (New Broadway Cast) Bright Star  —   Carmen Cusack, principal soloist Jay Alix, Peter Asher  Una Jackman, producers Steve Martin, composer Edie Brickell, composer  lyricist (Original Broadway Cast) Fiddler On The Roof  —   Danny Burstein, principal soloist Louise Gund, David Lai  Ted Sperling, producers (Jerry Bock, composer Sheldon Harnick, lyricist) (2016 Broadway Cast) Kinky Boots  —   Killian Donnelly  Matt Henry, principal soloists Sammy James, Jr. Cyndi Lauper, Stephen Oremus  William Wittman, producers (Cyndi Lauper, composer  lyricist) (Original West End Cast) Waitress  —   Jessie Mueller, principal soloist Neal Avron, Sara Bareilles  Nadia DiGiallonardo, producers Sara Bareilles, composer  lyricist (Original Broadway Cast) Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media: WINNER: Miles Ahead  —   (Miles Davis  Various Artists) Amy  —   (Various Artists) Straight Outta Compton  —   (Various Artists) Suicide Squad (Collector’s Edition)  —   (Various Artists) Vinyl: The Essentials Season 1  —   (Various Artists) Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media: WINNER: Star Wars: The Force Awakens  —   John Williams, composerBridge of Spies  —   Thomas Newman, composerQuentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight  —   Ennio Morricone, composerThe Revenant  —   Alva Noto  Ryuichi Sakamoto, composersStranger Things Volume 1  —   Kyle Dixon  Michael Stein, composersStranger Things Volume 2  —   Kyle Dixon  Michael Stein, composers, Best Song Written For Visual Media: WINNER: ”Can’t Stop The Feeling!”  —   Max Martin, Shellback  Justin Timberlake, songwriters (Justin Timberlake, Anna Kendrick, Gwen Stefani, James Corden, Zooey Deschanel, Walt Dohrn, Ron Funches, Caroline Hjelt, Aino Jawo, Christopher    Kunal Nayyar) Track from: Trolls”Heathens”  —   Tyler Joseph, songwriter (Twenty One Pilots) Track from: Suicide Squad”Just Like Fire”  —   Oscar Holter, Max Martin, P! nk  Shellback, songwriters (P! nk) Track from: Alice Through The Looking Glass”Purple Lamborghini”  —   Shamann Cooke, Sonny Moore  William Roberts, songwriters (Skrillex  Rick Ross) Track from: Suicide Squad”Try Everything”  —   Mikkel S. Eriksen, Sia Furler  Tor Erik Hermansen, songwriters (Shakira) Track from: Zootopia”The Veil”  —   Peter Gabriel, songwriter (Peter Gabriel) Track from: Snowden, Best Instrumental Composition: WINNER: ”Spoken At Midnight”  —   Ted Nash, composer (Ted Nash Big Band)”Bridge of Spies (End Title)”  —   Thomas Newman, composer (Thomas Newman) ”The Expensive Train Set (An Epic Sarahnade For Big Band)”  —   Tim Davies, composer (Tim Davies Big Band)”Flow”  —   Alan Ferber, composer (Alan Ferber Nonet)”L’Ultima Diligenza Di Red Rock   Verisione Integrale”  —   Ennio Morricone, composer (Ennio Morricone) Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella: WINNER: ”You and I”  —   Jacob Collier, arranger (Jacob Collier)”Ask Me Now”  —   John Beasley, arranger (John Beasley)”Good ’Swing’ Wenceslas”  —   Sammy Nestico, arranger (The Count Basie Orchestra)”Linus  Lucy”  —   Christian Jacob, arranger (The Phil Norman Tentet)”Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”  —   John Daversa, arranger (John Daversa)”We Three Kings”  —   Ted Nash, arranger (Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis) Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals: WINNER: ”Flintstones”  —   Jacob Collier, arranger (Jacob Collier)”Do You Hear What I Hear?”  —   Gordon Goodwin, arranger (Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band Featuring Take 6)”Do You Want To Know A Secret”  —   John Daversa, arranger (John Daversa Featuring Renee Olstead)”I’m A Fool To Want You”  —   Alan Broadbent, arranger (Kristin Chenoweth)”Somewhere (Dirty Blvd) (Extended Version)”  —   Billy Childs  Larry Klein, arrangers (Lang Lang Featuring Lisa Fischer  Jeffrey Wright) Best Recording Package: WINNER: Blackstar  —   Jonathan Barnbrook, art director (David Bowie) Anti (Deluxe Edition)  —   Ciarra Pardo  Robyn Fenty, art directors (Rihanna) Human Performance  —   Andrew Savage, art director (Parquet Courts) Sunset Motel  —   Sarah Dodds  Shauna Dodds, art directors (Reckless Kelly) 22, A Million  —   Eric Timothy Carlson, art director (Bon Iver) Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package: WINNER: Edith Piaf    —   Gérard Lo Monaco, art director (Edith Piaf) 401 Days  —   Jonathan Dagan  Mathias Høst Normark, art directors (J. Views) I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It  —   Samuel    Matthew Healy, art directors (The 1975) Paper Wheels (Deluxe Limited Edition)  —   Matt Taylor, art director (Trey Anastasio) Tug of War (Deluxe Edition)  —   Simon Earith  James Musgrave, art directors (Paul McCartney) Best Album Notes: WINNER: Sissle And Blake Sing Shuffle Along  —   Ken Bloom  Richard Carlin, album notes writers (Eubie Blake  Noble Sissle) The Complete Monument  Columbia Albums Collection  —   Mikal Gilmore, album notes writer (Kris Kristofferson) The Knoxville Sessions,  : Knox County Stomp  —   Ted Olson  Tony Russell, album notes writers (Various Artists) Ork Records: New York, New York  —   Rob Sevier  Ken Shipley, album notes writers (Various Artists) Waxing The Gospel: Mass Evangelism  The Phonograph,    —   Richard Martin, album notes writer (Various Artists) Best Historical Album: WINNER: The Cutting Edge  : The Bootleg Series, Vol. 12 (Collector’s Edition)  —   Steve Berkowitz  Jeff Rosen, compilation producers Mark Wilder, mastering engineer (Bob Dylan) Music Of Morocco From The Library Of Congress: Recorded By Paul Bowles, 1959  —   April G. Ledbetter, Steven Lance Ledbetter, Bill Nowlin  Philip D. Schuyler, compilation producers Rick Fisher  Michael Graves, mastering engineers (Various Artists) Ork Records: New York, New York  —   Rob Sevier  Ken Shipley, compilation producers Jeff Lipton  Maria Rice, mastering engineers (Various Artists) Vladimir Horowitz: The Unreleased Live Recordings    —   Bernard Horowitz, Andreas K. Meyer  Robert Russ, compilation producers Andreas K. Meyer  Jeanne Montalvo, mastering engineers (Vladimir Horowitz) Waxing The Gospel: Mass Evangelism  The Phonograph, 1890   1900  —   Michael Devecka, Meagan Hennessey  Richard Martin, compilation producers Michael Devecka, David Giovannoni, Michael Khanchalian  Richard Martin, mastering engineers (Various Artists) Best Engineered Album,  : WINNER: Blackstar  —   David Bowie, Tom Elmhirst, Kevin Killen, Tony Visconti  Joe LaPorta (David Bowie) Are You Serious  —   Tchad Blake  David Boucher, engineers Bob Ludwig, mastering engineer (Andrew Bird) Dig In Deep  —   Ryan Freeland, engineer Kim Rosen, mastering engineer (Bonnie Raitt) Hit N Run Phase Two  —   Booker T. Dylan Dresdow, Chris James, Prince  Justin Stanley, engineers Dylan Dresdow, mastering engineer (Prince) Undercurrent  —   Shani Gandhi  Gary Paczosa, engineers Paul Blakemore, mastering engineer (Sarah Jarosz) Producer Of The Year,  : WINNER: Greg KurstinBenny BlancoMax MartinNineteen85Ricky Reed, Best Remixed Recording: WINNER: ”Tearing Me Up (RAC Remix)”  —   André Allen Anjos, remixer (Bob Moses)”Cali Coast (Psionics Remix)”  —   Josh Williams, remixer (Soul Pacific)”Heavy Star Movin’ (staRo Remix)”  —   staRo, remixer (The Silver Lake Chorus)”Nineteen Hundred   (Timo Maas  James Teej Remix)”  —   Timo Maas  James Teej, remixers (Paul McCartney  Wings)”Only” (Kaskade X Lipless Remix) —   Ryan Raddon, remixer (Ry X)”Wide Open (Joe Goddard Remix)”  —   Joe Goddard, remixer (The Chemical Brothers) Best Surround Sound Album: WINNER: Dutilleux: Sur La Mêe Accord Les Citations Mystère De L’Instant  Timbres, Espace, Mouvement  —   Alexander Lipay  Dmitriy Lipay, surround mix engineers Dmitriy Lipay, surround mastering engineer Dmitriy Lipay, surround producer (Ludovic Morlot  Seattle Symphony) Johnson: Considering Matthew Shephard  —   Brad Michel, surround mix engineer Brad Michel, surround mastering engineer Robina G. Young, surround producer (Craig Hella Johnson  Conspirare) Maja S. K. Ratkje: And Sing . ..  —   Morten Lindberg, surround mix engineer Morten Lindberg, surround mastering engineer Morten Lindberg, surround producer (Maja S. K. Ratkje, Cikada  Oslo Sinfonietta) Primus  The Chocolate Factory  —   Les Claypool, surround mix engineer Stephen Marcussen, surround mastering engineer Les Claypool, surround producer (Primus) Reflections  —   Morten Lindberg, surround mix engineer Morten Lindberg, surround mastering engineer Morten Lindberg, surround producer (Øyvind Gimse, Geir Inge Lotsberg  Trondheimsolistene) Best Engineered Album, Classical: WINNER: Corigliano: The Ghosts Of Versailles  —   Mark Donahue  Fred Vogler, engineers (James Conlon, Guanqun Yu, Joshua Guerrero, Patricia Racette, Christopher Maltman, Lucy Schaufer, Lucas Meachem, LA Opera Chorus  Orchestra) Dutilleux: Sur La Mêe Accord Les Citations Mystère De L’Instant  Timbres, Espace, Mouvement  —   Alexander Lipay  Dmitriy Lipay, engineers (Ludovic Morlot  Seattle Symphony) Reflections  —   Morten Lindberg, engineer (Øyvind Gimse, Geir Inge Lotsberg  Trondheimsolistene) Shadow of Sirius  —   Silas Brown  David Frost, engineers Silas Brown, Shostakovich: Under Stalin’s Shadow   Symphonies Nos. 5, 8  9  —   Shawn Murphy  Nick Squire, engineers Tim Martyn, mastering engineer (Andris Nelsons  Boston Symphony Orchestra) Producer of the Year, Classical: WINNER: David FrostBlanton AlspaughMarina A. Ledin, Victor LedinJudith ShermanRobina G. Young, Best Orchestral Performance: WINNER: Shostakovich: Under Stalin’s Shadow   Symphonies Nos. 5, 8  9  —   Andris Nelsons, conductor (Boston Symphony Orchestra) Bates: Works For Orchestra  —   Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (San Francisco Symphony) Ibert: Orchestral Works  —   Neeme Järvi, conductor (Orchestre De La Suisse Romande) Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 In   Major, Op. 100  —   Mariss Jansons, conductor (Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra) Rouse: Odna Zhizn Symphonies 3  4 Prospero’s Rooms  —   Alan Gilbert, conductor (New York Philharmonic) Best Opera Recording: WINNER: Corigliano: The Ghosts Of Versailles  —   James Conlon, conductor Joshua Guerrero, Christopher Maltman, Lucas Meachem, Patricia Racette, Lucy Schaufer  Guanqun Yu Blanton Alspaugh, producer (LA Opera Orchestra LA Opera Chorus) Handel: Giulio Cesare  —   Giovanni Antonini, conductor Cecilia Bartoli, Philippe Jaroussky, Andreas Scholl    von Otter Samuel Theis, producer (Il Giardino Armonico) Higdon: Cold Mountain  —   Miguel   conductor Emily Fons, Nathan Gunn, Isabel Leonard  Jay Hunter Morris Elizabeth Ostrow, producer (The Santa Fe Opera Orchestra Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program For Singers) Mozart: Le Nozze De Figaro  —   Yannick   conductor Thomas Hampson, Christiane Karg, Luca Pisaroni  Sonya Yoncheva Daniel Zalay, producer (Chamber Orchestra Of Europe Vocalensemble Rastatt) Szymanowski: Król Roger  —   Antonio Pappano, conductor Georgia Jarman, Mariusz Kwiecień  Saimir Pirgu Jonathan Allen, producer (Orchestra Of The Royal Opera House Royal Opera Chorus) Best Choral Performance: WINNER: Penderecki Conducts Penderecki, Volume 1  —   Krzystof Penderecki, conductor Henryk Wojnarowski, choir director (Nikolay Didenko, Agnieszka Rehlis  Johanna Rusanen Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra Warsaw Philharmonic Choir) Himmerland  —   Elisabeth Holte, conductor (Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen, Ragnfrid Lie  Matilda Sterby   Ulsrud Uranienborg Vokalensemble) Janáček: Glagolitic Mass  —   Edward Gardner, conductor Håkon Matti Skrede, chorus master (Susan Bickley, Gábor Bretz, Sara Jakubiak  Stuart Skelton Thomas Trotter Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra Bergen Cathedral Choir, Bergen Philharmonic Choir, Choir Of Collegium Musicum  Edvard Grieg Kor) Lloyd: Bonhoeffer  —   Donald Nally, conductor (Malavika Godbole, John Grecia, Rebecca Harris  Thomas Mesa The Crossing) Steinberg: Passion Week  —   Steven Fox, conductor (The Clarion Choir) Best Chamber   Ensemble Performance: WINNER: Steve Reich  —   Third Coast PercussionFitelberg: Chamber Works  —   ARC EnsembleReflections  —   Øyvind Gimse, Geir Inge Lotsberg  TrondheimsolisteneSerious Business  —   Spektral QuartetTrios From Our Homelands  —   Lincoln Trio, Best Classical Instrumental Solo: WINNER: Daugherty: Tales Of Hemingway  —   Zuill Bailey Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor (Nashville Symphony) Adams, J.: Scheherazade. 2  —   Leila Josefowicz David Robertson, conductor (Chester Englander St. Louis Symphony) Dvorák: Violin Concerto  Romance Suk: Fantasy  —  Christian Tetzlaff John Storgårds, conductor (Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra) Mozart: Keyboard Music, Vols. 8  9  —   Kristian Bezuidenhout1930’s Violin Concertos, Vol. 2  —   Gil Shaham Stéphane Denève, conductor (The Knights  Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra) Best Classical Solo Vocal Album: TIE: Shakespeare Songs  —   Ian Bostridge Antonio Pappano, accompanist (Michael Collins, Elizabeth Kenny, Lawrence Power  Adam Walker) TIE: Schumann  Berg  —   Dorothea Röschmann Mitsuko Uchida, accompanistMonteverdi  —   Magdalena Kožená Andrea Marcon, conductor (David Feldman, Michael Feyfar, Jakob Pilgram  Luca Tittoto La Cetra Barockorchester Basel) Mozart: The Weber Sisters  —   Sabine Devieilhe Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Pygmalion) Verismo  —   Anna Netrebko Antonio Pappano, conductor (Yusif Eyvazov Coro Dell’Accademia Nazionale Di Santa Cecilia Orchestra Dell’Accademia Nazionale Di Santa Cecilia) Best Classical Compendium, WINNER: Daugherty: Tales Of Hemingway American Gothic Once Upon A Castle  —   Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor Tim Handley, producerGesualdo  —   Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor Manfred Eicher, producerVaughan Williams: Discoveries  —   Martyn Brabbins, conductor Andrew Walton, producerWolfgang: Passing Through  —   Judith Farmer  Gernot Wolfgang, producersZappa: 200 Motels  —   The Suites  —     Salonen, conductor Frank Filipetti  Gail Zappa, producers, Best Contemporary Classical Composition: WINNER: Daugherty: Tales Of Hemingway  —   Michael Daugherty, composer (Zuill Bailey, Giancarlo Guerrero  Nashville Symphony) Bates: Anthology Of Fantastic Zoology  —   Mason Bates, composer (Riccardo Muti  Chicago Symphony Orchestra) Higdon: Cold Mountain  —   Jennifer Higdon, composer Gene Scheer, librettistTheofanidis: Bassoon Concerto  —   Christopher Theofanidis, composer (Martin Kuuskmann, Barry Jekowsky  Northwest Sinfonia) Winger: Conversations With Nijinsky  —   C. F. Kip Winger, composer (Martin West  San Francisco Ballet Orchestra) Best Music Video: WINNER: ”Formation”  —   Beyoncé”River”  —   Leon Bridges”Up  Up”  —   Coldplay”Gosh”  —   Jamie XX”Upside Down  Inside Out”  —   OK Go, Best Music Film: WINNER: The Beatles: Eight Days A Week The Touring Years  —   (The Beatles) I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead  —   Steve AokiLemonade  —   BeyoncéThe Music Of Strangers  —     Ma  The Silk Road EnsembleAmerican Saturday Night: Live From The Grand Ole Opry  —   (Various Artists)"
"For Dan Barber, the celebrated chef of the New York City restaurant Blue Hill, each course of a meal is an opportunity to tell a story. One of these stories is about a pepper  —   an aromatic, orange habanero without any heat. Diners are served their heatless habaneros lightly flavored with salt and pepper. They take a bite, then wait for the feeling of a burning mouth or watering eyes that never comes. ”When [our diners] question things they know to be absolute  —   habanero equals intense heat  —   it gets them to think about eating in a different way,” says Barber. ”It’s very important to jujitsu expectations. You end up being more conscious of what you’re eating.” Blue Hill is the biggest buyer of these peppers, also known as ”Habanadas,” which are sold through distributor Baldor Foods. The story Barber hopes to tell with these chiles is that all foods  —   from apples to yams  —   were created through a series of conscious decisions. Some plants thrive because of their   growing conditions, or high yields for others, it’s taste that has caused their popularity. Behind each of the foods we take for granted as finished products are tens or hundreds of generations of genetic tinkering and selection. ”We selected the habanero for heat because that’s what was coveted. But what if you wanted to experience the   experience of a pepper?” Barber asks. ”You can’t do it with a habanero  —   you can with a Habanada.” The man behind the Habanada is a Cornell University plant breeder named Michael Mazourek, who created it as part of his doctoral research. He got the idea after discovering a rogue heatless pepper whose genetics behaved very differently from a naturally sweet pepper like the Bell. This pepper had somehow lost whatever made it spicy in the first place. So, Mazourek wondered, what would happen if they created a habanero without the heat? Their parent pepper, the original heatless variety, ”tasted pretty bad,” Mazourek recalled, ”so we   it with a habanero, and after a couple more generations we started to get some   but aromatic peppers.” Mazourek had a finished variety of the Habanada as early as 2007, but it was only a few years ago that the pepper started making its way out into the world. In 2014, the Habanada was one of the plants featured in the Culinary Breeding Network Variety Showcase, an annual event where chefs are paired with a new food variety and left to experiment. Nora Antene, chef of Portland, Oregon’s Le Pigeon restaurant, got the Habanada which she turned into a summer sherbet. Today there are two routes to get your hands on Habanadas  —   grow them from seed in your backyard or look for them in a restaurant. Currently, Ark Foods, a grower that helped popularize the Shishito pepper (another   pepper) is the only commercial grower. Its peppers are sold to restaurants through distributor Baldor Foods. Ark Foods founder Noah Robbins says he’s a big habanero fan and knew he wanted to grow heatless habaneros as soon as he heard about them. ”They fit really nicely into what we’re all about, which is the flavor of a vegetable rather than the yield or disease resistance.” While there are   pepper wars being fought between growers trying to beat the Carolina Reaper for the title of hottest pepper in the world, many pepper lovers are looking for something new, says Judith Finlayson, author of The Chile Pepper Bible. A normal, unaltered habanero can get up to 300, 000 on the Scoville scale  —   which measures levels of capsaicin, the chemical that causes the burning sensation we call ”heat. The Reaper registers at over 2 million.   challenges on the Internet often end in disaster for those who attempt it. Common side effects include: vomiting, sweating, stomach cramps, blisters in the mouth, and all around agony. Potential physical illness aside, ”You get to a point where it’s so hot that you aren’t tasting anything but heat,” Finlayson says. ”You’re in a state of numbness from the heat.” Robbins sees the growing popularity of the heatless habanero as a sign that people want new experiences with a pepper. Taking away the heat, Robbins explains, is almost like getting the essence of a pepper. As with most matters of taste, everyone describes the Habanada a little differently. Some say it has a citrus flavor, while others cite floral notes or even a hint of guava. But in some ways the main payoff of the Habanada is the anticipation it builds inside eaters’ mouths. ”Imagine as though you’re tasting a habanero, so your taste buds feel as though there will be a rush of heat  —   but it never comes,” Robbins describes. For most of the last 50 to 100 years, Barber says, the chef has been left out of the conversation of which plants were valuable. That decision has instead been in the purview of grocers, farmers, distributors, and others whose main concern wasn’t taste but practicality. As a result, Barber says, we’ve dumbed down taste, flavors, and diversity for the sake of the industry that wants things to be controlled. ”Chefs don’t want that control. Just as a painter wants different colors of paint, chefs want different flavors of food.”"
"The Mariana Trench in the northern Pacific is the deepest part of the world’s oceans. You might think a place that remote would be untouched by human activity. But the Mariana Trench is polluted. At its deepest  —   about 7 miles down  —   the water in the trench is near freezing. The pressure would crush a human like a bug. Scientists have only recently explored it. Among them is biologist Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University in England. His team dropped what they call a mechanical ”lander” down into the trench. It had cameras and water samplers and some baited traps. They didn’t really know what they’d find. When the lander surfaced, the traps contained amphipods  —   shrimplike crustaceans. That wasn’t terribly surprising, as amphipods are known to live at great depths. But bringing them back from the Mariana Trench was a rarity, and Jamieson thought there might be something to learn from them. He took the creatures to an environmental scientist. ”So we just sort of turn up with this really weird looking animal,” he says, ”and joking aside, he came back and said these are really badly contaminated.” The amphipods were contaminated with PCBs  —   polychlorinated biphenyls  —   toxic chemicals used for decades in industry, as well as other industrial pollutants known as persistent organic pollutants. ”Every sample we had,” Jamieson says, ”had contaminants in it at very high or extraordinarily high levels.” How high? He compared the contamination level in his Mariana amphipods to crabs living in waters fed by one of China’s most polluted rivers, as well as amphipods from other parts of the world. ”And what we were finding in the deepest place in the world were (levels) hugely higher, 50 times in some cases,” he says. The team found the same thing in another deep sea trench in the Pacific  —  heavily contaminated amphipods. Jamieson, who was at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland when he did the research, describes the results in the journal Nature Ecology  Evolution. He thinks the pollutants might get to the trenches by latching on to plastic that’s floating in the ocean. Fish and other marine animals absorb pollutants, as well. Eventually, the plastic and the dead animals fall to the bottom. Like dirt in your house, a lot of it will collect at the lowest points. It’s simply a matter of gravity, and the trenches are as deep as it gets. ”Once it gets deeper and deeper and deeper, there’s nowhere else for it to go, because there’s no mechanism to put it back to the surface again,” Jamieson explains. PCBs were banned decades ago. But they’re still out there. Marine biologist Katherine Dafforn at the University of New South Wales in Australia says the discovery of such high levels in these trenches is ”disturbing.” ”A lot of chemicals will have   impacts that we don’t necessarily know about,” Dafforn says. And those impacts might be in places that people don’t pay much attention. Jamieson says just because pollution is out of sight doesn’t mean it’s harmless. ”We’ve got to remember, planet Earth is mostly deep sea,” he says, ”and to think that it’s OK just to ignore it is a little bit irresponsible.”"
"It’s tough to be a teenager. Hormones kick in, peer pressures escalate and academic expectations loom large. Kids become more aware of their environment in the teen years  —   down the block and online. The whole mix of changes can increase stress, anxiety and the risk of depression among all teens, research has long shown. But a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics suggests many more teenage girls in the U. S. may be experiencing major depressive episodes at this age than boys. And the numbers of teens affected took a particularly big jump after 2011, the scientists note, suggesting that the increasing dependence on social media by this age group may be exacerbating the problem. Psychiatrist Ramin Mojtabai and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health wanted to know whether rates of depression among teens had increased over the past decade. They analyzed federal data from interviews with more than 172, 000 adolescents. Between 2005 and 2014, the scientists found, rates of depression went up significantly  —   if extrapolated to all U. S. teens it would work out to about a half million more depressed teens. What’s more,   of those depressed teens in the study were girls. The findings are just the latest in a steady stream of research showing that women of all ages experience higher rates of depression compared to men, says psychologist and author Catherine  . And no wonder, she says  —   despite gains in employment, education and salary, women and girls are still ”continually bombarded by media messages, dominant culture, humor and even political figures about how they look  —   no matter how smart, gifted, or passionate they are.” Today’s constant online connections  —   via texting, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat,  —   can exacerbate that harsh focus on looks and other judgments from peers, she says. The uptick in teen depression Mojtabai found after 2011 could be evidence of that. Mojtabai says girls, in particular, ”are more likely to use these new means of communication, so may be exposed to more cyberbullying or other negative effects of this latest social media.” The effects can feel devastating, says  . ”We know girls are very vulnerable to defining themselves in comparison to others,” she says. Her young female patients often tell her they get their ”entire identity” from their phone, she says, constantly checking the number of ”tags, likes, Instagram photos and Snapchat stories.”   urges schools to be proactive in trying to reduce teens’ feelings of being ”left out” or judged. One tool, she says, might be a course in mindfulness  —   a form of meditation that has been shown to offer measurable health benefits and can help reduce anxiety and depression. Such training can help teach kids that their brain ”on tech” actually needs a rest,   says. Mindfulness training teaches the value of solitude and can help practitioners calm the urge to constantly check the phone  —   a useful skill for people of all ages and gender. Meanwhile, Mojtabai says, parents and family doctors, as well as teachers and school counselors, should be on the lookout for any behavioral changes in the teens they live and work with that might be signs of depression. Symptoms can include changes in sleep patterns, appetite or energy, or a growing inability to pay attention and concentrate. Even just one counseling session to evaluate such symptoms, Mojtabai says, can help get teens back on the right track."
"After multiple public statements from the White House, there are still numerous unanswered questions surrounding Michael Flynn’s   resignation from his position as national security adviser. Flynn is under fire for a discussion he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on the day that the U. S. announced sanctions for cyberhacking that took place during the U. S. election. White House press secretary Sean Spicer characterized the resignation as being about ”eroding trust” between President Trump and Flynn, rather than a legal issue, and he said it was Trump’s decision to have Flynn step down. House Speaker Paul Ryan also said the resignation was Trump’s call. Those accounts contradict earlier remarks from White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, who said the move was Flynn’s. Here are the six questions we still have about the events: 1. What exactly did Flynn say about U. S. sanctions in his call with Kislyak? Spicer maintained Tuesday that Flynn being asked to step down was about ”trust” and that there was ”nothing wrong or inappropriate” about Flynn’s call with the ambassador. There is a transcript of the call produced by the intelligence community, NPR has confirmed. It shows there was discussion about the sanctions. ”Still, current and former administration officials familiar with the call said the transcript was ambiguous enough that Mr. Trump could have justified either firing or retaining Mr. Flynn,” the New York Times reported. Flynn briefed Vice President Pence before Pence made a round of TV appearances Jan. 15 in which he denied Flynn discussed the sanctions in the call. Spicer said on Jan. 13 that Flynn told him the call was to convey Christmas greetings, condolences for a plane crash that killed members of a Russian military choir, Russian talks about the war in Syria and logistics for a   call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his resignation letter, Flynn apologized for giving the vice president and others ”incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador.” 2. Did Flynn’s conversation influence Russia’s decision not to retaliate with sanctions of its own? The Obama administration announced sanctions on Dec. 29 in response to findings that Russia used cyberattacks during the presidential campaign in an effort to assist Trump. The administration expected Russia to retaliate, but it never did. At the time, Trump tweeted glowingly about Putin’s decision not to react. 3. Why wait until now to ask for a resignation? NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports that the White House knew Flynn’s public statements didn’t match what occurred. Johnson reports that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, since fired over her stance to not enforce Trump’s travel ban, told White House Counsel Donald McGahn about the call’s actual contents. Spicer said Tuesday that the Justice Department notified White House counsel on Jan. 26 and that the president was notified immediately. Spicer said that the White House has been ”reviewing and evaluating this issue on a daily basis” for a few weeks and that Flynn has been questioned on multiple occasions. As the Washington Post notes, though, on Friday Trump gave reporters the impression that he ”was not familiar with a Washington Post report that revealed that Flynn had not told the truth about the calls.” 4. Who was behind the initial leak? Who was the first person to share that Flynn had spoken to the Russian ambassador? Trump himself asked Tuesday morning in a tweet, ”Why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?” Spicer echoed concerns about the leak in his briefing. The Post’s Callum Borchers has three theories on ”why the Trump White House keeps leaking”: But it’s also possible, if not likely, that the leaks on this issue came from the intelligence community or Justice Department. That could mean that there are people in the government and national security infrastructure who had genuine concerns about Flynn and how Trump’s White House is being run. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes,  . blasted the leaks in a hallway interview on Tuesday, NPR’s Susan Davis reports. ”Here’s what I know: Gen. Flynn did not break the law talking to the Russia ambassador in fact, that’s his job,” Nunes said. ”Who did break the law is whoever recorded this, unmasked it and leaked it, that is clearly multiple violations.” 5. Who will replace Flynn? Spicer said in a briefing Tuesday afternoon the president is ”currently evaluating a group of strong candidates.” Three are thought to be the leading contenders: Also in the running is John Kelly, who was recently confirmed as Trump’s homeland security secretary, NPR’s Tom Bowman reports. But, Bowman reports, the smart money is on Harward for now. 6. Will Trump continue to speak with Flynn anyway? Trump is known to pick up his cellphone. And Flynn is someone who was one of Trump’s closest and most trusted national security advisers during the campaign. Flynn surely has that number. And there’s some precedent for it. Trump has continued communication with other former aides and advisers, including Corey Lewandowski, who was was fired as Trump’s campaign manager in June."
"Updated at 6:53 p. m. ET May 8, 2017, The events leading to Michael Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser accelerated this week, with constant new updates about what he said, to whom and when. But the path to that step has been unfolding since at least last summer. Here’s a timeline of key events that eventually led to the resignation of a top presidential adviser less than one month into the Trump administration. June through November 2016, Early in the summer, the Washington Post reports that hackers in the Russian government have breached the Democratic National Committee. Sources from the DNC and security experts tell the Post that the hackers had access to opposition research on Trump, as well as internal emails and chats. In late July, WikiLeaks posts a searchable database of more than 19, 000 emails stolen from the DNC computer servers. Compromising information in the emails leads to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chair. Donald Trump, meanwhile, eggs the Russians on. ”Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30, 000 emails that are missing,” he says. Trump repeatedly downplays the hacks in the coming months, saying in a debate that China or ”somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds” could have been behind the breaches. Days after the U. S. intelligence community says it’s ”confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails,” Trump dismisses concerns about the breach. ”You ever notice anything that goes wrong, they blame Russia? ’Russia did it.’ They have no idea,” he says in a speech. Nov. 8, 2016, Donald Trump wins the presidential election. Nov. 10, 2016, President Obama warns   Trump against Flynn during a meeting in the Oval Office, a former Obama official told NPR months after the   . Nov. 18, 2016,   Trump announces that Flynn will be his national security adviser. Flynn, it is later reported, had been in contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before the election. Dec. 9, 2016,   Obama orders a ”full review” of digital attacks aimed at influencing U. S. elections, going back to 2008. The Washington Post reports that the CIA has determined that the Russian government was seeking to help Trump win the election. The Trump transition office issues a statement: ”These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement says. ”The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. [Note: This is incorrect.] It’s now time to move on and ’Make America Great Again.’ ” Dec. 12, 2016, Trump tweets: ”Unless you catch ’hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn’t this brought up before election?” Dec. 15, 2016, Trump tweets, ”If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?” Secretary of State John Kerry says on CNN that   Obama did issue a warning about Russian hacking, but he also ”had to be obviously sensitive to not being viewed as interfering on behalf of a candidate or against a candidate or in a way that promoted unrealistic assessments about what was happening.” Obama tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep that the U. S. will strike back against Russia, one way or another, in response to that country’s attempts to influence the U. S. election. ”I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, that we need to take action,” he says. ”And we will  —   at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized some of it may not be.” He added, ”But Mr. Putin is well aware of my feelings about this, because I spoke to him directly about it.” Dec. 25, 2016, Flynn and Kislyak exchange text messages wishing each other happy holidays (per remarks later made by Sean Spicer on Jan. 13, 2017). Dec. 29, 2016, Obama ejects 35 Russian diplomats from the United States and introduces new sanctions against Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB the country’s main foreign intelligence agency, known as the GRU along with four GRU officers and three companies that did business with GRU. In addition, the Obama administration announces it will be closing down two compounds in the U. S. it says were ”used by Russian personnel for   purposes.” Dec. 29 is also when the conversations between Flynn and Kislyak regarding sanctions took place (this story would break on Jan. 12, 2017). According to a Washington Post story from Feb. 9, two officials ”said that Flynn urged Russia not to overreact to the penalties being imposed by President Barack Obama, making clear that the two sides would be in position to review the matter after Trump was sworn in as president.” Jan. 6, 2017, The Office of the Director of National Intelligence releases a declassified report finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to influence the U. S. presidential election and that a major part of that was the hacking of emails at the Democratic National Committee. ”Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help   Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,” the report says. The authors added that ”Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U. S. democratic process.” Trump meets with intelligence officials for a briefing on the report’s contents. Afterward, he releases a statement lumping Russia in with China and ”other countries” and insisting that the hacking had ”absolutely no effect” on the election’s outcome: ”While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines.” However, as   Director James Clapper had told John McCain just one day earlier, it’s impossible to know the impact: ”Certainly the intelligence community can’t gauge the impact that it had on choices that the electorate made. There is no way for us to gauge that.” Jan. 10, 2017,   General nominee (and Alabama Sen.) Jeff Sessions says in his confirmation hearing that he ”has no reason to doubt” the report’s conclusions tying Putin to the DNC hack. Jan. 11, 2017, In his confirmation hearing,   of State nominee Rex Tillerson acknowledges that he thinks it’s ”a fair assumption” that Putin had knowledge of the plot to influence the U. S. election. He also adds that the intelligence report on Russian hacking ”clearly is troubling.” Jan. 12, 2017, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius reports that ”a senior U. S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29,” the same day that the Obama administration announced the new sanctions and removal of Russian diplomats. Jan. 13, 2017, White House press secretary Sean Spicer says that a conversation took place between Flynn and Kislyak, but that the conversation was on Dec. 28, and that it wasn’t about sanctions. He says that Kislyak texted Flynn on the 28th, asking if he could give Flynn a call. Kislyak then called that day, and according to Spicer, ”the call centered around the logistics of setting up a call with the president of Russia and the   after he was sworn in, and they exchanged logistical information on how to initiate and schedule that call. That was it, plain and simple.” This proves to be untrue, as two Trump transition officials confirm to NPR that a call took place on Dec. 29. Jan. 15, 2017, Officials from the Justice Department and intelligence agencies discuss ”whether the incoming Trump White House should be notified about the contents of the   communications,” as the Washington Post has reported. Later that day, on CBS’s Face the Nation, Vice President Pence says the conversations between Flynn and Kislyak had nothing to do with sanctions. ”What I can confirm, having spoken to him about it, is that those conversations that happened to occur around the time that the United States took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions,” Pence said. Upon further questioning from John Dickerson, Pence added, ”I don’t believe there were more conversations” as well as ”I can confirm those elements were not a part of that discussion.” After the Pence interview, the Post reports, the Justice and intelligence officials thought the issue was ”more urgent . .. because U. S. intelligence agencies had reason to believe that Russia was aware that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed sanctions in their December call, contrary to public statements.” Jan. 19, 2017, According to the Washington Post, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, DNI James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan discuss whom in the administration should be briefed on the   communications. Jan. 26 and 27, 2017, The Justice Department notifies the White House counsel of discrepancies between what Flynn and Pence had claimed about the phone call between Flynn and Kislyak, as Spicer later reports at a Feb. 14 White House press briefing. Jan. 30, 2017, President Trump fires Yates after she refused to defend his first travel ban.  Feb. 8, 2017, In an interview, Flynn twice denies having discussed sanctions with Kislyak, according to the Washington Post. Feb. 9, 2017, A Flynn spokesman says that the retired lieutenant general ”indicated that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up,” according to the Post. This is also the day Pence ”became aware of the incomplete information he’d received . .. based on media accounts,” according to Pence press secretary Marc Lotter, who spoke to reporters on Feb. 14. Feb. 13, 2017, Kellyanne Conway tells MSNBC that Flynn ”does enjoy the full confidence of the president.” Later in the day, Spicer says that Trump is ”evaluating the situation” regarding Flynn. That night, Flynn resigns as national security adviser. In a statement, he admits accidental wrongdoing: ”Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the Vice President Elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology.” The White House announces that retired Lt. Gen. Joseph Keith Kellogg Jr. will be acting national security adviser. Feb. 14, 2017, Spicer says that 17 days prior, White House Counsel Donald McGahn had told the president that Flynn had been wrong when he told Pence he hadn’t discussed sanctions with Kislyak, as reported by the New York Times. At a press briefing, Spicer says of the resignation, ”We got to a point not based on a legal issue, but based on a trust issue,” adding that Trump was ”concerned that Gen. Flynn had misled the vice president and others.” Politico reports that there’s still more to come on the Flynn story, according to the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee: ”Rep. Adam Schiff ( .) told House Democrats Tuesday that the recent revelations about former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn’s conversations with the Russians are only the beginning, and more information will surface in the coming days, according to multiple sources in a closed party meeting.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicates that the Senate Intelligence Committee will investigate Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials, and Sen. Roy Blunt,  . a member of the intelligence committee, says Flynn should meet with the committee ”very soon.” With reporting from Barbara Van Woerkom"
"Throughout Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and now during his first weeks in office, one country keeps   in the controversies that swirl around him: Russia. For all the turbulence, Trump and his team have not addressed the larger and more important questions of how they plan to deal with Vladimir Putin’s Russia on a host of critical issues: the war in Syria, the turmoil in Ukraine, the future of NATO. The latest episode was Monday night’s resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn. Even as Trump contemplates Flynn’s replacement, Defense Secretary James Mattis flew out of Washington before dawn on Tuesday to reassure European allies anxious over Trump’s campaign criticism that NATO is ”obsolete.” Many NATO members find such remarks particularly troubling in the aftermath of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its ongoing support of separatists in eastern Ukraine. Yet Trump has often appeared more critical of NATO than of Russian actions seen as destabilizing Europe  —   something other foreign policy voices have seized upon. ”American policy toward Russia must be made clear and unequivocal: we will honor our commitments to our NATO allies, we will maintain and enhance our deterrent posture in Europe, we will hold Russian violators of human rights accountable for their actions,” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said in a statement Tuesday. A softer line on Russia, Under his tag line of ”America first,” Trump talks tough about many countries, from building a wall on the Mexican border to imposing trade tariffs on China and freezing immigration from mostly Muslim countries. Yet Trump has consistently opted for a much softer line on Russia, out of step with both Republicans and Democrats who see Putin as challenging American interests on multiple fronts. The Russians are again staging extensive airstrikes in support of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, part of a campaign that has been widely criticized for the many civilian casualties and frequent hits on hospitals. Critics also say the Russians have often struck at moderate rebels who threaten Assad’s army, while largely ignoring the Islamic State, which is concentrated in the thinly populated eastern part of the country. Trump has refrained from criticizing Russia’s role in Syria as well. He has ordered the U. S. military to come up with a new, comprehensive plan for the U. S. to defeat ISIS and suggested that the Americans and the Russians could join forces. And in Capitol Hill testimony last Thursday, the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, said that Russia was providing assistance to the Taliban insurgents battling the U. S. forces and the Afghan government. Asked about the Russian motives in Afghanistan, Nicholson said, ”I think it’s to undermine the United States and NATO.” While the general did not go into details, it was clearly a frustration in a war he called a ”stalemate.”   controversies, Trump has gone out of his way on multiple occasions to avoid criticizing Putin. When Bill O’Reilly of Fox News recently said, ”Putin is a killer,” Trump replied: ”There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?” Trump went on to say of Putin: ”I do respect him. Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get along with them.” While Russia looms large in all these foreign policy matters, Moscow has also been central to Trump’s political intrigues at home. Here’s the briefest of recaps:  —   Russia was accused of hacking into Democratic Party emails and trying to undermine Hillary Clinton in the election, a charge Trump has been reluctant to accept and which has become the source of quarrels with U. S. intelligence agencies.  —   Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, denied reports that he was paid by   interests for work he did previously in Ukraine. But he resigned from Trump’s team in August.  —   Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has faced criticism from many Democrats for the close ties with Putin he cultivated as the chief executive of Exxon Mobil.  —   U. S. intelligence officials informed    Trump about a dossier, compiled by a former British intelligence officer, that alleges the Russians have compromising material on Trump. At the time, U. S. officials said the claims are unconfirmed, and Trump angrily dismissed them. So far, Trump and Putin have just had one phone call, on Jan. 28, where both leaders said they would like better relations after years of friction. But Flynn’s flameout has contributed to a sense of turmoil in the White House, a Congress suspicious of the president’s intentions, and a fog of uncertainty around how Trump plans to engage with Russia. Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1"
"The hugely successful fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials will be getting a ”companion” trilogy, author Philip Pullman announced this evening. The first book of the new series, which will collectively be called The Book of Dust, is set for publication on October 19. The original His Dark Materials trilogy consists of three volumes (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass) published between 1995 and 2000. The series has sold over 17. 5 million copies and been translated into 40 languages. The events of the first trilogy took place across several parallel worlds  —   including our own  —   and touched on disparate ideas related to theology, particle physics, and the loss of childhood innocence. Characters included a headstrong and fiercely intelligent young girl named Lyra Belacqua, and an armored, talking polar bear. The Book of Dust will return to the world( s) and characters of His Dark Materials, Pullman said, and Lyra will be integral to the new story  —   but not in the way she was before. The first volume will take place a decade before the events of His Dark Materials, when Lyra is an infant. The second and third volumes will be set ten years after the original trilogy’s conclusion, and will follow Lyra as a young woman. But that doesn’t mean what you might expect, Pullman told NPR editor Glen Weldon. He wants readers to consider the new work not as a simple extension of the original trilogy, but as a ”companion” to it. ”The [new] story begins before His Dark Materials and continues after it,” he said, ”. .. you don’t have to read it before you read [the original trilogy] . .. this is another story that comes after it, so it’s not a sequel, and it’s not a prequel, it’s an equal.” The title, The Book of Dust, refers to an invisible substance that figures largely in the earlier books  —   a fictional elementary particle that harbors a mysterious affinity with human consciousness. ”That’s what I really wanted to explore in this new work,” he said. ”More about the nature of Dust, and consciousness, and what it means to be a human being.” Pullman has already followed up the original trilogy with two novellas and an audiobook. He said he was motivated to revisit the world of Lyra and her companions with a full trilogy because ”I sensed a big story. I sensed the presence, in the way that you do, of another story that hadn’t been told, and I went closer and . .. thought about it and lived with it for a while and discovered that yes, it was a big story, and it did deserve to be told, it deserves its own books.” On where The Book of Dust will fall in the saga, Well, the first book is set roughly ten years before the action of His Dark Materials. And the second book and subsequent books . .. are set ten years after it. So in the first one, Lyra is only a baby of about six months. So she’s not able to do very much, but she’s certainly the focus of intense activity on the part of the main protagonists. In the second book she will be twenty years old, she’ll be an adult. ... It’s a sort of companion book, if you like. It doesn’t stand before [His Dark Materials] it doesn’t stand after it, it stands beside it. On why he’s calling it The Book of Dust, Dust is something which terrifies the religious authorities in His Dark Materials. It seems to have something to do with human consciousness, it seems to have something to do with experience, or as they call it, ”sin.” But they don’t know what it is, or why it’s important, and they’re terrified of it. Now, in the course of the story, Lyra and her companions discover something about Dust, something important: that it’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. On whether the overwhelming worldwide reaction to the original trilogy colors his writing of the new one, When I wrote the first series, starting in 1993, I didn’t expect more than a readership of about two or three thousand. That’s sort of based on previous experience and thinking what sort of book it was, I didn’t think it would have very wide audience but maybe a few people would enjoy it. The fact that it was received with such interest all over the world in 40 different languages really did amaze me. It didn’t change what I was doing, though, because I was already in my late 40s when I was starting that, I wasn’t a very young writer bowled over by all the response and attention and so on. I was pretty clear and determined about what I was doing and how I was doing it. The only difference it made was that I had a lot more letters to write back. To answer. Nowadays I communicate by Twitter, but back in those days there were a lot of letters to write back, which I duly did. On his impatient readership, Well, I have a standard answer. When people say ”How’s The Book of Dust getting along? When’s it going to be finished?” I say, with perfect truth, ”It is three pages longer today than it was yesterday.” On the criticism his books have received, I’ve been greatly criticized for the attention to religion that I give in the books, but I’ve been criticized, on the whole, by people who haven’t read the books. My attitude to religion is that religion is a most interesting and extraordinary human phenomenon. I’m fascinated by it, interested in it, and at some points critical of it. And the points when I become critical are the points when politics come into it, and religion acquires political power  —   political with a small ”p,” for example, within the confines of a single family, or Political with a large ”P,” on a national or international scale. When religion gets the power to tell people how to dress, who to fall in love with, how to behave, what they must not read, what they must not wear, all those things, then religion goes bad. . .. Religion is private thing, and a fine thing and a good thing, as long as it remains private. As soon as it becomes public and political, it’s dangerous. That’s the position I’ve taken up in the first series and the position this current one takes up as well."
"Office of Government Ethics Director Walter M. Shaub Jr. is recommending an investigation and possible disciplinary action be taken against Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to President Trump, for urging shoppers to buy fashion products sold by Trump’s daughter Ivanka. ”Under the present circumstances, there is strong reason to believe that Ms. Conway has violated the Standards of Conduct and that disciplinary action is warranted,” Shaub wrote in a letter to White House deputy counsel Stefan C. Passantino. Conway appeared on Fox and Friends Thursday morning, where she addressed Nordstrom’s recent decision to stop selling Ivanka Trump’s line of products because of what it said were poor sales. ”Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would tell you. I hate shopping, and I’m gonna go get some on myself today,” Conway said. Ivanka Trump has a successful line of clothing, jewelry and shoes that is carried by numerous retailers. But a boycott of Trump products got underway last year after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood video, in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by the genitals, and that appears to have hurt Ivanka’s sales. Her product line ”was successful enough that these companies would have all kept carrying it on its own merits had this not happened,” says retail consultant Jan Rogers Kniffen. ”They weren’t just carrying it because it was Ivanka Trump selling it. They were carrying it because it was actually selling to a customer.” In recent weeks, several large retailers have dropped all or part of the line, while others have chosen to   it in their stores. ”They’re all just stepping out of the way. They’re saying, ’We don’t want to be in a fight with the president, but we don’t want to be in a fight with our customers either. We’re getting out of the way,’ ” Kniffen says. ”She has tied herself to a very controversial figure that many women believe is trying to take them back to the 15th century. Anyone associated [with] Donald Trump is toxic,” says Eric Schiffer, CEO of Reputation Management Consultants. But the retailers’ decision did not sit well with President Trump, who accused Nordstrom in a tweet last week of treating his daughter ”so unfairly.” Conway echoed the charge on TV. White House spokesman Sean Spicer later said Conway had been ”counseled” about her comments. Trump himself has not addressed Conway’s remarks, and she told an interviewer later that day that she had the president’s full support. Shaub said in the letter that his office had not received any indication of ”disciplinary or other corrective action against Ms. Conway.” The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Jason Chaffetz, and ranking minority member Elijah Cummings said in a letter that Conway’s comments ”appear to violate federal ethics regulations.” Shaub said in his letter to the White House that Conway had violated rules ”prohibiting employees from misusing their official positions.” Robert Weissman, president of the liberal group Public Citizen, praised Shaub for seeking disciplinary action against Conway. ”We can only hope that the Trump White House responds positively to the call to discipline Kellyanne Conway for her transgressions  —   statements that never would have been made had she subjected herself to the most elementary standards. But forgive us if we don’t hold our breath. Conway’s promotion of Ivanka’s products followed the example of President Trump and was intended to curry favor with the president (apparently successfully).”"
"On this day 50 years ago, a   gospel singer from Detroit went into a New York City recording studio to try to   her career. No one saw it coming, but the song Aretha Franklin laid down on Valentine’s Day 1967 would go on to become one of the greatest recordings of all time. ”Respect” hit the top of the charts four months later and turned Aretha Franklin into a feminist champion. The track was actually a clever   of a song by Otis Redding, whose original reinforced the traditional family structure of the time: Man works all day, brings money home to wife and demands her respect in return. Franklin’s version blew that structure to bits. For one, Redding’s song doesn’t spell out ”      ” like Franklin’s does. It also doesn’t have the backup singers and their clever interplay. So much of what made ”Respect” a hit  —   and an anthem  —   came from Franklin’s rearrangement. She remembered how it all came together when she spoke with WHYY’s Fresh Air in 1999. ”My sister Carolyn and I got together and  —   I was living in a small apartment on the west side of Detroit, piano by the window, watching the cars go by  —   and we came up with that infamous line, the ’sock it to me’ line,” she told host Terry Gross. ”Some of the girls were saying that to the fellas, like ’sock it to me’ in this way or ’sock it to me’ in that way. It’s not sexual. It was nonsexual, just a cliché line.” Franklin’s ”Respect” became a transformative moment  —   not only in her career but also in the women’s rights movement and the civil rights movement. Which makes one wonder: What did Redding think of all this? ”Well, he didn’t like it,” says Mark Ribowsky, author of the biography Dreams To Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul. Speaking to NPR in 2015, Ribowsky said Redding eventually accepted that ”Respect” no longer belonged to him  —   and that you can see it for yourself in his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. ”He comes onstage and he goes, ’This next song is a song that a girl took away from me’  —   but he says it with the Otis charm, a little glint in the eye,” Ribowski said. ”And Otis couldn’t begrudge her that.” Rolling Stone named ”Respect” one of the top five greatest songs of all time, saying: ”Franklin wasn’t asking for anything. She sang from higher ground: a woman calling an end to the exhaustion and sacrifice of a raw deal with scorching sexual authority. In short, if you want some, you will earn it.”"
"They say opposites attract. But these days, maybe not so much. A growing number of singles are adding a clause to their online dating profiles telling either Trump haters or Trump supporters  —   depending on their political preference  —   that they need not apply. ”This was like a deal breaker for me,” says    Elizabeth Jagosz from the Detroit area. ”If you are Trump supporter, I’m not even going to consider meeting you for coffee.” It’s not just an issue of party politics, Jagosz says. It’s about core values. Love, she says, cannot conquer all. ”If you don’t care about a person who says you can grab women by the pussy and that’s OK  —   I don’t wanna date you if you think that behavior’s OK,” Jagosz says. ”If that’s not a deal breaker for you, then you and I have nothing to talk about.” As another single put it in her profile, ”Red hats need not apply.” But the people wearing those red hats  —    the ones stamped with ”Make America Great Again”  —   have been feeling the same way. This lack of desire from liberals and conservatives to date each other is what David Goss says prompted him to launch TrumpSingles. com. ”Yeah, it’s both ways,” Goss says. ”You know, like a liberal doesn’t want to date a Nazi. And a republican doesn’t want to date, well, a whiny snowflake, and that’s what they’re viewing each other as.” TrumpSingles. com is a kind of safe space for Trump supporters who say they’re sick of the ”lefties” refusing to even give them a chance. ”[The liberals] are just repeating this left echo chamber of ’Oh, you must be a racist oh, you must be a homophobe oh, you must be a misogynist,’ ” Goss says. ”They’re judging the people based on who they voted for without actually getting to know them.” Helen Fisher, the chief scientific adviser to the Internet dating website Match. com, says new research from the website shows both liberals and conservatives are moving away from the center of the political spectrum. ”There’s a real distinct difference that we’re seeing today, and all singles are becoming more rigid in their views,” she says. The data also shows that singles are more likely now to shun those who are at the other end of the political spectrum. And liberals are more likely to spurn conservatives than the other way around. ”I think it’s very natural to the human animal to bring it into the idea of ’OK, you like this person, well, you must be like that person then,’ ” Fisher says. ”America is taking this very, very personally. No question about it.” Looking back now, it seems almost unfathomable that even two opposing campaign advisers could cross the aisle and then actually walk down the aisle as James Carville and Mary Matalin did in 1993. As Carville famously put it once, ”You can love the sinner and hate the sin.” The couple says their secret to survival and harmony at home is simply agreeing to disagree. But today, singles seem to be saying they just can’t do that. ”I mean, I wish I could just go out and tell everyone to knock it off and be cool with each other, but it’s just not going to work that way,” Goss says. His Trump Singles dating site is up to 35, 000 members. LiberalHearts. com, founded by Salvatore Prano, is up to nearly 50, 000. ”There’s more activity now than ever,” Prano says. ”I knew liberals would only find comfort in each other’s arms.” But there is one other option for lonely liberals. Single Joe Goldman founded MapleMatch. com, a dating site that helps Americans find Canadians ”to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency.” Goldman became his own first client. ”I can’t tell you the sinking feeling I felt [after the election],” he says. ”That’s not the country I want to live in. So why not consider places that might be more in line with my values, like Canada.” It may be better than the alternative. According to the new Match. com survey, a growing number of liberals today are simply choosing to not date at all."
"I’ve never been a fan of Valentine’s Day. Even when I was in a relationship, Valentine’s Day was an invitation to feel embarrassed by the pressures of consumer culture, or let down because someone who professed to care about me had not managed to read my mind. I didn’t want the clichéd gifts of chocolates or flowers, but I also didn’t want to tell you what to get, because that would spoil the surprise. I’ve spent a lot of Valentine’s Days disappointed. Maybe the only people really happy on Valentine’s Day are couples completely infatuated with each other, and since that’s already a gift, I’m not sure why they need their own holiday. That’s like a charity for rich people, or setting aside a day so we can all pay more attention to celebrities. You know who needs chocolate? Sad people. You know who deserves gifts? Lonely people. The ones who eat frozen dinners in their bed each night, and have their longest conversations with their pets, and are way too knowledgeable about the documentaries on Netflix. I’ve spent most of my adulthood single, and on bad days, I can fall prey to the magical thinking that finding someone would relieve me of the low rattle of unhappiness I’ve carried around much of my life. But I have to remind myself that ”relationship status” isn’t any kind of miracle cure. I’ve met plenty of lonely people who are married, and they can’t even think to themselves, ”Maybe when I find someone I’ll be happier.” They did, and it didn’t work. The truth is  —   the majority of our life is not spent with weak knees and butterflies, because no one would get anything done. One of my favorite authors is the   British philosopher Alain de Botton. In his novel The Course of Love, he writes about our shallow understanding of   intimacy: ”What we typically call love is only the start of love,” he says. And one of the cruelest games we play on young couples is suggesting this transitory state is supposed to last. I wish more writers told us about this kind of love  —   the   kind. The one forged by compromise, patience and accepting other people as they are, not as we wish them to be. Back in ancient times, people would never have married for love. They considered it too unstable. They married for money. They married for land. They married because her family had 45 goats and 30 sheep. That may sound insane to us now, but it might be a little more reliable than ”I just had this feeling.” If I do get married, I hope it’s for love. Not just because I don’t have any goats, but because I think a companionship based on respect and deep affection is a noble goal. At the same time, I know many of my previous relationships were corrupted by my own unrealistic expectations, forged by the soft fictions of pop songs and   and   love stories that only show you the beginning. Valentine’s Day was another opportunity to hold my relationship up against those idealistic images and see how I was failing. And my focus on romantic love, and all it was supposed to deliver, has kept me from missing all the other kinds of love I have in my life. My life is rich with love, even if it’s not the kind I expected. The walks with friends. The long conversations on the phone, or on a living room couch. A family that is so predictably available I forget to count them. A person who emails me out of the blue to admit they’re struggling, and sad, and I tell them I get it, and we both leave that small exchange a little lighter. There’s this great line from The Lonely City, by Olivia Laing. She writes, ”Loneliness, longing does not mean one has failed, but simply that one is living.” I think of that on days when I feel like what I have isn’t enough. And if you are feeling blue on this holiday, I can tell you there are many people right there with you  —   and we have a lot of documentaries on Netflix to recommend."
"It’s Valentine’s Day, which means it’s time of year to revel in the outward displays of love  —   be it flowers, chocolates, or wine. It’s also the time of year when romance novelists are suddenly in hot demand for our expertise on dramatic displays of affection, the perfect romantic evening out . .. or what to read for a delicious night in. Authors and readers of the genre know that romance is more than a    affair. In these novels, love is always front and center, and the central relationship is often as complicated as it is passionate. The   declarations of love that regularly occur approximately three quarters of the way through the story derive their power not from over the top displays, but heartfelt and honest words. The guaranteed happy ending reminds us that love is more than just a day, and more than just a display, and it’s always worth fighting for. These three romance novels have all that and more  —   the passion and complications, tender gestures and romantic declarations, and beautiful   . On their own, each one would make for a romantic night in  —   but they’d pair well with flowers, chocolate and wine, too. Maya Rodale is a bestselling romance author."
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that parsing the broader implications of The   can feel an awful lot like examining the semiotics of mashed potato flakes. But can we not also agree that the fact that a narrative is ridiculous and phony doesn’t mean it isn’t both reflective of and influential upon the culture out of which it grows? We learned on Monday night that attorney Rachel Lindsay will, in the 34th season of the combined   franchise, become the first black person at the center of a season. This is, in part, her reward for making it most of the way to the top of a heap that, according to the show’s eternally dopey narrative, was built by current Bachelor Nick Viall, a dude so devoid of charm that I once called him a ”churl” in a headline. (In fairness, some people like Nick, or else he wouldn’t be The Bachelor. I do not truck with these people.) The persistent whiteness of Bachelorons (my chosen term to encompass both Bachelors and Bachelorettes) is in part a result of the same dynamics that affect much of the rest of television. But this show has had an extra challenge that seems to have that particularly difficult to change even once network executives started to acknowledge it. (The only Bacheloron who wasn’t identified as white until now was Juan Pablo Galavis, an   Venezuelan soccer player and  —   unrelated to that, of course  —   kind of a toolbag, to put it in fancy critical terms.) In short, they alternate Bachelors and Bachelorettes, and each Bacheloron is chosen from the previous season’s  . Not always the   but generally somebody from the top few finishers. Rachel is not Nick’s chosen one, but she got close, and that’s why she was in the running for Bachelorette. So in a sense, inside this narrative, each Bacheloron has given a stamp of approval to the next by at least bringing them close to the end of the season. Rachel will do the same with the next Bacheloron  —   and we’ll get back to that. When the Bacheloron is white and most of the candidates are white, what this means is this: If you’re a black candidate, you can be chosen, but first, you have to impress a white Bacheloron and convince that person to, for many weeks in a row, pick you. You cannot go forward without their   because of longstanding structural rules about allocating power that they themselves have followed successfully in order to become powerful in the first place. You have to figure out how to navigate not only their evaluation of your qualities as a person, but also their largely mysterious ”gut feelings” and ”instincts” and ideas about ”compatibility” and ”fit” and so forth. Only by navigating that white Bacheloron’s   correctly can you, as a black candidate, obtain power yourself by being chosen. So to succeed in this structure as a black person, you have to click  —   in some    way for which nobody is accountable  —   with a white person who gets to say yes or no to you. That person’s approval is the only path. Now go back and replace ”Bacheloron” with ”boss” and ”chosen” with ”promoted,” and you’ll see that they may have accidentally set up a really freaky metaphor for the way structural racism can sometimes work without anybody setting out to do it. They consider this system, by the way, to be utterly  . But in practice, in actual undeniable fact, it has been a story almost entirely of a white person picking the next white person, and of that white person then picking another white person, and everybody shrugging and saying, ”I just went with my gut! It was love!” And that’s why the fact that they chose Rachel to be the Bachelorette is much less interesting to me than this question: Whom will they offer her as candidates? If the reason candidates of color were quite few in number until relatively recently was that the Bachelorons were white and the show had Certain Unspoken Ideas About Compatibility, that should mean Rachel should get mostly  —   not exclusively, but mostly  —   black men to choose from. (I am in no way endorsing those C. U. I. A. C. by the way I am merely positing them as one of the ways the show could choose to try to explain its past casting decisions.) And if that happens, and if the show is right about compatibility (again, I don’t think it is) then Rachel might well choose mostly black men at the top of her list. So maybe then you get a black Bachelor. And then maybe another black Bachelorette. If that doesn’t happen, then the story they’ve been telling is, in some way, wrong, or at least incomplete. Before you come at me to explain that you’ve seen UnREAL and all of this is phony, let me stress this: for the purposes of this argument, it doesn’t matter. Consider it a manufactured narrative, and you come out at exactly the same place: the show has put itself in an intriguing bind by building into its story structure both a longstanding lean against interracial dating and a story where being chosen by this season’s hero is key to being next season’s hero. This link between each season and the next has created a way for the centrality of white leads to perpetuate itself, without anyone who set up the whole      system having ever needed to have that motive. The motives were undoubtedly ratings, familiarity, and audience loyalty they probably wouldn’t care if the lead were a head of lettuce on a broomstick as long as people watched. (Which they might.) (And let’s be honest: some past Bachelors weren’t far from that anyway, BRAD.) But it doesn’t matter  —   the effect was the same. So yes, it’s interesting to see Rachel chosen as the Bachelorette. But watch for her list of suitors. Because that’s where you’ll get the hint about what the real rules are."
"After her glorious Grammy sweep on Sunday night, Adele woke up to a #BoycottAdele hashtag, with many Beyoncé fans questioning her ”unfair” win over their idol. But calls for a boycott are scarcely new for Adele. Last year, after she endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, Trump supporters launched a similar hashtag. Buffeted by the competitive politics of the right and left, the English singer will likely think longingly back to the uncomplicated very first #BoycottAdele hashtag that trended briefly in 2015 after the release of her hit single ”Hello.” It had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with tea. The millions of fans who have watched the music video of ”Hello” know that a steaming cup of tea has a central role to play in providing succor to the singer’s lovesick heart. Artfully stained with sepia and loss, the retro video opens with a deeply depressed Adele walking into a   house enrobed in dustcovers. Outside, it’s wickedly cold and blustery. Inside (her broken heart) the temperature’s pretty   too. So while she lavishly mourns the loss of her   lover in song, Adele does what the English do when things look bleak. She pops the kettle on. There’s a delicately patterned china cup and saucer waiting to be filled. So far, so good. Then, the singer does something absolutely shocking. She pours hot water into the cup and then pops in a tea bag. Instead of the other way around, of course. This casual switching of steps was an outrage and nothing short of tea treason. British twitter sputtered with indignation. How reassuringly English. A country that has fought two opium wars with China to protect its precious tea supply takes the beverage very seriously. Ask the man who is the au courant hero, George Orwell. He may have fought totalitarianism all his life, but when it came to making a pot of tea, it was his way or the highway. His popular essay, ”A nice cup of tea,” is an   disquisition on how to achieve just that. Orwell would have been horrified by Adele’s  —   and the modern streamlined style of  —    . Not merely by the presence of a teabag but by the absence of a teapot. ”If the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly,” he declaimed. In order to get a good infusion, one ”should take the teapot to the kettle, and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours.” As for that other great   Brit, John Lennon, he could imagine a world without heaven and religion, but not without tea  —   brewed the right way, of course. A few years ago, his widow, Yoko Ono, wrote a piece for The New York Times called ”The Tea Maker,” in which she affectionately recalled their midnight   kitchen trysts. ”Yoko, Yoko, you’re supposed to first put the tea bags in, and then the hot water,” John would admonish her. And so Ono allowed him to make the tea his way. But, for tea purists, there’s an unfortunate twist to this story. As Ono tells it: One night, however, John said: ”I was talking to Aunt Mimi this afternoon and she says you are supposed to put the hot water in first. Then the tea bag. I could swear she taught me to put the tea bag in first, but . ..”  ”So all this time, we were doing it wrong?”  ”Yeah . ..”  We both cracked up. ..  So Adele should take heart. She has the great Beatle on her side. But though once a committed tea drinker, Adele has given up her     habit. Not because of the tea trolls but because of the pounds she was putting on from the heavily sugared cups. Meanwhile, her ”Hello” video has launched a range of ”Hello, it’s tea” merchandise and several cheeky parodies, including changing the soulful line of Lionel Richie’s 1983 hit, ”Hello,” to ”Hello, is it tea you’re looking for?” In another very funny   an English radio presenter rewrote the lyrics to make tea the star. So instead of belting out ”Hello from the other side,” we have: Where the hell’s my cup of tea? My ginger nut needs dunking see, Have you even turned the kettle on? I should have had it by now, But all my biscuits are gone, I love tea, It’s me and tea. On Sunday night, after an awkward, overwrought but   acceptance speech in which she nervously lavished praise on Beyoncé, Adele accidentally broke her trophy in half. As if it were a ginger nut biscuit she was dying to dunk into a cup of tea. With all of those boycott hashtags, she could certainly do with a cuppa. Nina Martyris is a journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"Adele broke her Grammy award in half Sunday night. It might have seemed like the careless act of someone with plenty to spare the    powerhouse vocalist has 15 of the music industry’s most coveted statues, including the five just presented for her latest album, 25. She did so charmingly, with a characteristic big laugh, and apparently by accident, severing the statue’s gramophone horn from its base as she nervously handled it. While explaining why she didn’t deserve that particular award  —   why it should have gone to Beyoncé, her own professed idol and the most dominant figure in today’s sometimes fraught, sometimes banal pop milieu, for her   visual album Lemonade  —   Adele used the statue as a stress ball, inadvertently producing an apt metaphor for the predicament the win created for her, and the larger, enduring inequity it exposed. It’s interesting to think about what this gesture would have signified had another artist made it. What if Kanye West had rushed into the press conference, pulled the Grammy from Adele’s hands, and smashed it? What if Chance the Rapper had torn asunder one of his three prizes in protest against Beyoncé’s loss? Or if the Queen herself had, in her dignified and quiet way, gently tossed the pair she did win onto a tray full of empty wine glasses? Any of these gestures would have been read as deeply political, possibly immature and certainly insurrectionist. This is where privilege gets complicated: Adele could become slightly unhinged about her arguably dubious win because, as a lovable representative of the white, mainstream pop ideal the Grammys have helped shape, her protest doesn’t feel that disruptive. Are the Grammys racist? Not in the sickening mode of swastikas spraypainted on walls, or even in the   practices common in the   century, when rock and soul kickstarted a new, integrationist era to which the     Recording Academy, who doles them out, is still adjusting. Achieving the ideal of equality is proving as heartbreakingly difficult for the recording industry as it is for all of America. Here are some facts, laid out by music scholar John Vilanova when Taylor Swift won the 2016 album of the year in a field that included the widely praised rapper Kendrick Lamar. ”In the last ten years, there have been seventeen nonwhite artists nominated for the Grammy Award for album of the year,” Vilanova wrote. ”Of those seventeen, the only winner was Herbie Hancock in 2008. His album was a collection of covers of songs by the white folk artist Joni Mitchell.” Vilanova goes on to explain that the categories beyond the top four, which reflect genre and radio format distinctions, are racially marked. Lemonade, for example, won best urban contemporary album. She’s only won once in a major category, in 2009, for ”Single Ladies.” Nearly all of her other 20 gramophones are in the RB category. ”Many   people often have a hard time understanding what systemic racism looks like,” Vilanova writes. ”This is what systemic racism looks like.” When artists of color only win awards that are not included in the telecast  —   the only artist other than Beyoncé to get behind the podium on Sunday was Chance the Rapper  —   that’s systemic racism, buried so deeply within the structures of an institution that it can be read as inevitable. Throughout popular music, it also takes the form of pervasive ideas. These include the notion that music made with ”real” instruments and sung straightforwardly, like Adele’s softly tinged soul or Sturgill Simpson’s raucous country, require more skill and vision than those created within the   and   vernacular of   the assumption that artists who stand still and sing, like Adele, are more ”authentic” than those who dance, like Beyoncé, although dance and music have been inseparable at least since the Jazz Age and the elevation of the     a figure who’s almost always white, over those who work more collaboratively. These ideas obscure the fact that most white performers who embody them borrow heavily from black musical traditions. At the Grammys, the most memorable ”breakthrough” performances came from Nashville artists Simpson and Maren Morris, who both openly demonstrated their debts to gospel and soul. Adele herself is a   soul singer who began her education listening to Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé’s former group, at age 11. ”My life is Beyoncé,” she said while accepting her honors, at one point asking the very pregnant star if she would be her ”mummy.” That odd and frankly somewhat inappropriate gush (for one thing, Beyoncé is only eight years older than Adele) may have been inspired by Beyoncé’s own extravagant living tableau of a Grammy performance, which conjured African goddesses, her sister Solange and Cher in celebrating the divine side of motherhood. Yet the comment also inadvertently conjured a long and problematic history of black women being asked to serve as ”mothers” to white women  —   as domestics, as often unacknowledged mentors, and as uncredited artistic sources. Beyoncé demurely smiled in the audience, surrounded by her actual family, whom she’d cited in her own speech as the reason she made Lemonade  —   so that these black children would have images and words that reflected themselves, and not through a whitened mirror. ”Often, we become inaudible,” she’d said of the ”deep Southern culture” Lemonade expressed. Sadly, her loss at least momentarily rendered her inaudible again. But what could Adele have said? At one point it seemed that she would just give the award to Beyoncé, who demurred without responding. Moments later, Adele further protested, saying, ”The way you make me and my friends feel  —   the way that you make my black friends feel  —   is empowering.” Again, her sincere comment unfortunately came with some heavy baggage. The stereotype of the ”black friend,” like that of the benevolent black mother figure, runs throughout American popular culture as an inadequate balm used to soothe the realities of racism  —   good feeling among individual white and black characters is often presented in films, for examples, as a provisional solution to systematic oppression. Because viewers don’t know Adele’s black friends  —   the collaborators she brought onstage after her win were all white men, except for one, the producer Austen    —   the comment pinged off the stereotype. Yet some observers reacting on social media suggested that this was the only way the singer could have rightly expressed admiration for a work explicitly designed to speak to women of color. ”Bey made that for US. She [Adele] knows that,” wrote the author Luvvie Ajayi on Twitter. Adele was, in fact, caught in the horns of a predicament that many white Beyoncé fans responding to Lemonade have faced since it came to dominate the conversation around pop last year. How is a white listener supposed to appreciate this work, which like all great pop, springs from particular sources but resonates across boundaries and borders? One remarkable thing about Beyoncé’s work now is its simultaneous position at the very center of the cultural conversation and within a community reasonably demanding its own separate,   space. The synchronicity between her fully realizing her own voice and vision and the emergence of a new era of civil rights activism and black pride, crystallized within #BlackLivesMatter and given voice on Black Twitter, has allowed Beyoncé to join the ranks of very few   icons  —   Muhammad Ali and Aretha Franklin are two examples  —   who ”belong” to both the wider culture where systemic racism persists and the communities in resistance against it. Many white fans, including many fellow artists, have identified with Beyoncé over the course of her nearly   career. They are moved by Lemonade. They may even feel it speaks to them. But they recognize that this woman’s work also asks for their silence, their willingness to pause and step back in a way that leaves room for others to respond and celebrate it. ”Listen and amplify” is a credo for white participants in intersectional social activism, but time and time again we stumble, because privilege, the dialectical cause and result of oppression, sneaks into every side comment, every helpful suggestion, every unfettered response. Listening is difficult. Ask any child it’s a skill that takes years to learn. Here’s the hard part when it comes to popular music. Pop is fun  —   it helps people relax and temporarily abandon their inhibitions, to express hidden parts of themselves and to open themselves up to others, including others fundamentally different from themselves. The music industry relies on the fantasy that pop is welcoming to all  —   to anyone who’s willing to buy a record (now a download or a streaming service subscription) or a concert ticket. Yet this is, in fact, a dream that’s often contradicted by reality  —   by the separate tracks that once banished artists of color to the ”race records” division at record labels, and which persist in less explicit ways today by the policies that have restricted the access of artists of color to certain venues, because their audiences are allegedly dangerous or disruptive by the unspoken prejudices that elevate white artists working within black styles to star status while their inspirations remain ghettoized. Artists of color asserting themselves take the fun dream apart. They must. Otherwise the sickness persists because it’s inconvenient and frightening to acknowledge the symptoms. For white people, to acknowledge institutional racism is to recognize our place in it and to become prepared to move from that comfortable spot. Yet the little voice of assumed exceptionalism often convinces us that we can stay there and fight the good fight. Feeling exceptional is a privilege in itself. So is imagining the exceptionalism of your idols. Adele makes people happy because she is both an ordinary woman and a genius, borne by her own talent into the stratosphere. We need to believe this can happen to anyone but will only happen to the magical and unexpected few. Exceptionalism contradicts systematic truths and seems to solve the most deeply embedded social problems. And we all crave it. Everyone who benefits from these structures wants to believe they are natural. We want both Beyoncé and Adele to be exceptional  —   not yet another woman of color in a long line of them who has to present herself as nearly supernatural simply to be acknowledged as a supremely talented person, or another very gifted white woman, also in a long line, whose marketability is enhanced by her race. Her most avid fans might dream that Beyoncé could break free of this system altogether, creating some kind of new zone where she is no longer burdened by this legacy, but they and she too also want her to win, to prove the system wrong by actually succeeding within it. Adele, holding her broken trophy in her manicured hands, tried to acknowledge this, which took courage but was ultimately impossible. The language available to her within the pop world the Grammys support  —   the same one that leads Beyoncé to deify herself, wrestling with these questions, too  —   isn’t adequate to express what needs to be expressed. So she cried. She laughed. And she left it to all of us to consider ways to dismantle it."
"In the world of electric cars, there’s a    problem: More people might buy electric vehicles, or EVs, if they were confident there would always be a charger nearby. And businesses might install more chargers if there were more EVs on the road. Now, utilities are stepping forward to solve this problem, and not just in California or the Northeast. A $20 million project launched two years ago by   Kansas City Power  Light, whose service area straddles the   border, has turned a Midwestern metropolitan area into one of the   electric vehicle markets in the country. ”There’s a little movement afoot here in the middle of flyover country,” says Chuck Caisley, KCPL’s vice president for marketing and public affairs. ”We’re awfully excited about the prospect of this kind of transportation, and so we wanted to be catalytic to that.” At a time when Caisley estimates there were only 400 to 500 electric cars in the area, KCPL announced it would install 1, 000 charging stations throughout its service territory of more than 800, 000 customers. The stations are going up at workplaces, in apartment garages, at grocery stores, in city parking lots and malls, and near the baseball and football stadiums. The idea is to allow people to charge their cars as they do their cell phones, plugging in as they go about their daily lives. For the first couple years, charging at the Clean Charge Network is free  —   and will remain free until at least this summer. On a recent day, Sara and Adam Foote parked their car at a charging station in a public garage in Leawood, Kan. while they went for a drink. In the hour or so they spent in the bar, they added about 25 miles of charge to their Nissan Leaf, which they purchased 15 months ago. ”We’ve adapted our lifestyle, but I’d say that the charging stations  —   the abundance of them in Kansas City, has definitely made it very easy for us,” Sara Foote says. For KCPL, this project is about clean energy and clean air, but it’s also about selling more electricity without having to build more power plants. Caisley says KCPL’s power grid, which was built to work on hot summer days when   use is at a maximum, is underutilized 80 percent of the time. Customers have already paid for the electrical grid and the power plants. A dramatic increase in electricity use would drive down KCPL’s   cost, and could mean lower power bills for its customers. ”When you turn on an additional TV in your home, that’s not enough to change that equation,” Caisley says. ”But when you talk about a segment [the auto industry] that’s as much as 25 to 30 percent of the entire economy, and electrifying it, you’re talking about a significant amount of increased electricity use, which means we’re now using that infrastructure that customers have paid for so much more efficiently.” Caisley adds that the electricity the company is selling is getting cleaner all the time. Fossil fuels generate a declining share of the area’s electricity. Nuclear and renewables account for nearly half of it. ”We just happen to sit in the Saudi Arabia equivalent of wind,” he says. KCPL asked utility regulators in Missouri and Kansas for permission to add a   to   monthly fee to customers’ bills to help pay for the installation and maintenance of the charging stations. Missouri regulators have yet to rule. Kansas regulators said no. They said the utility failed to prove a need for such an extensive network of charging stations, and they said KCPL didn’t make a compelling argument for why it should be taking the lead. ”We think KCPL is certainly free to roll out whatever Clean Car Network program they want. The question becomes whether or not they impose the costs on a captive consumer. Our take on that is, simply not,” says David Nickel, consumer counsel with the Kansas Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, the state agency that represents the interests of utility customers. A version of this played out on a much larger scale in California a few years ago. Initial regulatory resistance there gave way to a legislative mandate to provide charging infrastructure. Despite the Kansas ruling, KCPL has moved forward with money from its investors. The company has built 850 of the 1, 000 charging stations it has planned. Overseeing this is Larry Kinder, founder and CEO of LilyPad EV. His company sells, installs and maintains charging stations for customers all over the country. KCPL is his biggest customer by far. From his home office in Overland Park, Kan. Kinder can monitor the stations his company has sold to see when they’re in use and how long they’re in use. Here’s one measure of their abundance: At about 9 a. m. one weekday, only about 75 cars were charging at those 850 stations. But what Kinder has learned is: If you build it, they will come, and sometimes, very quickly. Recently, a new charging station was installed outside an office building, and not two minutes after Kinder put it on the network, it was in use. ”Now, that was an employee who was sitting in his office, watching the electrician do the installation. He ran out, moved his electric car, plugged in and charged his car up,” Kinder says. ”It was wonderful.” Kinder, who has driven EVs since before they were sold commercially, says he’s already thinking about what’s needed next. For road trips, uninterrupted by long charging stops, there’s a need for fast chargers that can add, say, 90 miles of range in a  . Those are much more expensive to install. KCPL and other companies have begun to invest along highway corridors. ”We’re a little beyond Wild, Wild West, but I think not everything’s laid out,” Kinder says. ”This is all still evolving. It will all still be evolving for 10 years, or more.”"
"The Chevrolet Bolt EV, which is now hitting the market, could be the first of a new wave of   electric vehicles. Its longer range and lower price could attract new buyers to the electric car market, but there’s uncertainty over whether federal tax incentives will continue and whether California will be allowed to keep tougher emissions rules under President Trump. GM is marketing the Bolt as a small crossover. It has the footprint of a subcompact and the interior space of a standard car. More important are its range of 238 miles and price tag of $30, 000, after the $7, 500 federal tax credit offered on electric vehicles. Currently, the only other   cars for sale with that kind of range are Teslas, which cost upwards of $70, 000. ”In all our research, we’ve talked to consumers, and really that   EV range at the affordable price was kind of the tipping point for them to really consider this a mainstream vehicle, so we went after that,” says Darin Gesse, product manager for Chevrolet Electric Vehicles. GM is rolling out the Bolt in phases: It’s currently available in California, Oregon, Maryland, Virginia and Massachusetts and will be in all 50 states by the fall. Like other   cars, it has no tailpipe. As for fuel efficiency, the EPA gives the Bolt a rating of 119 MPGe, or miles per gallon equivalent. But without some environmental motive weighing in the balance, does the bottom line check out? We asked a few people who had stopped to look at the Chevy Bolt at the Washington Auto Show earlier this month. Jack Cheng of Potomac, Md. already drives an electric car, a BMW i3. He is impressed with the Bolt’s longer range, but less so with its price. ”For the price of the car versus what you get, you probably don’t come out ahead,” Cheng said. For him, the selling point is the environment he likes the fact that he’s not polluting. Price is also an issue for David Manfredi of Davidsonville, Md. ”It’s just expensive,” says the electrician, who currently drives a Toyota 4Runner SUV. Manfredi hopes to cut the cord on oil and gas, so he is looking at not just the Bolt but also the Volt, Chevy’s   hybrid. Manfredi says he couldn’t consider either car without factoring in the $7, 500 federal incentive. ”That’s a huge credit, so if that disappears then I think we’ll have to disappear from the market.” Clean car advocates are concerned about the future of electric cars under the Trump administration. Could the $7, 500 credit disappear in a new tax bill? Will Washington continue to spend millions on battery research? And then there’s uncertainty over whether President Trump’s EPA will continue California’s waiver for tougher car emissions rules. Washington permits California to set stricter emissions standards. Nine other states have gone along with Sacramento, adopting Zero Emission Vehicle regulations, or the   ZEV mandate. Automakers have to sell a certain number of electric vehicles, often at a loss, to sell profitable internal combustion engine cars. ”The consensus is that nobody knows what the heck is going to happen next. Nobody,” says Dan Neil, auto columnist for The Wall Street Journal. ”And the sense of uncertainty is really weighing hard on an industry that is capital intensive,   planning. They don’t like uncertainty in the auto industry.” Simon Mui, who works on energy and transportation issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says government support is still critical to the electric vehicle market. He says without subsidies, it’s likely going to be 5 or 10 years before electric cars are price competitive with   vehicles. ”Today, with incentives, you’re very close to that point,” he says. ”Consumers that are charging on electricity, if they charge   they’re basically paying a buck a gallon equivalent. So they’re seeing much lower fuel bills overall.” Mui makes another argument for government support of the clean car industry: the jobs that come with it. In 48 states, he says, American workers make components for   cars. ”These are red states. These are blue states. These are purple states, employing hundreds of thousands of people making technologies not just for clean cars in the U. S. but clean cars globally,” he says. China and Europe are big, regulated markets for electric cars. Mui says lowering the bar for American automakers by dialing back emissions standards would hurt the U. S. competitively. There are now some 30 models of electric and   hybrid cars available in the U. S. Last year, sales of these vehicles rose by almost 40 percent, but they still only accounted for about 1 percent of all new car sales. Neil of The Wall Street Journal says that in part reflects a poor job of marketing them. ”The marketing has been terrible, disastrous. It’s such a lost opportunity. For one thing, automotive dealers have done a terrible job in the United States of explaining what electric cars are, they don’t have them on the lot, so that’s hardly their fault,” he says. ”A lot of these cars fall into a category of compliance vehicles, which are just there to meet the California ZEV mandate.” Neil says he wishes more consumers knew that these cars are ”a better way to make mobility.”"
"Pygmy elephants. Monkeys with noses the size of beer cans. And a deer so small you could cradle it like a baby. And right there, sitting on a leaf, is the strangest bug we’ve ever seen.  ”Check out the size of it,” says virus hunter Kevin Olival as he picks up a ginormous  . ”It’s the size of a   ball!” We’re in the middle of Malaysia’s Borneo rain forest. Olival has brought us here because this is the type of place where pandemics are born. HIV came from a rain forest. So did Ebola. Yellow fever. And Zika. The next troubling outbreak could come from a rain forest like this. And a big reason why: all the crazy animals that live here. Rain forests are the world’s secret laboratory  —   where evolution experiments with body shapes, sizes and colors. Maybe if a monkey gets a giant schnoz, he’ll have a better time finding love? The result is a biological bonanza. ”It’s a biodiversity hot spot,” says Olival, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist with the U. S.  nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance. This rich diversity in the rain forest doesn’t apply to just creatures we can see. It also applies to creatures we can’t see. Microcreatures. Nanocreatures. You guessed it: viruses. New world order, The world is now in uncharted territory when it comes to infectious diseases. We’re facing a whole new era. Over the past century, the number of new infectious diseases cropping up each year has nearly quadrupled. The number of outbreaks per year has more than tripled. In the U. S. we have seen more than a dozen new human diseases appear over the past 25 years. For instance, a killer   virus showed up in Kansas in 2014. A new type of leprosy dismembered a man in Arizona in 2002. And a new hemorrhagic fever jumped from rodents into people, killing three women in California in 1999  —   to name just a few. But it’s the tropical rain forest that is the most worrisome to many scientists like Olival. Wearing a headlamp and a khaki shirt with the words ”Virus Hunter” embroidered on the back, Olival looks like Indiana Jones’ nerdy brother. He is constantly talking about how much he loves bats and admits he picked up his future wife by wowing her with his bat knowledge. But at the end of day, he is a global treasure hunter. He flies around the world collecting undiscovered viruses  —   and he focuses his hunt on viruses with the potential to kill. It’s part of a $200 million project called PREDICT, sponsored by the U. S. government and led by University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine. The goal is to figure out the viruses that are lurking inside animals around the world. So we are ready when a new and potentially harmful virus jumps from animals into people and causes an outbreak. In other words, Olival wants to find the next pandemic virus before it finds us. Little puppy face, Olival and his team are out here in Borneo setting up traps to catch animals. On the ground, they set up little metal boxes, each about the size of a Coke bottle, to catch rodents, shrews and those tiny   deer. And they have strung thin nylon nets high in the trees, like giant spiderwebs. ”We’ve got one,” yells Olival’s colleague Jimmy Lee, a virologist with EcoHealth Alliance. We rush over to one of the nets. Dangling in the middle is one of the most beautiful sights to a virus hunter: a bat. Lee puts on thick gloves and starts to untangle the bat from the net. ”They can bite,” he says, as he holds the little creature gently in his hands. It’s not much bigger than a grapefruit. One glimpse at the bat’s face, and my heart melted. ”He has a little puppy face, doesn’t he?” Olival asks. And it’s true. The bat  —   a   fruit bat  —   looks uncannily like a brown puppy. It is incredibly cute, especially as it wraps its wings around its body like a little blanket. But you wouldn’t want to snuggle with this little guy. Bats are arguably one of the most dangerous animals in the world. They carry a daunting list of killer viruses. They likely triggered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. They very likely launched a pandemic of killer pneumonia back in 2003, called SARS. And they’re behind one of the viruses scientists think could cause a nasty pandemic: Nipah. Bats carry viruses all over their bodies. In their spit. Their blood. And their poop. Because they fly, bats can spread these viruses across huge distances. So when there are bats in the sky, there could be Ebola in the poop that lands on your shoulder. So if bats are such a problem, why not kill the bats? ”Not a good idea,” Olival says bluntly. ”Bats do a lot of good for the environment. A lot.” Without bats, the world wouldn’t have rain forests. Bats are key pollinators for more than 500 species of flowers and trees. They disperse seeds for many other plants, and they keep insect populations in check with their   diets. As we learn a bit later, bats really aren’t the ones to blame when it comes to creating outbreaks. It’s the intruders into their homes that are the problem. Olival and Lee lay the bat on small table, gently spread its wings open and then prick it to get a few drops of blood. They also take a smidge of saliva and then do a quick rectal swab. ”That’s the worse part,” Olival chuckles. Then they let the bat go. Lee puts the samples in test tubes and drops them into liquid nitrogen. He’ll take them back to the lab, extract genetic material to see if any of it looks like something they haven’t seen before. So far, Olival and Lee’s team, have trapped and sampled more than 1, 300 animals in this region of Malaysia, in partnership with the Sabah Wildlife Department and Danau Girang Field Centre. Globally, the PREDICT team has sampled more than 74, 000 animals. Not everyone is a fan of the project. Some infectious disease scientists think creating a long list of viruses isn’t very helpful. They say money could be better spent on diseases we actually have now instead of trying to guess which ones might become a problem someday. And even if scientists could predict when an outbreak is likely to happen, it might not, says Michael Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis. ”I don’t think the actual premise for the PREDICT project  —   that it will make us better prepared for a pandemic  —   holds water,” Osterholm says. For example, in 2012 scientists predicted that the deadly H5N1 flu was about to jump from birds into people. ”Did we do anything to prepare, like make a new or better flu vaccine?” Osterholm asks. ”No.” We’re not even making vaccines for viruses that we know are threats, that are regularly killing people, he says. ”How are we going to convince people to invest money into a virus from the remote jungle for which we have no evidence that it has caused any human illness?” 1, 000 viruses found, The next morning, we meet up with Olival at a quiet spot on the edge of the rain forest. He is going to show us what his team has found in all these bats and other animals in Borneo. He opens up his laptop and pulls up data from Malaysia. It’s a bit  . ”We’ve found 48 new viruses. And 16 that were already known,” Olival says as he scrolls down a large spreadsheet. There’s a new   virus in orangutans. A bunch of new herpes viruses in monkeys, rodents and bats. And that’s just in this part of Malaysia. Teams with PREDICT have been sampling in rain forests around the world for seven years and found nearly 1, 000 new viruses in more than 20 countries, such as a new   virus in shrews. And many, many   viruses in bats across three continents. And then Olival drops a bombshell. ”These viruses aren’t ’new,’ ” he says. ”They’re just new to science. But not to the animals in the forest,” he adds. All these viruses have been circulating in bats, monkeys and rodents for tens of thousands of years, maybe longer, he says, and no one has cared. No one has noticed. They’re just a natural part of the ecosystem of the rain forest, coexisting with the animals, who are generally not harmed by the viruses. How do they become problems then? ”Well, they don’t magically jump out of the forest,” Olival says. ”It’s because we are getting in there. Getting into the forest.” To see what he means, we take a short walk from where we’re sitting. There’s a break in the forest and an overlook of the land below. And the view is incredible. As far as the eye can see are palm trees, row after row of oil palm trees. Nothing else. The rain forest has been eaten away by plantations for palm oil   —   you know, that inexpensive vegetable oil that is used in crackers, pizza dough, ice cream, even lipstick. Before the palm oil boom in the 1980s, this was all pristine forest. Filled with all these crazy animals and their viruses, Olival explains. But then people came along and started cutting down the forest. Destroying their homes. It’s like puncturing a balloon filled with viruses, says Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York. ”Whatever survives, spills out. Deforestation is closely tied to disease emergence.” In the past 40 years, more than a third of the Borneo rain forest has been destroyed. About half of that land has turned into palm oil plantations. A similar pattern is happening all over the world. By 2050, more than half of the world’s population is projected to live in the tropics and subtropics, Han says. Right now, only 15 percent of the world’s rain forests is still intact. The rest has been burned flat. Broken into pieces. Or converted into farms, ranges for cattle, metal mines  —   even shopping malls. ”It’s soybeans in the Amazon. It’s suburban development in the U. S. Every part of this planet has been modified by people in some way,” Olival says. ”We’re changing the environment in ways that are really unprecedented in human history.” Wild animals are now refugees. They have no home. So they come live in our backyards. They pee on our crops. Share our parks and playgrounds. Giving their viruses a chance to jump into us and make us sick. ”So it’s really the human impact on the environment that’s causing these viruses to jump into people,” Olival says. And cause an outbreak? I ask. Or a pandemic, says Olival. What do you want to know about pandemics? Share your questions by submitting them in our special tool here. Our global health team will answer some of them in an upcoming story."
"Goats and Soda is now running a series on pandemics. Dangerous viruses like Ebola and MERS are emerging in greater numbers than ever before. We’re looking at how pandemics start, how diseases jump from animals to humans and why the number of newly discovered viruses is on the rise. We know you’ll have lots of questions along the way. In fact, we’ve already received a few from our audience. On Twitter, someone asked: Could it be possible that in today’s information age, there really aren’t more pandemics  —   we just hear more about them? On Facebook, another asked: How did the animals first get the diseases? What do you want to know about pandemics? Submit your questions in the tool below. Our submission deadline has passed. Thanks for participating! The question our team chose to answer was: How do you protect yourself from a pandemic? Our correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff answers it in this post. "
"The world is in a hyperinfectious era. And that means there are a lot of words being tossed around that you might not be familiar with. Or maybe you have a general idea of what they mean but wish you knew more. Here are some key terms and definitions. And yes, there will be a quiz (coming in March so you have time to study). Epidemic: A sudden increase in the number of cases of a disease in a particular geographic area, beyond the number health officials typically expect. An increase that occurs in a relatively small geographic area or among a small group of people may be called an ”outbreak.” For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls   which affects 1. 2 million people in the United States, an ”epidemic.” By contrast, the CDC called two cases of sickness from drinking raw milk (listeriosis) in the United States an ”outbreak.” Pandemic: An epidemic spanning many countries   several continents. The difference between an outbreak, an epidemic and a pandemic can be murky and depends on the opinions of scientists and health officials. Emerging disease: A disease that occurs in the population of a certain geographic region for the first time, or a disease that’s been present at low levels in a region but then rapidly reaches new peaks in the number of cases reported.   interface: The points of contact between animals and humans  —   when people cut down forests and set up dwellings where forest animals are still prevalent, for example. Some types of diseases spread from animals to humans at this interface. (Note: In all these definitions ”animal” refers to nonhuman animals.) Reservoir: An animal, plant or environment in which a disease can persist for long periods of time. For example, some bats serve as a reservoir for rabies and can spread the disease by biting humans. But the bats  —   and other reservoir species  —   may not experience symptoms because of   immunity. A disease reservoir is analogous to a water reservoir. But instead of supplying water, a disease reservoir serves as a supply for a virus or other pathogen. Vector: Any living creature that can pass an infection to another living creature. Humans are technically vectors, but the term is more commonly applied to nonhuman organisms. Spillover: The transmission of a disease from one species to another. Sometimes a disease may reside in a plant or animal or even in soil, and then spread to humans. This spread of disease is called a ”spillover event.” Index case: The first case of a disease known to health officials. Some epidemiologists may refer to an index case as ”patient zero.” Zoonotic: Any disease that spreads from animals to people. The animals can range from tiny ticks to lumbering cattle. One Health: This   phrase embodies the view that there’s no such thing as just human health or just animal health or just the health of the environment  —   they’re all part of One Health. That’s because the health of humans is closely linked to the health of the environment and other animals. Proponents of One Health believe medical doctors, ecologists, veterinarians and other specialists should work together to improve a community’s health. Microbe: A living thing too small for the eye to see, such as bacteria, fungi or viruses. Many microbes are harmless and may even benefit other living things. But some can cause disease among humans, other animals and plants. Microbes that cause disease are called ”pathogens” and are informally referred to as ”germs.” Epidemiologist Peter Krause of the Yale School of Public Health provided invaluable input for these definitions. What do you want to know about pandemics? Share your questions by submitting them in our special tool here. Our global health team will answer some of them in an upcoming story."
"Lawmakers in Iowa began debating a bill Tuesday to dramatically change how public sector unions negotiate their contracts, part of a wave of legislation in statehouses across the country to roll back union rights. The bill, similar to a 2011 law in Wisconsin, is high on the state’s legislative agenda and comes as Republicans control both chambers of the state Legislature and the governor’s mansion for the first time in nearly 20 years. About 180, 000 state and local government workers would be prohibited from negotiating over issues including health insurance, seniority and extra pay. The legislation also leaves in place a provision that prevents workers from going on strike. And it includes provisions that would make it more difficult for unions to collect dues. Public safety employees, such as law enforcement officers, would be exempt from certain provisions of the bill. Critics say exempting public safety workers divides unions. Ahead of hearings on the leglslation, teachers, teamsters, firefighters and other union members demonstrated at the Iowa Capitol Monday night, breaking into chants of ”Kill the bill.” ”Enough of these misguided politicians and their billionaire buddies trying to take our voice and our rights!” shouted Becky Pringle, of the National Education Association, to the crowd from atop a folding chair. The state’s Democrats are trying to slow down debate on the measure, which is expected to last several days. ”This is a major change and policy shift,” said state Sen. Nate Boulton, a Democrat. ”It is disappointing that we had no voice in this process.” Republicans countered that they were ending a period of deadlock and divided government in Iowa by acting on their priorities. ”Normally the frustration I hear from folks at home is that we don’t get anything done,” said state Rep. Steve Holt, a Republican. ”So we are acting decisively on a bill that I think is great for Iowa and great for efficient government.” More than 1, 100 people signed up to speak against the bill, but only 33 got the chance. State correctional officer Lindsey Herron said she left her previous job, which paid well, for the better benefits that state employees receive. If the bill becomes law, the risks of working in a prison are ”no longer worth it,” said Herron. ”You may think that’s fine until those offenders end up living next door to your family and they learn nothing in prison because they no longer have professional educated staff working there.” Herron said she was upset about voting for Republican candidates last fall. ”If this bill passes, don’t think in 2018 I’m going to forget what you’ve done to my family.” Just four people spoke in favor of the bill, including representatives of the Iowa chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the nonprofit political advocacy group funded by conservative donors David and Charles Koch."
"A version of this story was originally published by member station WAMU. With the GOP fully in control of the federal government for the first time since 2006, Congressional Republicans are taking their first steps to assert their power over the District of Columbia’s local government. After an impassioned debate, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted Monday evening to block a D. C. law giving District physicians the right to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients who have less than six months to live. Committee chair Jason Chaffetz and other Republican conservatives have argued that the D. C. law should be nullified because it runs counter to ethical prohibitions against suicide. Most of the Republicans on the committee framed their opposition as a ” ” stance, with a number expressing concerns that the D. C. law could leave vulnerable dying patients at the mercy of physicians and relatives eager to hasten their exit. ”I worry that assisted suicide will create a marketplace for death,” Chaffetz said. Rep. Darrell Issa,  . who represents one of six states that already have enacted legislation similar to D. C.’s    bill, was the only Republican to vote against the measure. Issa argued that given Congress’ failure to stop such legislation nationally, he didn’t think interference in D. C. affairs was justified. In a statement after the committee vote, Mayor Bowser called it ”a signal to DC residents that Congress has zero respect or concern for their will or the will of their elected officials.” Though the District gained an elected mayor and legislature in 1973, Congress retained broad authority over the city. That included the right to disapprove of bills  —   or, in simpler words, block bills passed by the D. C. Council from taking effect. But that right has been used sparingly: Congress has only formally blocked three D. C. bills over the last 45 years. The panel voted   in favor of sending the bill to the House floor. However that may be as far as it goes. Unless conservative Republican backers of the manage to get the   ”resolution of disapproval” through the House and Senate and signed by President Donald Trump by the end of the week  —   an exceedingly uphill battle given the normal pace of Congress  —   the law appears likely to take effect as passed by D. C. Council and signed into law by Mayor Muriel Bowser. The bill becomes law if it is not blocked within 30 legislative working days of being sent Congress. By the D. C. City Council’s calculations, time is up for opponents of the Death With Dignity bill on or about Saturday. That leaves an almost impossibly narrow window for floor votes in the House and Senate. Moreover, it is not even certain that Trump would sign a disapproval resolution. White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to say what the president might do when asked about the Death With Dignity law at a press briefing last week. The audience at the committee meeting, which lasted until past 7:30, included activists in the    movement, including at least one who considers herself a potential beneficiary: Mary Klein, a    D. C. resident who is dying of cancer. In an earlier interview with WAMU, Klein described the measure’s passage, by an   D. C. Council vote in November, as ”a great relief.” Dan Diaz, the widower of Brittany Maynard, a young woman who wrote about her decision to end her life after a long battle with brain cancer, also turned up ”to support D. C.,” he said."
"In California, construction crews are trying to lower the level of Lake Oroville and repair emergency spillways at the Oroville Dam, about 75 miles north of Sacramento, to prevent catastrophic flooding downstream. A secondary spillway was opened Monday after the main spillway, which is supposed to safely release water when the lake level is too high, had developed a huge hole, as we reported. Rain is forecast for later this week in Northern California, and nearly 200, 000 people who live downstream have been evacuated from the area. As NPR’s Richard Gonzalez reported, ”The good news is that the water level in the dam is falling and repair crews have been able to drop heavy rocks in key spots of the emergency spillway to prevent further erosion.” For those who were evacuated, hotels in the region were filled to capacity on Tuesday and ”evacuation centers are straining to keep up with the demand for shelter,” Richard said. FEMA Acting Regional Administrator Ahsha Tribble said the agency is providing support to evacuated people, Ben Bradford of Capital Public Radio reported. ”We are already moving commodities, and commodities being cots, blankets and water, given the number of people that were actually evacuated last night,” Tribble said. ”Officials say a new series of storms coming by Thursday prevents them from saying how long the evacuation could last,” Richard reported. The Los Angeles Times published this diagram of what that catastrophic erosion could look like. ”Meanwhile, local reports are emerging that environmental groups raised concerns about the dam’s emergency spillway decades ago,” Richard reported. The Times reported that the the emergency spillways were damaged by far less water than the maximum flow they are supposed to handle: ”Earth and weak rock near the top of the spillway started to erode when peak flows were 12, 600 cubic feet per second, compared with the designed capacity of 450, 000 cubic feet per second, according to the Department of Water Resources. . .. Bill Croyle, the acting director of the Department of Water Resources, said Monday that he was ’not sure anything went wrong. This was a new,    event.’ ”But during 2005 relicensing proceedings for Oroville Dam, several environmental groups argued that substantial erosion would occur on the hillside in the event of a significant emergency spill. In a filing, they asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to order the state to ’to armor or otherwise reconstruct the ungated spillway.’ ”State Water Project contractors, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, were involved in the relicensing. MWD General Manager Jeffrey Kightlinger said Monday his agency deferred to the state and federal agencies on the matter.” At 770 feet, the Oroville Dam is the tallest in the U. S. Although the structure hasn’t suffered a catastrophic failure, the excess water dumped by a series of California storms and released through the spillways has nonetheless inundated communities in and around Oroville. Reporter Paige St. John of the Times tweeted a photo of a drowned cemetery in the town of Marysville downstream of the dam. An aerial photo shared by the Long Beach Fire Department, which was called in from the southern part of the state to assist local authorities, showed water carving channels through the hills downstream of the dam, carrying mud and debris with it."
"Here’s one side of the resume of the CIA’s new    Gina Haspel: she’s a decorated officer, serving more than three decades undercover, including multiple tours as a station chief. And here’s another side: Haspel’s fingerprints are all over the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs. She ran the ”black site” prison in Thailand where   suspect Abu Zabaydah was waterboarded 83 times. Those sessions were videotaped but the tapes were destroyed in 2005, two years after a member of Congress called on the CIA to preserve such tapes. Who wrote the cable ordering their destruction? Gina Haspel. This history led Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, both Democrats and both members of the Intelligence Committee, to write the president on Feb. 2  —   the day Haspel’s new role was announced  —   and argue ”her background makes her unsuitable for the position.” ”The senators who are asking questions have every right to ask them,” says former Rep. Jane Harman, who was briefed on the tapes back in 2002, as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. ”After that briefing, when I could sort of stop gasping and close my mouth, I wrote a classifed letter.” That letter, dated February 10, 2003, was addressed to the CIA’s   counsel, Scott Muller. It has since been declassified. It calls on the CIA to preserve the videotapes of interrogations. ”As a lawyer, as a trained lawyer, I know. .. it’s not okay to destroy the evidence. And this was evidence. And it was deliberately destroyed,” says Harman, now director of the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. CIA officers  —   past and present  —   maintain it was Haspel’s boss who made the decision to destroy them. Among them, a former chief of the CIA’s clandestine service who has never given an    interview before. ”This [the destruction of the videotapes] was not done on Gina Haspel’s authority. And I know that because I was there,” says John Bennett. Bennett led the clandestine service from 2010 to 2013. At the time the tapes were destroyed, he was serving as deputy to   service chief Jose Rodriguez. Gina Haspel was Rodriguez’s chief of staff. Bennett argues that attempts to block Haspel’s career today for actions taken in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks are ”really very unfair.” ”I don’t know anybody who joined the CIA to run an interrogation program,” he continued, ”But in the aftermath of   Gina Haspel and other colleagues stepped up to what is frankly a dirty job  —   because they were repeatedly assured that it was not only legal but necessary for the safety of the country. And they did it  —   Gina did it  —   because they felt it was their duty.” The deputy director job at CIA is not subject to Senate confirmation. And Haspel, through a spokesperson, declined NPR’s interview request. So her personal views on the CIA’s  —   and her  —   actions after   remain unclear. Bob Eatinger, a CIA attorney for 24 years, says he worked closely with Haspel. He remembers meeting her when he reported to the agency’s counterterrorism center in 2004. ”She would come into my office,” he recalls. ”We were in the same vault. And [she would] want my views  —   either she got a cable, she got a memorandum, she got an internal email that didn’t sound right to her. So she would come talk to me and say, how does this sound?” Eatinger says officers in the clandestine service, like Haspel  —   by definition tend to be   comfortable with operating at the edge of what’s legal. But he says Haspel is no lawbreaker. ”When she asked me a legal question, I gave her a legal answer, she always followed it. She was always trying to do the right thing.” After President Trump named Mike Pompeo as his CIA director, it was widely expected that the   post would go to a career CIA officer. Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, has no direct intelligence experience, aside from serving on the House Intelligence Committee. Pompeo and Haspel take the reins at Trump’s CIA, as he builds a foreign policy and national security infrastructure intent on battling terrorism driven by Islamic fundamentalism. Both on the campaign trail and since assuming the presidency, Trump has repeated his view that, ”torture works.” But he’s also said he would defer to his defense secretary, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, who has stated he does not believe waterboarding is effective and has reiterated that it is illegal. So will the CIA, under its new leaders, stay out of the detention and interrogation business? We asked John Bennett if he believes that chapter of the CIA’s history is definitively closed. ”I certainly hope that it’s definitively closed,” he replied. ”I hope the agency and policymakers and Congress have learned lessons from this.” Bennett added that leaving future interrogations to other government agencies would have the advantage of allowing the CIA to focus on its core strength: espionage. That’s a mission that he says Gina Haspel is uniquely qualified to help lead."
"A   box of chocolate is a sign of love, a symbol  —   and often tool  —   of romance, and an intrinsic part of Valentine’s Day. From at least the time of the Aztecs, chocolate has been seen as an aphrodisiac. So it’s reasonable to assume that it has been connected to love’s dedicated day of celebration for many centuries. But, that isn’t the case. The roots of Valentine’s Day are ancient but far from clear, and likely originated in the pagan Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia. Those Romans, though, exchanged not candies but whippings  —   part of a complicated fertility ritual that began with sacrificing a goat and dog. This morphed into a tamer Christian feast day in A. D. 496, when Pope Gelasius I commemorated a martyred saint, Valentine. Or saints. In the third century, the Roman emperor Claudius II executed two men named Valentine on Feb. 14th, albeit in different years. It was Canterbury Tales author Geoffrey Chaucer who first specifically linked the holiday with love birds  —   literally. In his 1382 dream poem The Parliament of Fowls, a large group of birds gather on ”Seynt Valentynes day” to choose their mates.   poets followed Chaucer’s lead, helping to popularize the amorous day through tales of courtly love, chivalric knights and fair maidens. Amateur bards took up their quills, too, and followed the tradition of writing verse to their paramours for the occasion  —   teasing couplets and sappy sonnets often surreptitiously passed in early valentines. By the   century, Feb. 14 had become the day in Britain (and the U. S.) on which people expressed their affection by exchanging lavish cards decorated with lace, ribbons and plump,     Cupids. Amongst these maudlin missives arrived chocolate, with its lustier undertones. From Europe’s first contact with it, chocolate had a reputation for aphrodisiac powers. Bernal Díaz Castillo, chronicler of Hernan Cortéz´s conquest of Mexico, claimed that during a banquet with Moctezuma, the great Aztec emperor was served gold cups ”with a certain drink made of cacao, which they said was for success with woman.” At first the Spaniard paid little attention, but then ”saw that they brought more than 50 great jars of prepared cacao with its foam, and he drank that.”  Mugs of the frothy drink proved immediately popular back in Spain. And chocolate was embraced with equal passion when it traveled beyond Spain’s borders, going to Italy, France (perhaps in 1615, when Anne of Austria, chocolate lover and daughter of the Spanish king, married Louis XIII) and, step by step, across Europe. Wherever chocolate went, its reputation as a sexual stimulant seemed to follow. Giacomo Casanova called chocolate the ”elixir of love” and the notorious Marquis de Sade celebrated its potency. In Restoration England, the learned physician Henry Stubbe wrote in The Natural History of Chocolate (1662) of the ”great use of Chocolate in Venery [sexual indulgence] and for supplying the Testicles with a Balsam, or a Sap.” Stubbe not only advocated the drink, but often prepared it for the insatiable Charles II, whose notorious appetite for sex was matched only by that for chocolate. In 1669, the merry monarch, England’s first chocoholic, spent £229 10s. 8d. on chocolate. That’s significantly more than he spent on tea (just £6) or even what his chief mistress received for an allowance (£200). For most people, though, chocolate was still an extravagance out of reach. By the time the more staid reign of Queen Victoria began in 1837, that had changed. Valentine’s Day was hitting its stride, thanks to the rise of the inexpensive penny post and   cards, and chocolate had become affordable to the middle class. Its popularity was soaring. In 1847, the British chocolate maker J. S. Fry  Sons produced the first   bar  —  that is, chocolate to eat rather than drink. The company combined cacao powder and sugar with cacao butter (the fat extracted from cacao beans) to form a moldable paste. A few years later, the company sold the first filled chocolates with flavored centers. But its rival Cadbury would ultimately be the one to connect Valentine’s Day with chocolate. Tapping into the Victorian fondness for ornamentation, Richard Cadbury launched ”Fancy Boxes” of chocolates in 1861. Inside, under a heavily decorated lid, assorted bonbons filled with marzipan,   ganache and fruity crèmes nestled in lace doilies. It didn’t take long —  1868 according to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets  —   for Cadbury to create a Fancy Box in the shape of a heart for the romantic holiday. Once the chocolates had been eaten, the boxes were deeply prized by sentimental Victorians, who stored love letters, lockets of hair, and other treasured mementos inside. The idea took wing globally and became a lasting commercial phenomenon. In the United States this year, some 40 million   boxes of chocolates will be sold for Valentine’s Day. Over half of those are from Russell Stover  —   many with lids festooned in enough roses, red satin and lace to please even the most lovesick Victorian. Modern science has found little evidence of chocolate’s purported   properties. (That’s not say it doesn’t have highly potent psychological ones.) Regardless, for holiday celebrants, chocolate retains its allure. According to the National Confectioners Association, U. S. consumers will shell out around $1 billion for Valentine’s Day candy this year. At least 75 percent of that will be on chocolate. And while flowers might be an even greater symbol of love, an overwhelming number of Americas prefer chocolate to a bouquet of blossoms, some 69 percent. As Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz famously once said, ”All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” Jeff Koehler’s Darjeeling won the 2016 IACP Award for literary food writing. Where the Wild Coffee Grows will be published in autumn. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. "
"Love  —   or infatuation, at least  —   is part of school, whether we want it to be or not. It’s often school that gives us our first crush, our first   cold sweat, and that first bitter taste of heartbreak. And so, on this Valentine’s Day we ask: Should educators and parents be talking about love more with the teens and   in their lives? Could they do more to help students navigate some of the more bewildering emotions of adolescence? For answers, we turn to Phyllis Fagell. She is a school counselor in Washington, D. C. a licensed clinical professional counselor and the mother of two teenagers (and an  ). Below is an edited version of our conversation. Is love really something kids want to talk about? What I have found in my years as a school counselor is that kids very, very rarely ask me questions about birth control or the mechanics of sex. What they ask me are relationship questions. They want to talk about why their parents divorced or how they can tell if a boy likes them or if they should break up with someone because they think that person is going to break up with them. It’s those relationship questions that they’re interested in. But when you look at the sex ed curriculum in most schools, it’s really grounded in issues related to disaster prevention  —   like preventing STDs or abstinence or consent. It’s not geared in the same way toward teaching kids the nuanced and complex skills they need to have a relationship  —   and that, if they choose to enter a relationship, it could end up being one of the most important parts of their life. If it’s not being talked about in school, where are kids and teens getting ideas about love and relationships? For the most part, we’re relegating the information that teens get to the outside world, to media, and I think the portrayal of love in the media is inaccurate. It really glorifies young love. It doesn’t delve into what it’s like to have a mature relationship. When I was growing up, I watched John Cusack movies, and I had this idea, just like in Sixteen Candles, that when the girl finds love she’s going to ride off into the sunset with a handsome older guy, even if she might not know his name. I think there’s still this idea in the media  —   in movies, in TV shows, in popular culture  —   of this instantaneous,   moment of love, as opposed to that slow building that it takes to create a lasting relationship. But this isn’t something that can or should only be talked about in school, right? Part of the issue is that parents are not talking about this at home, either. I think if a parent has been divorced, if a parent married their first love, if a parent has had a series of failed relationships, they might think that they have nothing to offer their child, and so they choose to avoid the topic altogether. But they have wisdom  —   whether it’s about the mistakes they’ve made or the good choices they’ve made  —   that they can share with their child. A lot of parents are teaching their kids about the mechanics of sex and birth control, and they’re talking about those physical risks. But they’re not talking about the emotional risks, the emotional vulnerability that comes with entering a relationship  —   that they might get their heart broken, for example. And parents don’t have to go into the really personal with their child. They can also look to the media when they notice an inaccurate portrayal of love  —   whether it’s on a TV show or a movie. They can talk about how they see that relationship on TV and how they see it as not accurately portraying what real life relationships look like. So it doesn’t always have to be these happy endings,      moments that they hear about? It shouldn’t be. There are huge   from failed romantic relationships  —   both emotionally and, later on, maybe financially. It’s not just the positive but the negative as well. Kids should be introduced to the idea that it might take some time to find the right person. There might be some ups and downs along the way, and there are a lot of ways to have a happy family  —   not leaving out single moms or divorced couples. This isn’t just about how   people can teach their children about love. It’s really about how everybody’s journey will be different. What about a younger child who isn’t necessarily old enough for a romantic relationship? Is there a way you could ease into the topic? The basics, like how to choose a friend. The same skills that kids would use to choose a friend  —   whether it’s generosity or kindness or loyalty or empathy  —   those are the same traits they’re going to be looking for later in a relationship. So parents can help guide kids, and they can lead that discussion at home. I do a lot of work in the younger grades with friendship skills: reciprocity, reflective listening,   sharing. All of these very basic skills that you need to teach young kids so that later on, they not only have the skills to maintain a healthy relationship, they’ll know how to identify a healthy relationship, too. What role can schools play in this discussion? I think that if we can rally public schools to join this cause, we will do kids such a big service. I think they can incorporate these concepts into the sex ed curriculum beyond what they’re doing at this time. They can have advanced sex ed classes, or provide boys and girls groups  —   either with an administrator or a teacher  —   to talk about romantic relationships and respect and all of these things that are important that would not typically get covered in your basic wellness class. I also think teachers can use literature and history, they can talk about it in any other part of the curriculum that provides that natural segue. They can talk about media literacy  —   in terms of how relationships are portrayed, how love is portrayed. We should use all the tools we’ve got. We spend all this time teaching kids about work, but work and love are equally important. Some educators might think, ’This seems like a tough topic with a lot of taboos, I don’t really know if it’s appropriate to talk about in school. Maybe I should just avoid it altogether.’ What would you say to that? It is a complex topic, and there is a lot of subtlety involved. But I don’t think the answer is to avoid it. Kids are smart. These are questions they have on their minds. These are the things they’re interested in. We need to honor their intelligence. We need to talk about everything beyond safety. There are so many ways we can do that without it being really fraught. In a school, the teacher’s not going to delve into their personal life  —   of course not. Everybody’s family has their own values, their own rules, their own way of addressing love at home, so it shouldn’t be about telling kids what they should value. Love comes in many different forms, but there are some basic tenets of relationships that you can convey that are not controversial."
"No snark or   rantings here, just a dose of simple sweetness. We asked readers to share their most memorable Valentine’s Day cards here are a few of our favorites, edited for length and clarity. And we asked NPR illustrator Chelsea Beck to   two valentines that live on only in their recipients’ memories. Renae Quinn, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. My favorite valentine ever was from my late husband on the Valentine’s Day before we married. He gave me a box and lined up in the box were a drawing of an eye, a paper heart on a spring that popped up when I opened the box, a pink foam letter U, a   strawberry, and a baggie full of dirt from the garden in front of our apartment. I was mystified. I mean I got the ”I love you so very” part clearly enough, but the dirt? I said, ”You love me so very dirty?” I didn’t care for that! He kept saying, ”No, think about it.” But all I could come up with was, ”I love you so very dirt.” He finally told me, ”MULCH! It’s mulch!” So it said, ”I love you so very much.” Duh. It’s still my favorite ever. Chrissie Tomlinson, Perry, Ga. My grandmother saved everything! This is actually a good thing for me. She had an amazing, adventurous life, but I never got the opportunity to really get to know her ”in person” because she lived far away from us (she lived in  . C. we were in Georgia). Our visits with her were few, and she passed away when I was 6. So the only way I have been really able to know about her is through all of the interesting things she saved. One day, as I was looking through a box of her old report cards from grade school, I found this handmade Valentine she had saved. It was given to her by a friend named ”Edith.” It’s on an old piece of cardstock, written in pencil, so it is very faded. It isn’t dated, but it was with other items dated as early as 1910. She would have been 12 years old at that time. The card reads: To my valentine, ”The red Hearts take without return, The green with envy always burns, The blue are cold and small, The gold ask nothing but gives all.” The hearts are obviously   and threaded on a piece of string. Since there is not a gold paper heart, we believe there was a charm that was on the card, perhaps a gold   button. Whatever the gold heart was, whoever Edith was, this Valentine has been kept safe for a century or more  —   a sign of enduring friendship, a friendship my grandmother obviously felt was as valuable as gold. Laura Ambrogi, Richmond, Va. As much as I adore my husband of almost 20 years, my   favorite valentine is not from him. I am an elementary reading specialist. I spend my days working with kids who need extra instruction in the areas of reading, writing and spelling. Last year, one of my students gave me a handmade valentine. His mom tells me that he thought of and completed the whole thing himself from start to finish, and was so proud of himself when it was done. When he gave it to me, I think I may have scared him a little bit because I couldn’t help but well up with tears. The text inside reads: hey mrs. ambrogie (sic) ya know that unit that we were working on that had the magic E that makes everything better?   you are that magic E.   XOXO, THIS is why teachers do what we do. Christine Hull, Springvale, Maine, Three years ago, when my son was 7, he made a collection of small valentines that he distributed throughout our house. Each valentine was unique, and each involved a heart shape. One was a simple red heart taped to the inside of a spoon. I found it while I was making my morning coffee and, of course, it brightened my day. Another was a pink bunny, who was especially cute because he was lopsided. Yet another was a series of yellow hearts arranged like petals of a sunflower. It was carefully taped to appear as if it were growing out from under my desk. I was impressed by his creativity, but more so by the fact that he woke up early to hide each valentine for my husband and me to discover as we went through our day. He didn’t simply give us one valentine, he gave us a day full of discovering valentines. Francha Menhard, Tel Aviv, Israel, I was teaching   how to speak English. I was teaching them similes to describe things. ”You are as quiet as a mouse,” ”You are tall as the ceiling,” etc. When Valentine’s Day came, wild and crazy J. R. gave me a heart cut out of plain white paper. On the heart, he wrote: ”You are as beautiful as Wonder Woman. You are as fun as clowns. You are as smart as God. Love JR.” I kept that valentine on my fridge until the sun bleached it out completely, some 14 years later. Thereafter, my sweet husband would remind me at bedtime that I was as beautiful as Wonder Woman. As fun as clowns. As smart as God. Just in case I forgot. Linda Knopf, Tallahassee, Fla. For our first Valentine’s Day, the love of my life wanted to give me a dozen roses. We had little money, so he did what he does best by making me a red heart with 12   blooms. It says: ”I Love you sweet thing. I Love the way you love me and Helene and Jenny. That’s why I believe you have a golden heart. I love you. David, David” We’ve been married for 35 years, 36 in March. Taking this valentine out to share with you has been a sweet trip back in time."
"The late James Baldwin was one of the most influential   writers to emerge during the civil rights era. During the late 1950s and 1960s, he traveled through the South and addressed racial issues head on. In the course of his work, Baldwin got to know the civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. He was devastated when each man was assassinated, and planned, later in life, to write a book about all three of them. Though Baldwin died in 1987 before that book could be written, the new   documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, draws on his notes for the book, as well as from other of Baldwin’s writings.   filmmaker Raoul Peck, who directed I Am Not Your Negro, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that working on the film allowed him to learn more about an author who had influenced him greatly. ”James Baldwin was one of the first authors ever where I felt not only at home, but he was speaking directly to me,” Peck says. ”He gave me very early on the instruments I needed to understand and to even deconstruct the world around me.” The audio link above features a 1986 interview with Baldwin, followed by a recent conversation with Peck. On how growing up in Haiti and the Congo, and experiencing political instability in each place, impacted him creatively, When you grow up in so many different places, you tend to take the good part of it, which is, again, this possibility to have different perspectives, and it gives a sort of lightness to the way you look at things. My whole life I tried not to have a heavy burden on me, you know, . .. to [not] have this sort of weight that forbids you to take risk, you know? . .. When you know that you can leave next year or leave in the middle of the year and be somewhere else, because you have gone through that experience, it’s very liberating. At the same time, in order to understand what’s going on in your country or in another country, the fact that you are far away helps you to see what is important and not important, because you can compare. On seeing governments change and fall at a young age and how it affected his view of authority  I learned very early on what fear could be, what arbitrary could be, and injustice. If there is something that determined my motivation in the work I do [it] is the sense of injustice. This is something that I cannot accept, on every level. And the fact of abuse, abuse of authority. I have a very vivid memory at a very young age of road blocks by the army. In fact, the night my father was arrested [in Haiti] my mother took me in the car, and it was a late night, there was a curfew, and I remember being in my pajamas in the back of the car, and my mother driving through the city trying to find where my father was, because she thought he might be in a friend’s house or in the hospital, and there was a curfew so it was very dangerous. I remember very vividly the road blocks. And in Congo, a few years later, there were . .. several rebellions, and of course the army had road blocks and the U. N. had road blocks, so . .. my relationship to authority and to police and to army was a relationship through road blocks, because on these road blocks, it was always about how does the conversation go? You need to give the right answers to the questions, and depending on the answer you gave, you know, you could be arrested as well. On what he learned from James Baldwin’s writing  What I learned from Baldwin is this way of questioning something that might seem solid. Nothing is solid, and this sort of agility, of mental agility, and intellectual agility to question everything, I think Baldwin helped me to have that very early on in my life. On why Baldwin chose to live abroad for much of his life, particularly in France, He found a sort of space where he could write. He could have peace. He described very clearly how the pressure of being a black writer in America was a pressure, a fear even, to be killed or to not be able to control your anger, because . .. there were so many instances in a day, every day, where you would be confronted with racism in all its different forms. Sometimes it’s a very subtle racism, but Baldwin with his intelligence and his very sensible and sensitive emotion, he would react to it. He would get himself in trouble. So being abroad was not only saving him from himself, but also he learned to know other people, to have different perspective. This is also very valuable for a writer, because when you are far away from your own country, this is the best viewpoint to really understand what is essential, what is less essential, what is superficial, and what is fundamental. On Baldwin coming back from France to the U. S.  The notion that he likes to use all the time [is] about being a witness. You know, in order to be a witness, you have to be there. You have to be also part actor. You have to be in the middle of the battle in order to be able to write about that battle. On the power of film and his responsibility as a filmmaker   I don’t think film can change the world or film can change the fate of a country  —   people change the fate of a country. But at the same time, I know . .. that film can change a person, because it [catches] you at the right moment and helps you do the necessary change. . .. As a black person and as a   person . .. I don’t have my own narrative in this medium, which is cinema. Since the discovery of cinema others have been the one telling the story. . .. A Native American could redo all the John Wayne westerns from a different perspective. This is what we don’t have, we don’t have our own visual history. So being a filmmaker for me was also trying to save part of our memory, part of our images, part of our stories. I saw it as one of the responsibilities to have to make sure that we are not totally dead in the picture."
"During his campaign and now as president, Donald Trump has made Twitter part of the daily news cycle, with a single   or   Trump tweet setting the news agenda for hours, if not days. But Trump’s use of Twitter hasn’t really helped the company’s bottom line, or drastically increased user numbers. That might be in large part because you can find out what President Trump is tweeting without having to actually be on Twitter. If you just wait long enough, cable news channels, other social media platforms like Facebook, and even news organizations like the one you’re reading now, will tell you everything Trump has tweeted. But Debra Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer, says this kind of problem is not new for Twitter. ”For as long as Twitter’s been in existence, it’s had far more popular awareness than it’s had actual users,” she says. ”Everybody knows what Twitter is. But not that many people use Twitter. And they’ve been fighting that perception, which has turned mostly into a reality over the past few years.” (Twitter has around 67 million monthly active users in the U. S. By comparison, Facebook has over 191 million.) There’s another problem facing Twitter that might be more closely tied to Trump: abuse and harassment on the platform. Many advertisers are reluctant to run ads on a space that is full of some very nasty and politically charged discourse. ”When you think about advertisers, they want to be in a nice,   pleasant place,” Williamson says. ”And if the commentary on Twitter is negative or abusive, then that just gives advertisers a very easy reason to not want to advertise there.” And this problem has also kept companies like Disney from buying Twitter, according to Bloomberg. You could make the case very easily that Trump has contributed at least a bit to that kind of environment. ”It’s my view that having Trump on the platform [Twitter] tweeting as he is, would probably be an incremental negative,” says Richard Kramer, a senior analyst at Arete, an equity research firm. ”It’s fitting a   pattern on Twitter, in that the content of the platform often strays into abusive language, and is not what you would call in the advertising community, ’brand safe.’ ” Make Twitter nice again? Last week, Twitter announced some changes to fight harassment on the platform. The company said it would take more steps to keep people who have been singled out for harassing before from making new accounts. Twitter also said it will make its searches, ”safer” and take out sensitive content, as well as hiding tweets Twitter has deemed abusive or ”low quality.” But several experts who spoke with NPR said to really stop harassment, Twitter needs to authenticate every user  —   make them say who they are and show their faces and their names. The question facing Twitter now is how to thrive in its current environment  —   one dominated by Trump, who is in almost equal parts a source of opportunity and strife for the social media platform. Michael Pachter, a research analyst with Wedbush Securities, thinks Twitter should lean into Trump, and use him to its advantage. ”They should cast themselves as a news organization without reporters,” Pachter told NPR. ”Trump is making news by posting on Twitter.” That strategy of bringing new users to Twitter, by emphasizing that users can see the news happen in   and framing Twitter as a news service might not be the most profitable. Lots of newsrooms throughout the world don’t turn a profit at all. But Pachter also says the company should do a better job of monetizing Trump’s already solid base of followers on the platform, whether or not the company can bring in many more new users. ”He [Trump] has 24 million followers,” Pachter said. ”Imagine advertising to them.”"
"I know, I know. Some of you are sick of it. As another winter storm finishes crashing through the northern parts of the nation  —   and a few more are supposed to be headed our way  —   many of you may feel you’re done with snow. We here at 13. 7: Cosmos  Culture, however, feel its our duty to constantly remind you that the world you live in is awesomely beautiful and weird and worth paying really close attention to. So, with that mission in mind, we give you this beautiful   video of water turning into snowflakes (I first found it at The Kid Should See This). Now I could regale you with the physics of   rotational symmetries and hexagonal structures forming from oxygen atoms and their bonded hydrogen pairs. But I’m gonna leave that to this article about the physics of snowflakes or this video that we showcased last year when the snow was falling heavy. So, watch and enjoy. May these two minutes remind you that there is a lot more going on than our worries and concerns. That’s the story snowflakes are trying to tell you. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"A prominent YouTube star has lost a lucrative contract after The Wall Street Journal pointed out a series of   jokes and   images in his videos. Felix Kjellberg is better known as PewDiePie  —   a profane, prolific video producer and comedian. He rose to prominence largely through videos of him playing video games, but now creates a wide range of popular videos, from pranks to sketches to commentary. He’s the most popular video producer on YouTube, with more than 50 million subscribers. His videos have been watched, collectively, billions of times. In a report on Monday, the Journal noted that Kjellberg’s popularity led to a ” ” deal with Walt Disney Co. which owns Maker Studios, a firm that handles Kjellberg’s business. The newspaper continued: ”Since August, PewDiePie has posted nine videos that include   jokes or Nazi imagery, according to a review of his channel by The Wall Street Journal. ”On Monday after the Journal contacted Disney about the videos, the entertainment giant said it was severing ties with Mr. Kjellberg.” Kjellberg is also the star and creator of a show featured on YouTube’s new paid service, YouTube Red. Engadget reported Tuesday that YouTube has canceled the second season, and is removing Kjellberg’s channel from the ”Preferred” category. ”Kjellberg will still be able to run ads against his videos, but will likely see a drop in revenue,” the site reports. Three of the nine videos flagged by the Journal have since been pulled down, apparently deleted by Kjellberg. In one video  —   which is still live  —   Kjellberg paid two men to write ”Death to all Jews” on a sign and dance beneath it. He reacted with apparent disbelief when they actually did it. A brief caption beneath reads, ”Trying to hide a smile from triggered SJWs,” which is short for ”social justice warriors,” Internet slang for liberal activists  —   who might complain about a sign saying ”Death to all Jews.” (Update on Feb. 15: The captions on the video were written by fans and owned by Kjellberg, under Youtube’s policies.) After a long pause, Kjellberg said, ”I’m sorry. I didn’t think they would actually do it. I feel partly responsible. . .. I mean, I gotta give them five stars for an outstanding experience because at least they did what I asked.” In other videos, Kjellberg donned a   cap, showed images of swastikas and pretended to try to resurrect Adolf Hitler. In many cases, he was mocking the media for characterizing him as ”racist.” Kjellberg defended the   content of his videos as jokes, taken out of context by their critics. In one of the videos, now deleted, Kjellberg said, ”We’re going to have to start separating what is a joke, and what is actually problematic,” according to the Journal. In a post on Tumblr, Kjellberg wrote: ”I think of the content that I create as entertainment, and not a place for any serious political commentary. I know my audience understand that and that is why they come to my channel. Though this was not my intention, I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive. ”As laughable as it is to believe that I might actually endorse these people, to anyone unsure on my standpoint regarding   groups: No, I don’t support these people in any way.” But Jonathan Vick, an associate director of the   League, told the Journal the apologies were insufficient. ”Just putting it out there brings it more and more into the mainstream,” he told the newspaper. The   site Daily Stormer said something similar  —   approvingly. The white supremacist website celebrated Kjellberg’s videos, and at one point wrote: ”Some may ask ’Is Pewdiepie really racist? Is he really a Nazi? Does he really want to kill all Jews?’ Who knows. He could be doing all this only to cause a stir things up and get free publicity. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, since the effect is the same it normalizes Nazism, and marginalizes our enemies.” Bloomberg News notes this is not the first time Kjellberg’s videos have gotten him in trouble with major tech brands. ”Twitter Inc. briefly suspended his account last year after he posted a profile picture that could be viewed as obscene,” Bloomberg writes. ”Kjellberg made matters more confusing by claiming, in jest, that he had been suspended because he had joined the Islamic State.”"
"In response to outrage from patients and lawmakers, Marathon Pharmaceuticals has delayed the launch of an $89, 000 drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The company had announced the annual list price for Emflaza, which is a steroid, after the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Thursday. Emflaza is approved as an orphan drug, which means it is intended to treat a rare disease. Duchenne is an inherited disorder that causes muscles to become weak. There is no cure for the condition, which mainly affects boys, but some drugs, including Emflaza, are used to lessen symptoms. For years, many American patients have imported deflazacort, the generic version of Emflaza, for about $1, 200 a year. But because the medicine wasn’t approved in the U. S. the cost of the medicine wasn’t typically covered by insurers. That contrast in price between became a flash point Monday as Sen. Bernie Sanders,  . and Rep. Elijah Cummings,  . sent a letter to Marathon on Monday morning demanding answers about the $89, 000 price for a drug that isn’t new. It has been used routinely by Duchenne patients in the U. S. since at least 2005. ”We believe Marathon is abusing our nation’s ’orphan drug’ program, which grants companies seven years of market exclusivity to encourage research into new treatments for rare diseases  —   not to provide companies like Marathon with lucrative market exclusivity rights for drugs that have been available for decades,” Sanders and Cummings wrote. Marathon said FDA approval would help more patients get the drug. ”Our goal in commercializing Emflaza all along has been to make it available to that broader set of patients who prior to FDA approval have not had access to the therapy,” said a statement attributed to Marathon CEO Jeffrey Aronin that was read Monday to a meeting of parents, patients and advocates in Washington, D. C. ”We are pausing our launch, which has not yet taken place. We have not sold any new product and will pause that process.” But patients and their families cried foul. ”What you’re doing is robbing my insurance company,” said Dana Edwards, a mother from New Jersey whose    has taken deflazacort, the generic version of the drug, since he was 5. Pat Furlong, the president and founder of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, which sponsored the Monday conference, read the statement to an outraged crowd in a conference room at the Mayflower Hotel. ”Since last week’s approval, they’ve heard from all of us,” he said. Furlong told the audience that complaints from patients helped to prompt Marathon’s action. The company, Furlong read, will continue to offer patients an expanded access program, which allows about 800 patients to receive the drug from the company. More can join that program free, and patients can continue importing the drug from Canada or ”wherever they are getting it,” the statement said. In January, Kaiser Health News and NPR published an investigation that found the orphan drug law intended to help desperate patients is being manipulated by drugmakers for financial gain. Republican Rep. Robert Aderholt, the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the FDA, called Marathon’s announcement a ”tipping point.” And he said the astronomical increase in deflazacort’s price ”makes me question whether the current construct of how the FDA approves orphan drugs does more harm than good if companies have found a way to game the system.” At Monday’s meeting, Marathon executives presented a slideshow on financial assistance for patients, as well as details on the drug’s expected availability. Emflaza was set to hit the market by   said Eric Messner, vice president of sales and marketing for Marathon. Messner said the drug would cost $50, 000 to $54, 000 after rebates and discounts to insurers. ”I know there has been a lot of discussion about that. How did we arrive at the price?” Messner said. An audience member interrupted Messner asking if the company had talked to patients and families about the price. He offered assurance that they did and said there would be an ongoing dialogue with patient groups. ”We expect that patients will experience a low or zero    experience,” he said. Late Monday, Marathon released an official statement and open letter to the Duchenne community, promising that ”price should not be a barrier” for patients. ”Put simply we expect patients will pay a standard copay of typically $20 or less per prescription. Edwards, the New Jersey mother, said she hopes President Trump will fulfill his vow to bring down high drug prices. Kaiser Health News’ coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation."
"Scientists could be allowed to make modifications in human DNA that can be passed down through subsequent generations, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine say. Such a groundbreaking step should only be considered after more research and then only be conducted under tight restrictions, the academies write in a highly anticipated report released Tuesday. Such work should be reserved to prevent serious diseases and disabilities, it says. The academies determined that new   techniques had made it reasonable to pursue such controversial experiments down the road, though not quite yet. ”It is not ready now, but it might be safe enough to try in the future,” R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of   who   the committee, said. ”And if certain conditions are met, it might be permissible to try it.” That conclusion counters a   taboo on making changes in genes in human sperm, eggs or embryos because such alterations would be inherited by future generations. That taboo has been in place partly because of fears that mistakes could inadvertently create new diseases, which could then become a permanent part of the human gene pool. Another concern is that this kind of genetic engineering could be used to make genetic modifications for nonmedical reasons. For example, scientists could theoretically try to create designer babies, in which parents attempt to select the traits of their children to make them smarter, taller, better athletes or to have other supposedly superior attributes. Nothing like that is currently possible. But even the prospect raises fears about scientists essentially changing the course of evolution and creating people who are considered genetically superior, conjuring up the kind of dystopian future described in movies and books like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. ”These kinds of scenarios used to be science fiction they used to be seen as   hypotheticals,” says Marcy Darnovsky, who runs the Center for Genetics and Society, a genetic watchdog group. ”But actually, right now, I think they’re urgent social justice questions.” She says, ”we’re going to be creating a world in which the already privileged and affluent can use these   procedures to make children who either have some biological advantages” or are perceived to have biological advantages. ”And the scenario that plays out is not a pretty one.” But Charo says the report clearly states that any attempt to create babies from sperm, eggs or embryos that have had their DNA edited could only be tried someday under very tightly controlled conditions and only to prevent devastating medical disorders. ”We said, ’Use it for serious diseases and serious conditions only  —   period,’” Charo says. ”We simply said, ’No enhancement.’ ” But Darnovsky is skeptical that line will hold. ”I don’t think there’s any way to keep that genie in the bottle,” he says. The report, however, was praised by many scientists. ”It’s important to be extraordinarily cautious on technologies that could leave a permanent mark on the human population for all generations to come,” says Eric Lander, who runs the Broad Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. ”But it’s important to try to help people. I think they’ve been very thoughtful about how you should balance those things.” The report acknowledges that it may be difficult in the future to draw a line between using   to prevent or treat disease and using it for enhancement.   designed to prevent or treat the muscle disease muscular dystrophy, for example, could theoretically be used to try to make healthy people stronger. Prominent Harvard geneticist George Church agrees. ”The report is very clearly broad,” he says. ”It could include a lot of things people consider enhancement. I think it will be case by case and there will be some people will be consider enhancement that some people will consider preventive medicine.” For example, if scientists figure out how to makes changes that boost thinking abilities to stave off dementia in Alzheimer’s patients by making them slightly above average or considerably above average, he says, ”that might be considered enhancement or it might be considered preventive medicine.” Scientists have been able to edit the DNA in the cells of humans and other creatures for decades. But the academies commissioned the report after scientists developed powerful new   techniques in recent years, such as   that make it much easier and faster. That raised the possibility that gene editing might be used to treat many diseases and possibly even to prevent many devastating disorders from occurring in the first place by editing out genetic mutations in sperm, eggs and embryos. That could potentially prevent a wide range of diseases, including breast cancer,   sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease. As a result, the academies assembled a   committee of scientists, bioethicists, lawyers, patient advocates, biotech entrepreneurs and others to conduct a   investigation that involved more than year of study. The resulting report stresses that because the technology is so new, it would be unsafe for anyone to even begin studies to try to create babies from sperm, eggs or embryos that have had their DNA edited before conducting much more research. The committee also says no clinical trials of gene editing should be allow unless: ”It would be essential for this research to be approached with caution, and for it to proceed with broad public input,” the   report states. The report notes that the Food and Drug Administration is barred from reviewing ”research in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include a heritable genetic modification.” Federal funding of such research is also prohibited. Many other countries have signed an international convention prohibiting this kind of gene editing. But the report aims to provide guidance for those countries where it’s not prohibited or in those where the prohibitions would be lifted. The FDA ban, for example, could expire or be reversed."
"It’s no surprise that most women with breast cancer consider hair loss one of the most traumatic aspects of chemotherapy. That has led to a big market for cooling caps, which are purported to limit hair loss. But cooling caps haven’t been extensively studied in the U. S. and womens’ experiences with the caps have been hit or miss. And just one cooling cap, the DigniCap, is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Two studies released Tuesday show that at least half the women who used either the DigniCap or another scalp cooling system, the Paxman, lost less than 50 percent of their hair. ”These findings appear to represent a major step forward in improving the quality of life of individuals with cancer,” says Dr. Dawn Hershman, who studies the effects of cancer treatments at the Columbia University School of Medicine in New York. She wrote an editorial accompanying the studies in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. But Hershman cautions that more study is needed to determine whether there is psychological benefit in using the caps to prevent hair loss. And the cost and who will pay for the treatment are also issues, she says. The average cost is $1, 500 to $3, 000, depending on the number of chemotherapy cycles. In the DigniCap study, 67 of 106 women (66. 3 percent) lost less than half their hair after four rounds of taxane chemotherapy. The women had either stage I or II breast cancer. In contrast, all of the 16 women who did not use the cap lost all of their hair during chemotherapy. The DigniCap system uses a double cap fitted to the scalp 30 minutes before an infusion, which keeps the scalp at 37 degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus 2 degrees, during the session. The system was approved by the FDA in 2015 and is available at infusion centers in 17 states. The other study found similar results using the Paxman system. It was led by oncologist Julie Nangia of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Half of the 95 women (50. 5 percent) using the Paxman system lost less than half their hair after four rounds of anthracycline and taxane chemotherapy, including five women who had no significant hair loss, as judged by independent observers from photographs. Among the 47 who did not use the cooling system, all lost all of their hair. The Paxman study was stopped earlier than planned, after four cycles of chemotherapy, because findings showed the cooling cap was highly effective at preventing hair loss. That cooling system is not yet available commercially in the U. S. and is under review at the FDA. ”It’s nice now to have two good studies focusing on the quality of life to make the cancer journey easier for women,” Nangia tells NPR. There were no serious side effects related to either cooler. A few people reported headaches, and some stopped using the device because they got too cold. Nangia says most patients described the device as ”reasonably comfortable.” The studies were funded and designed, in part, by their respective manufacturers, with varying levels of company input to the university investigators. In both cases, the researchers were free to publish results they deemed appropriate. Researchers don’t know exactly how the cooling caps work. One theory is that cooling constricts the blood vessels in the scalp, slowing the circulation and thereby reducing the amount of toxins to which hair follicles are exposed. Or it may be that cold slows the growth of hair follicles, making them less susceptible to damage from chemotherapy, which targets rapidly dividing cells. Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, says it could be that ”by slowing down those cells whatever mechanism it may be  —   either starving their blood flow or slowing them down straightforwardly  —   the net effect is beneficial, causing hair not to fall out.” While chilling the scalp may seem to carry few risks, Lichtenfeld says there is a theoretical risk that inhibiting the effect of chemotherapy in the scalp could allow metastases to take hold there. ”These techniques are relatively new,” he says, and ”breast cancer is a disease that can take a long time before it comes back and if one is to be 100 percent certain then you need a long period of time to answer the question.” So far, cancer recurrence on the scalp has not been seen in the U. S. studies, but authors of both JAMA papers say longer   is needed to be sure that this is not a risk."
"About 3, 000 years ago, a potter near Jerusalem made a big jar. It was meant to hold olive oil or wine or something else valuable enough to send to the king as a tax payment. The jar’s handles were stamped with a royal seal, and the pot went into the kiln. Over the next 600 years, despite wars destructive enough to raze cities, potters in the area kept making ceramic tax jars, each one stamped with whatever seal represented the ruler du jour. They didn’t know it, but in the process, the ancient potters were not just upholding centuries of tax bureaucracy. As a group of archaeologists and geophysicists wrote Monday in the journal PNAS, they were also creating a   record of activity some 2, 000 miles beneath their feet. And that record is now yielding clues to a big mystery about this planet: how its magnetic field has changed over time. It’s known that iron in the Earth’s outer core generates the magnetic field as it moves around the core with the Earth’s rotation. But it’s still largely unknown how the magnetic field got started and why it changes. ”Albert Einstein defined this problem as one of the five most enigmatic issues in modern physics, and it still is, because the mechanism that creates the magnetic field is not well understood,” says Erez   an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel and an author of the paper. Since the invention about 180 years ago of the magnetometer, a device that can measure the strength of a magnetic field, scientists have noticed something confusing and a little worrisome over the years. ”We are losing the magnetic field,”   says. ”We already lost more than 10 percent of its strength, so people are concerned that we might lose the magnetic field entirely.” That’s concerning, he says, because the magnetic field protects the Earth from high levels of radiation coming from space. But fear not,   says. The jars hold hope. All those years ago, as potters continued to throw clay, the molten iron that was rotating deep below them tugged at tiny bits of magnetic minerals embedded in the potters’ clay. As the jars were heated in the kiln and then subsequently cooled, those minerals swiveled and froze into place like tiny compasses, responding to the direction and strength of the Earth’s magnetic field at that very moment. ”It’s kind of like a tape recorder,”   says. Political instability provided another handy recording, because the royal seals stamped onto the jars changed often enough to allow the researchers to narrow down the timing of those magnetic records to windows of about 30 years. ”Instability  —   or even better, wars and destruction  —   are the best for us,” says  . (Peaceful transitions are nearly impossible to spot in sedimentary layers, but something like a burned city makes a clearly visible dark line. And the Assyrians had a knack for destroying cities.) So, for example, archaeologists know that the Assyrians destroyed Judah, also known as Judea, in 701 B. C. and subsequently replaced the tax jar seal. ”So, we know what happened to the magnetic field between 730 B. C. E. to 700 B. C. E. by the year,” says  . When   and his colleagues studied 67 jar handles spanning from the late 8th century B. C. to the late 2nd century B. C. they found that the Earth’s magnetic activity has been a lot choppier than people expected. For example, the jars indicate that in the late 8th century B. C. the core went a little crazy. The intensity of the magnetic field spiked to about double what it is today. ”It was the strongest it’s been, at least in the last 100, 000 years, but maybe ever. We call this phenomenon the Iron Age spike,”   says. Then, it weakened quickly after 732 B. C. E. losing about 30 percent of its intensity in just 30 years. It’s counterintuitive, but massive fluctuations like the Iron Age spike,   says, indicate there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to today’s weakening magnetic fields. Fluctuation, he says, must be the norm for our planet’s magnetic field, not a harbinger of apocalypse. The jars provide an unprecedented look at the planet’s magnetic field over those six centuries, one that’s much harder to get from rocks. Geologist Steven Forman of Baylor University has also found evidence of a magnetic spike about 3, 000 years ago, based on his study of Hall’s Cave in Texas. ”But we didn’t have the type of time resolution that the study in PNAS has,” he says, because it’s a lot harder to pinpoint rocks on a timeline than it is to pinpoint   objects. ”That’s what so cool about what they did. They pulled this out of heated ceramics.” He says the jar record shows the magnetic field is likely a lot more dynamic and nimble than researchers thought it would be. Scientists knew the Earth could undergo big changes in magnetic intensity  —   the poles are thought to reverse about every 200, 000 to 300, 000 years. But in between those times, Forman says, people assumed there wasn’t much going on. This study shows magnetic fields going about a quarter of the way toward reversal, and boomeranging back, all within just a few decades. ”When dealing with such   phenomena, we don’t usually think it can occur within a few decades. We usually think it would take thousands or tens of thousands of years,” Forman says. The finding, he adds, ”opens up a big can of worms” because researchers just don’t know how or why that would happen. So there’s something missing about scientists’ concept of goings on in the Earth’s core. And scientists can thank political instability, war, relentless tax bureaucracy and all those potters for the hint. Benjamin Franklin was right: ”In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” And maybe also ancient potters."
"It was The Magnificent Seven that inspired Ramin Djawadi, the musician behind Game Of Thrones’ iconic soundtrack, to become a film composer. ”You would turn the movie off and those melodies would stick with you,” he says. ”It’s something I love about movie scores  —   that when you leave the theater you can still hum the themes and relive the movie without even watching it. It’s just the music that lives on its own.” Djawadi witnessed the world of American westerns from Germany, where he grew up learning to play the organ. From there, he rode off into a career composing music for movies and TV. This spring, Djawadi’s taking his show on the road with an   orchestra for the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience. He sat down with NPR’s David Greene to talk about his process of composing the music for the show. Read an edited transcript below and listen to the full interview at the audio link. David Greene: Does it take a different kind of musician to compose music for television?  Ramin Djawadi: Yes and no  —   I think a melody is a melody. I usually start writing my themes without even writing to picture, just trying to find the tone for the movie or the TV show.   What do you know about it when you start, if you haven’t seen anything?  Many times it’s just based on a conversation with the director or the producer. Or I read the script, or watch it  —   if I have some rough cut in front of me, I’ll watch it once. But then I just let it run in the background and start writing. Once you have that [composition] then you can apply it to picture, because the length of the pieces and what they have to do dramatically changes from piece to piece. Then you really have to go in and   the melodies and emotions to what is needed in the scene. So you have these early conversations, you come up with a general feel for the score, and then you start   as you see the images and get to know the characters. Is that what you’re saying?  Correct. In the case of Game Of Thrones, before I started writing I sat down with [David Beinoff and D. B. Weiss]. We talked about the tone of the show, and I just listened to what their vision was. . .. They’ll say, ”We really like this instrument, do you think you can make this work? We like the violin, we don’t like this.” All that information helps me, and then I go in and actually turn that into music and go from there. What’s an example of something they might have said as you were collaborating? One thing we always laughed about was that they said, ”We don’t want any flutes.” There was a   rule for Game Of Thrones? There was a   rule! Just because, stylistically, it was something that we felt was used in the genre before, and we wanted our score to be different. . .. So the big instrument that we actually came up with was the cello. It has a big range, it can play really low and high, and it has a dark sound. Game Of Thrones is obviously a dark show, so the cello became the featured instrument. You were telling me earlier that sometimes ideas strike you at the weirdest hours. What does that look like? Do you sneak out of bed and start recording something? I used to just scribble things on a piece of paper whenever an idea came to mind. Now with cellphones, that’s gotten a lot easier. I can just take it out and sing into my phone. Sometimes I just wake up  —   usually at night, actually, at night or first thing in the morning, that’s when I have ideas because it’s quiet. I sneak into the bathroom so I don’t wake up my wife. What do you do then? Are you humming?  Yeah, humming  —   sometimes I whistle. The main title theme for Game Of Thrones, for example, I was humming in my car after I saw the visuals. As I was driving back to the studio, I had the idea to the theme. Wait a minute  —   you were in your car, humming what has become one of the most iconic themes on television.  Yeah, that little melody can just come at any time."
"One year after removing   nudity from its pages, Playboy is returning to its roots. ”Naked is normal,” the magazine announces on the cover of its   2017 issue. The cover also omits a   tagline: ”Entertainment for Men.” Cooper Hefner, Playboy’s chief creative officer who’s also the son of magazine founder Hugh Hefner, says that the evolution of the magazine ”is a reflection of how the brand can best connect with my generation and generations to come.” On the decision to remove the phrase ”Entertainment for Men” from the cover, Hefner said, ”Playboy will always be a lifestyle brand focused on men’s interests, but as gender roles continue to evolve in society, so will we.” The change could mean that Playboy, in its return to printing photos of unclad people, will also have to return to cladding itself in plastic wrap on newsstands. It was able to shed that wrap last February. In an updated form of the ”Playboy Philosophy” columns his father wrote, Hefner emphasized the magazine’s   attempts ”to promote a healthy conversation about sex while also encouraging dialogue on social, philosophical and religious opinions.” Comments on that posting were largely enthusiastic. ”Glad nudity is back, as it should be,” one reads in part. Another states, ”I’ve been a decade long subscriber to Playboy magazine and stopped when they ended the nudity and the articles went full hipster.” That commenter signed off with, ”MAKE PLAYBOY GREAT AGAIN!” First launched in the 1950s, Playboy surprised many when it announced in late 2015 that it planned to cut out nudity. At the time, the magazine, which had watched its circulation drop to around 800, 000, said it was making an effort to grow up. It was also adjusting to a media landscape in which nudity is commonplace online  —   but is tightly restricted by most social media platforms, which have become vital outlets for many publishers, no matter their content. Here’s how writer Charlie Warzel described it for NPR when the change was announced: ”Playboy seems to sort of exist in this middle ground, this   place where, you know, you have a lot of the adult entertainment, which is very sort of hard core and caters to the fringes and is not mainstream at all. And then you have, you know, the other side of Playboy’s enterprise, which is this culture and lifestyle section. You know, it came up in the ’50s as what the cultured, sophisticated, suave man might read  —   a real sort of   lifestyle publication. And then, you now, as it’s evolved, it’s kind of become a character of itself. So I think it’s trying to get back to its roots as, you know, as a culture publication.”"
"There are few people, musicians or otherwise, who can speak as eloquently about songs and their meanings as Ryan Adams. For this Valentine’s Day, our guest DJ, Ryan Adams, chose love songs by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, The Smiths and Sonic Youth, which we discussed in detail along with Adams’ new album, Prisoner, which addresses boldly both love and his recent divorce. (As well, we have a First Listen stream of Prisoner right here.) I drive by night, And I travel in fear, That in this darkness, I will disappear, ”I love that line. That’s the fate of everyone. .. That is the special thing about songs of longing and remorse and the encapsulation of the human spirit, is that we are temporary visitors in a dimension that is not ours. It’s interesting how people relate to that sometimes, as though that is a morbid way of looking at the world. But instead, it’s very real and beautiful way of looking at the world, because its factual and it also means that everything matters and everything is heavy. It doesn’t invalidate anything. .. It just actually makes things, I think, even more special.” ”That lonesome road in that car  —   that’s the thing to love. That’s the place where you are. For me, that’s the place I am. I like that place. And there’s nothing wrong with that place. In fact, that’s where everything’s right. But I think it’s different for everybody. ”It’s driving at night, ’59 Caddy [Adams’ car]. You’ve got some trees and stuff hazing by the window, windows are down. No radio. Just there. Just experiencing things. No expectation. No feeling of uncertainty. Just being and feeling stuff and being what you are, whether part of you is filled with this broken stuff and part of you is filled with some hope. All that stuff is all in the river and in the creek, and it’s below you, and it’s moving, and you don’t have anything to do with it. I think the more time I spend, the more I realize that it’s nice to separate yourself, if you can, from that expectation and that idea of the reward of happiness.” ”I think that he is describing that unbelievable force of extreme longing. .. it’s the most romantic feeling. This is, in my opinion, probably the greatest song I know. I think he’s describing that unbelievable force of extreme longing, and it’s the most romantic feeling  —   it’s the perfect storm of just utter romance. Every color is as bright as it could be.” ”It’s the same thing as those beautiful charcoal drawings in caves, where you see pictures of horses and the wild game that they were hunting and we go back and someone says, ’These are the oldest drawings that are ever known.’ And you know, that person, that day, was thinking about   either about how beautiful those animals were or how it felt to be out there with them that day. ”I think that there is this thing inside of human beings, and it’s this total appreciation of being alive. It’s so profoundly in our gut.” ”It’s the sound that I heard growing up, my grandmother typing away on the typewriter used to make me fall asleep. I shared her Remington Rand. I still have that typewriter. It’s doing great. ”The good thing about typewriters is you set it up on a desk up against a window when you’re typing and you could just look out the window and you just space out and you just type. I just type faster on a manual typewriter because my hands are big as hell, and I just break the keys off of every laptop I ever had.” ”So the guitars in this record specifically this song, they speak of a sensuality and sexuality  —   almost like a sparkling excited memory and being nostalgic for a feeling. It’s a crush it’s a crush. This moment bookends when I realize I am no longer in a trap. Instead I am the clouds above the trap, it’s a transformation. I didn’t understand my own freedom. .. I was free inside of this repressed desire. And so I look at it as an awakening and maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life describing that moment and ’Prisoner’ was the first time I really got it. I think it’s the very first time I was smart enough to stop trying to be smart and to allow myself to just be very perfectly flawed.” ”She’s dreaming. .. she’s dreaming about someone that she’s so attracted to. She’s dreaming, and there’s these fireworks and stuff going off, and these weird, static waves. You see almost   images of a character coming in and out of her field of vision in this fever dream. .. it’s being peaceful. .. and then, when the song hits this climax in the middle, it’s that feeling of, whether in a dream or metaphorically speaking, it’s the panic of the obsession and of that attraction. ”To me, this is the genius of that band. .. It’s total seduction, total and complete physical, spiritual, transcendental seduction. It’s like the filter of reality is just burnt off, and the fumes are toxic electric sparks, and you’re just in it.”"
"President Trump and his inner circle have reached their first crisis with the resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn, but the crisis extends well beyond one empty chair in one critical moment. Everything that has happened surrounding Flynn’s abrupt departure illustrates the larger troubles of the nascent administration. The president has made a great show of energy and excitement with a flurry of executive orders and meetings with foreign leaders. Yet the front pages were dominated by the backstory about the intense competition among the president’s top aides for his favor and attention. Press secretary Sean Spicer said Flynn had lost the president’s confidence because of an ”erosion of trust.” But an atmosphere of distrust pervades in the 2017 White House, bred in part by the personal rivalries and competing visions at the level just below the president. Who is speaking for the president? Among the contestants in the level below Trump are his    Jared Kushner his senior adviser Steve Bannon his chief of staff, Reince Priebus and various counselors and assistants including Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Miller (who appeared on four Sunday morning talk shows last weekend). While loyal to the boss, the top people are not loyal to each other. Magazines and websites, fed by leaked information, blare stories about which of the principal courtiers is up or down or on the way out. All presidential transitions have stumbles at the start, moments when they lose their balance. This White House has yet to develop a sense of balance to lose. You could say the new Trump team is not coming apart because it has yet to come together. The new White House has, however, kept up a running argument about appearances and reality, denouncing the media daily while working tirelessly to exploit them. The president turns to Twitter to denounce ”illegal leaks” and insist they are ”the real story.” But the leaks spring from all levels of the executive branch and White House in a torrent. In other tweets we hear of ”the lying media” and the ”dishonest media” and learn that ”all negative polls are fake news.” Through it all, there persists a sense of the surreal. Who is actually speaking for the president when several officially do  —   and at times contradict each other? The president and his inner circle can find a replacement for Flynn among the many others who had been interviewed for his job or as prospective deputies to Defense Secretary James Mattis. Flynn’s successor can take over immediately, needing no Senate confirmation. Carrying out Trump’s agenda, What is more important, and more difficult, is to find footing and focus on the real work that needs to be done. The heavy lifting to achieve the Trump agenda from 2016 must happen where laws are actually passed, on Capitol Hill. But there the Republican leaders, while loyally pushing the president’s nominations past Democrats’ resistance, have been frustrated by a lack of presidential attention. At the moment, the major elements of the Trump program  —   an infrastructure initiative, tax reform, repeal of Obamacare and the   financial services law  —   are all stuck in the starting gate. The one point on which Republicans all agree, repealing Obamacare, has stalled on the question of replacement. The most fervent repealers are loath to wait until there is a replacement plan. Others insist the two must happen in tandem. Republican leaders on the Hill thought they had a truce among their troops until Trump told a TV audience on Super Bowl Sunday that the replacement would be in place in the next year or two. The internal battle was swiftly rejoined and now seems beyond control. Nearly four weeks in, the Trump regime has issued a record number of executive orders, largely devoted to rescinding the orders of former President Barack Obama. One of those orders sharply limited access to the U. S. for many noncitizens, especially refugees from   countries of the Middle East and East Africa. The order was initially interpreted to apply also to permanent legal residents from these countries, causing massive confusion and at least temporary harm. When a federal judge, backed by an appeals court panel, put a stop to this ”travel ban,” the president was furious. He vowed to overturn the judges and prevail. He may pursue the fight in the courts or back down and revise his order. But that problem has seemed to be on hold since the Flynn story burst into the headlines last week. Helping one another, It is obviously a matter of priorities. Every White House faces many, and every decision to emphasize one implies the neglect of others. It is the kind of problem that demands the president have help, and that his helpers help each other. Philip Zelikow and Michele Flournoy have been among the scholars and officials studying the handling of crises in recent administrations for the ”First Year Project” at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. They looked at five cases from the early days of the presidents from John F. Kennedy in 1961 to George W. Bush in 2001 and listed five key pieces of advice for new presidents. Two of the first three were about advisers: ”Assemble a team of   advisors who trust one another” and ”Resolve differences among advisors.” It is possible that when we reach the milestone of 100 days (a time frame of no actual significance that bulks large in myth and the media) the Flynn episode will seem aberrant and minor in hindsight. But here in   the spectacle of his sudden fall from grace is all too convenient a metaphor for the first four weeks of life in the Trump White House. Far from asking what Trump and his inner circle might accomplish in their first 100 days, the world now wonders which members of that inner circle will be around that long."
"A current U. S. intelligence official tells NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the transcripts of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, although the official noted that doesn’t rule out the possibility of illegal actions. The official also says that there are recordings as well as transcripts of the calls, and that the transcripts don’t suggest Flynn was acting under orders in his conversations. Flynn resigned late Monday, after allegations that he discussed U. S. sanctions on Russia with Kislyak and then misled Vice President Pence about the nature of those conversations. Flynn initially denied discussing sanctions at all, but in his resignation Flynn said he ”inadvertently” gave Pence ”incomplete information” about the conversations. NPR’s Phil Ewing previously reported that it is not in dispute that Flynn spoke with Kislyak in late December. ”The issue is what he said,” Phil wrote. Depending on the content of the conversations, Flynn could have violated a law called the Logan Act, which bars a private individual from conducting foreign policy without the permission of the U. S. government. For instance, if Flynn told the ambassador the Trump administration would drop the sanctions, that would have been illegal. The intelligence official who has personally seen the transcripts told Mary Louise they contained ”no evidence” of criminal wrongdoing, although the official said it can’t be definitively ruled out. The official also said there was ”absolutely nothing” in the transcripts that suggests Flynn was acting under instructions ”or that the trail leads higher.” ”I don’t think [Flynn] knew he was doing anything wrong,” the official said. ”Flynn talked about sanctions, but no specific promises were made. Flynn was speaking more in general ’maybe we’ll take a look at this going forward’ terms.” As NPR’s Domenico Montanaro has reported, Flynn could face consequences even if there isn’t evidence he violated the Logan Act: ”The White House is confident Flynn didn’t say anything that could have violated the law. Of course, that could be open to interpretation. It would be up to the Jeff Sessions Justice Department to review the transcript and bring a case, if it saw fit. That is seen as unlikely. ”But there are other ways in which Flynn could be at risk. ”Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday it’s possible that Flynn will be called to testify under oath. More could become known about the specifics of the call before then. The New York Times reports Tuesday evening that the FBI questioned Flynn in the early days of the Trump presidency about his conversations. And investigators believe Flynn ’was not entirely forthcoming’: ” ’That raises the stakes of what so far has been a political scandal that cost Mr. Flynn his job. If the authorities conclude that Mr. Flynn knowingly lied to the F. B. I. it could expose him to a felony charge.’ ”"
"Updated at 4:15 p. m. ET,   executive Andrew Puzder withdrew his nomination to head the Labor Department on Wednesday as his support on Capitol Hill faltered. Facing criticism from both sides of the aisle, Puzder became the first Trump Cabinet pick whose nomination failed. Puzder put out a statement on Wednesday: ”After careful consideration and discussions with my family, I am withdrawing my nomination for Secretary of Labor. I am honored to have been considered by President Donald Trump to lead the Department of Labor and put America’s workers and businesses back on a path to sustainable prosperity. I want to thank President Trump for his nomination. I also thank my family and my many supporters —  employees, businesses, friends and people who have voiced their praise and hopeful optimism for the policies and new thinking I would have brought to America as Secretary of Labor. While I won’t be serving in the administration, I fully support the President and his highly qualified team.” Ahead of his scheduled confirmation hearing on Thursday, which had been delayed several times, it became less clear Puzder had support from his own party, facing pressure to withdraw. Several Republican senators, including Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Georgia’s Johnny Isakson and South Carolina’s Tim Scott, signaled trouble by saying they were undecided on Puzder. In a statement responding to Puzder’s withdrawal, Scott said, ”As revelations regarding paying employees in cash, illegal immigration, and comments regarding some of the American workforce came to light, I developed serious concerns regarding his nomination.” Scott said he informed Senate GOP leadership about his reluctance to support Puzder. Puzder has faced a range of criticisms, from his record running the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. ’s   chains to old allegations  —   since retracted  —   of domestic abuse made by his  . More recently, Puzder disclosed he employed a housekeeper who was not in the country legally. Labor unions, which had planned to protest his nomination outside the Senate offices where the hearing was to be held, have argued a   Labor Department would undermine their efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, expand the eligibility for overtime pay and enforce wage and hour violations, among other things. Puzder, a corporate attorney by training, was first a lawyer for CKE Restaurants, which operates Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr. Green Burrito and Red Burrito restaurants. He helped founder Carl Karcher settle an insider trading case with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Then, after the chain fell into financial trouble following its acquisition of Hardee’s in the late 1990s, Puzder helped turn the company around and in 2000 was named CEO. As CEO, and later as a Trump campaign adviser, Puzder has been outspoken about his views on labor policy, contributing to newspaper opinion pages and on television, discussing issues such as immigration. During the Republican presidential primaries, Puzder advocated creating a path to legal status for unauthorized workers living in the U. S. He endorsed a more moderate ”comprehensive immigration reform,” similar to what candidates Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio were proposing at the time. That endorsement won him critics from the right, who want the Trump administration to make good on promises to get tougher on illegal immigration and crack down to deport those in the country illegally. In an opinion piece titled ”No to Puzder” in the National Review published Feb. 15, the conservative magazine wrote: ”The case for his confirmation has diminished to the point of disappearing.” The most vocal critics, however, have pointed to his industry’s record at the very department he would lead. For the   industry overall, during the 2016 federal fiscal year, the agency found violations in 86 percent of the 1, 300 cases it investigated for wage theft, or for unpaid overtime. CKE Restaurants had one of the lowest incidents of reported cases, faring relatively well in an industry that came in for a lot of criticism under the Obama administration. Richard Trumka, president of the   said Puzder would not have enforced labor laws against his own industry. ”How can he possibly go out and defend workers,” he said, arguing the agency should be headed by someone with a history of trying to protect the interests of workers."
"Americans say they’re feeling more stress, according to a survey released Wednesday by the American Psychological Association. Americans rated their stress higher in January compared to last August, increasing from 4. 8 to 5. 1 on a   scale. That’s the first significant increase in the 10 years that the association has been doing these polls. What’s more, 57 percent of people polled in January said they were stressed about the current political climate 66 percent were stressed about the future of our nation and 49 percent were stressed about the outcome of the presidential election. When the organization asked about the election in its annual poll last August, 52 percent of Americans said the presidential election was a very or somewhat significant source of stress. That inspired the Stress in America team to put together a   survey, which was administered online in January to 1, 109 adults ages 18 or older. In the January survey, both Republicans and Democrats said they are stressed about the nation’s future  —   at 59 and 76 percent, respectively. People also said that worries about acts of terrorism, police violence toward minorities and general personal safety also are increasing. The number of people stressed about personal safety increased from 29 percent to 34 percent from August to January, the highest percentage since the survey was first conducted in 2008. People in rural areas reported less stress, with just 33 percent saying they were very or somewhat stressed about the political changes.   percent of suburbanites reported stress, as did 62 percent of city dwellers. Constant access to breaking news on social media, TV and other sources is probably a large contributor to the elevated stress levels, says Lynn Bufka, a psychologist and the APA’s associate executive director for practice research and policy. ”It’s everywhere  —   newspapers, social media, even elevators have screens now that push news at you,” Bufka says, adding that it’s hard to know when to disconnect from the news cycle. ”As consumers, it can be really difficult to know when we have enough information about our world.” Uncertainty tends to up the stress, Bufka says. ”Our president hasn’t held public office before,” she notes. ”We don’t know what to expect  —   no matter if we agree or disagree with his policies, we don’t have any way of predicting his style of putting those policies forward.” That uncertainty, she says, can be a major source of stress regardless of political affiliation. Sustained stress can increase the risk of serious health problems over a long period of time, Bufka says, including obesity, heart conditions, depression and anxiety. ”Stress can be good and motivating. But when it’s constant and intense, people push, and push, and push, and are usually less productive. And they’re bound to run into health issues in the long run.” To cope, Bufka says it’s good to make a point of scheduling a time to give your brain a break. Cut off news access and enjoy a hobby instead, like reading a book or exercising. And above all, Bufka says, don’t let an elevated worry level affect your routine. ”Don’t skip your workout, don’t sacrifice sleep.”"
"Two of the most influential groups in the food industry are asking companies to change those pesky ”expiration” or ”sell by” labels on packaged food. The labels, you see, don’t mean what they appear to mean. Foods don’t ”expire.” Most foods are safe to eat even after that ”sell by” date has passed. They just may not taste as good, because they’re not as fresh anymore. Companies use the labels to protect the reputation of their products  —   they want consumers to see and consume their food in as fresh a state as possible. But those dates often have the perverse effect of convincing   consumers to throw perfectly good food into the trash. The Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute are hoping to prevent that. They’re now advising their members, which include most major food manufacturers and retailers, to abolish many current labels, including ”Expires on” and ”Sell by.” Instead, they’re asking companies to use just two labels. One would use the words ”Best if used by” a particular date. This label would probably go on most foods. And companies could put a ”Use by” date on products that could become less safe as they age. Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the GMA, said the second label might go on packages of shucked raw oysters, for example. Some environmental advocacy groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, have been pushing for such a reform for a long time. They say the existing labels have been an obstacle to reducing food waste. Last year, the USDA issued a guidance document that asked companies voluntarily to adopt one universal label, using the words ”Best if used by.” Expiration dates on food are not required by any federal law, although some states require such dates on meat or milk. As a food product passes its ”expiration” date, it may get stale, and some products, like milk, may go sour. But according to food safety experts, most spoiled foods, though unpalatable, aren’t particularly hazardous."
"With differing messages emanating from the Trump administration about its stance on the   solution for in the   peace process, many eyes turned to President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for clarity on the issue at their joint news conference at the White House Wednesday. ”So I’m looking at   and    —   and I like the one that both parties like,” Trump said when asked about the subject alongside Netanyahu at the formal news conference around midday Wednesday. ”I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one,” Trump continued. ”I thought for a while the   looked like it may be the easier of the two, but honestly if Bibi and if the Palestinians  —   if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I’m happy with the one they like the best.” In the Israeli leader’s response to the same question, Netanyahu said he was concerned with substance, not labels. And he said his two main requirements for a peace deal haven’t changed. ”First, the Palestinians must recognize the Jewish state. They have to stop calling for Israel’s destruction,” Netanyahu said. Secondly, he added, ”in any peace agreement, Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River.” Earlier, when Trump was asked for his view of Israel’s settlement activities, he responded by pivoting to look at his Israeli counterpart and saying, ”I’d like to see you hold back on settlements for a little bit. We’ll work something out, but I would like to see a deal be made.” After Netanyahu offered a short reply to that statement  —   ”Let’s try it,” he seemed to say, as he waved a hand  —   Trump said, ”Doesn’t sound too optimistic, but he’s a good negotiator.” The two leaders spoke shortly after Netanyahu arrived at the White House with his wife, Sara. The news conference kicked off a series of joint events for Trump and Netanyahu, ranging from a private meeting to a bilateral session and a working lunch. Last night, remarks by senior White House officials seemed to signal a possible shift in the   U. S. view that a   solution is integral to peace negotiations, with an official describing the idea as something that should be left up to the two main parties in the talks. ”A   solution that doesn’t bring peace is not a goal that anybody wants to achieve,” the official said. ”Peace is the goal, whether it comes in the form of a   solution if that’s what the parties want or something else, if that’s what the parties want, we’re going to help them.” That message about the possibility of creating an independent Palestinian state differed from the U. S. message that was relayed to Palestinian leaders this week. On the eve of the White House meeting with Israel’s leader, CIA Director Mike Pompeo met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah  —   where the American intelligence chief relayed ”reassuring messages about the   solution” to the Palestinians, according to Israeli news site Haaretz, citing a source familiar with the meeting. Trump has said he wants to restart peace talks between the two sides  —   something that hasn’t happened in more than two years. ”He said he wants to put his    Jared Kushner, in charge of brokering what he’s called ’the ultimate deal,’” NPR’s Scott Horsley reports on Morning Edition. But, Scott adds, some Israelis are wary of entering a new round of negotiations. In response to reports from Washington about the views of senior officials, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry issued a statement Wednesday declaring that if the reports are accurate, the ”Trump administration’s withdrawal from adopting the two   will mark Netanyahu’s instant success that will strengthen his position.” While saying that they would await word from Trump and Netanyahu’s official appearance at the White House, the Palestinian ministry also stated that it ”will seek a broader international front to preserve the   solution,” citing the possible involvement of the European Union. One month ago, U. S. officials joined diplomats from some 70 nations to affirm the importance of a   solution at a summit held in Paris. The summit did not include leaders from Israel or the Palestinian Authority. ”President Trump has very much indicated that he wants to achieve peace,” a senior White House official said in the background briefing on Netanyahu’s visit. The official also stated, ”We’re not going to dictate what the terms of peace will be.”"
"President Trump is hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Wednesday. The two held a joint press conference amid differing messages emanating from the Trump administration about its stance on the   solution in the   peace process. NPR journalists with expertise in politics, national security and the Middle East have annotated a transcript of their remarks."
"By a   margin, the   Senate voted Wednesday to repeal an   regulation designed to block certain mentally ill people from purchasing firearms. The vote, which approves a House resolution passed earlier this month, now sends the measure to the White House for President Trump’s signature. President Trump, who campaigned as a defender of gun rights and a friend of the National Rifle Association, is widely expected to sign the measure. The rule on the verge of rollback would have required the Social Security Administration to report the records of some mentally ill beneficiaries to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Those who have been deemed mentally incapable of managing their financial affairs  —   roughly 75, 000 people  —   would have been affected by the rule, according to NPR’s Susan Davis. It was implemented by former President Obama after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which saw 20 students and six teachers killed at an elementary school by    Adam Lanza. The Hill reports that the rule was set to take effect in December. Yet GOP lawmakers have argued that the regulation was needlessly   painting people with mental illnesses with too broad a brush and infringing on their constitutional rights. The Associated Press reports that Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a leading Republican critic of the rule, said it is filled with ”vague characteristics that do not fit into the federal mentally defective standard” prohibiting someone from buying or owning a gun. ”If a specific individual is likely to be violent due to the nature of their mental illness, then the government should have to prove it,” Grassley said, according to the news service. The NRA and the American Civil Liberties Union also opposed Obama’s rule  —   the NRA for its restrictions on the Second Amendment, the ACLU for the possibility it would stereotype the mentally ill as violent. So, seizing its   moment with a GOP president in the White House, Congress passed Wednesday’s ”Resolution of Disapproval” under the Congressional Review Act, a rarely used maneuver that gives lawmakers a means to overturn federal regulations put in place by the executive branch. The move allows the Senate to proceed with a simple majority, thus enabling GOP senators to avoid a filibuster by Democrats. The House got that ball rolling two weeks ago the Senate sent it the rest of the way to President Trump’s desk. Democrats, however, excoriated the legislation as irresponsible. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut where the Sandy Hook massacre occurred, delivered a fiery speech against the measure before Wednesday’s vote, The Hill reports: ”The [Congressional Review Act] we have before us today will make it harder for the federal government to do what we have told them to do for decades, which is to put dangerous people and people who are seriously mentally ill on the list of people who are prohibited from buying a gun.” The AP notes that Murphy added: ”If you can’t manage your own financial affairs, how can we expect that you’re going to be a responsible steward of a dangerous, lethal firearm.”"
"On Sept. 1, 2000, the top movie in the country was Bring It On. The No. 1 song was Janet Jackson’s ”Doesn’t Really Matter,” from Nutty Professor II. And the newest cell phone on the market was the Nokia 3310  —   a sturdy little brick of a phone. A lot has changed since then.   Miranda turned Bring It On into a musical. Everyone pretty much forgot about the Nutty Professor II. The iPhone transformed the cell phone market. But get ready for a blast from the past: Rumor has it the Nokia 3310 might be making a comeback. For some people, the phone never really went away. Sure, it was technically ”retired” in 2005, after selling some 126 million units (according to Nokia.) But a few   fans refused to retire their devices, noting the convenience of a battery that lasts for days. And even those who moved on to shinier smartphones still fondly remembered the 3310  —   and as touchscreen after touchscreen shattered, they thought back wistfully to the old phone’s  . The phone eventually gained a legendary reputation on the internet as the ”Chuck Norris” of phones, with an everlasting battery and supernatural strength, destined to survive the apocalypse and capable of standing in for hammers when necessary. Now there are rumors that the 3310 will be moving from nostalgic Internet meme back into stores  —   for real. VentureBeat, citing an anonymous source, reports that HMD Global Oy  —   the company that now owns the right to the Nokia brand  —   will be releasing a ”modern version” of the ”classic workhorse” later this month. The new phone will cost just over $60, the site reports. A HMD Global spokeswoman would not confirm the report, telling NPR, ”We don’t comment on rumours or speculation.” As we wait to see if the rumors are correct, why not play a little Snake? Or you can watch valiant souls test the 3310’s storied durability, with drones . .. . .. hot axes . .. . .. katanas . .. . .. hot coals . .. . .. a train . .. . .. an Anzio 20mm rifle . .. . .. or a hydraulic press. Admittedly, the 3310 isn’t literally indestructible. But hey, at least it starts up faster than an iPhone."
"Updated at 3:45 p. m. ET, A    man who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents in Seattle on Feb. 10 says his constitutional rights have been violated, and he is suing the U. S. government for his release. Daniel Ramirez Medina, who is currently being held by immigration authorities in Tacoma, Wash. is registered with the U. S. government under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. His appears to be the first arrest by ICE of a DACA recipient. A federal judge in Seattle has scheduled a hearing in the case for Friday. According to court documents, Ramirez was born in Mexico and brought to the U. S. when he was about 7 years old. In 2014, Ramirez was approved to stay in the U. S. under DACA. He paid a fee to register with the government, underwent an extensive background check and was granted a work permit. On May 5, 2016, his DACA status was renewed a second time. The renewal stated, ”Unless terminated, this decision to defer removal action will remain in effect for 2 years from the date of this notice.” Ramirez’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, was filed on Monday. The complaint alleges Ramirez was asleep at his father’s home in Seattle when agents arrived with an arrest warrant for the father. From the complaint: ”Following his arrest, Mr. Ramirez’s father granted the ICE officers permission to enter his home so that he could inform his two sons about his arrest. When the ICE agents entered the home, they asked Mr. Ramirez, ’Are you legally here?’ Mr. Ramirez replied, ’Yes, I have a work permit.’ On the recommendation of his brother (a DACA recipient who was also then present) Mr. Ramirez declined to answer additional questions at that time.” . .. ”The ICE agents then took Mr. Ramirez to a processing center in Seattle, Washington. When he again informed them about his work permit, one of the ICE agents stated: ’It doesn’t matter, because you weren’t born in this country.’ At this point, the ICE agents had Mr. Ramirez’s wallet, which contained his work permit, which clearly identified him as a DACA recipient with a ’ ’ code, which reflects a work authorization issued pursuant to DACA. Despite this fact, Mr. Ramirez was questioned further, fingerprinted, booked, and taken to a detention center in Tacoma, Washington.” Attorneys for Ramirez, whose own child is an American citizen, claim his detention without probable cause violates his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. ICE spokeswoman Rose Richeson said Ramirez is a ”  gang member,” NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reported. One of Ramirez’s attorneys, Ethan Dettmer, said his client ”unequivocally denies,” that assertion. ”While in custody, he was repeatedly pressured by U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to falsely admit gang affiliation. The statement issued tonight by U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not accurate,” Dettmer said. The court complaint also addresses the seeming failure of a stopgap measure  —   a   law enforcement hotline that DACA recipients are instructed to call if they find themselves incorrectly detained by immigration authorities, as the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website explains. But ”when Mr. Ramirez’s counsel called the hotline, he was provided no assistance in remedying the mistake that had been made by the arresting ICE agents,” the complaint states. Ramirez’s arrest comes three weeks after President Trump signed an order regarding the enforcement of immigration laws inside the country. One section of that order addressed how federal agencies collect and share information about people in the U. S. under the Privacy Act: ”Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.” Advocates for DACA recipients say they would be troubled if data collected by the Obama administration through the program could now be used to deport people. Asked about that possibility on NPR’s All Things Considered, another member of Ramirez’s legal defense team, attorney Mark Rosenbaum, said he was ”not concerned today, because there’s nothing in terms of a change in law [now].” ”My hope is that ICE and federal government say the truth, which is that a mistake was made here,” Rosenbaum said."
"After decades of dogs ruling popular culture  —   there are three canine stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame  —   there’s been a revolution. Thanks to a tsunami of cute viral videos, our feline comrades are now in the catbird seat, from those ubiquitous Hello Kitty stores to surprise bestsellers like Takashi Hiraide’s exquisite, sneakily profound novel The Guest Cat. The latest to ride this wave is the charming new documentary Kedi by the   Turkish filmmaker Ceyda Torun. Kedi  —   which means ”cat” in Turkish  —   is a loving, gorgeously shot ode to the hundreds of thousands of cats living on the streets of Istanbul. Even if you’re a   or   Jonathan Franzen, I suspect you’ll find it delightful. Kedi’s stars, of course, are cats, and the film glides around Istanbul’s back alleys, boho enclaves and   piers to show us the range of these characters. These include Sari, a    tabby who’s all about food  —   stealing it from shops, begging for it at restaurants, carrying it back to her kittens. There’s Gamsiz, a carefree    shorthair who climbs trees and awnings so that he can demand admission into   apartment windows. And there’s the   little demon fondly known as the Neighborhood Psychopath who controls her turf with the prickly explosiveness of a feline Tony Soprano. Torun also shows us the people who love and indulge them, from the mechanic who gets blissed out brushing a longhair’s fat belly to the boatman who became a cat fan when one of them led him to a wallet full of money. As I do with my own cats, imperious Nico and altruistic Chubbs, the Istanbulites can’t resist projecting human qualities onto these creatures. One couple dubs their local cat a ”gentleman” because he doesn’t dash into their café for free food when he’s hungry. Instead, he puts his paws on their window . .. politely. Now, Torun is far from a gritty filmmaker  —   you won’t see these cats killing birds or hear talk about neutering  —   and she gives everything an idealized icing. Her affection for Istanbul rescues this Muslim metropolis from today’s dire headlines, reminding us that this is an ancient and beautiful city, not some hellhole of terrorist bombings. And in showing how Istanbulites love cats just the way we do here  —   which means becoming their servants, of course  —   she makes their culture feel warmer, more hospitable and less alien. That said, Kedi’s true pleasure lies in getting to watch Istanbul’s cats in action. Where the whole mythos of dogs is that they are man’s best friend  —   bound to human beings  —   cats are notoriously   even aloof. That’s one reason it’s so fun to watch those videos in which a cat does a silly dance or leaps sky high when it thinks a cucumber on the floor is a snake. It’s like seeing a fussy French waiter spill a plate of snails down his front or gruff Robert DeNiro start giggling on a blooper reel. Kedi aims higher than these videos. As Torun’s nimble camera follows the cats doing their rounds  —   filching food, catching rats, scaring off interlopers  —   the film offers a glimpse of something richer and more poetic. We see that these cats aren’t merely wondrous creatures in themselves, but that they enrich the whole city. They give the people around them a vision of another freer, wilder, more spontaneous form of life, one that can be easily lost in a huge, stressful, rapidly modernizing place like Istanbul. At one point, we follow a businessman who walks around dispensing food to the eagerly waiting street cats. He tells us, quite touchingly, that he’d had a nervous breakdown a while back but that he’d found his way back to health by making it his mission to ensure the neighborhood cats got fed. The cats saved him by taking him out of himself and out of his    worries. Kedi does much the same thing. It’s not exactly what you’d call a challenging film, but it offers a pleasurable refuge from our daily cares and from today’s   cultural climate in which even the Super Bowl could become a political allegory."
"Scientists may have solved the mystery of nodding syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy that has disabled thousands of children in East Africa. The syndrome seems to be caused by the immune system’s response to a parasitic worm, an international team reports in the journal Science Translational Medicine. And they think it’s the same worm responsible for river blindness, an eye infection that’s also found in East Africa. The finding means that current efforts to eliminate river blindness should also reduce nodding syndrome, says Avi Nath, an author of the study and chief of the section of infections of the nervous system at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. ”We can prevent new infections even if we can’t treat the ones who already have nodding syndrome,” Nath says. Drugs can kill the parasite in its early stages. Nodding syndrome usually strikes children between 5 and 16 who live in rural areas of northern Uganda and South Sudan. Their bodies and brains stop growing. And they experience frequent seizures. ”These are kids, young kids, you would expect that they should be running around playing,” says Nath, who visited Uganda several years ago. ”Instead, if you go to these villages they are just sitting there in groups,” so villagers can keep an eye on them. The epileptic seizures weaken muscles in the head and neck. ”So their heads tend to fall forward,” Nath says. ”And because that happens repeatedly as part of the seizure, it is termed nodding syndrome.” Researchers have struggled to find a cause for the syndrome since it was first documented in Tanzania in the 1960s. ”We thought it might have to do with toxins, chemicals in the environment or nutritional deficiency,” Nath says. But the only clue that seemed to hold up was that affected children lived in areas where river blindness was common. This clue was puzzling, though, because even though nodding syndrome is a brain disease, the parasite that causes river blindness doesn’t seem to infect the brain. After returning from Uganda, Nath decided to search for an explanation. ”He pulled all of the lab together as a team and asked us to each investigate different components” of the syndrome, says Tory Johnson, an assistant professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins who was working for Nath at the time. She is also an author of the new study. Johnson’s assignment was to see whether the body’s own immune system might play a role. So she began screening blood samples from people with nodding syndrome. Other scientists had also looked for an immune response. But Johnson’s search was much more extensive. ”We looked at everything that was available,” she says. And eventually, she found something. Nath remembers being in a meeting one day when Johnson appeared suddenly. ”I saw her waving at me and I’m like, ’Okay, what happened? ’” he says. Johnson had discovered that in people with nodding syndrome, the immune system was targeting a protein found in certain muscle cells. It looked as if the body was attacking itself. The question was whether the immune system’s attack also included the brain. So Johnson started looking to see whether the targeted protein was in brain cells. ”And lo and behold she found that yes, it was not only present in the brain, there were actually large amounts of it present in neurons,” Nath says. ”So the story really came together very nicely.” The full story, the team’s hypothesis, goes like this: When a person is infected with the river blindness parasite, the immune system begins sending antibodies to attack the invader. These antibodies identify their enemy by looking for a specific protein in the parasite’s cells. Unfortunately, the target protein in the parasite looks a lot like a protein found in certain brain cells. So these brain cells become unintended casualties of the body’s efforts to protect itself. The discovery shows why it’s important to treat children soon after they are infected with the parasite, Nath says. That might prevent an immune response that attacks the brain. And it would mean that the parasite can’t be spread from person to person by black flies. Because nodding syndrome appears to be the result of an immune response, Nath says, it may be possible to limit brain damage in some children by using drugs that tone down the immune system response. The finding also raises the possibility that parasites, or other infections, are causing epilepsy in the U. S. and other countries, Nath says. ”We know there are a large number of   epilepsies,” Nath says. ”But the underlying cause is not clear.” And there are plenty of parasitic infections in the U. S. Pinworms, for example, infect millions of children each year. It’s possible that some of these infections are leading to epilepsy, Johnson says. ”We don’t know because we haven’t looked yet.”"
"President Trump has promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act without taking insurance away from the millions of people who gained coverage under the law.  On Wednesday his Department of Health and Human Services made its first substantive proposals to change the marketplaces for individual coverage, commonly known as Obamacare. The proposed rules aim to keep insurers in the market during a transition to a new system. One way is to tighten up when people can sign up for coverage. Insurers like Aetna. The company’s CEO, Mark Bertolini, said Wednesday that Obamacare is failing.  ”It’s in a death spiral,” he said at a conference sponsored by The Wall Street Journal. ”And in the first look at this quarter it’s not going to get any better. It’s getting worse.” Bertolini hinted that Aetna may follow insurance giant Humana, which said Tuesday it was dropping out of the ACA exchanges altogether because not enough healthy people are buying insurance. HHS’s proposed changes are designed to make the individual health care market less vulnerable to gaming by consumers. Insurance companies have complained that many people delay signing up until they’re sick and then drop coverage after getting care. The administration’s proposals include cutting the annual open enrollment period to about six weeks instead of three months  —   to reduce the number of people who buy a policy because they find out about a health issue during that time. HHS will also require people who want to sign up for coverage during   special enrollment periods to first prove they qualify because of a life change like losing a job or getting divorced. ”The overall effect of many of the policies here would actually, over time, I think, actually shrink enrollment, not grow enrollment,” says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. The rules would make it harder to enroll, and adding more paperwork will just turn off more people, she says, citing research into Medicaid and other public benefit programs. And the people who leave are likely to be the healthier ones, making the situation even worse for insurance companies. ”Your healthy people are the ones who are going to be more likely to say, ’Oh, this is too much of a pain in the neck. I’m not going to go through with this,’ ” Corlette says, Still, Caroline Pearson, senior vice president at consulting firm Avalere, says some change is needed. ”The special enrollment periods are a real problem in the market,” she says. Her research shows that people who buy insurance during special enrollment periods incur a disproportionate share of money spent on health care. The HHS proposal also allows insurers to increase deductibles and copayments, by loosening the standards of coverage. Right now plans are rated in terms of what proportion of the costs a customer pays. The new rules would widen the band by 2 percentage points, so that a plan that’s marketed as covering 60 percent of health costs could actually pay for as little as 56 percent of those. The proposal also says insurance companies can demand consumers pay off any missed premiums before they get a new policy. Today, a consumer can enroll in a plan, pay for just one month and then continue coverage for 90 days before getting cut off. The following year, the insurance company has to write a new policy even if the person hasn’t paid for those three months. ”In total, I think that the rule is helpful for insurers but probably not enough to change plans’ minds in how to approach the exchange markets,” Pearson says. ”Plans that were going to leave the market will probably still leave the market and plans that were inclined to stay in will probably stay in, albeit a little happier.” Humana is, therefore, unlikely to rethink its decision because of these changes. As HHS tried to stabilize Obamacare while Congress debates its ultimate fate, the IRS is relaxing its plans to enforce the ACA’s tax penalty. The agency had planned to reject tax returns of people who didn’t say whether they had health insurance during the tax year. But the IRS changed that policy in response to Trump’s executive order directing all federal agencies to ease the burden of the health care law. Taxpayers may still owe the penalty if they don’t have coverage, however. ”Legislative provisions of the ACA law are still in force until changed by Congress, and taxpayers remain required to follow the law and pay what they may owe,” the IRS said in an emailed statement. Pearson at Avalere says the combined actions by HHS and the IRS could lead healthy people to drop their insurance coverage. ”In total, I actually think the exchange market is going to shrink in size, dramatically, as a result of both the rule and the IRS move.”"
"There was no end of intrigue at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show this year. Rumor, the German shepherd who narrowly lost at last year’s show, had come close to simply hanging up her leash and retiring. Instead, she stormed back to win her category again this year  —   and then, to top it all off, beat out more than 2, 800 dogs to take Best in Show on Tuesday, as well. The triumph makes her only the second German shepherd to win the top prize in Westminster’s   history. Considering Westminster is the   continuously running sporting event in the U. S.  —   second only to the Kentucky Derby  —   the redemptive win for the 5     female is no mean feat. Not only that, but as NPR’s Merrit Kennedy noted earlier this month, Westminster also played host to another rarity at this year’s dog show: cats. The featured felines shared a showcase with the dogs called Meet  Compete. Still, whatever words we can offer on the event seem a little beside the point. The dogs  —   big and small, noble and loony  —   are the main event. So, without further   here’s what you came for: A few of our very favorite images from the competition."
"On Wednesday morning, NASA rewarded five members of the public  —   two doctors, a dentist, an engineer and a product designer  —   for their creative ideas for how to poop in a spacesuit. Yes, it sounds a little bit funny. But unmet toilet needs could have life or death consequences for an astronaut in an emergency situation. That’s why thousands of people spent tens of thousands of hours on the ”Space Poop Challenge,” brainstorming, modeling, prototyping and   to come up with a   solution to the problem of human waste in a spacesuit. Currently, astronauts on spacewalks rely on diapers, which is a feasible solution for only a few hours at a time. As we explained in November, NASA is imagining a situation where an astronaut is stuck in a spacesuit for days  —   like during an emergency on future Orion missions, which could take astronauts far from Earth. The    solution has to work quickly, easily, in   without impeding movement, for both men and women, for solid and liquid waste. It can either store waste in the suit or expel it. And it has to be comfortable . .. for up to six continuous days. Since the project launched on the HeroX crowdsourcing site in October, nearly 20, 000 people, from all over the world, submitted more than 5, 000 ideas. They were competing for a total of $30, 000 in prizes. The winning solution came from Thatcher Cardon, an Air Force officer, family practice physician and flight surgeon. He says his design was inspired by minimally invasive surgical techniques  —   and a strong desire not to store the poop. ”I never thought that keeping the waste in the suit would be any good,” he told NPR. ”So I thought, ’How can we get in and out of the suit easily?’ ” ”I thought about what I know regarding less invasive surgeries like laparoscopy or arthroscopy or even endovascular techniques they use in cardiology  —   they can do some amazing things in very small openings. ”I mean, they can even replace heart valves now through catheters in an artery. So it should be able to handle a little bit of poop!” He designed a small airlock at the crotch of the suit, with a variety of items  —   including inflatable bedpans and diapers  —   that could be passed through the small opening and then expanded. His design even allows an astronaut to change underwear while inside the spacesuit, through the same small opening. Cardon used an old flight suit to try some physical prototyping, and his kids helped gather supplies. They were ”totally excited,” he says. ”They lost their minds when I told them I won.” Second place went to a trio from Houston  —   a physician, an engineering professor and a dentist (who also served as the team’s illustrator). All three had studied chemical engineering in college. Stacey Louie, the environmental engineer on the team, said the different areas of expertise on the team were central to their solution. But before they   their design, they had to discard a lot of ideas. For instance, doctor and team leader Jose Gonzales says that he immediately thought of some   strategies that would be effective  —   but not at all comfortable. ”You have to take into consideration, ’Is the astronaut going to be OK with this design?’ ” Katherine Kin, the dentist and artist, notes. ”You have to have something that’s psychologically comfortable.” So internal catheters were out. Instead, Gonzales says, they used an   system to push waste away from the body to store it elsewhere in the suit. ”More specifically, that air is created by passive and active normal body movements of the astronaut,” Gonzales says. A product designer from the U. K. Hugo Shelley, placed third. He usually works with electronics and tech products, but he says for this contest, he went in the other direction  —   and tried to build a solution with as few electronic parts as possible. ”I think we’re all aware of the dangers of things going wrong in space,” he says. A simple design seemed safer, he says. ”My mother’s a textile designer so I think I started off really thinking about materials,” he says. ”Making something as comfortable as possible I thought was fairly important . .. a lot of your mechanism really has to be in, effectively, the first few millimeters away from the skin.” His solution, the ”SWIMSuit  —   Zero Gravity Underwear,” disinfects and stores waste inside the suit, like the   design does. Cardon won $15, 000, while the trio from Houston took home $10, 000 and Shelley netted $5, 000. The next step is for NASA to start prototyping the ideas, and get working versions of a   system up to the International Space Station for testing. Dustin Gohmert, the Orion crew survival system project manager at NASA, explains that NASA will combine existing ideas with elements of the winning designs to create a solution that will, indeed, go into space. ”Optimistically this will never be used, because it is a contingency scenario that something catastrophic has happened,” he said. ”But this will be on Orion and should something happen, and should it be called on to save the crew, this will be there and at their disposal.” Shelley, the product designer, notes that research on how to improve waste management inside a spacesuit could also be useful in ”  applications”  —   for people with incontinence or in   critical job situations. And while it was ”kind of odd” to think about poop in space for weeks at a time, he says the project was ”quite exciting.” ”Yes, it’s an amusing thing to think about, but still it’s a part of a spacesuit  —   and there’s something incredibly thrilling about the space missions,” he says. And, he notes, ”you can’t fully appreciate being an interplanetary explorer if you’ve constantly got to use the bathroom and you can’t.”"
"The enormous success of the film The Martian has a lot of people talking about life in space. What is it really like spending months in small enclosure with a bunch of other astronauts while surrounded by death via a hard vacuum? People being people, it turns out that after running through all the gory details of death by hard vacuum, the conversation eventually turns to two topics: sex and going to the bathroom. I’m not going anywhere near the ”sex in space” question. Sorry. But in the interest of the eventual human colonization of the solar system, I can help with the second question. How do astronauts do their business while weightlessness? In this excellent presentation, the charming Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti walks us through the operation of what appear to be some pretty uncomfortable (and apparently pretty loud) devices in the outhouse of the International Space Station. After watching this   video, I guarantee you will have something interesting to say at your next cocktail party. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4."
"Aetna, one of the nation’s largest insurance companies, says that starting in March it will remove what’s been a key barrier for patients seeking medication to treat their opioid addiction. The change will apply to all its private insurance plans, an Aetna spokeswoman confirmed. Aetna is the third major health insurer to announce such a switch in recent months. Specifically, the company will stop requiring doctors to seek approval from the insurance company before they prescribe particular medications ― such as Suboxone ― that are used to ease withdrawal symptoms. The common insurance practice, called ”prior authorization,” has frustrated doctors because it sometimes results in delays of hours to days before a patient can get the needed treatment. That delay may sound like just a technicality ― a brief pause before treatment. But addiction specialists say this red tape has put people’s ability to get well at risk. It gives them a window of time when they may change their minds or relapse if they start experiencing symptoms of withdrawal. ”If someone shows up in your office and says, ’I’m ready,’ and you can make it happen right then and there ― that’s great,” said Dr. Josiah Rich, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brown University, who frequently treats patients who are addicted to opioids. ”If you say, ’Come back tomorrow, or Thursday, or next week,’ there’s a good chance they’re not coming back,” he said. ”Those windows of opportunity present themselves. But they open and close.” Aetna’s policy change comes as addiction to heroin and opioid painkillers continues to sweep the country. More than 33, 000 people died from overdosing on these drugs in 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Easing the prescribing restriction puts Aetna in the company of Anthem and Cigna, which also recently dropped the prior authorization requirement for their privately insured patients throughout the country. Anthem made the switch in January and Cigna last fall. Both those companies took the step after facing an investigation by New York’s attorney general, whose office was probing whether the firms’ coverage practices unfairly barred patients from needed treatment. The insurers adjusted their prescribing requirements as part of larger settlements. Treatment specialists hope the changes in policy will start making addiction meds more easily available. In New York, for instance, the attorney general’s office plans to follow up with other insurance carriers. ”Just think of any big health insurance company that hasn’t recently announced they’re doing away with this, and it’s a pretty safe bet they’ve got prior authorization in place,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, a Brandeis University senior scientist and the executive director of the advocacy group Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. The prior authorization requirements have caused intense problems for treatment centers, said Traci Green, an associate professor at Boston University’s School of Medicine and deputy director of the hospital’s injury prevention center. New England has been particularly hard hit by the opioid crisis, and Boston Medical Center has an urgent care center focused on this patient population. Though less than a year old, the center has already treated thousands who have problems with the drugs, Green said. To help patients get needed care ― before it’s too late ― the center had to hire a staffer devoted specifically to filling out all the related insurance paperwork. ”It was like, ’This is insanity,’ ” Green said, adding that ”navigating the insurance was a huge problem” for almost every patient. But defenders of the requirement maintain that such controls do have value, as a safeguard when prescribing any potentially dangerous drug. ”[It’s] not a tool to limit access. It’s a tool to ensure patients get the right care,” said Susan Cantrell, CEO of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, an industry trade group. Some other large insurance carriers ― such as United Healthcare and Humana ― list on their drug formularies a prior authorization requirement for at least some if not all versions of   medicine. A spokesperson from Humana said the practice is used ”to ensure appropriate use.” It’s generally agreed, though, that the practice is also used to put limits on the prescribing of expensive medications. The cost of these drugs that treat opioid addiction varies, based on brand and precise formulation, but can go as high as almost $500 for a   prescription. That may last a patient one month. Regardless of the insurer’s intent, critics say, those extra forms and hoops do make it more difficult for patients in need to get their medicine ― and ultimately do more harm than good. ”If you would like a physician to not do a particular treatment, put a prior authorization in front of it,” Rich said. ”That’s what they’re used for.” Meanwhile, advocates for addiction treatment and health professionals are hoping to build on what they see as a new trend among insurers. Earlier this month, the American Medical Association sent a letter to the National Association of Attorneys General, calling for increased attention to insurance plans that require prior authorization for Suboxone or other similar drugs. Minnesota’s attorney general has written to health plans in the state, asking they end prior authorization for addiction treatment. And New York has heard from other states interested in tackling the issue, a representative of the attorney general’s office said. Meanwhile, another project, called Parity Track, is soliciting complaints from consumers. ”Parity laws,” require insurers to cover addiction treatments at the same level they do other kinds of health care, Parity Track argues. The prior authorization requirement ”doesn’t meet the sniff test for parity,” said Dr. Corey Waller, an emergency physician who chairs the American Society of Addiction Medicine’s legislative advocacy committee. ”It’s a   Food and Drug   therapy for a disease with a known mortality. [For] every other disease with a known mortality, the   drugs are available right away.” Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Spending your own money on health care might mean that you’ll be more frugal with it. That’s the theory behind health savings accounts, a   GOP concept that’s sparking renewed interest on Capitol Hill as Republican lawmakers look for ways to replace the Affordable Care Act. HSAs are like personal savings accounts  —   with a difference. As with a retirement account, money put into an HSA can be invested, and any growth in the fund accumulates  . Withdrawals can be made at any time, and they are   too  —   but the money can be used only to pay for certain medical expenses, such as health insurance deductibles, or for copays for hospital care or a visit to the doctor. Currently, HSAs are only available to people who have   health plans, meaning they usually pay a few thousand dollars for medical care each year before their insurance kicks in to pay its share. While HSA participation is growing, only about 20 million people out of the 176 million who have health insurance participate in these savings accounts, according to a 2015 report by the Association of Health Insurance Plans. Why don’t more people who are eligible for HSAs have them? For one thing, not everyone has money to contribute upfront. But psychologists and behavioral economists point out that even many people who have the extra cash on hand confront big psychological barriers to saving. ”How we think and feel is directly tied to our ability to make ’good’ financial decisions,” says Alycia DeGraff, a board member and secretary of the Financial Therapy Association. DeGraff says when faced with financial decisions about the future, many people simply get stressed out. ”These stressors can become so overwhelming that . .. we can become debilitated and ignore the situation altogether,” she says. ”Or we can practice any kind of defense mechanism  —   entitlement, suppression, overcompensation, isolation, etc.  —   to try and deal with [it].” This may explain, at least in part, why   Americans are pretty bad at saving money in general. Only about half of us have money in any sort of retirement account. And those of us who are parents have only saved, on average, enough to pay for about one year at an   college for our kids. Saving money is hard. It means setting aside what we want now for something we think we’ll want or need later. And we live in a culture that offers a lot of pretty, shiny, things to buy RIGHT NOW. Plus, we all pretend we won’t get old or sick. ”People are predictably irrational,” says Dr. Mitesh Patel, especially when it comes to money. He’s a behavioral economist, physician and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. But many of us really hate to lose money, Patel says, which is what makes the concept of HSAs is so appealing. For example, he and his colleagues published a study last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine on what motivates people to lose weight, and found that the way a financial incentive was framed made all the difference. The researchers observed three groups of people for 13 weeks. They told one group to walk 7, 000 steps a day. About 30 percent of the group did so. Meanwhile, people assigned to the second group were told they’d be paid $1. 40 every day they walked 7, 000 steps. About 35 percent of the second group did so. Here’s the kicker: Each person in the third group was paid $42 upfront and was docked $1. 40 each time they failed to meet their goal.   percent of that group met the assigned goal, Patel says. People hate to lose money. Another way to encourage more saving might be to make HSAs operate more like the 401( k)s that required people who didn’t want to participate to actively opt out of the plan  —   rather than requiring people who want to contribute to opt in. ”This creates a path of least resistance,” Patel says. Of course, setting up and overseeing such a plan would likely cost the government some money, he notes. People with HSAs do use less health care than those without such plans, a recent study from the Employee Benefits Research Institute suggests. But it’s unclear whether they actually improve their health. Prescription drug costs went down for people enrolled in HSAs in the EBRI study, but emergency room visits went up  —   particularly for   families. Then there’s the issue of figuring out how much you, as an individual or a family, would need to save for health care  —   it’s not easy to find out the average price for a medical test or procedure in your town, let alone how much that price varies from doctor to doctor or hospital to hospital. ”If you want to save for a house, you can pretty much figure out the math,” Patel says. ”But if you go to a doctor, they don’t give you a menu for prices.” To really increase their health savings  —   or any savings  —   we’d all need to change our mindset, says Degraff, the financial therapist. ”People would have to first take a dose of reality and get real about their future selves,” she says. Naturally, we think our future selves will be ”better, healthier, more financially secure,” she adds. But, for many of us, health and income eventually decline with age. We need to save more now for later. HSAs can be useful, Degraff notes, but only for those who have enough cash to pay their    expenses  —   plus a little left over. ”A lot of people don’t even have a regular emergency fund savings,” DeGraff says, ”especially those that are already struggling to pay for health insurance.”"
"There’s an experiment underway at a few top universities around the world to make some master’s degrees out there more affordable. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, says the class of 2018 can get a master’s degree in supply chain management with tens of thousands in savings. The university’s normal price runs upwards of $67, 000 for the current academic year. But it’s not as simple as sending in a coupon with your tuition bill. There are big hurdles for students, and clear benefits for the universities. It’s called a MicroMasters and MIT, Columbia University, the University of Michigan and the Rochester Institute of Technology are among a dozen or so universities globally that are giving this online program a shot with courses like entrepreneurship, user interface design and artificial intelligence. What’s in it for students: New skills, lower cost, Meet Danaka Porter. She’s a    business consultant from Vancouver, British Columbia, and says a master’s degree was exactly what she needed to boost her career. ”I found that people were a little bit more respected, I guess, once they had their master’s,” she says. ”It was like they had taken that next step to go a little bit further.” But she couldn’t afford to stop working and become a   student again. She owns a house and, ”I have bills, and all of that stuff that doesn’t stop because I wanted to go to school,” she says. When a friend told her that MIT was piloting its first partially online master’s degree in supply chain management, she signed up. The tuition for a year in the master’s program costs $67, 938. Her MicroMasters certification, though, is just $1, 350. It’s called a MicroMasters because it isn’t a full degree, just a step toward one, though Porter says the coursework is just as rigorous as if she were on MIT’s campus in Cambridge. ”It requires a lot of effort, and if you don’t have a background in math, engineering or supply chain it’s not a breeze. Like, we do have people that fail,” she says. Even if students don’t go for a full master’s, the online coursework can make them more appealing to employers. Industry leaders who say they can’t find enough qualified candidates are looking for very specific skills like those offered through the MicroMasters. GE, Walmart, IBM and Volvo have recognized MicroMasters and are encouraging their employees and job applicants to take the courses. What’s in it for schools: Filtering the very best applicants, Back to Danaka Proter, even if she passes the certification, she’ll still need to complete a semester on campus at full cost if she wants to finish her graduate degree. It’s part of what MIT calls the ”blended” program  —   online and  . Getting accepted is no easy task. MIT says it expects to admit 40 students a year into the blended program and admissions officers at MIT say they’ll weigh applicants’ performance in these online courses before admitting them. ”When you get applications from people all over the world, it’s often a ” says Anant Agarwal, an MIT professor and CEO of the   platform edX, which makes these online courses possible. ”You don’t know the veracity of the recommendation letters or the grades. And so you’re taking a bet very often.” And Agarwal says that should give MIT and other institutions a better sense of how students will perform  —   if they’re lucky enough to get in. Read more about the story at WGBH’s Higher Ed Blog, On Campus. WGBH’s Lydia Emmanouilidou and Dina Kleiner contributed to this report."
"Following the introduction of two bills into the state Legislature that would legally prohibit transgender Texans from using bathrooms that align with their gender identities, 142 artists  —   including Ewan McGregor, Amy Poehler, Lady Gaga, Janelle Monae, Talib Kweli, Wilco and Whoopi Goldberg  —   have   a letter beseeching the state senators and representatives to prevent the bills’ passage. ”Transgender and gender   young people are already subjected to bullying and harassment,” the letter reads. ”Can you imagine the message these bills send to children  —   the message of ’that child is unwelcome, that child is dangerous?’ ” In an interview with Billboard, producer and musician Jack Antonoff, who helped draft the letter, said that he wants the state ”to know that me and all of my friends  —   all of these wonderful artists and actors and writers and designers  —   are watching Texas and are not OK with this happening.” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has made the legislation a priority. In a note on the initiatives, he wrote that: ”Legislation to protect women’s privacy and business is essential to assure that sexual predators . .. will not be able to freely enter women’s restrooms, locker rooms or showers. . .. ” Texas House Speaker Joe Straus voiced concern over the bill’s economic impact on the state in an interview with Texas Monthly in   saying the state ”should be very careful about doing something that would make Texas less competitive for investments, jobs, and the highly skilled workforce needed to compete.” Similar legislation in North Carolina has cost that state $600 million in its first six months, according to an estimate by Forbes. A study released in early December 2016 by the Texas Business Association claimed the legislation, as well proposed limitations on nondiscrimination by businesses based on religious objections, if passed, could subtract between $964 million and $8. 5 billion from the state’s gross domestic product and up to 185, 000 jobs, as well as ”alienate large, globally recognized businesses” including Apple, Google and the NFL."
"After two days of    work to control water flowing over the Oroville Dam in Northern California, people who live downstream of the structure are allowed to return to their homes, officials announced Tuesday. Nearly 200, 000 people were affected by evacuations after water scoured enormous holes in two of the dam’s concrete spillways beginning Sunday, raising concerns that the tallest dam in the country could fail. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea announced Tuesday evening he was lifting an evacuation order issued on Sunday, Dan Brekke of member station KQED reported. ”Thousands of lives were protected [from] the looming prospect of a catastrophic failure of the emergency spillway,” Honea told reporters, adding that residents should be ready to evacuate again if conditions change. ”There’s the prospect that we can issue another evacuation order if circumstances change,” he said. The Red Cross said shelters remained open on Tuesday evening. The Federal Emergency Management Agency also announced that federal disaster relief for Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties had been approved by the White House on Tuesday. On Monday and Tuesday, crews dumped enormous rocks into damaged sections of the dam’s damaged emergency spillway, hoping to prevent further erosion. The spillway is supposed to carry water from Lake Oroville around the main wall of the dam when the lake level is too high. With the lake level still high and more rain forecast for later this week, officials rushed to prevent a catastrophe, as The Los Angeles Times reported: ”A swarm of trucks and helicopters dumped 1, 200 tons of material per hour onto the eroded hillside that formed the dam’s emergency spillway. One quarry worked around the clock to mine boulders as heavy as 6 tons. An army of workers mixed concrete slurry to help seal the rocks in place. ” ’This is an aggressive, proactive attack to address the erosion,’ said Bill Croyle, acting director of the state Department of Water Resources. ’There’s a lot of people, a lot of equipment, a lot of materials moving around, from the ground and from the air.’ ”At the main spillway, a different and riskier operation was underway: Despite a large hole in the concrete chute, officials have been sending a massive amount of the swollen reservoir’s water down the chute to the Feather River in a desperate attempt to reduce the lake’s level. ”The structure continued to hold Tuesday without sustaining more significant damage, officials said.” By Wednesday morning, officials said the lake level was low enough to handle rain from the next storm, Dan Brekke reported. The damage to Oroville Dam raises questions about the ability of aging infrastructure to cope with severe weather exacerbated by global warming. After a damaging five year drought in California, the National Weather Service said Tuesday that much of the state is on track for the wettest winter ever recorded, filling reservoirs and replenishing alpine snowpack that will continue to feed rivers for months. That means California’s aging dams will be tested as they have not been in years. The New York Times reported that ”of the 1, 585 dams in California, 17 are listed in poor condition and 97 in fair condition, according to the National Inventory of Dams, which is kept by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.” On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called the Oroville dam situation ”a textbook example of why we need to pursue a major infrastructure package in Congress,” continuing, ”Dams, bridges, roads, and all ports around the county have fallen into disrepair.”"
"Agnes Obel, a Danish singer and writer of deeply alluring music, brought her work into what you could call its opposite  —   an office in the daylight. While the setting is a bit contrary to her carefully plotted, vocally dense songs, she mapped out a strategy which included her own reverb and monitor mix in the (successful, I think) hope of giving the Tiny Desk an aesthetic more suitable to these focused and powerful songs. And so, today we have Agnes Obel performing three songs from the enchanting Citizen of Glass alongside her band  —   keeping it sonically spare with just the right touch of keyboard and cello. Citizens of Glass is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Agnes Obel (vocals, keys) Charlotte Danhier (keys, backup vocals) Kristina Koropecki (cello, backup vocals) Marianne Lewandowski (backup vocals, percussion) Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Becky Harlan, Nicole Boliaux Production Assistant: Jenny Gathright Photo: Raquel  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Updated 11:25 p. m. ET, Malaysian police say they have arrested a second woman in connection with the killing of the North Korean leader’s   Kim Jong Nam. She is 25 years old and a holder of an Indonesian passport. They say she was identified from surveillance TV footage of the airport. Earlier, authorities said they had detained another woman in the death. The victim, who was in his   was the eldest of former dictator Kim Jong Il’s children. He died en route to the hospital Monday after a suspicious encounter at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The first woman detained was carrying Vietnamese travel documents, according to police, and was alone at the time of the arrest. Malaysian media cite government sources saying the   footage caught two women approaching Kim. One of them covered his face with a cloth before walking away. Police say Kim fell ill and asked a counter clerk for help. Sources tell NPR his body was transported earlier Tuesday from one hospital to a larger one  —   Hospital Kuala Lumpur. An autopsy will be performed. After growing up in Western countries, Kim had been living outside North Korea for decades. He was believed to have homes in Macau, Beijing and Paris. In 2001, Kim was detained trying to enter Japan on false travel documents. He later said he was trying to bring his family to Tokyo Disneyland. The big mystery, if he didn’t die of natural causes, is why Kim Jong Nam was attacked, and why now. ”I don’t think we will know the full story about the death of Kim Jong Nam for many years,” says Michael Madden, a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who runs the site North Korean Leadership Watch. Chan Kok Leong contributed to this post, from Kuala Lumpur."
"It’s the stuff of spy novels. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s older   Kim Jong Nam died mysteriously at the Kuala Lumpur airport, and both South Korean and Malaysian media report it was likely some sort of poison attack. Several questions surround his suspicious death, but perhaps the biggest is: Who would want Kim Jong Nam dead? The eldest Kim brother has led a quiet existence outside North Korea for decades, except for making headlines when he tried to enter Japan in 2001 on a fake passport. He later said he was trying to go to Tokyo Disneyland. That Kim has remained out of the limelight is rather remarkable, given he’s the son of Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s notorious former dictator. ”You would live anonymously, too, if people were gunning for you,” says Michael Madden, a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who runs the site North Korean Leadership Watch. ”Kim Jong Nam has lived a very leisurely life, primarily in a condo that the Kim family owns in Macau,” Madden says. Kim is widely known for his love of gambling and clubs. Madden also says Kim Jong Nam manages the family’s personal fortune overseas, which includes homes in Singapore, Beijing and Paris. Kim’s fate took a turn Monday morning, while he was in transit at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Something caused Kim’s sudden death. Malaysian media are showing   camera images in which two women cover a traveler’s face with cloth. Police say emergency responders rushed the man, whose travel documents identified him as ”Kim Chol,” to the hospital, but he died en route. ”It probably is the strangest story that I have encountered about North Korean elites and the Kim family and Kim family politics,” Madden says. In South Korea Tuesday, Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong   confirmed the identity of the dead traveler. ”The government is certain that the murdered individual is Kim Jong Nam. We have not confirmed the exact cause of death,” Jeong said. Kim could have died of natural causes, given his sedentary lifestyle and the family’s reported issues with gout and high blood pressure. But if he was killed, theories run the gamut as to why. Some believe Kim was punished for skimming from the family fortune he handled, or that he was the scapegoat in a power play by elites wanting to get back into leader Kim Jong Un’s good graces. But they’re all just guesses, says Madden. ”Nobody knows, and I don’t think we will know the full story about the death of Kim Jong Nam for many years,” he says. As with so much about North Korea, even a man’s demise is dressed in mystery. Haeryun Kang contributed to this post from Seoul. Chan Kok Leong contributed to this post from Kuala Lumpur."
"Margaret Drabble’s new novel The Dark Flood Rises opens with its protagonist, Francesca Stubbs, tensely driving her Peugeot on an English highway. Fran is an expert on housing for senior citizens she’s herself in her seventies, and lately, she’s been obsessed with mortality. Here’s the first sentence of the novel: ”She has often suspected that her last words to herself and in this world will prove to be ’You bloody old fool’ or, perhaps, depending on the mood of the day or the time of the night, ’you . .. idiot. ’” (There’s a choice, and unprintable on this website, word between ”you” and ”idiot. ”) It becomes very clear very quickly that Fran has no time for minced words or pleasant bromides. She knows she’s going to die, but for the most part, she’s more annoyed than despairing. When confronted with Dylan Thomas’ famous dying of the light, Fran isn’t the type to rage. She’d more likely roll her eyes and ask what took it so bloody long. She’s an unforgettable character, steely but likable, and The Dark Flood Rises is a beautiful rumination on what it means to grow old. The novel follows Fran and her family and friends over a period of two months. Much of the book focuses on Fran, who travels frequently for work, observing and reporting on homes for the elderly across the country. She likes her job in particular, she loves to travel, to wander around towns she’s never visited before. ”England is now her last love,” Drabble writes. ”She wants to see it all before she dies. She won’t be able to do that, but she’ll do her best.” Her elder years haven’t been free from worry, although, of course, nobody’s are. Her   Claude, is ailing, and she finds herself in the position of taking care of him, making him homemade meals. She does this cheerfully, but not without a touch of schadenfreude: ”Claude used to say he didn’t like soup, half a century ago, but he’s not in a position to not like it now, is he? He has to take what he’s given, now.” She’s also concerned about her son, Christopher, a television personality whose girlfriend has recently died from a rare disease. Christopher has been in the Canary Islands, where his girlfriend was filming a documentary, seeking solace in the company of a group of expatriates. Fran’s daughter, Poppet, an environmentalist who ”is ideologically austere and gives no quarter,” lives on a floodplain out in the country Fran, aware of the effects of climate change, worries about her, too. And then there are her friends, some of whom are going through health struggles. Fran enjoys her regular visits with her friend Teresa, who ”is dying, but she is dying with such style and commitment that Fran is deeply impressed and encouraged by this last passage.” The Dark Flood Rises jumps from character to character, from England to the Canaries, but the transitions are never sudden or jarring. It’s a narrative style that reflects Fran herself. ”Her mind wanders, in an endless stream of consciousness,” Drabble writes. ”Perhaps everybody’s does, but she suspects not. Some people have an ability to concentrate, to focus. She lacks this.” And while the subject matter of the book is inescapably, well, dark, Drabble lightens the mood with some genuinely clever humor. In one scene, the emotionally distant Claude reflects that he and Fran’s children have ”turned out OK, sort of OK, very OK when you look at what has happened to other people’s children. When you look at a generation of drug addicts, disgraced bankers . ..   comics,   media moguls, property thieves.” It’s a truly lovely novel, and when Fran reaches an emotional breaking point  —   ”a great tearfulness rising up in her, a grief for all things”  —   it’s hard not to cry with her, for her. This isn’t a sentimental book, but it’s a deeply emotional one. Drabble doesn’t ask the reader to feel sorry for Fran instead, she invites us to live in her world, to consider how sad, how funny, how genuinely absurd aging is. Or as Fran herself puts it, using another one of those choice but unprintable words, ”Old age, it’s a . .. disaster.”"
"The alliance between science and state is ancient. Archimedes, the great Greek mathematician and inventor, designed weapons to protect the city of Syracuse from attacking Roman fleets. For thousands of years, blacksmiths developed new, more powerful alloys to make arrows and swords for their king’s army. Scientific knowledge, as applied to weapons and to national defense, is part of history’s grand narrative. It is not, I’d like to think, why most scientists take on their chosen careers. Most choose a career in the sciences to break new ground in our understanding of nature, both   and living, or to develop scientific technologies that will better humanity. However, apart from few very rarefied fields of research where no funding is needed, there is an undeniable alliance between state and science. Historical circumstances tend to intensify or relax this alliance. Typically, in times of war or during authoritarian regimes, the alliance grows stronger and the state calls upon its scientists to help defend its interests. Reactions from scientists vary. For example, while the Wright Brothers had no qualms selling their plane to the U. S. Army in 1909, the Brazilian inventor Santos Dumont was horrified to see airplanes used as weapons during World War I. That war is sometimes referred to as the ”chemist’s war” due to the widespread use of poison gases with horrendous results. Typically, the military either develops a research complex aimed at creating new defense (attack?) technologies, or contracts the services of already established companies. During World War I, the German chemical manufacturers BASF, Hoechst and Bayer produced chlorine and other gases for use in the battlefield. Usually, the powers that are technologically dominant are the victors. The   alliance is perceived as essential for the survival and hegemony of the state and its population. If World War I was the chemist’s war, World War II was the physicist’s. Between the invention of the radar a few years before the war in 1935 and, more dramatically, the atomic bomb in 1945, the application of new physical concepts to the development of weapons of detection and destruction was key to the victory of the Allies. Upon the first successful test of the atomic bomb in Alamogordo, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project responsible for the bomb, famously quoted the somber words from the Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita: ”Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” The world, it was clear, would never be the same again. For the first time in history, the power of destruction could become global. From the start, some scientists were vehemently against the use of nuclear weapons in any conflict, while others saw no other way to deter the enemy. Patriotism, national pride, scientific curiosity and the fear of having the Nazis develop the bomb were a potent fuel. (It turned out that the Nazis weren’t even close to making a bomb, but information was sketchy at the time.) It was (and still is) puzzling how such a group of   intellectually open individuals as assembled by the Manhattan Project could have engaged in such a horrific development. Still, once the weapon was developed, the decision of what to do with it was not theirs. This is a key point in the   alliance: While scientists may, on occasion or even enthusiastically, work for the state to develop a new weapon, it is the executive branch of government, with support from the legislative (or not, in authoritarian regimes) that has the final decision power. The success of American science during and after World War II prompted a golden age for science funding. Heated by the Cold War and the fear of a Soviet nuclear attack, the race was on to develop ever more powerful weapons. In the 1960s, the space race was added to the fire, and funding for science grew even more. Of course, basic (that is, not directly applied at least in the short term) science also gets a boost when this happens. In the U. S. this would be mostly research that the National Science Foundation supports. As Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development famously declared in his July 1945 report to President Truman (conducted at the request of President Roosevelt prior to his death) titled ”Science the Endless Frontier”: ”The pioneer spirit is still vigorous within this nation. Science offers a largely unexplored hinterland for the pioneer who has the tools for his task. The rewards of such exploration both for the Nation and the individual are great. Scientific progress is one essential key to our security as a nation, to our better health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of living, and to our cultural progress.” Science is an opportunity for the nation and for the individual. It cannot progress on its own, but must be aided by the state or, when is the case, by the private sector. Clearly, industrial research is essential and has become dominant in the past few decades. Private initiative is where it’s at, including in the space race. What rarely gets discussed, even if it’s always implied, are the moral choices that are (or aren’t) made by scientists who engage in different kinds of research. To label science as moral or immoral completely misses the point. Science is amoral. Science is a collection of facts about the natural world painstakingly carved out by a community of scientists who engage in detailed quantitative research and data analysis. This is true even for computer simulations of detonation shock fronts of explosive devices, for example, and even of engineers and technicians putting bombs together in an assembly line. The issue of the right or wrong use of science emerges in the colliding front between scientists and their supporting sponsors, be they the government or the private sector. It is true that having the gun is not the same as using the gun. Since the bombing of Nagasaki, no nuclear weapons have been used against a civilian or military target. The policy of nuclear deterrence, one may argue, has worked, at least so far. But one can equally argue that having the gun is a necessary condition for using it. Having a huge collection of nuclear warheads is a highly unstable way to make peace, a point I made here before. And this is the issue at the heart of the science and state alliance. The alliance is a very unbalanced one. As was often debated during the last presidential campaign, the leader of a country with nuclear weapons is the person who is ultimately responsible for how to use them. The decision to ”pull the trigger” doesn’t rest with the scientists who worked to make the weapon. So, is it right or wrong to work as a scientist in such a project? There is no simple answer. People work in all kinds of jobs that may end up harming others. They do it out of choice, out of need, out of patriotic idealism, out of family tradition, out of a deep sense of national pride. The moral choice of how science is used rests with those who retain the power to decide how science is used. That’s why it’s so essential that we choose wisely when we decide who is leading us. Or who to work for. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"President Trump began his press conference Thursday afternoon naming his new nominee for labor secretary, R. Alexander Acosta. He then moved on to a range of topics, from the resignation of Michael Flynn as national security adviser and U. S. relations with Russia, to an upcoming executive action on immigration. He also blasted the media and leaks from within his administration and again touted his electoral victory, while misrepresenting the size of it. Journalists across NPR have annotated his remarks."
"Updated 9:05 p. m. ET with 9th Circuit appeals court delay, President Trump says his administration will continue to fight for his existing travel ban in the court system, and that he will also issue a new, ”very comprehensive order” next week. Trump provided no details on what that new order would entail, but said it would ”comprehensively protect our country.” The president made the remarks during a news conference Thursday at the White House. The president’s original executive order, temporarily blocking all refugees from entering the U. S. and barring travelers from seven   countries, prompted chaos, protests and lawsuits as officials and travelers grappled with its implications. A federal judge’s ruling on Feb. 3 halted enforcement of the executive order, and on Feb. 9, a   panel of the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Justice Department’s request to lift that stay. Trump said his administration would be ”vigorously defending this lawful order.” He described the judge’s ruling that led to the stay as ”incorrect and unsafe,” and the appeals court’s decision to uphold it as a ”bad decision.” ”We are appealing that and we are going further,” he said. ”We’re issuing a new executive action next week that will comprehensively protect our country. So we will be going along the one path and hopefully winning that at the same time we will be issuing a new and very comprehensive order to protect our people. ”That will be done sometime next week, toward the beginning or middle at the latest,” Trump said. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has asked the full 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals to wait until Trump’s new executive action before hearing any further dispute over the travel ban, NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports. Late Thursday, the court announced it would delay, pending developments. It’s unclear how exactly this relates to Trump’s comment about an ongoing appeal, but there are a large number of court cases pending against the travel ban and an array of legal options for Trump’s administration. During Thursday’s news conference, Trump also said that the 9th Circuit has been overturned ”at a record number  —   I’ve heard 80 percent. I find that hard to believe, that’s just a number I’ve heard.” That’s a reference to the court’s Supreme Court reversal rate. NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports that the 9th Circuit does not have the highest reversal rate, as Trump’s use of the word ”record” would suggest  —   it came in second last term and 10th in the   term, for instance. ”In sheer numbers, the Supreme Court reviews more cases from the 9th Circuit because it is the largest circuit,” Nina says, In general, because the reversal rate applies only to cases that make it before the Supreme Court, the statistic is ”not very helpful,” says Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond and an expert on federal courts. ”There are so few cases that come to the Supreme Court every year,” he says. Tobias offered an example of how the numbers can be misleading, using a smaller circuit court: ”If the 8th Circuit has one appeal in a particular year and it’s reversed, they have a 100 percent reversal rate. . .. It really doesn’t tell you very much.” ”I think most people who really look closely at the 9th Circuit find that reversal rate to not be very helpful,” he says."
"Updated 8:50 p. m. ET  President Trump said at a   news conference Thursday that he didn’t direct resigned national security adviser Michael Flynn to talk about U. S. sanctions on Russia in a   phone call Flynn had with Russia’s U. S. ambassador, but he would have. ”I fired him because of what he said to Mike Pence,” Trump said of Flynn misleading the     about the true nature of Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador. But, he added, ”Mike [Flynn] was doing his job. He was calling countries and his counterparts. So, it certainly would have been OK with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn’t doing it. I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed him because that’s his job.” Flynn was interviewed by the FBI about his conversations with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. A source familiar with the matter has told NPR’s Carrie Johnson that a criminal charge against Flynn in connection with what he told the FBI is unlikely. Asked at the news conference about reports that members of the Trump staff were in contact with Russia during the campaign, Trump said, ”Nobody that I know of.” The source has told Carrie that authorities continue to investigate those alleged connections. ”Russia is a ruse,” Trump said. ”I know you have to get up and ask a question. It’s so important.” He reiterated, ”Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia. Not that I wouldn’t. I just have nobody to speak to. I spoke to Putin twice. He called me on the election. I told you this. And he called me on the inauguration, a few days ago.” The New York Times reported Wednesday that members of Trump’s campaign ”had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.” Trump said such reports amounted to ”fake news.” In his first extended remarks since accepting Flynn’s resignation, Trump called him ”a fine man,” again contradicting the tough tone his press secretary, Sean Spicer, echoed on Monday  —   that Flynn had violated Trump’s trust. In briefing Pence for a round of TV appearances last month, Flynn denied he discussed the U. S. sanctions imposed on Russia in December with Kislyak, White House officials have said. Trump said Flynn ”did something wrong with respect to the vice president, and I thought that was not acceptable.” But Trump said as far as Flynn calling Kislyak and talking about the previous president’s sanctions, he saw nothing wrong. ”I’ve watched various programs, and I’ve read various articles,” Trump said, ”where he was just doing his job.” Trump lashed out at reporters for ”this whole Russia scam that you guys are building, so that you don’t talk about the real subject, which is illegal leaks.” Of course, Trump wasn’t always so down on leaks. He was touting hacks of Democratic emails during the presidential campaign. Those hacks, the U. S. intelligence community agrees, were at the behest of the Russian government and published on WikiLeaks. Trump said he has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the leaks, which revealed, in part, the Flynn contacts. He called those leaks ”criminal.” But those leaks to the public appear to be what led to Flynn’s ouster. The president knew since Jan. 26 the true nature of Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador and that he misled Pence. But Pence’s spokesman said the vice president didn’t find out about it until Thursday, when he read it in the paper. Trump said the leaks are ”absolutely real,” but ”the news is fake.” Members of Congress, however, think otherwise. They are planning their own investigations into the relationship between Trump’s aides and Russia. Trump repeated his assertion that ”it would be great” if the U. S. had a good relationship with Russia. He said he has had two phone calls with Putin since being elected. But Trump said the ”false reporting by the media” makes it much harder for him to ”make a deal with Russia.” Asked about the presence of a Russian spy ship that has been lingering off the Northeast U. S. coast, Trump repeated, ”Not good.” He gave the same response to reports that Russia has deployed a new type of missile prohibited under arms accords and to a report that Russian fighter jets buzzed an American Navy destroyer in the Black Sea last week. He denied, though, that Putin was testing him. ”The greatest thing I could do,” Trump said, ”is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles offshore right out of the water. ”Everyone in this country’s going to say, ’Oh, it’s so great.’ That’s not great. That’s not great. I would love to be able to get along with Russia.” But he refused to say what actions he was actually considering in response, if anything at all. Trump also said he had been briefed on each country’s nuclear capabilities and said, ”Nuclear holocaust would be like no other.”"
"Updated with announcement, President Trump has named R. Alexander Acosta as his replacement for labor secretary nominee. Trump’s earlier pick,   executive Andrew Puzder, withdrew his nomination on Wednesday afternoon after losing support on both sides of the aisle. Acosta has been dean of the law school at Florida International University since 2009. He has been a member of the National Labor Relations Board and was U. S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Prior to that, he was an assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the George W. Bush administration. His tenure there was not without controversy. Acosta filed a brief defending an Ohio law that allowed people to challenge the legitimacy of a voter at a polling place, even though the Justice Department was not involved in the case, as the Los Angeles Times reported in 2004. While Acosta was U. S. attorney, his office was reprimanded by a federal judge after it was revealed that prosecutors there had illegally recorded conversations with the attorney of a doctor accused of illegally prescribing painkillers. Acosta said he had instructed his employees to not do that again. If confirmed, Acosta will be the first Hispanic member of the president’s Cabinet. Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants  —   including Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. had been scheduled for a confirmation hearing on Thursday after multiple delays. He faced criticism for his management of the company and for more personal issues, including a   domestic abuse allegation from his wife and hiring a housekeeper who came to the U. S. illegally."
"Garland Reiter is one of the people behind the rise in imported food from Mexico. His family has been growing strawberries in California for generations and selling them under the name Driscoll’s. Today, it’s the biggest berry producer in the world. In the early 1990s, the Reiter family started growing strawberries and raspberries in Mexico, in addition to California. It found regions in Mexico where the climate allowed them to grow the fruit  —   especially raspberries  —   during seasons of the year when it hadn’t been feasible back home. ”Our move really was for   product, and quality,” says Reiter, who is executive chairman of Reiter Affiliated Cos. The North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect at that same time, in 1994. But that’s coincidence, Reiter says NAFTA had very little to do with the move into Mexico. ”To tell you the truth, we paid minimal attention to that,” he says. Many U. S. fruit and vegetable growers have made the same move over the past two decades. They’ve all done it to expand their growing season, and also to cut costs. Farmworkers in Mexico get paid very little, compared with workers in the U. S. Reiter says that when he got to Mexico and met his Mexican partners, he discovered another reason to locate there. ”They’re farmers. They want to be farmers. That is their industry,” he says. There’s excitement about new fruit varieties, and new methods of growing crops. Since 1992, raspberry exports from Mexico to the U. S. have gone from zero to $500 million each year. The increase in strawberry exports is similar. Total Mexican shipments of fruits and vegetables to the U. S. have increased by nine times over the last 25 years, to $12 billion a year. People in the industry say most of that increase is a result of U. S. companies setting up production in Mexico. President Trump’s criticism of trade with Mexico has unsettled the industry. He has talked about possibly taxing imports from Mexico or renegotiating NAFTA. Mexican officials have threatened to retaliate against American exports. But Reiter says such moves would just force Americans to pay a little more for Mexican fruit. It wouldn’t bring production back to the U. S. ”If you look at the magnitude of the investment in Mexico, there’s no way that’s coming back to California,” he says. ”There’s absolutely no way.” He’ll keep growing in Mexico, in part because it would be hard for Americans to replace Mexican production with fresh berries from somewhere else. Yet the situation on the other side of the trade equation, for U. S exports to Mexico, is considerably different. Those exports also have grown dramatically, but a lot of them are commodities that Mexico could buy from other places, such as corn, soybeans and dairy products. ”Mexico is the No. 1 buyer of U. S. dairy products in the world,” says John Wilson, senior vice president of Dairy Farmers of America, a cooperative with 14, 000 dairy farmer members. American dairy farmers have come to rely on exports in recent years. About 15 percent of all milk is processed into products for export. Wilson’s cooperative, for instance, has a plant in Portales, N. M. that receives milk from big dairy farmers in the eastern part of that state and dries it into powder. ”About 38 million pounds of [milk] powder moved from the plant into Mexico last year,” Wilson says. In total, the U. S. exports about $500 million worth of milk powder to Mexico annually. That’s up more than 10 times from 20 years ago. The U. S. also exports billions of dollars’ worth of corn, soybeans and pork. And NAFTA is really important for most of those exports. It allows products to enter Mexico   and makes American commodities just slightly cheaper than the competition, such as milk powder from New Zealand. ”Pennies do matter in the milk business,” Wilson says. ”It’s a very competitive business worldwide, and the presence or absence of a tariff can make or break a deal.” Wilson says he doesn’t know exactly how much it would cost American dairy farmers if Mexico bought less of their milk powder. ”We don’t even like to speculate about that,” he says. But it certainly would hurt."
"Updated 5:15 p. m. ET, In the dead of night last weekend in North Carolina’s Alexander County, a massive concrete statue of a rooster disappeared from its perch in front of a poultry farm. The white rooster stands about 4 feet tall and has a bright red wattle, Alexander County Sheriff Chris Bowman tells The  . It is valued at more than $1, 000. But perhaps the most impressive aspect of the lawn ornament is its considerable weight  —   approximately 3, 000 pounds, according to Bowman. Large concrete lawn ornaments of this kind are not uncommon in the area, which is home to numerous poultry farms, according to the sheriff. But he says this case is ”very strange.” It’s the first time in his 37 years with the sheriff’s department that he’s seen a theft like this: ”We’ve had larceny of yard ornaments but nothing of this size and weight, and we still don’t know why anyone would want to take and steal this type of ornament.” He says authorities received reports of a tractor in the area the night the rooster was stolen. They found it Thursday, still in the county. ”We found evidence of white paint on the forks of the tractor that we believe matches the paint from the concrete statue rooster,” Bowman says. Bowman says authorities have apprehended a man they believe has run afowl (sorry!) of the law. Andrew Emilious Justice, 32, of nearby Taylorsville, has been charged with felony larceny and misdemeanor injury to real property. He also faces a charge of reckless driving  —   Bowman says Justice came flying off the state highway and slid into the driveway as he arrived to meet with police. Pete Gilleland, who runs the poultry farm, tells The   that he is baffled by the theft of the statue, which he gave his wife as a birthday gift five or six years ago.  He has no idea why someone would go to the trouble of stealing the giant rooster. As for the suspect, ”I do not know him I have no relationship with him,” he says. ”I recognize him, but that’s about all.” Gilleland finds the theft all the more surprising because the statue is ”very difficult to move.” When he initially brought it home, he used a skid loader. To make off with it, one would very likely need a tractor, which he says typically doesn’t go over 20 miles per hour or drive at night. And perhaps the biggest question  —   where is the rooster now? Authorities found the base of the statue several miles away from its home, but the rest of the bird remains missing. When questioned about the rooster’s whereabouts, ”this individual did not cooperate,” Bowman says. Justice has been placed under a $10, 000 secured bond and is scheduled to appear in court on Monday."
"House Republicans are debating a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act that would give consumers tax credits to buy insurance, cut back on Medicaid and allow people to save their own money to pay for health care costs. The outline plan is likely to take away some of the financial help   families get through Obamacare subsidies, and also result in fewer people being covered under the Medicaid health care program for the poor. ”In general this is going to result in fewer people covered nationwide,” says Caroline Pearson, a senior vice president at Avalere, a health care consulting group. Republican leaders distributed the skeleton proposal at a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the Capitol on Thursday. Lawmakers now have an outline to bring with them to their districts for the Presidents Day holiday weekend, where they may face constituents with questions about what is going to happen to their health care. The plan is based on one outlined last summer by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Rep. Bill Huizenga,  . called the   outline ”guideposts and a road map.” ”We know the direction we want to go and sort of the destination,” Huizenga said outside the meeting. Lawmakers who attended the meeting said the plan is to repeal the Affordable Care Act with a bill similar to one that passed in 2015 but was vetoed by   Barack Obama. That proposal would have repealed all the taxes and subsidies associated with the health care law and would have killed the mandate for individuals to buy health insurance by getting rid of the tax penalty used to enforce it. This Congress could either first pass a repeal bill and then a replacement bill, or include replacement elements in the repeal. The meeting Thursday centered on ”principles and goals on where we’re going in   care,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady,  . after the meeting. ”We’re talking about repealing, replacing and starting to return control of health care and restoring the free market,” he said. Most of the plan is silent on how much money lawmakers want to put behind their proposals, so it’s impossible to know exactly how generous the plan is and how many people it would cover. The elements of the plan include replacing the subsidies that help people buy insurance through Obamacare exchanges with fixed tax credits to buy coverage on the open market.  The major difference between the two is that the Obamacare subsidies increase as premiums rise so that consumers are responsible for the same premium amount, which is tied to their income. The tax credits proposed by Ryan are not tied to income but rise as a person ages and insurance rates increase. ”The important thing on the tax credits is that they’re not income adjusted and we don’t know how big they are,” Pearson says. She says it’s unlikely they’ll be as generous as the Obamacare subsidies. ”This likely means that   people will have difficulty affording individual insurance,” she says. The outline distributed by Republicans repeatedly mentions that people will be able to buy   catastrophic coverage, which has limited    benefits but protects people when they have a serious illness or accident that requires a lot of health care. The plan also calls for expanding health savings accounts, which allow people to save their own money   to pay for health care costs. It calls for the limits on HSA savings to rise from $6, 750 per family to $13, 100. HSAs are a favorite among conservatives because they encourage people to save and plan for their health spending and to shop around for price. Democrats have criticized the focus on HSAs because they only help people who have extra money to put away and give a bigger tax cut to people with higher incomes. The Republicans’ plan also calls for a major restructuring of the Medicaid health care program for the poor. It would repeal the Medicaid expansion that most states adopted under the Affordable Care Act, which allowed   people with incomes just above the poverty line to become eligible for Medicaid coverage. And it would cap how much the federal government spends per person per year. Right now, Medicaid pays all health care costs for those who are eligible. ”This is a potentially significant incentive for states to get serious about efficiency,” says Paul Howard, director of health policy at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Howard says states currently have an incentive to increase their spending on Medicaid, because it boosts the amount of federal money they get. Ryan’s plan would make Medicaid either a block grant program, where states receive a fixed amount of money, or it would be a per capita benefit, where the federal government would give the states a set amount for each beneficiary. States could still offer Medicaid to those who became eligible under expansion, but the states’ share of the costs would be higher than it is under the Affordable Care Act, likely making it too expensive for many states to do so. Finally, the Republican plan would offer states pools of cash to come up with ways to expand insurance access to more people."
"President Trump took a big step forward this week in his   legal battle for more control over one of his most valuable assets in China: his name. On its website on Wednesday, China’s Trademark Office announced the trademark registration for a Trump   business in China. That might not sound like a huge win, but it could open the door to many more products and businesses Trump wants to trademark in China. Over the past decade, Trump reportedly has lodged dozens of trademark applications in China for, among other things, pet care products, golf clubs, lingerie and computer software. As Trump’s name has become increasingly popular in the Asian nation, a multitude of   businesses have slapped the word ”Trump” on their products  —   on everything from condoms to toilets to pesticides, according to The Associated Press. So China’s decision to grant Trump the one registration might open the door for Trump to not only trademark more of his own business interests there, but also to wrest back control of his name from others who are using it. China provisionally granted approval for the   trademark on Nov. 13, just days after Trump had won the U. S. presidential election. Interested parties had three months, until Feb. 14th, to dispute the decision. With that deadline now expired, the Trump name registration can go forward. Kathleen Clark, a government ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, says foreign trademarks present both a conflict of interest for Trump and breach of the Emoluments Clause in the U. S. Constitution. That clause prevents the president from receiving gifts and other payments from foreign governments. Clark says Beijing’s power to offer Trump the valuable   approval he wants is something the president may have in his mind when making policy decisions involving China. ”What I think this demonstrates is that when Donald Trump is dealing with the Chinese government on behalf of the United States, he also may be thinking about what the Chinese government can do not just for the U. S. but for Donald Trump and his businesses and his own financial well being,” she said."
"President Trump and his companies have been trying to navigate potential conflicts and the emoluments clause of the Constitution since before he was sworn in. The list of questions about those conflicts continues to grow, including how Trump is adhering to constitutional rules around compensation from foreign leaders and states. This past weekend, Trump sidestepped an apparent emolument when he said that he would personally pay for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife to visit    a resort Trump owns in Florida. That meant the government of Japan did not pay Trump’s   club for the lodging. Even with his sons managing the Trump Organization, there are lines Trump’s own lawyer identified that still seem blurry. At a press conference in January laying out a number of ways the organization planned to avoid conflicts of interest without fully divesting, Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon specified, ”no new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump’s presidency.” She assured the press that the president would have no direct knowledge of the business’s strategic moves  —   despite the fact his sons would take over the brand. The buck seems to have stopped there. The Trump Organization is pushing to expand a golf course and hotel in Scotland. Eric Trump, who with his brother is leading the family business, recently visited the Dominican Republic, where a branding deal for a resort may be in the works. Both potential deals may violate Dillon’s statements. The organization did not respond to our request for comment on either matter. And on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported that China is about to grant Trump something he has been seeking for a decade: the valuable trademark right to the Trump brand name in the Chinese market. Granting that right would, in effect, be giving the Trump Organization the ability to make much more money in that market, again raising ethical questions. The issue isn’t just potential violations of the organization’s promises. It is the bar against foreign emoluments, or compensation due to one’s office or employment, which comes straight out of the Constitution. In Article I, Section 9, the Constitution specifies, ”no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without Consent of Congress, accept . .. any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Historically, constitutional scholars have interpreted this section as an   clause, but there is virtually no case law to know how it would be used in practice. But many legal scholars worry any foreign deals could be perceived as an attempt to get in the president’s good graces. There is, however, one part of the provision that hasn’t gotten much attention: congressional consent. Norm Eisen, an attorney who   a lawsuit challenging President Trump on emoluments, said the framers ”left a safety valve.” He suggested that the president should let Congress ”do the oversight” and decide whether the organization’s and the president’s choices are ”emolument[s] or not.” So far, the administration has made no such move, and in the first hundred days, has continued to find itself in ethically questionable situations. Larry Noble, general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, said Trump ”seems to refuse to try to steer away from situations that will cause problems,” including the president’s trip with Japanese Prime Minister Abe to    and Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s comments endorsing Ivanka Trump’s brand, for which the White House said she was later ”counseled.” Eisen said ordinarily these incidents would be relatively minor news because, ”people do stumble over these rules,” but with the existing turmoil over White House ethics, both moments quickly became national stories."
"The economy in southwestern Pennsylvania has been hit twice, once by the collapse of big mining and steel employers, and again by the environmental destruction that accompanied those industries. It’s a part of the country that voted heavily for Donald Trump. Ashley Funk grew up an hour outside Pittsburgh. The area feels kind of left behind with buildings named after mining companies and polluted ponds turned fluorescent, alarming colors. By the time she was in high school, Ashley was a   climate activist. She even joined a lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania, alleging it had not done enough to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Her beliefs put her at odds with her own family. Ashley’s father, Mark, describes himself as a ”coal burning farmer.” During the primary season, Ashley was supporting Bernie Sanders and her father was an ardent Trump supporter. It seemed like the two couldn’t agree on anything. But when they start talking about local, natural gas jobs that have been popping up in southwest Pennsylvania, there is some common ground. ”Our area has been neglected since the collapse of the steel industry, the collapse of the coal industry, and finally something’s coming back, and I think that’s giving people hope,” Ashley says. ”But I am nervous in order to make money people exploit the environment.” Her father now agrees that bringing life back to the local economy can’t come at the cost of the environment. ”I agree 100 percent,” he says. ”I seen it. And I tell you the truth, I remember coming into Pittsburgh, that was the very early ’70s, you’d drive through the tunnels, and it was black. . .. I remember that. We can’t let this place go like it was before.” Use the audio link above the hear the full story. "
"Updated at 5:10 p. m. ET  Call it the case of the mysterious moving confirmation hearing. Donald Trump nominated Dan Coats to the nation’s top intelligence post back on Jan. 7, when Trump was still   and Coats  —   an Indiana Republican  —   had just departed the Senate. But today  —   nearly four weeks into the Trump administration  —   there’s still no firm date on the calendar for the Senate confirmation hearing for the director of national intelligence nominee. Capitol Hill aides first told NPR that the confirmation hearing was slated for early February, then said the target date might shift to this week. Today, Sen. Richard Burr,  . C. told reporters he is aiming for the last week of February. Burr chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, which runs the process for intelligence posts. The holdup prompts the question: Might Coats be getting cold feet? Not the case, according to Burr, who blamed slow paperwork for the holdup. ”Requirements of the minority to have everything  —   and some of that’s out of our control, it’s FBI security, background checks,” he said. It’s worth noting that Coats already holds a security clearance, owing to his service as a member of both the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees. It’s also worth noting that President Trump is currently running national security and foreign policy without the benefit of guidance from either a permanent national security adviser or a permanent U. S. intelligence chief. (Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, on Monday, citing a breakdown in trust over Flynn’s contacts with Russia and how Flynn subsequently portrayed those contacts to Vice President Pence. Over at the office of the DNI, CIA veteran Michael Dempsey has been serving as acting director since Jan. 20.) The intelligence community has clashed with the president, following Trump’s earlier dismissal of the consensus of all 17 U. S. spy agencies that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Three agencies  —   the CIA, the NSA and the FBI  —   concluded that Russia worked to tip the vote to Trump. Since then, the feud has only intensified after press reports that included what Trump called leaks from inside the intelligence services. In public, Trump has praised Coats. At a White House news conference on Thursday, he called the former senator a ”brilliant guy, [a] great guy.” Trump told reporters he is irked by the delay in getting his DNI installed. Coats is ”one of the most respected men in the Senate,” he said, adding, ”He can’t get approved. How do you not approve him?” But in private, Trump and his advisers have questioned the value of the DNI post and signaled that they believe the intelligence bureaucracy might benefit from streamlining. And on Thursday, the New York Times reported that Trump plans to assign New York billionaire Stephen Feinberg to lead a review of the intelligence community, from inside the White House. It’s not clear how that might affect the flow of information between spy agencies and the president, or whether introducing Feinberg into the mix might be an attempt to sideline current intelligence leaders. The Times report suggested Coats is not pleased about the prospect of Feinberg’s assignment or the potential competition Feinberg might represent. ”Mr. Coats is especially angry at what he sees as a move by [Trump aides Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner] to sideline him before he is even confirmed, according to current and former officials,” reporters James Risen and Matthew Rosenberg wrote. At his White House press conference Thursday, Trump played down the prospect of Feinberg joining the White House. ”He’s offered his services and you know, it’s something we may take advantage of,” Trump said. ”But I don’t think [we will] need that at all because of the fact that, you know, I think that we are gonna be able to straighten it out very easily on its own.” Even as that story is playing out, the road appears to be clear for Coats whenever he does appear before his former colleagues. ”I know of no obstacle to [Coats] being confirmed,” says Jane Harman, the California Democrat and former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. ”Dan Coats is a former member [of Congress] who is popular with both sides  —   certainly popular with me. ”We worked together when he was on the Senate Intelligence Committee and we worked together when he was U. S. ambassador to Germany,” Harman, who now runs the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, told NPR. ”He is skilled, modest and gets along with everybody.” The question now is, when might Coats get to apply those skills to the top job in U. S. intelligence?"
"Dozens of people were killed and more than 100 others wounded after a bomb tore through a crowded Sufi shrine in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday. The blast was triggered by an Islamic State suicide bomber, according to a claim by the Sunni militant group’s   Amaq news agency. Reports on the exact death toll have varied  —   with The Associated Press reporting that at least 75 people died, while the Pakistani newspaper Dawn put the number at 70. A number of women and children reportedly were among the dead. The Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine, which has stood in the town of Sehwan for some 800 years, is a center of Sufi life and worship in the region. Worshippers had converged on the shrine for dhamaal, a ritual that packed the area with people  —   thousands of people, by CNN’s account. Immediately following the explosion, Pakistan’s chief of army staff, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, issued a blistering statement through the military’s spokesman. ”Each drop of nation’s blood shall be revenged, and revenged immediately,” Bajwa said. ”No more restraint for anyone.” In a statement, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also struck a defiant tone: ”Such cowardly acts cannot deter the resolve of the nation to stand against terrorism and our government is committed to root out this menace.” As The Washington Post notes, the shrine blast is the latest incident in what has been a particularly deadly week for Pakistan, which has been buffeted by attacks not only from ISIS, but also    a Taliban splinter group which has promised a campaign of violence against government buildings.    claimed responsibility for a bombing that tore through a rally in the city of Lahore on Monday, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more. In the wake of that attack, Bajwa pledged that ”terrorists of all hue and colour, their masters, financiers, planners and abettors including from outside will be hunted across the country.” The Post reports that Pakistan ”formally complained” to its neighbor Afghanistan on Wednesday, ”charging that the militants were operating from sanctuaries across the border.” In response to Thursday’s attack, the military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor, blamed ”hostile powers” and ”sanctuaries in Afghanistan.” He tweeted that Pakistan would be immediately closing its border with Afghanistan ”till further orders due to security reasons.” The Islamic State has waged a campaign of violence against Shiite Muslims as well as Sufis, who take a mystical approach to Islam and prize a direct relationship with the divine. The AP reports that Thursday’s shrine attack was the deadliest in Pakistan since 2014, when an assault on a school killed 154 people."
"Nearly four months after a former aide testified that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie knew about a looming traffic nightmare that sparked a political scandal, a municipal judge says a criminal complaint against Christie can move forward. In finding there is probable cause for a complaint of official misconduct to proceed against Christie, Bergen County Municipal Court Judge Roy McGeady is extending a probe into the governor’s involvement in a case that has generated federal charges against several former aides to Christie. Christie is scheduled to appear in court over the case on March 10. The case stems from lane closures on the George Washington Bridge that were made in September of 2013  —   closures that were seen as targeting the mayor of Fort Lee, N. J. for not supporting Christie’s   campaign. ”The criminal complaint was brought against Christie by William Brennan, a Bergen County activist who is now running for governor,” WNYC reports. The member station adds, ”The complaint accuses the governor of failing to stop subordinates from purposely creating traffic jams to punish a Democratic mayor who didn’t endorse him.” In November, Christie’s deputy chief of staff and the former Port Authority deputy executive director became the latest former Christie allies to either plead guilty or be found guilty of federal charges that include conspiracy and fraud. Responding to today’s ruling, Christie’s press secretary, Brian Murray, said McGready ”is violating the law, pure and simple” in furthering a ”concocted” claim. Here’s the full statement from the governor’s office: ”This judge has once again violated the Governor’s constitutional rights and intentionally ignored the earlier ruling by Assignment Judge Mizdol. The judge is violating the law, pure and simple. This concocted claim was investigated for three months by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, which summarily dismissed it, after concluding that the very same evidence relied upon again by this judge was utter nonsense.” That statement was passed along by WNYC reporter Andrea Bernstein, who has been following the case. Back in October, Bernstein relayed details from the courtroom as Bridget Kelly, who was Christie’s deputy chief of staff, testified under questioning by her defense attorney. Here’s a summary of what Kelly said:"
"”It is not an accident that there is a blackout on the Black man’s contributions in America.” Dr. Melvin Chapman ( ) educator, Detroit, Mich. Inside the dark theater, during a recent showing of Hidden Figures, the pioneering food journalist and cookbook writer Freda DeKnight came to mind several times. The   film highlights the lives of three   women whose brilliant mathematical contributions to NASA and the Apollo program were left out of most magazines, news reports and books that covered the U. S. space program. As a Baby Boomer, born the decade following their amazing accomplishments, I felt betrayed by national media when I first discovered that their brilliance had been concealed from me during a time when I needed it most. I grew up during a decade my parents described as the ”tough, but necessary path of integration” in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Later, when my friend referred to the purposeful leaving out of   accomplishments as a ”separate and unequal” approach to American history, she mentioned a plan. ”Our job isn’t done until we pull every ’hidden figure’ out of the American history closet,” she said, adding that we should each dig deeper into our field of expertise. Which is why, as an   food journalist, I am concerned about culinary ”hidden figures.” So I’ll begin with this question: What do you know about Freda DeKnight? Born in 1909, DeKnight spent much of her 54 years collecting, protecting and celebrating   culture and traditions in the years after World War II up to the civil rights movement. Yet her name has been all but forgotten  —   she doesn’t even have that most basic of 21st century acknowledgements, a Wikipedia page. As the first food editor for Ebony magazine, DeKnight wrote a   monthly column that offered her home economist’s tips, as well as regional recipes from the ”Negro community” of home cooks, professional chefs, caterers, restaurateurs and celebrities. The column in Ebony’s 1947 February issue, for instance, featured the singer and actress Lena Horne wearing a prim,   ruffled apron and preparing what DeKnight described as ”an exotic Oriental dish . .. East Indian chicken.” The dish was actually a taste of the broader African diaspora: It was from Trinidad, whose melting pot cuisine reflects a population that includes both descendants of African slaves and of Indians brought over as indentured servants. Instead of the traditional recipe format, directions appeared as photo captions. ”Lena adds a dash more curry to suit her taste,” read one caption, for a photo showing Horne taking a test sip from a spoon above a large pot. (It also included a plug for her film Till the Clouds Roll By.) This was one of the many ways in which DeKnight presented a more nuanced and often glamorous image of   cooking and culture  —   not just to   readers, but to the broader world. ”Freda DeKnight was one of the first who brought international attention to   food. . .. She was a trailblazer,” says Jessica Harris  —   herself a respected trailblazer: an educator, culinary historian and author of a dozen books about   culture. Ebony was read not just in the United States but also in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean  —   ”especially as the Civil Rights movement burgeoned and grew with international repute,” says Harris. DeKnight’s ”work with Ebony brought our dishes to a larger world, and their dishes to us,” she says. In 1948, DeKnight published her only cookbook, A Date With A Dish: A Cookbook of American Negro Recipes. It is considered the first major cookbook written by an   for an   audience. It showcased a wide variety of recipes from ”Negro households,” from Tamale Pie  —   which DeKnight described as ”fitting in these days when California and Mexico are in the spotlight”  —   to filet mignon from Shortnin’ Bread to Key Lime Pie. By documenting the breadth and depth of   culinary   DeKnight challenged the stereotypes of what black cooking could be. Published seven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala. bus, and 16 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, A Date With A Dish was a powerful affirmation of black culture. As DeKnight wrote in the preface: ”It is a fallacy, long disproved, that Negro cooks, chefs, caterers and homemakers can adapt themselves only to the standard Southern dishes, such as fried chicken, greens, corn pone and hot breads. Like other Americans living in various sections of the country they have naturally shown a desire to become versatile in the preparation of any dish, whether it is Spanish, Italian, French, Balinese or East Indian in origin.”  The book became a national  . I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s in a family of black physicians and educators. DeKnight knew both of my grandmothers socially. And both my Granny and Gran used to say that, compared to other black cookbooks, which they described as a folksy approach for white households employing black cooks, A Date With a Dish was the first to ”represent the race with dignity . .. deliciously.” DeKnight’s culinary ambitions were rooted in her upbringing. She was born in Kansas, a generation after a great wave of   known as the Exodusters left the South   War and migrated into Kansas. Her father, a Topeka,   Pullman steward, died when she was 2. Her mother, a traveling nurse, moved DeKnight and her sister to Mitchell, S. D. to live with family. DeKnight grew up in the farm home of Paul and Mamie Scott, a couple who ran a successful catering company in town. DeKnight later credited the Scotts with setting her down her future career path. ”The Scotts were the inspiration for my early cooking aspirations, which gave me every opportunity to absorb all of their fine recipes and rudiments of cooking, preparing food and catering,” DeKnight wrote in The Collector’s Corner, a section of the cookbook that showcased recipes curated from ”Negroes all over the country”  —   from caterers in Philadelphia to home cooks in Arkansas and celebrity cooks in California. Each recipe was accompanied by a short biography of the cook. (The Scotts were among those featured.) The Collector’s Corner showcased recipes from many regions of the U. S. such as Mama Scott’s Bechamel Sauce, Effie Jenkins’ Mexican Shrimp, Fred Knight’s Lobster Newburg and Charlie Saunder’s Hot Water Cornbread. (Indeed, the cookbook includes no less than 15 different recipes for cornbread  —   a reflection, perhaps, of DeKnight’s upbringing in a town where corn was a critical part of the local economy.) But, as DeKnight wrote, all the dishes included were stirred with ”Negro culture.” Sadly, only the 1948 edition of A Date With A Dish included The Collector’s Corner. The section was left out of the subsequent 1962, 1973 and 1978 editions of the cookbook, which was rebranded as The Ebony Cookbook. It’s the 1948 edition that remains the most significant, becoming an heirloom, passed down through generations of black families and described by today’s black food writers and historians as among the most transformative recipe collections published in the 20th century. ”Freda DeKnight was a pioneer in translating the Ebony message of   education, intelligence and dignity to the recipes she shared in her columns and cookbook,” says Charlotte Lyons, who was an Ebony food editor for 25 years, from 1985 to 2010. DeKnight didn’t limit her celebration of   culture to the culinary world. She rose to the position of home service director at Johnson Publishing, home of Ebony. And in 1957, she staged the first Ebony Fashion Fair, ”stirring Negro culture” into international haute couture. She appeared frequently on television, demonstrating recipes like   cake, and scouted the country for models for the pages of Ebony. (Among her discoveries: a young Diahann Carroll.) In 1960, she underwent surgery for cancer. Still, she continued to travel with the fashion fair until 1962, when advancing illness left her increasingly weakened. She died in January 1963 at age 54. DeKnight’s obituary appeared in the August 1963 issue of Negro Digest. It was titled ”Tribute To A Lady Titan.” Noting her role in revamping the image of   in the public sphere, the writer called DeKnight ”a familiar figure at professional food and fashion gatherings where Negroes had been seen before only as servants.” She opened the door to career choices for future generations. Because she wasn’t a hidden figure for me, I’m certain childhood memories of DeKnight’s A Date With A Dish column and cookbook  —   my own copy passed down from my grandmother  —   had much to do with me choosing a career in writing about the importance of saving family recipes, and my deep appreciation of Black American foodways in particular. Donna Battle Pierce is a journalist and food columnist based in Chicago. She is currently writing a book on Freda DeKnight."
"A strange thing is happening to the tour business in Cambodia’s second largest city. The sleepy town of Battambang is becoming known for its Khmerican service. Cambodian American deportees expelled from the U. S. after committing crimes are now providing   service to foreign visitors. Sarith Chan built up a successful   tour business by using his   English and familiarity with American customs to attract American and European customers. It was his dad who first planted the idea in Chan’s head. He said he wanted to buy a   so he could make a little money driving people around while he was visiting Chan in Battambang. He was joking of course. Chan’s father lives in the United States and has no need for the small change earned by   drivers who cart tourists and locals around via motorcycles with attached carriages. Chan didn’t think anything of it, at least not while his parents were helping him settle into his new home in this northwestern rural provincial capital city. But then his parents left and he was alone and bored in a country he hadn’t lived in since he was a baby. Chan isn’t here by choice. He is one of 538 legal permanent residents of the United States who, after running afoul of U. S. law, were deported to Cambodia. Their presence in the country is the result of a series of laws passed in the U. S. in the 1990s, according to the humanitarian organization Southeast Asia Resource Action Center. These laws made it very difficult for immigration judges to consider the individual circumstances of a defendant in a deportation case. The laws affect   from Cambodia as well as other countries the deportation process varies depending on the agreement the U. S. has with individual countries. The Cambodian deportees are dumped in the capital of Phnom Penh, where they’ve often had a hard time finding their place. But about half of the deportees have made their way to four northern provinces, including Battambang Province, where many of them were born and lived before fleeing the country after the Khmer Rouge reign of terror from 1975 to 1979, when around 2 million people were executed or died of disease or starvation. And in Battambang, these   are the ones helping others find their way around town. Chan is now in his late 30s. During the genocide, his family escaped to Thailand and later was resettled in Ohio as refugees. From there they moved to California, then to Washington state. Chan’s parents never talked about the Cambodian genocide Chan in turn doesn’t like to talk about the path that brought him back to his homeland. He is more open about his first impression of the land on which his mother wanted him to build a house in Battambang. ”When I seen the land, it was nothing but a banana farm, I was like ’hell no’,” says Chan, who is large and talkative. Half a decade later he calls the spot home. Inside his compound is a pit bull named Spike  —   and a  . At first he parked his away from the other drivers, not wanting to encroach on their territory. But that was a bad strategy for attracting customers. Next he tried to grab tourists as they arrived at the bus station, but he found it hard to catch their attention amid the crowd of other drivers. Business picked up when he was hired to take a group of people working for a   organization to and from work during the week and on tours on the weekend. From there he designed his own $   custom tour hitting the main attractions of the Bat Cave, Bamboo Train and Wat Banan Temple, along with some of his own favorites such as a peaceful lake where customers can swim. His   American street style meshes well with Westerners, especially backpackers, who appreciate a guide who gives them plenty of space and makes jokes. ”A lot of people like my tour because I have fun when I talk with them,” he says. ”The [other]   drivers, they can speak English, but they don’t understand inside jokes, clowning, joking.” Chan isn’t the only exile who has found a niche catering to tourists in this city. Ry Mam operates a lounge restaurant that serves pancakes, bacon cheeseburgers and the kind of Cuban sandwiches he ate as a kid in southern California. Mam prefers English to the local Khmer language and feels most at home with fellow exiles, expats and tourists. The feeling seems to be mutual. Isabel of Germany currently calls Battambang home and stops by Ry’s Kitchen on Fridays for a beer and a conversation with Mam. Like Chan’s customers, Isabel was attracted by the relaxed atmosphere. Mam relies on word of mouth more than overt advertising, an easygoing attitude reminiscent of the West Coast, where many of the exiles grew up. Mam’s plans for growing some of his own ingredients on a rooftop garden and adding a conference room where people can watch sports also seem very California. It is also a long way from where he began when he arrived in Cambodia in 2010, later selling sandwiches from a street cart, making just $10 a day. As word spread his income increased. He rented a kitchen and more recently opened up his own restaurant. Not long ago, he says, a few customers showed up after a Google search for the best burgers in town suggested Ry’s Kitchen. A big man with a bald head, Mam talks relatively openly about the years he spent behind bars for drug dealing, breaking and entering and other ”stuff like that.” Chan’s cousin, Nheb Thai, did time for   burglary in the United States before landing in Cambodia in 2003. To make money, Thai would take tourists around on his motorcycle. Now he is opening a pizza joint along the road tourists travel on their way to the Bat Cave. After 13 years in the country, Thai considers himself almost a local, although he says locals insists he speaks Khmer with an accent. Nevertheless, they still like pizza and he is counting on them and the tourists to buy his pies because, as he says, ”everybody likes pizza.” Although Battambang is still a bit of a backwater, it is increasingly becoming a tourist destination. And locals have developed a taste for everything ”Western” and coffee shops and pizza joints are popular. ”I got both markets, Cambodian market, American, I got it,” says Thai, who is 45. As for the Americans, Thai understands the need for a shaded spot where they can relax, listen to music and enjoy familiar food, something the women selling grilled rats on the side of the road don’t offer. With his cousin Chan taking tourists right past his place, he is pretty sure things will work out. Bill Herod, an adviser to Returnee Integration Support Center (RISC) says the group encourages those ”who present well” to get into the tourist industry. Quite a few have. Others, about 14, have ended up back in jail. Two have taken their lives. Even those who have found success in tourism say it hasn’t been easy. Chan says that local   drivers have not always been friendly to him and that some staff at tourist attractions complain that his clients don’t tip. Other guides may insist their tourists tip, but Chan leaves it up to them. Attracting tourists is a competitive business and Chan believes the locals in the business resent him because he is different and because his English skills give him an advantage. ”It was hell with   to get where I got. It was hell,” says Chan. The Khmericans have a reputation of keeping their American street culture, something that causes friction with locals who are not accustomed to heavily tattooed people who speak in slang and wear baseball hats and baggy shorts. Sarith Keo,   of RISC, says sometimes it seems like the Khmericans ”don’t care about Cambodian culture.” With time, though, they are increasingly becoming a part of it. In June Chan found his business doing so well he was able to retire his   and purchase an   Hyundai van. On his parent’s most recent visit they had another idea. Before they left he found himself married. Katya Cengel is writing a book for University of Washington Press on the exiles. @kcengel"
"There are over 21 million refugees around the world, according to the United Nations, and the musical A Man of Good Hope tells the story of one of them: Somali refugee Asad Abdullahi. Several years ago, author Jonny Steinberg interviewed Abdullahi in a rough and tumble township outside Cape Town, South Africa. He was working on a book about South African history. ”[Abdullahi] began to speak of his past in ways that were so extraordinarily visceral and powerful,” Steinberg recalls. ”His capacity for smell and touch and sounds to trigger memories was unlike any other human being I’ve met.” So the book, also called A Man of Good Hope, turned into Abdullahi’s story. It’s a huge, almost Dickensian tale that begins in Mogadishu when he was a little boy. ”His mother was killed by militia in front of him,” Steinberg says. ”He fled south towards Kenya, was separated from his family and ended up living this quite lonely itinerant childhood, drifting from Nairobi into Ethiopia, always connected to adults, but very tenuously and very tactically. I think that he learned to be a very hard boy.” And a hard adult. He got married, made a dangerous trip to South Africa without immigration papers and found even more hardship there. Mark   is the artistic director of Cape Town’s Isango Ensemble. He was given Steinberg’s book as a Christmas present, and says, ”I couldn’t put it down. It’s the most extraordinary tale. It’s sort of a Greek epic in its proportions.” He had the idea to turn Abdullahi’s story into a musical, but adapting it for the stage wasn’t easy. Actress Pauline Malefane, who also   the company, says they experimented, taking sections from the book and applying different theatrical techniques. ”You can sing or you can speak or you can whatever,” she says. ”And then, you know, after 15 minutes, we’ll all sit and we’ll watch each other present whatever we’ve come up with.” Collectively, the ensemble began to build a show. The next challenge was the content. When Abdullahi arrives in South Africa, he encounters xenophobia and violence in the townships  —   townships that Malefane and other ensemble members once called home. ”You cannot imagine how difficult it is, because the violence is carried out by us,” Malefane says. ”You know, we are South Africans.” After that, the question became: How do you pull off a narrative that takes place over more than two decades in more than half a dozen countries? By having four different actors play Abdullahi. Ayanda Tikolo plays him as an adult, when he has three businesses destroyed in the townships. Through it all, Tikolo says, Abdullahi never lost hope. ”Asad is stubborn. He just doesn’t want to give up ever. Whatever is happening to his life, he’s just focusing his life forward.” At the end of the book and the musical, Abdullahi immigrates to the U. S. (He now lives in Kansas City.) But with recent events, author Jonny Steinberg says the story has taken on even more relevance. ”I called Asad 24 hours after the travel ban and asked him what he was feeling and what he was thinking, and he was so bewildered and shattered,” Steinberg says. But Abdullahi has overcome so much in his life, Steinberg knows he’ll be OK. A Man of Good Hope is currently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and will tour internationally after that."
"Candidate Donald Trump was a big fan of leaks, especially when they targeted Hillary Clinton and reports of her deleted emails. ”Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30, 000 emails that are missing,” Trump said last July in Florida. ”I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Now in the White House less than a month, President Trump is far less enthusiastic about leaks in general, and those involving Russia in particular. Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Trump blamed illegal leaks for the downfall of national security adviser Michael Flynn over his contacts with Russia: ”That was classified information that was given illegally. That’s the real problem,” the president said. ”We’re looking at them very, very seriously. I’ve gone to all of the folks in charge of the various agencies and I’ve actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks. Those are criminal leaks.” Welcome to Washington. Leaking classified information is a crime, but it’s also one of the most popular sports in the capital and is the bane of every administration. Barack Obama was extremely frustrated by unauthorized disclosures, and during his time in office, nine alleged leakers were prosecuted, more than by any other administration. A vulnerable moment, Trump may be at a particularly vulnerable moment right now since the White House has just changed hands. It takes time to fill several thousand government positions, which means some Obama holdovers have remained in place, and they might be inclined to spill secrets as they walk out the door. In Trump’s first days in office, early drafts of his executive orders circulated widely, as did details of his phone calls with foreign leaders. There was also a hint of this when The Washington Post broke the story last week that Flynn had discussed sanctions in telephone calls with the Russian ambassador at the end of December. The story cited ”nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls.” The nine were not further identified and their precise motives for leaking aren’t yet known. But the story suggests that at least some of them were leaving the government along with Obama and were likely motivated by a desire to undermine and embarrass Trump and Flynn. Flynn reportedly told     Mike Pence that he didn’t discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador, and Pence stated this in a television interview on Jan. 15. While Trump fumed about the leaks that revealed this, former Obama adviser David Axelrod told CNN why he thought the disclosures were a good thing: ”Were the media not pursuing these things, I’m not sure Mike Pence would still know he was being lied to by Gen. Flynn.”   disclosures, Leaks often involve a single   source and a few selective details about bureaucratic infighting in Washington. But technology has made possible a new era of   disclosures by relatively   government employees who have access to highly sensitive information. Back in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, revealing that the military establishment knew early on that the Vietnam War was going badly but continued to paint a rosy scenario. Ellsberg said it took him many days to photocopy the thousands of government documents one page at a time. Fast forward to 2010, when Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning was able to pass on hundreds of thousands of government documents to WikiLeaks. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Obama commuted her sentence just before he left office, prompting Trump to call Manning an ”ungrateful traitor” who should never be released. And Edward Snowden was a contractor for the National Security Agency when he spilled the details of the NSA’s bulk surveillance programs in 2013. Snowden remains in Russia and is under indictment in the U. S. where he is a polarizing figure. Supporters say he should be pardoned for showing the extent of government eavesdropping, while detractors say he undermined the country’s security and deserves to be prosecuted. One common thread: Many leakers have said they either tried to raise their frustrations officially and nothing happened, or that they didn’t trust their own superiors to get the word out. NSA whistleblowers told WGBH’s documentary show Frontline that they got nowhere with using proper channels, and their cases may have inspired Snowden to blow the whistle as openly as possible. And in a 2013 interview with NPR, Ellsberg said he initially tried working through the system, but to no avail. ”I wasted years trying to do it through channels, first within the executive branch and then with Congress,” he said. ”During that time, more than 10, 000 Americans died and probably more than a million Vietnamese.” ”That was a fruitless effort, as it would have been for Manning and Snowden,” he said. Leaks go both ways, As much as administrations complain about leaks, they rarely hesitate to use them to their own advantage. After the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed   leader Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration poured out details of the operation so it could bask in the limelight of a great success. Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, got so frustrated he urged his own administration to shut up. Yet the government launched a criminal investigation of Matt Bissonnette, a member of Navy SEAL Team 6, when he wrote an unauthorized book, No Easy Day, about the raid. The case was settled last August when Bissonnette agreed to forfeit $6. 8 million in book royalties and apologized for failing to get the book cleared in advance with the Pentagon. His book is just one of many in recent years by former members of the military and the national security establishment, which has led to criticism that they are revealing too many details. But they are hardly alone. The sieve, When looking for leaks, a good place to start is Capitol Hill. The disclosures are so plentiful that calling them congressional leaks somehow seems an understatement. A fire hose metaphor would be more apt. There once was a time when administrations could reasonably assume that sharing sensitive national security material would remain private when presented to Congress. But many of those traditions have faded in this highly partisan era. When Obama administration officials briefed Congress, they knew that Republican members and their staffers would be prone to leaking. The Trump administration is already discovering the same thing. Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1"
"So far, President Trump has tried to run the White House much the way he ran his family business. That means little rigid organization and a skeleton crew of loyal, but not necessarily experienced, staffers. As the president tries to transfer that improvisational style from Trump Tower to the White House, the results have been mixed  —   just this week the president’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned and his choice to lead the Labor Department, Andrew Puzder, withdrew himself from the confirmation process. ”Donald’s business had a very small staff,” says journalist David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump. ”And except for when he was in trouble with his bankers he was the absolute ruler of his business empire, which is not at all how the White House works.” Trump now finds himself in charge of a vast federal bureaucracy that neither he nor some of his Cabinet nominees know much about. He has bristled at the idea that presidential orders can be blocked by a federal judge. And he has upended longstanding foreign policy doctrine  —   questioning the   solution in the Middle East, for example  —   as casually as though he were simply changing the drapes in the lobby of a Trump hotel. ”A lot of what Donald does is seat of the pants,” Johnston says. ”He contends he’s a great negotiator. He’s really not a great negotiator. He’s just great at promoting the idea that he’s a great negotiator.” Trump promoted that idea through 14 seasons as star of The Apprentice, dishing out advice while playing a successful businessman on TV. ”A good leader has to be able to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of employees,” Trump said in one episode. That skill was tested this week at the White House, when Flynn resigned after making false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. While Trump had known about those false statements for more than 2   weeks before Flynn quit, spokesman Sean Spicer insists the president acted decisively. ”When he’s ready to make a decision he makes it, whether it’s hiring somebody or asking for someone’s resignation,” Spicer says. Indeed, the president appears to be moving quickly to replace Flynn. Discussions with retired  . Robert Harward were already underway even before Flynn tendered his resignation. (Harward later took himself out of consideration, a White House official told NPR’s Mara Liasson.) In fact, Trump made ”You’re fired” into his TV catchphrase, although former employees say Trump doesn’t actually like to fire people in real life. The president also seems comfortable surrounded by competing personalities and power centers in the White House. That can generate a lot of friction and palace intrigue. But not everyone thinks that’s a bad thing. ”It can make things pretty intense on the inside. But for the rest of us on the outside, it tends to lead to wiser decisions,” says Chris Demuth, a veteran of the Reagan White House who is now a distinguished fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt deliberately pitted staff members against one another, Demuth says, often with creative results. He also shares the president’s view that being unpredictable is a good thing. ”If we look back through history there are several of our presidents who actually cultivated a reputation for unpredictability to keep foes especially in international affairs a little off balance,” Demuth says. ”Richard Nixon was very good at promoting the idea he could be just a little bit crazy.” Unless that unpredictability is calibrated, though, friends can be thrown off balance as well. And that can make it harder for the president to actually advance his agenda.  ”Running government is no different than assembling an automobile, making a movie,” says journalist Johnston, who launched the news site DCReport. org. ”There are lots of different parts that have to be brought together and coordinated with a knowledge of how do you achieve that. Trump doesn’t have those skills.” The administration is less than one month old. so adjustments could still be made. After the botched rollout of the travel ban, for example, the White House chief of staff reportedly drew up a checklist to see that future initiatives go through the proper channels. Trump the improviser often seems impatient with checklists. But as he once said on The Apprentice, it’s important to adapt. ”Often times, things go wrong and there’s just not much you can do about it,” Trump said. ”But a really good leader will step up, take responsibility, and really just find the right solution.” The question is whether Trump himself can learn that lesson from his own political apprenticeship."
"As the national attention to fake news and the debate over what to do about it continue, one place many are looking for solutions is in the classroom. Since a recent Stanford study showed that students at practically all grade levels can’t determine fake news from the real stuff, the push to teach media literacy has gained new momentum. The study showed that while students absorb media constantly, they often lack the critical thinking skills needed to tell fake news from the real stuff. Teachers are taking up the challenge to change that. NPR Ed put out a social media call asking how educators are teaching fake news and media literacy, and we got a lot of responses. Here’s a sampling from around the country: Fake news ”Simon Says” In Scott Bedley’s version of Simon Says, it’s not those two magic words that keep you in the game, but deciding correctly whether a news story is real or not. To start off the game, Bedley sends his   at Plaza Vista School in Irvine, Calif. an article to read on their laptops. He gives them about three minutes to make their decision  —   they have to read the story carefully, examine its source and use their judgment. Those who think the article is false, stand up. The ”true” believers stay in their seats. Bedley says he’s been trying to teach his students for a while to look carefully at what they’re reading and where it comes from. He’s got a   checklist his students can follow: 1. Do you know who the source is, or was it created by a common or   source? Example National Geographic, Discovery, etc. 2. How does it compare to what you already know? 3. Does the information make sense? Do you understand the information? 4. Can you verify that the information agrees with three or more other sources that are also reliable? 5. Have experts in the field been connected to it or authored the information? 6. How current is the information? 7. Does it have a copyright? Subtle changes, Bedley also teamed up recently with Todd Flory at Wheatland Elementary School in Wichita, Kan. to do a fake news challenge via Skype. Flory’s   chose two real articles and wrote a fake article of their own. Then, they presented them to Bedley’s class in California. The   had four minutes to do some extra research based on the presentations, and then they decided which article out of the three were fake. Most importantly, they had to explain why they thought it was fake. Otherwise, no points. Flory says writing the fake news article was more difficult for his students than they expected because they had to make it believable. ”It really hammered home the idea to them that fake news doesn’t have to be too sensational,” he says. ”It can be a very subtle change, but that subtle change can have big consequences.” Every Friday, Flory’s class participates in what he calls Genius Hour. His students propose a question to answer through online research. But before they took to the Internet, Flory had to walk his students through the steps: What are reliable and trusted websites? How do you effectively search on the Internet and verify information? He uses Skype to connect his students with researchers and scientists from all over the world. He calls this ”authentic research.” ”It’s so much more powerful for them to do some of this authentic research when they’re able to hear from a scientist who’s seeing firsthand the effects of climate change,” Flory says. This year’s class got to talk to a penguin scientist. Flory says he’s not only teaching his students effective media literacy skills he is also helping them to be better citizens through global engagement and interaction. Let them eat fake (news) Remember Marie Antoinette and ”Let them eat cake”  —   her famous line about the poor that got her in all that trouble? Thing is, it never happened. Fake news! For Diane Morey and her   at Danvers High School in Danvers, Mass. that’s a teachable moment. ”The media of the day didn’t have Facebook, Twitter or partisan websites,” Morey says. ”But they did have pamphlets.” She shows her class cartoons and pamphlets from the French Revolutionary period that criticized Antoinette, and then discusses the conclusions that were made from those sources. She also includes a primary source: a letter written by Antoinette. Morey says history is rich with examples of fake news, and since source analysis is the core of her lesson plans, she doesn’t need a textbook. ”We don’t study [history] to memorize Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI,” she explains. ”We’re studying this because we can see this happening in the   political climate.” Morey encourages students to bring in examples of articles from today’s news that don’t ring true. ”Once you expose it to them,” she says, ”it’s like a game for them, seeing, ’Hey, I’m not sure I can trust this.’ ” Extra layers  For 13 years, Larry Ferlazzo has been teaching kids who are learning English how to read and write. Now, he’s adding another layer: helping them figure out if what they’re reading is true. Ferlazzo teaches at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. He’s also a blogger and journalist. Last month, he wrote a lesson plan on addressing fake news to English language learners (ELLs) which was published in The New York Times. He says media literacy is especially important for ELLs for two reasons. First, they’re not fluent in the language they’re reading, adding an extra level of difficulty in deciding what to believe. On top of that, false or exaggerated news about immigration could have a major impact on their lives. His lesson starts off with a few examples of reliable and fake news. Then, some basic journalism stuff: Students identify the different parts of the news, from the ”lede” to quotations. They enter all that into a diagram on paper so they have a visual representation of what they’re reading. That diagram eventually becomes a guide for students to write their own fake news lede that they can share with other classmates or post on a class blog. Media consumers and contributors, In 2015, Spencer Brayton and his colleague Natasha Casey revamped a media literacy course for students at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Ill. Brayton says the key is the critical approach. ”Students come in expecting that we’re going to lecture,” Brayton explains. ”But we have them think about certain power structures in how information is produced and how it reaches them. If they’re going to understand how they’re going to take it in, then they have to know how the news is going to be produced.” To take the class, students need a Twitter account. From the very first week, they are asked to follow five to 10 accounts on Twitter that promote media and information literacy, like Media Literacy Now or Renee Hobbs. As they follow these posts and add additional ones, the goal is that they’ll start to recognize fake news and other biases or viewpoints in media. By the end of the course, Brayton says students begin to see themselves not only as creators of information, but as credible sources of information too. The Twitter assignments encourage his students to engage with social media   retweeting, following and commenting  —   which Brayton says helps his students see how they play a role in spreading information to other media consumers. That means they have to take what they share more seriously. ”In looking at this issue, people seem to want a quick solution to fake news, but I’m not sure there is a solution (at least an easy one),” Brayton writes in an email. ”Students need to recognize that these skills and ideas need to stay with them through adulthood, but that’s easier said than done  —   we all fall into this trap.”"
"In the recent film, Moonlight, Mahershala Ali plays an unlikely father figure to a quiet young   boy named Chiron. At school, Chiron is bullied. At home, he is neglected by a mother who is addicted to crack. Ali’s character, Juan, is a drug dealer who takes Chiron under his wing in an attempt to provide him with some stability. Ali, whose performance earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that he knew men like Juan growing up. ”Those were the guys who had access and had money, and . .. some felt responsible to create opportunity for other people,” he says. ”When I read Moonlight . .. I was blown away by seeing characters from my own life and people that I recognized on the page.” In January, Ali won the Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role. In a moving acceptance speech, he said, ”What I’ve learned from working on Moonlight is: We see what happens when you persecute people  —   they fold into themselves.” Though he was never treated the way Chiron was, Ali says he knows what it is to be on the outside. ”There were periods of time where I didn’t feel understood,” he says. ”There were very few people around me that I felt like they really got me.” On his experience growing up, We were moving around a lot, so I couldn’t really hold on to a certain set of friends. That was a little bit difficult, and also . .. my father lived in New York. So I was going out there in the summers and meeting really interesting people. . .. And so I would go to the big city and watch these people performing on stage and doing television and films and then I would go back to Hayward [Calif.] and it just suddenly felt that much smaller. . .. I had this   of how much larger the world was. On his conversion to Islam  I converted Dec. 31, 1999. It was a Friday. That was my second time going to the mosque. The woman who is my wife now . .. was basically raised Muslim  —   and she was at that point where she was deciding or trying to come to terms with her own relationship with Islam and how to embrace that for herself. . .. I went to a mosque in Philadelphia with her . .. and I just had such a strong reaction to the prayer. I felt really grounded at that time, and so to be in this prayer and the imam is doing the prayer in Arabic, and I don’t understand a word of Arabic, but I just remember these tears just coming down my face, and it just really connecting to my spirit in a way that felt like I needed to pay attention to that. On how it felt to be a Muslim American after Sept. 11, You folded into yourself, because people were looking at you and recognizing you as being the culprit, even though  —   look, I’m American, I don’t believe the teachings of Islam justify those actions. I feel like those acts are  . So to see that happen and somebody do that in the name of God, and the religion that you practice, it hurts your heart so deeply, because it’s such a misrepresentation of the faith. And you’re an American, so you’re hurt that other American citizens have been hurt. But you end up having to shoulder the shame for something that you don’t even believe. I think that there’s this perception that Muslims really do condone and believe that this violence is OK and that the faith teaches it  —   but it doesn’t. So there’s a lot of years where Muslims have dealt with having to make themselves very small and not disrupt the flow and make sure you’re not noticed. On his birth name, Mahershalalhashbaz, which is Hebrew  I remember after   I was working quite a bit in Vancouver, and then I realized I would go to catch my flight and it would take me, like, 20 minutes to get cleared to fly, like every time. . .. Eventually I found out that I was on a watch list. . .. This is 2003 [or 2004]. . .. After the Patriot Act, I would always get my financial packages in the mail and they would just be opened. It was like, ”What is going on here? ”... On that watch list they would be like, ”Yeah your name matches the name of a terrorist or someone that they’re watching.” I was like, ”What terrorist is running around with a Hebrew first name and an Arabic last name? Who’s that guy?” On playing Division I basketball in college and transitioning to acting  I wanted to get that Division I scholarship and play ball and go to school for free, and I was always about getting to that next step. . .. I was always ahead of myself in some way, shape or form, and trying to envision how to get further along and closer to fulfilling that dream of being free and having creative agency, so to speak. So getting to St. Mary’s College was a big deal for me, because that essentially led to me getting to go to NYU. In my time at St. Mary’s College[I began] drifting out of sports, because it was something that began to feel really finite. I could see that I didn’t have the passion to sustain a career in sports. . .. At a certain point basketball became the thing I was doing most, but it was really in my periphery. It was really a focus on how to, in some ways, keep moving in this direction towards something that allowed me to express myself in a way that sports didn’t. On the roles he played in grad school, When I was in grad school I sort of got lulled into basically forgetting I was black  —   meaning that everyone you play at a conservatory, 95 percent of the characters are  . So, if anything, you’re thinking about: How do I transcend this, how do I transform and be believable as Krogstad in A Doll’s House or Sir Peter Teazle in [The] School for Scandal, you know? . .. Once you graduate is when you start to find yourself looking at the information in the audition breakdown and it says, ”tall, black” or ”  built   ” and you start seeing these character descriptions and seeing that, ”Oh, you’re only going in for the ones that are described as your look.” So if anything, in my mind, I never wanted to accept that and so I have always fought against that."
"Opening a few miles from its namesake, The Great Wall introduces a group of European knaves who have somehow trekked to northwestern China during the Song Dynasty ( ). Most prominent among these thieves and mercenaries is William (Matt Damon) who’s supposed to be British, although the actor doesn’t further burden his stiff line readings with a feigned brogue. The outlanders’ goal is to acquire some gunpowder, a Chinese invention with solid commercial prospects in   Europe. All the other rascals except Tovar (Chilean actor Pedro Pascal) are quickly dispatched. While being chased, the last two interlopers find their path blocked by that big wall and the troops that protect China from the menaces on the north side of the barrier. There are hundreds of   warriors, but the important ones are strategist Wang (Hong Kong cinema lifer Andy Lau) and battalion commander Lin (Jing Tian, soon to be seen in Kong: Skull Island). A lithe if blank beauty in   battle togs, Lin seems to have hatched not from Chinese lore but from Japanese anime. That’s appropriate, since she and her cohorts defend China’s capital from the Taotie, ravenous reptilian monsters with a strong family resemblance to Godzilla. (They also have zombie tendencies, and among the many credited writers  —   all Westerners  —   is World War Z author Max Brooks.)  This scenario may make The Great Wall sound entertainingly demented, but as   ’  spectacle, the movie disappoints. It’s bonkers in theory, but prosaic in execution. The monsters attack every 60 years, and are ”evolving” intelligence at a rate that could make Darwinists reconsider the great man’s theory. Led by their queen, the Taotie intend to breach the wall, attack the capital, and eat the boy emperor and everyone else. By comparison, the Cultural Revolution was a paper cut. Most of the movie is devoted to   combat and   mayhem. Occasionally, the rhythm slows so that Lin can teach William the Chinese virtues of cooperation and  . The lessons transform him, but prove less persuasive to Tovar and another   rogue who arrived earlier (Willem Dafoe). Those two scurry off to initiate a subplot while arrows fly, spears puncture, and red and green blood gushes. Originally assigned to Edward Zwick, the film was ultimately directed by Zhang Yimou, but it’s not a testament to his skill or sensibility. Zhang has balanced spectacle and social conscience in such powerful dramas as Raise the Red Lantern and staged dazzling action in fanciful romps such as House of Flying Daggers. This movie feels closer to a more nationalistic Zhang production: the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The director punctuates the warfare with pageantry: drum troupes, choreographed mass movements, and the release of thousands of airborne lanterns. Sometimes it seems that the Taotie, rather than scramble across the landscape with their jaws open, should march in orderly columns, wearing matching team jackets. While the stagiest sequences are visually impressive, much of the movie is not. The 3D images feature lots of camera swoops and ostentatious closeups, and are sometimes as   as a holographic ring from a 1960s gumball machine. No one could have expected The Great Wall to make sense, but that it doesn’t look very good is a nastier surprise than any shock cut of a looming  ."
"The best way to diagnose a strange skin bump is often to decide what it’s not. So say the researchers who have devised a mnemonic device useful for determining that the lesion or lump isn’t a bite from a brown recluse spider  —   a diagnosis that can be very common and very false, they say. Around 40 conditions have been or could be misdiagnosed as a nibble from the brown recluse, including Lyme disease, herpes,   staph infection, diabetic ulcers and skin cancer. You wouldn’t want to miss out on treatment for any of those things because the doctor said you had a spider bite. And the brown recluse’s venom can cause serious wounds or kidney failure, so isn’t to be trifled with, either. The aptly named mnemonic NOT RECLUSE could help limit misdiagnoses and make sure people get the right treatment. It stands for things that would not be a factor if a patient was bitten by a brown recluse, like numerous bites (N) the circumstances where the wound occurred (O) or the time of year it came about (T). Tally two or more NOT RECLUSE symptoms, and the brown recluse explanation should be thrown out, the researchers suggest in their JAMA Dermatology paper. Brown recluse bites have a reputation for causing pus and rotting flesh, so many people assume they’ve been bitten if they have a nasty wound. But only 10 percent of the bites ever need medical attention. In the most serious cases, skin turns black and starts to die in what’s called skin necrosis. If you know you’ve been bitten for sure, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends seeking immediate medical attention and to bring the spider with you for identification. Most typically, though, a bite from the spider looks like a pimple or a small white blister and heals on its own over a month or two. And the spiders, just larger than a penny, won’t bite unless threatened. One woman even trapped over 2, 000 of the arachnids in her own house over a   span, and no one in her family was ever known to have been bitten. Many people   another skin condition as a brown recluse bite because ”it’s a sexy diagnosis,” says Rick Vetter, a retired entomologist of the University of California, Riverside, a brown recluse expert and   on the study. ”It’s like saying you were bitten by a rattlesnake. It’s dramatic. Bacterial infections? Not so much.” These   even happen outside the brown recluse’s range of Southern and central Midwestern states in the U. S. Physicians tend to falsely diagnose brown recluse bites, Vetter says, because ”it’s a really comfortable scapegoat. People want a diagnosis. Doctors want to give them a diagnosis.” So if physicians can’t figure out the identity of an ambiguous bump, they jump to spider bite. Vetter worked with two dermatologists on the paper they hope that physicians will make use of NOT RECLUSE to ensure that patients get the right treatments. ”When we see people with cancer or MRSA who get this false diagnosis,” Vetter says, ”it really drives home that you can’t just call everything a recluse bite.” Eager for the whole mnemonic? Here you go. More than two of these would typically exclude a brown recluse spider bite: Numerous: More than one injury, Occurrence: Not in a secluded area like a box, closet or attic, Timing: The wound arose sometime between November and March, Red Center: The center of the wound is red, Elevated: The middle of the wound is elevated, not sunken, Chronic: The wound has persisted for more than three months, Large: The injury is more than 10 centimeters wide, Ulcerates Too Early: The injury gets crusty within the first week, Swollen: The wound swells up if it’s below the neck, Exudative: The wound is ”wet,” oozing pus or clear fluid"
"As the Trump administration moves to step up deportations, immigrant rights groups are organizing a resistance. ”No papers, no fear” is the message at a meeting of the Congress of Day Laborers in New Orleans. A mostly Latino crowd is packed in the sanctuary of a church. They encourage one another to stand up for their rights. ”Fear is our fuel,” says speaker Leticia Casildo as the audience cheers. She says they’re fighting for their families. In several cities Thursday, people stayed home from work and school as part of what was billed as ”A Day Without Immigrants.” The climate has energized the activists in New Orleans. ”We will not be intimidated,” Casildo says. She and her husband Mario Mendoza are leaders in the Congress of Day Laborers. They have three children and are in the country illegally. Through an interpreter, Mendoza says they moved to the U. S. because his life was in danger back home in Honduras. ”I actually worked as head of a police department in Honduras,” Mendoza says. ”There were multiple assassination attempts on me. The lives of my wife and my children were in danger.” His wife was also a police officer. They say they’ve always sought justice. But because they were denied asylum yet remained in the country, they could be a priority for deportation under President Trump’s immigration policy. It’s taken a toll on the family. Casildo says the childrens’ grades have suffered. ”Really, before this even happened, I was fine  —   I was fine, living life happy as possible,” says    Sarah, the youngest, who was born in the U. S. ” But right now, my worst fear is losing my family.” Her older brother Maycoll Mendoza, 17, also feels the effects of the policy. ”People look at me like I’m some sort of creep or like I’m not a human,” he says. ”The president now says we’re criminals and that we come to do bad things to the country,” he says. ”But we don’t actually come here to do bad things. Everybody wants an opportunity to be better. For example, me? I’m a senior in high school right now, and I’ve been there for three years already.” Immigration roundups around the country have people on edge and taking the legal steps they can  —   naming power of attorney, for instance  —   to provide for their families should they be separated. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu recently came to a Congress of Day Laborers meeting with the city’s police chief to reassure the community. ”Our police department will not be used as a deportation force for the federal government for the United States of America,” said Landrieu. The   Democrat said the city would not have been able to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina without the work of immigrants. Landrieu’s position could jeopardize some federal funding under President Trump’s sanctuary cities order. ”Municipalities or elected officials who disregard the rule of law should have funding withdrawn from them,” says Louisiana’s Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry. He’s pushing legislation that would deny state funding to local governments that don’t actively enforce immigration law. ”Local law enforcement officers and state law enforcement officers have a duty to collaborate with the federal government in carrying out those laws,” Landry says. As for people in Louisiana illegally, Landry says they should be deported. ”We are talking about people who are engaged in illegal activity from the beginning,” he says. President Trump’s policy targets a broader group for deportation, including people whose only offense is an immigration violation. ”We’re feeling very afraid because now both of us are priorities,” says Irma   through an interpreter. She and her husband are in the country illegally from Honduras, and have deportation orders. ”We’re not sure what we would do with our kids if they were to come to arrest us,” she says, fighting tears.   is helping organize immigrants in New Orleans to know their rights should that moment come."
"It’s been almost 20 years since Barbara Ehrenreich published Fear of Falling, her brilliant book on the anxious ”inner life” of the American middle class. The book’s title, ”fear of falling,” has become a catchphrase to refer to the cosmic jitters that afflict anyone whose lifestyle and sense of identity can be wiped out by the loss of a job or a plunge in the stock market. In this era of globalization, ”fear of falling” is also a phrase that resonates in other places. Take the southern Indian city of Bangalore, for instance. That’s where acclaimed Indian writer Vivek Shanbhag has set his novella called Ghachar Ghochar  —   a story whose every page is soaked through with the sweaty fear of falling into economic and moral ruin. ”Ghachar ghochar” is a nonsense phrase made up by one of the characters in this story it loosely translates from the South Indian language, Kannada, as: ”tangled up beyond repair.” The tense fun of reading this vivid, fretful story lies in watching the main characters grab hold of what they think will be rescue ropes, but instead turn out to be slip knots. Our narrator, who’s unnamed, is a young man whose family (consisting of his parents, uncle and sister) has hauled itself up from   subsistence living in Bangalore. The narrator’s father used to be a spice salesman whose earnings barely kept his family housed in an   shack. In a   flashback scene here, the father comes home one night from collecting his weekly payments from customers and realizes he’s short 800 rupees. The panic in the family’s shack is palpable. Over and over the father adds columns of numbers as the narrator’s mother interrogates him: Where did you go today? [she frantically asks]. Did someone who was supposed to pay not do so? . .. Could you have put some of the cash in a different compartment of your bag? After a sleepless night, a mathematical error is discovered and the family breathes again over a celebratory breakfast. All is saved. Then, all is lost that very same day when the father loses his job anyway because the spice company has been bought out. Desperate, the father gambles his retirement benefits on a scheme his younger brother proposes to start their own spice company. At the opening of this novella, which jumps around in time, that gamble has paid off and made the family wealthy, but it’s also cost them in ways that are hard to quantify. To our sentimental (and somewhat unreliable) narrator, life seemed to be richer emotionally, back in the bad old days, when, as he says, ”the whole family stuck together, walking like a single body across the tightrope of our circumstances.” Ghachar Ghochar is filled with wry poetic lines like that one where Shanbhag  —   and his translator, Srinath Perur  —   have rendered emotions and even random thoughts in language that’s as pungent as those spices the family is marketing. Within the tight confines of a hundred pages or so, Shanbhag presents as densely layered a social vision of Bangalore as Edith Wharton did of New York in The House of Mirth. Shanbhag’s Bangalore is packed with anonymous laborers, and the leisure classes and teachers and other ”brain workers” who are sandwiched in the middle. When our narrator marries, his wife, whose name is Anita, and her family belong in that last category and that’s a problem. Anita questions the family   too much. She disdains the dependence her husband and   have on that somewhat crooked uncle who runs the family spice empire. Challenging that uncle could cost our narrator his fortune. That’s when Ghachar Ghochar shifts from a powerful novella about class anxieties to an Edgar Allan Poe tale of terror. Ghachar Ghochar is the first of Shanbhag’s fiction to be published in English, but I expect it won’t be the last. He’s one of those special writers who can bring a fully realized world to life in a few pages and also manages to work in smart social commentary about fears that don’t require much translation."
"For most of human history, we had a lot of bad ideas about how we were getting sick. We also had plenty of bad ideas about how to prevent it, like bloodletting, drilling large holes in the head and drinking arsenic. We really only started to figure out how to effectively fight infectious disease about 200 years ago, when, inspired by milkmaids, a doctor named Edward Jenner decided to take a closer look at a promising folk remedy   the surprising details we’ll leave for the video. Eventually, he invented vaccination, our first safe and effective way to fight disease. About time! So what did that do for us? Consider that in 1900, the average person lived only about 30 years. Today, most of us live to 70. We were so successful in such a short time, the U. S. surgeon general reportedly exclaimed in 1967 that we had closed the book on infectious disease. If only! The conditions that created the rise of human germs are only intensifying. Which means there are more germs emerging now than ever before. If you missed ’em, catch up on Episodes 1 and 2 below . .. What do you want to know about pandemics? Share your questions by submitting them in our special tool here. Our global health team will answer some of them in an upcoming story."
"If you’re a germaphobe, make sure you’re sitting down. Back in 1999, a woman in California cleaned up rodent droppings in her home. Two weeks later, her liver started failing. Then she started to bleed internally  —   a hemorrhagic fever that would kill her. Eventually doctors found a new virus in her body, which very likely came from a rat. A few years later, a man in Arizona went to the hospital. The skin on his legs was infected and dying. Doctors had to amputate. His diagnosis? A new kind of leprosy. Over in the Midwest, the problem has been new   diseases, some deadly. And in New England, doctors are dealing with a disease that causes   symptoms but is caused by a different bacteria. The pattern continues across the country and across the world. A spike in new infectious diseases is the new normal. Over the past 60 years, the number of new diseases cropping up in a decade has almost quadrupled. The number of outbreaks each year has more than tripled since 1980. ”We’re in a hyperinfectious disease world,” says epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis. More than a dozen new viruses and pathogenic bacteria have appeared in North America in the past 20 years. Europe has had at least 18. Asia 17. Africa seven. OK. By now, you might be thinking: Aha! I know what it is! Scientists have gotten better at detecting diseases  —   and the media have gotten better at giving us the   about them. That is true, says Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N. Y. But it’s not the full picture. ”There’s never going to be a perfect way for us to take into account sampling bias,” Han says. ”But even when we try to compensate for how much more information there is, we just have more diseases overall. The data are very convincing.” Several teams have quantified the global rise in infectious diseases by analyzing disease databases and reviewing studies. They used a few tricks to take into account the fact that over time, doctors and scientists have developed better tools for identifying pathogens. But still, the studies found a surge in diseases. Old diseases that we thought were gone  —   like the plague  —   are returning. New diseases are spreading into new regions. And more dangerous strains of old diseases are cropping up more frequently. (Not to mention the rise in   versions.) The only trend that looks reassuring is that the number of cases in outbreaks per person has declined over the past few decades, researchers at Brown University reported in 2014. So the big question is: Why? Why is this era of new diseases happening now? ”Well, we’ve been boiling the frog for a long time. Eventually, it’s cooked,” says Toph Allen, a data scientist with EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that is trying to prevent pandemics by looking for diseases in wildlife. Wait. We’re boiling the frog? You mean, humans are responsible? Yes. Many scientists say we, humans, are to blame for this new disease era. That we’re responsible for turning harmless animal viruses into dangerous human viruses. Over the next month, NPR’s global health team is going to explore why this is the case. We’ll look at where these diseases come from. How they’re unleashed and how they spread. And why this isn’t just a problem for poor countries. In fact, one of the hot spots for rodent viruses could be right here, stateside, in Nebraska. What do you want to know about pandemics? Share your questions by submitting them in our special tool here. Our global health team will answer some of them in an upcoming story."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. ”I was young, but not for long,” sings Rhiannon Giddens in the voice of one of the characters she brings to bloody life on her second solo album, Freedom Highway. Actually, she wails the line  —   in grief, in defiance, and with the   accuracy of a singer whose art is steeped in the subversive theatrics of Paul Robeson, the prophetic folk of Odetta and the psychological inquiries of Stephen Sondheim. Giddens is singing about a slave whose baby  —   conceived (her lyrics imply) in a forced encounter with an owner  —   may be taken from her at any time ”at the Purchaser’s Option,” as the title says. But the lyric could also be about the America she reveals, mourns and challenges on this rich collection, the latest chapter in the    master folklorist, banjo virtuoso and vocal powerhouse’s epic retelling of our history with its sins and sorrows  —   and joy born of resilience  —   fully reinstated. Freedom Highway follows Giddens’s expertly curated and recorded Tomorrow Is My Turn, a   album that honored the work of overlooked   artists like the soprano Florence Quivar alongside icons like Nina Simone. In her new work, Giddens speaks for the truly silenced: slaves people murdered during the 1960s struggle for civil rights young men felled by police bullets in city streets today. In ”Julie,” the chilling centerpiece of Freedom Highway, Giddens stages a dialogue between a domestic slave and her owner as the Union army sets upon a Southern plantation. Slowly, the song reveals that the love the white mistress professes for her maid is fatally compromised: she has sold Julie’s children to another family. ”When I’m leavin’ here, I’m leavin’ hell,” Giddens intones, putting brutal stress on the word, showing the origins of white Americans’ delusion about black oppression. The propulsive banjo and bass in the arrangement pegs this song as a murder ballad: one chronicling the murder of hope. But hope comes back to life in Giddens’ music. Her sound, grounded in folk, is carefully expansive, buttressed by a band of musicians expert in various folk idioms but always willing to experiment. On ”Get It Right the First Time,” her #BlackLivesMatter anthem, she explores her Destiny’s Child side, and bandmate Justin Harrington adds a cutting (if tasteful) rap. ”We Could Fly” is a delicate country hymn whose divinity remains powerfully African: it relates the myth enslaved people created, that in death their loved ones actually flew back to their homelands, in intimate terms. Giddens also makes room for love, that source of personal empowerment, in various shades  —   ”Hey Bebe” is a Cajun romp, ”The Love We Almost Had” a sinuous New Orleans dance number. That song was   by Giddens’ fellow roots music adventurer Bhi Bhiman, who also proves a highly energizing duet partner on her rendition of the title track, from one of her main inspirations, the Staple Singers. That great gospel family is central in the heritage Rhiannon Giddens revitalizes: the side of folk music that’s not about   mulling over quirky confessions, but about excavating lost histories and preserving the crucial texts that form the people’s secular gospel. It’s a line that extends from Robeson and Woody Guthrie to Josh White and Odetta, Buffy   and Steve Earle, and into   today, with artists like Common and John Legend. On Freedom Highway, Rhiannon Giddens shows us that while America was never as innocent as some nostalgists want to believe, its young spirit still lives within, resistant to corruption, leading those who can hear its voice toward a better place down the road."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. It’s been a dozen years since Alec Ounsworth became an Internet sensation, as his band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah bypassed the label system to become internationally known through support from music blogs. But as that support waned with subsequent releases, and as the power of Internet buzz grew more diffuse, Ounsworth found a way to endure. Now on its fifth   album  —   plus side projects for various band members and a 2009 solo record for Ounsworth himself  —   Clap Your Hands Say Yeah returns with The Tourist, which shimmers, seethes and twitches in appealing new ways. Still, The Tourist picks up where 2014’s Only Run left off: by deepening and expanding the Talking   template of CYHSY’s early work. No matter how distressed and disconcerted Ounsworth appears across these 10 songs, his voice is swaddled in approachable sounds  —   synths, effects, harmonicas, acoustic guitars  —   that shine welcome light on his darkest mumbled ruminations. Ounsworth has suggested that The Tourist is the product of a low point in his life, and some of the imagery  —   even in the upbeat ”Fireproof,” he laments ”what a drag it is to win”  —   bears that out. But as often as it looks inward, The Tourist is no collection of woebegone dirges: Ounsworth, who used to so frequently draw comparisons to David Byrne, now sings with the wry,   twistiness of The New Pornographers’ Dan Bejar. Like its mastermind, The Tourist can get intense, even dark. But it also captures a sense of creative mischief  —   the sort of   creativity that keeps music careers going longer than early skeptics could have imagined."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Omar Sosa seemingly can do no wrong. Every album the jazz pianist releases is, if not exactly better than the last, arguably more profound. His exploration of   music in all of its forms ends up sounding like an intense Yoruban meditation on life cycles and existence. His piano is not a musical instrument but a conduit to spiritual awareness. Live and on record, I’m often transported and seduced by his music, which reaches for the sublime and eternal. (Can you tell I’m a fan?) And just when I thought ”No, way, he can’t keep raising the bar with every release!” along comes Transparent Water, a record   to Senegalese kora master Seckou Keita. The music instantaneously transports listeners from the very first notes. But in addition to journeys within, there are real world travels across the globe on this album. The cast includes: Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles Silk Road member and Chinese sheng master Wu Tong and Mieko Miyazaki on the Japanese koto. What could have been a   mess is instead a powerfully elegant statement of joy over shared musical discovery. I’ll leave you with this: While living with this album for some time before I tried to put words to my fascination, I often imagined Omar Sosa lifted up to the Yoruban spirits in the form of a swarm of butterflies. Such is the beauty of his musical spirit."
"Yahoo is warning some of its users that their accounts might have been breached by intruders using forged cookies, allowing them to access private information without knowing users’ passwords. Cookies are pieces of code stored by browsers to, among other things, keep track of whether a user is logged into a   account. They’re also used for innocuous functions, such as keeping track of online shopping cart contents. This latest warning to users stems from an ongoing investigation into previously disclosed hacking of at least 500 million user accounts in 2014. Ars Technica reported that Yahoo sent emails this week to users stating that ”based on the ongoing investigation, we believe a forged cookie may have been used in 2015 or 2016 to access your account.” The company first revealed the data breach in September 2016, as The   reported. In December, Yahoo disclosed a separate hacking incident of more than 1 billion accounts in 2013, as we reported. In a November regulatory filing, Yahoo mentioned the possibility that in addition to hacking of security questions to access user accounts, forged cookies might have been used to steal private user information, explaining: ”Forensic experts are currently investigating certain evidence and activity that indicates an intruder, believed to be the same   actor responsible for the Security Incident, created cookies that could have enabled such intruder to bypass the need for a password to access certain users’ accounts or account information.” In a December regulatory filing, the company provided further information, including that it had connected some of the forged cookies to ”the same   actor believed to be responsible for the data theft the company disclosed on September 22, 2016.” The December filing continued: ”Based on the ongoing investigation, the company believes an unauthorized third party accessed the company’s proprietary code to learn how to forge cookies. The outside forensic experts have identified user accounts for which they believe forged cookies were taken or used. Yahoo is notifying the affected account holders, and has invalidated the forged cookies.” A spokesperson for Yahoo declined to say how many user accounts had been accessed using forged cookies, but told NPR on Thursday that the company was in its final stages of its investigation into the data breach. The repeated revelations about Yahoo’s account security appear to have affected a proposed deal to be acquired by Verizon. When the deal was announced in July 2016, the price tag for Yahoo was $4. 8 billion, as we reported. On Wednesday, that price appeared to be dropping, according to The New York Times, which added: ”Yahoo is close to renegotiating its original deal, choosing to take close to $300 million off the price to preserve the sale, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday. ”Under the revised terms, the two companies are expected to share legal responsibility and costs for the data breaches, the person with knowledge of the matter said.” Bloomberg reported a slightly smaller decrease in Yahoo’s asking price, closer to $250 million. Both outlets said negotiations between Yahoo and Verizon were ongoing."
"Until September, journalist Chadwick Moore says his life had been lived in a liberal bubble  —   one that burst after he wrote a profile Milo Yiannopoulos for Out Magazine.  Yiannopoulos is a gay blogger for Breitbart and provocateur who so favors Donald Trump he calls him ”daddy.” Yiannopoulos has inspired such ferocious online attacks on others that he was banned from Twitter. Moore’s article was critical, but also let Yiannopoulos be heard, and included a professional photo shoot. As soon as it was published, Moore was attacked  —   so severely he says it pushed him to rethink his political allegiance. He became the subject of a New York Post story earlier this month headlined ”I’m a gay New Yorker and I’m coming out as conservative.” Moore tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep that the personal attacks  —   including being shunned by his liberal friends  —   caused him to lose respect for the left. He says people like him are ”part of a brand new conservative.” ”We were born in the Democratic Party, somebody set our house on fire, we went running out, and the right has been so welcoming to people like me and there’s so many of us,” he says. Interview Highlights, On the response to his Yiannopoulos profile  There was a petition [circulated] online signed by like 60 people in gay media condemning it, condemning the article, calling it dangerous, how dare you give this person a platform  —   and then of course personal attacks against me, calling me a Nazi, white supremacist, completely insane and ridiculous. On how his friends reacted  Friends, immediately after the story ran  —   people I knew in places where I hang out would turn around and walk away from me and not talk to me. As I sort of starting seeing this behavior amongst my peers, I began to then challenge them more and say ”How can you not at least listen to this person’s argument?” And by the way, if you really are intent on destroying people like Milo Yiannapoulos, then isn’t it beneficial to learn about him, to know what he’s about  —   his weaknesses and to beat him by being smarter and have better arguments? But nobody is interested in that. They just name call. On how he reacted, I’ve just lost so much respect for the left, especially the extreme left. I think they’ve gotten everything so terribly wrong. They’ve driven away moderates like myself  —   and I consider myself a moderate. But to come out as a moderate on the left is seen as aggressive. It’s practically seen as a hate crime. On whether he’s a moderate or a conservative, as was the headline of the NY Post story, To come out as a moderate is to be more aligned with the conservative. I said in the story, which was an ”as told to” piece, so I was interviewed by Michael Kaplan at the New York Post, and he wrote a story in my words. [Conservative] was in the headline. What I say in it is that I’m more aligned with the right than the left and I sympathize with the right more. And I feel more welcomed on the right now that it’s happened. To be moderate  —   to come out as a moderate today, being in the left as I was, is to be more aligned with the right and conservative. If you value things like free speech, if you value free thought, if you value individualism over collectivism, then you’re on the right now. On how the media covers the right, Many in the media, they seek out the craziests on the right: the very overly racist, overtly   people who are a very, very tiny percentage  —   just like I believe on the left the worst elements are a tiny percentage. On his positions  —   like whether he favors Vice President Mike Pence’s stance on gay rights  I don’t support Pence’s views because I don’t think that religion has any place in government, but I support religious freedom. For example, I support an evangelical Christian florist who doesn’t want to do the flowers for a gay wedding. You can go to another florist to do your flowers. Don’t unleash the ACLU on granny and her bucket of dyed carnations."
"You know that voice we tend to use when speaking to babies? It’s a   voice, one with higher pitch, shorter phrases with simpler grammar, slower speech rate, more repetitions, and greater contrast in our vowels. It’s called ”motherese” or, more accurately, IDS (for   speech). We may talk to our dogs in very much the same way, in what’s called PDS (  speech). And   researchers have now shown for the first time that PDS varies in subtle ways depending on what the dog and owner are doing together  —   and that those variations go beyond the basic speech patterns I’ve described (called prosody) to include specific content of the utterances directed toward the dogs. In a paper titled ”Effect of interaction type on the characteristics of   speech in female dog owners” published online in Animal Cognition last week, researchers describe how they invited 34 women to interact with  —   and speak to  —   their dogs in four different contexts: before a brief separation, after a reunion from that separation, during play and when giving commands. The women used simplified utterances with their dogs, with a limited vocabulary and frequent repetition. The most noteworthy finding was this: ”Before separation women used a low pitch, few modulations, high intensity variations and very few affective [that is,  ] sentences. In contrast, the reunion interactions were characterized by a very high pitch, few imperatives and a high frequency of affectionate nicknames. During play, women used mainly questions and   devices. Finally when commanding, women mainly used imperatives as well as attention —  getting devices.” That’s a significant set of findings because it shows that PDS, at least in this study, is about more than just prosody: When the women communicated with their dogs, they adapted both their actual words and also their prosody to the specific behavioral context. That means they’re communicating quite purposefully and strategically, using all the resources available to them as language users, with their nonhuman social partners. Or to put it another way, as lead researcher Sarah Jeannin of the University of Paris Nanterre said in an email: ”Our results show that female owners do adapt the way they communicate with their dog, in order to optimize the transmission of their intentions and emotional states, and in this way, facilitating their social interactions.” In its immediacy  —   in its context of woman and dog in close interaction  —   the research by Jeannin and her   Caroline Gilbert and Gerard Leboucher is quite different from another study earning headlines last month. In that study, women were asked to speak to photos of dogs. Then, recordings of their PDS utterances were played back to dogs, to check their responses. Puppies, but not older dogs, responded more attentively to PDS than to regular   speech. Adult dogs didn’t seem to prefer PDS at all. But in that experiment, the voices played back were unfamiliar to the dogs  —    and completely abstracted away from any sort of direct   interaction. Jeannin et al. ’s research is more focused on the human side of the equation rather than the dogs’ but, even so, their approach of setting up more natural encounters between dogs and their owners strikes me as likelier to produce an accurate picture of PDS. I did wonder whether their study could have been even stronger had men’s PDS been compared to women’s. Of this, Jeannin said: ”We had good scientific reasons to focus on women’s PDS, because previous studies have clearly pointed out gender differences with respect to the use of PDS (and maybe for IDS): male owners speak less frequently when interacting with their dogs and are less likely to use PDS than female owners.” Are we even aware of the way we communicate with our dogs, I asked Jeannin? She said via email: ”I think most owners are aware that they spontaneously modify the way they communicate when addressing their dog using a high pitched voice and affectionate nicknames, but I don’t think that they are conscious about the subtle acoustic modifications of their speech according to the emotional context of the interaction. These modifications seem to be driven both by their affection towards their animal and by the interaction’s context.” When it comes to IDS, the speech directed towards our own infants, we know it’s used in many cultures, but not all. So it isn’t a linguistic universal or ingrained human pattern. I would guess that PDS isn’t a linguistic universal either: It’s certainly not the case that people in all communities or all cultures have the desire, the time, or the resources to embrace dogs as part of the family or develop intimate emotional relationships with them. In this regard, it’s particularly interesting that Jeannin et al. discovered in their study that women without children spoke to their dogs with a higher voice compared to women who were mothers. ”One explanation,” they write, ”could be that   have a stronger tendency to express friendliness and affection to their dogs,” a finding consistent with research that shows that people who do not live with children tend to be even more attached to their dogs than others. There’s increasing scientific interest in the field of anthrozoology, and I can see why: Studies like this one tell us there’s more than meets the eye  —   or the ear  —   in our everyday interactions with our animal companions. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve, and her forthcoming book, Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat, will be published in March. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"The GOP put out a survey Thursday night that’s enough to make a social scientist cringe. It’s called the ”Mainstream Media Accountability Survey,” but this ”survey” commits a variety of polling sins. It contains:  —   Leading questions (”Do you believe that the mainstream media does not do their due diligence   before publishing stories on the Trump administration? ”),  —   Incomplete poll results disguised as a question (”Were you aware that a poll was released revealing that a majority of Americans actually supported President Trump’s temporary restriction executive order?”  —   while that’s true, some polls show that a majority oppose the travel ban) and,  —   Confusingly worded questions that also  —   surprise  —   slam the news media (”Do you believe that contrary to what the media says, raising taxes does not create jobs? ”). Not only that, but it was sent out to a   group (i. e. people on Trump email lists) ensuring a biased response. The questions are also incomplete  —   this poll only seems to care about cable TV news outlets, and even then, only three outlets (among those not represented: CNBC, which Trump as a businessman might reasonably have watched a lot in his life, as well as the Christian Broadcasting Network, a news organization represented at Trump media events and to which the president recently granted an interview). It doesn’t ask for demographic information beyond ZIP code, meaning that if analyzed, the ”survey” wouldn’t be able to be properly weighted. But that’s probably not the point of this. Team Trump is by no means alone in doing these kinds of flawed political surveys. It’s neither the first nor the last we will see. But while the poll is flawed from a scientific perspective, it could still be helpful to Trump’s team in a number of ways: (1) Those biased questions can plant ideas in people’s heads. If Jane Doe happens to be a Trump supporter and a Christian, she might not think that she’s being particularly hurt by news organizations  —   until she sees a question like, ”Do you believe that people of faith have been unfairly characterized by the media?” In this way, this survey is a cousin of the ”push poll,” which is often performed during political campaigns as a way of slinging mud at an opponent under the guise of survey research. (2) The survey’s wording plants ideas in subtler ways. For example, by using the word ”movement” repeatedly  —   ”Do you believe that the media has been far too quick to spread false stories about our movement?”  —   the survey casts the respondents not just as ordinary voters but rather as members of something bigger. (3) Another possibility: The survey could be testing which ideas resonate with Trump supporters and which don’t. If respondents don’t think the media have been unfair to people of faith, but they do think (as another question proposes) that ”the media uses slurs rather than facts to attack conservative stances on issues like border control, religious liberties, and ObamaCare,” that idea might reasonably be more likely to show up in a future ad or a Trump speech. (4) An additional potential boost from this survey:  . True, the survey went out to people who already are (duh) on a Trump email list. But those people could potentially share it with their friends or post it on Facebook or Twitter, giving the Trump team more people to send future email blasts. And (5) It could give Team Trump more numbers to put out to bolster Trump’s case that the news media really are the bogeyman he says they are. True, it would be citing a bogus poll, but then, that hasn’t stopped him before."
"Although President Trump has stepped back from daily management of the Trump Organization, his businesses continue to expand, often in foreign countries. On Saturday, Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. will be in the United Arab Emirates, helping cut the ribbon for the new Trump International Golf Club, according to Kim Benza, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization. The   golf course, in the works since 2013, is part of a larger project that will include 100 luxury villas in the desert just outside Dubai. The website touts ”a   golf course, exceeding all expectations. And the clubhouse contains ”enough gold to suit even the most exacting Dubai resident,” says the Gulf News, which toured the facility. The golf course is one of two Trump resort projects in Dubai. Behind both is the   company Damac Properties, run by billionaire Hussain Sajwani, a Trump business partner for almost a decade. In the week before his inauguration, Trump said that he turned down a $2 billion deal by Damac Properties to develop yet another golf course in Dubai because he didn’t ”want to take advantage of something.” Trump has been criticized for not divesting his family business. While he has moved his holdings into a revocable trust, he has not given up ownership and the trustees are his sons. Eric and Donald Jr. are overseeing resorts still underway in places such as the Philippines and Indonesia. Trump Hotels also is planning a major expansion of luxury properties in the United States, as well as opening up a line of moderately priced hotels called Scion. Those expansions not only raise ethical questions about conflicts between Trump’s role as president and as business owner but are generating concerns about costs to the U. S. taxpayers. The Trump sons get Secret Service protection, and their foreign business trips can be enormously expensive for their protective service, according to The Washington Post."
"Updated May 24, Although Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office now, he continues to own stakes in hundreds of businesses, both in this country and abroad. Ethics experts say this vast international web of personal financial ties could influence Trump’s thinking on   decisions. Trump has dismissed such concerns he notes presidents are exempt from the    rules that apply to Cabinet members and other government employees. Past presidents have complied voluntarily with the ethics rules. What Trump and his team have done is commit to certain steps that do touch on some of the ethics and    concerns. The Trump Ethics Monitor below focuses on those promises and tracks their status. The key questions we asked are whether Trump has claimed to make progress on his promises and what evidence has been reported to show it. We identified the promises and related assertions by checking debate transcripts, listening to campaign speeches and following press conferences. For broader context we spoke with Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and leading independent scholar on government ethics. During our reporting, we posed a list of questions to the White House, the Trump Organization and Trump’s lawyer Sheri Dillon. We sought clarifications of definitions, explanations of how specific plans would shape up, and guidance on records documenting proof of various assertions. A spokeswoman for Dillon’s law firm referred all questions to Trump Organization spokeswoman Amanda Miller, saying the firm doesn’t comment ”on our clients or the work we do for them.” Miller and the Trump administration did not respond to NPR’s inquiries. But a White House spokeswoman did say that the White House counsel’s office is still working through several of the issues raised in this story. The Trump Ethics Monitor will be updated as major news develops. NPR’s Tamara Keith, Peter Overby and Jackie Northam contributed to this report."
"For the third week in a row, President Trump is spending the weekend in Florida at   . It seems Trump enjoys spending time at the club he owns in Palm Beach, but since the election, his stays there have raised issues not seen when he was a private citizen. They involve security and the impact his visits are having on people and businesses in Palm Beach. At Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana, just 6 miles from    the situation is dire. For the fifth weekend since December, the airport has shut down. Whenever Trump is in    Federal Aviation Administration restrictions ban all flights out of the airport. The weekend restrictions are especially a problem for Jorge Gonzalez. His company, SkyWords, owns four planes that tow advertising banners targeting beachgoers in Palm Beach County. ”For our banner towing, 97 percent of our business is done on Saturdays and Sundays and on holidays,” Gonzalez says. Recently, he says, Trump ”comes every weekend, so basically we aren’t able to work.” It’s a similar story for nearly every business at Lantana, one of the busiest small airports in the country. Flight schools, sightseeing flights and the company that operates the airport say if Trump’s visits and the current restrictions continue, they may lose millions of dollars this year. Gonzalez has been talking to county officials, the Secret Service and his member of Congress about finding a way to allow his planes in the air while Trump is at   . So far, he hasn’t seen success. The problem is that this is the peak season, when snowbirds flock to Florida beaches. Gonzalez says that for his business, time is running out. ”Probably another month,” he says. ”Two months at most. So every week that they drag their feet puts me closer and closer to closing my doors.” When Trump was a private citizen, his visits to    drew little notice. Palm Beach is used to accommodating the wealthy and famous. But protecting the president demands a level of security that has proved costly for residents, businesses and local government. Along with losing money at its airports, Palm Beach County is also worried about the police overtime it’s racking up while Trump is here: $1. 5 million so far. The heartburn is greatest in Palm Beach, a manicured enclave where residents enjoy luxury resort living and privacy. At a meeting this week, residents asked the town council to block plans for a presidential helipad at   . Jose Flores said the noise and downdraft of the massive Marine helicopters would be a major inconvenience for people who live near the club. ”This is a flying tank,” Flores said. ”If you’re having three to five flying tanks going over you, it’s going to stop your enjoyment of your property, of your environment, of this town.” It’s not that Palm Beachers aren’t proud that the president likes to spend time on the island. Some just worry he will come every weekend. When Trump is there, the Secret Service shuts down a major thoroughfare, making it difficult to get anywhere in Palm Beach. In the town’s tony shopping district, sales are down. Marley Herring, the president of the merchants association, recently asked members of the town council for help. ”As you know, the season’s very short for us,” she said. ”We have great concern regarding how the small businesses, my own included, will survive over the next four or maybe eight years.” The people who may be happiest about Trump’s visits to    are the club members. During recent visits, members rubbed shoulders with the president and his entourage. Last weekend, one took photos, later posted on social media, while Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to be getting a briefing on North Korea’s missile test. Democrats in Congress are asking the Government Accountability Office to review whether the president followed proper security protocols at the club. They also want an account of how much Trump’s    visits are costing taxpayers. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat who represents Palm Beach, says Trump needs to rethink how he uses the club. ”The dining patio is quite lovely, but it’s also quite open,” Frankel says. ”It is not an appropriate place to discuss sensitive matters to national security in the earshot of patrons or waiters.” The White House said later Trump had been briefed earlier in a secure location and he and Abe were just discussing logistics for a press event. Frankel says while the president is always welcome anywhere he goes in the U. S. she has a respectful suggestion. ”The White House might want to consider having the president bring the excitement of his position to other parts of the country where they would love to see and interact with the president and where he would be also very welcome,” she says. But as a member of the town council reminded residents recently, Trump has lived in Palm Beach for more than two decades, and he’ll be coming home to rest whether they like it or not."
"These days, you’re more likely to come across the concept of a Rorschach test in a cultural context than a clinical one. The actual psychological test  —   in which participants are asked to interpret 10 symmetric inkblot images  —   isn’t as widely used as it once was. But metaphorically, Rorschach is still our   term when something elicits a variety of interpretations among different people. The test was designed by a Swiss psychiatrist and artist in the early 1920s. Hermann Rorschach trained with influential psychiatrist Carl Jung, but he also had a strong artistic background. ”His dad was a drawing teacher and he was a very visual person,” author Damion Searls tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. In his new book, The Inkblots, Searls traces the history of the Rorschach test and the man who invented it. The Rorschach images have become something of a cliche over the years, and Searls believes that reputation is unfair. ”A lot of people do dismiss them, but those dismissals are out of date,” he says. Searls believes that when administered properly, the test can yield useful data, but he cautions that it would never be used in isolation but rather always in the context of other tests. He talks with Siegel about the evolution of the Rorschach test and the intersection of art and psychology. Interview Highlights, On how the Rorschach test didn’t start out as a test, He started off being interested in them as a perception experiment  —   in other words, not a test at all, but just a way to study how people see things. And then he started realizing that people with different kinds of personalities were seeing things differently and that he could use these images as a real test. On abstract art and psychiatry evolving at the same time  That was one of things I was most surprised [by] and kind of excited to run across in writing the book. Because if you look at it from a psychology point of view, the Rorschach test seems kind of out of left field. If you think about Freud and Jung, they’re focusing on words. But in the 19th century there was work done in psychology on how people perceive things, and that was seen to be a psychological issue. So there’s this idea that, how can we connect to things visually if they’re not people? If we look at a crying person, then we might feel sad. But if we just look at a harmonious painting or sunset, how can we feel any emotion? There’s nothing to connect to. So there was this idea that empathy  —   which was a term invented at that time  —   is the way that we connect to things that we see. On the influence of German philosopher and psychologist Karl Albert Scherner, His main point was that the mind, whether asleep or awake, transforms things symbolically. Modern psychology and abstract art are close cousins with this idea, that what we are doing when we go about the world and seeing things is not just taking in what we see, but sort of putting something of ourselves out there. That’s what’s key to both the Rorschach test and to the modern abstract art that was being invented at the same time and place. . .. Most people would say the point of abstract art is that  —   how can it be anything if it’s just a rectangle? Well, it can be something, because viewers connect to it."
"Living by the ocean might sound nice, but in the era of climate change, it’s a risky proposition. As sea levels rise, coastal residents are faced with tough choices: try to fortify their homes, move to higher ground or just pull up roots and leave. Homeowners in Nahant, Mass. are grappling with these wrenching questions. The community lies on a rocky crescent moon of land in the Atlantic Ocean just north of Boston. For its entire history, it has been at the mercy of the ocean. To get to the town back in the 1800s, you would cross a beautiful beach at low tide that connected it to the mainland. At high tide, you had to take a boat. These days, there’s a   road built on that beach, and it sits just a few feet above the water. Climate scientists predict that devastation of these areas from storms will become more common. Higher seas mean even a less powerful storm could push the tides up over Nahant’s seawalls. That is a problem Sam Merrill spends his days grappling with. He works with a firm that helps communities protect themselves from storms. ”The unfortunate thing is what we’re really facing in so many of these coastal areas is what you can rightly call an extinction threat  —   the extinction of a community,” Merrill says. ”We don’t know how to deal with extinction. It’s not really a conversation in our public sphere.” Use the audio link above to hear the full story."
"Miffy the rabbit seems quite simple. Two black dots for eyes, a sideways X for a mouth, a body inked in gentle curves  —   the artistry of Dick Bruna’s creation rests precisely in its apparent artlessness. And in the six decades since Miffy was first put to page, Bruna’s venerable rabbit has earned the affection of young fans worldwide, the admiration of art critics and even an entire museum in her honor. The Dutch illustrator and author died Thursday at the age of 89, according to his publisher. He leaves behind a trove of more than 120 books, which sold over 85 million copies translated into more than 50 languages. Born in Utrecht to a family of publishers, Bruna got his start working as a designer and illustrator for his family’s titles. During his time there, he created more than 100 posters and some 2, 000 book jackets, according to The Guardian. But it was not until Bruna published his first two Miffy books, children’s tales inspired by a story he told his own son after they’d seen a rabbit, that Bruna found the popular acclaim that would define the decades to come. Those books were published in 1955 in Dutch, with Miffy going by the name Nijntje. The Miffy titles entered English in 1964, but the Guardian notes Bruna eventually also added books about a dog called Snuffy and a series called I Can  —   all of which ”retained Bruna’s distinctive style and palette, influenced by the work of [Henri] Matisse and Picasso, which Bruna had discovered while in Paris, and by the graphic design of the De Stijl movement in Holland.” ”It is very clear pictures, almost like a pictogram, and the fact that he leaves so much out  —   he goes to the essence of things  —   and of course his very strong, powerful primary colors,” Marja Kerkhof, a friend and managing director at Bruna’s publisher, told The Washington Post. ”Even today, if you see it in a store you would think, ’Hey, this looks different to a lot of other things out there.’ There is no clutter, it’s all very clear.” The Post reports that Miffy, which turns 62 this year, turned into a worldwide ”merchandising juggernaut, featuring on stationery, toys and children’s trinkets sold across the world as part of a   (dollar) business.” But Bruna’s work remains nowhere more beloved than in his native Netherlands. The artist earned a 2015 exhibition at the renowned Rijksmuseum, where his work was set beside Matisse and members of the De Stijl movement. There, curator Caro Verbeek sought to demonstrate the difficulty of achieving such apparent simplicity, The Associated Press reported at the time: ”To prove her point, Verbeek had other curators at the museum draw Miffy’s head, with its dots for eyes and x shape representing both nose and mouth. ” ’They did not succeed,’ she said. ’It is incredibly difficult. But the fact that it seems so simple proves that he is a true genius and true master who completely controls all lines and colors.’ ” Not that the Dutch have any lack of respect for their famous native son. As one astute tweeter notes, the love is so evident in Bruna’s birthplace, Utrecht, that there’s even a traffic light in his honor."
"Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has been confirmed as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency Pruitt has long criticized. The Senate approved Pruitt on a   vote Friday afternoon, with two Democrats  —   Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota  —   voting for his nomination. Republican Susan Collins of Maine voted no. The vote came after a failed Democratic attempt to delay the confirmation proceedings until after a new batch of documents from Pruitt’s state office are made public under court order. Those emails will be released beginning next week. Pruitt has come under fire for coordinating closely with energy companies in his attempts to scale back and block federal environmental regulations. The New York Times reported that at times, Pruitt had simply copied and pasted suggested language from an energy company onto state letterhead, and then sent it to the EPA. Pruitt will almost certainly take the EPA in a drastically new direction. The agency aggressively drafted and enforced new environmental rules during the Obama administration, tightening federal standards for vehicle emissions, water quality and pollution at power plants. Pruitt is expected to slow or reverse much of that, scaling back regulations and deferring to states on environmental enforcement. That’s a process President Trump and Congress have already begun. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt led legal challenge after legal challenge against EPA regulations, even describing himself in his official biography as ”a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” Pruitt argued during his confirmation hearing that he wasn’t against environmental quality standards  —   he just thinks that they are better enforced on the state level. ”The states are not mere vessels of federal will,” Pruitt testified. ”They don’t exist simply to carry out federal dictates from Washington, D. C. There are substantive requirements, obligations, authority, jurisdiction granted to the states under our environmental statutes. That needs to be respected.” That’s a view shared by many Republicans. But former Bush administration EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told NPR she is worried Pruitt’s skepticism goes too far for him to be an effective head of the agency. ”He seems to have a level of distrust that is unusual coming into an agency, because it doesn’t necessarily bode well for good relations with the career staff that are there, with whom you have to work and you need to get things done,” she said. Whitman also questioned Pruitt’s belief in climate change. While Pruitt did tell senators during his confirmation hearing that ”science tells us that the climate is changing and human activity in some manner impacts that change,” he said ”the extent of that [human] impact is subject to continuing debate and dialogue.” Regardless of Pruitt’s personal beliefs on climate change, he is expected to dismantle the EPA’s main rule aimed at lowering the United States’ carbon footprint: the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. The rule would lower carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by about 30 percent over the coming decades and is the linchpin of the United States’ plan to meet its obligations under the Paris climate agreement. The Clean Power Plan is currently held up in federal court. President Trump campaigned on reversing it, and Pruitt was among the state attorneys general who sued to block the regulation from ever taking effect."
"The Environmental Protection Agency has a pretty simple mission in principle: to protect human health and the environment. It’s a popular purpose too. Nearly three out of four U. S. adults believe the country ”should do whatever it takes to protect the environment,” according to a 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center. Political support for the EPA, though, is less effusive. On Friday, the U. S. Senate voted to confirm Scott Pruitt as the newest administrator of the EPA, despite protests from Democrats, scientists and nearly 800 former employees of the agency. Pruitt has made a career out of suing the EPA as Oklahoma’s attorney general. Until recently, his own LinkedIn profile described him as a ”leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” Donald Trump, his expected boss, has said that he wants to get rid of the agency, before backtracking to say he wants to ”refocus” it. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have proposed separate bills that would gut the agency or eliminate it altogether. This isn’t the first time that the EPA’s role  —   or even its need  —   has been questioned. ”We’ve seen the fortunes of the agency rise and fall in different administrations,” says William K. Reilly, administrator of the EPA under President George H. W. Bush. What’s changed is how the public perceives environmental issues and how political support has shifted with it. Born with bipartisan support, The EPA wasn’t always such a politically polarizing agency. It was Richard Nixon, a Republican, who created the EPA in 1970. In the following years, he also signed off on the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act with broad bipartisan support, cementing a legacy as one of America’s greenest presidents. But it wasn’t his intention. ”It wasn’t an issue that particularly interested him,” says William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the EPA. ”But he didn’t feel he could resist the public pressure to take this on, to do something about pollution.” Public pressure was immense. The environment was one of the top issues people voted on and politicians felt it. The Clean Air Act was passed in the Senate by a vote of  . Not a single lawmaker  —   Republican or Democrat  —   voted against it. In those days, Ruckelshaus says, people viewed the environment and public health as one and the same. ”It could have just as easily been the Public Health Protection Agency,” Ruckelshaus says, of the EPA. Pollution was rampant. The air in urban areas was thick with acrid smog. Eagles  —   a national symbol  —   were nearly extinct. Lakes, rivers and streams were contaminated by sewage and industrial runoff. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire. When Nixon created the EPA in 1970, it was a political calculation. In the decades since, the factors and math behind that calculation have shifted  —   some administrations have pushed for broader environmental protections, others have dialed them down or aimed to roll them back. The Reagan years, NPR talked to three former administrators of the EPA and a   other career employees of the agency and all said that for various reasons, the situation that’s unfolding currently with Pruitt and the Trump administration is unprecedented. Most though said that the closest parable to what’s happening today, is what happened under President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. ”Reagan came in promising deregulation and making some of the same claims that we are hearing today,” Reilly says. In 1982, NPR reporter Wendy Kaufman described the Reagan administration’s stance on the EPA like this: ”Officials say many regulations add enormous cost to industry and consumers without any real environmental or health benefits. They believe past enforcement efforts were often misguided. And finally, they say, environmentalists are paranoid, seeing problems where none exist.” The EPA saw its budget slashed in its first two years under Reagan. Its enforcement arm also saw cuts. But it didn’t go well. Within two years, the agency’s administrator Anne Gorsuch  —   mother of current Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch  —   was forced to resign because of an administrative scandal. Another EPA official was thrown in jail for lying to Congress under oath. Ruckelshaus was called back in to right the ship and he says that public support for the agency swelled. Again, it became an important issue to voters and the political calculation changed with it. In the 1988 presidential campaign, George H. W. Bush called himself an environmentalist and became the first presidential candidate to campaign on the issue of climate change. He won. Public support remains high, Through all of the ups and downs of the EPA, Reilly says, it’s important to remember that public popular support for environmental protection has remained high. There is a growing partisan divide on environmental issues and fewer people identify as an environmentalist now than they have in decades past. ”Environmental groups have basically become an arm of the Democratic Party,” Ruckelshaus says, a move that he thinks is a mistake. But polling for the environment remains stubbornly high. There is a disconnect though. Why, if the majority of Americans feel that the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth, do environmental issues rarely come up in political debates. As ClimateWire pointed out, in the 2016 presidential campaign, there were ”3 debates over 4 ½ hours, and zero climate questions.” People don’t vote the issue. National security, health care, guns and trade policy, among others, were all viewed as more important to voters in the 2016 election. Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment looked at that disconnect in 2005, while Reilly was an adviser. ”And the answer that came back was that the public essentially has concluded that there is no crisis,” Reilly says. ”That the kind of issues that were emergency issues that prompted the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency have been very well addressed by the Environmental Protection Agency.” Other former EPA administrators and officials agree. ”People can’t touch, smell and feel pollution the way they did back in the 1960s, the 1970s,” Ruckelshaus says. ”I think the EPA and state agencies have become a victim of their own success.” Changing tides, As administrator of the EPA, Pruitt has said that he would rely more on the states for environmental protections and look to reign in the federal government’s role. As Oklahoma’s attorney general he sued the federal government on behalf of businesses, industry and constituents who felt that the EPA was overly burdensome. ”I can understand why people get frustrated with regulation because they always cause somebody to spend more money or change their behavior on issues where they feel like there might not even be a problem,” says Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor and administrator of the EPA under President George W. Bush. But she, Ruckelshaus, Reilly and other former EPA officials say that there is still a pressing need for federal environmental protections. ”Pollution today is far more subtle,” Ruckelshaus says. It’s invisible greenhouse gases that cause global warming, or   pollution sources like the agricultural runoff from a farmer’s land that makes its way to a river. Those are no less threatening than issues like a burning river, Ruckelshaus says. And in some cases  —   specifically, in terms of climate change  —   they can be even worse. ”As people are subjected to sea level rise and   severity of storms, of floods, of droughts, they know something’s going on,” Whitman says. ”They’re often ahead of Washington in that.” And she believes that as those effects of climate change become more widely felt, the environment will become a top issue for voters again. That is, she says, unless changes at the EPA and in the country’s environmental regulations by the Trump administration don’t do it first."
"It’s been a long week. Take a moment  —   or even a minute!  —   to watch something beautiful. Around the third week of February each year, Horsetail Fall lights up Yosemite National Park with a spectacle of orange and red. The phenomenon, which has taken on the decidedly majestic nickname ”firefall,” is an optical trick of the sunset when a host of conditions are just right. If the waterfall is flowing with snowmelt, if Earth is aligned with the sun just so  —   as it is this time of year  —   and if the skies are clear enough to let that sunlight through, the fall appears to flare with the fiery glow of lava. It kindles into life for just about 10 minutes a day. The tiny window doesn’t dissuade the swarm of zoom   photographers from descending on the spot each year  —   photographers such as Michael Frye, who spoke with NPR’s Audie Cornish about the sight in 2012. ”It’s this narrow ribbon of water falling from this high cliff, the eastern buttress of [the El Capitan rock formation],” he says. ”Just that narrow little ribbon of water is lit and everything else around it is dark. And with the right light, that water can turn orange or even red.” Thankfully, Frye and his fellow photographers  —   and videographers  —   have taken the trouble to send back dispatches of these glowing minutes. After all, how but for them could we retrieve this    reprieve of our own? Short of flying to the firefall ourselves, of course. Maybe next year."
"Americans have complained for years about presidential campaigns that start too early and last too long. Now, they are confronted with one that refuses to end  —   even after reaching the White House. There may never be a ”last word” written or spoken about President Trump’s   barrage in the East Room Thursday, but the first word from many was: ”Wow.” That was the initial reaction blurted out by Bret Baier at Fox News, as well as by Wolf Blitzer at CNN. For the first time since he took the oath, the president took questions from all kinds of news organizations. And he took them very, very personally. ”I’ll tell you what else I see,” the president said with some heat. ”I see tone. You know the word ’tone’? The tone is such hatred. I’m really not a bad person, by the way. No, but the tone is such  —   I do get good ratings, you have to admit that  —   the tone is such hatred.” The impromptu news conference came sprawling onto screens everywhere out of a planned introduction for Alex Acosta, the new nominee to be secretary of labor. But Trump appeared and stepped onto the dais alone. This was to be a   show, and White House officials said it was very much the idea of that one man. In fact, Trump used the words ”I” or ”me” or ”we” in reference to himself (the royal we) more than 500 times. ”I’m here today,” he said, ”to update the American people on the incredible progress that has been made in the last four weeks since my inauguration. We have made incredible progress. I don’t think there’s ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we’ve done.” Trump seemed flummoxed by all the stories about the firing of national security adviser Michael Flynn and dissension within the president’s inner circle, stories that have been in heavy rotation throughout all forms of media this week. It was time to get the national focus back on the president himself and reverse the spotlight on his antagonists in the media. ”The press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about  —   we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people,” the president said. ”Tremendous disservice. We have to talk about it. To find out what’s going on, because the press honestly is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control.” Trump especially objected to accounts of his administration being in disarray. ”I turn on the TV, open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos,” he said. ”Chaos. Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a   machine, despite the fact that I can’t get my Cabinet approved.” Admirers in the media called it ”feisty” and ”combative” and ”vintage Trump.” The website Conservative HQ called it ”an epic beatdown of the media elite.” When it was over, the White House staff was clearly elated. But detractors used an array of terms that began with the same two letters: ”unprecedented,” ”unhinged,” ”untethered” and ”unbelievable” being just a few  —   and ”unpresidential” appearing often as well. Not a few watchers were unsettled by Trump’s reference to Russia and ”nuclear holocaust” or his mention of the Russian spy ship reported to be off the coast. Trump said he had encouraged his new secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, to meet with the Russians, but added: ”I told him I know politically it is probably not good for me. The greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles offshore right out of the water.” But once again, the president seemed as concerned with how he won the presidency as he was about his actual presidency. He sounded very much like the man we all saw on the hustings in 2015 and through the long months of campaigning in 2016. At one point he referred to his 306 votes in the Electoral College as ”the largest margin of victory since Ronald Reagan.” When Peter Alexander of NBC News pointed out there had been five larger ones in that time span, the president began to say, ”I meant for Republicans,” just as Alexander was adding that George H. W. Bush had won with 426. ”I was given that information,” Trump said. ”I have seen that information out there.” The president often seemed to be responding in the manner of a candidate. He talked about a favorable Rasmussen poll (which does not meet NPR’s polling standards for a good poll) showing him with 55 percent approval. Other polls this week from Pew Research and Gallup (more respected outfits) have him as low as 39 or 40 percent. He talked about the unfairness of the media and about the ”mess” he ”inherited” upon his inauguration. And he returned repeatedly to complaints about Hillary Clinton, about the free pass she got from the media, about her dealings with Russia as secretary of state and about a deal involving exports of uranium. The campaign mode continues this weekend, with the president again rallying like it’s 2016. He teased it at his news conference: ”In fact, I’ll be in Melbourne, Fla. 5 o’clock on Saturday, and I heard  —   just heard that the crowds are massive that want to be there.” Perhaps the campaign goes on because the president sees it as good politics. It enables him to dominate the cable coverage, much as he did in 2015 and 2016. By doing so, in all likelihood, he will keep his supporters enthusiastic and united. This will pressure congressional Republicans to back his versions of the policies on which they differ. These would include the replacement for Obamacare, the future of Medicare, the size of the federal deficit, details of new trade and tax arrangements and the commitment to rebuilding U. S. infrastructure. Or perhaps the campaign continues because it continues. The president does not yet seem comfortable in his new office with all the crosswinds and complications of divided powers and shared responsibilities. But he remains utterly comfortable onstage  —   especially in front of an adoring crowd and a national TV audience."
"More than two months after he publicly criticized Boeing over the costs of a new Air Force One, President Trump visited one of the aircraft company’s newest facilities Friday: a plant in North Charleston, S. C. where the company will unveil a new version of its 787 Dreamliner. The president spoke nearly 24 hours after delivering a   news conference in which he discussed, among other topics, U. S. relations with Russia the resignation of Michael Flynn as his national security adviser his legally contested travel ban and a new executive action on immigration. We’ve updated this page with news from Friday’s event. ”I have to say, I love South Carolina. I love it,” Trump told a large crowd Friday, saying that his campaign hadn’t been expected to win the state  —   presumably referring to the Republican primary season  —   but that he had won in ”a landslide.” Speaking after receiving a tour of the plant, Trump headlined an event that also included both the Rev. Eric Manning of Emanuel AME Church in North Charleston and Gov. Henry McMaster, along with Boeing CEO Dennis A. Muilenburg. The event included a blessing of the Boeing fleet by the Rev. Charles Jackson of Brookland Baptist Church in Columbia. ”I have to say also: That is one beautiful airplane,” Trump said, gesturing toward the new airliner behind him. Promising ”to unleash the power of the American spirit, and to put our great people back to work,” Trump said that ”we want products made in America, made by American hands.” That was a theme that ran through this speech, as Trump spoke out against companies that export jobs and said it should be easier to manufacture products here in the U. S. ”My focus has been all about jobs. And jobs is one of the primary reasons I’m standing here today as your president,” Trump said. ”And I will never, ever disappoint you. Believe me, I will not disappoint you.” Early in his speech, the president also mentioned big government projects that have involved Boeing, from the   Super Hornet and Apache helicopter to Air Force One. ”That plane, as beautiful as it looks, is 30 years old. Can you believe it?” Trump said, gesturing toward the tarmac where the president’s current aircraft sat (Boeing’s plant shares space with Charleston’s airport). ”What can look so beautiful at 30? An airplane,” Trump said. Jokingly gesturing back and forth between the two, he added, ”I don’t know  —   which one do we like better, folks? Tell me.” At one point, Trump told the crowd, ”In the old days, when I made this speech, I got paid a lot of money. Now I have to do it for nothing.” ”Not a good deal, but that’s OK, we love it,” he added. Trump ended his speech by saying, ”God bless Boeing.” Boeing also produces the 787 at its final assembly plant in Everett, Wash. the company says its South Carolina facility builds all three versions of the jetliner  —   the     and the   which the company says is the ”newest and longest member of the family.” Since his November election win, Trump has had a complex relationship with Boeing: Trump’s visit to Boeing’s plant comes after the company’s employees in South Carolina voted against unionizing at their plant, rejecting an offer to join the International Association of Machinists on Wednesday. The president visited South Carolina one day after the state’s now former Rep. Mick Mulvaney was confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget."
"Two decades ago only about 9 percent of children’s books published in the U. S. were about people of color. Things have changed since then, but not by much. On Wednesday, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Education School revealed that in 2016, it counted 427 books written or illustrated by people of color, and 736 books about people of color out of about 3, 400 books it analyzed. That adds up to 22 percent of children’s books. The CCBC tracks how many books are published by and about people of color every year. Since 1994, it has had categories for black, Latino, Native American and Asian Pacific Americans, who make up a combined 38 percent of the population. The center started keeping track prompted by requests from teachers who had mostly students of color but couldn’t find books to reflect their experiences. ”And in some cases, they were looking for books that didn’t exist,” said Director Kathleen Horning. She says that the reluctance to tell stories about people of color is something that you see across multiple fields, from television to the Academy Awards to publishing. ”There’s no problem with publishing five or six books in a season about bunnies,” Horning said. ”But if we’re talking about books about black boys?” Stacey Barney, a senior editor at Penguin Putnam Young Readers, said that one of the most important things about literature  —   particularly literature consumed by children and young adults  —   is that it helps young people learn to look beyond their own personal experiences. ”You can grow up and think, ’Oh, well everybody must get up and watch cartoons and eat cereal and go to school and that’s just what life is.’ ” She said young readers aren’t really familiar with experiences outside their own. She grew up in Brooklyn, N. Y. a very diverse city. ”But still I was unaware until I started reading books that prompted me to look outside of my experience. . .. Books that are about black people or about Muslims or about Asians can also find a home and be loved by people who are not of that culture.”"
"Royal Canadian Mounted Police are reporting a flurry of illegal crossings into Canada in recent months. Officials say Quebec province has seen the highest influx of people seeking asylum, with many crossing in snowy, remote areas in northern New York. One illegal crossing area that has become particularly popular among immigrants is in Champlain, N. Y. in the northeast corner of the state. At the end of Roxham Road, there’s a big dead end and a ”Road Closed” sign  —   but there’s also a very heavily trafficked, trodden route through the snow that goes over into Canada. From the ditch, the border is about 15 feet away, and the Mounties  —   the Canadian police  —   wait on their side for those who will cross the border next. ”They’ll be walking  —   you’ll see whole families, like two adults and like three children most of the time,” says Matthew Turner. ”They’ll be walking down the road with suitcases and backpacks.” Turner and his family moved into a trailer on Roxham Road in October. He says that, since then, he has seen people walking past his house, as well as a steady flow of taxis driving by. Taxis like the blue Honda minivan that rounds the corner. It’s stopped by U. S. Border Patrol agents, but after the officer inspects the passenger’s paperwork, the cab is allowed to continue. At the road’s end, a young woman with an infant gets out of the taxi. She doesn’t want to talk and seems to have limited English. She hugs the baby to her chest and, with her free hand, pulls a black suitcase on wheels. As she moves toward the ditch, several Canadian police officers approach on their side. One officer speaks out, saying, ”You have to go through the, the custom, the border  —   but if you do cross here, you’ll be arrested and then we’ll take you in charge, OK?” The woman nods and steps toward them. The Canadian policeman offers to carry her baby as she makes her way through the slippery snow path. She hands the child to him and then takes the hand of another officer who helps her to the road on the Canadian side. The police bring out a child car seat and place it in their cruiser. The woman is arrested, and she and her child are driven away from the border. The whole thing takes about six minutes. People who work with immigrants in Canada say these   would rather be arrested in Canada than live in fear of how U. S. officials might handle their cases. ”There’s quite an increase in people walking through illegally,” says Cpl. Camille Habel, spokeswoman with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She says that after the Mounties arrest those who cross the border illegally, the police can only detain them for up to 24 hours before either releasing them or presenting them in front of a judge. ”Once that we do all our checks and that we can confirm that they’re not a threat to national security, we hand them over to [the Canadian Border Service Agency] who then start the immigration process,” Habel says. Habel won’t give any information about the woman and child who crossed into Canada from upstate New York, but officials with the CBSA say that if they determine that she isn’t a danger of a flight risk, the agency will release her and her baby. It’s then up to a tribunal to evaluate her candidacy for refugee status. That woman’s experience is not unique, though. At least two other families crossed into Canada at Roxham Road on Wednesday, knowingly walking into police arrest."
"The young mother spoke softly but with determination. After fleeing from her abusive boyfriend, she and her newborn baby found refuge last month in a women’s shelter on the outskirts of Moscow. According to Russian law at the time, he could have faced criminal prosecution for striking her. Now, under legislation signed Feb. 7 by Russian President Vladimir Putin, her partner would most likely face an administrative fine of up to $500. The    woman asked her name not be used because her boyfriend, whose abuse she reported to authorities, is still looking for her. But she was blunt in her opinion about Russia’s new law decriminalizing domestic violence for   offenders. ”The law mentions one blow, but with one blow, you can kill someone,” she said. ”What kind of husbands, what kind of families, will we have with that law? What kind of relationships will we have in our society? Is that normal?” The young mother and her    baby are among five women and nine children staying in the   house on the grounds of a Russian Orthodox monastery. It is one of just a handful of shelters serving the Moscow metropolitan area. For a population of more than 12 million, the city has ”fewer than 150 shelter spaces,” according to Human Rights Watch. Backers of the new law, including the Russian Orthodox Church, argued that it would protect families by keeping the government out of   domestic disputes that don’t result in serious bodily harm. But human rights groups and other critics say it makes women more vulnerable to abuse. The changes to Russia’s criminal code were approved by the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, by a vote of 380 to 3. The two female legislators who coauthored the bill, Olga Batalina and Olga Okuneva, both declined interview requests from NPR. ”Domestic tyrants” who repeatedly and systematically resort to violence against family members should be subject to criminal prosecution, Batalina argued in the Duma last month, but cases of light, unpremeditated battery should be treated as a less serious administrative offense. The Russian Orthodox Church concurred that parents should be free to determine how to discipline their children, as long as they make ”moderate and reasonable use of physical punishment.” Alyona Sadikova, the director of the shelter, finds that position incomprehensible. ”I’m Orthodox Christian. I believe the church will never support any kind of violence,” she said. ”It contradicts the idea of the church.” The monastery where her shelter is located provides the building and some food. A telecommunications company donates staff salaries and medicine. What’s missing, Sadikova said, is a nationwide network of crisis centers that families in need can turn to. ”We try to get women back on their feet. This is not a hotel,” said Sadikova, who is an artist by profession. ”We’re not saviors we want women to save themselves.” Experience shows that women usually seek outside help only after multiple beatings, she said, when their lives may be threatened and children have become witnesses to violence. Forty percent of all violent crimes in Russia take place at home, and in 2014, a quarter of murders were committed by family members, according to government statistics. One problem with the current law is that it doesn’t distinguish between spousal abuse and disciplining children. Another problem is that restraining orders aren’t part of Russian legal practice. ”Inside me, I have a bright picture of the society I want to live in,” said women’s advocate Alyona Popova, who is working with lawyers on an alternative bill to present to lawmakers. Popova insists that Russia is ready for a ”Nordic model” of equality. Two crucial changes would improve the law, she said: First, making the state  —   not the victim  —   responsible for bringing a lawsuit against abusers, and second, introducing restraining orders to deal with violent domestic partners. ”They should protect the victims and not the oppressor,” Popova said. ”And now, according to that law, we protect the oppressor.” Sadikova, the shelter director, said that low public awareness of domestic violence is the biggest challenge. Her shelter once won a presidential grant to build a playground, she said, but now ”patriotic groups” such as   bikers get precedence in official funding. ”Unfortunately, we’re not conscious of the seriousness of the problem and the need for preventative measures,” Sadikova said. ”We’re moving slower than other countries, but we’ll get there in the end.”"
"One of the most joyful shows I’ve heard in years came courtesy of the     singer Betsayda Machado and her group La Parranda El Clavo, who made their New York City debut at the annual globalFEST festival in January. They root their often politically pointed lyrics with the sounds of their heritage  —   including intricate African polyrhythms and percussion, as well as    singing  —   occasionally mixed with close harmonies that evoke an   feel. Though she has been based in the capital city of Caracas for many years, Machado comes from a small village of 1, 500 people called El Clavo, located near Venezuela’s Caribbean coastline. Like Machado and her bandmates, the town’s inhabitants are mostly   the descendants of slaves who had worked on the area’s cacao plantations. For generations, they’ve been able to hold onto certain elements of their African and uniquely   heritage, especially in their  . And the music of this band, La Parranda El Clavo, has helped keep their community strong and proud of their traditions. The group has been playing together for nearly three decades, primarily at town festivals, holidays and funerals. But it’s only now that they’ve begun touring North America  —   and making their singular, passionate and purposeful voices reverberate in the wider world. Betsayda Machado: vocals Nereida Machado: vocals, dance Oscar Ruiz: vocals, dance Adrian Gomez: percussion, dance, vocals Asterio Betancourt: percussion Youse Cardozo: percussion Jose Gregorio Gomez: percussion, dance, vocals Blanca Rosa Castillo: percussion. Josh Rogosin, Rick Kwan and Noriko Okabe."
"The first sign of trouble was the monkeys dropping dead in the forest. Then people started getting sick and dying, too. Brazil is in the midst of its worst yellow fever outbreak since the 1940s, when the country started mass vaccination and mosquito eradication campaigns to thwart the virus. The first cases in this current outbreak were detected in December among men living in rural parts of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, an agricultural region just north of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. As of the first week of February, the Brazilian Ministry of Health has reported more than 1, 000 suspected human cases of yellow fever and hundreds more probable cases in monkeys since December. Usually there are only a handful or at most a few dozen cases of yellow fever a year in Brazil, and they’re found deeper in the Amazon, not hundreds of miles to the south in Minas Gerais. Most of these cases are sylvatic or ”jungle” cases in which a person who’s working in or visiting a forest is bitten by an infected mosquito, says Anna Durbin, a professor of international health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. Human outbreaks tend to follow larger outbreaks among primates in the jungle. ”One of the proverbs is that ’when the howler monkey falls silent, everyone starts to worry,’ because they know yellow fever is in the area,” Durbin says. In this outbreak more than a thousand monkeys have been found dead. Health officials are analyzing the corpses to confirm whether the animals actually died from yellow fever. Durbin says this is a significant outbreak. ”What we are starting to see now is a larger number of cases,” she says. ”And the concern is it could spread to a city and you’d have urban yellow fever, which they haven’t really had in South America in something like 50 years.” In an urban outbreak, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes spread it from person to person. A different strain of mosquitoes circulates the virus in jungle outbreaks. Mosquito control programs nearly wiped out the Aedes aegypti in the Americas in the latter half of the 20th century, but that mosquito has since staged a comeback. That’s the same mosquito that fueled the yellow fever outbreak in Angola last year and allowed Zika to infect millions throughout the Americas in 2015 and 2016. (WHO announced this week that the Angolan outbreak is now officially over.) Public health officials say there’s the potential for yellow fever to spread like wildfire if it takes hold in a place that has Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and where vaccination rates are low. Unfortunately that’s the case throughout much of the tropics of this hemisphere. ”The nightmare scenario for me is San Juan, Puerto Rico,” says Mariano   an emerging infectious disease specialist and the chair of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Given how deadly yellow fever can be, an outbreak in a crowded city like San Juan, Puerto Rico, or Sao Paulo, Brazil, could be a public health disaster. ”San Juan hasn’t seen yellow fever in probably a century. Aedes aegypti is rampant,” says  . ”It [yellow fever] could spread. Yes, it could spread rapidly.” San Juan also happens to be where he grew up. The disease itself doesn’t hit everyone hard. Most victims have only mild symptoms, like fever and chills, aches and nausea. Some have no symptoms at all. About 15 percent of patients develop a more severe form that can lead to high fever, bleeding, shock, organ failure and death. In the current outbreak the Brazilian Ministry of Health is pegging the fatality rate among confirmed cases at 36 percent. Among people who develop severe symptoms, there is no specific cure and as many as half the patients die. Yet a highly effective vaccine is available to prevent the disease. The vaccine is relatively expensive and can cause adverse side effects. Also there’s been a global shortage of the vaccine recently as tens of millions of doses were shipped last year to Angola and the DRC (including from Brazil) to battle the outbreak in Africa. But even before that, yellow fever vaccination rates in the Americas have been fairly low. ”The great majority of the population in all of South America and Central America and the Caribbean are unvaccinated [against yellow fever],”   says. Officials in Brazil have launched mass vaccination campaigns in areas around where the cases have been detected. In addition, the governor in Minas Gerais has declared a public health emergency. The Brazilian government already has shipped 10 million doses of vaccine to five states in the south to try to stem the outbreak and has ordered additional stockpiles to be used in other hot spots as needed. The World Health Organization is monitoring the Brazil outbreak and offers a rather pessimistic assessment of the region’s preparedness. WHO’s website states: ”Latin America is now at greater risk of urban epidemics [of yellow fever] than at any time in the past 50 years.”"
"Republicans know the scene well: angry constituents flood local town halls, upset over health care and other congressional issues. It’s that energy that exploded eight years ago, birthing the Tea Party movement and helping the GOP take back Congress in the 2010 election. But now, they’re finding themselves on the receiving end instead of the giving end. Last week more than 1, 000 people confronted House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz at his town hall in suburban Utah. In Tennessee,   Committee Chairman Diane Black also faced a frustrated crowd of people concerned over the repeal of President Obama’s health care law. And with Congress on recess next week, more contentious town halls could be on the horizon. Democrats who lived through 2009 say the scenes are eerily familiar. ”A lot of the tactics and a lot of the energy that we’re seeing today focused at the Republican Congress in these town hall meetings is more than just reminiscent  —   it’s downright deja vu,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who worked for the party’s national campaign committee during the 2010 cycle. That isn’t by accident. An organized online grassroots push called ”Indivisible” has helped alert frustrated members of the public on how they can best reach and influence their own representatives through town halls. Democratic strategists say the Tea Party movement was the inspiration and blueprint. ”Let’s accept the fact that when citizens get engaged, it changes the course of history. You can disagree with the Tea Party, and I strongly do, but it’s hard to claim that those people getting engaged didn’t change the course of the American political discussion and what was possible politically,” said Ezra Levin, who’s now Indivisible’s executive director. Levin, his wife Leah Greenberg, and other former Democratic staffers and activists put some of their thoughts and advice on how to best engage with Congress into a Google document titled ”Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.” After pushing it out on social media, the guide spread online. Weeks later, the group has a website with more than 14. 4 million page views, is registered as a 501c( 4) and has more than 7, 200 local groups registered. The first chapter of their guide acknowledges the Tea Party movement  —   through harnessing the power of local groups magnified by online grassroots organizing: The Tea Party started as an organic movement built on small local groups of dedicated conservatives. Yes, they received some   from above, but fundamentally all the hubbub was caused by a relatively small number of conservatives working together. Allen Boyd is a former Blue Dog Democratic congressman from Florida who lost his seat in the 2010 election. He said he and his colleagues didn’t fully grasp the anger behind the Tea Party movement at first. ”I think that we were caught off guard,” Boyd said. ”We didn’t really understand what was happening and the organization behind the coordinated and   out town hall meetings.” It’s still a tough climb for Democrats in 2018.   redistricting left them with fewer competitive House seats, and they’re also playing defense in the Senate with   Democrats up for  . But Democrats are optimistic. These uprisings are happening early in President Trump’s term  —   which has been marked by a chaotic first month and historically low approval ratings. The anger eight years ago over the healthcare law didn’t fully manifest itself until the August congressional recess in 2009. The coordination by Indivisible and other groups has some Republicans claiming this is different than the Tea Party. They say the enthusiasm is ”astroturfing,” or faked grassroots support, along with paid protesters inflating the numbers. ”This is something wholly different, I think. I understand they are using some of the same methodology but it’s not the same thing,” Rep. Scott Perry,  . argued to NPR’s Susan Davis. But other conservatives say that Republicans shouldn’t dismiss these events so easily, and instead should have the foresight that their Democratic counterparts lacked eight years ago. ”Democrats deluded themselves in 2009 by disregarding the early signs of fierce resistance to their agenda, and paid the price over and over again for their heedless  . Republicans shouldn’t make the same mistake,” National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote this week. One of the key struggles Republicans have now, too, is that there is no consensus alternative health care plan if Obamacare is repealed. Lowry argues that could help diffuse some of the tension, but that some of the GOP’s impetus to try and avoid constituents won’t end well either way: The alternative is to look the other way, avoid town halls, and hope that after the repeal passes everything calms down. This was essentially the Democratic tack in 2009, and how did that work out? Jesse Ferguson, a former top spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and later Hillary Clinton, said he had made some of the same arguments that the confrontational Tea Party town halls were manufactured to explain away that furor early on. ”Our dismissals turned out to be unfounded,” Ferguson said. ”And so I think when I see Republicans saying now that this doesn’t mean anything, as a political strategist who wants Democrats to be successful in 2018. I hope they continue to believe that every day from now until the next election. Keep deluding yourself into thinking that that there’s nothing going on out there and do not change a thing.”"
"A federal appeals court says doctors in Florida must be allowed to discuss guns with their patients, striking down portions of a Florida law that restricts what physicians can say to patients about firearm ownership. In a   decision, the full panel of the 11th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law, known as the Privacy of Firearm Owners act, violates the First Amendment rights of doctors. A federal judge blocked the 2011 law from taking effect shortly after it was passed, and legal challenges by medical and gun control groups have been moving through the courts ever since. In 2014, a   panel of the 11th circuit upheld the constitutionality of the Florida law. Thursday’s ruling overturned the panel’s decision, noting there’s no evidence that by asking about guns, doctors were in any way infringing on the second amendment rights of their patients, NPR’s Greg Allen reported. As the majority decision states, ”Florida does not have carte blanche to restrict the speech of doctors and medical professionals on a certain subject without satisfying the demands of heightened scrutiny,” continuing: ”As part of their medical practices, some doctors routinely ask patients about various potential health and safety risks, including household chemicals, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, swimming pools, and firearms. A number of leading medical organizations, and some of their members, believe that unsecured firearms ’in the home increase risks of injury, especially for minors and those suffering from depression or dementia.’ ”In an effort to prevent and reduce   deaths and injuries, particularly to children, the American Medical Association ’encourages its members to inquire as to the presence of household firearms as a part of childproofing the home and to educate patients to the dangers of firearms to children.’ ”The Florida law was passed in 2011, and targeted pediatricians who asked parents about firearms in the home. Under its provisions, doctors can be punished with a fine of up to $10, 000, and can lose their medical licenses for discussing guns with patients.” The decision upheld a portion of the law that explicitly prevents doctors from discriminating against patients who own guns. The National Rifle Association, which lobbied for the law’s passage, has weighed in on the legal fight. As The Atlanta   reported, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action sent members a letter about the case in 2015. ”Physicians interrogating and lecturing parents and children about guns is not about gun safety,” the letter read. ”It is a political agenda to ban guns. Parents do not take their children to physicians for a political lecture against the ownership of firearms, they go there for medical care.” One of the judges in the majority, William Pryor, wrote a separate concurrence addressing gun rights arguments head on. ”I write separately to reiterate that our decision is about the First Amendment, not the Second. The Second Amendment ”guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons,” . .. but the profound importance of the Second Amendment does not give the government license to violate the right to free speech under the First Amendment,” he wrote. Pryor, who President Trump has said is a contender for a future position on the Supreme Court, cautioned against politicizing the practice of medicine, and continued: ”The First Amendment is a   bulwark against tyranny. . .. The promise of free speech is that even when one holds an unpopular point of view, the state cannot stifle it. The price Americans pay for this freedom is that the rule remains unchanged regardless of who is in the majority.” . .. ”If we upheld the Act, we could set a precedent for many other restrictions of potentially unpopular speech. Think of everything the government might seek to ban between doctor and patient as supposedly ’irrelevant’ to the practice of medicine. Without the protection of free speech, the government might seek to ban discussion of religion between doctor and patient. The state could stop a surgeon from praying with his patient before surgery or punish a Christian doctor for asking patients if they have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior or punish an atheist for telling his patient that religious belief is delusional. ”Without the protection of free speech, the government might seek to censor political speech by doctors. The state might prevent doctors from encouraging their patients to vote in favor of universal health care or prohibit a physician from criticizing the Affordable Care Act. Some might argue that such topics are irrelevant to a particular patient’s immediate medical needs, but the First Amendment ensures that doctors cannot be threatened with state punishment for speech even if it goes beyond diagnosis and treatment.” An aide to Florida Gov. Rick Scott said the governor was reviewing the decision, as member station WLRN reported."
"The 1987 comedy Three O’Clock High, about the showdown between a nerdy school reporter and a bully who looked like a      has gained a cult reputation over the years for cutting against the grain of the typical ’80s high school fare. Stylishly directed by   Phil Joanou, who made a name for himself doing music videos for U2, the film worked as a teenage twist on Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, another black comedy about a hapless weakling being put through the wringer. (The posters for both are remarkably similar, in fact.) At heart, the film remains a satisfying fantasy for anyone who’s ever clung to the lowest bar on the social ladder and dreamed of unlikely comeuppance. The risible new comedy Fist Fight  —   a de facto remake of Three O’Clock High  —   switches the combatants from students to teachers, but the change is anything but cosmetic. By pitting a   English teacher against an authoritarian History teacher in a crumbling, chaotic high school, director Richie Keen and his screenwriters, Van Robichaux and Evan Susser, are trying to make a point about the neglect and institutional rot that’s affecting the public school system. This may sound like timely satire for the Betsy DeVos era, however inadvertent, but Fist Fight is more an argument in favor of brutality and violence as necessary antidotes to scholastic blight. Ideally cast if nothing else, Fist Fight pits the perpetually   Charlie Day against the perpetually scowling Ice Cube in the most lopsided matchup since Bugs Bunny outwrestled The Crusher. With the school facing massive layoffs on the last day of classes, Andy Campbell (Day) is scrambling to keep his job in the English department while steering clear of the   booby traps laid for Senior Prank Day. As the only intimidator in the entire school, History teacher Ron Strickland (Ice Cube) usually doesn’t have to worry about students getting out of line, but Campbell catches him at the wrong time. After witnessing Strickland destroy an unruly student’s desk with an ax  —   shades of Sam Kinison in Back to School  —   Campbell rats him out to the principal (Dean Norris) in order to keep his job. Strickland then challenges him to a   fistfight after the final bell. The cast list continues with a host of gifted supporting players, including an excellent Tracy Morgan as a dotty   coach who has led the school’s sports teams to historic losing records, Christina Hendricks as a    Strickland loyalist, Kumail Nanjiani as an ineffectual security guard, and Jillian Bell as a teacher with unsavory passions for homemade meth and handsome   . Their contributions vary widely  —   Bell does   as well as anyone, but statutory rape jokes are beyond her capacity  —   but the tone of cheerful vulgarity will be familiar to fans of Day’s   FX sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, of which Keen has directed many episodes. As Campbell schemes to get out of the fight, the film keeps humming with jokes on the margins, most of them defiantly  . Fist Fight sets up a promising dynamic between Campbell and Strickland and the   shenanigans of a school is overrun by cruel and elaborate pranks. A   racehorse clacks through hallways greased with baby oil. The principal’s car gets parked in the lobby. Kids mow obscenities into the football field. But eventually, the undercard must yield to the main event, and retrograde attitudes about masculine toughness and the necessity of a violent    start to take over. In this respect, Fist Fight has just as much in common with ’80s staples like Lean On Me, The Principal, and Class of 1984, which dreamed of   teachers and administrators weeding out the bad element. While Fist Fight doesn’t go so far in offering itself as a prescriptive suggestion, there’s an ugliness to its language and   that works against the comedy and leaves a sour aftertaste. Schools redeemed by teachers slugging it out for the edification of their students may not be worth saving."
"The action in the U. S. school system is overwhelmingly local. But the federal government, and the courts, have an important hand in many issues that touch classrooms  —   from civil rights to international programs of study. We looked at the records of some of President Trump’s key appointees to see how they might affect education in the years to come. Jeff Sessions, attorney general (confirmed) In his first two days in office, Attorney General Sessions appeared to reverse course on the previous administration’s pursuit of transgender student protections under Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding. According to the Washington Blade, his office withdrew a motion for a partial stay of a Texas court ruling from last summer, and moved to cancel oral arguments that were scheduled for Feb. 14. The Texas court had prohibited the Obama administration from enforcing guidance on the treatment of transgender students, such as allowing students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their preference. When voting against the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009, Sessions stated, ”Today, I’m not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination. I just don’t see it.” The Department of Justice is charged in certain circumstances with enforcing prohibitions on discrimination in schools and universities. For example, DOJ has historically filed ”consent decrees,” detailed agreements on how to desegregate school systems. As The Atlantic reported, civil rights groups are expressing concern that this enforcement could be curtailed under Sessions’ Department of Justice, and that the Department of Education’s own Office for Civil Rights could be downsized or merged with DOJ. To take an example, under the Obama administration OCR investigated more than 200 higher education institutions on sexual assault issues. If Sessions does take over the OCR, then the future of those open investigations would be uncertain. Finally, Sessions’ Senate record is of a   on immigration. This worries the many students who fall under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, policy. Neil Gorsuch, Supreme Court (nominated) Judge Gorsuch has been involved in several rulings that touch on various areas of education, including school discipline and student rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. Last year, he dissented from a circuit panel ruling in A. M. v. Holmes, a case where a New Mexico   was handcuffed for disrupting class, as Education Week reported. The majority ruled that the school police officer was immune from liability. ”[A]ny reasonable officer” should know, Gorsuch wrote in the dissent, ”that arresting a now compliant class clown for burping was going a step too far.” In another case involving school discipline, Hawker v. Sandy City Corp, where an officer twisted a   ’s hand in a ”control hold,” pushed him against a wall and handcuffed him, Gorsuch joined the majority ruling that no excessive force was used. Gorsuch’s opinions in three different cases all tended toward limiting the responsibilities of school districts toward students with autism and other conditions  —   for example, if they leave school of their own accord out of frustration. IDEA’s standard of a ”free appropriate public education,” reads Gorsuch’s opinion in one of these cases, ”is not an onerous one.” Rex Tillerson, secretary of state (confirmed) The State Department might not seem that involved in education at first glance, but Tillerson could play a role in how American students are perceived abroad and vice versa. The department funds a slew of study abroad programs, like the Fulbright Scholarship, the Critical Language Scholarship Program and multiple   scholarships for high school students. It also houses the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which facilitates student exchanges and   programs. The department also oversees student visas for foreign students coming to the United States, like the   and  . Some of these visa holders were among those caught up in last month’s executive order banning the entry of citizens from seven   countries. There are currently more than a million international students enrolled in American universities. Since Tillerson doesn’t have a political track record, it’s a little hard to tell where he’ll fall as far as education opportunities and policies within the State Department. But, we do know that ExxonMobil, the company that Tillerson ran before taking on his new position, has regularly touted the importance of STEM education and funded multiple scholarships and   programs worldwide through the ExxonMobil Foundation. As for Tillerson’s personal stance on education, he wrote a 2013   in The Wall Street Journal, defending the Common Core and expounding on the importance of education in a global world. Here’s a snippet: ”We need to raise expectations at every grade level so that, for instance, students who do well in math in lower grades are spurred to take algebra and more advanced math. But we need high standards to drive efforts to improve educational outcomes in every subject. ”With these education standards under attack in many states where they have been adopted or are being considered, the Common Core needs support now more than ever if America is going to reverse its education decline and prepare its young people to compete in today’s dynamic global economy.” Tom Price, secretary of health and human services (confirmed) At his confirmation hearing, Tom Price said his goal as secretary of health would be to make insurance accessible to everyone. But his proposals as a congressman to cut Medicaid’s federal funding could affect school districts, especially those with a higher concentration of   students. According to a survey from AASA, the School Superintendents Association, about 1, 000 school district leaders from 42 states were ”deeply concerned” about Republican proposals to refinance Medicaid. Republicans have typically proposed turning Medicaid into a block grant program, which could eliminate schools from eligibility for reimbursement funds. ”Medicaid plays a very important role in schools because it allows school districts to receive reimbursement for students with disabilities who have services that are immensely necessary in order for them to learn,” says Sasha Pudelski, author of the study. Those services include speech language pathology and occupational and physical therapy. About   of the respondents to the superintendents survey said they use Medicaid reimbursements specifically to subsidize the salaries of professionals, such as nurses, mental health providers and specialized instructional support personnel, who provide the services for special education. Ryan Zinke, secretary of the interior (nominated) The Interior Department is home to the Bureau of Indian Education, which accounts for roughly 42, 000 students at 164 elementary and secondary schools on 64 reservations in 23 states. Currently, Zinke is a Republican U. S. representative from Montana, a state that has one of the larger Native American populations in the country, and served as a state senator before that. A majority of the bills Zinke has sponsored have to do with public lands and natural resources  —   not a surprise for someone tapped to head the Department of the Interior  —   but Native American issues have also accounted for a notable percentage of bills he has put his name on. As far as education, Zinke has repeatedly voiced his support for keeping education policy control at a local level. ”I don’t have a problem with standards,” he said in 2014 campaign speech in Helena. ”But states should have more say in developing standards, rather than a    .” His website says he opposes Common Core, is in favor of local school board control and supports families who choose homeschooling."
"A news outlet publishes a story that a Republican politician dismisses as ”fake news.” Sounds familiar, right? But in this case, there’s a twist. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel in Colorado is accusing state Sen. Ray Scott of defamation and threatening to sue. If filed, legal experts said it would be the first suit of its kind, potentially setting a legal definition for what is considered fake news and what is not. The dispute began with an opinion column in the newspaper supporting a bill that would give journalists and others greater access to public records. Scott, who represents Grand Junction and serves as assistant majority leader in the state Senate, postponed a hearing and vote on the bill. The column urged him to move it forward. ”We call on our own Sen. Scott to announce a new committee hearing date and move this bill forward.” Scott took issue with the column on Twitter. ”We have our own fake news in Grand Junction,” Scott tweeted. He then added a separate statement on Facebook: The very liberal GJ Sentinel is attempting to apply pressure for me to move a bill. They have no facts, as usual, and tried to call me out on SB 40 know as the CORA bill. They haven’t contacted me to get any information on why the bill has been delayed but choose to run a fake news story demanding I run the bill. Scott declined an interview request on the advice of his lawyer. The accusation that the column was ”a fake news story” raised the ire of Jay Seaton, the Sentinel’s publisher. ”I’m accustomed to all kinds of criticism for what we do that comes with the job,” he said. But Seaton says the term ”fake news” is ”an attempt to undermine the speaker. That’s where this bumps up against the First Amendment. When you’ve got a government actor who doesn’t like something he’s seen and tries to diminish its credibility, then you’ve got real problems.” And, potentially, a lawsuit. Seaton says he’s going to cool down for a couple of weeks but is looking at his options for filing the suit, which is likely to put the ”fake news” term in the spotlight, said Steven Zansberg, an attorney who has represented the press in Colorado, including, at times, the Sentinel, though not in this case. Zansberg noted that the Sentinel isn’t alone in facing such accusations. ”We are seeing a trend, not just here in Colorado, but that politicians for a variety of reasons have taken to calling very legitimate media entities  —   whether it be The New York Times, The Washington Post or CNN  —   fake news,” he said. ”It’s intended to delegitimize those sources for news.” Risk of legal backfire, Aside from whether there’s a legal case against such accusations, there’s the question of whether it’s a good idea for a news organization to combat its detractors in court. Bringing cases like this could ultimately backfire on the press because legal arguments made in such cases could later be used against them, said George Freeman, the executive director of the nonprofit Media Law Resource Center. ”Then the next time you’re arguing something is opinion to win your case, maybe the court will look at this case and say, ’No . ..’ it’s similar to this case where the judge decided it’s a fact,” Freeman said. Freeman spent more than three decades as   counsel for The New York Times. The newspaper has a strict policy against filing libel claims against detractors on the principle that the press doesn’t want to suppress the speech of others. Still, Freeman believes the Sentinel is within its rights to threaten a lawsuit. ”I think the line has to be set. People just can’t call whatever they don’t like ’fake news,’ and that’s what [Scott] is essentially doing.” Poor timing for Colorado GOP, The fight between the newspaper and the state senator is exacerbated by the fact that the bill at the heart of the dispute is something many journalists in Colorado want to see become law. The legislation would make it easier for news organizations to analyze digital data through open records. The bill’s Democratic sponsor now worries the measure is in jeopardy. The battle over what is news in Colorado comes as state Republican leaders are trying to improve relations with the local press to contrast themselves from President Trump, whose battle with the media doesn’t show any signs of letting up. For the first time in years, Republicans are holding multiple media briefings each week and Republican senators recently hosted a reporter meet and greet. Some worry this potential lawsuit will be a setback. ”There’s some risk of squelching open dialogue and that’s one thing I’ve been trying to encourage as majority leader,” said Senate Majority Leader Chris Holbert, a Republican. To him, ”fake news” is a relative term and the fight between the newspaper and his colleague is a sideshow. ”What it means to one person might be different than another,” said Holbert. ”Are stories made up entirely out of whole cloth? In this instance, it seems like there are differing perspectives on the same reality. This really seems to be rather unnecessary.”"
"In a series of recent interviews, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal physician Dr. Harold N. Bornstein told The New York Times that our new commander in chief has what amounts to a pretty unremarkable medical chart. Like about a quarter of American adults, Trump is on a statin for high cholesterol. He also takes a daily baby aspirin for heart health, an occasional antibiotic for rosacea, a skin condition, and Propecia, a pill to promote hair growth. Bornstein also told the Times that should he be appointed White House doctor, he probably wouldn’t test the president for baseline dementia risk, something many doctors have argued should be mandatory. At 70, Trump is the oldest American president to ever take office. Couple his age with a family history of dementia  —   his father Fred developed Alzheimer’s disease in his 80s  —   and one could argue that the question of baseline cognitive testing for the U. S. head of state has taken on new relevance. An assortment of fairly simple tests exist that can establish a reference point for cognitive capacity and detect early symptoms of mental decline. One of the most common such screens is the   Status Examination, a series of questions that gauges attention, orientation and   memory. It takes about five to 10 minutes to complete. Yet admitting vulnerability of any kind isn’t something politicians have been keen to do. The true health of politicians has likely been cloaked in secrecy since the days of Mesopotamian kings, but definitely since the Wilson administration. In 1919, President Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke, the after effects of which were covered up by his wife, doctor and cabinet. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s disability related to polio and John F. Kennedy’s various ailments were minimized. And it’s possible, some have speculated, that Reagan developed dementia while still in office that was also concealed. But until Reagan, septuagenarian presidents at risk for dementia weren’t a concern. ”Donald Trump at the time of his inauguration was older than half of our deceased former presidents at the age when they died,” says Dr. Jacob Appel, a Mt. Sinai School of Medicine psychiatrist who has studied the health of politicians and presidents. ”Only a generation ago, our political leaders  —   like the rest of us  —   were likely to die of heart disease or cancer in their 60s and 70s, what we now think of as late middle age.” Teddy Roosevelt died at 60, FDR at 63, and Lyndon Johnson at 64, all before dementia usually sets in. It is a cruel Darwinian yin to the yang of medical progress that as we live longer and longer, new health problems like mental deterioration can emerge. ”This is a relatively recent problem that may call for a novel solution,” says Appel. Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, took issue with revelations in The New York Times, saying that anyone’s personal physician shouldn’t divulge health information without permission  —   even if that person is the president. Yet Caplan says there needs to be greater transparency when it comes to presidential health. ”I think we’re about 50 years overdue for having some sort of annual physical for the president and vice president, the results of which should be reported publicly,” he says. ”Part of this should be psychiatric and cognitive testing.” Caplan says the exam should be conducted by an independent panel of external physicians selected by a major medical society, as any internal reports from the president’s personal doctors are likely to be spun for political purposes. He acknowledges that plenty of past presidents have released medical information, but points out that such disclosures were likely curated by presidential handlers. What’s more, these reports don’t contain information about mental health, as Vice News’ Alex Thompson noted in a January article for Politico that argued for the appointment of a presidential psychiatrist. ”If, say, a president is showing cognitive decline, the people and Congress should be aware of it and be able to argue it,” says Caplan, ”Maybe voters would care. Maybe they wouldn’t. Some people might prefer a demented Donald Trump to whomever the Democrats have to offer! But at least there would be discussion.” Caplan points out that people knew about Dick Cheney’s bad heart for years, and he still got elected vice president. Mt. Sinai’s Appel isn’t sold on mandatory public screenings for presidents. Even with an external panel, the process would become politicized, he says. He also questions how to objectively determine what level of impairment renders a candidate unfit for office. ”As a colleague of mine says, ’One candidate with half a brain may be better than the other candidate with a whole brain.’ I fear that baseline cognitive screening is a rather facile solution.” This isn’t to say that Appel objects to steps to ensure mentally unfit politicians are removed from office. The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlines the succession of high office if a president dies, resigns or becomes incapacitated, provides a logical process for removing a   president. Yet, Appel asks, will anyone actually apply it? ”Regrettably, our current political climate makes it unlikely that such a measure will be invoked, even when necessary,” he says. ”Until the system is fixed, and the political culture changes, medical information is rather useless. . .. To one side, it will be a smoking gun, and to the other side it will be fake news or alternative facts.” Like Appel, Caplan doesn’t hold out much hope that the public would be clued in if a president’s cognition, including Trump’s, starts to meaningfully decline. ”What will they do if he starts to slip? Nothing!” Caplan declares. ”If that were to happen, he’ll be protected. . .. They’ll take over his Twitter feed. . .. This is how it’s always been.” Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired, Scientific American and on TheAtlantic. com. He graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. You can follow him on Twitter: @BretStetka."
"On a clear, cold winter evening, the sun begins to set at Lost Lake Farm near Jewell, Iowa, and Kevin Dietzel calls his 15 dairy cows to come home. ”Come on!” he hollers in a singsong voice. ”Come on!” Brown Swiss cows and black Normandy cows trot across the frozen field and, in groups of four, are ushered into the small milking parlor. Unstable milk prices that rarely get very high have forced most dairies to grow their herds to make money on volume. In general, farmers rarely keep only one or two cows in a red barn as is so often depicted in children’s books. Dietzel, who has 15 milking cows, is among the   farmers in the U. S. trying to turn a profit without having to churn out substantially more milk. ”My business plan was to add value to that milk by making cheese,” Dietzel says. Increasing demand for upscale, local foods has created a market for     like Dietzel. Profit is not guaranteed and the upfront investment is significant, but it’s the model Dietzel has chosen. Dietzel had always been interested in dairy farming, but when he finally decided to give it a go, he found himself in central Iowa, where land is expensive and dairy herds are few. He and his wife built a cheesery with a milking parlor on one end, and through a separate entrance, a   looking room filled with stainless steel and   plastic. At the entrance, Dietzel trades his warm hat and coat for a hairnet and apron and gets to work massaging curds into wheels of cheese. His signature product is Ingrid’s Pride, named for one of the cows. It’s a cheese related to provolone, but made using Dietzel’s own technique and featuring a unique flavor related to the grasses his cows eat. Dietzel’s     processing means he can sell cheese for more than what a big company like Kraft or Cabot could. ”We have to do something that’s a little bit more original and is also going to be worth that money,” he says. ”Hopefully, we’re doing that.” Dietzel is not the only one. Iowa State University dairy scientist Stephanie Clark says that over the past seven years, she’s seen one to two new startups invest in cheese each year. ”It’s amazing the history that we have in Iowa on its own,” Clark says, ”and then we have quite a lot of success throughout the Midwest.” The math can make sense. With a     calculation, Clark says one cow’s milk might yield a farmer $13 a day. Turning that milk to cheese could gross the same farmer $105. Obviously, there are expenses beyond what a   dairy has. But small,    businesses make money with cheeses that fetch a premium. In the past 15 years, membership in the American Cheese Society  —   a national group of home and   cheesemakers  —   has more than doubled to 1, 700 members today. ”We are talking about specialty cheese,” Clark says. ”We’re talking about smaller farms  —   [they] can be artisan, can be farmstead.” The small storefront of The Cheese Shop in Des Moines is crowded with a cheese case, wine displays and a handful of tables for the   lunch menu. A cheesemonger greets everyone who enters and all customers are encouraged to taste samples before buying. Owner C. J. Bienert was enamored of the taste and variety of American cheeses when he opened the shop five years ago. He combs the Midwest for the best ones, even stocking a small amount of an apple   goat cheese from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that costs $50 a pound. ”But it sells,” Bienert says with a laugh. ”You buy a tenth of a pound, $5 worth, a very small little taste, and it’s a treat.” Still, that’s 10 times what you might pay for a simple block at the supermarket. Many of Bienert’s other offerings are still special, but less expensive. Right now, he says about 70 percent of the cheeses in the shop are domestic. ”I really do believe in the next five years we’ll be able to be 80 to 90 percent American artisan and we’ll have at least half a dozen, if not a dozen, more producers here in Iowa,” Bienert says. The Cheese Shop also features cheeses from Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado and other regions of the country. On a gray day with a wintry mix falling outside, comfort foods like   macaroni and grilled cheese sandwiches attract a lunch crowd. ”I’m a big blue cheese fan, but anything soft and stinky is what I like,” says Cassie Valek of nearby Newton, Iowa. ”I like the Prairie Breeze cheddar I think those are probably my two favorites. I’m fairly new to Iowa, so I like to get out and explore and try all of the options here.” Another customer, Parady Boatwright, says she stops in almost once a week. ”There’s a lot of misconception that great cheese can only happen in one country,” says Boatwright, who grew up in France but has been in Iowa for more than 20 years. ”But when you come here, The Cheese Shop, it reminds you that great products can come from anywhere and are made by people who love what they do.” This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration focused on food and agriculture. "
"Updated at 3:50 p. m. ET, Many only know Norma McCorvey by a name that’s not hers. Under the pseudonym Jane Roe, McCorvey became the central figure of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the U. S. But in the decades that followed, the complex woman came to serve as a champion at times for both sides of the deep divide over abortion rights. McCorvey died Saturday of heart failure at the age of 69, according to her daughter Melissa, and Joshua Prager, a journalist who is writing a book about the court case, says McCorvey died in Katy, Texas. How McCorvey became Roe, It was her third pregnancy  —   after Melissa, her eldest, and another child McCorvey gave up for adoption  —   that brought McCorvey to the attention of the lawyers who would eventually take up her case. The    McCorvey, who was then unmarried, had been seeking an abortion but could not find a doctor in Texas who would perform the procedure, which was then illegal except when the life of the mother was endangered. Attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee took up McCorvey’s case, and in 1970, they filed the lawsuit that  —   after several twists and turns  —   would ultimately wind up at the Supreme Court. By the time the ruling was finally passed down in 1973, however, McCorvey had already carried her pregnancy to term, and had given the child up for adoption. Though Roe v. Wade may not have changed McCorvey’s particular circumstances, the landmark Supreme Court ruling had a massive effect on the cultural and political landscape of the United States. The   decision, which invalidated state bans on abortion in the U. S. may not have started the   dispute over the procedure, but it came to be its central flashpoint in the decades that followed. McCorvey after the decision, As Julie Rovner reported for NPR in 2013  —   the decision’s 40th anniversary  —   opinions on the ruling remained as deeply entrenched as the year it was handed down. ”Over the past two decades, opinion on whether or not Roe should be overturned has barely changed,” Rovner reported at the time, citing a Pew Research Center poll. ”In 1992, 60 percent of those asked said the court should not overturn the ruling. Today that’s up to 63 percent.” The case had no less of an impact later on McCorvey, who was still just 25 when it ended. She maintained her anonymity for more than a decade, until setting it aside in the 1980s. At that point, she remained a staunch defender of abortion rights, ”working for a time at a Dallas women’s clinic where abortions were performed,” according to The Associated Press. Yet in the   after the publication of her first memoir, McCorvey underwent a dramatic conversion  —   announcing that she had become a   Christian. What’s more, she went to work for the   group Operation Rescue, from which position she then championed against the abortion rights granted by the case that bears her pseudonym. ”I’ll be serving the Lord and helping women save their babies. I will hold a   position for the rest of my life,” McCorvey once said, explaining her conversion. ”I think I’ve always been  . I just didn’t know it.” In an interview with Fresh Air in the ’90s, McCorvey looked back on her experience as Jane Roe. ”I feel like a role model in one sense of the word,” McCorvey said. ”But when people really stop and really sit down and think about Jane Roe or Norma McCorvey, I feel like any woman who’s ever been denied anything in her whole life is a Jane Roe. Because no woman should have to suffer all the pain and humiliations and indignities that I’ve had to face.”"
"Jan. 22, 2013, marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. But the conventional wisdom that the court’s   decision marked the beginning of a contentious battle that still rages today is not the case, according to those on both sides of the dispute. Michael Taylor, executive director of the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, has been involved in the   effort since the late 1960s. He says the present fight dates back to the 1950s, when some groups ”began urging the overturn or modification of existing laws” banning abortion. Linda Greenhouse agrees. ”It’s important to understand how we got to where we are, and not to misunderstand the various lessons of Roe,” says Greenhouse, who spent 30 years covering the Supreme Court for the New York Times and now lectures at Yale Law School. But, not surprisingly, not everyone agrees on what those lessons are. Abortion foes like Taylor say the court’s Roe decision, by nationalizing the debate, set the nation on its current path toward making the issue a seemingly intractable one. ”I’m not sure if you’d have as much black and white in politics as you do today if the court had not taken this very aggressive position,” he says. ”As another scholar said, the court has made legislators and citizens mute on this issue.” But Greenhouse, along with Yale Law professor Reva Siegel, disagrees. In both a recent book, Before Roe v. Wade, and the Yale Law Journal article ”Before (and After) Roe v. Wade: New Questions About Backlash,” the authors suggest that factors other than the court decision may have had much more to do with the state of today’s debate. One important thing most people don’t realize, says Greenhouse, is that the move to relax state abortion laws came not from women’s rights groups but from the medical profession and a prominent apolitical group of judges and lawyers called the American Law Institute. ”These were heavily, heavily   professional organizations that looked at the regime of criminal abortion laws that were driving women to back alleys and were putting doctors in legal jeopardy if they acted in what they considered to be the best interests of their patients,” Greenhouse says. ”And that’s where the impetus really began.” Even those on the other side of the abortion debate don’t dispute that the debate began well before the Supreme Court entered the fray. David O’Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, notes that the American Law Institute’s model law called for allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormality, and to preserve the physical health of the pregnant woman. ”And that law was passed in a number of states,” he says. ”Between 1967 and 1970, a total of 19 states had legalized abortion for reasons other than to save the life of the mother.” It’s the next part of Greenhouse’s and Siegel’s argument that’s more controversial. They say one of the things that really politicized the abortion issue was the efforts of those working to   President Richard Nixon in 1972. His aides, including future Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, wanted to lure Northern Catholic voters, who had traditionally voted Democratic, over to the Republican Party. Nixon ”was strongly advised by his strategists . .. to make a play for a Northern urban Catholic Democratic vote,” says Greenhouse. ”A kind of Northern strategy that mirrored the Southern strategy.” In fact, up until then, top Republicans tended to be more in favor of abortion rights than Democrats, including, for much of his first term, Nixon himself. ”It’s ” says Greenhouse. ”It’s like going through the looking glass into another world.” So, taking his aides’ advice, Nixon switched sides on abortion, even reversing an earlier relaxation of an abortion ban in military facilities. Meanwhile, his staff painted his 1972 Democratic opponent, George McGovern, as a radical, describing him as the candidate of ”amnesty, abortion and acid,” with amnesty referring to those who dodged the draft for the Vietnam War. Although McGovern tried to deny the charges, the campaign worked. Nixon went on to trounce McGovern that November. But it wasn’t just the doctors and lawyers, or the politicians, who propelled the abortion debate before the Supreme Court got involved. The Catholic Church also played a role. ”During Vatican II, in the mid ’60s, the pope instructed the U. S. bishops to make abortion a priority. And they did,” says Jon O’Brien, president of the   group Catholics for Choice. Keeping abortion illegal, that is. But, O’Brien says, the church didn’t necessarily want to be seen as the leader of that movement, because most of its flock didn’t agree. ”A majority of Catholics, even back in the 1960s, believed that the abortion decision should be between a woman and her doctor,” O’Brien says. So the church created groups that were not overtly church sponsored. ”And what they wanted to do was give the appearance of having a   movement, when really this was the Catholic hierarchy at work to make abortion illegal in the United States of America and to keep it so,” he says. Taylor, of the Committee for a Human Life Amendment, is a living example of that move. As a graduate student then working for the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, he was asked by the church to help run the original National Right to Life Committee, which the church had set up. ”I was asked, would I temporarily shepherd this thing until it could get on its feet independently,” Taylor says. ”And I did that. I started that in ’69 I went full time in ’70.” The National Right to Life Committee was spun off into an independent organization in 1973. And both current Executive Director O’Steen  —   who is not Catholic  —   and Taylor insist that the   movement is both nonsectarian and very  . ”Nobody runs a   movement,” Taylor says. ”I think the   movement is one of the strongest   movements in the history of this country.” But the fact remains that the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is anything but the 40th anniversary of the nation’s abortion debate. And despite all the years of strife, it seems that not that many minds have been changed. A poll by the Pew Research Center released last week found that over the past two decades, opinion on whether or not Roe should be overturned has barely changed. In 1992, 60 percent of those asked said the court should not overturn the ruling. Today that’s up to 63 percent. Perhaps more troubling for those on both sides of the debate, however, is that the older the ruling gets, the less young people appear to know about it. Among those younger than 30, only 44 percent polled knew the case was about abortion 16 percent thought it had to do with school desegregation."
"Friday night, President Trump took to Twitter to deliver one of his favorite insults to journalists: ”The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” he wrote. It’s a phrase President Trump has now tweeted 15 times this month (10 times in all caps). He used the phrase seven times in his Thursday news conference. Anyone who has followed the news knows this isn’t what ”fake news” meant just a few months ago. Back then, it meant lies posing as news, made up by people from Macedonian teenagers to a dad in the Los Angeles suburbs. The stories impacted the election to some unmeasurable degree, and they also presented a tangible threat when a gunman inspired by false stories fired shots inside Washington pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong. Now, Trump casts all unfavorable news coverage as fake news. In one tweet, he even went so far as to say that ”any negative polls are fake news.” And many of his supporters have picked up and run with his new definition. The ability to reshape language  —   even a little  —   is an awesome power to have. According to language experts on both sides of the aisle, the rebranding of fake news could be a genuine threat to democracy. The danger of the word ”fake” As a linguist, University of California, Berkeley professor George Lakoff is one of the few people in the world who can truthfully say things like ”I’ve studied the word ’fake’ in some detail.” Because of that expertise, he finds the term fake news uniquely troubling. He explained to NPR exactly what is so destabilizing about calling news ”fake.” To illustrate, he used the word ”gun.” Putting the adjective ”black” in front of it doesn’t negate that it’s a gun. It just specifies a kind of gun. That black gun still has the same primary function of any other gun  —   that is, it can shoot something. But the word fake is entirely different, Lakoff said in an email to NPR: ”A fake does not have the primary function, but is intended to deceive you into thinking that it does have that function, and hence to serve the secondary function. A fake gun won’t shoot, but if you are deceived into thinking it is real, it can intimidate you.” News’ primary function is to not be fake it’s to pass along factual information that serves the public good, and the people who create it intend it to be factual and to serve the public good. By Lakoff’s logic, putting most modifiers in front of the word news  —   good, bad, unbiased, biased, liberal, conservative  —   still implies that the news is still somehow news. It is in some way tied to that main purpose, of being tethered to reality, with the intention of informing the public. When Trump calls news fake, then, that word implies that the news isn’t serving its basic purposes: It means that the story is intended to serve something other than the public good, and that the author intended to falsify the story. In other words, calling something fake news implies that it isn’t news at all. And using that phrase in the way that Trump uses it, said Lakoff, is dangerous: ”It is done to serve interests at odds with the public good. It also undermines the credibility of real news sources, that is, the press. Therefore it makes it harder for the press to serve the public good by revealing truths. And it threatens democracy, which requires that the press function to reveal real truths.” It may seem like a lot of fuss over one little phrase, but to Lakoff, it’s an important fuss. ”Calling real news fake is an attempt to hide the truth and undermine the function of the truth in a democracy,” he said. How Trump tries changing what fake news means, Technology has been a big aid in Trump’s quest to redefine fake news. With the help of Twitter and Facebook, language is, arguably, slipperier than ever. ”The speed of language adoption has never been as fast as it is now, and part of that is because of social media and the ability to touch people wherever they are, whenever you want, with no limits,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who has helped the GOP choose the words it uses to sell its policies. On top of that, Trump had a receptive crowd to begin with: Republicans in particular, along with some independents, hold journalists in low regard, according to several polls. According to Luntz, though, it took Trump’s political skills to capitalize on those trends. ”I’ve never seen anyone in politics with the potential communication capability of Donald Trump,” said Luntz. He added, ”He’s certainly not a unifier, but boy is he powerful and is he credible to a segment of the population that feels forgotten and left behind.” Trump also arguably picked a great phrase to take advantage of: one that was both young (so perhaps more malleable) and powerful. The phrase ”fake news” originally telegraphed a sense of danger about nefarious types intentionally sowing lies to influence the election. When Trump calls an unfavorable poll ”fake news,” he’s borrowing some of the phrase’s original power, even as he dilutes that power by reusing the phrase. The result is a dizzying dichotomy, as Lakoff pointed out in an interview with NPR: ”real fake news” (stories about ”pizzagate” and a   endorsement from the pope) and ”fake fake news” (claims that legitimate stories are made up). But the speed with which Trump’s messaging ricochets around the Internet worries Luntz, who fears that there is no accountability technology helps unfiltered (and unchecked) ideas to spread quickly. That means that a phrase can be redefined in an entirely new way ”within a matter of weeks,” he said. ”In the case of fake news, the problem is that we are actually undermining the core principles of a democracy,” he added, echoing Lakoff. The phrase fake news itself is young, and Trump’s abilities may be unique, but the fact that he is spinning language to his advantage is nothing new. ”If you think about rhetorical strategies  —   and I think it’s something that Trump has been very good at  —   I think this is something that has happened time and again during presidencies,” said Adam Berinsky, a political science professor at MIT, pointing to the ongoing tug of war during Barack Obama’s presidency over what to call health care overhaul. ”Did we call health care reform ’ACA’ or ’Obamacare’?” Berinsky said. ”Similarly, Donald Trump being able to take the term fake news and turn it into basically an epithet for any media he doesn’t like  —   it’s a very effective strategy.” ”So it’s a new development, but it’s a very familiar pattern,” he concluded. The definition changed . .. but only for some people  Trump has not succeeded at changing the definition of fake news for everyone. Google the phrase or search it on Twitter, and it is used in two ways (sarcastic uses aside). One is the original sense. The other is to slam mainstream media organizations, often on behalf of   organizations. The Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, for example, flung the phrase at CNN’s Jim Acosta, who criticized Trump for calling disproportionately on   outlets. It’s a valid disagreement, but it doesn’t mean Acosta’s remark is fake news. Likewise, conservative website The Federalist recently listed 16 stories that it classified as fake news. But many do not even approach the term’s original meaning, as the Washington Post’s Callum Borchers wrote. The author classifies a story that required a correction as fake news, for example (though by definition, a   writer intending to deceive wouldn’t try to correct a story). Other complaints are about perceived tone or framing. One can always argue that a story is poorly framed or biased. But that doesn’t make it fake news. Luntz  —   who himself perceives a   bias in many media organizations  —   explains that having problems with tone isn’t the same as negating the truth. ”While I have differences from time to time with what people report and the tone that they take, I am an advocate of a vibrant, constructive media,” he said. ”When you start to suggest that there are alternative facts and you start to criticize your opponents for fake news, you’re undermining the credibility of the one institution that holds all the others accountable.” One language for the right another, for the left, It’s not normally news when language shifts meanings  —   when the definitions of words like ”decimate” or ”literally” start to soften. Few (aside from copy editors and dictionary publishers) would call it a crisis. But with fake news there are serious potential problems . .. problems that go even beyond disputes over what is fact and what is fiction. The shifting definition of fake news may be a sign of a broader gap between right and left. In July, author George Saunders painted a picture of that gap: ”Intellectually and emotionally weakened by years of steadily degraded public discourse, we are now two separate ideological countries, LeftLand and RightLand, speaking different languages, the lines between us down. Not only do our two subcountries reason differently they draw upon   data sets and access entirely different mythological systems.” If it is indeed true that the term fake news has come to mean something different for a conservative than a liberal, it could be one more sign that the LeftLandian and RightLandian languages  —   and the people who speak them  —   have moved one more inch apart, into increasingly different realities."
"Iran tested a ballistic missile barely a week into Donald Trump’s presidency. North Korea then shot off a missile of its own. A Russian warship has been hanging out about 30 miles off the U. S. East Coast, and Moscow’s fighter jets recently buzzed a U. S. warship in the Black Sea. President Trump has been in office less than a month, and U. S. adversaries have already tested him on several fronts. So far, Trump’s responses have been out of the traditional foreign policy playbook, and he’s largely refrained from the bluster of his campaign, when he threatened radical action against a host of rivals  —   and even some allies. Trump has plenty of critics who say the transition period has been extremely rocky, and they point to the tumult surrounding the departure of national security adviser Michael Flynn this week. ”I think the national security agencies across the board  —   State Department, CIA, Defense Department  —   the career staff there are appalled,” Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism adviser to three presidents, told Morning Edition. ”They’ve never seen this level of disorganization. They’re not sure who to trust in the White House.” Yet in his first few weeks, Trump has opted for limited, moderate responses to events that had the potential to escalate. Trump was hosting Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at an   dinner at his    estate in Florida on Feb. 10 when word broke that North Korea had fired a test missile into the Sea of Japan. As fellow diners noted, this created a flurry of activity, but Trump’s public remarks were brief and restrained. ”I just want everybody to understand and fully know, that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent,” Trump said. After the ballistic missile test by Iran, the Trump administration added additional sanctions to 25 individuals and companies, which was seen as a modest response. Trump tweeted that ”Iran was playing with fire.” But since taking office, the president has not yet given any indication that he will tear up the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, as he promised to do during the campaign. On the military front, U. S. commandos carried out a Jan. 29 raid in Yemen  —   which was initially planned during Barack Obama’s final days  —   with mixed and disputed results. The U. S. military campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have remained on the same trajectory that Trump inherited from Obama, though the new president has ordered a revamped plan for the battle against the Islamic State. After Trump’s provocative campaign statements, many countries, including U. S. allies, are still wary of his plans on the international stage. That was evident Friday at the Munich Security Conference, where leaders referred to Trump’s calls for tough action against Islamic radicals. ”We must beware of turning this fight into one against Islam and Muslims,” said Germany’s Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. ”Otherwise we run the risk of deepening the trenches from which terrorism grows.” A spotlight on Russia, Russia has been the most active and most visible U. S. adversary in Trump’s first month, and the president will have to address several issues: Russia’s role in the Syrian war, Moscow’s support for separatists in Ukraine and U. S. allies in Europe who are jittery about the future of NATO. Any action Trump takes will be placed under a microscope, given his complimentary remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin during the campaign and the U. S. intelligence findings that Russia tried to influence the U. S. election. The Russians are already probing Trump’s intentions, according to Clarke. ”I think [the Russians] are being aggressive because they think the U. S. won’t do anything about it,” he said. ”They think the president of the United States is a friend who wants good relations with them, and won’t call them when they get more aggressive in Ukraine, which they’ve done, since the president came into office.” Trump and Putin spoke by phone on Jan. 28, and both said they hoped for improved relations that have been deeply strained. However, they offered no specifics, and several points of friction have emerged since then. If Trump takes any actions seen as soft on Russia  —   like easing sanctions  —   he will face strong opposition in the U. S. foreign policy and military establishments, as well as many in his own Republican Party. A traditional response, Trump’s initial steps have been notable mostly because they are so similar to what his predecessors did. His ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, criticized Russia for its role in the Ukrainian conflict. After Trump described NATO as ”obsolete” during the campaign, he dispatched Defense Secretary James Mattis to NATO headquarters in Brussels this week. Mattis called on members to spend more on defense and said the alliance needed to ”transform,” but overall, the speech was seen as reassuring. NATO has been increasing its presence in eastern Europe, and that has continued with the recent deployment of U. S. Army soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division. Troops, tanks and other vehicles arrived in Romania this week. In his public remarks, Trump has not said exactly how he plans to deal with Russia and Putin. He noted at his press conference Thursday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was meeting Friday at the   with his Russian counterpart, and Trump added that he wouldn’t take any rash action against the Russian spy ship, Viktor Leonov, that’s been sailing off the East Coast, but in international waters: ”If we could get along with Russia, that’s a positive thing. We have a very talented man, Rex Tillerson, who’s going to be meeting with them shortly and I told him. I said, ’I know politically it’s probably not good for me.’ The greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles off shore right out of the water. Everyone in this country’s going to say ’Oh, it’s so great.’ That’s not great. That’s not great. I would love to be able to get along with Russia.” But, he added, ”It’s possible I won’t be able to get along with Putin.” Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"With Secretary Betsy DeVos rolling up her sleeves at the Education Department and, at one point this week, joining Donald Trump at the White House to talk with educators and parents, Washington, D. C. is making a lot of education news these days. For those of you struggling to keep up, the NPR Ed Team is trying something new: a weekly recap of the latest national education news. Editor’s Note: This story was updated Saturday afternoon to reflect DeVos’ interview with Townhall and the subsequent response by Jefferson Academy in Washington, D. C. DeVos Protests Cartoon Sparks Outrage, At DeVos’ first major public appearance after her controversial confirmation, protesters temporarily blocked her from entering Jefferson Middle School Academy in D. C. One protester who was arrested and later released is an Afghan refugee who wrote this personal history for NPR last month. The action was debated on social media, prompting former Education Secretary Arne Duncan to tweet: It was that rare occasion when Duncan and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, agreed: An editorial cartoon by Glenn McCoy in the Belleville   stirred nearly as much controversy as the incident itself. McCoy referenced the famous Norman Rockwell painting, The Problem We All Live With, in which federal marshals escort young Ruby Bridges, an   student, on a harrowing walk to integrate her   New Orleans school  —   casting DeVos as Bridges. Jamelle Bouie of Slate was among those who commented on Twitter: But the Controversy Didn’t End There, In an interview with the conservative Townhall on Thursday, DeVos briefly mentioned her visit to Jefferson Academy, describing the teachers she met as ”wonderful, genuine, sincere.” But she was also critical, suggesting that the Jefferson teachers were ”waiting to be told what they have to do, and that’s not going to bring success to an individual child. You have to have teachers who are empowered to facilitate great teaching.” What followed was an epic Friday night tweetstorm, as reported by Emma Brown of The Washington Post. The school took to Twitter to defend its teachers: Ten subsequent tweets went on to single out individual teachers, with specific examples of their teaching styles and student success. It concluded: As Brown notes, Jefferson is one of the   schools in the city and five years into a turnaround. Kaya Henderson, former chancellor of D. C. schools, also chimed in on Saturday: DeVos Speaks at Magnet Schools of America, DeVos alluded to the intial incident in her first public speech, at the Magnet Schools of America conference on February 15: ”The protesters’ behavior is a reflection of the way some seek to treat our education system  —   by keeping kids in and new thinking out,” DeVos said. ”Friday’s incident demonstrates just how hostile some people are to change and to new ideas. Without realizing it, we, too, can fall victim to this trap of seeing our work in education as an ”us vs. them” approach.” The Education Secretary went on to praise magnet schools, a form of   public school choice, for their role in combating segregation. Trump On Autism Rates: ”Horrible” The day before DeVos’ speech, she appeared at the White House alongside her new boss, President Trump, for a listening session with parents and educators. Trump spoke in favor of school choice when ”properly done” and declared that ”millions of poor, disadvantaged students are trapped in failing schools.” ”That’s why,” Trump said, ”I want every single disadvantaged child in America, no matter what their background or where they live, to have a choice about where they go to school.” The guests included representatives from the public, charter, private, and   world. At one point, Trump also referred to ”tremendous increases” in the rate of autism. This is a matter of some scientific controversy, but U. S. public health experts believe that what’s happening is largely an increase in diagnosis and awareness, not necessarily in the number of children with the condition. The idea that autism itself is on the rise is a talking point for the   movement. Trump has met with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who propounds, against all scientific evidence and mainstream medical opinion, that childhood vaccines cause autism. U. S. Arrests DACA Recipient,    Daniel Ramirez Medina is suing for his release after he was detained by immigration authorities in Seattle on February 10. He came to the United States from Mexico as a child and had obtained a work permit under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program, which covers hundreds of thousands of young people, primarily students. Lawyers and advocates believe that this is the first case of a DACA recipient being arrested and held. Many DACA permit holders have been on edge since President Trump’s inauguration, after Trump vowed to end the program on the campaign trail this fall. However, Trump’s stance seems to have softened even in the last few days  —   in a news conference Thursday, Trump said that most DACA recipients are ”absolutely incredible kids.” 17 Elite U. S. Universities Support Challenge to Travel Ban, Approximately 17, 000 international student visa holders were affected by President Trump’s executive order banning entry to the U. S. from seven   countries. Now, the Ivies, along with other elite institutions, have filed an amicus brief in support of Darweesh v. Trump, one case challenging the ban. Each school ”has a global mission,” the brief argues, ”and each derives immeasurable benefit from the contributions of diverse students, faculty, and scholars from around the world. Because amici seek to educate future leaders from nearly every continent, attract the world’s best scholars, faculty, and students, and work across international borders, they rely on the ability to welcome international students, faculty, and scholars into their communities. The Executive Order at issue in this case threatens that ability, and creates significant hardship for amici’s valued international students, faculty, and scholars.” IDEA Website Goes Missing, Idea. ed. gov, a vital resource for parents of students with disabilities, went offline on Feb. 8, just one day after DeVos’ contentious confirmation. It was unfortunate timing not just for concerned parents but for DeVos, too. She misstepped badly during her confirmation hearing when she suggested to senators that states were not necessarily bound to follow the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. That 1975 law requires schools to give students with disabilities ”a free appropriate public education.” As for what happened, a department spokesman says the site failed, plain and simple. According to the spokesman, it had not been updated since 2013 and had suffered several intermittent outages before finally crashing on the 8th. Friday afternoon, DeVos issued a statement, saying that the site and its server ”were neglected for nearly four years . .. and I’ve instructed Department staff to begin working with stakeholders to build a new and improved site.” For the time being, ED has moved the site’s old files to a new server. The department spokesman said it was too early to know how long the official   would take. "
"Astronomers are offering the general public a     opportunity: the chance to discover a new planet in our solar system. Many astronomers now think there may be a massive, undiscovered planet lurking in the far reaches of our solar system. Right now, however, the existence of this planet is theoretical. So the hunt is on to actually capture an image of it. The obvious way to look for the new planet is to point large telescopes at the patch of sky where theory says it ought to be. But there’s another way: scour images of the sky that have already been taken, hoping one of those images contains the planet. Astronomer Adam Schneider of Arizona State University is trying the latter approach. He’s new to planet hunting: ”I’m more of a brown dwarf person myself, brown dwarf and low mass stars,” he says. But brown dwarfs and low mass stars have something in common with the putative planet . .. they give off infrared light. And NASA’s WISE telescope views the sky at infrared wavelengths. WISE has taken a trove of pictures of the sky. ”We have the entire sky to go through,” says Schneider. That’s both good and bad news. ”It’s a bonus, in that we have the whole sky, so we’re not going to miss anything,” he says. ”But it’s also why we need citizen scientists because it’s just too much to look at for one scientist or even a group of scientists.” By citizen scientists, Schneider means anyone  —   no special skills required. You just go to a website called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, sign up, and start scanning the WISE images. The images are presented like a  . You see four images of the same patch of sky, taken at different times. Because they’re so far away, the bright stars in the image appear to remain in the same place from one picture to the next. But a closer moving object such as a planet or a wandering brown dwarf will appear to move against the starry backdrop. Now you may be wondering, why do they need people to search for moving objects? Can’t a computer do this? ”Computer algorithms are not very good, the more and more stars that get involved,” says Jacqueline Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History and another member of the citizen science project. ”The human eye helps tremendously. It’s much faster, it can be very trustworthy,” more than a computer algorithm, she says. That doesn’t mean spotting moving items is easy. I went to the website and tried. I was terrible at it. Faherty told me not to feel bad. ”To be honest I’m really bad at it as well,” she says. ”But I want people with good eyes to do it, because when they’re good at it, they’re really good at it.” Even if you correctly spot something moving in the images, in might not be the undiscovered planet. It could be a brown dwarf star or some other faint object fairly close to the sun. But Adam Schneider says you could hit the jackpot. ”Literally anyone  —   you, me, anyone you talk to  —   can potentially log on and make that discovery,” he says."
"After years of declining numbers, hate crimes against   and Pacific Islanders are rising exponentially. A report from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations found that crimes targeting   tripled in that county between 2014 and 2015. In addition, the FBI found that the number of hate crimes against Muslim communities rose dramatically between 2014 and 2015 (67 percent). That’s the biggest increase of any other group listed in the Hate Crimes Report. However, national statistics on hate crimes against people who fall under the AAPI label are still scanty. Two days before the inauguration, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a civil and human rights nonprofit, launched a website to rectify the issue. The website, standagainsthatred. org, documents hate incidents and crimes against   and Pacific Islanders by tracking stories about hate incidents received from people around the country. The stories are vetted by AAJC staff and posted anonymously. ”We’ve always recognized that hate incidents have been an issue,” said AAJC Executive Director John Yang. ”We realized that we really needed a better tracking tool.” Documented hate crimes against   extend as far back as the 1800s, when the white supremacist group Arsonists of the Order of Caucasians murdered four Chinese men whom they blamed for taking away jobs from white workers. The men were tied up, doused with kerosene and set on fire. In 1987, a Jersey City, N. J. gang calling itself the ”Dotbusters” vowed to drive Indians out of Jersey City by vandalizing   businesses. The gang used bricks to bludgeon a young South Asian male into a coma. In a   case, two men from Queens, N. Y. were charged with a hate crime for attacking four Asian men, including one left with a possible fractured skull in a   white neighborhood. ”There’s an undercurrent of suspicion of the new immigrant  —   what are they doing, what are they building, what are they putting in that store?” Susan Seinfeld, the district manager of Community Board 11, told The New York Times at the time. In recent years, law enforcement bias has also surfaced: In 2014, video footage showed a New York Police Department cruiser running over and killing      student Ryo Oyamada. The court later ruled in favor of the police department, stating that the incident was unavoidable. In January of this year, a      man playing Pokémon Go in his car at night was shot and killed by a security guard in Chesapeake, Va. The guard was charged with murder. Hate crimes targeting AAPI often stem from the fact that they’re seen as the ”perpetual foreigner,” said Yang. That   sentiment has only increased under the new administration, he said. In one of the stories posted on the new AAJC website, an older white man approached an   woman in downtown San Francisco and pretended to hit her over the head with a book, yelling, ”I hate your f****** race. We’re in charge of this country now.” The anonymous submission added, ”He was not intoxicated.” In another entry, a Muslim teacher in Georgia was told to ”hang herself” with her headscarf. As disturbing as these stories are, they often don’t show up in national data, said Yang.   and Pacific Islanders frequently underreport hate incidents because they feel intimidated by law enforcement or are afraid of being seen as overly sensitive. Unfortunately, their silence on the issue makes them an even more attractive target for hate crimes. Racially motivated incidents that are reported are often filed as generic offenses and don’t show up in national data about hate crimes. AAJC plans to share data gathered from its website with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes through its Hate Map and Hatewatch blog. The center began segmenting out its hate crime numbers for   last December and relies on   organizations like AAJC for those data. ”We need to raise public awareness that hate incidents against AAPI are not   incidents. They happen in much greater numbers than we’d like to admit,” said Yang. Jenny J. Chen is an   science journalist and multimedia producer. Follow her @americanhaiku."
"Editor’s note: This story contains language that may be offensive to some readers. Harassment, threats and intimidation of minorities and immigrants spiked nationwide after President Trump’s election in November. Comprehensive statistics are hard to come by, but officials and watch groups say   incidents remain higher than usual more than three months after Election Day. Massachusetts is among the many states that have seen such a spike. ”There was one night, where my parents and I were walking out of a department store,” recalls Nadia Butt, 36, of Danvers, Mass. a suburb north of Boston. ”And two white males yelled . .. ’F****** immigrants go home!’ ” Butt says she froze. So did her parents, American citizens who emigrated from Pakistan 40 years ago. ”My dad just kept hugging me as I was crying and just kept repeating that in all of his years of living here, he has never experienced such hatred,” says Butts. The rise in incidents like this one spurred Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to set up a new phone hotline to field hate and harassment complaints and track their frequency. ”I just thought it was so important that we be clear that here in Massachusetts we’re going to enforce civil rights laws, we’re going to prosecute hate crimes and we’re going to be paying attention,” says Healey. The calls flooded in right away. Officials say they’ve gotten some 250 substantive reports since the election, half of those in November alone. A racist and threatening video was circulated at a local school an immigrant, in the country illegally, was physically assaulted by a   two Jewish community centers received bomb threats and a mosque received a letter calling for ethnic cleansing. ”The kinds of incidents that we’re seeing are really scary and troubling,” Healey says. A rising star among state Democrats, Healey is a vocal Trump critic. She says the hotline has received calls from Trump supporters who say they’re being harassed. But most frequently, Healey says, the targets are perceived immigrants and minorities, and the hateful messages often invoke Trump’s name, or reference his words. ”Unfortunately what we saw over the last 18 months from Donald Trump were statements that were misogynist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic,” says Healey. ”And that unfortunately seems to have been matched by this increase, this real uptick in hate crimes and bias incidents.” In a news conference this week, President Trump denied any part in inspiring ”racism and horrible things that are put up,” saying the nation was already ”seriously divided” before he was elected. He blamed ”people on the other side” for the rise in these incidents, suggesting that his political opponents are trying to frame his supporters as the culprits. He focused less on denouncing the hate, as he did during an interview with 60 Minutes in November. ”I will say this and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it,” he said about the dozens of acts of harassment and intimidation against minorities that were reported after his election, many of which were allegedly performed in his name, In the first month after the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate watch group, cataloged 1, 094   incidents nationwide, based on local news reports. Massachusetts was near the top of the group’s list, with 53 incidents, trailing only California (125) New York (94) and Texas (71) and tied with Washington state. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at SPLC, says clearly this spike isn’t restricted to states where Trump prevailed in November. ”This is not a phenomenon that is only occurring, say, in the Deep South, or in the very red states out West,” Potok says. ”There are enormous numbers of Americans who feel very uncomfortable with the way the country is changing  —   more and more people who are   more and more Muslims, more people who, in one way or another, do not look like what many people think of as a sort of normal   American.” In Massachusetts, the attorney general can respond to a hotline report with a criminal or civil case, though more commonly, her office will assist  —   or prod  —   local prosecutors and police to act. Frequently, no perpetrator is ever identified, and no charges result. But prosecution is not the hotline’s only goal. Staffers also offer up some   sympathy and share outrage with callers on the other end of the line. Eniola Soyemi, a Boston University graduate student from Nigeria, is one of many callers who say that just being heard and having her ordeal officially documented was therapeutic in itself. After the election, she experienced what she describes as a torrent of racist harassment. ”These kinds of incidents demoralize you as a human being,” Soyemi says. ”And even though you know deep, deep down inside you that that person is morally wrong, you do need other people to verify that. And I think it does help you move on from such an incident.” Similar hotlines also have been set up in New York and Maryland. Besides supporting victims and prosecuting offenders, officials are hoping to gather some better data on how the current ”hate wave” may heat up or cool down over time."
"Can you capture the energy of a city in just one image? That’s the idea behind Metropolis, a book of photos of the world’s megacities by Dutch photographer Martin Roemers. The images illustrate the rapid rise of global urbanization. In 1994, there were 14 cities with a population over 10 million. In 2016, there were 29, according to the U. N. Roemers was inspired to tell this story after going on a trip to Bombay many years ago. ”I was struck by what I saw. It was so crowded, chaotic. There’s a smell, there’s a noise. It’s intense,” he says. He wanted to translate that feeling, distill the city’s characteristics into a single photograph. That mission took him on a journey to five continents. From 2007 to 2015, he traveled everywhere from Lagos to Los Angeles. Roemers learned a lot of things along the way in both the rich world and the poor world. In developing countries, he saw how people built slums and houses where they probably shouldn’t, how in Mumbai, the beach is used as a toilet. Religion plays a big role in shaping a city’s personality. In Lagos, he said, taxi drivers would stop to do their Friday prayers right on the street. Most of his photos show busy intersections  —   places, he thinks, that display the city’s infrastructure and also show signs of everyday life: shops, billboards, signs, traffic, people on the street. ”I wait until every element falls into place,” says Roemers. That could mean waiting for a rickshaw to pass a lady waiting for a bus as a train whizzes behind. ”And at that moment, I push the button.” This month, a selection of photos from Metropolis will be exhibited in the Anastasia Photo Gallery in New York and the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. Roemer hopes to show his work in every city that he documented in his book."
"Few topics send the media into a panic like the idea of hookup culture on college campuses. But are college students actually having more sex than their parents did a generation ago? Research suggests the answer is no. Lisa Wade, a sociologist at Occidental College, says something has changed, though: In today’s hookup culture, developing an emotional attachment to a casual sex partner is one of the biggest breaches of social norms. For her new book, American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus, Wade spent 5 years investigating hookup culture on American colleges and universities. In this culture, she says, there’s a dichotomy between meaningless and meaningful sex, and students have to go out of their way to ”perform meaninglessness.” They have to prove that they’re not emotionally attached to their sex partners, and in fact that they care less than the other person. This leads to seemingly contradictory situations, such as people who only have sex with partners they’re not interested in, and friends being meaner to each other after developing a sexual relationship. This Valentine’s Day, Lisa Wade talks with us about hookup culture and investigates the complex social rules surrounding casual sex on American college campuses. Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Maggie Penman, Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, and Renee Klahr. Our intern is Chloe Connelly, and our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, and listen for Hidden Brain stories each week on your local public radio station."
"There’s a bulletin board at the front of the band room at Spring Lake Park High covered in portraits of the composers who wrote this year’s music selection. The bulletin board isn’t new  —   it’s there every year. What’s new are the faces: Instead of primarily white men, there are faces of women and composers of color. This is intentional. The band directors at Spring Lake Park, outside of St. Paul, Minn. have pledged to include at least one piece by a female composer and one by a composer of color in each concert, for each of the school’s bands. ”We made a commitment this year to only buy music from composers of color,” says Brian Lukkasson, one of the directors. He says it’s been hard, but not because those composers aren’t writing for bands. ”It’s really hard to find music because there’s just not a lot of composers of color that are being published,” Lukkasson explains. Composers of color and women are shut out of the canon and often stereotyped, so Lukkasson usually has to network with his colleagues to find their music. Viet Cuong, for instance, is a young   who wrote the piece ”Diamond Tide,” inspired by the scientific process of melting a diamond. ”I really, really want other students of color to be able to feel like they are welcomed and appreciated anywhere, that they don’t have to check themselves at the door,” says junior Kia Muleta, one of Lukkasson’s students. Muleta, who is black, has been playing the clarinet in since fifth grade, and says the students sitting around her are usually white. She says it bothers her that the composers they used to play were usually white too. ”There’s a kind of an ideological segregation of who can and cannot be in band, based on who the composers are, and what the music is like,” she says. This year she’ll be playing ”Of Honor and Valor Eternal,” a tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen. It’s by Ayatey Shabazz, a black composer from Mississippi. Shabazz says that his grandfather knew one of the   airmen, and that stories he heard as a child inspired the composition. ”The more you practice talking about race, culture and ethnicity, the more comfortable you are,” says Nora Tycast, one of the other band directors at Spring Lake Park. She and her students wrote to Shabazz to ask about the composing process. Kia Muleta says the mix of composers on the bulletin board may seem like a small thing, but it’s not to her. She says new faces up front are a signal that difference is welcome here."
"Big Little Lies, which begins Sunday on HBO, is a miniseries that begins with a murder scene, and investigation, in the   oceanside town of Monterey. It’s a   drama, and HBO made the first six available for preview. Even after watching all of them, I still don’t know the identity of the murderer  —   or, for that matter, the victim. But that’s on purpose. Based on the novel by Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies is a study in motivation, conflict and, most of all, secrets. You watch this miniseries to actively identify the potential killer, and the person most likely to be murdered  —   and the more Big Little Lies plays out, the more you realize they could be anyone. Two of this drama’s stars, Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, also rank among its executive producers, and have found themselves some especially deep and challenging roles to play. Witherspoon is Madeline, a     mom, and Kidman is Celeste, whose seemingly storybook marriage to the handsome and charismatic Perry is the envy of almost everyone else in Monterey  —   but perhaps shouldn’t be.  Perry is played by Alexander Skarsgard, who’s already scored impressive roles on HBO in Generation Kill and True Blood. His scenes with Kidman are the best, and most chilling, in Big Little Lies. But there are lots of strong roles and performances here, including Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley, playing two other combative Monterey moms. Like mother bears protecting their cubs, they’d kill to protect their young  —   and, most likely, one of them has. Witherspoon brought her director from the movie Wild,   Valleé, along to direct every episode of this project. And every episode was written by David E. Kelley, who had so much fun writing for female voices on broadcast series such as Ally McBeal. Here, on HBO, Kelley has a field day, amping up the humor and the drama in equal measure. He transplants the novel from Australia to northern California, but otherwise stays very true to the issues of female empowerment, interaction and frustration. Big Little Lies takes full advantage of the major assets of the TV miniseries: Networks can sign up major talent for a   commitment, and viewers have no idea if the characters will even survive to the end. The Good Fight, which begins Sunday on CBS, is all about survival. It’s a spinoff of the series The Good Wife, which starred Julianna Margulies as a woman embarking on a new life after her politician husband was caught in a scandal. Margulies is nowhere to be found in The Good Fight, but series creators Robert and Michelle King, who created The Good Wife as well, have populated this spinoff with some familiar, and very welcome, faces from the old show. Sarah Steele is back as Eli Gold’s daughter. Cush Jumbo is back as attorney Lucca Quinn. And central to the story, which picks up about a year after The Good Wife ended is Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart. Baranski opens The Good Fight by watching, on TV, the inauguration of Donald Trump. In the next scenes, she purchases a lavish villa in France and announces her retirement from the law firm she  . This new beginning has the feel of a happy ending  —   until Diane learns that the close friend who has invested her savings all these years, and to whom she has referred many close friends and important clients, has been arrested, accused of running a Bernie   Ponzi scheme. Diane’s money is gone  —   and when she returns to her law firm to reclaim her position, and addresses the board run by her former partners, so is her job. The Good Wife always was about reinvention and perseverance, and The Good Fight continues those themes beautifully. It’s an excellent series  —   a perfect sequel. And while it makes room for established characters, it also presents some new ones, including Delroy Lindo as a partner at a competing Chicago law firm, and Rose Leslie, who was in both Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones, as Maia Rindell, a   lawyer, and the daughter of the disgraced financial advisor. And while it’ll be bleeped out of the version shown on CBS this Sunday, The Good Fight also features some very emphatic uses of the F word. And this is the key thing to know about The Good Fight. It’s being used by CBS as bait, to lure you to the network’s streaming site, CBS All Access. After this weekend’s premiere on the broadcast network, The Good Fight moves to the streaming site  —   which, until now, has offered selected reruns of a few CBS series, and gotten about one million subscribers at $5. 99 a month. This is its first original offering  —   and for a while, until and unless it shows up on DVD or somewhere else, the only place to see The Good Fight after this Sunday. You’ll get to see it unedited and uninterrupted  —   but it’s the first time CBS, or any major network, has tried so aggressively to push viewers towards a paid streaming site. As a TV viewer with an already   monthly cable and satellite bill, I’m not happy about that. I am happy about the quality of The Good Fight  —   it’s better than any other new drama CBS presented this season. But after this weekend, you have to pay to get it. If this is TV’s future, it’s not going to be cheap."
"Some Republicans looking to scrap the Affordable Care Act say monthly health insurance premiums need to be lower for the individuals who have to buy insurance on their own. One way to do that, GOP leaders say, would be to return to the use of what are called   insurance pools. But critics say even some of the most successful   pools that operated before the advent of Obamacare were very expensive for patients enrolled in the plans, and for the people who subsidized them  —   which included state taxpayers and people with   health insurance. The argument in favor of   pools goes like this: Separate the healthy people, who don’t cost very much to insure, from people who have   medical conditions, such as a past serious illness or a chronic condition. Under GOP proposals, this second group, which insurers fear might be expected to use more medical care, would be encouraged to buy health insurance through   insurance pools that are subsidized by states and the federal government. Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan made the case for   pools on public television’s Charlie Rose show in January. ”By having taxpayers, I think, step up and focus on, through risk pools, subsidizing care for people with catastrophic illnesses, those losses don’t have to be covered by everybody else [buying insurance] and we stabilize their plans,” Ryan told the TV host. Minnesota’s newest congressman Jason Lewis ( ) recently endorsed   pools on CNN. ”Minnesota had one of the best . ..   insurance pools in the country,” Lewis said. ”And it was undone by the ACA.” It’s true that the Affordable Care Act banned states’ use of   pools, including the Minnesota Comprehensive Health Association, or MCHA. But that’s because the MCHA was no longer needed, the association’s website explains the federal health law requires insurers to sell health plans to everybody, regardless of their health status. Supporters of the MCHA approach tout a return to it as a smart way to bring down the cost of monthly premiums. But MCHA had detractors, too. Craig Britton of Plymouth, Minn. once had a plan through the state’s   pool. It cost him $18, 000 a year in premiums. Britton was forced to buy the expensive MCHA coverage because of a pancreatitis diagnosis. He calls the idea that   pools are good for consumers ”a lot of baloney.” ”That is catastrophic cost,” Britton says. ”You have to have a good living just to pay for insurance.” And that’s the problem with   pools, says Stefan Gildemeister, an economist with Minnesota’s health department. ”It’s not cheap coverage to the individual, and it’s not cheap coverage to the system,” Gildemeister says. MCHA’s monthly premiums cost policy holders 25 percent more than conventional coverage, Gildemeister points out, and that left many people uninsured in Minnesota. ”There were people out there who had a chronic disease or had a   condition who couldn’t get a policy,” Gildemeister says. And for the MCHA, even the higher premiums fell far short of covering the full cost of care for the roughly 25, 000 people who were insured by the program. It needed more than $173 million in subsidies in its final year of normal operation. That money came from fees collected from private insurance plans  —    which essentially shifted a big chunk of the cost of insuring people in MCHA program to people who get their health insurance through work. Gildemeister ran the numbers on what a return to MCHA would cost. Annual   pool coverage for a    would cost more than $15, 000, he says. The policy holder would pay about $6, 000 of that, and subsidies would cover the more than $9, 000 remaining. University of Minnesota health policy professor Lynn Blewett says there is a better alternative than a return to   pools. It’s called ”reinsurance.” In that approach, insurers pay into a pool that the federal government administers, using the funds to compensate health plans that incur unexpectedly high medical costs. It’s basically an insurance program for insurers. The big question is whether lawmakers will balk at the cost of keeping premiums down for consumers  —   whatever the approach, Blewett says.  ”The rub is, where that funding is going to come from?” she says. ”And is the federal government or the state government willing to put up the funding needed to make some of these fixes?” The national plan Ryan proposes would subsidize   pools with $25 billion of federal money over 10 years. The nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund estimates the approach could cost U. S. taxpayers much more than that  —   almost $178 billion a year. Researchers at the consulting firm McKinsey  Company say reinsurance would likely cost about a third of what the   pool option would. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Minnesota Public Radio and Kaiser Health News."
"There are a lot of children playing outside in eastern Mosul. They run around the front yards of their houses, chasing each other through the alleyways, as their parents sit on plastic chairs keeping  —   at most  —   half an eye on them. At the   boys’ school, Mustafa Salem, 13, says this freedom is new. During the 2   years that ISIS controlled his neighborhood, he was rarely allowed to leave the house. ”It wasn’t good, there was no school, nothing,” he said. His parents were afraid the extremists would take him and forcibly enlist him in jihadist training camps for boys, known as the ”Cubs of the Caliphate.” ”ISIS was taking children my age,” he said. And like most children, he was kept at home from ISIS schools by his parents, who were horrified by a curriculum that revolved around violence. Last month, Iraqi security forces, with support from a U. S.  coalition, forced ISIS out of the eastern half of the city. Unlike in other Iraqi cities retaken from the extremists, most of the infrastructure remained in place and intact. So did the civilians. ”I felt as if I had been reborn into this life,” said   school principal Saed Ali Judei, of coming back to work. His is one of 70 of about 400 schools in east Mosul that have   under government control, with help from UNICEF. The riotous noise of children’s laughter in the schoolyard is matched by a bustle in the streets: Markets are open and busy, men are mending roads damaged in fighting, traffic is surprisingly dense. It feels optimistic, and many people say how happy they are the fighting for this half of the city is over. But as Iraqi security forces and their international allies gear up for an assault on ISIS in the western side of Mosul, concerns about the east are beginning to bubble up. In a more rural area of eastern Mosul, Zainab Abdeljabbar, a teacher, pointed out damage to a nearby house. ”We cannot say it is safe here,” she said. ”Yesterday there was a drone, it dropped a bomb here and four people were injured.” ISIS has often used armed drones. This one likely came from somewhere on the eastern side of the city. There have also been recent sniper attacks and a suicide bombing at a restaurant, indicating the militants are still hiding out in the area. ”We are liberated, but we are still scared because we don’t know what they will do,” Abdeljabbar said. ”I don’t think the Iraqi people are in a good situation.” Air Force Brig. Gen. Matthew Isler, with the U. S. troops assisting the Iraqi security forces, confirmed the use of armed drones by ISIS. ”What they have not been able to do is precisely target,” he said. ”Instead they are looking for large gatherings and dropping [bombs] on civilians there. It is just another example of the atrocities that they commit.” He said that the U. S.  coalition regularly conducts airstrikes against ISIS militants who fire mortars indiscriminately across the river Tigris from Mosul’s west side, which they still hold. Even as the militants continue violence, there are doubts about the capabilities of the Iraqi forces that hold eastern Mosul. The Iraqi army is coordinating national forces, including the federal police, alongside local forces, including police and tribal fighters. But there is jostling and competition among the troops. One local group, the Nineveh Guard, is controversial because of its support from Turkey, which has fallen out of favor with the central government in Baghdad. One of the Nineveh Guard commanders, Gen. Mohammed Saleh, said his men fought  —   and more than 30 died  —   to free Mosul from ISIS. He wishes they had more power and were stationed in the center of the city, not on the edge. ”It was an unfair decision against the Nineveh Guards  —   all of us are from Mosul,” he said. ”We know the city streets and the ins and outs of the city. We know [who] is working with the terrorists there.” Saleh criticized some other forces operating in the area, including some backed by Iran, which he said discriminated against local people and had too much influence in Iraq. He may have a point. Human rights groups have raised concerns about abuses by numerous branches of Iraq’s security forces and paramilitaries. But the disunity does not bode well for the chances of these forces holding firm against the still very real ISIS threat."
"Polar bears aren’t the only beloved Arctic animal threatened by climate change. Scientists believe reindeer are at risk as a warming world makes their main winter food source disappear. But reindeer on one Alaskan island are surprising researchers. And that surprise doesn’t just come from the fact that the reindeer are hard to spot. On St. Paul Island, Lauren Divine of the EcoSystem Conservation Office was not having luck seeing a herd of 400 reindeer, even on this treeless island with tundra as far as the eye can see. Divine helps manage the reindeer on the island, but on this windy day, she’s hunting them. Reindeer aren’t native to Alaska. They were brought to rural villages across the state in the late 1800s. In communities like St. Paul, where grocery prices are astronomical, Divine says residents depend on reindeer to feed their families. And to make it through winter, the reindeer need something as well. ”Reindeer all over the world depend on lichen,” Divine says. ”They’re very high in sugars and starch, and they’re considered like a Snickers bar for reindeer in the winter.” But the reindeer on this island ate the lichen faster than it could regrow. Now, it’s gone. Without lichen, reindeer experts would expect to see malnourished or starving animals. And in some places, that’s already happening. But the animals on St. Paul Island are thriving. Greg Finstad, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Reindeer Research Program, came to study and evaluate the island’s reindeer and environment. On a visit to the island last year, he saw something he had never witnessed before. ”The reindeer are doing something really very interesting,” he says. ”They have managed to find other things to eat. They’ve gone underground.” Finstad discovered that instead of lichen, the reindeer are digging up roots and grazing on grass. He says that’s good news. Lichens thrive in arctic climates, but the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe. These higher temperatures mean more wildfires, erratic rainfall and better conditions for other plants that can crowd out the lichen. All of this could mean less lichen for reindeer. On top of that, a warmer climate means what used to be snow is now rain. A few years ago in Russia, that created an icy barrier so thick the reindeer couldn’t stamp through it to get to the lichen. Tens of thousands starved to death. That’s why Finstad thinks it’s important that the reindeer in St. Paul are finding something else to eat. ”There’s a lot of scientists, researchers, reindeer producers waving their arms in the world [saying] ’Oh climate change, it’s the death of reindeer and caribou,’ ” he says. ”But you know what, we have forgotten to tell the reindeer and caribou. Things change, and they change with it.” But ecology professor Mark Boyce of the University of Alberta is not convinced. ”It’s an island population, and a very small sample of our global populations of reindeer and caribou and the general pattern has been one of decline,” he says. ”So I guess I’m not very optimistic.” Still, on this island, reindeer are doing just fine for now. And hunting them is more popular than ever. This report comes from Alaska’s Energy Desk, a public media collaboration focused on energy and the environment. Zoë Sobel is a reporter for member station KUCB in Unalaska, Alaska."
"What a week it was for Donald Trump. As if everyone didn’t know this already  —   Donald Trump is governing just the way he campaigned. He’s a   band with an impulsive,     management style. As his former rival Jeb Bush correctly predicted way back in the primaries, he’s the ”chaos candidate” and now the ”chaos president.” While it’s too soon to subscribe to some of the hyperventilating headlines about a ”crisis” in the West Wing, there’s no doubt Trump’s has been the most chaotic start to any administration in modern times. Here are five questions about Trump’s extraordinary fourth week in office. 1. Has Trump done more in one month than any other president? Maybe  —   but not exactly the way he means. This week started with Trump firing Mike Flynn, his national security adviser, after a news story that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about what Flynn said to the Russian ambassador. (Trump had known about that for almost two weeks and failed to inform Pence.) The week ended with the news that the man Trump chose as his new national security adviser, retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, had turned him down. Ouch. In between, there was the withdrawal of Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, and the announcement that three congressional committees were investigating repeated contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russian intelligence  —   including during the time period when U. S. intelligence agencies say Russians were interfering in the U. S. election. Those were the big things. There was also a myriad of smaller controversies, like the repeated and false insistence by Trump that millions of people voted illegally for his opponent, and the fights he keeps picking with foreign leaders, intelligence agencies and department stores. Then there was a press conference for the ages, in which Trump insisted he wasn’t ”ranting and raving. I love this,” he said. ”I’m having a good time doing it.” And there was one more thing. Gallup has Trump at a 38 percent approval rating, the lowest ever for a president this early in his term. 2. Is this what Trump voters wanted? Trump’s performance at his news conference  —   at times defensive, aggrieved, wheedling, frustrated and combative  —   thrilled his hardcore supporters. They love it when he takes on the press. By the end of the week he was tweeting that the media is ”the enemy of the American People.” Still, Trump is losing some support. Gallup and Pew  —   two respected polls  —   have him around 40 percent approval or below. He’s holding steady with his core white    supporters, but his support from white   voters is down since Election Day. Those are the voters who voted for Trump even though they had reservations about his temperament and qualifications. They were willing to give him a chance to disrupt the system because the system wasn’t working. But is this the kind of disruption they had in mind? They wanted him to ”drain the swamp,” vanquish ISIS, and above all, bring back jobs. But he’s been talking about Russians instead of renegotiating NAFTA promising to punish ”  leakers” instead of proposing tax reform and fighting with the media instead of unveiling his infrastructure program. 3. Is this what Republicans on Capitol Hill wanted? No. After Thursday’s news conference it was hard to find a congressional Republican who thought Trump has helped himself. Republicans have a very compartmentalized view of Trump. They love that after eight long years of Obama they finally have a president who will sign their bills. For that alone, they’re happy to ignore the tweeting, the obsession with his vote totals, and the flirting with Vladimir Putin. But if Trump’s approval ratings keep dropping to the point where he looks like he’ll be a drag on their   that forbearance might disappear. Although Republicans in Congress are intimidated by Trump’s tweets and his hardcore supporters  —   who make up a large share of the party’s base  —   Trump doesn’t have a real constituency on Capitol Hill the way Mike Pence does. Pence is a former member of House leadership and there are plenty of Republicans who would much rather have him in the Oval Office. 4. Is it a finely tuned machine or a dysfunctional mess? Trump says everything is running just fine, but Republicans on Capitol Hill say they have no idea who’s in charge. At the press conference, Trump said his White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus is ”putting out fires” when Priebus would rather deal with tax reform and health care. But the character of any White House is set by the personality of the president. We’ve gone from   Obama to     Trump. This worked for Trump when he was a reality TV star. He would pit one contestant against another, creating drama and keeping the spotlight on himself. Now it looks like there’s no one in the White House to tell Trump when something is a bad idea. The news conference was reportedly his own idea, and it must have been a cathartic experience for him after weeks of complaining about how ineffectively his surrogates were defending him on television. So he decided to do it himself. When Trump says he’d run the country like a business, was this chaotic week what he meant? Trump is famous for seeking lots of advice  —   from almost anyone. He’s gone table to table polling diners at    about who he should appoint to the Cabinet. And he’s known for agreeing with the last person he talked to. This has been particularly hard on Priebus, who has had to contend with public attacks on his competence from Trump’s friends like Newsmax CEO Media Chris Ruddy and Roger Stone. Stone told NBC there is ”a division between those who are loyal to the president and those who are loyal to the Republican National Committee,” and has urged Priebus’ firing. 5. Can this ship be stabilized? Other administrations started chaotically, though probably not as dizzyingly as this one. Bill Clinton had a famously rocky start but went on to pass NAFTA and welfare reform  —   and with the country at peace and prosperous, he won  . Trump has inherited a good economy that’s improving by the day. If he can avoid a crisis like Ebola or Hurricane Katrina and get a seasoned hand or two in the White House, he might be able to move past this rough patch. But there is nothing we’ve seen so far that shows he actually wants that. His first song at the inaugural ball sums up what seems to be Trump’s ambition  —   he’d rather do things ”My Way”  —   for better or for worse."
"It has been   of a century since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order, issued just over two months after Japan’s surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, gave the U. S. military the ability to designate areas ”from which any or all persons may be excluded.” There was no mention of any particular ethnic or racial group anywhere in the order. Nevertheless, the implications were quickly quite clear: Not even a week passed before people of Japanese descent were being ordered to leave their homes in California. Soon, the forced relocation applied to the whole state, as well as much of the rest of the West Coast. Roosevelt signed another order the next month, creating an agency to usher these people  —   mostly U. S. citizens  —   to camps set up expressly to incarcerate them as potential threats. By the time the last internment camp closed in 1946, roughly 120, 000   had been held in 10 camps,   barracks set up in a handful of states. Beacons In A ’Dark Chapter’ Before an Oregon Senate committee, George Nakata, who was no more than 8 years old when the Roosevelt’s order was signed, spoke earlier this week of a ”dark chapter in American history . .. not found in many school textbooks,” according to The Associated Press. ”I can never forget, upon entering the building [where I was incarcerated] the smell of livestock urine, the pungent odor of manure underneath the wooden floors,” Nakata told lawmakers, who are considering a bill to establish a Day of Remembrance of the internment. The AP notes that California and Washington have passed similar resolutions. In their commemorations, many have turned to the courage of a few as a beacon in that ”dark chapter”  —   especially Fred Korematsu, who as a young man refused to be relocated in 1942. Korematsu, a U. S. citizen, took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against him. ”The majority of justices claimed the detentions were not based on racial discrimination but rather on suspicions that   were acting as spies,” as NPR has reported. Though in his dissent, Justice Robert Jackson wrote the decision ”has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens.” He added: ”The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.” That conviction was eventually vacated in 1983 by a U. S. District Court in San Francisco. But ”if anyone should do any pardoning,” Korematsu said at the time, ”I should be the one pardoning the government for what they did to the   people.”   across the country still harbor memories of childhood years spent behind barbed wire. That includes Roy Ebihara, who recently spoke with StoryCorps. ”I really didn’t understand what this all meant and how it would affect our family. I guess I felt we were guilty of something but what, I didn’t know,” he told his wife Aiko during the interview. ”I just feel that I want to go back and accept that pride, that pride of who we are.” Regret And Reflection In LA, At the time Roosevelt’s order was signed, The Los Angeles Times defended the internment  —   a decision the Times editorial board on Sunday called ”our lasting shame.” ”The time has come to realize that the rigors of war demand proper detention of Japanese and their immediate removal from the most acute danger spots,” the paper wrote in 1942. ”It is not a pleasant task. But it must be done and done now. There is no safe alternative.” A year later, the paper pinned their rationale on the idea that ”as a race, the Japanese have made for themselves a record for conscienceless treachery unsurpassed in history.” In this respect, the paper was in lockstep with the mayor of its home city at the time, Fletcher Bowron. On member station KPCC, Michael Holland and John Rabe point to Bowron’s archived speeches, which referred to citizens of Japanese descent as a threat to the homeland. Some of his addresses drew on legal trappings for credibility: ”I have merely pointed out a legal theory that   Japanese never were citizens under a proper construction of the provisions of the United States Constitution. If they never were citizens, nothing could be taken from them and their position is different. . .. [They] are in a class by themselves.” Bowron later ”made several public apologies for the treatment of the Japanese citizens of Los Angeles,” Holland and Rabe write. The Times of 2017, for its part, condemned the claims of its forebears. The anniversary marks a time ”to exercise some humility and to reflect on how we reach our positions on the passionate issues of the day,” the paper’s editorial board wrote Sunday. ”Here’s one obvious conclusion: Even in times of stress and fear, we need to keep a firm grip on our core values and bedrock principles.” Others in the U. S. also treated Sunday as a time for reflection  —   and as an opportunity to cast an eye on the present. ”Curators at the Japanese American National Museum say they see parallels between how Japanese Americans were treated during World War II and how Muslim Americans are treated today,” NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reports for our Newscast unit. Starting this weekend, the Los Angeles museum is displaying two pages of Roosevelt’s original executive order. ”They say they hope younger visitors will have a chance to see firsthand the document that scarred the lives of generations of  .”"
"This weekend marks 75 years since President Roosevelt’s executive order that sent   to internment camps. Roy Ebihara and his wife,    Aiko, were children then, and both were held in camps with their families. At StoryCorps,    Roy told Aiko about what happened in his hometown of Clovis, N. M. in the weeks just before the executive order was issued. ”A sheriff and two plainclothesmen barged into the house and searched for what they called ’contrabands.’ They took out my brother’s box camera, my father’s shortwave radio and they took the ax to it and chopped everything up,” Roy says. ”My father never protested. Never said a word. He just stood there. ”And one night, vigilante groups formed in town. We saw the men were holding the oil torches coming across to where we lived. They were going to burn down everything. The state patrol came roaring in and told us quickly to gather up what we can in pillowcases and whatever can fit into the trunk of the car. I remember my sister Kathy, my sister Mary and my brother, Bill, and I, the four of us were squeezed into the back seat of the sedan, and we left in the darkness of the night. We were all crying. We couldn’t stop. It was just terrifying.” That night Roy’s family was taken to the Old Ratan Ranch Camp about 12 miles outside the Fort Stanton Military Reservation in New Mexico where they were held until December 1942, when they were moved to the Topaz War Relocation camp in Utah. Aiko remembers getting on Army trucks that took her family to a camp. ”I was probably 5 or 6 years old,” she says. ”I thought I was going on a vacation.” Roy says he did not know he wasn’t going to return to his house again. ”I was 8 years old, and I really didn’t understand what this all meant and how it would affect our family,” he says. ”I guess I felt we were guilty of something but what, I didn’t know.” Roy says his family didn’t talk about the camps  —   his father didn’t want it discussed, and he and Aiko continued that tradition as parents to their two children. It’s something he calls ”the silence of our parents.” ”We regret it very much,” Aiko says. ”I just feel that I want to go back and accept that pride, that pride of who we are,” Roy says. Audio produced for Morning Edition by John White.  StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"At 98, Riichi Fuwa doesn’t remember his Social Security number, but he remembers this: ”19949. That was my number the government gave me,” he said. ”19949. You were more number than name.” That was the number that Fuwa was assigned when he was 24 years old, soon after he was forced off his family’s farm in Bellingham, Wash. and incarcerated at the Tule Lake camp, just south of the Oregon border in California’s Modoc County.   years ago today, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, which led all   on the West Coast to be forced from their homes and businesses during World War II. Fuwa was one of almost 120, 000 people of Japanese ancestry, most American citizens and farmers, who were incarcerated in what were euphemistically called ”relocation” or ”internment” camps. I met Fuwa last summer, when I joined a   pilgrimage to Tule Lake undertaken by survivors of the camps and their children and grandchildren. ”I wanted to see the place for the last time,” Fuwa told me. Before the war, nearly   of West Coast   worked in agriculture. People like    Jim Tanimoto, from the Sacramento Valley town of Gridley. His father grew rice, then cultivated peaches. Tanimoto and Fuwa’s immigrant parents faced laws barring them from owning or holding   leases on land. Despite that, by 1940 they and their   children grew almost 40 percent of the vegetables in California. Then, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor. Resentment and hysteria grew about anyone of Japanese origin, even those born in the United States. Tanimoto remembered, ”Then Executive Order 9066 was signed. Things changed.” On Feb. 19, 1942, when President Roosevelt signed the executive order authorizing the removal of anyone from military areas,   could read between the lines. They knew the order mainly targeted them. Soon, the commanding general for the West Coast determined that all people of Japanese origin  —   whether immigrant or U. S.  citizen  —   in coastal areas had to move inland onto   ”relocation camps.” Many had to abandon their orchards and fields, with crops ready to harvest. ”When I stepped out of the train, the terrain was not a big shock,” Tanimoto said. ”I knew what the terrain looked like.” That’s because, when he was younger, Tanimoto had hunted for deer up in the Tule Lake Basin, when all he could see was dusty land and scrub brush. When, in 1942, Tanimoto and the 15, 000 other forcibly evacuated   arrived at Tule Lake, they saw a landscape dominated by barracks covered in black tar paper. ”Rows and rows and rows of these buildings,” said Tanimoto. ”We were inside the   fence, the armed guard towers. We couldn’t walk out of the enclosure. I might get shot.” He remembered thinking, ”Hey, I’m an American citizen! Now I’m the one being hunted.” Government Farmworkers, Jim Tanimoto and many other   farm owners were about to become field workers for the U. S. government. The guard towers and rows of barracks have long since been torn down or moved. Our guide on the pilgrimage points out the few remaining buildings, and the huge swaths of farmland once worked by Tule Lake prisoners. Over 1, 000   worked in the fields, most earning just $12 a month, a quarter of what farmworkers made at the time. Agriculture wasn’t incidental at any of the incarceration camps. Many of the new War Relocation Authority administrators came right from the Department of Agriculture. Camp locations, though usually in deserts and other inhospitable places, were often chosen for their existing government irrigation projects or agricultural potential. The government’s intention was to improve the land for after the war. Each of the 10 incarceration camps nationwide had working farms, but Tule Lake was different. The land was on a former lake bed, so despite a dusty, snowy and windy climate and a short growing season, it produced enough food for its own mess halls and those at other camps. That production was so essential that when the Tule Lake camp opened, eligible men who refused to work were threatened with $20 a month fines. Farmworkers at Tule Lake harvested almost 30 crops, including potatoes, rutabagas and daikon radishes. They also grew grain and hay for animal feed, and kept hogs and chickens. Before the war, Lucille Hitomi’s father ran a commercial flower business in Mountain View, Calif. At Tule Lake, he worked the fields, under white supervisors. ”I remember my dad saying, ’I don’t know if they were good farmers,’ ” she said, but those bosses relied on the expertise of the   laborers to develop a productive farm. To keep some semblance of normalcy, families like Hitomi’s tried to create special meals. It helped that her brother worked at the camp slaughterhouse. ”I don’t know if this was legal,” Hitomi remembered, ”but sometimes he would bring bits of meat home. My mother brought to camp a hot plate and a frying pan, and she’d cook the meat in the barrack,” instead of joining hundreds of others in the mess hall. ”I guess it was more like home,” Hitomi said. The stated purpose of these farms was to feed the incarcerated, but camp administrators took produce, grain and hay grown by these imprisoned Japanese American workers, and sold it on the open market  —   over 2 million pounds of it from Tule Lake alone. Loyalty questioned, One year after ordering   out of their homes, the government made every adult in every camp fill out a questionnaire. ”This outrageous questionnaire was used to separate the   loyal people from the disloyal,” said writer and historian Barbara Takei, who also attended the pilgrimage. Jim Tanimoto remembers that two questions caused the most confusion and anger: No. 27 asked a person’s willingness to join the armed forces  —   this, after being incarcerated. ”And No. 28 was sort of like a trick question, ’Would you cut your ties with Japan and the emperor? ” he recalled. ”Well, I’m an American citizen and a Gridley farm boy. I have no ties with Japan or the emperor, so how was I supposed to answer this question?” If he had no ties to begin with, he couldn’t answer ”yes” and cut them. But if he answered ”no,” the U. S. government would assume he was disloyal. Tanimoto and all of the other young men in Block 42, his area of the Tule Lake camp, refused to answer. They were arrested and jailed in nearby towns, then at a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp nearby. ”I stood on my constitutional rights,” Tanimoto said. ”You can’t do this to American citizens.” More people at Tule Lake refused to answer these questions, or answered no to one or both, than at any other camp. Additional fences and guard towers went up, and anyone in the whole camp system who didn’t answer ”yes” to both questions was labeled ”disloyal” and was sent to the   Tule Lake Segregation Center. This was in the 1940s, two decades before the civil rights movement. ”Now,   rights movement, we realize that the right to protest is a precious American right,” Takei said. ”It was something that the people who were imprisoned in Tule Lake exercised, and because of that they were punished.” A camp that was the largest ’city’ in region, By fall of 1943, Tule Lake Segregation Center became the largest ”city” in California north of Sacramento, ballooning to nearly 19, 000 people, most of them labeled troublemakers. Camp got tense. With a larger workforce, the administrators expanded the farm, and expected a huge harvest, but the laborers complained of poor food rations and major safety concerns. Then, a truck carrying   laborers from the farm had an accident. Nearly 30 worker were injured. One died. Farmworkers refused to go back to work. ”They recognized that they had leverage by having the strike right when the crops are ready to pick,” Takei explained. The camp director turned around and brought in   from other incarceration camps to break the strike. ”These strikebreakers were also paid a dollar an hour, so in two days they could make more than a farm worker at Tule Lake would make in a month,” Takei said. Camp administrators would simply not let the fields go unharvested. A few days later, Takei explained, the Tule Lake laborers became even angrier. ”Workers saw a truck leaving the warehouse area filled with food,” ostensibly to feed the strikebreakers. Some 200 people surrounded the truck. ”And that’s what caused the camp director to call in a battalion, with the tanks rolling in, and the camp was shut down,” said Takei. Martial law    leaders were thrown in a stockade, with no legal recourse. Within days, martial law was declared. This marked the end of   farming, and the beginning of two tumultuous years at Tule Lake. The military raided barracks, and hundreds of people ended up in the stockade, then a jail, for months. There were more protests. A radical faction grew in camp, and eventually thousands of angry, scared, or confused   imprisoned at Tule Lake renounced their U. S. citizenship, actions many felt were made under duress, and which took 20 years to reverse. The Tule Lake Segregation Center closed in the spring of 1946, six months after the war ended. What remained were empty barracks that once housed families, and thousands of acres of rich farmland. Riichi Fuwa, 98, remembered that the land he and other   improved got parceled off to veterans returning from war. ”When the soldiers came back and they wanted to farm, they could homestead that place,” he said. I asked him, jokingly, if he was offered that land. Fuwa just laughed. Some former incarcerees returned home and eventually rebuilt successful farm businesses. Not Fuwa. His farm was overgrown, all the equipment stolen. ”There’s no way to express that feeling when you see the place like that,” he said. He soon left farming forever. By 1960, the number of   farmers dropped to a quarter of their prewar presence. With lost farms, homes and businesses, it’s estimated that wartime incarceration cost   up to $4 billion in today’s values. Some of those losses were compensated in 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed redress legislation offering a formal apology and giving $20, 000 to each survivor. The   losses  —   to   to California, to the whole country  —   are impossible to measure. Especially now, Takei said, we must remember ”how easily people  —   because of fear and anger  —   lose sight of our important national values of justice and rule of law.” She drew parallels with Muslim Americans, refugees and immigrants, ”as though demonizing other people is going to solve our problems.” All we have to do, she said, is look at the World War II incarceration of Japanese   to see that’s not true. Lisa Morehouse is an independent journalist. This story was produced in collaboration with the Food  Environment Reporting Network, a   investigative news organization. Meradith Hoddinott helped with research. "
"I was worried that I might not be able to stick to an intermittent fasting schedule during my vacation in Mexico. It turns out, it was a breeze. Because I was sick. It started on the plane ride to Cozumel, a tingle in my throat and then the telltale sign that illness was imminent: three sneezes in a row. A clogged nose, a slight fever and a general feeling of malaise came over me after my third dive into the electric blue waters of the Caribbean. I’m participating in a preliminary study at Johns Hopkins Medicine on the effects of intermittent fasting on the microbiome and inflammation in people with multiple sclerosis. For the   study, I’m restricted to eating during an   period, usually from noon until 8 p. m. That meant that the first day of vacation, my first meal was pretzels on a plane, my second was ceviche and nachos in the late afternoon. It wasn’t a great combination, but I had a feeling that as my nose continued to clog, I wouldn’t be able to taste much, so I went for variety. As the week went on, I tried not to let my inability to taste hamper the experience, but it was hard. Tacos tasted like rubber, plantains like Elmer’s glue. And though I squealed in delight when I saw a churros cart, the   buttery,   treats tasted more like cardboard covered in sawdust. My vacation was headed toward gastronomic disaster, but at least the study data would not be compromised. At the end of the six months, researchers will be looking at the state of my microbiome, via a stool sample, to determine how it may have changed. Or to be precise, my microbiota, according to Jorge Cervantes, an assistant professor of microbiology at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso who has studied the microbiome in relation to several diseases, including MS. I called him to get up to speed on my microbiota. ”The microbiota is all the microorganisms living in a specific niche,” he says. That niche being my gut. ”We talk about bacteria, mainly, but there are also viruses and fungi.” The microbiome is the whole ecosystem  —   the bacteria, viruses, fungi, as well as the environmental conditions they inhabit. Our resident bacteria serve us in three basic ways, says Cervantes, who is not involved in the study I’m doing. They occupy space and help restrict the overgrowth of bad bacteria. And they can help our metabolism by facilitating the breakdown of certain molecules. Gut bacteria are of special interest to people with autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease, because they help in the training and development of our immune systems. That’s so that your immune system can sample a molecule and and tell, ” ’Oh this is bacteria,’ or ’Oh, this is a virus.’ ” Cervantes explains. If the molecule might cause harm, an immune response is triggered. Once an immune cell locates a potentially harmful molecule  —   say, from the bacteria Streptococcus, or whatever I caught on the plane to Mexico  —   it sends out a call to other immune cells so they can help control the invasion, Cervantes says. That process creates inflammation, which can involve pain, stinging, swelling or a host of other unpleasant symptoms that ordinarily mean your body is fighting the good fight to help you heal. ”Sometimes,” Cervantes said, ”the immune cells get confused.” And here’s where our microbes can affect autoimmune diseases such as MS, in which the body’s immune system fires up at the wrong times: Bacteria can be the trigger for this confusion. An immune cell can mistake good bacteria for bad bacteria, and that confusion can lead to an immune response when there’s no real threat to a person’s health. Scientists are not only studying microbiota and their relationship to autoimmune diseases they’re studying their roles in hypertension, cancer, even mental health disorders. Research in many of these areas is new and exciting and full of potential  —   and faces challenges, one being the difficulty of teasing out cause and effect. Does a change in the volume   variety of a microbiota lead to disease? Does the disease change the microbiota, leading to other health changes? ”The thing is, no one knows what is first, the egg or the chicken,” Cervantes says. To answer that question, scientists have been turning to mice. Not just any mice, these rodents are   entirely  . According to a review published in 2015 in Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease,   mice are less likely to have inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune arthritis, Type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases. And when they do have them, the symptoms are less severe. This, the authors say, is consistent with the idea that the microbiota could be a trigger for these diseases. Good news, right? But they go on to say that attempts to identify exactly which organisms could be causing these diseases have failed. And even if we can agree that we want a ”healthy” gut microbiome, what does that mean? ”There is no ideal,” Cervantes says. ”The point is that the microbiome is not a fixed entity.” It changes over time and is different from person to person. And so it seems we’ve added a third variable to the already complex interplay of genetics and the environment when considering health and disease. I’m pleased to report that my immune system, while it may be overactive, also does its job once in a while, fighting back the infection as I hunkered down in my hotel room in Mexico. While I recuperated, I read through comments on the first article I wrote about my experiences with this study. People shared their own attempts to tweak their diets as means to ease suffering from a host of diseases. I also read a lot of criticism about my diet: However, what she is eating are not   foods at all! Why not start there and give the body more of a fighting chance than to eat the SAD (standard American diet) less ice cream  tacos, more #fruit, #veg, #wholegrains, #beans etc  this could be a real winner for #multiplesclerosis,  Darlin try cannabis its amazing for MS, ”Who do these people think they are?” I thought. I mean, ramen is delicious, tacos are a mainstay of my diet, and ice cream is pretty much perfect. Many people with MS do have foods that they know don’t sit well with them for me, one is pizza. Delicious pizza. After a few slices my hands and feet burn and I typically fall asleep within the hour. To be honest, my body isn’t a fan of ice cream, either. And I can’t say I felt great after that ramen. Halfway into the study, and I haven’t felt much better overall. The first thing I do when I get home from work every day is still nap. I still grab my trusty ice pack from the freezer about once a week and clutch it for the soothing effect it has on my hands, and occasionally my feet. Don’t worry I wash it! So OK, maybe the commenters are on to something. It stands to reason that if when you eat can have a drastic impact on the microorganisms in your gut, then certainly what you eat must be important, too, right? ”By all means,” Cervantes said. My study isn’t looking at the effect of particular foods on MS symptoms. But I must admit I’ve been eating much worse since the study began. Come noon, I am so focused on food that I inhale everything in sight, then forage for more. One   frequently reminds us via email that he has Hershey’s Kisses in his office. Another introduced me to Peanut Chews  —   she kindly always has a pack waiting for me in her desk drawer. The convenience store downstairs has granola bars for 75 cents! (And french fries for $1. 50.) Most days I eat my typically healthy lunch (some haphazard mix of vegetables topped with last night’s dinner protein) and before I’ve finished chewing the last bite, before I can rationally asses the state of my hunger, I’m out of my office looking for another food fix. There’s another reason I’ve continued to eat like a madwoman during these past three months. Over the past year, I’ve deliberately lost a good amount of weight. Let’s call it 35 pounds. Despite my unhealthy recent eating habits, believe it or not, I did it through an overhaul in my diet, cutting out most simple carbs and eating more vegetables and trading fat for muscle mass. And like so many women, I do still reflexively judge how healthy I am in part by how much I weigh. I lost a few pounds when I began the study, and no matter how much ice cream I shovel into my face, I haven’t gained any of it back. I’m no doctor, but I’m fairly certain that just because my weight is stable, that doesn’t mean I’m on a path to perfect health or a flourishing microbiome. And so for the second half of the study, I have resigned myself to a crazy idea, getting back to eating like a responsible human being. A person who cares about the   of the ecosystem I’m hosting: the bacteria, viruses and other little guys who call my gut home. Farewell, Peanut Chews. :) Brandie Michelle Jefferson is a communications manager and freelance reporter who loves a good science story. She’s on Twitter, too: @b_m_jefferson"
"The chief of Facebook made an ambitious announcement last week, though it would have been easy to miss. It came Thursday afternoon  —   about the same time that President Trump held his news conference. While the   icon is a genius at capturing our attention, the technology leader’s words may prove to be more relevant to our lives, and more radical. Mark Zuckerberg posted a nearly   essay to his page, entitled ”Building Global Community.” Many are calling it a ”manifesto.” His ambitions are global and his tone, altruistic. Zuckerberg writes: ”Our greatest opportunities are now global  —   like spreading prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding, lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science. Our greatest challenges also need global responses  —   like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics.” Zuckerberg speaks to people who dream of global citizenship, a borderless utopia that many political leaders around the world don’t seem to be offering. ”In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us,” he writes. And to build this global community, Zuckerberg encourages us to shift how we think about Facebook: stop looking at the app as a means of recreation. Instead, think of it as the way you connect to others  —   for work or for play. You can use it as a medium to let the world know about your startup or to recruit parishioners to your church or to announce your presidential campaign or to manage a multinational disaster relief effort. ”Going forward, we will measure Facebook’s progress with groups based on meaningful groups, not groups overall,” he writes. He adds that the strengthening of ”meaningful online communities” will ”strengthen our social fabric.” It sounds noble, but behind that alluring vision is a profound power grab delivered by a savvy politician, say critics. At its core, Zuckerberg’s essay reads like a call to give up our open access to the Internet and the freedom that exists in a marketplace with real competition. Rather, Facebook wants us to step into its walled garden  —   where a handful of company chieftains set the rules  —   and live our social, economic, and religious lives inside it. What he doesn’t address in his essay, however, are the responsibilities that come with this power. Take for example, disaster relief. A   nonprofit could try to use Facebook to let refugees fleeing conflict know about safe places to go to for food and water. Now, a group of human traffickers, posing as   citizens, could do the same. What kinds of resources will Facebook invest in verifying what’s real versus fake? Zuckerberg’s lofty goals require profound trust in his platform. And there are two industries  —   journalism and small advertisers  —   whose recent experiences with Facebook illustrate the dangers of  . (Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams.) Journalists have been surprised to learn that Facebook is concerned with driving engagement  —   not to be confused with civic engagement. The algorithm that determines what you see in your News Feed prioritizes content that people want to share and comment on, even if it’s a lie. Consider how fake news influenced the presidential campaign of 2016. One such story that went viral last fall claimed the pope had endorsed Donald Trump.  If Facebook valued real journalism  —   where resources are poured into the expensive business of    —   its corporate leaders could have decided to implement a simple solution to fake news: make the source for news stories more prominent (so I don’t have to strain my eyes to see if it’s The New York Times or the National Enquirer). Facebook already does that for celebrities, through the blue verification check mark that tells you the platform has verified and confirmed the true identity of the person. Imagine if Facebook had visually obvious verification for links that come from trusted news outlets. It would do an enormous public service. Facebook’s current corporate approach to   links is  . Let the users flag suspicious content. It’s a system susceptible to warring factions sabotaging each other. And it’s not clear from the manifesto that Zuckerberg is willing to change the model to one that pays for essential human capital  —   far more expensive than software solutions.  Small advertisers have been discussed far less but probably have the best insight into Facebook’s volatility as a platform. Say I decide to start a page for my tire shop on the site. For the first year, I pay Facebook $5, 000 to advertise and the Facebook algorithm shows my posts to all my ”followers.” But the next year, the company decides to change the rules and say: for $5, 000 we will show your posts to 20 percent of fans. If you want to reach the same number you did last year, you have to pay more. These kinds of rule changes  —   some with dramatic financial implications  —   regularly occur on the platform. (See for example this change last April that severely limited which users are allowed to post commercial content.) They occur without a user vote and without a public comment period. Right after Zuckerberg posted his manifesto, NPR emailed the company to ask about the new responsibilities that will come with the   new power Facebook seeks. If Facebook wants people to rely on the platform as the tool to build important social ties online, what guarantees can Facebook give for its own accountability? Can it at least offer something as basic as a customer service hotline, for example? Currently many users who are expelled without clear explanation or who have small business pages removed find it impossible to reach a human at the company for help. A spokesperson did not answer the question, and simply shared the company’s press release summarizing Zuckerberg’s points."
"New York GOP Rep. Tom Reed probably knew what kind of day he was in for when he arrived at the Ashville senior center for his first town hall on Saturday. The crowd was so large the gathering had been moved outside to a slushy parking lot. ”First and foremost, we are going to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act  —   Obamacare,” Reed said at the outset, using a loudspeaker propped up on a ladder to try to reach the sprawling crowd. The response was loud and sustained boos. The congressman is just the latest Republican to face boisterous constituents voicing concerns with the nascent Trump White House, and more confrontations are expected as members head home for recess this coming week. The backlash is happening in prime Trump country. Reed’s 23rd District, which encompasses the western tip of southern New York, borders Pennsylvania and includes the more liberal college town of Ithaca. It has more in common with the neighboring Keystone State  —   which Trump carried  —   than New York City. It’s rural,   and made a big swing for Trump at the ballot box. After narrowly voting for President Obama in 2008, then narrowly going for Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump won the district by almost 15 points, according to calculations by the Daily Kos. But if Democrats want any hope of making the 2018 race for the House competitive, they’ve got to put districts like Reed’s back on the board  —   and the early anger in places like Western New York is giving them glimmers of hope. Repeal and replace  —   but with what? Republicans’ biggest Achilles heel is front and center as they meet with constituents: their lack of a consensus plan to replace former President Obama’s signature health care law, despite making it the cornerstone of their campaign platform for several years. On Saturday, Reed was repeatedly pressed about how Republicans would propose replacing the ACA. While he said he supported keeping some of the popular provisions in the current law  —   such as guaranteeing coverage for people with   conditions and allowing children up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ plan  —   on other issues he didn’t have concrete answers, frustrating many in the crowd. ”We’re not comfortable with this until you tell us what you’re going to do, point by point, to replace our health care,” yelled one woman at Reed’s second town hall in Cherry Creek. When one constituent in the earlier Ashville gathering asked for the number of the GOP replacement bill so she could look it up, Reed said he would have his staff get back to her. In fact, there isn’t just one bill that’s been proposed, but several. President Trump has said he will roll out his alternative next month. Others in the crowd grew angry as Reed explained why he believed Medicare reform was necessary, with some seniors shouting back that they liked their Medicare the way it was and didn’t want it to change. Chants of ”Do not privatize!” rang out. Many shared personal stories as to why the health care law was so critical for them. In Cherry Creek, Mark Jones of Jamestown held up a poster with a picture of his    daughter, Lauren, who has cystic fibrosis. Eventually she’ll need a double lung transplant. Lauren currently has health care through her employer, Jones said, but if she has to stop working and the rule protecting people with   conditions ends, that lung transplant may be in jeopardy. ”They had six years to reach across the aisle and fix what was wrong. They didn’t do that,” Jones said. ”They need to come up with a plan, and they need to come up with a plan fast, and it needs to be good.” Tea Party passions reversed, The anger Republicans face as they try to replace Obamacare is almost the reverse of what Democrats saw eight years ago. Back then, Democrats’ town halls became raucous as members of the growing Tea Party movement flooded events, angry about the president’s health care proposal, stoking fears of not just rising costs but of mythical ”death panels.” That feeling of deja vu isn’t by accident. Progressive activists are borrowing some of the Tea Party tactics to try and raise awareness online, form action groups and alert locals about events with their representatives where they can raise their concerns. Some have been using the ”Indivisible” guide  —   a reference for progressive activists who want to reach their representatives and make their voices heard, composed by former Democratic staffers who lived through the advent of the Tea Party town halls. The organization is reaching out to supporters this weekend to start mobilizing for a ”week of action” while members of Congress are home. National Republicans have tried to dismiss the Indivisible groups, claiming they’re just providing fake   support and could include paid protesters. But even many Democrats now acknowledge they made the same arguments eight years ago to try and diminish the rise of the Tea Party  —   at their peril  —   which led to a disastrous 2010 midterm election for their party. Stephen Keefe is one of the leaders of the local Indivisible groups that’s sprung up over the past few weeks. He’s a former local Democratic councilor and mayor who heard about the group online and decided to get in touch and start a chapter in Western New York. Reed’s meetings on Saturday were in mostly conservative areas of the district, and not by accident, Keefe said. The number of protesters shows how much anger there is toward Reed and GOP policies, he added. ”I think that he is willing to meet with the people and listen to their concerns,” Keefe said. ”I don’t think he’s willing to act on them.” Most of the constituents at Reed’s two morning town halls were   or senior citizens, and some carried signs with their ZIP codes saying they certainly weren’t being paid. Judy Einach of nearby Westfield bristled at that idea. She and her friends had camped out early on at the Ashville town hall and had secured a prime spot near the front of the huge crowd. ”I don’t think we’re paid,” Einach joked. ”We got up early in the morning. We’re lucky if we got coffee, and we’ve been waiting her for a very long time for him.” An   backlash? In addition to health care, many in Reed’s crowd repeatedly pressed him over the new president, whom Reed supported early on. Many people wanted to know why he had voted against a bill in the Ways and Means Committee that would have required Trump to release his income taxes. Reed tried to explain that he had concerns with that bill because of privacy rights, arguing that such an action was ”a tremendous amount of power, for the government to come after one individual.” The crowd, not agreeing, drowned him out with chants of ”What are you covering up?” and ”He’s not a private citizen!” At other times, attendees shouted, ”Russia! Russia!”  —   demanding Reed address the president’s alleged ties to the country and intelligence findings that Russia had tried to meddle in the U. S. elections to help Trump. At his Cherry Creek town hall, Reed had a tense exchange with one woman after he said he didn’t support further investigation into the Russia issues. Reed said he hadn’t seen enough evidence to warrant a probe, but the woman argued other Republicans had called for such action and that it should be a bipartisan issue of national security. At one point, a friendly face seemed to emerge when a   girl made her way to the front of the Ashville town hall to ask a question. It wasn’t to be: The young girl named Madison asked the congressman why he wanted to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency  —   and received massive applause for her question. Reed said he didn’t want to eliminate it, just roll back burdensome regulations. Reed stays in the fray, Several in the crowd noted that, to his credit, Reed hasn’t shied away from doing town halls, despite the anticipated blowback. In fact, he crisscrossed his expansive district to do a total of four gatherings on Saturday. Neighboring Rep. Chris Collins has refused to hold any town halls, and other GOP members have turned to   halls to try and tamp down on protesters. Not everyone was there to protest, though. In Ashville, a woman carrying a   sign and a man wearing an Infowars cap  —   from the conspiracy   site that backs Trump  —   stood stoically near Reed. Mel McGinnis, who donned one of Trump’s signature ”Make America Great Again” red hats was another Tea Party faithful in the crowd, frustrated with the progressive activists and their interruptions. ”I thought this was going to be a town hall, but it was a mob hall,” he said, calling the scene ” .” Despite repeated outbursts throughout the morning and angry chants against him, Reed was not fazed. He kept a smile on his face and almost seemed to relish the exchanges, no matter how hostile they became. Earlier in the week, he even met with some constituents who had engaged in a   at his Ithaca office. ”What I have heard is passion, what I have heard is democracy, and what I have heard is, hopefully, a willingness by many, of each and every one of you to find solutions,” he told the crowd in Ashville at the end of the event. That conciliatory tone, however, was met with chants of ”vote Reed out” by the unsatisfied crowd."
"This is a   story on immigrants and small town viability. Part one aired on this Weekend Edition Saturday. For the full story, listen to both audio segments. Like thousands of rural towns across the country, Cawker City, Kan. was built for bygone time. Resident Linda Clover has spent most of her life in Cawker City, and she loves the place, but it’s a shell of the town it used to be. ”When I moved here in the ’60s we had three grocery stores,” she says. ”Now the number is zero.” Cawker City has a common rural problem. When it formed, 140 years ago, the big families living on many small, nearby farms had no other place to shop  —   or shoot pool. Since then, farms have grown much bigger, the remaining families are smaller, and increasingly they’re doing much of their shopping online. As career opportunities in town dry up, ambitious young adults tend to move away. ”You have to find your little place in the world,” Linda Clover says. ”And we’ve kind of lost it, in our whole area really.” But as some small towns struggle to remain viable, others, like Garden City, Kan. are booming. But, other than being surrounded by cows and cornfields, the town doesn’t square with most people’s stereotypes of rural Kansas. Three, 4 and    flock to their parents’ arms at a   school in Garden City. Principal Josh Guymon says enrollment is up sharply since the start of the school year, and these parents have come from all over the world. ”We have a significant Burmese population,” Guymon says. ”We have a Vietnamese population. We’re seeing a lot of students come in from the northern African countries  —   Somalia, Ethiopia  —   and of course, the majority of them from Mexico or other countries in Central America.” According to the latest census, only about 40 percent of the residents here classify as ”white,  .” ”Garden City is the most diverse community here in Kansas,” says Albert Kyaw, a translator for the district, who comes from Myanmar. At least 27 different languages are spoken, some say up to 40, in a town of only 27, 000. And these people are busy, as unemployment hovers around 3 percent. City manager Matt Allen says it’s an economic system powered by a steady stream of irrigated corn and immigrant labor. ”In this region, we pump water out of the ground to grow a tropical plant in the sand hills, in mass, so that we can feed cattle in mass, so that we can kill cattle in mass, so we can distribute beef in mass, and that requires a big workforce,” he says. ”That is the common thread through the economy.” All those workers, producing food that the rest of the country buys, bring wealth  —   in the form of stores, services and terrific ethnic restaurants  —   to the remote western Kansas town. All that, in turn, helps Garden City hang onto workers. ”For us, that matters. It’s about workforce,” Allen says. ”It’s about do we have enough fuel to run the engine.” And Garden City’s success is no accident. The town’s turning point came in the 1970s, says Sister Janice Thome, when city and church leaders debated bringing in a meatpacking plant. Thome slides behind the wheel of her faded red Ford truck she uses to haul donated furniture to newcomers. Those leaders, as she recalls, ”said, if we say ’no,’ then Garden City is liable to become one of these ghost towns, like many other towns. If we say yes, then we’ve got a vibrant economy, but then we’re going to be bringing all of, quotes, ’those people.’ ” ”Those people,” as in immigrants, mostly poor ones, who don’t speak English, and need significant help getting their footing in a new culture.  ”They decided they didn’t want to be a ghost town, so they would say yes, and then they said, ’OK, are we going to count the people that come in then, as a blessing or a curse?’ ” Sister Thome says. Viewing them as a blessing won out. And after a lot of persistence, effort and patience, a   ethos has gradually taken root here. Ahmed Ali, a spirited young Somali meat packer says he never wants to leave. ”This town is so nice,” he says. ”The people in this town, they are so great people. We love them, and also they love us.” In a way, Garden City offers the same basic deal that settlers around here embraced in the late 1800s: Foreigners move to remote part of the country, work hard and create a   community to call home. 3 Threats To A Successful Rural Town’s Model, But now, Garden City’s blueprint for success is under pressure from domestic terrorism, and possibly from the Trump administration’s focus on immigration. In the town of many cultures, one of its cultural hubs, an African Somali shop, lives in a metal building in a commercial strip near the outskirts of town. Shelves overflow with bright African clothes and African food. In back there’s a big TV playing African soccer, some folding chairs and tables where guys like Marsal Maleye hang out after work. ”Seven years, in Kansas, I’ve never seen someone tell me, ’Are you from Africa, are you from this, ’ you just never,” Maleye says. ”And that’s why I prefer Garden City be my house, rest of my life.” But Garden City’s model  —   a vibrant economy built in a difficult environment by welcoming decades of immigrant labor  —   faces three distinct challenges. One challenge cropped up earlier this month, when immigrants did stop coming. ”For me, Garden City office in particular, I don’t have any scheduled arrival in the coming days or weeks,” says Amy Longa of the International Rescue Committee, an agency that helps resettle refugees. That’s a problem because meatpacking, the bedrock industry here, is hard, dirty work, with high turnover. With unemployment way below the national average, Garden City’s labor market is tight. And Longa, who came from Uganda a decade ago, says refugees are motivated workers. ”It’s almost no plan B, it’s a plan A  —   you become an independent person, and becoming independent is [being] able to pay your rent,” she says. Immigrants working, paying rent and taxes have turned Garden City and other meatpacking towns into islands of growth amid seas of rural decline. And Garden City, by and large, welcomes and appreciates its immigrants, as Carol Schieber found out when she was passing through, from Guatemala, 22 years ago. ”It was so friendly and helpful,” she says. ”The people would greet you at the stores and help you as much as they could everywhere you went.” Schieber liked the vibe here so much that she stayed. Garden City is now majority Hispanic, but the extremely diverse town still finds fresh ways to welcome newcomers. Dr. John Birky moves a big medical exam table into a modest apartment, with help from a couple of Somali men, where he’s setting up a   clinic handy for recent immigrants. ”So, this is actually going to be the waiting room. And then, we’ll come back here, and so this will be one exam room, you can see where they put a sink in there.” But he’s aware of a second, very serious menace to immigrants here. ”Do we want to publicize this beyond the local community? Because we’re always kind of asking ourselves, what kind of bad actors are going to show up and cause issues,” Birky says. In fact, Garden City had a close brush with some alleged bad actors last fall, when three men were charged with plotting a terrorist attack on a mosque and apartment complex in Garden City. ”I got a little bit flashback,” says Ahmed Hassan Ali, a Somali immigrant. ”I said, ’Wow. What I was running from, still is here.’ I never thought that, really.” He stands outside the low slung housing complex targeted by the bomb plot. ”There’s a lot of families. Kids. Did nothing wrong. Away from civil wars, problems back home,” Ali says. ”They were seeking to have a better life in the United States.” Three members an   militia calling itself the Crusaders allegedly prepared to set off bombs at the complex, then to shoot any fleeing survivors. ”Thanks to FBI, thanks to law enforcement, that didn’t happen,” Ali says. ”That’s why we have a good connection with the law enforcement in Garden City, especially Michael Utz, he’s a great guy.” When FBI agents told Garden City’s chief of police, Michael Utz, about the bomb plot, he reached out to the Muslim community. ”To me, it wasn’t an attack on the Somalian population or the Burmese population, this was an attack on our community,” Utz says. Finney County Sheriff Kevin Bascue agrees. And he says there’s a third problem vexing immigration here. Another Trump administration executive order could force local law enforcement to check the immigration status of otherwise   citizens. ”I think that the threat to this community is the ending of what we’ve worked so hard over many, many years to happen here,” Bascue says. The relationship built between police and the town’s valued immigrant population. ”I think our community would be a dying community without the immigrants that have come in to fill in the gaps, and to grow business,” he adds. Bascue says the district’s law enforcement will continue to cooperate fully with federal Immigration agents, but with an eye toward preserving Garden City’s winning formula  —   which starts with immigrants."
"The Children’s Relief Ministry orphanage sits at the end of a dirt road in Paynesville, Liberia. There’s no running water or electricity. Many of the 40 or so boys and girls who live there lost their parents in the country’s civil war or to the more recent Ebola epidemic. When Peace Corps volunteer Anne Geroski first showed up in August, CRM director Moses Kargbo suggested she get to know the kids. There was one who stood out immediately: a    named Sundaygar Moses. At the orphanage, he’s known as ”the general,” because he dashes around constantly, keeping tabs on everything that’s going on. They sat down to chat, and Sundaygar had two requests for Geroski. ”The first thing he said to me is, ’I need a leg,’” Geroski remembers. ”Then he said, ’I need a bicycle. ’” Yes, Kargbo confirmed, Sundaygar could indeed ride a bike. He’d figured out a way to do it, just as he had developed his own method to maneuver on a single crutch. Instead of putting the crutch under his armpit, he grips it at the top, like it’s a cane. That way the crutch handle is reserved for his stump  —   which is all that’s left of his right leg, where he was shot as an infant. It’s hard to explain how this works, but it does, says Geroski, who soon learned that Sundaygar is also an avid soccer player. ”He’s a kid who knows how to make things happen,” she says. And something very big happened recently: Sundaygar was fitted for a prosthetic and learned to walk without a crutch for the first time. His reaction? ”I felt fine,” Sundaygar says, which Geroski explains means ”really, really good” in Liberian English, especially among   . It hasn’t been an easy life for Sundaygar, starting with a traumatic gunshot wound at an early age. He spent the next few years at an orphanage that was eventually shut down. He arrived at CRM with a group of kids from that facility in 2010. ”When he first came he was suffering. He was skinny. You could tell by his condition he wasn’t getting good care,” says Abraham Cole, a    who grew up at CRM and now helps out with the younger children. CRM feels like a family, Cole adds, with ”the kind of love parents give you.” Sundaygar remembers, ”There were children waiting for us, welcoming us.” Although he looked different  —   Abe says most of them had never seen anyone with one leg before  —   they treated him the same. Sundaygar says he just watched the others until he eventually learned how to keep up. Still, as Sundaygar told Geroski, he longed for a leg. The crutch was causing rashes under his arm, and even with this improvised method of walking, he had trouble doing certain tasks, such as drawing water from the well. So Geroski added ”prosthetic leg” to her   list of needs she’s discovered at CRM. They range from basic items, such as mirrors (”They don’t even know what they look like,” she says) to bigger asks, like a college scholarship for Abe. She also mentioned the leg to her husband, Kevin Rodgers, a doctor who’s teaching at the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia. The couple, who originally met as Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras in 1983, have remained committed to service. After raising four kids  —   including one who served in the Peace Corps in Peru and another who will head to Mozambique for the Peace Corps in April  —   they decided it was time to pitch in again. Geroski, 56, an associate professor in the Graduate Counseling Program at the University of Vermont, is part of Peace Corps Response, which sends experienced professionals out on   assignments. Rodgers, 62, is stationed at the hospital as part of Peace Corps Global Health Service Partnership, a program for physicians and nurses to address   challenges. For both of them, working with an orphanage was a priority. ”In fact, Kevin asked if we could live in the orphanage,” Geroski says. They couldn’t, and both have other Peace Corps responsibilities in Liberia. But they devote as much attention to CRM as possible. It’s a special place, explains Rodgers, who is impressed by how well the kids are doing emotionally despite the conditions. Medically, however, there are red flags. ”We have a   list we’re working through,” he says. All of the youngsters are behind on immunizations. Many have been malnourished in the past. Some have sickle cell anemia. Malaria is a constant concern. There are many, many cavities. But there was no way to ignore Sundaygar  —   and his curious   technique. Although it’s remarkably effective, ”he always seems to be on the verge of a crash,” Rodgers adds. So he was surprised when, one day in October, he saw Sundaygar running down the hallway of the hospital toward him. It was just a coincidence that they bumped into each other, and even more serendipitous was the fact that Rodgers happened to be in the middle of a meeting with a visiting surgeon from the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Sundaygar had been brought to the hospital by a charity called Street Child, which has a program focused on amputees. The assessment that day had ended with bad news: Sundaygar wasn’t a candidate for a prosthesis unless he underwent surgery on his stump. After he was shot, the wound became infected doctors removed his leg just a bit beneath his knee. A prosthetic that attaches below the knee requires a functional knee  —   and Sundaygar’s isn’t. So it looked as if he would need to have the knee removed. Because of this   with a Texan specialist, Rodgers was able to get Sundaygar an instant second opinion. The new verdict: Get this kid a leg right now. It would be possible create an adapted prosthetic that allowed him to keep his knee, while using the knee of the prosthetic. That’s a project they could do on site, because the hospital is home to the Monrovia Rehabilitation Center. (It was established with the help of the nonprofit group Handicapped International but is now independent.) And because Rodgers and Geroski could handle coordination between the hospital and CRM, they told Street Child they would take over Sundaygar’s case. Orthopedic technician Forkpa Flomo constructed the leg out of metal, plastic and latex that were among the leftover donations from Handicapped International. He then   the fitting over the course of several visits. Ferrying Sundaygar to and from the hospital was Cole’s job  —   it’s a tricky   journey. First there’s the   walk on the dirt road leading from the orphanage. The next step is getting a motorcycle for the short trip to Duport Junction, where it’s possible to look for a taxi. Sundaygar and Cole then had to wait (sometimes over an hour) before embarking on the   drive into town and to the hospital. Geroski and Rodgers were always at the entrance to meet them, and pay for taxi fees. (They also got Cole a cellphone, so they could stay in contact.) She viewed their role as ”facilitators,” who oversaw the process, held people accountable and kept everyone excited about moving forward quickly. Sundaygar was soon learning how to use his new leg to take steps, then climb stairs. Eventually he went to the rehabilitation center’s obstacle course, where he could test the leg out moving around in a gravel pit and on   logs. The toughest part? ”The tires,” Sundaygar says, because of the way they moved under him. On December 7, he brought the leg home to the orphanage for the first time. Just like the day Sundaygar first arrived at CRM, there were kids waiting for him at the gate. Once again, he looked different. ”Some thought it was a real leg, not a prosthetic,” Abe says. (Flomo was able to closely match Sundaygar’s skin tone.) There were several people crying, he adds, ”They said, ’Finally the dream of Sundaygar has come to pass. ’” That’s not the end of the story, by any means. Sundaygar is still adjusting to the new leg and strengthening the different muscles he needs to use it. He says when he wears it too long, he feels sore on his right side. He hasn’t tried playing soccer with it yet. ”It slows him down at this point,” Geroski says. But she has no doubt he’ll speed up soon enough and go anywhere he wants. In a country where there’s a stigma for people with disabilities and amputees beg on the streets, Sundaygar is eager to chart his own course. In fact, he’s already decided on his career plans. ”Because I want to help people,” he says. ”I want to be a doctor that fixes legs.”"
"On Saturdays, Jim Stokes searches for typefaces. And on the floors of parking lots, the displays in antique stores and the dust jackets of his modest 4, 000 book   collection, he finds them. Then, he waits until Sunday to post them on Twitter. Stokes, 60, participates in the weekly hashtag #FontSunday, in which Twitter users from around the world post fonts that relate to a specific theme. Every Saturday, the Design Museum in London dictates the theme, and on Sunday from noon to 6 p. m. GMT, the feed begins to flood with letters. It has become a kind of community for people  —   ”type enthusiasts,” as it says on the museum’s website  —   to share their love of an aspect of design that usually goes unnoticed. But in this case, it seems fonts are BIG. On a recent Sunday, the theme was #Letraset fonts. Josephine Chanter, head of communications and external affairs at the museum, says the hashtag and the museum’s Twitter account have grown steadily since the hashtag’s inception about four years ago. It began, she says, as an experiment in seeing how audiences would react to a regular,   program in a digital space. Themes are chosen by either the museum, a partner of the museum or an interested follower who’s asked to host. Past themes have been everything from fonts on coffee to fonts on manhole covers. Now, the Design Museum is currently the second most followed museum in the world on Twitter after the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Chanter says she thinks #FontSunday is a big part of that. For three or four consecutive weeks last month, Chanter says, the event was featured on Twitter Moments. But this event isn’t only for those in the design and creative industries. ”It seems to be a huge range of people who have something lovely or charming that they’ve seen and want to share it,” she says. The Design Museum’s idea is that by posing a theme, anyone can join in simply by snapping a picture from something seen at home or on the Internet. ”You don’t need to be a typographic geek to have one of the most retweeted things on #FontSunday,” Chanter says. Creative types, Stokes, who lives in Spring Lake, N. J. is a sales executive in the information technology industry who just enjoys the challenge of looking at things with a different perspective. He’s been following the hashtag for about four years, and admits he’s not an expert in fonts. ”I don’t know the difference between Arial and Sans Serif and Times New Roman as a study,” he says. But what he does know is that the event encourages him to be creative. He says he often uses the covers of his collected   books because the art on books from the 1950s and 1960s is artistic and strikingly different from today. But when his books don’t fit the theme, he doesn’t give up. ”My wife has often seen me on Sunday morning running around snapping pictures,” he says. And on Sundays, he’s interested in seeing what others have to contribute. ”I tend to want to look at the timeline during mass, which is a big ” he says, laughing. ”But it’s a fun thing to do. In my mind it’s a very creative and different way of looking at the world.” For    Marie Dulin, half the fun is seeing what other people share. Dulin, who lives in    N. Y. says she’s been following the hashtag for about two years. She’s found some of her favorite people to follow on Twitter through the hashtag. She loves the variety of people who post, she says, from the students to the designers to the people like her, who are not in the industry. ”They’re not in the field, but they love design, and they’ll add pictures from artifacts that they may have saved, family heirlooms, anything,” she says. ”So there’s so much variety out there. And it’s fun.” Even with her work in software development, Dulin says she’s become more aware of the role typefaces can play. ”Just seeing other people’s email, where they deliberately choose fonts  —   it just says something about the other person that they understand the written language conveys a certain atmosphere when you read it,” she says. The ability to create reactions, According to Ellen Lupton, the senior curator of contemporary design at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, the choice of typeface is a deliberate one as they can have a large influence. ”Typefaces have this personality and quality that influences everything you read whether it’s the headline on an ad or pages of text or small print on your Kindle,” she says. ”And you may not pay attention to it, but that doesn’t mean you’re not aware of it.” Typefaces, she says, are like the lighting in a restaurant. ”You may never stop and say ’oh, I really like the lighting in the room,’ but it is an omnipresent element that literally bathes your entire experience,” she says. ”If it’s just good and appropriate, you might never take note of it, but it is there, supporting your experience. And it has been designed to do that.” Typefaces are more of a tool too Wayne Ford, a freelance graphic designer and creative director based in London. For his work, typefaces are meant to reflect the brands of his clients and showcase the content he creates. When someone is reading, he says, the type shouldn’t be that important it should just be visible and not distracting. But one of the reasons Ford, 51, finds #FontSunday so interesting is because people are taking notice. ”Whilst most of us read things every day, and we have no understanding or knowledge of what typeface that piece of copy might be set in, there are people that are pulling things out and keeping them because they connect with them in some way,” he says. According to Lupton, typography in the west was invented in the early 15th century in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg. It quickly became a technology that spread across Europe, influencing new standards of literacy. Around 1950,   methods were introduced, resulting in typography becoming more lightweight. Eventually, digital typography became the norm. Today, Lupton says, many typefaces are created for use on screen and in print, and there are hundreds of thousands of typefaces for every language. She says people are now more aware of how fonts can be used to personalize what they create. ”More people are interested in changing the look of something or creating their own wedding invitations or, you know, posters for their own rock band,” she says. ”And so there’s a lot of sources of really cheap, even pirated low quality typefaces. But there’s also people who will buy like a real typeface and spend money on having a unique typeface they can use in their work.” And many understand how fonts have the ability to create reactions. ”People get upset about Papyrus and Comic Sans,” she says. ”An alert will go out when these typefaces are used inappropriately. And that’s sort of a popular awareness. It wouldn’t have existed 20 years ago.” But what is it really about typefaces that have people so interested? #FontSunday may be so popular, Chanter says, because with all the negativity and silliness on social media, it’s a kind, supportive space. ”It’s a genuinely, kind of lovely thing for people to be involved in,” she says. ”There’s no trolling on #FontSunday.” But the fonts in #FontSunday have reached their current height in popularity over other aspects of design shared on social media, Chanter says, because there’s nothing quite as visual and lacking of boundaries. ”It’s funny because we’ve tried to think of other kind of equivalent projects that we could do,” she says. ”But there’s something about typography that just is so limitless.” Cecilia Mazanec is a Digital News intern."
"If Hacksaw Ridge breaks Kevin O’Connell’s Oscars losing streak, he’ll have a pile of acceptance speeches to choose from. Over the years, he’s earned 21 Academy Award nominations for sound mixing, but doesn’t have a single statue to show for it. Most of his unused acceptance speeches are sitting in a drawer. ”I don’t pay much attention to that stuff anymore,” O’Connell says. ”I almost feel like this is like a rebirth for me at this point, you know?” O’Connell’s a   mixer  —   he brings sound into movies. ”I am merely the front man for a huge team of people that work in putting the sound of a motion picture together,” he explains. O’Connell works out of the mixing stage at Sony Studios in Culver City, Calif. His office is a movie theater. His desk is an audio mixing board that spans the length of the room. He sits behind hundreds of buttons that glow and blink and rows of   audio faders. His early work includes sound for classic films like Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Grease and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Back when everything was analogue, O’Connell used to mix movies in    —   he calls those the ”pressure cooker days.” ”Time is money and the stages were expensive and I’m a    guy sitting there working on Poltergeist with Steven Spielberg sitting behind me,” O’Connell recalls. ”It was   I have to say. It was really  .” In Poltergeist, he distorted Carol Anne’s voice that comes from the TV static. ”It’s the sound artists that bring those visual effects to life that make you believe that what you’re seeing is actually real,” O’Connell says. Like the epic launch in Armageddon or Optimus Prime in Transformers  —   both Oscar nominated mixes for O’Connell. He made Maverick’s fighter jet come alive in Top Gun. ”When that jet starts to take off, you’re focusing on that afterburner sound which is revving up in your face,” he says. ”And the second it explodes and starts to take off, we immediately pull those jet sounds down and raise up Kenny Loggins’ ’Danger Zone’ music.” O’Connell thought Top Gun might get him the Oscar that year, but his name was never called. ”It hasn’t been the right time for me,” he says. And he’s actually OK with that. But when will the right time be? ”The Kevin O’Connell phenomenon can really be explained pretty easily,” says awards columnist Scott Feinberg at The Hollywood Reporter. ”Sound people  —   members of the sound branch of the Academy  —   are the only people who pick the nominees.” That explains O’Connell’s 21 nominations. But picking the Oscar winner is up to the whole Academy to decide: actors,   artists, visual effects artists all get a say. And Feinberg says not everyone knows what goes into sound mixing. ”[Sound mixing] is a coattail category,” he says. ”So, if you have a best picture nominee that’s also nominated in that category, you can bet that’s going to get a lot votes just for being a movie that people liked.” He says that undermines the craft  —   after all, sound is the other half of the movie. Take, for example, O’Connell’s   mix for Hacksaw Ridge. While filming the battle scenes, O’Connell says the prop explosions sounded like firecrackers and the prop rifles sounded like cap guns. So his team, including fellow nominees Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie and Peter Grace, had to redub all of it. They used   audio recordings to recreate one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. ”Explosion after explosion,” O’Connell says. ”We have foreground explosions, background explosions, bright explosions . .. Then we have American guns, Japanese guns, then we have the USS Missouri firing   cannon sounds. Every single sound, every single footstep.” It’s such a realistic soundscape that even a group of war veterans who previewed the film at a private screening were convinced  —   maybe even a little too convinced. ”One veteran said, ’I don’t know where you guys got the sound of the whizzing bullets cracking overhead, but . .. that triggered my PTSD because I’ve never heard it until I was in the war, and I’ve never heard it since,’ ” O’Connell says. ”That sound and feeling took him right back to the battlefield.” So, will Hacksaw Ridge finally be O’Connell’s winning mix? Feinberg says he’ll have to beat La La Land, and that won’t be easy. But it’s been a decade since O’Connell’s last nomination for Transformers, and next weekend  —   win or lose  —   he’ll return to the Academy Awards with a new acceptance speech and hope that number 21 is Oscar gold. ”Hopefully my time will come,” he says. ”But it’s going to come when it’s the right time  —   and hopefully this year it is.”"
"Updated at 4:35 p. m. ET, President Trump has announced that Army Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster will be his new national security adviser. McMaster will replace retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign after revelations that he had misled top White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. The president made the announcement in a brief appearance before reporters at    his resort estate in Florida on Monday. He spent part of the weekend interviewing generals after his first choice  —   retired vice admiral and former Navy SEAL Robert Harward  —   turned down the job. McMaster, 54, is a   Army general known for being a military intellectual. A West Point graduate who earned a doctorate in history from the University of North Carolina, he wrote his dissertation based on newly declassified documents from the Vietnam War. The dissertation became a 1997 book  —   Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. As NPR’s Tamara Keith said on All Things Considered, ”In U. S. military circles that book is a classic, and it’s also a cautionary tale.” Keith points out that it is essentially a book about generals who deferred to politicians and regretted it. For that reason, McMaster isn’t thought to be one to back down if challenged by anyone in the White House. ”He’s his own man and will tell you exactly what he thinks,” Keith said. In a New Yorker article about the Iraq War in 2006, George Packer wrote that McMaster pushed for a ”more imaginative and coherent response to an insurgency that he believed was made up of highly decentralized groups with different agendas making   alliances of convenience.” McMaster is credited with demonstrating how a different strategy could work to defeat insurgents in Iraq, and he is known for having been critical of the George W. Bush administration’s handling of the war. During the first Iraq War, McMaster was awarded a Silver Star for heroism while fighting in a tank battle with Iraqi troops known as ”73 Easting,” in February of 1991. Two parts of his past will surely return to him as national security adviser. During the second Iraq War, he was key in applying counterinsurgency tactics and pacifying the city of Tal Afar, a city later taken over by ISIS, a foe McMaster will have to help devise a new strategy to defeat. In 2010, he was deployed to run   efforts in Afghanistan, another issue that persists. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who was recently in Kabul, Afghanistan, noted government corruption among the region’s challenges."
"In the span of a single sentence, President Trump managed to flummox a nation. ”We’ve got to keep our country safe,” Trump said at a   rally Saturday in Melbourne, Fla. ”You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden  —   Sweden, who would believe this?” Swedes, in turn, answered Trump’s question with a question of their own: ”Wait  —   what?” On Friday night  —   the night in question  —   a few things did, in fact, happen in Sweden. A Stockholm newspaper helpfully laid out a few of them: Aftonbladet listed a few more, to be sure  —   the trouble is, none of those events fits what Trump implied by including Sweden in a list of places that had recently suffered terrorist attacks. ”Sweden  —   they took in large numbers,” Trump continued Saturday. ”They’re having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what’s happening in Brussels. You look at what’s happening all over the world. Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris.” Trump later tweeted that  —   as some had theorized  —   he was inspired by a Fox News segment on immigration and crime in Sweden, which aired on Friday but did not mention any specific atrocity that day. The reaction, Shortly afterward Trump got a definitive response from Sweden  —   literally, as The Guardian points out, since one of Sweden’s official Twitter accounts is controlled by a different Swede each week. ”No. Nothing has happened here in Sweden,” tweeted Emma, the school librarian running the account this week. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt’s answer was a bit more blunt: ”Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking?” Naturally, the rest of the Internet was quick to let loose its seemingly   store of snark and mockery. By Sunday, #SwedenIncident was trending on Twitter, as many tweeters the world over helpfully suggested ideas to jog the Swedes’ memories of just what exactly happened Friday night. What the president says he was talking about, Some quickly began theorizing about what Trump may have been referring to. The Guardian, for instance, suggested Trump may have confused Sweden with the Pakistani town of Sehwan, where just days ago a suicide bomber brutally killed dozens of worshippers at a Sufi shrine. Others, like The New York Daily News, posit that Trump was referring to an interview with filmmaker Ami Horowitz that aired Friday night on Fox News. Trump’s tweet on Sunday  —   that he was referencing ”a story that was broadcast on Fox News concerning immigrants and Sweden”  —   fits with this explanation. Regardless of how it came about, the incident calls attention to a telling aspect of American political life, as Martin Gelin, U. S. correspondent for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, tells NPR: Sweden can be a kind of Rorschach test in American politics, which inspires different reactions depending on where one’s beliefs fall on the political spectrum. ”The left really admires Sweden, and the far right views Sweden as a nightmare,” Gelin says. Recalling his own experiences while reporting in the U. S. Gelin notes that the different opinions he saw between progressives and conservatives were usually tied to the issues they’re most concerned about. ”Conservatives, especially from the far right, know that Sweden has welcomed more refugees than almost any other country in Europe, especially in proportion to how small the country is. Many of them have heard erroneous or heavily exaggerated stories about increases in crime and arson and things like that. ”But on the left, you have the completely opposite view of Sweden as a progressive paradise, especially among Bernie Sanders supporters. I’ve heard a lot of people talking about Sweden as the country that they wanted to emulate.” As The New York Times reports, citing the Swedish Migration Agency, the country ”processed 81, 000 asylum seekers in 2014, 163, 000 in 2015 and 29, 000 last year, with another 25, 000 to 45, 000 expected this year.” The most recent terrorist attack in Sweden, according to The Associated Press, happened in 2010, when an   Swede carried out a suicide bombing, injuring two people and killing only himself."
"Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels Monday, Vice President Mike Pence reassured allies that America would uphold its commitments to the organization, but added that President Trump expected ”real progress” among NATO allies in stepping up their defense spending. ”The world needs NATO’s strength and leadership now more than ever before,” Pence said, calling for ”immediate and steady progress” in defense spending among member countries. NATO has set a goal that nations should spend the equivalent of 2 percent of their GDP on defense, but many don’t  —   a fact that Trump brought up repeatedly on the campaign trail. The vice president insisted that his statements were not in conflict with the president’s, adding, ”The United States is expressing strong support for NATO even as we challenge NATO and challenge our allies to evolve to the new and widening challenges and further meet their responsibilities.” Pence seemed to be trying to quell fears by saying that ”the United States’ commitment to NATO is clear.” But Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO, calling the organization ”obsolete,” and indicating the the U. S. might not uphold its commitment to defend fellow NATO countries if they did not pay their fair share. As NPR’s Frank Langfitt reported in November, many U. S. allies were rattled by Trump’s campaign rhetoric, but hopeful that it might be just that  —   rhetoric. Pence also addressed the resignation of Michael Flynn as national security adviser, saying he was ”disappointed” to learn that he had been misled about Flynn’s contact with Russia, and fully supported the decision by Trump to dismiss him. Pence also attempted to assuage fears from the European Union  —   another institution that Trump has also been highly critical of  —   stating that he was acting on behalf of Trump to ”express the desire of the United States to continue cooperation and partnership with the European Union.” Pence met with many leaders from the EU earlier Monday morning. These statements seem at odds with others from Trump, who last month called the EU ”basically a vehicle for Germany” and praised Britain’s vote to leave it. ”I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing,” he told the Times of London."
"President Robert Mugabe turns 93 on Tuesday, making him the oldest president in Africa  —   and the world. He’s the only leader most Zimbabweans have ever known, spending nearly 37 years at the helm since independence from Britain and the end of white minority rule in Rhodesia in April 1980. Mugabe is blamed by his critics, including the United States, for mismanaging the economy and making a   southern African country poor. But his supporters in and out of Zimbabwe see him as an African nationalist who championed the cause of the continent and helped fight apartheid in neighboring South Africa as one of the leaders of the frontline states. The nonagenarian has been endorsed by his governing   party as its candidate for elections next year, when he’ll be 94. Last Friday, his wife Grace, who’s 51, told thousands of cheering supporters at a political rally in eastern Zimbabwe that even if her husband dies before the vote, he should still run and would win. ”If God decides to take him,” the first lady said in the local Shona language, ”then we would rather field him as a corpse.” Grace Mugabe also took a swipe at   in the party who fought Zimbabwe’s guerrilla war of independence, whom she accuses of trying to wrest power from her husband. ”Anyone who was with Mugabe in 1980 has no right to tell him he is old. If you want Mugabe to go, then you leave together,” she said. ”You also have to leave. Then we take over, because we were not there in 1980,” she added, pointing to herself. That has set tongues wagging again that Grace Mugabe is very much part of the succession battle raging within    —   and that she’s positioning herself politically within the party to try to take over from her husband. That’s highly unlikely, says political commentator Pedzisai Ruhanya of the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute. He tells NPR he believes the armed forces will decide who takes over from Mugabe, when the time comes. The military, which has its own wing of the party, will designate Mugabe’s successor and is likely to choose a candidate with credentials from the liberation struggle, Ruhanya says. ”The president will not be removed from power by anybody,” he says. ”I think the president will die in office and when the president dies in office, the faction in [ ] that has the control of the military will take over the affairs of the state.” Still, speculation about the succession is a burning issue in Zimbabwe. Mugabe, a political survivor who has always   any potential rivals, has accused fellow governing party members of plotting his ouster and told them at a December party congress to rein in what he called their ”unbridled ambition.” He grumbled that ”some are busy plotting succession in the party. They say: ’When will this old man die? He is refusing to die.’ ” In excerpts of Mugabe’s traditional annual birthday interview, published Sunday, Mugabe was quoted as saying he wasn’t ready to step aside. He has declared in the past that he would like to live until he’s 100 and rule for life. He says he’s not grooming anyone to replace him. ”A successor is groomed by the people. The majority of the people feel that there is no replacement a successor who to them is acceptable, as acceptable as I am,” Mugabe is quoted as saying in the   Sunday Mail. While Mugabe was on his annual extended holiday in December and January, a tussle ballooned on social media  —   an indication of the hype, buzz and concern surrounding the succession issue. Festive season photos circulating showed Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, an independence war veteran who served as acting president during Mugabe’s absence, posing with a huge mug bearing the message, ”I’m the boss.” Another minister, Jonathan Moyo, decried what he called a ”  narrative” by Mnangagwa and tweeted, ”One Boss at a time, please.” Supa Mandiwanzira, a government minister,   central committee member and Mugabe supporter, says the president is their leader  —   and that’s that. ”We have no problem with him. President Mugabe says, ’I’m still here, so my position is not up for grabs. I’ve a mandate, allow me to serve my term, if you’re also interested  —   number one. Number two  —   don’t jostle for power,’ ” Mandiwanzira says. ”We have more important things to do, to address the concerns of the people, to deliver on the expectations of voters. Those are things we should focus on: addressing our economic challenges.” But Ruhanya, the political analyst, emphasizes that Mugabe is an aging president with health problems and Zimbabweans can’t help but ponder a future without him. ”Given the president’s age, any reasonable person would see that, at 92, turning 93, the future of the president is in the cemetery. So it is at that age, and his loss of grip  —   not by anyone’s willing, but by the will of God  —   a time when they fizzle out, when they naturally can leave this world.” Others believe Mugabe’s wife’s assessment might be closer to the mark. The first lady has said that if necessary, ”I will push President Mugabe in a wheelbarrow or a wheelchair to bring him to work.” Even as he grapples with the factions within his party, Mugabe has many other problems. For years, Zimbabwe has been an international pariah because of his human rights record and allegations of   violence against his opponents. The U. S. and other powers slapped targeted sanctions on Mugabe and his inner circle, sanctions the Zimbabwean government repeatedly blames for the terrible state of the economy.   campaigners took to the streets last year, inspired by an   hashtag campaign called #ThisFlag and demanding ”Mugabe must go.” Among his failures, said the demonstrators, were his mishandling of the economy, a dire shortage of U. S. dollars, the main currency used in Zimbabwe, and the $800, 000 reportedly spent on his lavish 92nd birthday celebrations, when giant cakes were served in a   area suffering food shortages. A year on, Mugabe supporters are poised to celebrate his 93rd birthday with another official party planned for thousands of people on Saturday in Matabeleland in the south. Matabeleland was the scene of the 1983 Gukurahundi massacres of the Ndebele people, shortly after independence, when Mugabe’s North   troops cracked down on alleged dissidence from a minority tribe. An estimated 20, 000 people were killed or starved to death in the campaign. Mugabe is still haunted by the Gukurahundi legacy, an economy in   and his controversial land reform policy that led to   invasions of mostly commercial   farms and saw white farmers and many black farm workers driven off their land. The economy collapsed and Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, had to import food. Critics say Mugabe’s plan to deliver land and farms to black people fell far short of expectations and only members of Zimbabwe’s elite have truly benefited. But Mandiwanzira, the   central committee member and government minister, says Mugabe’s   legacy belies the common narrative. ”People are aware of the big prize that we have gotten from President Mugabe and the   leadership, which is independence, economic empowerment, independence of the brain  —   liberate yourselves mentally  —   and the right to own your own resources in your own country,” Mandiwanzira tells NPR. ”All these benefits cannot be wiped away because there’s no cooking oil in the home at the moment. No, I think Zimbabweans are smarter than that, to know these things.”"
"In June 2010,    Sergio Hernandez and his friends were playing chicken at the U. S.  border, daring each other to run up and touch the tall border fence separating Juarez, Mexico, from El Paso, Texas. At some point during their game, U. S. border patrol agent Jesus Mesa arrived on a bicycle. He detained one of the kids on the U. S. side while the others ran away. Hernandez hid behind a pillar beneath a bridge on the Mexican side of the border. A cellphone video shows the boy peeking out from behind the column, before Mesa shoots and kills him. NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports that Mesa claims he was being surrounded by the boys, and that they were throwing rocks at him. But as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments Tuesday, the question in this case actually doesn’t come down to whether Mesa acted in  . The Justice Department decided against prosecuting Mesa because the department said it did not have jurisdiction on the Mexico side of the border. Mexico charged the agent with murder, but the U. S. refused to extradite him, so the prosecution could not move forward. The Hernandez family sued Mesa for damages, saying that the border agent violated their son’s rights  —   and this is the question that the Supreme Court faces: Can foreigners sue for damages under the U. S. Constitution? The government said in its court filing that the right to sue ”should not be extended to aliens injured abroad.” Mesa’s lawyer says a ruling in favor of the Hernandez family would mean foreigners could also sue over drone attacks. In an interview with Steve Inskeep in 2014, the head of U. S. Customs and Border Protection Gil Kerlikowske acknowledged that the agency had a problem with transparency around the use of force. But he also said that he found the decision by an appellate court that the Hernandez family could sue for damages ”chilling.” When asked if he thought that federal law applied when agents shot across the border, Kerlikowske said it would depend on the circumstances  —   but that border patrol rules for using force always applied. ”Frankly, we need to be better at admitting when we’re wrong or where we’ve made a mistake,” Kerlikowske told Inskeep. ”There is a certain sense in law enforcement that if we just keep our heads down, all of this will go away  —   meaning media scrutiny and nongovernmental organizations. That doesn’t happen.” A 2013 report commissioned by U. S. Customs and Border Protection and written by an outside group had faulted the agency for insufficiently investigating the 67 shootings that took place from 2010 to 2012 and questioned the use of force in some of those cases. Since March of 2014 the CBP says there has been a decline in the number of use of force incidents."
"Sitting inside a   cockpit, two men fiddle with joysticks controlling giant claws outside. They look like they’re playing at a vending machine at a mall, where you try to grasp a stuffed animal. But these are engineers. The claws they’re manipulating are as big as houses, and they’re sifting through hundreds of tons of garbage thrown away by the world’s largest consumer class. Trash is piling up in China  —   more than 520, 000 tons a day. China’s government has concluded the best way to get rid of it is to burn it at incinerators like this one, the Gao’antun incinerator power plant run by the Chaoyang district of Beijing. ”Our emissions from burning the garbage are well below EU standards, and our technology is ahead of incinerators in the U. S.,” says Chen Hui, the plant’s chief engineer. This incinerator was opened nine months ago. The heat from burning garbage at more than 1, 000 degrees Celsius produces enough electricity to power more than 140, 000 homes. ”Our biggest goal is to protect the environment,” says Chen. ”This incinerator is funded, built and run by the government. We’re not driven by profit.” This is not the case in the rest of China. ”China has a few incinerators that burn garbage in a clean way, but they’re not the ones winning bids for most government projects,” says Tao Guangyuan, executive director of the   Renewable Energy Cooperation Center. He’s worried about China’s pledge to burn 40 percent of its garbage by 2020, because most incinerators in China are operated by private companies. ”Whoever burns garbage the cheapest wins government contracts,” says Tao. ”Some companies are willing to burn a ton of garbage for less than $4. When it’s that cheap, you’re definitely not burning it in a clean way.” China’s government sets its budget for burning garbage at around $10 per ton, but many of the country’s incinerators, says Tao, do it for far less. According to a report by the Chinese news service Caixin, an incinerator in the city of Shaoxing won a government bid last year for burning garbage at the equivalent of $3 a ton. Experts say incinerators in China’s   cities like Beijing and Shanghai burn trash at an average of $20 a ton, which is still a third of the average cost of burning trash in the United States and nearly a tenth the average cost of burning garbage in Japan. Burning garbage in the cleanest way  —   like at Beijing’s Gao’antun plant  —   means doing so at more than 850 degrees Celsius with a   filtration system that removes dioxins and other toxic gases. This costs a lot of money. While some bigger cities like Beijing can afford to do this, Tao says most waste management companies in China can’t afford to burn garbage this way because local governments pay them so little. As a result, they’re burning garbage the cheapest way possible, filling China’s skies with an unknown amount of   heavy metal and dioxin emissions. China doesn’t publicly release emissions data from its incinerators. And that’s why protests from residents are on the rise whenever a new incinerator is planned for a neighborhood in a Chinese city. Two years ago, thousands of residents in a district of the wealthy eastern city of Hangzhou overturned and set fire to police cars, injuring at least 30 officers, while protesting an incinerator planned for their neighborhood. The same scene has been replayed in affluent cities throughout China, as middle class urbanites become angrier about the health effects of pollution and the lack of government oversight on industry. Song Guojun, a professor of environmental economics and management at Renmin University, says there is a clear answer to China’s garbage problem. ”If we sorted garbage like many other developed countries do, we’d cut the amount we need to burn in half,” he says. ”If we had a functioning recycling system, we could cut it by another 20 to 30 percent. Less garbage means less toxic emissions.” Song has spent his career studying garbage. He says in Taiwan, where residents sort their trash, incinerators are running out of trash to burn. As a result, an average Taiwanese person generates half a pound of garbage a day. An average Chinese person burns 2   pounds. Because China has 1. 3 billion more people than Taiwan, Song says the environmental stakes of establishing a   program are much bigger. ”Why hasn’t China done this? Because incinerator companies are a big special interest group, and they influence policymakers,” he says. Nonprofits and environmental organizations ”have limited power,” he says, ”and so do I. I’ve studied this. I know this is doable, but [policymakers would] say it’s unrealistic.” According to a World Bank report, in eight years, the Chinese will throw away nearly 1. 4 million tons of garbage per day  —   twice as much as garbage as Americans are expected to generate. Half of the Chinese waste will be burned inside incinerators whose managers are currently more interested in profits than clean air. The question is a crucial one, says Song: If China can build the world’s largest consumer class, why can’t it get its people to sort their garbage?"
"An ”atmospheric river” is a colorful term for a sinuous plume of moisture that travels up from the tropics  —   a single plume can carry more water than the Mississippi River at its mouth. But new research shows that atmospheric rivers are also among the most damaging weather systems around. The atmospheric rivers that soaked California this winter did some good  —   they ended an epic drought in the state. ”This has been a very active winter, atmospheric ” reports Jeff Zimmerman of the National Weather Service. ”We’ve probably had 10 or more . .. this winter.” The norm is just a few being a La Nina year, with cooler water in the eastern Pacific, was part of the reason for the abundance. Atmospheric rivers are famously wet. But atmospheric scientist Duane Waliser has done some new research that shows they’re also remarkably windy. Waliser studied two decades of storms around the globe at    —   that is, outside the tropics. When he focused on the very windiest  —   the top 2 percent  —   he found that ”atmospheric rivers are typically associated with 30 and even up to 50 percent of those very extreme cases.” Atmospheric rivers were also responsible for almost that percentage of the very wettest storms, too. But the windiness was surprising. Waliser found that winds during an atmospheric river are typically twice the speed of the average storm. He says emergency responders need to know that. ”Not only do [atmospheric rivers] come with this potential for flooding hazards,” he says, ”they also come with potential for high impact winds and extremes that can produce hazardous conditions.” In fact, the atmospheric river that hit California on Jan. 8 knocked over a famous  —   and gigantic  —   sequoia in a state park. Waliser, who’s with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California, says the combination of water and high wind is especially costly. Over the past two decades, for example, Europe experienced 19 storms that each did at least a billion dollars in damage. ”And so out of these 19 storms,” he says, ”we associated atmospheric rivers with 14 out of the 19.” Waliser’s research appears in the journal Nature Geoscience. He says his next project is to find out if climate change will make atmospheric rivers more frequent."
"Defense Secretary James Mattis arrived in Iraq Monday on an unannounced visit that seemed aimed to reassure Iraqi allies. He told reporters that, despite President Trump’s earlier statements to the contrary, the U. S. does not plan to seize Iraqi oil. ”All of us in America have generally paid for our gas and oil all along and I’m sure that we will continue to do so in the future,” Mattis said. ”We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil.” The trip comes amidst an operation by Iraqi security forces to retake the western half of the Iraqi city of Mosul, the last major stronghold of the Islamic State in Iraq. The U. S. and other international troops are there advising and assisting them, but there has been mixed messaging from the White House. NPR’s Alice Fordham says Iraqi leaders have been rattled by Trump’s comments about seizing their oil, and by the president’s inclusion of Iraq in his executive order banning travel from seven   countries. Speaking at the CIA the day after his inauguration, Trump said that, after the war in Iraq, ”We should have kept the oil. But okay. Maybe you’ll have another chance.” Comments like these have also shaken the Iraqis. Mattis is in Baghdad meeting with Iraqi leaders. Fordham says they are probably looking to him for reassurance  —   both of political alignment, and continued support for their battle against the Islamic State. The statements from Mattis Monday are the latest in a series of reassurances from the new head of the Pentagon that Washington remains a reliable ally. Mattis spoke to European allies at the Munich Security Conference last week, reaffirming the U. S. commitment to NATO, which Trump has said is ”obsolete.”"
"The Iraqi offensive to retake the western half of Mosul has begun, Prime Minister Haidar   announced Sunday. The   assault comes just over a month after Iraqi forces largely cleared Islamic State militants from the districts east of the Tigris River in the major Iraqi city. ”We announce the start of a new phase in the operation, we are coming Nineveh to liberate the western side of Mosul,” Abadi said in a televised speech. Using a common Arabic acronym for ISIS, Abadi added: ”Our forces are beginning the liberation of the citizens from the terror of Daesh.” Commanders of the U. S.  Iraqi forces fear an even bloodier challenge awaits them on the western side of the Tigris in Mosul, Iraq’s   city and ISIS’ last remaining major stronghold in the country. The crowded nature of the area, with its narrow streets and hundreds of thousands of civilians, threatens the possibility of close, urban warfare  —   as dangerous for the civilians there as for the soldiers. Multiple news outlets reported that leaflets were dropped from planes overnight on the western districts, warning residents of the coming assault and appealing to militants to surrender. The leaflets told the jihadi fighters to give up ”or face a fatal end,” says Reuters, which reports that an estimated 650, 000 civilians remain in the area. By the time Sunday set in, jets from the U. S.  coalition had begun air strikes on ISIS positions southwest of Mosul and Iraqi police forces were mobilizing just outside the city, according to The Associated Press. The news service reports the immediate objective is to capture the villages near Mosul’s airport, which rests on the southwest side of the city. Meanwhile, militants renewed their attacks in eastern Mosul, sending suicide bombers to kill soldiers and disrupt Iraqi operations. Still, in much of eastern Mosul, life is beginning to return to something resembling normal, NPR’s Alice Fordham reports. Even as ISIS uses armed drones, suicide bombings and sniper attacks to continue to intimidate residents, Alice says a wary optimism has taken hold in neighborhoods there. ”I felt as if I had been reborn into this life,” a local school principal told Alice, referring to the feeling of finally coming back to work. Humanitarian agencies have not been as hopeful about the situation now confronting the western half of the city. The AP reports they’re preparing to aid 250, 000 to 400, 000 civilians who may flee from the fighting to come."
"On Sunday, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler Rigetti published a post on her blog entitled ”Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber.” On her first day working on her new team at Uber, Rigetti says, her manager sent her a string of messages propositioning her on the company chat. She says she took screenshots of the conversations, and brought them to Uber’s HR department, saying she expected the matter would be handled quickly and appropriately. And from her account, it was not. Regetti writes that she was told her manager was a ”high performer” and that this was a first offense, but she says she heard later from other women in the company that they had complained about the same employee. The blog post comes at a time when Uber has already been under fire  —   and at the center of a consumer boycott. Earlier this year a campaign began on social media encouraging people to #DeleteUber after CEO Travis Kalanick joined President Trump’s economic council. The movement picked up steam when Uber lowered its prices during a taxi strike at New York City’s JFK airport. The strike was in protest of Trump’s executive order on immigration, and to many critics it appeared that Uber was taking advantage of the situation for profit, though Uber denies that. Kalanick ultimately resigned from Trump’s economic council, saying his joining the group was not meant to signal ”an endorsement of the President or his agenda” but ”unfortunately was taken that way.” Tweets with the hashtag #DeleteUber began flowing again after Rigetti’s blog post was published, and quickly went viral. But this time, the response from Uber was swift and unequivocal. Kalanick tweeted out Rigetti’s blog post Monday with the comment, ”What’s described here is abhorrent  against everything we believe in. Anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.” Kalanick added that this was the first time the issue had come to his attention, and that he has instructed Chief Human Resources Officer Liane Hornsey to conduct an urgent investigation."
"During Betsy DeVos’ bitter confirmation hearing last month for education secretary, U. S. Sen. Michael Bennet pointed to Denver as a potential national model of a big city school district that’s found an innovative, balanced approach to school choice. ”Without exception,” the Colorado Democrat told DeVos, ”we demanded quality and implemented strong accountability” for the mix of traditional, charter, innovation and magnet schools in the   district. Bennet invited DeVos to come see the Mile High city’s choice program  . DeVos said she’d ”love to.” We don’t yet know if she plans to take up Sen. Bennet’s invitation. But NPR Ed did. In Denver we found a generally popular,   program  —   one application for any school  —   that has boosted academic growth rates, improved   graduation and lowered dropout rates. Denver Superintendent Tom Boasberg says at its core, choice in the city is focused on leveling the education playing field  —   or as he puts it, ”How do we promote greater equity for our   families?” But there are still big gaps in access to quality schools choice has done little to narrow achievement gaps by income and race poorer families point to   transportation challenges and choice in Denver includes some painful choices about   and closing   schools, mostly in neighborhoods with some of the most vulnerable students. It all raises important questions about the promise and limitations of choice to bridge stubborn access and equity gaps in education. Closing underperforming schools  Color codes matter in Denver’s schools. And Gilpin Montessori, a public elementary school in the city’s Five Points neighborhood, got a ”red” ranking  —   or probation. That’s the lowest category in the city’s school performance rankings. And in Denver, chronic red can get you closed. Just before Christmas break, parents got word that the school board and district had decided to shutter Gilpin. ”My disappointment turned into shock and a little bit of anger and frustration as I realized how they’re using closure as a tool to deal with reforming schools instead of actually trying to transform them,” says Cameron   one of the many Gilpin parents who’s outraged at the closure decision and at the way it was rolled out and communicated. Choice here, he charges, represents ”hope and ideology not supported by current evidence” that closing   schools really improves outcomes. Once a thriving area known as the Harlem of the West, Five Points went into a   decline. Today, the area is gentrifying fast, with pricey new condos, a café, fitness center and a few new eateries. But it still has deep pockets of poverty. Public housing projects are visible from the Gilpin Montessori playground bench, where parent Beth Bianchi sits. ”They’re really in turmoil over everything that’s happening,” she says of the students here. Everything includes parents having to find and ” ” to a new school, as well as figuring out transportation and other logistics after years of walking to a neighborhood school. ”How am I gonna get there? Is that the best the school for my kid?” Bianchi wonders. ”And when you don’t have great options for those things, it’s extremely stressful. And the kids are really feeling it.” Teachers, she says, are reporting more behavior problems and stress since the community got word Gilpin will close at the end of the school year. School choice in Denver has been around for more than a decade and grew out of the end of a   desegregation case in the 1970s. Back then, a busing decree from a federal court led to an exodus of white families to the suburbs and, in the end, undermined efforts at school integration. Cameron   says he and his wife chose this neighborhood public school for   for their son because of its more open Montessori curriculum and its economic and ethnic diversity. He believes that, with closures like this, the district is slowly   minority and   areas. ”It’s clear that for Denver, choice, closure and charter are all linked together,” he says. ”It’s really closing down neighborhood schools close to the city, and then replacing them with charter schools out in suburbia.” He has a point: Since 2006 enrollment in Denver charter schools has far outpaced enrollment in   schools. Katherine Murphy, a mother of two, lives a short walk from Gilpin. Her youngest daughter attends the school’s early learning program. ”The choice process has been   schools. That’s absolutely clear,” she contends. ”The choices we have in the neighboring schools are not integrated. The charters that they are putting in definitely exhibit ’white school, brown, black school.’ And I’m very uncomfortable with that,” she says. Gilpin students will get priority in ” ” to any other school around the city, including several public Montessori options. ”If there’s space,” says Beth Bianchi. ”And that’s the problem with the choice: If those   schools don’t have the space to absorb any of these extra students, you have to look at charters or neighborhood schools that aren’t as   and that doesn’t feel like much” of a choice. Tough choices  District leaders, however, say improving schools and boosting equity involves hard but necessary decisions. ”I understand the fear, anger, and hurt of parents in that community,” says Superintendent Boasberg. But he adds: ”I think lots of   choices don’t serve anyone.” Denver is one of the few big cities in America using strict criteria to shutter   schools, whether traditional   or charters, officials here say. It is part of Denver’s ambitious goal of having 80 percent of its students attend a   neighborhood school by 2020. ”Choice is not meaningful if it means that poor families have to get on a bus in order to go to a great school,” Boasberg says. ”Choice, first and foremost, should be about having a great school in your neighborhood and making sure that all of our schools serve all of our kids.” Boasberg and district administrators say that, while painful, there simply aren’t enough children in this neighborhood to support all the schools. Enrollment at Gilpin, for example, steadily declined as more parents chose other options. Even more importantly, district officials say, Gilpin was failing many of its   and minority students: Only 6 percent of its students of color performed at grade level in English Language Arts. And only 1 percent of its students of color performed at grade level in math, according to data from the district. At University Prep Arapahoe  —   a charter school that’s not in suburbia, but less than a mile from Gilpin  —   45 and 48 percent of students of color today are at or above grade level grade level in math and English. Boasberg has led Denver’s schools for the last nine years. That’s a long run by national superintendent standards and underscores the backing he has to continue to refine and expand the city’s choice system. The goal, he says, has always been boosting equity and quality learning for all  —   not merely choice for choice’s sake. ”I think some of the models that you see nationally that emphasize choice over quality lead to a profusion of   choices that don’t lead to increases in student achievement, that don’t drive greater equity,” he told NPR Ed during an interview in the district’s downtown headquarters. And Gilpin wasn’t closed without first receiving additional help: Over the past three years, the city gave the school nearly $1. 4 million in extra funding that equaled eight extra teachers per year. That gave Gilpin one of the best    ratios in the district. ”Unfortunately, even with these supports we have still seen extremely low academic growth among Gilpin students,” says Nancy Mitchell, the district’s chief communications officer. Critics, however, charge that the district is exaggerating the success of the choice program by crediting the   schools for educating students who are more likely to succeed and downplaying the real challenges of choice without adequate transportation. ”I see choice in Denver working for those families that have a great educational and socioeconomic background,” says Tanya Streicher, a veteran elementary teacher who serves as the representative at Gilpin for the city’s teachers union, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. For the less   Streicher says, ”I don’t think it’s working well.” Portfolio strategy  In a sprawling school complex in the Westwood neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest, you’ll find a kind of ”only in Denver” scenario: Under one roof, four schools are in various stages of transition. There’s a new elementary and middle school here  —   both charters. They share the buildings with a ”legacy” middle school that’s being   for   alongside what is called an ”innovation” school  —   Kepner Beacon Middle School   that’s being phased in. Six months ago, a   named Demetrio spoke almost no English when he arrived here from El Paso, Texas. ”This is the science class. We’re learning about the solar system,” he explains, welcoming me to his classroom. ”Is Pluto a planet or star?” I ask. ”A star!” he says excitedly, and launches into an energetic description of what he’s learned today. Demetrio, in theory, could choice into any school in the district, through a lottery. But like half of all Denver students, his family chooses to stay in their neighborhood or ”boundary” school. In this case, it’s this new ”innovation school” that offers its administrators   autonomy to get around certain district and state rules. It’s not quite a charter, but not a   school either. It’s a hybrid, and part of Denver’s ”portfolio strategy” to expand choice options and allow the schools more freedom to experiment. The district then tries to replicate what’s working well and, when needed, close what’s not. ”To me it’s a no brainer,” says Dan Walsh, Kepner Beacon’s assistant principal, who grew up in the neighborhood. ”You have to create competition, and if you’re good at something you should be rewarded for that. If you’re not good at it, you shouldn’t be able to stay in your job.” The school has unique needs: 98 percent of the students at Kepner Beacon receive free and   lunch. The student population is almost entirely Latino. Twenty percent have a special education plan called an IEP  —   that’s more than twice the national school average. Today, only about 10 percent of the students here are performing at  . Assistant Principal Walsh says so far, grades and attendance are up and behavior problems are down. ”At this point in the year, we don’t have a single   or    suspension, which is pretty remarkable  —   because for the school that we’re replacing, it hasn’t always been that way,” Walsh says. But, he concedes, its still early for the   school: ”Let’s wait and see. We’re going to see what the district tests show us. We’re going to focus on growth.” Equity gaps, In other cities, expanding choice has sparked bitter fights, especially over charters. Critics charge that they pull away   funding and talent from neighborhood schools. While Denver has certainly had its battles, today the choice debate here is far less heated than elsewhere. Reforms here have faced less blowback than other cities from   communities of color. That’s partly because leaders reached out early to multiracial,   groups for input and help. Superintendent Boasberg says another factor is that, no matter what type of school, the focus is on quality and improvement: ”What parents care about: Do they have a great public school in their neighborhood that will serve their kid well? If it’s a   school, hallelujah! If it’s a charter school, hallelujah.” And, the fact is, it’s easier to close schools and open innovative new ones when student achievement rates and other key indicators are trending upwards. Overall, the Denver strategy appears to be working: Ten years ago the city was near the bottom of Colorado cities in academic growth. Recently, it has ranked at or near the top. ”We have more than doubled our graduation rate among our Latino students,” Boasberg points out. ”We’ve cut our dropout rates by 70 percent among our students of color.” While the growth is impressive, wide achievement gaps by race and class persist. And the    choice mentality doesn’t sit well with all teachers. ”Your education is a right, and I don’t think that this system of competition is necessarily appropriate,” says Aaron Lowenkron, a math teacher at East High School. It’s a traditional,   place that is highly regarded and is consistently one of the top high schools that parents choose from around the city. Lowenkron says treating schools like   startups has done little to narrow significant equity gaps. ”What we need to look at is, Who are the winners and losers? And I think that when we really dive into that it becomes really clear that it’s the usual winners and the usual losers in that game,” he says. Numbers from 2014 show that wealthier students in Denver are testing at grade level at far higher levels than   students across all subjects. A report   by the education advocacy and research group A+ Colorado found that more than a third of the   students in Denver’s schools are not actively choosing which school to attend using the choice system. The report also found that   students use the choice system less than   students, but have better odds of getting their first choice in a school. Students with special needs, however, have lower odds of getting their first choice school than the general education population. Van Schoales, the group’s CEO, says that not enough   families here are exercising their choice option because they may not have the car, gas or time to ferry their child across town in ways that wealthier families do. ”There’s still a fair amount of inequity in terms of access to quality schools and programs depending on whether or not you’re ” he says. The city and district, Schoales says, can and should do more to figure out transportation solutions and set aside more slots for   students in better schools in   areas. ”There’s no reason why a person that buys a    house in a particular neighborhood should have greater access to a quality school than somebody that is renting space in a large apartment,” he says. Otherwise, he points out, Denver’s popular choice experiment risks widening the chasm between rich and poor. NPR Ed’s Kat Lonsdorf contributed to this story."
"Malaysia and North Korea are wrangling over whether a man who died at the Kuala Lumpur airport last week is indeed Kim Jong Nam, the estranged   of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Among the many countries trying to figure out what to make of it is North Korea’s neighbor and sole ally, China. Officially, China has said little except that it is closely monitoring the situation. But in China, Kim Jong Nam’s apparent assassination has triggered a debate about what it means and how to respond. Commentator and former journalist Deng Yuwen argues that decades of supporting North Korea has been a losing deal for China, and the assassination of Kim Jong Nam is the perfect opportunity for Beijing to cut its losses. ”In the past, whatever North Korea would do, China would pick up the tab for it. The cost was huge, but the   was next to nothing,” Deng said. Beijing has shielded Pyongyang from criticism of its human rights record. It has propped up its rickety economy. But the biggest cost of all, Deng says, was the roughly    Chinese troops killed or wounded defending the north in the Korean War. Avoiding that conflict could have altered the path of China’s development, Deng says, and possibly allowed Beijing to end the Chinese civil war by seizing Taiwan from Chiang   who retreated to the island with his defeated nationalist troops in 1949. Despite all this, North Korea has ignored Beijing’s warnings not to proceed with its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. While it is unwilling to trigger instability or regime collapse, Beijing has joined in several rounds of U. N. sanctions on the north. Deng says Beijing may also be unhappy about Kim Jong Nam’s assassination. They may be thinking ”we’re running interference for you, and this is what you do behind our backs,” he says. Kim lived in Beijing for several years beginning in the   and Deng argues that he could potentially have headed an alternative North Korean government, that might have been more liberal and   than his brother’s. Deng points out that as Kim Jong Il’s eldest son, dynastic logic would put Kim Jong Nam first in line to succeed his father. His father sidelined him, though, after he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001. Deng says Kim Jong Nam is thought to have had contacts with Chinese elites, and may have been more receptive to their suggestions that North Korea should follow China’s path and implement   reforms. That would likely have been Kim Jong Un’s motive in getting rid of his sibling. ”If, after the collapse of North Korea, China wanted to establish a stable new regime,” Deng said, ”then Kim Jong Nam would obviously have been a card for China to play.” Deng says Beijing would never admit to contemplating its neighbor’s collapse or supporting a rival ruler, and he admits that many Chinese still support their longtime ally. Rather than believe that Kim Jong Un ordered a hit on this   they’d be more inclined to believe that Seoul or Washington did it, to provide them with an excuse to attack or isolate the North. China’s Global Times tabloid, known for its commercially successful jingoism, dismissed speculation that Beijing could play Kim Jong Nam as a political card as ludicrous, because it ”doesn’t conform to the logic of contemporary Chinese diplomacy.” Personally, Deng has paid a high price for criticizing China’s policy toward its neighbor. He was fired from his job in 2013 as deputy editor at the Study Times, a newspaper put out by the Central Party School, the Communist Party’s top training facility for its officials. Deng notes that on Saturday, China announced it was banning all coal imports from North Korea for the rest of the year. Coal exports are one of the few ways the North has to earn foreign currency. Beijing says the ban is related to U. N. sanctions. Beijing previously allowed the North to export some coal as a form of humanitarian assistance, provided it was not connected to its nuclear or missile programs. But Beijing has offered no explanation of why the humanitarian assistance is no longer allowed. Deng notes that after Pyongyang’s latest missile test, and before a phone conversation between President Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, China announced a list of items with both military and civilian uses that it was banning for export to North Korea. But Deng says that Beijing not announcing the coal import ban until later suggests that China’s leadership may have been signaling its displeasure at the killing of Kim Jong Nam."
"About 13 years ago, The Alchemist brewery in Waterbury, Vt. released a new IPA called Heady Topper. The brewer, John Kimmich, had decided to neither filter nor pasteurize the beer  —   both common methods of extending a commercial beer’s shelf life. The result was an IPA thicker with the microscopic compounds and particulates that add flavor and aroma. Customers noticed and praised the beer as being especially tasty. They also noticed the beer’s appearance: Heady Topper was unusually murky and opaque, almost like orange juice. Even though Kimmich says the beer’s turbidity was never a concern of his, it became a point of focus for many of his customers. Other brewers noticed, too, and some began making their own hazy IPAs. For the next decade, the style remained modestly popular as an East Coast specialty. Then, a few months ago, hazy IPAs exploded onto the national beer scene. No one can explain this sudden explosion, but beers with the appearance of pulpy fruit juice have swept across the country since then. The phenomenon is now billed the ”haze craze.” And in the past several months, these   New England IPAs have hit the West Coast like a wild dust storm. Now, the hype over these murky  —   and supposedly better tasting  —   IPAs is only building. Derek Smith, brewer at Moylan’s Brewing Co. just north of San Francisco, made a hazy IPA late last summer. It took some encouragement from behind the bar before a customer would order a pint. ”People were asking us, ’Why do I want haze in my beer?’ ” Smith tells The Salt. But in late January, Smith took another stab. By then, he says, customers had been hearing good things about these thick, muddy beers, largely through beer blog gossip and magazine articles, and were much more willing to have a taste. In fact, Smith says the beer  —   called ”Haze Craze”  —   sold two or three times as fast as the brewery’s traditional IPA. All the brewers we spoke with said that even though haziness has become a point of fixation for many consumers, making murky beer isn’t the goal when brewing New England IPAs. ”Haze is really just a byproduct of trying to make the most aromatically hoppy beer we can,” explains Zach Page, director of brewing operations at the   Trillium Brewing Co. Page has been making hazy New   IPAs for about four years, since Trillium opened in 2013. The haziness in these beers is caused by a variety of techniques that brewers say are primarily aimed at enhancing aromas and creating a smooth, creamy mouthfeel while also reducing the stinging bitterness associated with more conventional IPAs. Some brewers, for example, are using certain yeast strains that leave fruity esters in the beer, as well as suspended particulate matter. Alvarado Street Brewery, in Monterey, Calif. and Amplified Ale Works, in San Diego, recently collaborated on a hazy IPA called Trois Cabrones  —   a reference to the special strain of yeast used to ferment the beer, Saccharomyces bruxellensis Trois. This particular yeast, says Alvarado Street brewer Andrew Rose, leaves a distinct fruitiness in the beer  —   along with a pronounced haze so thick that one cannot even see through a   sampler of the IPA. Late addition hopping is another method that brewers use for New England IPAs. This means hops are added to a beer at the end of the roughly   boiling process, or even after that  —   rather than during the boil, a more conventional approach. This amplifies aromas while extracting less of the hops’ alpha acids, which create bitterness. The process can also leave microscopic vegetable matter suspended in the beer. Filtration has traditionally been used to remove this material. ”But if we filtered our beer we’d also lose some of the flavor,” Rose says. Rose stresses that the murkiness isn’t the point of the beer, but he acknowledges that haze sells. ”There’s now a lot of hype about haze,” he says. Page, at Trillium, says that haziness can be an indicator of enhanced fragrance and brighter, livelier hop aromas. But hazy beers, he cautions, aren’t necessarily better. ”But consumers have seen the correlation, and now they’re using haze as an indicator,” Page explains. ”They’re making purchasing decisions based on how the beers look.” It isn’t surprising, then, that brewers may be intentionally murking up their IPAs to make them more marketable. Rumors are circulating of IPAs made hazy and viscous by the addition of flour or   applesauce, both of which can create a milky, opaque hue in the beer without any benefits for flavor or smell. We were unable to find any brewers who said they had personally tried these techniques, though Kimmich, at The Alchemist, is convinced that the rumors are true. ”I know for an absolute fact there are brewers doing this stuff,” he says. Kimmich, who wouldn’t name any of these breweries, says he is amused  —   and slightly satisfied  —   to see brewers across America creating beers that he says he was once rebuked for producing. ”We spent 10 years trying to convince people that haze is OK, and now some people are looking at our beers and saying they aren’t hazy enough,” he says. Alastair Bland is a freelance writer based in San Francisco who covers food, agriculture and the environment."
"At a rally in New York City’s Times Square on Sunday, protesters filled three city blocks to express solidarity with Muslims. The crowd gathered to speak out against President Trump’s executive order  —   now on hold after a unanimous federal appeals court decision  —   banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Organized by the Foundation For Ethnic Understanding  —   a coalition of religious groups led by record label founder Russell Simmons, Rabbi Marc Schneider and others  —   speakers at the protest included New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, activist Linda Sarsour and Imam Shamsi Ali. ”We’re using the Muslim community as a scapegoat. We are being mean to the people who are the victims of terrorism,” Simmons, a former friend of Trump, told the crowd. After Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the U. S. in 2015, Simmons penned an open letter describing Trump as a ”  wrecking ball willing to destroy our nation’s foundation of freedom.” ”While you are saying, ’I am Muslim too,’ I say to you, ’I am unapologetically Muslim all day, every day,’ ” said Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. She brought attention to the date  —   Feb. 19  —   which marks the 75th anniversary of when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced relocation of more than 100, 000   to incarceration camps. ”I ask you . .. that you commit to being part of the true,   generation,” Sarsour told the crowd. ”Not on our watch, not on my watch, not on your watch.” Amal Bajes was standing at the edge of one of the rally barricades. She was there with her daughter, and she was wearing an American flag hijab. ”We’re here . .. to express our thoughts and feelings that we’re all Americans. We love this country. We’re all immigrants,” Bajes, an immigrant from Jordan, told NPR. ”We were tearing [up] my daughter and I, for the beautiful words and support we heard from all the brothers and sisters here. We all came from different backgrounds, but look, we love each other.” Bajes was standing next to Ellen Landsberger, who she’d just met at the rally. ”I’m Jewish,” Landsberger said, her arm around Bajes, ”in the ’40s, my people were turned away. The Holocaust happened. Today, it’s Muslims that are being turned away. As my sister here said, we’re all one people.” ”As one of the signs here says,” Landsberger said, ”the irony of this  —   and the actions here  —   is that this has united us in more ways than he’ll ever divide us.”"
"Most of us suffer back pain at some point in our lives. In fact, it’s one of the most common reasons people go to the doctor. Many of us also probably reach for medication. Now, new guidelines from the American College of Physicians say try exercise, yoga, or massage first. That’s a pretty big change for both doctors and patients, but a welcome one, some doctors say. To come up with the recommendations, researchers analyzed more than 150 studies looking at what works and what doesn’t when it comes to lower back pain. The type of acute pain we’re talking about is your ”garden variety back pain you might get after shoveling a little too much or ” says ACP president Dr. Nitin Damle  —   not the kind of pain that radiates down your leg and causes numbness, or the type which results from a major accident. In contrast to other types of pain, Damle says acute back pain usually goes away on its own. ”The body will adjust, the inflammation will go down,” he says. It may take a few days or even a week, but eventually you’ll be back to normal. So why risk side effects of medication, he says, if you don’t have to? Side effects can include gastritis, stomach upset and a rise in blood pressure. Instead, the new guidelines suggest techniques to speed up the healing process, including heat wraps, massage, acupuncture and spinal manipulation which can ”relax the muscles, joints, and tendons so people can be relieved of their low back pain sooner, rather than later.” Other options that can help include exercise, ” ” therapies like yoga, tai chi,   stress reduction and guided relaxation techniques. For patients with chronic pain who just aren’t responding to these   therapies, the guidelines recommend medication to reduce inflammation such as ibuprofen and naproxen, which are nonsteroidal   drugs (NSAIDs). Acetaminophen doesn’t reduce pain or inflammation and is no longer recommended for back pain, according to a review published in Annals of Internal Medicine on Tuesday. In certain cases, muscle relaxants might help short term. If that fails, and pain persists, the next option could include medications for nerve pain or narcotics for pain. ”Only in rare circumstances should opioids be given,” Damle says, ”and then only at the lowest dose possible and for the shortest period of time.” Primary care doctor Steven Atlas, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who practices at Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote an editorial accompanying the guidelines. He describes them as a needed change. ”We are moving away from simple fixes like a pill to a more complex view that involves a lot of lifestyle changes,” he says. Atlas says this is a big cultural shift. In order to make   treatments more commonplace, he suggests doctors expand their referral systems and that health insurance companies consider covering these costs. The guidelines were published online Feb. 13 in the Annals of Internal Medicine."
"In the early 1990s, Seattle stood at the center of a new rock ’n’ roll genre called grunge. The music was loud, pared down, and largely unrestrained. Hundreds of garage bands formed in Seattle over a short period of time. One of them, Nirvana, achieved mammoth success with its first   single, ”Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That song, the band and lead singer Kurt Cobain would come to represent the genre.  By the time Nirvana started playing in the small clubs around Pioneer Square in Seattle, pop music was witnessing the decline of the highly produced synthesized sound that had dominated it for years. At that time, rock subgenres were pretty  . Heavy metal was loud, and the   alternative bands from England cranked out such earnest tunes that critics called the style New Romantic music. American punk, while still vital, wasn’t commercially viable. In 1991, all that was about to change. Nirvana performed a version of ”Smells Like Teen Spirit” in front of a small crowd at the OK Hotel in Seattle. Jonathan Poneman,   of Sub Pop Records, was there. ”It started off with that chord progression, and it went into a really beautiful, almost dreamy verse,” Poneman says. ”And then they went into a bridge, which seemed to be leading to something. I mean, there was this tension in the bridge. It’s hard to explain, but then it erupted into this chorus and it was really a   experience. I believe that everybody in the room knew that they were listening to something that was truly magnificent.” ”Smells Like Teen Spirit” became an unlikely hit. It wasn’t a track designed to be marketable, or even accessible. Check out the pop charts in 1991, and you’ll find artists like Paula Abdul, Color Me Badd and Mariah Carey all dominating the Top 20. It’s the kind of music that parents could listen to with their kids. But ”Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a song that parents were going to hate. It didn’t make sense. You couldn’t understand the words, and the chorus sounded like shouting. An Unlikely Blockbuster, Nevermind, the album that included ”Smells Like Teen Spirit,” reached the top of the charts. Most ironic is that the very demographic ”Smells Like Teen Spirit” appeals to, the   slacker generation, is the subject of ridicule in the song. Singer Kurt Cobain observes his generation as ”   .” The refrain shouts, ”Here we are now, entertain us.” Nirvana crafted a cynical video to accompany the track that showed the band playing background music for a truly spirited   cheerleading squad. Almost instantly, the song was embraced as a crossover anthem. It appealed to the football players and cheerleaders just as much as it did to the   teenage punks. You could interpret it as a generation’s call to arms or a simple loud rock song. And despite massive commercial success, Nirvana managed to maintain its credibility by posing as   stars. The first time the band was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, Kurt Cobain wore a shirt that read, ”Corporate rock mags still suck.” ”There have been a lot of great and popular   bands, but there was always a feeling or a suspicion that their careers were somehow manufactured,” Poneman says. ”Nirvana was the real deal.” ”I mean, in a very short period of time, they went from playing for eight people at a small tavern in the Pioneer Square district of Seattle to playing the Coliseum, and they did it on their own terms.” And their own terms were simple: Nirvana was part of a movement that believed anyone could produce music. Neither money nor connections nor even talent were prerequisites. But for all the band’s   rock credentials, Nirvana’s legacy would have a very corporate impact on alternative rock. With its success, record companies turned grunge into one of the most profitable and   rock  . Years later, the acts that dominate the charts pose as   stars  —   and, at the same time, make a lot of money doing it."
"On the day before President Trump’s inauguration, the outgoing Obama administration passed a   directive banning the use of lead ammunition and fishing sinkers on federal land. Recently, the deteriorating health of a bald eagle showed the effects of lead poisoning. Obama’s regulation is intended to protect wildlife from exactly that. But hunters are hoping Trump will soon overturn it. Last week, an officer from the Pennsylvania Game Commission brought a bald eagle to the Carbon County Environmental Education Center in northeastern Pennsylvania. In large, wire enclosures behind the center are hawks, vultures and a bald eagle recovering from a   with a car. But this newly arrived eagle didn’t look quite so elegant. ”Sometimes you just get a gut feeling with these birds, and our gut said this was lead poisoning,” says Chief Naturalist Susan Gallagher. She says the bird was vomiting and had   diarrhea, along with other classic symptoms. ”Bird comes in with its head down, its hackles up, the feathers on the back of its neck are up, it looks a little disoriented. . .. The bird had all of those problems, and they just look like they don’t feel well,” Gallagher says. It’s hard to know exactly how lead fragments got into this eagle’s gizzard, but the most common source is ammunition. Eagles and other birds scavenge remains left behind by hunters  —   ammo included. This is what the Obama administration was trying to stop with the ban on lead ammunition and fishing tackle. Environmental groups, like the Center for Biological Diversity in Oakland, Calif. have been advocating for this kind of action for years. ”Waterfowl hunters have been successful using   ammunition nationwide for decades, ever since lead shot was phased out in 1991,” says Jonathan Evans, the environmental health legal director. Evans says he thinks the Obama directive is a good start, but he wants to see the 1991 ban extended to all ammunition and fishing gear on all public lands. But at the time of the ban, there was conclusive proof that lead was harming the population of waterfowl. ”Bald eagle populations are soaring in the U. S.,” says Lawrence Keane, the senior vice president at the National Shooting Sports Foundation. ”They are at record levels.” Keane says he opposes the ban because it will make hunting more expensive. ”There’s no reason to ban traditional ammo unless there’s evidence of a population impact, and that’s the only solution to address that problem,” Keane says. Unlike eagles and most wildlife, the population level of condors, an endangered species living mostly in California and Arizona, is affected by lead. Those two states, along with a handful of others, have instituted   programs. California has the most   ban on lead ammunition, while Arizona has tried a voluntary approach, offering free copper ammunition to hunters. If it survives, the Obama directive would continue to complement these   programs. Though Trump has promised to undo many of the   regulations, this specific issue hasn’t been addressed yet. Back at the education center, Gallagher says she is convinced hunters don’t need laws or proof of population change to choose nonlead ammunition. They just need to spend a little time with a   eagle. ”Had you seen this bird suffer and go through what it went through and then walked into a sporting goods store, absolutely, you’d make that choice,” Gallagher says. ”Absolutely.” Despite    rehydration and chelation treatments, the eagle died just a few days after he was brought to the center."
"Alison Krauss and Buddy Cannon go way back. Cannon, a veteran country songwriter and producer, remembers hiring Krauss to sing harmonies on one of hear after hearing on of her early demos on cassette in the early ’90s. ”I’ve been blown away ever since,” Cannon says. Krauss has a new album out called Windy City. Produced by Cannon, it is her first solo album in 18 years. She says her friend’s instincts are almost always right. ”I’m very interested when he decides he wants to keep something  —   I want to know why,” Krauss says. ”When he goes, ’Oh, that’s good. We gon’ keep that.’ It’s like, what is it that he loves about that? . .. But you can’t second guess somebody’s instinct.” ”I think ’right’ means the same thing to both of us,” Cannon chimes in. Krauss and Cannon spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin about the making of Windy City, pushing through vocal trouble and what it’s like to collaborate with Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"Creating some form of art is commonly believed to help older people stay mentally and physically healthy. Scientific research hasn’t quite caught up with that belief. But that hasn’t deterred the dozen or so older adults in Janet Hoult’s poetry workshop. She refers to them all as ”my poets.” They meet weekly at the Culver City Senior Center in Culver City, Calif. Hoult is 80. Her eldest pupil, Ruth Berman, is 91. Like everyone in the class on the day I visit, Berman’s brought some new work to share. It’s a sweet poem about a gift from her granddaughter, expressed in rhyming couplets. ”My jewelry that’s real is hidden out of sight,” she reads, ”but my butterfly necklace, I wear day and night.” Another member of the class has a more meditative piece. Terry Dicks’ poem is about her spiritual struggles  —   her choice between ”mud,” as she puts it, and her quest for the place ”where miracles flow and all rain is holy water.” Regardless of age or subject matter, everyone here is serious about becoming a better poet. Ruth Berman says she works on each assignment all week. ”As soon as I leave the class, I go home and all these thoughts come into my mind,” says Berman. ”I write and I rewrite and I write. I must do it about 30 times before I get it the way I want it to be.” You wouldn’t guess, from Berman’s cheerful enthusiasm, what led her to start writing poetry. She took it up just last year after her husband died. ”It was sudden,” she says of his death. ”Very sudden. And I knew that I had to keep busy in order to focus and live again.” Researchers say there’s no scientific proof that poetry  —   or any other artistic pursuit  —   actually helps older people live longer or live better. ”We still have a long way to go in understanding physical health outcomes,” says Sunil Iyengar, the director of research and analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. It would be great to know for sure, Iyengar says, because compared to other kinds of health interventions, engaging in the arts is pretty inexpensive. But it can be difficult to study. Making art is a complex process. Sometimes it’s done alone. Sometimes in a group. And singing might have a different impact than painting or writing. ”We’re not talking about a pill,” says Iyengar. ”We’re not talking about [testing] a device. We’re talking about something that is so deeply embedded in our culture and our society, and that contains . .. many factors.” So far, research findings on the relationship between the arts and health have been all over the map. A roundup of some 30 studies shows that while most found benefits, they didn’t measure the same things. Some looked at physical effects, like fewer falls or less use of medication. Others looked at effects on the mind  —   like improved memory or decreased depression. Unfortunately, many of the studies had no control groups, and were often too small to draw meaningful conclusions. Iyengar says federal agencies are now funding more rigorous research and the results are just starting to come in. The early evidence suggests that the arts have positive cognitive, social, and emotional impacts on older adults. For Hoult, the leader of the poetry workshop in Southern California, the emotional sustenance she gained from writing her first poems was profound. That was in 1999, after her son was killed in an accident. Poetry ”helped me begin to focus how I felt about losing my son,” she says. ”When you lose, you also remember what you had before the loss. And so poetry allows you to begin to look at a relationship, at what was of value to you.” In Hoult’s workshop, Marsha Wilde reads a poem expressing a sense of loss on a global scale. ”How many words for murder do we already have in our North American language?” she asks. ”Are there enough? Should we invent more? Would we write better poems if we invented more words that mean destruction? ” It was a long poem and there was silence in the room when she finished reading it. Most of the poems that are read aloud here tend to be lighter. But that doesn’t matter. The people in this room all support each other. Ruth Berman says she loves each and every poem and all of the poets, too. ”I find them all fascinating,” she says. ”I want to get up and hug each one of them. They bring me such joy.” Even though science can’t yet tell us if this poetry workshop is improving Ruth Berman’s health, it’s clearly doing her heart a lot of good."
"Presidents Day is a time to reflect on the giants. Lincoln. Jefferson. Washington. And of course, mattress sales. ”You go hunting when the ducks are flying,” says Kevin Damewood, the executive vice president of sales and marketing at Kingsdown, a mattress manufacturer. He says   weekends are when people have time to shop for a new mattress. It’s also when many people decide to move, and consequently when many people are in the market for a new mattress. Yet despite the flashy advertisements, mattress shopping can be met with the same level of excitement as buying new tires. ”A mattress has often been considered what you might call a grudge purchase,” says Mary Helen Rogers, the vice president of sales and marketing at the Better Sleep Council, a part of the International Sleep Products Association, which represents the mattress industry. A new survey from the Better Sleep Council, however, suggests this is starting to change. It found consumers were replacing their mattresses more often, particularly younger people 18 to 35. They were expecting to replace their mattress about once every six years. Younger shoppers experiencing more   events, such as moving to a new city or getting married, can explain some of this. But it also reflects a different perception of buying mattresses. ”I think I had 50 friends comment on it,” says Meg Massey, referring to a Facebook status she posted about shopping for a new mattress for her studio apartment in Washington, D. C. ”They were talking about it like it was so easy.” Initially, Massey was apprehensive about the purchase, expecting to have to pay four figures. Yet after recommendations from friends and research online, she ordered a foam mattress on Amazon for $171. Her plan is to keep the mattress for a few years, before buying a   mattress. ”I’m actually kind of excited about the next purchase,” she says, even though she only expects that mattress to last about five years, a significant shift from her parents’ mattress habits. ”I’m pretty sure my mom has mattresses she bought when I was a child,” Massey says. ”That was something you kept for 10 or 20 years and you somehow made it work.” The ability to do her own research online and avoid having to shop at a mattress store changed the shopping experience from something she was dreading to one she enjoyed. And despite the savings being marketed for Presidents Day, Massey feels she wouldn’t have received such a deal while working with a salesman. ”It’s easier to kind of stick to your game plan when it’s just you and your laptop and not you and like someone whose entire job is to try and get you to spend more money,” she says. Several new companies have taken note of the poor reputation of mattress stores and joined the online market. ”Buying a mattress when we did focus groups and surveys ranked as one of the worst consumer shopping experiences, period,” says Philip Krim. He’s the CEO of Casper, one of the most recognizable names in the online mattress market. The site was designed to be the polar opposite of a mattress store. Instead of a physical location with dozens of mattresses to try, Casper sells only one mattress  —   though in different sizes  —   online with a simple return policy. Several other companies also sell beds exclusively online. It’s still a small slice of the market, but more and more companies are moving in that direction, seeing an opportunity. ”Look, it’s an Amazon world, isn’t it?” says Mark Quinn, the   of Hero Bed, a new startup looking to sell beds online. He says online sales are about five percent of the market, though he expects that to double in the next few years. ”You can buy anything you want and have it shipped to your house in a couple of days,” he says. ”It’s hitting the easy button.” While the lack of options  —   and salespersons  —   is one of the main selling points for shopping online, mattress stores argue the opposite serves as an advantage. Many stores have test beds and salespersons trained to use them to connect customers with the bed with the right kind of support. ”I don’t know how you can really, thoroughly, 110 percent accomplish that online,” says Damewood. ”How many consumers really understand what the different gauges of wire mean online and what that means to the support they’re being given in a mattress?” Support is a term used often by mattress stores. Tossing your current mattress for one with more support is often sold as the gateway to a better night’s sleep and all the health benefits promised along with it. ”Even small changes in support that you may not necessarily perceive can actually impact pain you have the next day and the quality of sleep that you have,” said Dr. Robert Oexman, the director of the Sleep to Live Institute, which is funded by Kingsdown. ”The type of mattress you buy and the support characteristics of that mattress is critical.” But for Dr. Lisa Medalie, who works at the University of Chicago’s Sleep Disorders Center, a new mattress is pretty low on her recommendations for her patients. ”I kind of go with, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” she says. If a mattress is uncomfortable, she says replacing it can lead to a better night’s sleep and hunting for a mattress with adequate support makes sense. Often, however, she says there are other ways to find that elusive restful night. She says try these tips first:"
"Rio de Janeiro’s carnival is like one of those lavish parties where all the guests show up early and start guzzling away while you’re still upstairs, trimming your eyebrows. Is there another city on earth that tosses aside its troubles with such gusto, and then dives into the   box with all the   relish of The Cat in the Hat? The carnival hasn’t even officially opened, but this weekend several hundred thousand people were already out parading and partying beneath a steaming tropical sun. Many cats in many hats appeared on the streets, against a skyline so weirdly wobbly that it could have come from the pen of Dr. Theodor Seuss Geisel himself. Beneath garlands, glitter and grins, they twirled away the weekend as if Monday would never come and the   Brazilian beer  —   served from   trucks or grubby   on bicycles  —   would never stop flowing. Amid this euphoria, there is an echo of reality. Political satire and protest is sewn into the multicolored fabric of Rio’s annual carnival season. To see that, you only have to look at some of the costumes. Former commodities tycoon Eike Batista, once Brazil’s richest man, was recently locked up in prison awaiting trial for bribery. Yet I saw him lining up for the   behind Napoleon, two Roman emperors and a squirrel carrying a trombone. Word has it that in Rio this year there are many sightings of Donald Trump. I didn’t personally see the U. S. president’s   locks bobbing above the dancing crowds, but I met his Mexican Wall  —   rendered, in symbolic protest, as cardboard boxes around the waists of Brazilian journalists Fernando and Luciana Miragaya. As a newcomer watching this craziness for the first time, you might find yourself asking  —   how all do these people do it, in this insane heat? How do so many manage to party so joyously in temperatures so sweltering that you can lose a gallon of sweat in an hour? Serious carnival performers  —   the ones you see in   heels and glorious costumes on TV  —   say they prepare with strict diets, intensive training and by glugging down plenty of water beforehand. Law student Ana Carolina Carvalho is preparing to perform in the official samba parade as a giant, silver, feathered mermaid. That’s why she’s been working out for two hours a day, five days a week, at the Bodytech Fitness Center close to Copacabana beach. Carvalho thinks this will pay off, once the fun starts. ”When you listen to the music, and your body starts shaking, and then you forget everything, and everything is good, and everything is alright, and excellent” she says. Fatima Carvalho, 55, has danced every year for 27 years with the Portela samba school in north Rio. She says she prepares by soaking her feet in rock salt, drinking water and eating fruit. That’s no insurance against trouble when several million people are on the loose. She hasn’t forgotten the occasion, some years back, when she was hit in the head by a flying beer can. It knocked her out cold. Yet it did not dent her enthusiasm. ”I don’t like parties, or birthdays, or Christmas. But I adore my carnival,” says Fatima. Which prompts my second big question. Why? I mean  —   seriously  —   why does a country, bedevilled by recession, corruption, red tape, gangs, drugs and guns  —   want to enjoy itself with such flamboyant abandon instead of wallowing in   like the rest of us? Rio’s carnival doesn’t officially open until the end of the coming week, when the city’s fabulous samba schools will compete against each other for several days in what’s billed as the ”world’s greatest spectacle.” When this party really starts, I intend to get an answer."
"Growing up on Long Island, Zachary Linderer was obsessed with science. He grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, and like many others in the faith, he was homeschooled his whole life. By the time he got to high school, Linderer knew that he wanted to go to college for something in the sciences: physics, oceanography, something in that realm. But he realized at a young age that wasn’t going to be a possibility. ”I knew that it wasn’t going to be encouraged that I get an education,” Linderer says. ”My dad told me that he knew people who were into science, and it dragged them right out of the organization, right out of the truth.” The organization that Linderer is talking about is the Watchtower: the governing organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The view that higher education is spiritually dangerous is very common among Witnesses, and for Linderer, it meant that his parents wouldn’t support him going to college. Still, he knew that he wanted to study, so he decided to keep his ambitions a secret and figure out a way to attend on his own. Close to high school graduation he let his plans slip to a couple of his Jehovah’s Witness friends. Word got back to his family. ”When they found out, my dad and uncles made fun of me,” Linderer recalls. ”It really squashed my hopes. I knew I wasn’t going to get their support, and without their support, it was really obvious to me at the time that I wasn’t going to be able to do it on my own.” With only a few credits left before high school graduation, Linderer dropped out. He had no prospects of education beyond high school, so getting the diploma seemed pointless. He struggled to find work after moving out of his parents’ home, which eventually led him to get certified as an electrician. Still, that longing to study science haunted him. ”I think I had that feeling at 17 years old or so that that was what I wanted to be, what I needed to be,” Linderer says. ”There’s been this hole ever since then.” From the top down, Linderer’s story is a common one for children raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Pew Research shows that only 9 percent of Witnesses get undergraduate degrees. That’s well below the national average of 30. 4 percent and the lowest of any faith group. The likely reason for this trend is the religion’s official warnings against college. Witness leadership declined to speak to NPR for this story, but Anthony Morris III, a member of the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, outlines the organization’s policies clearly in a video on the organization’s website. The Watchtower Organization discourages higher education for two basic reasons. First, higher education is spiritually dangerous. In the video, Morris warns parents that ”the most intelligent and eloquent professors will be trying to reshape the thinking of your child, and their influence can be tremendous.” He goes on to say that continual association with   in an academic setting can ”erode thinking and convictions.” Witness leadership also discourages higher education because they believe it’s a waste of time. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been predicting the end of the world since the religion’s founding at the end of the 19th century. By their rationale, time in college would be better spent out on the streets, converting persons to become Witnesses. Morris makes it very clear that the Watchtower organization doesn’t discourage education, but rather secular education. ”If parents and young ones are motivated to pursue divine education,” Morris says, ”the quest for higher secular education becomes less and less of an issue.” More material problems, The lack of higher education can translate into more tangible problems for Witnesses. Pew research also shows that Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the lowest earners of any religious group. Amber McGee falls in that category. She grew up a Witness in rural Texas. Like Linderer, she was   from a young age. Her parents wanted to protect her and her siblings from worldly influences. That decision wasn’t easy on her family. ”My mom, who was supposed to be our home school teacher, was not capable of doing it, emotionally mentally,” McGee recalls. ”She had three young children. She was by herself, very far from family, and even grocery stores and that sort of thing.” McGee’s mother never finished high school herself, and the pressure of trying to teach three children was too much for her. She gave up on homeschooling them when McGee and her twin were in third grade. The kids were forced to fend for themselves using workbooks. When she had trouble with a subject, McGee says she’d just pass her work off to her twin, and  . This left both of them with significant learning disabilities. McGee says that when she got excited about a subject, her mother would often shut her down. ”I told her how much I found history fun,” McGee says. ”She told me, ’Well, that’s not important because it doesn’t have any bearing on your future, and it won’t be any use in the paradise.” This ”paradise” refers to the heaven on earth that Witnesses believe is coming after the end of the world. McGee barely graduated high school. In mathematics, she never made it past the seventh grade level. That’s made life difficult for McGee. She’s now 34 years old, and the most she’s made in a year is about $14, 000. McGee and her family left the Witnesses about a year ago. They’re doing better now financially, but it’s still far from what McGee had hoped for her life. She had wanted to be nurse growing up, but with no support from her parents and very little education, she didn’t feel it was possible. Today, she struggles with that same feeling that Linderer talked about: the feeling of being robbed of something. It’s a sentiment shared by most of the more than 100  ’s Witnesses that I heard from while reporting this story. Still, McGee says she isn’t letting that feeling stop her from retaking her life. ”I was taught very, very young to stop dreaming, to not have dreams,” McGee says, ”that you’ll never be a famous person or a doctor or a nurse. It’s not possible. So now, as an adult, at 34 years old, I’m learning to start dreaming again.” Even if it’s too late for some of her dreams, she definitely hopes to pass them on to her children."
"If you are a fan of sketch comedy, then you’d probably know the name Jordan Peele. He, along with Keegan Michael Key wrote and performed in the acclaimed Comedy Central sketch series Key  Peele. The show, which ran for five seasons, earned a Peabody Award and two Primetime Emmys for its hilarious and deeply pointed take on race and culture. A popular feature among the sketches on Key  Peele was the way it sometimes mixed humor and horror, for example, the zombies who refused to eat black people. Now Peele has taken that strategy and used it in his directorial debut of a horror film called Get Out. The movie, which he also wrote and produced, is already being called a bombshell social critique, fearless and a   after its first showing at the Sundance Film Festival. In Get Out, Peele unabashedly addresses the politics of racism as he chronicles the story of an   man who’s meeting his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time but she’s not told them he’s black. NPR’s Michel Martin spoke with Peele ahead of the movie hitting theaters on Friday Feb. 24 and he explained the motivation behind tackling this particular issue. On how he got the idea for the film  This is the only woke horror movie of all time, save for Night of the Living Dead. . .. I felt like race has not been dealt with in my favorite genre which is horror. Every other human horror has its sort of classic horror movie to go along with it. So I kind of wanted to fill the gap in that piece of the genre of conversation. On if the opening scene was meant to bring echoes of Trayvon Martin  Obviously the tone of this movie was a big question mark and we had to get it right because it is dealing with subject matter. It hits home to a lot of people. But I wanted to represent the fact that what many people may not understand is the fear that a black man has walking in a white suburb at night is real. And I wanted to put the audience in that position so they could see it and feel it. On the scene about the black character Chris meeting his white girlfriend Rose’s family for the first time, I took a lot of cues from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The first act of the film kind of resembles that movie. And one of the reasons that movie I think was so successful and important was because you know, aside from being a racial commentary, anybody can relate to the fear of meeting your potential future   for the first time. It’s a very scary thing and you want to present yourself right. But when you add race to that equation there is this fear if they don’t know that I’m black for example, I don’t want to see them realize, ”Oh, this is not what I had expected.” So in this movie, the parents are very welcoming. They don’t skip a beat. They don’t care about the color of his skin, which to me was like almost creepier because of what we know this world to be. On the film addressing the appropriation of black culture by some white people  I think you’re really talking about the party sequence. Chris arrives at this party, which is populated with Rose’s grandfather’s friends  —   all of whom are white. Everybody wants to connect with him. Everybody wants to say, ”Hey, you know, I know Tiger Woods,” or feel his muscles. It’s all a form of the very true cliché of, ”Can I touch your hair?” On if any of the scenes in the movie comes from his own life experience  My wife Chelsea Peretti is, of course, white and I did write this movie before I met her. Without taking it that literal, this is about the   experience. It’s about the feelings of being an outsider, of being the other that we confront. And also, the presumptions that I make as a black man about others. On what it was like meeting his wife’s parents for the first time  Well they’re pretty they’re pretty cultured people. . .. My   are amazing people, very intelligent, very warm, very empathetic. I think one of the big problems with how we talk about race though is us versus them. They’re racist. I’m not. This movie is not about this idea that white people are racist and no one else is or that white people are villains. We all have issues to deal with in regards to race internally. Part of being a human being unfortunately, is the urge to prejudge people. So I think the only way we can really approach this is to say look this is a human trait and it’s how we as individuals choose to deal with our own internal racism and face it that’s our only way out."
"Argentina can be beguiling, but its grand European architecture and lively coffee culture obscure a dark past: In the 1970s and early ’80s, thousands of people were tortured and killed under the country’s military dictatorship. In many cases, the children of the disappeared were kidnapped, and some of those children were raised by their parents’ murderers. That troubled past serves as a backdrop for Things We Lost in the Fire, an unsettling new collection by Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez. The book’s stories mix elements of Argentine history with the supernatural: In one, a little girl disappears into a haunted house and is never seen again in another, a young boy is murdered in what could be a satanic ritual. Enriquez tells NPR’s Lulu   that she’s always been drawn to the macabre. ”I guess I’ve always been a dark child,” she says. ”I was a bit lonely when I was little and fiction is very important in my life. . .. And the fiction I loved is a very dark world. . .. There’s comfort in the darkness for me.” On what inspired her to write about Argentina’s dictatorship, I did not try specifically to write about the dictatorship and its consequences in the present, but I couldn’t hide away from it when [it] kept appearing in the stories. I’m 43 I’m a bit older than the children of the disappeared, but not all of them because some have my age, some are older etc. But what always haunted me once I knew the stories of these children is that there’s a question of identity. I mean, I went to school with children that I don’t know if they were who they were, if their parents were who they were, if they were raised by their parents or by the killers of their parents, or were given by the killers to other families. So there is a ghostly quality to everyday life. So it’s almost like something is floating in the air  —   something that is not resolved. And there is a fear, a real fear, that was in the air that kind of got through my skin. On writing mostly female characters who aren’t always good, In the end that’s real equality, I think. I don’t want to write about women that are, let’s say, good and . .. angelic women, goddesses. I think women should . .. also be allowed to be villains, also be allowed to be brutal and all these things that traditionally are the territory of men. On her decision to mix Argentine history with the supernatural, To me it was something very personal as a writer more than anything else. Like, I really wanted to write ghost stories, horror stories. And I was thinking, How do I do it with my voice, with something that I want to say, with something that interests me? And this is the way I found, mixing it with the history, mixing it with the social issues, mixing with the fears we have as a society. I didn’t really want to go the realistic way. I think there [are] many writers that do it I think they do it brilliantly, and I didn’t have anything to bring to the table in that sense. What I could bring to the table was something a bit more modern. On being part of a larger literary tradition, The tradition of literature in, not only in Argentina, but I think in what we can call the Rio de la Plata  —   Uruguay, too  —   has this element of fantastic stories, and a literature that is not as close to realism as the literature of other places. I’m thinking about [Jorge Luis] Borges, [Julio] Cortázar, but also Felisberto Hernández and, before, Roberto Arlt. But many of them had a very strong connection also to realistic themes: to the social, to the political, to what was going on in the country. So to me it’s a mixture that comes very [naturally] when I think about the tradition of my literature. I mean, I’m interested in ghost stories, I’m interested in witches, I’m interested in the occult. But I’m also interested in inequality, in social issues, in violence in our societies. So to me, when I started writing stories, I thought, How can I mix this? And the mix was there. It was in the tradition. It was very close to me and it came very [naturally] to me."
"In the final months of the Obama administration, the U. S. struggled to find homes for dozens of detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention center. But the negotiations with host nations proved complicated, and five men approved for release never made it out. To understand why, I set out to interview a released Guantanamo detainee, as part of a project in partnership with the PBS series Frontline. I traveled to Serbia and met Mansoor   who had been sent to Guantanamo Bay soon after the    detention facility was opened in early 2002. He now lives in a sparsely furnished apartment in Belgrade. It’s small, but with a separate bedroom and kitchen and a living room with a nice view of the city. Dayfi is from Yemen but couldn’t go home because of the instability there. So last July, U. S. officials sent him to Belgrade. The Serbian government set him up with a new life: an apartment, a monthly stipend and the opportunity for   classes. After 14 years detained at Guantanamo, he’s free. But Dayfi told me he feels like he is still in prison. ”When they brought me to Serbia they make my life worse. They totally kill my dreams. It’s making my life worse. . .. Not because I like Guantanamo, but my life become worse here. I feel I am in another jail,” he said. Dayfi taught himself English at Guantanamo, but he didn’t make it far in his language classes in Serbia. He said his prospects for an education, a job, a social life and marriage are all derailed by the stigma of being an accused terrorist. He said he wants to be sent to an Arab country. To protest his conditions  —   just as he did at Guantanamo  —   Dayfi went on a hunger strike. ”What I am asking [is] to be sent to another country [where] I can start my life. That [is] what I want, to start a family, start to finish my college education and to live like a normal person. That [is] what I want in my life. Not more,” he said. ”Simple dream. . .. I hope to leave here, where I can start my life, this my hope. Where I can get some support and to either a country  —   other country where I can least make something of my life, move on with my life, that what I want.” I had come to Serbia to find out why transferring former Guantanamo inmates deemed ready to   society was so difficult. And right away I got a sense of the problem. Moments after speaking with Dayfi for the first time, I was stopped by the police and questioned. Even though the Serbian government had agreed to give him a home, it still seemed uncomfortable with an accused terrorist living in its capital city. The officials I spoke with, up to the prime minister, said the former detainee in Belgrade was adjusting well. But after our first interview, Dayfi disappeared. For two days he didn’t answer his phone or his door. He then appeared at my hotel, looking terrified, with a fresh bruise on his head. He was certain he had been followed and that we were being watched in the hotel lobby, so we went to my room to talk. He told me that the day after our first interview several Serbian men wearing masks had forced their way into his apartment, and pinned him to the floor. While the others searched his apartment, the man holding him down yelled at him, saying things like, ”If you want to stay here, you have to keep your mouth shut. You are lying. You are playing games.” Dayfi said he felt humiliated, and he broke down as he told the story. ”They told me basically just shut your mouth and I’m lying. ’If you don’t stay in this place, we’re going to take you someplace where you don’t like,’ ” he said. This was a difficult situation: interviewing an   detainee hiding from authorities in a foreign country, now in my hotel room. Making the situation more complicated, we still didn’t know who Dayfi really was. He was captured in 2001 after the prison uprising at   Sharif in Afghanistan and told interrogators he trained with   and met repeatedly with Osama bin Laden. The American government now says he was a   fighter who exaggerated his role to sound important. But if he has lied about being a terrorist, I had to ask him, how could I trust what he said now? He told me he did what he needed to survive. ”In Guantanamo, when they put you under pressure, under very bad circumstances you are going to tell them what they want. That’s it,” Dayfi said. ”Say, like 72 hours under very cold air conditioning, and you are tied to the ground and someone came and poured cold water, whatever. Tell him what he want. Just OK, get out of my skin. I will sign anything, I will admit anything!” Dayfi was in rough shape when I left Serbia in November and more than a dozen pounds lighter than he had been just weeks before. He finally ended his hunger strike in December under pressure from his mother, who threatened her own hunger strike if he didn’t start eating. I spoke with Dayfi regularly on video calls and text messages. He said he was facing his first real winter without a proper coat. And he was still miserable. A few weeks ago, he video called me via WhatsApp on a Saturday afternoon, tearing through his apartment and ranting, ”This is crazy!” He was ripping the molding off the walls, yanking out wires, and he pulled out three tiny hidden cameras  —   ”I’m really, really pissed off. I, this is f****** enough . .. really it’s enough. .. being watched on camera in the place where I live,” he said. As we were on the call, I saw armed men dressed in black ski masks walk into his apartment. Dayfi switched to the front phone camera so I could watch as they searched his apartment. The men demanded he hand over the phone he was using to record our conversation. Dayfi refused. And after a standoff, some unmasked officials who spoke English arrived. ”So can you tell me why I’m being watched in my apartment? Give me one reason, am I a criminal?” Dayfi asked them. They didn’t have an answer for him, but demanded his phone again. ”I’m not giving you my phone! No! No, don’t talk to me like this!” Dayfi screamed at the police. ”Don’t scare me,” he continued. ”Look, if I was a bad guy  —   ” he stammered, and spat out in frustration. ”I’m not stupid. I’m very smart. And very dangerous.” ”Very smart” and ”very dangerous”  —   those words cut to the heart of the problem. Is Dayfi a real threat or just a desperate man pushed into a corner? That’s exactly what the Serbs want to know. Dayfi told the officials that he never wanted to be sent to Serbia, he wanted to be sent to an Arab country instead. ”Did you  —   did you know, uh, that you don’t probably have opportunity to do it?” one of the Serbian officials told Dayfi. ”I am following the finishing on Guantanamo I see that Trump said that they want to rise again, something like that. They want to put a new guy inside [there]. . .. It is not the same like before, one month. They start to put the wall between the Mexico and, and America, uh, two days ago . .. Everything change.” Eventually, there was a sense of resignation in the conversation, and almost humor. The men fell into a very cordial chat for another hour before Dayfi finally agreed to let them take his phone and laptop, which were returned two days later, Dayfi said, wiped of data. Chuck Hagel, who served as U. S. secretary of defense from 2013 to 2015, personally signed off on the release of more than 40 detainees. ”We say to the host countries that are going to accept them, we want these people to get back into society, where they are productive citizens. That means education that means rehabilitation.” Ambassador Lee Wolosky, the State Department special envoy for Guantanamo closure under President Obama who negotiated the deal with Serbia to take in Dayfi, says Dayfi got a fair deal. ”This is a pretty remarkable thing. An individual is picked up as a fighter by the United States. He spends a period of time in Guantanamo. And then one of our partner countries offers not only to take him in, but to give him a stipend, give him an apartment, give him language training, and to provide two years of educational support, as he tries to get himself educated,” Wolosky says. Today, 41 detainees remain at Guantanamo. Ten are scheduled to go on trial in military commissions, including the   mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The rest are being held without charge. President Trump has vowed to stop releases."
"Updated 5:25 p. m. ET, The Trump administration is releasing more on its plans to crack down on illegal immigration, enforcing the executive orders President Trump issued in late January. Those orders called for increased border security and stricter enforcement of immigration laws. The Department of Homeland Security issued the new rules on Tuesday, laid out in two documents signed by Secretary John Kelly. ”Those people who are in this country and pose a threat to our public safety, or have committed a crime, will be the first to go,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. ”And we will be aggressively making sure that occurs. That is what the priority is.” Under the new rules, the department would greatly expand the number of immigrants who are prioritized for removal. This includes a person in the country illegally who may have committed a crime but not been charged, who has ”abused any program related to receipt of public benefits,” or who an immigration officer deems a risk to public safety or national security. Immigrant rights advocates say the rules are written so broadly that they make anyone in the country illegally a target for deportation  —   potentially, as many as eight to 11 million people. ”In my many years of practicing immigration law, I have not seen a mass deportation blueprint like this one,” said Maria Elena Hincapie, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. ”This means an undocumented mother . .. who has been living in the United States for over ten years and has a U. S. citizen child she’s nursing would now also be considered a priority, ” she said. ”Today’s memos offer a guide from Trump to enact his mass deportation agenda which he talked about during the campaign trail,” said Hincapie. ”But [the memos] actually are even more extreme than his rhetoric.” The White House and DHS deny that the rules amount to a blueprint for mass deportation. While the new policies call for a ”surge” in the deployment of immigration judges and other personnel, DHS officials said the agency is not planning mass deportations and that many of the new policies would take time to implement. ”We don’t need a sense of panic necessarily in these communities,” one DHS official said in a conference call with reporters. Homeland Security officials said the policies would not affect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama administration program that offered protection from deportation for   Dreamers who were brought to the U. S. illegally as children. The DHS wants to expand the use of   expedited removal, in which migrants do not appear before an immigration judge before being deported. Under the Obama administration, those expedited deportations had been limited to those in the country for two weeks or less, and within 100 miles of the border. DHS officials say they could seek to expand the use of expedited removal all over the country, for immigrants who have been in the U. S. for up to two years. Those rules have not yet been finalized. In addition, the policies call for an expansion of a federal program that enlists state and local police to enforce immigration laws. That partnership has come under fire from critics who allege that it has led to racial profiling. The federal government terminated one such agreement with Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 2011 after the Justice Department found that county officers unlawfully stopped and detained Latinos. On Tuesday, DHS called the program ”a highly successful force multiplier.” Officials said local officers go through extensive training and that racial profiling would not be tolerated."
"President Trump’s executive orders so far have targeted immigrants staying in the U. S. illegally, refugees, and visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. ”It’s a good assumption,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18, that green card holders  —   or legal permanent residents  —   will not be affected by the revised travel ban Trump is expected to announce this week. But Alondra Juarez, a green card holder in Los Angeles, says she is not taking any chances. On a recent morning, she was one of dozens lined up outside the office of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or CHIRLA. She had come before, but she turned back after she saw long lines. ”I want to say this is my sixth attempt,” said Juarez, a    social worker who has lived in LA for more than two decades. She heard that CHIRLA was offering free help with citizenship applications during Trump’s first 100 days in office. Juarez says she was troubled by Trump’s executive order that temporarily banned travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. ”The Muslim ban was an   because if you do ask a lot of Latinos with resident cards, they’ll tell you, ’OK, first it was Muslims, and next, who’s on the list? The Latinos, Hispanic population,’ ” she said. Green card holders can apply for citizenship after staying in the U. S. for at least five years. But historically, nearly 40 percent of those eligible for citizenship  —   or about 10 million people  —   choose to keep their green cards, according to the latest estimate by the Pew Research Center. While the courts have put the travel ban on hold, the uncertainty of Trump’s immigration policies is keeping immigrants on edge. Many green card holders are now flocking to apply for citizenship, including Vera Mayorga. Standing on the sidewalk outside CHIRLA’s office, she said her mother, Dina, is concerned about more changes in immigration policy and feels that getting citizenship is the best insurance against being deported back to Guatemala. ”She doesn’t want to go back,” Vera said. ”This is scary because here is my life,” Dina added. ”My daughter’s going to school here.” After CHIRLA staffers opened their office doors, the Mayorgas and other green card holders streamed inside to start filling out intake forms. There were so many people crammed into the room that more chairs had to be brought in. Smiles broke across nervous faces as a staffer welcomed them in Spanish. ”We used to see two to three people a week seeking citizenship services. Now we are seeing between 30 and 50 people a day,” says   Cabrera, CHIRLA’s director of communications. He says his organization hopes this recent rush for citizenship will eventually result in more new voters at the polls. The right to vote and a U. S. passport are some of the top incentives for applying for citizenship. But there are also plenty of barriers that discourage some green card holders, including misinformation about the application process. ”What we want is to provide folks with the right information so that they don’t end up at notarios and fraudulent attorneys that will take their money, wreck their lives and run away from it all,” Cabrera says. Allan Wernick, an immigration attorney who runs the City University of New York’s Citizenship Now! program, has also seen a significant increase in green card holders seeking citizenship. In the past, he says, some people have been intimidated by having to pass an English test and an exam about U. S history and government. Another challenge has been the fees, which can total as much as $725 to file the application for naturalization and to pay for the required fingerprinting and other biometric collection. ”Not everyone understands that if you’re indigent or low income, you can get a waiver of that filing fee,” Wernick explains. Presidential election cycles generally boost the number of citizenship applications. Last year was no exception. Through September, application numbers were up more than 24 percent over the previous fiscal year. Amir, a green card holder from Iran who lives in California’s Orange County, submitted his application for naturalization a few weeks before Trump’s inauguration, He asked NPR not to use his last name because he is worried that speaking out might affect his application. He says he was shocked that green card holders from Iran and the six other mainly Muslim countries affected by the travel ban were initially not allowed to return to the U. S. after Trump signed his executive order on Jan. 27. The White House counsel eventually issued a statement saying that green card holders are exempt from the travel ban. Still, the confusion brought up a lot of questions for Amir. ”What if I happened to be outside of the country and wanted to come back?” he says. ”This is home. I mean, I own a house here. I have no other place to go. I’m here as an asylee and as a gay man. There’s not a lot of welcoming in Iran for me.” U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order will not affect how it reviews citizenship applications. Meanwhile, Amir hopes he will soon be able to take his oath of allegiance and become a U. S. citizen. With the surge of applications, the wait may be longer than usual."
"Rex Tillerson is heading on his second foreign trip as secretary of state later this week. But as in his visit last week to Germany, Tillerson is expected to try to keep a low profile when he travels to Mexico on Wednesday. Tillerson has said very little in public since taking office. There has been no State Department briefing since the Trump administration began a month ago. For two days at last week’s   meetings in Bonn, where Tillerson was meeting with his counterparts from the group of 20 leading economies, reporters tried but failed to get the secretary of state to weigh in on some of the key foreign policy issues facing the Trump administration. ”Met a lot of new friends,” Tillerson said with a laugh at a photo op. The former Exxon Mobil CEO is new to politics. His aides say he was mainly in listening mode on his first trip. He was also trying to reassure nervous allies in Europe about where the Trump administration is heading. Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, told his colleagues at a security conference in Munich that he is impressed so far by his U. S. counterpart. ”Rex clearly understands and thought deeply about some of the conflicts that everybody is now looking to the U. S. to address, particularly Yemen, Libya, and of course Syria and Iraq,” Johnson said. ”I’m optimistic about this, folks, not least because I have no option.” But some foreign diplomats are wondering just how much influence Tillerson actually has with the White House. The secretary of state was not part of Trump’s recent meetings with the leaders of Canada, Israel and Japan. The White House hasn’t approved a deputy for him yet, and many   State Department jobs have yet to be filled. That worries Tom Countryman, a former State Department official who served most recently as acting undersecretary for arms control and international security. ”The very slow pace at which the White House seems to be paying attention to filling those vacancies is an indication, I fear, that the White House is content to have empty agencies across the government that cannot interfere with the edicts that are issued by the White House,” Countryman says. Last month, Countryman was nudged out of his arms control job by the Trump administration, one of several senior foreign service officers effectively forced into retirement. Since then, the administration has moved to eliminate one of the State Department’s deputy positions and the job of counselor, another holdover from the Obama administration. That kind of reshuffling is not unusual, says Brett Schaefer, who has written about reforming the State Department for the Heritage Foundation. ”You’ve seen changes in the structure of the organization by pretty much every secretary that has come in,” he says. ”They’ve either established new positions or shifted boxes around to try to comport with their ideas of what a more efficient structure should be.” The Obama administration hired many special envoys and expanded the State Department budget, Schaefer notes. ”But what you haven’t seen,” he says of the Obama era, ”is a sense that the State Department is functioning more efficiently in championing the foreign policy of the United States.” Schaefer says Tillerson would like to move more quickly to get his team in place. Countryman, the retired diplomat, says that is key. ”Diplomacy is not like other businesses,” Countryman says. The U. S. needs a lot of   diplomats to interact with countries around the world, he says. ”Even if they operate with a very small staff and a flexible set of responsibilities,” Countryman says, ”it gives you greater capability respond to allies and friends who need a   touch by the United States.” This week, the Trump administration will be giving a   touch to Mexico. Tillerson will be joining Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly there. They’ll be trying to put the relationship back on track after Trump’s phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his many statements demanding that Mexico pay for a border wall."
"With security at the U. S.  border at the center of a seething controversy, the justices of the U. S. Supreme Court seemed torn at oral arguments on Tuesday  —   torn between their sense of justice and legal rules that until now have protected U. S. Border Patrol agents from liability in   shootings. In the summer of 2010,    Sergio Hernández and his friends were playing chicken, daring each other to run up to the border fence between Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas. Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. arrived on the scene and grabbed one of the kids, while others ran past him, crossing the invisible border into Mexico and hiding behind a railroad trestle. Cellphone videos show Sergio peeking out from his hiding place, as agent Mesa points his gun and fires three shots, killing the unarmed boy 60 feet away. After an investigation by U. S. Customs and Border Protection, Mesa was neither prosecuted nor disciplined. Mexico charged him with murder, but the U. S. refused to extradite him. So the dead boy’s parents sued agent Mesa for damages, claiming that he had acted in violation of the U. S. Constitution by killing their son. On the steps of the Supreme Court Tuesday, agent Mesa’s lawyer, Randolph Ortega, said the Constitution does not extend across the Mexican border. ”Borders are real and finite, and borders determine where the primacy of one country ends and the other begins,” Ortega said. Bob Hilliard, the lawyer representing Hernández’s family, countered that the roughly 44, 000 Border Patrol agents are domestic law enforcement officers who should be constrained by the Constitution. ”Right now, while they’re in the United States, their boots never leave the country, and it’s the government’s position that the Constitution turns off like a light switch at the border, and they are unconstrained by our U. S. Constitution,” said Hilliard. Inside the Supreme Court chamber, Hilliard had some difficulty selling his counterargument to the court’s four conservative justices. ”How do you analyze the case of a drone strike in Iraq where the plane is piloted from Nevada?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked. Could the family of those who are killed or injured sue for damages? Hilliard fumbled, until Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed dryly that under the argument Hilliard had put forth in his brief, neither military nor intelligence personnel could be sued. Justice Stephen Breyer commented that Hilliard has ”a very sympathetic case,” but he added that the court has to write an opinion that doesn’t cause confusion and doesn’t affect drone strikes and the like. Justice Anthony Kennedy, potentially the deciding vote in the case, held his fire until about halfway through Hilliard’s argument. And then he let loose. ”[T]his is one of most sensitive areas of foreign affairs where the political branches should discuss with Mexico what the solution ought to be,” he said. Kennedy added, ”It seems to me this is an extraordinary case for us to use in expanding damage suits against federal law enforcement agents when we have not done so since 1988.” Lawyer Hilliard replied that ”there is no alternative remedy for the family.” There have been 283   shootings, Hilliard said, despite the government’s stated policy barring a Border Patrol agent from using deadly force if there is no imminent peril. ”If we assume the officer was completely at fault, there should be some relief, but that’s up to the executive and legislative branches” to craft some sort of compensation, Kennedy replied. Lawyer Hilliard shot back that that would mean the largest law enforcement group in the country would be, for all practical purposes, immune to punishment for its actions. Next up to the lectern was lawyer Ortega, representing agent Mesa. He too faced a fusillade of questions, mainly from the court’s liberals. The law of the United States is directed at the Border Patrol agent, Justice Ginsburg observed. ”And the instructions from the United States are very clear: Do not shoot to kill an unarmed, nondangerous person who is no threat to your safety.” Justice Kennedy supported Ginsburg’s assertion. ”It’s a U. S. officer subject to U. S. supervision. That’s it,” Kennedy said. Also arguing on behalf of agent Mesa and the Border Patrol was the U. S. government, represented by Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler. He too faced tough questioning. This case, observed Justice Elena Kagan, falls ”in the heartland of” our prior rulings on a law enforcement officer’s use of deadly force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Kneedler if he had seen the cellphone video that appeared on YouTube, which captured the events at the center of Tuesday’s case. Sotomayor said she had watched the video, ”and I can’t square the police officer’s account of this incident with the film.” By the end of the argument, the justices looked very much as if they could be tied  . If so, the court could hold the case for reargument at a later date this year, waiting for Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch to be confirmed so that a full complement of nine justices could hear and decide the case. The alternative would be to let a tie vote stand, which for the time being would affirm the lower court’s decision against the Hernández family’s claimed right to sue. Then too, court observers know that it can be folly to predict the outcome of a Supreme Court case. It is still possible that there are at least five votes for one side or the other."
"Many men over 65 with low testosterone levels say their sense of   not to mention sexual function, isn’t what it used to be. That’s why some doctors prescribe testosterone replacement. But the effectiveness of testosterone has been controversial. Studies of the risks and benefits have been mixed, and the Food and Drug Administration beefed up its warnings about cardiac side effects of testosterone supplementation in 2015. And the findings of five studies released Tuesday aren’t likely to clear up the confusion. They appear in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association and JAMA Internal Medicine. The studies are collectively called the Testosterone Trials (TTrials) and they compared a testosterone gel, AndroGel, against a placebo. The results are based on 788 men with below normal levels of testosterone studied at 12 sites across the country over a year. Overall, researchers saw improvements in bone density and bone strength in men who used a testosterone gel, which raised their testosterone to levels seen in younger men. In men with unexplained anemia, testosterone also improved iron levels in the blood. (A reviewer of the study raised questions about whether it was done ethically.) But in men using testosterone who had been reporting memory problems at the start of the study, there were no improvements in memory or cognition. And there were worrisome signs of an increase in the risk of cardiovascular problems. Taken together, says Dr. David Handelsman of the University of Sydney and Concord Hospital in Australia, the TTrials ”do not materially change the unfavorable balance of safety and efficacy to initiate testosterone treatment.” His comments appear in an editorial in JAMA. ”Low testosterone levels due to obesity” and other aging health problems, Handelsman says, ”are better addressed by lifestyle measures” directed at those problems. He also called for strengthened warnings on the drug’s packaging to note the cardiovascular risk. In another accompanying editorial, Eric Orwoll, a professor of medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University, says convincing answers about the effects on cardiovascular health remain ”elusive” and will require large, prospective randomized trials. ”At this point, clinicians and their patients should remain aware that the cardiovascular risks and benefits of testosterone replacement . .. have not been adequately resolved,” he says. The results, The red flag on cardiovascular risk was raised in the TTrials’ Cardiovascular Trial, where researchers found an increase in plaque buildup, a known risk factor for heart disease. The study was based on 73 men using the gel and 65 receiving a placebo. The study was originally done because there had been suggestions that testosterone has heart benefits. Indeed, another trial published Tuesday, which was not part of the TTrials, showed a lower risk of cardiovascular events, including heart attack or stroke, in men who’d received testosterone, on average, for 3. 4 years. Somewhat more positive results were seen in the TTrials’ Bone Trial. Among men using the testosterone gel, there were statistically significant improvements in lumbar spine and hip bone density and bone strength. There was a small and equivalent number of bone fractures in each group. The Bone Trial included 189 of the 790 men in the overall study. But another TTrial, the Cognitive Function Trial, failed to find improvements in memory and cognitive skills associated with testosterone treatment. This trial studied 493 men who had   memory impairment at the start of the study, as measured by subjective memory complaints and objective memory performance. The TTrials started out by screening more than 51, 000 men 65 and older. To qualify for one of the subtrials, men needed a blood level of testosterone to be below 275   just below the range many doctors consider ”normal” for healthy, younger men. After screening, 788 men were considered to have low testosterone. Until the first year of TTrials was over, neither the participants nor the researchers knew which men were getting the placebo or the testosterone gel. The first set of TTrial studies was reported last year in the New England Journal of Medicine. Those looked at sexual function, physical activity and mood and found that sexual function and desire did improve significantly among men using the testosterone gel. Some mood improvements were also noted although there was not significant improvement in overall vitality or in physical activity. Final decisions about testosterone treatment for older men will depend on ”balancing the results” from the TTrials ”with the results from a much larger and   trial designed to assess cardiovascular and prostate risk,” says endocrinologist Peter Snyder of the University of Pennsylvania, who headed the studies. In the meantime, TTrial researcher Susan Ellenberg says decisions about whether to take or not take testosterone should be made between older men and their physicians, taking into account overall health and medical history while weighing potential benefits and risks. The studies were funded by the National Institute on Aging and other parts of the National Institutes of Health. Additional funding was provided by the maker of AndroGel, AbbVie, which also supplied the drug, which is customary in clinical trials. The company was not otherwise involved in the implementation or analysis of the trial."
"There’s a lesson about one of the testosterone studies released this week that has nothing to do with testosterone: The study on how testosterone affects anemia was designed with an ethical lapse that nobody noticed until the study was complete. That’s surprising because it was designed and carried out by a couple of dozen of   scientists. Their protocols were reviewed by 12 university institutional review boards, whose job is to evaluate the ethics of an experiment. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and the trial was overseen by a watchdog data safety and monitoring board. But all of those safety features fell short this time. A reviewer at JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, noticed that participants who were diagnosed with anemia (low iron in the blood) at the outset of the study were not told of that fact. ”Abnormal results on this simple blood test could have been an early warning sign of a serious illness which, if diagnosed and treated early could have greatly improved patient outcomes,” says Dr. Bernard Lo, a bioethicist who runs the Greenwall Foundation. Lo says low iron levels could be an early sign of colorectal cancer, which is quite treatable if it’s caught early. Lo noted that 126 of the 788 study participants had low iron in the blood, but nobody thought to inform them. Scientists do not know whether this lack of information actually harmed any of the participants. ”But my own feeling is if it happened once, despite all these safeguards, it could happen again” in another major study, Lo says. ”It’s a warning sign that there’s a major problem in the system that needs to be addressed.” Lo and Dr. Deborah Grady at the University of   Francisco wrote an editorial about the ethical lapse in JAMA Internal Medicine that accompanied articles about anemia and other studies that showed some benefits and some downsides to prescribing testosterone supplements to older men with low levels. Testosterone supplements have been controversial for some time, and the Food and Drug Administration increased its warnings about the potential cardiac side effects of taking the hormone in 2015. Dr. Peter Snyder, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who organized the anemia study, readily admits this was an oversight. He says the scientists and review boards had focused their attention on potential harms from the testosterone treatment. ”We put an enormous amount of time and effort into attempting to protect the participants [from the side effects of testosterone] and that’s where our focus was,” he says. Testosterone can affect the prostate and the heart, so the study was designed to watch for those health risks. Men with severe anemia were excluded from the trial to begin with, Snyder says. ”Men who had a mild degree of anemia weren’t informed because we just didn’t think of that,” he tells Shots. ”It didn’t occur to anybody until this review pointed it out.” Snyder says scientists followed up by sending a letter to all 788 participants, informing of them of their iron levels at the start of the trial as well as at the end. He says since the trial has now ended, there is no plan to systematically study the men who had mild anemia. ”At this point we have not been notified of any problem.” Ethical lapses like this are not often recognized or highlighted. Lo says this occasion provides an opportunity to   a system that should not fail like this. Lo says the ethical lapse was not enough to prevent publication of the study."
"When the Academy Award nominations were announced in 2015  —   and again in 2016  —   there was swift backlash against the Academy for the lack of racial diversity among the nominees. Now, a new study of Best Picture nominees has revealed yet another demographic that’s been chronically underrepresented in Hollywood  —   older people. In the 25 films nominated for Best Picture Oscars over the past three years, less than 12 percent of the characters were people over the age of 60. Of those, very few were women or minorities. This is according to a new study by Stacy Smith, who directs the Media, Diversity and Social Change initiative at the University of Southern California. Smith had previously looked at the age of characters in popular films, and was curious to see if critically acclaimed, Best Picture nominees might have a different proportion of older characters.  Turns out, they don’t. Even when there are older characters, Smith found they rarely drive the plot. In the 25 best picture nominees she examined, she found only two examples of an actor over 60 who was essential to the story. Both of those characters were played by Michael Keaton. (He played the title role in Birdman in 2014 and a Boston Globe editor in Spotlight in 2015.) Arguably, there was a third character over 60 integral to the plot in one of 2017’s Best Picture nominees  —   Jeff Bridges played a Texas ranger in pursuit of bank robbers in Hell or High Water. Then again, he had to put up with dialogue like this from his deputy: ”You wanna hear about these bank robberies or just sit there at let Alzheimer’s run its course?” ”For those films that had leading or supporting characters that were 60 or above, over 40 percent had ageist comments within them,” Smith says. Concern over portraying older people as infirm or   isn’t just about protecting hurt feelings. Studies show that embracing negative stereotypes about age can lead to poor health and even a shorter lifespan. This is why Humana, the health insurance giant, funded Smith’s study. Dr. Yogi Hernandez Suarez, chief medical officer for a division of Humana, says that movies can reinforce negative stereotypes. ”If I don’t see myself in the movies, what does that say about me?” Suarez asks. ”Am I not a valued person? Should I be preparing for a future, or will I just sort of disappear at a certain time?” The AARP has actually been looking at this issue since 2001. Movies made that year were the first to be recognized with the organization’s Movies for Grownups Awards, which honor films and actors portraying characters 50 and older. Bill Newcott, who founded the program, says he’s seen some progress  —   when the awards began back in 2001, just seven of the top 100 box office movies featured a character 50 or older in a central role. In 2016 that number had jumped to 26. Why’s that? ”111 million people in the U. S. are over 50,” Newcott says. ”They buy 25 percent of movie tickets and that number’s rising.” So if we see an increase in older characters on the big screen in coming years, it’ll likely be because Hollywood does what it’s always done  —   focus on the bottom line."
"She’s done it again. Wisdom, a Laysan albatross thought to be at least 66 years old, has hatched yet another chick at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and Battle of Midway National Memorial in Hawaii. The happy news further cements her place as the ”world’s oldest known breeding bird in the wild,” according to the U. S. Fish  Wildlife Service. Wildlife authorities say she was first banded by biologist Chandler Robbins in 1956 and has raised dozens of chicks. ”Wisdom continues to inspire people around the world. She has returned home to Midway Atoll for over six decades and raised at least   chicks,” Bob Peyton, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Project Leader for the Refuge and Memorial, said in a statement. The wildlife refuge and memorial is part of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Wisdom’s feat is all the more impressive because ”it takes nearly seven months to incubate the egg and raise a chick to fledge,” the Fish  Wildlife Service adds. Here’s more: ”When not on parenting duty, Wisdom and [her mate] Akeakamai take off to forage for food. Because this process takes up so much time and energy, most Laysan albatross don’t lay an egg every year.” Park officials first spotted that Wisdom was incubating an egg in early December, and have watched it closely since then. The incubation period stands in contrast to Wisdom’s usual active lifestyle  —   the Fish  Wildlife Service estimates that the bird has ”likely flown over three million miles” during her lifetime. The   has followed Wisdom in the past  —   including the birth of another chick last year, called Kūkini, the Hawaiian word for messenger. This new chick has yet to be named. The wildlife refuge and monument is home to nests for an estimated 3 million seabirds, many of which were born there and continue to return every year. Conservationists say this makes preserving the fragile habitat all the more important. Laysan albatrosses mate for life  —   and Wisdom’s mate, Akeakamai, has a particularly appropriate name. As we reported last year, participants in an online poll selected the name, which means ”yearning for or lover of wisdom.”"
"Against a backdrop of turmoil and after big losses in November, the Democratic National Committee votes this week for its next leader. The winner of the DNC chair race will very likely reflect whether the committee’s voting members think it prudent to align their party with the Hillary   Obama camp, the Bernie Sanders camp  —   or neither. With the   developments of the Trump administration, Democrats have struggled to focus their efforts. But the coalescence of a   resistance, seen in protests across the country, has generated new confidence and energy in those running. The new chair will replace Donna Brazile, who took the job on an interim basis after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned the leadership in July, when WikiLeaks released emails that appeared to show DNC officials discussing how to hurt Sanders in the primaries. To get on the ballot, a candidate needs the signatures of 20 out of 447 voting members. The ballot goes out on Wednesday, then members will vote during the party’s meeting in Atlanta on Saturday, in as many rounds as it takes for a candidate to garner 224 votes. Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez is trying to solidify   status: Last week he contacted DNC members, saying that he had locked in support from 180 voters. Rep. Keith Ellison, expected to be the main challenger to Perez, replied with a letter to members that said it was inappropriate for a candidate to try to ”make the race sound like it is over,” adding, ”We are very confident in our whip count and are in an excellent position to win.” Here is a look at candidates Perez, Ellison, Jaime Harrison, Pete Buttigieg, Sally Boynton Brown and Jehmu Greene. Highlights from interviews with NPR and others indicate where they want to take the party: Perez, 55, represents the Obama camp  —   he was secretary of labor from 2013 until last month and was considered the most liberal member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet. Before joining the Labor Department, he was head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. What went wrong in 2016, ”What voters heard was ’he’s feeling my pain, he’s feeling my anxiety. And what they heard all too frequently from the Clinton campaign was, ’Vote for me because he’s crazy.’ I will stipulate to the accuracy of that statement, but that’s not an affirmative message,” Perez told the Washington Post. How the DNC can be more useful, ”We have to up our game,” Perez told NPR in January. ”And the reason I’m running is because we have to make sure that we are providing help and partnership with the state parties. Organizing has to be a   endeavor. You can’t show up at a church every fourth October and say, ’Vote for me,’ and call that persuasion. . .. ”What I want to do if I have the good fortune of being elected chair is build a party infrastructure in partnership with our state partners so that we have organizers in place in urban, suburban and rural communities across America so that we are a force on important issues, whether it’s voting rights, whether it’s cybersecurity. And we need to have a director of cybersecurity at the DNC, which we currently don’t have.” On whether Democrats should pursue obstruction or cooperation, ”We need to take the fight to Donald Trump. If they’re talking about deporting children, we’re going to take the fight to Donald Trump. If Donald Trump wants to raise the minimum wage to $15, yes, I will work with Donald Trump. But you know what? If they are going to try to have a deportation task force and they’re going to try to continue to deny climate change, you’re damn right we need to fight. And we will continue that fight because this is a battle for the heart and soul of who we are as Americans,” he told NPR. Key endorsements: former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius,  Ellison, 53, represents Minnesota’s 5th District, which includes Minneapolis and some of its suburbs. In 2007, he became the first Muslim elected to Congress. What went wrong in 2016, ”The thing is that before 2008, we had the   strategy, and that is in fact still pretty popular among DNC members,” Ellison told Vox in January. ”As you notice, we did pretty well in 2006 we did pretty well in 2008. I think that’s because we still had enough connectivity in place from that   strategy, but as time wore on, the tremendous popularity of Barack Obama, his amazing rhetorical skills, his just unparalleled ability to explain things and to inspire people really is the fuel that we lived on. Because of that, we lost a lot.” What Democrats need to learn from Republicans, ”I do not believe that Democrats have identified the fact that voter expansion has to be a strategic goal of ours, and yet Republicans clearly are aware that voter suppression must be a strategic goal of theirs,” he told Vox. ”They’re actively suppressing the vote. They’re doing it in 50 states. They’re doing it with a PR program. They’re doing it with a state legislative program. They’re doing it with a city program, just simply not enough voting machines. They’re doing it with a legal program. What are we doing? We’re doing state by state. Oregon’s doing great work, but what about others? This should be 50 pieces of legislation introduced in all states that expand the vote. That’s clearly what we need to be doing. The DNC has to help do that.” How the Democrats can win, ”Voter turnout has got to be something that is on the mind of every    Democrat, every Democratic officeholder. We must, in terms of turnout, think in terms of expanding the electorate beyond the people who are the likely voters in the swing states. Turnout has got to be key,” Ellison told Vox. ”When I was elected in 2006, my district had the lowest turnout in the state of Minnesota. Now it’s the highest, and it’s consistently the highest. . .. We don’t have no statewide Republicans. We used to. You remember Tim Pawlenty, who used to be the governor, and you remember Norm Coleman. Why can’t a Norm Coleman or a Tim Pawlenty get back into statewide office? Because in the Fifth Congressional District, we spike the vote so high they cannot get in.” Key endorsements: Sen. Bernie Sanders Sen. Elizabeth Warren Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Rep. John Lewis New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley, who dropped out of the DNC race over the weekend,  Harrison, 40, is chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party. He was previously executive director of the House Democratic Caucus and worked for the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm. On what went wrong, ”We got spoiled because we had the political phenom of Barack Obama. And we won in ’08, and we won in ’12, but we lost sight of it’s not just about 1600 Pennsylvania [Ave. ]. It’s about also those folks who are working and representing people on Main Street,” Harrison told NPR. Where the party goes from here, ”The people who are elected on local levels have just as much impact, if not more, on the    lives of citizens,” he told NPR. ”And so we can’t just be focused on the White House. If we do what we have to do on a state level, then the White House is gravy. And that’s the focus. . .. And let me tell you this  —   look at the victories in 2006 and in 2008. Howard Dean started the   strategy in 2006. I don’t know if folks remember. The 2004 election was probably just as sobering of an election for Democrats. We lost everything. But what happened is Howard Dean came, enacted this   strategy, and we won the House and the Senate back in ’06. And then based on that foundation, we grew the majorities in the House and the Senate and added the president.” Why he should win, ”If I become DNC chair at the age of 40, I’ll probably be half the average age of the Democratic leadership in Washington, D. C. . .. I bring a different perspective,” he told NPR. ”I will probably be the  —   if elected chair  —   probably the only person that’s ever been on food stamps that’s been chairman of the Democratic Party, the only chair that will have over $160, 000 of student loan debt. I mean, I can relate to the story of so many in this country who started behind the start line and now are trying to become successful.” Key endorsements: Reps. James Clyburn, Tim Ryan, Marcia Fudge and John Larson,  Buttigieg is the    mayor of South Bend, Ind. He is an officer in the U. S. Navy Reserve and left office temporarily in 2014 to serve in Afghanistan. Where the party needs to go, ”One thing that I’ve noticed about the other side of the aisle is they are very patient in building their majorities. You know, you had organizations that started by running people for school board in the ’80s and are seeing dividends on that now. And we’ve got to have the same patience,” he told NPR. ”We, as a party, can’t treat the next cycle like it’s the only one that matters. For example, you know, 2020 is a year that will have huge implications for redistricting. And so we’ve got to be looking at the statehouses, not treating the presidency like it’s the only office that matters.” Why it’s crucial to have a message that’s more than anger, ”There have been a lot of outrages coming from Washington in the last few weeks, and they rightly inspire a level of anger, but we can’t have that be the only thing anybody hears from us. We’ve got to be talking about what our values actually are and what the policies are that flow from them,” he told NPR. ”When we’re talking about things like the deportation rates, we should also be talking about the importance of family, why we believe it’s important to keep families intact and allow families to stay together. Every time we’re saying no to something, we’ve got to be saying yes to something else. And I do think that we can have an energy that is at or above the level of what you saw with the Tea Party.” On whether town hall protests are a good strategy, ”I think the important thing right now is to really lift up our voices and speak to the values that make us Democrats. You know, one of the things that’s striking about the town halls is a lot of them are very specifically about issues like whether people are going to have their health care taken away,” he told NPR. ”And the more we can have this discussion focus on how ordinary people are going to be affected by the decisions that are being made in Washington, then the better chance we have of reconnecting with a lot of parts of the country that didn’t really feel like they were in touch with the Democratic Party in the last go around. . .. Compromise is only possible when the other party is working in good faith. And if there’s one thing that Democrats in Congress in Washington learned the hard way about congressional Republicans it’s that there’s not a lot of people there in good faith.” Why he should win, ”We’re all saying that we’ve got to engage a new generation. We’ve all said that we need to get back to the state and local level. And so my contention is if we’re saying we want engage a new generation, bring in a leader from a new generation. If we’re saying we want to compete and win in red and purple states, find somebody who’s been competing and winning in as red a state as it gets, Mike Pence’s Indiana,” he told NPR. ”And if we’re recognizing that the solutions are not going to come from Washington, D. C. put in somebody who doesn’t get up in the morning and go to an office in Washington, D. C. every day.” Key endorsements: former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former DNC Chair and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland,  Boynton Brown, in her early 40s, has been the executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party since 2012. On what went wrong, ”Well, I really think that we have lost focus as a party. I don’t think we have any overarching identity message. We’ve let the Republicans frame the debate and frame our party for a really long time. And, frankly, I will say that in losing the amount of statehouses that we’ve lost, we’ve also allowed them to legislate. And what we know is that they’ve been passing really dangerous voter suppression laws, really stripping Americans of their rights and their freedoms,” she told NPR in January. ”And we have not had an organization who’s designed to fight back. We have 57 state parties who have been doing that to the best of their abilities. But it’s time that we had a DNC really designed to look at not just the president of the United States and that seat but every single seat all the way down to school board and city council and county commissioner seats.” On what’s next, ”Ultimately, I think the Democratic Party’s job is to save democracy and to be the fighters for freedom,” she told NPR. ”Republicans have been stripping us of our freedoms. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that our constitutional rights can be under fire in this next administration. And we absolutely must be of powerful voice to push back on anything that potentially is going to come down the road.” Key endorsements: California DNC member Christine Pelosi,  Greene, 44, is a former president of Rock the Vote and was a political analyst at Fox News. The daughter of Liberian immigrants, Greene cut her teeth as the executive director of Texas Young Democrats. She also worked in the private sector as president of WakaWaka, a solar social enterprise. On superdelegates and caucuses, ”We have to   our structures and processes. It is time to retire the outdated concept of superdelegates. That does not mean  —   and I say this as I look at the DNC members who are all superdelegates  —   we have to find a new way to honor the veterans of the party, to honor our elected officials. We have to stand shoulder to shoulder and understand that innovation and transformation is powerful, and it is possible if we do it together. It can’t just start or stop with superdelegates. We also have to take a good, hard look at caucuses. Because as a party, if we are not walking our values and [are] electing a nominee through a system that disenfranchises shift workers and the disabled and seniors, and communities that we say make up this great party of ours, then we are not the Democratic Party that we claim to be,” Greene said at the DNC’s final forum for chair candidates. What the DNC needs in a leader, ”We have to have a DNC leader who is willing to speak truth to power and say very specifically, ’I acknowledge the wounds of Bernie Sanders’s supporters who feel that they were left out of this election unfairly. And I also acknowledge the wounds of Hillary Clinton’s supporters who feel that sexism and misogyny has been too rampant in our party and in the media on how she was treated.’ And we have to have a leader who will speak truth to power to this institution of the Democratic Party and say, ’We ourselves have sexism, racism, and bigotry within our own ranks and we have too much complexity.’ . .. The Obama years were great in the lifting us out of recession, but they decimated the DNC. The Clinton campaign treated this institution with disrespect. And so we need a leader who is going to speak truth to power and put actual specific plans in place.”"
"In April 1991, I met a young U. S. Army captain in the moonscape of southern Iraq. He was frustrated. Just weeks earlier, the officer and his troops had been part of the wave of U. S. forces that drove Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military out of Kuwait. The Americans kept advancing, pushing some 150 miles into southern Iraq  —   but then they received orders to halt in place. The captain and his men sat and watched from a distance as Saddam’s army regrouped and crushed an uprising by Shiite rebels in Nasiriya and other cities throughout southern Iraq. ”The rebel leaders begged us for weapons,” said the captain, explaining that he was not allowed to help them. Later, the rebels returned and pleaded with the U. S. forces to simply drive into the city, believing that would scare out the Iraqi army. ”All we could do was wish them luck,” the American officer said. That captain was H. R. McMaster, then just 28. An old problem, McMaster, now 54, has since put away his desert camouflage and today wears three stars and a chest full of honors. But as President Trump introduced him as his new national security adviser on Monday, McMaster essentially faces the same challenge as 26 years ago  —   how to fix Iraq. This time, he must try to do so from within the White House, as one of several top aides competing to make policy both within and outside of the formal National Security Council. Based on McMaster’s track record, he may not shrink from dealing candidly with Trump’s other staffers. ”The president doesn’t have a lot of experience in national security policy, in military policy,” NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”But let me tell you something: This guy (McMaster) is no shrinking violet. He’s very blunt, he’s very smart, and he’s not going to suffer fools gladly.” Before the 1991 Iraq invasion, the U. S. had never fought a   war in the Middle East. Since then, the region has been the military’s main focus, and that looks likely to continue during the Trump administration. The U. S. is currently involved in wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and carries out periodic airstrikes elsewhere in the region. While Trump’s national security policy is still taking shape, he has now become the fifth consecutive commander in chief to carry out military action in Iraq. Here’s the condensed version of 26 years of U. S. military history in Iraq: President George H. W. Bush ordered Saddam kicked out of Kuwait, but left the Iraqi dictator in power. President Clinton upheld a   zone over northern and southern Iraq, but did not dislodge Saddam. President George W. Bush invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam in 2003, and the Iraqi insurgency followed. President Obama withdrew the final U. S. troops at the end of 2011, but ordered airstrikes in August 2014 to counter the emergence of the Islamic State. Obama later ordered thousands of American troops into Iraq and Syria to help indigenous fighters against ISIS, the strategic situation that Trump and McMaster inherit today. To put this in perspective, 26 years before McMaster first charged into Iraq in 1991, the U. S. was just ramping up its involvement in Vietnam in 1965. A tough job, McMaster’s long history with Iraq is a sobering lesson of just how tough his job will be. He earned a Silver Star in 1991 for heroism in a massive tank battle known as ”73 Easting.” During the second Iraq War, he was considered one of the architects of the   surge that beat back the Iraqi rebellion. In between his stints in Iraq, McMaster, a West Point grad, earned a doctorate in military history from the University of North Carolina. His dissertation expanded into a highly acclaimed 1997 book on the Vietnam War, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. The central theme is generals who deferred to politicians and came to regret it. As he moves into his White House office, McMaster’s most immediate challenge will be helping to coordinate the effort to drive the Islamic State out of its last stronghold in Iraq, the western side of Mosul. The Trump administration has inherited an operation in midstream. With the U. S. providing air power and advisers to the Iraqi military on the ground, ISIS was recently pushed out of the eastern part of the city in fighting that took roughly four months. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider   on Sunday announced the offensive to take the western part of the city, which is bisected by the Tigris River. If ISIS is uprooted, it will no longer hold any urban areas in Iraq and would be a greatly reduced force from the one that spread across Iraq in 2014. But as McMaster knows all too well, military victories in Iraq are ephemeral without a political solution that follows. It’s a lesson he’s relearned many times over the past 26 years. Greg Myre, an NPR national security correspondent, covered the 1991 Gulf War for The Associated Press. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Updated at 4:10 p. m. ET, A literary treasure buried for more than a century has been unearthed by Zachary Turpin, a grad student at the University of Houston. It’s a work of short fiction: a   novella published anonymously, in six parts, in a New York newspaper in 1852. The discursive nature of the manuscript’s full title  —   Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An   In Which The Reader Will Find Some Familiar Characters  —   places it squarely in its literary era, as does its subtitle, A Story of New York at the Present Time. The find was announced on Monday as the full book was published online in the literary journal Walt Whitman Quarterly Review the University of Iowa Press is releasing it in book form. What’s notable about the novella is its author  —   the beloved American poet Walt Whitman  —   and its place in Whitman’s literary career. Just three years after Jack Engle saw print, Whitman would publish the work that would enshrine him in the American canon: Leaves of Grass. Prior to Monday’s announcement, it was believed Whitman spent the early 1850s at work on that magnum opus, publishing little of note. In 1842, Whitman had published another work of fiction, a harrowing ”temperance novel” about a stouthearted young man whose life is nearly destroyed by alcohol. Whitman distanced himself from that early work and never publicly acknowledged authorship of Jack Engle. Turpin spoke to NPR about his discovery, made when he was scouring a vast online database of 19th century newspapers for names found in Whitman’s notebooks. ”It was wild,” he told All Things Considered’s Ari Shapiro. ”The literary research that I do isn’t as glamorous as you might think. I was actually in a guest bedroom at my  ’ putting together a    and I got an email. . .. ”What I’m looking for are these very unique character names Whitman had written out  —   Wigglesworth, Smytthe . .. and the first thing I see on the page are those names. . .. It was surreal.” Turpin describes the book as, among other things, Dickensian. ”It’s also a sentimental novel it’s also city mystery novel. It’s multifaceted, let’s put it that way.” As for how Jack Engle intersects Leaves of Grass, Turpin says, ”They’re apples and oranges. You have certain passages like [those excerpted below] that are remarkably similar, that presages . .. Leaves of Grass, which he was probably writing simultaneously. . .. There are also elements that are wildly different  —   chases across New York and romances and scheming,   villains are not the stuff of Leaves of Grass, but these are the stuff of Whitman’s long and storied fiction career, and career as a journalist.” As for what Turpin thinks of the the work itself, he says, ”I’m really blown away by this book. . .. It’s all things to all men. It’s weird, it’s wild, it’s beautiful and hilarious, and turns on a dime in ways that are both great and terrible. It’s truly phenomenal, and I think something that everyone will enjoy picking up.” It’s the second time in as many years Turpin has made such a discovery. Previously, he found another Whitman manuscript, a series of articles offering tips for a healthy and vigorous lifestyle, in another newspaper. Asked if historians should respect Whitman’s wish for his early work to ”be dropped in oblivion,” Turpin says, ”I respect that . .. on the other hand, Whitman’s greatest wish was to be the greatest and most famous poet in America.” In this excerpt, the narrator stops into the graveyard of Manhattan’s Trinity Church and muses about mortality. Turpin and other Whitman scholars believe this section offers a glimpse of the poet engaging with some of the same language and themes that would define Leaves of Grass: ”Truly, life is sweet to the young man. —  Such bounding and swelling capacities for joy reside within him, and such ambitious yearnings. Health and unfettered spirits are his staff and mantle. He learns unthinkingly to love —  that glorious privilege of youth! Out of the tiny fractions of his experience, he builds beautiful imaginings, and confidently looks for the future to realize them. And then he is so sure of those future years. . .. ”Out there in the fashionable thoroughfare, how bustling was life, and how jauntily it wandered close along the side of those warnings of its inevitable end. How gay that throng along the walk! Light laughs come from them, and jolly talk  —   those groups of   young men  —   those merry boys returning from school  —   clerks going home from their labors  —   and many a form, too, of female grace and elegance. ”Could it be that coffins, six feet below where I stood, enclosed the ashes of like young men, whose vestments, during life, had engrossed the same anxious care  —   and schoolboys and beautiful women for they too were buried here, as well as the aged and infirm. ”But onward rolled the broad, bright current, and troubled themselves not yet with gloomy thoughts and that showed more philosophy in them perhaps than such sentimental meditations as any the reader has been perusing.”"
"Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos has resigned amid a social media backlash over comments he made that appeared to condone pedophilia. In a news conference Tuesday, Yiannopoulos said his resignation was effective immediately and praised the website as ”a significant factor in my success.” He also explained his views on sex with minors, insisting that he does not condone statutory rape. ”I do not believe any change in the legal age of consent is justifiable or desirable,” Yiannopoulos said. He was referring to comments in   interviews more than a year ago in which he said, ”We get hung up on this kind of child abuse stuff,” and referenced, ”this arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent.” ”I said some things on those Internet live streams that were simply wrong,” he said Tuesday. He also said that he had been sexually abused as a child. Yiannopoulos’ resignation comes one day after he lost both a prominent speaking gig at a conservative meeting and a book deal. As The Two Way reported: ”First, Monday afternoon the American Conservative Union rescinded its invitation to the   provocateur  —   noted for his political posts on the Internet  —   to speak at its annual Conservative Political Action Conference this upcoming weekend. Then, a few hours later, Simon  Schuster announced that it was canceling the publication of Yiannopoulos’ upcoming book, Dangerous. ”These actions come in the wake of a social media backlash against Yiannopoulos after the conservative news outlet The Reagan Battalion tweeted videos on Sunday in which Yiannopoulos appears to condone statutory rape and sexual relationships between boys and men.” Yiannopoulos had tried to clarify his comments Monday on Facebook, defending his remarks and referencing his own sexual history while also blaming his own ”sloppy phrasing” and ”deceptive” video editing. He said Tuesday that other publishers had expressed interest in his book, and that he expected it to be published this year. He also said he was founding an ”independently funded media venture” and would be going on a ”live tour in the coming weeks,” including appearances on college campuses. Earlier this month, a Yiannopoulos speaking engagement at the University of California, Berkeley was canceled after students protests turned violent."
"Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos lost both a speaking gig at a prominent conservative event and a book deal in less than 24 hours. First, Monday afternoon the American Conservative Union rescinded its invitation to the   provocateur  —   noted for his political posts on the Internet  —   to speak at its annual Conservative Political Action Conference this upcoming weekend. Then, a few hours later, Simon  Schuster announced that it was canceling the publication of Yiannopoulos’ upcoming book, Dangerous. These actions come in the wake of a social media backlash against Yiannopoulos after the conservative news outlet The Reagan Battalion tweeted videos on Sunday in which Yiannopoulos appears to condone statutory rape and sexual relationships between boys and men. Yiannopoulos sought to clarify his comments Monday in a Facebook post citing the video clips as ”deceptive editing” and blaming his own ”sloppy phrasing” for any indication that he supports pedophilia. He goes on to defend himself by referencing his own relationship when he was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the U. K. is 16. There were several references to sex between boys and men in the video. ACU chairman Matt Schlapp issued the following statement via Twitter Monday afternoon. ”Due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia, the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference. ”We realize that Mr. Yiannopoulos has responded on Facebook, but it is insufficient. It is up to him to answer the tough questions and we urge him to immediately further address these disturbing comments. ”We initially extended the invitation knowing that the free speech issue on college campuses is a battlefield where we need brave, conservative  .” Schlapp also appeared on Fox News Monday evening to further explain why Yiannopoulos was dropped. Schlapp said that in the videos, it sounded as if Yiannopoulos was trying to mainstream something as offensive as pedophilia. He suggested that if what Yiannopoulos said was taken out of context, he needs to continue to speak out and clear his name on his own. ”Milo is one of God’s children as well. We don’t wish him any harm,” Schlapp told Fox. Yiannopoulos’s book Dangerous was originally scheduled to be released in March but was pushed back to June, The Associated Press reports. Some 100 Simon  Schuster authors had objected to the book deal. On Monday, Simon  Schuster announced that it’s canceling the publication of the book, issuing the following statement to its staff obtained by NPR: ”After careful consideration, Simon  Schuster and its Threshold Editions imprint have canceled publication of Dangerous by Milo Yiannopoulos.” Yiannopoulos confirmed the cancellation on his Facebook page. ”They canceled my book,” his post read."
"I’m a black woman of a certain age, a divorced mom of two teenagers who has no choice but to focus daily on the challenges of keeping a home, my family and myself on track. I’m college educated, work in media communications, am precariously middle class  —   and I am tired of what I witness of today’s feminism. I’d hoped that the Women’s March might help me update my perception of feminism, at least as it is commonly portrayed and disseminated of late. I’d followed the back and forth in the alternative and mainstream press during its hurried, urgent formation, and chalked up reports about internal squabbles over the race and class makeup of the group’s leadership to the same kind of growing pains that beset every activist group that I’ve ever followed or covered during my years in newsrooms. But now, a month after the Women’s March masterfully pulled off a massive protest in D. C. that also inspired similar ones in major American and global cities, my nascent investigation of the March 8 ”general strike” and ”Day Without Women” raised only more concerns, and a few questions, all located in what I see as a big void in today’s   expression of ”feminism.” At this moment, whether expressed by the   Gloria Steinem wing, or the   corporatist Sheryl Sandberg arm, or the rowdy,   Lena Dunham arm, it seems that ”feminism” in 2017 is more concerned with promoting superficial trappings of genuine equality than with doing the tough work required to address the hard, cold facts of gender and racial inequality. For example, across all U. S. occupations, women’s median weekly earnings are $706 per week, compared with $860 for men, and the top 30 occupations for women cover a range of essential  —   but relatively    —   jobs such as elementary school teachers, administrative assistants, customer service representatives and retail sales, according to the most recent data available (2013) from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics Women’s Bureau. And, while black and Latina women together make up nearly 18 million of the total number of America’s 67 million working women, they are disproportionately more likely to be heads of households, yet also more likely to receive less pay than white women and white men. Moreover, in addition to stubborn disparities in the workforce and incomes, women of color see huge gaps between themselves and white men and women in health outcomes and other key   indicators. The Women’s March, while apparently ”led” by a diverse collection of black, white, Latina and Asian women from across age groups, is the latest entry in a recent bumper crop of ”feminist movements,” ”collectives,” ”initiatives” that claim inclusivity and egalitarian principles, but which somehow always seem   at best, to the daily,    realities of nonfamous black women and Latinas. How, then, will   black women and Latinas respond to the idea of missing a day of work in a general strike as part of political resistance? It is a case of   ideology that, while   doesn’t take into account the fact that some women can’t miss even a single day of work without fear of being fired or docked a full day’s pay. Consider that the ”Day Without Immigrants,” on Feb. 16  —   organized by disparate workers’ and immigrant rights organizations in response to President Trump’s proposal to build a wall between the U. S. and Mexico, and to impose a strict immigration ban on seven Middle Eastern nations  —   resulted in private companies in several cities firing dozens of workers who participated in the boycott. While the symbolism of the ”Day Without Immigrants” is certainly valuable, for the immigrant and women workers who got fired for participating, and who now must find new jobs, you have to wonder if they now genuinely believe they received appropriate return on their investment. I have similar concerns about the upcoming ”Day Without Women.” As Jessa Crispin noted in a recent essay, ”the   power elite peers deeply into the savage inequalities of American life and asks, ’Where’s my half of the profits?’ ”  Akin to the debate over white privilege, the debate over feminism is similarly stuck in a binary construct, largely defined in   or      contexts. Variations exist along generational lines: See the Lena Dunham crowd contrasted against the Steinem wing. But the marketing of modern feminism, and the   place it holds in the public imagination, is largely occupied by white women. The occasional invocation of Audre Lorde, Fannie Lou Hamer or Angela Davis by some leaders within these status quo or emerging white feminist camps in 2017 is notable  —   if also to me superficial and insufficient. (Yes, I know Davis is among a group of women who are advocating for a general strike.) Today’s purveyors of hashtag feminism exemplified by pink ”pussy hats,” safety pins and   slogans on   have forgotten that women of color have to learn how to navigate their own universes but also those of white women and men to literally be able to pay the rent and afford decent schools. We have to succeed in both spheres not only to achieve success, but to fundamentally cope. To ask us, then, to participate in a   action makes me wonder if the gesture is designed more to give white ladies another opportunity for displaying unity, a kind of safari solidarity, than it is to provide women of color and   women tangible relief. However out of fashion it is to say so in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, identity politics are inherently personal. Identity politics do, in fact, drive political outcomes, which in turn drive policy, economic and social developments. I don’t now and never have viewed the conventional version of feminism as a defining part of my identity rather, based on what I have experienced and learned from the black women I’ve known my entire life, I have absorbed a degree of resilience, appreciation for common sense, and unflashy   that many women of color demonstrate. It is no accident that Black Lives Matter was   by Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors in the wake of the death of    Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Within the span of two years, BLM expanded into an effort to organize the energies and intellect of people of color and whites toward strategically resisting police brutality and other American institutions where systemic race and gender discrimination put us at risk. The energy and determination of BLM, its ability to spur dozens of protests nationwide since 2014, garnering condemnations from some police unions and elected politicians, seems to have inspired organizers of the Women’s March without, apparently, deeply informing the group about the full range of potential negative consequences for participants. Telling also is the group’s tepid nod to intersectionality, the concept coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a black legal scholar, which has informed the positions and actions of many emerging protest movements in recent years. Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality  —   the critical analysis of gender, ethnic and class aspects that drive inequality in populations and social structures  —   was earlier identified as ”interlocking” factors by Chicana playwright Cherríe Moraga. This intellectual trait, the ability to recognize the multidimensional layers of inequality, are bedrocks of effective leadership across disciplines  —   although when demonstrated by women of color they are rarely characterized as such by the dominant society. Today’s iteration of feminism might gain wider credibility by recognizing and adopting core aspects of women of color’s experiences: resilience,   and fundamental understanding that one’s   is not defined by the same markers of success that have defined white male status since the beginning of time in America. Amy Alexander, an   writer and editor, is the author of four nonfiction books, including Uncovering Race: A Black Journalist’s Story of Reporting and Reinvention. Follow her @amyalex63."
"The United Nations says people are dying of starvation in   South Sudan, and it has issued a formal famine declaration for part of the country. In all, nearly 5 million South Sudanese people do not have enough food, according to the U. N.’s food security arm, and that number is expected to rise to 5. 5 million by the agricultural lean times in midsummer. Of those, at least 100, 000 people are at immediate risk of starving to death. ”The magnitude of these food insecure populations is unprecedented across all periods,” a new report warns. UNICEF estimates more than 1 million children are malnourished across South Sudan. ”If we do not reach these children with urgent aid many of them will die,” said Jeremy Hopkins of UNICEF. As The   has reported, South Sudan fell into civil war in 2013, just two years after it gained independence: ”[The war] began as a primarily political conflict, but has since taken shape between the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer. At that time, South Sudan President Salva Kiir fell out with his former vice president, Riek Machar, over allegations of a coup attempt. Kiir, who is Dinka, and Machar, who is Nuer, gathered supporters from their respective tribes.” Aid work in South Sudan has gotten more and more dangerous and difficult. In July 2016, aid workers reported having been   by South Sudanese soldiers who attacked a hotel in the capital, Juba. In December, one of the largest international aid groups working in South Sudan was expelled from the country, as NPR’s Jason Beaubien reported. ”In the last few months, aid convoys and warehouses have been attacked, both by the government and by the rebels,” Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times told NPR’s Morning Edition. Gettleman spent the past two weeks reporting inside South Sudan and said the situation there has fallen apart since the country became independent in 2011: ”[In 2011] there was so much hope and unity and a sense that this country was embarking on a future together. And in the last few years, that’s all crumbled. Right now, we’re seeing this conflict spread across different areas of South Sudan that had been relatively peaceful. . .. ”The problem in South Sudan is that it’s a very weak government, and you have tens of thousands of young men that know little else except how to fight and how to wage war. . .. It’s a political problem. It’s the fact that much of the country is resisting the government and that the government is responding very brutally.” In December, the U. N. warned that South Sudan was on the brink of genocide, and the U. S. called for an arms embargo on the country. The embargo failed to pass the U. N. Security Council just before Christmas, in part because ambassadors from Japan, Russia, China, Angola, Malaysia, Venezuela, Egypt and Senegal all questioned its potential efficacy and abstained from voting. History is going to be a very harsh judge of their decision,” former U. S. Ambassador Samantha Power told the council following the vote. ”The atrocities in South Sudan, the displacement to other countries is increasing every day.” ”It’s basically a cry for help,” Gettleman said of the U. N. famine declaration. ”The U. N. is saying we’re desperate here. We need resources. We need cooperation. We need more involvement by other countries to really push the government to do something about this.”"
"The   Islamic State’s financial fortunes are bound to the amount of territory it controls. And the group’s dramatic loss of ground in its strongholds in Syria and Iraq is putting pressure on its finances, according to a new report from the  International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. Though exact figures are murky, the researchers assessed information, including leaked documents, about ISIS finances. They found that the group took in $870 million last year, which is approximately 50 percent less income than in 2014. That’s because its most significant income sources  —   taxes and fees, oil, and looting  —   are linked to territory, as ICSR Director Peter Neumann tells All Things Considered. ”In fact what made them so rich in 2014, the fact that they were tied to territory, territory that they could exploit  —   that also explains why their income has declined so dramatically,” he says. Neumann adds that losing control of key cities ”means fewer businesses to tax, fewer people to tax, less oil fields to be exploited.” This stands in contrast to financing patterns of most terrorist groups, as the report explains, which tend to be reliant on ”foreign donors, charities, or conducting its ’business’ of the international banking system.” Iraqi forces, backed by U. S.  coalition air support and advisers, are currently attempting to wrest Mosul from ISIS control. It’s the group’s last major population center in Iraq. The operation began in October and is now focused on the western part of the key city. The apparent decline in the group’s finances, the report states, is a product of the coalition’s broader military campaign rather than efforts specifically aimed at their finances. But as Neumann explains, a decline in territory and finances for ISIS ”will not have an immediate effect on terrorist operations abroad.” Here’s why: ”We know that in Europe for example, terrorists have been told to   their attacks, even the Paris attacks, which were fairly complex in November 2015. According to the French government, they cost less than 20, 000 euros and that money was raised through petty criminality  —   people were taking out fake loans, they were selling consumer goods, they were even dealing with drugs. ”So this is quite independent of Syria, of ISIS the central organization as it exists in its core territory in Syria and Iraq. And as ISIS says itself, one of the responses of the declining territory in its core territory will be to increase, or to call for the increase, of terrorist operations abroad. So in the short term, I don’t think it will have any effect. If anything, it may actually have a negative effect. It may mean actually more effort to carry out terrorist operations abroad.” At the same time, the extremist group does not appear to be finding new sources of revenue. Neumann says this may mean a shift in strategy: ”They are going underground. They are becoming essentially a criminal network again that is involved in smuggling, in extortion, that is involved in common criminality.” The findings corroborate recent reports from the region that suggest financial strain. ”Having built up loyalty among militants with good salaries and honeymoon and baby bonuses,” The Associated Press reports, ”the group has stopped providing even the smaller perks: free energy drinks and Snickers bars.” The wire service adds that Mosul residents in   areas are now being punished for dress code breaches with fines, rather than floggings, as they had done previously."
"Several Jewish community centers across the U. S. were targeted by bomb threats on Monday, according to the JCC Association of North America, in the fourth wave of such threats in the past two months. In total, there have been 69 threats at 54 JCCs, in 27 states and a Canadian province, the organization reports  —   including previous threats on Jan. 9, 18 and 31, as well as 11 threats by telephone on Monday. No bombs have been found, the organization says, and all the centers affected have ”returned to regular operations.” Also on Monday, a   Jewish cemetery in Missouri discovered apparent vandalism of dozens of headstones. St. Louis Public Radio reports that police in University City are investigating the vandalism by examining footage from surveillance cameras: ”Photos and video of the damage at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery show clusters of headstones that have been toppled. University City Lt. Fredrick Lemons told the St. Louis   on Monday that authorities are keeping all options open, but wouldn’t say whether the vandalism is being investigated as a hate crime. ”It wasn’t immediately known when the damage happened.” President Trump had been criticized for his lack of response to previous waves of threats against Jewish community centers. At his news conference on Thursday, a reporter asked what the government was planning to do about the threats, and Trump responded as though he had personally been accused of  . He called the question ”insulting,” without addressing the bomb threats. But on Tuesday morning, during remarks at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Trump directly addressed the waves of threatening phone calls. He said his tour of the museum ”was a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms,” and continued: ”The   threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.” The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who is Jewish, also commented on the attacks, without using the words ” ” or ”Jewish.” On Twitter, she wrote, ”America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship  religious centers. #JCC.”"
"In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as   sentiment gained ground in the United States, paranoia and persecution swept through Hollywood. The House   Activities (HUAC) began interrogating some of the country’s most talented filmmakers and actors, accusing them of being communists or communist sympathizers. Author Glenn Frankel tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the government was ”looking to see or to prove that there had been communist infiltration in Hollywood, that this was part of a mass plot engineered by Moscow to take over our cultural institutions.” Many who appeared before the HUAC were put on a blacklist that made it impossible for them to work in show business. Among the blacklisted was screenwriter Carl Foreman, whose 1952 classic western High Noon is seen as a parable about the toxic political climate of the time. Frankel revisits the film  —   and Foreman’s experiences testifying on Capitol Hill  —   in his new book, also called High Noon. Frankel says that the Hollywood blacklist era was fueled by a fear that the country was being usurped by outsiders  —   a feeling that still resonates in today’s political climate. ”The blacklist movement stems out of a backlash by people who felt they want to get their country back,” Frankel says. ”In those days it was [from] communists, and Jews and liberals. Today you might say it’s Islamic terrorists and undocumented immigrants.” On the hearings held by the House   Activities Committee  The idea of these hearings was to expose the   ”commies” and have them purged from Hollywood, to get rid of the red influence that they said  —   they never proved it, they never had data to back it up, but that they said  —   was attempting to take over on many different levels in Hollywood, the trade unions for the crafts, the folks who were in the talent guilds, like the Screenwriters Guild. The idea was to root out this communist influence, identify these folks, get them out of there and turn the movies into . .. Americanist kind of propaganda. On what was required from those who testified before HUAC  They were being required to confess to their involvement in leftist causes, whether they had been members of the Communist Party or whether they were simply involved in progressive organizations that might have at one point or another, been allied with the communists in some sort of joint movement. For example, in the   movement . .. so they had to own up to that. But that wasn’t enough. They had to praise the committee for its courageous work in rooting out the ”communist menace,” they had to describe the communist menace and then finally to make everything clear, they had to name names, they had to single out other people who had been in the party with them and present those names in public in order . .. it was a purity ritual if you will, it also was a sort of   ritual and without naming names, the conversion back to Americanism wasn’t considered genuine. On Carl Foreman’s relationship with the Communist Party  He and his wife, Estelle, when they came out to Hollywood in 1938, had fairly quickly joined the party. It was a time  —   remember we’re talking about the tail end of the Great Depression, we’re talking about a time when the progressive movement was in alliance with the small American Communist Party. And he saw the Communist Party as a lot of his fellow members did  —   as a force that was fighting fascism, that was fighting for civil rights, all kinds of things. Gradually he soured on it. . .. Nonetheless, he had friends in the party . .. so he was put in a very difficult situation, because he wasn’t in the party anymore. He didn’t want to risk his wonderful career, which was just reaching its height, but at the same time, he didn’t want to name names. He didn’t want to rat out the people who he had been close to. I found Carl so interesting, because he’s not a big hero. He’s not up there trying to be a martyr. He’s just trying to figure out a way to get through this and still be an honorable person  —   in many way just like the lawman in High Noon. On Foreman’s testimony before HUAC, He gets there and he is rather coy. . .. He says I’m not a member of the Communist party now and says that by saying: Look, last year everyone in the Screenwriters Guild in the executive board were required to fill out a loyalty oath, and I signed the loyalty oath then saying I wasn’t a member of the party. That statement is still true. But that’s as far as he would go. He wouldn’t denounce the Communist Party. When asked repeatedly if he’d been a member before he signed the oath, say in the 1940s, he cited the 5th Amendment against incriminating himself. He simply wouldn’t play the game . .. I think he knew or he came to know that this wouldn’t work, that it might keep him from going to jail, but wouldn’t keep him from the blacklist. On how the western High Noon, in which a community refuses to help the town’s lawman stand up to group of outlaws, can be viewed as a parable of the Hollywood blacklist era, [The film] is set in the fictional place called Hadleyville, which sounds a lot like Hollywood. . .. This bad guy who used to run the town is coming back and he’s got three thugs waiting for him and they are going to seek out and kill the marshal, the lawman who had resisted them and put him in jail years earlier. The lawman . .. played by Gary Cooper, thinks he can rely on the community, the same way he did originally when they imprisoned these guys to support him, but he finds . .. that the community is not backing him. There is a sort of moral corruption going on, there is a cowardice, and he ends up standing alone and that’s exactly I think the point that Carl [Foreman] was trying to make, that Hollywood when faced with these gunmen, thugs  —   whatever you want to call them  —   of the committee coming back to Hollywood, didn’t stand up. He found himself being shunned, friends crossed the street to avoid talking to him. On parallels in the present day, I think that the blacklist movement stems out of what you might consider a backlash in politics in the late 1940s and early ’50s, after World War II has ended, and the Cold War has begun, and that sense of backlash by people who felt disenfranchised, if you will, during the time of the New Deal. [They] now have the opportunity to come back into politics after the war has ended, and Franklin Roosevelt is dead. . .. It creates a political movement that takes advantage of the Cold War atmosphere and the anxiety in society and lashes back and that’s exactly what we saw in the late ’40s and I think you can see lot of similarities to what’s going on now with the ascendancy of Donald Trump and a sort of new   movement."
"The human species is about to change dramatically. That’s the argument Yuval Noah Harari makes in his new book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harari is a history professor at Hebrew University in Israel. He tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro that he expects we will soon engineer our bodies and minds in the same way we now design products. On how we will begin to engineer bodies, The three main ways of doing that, first of all, is to take our organic body and start tinkering with it with things like genetic engineering, speeding up natural selection and actually replacing it with intelligent design  —   not the intelligent design of some God above the clouds, but our intelligent design. The other way is to start combining organic with inorganic parts and creating cyborgs. For four billion years all of evolution  —   not just of humans but of all beings  —   was confined to the organic realm, but very soon we might be able to break out of the organic realm using things like   interfaces, which combine organic parts like an organic brain with inorganic parts like bionic hands or eyes or ears. And then the third and most extreme path is to create completely inorganic beings not even needing an organic brain, but using instead artificial intelligence. On one way a future medical breakthrough could be used to upgrade a healthy person, I think in general medicine in the 21st century will switch from healing the sick to upgrading the healthy. . .. If you find ways to repair the memory damaged by Alzheimer’s disease or dementia and so forth, it is very likely that the same methods could be used to upgrade the memory of completely healthy people. And if you find ways to connect brains and computers, you can rely on memory’s immense databases outside your own brain. We are starting to do it, in a way, with our smart phones and computers, but what we may see in coming decades is humans actually merging completely with their smart phones and computers. On biological inequality, It’s likely that all the upgrades, at least at first, will cost a lot and will be available only to a small elite. So for the first time in human history we might see economic inequality being translated into biological inequality. And once such a gate opens, it becomes almost impossible to close it because then the rich will really be far more capable than everybody else. On what can be done to control the growth of bioengineering and artificial intelligence, One thing that we need to do is start thinking far more seriously about global governance because the only solution to such problems will be on a global level, not on a national level. Actually, of course, in the last year or two we are seeing a retrograde movement away from globalist thinking and into more nationalist and isolationist thinking, and this is very dangerous. I mean, traditionally, people said that nationalism is dangerous because it leads to war. But now nationalism is far more dangerous because not only it leads to war, it also may prevent us from having any effective answer that can help us cope with dangers like the rise of artificial intelligence or the implications of bioengineering."
"Welcome to the bat cave. No, we’re not talking about the secret headquarters of a superhero. This is Gomantong  —   an ancient cave carved out of 20    limestone in the middle of the Borneo rain forest in Malaysia. It’s part of a vast network of tunnels and caverns. And it’s the perfect hideout for bats. Up at the top are millions of bats. Literally millions. They hang upside down all day long from the cave’s ceiling, sleeping and pooping. ”Oh dear! We’ve been dripped on,” says Mike   a doctor from Australia, as some liquid falls on his head. ”Is this bat urine?” ”No, it’s just water,” says Jimmy Lee, with the U. S.  nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance. Lee is guiding us through the cave, along a wooden boardwalk. Suddenly   grabs the handrail covered in guano. ”Don’t touch your face!” Lee warns, because inside that bat excrement could be something potentially dangerous. ”That’s why I’m wearing a mask,” says disease ecologist Kevin Olival, who’s also with EcoHealth Alliance. We’re all wearing masks. Because bats tend to carry lots of viruses. Some of them are harmful to us. Bats are vital for keeping the rain forest alive  —   they are key pollinators for more than 500 kinds of plants. But as people spread out around the globe, we’re increasingly coming into contact with bats  —   and the viruses they carry. Right here, we’re using one of their favorite hideouts as a tourist attraction. ”Visiting beautiful places like this inspires people to protect tropical ecosystems and the species that live here,” Olival says. ”At the same time, we need to recognize that there may be potential health risks when people and wildlife come together, and that’s why we’re working to understand and limit those risks.” A few years ago, Olival, Lee and their colleagues went hunting for viruses around this cave, in partnership with the Sabah Wildlife Department and the Danau Girang Field Centre. And they couldn’t believe what they found. ”We found 48 new viruses in the surrounding forest,” Olival says, ”including a virus related to SARS in bats that roost in the cave.” Olival and his colleagues don’t know yet if these new viruses can infect people. They are related to viruses that do. But   viruses aren’t something to mess around with. In 2003, SARS scared the world. The deadly virus emerged in China and spread to Singapore and Hong Kong. Then hopped on a plane to Toronto and cities in the U. S. People panicked. They thought this was the big one  —   a pandemic that could kill millions. Luckily, health authorities stopped it in time. Now this   virus could be above our heads. Dripping from the walls. Even circulating through the air. Playing the viral lottery, Historically, it’s been difficult for scientists to pinpoint where a deadly outbreak begins. For the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the culprit was possibly a hole in a tree where toddlers liked to play and may have come into contact with infected bats. SARS very likely came from a civet cat, caged at a meat market. Like these places, bat caves around the world have the two essential ingredients to brew up a new plague: intrusion of people into a previously hidden habitat and viruses circulating around. In this case, the Gomantong Cave is an ecotourist hot spot. People come from all over the world to see the cave  —   and the orangutans and pygmy elephants in the surrounding rain forest. Tourism has helped protect this stretch of rain forest and these animals. If it weren’t for tourism, there’s a good chance much of this forest would’ve been cut down and converted into palm oil plantations. One look at this area on Google Earth, and you’ll see that there is just a narrow strip of forest left. The cave also provides another source of income for families that live nearby. Up high along the cave’s walls, swiftlet birds zoom in and out of their nests. The nests are made from the birds’ saliva and are a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. So each year, men climb on rope ladders along the walls to collect the nests and sell them. Below the birds and their nests, another creature reigns supreme. ”That wall is plastered with cockroaches,” says Sammy Whitaker, a young boy from New Zealand, touring the cave with his parents. Cockroaches are everywhere in the cave. They’re all over the floor. On our shoes. There are so many that we can even hear them. But the cockroaches aren’t what worries scientists about the cave. It’s what the critters are eating: bat poop. In the middle of the cave is a giant mountain of bat guano. It looks like black snow that’s 8 to 10 feet deep. It smells awful, like moldy socks mixed with rotting cheese. And some of that guano might contain this new   virus, Olival says. But the risk any one tourist faces is low. So low, Olival says, that for a virus to infect a tourist, it would be like the virus winning the lottery. Only some bats in the cave have the virus. So only a few of the guano pellets are likely contaminated. And then, the tourist has to touch those contaminated pellets and rub his eyes or mouth to get infected. That’s another long shot. But here’s thing about lotteries: There’s always a winner. A big winner. Scientists worry it’s the same thing with   bat caves. ”It’s a numbers game,” Olival says. Because there are so many bats in caves around the world and so many people now visiting them, eventually it’s going to happen in some cave at some moment. In fact, Olival says, it already has. In 2007, a woman from Colorado took a trip to Uganda, where she visited a bat cave, kind of like the Gomantong Cave. A few days after she returned home, she got very sick. Eventually the woman was diagnosed with Marburg virus  —   a close relative of Ebola. She recovered. And scientists think they know how she got the virus: She put her hand on rocks covered in bat guano. Fortunately, the woman didn’t spread the disease to anyone else. But it could be just a matter of time before another tourist does. Tourism is one of the   economic sectors in the world. In 2015, people took more than 1. 2 billion international trips as tourists. Tourism helped Zika spread around the Americas and brought SARS to North America. A risky cave souvenir, Just as we’re leaving this cave in Borneo, we run into two more tourists  —   a   pair from the U. S. Anthony and Joe Caravello. They’ve just finished the cave tour, and Anthony notices something on his dad’s hat. ”You’ve got a piece of guano on your hat,” Anthony says. ”Actually, you’ve got a few pieces.” ”Just what I wanted,” Joe says with a chuckle. ”Maybe I could take it home and show it off.” Because soon Joe will hop on a plane and head back home to Florida. Like most people touring the cave, Joe wasn’t told about the potential risk. Because why scare away business when the risk is infinitesimally small for any one tourist? But eventually someone, somewhere, won’t be so lucky. And the impact of that could be global. What do you want to know about pandemics? Share your questions here. Our global health team will answer some of them in an upcoming story."
"As thousands protested outside the U. K. Parliament on Monday, members inside debated whether President Trump should receive the honor of meeting the queen on a state visit later this year. State visits by U. S. presidents are rare in Britain Labour Party lawmaker Paul Flynn noted that only two  —   Barack Obama and George W. Bush  —   have made them. The parliamentary debate was triggered by a petition opposing the state visit, signed by more than 1. 8 million people. Another petition supporting a state visit garnered just over 300, 000 signatures. The debate will not change the outcome. The U. K. government is committed to a visit, citing the   ”special relationship” between the two countries. It is offering a state visit in large part because it needs a free trade deal with the U. S. as Britain prepares to leave the world’s largest collective market, the European Union. Some members of Parliament noted that the queen has hosted controversial leaders in the past, including Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1973, and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who visited Buckingham Palace a decade after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. But the discussion provided insight into how Trump is viewed by one of America’s closest allies. Arguments for and against were largely drawn along party lines, but those speaking in favor of a state visit were keen to point out that the invitation was extended to the office of the U. S. president  —   which Trump happens to occupy. The debate was also a classic example of the political wit and rhetorical skills of U. K. lawmakers. A sampling: Paul Flynn, Labour Party  The day after the inauguration, 2 million people, mostly women, marched on the streets of America and 100, 000 people marched in this country. It was an expression of fear and anxiety that we had [of] someone like this in the White House wielding such enormous power. . .. but unfortunately his intellectual capacity is protozoan. Nigel Evans, Conservative Party  We might not like some of the things [Trump] says. I certainly do not like some of what he has said in the past, but I respect the fact that he is now delivering the platform on which he stood. He will go down in history as the only politician roundly condemned for delivering on his promises. Alex Salmond, Scottish National Party  It is difficult to know whether to be appalled at the morality of the invitation or just astonished by its stupidity . .. To put ourselves in a weak negotiating position and then advertise it so blatantly to President Trump, as the Prime Minister managed to do, is a recipe for total and utter disaster. An exchange between Salmond and Alistair Carmichael, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, went like this: Carmichael: ”Having offered a state visit this time, what will we offer the next time we want to get a favorable response?” Salmond: ”The crown jewels.” Carol Monaghan, a member of the Scottish National Party, said when Trump was elected, she tweeted: ”Xenophobic, racist, sectarian and sexist rhetoric has just been legitimized. We should all be very afraid.” Monaghan, who represents Glasgow, Scotland, said some Trump supporters responded with critical tweets of their own. She read a few aloud in Westminster Hall, noting her personal favorite came from a ”geographically challenged” man in Dallas: ”Ignorant, thick, foolish is the order of the day with Carol Monaghan. Australia should be very afraid.”"
"Oh, no! Trouble on the tracks! Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train has collided with the circus caravan from Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, and out of that wreck has come Pam Jenoff’s The Orphan’s Tale. The novel is a magical carnival saga, a bit grittier than either of its antecedents, and with more at stake. Yes, at the center of the action there is indeed a train, the rolling caravansary of the venerable Circus Neuhoff, complete with elephants and glittering acrobat costumes. And, yes, there is an orphan, in this case a Jewish baby, a parentless waif who must be kept safe at all costs. Also hiding out on board is Astrid, a Jewish aerialist who becomes one of the book’s narrators. The story starts in the present day as Astrid, now an elderly woman, travels from America to the Paris opening of a contemporary museum exhibit that highlights ”Two Hundred Years of Circus Magic.” Behind the scenes at the museum she stumbles upon a parked, vintage railcar, featuring oddly constricted berths and a ”belly box,” or secret compartment. She’s been there before. This opening teaser draws us back to wartime Germany, where a Dutch teenager is on the run, incognito. This is our second narrator, Noa, banished by her parents after an    birth. She adopts away the poor nameless newborn, grieving her loss and being tormented by vivid visions of the child. The shadow of World War II falls heavily over the action, and the murderous rampage of the Holocaust threatens all of the main characters. When a train rumbles through the station where she has found work, the   Noa discovers new purpose in a way both horrifying and miraculous. One of the cars is packed full with Jewish infants, wholly lacking any adult presence, all starvelings bound for a concentration camp  —   a chilling, heartbreaking image, true to the time. Noa manages to break into the    car and rescue a     child. ”I am unfamiliar with infants [Jenoff writes in Noa’s voice] and I hold him at arm’s length now, like a dangerous animal. But he moves closer, nuzzling against my neck.” Experiencing bouts of brooding that alternate with spasms of altruistic panic, Noa grabs the baby and makes a run for it. After this breathless opening, Noa’s voice alternates with the older Astrid. The older woman had been married and living in Berlin, but her husband’s loyalty to the Reich caused an abrupt break. Having lost her   parents to the war, and with Nazis occupying her ancestral home, Astrid signs on with a circus willing to disguise her Jewish identity. Much of The Orphan’s Tale focuses on the testy relationship between naïve Noa, fiercely protective of the little boy she is mothering, and acerbic Astrid, whose tumultuous past leads her to trust no one. It is filled with engaging scenes of Noa learning to ”fly” on a trapeze under Circus Neuhoff’s aging, itinerant big top. Noa is a novice, but she learns to overcome her fears and rely upon the stellar veteran Astrid. Telling details reveal circus life in the air and on the rails  —   every person, for example, is assigned two buckets to use for water, names emblazoned to lessen confusion. Such particulars are based in fact Jenoff did ample research about real Jewish circus dynasties in the archives of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and archive, as well as learning about the actual ”Unknown Children” of that terrible boxcar. Hounded by the Nazi menace, the Circus Neuhoff travels to a refuge in occupied France. Both Noa and Astrid find men whom they love and whom they must struggle to save. Through the darkness of war, the circus lights twinkle on, the circus family lives and loves and laughs, all while beautiful athletes fly high above the crowd. It may seem a bit too neat and Hallmarkian to some, but Jenoff has written a tribute to the human spirit that soars in the midst of epic despair. Jean Zimmerman’s latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin."
"Spoon’s latest video is a surreal,    tale shrouded in mystery. Nearly everyone in this     minute,   jam wears a creepy mask or some sort of ogre costume while riding bikes, dancing, chasing and intermittently accosting one another. It’s anyone’s guess what it’s all about, but it’s a curious and compelling watch. ”Can I Sit Next To You” itself has been a bit of a mystery until now. For the past several months, bits of the song have been used as background music in various clubs and venues. The house band for the Late Show With Stephen Colbert has performed it going into commercial breaks, and American Airlines has been using it as unidentified boarding music. The video was directed by Marcel Dzama. ”Can I Sit Next To You” is from Spoon’s upcoming   Hot Thoughts, due out March 17 on Matador."
"There are many challenges to farming for a living: It’s often grueling work that relies on unpredictable factors such as weather and global market prices. But one aspect that’s often ignored is the cost of health care. A University of Vermont researcher found that nationally, most farmers cited health care costs as a top concern. Shoshanah Inwood is a rural sociologist at UVM. She has been studying the aging and shrinking farm population, and what components are needed to build a prosperous farm economy. Inwood says she hadn’t thought about health care in particular as a factor until she conducted an unrelated survey in 2007 of farmers working the land in areas facing population growth and development pressures. The survey asked, ”What are the issues affecting the future of your farm?” ”And we assumed when we got that survey back, we would get things like the cost of land, the cost of inputs, neighbors. The number one issue facing farmers was the cost of health insurance. They identified that as the biggest threat to their farm,” she said. Inwood says this held true for small and large farms:   of commercial farmers cited the cost of health insurance as the biggest threat. Typically, strategies to build a robust farming industry have focused on access to land, capital and changes to market infrastructure. ”But then you ask people, ’Well, how many people know a farmer that has an injury? Or a farm family that has a chronic health issue? Or a mental health issue?’ And everybody’s hand goes up,” Inwood said. ”And that’s the one issue we really never talk about, are some of those social needs that farm families have.” How health care influences farm decisions, While it may be underrepresented in farm planning discussions, on the farm, families are talking about it. Take Taylor Hutchinson and Jake Mendell. The two fell in love with farming  —   and each other  —   on a small educational farm in California. When the two decided to take the plunge and start their own farm, they decided to head back east to Jake’s hometown area. Over the past three years they’ve transformed three acres of his family’s land in Starksboro, Vt. into a small farm business, selling vegetables, eggs and some meat through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Access to free land puts them well ahead of many starting farmers, financially. But one thing they didn’t initially factor into their business budget was health insurance. ”We both came of age at the beginning of the Affordable Care Act. It’s not something that we’ve really had to think about, paying in full for a health insurance plan,” says Mendell. By ”coming of age,” he means he aged off his parents’ health insurance at 26. Mendell was able to stay on his parents’ plan beyond college under a provision in the Affordable Care Act. Then he switched onto a heavily subsidized plan through Vermont Health Connect. His partner, Taylor Hutchinson, is covered by Medicaid because her income falls just below the threshold. ”It’s a very fine line for me personally, that I’m skating under right now,” Hutchinson said. An unpredictable risk, With government assistance, right now health insurance is not among their highest expenses. But that all could change. If their income grows, Hutchinson would no longer eligible for Medicaid. Or if health care policy changes, their subsidies could go away. Both scenarios would have very real impacts on their farm business. ”It’s concerning now that, I mean, I just don’t know how we could manage $800 a month, when right now it ends up being combined $60 a month,” says Mendell. The whole situation gets even trickier if or when the couple were to get married. That act alone would bring their shared income above the Medicaid line, meaning they’d have to pay a significantly higher price for health insurance. And then  —   someday  —   there are kids to consider. ”Something that I think about is when we have kids, in order to be able to afford the medical bills for that, as well as daycare, it is very likely that I will be stepping back from the farm,” says Hutchinson. ”It’s something that I’m thinking about now. Would I get a   job? Or would I try for a   job that I could get benefits that would cover us all?” That calculation is not unique. Nationally, slightly more than half of farmers also work off the farm. Historically it has been women who work two jobs, but that dynamic is changing as more women are getting into   farming. Inwood says the need to work another job just to support the farm is a real roadblock to growing a ”prosperous, bright farm population.” And it comes at a time when the overall farm population in the U. S. is aging and shrinking. ”We need folks who have strong backs, who are able to do work,” Inwood says. ”And one of the things that happens is when you’re young, that tends to intersect with the age when you’re really ready to have children, that’s when health insurances concerns really start to enter into people’s minds.” As recently as 2012, the number of new farmers was down about 20 percent from five years earlier. There are many factors  —   financial and otherwise  —   that make becoming a farmer incredibly challenging. Teaching advisors to talk about health insurance, But Inwood says one key learning from her research is that advisers who work with farmers need to be better prepared to help them navigate the   world of health insurance. ”A lot of farm viability planning and farm business planning, they generally will tend to mention health insurance, but there’s no planning for it,” says Inwood. ”None of the workbooks currently really talk about how are you going to do this . .. How does having health insurance fit into your overall farm plan?” Back on the farm in Starksboro, Hutchinson says if it weren’t for the Affordable Care Act, she likely wouldn’t have health insurance. ”I think that the subsidies have been crucial for us to have been able to start our farm, and to be able to keep our personal costs ridiculously low for the first few years,” she says. Hutchinson says she knows many who are in the same situation. She is on the leadership team of the National Young Farmers Coalition she says she knows many farmers either on Medicaid or highly subsidized insurance. And she says that in a recent meeting, many farmers mentioned that they’re considering getting an   job or even liquidating the business because they’re worried that the health insurance situation could change. This story comes from the New England News Collaborative: Eight public media companies coming together to tell the story of a changing region, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."
"When Vitaly Churkin was Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman in the early 1990s, he would in effect brief the Moscow press corps twice. First he’d speak in Russian, formally, behind a lectern. Then he’d step to the side, his hands folded before him, and wait for the foreign broadcast journalists to approach with their cameras and microphones. The questions and answers were in English, and the audience, it was understood, was the United States. I was then Moscow producer for CBS News and attended a lot of those briefings. The end of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union itself, was underway. Many members of the Western press corps were, like Churkin, in their 30s, and while we weren’t exactly friends, I think there was a shared understanding that we were all living through the great adventure of our lives. Churkin’s home phone number was in my Rolodex (imagine that today). I only used it once. This was just before the outbreak of the Gulf War. A CBS News team  —   correspondent Bob Simon, producer Peter Bluff, cameraman Roberto Alvarez and sound man Juan Caldera  —   had been captured by an Iraqi army patrol and disappeared into the country’s prisons. We learned that Moscow was sending a special envoy, Yevgeny Primakov, to Baghdad in an attempt to convince Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait and forestall the war. I called Churkin at home the night before Primakov’s departure. He was surprised but gracious. Could Primakov carry this message to Saddam, I asked: Release  —   or at least ensure the safety of  —   our journalists. Churkin never said another word to me about it, but within a few days, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was himself publicly expressing his concern for our colleagues. At the conclusion of the war, all four were freed by Baghdad  —   abused and tortured, but alive. Churkin was a professional diplomat above all else. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he continued in that role on behalf of the Russian Federation. When he died on Monday, Churkin had been Moscow’s U. N. ambassador for more than 10 years. No matter how unpopular his country’s policies might be on the world stage, he fiercely defended them. I heard Churkin lose his cool only once  —   the day after the Soviet Union came to an end. I needed to get a bunch of CBS people into the country quickly and called  —   this time, his office  —   to ask whether he could help with the visas. Churkin, spokesman for the late, departed Soviet Foreign Ministry, snapped, ”Call the Russian Federation,” and slammed down the phone. I didn’t take it personally. Mark Katkov is a news editor at NPR."
"Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin, a veteran diplomat who represented the former Soviet Union and Russian Federation for more than 40 years, died Monday while at work in the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations. He would have been 65 today. The Russian U. N. mission said Churkin’s death was a ”shock,” but offered no cause. The New York Police Department said there were no indications of foul play. At the time of his death, Churkin was Russia’s ambassador to the U. N. He had previously served as Foreign Ministry spokesman and as ambassador to Canada and Belgium, among other posts. Churkin was known as an unflappable and fierce defender of Russian policies at the U. N. Security Council, often in opposition to the U. S. on issues such as Ukraine and Syria. Despite Russia’s at times tense relationship with the international community, Churkin was widely admired by diplomatic colleagues. Former U. S. ambassador to the U. N. Samantha Power, who frequently clashed with Churkin, most recently over the Russian bombing of Aleppo, nonetheless called him ”a diplomatic maestro and deeply caring man.” Former   Ban   said of Churkin, ”He was an outstanding diplomat and an intellectual star. His diplomatic skills, quick wit and ready sense of humor will long be remembered.” Churkin first came to the attention of the American public following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986. In an extraordinary moment, Churkin, then a junior diplomat, testified before the U. S. Congress and was castigated for the Soviet Union’s handling of the accident. It was the early days of liberalization under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Churkin was something new: a handsome,   diplomat with flawless English and none of the bellicosity for which Soviet officials were typically known. Churkin went on to be Foreign Ministry spokesman, conducting the regular ministry briefing first in Russian, then answering questions in English, the better to reach western and in particular American audiences. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new Russian Federation absorbed the Soviet diplomatic corps and Churkin’s career continued uninterrupted. Among other missions, Churkin played an important though largely unheralded role in bringing the war in Yugoslavia to a close. Churkin is survived by his wife Irina, daughter Anastasia and son Maksim."
"Most American school children learn that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, leading us to join World War II. This week marks the 75th anniversary of   being subsequently rounded up and interned as suspected enemies of the state. But there’s another tragic and untold story of American citizens who were also interned during the war. I’m a member of the Ahtna tribe of Alaska and I’ve spent the better part of 30 years uncovering and putting together fragments of a story that deserves to be told. In June 1942, Japan invaded and occupied Kiska and Attu, the westernmost islands of Alaska’s Aleutian Chain, an archipelago of 69 islands stretching some 1, 200 miles across the North Pacific Ocean toward Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. From a strategic perspective, Japan wanted to close what they perceived as America’s back door to the Far East. For thousands of years, the islands have been inhabited by a resourceful indigenous people called Aleuts. During the   Period (1733 to 1867) when Alaska was a colonial possession of Russia, Russian   decimated Aleut populations through warfare, disease, and slavery. Shortly after Japan’s invasion, American naval personnel arrived with orders to round up and evacuate Aleuts from the Aleutian Chain and the Pribilof Islands to internment camps almost 2, 000 miles away near Juneau. Stewardship of the internment camps would fall under the jurisdiction of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS). Furthermore, orders included the burning of the villages to the ground, including their beloved churches, as part of a ”scorched earth” policy. The Army’s stated purpose was to protect the Aleuts, who were American citizens, from the dangers of war. But one officer told astonished Aleuts that it was, as he put it, ”Because ya’ll look like Japs and we wouldn’t want to shoot you.” That exchange is part of a documentary video called Aleut Evacuation. With only the clothes on their backs, 881 Aleuts from nine different island villages were forced aboard the USS Delarof and transported to dilapidated abandoned salmon canneries where the roofs and walls had holes, the windows and doors were broken, and the floors were so rotten that people fell through them. There was no electricity, sanitation, or running water. The Aleuts were interned against their will for the duration of the war, long after the Japanese were routed out of Alaska, and were largely neglected by the very government that said it was protecting them. Ironically, less than 30 miles away, over 700 Nazis who had been captured in North Africa were imprisoned at a POW camp at Excursion Bay. The Nazis, sworn enemies of America and our allies, were treated far better than the Aleuts, so much so that military historian Stan Cohen later wrote in The Forgotten War, ”All in all, the German imprisonment in Alaska was quite pleasant.” In May 1943, the United States government even enslaved many of the men from the Pribilof Islands. The government threatened that none of the Aleuts would ever be allowed to go home (even after the war) if the men didn’t ”volunteer” to harvest fur seals for the war effort. By international treaty, only Native Pribilovians could harvest fur seals. They were told the furs would be made into liners for aviation jackets and helmets for American pilots and bomber crews, which was a lie. The men spent the summer sealing season on the tiny Pribilof Islands clubbing over 125, 000 seals. The government sold the furs to the Fouke Fur Company of St. Louis, Mo. for $1. 5 million in profits, all of which went straight into the government’s coffers. The Japanese invasion of Alaska never made it very far beyond the westernmost Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu. Over a period of 15 months, American soldiers eventually recaptured the mountainous islands in a series of battles which came to be known as the Forgotten War. In all, half a million soldiers  —   American, Canadian, Russian, and Japanese  —   were involved in the conflict, one of the least known yet   battles in WWII, as explained by Brian Garfield in The Thousand Mile War. Some of the most horrific accounts of    combat in World War II happened at the end, when over 500 Japanese soldiers, unwilling to surrender or to be taken alive after a desperate banzai (suicide) attack, blew themselves up en masse with hand grenades at the foot of Engineer Hill. The war in the Aleutians gave America its first   victory over Japan and the first experience at amphibious assaults in the war. Some 118 Aleuts perished from lack of warmth, food, and medical care. Smaller Aleut villages lost as much as a quarter of their   population. The Aleut deaths were avoidable. Medical supplies that had been allocated for the internment camps were instead taken by the military. The 700 German prisoners all returned home after the war without a single one dying during their imprisonment. Although the Japanese invasion was defeated by the fall of 1943, the Aleuts remained interned until the end of the war in  . In 1988, President Reagan signed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Act, which authorized the establishment of a commission to review the facts and circumstances surrounding the relocation and internment of tens of thousands of American civilians during World War II.   years after the Aleuts returned to their burned and ransacked villages, the U. S. government finally recognized that their constitutional rights had been violated. In 1988, Congress passed the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands Restitution Act, which paid $12, 000 to Aleut surviving victims of the internment camps. By then, about half of the survivors had long since passed away. John Smelcer is the   author of more than fifty books. His forthcoming historical novel, Kiska, is about the Aleut Internment experience."
"If I close my eyes, I can go back in a heartbeat to the   sofa in my grandmother’s living room, where I was curled up with my face pressed close to the slightly rough fabric. It was a Saturday morning, but not a typical one. I was 14 years old, deep in the throes of my first heartbreak, and I imagined that nobody in the world had ever felt the monumental pain I was feeling that day. My boyfriend  —   who was two whole years older than I was  —   had told me that he was going to high school, and I was now far too immature for his tastes. It was not only heartbreaking, but humiliating. I imagined I would never be able to love anyone again, and that life couldn’t possibly go on. A gentle hand on my back roused me, and I turned around to look into my grandmother’s face. ”Do you want vadai?” she asked. I hadn’t eaten in a couple of days, and had resisted every attempt to be fed, but vadais were different. In all of their delicious   goodness, they had been a Saturday breakfast treat for as long as I could remember. I sat up, realizing I was actually ravenous, and more than mildly interested in the idea of a          piping hot vadai  —   or three. ”I’ll teach you how to make it,” my grandmother said in a tone I knew not to argue with. Vadais, or vadas, depending on whom you talk to (they are both correct) have been an Indian staple for at least 2, 000 years. Eminent food historian, the late Dr. K. T. Achaya, writes about vadais in his book The Story of Our Food, where he states that the earliest mention of vadais in Tamil literature occurs around 100 BC there are accounts of moong beans (mung bean, or mung dhal) soaked overnight or for five to six hours. The soaked dhal is drained and ground to a paste with very little water, and mixed with flavors such as ginger, green chillis and asafoetida. Chopped onions, cumin, coriander and salt is added to the smooth, fluffy batter, which is then quickly shaped and  . Vadais are meant to be eaten piping hot, and are typically served with a variety of chutneys and sambhar (a   gravy). If vadais made from mung dhal don’t sound particularly appealing, there is a wide assortment to choose from. My favorite vadai is medhu vadai, which literally translates to soft vadai, and it is made from urad dhal, or black lentils. There is also a masala vadai (bengal gram dhal) keerai vadai or spinach vadai (spinach and urad dhal) bread vadai (  bread and rice flour) and even vadais made with banana blossoms. The list is endless, but these are some of the more popular options. On that day  —   the day I learned to make vadais  —   my grandmother was making medhu vadais. I meandered into the kitchen as she told me that the black lentils had already been soaking for a couple of hours and were ready to go. I was unsurprised at that she was always up early to see to the family breakfast, even on weekends. She showed me how to grind the dhal with a little water. The mixture couldn’t be too thick that would make for a dense vadai when it was fried. But it couldn’t be too thin, either, because the dough would absorb far too much oil. It had to be just right, and I worried I wouldn’t know how to tell the difference. ”You’ll learn,” my grandmother said   . She glanced at me, and nodded at the dough in front of her. Encouraged, I poked the downy white mixture. ”It has to bounce,” she told me as I prodded, fascinated. ”See?” I saw. I hadn’t made bread yet, but when I did learn to make it, I would see the similarities between the two doughs. For now, though, I was enjoying learning to make medhu vadais with my grandmother. We added cumin, slightly crushed black peppercorns, chopped green chillis and curry leaves to the batter, and then salt to taste. ”Perfect,” said my grandmother. I felt a vague sense of pride. I watched as she wet her hands and quickly worked the dough into   shapes before sliding them into the hot oil. Standing beside her, I shaped a few too. I had forgotten my heartache in that hour with my grandmother, and as the aroma of fried vadais permeated the kitchen and escaped into the house, she smiled at me. ”You’ll make these for your children someday,” she said. And in that moment I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would love again someday, that life would go on, and that vadais would forever be sealed in my brain as a symbol of everything love could be. This family recipe comes to us from the author. Ingredients, 2 cups urad dal, 4 tsp raw rice, 5 green chillis, finely chopped,   stem ginger, finely chopped, Handful of curry leaves, finely chopped, Salt to taste, Vegetable oil for deep frying, Directions, Soak the dal and rice for   hours. Grind, using very little water until the batter is smooth and fluffy. Add the salt and chopped chillis, ginger and curry leaves. Heat the oil in a pan until it is very hot, but not smoking. Using wet hands, make a ball of batter and hold it in the palm of your left hand. Use your right index finger to make a hole in the center of the dough and then drop the ball into the oil. When it turns golden brown underneath, flip it gently on to the other side until golden. Make all the vadais this way, remembering to wet your hands each time before shaping the dough. Serve hot with coconut chutney, sambhar, or a chutney or sauce of your choice."
"Saying that he’s been diagnosed with the same condition that struck his mother and grandfather, singer David Cassidy has revealed that he is fighting dementia. The star whose career was launched by 1970s TV show The Partridge Family had recently told fans that he was on a farewell tour. ”I was in denial, but a part of me always knew this was coming,” Cassidy, 66, tells People magazine, in an interview about his condition. The revelation comes after two recent developments: Earlier this month, Cassidy stated that he would no longer tour after 2017 and over the weekend, the website TMZ posted a video from his Saturday night show, in which the star seems to struggle to recall lyrics and maintain his balance. Last week, as Cassidy discussed the last shows he had planned to play in California, he said: ”I just can’t tour anymore. I know it’s time.” On his Facebook page, Cassidy had recently said he wanted to perform until the end of the year, urging fans to come see the final concerts in what he said were 49 years of touring. ”I’m not going to vanish or disappear forever,” Cassidy wrote. But it now seems that his health concerns have forced Cassidy to hasten his retirement date. His mother, Evelyn Ward, died at age 89 after struggling with dementia for years, Cassidy has said. The former teen idol has been an active supporter of the Alzheimer’s Association, auctioning off some of his old costumes to benefit the group after his mother’s death late in 2012. In recent years, Cassidy has also been forced to auction a house and other items as part of bankruptcy and divorce proceedings. The performer’s official page also recently highlighted a 1972 interview he did with the BBC, in which Cassidy talked about his life as Keith Partridge  —   and how he tried, without success, to elude masses of fans. At the end of that chat, he was asked if he worried about how ephemeral his fame and success might be. ”I don’t worry about it at all,” Cassidy said. ”I think by the time that it does kind of die out, I’ll be wanting it to.”"
"On my way back from the woods in New Hampshire, I stopped at a strip mall marking my crossing into more densely inhabited landscapes. The contrast wasn’t pretty. The sky above the strip mall hung low and grey, which didn’t help the look of things. With the snow melting, the parking lot was filled with dirty cars and wet trash. People spilled into and out of the stores: a Subway a Starbucks a supermarket whose name I forget. As I stood there, I was struck by how we humans are a strange lot, trading prairie, forest, fields and wetlands for these terrains of tar and concrete. It left me with a question. Why exactly is the contrast between these worlds so sad? What, specifically, is it that makes the parking lot seem so lost compared with the forest of trees or the field it used to be? To answer these questions (and more) I’ve been   Gary Snyder’s The Practice of the Wild. If you don’t know Snyder, it is my great pleasure today to introduce him to you. I am also relatively new to his writing. He is one of America’s greatest poets. He’s also lived a great American story. In the 1950s, Snyder hung out with Beats serving as inspiration for the main character in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. Later in that decade, Snyder made his way to Japan to begin years of Zen training. Still later, he became a founding voice for what’s called ”Deep Ecology.” A scholar with a poet’s ear and a poet with a scholar’s curiosity, his whole life has been lived as a search for our roots embodied in the land. There are many tasks The Practice of the Wild takes on. At its heart, it is a book about what happened to us  —   meaning how we pulled ourselves so far from a lived connection to lived landscapes. In that way, it’s a kind of history of human beings and their relationship to land and life. But before he begins that history, Snyder also lays out distinctions between nature, wild and wilderness. In that distinction, I found an answer to my question. As Snyder tells us: ”Science and some sorts of mysticism rightly propose that everything is natural. By these lights there is nothing unnatural about New York City, or toxic wastes, or atomic energy. ..” I agree, the parking lot is just as natural as the stand of trees. It’s made of the same basic elements  —   and it’s a product of the same cosmic evolutionary forces. But if that’s true, then what makes the strip mall seem so sad compared to the forest? For Snyder, the answer is about inclusiveness: ”So we can say that New York City and Tokyo are ’natural’ but not ’wild.’ They do not deviate from the laws of nature, but they are habitat so exclusive in the matter of who and what they give shelter to, and so intolerant of other creatures, as to be truly odd. Wilderness is a place where the wild potential is fully expressed, a diversity of living and nonliving beings flourishing according to their own sorts of order.” Thus, for Snyder, the wild is not about pristine landscapes. Instead, it’s about landscapes that are rich and diverse enough to be interesting for everybody, human and   alike. He writes: ”When an ecosystem is fully functioning, all the members are present at the assembly. To speak of wilderness is to speak of wholeness.” This, I think, explains the hollow sense of otherness you can get in a big parking lot. There is, of course, a lot of space there. That space is as natural as any other space. But the parking lot is not whole. There is a lot missing. And what’s not there is wildness, which is the complexity that comes when there are a lot of players building their way up to that flourishing Snyder speaks of. This perspective helps me understand a lot of what I was feeling standing there in front of that  . I’m not a  . I think we, and our civilization, are pretty amazing. And I love cities, too. The crashing collisions of peoples and cultures allow for a different, but equally important, kind of flourishing there. So the sadness I felt in the parking lot didn’t rise up just because I wasn’t 10 miles deep into the backcountry. It wasn’t a question just of wilderness (which I also deeply love). Instead, the sadness I felt at the   was the loss of wildness, which happens in so many of landscapes we build. But that wildness need not be pushed so far away. In fact, one of Snyder’s most essential insights is that it’s not just ”out there” in distant,    corners of the map. Instead, wildness remains right in front of us: ”Shifting scales, [the wild] is everywhere: ineradicable populations of fungi, moss, mold, yeasts, and such that surround and inhabit us. Deer mice on the back porch, deer bounding across the freeway, pigeons in the park, spiders in the corners. There were crickets in the paint locker of the Sappa Creek oil tanker, as I worked as a wiper in the engine room out in   cleaning brushes. Exquisite complex beings in their energy webs inhabiting the fertile corners of the urban world in accord with the rules of wild systems, the visible hardy stalks and stems of vacant lots and railroads, the persistent raccoon squads, bacteria in the loam and in our yogurt.” Just as important for Snyder, the wild is in us too. He writes: ”Our bodies are wild. The involuntary quick turn of the head at a shout, the vertigo at looking off a precipice, the     in a moment of danger, the catch of the breath, the quiet moments relaxing, staring, reflecting  —   all universal responses of this mammal body.” I find this last passage to be an antidote to the weirdness I felt in that gray parking lot. There are a lot of ways we’ve become alien to the planet that birthed us  —   but it doesn’t have to stay that way. I like to think that there can be wildness in what we build because we, too, are an expression of the planet. That’s what Gary Snyder is reminding us, and maybe it can be a kind of salvation. ”Wilderness may temporarily dwindle,” he says later in the book, ”but wildness won’t go away.” Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"Simbi Ajikawo, who records and performs as Little Simz, first gained widespread recognition with the release of her debut album, A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons back in 2015. Receiving praise from   artists like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, the British lyricist has been compared to the likes of Lauryn Hill for her   wordplay that shies away from the often braggadocios nature of mainstream rap music. While on her first album Simz opted to tell stories that spoke of her childhood experiences (and the insight gained from them) on her most recent release, Stillness in Wonderland, she expands this notion of   by creating a world that pays ode to the childhood classic Alice in Wonderland. Much like Alice, Simz’s newfound success has taken her on a journey that’s leading her to discover a whole new world. Only   old, Simz is still early in her career. And while she’s constantly challenged by the abnormal experiences that come from success, her performance for our Tiny Desk was poised and confident. Accompanied by three members from the   RB group known as Phony Ppl, Simz performed a set of three songs off of Stillness in Wonderland, including the standout ”Poison Ivy,” which chronicles the outfall of a failing relationship. As Simz continues to grow as a musician it will be exciting to see what new worlds she brings to her audience next. Stillness In Wonderland is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Little Simz (vocals, guitar) Matt Byas (drums) Omar Grant (bass) Aja Grant (keys) Credits, Producers: Cameron Robert, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith Assistant Editor: Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Ever since Donald Trump entered the presidential race, his comments on illegal immigration have been pored over in the press  —   from vows to deport millions of people to promises that any enforcement plan would have ”a lot of heart.” Observers asked, again and again, how rhetoric would translate into actual policy. Now activists and experts have the policies themselves to examine. On Jan. 25, Trump signed a pair of executive orders on immigration enforcement (not to be confused with his ”travel ban” affecting refugees and seven   countries). The documents signaled that he would pursue a path of greatly expanded deportations  —   and an actual wall on the U. S.  border. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security released two memos outlining how those orders would be enforced. The memos, signed by Secretary John Kelly, have been described by immigration activists as a blueprint for ”mass deportation,” though the administration has denied that. It will take time for some of the new policies to be made reality  —   and in certain cases, DHS must wait for funding from Congress. But in the meantime, here are a few key takeaways: The memos, like the orders, drastically expand the category of people classified as ”priorities for removal” Under the Obama administration, immigrants in the U. S. illegally who had been convicted of serious crimes were prioritized for deportations. Under the new rules, federal agents could seek to deport people in the country illegally who were convicted of any crime, no matter how minor. In fact, agents could prioritize for deportation people who have just been charged with a crime  —   or people who have committed an act for which they could be charged. Anyone who has ”abused any program related to receipt of public benefits,” and anyone an immigration officer deems a risk to public safety or national security, also could be marked as a priority. The shift in policy could affect up to 11 million people, Immigration advocates have highlighted, in particular, the fact that people who have ”committed an act for which they could face charges” could be made a priority. ”Because immigrants can technically face charges for entering the country illegally,” NPR’s Adrian Florido explained in January, the policy ”potentially makes any immigrant in the U. S. illegally a deportation priority just by virtue of being present.” According to the Pew Research Center, there were 11. 1 million people living in the U. S. illegally in 2014   of them have been in the country for a decade or more, Pew says. That year, more than half of immigrants in the country illegally were from Mexico, 15 percent were from Central America and 13 percent from Asia. NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang has more on the demographics of the group. The memo preserves Obama’s protections for DREAMers, at least for now, During Barack Obama’s presidency, an executive action called DACA  —   Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals  —   offered temporary work permits and protection from deportation to people who arrived in the U. S. as children. It covered hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes referred to as DREAMers. There was broad concern among people with DACA protections that Trump would end the program, and January’s executive orders didn’t offer any clear signal about the program’s future. But the DHS memos explicitly state that DACA remains in effect. They also state that DAPA, a program for the parents of U. S. citizens that has never been implemented, will be ”addressed in future guidance.” DHS plans to hire thousands more agents . .. The memos, like the original orders, call for 10, 000 more officers and agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and 5, 000 more at U. S. Customs and Border Protection. That will require funding from Congress. And CBP, which has struggled with preventing corruption, already has trouble filling open positions, according to a recent report from The Associated Press that focused on the CBP’s use of polygraph tests in hiring. . .. and ICE and CBP will resume partnerships with local law enforcement officers, The federal 287( g) program authorizing state and local officers to identify and arrest people who are in the U. S. illegally has been controversial the Obama administration pared down the program’s use after allegations that it led to racial profiling. You might remember Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s use of the program in Arizona, which was suspended in 2011 after the Justice Department found that county officers unlawfully stopped and detained Latinos. In the memos, DHS officials call the 287( g) program a ”force multiplier” and say the assistance of state and local police is critical to immigration enforcement. Kelly calls for ICE and the CBP to immediately partner with all willing and qualified jurisdictions. Unaccompanied children could be deported, and their parents could be prosecuted, When draft versions of the memos leaked last week, one policy in particular made headlines: a directive to deport some unaccompanied children, and deport or prosecute anyone who helped bring a child into the U. S. illegally. There’s no exemption in the new policies for parents who are attempting to bring their own children to live with them in the U. S. In fact, ”parents and family members” are explicitly identified as subject to prosecution if they have paid to have their children brought across the border. ”Tragically, many of these children fall victim to robbery, extortion, kidnapping, sexual assault, and other crimes of violence by the smugglers and other criminal elements along the dangerous journey through Mexico to the United States,” one memo reads. ”Regardless of the desires for family reunification, or conditions in other countries, the smuggling or trafficking of alien children is intolerable.” Stephen Legomsky, who served as chief counsel at U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Obama administration, says prosecution in such instances would be a new step for the U. S. government. ”I can’t think of any precedent, ever, for any administration to criminally prosecute parents for paying to have their children smuggled,” he says. There is some historical precedent for the other option the memo raises, of deporting parents who have their children smuggled in. Decades ago, immigration officials used to use an unaccompanied child’s arrival to facilitate deportation of the parent  —   but the practice generated ”such ill will” that the government stopped doing it, Legomsky says. More people already in the U. S. could be deported without review by a judge . .. The memos say the department wants to expand what’s known as ”expedited removal,” which means that migrants don’t go before an immigration judge  —   they’re just deported, with no hearing or review. Under Obama, this expedited process was used only for recently arrived immigrants within 100 miles of the border. DHS is looking to expand expedited removal all over country, for any immigrant who can’t show he has been in the U. S. for at least two years. . .. and arriving asylum seekers might be detained in Mexico even if they aren’t from Mexico, Kelly calls for people caught crossing the border who would like to appeal for asylum to be returned ”to the foreign contiguous territory from which they arrived, pending the outcome of removal proceedings.” ProPublica has reported on the implications of this policy. Journalists Ginger Thompson and Marcelo Rochabrun write that based on current trends, the plan could potentially affect ”hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Brazilians, Ecuadorans, even Haitians.” They’d communicate with U. S. immigration officials ”via video conference calls . .. from facilities that Mexico would presumably be forced to build,” ProPublica reports. Kelly’s memos say the policy would free up ”detention and adjudication resources” in the U. S. for the department to use in other ”priority” cases. The administration plans to move forward with a border wall, According to the memos, CBP ”shall immediately begin planning, design, construction and maintenance of a wall . .. along the land border with Mexico.” NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben has written about the logistical hurdles and high cost of such a wall, which one poll suggests 37 percent of Americans support. Our reporters have also written extensively about the environmental impact of a wall, the economic consequences of a tariff to pay for the cost, and the difficulties of building existing fences along some of the border. If you’re curious about what the barriers along the border look like now, check out ”Fence Facts,” from NPR’s Borderland project. Open questions: Where, how and with what funds will detention centers and courts be expanded? The note about ”detention and adjudication resources” raises a big question: How will the Department of Homeland Security handle expanded deportations at the level indicated by the memos? There are already massive backlogs at immigration courts across the country the memos call for a ”surge” in immigration judges. And for the past few years, the department has had roughly 34, 000 beds at detention centers. The memos call for detention capabilities to be ”expanded,” focusing on areas near the border, but don’t get more specific about how. DHS is the first to note that it will take time and money to scale up deportations. That’s one reason it pushes back on descriptions of the memos as enabling mass deportations  —   it says it needs time to implement many of the new policies, and thus there’s no need for ”panic.” But how long it will take, how much it will cost and where the money will come from isn’t clear. DHS relies largely on private,   prisons  —   which currently hold more 70 percent of the department’s detainees, as NPR’s John Burnett reported last month. Trump has also spoken positively about private prisons. As a result, many anticipate that an expansion of DHS operations will be profitable for private prison companies. John notes that   detention at ”all levels” has been sharply criticized. Complaints include poor living conditions, understaffing, security risks, mismanagement and poor medical care. Last year, the Justice Department announced it would phase out the use of private prisons. The decision did not affect DHS."
"A small, faint star relatively close by is home to seven   planets with conditions that could be right for liquid water and maybe even life. The discovery sets a record for both the most   planets and the most potentially habitable planets ever discovered around a single star. The strange planetary system is quite compact, with all of these worlds orbiting their star closer than Mercury orbits the sun, according to a newly published report in Nature. ”If you were on the surface of one of these planets, you would see the other ones as we see the moon, or a bit smaller,” says Michaël Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium. ”The view would be very impressive.” The cool, reddish star is about 40   away, in the constellation Aquarius. ”It’s a very tiny star,” says Gillon, ”10 times smaller than the sun.” Until recently, no one was even looking for planets around   ultracool dwarf stars. About a year ago, however, scientists announced that they’d found three planets around this star. They launched a campaign to study the star more intensively, and were surprised to find four more. All of the planets were spotted by looking for a faint dimming that occurs when starlight is blocked by a planet passing in front of the star. Julien de Wit of MIT, one of the astronomers on the research team, says these planets have a ”winning combination” of being temperate,   and ideally suited for   observations with telescopes to analyze their atmospheres. Already, initial observations have been made with the Hubble Space Telescope, he says, and the data is being analyzed. More observations with Hubble are planned to search for signs of water or methane. Astronomers could get an even better sense after 2018, when the   James Webb Space Telescope is expected to launch. It could provide an   look at the atmospheres of these planets. Some theoreticians question whether this type of star could support life, since it is so different from the sun and the   planets would get hit by so much ultraviolet radiation. ”We really cannot know,” says Emmanuël Jehin of the University of Liège. ”So it looks like everything is possible, at this point. It’s very exciting.”   have recently been gathering more and more evidence that   planets are common in our galaxy, according to Ignas Snellen at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, who wrote a commentary that accompanied the scientists’ announcement. This new discovery, he notes, suggests such worlds are ”even more common than previously thought.”"
"Early Wednesday morning, a space capsule carrying 5, 500 pounds of cargo approached the International Space Station. The SpaceX Dragon cargo ship was scheduled to arrive at the station around 6 a. m. ET. If all went as planned, astronauts Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency and Shane Kimbrough of NASA would use a robotic arm on the station to reach out and grasp the ship, pulling it in and locking hatches with it. But that cosmic embrace was not to be. Around 3:25 a. m. ET, according to NASA TV, the navigation system on the unmanned Dragon cargo ship detected an error. A number was wrong in its GPS software. The ship automatically aborted its mission. It was about   of a mile away from the space station. The docking has been rescheduled for Thursday morning. ”It did exactly what it was designed to do, breaking out of a rendezvous approach when it saw an incorrect value,” said NASA TV commentator Rob Navias. ”This is an easily correctable issue,” he explained during a live NASA TV stream of the docking attempt. ”Dragon itself is in excellent shape.” The new schedule means Dragon will arrive at the International Space Station the day before a Russian resupply rocket, which launched early Wednesday and is set to arrive at the ISS early Friday morning. As The   reported, today’s is not the first delay for the SpaceX Dragon. The cargo ship was supposed to launch Saturday, but that was scrubbed just 13 seconds before liftoff because of an anomaly discovered in the rocket’s steering system. ”On Sunday, however, the launch went smoothly,” NPR’s Colin Dwyer reported. ”Not only did SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lift off without a hitch, its first stage also returned to land right back on a platform on Earth. Shortly afterward, the Dragon spacecraft it was carrying detached as planned from the rocket.” As The Wall Street Journal has reported, mistakes and setbacks in its rocket business have become an increasing concern for the commercial spaceflight company, in part because its founder Elon Musk has publicly announced that the company will build a system to colonize Mars. As the newspaper reported, failed launches (the rockets exploded) in June 2015 and September 2016 contributed to a loss in revenue: ”Internal financial documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with former SpaceX employees depict robust growth in new   contracts and a thin bottom line that is vulnerable when things go awry. They also show the company putting steep revenue expectations on a nascent   business it hopes will eventually dwarf the rocket division and help finance its goal of manned missions to Mars.” In addition to stuff humans use to live in space, the cargo craft is carrying science experiments. ”One experiment will use the microgravity environment to grow stem cells that are of sufficient quality and quantity to use in the treatment of patients who have suffered a stroke,” a NASA press release read. The mission will also aid in recording ”key climate observations and data records.”"
"The space capsule that took the first moonwalkers on their historic adventure is getting ready to take off on another trip  —   its first tour of the United States in more than 40 years. The Apollo 11 command module is the spacecraft that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins rode in to the moon and back in 1969. To celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of that achievement, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is sending the space capsule to four different museums around the country. It’s the first time the space capsule, called Columbia, will have left the museum since it opened to the public in 1976. The traveling exhibit also will include objects such as the helmet and gloves that Aldrin wore during his moonwalk, a ”rock box” that the astronauts used to bring back some of the first samples ever from a heavenly body and the watch that Collins wore during his lonely time orbiting the moon while Aldrin and Armstrong explored the lunar surface. ”This is the spacecraft that brought the three astronauts home from the first landing on the moon, so it’s one of the Smithsonian’s most important artifacts,” says Michael Neufeld, a senior curator at the museum. In 1970 and 1971, before it came to the Smithsonian, the capsule went on a   tour. This time around, it will be going here: Those museums were picked for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they had the capacity to display such a large, heavy object. ”All of the venues actually had to submit engineering documentation to make sure that the floor load was one that could support not just the Columbia, but also the rest of the traveling exhibit,” says Kathrin Halpern, a project director at the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. ”It’s a very special artifact. And it does weigh a lot. The command module, on its traveling ring, is over 13, 600 pounds.” She says this is likely a     opportunity to see the command module outside of Washington, D. C. When it returns, Columbia will be the centerpiece of a new ”Destination Moon” exhibit that will open in 2021 to tell the story of lunar exploration from ancient times to today."
"Reform groups in Mexico have been trying for years to persuade politicians to regularly disclose their assets and income, pointing to their northern neighbor as an example of a place where financial disclosure is the norm in government. Then came President Trump, who has steadfastly refused to release his tax returns. The global fight against government corruption has often been led by the United States over the years, but those in the movement’s trenches worry that signals being sent by the Trump administration could undercut that effort. They point to early actions by Trump, such as his signing of a law repealing disclosure requirements on oil and gas companies operating abroad, as well as the conflicts of interest posed by his numerous business interests. ”For many individuals and organizations investing and putting our hearts into this [effort] this has been very disappointing. And it goes back to the election,” says Alejandro Salas, regional director for the Americas at Transparency International, the   coalition, Trump campaigned by promising to ”drain the swamp” in Washington, Salas notes. ”He was an active   campaigner, in his own words. But then his actions . .. started showing that he was not going to follow [up] on that.” What Trump does matters to reformers around the world, because of the dominant role the U. S. has long played in spreading the gospel of good government. ”The United States, being one of the oldest and   democratic systems, with strong institutions, has always been a role model and has been a very strong ally for the fight against corruption around the world,” Salas says. When a corruption scandal erupted inside FIFA, the global governing body for the sport of soccer, it was the U. S. Justice Department that led the investigation, which eventually brought about the indictment of more than a dozen officials. The U. S. has also pressed hard against   laws that protect tax evaders. That’s not to say that government corruption doesn’t exist in the U. S. of course, as residents of states such as Illinois and Louisiana know all too well. But over the years it’s often been Washington that has led the way in arguing for government transparency and strong   measures, with even European countries following its lead, Salas says. It has done this in part by passing strong laws, such as the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which essentially barred multinational companies and individuals from paying bribes to obtain business abroad. The U. S. government has also spent money trying to spread ideas about civil society and good government practices to other countries, particularly in the Middle East and Central Asia. In 2004, for example, Congress created the Millennium Challenge Corp. an independent agency that provides aid to poor countries, as long as they commit to what it calls ”good governance, economic freedom and investments in their citizens.” The   group Legacy International has a State Department contract to train young leaders of countries such as Tunisia and Kuwait about practices such as government transparency and constituent service. ”Those are all things that are fledgling in other parts of the world, so we give them a taste of how we do it in the United States and they take a lot of those practices home and implement them,” says Mary Helmig, the group’s vice president. Even more important is the example that the U. S. has set as a country where strong institutions exist to battle corruption when it occurs. ”The greatest asset of the United States in terms of influence is basically the model that it has become for the rest of the world,” says Georgetown law professor Alvaro Santos. Some of Trump’s actions both before and after he took office have raised questions about the U. S. model, he says. ”If you go to, say, the area of separation of powers, which is another important part of   reform, the ways in which President Trump has criticized courts that render decisions against executive orders he has proposed, particularly this last one about immigration, seem very strange,” Santos says. ”From an outsider point of view, for someone from another country who is trying to implement . .. reforms, this seems odd, I would say.”"
"The Dakota Access Pipeline’s route takes it over four states and nearly 1, 200 miles, from the Bakken oil fields in northwestern North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa and down to a terminal in Illinois. But one Missouri River crossing just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota has become the focal point of a fight over how the pipeline’s route was analyzed and approved by the federal government. In legal challenges and public demonstrations, members of the tribe and their supporters have argued that they were not adequately consulted about the route. Running the pipeline under a Missouri River reservoir called Lake Oahe, member say, would jeopardize the primary water source for the reservation, and construction would further damage sacred sites near the lake, violating tribal treaty rights. After more than six months of legal wrangling, the Trump administration reversed a decision by the Obama administration and announced it is allowing the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, to drill under Lake Oahe and finish building the last section of the pipeline. Here are some key moments in the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline. This story has developed over many months, and this timeline captures only a portion of the newsworthy developments that have occurred, focusing largely on legal and policy decisions. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers for the Omaha District publishes a draft of its plan to approve the Dakota Access Pipeline route under the Missouri River. The Corps opened the plan up to public comments, including comments on environmental and cultural impacts. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers office determines that no historic properties will be affected by the pipeline crossing. A letter from the Corps’ senior field archaeologist for the project lists five ”recorded cultural sites” within the area that could be affected by construction of the pipeline, and more than 30 others that are thought to be within a   radius. The letter supports the determination that ”no historic properties will be subject to effect,” by the crossing under Lake Oahe, and notes that the Standing Rock Sioux has requested further archaeological survey of the area. The U. S. government’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation disputes the Corps determination in a letter to the assistant secretary of the Army, citing the need for cooperation with tribal leaders to identify areas of concern to them. In the letter, the advisory council director asks the Corps to justify its decision. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers approves the portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline route that crosses the Missouri River at the Lake Oahe reservoir. The crossing is on Army   land. The   report announcing the approval said of the public review process: ”No significant comments remain unresolved.” The Omaha district commander, Col. John Henderson, wrote, ”I have evaluated the anticipated environmental, economic, cultural, and social effects, and any cumulative effects” of the river crossing and found it is ”not injurious to the public interest.” The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sues the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. The tribe alleged that the Corps had failed to adequately consult tribe members before approving the pipeline, and had violated the National Historic Preservation Act when it ”effectively authorized construction of the vast majority of the pipeline in and around federally regulated waters without any provision to ensure against destruction to culturally important sites.” ”There is a high risk that culturally and historically significant sites will be damaged or destroyed in the absence of an injunction,” the tribe wrote in its court filing. Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners, countersues leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux, alleging that protesters near the Lake Oahe river crossing have ”halted construction activities” that had been scheduled to begin five days earlier. ”On Wednesday August 10, 2016, representatives of Dakota Access arrived at the Construction Site and were met with resistance by approximately 15 to 30 individuals . .. who were protesting the construction of the Pipeline. By the afternoon, the number of individuals protesting at the Construction Site increased to approximately 100,” the company wrote. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe issues a statement saying Energy Transfer Partners demolished an area that contained ”significant Native artifacts and sacred sites” when construction crews bulldozed a    area near the Lake Oahe river crossing and north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. ”I surveyed this land and we confirmed multiple graves and specific prayer sites,” the tribe’s historic preservation officer, Tim Mentz, said in the statement. ”Portions, and possibly complete sites, have been taken out entirely.” And protests in North Dakota turned violent when private security guards clashed with some protesters. As reporter Amy Sisk of the public radio collaboration Inside Energy said in an NPR Live discussion on Facebook, ”What happened is some protesters who’ve been camped out near this construction area broke through a fence to access this construction site and were met with some private security guards and guard dogs hired by the pipeline company. . .. Law enforcement says the protesters attacked the security guards and the dogs.” She added that demonstrators said the dogs ”actually bit some of the protesters.” U. S. District Judge James Boasberg temporarily halts construction on the portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline that crosses the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, pending a full decision on the tribe’s earlier lawsuit against the Army Corps. North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple activates the North Dakota National Guard to assist local law enforcement that had been monitoring demonstrations. In early December, a spokesperson for the guard told NPR that more than 500 National Guard members were on active duty and that multiple buses and military vehicles had been used to ”aid law enforcement.” U. S. District Judge James Boasberg denies the Standing Rock Sioux’s request to stop construction. In his decision, he writes that ”the United States’ relationship with the Indian tribes has been contentious and tragic.” But he went on to say that the Army Corps ”likely complied” with its obligation to consult the tribe, adding that the tribe ”has not shown it will suffer injury that would be prevented by any injunction the Court could issue.” But the Justice Department, the Department of the Army and the Interior Department announced that construction on Army   land near the Lake Oahe river crossing should not proceed  —   and asked that the pipeline company honor the request  —   pending further evaluation and consultation with the tribe. Energy Transfer Partners proceeds with construction despite the request by the three federal agencies that it voluntarily halt activities near the Lake Oahe river crossing. The Morton County Sheriff arrests 27 people demonstrating at the site. The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, Dave Archambault II, sends a letter to  . S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting an investigation ”to protect civil rights” of protesters, citing the ”overall militarization of law enforcement response.”   Obama says in an interview that the U. S Army Corps of Engineers is ”examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline in a way. So we’re going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first Americans.” Law enforcement uses tear gas and sprays water at crowds of demonstrators as the temperature drop below freezing, reports Amy Sisk of Inside Energy. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers tells protesters to leave some encampments on federal land by Dec. 5, and North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple follows up with an evacuation order for the area, citing ”harsh weather.” Nonetheless, many people stay. The Army Corps halts construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and says it intends to issue an environmental impact statement with ”full public input and analysis” before it approves the river crossing at Lake Oahe. The Army publishes a notice in the Federal Register saying it is preparing the environmental impact statement and soliciting public comments until Feb. 20, 2017, on whether to grant the easement necessary to cross under Lake Oahe. President Trump signs an executive memorandum instructing the Army to expedite the review and approval process for the unbuilt section of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Army says it has been directed to expedite the review process for the easement request, and that ”the Assistant Secretary for the Army Civil Works will make a decision on the pipeline once a full review and analysis is completed in accordance with the [president’s] directive.” The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers grants the easement allowing the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The Corps also issues a memo saying it intends to terminate the public comment period and rescind its notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact assessment. The pipeline company immediately began construction near the crossing under Lake Oahe. The Cheyenne River Sioux tribe asks the U. S. District Court to issue a restraining order to block construction of the final piece of the pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe officially joins the request a few days later. Both reservations get their water downstream of the Lake Oahe crossing. U. S. District Judge James Boasberg denies the tribes’ joint motion, noting that oil is not yet flowing under the reservoir. In his decision, Boasberg requires Dakota Access LLC to update the court on Feb. 21, ”and every Monday thereafter as to the likely date that oil will begin to flow beneath Lake Oahe.” The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Cheyenne River Sioux tribe request a summary judgement against both the Army Corps and Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of the pipeline company. The plaintiffs cite tribal land rights under the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty and argue that the Corps decision to grant the easement was ”arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law.” The Corps formally terminates its environmental review in a notice published in the Federal Register. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum sets this date as a deadline for the remaining protesters to leave an encampment on federal land near the area of the pipeline company’s construction site. U. S. District Judge James Boasberg denies the motion by the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes for a preliminary injunction against the pipeline company. In his decision, Boasberg explains that he believes the tribes will be unlikely to prevail in their lawsuit at this point, and denies their request to either halt construction on the pipeline, or stop oil from flowing through it once it is complete. The previously filed motion for summary judgement is still outstanding."
"Local law enforcement officers have arrested some people who chose not to evacuate federal land near part of the Dakota Access Pipeline north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Most protesters had left earlier. At dusk, police moved back, and said they would not enter the camp at that time. The governor of North Dakota had set Wednesday as the evacuation deadline for the largest protest camp, which is on a flat area north of the Cannonball River. He cited flooding concerns. Protesters supporting members of the Standing Rock Sioux, many of whom believe the pipeline’s route under a section of the Missouri River known as Lake Oahe will endanger drinking water, have been living on the land for six months or more. They have erected shelters and organized supply systems for food and water, even as winter brought freezing temperatures and feet of snow. As the 3 p. m. ET deadline approached, some demonstrators prayed while others took down some shelters and set fire to things they were not carrying out. Rain falling on law enforcement and demonstrators turned to fat snowflakes. ”It looks like a trash pile. But it’s getting picked up and every spot is starting to look better and better as we work together,” Dotty Agard of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe told Amy Sisk of Inside Energy while sorting through abandoned goods. ”One man used a   to help get a car out of the deep mud, and another person rode a snowmobile through the dirt,” The New York Times reported from the area. ”Some semipermanent structures had been burned, apparently an effort to demolish them ahead of the deadline. A fire burned, black smoke rising in the cold air, while some people roamed the area.” The newspaper reported that ”state officials have offered meals, lodging, a medical exam and a bus ticket to anywhere in the 48 contiguous states for protesters who left by Wednesday afternoon but needed help getting home.” According to live video posted to the Lakota People’s Law Project Facebook page, a group from the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, which borders the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, leased land a few miles away and were welcoming people who left the evacuated area. Not far from the area being evacuated, crews for the company Energy Transfer Partners are drilling a hole for the pipeline to carry oil under the Missouri River. Construction had been stalled for months, as lawsuits challenging the permitting process for the pipeline made their way through the courts. In December, the Obama administration announced it would not allow construction to go forward until the Army Corps conducted a full environmental review of the route. It was a win for the protest movement. The Corps officially began the review process in January, opening up the pipeline route plan to public comments, but that process ground to a halt when President Trump signed an executive memorandum directing the Corps to expedite the permitting consideration. The Corps subsequently approved the river crossing on Feb. 7, and suspended its environmental review. Construction resumed. Even as protest camps clear out, the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies have doubled down on their legal fight against the pipeline. Since the president’s executive action, numerous lawsuits have been filed seeking to halt construction or block oil from flowing through the pipeline should it be completed. In an amicus brief filed in U. S. District Court earlier this month, the leadership of the 16 federally recognized Indian tribes located in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska  —   a group known as The Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Association  —   wrote in opposition to the pipeline. The Dakota Access Pipeline, they argued, cannot be understood without considering the history of the federal government abusing tribal sovereignty: ”From this history, a pattern emerges wherein the United States consistently utilizes the legal narrative of the time to segregate, take from, and discriminate against Indian tribes. [The Dakota Access Pipeline] is simply the latest example of Native peoples of the Great Plains being subjected to varying legal standards and shifting political winds to justify the subordination of Indian treaty rights to   pecuniary interests. ”. .. In addition to the irreparable harm to the free exercise of Native religious beliefs . .. there is also irreparable harm in the form of historical trauma and psychological distress which stems from the consistent failure of the United States to live up to its obligations under its Treaties with Indian tribes generally, and under its Treaties with the Great Sioux Nation here specifically. Treaties matter.”"
"Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster has already had his easiest day as President Trump’s national security adviser. Trump’s announcement of McMaster was met with widespread acclaim by the Washington national defense establishment, including from people who are not particular fans of Trump’s. The array of challenges facing the president and his new top assistant is so vast, however, and the amount of room they have to maneuver so comparatively small, the White House may struggle even if it gets control over its own internal clashes over power and access to the president. The outside world, at very least, does not appear likely to cooperate. ”What we might call our holiday from history in the   War period is over,” McMaster said last spring in an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. He quoted a historian connecting the events of today’s era to those of 1914  —   the year the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand exploded into World War I  —   as ”really making the point that geopolitics is back.” If global geopolitics is ”back” and history has resumed (after ”ending” for a time after the fall of the Soviet Union, in the construction of Stanford expert Francis Fukuyama) American domestic politics haven’t gone anywhere. And that constraint may be the greatest brake on Trump’s and McMaster’s ability to make major changes in the strategic direction of the United States. The White House does have some options. Trump’s aggressive  —   if vague  —   rhetoric about the war against the Islamic State has bought McMaster a political rain shadow, at least at first. Trump vowed to ”knock the hell out of ’em” and step up operations in Iraq and Syria, without giving detail. He also has abandoned former President Barack Obama’s onetime pretense that American forces weren’t ”in combat,” even after the deaths of troops in Iraq and Syria. So as McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and other leaders plot the ”aggressive” new approach for ISIS that Trump wants, they have room to run that their predecessors did not. That could mean more weapons, more special operations troops closer to the fight against ISIS, reduced safeguards for civilians or other revisions to the current rules of engagement. Pentagon officials have also signaled they might consider recommending new deployments of combat forces to Iraq or Syria as part of the ”review” Trump requested. But Americans have almost no appetite for a new   foreign adventure as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan continue to smolder. In 2013, Obama stepped right up to the brink of ordering a major U. S. military attack against Syria  —   then stopped. Obama had the power as commander in chief to order American forces into action, he decided, but he wanted Congress to authorize it. Lawmakers considered his request for about as long as it took to sweep it under the Capitol rug. Unless Trump makes a case to Congress and voters that changes those attitudes, he and McMaster could remain locked into a version of Obama’s approach to the war  —   providing air power and other support to local forces in Iraq and Syria. (The irony of McMaster picking up Obama’s strategy is that it embraces at least three of what McMaster has called the Pentagon’s four   ”fallacies” of war: an overreliance on precision airstrikes supported by   surveillance an overemphasis on special operations forces and a preference for the use of indigenous troops over Americans.) As for another of Trump’s desires  —   closer collaboration with Russia against ISIS in Syria  —   that door may already have closed. Mattis said flatly in Belgium he thought nothing beyond a political accommodation was practically possible for now. And McMaster  —   who began his career deployed to West Germany, buttoned up in a tank prepared to fight the Soviet 8th Guards Army  —   is not known as particularly sympathetic to Moscow. He has, however, acknowledged the political bounds of what Americans will countenance. McMaster was asked at his CSIS talk whether there was any Pentagon hardware or system that could offset the limited troop commitments that voters might tolerate: ”No,” he said. ”There’s no technology that can do it.” Global politics are another factor. Vice President Pence, Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson all took turns reassuring America’s European allies last week at the Munich security summit in Germany  —   but there are many signs it didn’t sink in. The European leaders heard the soothing words of the administration leaders. But they can’t forget the campaign bluster of Trump, who amplified a   bit of U. S. foreign policy boilerplate  —   NATO nations must make good on their defense spending commitments  —   into what sounded like a   assault on the alliance itself. McMaster is a huge advocate for American relationships, especially in the context of the European frontier with Russia. ”Allies are pretty darn important, right?” he said at the CSIS event last May. ”Especially at these far reaches of American power. Especially when hoping to deter these revisionist powers. And so really what we want to do is prevent conflict, and our allies are essential to doing that.” McMaster and Trump may be able to square their views inside the Situation Room, but the problem, as NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reported, is that at worst, the Europeans are already terrified. At best, they are confused. German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not take a direct shot at Trump, but she and others asked rhetorically which worldview from Washington they should believe. ”Will we be able to continue working well together,” as Merkel asked, ”or will we all fall back into our individual roles?”"
"Four newly discovered frog species are so tiny that they can sit comfortably on a fingernail, making them some of the   frogs in the world. Scientists said in a video that they were ”surprised to find that the miniature forms are in fact locally abundant and fairly common.” The frogs likely escaped notice until now because of their tiny size and secretive habitats, hidden under damp soil or dense vegetation. The team from the University of Delhi also found three other, larger species from the same genus of night frog, Nyctibatrachus, in a study published in PeerJ. The largest of the seven frog species, Radcliffe’s Night Frog, comes in at about 38 mm, while the smallest, Robin Moore’s Night Frog, is some 12. 4 mm. Take a look at how they measure up: The researchers proved these are new species ”by using an integrated taxonomic approach that included DNA studies, detailed morphological comparisons and bioacoustics.” These frogs are also distinctive because of their   calls, which sound a little like a cricket chirping  —   yet another reason why they might have been previously overlooked. Researcher Sonali Garg, who is a doctoral student at the University of Delhi, explained in an interview with PeerJ how these miniature frogs differ from other night frogs: ”Unlike other   frogs in the genus (up to 77 mm in length) which are adapted to live in forest streams, have large foot webbing and call loudly, the new miniature frogs have very different   calls, lack webbing between toes and are found under damp leaf litter or in marshes.” Taken together, the seven new species found in the Western Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot suggests that more species are likely to be found in the area. ”The past decade has witnessed an exponential increase in the number of new amphibian species described from this region,” the researchers say. Some 159 new species were identified in the area between  . Night frogs are an ”ancient group of frogs that diversified approximately   million years ago,” Garg said. The team’s findings mean a far higher number of the night frog genus are miniature than previously known. ”Previously, the Night Frog genus comprised of 28 recognized species of which only three were miniature sized,” the researchers stated. ”Now the total number of known Nyctibatrachus species has increased to 35, of which 20 percent are diminutive in size.” The newly discovered frogs all reside in small areas in the southern Western Ghats states of Kerala and Tamilnadu, Garg said. That may not bode well for them  —   the researchers say some of the habitats are in areas that are not protected. ”Out of the seven new species, five are facing considerable anthropogenic threats and require immediate conservation prioritization,” said University of Delhi’s SD Biju."
"The day Donald Trump took office, six members of the presidential advisory commission for Asian American Pacific Islanders stepped down. Last week, another 10 resigned. They wrote in a scathing letter that Trump’s immigration executive orders, slash of federal funds to sanctuary cities, bans on refugees and opposition to the Affordable Care Act, had ”deleterious consequences” for   and Pacific Islanders. ”We object to your portrayal of immigrants, refugees, people of color and people of various faiths as untrustworthy, threatening and a drain on our nation,” the letter stated. Only four commissioners remain on the panel. While political resignations are common at the start of presidential transitions, this was a remarkably public, mass exodus from an advisory group created by President Bill Clinton in 1999 and renewed by each president through an executive order ever since. These resignations are a reminder that appointees to   commissions are inevitably racial representatives, whose work is seen as both powerful symbol and political shield. And for   the   racial group in the United States that saw a 46 percent population jump between 2000 and 2010, this reflects the end of what   Lien, a University of California, Santa Barbara political science professor, called the community’s ”cozy” relationship with the White House. About 60 percent of AAPIs were born outside the U. S. and from 2001 and 2010, Asians made up 26 percent of refugee arrivals. Surveys show that AAPIs as a whole are drifting from the Republican Party, and a majority voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. And in each presidential election cycle, according to a report from the National Asian American Survey, there’s an average increase of 600, 000 registered AAPI voters. The point of such a commission, and in this case, a presidential one for AAPIs, is pretty straightforward: to create a   flow of information between the highest levels of government and the broader AAPI community, said Linda X. Phan, executive director of Asian Family Support Services in Austin, Texas, who resigned from the commission last week. ”Our charge was to make sure the policies put in place were to help out the AAPI community, and to make the federal government much more accessible to everyone,” Phan said. At least, that’s how it’s worked before. On Inauguration Day, the AAPI commission’s signature project on disaggregating data about   was deleted from Whitehouse. gov, along with a LGBT rights page. According to multiple commissioners who stepped down, their messages to the White House calling for meetings and expressing their concerns were met with silence. The White House did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for an    comment. ”Under Trump, we tried to hold on and wait as long as possible,” Daphne Kwok, who served as chair of President Obama’s AAPI committee for four years and also runs the AARP’s multicultural markets for   said. The task force members would have held their seats until September 30, 2017, at which point, as past transitions showed, the president could reauthorize the commission and appoint new members. Kwok said she’d plan to serve out her term, but with the executive orders, no longer felt that the commission was the best way for her to advocate on behalf of AAPIs. In the past, the commission was able to push the federal government to provide more language resources and translation services, and to disaggregate data about the various AAPI subgroups. This data disaggregation project, which started under President Obama’s tenure and was a joint venture with the Department of Education’s White House AAPI initiative, helped chip away at the ”model minority” myth by showing how specific AAPI ethnic groups fared when it came to areas including education, health, employment and immigration. (While this data project no longer appears on WhiteHouse. gov, part of it is still accessible on the Department of Education’s site.) This data was intended to help policymakers decide where to spend federal money. For example, according to the DoE’s website, disaggregated education data helped show which colleges had large numbers of   AAPI students and students living below the poverty line, indicating which schools might need more funding. But with a dwindling board, a   White House and a president trying to implement policies that they said went against their values, both Kwok and Phan said they felt their role on the advisory commission was pointless. When Phan was invited to join President Obama’s commission in 2014, she was wary of joining a panel that might not have legitimate power. ”There are commissions, especially with federal commissions, they can be staffed by big donors or folks who aren’t willing to roll up their sleeves but enjoy the title.” ”You can join a task force or a commission and just have your name on something, and not do real work,” Phan said. Her concern foreshadowed what was to come as the commission sat through the White House transition, watching Trump’s immigration policies and refugee bans unfurl. That ability to do ”real work” depends largely on how a commission is designed, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor and associate dean of public policy at the University of California, Riverside.   commissions, with appointees with differing backgrounds in the corporate, nonprofit and academic worlds have ”the potential to reflect the community’s issues that no other can do,” Ramakrishnan said, and hosting public hearings to hear from actual people in the community is also crucial. For example, Ramakrishnan serves on the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs and has worked with the White House Initiative for AAPIs. He says that when California implemented a program that would issue special driver’s licenses regardless of a person’s immigration status, the state commission heard from residents that AAPI folks were struggling to produce the necessary documents. The commission reached out to the DMV and governor’s office, and discovered that certain program documents were only in Spanish and English, not in any Asian language. The commission recommended these documents be translated, and now there are instructions in Chinese, Farsi, Hindi, Korean, Punjabi, Tagalog and Vietnamese. But Ramakrishnan also cautioned that it’s easy for politicians to use racial commissions ”as a way to deflect criticism that may be lodged against them.” In other words: the political version of ”I have Asian friends and . ..” ”This is always the dilemma for minorities,” said   Lien, a University of California, Santa Barbara political science professor. Recognition as a community  —   especially for a relatively small one  —   is crucial, but not at the cost of   detrimental policies, she said. ”It’s about the politics here. As a minority, we would like to be able to be included, but we definitely also know there’s a risk of being marginalized, just like symbols.” Still, Lien wrote in an email, it’s important not to inadvertently devalue ”the politics of symbolism, which can be highly valuable to a small, extremely diverse, and   community such as the AAPI.” President Trump has the option to issue an executive order to reauthorize the AAPI initiative later this year and appoint new members. There are no other equivalent   presidential advisory commissions, though there are White House Initiatives run by the U. S. Department of Education that include a program on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and on the ”educational excellence” for Hispanics. In Congress, there are the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which play important advisory roles for the legislative and executive branches of government. ”I think these commissioners, by taking collective action, made a powerful statement,” Ramakrishnan said. AAPI voices haven’t been able to get much political or media attention, he said, so this mass resignation gives an alternative face to the AAPI pushback of Trump’s policies. Ramakrishnan points to what he calls the prevailing mainstream image of the AAPI resistance against Trump: An unidentified   woman at an inauguration march. She’s raising her two middle fingers. The exit of   of the AAPI presidential commissioners is its own form of protest, Ramakrishnan said. ”We haven’t seen that many powerful AAPI voices band together and get noticed.”"
"As Republicans look at ways to replace or repair the Affordable Care Act, many suggest that shrinking the list of services that insurers are required to offer in individual and small group plans would reduce costs and increase flexibility. That option came to the forefront last week when Seema Verma, who is slated to run the Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services in the Trump administration, noted at her confirmation hearing that coverage for maternity services should be optional in those health plans. Maternity coverage is a popular target and one often mentioned by health law critics. But other items also might be watered down or eliminated in the GOP revision. There are some big hurdles, however. The Affordable Care Act requires that insurers who sell policies for individuals and small businesses cover at a minimum 10 ”essential health benefits,” including hospitalization, prescription drugs and emergency care, in addition to maternity services. The law also requires that the scope of the services offered be equal to those typically provided in the coverage that businesses offer their employees. ”It has to look like a typical employer plan, and those are still pretty generous,” says Timothy Jost, an emeritus professor at Washington and Lee University Law School in Virginia who has studied and written about the health law. Since the 10 required benefits are spelled out in the Affordable Care Act, the law would have to be changed to eliminate entire categories or to make them less generous than typical employer coverage. And since Republicans likely cannot garner 60 votes in the Senate to do that, they will be limited in changes that they can make to the ACA. Still, there’s room to ”skinny up” the requirements in some areas by changing the regulations that federal officials wrote to implement the law. Habilitative services, The law requires that plans cover ”rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices.” Many employer plans don’t include habilitative services, which help people with developmental disabilities such as cerebral palsy or autism maintain, learn or improve their functional skills, via speech or occupational therapy or other support services. Federal officials issued a regulation that defined habilitative services and directed plans to set separate limits for the number of covered visits for rehabilitative and habilitative services. Those rules could be changed. ”There is real room for weakening the requirements” for habilitative services, says Dania Palanker, an attorney and assistant research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, who has reviewed the essential health benefits coverage requirements. Oral and vision care for kids, Pediatric oral and vision care requirements, another essential health benefit that’s not particularly common in employer plans, could also be weakened, says Caroline Pearson, a senior vice president at the consulting firm Avalere Health. Mental health and substance use disorder services, The health law requires all individual and small group plans to cover mental health services and treatments for substance use disorders. In the regulations, the Obama administration said that means those services have to be provided at ”parity” with medical and surgical services, meaning plans can’t be more restrictive with one type of coverage than the other regarding cost sharing, treatment and care management. ”They could back off of parity,” Palanker says. Prescription drugs, Prescription drug coverage could be tinkered with as well. The rules currently require that plans cover at least one drug in every drug class, a standard that isn’t particularly robust to start with, says Katie Keith, a health policy consultant and adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School. That standard could be relaxed further, Keith says, and the list of required covered drugs could shrink. Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, Republicans have discussed trimming or eliminating some of the preventive services that are required to be offered without cost sharing. Among those is covering birth control without charging women anything out of pocket. But, Palanker says, ”if they just wanted to omit them, I expect that would end up in court.” Pregnancy, maternity and newborn care, Before the health law passed, just 12 percent of health policies available to a    woman on the individual market offered maternity benefits, according to research by the National Women’s Law Center. Those policies that did offer such benefits often charged extra for the coverage and required a waiting period of a year or more. The essential health benefits package plugged that hole very cleanly, says Adam Sonfield, a senior policy manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and advocacy organization. ”Having it in the law makes it more difficult to either exclude it entirely or charge an arm and a leg for it,” Sonfield says. Maternity coverage is often offered as an example of a benefit that should be optional, and that’s what Verma has advocated. If you’re a man or too old to get pregnant, critics of the requirement say, why should you have to pay for that coverage to be included in your policy? But that a la carte approach is not the way insurance is designed to work, says Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow at the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Women don’t need prostate cancer screening, she points out, but they pay for the coverage anyway. ”We buy insurance for uncertainty and to spread the costs of care across a broad population so that when something comes up, that person has adequate coverage to meet their needs,” Blumberg says. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow Michelle Andrews on Twitter: @mandrews110."
"During a sentencing hearing in Texas two decades ago, a defense attorney for a man named Duane Buck called on an expert who said his client’s race made it more statistically likely that he would commit violent crimes in the future. Because of that statement, the Supreme Court has ruled   that Buck, who is black, can appeal his death sentence. It’s the latest development in a case that Chief Justice John Roberts describes as ”a perfect storm” of circumstances that he says culminated in a lower court ”making a decision on life or death on the basis of race.” That’s from the majority opinion, which Roberts wrote. Justice Clarence Thomas, who was joined by Justice Samuel Alito, wrote the dissenting opinion, in which he stated, ”This is an unusual case.” Here’s how NPR’s Nina Totenberg described the case’s genesis, in a report after Buck’s execution had temporarily been put on hold in 2011: ”In 1995, Buck, who is   was convicted of killing two people and shooting a third. During the sentencing phase of his trial, psychologist Walter Quijano was called by the defense. Although Quijano testified that Buck would not pose a continuing threat to society if incarcerated, he also testified that blacks and Hispanics are statistically more likely than whites to commit future crimes. ”When the prosecutor   Quijano, the psychologist testified that being black ’increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons.’ Buck was ultimately sentenced to death by lethal injection.” The question of predicting Buck’s behavior was crucial to his sentence: The Supreme Court’s summary of the case states that under Texas law, ”the jury was permitted to impose a death sentence only if it found unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that Buck was likely to commit acts of violence in the future.” Today, Roberts wrote, ”Dr. Quijano’s testimony appealed to a powerful racial stereotype —  that of black men as ’violence prone.’ ” When the case was argued last October, as Nina reported, ”Justice Samuel Alito called the introduction of race as a predictor of violence ’indefensible,’ but he was also the only justice who voiced skepticism about granting what’s called a certificate of appealability for Buck.” In pursuing an appeal of his death sentence, Buck has argued that he didn’t receive effective legal representation he also says his case includes extraordinary circumstances that would merit an appeal. From the majority opinion: ”Despite knowing Dr. Quijano’s view that Buck’s race was competent evidence of an increased probability of future violence, defense counsel called Dr. Quijano to the stand and asked him to discuss the ’statistical factors’ he had ’looked at in regard to this case.’ ”Dr. Quijano responded that certain factors were ’know[n] to predict future dangerousness’ and, consistent with his report, identified race as one of them. ’It’s a sad commentary,’ he testified, ’that minorities, Hispanics and black people, are over represented in the Criminal Justice System.’ ” The jury deliberated for two days before returning a death sentence for Buck. During that time, they asked to see ”psychology reports” that had been entered into evidence. Back in 1999, Buck’s conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal. But as Roberts wrote, ”His case then entered a labyrinth of state and federal collateral review, where it has wandered for the better part of two decades.” Quijano gave similar testimony in other cases in Texas  —   and in 2000,   General John Cornyn issued a statement about ”problems associated with the testimony” of the psychologist. That was the year the Supreme Court vacated a judgment against Victor Hugo Saldano, whose capital murder trial included testimony from Quijano that Saldano’s Hispanic heritage increased the likelihood that he posed a danger. After the court’s ruling, Cornyn stated, ”It is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system.” But as the high court noted Wednesday, despite Buck’s case being among those Cornyn’s office identified as similar to Saldano’s, it was not among those in which prosecutors admitted error and allowed new sentencing hearings. Thomas wrote that the lower courts got Buck’s case right  —   and he opened his dissenting opinion with an attack on his colleagues’ analysis: ”Having settled on a desired outcome, the Court bulldozes procedural obstacles and misapplies settled law to justify it.” Part of the problem, in Thomas’ view, is that the high court didn’t find the lower courts had used the wrong standards to determine their rulings  —   it’s that the majority ”simply disagrees with the courts below” in how those standards were applied. Thomas also defended the 5th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying that his colleagues’ criticisms of the appeals court  —   which the American Bar Association has dubbed ”the nation’s most divisive, controversial and conservative”  —   were wrong, misplaced, and misguided. ”The majority also has things just backwards,” Thomas writes. The justice also argued that the jury in the Buck case had sufficient reason to recommend a death sentence aside from the psychologist’s consideration of race, saying that the evidence ”of both the heinousness of petitioner’s crime and his complete lack of remorse was overwhelming.” Thomas recounted the crimes Buck is convicted of, saying that despite the defense team’s assertion that the murder of Buck’s former girlfriend and another man was a crime of passion, the shootings were ”premeditated and cruel.” Thomas noted that Buck had driven 28 miles to carry out his shooting rampage that he had also shot his stepsister that he killed his   as her children looked on and that he laughed and joked about the killings afterward. Citing the unique legal circumstances of this case, Thomas also wrote that the court’s ruling would likely have only limited legal impact: ”Despite its errors, today’s opinion should have little effect on the broader law, for two reasons. For one thing, the Court’s reasoning is highly factbound, and the facts presented here are unlikely to arise again. For another, although the majority misapplies settled principles, it does not purport to actually alter any of those principles.”"
"A federal judge in Texas has temporarily blocked an attempt by state health officials to remove Medicaid funds from Planned Parenthood, allowing the women’s health provider to remain in the federal program at least until a lawsuit is settled. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he will appeal the decision, which he said ”is disappointing and flies in the face of basic human decency,” the Dallas Morning News reported. In trying to justify its action, state officials have pointed to undercover videos recorded by   activists in Houston. Texas Health and Human Services Inspector General Stuart Bowen referred to ”misconduct” in the videos in a letter notifying Planned Parenthood of the defunding plans in December, as we reported. A grand jury found no evidence of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood and instead indicted two people who recorded the videos for tampering with a government record and illegally offering to purchase human organs, as The   has reported. The indictments were later dismissed on technical grounds, as we also reported. In his decision blocking the state’s action, U. S. District Judge Sam Sparks said blocking Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood would ”disrupt the care of the 12, 500 Texas Medicaid patients receiving services from Planned Parenthood,” and accused Bowen of ”likely act[ing] to disenroll qualified health care providers from Medicaid without cause.” Sparks laid out his reasoning in particularly dramatic terms: ”A secretly recorded video, fake names, a grand jury indictment, congressional investigations  —   these are the building blocks of a   novel rather than a case concerning the interplay of federal and state authority through the Medicaid program. ”Yet, rather than a villain plotting to take over the world, the subject of this case is the State of Texas’s efforts to expel a group of health care providers from a social health care program for families and individuals with limited resources. Stalling for nearly a year after issuing an initial notice of termination, HHSC reinitiated its efforts to terminate Planned Parenthood health care providers from the Texas Medicaid program. ”Following extensive investigations, the Inspector General’s reasons for termination constituted unsubstantiated and indeterminate allegations, including a ’policy of agreeing to’ and a ’willingness’ to violate medical and ethical standards. Without any evidence indicating an actual program violation warranting termination, the Inspector General nevertheless acted to terminate one of the Provider Plaintiffs from the Texas Medicaid program and sought to terminate the other Provider Plaintiffs by extension.” The ruling means the Planned Parenthood clinics still open in Texas after years of other budget cuts by the state Legislature will still be eligible to receive Medicaid funds until the lawsuit has made its way through the courts. The organization says about 75 percent of the more than $500 million it receives each year from the U. S. government comes from Medicaid, as we have reported: ”As NPR’s Wade Goodwyn has reported, it is already against state and federal law for clinics that perform abortions to receive taxpayer dollars. Clinics that provide other health services  —   for example, HIV testing, cancer screenings and contraception  —   largely rely on those funds. ”Most Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas do not provide abortion services. ”Federal courts in other states have struck down multiple laws that attempted to block Medicaid dollars from clinics associated with organizations that provide abortions.” In December, the federal government finalized a regulation that bars states that award federally funded grants for women’s health programs from discriminating against Planned Parenthood."
"Republican members of Congress aren’t exactly getting a warm welcome in their home districts during this week’s recess. Angry constituents have confronted legislators at town halls across the country, upset over everything from the GOP’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, the Trump White House’s travel ban, alleged Russian interference in the U. S. elections and more. New York Rep. Tom Reed, for example, faced these questions in a series of town halls he held over the weekend. The backlash is happening in some deep red places, stretching from Reed’s western New York district to Kentucky and Iowa. Some national Republicans  —   and President Trump in a Tuesday night tweet  —   have tried to dismiss the progressive activists helping to organize the protests. However, their statements almost mirror the arguments Democrats made in 2009 to explain away backlash at town halls that summer over the health care law. How did that work out? Democrats got a ”shellacking” at the ballot box in November 2010. Here are snapshots of rowdy events that have happened in the past couple of days: Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell: The Senate majority leader didn’t have a formal town hall scheduled, but he got plenty of blowback at a $10 per plate luncheon on Tuesday, which was supposed to be a   event, according to the Lexington  : ”At one point, a frustrated audience member implored him: ’Answer the question, Mitch!’ after he offered a curt answer to a woman asking about lost coal jobs in Eastern Kentucky. ”As he began leaving the event, escorted by state and local law enforcement, a few in the crowd booed. Someone shouted ’Do your job.’ ” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley: The Des Moines Register described the senator’s first town hall on Tuesday morning as ”a raucous, sweaty tumult of cheering and jeering, interruptions and shouted questions.” Virginia Rep. Scott Taylor: The freshman congressman  —   who sits in a swing district sure to be a top target in 2018  —   had a crowd of about 800 at his first town hall on Monday with another 200 waiting outside unable to get in, according to the Virginian Pilot. Local station   10 had this report. California Rep. Tom McClintock: Capital Public Radio’s Ben Adler reports that a crowd of nearly 1, 000 pressed the GOP congressman on health care Tuesday night in a town hall that was ”opinionated yet peaceful, though manners and tempers sometimes ran short.” Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn: About 130 people packed Blackburn’s town hall on Tuesday, where she faced pointed questions about the GOP’s Obamacare replacement plans. From The Tennessean: ”Many of the questions were without clear answers from Blackburn, who served on Trump’s transition team and is carrying key legislation that will be a part of the repeal effort from the   House. She said the replacement will include provisions allowing people of certain age groups with   conditions to get insurance. ”She said the replacement plan will be ’more responsive and more affordable’ as well, without going into many specifics.” Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst: The freshman senator’s veterans roundtable was met with chants of ”We want our voices heard!” and ”Your last term!” according to CNN. ”She fielded just one question on health care and abruptly ended the event after 45 minutes, with a long line of people still waiting to ask questions.” Virginia Rep. Dave Brat: In a packed banquet room in Blackstone, The Richmond   reported, the congressman was jeered and applauded: ”He charged through it all, at times smiling and being a good sport even when his audience booed.”"
"Over the next few days, thousands of conservatives will converge on a conference center just outside of Washington, D. C. for the Conservative Political Action Conference. It’s a gathering that, for the last several years at least, had a gravitational pull for any leader on the right who may have hoped to replace Barack Obama in the White House or play a role in opposing his presidency. Now that room is likely to be filled with elation since Republicans have total control in Washington. But the man who delivered the conservative movement its most satisfying victory in decades  —   Donald Trump  —   has not always been warmly welcomed in this particular room. CPAC is equal parts political rally, conservative boot camp, recruiting tool, trade show and merchandise mart, Beltway celebrity watch party, and this year  —   with GOP control in the White House and Congress  —   a celebration. That’s the backdrop for the 2017 edition of CPAC, which is the largest annual gathering of conservative activists from across the United States. It’s an event that keeps growing, with attendance topping the 10, 000 mark in recent years. It’s four days of speeches, panel discussions, break out sessions, networking breakfasts,   parties, all with plenty of patriotic music mixed in, where the rock stars are leading conservative voices  —   some of them elected officials, some   authors or media stars, and other icons of the movement. The event has its roots in a landslide defeat for conservatives  —   the 1964 loss of GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater to President Lyndon Johnson. Less than a year later, the American Conservative Union was born with the aim of promoting conservative ideals and promoting candidates who would advance the cause. It took another decade, but by 1974 the first Conservative Political Action Conference was organized. About 400 people attended, and the headliner was California Gov. Ronald Reagan. These were hard times for conservatives. President Nixon would be forced out of office by year’s end. Democrats controlled the Congress. And things would get worse before they got better. Trump is scheduled to speak at CPAC 2017 on Friday morning. In the past, he’s been greeted by both cheers and wariness. CPAC attendees have always loved the way he sticks it to Democrats and the establishment. He certainly channels the opposition to political correctness that imbues CPAC. But plenty of conservatives have harbored doubts about just how much of a conservative Trump actually is. Social conservatives rallied around his pledge to nominate a Supreme Court justice in the image of Antonin Scalia, but many were slow to support Trump in 2016 due to his past support for abortion rights and   marriage. Fiscal conservatives don’t hear real support from Trump for small government. Additionally, his protectionist talk on international trade rankles   conservatives. Still, if you look at Trump’s CPAC speeches, he was saying then the same things he said on the campaign trail this past year and a half. In 2011 he was a big draw, as he used his moment in the spotlight to ponder a 2012 run for the White House. In that speech Trump told the audience, ”And I can tell you this, if I run and if I win, this country will be respected again,” as quoted in the Washington Times. And does this moment from that 2011 Trump CPAC speech sound familiar? ”If I decided to run, I will not be raising taxes, we’ll be taking back hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us, we’ll be creating vast numbers of productive jobs, and we’ll rebuild our country so that we can be proud.” In 2015, Trump returned to the conference, earning some boos when he spoke of using ground troops to combat ISIS. Then, in 2016 he was scheduled to speak but dropped out, choosing to campaign instead. It’s not unusual for there to be a moment of controversy at the conference. This year’s candidate for that award is the Milo Yiannapoulis invite followed by the rescinded invite after a video surfaced in which the proud and unrepentant provocateur appears to be defending the merits of pedophilia between adults and boys age 13. In past years there was columnist Ann Coulter using a homophobic slur during her 2007 speech to describe   presidential candidate John Edwards. And in 2011 a gay Republicans group called GOProud was one of many official   of CPAC, prompting a boycott from some other sponsors who objected to GOProud’s message. A year later, GOProud’s request to again be a   was declined by CPAC organizers. One of the big news items out of CPAC is the annual presidential straw poll of attendees. The results generally reward the most conservative candidates. In 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz won, with Trump finishing a distant third. The CPAC crowd also features an active Libertarian contingent those voters helped former congressman and presidential hopeful Ron Paul win the straw poll in 2010 and 2011, and helped his son, Sen. Rand Paul, win in  . Ronald Reagan won CPAC straw polls in 1976, 1980 and 1984. This year, there will be no presidential preference question in the poll. A CPAC spokesman says it’ll focus on issues instead. The last time there was no presidential straw poll was 2004, when President George W. Bush was still in his first term and the GOP was not in search of a presidential candidate. Here’s the full list of past winners, compiled by NPR’s Domenico Montanaro, 1976: Ronald Reagan1980: Ronald Reagan1984: Ronald Reagan1986: Jack Kemp1987: Jack Kemp1993: Jack Kemp1995: Phil Gramm1998: Steve Forbes1999: Gary Bauer2000: George W. Bush2005: Rudy Giuliani2006: George Allen2007: Mitt Romney2008: Mitt Romney2009: Mitt Romney2010: Ron Paul2011: Ron Paul2012: Mitt Romney2013: Rand Paul2014: Rand Paul2015: Rand Paul2016: Ted Cruz, Early on, CPAC figured out that there were big benefits to be gained by reaching out to college conservatives and helping them attend. Sponsors helped pay for registration fees and accommodations for these young conservatives. That helps build loyalty to the cause, and it brings these future leaders together with   students from across the country. Many come from conservative colleges, but many are from campuses where their conservative views put them in opposition to many of their fellow students. Bonding happens at CPAC, along with a fair amount of   partying. If you go to CPAC, be sure to roam the sprawling exhibit area located on the lower level of the conference center. You’ll find conservative celebrities like former congressman Col. Allen West signing books and posing for photos with fans. Another year, a guy in a dolphin suit  —   who called himself Flip Romney  —   mocked presidential candidate Mitt Romney for being a moderate and for   on issues such as health care. And you’ll certainly see at least one attendee dressed in American Revolutionary garb, complete with a   hat. One year a   Sarah Palin impersonator stopped people in their tracks. Then there are buttons,   beer koozies and all kinds of limited edition collectibles to be scooped up and taken home."
"There are very few scenarios where I could see myself considering the flesh of a fellow human being as food, and the ultimatum ”eat today or die tomorrow” comes up in all of them. Most people are probably with me on this. But Bill Schutt’s newest book, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, reveals that from a scientific perspective, there’s a predictable calculus for when humans and animals go cannibal. And far more humans  —   and animals  —   have dipped into the world of cannibalism than you might have imagined. Schutt, a vertebrate zoologist at LIU Post and the American Museum of Natural History, dives into cannibalism’s history, its place in the kingdom Animalia and the source of its taboo. The book encompasses a range of stories far wider than the usual canon of gruesome reports. He makes no secret of his distaste for these   accounts, not because of the gore but because there’s just so much more to cannibalism. Instead, he opts for a keenly scientific approach. ”I’m taking things that seem grotesque and misunderstood and horrify people and putting it through the eyes of zoologist,” he says. And what does a zoologist see, exactly? He sees the perfect, natural sense of cannibalism, the evolutionary biology of eating one’s own kind and, oddly, the wonder of it all. Macabre summaries of men eating men are present, too, but by far the most interesting section on human cannibalism in the book is Schutt’s description of the long history of European aristocrats eating human parts as medicine. ”  types and even members of the British Royalty ’applied, drink or wore’ concoctions prepared from human body parts, and they continued to do so until the end of the 18th century,” Schutt writes in the book. We caught up with Schutt to chat about the book. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity: I hadn’t heard of the medicinal cannibalism you described in Europe, starting with the Ancient Greek physician Galen of Pergamon and continuing to the 20th century. That was one thing that really surprised me. Yeah, especially given the Western taboo around cannibalism, which has been around since the time of the Greeks, to find out that for hundreds of years, for many countries in Europe, pretty much every body part you can think of was used to cure something or the other. That was a complete shock. I don’t even know where some of these [purported cures] came from. That blood was going to cure epilepsy or how human fat could cure skin diseases? The most interesting one to me was mummies, and I think that was a mistranslation. To the Arabs . .. the word mumia meant this stuff they used to bind wounds and prep mummies. In the translations, the Europeans thought they meant real mummies had medicinal values, so they started grinding [mummies] up. How did you get to seeing cannibalism as something that was really, very natural? Cannibalism as a behavior has various functions  —   from parental care to a reproductive strategy to foraging. If you look at insects, snails, crustaceans, fish, toads, salamanders, there’s plenty of cannibalism. When you’re talking about cob fish and the million eggs they lay, they’re not looking at [their eggs] like juniors. They’re like a handful of raisins. It’s just food. My favorite is these legless amphibians, or caecilians. The mother provides her skin to the young hatchlings, and they peel her skin like a grape. That to me was wild and amazing, and I’d never heard of it. When you get to mammals, it’s rarer because you’re dealing with less offspring and [more] parental care. The cannibalism you do see sometimes takes place because of environmental stresses. Seems like the decision to cannibalize is a pretty simple calculus. You do it when the need for food outweighs the risk of getting a disease.  Yup. Though when you’re starving, I don’t know if you’re thinking, ’This person might have a disease I could catch.’ No, you’re just at the end of your rope, and you’re going to die. It’s natural behavior. Scientists have looked at starvation. At a certain point, one of the predictable behaviors that you’ll see is cannibalism. It could start with dead bodies and then get to the extreme where you kill somebody and eat them. Then there’s the case where some people will just not eat dead bodies and starve to death. There’s plenty of mammals and animals that don’t practice the kind of parental care, or sexual cannibalism or that lifeboat strategy. But if you stress any creature out enough, I think the odds are that they’ll eat their own kind. In the book, you describe getting invited over for dinner by one of your sources to eat her placenta. How was that? Was it good? Yeah, it was really the prep that made it taste good. Granted, the [husband] was a chef and so he knew how to prepare it osso bucco style and used a really nice wine I had brought. It smelled great. It didn’t taste bad. I wouldn’t do it again. I don’t have any regrets I did this. She said that after birth, she had all sorts of ups and downs, baby blues and stuff like that. Somebody turned her onto this and she tried and it she said she felt a lot better. She readily acknowledged that it was probably a placebo effect. Which is a real thing. Would you eat another human  —   not a placenta? Not because of overcrowding, predation, competition or hunger. Just . .. because? No. If I was put into a life or death situation like the guys who got stranded in the Andes, or in a besieged city with no alternatives, then I can’t say that I wouldn’t consume human flesh. Would I do it again, just for kicks? Why would I? There’s no need for that. Not unless it really came down to a real horror situation where there was nothing else to eat. I try not to think about that as a possibility."
"This year, the Paris museum that looks like a jumble of giant, colored pipes with an escalator in a clear plastic tube zigzagging up its side turns 40. Nowadays, that museum  —   the Pompidou Center  —   has a secure place in the heart of Paris and in Parisians’ hearts. But it wasn’t always the case. ”When it was first built, the reaction was one of horror,” said Serge Lasvignes, president of the Pompidou Center, who recounted the museum’s beginnings at a recent meeting with the   Press Association of Paris, of which NPR is a member. ”Le Monde newspaper called the museum’s construction the ’rape of Paris,’ and city politicians thought their money had been totally wasted,” said Lasvignes. The   museum required 15, 000 tons of steel and cost millions to build. Critics said it looked like an oil refinery. France’s first museum entirely devoted to contemporary art saw the light of day thanks to the obstinacy of one man  —   Georges Pompidou, an art lover who served as France’s president from 1969 to 1974 and prime minister from 1962 to 1968. ”Pompidou thought there was a real gap at the time between the progressiveness of French industry and the country’s conservatism when it came to cultural matters,” said Lasvignes. ”And he thought that gap partially explained the social explosion and student revolts of 1968.” Pompidou was widely credited for resolving those revolts when he served as prime minister. In 1971, Pompidou launched an international competition to build the museum, originally known as the Centre Beaubourg. ”The idea was to have a complex for contemporary art and with new architecture,” said Lasvignes. The winning team, which included three young architects from Britain and Italy, was completely unknown at the time. Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, the two architects who saw the project through, made their provocative plan a reality, putting the museum’s working guts  —   its plumbing and electricity  —   on the outside, to leave more space inside for art. Their design took everyone by surprise. ”They didn’t think they had a chance to win,” Lasvignes said. ”So they thought they might as well do exactly what they wanted and be entirely original.” But there was a real philosophy behind their design, he said. ”Someone said to Piano, ’Your thing is horrible  —   with the escalator on the outside, it looks like a supermarket!’ And Piano replied, ’Well, that makes me happy, because it means no one will be too intimidated to come inside. ’” Forty years later, the museum still strives to make culture accessible to everyone, Lasvigne said. He calls the Pompidou Center a museum like no other. ”Our mission is   so we are not only a museum,” he said. ”We have concerts, debates, performances, a library . .. and everything flows together.” Pompidou felt putting up walls between different forms of art  —   compartmentalizing it  —   was detrimental. ”So we are a house of culture where people return again and again,” Lasvignes said. ”Most of our visitors come more than once a year, which is different from other Paris museums.” After the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, Lasvignes said the Pompidou Center was the only museum in the city where the number of visitors actually increased. The museum received 3. 3 million visitors in 2016, a 9 percent increase over 2015. ”Many Parisians refused to stay home and wanted to continue to live after the attacks,” he said. Some 60 percent of the Pompidou’s visitors are French. Lasvignes calls it the ”museum of Parisians.” At the Louvre, in contrast, almost 70 percent of visitors are foreign. The Pompidou Center is Europe’s biggest modern art museum New York’s Museum of Modern Art is the biggest in the world. But the two museums have totally different strategies, Lasvignes said. ”The MOMA’s strategy is to collect masterpieces, and we try to represent an entire epoch,” Lasvignes explained. ”For example, we have an incredible surrealist collection. They’re not all masterpieces, but it’s a complete collection and you can see the nuances.” Lasvignes said that’s how the Pompidou Center was able to stage a recent exhibition on surrealism in Egypt. ”No one even knew [surrealism in Egypt] existed!” he said. Lasvignes said visitors to the Pompidou experience an exhibit in a way that’s entirely different than at other museums. ”We find an original angle of attack and the works are displayed differently. They’re often accompanied by music or literature. It’s like an unexpected trip. And this is what attracts people,” he said. To highlight the work of   expressionist artist Paul Klee, who Lasvignes said some may be a bit tired of, the Pompidou mounted an exhibit highlighting irony and humor in Klee’s work, something Lasvignes described as ”a totally new itinerary that helped people rediscover Paul Klee.” Nadine de Grandsaigne, visiting the Pompidou Center from the Paris suburbs on a crowded winter day, says she comes back again and again. She says the Louvre is too big. ”And,” she says, ”I love the view here.” Visitors who ride the escalator to the top of the museum are rewarded with a panoramic view of Paris. Particularly visible are the hill of Montmartre and the white domes of the Sacré Coeur church. Grandsaigne says she remembers the uproar when the museum first opened. While she liked it, she feared it would become ugly with time. ”But it doesn’t get old,” she says. ”It is still exceptional.” Now that it’s 40, the Pompidou’s goal is to continue to cultivate originality and remain   Lasvignes said. ”We want to be in tune with the intellectual tendencies and international currents of 2017,” he said, ”and not become a conservatory of nostalgia and history.” Lasvignes said the Pompidou Center will remain ”a safe place for unsafe ideas.” With a presidential election this spring, and   populist leader Marine Le Pen currently in the lead, Lasvignes mentioned no names but said his museum could take on ”an activist role.” ”We are not involved in politics,” he said. ”But we recognize that sometimes culture needs to be pushed to avoid a sclerosis of society.” Access to culture and art is crucial to opening minds and learning how to deal with what’s different and foreign, he said. If there were to be any attempt in France to shut people’s minds and break the bridges between cultures, ”Then yes,” he said, ”the Pompidou Center would step in to play a role of resistance.”"
"Dozens of    organizations have formed in the past decade to promote free or   heart screenings for teens. The groups often claim such tests save lives by finding abnormalities that might pose a risk of sudden cardiac death. But the efforts are raising concerns. There’s no evidence that screening adolescents with electrocardiograms prevents deaths. Sudden cardiac death is rare in young people, and some physicians worry screening kids with no symptoms or family history of disease could do more harm than good. The tests can set off false alarms that can lead to   tests and risky interventions or force some kids to quit sports unnecessarily. ”There are harms that I don’t think a lot of people realize,” said Dr. Kristin Burns, who oversees a    registry at the National Institutes of Health of sudden deaths in people under 20. It’s one of several efforts aimed at gathering better data about cardiac abnormalities in kids. Studies using limited data have found that between 1 and 4 sudden cardiac deaths occur annually per 100, 000 kids between ages 1 and 18. By comparison, 22 in 100, 000 U. S. teens are killed each year in accidents, including those involving motor vehicles 9 in 100, 000 commit suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some screening advocates believe sudden cardiac deaths are underreported and that not enough is being done to spare families from the fate of losing a child. ”We have to acknowledge that every kid who drops dead, they’ve been failed by the current system,” said Darren Sudman, who founded Simon’s Fund, a screening effort in greater Philadelphia in memory of his infant son, who died of an arrhythmia. Screening programs say they’re educating parents about the risks. ”What we want to emphasize is, make sure your kid is ” said Dr. Jonathan Drezner, a sports and family medicine specialist at UW Medicine and medical director of the   Nick of Time Foundation. Enthusiasm for EKGs, which measure the electrical activity in the heart to detect abnormalities, grew after a 2006 study showed they lowered death rates among athletes in Italy. But research in other countries hasn’t yielded similar results, and the Italian researchers recently were accused of refusing to share their data so they could be evaluated independently. Some 60, 000 to 70, 000 U. S. teens were screened with EKGs in 2016, most by foundations created by families who lost a child to sudden cardiac death, said Sudman, who runs the online directory Screen Across America. It’s unclear whether high school athletes face higher risk than nonathletes, so screening programs usually invite everybody. Screenings typically are held in high schools and overseen by volunteer cardiologists, with funding from individuals and businesses including hospitals. A handful of hospitals and   companies also run screenings. It may be presumptuous to claim EKGs save lives, but parents often believe they do, said Sudman. ”If I find a heart condition, I promise you there are parents who are thanking me for savings their kid’s life,” he said. That perception is stoked by tragic stories in the media of children who died suddenly after never reporting a symptom. Meanwhile, the drawbacks of EKGs are seldom depicted. As many as 1 in 10 EKGs detects a potential abnormality, and the emotional and financial toll of such a finding can be significant  —   especially when it turns out to be wrong. Following a screening EKG and echocardiogram last fall, Daniel Garza, 16, a talented sophomore basketball player in San Antonio, was told he had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart muscle and the most common cause of sudden cardiac death in young people. He was advised to quit all exercise, at least temporarily. ”We were shocked, just shocked,” said his mother, Denise. She said her son became depressed when he couldn’t play the sport he enjoyed and excelled at. ”He came home and cried himself to sleep. He said, ’Mom, why did God give me this gift to take it away?’ ” The Garzas traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. where further tests indicated his enlarged heart was a benign condition known as athletic heart, a result of intense training. His mother estimates that correcting the misdiagnosis cost more than $20, 000, including medical costs, travel and lost work. Daniel has returned to the basketball court. Still, Denise Garza said the emotional toll was rough: ”It was one of the hardest things my family has ever endured.” Several cardiologists said they often see cases like this  —   or worse. Even after   testing, it can be unclear which cases are   so kids with low risk could be restricted from exercise or given   interventions such as implantable defibrillators, surgery or   medications. Medical groups have wrestled with the issue. The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology recommended in 2014 against mass EKG screening, noting that sudden cardiac death is rare in teens and false positives generate ”excessive and costly   testing.” EKGs also miss at least 1 in 10 cases of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and more than 9 in 10 cases of congenital anomalies, the    cause. But the medical panel accepted voluntary screening ”in relatively small cohorts,” if there’s physician involvement, quality control and a recognition of unreliable results and ancillary costs. Efforts are underway to improve the accuracy of the screening programs. Some are adding echocardiograms, which use ultrasound to produce images of the heart, to assess potential abnormalities. Advocates say false positives have dropped as a result of better interpretation guidelines, known as the Seattle Criteria, which are expected to soon be endorsed by cardiology societies in revised form. But the criteria aren’t perfect, and there’s a ”giant gap” in training cardiologists to use them, said Drezner, one of the developers. He’s also a medical adviser for Parent Heart Watch, a consortium of foundations. ”If I was a parent, I’d want to know about the experience of the [cardiologists] and what they’re going to do to help my kid if they have a positive screen.” One problem with EKGs is a lack of good data. ”There’s no evidence we have that [EKG] screening saves lives,” said Dr. Jonathan Kaltman of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. ”There’s never been a controlled clinical trial, which is the only way to answer that question.” At the urging of screening advocates, the NIH partnered with the CDC to rigorously track cardiac deaths as part of a Sudden Death in the Young Case Registry. So far a handful of states and counties have joined the effort, which helps local health departments collect better data. The goal is to standardize death investigations and get a firm handle on how often kids die from heart abnormalities as well as the role of factors such as genetics. Initial findings are expected to be available in about two years. The NIH is also funding three   research groups to answer key questions about sudden cardiac death in the young. Some screening organizations are getting behind a nascent initiative with the Cardiac Safety Research Consortium to harness their own screening data for research. It would require standardizing their practices and tracking outcomes, which organizations aren’t now equipped to do. ”Screening is happening. We can’t avoid that,” said Dr. Salim Idriss, director of pediatric electrophysiology at Duke University and   of the initiative. ”We have a really good opportunity to get the data we need to make it better.” Separately, the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas recently began a   pilot study involving athletes and band members at eight high schools to determine the feasibility of a   randomized controlled trial. A valid finding on the overarching question of whether EKG screening saves lives could require at least 800, 000 participants and a cost of $15 million, said Dr. Benjamin Levine, a cardiologist and the lead researcher. The pilot is partly a response to legislation that would mandate EKGs for student athletes in Texas. A similar bill was also introduced in South Carolina. Both bills failed, but it’s expected there will be more attempts to mandate EKGs, leaving state legislators looking for better guidance. ”We’re not going to solve this by having more debates, but by having more data,” Levine said. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Mary Chris Jaklevic is a freelance health and environment writer based in Chicago. She’s on Twitter: @mcjaklevic"
"Fake news has been, well, in the news a lot lately. But for the world’s largest crowdsourced encyclopedia, it’s nothing new. ”Wikipedia has been dealing with fake news since it started 16 years ago,” notes LiAnna Davis, deputy director of the Wiki Education Foundation. To combat misinformation, Wikipedia has developed a robust corps of volunteer editors. Anyone can write new entries and scrutinize existing ones for adherence to Wikipedia’s rules on sourcing and neutrality. While it’s not free of errors or pranks, what results is a resource that 50 million people turn to daily on hundreds of thousands of topics in a few dozen languages. Today, educators are among those more concerned than ever with standards of truth and evidence and with the   spread of misinformation online. And the Wiki Education Foundation, a freestanding nonprofit, is sharing Wikipedia’s methods with a growing number of college students, and striking a blow for digital literacy along the way. The foundation gives professors the technical assistance they need to assign students, instead of writing a research paper, to write a   Wikipedia entry, or expand an existing entry, on any topic in virtually any discipline. This spring, 7, 500 students are expected to participate. Among the many items past students written on are: Since the program began six years ago, Davis says, students have collectively added more than 25 million words of content to Wikipedia. Jennifer Malkowski, an assistant professor of film and media studies at Smith College, assigned her class on new media and participatory culture to write and contribute to Wikipedia entries this past fall. ”One of the things they really liked about it was the ability to share knowledge beyond the professor  —   that audience of one,” she says. While all Smith students are expected to use good research methods in their classes, knowing that their entries might be rejected outright if they didn’t conform to Wikipedia’s standards ”felt like a higher stake than the difference between a B and an ” she says. Malkowski will be leading a workshop to help her colleagues, some of whom are less technically minded, learn how to make Wikipedia assignments in their own classes as well. Davis says many professors report a greater level of effort from their students on Wikipedia assignments. ”If you’re writing something millions of people are going to read, it’s a reason to do a really good job, to go into a library and get a deep understanding of the topic.” Some professors, like Tamar Carroll, an assistant professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology, see Wikipedia as a way to make previously neglected areas of knowledge more visible. For Carroll, it’s women’s history. She says a former student recently emailed her to say that her Wikipedia entry on Mary Stafford Anthony, the suffragist and sister of Susan B. Anthony, was ”the most meaningful assignment she had” as an undergraduate. There’s another learning opportunity too. Every Wikipedia entry has a ”talk” page, where editors discuss changes, and a ”view history” page that shows additions and deletions over time. Peeking behind that curtain, says Malkowski, helps ”expose how knowledge is collectively created and how different voices might come to consensus, or not, on a particular topic.” Right now, she adds, ”is an especially important time to be asking these epistemological questions.” According to the foundation’s own survey, 87 percent of university faculty who participated in the program reported an increase in their students’ media literacy. By grinding some Internet   themselves, essentially, they gained a better understanding of what goes into it. It’s an interesting turn of events for Wikipedia, which, as Davis acknowledges, has had a bad rap in academic circles as the lazy student’s substitute for real research. ”When I first started going to academic conferences, people would hide and say, ’Don’t let my department chair see me,’ ” talking to you, says Davis. She added that Wikipedia should only be a starting point for a   research paper, never a footnoted source."
"Every day on his way to class, Terrence Johnson walks by a bronze statue and thinks about history. The statue depicts James Meredith, who in 1962 became the first   to enroll at the University of Mississippi. ”He transcended so much,” says Johnson, a junior. ”The fact that he had the will to integrate a university like this in Mississippi that has such a rich and chaotic history . .. that will always be with me.” Johnson’s a journalism major, with a minor in   studies. And he’s a leader here: His schedule is packed with tutoring, mentoring, writing for the newspaper. He’s active in the LGBT community and in black student groups, and sings with several choirs. We’re here in Oxford, on this historic campus, to talk about how race and history influence college life today. We sat down to talk with Terrence Johnson behind the Lyceum, the administrative building that was at the center of the riots that erupted when James Meredith arrived on campus in 1962. Thousands of rioters battled federal marshals at the heart of campus. When the marshals couldn’t control the white mob, President John F. Kennedy called in the U. S. Army. Two people were killed in the rioting, and hundreds more were wounded. The ugly fight left a scar on the University that is still felt now, 55 years later, when blacks make up roughly 13 percent of the student population. The statue of Meredith was erected on the spot we’re sitting in 2006. He’s shown   about to walk through an open door. ”He was carrying the torch for so many like myself,” says Terrence Johnson. In recent years, Ole Miss has tried to refashion its image and shed some of its past ways. Last year, the university dropped the tradition of playing ”Dixie” at football games. And there’s now a plaque in front of the Confederate monument, which references slavery and the university’s divisive past. Some have called for the university to drop the use of the nickname ”Ole Miss” itself: Originally, that was how slaves would refer to the wife of a plantation owner. But old prejudices die hard. Three years ago, students woke up to find a noose tied around the Meredith statue’s neck two white fraternity brothers later pleaded guilty to civil rights charges.  Terrence Johnson was a senior in high school at the time, about to enroll at Ole Miss. ”It threw me off for a minute,” he recalls. ”I was just like, ’It’s two thousand and what? You know, what year is it again?’ It will always baffle me.” For a moment he considered going somewhere else. But, he adds, ”I didn’t feel like it was going to, at the end of the day, derail me from what I wanted to do.” That determination has taken Terrence far. He comes from the tiny town of Shuqualak, population about 500, out in the countryside in eastern Mississippi. ”I knew Shuqualak was small,” he says, ”but no one ever made me feel small, you know?” When Johnson graduates next year, he’ll become the first in his immediate family to complete college. His father is a welder his mother works as a phlebotomist. He grew up in a   trailer. ”It is a palace!” he says, with clear affection. ”It’s safety. It’s a haven. It is relaxation. It is blessings! It’s good music on Sunday and Saturday mornings, it’s good fried chicken on Tuesday nights. It is a true palace.” When Terrence graduated from the prestigious Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science  —   a high school for gifted students  —   he saw his father cry for the first time ever. Seeing his son succeed means the world to his dad, Terrence says. His parents would always stress, ”You gotta go be great.” Now he’s about to fulfill those ambitions  —   in a place where the legacy of race and history are still close to the surface. You can see it in the dining hall, Terrence says. ”You will walk in, at the very front: nothing but black people. Always. Every single solitary day. And at the back? Nothing but white people. Every single solitary day.” In classes, he notices that black students will sit on one side of the classroom whites on the other. ”It just happens,” he says. I walk with Terrence Johnson inside the archway that stands in front of James Meredith’s statue. Etched on the wall is a quotation from Meredith’s memoir, written in 1966: ”Always, without fail, regardless of the number of times I enter Mississippi, it creates within me feelings that are felt at no other time. Joy . .. Hope . .. Love.” But it’s telling that the quotation has been sanitized: whitewashed, if you will. What’s not on the wall is the part where Meredith described the sadness he also felt in Mississippi. Sadness, he wrote, ”because I am immediately aware of the special subhuman role that I must play, because I am a Negro.” For Terrence Johnson, that ambivalence about Mississippi still rings true. ”You have a   relationship with it,” he says. ”All these incidents that have happened throughout the years, even way back to Emmett Till. There are moments where you do feel subhuman in Mississippi. But at the end of the day, this is just as much my state as it is theirs.” Before we leave, I ask Terrence to read the final words of that James Meredith quotation: ”I have always felt that Mississippi belonged to me and one must love what is his.” Johnson thinks about that for a moment. ”I feel the exact same way,” he says. ”’Cause I come from Mississippi. I am very protective of it. It made me everything that I am, everything that I will ever be. And I’ve always been proud of the fact that I was from Mississippi. Mississippi doesn’t feel like anywhere else! It’s beautiful. It’s engulfing. Sometimes it’s enraging. But it’s still beautiful.” The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"On Wednesday, the Trump administration made big news regarding the rights of transgender students. But what exactly changed? And what does it mean for students in school districts around the country? Here’s our cheat sheet. 1. What just happened? Last May, the Obama administration sent what’s called a ”Dear Colleague” letter to school districts. The letter, from the Justice and Education departments, made clear that the administration was interpreting Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, to include transgender students. The letter stated that to be in compliance with the law, every   school district, state education association and high school athletic association in the country ”must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity.” This week the Trump administration officially rescinded that guidance. This does not change the law. What it does is give states and districts more flexibility in their interpretation of Title IX and how they choose to accommodate transgender students. 2. Is this just about bathrooms? No, not at all. Title IX also covers access to   facilities like locker rooms and the right to participate in sports. The Obama administration’s guidance also spelled out other steps that schools should take to avoid discrimination, like allowing all students to attend prom or graduation in the clothing that makes them feel most comfortable. The American Academy of Pediatrics summarized the public health issues at stake today in its critical statement about the Trump administration’s decision: ”Transgender children are already at increased risk for violence, bullying, harassment and suicide. They may be more prone to depression and engaging in  . . .. Policies excluding transgender youth from facilities consistent with their gender identity have detrimental effects on their physical and mental health, safety and  .” 3. What policies do school districts around the country currently have regarding transgender students? There’s a wide range. The nation’s three largest districts, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have comprehensive policies that cover not just restrooms, locker rooms and sports teams but issues of privacy, bullying and harassment. Information about a student’s actual or perceived gender identity or expression should be shared ”only on a need to know basis,” says the policy in LA. ”Students should be addressed by school staff by the name and pronoun corresponding to their gender identity that is consistently asserted at school,” New York City’s policy states. Chicago’s policy calls for schools to convene an administrative support team, including the principal and parents or guardians, to address each transgender student’s individual needs. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an advocacy group, tracks which states have created laws that prohibit bullying, harassment and discrimination on the basis of gender identity. These are clustered on the coasts but also include Arkansas, Iowa and Illinois. North Carolina, the home of HB2, or the ”bathroom bill,” also has a law that protects students from bullying on the basis of gender identity. Legal complaints against some school districts in several states have charged that transgender students have been disciplined for using the ”wrong” restroom, isolated on school trips that involved overnight stays, referred to by their birth name and pronoun and excluded from school activities in other ways. 4. How does all of this relate to the case now headed to the Supreme Court? Gavin Grimm, 17, is a transgender senior at Gloucester High School in eastern Virginia. After parents complained that Grimm was using the boys’ restroom at school, the school board ruled that he had to use a private, unisex bathroom instead. ”That’s basically saying, you can’t use the restroom with the rest of the kids,” Grimm told NPR’s Robert Siegel last year. ”I’m not unisex. The alternative facility was a unisex bathroom. I’m not unisex. I’m a boy. And there’s no need for that kind of ostracization.” Grimm sued and is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. Last year, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in Grimm’s favor, citing the Obama administration’s guidance on Title IX that has now been rescinded. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and oral arguments are scheduled on March 28. 5. What is likely to happen next for transgender student rights? A few things. First, that Supreme Court case. The 4th Circuit’s ruling in Grimm’s case was based on the Obama guidance. Rescinding it complicates things for Grimm’s legal team. Regardless of the Trump administration’s move, though, the Supreme Court now has before it the big question: Does the word ”sex” as it is used in Title IX include gender identity? In August, a federal district judge in Texas ruled that the Obama administration had overreached, and paused its Title IX guidance. There is genuine disagreement over how broadly courts should interpret ”sex,” and that legal disagreement will persist until the Supreme Court puts it to rest. In the meantime, states and districts can now set their own policies, which may or may not include equal access to facilities on the basis of gender identity. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made it clear in her statement on the new Title IX guidance that she considers ”protecting all students, including LGBTQ students, not only a key priority for the department, but for every school in America. We owe all students a commitment to ensure they have access to a learning environment that is free of discrimination, bullying and harassment.”"
"Some students, principals, parents and attorneys have condemned the Trump administration’s decision to remove some federal protections for transgender students. Those protections had been issued by President Barack Obama, who cited the federal Title IX law, and instructed public schools last year to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities. But the departments of Education and Justice on Wednesday reversed that guidance, allowing state and local officials to pass rules that discriminate on the basis of gender identity without risk of losing federal funds, as we reported. In response to the news, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, which petitioned the federal government to issue the guidelines last year, said in a statement ”rescinding the guidance will discourage educators’ efforts to support transgender students, and embolden their harassers.” The American Federation of Teachers said ”the Trump administration is compromising the safety and security” of transgender students, and the National Education Association, the other large union of public school teachers, said ”schools have a legal and moral duty to support transgender students,” reported NPR’s Claudio Sanchez. The administration’s decision will not have any immediate legal effect on public schools, because a federal court in Texas issued a nationwide injunction in August blocking the enforcement of the Obama administration guidance. ”No longer will federal officials distort federal law that is meant to equalize educational opportunities for women,” said Gary McCaleb, senior counsel for the Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom, according to The Associated Press. ”No longer will they force local officials to intermingle boys and girls within private areas like locker rooms, showers, hotel rooms on school trips and restrooms.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who brought the lawsuit against the Obama administration, said he agreed with the Trump administration’s decision. ”Our fight over the bathroom directive has always been about former President Obama’s attempt to bypass Congress and rewrite the laws to fit his political agenda for radical social change,” Paxton told Reuters. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos addressed student safety in a statement shortly after the policy change announcement, which her department supported. She wrote, ”at my direction, the Department’s Office for Civil Rights remains committed to investigating all claims of discrimination, bullying and harassment against those who are most vulnerable in our schools.” The heads of two national LGBT advocacy groups, PFLAG and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, accused DeVos of causing ”unnecessary fear and confusion among transgender students and their families” by allowing federal protections to be rescinded. Ginger Clifton, who lives in Michigan and whose teenage daughter Kylie is transgender, spoke to reporters on Thursday, along with attorneys from the ACLU. ”Kylie has been using the girls’ bathroom for two years,” she said. ”Nobody feels threatened. Just because someone is uncomfortable doesn’t mean my daughter should have to walk across the school to use a unisex bathroom.” One American student has taken on a particularly public role in the national conversation about the rights of trans people in public schools.    Gavin Grimm is the plaintiff in a case challenging the right of his local school board to bar him from the boys’ bathrooms at his high school. The case will be argued before the U. S. Supreme Court in March. ”Every day I go in and I face the reality that I’m not allowed to use the same restroom as my peers,” Grimm told NPR’s All Things Considered on Thursday. ”I face the looks and the whispers and the comments and just the general increased isolation.” The senior from Gloucester County, Va. was initially allowed by the school principal to use the boys’ bathroom. But after complaints from some parents, the school board adopted a policy that required students to use either the bathroom that corresponds with their ”biological sex” or a separate   restroom. Grimm sued the school board. His lawsuit argues the bathroom policy is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment and violates Title IX of the U. S. Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination by schools. ”When you’re trying to focus on aspects of high school life  —   getting homework done, studying for tests, preparing yourself for college  —   and you have to worry about being seen as who you are in a class environment, and you have to worry about planning restroom trips and you have to worry about being embarrassed and stigmatized every time you have to raise your hand and say, ’Can I go to the bathroom,’ it redirects your attention in a very, very significant way, and to something that’s so profoundly negative,” Grimm explained to NPR’s Ari Shapiro. ”When you are in a school environment with an administration that says this student is different, this student should be separate, and pointing that kind of finger and putting that kind of target on the child’s back, it will absolutely negatively affect your ability to focus and succeed and flourish in a school environment.”"
"The Trump administration is rescinding protections for transgender students in public schools. The move by the Justice and Education departments reverses guidance the Obama administration publicized in May 2016, which said a federal law known as Title IX protects the right of transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities. But on Wednesday, the two federal departments said the Obama documents do not ”contain extensive legal analysis or explain how the position is consistent with the express language of Title IX, nor did they undergo any formal public process. This interpretation has given rise to significant litigation regarding school restrooms and locker rooms.” A letter issued by the departments also says there ”must be due regard for the primary role of states and local school districts in establishing educational policy.” ”The president has made it clear throughout the campaign that he’s a firm believer in states’ rights and that certain issues like this are not best dealt with at the federal level,” said White House spokesman Sean Spicer. About 150, 000 young people ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. Civil rights groups say they worry that the reversal could lead to bullying and violence against vulnerable transgender kids. Some protested outside the White House on Wednesday evening. When   Barack Obama issued the guidelines last year, the White House directed schools to allow students to use the restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities, citing a federal law that protects students from gender discrimination. As NPR’s Scott Horsley reported, the Obama administration ”warned that schools that defied the recommendation could be at risk of losing federal funds. Thirteen states challenged the Obama guidelines, and a Texas judge put them on hold.” That administration said the directive was meant to help school districts avoid running afoul of civil rights laws, as we reported. Under Obama, the Department of Justice sued the state of North Carolina over its   bathroom law, which prohibits municipal governments in the state from passing laws protecting the rights of transgender people. It also requires trans people in government facilities to use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate. North Carolina has lost business over the law, including NCAA championship events that were scheduled to be held in the state. State legislatures in New Hampshire, Colorado and Texas, among other states, have also considered bills that would restrict access to restrooms for transgender people. On March 28, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a lawsuit filed by a high school student in Virginia. As NPR’s Nina Totenberg has reported: ”Gavin Grimm, a    senior in Gloucester County, [Va.] . .. came out as transgender when he was a freshman in high school. The school principal allowed him to use the boys’ bathroom, until some parents complained, and the school board adopted a policy that required students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their biological sex, or a separate   restroom office.” Grimm sued the school board. His lawsuit argues the bathroom policy is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment and violates Title IX of the U. S. Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination by schools. In April, the 4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the case to proceed. In August, the Supreme Court ruled   that the school board did not have to allow Grimm to use the restroom of his choice in the interim. Justice Stephen Breyer said he voted to stay the lower court order as a ”courtesy” to maintain the status quo while the court considered whether to hear the lawsuit, as The   reported. Wednesday’s documents say the Trump administration will ”more completely consider the legal issues involved” in the Obama rules and in litigation ”will not rely on the views expressed within them.” The American Civil Liberties Union’s James Esseks says in a statement: ”While it’s disappointing to see the Trump administration revoke the guidance, the administration cannot change what Title IX means. When it decided to hear Gavin Grimm’s case, the Supreme Court said it would decide which interpretation of Title IX is correct, without taking any administration’s guidance into consideration. We’re confident that that the law is on Gavin’s side and he will prevail just as he did in the Fourth Circuit.”"
"President Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, struck a defiant tone in brief remarks before conservative activists at a political conference outside Washington, D. C. on Thursday. But she held back on the administration’s rescinding of Obama administration guidance to schools on transgender rights. ”This issue was a very huge example of Obama administration overreach,     approach to issues best solved at personal and local level,” DeVos told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. DeVos added that she and the Trump administration have ”made clear, it’s our job to protect students and teachers’ flexibility and protect and preserve personal freedoms.” There were reported tensions between DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the joint decision made to rescind the Obama administration guidance that had required schools wanting to receive federal funding to allow transgender students to use bathrooms, locker rooms and participate on athletic teams corresponding with the gender with which they identified  —   rather than their gender at birth. DeVos reportedly was uncomfortable with earlier draft language and wanted to stress protections for transgender students. That was reinforced with a DeVos statement put out separately from the joint letter with Sessions, in which DeVos stressed: ”We have a responsibility to protect every student in America and ensure that they have the freedom to learn and thrive in a safe and trusted environment. This is not merely a federal mandate, but a moral obligation no individual, school, district or state can abdicate. At my direction, the Department’s Office for Civil Rights remains committed to investigating all claims of discrimination, bullying and harassment against those who are most vulnerable in our schools. . .. I consider protecting all students, including LGBTQ students, not only a key priority for the Department, but for every school in America.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday that there was ”no daylight” between the president, Sessions or DeVos but that ”there has been some discussion between the timing of the issuance and recommendations, or between the exact wording.” DeVos squeaked through the confirmation process, and in those hearings, she disavowed conversion therapy, which her family has invested in. Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota asked about it. ”I have never believed in that,” she said, adding, ”I fully embrace equality, and I believe in the innate value of every single human being, and that all students, no matter their age, should be able to attend a school and feel safe and be free of discrimination.” Earlier in her speech, DeVos struck an ideological tone about education. She took aim at the media and liberals, calling herself the ”first person to tell Bernie Sanders to his face, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” That was meant to draw laughs from the conservative activists, but   schools, known as Title I schools, provide free and reduced lunches and breakfasts to low socioeconomic students. As of 2012, 31 million children benefited from the National School Lunch program. The National School Lunch Act was signed by President Truman in 1946. ”The media has had its fun with me,” DeVos said, noting, however, ”my job isn’t to win popularity contests” with the media or the ”Washington education establishment.” She criticized $7 billion in school grants given out by the Obama Education Department. She said that administration thought ”money alone would solve the problem. They tested their model and failed miserably.” She also spoke out against university administrators and professors ”telling you what to think.” She said the ”real threat is silencing people with whom you disagree.” The University of California, Berkeley drew Trump’s tweeting ire after protesters blocked Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial former Breitbart editor, from speaking there. But he is the same speaker CPAC disinvited after video surfaced of him seeming to defend pedophilia. DeVos praised ”good teachers” and said they should be paid accordingly, but she blasted ”defenders of the status quo.” Teachers unions were vociferously against DeVos’ nomination. NPR’s Brin Winterbottom contributed to this post."
"Amid deep strains in the U. S. relationship with Mexico, a country that’s been a favorite target of President Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security chief John Kelly took part in talks in Mexico City on Thursday that were aimed at smoothing out tensions. ”That’s going to be a tough trip,” the president said Thursday morning at the White House. Some of the key issues between the two countries: immigration, border security, trade and U. S. aid to Mexico. In a Feb. 21 executive order, President Trump expanded the category of unauthorized immigrants the U. S. can deport to Mexico, including asylum seekers from other countries. Mexico’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, said earlier this week that Mexico ”will not accept” the U. S. immigration order. Speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon, Kelly sought to allay some of Mexico’s concerns, saying twice, ”There will be no  —   repeat, no  —   mass deportations.” He added, ”There will be no use of military force in immigration operations  —   none.” Earlier in the day, in Washington, Trump had described deportations as ”a military operation.” Trump’s Feb. 21 executive order also ordered construction of a U. S.  border wall. To help pay for the wall, the president has threatened to slash aid to Mexico, much of which the U. S. delivers via the Merida Initiative, a    program whose primary purpose is to deter organized crime and bolster the rule of law. The wall wasn’t mentioned at Thursday’s press conference. Tillerson told reporters that Mexico and the U. S. need to ”modernize and strengthen our trade and energy relationship,” and Kelly emphasized the need for ”safe and secure trade.” Back in Washington, the president told a group of manufacturing CEOs the trade relationship with Mexico was ”unsustainable.” ”We have $70 billion in deficits, trade deficits, and it’s unsustainable,” the president said. ”We’re not going to let it happen. Can’t let it happen. We’re going to have a good relationship with Mexico, I hope. And if we don’t, we don’t. But we can’t let that happen.” The U. S. trade representative says the trade deficit with Mexico is $58 billion, not $70 billion. The president has called NAFTA, the landmark 1994 deal eliminating most tariffs among the U. S. Mexico and Canada, ”the worst trade deal in history” and a ”terrible disaster.” He has repeatedly vowed to renegotiate it  —   or ”terminate” it. Under the tripartite pact’s terms, the president can withdraw the U. S. unilaterally, without congressional approval, giving six months’ notice. U. S. exports to Mexico, its   trading partner, have increased by 468 percent from 1993, the year before NAFTA was signed, according to the U. S. trade representative website, accounting for nearly 16 percent of all U. S. exports in 2015. ”NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters,” a 2015 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded. ”The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U. S. economy appears to have been relatively modest.” But critics of NAFTA  —   including many U. S. unions, which opposed the deal from the start  —   argue that wages and employment have both suffered as a result of it. They’ve blamed it for trade deficits, job loss to Mexico, poor job opportunities, even illegal immigration. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday that he does not foresee changes to NAFTA anytime soon, and it’s unclear what trade policies the Trump administration might pursue should there ever be a NAFTA withdrawal. But a pullout could lead to some of the very job losses Trump is trying to avoid, according to a recent report from the Center for Automotive Research. ”A wholesale withdrawal from NAFTA could set in motion a series of unintended consequences that would constrain future growth of the U. S. automotive industry,” the research firm warns. Other possible unintended consequences: A loss of nearly 5 million U. S. jobs, according to the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. And imposing huge tariffs on Mexico could push that country into recession  —   leading, perhaps, to greater immigration pressures on the U. S."
"At a joint news conference in Mexico City on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged the tension between the U. S. and Mexico. After talks with his Mexican counterpart, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, Tillerson said that ”in a relationship filled with vibrant colors, two strong sovereign countries, from time to time, will have differences.” Standing beside him, Videgaray put a finer point on the matter: ”There’s a concern among Mexicans there’s irritation [about] what has been perceived as [U. S.] policies that might be harmful for the Mexicans and for the Mexican industry.” Thursday’s talks  —   which were also attended by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong  —   come just days after the Department of Homeland Security released a pair of memos that detailed how it would implement President Trump’s Jan. 25 executive orders on immigration. NPR’s Camila Domonoske notes the two memos, which Kelly signed off on, spelled out a program that would dramatically increase and speed up the deportation of Mexican nationals from the U. S.  —   or, as Trump put it Thursday, would seek to get ”bad dudes out of this country at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before.” Mexican officials have been disinclined to see it that way. In fact, they used Thursday’s meeting to express ”concern about the increase of deportations,” Osorio Chong said. According to CNN, he added: ”We do not agree on the different measures that recently were stated by the government of the United States [that] affect Mexico.” NPR’s Carrie Kahn explains that one provision, in particular, in the DHS memos has upset Mexicans: ”The DHS guidelines say that migrants who pass through Mexico into the U. S. would be returned to Mexico even if they’re not Mexicans, to wait out their legal proceedings,” Carrie reports. ”Mexico is adamant that won’t happen.” The two American secretaries, for their part, struck conciliatory tones in their statements Thursday. Kelly assured reporters that there would not be any mass deportations from the U. S. adding that the U. S. is focusing on getting criminal elements out of the country and deportations will be orderly and respectful of human rights, Carrie says. For the U. S. Mexican cooperation  —   or recalcitrance  —   will have a big impact on its implementation of immigration policy. Mexico has been stopping and deporting many of the Central American migrants moving through the country to the U. S. illegally. And Mexican officials also must help substantiate and validate the fact that deported nationals are, in fact, Mexican citizens. In such a tense political environment, many Mexican lawmakers have questioned why they ought to maintain this cooperation. President Enrique Peña Nieto’s low approval numbers  —   he’s one of Mexico’s most unpopular presidents ever  —   appear to reflect Mexican voters’ distaste for his moderate approach to Trump’s proposals. Ultimately, ”clarity is absolutely essential” in this week’s talks, Mexican economist Antonio   told NPR’s David Greene. The visit is ”awkward but also necessary,”   said, adding, ”clarity would be greatly welcome  —   and also, the sense that Mexico is a partner, not an adversary, not a challenge but a trusted and reliable partner.”"
"Top White House advisers Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to make the case that despite seeming like a political odd couple, the two represent the successful marriage of disparate wings of the Republican Party, united under President Trump. ”The truth of the matter is [Trump] brought together the party and the conservative movement, and I’ve got to tell you, if the party and the conservative movement are together . .. it can’t be stopped,” said Priebus, the White House chief of staff and former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and former Breitbart News executive chairman, echoed that sentiment at the annual conservative confab, held just outside the nation’s capital in National Harbor, Md. ”A lot of people . .. have strong beliefs about different things,” Bannon continued, but eventually, ”you can come together to win,” he said of their successful campaign coalition. A year ago, having the two men of very different backgrounds and political pedigree share the same stage would have seemed highly unlikely  —   but, to many, so did Trump’s election. Since the beginning of the administration, there have been reports and rumors of tension between Bannon and Priebus and speculation that they represent competing centers of power within the Oval Office, with the more populist Bannon’s influence over Trump often winning out. But both quickly shot down any speculation of dissension between them. ”We share an office suite together. We’re basically together from 6:30 in the morning until 11 at night,” Priebus said with a laughed. Later on, he praised Bannon as ”a very dear friend,” while Bannon in turn admitted that he ”can run a little hot,” but that the White House chief of staff was ”indefatigable.” The differences between the two are evident from first glance. Bannon appeared in a more casual black   and blazer with khakis, while Priebus wore a suit and tie. But the message they conveyed was that despite their differences, they were able to come together to serve the president and the country, much like Trump had united the   wings of the GOP in 2016  —   from libertarians to populists to social conservatives to Reagan Democrats. Priebus said that as RNC chair, ”after overseeing 16 people kill each other” in the primary, he eventually realized that ”it was Donald Trump that was able to bring . .. this party and this movement together.” He talked about being stunned after getting outside of the Washington echo chamber and back to his home of Wisconsin and hearing person after person telling him they were for Trump shortly after he announced in 2015. Though party strategists and political analysts had dismissed Trump’s rise in the polls that fall, it was a lead that would never dissipate. That led to chants of ”Trump! Trump! Trump!” from the crowd. Bannon blamed the mainstream media for sowing inaccurate reports of discord between himself and Priebus, and he returned often throughout the interview to one of his favorite monikers for the press  —   the ”opposition party.” On the administration’s actions, Bannon called Trump’s withdrawal from the   Partnership ”one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history.” He also said that another top Trump priority would be the ”deconstruction of the administrative state,” including rolling back   government regulations and trade agreements. He praised the president’s Cabinet picks and said that ”they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction.” The two were interviewed by American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp, whose organization sponsors CPAC, and were welcomed onstage with a standing ovation and got multiple applause throughout their appearance."
"Richard Spencer, a white nationalist, was kicked out of the hotel where the Conservative Political Action Conference is taking place, a CPAC spokesman confirmed to NPR. Spencer was spotted in the lobby of the Gaylord National Resort outside Washington, D. C. talking with reporters. That’s when CPAC officials were alerted to Spencer’s presence. ”His views are repugnant and have absolutely nothing to do with conservatism or what we do here,” said CPAC spokesman Ian Walters. Spencer purchased a general admission pass Thursday morning, Walters said. ”He’s   markets,   ” Walters added. ”This was one bad egg who bought a ticket.” He described the   and Spencer’s views as ”vile,” ”venomous,” ”horrible” and ”repulsive.” CPAC is trying to send a message that it wants nothing to do with the     a white nationalist movement that latched on to Donald Trump’s rise. The president’s chief strategist in the White House, Steve Bannon, ran Breitbart, which he called a ”platform for the  .” Bannon and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus are speaking at CPAC Thursday afternoon. CPAC also invited then disinvited Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor with controversial views, after video surfaced of him seeming to endorse pedophilia. Dan Schneider, executive director of the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC, spoke out forcefully against the   at an earlier event. ”CPAC, we have been slapped in the face,” Schneider said. ”There is a sinister organization that is trying to worm its way in, into our ranks.” The   which ”had been used for a long time in a very good and normal way,” had been ”hijacked [by a]     fascist group,” Schneider said. ”We must not allow them to be normalized. They are not part of us.” Walters noted, ”It’s not even close to even being somewhat representative of what goes on here. And everyone here is in agreement.” He noted that Schneider’s speech was a deliberate addition to a   series of speeches here on conservatism."
"Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has a message for members of Congress who are citing the possibility of protests as a reason not to hold town meetings: ”Have some courage.” Giffords, wounded in a 2011 shooting outside a Tucson supermarket where she was meeting with constituents, was responding to a statement by Republican Congressman Louis Gohmert of Texas. Asked why he wasn’t holding public meetings, Gohmert said: ”Unfortunately, at this time there are groups from the more violent strains of the leftist ideology, some even being paid, who are preying on public town halls to wreak havoc and threaten public safety. Threats are nothing new to me and I have gotten my share as a felony judge. However, the House Sergeant at Arms advised us after former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot at a public appearance, that civilian attendees at Congressional public events stand the most chance of being harmed or killed —  just as happened there.” Giffords’ response was posted on the website of the gun violence prevention group she   Americans For Responsible Solutions: ”To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls.” Giffords noted that she was shot on a Saturday morning, and that by Monday her offices were open to the public. There have been protests and tough, sometimes angry questions directed at several lawmakers who have held town   meetings during the current congressional recess, as NPR’s Jessica Taylor has reported. But no violence has been reported at any of the sessions."
"The Associated Press is reporting that Beyoncé will not make it to Indio, California in April for her planned headlining performance at Coachella, one of the world’s most successful and   music festivals. In a joint statement, Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment and festival promotion company Goldenvoice write: ”Following the advice of her doctors to keep a less rigorous schedule in the coming months, Beyoncé has made the decision to forgo performing at the 2017 Coachella Valley Music  Arts Festival,” the statement said. ”However, Goldenvoice and Parkwood are pleased to confirm that she will be a headliner at the 2018 festival. Thank you for your understanding.” Coachella runs for two concurrent weekends, during which Beyoncé was scheduled to headline the festival’s second nights. Radiohead and Kendrick Lamar will respectively perform on Coachella’s Friday and Sunday night rosters. As the AP notes, this was the first time a woman was scheduled to headline the event since Björk performed there in 2007. According to The Los Angeles Times, 99, 000 people attend each of Coachella’s six days, for which tickets regularly sell out months in advance. A sign of what was to come could be seen when Beyoncé performed at the Grammys on Feb. 12, in a striking multimedia medley of two songs from Lemonade, for which she won best urban contemporary album. ”Nothing less than stunning,” Denene Miller called her Grammy performance in an essay for NPR, ”with airy yellow goddess robes floating about her crowned head and her baby, Blue Ivy, joyfully prancing and giggling around her bare, pregnant belly, she created a powerful, dramatic piece of art, an exultant narrative for black motherhood.”"
"Edward Price joined the CIA in 2006 and thought he would work there forever. Instead, he drove out of CIA headquarters on Feb. 14 after signing his resignation letter. ”Despite working proudly for Republican and Democratic presidents, I reluctantly concluded that I cannot in good faith serve this administration as an intelligence professional,” Price, who goes by ”Ned,” wrote this week in an   for the Washington Post. Price says he knew he wanted to join the CIA from his early college days in 2001. He was two weeks into his freshman year at Georgetown University when the Sept. 11 terrorists struck. ”I remember vividly watching the Pentagon burn,” Price says. ”Watching the black smoke rise, from atop one of the dorms. And knowing at that moment that public service was for me.”   to today. Now Price is 34. And it was another vivid image that led him to quit: that of President Trump on Jan. 21, his first full day in office, delivering a speech at CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia. Trump chose to speak in front of the CIA’s wall of stars  —   stars that honor CIA officers who died in the line of duty. ”He stood there, and he bragged about the size of the crowds at his inauguration the previous day,” Price recalls. ”And all I could think about as I watched him in disbelief was a mentor of mine who lost her life. And whose star was obscured by our new commander in chief, as he bashed the media and spoke about the size of his crowd in a way that was either deceitful or delusional.” That mentor was Jennifer Lynne Matthews. She was chief of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009, when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing Matthews and six other CIA officers. Price says that what stood out about Matthews was her dedication and commitment to the mission. ”Comparing that to what I heard and saw from the commander in chief, in front of her star. .. it was a lot to take,” he says. Price’s resignation comes after months in which the agency and Trump have seemed on the verge of   war. Recall the final presidential debate back in October, when Trump rejected the unanimous judgment of U. S. intelligence agencies about Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election. Price says, for him, the final straw was the recent reorganization of the National Security Council, where he was assigned to work for the last three years. ”The choice I faced was in some ways a simple one: Do I return to the CIA and write reports and analysis that would go to the White House and could well just gather dust? Or do I serve the American people in another way?” Price’s very public exit prompts a question: Might others follow suit? CIA spokesman Dean Boyd tells NPR there has not been a spike in departures. A former senior CIA official agreed, adding that ”people are watching and waiting,” giving new CIA Director Mike Pompeo a chance. Pompeo, for his part, has mostly been keeping out of the fray, though he did respond to a recent Wall Street Journal story that reported U. S. intelligence officials have withheld sensitive information from Trump because of fears he might leak it. Pompeo issued a short statement noting, ”It is the CIA’s mission to provide the president with the best intelligence possible.” The former CIA official says he worries Trump’s inner circle may interpret Price’s resignation as evidence that the CIA has an ax to grind with Trump. And outside critics also pounced after the Washington Post added a ”clarification” to Price’s column that said he contributed $5, 000 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic Party. Price denies any partisan motivations for speaking out. ”The only ax I have to grind with President Trump is the way he has treated the intelligence community,” Price says. ”Look, I will not hide the fact that I fervently disagree with many of the policies this administration has pursued. But what led me to this decision was the criticism of the intelligence community: comparing them to Nazis, accusing them of leaking, doubting their work. That is the core issue.” Price says he is not sure what comes next, other than that he hopes to continue serving his country, and he plans to stay in public service. Meanwhile, the next chapter in relations between the Trump White House and the CIA is still unfolding. On Feb. 15, the day after Price quit, the president once again accused the intelligence community of leaking. In a tweet from his personal account, Trump wrote: ”The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by ’intelligence’ like candy.” The president also complained about having to operate without a director of national intelligence. His nominee for the position, former GOP Sen. Dan Coats, has been waiting for weeks to get a confirmation hearing in the Senate. Now it has been scheduled for Tuesday, which could serve as the venue for another public airing of grievances between the Trump administration and the intelligence community."
"Update: Since this story was published, we’ve become aware of allegations of animal mistreatment and illegal trade in tiger bones and bone wine at the Siberian Tiger Park where drone video of tigers was recorded. You can read more here. Never underestimate a tiger, no matter how fat. It’s an enduring truth we’d all do well to remember  —   and one that attendants at a tiger enclosure at the Siberian Tiger Park in China’s Heilongjiang province have learned all over again. They scrambled a flying drone to catch the attention of some of the, let’s say, bigger big cats and get them some exercise. Trouble is, the tigers managed to track down the drone and bat it out of the air. Then, naturally, the Siberian tigers tried to eat it. Happily, all of it was caught on film, which you can watch above, courtesy of China Central Television. From the dramatic chase to the quadcopter’s grim end . .. to the quadcopter’s revenge from beyond the grave, when it startled the tigers as it started smoking. Eventually, the staff retrieved it from the tigers’ big mitts. As NPR’s Bill Chappell reported last year, this isn’t the only small victory tigers have recently racked up. In 2016, the World Wildlife Fund announced that for the first time in a century the population of tigers in the wild rose, getting a 20 percent boost in numbers since 2010. That said, National Geographic notes that Siberian tigers remain endangered, threatened by poaching and loss of habitat."
"Horror parodies are seldom as funny, and never as scary, as   that play their scares, er, straight. Jordan Peele  —   the shorter half of the 21st century’s funniest   duo  —   understands this, and that’s why Get Out, his debut feature as writer and director, is so truly, madly, mercilessly entertaining, even when it makes you want to jump out of your skin. It is   catholic in its tastes, liberally sampling elements of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Rosemary’s Baby and Invasion of the Body Snatchers before morphing into the most potent racial revenge fantasy since Django Unchained. But a parody it’s not: It’s as gnarly as Green Room, 2016’s nerviest thriller, whose villains wore their bigotry on their tattooed arms. What makes Get Out stand out is that its social critique  —   usually present in the   genre as subtext  —   is very much its text. That’s a writing trick Peele and his creative partner,   Key, used over and over again through five seasons of their marvelous Comedy Central series, one that boasted production values that stood head and shoulders above anything else in sketch TV. Key  Peele’s movie sendups looked like real movies, and now we have a good idea why: Peele is a   filmmaker. (Nearly all Key  Peele episodes were directed by Peter Atencio, who also directed the two comics in last year’s Keanu. That was a funny movie, but it had nothing like the invention, the intensity or the shimmering, righteous anger that Get Out possesses.) His movie is as much a triumph of craft as of inspiration. Get Out’s cautionary tale concerns Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) a    photographer, whose white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams from HBO’s Girls, though her   jawline makes you wonder how she hasn’t shown up in an Alien sequel yet) takes him home to meet her affluent parents. She hasn’t told them the man she is dating is black, but she assures Chris their liberal credentials are in good standing and that he’ll be welcomed unconditionally. Chris is wary, but he loves Rose and trusts her, so he overrules his better judgment  —   and the warnings of his TSA agent best pal, Rod (LilRel Howery, marvelous in a comic supporting role)  —   and they drive upstate. When a cop demands Chris’s ID after a minor accident even though Rose was the one driving, Rose calls out the cop for profiling even though Chris is eager to comply. In Rose, it seems, Chris has found a true and constant ally. The less I tell you about what happens once she introduces Chris to her folks  —   Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford, perfectly cast as a smug psychiatrist and a smug neurosurgeon, respectively  —   the better. Let it suffice to say that Allison’s louche   brother (Caleb Landry Jones) can’t refrain from commenting admiringly on Chris’s ”genetic makeup” and that the Armitages are weirdly insistent Chris meet every one of their neighbors, one of whom cheerfully observes that ”black is in fashion again.” Green Room’s gaptoothed skinheads had nothing on these     Clinton voters. Even more unsettling is the fact that the Armitages’ black housekeeper (Betty Gabriel) and their black   (Marcus Henderson) evince a   servility when they’re around company and behave even more strangely when they think they’re alone. But it takes a long time for the microaggressions Chris experiences at the hands of the Armitages and their confederates to harden into something more directly threatening  —   long enough for Chris, and for us, to wonder if he’s just being paranoid. Rose listens to him airing these concerns with saintly patience, but Peele’s handheld camera in these scenes keeps the anxiety high. It’s rare to find a   director so fully in command of his tone. But if 90 percent of directing is casting (an adage that’s been variously ascribed to John Ford, Elia Kazan and many others) then Peele started at 90: His actors are    great, but Kaluuya (whose expressive face you may recall from ”15 Million Merits,” perhaps the most upsetting of all Black Mirror episodes) is especially magnetic, letting us see the grinding gearworks behind his eyes without speaking a word. That other 10 percent we have to give to Peele. He opens the picture with a long steadicam shot of a young black man’s attempt to locate an address in a suburban, presumably   neighborhood after dark, while a car creeps along too slowly beside him. We’re primed to expect a Trayvon   killing, and the way the scene resolves is the first of Peele’s many  . It’s a powerful sequence, but Get Out might’ve been even stronger without it. This prologue seems inserted to   complaints that Get Out takes too long to Get Going. It doesn’t. Its pace, like everything else about it, is just right. And righteous."
"As the shorter half of the   duo Key  Peele, Jordan Peele was ever on the lookout for distinctive ways to tackle ethnic stereotyping, so it makes sense that he’d leaven his film directing debut with more than just a dash of social satire. Get Out, billed in its opening credits as ”from the mind of Jordan Peele,” is a   with a decidedly Peelean take on genre and on race  —   one that subverts familiar horror tropes while encouraging audiences to simultaneously react to them, and step back to look at them more closely. As Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is packing to accompany his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to her parent’s country house for the first time, she has lots of questions  —   about whether he remembered his toothbrush, his deodorant, his cozy clothes  —   while he has just has one: ”Do they know I’m black?” Rose says no, but that it won’t matter. Her dad, she tells him, will take him aside to say he’d have voted Obama for a third term. And indeed her folks (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) welcome Chris with open arms, even if at times they seem to be trying too hard. ”How long,” asks dad, ”has this been goin’ on. ..this thaaaang.” Chris laughs that off, as well as later references to Jesse Owens and Tiger Woods. He figures dad’s trying to make him feel comfortable, though it’s having the opposite effect. Other guests at what turns out to be a big family gathering are also welcoming. .. though in a way even Rose has to concede is a little much. As when one woman accompanies a compliment not just with a     squeeze of his biceps, but also a glance at his crotch, and the question for Rose, ”So is it true? Is it better?” Chris decides to let Rose deal with her, while he tries not to be paranoid about the fact that the family’s oddly robotic maid and gardener, are the only black folks around. Well, not ”the only.” There’s one guy, but when Chris introduces himself, this outwardly calm, studiedly preppy black guy starts screaming ”Get out!” Jordan Peele’s made a career of subverting genre expectations to comic effect. Here, he’s not going for laughs. ..or at least, not always going for laughs. But he clearly knows well the horror movie tropes he’s undercutting  —   the one where, say, black characters always seem to be the first to die. Or where it’s a pale white woman who slowly realizes something about her surroundings is terribly wrong. As a writer and a remarkably accomplished   director, Peele layers other notions on top as he’s inverting those  —   about servitude, about social privilege, about law enforcement and Guess Who’s Coming To   liberals. Before long, Chris’s paranoia starts to seem downright understated. Why is Rose’s dad talking about ”black mold” in the basement. What is it about that spoon stirring tea that feels so alarming. Should it bother us that the cleaning lady spends so much time smiling at her reflection in the mirror. Get Out is more a very smart satire with scares, than a   horror movie. But if it makes you think while it’s making you jump there’s much to be said for that. The film’s tone may be light, but its take on race feels true  —   which in this day and age, is kinda. .. scary."
"This week United Nations officials declared that a famine in South Sudan is growing  —   fueled by a deadly combination of drought and conflict. They estimate that nearly 4 million people are already struggling to get enough food. And officials expect the famine will spread to more areas in the coming months affecting an additional 1 million people. Meanwhile the threat of famine is looming over three other countries: Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, putting a total of 1. 4 million children at risk of death this year. This week’s warning follows several years of worrisome reports about droughts and food crises across Africa. And the frequency of these alerts can inure us to their seriousness. We’re so used to hearing alarms about the risk of hunger that it can be hard to grasp when a situation has reached a truly catastrophic stage  —   as it has now. To appreciate why the current alert is so momentous, it helps to understand who declares a famine  —   and what that actually means. The determination  —   which was formally announced for one county in South Sudan last month and another one this month  —   is generally made jointly by several parties: the government of the affected country, various agencies of the United Nations and a ”Famine Early Warning Systems Network”  —   called FEWSNET for short  —   that the U. S. government set up in the   to collect and analyze data from a range of sources. FEWSNET draws from both survey data collected on the ground by aid agencies and governments as well as climate and satellite data provided by U. S. agencies like NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The setup was developed in response to the devastating famines in East and West Africa in the 1980s  —   including one in Ethiopia that killed hundreds of thousands. The idea was to prevent such disasters by providing policymakers with a rating system that tells not just how severe a food crisis is but what needs to be done to keep it from escalating to the next level. Today, officials use a   scale to rank food crises that has been developed since the  . It’s not unlike the category system we use to characterize the power of a coming hurricane so that we can brace ourselves accordingly. And even at phase 1  —   referred to as ”minimal food insecurity”  —   the situation is troubling. No one is actually going without food just yet, but conditions are bad enough that as many as 1 in 5 households are only getting by thanks to aid money or because they’re taking steps that could pose problems down the line. For instance, they’re starting to sell off some of their cows, which could eventually make it hard for them to earn enough money to pay for food. This is the ideal point for governments and international donors to step in with aid to tide people over. Then once the crisis  —   say a drought or flooding  —   abates, people can quickly get back to normal. But if there isn’t enough help, the situation can quickly ratchet up to phase two where an area is considered ”stressed” or to phase three, when it’s considered in ”crisis.” At this point even with whatever aid is being provided at least one in five households is either taking drastic measures to get food or is actually cutting back on food. The drastic steps could involve selling off the last of their cattle, or eating seeds like maize kernels that they would normally plant for the next harvest. Also, for a situation to be considered level three, between 10 to 15 percent of the population is starting to suffer from what’s called ”acute malnutrition”  —   essentially the effects of not getting enough food. By phase four the situation has reached the point of an ”emergency.” One in five households is either taking steps to get by that are so drastic they’ll be impossible to sustain for much longer  —   or the family is already cutting back on food intake in major ways. ”People might start by protecting at least the main earners in the family  —   say the men who work in the fields  —   at the expense of the others,” explains Yasmin Haque, UNICEF’s deputy director of emergency operations. ”So in a household that has extreme shortages of food you might see that first the mother starts to skip meals. Then it gets to the children. And then gradually you see the whole range of family members reducing their meals from three a day to two. And then maybe from a meal a day to a meal every two days.” And Haque notes that it’s not just the frequency of the meals people are getting but the content of what they’re eating. ”In South Sudan, I’ve seen cases where women are boiling the bark and leaves of trees just to have something to feed their kids.” By this point as much as 30 percent of the population is also suffering from acute malnutrition. It often includes not just the moderate version but the severe form. ”People start looking skeletal,” says Haque. ”They have no reserves left in their body. The hair becomes bleached due to vitamin deficiency. The eyes get sunken.” People find it harder to move. ”Your immune system begins to suffer. Organ failure begins.” And yet this is still not a phase five ”famine” situation. For that, three criteria need to be met: At least one in five households now faces an extreme lack of food, more than 30 percent of the population is suffering from acute malnutrition, and at least two people out of every 10, 000 are dying each day. That is the situation in two counties in South Sudan right now  —   with an estimated 80, 000 people currently dealing with an extreme lack of food. And officials say that two more counties are at risk of reaching famine level soon. The problem is not just that there’s a drought on but a civil war. Aid convoys and food warehouses have been attacked by both government and rebel forces. Haque says the numbers of children suffering from the most severe form of acute malnutrition is particularly tragic. As of January UNICEF had treated 12, 000 of them. And going forward officials there expect they’ll be seeing as many as 25, 000 additional cases each month. While treatment can keep a child from dying, Haque notes, it cannot undo the lasting damage from severe acute malnutrition. ”It affects the growth of their intellect,” she says. ”The children are damaged for life. And the whole country is robbed of its potential.”"
"What is it like to starve to death? It’s an awful question, but it’s the question of the moment. In what United Nations   Ban   has called a ”war crime,” thousands of people in Syria have been starving because both government and rebel blockades have kept food from reaching them. The town of Madaya has been under siege for months. U. N. relief staff members reported seeing elderly people, children, men and women who are little more than skin and bones. ”Gaunt, severely malnourished, so weak they could barely walk and utterly desperate for the slightest morsel,” Ban   said, according to the U. N. News Service. This is not just a problem in Syria. People suffer from extreme malnutrition all over the world in places where there is war, economic crisis, floods, drought and all manner of human suffering. About 1 in 9, or 795 million people in the world, suffers from undernourishment, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. And that’s how starvation can begin  —   with undernourishment. People do not get enough calories to keep up with the body’s energy needs. (Although starvation may be staved off if edibles are available that would not previously have been considered ”food”  —   grass, leaves, insects or rodents.) Over weeks and months, malnutrition can result in specific diseases, like anemia when people don’t get enough iron or beriberi if they don’t get adequate thiamine. A severe lack of food for a prolonged period  —   not enough calories of any sort to keep up with the body’s energy needs  —   is starvation. The body’s reserve resources are depleted. The result is substantial weight loss, wasting away of the body’s tissues and eventually death. When faced with starvation, the body fights back. The first day without food is a lot like the overnight fast between dinner one night and breakfast the next morning. Energy levels are low but pick up with a morning meal. Within days, faced with nothing to eat, the body begins feeding on itself. ”The body starts to consume energy stores  —   carbohydrates, fats and then the protein parts of tissue,” says Maureen Gallagher, senior nutrition adviser to Action Against Hunger, a network of international humanitarian organizations focused on eliminating hunger. Metabolism slows, the body cannot regulate its temperature, kidney function is impaired and the immune system weakens. When the body uses its reserves to provide basic energy needs, it can no longer supply necessary nutrients to vital organs and tissues. The heart, lungs, ovaries and testes shrink. Muscles shrink and people feel weak. Body temperature drops and people can feel chilled. People can become irritable, and it becomes difficult to concentrate. Eventually, nothing is left for the body to scavenge except muscle. ”Once protein stores start getting used, death is not far,” says Dr. Nancy Zucker, director of the Duke Center for Eating Disorders at Duke University. ”You’re consuming your own muscle, including the heart muscle.” In the late stages of starvation, people can experience hallucinations, convulsions and disruptions in heart rhythm. Finally, the heart stops. How long does this take? There’s great variation in the amount of time people can survive without food, depending on age, body weight, whether they have adequate water, and whether they have other underlying health issues. Mahatma Gandhi, in his nonviolent campaign for India’s independence, survived for 21 days with only sips of water. One study found that hunger strikers in various parts of the world survived for up to 40 days. ”There’s really no specific number of days people can survive,” says Gallagher. Theoretically, women might have a survival advantage because they have a greater percentage of stored body fat. But, says Zucker, no study proves that. The most thorough study of near starvation in humans was a 1950 study by Ancel Keys, ”The Biology of Human Starvation,” in which 36 volunteers  —   all male  —   were given a   diet of 1, 570 calories (the average man needs about 2, 500 calories a day) for six months. It is from that study that nutrition scientists began to understand how the body reacts to food deprivation. Children are smaller and have fewer   stores to draw from. They fail much faster. ”Children are at a much greater disadvantage,” says Zucker. ”With anorexia nervosa [an eating disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat] we have to act a lot more quickly, because children and teens have fewer stores available they’re growing and their metabolic needs are greater.” What is going on during starvation internally, biologically and metabolically, is invisible. But physical and behavioral changes are on display. Both adults or children can act very much out of character. They might be irritable or apathetic or lethargic. ”Starvation is a state of threat,” says Zucker. And so people who are starving might act like a cornered animal, alert to any change around them and too quick to react to perceived threats. With a severe ongoing lack of food, people start doing things to ration food. ”They eat more slowly. They might start shredding food to make it look like there is more. You take a piece of bread and shred it so you have a pile of bread crumbs,” says Zucker. The body attempts to protect the brain, says Zucker, by shutting down the most metabolically intense functions first, like digestion, resulting in diarrhea. ”The brain is relatively protected, but eventually we worry about neuronal death and brain matter loss,” she says. Just as the heart, lungs and other organs weaken and shrivel without food, eventually so does the brain. The concern for children is that their brains are still developing and any loss of function due to starvation could be permanent. But their brains are more plastic and might have a greater ability to bounce back, after they begin eating again. ”It’s hard to know. Children suffer more steeply, but their recovery might be better. It might be a tie,” says Zucker. ”But adults and children alike can have permanent brain damage.” People who are in the throes of starvation look apathetic, lethargic  —   almost mechanical in their   reactions. Starving people may not look as if they’re in acute pain. But that doesn’t mean they’re not suffering. ”I’ve seen kids who are not kids anymore. They’re either irritated and crying, or they’re apathetic and not playing,” says Gallagher. ”And their mothers are hopeless and not showing any signs of caring.” Treatment for someone who has been starved begins with a thorough medical exam. People might need hospitalization or antibiotics to treat underlying illnesses or infections. But therapeutic foods, like a fully nutritious peanut butter paste, dry skim milk and a wide set of vitamins and minerals, work well in the developing world. And there’s one curious observation that’s been made. It’s not clear why, but the problem of peanut allergies in the West is not an issue in   Africa and other areas where severe malnutrition is most common. ”We haven’t come across any allergic reactions to peanuts,” says Gallagher."
"About 1 out of every 10 public school students in the United States right now is learning to speak English. They’re called ELLs, for ”English Language Learners.” There are nearly 5 million of them, and educating them  —   in English and all the other subjects and skills they’ll need  —   is one of the biggest challenges in U. S. public education today. As part of our reporting project, 5 Million Voices, we set out to gather up all the data and information we could find about who these students are and how they’re being taught. Here’s our snapshot: The vast majority  —   some 3. 8 million ELL students  —   speak Spanish. But there are lots of other languages too, including Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) Arabic and Vietnamese. Most ELLs were born in the United States, and are U. S. citizens. The state with the most ELL students is California  —   which has 29 percent of all ELLs nationwide. Texas has 18 percent, followed by Florida with 5 percent and New York with 4 percent. From 2000 to 2014, the growth of the ELL population was greatest in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. Based on the most recent data available, NPR found that no matter where they go to school, most ELLs are struggling because they have little or no access to quality instruction tailored to their needs. Although 90 percent of these kids are enrolled in designated ELL programs, at least one recent study argues that the quality of these programs is suspect. Funding for ELL programs comes almost entirely from local and state sources. That’s because federal education funding on average represents about 11 percent of what local school districts spend overall. Still, the U. S. Education Department does focus on how ELLs are treated. The department’s Office of Civil Rights has singled out 121 school districts in which not a single student is even enrolled in an ELL program. Overall, as many as half a million do not receive any special instruction to learn English. Identifying ELL students, Identifying and screening ELLs is tricky. In most states, school districts use the simplest and   method: a   survey. An overview of how the screening differs    can be found here. In districts with large ELL populations, schools typically test students to determine how much English they speak, read and write. This allows teachers to pinpoint their needs. Take, for example, a    who still can’t read in English. Rather than placing that student into a   or   class with much younger kids who are learning to read, that   old is placed with her peers in sixth or seventh grade, but is pulled out for intense English instruction. Another option is transitional bilingual instruction. In this model, a teacher who is fluent in both English and the student’s native language builds on that child’s language for at least   years. The goal is having the student become fluent in both English while retaining a native language. A third option is ”  immersion,” which requires that a classroom be made up of both ELLs and native English speakers. In this approach, all subjects are taught in two languages during the school day. English speakers learn a second language and ELLs learn English. The demand for dual language immersion has grown significantly in recent years. Achievement, As a whole, English language learners still lag behind in terms of academic achievement. Most are not making the transition to English quickly enough. Many ELLs remain stuck in academically segregated programs where they fall behind in basic subjects. Only 63 percent of ELLs graduate from high school, compared with the overall national rate of 82 percent. In New York State, for example, the overall high school graduation rate is about 78 percent. But for ELLs, it’s 37 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Of those who do graduate, only 1. 4 percent take college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT. Teacher shortages, ELLs are often concentrated in   schools with untrained or poorly trained teachers. The shortage of teachers who can work with this population is a big problem in a growing number of states. Gifted ELLs, Only 2 percent of ELLs are enrolled in gifted programs, compared with 7. 3 percent of gifted   students. According to the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) a gifted ELL student is likely to know much of the curriculum content on the very first day of school. But NAGC researchers have found that most gifted ELLs are not on anybody’s radar. Researchers say that, even when ELL students are identified as gifted, the impulse is often to keep them out of accelerated programs despite evidence that they would benefit from more challenging work while they’re learning English. In his book, Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating   Students, Chester E. Finn Jr. argues that school policies for identifying gifted ELLs are inadequate. Finn, a former assistant secretary of education, says schools need to train teachers to be more like talent scouts, so that they can spot gifted ELLs. Otherwise, says Finn, ”We’re losing talented kids from immigrant families who don’t know their way around the American system.”"
"Days after expanding the fight for of Mosul, Iraq’s security forces are pushing further into the strategic city’s western portion, focusing on its airport. Thousands of ISIS fighters are believed to be in Mosul, the extremist group’s biggest stronghold in Iraq. From Erbil, Iraq, NPR’s Alice Fordham reports for our Newscast unit: ”The fight to take back Mosul has been going on since October, but the push for the western half of the city is just four days old. Federal police and the army have pushed through rural villages to the outskirts of the city, and the Iraqi special forces have now joined them as they face fierce ISIS resistance around the airport. ”Around 450 members of the U. S.  coalition are advising the Iraqi troops. Inside western Mosul, a resident tells NPR that ISIS has forced residents to knock holes in their houses to create tunnels for the militants to use in the coming fight there.” According to Iraqi News, ISIS leaders have disseminated a list of nearly 150 members who are wanted for arrest, because they fled in the face of fighting in Mosul. Government forces entered the airport on the southern edge of the city for the first time since the Islamic State group overran the region in 2014, Iraqi News reports, citing state TV. So far, government forces have been able to recapture the eastern half of the city that’s divided by the Tigris River. The recent progress comes two years after a senior U. S. military official said Iraq’s military was preparing to launch an offensive to take the city back. When it was overrun by ISIS fighters in the summer of 2014, Mosul’s population was around 2 million. Announcing the new offensive Sunday, Prime Minister Haidar   said, ”Our forces are beginning the liberation of the citizens from the terror of Daesh.”"
"In baseball, if a pitcher wants to intentionally walk a batter, he has to actually lob the four pitches outside the strike zone. It’s a technique often used to bypass a particularly strong batter, or to set up a double play. But that rule now appears poised to change. The Major League Baseball commissioner’s office has proposed a rule change to have the pitcher forgo actually throwing four balls  —   instead, the bench would simply signal to the umpire that the batter will be intentionally walked. The head of the players union, Tony Clark, has signaled that it is amenable to the change, according to The Associated Press. ”As part of a broader discussion with other moving pieces, the answer is yes,” Clark told the wire service. ”There are details, as part of that discussion, that are still being worked through, however.” Mike Teevan, vice president of communications for Major League Baseball, tells The   that the change is currently under consideration. Any rule change involves many parties, he explains, and ”that process is not yet complete.” MLB. com has reported that we could see the change as early as this upcoming season. This is part of a larger push to ramp up the pace of the game, and it comes after Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that there would be no ”meaningful” rule changes for the upcoming season after they were not accepted by the players union. ”We didn’t make a deal we couldn’t make a deal,” he said, sounding frustrated. Among the proposed changes: introducing a pitch clock to reduce the time between pitches, and capping the number of times a catcher can conference with a pitcher. Manfred argued that these changes would have ”little effect of the competitive character of the game” but would ”take dead time out of the game” and ”keep fans engaged.” These remain on the table, he said. The changes would benefit the fans and respond to the ways the game has changed, Manfred said: ”I think it’s a mistake to stick our head in the sand and ignore the fact that our game has changed and continues to change. Since 1980, home runs are up 32 percent. And strikeouts are up 67 percent. Last year, balls in play were at a record low, and we all know that things like the use of relief pitchers has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. I’m firmly convinced that our fans  —   both our avid fans and casual fans  —   want us to respond to and manage the change that’s going on in the game.” Not all fans are happy. As some social media users pointed out, intentional walks are not currently automatic  —   and that means exciting and unexpected things sometimes happen. For example, a wild pitch over a catcher’s head can provide a memorable opportunity to steal a base. And occasionally, a batter actually manages to hit the pitch. Here’s a compilation posted on Twitter of some of those exciting moments (  Washington Post): ”You’re changing or altering the essence of the sport under the guise of speeding it up minimally,” ESPN host Michael Smith argued. ”The object of the game is to pitch to a batter  —   you should still have to execute those pitches.” Some players aren’t happy, either. Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin made this sarcastic point, as quoted by Sportsnet columnist Shi Davidi: ”My thing is, if they really want to speed up the game, then when a guy hits a home run, to speed up the game should a guy, just like in softball, when he hits it, should he just walk to the dugout? It’d be quicker. I’m just wondering, at what point do we just keep the game, the game?” It’s also worth noting that intentional walks don’t happen all that often. According to statistics provided by MLB, there were 932 intentional walks during the 2016 regular season. That’s about 1 every 3 games."
"More than 50 years after it was incorporated as a town, Centerville, N. C. is on its way to dissolving its charter, as the town is unwilling to impose a property tax and unable to offer services beyond streetlights. Its leaders say the rural town, which comprises less than 200 acres and has fewer than 100 residents, is struggling to pay its bills and has run out of options. Located about 44 miles northeast of Raleigh, Centerville has shrunk in recent years  —   to 89 people, according to the most recent U. S. Census Bureau data. First chartered in 1965, it has a volunteer fire department, but it relies on Franklin County for many other services and its finances have been stretched thin. State Sen. Chad Barefoot recently introduced a bill to repeal the town’s charter, after Centerville’s leaders  —   including Mayor Margaret Nelms and her husband, Henry, who’s also a member of the town council  —   decided the situation was untenable. Two community meetings backed their decision. NPR’s phone call to Nelms for comment wasn’t returned the city doesn’t operate municipal offices. But she and others have spoken to local media about the looming shutdown. ”We did it because we don’t get enough funding to keep going, and people don’t want a tax. There’s nothing else we can do,” Nelms said in an interview with the Raleigh News  Observer. ”There’s nothing left to do except this. I’m very sad.” Nelms told local TV station WRAL that only 12 votes were cast in the last election  —   and that she and the council members accounted for four of them. Centerville is the kind of place a driver might need only a tap of the brake to acknowledge  —   for a brief stretch of North Carolina Highway 561, the speed limit drops to 45 mph, as motorists pass through the crossroads that define the town. Along the way, farmland gives way to grassy yards and a Baptist church. The town’s crossroads includes Arnold’s Convenient Mart, where owner Clay Arnold told WRAL that he’ll miss the town’s streetlights if they don’t survive the shutdown. ”The streetlights are nice,” Arnold told the station. ”If it’s not incorporated, I understand they’d do away with them.” For now, the fate of the streetlights is unclear Nelms and other residents have said the town’s life won’t change after its charter is dissolved. There was never anything large about Centerville: the legislation that approved the town’s charter established its borders just 450 feet on either side of the two highways that make up its crossroads, creating a jagged outline on the map. It turns out that it will take just three sentences to delete a town from state records. Sen. Barefoot’s legislation repeals Chapter 695 of the Session Laws of 1965  —   which established the charter  —   and gives Nelms and other officials 30 days to liquidate the town’s accounts. Any leftover money will go to the Centerville Fire Department."
"What’s in a name? A lot, according to a new study from researchers at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto, both in Canada. The study found that job applicants in Canada with Asian names  —   names of Indian, Pakistani or Chinese origin  —   were 28 percent less likely to get called for an interview compared to applicants with Anglo names, even when all the qualifications were the same. Researchers used data from a previous study conducted in 2011 where they sent out 12, 910 fictitious resumes in response to 3, 225 job postings. The previous study, also in Canada, similarly found that applicants with Anglo first names and Asian last names didn’t fare much better than applicants with Asian first and last names. ”Some people still believe that minorities have an advantage,” said one of the study authors, Jeffrey Reitz, a sociologist at the University of Toronto. ”These studies are important to challenge that and show that not only is this kind of discrimination happening, but it’s quite systemic.” Reitz, who completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees in the United States and has conducted numerous studies comparing race relations in the two North American countries, says this kind of discrimination is prevalent in the U. S. as well. ”It’s a very intense belief that we’re a multicultural country in the way that the U. S. is not. But it’s not terribly different in the two countries,” said Reitz. A   study published in the Administrative Science Quarterly Journal found that Asian job candidates in the U. S. were almost twice as likely to receive a call back if they whitened their resumes by changing their names and excluding   honors and organizations. (The same was true for   candidates). Last year, a young   named Tiffany Trieu who applied for a graphic design position received a letter from the president of the studio denying her the job because ”we’ve hired so many foreign nationals that it seems time for us to hire an American, or be unfair.” Trieu was born in the United States. In the same year, the U. S. Department of Labor filed an administrative lawsuit against Palantir Technologies alleging that the data mining startup systematically discriminated against Asian job applicants. The case claimed that while 77 percent of applicants for several engineering positions were Asian, less than 15 percent of the people hired were Asian. Palantir has denied these allegations of discrimination and the case is still pending. The kind of discrimination described in the study often goes unnoticed because statistics often portray   as doing quite well  —   one of the best educated, highest income racial groups in the United States. But such statistics belie the fact that they’re still not treated equally in comparison to their white counterparts. What’s more, data on   is rarely broken up sufficiently so that it differentiates between   and  . That level of generalization can skew perceptions of how parts of the population are doing in certain regards. Reitz said that when researchers of the studies cited above asked employers to explain why they called fewer Asian applicants, they usually received a response along the lines of, ”Well, you see an Asian name and you know that language problems are going to be there.” For many   this kind of discrimination means that the pressure to change their names and shed the perpetual foreigner stereotype is strong. In 2009, Texas state representative Betty Brown suggested during House testimony that all   change their names to ones ”we could deal with more readily here.” But for many, those Asian names given at birth hold a lot of meaning. As Quartz writer Zheping Huang wrote, ”This is the only name that I feel I belong to.”"
"Last November, helium balloons with pictures of the bridal family floated over Bangalore Palace in southern India, welcoming some 50, 000 guests to a $75 million wedding. In a country of    weddings  —   lasting three days or more, featuring bridal gowns decorated with real diamonds, and guest performers like Enrique Iglesias  —   this one was big enough to make headlines: ”Big fat Indian wedding  —   no cash crunch for Janardhan Reddy!” But now there is a wedding backlash. A member of Parliament is proposing a bill to not only recommend how much a family could spend on a wedding, but also tax them for extravagance. Families who spend more than $7, 500 have to declare their estimated expenditure to the government beforehand and earmark 10 percent for a fund that will defray wedding costs for    from poorer segments of society. The proposal comes from Ranjeet Ranjan, a      minister of Parliament from Bihar, who issued a statement saying, ”These days, marriages are more about showing off your wealth and as a result, poor families are under tremendous social pressure to spend more.” There is anecdotal data and academic research on how poor families feel pressure to undertake wedding ceremonies that outstrip their liquidity, often taking out loans that could take anywhere from a few years to a lifetime to repay. But it’s not clear whether that pressure comes from within their own social class or is a   effect from higher socioeconomic classes. Indeed, wedding excess is everywhere. ”From designers to wedding planners to wedding blogs and Bollywood, all create a fantasy and imagery of what a wedding should look like,” says sociologist Parul Bhandari, a research scholar at New Delhi’s Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities. Geeta Jetpura is a cleaning lady in Mumbai. Last October, with her mother and sister, she contributed toward her brother’s marriage. Her brother took a loan of about $1, 500 from his boss at the IT firm where he works, earning $300 a month as part of the support staff. The family put in around $750, borrowing from people they work for. ”We paid for the invitation card, the band, new clothes and a bit toward the decoration,” says Jetpura. The bride’s family paid for the rest, about $2, 500. Some of the family’s employers attended, Jetpura says, and were impressed by the rich food and decor. Could they have not taken loans and held a simpler ceremony? Jetpura, her mother and her sister giggle and shake their heads. ”What’s the point then?” Jetpura asks. ”Our neighbors would say the marriage didn’t happen at all.” Anil Bosak, a migrant from the eastern state of West Bengal who now lives in Mumbai, concurs. ”You only get married once. You have to make it count. It’s a question of pride and  .” His sister’s wedding in the village cost about $2, 200, which covered ”the cost of the reception hall, the priest’s fees, and the banquet food. Plus jewelry, gifts and new clothes for everyone.” Half of that amount was a loan from the bank at 5 percent interest two years later, the family is still paying it off. ”Some people do take loans to pull off weddings for their children they can’t afford, we try to step in and prevent that,” says Kulbhushan, national secretary of the Bharat Vikas Parishad, a nongovernmental organization for social progress. (He uses one name.) ”Making comparisons is a human trait it’s natural to look up at the rich and try to emulate what they have,” says Kulbhushan. The organization tries to level the wedding field, though, by conducting mass weddings for underprivileged couples. Over the past three decades, they’ve conducted thousands of weddings, from 30 couples to 500 at one time. Here’s how it works: People sign up across the country for one of several community weddings held each year. A couple can invite up to 50 guests. There’s no charge for the ceremony or the banquet. All the costs are underwritten by donations from the organization’s volunteers and from fundraising. Sometimes, state governments extend some aid. At the last ”samuhik vivah,” or community wedding, in January, 72 couples were married. But for some families, a community wedding is seen as losing face. Geeta Jetpura and her mother laughed outright at the suggestion. ”You may as well elope then for the respect you’d get in the neighborhood.” The   wedding trend started in 2004 when tycoon Lakshmi Mittal hosted his daughter’s $36 million wedding at the palace of Versailles. Since then, India’s high society has been trying to   him both at home and abroad. Traditionally the bride wears red for prosperity (and fertility) but nowadays it’s a designer outfit that costs $6, 000 on average.   And the groom might show up on a white mare  —   or a hired elephant. The ostentation can start with the very invitation. For Janardhan Reddy’s daughter’s wedding in Bangalore last year, the invite came in a   box with an embedded LCD screen that looped a music video featuring the family. Ranjan has proposed that the expenses should not exceed $7, 500 but provides a loophole for overspenders to ”contribute 10 percent of such amount in a welfare fund which shall be established by the appropriate government to assist the poor and below poverty line families for the marriage of their daughters.” Criticism has been vocal, both against interference in personal celebrations (the press was quick to point out Ranjan had 100, 000 guests at her own wedding) as well as the tax and what it would be used for. The bill ”does not tackle root issues of this traditional practice,” says Suparna Gupta of Aangan, an organization that works for the rights of children, particularly to abolish child marriage. If there is a tax on lavish weddings, that money shouldn’t go toward a marriage fund for poor people, says Gupta: It should be ”linked to scholarships, education or economic opportunities.” Private bills introduced in Parliament have a mixed rate of being passed, but several NGOs across the country have thrown their weight behind this issue before. So it’s entirely possible that the big, fat Indian wedding might actually get squeezed."
"The French presidential campaign has been marked by scandal, surprises and upsets as the April election approaches. Now a petition is calling for an even bigger plot twist: the return of President Barack Obama. As in, French President Barack Obama. Earlier this week, the Obama 2017 campaign was launched, calling for the former U. S. president to step forward as a candidate in the French election while there’s still time. ”Barack Obama has completed his second term as President of the United States,” the site says. ”Why not hire him as president of France? . .. [He] has the best resume in the world for the job.” Posters for Obama 2017 have been plastered around Paris. The slogan, of course: ”Oui on peut,” French for ”Yes we can.” And a   website is gathering signatures to persuade Obama to run. It’s not the first time French citizens have expressed longing for Obama’s leadership  —   at least two petitions were started last year  —   but it’s by far the most successful. According to the site’s organizers, some 27, 000 people have signed the petition so far. A group of four friends  —   ”basic    guys from Paris” who work in creative industries  —   came up with the idea ”after a drink,” according to one of the people behind the site. He asked NPR not to use his name, to avoid possible legal consequences that could damage his career. ”We were thinking about French politics and saying that we were fed up with the fact that we all the time had to vote against someone,” he says, ”and how it would be cool to be able to vote for someone we admire. We came up with Obama.” ”I think the whole world would love to have him as president,” he says. We should note that in order to run for president in France, Obama would have to be naturalized as a French citizen. Also, he doesn’t speak French  —   although Michelle Obama studied the language in college, according to a biography. Anyway, that’s not really the point. ”It’s definitely a joke,” says the   of the site. ”But it could make people think a little bit about what we could do differently in French politics. . .. the idea was to make people wake up.” Obama 2017 isn’t meant to rally support for any French candidate or party, he says  —   it’s an expression of frustration about politicians in France in general. ”Always the same people, here for 20 years, coming up from the same schools, giving ministry [positions] to their friends,” the   says. ”We don’t know politics,” he says, referring to the group of friends behind the site. ”We aren’t coming with real stuff. We’re just proposing something to make people think.” NPR has reached out to Obama’s personal office for comment so far, there has been no reply."
"President Trump wants to hire 5, 000 more Border Patrol agents and 10, 000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to enforce his executive orders on immigration. It wont be easy. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was blunt when asked by a member of Congress about it. He said he will add to the ranks ”as fast as we can.” But he quickly added, ”we will not lower standards and we will not lower training.” Kelly then said he didn’t believe ”we’re going to get 10, 000 and 5, 000 on board within the next couple of years.” The Border Patrol is part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) which enforces the law at the border. ICE officers enforce immigration and customs laws in the U. S. interior. The number of CBP agents doubled during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, from 10, 000 to 21, 000. But there were problems. New agents were rushed through training and into the field, some without completed background checks. ”You have to make sure that no red flags come up in someone’s background before you’re putting them in a position like this,” says Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents Border Patrol agents. Moran says it will be ”difficult but not impossible” to find 5, 000 new agents, adding that when it comes to hiring and training border patrol agents, ”we are fans of extreme vetting to make sure that we get the right people.” Yet Moran thinks one part of that vetting is too extreme: the polygraph exam that candidates have to undergo. He calls it flawed and overly burdensome, and says it excludes a higher percentage of candidates than at any other federal agency where polygraphs are used. The AP reported that 2 out of 3 applicants fail the exam. The test can run eight hours, Moran says, and ”is excluding qualified candidates from being Border Patrol agents.” James Tomsheck, former head of internal affairs at CBP, defends the test. He told NPR’s Morning Edition it weeded out candidates who had criminal backgrounds and some   agents who were members of drug cartels that wanted to infiltrate CBP as spies. Tomsheck says there have been efforts to remove some questions from the exam, which he says ”is beyond my comprehension.” In the past, CBP has also had a problem retaining Border Patrol agents. The agency is now down some 1, 600 agents from the 21, 000 it’s authorized for. Jay Ahern, a former CBP official now with the private security firm the Chertoff Group, says one problem is sending new recruits to distant outposts. ”When you recruit somebody, let’s say from Boston, and that person’s gone through the six months of the hurdle [of the] hiring process, and you offer them a job in Del Rio, Texas and they realize what it’s like when they get to Del Rio,” Ahern says, they realize ”this isn’t what I expected it to be.” Ahern says additional Border Patrol agents are very much needed, but that it’s going to take time to recruit and hire them, administer medical exams and drug screening, fitness tests and training. ”To get somebody delivered on the border,” Ahern says, takes a significant period of time, and is ”not something that should be compromised.” Even if the process began today, it could take a year or more to bring a new agent on board."
"No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, health care under the Affordable Care Act is going to change in the next few years. The   Congress has vowed to ”repeal and replace” the health law known as Obamacare. That has left many people anxious and confused about what will happen and when. So NPR’s Morning Edition asked listeners to post questions on Twitter and Facebook, and we will be answering some of them here and on the radio in the weeks ahead. Many of the questions so far have to do with timing. For example, Steva   of Lewisburg, Penn. says: ”I’m confused about what parts of the ACA have been repealed and when those changes take place.” First, despite social media headlines, nothing substantive has been changed in 2017. That’s because making these changes is harder than it looks. In January, Republicans in Congress passed a budget resolution that called for major changes to the law to be made in a subsequent bill. Even though that process would allow them to pass a bill without Democratic votes, they haven’t been able to agree on what those reforms should look like. And there are several other obstacles. First of all, they won’t be able to repeal everything in one go, which counters a lot of the rhetoric coming out of the election. And they would be limited in what parts of the law they can replace. That said, the Trump Administration has taken some action, but no concrete changes  —   yet. In January, Trump signed an executive order calling for federal agencies to ”waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision or requirement of the act” that would ”impose a fiscal burden” on states, individuals, healthcare providers, and others in the health industry. While that could be widely interpreted, so far the only federal action in response to that order has come from the IRS. The IRS says it will not strictly enforce the ”individual mandate” that requires most Americans to have health insurance. The agency noted, however, the requirement is still law. A related question comes from Kathryn Henry of Iowa City, Iowa. She asks ”if it is repealed, what happens to people like me who currently have insurance through it and when?” Both President Trump and GOP congressional leaders have insisted that they want a smooth transition from the current system to a new one, particularly for the 11 million or so people who purchased coverage on the federal or state health insurance exchanges since the law took effect. ”We don’t want to pull the rug out from under people while we’re replacing this law,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . in January. Trump has insisted that repealing the law and replacing it be done ”essentially simultaneously,” so as not to leave people without insurance. Unless something unexpected happens, people who purchased insurance for 2017 should be covered through the remainder of the year. The bigger question is what happens in 2018. The uncertainty alone is prompting some insurers to pull out of the individual insurance market  —   the market in which people don’t get insurance through their employer. The individual market is the most affected by the health law. For example, the insurance company Humana has already said it won’t participate in the health insurance exchanges next year, and the CEO of Aetna told reporters that his company might drop out, too. If Congress deadlocks over how to overhaul the health law, more insurance companies could follow suit. Insurers were supposed to tell the federal government if they planned to participate in the insurance exchanges by May 3, but the Trump Administration has now given them until the end of June. Got more questions about what’s happening to the ACA? I’ll be back next week with answers. Just tweet @MorningEdition using the hashtag #ACAchat. Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"If you’ve found yourself with little taste for sniping in recent days and a serious thirst for entertainment that’s satisfying and warm, you’re not alone. I’ve heard this from an awful lot of folks in the last couple of months. And while there are lots of places to go to find what you’re looking for if this is the headspace you’re in, one place is the terrific Charleston season of Top Chef that’s about to wrap up. The penultimate episode is Thursday night, and the finale is in a week. To bring you up to speed: this season’s competitors included eight newbies and eight returning contestants from previous seasons. In a lot of ” ” seasons, the group is studded with   jerks and hateful weasels, but in this case, they brought back a lot of very likable chefs who had gotten    to winning. While there was heartbreak (I’ll never forget you, Sam) and while there was sniping here and there, it was such a pleasure to see a bunch of mostly nice people really try in earnest to be good at something. Spirited competition! Imagine that! And you can still jump in very easily to enjoy, I would argue, one of the best sets of three finalists the show has ever had: Shirley, a    storyteller who can connect almost everything she cooks to something in her own history Sheldon, a chill Maui restaurant owner who’s the source of most of what I now know about Filipino food and Brooke, a stealthily funny and very steady chef who plans carefully and works methodically. If you’d asked me at the beginning of the season who would be in my ideal final three, I’d have said Shirley, Sheldon and Brooke. And it happened! I never get my way with reality television! I’m not going to lie: I feel like I’ve vanquished jerkdom personally when it all comes together this well. Brooke and Sheldon have been in this position together before: they were two of the top three contenders in Top Chef Seattle, where Sheldon finished third and then Brooke lost to Kristen Kish. Kish had returned after an earlier elimination through the show’s ”Last Chance Kitchen” gimmick, which sends eliminated chefs off to fight each other (in a   series) with the ultimate winner returning to the competition right at the end. This season, Brooke herself was eliminated and then came back through ”Last Chance Kitchen.” The resonance! The irony! The . .. coincidence, but still! It’s fun to watch all these people cook, and it’s relatively rare to watch a final three without thinking, ”It would be a bummer if this bonehead emerged victorious.” But Top Chef gets there sometimes  —   including the Seattle season, where Kish was also easy to root for. If you watch these last two episodes, just know that these are all people you’d probably dig if you’d been watching them for a long time, and there’s not really a bad ending here. Which is a lot more than I can say for The Bachelor in any season where it doesn’t end with the titular Bachelor being stung by a bee."
"The   Oscar category of best documentary short has a dramatic theme this year: Three of the five films nominated are about Syrians, and each offers an intimate,   account of the devastation in that country. One of the shorts, The White Helmets, follows a group of civilian volunteers in Aleppo who search for and rescue bombing victims. They’re the only first responders left and they’ve saved tens of thousands of people, digging them out from the rubble. (The sound of bombs blasting can be heard throughout the film.) ”They began with nothing,” says filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel, who’s based in the U. K. ”They began, you know, clawing at the rubble with their bare hands. . .. They are the closest things Syrians have to superheroes.” The film’s stunning footage was shot by   Syrian photographer Khaled Khatib, who volunteers with the White Helmets. His camera follows them running into smoky crossfire just after the bombings. In one key scene, rescuers stop to carefully listen for the faint cries of a newborn baby. He’s been trapped under a   building for more than 16 hours. ”They pull him out and he’s completely unharmed,” von Einsiedel says. ”Apart from being dehydrated, he hasn’t got a single scratch on him. It’s the most extraordinary footage.” The men cheer and call him a miracle baby. Von Einsiedel says his documentary is ultimately a hopeful story in the midst of tragedy. ”One of the great things about documentary is its ability to create empathy. And, you know, there’s so much misunderstanding particularly at this moment about Muslims and people from places like Syria. We hope our film helps create bridges.” Since the film was shot, the White Helmets have stayed in Syria, where they continue to save lives but hundreds of thousands of other Syrians have had to flee the country. The nominated short 4. 1 Miles documents part of the treacherous journey some of them make. Named for the distance between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos, the film captures a day in the life of a Greek coast guard captain. Kyriakos Papadopoulos and his crew rescue groups of Syrian refugees clinging to flimsy dinghies in the Aegean Sea. Daphne Matziaraki made the film for her journalism master’s project at the University of California, Berkeley. She traveled to her native Greece to film Papadopoulos and his crew pulling women and children onto their   boat with ropes and their own hands. The captain is seen trying to revive unconscious children and get them to safety. ”This man is a true hero,” Matziaraki says. ”He, as a human being, feels this enormous responsibility to just respond and to save every life that he can. . .. It is his nightmare that he might have left somebody behind. Or when he loses somebody . .. and he cannot revive the child or he cannot get fast enough to his dock, that haunts him.” The third of these films, Watani: My Homeland, documents the lives of Hala Kamil and her four children, who, at the beginning of the film, live in an abandoned building in eastern Aleppo. Filmmaker Marcel Mettelsiefen shows Kamil’s husband, Free Syrian Army commander Abu Ali, shooting from atop a   building, followed by scenes of their young daughters crying or playing with toy guns, pretending to be what they call ”ISIS girls.” ”They were playful, incorporating their environment into their games,” Mettelsiefen says. ”I think it’s the secret of how children are able to adapt to anything.” Mattelsiefen was working as a photojournalist when he first met Abu Ali. He was shocked when the Muslim man invited him to film his wife and children. ”That’s unbelievabl[y] rare that a man allows me to speak to his wife and that she’s even able to be filmed and that I’m able to spend days with them.” In fact, Mattelsiefen spent three years with the family. In that time, Abu Ali was kidnapped by ISIS and Kamil and the children fled, eventually making their way to a small German city that welcomes refugees. Mattelsiefen follows them on their journey. ”We have seen enough fighting, shooting, dying,” he says, ”and I wanted to tell the story of how do these people survive.” Mattelsiefen plans to escort Hala Kamil to the Oscars ceremony on Sunday. Daphne Matziaraki, the director of 4. 1 Miles, is bringing Kyriakos Papadopoulos, and White Helmets filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel is bringing his cinematographer, Khaled Khatib, as well as Raed Saleh, the leader of the White Helmets. Update on Tuesday, Feb. 28: Raed Saleh and White Helmets cinematographer Khaled Khatib did not attend the Oscars ceremony on Sunday. After accepting the award for best documentary short, White Helmets filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel told NPR, ”Raed Saleh . .. couldn’t come in the end because the last couple of days in Syria the violence has really escalated and he does   work and he decided in the end his time was better placed to do that. And Khaled Khatib, our cinematographer, we’re confused about this, too. The last two weeks have been very difficult. He had a U. S. visa, he tried to board a plane and he wasn’t able to come. We’re very sad about that.”"
"In America, there is a rare echelon of pop stars so big they only need one name: Madonna, Cher, Prince. In Italy, that name is Zucchero. It’s Italian for ”sugar”  —   and it’s the stage name of Adelmo Forniciari, who first made it big in the 1980s and has since sold more than 50 million records worldwide. His latest album is called Black Cat, which includes collaborations with some of pop music’s biggest legends, including Elvis Costello and Bono. ”Music is my pusher, what can I say? Music is my drug, and when I’m on stage I’ve always been very energetic,” Zucchero says. ”I was influenced from the   artists between the 60’s and the 70’s, like Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin. [But] I grew up in the countryside, in a place . .. where the opera, like Verdi, Puccini, the Italian typical melodia, was very strong. So I grew up with these two kinds of music, and this is what, at the end I did.” Forniciari spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about getting career advice from Miles Davis, and how he came to use what he calls ”macaroni English” as a language for songwriting. Hear their full conversation at the audio link."
"Researchers are eager to test promising vaccines against Zika, the virus that sparked a global health emergency last year. But uncertainty over whether the Zika epidemic will continue affects researchers’ ability to finish testing vaccines. They need locations with an active viral outbreak to conduct   human trials and make sure the vaccine actually protects against disease. ”On one hand, you don’t want to see outbreaks of infection,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ”But on the other hand, [without that testing] you might have to wait a long time to make sure that the vaccine works.” All the vaccines being tested are in Phase I clinical trials, which means they are being tested for safety in a small number of people. According to a review paper published Tuesday in the journal Immunity, the vaccines represent a variety of scientific techniques to thwart the disease, ranging from inactivating the virus to manipulating its DNA. The NIAID announced Tuesday it is launching yet another Phase I trial for a vaccine made out of proteins found in mosquito saliva. The product is intended to trigger a human immune system response to the mosquito’s saliva and any viruses mixed with it. If successful, the product could protect humans against a number of   diseases, including Zika virus, dengue and chikungunya. All three have infected people in the United States. Col. Nelson Michael, director of the U. S. Military HIV Research Program at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and   of the paper, says he expects preliminary reports on the safety of some of the older vaccines in April. As of now, he says, it is impossible to guess which vaccine will prove most effective in providing immunity. ”Sometimes it’s difficult to predict which horse will win the race,” Michael says. Zika, which is spread from infected people to others by mosquito bites or sexual contact, often infects people without showing symptoms. In some cases it causes   symptoms, such as fever, muscle aches and joint pain in adults ― and, in rare cases,   syndrome, which can cause temporary paralysis. But it is most notorious for causing some children to be born with microcephaly, a devastating a birth defect in which a child’s head and brain is smaller average size ― if their mothers were exposed to Zika. The virus garnered international attention after hundreds of cases of disabled babies surfaced in Brazil. It quickly swept through South America and the Caribbean before stopping on the southern coast of the U. S. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a ”public health emergency of international concern” on Feb. 1, 2016, then ended the alert on Nov. 18. Vaccines that meet the safety standard in Phase I clinical trials undergo subsequent rounds of testing to gauge effectiveness. To measure this, researchers rely on the gold standard of administering the vaccine to large number of people at risk to see if the vaccine is effective. However, Zika’s recent arrival to the Western Hemisphere means researchers don’t know whether the virus will become a perennial threat, or was a   explosion. The uncertainty poses challenges for Zika vaccine development. A lull in the outbreak could cause significant delays in testing, pushing back the timetable for a commercially available product, Fauci says. While researchers can use alternative methods to measure efficacy without   testing, a decline in the circulation of the Zika virus could set progress back by years because the vaccine testing would be less reliable. ”If we don’t get a lot of infections this season in South America and Puerto Rico, it may take years to make sure the vaccine works,” Fauci says. Fauci expects to launch the next round of human trials for a DNA vaccine developed by the NIAID next month. Michael also worries that a lag in the number of Zika cases could lead the private sector to pull funds from vaccine development. It takes millions of dollars to develop a drug or vaccine, and pharmaceutical companies play a critical role in making and manufacturing them, he said. But those companies have many competing interests, he notes, and if it is hard to test a vaccine this year, federal agencies and private companies may turn their Zika prevention efforts elsewhere. ”This is a constant issue, where you put your resources,” Michael says. So far, signs suggest that the climate could be ripe for Zika again this year.    temperatures are affecting areas across the Western Hemisphere, including hotbeds of the Zika outbreak in Brazil. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that South America experienced the second hottest January in recorded history. The balmy temperatures rev up the Aedes aegypti’s behavior in multiple ways, says Grayson Brown, professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky. They tend to move faster, lay more eggs per day and feed more frequently. However, the heat is not necessarily correlated to higher numbers of the mosquito, Brown says, as they tend to live among humans, not in the wild. ”This mosquito breeds almost exclusively in human created containers,” he says. ”You don’t really find it out in the woods.” In the United States, areas with populations of the Aedes aegypti are closely monitoring their numbers. Last year, Texas and Florida dealt with locally acquired cases of Zika infection. In Texas, public health officials have monitored mosquito populations throughout the winter to track their numbers and any presence of the virus. Despite unseasonably warm weather, Chris Van Deusen, spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, says they have seen lower numbers of the Aedes aegypti and no cases of Zika. Van Deusen says the state is also monitoring the outbreak in Mexico, since heavy traffic across the border increases the possibility of transmission in Texas. Officials are expecting another outbreak of locally transmitted cases of disease, Van Deusen says. But when and where? That’s a mystery. ”There’s so many factors that go into it, it’s really impossible to make an ironclad prediction,” he says. This story was published as part of a partnership between NPR and Kaiser Health News (KHN) which is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Scientists around the United States are getting ready to do an unprecedented experiment: They plan to march en masse in Washington, D. C. and other cities on April 22, to take a stand for the importance of public policies based on science. Some researchers predict that this March for Science will release much needed energy and enthusiasm at a time when science is under threat others worry it will damage science’s reputation as an unbiased seeker of truth. The idea for the march emerged soon after the inauguration of President Trump, and the Women’s March that took place the next day. Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist at the University of Maine, says she posted a message proposing a march for science on Twitter. ”And someone else said ’Yeah, that’s a great idea,’ and then someone else said, ’Yeah, I had the same thought,’ ” Gill recalls. ”And so then we all kind of glommed together and started working on it.” There’s been a lot of concern about the fate of science under President Trump. His appointees include climate change skeptics he’s met with an   campaigner. He regularly cites false numbers on things like voter fraud and crime rates, while his surrogates defend the use of ”alternative facts.” ”Our goal, really,” Gill says, ”is to bring people together in a strong unifying message that science is important to our citizens, it’s important to our nation, and that we are going to hold our elected representatives accountable to that.” The March for Science now has a website and a Facebook page that’s gotten the attention of hundreds of thousands of people, and affiliated marches are planned from Cleveland to Anchorage. The organizers say all are welcome, not just scientists, and they’re billing it as a nonpartisan celebration of science. But not everyone buys that. Jerry Coyne, a biologist at the University of Chicago, says the only thing that binds scientists together is that they all use the same tools: things like   experiments, replication of results, and peer review. ”How do you march for something like that?” asks Coyne. ”A march for science itself is just simply a march for the mechanisms that find truth. And who is going to pay attention to that?” He says what will get attention is the politics: ”It’s going to become a partisan march.” That worries scientists who do research on some   issues. Rob Young, a coastal geologist at Western Carolina University, recently wrote an   column for The New York Times in, opposing the march. Young works on   rise, a phenomenon that some politicians would rather ignore, and thinks it’s best for scientists to interact    with   across the political spectrum. After his opinion piece ran at the end of January, Young received hundreds of emails from scientists, he says, and the majority agreed with his position. ”I’m not saying that we don’t have a problem with ensuring that science has a seat at the table when we’re making decisions at all levels of government,” Young says, ”but this march is not going to make that job any easier.” In his view, all a march will do is make scientists seem like just another biased interest group, especially since it’s scheduled for April 22  —   which is Earth Day. ”Those folks who have been trying to pigeonhole and demonize scientists as having a particular political view and identity will see scientists marching on Earth Day as a part of the environmental movement,” says Young. But other researchers say, look, if some protest signs at this march are overtly political or even inflammatory, that’s really OK. ”You just can’t hope for perfect control over what a large group of people do when they get up to express themselves,” says Michael Eisen, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. That’s why Eisen thinks scientists, who are used to controlled lab experiments, just have to get comfortable with the rough and tumble of public life. ”The people who seem to be demanding some kind of pure message, and worry about scientists seeming that they’re too engaged or something  —   I think it is a mistake,” says Eisen. ”I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a group of scientists to get together and not have some of what they talk about be, ’Hey, this administration is ignoring evidence in a really important area  —   that being changing climate.’ It’s going to happen.” In Eisen’s view, science is under threat and it’s a good thing for scientists to show they really care about how science gets used. That’s one reason why he’s not just going to march. He says he’s going to run  —   for the U. S. Senate."
"The proposed border wall between the U. S. and Mexico would run right through Native lands, and tribal leaders in the region say it would desecrate sacred sites. ”Over my dead body will we build a wall,” says Verlon Jose, vice chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation. ”It’s like me going into your home and saying ’You know what? I believe in order to protect your house we need some adjusting.’ And you’re going to say, ’Wait a minute, who are you to come into my house and tell me how to protect my home?’ ” he says. The Tohono O’odham reservation straddles the U. S.  border about an hour south of Tucson. Tohono O’odham means people of the desert. On a recent drive through the Sonoran desert  —   where rain has made the palo verde trees even greener and the saguaro stand a little taller  —   Jose points to a cactus plant. He says every living thing has a story and each story comes with a teaching. ”And I always tell people that every stick and stone is sacred. The rocks that you see along the road have meaning. Sometimes you refer to them as ’the grandfathers,’ ” he says. The Tohono O’odham people believe their creator lives in the holiest of rocks, Baboquivari Peak President Trump’s wall would cut across this mountain range  —   as well as sacred burial ground. Jose says they’re not asking the Trump administration to get out. The tribe is asking them to collaborate. ”We’re not your enemy. We’re your ally. We want to work with you in protecting America,” he says. ’Legal Limbo’ The Tohono O’odham agreed to a vehicle barrier along the border a decade ago. But it hasn’t prevented people from crossing, and the tribe is overwhelmed by the number of  . Before the Obama administration ramped up border enforcement, the tribe saw 1, 500 people a day trying to cross the desert illegally. That number has since dropped significantly, but it’s still high for a tribe with few resources. In 2010, half of Arizona’s migrant deaths occurred on the Tohono O’odham Nation. The Tohono O’odham feel like outsiders. Tribal members are U. S. citizens who can cross onto the Mexico side of the reservation. But since Sept. 11th and an influx of people from the south, the Tohono O’odham are restricted to one entry point on the reservation or U. S. ports of entry hours away. Trump says his plan to build a wall and to hire significantly more federal agents will stop border crossings. ”As I’ve said repeatedly to the country, we are going to get the bad ones out  —   the criminals and the drug dealers and gangs and cartel leaders. The day is over when they can stay in our country and wreak havoc,” Trump said last month. It’s still an open legal question how much authority the president has through executive order to build a wall on Native land. ”We’re really in legal limbo, and I think that’s a cause of great anxiety on the part of tribal peoples,” says Rob Williams, a professor at University of Arizona’s Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program. However, Williams says Congress would have the power. ”Congress can basically condemn Indian land as long as it pays fair market value,” Williams says. ”Any tribe that would seek to resist  —   particularly congressional legislation that would take that land or appropriate that land for a wall, for example  —   would have very few avenues opened to it.” The Tohono O’odham Tribe has invited Trump to visit the reservation. They believe only then, when sitting amidst an army of saguaros and on the sacred mountain Baboquivari, will the president understand that he needs to work with the tribe to secure the U. S.  border."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. As half of the experimental electronic duo F —    Buttons, Benjamin John Power has spent most of his musical career pushing toward extremes. His solo affair Blanck Mass has been a little more subtle while never shying away from overload, Blanck Mass’ instrumental vistas have been less blinding and more illuminating —  to the point where ”Sundowner,” a track from the project’s 2011 debut, was rerecorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and played during the 2012 Olympics. It was a perfect fit, seeing as how Power’s edgier, noisier impulses mask a symphonic scope of veritable Vangelis proportions. Those two sides of his aesthetic don’t vie for dominance as much as strike a nervy balance on Blanck Mass’ third   World Eater. F —    Buttons was based in Bristol, England, but Power now resides in Edinburgh, Scotland. World Eater was recorded entirely in his home studio there, and there’s an immersive quality to the record that hints at the intimacy of the production. ”John Doe’s Carnival Of Error” opens the album with a sparkling, playfully glitchy melody that comes across like an antique, windup music box  —   that is, until a sharp segue into darkness at the end of the song thrusts it squarely into the 21st century. From there, like an initiation, World Eater descends quickly into its harshest depth: ”Rhesus Negative” is nine minutes of percussive abrasion, eroded loops, and blurry glimpses into a monochrome nightmare. ”I do find comfort in a negative space,” Power said in a recent interview. And while that’s plentifully obvious in ”Rhesus Negative,” there’s an even more powerful approach taken on tracks like ”Please” and ”The Rat.” Each in their own way fuse fragmented melody  —   and even soul  —   with the   sound manipulation of Power’s work in F —    Buttons. There are no lyrics, but the mood being projected is unmistakable: In the U. K. as well as the rest of the world, alarming changes are underway, and much of World Eater seems to embody the struggle between the noblest and the most nihilistic elements of human nature. That’s not to say the album doesn’t succumb to outright beauty in spots in particular, ”Silent Treatment” and ”Hive Mind” stray toward pop territory, even as they build and collapse in a carefully calibrated chaos of eerie, incoherent vocal samples and beckoning beats. The album’s most intriguing song is also its most complex. ”Minnesota   Eas Fors   Naked” is a triptych that encompasses all of Blanck Mass’ sonic and emotional territory to date. Sprinkled with field recordings of everything from drums being pushed down a flight of stairs to the roar at the bottom of a waterfall, the track begins as a clattering onslaught of static before segueing into orchestral swells and then, finally, a section of melodic, shoegaze bliss. There’s a great amount of tension and terror at the heart of World Eater, to be sure, but that anxiety is lightened by a desire to reconcile, heal, and find peace amid distress."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. An air of nonchalance hangs over Talaboman’s debut album. To read producers John Talabot and Axel Boman describe their collaboration, there’s not much to it: just ”a Catalan and a Swede talking blip blop until we felt that we had something worth saying.” As for which thematic platitudes might best describe that ”something,” the underwhelming admissions  —   ”a journey to reach our subconscious,” to ”push imagination,” ”open your mind,” the realization that ”love is all this world needs”  —   all make a decent case that sometimes the ”blip blop” should speak for itself. Especially since, on The Night Land, a     to ”Sideral” the excellent   Talaboman track for Talabot’s    2014  ! mix, their ”blip blop” actually says quite a bit  —   specifically pertaining the role of synthesizer music in those European dance circles where classic house and techno strategies have once again hit a cul de sac. Without grandstanding, it raises the question: What lanes are open to producers with melodic and   streaks, who also take seriously the populist (and commercial) appeal of freeing as many asses as possible? In recent years, both the Barceloni Talabot and Gothenburg’s Boman have found   success in dance music and its adjacents by pursuing creative whims on the outskirts of club culture. They’ve often engaged ideas and structures more in keeping with   indie and   experimentalism, or   psychedelia. The best of their own individual tracks  —   and the records they oversee via their labels (Talabot’s Hivern Discs, and the   Studio Barnhus)  —   radiate with the feeling of   or absurd endeavor rather than beat programming. (Though   house has remained a persistent, if often distant metronome.) So it is with The Night Land, an album that only occasionally captures the dance, even if it’s likely to be pigeonholed as such due to its creators’ reputations and a preoccupation with rhythm. Thematic oddities are present from the onset. With its   mix of martial and machine drumming, and an ominous ambiance (treated vocals, feedback synth) ”Midnattsol” sounds more like a ” ” segment of a 1980s Grateful Dead concert or one of Brian Eno’s Fourth World excursions, than a club track. And the   ”Safety Changes,” weaves through nearly six and a half minutes of melodic keyboard abstraction, gracefully splitting the difference between simple   repetitions and the saccharine   radicalism of Warp Records artists like Plaid or Plone, before mixing in an undercurrent of distorted electronics. These actively   textures  —   deep drones, feedback and distortion, elongated lines that begin to take on the function of solos  —   appearing in musical spaces not known for hosting them, are a central part of The Night Land’s overall fabric. Evoking multiple generations of European radicalizers, from Manuel Göttsching to the Sex Tags Mania crew, all these tracks take one strange turn after another, until, by the end, the album has formulized the notion that its pieces will end in places quite different from where they began. This is especially true with the album’s more   tracks. Both ”Loser’s Hymn” and ”The Ghosts Hood,” for instance, unfold around a muted    —   the former guided by cymbals and a deeply melancholy melody the latter by layers of shakers, cowbells and keyboard repetitions  —   forming likeable if perfunctory grooves easy to find at 4 a. m.   all over the planet. Yet a third of the way through ”Ghosts,” small shards of unlikely noise begin to breach the atmosphere, and a stark,   synth minimalism takes over a beatless synth duet floats over a hospital heartbeat sensor to clearly accentuate the funereal point. The same synthesizer joins midway through ”Hymn” to begin a call and response, altering that track’s trajectory as well. The keys continue their conversation, percolating as the song rides off towards a sunrise, one   and bellicose, the other fleeting in the upper registers. What they are saying isn’t anything new or definitive, but the very essence and context of the exchange communicates something potentially essential."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. My enduring memory of Chicano Batman dates to the first time I saw them perform, back in 2010, at a bar called Footsies in Los Angeles’s Glassell Park neighborhood. It’d be generous to even describe the space as ”tight,” as the group was surrounded by fans so close that one could have swiped Bardo Martinez’s keyboard off the ironing board he used as a stand. Yet, as cramped as it was, once the group began playing its blend of   inflected music, it’s like the walls melted away and we were transported to a   patio on some coastal city rooftop, tar and concrete beneath our feet but a hint of ocean on the horizon. The group’s previous albums, including their eponymous 2010 debut and 2014’s Cycles Of Existential Rhyme crafted a distinct sound through their embrace of myriad musical touches, including the psychedelic fuzz of Rio de Janeiro’s tropicalia and licks of surf guitar reminiscent of Lima’s cumbia peruana. However, with Freedom Is Free, the group is now incorporating the rhythms of American soul and funk music. I’ve been so accustomed to their Global South syncretism that it took me a moment to place why, on ”Angel Child,” the snap of Eduardo Arenas’ bassline and angular attack of both Martinez and Carlos Arévalo’s guitars felt so familiar and then it hit me: It’s pure James Brown. Chicano Batman has always exuded soulfulness in a broad sense of the term, but with Freedom Is Free, they’re deliberately playing with ’60s and ’70s RB influences. Ample credit goes to new collaborator Leon Michels, the   soul producer who’s worked with everyone from Lee Fields and the late Sharon Jones to the Black Keys and  ’s Raekwon. Together, he and Chicano Batman don’t transform the group’s sound so much as subtly expand it. Gabriel Villa’s funky drumming becomes a more prominent anchor, especially on the album’s outstanding,   stepper, ”Jealousy,” while the title track still hums with   guitars, but now adds a boogie bounce on bass. As Freedom Is Free’s title suggests, Chicano Batman is also making a statement on the current moment, a deliberate rejoinder to the militaristic bromide that ”freedom is not free.” I’m not sure Chicano Batman has ever cut a track as explicitly political as the album’s penultimate song, ”The Taker Story.” Martinez, normally so languorous on vocals, brings a more forceful presence, like a   Gil   or Eugene McDaniels, singing about the predatory nature of mankind and how it leads to ”genocide and extinction, all the functions of civilization.” It’s heavy, heady stuff, but the group follows that with an instrumental, ”Area C,” a cool breeze of a closer that coasts on the group’s trademark, balmy grooves with just a hint of drum machine burbling in the background. It’s a calming, contemplative end to the album, one last strum of comfort for these uneasy times."
"The average American eats more than 33 pounds of cheese a year. This is according to Neal Barnard, physician and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. And that’s a problem, he says, because it’s helping to make us overweight and sick. Barnard’s new book, The Cheese Trap: How Breaking a Surprising Addiction Will Help You Lose Weight, Gain Energy, and Get Healthy, is set to hit shelves Tuesday. In it, Barnard writes about cheese in strong terms: ”Loaded with calories, high in sodium, packing more cholesterol than steak, and sprinkled with hormones  —   if cheese were any worse, it would be Vaseline . .. Some foods are fattening. Others are addictive. Cheese is both  —   fattening and addictive.” I’d never before thought in terms of dairy products being addictive (with the personal exception of milk chocolate, I admit). Barnard explains that dairy protein  —   specifically a protein called casein  —   has opiate molecules built in. When babies nurse, he notes, they’re getting dosed with a mild drug: ”Milk contains opiates that reward the baby for nursing.” It’s no different with the cow’s milk  —   or other mammalian milk  —   from which cheese is made. In fact, Barnard says, the process of   concentrates the casein: ”A cup of milk contains about 7. 7 grams of protein, 80 percent of which is casein, more or less. Turning it into Cheddar cheese multiplies the protein count   to 56 grams. It is the most concentrated form of casein in any food in the grocery store. Call it dairy crack.” The U. S. produces more cheese than any other country in the world, according to Barnard. The big issue, he says, is that cheese lovers aren’t just addicted to a delicious food, they’re addicted to one that may seriously contribute to health problems. He cites studies in the book that tie eating cheese to weight gain and risks of numerous diseases. Barnard suggests that giving up cheese is associated, for example, with relief of asthma symptoms. In an email, Barnard summarized the case for this association this way: ”Dairy proteins appear to trigger inflammation, apparently by triggering the release of antibodies, which leads to the constriction of the tiny muscles in the airways. By avoiding dairy proteins, the trigger for the attacks is gone.” In the book, Barnard notes that vitamin D may play an important role in protecting us against some types of cancers. Citing   data, he suggests that because dairy products are high in calcium and calcium intake can slow down activation of vitamin D, cancer risks may increase with  . He also tells the story of Ruth Heidrich, who opted for a vegan diet and exercise instead of chemotherapy and radiation to fight breast cancer that had spread to her bones, liver and one lung. It is fabulous that this approach succeeded for Heidrich in quite remarkable fashion, but cancer affects each person differently  —   and I do worry that anecdotes like this one may influence some cancer patients to turn away from treatments they need. (Yes, I know chemotherapy and radiation can be highly toxic. I’ve been there. But they can also save lives.) The National Dairy Council does not endorse Barnard’s descriptions of cheese. On Tuesday, Greg Miller, the council’s chief science officer, responded to my request for comment about some of Barnard’s claims by offering a perspective firmly centered on   as part of a healthy diet. Among the points Miller made were these: ”On average, Americans eat about 1 serving (i. e. 1. 5 ounces is a My Plate serving) of cheese per day. There are lots of options to select from  —   Swiss for     or regular. Plus, cheese contains nutrients like protein, calcium, phosphorus and B vitamins (i. e. B12, pantothenic acid and niacin). Cheese in moderation can be part of a healthy eating plan meeting total fat, saturated fat, and sodium recommendations.” And as far as that ”dairy crack” crack of Barnard’s? ”The idea that any food, including cheese, can be addictive in the same way as any drug is misleading and will only add to consumer confusion about healthy eating,” Miller said. Additionally, Miller points to research from Harvard School of Public Health that shows no association between cheese and   weight gain. For his part, Barnard includes a chapter in The Cheese Trap called ”The Industry Behind the Addiction” that describes ”the relentless lobbying of the powerful dairy industry” to promote cheese despite its risks. Barnard’s central message about the costs of   includes something I find to be quite important: costs to other animals, like dairy cows. He summed up those costs in his email: ”All of us are concerned about our personal health and that of our families. But we are not alone on this planet, and our food choices have enormous effects on animals and the environment. Dairy cows are artificially inseminated annually, then separated from their offspring so that we can take their milk, then killed by around age 4 so that their   offspring can take their place. A visit to a dairy farm will soon convince any thinking person that this is not civilization’s proudest achievement.” What about a person who is convinced by Barnard’s      argument to the extent that she decides to reduce her cheese intake, rather than giving up cheese altogether? ”People are free to make their own choices, of course,” Barnard wrote. He continued: ”However, if one’s goal is to lose weight, there is something to be said for not teasing yourself with occasional doses of the very food that caused the problem in the first place. Better to end that bad love affair. If a person is concerned about asthma, migraine, rheumatoid arthritis, or other sensitivities, one soon loses all desire for the food product that caused the problem. Also, if you have children, it would be best to never introduce them to unhealthful foods at all. The taste for cheese is a great introduction to childhood obesity.” The Cheese Trap concludes with more than 60 pages of recipes, ranging from     ”cheesecake” to   pizza. No surprise: Cheese is not included among the ingredients. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve, and her forthcoming book, Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat, will be published in March. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"As President Trump prepares a new executive order on vetting refugees and immigrants, one idea keeps cropping up: checking the social media accounts of those coming to the U. S. In fact, such a program was begun under the Obama administration more than a year ago on a limited basis and is likely to be expanded. But social media vetting is a heavy lift, and it’s too early to tell how effective it will be. Leon Rodriguez, who stepped down last month as head of U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the checks began around the end of 2015, coinciding with the rise of Syrian refugee admissions. Until that point, only 2, 000 or so Syrian refugees had been admitted to the U. S. during four years of war there. The number of Syrian refugees coming to the U. S. jumped to more than 12, 000 last year. ”Initially, we were focused on Syrian males who had some sort of flag in their application,” said Rodriguez. Over the course of last year, his agency kept ”expanding the universe of people whose social media we examined, to include larger numbers of Syrian applicants and Iraqi applicants.” The agency examined Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, he said. Most were in Arabic, and it could take an entire day to go over the file of one person, he noted. Additional staffers have been hired and trained, though it’s still a limited number of applicants who receive such scrutiny. With Trump repeatedly calling for ”extreme vetting,” such measures are likely to continue and could well expand, according to analysts. Trump’s initial executive order on Jan. 27, which froze immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries, has been blocked by the courts, but the president has promised a new order next week. Asking for passwords, In an interview with NPR earlier this month, John Kelly, the head of homeland security, indicated that extreme vetting might include measures like asking applicants for their social media passwords. ”Someone comes in and says, ’I want to come to the United States.’ Then we ask them to give us a list of websites that they visit and the passwords to get on those websites to see what they’re looking at,” Kelly said. So far, the only new wrinkle under the Trump administration has been a tweak to forms that request refugee applicants to list specific social media sites they use, according to the Department of Homeland Security. What would constitute a red flag? Rodriguez said that expressions of religious devotion were not an issue. But if, for example, a teenage boy in a refugee family had been watching gruesome Islamic State videos on the family computer, that would prompt an agent to take action such as putting an application on hold, if not rejecting it, Rodriguez said. The agency also undertook a pilot program looking at the selective use of social media vetting for other categories of people coming to the U. S. beyond refugees  —   including, perhaps, some holding student or fiance visas. Looking beyond refugees, While much of the recent debate has focused on refugees, they are just a tiny fraction of those coming to the U. S. They are already heavily scrutinized and have not traditionally been a source of terrorist attacks. Rodriguez said social media vetting provided an additional tool, but he said he was comfortable with the extensive background checks conducted by multiple government agencies, which now engage in much more   than in years past. The U. S. took in 85, 000 refugees last year, the largest number since the 1990s. That compares with more than 1 million immigrants who enter the U. S. annually. Many are coming from countries like Mexico, China, India and the Philippines and are joining family members already settled in the U. S. Those receiving temporary visas  —   tourists, businesspeople and students  —   account for the overwhelming majority of foreigners coming to the U. S. They numbered nearly 77 million in 2015. Temporary visas are the quickest way to get into the country with the least amount of scrutiny. Almost all the Sept. 11 hijackers came into the U. S. on tourist or student visas, which many had overstayed by the time of the attacks. Scrutiny of temporary visitors has been ramped up dramatically since then, but many feel this remains a potential weak spot because of the huge numbers involved. ”The focus on refugees was always badly misguided,” said Rodriguez. ”It’s totally missing the point of where our actual vulnerabilities are.”"
"The White House is admitting that it discussed with the FBI media reports that Trump campaign officials were in contact with Russian intelligence agents and that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus asked the FBI to publicly knock down the story. FBI Director James Comey refused. The administration is pushing back on a CNN report that White House officials ”sought the help.” A senior administration official told reporters Friday morning that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak to Priebus on Feb. 15 and told him the report in the New York Times about Russia contacts was inaccurate. Priebus had first been approached by McCabe after a meeting in Priebus’ office on another matter, according to the official. McCabe told Priebus the New York Times story was wrong, and then Priebus asked McCabe, ”What can we do about this?” the official said. Later, according to the official, McCabe called Priebus and told him the FBI ”would love to help but we can’t get into the position of making statements on every story.” The official said Comey later reached out to Priebus and said ”the story was garbage.” According to the official, Comey told Priebus, ”We’d love to help,” but that the bureau wouldn’t ”get into issuing a statement.” The official said Priebus got clearance from Comey to say publicly that ”intelligence officials” told him the Times’ story was inaccurate. Last weekend on Fox News Sunday, Priebus said: ”The New York Times put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies, basically, you know, some treasonous type of accusations. We have now all kinds of people looking into this. I can assure you, and I have been approved to say this  —   that the top levels of the intelligence community have assured me that that story is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it.” NPR has reached out to the FBI for comment. According to a 2009 memo from   General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice, including the FBI, should advise the White House on pending investigations ”only when it is important for the performance of the president’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.” President Trump meanwhile tweeted Friday morning that the FBI is ”totally unable to stop the national security leakers that have permeated our government for a long time” and ”they can’t even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U. S. FIND NOW.”"
"The video of about a dozen hefty Siberian tigers chasing and batting a flying drone from the sky seemed a lighthearted reprieve from the more serious news of the day. But since sharing the footage, we’ve become aware that it may conceal a darker story. Vice’s Motherboard notes that the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park in China’s Heilongjiang province, where the drone video was filmed, has a past that belies its billing on travel sites as a ”natural park for wild Siberian tigers.” The Washington Post, drawing on its 2015 investigation, reports the   park is a tiger farm that has been implicated in the tiger bone and wine trade, which was banned by China in 1993. That 1993 order banned the trade of tiger bone and its use for medicinal purposes. McClatchyDC investigated the park in 2014, along with another tiger farm, and ”found animals in deplorable conditions” in both parks. On Friday, Ben Pearson of World Animal Protection also told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that ”tigers are solitary animals, so it is unnatural for so many to live together.” Attempts to reach the Siberian Tiger Park have so far proved unsuccessful. The roughly 200 tiger farms in China have bred about 6, 000 tigers currently in captivity, author J. A. Mills told NPR in 2015. While some, like Liberty Institute’s Barun Mitra, contend that registered Chinese tiger farms can serve to tamp down on poaching by legally and safely meeting demand for tiger pelts and bone, most conservationists strongly disagree. ”The problem with tiger farming is that it stimulates demand for tiger products, which in turn stimulates poaching of wild tigers because tiger products from wild tigers are considered superior, more prestigious and exponentially more valuable,” Mills said. The Environmental Investigation Agency reported in 2013 that while Chinese farms house thousands of tigers, only about 45 tigers still live in the wild in China. But a World Wildlife Fund report last year put the number in the single digits."
"When the   of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un collapsed at a Malaysian airport last week, poisoning was instantly suspected. But on Friday, Malaysian authorities revealed that an autopsy had turned up not just any poison, but a rare nerve agent known as VX. VX is among the deadliest chemical weapons ever devised. A colorless, odorless liquid, similar in consistency to motor oil, it kills in tiny quantities that can be absorbed through the skin. A relative of the nerve agent Sarin, VX disrupts communications between nerves and muscles. Victims of VX initially experience nausea and dizziness. Without an antidote, the chemical eventually paralyzes the diaphragm, causing suffocation. That may have been the fate of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged   of North Korea’s leader. Security footage showed that Kim was approached by two women who appeared to cover his face with a cloth. Moments later, he fell ill and sought help. He died before reaching a hospital. If the Malaysian analysis is correct and VX was the culprit, that would seem to suggest that the North Korean state itself is behind the killing. ”Hardly anybody has it,” says Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert and consultant based in London. The U. S. has destroyed nearly all of its stocks of VX in recent years. North Korea is among the few states in the world that have an active chemical weapons program. It is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the use of such weapons. The South Korean government estimates that Pyongyang has somewhere between 2, 500 to 5, 000 tons of various agents in its arsenal. That likely includes VX, says Joseph Bermudez, an analyst with the website 38 North who has looked at North Korea’s program in depth. Kaszeta, who was once an officer in the U. S. Army Chemical Corps, says VX and agents like it are designed for   contamination of a battlefield. Once VX is spread over equipment or facilities, it stays there for long periods of time. Before it was banned, countries such as the U. S. and Russia stockpiled VX in large quantities with the intention of rendering strategic targets, like ports, useless. But its lethality and stability could also make it a good tool for assassination, Kaszeta says. A tiny quantity could be sealed in a glass container with no ill effects, and it wouldn’t be readily detectable by authorities. Because VX does not evaporate easily, it would not contaminate the surrounding air. That might explain why no one else at the Malaysian airport appears to have fallen ill. It remains unclear whether the Malaysian authorities will seek to verify their VX detection with official bodies like the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. ”OPCW stands ready to provide its expertise and technical assistance, if required, to any State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention,” the agency said in a statement. North Korea’s official news agency has denied the country had any role in the death. It has blamed Malaysia for fabricating evidence of a murder at the behest of South Korea."
"Malaysian authorities say initial autopsy results show a chemical weapon  —   VX nerve agent  —   was used in the fatal poisoning of Kim Jong Nam, older   of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. VX is an odorless substance that can exist as liquid or gas. It can kill within minutes if it’s passed through the skin. It is 10 times more toxic than sarin and classified as a weapon of mass destruction. Early last week, while Kim Jong Nam was traveling through the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, two women approached him, touched his face and held a cloth over it. He was able to walk to a help desk, which took him to an airport nurse area, but soon fell severely ill and died before making it to the hospital. The women who approached him were caught on airport security cameras and captured within days of the attack. They are from Southeast Asian countries and are now in custody. But police believe the plot involved far more people than the two women. Authorities are seeking at least seven North Koreans, including a diplomat, in connection with the crime. That VX nerve agent is responsible for Kim’s death strengthens the claims made by South Korea that the North Korean regime ordered the hit. VX is   and not that difficult to produce, according to chemical weapons experts. But it tends to be used by state actors. For example, Saddam Hussein is believed to have used VX nerve agent on Kurdish citizens of Iraq in the 1980s. South Korea last week blamed North Korea for the killing and called the rather public assassination a terrorist act. North Korean officials in Malaysia, meanwhile, were rejecting the autopsy’s results before it was even concluded. And to add to all this drama, someone this week apparently tried to break into the morgue where Kim’s body is being held. That incident is under investigation. The body believed to be that of Kim Jong Nam has yet to be identified by next of kin, so Malaysia is refusing to release the remains. Malaysian authorities have asked the North Koreans to provide a DNA sample from a Kim family member. But North Korea is not cooperating. The Malaysian police inspector general has been talking with the press this week, but not answering many questions, saying instead that a lot of answers reporters are seeking are ”subjects of the investigation.” Later he said that the investigation could last years. Chan Kok Leong contributed to this post, from Kuala Lumpur."
"In recent days, several Republican lawmakers have faced crowds of constituents at town hall meetings around the country who are angry that they may be in danger of losing their health coverage. A GOP draft bill, recently obtained by Politico, would likely do little to assuage these concerns. The Feb. 10 document follows the broad policy outline released by Republicans last week just before they went home for a Congressional recess. It proposes cuts to federal payments to states that have expanded Medicaid and offers tax credits for people to buy health insurance. ”This would mean fewer people could afford health insurance and that the health insurance would likely cover less,” says Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Under the plan, states that expanded eligibility for Medicaid would see their supplemental federal funding rolled back. The program would also be converted from a   program that pays for all the health care beneficiaries get, to one where Washington sends a fixed amount of money to each state for each Medicaid enrollee. To help people who don’t get insurance through their employer buy coverage, the bill offers   tax credits that start at $2, 000 for individuals under age 30. It would rise to $4, 000 for those over 60. Those credits are unlikely to cover the full cost of a plan that pays for routine health care, but could potentially pay for insurance that protects against a catastrophic health event. Levitt says those credits are less generous than the subsidies offered under Obamacare. The draft bill is consistent with what Republicans have been saying they want to see in place of Obamacare, says Rodney Whitlock, vice president of health policy at ML Strategies. ”No surprises here,” says Whitlock, who was formerly the Republican health policy director for the Senate Finance Committee. ”These are all ideas Republicans have championed. Now the Congressional Budget Office will decide if they agree.” The Congressional Budget Office will ”score” the ultimate bill, estimating how how many people it’s likely to cover and its impact on the federal budget. Spokesmen for the House Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means committees, which are drafting the legislation, declined to comment on the leaked bill. It’s not clear that the details in the    draft bill, such as the size of the tax credits, are still being considered. One House staffer says lawmakers are testing different scenarios with the Congressional Budget Office, comparing cost and coverage levels, and fine tuning the legislation. The draft bill would also get rid of the taxes created under the Affordable Care Act, including taxes on medical device makers and health insurers. Instead, it would limit how much employers can deduct for expensive insurance policies they give to their workers. It would also eliminate the mandate for individuals to buy insurance.  The bill attempts to encourage healthy people to buy insurance by mandating that they cannot be charged more for existing medical conditions, or, once they get sick, if they maintain continuous coverage. People who elect not to buy insurance at the outset would pay a surcharge when they do, and could end up paying more if they’ve been ill. Levitt is not convinced the Republican’s continuous coverage plan would work. ”Republicans are struggling to find the Holy Grail of how to get healthy young people to buy insurance,” he says. ”I’m not sure they’ve found it here, but it’s a legitimate struggle.” Senate Democrats denounced the proposal. ”This isn’t a replacement, it’s a recipe for disaster,” says Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, N. Y. ”Republicans are determined to put insurance companies back in charge, make health insurance more expensive for millions of Americans, restrict women’s access to vital health services by by defunding Planned Parenthood, shift costs to states and dismantle Medicaid, while kicking millions more off of their plan.”"
"Indiana expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in 2015, with a few extra conditions that were designed to appeal to the conservative leadership in the state. The Federal government approved the experiment, called the Healthy Indiana Plan, or HIP 2. 0, and it is now is up for another   renewal. But a close reading of the state’s renewal application shows misleading and inaccurate information is being used to justify extending HIP 2. 0. This is important because the initial application and expansion happened on the watch of     President Mike Pence. And Seema Verma, who is now President Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, helped design it. (Among other functions, CMS oversees all Medicaid programs.) So states are watching to see if the approval of Indiana’s application is a bellwether for Medicaid’s future. To get the program extended again, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration has to prove to CMS that the experiment is working and that   people in the state are indeed getting access to care and using health care efficiently. The key part of Indiana’s experiment requires   participants to make monthly payments. Advocates say this promotes recipients’ taking personal responsibility for their health care. But some health policy experts say the information provided by the state shows that the provision isn’t working as well as it should.  Here are some examples: The Claim: Most Members Are Making Regular Payments To Maintain Coverage, The Fact: A Lot Of People Are Missing The First Payment, The state’s application says that ”over 92 percent of members continue to contribute [to their POWER accounts] throughout their enrollment.” This claim is missing a lot of context. To understand why it’s important, here’s a primer on how HIP 2. 0 works: Members can get HIP 2. 0’s more complete coverage, the HIP Plus plan, by making monthly payments into a ”Personal Wellness and Responsibility Account,” or POWER account. If they don’t make the payments, there are penalties. If a recipient makes less than the federal poverty level  —   about $12, 000 a year  —   they’re bumped to HIP Basic, a   plan that requires copays and doesn’t include vision or dental insurance. If a recipient is above the poverty line and misses a payment, they’re locked out of coverage completely for six months. The state’s claim that 92 percent of members make consistent payments is based on data in a report by the Lewin Group, a health policy research firm in Virginia that evaluated HIP 2. 0’s first year. But the Lewin report also says that when people are signing up for HIP 2. 0, they can be declared ”conditionally enrolled,” which means they’re eligible but have not yet made their first payment. According to the Lewin report, in HIP 2. 0’s first year, about a third of people who were conditionally enrolled never fully joined. ”I don’t see those numbers being captured,” says Dr. David Machledt, senior policy analyst with the National Health Law Program, which advocates for   individuals. Machledt says the state should recalculate the figure to include those people, because it’s potentially an indicator that people are confused about how the program works, or that they can’t afford the payments. He adds that the figure cited is also based on the first year of HIP 2. 0, and that the rate of losing coverage for missing payments has increased substantially since then. The Claim: HIP 2. 0 Users Check Their POWER Account, The Fact: More Than Half of People Don’t Even Know They Have One, The state says the POWER account is promoting personal responsibility in health care meaning, if someone is aware of how much they are spending, they’ll choose their medical care wisely. As evidence, the state writes in its application that 40 percent of HIP Plus members ”check their [POWER Account] balance at least once a month.” Again, the state leaves out important context. According to the Lewin report, most people in HIP Plus didn’t know they had a POWER account. Of those who did, 40 percent of them checked their account once a month, but that’s much smaller than 40 percent of all HIP Plus members. In fact, an analysis of the numbers shows only about 19 percent of HIP Plus members reported checking the balance of their POWER account monthly. Rather than evidence of personal responsibility, Judy Solomon, Vice President for Health Policy at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, sees evidence of confusion. ”I think that’s another really significant finding [in the Lewin report] that so far I have never seen the state come to terms with,” says Solomon. A spokesperson for the state wrote in an   that the phrase, ”of the members surveyed” was unintentionally omitted from the application. The message did not address the overall concern that the statement was misleading. The Claim: People On HIP Plus Are More Responsible, The Fact: Experts Say HIP Plus Is Just Better Insurance, The application also says ”HIP members who contribute [to their POWER accounts] are twice as likely to obtain primary care (31 percent to 16 percent) have better prescription drug adherence (84 percent to 67 percent) and rely less on the emergency room for routine treatment.” Machledt says simply showing that HIP Plus members use the emergency room less frequently than HIP Basic members doesn’t tell the whole story. ”They don’t talk about the risk profile of those different groups,” Machledt says. He says people who are above the poverty line are generally less likely to frequent the ER in the first place. ”There’s no evidence to me that they’ve risk adjusted. .. to show that they’re comparing apples to apples,” he says. Indiana argues that the higher levels of primary care use and drug adherence for those making POWER account payments, ”confirms the principle of personal responsibility.” But Solomon says the differences in behaviors actually just confirm something else: Those who pay their POWER account have better insurance. HIP Plus makes it easier for people to access primary care and to adhere to their prescription drug regimens, Solomon says. ”The policy for people in HIP Plus is that they get a   supply of drugs, and can even use mail order, without any copays,” she says. Meanwhile, people in HIP Basic have to pay copays and are limited to a   supply of drugs. Solomon says getting less primary care and relying on the ER for health crises is worse for patients and could also mean higher costs. ”You have large numbers of people that are not getting care in the right place at the right time, and not maintaining adherence to prescription drug regimens.” The Claim: HIP 2. 0 Is Meeting Its Enrollment Projections, The Fact: No, It Isn’t, The state’s application reads ”HIP has continued to meet its enrollment goals with over 394, 000 individuals fully enrolled in HIP as of December 1, 2016.” But the state isn’t meeting its enrollment goals. According to a chart published in 2014 in Indiana’s original proposal for HIP 2. 0, its enrollment goal for December of 2016 was higher  —   424, 339. (The chart to the right is off by a month, because the state started HIP 2. 0 a month later than planned, so the actual projection for December 2016 appears on the line for November 2016.) The most recent enrollment report shows 403, 142 HIP members in January 2017, short of the state’s projection of 427, 702. The Claim: Surveys Show People Like HIP 2. 0, The Fact: The Survey Data Is Not Reliable, There’s reason to doubt the survey results that underlie much of the Lewin report, according to Dr. Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. ”They were not using what would generally be considered best practices in their survey methodology,” Ku says. Ku says the methodology available to the public is vague. From the information provided, he says there are multiple ways that bias could have been introduced into the survey results used in the Lewin report. For one thing, the sample sizes of the survey were too small to draw accurate conclusions, Ku says, and the data was analyzed using ”not an optimal method.” Ku says the results are not displayed in a scientific manner, and that it appears the survey and analysis were done in a hurry. ”You would not, as a survey researcher, have great confidence in the results that they show,” he says. Conclusion, As Indiana looks to extend HIP 2. 0, health policy experts say it’s important to get an accurate picture of how well the program is working. Requiring POWER account payments was key to making the program a reality in Indiana, but they say a more traditional Medicaid expansion  —   one that does not require monthly payments and   lockouts  —   is a better option. Dr. Jennifer Walthall heads the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, the government agency that runs HIP 2. 0. She said that in order to comment on discrepancies between the state’s extension application and the Lewin report, ”I would have to go back and look at the way that these data were reported.” She continued, ”I’m happy to look into that and get that for you.” In a separate prepared statement, the agency noted that the state ”has made significant achievements” on HIP 2. 0’s stated goals and that it looks forward ”to continuing to build on these successes with future versions of HIP . .. The analysis of this program is constant and ongoing and includes continuous conversation with our federal partners to discuss all aspects of the proposed waiver as well as program outcomes.” If the application does not go forward, the state could choose to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act without any special provisions, or not accept the expansion at all. The federal government is welcoming public comment on Indiana’s application until March 17. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WFYI, Side Effects Public Media and Kaiser Health News."
"The Los Angeles Zoo has officially announced its newest addition: a baby bongo. Eastern bongos are striped forest antelopes, with large ears and horns. They are found in the wild in East Africa and are critically endangered according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which maintains the   red list of species facing extinction. Only 75 to 140 wild bongos are thought to still live in Kenya. ”This birth is a true testament to the work zoos are doing to sustain critically endangered species,” said Josh Sisk, the curator of mammals at the Los Angeles Zoo in a press release. ”Babies like this little bongo calf engage visitors and allow the Zoo to spread their conservation message. It is our hope that he will one day father offspring of his own.” The baby bongo, a male, is almost 2 feet tall and weighs about 55 pounds. In a video shared by the zoo, he stays close to his parents, occasionally bounding over a low divider in the enclosure where he lives. Adult bongos are about 4   feet tall and weigh between 500 and 800 pounds, according to the zoo. He was born Jan. 20. His arrival has just been announced because he is now living with the adult bongos at the zoo, and visitors can see him. According to the zoo press release, the baby bongo is the son of a    mother named Rizzo and a    father named Asa and lives with two other females in a small herd at the zoo. ”Also housed in the same habitat are two   duikers, a   antelope found mainly in central and western Africa. The bongo calf has been very curious [about] his new neighbors and has expressed interest in getting to know them better,” the zoo stated. According to the African Wildlife Foundation, a conservation group, bongos can live up to 19 years in captivity. Which means this bongo will eventually need a name. We humbly suggest Bingo."
"A young woman meets a prince and falls in love. That sounds like the start of an old fashioned fairy tale, but in the movie A United Kingdom it’s the start of a diplomatic firestorm. The film tells the story of Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama, who married in 1948. Williams was a typist in London Khama was heir to the throne of Bechuanaland, or   Botswana. Their marriage angered nearby countries that were part of the British empire, including South Africa, which had just banned mixed marriage and was establishing apartheid. As a result, Khama, played by David Oyelowo, was forced to defend his marriage both internationally and at home. One scene shows him doing just that in front of a tribal council. ”We should be fighting for equality,” he says. ”That is where we should be focusing our minds, not on the wife I have chosen, who means you no harm, whose only apparent crime has been to fall in love with me  —   and mine to fall in love in with her. I cannot serve you without her by my side, but I cannot force you to accept this.” Oyelowo spoke with NPR’s Audie Cornish. On Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama’s love story, The wonderful thing about Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama is even though they were from different countries, different cultures, even though they were living in a time period where there was very real and apparent opposition to a black man and a white woman being together, they fell in love with each other’s soul[s] they fell in love with each other’s intellect they fell in love with each other’s love of jazz. They managed somehow to cut across and past the racial divide and it was almost as if, once they had fallen in love and were reemerging from that haze, that suddenly the reality of what they had allowed themselves to feel made itself known in the shape not only of familial opposition  —   both from Ruth’s family and Seretse’s family  —   but governmentally. On the political opposition to their marriage, Bechuanaland, as Botswana was called back then, was a protectorate of the United Kingdom, and so therefore Great Britain had a say in what was happening in Bechuanaland. South Africa was in the midst of instituting apartheid. But also, Great Britain was beholden to South Africa because it needed South Africa’s uranium to fight the Cold War it needed South Africa’s gold because the coffers were highly depleted after the second world war in the U. K. And South Africa was threatening to leave the commonwealth. So these two people getting married just across the border in Bechuanaland . .. was something South Africa was just not going to allow, and South Africa had a lot of leverage. On how people in Bechuanaland reacted to the marriage, The people of Bechuanaland . .. had been subjected to   behavior in their country. . .. And here was their prince, who had been sent away to be educated, coming back with a white person who, in people in Bechuanaland’s mind, was synonymous with intolerance and prejudice. And now you’re proposing that this person is going to be our queen? So, you know, some of the opposition was very understandable, some of it was purely about the disgust at the thought of this black man and this white woman in bed together. On the similarities between Khama and Martin Luther King Jr. who Oyelowo played in the film Selma, Both men had that attribute that I personally admire the most in human beings, which is an enormous capacity to love. And not just love in a thin, romantic Hollywood way  —   I’m talking about sacrificial love where you are prepared to put yourself on the line for others. And in the case of Dr. King, obviously, that was for a people but with Seretse Khama, it was for both his wife and his people. And, you know, that’s a real point of overlap that I could feel in my body playing both characters. On whether, as an actor of color, he feels there are more roles for him now than there were before, I can’t lie to you and say I’m buried under an avalanche of scripts. And the reason I say that is, look, the breadth of what you hope will be coming your way isn’t necessarily there. So, you know, I’m not going to complain about it, I’m not going to grow bitter in a corner. I just have to develop things that I want to see myself do. But having said that, you know, I asked Tom Cruise how he had managed to remain a movie star for over 30 years and he said to me, ”David, create create create. After my very first movie, every film I’ve done I had a hand in bringing to fruition.” Now, that’s Tom Cruise. So if that’s the rule for him, it can be the rule for me."
"There’s more than one fractured monarchy in A United Kingdom, a period saga of love, race and colonial politics set in both   War II Britain and a tiny African tribal nation   Bechuanaland. Some of this really happened: In 1947 the African country’s heir apparent, Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) and white office worker Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) cross paths at a missionary dance in drab, foggy   London. In the film, their eyes lock across a crowded room they bond over a mutual love of jazz that’s it, they’re hooked for life. Not having read Susan Williams’ Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation, on which the film is based, I can’t be sure that love really bloomed for the couple with that   ocular lock. But their determination to marry and return to rule his nation triggered a diplomatic row, and, conceivably, paved the way for the independence of more African countries from British rule. That’s an extraordinary story, but first we must wade through a romance between lovers without flaw, and drowning in syrup and cliché. Not what you’d expect from Amma Assante, the British daughter of Ghanaian immigrants and director of the wise and charming Belle (2013) with Gugu   as a   Englishwoman caught up in an   battle to end slavery. A United Kingdom walks us dutifully through the couple’s early travails in England, where racist street thugs and job loss turn out to be mere   for the combined wrath of Ruth’s hidebound father (Nicholas Lyndhurst) the Archbishop of Canterbury and, more crucially, Sir Alistair Canning (Jack Davenport) a nasty piece of British government work who’s in charge of finessing uppity colonials seeking independence from their imperial masters. Why would all these poobahs care, beyond the   racism that ruled the day? Well, Seretse is up at Oxford, being groomed to take the reins of Bechuanaland (minor spoiler alert, the country is known today as Botswana) from his uncle (Vusi Kunene) an   regent who fondly believes the Brits have his interests at heart. What’s more, there may be diamonds. Ruth and Seretse marry anyway, and I wish the movie’s flatly conventional early introduction to their union would let in more light (as Jeff Nichols’ wonderfully rich Loving did last year) about who these people are and what  —   Courage? Curiosity? Rebellion?  —   might drive a sheltered young white woman to commit to a union she and her lover know will bring them only trouble. And vice versa. Pike and Oyelowo (a   on the film whose wife, Jessica Oyelowo, plays Sir Alastair’s wife) are fine actors who mesh well, but their characters aren’t fleshed out enough separately or together to explore what kind of person might take such a risk and then persevere in the face of such adversity. There’s worse to come, but much better filmmaking and gorgeous landscape when the newlyweds move to Africa, only to confront pushback from a tribe newly awakening to its desire for freedom from Britain’s imperial yoke. It’s here that A United Kingdom, freer from its own yoke as a woolly tale of love triumphant, gathers steam and narrative drive. Guy Hibbert’s screenplay, stilted and awkward in early scenes, grows vigorous and sharp as the movie follows the couple’s   separation. Forced into exile with his wife stranded in Africa, Seretse becomes a potential pawn in a deadly political game that involves further backroom finagling from the Brits in cahoots with the South African government, which is busy installing apartheid while sniffing out the potential of neighboring   tribal lands. There’s a decent thriller here, and with or without dramatic heightening, A United Kingdom  —   whose title may legitimately be read as sardonic or sentimental  —   is a remarkable tale of chicanery and serial betrayal in which, by the way, Britain’s most famous prime minister plays a shockingly inglorious (offscreen) role, while a young Labour politician named Anthony Wedgwood Benn steps in to help. Sure, this resolutely populist movie takes liberties with personal history: Obituaries state that Ruth, the daughter of an army captain, was far from the humble   class girl we see marrying upward. And once settled in Africa, she became more a colonial lady than the film’s     Ruth, sweating through the days onscreen with local tribeswomen. Still, this enormously satisfying story honors the smiling, courageous couple we see in a photo behind the closing credits."
"Officials in Los Angeles have asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents working in the city not to identify themselves as police. In a letter addressed to the ICE deputy field office director who handles immigration enforcement, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, City Attorney Mike Feuer, and president of the city council Herb Wesson wrote: ”In Los Angeles, the term ’police’ is synonymous with the Los Angeles Police Department, so for ICE agents to represent themselves as police misleads the public into believing they are interacting with LAPD. This is especially corrosive given that to advance public safety, the LAPD does not initiate police action with the objective of determining a person’s immigration status.” The letter cited reporting by the Los Angeles Times that described an agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the U. S. Department of Homeland Security, identifying him or herself as a police officer. The article published an account of an exchange captured on video and released by ICE this month: ”A team of ICE agents in Los Angeles approached the house of a man targeted for deportation. ” ’Good morning, police,’ one agent announced in the   darkness. ”A man opened the door moments later. ” ’Good morning, how you doing? I’m a police officer. We’re doing an investigation,’ the agent said.” The report, published Tuesday, explained that ”there is nothing illegal about ICE agents simply identifying themselves as police officers while standing outside someone’s door,” but went on to note: ”Agents generally are not armed with search or arrest warrants when they try to detain someone on suspicion of being in the country illegally. Without a warrant, they cannot force their way into someone’s home and, instead must receive consent from an adult to enter.” A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the western region, Virginia Kice, said ICE agents wear protective vests during operations that often say both ”ICE” and ”Police” on them. It’s up to individual agents how they configure the identifying patches that attach to the vests  —   for example, whether they wear the words on their chests or backs. In a statement, Kice acknowledged, ”As a standard practice, special agents and officers with U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may initially identify themselves as ’police’ during an encounter because it is the universally recognized term for law enforcement and our personnel routinely interact with individuals from around the world.” ”In the often dangerous law enforcement arena, being able to immediately identify yourself as law enforcement may be a    issue,” the statement continued. Agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also use the word ”police” to identify themselves sometimes. Mary Markos, a spokeswoman for the ATF, wrote in an email to NPR, ”if [ATF agents] are in the process of a federal search warrant where we ’knock and announce’ at the door, we would say police. Other times, our agents would show their credentials and announce themselves as ATF Special Agents.” A spokesman for the U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency told NPR that agents generally identify themselves by saying ”DEA, search warrant,” if they are knocking on a door, or by describing themselves as agents for the DEA, not as police. The disagreement between Los Angeles and federal officials is the latest in a series of public arguments about how local governments do, or don’t, assist federal agents operating in their cities after executive actions were issued to crack down on people living in the U. S. illegally. In January, President Trump threatened to withhold federal funds to   sanctuary cities. In New York City this week, ”ICE officials publicly assailed the city government after an undocumented Salvadoran teenager with suspected ties to a violent gang . .. was released from Rikers Island despite a federal request for assistance with his deportation,” reported The New York Times. In   County, the mayor ordered county jails to honor federal detention requests from the Department of Homeland Security, reversing the county’s earlier policy, as The Miami Herald reported. And in Denver, the federal immigration agency accused the local sheriff of notifying ICE agents too late for agents to act before the sheriff’s department released from the county jail a man suspected of being in the country illegally, according to the local NBC News affiliate. In an interview with NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered, Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler discussed the tension between local police and federal immigration authorities. ”There’s a lot of uncertainty here,” Adler said. ”It’s, unfortunately, undermining a lot of the trust relationship that had been built up with our public safety officials over time. It’s sending people back into the darkness.”"
"A Kansas man is charged with murder in a shooting that left one man dead and two others wounded. Two of the victims are originally from India their assailant was reportedly heard yelling ”get out of my country” just before opening fire. The FBI is jointly investigating the triple shooting with local authorities, an FBI representative tells NPR. The agency is working to determine whether the victims’ civil rights were violated as part of the crime. The incident occurred at Austins Bar  Grill in Olathe, Kan. Two of the victims, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, work for Garmin, which has its U. S. headquarters in the town. Police say Adam Purinton, 51, shot the two men as well as another bar patron who intervened on their behalf. Kuchibhotla, 32, died after being taken to a hospital Madasani, 32, is recovering from the attack, as is the other victim, Ian Grillot, 24. Witnesses say the violence in Olathe, about 20 miles southwest of Kansas City, seemed to be aimed at foreigners. The Kansas City Star reports: ”At least one witness reportedly heard the man yell ’get out of my country’ shortly before shooting Kuchibhotla and Madasani. The man fled on foot. A manhunt ensued. Five hours later, Purinton reportedly told a bartender at a bar in an Applebee’s in Clinton, Mo. that he needed a place to hide out because he had just killed two Middle Eastern men, The Star has learned.” Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe says Purinton, 51, is being charged with one count of premeditated   murder and two counts of attempted premeditated murder. Purinton is being held on $2 million bond he’s expected to be extradited from Henry County, Mo. to face charges in Kansas. The shooting prompted an outpouring of support on Go Fund Me pages set up for the victims. A friend who set up a page for the family of Kuchibhotla says he died after ”an intoxicated man hurling racial slurs opened fire inside a packed Kansas bar.” Sridhar Harohalli of the India Association of Kansas City tells reporter Laura Ziegler of member station KCUR in Kansas City that he’s shocked by the violence. ”It kind of sent chills down the spine,” Harohalli tells Ziegler. ”I was like, wow. This has hit us close to home . .. this is home to us.”"
"Earlier this month, House Republican Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, was booed at a town hall meeting by voters who wanted him to investigate President Trump. Chaffetz said he’d been targeted by paid protesters from out of state, and speaking to NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Friday, still insists law enforcement told him that some were from out of state. Morning Edition on Thursday interviewed three voters who attended. We verified they live in his district one even says she voted for the congressman. Chaffetz says he doesn’t mind criticism, ”but I did think it was a bit over the top for an     minutes to yell, scream, flail and try to, I think intimidate and to bully people.” Like other Republicans, he faces pressure to use Congress as a check on the White House. Chaffetz insists he’s doing that. ”He is the president of the United States. He has a duty and an obligation to put the country first, and we’ll keep a watchful eye on that,” he tells Inskeep. ”But I’m also not going to go on fishing expeditions.” Chaffetz says he’s examining four things relating to the president. He’s investigating Michael Flynn, the recently departed national security adviser. He criticized presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway for promoting a Trump brand. He’s asked questions about Trump’s Washington hotel and the president’s handling of classified information, although Chaffetz knows some voters expect more. ”I think a lot of liberals in particular are surprised and shocked that Donald Trump actually won. There’s still a lot of concern and some of it’s very legitimate concern. I have questions myself,” he says. ”But I want to have that dialogue and I want to try to come up with as much bipartisan support as we can for our way forward.” On whether the president is really exempt from any business conflict of interest, The president is exempt from the conflict of interest laws. And a lot of people who for instance wanted to see his tax returns  —   I went on national news multiple times saying I thought Donald Trump as a candidate should have released his tax returns. But it’s not required by law. On former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter’s contention that the Emoluments Clause applies to the president, and that Trump should have unwound certain business interests by Inauguration Day, You’re going to have to ask the White House about that. But I disagree with Mr. Painter. I’ve met with him. I’ve spoken with him. He’s got a very interesting perspective. But the president is exempt from the conflict of interest laws. On whether Trump is profiting from his office, That’s ridiculous. I really think that’s just silly. That’s the silly season. We were very concerned in the Oversight Committee about the potential mishandling of classified information while he was at [Trump’s private club in Florida]   . That did not seem acceptable, and I did send a letter asking for clarification and really need further clarification that they are able to handle classified information. But it is something the committee is concerned about. Any time you have mishandling of classified information, I am very, very concerned about that. I was very concerned. That does raise a lot of eyebrows, enough so that the committee is investigating that. On Trump’s conducting of a domestic deal that include foreign investment though his lawyer said he would be making no new foreign deals, I think it’s something that should be paid attention to long term. If there’s evidence that somebody was using the White House inappropriately to overstep their bounds  —   as we saw the situation with Kellyanne Conway, who went on television and started talking about Ivanka Trump’s clothing line. You can’t do that. First I’ve ever heard of that. [To investigate it] there would have to be evidence. Again, not looking at any of the details, but unless there’s evidence that they were somehow misusing the office, that would be a different standard than the normal course of business that the Trump organization  —   and there’s lots of different investments in companies in holding companies and whatnot. Absent to that, I don’t think that the committee would be looking into that."
"Shortly after 1 p. m. Friday, the temperature in Buffalo, N. Y. hit 71 degrees, according to the National Weather Service, in the latest sign of the mild, even warm, winter that much of the Eastern U. S. is experiencing. By midday, Boston had also hit 71  —   also a record. Both temperatures equal or set new benchmarks for record highs in the month of February. ”That surpasses the 70 degrees reached on Feb. 24, 1985” in Boston, member station WBUR reports. ”Records go back to 1872, according to the National Weather Service.” In Buffalo,   temperatures broke the Feb. 24 record shortly before 1 p. m. according to the NWS office at Buffalo International Airport. It then rose further to 71, equaling a mark set in 2000. Buffalo’s record of 67 degrees on Feb. 24 had stood for 111 years, according to the Buffalo News. To put that 1906 date in perspective, Theodore Roosevelt was president. At the time, local news included an inquiry into reports of fish being dynamited in the Niagara River, the newspaper says. On a broader level, on Feb. 24, 1906, the author Upton Sinclair was just days away from publishing his seminal novel, The Jungle. By the end of next week, Buffalo (and other areas) could be facing a return to winter. The National Weather Service predicts a chance of snow on Thursday, with a high near 34 degrees."
"President Trump skipped the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last year, but this year he was the annual gathering’s hero who had finally returned the White House to Republicans. Trump’s   of just under an hour, which he delivered to the adoring crowd just outside Washington on Friday morning, felt more like a campaign speech than a presidential address, reliving many of his greatest hits and applause lines on the campaign trail  —   even down to the crowd breaking out in chants of ”lock her up” about his vanquished rival, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The president boasted to attendees that ”the era of empty talk is over” as he began to tick off each of his campaign promises. ”We’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare,” he promised, despite the fact that Republicans have not yet settled on an alternative plan. ”We’re going to build a wall. Don’t worry about it,” Trump crowed to the crowd, saying the plans were ”way ahead of schedule.” ”As we speak today, immigration officers are finding gang members, drug dealers and criminal aliens and throwing them the hell out,” the president said. The comments follow memos this week from the Department of Homeland Security on how it will be enforcing executive orders on immigration and border security. Attendees loved Trump’s strongman approach as he promised to rebuild the military and take on terrorism. ”As part of my pledge to restore safety for the American people, I have also directed the defense community to develop a plan to totally obliterate ISIS,” he said to cheers. ”Working with our allies, we will eradicate this evil from the face of the Earth.” And of course he threw plenty of jabs at his favorite punching bag  —   the media. Trump claimed that the ”dishonest media” would say he didn’t receive a standing ovation because everyone was standing in the room and never sat down. And then he doubled down on his tweet a week ago calling the media the ”enemy of the people.” Trump claimed his comments had been misrepresented because he didn’t call all media the enemy  —   just the ”fake news,” though he cited mainstream news sources that do not print fake news stories, such as CNN, NBC News, CBS News and others. And he took aim at the use of anonymous or unnamed background sources in the media  —   even though, as is a common practice in many administrations, a ”senior administration official” had just briefed reporters Friday morning on the condition of not being named. ”I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources,” Trump said. ”They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there. Let their name be put out.” With his usual bombast, the president boasted that ”nobody loves [the First Amendment] better than me. Nobody.” But then he went on to issue an ominous warning: ”So just in finishing, I say [the fake news] doesn’t represent the people, it . .. never will represent the people, and we’re going to do something about it because we have to go out and have to speak our minds and we have to be honest. Our victory was a win like nobody has ever seen before.” Overall, the love was palpable from both sides as Trump addressed a capacity CPAC crowd. ”I love this place. Love you people,” the president said as he took the stage. ”I wouldn’t miss a chance to talk to my friends. These are my friends.” That wasn’t always the case. A year ago he wasn’t most attendees’ first choice at the gathering, which is typically more   and hews more closely to conservative orthodoxy than the Trump brand of populism he campaigned on. Trump ultimately did not attend. A rising ”Never Trump” movement was forming at that time in the campaign, but Trump said Friday that the reason he skipped out was that he ”was worried that I would be, at that time, too controversial” given his desire for border security and a ”very, very strong military.” Trump acknowledged that it was this very conference that may well have launched his electoral career six years ago when he made a   appearance at CPAC in 2011. The way the president told it, that’s where he caught the political bug, loving the people there and the ”commotion.” ”But it gave me an idea. And I got a little bit concerned when I saw what was happening in the country. And I said, ’Let’s go to it,’ ” Trump said. ”So, it was very exciting. I walked the stage on CPAC. I’ll never forget it, really. I had very little notes and even less preparation. So when you have practically no notes and no preparation and then you leave and everybody was thrilled, I said, ’I think I like this business.’ ” Now, as White House counselor Kellyanne Conway joked during her remarks Thursday morning, the conference is beginning to feel like ”TPAC” in honor of Trump."
"Vice President Pence is no stranger to the Conservative Political Action Conference, having addressed the annual gathering nine times when he was an Indiana governor and congressman. But on Thursday night he appeared in his new role to give a vigorous defense of the first month of President Trump’s administration and pledge that the priorities their team laid out on the campaign trail would become a reality. ”Over at the White House, I like to say we’re in the   business these days,” Pence said, going on to list the administration’s priorities. Using Trump’s campaign slogan, Pence ticked off the ways they were already ”making America great again”  —   from ”putting Americans back to work already” to ”rebuilding the military and putting our enemies on notice . .. supporting law enforcement and ending illegal immigration once and for all . .. rolling back big government and slashing through red tape . ...[and] leading the fight to repeal and replace Obamacare.” Like the president often does, Pence took some time to revel in their unlikely win last November, boasting about the ”blue wall” of the Midwest in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio that Trump was able to flip to the GOP column to defeat Hillary Clinton. And he chided another favorite opponent  —   the media  —   for not foreseeing the outcome and for continued skepticism of the new administration. ”What they should have learned on Election Day is, this is not a government of the elites, by the media, or for the establishment,” Pence said. ”What November 8th showed, even if they didn’t listen, is that this is still government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Still, Pence acknowledged that their work wasn’t over, telling the crowd that ”the most important work now lies ahead” and that ”President Trump will fight for you every single day.” Pence joked about the fact that he is indeed much different from the   . ”You know, I’m a small town guy. He’s big city. I’m Midwest, he’s Manhattan Island. He’s known for his bigger than life personality, his charm, and his charisma. And I’m, like, not,” the vice president laughed. Still, Pence said, he had no hesitation when asked to join Trump’s ticket and was proud to serve with ”a man for president who never quits, he never backs down, he is a fighter, he is a winner.” In fact, in years past, it was Pence’s brand of conservatism that was more germane to the massive gathering that has attracted a mix of social conservative and libertarians instead of Trump’s brand of populism. As NPR’s Don Gonyea noted, the former reality TV star and real estate mogul ”has not always been warmly welcomed in this particular room.” Trump will speak to the gathering on Friday morning. Pence, however, was right at home with the CPAC crowd, giving them the red meat they wanted. ”Let me assure you, America’s Obamacare nightmare is about to end!” he crowed, while chastising ”liberal activists at town halls around the country” who have come out to protest to GOP members of Congress, who are home for recess, the possible repeal and replacement of the law. ”This failed law is crippling the American economy and crushing the American people,” Pence said. ”Talk about your fake news, folks. Just look at all the promises liberals made about Obamacare.” But Pence also cautioned conservatives that they couldn’t rest on their laurels, and warned that Democrats were already salivating at the chance to knock them down. ”The other side is not sitting idle, and their allies in the media are more than willing to amplify their defense of the failed status quo every single day,” Pence said, encouraging conservatives to ”make your voices heard in town halls with your family and your friends, on the Internet and social media, and all those places where commonsense conservative messages are most desperately needed, because this is our time.” ”We’ve got to mobilize,” Pence continued. ”We’ve got to march forward, as if it’s the most important time in the history of our movement, because it is.”"
"The newly appointed Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is moving to scale back the implementation of sweeping privacy rules for Internet providers passed last year. Chairman Ajit Pai on Friday asked the FCC to hit pause on the rollout of one part of those rules that was scheduled to go into effect next week. This marks the latest in his efforts to roll back his predecessor’s regulatory moves. Overall, the privacy rules would regulate how ISPs have to disclose to their customers what information is collected on them and how it’s used or shared with other companies  —   including guidance on getting consumers’ consent in some cases. Pai’s move on Friday does not target those   regulations, but goes after one element of the rules related to security protocols and other measures ISPs have to take to protect the collected data. While the rest of the FCC’s privacy regulations are still winding through required government reviews, the data security rules were set to go into effect on March 2. ”This is the first robin of spring,” says Andrew Jay Schwartzman, veteran telecom lawyer now at the Georgetown University Law Center. ”These rules are about to go into effect so (Pai) has got to act on them now. . .. He’s got more time to act on the other rules.” A group of telecom associations and companies, including Comcast, Verizon, ATT and   has filed a petition asking the FCC to halt broader privacy rules, which were passed in part on the basis of the broader authority the agency claimed over the industry through its landmark ”net neutrality” overhaul. As we’ve reported before, telecom and cable companies argue that the new FCC privacy rules put them on an unequal footing with other Internet companies that collect data on users, like Google and Netflix, which are only overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC’s privacy guidelines are less stringent than the ones passed by the FCC and they are implemented through investigations and enforcement, rather than   regulations. When the Democratic majority passed the FCC privacy rules, Republican commissioners  —   including   Pai  —   called them corporate favoritism. This sentiment was echoed in the statement the FCC issued on Friday: ”Chairman Pai believes that the best way to protect the online privacy of American consumers is through a comprehensive and uniform regulatory framework. All actors in the online space should be subject to the same rules, and the federal government shouldn’t favor one set of companies over another. Therefore, he has advocated returning to a   privacy framework for the online world and harmonizing the FCC’s privacy rules for broadband providers with the FTC’s standards for others in the digital economy. Unfortunately, one of the previous administration’s privacy rules that is scheduled to take effect on March 2 is not consistent with the FTC’s privacy standards.” Consumer advocacy groups have argued that the ISPs have a broader capacity to collect data on people than websites and digital services, given that ISPs connect users to all those websites and services in the first place. ISPs might use the collected data for their own promotions or sell it to data brokers for marketing or other uses. Pai’s move on Friday seeks a vote of his fellow commissioners, of which there are currently two: a Democrat and a Republican. But even without the vote, the FCC staff can hit pause on the data security part of the rules until the full FCC vote on the pending petitions to reconsider the broader privacy rules."
"Many studies designed to try out new drugs simply languish. They don’t attract enough patients, and they aren’t completed. That slows medical progress. But here’s a story of one study that has bucked that trend  —   in fact, it is so popular, scientists had to put the brakes on it for a while. The study is called the   trial. It upends the normal way of classifying cancers for treatment: Instead of categorizing malignancies by the organ where they first appear, this method of sorting focuses on particular mutations in the genes of cancer cells. ”Instead of thinking of a breast cancer treatment or a lung cancer treatment or colon, it looks at the different mutations that occur in the tumors,” explains oncologist Robert Comis, who leads the study.   recruits people who have tried and failed the traditional cancer treatments. People like    Nancy Nahmias. ”It all started when I was diagnosed with cancer of the liver,” Nahmias says. ”I was put on chemo, which I reacted very poorly to.” In fact, she developed a severe reaction called sepsis, which put her in the hospital for six weeks. Standard chemotherapy was out of the question, her doctors told her. Nahmias’ daughter, a physician, learned about the   trial and encouraged her mother to give it a try. Scientists screened the genetic pattern of her tumor and found a mutation that might be amenable to a treatment not usually given to patients who have liver cancer. Nahmias signed up about two months ago, at Thomas Jefferson University, one of many sites running the study. The study has been recruiting patients at a record pace. In its first three months it enrolled 800 patients, far more than the 150 the researchers expected, Comis says. The organizers had to pause the study briefly, to reconfigure their labs to keep up with the flood of patients. That rapid clip is no doubt because the study is aimed at patients who are running out of traditional treatment options. But it’s also because the researchers who designed the study stopped to ask what would appeal to potential participants. Nancy Roach, a longtime patient’s advocate who lives in rural Oregon, got involved early on, and helped advise the scientists planning this study. Know your audience, ”This is going to sound goofy, but my dad was in advertising,” she tells Shots. ”Remember the scrubbing bubbles  —   Dow scrubbing bubbles? That was my dad. So I grew up watching commercials and thinking about what consumers wanted.” Roach brought that sensibility to the conferences where the   trial was being designed. The original plan would have split the study participants who seem to be doing well on the test treatment into two groups. One group would continue the treatment the other would take a break, called a drug holiday. Roach remembers her immediate reaction to that design: ”Taking a patient who’s responding to treatment and taking them off treatment? That is not going to fly.” She correctly anticipated how patients like Nancy Nahmias would have reacted, as they deliberated whether to sign up for the trial. ”I would not have liked that,” Nahmias says. ”If it seems to be working, let’s face it, I don’t want to do anything to sabotage myself.” Dr. Peter O’Dwyer, a University of Pennsylvania oncologist who was involved in the study design, readily admits that ”the design had certain attractions, but it clearly had certain flaws.” On the one hand, incorporating a drug holiday would have helped doctors tell whether a tumor was just growing slowly, or actually responding to treatment, O’Dwyer says. On the other hand, the researchers could see the point that Nancy Roach and others in the patient advisory group were making. Want patients in your study? Listen to their concerns, ”We all agreed, and changed the design of the study accordingly,” O’Dwyer says. That meant the scientists wouldn’t be able to distinguish as easily the   tumors from ones responding to treatment  —   that insight would have to come from a   study. Comis says researchers used to design studies without any patient input, back in the day when patients tended not to question their physicians. But just as patients have gotten more involved in their own care, their advocates have become more involved in the technical discussions of study design. ”That has increasingly become the norm in the development of clinical trials,” Comis says. He and O’Dwyer work together in Philadelphia at the   Cancer Research Group. Years ago, Comis was involved in a landmark study that put cooperation with patients to the test. Back in the 1990s, doctors were increasingly encouraging breast cancer patients to undergo very aggressive treatment that involved having a   transplant. The treatment, which can have serious side effects, was based on poor evidence, Comis says, so he wanted to run a rigorous trial to see if it really worked for this group of patients. Patients can have biases, too, ”We struggled throughout the ’90s to put enough patients on clinical trials, which ultimately showed that it didn’t work,” Comis says. Patients and their advocates, as well as doctors, really didn’t want to question the prevailing wisdom about bone marrow transplants, he says. ”And I think one of the reasons some of those early trials took so long was that the whole external environment was against participation in these particular trials.” That experience validated Comis’ view that patient advocates are central to doing good research. From Nancy Roach’s perspective, it takes a bit of nerve to speak up in a room of doctors and scientists and ask, ”Will the results of this study actually help anybody?” But it’s Roach’s responsibility to ask those basic questions. ”I’m not a scientist,” she says. ”I’m not a clinician. I’m there on behalf of patients.” Her own journey started when her    developed colorectal cancer. Roach went from being an advocate for one patient to an advocate for many she   the Colon Cancer Alliance in 1999 and founded Fight Colorectal Cancer in 2005, advocating for those with cancer and their families. And while she’s gratified to see more and more people stepping in to become patient’s advocates in research design, she notes that most are white and economically advantaged. ”Honestly,” she says, ”most of them look like me. And that’s a problem.” African Americans are   in clinical trials, she notes. That may be in part because their doctors aren’t recommending experimental treatments as often. But it may also be that the clinical trials haven’t made a big enough effort to listen to the needs of various communities of patients. Roach hopes this will be the next frontier for patient involvement. You can contact Richard Harris at rharris@npr. org."
"From humble origins as the daughter of Eastern European immigrants, raised in the Bronx in the depths of the Great Depression, Mildred Dresselhaus scaled to great heights in the scientific community and attained the status of royalty  —   even if only in nickname. Dresselhaus, the ”Queen of Carbon” and pioneer of nanoscience, died Monday at the age of 86, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her celebrated career, she sought to prepare a path for potential successors  —   the female scientists whom she mentored and opened doors for across decades. ”When I came, we only had 4 percent of women at MIT, period, and fewer even in physics,” Dresselhaus told NPR in 2007, recalling when she was hired by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in 1960. ”And today we’re getting close to the 50 percent mark. That’s an amazing achievement in one lifetime. ”Of course,” she added modestly, ”I didn’t have that much to do with making it all happen.” Many would beg to differ. Dresselhaus’ work with carbon materials, semiconductors and nanotubes made her the first woman to win the National Medal of Science in Engineering, in 1990, and earned her the Medal of Freedom  —   the highest civilian honor in the U. S.  —   in 2014. In fact, she racked up more than her fair share of firsts along with those medals: She was the first woman to become a fully tenured professor at MIT, the first to become an institute professor and the first solo recipient of the prestigious Kavli Prize, for her contributions to nanoscience. In the course of her career, The New York Times reports, Dresselhaus published more than 1, 700 papers and   eight books. Lately, she also gave a star turn in a General Electric commercial. ”What if we treated great female scientists like they were stars?” that commercial asked. In Dresselhaus’ field, at least, the physicist was indeed a star. ”Yesterday, we lost a giant  —   an exceptionally creative scientist and engineer who was also a delightful human being,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif said in a letter to the school Tuesday. She ”laid the foundation of nanotechnology by predicting the existence of carbon nanotubes before anyone had actually seen these tiny but very strong structures for the first time,” Talk of the Nation host Ira Flatow explained in 2007. These days, carbon nanotubes are ”incorporated in diverse commercial products ranging from rechargeable batteries, automotive parts, and sporting goods to boat hulls and water filters,” researchers noted in the journal Science in 2013. Indeed, they even have applications out of this world, as Dresselhaus told NPR. ”The mechanical properties [of carbon materials] are such that without them we wouldn’t have a space program. That is, the strength and stiffness of carbon fibers which initially supported the space program were absolutely essential for the spacecraft to have the    factor  —   and the nanotubes are even better in this regard,” Dresselhaus said. ”They have additional resiliency and elasticity properties, as well as the strength.” But her research was by no means limited to nanotubes. In 2012, The New York Times explained that: ”She invented breakthrough techniques for studying individual layers of carbon atoms. She discovered ways to capture the thermal energy of vibrating particles at   ’boundaries,’ and then to use that heat to make electricity. ”She devised carbon fibers that are stronger than steel at a fraction of steel’s weight. Her research helped usher in the age of nanotechnology, the wildly popular effort to downsize electronic circuits, medical devices and a host of other products to molecular dimensions.” Still, as crucial as Dresselhaus’ work was to her field, she remained a mentor to ”dozens of young faculty and hundreds of MIT students over the years,” said Reif, who added that he counts her as his mentor. And even in 2014, Dresselhaus was still evangelizing for the sciences. ”I think that entering the field of science is really almost the best career [young women] can have,” Dresselhaus told NPR’s Audie Cornish. ”What’s the reason for it? There are two reasons. One, the work is very interesting, and secondly, you’re judged by what you do and not what you look like.” And perhaps few scientists did more in their lifetimes than Dresselhaus."
"One of the underheralded architects of soul music has died: songwriter producer and singer Leon Ware, who penned classics for such artists as Marvin Gaye, The Isley Brothers, Michael Jackson, Minnie Riperton, Quincy Jones and many more. He died Thursday at the age 77. His death was confirmed by his manager. Born in Detroit in 1940, Ware became a Motown songwriter in his twenties. Soon, he was writing for the who’s who of Motor City  —   including Marvin Gaye, whose   1976 album I Want You was   by Ware, who also   every tune on the release. Ware’s work also became a staple source of samples for major   artists, including Tupac Shakur, A Tribe Called Quest and Jay Z in 1996, he collaborated with Maxwell in writing the tune ”Sumthin’ Sumthin’,” a single on the landmark   album Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite. In 2014, he was credited as the ”creative producer,” as well as a featured artist, composer and producer on Theophilus London’s album Vibes. In a review of a Leon Ware show at New York’s Blue Note club in 2008, The New York Times’ Jon Pareles wrote that his performances were ”incantations delivered in weightless, improvisatory vocals above undulating grooves they’re entreaties of yearning and devotion . .. he was a preacher of sensuality in his pulpit.” His last commercial release in the U. S. was made for  : the 2008 solo album Moon Ride. In 2012, he released the album Sigh in Japan. This is a developing story and will be updated."
"Today, two table tennis pros met at the Qatar Open and ended up locked in a staggering     rally. The International Table Tennis Federation, which runs the event, said in an Instagram video that it ”has got to be the longest rally ever in modern table tennis history!” Li Jie of the Netherlands and Hitomi Sato of Japan are both internationally ranked table tennis players known for their defensive skills. Li competed in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Sato is a champion doubles player. The score when Thursday’s rally happened was  . Neither player ”took the risk to attack first, resulting in an endless rally,” the ITTF wrote. The rally was interrupted not by a failure of focus or coordination, but by a stray ball from a neighboring match area. Under the ITTF rules, a rally may be stopped ”because the conditions of play are disturbed in a way which could affect the outcome of the rally.” Presumably, another little white ball entering the players’ field of vision could affect the outcome. Li eventually ended up winning the match and moving on in the tournament, which has four more rounds."
"Former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear has been tapped to give the Democratic response to President Trump’s address to Congress next Tuesday night. The announcement was made by the party’s top congressional officials, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. They said the    Beshear was chosen for his record extending access to affordable health care and lowering the state’s uninsured rate from over 20 percent to 7. 5 percent, ”one of the biggest improvements in the nation.” The party officials also announced that Astrid Silva, an immigration activist, will give the   response to the speech. Silva is part of a movement of   DREAMers, immigrants brought to the U. S. illegally when they were children. Silva, who came to the country with her parents at age 5, spoke at the Democratic National Convention last summer. In choosing Beshear, who left office in December 2015, the party appears to be ignoring the clamor from pundits who say Democrats desperately need to present fresh faces to reinvigorate the party’s standing with voters at a time when it is in the minority in Congress and in most state legislatures as well as out of power in the White House."
"On the eve of the vote for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, the crowded field is thinning out. South Carolina Democratic Chair Jaime Harrison dropped out of the race Thursday and endorsed former Labor Secretary Tom Perez. The move comes days after another candidate, New Hampshire Democratic Chair Ray Buckley, exited the race and threw his support to Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota. The two withdrawals surely add to Perez and Ellison’s vote totals and solidify the two as the   to be the next head of the Democratic Party. Both claim substantial support among the 447 DNC members who will vote for the position on Saturday morning in Atlanta, though neither is predicting a   majority. There are still seven candidates, though South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the long shot with the best chance. He’s made some waves during the race’s final days, getting endorsements from former DNC chairs like Howard Dean and Ed Rendell. Even with all the   jockeying, the race has a cordial and complimentary vibe, with candidates all but falling over themselves to agree with each other at its many public forums and debates. ”We’re all friends up here,” Ellison said during a recent candidate forum. ”We like each other. We respect each other.” ”This is a conversation among siblings as to who should lead the party,” Perez recently told Politico. But if the contest seems breezy, its backdrop does not. Democrats are still reeling from a presidential loss that hardly any party officials saw coming. The party has shed hundreds of statehouse seats over the previous decade, and it is in the minority in both the House and Senate. On top of that, the DNC has effectively been in a holding pattern since   when WikiLeaks published internal emails that led to the ouster of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The emails were likely stolen and provided to WikiLeaks by Russian hackers, according to the CIA and other federal intelligence agencies. Most of the candidates are vowing to borrow a page from former DNC Chair Howard Dean and spend time and money organizing the party across the country  —   not just in coastal states where Democrats have solidified their support in recent years. Many agree the party needs to improve its messaging, especially when it comes to economic issues. ”When Donald Trump says, ’I’m going to bring those coal jobs back,’ we know that’s a lie, but people understand that he feels their pain,” Perez said at a recent forum. ”And our response was, vote for us because he’s crazy. I’ll stipulate to that, but that’s not a message.” While the candidates are taking pains to appear united  —   Perez and Ellison were recently photographed having dinner together  —   many are viewing the DNC race as a proxy for last year’s divided presidential primary season. Much of the party’s establishment wing is backing Perez. While former President Barack Obama has stayed out of the race, Perez has been endorsed by close Obama allies like former Vice President Joe Biden and former U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Ellison, on the other hand, touted an early endorsement by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and he has attracted support from the more liberal,   activists in the Democratic Party. This has been the main narrative of the unusually   race, but it’s not quite that simple. For one thing, Ellison has also been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, an establishment figure. The eventual winner will have a lot on his or her plate. In addition to fundraising and reorganizing the DNC, the chair will likely function as one of the party’s top surrogates in the media. Howard Dean views something else as the winner’s most important job: ”coordinating the tremendous rush of young people who are interested in the process, and really weren’t much before.” Democrats in all levels of office are processing how to respond to the surge of motivated  —   and often angry  —   liberals who have taken to the streets and filled Republican congressional town halls. Engaging those folks in the political process and steering them to the polls in future elections will likely be the key to success for Saturday’s winner."
"An   car bomb exploded near the Syrian town of   killing at least 51 people in an area that   rebels recently seized from Islamic State militants. At least 34 of those killed were civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a   monitoring group. Witnesses told Reuters that the bomb went off in the village of Sousian, five miles north of   at a rebel checkpoint crowded with people who had fled the fighting and were preparing to return to their homes. The car ”drove right into the heart of the crowd,” said Khalil Abdulrahman, a Syrian journalist from   told The Washington Post. ”There were bodies everywhere. Some of them were on fire. When I got closer to them, I realized I knew their faces. They were trying to go home.” The death toll is likely to rise because some of the injured victims were in critical condition, according to the Observatory. The offensive for   began   and the   Free Syrian Army, a loose array of rebel groups, took control of the town on Thursday. The BBC says the town came under ISIS control in early 2014 and was the extremist group’s ”last major stronghold in Aleppo province.” A second explosion in Sousian also occurred later Friday, according to multiple media reports, but the extent of the damage was not immediately clear. And Turkey’s   Anadolu news agency said there was a third explosion, south of   that killed two Turkish soldiers and injured three others. They were ”on a landmine reconnaissance mission,” the agency adds. ISIS fighters regularly leave behind landmines after they suffer a defeat. Recapturing   was part of a broader Turkish military operation called Operation Euphrates Shield, launched last August. It represented a major escalation for Turkey in the Syria conflict, and was intended to clear ISIS militants from the border area. Operations Euphrates Shield ”relies heavily on Free Syrian Army fighters backed by Turkish artillery and air support,” Anadolu reports. The capture of   achieved those aims. ”With   under control, the targets planned at the start of the operation have been achieved,” said Hulusi Akar, the head of Turkey’s chief of staff, according to Reuters. ”In the aftermath, support will be provided to normalize life and for the local people to quickly return to their homes.” Meanwhile, peace talks opened yesterday in Geneva. U. N. mediator Staffan de Mistura was holding bilateral meetings with the parties Friday to ”decide on a work plan,” the U. N. reports. It’s difficult to overstate the obstacles to peace here. As Reuters writes, ”with obvious tensions among participants at the opening ceremony and the opposition delegation not fully under one umbrella, there appeared little prospect the sides would meet directly soon.” De Mistura recognized the challenges in his welcome statement. ”We face an uphill battle,” he said. ”It will not be easy, but we must apply ourselves to this task.”"
"It’s been a good year so far for jazz at the movies. La La Land, a   love story in the style of Jazz Age musicals, has a heap of Oscar nominations. Elsewhere, in a much quieter affair, the documentary film I Called Him Morgan  —   based on the story of jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan  —   will open theatrically next month. Both of these films caught the eye of Christian McBride,   bassist and host of NPR’s Jazz Night in America. He joined Audie Cornish on All Things Considered to talk about how the two stories offer contrasting visions of the working jazz musician hear their conversation at the audio link and read an edited version below. Audie Cornish: I Called Him Morgan is a film by Kasper Collin. It played at a few festivals in 2016, and it’s about Lee Morgan, who was shot by his wife in 1972. Had you heard of the story of Lee Morgan before this? Christian McBride: Absolutely. Lee Morgan not only was one of the greatest trumpet players in the history of jazz, but he was also a Philadelphian  —   so if you were a jazz musician from Philadelphia, Lee Morgan is one of the first names that you hear. And I think when something like a crime of passion is involved, that story is always going to be told. I heard about it probably as early as 8 or 9 years old before I even really knew much about jazz. But the documentary is very thorough: You get to hear stories about Lee Morgan directly from the men and women who were there, who knew him, who saw him, who were there the night he was killed. [When he died,] Morgan artistically had progressed from being simply a   Dizzy Gillespie,   Brown trumpeter, to really being on the cusp of some very progressive music. He was really about to get to something big. The film depicts drug addiction, violence  —   it really presents Morgan as someone who’s very flawed, not innocent himself. Do you think this kind of traffics in the stereotypes of the tragic jazz figure? More than anything else, I think it depicts our interest in always wanting to find the jazz musician who was on drugs or has been in violent relationships. We have some sort of fixation with that. Somehow, the story of the jazz musician who ends up victorious, who kinda strays away from the drugs or the violence or the alcohol or that sort of lifestyle  —   that’s not fun to watch, somehow. But the most important thing, which I hope happens, is that someone will get curious to actually go back to find out about Lee Morgan’s music. It’s about the music that he made that touched people, that inspired people and inspired a whole generation of trumpet players. This brings me to La La Land, because that movie been talked about so much in the context of its music. This is a story of a couple that falls in love: He’s a jazz pianist, she’s an aspiring actress. I want put to you the criticisms that I’ve heard of this movie  —   number one, that it’s got too simple an idea of what jazz is, almost like a    ideal of the music. You know, after I saw this movie, my first thought was, ”Who would focus on how jazz is portrayed in this film?” To me, the story of ”jazz,”   is not as important as the story of these two young people trying to pursue their dream. So you’re fine with it being a backdrop.  It is a backdrop, you know? I don’t think anybody is going to see this movie and their first, second or third thought is ”jazz.” To me, this is a love story. But I think at a certain part of the film, there is this discussion. Because the Ryan Gosling character, he kind of considers himself this evangelist for the music  —   teaching her to love it, complaining about people not listening to it anymore. And at one point he joins a band led by John Legend, who’s doing something a little more, let’s say, complicated. Well, a little more commercial, shall we say. I’m not an expert, but I remember sitting there and thinking, this is nothing like what young,    jazz artists are doing at all  —   who are getting commercial success. I don’t think that scene was really made to depict what’s happening now. I think what it’s trying to give an example of is: Here’s this young, as you say, evangelist for traditional jazz. He’s trying to be the most dedicated jazz pianist that he can be  —   but he’s not getting any work. So then, John Legend offers him a gig: ”Look, it’s not   jazz, but hey  —   you need a gig.” And at some point he decides, ”Yeah, you’re right, I do need to work. I do need to pay my bills.” And musicians are confronted with that all the time. It happens more often than not. And it’s happened throughout generations, too. Musicians who want to play their own music, or they want to play music that moves them  —   a lot of times, it’s not that easy to do that. So they might have to take a gig in a band that they may not necessarily want to play in, stylistically. They may play in pit orchestras, or in a TV band. That’s not necessarily what they may want to do, but they have to work. We are musicians, but we are also professional people. Finally, the unspoken thing, I think, has been about where you have movies about jazz and there are not people of color at the forefront of it.  Well, I was thinking of some of the movies of the past that have sort of been  : I think of Cabin in the Sky, or Stormy Weather, or Carmen Jones, or A Man Called Adam, or ’Round Midnight, or Mo’ Better Blues, or Love Jones, or Miles Ahead. I’m not sure I focus too much on the race thing as I concentrate on, the jazz musician is always despondent, the jazz musician is always the underdog, the jazz musician is always the one who has these drug problems or alcohol problems or problems with violent relationships. We want to see a movie where a jazz musician actually wins in the end. You take another movie like The Man With The Golden Arm, where Frank Sinatra plays a   drummer, and I’m thinking, ”Wow, OK  —   it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white.” You just have to be a jazz musician, and they’re gonna put you on something: heroin, cocaine, something. There is that issue in the history, but I wonder if it has to do with the broader stereotype of the mad creative genius. I suppose, but the thing is: There’s so many mad creative geniuses who’ve never gone through that. Maybe one day someone will make a movie about Wayne Shorter. He’s one of the greatest mad creative geniuses ever and he never went though that. So that would be a nice, victorious, wonderful, interesting story to see."
"Whatever else you might say about the themes of La La Land  —   that it’s a film about the ins and outs of young romance, or the pros and cons of creative ambition, or the movie musical as a renewable art form, or the culture of Hollywood, or the state of jazz (more on that in a sec)  —   you’d have to acknowledge the line it draws between illusion and disillusion. Without giving anything away, that tension lends obvious subtext to the title of Damien Chazelle’s film  —   and essential motivation for its opening and closing set pieces, which pivot from drab reality to Technicolor fantasy. This is a proven strategy in the movie musical playbook: You’ll find it in touchstones ranging from the MGM classic Singin’ In The Rain to Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg to Lars von Trier’s Dancer In The Dark. Chazelle knows this history and works it to his advantage, as the accolades for his film have already demonstrated, however many of its   14 Oscar nominations pan out Sunday night. The current La La Land backlash has a lot to do with   overhype, and the unremittingly personal dimensions of its story, at a moment when everything feels political. In jazz circles, there are more pointed gripes about the film, which stars Ryan Gosling as a journeyman piano player enthralled by the mystique of the music, and eager to evangelize his passion  —   particularly to his   girlfriend, played by Emma Stone. There are many hot takes about what the film gets wrong, or what it gets right, about jazz. But what hasn’t been explored enough is the way in which its central contrast, between the glossy ideal and the grainy particulars, plays out among jazz musicians in Los Angeles. That’s the subject of this episode of Jazz Night In America, which explores a pocket of the scene that La La Land purports to speak for. In the radio episode, we’ll hear from prominent Los Angeles jazz musicians like drummer Peter Erskine, who played on the film’s soundtrack, and keyboardist John Beasley, whose résumé includes all manner of commercial work as well as the MONK’estra, his own big band. And in both the audio and the documentary short, we check in with Josh Nelson, a pianist and composer whose Los   Discovery Project is about the real stories beneath the surface, or behind the façade. (Nelson, the son of a Disney   Imagineer, auditioned to be Gosling’s hand double in the film. But we’ll let him tell you that story himself.) There’s a lot more to the story of jazz in Los Angeles than anyone could tell in one sitting. What you’ll find here are a few vivid impressions, and some illuminating insights. As in La La Land, this is a moment to consider facts on the ground even as the focus shifts in a dreamy flyaway."
", Waymo, the company that began as Google’s    project, is suing Uber  —   alleging that when Uber bought a startup founded by Waymo veterans, it also bought thousands of design files that had been inappropriately downloaded from its servers. In its lawsuit, Waymo cites forensic evidence as well as a vendor’s email that it received by mistake. The startup in question is Otto, which was only months old when Uber bought it for roughly $680 million last summer. Uber put Otto   Anthony Levandowski in charge of its    effort, which includes both trucking  —   a field Otto had focused on  —   and personal vehicles. The problem, according to Waymo and Alphabet (Google’s umbrella company) is that before he left, Levandowski ”took extraordinary efforts to raid Waymo’s design server and then conceal his activities.” Waymo says Levandowski’s actions were ”part of a concerted plan to steal Waymo’s trade secrets and intellectual property.” Before it acquired Otto, Uber was ”more than five years behind” in the race to develop reliable autonomous vehicles, according to the court filing. Requests for comment on the case from Uber and Otto were unanswered as of Friday morning. Waymo’s accusations center on LIDAR  —   essentially, the technology that allows   vehicles to see the world around them by using lasers to shape an evolving   image of other objects on the road. Waymo says it invested millions of dollars and thousands of hours to develop its advanced and   LIDAR sensors. Waymo says Levandowski, who worked as a manager in its   car project, downloaded nearly 10 gigabytes of data  —   more than 14, 000 files  —   and attached an external hard drive to his company computer. A big chunk of that data, Waymo says, was related to LiDAR technology  —   including ”confidential specifications for each version of every generation of Waymo’s LiDAR circuit boards,” the company says. In its lawsuit, Waymo also says its former employees who left to join Levandowski’s new venture took proprietary information with them. ”These secrets included confidential supplier lists, manufacturing details and statements of work with highly technical information,” the company says in its complaint, ”all of which reflected the results of Waymo’s     research into suppliers for highly specialized LiDAR sensor components.” LiDAR is also at the heart of an email that seems to have been sent to Waymo by mistake, by a vendor who copied the company on a message to Uber. From the complaint filed in U. S. District Court: ”Waymo was recently  —   and apparently inadvertently  —   copied on an email from one of its LiDAR component vendors. The email attached machine drawings of what purports to be an Uber LiDAR circuit board. This circuit board bears a striking resemblance to Waymo’s own highly confidential and proprietary design and reflects Waymo trade secrets.” Waymo accuses Levandowski of attempting to conceal his activity in the Waymo design server, saying he installed a new operating system on his   laptop in an attempt to wipe the laptop clean  —   and that afterward, he only used the laptop again for a few minutes. Here’s the rough timeline of events Waymo alleges in its court filing: Along the way, Otto and Uber marked two   milestones. Last September, Uber began using   cars as part of a pilot program in Pittsburgh. And in October, Otto made what was called ”the world’s first autonomous truck delivery” in Colorado. While at Google, Levandowski was widely regarded as a star, a gifted engineer with a knack for integrating his work into the real world. The Ghost Rider robotic motorcycle he led the development of now belongs to the Smithsonian. He joined Google back in 2007  —   and in 2013, a New Yorker profile said that ”Levandowski is equal parts idealist and voracious capitalist. He wants to fix the world and make a fortune doing it.” When that article was published, Levandowski worked at Google X, the company’s experimental lab. It’s unclear how the current dispute might affect his reputation. Waymo’s lawsuit is the latest in a series of dramatic shifts in the relationship between Alphabet and Uber. Back in 2013, Google Ventures invested more than $250 million in the car service. At the same time, David Drummond, an Alphabet executive in corporate development, joined Uber’s board  —   but he stepped down last summer, as the companies’ roles as competitors became clear. Last month, Uber hired Amit Singhal, a former Google executive who led the company’s search unit before retiring a year ago."
"POTUS Yanks The Welcome Mat, The effects of the Trump administration’s deportation sweeps will be felt, of course, most immediately by the people who are caught up in them. But as many conservatives are applauding the president’s effort to make good on his campaign promise to rid the country of people who are here illegally, they may start to feel the results of that campaign in unanticipated ways. For instance, Eater has a good piece on the interconnected nature of immigrant labor and the price of the food in supermarkets and restaurants. If the   aspect of the issue doesn’t interest you, the prospect of $8 avocados and   fast food might. And as the week has shown, having DACA status is no guarantee that an immigrant is safe from deportation, as KPCC reports. Nor are  . Meanwhile, the sweeps have caused widespread anxiety in Latino communities  —   and eager anticipation in at least one business, according to Mother Jones. And if past is prologue, the president’s intention to remove millions of undocumented immigrant farm workers might sound good to many of his supporters, but, as Politico reports, it didn’t work before. In Happier News: It’s Academy Awards Weekend! #OscarsMaybeNotSoWhite this year  —   at least in nominations. But we’ll have to wait and see if Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Denzel Washington   Mahershala Ali pick up a Little Gold Man on Sunday night. Meanwhile, the New Yorker ponders the effect Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs (who is  ) has had on Academy members and Academy diversity. Lots of people head to theaters on the movies’ biggest weekend to catch up on what they’ve missed. If you’ve seen all the Oscar contenders you care about, try this: Jordan Peele (of the hit comedy sketch series Key  Peele) directed a film about an interracial couple whose weekend with her parents goes very, very wrong. It’s called Get Out. Gene Demby talked with Peele on this week’s podcast. We won’t spoil it for you. Let’s just say there’s a lot of suspense, some surprises (Allison Williams of ”Girls” fame plays the white girlfriend) and it’s plenty scary. But Then So Was This: The president had been scheduled to visit the Blacksonian earlier in the month, but had to postpone. He did stop in front of Ben Carson’s exhibit during his visit. Apparently, Mr. Douglass wasn’t around to greet him. Get your acceptance speeches ready, and have a weekend free of alternative facts, y’all."
"London Bridge isn’t falling down, but Britain’s Parliament building  —   which sits along the River Thames and includes Big Ben  —   needs a ton of work. U. K. lawmakers are now analyzing a massive rehab plan that will cost billions of dollars and could force legislators to work somewhere else for years. The options run the gamut. Doing the minimum amount of work to the complex, with lawmakers remaining inside, would take 32 years and cost more than $7 billion, according to an independent assessment commissioned by Parliament. Moving legislators into temporary accommodations one house at a time would cut construction time to 11 years and slash the price tag to a minimum of $4. 9 billion. Moving both the House of Lords and the House of Commons out of the complex at the same time would further reduce renovation time to six years, at a minimum cost of $4. 4 billion. ”What we want to do today is nail down the numbers on the costs,” said Meg Hillier, a member of Parliament with the Labour Party, during a hearing this week on the proposal, ”because it’s a huge task to manage.” The amount of work to fix the Palace of Westminster, as the complex is formally known, is staggering. The problem isn’t the structure itself, most of which was built after the fire of 1834 and remains sound. It’s the guts of the complex, systems which include more than 700 radiators, 4 miles of hot water pipes, 7 miles of steam pipes and about 50 miles of telephone cables. Most of the infrastructure dates from after the end of World War II and is either a jumble or in decay. On a recent tour of the basement, engineer Andrew Piper pointed out potential hazards, including an area where gas lines run next to   lines. ”No one’s had the opportunity to replace all these services in one go and come up with something that’s sensible,” said Piper. ”Since the 1950s, it’s just been adaptation, adaptation.” The U. K. government has put off fixing all this because of the expense and disruption it will cause, most likely forcing lawmakers to work elsewhere in Westminster for years. ”Sometimes politicians  —   and I am one  —   are not very good at making swift decisions,” said Chris Bryant, a member of Parliament from Wales with the Labour Party and a member of the committee that drafted the renovation proposal. No one questions fixing the Parliament building, which ranks with the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal in terms of global recognition. But some members insist on scrutinizing the cost, given the whopping price tag. Bryant said the project is expensive because of its size and difficulty. For instance, he says, the Palace of Westminster has more than 4, 000 windows that need work and the complex is riddled with asbestos. Some of the infrastructure looks ancient, including a giant,   tank that pumps sewage into London’s sewer system. Embossed on the tank is the date it was made, 1888, back when Jack the Ripper was prowling Whitechapel. At first, Piper didn’t believe it, but then he checked the House of Commons library and found the tank was indeed well over a century old. Parts of the ornate exterior also need a  . The palace’s Cloister Court is one of the few surviving sections of the complex dating to medieval times. Today, though, it’s cordoned off for safety reasons, because some parts of the stone façade are crumbling and other parts look like they’ve been melted by acid rain. No matter how much the rehabilitation of the Palace of Westminster ultimately costs, the project will take years to accomplish. For Piper, the engineer, it will be a labor of love. ”I came here for this building,” he said. ”Every day you see it on TV, where it’s on the news, it’s on an advert, you feel connected to it and you feel it should be saved.”"
"3:23 p. m. ET: Perez wins DNC chairmanship, names Ellison deputy, Former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez won the DNC chairmanship on second round. It was met by protest from about a dozen Keith Ellison supporters, who chanted, repeatedly, ”Not big money, party for the people.” They were shushed and overshouted. ”Shut up,” one man eventually yelled from the Perez side. Here’s the final tally, 218 needed. 435 total voted: Perez 235Ellison 200, Perez responded by appointing Ellison deputy chair of the Democratic Party, which was greeted by huge cheers, including from most in the Ellison section. He called for a motion to do so that was passed by voice vote. ”Allow me to congratulate our chair,” Ellison said to big applause, ”on successfully passing his first motion.” That was greeted by laughs. ”I want to congratulate” Perez, Ellison said, noting that he conducted himself with ”class.” He added, ”I’m asking you to give everything you’ve got to support Chairman Perez.” He said he was ”honored” to serve under Perez. 2:48 p. m. ET: Howard Dean endorses Ellison, As votes are being tallied for Round Two, Keith Ellison’s campaign sends out an endorsement from former Chairman Howard Dean: ”This is Governor Howard Dean. I believe that Keith Ellison would be the most likely person to be able to successfully bring in the first global generation to the Democratic Party. (This is real)” ”This is real” is in response to fake texts to committee members that Buttigieg was endorsing Ellison after voting in Round One.  —   Domenico Montanaro, 2:28 p. m. ET: Perez one vote short after Round One Ellison close, This was billed as a race between former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, and now it officially is. After Round One of voting, Perez is just one vote shy of the votes needed with Ellison just 13. 5 votes behind. The other four candidates dropped out. (The magic number was 214. 5 as 427 total votes were cast.) Here’s the tally: Perez 213. 5Ellison 200Boynton Brown 12Buttigieg 1Greene . 5, After the vote, Sally Boynton Brown (12 votes) did not endorse Sam Ronan (0 votes) and Peter Peckarsky endorsed Ellison. Jehmu Greene endorsed Perez. (For those wondering, a candidate could get half a vote because each Democrat abroad got half a vote.)  —   Domenico Montanaro, 1:56 p. m. ET: Ellison’s religion, The Democratic National Committee has wrapped up Round One of voting and officials are tabulating the votes for new chairman. We have just come back from a   break. But   is expected to take some 30 to 45 minutes. To recap, the biggest news so far: Popular Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has dropped out of the race. He did not endorse. It could signal momentum for Perez, but his team would have preferred an endorsement, of course. There’s been some talk of the party divide but some prominent voices, including Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice, urged unity. It’s also been a stark contrast to the Conservative Political Action Conference, especially on religion. The elephant in the room here is Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison’s religion. He’s the first Muslim elected to Congress. At CPAC, conservative radio host Mark Levin introduced Ted Cruz and called Ellison the front runner for DNC chairman and that it was controversial because of his ”ties to Farrakhan.” Cruz followed up and said, ”I’ll commend the Democrats for one thing —   if they name Keith Ellison, we can commend them for truth in advertising.” Here, not only does Ellison have the most enthusiastic following, but an Imam led the convocation.  —   Domenico Montanaro, 1:27 p. m. ET: ”Time to vote” All the candidates have now spoken, and as Donna Brazile just told a cheering crowd, ”It is time to vote.” The race will be conducted on paper ballots. This morning, the DNC conducted several test runs with electronic clickers that would have allowed for instant   tabulations, but Brazile was uncomfortable with their efficacy and even noted questions about the security and speed of the room’s wifi, among other factors, made her lean toward sticking with a more   approach.  —   Scott Detrow, 1:25 p. m. ET: Fringe candidate questions validity of Trump’s win, Milwaukee lawyer Peter Peckarsky used his speech to raise questions about validity of President Trump’s electoral win, saying Trump’s narrow victories in Florida, North Carolina veered too far from exit poll results. There’s been no evidence that electoral results were tampered with in any state. In fact, a recount funded by the Green Party increased Trump’s margin over Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin by about 100 votes.  —   Scott Detrow, 1:18 p. m. ET: ”Women of color” are the ”backbone” of the Democratic Party, Speeches are wrapping up. The second to last speaker was Jehmu Greene, former president of Rock the Vote who was also a Fox News analyst. Being a Fox analyst was something that was a hurdle for her with this crowd, as she acknowledged. ”I go toe to toe with Republicans who lie for a living,” she said, ”and I have been living with the truth.” She said it was ”not a time for   it’s a time for regeneration.” She whacked Trump, who she said is ”arrogantly marching us toward fascism.” She also spoke against superdelegates and the caucuses, which she said disenfranchises working people, like her mother, who is a nurse. ”Women are the backbone of this party, especially women of color,” said Greene, who is African American.”  —   Domenico Montanaro, 12:54 p. m. ET: South Bend, Ind. Mayor Drops out, declines to endorse, South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg has dropped out of the DNC chair race, even before the first round of voting began. He did not endorse anyone else. ”It looks like I’m not going to be the next DNC chair,” he said, but he urged whoever would be not just to pay attention to the presidency, but to small towns ”not as a foreign species.” Buttigieg called on the party to ”engage a new generation.” He added, ”There’s nothing wrong with our bench. We just haven’t called enough people on the bench off the bench and onto the field.” He said being chairman ”is not just about policy it is soul craft.” Alluding to Trump, he said America has a leader who appeals to darkness. But, he added, ”Darkness cannot drive out darkness. We have the opportunity to do the reverse.”  —   Domenico Montanaro, 12:50 p. m. ET: ”Keith, Keith Keith” Taking the stage to chants of, ”Keith, Keith, Keith,” Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison told DNC members that as energizing as recent protests and marches have been, Democrats need to focus their energy on electoral results. ”We’re in this mess because we lost not one election, but a thousand elections,” he said before the DNC chair vote. ”And we’re going to get out of it when we win elections.” Ellison promised to raise voter turnout and increase grassroots fundraising, if he becomes head of the DNC. ”We would rather have a million donations of ten dollars than 10 donations of $100, 000,” he said. Ellison, one of the two frontrunners for DNC Chair, also urged Democrats to unite after the   race concludes this afternoon. ”We’ve got to come out of here    brothers and sisters, because Trump is right outside that door. Not just Trump, but Trumpism,” Ellison said. Ellison was one of the first candidates to enter the race, and earned early endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But since then, many other   Democrats have backed former Labor Secretary Tom Perez. Committee members also heard from Sally Boynton Brown, the executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party. She said the party needs to improve its communication with voters, especially Millennials. ”In the 21st Century, the way we’ve been doing business no longer works,” Brown said. ”We have to find a new path forward.” Sam Ronan spoke, too, urging Democrats to ”regain the trust and the respect of the American people.”  —   Scott Detrow, 12:24 p. m. ET: Perez, losing voice, vows to ”get Democrats winning again” Former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez, the   for DNC chairman, called for unity within the party, pledged to be an inclusive chairman if elected, vowed to fight Donald Trump, while striking a   tone. ”We will turn this party around and get Democrats winning again,” Perez said at the end of a short speech. Perez strained to talk with a hoarse voice. Perez said the party is ”suffering from a crisis of confidence and relevance” and vowed to lead a ”turnaround and change the culture of the Democratic Party and the DNC.” He noted that the party needs to refocus on   races, from school board on up, rather than focusing on winning the presidency. Democrats are at their lowest point of power in about 100 years, out of power not just in the White House and both chambers of Congress, but also in governorships and state legislatures. He alluded to the Democratic split, but vowed, ”You will all be part of the team.” He added, in something of an awkward line, ”You can’t go bowling alone to succeed, you must go bowling together.” He continued: ”I know we will cross the finish line together. A united Democratic Party is not only our best hope, it is Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”  —   Domenico Montanaro, 12:12 p. m. ET: Candidate speeches are about to begin. Mayor Garcetti from Los Angeles introducing Tom Perez who is going first. For some background, here are some bios of key candidates and what they want to do.  —   Domenico Montanaro, 12:02 p. m. ET: We are told the election portion of the programming is coming up after a short break here  —   only two hours later than scheduled. So, that means get ready for (at least) an hour and 10 minutes of speeches from seven candidates (10 minutes each).  —   Domenico Montanaro, 11:52 a. m. ET: To moderate or not? As Democrats prepare to elect a new DNC chair, one of the party’s rising stars has a message for fellow Democrats: don’t moderate. Former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who lost a close Senate race last year but impressed party leaders with his run, told committee members in Atlanta not to shy away from liberal values as they attempt to win back voters. Pointing out President Trump won Missouri by nearly 19 points, Kander said, ”I came within 3 points of turning the Senate seat blue, and I did not do it by pretending to be a moderate Republican or hugging the middle.” ”When Democrats make our argument,” he said, ”then we have a chance to win.” Kander shares some similarities with one of today’s candidates for DNC chair, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttiegeg. Both are strong campaigners and speakers and have stellar resumes that include military service. Both are seen as rising Democratic stars. But both happen to live in red states where it’s increasingly hard for Democrats to win statewide races, especially at the federal level.  —   Scott Detrow, 11:30 a. m. ET: King daughter: ”Lay aside those things that divide you” Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a powerful speech to Democratic National Committee members. She implored the party to unify. It’s ”no secret there’s division even within this camp,” she said, urging members and activists in the party to ”lay aside those things that divide you to find common ground.” She told a story about a young boy who was giggling in a boat with his father. The father wanted to know why he was laughing. The boy told him because there’s a hole in his father’s side of the boat and he was going to drown  —   without realizing that they were in the same boat. ”There’s a hole in the boat called these United States of America,” King said. She said Democrats should reach across the aisle. ”We’ve gotta be willing to listen when we don’t want to hear,” she said, adding that people have to ”seek to understand” before they can be understood. ”If we don’t learn to live together as brothers and sisters  —   yes, together  —   we’re going to perish as fools,” King implored. She noted, the ”strategy has to be winning people over rather than winning over people.” There’s ”too much energy on winning over people rather than winning people over.”  —   Domenico Montanaro, 10:57 a. m. ET:  A famous quote attributed to Will Rogers goes, ”I’m not a member of an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” The party doesn’t have the best reputation for sticking to schedules, and that’s the case this morning in Atlanta. The DNC meeting got started late, and committee members are still working through early business, like the approval of resolutions. (One particularly contentious discussion: a proposition to ban corporate political action committees from contributing money to the DNC.) There’s other business on tap before the DNC chair vote, including speeches from all seven candidates. So at this point, it’s highly unlikely a vote happens before noon.  —   Scott Detrow, 10:25 a. m. ET: Good morning from Atlanta!  We are covering the Democratic National Committee chair race. Here’s the latest: Timing, The earliest we’re going to know a chairman will be 11:30 a. m. ET, and if it goes multiple rounds, it won’t be at least until after noon. Vote counting should take 30 to 45 minutes, per round, a DNC official said. If all that goes to time, voting for chair is slated to begin at 11 a. m. after each of the seven candidates speak. But the DNC is already behind schedule. Candidates are allotted 10 minutes each beginning at 10 a. m. The voting should only take about 10 minutes per round, but again counting will take 30 to 45 minutes, a DNC official said. So here’s a quick schedule rundown: 9:30 a. m.: Party business closed session10 a. m.: Candidate speeches begin11:10 a. m.: Candidate speeches wrap11:10 a. m.: Voting begins at the earliest, How it works, A candidate needs 50 percent plus one of all votes cast to be chairman. There are 447 voting members, but five current vacancies. So the highest potential voting members is 442. That means the magic number is 222. But, again, that’s only if all members vote. (Members can vote by proxy as well there are expected to be 70 to 75 voting by proxy, according to a DNC official.) There is a limit to how many round this race can go. All seven candidates will be on the ballot for Rounds One and Two. But the lowest   in Round Two will be kicked off the ballot for Round Three. Where the race stands, Former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez has gained some momentum in the last couple of days with the endorsement of South Carolina Party Chair Jaime Harrison, and last night at an for Perez supporters, Harrison predicted that Perez would win in one round. A week ago, a Perez staffer said he was at 180 firm. Harrison is believed to have gotten Perez about another 30. This is far more than any other candidate has expressed publicly. The question is whether he has a ceiling or if other committee members see the writing on the wall and push him through. That’s what Perez’s team is expecting. But these events tend to produce surprises. Keith Ellison, the Minnesota congressman, also has strong support here from the more progressive members. Bernie Sanders endorsed him (but it should be noted  —   Sanders and other elected officials don’t vote. The voting members aren’t superdelegates, they’re committee members). Thought to have less support, but also in the running is South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He has impressed members here and has the backing of former DNC Chairman Howard Dean. The race has shaped up to be something of a proxy battle for the fault lines in the party  —   the   wing (Perez) the progressive firebrands (Ellison) and Middle America (Buttigieg).  —   Domenico Montanaro"
"On Tuesday night, President Trump will address a joint session of the Congress for the first time, laying out his case for making the agenda of his campaign the law of the land. He will talk about controlling immigration, cutting taxes, abolishing regulations, repealing the Affordable Care Act, pulling out of multinational trade agreements and spending more on defense and homeland security. He may also talk about his disdain for much of the news media and bring up social issues such as abortion. He will be addressing the members of the House and Senate, his Cabinet and the Supreme Court. But his real audience will be far larger, reaching across the country and around the world via broadcast and streaming media. Even after decades in the public eye, Trump has never had a moment of global exposure quite like this. Thanks to both conventional and social media, he has become the most famous human on the planet  —   a daily obsession for his implacable foes as much as for his fans. But on this night, he will be speaking to an even greater audience. He will be speaking to history. The occasion of the first address to Congress has provided some of the most memorable moments in our shared national memory. (It is called an ”address to a joint session” because the constitutionally required report on the ”state of the union” is customarily given after at least a year in office.) When Trump enters this historic chamber and   the ritual of such events, he will hear the House doorkeeper crying out, ”Mr. Speaker . .. the president of the United States!” He will himself be entering a dimension of real and limitless consequences  —   one in which he is still a celebrity apprentice. Still savoring triumph, Serious questions are still swirling around the   administration, its policies and management. These arise from a host of issues and surround an   cast of players. But the most profound questions are posed by the new chief executive himself  —   his combative personality and his penchant for controversy, his loose use of language and his often casual handling of facts. Among the errors many of us made in contemplating Mr. Trump in 2016 was the assumption that he would moderate his personal style to seem more like a conventional White House candidate  —   more ”presidential.” There were passages of relative restraint, notably in the last two weeks of the campaign. But Trump always returned to playing himself. If he did this even at the risk of losing the election, why on earth would he change now? Still savoring his extended moment of triumph, Trump will be expected to recount his Electoral College victory and suggest, as he regularly does, that it was the will of a majority of the voters  —   perhaps even a large majority. He will be expected to depict the contrast between life in the U. S. today and life under previous presidents as a walk into the light after many years in darkness. But this speech may not be quite the tour of blighted landscape Trump gave in his ”American carnage” speech at his inauguration on Jan. 20. This week the White House has hinted at a different mood, using words such as ”sunny” and evoking the memories of President Reagan’s often   rhetoric in his speeches to Congress and the nation. We can expect to hear more about what’s going right in America. Trump will have had just 40 days and 40 nights in office, but he has been taking credit for positive developments in the economy since his election in November. He has attributed the stock market rally that began late last year to the boost that business sentiment got from his win. He often touts news of corporate plans for jobs in the U. S. especially in manufacturing, as the fruits of his fresh administration. And that would make a great segue into talking about the   list the White House has for Congress, including changes to health care and taxes. But the speech is not likely to devolve into a catalog of policies and programs as we have sometimes heard in State of the Union moments. That would be too prosaic for the moment, or for the showman in Trump. We should expect, rather, to hear more of the muscular talk with which Trump concluded his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. ”America is coming about, it’s coming back,” he told the riled crowd of activists. ”It’s roaring you can hear it. It’s going to be bigger and better and stronger than ever before.” The opposition party, In one form or another, all presidents have used this kind of hopeful hyperbole. And it has the added benefit of moving the members of the Congress to go beyond the usual waves of polite applause. On the Republican side, there will be repeated standing ovations, with cheering and, yes, perhaps even roaring. They may not file in wearing red ”Make America Great Again” caps, but on the other hand, they might. It will make a great demonstration of enthusiasm and approval. And it will also serve to highlight the lack of either on the Democratic side. In fact, the distinct lack of participation by Democrats may be so dramatic as to be historic in its own right. Democrats are not only aware that Trump lost the popular vote by millions, they have seen the polls this week showing him with lower approval from the public than any new president since polling began. Several major national polls have shown him below 40 percent. Joint sessions of Congress have sometimes brought forth restive behavior from the ranks of the opposition party, but usually at a later point in a presidency. For example, after winning the majority of seats in the House and Senate in 1994, Republicans relished their next encounter with President Bill Clinton in early 1995. A few in the first rows of House members that night were rowdy enough during the speech to sound like hecklers. And when President Obama was proposing what became the Affordable Care Act in 2009, one junior Republican from South Carolina blurted out his objection (”You lie! ”) so loudly that the president paused in  . Neither of those occasions, however, was the initial appearance of a newly elected president. Usually, the new president is accorded a measure of respect and admiration for having won the highest office in the land. This has been the case even when most of the members of Congress have not been from the president’s party. For example, when Richard Nixon gave his first speech to Congress early in 1969, both the House and Senate had clear Democratic majorities. The same held true when George H. W. Bush gave his first address of this kind 20 years later. In between, Ronald Reagan’s first joint session appearance in 1981 featured a Senate that had just turned Republican but a House that was still nominally Democratic. Both chambers would do his will in those early years of his presidency, however, and Reagan’s big speeches to their joint sessions were a big part of his legendary power over them. Down the road, The greatest audience enthusiasm, of course, has accompanied the first addresses when president and Congress are of the same party, as was the case for Obama in 2009 and Clinton in 1993. A special case was George W. Bush’s first such address in 2001. The second president Bush had lost in the popular vote but prevailed in the Electoral College by virtue of winning Florida by 537 votes. He addressed a Congress that February that had a Republican House and a   Senate. He chose to make it an occasion of conciliation, much as his father had done a dozen years before. Trump, of course, adds to the list of presidents who came to power with full control of both chambers. Will he use his first address to direct the efforts of those majorities? Will he reach out in some way to the hostile minority party? Few may be expecting the latter. But many of Trump’s own Republicans have been looking for greater specifics on the replacement of Obamacare or the reform of the tax code. They may not want marching orders, but a sense of what the president wants to prioritize. House Speaker Paul Ryan for example was pleased this week when Trump again spoke of a 20 percent ”border adjustment” tax as part of his new trade policy, an idea Ryan has counted on in his own budget projections. Down the road, they will also need clearer ideas about the military   the revamp of the Veterans Administration or the actual reality of a wall tracing the entire border between the U. S. and Mexico. But on Tuesday night, the Republicans in Congress will have their majorities and a president they can be happy about for the first time since 2006. And that will be a good enough start on making at least one vision of America great again."
"When you win an election, opposition can seem kind of, well, manufactured. Asked about the protests facing members of Congress back home this week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, ”Some people are clearly upset, but there is a bit of professional protester, manufactured base in there.” It turns out, that’s not far off from how the Obama team reacted when protests erupted at town halls in the Summer of 2009. ”Well, I think what you’ve seen is they have bragged about manufacturing to some degree that anger,”   House press secretary Robert Gibbs said at the time. Back then, Democrats pointed to some activist groups funded by the Koch brothers. Now, Republicans point to liberal activist efforts like Indivisible, founded by former Democratic Congressional staffers to help liberals take advantage of Tea   tactics. It’s the question everyone would love to answer as protesters show up at town halls held by members of Congress who are home this week: Is this the liberal version of the Tea Party? The scenes at Congressional town halls are similar, as are doubts about how organic the demonstrations are. Last night, President Trump sent a tweet suggesting that Republicans being confronted at town halls are not facing the wrath of the actual voters who put them into office. Yes, many  —   if not most  —   of these protests are planned, just like many of the confrontations driven by Tea Party groups in 2009 against passing Obamacare in the first place were also planned. Today, ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl asked White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, ”The president referred to ’  angry crowds’ at these town halls. Is he suggesting this is manufactured anger, that this is not real anger and real concern?” Spicer called it a ”hybrid.” He said of some protests, ”It is not a representation of a member’s district.” It’s true that members like Rep. Jason Chaffetz,   who won his seat with over 70 percent of the vote in 2016 may not see seemingly liberal protesters overtaking his town hall as an accurate measure of any electoral danger he may face in 2018. In fact, Chaffetz had referred to a clash at one of his recent events as ”a paid attempt to bully an intimidate.” However, let’s compare how this was dealt with by the Obama administration when protests against their efforts at healthcare reform rose up in 2009. Here’s the exchange with former press secretary Robert Gibbs and former ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper: As much as Democrats might have downplayed the authenticity of protests eight years ago, there was no denying the political force surrounding the Tea Party when it developed into a wave by the midterm elections of 2010, and swept Republicans into control of the House of Representatives. Much of that opposition was in response to the Affordable Care Act. Now, Republicans are moving to repeal and replace the healthcare law, and getting an earful from constituents worried about losing their coverage. There’s no way to know if this anger will develop into anything as powerful as the Tea Party wave. Regardless of whether there’s enough energy to propel Democrats back into power down the road, it’s at least giving the left something to rally around."
"It was a balmy Sunday evening in early 1999, and Dr. Kaw Bing Chua hadn’t had lunch or dinner. There wasn’t time to eat. Chua was chasing a killer. And he thought maybe he had finally tracked it down. He slid the slide under the microscope lens, turned on the scope’s light and looked inside. ”A chill went down my spine,” Chua says. ”The slide lit up bright green, like bright green lanterns.” Right there, in Chua’s hands, was a virus the world had never seen before. And as he soon learned, it’s also one of the most dangerous ones. Now Chua had enough of the virus to kill everyone in the lab. Maybe worse. The new virus  —   eventually called Nipah  —   is on the World Health Organization’s list of viruses most likely to cause a global pandemic. It’s the virus that inspired the 2011 movie Contagion. And just this past January, governments and philanthropists pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a Nipah vaccine because it poses such a big threat. Back in 1999, Nipah was spreading across Malaysia. And Chua was the only one who knew it. But nobody believed him. Chua was still training in virology at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur and didn’t have clout or confidence. ”I called my department head at his home. I said, ’Prof, please come. I want to show you something,’ ” Chua says. Chua’s professor told him to throw away the experiments  —   that Chua was wasting time. But Chua didn’t throw away the virus. Instead he packed it up and brought the samples to the U. S. Living in a nightmare, An hour south of Chua’s laboratory experiments, a mysterious disease was devastating a farming town called Nipah. The disease was as deadly as Ebola, but instead of attacking blood vessels, it attacked the brain. It felt like living in a nightmare, says Thomas Wong, who was a pig farmer in Nipah at the time. ”Every day we were seeing in the newspaper that people were dying,” Wong says. ”I lost many friends. Many friends.” The disease struck lightning fast. Young men would be healthy one day. The next day their brains would swell up. They couldn’t walk. Or talk. ”They’d become comatose, and some of them became paralyzed,” says Dr. C. T. Tan, a neurologist at the University of Malaya, who took care of patients from Nipah. Some people even had what looked like   syndrome  —   they were conscious and awake but couldn’t move or speak. There was nothing Tan could do. No cure, no treatment. About half the patients died. ”We didn’t know what it was,” he says. ”It was terrifying.” Nearly 1 in 3 families in Nipah had already lost someone. And the window of opportunity for keeping the disease contained was quickly closing. It had already spread to several states and hopped over the border into Singapore  —   where 4 million people lived. Yet the Malaysian government told people not to worry. It said the disease was coming from mosquitoes. And it had it under control because it was spraying for mosquitoes. Both Tan and Chua thought the government was wrong. And there was one big clue: ”No Muslims were getting sick,” Tan says. Mosquitoes don’t care which religion you practice. ”So if the disease was coming from mosquitoes, you would have Muslims, Hindus and Christians getting sick,” Tan says. But only Chinese Malaysians were catching the disease  —   and even more specifically, only Chinese farmers raising pigs. ”As you know, Muslims don’t handle pigs,” Tan says. Pigs were crying, At this point, Chua agreed with Tan: This disease wasn’t coming from mosquitoes. ”No, no I knew it was something else, and people were dying!” he exclaims. ”But no one would believe me,” he says. ”I was practically begging people to believe me.” So Chua had to get crafty. He persuaded his professor to send him to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab in Fort Collins, Colo. Scientists study   diseases there. They also have a powerful microscope that would show exactly what type of virus was causing the problem. Chau wrapped up samples of the virus in special packaging, put them in his   luggage and hopped on a plane. ”It was an emergency,” Chua says. ”I had to get the samples there very quickly.” When a scientist put the samples into the microscope, Chua says a sense of great fear rushed through him: ”The moment I saw the screen, I said ’Goodness! It’s a paramyxo!’ ” The image revealed the telltale signs of a frightening group of viruses: paramyxoviruses.  These viruses come from livestock, not mosquitoes. And they often infect the lungs. So they can spread rapidly through the air. Measles is a type of paramyxovirus, and it’s one of the most contagious viruses on Earth. Chua quickly realized just how dangerous this virus could be. He rushed to a phone and called officials in Malaysia. ”Stop fighting mosquitoes!” he told them. ”It’s coming from pigs.” The Malaysian government listened. And it did something very drastic. ”Malaysia’s army moved in for the country’s   animal culling,” Journeyman Pictures reported in a documentary back in 1999. ”Almost 1 million pigs, shoved into pits and shot.” Awali Muniandy helped with the pig culling. He says it was a horrific scene. ”The pigs were screaming, and you could see some tears on their faces,” says Muniandy, who’s with the Department of Veterinary Services Malaysia. ”It was pitiful.” But the culling worked. The outbreak completely stopped. The new killer virus appeared to have vanished. And the world was left with a mystery: Where did the pigs get the virus? Huge pig farms turned into virus factories, It took more than a decade to figure all out, but eventually scientists realized that pigs had been getting Nipah virus for years. Maybe more. They very likely picked it up from bats. But the outbreaks were small. And no one really noticed because the farms were small. ”In the olden days, the pigs were running and the family would look after a few pigs,” neurologist Tan says. Then in the ’80s and ’90s, Malaysia went through a massive economic boom. Families were entering the middle class. They could afford to eat pork several times a week. So farmers changed the way they raised pigs. They started packing the pigs into tight quarters and industrializing the farms. They could produce more meat with fewer resources. But the productivity bump came with a cost: ”When a virus got into the pigs, it could multiply very quickly,” Tan says. When you have thousands and thousands of pigs on one farm, there’s a seemingly endless supply of new piglets to infect. The pig factory becomes a virus factory. The virus spreads like wildfire through the whole farm. Hops to another farm. And eventually jumps into farmers. ”The way people grow their food has changed so has the way diseases spread,” Tan says. ”Agricultural industrialization was part of what triggered the outbreak.” This pattern has occurred throughout human history. When we change the way we interact with animals, we unleash new diseases. For example, when people first started raising cows and farming, thousands of years ago, we very likely started catching something like the measles from cows. Now we’re in a new phase of agriculture: factory farming. From it, we’ve gotten a new strain of the   bacteria disease MRSA, a slew of bird flus, swine flu and Nipah. In Malaysia, pig farms have gotten cleaner. Farmers break large farms into smaller ones and keep pigs isolated from other animals and people. As a result, Nipah has stayed away. But across Asia, there have been at least 16 outbreaks of Nipah since 1999  —   in India, Bangladesh and the Philippines. And there are signs the virus is becoming more dangerous. In the Malaysian outbreak, the fatality rate was about 40 percent, and the virus didn’t seem to spread between people. But more recently, Nipah has killed up to 70 percent of those infected  —   and can spread not only from animals to people but also between people. ”The world is changing so fast,” says Tan. And sometimes the only way to keep up is when a scientist like Chua isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo. What do you want to know about pandemics? Share your questions by submitting them in our special tool here. Our global health team will answer some of them in an upcoming story."
"When Anna Taylor got her U. S. patent for false eyelashes in 1911, it’s doubtful she could see far enough into the future to know that trying to make lashes look longer and fuller would turn into a   industry. While some may find it odd that others apply mascara, glue strips of lashes to their eyelids or get individual lash extensions, the quest to have  —   or appear to have  —   long, luxurious lashes is serious business. As of April 2016, drugstore sales of false lashes and adhesives were more than $113 million, according to Gale Business Insights. Bette Davis eyes, In the early 20th century, film director D. W. Griffith and Hollywood makeup artist Max Factor brought false lashes to the big screen. Movie stars such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Lauren Bacall and Carol Channing were regular lash wearers. A 2007 Los Angeles Times obituary for Hollywood makeup artist Monty Westmore, who worked with the legendary Crawford, noted that she did her own face. But it was his job ”to lay out her makeup supplies and curl six pairs of her false eyelashes each morning before filming began.” In the ’60s, model Twiggy made false lashes so popular, as many as 20 million pairs were sold a year, according to Racked. But getting them on your eye wasn’t so easy. ”They were mystifying!” says Jenny Bailly, the executive beauty director for Allure magazine. Even though false lashes were the standard for movie stars, showgirls and models, for the laywoman they could be a bit of work. ”There was the glue, the strips  —   how do you get these things on and then how do you get them off,” Bailly says. In a 1998 interview with  ’s Pop Up Video creators, Oprah snatched hers off for the audience  —   then couldn’t get them back on. But more recently, Bailly says, YouTube tutorials have helped people figure it out. ”All I had to do was type in ’how to apply,’ and the first thing that came up was false lashes, and then there’s like 130, 000 different videos,” she says. That’s helped more people bring the red carpet look to everyday life. ”I do think the Kardashian effect is part of it,” Bailly says. ”I think the show, you know these women who wear false lashes every day as just part of their everyday look, kind of normalized it.” And these days, there are a lot more options that are easier to use  —   and lash extensions. One lash at a time, At DC Lash Bar in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D. C. customers lie on a massage table as   and lash technician Josie Felipe explains each step of the process. First, she cleanses the eyes, then she applies an undereye pad to keep bottom lashes out of the way. ”What I’m doing now is I’m just applying a little bit of a tape onto your eyelid, to kind of make that area taut, so I can get as close to the root as possible,” she says in a soothing voice. Felipe brushes the lashes to help separate them, then pulls out a pair of tweezers and metal separator to isolate individual lashes. A small square of cardboard holding assorted synthetic lashes is stuck to the back of her hand with Velcro. She asks questions during the consultation  —   do you want them to look natural or are you going for a full glamour look?  —   that help her make decisions about the weight, curl and length of lash to apply. The whole session can take up to two hours, but unlike lash strips, extensions can last up to three weeks if you remember not to rub your eyes and don’t apply mascara. The extensions get longer as your lashes grow and then fall off as they shed. Still, if false lashes of any kind are too much for you, Unyi Agba, a senior manager of marketing at Maybelline, says there’s a growing demand for mascara that gives the false lash look. ”It’s always about trying to find that mascara that’s going to really transform them,” she says. ”So there’s going to be an increased appetite for that. Consumers are going to want mascaras that can really deliver a false lash look. So even more lengthening, even more volume, and even more depth to the lashes  —   expect to see some of that.”"
"Look: You want to win your Oscar pool. We want you to win your Oscar pool. In truth, we feel we owe it to you. You took our advice on the Emmys, last September, and you did . .. okay. Seventeen right, out of 27 categories. Which, yes, if you’re the kind of egregiously unimaginative churl who clings, with a willfully hidebound insistence, to the ”rules” of ”math,” works out to 62%. A ”failing” ”grade.” This meant that, yes okay, your awful friend Trish won the evening, and has been gloating about it for months, in that gratingly condescending way of hers. Like that time you went to see Arrival, and she waited until the movie started to lean over and whisper hotly in your ear, ”It’s not your fault, I mean who saw Bloodline’s Ben Mendelsohn coming, right?” This effrontery will not stand. Take heart: Tomorrow night, if you follow our picks below, Trish is going down. REMINDER: The Pop Culture Happy Hour team (Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, Glen Weldon, producer Jessica Reedy and All Things Considered’s Bob Mondello) will be   the Oscars tomorrow night, beginning at 6pm ET. Join us at oscars. npr. org, Know that we are applying precisely the same degree of sterile, empiricist rigor to our Oscar prognostications that we did to our Emmy picks. Know, too, that in most of the major categories,   and prognosticators have identified clear   and the conventional wisdom around their chances has remained remarkably stable, ever since the nominations were announced. HOWEVER. There’s every reason to believe that this year, the conventional wisdom should be regarded with a pinch of salt. A shovelful of salt. A   Costco bag of Snowmelt. Because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)  —   the members of which vote on the Oscars  —   took   steps last year to diversify and revivify their voting pool. A bit. Let’s look at the numbers. Some 6, 004 active members voted for the 2016 Oscars last February. In June, AMPAS added 683 new members. Of this new group, 46% are women, 41% percent are people of color, and 41% are from 59 countries outside the U. S. Encouraging? Sure. But the needle hasn’t moved all that much: membership still stands at 89% male, and 73% white. The Academy’s a long way from woke, but it’s sleeping lighter. For our prognosticating purposes, what matters is that about 10% of those who are voting this year have never cast an Oscar ballot before. They’re also younger, on average, than their fellows. As a result, the conventional wisdom  —   the ”Oscar buzz” that historically reflects the   calcified,   assumptions of   who’ve been watching the Oscars for years  —   is less dependable than ever. The picks below attempt to account for this new landscape. Inasmuch as they can. Which is not very much. But, um, trust us anyway? BEST PICTURE, The battle here’s between Moonlight and La La Land. (This will be the last Oscar handed out tomorrow night, but if La La Land racks up some early categories, you’ll know which way the evening’s headed.) Many assume that Hollywood’s long track record of rewarding movies about itself  —   ”dreams made of flickering light and shadow” and whatnot  —   makes La La Land a  . But all those new members, and the   political climate, may be enough to give the smaller, moodier, achingly beautiful Moonlight the momentum it needs to take the trophy. . .. But probably not. This is The Artist all over again. Who Will Win: La La Land,  ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE, It’s between Affleck and Washington, and Affleck’s chances have been fading over the past few months. There’s also the fact that it’s such a hooded, inwardly directed performance  —   masterful, but unshowy in ways that might fly below some voters’ radar. Smart money’s on Washington: It’s a big performance of an iconic American role in a work that’s revered. Yes, he’s won twice before (for best supporting in Glory and best actor in Training Day). Doesn’t matter. If he wins tomorrow, he’ll be the first black actor to take home three trophies. Who Will Win: Denzel Washington, Fences,  ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE, Negga was quiet and assured, Portman’s performance was deeply divisive (I loved it, but I get how people thought it mannered) ditto Huppert, and Streep was Streeping to beat the band. With a stick. But La La Land’s about dreams made of flickering light and shadow, have you heard? The only question is whether she’ll dedicate it to her aunt who used to live in Paris. Who Will Win: Emma Stone, La La Land,  ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE, One of the few locks of the night. Who Will Win: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight,  ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE, Another of the evening’s absolute locks. You won’t find bigger locks on the Panama Canal. Who Will Win: Viola Davis, Fences  ANIMATED FEATURE FILM, There are those who will tell you that the actual best animated feature of the year, Kubo and the Two Strings, will win this year, because it just won a BAFTA, which has a great track record of picking this category’s winners. Do not believe them. Who Will Win: Zootopia, CINEMATOGRAPHY, Moonlight, Lion, and Arrival featured cinematography that supported their stories, intensified them, invited audience to live inside them. Silence is   spectacle, gravid and gorgeous. It’s also the Scorsese film’s only nomination, and there’s a solid chance that voters might single it out in an effort to honor its director. But then again, dreams made of flickering light and shadow blah blah blah. Who Will Win: La La Land, COSTUME DESIGN, Tough one. Historically, the Academy rewards period pictures, with all their showy bustles and bonnets and brooches. Which would argue for everything but La La Land. If you think the backlash against La La Land is strong enough that you’re prepared to risk another loss to Trish (who’s confident of a La La Land sweep) a good place to hop off the LLL train is the depot marked Jackie, which was meticulously stylish and sleek as hell. But if you do, you’re braver than us. Because those dreams! They’re made of flickering light! And shadow, also! Who Will Win: La La Land,  DIRECTING, Usually  —   in 64 out of the 88 past Oscar ceremonies, or 73% of the time  —   the best picture and best director awards go to the same film. But this year is anything but usual, and splits are getting more and more common. (2013:   of Pi 2014: 12 Years a   2016:   Revenant.) A split gives the Academy a chance to spread the love around, and in a year when there’s a choice between a popular ”dreams made of flickering light and shadow” choice and a   critical darling, it’s beginning to look a like Splitsville. Who Will Win: Barry Jenkins, Moonlight. (If he does, he’ll be the first black director to win.) DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE) Three out of the five nominees (I Am Not Your Negro, OJ: Made in America and 13th) tackle race in America. The fight’s between Ava DuVernay’s magnificent 13th and the sprawling,   deep dive into the OJ Simpson case. 13th makes a powerful and stirring argument, while OJ: Made in America dedicates itself to making the viewer place an achingly familiar event in a sweeping cultural context. (Its Hollywood setting does not hurt its chances.) OJ has the edge here  —   but if there’s a knock against it, it’s that it’s a television project that got a VERY limited theatrical release to qualify for this award. The Academy may sniff at that. Who Will Win: OJ: Made in America, DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT) Extremis profiles a palliative care specialist treating terminally ill patients in an Oakland ICU. 4. 1 Miles follows a captain in the Greek Coast Guard swept up in the ongoing migrant crisis, and both Watani: My Homeland and The White Helmets present a   view of   Syria. They are, in different ways, searing and stark. Only Joe’s Violin  —   about a elderly man who lost much of his family in the Holocaust, and his decision to donate his beloved violin to the Bronx Global Learning Institute for Girls  —   offers anything like the faintest glimmer of hope. Voters will likely seize on that. Who Will Win: Joe’s Violin, FILM EDITING, Take a look at how that diner scene in Moonlight makes you live in the tension and uncertainty of the moment, and tell me it doesn’t deserve the Oscar. The black beans and rice alone! But who are we kidding. It’s a ”dreams made of flickering light and shadow” world, and we’re all just livin’ in it. Who Will Win: La La Land, FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM, The Iranian   Ashgar Farhadi won’t be at the ceremony, but that doesn’t matter. Who Will Win: The Salesman, Iran. MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING, I know I keep harping on this, people, but seriously: If we allow the words ”The   Suicide Squad” into the universe, I fervently believe they’ll open a rift in spacetime from which will spill all manner of squamous gibbering eldritch horrors bent on our annihilation. It’s a thing I worry about. Besides, there’s a far better choice, which reflects how very far Star Trek has come from slapping a wad of spirit gum between the eyebrows of a   and shoving him in front of a camera. Who Will Win: Star Trek Beyond, MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE) Moonlight’s score was beautiful, Jackie’s was . .. impossible to miss (BRAAAAMMMMM) Lion’s did its work, and Passengers’ was there also. (Arrival’s was overlooked, for what it’s worth.) But La La Land’s score is almost disquietingly hummable. Also? Not to put too fine a point on it? Dreams made of flickering light and shadow. Who Will Win: La La Land, MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG) Conventional wisdom says ”City of Stars,” from La La Land. And in its defense: ”dreams made of flickering light and shadow,” after all. But it’s up against ”Audition,” a song which is so very ”dreams made flickering light and shadow” it practically makes   at you. They could split the vote, allowing something else to squeak in. Which is why we’re flinging conventional wisdom to the four winds and going with our heart on this one. Because if ”How Far I’ll Go” wins,   Miranda will: 1. Get the O in his EGOT, 2. Be the youngest   in history, and 3. Give an acceptance rap. Those are three good things, right there. Who Will Win: ”How Far I’ll Go,” Moana, PRODUCTION DESIGN, Arrival’s alien ship is uncanny and unforgettable, and Fantastic Beasts is showy, but please people, let’s not forget about dreams, and what they’re made of. (Psst it’s flickering light and shadow, beeteedubs.) Who Will Win: La La Land, SHORT FILM (ANIMATED) Piper’s a Pixar short, and it’s looking like the studio will miss out on the animated feature Oscar, so this will make a nice consolation prize. Who Will Win: Piper  SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION) Ennemis Interieurs, a tense, intimate, wonderfully acted film about a French policeman of Algerian descent interrogating a   Algerian man, plays with the viewer in ways that voters are likely to appreciate. (Timecode is very cute, though don’t count it out.) Who Will Win: Ennemis Interieurs  SOUND EDITING, On the one hand: Dreams made of flickering light and shadow. On the other: War is both hell, and hella noisy. Who Will Win: Hacksaw Ridge, SOUND MIXING, Three war films here (Hacksaw Ridge, Rogue One, and 13 Hours). And if Hacksaw Ridge takes it, it’ll be Kevin O’Connor’s first win, having been nominated 21 times. But then again: flickering light, shadow, dreams etc. Who Will Win: La La Land, VISUAL EFFECTS, Doctor Strange was trippy, Kubo and the Two Strings was breathtaking (and if it wins, it’ll be the first animated film to do so   weird, right?) but the pure technical achievement of The Jungle Book will take the day. Who Will Win: The Jungle Book, WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY) Here’s a chance for the Academy to recognize both La La Land and Moonlight by splitting the   writing awards. But it’s also a chance for them to give the evening’s only nod to the hugely popular Hidden Figures (if Octavia Spencer doesn’t win). Who Will Win: Moonlight, WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY) The Lobster was my favorite film of the year, and the writing category is historically where the Academy recognizes films that are too quirky to qualify for the mass appeal of best picture. Hell or High Water and, especially, 20th Century Women feature smart, unconventional scripts. La La Land made the list, despite its unremarkable screenplay, for reasons having to do with flickering light and shadow, which, I am reliably informed, are the stuff of dreams. But this is Manchester by the Sea’s to lose. Who Will Win: Manchester by the Sea, There you have it. Good luck! Deliver unto Trish a shattering defeat! Here’s one last thing to keep in mind: Even if La La Land doesn’t sweep all 14 of the categories in which it’s nominated (and it won’t, despite Trish’s   convictions) it just needs to win 11 of them to tie with   Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Titanic and  . Should it miss only two of its categories, it’ll break the Oscar record. Regardless, you can be certain that the Oscar’s orchestra will be playing snippets from La La Land’s score many, many times tomorrow night. But which of its songs will they launch into, as members of the cast   crew clamber to the stage? Take bets at your Oscar party, before the night begins. Trish will say, ”City of Stars,” because it’s nominated. Foolish Trish! Ridiculous, witless Trish! It’s much too slow and somber! Ditto ”Audition.” No, the   music needs to be more celebratory. It could be ”Someone in the Crowd,” of course. But no: The smart money’s on ”Another Day of Sun.” So get ready, tomorrow night, for a lot of ba ba BA       ba ba BA       and also, as I trust we’ve made clear, for plenty of dreams made of flickering light and shadow. How many? Definitely not 14, and probably not 11, but at least eight of them, we’re predicting."
"When it comes to music, the Oscars often get it wrong. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tends to wobble in the Best Score category, nominating old hands with familiar names but frequently rewarding strangers who emerge out of left field and then disappear from the scene. The merits of these   choices are debatable, but scrolling through the Academy’s choices over the years prompts a fair amount of  . What makes a film score ”great” is as hard to define, let alone find consensus on, as great acting or great editing  —   but it’s fair to ask that those deemed   be both skillfully composed and essential to the storytelling. For every obvious masterpiece (like E. T. whose emotional contours and iconic moments are inextricable from John Williams’ music) and subversive surprise (see The Social Network, Trent Reznor’s pulsating, electronic heartbeat for the internet generation) there is a long list of Oscar winners that beat out clearly superior scores for inexplicable reasons, or that shouldn’t have qualified in the first place. ’Round Midnight, a collage of mostly classic jazz pieces, won in 1986 over Ennio Morricone’s The Mission, one of the greatest film scores ever written. John Williams has 50 nominations but only five Oscars his score for The Empire Strikes Back, widely considered the apex of his Star Wars work, lost in 1980 to Michael Gore’s   musical, Fame. Babel and The Artist likely owe their wins in 2005 and 2011 to music that isn’t original score at all: The former uses a preexisting piece by Ryuichi Sakamoto in its climax the latter, Bernard Herrmann’s seminal score from Vertigo. Somehow, despite their spotted history, the Academy’s 2017 picks for Best Score are a surprisingly spotless batch. They are largely the work of newcomers: Five of the six composers have never been nominated for an Oscar before. Three are younger than 40. Two are being recognized for what is only their second feature film. Most of the scores take a clean, minimal approach, avoiding the big, creamy Hollywood orchestra in favor of smaller ensembles and soloists. Each one feels integral to its story, and each one stands out  —   whether in its bold and startling prominence, or because it bears the burden of nuanced, emotional storytelling where the film lacks it, or because it lives in a genre where music is the star. In Moonlight, composer Nicholas Britell ties together three chapters of the protagonist’s life with a gossamer theme that gradually slows and deepens as the character ages. Violinist Tim Fain gives voice to ”Little’s Theme,” the melody in its childhood phase, with such lightness and intimate mic placement that you can hear the scratch of fibers between bow and string. Inspired by director Barry Jenkins’ love of ”chopped and screwed” music  —   a remix style from Southern   that digitally slows down a track to reveal, in the composer’s words, ”hidden sonic worlds”  —   Britell decelerates the theme for each progressive chapter, to the point where the adult character, ”Black,” is accompanied by celli and basses, moving with a masculine, glacial weight. Elsewhere, digital effects turn the ordinary into poetry. In the ”baptism” scene where Mahershala Ali’s character teaches Little to swim in the ocean, the tails of Fain’s lightning arpeggios are manipulated by the composer to create a sense of tidal overlapping. With his spare but virtuosic score, Britell helps elevate this quiet story of a very interior (and nearly speechless) gay black youth in Miami to   heights. Lion’s music shares a narrative function with that of Moonlight  —   binding chaptered portions of a character’s life  —   as well as an aesthetic, built around fragile, tactile, solo instrument sounds. Composers Dustin O’Halloran, who writes the neoclassical piano music for the Amazon series Transparent, and Hauschka (a. k. a. Volker Bertelmann, the German artist best known for his use of prepared piano) set up melodies of melancholy and loneliness in the film’s first half, which traces hero Saroo’s childhood in India and separation from his home and family. These themes, arranged for vibrato violin and gentle, arpeggiating piano, resurface in Saroo’s adult life in Australia, hovering like ghosts and calling him back to a location he can’t identify. For a story that could have easily invited sentimental mush and overbearing orchestration, O’Halloran and Hauschka’s score succeeds by being emotionally direct: lyrically, delicately and unoppressively capturing Saroo’s internal state. Mica Levi, the English composer alternately known as experimental pop artist Micachu, surprised audiences with her itching, quivering score for the 2013   drama Under the Skin. Although Jackie tells a more grounded story  —   about the grieving process of Jacqueline Kennedy in the wake of her husband’s assassination  —   its score is almost equally unnerving. Written mostly for strings and a few solo instruments (flute, piano, snare drum) the music throbs and invades the story in unexpected ways, beginning with a queasy, melting chord that cascades before the first image flickers onscreen. Levi largely stayed away from the film while composing, guided instead by her own impression of the kind of music Jackie Kennedy would have liked.  As Indiewire critic Ben Croll has noted, the score moves the way grief does  —   arriving in waves out of nowhere, then retreating just as suddenly. A timid, unsteady waltz for flute and strings follows Jackie around a sepulchral White House. Violins shake violently on a sudden recall of the gunshot that upended her life in Dallas. The music softens and sweetens in a tender moment Jackie shares with her friend Nancy Tuckerman  —   a flute darting birdlike over simple string chords trudging toward light. And in the film’s long, dreamy denouement,   notes complicate an otherwise hopeful adagio. Levi’s music avoids biopic clichés and gives new insight into the broken, disoriented but still elegant first lady, as imagined by star Natalie Portman and director Pablo Larraín. For my money, it’s the best, most daringly and essentially used score of the lot. The one familiar name on the ballot is Thomas Newman, a perennial bridesmaid with 14 Oscar nominations over the past 22 years  —   including The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty and last year’s Bridge of Spies  —   and zero wins. In some ways, the   adventure Passengers has the most traditional score on this list, but only because the composer has become a cinematic tradition. His scores all bear an unmistakable DNA, a deft blend of quirky instrumentation and rhythmic play with nostalgic, emotive melody. Truthfully, the film asks too much of its score  —   the   dialogue and undercooked effects leave much to compensate for  —   but by doing the heavy lifting, Newman shines in his own right. As he did in   Newman paints a mysterious cosmic soundscape for the lonely occupants of a futuristic world, combining his usual bag of wispy woodwinds and clustered brass with cool electronics and a high synthetic voice (something he’s jokingly called ”a bit of a star child thing”). There’s even a spiritual cousin to  ’s ”Define Dancing” sequence for Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence’s own   spacewalk, a romantic serenade for piano and blossoming strings. The score is one of two nominations for a film derided by critics and rejected by audiences, and the confluence of circumstances almost undoubtedly spells another   year for Newman. Still, even where the film itself fumbles, his music lends subtlety to its spectrum of moods  —   desperation, moral quandary, sensuality and, finally,   action  —   and the score is one of the composer’s most mature and sophisticated from his   period. For obvious reasons, music matters more than usual in La La Land, the clear frontrunner in this category and many others this year. In the tradition of his childhood hero, Disney legend Alan Menken,    Justin Hurwitz crafted a score that mines every inch of possibility from the film’s showtunes, which he also wrote. The result is a patchwork of variations on these melodies, operating like afterimages or foreshadows to keep the musical pot boiling and the stars’ feet nimble between numbers. Despite the interstitial nature of the score cues, these aren’t lazy, muzak interpretations of Hurwitz’s songs: The composer dresses up his tunes in a boundless wardrobe that includes jazz combos, Latin ensembles and romantic classical orchestras. The orchestration is clean and transparent, showcasing trilling woodwinds, classical guitar and a whole cast of idiophones  —   and there’s a sparkling, nostalgically fizzy quality that’s hard to find outside of a Disney movie these days. There’s no overture in this musical, but Hurwitz effectively works one in with his fireworks spectacular ”Epilogue,” in which the main tunes are reprised and decked out in their evening best, including a   chorus. The one major melody in the score not taken from the songs is a wistful waltz, which first lures Emma Stone’s Mia into the restaurant where Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian is gigging like a siren song. Hurwitz evolves that theme in a parade of developments, until it quite literally takes flight in a romantic fantasia inside the Griffith Observatory planetarium. La La Land will no doubt get swept up in the film’s suction of gold, minting Hurwitz (like his school pal, director Damien Chazelle) as one of the hottest properties in Hollywood. Newman will likely have to wait another   for his first statue. As for the other composers, they all have full, exciting careers ahead of them."
"The notion of dog years stems from the common belief that one year for a dog equals seven years for a human. Although canine aging is more nuanced than a simple formula, any dog lover knows that dogs’ lives pass far too quickly. Even so, America’s 70 million dogs, like their human companions, are living longer, on average, because of better medical care and nutrition. Caring for elderly dogs can be  . Many pet owners struggle to understand when to pursue aggressive care and when to stop and help a beloved pet pass on. ”Older patients are the biggest challenge veterinarians face,” says Dr. Alicia Karas, an assistant professor of veterinary medicine at Tufts University. She argues for a holistic approach to older dogs, saying that ”too often we focus on the affected body part or the results of an   not how an animal walks into the exam room.” Pain tops the list of common health concerns for older dogs, with causes ranging from the routine, such as arthritis, to the more serious, such as cancer. As in humans, pain management can be complicated by other conditions. A dog with weak kidneys, for instance, may not be able to take   pain medicine. Karas looks beyond drugs to treat pain, sometimes recommending massage, therapeutic ultrasound and rehabilitation. The benefits of a good rehabilitation program can be  . Older dogs may not make it outside for long walks, says Karas, but with rehabilitation, ”three times a week the dog gets out and sees people who pet and love him.” Older dogs, like their aging owners, may experience memory loss. ”When we work up a pet for urinating in the house, we tend to focus on the kidneys, bladder and endocrine reasons,” she says. But it may be a case of ”simply forgetting to go to the bathroom,” she explains. Anxiety is closely linked to impaired memory, and even minor changes in the household can be hard on older dogs. While specialized care may seem ideal, Dr. Stephen Steep, a veterinarian in Oxford, Mich. tries to present a menu of options and to set realistic expectations of what can and can’t be done. ”Here are some things you can do. If cost is not an issue, this is an option,” he says. ”Here is another less aggressive option.” But the pet’s comfort is paramount, and Steep says he always considers whether or not a particular decision will improve quality of life. When it comes to    discussions, Steep recognizes they’re inherently difficult. He likes to start with   questions, noting that many owners aren’t aware of subtle changes. ”How is your dog’s appetite?” he asks. ”Is your dog sleeping through the night? How is he doing on long walks?” Although Steep believes most owners understand there is a limit to their pet’s life, he feels people don’t always realize how old their pets really are. He tries to help them accept aging as a normal process, not a disease. ”People want to have dog pass away at home in their sleep, but that is rarely the case,” Steep says. ”You get into a situation where the pet cannot go outside to urinate or defecate. He may be gasping for air due to heart failure or incapacitated due to memory loss.” Still, some people just can’t let go. When Steep gets the sense that someone is pushing too hard, he tries to emphasize the pet’s comfort. ”I’ll pull them into clinical activities like checking heart rates, monitoring water intake, to try and open their eyes,” Steep explains. Most owners come to the realization that their dog is at the end of its life. Although Karas recognizes the moral distress created by    decisions, she acknowledges the importance of euthanasia. ”When I have no other options, I have a tool to alleviate suffering.” When Andrew Shepherd’s    English setter, Madison, developed seizures, he focused on maintaining her quality of life. Given her age and the lack of any obvious discomfort, Shepherd decided against an extensive   and instead focused on the dog’s symptoms, a decision their veterinarian supported. During the following months, the seizures become more frequent, lasted longer and the dog appeared to be in pain. ”She would yelp,” Shepherd recalls. ”It was clearly not a pleasant experience.” One day Madison suffered a protracted seizure while traveling in the back seat of Shepherd’s car. For him, this was the tipping point. ”We couldn’t sacrifice her quality of life just to keep her around,” Shepherd explains. After that, it was about selecting the right moment to let Madison go. Their final night together was a celebration of Madison’s life. The family comforted their dog, took pictures, shared their favorite Madison stories and made a list of all the nicknames they had for her. Shepherd recalls crying as he took Madison to the veterinarian’s office for the last time. ”Normally she hated going to the vet, but this time she didn’t fight at all,” he says. ”She knew it was time.” Dr. Preeti N. Malani is a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. You can follow her on Twitter: @PreetiNMalani. "
"Yahya Abu Romman, a    languages major, had just graduated from university. To celebrate, he planned a   trip to the U. S. where his brother, uncles and aunts and more than a dozen cousins have lived for years. With good grades, an engaging personality and fluency in three languages  —   English, Arabic and Spanish  —   he had worked as a nature conservation ranger while studying, and had his pick of jobs with tour companies in Jordan, a strong U. S. ally. In 2015, Abu Romman was issued a tourist visa at the U. S. embassy in Amman, good for five years. With money from a graduation present, he bought a   ticket and landed at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport a few days after the start of President Trump’s travel ban on the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries. That’s where the positive impression of the U. S. he’d inherited from his father came to a screeching halt. ”My dad is a graduate from the University of Illinois,” says Abu Romman. ”He always told me America is the land of justice, land of opportunities, of generosity. That there are very kind people. And there are. But I think things have changed.” Abu Romman is a Jordanian citizen, but born in Syria. He’s been to Syria only once since birth  —   and being born in an Arab country doesn’t automatically confer citizenship there. Instead, citizenship is generally based your father’s nationality. Still, Abu Romman couldn’t persuade the border officer at O’Hare that he wasn’t Syrian. ”He said, ’Sir, if you were born in Syria, you should have a Syrian passport,’ ” says Abu Romman at his family’s home off a winding street in the Jordanian capital. ”I said, ’Why should I have a Syrian passport? My father is Jordanian. My mother is Jordanian. We all are Jordanian, but it happened to be in Syria where I was born.’ He knocked on the glass next to him, to his colleague. He said, ’We might have a problem with this.” The questions moved on to the case of Abu Romman’s brother, who had lived illegally in the U. S. and overstayed a visa before becoming a citizen. Then border guards went through Abu Romman’s phone and found emails he’d sent to flight schools in the U. S. and other countries. Abu Romman says his dream was to learn to fly, and he was simply asking about scholarships. But the officer wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t planning to stay in the U. S. ”He said, ’Sir, we’re going to be cancelling your visa,’” says Abu Romman. He shows me his U. S. visa with the words ”Revoked  —   cancelled by CBP”  —   Customs and Border Protection  —   written across it with a red marker. Abu Romman says the officer told him he would not be allowed to call his embassy before he signed papers agreeing to be deported. He says he wasn’t allowed to phone a lawyer or a family member. ”He said, ’If you refuse to sign the papers . .. I will ban you from entering the United States for the rest of your life,’” Abu Romman says. He was told he would be deported the following morning. CBP officers took his jacket, his belt, his phone and his shoelaces, he says, and put him in a cold cell with a steel door and open toilet, along with five other people. ”I sat there and introduced myself to my cellmates. Most of them were engineers or something,” Abu Romman says. There were five mattresses on the floor for six people. Abu Romman says everyone crammed into the cell had advanced degrees, including an Indian engineer working for an American company. Refugee and immigrants’ rights organizations have gone to court over the issue of other travelers who were earlier denied entry to the U. S. after the ban. The case argues that the travelers were coerced by border officials into agreeing to be deported. This is similar to Abu Romman’s account of his experience at O’Hare, though he is not represented in the case. As of Friday afternoon, CBP had yet to comment in response to NPR requests about Abu Romman’s experience. Abu Romman had visited the United States once before, when he was in the sixth grade, and has wonderful memories of that trip. ”They were so welcoming  —   ’Come to us. See our beautiful land,’” he says. ”Now they’re telling you not to come, please. ’You’re not welcome. ’” He’s been told by the U. S. embassy in Jordan he can apply again for a visa, but probably shouldn’t do it right way. Abu Romman says he probably will, but it’s been a painful lesson. He seems genuinely puzzled by the assumption by border officers that he might try to stay in the U. S. ”I’m a lot safer in Jordan,” he says. ”You hear about people being robbed and killed [in the U. S.] all the time. My relatives say sometimes even in gas stations, there are   windows between people working there and the customer. You never have to worry about that here.” Most Jordanians say their biggest problems are economic. At a demonstration Friday in downtown Amman to protest price increases in fuel and public services, another recent graduate, Zina Khabbas, said she was thinking of moving to the Gulf. Khabbas, wearing designer sunglasses and an elegant head scarf woven with gold threads, is an engineer. She says it’s tough to make ends meet in Jordan, but neither she nor her friends are considering the U. S. ”America was an opportunity for people here before,” says the   . ”But now, no one is actually thinking about the United States for a future place to live.”"
"The White House on Friday barred reporters from numerous major media outlets from participating in a regularly scheduled press briefing, triggering charges of retaliation from news executives. ”These are moves that governments around the world make when they are less sophisticated and they want to block the press from doing its job, and it’s sad to see that it’s a tactic that the Trump White House is employing,” CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker told NPR. ”It has no impact on our commitment to reporting and the story. If anything it only further motivates us to make sure we ferret out all the facts.” The latest chapter in the saga of the Trump White House’s relations with the press kicked off Thursday night: CNN reported that senior White House officials intervened with the FBI to try to get the nation’s top law enforcement officials to throw cold water on news reports about investigations of ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The White House reacted furiously. On Friday morning at a convention of conservative activists, Trump once more attacked the media as phony and an enemy of the public. He drew a distinction between what he called ”fake news” and the rest of the media, and particularly denounced reporters’ reliance on anonymous sources. Early Friday afternoon, press secretary Sean Spicer held what’s called a gaggle with reporters, during which he responded to questions on the record but without television cameras present. Journalists for CNN and other news outlets, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, Politico and some others were kept out of Spicer’s briefing in his office. Reporters for other major television networks, as well as those for a few conservative news organizations sympathetic to Trump, were ushered in. Designated pool reporters for the day, who share materials with their peers in print, radio and television, did attend. CBS Radio recorded and circulated audio with those news organizations that share pooling duties. Reporters from Time magazine and The Associated Press declined to participate in the briefing because their peers were turned away. Reporters noted several ironies. Even as Trump denounced the media for relying on anonymous sources in his address Friday morning, senior White House officials were trashing CNN’s report but declining to do so by name. As several reporters noted, in an earlier life Trump used to call major newspapers using an assumed name to plant stories and offer comments as though he were someone else, acting as a publicity agent or spokesman for himself. Other media organizations, news executives and journalistic groups also publicly objected to being shut out. The New York Times’ Dean Baquet said in a statement that it was unprecedented in the paper’s history of covering administrations of both parties. ”Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest,” Baquet said. The White House Correspondents’ Association and the National Press Club also weighed in. As captured in an audio recording of his exchange with reporters, Spicer said he decided whom to admit and added that he had decided to expand the group beyond a small cluster of pool reporters. He did little to allay concerns that CNN and others were targeted. ”We’re going to aggressively push back,” Spicer said. ”We’re just not going to sit back and let false narratives, false stories and inaccurate facts get out there.” Trump similarly rejected reports that had rocked his new administration. ”I saw one story recently where they said, ’nine people have confirmed. . ..’ There are no nine people. I don’t believe there was one or two people,” Trump told attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference. ”And I said, ’Give me a break.’ Because I know the people, I know who they talk to. There were no nine people.” The Washington Post recently cited nine unnamed sources in reporting that   security adviser Michael Flynn spoke about sanctions against Russia with a top Russian diplomat before Trump’s inauguration, despite Flynn’s denials. Flynn resigned shortly after. The Post’s executive editor, Marty Baron, responded with this statement: ”Everything we published regarding Gen. Flynn was true, as confirmed by subsequent events and    statements from administration officials themselves. The story led directly to the general’s dismissal as national security adviser. Calling press reports fake doesn’t make them so.” Friday evening, CNN anchor Jake Tapper knocked the Trump administration for its aversion to accountability and ”a lack of a basic understanding of how an adult White House functions.” Tapper called its rejection of the press’s role ” .” Zucker said Friday’s slight would not stop CNN from performing its role and called it another dangerous precedent showing hostility toward the press, citing Trump’s verbal attacks and Spicer’s repeated preference for calling on reporters from sympathetic news organizations. ”It’s silly on their part to retaliate like this,” Zucker said. ”I think it says more about them and the way they view the press, and the truth, than anything else. And that’s unfortunate.”"
"In the 1950s and ’60s, if there were any children’s books in a house, at least one of them was likely to be a Little Golden Book. With their golden spines and brightly colored pictures, they begged to be grabbed off a shelf by a curious child  —   which is exactly what their creators intended. Those beloved books celebrate their 75th birthday this year. First introduced shortly after the start of World War II, many of them  —   such as The Tawny Scrawny Lion, The Saggy Baggy Elephant and The Poky Little Puppy  —   have become classics. There were a lot of reasons that Golden Books became an instant success when they were first published. The most obvious one was the price  —   they cost just 25 cents. Up until then, children’s books were found mostly in libraries or   book stores and were meant to be handled with care. ”They tended to be very expensive. So even if you could find one of these books in a store, only a certain percent of the population could afford to bring them home,” explains author Leonard Marcus. Marcus wrote The Golden Legacy: The Story of the Golden Books. He says the printers, publishers, writers and artists who brought Golden Books to the market had a lofty goal  —   they wanted to ”democratize children’s books,” making them both affordable and accessible. To that end, they were sold in department stores, train stations, drugstores and supermarkets. ”Kids would come with their parents,” Marcus says. ”And they’d be sitting in the shopping cart and they’d reach out to the rack and grab a book. And the mother, the father, would look at it and see that it was only 25 cents and they’d put it in the cart. And that would happen over and over again.” Golden Books became a kind of totem of the times for baby boomers who grew up in the 1950s and ’60s. George Saunders, author of the bestselling Lincoln in the Bardo, says Golden Books were a highlight of his visits to his grandmother. ”She had a collection,” he recalls. ”And I can remember heading over with the anticipation that we’d wallow in these books a bit.” He says he remembers the pictures best: ”In those editions there’s some magic between the words and the images,” he says. ”Something about the kind of primary nature of the images and how those colors just explode off the pages. I think that may have been the first time I became aware of art. . .. I could feel in my mental and physical reaction to those books that something really incredible was going on.” And there was something magical going on. Diane Muldrow, an editorial director at the current incarnation of Golden Books, says the publisher drew on two talented pools of artists: animators who wanted to leave the Disney studios and commercial artists fleeing the war in Europe. Teaming up with an equally creative team of writers, Muldrow says, they came up with a sophisticated product in a deceptively simple package. ”I think that sense of motion and wit  —   it really shines through the books,” says Muldrow. ”When I think of these famous Little Golden Books  —   like Tawny Scrawny Lion, Scuffy the Tugboat, The Shy Little Kitten  —   these books have a wit to them, a slyness that I think was very rare at the time. It’s lasting.” In the 1960s Golden Books drew criticism for their lack of racial diversity, and the creative teams behind the books worked to make them more inclusive. In the ’70s, Golden Books began getting some competition from inexpensive paperbacks by the ’90s, the company went bankrupt. The books are now published by Penguin Random House. Though not as ubiquitous as they once were, they are still around, and still much loved, says Muldrow. On the front of every Golden Book, there’s a name plate that reads, ”This book belongs to . .. ” They beckon children to write their names in the books  —   making them their own."
"President Trump’s status with the Conservative Political Action Conference has gone from ”it’s complicated” to a   committed relationship. That turnaround was to be expected, given that the former reality TV star and billionaire businessman pulled off an unlikely upset last November that finally gave attendees at CPAC what they had been salivating over for more than a decade  —   control of the White House, Congress and a new conservative justice nominated to the Supreme Court. But to do that, attendees had to be willing to embrace Trump’s brand of populist conservatism that hasn’t always jibed with the more libertarian strain that’s been in command at CPACs of yesteryear. ”Is Trump a conservative? He’s not  —   no, I don’t think so,” said college student Matt Longenacker who was attending from Lancaster, Pa. But the    still cast his ballot last November for Trump, albeit with some reservations that Trump might actually grow the federal government instead of shrinking it. ”Unfortunately, it takes somebody who isn’t willing to play by the rules to get the job done. And right now, that’s how I tend to agree with him in that sense,” Longenacker said. Cheryl Posavac, 49, from Philadelphia, made the case that Trump did show some shades of conservatism that blended in with a more libertarian worldview. ”He’s a true believer in America and the Constitution,” she said. ”I don’t think we’ve seen that in a while  —   somebody very much championing that. Not really not in the traditional sense.” Is Trumpism the new Reaganism?  The last person who embodied the group’s perfect conservative ideal was one that Trump’s team was quick to draw a comparisons to throughout the week  —   President Ronald Reagan. Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged in his speech Thursday night that his own political marriage with Trump may have seemed like an odd one, given their contrasting images. ”You know, I’m a small town guy. He’s big city. I’m Midwest, he’s Manhattan Island,” the former Indiana governor laughed. ”He’s known for his    personality, his charm, and his charisma. And I’m, like, not.” But, it was another   famous star who ultimately provided the mantle to which all other conservatives are still measured up to. ”You know, from the outset, our president reminded me of somebody else, a man who inspired me to actually join the cause of conservatism nearly 40 years ago, President Ronald Reagan,” Pence said. American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp, whose group sponsors CPAC each year, made the same comparison. ”You know the last time a president of the United States came to CPAC in his first year?” he asked the crowd before introducing Trump Friday morning. ”Ronald Reagan in 1981.” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus also made sure the allusion to the 40th president was clear. ”Some of the core principles of President Trump are very similar to those of Ronald Reagan,” the former Republican National Committee chairman told CPAC attendees on Thursday. ”When you look at peace through strength and building up the military . .. peace through strength, deregulation. You think about the economy, the economic boom that was created. And some of it is going to take a little time, I mean, to get the jobs back to get more money in people’s pockets. Those things are going to happen.” While there are some similarities in Trump’s view of America’s great days that lie ahead, his speech to CPAC was not Reagan’s ”shining city on a hill” or brimming with the kind of optimism that the former president inspired. But the speech was not exactly the dark ”American carnage” Trump talked about in his inaugural address just over a month ago, either. To hear the president tell it, his initial relationship with CPAC that began six years ago when he first addressed the gathering was love at first sight. ”I walked the stage on CPAC. I’ll never forget it, really. I had very little notes and even less preparation,” Trump reflected on Friday. ”So when you have practically no notes and no preparation and then you leave and everybody was thrilled, I said, ’I think I like this business.’ ” He didn’t run the next year after giving that speech in 2011, but the ultimately successful campaign he would launch in June 2015 drew from those same populist ideals he laid out to CPAC in his first appearance. He told the crowd six years ago that if he were president ”we’ll be taking back hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us, we’ll be creating vast numbers of productive jobs, and we’ll rebuild our country so that we can be proud.” CPAC becomes TPAC  White House counselor Kellyanne Conway went a step further than her other colleagues, outright saying that this conference was now fully in Trump’s control. ”This will be TPAC when he’s here, no doubt,” she predicted. ”You know, every great movement  —   and which the conservative movement is, of course  —   every great movement ends up being a little bit sclerotic and dusty after a time, and I think they need new fusion of energy,” Conway said. ”And in the case of candidate Trump and   and nominee Trump, he went right to the grassroots and brought you along. He made people feel from the beginning, they were part of this movement.” Conway herself was a convert to the Trump team, eventually becoming his final campaign manager. But before that, she had been behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the primary, leading one of the superPACs supporting him. A year ago, it was Cruz who looked like he was in the driver’s seat at CPAC, winning the presidential straw poll and ribbing Trump for skipping out on the gathering. Cruz was back again at CPAC after embracing Trump late in the campaign. But many of the other usual mainstay speakers were absent, as The Washington Post pointed out. There were no speeches from   crowd favorites like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Not even GOP congressional leaders like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made appearances. Trump’s proclamation on Friday that ”the era of empty talk is over” belies the struggles he’s had in his first month in office  —   from blowback over the hurried implementation of his controversial travel ban to the anger Republican members of Congress are facing back home at recess town halls this week over Obamacare repeal plans and other issues. Both Pence and Trump insisted that the health care law would be overhauled the replaced, though neither offered any specifics. While attendees and conservatives as a whole will want to eventually see results of those promises and ensure that Trump isn’t just offering ”empty talk,” the president and his advisers returned to his usual punching bag  —   the media  —   or ”fake news,” as Trump and others have taken to calling mainstream news sources. ”So just in finishing, I say [the fake news] doesn’t represent the people, it . .. never will represent the people, and we’re going to do something about it because we have to go out and have to speak our minds and we have to be honest. Our victory was a win like nobody has ever seen before,” the president warned. His chief strategist Steve Bannon  —   the former head of the controversial Breitbart News  —   was even more direct when he appeared on stage with Priebus on Thursday, using his favorite derisive label of the ”opposition party” for the media. ”It’s going to get worse every day for the media,” Bannon said, going on to warn the crowd that ”if you think they are giving you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.”"
"President Trump’s counterterrorism adviser is under fire from his peers  —   and Sebastian Gorka is hitting back. Just ask Michael Smith. He’s a counterterrorism expert in Charleston, S. C. who specializes in online recruiting efforts and who has advised members of Congress on   issues. Smith says that at about 7 p. m. Tuesday, he received a call on his smartphone from a private number in Falls Church, Va. It was Gorka  —   not calling from a government line at his office at the White House. ”The statements made from the very beginning led me to believe that it was a prank call,” Smith tells NPR. ”Because he’s calling me from a cellphone suggesting that he wants to talk about official business  —   specifically, elevating awareness of my tweets about him to White House legal counsel.” Smith has been a prominent critic of Gorka, questioning the    British immigrant’s qualifications to be Trump’s new counterterrorism czar. ”I frankly was stunned that the administration would hire him to work in the White House on such critical issues as counterterrorism,” says Smith, a Republican who voted for Trump. ”This could blow up in our faces, to have basically an amateur working on such important policies and working with people like [White House chief strategist] Steve Bannon.” Much of Smith’s criticism of Gorka has appeared on his Twitter account under the hashtag #FakeTerrorismExpert. Gorka began their phone conversation by threatening to have a White House legal team review Smith’s online jabs, Smith says. ”I believe it speaks to an absence of professionalism,” Smith says. ”I mean, to call somebody and posture intent to entangle that person in a legal battle with the White House  —   that’s a call that should be made on an official White House line so there’s a full recording of it for the public record.” So about five minutes into their conversation, Smith began recording the call. Here’s one excerpt: Gorka: Why, why is there such vitriol pumping out of you constantly every day now? It’s so strange. I look at your Twitter feed, you know, once or twice a day and again, it’s half a dozen tweets about me and I’ve never met you. Smith: Wow. Are you defeating jihad by monitoring or trolling my Twitter feed? I mean honestly, to begin, you’ve called . .. Gorka: Oh, if that’s your answer, if that’s your explanation . .. Smith: . .. you’ve called, you’ve called as a White House official, you have called an American citizen . .. Gorka: Yes, I have. Smith: . .. and begun the conversation very confrontationally by accusing me of animus toward you. Of which I’m attempting to explain, there is no animus towards you: I believe that you are a charlatan. [At another point in the conversation, Gorka recapitulates what he said before Smith began recording the call] Gorka: Before I do anything and show these materials to legal counsel, tell me why you’re doing it. Smith says Gorka’s initial harsh tone softened during the call. ”I think it occurred to him that he may be approaching things in such an unprofessional manner that I could perhaps bring that to light in such a way as to harm his career working in government,” Smith says. ”He probably recognized that his conduct was so unbecoming.” Gorka did not respond to NPR’s repeated requests for comment on this story. He did appear on Morning Edition earlier this month to talk about the counterterrorism raid that Trump ordered in Yemen and the administration’s positions about Israeli settlements. As for his conversation with Smith, Gorka invited him during the call to come to the White House to discuss the matter ”face to face, man to man.” They agreed to meet there on March 8. That invitation was rescinded the next day. ”Given your statements for the latest attack piece and continued disparaging Tweets against not only myself but the administration and president,” Gorka wrote in an email to Smith, ”consider your invitation to meet withdrawn.” Despite having authored the   2016 book Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, Gorka was not   in Washington before his arrival at the Trump White House. ”This is somebody who has been kind of excluded from a lot of mainstream conversations for a long time,” says James Carafano, a military expert at the Heritage Foundation and a member of the Trump transition team. ”And if there’s one thing Seb is   at, it’s about not being ignored.” In a December interview with Fox News, Gorka declared: ”The era of the pajama boy is over January 20th  —   and the alpha males are back.” Gorka seemed to illustrate that point three days after Trump won the presidency, at a gathering in Palm Beach, Fla. ”I’m gonna start with something a tad naughty,” he told a giddy crowd of Trump supporters. ”We are happy. But I am going to show a picture I’m not meant to show usually.” A grisly photo was then projected onto a large screen of the body of an insurgent lying face down, with an   at its side. ”We can win now,” Gorka roared before the cheering crowd. ”We can win!” ”Gorka is a showman,” says Paul Pillar, a former chief of counterterrorist analysis at the CIA who is now a fellow at Georgetown University. ”Gorka is not taken seriously as an analyst of terrorism or international affairs in the serious academic community.” Still, Trump’s top counterterrorism adviser has gotten a lot of attention. That’s due in good measure to Gorka’s fierce public defense of the president’s executive order temporarily barring the entry of refugees and the people of seven predominantly Muslim nations. ”The border is our front door,” Gorka told an approving crowd at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D. C. ”Surely we should have a control as to who enters our house. This is the house of America, and the idea that we don’t control it is crazy!” Such views alarm Gorka’s critics. ”It is dangerous and counterproductive to allege, as Gorka does, that the struggle against terrorism and political violence is basically a struggle against Islam,” says Georgetown’s Pillar. ”Unfortunately, the doctrine that Gorka articulates is reflected in much of what President Trump and, earlier, candidate Trump have been saying.” At another recent gathering, Gorka described a global jihadi war that extends to every American home. ”The front line in this war,” he told defense contractors and special operations personnel, ”is when you step out of your house in the morning. That’s the front line.”"
"Retirement parties have become frequent events at the State Department in recent weeks. So, too, are the warnings about where foreign policy may be heading under the Trump Administration. On Friday afternoon, yet another experienced State Department official moved on. Daniel Fried was feted with champagne and cake at the end of his   career as a diplomat who helped shape America’s   War policy in Europe. Fried, a longtime critic of Russia, served in the   Union, worked on Poland and Central Europe and was the assistant secretary of state for Europe under President George W. Bush. Most recently, Fried was the lead sanctions expert at the State Department, formulating sanctions including those imposed on Russia for annexing Crimea in 2014 and stirring up a conflict in eastern Ukraine. Fried told colleagues at his party on Friday that over the years, he learned that values have power. Time and patience can pay off, as it did when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. ”The West’s great institutions, NATO and the EU, grew to embrace 100 million liberated Europeans,” Fried said. ”It was my honor to do what I could to help.” ”I learned never to underestimate the possibility of change,” he said. ”Nothing can be taken for granted, and this great achievement is now under assault by Russia, but what we did in my time is no less honorable. It is for the present generation to defend and, when the time comes again, extend freedom in Europe.” There were some    digs, too, at President Trump, who has talked about trying to make ”a deal” with Russia. Germany offered Britain a sphere of influence deal in 1940, Fried reminded his colleagues. ”Churchill didn’t take the deal then,” he said. ”We shouldn’t take similar deals now.” The Atlantic Council’s Damon Wilson tweeted that Fried’s remarks were a ”clarion call for the U. S. to believe in itself and lead [a] liberal order.” Fried urged his colleagues to continue to serve the Trump administration with ”loyalty, dedication and courage.” ”Help Secretary Tillerson,” he said. ”He deserves it. And he needs it. And help the president as well, putting your backs in it.” Fried also spoke of the importance of American values and identity. ”We are not an   with identity rooted in shared blood,” he noted. ”The option of a white man’s republic ended at Appomattox.”"
"Black parents across America have long instructed their children on navigating discrimination and avoiding its sometimes deadly consequences. But for black immigrant Muslims, this conversation takes on an entirely different dimension. Growing up, Ahlaam Ibraahim, a   student at the University of Washington, felt the dual struggles of being a religious and ethnic minority. ”As a black woman, I’m scared of the police because I see people that look like me killed simply for being black. As a Muslim woman, I’m scared of being attacked and killed,” Ibraahim says. ”Do they notice I’m a Muslim because of my hijab and my blackness because of my melanin?” The intersection of these two identities has become more acute thanks to Black Lives Matter and protests against the Trump administration’s executive order on immigration. A recent survey by Pew Research showed that almost 6 in 10 Americans believe Muslims face ”a lot” of discrimination. Another Pew study found that while races differ in their perceptions of how   discrimination affects achievement, nearly a third of white Americans believe blacks have a harder time getting ahead compared to 70 percent of black Americans. According to Hind Makki, a   interfaith and   educator, these concerns are common among many Muslim American youth, especially those of African descent. ”A lot of black Muslims from immigrant backgrounds live at the intersection of Islamophobia and   racism, which affects how they see America and how they raise their kids.” From Malcolm X to Muhammad Ali, America’s most famous Muslims are indisputably black. Yet the visibility of the nation’s native and immigrant Muslim populations have been erased due to the heightened fears of terrorism   . Since the attacks, Muslims of Arab descent, especially men with turbans or women with hijabs, have borne the brunt of   rhetoric. ”I think if I wore taqiyah [an Islamic prayer cap] on my head or if my beard were grown out, I’d probably receive more discrimination than I do now,” says Amir Mohammed, a   rapper better known by his stage name Oddisee. ”I can’t escape or hide my color, so I’m stereotyped based on being a black person in America. Because I’m not Middle Eastern, it’s only after they find out that I’m Muslim that I’ll also encounter the Islamophobia.” The face of American Islam is changing, and while some black Muslims might welcome greater visibility for their religious identity, embracing their religion and immigrant heritage may come with a cost. President Trump’s executive order created panic among Muslims from seven   countries. For   and   who come from two of the three African countries on the list, anxiety may be particularly acute. These communities are primarily based in Midwestern cities that have already been subject to heightened scrutiny from the Trump administration over claims of extremism and violence. Minneapolis has the largest   population in the country while Chicago boasts a large   community. Despite their rapidly rising immigrant populations, both cities remain highly segregated and have been national focal points in   cases of police brutality and institutionalized discrimination. In March 2015, Hazma Jeylani, a      was stopped under suspicion of stealing a car. In the smartphone video capturing the arrest, a Minneapolis police officer threatened to break the teenager’s leg. In 2002, the city’s Somali community was outraged following the police shooting of Abu Kassim Jeilani, a mentally ill Somali man. President Trump has been outspoken in his views on both cities. Last November, Trump visited Minneapolis and said some Somali migrants there, ”[are] joining Isis and spreading their extremist views all over our country and all over the world.” Such statements from the nation’s highest office raised alarm bells for black immigrant Muslims, for whom problems with urban policing are married to increased scrutiny of immigrants. The realities of being black in America leave immigrants with no doubt about their identity in America. ”I think that when many of the older generation come here, they realize that if they don’t identify as black, America will do it for you,” says Oddisee. ”When my father moved to Prince George’s County, a predominantly black area, when my neighbors looked out the window, they saw a black family.” Somalia and Sudan have a complicated relationship with race on the fault line of racial consciousness because they straddle the border between Arab and black Africa. For Hind Makki, the slow acknowledgement of blackness within older generations has lead to an active embrace of   identity among her peers. ”I’ve witnessed a shift of feeling and claiming blackness as a cultural, political, and religious identity, and a shift away from the Middle   identity.” With nearly a third of American Muslims identifying as   calls for intersectionality are gaining traction. The Council on   Relations (CAIR) has openly supported Black Lives Matter while leading black commentators like Shaun King and Van Jones have been outspoken in their calls for solidarity with Muslims affected by the rise in hate crimes and   rhetoric. Magari Aziza Hill, an   Muslim and   of Muslim   Collaborative, says the experiences of black immigrant Muslims are often erased. ”Since most black American Muslims are   there’s a tendency to render African Muslims invisible. Discussions of   within immigrant Muslim communities often erase the experience of African immigrant communities. I’ve certainly been guilty of that and have been trying, especially given recent events, to shed more light on those stories.” In Minnesota, the local CAIR chapter has experienced a marked increase in its caseload. According to Jaylani Hussein, the executive director, the abrupt rollout of the immigration ban fueled distress and paranoia that heightened   fears among many Muslims. ”Traditional   are already greatly concerned about their rights and dealing with law enforcement, particularly local police. But immigrant black Muslims also have to deal with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI,” says Hussein. ”That exacerbates perceived notions of what law enforcement is, particularly for many that come from police states where law enforcement can detain people for no reason.” Daad Sharfi, a   student at Yale University, lives in Albany Park, one of Chicago’s most ethnically diverse neighborhoods. Although her immediate family was naturalized during the Obama years, many members of her extended network are permanent residents or visa holders vulnerable to the consequences of the administration’s executive order. ”I am an immigrant and I have always been surrounded by immigrants and asylum seekers, so this attack on migration was personally very disheartening as it jeopardized my community and the entire system through which my family was able to enter the U. S.,” she says. After the Ninth Circuit Court refused to uphold the administration’s immigration ban, the future for black Muslims of immigrant descent remains uncertain as the Trump administration issues a revised executive order. However, individuals like Sharfi and organizations like CAIR are gearing up for a fight. On her part, Sharfi plans to pursue a career in immigration law following her graduation from Yale in May. Mohamed says CAIR will continue to engage in civic education and policy advocacy, leaning on powerful advocates including Rep. Ilhan Omar, the first   legislator in the United States and Rep. Keith Ellison, who represents Minnesota’s 5th district, which includes Minneapolis. Akinyi Ochieng is a writer and researcher studying at the London School of Economics. Follow her @kikiochieng."
"12:39 a. m.: Next up on Pop Culture Happy Hour’s end, we’ll record a   Small Batch, which ought to be up in your feeds overnight. Too bad there won’t be much to discuss. .. 12:36 a. m.: It’s naive to suggest that we’re done with this year’s Oscars coverage, because we’ll be talking about this one for a looooooong time. But to recap, for now: Moonlight is your best picture, and is absolutely wonderful, and will hopefully be seen by a lot more people as a result. (It also took best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor.) La La Land leads the field with six Oscars  —   including best director and best actress  —   out of 14 nominations. Manchester By The Sea takes best original screenplay and best actor. 12:25 a. m.: Poor Jordan Horowitz, one of La La Land’s producers, had to break the news in the middle of a celebration  —   and held up the card to the cameras so everyone knew he wasn’t kidding. Then, he handed off the award to Moonlight in the most gracious possible way. 12:19 a. m.: We’re going to be parsing this one for a while, because Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty said ”La La Land,” and the La La Land folks started giving their speeches, and then they looked at the card, which read, ”Moonlight.” At which point they called up the Moonlight people, who came up to accept. Never seen anything like it, and at the   possible time, too. 12:14 a. m.: And now, to hastily rewrite history, because: BEDLAM. The wrong winner was read, and Moonlight is your Best Picture. Also, Thomas E. Dewey is our 35th president. 12:09 a. m.: And your winner, at long last, is La La Land. Won’t mute the backlash a whole lot, but once you’ve won Best Picture, backlash is kinda beside the point, right? 12:05 a. m.: On the 50th anniversary of Bonnie  Clyde, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty give out the final award of the evening: Best Picture. Our nominees, one last time: Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell Or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester By The Sea and Moonlight. 12:02 a. m.: In a minor surprise, given some of the padding in the telecast’s midsection, it looks like we’re only going to come in a few minutes late. Best Picture is next, and looks like a lock for. .. well, let’s just see. 11:57 p. m.: After a characteristically dry Affleck speech, we zoom right into the Best Actress prize, which  —   to the surprise of absolutely no one  —   is transported directly into the hands of one Emma Stone. 11:51 p. m.: After pantsing around all night, we’re finally barreling through the big ones. Best Actor has been considered a close race between Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington, with Washington appearing to have momentum. But. .. it’s Affleck. 11:44 p. m.: Damien Chazelle wins Best Director for La La Land  —   not a huge surprise, and probably (but not certainly) a bellwether for Best Picture. At 32, he’s the youngest person ever to win the award. 11:35 p. m.: Best Adapted Screenplay goes to Moonlight, because there is some justice in the world. (Though the award is presented by Amy Adams, who should have been nominated for Arrival, so maybe there isn’t.) 11:30 p. m.: After the umpteenth Matt Damon bit, we are at Best Original Screenplay. Sure would be a shame to wrap this baby up in less than four hours. And your Best Original Screenplay winner is. .. Manchester By The Sea! And not La La Land! And apparently Glen Weldon was right! 11:24 p. m.: For the In Memoriam segment, the Oscars’ directors have wisely muted the crowd, thus sparing the world the unseemly business where big stars get applause and   figures don’t. In other news, wow, a lot of terrific folks have died in the last year. 11:20 p. m.: La La Land continues to gain momentum, this time winning Best Original Song for ”City Of Stars.”   Miranda, for now, misses out on EGOT status, and must for now remain an EGT. 11:15 p. m.: La La Land wins best original score. 11:05 p. m.: John Legend performs ”City of Stars” and ”Audition (The Fools Who Dream),” the two songs from La La Land nominated for best original song. Both songs are composed by Justin Hurwitz. 11:02 p. m.: Celebrities read mean tweets about themselves, a gag you might have seen on YouTube or Jimmy Kimmel Live! 11:00 p. m.: La La Land wins for best cinematography. I predict you’ll see more wins for La La Land later tonight. 10:54 p. m.: Seeing as we are in the umpteenth commercial break, we bring you this tidbit from Bob Mondello: Can we talk money for a moment. The Academy Awards aren’t technically about dollars, but within the industry, they’re kinda about dollars. The nine films that received Oscar nominations for best picture had taken in $483 million prior to the nominations. In the last month, since the nominations were announced, they’ve added an additional $172 million, nearly a third as much. For most films, it goes without saying, grosses drop precipitously after opening week. Hidden Figures and La La Land have all but exploded since their nominations. Moonlight, Fences, and Manchester By The Sea would have remained   films without the recognition, That Oscar bounce is why film studios spend millions of dollars chasing nominations, and it’s just the tip of the proverbial (though gradually melting) economic iceberg. Ancillary income for Oscar nominees is also substantially improved  —   home video, DVDs, and TV and cable sales. And winners? In the major categories, a win is  . Directors of Best Pics, stars who win major awards, all have expanded opportunities, higher paydays, more roles that could lead to, well. Oscar consideration. 10:52 p. m.: John Cho and Leslie Mann do a bit about the scientific and technical awards. 10:50 p. m.: Sing wins for short film, live action. 10:44 p. m.: The White Helmets wins best documentary short. NPR’s Mandalit del Barco profiled the film for All Things Considered. 10:36 p. m.: Hacksaw Ridge wins best film editing. For those keeping score at home, the film has picked up two awards. 10:33 p. m.: Actor and writer Seth Rogan salutes his childhood favorite film Back to the Future, then enters via a DeLorean with beloved actor Michael J. Fox. 10:30 p. m.: The Jungle Book takes the Oscar for best visual effects. The Pop Culture Happy Hour crew thinks this category was stacked, so this is a deserved win. 10:28 p. m.: And now. .. A SALUTE TO THE MOVIES! !! 10:20 p. m.: Two things can be equally true. 1. These tour bus people are cute. 2. This bit has been going on since the Industrial Revolution. 10:16 p. m.: Kimmel does a bit, pranking a tour bus who don’t realize they’re at the Oscars. Gary and Vicki from Chicago get   by the power invested in Denzel by the state of celebrity. 10:14 p. m.: Best production design goes to La La Land, its first win of the night. Won’t be the last. 10:11 p. m.: Best animated feature goes to Zootopia. Not a surprise, but Kubo and the Two Strings is a gorgeous and surprising film that not enough people saw. FYI. 10:08 p. m.: Best animated short goes to Piper, the Pixar short. 10:04 p. m.: Sting performs ”The Empty Chair” from the documentary Jim: The James Foley Story. Seems like he could keep playing for hours and hours and hours without ever reaching the song’s climax. 9:58 p. m.: The Salesman of Iran wins best foreign language film director Asghar Farhadi is absent, ”out of respect” for residents of Iran and other nations targeted by the Trump administration’s travel ban. 9:55 p. m.: The theme for the evening, Kimmel informs us, is ”Inspiration.” As opposed to, you know: ”Handing out awards.” 9:50 p. m.: Glen here, noting that 1. Foreign language film is coming up next, and 2. My Oscar predictions, as of this moment, stand at 50%. I’m a coin toss! 9:47 p. m.: Viola Davis becomes the first black actor to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony. (Note: Whoopi Goldberg won a ”special”   Emmy for Comic Relief.) 9:44 p. m.: Mark Rylance and his jaunty hat give out Best Supporting Actress  —   which to the surprise of no one on earth, goes to Viola Davis, who could have just as easily been nominated (and won) for Fences. 9:38 p. m.: A montage honors Governors Awards winners Lynn Stalmaster, Frederick Wiseman, Anne V. Coates and Jackie Chan, who hasn’t aged a day in decades. 9:36 p. m.: A Weekend Edition Sunday piece on Kevin O’Connell, who just won his first Oscar in 21 tries. 9:33 p. m.: Six awards in, and six different movies have won so far: Moonlight, Suicide Squad, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, O. J.: Made In America, Arrival, and Hacksaw Ridge. More than an hour into the ceremony, La La Land has gone   . 9:30 p. m.: Best sound mixing, in a bit of an upset, goes to Hacksaw Ridge  —   including Kevin O’Connell, winning his first Oscar in 21 tries. 9:28 p. m.: Best sound editing goes to Arrival, giving La La Land its second loss of the night. So, if you’re keeping score, that’s ”Suicide Squad 1, La La Land 0.” Also, Arrival is wonderful. 9:25 p. m.: If you had ”9:25” for the first utterance of ”the magic of the movies,” you’re a winner! 9:24 p. m.: Stephen here, to note that the Oscar crowd looks much more excited to see Cheryl Boone Isaacs than the Grammy crowd will ever be to see Neil Portnow. 9:20 p. m.: During the performance of ”How Far I’ll Go” from Moana, Bob Mondello asks Glen if he predicted this would win. He did. Bob: ”You’re wrong, it’s a really boring song.” UNRELATED: Bob’s Twitter handle is @bob_mondello, 9:15 p. m.: Best documentary feature goes to the   OJ: Made in America. It’s the longest film to win an Academy Award. As you’d imagine. 9:01 p. m.: Best Costume Design goes to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This is La La Land’s first loss of the evening. 8:58 p. m.: Best Makeup and Hairstyling goes to Suicide Squad. Glen Weldon audibly gasps. 8:55 p. m.: Glen Weldon notes that as of this moment his predictions are at 100%. 8:51 p. m.: Costume design coming up next. 8:50 p. m.: Not a surprise, but a nice emotional speech. ”We are servants to these characters, these stories.” 8:47 p. m.: First award: Best supporting actor, Mahershala Ali for Moonlight. 8:45 p. m.: Looks like we’re going to get a bunch of montages tonight, retrospectives of past winners for each category. 8:44 p. m.: Number of jokes about nobody seeing the nominated films: 3. And counting. 8:40 p. m.: First laugh of the evening, in re: the movies of 2016. ”Black people saved NASA, and white people saved jazz.” 8:37 p. m.: Who had seven minutes in the ”Kimmel does a Damon bit” pool? 8:35 p. m.: We begin with Justin Timberlake performing ”Can’t Stop This Feeling” while dancing at rows and rows of awkward Hollywood types. Not so much audience participation as audience toleration. 8:20 p. m.: The show’s about to start. As host of big events like this, Kimmel’s got a history of keeping things moving at a brisk trot and dialing down the ”HOLLYWOOD’S MOST GLAMOROUS NIGHT OF STARS! DREAMS MADE OF FLICKERING LIGHT!”  of it all. Which makes for better TV. He also has a history of dragging Matt Damon onstage for a bit that your Uncle Hank will likely find hilarious. 6:30 p. m.: Here’s the order of awards tonight: Supporting Actor, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Documentary Feature, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Supporting Actress, Foreign Language Film, Animated Short, Animated Feature, Production Design, Visual Effects, Film Editing, Live Action Short, Documentary Short, Cinematography, Original Score, Original Song, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Directing, Leading Actor, Leading Actress, Best Picture, With so many tech awards up front, it’ll take a while for a La La Land sweep  —   if it happens  —   to register. 6:15 p. m.: Welcome! We’re here at NPR HQ at The Hub  —   the circle of monitors around which NPR editors gather when breaking news occurs. Big decisions that shape NPR coverage are made here. . .. We’re, um, watching the watching the red carpet. (We promise not to spill booze and get   dust on all the history.)  —   —   —   —    All of us at Pop Culture Happy Hour (host Linda Holmes, panelists Stephen Thompson and Glen Weldon, frequent fourth chair Bob Mondello, and producer Jessica Reedy) are gearing up for the 89th Annual Academy Awards. We’re trying on gowns, experimenting with   and wondering if our   lavalier necklace steals focus from our Nirav Modi earrings. (Read: we’re schlepping into NPR HQ on Oscar night to watch the show in jeans and  . Will there be pretzels? There will likely be pretzels.) We’ll be   all night long, beginning with the red carpet at 6:00 pm Eastern Time, and continuing until the ceremony ends, or the   of the universe, whichever comes first. Keep refreshing this page to stay    on our  . Will La La Land sweep? Will Moonlight wax or wane? Will Suicide Squad win its    category, and thus cause the phrase ”the   Suicide Squad” to be loosed upon an unsuspecting world, creating a rift in spacetime? Find out by hanging out with us at oscars. npr. org and on Twitter: Pop Culture Happy Hour: @pchh, Linda: @nprmonkeysee, Stephen: @idislikestephen, Glen: @ghweldon, Bob: @bob_mondello, Jessica: @jessica_reedy"
"The cost of college is high and rising, while a bachelor’s degree is practically required to get ahead. It’s hard enough for a family with means to get a student through school these days, let alone a   family. So, are the immediate costs of college, and the loans that can follow, worth it? A recent study took a look at each college in America and calculated the number of   graduates who wound up being top income earners. We call that mobility. The study comes from the Equality of Opportunity Project and is paired with an interactive tool from the New York Times. How did schools do? It may surprise you to hear that the schools with the lowest mobility rates are Ivy League and elite colleges, where less than two percent of the student population comes from a family earning less than $25, 000 a year. And the schools that are most likely to move students upward? They’re what the   of the study, Raj Chetty, calls ”  public schools”  —   like California State University and City University of New York. NPR Ed spoke with Chetty, economics professor at Stanford University, about his work. This interview has been edited for clarity. So, what can policymakers and educators in higher education take away from this study? Let me give you an example. What I think these data shows you about CUNY is that it’s a college that takes lots of   kids and those kids do very well. Studying places like CUNY and figuring out how we might be able to replicate their success at other institutions is a very valuable thing to do. Now, that’s especially the case because if you look at the data for CUNY you see over the past 15 years, the fraction of   kids at CUNY has steadily fallen. Perhaps because of budget cuts or increases in tuition or various factors, but I think that’s worrisome because CUNY was working in helping lots of poor kids climb the ladder. It’s doing less and less of that today. That kind of thing I think is very important for policymakers to see because right now there’s a budget debate in New York about how much support these public institutions will get. And, what about students?  You can see the earnings outcomes of kids at different colleges. You need to be careful in interpreting that. For example, we see much higher earnings levels for kids who went to Harvard relative to kids who went to a number of other schools. That’s not entirely because just going to Harvard is going to raise your earnings dramatically. It’s also obviously because Harvard admits a very selective group of students who are likely to do very well no matter where they go to college. But, there are pieces of information that are quite useful. For instance, you see that if you attend Stony Brook University, your earnings outcomes look very similar if you attend Columbia University. Let’s say a   student gets accepted to an Ivy League school and decides to go. How will being the minority   financially   affect their experience? There’s one very important result there, which is that the kids from   families who attend an Ivy League school do just about as well than the kids who come from   families who go to an Ivy League school. And that’s very important because in the past, people have been worried that the   families who get in might struggle because they haven’t had the same preparation, the same school background, family background and so forth. But that does not appear to be the case in the data. Even though the study shows that Ivy League and elite colleges have low mobility rates, those schools could argue they don’t need to increase their access because, as you mentioned,   students are still able to earn a good amount of money after attending other schools. What would be your response to that? The one other important thing to note with these elite private schools is that while they don’t excel in terms of mobility rates overall, largely because they don’t have many   kids, they are actually at the very top in terms of what we call upper tail mobility. That is, kids’ odds of reaching the top one percent of the income distribution. Given that, you also want to give   kids access to these institutions that are shaping the leaders of the next generation, so that’s why I think it is quite important to expand access to the extent possible. To be very clear, I don’t think it’s just completely in the hands of the college because of the challenges our country faces in terms of quality of public schools for   kids, the neighborhoods in which they grow up, all kinds of challenges throughout childhood. Looking forward, how can this research develop to keep improving the affordability of higher education and propelling students to make higher incomes? One of the key messages that to me comes out of this work is that we should be paying lots more attention to these   public institutions that are not the state flagships, like University of California   Berkeley and the University of Michigan   Ann Arbor. More the schools like Cal State, City University of New York that take large numbers of   kids and seem to produce pretty good outcomes. I think policymakers should at least be paying attention to sustaining funding for these types of institutions. And once we hopefully figure out exactly what they’re doing right, we’ll be able to offer more precise policy prescriptions in how we can scale up that model going forward."
"It’s a fascinating thing to watch activists in both American political parties grapple with a way forward in the Trump era. Conservatives gathered outside Washington last week at a convention, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which had been a home for libertarians in recent years. The CPAC annual presidential straw poll has been dominated by people with the last name Paul over the last decade. Former congressman Ron Paul and his son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, won five of six CPAC straw polls from  . Rand Paul didn’t even attend this year. And many of his libertarian followers may have stayed home with him, because CPAC this year was very different. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway predicted on day one of the conference that it was going to be more like ”TPAC.” And she was right. Trump was greeted as a conquering hero  —   after a couple of days of CPAC that had been, to borrow a Trump phrase, low energy. But when this president spoke, the room, dotted with red ”Make America Great Again” hats, lit up and roared with approval. ”Trump! Build the wall! Dishonest media!” came random Trump talking points in shouts from one   Trump supporter in the back of the packed room. No, there weren’t lines six blocks long to get in, as Trump asserted from the dais, but there was lots of enthusiasm in that room for him. A day later, in Atlanta, Democrats gathered to pick a new party chairman. They did  —   Tom Perez, President Obama’s former labor secretary and a finalist for Hillary Clinton’s   pick. But his election  —   and the response to it  —   did more to highlight the continuing rift within the Democratic Party. When Perez took the stage after the results of the close election were announced  —   he won by just 35 votes out of more than 400  —   supporters of Perez’s chief rival, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who was endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, stood and voiced their disapproval. ”Not big money! Party for the people!” they chanted over and over and over again. The proceedings were briefly stopped, as Donna Brazile, the interim party chair  —   with ties to Clinton  —   tried to gavel the group to order. ”Shut up!” one Perez supporter eventually yelled from across the room at the irritated Ellison supporters. In reality, it was only about a dozen Ellison supporters who were chanting, and the room erupted in applause when, in his first act as party chair, Perez named Ellison his deputy. Ellison warmly accepted, pledged to work together and told his supporters to support ”our” chairman. And most Ellison supporters NPR chatted with said they were disappointed, but fine with Perez. They said they liked his labor background. And that’s what’s amazing  —   that Perez has been targeted by activists as something of a corporate sellout, when he was a former   attorney and was arguably the most progressive Obama Cabinet member. Perez is also the first Hispanic chairman of the committee, something that was largely ignored, because of the   bickering and because of another potential first  —   the possibility of the first Muslim chairman. Ellison is the first Muslim elected to Congress, and many of his supporters wanted to send a message in the era of Trump  —   one of inclusivity that the party stands for. And that was another thread that ran through both conferences  —   CPAC and the Democratic National Committee chairman’s race: Identity politics. It’s something that seems to animate both bases  —   and Ellison’s religion was something that was greeted very differently at both events. At CPAC, when conservative talk show host Mark Levin introduced Sen. Ted Cruz, he predicted Ellison would win the DNC race. Levin obliquely alluded to Ellison’s religion when he mentioned Ellison’s ties to ”Farrakhan.” Cruz picked up on it and said, ”If they name Keith Ellison, we can commend them for truth in advertising.” At the DNC event, an Imam led the invocation and the ”black national anthem” was sung. At CPAC, like with most conservative events, immigration was the glue. If there were disagreements  —   about how the U. S. should approach Russia, for example  —   they agreed a hard line on immigration. Democrats picked a Latino chairman, whose parents were born in the Dominican Republic. These aren’t just two different parties  —   they’re two different worlds. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. urged Democrats to not only work together, but to try to understand the other side. After all, she said, ”If we don’t learn to live together as brothers and sisters  —   yes, together  —   we’re going to perish as fools.” But that’s not where American politics is right now. Hours after Perez’s election, Donald Trump tweeted faux congratulations: Perez responded hotly:"
"Less than a week after a man opened fire in a crowded Kansas bar, killing one man and injuring two others, thousands of strangers from around the world have opened up their wallets to comfort the victims’ families. Three separate GoFundMe accounts have between them raised more than $1 million in donations, which they pledge to help with the families’ medical expenses. Wednesday’s shooting, allegedly carried out by    Adam Purinton, targeted two Indian men in Olathe, Kan. a suburb of the Kansas City metro area. Purinton has been arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder for the attack, which witnesses say he opened by shouting racial slurs and yelling, ”Get out of my country!” One of the survivors, Alok Madasani, told The New York Times that before the shooting, the man sitting near Madasani and his friend Srinivas Kuchibhotla began addressing them with pointed questions. ”He asked us what visa are we currently on and whether we are staying here illegally,” Madasani told the paper on Friday. The Times notes Madasani and his friend were educated in the U. S. and working legally at Garmin, which has an office in town. ”We didn’t react. People do stupid things all the time. This guy took it to the next level.” The shooting that followed claimed Kuchibhotla’s life and left Ian Grillot, who sought to stop it, hospitalized with gunshot wounds in his hand and chest. The FBI is now investigating whether the shooting should also be considered a hate crime. ”We’ve set up this fund to help them with the funeral expenses and other ongoing grief   recovery support costs,” reads the GoFundMe page that pledges to send the donations to Kuchibhotla’s family. ”This includes the very expensive process of carrying his mortal remains back to India, so his parents can say goodbye one last time to their beloved son.” As of this posting, that campaign has drawn more than $600, 000, well above its $150, 000 goal. A fundraising campaigns pledging contributions for both Indian men has also raised roughly $89, 000, while another for Grillot  —   created by his sisters  —   has raked in more than $375, 000. Citing GoFundMe, The Kansas City Star reports that as of Friday donations had come from ”all 50 states, 25 nations and from some 18, 000 donors so far.” Meanwhile in India, NPR’s Julie McCarthy reports that compassion has been mixed with concern that the Trump administration’s stance on immigration is making the U. S. a dangerous place for Indian immigrants. ”There’s been an outpouring of anger and dismay on Twitter. Some Indians have characterized the United States as a place to be avoided,” Julie reports for our Newscast unit. ”Indians make up the second largest immigrant group in the United States after Mexicans,” Julie adds. ”And they hold more than 70 percent of the visas issued for   workers. The two   Indians (injured in the attack) held such visas.”"
"Mira Rai is perched on the edge of a couch in Kathmandu in a bright yellow Salomon windbreaker and track pants. The    is recovering from knee surgery but looks as if she needs to jump off the couch and burn energy on a mountain trail. Trail running is, in fact, what the Nepali athlete is known for  —   along with her unlikely journey from school dropout in a remote Nepali village to Maoist child soldier to national sports hero featured in children’s books and depicted in murals. There’s now a constant buzz around Rai. And only part of that is due to the nonstop vibrations of her cellphone, as she gets inundated with requests for interviews and for    time from fans. Less than three years after entering her first trail race, Rai has solidified her position as a top ultrarunner, earning titles across the globe in grueling mountain races up to 110 kilometers long  —   or 68. 3 miles. She bagged her Salomon sponsorship in 2016 and was declared National Geographic’s Adventurer of the Year in January. In early February, Nepal’s youth and sports ministry announced its plan to award her three million rupees (about $30, 000) for ”spreading the name of Nepal all over the world,” according to the ministry’s secretary Mahendra Prasad Paudel. Rai’s celebrity status in Nepal is no small feat considering that her specialty is extreme distance running  —   think marathons but much longer and across steep, rocky terrain. It’s an athletic pursuit that’s considered borderline absurd in Nepal. ”They said this is not a sport. Why do you run?” Rai says of the reaction she gets back home. Despite the country’s strikingly ideal landscape for these races, for most Nepalis, trudging up and down the endless ripples of hills is the stuff of daily life rather than recreation. Rai unwittingly began her training by helping her mom carry necessities like salt and oil from the market to their home deep in the hills of eastern Nepal. Rai remembers all of the early mornings when she ran to the jungle to cut grass for her family’s livestock or fetch water before school. She’d run the 45 minutes to school too, typically on an empty stomach. By age 12 it was getting tough to afford the pens and notebooks and uniform to stay in school, so she quit to earn money to help her family. She wasn’t happy with the bleak future she saw before her. ”I wanted to do new things,” she says. ”In the village there’s no chance, every day watching goats, planting corn or millet, and then working in the fields every day.” In the early 2000s, a civil war was ripping through the hills and the Maoist rebel army was taking recruits. To    Rai, signing up was an opportunity to escape a life of manual labor and, in keeping with local customs, early marriage. In her three years with the army, she didn’t see combat, but she practiced karate and ran in battalion races as part of her training. When Nepal signed a Comprehensive Peace Accord in 2006 and eventually integrated Maoist rebels into the national army, Rai was still a child soldier and not eligible to join. She was taken in by a karate coach she had met through the Maoists  —   the same coach she still lives with today to keep expenses to a minimum. Rai continued running and practicing karate as she looked for another opportunity. With a grade school education and no money to support training, she didn’t have many prospects. By 2014, she was totally broke and about to give up on her dream of a better life outside her village. That March, Rai wound up running in a national park in Kathmandu with some guys from the Nepalese army, who told her to come back the following Saturday. What Rai thought was another training run was actually the 50 kilometer Himalayan Outdoor Festival race, hosted by a new company, Trail Running Nepal, which was started to grow the sport in Nepal and support Nepali runners. Until that point, Rai had mostly been her own coach, running long distances on roads but never tackling the distances or terrain of ultraracing. ”I didn’t know! I thought [it was] just training, and then [I realized] ’Oh my god, this is a race!’ And then I felt like I [could] do it,” she says. Actually, despite never having run that distance before, she crushed it. Rai, the only woman to complete the grueling course, finished in about 9 hours (which included 45 minutes waiting out a hailstorm and another 15 minutes searched for washed away trail markers). That put her just two hours after the male winner and made her the number one female racer. Without money for food, and just a pair of ”very simple shoes, not OK shoes,” Rai won her first ultra event and a 7, 000 rupee (about $70) prize. With a laugh that slips out often, Rai says the punishing race was very tough, but ”similar to my village [and what] I did everyday: carrying water, and going to the jungle, cutting grass.” Richard Bull, the race organizer and founder of Trail Running Nepal, recognized that Rai had the raw talent and attitude to go places: ”You have to be hungry, slightly intelligent, [with] a bit of personality, because [otherwise] you’re not going to get very far.” Bull says races of 10 plus hours across steep and often rocky terrain require a certain mental endurance and sense of calm that Rai seemed to have. But Rai was short on cash for food, let alone training. Bull pulled together donations from other runners to see if she had a chance to go pro. To compete, she had to get out of Nepal, where there wasn’t much of a competitive distance running scene. Six hours after she got the visa for her first international race, Rai was on a flight to Italy, where she bagged first place in both the   Sellaronda Trail Race and the 83 kilometer Trail Degli Eroi. After that, Rai’s CV boasts a stunning string of wins including a new course record at France’s   80 kilometer of 12 hours and 32 minutes, and a second place finish at Spain’s Ultra Pirineu, a   race with a   vertical incline, which Rai says she enjoyed too much to feel tired. Clips of her racing show her beaming at finish lines with a Nepal flag wrapped around her neck. Rai logs countless hours on Nepal’s hills to train for these brutal races. Despite her hard work, she knows she’s lucky  —   in her country, women don’t often get to dream big. ”My grandma, she worked hard, my mom, she worked hard, but they didn’t have a chance to do something, to get respect,” Rai says. ”I went around the world, which nobody ever got that chance, from my family or village.” She wants to translate that chance into opportunities for other young people, especially girls. A 2014 survey by the Nepal government and UNICEF reported almost half of Nepali women were married before age 18 and about 16 percent before age 15. The same survey said just 28 percent of Nepali young women had ever used a computer. For now, Mira Rai is a rare model of what’s possible. A Nepali arts organization screened a documentary about her life, ”Mira,” in schools across Nepal last fall to inspire students. In one scene, she travels home and shows off her magazine clips as her family huddles around her. ”You look like a boy,” Rai’s mother tells her in Nepali, laughing. Small kids smile at each other as they try on her medals. Rai shows a picture of another runner to her family. ”I have yet to win against her. She’s also a great runner, but I think if I work harder, I can win.” Rai wants to help more Nepali women win along with her. Due to a knee injury, she had to sit out December’s Lantau 50 in Hong Kong, a race in which she took second place back in 2014. Instead she accompanied two teenagers from the remote west of Nepal, both of whom were running their first   race there, to help them navigate the event and their first trip abroad. One of them,    Sunmaya Buddha, carried Rai’s torch, taking second place behind France’s Caroline Chaverot. ”Girls get married at 15 or 16 and because of that many people call me old.” Buddha says, of her village in Jumla, Nepal. ”I don’t think like that. I want to go to other countries and run.” Rai hopes her National Geographic Adventurer award will pull more undiscovered athletes out of the hills and show more girls (and their families) that they have a right to dream. She hopes to use the platform to do more on behalf of Nepali women and girls. But Bull says she also needs to make sure she has a plan for her own future to avoid sliding back into poverty later in life herself. ”She wants to help others, but first she wants to help her family,” he says, noting that a lot of people are telling her, ”Look you did so well and look at us left behind.” Plus, she’s still trying to learn English and make up for her years out of school. It’s a lot of pressure for her  —   and her overloaded cellphone. But Rai is getting the hang of it. She ends the interview like a true celebrity, grabbing the phone and asking, ”Don’t you want to take a selfie together?”"
"Updated Sunday, Feb. 26, 12 p. m. ET  President Trump announced Saturday afternoon that he would break from a   tradition and skip the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner scheduled for April 29. ”I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!” Trump tweeted. On Sunday, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC’s This Week, ”This wasn’t a president that was elected to spend his time with reporters and celebrities.” Sanders also addressed the major tensions between the president and the press. ”I think it’s kind of naive of us to think that we can all walk into a room for a couple of hours and pretend that some of that tension isn’t there,” she added. ”You know, one of the things we say in the South, if a Girl Scout egged your house, would you buy cookies from her? I think that this is a pretty similar scenario.” The annual dinner, sometimes referred to  —   affectionately and derisively  —   in Washington as ”Nerd Prom,” honors journalism with awards and scholarships. The president is a major a draw to help in those efforts. What began in 1921 as a simple awards dinner evolved into a highly glamorized affair that attracts Hollywood stars. The last president to not attend the dinner was Ronald Reagan in 1981. But he had a pretty good reason  —   he was recovering from being shot in an assassination attempt. Reagan did phone into the event and even joked about the shooting. ”If I could give you just one little bit of advice,” Reagan said from Camp David, the presidential retreat, ”when somebody tells you to get in a car quick, do it.” He signed off with a light ribbing of the news media. ”Well, I’m looking forward to the next news conference,” he said. ”I have so many questions to ask you all.” The last president to outright skip the event was Jimmy Carter, who did so twice  —   in 1980 and 1978. Richard Nixon also skipped it twice  —   in 1974 and 1972. Nixon warned the press he would do so and followed through. Trump called the press the ”enemy of the American people,” in a tweet recently. That echoes Nixon, who told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ”The press is your enemy.” Trump’s announcement comes at a moment of high tension between the White House and many news organizations. Trump has made attacking mainstream news organizations a staple of his public remarks. Trump and his White House have accused the New York Times, CNN and others of being an ”opposition party” with which he is at war. In response to Trump’s tweet, White House Correspondents’ Association President Jeff Mason issued the following statement: ”The White House Correspondents’ Association looks forward to having its annual dinner on April 29. The WHCA takes note of President Donald Trump’s announcement on Twitter that he does not plan to attend the dinner, which has been and will continue to be a celebration of the First Amendment and the important role played by an independent news media in a healthy republic. We look forward to shining a spotlight at the dinner on some of the best political journalism of the past year and recognizing the promising students who represent the next generation of our profession.” White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Thursday reiterated that the press was the ”opposition party” at the Conservative Political Action Conference Trump himself devoted a significant portion of his CPAC speech Friday to attacking the ”fake news” media and White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave access for a briefing to a group of mostly   news organizations that same day while shutting out some mainstream organizations. The correspondents’ dinner has been a place where the inevitable tension between the president and press is mostly put aside after a roasting. The president usually takes on the press corps in a lighthearted way before acknowledging its important role in a democracy  —   and the president in turn takes a ribbing from a famous comedian who headlines the night. But in recent weeks, as relations between the White House and the news media have grown more strained, several news organizations have announced plans to not attend this year’s dinner. BuzzFeed reported that CNN, which Trump has been pointedly attacking, might boycott, and Bloomberg canceled hosting a planned   a longtime feature of the event in collaboration with Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair had pulled out earlier. NPR and most other news organizations are still planning to attend. Some news outlets, like The New York Times, have been skipping the event for years because, in part, of charges that the event depicts journalists as being too chummy with the president. CBS’s Major Garrett, the network’s chief White House correspondent and a former board member of the correspondents’ association, penned an   in the Washington Post, in which he said he thought it was a bad idea for the press to skip the event. He concluded: ”If Trump represents a genuine threat to press freedoms, then [forgoing] the dinner doesn’t change a thing. The right response, instead, is for reporters and news organizations to redouble their commitment to a WHCA dinner built around the journalism of the present and of the future.” According to WHCA website, the dinner has been held every year since 1921. ”The 50 men who gathered in the Arlington Hotel at Vermont Avenue and L Street on the north side of McPherson Square that evening could not have known that they were initiating a Washington tradition, one that would annually draw 2, 600 people and a national audience a century later. It was Saturday, May 7, 1921 and this was the first White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.” There have been plenty of controversies surrounding presidents, yet they still attended, from the   weapons scandal in the 1980s during the Reagan administration to the Clinton impeachment. Bill Clinton attended all eight years, including before and after his 1998 impeachment following the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The first president to attend was Calvin Coolidge in 1924. For years, the dinner had been headlined by cabaret singers and entertainers. The comedic roast didn’t become a staple until 1983, but it has grown in popularity since, drawing together the odd couple of celebrities and the political news media."
"There are renewed efforts at the state level to pass   religious freedom bills. LGBTQ rights advocates believe that’s because local lawmakers are anticipating support from the Trump administration. In Alabama, there’s a bill that allows adoption agencies that are religiously affiliated to hold true to their faith if they don’t think   couples should be parents. The psychiatric community has found no evidence that having   parents harms children. The bill is called the Child Placing Agency Inclusion Act. When it was first introduced two years ago, the bill didn’t go very far. But since the election that has changed. For the first time the bill is listed on the Alabama State Senate GOP agenda. ”This bill has been   through the House of Representatives with support from both Senate and House Republican leadership,” says Eva Kendrick, the Alabama state manager for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGTBQ rights group. With the choice of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general, the Trump administration has picked someone who is likely to be an ally on these state bills. Back when Attorney General Sessions was a U. S. congressman, he referred to separation of church and state as something that was ”recent,” ”unhistorical” and ”unconstitutional.” Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the HRC, fears that the choice of Sessions as attorney general is a signal to local lawmakers. ”A number of states have introduced bills for many years that would allow child welfare agencies to discriminate on the basis of religious belief,” Warbelow says. ”But since this particular executive order draft leaked out, we’ve seen a number of states really begin the process of moving those bills.” In addition to the bill in Alabama, she says there are similar ones based on religious freedom that are moving more quickly in Texas, South Dakota and Oklahoma. Even without the passage of the bill, April   says she and her wife have run into problems trying to adopt. They already have a    adopted daughter. But for many years in Alabama, only   could legally adopt her. Then the Supreme Court legalized   marriage, and now she and her wife are recognized as parents under the law. When they decided they wanted to adopt another child, they ran into problems. ”We’ve had several agencies that refused to call us back already because we were a   couple  —   although we’ve got marriage equality, and we’re supposed to be equal” says  . ”But at this point in time, we’re still having hurdles to jump over.”   says the agencies didn’t explicitly tell her they were turning them down because they are a lesbian couple. But all their forms asked about a mother and father and at least one of the agencies has a Christian affiliation.   has thought about investigating and perhaps taking legal action. That’s why religious agencies want protection, says Eric Johnston, an attorney who represents several adoption agencies in Alabama with a religious affiliation. ”They anticipated there could be problems and wanted to  —   in advance  —   think it through and do something that would be reasonable and to the benefit of everyone concerned on both sides of the issue,” Johnston says. The bill’s sponsor in the Alabama House is Rep. Richard Wingo. ”The bill is saying that: Do not discriminate against these   agencies and force them to place children  —   foster or adoption  —   into homes that go against their religious beliefs,” Wingo says. According to Wingo, in some states, religious agencies have closed rather than be forced to put children with   couples. He believes keeping them open helps more children. And he says only 30 percent of the adoption agencies in Alabama have a religious affiliation. So, he feels lesbians like   have alternatives. Wingo won’t say how he feels about   couples adopting. ”It doesn’t matter what I think,” he says. ”If you are a follower of Christ then what matters is what does the word of God say. What does God say about it?” Advocates for the LGBTQ community fear that this reasoning will soon make it harder for their community to adopt."
"Lawyers for a    transgender student and the Gloucester, Va. school board that wants to limit which bathroom he can use don’t agree on much. But both sides have concluded the Trump administration’s decision this week to revoke guidance that protects transgender students’ ability to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity only heightens the need for a hearing before the nation’s highest court. Rather than making the claims of Virginia student Gavin Grimm moot, his attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union and their courtroom opponents are urging the U. S. Supreme Court to proceed with oral arguments scheduled for March 28. ”If anything, the confusion caused by this recent action by the Department of Justice and the Department of Education only underscores the need for the Supreme Court to bring some clarity here,” Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s LGBT  HIV Project, told reporters on a conference call on Thursday. As for Gloucester County, the school board said it ”looks forward to explaining to the Supreme Court why [the rescinded guidance] underscores that the Board’s common sense restroom and locker room policy is legal under federal law.” The high court agreed to hear two questions in the Grimm case: one, whether the former Justice and Education Departments’ interpretation of Title IX of a 1972 education law protecting students from discrimination on the basis of their sex deserved deference and two, whether the prohibition on sex discrimination in schools also applies to gender identity. While the first question likely goes away along with the   guidance, the second remains, if justices still want to field it. The U. S. Justice Department, led by new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, said the matter is best left to ”Congress, state legislatures, and local governments,” shrouding the federal argument in a case for states’ rights. And at the White House on Thursday, press secretary Sean Spicer pointed out that a federal judge in Texas last year enjoined the guidance so it never fully took effect. Spicer also asserted, ”There’s nobody who’s possibly suggesting” that the 1972 law contemplated protection of transgender students at the time. That view is shared by a series of mostly conservative groups, which have weighed in with Supreme Court briefs opposing an expansive reading of sex discrimination. The Alliance Defending Freedom, one such nonprofit, defended the approach by the Gloucester School Board that allowed transgender students to, among other things, use separate, individual facilities to change clothes and shower. The Alliance said school boards enjoy great freedom to develop education policies for their own communities. Civil rights lawyers said that’s just wrong. The federal government, they argue, has long led the way when it comes to integrating schools, easing access to the polls, and other critical civil rights issues. What’s more, Block at the ACLU said, his client Gavin Grimm has obtained an amended birth certificate stating that he’s male. If Grimm moves to a state like North Carolina, where the law defines sex by what’s on a birth certificate, schools there would allow him to use the boy’s room. But Gloucester County, Va. has adopted a different approach, excluding Grimm from the boy’s room and requiring him to use a   restroom. ”The fact is that no child in America should have their rights subject to their ZIP code,” said Eliza Byard of the Gay Lesbian  Straight Education Network, or GLSEN. Advocates for the LGBT community say that a   courts across the nation already have adopted their approach  —   finding that longstanding protections against sex discrimination under federal law extend to transgender people. The U. S. Courts of Appeals in the Sixth and Seventh Circuits have sided with transgender students and denied attempts to halt or stay the cases while they move toward appeal, ACLU lawyers said. ”Honestly, I’ll just tell you, nobody wants to be on the business end of a transgender lawsuit these days,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. ”The courts have been moving in our direction very quickly.” Nearly two years ago, a divided Supreme Court ruled    that   couples have a fundamental right to marry under the due process clause and the equal protection clause. President Trump told an interviewer this year that is ”settled law.” But legal arguments about whether protections against sex discrimination in Title IX and other federal laws extend to gender identity, central to the lives of transgender people, are still very much active in the courts. For instance, Lambda Legal, a nonprofit that advocates and litigates for LGBT clients, is litigating a case against a Pennsylvania school district where Juliet Evancho, a transgender student, wants to use the bathroom of her choice. ”It’s not just about bathrooms, it’s about being a full, participating member of society,” said Demoya Gordon, a Transgender Rights Project attorney at Lambda Legal. Lambda Legal is also awaiting court decisions in cases that center on whether federal   laws cover a person’s sexual orientation. In one case, a math teacher, who is a lesbian, separated from her job in South Bend, Ind. because of her sexual orientation. Lambda is arguing that sexual orientation discrimination against its client, Kimberly Hively, ”is a form of sex discrimination” barred under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The organization is making the same argument before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. There, a security guard sued her employer for harassment and for allegedly forcing her out of a job at Georgia Regional Hospital because she’s lesbian and ” .”"
"The debate over transgender restrooms is nothing new in Gloucester County, Va. The largely rural county in the eastern part of the state is the home of Gavin Grimm, whose   case is pending before the U. S. Supreme Court. It’s an area that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in November. His administration has issued guidance rolling back protections for transgender students like Grimm  —   a policy popular with residents like Marshall Butler. The retiree says the county school board made the right call in refusing Grimm’s request to use the boys’ restroom. ”I don’t think we should make rules for anybody special,” he says. Butler said Grimm, who identifies as male, should use the separate, unisex restroom provided by the school  —   or use the girls’ restroom. That view is shared by Brian Hopkins, a cabinetmaker who lives in neighboring Mathews County. ”I think the child is very confused,” Hopkins said of Grimm. ”Biologically, we are who we are. It just should be that simple.” Outside a local diner in Gloucester County on Thursday afternoon, Hopkins said he’d never spoken at length with a transgender person. But he said his interpretation of Christianity leads him to oppose LGBT rights. ”I typically wouldn’t associate myself with someone confused like that,” Hopkins said. He agrees with the Trump administration’s decision to overturn guidelines issued under President Obama, which allowed students to use restrooms matching their gender identity. ”It’ll give peace of mind to the other 99. 9 percent of the students at the school, as well as the teachers, rather than we change our whole outlook on life toward that one child,” Hopkins said. For trans high school and college students from eastern Virginia, the guidance from the Trump administration is alarming. There’s not much in the way of   groups in Gloucester County. But about an hour’s drive away in Norfolk, Alex Laubert, a Navy veteran, is studying automotive technology at Tidewater Community College, where he’s involved in a club for LGBT students. He hopes to begin transitioning to male soon, through hormones and surgery. Laubert, who prefers male pronouns, grew up in Cunningham, Tenn. in ”a very, extremely religious household,” where he says he faced harassment because of his sexuality and gender identity. Sitting with his wife at a café in Norfolk, Laubert recalled crying and praying as a young child that he would become a boy. He finally felt ”at peace” and ”freed” when he came out recently as transgender. Laubert says he and his wife, Sonia Murden, didn’t vote in November and don’t pay much attention to politics. But he’s concerned about how the Trump administration guidance could affect teens in similar situations. ”It’s making it worse for people who are in high school, or in middle school like I was, and hiding it, because we’re in an area that we’re not safe or protected,” Laubert said. ”You’re afraid to come out because you’re afraid you could be bullied you’re afraid everyone’s going to tell you that you’re going to hell, you’re an abomination.” Even now, Laubert said he usually avoids public restrooms because he’s uncomfortable in them. Bjorn Mustard, a    from nearby Chesapeake, Va. calls Trump’s guidance on transgender restrooms ”a bit of a slap in the face” to people like him. Mustard identifies as male. He uses a separate, private bathroom  —   an accommodation he requested from the school. He doesn’t participate in physical education classes because he’s uncomfortable changing in front of other students. Mason Beck, an    high school senior from Norfolk, prefers to use a private,   restroom at his school. He came out as trans in January and is preparing to begin hormone therapy to transition to male. Beck said he doesn’t feel comfortable in the boys’ restroom, and he worries about making female classmates nervous if he uses the girls’ restroom. ”It’s a female space, and I want to respect people, and I want to respect their privacy,” he said. ”When a trans person walks in  —   a very masculine female walks in, in their eyes  —   it’s scary for them. Because first glance, I feel that they see me as a male.” Beck worries that protections have now been stripped away, leaving transgender students more vulnerable to bullying. ”It’s kind of made me more scared, because I’m concerned about myself and other trans people in the community,” he said. ”We just want to use the bathroom. I don’t really understand why that’s such a problem.”"
"On Monday, the Senate will vote on Wilbur Ross’ nomination as the U. S. commerce secretary. As required by the Ethics in Government Act, the billionaire businessman has reached an agreement with the Office of Government Ethics to sell off most of his holdings. That divestiture will once again underscore the impact of the tiny agency that actually has no power to enforce federal ethics laws. It simply provides guidance on how to comply with laws, and helps work out solutions, as it has with Ross. But while OGE has been shaping the holdings of President Trump’s appointees, it has so far had no real impact on Trump himself. Trump correctly notes that federal    laws technically do not apply to the president and vice president, although previous holders of those positions have voluntarily observed the rules. Back in November, OGE Director Walter Shaub used Trump’s favorite social media platform  —   Twitter  —   to tweet out some advice. In an effort to coax Trump to divest his business empire, his office offered a   tweetstorm, saying things like: ”Brilliant! Divestiture is good for you, very good for America!”  —   even though Trump had never promised such a thing. Government reform advocate Meredith McGehee said of the   agency: ”I would describe it at this point as the mouse that roared.” That was its loudest public roar since 1978, when it was created to help keep Washington calm. Congress didn’t want another national trauma like the Watergate scandal that had brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974. In the aftermath of that ordeal, Congress created new rules for ethical behavior in government, and set up OGE to help facilitate compliance. ”Government officials didn’t disclose their personal financial holdings and wealth until the ethics laws were created,” said Washington ethics lawyer Jan Baran. Once OGE set up shop, it taught federal officials how to comply with the new laws. ”These forms were being filled out and submitted and made public for the first time,” he added. In the   the disclosure requirement led to OGE’s biggest controversy up until now. That’s when President Ronald Reagan’s attorney general Ed Meese failed to disclose a financial relationship with lawyers for a Pentagon contractor. The scandal led to Meese’s resignation. Since then, OGE’s work has gone on quietly, but with a huge impact on the federal bureaucracy. While it gets attention for working with 22   nominees, its biggest job involves overseeing the collection of annual financial disclosures from 370, 000 midlevel federal employees. Disclosure is mandatory for ”anyone who touches money,” mainly contracting officers, procurement officials and those who oversee federal spending. OGE’s goal is to ensure that federal workers don’t have financial interests that could come before the public interest. And that’s the rub with President Trump. While Trump has stepped back from management of his business empire,  he continues to profit from it. He correctly notes the    law  doesn’t actually apply to the Oval Office occupant. But previous presidents complied voluntarily. Shaub, in a rare speech last month, suggested that Trump is upsetting a delicate balance in Washington. ”Should a president hold himself to a lower standard than his own appointees?” Trump’s Commerce Department appointee, Ross, decided to make serving his country enough of a priority that it was worth the price: resigning his positions with 37 companies and selling off his holdings in about 80 companies."
"The Indonesian island of Java has long been synonymous with coffee. But it’s only in the past decade or so that Indonesians have begun to wake up and smell the coffee  —   their own, that is. Big changes are brewing in the country’s coffee industry, as demand from a rising middle class fuels entrepreneurship and connoisseurship. The trend is clear at places like the Anomali Coffee shop in South Jakarta. It roasts its coffee just inside the entrance on the ground floor. If you walk into the roasting room at just the right moment, as the heat caramelizes the sugars in the coffee beans, it smells like someone is baking cookies. Get close to the roasting machine, and you can hear the beans snap and pop. ”It is the bean expanding because of the heat of the core,” explains Anomali’s founder Irvan Helmi. Anomali Coffee includes a trading company that wholesales to hotels and other businesses. It also has a barista training academy. And upstairs from the roasting ovens is one of its seven cafes. On a table, bags of beans from a   single origins are on sale. A blackboard ranks the beans in terms of their acidity and body. ”In Toraja, you also have a medium body, chocolaty and caramel, herbs,” Irvan says, picking up a bag of beans from Sulawesi Island. Indonesia’s more than 17, 000 islands teem with cultural diversity, and more plant and animal species than researchers can catalog. Little wonder, then, that from Aceh in the west to Papua in the east, the archipelago has more coffees than Irvan’s tasters can get around to tasting. ”From Aceh alone, we have more than 100 samples each season,” Irvan says. ”Can you imagine?” Anomali sells coffees from nine single origins at a time. Irvan reckons he has sourced coffee from about 100 single origins since founding his company a decade ago. ”We put a score on it for each season,” he says, ”and we select which coffee we want to bring for our customers.” Then comes a slew of different procedures and techniques, from the way the beans are dried and hulled to the time and temperature at which the they’re roasted, and the way they are ground and brewed to bring out their characteristic flavors. Irvan notes that Indonesian coffees are known for their ”earthiness” and body. Indonesians often drink these coffees black, and therefore, he says, they don’t need the dark roast and acidity needed to be tasted above all the milk and syrup added to them in   cafes. Colonialists started growing coffee in what was then the Dutch East Indies in the 17th century. After parasites decimated plantations of Arabica beans in the 1880s, the Dutch introduced the hardier Robusta variety, which continues to account for most of Indonesia’s crop today. Indonesia is the world’s   producer of coffee after Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia, and it exports more than it consumes. But Irvan explains that this has been changing in recent years, as demand from Indonesia’s growing middle class has taken off, and improved logistics have helped build a thriving,   market. And that’s where Irvan saw his chance. ”The mission becomes clear,” he declares, ”to promote Indonesian coffee as a curator.” Irvan acknowledges the contribution of Starbucks to the Indonesian market. He jokingly calls the   chain his ”marketing department,” as it has the financial muscle to penetrate new and remote cities and give local consumers an introduction to authentic espressos, cappuccinos and the like. Irvan says most coffee companies blend different coffees together to make a consistent product. But each of Anomali’s coffees comes from a single origin. ”We don’t care about consistency,” he sniffs. ”If it’s a high quality, we want it.” So you could say that each of their coffees is, well, an anomaly. ”That’s the big difference between Anomali and the mass market,” he says. ”And we’re very proud of it.” Mirza Luqman Effendy, a friend and colleague of Irvan’s who runs a café called Brewphobia (something he got over a long time ago) explains to me that younger Indonesians have different tastes in coffee from their parents’ generation. ”The fact is, my father is a coffee addict,” Mirza says. ”He really likes very intense coffee, like Robusta, roasted very dark, and then basically he drinks coffee with putting some sugar and ginger.” He says that recipe is way too   for him: ”My father’s coffee is just like . .. coffee. You cannot taste any attributes besides the coffee taste.” But Mirza tastes so much more in a cup than just coffee. He hones in on the attributes of each bean, the notes of citrus and spice, the feel on his palate and the lingering aftertaste. Of course, it’s young people like Irvan and Mirza, sharing their passion for coffee, that drives the coffee scene in many countries. But with its rich variety of beans and long history of cultivation, Indonesia is building a coffee culture  —   and a pride in it  —   that is truly homegrown."
"Tales of talented black students on   campuses running through a racial gauntlet that has them questioning their brilliance, abilities and place are familiar to parents like me who have a   child at home. The trauma that sometimes comes with being a black student at predominately white institutions is tangible. In their 2015 paper, ”Reimagining Critical Race Theory in Education: Mental Health, Healing and the Pathway to Liberatory Praxis,” Ebony McGee, a professor at Vanderbilt University, and David Stovall, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that black college students who weather the effects of studying and living on predominately white campuses suffer from a ”physical and mental    that contributes to a host of psychological and physical ailments.” ”We have documented alarming occurrences of anxiety, stress, depression and thoughts of suicide, as well as a host of physical ailments like hair loss, diabetes and heart disease,” McGee said in an article on Vanderbilt’s website, adding that calls for black students to draw on mental toughness and perseverance  —   what researchers are referring to these days as ”grit”  —   overlook the additional burden black students bear as they face off against overt and covert racism. ”We have witnessed black students work themselves to the point of extreme illness in attempting to escape the constant threat of perceived intellectual inferiority,” McGee said. ”We argue that the current enthusiasm for teaching African American students with psychological traits like grit ignores the significant injustice of societal racism and the toll it takes, even on those students who appear to be the toughest and most successful.” At a historically black college or university (HBCU) students with diverse economic, social and geographic backgrounds share similar cultural and emotional frames of reference that can take the edge off the rigors of college life. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that over the past three years, nearly a third of HBCUs have seen at least a 20 percent increase in applications  —   a spike that correlates with nationwide protests over high profile incidents like George Zimmerman’s acquittal in Trayvon Martin’s shooting death and Sandra Bland’s jail death after a controversial police traffic stop. Those protests spilled onto college campuses after students at the University of Missouri, citing volatile racial aggression against students of color, demanded  —   and got  —   the November 2015 resignation of the school’s president and chancellor, who protesters said failed to address racial problems on campus. Success by Mizzou’s students sparked   rallies and protests at more than 100 colleges and universities, reverberating all the way through to earlier this month, when Yale University announced that, after   unrest, it would rename a residential college originally named after an alumnus who was a fierce slavery advocate. And black parents are lockstep with their children  —   including famous ones like Taraji P. Henson, who publicly announced she decided against sending her son, Marcell Johnson, to the University of Southern California after he said he was racially profiled on the USC campus. She chose Howard University, an HBCU and her alma mater. ”I’m not paying $50, 000 so I can’t sleep at night wondering is this the night my son is getting racially profiled on campus,” Henson said about her decision. Like her, black parents readily admit to sleeping better at night, too, knowing that their babies are reasonably protected from possible racial violence  —   physically, emotionally, mentally  —   on a campus where they can engage in political, social and creative movements, and still have some modicum of room for joy in an affirming environment amid the political and social upheaval unraveling across the country America. For black families, the choice of where a child should attend college is every bit as much about   as it is about getting a solid education, and HBCUs are building on their reputations for offering both in spades. Denene Millner is a New York Times   author and a parenting expert, whose latest book is My Brown Baby: On the Joys and Challenges Of Raising African American Children. Follow her @MyBrownBaby."
"Firsts can be life changing  —   think about your first kiss, your first time behind the wheel of a car. But what about the first time you got a prescription for a narcotic? James Hatzell, from Collingswood, NJ, is now a technology officer for a college addiction treatment program. He didn’t realize it at the time, but that spring day of his junior year of high school  —   seven years ago  —   was a pivotal moment in his life. ”We’re in our 2001 Honda Odyssey minivan, driving to the dentist,” Hatzell recalls. ”And we get there, and I’m just pumped. I was very excited to get my wisdom teeth out.” The prospect of pain didn’t thrill the teen, but he’d heard from friends that when the dentist took out his teeth, he’d get his very own bottle of pain pills. Those pain pills, Hatzell now says, eventually derailed his life. Dentists have long been frequent prescribers of   opioids like Vicodin and Percocet for the pain from tooth extractions. That’s a lot of pills and teeth annually more than 3. 5 million people, mainly young adults, have their wisdom teeth removed. For many patients, thse drugs never pose a problem. But deaths of some 165, 000 people in the U. S. in the last 15 years involved an overdose of heroin or opioids, and many other people are struggling with addiction. Health officials say the nation’s major epidemic of drug use has been fueled by the misuse of prescription painkillers. So dentistry is at a crossroads. Many in the field are now reassessing their prescribing habits, with state dental boards and associations issuing new guidelines for patients and practitioners. As of this year, Pennsylvania requires new dentists and those renewing their clinical license to get training in the best practices of opioid prescribing. Hatzell says he was always a little afraid of narcotics in high school, until that day he had dental surgery. He’d tried Vicodin recreationally before that, he says, but with caution. Friends would find an extra pill in a medicine cabinet at home they’d crush it, mix it with pot, and share it. But getting his own prescription from a health professional felt different, Hatzell recalls. It seemed legitimate  —   like maybe it wasn’t as dangerous as he’d feared. On the way home from the dentist’s office that day, Hatzell was still high from the drugs he was given during the procedure and could not wait to pop his first pill. His mom noticed. ”We got home, and my mom took the pills and was like, ’You can’t have these,’ ” he says. But he knew where she’d hid the bottle. When she wasn’t watching, he sneaked into her room, emptied out the pills, and replaced them with Advil. ”I definitely was every parent’s worst nightmare,” Hatzell now says, and laughs. He can joke about that day now, he says, but what opioids did to him and his family wasn’t funny. A few years later he was arrested for dealing drugs in college. A 2011 study in the Journal of the American Dental Association  estimates that dentists are responsible for 12 percent of prescriptions for   opioid pain relievers  —   just below general practitioners and internal medicine doctors as top prescribers of common opioids. Roughly 23 percent of opioids in the U. S. are used   according to the study. Dr. Joel Funari, a dentist who specializes in oral and maxillofacial surgery in Devon, Penn. says that when he started out as a dentist more than three decades ago it was common to prescribe a bottle of 30 or more narcotic pills after procedures such as a wisdom tooth extraction. He now calls that excessive prescribing. ”Dentists don’t like to see patients in pain,” Funari explains. ”We tend to be compassionate people and I think we were falling into a trap we were creating ourselves.” In 2014, Funari joined a group tasked by the Pennsylvania department of health to develop prescribing guidelines for dentists. In reviewing the science, he and his colleagues realized there’s a better way to address standard dental pain. ”    drugs  —   the Motrins, the Advils, the Aleves  —   when used in a certain way, are very effective,” Funari says. ”More effective than the narcotics.” NSAIDs reduce inflammation, which is a main source of the pain, he says. And because wisdom tooth removal is so common, it has actually been an ideal procedure to study the benefits from this alternative in treating pain. The 2014 guidelines that Funari and his colleagues came up with are the state’s first to tackle how to best use a combination of opioids and other drugs to manage pain in dental patients. National discussions have been expanding, too. Dr. Paul Moore, a dentist and pharmacologist at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Dental Medicine, studies the relative usefulness of ibuprofen and other NSAIDs in acute pain management, and worked on a recent update of the American Dental Association’s prescribing guidelines for opioids. It was the national group’s first update on the topic in a decade, Moore says. The effort to get dentists and dental students to be wiser prescribers recently became personal for Moore. Among the more than 3, 000 overdose deaths in Pennsylvania last year, one young man was Moore’s nephew. The growing abuse of opioids by adolescents particularly concerns him. ”I’m very sensitive to the issue,” he says. Prescribing more pills than are needed to mitigate pain, Moore says, leaves extra pills or an unused prescription that can be sold or abused. Dr. Elliot Hersh, a professor of pharmacology and oral surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine and a research collaborator of Moore’s, says he regularly brings in a retired narcotics officer to address his class of dental students. ”I’ve been teaching my students that you have to be really, really careful with these drugs,” he says. ”That if you write too many of these prescriptions, for either good or bad intentions, either the state dental board   the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency] is going to come down on you.” Hersh says one of the biggest hurdles in improving prescribing habits is countering  —   among his students, practicing dentists and patients  —     misunderstandings about the   power of less addictive drugs. NSAIDs work at least as well as opioids, he says they just haven’t received as much hype, because they’re available over the counter. ”A lot of the lay public believes if they’re available over the counter, they’re weak and they don’t work,” Hersh says. Hatzell is 23 and has been in recovery for his opioid addiction for three years now. He says one of the most terrifying thoughts he faces as he navigates his recovery is that he might need surgery one day, and again need pain medication. These days, whenever he goes to a dentist or doctor, he makes it a point to say right up front that he cannot take opioids. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WHYY’s The Pulse and Kaiser Health News."
"When new presidents address Congress for the first time, they can scarcely be said to be making a first impression. In recent years, even the youngest presidents have become familiar to everyone in the country via their careers, their campaigns and the constant attention of the media. Yet there remains a special quality to the moment when a new president first enters the House chamber, shaking hands and making his way to the speaker’s rostrum, turning finally to look out at the leading figures of the entire federal power structure  —   all in one place and staring back at him. So it was for a    former first term senator from Illinois named Barack Obama, who just eight years ago this week gave his first address. He would make no mention of being the first   president, but rather focused from the outset on a national economy in free fall. ”The impact of this recession is real and it is everywhere,” Obama said. ”But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.” There was in these remarks a distant echo of John F. Kennedy’s first address to Congress in January 1961. Just 43 at the time, Kennedy too had been elevated from the   of the Senate in part by economic anxiety. And he said as much to Congress the first chance he got. ”The present state of our economy is disturbing,” Kennedy intoned. ”We take office in the wake of seven months of recession, three and   years of slack, seven years of diminished economic growth, and nine years of falling farm income . .. ”Life in 1961 will not be easy. Wishing it, predicting it, even asking for it, will not make it so. There will be further setbacks before the tide is turned. But turn it we must.” Kennedy and Obama both gave other speeches that were more famous. But as freshly inaugurated presidents they both got down to business with Congress, setting a marker for the programs they would pursue. So too in his own way did George W. Bush when he stood before a joint session for the first time on Feb. 27, 2001. Like his father George H. W. Bush, the second president Bush came to office in good economic times, with the federal budget projected to be in surplus and no thought yet of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. ”Our generation must show courage in a time of blessing as our nation has always shown in times of crisis,” Bush said. ”And our courage, issue by issue, can gather to greatness and serve our country. This is the privilege and responsibility we share. And if we work together, we can prove that public service is noble.” Bush was not known as a compelling speaker, and the audience for his first address to Congress was about 40 million viewers, down sharply from the 67 million who tuned in for Bill Clinton’s first address in 1993. (A record for President Trump to shoot for.) Whether Clinton drew that size crowd for his speaking appeal or roguish reputation may be hard to discern, but he had his sense of humor. His first sentence was ”it is nice to have a fresh excuse for giving a long speech.” Clinton offered a preview of two of the major issues of his first term. He spoke of ending ”welfare as we know it” and also of tackling the costs and gaps in the health care system. ”Our families will never be secure, our businesses will never be strong, and our government will never again be fully solvent until we tackle the health care crisis.” Twelve years earlier, Ronald Reagan had wowed both the chamber and the national TV audience with his first address to a joint session. It was February of 1981, just four weeks after he took the oath for his first term, and he was pitching the economic program that became his hallmark. It included deep cuts to taxes and spending. It was a major departure from the New Deal consensus of the previous   but Reagan got a warm partisan reception  —   including at an unexpected point late in his speech. Ever confident onstage, the former actor quipped ”I should have arranged to quit right there.” Another kind of crisis afflicted Gerald Ford in 1974 when he first addressed a joint session in August of 1974. It was just three days after Richard Nixon had resigned and Vice President Ford had been sworn in to succeed him. ”I do not want a honeymoon with you,” he said, ”I want a good marriage.” He promised to listen to Congress, and to the people, ”to be sure that we are all tuned in to the real voice of America.” Still, the most dramatic first address to Congress in the   era had to be that of Lyndon Johnson in November 1963 just days after he had been elevated to the presidency by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. ”All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today,” he said. ”The greatest leader of our time has been struck down by the foulest deed of our time.” And later in that speech, Johnson vowed to pursue the legacy he had inherited. ”On the 20th day of January, in 1961, John F. Kennedy told his countrymen that our national work would not be finished ’in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But,’ he said, ’let us begin.’ ” Then Johnson added: ”Today, in this moment of new resolve, I would say to all my fellow Americans, let us continue.” Continuity of tradition and shared power is what ceremonies such as the address to Congress are all about. They start the process by which independent personalities become part of the government, to envelop them in the context they are confronting. Even the most disruptive and embattled presidents have come to realize that  —   no matter how much they see themselves as champions of the people  —   they cannot escape the constraints of the office in which they serve."
"At the height of Spain’s economic crisis a few years ago, protesters used to form human chains around houses to prevent authorities from serving eviction papers to homeowners who’d fallen behind on their mortgages. Often at the center of the crowd, with a megaphone, was Ada Colau. She was an Occupy activist who founded an   group, organized protests in front of thousands of homes and banks and got hauled away many times by police. She was evicted from Spain’s parliament in February 2013, when she interrupted a debate on banking laws with shouts of ”Si, se puede!”  —   Yes, we can!  —   from the gallery. ”It was very powerful. She had collected all these signatures to change the law, and she was yelling from the gallery and protesting,” says Liz Castro, a longtime Barcelona resident and Catalan independence activist who respects Colau, even as she opposes her. ”I found her very brave, making change happen, and motivating all these other people. I was impressed.” Colau had become such a folk hero that she was invited back to the parliament later the same month to testify on Spain’s economic crisis. Before she took the microphone, a spokesman for the Spanish bankers’ association told the lawmakers that bankers played no role in the economic collapse  —   even though they did, and had to get a bailout from Europe. When it was Colau’s turn to speak, her voice was shaking, but she minced no words. ”This man is a criminal, and should be treated as such! He’s no expert. Bankers are the ones who got us into this mess,” she said. ”It’s these very people [who] ruined the economy of this country. Yet you still refer to them as experts!” She was scolded for her language and was asked to apologize, but she shook her head and refused. Now, four years after that confrontation, Colau is a politician herself  —   Barcelona’s first female mayor  —   and the boss of the police who once handcuffed her. She was elected in May 2015 on a wave of   anger fueled by Spain’s economic crisis. Even though Colau, 42, has made the transition from grassroots activist to politician in charge, she says she feels like the exact same person with the same goals: to fight corruption, make government institutions more transparent and solve real problems. She’s just got a different role now, she says. In an interview at her office at City Hall, Colau recalls how she felt at that 2013 parliamentary hearing. She says she hadn’t planned to be confrontational. ”My reaction was simply to say what I thought. Every day, I was with people who were losing everything, and this guy had no idea what was happening in our country!” she says, laughing. ”So I spoke plainly, in a tone that you don’t hear often in parliament.” Since taking office, Colau has quadrupled public spending on social housing and fined mortgage lenders that kept foreclosed homes empty. She’s banned new hotels in Barcelona’s city center, which she says risks becoming a souvenir theme park, overrun by tourists. She also slashed her own salary and refused a   Audi. She rides the metro to work instead. Colau’s latest target is President Donald Trump. After Spain’s conservative prime minister held a friendly phone call with Trump, Colau launched a social media campaign with the hashtag #NoenNuestroNombre  —   ”not in our name.” ”He questions human rights and says sexist and racist things,” she says. ”You have to put limits on diplomacy with someone like that.” In January, Colau joined an   women’s march in Barcelona, and says more are in the works. There’s some irony here: Those who study local democracy say even though Colau’s supporters and Trump’s may be on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, there are similarities. They’re people who’ve felt   in politics, left out by elites  —   motivated by some of the same inequalities and fears that led Britons to vote to leave the European Union. ”They all feed off a similar hunger for what in Spain we’ve called ’real democracy,’ and what in the U. K. has been called ’take back control’  —   this idea of popular sovereignty,” says Kate Shea Baird, a     local democracy activist who has worked with Colau. ”I think it shows that [a] kind of frustration and the economic crisis can [both] be channeled into positive projects  —   or nationalist, authoritarian projects. So it can go either way.” As for the future, Colau denies having any ambition for higher office, though she’s more popular than many national politicians in Spain. Her opponents include those on the right who oppose increased public spending, and some on the left, including Catalan independence activists like Castro. They want to break away from Spain and form a new country with Barcelona as its capital, and they’re angry Colau has prioritized municipal projects rather than nationalist ones. ”People think being a mayor is like being on the lowest rung on the ladder of politics, and that you always want to move up,” Colau says. ”But I disagree. Being a mayor is where you’re closest to the people.” If she were to imagine a movie about her life, Colau says the major scenes would be that 2013 parliamentary hearing when she called bankers ”criminals,” the day in 2015 when she was elected as Barcelona’s first female mayor  —   and the day she became a mother. This spring, she will give birth to her second child. After that, she says, it’s back to work."
"In 2010, Lester Packingham was convicted of having a Facebook account. That’s a crime in North Carolina, which bars registered sex offenders from ”accessing” certain social media sites, including Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. On Monday, the U. S. Supreme Court hears arguments on whether that law violates the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. Packingham contends the statute, instead of being narrowly targeted, encompasses a ”vast amount” of speech that is protected by the Constitution. Packingham’s case stems from the guilty plea he entered at age 21 for having consensual sex with a    girl he says he was dating. He claimed he didn’t know her age. He got a suspended sentence. Under North Carolina law, he was required to register as a sex offender  —   a designation that lasts for 30 years. For seven years after his conviction, Packingham had no further sex offenses  —   until he signed up for the Facebook account. Indeed, even after his Facebook page was discovered and police searched his house, they did not find any evidence that he was abusing children or committing sex crimes. He was placed on probation for committing this felony and received a suspended sentence. The state contends its social media ban was adopted to stop sexual predators from ”taking what is often the critical first step in the sexual assault of a child,” meaning gathering information about potential young targets. The law applies to websites open to those under 18. ”It blinks reality to suggest that sexual predators do not use social media to further their crimes,” the state maintains. Countering that argument, lawyers for Packingham contend that the statute punishes far more speech than ”the minuscule fraction” the state is legitimately worried about. David Post, an Internet scholar who authored a friend of the court brief siding with Packingham, notes that the   sex offender registry means that Packingham and other former offenders who are not in prison, not under supervised release and not repeat offenders are still subject to limits on their liberties. ”They are ostensibly free and have the same constitutional rights as you or I have,” Post says. And yet, in North Carolina and many other states, laws limit basic First Amendment rights. Nationwide, an estimated 850, 000 people are on sex offender registries. The crimes that got them there range from public urination to the rape of a child. In some states, registration can be for as little as two years for certain convictions, and in other states registration may be required for life. North Carolina has attempted even greater restrictions. For example, the same year the North Carolina Legislature unanimously passed the social media ban, it passed a law requiring that certain registered sex offenders have lifetime GPS monitoring and made it forbidden for offenders to go to places ”where minors gather.” Parts of that law were ruled unconstitutional by federal courts in 2016. North Carolina’s social media ban is particularly  . Other states restrict Internet use as a condition of parole, or ban from social networking sites only those who commit certain crimes. North Carolina appears to be the only state that currently prohibits all registered sex offenders from a wide range of social media sites. Two similar statutes  —   in Indiana and Nebraska  —   were struck down by the lower federal courts. The North Carolina law was upheld by that state’s Supreme Court. ”States and the federal government have greater leeway when dealing with this class of individuals than when dealing with the general public,” North Carolina says in its brief. Lawyers for Packingham reply in their brief that ”it is hard to imagine that a government would impose, or a court would uphold, a similarly sweeping, criminal ban directed at any other group of people.”"
"Down Baltimore’s Greenmount Avenue, across from a hair braiding salon and a crab shack, the lights for the One Stop Auto Shop flash around the clock, much like shop owner Jerry Greeff’s work ethic. Greeff has been putting in his last days after working with cars for more than 40 years  —   and he’s done quite well. In 2016, his business had $2. 5 million in sales. But he’s been working long days for a long time. ”If a customer doesn’t have their car, I feel bad for them,” Greeff says. ”They need their car.” So he  —   and his employees  —   would work late. Greeff knows what a difference having a car can make in getting to work and getting kids to daycare. He and his wife, Pam, have three grown kids of their own. But the time he spent at the shop, and away from her, was really getting to her. ”My wife had given me an ultimatum  —   she said it was her or the business,” Greeff says. ”It was a very close call, I gotta tell ya, but she eked it out.” Greeff says 10 years have passed since he took his last real vacation and that Pam was starting to travel solo. So, they tried selling the One Stop Auto Shop, but couldn’t find a buyer who would run it. When you start a business and watch it grow for decades, it can be hard to let go of it and retire. Then, the Greeffs had an idea. They’d donated a few of their old cars to a local nonprofit specializing in auto mechanics. Why not donate the business? ”We didn’t want to close,” Greeff says. ”We didn’t want the employees to lose their jobs, we didn’t want the community to lose it.” Vehicles for Change is a nonprofit that fixes up donated cars while teaching   auto repair. They sell the cars at low cost to   families. The   earn their mechanic certificates, they’re placed in a job, and Vehicles for Change sells them a car at low cost, so they can get to that job. Marty Schwartz, president of Vehicles for Change, says when the Greeffs donated their   business, it was simply unbelievable. ”I mean it’s amazing,” Schwartz says. ”It’s a miracle.” And the benefits for the   he trains are going to be plentiful. ”These are guys who have been to prison. They don’t want to go back to prison. They don’t want to go back to the life that they were in,” Schwartz says. ”They just need an opportunity.” In Maryland, about 40 percent of   who were released from prison in 2009 were back in prison or under supervision by 2012. Getting a job is crucial to staying out of prison, but those opportunities are rare. ”I been working on cars all my life,” says    Nick Kuespert. ”I’m just an old redneck. I love cars and that’s why I’m here.” Kuespert is finishing up his training in the Vehicles for Change auto shop. He grew up in Jackson, Miss. where his dad was addicted to drugs and the chaotic environment rubbed off on him. ”I didn’t go to high school,” Kuespert says. ”I dropped out in the eighth grade because when I was in my teens, I was a hardcore addict.” But he bounced back and started a small construction business. ”Then when I was about 31, I relapsed.” Kuespert says. ”And my wife and my kids and  —   I’m sorry, excuse me,” he says as he gathers himself. ”So, um, [I] relapsed, I ended up doing some robberies, got caught and went to prison.” Kuespert was 34 years old when he went to prison. ”Since I been out, I been doing a lot better. I feel like I’m worth something because I show up and I help people. I fix cars for people that need cars, and I like that.” And that’s the legacy the Greeffs want to leave behind. Greeff says when he hands over the keys to the One Stop Auto Shop, he won’t be able to stay away for long. ”I want to help ’em. I want them to succeed,” he says. ”They have an issue, I mean, I’m always on call for them.”"
"President Trump’s initial budget proposal isn’t enough to expand the military in the way he proposed. Trump campaigned on the need to add tens of thousands more troops to the Army and Marine Corps, field a Navy with 350 warships or more and also to upgrade the Air Force. The $54 billion he’s seeking to increase the Defense Department budget this year would represent a funding boost  —   but not one that would pay for an expansion on the scale Trump endorsed. In fact, not only might Trump’s proposed Pentagon budget not expand American power but it falls short of plugging some gaps in the current force, critics say. ”The administration will have to make clear which problems facing our military they are choosing not to fix,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry,   who issued a statement faulting the White House’s ”low budget number.” Thornberry, whose committee oversees the military and who is a top advocate for the defense establishment, said he thought increasing military spending should not be part of the politics of cuts to other functions of government. ”We cannot make repairing and rebuilding our military conditional on fixing our budget problems or on cutting other spending,” he said. ”We owe it to the men and women who serve and to the American people to protect our nation’s security under all circumstances.” Thornberry’s counterpart in the Senate, Arizona Republican John McCain, complained that Trump’s proposal is ”a mere 3 percent above President Obama’s defense budget, which has left our military underfunded, undersized and unready.” Actually getting the money to the Pentagon depends on the approval of Congress, which would also have to waive or lift   spending limits. And the practical effects would depend on how any additional money was directed. The Navy, for example, typically gets about $18 billion per year for the account it uses to build ships. If Trump’s proposed $54 billion were theoretically split three ways, one for each of the military departments within the Defense Department, that works out to an $18 billion boost for the entire Department of the Navy, including the Navy and the Marine Corps. The Navy Department requested nearly $165 billion in its most recent budget. The White House could propose specific priorities when it releases its full budget, and supporters argue that Trump must start somewhere. ”The president’s budget is a down payment on fixing the problem,” said Kim McIntyre, a spokeswoman for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that praised the budget guidance. ”There is bipartisan recognition that the military is already in a readiness crisis with too many, ships, planes and vehicles unavailable for the force.” The deputy chiefs of the military services warned Thornberry’s committee about this problem earlier in February. For example, Assistant Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Glenn Walters said about 80 percent of the Marines’ aviation units are short the minimum number of aircraft they need for training or deployments. A lack of spare parts and the need for repairs has taken hundreds of aircraft, from helicopters to fighters, out of action. At the same time, however, the Marines are fielding advanced, brand new warplanes, including the   Lightning II fighter and the   Osprey transport. Tens of thousands of American troops continue to deploy overseas for the fight against the Islamic State or the Taliban and to take assignments around the globe. The vast scale of the U. S. military means it includes both extremes of advanced and antiquated hardware some units in combat daily, others unready to deploy. The Air Force flies   bombers built in the early 1960s on missions today over Syria attacking the Islamic State. Pentagon leaders say they still wield the most powerful military force on Earth. Trump focuses on what he calls the ”depletion.” ”This budget will be a public safety and national security budget,” Trump told governors at the White House on Monday. ”And it will include a historic increase in defense spending to rebuild the depleted military of the United States of America at a time we most need it.” White House officials say that Trump would cover the additional Pentagon funding by cutting the nondefense budgets of other Cabinet departments, and would also reduce spending on foreign aid. But those details are not yet clear and precise numbers won’t be made public for several more weeks. Trump has not released a detailed proposal for how he would expand the military beyond the general statements he has made supporting a larger force and more nuclear weapons. That means there is no solid estimate for the costs involved above the current Pentagon budget, but based on the costs of the current force, the price tag would very likely reach many more billions of dollars. Past administrations have released a   defense plan along with each new budget submission that signaled what they intended to propose beyond the immediate budget they were releasing. If Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis issue one when this year’s budget comes out, it could include more clues about a potential big expansion to the military. But Trump has already shown his commitments are not  . In fact, he has hectored aerospace titans Lockheed Martin and Boeing over what he called the unreasonable costs to some of their ongoing programs  —   Lockheed’s   and Boeing’s replacement for the Air Force’s presidential aircraft. The Washington defense establishment is waiting to see whether that scrutiny continues  —   or expands."
"How much of the federal budget goes to foreign aid? What’s your best guess? 10 percent? 20 percent? 1 percent? If you’re like most Americans, you probably guessed wrong. In December, the Kaiser Family Foundation polled 1, 505 people. Only 1 in 20 knew the right answer: less than 1 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget goes to foreign aid. The average respondent estimated that 26 percent went toward assisting other countries. What’s more, our ignorance colors the way we think about foreign spending.   percent of the poll respondents thought the U. S. spends too much on foreign aid. Once they were told that the U. S. spends less than 1 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid, only 28 percent still thought the nation was overspending. This is nothing new. The Kaiser Family Foundation has conducted this poll since 2009, and every year the response is the same. But maybe it’s not our fault. Maybe the problem is that foreign aid is incredibly complicated. Even coming up with a definition of ”foreign aid” is tough. So we spoke to five specialists to soak up some foreign aid smarts. With Obama’s $4 trillion budget for 2016 newly submitted to Congress for approval, here’s a primer on the 1 percent. The definition of foreign aid is pretty broad. The largest portion of the money goes to health: a third of the U. S. foreign aid budget in 2014, or more than $5. 3 billion. The next two biggest portions go toward economic development and humanitarian assistance. Small sums of aid support democratic elections in other countries. A tiny portion goes to protect forests in countries where logging is destroying natural habitats. Some aid funds programs that train local law enforcement to combat drug trafficking. (But no foreign aid goes directly toward another country’s military.) The vast majority of spending on health goes to   projects. In 2014, the U. S. spent $3. 1 billion on    —   about a fifth of the foreign aid budget. The next two big health categories were ”Maternal and Child Health,” at about $530 million, and malaria, at about $470 million. Of all the global health expenditures, a category labeled ”Pandemic Influenza and Other Emerging Threats” receives the least funding, about $66 million in 2014. Funding for the U. S. Ebola response counts as emergency assistance and is not included in the budget. The U. S. spent $2. 7 billion  —   about a sixth of foreign aid money  —   on economic development in 2014. Economic development mostly includes infrastructure projects, like building roads, expanding electricity and improving phone and Internet access. Another sixth goes to humanitarian assistance. The majority is earmarked for ”Protection, Assistance, and Solutions”  —   a vague title that refers to caring for refugees who’ve fled from conflicts. The money feeds and houses the refugees and sometimes covers shelter and migration costs. A tiny amount from this category goes toward disaster readiness. There’s more to foreign aid than the foreign aid budget. First, there’s money for Overseas Contingency Operations, or, more simply, finishing up projects that the U. S. already started. For example, in 2013, the U. S. spent $2. 1 billion on foreign aid in Afghanistan, even though only $700 million was allocated in the federal budget. Then there’s emergency assistance, like the aforementioned Ebola. Finally, the private sector often chips in to help build infrastructure, and its contributions are separate from foreign aid. For example, USAID partnered with   to build juicing facilities in Haiti so that locals could turn their mangoes into a marketable product.  If you want to know more about foreign aid, you’ll have an easier time of it than in years past. Details are available at foreignassistance. gov. The U. S. is pretty generous . .. until you consider how much money it has. ”On the one hand, you can say that the U. S. is the most generous because it is one of the biggest donators to foreign aid,” says Phyllis Pomerantz, a professor of public policy at Duke University. ”But on the other hand, we have one of the lowest percentages of gross national income donated to foreign aid,” she says."
"Updated at 4:15 p. m. ET, President Trump’s budget will propose a $54 billion increase in defense spending, while slashing domestic programs by the same amount. The president told the nation’s governors on Monday that his plan ”puts America first,” and that ”we’re going to do more with less, and make the government lean and accountable to people.” An official with the White House Office of Management and Budget, who spoke to reporters only if not named, said most agencies will see budget cuts, including foreign aid, which comprises less than 1 percent of federal spending. A formal budget blueprint will be sent to Congress in March. The official said this the first step of ”internal collaboration” between the White House and federal agencies. The official said details about tax cuts and entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, will come later. The administration is not expected to propose changes to entitlements. It will be up to Congress to write the final spending plan, and it’s likely there will be strong objections from Democrats to the proposed domestic cuts. New Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters on Monday that the president’s blueprint was essentially ”taking [Trump’s] words and turning them into policies and dollars.” ”It’s a true ’America First’ budget,” Mulvaney said, though he stressed that this is not a full budget proposal, which won’t come until May. Already, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tweeted that Trump’s budget outline would take ”a meat ax to programs that benefit the  .” Current defense spending is put at $590 billion, down about 25 percent from the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, the U. S. spends more on the military than the next seven countries combined, according to data from 2015. Trump called his proposed defense increase ”historic,” and that it will send a ”message to the world in these dangerous times, of American strength, security and resolve.” ”Everybody used to say America never lost a war,” he said, adding, ”Now we never win and don’t fight to win.” He repeated his claim that the U. S. has spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, calling the situation a ”hornet’s nest.” (PolitiFact has looked at this figure and found that it includes projected spending, beyond money that has already been spent.) Trump said he would also increase spending for law enforcement and on infrastructure, but offered no specifics. He said he would have ”big details” in his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. Mulvaney was asked whether this budget would include funding for the president’s vaunted border wall, which Trump has promised that Mexico would pay for Mexico, however, has continued to insist it will not. Mulvaney said that he did expect some funding for that wall to be included in a future supplemental, while a 2018 budget would contain more. It’s unclear what the overall impact of Trump’s plan will be on the federal budget deficit. While the proposed military buildup may be offset by domestic spending cuts, the size and nature of the     tax reform proposal will determine the deficit picture. NPR’s Jessica Taylor contributed."
"It started out a simple, human interest story featuring a former president and his   House hobby  —   painting watercolors of world leaders, and now, portraits of American soldiers, wounded during military service. But before long, that president, George W. Bush, made real news by doing something he had never before done in a public forum since leaving office: discussing at length the current occupant of the Oval Office. Bush spoke on the set of NBC’s Today show. Then, hours later, came an interview with People magazine, and more language that can only be seen as a careful critique  —   but still a critique  —   of the early days of the Donald Trump presidency. This is not just another president weighing in on public events and American politics. In fact, all through the Obama years, Bush avoided opining on questions about the policies of his successor. He held his tongue when Obama reversed his executive orders. He was quiet when Obama likened   policies to driving the car ”into the ditch.” Bush once told CNN, ”It’s a hard job. It’s difficult. . .. A former president doesn’t need to make it any harder.” In a speech in Canada just weeks into the Obama presidency, Bush told his audience he wouldn’t spend his time criticizing Obama, ”and if he wants my help, he can pick up the phone and call me.” Which brings us to NBC’s Today on Monday morning. It was Bush’s first interview since Donald Trump was sworn in as president. Bush was promoting his newest paintings, featuring the faces of wounded soldiers. They have been collected in a book called Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors. Host Matt Lauer started by asking about the division in the country following the brutal 2016 presidential campaign, and about how the transition to President Trump compared with when Bush took office after the controversial 2001 election. (In both cases, the loser of the popular vote won in the Electoral College.) Bush said it’s hard to compare: ”One thing’s for certain, though the job’s a tough job.” But the former president did say that healing divisions requires a lot of people coming together to unite the country  —   the clear implication being that the president plays a role in that. Bush said that you have to take President Trump at his word that he wants to unify people. He also stressed that Trump has only been in office a little more than a month. Still, the 43rd President told People, ”I don’t like the   and I don’t like the people feeling alienated.” He added for emphasis, ”Nobody likes that.” During his first month in the White House, President Trump has repeatedly hurled insults and attacks on news organizations. On Twitter and in speeches, labeling the media ”the enemy of the American people.” Today’s Matt Lauer noted that President Bush  —   who took the country to war in Iraq, and who presided over an economic crisis  —   faced plenty of criticism from the media while in office. Lauer asked Bush, ”Did you ever consider the media to be the enemy of the American people?” Bush chuckled and then answered: ”I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. We need an independent media to hold people like me to account. Power can be very addictive. And it can be corrosive. And it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.” Bush noted that he spent a lot of time trying to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept the notion of an independent press. That led to an exchange about the controversies involving Russia’s alleged attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, including reports of contacts between top Trump campaign officials and the Russians. Asked whether he would like a special prosecutor to look into the issue, Bush said: ”First of all, I think we all need answers  —   whether or not the special prosecutor is the way to go or not, you’re talking to the wrong guy.” Bush stressed that he is not a lawyer, so he wouldn’t weigh in on the best approach, but on the reports about Russia and the election, he did say, ”I am sure, though, that that question needs to be answered.” The discussion segued into talk of the days right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, during Bush’s first year in office. In the aftermath of that shocking, terrifying moment, Bush, as president, stressed to Muslims around the world that he had respect for their faith  —   a faith practiced by many Americans. He repeatedly made it a point to call the teachings of Islam good and peaceful. ”We are not at war against Islam,” Bush would often say. Trump makes no such careful distinction, blasting the Obama White House and those who refuse to use the phrase ”radical Islamic terrorism.” ”That’s very different talk than what we’re hearing today about a ’Muslim ban,’” Lauer said. ”Do you think the president’s position on this has been well thought out?” Bush responded that the right to worship freely, or to not worship at all, is a bedrock of freedom in the U. S. ”You see, I understood right off the bat, Matt, that this is an ideological conflict, and people who murder the innocent are not religious people,” Bush said. ”They want to advance an ideology, and we have faced those kinds of ideologues in the past.” Asked point blank if he supports the ban on travel from the seven predominantly Muslim countries that were included in Trump’s executive order, which is now being challenged in the courts, Bush said he is ”for an immigration policy that is welcoming and that upholds the law.” In the conversation with People, Bush said ”I don’t like the racism.” The People interview, in Bush’s painting studio at his Dallas home, was conducted by journalist Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, a former   reporter who covered the Bush presidency. She asked if he would begin to speak out more, to take on some sort of leadership role. Bush responded that he won’t be doing that. But his Presidential Library in Dallas is involved in the issues of the day. Here’s a passage from the interview, where Bush describes the work he and former First Lady Laura Bush are doing: ”. .. at the Bush Center we are speaking up.” The couple list some of the center’s work that stands in contrast to Trump’s isolationism: immigration ceremonies, women’s   programs in Africa, and leadership training for Muslim women that the Bush Center brings to Texas from the Middle East. Asked if Trump’s determination to restrict immigration and travel from Muslim countries threatens the Bush Center programs, he shrugs. ”Now that you mention it, it might bother me but we’ll figure out how to bring them over.” ”There’s a lot of ways to speak out,” the former president says, ”but it’s really through actions defending the values important to Laura and me. . .. We’re a blessed nation, and we ought to help others.” In both interviews, Bush does stop short of direct and blunt criticism of Trump. But his willingness to engage on controversial, ongoing topics involving the White House  —   and a president of his own Republican Party  —   is a significant departure from what he did during the eight years when his Democratic successor, President Obama, was in office. Bush might have simply said that this is all now on the current president’s plate and declined to weigh in. He didn’t. There is no love lost between the Bush family and Trump. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush  —   and by extension, George W. Bush  —   were often ridiculed by Trump during the 2016 primaries. ”  Jeb” was one of Trump’s favorite putdowns. Last year in February, George W. Bush campaigned for his younger brother in South Carolina, the state that turned out to be candidate Jeb Bush’s last stand. Perhaps this week’s comments from the 43rd president stem from lingering bad feelings over 2016. Whatever the reason, they are consistent with his   belief. And they are a departure from his practice of not providing fodder that can be interpreted as casting judgment on a sitting president. In these interviews  —   even as he promotes his paintings and his book about wounded warriors  —   he seemed to jettison any such concern."
"When it comes to climate change, we often think of the cars we drive and the energy we use in our homes and offices. They are, after all, some of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. But what about the toast you ate for breakfast this morning? A new study published Monday in Nature Plants breaks down the environmental cost of producing a loaf of bread, from wheat field to bakery. It finds that the bulk of the associated greenhouse gas emissions come from just one of the many steps that go into making that loaf: farming. The study was conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Sheffield, in the U. K. They wanted to understand the environmental impacts of the entire life cycle of a common staple. They chose bread and used a ”  supply chain,” says Liam Goucher, the lead author of the study and a research fellow at the Grantham Center for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield. ”We focused on a specific farm, which was in Lincoln, in the U. K. and we focused on a specific mill and a specific [commercial] bakery.” They collected and analyzed data for emissions involved at every step of the process, including growing the wheat, fertilizing it, harvesting the crop, transporting the grains to the mill, grinding the grains into flour, transporting the flour to a bakery and then baking and packaging a loaf of bread. Scientists call this a life cycle analysis. Many stages were energy intensive and involved with emissions  —   for example, the machinery involved with tilling the soil, harvesting, and irrigation, or the electricity required to operate the mill and the bakery. But the vast majority of emissions  —   nearly 66 percent  —   came from growing wheat. ”We found that over half of the environmental impacts of producing a loaf of bread come from wheat cultivation,” says Goucher. ”The interesting thing is that 40 percent is attributable just to the use of ammonium nitrate fertilizers alone, which is a huge amount, when you consider it.” The fertilizers also cause a lot of water pollution when they run off into streams and rivers. Globally, agriculture is thought to contribute about   of all greenhouse gas emissions. That includes the emissions from deforestation to create farmlands. And we also know about the emissions involved in manufacturing fertilizers (an   process) and their use on farms. Farmers typically use more fertilizers than they need to, and not all nitrogen in the fertilizers is used up by plants. Some of the nitrogen goes back into the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. What is new about the study, says Goucher, is that it breaks down the emissions at every step, so we can figure out which steps to focus on to reduce emissions. ”It kind of points to the fact that if you want to reduce the climate impact of food production, we need to think of fertilizer manufacturing and fertilizer application as one place where we have big leverage to reduce climate impact,” says Navin Ramankutty, a professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, who was not involved in the study. There are known ways to reduce use of nitrogen fertilizers, like applying fertilizers only at certain times of the growing season, when plants need them the most. The study is ”very interesting, very complete,” says James Galloway, an expert on nitrogen cycles at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, who was not involved in the new study. ”This is exactly the kind of thing that should be done with other food commodities.” Galloway says it would be even more useful to do such analysis on animal products like beef and pork, which we know are bigger sources of greenhouse gas emissions. ”That would have interesting results and would be even more useful if you’re going to ask the question, ’What can society do about the issue?’ ” he adds. ”This type of analysis would generate very well the   message that if you only eat the amount of protein you’re supposed to eat, as opposed to overconsumption, you would decrease the environmental footprint.” In the future, this kind of analysis could be used to create a market for foods with lower emissions, says Ramankutty. The way to do that is by ”asking consumers to vote with their money,” he says. If for example, customers demand ”  bread,” then bakeries would have to prove that their bread uses less energy than the average loaf. Bakeries can in turn influence the supply chain. ”They can go back to the farmer and say, ’Can you use less fertilizer, or use organic fertilizer?’ ” Ramankutty says. That could become a productive way to make sure that the food we eat has a smaller climate impact, he adds."
"The private company SpaceX has announced that it plans to send two passengers on a mission beyond the moon in late 2018. If the mission goes forward, it would be the ”first time humans have traveled beyond low Earth orbit since the days of Apollo,” as NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce told our Newscast unit. The two private citizens approached the company about the idea and have already paid a sizable deposit, CEO Elon Musk told reporters in a conference call. These private individuals will also bear the cost of the mission. ”I think this should be a really exciting mission that hopefully gets the world really excited about sending people into deep space again,” Musk said. As the company puts it: ”This presents an opportunity for humans to return to deep space for the first time in 45 years and they will travel faster and further into the solar system than any before them.” The plan for this private mission is to send the two people to loop around the moon and then return to Earth. They will not land on the moon’s surface. As Nell explained, SpaceX ”builds rockets and capsules that have taken cargo to the International Space Station for NASA.” SpaceX plans to use its Falcon Heavy rocket, which is set to launch its first test flight this summer. Next year, prior to the moon mission, it plans to start crewed missions by taking NASA astronauts up to the ISS. That’s a lot of ground to cover before this mission can take place, as George Washington University’s John Logsdon, an expert in space policy and history, told Nell. ”Introducing this into the mix raises a fair amount of questions, but it’s an exciting prospect,” Logsdon said. ”SpaceX is notorious or notable, depending on how you want to think about it, for setting very ambitious schedules and usually not meeting them.” He added that historically, SpaceX has eventually followed through on what it said it was going to do. The moon mission vehicle is designed to be automated, Musk told reporters, but the passengers will be trained in emergency procedures in case there is a problem. The individuals involved in the mission ”are entering with their eyes open knowing that there is some risk here,” Musk said. NASA has congratulated SpaceX on ”reaching higher.” In a statement, the agency said: ”NASA is changing the way it does business through its commercial partnerships to help build a strong American space economy and free the agency to focus on developing the   rocket, spacecraft and systems to go beyond the moon and sustain deep space exploration.” SpaceX has seen some recent setbacks, including multiple delays launching and docking a capsule on the International Space Station earlier this month. It succeeded last week. SpaceX said other potential customers have also expressed interest and it expects to launch further missions. And it’s worth noting that this is far from the most ambitious goal that Musk has proposed. Last September, he unveiled plans to colonize Mars by sending at least 1 million humans there to establish a   city."
"Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk says his space transport company, SpaceX, will build a rocket system capable of taking people to Mars and supporting a permanent city on the red planet. ”It’s something we can do in our lifetimes,” he said in a speech Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, that was streamed online and watched by more than 100, 000 people. ”You could go.” Musk described plans to send at least a million humans to Mars and establish a   city there. He said he expects people to reach Mars within a decade, and described four requirements for a new rocket fleet, which would travel to Mars approximately every two years, when Mars and Earth come closest to each other. The requirements for a feasible rocket system are full   the ability to refuel in orbit, the ability to produce fuel on Mars and identifying the ideal propellant. Because the atmosphere of Mars is largely made of carbon dioxide, and previous missions have found ice on the planet, Musk said he though it would be possible to produce a methane fuel there. But the centerpiece of the speech was a video simulation of a the massive spacecraft and rocket to get Mars colonizers to their destination. (Within SpaceX, they have been nicknamed the ”BFS” and ”BFR,” which are acronyms for phrases NPR is too polite to spell out.) One thing Musk was less specific about was who would pay for it all, saying it would be ”a huge public private partnership,” and that he expected support to ”snowball.” He did say the cost per person would need to decrease significantly in order for colonization to work. Right now, Musk estimates a trip to Mars would cost $10 billion per person. Musk says he would like to bring that cost down to about $200, 000. Musk is very wealthy, and said in his speech that his ”only motivation” for amassing personal wealth is to work on making life  . He is simultaneously supporting SpaceX, Tesla Motors and SolarCity. The speech also comes just weeks after a   SpaceX failure: An unmanned rocket and its payload were destroyed in an explosion two days before the rocket was scheduled to launch. It’s not the first setback for SpaceX, which has seen rockets explode before  —   and, as the   reported, came after a series of successes for the company. But Musk called it the company’s ”most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years.” The Guardian notes that Musk’s ” ” approach to   is intentional, and tied to his ambition. But the explosion has led some to question whether SpaceX can reliably send cargo to the International Space Station, ”let alone take people to Mars,” the newspaper writes."
"It’s been five years since the death of Trayvon Martin  —   and the outrage that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. Martin  —   17 years old, black and unarmed  —   was shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman was charged with   murder and manslaughter. He claimed   and was later acquitted. After the verdict, there were demonstrations  —   and an emotional Facebook post by an activist named Alicia Garza. It read, in part: ”Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” That phrase was streamlined by her friend, Patrisse   and with the help of a third friend, Opal Tometi, ”black lives matter” became a hashtag, a rallying cry and eventually a protest movement that gained steam after police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Since then, much has changed,   tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. ”In that moment, it wasn’t popular to be in the streets. It wasn’t a part of the mainstream dialogue,” she says. ”What we’ve seen over the last five years is the popularization of protest and the willingness of both media but also Hollywood to talk about Black Lives Matter unapologetically.” On whether the movement would have benefited from focusing on a single policy issue, The movement is a decentralized one. Many different people across the country are entering from different angles. We’re not looking for one   policy. We’re taking on our mayors, our chiefs of police, our sheriffs and our DAs. We’re looking at the entire system and the ways that it can transform itself so that we can actually see a world where black lives matter. And I think it’s been incredibly effective. On whether Donald Trump’s election felt like a rebuke  I’ll say this: Whenever black people say enough is enough, we are often up against white nationalism. And so what this election showed us is our movement became too powerful and that white nationalism  —   although (it) has always existed  —   took power again. On Trump’s voter base, There are people who are white racists and identify as such. And there are people who are   white people who also voted for Trump. There also are a significant amount of people of color who voted for Trump. And I think we have to consider what kind of conditions allowed for people who actually believe in American democracy to vote for a Trump. On what lies ahead for the movement in the Trump era, I see us moving forward with a renewed focus. We have to defend and protect our communities, but we also have to build a   strategy to ensure that those who are most at the margins, that we’ll actually be able to build real political power. To hear more of this interview, click on the audio button."
"The Black Lives Matter movement was formed three years ago. That phrase  —   ”Black Lives Matter”  —   first came up in a frustrated Facebook post in response to the George Zimmerman case. A jury acquitted him after he killed    Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. Then, Black Lives Matter became a hashtag and soon, a national movement. NPR’s Ari Shapiro talked with three of the founders  —   Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi  —   about the cultural shift they’ve seen in the past three years, the frustration that’s bubbled to the surface in that time and what they still want to see change. On describing this moment, Alicia Garza: I would describe this moment for the movement as a real paradigm shift. It is a indicator of what is to come. But it also, I think, points to the agency that we have, collectively, to change our conditions. I think if we demonstrate a collective commitment and a collective practice to changing not just how police and policing happens in this country, but certainly to changing the conditions that black communities are living and existing in, then we have a real shot for living in a world that is more just, more equitable  —   in a world where black lives actually do matter. On if this is a turning point for the movement, Opal Tometi: So I do see this as a very real turning point for the movement. What we’re witnessing right now is a deepening level of commitment from people of conscience from all different walks of life. We’re seeing a really vibrant, multiracial movement for Black Lives. And we’re seeing it evidenced by the people who still committed to being in the streets this weekend, even though we did experience a shift in the narrative and a shift in the understanding of what was happening because of the really unfortunate and sad events in Dallas. On their response to critics who say the Black Lives Matter movement has created a less safe environment for police, Patrisse Cullors: I think all of us inside of this movement have a deep understanding that what happened in Dallas was a tragedy and that we also can hold the tension of what continues to happen in black communities, which is being brutalized, killed and abused by the state, often at the hands of law enforcement. And so I think people are smart enough to be able to understand that both things are tragic, but  —   not but  —   and that we can’t be deterred from fighting for black lives. The conversation about Black Lives Matter is an   conversation. You know, we talk about this movement really blossoming in the last three years. But we often  —   the three of us  —   talk about that ”we.” We’re part of a movement that’s been happening for hundreds of years, and this just happens to be a tipping point. To hear the full interview, click ”listen” above."
"This post has been updated, The Department of Justice is reversing the federal government’s position in an important voting rights case, involving a Texas voter ID law. The switch was not unexpected following the election of Donald Trump and confirmation of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Both Trump and Sessions claim voter fraud is a major problem and have backed voter ID laws. In a motion filed Monday, DOJ asked a federal court to dismiss the department’s earlier claim that the ID law was enacted with the intention of discriminating against minority voters. That claim was made by the Obama administration as part of a broader legal challenge to the law, which is among the strictest in the nation. But the Trump administration notes that the Texas legislature is now considering changing the law to address concerns that it hurts minorities. DOJ says those efforts should be allowed to proceed. Voting rights advocates, who worked with the Obama Justice Department for years on the court challenge, expressed outrage at the reversal. In a written statement, Gerry Hebert of the Campaign Legal Center, which represents some of the plaintiffs, said, ”I am appalled and disgusted that DOJ would abandon their claims, that they have advocated for the last six years, that TX’s photo ID law was enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose.” He and others have argued that hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters in the state lack the required ID, such as a driver’s license or gun permit, and that many of them would have a difficult time acquiring one. They also claim that the state legislature passed the law with the intention of discriminating against minority voters, primarily Hispanics, who are less likely to have the required ID. A federal appeals court last year agreed that the law had a discriminatory impact, but asked the lower court to reconsider its findings that the law was passed with a discriminatory intent. The DOJ’s move comes amid continued partisan debate over the need for tough new ID requirements, and the impact such laws have on minority voters. Republicans say voter ID laws are needed to prevent voter fraud, but Democrats argue the laws are intended to block legitimate voters who tend to favor Democrats. The Justice Department under the Obama administration actively challenged such laws in Texas and several other states. The new administration sent signals almost immediately that it might switch sides. DOJ filed a motion Jan. 20  —   Inauguration Day  —   requesting that a hearing on the case be delayed until Feb. 28th to give the new administration time to assess its position. That motion was granted. Then last week, the Justice Department joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in asking the court to delay the case until June to allow the state legislature to revise the law. Legislators are considering a proposal to allow those without a required photo ID to vote if they sign an affidavit declaring that they face a reasonable impediment to getting one. The measure also includes strict penalties for those who falsely make that claim. However, the judge denied that request and the hearing on whether the law was passed with discriminatory intent is still scheduled for Tuesday in federal district court in Corpus Christi. Voting rights groups say they’ll continue to pursue the case, even without DOJ support. The switch in the government’s position comes amid unverified  —   and widely discredited  —   claims by Trump that millions of people voted illegally in November. He has asked Vice President Mike Pence to lead an investigation into those claims. Voting rights activists are worried that the new administration and state legislatures under Republican control will use the inquiry to justify more voting restrictions."
"Wildfires can start when lightning strikes or when someone fails to put out a campfire. New research shows that people start a lot more fires than lightning does  —   so much so that people are drastically altering wildfire in America. Fire ecologist Melissa Forder says about 60 percent of fires in national parks are caused by humans: ”intentionally set fires, buildings burning and spreading into the forest, smoking, equipment malfunctions and campfires.” But the average for all forests is even higher. The latest research shows that nationwide, humans cause more than 8 in 10  —   84 percent. ”We are playing a really substantial role in shifting fire around,” says fire ecologist Jennifer Balch at the University of Colorado. Balch looked at the big picture, going through records of 1. 5 million wildfires over a   period. She says people are starting fires where and when nature normally doesn’t  —   at times when forests are often too wet to burn easily or at places and times when lightning isn’t common. As a result, Balch says, not only are people causing the vast majority of wildfires, they’re also extending the normal fire season around the country by three months. ”I think acknowledging that fact is really important,” she says, ”particularly right now when we have evidence that climate is changing, and climate is warming, and that fires are increasing in size and the fire season is increasing.” You can see evidence of that along Skyline Drive in Virginia. The view offers an Appalachian panorama  —   rolling mountains carpeted in deep oak and pine forests. But it’s not all green, as Forder points out from the side of the highway at   Run Overlook at Shenandoah National Park. Right below stands a grove of blackened trees a few patches of green needles on surviving pines are the only green. ”We can see where it started,” she says. ”That’s Rocky Mount right there.” The mountain is the namesake for the Rocky Mount fire, which burned more than 10, 000 acres last year. The park’s fire manager, Jeff Koenig, ran the firefighting teams that spent almost two weeks stopping it. ”We were probably   days without rain” before the fire, he says, ”so you know it was expected. It was that time of year when you can expect fire activity.” It was April, and spring and fall are when forests in the east usually burn, explains Forder, who also is with the National Park Service. ”To have a fire,” she says, ”you need the fuel, which is available each spring and fall with the leaf litter, which is constantly here, and the ignition source, and then weather conditions that would allow the fire to burn.” That ignition source at Rocky Mount is thought to have been people. There was no lightning at the time lightning fires happen more during summer storms. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Balch says there is a solution: Ironically, it means starting more fires. Prescribed fires are intentionally lit  —   they burn off leaf litter and underbrush that would otherwise fuel bigger wildfires. Controlled fires also help germinate the seeds of many tree species. But people don’t like them nearby they’re smoky and sometime get loose. ”Now the question is, can we live with the amount of prescribed fires that we need in ecosystems?” she says. ”Can we live with the smoke that comes off those fires?” The research, she says, suggests that the alternative is a   season of bigger, more damaging fires."
"Updated at 3:50 p. m. ET, William Owens, whose son William ”Ryan” Owens became the first American to die in combat under the Trump administration, says that he refused a chance to meet President Trump and that he wants an investigation into his son’s final mission  —   a raid in Yemen whose merits have been called into question. ”I told them I didn’t want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me talk to him,” Owens said of the president in an interview with The Miami Herald. He made that decision after being told that Trump was heading from Washington to attend the transfer of Ryan Owens’ remains. The Navy SEAL died on Jan. 29, in a rare ground mission in Yemen. Since then, the U. S. has acknowledged that more than 20 civilians, including women and children, were also killed in the attack, along with 14   militants. Almost immediately after the raid, questions were also raised about whether the gains of the raid were enough to offset the loss of an elite U. S. special operator and an Osprey aircraft. The White House has deemed the mission a success, despite the losses and the apparent escape of one of the raid’s key targets. From NPR’s fact check that included Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman: ”But the U. S. would not send in SEAL Team Six, the premiere   commandos, to pick up some cellphones and computers, a U. S. official told Bowman. ”Part of the effort was to get top   in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, leaders. While more than a dozen militants were killed, a top target, Qassim   either slipped away or was not at the location.” Discussing the raid, William Owens, who is also a military veteran, told the Miami Herald, ”Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn’t even barely a week into his administration? Why? For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen  —   everything was missiles and drones  —   because there was not a target worth one American life. Now, all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?” Saying that the U. S. owes his son an investigation, Owens criticized Trump for using a combat death to attack those who are calling for an inquiry. ”Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation,” he said. Days after the raid, the White House said that while Trump had authorized the operation, it had been planned under the Obama administration months ago, with the goal of gathering information. But military officials later said the raid’s site was one of several that were identified back in November as ones to consider. At a press briefing on Monday afternoon, White House press secretary Sean Spicer responded to a question about Owens’ concerns by saying it is ”standard operating procedure” for the Department of Defense to review incidents like this. There will be three reviews, he said  —   one for the loss of civilian life, one for Owens’ death and one for the helicopter. He expressed condolences over Owens’ death and reiterated the administration’s claim that the mission ”achieved its objectives” and ”was successful in helping prevent a future attack or attacks on this nation.” ”We’re very comfortable with how the mission was executed and we’ll let the Department of Defense go through that review process and then see where that leads us,” Spicer said. ”But I think to get ahead of the three separate reviews . .. would probably be a little irresponsible at this time.” Trump was also criticized after it was reported that he made the decision to carry out the raid while he was having dinner with his advisers, rather than in the White House’s Situation Room. Yemen has condemned the attack, with its military saying that one of the men who was killed had actually been working for it, as NPR reported."
"A    white man accused of kicking a coat hanger up the rectum of a mentally disabled black teammate received no jail time at his sentencing on Friday. Former high school football player John R. K. Howard entered a   ”Alford plea,” meaning he maintains his innocence while admitting a judge or jury would likely find him guilty. He was sentenced to probation and community service, and his conviction might be entirely dismissed at a later date. The Twin Falls   writes that supporters of the black player see the sentencing as ”a slap on the wrist for a privileged white teen who preyed on a disabled teammate from the only black family in town.” Howard, who pleaded guilty to felony injury of a child, had originally been charged with sexual assault. But prosecutors later decided that, while they were confident they could prove Howard kicked the coat hanger into his teammate’s rectum, the act did not constitute a sex crime. District Judge Randy Stoker agreed, and approved the plea deal for a lesser charge in December. On Friday, as he issued the final sentencing, he also discounted testimony of racist remarks toward the black player and concluded that the assault was not racially motivated. Two other members of the football team were also charged in connection with the attack. The Idaho Statesman reports that the outcomes of their cases are sealed in juvenile court. In addition to the criminal cases at the state level, the mentally disabled young man’s parents are also pursuing a federal civil case, which is still ongoing. ”The truth will come out,” the family’s attorney in that case said, according to The Guardian. The case has been explosive in the tiny town of Dietrich, Idaho, a community of about 330 people. Last May, The Washington Post described a town ”torn apart” when Tim and Shelly McDaniel accused three football players of a monthslong campaign of racist bullying of their adopted son, culminating in the assault. The couple says they reported the bullying but the school did nothing  —   Howard was a football star with ”ties to a prominent Dietrich family,” the Post wrote, and Shelly McDaniel said she was ”just shunned” when she went to administrators for help. Then, after the assault, the couple took legal action. The Guardian has more on the specific allegation of assault, which began with an invitation for a hug: ”The young man said that one of his friends motioned for him to come over and hugged him while another player shoved a hanger into his anus. Then, the victim said, Howard kicked the hanger, which pushed it further into his rectum. ” ’Pain that I have never felt took over my body,’ he said during the April hearing, according to the transcript obtained by the Guardian. ’I screamed, but afterwards, I kept it to myself.’ ” We should note that the mentally disabled young man has referred to his teammates as his ”friends” throughout the case, even while testifying about racist comments and physical abuse. Howard’s defense attorney didn’t deny that this incident occurred. Instead he argued that the football star kicked at his black teammate while the hanger was between his buttocks, but did not intentionally kick at the hanger itself, the   reports. The attorney also argued that Howard may not have known the hanger, which was inserted by another player, was there. The victim has also testified that Howard repeatedly called him the   and taught him a   song that called for the lynching of black people, and that other members of the football team called him ”fried chicken,” ”watermelon,” ” ” and ”grape soda,” the   reports. (Stoker said during sentencing that ”nobody” thinks those are racial slurs, despite the fact that the terms have a long history of being used as racist insults, as Alex Riggins of the   explained.) But the most unexpected and hotly contested part of the sentencing hearing on Friday was a May 2016 audio tape of the mentally disabled young man saying his parents pressured him into testifying, for the sake of the $10 million civil suit, and that he lied under oath when he made his allegations. The McDaniels left the courtroom in fury after they were accused of fabricating the assault for financial gain, The   reports. ”I don’t think you guys should have to lose your farms,” he told the coaches on the recording from last May, according to The Guardian. ”It was never my intention. I was fed stuff, fed lies.” ”I love those guys,” the young man says of his alleged assailants, The   reports. ”Those guys shouldn’t be charged. The defense argued that the tape showed the black player recanting his allegations. But the young man has since retracted his comments on that tape, the   reports: ”The [May 2016] conversation was recorded by football coaches Mike Torgerson and Rick Astle just six days after they were named as defendants in the civil lawsuit. Several of the victim’s friends and teammates were also present. Voices on the recording are repeatedly heard telling the victim how much they love him, and how he needs to tell the truth. . .. ”But just last week, in a deposition taken Feb. 17, the victim takes back what he said in the recording and explains that he lied to his football coaches and friends. He told them what they wanted to hear because he wanted his friends back, he said. ” ’All that stuff, I just made up,’ he said of the recording. ’I just started telling a bunch of just lies because I wanted my friends back.’ ” The Guardian also notes that elsewhere on the tape, in a section not mentioned in court on Friday but disclosed in a civil case document, the mentally disabled player reiterates that the coat hanger assault happened. ”I honestly don’t know who did the hanger thing,” he tells his coaches. ”All I know is that it happened.” Stoker, as he sentenced Howard to community service and probation, was emphatic that the assault did not constitute a rape, the British newspaper reports. ”Whatever happened in that locker room was not sexual,” he said. ”In my view, this is not a case about racial bias,” he also said. ”People from the east coast have no idea what this case is about,” he said, according to the Guardian. ”But I’m not going to impose a sentence that is not supported by the law.”"
"Tuesday night, President Trump will address a joint session of Congress for the first time. After a chaotic first month, it will be a chance for Trump to reset his relationship with voters, who currently give him   approval ratings. It will also be a chance for him to reassure congressional Republicans, whose view of the new administration runs the gamut from optimism to unease. Here are five things to watch for when Trump goes to Capitol Hill on Tuesday. 1. Where we’ve come and where we’re going, That’s how White House press secretary Sean Spicer described what Trump will discuss on Tuesday night. It may sound vague, but Trump will certainly list his achievements, much as he did in his marathon ”I’m not ranting and raving” press conference. He’ll present himself as a man of action, who said what he meant and is now making good on his promises. Trump will likely repeat his claim that he ”inherited a mess”  —   even though no president in 20 years has been left a healthier economy. And he’ll take credit for everything from a booming stock market to the decisions of American companies like Carrier or Intel to retain U. S. jobs or hire new workers. This weekend, Trump congratulated himself for a drop in the budget deficit after his first month in office. Though, since he hasn’t signed any spending bills into law yet, it’s hard to see how that had anything to do with him. 2. ’American carnage’ or ’renewal of the American spirit?’ The speech, like Trump’s inaugural address, will be written by Stephen Miller. But the White House says the tone will be very different. The inaugural speech was a dark, dystopian vision of American decline. Its theme was something like ”the blowtorch has been passed to a new generation.” This one, White House aides say, will be sunny and optimistic  —   more opportunity, less Armageddon. But previews from Trump aides have not always panned out. For instance, we were told his inaugural address would focus on unity. It didn’t. With his approval ratings hovering in the low forties, the White House may have decided that a little more inclusion and a little less divisiveness might help. So far, Trump has been speaking almost exclusively to his base, which is loyal and enthusiastic no matter what he does. But the period of executive orders is over. Trump has done almost all he can unilaterally. If he wants to pass legislation, he will need Congress and in some cases Democratic votes. So watch to see if Trump tries to reach out. 3. Policy details, anyone? Donald Trump is not a policy wonk, so don’t expect him to talk specifics about health care or tax reform or infrastructure. But these big set speeches to Congress are about policy guidance, and Republicans want to know where he stands on their big legislative goals. On replacing Obamacare, Republicans have put themselves in a box. If they want to pay for tax cuts, they need to get trillions of dollars from somewhere. There’s money to be had in health insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion established by the Affordable Care Act, but if Republicans unravel Obamacare they will be held responsible when millions of people, many of whom voted for Donald Trump, lose their coverage. What guidance will Trump give them? The latest word from the White House is that ”the goal is that we make sure that people don’t lose their coverage,” as deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders put it to ABC’s This Week on Sunday. 4. Tax reform or tax cuts? Tax cuts that don’t expire after ten years need 60 votes to pass in the Senate. But they have to be paid for. Tax reform, which lowers rates but also gets rid of deductions, could be revenue neutral or even produce revenue that could be used for Trump’s big infrastructure program. Is Trump a tax cutter or a tax reformer? He talked about getting rid of deductions during the campaign, but hasn’t said much since. All of the Republican tax plans skew their benefits to the wealthy. Will Trump repeat the pledge of his new Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, that the rich will not get an ”absolute tax cut.” Then there’s the border adjustment tax, basically a tax on imports. This is at the heart of Paul Ryan’s tax plan and it would raise a lot of money. But the idea has split the GOP business coalition. Retailers like Walmart who rely on imports hate it, while many manufacturers love it. Trump had been critical of the idea, saying in the past that it was ”too complicated.” But lately he has sounded warmer, saying in a Reuters interview last week, ”It could lead to a lot more jobs in the United States.” Or Trump might send a signal that ”paying for things” is just not necessary. Deficits have been a focus of conservative,   Republicans. That’s not Donald Trump. 5. How will Democrats react? Probably by sitting on their hands. They are fierce and united in their opposition to Trump. This will be an unusual audience for him, as the president is used to speaking to crowds that love him. On Tuesday, nearly half the crowd will be sullen  —   if not seething. Democrats are also planning to bring guests who are a rebuke to the president’s policies  —   Muslim refugees, Hispanic immigrants, relatives of victims of gun violence and others. Plus, one of the two official Democratic responses to the speech will be delivered in Spanish by DREAMer and immigration activist Astrid Silva. The other will be delivered by former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat who served in a state with a lot of coal miners, championed by Trump, where Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act extended coverage to hundreds of thousands of people. The message from that pair of responses will be that the Democrats don’t have to choose between two groups  —   minorities and others that have been marginalized historically, and white   voters who delivered a victory to Trump."
"It’s become an annual tradition for NPR to host a live band in our studios for a full day. This year, we upped the ante and invited around 70 musicians from Washington, D. C.’s National Symphony Orchestra to play the musical interludes between stories on All Things Considered. Steven Reineke, the NSO’s principal pops conductor, says the experience was both gratifying and surprising. ”The whole experience has just been so much fun, from the first time I heard about this, but it really didn’t take full shape until today,” Reineke says. ”We had a bunch of music selected, but we didn’t know exactly what we were going to play or where we were going to play it . .. I’m starting to feel like what Toscanini must have felt like with the NBC Orchestra.” Hear NPR’s Audie Cornish speak with Reineke and NSO trombonist David Murray at the audio link."
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions pledged to devote federal resources to combat violent crime and to shore up morale across the nation’s police departments, on Monday in his first    briefing as the top U. S. law enforcement officer. ”I’m already hearing from state and local people that they’re concerned about a lack of federal support and leadership” in the face of rising murder rates in some major cities, Sessions told reporters at the Justice Department. ”My judgment is this is not a blip and we’re seeing, I’m afraid, a longer term trend of violent crime going up, which is not what we want in America.” He vowed more consistent prosecution of criminals who carry guns in the course of their crimes, insisting that approach will rid the streets of dangerous people responsible for a spike in violence in some major cities. Criminologists report the overall U. S. violent crime rate remains near record lows, historically. ”If they know they’re going to get popped, they’re going to federal court, they’ll get five years and probably get sent off” far away from their homes, Sessions added. He praised police and sheriffs’ deputies as ”  soldiers” in the mission to protect public safety and worried about poor morale and a lack of community engagement in some areas. Sessions also addressed a number of ongoing cases and controversies. *Sessions said he was ”not aware” before news reports last week of communications between White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe about the bureau’s ongoing investigation into possible contacts between people with ties to President Trump and Russia. ”The FBI and the Department of Justice have to remain independent and they will do so,” Sessions said. ”But every contact is not improper.” *After congressional Democrats called on Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation because of his campaign work for Trump, he told reporters Monday ”I would recuse myself on anything I should recuse myself on. That’s all I can tell you.” *He said he had not read the Obama Justice Department’s scathing reports on unconstitutional policing practices in Ferguson, Mo. or in Chicago, reasoning that he found the summaries ”pretty anecdotal.” Sessions said he had not yet decided whether his civil rights division would proceed to negotiate a   consent decree with police in Chicago after   findings there, or abandon the effort. *He repeated his disdain for drugs, including marijuana. ”I don’t think America is going to be a better place when more people are smoking pot,” he said. Sessions said he was studying an   memo that sets out priorities for federal prosecution in states which have legalized the drug in some form. The attorney general said he met Monday with his counterpart in the state of Nebraska, who expressed concerns about a ”big overflow” of marijuana from Colorado, where the drug is legal. ”I’m definitely not a fan of expanded use of marijuana,” he said. *Responding to a spate of bomb threats and and abasements of Jewish centers and cemeteries, Sessions called it ”unacceptable behavior” in a diverse nation and said ”this Department of Justice will do whatever it can to assist in pushing back on that and prosecuting anybody who’s a part of it.”"
"The Texas state wrestling championships aren’t usually national news. But they made headlines this weekend when a    transgender boy  —   barred by state rules from competing in the boys’ league  —   won his weight class, against girls. Mack Beggs, the teenage boy in question, hasn’t sought the spotlight. By all accounts he just wants to wrestle. But media attention found him anyway. In part, that’s because some parents of female wrestlers have vocally objected to the fact that Beggs, who has been taking testosterone as part of his gender transition, is wrestling girls. One parent even filed a lawsuit against the league that organizes public school sports. The controversy has been heightened because his victory arrived on the heels of President Trump’s decision to rescind Obama administration guidelines on trans students’ rights in school. Asa Merritt, a reporter in West Texas, spoke to NPR’s Michel Martin about the controversy, and also covered the championship for our Newscast division. He says Beggs began transitioning about a year and a half ago. ”He wants to compete against boys,” Merritt says. But under Texas rules, boys can’t compete against girls, and students must compete as the gender marked on their birth certificate. That meant if Beggs wanted to wrestle, he had to do it in the girls’ league. Which he did, with great success  —   he had an undefeated season. His triumphs led to impassioned feelings in the Berry Center, just outside of Houston, on Saturday. Merritt says that every time Beggs won a match in his   weight class, the audience ”erupted in both boos and cheers.” Family, friends, teammates and trans supporters celebrated Beggs’ wins. But at the same time, ”there was jeering and jawing,” Merritt told Michel Martin. ”And people said things like, you know, ’He doesn’t belong there. He should be on a different mat.’ It was really intense.” Beggs ”didn’t speak to anyone during the event,” Merritt says. ”He definitely avoided any kind of media presence.” When he did speak publicly, after the championship was over, Beggs didn’t highlight the rules, the lawsuit or the controversy. ”I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my teammates,” the wrestler said. ”That’s honestly what the spotlight should have been on, is my teammates. . .. we trained hard every single day.” Texas is considering legislation similar to North Carolina’s controversial HB2, that would require trans people in public schools and other government buildings to use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate. Powerful business interests are opposed to the bill, NPR’s Wade Goodwyn has reported, but it’s a priority of the state’s lieutenant governor. As for the sports requirement that kept Beggs competing with girls, despite criticism from other parents, officials ”don’t envision a change,” The Associated Press reports. ”  percent of the school superintendents in Texas voted for the rule as it was proposed, which was to use birth certificates,” Jamey Harrison, the deputy director of Texas’ University Interscholastic League, told the AP. ”So any rule can be reconsidered, but . .. given the overwhelming support for that rule, I don’t expect it to change anytime soon.”"
"So. How’d you do? Did you follow my advice in making your Oscar pool picks? . .. You did? All of them? Hunh. Well then. That means you got 13 out of the evening’s 24 categories correct. That’s . .. 54%. So. Yes. Well. Cough. You probably didn’t win, then. But what is ”winning,” anyway? This is art, we’re talking about! The sundry achievements of those engaged in the magic of cinema, with its dreams made of flickering light and shadow, are not some base, competitive sport, surely! Why, the very idea! Whither aesthetics? Whither the life of the soul? Whither the no yeah okay I get it, you lost, and that sucks.   percent! After all my rigorous work, all that big hard science, all those pipettes and Tesla coils and slide rules and whatnot: I was slightly better than a coin toss. But only slightly. It is thus incumbent upon me to make a full accounting: to collectively examine the picks that I got, in the coarse, unimaginitive language of mundane causality, ”wrong.” I will do so in the order the awards were handed out. But before I dive in, some words of cool, objective, overarching analysis (read: whiny defensiveness). As noted in my predictions post, I attempted to account for the fact that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts  Sciences had recently taken steps to deepen and diversify their voting pool. Almost 10% of those who voted for this year’s awards were   voters, and this influx of new members featured more people of color, more women, and more international voters, all of whom were, on average, younger than the Academy’s general membership. In my mind, this strongly suggested that this year’s Oscar buzz  —   the conventional wisdom that accrues over the course of awards season  —   was based on an outdated understanding of the voting base, and could and should be interrogated more robustly than ever. And yet, again and again, in these 11 cases, the conventional wisdom proved wiser than I was. Makeup and Hairstyling, I Picked: Star Trek Beyond, What Won: Suicide Squad, The first cut of the evening was the deepest. I confess I let my heart lead me, here. Or, more specifically, my simmering resentment of the long minutes I’d spent sitting through a film that played like    ’s dream journal. But as a pure technical achievement, Suicide Squad featured more elaborately realized constructions than Star Trek Beyond, its closest competitor. Even so. It’s going take some getting used to, spiritually. Costume Design, I Picked: La La Land, What Won: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, This should have tipped me off that the evening was not going to go well, either for the La La Land sweep that some were projecting or for, you know, me. I had noted that the Academy loves period costumes  —   all those gussets and buttons and whalebone whatevers. I should have guessed that this tendency would carry the day, especially when you add to the sartorial mix a bit of Potterverse wizarding flair. Sound Mixing, I Picked: La La Land, What Won: Hacksaw Ridge, I figured this was the award with which La La Land would establish its beachhead on the way to a decisive series of victories, but I overlooked the possibility that the   Oscar voters would 1. revert to type, by recognizing a war movie in this category, and 2. honor sound mixer Kevin O’Connell with his first win, after nominating him 21 times. Sound Editing, We Picked: Hacksaw Ridge, What Won: Arrival, Right church, wrong pew. I knew Hacksaw Ridge would win some sound award, I just picked the wrong one. It would be tidy  —   too tidy  —   to ascribe Arrival’s win, here, to a collective intention on the part of the Academy to recognize that film’s many achievements  —   and the fact that it was going to lose all of its many other nominations (best picture, director, cinematography, editing, sound mixing, adapted screenplay and production design). Short Film, Live Action, I Picked: Ennemis Interieurs, What Won: Sing, Okay, I knew I got this one wrong. I could smell it. Not right away, but as the evening progressed, and so many of the categories were won by nominees that had been widely predicted to win them, I took another look at my pick  —   the tense, uncompromising French film about national identity and terrorism  —   and realized I’d screwed up. It was my favorite of the five, and I thought it felt engaged and topical in a way voters would reward. But then, as the nominees were announced, I saw all those shots from Sing, of little girls singing, and I thought: Oh, right. Kids singing. People like kids singing. I’ve made a huge mistake. I even said it, aloud, to my Pop Culture Happy Hour colleagues: ”It’s gonna be [expletive] Sing!” I said. And so, just three seconds later, it [expletive] was. Film Editing, I Picked: La La Land, What Won: Hacksaw Ridge, I figured La La Land’s   was strong enough to carry this category as well, but, as often happens, the film featuring gripping battle scenes  —   which rely so greatly upon deft editing to ensure viewers can feel, much less follow, the action  —   took the prize. Documentary, Short Subject, I Picked: Joe’s Violin, What Won: The White Helmets, I was just too cynical here, and made precisely the opposite mistake I’d made with live action short, above. I figured The White Helmets, which tells the story of the volunteer rescue workers who’ve saved tens of thousands of lives in the Syrian civil war, was so stark that voters would gravitate towards the homier uplift of Joe’s Violin. (Also? Not for nothing? If you were setting out to parody the world of documentary filmmaking, and you were casting about for a title that said ”heartwarming inspiration,” you’d likely settle on something that sounded a lot like ”Joe’s Violin. ”) But in the end, the work of the White Helmets is inspiring, and uplifting, and it comes with a sense of desperate urgency that lent this film the momentum it needed to nab it the Academy Award. Original Song, I Picked: ”How Far I’ll Go,” Moana, What Won: ”City of Stars,” La La Land, I knew this one was a longshot, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see   Miranda EGOT so badly that I took my eyes off the  . I sincerely believed enough Oscar voters would want to be part of that history as well. What I neglected to realize, of course, is: 1. Miranda is young, so he’ll get many other shots, none of which he is likely to throw away, and 2. Academy members vote for life, so when he does get those other shots, they’ll still be around, too. There’s no rush. (Which is something you can certainly say for ”City of Stars,” a tune so slow and lugubrious it makes Pachelbel’s Canon in D sound like a tarantella.) Director, I Picked: Barry Jenkins, Moonlight, What Won: Damien Chazelle, La La Land, I knew there’d be a best   split, I just got it exactly wrong. (I think we can safely say, now that four of the last five Oscars have featured a best   split, that such   incidences have become the new normal.) Actor in a Leading Role, I Picked: Denzel Washington, Fences, What Won: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea, Even apart from the sexual harassment allegations dogging the actor, I figured Affleck’s performance in this particular film might strike some Oscar voters as too inward to stand up against the boisterous   Washington summoned in Fences. Nope. Best Picture, I Picked: La La Land, What Won: Moonlight . .. (You know . .. eventually) For four glorious minutes near the end of Sunday night’s Oscars broadcast, my predictions stood at 58% accurate. But then that very, very   stagehand ran onstage, carrying an envelope. And then: bedlam. Marvelous, terrifying,  ’                   bedlam. Those other 10 categories, I resent getting wrong. I will always resent getting wrong. Ten tiny daggers to the gut. But not this one. Not this one."
"Well, excuse me while I throw away my first draft, won’t you? For quite a while, Sunday night’s Oscars seemed fairly tame. La La Land, the retro musical with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, came into the Oscars as a favorite, having tied the nomination record with a total of 14. It took a while for it to get going, as the early awards were spread out across a variety of nominees. But indeed, by the time they prepared to announce best picture, La La Land had gone on a late run and nabbed six awards: for production design, cinematography, best original score, best original song (”City Of Stars”) best actress (Stone) and best director. Its path to best picture seemed clear. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty took the stage to announce best picture and Beatty looked at the card and paused. And then he paused more. He handed it to Dunaway, and she read the card: ”La La Land.” The producers and cast of the heavily favored film took the stage, and several of them spoke. But then, with the throng still onstage, producer Jordan Horowitz  —   who had already given his heartfelt thanks  —   returned to the microphone and announced that there had been a mistake. In fact, best picture had not been won by La La Land, but by Moonlight, a beautiful, moving and very inexpensive independent    drama. Beatty, still onstage and trying to explain while surrounded by shocked producers and actors, blamed it on confusion with the card from the previous award: Emma Stone, in La La Land. But either way, the Moonlight producers stepped up and took an award that many in the room and many watching at home were already irate that they hadn’t won. It hadn’t been all that unexpected an evening until then. The Oscar telecast hadn’t begun with a cornball   musical number, but with Justin Timberlake performing ”Can’t Stop The Feeling,” his nominated song from the animated movie Trolls. After guiding an auditorium full of celebrities through some very awkward dancing, Timberlake yielded the stage to   host Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel’s monologue was about average for such things, laced with politics as you might expect (Kimmel thanked President Trump and said, ”Remember when it seemed like the Oscars were racist? ”) but also heavy on the kinds of jokes that would be   jokes on an average   monologue (for instance, his quip that if Amazon won an Oscar for Manchester By The Sea, it would be delivered ”in two to five business days”). Once the awards got underway, though, they started to go in interesting directions in a hurry. Mahershala Ali won best supporting actor for his performance in Moonlight  —   a win that few would have imagined last year at this time. Ali gave a very emotional speech and offered a   to his wife, who had a baby four days ago. Ali was also the night’s first first, as it were  —   specifically, the first Muslim actor, as far as anyone seems to know, to win an Oscar. There were other milestones: Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician Taraji P. Henson played in Hidden Figures, joined the actresses from the film onstage to present the award for best documentary feature to Ezra Edelman for O. J. Made In America, the ESPN TV miniseries (which also played in theaters and at film festivals with an eye on Oscar qualifications). In winning, it became the longest ”film” to ever win an Academy Award, given that it was produced as a   multipart (and totally brilliant) TV miniseries. Viola Davis won best supporting actress for Fences. With an Emmy, an Oscar and a Tony, she’s only a Grammy away from precious EGOT status. (Narrate that audiobook, Viola Davis!) She saluted the writer of Fences, both play and screenplay, recognizing ”August Wilson, who exhumed and exalted the ordinary people.” The Oscars for original screenplay and adapted screenplay went, respectively, to the scripts for Manchester By The Sea and Moonlight. Manchester also won best actor for Casey Affleck.   Politics, which had been a big question mark hanging over the ceremony ahead of time, showed up in a few ways. Absence, in at least one case, spoke as plainly as presence. Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi won best foreign language film for The Salesman, but he was not present (as he had announced he wouldn’t be). In a statement read on his behalf by Iranian engineer and space traveler Anousheh Ansari, Farhadi said that he wasn’t present out of respect for Iranians and those from the other six countries included in the travel ban issued in late January. On a much lighter note, Kimmel tweeted directly at Trump at one point, asking him ”u up?” and adding ”#merylsayshi” in a nod to Trump’s displeased reaction to Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes. And, sometimes, even silent statements emerged: there were   pins showing support for the ACLU, GLAAD and Planned Parenthood. As for Kimmel himself, he remains utterly convinced that everyone wants him to play his   hits  —   even on the Oscars. Thus, you get Mean Tweets, and you get endless riffs on his supposed feud with Matt Damon. You get a weird stunt  —   in this case, a bit in which Kimmel brought in a bunch of tourists from a bus who didn’t know they were being surprised with a visit to the ceremony. There didn’t seem to be much of an exit strategy for the bit, so once they brought the tourists in  —   perhaps getting less squealing and more confused milling than they expected  —   it was tough to put any kind of a button on it, so it kind of went on and on until it petered out. It really wasn’t a terribly surprising Oscar night, right up until the unimaginable happened and someone had to give back a best picture trophy that he already held in his hand."
"National Geographic contributing photographer Joel Sartore is 11 years into a   endeavor to document every captive animal species in the world using studio lighting and    backgrounds. So far, he’s photographed 6, 500 different species, which leaves approximately 6, 000 to go. Sartore tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that presenting the animals in the studio, rather than in nature, gives them equal importance in the eye of the viewer. ”A mouse is every bit as glorious as an elephant, and a tiger beetle is every bit as big and important as a tiger,” he says. ”It’s a great equalizer.” Sartore chronicles his project in the new photography book, The Photo Ark. The ultimate goal of his project is to help ensure that the future existence of his subjects, many of which are either endangered or on the verge of extinction. ”I’ve been a National Geographic photographer for 27 years, and I photographed the first 15 years or so out in the wild doing different conservation stories, on wolves, on grizzly bears, on koalas all in the wild  ” and can I say that moved the needle enough to stop the extinction crisis? No, no it did not,” Sartore says. ”So I just figured maybe very simple portraits lit exquisitely so you can see the beauty and the color, looking animals directly in the eye with no distractions would be the way to do it.” On what it takes to photograph animals in captivity, There’s millions of species in the wild and there’s about 12, 000, maybe 13, 000, animals in captivity . .. in human care at zoos, aquariums, wild life rehab centers (where they take injured and orphaned wildlife in and raise them and let them go again) and also at private breeders. . .. The reality is that the animals that are in captivity around the world, they are used to people. They’ve been around people their whole lives, born and raised. And so it’s just much easier to convince them to come into a room and most of the time, we shift animals into a room that has been prepped with black and white . .. paint or cloth or paper. And then we feed them during the shoot, and it takes a few minutes, and then they leave. So most of the time they just think they’re coming in to get lunch by the time I get there. The majority of these animals are not tame, they’re not trained, but they’ve been living in human care for many years, and for many of the species, Terry, they only exist in zoos and aquariums now. They don’t live in the wild anymore. A lot of the species that you see in The Photo Ark would be extinct by now if it weren’t for captive breeding programs. On using Photoshop to alter the photographs  Since the name of the game is speed, we put all these animals on    backgrounds, but if they poop or they drag dirt in, we’ll clean that up in Photoshop because we don’t want to have to grab the duck, remove him from the tent, clean the tent, put him back in. I mean ducks go to the bathroom every 60 seconds, so we just want to put him in there and get the best portrait we can and we will remove any extra things in Photoshop after the shoot . .. with some of the big animals, some of the flighty animals (like gazelles, zebras, giraffes) we don’t even use lights, because it could scare them. On the pressure of The Photo Ark project, I enjoy saving the animals, but the photographic process is a lot of work for the places I go. . .. I will be very glad when it’s done, because there’s a lot of pressure. . .. I know of at least four or five animals now that are the very last of their kind in the world’s zoos and I’ve got to get to them, and it means I’m gone all the time, and once I get there I’ve got to do the world’s best picture of this animal before it’s lost. . .. There’s a type of oxen that’s on a remote island in the Philippines that I have to go to, to get this. They’re down to about nothing in the wild and there’s one left, an old animal in captivity. There’s a type of gorilla, a   of gorilla that’s in a zoo in Belgium, the last one. . .. There’s lots of examples like that, a lot of birds especially. Birds and amphibians. A lot of them are down to the last ones, so I will be greatly relieved when all this is done, but I figure another 15 years or so, that’s what it’s going to take. No matter what, I’m going to get it done if I can still do it, if I can still walk and talk and shoot."
"One of the very first bills President Trump signed into law this month killed a Securities and Exchange Commission rule meant to promote transparency in countries riddled with corruption. Trump said getting rid of the rule, which required oil, gas and mining companies to disclose overseas royalties and other payments, would bring back jobs and save extraction companies many hours of paperwork and, potentially, hundreds of millions of dollars. But critics of this rollback say it could make the U. S. less safe. The rule was an important national security tool, they argue, since corruption often leads to violence, instability and terrorism. Former Sen. Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican who   the original legislation to require the transparency rule, was disappointed to see his fellow Republicans vote overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress to invalidate the SEC rule, which hadn’t even gone into effect yet. ”History shows that many   countries are very poor because the vast mineral resources have bred corruption that has led to poverty, hunger and instability,” Lugar told NPR. He said as he was working on this issue, Rex Tillerson, now secretary of state and then head of Exxon Mobil, came to see him to lobby against the reporting requirements. Tillerson argued that the rule would put American companies at a disadvantage. But even as energy lobbyists worked to delay the SEC rule, the U. K. Canada, Norway and other countries picked up on Lugar’s idea and ran with it. ”So the argument that the U. S. would be competitively at a disadvantage doesn’t make sense at all,” Lugar said, ”because clearly, other countries have understood that corruption must stop.” There is a national security argument for promoting transparency, too, says Kate Bateman, a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Corruption fuels conflict and terrorism, she says  —   lessons ”learned from our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Bateman, a former State Department official who worked with the Special Investigator for Afghanistan Reconstruction, says the SEC rule was a ”simple transparency measure” that would show citizens of foreign countries  —   and U. S. bankers and investors  —   how much money was pouring into countries like Nigeria, where she says corruption has complicated the military’s battle against the militant group Boko Haram. ”  underdeveloped countries often have weak institutions and rule of law,” Bateman wrote after the rule was repealed. ”Payments by foreign companies can easily end up in the overseas bank accounts of a tiny, corrupt elite and do nothing to spur economic growth, provide basic services to deprived populations, or build capable, professional security forces.” The SEC is not the place for a social agenda, argues Rep. Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican who wrote the   legislation signed by Trump. ”While this is may be a laudable goal, using federal securities law and the SEC to enforce social issues is inconsistent with the SEC’s core mission and completely inappropriate,” he said on the House floor in early February. There is another SEC rule that could be on the chopping block soon. That one requires U. S. tech companies to report if they are getting   conflict minerals from Africa."
"A Minnesota police officer accused of fatally shooting Philando Castile in a St. Paul suburb last July pleaded not guilty to   manslaughter and two other charges. St. Anthony police Officer Jeronimo Yanez entered his plea in a brief hearing in Ramsey County district court. Earlier this month, Judge William H. Leary III denied a defense request to drop all charges against Yanez. His attorneys argued that the officer feared for his life when he shot Castile. The trial date is set for May 30. The controversial shooting case drew national attention. Castile, 32, was pulled over by Yanez and another officer on July 6 for a broken tail light. According to Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, Yanez demanded to see Castile’s license and registration. Castile reached for his wallet and told Yanez that he was armed. The officer opened fire. In the immediate and emotional aftermath, Reynolds streamed the scene live on Facebook. Her    daughter was sitting in the back seat of the car during the shooting. Local officials later acknowledged that Castile had a permit to carry a weapon. An NPR review of court records last year showed that Castile had been stopped 46 times before by police."
"Bomb threats forced evacuations at Jewish schools and community centers in 11 states Monday, with the Jewish Community Center Association confirming threats in states ranging from Florida to Michigan. In Ann Arbor, Mich. police gave the   after a Hebrew day school was threatened, forcing students to leave. ”Today, bomb threats were called into schools   JCCs in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” the JCC Association of North America says. ”Many affected institutions have already been declared clear and have returned to regular operations. All previous bomb threats to JCCs this year were determined to be hoaxes.” In Ann Arbor, police are working with the FBI after receiving an ”unusually specific” threat about a bomb in a backpack, Michigan Radio’s Kate Wells reports. After detection dogs were brought in, police allowed students to return to school  —   but Wells calls the scene ”surreal,” with news crews and police still hovering around the school. ”My instincts tell me this is all part of a coordinated effort,” an Ann Arbor police detective tells Wells, saying that there have been at least two bomb threats against the Ann Arbor Jewish Community Center. The   League says there have been reports of bomb threats at a wide range of locations in and around New York, including ”three in Staten Island, one in New Jersey, one on Long Island, one in Westchester.” The ADL confirms threats were made Monday against a Jewish day school in Miami, a JCC in Asheville, N. C. and the upper school of Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md. It also says there are unconfirmed reports of a threat in Birmingham, Ala. The threats come after a weekend in which vandals damaged approximately 100 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia  —   an act that came less than a week after a similar attack on a Jewish cemetery near St. Louis, where more than 150 graves were targeted. Since the start of 2017, dozens of bomb threats have been made against Jewish community centers this is at least the fifth wave of threats in the past two months. President Trump, who had been criticized for not vigorously responding to earlier threats against Jewish community centers, took on the issue more directly last Tuesday, saying the threats ”are horrible and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.” As news of Monday’s wave of threats spread, David Posner, director of strategic performance at the JCC Association of North America, issued a statement that reads, in part: ”  of this nature should not and must not be allowed to endure in our communities. The Justice Department, Homeland Security, the FBI, and the White House, alongside Congress and local officials, must speak out  —   and speak out forcefully  —   against this scourge of   impacting communities across the country.”"
"Philadelphia police say approximately 100 headstones have been damaged at a Jewish cemetery in the northeastern part of the city. The vandalism occurred less than a week after a similar episode in a Jewish cemetery near St. Louis, where more than 150 graves were targeted. Local police arrived at Mt. Carmel Cemetery Sunday morning after getting a call from a man reporting that the headstones of three of his relatives had been knocked over. A wider search then revealed dozens more headstones had been toppled, in a crime that investigators believe took place Saturday night. WHYY’s Bobby Allyn spoke with Shawn Zevit, a Philadelphia rabbi who described the vandalism as ”a hateful act, an attempt to create fear and to tarnish the memory of those who have died and attack their dignity.” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney says authorities are doing all they can to find the perpetrators. ”My heart breaks for the families who found their loved ones’ headstones toppled,” he said in a statement. ”Hate is not permissible in Philadelphia.” The   League is offering a $10, 000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the vandalism. Last week, President Donald Trump addressed recent   hate crimes, including a spate of bomb threats targeting Jewish community centers, calling the attacks ”horrible and painful.” Trump had previously faced criticism for failing to mention Jews in a statement commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day."
"Parents of teens know how tricky it is to keep their kids physically safe while balancing their need for greater independence, but when it comes to keeping them safe online, it can be even trickier. Horror stories of social media harassment and exposure to explicit content leading to teen suicide or even murder abound. With 91 percent of U. S. teens accessing the Internet via a mobile device that allows them to be online anywhere and at all times of day, parents are desperately looking for ways to protect teens from online predators, bullies, and their own poor decisionmaking. Most apps sold to promote teen safety online focus on giving parents control over the phone, rather than helping teens learn how to navigate the web safely, a study finds. Researchers looked at 74 Android mobile apps and found that 89 percent of the security features on the apps focus on parental control by blocking and monitoring teens’ online activities. Only 11 percent support teens’ ability to regulate their own behavior. In other words, most of the apps don’t encourage parents and teens to talk about their shared social media values. And that may be a missed opportunity. ”The most apparent finding from our results is that developers assume that parents are the end users of mobile online safety apps, not teens,” says lead researcher Pamela Wisniewski, a former postdoctoral scholar in information sciences and technology at Penn State who is now an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Central Florida. ”Teens have somehow been overlooked within the design process because these apps clearly violate their privacy and assume the only thing that can do to protect themselves from online risk is make an SOS call to a trusted adult,” Wisniewski said in an email to Shots. The most surprising finding? That ReThink, the only app that gave teens a bigger role in online risk reduction, was designed by a    girl, Wisniewski says. It’s designed like those drunk texting apps that temporarily block contacts (like exes) to save us from sending   screeds at the end of a long night, but this one helps teens ”rethink” before sending a potentially hurtful message. Wisniewski and her colleagues set out to reverse engineer the values in the design of existing mobile apps to try to understand what they offer. Developmental psychology says the Holy Grail of parenting teens is striking a balance between parental supervision and teen autonomy, and that teens learn coping skills when parents are actively engaged yet mindful of teens’ need for independence. That general theory is supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which issued an online tool this past October to help families develop a media plan to create goals and rules around media use. Jenny Radesky, a developmental pediatrician at the University of Michigan’s C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital and lead author of the AAP’s policy statement on media use for young children told Shots last fall that a printout of a plan is not going to solve every family’s problems about how much screen time kids should get or whether devices should be banned from the bathroom. But it will help families lay out values in advance, rather than reacting to the latest new online challenge. Dr. Yolanda Reid Chassiakos, a clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, says the AAP doesn’t want to paint all digital media as bad. In fact the opportunities for teens to find a supportive community and be exposed to new ideas are some of the positives. But parents must be actively involved in discussions with teens about their values. ”They [parents] also must model good online behavior themselves,” Chassiakos says, like participating in ”  meals,” making time for exercise, and putting the device away before bed. For their assessment of the teen mobile safety apps, the Penn State researchers developed a framework they call Teen Online Safety Strategies. TOSS weighs parents’ desire to monitor, restrict and mediate teen activities with teens’ need to learn   impulse control and how to cope with risk. Of the apps they looked at, 49 percent had interactive interfaces only for parents, and 49 percent had interfaces for both parents and teens, although the teens’ interfaces were ”extremely limited,” the study says.   percent of all the apps’ features included monitoring, 43 percent included restriction and 2 percent focused on education. Meanwhile, only 4 percent of the apps’ features helped teens cope with risk, 2 percent focused on teen   and less than 1 percent focused on teen impulse control, according to the study. It’s still early days for mobile monitoring of teenagers. Currently, only 16 percent of parents use monitoring software on their teens’ mobile phones, according to a 2016 Pew Research study. More often, parents check websites their teens have visited, monitor their social media profiles by ”friending” them, or directly access their accounts  —   the online version of listening in on phone calls or sitting two rows away at the movies. Wisniewski hopes her research will lead to other studies that include teens in the design of new mobile online protections. ”As adults, we need to start being more creative rather than trying to put ’governors’ on teens’ phones to prevent unwanted behaviors,” she says. ”If we want to help protect teens from online risks, we have to stop assuming that they are the perpetrators and treat them like partners.” Wisniewski and her colleagues will present their paper at the Association for Computing Machinery conference on   cooperative work and social computing in Portland on Monday."
"Whether your kid is 3 and obsessed with Daniel Tiger videos or 15 and spending half her conscious hours on Snapchat, you are probably somewhat conflicted about how to think about their media habits. How much time? What kind of media? What should our family’s rules be? When the American Academy of Pediatrics released its latest recommendations on these burning questions Friday, it also did something pretty cool: it launched an online tool that parents can use to create their own family media plan. The interactive tool lets you set guidelines for each child, with suggested items based on the AAP’s   recommendations and space to add or substitute your own family’s rules. At the end, you can print out a document that lays out your family’s own media policy. I went through the process for my    daughter a few days ago. It took about five minutes to indicate the   areas and times in our household, specify our device curfews and where they will recharge, how we will watch media with our daughter, what kind of media we’ll avoid (unboxing videos) and answer other questions. We’ve certainly had some of these rules in vague form floating around in our heads, but it helps to have something concrete to remind us that there are no screens allowed at the dining room table, in my daughter’s bedroom, in the stroller or in the bathroom (No iPotty for us, thanks.) Our plan also includes a list of things we can do more of by decreasing time spent with media, like coloring, going to the library and playing outside. It reminds us about digital safety rules, like reviewing privacy settings on sites our kid may use. And by making these the family’s rules, it reminds my husband and me that we need to set a good example ourselves by putting our devices aside at the   times and places. (I haven’t had a chance to run it by my kid yet, but that’s on my list for the weekend.) It’s not that a printout is going to automatically change behavior, says Jenny Radesky, a developmental pediatrician at the University of Michigan’s C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital and lead author of the AAP’s policy statement on media use for young children. But it helps parents lay out their values in advance rather than simply reacting to the latest app or platform. The AAP’s updated recommendations are more nuanced than in the past, when the group discouraged any digital media use for children under 2 and recommended limiting screen time to two hours or less for those older than that. Those lines in the sand are ”too simplistic,” says Ari Brown, a pediatrician in private practice in Austin, Texas, and a former member of the AAP’s Council on Communications and Media. (She wasn’t involved in writing these latest guidelines.) (NPR Ed lead education blogger Anya Kamenetz explains what we know about media use and learning in very young children here.) In fact, the recommendations for elementary   kids and teens don’t set any specific time limit. The AAP says that’s a decision that depends on the type of media being used and the child using them. But they do say that children and teens’ priority should be getting enough physical activity (one hour per day) and sleep (  hours). They recommend that kids not sleep with devices in their room, and that they avoid exposure for one hour before bedtime, since that can disrupt sleep. And they make it clear that parents have a huge role in their children’ media use, even when they’re teenagers. Parents should talk about online citizenship and safety, form a network of trusted adults their kids can engage with on social media, and take an active role in selecting and watching media with their children.   ” ” is crucial for younger children. ”It should be like reading a book together,” says Georgene Troseth, an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. ”You should be talking about what you’re watching.” As with books, the goal is to help children compare what they’re watching to the real world. That’s a valuable skill to work on, since ”that’s how adults use media: we use it to get information or to be entertained,” she says. Still, the AAP says that parents shouldn’t feel pressured to buy apps or gadgets because they think kids will be left behind. (They’re intuitive enough so that they’ll pick them up quickly whenever they start.) ”Your kid doesn’t know how to do a Google search when they enter kindergarten,” says Brown. The bottom line: Your family’s media policy should be informed by your own values and intuition as well as what the science says. ”I want parents to trust their gut,” says Radesky. ”If they’re sitting with a child [using media] and the child is liking it and seeming to be learning something, that kind of a test is totally great.” And if you decide you’d rather ditch all devices in your house, that’s fine too. ”We support that 100 percent,” she says. ”Your child is not missing out on anything.” Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson."
"  took off its cool over the weekend  —   and lit itself ablaze in the process. Two seemingly unrelated threads this past weekend served as raucous,    reminders that   is not just a genre measured by charts, award show accolades and platinum plaques, but an organic culture unbound by industry rules. In one corner, a battle staged between legendary beatsmiths turned into a lovefest. In the other, a shot of ether, fired from one New York queen towards another, was instantly canonized alongside the most vicious disses on record. The Internet erupted in customary fashion, but the drama also sparked an internal debate that highlighted one ironic fact: In   the culture is often at its finest when its players are presumed to be at their baddest. ”Everybody in here, you are privileged to be in this space tonight, where we invited you cause we wanted to keep it clean,” producer Swizz Beatz announced, stopping the music inside his studio nearly 30 minutes into an    ”Battle of the Beats” between he and producer Just Blaze. Streamed on Instagram live for its majority, the event was hosted by Hot 97 radio personality Ebro Darden and attended by Swizz’s wife Alicia Keys his uncle and Ruff Ryders label   Darrin ”Dee” Dean former protégé Cassidy and Busta Rhymes, whose climactic   reactions to an unreleased Swizz track featuring Nas,   Jadakiss and DMX became instant meme material. But before all that, Swizz had to establish some rules and remind everybody it was a cause for celebration. ”But all this cool s*** in here,” he said, before restarting the battle, ”this ain’t no library. We in here turning up for the culture.” Less than 12 hours later, veteran rapper Remy Ma unceremoniously released a diss track titled ”ShETHER” via Soundcloud with a tweet that cast zero doubt about the song’s lethal lyrical content or its intended target. ”’You wanna see a dead body,’” she tweeted at reigning rap queen Nicki Minaj, referencing the classic John Singleton film Boyz N the Hood. Rapped to the beat of Nas’ classic Jay Z diss ”Ether,” Remy Ma’s    tirade includes unprintable jabs at Nicki’s physical anatomy, love life and family. It was a personal attack, reflective of the complicated legacy surrounding  ’s grimiest beefs. The response reverberated around the web, sparking murderous memes and retweets. One, from Insecure   Issa Rae, read: ”Nicki, don’t Meek this up”  —   a direct reference to Minaj’s former suitor, Philly rapper Meek Mill, whose battle against Drake was the talk of 2015 (and which Meek was widely seen as having lost). Minaj posted her own response on Instagram, where she harped on the lackluster chart performance of Remy’s recently released album with Fat Joe, Plato O Plomo, as proof that her queendom remains untouched. But rap dominance does not revolve around sales figures alone. The history between the two emcees  —   which stretches back a decade  —   came to a head in a recent collaboration between Minaj and Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane, ”Make Love,” released on Feb. 23. The song contained what many took as    shots aimed at Remy Ma  —   but the deeper backstory of Ma and Minaj is less important than the contextual history of battle rap from which it springs. As tests of lyrical dexterity, rhetorical wit and competitive charisma, battles harken back to rap’s roots in Jamaican toasting, the   boasts of black radio announcers like the late Jack the Rapper and the trickster charm embodied by street hustlers of a bygone era. At their best, classic beefs  —   perhaps most notably   vs. MC Shan and Ice Cube vs. NWA  —   helped elevate the culture. The lyrical retaliations of Tupac against Bad Boy Records and the Notorious B. I. G. sparked bicoastal grievances  —   exacerbated by sensationalistic media coverage  —   and ended in the tragic murders of both iconic ’90s rappers, marking the form’s lowest point. That dark period continues to link battle rap with the distorted mythology of    crime or other pathological stereotypes erroneously attributed to black America. It’s part of the reason why beefs of this sort, often composed of violent metaphors and clever quips, provoke equal parts exultation and condemnation from critics and fans alike. As the saying goes: It’s all fun and games until someone gets shot. The   critiques can be equally layered. The belief that there is only room for one rap queen at a time persists largely because major labels have increasingly deferred from signing and investing in women emcees since the golden era (roughly, from  ) when   was flush with more   female talent (MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Monie Love,  ). These are the politics of gendered performance rarely applied to men in a   industry. Even within the culture, conflicting views persist. Like the timeless cries for unity that suggest black America moves best as a monolith, many view the performance of beef as a sign of cultural dysfunction rather than proof of a   subculture. While established OGs Swizz and Blaze engaged in plenty of trash talk, they were love taps compared to Remy’s verbal assault. ”I don’t know who Just Blaze thought he was coming to see tonight? !” Swizz Beats taunted his competition in the midst of their    beat battle. While Blaze set up    by dipping into his eclectic catalog of old    samples that inspired such     hits as  ’s ”Girls, Girls, Girls” or Jay Electronica’s ”Exhibit C,” Swizz bounced back with a discography of aggro street anthems including DMX’s ”Party Up,” Ruff Ryderz’ ”Down Bottom” and, ironically, Remy Ma’s ”Whuteva.” It was an even match, musically. But in the end, it came down to the power of performance. The introverted technician Just Blaze was bested by Swizz’s oversized personality as he swaggered and   the lyrics to his   hits. Swizz was a gracious winner. ”This was more about unity. There was no violence in here, no negative energy in here,” Swizz said at the conclusion, shutting down Darden’s pronouncement that he’d won. ”We was competitive because that’s the culture. But I wish that more artists would come to the table to do these things without all of the foolishness, because this music allowed us to get out of our ghettos . ...” Despite shouldering so much cultural baggage, both Friday’s battle and Saturday’s beef reaffirmed the grassroots vitality of   that’s immeasurable by typical industry standards. On the same weekend, astronomical artist Future dropped his second   album in two weeks, which is predicted to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (an unprecedented feat). But these DIY happenings  —   distributed over digital platforms that privilege accessibility over paid exclusivity  —   dwarfed the conversation surrounding his historic releases. And at a time when the tenets of battle rap are viewed as fading tradition for better or worse, each worked together to reinvigorate debates around representation and respect  —   proving that the culture remains its own harshest critic. While Swizz made his closing speech, he had no idea that the Internet would be wrapped up in a beef of historic proportions less than a day later. Just as he began promoting the possibility of future soundclashes between   Pharrell and Timbaland, or Pete Rock and DJ Premier, Swizz’s old protégé, the rapper Cassidy, insisted they do something similar for the emcees. ”Naw,” Swizz responded. ”The rappers be beefin’ too much.”"
"Millions of people in Chile are scrambling to find alternative sources of drinking water after authorities cut off service to the capital, Santiago, following torrential rains that contaminated the water supply. At least three people are dead and 19 others missing after the heavy storms. The waters have isolated another 830 people in mountainous surrounding areas, according to the country’s national emergency office, Onemi. The majority of those stranded are in the O’Higgins region, south of Santiago. ”Emergency teams are working on the ground to connect the isolated people and restore the water supply wherever possible,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet wrote on Twitter. The supply was compromised because heavy rains ”triggered mud and landslides that sent debris flowing into parts of the river system, including the main waterway that supplies most of the homes in Santiago,” as NPR’s Philip Reeves reports. The governor says some 4 million people have been impacted, according to Philip. ”Reports say many people armed with buckets and pans are collecting water from emergency taps on the streets,” he says. ”Bottles of water are selling fast in shops and supermarkets, and some businesses and restaurants have had to close until the drinking water supply’s switched back on.” Scuffles were reported at some supermarkets between people trying to buy bottled water, the BBC reports. It’s not clear how long the water supply will be off  —   the capital’s water provider, Aguas Andinas, says the continuing rain was hampering repair efforts, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, photos from Santiago and surrounding areas show swollen rivers and sludge flooding into people’s homes. This is happening during the summer months in Chile. Regional Gov. Claudio Orrego told the BBC that the heavy rains are ”absolutely anomalous” for this time of year. The broadcaster adds that the flooding follows ”months of drought and a series of deadly wildfires which burned for weeks.”"
"In my head, a person with the name Danny has a boyish face and a perpetual smile. Zoes have wide eyes and wild hair and an air of mild bemusement. There might actually be something to the idea that people who share a name also share a stereotypical ”look” to them, researchers say. In one experiment, published Monday in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, scientists found that when people are shown a stranger’s face and a choice of five names, they pick the right name about 35 percent of the time. That’s actually pretty good, says Cathy Mondloch, a psychologist at Brock University in Canada who was not involved with the work. ”Random chance would be 20 percent. I found that quite compelling.” Though she says that more work needs to be done before she’s convinced another reason, like that some name options are unpopular, isn’t responsible for the result. The team ran several more experiments with different conditions and continued finding that study participants  —   and one computer algorithm  —   could reliably match names to faces. ”We ran more than a dozen studies, and each time we had this feeling like, ’Oh boy, maybe this time it won’t work.’ And each time, it worked. That was really surprising,” says Yonat Zwebner, a social psychologist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lead author on the paper. In one of the experiments, Israeli people could match Israeli names to faces, and French people could do the same for their own countrymen. But Israelis apparently had no idea what a ”Pierre” looks like, and the French couldn’t peg Israeli names to faces either. ”That suggests it’s something culturally specific,” Mondloch says. And in another experiment, the researchers trained a computer to find similarities in thousands of faces of people with the same name. The algorithm found that people with the same name tend to have similarities around their eyes or at the corners of their mouths. ”You can see it’s the places with different expressions or most of our expressions,” Zwebner says. Using that information, the robot could match a face to the correct name about 60 percent of the time when given two options. Zwebner speculates that people might be using their facial muscles to conform appearance to name. Imagine someone with the name ”Joy,” for instance, Zwebner says. ”The moment she’s born, her parents and society treat her in a way that befits that name. The say, you really are so joyful, smiling just like your name. She develops a certain look maybe because she is smiling more because of all the positive feedback she gets when she smiles.” It may also be that people mold their names to fit them, says Melissa Lea, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Millsaps University in Mississippi. ”I have several colleagues who say, ’[My first name] didn’t fit me. So I use my middle name.’ That may be because they weren’t matching the stereotype,” she says. Don’t feel like a Richard? Maybe Dick will suit you better. However, there could be other explanations reasons why Zwebner found the correlation between faces and names, Mondloch says. For one, maybe it’s that one or two of the five names the researchers chose were unpopular or a terrible match for the face that study participants saw. ”Nobody would pick [those] but picked the other three names equally often, then they would still pick my name about 35 percent of the time,” she says. Thus it could be that we can’t really pick out the right name for a face, but just that we’re good at ruling out certain names. For instance, you might quickly cross out the name Angus for an Asian guy. And there are other things that change our facial appearance aside from our names and people’s reactions to our names, Mondloch says. ”Parents influence our face because we’re genetically related, and they pick our names, too. I think a big component [of our appearance] is going to be from genetic inheritance, diet and stress.” Still, that doesn’t mean Zwebner isn’t seeing a real effect, Mondloch adds. ”The phenomenon is there, I do think.” She’s hoping other scientists will delve into it and see what could be driving the effect. This could put more pressure on parents when choosing baby names, a possibility Zwebner has just experienced herself. She delivered a baby daughter a couple weeks ago and almost couldn’t pick a name. ”For the older kids, I wasn’t in this research, but now that I know the implications of choosing a name it was much harder,” she says. ”If we didn’t have to name her in the hospital, I think she would still not be named.” They picked Lilac.  "
"Sweeney Todd is a piece of theater that should make you lose your appetite. The grisly musical by Stephen Sondheim tells the story of a demonic barber whose clients become the filling for meat pies. Many productions leave the stage soaked in blood. And yet, at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City earlier this month,   Mary Alice Kellog eagerly dug into a hot meat pie. It’s part of the   experience. Kellog said she’s seen every New York production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street since the show originated in 1979. Knowing what the show is about, she was still willing to eat a meat pie before the show. And she loved it: ”The pies are really delicious, they’re flaky, they’re light, no fingernails in them or anything.” The little   Barrow Street Theatre has been transformed for this production. It is now a   recreation of Harrington’s  —   one of the oldest working pie shops in London. ”The tiles, the kind of yellow, slightly dirty walls  —   it’s all as it would be if you walked into Harrington’s,” says Rachel Edwards, founder and artistic director of the Tooting Arts Club, which stages the production. A few years ago, Edwards’ shoestring theater company in South London first mounted this production of Sweeney Todd in Harrington’s after the pie shop closed for the day. The shop could accommodate 32 people per night. ”It was thrilling because it was so tiny,” says Edwards. ”It did really serve as a kind of pressure cooker and Sweeney is singing two inches away from your face. So it’s pretty intense.” The production got such raves that the composer, Sondheim, dropped by. So did the   Cameron Mackintosh  —   who offered the company a slightly larger   venue in London’s West End. And now the production has come to New York City, where it is in previews. To create the   meal of pie and mash, Edwards decided to hire a local baker whom President Obama once dubbed ”The Crustmaster”  —   former White House Pastry chef Bill Yosses. The two gigs aren’t all that different, according to Yosses. ”The White House has a very theatrical feel, even though it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to be real. You know, the day is pretty scripted and the speeches obviously are scripted. The visuals are scripted, in the sense that the administration wants to present this best face forward. Who doesn’t? And in that way, it’s very theatrical.”   Yosses was trained as a classic French pastry chef. Before he worked in the Obama White House, he hadn’t made very many pies. But President Obama has a famous weakness for pies, so in the Obama years, Yosses says he became a ”pie machine.” His new role is really ”just inertia. I just couldn’t stop.” A thin man with a quick smile and bright blue eyes, Yosses serves pies and mash to the audience as they enter the Barrow Street Theatre. With a paper hat and an apron that says, ”Harrington’s pie shop,” he is playing a part  —   and seems to be enjoying himself. But his role ends well before the curtain rises on the musical. Yosses’ day starts much earlier, in a nondescript warehouse district in Queens, where he runs an online pie business called Perfect Pie. The bakery sits across the street from a Gothic cemetery, adding to the morbid humor. ”Across the street, especially for Sweeney Todd, we have an unlimited supply of, uh, produce,” Yosses jokes. Inside, pie shells are baked and filled with the chicken and vegetables, cooked in a little white truffle butter, then sprinkled with truffle zest. Traditional British pies are not made from chicken. But Yosses has an explanation for that. ”When they talk about exotic meats, they say everything tastes like chicken. I thought, I’ll make chicken.” Jokes aside, Yosses says this new role is an example of life coming full circle. The first time his parents visited him after he moved to New York from Ohio, they went to see the original 1979 production of Sweeney Todd. ”And they had never seen a live musical before,” he recalls. ”And they said, ’Now we understand why you want to live in New York.’ And they never really accepted it before that. So it was really kind of a huge moment for me.”   It’s nearly 4 p. m. At the bakery, Yosses’ assistant pulls the golden pies out of the oven and packs them into sealed crates for the trip into town in his Jeep. At the Barrow Street Theatre, people line up more than an hour before the show to eat. The audience sits at benches and long tables for both the performance and the meal. These pies never appear on stage. Beautiful, flaky and delicious, they are only   fare, served with a side of mashed potatoes and a green herb sauce known as ”liquor.” After the plates are empty and the dishes are cleared, actors take their places, the factory whistle sounds, and the blood starts flowing. Sweeney Todd at the Barrow Street Theatre officially opens on March 1. Pie crust  3 cups flour, 2 tsp salt, 10 oz butter, 3 oz cold water, Method: Cut butter into small   pieces and place in freezer for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, place flour and salt in standing electric mixer and mix on slow speed with paddle attachment. Add the butter slowly, taking care that is does not jump out of the bowl. Mix loosely and then add cold water down the side of the bowl with mixer on slow, until the dough comes together. Remove from bowl and work into a ball with floured hands, then push down to a disk, wrap with plastic film and refrigerate for 2 hours. Roll out on a floured surface to   thickness and then place in a pie dish, crimping the edges. Cut away excess and add to remaining pie dough,   to a   thickness into a circle for the top. Filling, 2 chicken legs and thighs, deboned, 2 carrots, peeled and chopped into small dice, 1 celery, chopped into small dice, 1 vidalia onion, chopped into small dice, 12 button mushrooms, sliced thin, or chanterelles if available, Method: Bring 3 quarts water to a boil and add chopped vegetables, except the mushrooms, to the water and cook lightly, about 3 minutes. Then add the chicken meat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove chicken, cool and chop into   dice. Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon and skim the fat off the top of the liquid. Boil the cooking liquid for 30 minutes to reduce the stock and when it is down to one quart of liquid, add 2 tablespoons of corn starch dissolved in cold water. Stir continuously with a whisk, bringing it back to the boil until the liquid thickens. Strain and cool. Mix together the vegetables, chicken and mushrooms and moisten with the reduced chicken stock until it is like a thick ragout. Prepare the pie: Prebake the bottom pie shell lined with aluminum foil at 350F for 20 minutes. Then remove the foil and fill with the chicken vegetable mixture. Prepare an egg wash  —   two eggs and pinch salt  —   then brush the edges and cover with the dough circle, pressing firmly to seal the edge. Poke the surface several times with a fork to make air vents and then paint with egg wash. Bake in a 350F oven for 40 minutes, until golden brown and bubbling. Serve warm."
"We’ve written a lot about the link between college and the workforce  —   and the kinds of skills graduates will need in the 21st century to succeed. One of the skills you need is knowing how to present yourself. To put your best foot forward in the workplace, and in life. And so, as we started to read the current round of internship applications, we have some advice for you. The problem we see, over and over and over again? Well, let’s just say your cover letter needs some work. More often than not, the problems are there right from the very first sentence. Actually the first three words: ”I am writing . ..” As in: ”I am writing to express my interest in an internship” or ”I am writing to apply for the internship with NPR.” Think about that for a moment: You’ve written to us to tell us that you’re writing to us to apply for the internship that you’ve applied for. (By the way, we blame the Internet for a lot of this   stuff.) In letters that start off that way, things usually head downhill from there. You’re then probably going to tell us, in a lot of multisyllabic words, how you’ll apply your creativity and your passion and your research and analytical skills, and the perspective you’ve gained in your academic   blog   abroad   experience to become a ”dynamic” and ” ” member of our team. Read that sentence out loud. Try doing it without taking a breath. See what we’re talking about? Continuing from there, you’ll then praise us at NPR for our dedication to the mission of exploring the complex policy initiatives that are something something about America’s something something education system. Then, having put us to sleep with writing like that, you’ll tell us about your writing skills. Now, all of this isn’t meant to poke fun at you. We’re just trying to make it clear that, when you write us that paragraph, we pretty much tune out from there. Which is sad, because so many of you are amazing and talented students who’ve done some incredible things. You’ve started a nonprofit or traveled the world or raised a sibling or learned a third language or have insights into a culture or community that others don’t know about. It’s sad, too, because in many cases you really like us and really want to work here. Usually, you’re about to tell us, that’s because you grew up listening to NPR in the back seat of the car while your parents had us on the radio and you came to admire the work that we do. So, instead of all that, here are five things you can try: Tell us a story, Here at NPR, that’s what we do for a living. We tell stories, and the goal is to be interesting and exciting and make people want to keep on listening or reading. Stories have characters and movement . .. well, you get the point. And so to introduce yourself to us right off the bat, and get us eager to know more about you, show us your stuff  . Let’s illustrate. Which of these, drawn from actual examples, would you rather read? I am applying for the position of NPR Fall Intern. I believe that my strong interest in education topics and background in research qualify me for this internship. My undergraduate and postgraduate academic careers have taught me to critically analyze and synthesize large amounts of data quickly. I also have experience conducting research in corporate and office settings. Or this: The first time I ever went on live television, I was in Lahore, Pakistan. By the time I ended up in Pakistan this past January, being on camera wasn’t new to me. I had several years of   experience under my belt traveling around the world with an educational travel show for kids. When I lived in Los Angeles, I spent my   bartending money on TV hosting classes for a year. If you’re like us, you’d much rather read that second one. It was written by one of our actual interns, Kat Lonsdorf. Don’t bury the lede, We’re always afraid that, hidden down below, somewhere after that awful first paragraph, there’s a fascinating person with great ideas. And we might not ever find out. It’s a basic lesson of journalistic writing: Put the good stuff right up there at the top. Grab us and hold us and keep us reading. Ask not what your internship can do for you . .. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, don’t tell us what you’ll get out of the internship, but what you can do for us. Here’s what you should avoid: As a recent college graduate in the humanities, I believe I stand to benefit from the development of skills and career direction which an NPR internship provides. Or, I believe that NPR is the ideal internship for me as the position will allow me to explore . .. Aim at the right target, It’s so nice when we get letters from people who’ve made it clear they’re interested in our topic: how learning happens, and that you’ve read what we do. Slip in a comment that shows you’ve listened to a story or two, or checked out our blog. And maybe tell us  —   without a lot of big words and jargon  —   what you think about schools or teaching or education. Instead of, ”To Whom It May Concern,” put our actual names (they’re at the top of this story) in the heading of your letter. ** Extra bonus: a story idea or two that you’d like to see us write about. Have someone else read your letter, We call this editing. Spellcheck is great, but take the next step: Have someone look over your letter to check for misspellings. They can find punctuation mistakes or long, clunky sentences. If you can’t find someone, read your letter out loud. In the journalism world, all these things are important. But they might help you in lots of other fields, too. Good luck! We’re looking forward to reading your letter. Oh, and the deadline is Sunday, March 5. No extensions. This post was updated Feb. 27, 2017."
"Updated 5:35 p. m. ET, The Trump administration is moving to roll back an environmental rule intended to define which small bodies of water are subject to federal authority under the Clean Water Act. President Trump signed documents Tuesday directing the Environmental Protection Agency and the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to review the Obama administration’s ”Waters of the United States” rule. In doing so, Trump said he is ”paving the way for the elimination” of the rule. He asked for the reviewers to assess its consistency with ”promoting economic growth” and ”minimizing regulatory uncertainty,” among other factors.  Supporters say the regulation is needed to ensure safe drinking water. But a long list of opponents say it goes too far and poses a burden on them. The rule is currently on hold after a stay by the 6th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. ”It was a massive power grab,” Trump said as he prepared to sign the documents, surrounded by a group of farmers, homebuilders and county commissioners. ”Regulations and permits started treating our wonderful small farmers and small businesses as if they were a major industrial polluter. They treated them horribly.” But as NPR’s Greg Allen has reported, ”overturning the rule isn’t something that can be done through executive order. The EPA would have to restart the lengthy   process, according to Jon Devine, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.” Trump’s executive order has been sharply criticized by environmental groups. Earthjustice accused the president of ”demonstrating that he puts the interests of corporate polluters above the public’s health.” When the Clean Water Act passed in 1972, it defined waters that would need protection from pollution as ”navigable.” For most of us, that means big enough to float a boat. Over the years, though, it became clear that smaller streams and wetlands needed protection as well, especially those that feed into rivers and lakes that provide drinking water. But Congress and successive administrations tried, and failed, to clarify exactly which waters were subject to the act. The Army Corps of Engineers interpreted the act differently in different regions of the U. S. and courts only added to the confusion. The Obama administration tried once and for all to settle the question with the Waters of the United States rule in 2015. At the time, it was hailed by the Obama administration as protecting the water supply for about 117 million Americans. But it faced heavy criticism and lobbying against the rule from farmers, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, real estate developers and golf course owners, among others. In Tuesday’s executive order, Trump said that in any future proposed rule, the EPA and the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers should consider Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, which focused on the scope of the Clean Water Act. In that case, Scalia stated that the ”waters of the United States” are limited to ”only relatively permanent, standing or flowing bodies of water.” He added: ”The phrase does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.” After the 2015 rule, Owen McDonough of the National Association of Homebuilders said a developer who buys a rural piece of land ”is all of a sudden faced with jurisdiction waters, and then he has to secure federal permits, and offset his impacts.” He said builders must hire expensive environmental consultants to get those permits. Last August,   Trump echoed that criticism when he addressed the homebuilders association. It’s worth noting that Trump has a stake in the rule’s fate. As Greg has reported, the Trump Organization has about a dozen golf courses across the U. S. And the president’s new EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, sued the agency over the water rule when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general. The American Farm Bureau Federation also launched a campaign called ”Ditch the Rule.” In an ad featuring a farmer’s wife running barefoot in a field, it asserted that the Waters of the U. S. rule would force farmers to get a permit for every ditch or puddle on their land. The bureau also says the rule goes overboard by including   prairie potholes, which don’t have water in them  . ”The [Obama] administration really belittled a lot of farmers’ concerns,” says the Farm Bureau’s Don Parrish. He says growers who fail to get a needed permit could face heavy fines or even jail time. But Ellen Gilinsky, a former EPA administrator who advised on the Waters of the U. S. Rule, says many such fears are overblown. She says the rule actually reduced the number of ditches that would require permits and that both farmers and ranchers have numerous exemptions. ”I really think there’s a lot of blood shed over this rule that didn’t need to be,” Gilinsky says. ”I think there’s an opportunity to take another look at it and bring everyone to the table and get a rule everyone can feel good about.” Supporters of the Waters of the United States rule say states simply don’t have the resources to ensure healthy streams and clean drinking water on their own. Gilinsky says she hopes the Trump administration can finally get all sides to agree on which waters the federal government should protect. Susan Phillips is a reporter with StateImpact Pennsylvania."
"When 2011 began, the worst recession in two generations was technically over, but Annica Trotter, Ray Meyer, and Jennifer and Brian Barfield were unemployed and searching for work. Six years later, their experience demonstrates life doesn’t just snap back to normal after a job loss. Their economic recovery remains incomplete and in some ways their story is America’s story. NPR first profiled Trotter, Meyer, the Barfields and two others in the St. Louis area in 2011 as part of a   project called The Road Back to Work. For a year, they kept audio diaries documenting their quest for employment. There were successes and failures, health scares and relationship troubles, jobs secured and lost. In the past we’ve mostly talked about the economy generally, and their personal economies, but this time, we asked about politics, too: their view of President Trump, his first month in office and what they hope to hear him say in his address to Congress on Tuesday night. The Barfields, both Trump supporters, want to hear more of what he’s already promised. Annica Trotter didn’t vote for Trump she wants to hear humility from the president. Ray Meyer, who has mixed feelings about Trump, is looking for a measured address with hard evidence. These are their stories. What they want to hear Tuesday night: Brian Barfield: ”I want him to come out and say, ’Here’s what I’ve done. That was the start folks. And here’s what I am going to do. I’m going to put Hillary behind bars. I’m gonna build up our military. I’m going to make sure that wall gets built and Mexico will pay.’ . .. Everything he said in his campaign, just keep going right with it.” Jennifer Barfield: ”I want to hear him say he’s crumpling up other trade agreements and changing that ASAP. That’s what I really want to hear. Even though I know he’s got a lot of big fish to fry on his plate, that’s the one that I want the most.” The Barfields met in what was at the time a booming support group for unemployed people in St. Louis. They didn’t immediately find jobs, but they did find love. Brian Barfield, 59, has long considered himself a conservative, a Reagan Republican, and he jokes that his wife is ”liberal.” Jennifer Barfield, 53, did vote for President Obama in 2012, a choice she made after he approved the raid that killed Osama bin Ladin, but she bristles at her husband’s description. Both feel strongly that politicians, at the national and local levels, have failed them. When we spoke in late 2011, Brian Barfield said there was ”no such thing as a politician that knows how to bring jobs back.” Elected officials were so worried about winning partisan squabble, he said, that ”America’s losing.” It’s no wonder he took one look at candidate Trump and was sold on the brash businessman who didn’t always tow the Republican Party line. Jennifer Barfield wasn’t far behind. Trump sold her with his tough talk on ISIS and bashing of trade deals like NAFTA. For the Barfields, Trump’s focus on the ”forgotten” man and woman and getting American factories humming again hit home. For Brian Barfield, it’s almost as if candidate Trump was channeling his very thoughts. ”It’s about time someone stand up for us,” he said. He was particularly fond of Trump’s promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico. ”You’ve got new ideas, you’re willing to protect American workers. You’re willing to help us out, you’ve got my vote,” Brian Barfield said. Brian traces his employment problems back to 2007, when the Chrysler plant where he worked closed up. He’s worked off and on since then but never really recovered from it. ”Never have, and I never will,” he said quietly. His shoulders and knees are busted from years of physically demanding work. And unable to find a job after years of searching, he finally gave up and got approved for federal disability payments. ”So I am officially retired,” he said. Brian Barfield has felt forgotten for years: ”I have been unemployed so long they just said, ’Well, you don’t count.’ You don’t receive benefits, you don’t file anymore, so you’re one of the . .. 9 percent that just don’t count anymore.” The unemployment rate would rise to about 9. 4 percent if those who are marginally attached to the workforce or working part time for economic reasons are added to those still looking for work. Jennifer Barfield is currently among the 4. 8 percent officially counted as unemployed. ”Unemployed and looking and available,” she said with an eager lilt in her voice. She works in IT and just scored an interview with the company that is her top target. The irony is Jennifer Barfield spent most of the last five years gainfully employed. But at the end of November, a temporary assignment ended, putting her back in the    position of searching for work. When she lost her job, she also lost her insurance. So, on the last day in January, Jennifer Barfield signed up for health insurance  —   through Obamacare. She and Brian go back and forth about whether her Obamacare plan is any good. Because she is unemployed, there are enough subsidies to make her plan affordable (though Brian adds they wouldn’t be able to pay for it without his disability money). But if she gets a   job, she’ll have to pay the government back. Brian is skeptical and calls it the ”unaffordable care act.” Jennifer said she’s thankful to former President Obama for making this option available, even if it is imperfect. President Trump is pledging to repeal and replace the program with the help of Congress. Jennifer Barfield doesn’t know how she feels about that. It all depends on what Obamacare is replaced with. On this, and other matters, she’s willing to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt. ”Let’s give him a chance,” she said. ”Let’s see what he does. He’ll work it out.” A month into Trump’s presidency, Brian Barfield is elated. ”He’s doing everything I sent him to Washington to do, everything,” Barfield said, his face lighting up. ”When the press gets upset with him, I know he’s had a good day.” Barfield watches the NBC Nightly News and it usually starts with a story about Trump. ”The more bad things they say about him, the better I enjoy my day because that means Trump did something right,” Barfield said. ”When [host] Lester Holt’s upset with Trump, Trump  —   I could just go hug him.” Jennifer Barfield says she loves Trump, too, but maybe not absolutely everything about him. ”He went in high gear and it was so fast for me,” Barfield said, referring to the president’s flurry of executive actions in the early days of his presidency. ”I was saying in my head, ’Slow down, slow down . .. let some dust settle here from that last thing you signed before you sign another big thing.’ ” Asked whether they think Trump will be able to do something to improve their lives directly, the Barfields give very different answers. Brian said it’s too late for him. At this point it’s about his children and grandchildren. But Jennifer does have hope ”that I will see changes that will affect me directly before I am retired, and I don’t want to retire anytime soon.” What Trotter wants to hear: ”I would like to hear some kind of humbling statement that addresses the elephant in the Oval Office. I want to hear something that says, you know, ’I do understand the power of my position. I do understand the needs of the American people and that I am working hard to remain connected and do what I can to serve.’ You know, to actually serve the people and not run the people . .. or dictate the people. But that’s a pipe dream. I’m not going to hear that from him.” Annica Trotter, 31, was the youngest person we met in 2011. And she doesn’t just have a job six years later, she has a career. She is working overnights as a registered nurse, making a difference in people’s lives one shift at a time. ”Part of being a new nurse also is teaching myself that it’s OK to prioritize and ask for help and delegate and do the best you can in 12 hours,” Trotter said. But getting to this point wasn’t even remotely easy. She went to nursing school while still working to support her two kids. In December Trotter earned her degree and started working right away, which is a pretty remarkable shift for someone who at one point was convinced she would never even go to college. ”That was the bar that I had set for myself, but then I realized I can move that bar,” Trotter said. ”It’s not fixed in place.” Of the four people NPR visited in St. Louis last week, Trotter is the only one who didn’t vote for Trump in November. ”He’s not my president,” she said. Trump’s first month in office ”seems like a clown show to me,” Trotter said, though one with very serious implications. Trotter finds the flurry of executive orders coming from the Trump White House unnerving. ”You don’t play with people’s lives,” Trotter said, referring to the potential impact of Trump’s orders on immigration and federal hiring. ”I think that before anyone makes decisions so concrete, much more thought needs to be put into it.” Her daughter is named Malia and was born shortly after President Obama won in 2008, though Trotter and her boyfriend picked the name before they knew one of Obama’s daughters was also named Malia. ”It felt kind of magical,” Trotter said, ”that I was witnessing history and also that my daughter would have a connection to that history by having the name of one of the first daughters.” Until January, Trotter’s daughter Malia had grown up with a president who looked like her in the White House. Trotter is concerned about the rhetoric coming out of the administration, the message that Trump’s travel ban sends. ”Not all Muslims are terrorists, and I really think that he finds those two terms synonymous,” said Trotter. She is worried about what that type of thinking could lead to. ”It’s really sickening because when you have people in power that have those kinds of ideas it can be very dangerous for some and then eventually all,” she said. She doesn’t want her daughter to experience another side of history ”that we don’t ever want to revisit.” What she hopes, though doesn’t expect to hear from President Trump on Tuesday, is some humility and an effort to make her feel like she is part of his America. ”I feel that if I came across President Trump, he would disregard me,” Trotter said. ”Who am I to him? I’m a poor person, even though in my world I’ve done what I need to do to elevate my income and financial status.” Although Trump speaks frequently about the forgotten men and women of this country, Trotter doesn’t think he’s talking about her. ”From my short experience with him in government, he’s not that kind of leader,” Trotter concluded. What he wants to hear: ”I would like to see him remain calm, and not go off on a tangent, and focus  —   focus on the problems at hand and what he’s done so far and what he hopes to accomplish. I want him to get up there and act presidential and look presidential and don’t pass buck and don’t start slamming anybody and just tell it like it is. . .. I want to hear what he thinks he’s accomplished. And I don’t need him to necessarily be optimistic, to   it, but tell me what you really are doing. Tell me what progress he’s seen, real progress he’s seen. I would like to see some hard mechanics.” At 61 years old, Ray Meyer has worked in banking for some 40 years, except for the   gap where he struggled to find any work at all. In January 2009, the bank where he had worked for five years laid off more than a third of its staff. ”I was terminated and I set home and watched [Obama’s] inauguration,” Meyer said. At one point he even sent his resume to   Obama, asking what the president could do for him. He didn’t get a response.  Meyer has been working at his current job for almost two years, not making what he did before, but it’s enough. Meyer’s marriage, however, did not survive. The extended unemployment, the financial stress, they all took a toll. But he insists he’s happy now. ”Life goes on,” he said. For Meyer, the feelings about Trump are mixed. He is thrilled about the way the stocks in his retirement account are performing. He figures the economy will continue improving under Trump. But he is worried about race relations. A Jewish cemetery in St. Louis had been recently vandalized, and he was puzzled why anyone would want to do that. Meyer said when he voted for Trump, he was voting to have someone run the country like a business. The status quo hadn’t been working for him, and he thought Hillary Clinton would just be more of the same. He’s been happy with some of the president’s choices, including some of his Cabinet picks and the nomination of Judge Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. ”I really like that guy,” Meyer said. But others like, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, make him shake his head. And then there’s Trump’s tweeting, the constant talking about his Electoral College win, the claims of widespread election fraud with no proof. Meyer figured once he took office, Trump would be more presidential than he had been. ”I just wish that he would kinda get a little bit thicker skin and get on with what he’s got to do,” said Meyer. ”He’s got a job to do, you know? He’s got all of us looking up to him with hopeful eyes thinking that he’s going to be not our savior, but that he’s going to get where we need to be and on the right track again.” Comedians have been mocking presidents forever, Meyer said, wondering why this president feels compelled to respond. ”No, you don’t do that. You’re a step above all of us as far as I’m concerned,” Meyer said. ”Who cares? He’s the president of the United States. He needs to act like it.” Meyer accidentally slips into the past tense when talking about his hopes for the Trump administration, before correcting himself. Meyer still hopes President Trump can get the country moving in the right direction. But he just wishes the president would stop tweeting. ”Every time he tweets something, I just shake my head and say, ’Oh God, please don’t tweet anymore.’ Maybe they should take and dismantle his tweet account,” Meyer said."
"It will certainly feel like a State of the Union on Tuesday night: The president will make a major speech to Congress. A bit more than half the room will applaud resoundingly while a bit less than half sit on their hands in that familiar and awkward display of partisanship. Members of Congress will invite guests that telegraph pointed political messages, and the TV commentators will tell us who they are. But although the drinking game rules remain roughly the same, President Trump’s speech is not a State of the Union. It’s simply an address to a joint session of Congress. Why is that? The president gives remarks at the invitation of the speaker of the House  —   in this case, Rep. Paul Ryan  —   and it’s up to the speaker what the speech is called, says Gerhard Peters,   of the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Ryan invited Trump to give an ”address” and not a State of the Union speech. That’s mainly out of tradition: Trump, like his predecessors in the first year of their presidencies, is assumed to be too new to the job of running the country to authoritatively describe the state of the nation. Presidential updates to Congress on how the country is faring are expressly called for in the Constitution. Article II, Section 3 declares: ”He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” But there are no requirements for how often or what form it should take  —  although there has been some sort of annual State of the Union message since George Washington established the precedent in 1790. It was Ronald Reagan in 1981 who began the tradition of a presidential address to Congress about a month after taking office. Every president since then has done so, usually focusing on specific issues, like the budget or health care. It’s unclear how specific Trump will be with policy proposals in his address, but senior administration officials say the president will take an optimistic tone, focusing on economic opportunity, national security and the ”renewal of the American spirit”  —   a contrast from his inaugural address, in which Trump described a country in crisis."
"President Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday night is expected to strike an optimistic tone as he outlines how he plans to begin a ”renewal of the American spirit” with his economic goals and priorities. According to senior administration officials who previewed the speech to reporters, that’s the theme the president will use to lay out his vision for the American people and explain how his administration will begin solving real problems for real people. He’ll tell members of Congress that Americans have been waiting on help from political leaders for too long, but that now help is on the way. For Trump, the speech to a joint session of the Senate and House is a chance to reset what has been a tumultuous first month in office. He’s been beset with backlash to his immigration and travel ban, struggles to come up with a replacement health care plan if Obamacare is repealed, turnover with his national security adviser and repeated questions about his administration’s alleged ties to Russia. According to the White House, as of Monday evening the president was still working with speechwriters to finish crafting the speech. And while it’s the same group of writers who helped write his inaugural address  —   which struck a dark tone as he promised to stop ”American carnage”  —   this new speech just over a month later is the product of listening sessions and meetings he has been holding with health care professionals, law enforcement, union representatives, coal miners and others. Still, the speech will focus on the two cornerstones of Trump’s campaign and much of his nascent presidency so far  —   growing economic opportunity and protecting the American people. In an interview that aired this morning on Fox News, Trump blamed messaging problems for his rocky first month in office. ”I think I get an A in terms of what I’ve actually done, but in terms of messaging, I’d give myself a C or a C+.” He also said he expects a ”revved up” economy will pay for the $54 billion dollar increase he’s proposing in defense spending. ”I mean you look at the kind of numbers we’re doing, we were probably GDP of a little more than 1 percent and if I can get that up to 3 or maybe more, we have a whole different ball game. It’s a whole different ball game.”  The Commerce Department puts the GDP at 1. 6% for 2016. Senior administration officials described Tuesday’s speech as an optimistic look forward to what Trump hopes to accomplish in office. He’ll also run down the promises he made to the American people and argue for what he has kept so far, pointing to his executive orders and memos. National security and foreign policy will also be a key component of the speech. After his travel ban against several   countries was halted by a federal court, Trump is expected to issue another executive order this week with more detail and direction that would not impact green card holders."
"Republicans are looking to President Trump to use his address to Congress Tuesday evening to define the party’s path forward on how to deliver on the   pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare. The White House has, so far, ceded the   to congressional leaders who are trying to unify competing moderate and conservative lawmaker demands behind a plan that can pass with narrow majorities in both chambers. The only legislative proposal on the table at the moment is being crafted by House Republicans and guided by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Senate Republicans have not authored a plan, nor has the White House publicly outlined much in the way of policy specifics. White House aides who briefed reporters on Monday evening would not say how specific the president would be about health care in his address. They said the speech is being crafted with input from listening sessions the president has held, including on that issue. On Monday, Trump met with health insurance executives, and the president held his latest of several meetings with top congressional leaders. A GOP proposal that’s still coming together on Capitol Hill would end the Medicaid expansion enacted in 31 states and eliminate the individual mandate, as well as other taxes created by the Affordable Care Act. It would replace the mandate with a tax credit to encourage individuals to buy insurance instead. It would also allow higher contributions to health savings accounts, but it would eliminate minimum coverage standards established by the Obama administration and let states decide what services must be covered by insurance. ”There are serious problems with what appears to be our current path to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Rep. Mark Walker,  . C. said in a statement in regards to the draft proposal. Walker chairs a bloc of influential conservatives in the House, and he said he could not ”in good conscience” recommend any conservative vote for it in its current form. One of Walker’s complaints is the proposal does not do enough to contain costs. However, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has privately told congressional Republicans that the White House is fully on board with the emerging proposal. White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Monday that Trump will speak to health care and his ”  alternative” in his Tuesday address. Spicer said the White House wants to see a legislative proposal ”within a matter of weeks.” Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . also huddled with Trump at the White House on Monday. The speaker has maintained that the House will act on Obamacare    legislation in March. ”We’re going to be rolling out our plan very soon,” Ryan pledged. A focal point of Tuesday’s address will be just how far the president goes in embracing the emerging House GOP plan. Trump and his senior aides have at times made promises about the overhaul that Congress is unlikely to keep —  such as a pledge to cover more people, with better coverage and at a cheaper cost. Trump spoke candidly about the complexities of U. S. health care policy on Monday in remarks at a meeting with the nation’s governors. ”It’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated,” Trump said. One governor who does understand the complexity is Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich, who is lobbying Trump to keep the Medicaid expansion in place. Kasich’s efforts underscore the many divides within the GOP over the best policy solution that comes with the least amount of political risk. Dozens of Republicans lawmakers have in recent weeks faced large, angry crowds at town hall meetings largely driven by concerns about how the    effort would affect coverage. It’s unclear still how this public pushback could affect GOP strategy. Democrats are unanimous in opposition to GOP    efforts. In a Monday ”prebuttal” to Trump’s address, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer noted the GOP’s failure to coalesce around a single plan or pick up any Democratic support. ”I predict the discord in their party will grow as Republicans return to Washington after a week of angry town halls,” said Schumer, who added another prediction: ”I believe the odds are very high that we’ll keep the ACA. It will not be repealed.” Obamacare has provided coverage to about 20 million Americans. About 6% of Americans receive insurance on the individual market. The vast majority of Americans are covered by insurance provided by their employer."
"When is a guest list more than a guest list? When politicians bring a   to a presidential address before a joint session of Congress. Each member of Congress can invite a guest to tonight’s speech, and many members will use the occasion to send a pointed political message to President Trump and the public about the issues that matter to them. For a number of Democrats, their guests of honor are immigrants, a rebuke to Trump’s executive orders to halt refugee entry, expand the pool of unauthrozied immigrants who are likely to be deported and ban travel by people from seven   countries. Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York will bring Hameed Darweesh, who was detained at JFK International Airport for 18 hours when Trump’s travel ban was enacted. Darweesh is an Iraqi who worked as an interpreter for the U. S. Army and an engineer for the State Department and Army Corps of Engineers. Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York is chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and his guest is Sarker Haque, the victim of an alleged   hate crime. Crowley told reporters that he didn’t anticipate any disruptive protests from House Democrats during the speech. ”I think as much as we have nothing in common with the present president, we do respect the office of the presidency,” said Crowley. ”Keeping that in mind, we’ll be polite. We’ll show very little, if any enthusiasm at all, for what I anticipate his speech will be about.” Other congressional Democrats are bringing guests who they hope underscore the importance of the Affordable Care Act, which Trump and congressional Republicans say they plan to repeal and replace. Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, for example, has invited Tracy Trovato, whose husband has leukemia. Trovato says that if not for the ACA, ”our family could have been bankrupted by the cost of the care he needed.” Many Democratic congresswomen said they’ll wear white to tonight’s address. Rep. Lois Frankel of Florida tweeted, ”Tonight, Democratic Members will wear suffragette white to oppose Republican attempts to roll back women’s progress.” A number of outlets are reporting that Rep. Maxine Waters of California won’t attend the address, reportedly telling the House Democratic Caucus that ”anyone who can’t sit still shouldn’t go.” And to the   list of traditions that are being upended by Trump’s presidency, add this one: New York Rep. Eliot Engel, for the first time in his 29 years in Congress, says he won’t get an aisle seat and shake the president’s hand. For its part, the White House released the names of special guests that President Trump and first lady Melania Trump have invited to the address. Like those invited by the Democrats, the White House guests were also carefully chosen to illustrate political points with their biographies. Among those who will sit with Melania Trump are Jessica Davis, Susan Oliver, and Jamiel Shaw Sr.  —   each of whom had a family member killed by an immigrant in the country illegally, according to the White House. Maureen McCarthy Scalia, the widow of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, will also be a guest in the Trumps’ box. Trump recently nominated federal Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace Scalia, who died just over a year ago. Republicans blocked former President Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland. Democrats have tapped Astrid Silva to give the party’s   rebuttal following Trump’s address. Silva is an activist and DREAMer, an immigrant who was brought to the U. S. illegally as a child  —   a life story with relevance that will be lost on no one."
"President Trump has pushed aggressively against illegal immigration, while his specific plans for legal immigration  —   including the popular but troubled   work visa  —   remain unclear. He has said he wants to crack down on abuses and protect American workers, but it’s Congress that holds the power to fundamentally reform the program. A broken system, For months last year, California lawmakers Darrell Issa and Zoe Lofgren tried to hash out a joint bipartisan bill to reform the   visa, the popular program that lets thousands of highly skilled foreigners work in the U. S. particularly in tech jobs. As far as immigration reforms go,   immigration programs are some of the least controversial. The   program covers many fields, but is especially known to benefit tech companies. Its description often invokes a recurring line about America’s interest in attracting the world’s ”best and brightest.” But   also has elements known to be broken: A lottery decides who gets the visa the demand has far eclipsed the quota and options for permanent stay differ by country of origin. And the biggest complaint is that Indian IT companies like Wipro, Infosys and Tata have hijacked the system. They are three of the top   employers. ”They’re taking the   visas a real U. S. tech company needs,” says Gary Shapiro, the head of the Consumer Technology Association. ”And they’re using them . .. to basically replace American workers at a cheaper rate by having people come here temporarily, not paid well, not housed well, not on any way to becoming citizens. ”Everyone loses under the system today,” he says, ”so it’s part of the reason we need an   overhaul.” Efforts to do that kind of overhaul have been undertaken by federal legislators over recent years, but haven’t progressed. The latest concerted effort came under President Barack Obama  —   but stalled in Congress, folded into a massive, broad immigration reform bill, Shapiro says. ”President Obama meant well, but . .. he had the chance and he lost it,” he says. ”Now we have another chance.” Attempted joint effort, Lofgren is the top Democrat on the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, where Issa is one of her Republican colleagues. Her district covers a chunk of Silicon Valley his is in San Diego County. She is, by profession, an immigration lawyer. He is a former electronics executive with family members from Lebanon balancing lives in several countries. ”We tried to work before the election with the ranking member on the subcommittee and she pulled out of it, preferring partisan politics,” Issa says. ”We talked for probably six, seven months . .. every day it was a new” thing, says Lofgren. ”I tried to work with Darrell, but it’s impossible to work with Darrell.” Each says the other kept moving the goal post or altering the bill. In the end, the two of them introduced separate bills. With Republicans controlling the majority, Issa’s has more potential  —   at least he says he’s got the votes to pass it in the House. Shapiro’s CTA supports it. ”This piece of legislation is small, it’s focused, and it’s highly bipartisan,” Issa says, ”and that gives it an opportunity to break a logjam that has gone on for approaching two decades.” Dueling bills, Issa’s bill is small indeed. Without reaching for changes to the quota or how the system operates, Issa’s legislation  —   in simplest terms  —   raises the bar for companies with more than 15 percent of   employees to ”attest” that they could not hire Americans. Currently, these ”  ” companies have to certify this only if a foreigner displaces an American worker for a job that pays less than $60, 000  —   far less than an average tech wage. Under Issa’s bill, the threshold would rise to $100, 000 and holders of master’s degrees would lose an exemption. However, Lofgren and other critics  —   which include the engineering group    —   say that this won’t do much. They argue companies have figured out how to game the   attestation process, and in a highly paid field of tech work, even the new wage threshold would allow for displacement of Americans. ”Some people think (attestation) works, but my observation is it doesn’t work and it hasn’t worked,” Lofgren says. ”I think if we place all eggs in that basket, we’re going to be disappointed.” Lofgren’s bill sweeps wider. It proposes replacing the lottery process with a system that prioritizes the   companies. Then it goes beyond   suggesting changes to   immigration and other types of visas. Issa sees merit in Lofgren’s bill  —   he says parts of it came from their joint effort. But, he says, the time for broader legislation is after a narrow bill passes. ”I support comprehensive   reform,” Issa says. ”But there’s a difference between plugging a leak and building a better ship. . .. In this particular structure of Republicans and Democrats, simplicity may be the best way to at least get a partial fix.” Presidential power, Issa’s and Lofgren’s bills aren’t the only ones under consideration in Congress. And Trump is expected to weigh in on the matter. A leaked draft of his executive order earlier this year took aim at   and other work visas, but with few specifics. It recommended a review of the programs to ensure protections for American workers. ”The president made it clear when he was asked by [Apple CEO] Tim Cook and other tech leaders to put a priority on this that he would and they agreed with him,” Issa says about Trump’s December meeting with tech executives. White House spokesman Sean Spicer was asked about plans for legal immigration earlier this month. He replied that they would shape up, but for now illegal immigration was a priority. And ultimately, experts say that key elements of the program, including the number of the visas that get issued, are written into statute, meaning Congress holds the power to change them."
"A Georgia judge has sentenced Kayla Norton, 25, and Jose ”Joe” Torres, 26, to spend a combined 19 years in prison for their role in a group’s racist rampage at an   ’s birthday party  —   an assault that included shouting racial slurs, making armed threats and waving Confederate battle flags. ”I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Norton told the family that endured the assault, weeping in the courtroom at Monday’s sentencing. ”I am so sorry.” After telling the court that she accepted responsibility for her actions, Norton turned to the area of the courtroom where families who attended the birthday party were seated. ”But I want you all to know that that is not me,” Norton told them. ”That is not me.” Norton and Torres, who are not married, have three children together. Prosecutors say they were part of a gang of white supremacists who targeted   with racist taunts and threatened to murder minorities. In court Monday, both Norton and Torres sat hunched over and crying after Superior Court Judge William ”Beau” McClain handed down his sentence: 13 years in prison and seven years’ probation for Torres, and six years in prison with nine years’ probation for Norton. Both of them are also banished from Douglas County, McClain said. The sentencing comes weeks after a jury found Torres and Norton guilty of making terroristic threats and violating the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act. The jury also convicted Torres of aggravated assault. Although Georgia doesn’t have a law specifying a hate crime, that’s the term both McClain and District Attorney Brian Fortner used to describe the group’s behavior. The assault occurred in July 2015, one month after a racist gunman killed nine worshippers at a historically black church in Charleston, S. C. Prosecutors say Norton, Torres and other members of a group that called itself ”Respect the Flag” went on an   racist spree in Douglas and Paulding counties, west of Atlanta. With Confederate battle flags affixed to the beds of their pickup trucks, the group gathered for a ride that was purportedly meant to celebrate the flag’s heritage. ”However, Paulding County 911 began immediately receiving calls that members associated with this group were threatening African American citizens at various locations in Paulding County and hurling numerous racial slurs in the process as well,” according to the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office. After threatening black motorists, the group headed to Douglasville, where they happened upon an outdoor birthday party that included a cookout and bouncy castle. ”Victims and witnesses from the party, who were predominantly   testified to observing the group of trucks whose passengers were hurling a litany of racial slurs at them as they passed by,” prosecutors said. Several members of the group  —   some of whom are now serving prison terms of their own  —   got out of their trucks and approached the partygoers, threatening to kill them all. According to their fellow defendants and witnesses, it was Norton who retrieved Torres’ shotgun  —   a tactical   with a pistol grip  —   and loaded it before giving it to him. Cellphone footage from the party shows police attempting to form a barrier in front of the families as the trucks drove off. During his trial, Torres told the court he was carrying the shotgun for this own defense. But he then acknowledged lying to police about the gun  —   and to selling the weapon before he was arrested. Months after the attack, the ”Respect the Flag” group was indicted as a street gang by a Douglas County grand jury. ”They recognized that it was not about flying a flag but it was about pointing a shotgun at other people and threatening to kill them because of the color of their skin,” Fortner said Monday. Testifying for the victims at Monday’s sentencing, Hyesha Bryant, who attended the party, said she forgave the couple. ”I never thought this would be something I’d have to endure in 2017,” Bryant said, according to the Atlanta  . ”As adults and parents, we have to instill in our children the values of right and wrong. That moment you had to choose to leave, you stayed.” ”I forgive you. I forgive all of you,” she said, as Torres and Norton sat weeping. ”I don’t have any hate in my heart. Life is too short for that.” The stiff punishment is being both celebrated and questioned, in a debate that touches on free speech and the nature of terrorism. Some of those points are summed up in two   responses to the district attorney’s Facebook posting that announced the punishment. One commenter writes: ”To all the people on here saying the punishment was unjust. Let’s be real, if it had been any other terrorist group committing these felonies you guys wouldn’t bat an eye if they went away for life. ... but when the terrorist look like you all of a sudden you get a soft heart.” But another commenter says: ”Did they actually attack anyone or just guilty of being racists? Not condoning their actions by any means but I’m not sure the punishment fit the crime here. If they attacked the kids or something, let them rot, but just being ignorant racists shouldn’t constitute a 20 year sentence. Does that not seem a little extreme?? What am I missing? If everyone in Douglas County that is ignorant and racist (on both sides of the fence) had to serve 20 years, they’d have to build many new jails.”"
"President Donald Trump’s nominee to become director of national intelligence assured senators on Tuesday that he’d be an apolitical and independent spymaster with full control over the U. S. intelligence agencies. Former Sen. Dan Coats tried to placate the worries of his onetime colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee who said they were worried by the appearance of Trump’s early attempts to sideline the job before Coats was confirmed. ”I’m reassured with regard to your position,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich,  . M. ”I am not reassured with regard to the process these [orders] have been going through.” Trump raised eyebrows in the national security world by ordering changes to the National Security Council, inside the White House staff. He added his chief political strategist, Steve Bannon, to what had in past been considered a   committee. And he made other changes viewed as hostile to the DNI and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top uniformed military officer. Not long after, news organizations reported that Trump was considering bringing in a friend, financier Stephen Feinberg, to do a ”review” of the intelligence community. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins condemned the notion of someone coming in from the outside to take an oversight role beyond that of the DNI and the president’s existing National Intelligence Council. ”This is a textbook definition of waste and duplication,” she said. The White House has since said it would revise its goals for the National Security Council and Trump has cast doubt on whether he’d actually order the review to be undertaken by Feinberg. Coats told the committee on Tuesday that the administration has assured him he’ll have the full authority and independence of his predecessors. ”I have full confidence that’s the way it’ll turn out,” Coats said. Trump’s relationship with the intelligence services has been rocky since before his inauguration. He blasted what he called leaks of classified information that have appeared in news reports linking his presidential campaign with Russia’s intelligence services. And he has also gone back and forth about whether he accepts the conclusion of the U. S. intelligence community that Russia meddled in last year’s presidential election. Coats told senators Russia ”definitely” tried to influence the presidential race, but echoed the spy agencies’ careful agnosticism by adding, ”to what extent they were successful, I don’t think we know.” Coats also said Russia continues to run the same playbook in political races taking place today in Europe, including France and Germany, and he suggested there need to be ”consequences.” Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama ejected some Russian diplomats from the U. S. and imposed some sanctions in retaliation for the Russian meddling, but Coats’ remarks suggested he supports even more action. ”Russia’s assertiveness in global affairs is something I view with grave concern,” he said. As a former senator and former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Coats got a genial reception and his confirmation appears likely. But Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford and Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King both warned Coats that once he is in his new job, he can’t always be the nice guy from Indiana. ”I’m not sure likability and affability are the qualities I want in this position,” King said. ”I want somebody who’s crusty and tough and mean.”"
"A billboard that sits along an interstate in North Carolina reads, ”Real men provide. Real women appreciate it.” Although it might be a simple billboard, people have a lot to say about its message. A crowd in downtown   protested the billboard, which has been up for about a week. When business owner Molly Grace first saw it, she said she was shocked. ”To me, I see that billboard and people rallying to support it as people wishing it was a little bit more like the olden days, annoyed that it’s not and trying desperately to hold on to what is left of those olden days,” she says. Organizers of the protest said they’re not protesting free speech but rather are protesting the thinking behind the sign. The group created its own messages and painted them on bedsheets. One reads, ”Appreciate those who provide, provide for those you appreciate.” But they want to do more. They’ve raised enough money to rent their own billboard that counters the original. ”There are no gender roles that define what people can and cannot do for their households and how measurable their worth or their provisions are,” Grace said. At the rally, most people spoke against assigning roles to gender, but not everyone agreed. Dana Pavlick, along with her husband and six children, was at the rally. ”If you want to bring people into the world, there’s a responsible, good way to do it,” she said. ”And no one has shown how our following patriarchy has hurt society.” The owner of the billboard hasn’t revealed who’s behind it, saying the client doesn’t want to be identified and may not be done yet. There are plans to put up another billboard with a different message."
"Many Republican leaders have promoted the idea that consumers should have a ”health care backpack,” which would make it possible to take insurance from job to job or when moving, starting a business or retiring. The concept  —   often referred to as ”portability”  —   is appealing. Why should a health plan be tied to where you work or live? The answer, of course, is ”it’s complicated.” As Republicans debate ideas for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, portability might play a central role in their plan. So how would that work? Portability Is Hard To Define, The notion of ”portability” in the purest sense means that consumers can stick with the same insurer, the same benefits and the same coverage limits, even if they move or change jobs. In the current policy discussion, though, portability is more likely to be viewed as a means for consumers to get access  —   possibly with the help of a tax credit  —   to a variety of health plans. If keeping the same plan is the goal, that would be very tricky. The health care system is just not built that way. Among the health plans 156 million of us get from our jobs, only a few insurers offer national networks of participating doctors and hospitals. And most of the plans available to people who buy their own insurance through the individual or small group market are local and limited by specific geographic areas. Policyholders who move away generally must change carriers. And insurers sometimes pull out of markets, meaning stranded consumers would also have to pick new plans. Such factors could create a predicament for Republicans similar to the ”         ” problem that bedeviled President Barack Obama when tens of thousands of consumers had to change their coverage after the ACA took effect. Take A Tax Credit Instead, Because of these hurdles, some advocates suggest a portable tax credit. The proposals vary, but here’s how it could work: If a consumer moves or quits a job to start a business or go back to school or take an early retirement, they would get a tax credit they could apply to pay for their new insurance. ”To get to true portability, you have to be able to choose a plan and have the same subsidy . .. and take [the subsidy] it with you when you leave,” says Stuart Butler, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a D. C.  think tank. That’s how the ACA subsidy works. It uses an advance tax credit calculated by income. In contrast, several of the GOP proposals would link the subsidy to age instead of income, with older consumers who likely have higher health costs and premiums getting a bigger credit, although the amounts debated are generally less than what consumers now receive under the health law. Also, the proposals generally do not link the credits to the cost of insurance, potentially creating unhappy consumers in   regions. Current Portable Coverage Poses Political Problems, Portable coverage already existed before Obamacare. The Federal Employees Health Benefit Program, the military’s TriCare and Medicare all offer such coverage. But enrollment in those programs is limited to specific groups: federal workers, military members and their families, certain qualifying people with disabilities and those older than 65. When running for president, Sen. Bernie Sanders,   suggested a    plan, an idea popular among the left. But the current   Congress is unlikely to adopt this approach or to call for opening the federal employee program or the military plan to the general public. Covering everyone through a   system  —   common in Europe  —   where the government pays the bills but private providers or government agencies offer the medical care, also would fall into this category but is currently a political nonstarter in the U. S. A Risk To   Insurance, Employers who provide   coverage fear that if Congress makes health plans too portable, meaning everyone has access to the tax credits, the youngest and healthiest might peel away from their employer plans’ risk pools to buy insurance. This would drive up premiums for those who remain. To prevent that, several GOP plans  —   including House Speaker Paul Ryan’s  —   would bar people with   coverage from getting a credit. But others, including the plan put forward last year by   and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, don’t include that prohibition.   Conditions? Separate Rules, To be truly portable, consumers must be offered plans regardless of their health status, age or other considerations. Before the health law was enacted, insurers could reject people with medical conditions. But the ACA prohibits insurers from redlining sick people or charging them higher premiums. Although popular in opinion polls, those Obamacare provisions may face some changes under the GOP plans. Ryan’s plan would allow a   open enrollment during which uninsured people could sign up no matter their health status. Waiting would result in higher premiums. Price’s plan would require insurers to accept all comers during enrollment periods every two years. His plan would also require consumers to maintain continuous coverage, or risk having preexisting conditions excluded from future coverage. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s plan would do away with the ”guarantee issue” requirement altogether and allow insurers to exclude medical conditions from coverage. Cheaper Plans, Less Coverage, Cost is essential to portability because if consumers can’t afford insurance, it doesn’t matter that it can move with them. To bring premiums down, some Republicans suggest easing the health law’s essential benefits requirements. More flexibility for these rules could spark competition and open the market to added options, from   ” ” plans to   comprehensive coverage, proponents say. ”From a consumer perspective, it’s important to have wide choice,” says Butler. But the less expensive plans would likely be more restrictive and exclude coverage for some services, such as prescription drugs. Some experts warn that without some benefit rules, plans could end up in a ”race to the bottom,” with few insurers wanting to offer broad benefits at the risk of attracting the sickest enrollees. ”If their answer is to make it affordable by stripping down the benefits, then you leave families exposed to a lot of financial risk if something happens to them,” says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Like a lot of artists who try to make it in Hollywood, Bill Paxton spent a big chunk of his career just trying to survive. The thing is, no one was ever better at getting killed. The actor, who died Saturday at age 61 following complications from heart surgery, had paid his dues and then some. Twenty years ago  —   which was 20 years after he’d moved to Los Angeles from Fort Worth to try showbiz  —   he’d reached the   peak of his profession: Circa   he appeared in, consecutively, True Lies, Apollo 13, Twister, and Titanic, each among the three biggest hits of its year. Besides huge box office, those films shared another uncommon trait: In all of them, Paxton’s character was still breathing when the credits rolled. Those movies, and several dozen others, were enlivened by Paxton’s oddball presence and weirdly emphatic line readings. But more than anything else, Paxton was The Boy Who Died. By the time of that   run, when even   started to recognize him, his legacy was already secure: He was and remains the only actor1 ever slain on screen by a   (a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger flung him into metal bars at the Griffith Park Observatory in The Terminator, 32 years before Gosling and Stone danced among the stars there in La La Land) a Xenomorph (a bug dragged him under the floor in Aliens while he raved his profane epitaph) and a Predator (Paxton emptied his sidearm into the advancing beast on an L. A. subway car in Predator 2 when that didn’t work, he tried a machete. And a golfball. Never say die! Even when dying is apparently your job. ). To have been walked toward the light by such a rich assortment of cyborg assassins and invasive species seems fitting for a guy who got his start in movies working behind the camera for   shlockmeister Roger Corman. That’s how he became fast friends with James Cameron, an even quicker study of the Corman school. Cameron would cast Paxton in four of his films, including as the panicky, motormouthed Marine PFC William Hudson in 1986’s Aliens  —  Paxton’s most memorable role, arguably. By which I mean: If you say it was anything else, expect an argument. Two Sundays ago, I dragged a group of friends to a double feature of Alien and Aliens at the National Air and Space Museum. (In IMAX!) This was two weeks after John Hurt died, and when his name appeared in the opening titles of Alien, there was a smattering of respectful applause. When Paxton made his entrance as Hudson     hours later, people hooted and recited his lines along with him, Rocky  . We were all of us on an express elevator to hell, going. .. down! It was, paradoxically, heaven. ”To this day, if I do a thousand movies, it’ll be at the top of my obituary,” Paxton told Marc Maron on Maron’s WTF podcast only three weeks ago. ”Weird Science!” Respectfully, no. That John Hughes transformed Paxton into a talking humanoid turd in 1985’s Weird Science is a disgusting fact. But Chet Donnelly, Paxton’s Weird Science alter ego, was a bully who earned that gross penance by tormenting his little brother. Hudson was just a cocky   grunt who tried to mask his insecurity and fear with an easily punctured bravado. Hudson was us. He had to get his famous ”Game over, Man!” tantrum out of his system before he could settle down and Semper Fi. But after a stern   from Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, Hudson got it together. He did his part to try to keep his comrades alive. He went down shooting. It was a great movie death, maybe the very best. Of many. Herewith, an Almost Inevitably Incomplete List of Movies Depicting the Rather Less Memorable But Still Notable Violent Demise of Bill Paxton Characters: In Carl Franklin’s superb, underseen 1992 crime picture One False Move, Paxton’s character  —   an Arkansas sheriff  —   is stabbed and shot. The film’s ending makes his survival ambiguous. The name of his character is One False Move Dale ”Hurricane” Dixon. The name of his character in Twister is Bill ”The Extreme” Harding. In the military school hazing drama The Lords of Discipline, he was credited as ”Wild Bill” Paxton. That tells you something about the screen persona of his salad days. But he gradually started landing more    roles in movies outside of the genre stuff that had been so good to him. Sam Raimi  —   like Cameron, an unwashed   genre filmmaker who over time became respectable  —   cast him in the marvelous 1998 thriller A Simple Plan. Paxton made his feature directing debut with 2001’s Frailty, a psychological horror flick wherein he starred opposite Matthew McConaughey. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars. Paxton’s character was killed, naturally. By his own son. With an axe. Like so many movie veterans, Paxton gravitated in the 21st century towards television, where he died in the miniseries Hatfields and McCoys and on Agents of S. H. I. E. L. D. But he lived again in two of 2014’s strongest features: As an unscrupulous freelance TV news cameraman in Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, and as the   Master Sgt. Farrell in Doug Liman’s     movie Edge of Tomorrow. It was, like so many Paxton films, brilliant but underseen. Putting Paxton in Edge was a sort of easter egg to longtime fans in multiple ways: With him playing the unflappable sergeant forced to deal with a   Tom Cruise, it was a sort of inverse of his part from Aliens a generation earlier. But it was also a nod to Paxton’s many, many prior screen deaths: Because Edge finds Cruise’s character beginning the same horrific day anew each time he is ”killed,” Paxton’s character, along with the other soldiers in Cruise’s unit, dies onscreen only once but dies by implication dozens or hundreds of times. Paxton logged more screen hours as Bill Henriksen  —   a polygamous patriarch on the HBO series Big Love  —   than as any other character he ever played. 53 episodes over five seasons,  . I’ll go ahead and slap a Spoiler Alert here for those who haven’t yet watched that show (though if you followed Paxton’s career, you really won’t need it): In the series finale, he was shot and died. "
"Updated at 12:38 p. m. ET, Bill Paxton, prolific actor and   fixture for decades, has died at the age of 61. In a statement released to media outlets Sunday, a family representative says Paxton died of complications from surgery. ”A loving husband and father, Bill began his career in Hollywood working on films in the art department and went on to have an illustrious career spanning four decades as a beloved and prolific actor and filmmaker,” the statement reads. ”Bill’s passion for the arts was felt by all who knew him, and his warmth and tireless energy were undeniable.” Paxton was perhaps best known for his marquee roles in Hollywood blockbusters. From below the sea, as in Titanic, to out of this world, as in Aliens and Apollo 13, Paxton starred in dozens of films and even directed a handful himself. More recently, Paxton had been focusing on the small screen. His role as a polygamist in HBO’s Big Love earned him Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. And Paxton played the lead in the television   of the film Training Day, which launched on CBS earlier this month. As a corrupt LAPD detective, Paxton tackled the kind of moral ambiguity that characterized some of his most memorable roles. Based on the reaction from many of his colleagues, those who worked with the beloved actor felt no such ambivalence about the man himself. What may risk going unnoticed, though, is the sheer effort Paxton would put into his roles. In a 2009 interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, Paxton explained his process while filming Big Love. ”I live kind of a monastic existence. I usually stay in a hotel,” Paxton said, noting that he would spend his evenings memorizing his lines for the next day. ”Every night I have five or six pages I have to learn. I don’t know if my memory is starting to fail me, but I really have to get it down cold the night before.” Paxton added: ”My technique is kind of like the errant schoolboy who has to stay after school and write ’I will not talk in class’ on the chalkboard. I write it over and over, again and again, until I find I understand the character I’m playing.” And though he left Texas when he was still in his teens to pursue his acting career, Paxton said he carried some crucial lessons with him that he’d learned from his father, who was a hardwood salesman. ”Look, I’ve been an actor most of my adult life, and you certainly have to know how to sell yourself to get on in this profession. . .. But it’s not a phony thing. My dad sold a good product  —   you know, these hardwoods were used to make everything from musical instruments to beautiful furniture and every use in between. ”He had integrity about the thing he was selling,” Paxton continued. ”And I certainly picked that up from him.”"
"Today is Pancake Day in the United Kingdom, or Shrove Tuesday, as it’s known on the Christian calendar. It’s a time for indulging before the beginning of Lent and, in Britain, racing around with a frying pan, flipping pancakes. Every year, people gather in backyards and on streets for pancake races, which have a history dating back centuries. This morning, members of Parliament and the House of Lords took on national media in a relay race around a garden along the Thames, just down the street from Big Ben. Wearing white chef’s hats and aprons, they flipped pancakes and handed off frying pans in a   race to raise money for Rehab Group, a health charity that helps people with brain injuries. That worthy cause, though, did nothing to restrain the race’s traditional shoving and cheating, which is part of the fun. Racers stuffed extra pancakes in their pockets, in case they dropped the ones in their frying pans, as they often did. Speaking before today’s race, Liz McInnes, a member of parliament from northern England, recalled some members of the Upper House hitting the deck in the 2016 contest. ”There were Lords on the floor last year. I was running over Lords who’d fallen over,” she said. ”I stopped to pick my pancake up last year, which was a mistake  —   never pick it up if you drop it.” Carrying an extra pancake in your pocket is ”part of our tactics,” McInnes said. ”Any rules are made to be broken, I think.” The origins of Britain’s pancake race are decidedly more civilized. The story goes that a woman lost track of time while cooking pancakes on Shrove Tuesday back in 1445. When she heard the church bells ring, she rushed out the door and raced to church while still holding her frying pan. Some of today’s participants grew up with the pancaking racing tradition, including Tim Loughton, a member of parliament with the Tory party who represents part of England’s south coast and is the son of a minister. ”We used to do it in school,” said Loughton, before the race. ”My father was a vicar, so Pancake Day and Easter and the   towards that was always a big thing for us. So, yes, pancakes are in my blood.” British racing pancakes bear no resemblance to the fluffy ones Americans might eat at an IHOP. The U. K. version is flat  —   more like a crepe  —   and tends to split apart by the third flip. The ones distributed for today’s race came in a packet and were  . ”There’s a big debate now over what you should have in a pancake,” said Clive Lewis, a parliamentarian with the Labour Party. ”You can have Nutella on it, or butterscotch. Back in the day, the tradition is just lemon and sugar,” which is Lewis’ favorite. After 10 laps, a member of parliament running the anchor leg crossed the line in a   finish to cheers from the 200 or so people watching. The members of parliament team took first place  —   by the length of a frying pan."
"It started in late January. At my local grocery store in South London, salad seemed to be just a few pence pricier than usual. But I didn’t think much of it. Later that week, the same market had conspicuously run out of zucchini. I’m not particularly fond of it, but I lamented for the   yuppies who depended  —   and subsisted  —   on spiralized zucchini spaghetti. How would they cope? Then came the true sign of wretched times. A notice, posted atop the iceberg lettuce displays of Tesco supermarkets, read, ”To protect the availability to all our customers, we are limiting bulk purchases to 3 per person.” To paraphrase the Bard: Et tu, Tesco? Then fall, Caesar salad! This was the Great British Vegetable Shortage of 2017. Panic  —   and punning  —   ensued. ”LEAF IT OUT! British supermarkets begin RATIONING vegetables” read a headline on the U. K.’s most popular tabloid, The Sun. The Times of London, meanwhile, urged readers to ”Romaine calm.” And then The Guardian came out with the harrowing news: ”Tip of the iceberg: lettuce rationing widens to broccoli and cabbage.” Indeed, the culinary crisis that launched a thousand headlines is the result of bad weather in Southern Europe. Spain’s   Murcia region, which supplies much of Europe’s fresh produce during the winter months, was hit with frost and snow, as well as the heaviest rainfall in 30 years. This coincided with a cold snap in Italy. The resulting crop shortages especially affected the U. K. which imports about half of its food. But the results weren’t as dire as many news reports predicted: At worst, British shoppers may have to pay a bit more for zucchini, eggplant, salad and celery until April, when domestic farms begin producing those crops. ”It was overblown,” says Tim Lang, a professor of food policy at City, University of London, and   of The Atlas of Food: Who Eats What, Where and Why. ”It wasn’t exactly a national crisis,” he says. ”Just a little hiccup.” But it is a teaching moment, Lang notes. It demonstrates the extent to which grocers in the U. K. depend on imported produce in order to supply British consumers with    fruits and vegetables all year round. The recent shortage prompted some supermarkets to ”switch from trucking fresh vegetables to flying them,” Lang notes, from as far away as the U. S. and South America, leaving behind a huge carbon footprint. Mukesh Kumar, a professor of food security at Cambridge University, agrees that if any good has come out of the vegetable shortage, it’s that British consumers have been forced to think about where their food comes from. Kumar more or less predicted the lettuce crisis. In a 2013 study, he found that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change would upset iceberg production in Spain. And as climate change accelerates, Kumar says, the extreme weather will become more common  —   and food production is bound to be affected. Ultimately, the only way to avoid food shortages in the long run is to address climate change, Kumar says. Media reports often discuss climate change in terms of rising sea levels and melting ice caps, Kumar adds. ”We haven’t thought about, ’How does climate change impact me, personally?’ ” Now we know that it’ll sap our salad supplies, for a start."
"The acting head of Samsung, Lee   has been charged with bribery and embezzlement in connection with the corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of South Korea’s president. NPR’s Elise Hu reported from Seoul that prosecutors announced the indictment after a   investigation: ”Samsung acting head Lee   got ensnared after documents showed Samsung funneled some $36 million to the president’s close confidant. Prosecutors say the money was paid to win government support of a controversial 2015 company merger. ”The merger did go through, after a vote of support from the government. In a statement, Samsung says it has not paid bribes or made improper requests to the government. Lee is currently in jail awaiting further proceedings in his case.” Lee was arrested on Feb. 17, two months after President Park   was impeached over allegations of corruption,   and cult ties, as we reported. Those corruption allegations were directly tied to the charges brought against Lee, who also goes by the name Jay Y. Lee. Samsung is a   company, in which leadership of the operation is inherited. Lee is the grandson of Samsung’s founder and is technically a vice chairman, but he ”has become the company’s de facto leader since his father, Chairman Lee   fell ill,” as The Two Way reported. ”The attention on Lee has shone a light on the powerful, patriarchal   conglomerates here known as chaebol,” Elise previously reported. ”The public has grown wary of their influence and coziness with the halls of power.” Reuters reported that four other Samsung executives also were charged with bribery and ”hiding assets overseas,” among other crimes, and that the company had announced the resignations of three of the four. Samsung is the world’s leading seller of mobile phones and is South Korea’s largest conglomerate."
"The body of Kim Jong Un’s slain   has become the subject of a diplomatic turf war between North Korea and Malaysia, where he was poisoned earlier this month with a powerful nerve agent. A   delegation of North Koreans arrived in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Tuesday to try to claim the body of Kim Jong Nam, NPR’s Elise Hu reports from Seoul. ”The North Korean delegation  —   which includes former North Korean diplomats  —   told reporters it is seeking the body of Kim as well as the release of one North Korean suspect that’s in custody in connection with the death,” Elise reports. ”Malaysia is refusing to give up the body until it gets DNA samples from Kim Jong Nam’s immediate family for positive identification of the body.” Kim suddenly fell ill at the Kuala Lumpur airport, and surveillance video shows two women approaching him and holding a cloth over his face. Malaysia’s health minister later said that he died within 20 minutes due to the effects of the VX nerve agent, one of the world’s deadliest chemical weapons. North Korean officials have demanded that Malaysia turn over the body and accused Malaysian authorities of performing the autopsy ”without their participation or witnessing.” It’s worth noting that North Korea has not formally acknowledged that Kim was the victim according to The Associated Press, the isolated nation ”has identified him only as a North Korean national with a diplomatic passport bearing the name Kim Chol.” Malaysian authorities have apprehended the two women purportedly seen in the video  —   who have been identified as Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam and Siti Aisyah from Indonesia. Now, Malaysia’s attorney general has told the AP and Reuters that his office is preparing to file formal charges against the two women on Wednesday, which could carry the death penalty. And in perhaps the strangest aspect of this very strange case, both women have reportedly claimed that they believed they were taking part in a TV prank. According to the AP, ”Indonesian officials have said Aisyah told them she was paid the equivalent of $90.” Kim had been estranged from North Korea’s leadership since he attempted to enter Tokyo on a fake Dominican passport in 2001, reportedly to visit Disneyland. He was the oldest son of former leader Kim Jong Il, and at one time he was believed to be the heir apparent."
"The collision of two core American values  —   freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination  —   is prompting a showdown in legislatures and courts across the country. For some conservatives, religious freedom means the right to act on their opposition to   marriage and other practices that go against their beliefs. LGBT advocates and their allies, meanwhile, say no one in the United States should face discrimination because of their sexual orientation. President Trump is said to be considering an executive order to bar the federal government from punishing people or institutions that support marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman. The language is similar to a bill expected to be reintroduced by Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah called the First Amendment Defense Act. After a widely circulated draft order aroused considerable opposition from the LGBT community, no further action was taken. Asked recently whether such an order might still get signed, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said only that Trump ”will continue to fulfill” commitments he had made. Advocates for executive action say they do not expect new developments until Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, has been confirmed. The debate’s heart: What ”exercising” one’s religion means, Under the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, Congress is barred from enacting ”an establishment of religion,” but neither can it prohibit ”the free exercise thereof.” The question under current debate is what it means to ”exercise” one’s religion. If a football coach is not allowed to lead his team in a public prayer, or a high school valedictorian is not given permission to read a Bible passage for her graduation speech, or the owner of a private chapel is told he cannot refuse to accommodate a   wedding, they might claim their religious freedom has been infringed. Others might argue that such claims go against the principle of   separation, or that they undermine the rights of LGBT people to be free from discrimination. Legislation either to uphold LGBT rights or to limit them in the name of protecting religious freedom has advanced in several states, and further court battles are likely. One of the thorniest cases involves Catholic Charities, whose agencies long have provided adoption and foster care services to children in need, including orphans. Under Catholic doctrine, the sacrament of marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman, and Catholic adoption agencies therefore have declined to place children with   couples. When Massachusetts (and other jurisdictions) redefined marriage to include   couples, making it illegal to deny adoption to them. the Catholic agencies closed down their adoption services and argued that their religious freedom had been infringed. ”One of the major activities of the [Catholic] church, going way back, was to look after the orphans,” says Stanley   founder of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance. ”For that to be illegal unless the religious people change their standard, seems to me . .. unfortunate.” But to the LGBT community and its supporters, a refusal to place a child for adoption with a   couple is unacceptable discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual orientation. Those who oppose   efforts are often portrayed as out of step with the growing public acceptance of   unions. ”I can’t think of a single civil rights law that doesn’t have some people who are unhappy about it,” says Karen Narasaki, a member of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. ”But once the country has said, ’Well, we believe that people who are LGBT need to be protected from discrimination,’ then how do you make sure that happens?” The commission’s report on the religious freedom vs.   debate, published last September, came down squarely on the   side. The commission recommended that ”civil rights protections ensuring nondiscrimination” were of ”preeminent” importance and that religious exemptions to such policies ”must be weighed carefully and defined narrowly on a   basis.” The commission chairman at the time, Martin R. Castro, went further with a statement of his own, saying, ”The phrases ’religious liberty’ and ’religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.” The commission report sparked a protest letter signed by 17 faith leaders, arguing that the report ”stigmatizes tens of millions of religious Americans, their communities and their   institutions, and threatens the religious freedom of all our citizens.” One of the signers, Charles Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Center at the Newseum Institute in Washington, says religious conservatives are entitled to make claims of conscience. ”We may not like the claim of conscience,” Haynes says, ”but you know, we don’t judge claims of conscience on whether we like the content of the claim. We are trying to protect the right of people to do what they feel they must do according to their God. That is a very high value.” Haynes himself says LGBT rights and   marriage ”are very important” but that supporters of those causes ”cannot simply declare that one side wins all.” ”Nondiscrimination is a great American principle  —   it’s a core American principle  —   as is religious freedom,” Haynes says. ”When you have two important American principles coming into tension, into conflict with one another, our goal as Americans is to sit down and try to see if we can uphold both.” Exercising ”freedom to worship” in life, Not all faith leaders are convinced, however, that the push for LGBT rights is jeopardizing the religious freedom of people who hold conservative beliefs about sexuality and marriage. During a recent appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations, Bishop Michael Curry, leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States, said he has witnessed the persecution of Christians in other parts of the world and doesn’t see anything comparable in the United States. ”I’m not worried about my religious freedom,” Curry said. ”I get up and go to church on Sunday morning, ain’t nobody stopping me. My freedom to worship is protected in this country, and that’s not going to get taken away. I have been in places where that’s been infringed. That’s not what we’re talking about.” Curry’s reference only to ”freedom to worship,” however, missed the point, according to some religious freedom advocates. They say they want the freedom to exercise their faith every day of the week, wherever they are  —   even if it means occasionally challenging the principle of absolute equality for all. ”We can’t use equality to just wipe out one of the [First Amendment] rights,”   says, ”or say you can have the right, as long as you just exercise it in church, but not out in life.”   is one of several conservatives who support a ”Fairness For All” initiative to forge a compromise between advocates for LGBT rights and religious freedom, but the effort has had little success so far. The LGBT community and their allies have been cool to the notion of compromising their cause, while a group of more strident religious freedom advocates made clear their own opposition to the recognition of sexual orientation as a status worthy of civil rights protection. Legal analysts are divided in their assessment of the debate. A federal judge, ruling on a Mississippi religious freedom law, concluded that by protecting specific beliefs, the bill ”constitutes an official preference for certain religious tenets,” and may therefore be unconstitutional. Other laws and proposals, however, are written in support of beliefs held by several different religions and thus may not run afoul of the First Amendment’s bar on ”an establishment of religion.” John Inazu, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, whose book Confident Pluralism lays out an approach that might help bridge differences between LGBT and religious freedom advocates, says efforts at reconciliation face long odds. ”There were efforts early on about some kind of compromise,” he tells NPR in a recent interview. ”I think those are less and less plausible as time goes on and as sides get factionalized. It’s hard to see in some of these cases how there would be an outcome that is amenable to everyone, and so I think we’re seeing these cases with us for a long time.”"
"We watched more than 6, 000 videos. Ten judges weighed in. Now, the 2017 Tiny Desk Contest has a winner. We are proud to have fallen in love with the sounds of New Orleans’ own Tank and the Bangas. What won me over about the band’s performance of ”Quick” were the interactions among lead singer Tarriona ”Tank” Ball and her bandmates, and the way they seemed to surprise one another. It all felt so organic and    just like the best Tiny Desk concerts. The decision was unanimous across our judging panel, which included Phish guitarist and singer Trey Anastasio. ”I immediately loved this,” he tells NPR’s David Greene and me on Morning Edition. ”Tank is a force of nature, just full of joy  —   and her band is killing in the background.” (Hear that interview at the audio link above.) The other judges were equally impressed. Stas THEE Boss, a   DJ at NPR Member station KEXP and a former member of THEESatisfaction, says, ”Tank and the Bangas gave me life straight out of the gate.” Fellow judge Rita Houston of Member station WFUV says, simply, ”There is star power all over this.” In this third year of the Tiny Desk Contest, we got more submissions than ever before. We saw submissions from every state in this country, and the variety of ages and instrumentations on display was thrilling to see. There may be only one ”winner,” but truth be told, every one of these videos is a testament to the joy of making music. It’s a way to share what is often so personal, publicly. It’s about a community of friends and sharing your art with a world beyond your bedroom. So from all of us at the Tiny Desk, thank you to everyone who submitted. Thank you for all the chances you took in putting yourself out there. Our next step is to have Tank and the Bangas come and record a Tiny Desk concert here behind my desk at NPR in Washington, D. C. And after that, we’re hitting the road with Lagunitas Brewing Company on a national tour with Tank and the Bangas and local Contest entrants we loved. Stay tuned for dates and more information  —   we can’t wait to meet you in person. There will be more opportunities for us to feature some of the amazing music you shared with us, and I already know I’ll be spending a good deal more time listening to so many of the artists who entered. But for now, I want to thank everyone who entered the Contest for inspiring our team every day. And to Tank and the Bangas: Congratulations. Our adventure together is just beginning."
"A gunshot was heard near the spot where French President Francois Hollande was speaking Tuesday, momentarily disrupting his inauguration of a new line in France’s   train system. Local media are reporting that the shot was mistakenly fired by a police sniper. The shot left two people wounded. Hollande was nearly 17 minutes into his roughly   speech when the loud crack of gunfire was heard. While there was no sign of panic, the leader was also plainly uncertain of what had just happened. You can watch the video here  —   the shot is heard at the 16:50 mark, and this clip begins about 10 seconds before that point: ”I hope that it’s nothing serious,” Hollande said, looking off to the side of the stage where he heard the shot. He then paused for several seconds to take stock of the situation. ”I don’t think so,” the president concluded, raising a hand to assure those in the audience. He then launched back into his speech, discussing the merits of a rail project to take passengers between Bordeaux and other parts of France. The errant shot was fired by a police sniper who was positioned on a roof as part of the security plan for the event, the Sud Ouest news outlet says, citing a local prefect in Villognon, the town in Charente the president visited today. The officer fired while adjusting his position, prefect says. Two people  —   a waiter who was there with the catering crew, and a worker who’s employed by the train line  —   were wounded by the bullet: one whose calf was grazed and another who was shot in the leg, Sud Ouest says. Their injuries were not serious, the news outlet adds."
"The World Health Organization for the first time has issued a list of the top 12 ”priority pathogens.” They’re   bacteria that are increasingly resistant to antibiotics, says WHO. Yet the development of new antibiotics to treat them has slowed to a crawl. ”We are fast running out of treatment options,” says Dr.   Kieny, WHO’s assistant   for Health Systems, in a statement. WHO says its new list is an attempt to get drug company and public research labs to make it a priority to collaborate on new treatments for the bacteria that pose the greatest threat to human health. ”If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we need are not going to be developed in time,” says Kieny. Dr. Elizabeth Tayler, a senior technical officer for Antimicrobial Resistance with WHO in Geneva, tells Goats and Soda that typically getting a new antibiotic can take a decade or more. ”And we are already seeing bugs that are resistant to all the drugs we have available,” she adds. The list has three sections: Critical, The highest priority is research and development for three families of multidrug resistant bacteria, including E. coli, that often prove fatal in hospitals and nursing homes. These often are ”gut” bacteria, according to Tayler, found in the intestinal tract and spread by the fecal contamination of food, water or operating room equipment. ”These bugs . .. usually affect people in intensive care units,” says Tayler. ”They get into your bloodstream, causing very severe   infections,   pneumonia and very, very nasty wound infections that are very hard to treat.” High priority, These are a grab bag of   microbes including gonorrhea, staph infections and salmonella. ”These are perhaps the bugs most likely to give you severe disease,” says Tayler. ”They spread very easily and we don’t have any other way of preventing them.” Medium, This category includes Haemophilus influenzae, which can cause a wide range of infections, particularly in children, and   streptococcus bacteria. Tayler says these microbes show significant resistance to antibiotics but are listed as ”medium” priority because there are other options to deterring them, including immunization. But don’t let the category title lull you, she says: ”The ’medium’ are still very nasty bugs that can make you very sick and kill you.”"
"Charles Collins and his wife, Joyce, were cruising down one of the main streets in Milwaukee’s North Side one spring evening in 2014, headed home after a day of babysitting their infant granddaughter. They had just dropped the little girl off with his son. ”You know how you have a leisurely ride?” Collins said this week by telephone. ”That’s just what we were doing, just enjoying my lady.” A police cruiser with two officers in it signaled for their car to pull over. Collins, then 64, worried that he was about to get a ticket. ”At the time, [the officer] said, ’I’m not the ticket police,’ and I said, ’OK  —   I’m good with that,’” he chuckled as he told me this part of the story. But if he wasn’t being pulled over for a moving violation, why were the police stopping him? The officer took his identification, went back to the cruiser and returned a few minutes later. They told the couple they were free to go. They did not receive a citation, summons or explanation. Their mood soured, Collins and his wife drove straight home. ”You know how you feel after an encounter like that,” he said. ”We were wondering, what was that all about?” What frustrated him, he said, is that he was usually on alert for the city’s police as he drove, but that day, with his wife, he had been relaxed and not paying attention. Collins, a Milwaukeean for most of his life, had been stopped by the Milwaukee police before, as had his son, whom he described as a straight arrow. For black men here, he said, encounters with the police are a rite of passage. ”That shouldn’t be your normal, but that’s what it was,” Collins said. Collins was unnerved enough by those stops that he joined a lawsuit filed this week by the ACLU against the city’s police department. The civil liberties group argues that these police stops were baseless and unconstitutional and targeted black and Latino men. They pointed to available records for police stops in Milwaukee from 2010 to 2012 and found that officers there had made hundreds of thousands of stops of pedestrians or motorists. The majority  —   72 percent  —   were stops of black   people. (The city’s population is about 34 percent black   according to the most recent census data.) In most instances of    officers canvass certain neighborhoods to stop and question pedestrians and motorists they deem suspicious if the officers suspect the person they stopped is carrying contraband, like drugs or guns, they can proceed to frisk them. Nusrat Choudhury, a lawyer with the ACLU, said that there was often no reason cited for the stops in the written reports that officers filed. ”Where a reason could have been supplied, there was ’none’ or vague descriptors like ’suspicious person’ or ’suspicious vehicle,’” she said. Choudhury said that none of the thousands of police records the ACLU examined indicate whether a frisk occurred following a police stop, much less whether there was any basis for a frisk, which ”raises the red flags that innocent people are being stopped and questioned [and frisked.” The ACLU’s lawsuit calls for an end of    by the Milwaukee Police Department. But the city’s police chief, Ed Flynn said in a written statement to the Milwaukee   that the department ”has never used the practice of    nor has there ever been a quota for traffic stops.” Flynn went on: ”However, traffic stops in   areas have been proven to reduce the number of   shootings, robberies and motor vehicle thefts.” Choudhury says that Greg Chambers, another plaintiff in the suit, was not stopped in an area known for high crime, per Chief Flynn’s explanation, but for ”race out of place”  —   being black in a neighborhood that is not. In big cities across the country,    policies have been contentious, and possibly the   application of the debunked ”broken windows” philosophy of policing, which holds that aggressive policing of   petty infractions prevents more serious crime from occurring. In recent years,    has been the subject of lawsuits in cities across the country. Critics say that the practice violates constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure, and that flooding black and Latino neighborhoods with police who have a wide berth to stop anyone for any reason is tantamount to racial profiling. They also argue that the practice rarely yields ”hits” on illegal activity or contraband. The ACLU lawsuit rests atop Milwaukee’s history of discord between the police and black residents, stretching back to when blacks moved from the South to the Midwest en masse during the Great Migration. During the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, Harold Breier, the city’s combative,   police chief, regularly antagonized the city’s black communities, who said that Breier’s department brutalized and mistreated black residents. The city remains among the most racially segregated in the country, which means that black and white residents are having vastly different experiences with policing in volume and texture: a report from the Public Policy Forum last year found that black people made up 72 percent of all arrests for marijuana possession in Milwaukee, while there is no evidence that black people use marijuana at vastly different rates than white people. Wisconsin locks up a larger percentage of its black men than any other state  —   and it isn’t particularly close a large chunk of that cohort of incarcerated black men comes from Milwaukee, the state’s largest city. (The city’s 53206 ZIP code is 95 percent black and has the highest incarceration rate in the country.) These tensions between black Milwaukeeans and the police department seem to have contributed to a crisis of legitimacy among the city’s police that has only been exacerbated by several   local cases of police violence. A study last year by three sociologists found that one such incident prompted residents in the city’s black neighborhood to make fewer emergency calls to 911 dispatchers. ”Police work of every kind relies on citizen participation, especially reports of law breaking . .. If police misconduct lowers crime reporting throughout black communities, it directly threatens public safety within those communities, many of which already have high levels of crime,” the authors wrote. For his part, Collins, the plaintiff in the ACLU    suit, said that he simply wants younger black people in the city to be able to grow up and not take as a given that they will have random, unexplained contact with the police. ”You haven’t committed a crime or anything, you’re innocent, you should have the freedom to flow,” he said. ”You don’t want to be looking over your shoulder, you know what I’m saying?”"
"You’re sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for the result of a test. The test will tell you whether you have a disease you really don’t want to have. As you wait, it seems as if the whole world is poised like a pencil balancing on its tip. In a moment, the doctor will come through that door and, based on the test, your world will fall one way or another. Or will it? I hope you never face a moment like this or, if you have faced one, it’s now far behind you. But as scary as these moments can be, they also illustrate a more subtle way of thinking about a field most people (including me) aren’t very good at thinking about: statistics. As part of my sabbatical season, I’ve been teaching myself probability and statistics (I’m training for work I want to do in Network Theory). Statistics has never been a field that’s come easily to me. But the deeper I dig into it, the more I’m falling in love with its ideas. Today, I want to use the example of the doctor and the test to introduce something remarkable in statistics that’s been affecting us all. It’s called Bayes’ theorem. And because of its use in Big Data and all those algorithms ruling our world, it’s worth taking a moment to consider. So let’s get back to the doc’s office. Let’s say she comes in and tells you the test was positive. She also tells you the test is 80 percent accurate. Does that mean there’s 80 percent probability that you have the disease? While that might seem to be the intuitive conclusion, it doesn’t tell the whole story. But to tell the whole story, you’ll need a subtler kind of statistical reasoning. That’s where Bayes’ theorem comes in. The usual way of thinking about statistics is what’s called the frequentist interpretation. Simple frequentist reasoning goes like this: Let’s say there are 1, 000 people living in a small town and 10 of them have an illness. If I pick a citizen at random, what is the probability that the person has the illness? A simple frequentist calculation says the probability would be 1 percent (i. e.   = 0. 01). The Bayesian interpretation of statistics looks at things much differently. It doesn’t just see probabilities as an expression of how frequently something happens. Instead Bayesians take statistical inference as a way of stating our confidence about unknown states of the world based on knowledge of the world we already have. With each new piece of knowledge we can update how confident we are about something being true or not true. In that way, the Bayesian view often focuses on what’s called conditional probability. What is the probability of this happening if I already know that has happened? (It’s actually much richer than this but I’m simplifying here for brevity.) To see how it all works, let’s go back to our test. We already know the test was 80 percent accurate. But now we also want to consider the times when the test comes back positive even though you don’t have the disease. These are known as false positives. Let’s assume there is a 9. 6 percent probability of the test coming back with a false positive. Finally, we should also ask: What’s the raw probability of getting the disease? Is it rare or common? Let’s say it’s pretty rare, like in our small town example, with the probability of a random person having the disease being just 1 percent. The power of the Bayes perspective is the way it quickly works with all this information rather than just looking at the positive test result. It considers how rare the disease is and the possibility of false positives, too. In this way the famous Bayes’ theorem (whose equation and explanations can be found here) allows you to quickly get the all important conditional probability you’re really interested in. And what do we mean by conditional probability? We mean the probability that you actually have the disease given that the test came back positive. That’s the real question you want to answer. Remember, if you had only considered the test, you’d think the probability you have the disease was 80 percent. With Bayes’ theorem, however, it turns out that, in fact, you really have only about an 8 percent chance of having the disease. There is a big difference between 80 percent and 8 percent  —   and that difference comes because of the fact that disease is actually rare and there is a nonzero rate of false positives. By considering these other pieces of information in a clear and quick way, Bayes’ theorem upends our usual intuitive statistical sensibilities. What our little parable of the doctor’s visit and test really tells us is the enormous power of the Bayesian perspective. Even though it has been known for some time (Thomas Bayes lived in the 18th century) its study and use has been growing like wildfire over the past few decades. In particular, the world of Big Data is powered by statistical reasoning  —   and much of that reasoning is powered by Bayes. So whether it’s a spam filter or the language recognition going into your conversations with Siri, you’ve already met Bayes a lot of times. Well, probably. (*Please note the example in this post DOES NOT tell you to ignore any test you get but to get it done again or have other tests to confirm the initial result. Please! Talk with your doctor). Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"When President Trump delivers his speech at the Capitol on Tuesday, he’ll be looking out at a   Congress. It’s now new DNC Chairman Tom Perez’s job to coordinate the opposition to change that dynamic. The former labor secretary was elected on Saturday in Atlanta. Perez tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep that Democrats have a lot of work to do. ”We need a   strategy plus the territories, and that’s what we talked about down in Atlanta last week, making sure that we redefine our mission as a Democratic Party so that we’re not simply electing the president, but we’re also working to elect people from the from the school board to the Senate across the nation,” he says. On whether a   strategy has a realistic way of competing in red states  Well, absolutely. You look at what happened in Kansas. Donald Trump won by 14 points, and [Democrats] picked up 14 seats in the state legislature because there’s radical social engineering going on by Gov. Brownback. [Editor’s note: Democrats in Kansas netted 12, not 14 seats in the Legislature.] In Alaska, for instance, the House of Representatives flipped Democratic. When we invest in these states and when we have an ”every ZIP code strategy,” we can succeed because our values and our message, I think, it resonates with the American people. We are the party that fights for Medicare. We’re the party that fights for Social Security. We’re the party that fights for good wages and we have to communicate that. On opposing a president who says he wants to preserve Medicare and Social Security, Well, that budget will not allow him to preserve Medicare and Social Security. He talks the talk but they don’t walk the walk. He’s talked the talk of ”I’m going to help the little guy” and . .. one of the first things he does on Jan. 20 is to take executive action to make it harder for   homeowners to buy a home. A few days later he’s making it harder for people to save for retirement. We implemented an overtime rule at the Department of Labor, and he’s seeking to roll that back. So he talks the talk, but the reality is he’s not draining the swamp. He’s filling it with billionaires. On whether Democrats in Congress will work with Republicans on an Affordable Care Act replacement  The reality is the Republicans don’t have . .. a replacement. This is a repeal, and when you repeal, what you’re saying to people like Ward, who I met  —   a long haul truck driver who in 2015, March 1, got his coverage, on March 15 got his liver transplant. And when I asked him ”What do you want to do now, Ward, that you have your life back?” He said, ”I want to work again.” That’s what the Affordable Care Act has done. It has been a lifesaver for people. And when you are trying to repeal something that has created access to health insurance for so many people, that makes no sense. And that’s why we’re fighting against it."
"One of the great treats of following an Agatha Christie mystery (my favorite being Hercule Poirot) is that you know there will be an ”Aha!” moment at the end. The fastidious, mustachioed detective will pull together all the disparate facts and present a compelling answer. I’m frequently reminded that science doesn’t work that way. The latest case in point is an article published Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that sets out to explore a trend in colorectal cancer among younger Americans. More than a decade ago, scientists noticed an odd quirk in the data: While overall rates of colorectal cancer have been falling dramatically since the   there’s been a steady uptick of this disease among people younger than 50. The numbers are small. Cancer incidence is creeping up by 1 or 2 cases per 100, 000 people under 50. By way of comparison, the disease rate among older Americans has plummeted by more than 100 cases per 100, 000 people. And the vast majority of colorectal cancer cases are among people over 50: These older Americans are 16 times more likely to get colon cancer, compared with adults who are younger. That’s why a small trend in younger adults is far outweighed by the dramatic decrease of disease among people over 50. Still, the   will eventually grow older. What will happen to their risk then? Will the trends that started in their 20s and 30s continue? If that’s the case, overall colorectal cancer rates might ultimately end their steady decline, and could start to rise. Another possibility is that, once people turn 50, they will follow the current medical guidance and get colonoscopies or other recommended screening tests, which can actually prevent colorectal cancer by finding and removing precancerous polyps. And their risk profile could end up looking much like it does today. Here’s where even Poirot would be stumped. There simply isn’t enough information to know what will happen. Epidemiologist Rebecca Siegel and her colleagues at the American Cancer Society have published their take in the JNCI. In their study, they break down the population into generational cohorts, focusing on millennials and members of Generation X. By breaking down the cases by age group, Siegel says, it’s easier to disentangle generational changes such as differences in diet from trends in medical diagnosis and treatment, which vary less by age. Still, she and her colleagues can only say so much. ”[T]he results do not provide any direct evidence about the role of specific exposures or interventions,” they note in the study. Even so, the researchers say, because trends in the young ”could be a bellwether of the future disease burden, our results are sobering.” Siegel tells Shots, ”It appears that under the surface, the underlying risk for this disease is actually increasing in the population.” What’s driving that is hard to say. Obesity is more common among younger than it used to be, so perhaps it’s partly to blame. Or it may not be obesity itself it could be that poor diet and lack of exercise, which contribute to obesity, are also influencing colon cancer rates. One study found that people from Africa who were suddenly switched to an American diet had signs of inflammation in their colons within just two weeks, Siegel notes, ”so this change can happen fairly rapidly.” But that’s far from a complete explanation. A large British study published a few years ago suggested that only 11 percent of colon cancer cases could be tied to trends in obesity. There’s also a scenario in which this seemingly glum cancer trend is in fact good news. Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy  Clinical Practice, says what look like additional cancers in people under 50 may simply be cases that are being diagnosed earlier than they would have been. Some people are getting colonoscopies for reasons other than cancer screening these days, and doctors are surely coming upon early cases of colon cancer they might not have turned up so soon. There’s some evidence to back that claim: While the rate of new cases of colorectal cancer has been climbing in   Americans since the   the death rate among that group has remained remarkably flat. And death rates may be the more telling statistic. Something similar happened with breast cancer in the 1980s  —   there was a temporary spike in the number of breast cancers diagnosed, as large numbers of women went in for mammography screening for the first time. But death rates didn’t rise, and incidence rates of breast cancers fell again after that uptick. Welch notes that we’re seeing that again with the rates of thyroid cancer, which are skyrocketing due to intensive screening and diagnosis but, again, there’s been no increase in mortality from thyroid tumors. Welch offers yet another possibility: Maybe the apparent rise in colon cancer among young people is real, but it won’t affect them as they age. ”The biology of the disease may be different between the young and the old,” he says. Welch himself has explored the much larger trend of declining colorectal cancer rates. Some of it is no doubt caused by vastly increased screening for colorectal cancer, though he notes that the decline was well under way before colonoscopies became routine. There’s no question that diet and other factors can also have a profound effect on cancer rates. ”One of the most dramatic cases of that is stomach cancer, which used to be a very common cause of cancer and has now virtually disappeared, at least in the United States,” Welch tells Shots. On one point there is broad agreement among doctors and researchers treating and studying this disease: The increased screening for colorectal cancer, which can involve removing polyps before they become cancer, has been a significant factor in reducing the burden of this illness. Another point of agreement: If the Trump administration eliminates the current insurance benefit for colon cancer screening as it does away with the Affordable Care Act, fewer people are likely to get screened for this deadly malignancy. And the likely impact of that is not a mystery. You can contact Richard Harris at rharris@npr. org."
"In 1890, Sir Thomas Lipton arrived on the island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to purchase a plot of land that would become the first tea estate in his global tea empire. These days, in the Ambadandegama Valley located just a few miles from Lipton’s original estate, another experiment in tea production is unfolding. Tucked into the side of a precipitous mountain, Amba Estate is a tea operation that shares 10 percent of its revenues with its workers. That’s a novel approach here in Sri Lanka, a country that’s one of the world’s largest exporters of tea  —   an industry that employs more than 1 million of its 22 million residents. ”What makes us different is our 10 percent revenue share  —   not profit share. We decided to do revenue share because even when we’re not making a profit, we felt it was only right that workers and management receives recognition,” says Simon Bell. Bell purchased the   Amba Estate in 2006 with three partners  —   all of whom had previously worked in international development. Their goal, he says, was to create a   social enterprise that could create   employment in the region. ”It’s thanks to the hard work and innovation [of the workers] that we’ve grown revenue 20 fold over the last few years.” The estate employs 30   workers from the local village. One elderly Tamil couple resides on the property itself. They had lived in an old line house, a structure built to house tea workers during the days of British rule, since long before Bell and his partners purchased the land. ”We didn’t know if they had anywhere else to go,” says Bell. ”They asked to stay and we were happy to let them.” Workers rise early in the morning, strolling or   down the winding road that links the village to the estate, and head into fields of tea bushes to fill bags of tea leaves plucked by hand. After about two hours of careful plucking, the workers leave the thick fields and head to the measuring room, a former line house converted into sunny work rooms. The tea bags are weighed, and workers make note of which section of the estate each bag came from, so that they can monitor flavor profiles. Then, they head back out to pluck again. The staff gets paid overtime if they work outside of their usual 7 a. m. to 3 p. m. day or during the weekend. Workers also receive bonuses from a portion of the sales made in the estate’s gift shop. The tea leaves are spread out on racks that get placed inside dryers like this one  —   basically, it’s a metal contraption with a heating bulb and ventilation holes. The design is deliberately simple: Both the racks and the dryers are locally made. Bell and his partners worked with Sri   engineers to design the technology  —   they wanted to make it easy for other local, small farmers to replicate. ”From Day 1 we wanted to be a model to show   and small farmers that you don’t need to be a big factory. You can produce tea with local technology,” says Bell. ”Our hope is to create simple, affordable machinery for other farmers and to help a small industry in itself with these equipment firms.” It’s that kind of attitude that has helped make Amba successful, says Rohan Pethiyagoda, the chairman of the Sri Lanka Tea Board. ”They work with the village rather than agitate against them,” says Pethiyagoda. ”They don’t complain about dogs barking at night or the radio in the village being a little louder that it perhaps should be. They haven’t tried to socially engineer the village to their way of thinking.” In a country where ethnic tensions fueled a   civil war that ended in 2009, Amba Estate boasts another rare distinction: The staff is nearly equally split between Sinhalese and Tamil workers. ”Most of the harmony has been because of the history of the place,” Bells says. The estate was first purchased in 1890 by Thamba Arunasalam Pillai, a former Tamil plantation laborer who turned it into a successful tea enterprise. For years, the original Tamil owners and local Sinhalese and Tamil villagers have held joint celebrations for weddings and religious holidays. (Tamils are Hindus, Sinhalese are Buddhist.) ”We can’t take credit for the history of the region, but we certainly maintain and benefit from it,” Bell says. Indeed, the Pillai legacy lives on at Amba. Pilla’s   Karuna Mohan Raj, joined the team as estate manager in 2009. He also leads tours of the grounds. Tea tourism is big business in Sri Lanka  —   and a major source of revenue for Amba. The estate typically sees about 2, 000 visitors a year, Bell says. Some stay the night in a 100   farmhouse on the grounds, indulge in tea tastings and take tours of the property. The partners are also working to renovate an old, abandoned tea factory on the property and turn it into an   hotel. Amba is one of just three tea plantations in the country to be certified organic. As part of the organic conversion process, the estate uses manure from a herd of cows it adopted several years ago. ”It’s a local Buddhist tradition to rescue cows destined for slaughter from the abattoir at New Year each year,” says Bell, ”So we ended up with our own herd of ’rescue cows’ to provide organic manure.” While it sounds idyllic, the process of converting Amba into a social enterprise hasn’t come without challenges. The region has shallow, gravelly soil that produces rich tea flavors but can make growing difficult. Swarming bees occasionally force visitors to find quick shelter inside. Cows have fallen down wells or trampled tea plants. Brush fires have spread through the estate.   village relations sometimes boil over, leading to disputes. ”There is no day something unexpected doesn’t happen due to weather, animals or the community,” says Bell. ”We take it as it comes.” Tea Tuesdays is an occasional series exploring the science, history, culture and economics of this ancient brewed beverage. Victoria Milko is a photojournalist based in Myanmar."
"President Trump and his advisers have begun putting some red meat on the bones of the president’s ”America First” agenda. Trump is expected to talk more about that when he addresses a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. As with Brexit and other nationalist movements, Trump sees his election as part of a broader rejection of globalization. ”Erasing national borders does not make people safer or more prosperous,” Trump told supporters in Melbourne, Fla. this month. ”It undermines democracy and trades away prosperity. We’re giving it away.” That philosophy not only guides the president’s policies on immigration and national security, it is also steering an economic agenda that plays well with many of Trump’s most ardent supporters. ”A lot of people here are   and looking to support a president that finally says, ’I’m for you, the working man,’” said rally attendee James Evert. ”His No. 1 concern is Americans. Not for all the other people around the world.” But turning nationalistic slogans into practice is easier said than done, as Trump discovered on one of his first days in office. During a discussion of restarting two stalled pipelines, Trump insisted his commerce secretary look for ways to include more American materials. ”It comes from the United States or we’re not building it,” Trump told an audience of conservative activists last week. The actual order is not quite so  . It includes considerable wiggle room if the ”buy American” provision turns out to be impractical or runs afoul of international trade rules. Some people welcome the president’s push. ”I thought, it’s about time,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a partnership between the steelworkers union and domestic steel companies. Thousands of steel jobs have been lost in recent years, partly as a result of cheap Chinese imports. Paul said those idle steelworkers would be happy to go back to work making pipes. But first, their employers will have to be convinced that Trump’s mandate has staying power. ”It’s kind of the    thing,” Paul said. ”U. S. steelmakers are not going to open up lines to make massive amounts of pipes if they don’t think pipes are going to be in demand. But once they know there is going to be a market, this is a product the steel industry will be eager to deliver.” Likewise, Trump has been pressing automakers to locate more assembly plants in the U. S. But that may overlook what’s under the hood. Carmaking is a business that increasingly crosses national borders. Many American automakers rely heavily on imported parts, while many foreign companies employ workers here in the U. S. ”The No. 1   car was the Toyota Camry,” said senior editor Kelsey Mays of the website Cars. com, which compiles an annual index of the most ” ” models. ”That may surprise some people because Toyota obviously isn’t based here in the United States. But the Camry has 75 percent domestic content. It’s built in Georgetown, Ky. and Lafayette, Ind. ,” Mays says. In fact, the five most   models on the Cars. com list last year all had Japanese nameplates. The biggest disconnect between Trump’s narrow brand of nationalism and the reality of global supply chains showed up when the president visited a Boeing plant earlier this month to celebrate the rollout of a new 787 Dreamliner. ”This plane, as you know, was built right here in the great state of South Carolina,” Trump said. ”Our goal as a nation must be to rely less on imports and more on products made here in the U. S. A.” While Boeing is an American company, the Dreamliner is a melting pot. Its fuselage comes from Italy. The wings are from Japan. Passenger doors are built in France. What’s more, 85 percent of the planes are sold overseas. ”You’ve got a plane that’s heavily sourced from abroad and overwhelmingly goes to international customers,” said aviation consultant Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group. ”This is a poster child for globalization.” Big exporters like Boeing would have a big target on their backs if Trump’s protectionist policies end up starting a trade war. In a way, it’s odd that Trump would choose to give an ”America First” speech while standing in front of a newly assembled Dreamliner. With its   range, the widebody jet is built to carry people quickly and easily across oceans and between continents. That flight could be bumpy with a new nationalistic president at the controls."
"When he addresses a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, President Trump is expected to outline some of his plans for rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. And he will likely reiterate his commitment to ”buy American and hire American,” as he repeated often during the campaign and since taking office last month. But what exactly does that mean for state departments of transportation and the contractors who build transportation projects? ”I think for the most part that means business as usual,” says Jim Tymon, chief operating officer for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or AASHTO. ”There are already requirements in federal law that require state DOTs and local transit agencies to buy American products as they construct infrastructure projects around the country,” he says. Those requirements, actually called ”buy America” in federal law, were first put in place in the late 1970s after the collapse of the steel industry. They were gradually expanded to include almost all federal   transportation projects. ”For the folks building highways and bridges in this country, it really is the default to use locally and   products because they’re locally available and sometimes cheaper to use,” Tymon says. And it’s evident in the massive reconstruction of the Jane Byrne Circle Interchange near downtown Chicago. It’s one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the country, as three major expressways carrying about 400, 000 vehicles a day all converge there. The Illinois Department of Transportation is in the midst of a six year, $600 million construction project aimed at reducing chronic congestion and lengthy delays. Just one recently completed   ramp, from the northbound Dan Ryan Expressway,    to the westbound Eisenhower Expressway,   contains 6, 900 cubic yards of concrete, 4. 8 million pounds of structural steel and 2. 5 million pounds of steel rebar. And all of those materials were made in the U. S. with much it coming from the steel mills of Gary, Ind. about 25 miles away. But preserving American steel industry jobs comes at a cost. ”Economics is always about ” says Jeff Davis, senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, a   policy think tank in Washington, D. C. who has written extensively about ”buy America” rules. ”  steel usually out of the mill will cost 70, 80 percent more than Chinese steel out of the mill,” Davis says. Davis says the cost of shipping Chinese steel over the Pacific Ocean mitigates that cost difference a little bit, but he says Americans should know that buying homemade products will usually increase the price, sometimes significantly. And Davis adds that this administration seems willing to pay that higher price. ”Clearly, President Trump has decided that preserving   jobs is a worthwhile endeavor and is probably worth less efficient procurement of highway and bridge projects,” Davis says. States can get waivers from the federal government’s ”buy America” and other such requirements if complying increases the costs significantly, if a certain material or product is difficult to get, or if it may create significant construction delays. And some industry groups want those waivers to remain, in case of any unforeseen circumstances. ”Our concern is that someone would take an extreme interpretation of those rules, and the cost of complying with an extreme interpretation would far outweigh the economic benefit of ’buy America’,” says Rich Juliano of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. For example, Juliano says contractors often need to purchase extra parts or materials on the fly, such as ”very small components, literally nuts and bolts and  .” Those are things that may cost just pennies a piece. ”If you’re requiring a contractor to document the origin of nuts and bolts or   or something like that, all the way back to when they were first produced, that could be difficult to do,” Juliano says. It’s not clear if the Trump administration will expand requirements for buying   products to such small parts, but the president is already going beyond existing mandates in other ways. He’s requiring American steel in the construction of the   Dakota Access Pipeline. And Vice President Mike Pence in St. Louis last week hinted buy America requirements could be expanded even further. ”We’re gonna rebuild America with American workers and American tools,” he said during a speech to workers at the Fabick Cat company in Fenton, Mo. Could that mean private contractors on government projects would be required to use   backhoes, graders and dump trucks? Even   hammers,   and wrenches? A White House spokesperson would not clarify, saying in an emailed statement, ”we are currently considering many options and it would be premature to speak about specifics.” Juliano worries about how that might play out. ”It might be that, you know, costs of these projects would increase a great deal because of that,” he says. Nonetheless, this is one of the rare instances in which President Trump’s agenda may have bipartisan support. A number of congressional Democrats are already backing legislation to expand ”buy America” requirements."
"Tressie McMillan Cottom studies   colleges as a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has analyzed large data sets, scrutinized financial filings, interviewed students and staff. But she has also helped enroll students at two different   herself. They’re not named, but known only as ”Beauty College” and ”Technical College” in her new book, Lower Ed.  NPR Ed has covered both the rise, and some of the travails, of this form of education. We called up Cottom to hear her thoughts. Here’s an edited version of our conversation. Interview Highlights, The last few years brought a string of   closures and crackdowns on companies like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute. But now we have a president who himself started the   nonaccredited Trump University, and reports are that the stocks of   college companies are rising. You think   will bounce back?  Yup. I think the conditions are ripe for it. We attribute too much of that enrollment bust to people wising up. But the cost of managing regulation had gotten high as well.   stocks have been bullish [since the election] because that political change means less regulatory cost. As long as the social safety net continues to fray, job cycles are short and incomes are spiky, there will be demand. You write that we should place more blame for the growth of ”Lower Ed” on changing labor markets and those fraying social safety nets. For 15 or 20 years we’ve had this narrative that everybody needs to go to college. ”College for all” was the response to changes in the job market that made people unstable and insecure. Now we’re at the end of that rope  —   debt has made it run out. But if workers don’t have some way to extract better money from employers, more stability and security, that’s why we have government and unions. You use the term ”education gospel.” What is that, and how does it affect our understanding of the job   colleges are doing?  I was really excited to find the term. Economists W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson say the education gospel is about the faith we have in education and what a significant role that faith plays in what we call our opportunity structure, or how we distribute rewards in society. We trust education will have a positive effect on our lives and our society.   have perverted that faith. It’s really clear, in SEC [U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission] filings, for example, how deliberate they are in using ”College” and ”University” in their names, or getting a ” ” Internet address. They know what that means to people. Yet they really fall down in the high cost, the high risk of not completing and the poor job outcomes. One group you spent time with, whose members invoked aspects of the education gospel, were the women in the Facebook group called Sisters Working to Achieve Greatness, or SWAG. They call themselves ”Swaggers.” They are   mainly enrolled in   online programs. But they are earning Ph. D. s, which doesn’t fit most people’s stereotype of   students. Yes, so a couple of things. [First,] we tend to think of students in   as being ” .” That they don’t know any better. Yet almost all of these women had traditional degrees already. [Second] if all the predictions about how we need to become lifelong learners are true, then the Swaggers are ahead of the curve. To maintain our status, our job, our family life, our patterns of consumption, we have to constantly have more credentials. But we can’t take on the opportunity cost of leaving the job market. So they choose online programs despite the high cost. You wrote about women like Janet, who maxed out with over $100, 000 in student loans, but ”insisted that education is an investment.” Is that a rationalization?  They are taking the only practical options available to them. Then they retrofit what they know about college to make that option rational, by saying that technology is the future, or investing in yourself is the future. Do you see any legitimate role for   in the education landscape? My answer is a qualified yes. There has to be something for these highly regulated, licensed industries, like cosmetology. The work I personally felt was most defensible was my work with women in the beauty college. The occupational outcome was clear  —   not highly paid, but better, cleaner work than waitressing. Less   so women could get regular child care. And there’s a real reason why    higher ed doesn’t compete for those certificate programs  —   the semester system makes it really hard to do it efficiently. One other new development that might challenge the popularity of   colleges is the rise of online, flexible programs. I’m thinking of examples like the nonprofit Southern New Hampshire University and the public University of Wisconsin Flex Degree programs. They do seem to be competing for the same students: working adults. Do you think that these represent an improvement? I’m still deciding how I feel. My gut reaction is there’s something weird about it. Ideally yes, I want higher ed, especially public higher education, to compete for these students, to become more accessible in really critical ways. There’s almost nothing we could do to traditional higher ed to make it more accessible that wouldn’t make it better for traditional students as well. So I worry we are adopting the practices without really changing how we do business. You mean, by running programs somewhat separately from the main university? I don’t think the model itself has to be academically inferior. There are mechanisms to defend academic rigor in traditional institutions. But the way we design these programs is really as workarounds to get around precisely those things. This delays the inevitable bureaucratic change that needs to happen in the university overall."
"President Trump is receiving plaudits for his first joint address to Congress. The White House certainly thinks it went well  —   so much so, it was reported that the White House is holding its revised travel ban, in part, to bask in the glow of the positive reviews. Snap polls after the speech showed that people who watched it largely liked it. The speech came at as good a time as any for Trump. His first month as president  —   marked by lower approval ratings than any recent president at the same point  —   has been chaotic and off message. His speech Tuesday night was the opposite  —   organized and scripted. It was pretty. .. normal. And, right now, Trump and his congressional GOP colleagues in particular could use a little normal, especially as they try to show they can govern. All that said, there are still lots of questions for Trump and the GOP. His speech set priorities and delivered red meat, but put no meat on the bones. Anyone have a better sense of what the Obamacare replacement will look like after last night? Anyone better informed about how Trump wants Congress to pay for that border wall? (Words not in the speech: ”border adjustment tax. ”) Anyone know how he wants to pay for that $1 trillion infrastructure spending? (After all, Republicans have always said they’re in favor of infrastructure spending, but could never agree with Democrats on how to pay for it in the Obama years.) And, stylistically, it was more positive than his dire inaugural speech, but it wasn’t buoyant  —   a shining city on a hill where the arc of history is long but bends toward justice, it was not. Trump’s supporters find hope in Trump’s words of nostalgic repair, but he was never soaring  —   there were no moonshots or quests for cancer cures. But how did it resonate? A majority of speech viewers told CNN in a poll immediately after the speech that they came away with a positive impression almost seven in 10 said they think the policies he’s proposing will move the country in the right direction and almost   said they think he has the right priorities. It should be noted, however, that this is not a poll of all Americans or even registered voters, but a group of people who decided to tune in for the speech that CNN reached out to beforehand. As CNN notes: ”People who choose to watch a political speech such as this one tend to be more supportive of the speaker. In this case, the pool of   was about eight points more Republican than the population as a whole.” That’s significant. It’s also worth pointing out that the 57 percent who came away with a positive impression is higher than any Obama State of the Union, but lower than his 2009 joint address to Congress.   also interviewed    —   more than   approved of the speech the same percentage said it was ”positive,” with 61 percent calling it ”very positive” and   said Trump is describing America ”as it really is.” CBS also points out that ”Republicans did tune in to watch it in much greater numbers than Democrats (as a president’s party typically does) which bolstered those approval numbers.” Some 40 percent of Democrats, though, did also approve of the speech. And perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the speech was the number who thought it was ”presidential”  —   82 percent. That’s significant because even supporters of Trump criticize him for his Twitter wars and      insults. Those   suburban white women, concerned about his tone, were likely given some hope. Republicans in Congress were likely reassured of what’s possible with Trump, that perhaps Trump is capable of a reset  —   if only he keeps off Twitter. ... Is this the ”pivot”? Of course, other presidents who have been soaring in State of the   speeches have been criticized for not laying out specific policy agendas. And when they lay out specific policy agendas, they are sometimes criticized for delivering too much of a laundry list. Trump is getting good marks for delivering a speech that was normal, but it didn’t advance much of his agenda except to calm those who want to support him. And remember, this is Trump. He’s done this before. He got ”presidential” a handful of times during the campaign when his back was against the wall. ”We’ve got to be nice and cool, nice and calm,” Trump implored himself at a rally in Florida a week before Election Day. ”All right. Stay on point, Donald. Stay on point. No sidetracks, Donald. Nice and easy.” Trump has always reverted back. The past has always been the best predictor of the future for Trump, and there’s no reason to think that’s not true now. It’s not clear it will matter, though. The door is open for success for Trump  —   in spite of his worst instincts. That’s because the thing that has mattered most to successful legislative agendas for presidents is simple: numbers. It was true for Johnson and his Great Society measures it was true for Obama and health care. Trump and Republicans have a golden opportunity, controlling both chambers, the White House, the majority of governorships and legislatures  —   and a favorable 2018 midterm landscape. That kind of foundation can withstand Twitter spats. Because of that, there’s less risk for Trump politically  —   until or unless something really goes wrong. He’s got a lot of room for error, and last night’s speech can only help him with the people he needs it to help with."
"Updated at 10:28 a. m. ET, Donald Trump’s first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was the occasion for his most presidential performance to date, balancing a reprise of his angry campaign themes with a recitation of hopes and dreams for the nation. It was his most successful, if not his first, effort at assuming the public persona and personal demeanor associated with his new office. He stuck to the script on his teleprompter, spoke graciously to individuals in the audience and refrained from attacks on critics, rivals or adversaries. Toward the beginning and again at the end of his   speech (the longest presidential address to Congress of any kind in 35 years) Trump asked what the nation would look like in 2026  —   the 250th anniversary of its founding.  ”Hopefully,” he said, ”the 250th year for America will see a world that is more peaceful, more just and more free.” The president began with words of condemnation for the hate crimes lately unleashed on religious and ethnic minorities around the country, including the fatal shooting of an immigrant from India in a suburb of Kansas City. ”Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.” The president, however, did not respond to critics who say these recent acts have been encouraged by some of his own rhetoric or apparent signs of disrespect for targeted groups. Rather, he turned to strikingly poetic sentiments. ”Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty and justice  —   in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present,” he said. ”That torch is now in our hands,” the president said. ”And we will use it to light up the world. I am here tonight to deliver a message of unity and strength, and it is a message deeply delivered from my heart.” These words early in the speech quickly confirmed the expectation of a softened tone and more inclusive mood. The White House communications staff had promised a speech far more upbeat than any he has delivered in his campaign or in the months since Election Day. The contrast with his ”American carnage” jeremiad on Inauguration Day was unmistakable and clearly intentional. The success of the big speech strategy seemed immediately apparent. Media coverage was largely positive, even laudatory. Snap polls showed big majorities found the speech optimistic and uplifting. The president’s approval rating, which had been at historic lows for a president in his first month in office, is expected to pop back up in the next few soundings. Still, the new president is nothing if not unpredictable. In fact, being unpredictable was a trait mentioned often by candidate Trump, indicating that previous presidents and others negotiating for U. S. interests were too easy to read and counter. So, while he projected a sunnier outlook than he had in other major addresses or in his campaign rallies, he also reiterated the ”America first” theme several times, including near the top and the end of his remarks. ”America must put its own citizens first,” the president said, ”because only then can we truly make America great again.” Trump made it clear he was talking about trade policy, citing the withdrawal from the   Partnership as one example of his desire for better deals around the globe. But he also returned repeatedly to the topic of immigration. He renewed his pledge to construct ”a great wall on the southern border” to counter ”lawless chaos” in that region. He also vowed to create a new agency called VOICE  —   for Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. And it was widely noted that of the first six guests announced to share the first lady’s box in the gallery, three had lost immediate family members to violent criminals in the country illegally. ”We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests,” Trump said. There had been talk throughout Tuesday of a drastic shift in White House policy regarding those in the country illegally. The president had indicated to a luncheon group (of anchors and correspondents from TV news operations) that he might be open to compromise on a path to citizenship, perhaps for those ”dreamers” who were brought to the U. S. as children by parents entering the country illegally. But in the speech, there was no such talk. All mention of reform was focused on border security, stricter enforcement and economic security for Americans. On domestic policy, the president did stun many in the audience when he said he wanted ”paid family leave” and an infrastructure package worth $1 trillion. These are both ideas long espoused by the Democratic Party but resisted for decades by business groups and Republicans generally. Few would expect either of these ideas to become law anytime soon. But the president seemed to relish proposing something the Democrats might cheer about, even if they seemed remarkably reluctant to do so. The president also said he wanted to repeal and replace Obamacare, but said the replacement would still cover people with   conditions. There was no explanation of how that would square with a repeal of the individual mandate by which everyone has to obtain insurance up to minimum government standards. The latter provision is what enables insurers to handle policyholders with expensive conditions. Trump also stated his preference for keeping the tax credits in Obamacare that enable lower income people to afford insurance. That is also a favorite idea of Speaker Paul Ryan,  . who sat through the speech grinning like a schoolboy. But it is stoutly resisted by both the   House Freedom Caucus and the more mainstream conservative Republican Study Committee. Both see ”a new entitlement” coming into being if the tax subsidies are made refundable to those with no federal income tax bill (because their income is too low). Nonetheless, Trump and Republican leaders spent the evening acting as though their plan for replacing Obamacare was all but complete and ready for votes. Most observers, though, think the House is a long way from agreement among its own Republican factions. The outlook for Medicaid programs that were expanded as part of Obamacare is typically clouded because some members think it’s imperative to replace Obamacare with something new and different immediately. Others are willing to see it done before the end of April or even later, so long as people do not lose coverage en masse. The Tuesday night event was not long on military or foreign policy. The president said he supported ”direct, robust and meaningful engagement with the world” and wanted to stay in NATO. He also asserted that certain NATO nations had begun spending more on their own defense, responding to his threats and prodding. It was not immediately clear what basis he had for this. Trump did reiterate U. S. support for Israel and opposition to ISIS. He did not mention North Korea, Iran or Russia. The latter country has been much in the news because U. S. intelligence has described its efforts to meddle in last year’s presidential election. Lately, stories based on anonymous sources have said Russian officials had regular and extensive contacts with Trump supporters during the election cycle. Democrats in Congress have been seeking either an independent prosecutor to pursue the case or a special committee of both the House and Senate. Republican leaders have said there is no evidence to justify such efforts. But soon after Trump’s inauguration, the intelligence committees in both the House and the Senate began their own respective inquiries. The president also produced the most emotionally powerful moment of the evening when he introduced the widow of William ”Ryan” Owens, a Navy SEAL killed in a special operations raid against a terrorist site in Yemen just days after Trump took office. Carryn Owens was honored by a standing ovation by everyone visible in the vast House chamber, regardless of party or position. She wept openly, clasped her hands and looked upward as the ovation continued for several minutes. When it finally subsided, the president said, ”Ryan is looking down right now and he’s happy because I think you broke a record.” The Yemeni raid remains controversial, and Owens’ father had refused to meet with Trump when he came to greet the returning remains at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The father said he wanted an investigation to find out why the raid had been conducted, why his son and nearly 30 civilians had died and what the raid had accomplished. After Owens’ father raised questions about the raid, NBC News reported that the operation ”has so far yielded no significant intelligence.” Contradicting that report, Trump said Tuesday night he had been assured by Secretary of Defense James Mattis that the raid was a success and that it captured intelligence that will be of value for a long time  —   and Vice President Pence told CBS News on Wednesday morning that the NBC report was ”wrong.”"
"Barely a month after the death of her husband in a   U. S.   raid in Yemen, Carryn Owens was one of President Trump’s guests in the House gallery for his address to Congress. Navy SEAL William ”Ryan” Owens died in the first such operation approved by the new president. She wept as Trump spoke directly to her: ”We are blessed to be joined tonight by Carryn Owens, the widow of U. S. Navy Special Operator, Senior Chief William ”Ryan” Owens. Ryan died as he lived: a warrior, and a hero  —   battling against terrorism and securing our nation. ”I just spoke to our great Gen. Mattis, just now, who reconfirmed that, and I quote, ’Ryan was a part of a highly successful raid that generated large amounts of vital intelligence that will lead to many more victories in the future against our enemies.’ Ryan’s legacy is etched into eternity. Thank you.” The chamber rose in a standing ovation that lasted more than a minute and a half. As it came to an end the president added: ”Ryan is looking down right now, you know that, and he’s very happy, because I think he just broke a record,” referring to the applause. As NPR has reported, the White House has repeatedly called the raid a success, despite the deaths of Owens and at least 23 civilians, including a small child. The New York Times, in an analysis of the raid, wrote, ”Everything that could go wrong did.” Ryan Owens’ father, Bill Owens, is calling for an investigation into the raid. The Pentagon says one is normally conducted when an operation results in loss of life. In an interview with the Miami Herald, Owens said that he had declined to meet with Trump when his son’s body arrived at Dover Air Force Base. Trump and his daughter Ivanka were present at what the military calls ”dignified transfer” of a service member’s remains. Owens, who acknowledged he did not vote for Trump, said he wants the president to stop ”hiding behind [his] son’s death.” In an interview with Fox News Tuesday morning, Trump appeared to deny responsibility for the raid. ”This was something that was, you know, just  —   they wanted to do,” Trump said, referring to the military. ”And they came to see me and they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected.” ”And they lost Ryan,” the president continued."
"In his speech last night, President Trump asked Congress to pass a broad school choice initiative. ”I am calling upon members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of   and Latino children. . .. ”These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.” It’s not clear yet exactly how a program like this could be funded. ”There isn’t that much money that is fungible from the federal education budget,” points out Samuel Abrams, an expert in education policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. There is currently a bill in the House that would replace the major federal education law with block grants, including for vouchers. However, that law was reauthorized with broad bipartisan support in 2015, making such a reversal difficult. But Trump’s speech did contain a clue as to how school choice might expand without major reappropriation of federal funds. He spoke about one of his invited guests, a young Florida woman named Denisha Merriweather: ”As a young girl, Denisha struggled in school and failed third grade twice. But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, great learning center, with the help of a tax credit, and a scholarship program.” What he was actually talking about was Florida’s tax credit scholarship program. And it’s worth looking at the details if you’re curious about exactly how expanded school choice might work under this administration. Most people are familiar with voucher programs, where state dollars go to pay for tuition at private schools. These programs have faced constitutional challenges in Florida and elsewhere  —   among other reasons, because they direct public money to religiously based organizations. In a scholarship tax credit program, however, the money bypasses state coffers altogether. In Florida, corporations or individuals can get a generous,    tax break by donating to a private, nonprofit scholarship organization. The money from this fund is in turn awarded to families to pay for tuition at private schools. In other words, it’s donors that get the tax credits, and families that get the scholarships. The   structure could be a way to promote school choice on a federal level without writing big checks, and without running into problems with the Constitution over religion in schools. The Florida program, created in 2001, has been popular. In the   school year, 92, 000 students received scholarships, a 17 percent increase from the year before. The state’s scholarship organization, Step Up for Students, announced that the recipients were overwhelmingly   and Hispanic, with incomes just above the poverty line. Over 70 percent of the scholarships are directed at religious, primarily Christian, schools. Florida’s tax credit scholarships was recently ranked No. 1 in the country by a group called the American Federation for Children. That’s the advocacy organization that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos chaired until she was nominated. Last fall, AFC issued a report ranking the existing private school choice programs. There are 50 of them, located in 25 states and Washington, D. C. by AFC’s count. AFC awarded high marks to Florida’s program for its: However, not everyone is a fan. The Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers union, sued to challenge the program in cooperation with the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and other groups. The suit was dismissed in the lower courts, which said the union and the other parties did not have standing to challenge it. In January, the Florida Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Mark Pudlow, a spokesman for the union, argues that the fund violates Florida students’ constitutional right to a ”uniform education.” That’s because schools that receive scholarship funds ”don’t have to follow the state curriculum, don’t have to participate in testing, don’t have to hire certified teachers.” In fact, teachers don’t even need bachelor’s degrees. ”They don’t have to follow the same rules.” The AFC awarded Florida’s program 26 out of a possible 28 points for accountability. The private schools are required to administer a standardized test of some kind, though not necessarily the state test. There is no mechanism to close schools that underperform, or take away their eligibility for the scholarship. Denisha Merriweather, President Trump’s guest last night, says she’s living proof that tax credit scholarships work. She wrote an   in 2015 in support of the program. ”It gave me a fresh start and an opportunity to try out a different school that fit me like a glove, just like it has done for thousands of other students over the past 13 years.” A version of this story previously appeared on NPR Ed on Jan. 31. "
"It’s not clear when or where life on this planet began, but scientists are working hard to find out. Now, researchers writing in the journal Nature say they found fossils of what could be some of the earliest known creatures to grace the Earth, embedded in rocks that are at least 3. 7 billion years old. ”These rocks are some of the oldest  —   if not the oldest  —   sedimentary rocks on Earth today,” says Matt Dodd, a biogeochemist at University College London in the U. K. who studied the ancient rocks. The rocks hold some very small and curious shapes. Some, Dodd says, look like ”strings of iron.” Others look like tubes or spirals. They look a lot like the microbes you’d find clumping around a volcanic vents in the ocean today  —   like the   gelatinous mats full of bacteria that form around vents off the coast of Hawaii. ”A spongey kind of gloopy soup, if you like,” says Dodd. Yum. That gloopy soup contains just the kind of shapes that Dodd and his colleagues spotted in these rocks. And, he says, the fossils contain the chemistry you’d expect to find around living organisms, namely, lots of carbon and phosphorus. ”It provides us with this high degree of certainty that these structures are indeed, biological microorganisms that were living and thriving around hydrothermal vents billions of years ago,” he says. If Dodd is correct and the shapes are, indeed, the leftovers of living beings, then these fossils hold the oldest evidence of life on the planet. (And they could provide a tantalizing hint about the possibility of life forming elsewhere. Mars, Dodd points out, hosted vast oceans between about 3. 7 and 4. 3 billion years ago.) But that’s a big ”if.” The study, like other recent studies that try to probe life’s early history, has plenty of skeptics. Tanja Bosak, a geobiologist at MIT, says she’s not convinced these fossils are signs of life  —   or that they are really as old as the authors assume they are. ”The big problem is the understanding of what can create those sorts of very simple shapes in rocks,” says Bosak. There’s a lot of activity at hydrothermal vents, she says, and it’s possible that something like precipitating minerals could be responsible for creating the curious shapes in these fossils. ”We are talking about very, very simple shapes here. We have blobs and knobs and something that they interpret as filaments, and it’s really just an unevenly thick string. We are not talking about having a beautiful fossil bone here or something,” she says. Things can get hairy trying to interpret signs of life from more than 3. 4 billion years ago, largely because rocks older than that are so deformed it’s hard to tell what’s in them, or whether certain forms came from living organisms or from the billions of years of heating and squishing that the rocks endured. ”We don’t have a good enough understanding of the range of features that can form under all sorts of conditions, whether they include biology or not,” she says. ”Everywhere you go on Earth today you will find biology, so it’s almost impossible to find negative controls.” Two separate groups of scientists identified the age of the rocks using separate techniques, one group landing an age of 3. 7 billion years, and the other one about 4. 3 billion years. But Bosak says the   forms could be much younger than the rocks they were found in. ”Because our planet is so geologically active, you’ll have things cracking and tumbling around,” she says. Cracks can form and then get filled with fluids. Any of those processes could have provided a chance for interesting shapes to form, whether biology was involved or not. For Bosak, the earliest evidence of life on Earth is a 3.    fossil found in Australia. ”I think it would be incredibly exciting to find some sign of something that was living 3. 8 billion years ago, at a time that was not very favorable to life. There were all sorts of meteorite impacts, possibly hot environments. It would be incredibly amazing to see where life took hold,” she says. But this one just might not be it."
"President Trump gave an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, outlining his vision for America. ”We are one people, with one destiny,” Trump said, offering a markedly different tone than his inaugural address, which described a country in crisis. He touted his executive actions, called again for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare and reiterated his position on immigration and national security. Journalists across NPR have annotated his full remarks."
"Following President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, the Democratic Party gave its response. Party leaders chose former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear to do the honors this year. Beshear, who left office in 2015, has a record of expanding access to affordable health care, lowering his state’s uninsured rate from more than 20 percent to 7. 5 percent. NPR journalists have annotated his remarks."
"Infinity is a concept that’s nearly impossible to grasp, let alone see. But it’s one of artist Yayoi Kusama’s obsessions. The Japanese artist is known for her ”infinity rooms,” which have mirrored walls that make the space feel endless. Now, for the very first time, six of Kusama’s infinity rooms are on display in one venue: the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D. C. (The show will later travel to Seattle, Los Angeles and other cities.) At first, walking into one of Kusama’s infinity rooms can be disorienting. One room, The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, is pitch black except for a spray of flickering red, green, yellow and blue lights  —   like little jewels suspended in  . They seem to go on forever you’re not sure what you can touch and what’s out of reach. Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu says the room makes ”you feel as if you’re a speck in amongst something greater.” That idea  —   that we’re all just specks in the universe  —   has captivated Kusama for decades. In 1968, she wrote, ”Our Earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos.” And with her infinity rooms, you almost lose any sense of space. ”She shocked the living daylights out of people,” says Richard Castellane, Kusama’s art dealer in New York in the 1960s. He remembers one infinity room that was full of phalluses and another that had masses of blinking colored lights and a Beatles soundtrack. ”The machine would be setting off these lights in almost like a   rhythm,” Castellane says. ”And what occurred, of course, was the lights would bounce from mirror to mirror to mirror to mirror, and you couldn’t focus on anything. You had no sense of space because space was infinite.” Kusama’s work astonished her 1960s audience. ”They were just mesmerized and rather overwhelmed,” Castellane says. ”It was something very new.” Castellane describes Kusama’s mind as ”brilliant” and ”inventive”  —   but it also terrified her. She grew up in a mountain city in central Japan during World War II. In her autobiography, Infinity Net, she writes that she suffered from hallucinations  —   violets in a field suddenly had   faces and voices. She would draw the visions in sketchbooks that she carried with her everywhere. ”Recording them helped ease the shock and fear of the episodes,” she writes. But Kusama’s mother fiercely objected to her art and took away her supplies. She believed art wasn’t respectable work  —   especially not for a woman. In 1958, when she was almost 30, Kusama did what a lot of creative people were doing: She moved to New York, where she thrived in the downtown art scene. Kusama was in shows throughout the U. S. and Europe she designed polka dotted dresses that were sold at Bloomingdale’s and she organized   War ”happenings” where she would sometimes paint polka dots on naked bodies. People started calling her the ”Priestess of Polka Dots.” Richard Castellane says Kusama was fearless. ”She was very gutsy. I never sensed any  . And also, she really felt that what she was doing was important.” But gaining respect as an artist wasn’t easy. Hirshhorn Curator Mika Yoshitake says, ”It was tough to get the attention in a very   art world at the time. She also was exoticised  —   and she didn’t hide it, either. She was wearing kimonos and presented this kind of exotic, oriental figure.” Despite her successes, Kusama was barely making ends meet, and she continued to hallucinate and have panic attacks. In the early 1970s, she moved back to Japan and committed herself to a psychiatric institution where she has lived, by choice, for more than 40 years. Kusama couldn’t travel to Washington for the opening of her show at the Hirshhorn, but her creative life continues. She’s written poems and novels, and she paints in her studio every day. She’s made new infinity rooms, which are on display in the new show  —   one filled with huge, neon pink balloons another with bright yellow pumpkins. Both are decorated with her signature polka dots. In a video interview with Hirshhorn curators, Kusama talks about her need to explore and create other worlds. ”Far beyond the reaches of the universe,” she says, ”infinity is trying to communicate with us.” Editor Rose Friedman, digital producer Nicole Cohen and photo editor Claire Harbage contributed to this report."
"Thousands of women who worked for the largest retail jewelry company in the U. S. allege that they suffered wage and promotion discrimination, and more than 200 of them describe an atmosphere in which female employees endured unwanted sexual advances from male superiors at the company. In newly released sworn statements by current and former employees of Sterling Jewelers Inc. whose parent company runs Kay Jewelers and Jared jewelry stores among others, women describe an atmosphere of pay secrecy in which men dominated positions of power and qualified women were routinely passed over for promotions and in some cases, even publicly demeaned. In sworn statements, female employees also described male Sterling managers and executives who grabbed their bodies, propositioned them for sex, kissed them without their consent and spoke about women’s bodies and about sex during company events. The 249 statements, most of them by women, were collected as part of a   lawsuit originally filed in 2008 against the company, alleging it violated the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act. The allegations of sexual improprieties have been offered to show the workplace context in which the pay discrimination allegedly occurred. The suit covers at least 69, 000 current and former employees, who it alleges were affected by wage and promotion discrimination dating to the early 1990s. About 10, 000 women actively filed documentation of what they say was pay discrimination, according to an attorney handling the case. Because the suit is being tried through arbitration, as opposed to a public trial with a judge or jury, much of the case information has been kept private until now. On Sunday, following a request by The Washington Post, a judge ordered that more than 1, 300 pages of statements be released. The statements maintain that women who were hired as   employees at Kay and Jared stores were prohibited from discussing their wages but found out through informal conversations that they were making significantly less money than men doing the same work. For example, Timeen Adair, who worked for Sterling from 1992 to 2009, said that when she found out she was being paid less than a man in the same position she complained her manager, and was eventually promoted. ”It did not seem right to me that a male who was not performing as well [as] I was should be paid more than me, and that it was justified by the possibility of some future promotion,” she said in her statement. After she was promoted to store manager, she noticed ”a pattern in which female sales associates were hired at about $1 an hour less than male associates.” Adair also said she witnessed sexually aggressive behavior by executives at the company, who had power over their subordinates. She said when a certain executive visited her store, he would request that certain women ”go out drinking and dancing” the night before. ”We felt obligated to go when directed like this,” Adair said, because her superior told the women they needed to show up, and because the executive ”typically was visiting the store the next day and no one wanted to get on his bad side.” Ellen Purdy worked for Sterling from 1987 until 2011 and said one of her superiors ”would constantly call me and other female employees ’Honey.’ This made me uncomfortable as it was a term of endearment reserved only for my husband. I tried to ignore it, however, as I could not afford to lose my job.” Robin   who worked for Sterling from 1999 to 2007, said ”there was certainly a Good Old Boy culture at Sterling where male management (most of the upper management was male) would have each others’ backs.” As they rose in the company and attended managers’ meetings, hundreds of women said they found themselves at   gatherings at which male managers and executives, including top Sterling executives, allegedly made passes at their female subordinates. Kristin Henry was originally hired at a store in Florida in 2000. The next year, a male colleague told her he was making $12. 50 per hour. Henry made only $9. 50 per hour in the same position. Nonetheless, Henry remained with the company. She said she was passed over for management positions multiple times in favor of men who had less experience selling jewelry, before she eventually became a manager in 2005. But in her new position, Henry was assigned to work with a man who, she said, ”looked at me and and other female employees in a sexual manner that made me feel uncomfortable.” She recounted an instance in which she said the male employee told her he hoped she ”was stopping by Victoria’s Secret to get something to wear for him.” Following the incident, she said she called the company’s human resources hotline. She said the office didn’t follow up with her. Later that year, Henry attended a managers’ meeting for the company. After an awards dinner, her superior, a man, ”tried to kiss and touch” her. Shortly after she reported the incident, she said, she was fired from Sterling. Diane Acampora, who worked at Sterling stores from 2002 to 2009, said, ”It was common knowledge at the Company that these [manager] meetings provided abundant opportunity for heavy drinking and extramarital sexual activity between male managers, supervisors and executives and subordinate female managers.” Multiple male employees also gave sworn statements describing what they saw as systematic wage discrimination against women and sexual comments toward female employees, dating back decades. A spokesman for Sterling, David Bouffard, wrote in an email to NPR that ”It’s critical to understand that none of the 69, 000 class members have brought claims in this arbitration for sexual harassment or sexual impropriety,” continuing: ”Indeed, the distorted and inaccurate picture of our company presented in these allegations does not represent who we are. They involve a very small number of individuals in a workforce of more than 84, 000 during the class period, and many of the allegations go back decades. Complaints that were reported to the company were thoroughly investigated, and action was taken where appropriate. The company had  —   and continues to have  —   multiple processes in place to receive and investigate allegations of misconduct, and we continue to encourage all employees to use these processes to raise any workplace concerns so we can investigate and respond appropriately.” The class counsel for the case, attorney Kalpana Kotagal, says descriptions of unwanted sexual advances are relevant to the gender discrimination claim, because they point to a pervasive culture of sexual intimidation at the company. ”We contend that this evidence of sexual harassment . .. is directly relevant to claims of sexual discrimination,” Kotagal told NPR. Presenting evidence that the company knew of both pay disparities and sexual harassment of female employees, and did not act sufficiently to remedy them, could suggest ”a lack of real concern about discrimination,” Kotagal said. In addition to the class action being handled through arbitration, the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit, also in 2008, against Sterling, alleging wage discrimination on the basis of gender."
"Despite ordering an ”influence campaign” to help Donald Trump in last year’s election, the Kremlin is scrambling to respond to a win it didn’t expect, New Yorker editor David Remnick and staff writer Evan Osnos tell Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. Remnick, who lived and worked in Moscow from 1988 to 1992, and Osnos say Trump’s victory has created unintended consequences for Russian President Vladimir Putin. ”This was like a bank heist that, instead of blowing the doors off the safe, they blew the safe up entirely,” Osnos says. Remnick adds that Russia’s   media, which was full of praise for Trump during the campaign, has changed its outlook of late: ”We’ve now had a month of chaos, and they’ve decided to take much more of a    attitude.” Osnos and Remnick collaborated with contributor Joshua Yaffa to report on Trump, Putin and the ”new Cold War” for the current issue of The New Yorker. The title of their article, ”Active Measures,” is a reference to the type of intelligence operation in which the goal is to take active measures to influence events and undermine a rival power. On why the White House’s response to the DNC hacking was ”muted”  Osnos: There was a robust, a really intense debate going on within the White House and the national security community about what the best response would be. In September the Obama White House went to Mitch McConnell and said, ”Look, we believe that the Russians were involved and that they may be threatening the integrity of the vote,” and they said, ”We want to issue a bipartisan statement that would encourage state voting authorities to keep an extra eye on the security and integrity of the vote.” Basically a bipartisan gesture, and Mitch McConnell, this is now public, he has said that he would regard that as a partisan gesture. That was one of the reasons . .. why the Obama White House was reluctant to go too far in being very public about this. There are people in Hillary Clinton’s camp who, one of whom was quoted in our article, saying, ”We look back and wonder why this was not”  —   in the words of this person  —   ”a   fire in the White House.” On Russian TV news coverage of Trump and his administration, Remnick: I’ve been watching Russian TV a lot, which you can do really easily on YouTube. Initially, there was great celebration, enormous celebration. Champagne corks popping. People going on the air and saying, ”Ding dong, the witch is dead,” practically, and showing great enthusiasm for Trump because Trump, of course, has been incredibly complimentary of Putin, says much nicer things about Vladimir Putin than Barack Obama or anybody else. But now, things are different. We’ve now had a month of chaos. We’ve had the Michael Flynn firing or resignation. Suddenly the order goes to Russian television, which is completely under Putin’s control, ”Enough about Trump. Enough compliments. Let’s play it down. Let’s take it easy.” On differing perceptions of the end of the Soviet Union, Remnick: What I witnessed was the dissolution of an empire, these 15 republics going each their own way, the end of Communist ideology and the rise of things like a free press and artistic freedom  —   and the rise of politics, actual politics, of competition of ideas and the filth and tumult that that all brings, and it was incredibly exciting. I think most Westerners experienced it and many Russian intellectuals and people of the rising, the nascent, middle class and educated people in particular, and people in cities, they experienced it largely as a great passage forward in history. And we forget that even then . .. a lot of people were made deeply anxious about this. A Cold War, which had been fought for two generations, had been lost. This was experienced not as a triumph by so many, but also as an incredibly disorienting, humiliating passage of history in which the great empire had disintegrated. . .. An economic depression came along that, for many people, was incredibly painful, like the ’30s in the United States. . .. A lot of people in Russia, exemplified by Putin, saw this as a crash followed by chaos, followed by poverty. On Trump’s calling the press the ”enemy of the American people”  Remnick: It goes back to Robespierre. [”Enemy of the people”] is an ugly, ugly phrase. I don’t know how   Donald Trump is of that kind of phrase. I guarantee that Steve Bannon knows what ”enemy of the people” means. Stalin used it to keep people terrified. If you were branded a vrag naroda, an ”enemy of the people,” you could guarantee that very soon there would be a knock in the middle of the night at your door and your fate would be horrific. To hear that kind of language directed at the American press is an emergency. It’s an emergency. It’s not a political tactic, and if it’s a political tactic, it’s a horrific one and that needs to be resisted, not just by people like me who are editors or writers  —   but all of us. This is part of what distinguishes American democracy and it is untenable, immoral and  . "
"President Trump likes to tout the booming stock market as evidence that he is already boosting the economy. He bragged about it in his speech to Congress on Tuesday night, and then got more to the point on Wednesday, when the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 21, 000 for the first time. To Trump, this is validation of the   policies he has pushed thus far. But there’s something jarring about Trump’s stock market talk as he promises his commitment to the middle class and laments the poverty level: Those stock market gains will overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans. America’s massively unequal stock ownership, Ignore for a second that stock index milestones like Dow 21K are inherently rather arbitrary. The broader point is that stock indexes have recovered nicely since the Great Recession  —   the SP 500 (a more comprehensive look at the stock market than the Dow) has more than tripled from its trough in 2009. However, stock ownership has slipped during that same period. According to Gallup, 52 percent of U. S. adults owned stock in 2016. Since Gallup started measuring this in 1998, that’s only the second time ownership has been this low. These figures include ownership of an individual stock, a stock mutual fund or a   401( k) or IRA. That means the stock market rally can only directly benefit around half of all Americans  —   and substantially fewer than it would have a decade ago, when nearly   of families owned stock. And that decline was bigger among   Americans, data from the Federal Reserve show. Of the 10 percent of families with the highest income, 92 percent owned stock as of 2013, just above where it had been in 2007. But ownership slipped for people in the bottom half of the income distribution, and to a lesser degree for people who were above the median but below the top 10 percent. Those richest Americans own far greater amounts of stock. As of 2013, the top 10 percent of Americans owned an average of $969, 000 in stocks. The next 40 percent owned $132, 000 on average. For the bottom half of families, it was just under $54, 000. Combine the uneven ownership rates and ownership amounts, and the total inequality in the stock market is astounding. As of 2013, the top 1 percent of households by wealth owned nearly 38 percent of all stock shares, according to research by New York University economist Edward Wolff. Indeed, nearly all of the stock ownership in the U. S. is concentrated among the richest. According to Wolff’s data, the top 20 percent of Americans owned 92 percent of the stocks in 2013. Put another way: Eighty percent of Americans together owned just 8 percent of all stocks. Of course, it makes sense that richer people would own more stocks than the rest of Americans, just as they own more of other types of assets, like real estate. But the massive disparities in stock ownership are important for two reasons: One is that when a politician brings up the stock market as a measure of economic success, that success isn’t very relevant to many Americans. Trump isn’t alone in mentioning the stock market in his speeches Obama referenced gains in his 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015 State of the Union addresses, according to MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash. Another reason this kind of information is important is that it doesn’t just reflect who has enough disposable income to make some trades it’s about the nation’s retirement system. While half of Americans benefit from the stock market (the richest far more than the rest) many   and   Americans don’t even have the retirement accounts that constitute many   Americans’ stock ownership. More than   of Americans working full time have no access through their employers to either pensions or retirement investment accounts like 401( k)s, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Many   politicians occupy a world where stock ownership is a fact of life. But that’s not true for many of the people they represent. How stocks could benefit   owners, To be fair,   owners could see a potential upside to the improving stock market through what’s known as the ”wealth effect.” The basic idea is that when the stock market improves, wealthier folks feel better about their finances and therefore spend more. That spending drives more economic growth and can help people up and down the income spectrum. Indeed, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke listed the wealth effect as one argument for his quantitative easing programs. The Fed’s accommodative monetary policy after the recession helped goose stock prices, in part by lowering yields on safer assets like Treasury bonds. That sent investors to the stock market to invest. And as Bernanke wrote in 2010, higher stock prices would boost spending, which would ”lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.” That expansion isn’t necessarily even, though. Former Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher explained to CNBC in 2016 that the Fed’s quantitative easing program boosted the prices of stocks and other assets, but that the economic benefits were limited. ”We were going to have a wealth effect. That was achieved. We made wealthy people wealthier,” Fisher said. ”But the point is it didn’t trickle down.”"
"When Marlene Fowler wakes up in the northern Arizona town of Kaibeto, she can see a   haze on the horizon. But Fowler’s not worried about the pollution. It’s her husband’s job at the Navajo Generating Station that has her on edge. ”Even though they say the pollution is all this and that, it’s been there years,” she says. The Navajo Generating Station is the largest   power plant in the Western United States, and it’s slated to shut down in 2019. While environmentalists are celebrating, hundreds of Navajo people like Fowler who rely on jobs there are devastated. Fowler works as a cook at a senior center, but she says her family relies on the paycheck her husband earns as a   mechanic for the power plant. Fowler says without the plant work, he’ll have to travel to various odd jobs. ”It’s going to cost a lot of gas and mileage on the vehicles. They have to pay their motels and meals and lodging and stuff,” she says. Similarly, Lorinda Bennett says her family will be impacted by the closing. ”I have a daughter that’s working there and two    working there. They’re close by,” she says. ”We see them almost every day.” Bennett is afraid the plant shutdown will take her children and grandchildren far from her. ”Our kids are going to move away and our grandkids. That’s what they’re planning on. They’re already looking for another job,” she says. The Navajo Nation has relied on the coal industry for the last four decades. The energy companies have provided hundreds of families with some of the   jobs on the reservation. The revenue, taxes and royalties all make up about a third of the tribe’s operating budget. The Salt River Project, the plant operator, says natural gas is much cheaper and makes more economic sense. A plant closure means the coal mine that feeds the plant would also likely shut down. Together, the Navajo Generating Station and the mine that feeds the plant employ about 800 people. ”Their benefit has been at our expense  —   expense meaning the water, the land, the health of the people,” says Percy Deal, who lives near that coal mine. Thousands of tons of nitrogen oxide the plant spews into the atmosphere have caused serious health problems. Deal says the plant shutdown is an opportunity to fix the mistakes of the past and open the door to a cleaner future. Green energy  —   like wind power  —   would use less water and wouldn’t pollute or harm the environment, he says. To that end there’s a plan to bring together four colleges from the region to build a higher education center near the Navajo Generating Station. That’s what Coconino County Supervisor Lena Fowler is working on to give power plant employees a reason to stay. ”These are the homeowners. These are the people that come and shop,” she says. Fowler started work on an economic impact plan when she thought she had 25 years until the plant’s closure. Now, she says, the tribe has just three years to ask ”the big scary questions.” ”How do we help ourselves? How do we help our children? How do we help our neighbors? How do we as a community come together to help each other to keep our population whole and families whole?” she says. Fowler hopes the answers to those questions are able to do more than simply replace the jobs lost at the power plant. The Navajo Nation hopes President Trump will help keep the plant open through 2044. ”This dilemma provides an opportunity for the Trump administration to live up to its promise to the American people that it will stand behind the coal industry,” Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said in a statement. ”Many people depend on this industry. It is a matter of national security.” Laurel Morales is a reporter with NPR member station KJZZ in Flagstaff, Ariz."
"Starting today, the people of Flint, Mich. will have to bear the full cost of the water flowing through their pipes. It’s a frustrating prospect for Flint residents, who have been struggling with a crisis over   water that started nearly three years ago. ”We have seniors that are already making decisions between buying medication or paying their water bill,” as one Flint resident told Michigan Radio’s Steve Carmody. For about a year, Carmody says, the state paid about   of residents’ water bills, spending more than $40 million ”to pay for water that didn’t meet federal quality standards dating back to 2014, when the city’s drinking water source was switched to the Flint River.” Recent tests showed levels in the water to be within federal limits, prompting the state to end the subsidy on the last day of February. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality announced on Jan. 24 that Flint’s water system is testing ”at levels comparable to cities with similar size and age of infrastructure in Michigan and across the nation.” Michigan Radio reported that dozens of Flint residents protested last month at City Hall, chanting, ”We don’t pay for poison water.” Nayyirah Shariff, the director of Flint Rising, told the member station that it’s a ”kick in the teeth to Flint residents.” The water problem began when Flint switched to a new water source in 2014 in order to save money, but failed to implement corrosion controls. The governor’s office formally notified the City of Flint that it would be ending water relief credits in a letter dated Feb. 7. State and city officials differ over whether Flint was given adequate notice. Flint’s mayor, Karen Weaver, has said the city was caught off guard. She said state officials promised the payments would continue through March 31. ”This is a trust issue, that’s what it is,” she told reporters last month. ”State officials say one thing, and then do another.” Michigan officials advise residents to continue filtering their water ”due to the chance for disruption to pipes as the city replaces lead service lines.” Weaver wants to see state subsidies continue until the water is ”tap drinkable” without a filter, as Carmody tells our Newscast Unit. It’s worth noting that the cost of water in Flint is ”extremely high compared to other cities,” according to Michigan Radio. Part of the reason that the state subsidized the water was to encourage residents to let it move through the corroded pipes, because an additive would help the pipes recover. Michigan Radio points out additional concerns  —   an increase in delinquent accounts could lead to residential customers having their service cut off. It could also ”crimp the city’s ability to continue paying for water from Detroit.” Catching up on the Flint water crisis? Our timeline takes you through the major events."
"Lead seepage into the drinking water in Flint, Mich. has caused a massive public health crisis and prompted President Obama to declare a federal state of emergency there. The problem began when the city switched its water supply in 2014. Almost immediately, residents of Flint  —   a   city where 40 percent of people live in poverty  —   started complaining about the quality of the water. City and state officials denied for months that there was a serious problem. By that time, supply pipes had sustained major corrosion and lead was leaching into the water. The city switched back to its original water supply late last year, but it was too late to reverse the damage to the pipes. High blood lead levels are especially harmful to children and pregnant women, and can cause ”learning disabilities, behavioral problems and mental retardation,” the World Health Organization says. Here’s how the crisis unfolded: Flint officials explore whether the city can save money by switching from its current provider, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD). City and state officials weigh an alternative: Flint could build its own pipeline to connect to the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA). That option was projected to save the region $200 million over 25 years, according to City Council meeting minutes. On April 16, Flint Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz tells the state treasurer that the city is going to join the KWA. A day later, Detroit’s water system tells Kurtz it is terminating service to the city effective a year later, in April 2014. Until Flint’s pipeline connecting to the KWA is operational, the city needs an interim source of water and turns to the Flint River, which was also its main water source until the 1960s. Flint River water starts flowing to the city on April 25. In a press release, the city characterized it as a temporary switch and aimed to ease resident concerns about the water quality. Here’s an excerpt: ”Even with a proven track record of providing perfectly good water for Flint, there still remains lingering uncertainty about the quality of the water. In an effort to dispel myths and promote the truth about the Flint River and its viability as a residential water resource, there have been numerous studies and tests conducted on its water by several independent organizations. . .. Michael Prysby of the Michigan DEQ Office of Drinking Water verified that ’the quality of the water being put out meets all of our drinking water standards and Flint water is safe to drink.’ . .. ” ’It’s regular, good, pure drinking water, and it’s right in our backyard,’ said Mayor [Dayne] Walling, ”this is the first step in the right direction for Flint, and we take this monumental step forward in controlling the future of our community’s most precious resource.’ ” Officials did not immediately treat the Flint River water to ensure it didn’t cause corrosion in the pipes  —   instead, they took what Michigan Radio characterized as a ”  ” approach. Some Flint residents complain about the smell and color of the new water, which is 70 percent harder than its previous water source, according to MLive. E. coli and total coliform bacteria are detected in Flint’s water, prompting multiple advisories for residents to boil their water. An informational document from Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) says the city addressed the problem by increasing chlorine levels in the water. General Motors says it will stop using Flint River water, fearing corrosion in its machines. ”Because of all the metal . .. you don’t want the higher chlorine water (to result in) corrosion,” GM spokesman Tom Wickham tells MLive. ”We noticed it some time ago (and) the discussions have been going on for some time.” Flint is found to be in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act because of the level of total trihalomethanes, or TTHM, in the water. TTHM are disinfection byproducts that occur when chlorine interacts with organic matter in the water. Some types are possible carcinogens for humans, the CDC says. In response, the state starts buying bottled water for its employees at government offices. This continues even after TTHM levels returned to compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act in September 2015, MLive reported. A city test ”reveals high lead content in the water of a Flint resident’s home.” As Michigan Radio reported, the water at Lee Anne Walters’ home ”turns up with a lead content of 104 parts per billion. Fifteen parts per billion is the [Environmental Protection Agency]’s limit for lead in drinking water.” In April, Walters says her child was diagnosed with lead poisoning. An independent test done by Virginia Tech researchers finds lead levels at 13, 200 ppb  —   water is considered hazardous waste at 5, 000 ppb. The EPA says it was notified by the MDEQ on or about April 24 ”that the City did not have corrosion control treatment in place at the Flint Water Treatment Plant.” A leaked internal memo from the EPA expresses concern about lead levels, including the level at Lee Anne Walters’ home. The ACLU picks up the report. Michigan Radio reaches out to the MDEQ for comment about the memo, and spokesman Brad Wurfel says, ”Let me start here  —   anyone who is concerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax.” He adds that he hasn’t seen the memo, but that preliminary tests show the Walters test was an ”outlier.” Wurfel tells Michigan Radio, ”It does not look like there is any broad problem with the water supply freeing up lead as it goes to homes.” The MDEQ dropped two samples from its initial report on lead levels from the city, which put the result within federally mandated levels. ”If the state had just dropped one high sample, Flint still would have been over the federal action level,” Michigan Radio reports. ”But dropping two samples put them below the action level.” Officials said the two samples did not meet federal criteria  —   because one of the samples had a water filter and another came from a business rather than a home, Michigan Radio reports. A team from Virginia Tech tests hundreds of homes for lead in Flint, and says that ”preliminary tests show ’serious’ levels of lead in city water.” ”The levels that we have seen in Flint are some of the worst that I have seen in more than 25 years working in the field,” Dr. Marc Edwards, a member of the Virginia Tech team, tells Michigan Radio. Officials such as MDEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel dismiss the Virginia Tech results. He tells Michigan Radio: ”I don’t know how they’re getting the results they’re getting. . .. I know that it doesn’t match with any of the other surveillance in the area.” In an email to MLive journalist Ron Fonger, Wurfel says: ”It’s scientifically probable a research team that specializes in looking for lead in water could have found it in Flint when the city was on its old water supply. We won’t know that, because they’ve only just arrived in town and quickly proven the theory they set out to prove, and while the state appreciates academic participation in this discussion, offering broad, dire public health advice based on some quick testing could be seen as fanning political flames irresponsibly. Residents of Flint concerned about the health of their community don’t need more of that.” In a September interview with NPR, Edwards says: ”Flint is the only city in America that I’m aware of that does not have a corrosion control plan.” A study from the local Hurley Medical Center found that 2. 1 percent of children age 5 and under had elevated blood lead levels prior to the switch to Flint River water, compared to 4. 0 percent after the switch. A spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said the elevated lead level results may be a result of seasonal changes, rather than the change in the water source. Flint issues a lead advisory to residents. ”While the City is in full compliance with the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act, this information is being shared as part of a public awareness campaign to ensure that everyone takes note that no level of lead is considered safe,” it reads. That same day, Gov. Snyder’s chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, writes in an email that the MDEQ and Department of Community Health ”feel that some in Flint are taking the very sensitive issue of children’s exposure to lead and trying to turn it into a political football claiming the departments are underestimating the impacts on the population and particularly trying to shift responsibility to the state.” An action plan released by Snyder says the city and state will provide free filters and water testing for Flint residents, among other things. Flint switches back to the Detroit water supplier, which is now called the Great Lakes Water Authority. The governor’s office said in press briefing notes that the Detroit water ”will be easier to manage. It comes from a more stable source than the river, it is fully optimized for corrosion control, and it is clear that residents of Flint have more confidence in this water source.” In an email to a Detroit News reporter, MDEQ Director Dan Wyant discusses why there were no corrosion controls in place when the city started using Flint River water. He seems to chalk up the lack of corrosion controls to a misunderstanding: ”What has become clear in recent weeks is that the staff believed they were handling the situation in accordance with the proper protocol for a water provider using a new source, but the federal Lead and Copper rule has a particular provision for communities over 50, 000 people that the system operator must continue treating with full corrosion control even as they test the water. ”What the staff did would have been the proper protocol for a community under 50, 000 people. None of the DEQ staff in this division had ever worked on a water source switch for a community over 50, 000 people  —   it’s uncommon for big communities to switch sources. ”It’s increasingly clear there was confusion here, but it also is increasingly that DEQ staff believed they were using the proper federal protocol here and they were not.” Wyant adds that lime had been added to the water but provided ”insufficient corrosion control.” A December email from Snyder’s communications director, Meegan Holland, also said that Flint never tested the impact of the Flint River water on the distribution system. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declares a state of emergency over the elevated lead levels in the city’s water. ”I am requesting that all things be done necessary to address this state of emergency declaration, effective immediately,” Weaver tells the City Council, according to MLive. Weaver, who vowed to fix the water crisis, beat out incumbent Dayne Walling in an election the previous month. MDEQ Director Dan Wyant and spokesperson Brad Wurfel resign, MLive reports. This comes a day after the Flint Water Advisory Task Force, created by the governor, releases a preliminary report on the crisis and concludes that primary responsibility rests with the MDEQ. The report says that in the agency’s interactions with the public about their concerns, its response ”was often one of aggressive dismissal, belittlement, and attempts to discredit these efforts and the individuals involved.” Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder declares a state of emergency in Genesee County due to the lead in Flint’s drinking water. President Obama declared a state of emergency less than two weeks later. The move ”means FEMA is authorized to provide equipment and resources to the people affected. Federal funding will help cover the cost of providing water, water filters and other items,” as we reported. The EPA issues an emergency order to take action on the Flint water crisis. ”EPA has determined that the City of Flint’s and the State of Michigan’s responses to the drinking water crisis in Flint have been inadequate and that these failures continue,” the emergency order reads. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hears testimony from several Flint officials and experts. But much attention has focused on who wasn’t testifying at the hearing: Gov. Snyder and city emergency managers who presided over the change in Flint’s water supply. Snyder, along with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ”Let me be blunt,” the governor says in his opening statement. ”This was a failure of government at all levels. Local, state and federal officials  —   we all failed the families of Flint.” Snyder outlines state agencies’ goals in addressing the Flint crisis. The action plan includes providing professional support for children under 6 with elevated lead levels, replacing water fixtures in public facilities, replacing the city’s 8, 000 lead service lines, and increasing resources for schools. Supporting its preliminary conclusion, the task force charged with investigating the causes of the Flint water crisis says in its final report that the MDEQ bears primary responsibility. Task force member Chris Kolb tells reporters: ”From a regulatory standpoint, to a protection of human health and the environment standpoint, they missed the boat completely. And it is extremely troublesome to me that an agency whose primary role, once again, is to protect human health and the environment came to these decisions, and they never backed off these decisions, no matter how many red flags they saw.” Others are also to blame, the report says, including the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, the city’s emergency managers and the governor. Despite improved lead levels in Flint’s water, it remains unsafe to drink without a filter, according to results released from Virginia Tech researchers. (Though Gov. Snyder later pledged to drink filtered Flint water for 30 days.) That’s partially because residents have been using very little of the tainted water. As the   has reported, ”in an unfortunate cycle, the water additives that would ’ ’ corroded pipes in the water system, thereby preventing lead from leaching into the water, are not reaching the pipes because people in Flint don’t want to pay for contaminated water that they can’t use.” MLive reports that in December, Flint began adding phosphates to the water that would ”rebuild the protective coating inside transmission lines.” Michigan’s attorney general, Bill Schuette, announces that three people will face charges  —   the first criminal charges leveled against officials over the lead crisis. Stephen Busch and Michael Prysby are state officials at the MDEQ. City employee Michael Glasgow is Flint’s water quality supervisor. As the   reported, the three ”face felony charges including misconduct, neglect of duty and conspiracy to tamper with evidence. They’ve also been charged with violating Michigan’s Safe Drinking Water Act.” Schuette announced that his office is suing two companies involved in Flint’s crisis, and he says the damages could reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Veolia, a French company, was hired by the city as a   consultant in 2015.   firm Lockwood, Andrews  Newnam was originally hired in 2011 and helped to operate the water treatment plant using the Flint River. The civil lawsuit accuses both firms of negligence and public nuisance, and also accused Veolia of fraud. ”In Flint, Veolia and LAN were hired to do a job and failed miserably,” Schuette told reporters at a news conference. ”They failed miserably in their job  —   basically botched it, didn’t stop the water in Flint from being poisoned. They made it worse, that’s what they did.” Schuette announced criminal charges against six more current and former state employees, bringing the total number of people charged to nine. Liane   is the former director of the drinking water and municipal assistance office within the MDEQ. She and two subordinates, Adam Rosenthal and Patrick Cook, allegedly misled officials about Flint’s water treatment plant, which was not in compliance with lead and copper rules. The other three people charged are current or former employees of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. The director of the child health unit, Nancy Peeler, her subordinate, Robert Scott, and a state epidemiologist Corinne Miller allegedly failed to release a report that showed unsafe lead levels in the blood of Flint children. All six are charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy, and willful neglect of duty. Rosenthal is also charged with tampering with evidence, for allegedly requesting water tests that did not show elevated lead."
"The dream of reviving Puerto Rico’s chocolate tradition took root in Juan Carlos Vizcarrondo’s mind years ago. He’s always been obsessed with flowers and trees. As a boy, he planted so much greenery in his mother’s backyard, there was hardly room to walk. But in his thirties, he started planting cocoa trees, with their colorful pods full of magical seeds. ”Something told me, just keep planting, because nobody has it! It’s so strange, nobody has it! ,” he recalls. Centuries ago, there were whole plantations of cocoa trees here in Puerto Rico. The climate is perfect for them. But a series of hurricanes wiped out much of the island’s agriculture in the early 1700s, and cocoa farming never recovered. Most cocoa now is harvested in places where labor is cheaper, like in West Africa. But you can still find cocoa trees growing wild in the Puerto Rico’s hills, with yellow and purple pods, shaped like miniature footballs, sprouting from trunks and branches. Vizcarrondo went looking for them, and found a few. ”Once I had the pods in my hands, I was so impressed,” he says, and the wonder is still audible in his voice. ”I started opening them and sucking on the pulp, and that was delicious. I started drying them out in the sun.” He tried grinding up the beans to make his own chocolate. The result tasted terrible at first. Nevertheless, he persisted. Over the course of a decade, he learned how to ferment the beans, how to grind them, and temper the resulting chocolate. ”Finally, people told me, ’Ok, I like it now! I’m starting to like it!’ That’s where I said, ok, this is interesting,” Vizcarrondo says. Eight years ago, he set up a little company called Loiza Dark, making chocolate just from beans that he grows on his own farms. His ”factory” is just three small rooms alongside a highway near the San Juan airport. He sells to local restaurants, specialty shops, and takes some orders through his web site. Lately, though, the idea of   Puerto Rican chocolate has found an influential new supporter: Eduardo Cortes, who runs a family business called Cortes Hermanos, which just happens to be the biggest chocolate producer in the Caribbean. His company’s factories and farmers are mostly in the Dominican Republic, but ”I was raised in Puerto Rico I’m Puerto Rican, and I always wanted an opportunity to do what I like to do best in Puerto Rico,” Cortes says. Cortes sensed that opportunity one day in 2011, when he saw something odd: a truck full of cocoa pods on a Puerto Rican highway. Cortes had never heard of anyone growing cocoa on that scale in Puerto Rico. ”I stopped the truck and asked the driver where [the pods] were from,” he says. ”And he said that they were from a research station in Mayaguez.” The city of Mayaguez sits on Puerto Rico’s western coast. Cortes didn’t know it, but this is where the U. S. Department of Agriculture carries out much of its research on tropical crops. Cortes got in touch with scientists at the research center and discovered that they had a huge collection of cocoa trees. Not only that   they’d just spent twenty years identifying nine new, highly productive varieties of the tree. Cortes sensed an opportunity. He recruited a small group of farmers in Puerto Rico to grow these great new trees and make a   chocolate bar just from those beans. ”There’s always going to be a little market for people who want to eat local chocolate, just like there is for coffee,” Cortes says. ”I know at least that is possible. And from there, maybe it becomes a little bit more [economically] competitive, who knows?” The new trees, he says, will yield three times as much cocoa as the average tree in today’s commercial cocoa farms. Perhaps that will make up for the extra cost of labor in Puerto Rico. One of the farms where the new trees are growing sits in the hills near Mayaguez. It looks more like a forest than a farm. But scattered across the steep hillside, in the shade of big trees all around them, I see lines of young cocoa trees, over a thousand in all. They’re   plants, just four or five feet tall. Most aren’t yet producing any pods. Jose Martinez Cruzado, who owns this farm and agreed to work with Cortes on this project, tells me that when he was a boy, he’d see wild cocoa trees in the hills. ”And I’d say, ’Hey, I love chocolate, I’d like to grow cocoa one day in my life! ’” Cruzado doesn’t depend on farming for a living. He’s also a professor of engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. ”I’m doing this for the enjoyment, but if I get some money, I’ll enjoy it a lot more!” he says, laughing. Cortes has launched his new, premium line of chocolate, called Forteza. The bars come packaged in a distinctive metal box. Right now, most of them are still made from cocoa grown in the Dominican Republic, but as the Puerto Rican trees start producing pods, that should change. Word of this new venture has spread. A couple of hundred other Puerto Rican farmers have called Cortes, out of the blue, asking how to get their hands on these new trees. All of them, it seems, want to help bring back   on their own Caribbean island."
"House Democrats are pursuing a strategy to force Republicans to take repeated votes on whether to investigate President Trump’s ethics and alleged ties to Russia. The Democrats failed Tuesday evening as the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee rejected such an investigation. A   vote ended a long day of wrangling, barely two hours before the president took the rostrum in the House chamber for his address to Congress. Democrats say their strategy is aimed at keeping a parliamentary spotlight on the president’s ethics issues and other controversies. Republicans hold clear majorities in the House and Senate and control the agenda. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has said she wants to push for a vote every week on a resolution that would force disclosure of Trump’s tax returns between 2006 and 2015. The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Bill Pascrell,  . J. has already gone down on   votes in the Ways and Means Committee and on the House floor. Senate Democrats have a companion measure. The Democratic resolution of inquiry defeated Tuesday in House Judiciary would have directed the Justice Department to give the House its records on four issues: Trump’s business empire the revocable trust that allows him to maintain ownership possible conflicts of interest arising from foreign money going to his businesses and alleged links between people around Trump and Russian operatives. ”It simply says give us, the Judiciary Committee, the information so that we can look at what has actually happened,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal,  . Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said the resolution of inquiry was ”unnecessary, premature and not the best way” to tackle the concerns. Other GOP lawmakers said Democrats have already judged Trump. Rep. Matt Gaetz,  . said, ”President Trump’s detractors are going through the stages of grief.” Still another resolution from House Democrats would create an independent commission to investigate alleged Russian interference with the election. The Senate and House Intelligence committees are also looking at that issue, amid partisan conflict. Rep. Darrell Issa,  . who aggressively investigated the Obama administration, has also called for what he termed an independent review of the Russia connections."
"A survivor of abuse has resigned from Pope Francis’ panel on clerical sex abuse, citing ”shameful” resistance within the Vatican to the group’s efforts to protect children. Marie Collins, who was abused by a priest as a child, was the only survivor active on the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Another   survivor and advocate, who expressed frustration with the slow pace of change, took a leave of absence from the commission last year. Collins says she is leaving the panel because, as she told The Telegraph, ”there are people in the Vatican who do not want to change or understand the need to change. . .. They are not cooperating.” She says it was ” ” to face the Vatican’s resistance on the issue. In a statement on her website, Collins says she was impressed by Francis’ genuine desire to seek help in confronting clerical sex abuse. She says she believes the pope was sincere in establishing the panel and notes that he approved every recommendation they made. But others in the Vatican resisted the commission’s work, Collins says, leading to ”constant setbacks.” ”The lack of   particularly by the dicastery [department] most closely involved in dealing with cases of abuse, has been shameful,” she writes. The last straw came in January, she says, when a recommendation was refused and a request for cooperation denied. Collins gave more detail to the National Catholic Reporter. She says a set of guidelines meant to be disseminated around the world is tied up because a department won’t work with the commission. Meanwhile, she says the pope, at the commission’s recommendation, had instructed Vatican departments to reply, in some form, to every letter from a victim or survivor of clerical abuse. Then Collins says she learned that the uncooperative department was refusing to send responses. ”I find it impossible to listen to public statements about the deep concern in the church for the care of those whose lives have been blighted by abuse, yet to watch privately as a congregation in the Vatican refuses to even acknowledge their letters!” Collins wrote in her piece for the NCR. ”It is a reflection of how this whole abuse crisis in the Church has been handled: with fine words in public and contrary actions behind closed doors.” Collins says she will help the commission with training projects but will no longer serve on the panel  —   she saw no choice but to resign ”to retain my integrity,” she wrote in her NCR piece. ”I can no longer be sustained by hope,” she wrote. In a press release, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors praised Collins’ ”consistent” and ”tireless” work on behalf of survivors of sexual abuse by priests. Her resignation is effective Wednesday, the commission says."
"Five storied female NASA pioneers will soon grace   shelves, in Lego form. The Danish company announced on Tuesday that it would produce the Women of NASA set, submitted by science writer Maia Weinstock. ”Women have played critical roles throughout the history of the U. S. space program,” Weinstock wrote in her project proposal. ”Yet in many cases, their contributions are unknown or    —   especially as women have historically struggled to gain acceptance in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” She said the set is meant to shed light on the rich history of women in STEM professions. It beat out eleven other projects in the Lego Ideas competition, which each had to receive votes from 10, 000 supporters to be eligible. The set features Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician whose story was featured in the recent film Hidden Figures. Johnson, who is now 98 years old, appeared on stage at the Academy Awards on Sunday. She was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Other NASA women honored in Lego form are: ”Excited to be part of such a great group of women,” Jemison tweeted after the announcement, ”And even more jazzed about women in STEM!” Lego says it is particularly excited about the ”inspirational value” of the set. It is still determining the final product design  —   the photos accompanying this story were part of the proposal submitted by Weinstock. ”I hope it sets a new example for both girls and boys,” Weinstock told the BBC. ”Girls, in that they can and should be engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, and boys, in that they internalise at an early age that these careers are for everyone, not only men.” A Lego spokesperson says Women of NASA is slated for launch later this year. Other projects that were vying for Lego production included depictions of the Addams Family Mansion and the Large Hadron Collider."
"People with moderate to severe eczema may benefit from new treatments that significantly reduce the intense itching that comes with the scaly skin disease. A study published Wednesday finds that the antibody nemolizumab, given as a monthly injection, not only reduces itching significantly but also clears up many of the patches of dry, inflamed skin that are part of the disease. It appears in the New England Journal of Medicine. ”At 12 weeks there was very significant improvement,” says dermatologist Jon Hanifin of the Oregon Health and Science University. ”Not 100 percent, but patients were delighted not to have the itching that was keeping them up at night.” The study was done in 216 patients with    eczema to determine the best dose of nemolizumab. They were randomized to receive either a placebo or a low, moderate or high dose of the drug, injected once a month. Those who got the low dose reported a 44 percent reduction in itching, using a scale of 1 to 10. Patients who received moderate doses reported a 60 percent reduction in itching, while patients getting high doses reported 63 percent less itching. ”There was a consistent improvement across the dosing range and the best one was the moderate dose,” says Hanifin. ”So we may be able to treat patients with smaller doses” [than we thought.] Eczema, also called ”atopic dermatitis,” is caused by a malfunction in the body’s immune system, leading to a loss of the proteins needed to form a protective skin barrier. About 35 million Americans are estimated to have some form of the disease. The majority have mild cases which are usually helped with moisturizers to prevent dry skin and sometimes prescription medications to reduce inflammation. But about 10 percent of patients have moderate to severe eczema which, according to Hanifin, is a ”conservative estimate.” For these patients, the severe itchiness can make it nearly impossible to sleep and the creams typically used to soften dry skin and relieve itching may not work very well. They often have to take time off work and see several doctors before finding one that can help treat the chronic disease. In an editorial accompanying the study, pediatrician Lynda Schneider, who directs the Allergy Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, says the new medication is uniquely promising because it targets the need to scratch. ”If you can target the itching, this makes a big difference.” ”If patients aren’t scratching they are not disrupting the skin barrier,” she says. When the barrier is broken, bacteria can pass through the skin, exacerbating the scaly rash. Therapies like this one that boost the immune system and help treat moderate to severe eczema are an exciting advance, Schneider says. Nemolizumab is one of several drugs being studied in a new class of medications for eczema that act on the immune system. Researchers have focused in particular on the role of cytokines  —   chemicals that are released when the immune system kicks into gear in response to a bacterial or viral invader. In eczema and other autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks itself. Cytokines called interleukins are released, which block the production of proteins that are needed to keep the skin’s barrier properties intact. Nemolizumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody developed to block the production of these interleukins and prevent the loss of the protective proteins. The study’s design and analysis was paid for nemolizumab’s maker, Chugai Pharmaceuticals. A note in the article says the academic authors, which include Hanifin, vouch for the ”completeness and accuracy” of the data. Another drug, Dupilumab, works in a similar fashion and is undergoing a final review at the Food and Drug Administration. A decision whether to approve could come within weeks or months."
"When James Harris rushed his wife, Salome Karwah, to a hospital at the edge of Monrovia on the night of February 19, he expected that she’d be treated as a priority case. Salome was a prominent Ebola survivor and   Without Borders employee who’d graced the cover of Time magazine in 2014 as one of the ”Ebola Fighters” named persons of the year. And the hospital  —   run by an international Christian aid organization affiliated with the U. S.  charity Samaritan’s Purse  —   had earned a reputation for providing care to survivors. In fact, Salome had just been discharged from the same hospital a few hours earlier. She’d given birth to her fourth child two days before, undergoing a Caeserean section despite a dangerously high spike in her blood pressure, which Harris says had periodically popped back up in the days after the procedure. Privately complaining to Harris that she was being neglected by hospital staff, Salome returned home on the 19th to tend to her newborn son. Not long after, Harris says, she collapsed, foaming at the mouth and wracked by convulsions. But when Harris reached the hospital  —   known as ELWA, or Eternal Love Winning Africa  —   he says the doctor on duty refused to treat Salome. A doctor who specializes in treating Ebola survivors wasn’t present, and Harris was told he’d have to take her to a different hospital. In anguish, Harris says he pleaded with the doctor, growing increasingly agitated as his wife convulsed in the front seat of his car outside. ”[The doctor] was checking Facebook,” Harris says. ”I had to rush into the emergency room myself to get a wheelchair, but I was struggling to take her from the car to put her in it. Other nurses came to help me, but the doctor told me that she would not touch her, and that if [Salome] stayed [at the hospital] she would die.” Harris called Dr. Mosoka Fallah, a prominent Liberian epidemiologist who works with Ebola survivors, begging him to intervene. After three hours Fallah arrived at ELWA. Salome was finally admitted and examined. Two days later, she died. She was 28 years old, leaving behind Harris and their four young children. No cause of death has been given. Salome had lived through civil war, conquered Ebola and served as a global face of humanitarianism. But she could not survive giving birth in   Africa. Cradling his new son, Jeremiah, in the soft dusk of a Liberian night, and surrounded by friends and family from the neighborhood  —   known as the ”Obama community,” after a local school that bears the former U. S. president’s name  —   Harris speaks quietly, sadness etched on his young face. ”I feel crazy,” says Harris, who’s 32. ”Salome was a friend of mine, not just my wife. I will never replace her.” Like Salome, Harris is an Ebola survivor. The two met in 2013 at a friend’s house, consoling each other over recent breakups. Romance budded, and not long after they began seriously dating. Harris says he was drawn to her kindness and humor. ”She was caring with my people. When I was depressed, she was there to comfort me. When I was downhearted, she was there to reawaken me. And she was always smiling,” he says. A year after they started dating, the Ebola crisis hit Liberia. Salome and her family were among the first wave to become ill in the late summer months of 2014. Her father, a local doctor, passed away along with her mother and uncle. But she survived, along with her sister Josephine and Harris. Josephine says that when the three of them were confined in the Doctors Without Borders treatment unit, Salome’s priority was to care for her, even at the risk of her own health. ”I was worried about her, because I was pregnant at the time. There were nine other pregnant women in the unit and we watched all of them die. Salome’s entire focus was on me, that at any time I would die.” Later, when Harris deteriorated and neared the edge of death, Salome cleaned body fluids off of him and changed his clothes. When her mother died of Ebola in a separate part of the unit, she hid the news from Josephine in fear that it would harm her chances of survival. In early September 2014, Josephine and Salome were discharged. A few days late, Harris received the news that he was  . ”I called Salome, and it was like she went crazy. She was shouting on the phone, so happy.” Doctors Without Borders staff noticed that Harris and Salome had shown an inclination to care for the other patients and hired the two of them to serve as   counselors to the sick. ”She was so caring,” he remembers. ”They told us we should only spend 30 minutes in [protective gear] but sometimes she would stay in the ward for 2 or 3 hours, just talking to patients and telling them to have hope.” Interviewed by NPR in 2014, Salome Karwah said, ””It was not hard to come back [to the Ebola treatment center]. Of course I lost my two parents here . .. but if I can help someone survive, I will be very happy.” After the outbreak ended and the unit closed, Harris and Salome got engaged and were married in January 2016. In photographs, the two are smiling, elegantly dressed in white. Salome was pregnant with their third child at the time and delivered a few months later. Later that summer, Salome discovered she was pregnant again. Already dealing with three young children, the newlyweds went so far as to contemplate having an abortion. But Salome was deeply religious and decided to keep the child. They both agreed it would be their last. Now, in the wake of Salome’s death, both Harris and Josephine are accusing staff from ELWA hospital of malpractice, saying that she was stigmatized and discriminated against because she was an Ebola survivor. ”We look at it as stigma,” Harris says. ”The doctor said that the other doctor who normally works on survivors wasn’t around to treat the ’special’ patient. I said because she’s not around my wife will die? And [the doctor] told me yes.” ELWA hospital is managed by a Christian aid organization called Serving in Mission, which made headlines during the Ebola crisis when two American doctors working with the organization contracted the disease in 2014. It’s considered to be among the best health facilities in Monrovia, operating a special clinic for Ebola survivors that treats secondary complications like vision loss and joint pain. When NPR asked a doctor from ELWA to comment on Salome Karwah’s case, he said that the hospital does not think the press is an ”appropriate forum for the discussion.” More than a week after Salome’s death, Harris says that ELWA still hasn’t explained the cause of his wife’s passing. According to the World Bank, maternal mortality rates have declined sharply since 1990 in nearly every country, with the United States being a notable exception. Still, Liberia boasts the sad distinction of being among the ten most dangerous countries to give birth in, with a rate of 725 deaths per 100, 000 live births. And while most of the reporters who descended upon Liberia in 2014 have long since moved on to new stories, the ongoing effects of the outbreak are still reverberating through the country, which lost nearly ten percent of its   workers to the disease. Salome Karwah leaves behind her four children, all of them under the age of 6, and a family tortured by questions over what went wrong. Josephine is bitter. She says that Salome cooperated with the government’s mandate for survivors to go for routine checkups, including tests to ensure that her breast milk was safe. She believes that her sister deserved better care given her contributions to the country during the crisis. ”In fact, I’m not a survivor from today on. I will never go to a survivor clinic again, and I won’t ever be part of another study,” Josephine says. ”If I’m sick, I’ll disguise myself.” ”I still don’t believe she’s dead,” she says in a soft voice. ”I was trying to call out to my daughter this morning for her to come for a bath, and I accidentally started calling Salome’s name instead.” ”Even if you never met Salome, I want you to picture her as a humanitarian,” Harris adds. ”That’s the kind of person she was.” Ashoka Mukpo is a freelance writer and videographer who covers politics and culture, primarily in West Africa. Find him on Twitter @unkyoka"
"President Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday night was either, in Vice President Pence’s view, an example of Trump’s ”broad shoulders, big heart, reaching out” vision  —   or  —   in the eyes of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a ”bait and switch” speech. Pence and Democratic congressional leaders made the rounds of morning TV news programs following Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress and a nationwide audience to set their imprint on how it’s received. Pence told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the speech, in which Trump displayed a less confrontational and, at times, compassionate side, ”was all him,” and that the President was ”literally rewriting the speech” Tuesday afternoon, hours before he delivered it. On ABC’s Good Morning America, Pence said ”what you saw last night was the President acting on the priorities that he ran on, and I think that’s why this speech is being so well received.” Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, in an interview that will air Thursday on NPR’s Morning Edition, said Trump ”talks like a populist” in his speeches but he ”governs like a   guy.” Trump, Schumer said, has been ”talking the talk for a long time, but when is he going to walk the walk?” While the speech was light on specifics, Pence said the Trump has made repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act ”the number one priority of this Congress,” though congressional Republicans have long made it clear that would be their first move. Trump has continued to say that, politically, it might have been smarter to hold off, though he adds that it wouldn’t be right to make Americans wait for a resolution on the issue. Pressed today if anyone would lose their coverage in the     replacement for the ACA, Pence said Trump has made it clear that ”no one is going to fall through the cracks.” Pence told CBS This Morning the administration was still working on a new executive order to temporarily ban immigrants from some nations from entering the U. S. It’s been reported by CNN that the order was supposed to be revealed on Wednesday, but was delayed due to positive reviews of the president’s performance Tuesday night. The previous order was blocked last month by a federal appeals court, a decision Pence said is still being evaluated. He said a variety of federal agencies ”are putting the finishing touches” on a revised order, which will be issued ”in the days ahead,” but he would not divulge which countries would be affected. One of the major criticisms of the original order is that it was rushed out without proper coordination with various departments. The most emotional moment in Trump’s speech came as he recognized the widow of Navy SEAL William Ryan Owens, who was killed in a Jan. 29 counter terrorism operation in Yemen. As Carryn Owens looked on in tears from the House Gallery, Trump said ”Ryan died as he lived, a warrior and a hero, battling against terrorism and securing our nation.” But the success of the raid has also been in doubt an unknown number of civilians were also killed and a $75 million fighter jet was destroyed. Pence was asked about a report on NBC that the raid yielded no significant intelligence. Pence said the report was ”wrong.” He said Defense Secretary James Mattis on Tuesday ”confirmed again to the administration that there was significant intelligence” gathered, that will lead to ”American success and to the safety and security of the American people.”"
"You know that sharp odor of chlorine from the swimming pool you can recall from earliest childhood? It turns out it’s not just chlorine, but a potent brew of chemicals that form when chlorine meets sweat, body oils, and urine. But up until now, just how much urine has been difficult to measure, says chemist   Li of the University of Alberta. Li and her colleagues report they can now tell roughly how much pee is in a pool by measuring the artificial sweeteners carried in most people’s urine. Certain sweeteners can be a good proxy for pee, she says, because they’re designed to ”go right through you” and don’t break down readily in pool water. The scientists calculated that one     swimming pool contained almost 20 gallons of urine. In a residential pool (      deep) that would translate to about two gallons of pee. It’s only about   of a percent, but any urine in a swimming pool can be a health concern for some people, not to mention that smell that never quite goes away. Li’s team collected water from pools and hot tubs at hotels and recreation facilities in two Canadian cities and measured the amount of a sweetener called acesulfame potassium, or   for short. It’s found in everything from yogurt to soup these days, so it’s no surprise that it’s ubiquitous in our urine. It’s not just in the North American diet.   has been found in people’s urine in China too. And enough people are peeing in pools for sweeteners to show up there, too. ”I think you can assume that if people are using your pool, they’re peeing in it,” says Ernest Blatchley III, an environmental engineer at Purdue University. Apart from being gross, that’s also a potential health hazard. Chlorine reacts with urine to form a host of potentially toxic compounds called disinfection byproducts. These can include anything from the chloramines that give   pools the aforementioned odor, to cyanogen chloride, which is classified as a chemical warfare agent. There are also nitrosamines, which can cause cancer. There’s not enough evidence to say whether the nitrosamine levels in pools increase cancer risk, Blatchley says, but one study in Spain did find more bladder cancers in some   swimmers. That’s not to say that people should avoid swimming, says Clifford Weisel, an environmental health expert at Rutgers University. Even people with respiratory problems like asthma can benefit from the exercise, but ”if you take your child to the pool and they react to it, make sure you understand why,” he says. Indoor pools can be more problematic for people with respiratory conditions, for example, because compounds build up in the air above the water, and there’s less natural sunlight, which breaks down some harmful compounds. The simplest solution: Just don’t pee in the pool. And tell all your friends not to do it, either. ”I view it like secondhand smoke,” Blatchley says. ”It’s disrespectful and potentially dangerous.” Also, swimmers should shower before getting in the pool, and get out to go to the bathroom, Li says. Even a   rinse before diving in can remove much of the sweat and body gunk that reacts with chlorine. Once someone does pee in the pool, the only way to truly get rid of it is to replace the water. ”It’s not uncommon for water in a pool to go unchanged for years,” Blatchley says, since many pool owners or operators just add water as needed rather than completely replacing it, which is more expensive.  And the longer water sits in a pool, the worse it gets, his research has shown. Over time, people add more chlorine to the water, which is converted to a form called chloride that builds up and encourages the formation of yet more disinfection byproducts. Li says she’s a regular swimmer, and doesn’t want to discourage people from a healthy activity. ”This isn’t to scare people,” she says, ”but hopefully they can prevent the problem.” The study was published Wednesday in Environmental Science  Technology Letters. Erika Engelhaupt is a freelance science writer and editor based in Knoxville, Tenn. She is the former online science editor at National Geographic and writes for NPR,  Science News, and many other publications. Find her on Twitter @GoryErika."
"If you consider thousands of dollars for a tiny patch of   mold a tad too pricey, well, maybe you’re just not cut out for the   world of mold auctions. Because not even that hefty bit of green wouldn’t have brought home the other bit of green that just sold Wednesday at a London auction house. The mold in question  —   which actually outpaced early expectations to be sold for a whopping $14, 617, according to The Associated Press  —   is a capsule of the original Penicillium chrysogenum Alexander Fleming was working with when he discovered the antibiotic penicillin. Encased in a glass disc, inscribed with the words ”the mould that first made Penicillin,” and signed by Fleming himself, the little sample comes from the collection of Fleming’s niece, Mary Anne Johnston. Penicillin eventually went on to revolutionize medicine, which by the 1940s was   the antibiotic to treat many bacterial infections. ”Scientists at Oxford University further developed penicillin,” the AP explains, ”and production was ramped up so that enough of the antibiotic would be available for the Allied invasion on   in 1944.” And Fleming himself, it seems, was also distributing the original mold far and wide. Called ”mold medallions,” little items like the one sold Wednesday were passed out to notable figures worldwide. Bonhams, the London auction house, says Pope Pius XII got one, as did Winston Churchill, Marlene Dietrich and the Queen Mother Elizabeth. ”These   artefacts soon took on the status of holy relics,” says Kevin Brown, author of Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution, according to Bonhams. Fleming seems to have used the mold medallions as a combination annual bonus and hostess gift. As Quartz puts it: ”Award Fleming an honorary degree? You got mold. Dedicated service in his lab? Mold. A special audience with a celebrity or royal? Again: mold.” And Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, apparently received multiple copies. ”Every time he met Fleming, he got another one of these things,” Brown tells the AP. So, perhaps it’s not the only patch of mold Fleming left behind  —   or, really, even close to the only one  —   but still, it remains a little splotch of history. And besides, Wednesday’s buyer (whose name has not been released) at least got a better deal than the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which bought a similar sample for £23, 000 in 1996  —   or, Quartz notes, about $51, 000 when adjusted for exchange rate and inflation."
"When Ali Cobby Eckermann received the email announcing she’d won one of the world’s richest literary prizes, the unemployed Aboriginal poet says she had no idea what to think  —   though two thoughts weren’t long in coming. After she wrapped her head around the fact she’d just won a $165, 000   Prize, Eckermann told The Guardian that she ”pretty much just cried.” The poet, who now lives in a caravan in South Australia with her elderly adoptive mother, added: ”It’s going to change my life completely.” And the other thought? ”I’m fascinated that they even knew about me,” Eckermann remarked to The Sydney Morning Herald. The author, who has published a novel in verse and a memoir in addition to her several poetry collections, is among eight writers to receive this year’s   Prize, which announced its selections this week. And it’s possible that none of the eight winners will ever know who thought of them first nominations for the prize are made confidentially and judged anonymously. ”The call that recipients receive from program director Michael Kelleher is the first time that they learn of their consideration,” Mike Cummings writes for Yale News. That process can lead to quite a shock  —   and occasionally, a case of mistaken identity. As the Guardian noted, 2016 winner Helen Garner found out about her prize by checking her junk mail folder, and even then suspected she was getting scammed. There is no mistaking the esteem   judges have for Eckermann, however. ”Through song and story,” the judges write in their citation, ”Ali Cobby Eckermann confronts the violent history of Australia’s Stolen Generations and gives language to unspoken lineages of trauma and loss.” A woman of   heritage, Eckermann knows that trauma and loss personally as a member of the Stolen Generations, Aboriginal children who for decades were forcibly taken from their mothers by Australian governments and missionaries in order to assimilate them. As she wrote in her 2013 memoir Too Afraid to Cry, Eckermann was taken from her mother as a baby, just as her mother was taken from her own family. Eckermann did not find her biological mother until she was in her 30s. ”I remember the profoundness of finally finding someone that looked like me, you know,” Eckermann told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last year, ”because that’s what family is: a reflection of each other.” Her situation was not rare: As many as a third of indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families from about 1910 to 1970, the Australian government says. She tells the Guardian it feels as if the award is now ”honouring my family’s story, and the three generations of us that didn’t grow up together.” She also hopes the   prize will open the door for a family reunion of sorts. ”My son and grandsons are returning from Western Australia soon,” she tells the Morning Herald, ”so it would be lovely to establish a place to enjoy my family and watch them grow, instead of spending all my time going to them.” Eckerman joins American Carolyn Forché as the first two poets to be recognized by the prize, which was established in 2013 using funds from writer Donald Windham and named partly for his lifelong partner, actor Sandy Campbell. The six others to win this year’s prizes are André Alexis and Erna Brodber for fiction, Ashleigh Young and Maya Jasanoff for nonfiction, and Marina Carr and Ike Holter for drama."
"Worlds collide in Waking Lions, a new novel by Israeli writer Ayelet  . Like Tom Wolfe, who used the device of a    accident in The Bonfire of the Vanities as a means to violently ”introduce” New Yorkers of different races and classes to each other,   also begins her story with a car ride gone haywire. One night, as neurosurgeon Dr. Eitan Green is driving home from his long hospital shift near the Israeli city of Omer, he decides to   by detouring out to the moonlit desert. There, he cranks up some Janis Joplin and begins racing his SUV on the empty white gravel road. Well, not quite empty. Because as Eitan glances at the enormous moon in his   mirror, his SUV hits a man who appears out of nowhere on the road. The man looks to be African, a migrant, and, though he’s still breathing, his skull is split open. The African man’s life can’t be saved, but Eitan’s life, the one he’s built with his wife and two young sons, can be. After a few minutes of tortured soul searching, the good doctor gets back in his SUV and drives home. That opening failure of conscience reverberates throughout Waking Lions, warping Eitan’s marriage and career and bringing him into unforeseen intimate contact with crowds of ”others”. Like many a noir patsy, Eitan comes to realize that in trying to dodge disaster, he’s stepped backwards into a bottomless pit. The next morning, after his wife has taken their young sons off to school, Eitan hears a knock at the door. A tall Eritrean woman stands outside, holding Eitan’s wallet. Turns out, he dropped it at the scene of the crime. The woman’s name is Sirkit and she’s the widow of the man Eitan hit and killed. In return for her silence, she demands that Eitan spend every night for the foreseeable future at a deserted garage outside the city. There, on a rusty metal table, with medicine he’s ordered to steal from his own hospital, Eitan must treat an unending stream of African migrants, most of whom have walked over a thousand miles from Eritrea through Egypt and the Sinai into Israel. As a novel, Waking Lions itself is the product of a collision of cultures and genres. Translated from the Hebrew, it’s a psychological suspense tale mashed with a social novel about the refugee crisis. Overall, it’s vividly imagined, clever, and morally ambiguous, although, occasionally,  ’s plot seems bit contrived. (Eitan’s wife, for instance, happens to be the Israeli police detective investigating the    accident.) Those lapses, however, mean little in comparison to how deftly   complicates her characters here. Sirkit, who at first appears to be a fierce humanitarian, turns out to be charging her fellow refugees for the illicit medical service she’s arranged. And, Eitan, who used to pride himself on his ethics and selflessness as a doctor, finds that, as his autonomy is taken away from him and his exhaustion mounts, his empathy for his fellow human beings withers. Here’s a description of the nightly scene at the garage: They came en masse. The rumor about secret, unrecorded medical treatment spread faster than any viral infection. They came from the deserts and wadis, the restaurants . .. and the central bus station where they worked as cleaners. . .. Since [Eitan] had been coerced into helping his patients, he hated them as least as much as he hated himself. Was repulsed by the stench. The bodily fluids. . .. Without language, without the ability to exchange a single sentence the way people do . .. without words, only flesh remained. Stinking. Rotting. With ulcers, excretions, inflammations, scars. Perhaps this was how a veterinarian felt. Waking Lions contains lots of raw passages like that one. It’s a smart and disturbing exploration of the high price of walking away, whether it be from a car accident or from one’s own politically unstable homeland."
"Updated at 4:20 p. m. ET, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway acted ”inadvertently” when she urged shoppers to buy Ivanka Trump’s products on Fox and Friends last month and won’t make the same mistake again, the Trump administration says. ”It is noted that Ms. Conway made the statement in question in a light,   manner while attempting to stand up for a person she believed had been unfairly treated and did so without nefarious motive or intent to benefit personally,” wrote Stefan C. Passantino, deputy counsel to the president, compliance and ethics. Passantino made the remarks in a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr. director of the U. S. Office of Government Ethics, which had recommended possible disciplinary action against Conway. When she appeared on the Fox show on Feb. 9, Conway criticized the decision by Nordstrom to drop Ivanka Trump’s line of fashion products. The retailer has said the products weren’t selling well. ”Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would tell you. I hate shopping, and I’m gonna go get some on myself today,” Conway said. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said shortly afterward that Conway had been ”counseled” over her remarks. That a White House employee would use her platform to encourage shoppers to buy products sold by a member of the president’s family was widely criticized as a violation of ethics regulations. ”That is absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong. It is over the top,” said Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee. He and ranking minority member Elijah Cummings of Maryland later sent a letter to the White House calling for an investigation into the incident. What happens next is not clear. The OGE said it is reviewing the White House letter and had no immediate response. Cummings expressed disappointment in the White House’s response. ”It is a very bad sign that the President chose not to discipline Ms. Conway for blatantly violating the law. Other federal employees would likely be suspended for engaging in this conduct, and White House officials should not be held to a different standard. I hope that the President reconsiders his decision and that he and his staff will take their ethical obligations more seriously.” Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, said in a statement emailed to NPR: ”An internal walk through of rules that she broke is in no way an adequate reaction to the product endorsements made from the Presidential stage by Kellyanne Conway. Her blatant sales pitch for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line is a violation of ethics laws and publicly demonstrates how willing the Trump regime is to manipulate the government apparatus to advance its private business interests. We should have more than assurances that she is ’highly unlikely to do this again,’ and instead should have an administration that is eager to uphold ethics laws, and hold those who break them accountable with real consequences.” Passantino said in his letter that he had met with Conway to advise her that her comments violated ethics rules. ”Ms. Conway has acknowledged her understanding of the Standards and has reiterated her commitment to abiding by them in the future,” he said."
"Since President Trump took office, there’s been an upswing in rallies and protests outside clinics that perform abortions. During the campaign, Trump vowed to try to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has emboldened activists on both sides of the abortion debate. At one abortion clinic in Texas, along the border with Mexico, two young women in opposing camps recently changed their minds about the way they feel and think about the issue of abortion. It’s midday on a Tuesday, and    Mercedes Soto is standing outside the Whole Woman’s Health clinic in McAllen, Texas. It’s the last remaining abortion clinic in the entire    region known as the Rio Grande Valley. Soto is demonstrating with fellow   protesters who call themselves prayer warriors. She doesn’t look like the other women praying. She’s a lot younger. The word ”misunderstood” is tattooed in cursive on the outside of her arm. Soto says she had a rough childhood. She says she always felt isolated and unloved, so when she turned 18 she left home. ”If you would have looked at me in my old life, you wouldn’t have expected anything good,” Soto says. ”I was in very very bad steps. I turned to drugs as a coping mechanism. I started hanging out with the wrong crew. I joined a gang. I just wanted to belong. I wanted to belong. And I wanted somebody to be there for me.” Then, two years ago she got pregnant. That’s when she came to this clinic for the first time, except not as an   protester but as a patient. ”I was on the other side,” Soto says. ”I was contemplating abortion, and I was very headstrong about my abortion.” On her way into the clinic that day, Soto was stopped by a woman, an   activist praying outside the clinic. ”She starts telling me I’m beautiful, and I wasn’t trying to hear this woman,” she says. ”I wasn’t.” Soto decided not to have an abortion. Now, she is carrying a sign with what looks like a gory fetus and the words ”Abortion Is Murder.” In her other hand, she is holding an even more persuasive tool  ” her    son, Samson, whom she often brings with her to protest shutting down the McAllen clinic. In January, hundreds of protesters rallied outside the Whole Woman’s Health Clinic. One group was marching against the abortion clinic, and another, smaller group was standing to protect it. ”Seeing all of these women here has just ignited the fire,” said    Laura Molinar, who traveled more than 230 miles from San Antonio. She held a   sign on yellow poster board with the words ”Don’t Tread On Me” on top. The flag is one you see all over the place in Texas. Only this time, the snake is wrapping around a giant uterus. ”It took me a while to draw this uterus,” Molinar joked. ”It’s not the best.” There used to be another abortion clinic about 35 miles from the one in McAllen, but it closed because of a Texas law known as House Bill 2. HB2 was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court, but many clinics affected by the law never reopened. For Molinar, these closures would have been celebrated in the church she grew up in. ”As a teenager I was so involved with the Catholic Church, you know, doing praise and worship,” Molinar said. Friends from her church youth group used to pray outside abortion clinics. But last year, the issue became personal when Molinar chose to have an abortion. ”I was faced with making that choice for myself,” Molinar said. ”And I never thought that that would happen to me until it actually did. I remember feeling so alone, and so scared and unworthy, and I remember telling myself that I will do everything in my power from this point on to help women so that they will never feel like that.” In the Rio Grande Valley, the local Catholic diocese is a major organizer of   efforts. The clinic in McAllen has protesters outside its main entrance almost every day. And   activists even travel from across the border in Mexico to demonstrate at the clinic. But for Molinar, her religion remains a guide. For her, it’s not just about maintaining abortion access in this part of Texas, but also fighting for all the other services the clinic provides to   women and unauthorized immigrant women, like birth control and Pap smears. ”I still identify as Catholic, and I still feel that God loves me,” she said. ”I don’t think I’ve confronted that yet. And I feel that a lot of members of the church shame these women, and they make them feel unloved and unsupported and that God doesn’t love them, which is not true.” With abortion, it so often seems like the national divides are entrenched and that nothing will change a person’s point of view. But in this Texas town and across the U. S. there are women like Soto and Molinar, who defy what you might think, and sometimes even switch sides."
"Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political careers took off in Arkansas and the state capital, Little Rock, is filled with tributes to the former president, the only native of the Natural State who has made it to the Oval Office. Now a state lawmaker wants to erase the Clintons’ names from the Little Rock airport. ”The state of Arkansas would just like to forget the Clinton era,” said state Sen. Jason Rapert, a Republican. On Wednesday, the state Senate will hold a hearing about a bill Rapert has submitted that forbids the state from naming facilities built with public money after people who are still alive. The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock would be the most prominent facility affected by the proposed law. Although Bill is 16 years removed from the White House and Hillary’s own presidential dreams were smashed in November, Rapert cites a familiar list of reasons why the Clintons’ names should be removed from the busiest airport in Arkansas, including allegations of impropriety at the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton’s emails as secretary of state and Bill Clinton’s impeachment by Congress. ”When people realized there really was fire where there was all that smoke with the Clintons, they really don’t want to have anything to do with them at all,” said Rapert. Shift away from Democrats, A controversial figure himself, Rapert has most recently attempted to revive the abolition of   marriage, criminalize abortion and install a monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state Capitol. He is on the far right in a state that has become increasingly dominated by Republicans in the past decade. By 2014, the GOP controlled the state Legislature and every constitutional office in Arkansas as white, socially conservative voters migrated away from the Democratic Party. Bill Clinton said in 2015 that he would perhaps lose in Arkansas were he running now. Last year, Hillary Clinton didn’t bother to contest Arkansas and lost the state by 27 points. After the election, a billboard on a highway leading into Little Rock read: ”The Witch is Dead. Establishment Fired. Time to drain the swamp.” Hillary, who was raised in Illinois and educated on the East Coast, had a complicated relationship with her husband’s home state. In her autobiography, Living History, she wrote, ”I was an oddity because of my dress, my Northern ways, and the use of my maiden name.” Still, as the state’s first lady, Hillary started the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program, a popular early education program that continues to have bipartisan support today. Although Bill’s presidential library was built in Arkansas, the couple relocated to New York after his presidency so that Hillary could pursue her own political career representing that state in the Senate. Economic legacy, In 2012, while Hillary was serving as secretary of state in the Obama administration, the Little Rock airport commission voted unanimously to rename it in honor of the Clintons. ”The Clintons did a tremendous amount for this state,” said Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, a Democrat. Stodola says that the Clinton presidential library has brought billions of dollars to Arkansas and that Bill Clinton remains an active presence, staying in the apartment atop the library nearly every month. Little Rock was one of the few parts of the state to back Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid last year. Stodola hopes the bill won’t proceed in the state Senate, but if it succeeds, the city is prepared to challenge it or reject state funding so that the law doesn’t apply to the airport. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, is staying out of the fray. Hutchinson says the decision is up to the airport commission, although he emphasized that Arkansas remains proud of the Clintons. ”Even today, I was at the mansion with some guests from a foreign country and I was, with great pride, pointing out the balcony from which Bill Clinton made one of his announcements for president,” he said during a news conference on Tuesday. When asked whether renaming the airport pushes the boundaries of political decorum too far, Rapert conceded that perhaps the bill, which bans naming airports after a living person, should make an exception for living presidents. ”Therefore, Hillary’s name would be removed,” he said. Meanwhile, Rapert has gotten some blowback from Clinton supporters in the state. In response to his bill, a petition on Facebook proposes renaming several municipal sewage tanks after Rapert."
"For 10 days every winter, nearly a million people show up to visit a Paris convention center that’s been transformed into a piece of the French countryside. The Salon de l’Agriculture, which runs Feb. 25 to March 5, is one of the world’s largest agricultural fairs. Inside the massive,   exposition hall on the west end of Paris, dozens of breeds of milk and beef cows chew their cud and watch hordes of visitors, as baby lambs scamper about their   stalls. Farmers tout their   meats and cheeses and young people learn what it’s like to work on a farm. And during a heated political campaign season, this farm show is an obligatory stop for any presidential candidate. Retired engineer Gilles Roque says Parisians young and old show up here every year because farming holds a kind of mythic place in the French psyche. ”We French, even though we mostly live in the city now, we have peasants and farmers in our ancestry,” he says. ”Farming is part of our heritage. It’s in the French soul.” France is also the European Union’s top agricultural producer, with exports of more than $60 billion a year. With a presidential election coming in May, the importance of candidates paying their respects to the guardians of this nation’s cherished farmland and villages cannot be underestimated. On Tuesday,   candidate and   Marine Le Pen made her visit. There was such a dense scrum of reporters, cameras and microphones surrounding her that all you could see was the top of her   head bobbing as she walked around, talking to farmers. Roque filmed it all on his cell phone. He says voters today are tired of 40 years of going back and forth between right and left. Many are choosing the two outsider candidates, Le Pen and political newcomer Emmanuel Macron, who stepped down as President Francois Hollande’s economy minister to launch his own movement and run as an independent. Roque says he’s always voted Socialist, but this year, he’s thinking of voting for Le Pen. ”She has completely changed the party from her father’s day,” he says. ”She’s created a solid base that’s no longer extremist. And you see that in the simple, regular people who want to vote for her now.” Le Pen took over the   National Front party from her father,   Le Pen, in 2011. He was seen as a xenophobic and racist firebrand. His daughter has worked to soften the party’s image and attract new voters. Today she is leading the presidential race, with 27 percent support in recent polls. And she’s even more popular in the   world of rural France. Le Pen favors leaving the European Union, boosting aid to French farmers and promoting French products. A recent poll in Le Monde showed her support at 35 percent among farmers. But not every farmer at the Paris agriculture show is enthusiastic about about Le Pen. Thierry Chabot, who makes the famous Comté cheese in the mountains near the Swiss border, is one who isn’t. He’s brought some of his Montbeliard cows here, wearing giant bells around their necks. Chabot says he doesn’t like Le Pen’s ideas about leaving the European Union. ”Today we can’t live without Europe,” he says. ”We sell our products in the EU, we have a European currency, we can’t go backwards. And we see how the English regret their decision to leave.” Chabot says most French farmers vote conservative, and their favored candidate has been Francois Fillon, on the mainstream right. But Fillon is under investigation for allegedly creating a fictitious,   government job for his wife. In a   surprise Wednesday that had the French news channels in a speculative frenzy, Fillon suddenly cancelled his scheduled visit to the farm show. With news that the investigation into a possible fictitious job scheme is going forward, Fillon called a press conference to denounce a ”political attack” and vowed to continue his campaign. Even with Fillon looking less and less attractive, Chabot says he’s hesitant about voting Le Pen. He says the political turmoil he’s seen in the U. S. after President Trump’s election gives him pause. No one seems too excited about Macron, currently running second in the polls behind Le Pen. Three women who are discussing the election tell me Le Pen has nothing to do with Donald Trump. They say she is much smarter and savvier than him. One of the women, Martine Le Monze recently retired from a research job at a respected scientific institute. She says she’s always voted for mainstream right candidates, but this year, her vote will go to Le Pen. ”We really hope she’ll be elected because France is so low right now and she’s the only on who can bring us up,” says Le Monze. ”She has a program for the old, the young, the farmers  —   and it’s the only viable plan.” Le Monze and her friends say Macron is a neophyte with no program at all. The centrist candidate has revealed the overall themes of his campaign and is expected to present a detailed platform on March 2. What’s strikingly different about attitudes here since the last presidential election just five years ago is that the typical Le Pen voter  —   usually   and without higher education  —   seems a thing of the past. And there is no shame anymore about voting for the National Front."
"Every year, the SXSW Music Festival serves a daunting,   feast of sounds from around the world. And once again, NPR Music’s Austin 100 is here to distill it all down to a digestible meal of music discovery. Picked from a playlist that spanned more than a hundred hours, these 100 songs represent a broad and exciting   of SXSW’s many highlights. Here’s how you can listen: As in previous years, The Austin 100 is just the beginning of NPR Music’s SXSW 2017 coverage, so visit NPR.  for full concerts, photos, videos, commentary and, of course, many more recommendations. Enjoy the music! The Austin 100 Playlist, Aaron Lee Tasjan, ”Little Movies” Nashville, Tennessee, Tasjan’s spacey,   Americana positively sparkles. Adam Torres, ”I Came To Sing The Song” Austin, Texas, Torres sings high and lonesome ballads with vulnerability and piercing clarity. Agnes Obel, ”Familiar” Copenhagen, Denmark, Obel’s graceful, immaculate songs can sound both warm and chilling. Aldous Harding, ”Horizon” Lyttelton, New Zealand, Harding’s haunting folk music moves delicately, but never stops baring its teeth. All Our Exes Live In Texas, ”Boundary Road” Sydney, Australia, Four singers whose rich, swooning harmonies elevate their lush   songs. Allison Crutchfield, ”I Don’t Ever Wanna Leave California” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The former Swearin’ singer writes smart, spiky songs about rootlessness and regret. Annabelle Chairlegs, ”Watermelon Summer” Austin, Texas, Lindsey Mackin’s voice soars and rages over stormy   jams. Be Charlotte, ”Machines That Breathe” Dundee, Scotland, Charlotte Brimner sings brightly charming   songs with an irresistible brogue. Big Thief, ”Masterpiece” Brooklyn, New York, Adrianne Lenker’s songs mix blustery energy with sweet nods to a life of friendship and connection. Boogarins, ”Elogio Á Instituição Do Cinismo” Goiânia, Brazil, The band’s stomping songs meet at a perfect midpoint between   and Tropicália. Brent Cobb, ”Shine On Rainy Day” Ellaville, Georgia, The  ’s sandy voice is the audio equivalent of sweet tea in the summertime. Calliope Musicals, ”Sink Or Swim” Austin, Texas, A vibrant   band whose shows are spectacles of concentrated celebration. Canyon City, ”Paper Airplanes” Nashville, Tennessee, Paul Johnson’s warm, bright   songs feel like letters from a friend. Carson McHone, ”Poet” Austin, Texas, McHone straddles the   line, as rock energy meets slide guitars and deep twang. Charlie Cunningham, ”An Opening” London, England, Cunningham’s songs have a cavernous quality to them, while still somehow sounding intimate. Charly Bliss, ”Ruby” Brooklyn, New York, ”Bubblegrunge” is a genre now, and damned if Charly Bliss isn’t great at it. Cherry Glazerr, ”Nurse Ratched” Los Angeles, California, Clementine Creevy leads a young rock ’n’ roll powerhouse with slyness and swagger. Christopher Paul Stelling, ”Destitute” Brooklyn, New York, Stelling infuses his dusty folk songs with raw, wiry,   intensity. Close Talker, ”Afterthought” Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Like Rhye’s music before it, the band’s songs are sexy, oddly unsettling and irresistible. Coco Hames, ”I Don’t Wanna Go” Memphis, Tennessee, On her solo debut, The Ettes’ singer arms sugary pop hooks with   fangs. Crywolf, ”Weight” Los Angeles, California, Crywolf came up in EDM, but his new project radiates lonesome, Bon   yearning. Dawg Yawp, ”I’ll Quit Tomorrow” Cincinnati, Ohio, A sitar gives this   duo’s dreamily pretty songs a bit of added shimmer. De Osos, ”Todo El Ruido Entre Nosotros” Mexico City, Mexico, From ambient swells to   squalls, in the space of a single song. Dem Yuut, ”Dawn   Sea” Minneapolis, Minnesota, RB and   sounds get warped and reshaped until they form something new. Derrick Hart, ”you’re winning so i quit” Greenfield, Massachusetts, Hart’s timeless, vibrant   songs make the most of their impeccably placed strings. Emily Reo, ”Spell” Brooklyn, New York, Reo’s voice gets looped and processed until it forms a grand, gorgeous, swirling mass. Eric Biddines, ”Peeuurrnn” Palm Beach, Florida, The rapper’s twisty, distinct flow lends his songs a sense of playfulness and surprise. FINLAY, ”TIDES” Los Angeles, California, Paige Finlay’s fizzily insistent pop brims over with a sense of joy worthy of Carly Rae Jepsen. Frances Cone, ”Arizona” Brooklyn, New York, The band doesn’t stay in one place for long, as slow burns make way for soaring catharsis. Frankie Rose, ”Know Me” New York, New York, The singer is an inexhaustible well of sunny, hooky  . Gaelynn Lea, ”Watch The World Unfold” Duluth, Minnesota, Lea’s looped violin and intimate vocals form a sound infused with warmth and optimism. Golden Dawn Arkestra, ”Stargazer” Saturn, Texas, You can almost hear the costumes and smoke machines in this Sun   spectacle. Goon, ”Cammie At Night” Los Angeles, California, Right down to its name, Goon captures the essence of ’90s college radio. Gurr, ”Moby Dick” Berlin, Germany, A     duo whose simplicity never drowns out all the shiny hooks. Holly Macve, ”Heartbreak Blues” Brighton, England, Macve blends the icy cool of Lana Del Rey with the folksy warmth of a yodeling country queen. Hoops, ”Cool 2” Bloomington, Indiana, The band distills busy guitars and shadowy mystery into efficient pocket epics. Iron Reagan, ”Dying World” Richmond, Virginia, Speedball blasts of rigid, raging metal, complete with solos that shred. Japanese Breakfast, ”Everybody Wants To Love You” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Beneath all the sweetness and sugar lies something sideways, even vaguely sinister. Jay Som, ”The Bus Song” Oakland, California, Melina Duterte writes   brightly spry   songs, and plays every note herself. Jealous Of The Birds, ”Goji Berry Sunset” Portadown, Northern Ireland, Irish singer Naomi Hamilton layers her gorgeous voice to make blissful, hypnotic folk music. Johnny Flynn, ”Heart Sunk Hank” London, England, Big on the U. K. folk scene, the   plays songs that never feel tethered to one era. Julie Byrne, ”Follow My Voice” New York, New York, Byrne’s dusky voice slows the blood and calms the nerves. L. A. Salami, ”Going Mad As The Street Bins” London, England, Lookman Adekunle Salami is a songwriter and poet whose songs burst with big ideas. Le Butcherettes, ”Shave The Pride” Guadalajara, Mexico, Teri Gender Bender is riveting onstage, to the point of being a little terrifying. Let’s Eat Grandma, ”Deep Six Textbook” Norwich, England, Two English teenagers make funny, whimsically unsettling experimental pop. The Lighthouse And The Whaler, ”I Want To Feel Alive” Cleveland, Ohio, Agreeably effervescent   elevated by forays into orchestral grandiosity. Lillie Mae, ”Honky Tonks  Taverns” Nashville, Tennessee, A Jack   singer and   whose songs are all verve and nerve. Liniker E Os Caramelows, ”Remonta” Araraquara, Brazil, A brooding Brazilian soul band with a chilling sound and a future star in singer Liniker Barros. Living Hour, ”Steady Glazed Eyes” Winnipeg, Manitoba, Slowdive just returned, but shoegaze music was already in good hands with Living Hour. LVL UP, ”The Closing Door” Purchase, New York, The churning, wordy rumble of Neutral Milk Hotel gets a thoughtful and catchy update. Manu Delago, ”A Step (feat. Pete Josef)” London, England, Delago’s playing on the Hang (kind of like a muted steel drum) has led him to work with Björk. Solo, his songs are dizzyingly pretty. Marisa Anderson, ”He Is Without His Guns” Portland, Oregon, Without flash, Anderson’s solo guitar pieces tell a story while establishing a clear sense of place. Meat Wave, ”Run You Out” Chicago, Illinois, Meat Wave locates the thread connecting blistering punk to the   legacy of Billy Squier. Middle Kids, ”Edge Of Town” Sydney, Australia, A rock band with the chemistry, charm and moxie to sail straight from small clubs to stadiums. Migrant Kids, ”Thread” Austin, Texas, Propulsive   with swirling synths, chugging guitars and real power. Moor Mother, ”Deadbeat Protest” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Camae Ayewa’s     is radical and confrontational in every way. Moses Boyd Exodus, ”Rye Lane Shuffle” London, England, A drummer, composer and rising star, Boyd takes jazz in surprising, invigorating directions. Nick Hakim, ”Bet She Looks Like You” Washington, D. C. The singer’s   songs seem to seep in from another room  —   or another era. Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, ”dOn’t turn me Off (feat. JD AKA ThrashKitten  Mal Devisa)” Chicago, Illinois, With the help of inspired guest collaborators, Ogbonnaya flings joyful ideas in every direction. No Joy, ”Califone” Montreal, Quebec, The band stirs fuzz, jangle and abrasion into a   sound that rarely stays in one place for long. Noga Erez, ”Pity” Tel Aviv, Israel, Bold in sound, style and subject matter, the   infuses her   with tightly coiled fury. Noname, ”Diddy Bop (feat. Raury  Cam O’bi)” Chicago, Illinois, The rapper’s clever wordplay and   sound only enhance her personal storytelling. Otoboke Beaver, ”S’il Vous Plait” Kyoto, Japan, The    equivalent of 15 consecutive exclamation points. Outer Spaces, ”Words” Baltimore, Maryland, You’ll never be happier to get a song stuck in your head for days. Overcoats, ”Hold Me Close” New York, New York, Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell weave their beautiful voices together tightly and set them to subtle beats. Palm, ”Crank” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Palm’s songs are jagged and dauntingly complex, but the band’s live reputation promises relentless mayhem. Particle Devotion, ”Pause Button” New Orleans, Louisiana, Brainy, tenderly conversational verses give way to choruses that burst with ragingly ecstatic energy. Perro, ”Reptiliano” Murcia, Spain, Big, churning, infectious rock ’n’ roll, fueled by guitars you can feel in your bones. Phoebe Bridgers, ”Smoke Signals” Los Angeles, California, A formidable talent whose haunting voice and eye for storytelling detail are genuinely special. Phoria, ”Emanate” Brighton, England, Breathlessly pretty electronic music in which every note sounds conspicuously human. Porter Ray, ”Arithmetic (feat. Infinite  Stas THEE Boss)” Seattle, Washington, Aligned with Shabazz Palaces, the rapper sets his own agile rhymes against softly woozy,   arrangements. Priests, ”JJ” Washington, D. C. Charismatic singer Katie Alice Greer is a rock star, a pop star and a political punk, all rolled up in one. pronoun, ”a million other things” Brooklyn, New York, Alyse Vellturo’s bedroom recordings exude raw vulnerability, but also notes of defiant optimism. R. LUM. R, ”Frustrated” Nashville, Tennessee, A     RB singer whose falsetto is no joke. The Regrettes, ”Hot” Eagle Rock, California, The band played with cool confidence when its members were just kids now that most of them are grown, look out. River Whyless, ”Life Crisis” Asheville, North Carolina, Every band member seems to keep busy at all times, giving River Whyless’ songs a sense of playful motion. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, ”Julie’s Place” Melbourne, Australia, Beachy, strummy   that’ll chime and jangle its way straight into your heart. Sad13, ”&lt2” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis takes a solo turn, redirecting her sound toward smart, slinky pop. Sammus, ”1080p” Ithaca, New York, The rapper   as a nerd, but she also bares her soul and raw nerves. Seckond Chaynce, ”Can’t Take This From Me” Tampa, Florida, The Christian rapper’s intense,   delivery is  . Slingshot Dakota, ”You” Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, The married couple plays big, blooming, Technicolor   with grace and joy. Sneaks, ”Inside Edition” Washington, D. C. Eva Moolchan’s     plays out in short minimalist bursts. SOHN, ”Signal” Vienna, Austria, Christopher Taylor’s sparse, brooding electronic ballads settle under the skin. Split Single, ”Untry Love” Evanston, Illinois, Rock veteran Jason Narducy plays     anthems worthy of arenas. Sven Helbig, ”Abendglühen” Dresden, Germany, The composer’s rich, enveloping symphonic pieces are performed by choirs and augmented by electronics. Tancred, ”Bed Case” Kittery, Maine, Now, Now’s Jess Abbott marries     sounds to deceptively dark lyrics. Teen Daze, ”Cycle” Abbotsford, British Columbia, Jamison Isaak’s dreamy electronic music reflects on the vulnerability of nature and our own minds. Temples, ”Certainty” Kettering, England, The band channels the sonic ambition, and the visual manifestations, of ’60s and ’70s pop. Tkay Maidza, ”Simulation” Adelaide, South Australia, The singer and rapper presides over springy pop songs that beg to be fed through car speakers. Tombs, ”Deceiver” Brooklyn, New York, Tombs’ punishing metal is expansive and inventive, with nods to gothic and industrial music. Totally Mild, ”When I’m Tired” Melbourne, Australia, Sweet,   pointedly concise    —   perfect for very short walks in the sunshine. Trapo, ”Speed” Madison, Wisconsin, At 19, the rapper and singer already has a distinct, alluring songwriting voice. Tribu Baharú, ”Made In Tribu Baharú” Región Caribe, Colombia, It’s difficult to overstate the band’s unrelentingly,   joyous energy. Troker, ”Principe Charro” Guadalajara, Mexico, Troker’s churningly energetic,   jazz has a spring in its step and a metalhead’s heart. Tunde Olaniran, ”Namesake” Flint, Michigan, Olaniran’s busily infectious anthems bubble over with intensity and ideas. Vagabon, ”Fear  Force” New York, New York, Singer and   Laetitia Tamko fills her songs with spare, thoughtful rumination. Valley Queen, ”Stars Align” Los Angeles, California, Natalie Carol presides over ambling Americana jams that positively soar. Weaves, ”Tick” Toronto, Ontario, The band’s zingy,   quirkiness provides a nice backdrop for the commanding presence of singer Jasmyn Burke. Will Stratton, ”Some Ride” Beacon, New York, For all their   precision, Stratton’s pristine acoustic folk songs are as warm as music gets. Yussef Kamaal, ”Lowrider” London, England, Drummer Yussef Dayes and keyboardist Kamaal Williams play bold, futuristic funk that throbs and thrills."
"Lady Gaga will be filling in for Beyoncé as Coachella’s Saturday headliner for the   festival. Gaga tweeted the news Tuesday: ”Let’s party in the desert!” After Beyoncé cancelled her performance due to her pregnancy with twins, secondary ticket prices reportedly dipped over 10 percent for the annual desert festival, which takes place April   and April  . It wasn’t the only news involving Coachella this week. In an email to those with user accounts on its website, festival officials ”recently discovered that third parties illegally gained access to the usernames, first and last names, shipping addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth individuals provided.” No passwords or financial information was stolen, according to the statement. The hack was first reported last week by Motherboard, which pointed out that some 950, 000 accounts  —   the majority for Coachella’s message board  —   were being sold on the dark web, including hashed (or encrypted) passwords. A request for clarification from Goldenvoice on whether passwords were or were not stolen referred NPR back to the statement the company issued, in full below. Neither Coachella, its owner Goldenvoice, or Goldenvoice’s owner AEG addressed the hack on social media or coachella. com. Even if passwords weren’t accessed during the hack, account holders’ email addresses could be targeted with phishing emails that appear as if they’re from Coachella. The same method, called ”spear phishing,” resulted in the hack of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman John Podesta. Their statement in full: We recently discovered that unauthorized third parties illegally gained access to the usernames, first and last names, shipping addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth individuals provided to Coachella. We have confirmed that no user passwords were stolen. Based on our investigation, no financial information was accessed and, there is no indication that customer financial information has been disclosed. We have taken measures to block further unauthorized access, and reported the matter to the appropriate authorities for further investigation. We regret any inconvenience this incident may have caused. If you have any questions, please contact info@coachella. com. Please be aware that you may be targeted by phishing emails sent from people impersonating Coachella personnel. Please remember that Coachella will never solicit personal information or account information from you via email. Please exercise caution if you receive any emails or phone calls that ask for such information, or direct you to web sites where you are asked for personal or financial information. Festival ticketing purchase accounts were not affected by this incident, however festival attendees may want to consider changing any passwords that they have shared with others. Updated, 12:49 p. m. Mar. 1: This article was updated to include Coachella’s full statement on the hack and its response to questions on whether passwords were included as part of it."
"We have a winner. For the last three years, thousands of musicians have submitted videos to NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest for a chance to come to Washington, D. C. and perform at NPR’s home office. This year, the judges settled unanimously on Tank and the Bangas, a group of half a dozen young New Orleanians who wear their geography on their sleeves in their winning submission, ”Quick.” NPR’s Ari Shapiro caught up with the band, led by vocalist Tarriona ”Tank” Ball. Hear their conversation at the audio link, and read an edited version below.” Ari Shapiro: I’ve got to start by asking where the name Tank and the Bangas came from. Tarriona Ball, a. k. a. Tank: ”My nickname is Tank. My dad was in college  —   he played football, and they called him ’Cannonball,’ and it would be so crazy that years later he would call me his ’Tank.’ He passed on, and I really feel like I’m living out his dreams through the simple nickname that he gave me. It’s kind of crazy that the whole world knows it now.” Where does the word ”Bangas” come from? ”We started this open mic at this cafe that we used to be at called Black Star Cafe, and I guess they added Bangas on because you would go there every Sunday and the music would be bangin’.” Tell me about the song that you submitted for the Tiny Desk Contest. ”Well, the song is called ”Quick!” One day, Albert [Allenback] the saxophonist of the group, was playing with beats in his room like he does. And he brought this to Joshua [Johnson] one day . ..” Joshua’s the musical director and drummer. ”Yes. And we were just playin’ in the car and he was like, ’I want you to write something to this. ’” Tell us about where you took it in this song. ”The song is about a guy that tried to really get a girl and she’s just planning on getting him back. It’s about a   chase it has lot of elements, and the story is actually told backwards. ”I don’t know if you know this hand game called ’Down by the river called Hanky Panky, where the bullfrogs jump bank to bank’? That’s how I got the first line, ’Down by the river where the green grass grow, where the sun be burning hot.’ I have a lot of childhood memories that still stick with me a lot today, and it’s always incorporated into music in some type of way. ’My back is achin’ my bra too tight’: It’s hand games that we would play as little girls.” You guys are a New Orleans band, so it’s appropriate that we’re talking on Mardi Gras. What is New Orleans about your sound? ”One of the beautiful things that I guess I could say about Tank and Bangas, that a lot of people even from New Orleans know, is that we are very different from what is traditionally New Orleans. New Orleans has a good ground of beautiful, great music that’s . .. jazzerific, if that’s even a word, that’s brassalicious and definitely  . But if I was to take anything from New Orleans  —   definitely just being an entertainer. ”In New Orleans, you could walk down the street and someone is standing still just for money. There are children   for change. There’s a brass band on the corner almost every night. And you just know that no matter what you’re going through, that New Orleans wants you to know, for some reason, that it will be all right if we put a beat to your pain. It’s just something about walking those streets and seeing people, old [people] start dancing like young boys when they hear certain music. You want to always carry on that tradition of what New Orleans is.”"
"Updated at 4:56 p. m. ET, Attorney General Jeff Sessions says he will recuse himself from any investigations into possible Russian involvement in the 2016 elections. ”Let me be clear: I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions reiterated during an afternoon news conference in response to reports that he had met twice with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. last year. ”I should not be involved in investigating a campaign I had a role in,” Sessions said. The meetings, first reported by the Washington Post first and confirmed by NPR’s Carrie Johnson, came as Sessions was a top surrogate for President Trump’s campaign and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. During his Senate confirmation hearing, the   senator told Sen. Al Franken,  . under oath that he ”did not have communications with the Russians.” Sessions said Thursday that it was not his intent to mislead the committee and that he would soon write to the members to clarify his answers, admitting that in retrospect, he ”should have slowed down and said I did meet with one Russian official and that was the Russian ambassador.” When asked about what he did discuss with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during their two meetings in July and September, Sessions said, ”I don’t recall” but that ”most of these ambassadors are pretty gossipy.” In a statement, Sessions announced that after meeting with his staff and Justice Department counsel, ”I have decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.” When Trump was asked earlier in the day about Sessions during the president’s visit to the USS Gerald R. Ford in Newport News, Va. Trump said he ”wasn’t aware” Sessions had spoken to the Russian ambassador. When asked about whether the attorney general should recuse himself, Trump responded, ”I don’t think so.” Sessions clarified in the statement, however, that the ”announcement should not be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of any investigation or suggestive of the scope of any such investigation” and reiterated that he has ”taken no actions regarding any such matters, to the extent they exist.” Democrats on Capitol Hill were already clamoring for a Sessions recusal  —   and his possible resignation. Some top Republicans had already begun to say that he should recuse himself from any investigations too, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, though McCarthy later tried to walk that back. After the Sessions announcement, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said that ”any talk of resignation is nonsense” and that Sessions’ recusal was ”the right thing to do.” Grassley added that he ”welcomes” Sessions sending a letter to the committee to ”clear up any confusion regarding his testimony.” If any investigation into the 2016 election does move forward, however, Acting Deputy Attorney General and U. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dane Boente will oversee those matters. He was appointed acting attorney general in the interim before Sessions’ confirmation after Obama holdover Sally Yates was fired by Trump for refusing to defend the president’s temporary ban on refugees and visa holders from seven   countries. NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson contributed to this report. "
"Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, is not known to seek the limelight. He’s a   diplomat and an arms control expert who came to Washington as ambassador in 2008. But he has been in the news a lot of late, as Trump administration contacts with him come under scrutiny. Michael Flynn, President Trump’s original national security adviser, had to resign after misleading the administration about his phone calls with Kislyak. And now, Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has come under fire for meeting twice with the ambassador last year. ”I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions said Thursday. But he announced he would recuse himself ”from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.” Speaking at Stanford University last November, Kislyak defended his contacts with Trump surrogates. ”Our job is to talk to all the people, be it Republicans, be it Democrats, whether they work for a campaign, whether they don’t work for a campaign,” he said. ”Our job is to understand.” He also lamented the souring of U. S.  relations. ”We are living in the worst point in our relations after the end of the Cold War,” he said. But the ambassador complained that the U. S. is trying to contain Russia, through sanctions and political pressure. Kislyak has built a reputation in Washington as a pragmatist. Alexander Vershbow, a former U. S. ambassador and NATO official, has known him since the 1990s and negotiated directly with him when both served as ambassadors to NATO. Vershbow says when he left that job to become U. S. ambassador to Russia, Kislyak gave him a gift  —   an album by the Red Army Chorus called Our Answer to NATO. It was all in good humor, Vershbow says, and that’s the kind of ambassador Kislyak is  —   patriotic but personable. ”He’s much more of a quiet,    type,” Vershbow says, ”a real experts’ expert on arms control and security issues . .. but also has a good reputation as a   one of the relatively pragmatic and nonpolemical diplomats I’ve dealt with.” A former Obama administration official, Philip Gordon, found the same in his dealings with Kislyak. In the early days of the Obama administration’s ”reset” of relations with Russia, Kislyak played a key role. ”There was a real agenda,” Gordon says, ”and Kislyak was a part of that positive development in relations between the two countries.” Dmitry Medvedev was Russia’s president at the time. But when Vladimir Putin returned to the job, the Kremlin set a different tone, says Gordon, now at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”We started to hear the differences,” Gordon recalls, ”and the Russian ambassador reflected those, just as he reflected his government’s policies when we were in a more positive phase.” Gordon says it was not surprising to see Kislyak make contact with Trump surrogates during the campaign. But he says it is alarming that those advisers weren’t upfront with Americans about those contacts. Those who support more pragmatic dealings with Russia say that just got more difficult. ”Very few people probably would want to meet with Russia’s ambassador,” says Paul Saunders of the Center for the National Interest, a conservative think tank that has frequently hosted Kislyak. ”That really doesn’t really have anything to do with him personally. But I think it has become, in our political climate, increasingly damaging to admit to contacts like that.” The same is likely to be the case for the next ambassador. Russian news reports have said Kislyak will be replaced by Anatoly Antonov, who has a reputation as a  ."
"U. S. Rep. Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, has been trying to get a look at the Republicans’ bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. He’s the   Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will have to approve the bill before the whole House can vote on it. But as of Thursday afternoon, Pallone still couldn’t get his hands on a copy. ”We have no idea right now what they’re considering,” he said of his Republican colleagues. Rep. Greg Walden, a Republican from Oregon and the Energy and Commerce Committee’s chairman, made draft legislation available to Republicans on the panel Thursday, but they had to read it in a private room and weren’t allowed to make copies. When the location of that room leaked on Twitter late Thursday morning, reporters filled the hallway outside the room’s door on the first floor of the U. S. Capitol. Pallone, along with his Democratic House colleagues Jan Schakowsky, from Illinois, and Joseph Crowley, from New York, also stopped by. But when they went in, the room was empty. ”We were looking for the bill but there’s no one there,” Pallone said. That room was just down the hall from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s  office, so Pallone went in to ask McCarthy where he could see the legislation. McCarthy directed him to Walden’s office. Luckily, Walden had a Capitol ”hideaway” office just down the hall. Pallone led his colleagues, a string of reporters and even a couple of Capitol Police officers to the unmarked door, knocked and waited. ”It’s locked,” he said after trying the handle. ”This is ridiculous.” He paused and looked at the crowd. ”Do you want to go to Rayburn?” He was referring to the Rayburn House Office Building, across Independence Avenue from the Capitol. It’s where Walden’s personal office and the Energy and Commerce Committee offices are. Everybody wanted to go. As we strolled the halls of the Capitol, down elevators and through the underground tunnel that leads to the House office buildings, Pallone reflected on why his Republican colleagues were keeping the legislation under lock and key. ”I think they’re afraid,’ he said. ”I think they’re afraid that it will show that it really doesn’t cover most of the people that receive coverage under the Affordable Care Act.” Even many Republicans weren’t invited to view the latest draft Sen. Rand Paul from Kentucky condemned the GOP leadership Thursday for not making it more widely available. Last week, an earlier draft of the bill, dated Feb. 10, was leaked to Politico. Most analysts said that legislation would lead to millions of people losing coverage. And members of the House Freedom Caucus, considered the most conservative wing of the Republican Party, said they would oppose the bill because it includes refundable tax credits for people who are too poor to pay any federal income tax. Pallone said he was pushing to get a copy of the most recent draft of the bill because he had heard Walden intends to have the committee vote on it next Wednesday  —   a timeline that wouldn’t give the Democrats and the public much time to analyze the legislation. He compared what the Republicans are doing this week with what the Democrats did with their draft of the Affordable Care Act several years ago Democrats posted the text of the ACA online 30 days before it went to members for a vote. ”The reason why Republicans were able to comment on the ACA  —   and of course many of them commented negatively  —   was because the bill was out there,” Pallone said. At Walden’s personal office in the Rayburn building, Andrew Malcolm, Walden’s deputy chief of staff, told Pallone he would be better off directing questions about the bill to the Energy and Commerce Committee office. It was an awkward conversation as Pallone asked repeatedly whether Walden would be there, and Malcolm refused to answer. ”That’s not helpful,” Pallone said. ”He’s probably ducking us.” Still, Pallone headed to that committee office, as Malcolm suggested. And just as Pallone walked in, Walden came down the hall walking very quickly, trailed by some of his staff. He scowled at Pallone and the crowd of reporters in his lobby, then headed out a back hallway toward the hearing room next door. He didn’t say a word. ”Well, obviously he doesn’t want to talk,” Pallone said. ”I’m not going to keep chasing him. I’m tired of chasing him around. Obviously he doesn’t want us to see the bill.”"
"President Trump’s declaration during his speech to Congress Tuesday night that Obamacare is ”collapsing” and must be replaced was cheered by Republicans. But Republican lawmakers remain unable to coalesce behind an approach to their   goal of repeal and replace, and Democrats believe they hold the upper hand to the fate of the Affordable Care Act. In an interview with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep that aired Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the odds ”are much greater than half” that the ACA will remain in place. Schumer cited the pledge by three Republican senators, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, in support of what they called #FullRepeal of Obamacare, which is further than other Republican senators have said they are willing to go. Schumer said if they lose those votes, ”that’s the margin” and Republicans don’t have enough votes to support any kind of replacement. Schumer said Democrats are willing to sit down and negotiate with Republicans about ”how to improve the ACA,” but he said Democratic senators are united in opposition ”to any form of repeal.” Key House Republican committee chairs held a   meeting on Capitol Hill Wednesday in which they briefed GOP senators on the evolving ACA proposal. But House Republicans are also divided about how to approach the issue. Two House conservative groups, the Republican Study Committee and the House Freedom Caucus, say they oppose a draft measure that was circulated by GOP leaders, which would provide tax credits for   Americans to help them purchase health insurance. Those tax credits could be refundable, meaning they would be paid out even if the recipients pay very little or no income tax. Conservatives who find that unacceptable see it as replacing one subsidy with another. Backers of the approach said they have Trump’s support, based on his mentioning of tax credits during his speech. Meanwhile, Paul tweeted he was ”heading to a secure location” in the Capitol where he alleges House leaders ”are keeping the House Obamacare bill. I will demand a copy for the American people.” Even if Republicans in Congress are unable to settle on a measure to replace Obamacare, there are still steps the Department of Health And Human Services could take on its own to alter the program. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has long been a chief opponent of the Affordable Care Act."
"Nora McInerny is tired of small talk. ”I don’t want small talk . ..” she says on her podcast. ”I want the big talk.” McInerny’s show is called Terrible, Thanks for Asking, and she begins each interview with the same question: How are you? The responses she gets go way beyond the typical ”I’m fine.” McInerny deals with death, loss and coming through trauma. But her approach to these tough subjects is saturated with love and humor. She shares (or, as she puts it  —   overshares) some of her stories with NPR’s Ari Shapiro. On experiencing loss in her own life, Up until 2014 I had the most charmed, uneventful life that a person could possibly hope for. I think that if you looked up ”privilege” in the dictionary you would have seen my senior photo from high school. . .. In 2014 my husband died of brain cancer on November 25th. And six weeks before that, my father had died of all kinds of cancer. And five days before that, I had miscarried the second child that my husband and I were expecting and had conceived knowing that he had stage four brain cancer. It’s hard to just list those things off without sounding as if I’m minimizing it, but at some point in time, that just becomes your story. On how people react to someone who has experienced a loss, [People ask] ”Oh, how are you?” And nobody actually wants to hear: ”Well, I frankly have been staying up all night watching Gilmore Girls and drinking a box of white wine that is almost gone.” . .. But now I know that . .. it’s almost impossible to know the right thing to say, and that even if people say the wrong thing it is a sign that they’re trying. The worst thing  —   and it doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with death, or if you’re dealing with all of these other things that we’ve talked to people about  —   silence is the worst thing you can hear from people. On her instinct to find humor even in sad times, I think part of it is how I was raised. My father was very funny and very dry. And so he was in the ICU and the nurse walked in and said, ”Steve how are you doing?” And he was on a respirator. But he said slowly, ”I’m kind of dying here”  —   because he was. . .. She was so horrified. And all my brothers and sister and I were laughing . .. because of course that was my dad  —   and that’s how Aaron was, too. He was definitely a favorite on the oncology floor and in the radiation department because he was always so funny . .. that’s how we got through. . .. In the E. R. after he had had a lot of seizures and we had yet to see an extremely attractive doctor à la Grey’s Anatomy and we were commenting on that. And the doctor walked in and he looked like a Ken doll. Aaron kept saying, ”I think that they hire him just to deliver bad news because it’s hard to feel really bad when it comes from an incredibly handsome person.” I found out later that he is a doctor. On whether laughter can be perceived as inappropriate in the context of loss, It’s not as if I sit down trying to think, gosh how could we make this awful thing really funny? I think that those kinds of moments just happen naturally. . .. When it is your story you can find those little points of humor even in the worst things. I think that’s really common. Anyone who’s been through something really traumatic has probably also laughed at it. . .. We had this woman come in  —   it was literally the day after her husband had died. . .. She sat right down and she talked to us about her husband having died and we laughed together and she stopped herself and said, ”I’m afraid people will think I’m terrible for laughing right now.” And of course not  —   you are allowed to feel all of the things all at once. I think her fear was being judged for that. On the way painful experiences can connect us, I am reminded every day  —   because I sort of choose to surround myself with these stories  —   that I’m not special. The experiences, the pain that I have, it’s obviously unique to me. We all have our own. But it doesn’t make me and it doesn’t make me different from other people. I had sort of wrapped Aaron’s death and my dad’s death around me like armor  —   like it was something that made me different from other people, that made me harder to understand. And the fact is that everybody has these kinds of pain  —   it’s different brands for all of us, but that is a way of connecting. It has helped me look more tenderly on the people around me. I now am sort of more intentional about reminding myself that we all carry something, and that we are, for the most part, all doing our best."
"When greeting card designer Emily McDowell had cancer, she got a lot of cards that just felt weird. ”A    card is kind of strange if you might not,” she tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. So McDowell started writing nontraditional sympathy cards. They say things like ”Please let me be the first person to punch the next person who tells you everything happens for a reason. I’m sorry you’re going through this.” Now, McDowell’s new book takes that idea one step further. It’s called There Is No Good Card For This: What To Say And Do When Life Is Scary, Awful, And Unfair To People You Love. On the absolute wrong thing to say to someone who has cancer, I came home to a voicemail that said, ”Hey. I was just thinking of you because we had this family friend who passed away from cancer today. So I just wanted to know how you were doing.” And it’s super  . . .. Totally honest. It’s just, you know, a lot of people say things trying to relate and end up sort of taking it [to] a weird place. On what you should say to a sick or grieving loved one, Really, I think it’s all about listening. And I think a lot of what we go into in the book is that we operate under the assumption that we need to find the right words, and the good news is that Oprah can’t even do that. Nobody can do that. And so you kind of are off the hook in that really all you need to say is, ”I’m here,” and ”I’m thinking about you,” and ”How are you doing today?” and then let the person talk. . .. On the problem with finding a silver lining instead of allowing someone to be angry or sad, Culturally, we’re just not comfortable with a lot of those emotions and anything that I call ”death adjacent,” where the end could potentially result in death  —   which is ironic because all of our lives will result in death. That’s the one thing we all have in common is that we’re all gonna die. So, yeah, we do feel like this sort of internal pressure to come up with a silver lining. And when you are a person who is going through something, that feels like your pain, which is very real, is being minimized. On writing sympathy cards for infertility, What was interesting with that was that that was not part of my original collection. I release them a few times a year, and every time I put in a few new ones, and infertility was by far the one that was most requested. . .. It’s not a situation that I have personally been through, and so it wasn’t something that was in the initial list of things that I thought of, but I got so many requests both from people who knew me and from strangers, that I started researching it and then I started writing to it. On how her sympathy card premise turned into a book, What became obvious in all of this feedback that we were getting from people was there needs to be some sort of guide that goes deeper than these cards can go, but that’s in the same tone as the cards: down to earth, relatable, even funny. And I wasn’t qualified to write that book. . .. Enter Kelsey Crowe, who is an empathy scholar and runs an organization that she founded in San Francisco called Help Each Other Out where they do empathy boot camp workshops . .. teaching people empathy around this particular thing. And we took her research and a lot of the material that she’s developed for her workshops and turned it into an illustrated guide for how to show up . .. after you’ve sent the card."
"I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that. The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson, my old fifth grade math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. ”Dee,” he said, ”you’re going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the family.” So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought it would be: I was the only kid there. When the condolence line deposited me in front of Miss Emerson’s   parents, I stammered out, ”Sorry about all this,” and stalked away. But, for that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss Emerson’s mother still remembers my name and always says hello with tearing eyes. That was the first time I went   but my parents had been taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course for years. By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals. I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of free mints and my father saying on the ride home, ”You can’t come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral.” Sounds simple  —   when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that. ”Always go to the funeral” means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don’t feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don’t really have to and I definitely don’t want to. I’m talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully   birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex’s uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing. In going to funerals, I’ve come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life’s inevitable, occasional calamity. On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I’ve ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral."
"Updated at 10:15 p. m. ET, Three of Caterpillar’s facilities in Illinois  —   including its headquarters  —   were searched by federal agents on Thursday. The warrant specified a search for evidence of misleading reports related to the company’s exports. Peoria Public Radio reported, ”In 2014, the U. S. Senate issued a report that may be related to today’s . .. search. The   document was titled ’Caterpillar’s Offshore Tax Strategy.’ The report alleges Caterpillar used the subsidiary to avoid paying $2. 4 billion in taxes over a period of 13 years,” the member station reported. Copies of the warrants for the three facilities as obtained by Peoria Public Radio indicate that while evidence pertaining to dealings of Caterpillar subsidiary CSARL in Switzerland was the focus of the search, agents were authorized to collect documents about Caterpillar’s sales outside the U. S. and shipments to any other foreign country. Some Caterpillar employees were interviewed by authorities, according to Peoria Public Radio. Caterpillar said it is cooperating with authorities. Sharon Paul of the U. S. Attorney’s Office would say only that multiple agencies  —   including the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division and the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement  —   were at Caterpillar facilities in Peoria, East Peoria and Morton, Ill. The tax allegations were explored in the Peoria Journal Star which reported on a 2009 federal wrongful termination lawsuit brought by Daniel Schlicksup. The newspaper notes that: ”The lawsuit alleged the company shifted profits overseas and to offshore shell companies to avoid paying more than $2 billion in U. S. taxes. Schlicksup settled the suit in 2012. ”Caterpillar, in its annual   filing with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month, acknowledged a criminal investigation into the tax strategy.” Ranked 59th on the Fortune 500 list, Caterpillar is one of the world’s largest manufacturers and sellers of construction equipment and machinery. Its shares had dropped about 4 percent by the closing bell Thursday."
"Lorde is back. Aside from ”Yellow Flicker Beat,” a single on the third Hunger Games film soundtrack (which she also curated) and a track she   with fellow New Zealanders Broods, today’s single, ”Green Light,” is the first new music Lorde’s released since winning over legions of fans with her 2013 debut, Pure Heroine. The new track is a very polished piece of  . Lorde began teasing the track late last month with a ”sneak peek” video that showed the singer eating and drinking in the back of a car, while a muffled version of the song plays on the radio. Lorde also teased the track with a separate video clip posted to a site called imwaitingforit. com. Along with the new song, Lorde announced the title of her upcoming record, Melodrama, on Instagram. ”Welcome to the new world,” indeed. Lorde, reflecting on her 20th birthday last Nov. 7, posted a note on her Facebook page about the new work. ”Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory,” she said. ”Putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies, and this record  —   well, this one is about what comes next. I want nothing more than to spill my guts RIGHT NOW about the whole thing  —   I want you to see the album cover, pore over the lyrics (the best I’ve written in my life) touch the merch, experience the live show. I can hardly stop myself from typing out the name. I just need to keep working a while longer to make it as good as it can be.”"
"Long live Logan, James Mangold’s sad, stirring requiem for the   franchise’s most beloved character. The only problem with calling it the boldest and most affecting superhero flick in many years is that it’s barely a superhero movie at all. It doesn’t talk like a superhero: too many   including its very first word. And it doesn’t walk like a superhero: No   cities are razed in its finale, no unseen thousands sacrificed. Though with its gnarly   medley of stabbings, slicings, skewerings, and impalings in what has been, Deadpool excepted, a   franchise, Logan sure feels bloodier than most of its ilk. And feels is the right verb: The deaths have weight. For once. To misquote the    tagline of the very first   comic book movie, you will believe a man can cry . .. . .. at a movie about a    rage monster with a silly haircut and retractable knives implanted in his knuckles. Because Logan is unlike any    movie we’ve seen. It does for the creaky X series what Creed did for the Rocky cycle, restoring the integrity and emotion of the earliest installments while introducing talented new blood. (As with Creed, you need only skeletal familiarity with the prior chapters to get   by this one.)  Most significantly, it’s Hugh Jackman’s swan song to the part that’ll be cited in the first graf of his obituary, one he’s played for 17 years  —   longer than any superhero has ever remained on duty, by a lot. He’s played Logan more times than Sly played Rocky. More times than Connery or Moore played 007. More times than Shatner played Kirk  —   in movies, anyway. (And all sans hairpiece, despite the precariousness of his   mutant coif!) Unlike almost every other star who ever got famous in a   role, Jackman never whined about his   gig. He was a musical theater guy, used to working hard, and he knew he’d lucked into an opportunity most actors would stab you through the heart with adamantium claws for. (In fact, he was a   replacement Wolverine, after Scotsman Dougray Scott had to drop out of 2000’s  .) Jackman always seemed humble and happy. Which is ironic, because the character has historically been defined by his temper. But it’s rage of the largely impotent sort in Logan, which plays like the King Lear of the  . Director Mangold gave us not only 2013’s   The Wolverine, but also Walk the Line, and 3:10 to Yuma. You can pick up echoes of all those movies here, and of Unforgiven, samurai pictures, the Coen Brothers, Children of Men, even Samuel Beckett. The scenes between Jackman and Patrick Stewart, who’s been in these movies as long as he has, have an intimacy rarely found in films with   budgets. One influence that’s muted: the   years of Marvel comics in which the character has appeared. Even though, in a confident grace note, the movie actually lets Jackman leaf through old   issues, dismissing them as ”ice cream for bed wetters!” because that’s not how it all went down. Feel free to infer a diss of any   that didn’t deserve him. There have been a few. But at last we have a Wolverine movie as committed as Jackman is, and the grinning Australian wrings every drop of pathos he can from it. He’s tremendous. Logan finds the     bicentennial   finally feeling his age. It’s an effort for his body to expel bullets now. He’s hacking up blood like a courtesan in an opera. In one sure sign that the instant ”healing factor” that once made him unkillable is flagging, he can even get drunk  —   and he does his damnedest to stay that way. You need only scope out its   El       Dakota trail to see that Logan belongs to a genre even older and more   than superheroes: In every way that matters, it’s a Western. Mangold leans into that association, hard, by having its three principal characters take a breather from the action in Act Two to watch the George Stevens classic Shane. If you know that movie, you’ll get a pretty good clue about where this one is going. Subtle? No. Powerful? Just you wait, Bub. Set in 2029 (where The Terminator began, back when 2029 was a long way off) Logan exists in a twilight world where the   are a spent and dissipated force. No new mutants have appeared in a generation. Charles Xavier, who founded the team some 70 years earlier, is in his nineties and suffering from dementia. Mangold (who wrote the script with Scott Frank and Michael Green, drawing inspiration from two 21st century comics stories by Mark Millar and Kyle Craig) vividly imagines what this scenario might look like if the patient were the world’s most powerful psychic. Basically, a Professor X not in control of his faculties is a loose nuke. Logan and Caliban (the comedian Stephen Merchant, playing a    ) keep the prof sedated and isolated in a compound south of the border, hoping he won’t take us all with him when he finally goes. Logan, scraping together a living as a limo driver, reluctantly accepts a dying woman’s request to escort a mysterious little girl (the astonishing Dafne Keen) from Mexico, up through the spine of the United States, to Canada. The Federales and a bunch of extras from The Road Warrior show up at his door (along with Boyd Holbrook from Narcos and Richard E. Grant from the immortal Hudson Hawk) and the movie becomes, like The Empire Strikes Back, one long, desperate chase  —   and with just as many surprises. Though it runs 45 minutes longer than Bryan Singer’s     it shares with that film a refreshing modesty of scale.   was built largely on Jackman’s protective relationship with Anna Paquin, as Logan trades on his burgeoning rapport with Keen. The world isn’t threatened  —   just a handful of characters about whom we’ve come to care deeply. Marvel’s ”mutants,” separate from their other superpowered beings, have always been analogs for persecuted peoples in this movie, they’re immigrants. This gives Logan the kind of topical frisson and intensity that The Dark Knight had nine years ago, and no superhero movie has enjoyed since. Inevitably, there will be those who cry that we don’t need dour, violent   comic book adaptations that crowd can take comfort in the certainty that the bright, quippy Marvel Studios films aren’t going out of print until the human race does. Logan is something else, a       Johnny   supermovie. And it’s a Marvel."
"The Department of Homeland Security is stepping up its support for Jewish institutions across the nation who’ve received more than 120 bomb threats in the past two months. Jewish Community Centers have been pressing for help as they’ve been targeted by waves of threatening calls as well as vandalism. Since January, the calls coming in to JCCs have been both vivid and unnerving. Betzy Lynch, executive director of the JCC in Birmingham, Ala. got three of the threatening calls, all very similar. ”It is a very disguised sort of digitized voice that indicates that there’s a bomb in the building, and then there’s some pretty horrific rhetoric about hurting Jewish people,” she says. The calls have thrust JCCs around the nation into repeated evacuations. Elderly women doing water aerobics and babies in daycares have been rushed out to the streets, and whole communities have been rattled. ”Everybody’s no more than one or two degrees of separation from someone whose kid ended up on a sidewalk in front of a JCC over the last couple of weeks,” says Jeremy Burton, the head of Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council. He says the current uptick in   is particularly disconcerting to younger Jews. ”Frankly, it’s bit of a shock,” Burton says. ”And maybe we are a bit naive, but we sort of maybe assumed that it was something we had mostly left behind.” Jewish leaders across the nation who’ve been frustrated that the threats have gone on so long have been calling on the federal government to do more to help protect their institutions. Two hundred leaders joined a conference call Wednesday with the DHS that ended with officials promising more support. That will include assessing where JCCs are vulnerable to helping them improve security. Bob Kolasky, the acting deputy under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate at DHS, says JCCs will be trained on everything from dealing with an active shooter to managing the current bomb threats that seem to be intended to cause more fear than harm. ”The advice that we will give is how do you deal with something you think is probably not likely to come to fruition,” he says. ”We’re not going to tell an organization not to evacuate, but we’re also going to teach them some of the telltale signs that may help make that decision.” Lynch says the federal expertise will go a long way to help secure JCCs like hers in Alabama. ”This outreach is unprecedented, and it’s much, much appreciated,” she says. She also hopes it will help reassure members and even persuade some families who’ve left in fear to return. ”I think that feeling of knowing that this really is not OK with people reassures us that while we’re in a difficult period, the federal government has decided that they’re standing with us as well,” she says. But others were more circumspect. The   League calls the federal support an important step forward, but insists more must be done, including new federal policies that will crack down on hate crimes more broadly. Many Jewish leaders are also imploring the federal government to expand efforts to find the perpetrators. ”In the end, the only response that’s going to be adequate for us is catching these guys,” says Mark Sokoll, CEO at Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston. Authorities should do more so that ”these people who are filled with hate can be brought to justice, and this can stop,” he says. In the meantime, security is tight at Jewish institutions  ” like it was at a Boston event Wednesday. ”I mean, look at this synagogue,” says Helene Weitzenkorn, an attendee. ”They are checking people going in here. I’ve never seen them have even a metal detector.” She calls the current climate of   palpable. ”I mean, I’m almost 64, and I have just never felt this scared,” she says. Others took a longer view, noting  ’s long history. The echos are disturbing, as one put it. But they’re also a reminder that this too shall pass."
"In 2009, Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar was shot down by the Taliban in Afghanistan while   an Air National Guard medevac helicopter. Though she was wounded in her rifle arm, Hegar managed to return fire while hanging onto a moving helicopter, which saved the lives of her crew and her patients. At the time, the Department of Defense allowed female soldiers to participate in air combat, but forbade women from ground combat positions. Hegar tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the rule was often circumvented, which meant that women who served on the ground did not receive credit for combat duty. In 2012, Hegar became a plaintiff in an ACLU suit against the Defense Department, arguing that excluding women from combat was unconstitutional. She says that participating in the lawsuit ”wasn’t about women’s rights, it was about military effectiveness.” That same year,   Secretary Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff lifted the ban on women serving in combat. But Hegar doesn’t count the case as closed  —   she says, ”The lawsuit remains open as a way for us to monitor integration, especially through a changing administration, and make sure that we don’t take any steps backwards.” Hegar notes that when it comes to combat, physical strength is not necessarily the most important factor on the battlefield. ”It’s who is the best with their weapons, who is the best tactical thinker, . .. who holds their composure when the bullets fly,” she says. ”I’ve seen  . men curl up in the fetal position and call for their moms before, just by the nature of my business.” Hegar received the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross with a Valor Device for her service in Afghanistan. Her new memoir is called Shoot like a Girl. On the problems that cropped up when women were barred from ground combat  I knew that I wanted to apply for a job in the Air Force, that I couldn’t because it was a     role. But it didn’t really sink in to me because it impacts the Air Force like 1 percent, whereas the other branches  —   the Marines, the Army  —   it really, really impacts them. . .. I was given credit for being in combat, because air combat [was] allowed. I have the Air Force combat action medal. I have a couple of medals that denote that I was in combat, and it says that on my records, [but] I wouldn’t have gotten credit for being in combat on the ground if I were a ground troop. So the reason that that’s important is, obviously, for things like promotion. But if you think about becoming a joint chief of staff or something like that, you can’t have that job unless you have led troops in combat, unless you’ve been in combat, held combat roles and those types of things. Even though the women that I’m serving with today have been [in combat] they [wouldn’t] get credit for that in their record. So they could never rise to the level of a joint chief of staff. On the unofficial ways in which women served in combat in the past, The Marine Female Engagement Team is a great example of that, where they go out and they’re the ones who talk to the female locals and have to pat them down if they’re going through a checkpoint. That’s not something that the culture would allow our male soldiers to do, so there’s a need for women in those roles. But because of the policy, they couldn’t be assigned to [combat] units, which caused all sorts of problems. . .. They would be what we call ”attached” to the unit. They wouldn’t get to train with the unit, they wouldn’t go home and stay at the same base with the unit, they wouldn’t get to know them, they wouldn’t get a chance to bond with them. The unit cohesion wouldn’t get a chance to form. On some of the arguments against women serving in combat, They range from concerns that are very legitimate and need to be carefully considered to concerns that are absolutely ridiculous. I think the No. 1 thing that pops up in people’s mind is the physical strength issue and whether or not women are physically strong enough to be in combat, which I answer with a couple things: First of all, we’ve already disproven that that’s an issue because there are women serving successfully in combat. Most combat is not a    knife battle that the person who can do the most   is going to end up winning. That’s just not the face of modern warfare right now. . .. I [was] in medevac, so I [saw] people having their hardest day. I’ve seen firsthand that the warrior spirit is not directly proportional to how many   you can do. . .. In my opinion, you keep the standards very high and you maintain one standard. There shouldn’t be two standards for women and men, there should be a standard for this job: To do this job, you should have to do these things. And those requirements should be   and not arbitrarily high in order to specifically keep women out. On what motivated her to join the lawsuit against the Defense Department, Some people who haven’t really looked into what happened with the suit, they like to assume that I have taken some kind of   or   stance, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. . .. We were trying to double the pool of candidates that could apply for any position. So any time you increase the number of candidates that can apply, you’re obviously going to get a better product out of that. So it was never about fighting the military  —   it was about this is the right thing to do for the military. A lot of people agreed with me, and we were trying to offer the secretary of defense  —   then Leon Panetta at the time  —   as much ammunition as possible to enable him to lift the policy. On being a ”warrior” and a mother  I think of myself as a bit of a mother bear, and if anybody poses a threat to my kids they’ll see both my mother’s heart and my warrior spirit. I think that they’re compatible. Throughout history, there’s examples of women who have been mothers and gone on to lead in combat  —   Queen Boudicca is one that I can think of. . .. So I believe that being a mother and a warrior are absolutely compatible. In fact, I think the things about me that make me a good warrior are the things that make me a good mother: My steadfast commitment to integrity and excellence and putting others before myself and being protective. I tap on those same things as a mother."
"At a conference in Brussels on Thursday, more than a dozen nations and private funders pledged a combined total of $190 million for international family planning charities that stand to lose their U. S. support as a result of President Trump’s Jan. 23 executive action to block U. S. foreign aid funding of groups linked to abortion. The policy disqualifies organizations that perform abortions or advocate for the procedure’s legalization, as well as those that provide patients with basic information about abortion or medical referrals to obtain the procedure. ”The President, it’s no secret, has made it very clear that he’s a   president,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters shortly after the Trump action. ”And I think the reinstatement of this policy is not just something that echoes that value but respects taxpayer funding as well.” For all its size and scope, the fundraising effort was the brainchild of one woman: Lilianne Ploumen, a Dutch government official who came up with the idea just a few weeks ago, shortly after Trump enacted the measure. The policy has been adopted by each Republican president since Ronald Reagan, and reversed by Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, Ploumen says she was surprised that Trump   it. ”I was very disappointed. I did have some hopes that he might decide differently,” she says. But then, adds Ploumen, she realized that as the Netherlands’ Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, ”I was in a position to do something.” She dubbed the replacement fund the ”She Decides Initiative” and set about recruiting partners in other governments. Ministers of three other nations  —   Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden  —   soon signed on to   the conference in Brussels. As a   Catholic  —   ”I do go to church, though not every week,” Ploumen says  —   she might seem an unusual champion of this cause. Several Catholic organizations are among the staunchest supporters of the U. S. funding ban, arguing that it’s the only way to ensure that U. S. tax dollars don’t go toward supporting abortions overseas. ”Without the Mexico City Policy in place, the U. S. is . .. exporting the destruction of life as a solution to challenges faced by families in developing countries,” Deirdre McQuade, a spokeswoman for the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told NPR shortly after Trump’s election. ”Poor women in developing nations don’t want help aborting their children. They’re calling for food, clean water, housing, education and medicine for their families.” Ploumen counters that her Catholic faith is actually what drives her commitment to the effort. ”We were taught that your faith helps you to develop your own conscience and to make your own decisions,” she says. ”But in order to be able to do so you have information and you have to know what your options are, so that you can weigh them according to your values.” And like other opponents of the funding ban, Ploumen argues it will prove counterproductive by resulting in more unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions. Drumming up funds for a feminist cause is a familiar role for Ploumen. From the   through 2001 she headed an organization called Mama Cash whose mission is to raise money for groups that support women’s rights. During her tenure there says, Ploumen, ”it was not so easy to get support for the movement.” By contrast, she says, the swift response to the She Decides fund has been ”heartening.” Among the funders that formally announced their contributions today are the governments of nine European countries, Australia, Canada and private parties such as the Gates Foundation (which is a funder of NPR). The largest single grant came from an anonymous U. S.  donor: $50 million. Still the grand total of nearly $200 million represents less than a third of the roughly $600 million in U. S. family planning funding potentially at stake. And the amount may actually be much higher because Trump’s version of the policy is more expansive  —   applying to spending by all global health groups and not just not just monies explicitly earmarked for family planning groups. Ploumen says she hopes not just other countries, but more   groups and even individuals will step up to fill the gap in the coming weeks and months. ”This is only the beginning,” she says. ”And governments can’t do it alone.”"
"Newly minted Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke knows how to make an entrance: He arrived at his first day of work in Washington on the back of a horse named Tonto. Zinke rode the horse  —   a bay roan gelding just over 17 hands tall  —   less than a mile, from the National Park Service’s stables on the National Mall to the Department of the Interior. The former congressman’s equine entrance alluded to both his own Montana upbringing, and to Theodore Roosevelt, who expanded the National Park Service significantly during his presidency. In a statement released upon his   Wednesday, Zinke invoked the Rough Rider and 26th president: ”I shall faithfully uphold Teddy Roosevelt’s belief that our treasured public lands are ’for the benefit and enjoyment of the people’ and will work tirelessly to ensure our public lands are managed and preserved in a way that benefits all Americans for generations to come.” But environmentalists have questioned Zinke’s commitment to conservation. The League of Conservation Voters gives him a score of 4 percent for his voting record on environmental issues. At Zinke’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders asked whether he thought climate change was a hoax. ”I don’t believe it’s a hoax,” Zinke replied. ”The climate is changing. Man is an influence. I think where there’s debate on it is what that influence is [and] what can we do about it.” Zinke was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday by a   vote. Friday marks 168th birthday of the Interior, which has been cheekily called ”the Department of Everything Else.” Indeed, when it was founded, it was responsible for a vast array of matters, according to the Interior’s history page: ”the construction of the national capital’s water system, the colonization of freed slaves in Haiti, exploration of western wilderness, oversight of the District of Columbia jail, regulation of territorial governments, management of hospitals and universities, management of public parks, and the basic responsibilities for Indians, public lands, patents, and pensions.” The Department of the Interior employs 70, 000 people, across units including the National Park Service, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management and the U. S. Geological Survey."
"Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has been confirmed as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, by a   Senate vote. Six Democrats and one Independent joined with the Republicans to approve the nomination  —   mostly Democrats who are up for   next year and represent states that voted for President Trump, NPR’s Arnie Seipel reports. ”Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who received blowback from liberals for voting for Carson in committee, voted against his nomination today,” Arnie says. Carson was a controversial nominee to lead HUD because of his lack of experience in either housing or development  —   or government in general. Before Trump announced his selection of Carson, an aide told the media that Carson wasn’t interested in joining the Cabinet because he ”feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency.” But the same aide, Armstrong Williams, later told NPR’s Rachel Martin that Carson was qualified to lead HUD because of ”his life growing up in subsidized housing, growing up in poor communities.” ”He’s never been disconnected from these inner cities and these people who live these lives,” Williams said. ”Dr. Carson may have aspired to become a   pediatric surgeon and a presidential candidate, but he’s never lost the human touch with people.” While Carson’s nomination ”raised some eyebrows,” NPR’s Pam Fessler reports, members of the Senate came around. Carson ”won easy approval in January from the Senate Banking Committee after he assured lawmakers that he supported some of HUD’s biggest programs, such as rental assistance for the poor, and that he would enforce the nation’s fair housing laws,” Pam says. HUD has 8, 000 employees and an annual budget of almost $50 billion, she says. Pam has more on what to expect from Carson’s early days at the helm of the agency: ”One of his first challenges will be dealing with Trump administration plans to scale back domestic spending to help pay for a huge boost in the defense budget. ”Carson says he’ll go on a listening tour around the country to hear from those involved in housing and urban development to find out how the agency can best help them. ”Both he and President Trump have said they want to revitalize the nation’s urban areas, but have offered few specifics so far. Democrats say they’re worried Carson will cut HUD programs, such as rental assistance for the poor.”"
"For years, parents have been warning their   children to be careful what they post on social media. Now, one young candidate is learning this important lesson the hard way  —   everything you post can and will be used against you in politics. Jon Ossoff, 30, is running as a Democrat in a special election in Georgia. But the Congressional Leadership Fund, a superPAC aligned with GOP leadership, launched an attack ad Wednesday hitting him with some unflattering college footage. It includes a clip of him dressed as Han Solo in a Star Wars parody of the school’s alcohol policy. It’s an effort to paint Ossoff as a ”spoiled frat boy” and undercut his experience on Capitol Hill in a race taking place in a conservative state. The ad marks a new era in politics. Many under the age of 35 live their lives on social media. It’s ubiquitous. In years past, opposition researchers would have to dig deep to hope for leaked videos or testimony from former friends, rivals and roommates. Now, they don’t have to go much farther than Google or the photos section of Facebook pages. The clips of Ossoff are easily accessible via YouTube from his college a capella group, the Georgetown Chimes. Another clip shows them singing a parody of Billy Joel’s ”Uptown Girl,” with the lyrics, ”Georgetown girl. You know she’s living in her M Street world. She never tires of her   toys.” The $1. 1 million buy from the leadership fund runs through the April 18   primary to replace former Rep. Tom Price, who resigned to become President Trump’s secretary of health and human services. Price’s suburban Atlanta seat has emerged as a rare opportunity for Democrats  —   in a district that went from voting for Mitt Romney by 24 points to one Trump carried by only 1. Democrats hope to capitalize on backlash against the president to pull off an upset. If no candidate reaches 50 percent, the top two finishers, regardless of party, will advance to a June 20 runoff. The heavy investment from the superPAC also shows Republicans are taking the race seriously and are worried about Ossoff’s early momentum. Ossoff has become a somewhat unlikely candidate for Democrats. He’s a documentary filmmaker who previously worked as a legislative aide on national security issues for Rep. Hank Johnson,  . The congressman threw his support behind Ossoff, as did neighboring Democratic Rep. John Lewis. With the attention of progressive blog Daily Kos and social media shoutouts from Hollywood celebrities like Kristen Bell and Debra Messing, he has already raised $2 million. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has paid for nine staffers on the ground to help out, but the district likely remains an uphill climb for the party. The message the superPAC ad is trying to show is clear  —   that during the five years Ossoff worked for Johnson, some of which he was still studying at Georgetown, he was still an immature kid. Johnson disputed that in a statement: ”This is absurd. Jon spent five years working on National Security issues for me, and he worked on such sensitive programs that he received a top secret security clearance from the Department of Defense. Washington political operatives are coming into Georgia to spread false personal attacks  —   it’s what the American people are sick and tired of.” A visual ”sticks with voters” University of Kansas political science professor Patrick Miller said this line of attack isn’t surprising, given Ossoff’s age and the prevalence of social media among millennials. With visuals, it’s an easier way to get across to voters that this candidate may be unprepared or just too young. ”What you’re putting out on Facebook, Instagram or whatever venue, if it’s there and and publicly available,” Miller said, ”it just becomes an easier way for opponents who want to hit you over your age. It’s an easier way to visualize that. It sticks with voters.” And as more millennials run for Congress or other political offices, these types of ads are likely to continue to write themselves. ”Most young people are probably not thinking, ’What am I going to be doing in 10 years?’ a lot of times,” Miller added. ”They’re focused on being in college and being young. A lot of times, they look at social media as a way to express themselves, what they’re doing right now. They’re not really thinking about it in a professional way and what type of image they want to craft.” A Star Wars parody, underage drinking and some mocking lyrics about Georgetown girls may not be a death knell and some voters may be willing to write it off as a youthful indiscretion. However, the leadership fund’s executive director, Corry Bliss, warned it has more coming that is being prepped against Ossoff. ”The point is Jon Ossoff is simply not being honest when he talks about his resume,” Bliss said. ”He wants to play   and pretend to be a grown up and say, for five years he was a national security adviser when, in fact, he’s just a spoiled frat boy, playing   and advocating for underage drinking.” Bliss added, laughing, ”Jon Ossoff has a better chance of actually playing Han Solo in the next Star Wars movie than winning this election.”"
"For a man who had just spent a week living inside a rock, sucking oxygen through tiny air holes and storing days’ worth of his own waste in bottles closely around himself, Abraham Poincheval was admirably  . ”I’m a little dazed, which I imagine is totally normal after one week living in a rock,” the French performance artist told reporters who had gathered Wednesday at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo museum to see him emerge from the more than   boulder. ”I thank it very much,” Poincheval continued, referring to the rock, ”for having been so enthusiastic about welcoming me.” It was Poincheval’s first gulp of fresh air and glimpse of light since stepping inside the boulder to begin his latest work, Pierre  —   or Stone, in English  —   on Feb. 22. Since then, he had been sitting in a   cavity, eating soups and dried meats and, as he told The Guardian midway through the work, ”travelling in this rock without moving, like an astronaut.” He elaborated on that point after he emerged, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, ”It’s this strange feeling of a floating world, an incredible floating in this mineral capsule,” Poincheval said. ”There are very strong moments of getting dizzy, where the world is shaking monstrously. ”It’s a moment of happiness, it’s a gift,” he added, ”but at the same time one must stay  . There are very strong moments where you lose yourself, where suddenly you don’t know anymore where you are.” It may be disorienting, understandably, but he also says sitting inside a rock for days on end is not as lonely an experience as you might expect. In an interview with Agence   a few days ago, his voice muffled by the layers of stone between himself and his   interlocutor, Poincheval explained that the sounds of the museum’s patrons actually helped him tell time. It was the patter of feet and the chatter of voices that told him it was day ”otherwise, I have no particular sense of day or night or anything like that,” he said. What’s more, ”people seem to be very touched. They come and talk into the crack, read poetry to me, or tell me about their nightmares or their dreams,” he told the Guardian. ”They are not so much talking to me, I think, as to the stone.” It is by no means Poincheval’s first exercise in endurance and isolation  —   nor his first time stuffed inside an inanimate object. Far from it, in fact. In 2014, he spent nearly two weeks living inside a bear carcass a la Luke Skywalker at the Parisian Hunting and Wildlife Museum, repeating a feat he’d performed the year before. While inside the bear, he subsisted on worms and beetles. ”For him this act signifies a rebirth, a rite of passage, to pass from the world of the dead to that of the living,” read a 2014 press release, according to the BBC. That’s not to mention the week he spent beneath a rock, in a hole in the ground beneath a bookshop in 2012, which he called 604, 800 Seconds. Or the several times Poincheval has pulled a Saint Simeon, emulating the early Christian Stylite by sitting alone for days atop a platform high above the ground. Most recently, he set up outside a Parisian railway station last year, sitting exposed to the elements roughly 60 feet off the ground. For his next project, Poincheval will be returning later this month to the Palais de Tokyo, where he will begin a work he simply calls Oeuf (or Egg, in English). Beginning March 29, he will be sitting atop a dozen hen’s eggs for approximately three to four weeks until they (hopefully) hatch, only taking one   break each day. Those chicks that hatch, he told The Guardian, ”will go and live with my parents.”"
"Amid escalating anxieties over recent Russian activities, Sweden has approved a plan to reinstitute military conscription beginning next year. The draft, which will pull from both young men and women, will be Sweden’s first since 2010, when the country discontinued compulsory service. The country expects to call up at least 4, 000 young people per year for military training, in a bid to erase its deficits in recruitment since the draft ended. The government says it has been recruiting about 2, 500 people for military service annually, about 1, 500 fewer than it says it needs. ”We have had difficulties manning the military units voluntarily, and that needs to be addressed somehow,” Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told Swedish Radio, according to Bloomberg. ”That’s why it’s necessary to reintroduce compulsory military service.” But Hultqvist also tells Reuters there’s another reason for concern in Sweden, which as a nominally neutral party in the Cold War never joined NATO. ”We have a Russian annexation of Crimea, we have the aggression in Ukraine, we have more exercise activities in our neighborhood. So we have decided to build a stronger national defense,” Hultqvist told Reuters. ”The decision to activate conscription is part of that.” It is part of a reversal already underway in Sweden’s defense policy. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that Sweden had been scaling back its defense spending, from 2. 5 percent of its GDP at the end of the Cold War in 1991, to just 1. 1 percent in 2015. But last year, the country moved to garrison troops permanently on the large island of Gotland, where it could better keep tabs on doings in the Baltic Sea off Sweden’s east coast. ABC notes that Hultqvist described the move as a signal to Russia amid its ”increasing pressure” on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which also rest on the Baltic. During the height of the Cold War, almost 85 percent of Swedish men were conscripted, ABC reports. The planned draft will draw not only from men, but also women, following in the footsteps of its   next door neighbor Norway, which has already instituted its own   draft. The BBC says the 4, 000 young people called up for military service will be selected from a group of 13, 000 who will be asked to undergo a military assessment."
"Nearly a week after Malaysia concluded that the   of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un died of poisoning from a powerful nerve agent, North Korea is claiming that he probably died of a heart attack. Ri Tong Il, who once served as the North Korean deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters Thursday that the man ”probably died of a heart attack because he suffered from heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure,” according to The Associated Press. North Korea has not officially acknowledged that the deceased man is Kim Jong Nam  —   as we have reported, they instead have referred to him only as a North Korean national by the name of Kim Chol. ”We have our experts who are qualified to determine the cause of death of Kim Chol. Our investigations, supported by expert reports, confirmed that Kim Chol was murdered,” Malaysia’s national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told the AP. ”North Korea can say what they like but the facts remain.” The nerve agent VX that Malaysia says killed Kim Jong Nam is an extremely deadly chemical weapon. It’s also extremely rare  —   and as NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reported, its use ”would seem to suggest that the North Korean state itself is behind the killing.” Kim Jong Nam’s body has become the source of a major diplomatic row North Korea is demanding that Malaysia hand it over, while Malaysia is refusing, saying that it is waiting for DNA verification from a family member. North Korea also objected to Malaysia’s autopsy, saying its officials were not there to witness it. In the latest sign of escalating tensions between the two nations, Malaysia announced on Thursday that North Koreans would no longer be able to enter the country without a visa, according to multiple news reports. Kim Jong Nam suddenly became ill in the Kuala Lumpur airport last month as he was waiting to board a flight. He died on the way to the hospital. Surveillance video appears to show two women approaching him and covering his face with a cloth. Malaysia apprehended the two women it says are seen on the tape: Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam and Siti Aisyah from Indonesia. The two have been formally charged with murder, and have reportedly claimed that they believed the deadly poisoning was actually part of a prank for a reality television show. But Malaysian authorities say they will release a North Korean man who was held in connection with the poisoning because there was ”insufficient evidence to charge him,” according to the BBC. They never explained why Ri Jon Chol was detained. Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son of North Korea’s former leader Kim Jong Il, has been estranged from the country’s leadership since 2001. He has lived outside the country and reportedly feared for his life."
"On Puerto Rico’s southwestern corner, the sleepy seaside town of Guanica is where, nearly 120 years ago, the U. S. relationship with the island began during the   War. The town’s museum director, Francisco Rodriguez, takes visitors to the town’s waterfront where the invasion began. In Spanish he says, ”This is Guanica Bay, where the American troops commanded by General Nelson Miles landed on July 25, 1898.” At the site, a stone marker engraved by the 3rd Battalion of the U. S. Army commemorates the invasion. Nearly 19 years after the invasion, President Wilson signed the   Act, granting citizenship to people born on the island. But it’s a limited form of citizenship. The law puts Puerto Rico under federal control but doesn’t allow the island voting representation in Congress. Residents also can’t vote for president. That law started a debate that continues today over what exactly the island’s relationship with the U. S. should be. And now in Puerto Rico, there’s a new push to fix what many see it as a   relationship. For decades, Puerto Rico’s three political parties have pushed for three basic positions: statehood, independence or the status quo or commonwealth status. But nearly all Puerto Ricans agree on one thing, says Gov. Ricardo Rossello. ”Regardless of what ideological twist people may have, about 90 to 95 percent of our population really values our citizenship, so it’s of utmost importance,” he says. One reason Puerto Ricans treasure U. S. citizenship is that it allows them to travel freely to the mainland. Over the last decade, while the island was mired in a recession, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans migrated to Florida, New York, Texas and other states. Rossello is with the New Progressive Party, which advocates statehood. He says Puerto Rico’s strength is its status as part of the United States. ”The bad side of it is that we are not a full part of the United States,” he says. ”We’re a territory or a colonial territory. We’re aiming to change that and of course, from my perspective, I’d want Puerto Rico to become the 51st state of the nation.” Today the question of Puerto Rico’s status is one debated on the campaign trail. But over the last century, the push for Puerto Rican independence several times led to violence, including an attempt to assassinate President Truman in 1950 and then, four years later, an attack on Congress, in which five lawmakers were wounded. Since then, support for outright independence has declined on the island as the Puerto Rican population has grown on the U. S. mainland. Support also has declined, at least among elected officials, for maintaining the status quo. Last year, a Supreme Court decision undercut the island’s   claims of autonomy. Around the same time, struggling with more than $70 billion in public debt, Puerto Rico was forced to hand over financial control to an oversight board established by Congress. Manuel Natal, who serves in Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives with the party that supports the current commonwealth status, believes change is needed, but worries statehood would force Puerto Ricans to give up things they’ve long treasured. ”We can talk about language, our cultural identity,” he says. ”We can give plenty of examples of things that are important to the people of Puerto Rico on    and we are not sure how we would come about if statehood was a reality.” Natal supports a political status called free association. That would enable Puerto Rico to maintain its close relationship with the U. S. while allowing the island autonomy to make its own trade deals. He thinks the U. S. Congress might find free association more acceptable than statehood, in part because statehood would grant Puerto Rico more power in Washington  —   two U. S. senators and as many as five House members, numbers that could affect Republican control in Congress. And, Natal says, with President Trump’s pledge to build a wall on the U. S. border, Washington is unlikely to welcome a state where Spanish is the first language. ”I’m a Puerto Rican citizen, a U. S. citizen with a thick accent,” he says. ”I understand what’s going on there and I know that statehood is not a possibility.” In June, Puerto Ricans will go to the polls to choose between two options: statehood or   association. In Guanica, Rodriguez says most support statehood, in part because of the town’s historical connection to the U. S. ”Puerto Rico lacks resources, but that’s not the fault of the U. S.,” he says. But it’s a town with a mixed legacy. Every year, Rodriguez says, members of the island’s independence movement come to Guanica to protest. It’s a place that’s both a source of pride, and for many, a symbol of colonialism and a   dysfunctional relationship with the U. S."
"March 2, 2017 marks the centennial of the   Act, legislation passed by the U. S. Congress that granted citizenship to the people living in Puerto Rico. (The territory had become U. S. property in 1898, at the end of the   War.) The result has been a century of Puerto Rican culture becoming part of the U. S. fabric, and nowhere is that more evident than in music. This week, percussionist and educator Bobby Sanabria joins us as we hop in the Way Back Machine and explore some of the highlights of 100 years of musical  . We’ll hear examples of artists adapting the music of Puerto Rico to styles popular in the wider U. S.  —   but mostly it’s a story of biculturalism, of artists with Puerto Rican roots who are equally fluent in the musical languages of both the island and the mainland."
"In its first cyber policy paper, the Chinese government is emphasizing its control over Internet access in China, and argued that each nation should govern the Internet as it sees fit. ”Countries should respect each other’s right to choose their own path of cyber development,” read an English translation of the paper published by the   news agency Xinhua. ”No country should pursue cyber hegemony, interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, or engage in, condone or support cyber activities that undermine other countries’ national security.” Asked at a news conference about the blocking of Google, Twitter, Facebook and other sites in China, cyber official Wang Jianchao insisted that ”China’s Internet is fully open. China’s government protects citizens’ freedom of speech according to the law,” NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reported from Beijing. Google unveiled a censored search engine in China more than a decade ago, and for years, the company has asked the Chinese government to stop requiring it to filter results for Chinese users. Earlier this year, Apple removed the app for The New York Times from its Chinese app store, as The   reported. ”Asked about accusations that China has hacked into U. S. websites, the officials argued that China is itself a major victim of other countries’ hacking attacks,” Anthony reported. The Times of India said officials at the news conference ”spoke at length about close cooperation between China and Russia, another Communist country, in pushing for the ”cyber sovereignty” principal at the U. N. and other international bodies.” ”Cyberattacks, cyber espionage, surveillance have become major issues confronting all countries,” said the coordinator for the foreign ministry’s cyber affairs division, Long Zhou, according to The Associated Press. The news service continued: ”Describing the internet as rife with subversive thought, religious extremism, pornography, fake news and financial scams, Long said China ’stands ready to work together with Russia and BRICS partners,’ as well as other countries on new governance measures. ”BRICS is an organization of large emerging economies grouping Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. China is hosting its annual summit this year as part of efforts to elevate the group’s international status.” The paper released by the Chinese government also laid out the country’s intent to reform global Internet regulation. It advocates for the U. N. to have more power over Internet policy worldwide, and for reforms at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit organization that largely controls domain names online. In 2015, the U. S. government announced it was officially handing over oversight responsibilities for Internet domains to ICANN, and the transition officially took place last year. For years, governments and corporations have clashed over which domains  —   such as . com, . org, . pizza  —   should be allowed, and who should have access to them, as we’ve reported."
"A quickening flow of civilians is leaving the city of Mosul, fleeing fighting between Iraqi security forces and the ISIS militants who have held the city for more than two years. A total of 28, 400 people have run away since an offensive to retake the densely populated western half of the city began Feb. 19, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Since Feb. 25, about 4, 000 people a day have been escaping, the body said in a statement, the highest sustained daily rate of displacement since the struggle to retake Mosul began in October  —   on the eastern side. Most people are being picked up by Iraq’s security forces and moved to camps in towns and villages south of the city. Aid agencies are scrambling to expand the capacities of the camps in anticipation of more people arriving soon. Estimates of how many people currently live in western Mosul vary. The number is certainly in the hundreds of thousands, and the U. N. says it may be as high as 750, 000. At a newly built camp outside the flyblown town of Hamam   south of Mosul, some of the first to arrive last week described appalling conditions inside the city  —   and a narrow escape. ”It was a hard day,” said Amsha Mohammad, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. ”The army was here and ISIS was here, and we were trapped in the fighting for four hours.” She said the numbers of ISIS fighters in the city is now relatively small  —   her guess was between 1, 000 and 1, 500  —   but a group of 12 militants held off an army assault for hours. After they were defeated, the family begged the security forces to help them. ”They told us, thank God for your safety, and brought us here,” she said. Her son, Samir Khalil, a laborer, said he had followed the news by listening secretly to the radio on a phone that ISIS would have killed him for having, if they’d found it. So he knew that if they waved white flags, the security forces would help them. Shaking his head, he said they had experienced terrible hardship under the militants. Government salaries and supply routes were cut off and food had become scarce. Then, five months ago, ISIS forced them out of their homes on the edge of the city and moved them into a vegetable market farther inside the city: a tactic that provided the militants with human shields. ”We ate flour mixed with dirty water,” said Amsha Mohammad, his mother. Her face contorted with disgust. ”It made us sick.” Their homes are in an area that is now retaken from ISIS, although heavily mined. They plan to go back. ”I’ll return to my house, with ISIS gone,” Amsha Mohammad said, practically spitting with rage as she described how the militants killed people for the smallest infractions of their rules: a secret cigarette, a woman’s uncovered hand. ”If I catch any ISIS,” she said, ”I will kill him. I will eat his flesh.”"
"Ali Brivanlou slides open a glass door at the Rockefeller University in New York to show off his latest experiments probing the mysteries of the human embryo. ”As you can see, all my lab is glass  —   just to make sure there is nothing that happens in some dark rooms that gives people some weird ideas,” says Brivanlou, perhaps only half joking. Brivanlou knows that some of his research makes some people uncomfortable. That’s one reason he has agreed to give me a look at what’s going on. His lab and one other discovered how to keep human embryos alive in lab dishes longer than ever before  —   at least 14 days. That has triggered an international debate about a   convention (one that’s legally binding in some countries, though not in the U. S.) that prohibits studying human embryos that have developed beyond the   stage. And in other experiments, he’s using human stem cells to create entities that resemble certain aspects of primitive embryos. Though Brivanlou doesn’t think these ”embryoids” would be capable of developing into fully formed embryos, their creation has stirred debate about whether embryoids should be subject to the   rule. Brivanlou says he welcomes these debates. But he hopes society can reach a consensus to permit his work to continue, so he can answer some of humanity’s most fundamental questions. ”If I can provide a glimpse of, ’Where did we come from? What happened to us, for us to get here?’ I think that, to me, is a strong enough rationale to continue pushing this,” he says. For decades, scientists thought the longest an embryo could survive outside the womb was only about a week. But Brivanlou’s lab, and one in Britain, announced last year in the journals Nature and Nature Cell Biology that they had kept human embryos alive for two weeks for the first time. That enabled the scientists to study living human embryos at a crucial point in their development, a time when they’re usually hidden in a woman’s womb. ”Women don’t even know they are pregnant at that stage. So it has always been a big black box,” Brivanlou says. Gist Croft, a stem cell biologist in Brivanlou’s lab, shows me some samples, starting with one that’s 12 days old. ”So you can see this with the naked eye,” Croft says, pointing to a dish. ”In the middle of this well, if you look down, there’s a little white speck  —   it looks like a grain of sand or a piece of dust.” Under a microscope, the embryo looks like a fragile ball of overlapping bubbles shimmering in a silvery light  —   with thin hairlike structures extending from all sides. Croft and Brivanlou explain that those willowy structures are what embryos would normally extend at this stage to search for a place to implant inside the uterus. Scientists used to think embryos could do that only if they were receiving instructions from the mother’s body. ”The amazing thing is that it’s doing its thing without any information from mom,” Brivanlou says. ”It just has all the information already in it. That was   to me.” The embryos they managed to keep alive in the lab dish beyond seven days of development have also started secreting hormones and organizing themselves to form the cells needed to create all the tissues and organs in the human body. The two scientists think studying embryos at this and later stages could lead to discoveries that might point to new ways to stop miscarriages, treat infertility and prevent birth defects. ”The only way to understand what goes wrong is to understand what happens normally, or as normally as we can, so we can prevent all of this,” Brivanlou says. The   cutoff, But Brivanlou isn’t keeping these embryos alive longer than 14 days because of the rule. ”The decision about pulling the plug was probably the toughest decision I’ve made in my scientific career,” he says. ”It was sad for me.” The   rule was developed decades ago to avoid raising too many ethical questions about experimenting on human embryos. Two weeks is usually the moment when the central nervous system starts to appear in the embryo in a structure known as the ”primitive streak.” It’s also roughly the stage at which an embryo can no longer split into twins. The idea behind the rule is, that’s when an embryo becomes a unique individual. But the rule was initiated when no one thought it would ever be possible to keep embryos growing in a lab beyond two weeks. Brivanlou thinks it’s time to rethink the   rule. ”This is the moment,” he says. Scientists, bioethicists and others are debating the issue in the U. S. Britain and other countries. The rule is law in Britain and other countries and incorporated into widely followed guidelines in the United States. Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University, advocates revisiting the rule. It would allow more research to be done on embryos that are destined to be destroyed anyway, he says  —   embryos donated by couples who have finished infertility treatment. ”Given that it has to be destroyed,” Hyun says, ”some would argue that it’s best to get as much information as possible scientifically from it before you destroy it.” But others find it morally repugnant to use human embryos for research at any stage of their development  —   and argue that lifting the   rule would make matters worse. ”Pushing it beyond 14 days only aggravates what is the primary problem, which is using human life in its earliest stages solely for experimental purposes,” says Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a Georgetown University bioethicist. The idea of extending the   rule even makes some people who support embryo research queasy, especially without first finding another clear stopping point. Hank Greely, a Stanford University bioethicist, worries that going beyond 14 days could ”really draws into question whether we’re using humans or things that are well along the path to humans purely as guinea pigs and purely as experimental animals.” Embryo alternative: ”Embryoids” So as that debate continues, Brivanlou and his colleagues are trying to develop another approach. The scientists are attempting to coax human embryonic stem cells to organize themselves into entities that resemble human embryos. They are also using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are cells that behave like embryonic stem cells, but can be made from any cell in the body. Brivanlou’s lab has already shown that these ”  structures”  —   or ”embryoids”  —   can create the three fundamental cell types in the human body. But the scientists have only been able to go so far using flat lab dishes. So the researchers are now trying to grow these   structures in three dimensions by placing stem cells in a gel. ”Essentially, we’re trying to, in a way, to   a human embryo in a dish starting from stem cells,” says Mijo Simunovic, another of Brivanlou’s colleagues. In early experiments, Simunovic says, he has been able to get stem cells to ”spontaneously” form a ball with a ”cavity in its center.” That’s significant because that’s what early human embryos do in the uterus. Simunovic says it’s unclear how close these structures could become to human embryos  —   entities that have the capability to develop into babies. ”At the moment, we don’t know. That’s something that’s very hot for us right now to try to understand,” Simunovic says. Simunovic argues the scientists are not ”ethically limited to studying these cells and studying these structures” by the   rule. There’s a debate about that, however. ”At what point is your model of an embryo basically an embryo?” asks Hyun, especially when the model seems to have ”almost like this inner, budding life.” ”Are we creating life that, in the right circumstances, if you were to transfer this to the womb it would continue its journey?” he asks. Dr. George Daley, the dean of the Harvard Medical School and a leading stem cell researcher, says scientists have been preparing for the day when   research might raise such questions. ”I think what prospects people are concerned about are the kinds of dystopian worlds that were written about by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World,” Daley says. ”Where human reproduction is done on a highly mechanized scale in a petri dish.” Daley stresses scientists are nowhere near that, and may never get there. But science moves quickly. So Daley says it’s important scientists move carefully with close ethical scrutiny. The latest guidelines issued by the International Society for Stem Cell Research call for intensive ethical review, Daley notes. Brivanlou acknowledges that some of his experiments have produced early signs of the primitive streak. But that’s a very long way from being able to develop a spinal cord, or flesh and bones, let alone a brain. He dismisses the notion that the research on embryoids would ever lead to scientists creating humans in a lab dish. ”They will not get up start walking around. I can assure you that,” he says, noting that full human embryonic development is a highly complex process that requires just the right mix of the biology, physics, geometry and other factors. Nevertheless, Brivanlou says all of his experiments go through many layers of review. And he’s convinced the research should continue. ”It would be a travesty,” he says, ”to decide that, somehow, ignorance is bliss.”"
"People who have survived melanoma were more likely to protect themselves from sun exposure than those who hadn’t experienced the disease, but a significant portion of them still reported getting a sunburn in the past year, among other behaviors that might increase the risk of a new cancer. The study, which appears Thursday in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, included 724 cancer survivors who had been diagnosed with melanoma, a potentially deadly form of skin cancer, between July 2004 and December 2007. Researchers also surveyed 660 people who hadn’t had melanoma but who were similar in age and gender to the cancer survivors. The study, conducted in 2015, relied on   which means some people may have overestimated their positive behaviors, and it captures only one point in time. So it’s not possible to say whether a given cancer survivor changed his or her sun exposure behavior after diagnosis. You can look at the results two ways: On the positive side, the survivors were on average doing better at protecting themselves from sun exposure than people who hadn’t had skin cancer. For example, 34 percent of survivors reported spending more than an hour outside on summer weekdays, compared with 44 percent of those in the control group. Among survivors, almost 20 percent reported at least one sunburn within the past 12 months, compared to nearly 37 percent of people without a history of the disease. And 62 percent of survivors said they often or always wear sunscreen outside in the summer, compared to 39 percent of the control group. On the other hand, one might wonder why more melanoma survivors weren’t taking protective measures. Study   Rachel Vogel, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, says she puts the findings in the ”glass half full” category. ”These survivors are almost 10 years out, and the fact that they’re doing better [than the control group] at all is surprising,” she says. On the flip side, though, she says there is definitely room for improvement, which is where she plans to focus future research efforts. (More on that in a minute.) The results point to a truism of health: changing behavior is really, really hard. There’s an assumption that a cancer diagnosis provides a teachable moment when people are more willing to make positive changes, but whether it represents a true window of opportunity isn’t well studied, says Colleen McBride, a behavioral epidemiologist who chairs the department of behavioral sciences and health education at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and wasn’t involved with the study. Most of us think that people make   positive changes after a cancer diagnosis, but that doesn’t always happen a 2014 study found almost 15 percent of lung cancer survivors were current smokers. The best timing for when an intervention should be offered isn’t known, McBride says. ”Does it actually make a difference, compared to giving the intervention at any other time?” she says. ”There’s not a lot of research to pin that down.” McBride and her colleagues have proposed a way to think about whether a given event, like a bad diagnosis or, on the brighter side, a pregnancy, represents a true window of opportunity for making changes. The event has to make a person feel at risk, has to provoke emotions and has to challenge  . So a cancer diagnosis might make you feel at risk of serious health problems or death, which could provoke worry and anxiety, and can make you feel like a patient  —   who is, by cultural standards, supposed to work hard to try to get better, she says. That may help explain why some melanoma survivors in the study weren’t studiously avoiding the sun. Vogel says that in focus groups preceding the study, melanoma survivors seemed to fall into two groups: those who said they wore long sleeves every day and only golfed starting at 7 a. m. and those who said they did pretty much whatever they wanted to do. She says that latter group didn’t seem to think that their diagnosis had been a serious one  —   they may never have felt truly at risk. ”There may be an education piece we’re missing,” says Vogel. ”People go to the dermatologist and have the melanoma removed, and that’s the end of the story for them. They don’t realize that they dodged a really big bullet and got very lucky.” (Early stage, localized melanoma has a   survival rate of more than 98 percent, but if the disease has spread beyond the nearby lymph nodes and to other parts of the body, the rate drops to 17 percent.) A diagnosis may motivate the patient herself or a relative or loved one to try to change their behavior. ”But once they’re in the door, they face all the challenges of anyone who is trying to change their behavior,” McBride says. ”It’s difficult to let go of old habits.” That’s particularly true when those habits like smoking or overeating give people comfort during the stressful period right after a diagnosis. Vogel is planning to study and develop better interventions for people who have had skin cancer. One option, for example, would be to use a wearable device to measure UV exposure and then ping people on their watch or phone to remind them they’ve been outside for too long. And whether you’ve had a melanoma diagnosis or not, Vogel says it’s time to make sun protection routine. That means limiting sun exposure when UV light is strongest, covering up with clothing and hats, using sunscreen properly and avoiding tanning beds. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson."
"In Latin America, Lent is full of elaborate Catholic rituals, from palm weavings and sawdust carpets to processions of robed penitents. But only in Ecuador will you find fanesca, the equally elaborate Lenten soup. ”Fanesca is a traditional Ecuadorian dish of unmatched flavor,” says Lily Rodriguez, a home cook in the capital city of Quito. ”It’s a stew that combines 12 tender grains and dried cod in a creamy base. To all that, you add peanuts,   eggs, fried plantains and mini empanadas. In sum, [it’s] a mix of flavors that once you taste it, you will remember forever.” The 12 ”grains” include a combination of beans and vegetables, and together they represent Jesus’ 12 apostles, while the salt cod represents Jesus (a fish is an ancient Christian symbol.) Fanesca is prepared and eaten throughout Ecuador’s six weeks of Lent, and is an indispensable lunch on Good Friday. The origin of the dish is unclear. Food historian Maria Baez Kijac, a native of Quito, writes in her cookbook, The South American Table, that some researchers believe ”fanesca represents a Christian ritual that was practiced in the catacombs in Rome during the persecution of the Christians. During Holy Week, the Christians would sneak into the catacombs carrying food, mainly grains and legumes, which were put into one big pot to be distributed among all. That is why, even to this day, it is the custom to give fanesca to relatives, friends, neighbors, and the needy.” Rodriguez subscribes to a different theory. ”It is said that this custom dates to the   era, when the indigenous people of the Andes gave thanks to Pachamama (Mother Earth) preparing this dish with the bounty of the harvest. With the arrival of the Spaniards to these lands, fanesca was Christianized, coinciding with the time of Holy Week and the prohibition of eating meat during Lent.” Whatever the origin, fanesca is now a national tradition, especially popular in Ecuador’s mountain highlands. Many restaurants offer fanesca throughout Lent, and on Good Friday, small vendors set up tables to sell bowls of the rich soup from enormous vats. While many Ecuadorians buy fanesca at restaurants to take home, others, like Rodriguez, make fanesca as part of a beloved ritual. It starts with a trip to a local market to purchase the freshest ingredients. Then the real work begins. ”Can you imagine a peeled kernel of corn or a peeled bean?” Rodriguez asks. ”They have to be peeled one by one, so that the soup is creamier and more delicate and, according to my mother, easier to digest.” Then, she says, ”Each type of grain is cooked separately, as are the other ingredients. I prepare it over three days, between shopping, preparing the grains, and mixing this marvel of flavors.” Beans (white, lupini and fava) peas, pumpkin, rice and hominy are common to most fanescas, and adding milk to the base is obligatory. But each cook has his or her own combination of grains, beans and vegetables to make up the 12. ”Due to the great gastronomic diversity in Ecuador, there exist many variations of tastes and methods of preparing the fanesca,” says chef Angel Valdiviezo of Quito’s Mercure Alameda Hotel. Valdiviezo’s version, which regularly appears among the 12 winners of the city’s annual fanesca competition, includes lentils, cabbage and Ecuadorian produce such as winter melon and melloco, a mucilaginous tuber. According to Valdiviezo, the secret is in the sauce  —   or in the soup base, to be precise. ”Our fanesca is recognized for maintaining a historical and ancestral recipe. [The] secret consists in draining the salt cod and throwing away the first water, in order to then soak it in milk for 24 hours,” Valdiviezo explains. ”This milk base is used as the main base.” Cooks who prefer a milder taste prepare the salt cod separately, leaving it to diners to add fritters, plantains and other toppings. Baez Kijac notes in her cookbook that ”the seasoning is also controversial. Some people like a very spicy sauce, while others prefer a more subtle seasoning, so that each ingredient can be tasted. Purists use only milk and cream for the sauce others also use some of the liquid in which the vegetables were cooked.” Regardless of recipe, preparing fanesca invariably requires many hands and at least two days of work. Valdiviezo starts 24 hours ahead with the soaking of the cod. Then, he and his staff peel and cook the grains, prepare the refrito (fried, spiced onions) and simmer them together over low heat with the rest of the ingredients. The process can take around 5 hours. ”For all Ecuadorians, this dish constitutes a family gathering,” Valdiviezo says. ”Children and grandchildren peel the grains, and the more experienced family members such as the mother or the grandmother take charge of cooking the refrito and then adding other ingredients.” He says the process at the hotel is much like that: The staff helps prepare the ingredients, and the chef creates the stew. Rodriguez first made her own fanesca and an Ecuadorian beverage called colada morada to celebrate the indigenous religious ceremony    —   a festival in honor of the Incan sun god, Inti. ”It was a way to regain the gastronomic traditions, a way to regain the culture and express it and share it with others,” she says. But, she also makes it to observe Lent. This year, as usual, Rodriguez will be among the many grandmothers preparing fanesca and sharing it with their children, grandchildren and friends. This recipe is courtesy of Harvard Common Press, publisher of The South American Table, by Maria Baez Kijac. Serves  . 1 lb boneless salt cod (preferably white) 2 cups shelled fava beans, blanched and peeled, 2 cups cooked corn kernels, drained, One   can Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed, or 11⁄2 cups frozen baby lima beans, cooked and drained, 1 cup fresh or frozen peas, cooked in water to cover until tender and drained, 11⁄2 cups bottled lupini beans, peeled, 1 head garlic, unpeeled, 2 cups shredded zucchini or zambo (winter melon) 2 cups peeled, seeded and cubed (1 inch) calabaza or other winter squash, 2 cups shredded cabbage, 1⁄2 cup   rice, 11⁄2 cups water, 2 tablespoons canola oil, 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, 1⁄2 teaspoon ground annatto or sweet paprika, 1 cup finely chopped scallions (white part only) 2 cups finely chopped leeks (white part only) washed well, 1⁄2 tsp ground cumin, 1⁄2 tsp dried oregano, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp white pepper, 1⁄2 cup unsalted   peanuts, 5 cups milk, or more if needed, 4 oz cream cheese, 1 cup whipping cream, 1⁄4 cup (1⁄2 stick) unsalted butter (optional) softened, Garnishes, 2   eggs, peeled and sliced, 1 ripe (yellow) plantain, peeled, sliced 1⁄4 inch thick, and fried in hot canola oil until golden on both sides, 1 small red bell pepper, seeded and cut into strips, or 4 hot red peppers, seeded, cut into thin strips, blanched in boiling water for 20 seconds, and drained, Mini cheese empanadas or dough fritters, Fresh parsley sprigs, Directions, Soak the salt cod in water to cover overnight, changing the water a couple of times. Drain, cut into   pieces and set aside. Prepare the fava beans, corn, Great Northern beans, peas, and 1 cup of the lupini beans. Place in a large mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Roast the garlic in a baking dish until the cloves are soft, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, let cool, and squeeze out the garlic it should be like a paste. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Steam the zucchini until tender, about 5 minutes. Steam the calabaza until soft, about 20 minutes. Steam the cabbage until tender, about 20 minutes. Place the zucchini, squash and cabbage in a food processor and process until smooth. Transfer to a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. In a small saucepan, combine the rice and water and cook over low heat until most of the water has been absorbed, 25 to 30 minutes. Mash with a fork, transfer to a bowl, cover and refrigerate. In a large, heavy casserole, heat the oil, butter and annatto together over medium heat until the butter has melted. Add the cod and cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add the scallions, leeks, roasted garlic, cumin, oregano, salt and white pepper to the casserole and cook, stirring constantly for 5 minutes. Do not let brown. Transfer to a blender and add the remaining 1⁄2 cup lupini beans, the peanuts and a little of the milk. Process until smooth. Return to the casserole, add the cod and remaining milk, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the squash and cabbage, rice, and bean mixture and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring frequently so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the casserole. Cut the cream cheese into small cubes and add, stirring until it melts. Add the cream and heat through. Fanesca should have the consistency of a thick soup if it is too thick, add a little more milk. Taste for salt and stir in the butter, if using. Serve hot in soup plates, garnished with the eggs, plantain, bell pepper, mini empanadas, fritters and parsley. NOTE: You may serve the cod separately as a side dish. Place the cod pieces in boiling water, cover, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain and set aside until ready to serve. Water is never used in the classic fanesca, just milk."
"Shares of Snap Inc. parent of the popular   and   app Snapchat, rose by more than $8 in the first hours of trading Thursday, as the company watched the $17 price of its initial public offering of 200 million nonvoting shares soar by 50 percent as of   Thursday. The stock opened above $24 when the new offering began sales shortly after 11 a. m. It then rose above $25 a share, hitting $25. 64 by 1:31 p. m. The initial pricing valued the    company, based in Los Angeles, at $24 billion. Earlier projections had expected the range of $14 to $16. Last month, Snap filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to become a publicly traded company. Snap’s Snapchat app is best known for disappearing messages and quirky facial filters for jazzing up selfies. It’s popular with teenagers and younger millennials. But despite Snapchat’s popularity, user growth has slowed recently. Snapchat started 2017 with 158 million daily active users, most of whom are people in their teens, 20s and early 30s. Does Snapchat need to go beyond young users to succeed? LaVon Murphy, 45, a photographer in Portland, Ore. told The Associated Press that she uses Snapchat to stay in touch with her    son. ” ’I don’t really understand why he and his friends use the app so extensively, but I am trying to keep up,’ she said. ” ’It allows me to be silly and show a silly side of myself to my son and it allows him to be silly with me.’ ” Murphy also uses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but analysts have questioned whether most people have time to work another social network into their schedule. Snap’s IPO is one of the most anticipated for a technology company since Twitter’s stock market debut in 2013. Twitter is now valued at $11 billion. In 2012, it was Facebook’s IPO that capture the market’s attention. Facebook is currently valued at $395 billion. Facebook’s Instagram is a major rival to Snapchat. The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to people familiar with the deal, Snap executives took some unusual steps that could help bolster demand for the shares: ”In a regulatory filing ahead of the IPO, the company said roughly   of its planned float of 200 million shares would be subject to a lockup of one year before that chunk could be sold. ”The company planned to sell those shares to a group of existing investors, who got in before the IPO process began, people familiar with the deal said. ”Other investors would be locked up for less time. Such moves could damp volatility by limiting the number of   stockholders who can jump in and out.” Analysts, investors and investment bankers have told the Journal that a successful Snap ”debut could awaken what has been a largely dormant tech IPO market.” Snap is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the symbol ”SNAP.”"
"An aircraft flying at night drops a flock of unpowered drones. They carry food, medicines and batteries. After delivering their load on the ground, the drones vaporize into thin air within hours. Disposable drones that can make precise deliveries before vanishing may look like a product of Stark Industries. But the fictional giant of military technology run by Tony ”Iron Man” Stark has nothing to do with them. Instead, the development of ”disappearing delivery vehicles” is a project by DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research and development agency. DARPA, officially called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is working with several companies in the field of ephemeral materials to achieve a prototype. The name of the $8 million program is ICARUS (Inbound, Controlled,   Unrecoverable Systems) which alludes to the mythological hero who flew too close to the sun by using wings made of wax and feathers. The program aims to mimic the material transience that is depicted in the myth. In fact, finding a balance between the properties of the material to build disposable drones is the main challenge, says Troy Olsson, ICARUS program manager. ”The material [which disposable drones will be made of] has to be reliable enough to enable the flight,” but then be able to vanish after delivering its payload, he says. Options range from cardboard to   or   materials. San Francisco firm Otherlab, for example, received a grant of about $1 million from DARPA in 2015 to develop   expandable and disposable drones, according to Mikell Taylor, team lead of the project at Otherlab. All the disposable drones under development as part of ICARUS are, technically, gliders  —   they don’t have motors like traditional drones. They have to be dropped by an aircraft and then take advantage of the wind. An   navigation system allows disposable drones to correct their course and land in a precise location. While the drone is flying,   sensors are supposed to measure wind and adjust its path accordingly. ”[Disposable drones] fly themselves, which is a difference with commercial drones,” which are remotely operated, Olsson notes. Ideally, disposable drones could carry payloads of three to 10 pounds. The dream result would be a prototype glider that travels from 150 to 200 kilometers [93 to 124 miles] when dropped from 35, 000 feet, lands within 10 meters [33 feet] of its target and vanishes within four hours after delivering its load, Olsson says.  Otherlab researchers did some actual testing. Taylor says they used    traditional drones to drop disposable ones from below 400 feet, the maximum altitude drones are allowed to operate under Federal Aviation Administration rules. Later, at an Army facility, researchers were able to drop disposable vehicles from 1, 000 feet, she says. ”We bought all the materials we used off the shelves to focus on the airframe design,” she says. DARPA wants the disposable drones to be    —   from $250 to a couple of thousand dollars each, including the guidance and navigation system that combined are the size of a tennis ball, according to Olsson. In the battlefield, applications of disposable drones would range from bringing medicines to injured soldiers to providing any critical supply  —   food, batteries or electrical components  —   to helping troops that encounter an unexpected situation. But disposable drones may also come in handy as part of a   response to earthquakes or other disasters, when people need humanitarian supplies. ”We are competing with parachute dropping, and the precision of landing is the difference,” Taylor says. ”For disposable drones, the range of landing accuracy is 50 feet. In an emergency situation, you want that precision.” Lucia Maffei is an NPR Business Desk intern."
"If a snake bites you in a remote Amazonian village like Pampa Hermosa, Peru, and the local doctor is out of the right   it might be wise to prepare some goodbyes. The nearest resupply, in a town called Contamana, is up to six hours away by riverboat, and you might not last that long. But you might last 35 minutes, the travel time between Pampa Hermosa and Contamana as the drone flies. A single unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV could dart over the lush canopy with a vial of lifesaving   and a nonprofit called WeRobotics is trying to make that a reality. Last September, the company, which aims to use technology for humanitarian purposes, started testing drones that might be able to deliver small emergency supplies, like   on that Pampa   run. If it works, a fleet of flying robots would substantially bolster public health capabilities in a region often with few roads or ready access to fast boats. ”Delivering health care in the Peruvian Amazon basin is a major issue,” says Dr. Willy Lescano, an epidemiologist at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. ”And it’s going to need creative approaches like this.” But the initial testing, in December, which WeRobotics describes in a report released Monday, was off to a rocky start. WeRobotics had acquired a specialized cargo drone that can land and take off vertically, a useful ability in a region where large open spaces are rare. The large drone can carry a roughly 5 pound payload and range as far as 37 miles. It’s an impressive robot. The only problem was that the $40, 000 rig wouldn’t fly once WeRobotics set it up in Contamana. ”It was incredibly depressing. We were like, holy cow, this is a complete disaster,” says Patrick Meier, a   of WeRobotics, which is funded mainly by grants and donations. The team had another drone with it, an old flier strapped together with duct tape and originally designed for mapping and aerial imagery work. ”Our Peruvian flying labs team just happened to have this old,   mapping drone,” Meier says. It’s a lot smaller and can carry only a quarter of the weight the other drone can, but it worked. All the team did was yank out the camera, replace it with a vial of   and launch it off in the afternoon for the Pampa   test flight. It got to Pampa Hermosa in just over half an hour, and it flew back that night. Meier says it’s the best outcome he could have hoped for. The mapping drone costs only about $3, 000. ”I was like, what were we thinking? What are we doing here bringing a $40, 000 drone when this can be done with just a few thousand dollars?” he says. ”I think we drank the   buying the hype and thinking more expensive and sophisticated means more reliable when it’s still very early days [for] cargo drones.” Instead of one specialized cargo drone, WeRobotics and its partners could furnish a drone fleet of about a dozen repurposed mapping UAVs. In Meier’s view, the 12 little guys are better than one big one. ”What we need is a network. You don’t want just one. You want to service many towns,” Meier says. And if one of the little drones goes down, for maintenance or because a bird or bad weather got it, 11 others are still in the air. Not even a swarm of drones will be useful in every situation, Lescano says, who is not involved with WeRobotics. The little UAVs can’t fly in bad weather, and they would eventually be operating in a rain forest. ”The amount of precipitation could be a big challenge for delivery over the rainy season,” he says. But: ”We have very little alternatives to delivering care [in the Amazon] and this is really innovative and creative. The test is a proof of concept to move to the next stage.” And they are going forward, Meier says. WeRobotics will be running more test flights this week in Peru, and then again in May. This time, the team is using an upgraded version of its mapping drone."
"My bank sends me a text alert when my account balance is low. My wireless company sends me a text alert when I’m about to use up my monthly data. Somebody  —   I guess the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration?  —  sends me a text alert when it’s going to rain a whole lot. A few clever researchers said: ”Hey! What if we could send text alerts to parents when students miss class or don’t turn in their homework?” And what do you know, it worked. Take it away, Peter Bergman and Eric W. Chan of Teachers College, Columbia University: ”In a field experiment across 22 middle and high schools, we [sent] automated   alerts to parents about their child’s missed assignments, grades and class absences. The intervention reduces course failures by 39% and increases class attendance by 17%.” That’s from a draft paper they’ve just released. They say the intervention was especially helpful for students who were struggling academically. The students’ GPAs improved by a quarter of a point on a   scale. And students were more likely to stay in school. Bergman told NPR Ed that he has been researching the power of texting parents for about six years. In a previous study in Los Angeles, he tapped out the texts by hand. This time, working with the largest school district in West Virginia, they built software that communicated directly with the electronic gradebook that teachers were already using, and they used the phone numbers parents provided on class lists. The result was automated messages like this one: What’s really interesting is that, for the most part, parents didn’t follow up by logging online. Studies across hundreds of schools with online portals show that very few ever do. Simply sending updates to parents’ pockets, though, seemed to make all the difference. They contacted the school more often. And presumably, they talked to their kids. Bergman says that, when asked, parents who got the text messages showed a more realistic, less optimistic view of their children’s school performance. Lots of research supports the idea that students succeed when parents get involved. But most policymakers treat parental involvement as something that’s determined largely by factors that are tough to budge, like family income and education. This study suggests that parents may just need a little help. ”If my Internet goes down, I can call any time, day or night,” says Bergman, who must have a better Internet provider than I do. ”If I want to figure out whether my child’s missing any assignments, by 8 or 9 p. m. when I get home from work, good luck,” Bergman adds. ”The school is shut.” Report cards come out quarterly. Children and teens may shade the truth. But timely text reports from teachers can apparently prompt better behavior. And all for a fraction of a cent per message. Bergman hastens to underline that text messages are no panacea: ”I think this is one piece of a larger puzzle.” For one thing, the significant results came almost entirely from the high school students in the study, not the  . Still, interest in the general area of ”nudging” better behavior is growing. NPR Ed previously covered trials using text messages and emails that prompt college students to sign up for financial aid and reduce dropouts among   students. Justin Reich, who studies education technology at MIT, says this direction of research looking for simple, cheap interventions is welcome. ”I think there is a serious problem in   funding, which is that there’s too much interest in things that look sexy, that are on the horizon, and are untested and unproven,” he says. ”If we can adopt a technology that is almost universally accessible to parents, it has positive outcomes on their kid, and it doesn’t cost very much, that seems like a positive thing to me.”"
"In a new book, The Complacent Class, economist Tyler Cowen argues that the United States is standing still. People have grown more risk averse and are reluctant to switch jobs or move to another state, he says, and the desire to innovate  —   to grow and change  —   has gone away. In an interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin, Cowen says he’s worried that more and more communities are    —   by income, education or race. ”We’re making decisions that are rational and even pleasurable from an individual point of view, but when everyone in society behaves this way  —   to cement in their own security, their own mobility  —   social mobility as a whole goes down, inequality goes up, many measures of segregation go up,” he says. ”And ultimately a bill for this comes due.” Interview Highlights, On how   leads to complacency  If you live in Arlington, Va. and if you move to Ann Arbor, Mich. or even Santa Monica, Calif. those places are more alike than ever before. But most importantly, segregation by income has gone up in virtually every part of this country. So wealthier people tend to live together more than before and so do poorer people. And this is bad for the country as a whole and we see a version of this in the last election where so many people are shocked by the candidate who actually won. On what this complacency means, [I]f you cease being challenged and you think your way of life is the only way, ultimately that way will become weak, it will be subject to less improvement, you will enter a kind of bubble and continually be surprised by the challenges the outside world keeps on throwing at you. But you’re not very   intellectually to handle them. On the fact that median male wage was higher in 1969 than it is today, It is truly a shocking fact. Now you could argue the measurements are not perfect, that’s true, but that even the numbers can come out that way. So many of the advances in our economy have come from women working more, working harder, getting more educated. That’s great. But when it comes to males, something has very badly gone wrong. I think we have switched to a   economy  —   most jobs are now service sector. That’s bad for some percentage of men. Jobs require more and more that you be skilled in information technology. That’s great for the top 1 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent. Not so great for the median or the bottom third for males. On why he writes in his book: ”The biggest story of the last 15 years, both nationally and globally, is the growing likelihood that a cyclical model of history will hold rather than a model of ongoing progress.” In the 1990s, pretty much everything seemed to be going in the right direction. More countries were democratic, more countries were becoming free. Lately we see China, Russia, Turkey moving back in a much more authoritarian direction, significant parts of the Middle East up in flames. The forward march of progress is not the main story today. The risk of an unraveling of the basic liberal globalized world order has been going up for some number of years now and only now do we see it with Brexit and the election of Trump. We need to take this risk very seriously. On why he feels optimistic and not unsettled, I think of the ’80s and ’90s as very calm, smooth optimistic decades. But when you think back to our broader history  —   the Civil War, the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon trying to undermine the Constitution  —   those are all terrible, deeply unpleasant events, but we did get through them. And I think viewed in a   perspective, this country will recapture its dynamism. I think innovations that have been restricted to the tech sector will move through most of our economy. At some point real wages will go up quite a bit more again. My hope is the current political mood is something we’re getting out of our system rather than a permanent change. So ultimately I would bet on optimism, but I think those big bumps in the road, they’re not distant. Right now we’re just at them. NPR associate editor Reena Advani contributed to this report."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. An awful lot of musicals include an early song of    —   ”Iowa Stubborn” in The Music Man, ”It Sucks To Be Me” in Avenue Q, even ”Jet Song” in West Side Story. So when the inhabitants of Gander, Newfoundland, introduce themselves in ”Welcome To The Rock” at the beginning of Come From Away, there’s something familiar about the      exposition. But these are not just any locals: they’re the locals of the small town of 10, 000 where 38 planes and almost 7, 000 people were stranded by airspace closures on September 11, 2001. The show, from the Canadian married writing team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein, chronicles the few days when this little town took in thousands of strangers. You might expect an entirely mournful or entirely saccharine collection of music in a September 11 story  —   a choice between wallowing in misery and wallowing in unbearable earnestness. But that   is avoided on Come From Away’s original Broadway cast recording in part by an infusion of humor. In ”Blankets and Bedding,” for instance, two classic folk styles combine. A tense Celtic flute under the local women’s concern about how to help gives way to kicky bluegrass   and then one man’s shopping list expands, with comedy rhythms almost like a summer camp song, like ”Hole In The Bucket” or ”99 Bottles Of Beer.” Much of the cast album, in fact, feels like a coming together of modern   ballads and drinking songs, often in the same number. The show never loses sight of the way these people are suspended in a certain unreality, and that shows up in the music. Like many musicals, this one devotes a good stretch to a raucous celebration (”In The   Away,” ”Screech In”) but here, it’s a distraction that cannot last. These people are still here because they cannot go home, because it is not yet believed to be safe. And in just the next song, ”Me And The Sky,” pilot Beverley (the real Beverley Bass was American Airlines’ first woman captain) played by Jenn Colella, tells her story. And in it, there are elements of the same longing for fulfillment  —   matched musically by a soaring chorus  —   that shows up in songs like ”Corner Of The Sky” from Pippin  —   that’s common in musical theater. But there is also a jarring reminder that in this show, the externalities of violence and fear have made the ground shift, and the shape of many wishes has literally changed overnight. While the rock influences (or at least the   influences) of Come From Away make it feel firmly like a modern piece, there is an echo in the story of classic American musical theater  —   specifically, Brigadoon. That Lerner  Loewe classic, which opened in 1947, follows two Americans who find a mysterious Scottish village that appears for one day every 100 years and then disappears again. Not only are there Celtic influences in the music of both shows, but both find their most poignant notes in the sometimes transient nature of connection. But where Brigadoon is a village that vanishes, here, it’s the visitors who vanish after a short time. And as committed as Come From Away is to the story of the Gander residents’ generosity, it devotes one of its last songs (”Something’s Missing”) to the fact that when this period of connection was over, there was a difficult return to normalcy both for the town and for the people who finally had to face what awaited at their destinations. The show circles back to themes of unity in the finale with a reprise of ”Welcome To The Rock,” expanding the community defined in the opening to include the visitors  —   and perhaps the world. But it remains a show unapologetically admiring of a specific community that opened its buildings  —   even its bar  —   to strangers. And it did so in defiance of the fear of unfamiliar visitors that those same series of days instilled, or simply excused, in many others. The original Broadway cast recording of Come From Away will be released March 10."
"The White House asserted this week that broad swaths of federal ethics regulations do not apply to people who work in the Executive Office of the President. Ethics experts say this sets the Trump White House apart from past administrations. The administration’s assertion was made in a letter that White House Deputy Counsel Stefan Passantino wrote regarding the controversy over White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway’s recent ethical issues. Passantino’s letter said that ”many regulations promulgated by the Office of Government Ethics (”OGE”) do not apply to employees of the Executive Office of the President.” The Executive Office of the President extends well beyond the president’s inner circle in the West Wing. For example, under Obama, the Executive Office included 11 separate entities, including the National Security Council, Office of Management and Budget, and U. S. trade representative. (The Trump White House webpage on the Executive Office is not yet populated.) This all began after Conway’s endorsement of Ivanka Trump’s clothing line in a February Fox  Friends interview. In response, OGE Director Walter Shaub Jr. had advised that there was ”strong reason to believe” that ”disciplinary action is warranted” against Conway for ”misuse of position” in promoting a product. In his letter this week, Passantino concluded that Conway had ”acted inadvertently” and promoted Trump’s products ”without nefarious motive or intent to benefit personally.” Who has to follow the rules? Near the start of his letter, Passantino described the White House’s view of ethics: ”We note initially that although many regulations promulgated by the Office of Government Ethics (”OGE”) do not apply to employees of the Executive Office of the President, the Office of the White House Counsel has instructed all such employees to abide by 3 CFR 100. 1 . ..” Richard Painter, who served as the George W. Bush administration’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, said that expansive assertion breaks with the past. ”Every White House has instructed employees that these OGE rules are binding rules for White House and other EOP staff,” he wrote in an email to NPR. ”The only exception is the President and in some cases the Vice President.” Because of the broad, nonspecific nature of what Passantino wrote, Painter advised that the ethics office should work to get more answers. ”OGE should write back and ask the White House Counsel which OGE rules it believes do not apply to EOP staff,” Painter said. ”OGE is entitled to know that.” When asked about the OGE’s response, a spokesman from that office told NPR, ”OGE has received the letter, and we are evaluating it.” NPR has reached out to the White House about which rules officials believe do and don’t apply but has not yet received a response. What does ”agency” mean? Here’s what may be at issue in the letter Passantino wrote. He said that White House employees must abide by a particular bit of code (3 CFR 100. 1) that comprises a massive amount of regulations. But there’s a catch within those regulations, Painter said: ”The issue is that many of the regulations refer to an ’agency,’ and the EOP may or may not be an ’agency’ within the meaning of that term as it is used in the regulations,” Painter wrote. If the definition of agency is in question, that means major rules also could be. Painter pointed to the section intended to ensure ”impartiality”  —   keeping federal employees from engaging in work that might directly benefit themselves or their family members, for instance  —   as one example. Another could be the rules regarding when employees may or may not accept gifts from outside sources. Quibbling over what exactly constitutes an agency has happened before. In 2005, Dick Cheney’s office made this kind of argument to justify the way it avoided reporting travel expenses. ”The Office of the Vice President is not an ’agency of the executive branch,’ and hence the reporting requirement does not apply,” wrote Cheney’s general counsel, David Addington, as reported in the Washington Post in 2005. Painter, however, said that the Cheney instance isn’t nearly as consequential as the current debate. ”VP Cheney’s office in some respects came a little close to the Trump approach on ethics issues,” he wrote. ”But the Cheney approach, even if uniquely distinct from that of every other recent Vice President, is a model of compliance compared with the Trump White House.” The agency argument is similar to one that the DOJ made when approving the appointment of Trump’s    Jared Kushner, as an adviser: that the White House Office (a subset of the EOP that itself includes a variety of smaller offices, like the Office of the Chief of Staff and the National Economic Council) is not an agency. That question was similarly at issue in a case pertaining to Hillary Clinton’s position on a White House task force during her husband’s presidency. One   ethics adviser had a blunt response to this kind of debate when it comes to ethics laws. ”This is nonsense. There are debates about whether for other purposes the [White House] is an agency,” wrote Norman Eisen, who led White House ethics efforts from 2009 through 2011, in an email to NPR. ”Never before for ethics purposes.” ”This part of the letter is another salvo in trump’s war on ethics. Terrible,” he later added. And focusing on what agency means very easily could be a losing argument, Painter added. ”I am not sure this argument is right so I never would have tried it and would not recommend that the White House do so,” he said."
"President Trump got generally positive reviews this week for his speech to a joint session of Congress. But that was quickly eclipsed by news of more undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and the Russian government. Stepping on its own good news cycle has been a recurring pattern for this administration. The White House had less than 24 hours to bask in the positive coverage of Trump’s speech before the Washington Post reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact on two occasions last year with the Russian ambassador. Sessions failed to tell lawmakers about those contacts during his confirmation hearing. That prompted a chorus of calls for Sessions to recuse himself from any investigation of Russian campaign meddling, and some calls for him to resign. The story dogged Trump on Thursday as he visited an aircraft carrier in a Virginia shipyard, overshadowing the president’s call for increased military spending. Sessions’ announcement late Thursday that he would recuse himself might have tamped down the negative news. But Trump revived the story himself Friday afternoon, with an angry tweet about a 2003 public meeting between Vladimir Putin and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer. ”One of Donald Trump’s greatest weaknesses is that he’s such a good counterpuncher, he often hits himself,” said Ari Fleischer, who was George W. Bush’s White House spokesman. Fleischer thinks Trump would be better off focusing on his own economic agenda rather than responding to every critic. Of course, some of the president’s most ardent supporters like his combative approach. As far as they’re concerned, the more Democrats come after Trump, the better they like him. ”They’re just poor losers,” said Gail Anderson, attending a Trump rally last month in Melbourne, Fla. ”I am so glad we have someone in there now who cares about America.” But merely nursing his fans’ grievances may not be a winning formula for Trump. ”If the Trump presidency is only about keeping his base, he’s not going to be a very successful president,” Fleischer said. ”If the Trump presidency is about keeping his base but then growing his support across the country because he’s going to get things done that he promised, that’s where he’s either going to rise or fall.” The White House hired a communications director only two weeks ago to look beyond the daily news cycle and craft more substantive messages. When it comes to policy, though, it appears much of the shaping is still taking place on Capitol Hill. Congressional Republicans are happy to have a president who will sign GOP tax cuts or an Obamacare repeal bill. But many would like to see Trump show a little more message discipline. ”I’ve been pretty candid with him and all of you that I’m not a great fan of daily tweets,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters last month. ”What I am a fan of is what he’s been actually doing.” Trump came out of the presidential campaign with little in the way of detailed policy. And most of his inner circle has no government experience. In a rush to look busy, the White House has tripped over itself on measures like the   travel ban. Fleischer’s advice is to slow down.  ”The power of the presidency is a tremendous power,” Fleischer said. ”But it depends on getting your facts lined up and your ducks in a row. If Donald Trump does that, he can be a very successful president. But he’s got to master these inside pieces.” That’s a lot tougher than giving a   speech."
"Compared with the Obama administration, the Trump White House has been much slower to submit its nominees’ financial arrangements for review by the federal Office of Government Ethics. A statistical report NPR obtained from OGE on Friday shows that the Trump nominees’ documents have not only come in more slowly, but also have been far more complex. The OGE shared the data with NPR in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act. OGE officials say the report was compiled for the Congressional Research Service in February. OGE works with presidential nominees to make sure their financial holdings do not influence their decisions as public officeholders. The watchdog agency, which does not have investigative or enforcement power, reviews financial reports submitted by the White House to help identify and address ethical issues. The data showed that under Obama, OGE had received roughly 140 nominee reports by Feb. 5, 2009  —   and the reports had begun arriving about two weeks after Obama was elected. Under Trump, by Feb. 5 of this year, OGE had received just over 30 nominee reports, which started arriving about a month after Trump’s election. The statistics offer a new illustration of Trump’s slower pace of filling his Cabinet as well as the vast wealth of many of his nominees, a number of whom at the highest ranks are billionaires with complex investments and financial and corporate ties. In fact, OGE classified the vast majority of the financial reports filed by the Trump administration nominees as ”complex” or ”extremely complex.” That means the reports come from people who are  —   by OGE’s assessment  —   wealthy or extremely wealthy, holding complex and   investments and business arrangements, including in some cases ongoing deals. ”These reports usually present unusual or novel legal issues related to conflicts of interest. The ethics review cannot be completed without the direct involvement of OGE’s managers or leadership,” the ethics agency says in the document as it defines the ”extremely complex” category. By comparison, under Obama, only a sliver of nominees’ financial reports were classified as ”extremely complex,” according to OGE data, which shows roughly a third of them classified as ”simple” and another third as ”moderate” during Obama’s transition into the White House. Yet, OGE’s statistics show that the agency is actually moving slightly faster in vetting the financial reports under Trump now than it did during Obama’s first term. The White House issued this statement on Saturday: ”Prior to being submitted to OGE, the reports undergo extensive legal review by White House counsel. White House staff are given ethics counsel to avoid any conflict of interest based upon this review. The President has chosen individuals who have been tremendously successful in their business to help him implement his agenda. These individuals have made financial sacrifices for the good of our country. We are working diligently to ensure the White House office runs in compliance with ethics rules.” As of Feb. 5, the agency was taking fewer than 20 days to process the received financial reports and get them ” ”  —   defined as having the financial information reviewed and corrected, and conflicts of interest addressed in an ethics agreement. The documents also shows that in the same period of time, OGE   a much larger portion of received financial reports under Trump than under Obama. OGE’s review typically paves the way for the Senate to begin the confirmation process. In January, however, OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote to Congress to express concerns that the Senate confirmation hearings were being scheduled faster than usual and before the completion of proper ethics reviews. OGE advises future officeholders on ways to eliminate personal financial ties that may be in conflict with their work in the public interest, in compliance with    rules. For instance, Shaub has praised the ”clean break” Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson made from the company as he prepared to become U. S. secretary of state. Presidents, however, are exempt from these    rules (though they are subject to other ethics rules, including bribery and insider trading laws and restrictions on gifts from foreign officials). So Trump himself remains the owner of his international network of businesses. NPR’s Peter Overby contributed to this report."
"With a series of airstrikes and a recent ground raid, the U. S. military has intensified a   campaign against   in Yemen, which is considered more dangerous than the group’s parent organization. The U. S. military has carried out about 30 airstrikes over the past two days in   Yemen, according to the Pentagon. The Americans have targeted members of the extremist group, formally known as   in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. The concentrated strikes come just a month after a rare U. S. ground raid in the same general area. That Jan. 29 operation in Al Bayda Province did not go smoothly. One Navy SEAL was killed, several other troops were injured and a damaged U. S. aircraft had to be destroyed.   Yemeni civilians were also killed, a witness told NPR. The raid generated a debate about the value of the information on the computers and cellphones recovered from the AQAP compound. A Defense Department official said Friday that the latest airstrikes were not based on intelligence gathered in January. But he did add that the previous raid produced ”good information” that provided a fuller picture of a group that is made up largely of local Yemeni tribesmen. Many details of the airstrikes this week remain sketchy, including the exact targets and the number of casualties. What is clear is that the Pentagon has decided to ramp up its efforts against AQAP, a group that operates in one of the world’s most remote, isolated and dysfunctional countries. However, many national security officials believe AQAP poses the most serious threat to the U. S. homeland of any terrorist group. Most   groups, including its core in the   region, have been substantially weakened by the U. S. military. But   in Yemen is believed to have the ability to make sophisticated bombs that do not contain metal, which would make them difficult to detect if, for example, someone tried to place them on an airliner. The group has been linked to a number of actual or attempted attacks in the West, including the 2015 shootings in Paris at the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The U. S. has carried out selective drone strikes against AQAP for years, but the operations have generally been on a much more limited scale than in the past month. The Pentagon said Thursday that airstrikes ”will degrade the AQAP’s ability to coordinate external terror attacks and limit their ability to use territory seized from the legitimate government of Yemen as a safe space for terror plotting.” The military also said it was working in coordination with Yemen’s president, Abed Rabo Mansour Hadi. However, Hadi’s authority is extremely limited. He fled the country two years ago after Houthi rebels took over the capital Sanaa. Hadi has spent most of his time in Saudi Arabia, though loyal army forces continue to fight on his behalf. The war appears to be largely a stalemate at present, with no faction demonstrating the strength to win an outright military victory. Saudi Arabia has been waging an air campaign in support of Hadi, but that has not significantly changed the trajectory of the war and the Saudis have been blamed for many civilian casualties. Yemen, meanwhile, is suffering a humanitarian crisis with an estimated 18 million of the country’s 27 million people in need of some sort of assistance. The country faces chronic water shortages, and people in the worst affected areas can spend hours a day waiting in line for water. The economy, the health care system, the education system have all broken down. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman contributed to this report."
"The stock market’s been charging higher lately. After the Dow Jones industrial average topped 20, 000 for the first time in history in January, it kept surging to close above 21, 000 earlier this week. So what’s going on with the stock market and what does it mean for your retirement account? Rasheed Irani works for a helicopter manufacturer in Torrance, Calif. and like many everyday Americans, he’s been paying more attention to the stock market lately. ”I was speaking with my wife and we were both obviously happy that the market is going up, and she said, ’I’m so glad our 401( k) is doing much better now that Trump is the president,’ ” he says. Irani says he disagreed that it was because of the newly elected president. ”I think I was able to convince her that it is not.” Actually, many investors do seem to be enthusiastic about Trump’s pledges to cut taxes and regulations, and build infrastructure. But beyond the debate over why the market is up, other people are wondering what to do. Do they own enough stocks, or too many stocks, and what happens next with the market? To get some answers we called up Burt Malkiel, an economist and author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, a classic book on investing. He’s also head of investments for the roboadviser Wealthfront. Malkiel says people right now have a lot of questions about the market, ”and what I tell people is nobody  —   and I mean nobody  —   is able to tell you whether the market is too high or too low.” That may not sound very helpful. But Malkiel says you don’t need to know where the market is headed next or why. There are other things that are very important for a successful investor to know. ”Let me tell you the one thing that I am absolutely 100 percent sure of, and that is the lower the fee I pay to the purveyor of an investment service, the more there is going to be for me,” Malkiel says. Pay the lowest fees possible. Malkiel says that’s crucial. He says you also want to have the right mix of U. S. stocks, bonds, emerging market stocks, real estate funds, and more. Roboadvisers can set that up for you for a small fraction of 1 percent of your assets. (Wealthfront, for example, charges 0. 25 percent.) But Malkiel says you do not want to play the game of paying brokers or mutual fund managers a lot more than that to try to pick a bunch of stocks that will be winners. ”This was something Warren Buffett stressed in his annual letter to shareholders,” Malkiel says. Buffett’s letter came out just this past weekend. Buffet wrote about a $1 million bet he made with a hedge fund manager 9 years ago. Buffett bet that a simple   index fund that just blindly owns 500 major U. S. companies (the SP 500 index) over a decade would beat any group of hedge funds that the person betting against him would choose. The hedge fund manager who took the bet is losing  —   and losing big time. Buffett writes, ”$1 million invested in those funds would have gained $220, 000. The index fund would meanwhile have gained $854, 000.” The SP 500 index fund Buffett used has gained nearly four times as much value as the group of hedge funds  —   in part because of the hedge funds’ big fees. ”The fees border on the obscene,” Malkiel says. So there are good ways to invest online at a very low cost. But some people still want a human being they can talk to for investing and other financial planning advice. And that can get risky. ”Just because a person calls himself or herself a financial adviser, they may be nothing more than a salesperson,” says Kevin Keller, CEO of the CFP Board, which represents certified financial planners across the country. Keller says many advisers get commissions to steer you into bad investments with big fees. And, he says, ”that’s why it’s so important to select an adviser that’s going to work in your best interest.” The Obama administration put in place a rule that would require advisers to act in people’s best interest. But, the Trump administration has moved to delay it and might kill it. Some financial industry groups argue the rule is too burdensome and hard to implement and that it limits consumer choice. But Keller, who is also in the industry, doesn’t buy those arguments. Speaking for himself and the Certified Financial Planner Board, he says, ”we support the rule because we think it’s the right thing to do.” But with the rule up in the air, Keller says the next best thing is to ask your financial adviser if he or she is acting in your best interest, as a fiduciary, at all times. The ”at all times” part is important, he says. Keller says to get that in writing. And his CFP board has a list of other important questions to ask your financial adviser to make sure you’re getting good advice."
"Rachel Dolezal just won’t let it go. The white civil rights activist and former NAACP leader outed by her parents in 2015 for passing herself off as black is making the rounds with news that she is living on food stamps, a month away from homelessness, can’t find a job and, perhaps most shockingly, has legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo. News of Dolezal’s precarious living conditions and new name  —   Nkechi is the Igbo word for ”gift of God,” with roots in Nigeria, and Diallo means ”bold” in Fulani, a word that can be traced to both Guinea and Senegal  —   comes, not surprisingly, just weeks before her new memoir, In Full Color, heads to bookstores. For her part, Diallo is doubling down on her insistence that she is ”transracial”  —   a woman who is the product of two white parents but identifies mentally, emotionally, physically and culturally as black. ”I feel that I was born with the essential essence of who I am, whether it matches my anatomy and complexion or not,” Dolezal told The Guardian earlier this week. ”I’ve never questioned being a girl or woman, for example, but whiteness has always felt foreign to me, for as long as I can remember. I didn’t choose to feel this way or be this way, I just am. What other choice is there than to be exactly who we are?” Here’s the thing, though: The woman formerly known as Dolezal is still a white lady with fussy hair and a bad tan, trying to make fetch happen. Snatching two words from two separate African languages and claiming them as a reflection of her connection with blackness cannot  —   and will not ever  —   earn her the soul of black folk. Of course, on paper, it was probably a wise decision for Dolezal to pick a new moniker, considering the name her biological parents gave her incurs near automatic wrath from those familiar with her story, no matter their race. For years, she denied her own family, heritage and skin color, claiming she was a   daughter of an   man who had fled the South after assaulting a racist police officer. So tremendous were her lies that she actually managed to talk herself into the president’s chair in the   Wash. chapter, onto the board of a police oversight committee and into a teaching gig in the   studies department at Eastern Washington University, where she taught classes on subjects like black and African art,   culture and ”the black woman’s struggle.” It was her parents, from whom she is estranged, who exposed Dolezal’s true identity, launching her into a national scandal and making her the bull’  for heated conversations targeting race, identity, blackness, cultural politics and whether one has the right and power to choose. That conversation led to a tidal wave of condemnation, costing Dolezal her various jobs, further fraying her relationship with her family, opening her up to seemingly endless and brutal mockery, and leading to social, political and financial isolation that’s left her virtually penniless and unable, she claims, to secure work outside of offers to do reality television or porn. But none of this bothers her, it seems, more than being ”evicted” from the good grace of the black community, she told The Guardian. ”That was very painful, to feel kicked out of it. I think it’s a mix of anger and sadness really for me, because I’ve struggled to stay away from turning bitter. But I do resent the fact that people knew that I gave so much, and I’ve done good things in the community. And when I could no longer do things for people I was thrown away.” Thus the new African name  —   the digging in. Of course, in many cultures across Africa, the importance of a name and the excitement in choosing it are rooted in the community’s investment in a child’s destiny. Naming newborns, in many cases, honors ancestors, religion, a family’s status, even expectations for what the child will accomplish in her lifetime. In the case of the Igbo, the ethnic group from whose language Dolezal chose her new first name, a mine of information can be gleaned from the names parents and grandparents choose for newborns: Nwawulo means ”a child guarantees that the home continues” Chinua means ”may God fight for me” Iheanacho celebrates ”what we have been looking for.” The names are messages, values, prayers. Hope. A history. In taking an African name, Dolezal looks to change her destiny  —   to revise history. To claim what is not hers to claim. Blackness is a bright and shiny diamond, and here in America, everyone wants to wear it like a Rockafella chain around their neck. The attitude, the language, the humor, the music, the style, all of it is covetable, and everyone from the Kardashians (with their signature curvy bodies and thick, puffy lips) to cereal companies (with their   commercial jingles) to a white   neighbor (twirling around in the yard singing Beyoncé’s latest hit) get high  —   and rich  —   off it. But, like diamonds, blackness is created under extreme pressure and high temperature, deep down in the recesses of one’s core. It is sitting between your mama’s knees on a Saturday night, hunched over as she runs a hot comb through your kitchen. It is showing up to the family reunion and running board on Uncle Ned, the   Spades champion who remembers every . .. single . .. shady . .. thing you did as a baby  —   and repeats it to anyone within earshot. It is dealing with the tambourine on the twos and the fours on early Sunday morning as you march in the choir processional to that   gospel song that leaves the entire congregation shoutin’ and praisin’. Blackness is   peas and collard greens with neckbones and chitlins on New Year’s Day  —   not just for the eating but for very specific wishing. It is being followed in the store and told what you can and can’t afford by a salesperson whose weekly salary is what you just spent on a casual lunch it is sitting on the curb outside your apartment building with your hands behind your head, waiting for the police officer to decide if he’s going to let you go or put you in the back of his squad car. Blackness is all up in the bones  —   in the sinew. And it is the ultimate in white privilege, really, for a white woman to see that diamond, all shiny and hard and unbreakable, and pluck it for her own, like it’s a gift from Tiffany’s, with seemingly zero regard for the pressure, the heat, the pain it went through  —   that we went through  —   to earn that shine. Denene Millner is a New York Times   author and a parenting expert, whose latest book is My Brown Baby: On the Joys and Challenges Of Raising African American Children. Follow her @MyBrownBaby."
"Here are the claims: Oranges taste better in the shower. Eating oranges in the shower will make you happy. The shower orange experience could turn your entire life around. Thousands of Reddit users have been finding out for themselves. And they have chronicled their adventures on the subreddit    . To sort fact from fiction, White House Correspondent Scott Horsley, Science Editor Geoff Brumfiel and    Sam Sanders stepped into shower stalls at NPR’s Washington, D. C. headquarters. (We wanted a diversity of expertise and opinions on the matter.) Then, they ate some oranges. Here’s what they learned. Which kind of orange works best? Producer Graham Smith supplied three kinds of oranges: navel oranges, blood oranges and clementines. All three appeared to work fine, though the blood orange reminded Scott of the shower scene in Psycho. You’re in the shower with an orange. Now what? Peel it! Sam tried to put the peels in the soap dish. Geoff dropped his on the floor. (Some Reddit users advocate biting through the skin, but come on, this is NPR. We peel our oranges.) Does the shower orange taste better? Geoff: ”Yes, absolutely. I ate half the orange in the shower and finished the other half outside the stall. There was a discernible difference.” Scott: ”For me, the smell was more intense. The taste wasn’t terribly different.” Sam: ”The orange did not TASTE better. It did smell better. But I couldn’t focus on any of that because I was too worried about whether seeds were gonna clog the drain, where I was gonna put the peels, and what I was gonna do with that orange juice stain on the shower curtain!” Is there any scientific basis for why showers would make oranges better? Conclusively establishing why an orange tastes or smells differently in the shower would likely require years of careful study. In the absence of that, we asked Johan Lundström at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia to make an educated guess: ”The only thing I can think of is that the heat makes the orange odors more volatile and this, merged with the increase in mucosa humidity, makes the orange odor smell more in the mouth,” Lundström said in an email. Since 90 percent of flavor comes from smells traveling through the mouth to olfactory receptors in the nose, it might also explain why an orange would taste better under a shower stream. Did eating an orange in the shower change your life? Geoff: ”Not really. But it made me happy in the moment. I’d do it again.” Scott: ”I don’t think showering with an orange in the privacy of my home would be  . But doing so on national radio certainly was.” Sam: ”This event was not  . It was annoying.”"
"One week and a day before thousands will descend on downtown Austin for South By Southwest 2017, what seemed like a standard bit of legalese in contracts given to artists performing at this year’s SXSW music festival has, amidst a markedly shifted political climate, erupted into controversy. Musicians have accused the festival of threatening foreign performers with deportation if they appear outside official festival venues. The controversy began online Thursday afternoon, when a drummer named Felix Walworth (who is gender   and uses ”they” and ”their” as pronouns) canceled a South by Southwest showcase via Twitter. Walworth, who leads the band Told Slant and is also a member of other groups including Eskimeaux and Bellows, wrote in two separate tweets about their cancellation: ”I’m not interested in aligning myself with an institution that interacts with immigration authorities as a means of . .. controlling where art is shared and performed, and who makes money off of it.” Walworth did not respond to NPR’s requests for an interview. Later yesterday, following coverage from several media outlets, an open letter calling for SXSW to apologize for ”their attempt to collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement” and to ”cease any collusion with immigration officials that puts performers in danger” was published. The letter was signed by 35 artists and labels, including PWR BTTM, who is scheduled to play NPR’s official showcase during the festival. Central here is understanding the types of visas that international musicians use to travel to the Austin festival. SXSW’s guidelines for artists invited to the festival note that any artists who arrive in the country on a   (”tourist”) visa, or who are here as a citizen of one of the nearly 40 countries that participate in the United States’ Visa Waiver Program, may be reported to authorities if they are found to be in violation of the government’s travel guidelines.   visas for international travelers allow for the solicitation of future business. (A band invited by SXSW to play a   showcase that may result in future bookings for an artist would qualify  —   but the rules prohibit any work that results in payment, including playing a show for any amount of money, or playing additional shows not covered by the original invitation.) As Leena Khandwala, an immigration attorney based in New York, explains: ”Tourist visas are for foreign nationals visiting the U. S. temporarily.” Bands coming to the U. S. to tour  —   or those playing an unofficial showcase during SXSW for which they may be paid  —   ”would have to have an employment type of   visa: an O visa or a P visa.” Speaking on background, those who work with international artists in the touring industry say clauses such as the one in SXSW’s contract are not uncommon anymore. Roland Swenson,   and CEO of SXSW, says that the contract language is actually intended to help the thousands of musicians who travel to Austin. ”[In the contract] we gave the artists a list of: ’If you violate your visa, this is what could happen,’” he says. ”It’s being interpreted as ”This is what we’re going to do to you. ’” A statement released yesterday by SXSW said that the    festival had never reported an international act to immigration authorities. Swenson also notes that acquiring a work visa is an expensive process that takes months of preparation, and requires visa applicants prove that they are already accomplished musicians. ”If the artists had to qualify for other types of visas,” he says, ”they might not have the career credentials to gain those.” While SXSW’s contractual intent may be benevolent, Swenson didn’t help his festival’s public relations in an interview yesterday with The Austin Chronicle, in which he insinuated that artists were using disagreements over the contract to promote themselves. ”I think that everybody has figured out that a quick way to get your name out there is to accuse us of conspiring with immigration authorities,” he told the paper. At best, it was a   response to concerns voiced by the kind of artists  —   emerging, often independent  —   upon which SXSW’s reputation has been built. Artists, though, also seem to have put the bellows to a fire they didn’t fully understand. Despite Walworth’s mistatement, SXSW has not interacted with immigration authorities to control where art is shared, but rather drafted a fairly standard contract warning of the limits placed on visiting artists. Victoria Ruiz is the singer of the band Downtown Boys and a   of the open letter. Her band has played SXSW in previous years and is scheduled to perform at the festival this month. She told NPR: ”I don’t know visa requirements on both sides, so I can’t speak to that. I think there is a really big issue . .. if SXSW has sole discretion, our hope would be that they would explicitly say, ’We would never use our discretion to get an artist involved with immigration. ’” This is an impossible ask. An easy metaphor would be the terms of service language signed by users of a web browser to absolve the browser’s creators from culpability in the event that it is used to violate laws. SXSW, in order to facilitate thousands of concerts within a very short period of time, asks visiting artists to sign a similar agreement. For a musician and activist like Ruiz, who says she has spent time in the last year advocating on behalf of immigrants’ rights, the line, especially in such an unpredictable political environment, is clear. ”Right now,” says Ruiz, ”especially under the Trump administration, everyone needs to pick a side.” But Swenson argues that SXSW’s offerings have become more diverse specifically because the festival has helped international artists find their way to Austin as simply  —   and cheaply  —   as possible. ”You know,” he says, ”we’ve managed to build this event that allows hundreds and hundreds of acts  —   who are for the most part unknown  —   to come and play at a festival in the U. S. I think we’re the only ones who have done that on the scale that we have.” Musicians who have signed the open letter are considering whether or not they will withdraw from this year’s edition of SXSW."
"In all his 50 years, Georges Kouamé Koffi has eaten chocolate once. ”Someone gave me a piece to try,” says the cocoa farmer. ”It was lovely.” Chocolate bars are on sale at a store in his city of San Pedro, in southwestern Ivory Coast. ”But they are too expensive for us,” he says. His family  —   he has a wife and three children  —   will eat only grated cassava tonight, as it has on most days since last October when Kouamé Koffi handed a buying agent the first of the 2. 8 tons of cocoa he produced this season. All he has to show for his   work on 12 steamy acres are two receipts   effectively IOUs from a buying agent, who is trying to sell the beans to a wholesaler. Kouamé Koffi is owed just over 3 million CFA francs (about $4, 850) for his 2. 8 tons, but he is still waiting for his payment. Seventy per cent of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa. And in Ivory Coast, the biggest cocoa producer in the world, six million people  —   a quarter of the population  —   are estimated to depend on the crop for a living. And Kouamé Koffi is among hundreds of thousands of Ivorians currently suffering from the   effects of a devastating cocoa crisis brought on by a range of factors that are beyond their control. These include the lowest cocoa price on the New York Stock Exchange in eight years, high rainfall creating a bumper harvest, a dip in the world’s appetite for chocolate, price fixing, speculation, politics and the mood swings of hedge funds. As his wife, Janine Allini, 35, grates the white flesh out of a cassava root for dinner, Kouamé Koffi explains: ”We grow a little cassava but that is for eating at home. We use the money from the cocoa for everything: the fields, the family, the children’s school fees.” Until this year Kouamé Koffi had no trouble meeting those expenses. He says until now, ”cocoa has been good to us.” His crop yield doubled between 2011 and 2016. Last year he was even able to buy a family vehicle  —   a motorbike. But ”we are now in debt, even to the local school,” says Kouamé Koffi. ”Sometimes the teacher sends them home. He says, ’Go, tell your parents to send the money’. I’m scared. I’m scared for the future of my children.” All his neighbors are cocoa farmers too, and are struggling under similarly uncertain circumstances. Last October, when the Ivorian government set the national price for this year’s harvest, it promised farmers 1, 100 CFA Francs ($1. 80) per kilo. It was a record high price supposedly based on projected international demand and a national count of budding cocoa pods. But farmers say wholesalers aren’t offering anything close to that price. Economists say the cocoa crisis affects the entire country’s economy. ”Around 30 percent of the debts of the country are in dollars,” says Youssouf Carius, managing director of Ivorian analysis firm Pulsar Partners. ”If the crisis remains like this, it will impact the financial capacity . .. of Ivory Coast to honor that service of debt. That could be really really difficult.” Ivory Coast ships its cocoa in processed form to the world’s cocoa wholesalers and chocolate producers. Once farmers harvest the cocoa beans from the pods, they wrap the beans in banana leaves and ferment them for about a week. Then, the beans are dried in the sun before being poured into jute bags and taken to processing plants in San Pedro, the world’s busiest cocoa exporting port. But right now, the port’s cranes are standing idle and the ships are nowhere to be seen. A musty smell hangs in the air around dozens of trucks still carrying fermented cocoa parked outside the Cargill processing plant near the harbor. Driver Daouda Traoré, 46, has been waiting to unload for three weeks. He is worried that rain will damage his load. ”Cargill is the only plant buying beans at the moment so we are all backed up here,” he says. ”The other factories in San Pedro are closed and not taking any beans.” He says factories are unwilling to pay the high price set by the government because it doesn’t offer them a big enough profit margin. ”They are waiting to reopen when the international price goes up,” says Traoré, who claims he has never seen trucks backed up in San Pedro in such large numbers since he became a driver’s apprentice in 1988. But cocoa is being sold in this city, on the sly. Cocoa farmers’ union representatives takes The Salt to see a truck unloading inside a huge warehouse. Thirty men  —   most of them   and covered in sweat  —   empty sacks in a dusty haze that hovers in the stifling heat. The union officials say the men are sifting the content to check for mold and   beans. The warehouse owner, who doesn’t want to be identified, chooses his words carefully. He refuses to reveal what he paid for the beans and who he has bought them from. Asked how his business is adapting to the current cocoa crisis, he says, ”We adapt.” In Ivory Coast, it is illegal to undercut the price set by the government. And yet some farmers ”are selling cocoa for as little as 600 francs (96 cents) per kilo,” says Blaise Koffi, 45, a union representative and a farmer. ”They just have to, otherwise they cannot feed their families. But it is risky.” A farmer risks losing his licence if he is caught selling cocoa for less than the government price, he says. Koffi says that in recent years, the Ivorian government has created a stabilization fund as a buffer to protect farmers against market fluctuations. But farmers say they have yet to see that money. ”It is there for times like these when we need help to make up for a low international price,” says Koffi. ”We want the government to trigger payments from it now.” On 15 February, several hundred cocoa farmers demonstrated in the commercial capital, Abidjan. They tried to march on the ”Caisse Stab,” a building that houses the offices for those stabilization funds. But the protesters were scattered by riot police using tear gas. After the incident, the government regulator  —   the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC)  —   agreed to discussions with farmers. The CCC said it was confident it could put pressure on plants in San Pedro to reopen and resume buying cocoa. But in San Pedro, the trucks are still backed up. On his farm, Georges Kouamé Koffi and his family have yet to receive their payment. He takes me to see some cocoa trees near his homestead. We wade through brown leaves lying   on the ground. Kouamé Koffi is not just worried about his children’s future. ”If you look around you at the trees, you will see that the insects are in charge,” he says, referring to pests now attacking his trees. ”We need money to spray chemicals. We need income to be able to take care of our fields. If we do not spray, soon the entire plantation will become a skeleton, and that would be very serious.”"
"Authorities in Ireland say they have excavated the human remains of an undisclosed number of young children from the site of a former home for unmarried mothers. The home, located in the town of Tuam, was operated by the Bon Secours nuns beginning in the 1920s and was home to women and babies until the 1960s. For years, some in the region had suspected there was a mass grave on the site. On Friday, the Irish minister for children and youth affairs, Katherine Zappone, announced in a statement that the official commission investigating the Tuam site ”revealed that human remains are visible in a series of chambers that may have formed part of sewage treatment works for the Home.” The statement continued: ”It is not certain whether the chambers ever functioned for sewage purposes, but the Commission believes that there are a significant number of children’s remains there. The Commission recovered some juvenile remains for detailed forensic analysis. From this analysis, it has determined that the remains are between 35 fetal weeks and 2 to 3 years of age. From carbon dating it has correlated the age of these samples with the time period during which the home was in operation  —   between 1925 and 1961. ”This news is very disturbing and will touch everyone’s heart. There were, of course, strong suspicions about burials of this kind in Tuam for some time. . .. The information I have received confirms these suspicions and, importantly, they trace the remains specifically to the period of the Home’s operation, rather than to earlier times in our history such as during the Famine.” Allegations that bodies of dead children might have been interred in a septic tank on the home’s property surfaced in the media in 2014, when a report in The Irish Mail on Sunday said that based on local records, a mass grave might hold the remains of nearly 800 children over more than three decades. A number of news organizations repeated some of the claims put forth in the Mail story, but it later became clear that no actual remains had yet been found. NPR subsequently clarified its own reports. The Associated Press issued a correction to its story that questioned details such as the number of children who died, how they died and where they might have been buried  —   describing the story as ”a study in how exaggeration can multiply in the news media, embellishing occurrences that should have been gripping enough on their own.” Nonetheless, there were still questions about what had happened to children who died at the Tuam home for mothers and children. Irish authorities launched an investigation in 2015, which resulted in the report released Friday. Zappone said the county council for the region was securing the site for now and had not yet decided how to handle the human remains. As we previously reported, the Tuam site ”was surrounded by an   wall, concealing these living conditions from the outside world.”"
"A few years ago, Chimamanda Adichie received a message from a childhood friend asking for advice: She wanted to know how to raise her newborn daughter to be a feminist. For Adichie  —   a   author who has also made a name for herself as a leading feminist voice  —   the question was a bit daunting, but she wrote a long letter back to her friend. Now, that letter has been published as a book. It’s called Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, and it talks about everything from how to choose toys to teaching   to challenging traditional gender roles. Adichie says writing the letter was useful for her, too. ”Yes, I wrote it for my friend, but I think to a large extent it was also my way of mapping out my own thinking. Because I have talked a lot about these things and I care very much about them and I get very passionate . .. but I realized I didn’t actually have a concrete map of the particular, specific things that I think will help if we do them differently.” On ” ” and why it’s harmful, It means raising a girl to believe that she is inferior to a man, but that the man is expected to be good to her that women are somehow naturally subordinate to men, but men have to treat women well. And I find it dehumanizing to women because I think that surely we have to have something more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman’s wellbeing. I also think that that kind of   you know, often uses the language of power. And an example from the book is a British newspaper writing about the British prime minister and saying that her husband had ”allowed” her to shine. And I think it’s the kind of language that’s used so often that we just think it’s normal, but it’s so problematic. . .. The premise, of course, is it’s kind of like the headmaster has allowed the little girl to ascend. And I just think it’s important, very early on, to let children be aware of this. Right, so if a child  —   and when she’s 3, of course, she’s not going to be reading the newspapers, but when she’s a bit older  —   to say to her, ”Do you see? This is not OK and here’s why: ’Allow’ is the language of power, and you can’t use that when you’re talking about two people who are equal.” On the importance of teaching girls to reject likability, I think the way that a lot of girls are raised in so many parts of the world is that idea that you have to be likeable. And likeable means you have to kind of mold and shape what you do and say based on what you imagine the other person wants to hear. . .. Actually, I was just thinking about a friend of mine who lives and works in Lagos, [Nigeria]. And she’s talking about her superior at work, who she said was making her very uncomfortable because he made very demeaning remarks about her appearance, about her breasts, that kind of thing. And she said, you know, ”I just can’t take it anymore. I need to tell him to stop.” And one of the men, a friend of ours who was there, said to her, ”Well yes, you should, but make sure you’re not rude about it.” And my friend said, ”Of course I won’t be rude.” And I remember being struck by that because I thought, He’s demeaning you, this person. You’re uncomfortable and unhappy, but you’re still consumed by how not to be rude when you tell him to stop. And I thought, You know what? You should be bloody rude! And I remember also thinking, Only a woman raised in the way that we’ve been sort of conditioned would think about not being rude in telling somebody who’s really hurting her to stop. And for me it’s the consequence of likeability it’s what that idea of likeability does. And I think instead we should teach girls to just be themselves, and that idea that you don’t have to be liked by everyone. And it kind of makes me wonder what kind of world would we have lived in if women had been allowed to be their full selves? On the importance of teaching difference, My general approach is teach the child that we don’t understand everything. . .. ”I don’t know, and it’s OK that I don’t know.” I think it’s important to just say to kids, ”Look, there’s difference in the world. The norm of our existence as human beings is difference. We’re not all the same, and it’s OK.” . .. Then it makes them just kind of shrug when things that don’t fit their own narrow existence sort of appear to them. On why it’s important to start having these conversations early on, By the time we are older, it’s much more difficult to unlearn things that we’ve learned, which is why there are so many women who  —   even though ideas of gender are bad for them, stifle them  —   they kind of still go along with it because that’s what they know. If we start early to start to challenge it, push back, then, you know, a woman is more likely, when she is an adult, to have those tools to say, ”You know, in the end I’m going to live the life I want to live.” Editor Bridget Kelley, producer   Smith and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"Updated 8:30 p. m. ET, Federal authorities have arrested and charged a man in St. Louis who they say is responsible for making at least eight threats against Jewish schools and organizations across the U. S. The threats were allegedly part of the suspect’s larger cyberstalking campaign against a woman with whom he once had a romantic relationship, the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said. Some of the threats against Jewish centers were made in the woman’s name, while others were made in the name of the    suspect, Juan Thompson, allegedly in an effort to suggest she was trying to frame him. Dozens of threats have been made against Jewish community centers since the beginning of 2017, aside from those Thompson is accused of. In a statement, the FBI says investigations into those threats are ongoing. ”FBI Director James Comey and his senior executives today met with Jewish community leaders to discuss the recent increase in threats to Jewish institutions nationwide. The investigation into these threats is a top priority for the FBI. Agents and analysts across the country are working to identify and stop those responsible.” The Federal Communications Commission has also gotten involved, granting a waiver to Jewish Community Centers allowing them to see who might be calling from blocked phone numbers. Thompson was an intern at NPR member station WBEZ in 2014 and left early to go work at The Intercept, NPR’s David Schaper reported. The Intercept said in a statement emailed to NPR that Thompson ”was fired after we discovered that he fabricated sources and quotes in his articles” and called the news of Thompson’s alleged threats ”heinous.” After Thompson was fired in January 2016, the Intercept said he had carried out a ”pattern of deception” during his time there and that he also had ”created fake email accounts that he used to impersonate people.” According to the criminal complaint, the woman, who was not named but who works at a New   social service organization, ended a romantic relationship with Thompson in July 2016. Just one day later, according to court documents, the woman’s employer received an email claiming to be from a news organization that stated she ”had been pulled over for drunk driving, and was currently being sued for spreading a sexually transmitted disease.” FBI investigators say it was sent from an IP address linked to Thompson. This started an escalating pattern of abuse, the complaint said. Thompson’s harassment appears ”to have included, among other things, defamatory emails and faxes to  ’s employer, false reports of criminal activity by   and JCC Threats in  ’s name,” according to the U. S. Attorney’s Office. The abuse also reportedly included an anonymous email to the woman and threatened to release nude photographs of her that were attached to the message. Later, an anonymous email account linked to Thompson sent a message to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, accusing the women of watching child porn. Thompson is accused of making the following threats against Jewish centers, none of which were found to be credible: According to the complaint, Thompson asked his Twitter followers if they ”know any good lawyers?” He also allegedly said: ”Need to stop this   #whitegirl I dated who sent a bomb threat in my name  wants me to be raped in jail.” ”Thompson’s alleged pattern of harassment not only involved the defamation of his female victim, but his threats intimidated an entire community,” William F. Sweeney Jr. FBI assistant    of the New York Field Division, said in the statement. Law enforcement officers also spent ”hundreds of hours” responding to the threats. ”We are relieved that nobody has been harmed,” David Posner of the JCC Association of North America said in a statement before Thompson’s arrest, ”but the atmosphere created by these calls hangs over our communities and will only be lifted once someone is caught and punished.” Thompson has been charged with one count of cyberstalking. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison."
"Last year, when presidential candidate Donald Trump hammered the Affordable Care Act as ”a fraud,” ”a total disaster” and ”very bad health insurance,” many Americans seemed to agree with him. Now that President Trump and fellow Republicans are attempting to keep their promise to get rid of the law, voters increasingly seem to be having second thoughts. Multiple polls show rising support for the ACA, including one from the Pew Research Center and one from the Wall Street   News indicating Americans feel more positively about it than ever. True, many still dislike the law known as Obamacare, but as the national conversation swells on the fate of a law that affects millions of people in multifaceted ways  —   and the issue takes center stage at raucous town hall meetings  —   it’s increasingly clear that many don’t see the ACA as an   proposition. ”At first it was a good deal  —   that was three or four years ago,” says Mark Bunkosky, 56, an independent contractor in Michigan who buys coverage through one of the law’s online portals. ”Every year it’s gone up. From where it started, the premium has doubled, and now my deductible has also doubled. And my income has not doubled.” Bunkosky, a Republican, views the ACA unfavorably but believes Washington should fix it, not toss it. He supports keeping some of the law’s Medicaid coverage for   people and its prohibition on discriminating against those with   conditions. This week, Trump acknowledged that health care is ”so complicated.” So are voter opinions on what to do next with the ACA, which expanded coverage to some 20 million people. ”I didn’t like that it mandated people to carry health insurance. And I thought it was just a lie” when it promised affordability, says Amber Alexander, 27, a Pennsylvania independent whose seasonal income puts her on Medicaid in winter and a commercial plan the rest of the year. However, she adds, ”I don’t think it should be thrown out altogether. There are people that do benefit from it, but there are also a lot of people that get screwed.” Carol Friendly, 67, an Oregon Republican, voted for Hillary Clinton for president and favors the Medicaid expansion. She objects to the ACA’s reproductive health coverage, though, saying consumers opposed to birth control and abortion shouldn’t have to pay for them. On the other hand, she says, ”I know it put 22 million [people] in the health care system that weren’t there before. So that’s a plus.” Mixed signals from Republicans add to the political fog. For weeks, Trump has been promising  —   but not yet producing  —   a blueprint detailing his plan to repeal and replace the ACA with ”insurance for everybody.” In his address to Congress on Tuesday, he said a new law ”should ensure that Americans with   conditions have access to coverage.” Meanwhile, a leaked GOP congressional draft replacement bill would shrink coverage subsidies, and House conservatives complained even those were still too expensive. On Tuesday, congressional Republicans told reporters they were still working on ”the best way to build a consensus to pass a bill to gut Obamacare.” For many helped by the health law, such a prospect has focused minds and aroused fears and may account for its rising popularity, says Simon Haeder, a political science professor and specialist on health policy at West Virginia University. ”Now that we have this whole debate on replacing, repealing, repairing  —   whatever you want to call it  —   more and more of this information is coming out on what the ACA does and how it’s benefited people,” he says. ACA beneficiaries and activists flooded town halls held by Republican congressmen last week, urging them not to repeal the law. ”My story thus far has been [of] one who has benefited from the system,” says Michael Bilodeau, 39, who attended two town halls held by California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock. ”We are able to see our local doctor, who we like. And our premiums have been, I would say, stable.” He   a small business with his wife and is on a plan from Covered California, the state’s online marketplace. He fears a big change if the ACA goes away. ”One of the Republicans’ major arguments is that the ACA brought disruption to people’s health care,” Bilodeau says. ”It feels like we’re headed toward another disruption.” Also, many   and   Republicans benefit from the health law’s Medicaid expansion and marketplace subsidies. That’s a political hazard for Republicans who would abolish it, says Mark Peterson, a political science professor at UCLA. ”A lot of that base would be most adversely affected by repealing the ACA and replacing it with something that left enormous holes for the working class,” he says. And while many national Republican policymakers have excoriated it, the Medicaid expansion is supported by some GOP governors. Some Republican voters object to the ACA because it’s just so complex. ”It would have been better if the federal government had said, ’Look, to get these 20 million insured let’s just expand Medicaid nationwide and let’s leave everybody else alone,” says Rickey Mathis, 56, a Georgian who voted for Trump and hasn’t had insurance since the factory employing him closed in 2012. ”Why did they have to screw up the whole country’s health insurance?” Michigan contractor Bunkosky urges Republicans to think hard about any Obamacare replacement. ”Everybody’s in a hurry for it, but they need to sit down and do it right,” he says. ”Some of it is still a good idea.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"In the last three years, 33 U. S. states have passed laws aimed at helping dying people get easier access to experimental treatments that are still in the early stages of human testing. Supporters say these patients are just looking for the right to try these treatments. Such laws sound compassionate, but medical ethicists warn they pose worrisome risks to the health and finances of vulnerable patients. California’s ”right to try” law went into effect in January. It protects California doctors and hospitals who want to prescribe any medicine that has successfully made it through a Phase 1 drug trial. That’s the first stage of human testing required by the Food and Drug Administration  —   usually, all the study participants are healthy in the small Phase 1 trial, and it focuses merely on a drug’s general safety and questions about dosage, not its effectiveness. Phase 2 and Phase 3 drug trials watch for toxic side effects of the experimental medicine among a group of people who have the disease or condition. About 20 percent of all drugs tested in Phase 2 are found to have too many serious side effects to move on to Phase 3, the FDA says. And only between 25 and 30 percent of drugs that pass the larger Phase 3 tests for effectiveness and   move on. Only after passing that    —   and    —   gauntlet is a drug finally approved for market. Assemblyman Ian Calderon, a Democrat from Southern California, and majority leader in California’s assembly, was lead author of the state’s right to try law, and thinks people who are terminally ill shouldn’t have to wait that long. He says if he had just been given a terrible diagnosis, he would want to try anything possible to live. ”My thought would be what do I have to lose?” Calderon says. ”I have an opportunity to potentially find a cure. Or at least find something that prolongs my life  —   find something that could help me.” He says the law seemed to him the logical next step, after California instituted a law in 2016 that now permits   suicide. ”It’s inhumane to have a law on the books that allows you to end your own life, but no law on the books that allows you to fight to extend it,” he argues. ”That just seems  .” Proponents of right to try legislation contend that some doctors have been hesitant to help dying patients, for fear of being penalized for using drugs or devices that don’t have FDA approval. California’s law ensures that doctors can help patients petition to get investigational medicine from drug makers without fear of censure from the state’s medical board. It eliminates regulatory obstacles on the state level, and creates processes for patient consent and data collection. David Huntley, a San Diego State University professor who died from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2015, was among the patients who fought for California’s law. Before he died, Huntley testified in favor of the bill in Sacramento from his wheelchair. His widow, Lina Clark, founder of the patients’ advocacy group HopeNowforALS, says her husband completely understood what was at stake. ”The patient community is saying: ’We are smart, we’re informed, we feel it is our right to try some of these therapies, because we’re going to die anyway,’ ” she says. It’s a compelling argument, but there are serious risks according to doctors and medical ethicists. ”We know some people try to take advantage of our desperation when we’re ill,” says Dr. R. Adams Dudley, director of UCSF’s Center for Healthcare Value. ”If we take the FDA out of it, how do we protect people from physicians or drug companies that will want to sell them things and will want to prey on their desperation?” Dudley says the FDA and the clinical trial process were put in place for a reason  —   not just to shut out   snake oil salesman, but also to ensure that manufacturers are producing a safe product, and not cutting corners. ”If you say there’s a path that’s not through the FDA,” he says, ”then there are billions of dollars out there to be made by skipping the important steps that we’ve developed.” Dudley thinks ”right to try” is a misnomer in describing these state laws all that patients can really do is ask for an experimental medicine. Drug companies don’t have to give them the medicine, and insurance companies don’t have to pay for it. Patients could spend huge amounts of money trying a drug that hasn’t been proved to work, he says. And the patient may also be giving up their hopes for a controlled, peaceful death at home. ”Instead you try a drug and you get very severe lung problems,” Dudley says, ”and you end up on a breathing machine in a hospital. That could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.” Although nearly three dozen right to try laws are now on the books, researchers at New York University who have been looking for evidence of the laws’ usefulness haven’t yet found a single substantiated case of a patient getting a drug by using a state law. That’s partly, perhaps, because the FDA already has a process to help patients and their doctors apply for the use of experimental drugs (and such requests are nearly always approved). Still, Calderon, Clark and others point out that the process entailed in these ”compassionate use requests” is much too slow and cumbersome for many patients who are dying. A new federal research law might help change that. The 21st Century Cures Act requires drug companies to be more transparent about how they decide who gets experimental access to promising medications, and how long it will take. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News. Carrie Feibel is a health editor and reporter for KQED, and a contributor to Kaiser Health News."
"There’s no pool, but there is a piano bar that exudes ”an air of undeserved authority.” That’s part of the promise at The Walled Off Hotel, the artist Banksy’s vision of a hotel along the wall Israel built in the occupied West Bank. The project blends Banksy’s trademark style  —   a trickster’s eye for trompe l’oeil and a political cartoonist’s ear for satire  —   into more traditional hotel amenities such as food, drinks and   rooms. The hotel will begin taking reservations on March 11. Just don’t call it the Waldorf. For a hint of what awaits visitors to the small hotel in Bethlehem, consider this description of the piano bar inside: ”Guests can peruse a collection of Banksy artworks that include vandalized oil paintings and statues choking on tear gas fumes. Warm scones and freshly brewed tea are served daily on fine bone china and the Walled Off Salad should not be missed.” That’s from Banksy’s website, which adds that the engagement is  : ”We’re aiming to be here for the whole of the centenary year, maybe longer if people come.” The piano bar is a nod to Britain’s history in the area: Banksy timed the hotel’s opening to coincide with the centennial of the U. K.’s declaration of its support for creating ”in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people,” as the famous Balfour Declaration stated in 1917. The art installation seeks to simultaneously address and occupy a highly controversial topic. Here’s how the artist explains its broader goals: ”The Walled Off Hotel is an entirely independent leisure facility set up and financed by Banksy. It is not aligned to any political movement or pressure group. The aim is to tell the story of the wall from every side and give visitors the opportunity to discover it for themselves. We offer an especially warm welcome to young Israelis.” The hotel is being unveiled two years after Banksy’s work popped up in the Gaza Strip, in a project that also included a video of life in the Palestinian territory. The   hotel project, which touts the ”worst view in the world,” comes on the heels of Dismaland, the artist’s   bemusement park that promised to be the U. K.’s most disappointing tourist attraction in 2015. The chance to stay at The Walled Off comes with some requirements. No one is allowed on the roof, for instance. There’s also this caveat: ”Absolutely no fanaticism is permitted on the premises.” Other rules are aimed at keeping the hotel’s art on its walls. Staying in a room, for instance, will require a $1, 000 deposit. ”The artwork here has been donated to the community and their struggle,” the artist says online, ”and any person found attempting to steal from them, or deface hotel property, will be arrested, transported to the police station in Ramallah and prosecuted to the full extent of local law.” The facility has fewer than a dozen rooms while some of them feature Banksy’s signature mural work, others were customized by artists such as Sami Musa and Dominique Petrin. Unlike some of the artist’s more surreptitious public work  —   Banksy has thrilled fans and mystified others by mounting complex works in public spaces, usually without notice  —   the hotel offers a private experience of the artist’s work, along with an opening party. That’s slated for Saturday, March 4 it will include both Elton John and Ramzi Shomali, a Palestinian pianist. Alongside its promotion for special events at the hotel, Banksy’s website quotes the writer Aldous Huxley: ”To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.”"
"It was in 2012 that Barry Eggers, a venture capitalist, noticed that his two high   children were getting obsessed with a curious new app called Snapchat. After a little investigation, Eggers persuaded his company, Lightspeed Venture Partners, to become one of the first to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in the fledgling app. Then in a stroke of fortune, he also persuaded his children’s school, where he was chairman of its financial growth fund, to put up a little seed money, too  —   $15, 000, in fact. By Thursday, when the app’s parent company Snap went public, that investment had ”matured and given us a significant boost,” Simon Chiu, president of Saint Francis High School in Mountain View, Calif. wrote to parents with remarkable understatement. The school got a little more specific with Quartz Media about that ”boost,” saying the school sold   of its shares in the company to raise about $24 million. ”The remaining third of its holding, roughly 700, 000 shares, could be even more lucrative. Snap’s stock ended its first day of trading [Thursday] at $24. 51 per share, up 44%,” Quartz reports. ”This incredible boon will not, by itself, completely fund the goals of the strategic plan,” the president of the private Catholic school wrote Thursday, ”but it will help lay the necessary foundation and give us a remarkable head start.” Chiu added: ”Barry Eggers now joins the illustrious list of individuals and families whose foresight and generosity have enriched Saint Francis High School over the years.” The Silicon Valley school, which charges tuition of roughly $17, 000 a year, also offers financial aid based on need. As of the   school year, it enrolled about 1, 700 students. Chiu said the school’s administration will deliberate with its board of directors ”to determine how the money can be leveraged to make the largest impact on our students and continue the tradition started here by the Brothers of Holy Cross over 60 years ago.”"
"Amazon says a typo caused its   service to fail earlier this week. On Tuesday, part of Amazon Web Services stopped working. The company’s   simple storage service, or S3, provides features ranging from file sharing to web feeds. In an online statement, Amazon described the circumstances of the disruptive typo this way: ”The Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) team was debugging an issue causing the S3 billing system to progress more slowly than expected. At 9:37AM PST, an authorized S3 team member using an established playbook executed a command which was intended to remove a small number of servers for one of the S3 subsystems that is used by the S3 billing process. ”Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended.” The company did not elaborate on what, exactly, the ”authorized S3 team member” mistyped, but did say that it took about three hours to get some of the system back up, and more than four hours before the S3 system was back to normal. The Wall Street Journal reported that the outage ”cost companies in the SP 500 index $150 million, according to Cyence Inc. a startup that specializes in estimating  . Apica Inc. a   company, said 54 of the internet’s top 100 retailers saw website performance slow by 20% or more.” ”People reported outages and delays on services like Slack, Trello, Sprinklr, Venmo and even Down Detector, which is the site that shows where real time outages are occurring,” reported CNN Money. The tech site Gizmodo, whose own website was disrupted, reported that the forum site Quora was disrupted. Even Apple relies on the Amazon system for some of its own cloud services, and parts of its iCloud service were disrupted. Amazon said it has changed its protocol for the routine, temporary removal of servers from its system so that server capacity is taken offline more slowly, among other safeguards. ”This will prevent an incorrect input from triggering a similar event in the future,” the company wrote."
"Amazon Web Services (AWS) the world’s largest provider of   computing services, suffered an unspecified breakdown on Tuesday. The cloud computing division is separate from Amazon. com Inc. ’s shopping site. Known as S3, Amazon’s ”simple storage service” provides features ranging from file sharing to web feeds. USA Today reports: ”The outage appeared to have begun around 12:35 pm ET, according to Catchpoint Systems, a digital experience monitoring company. Operations were fully recovered by 4:49 pm ET, Amazon said. The   company did not comment on the cause of the outage. ”The most common causes of this type of outage are software related, said Lydia Leong, a cloud analyst with Gartner. ”Either a bug in the code or human error. Right now we don’t know what it was.” ”The system that went down was the first of what now are three AWS regions in the United States. It is still the largest and is also where AWS rolls out new features, ”so it’s disproportionately big,” she said.” AWS is a   source of revenue for Amazon and has helped transform the company into a technology platform. The Associated Press reports: ”Amazon S3 stores files and data for companies on remote servers. Amazon started offering it in 2006, and it’s used for everything from building websites and apps to storing images, customer data and commercial transactions. ”Anything you can think about storing in the most   way possible,” is how Rich Mogull, CEO of data security firm Securosis, puts it. ”Since Amazon hasn’t said exactly what is happening yet, it’s hard to know just how serious the outage is. ”We do know it’s bad,” Mogull said. ”We just don’t know how bad.” Forrester Research data shows that Amazon’s service is significantly larger by revenue than any of its nearest rivals: Microsoft’s Azure, Google’s Cloud Platform and IBM. Some analysts told The Associated Press that the Amazon outage doesn’t prove there’s a problem with cloud computing  —   it just highlights how reliable the cloud normally is."
"There’s nothing like being out of office for more than eight years to make a former president look happy and, maybe for some, human again. George W. Bush appeared on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday night  —  laughing, cracking jokes and charming his host as he plugged his new book of portraits of veterans. Bush continued a theme this week of contrasting himself with  —   and even critiquing  —   the current president, which he purposefully avoided during Obama’s presidency. Bush said imitations of him by Will Ferrell and others didn’t bother him ”at all.” He said he loves humor and that ”the best humor is when you make fun of yourself.” Kimmel’s reply: ”Tell that to the president he doesn’t think so.” President Trump has repeatedly dismissed Saturday Night Live’s satire of his administration. Bush laughed. Poking fun at himself further, Bush said Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels once told him he had a writer come up with the word ”strategery.” Bush said he told Michaels that he had come up with the word. ”And he said, ’No you didn’t say strategery.’ I said, ’I damn sure said strategery.’ He said, ’We invented it.’ I said, ’Let me ask you this: Did he come up with ’misunderestimate’?” You can watch the full interview here or in the video player above."
"Before Thurgood Marshall became the first black justice on the U. S. Supreme Court . .. Before Toni Morrison became a Pulitzer   novelist and Nobel laureate . .. Before Kamala Harris was elected to the United States Senate . .. They were all students at Howard University. They roamed The Yard in between classes, they studied in Founders Library. Whether they knew it or not, these students would become part of Howard’s history as a jewel of   education and culture. The Washington, D. C. campus is ranked at or near the top of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This week, Howard celebrated its 150th anniversary. The celebration came in a tumultuous week in which HBCU presidents came to Washington to meet with President Trump. NPR Ed visited the campus to talk to students about Howard’s history, and what going to school there means to them. Megan Preston: Sophomore, biology major, For Megan Preston, actress and Howard alumna Taraji P. Henson has been one of her biggest inspirations. Henson worked two jobs and became a mother while finishing her degree at Howard. She went on to Hollywood, most recently appearing in the   film, Hidden Figures. Preston says she chose to attend Howard because she wanted to be in an environment where black students were achieving greatness, like Henson did. ”I feel like it’s different than being at a PWI [predominantly white institution] because white people are known for doing great things,” Preston says. ”So to be around black people doing that, it’s inspiring for me. It makes me want to do better.” Angel Mitchell: Junior, computer science major, Angel Mitchell applied to other HBCUs, like Hampton University and Tuskegee University. But Howard was at ”the top.” Mitchell says there are ”so many people who have been through Howard and made it what it is. They hold us to another standard that might not happen at other HBCUs or other schools, period.” So when Mitchell got her scholarship, her decision was easy. One of her favorite professors at Howard is Greg Carr. She says his Intro to   Studies class was an opportunity to learn cultural content that she wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Celebrating Howard’s birthday ”feels like I’m a part of history,” she says. ”I definitely feel like I’m part of paving the way for other people because other people have paved this way for me too,” Mitchell explains. ”I just want them to have the same experience or better.” Tyler Ellis: Junior, sports medicine major, Tyler Ellis came to Howard to play soccer. The university’s culture and diversity is more than just ”a lot of black kids,” he says. Ellis is planning to take a spring break trip to Ghana this semester, which he hopes will teach him more about civic engagement. ”I just think it’s excellent, man,” Ellis says about the anniversary. ”It just shows that Howard’s been doing a lot of great work despite what people may think.” Ellis is also a member of Phi Beta Sigma, the same fraternity that Alain LeRoy Locke belonged to. Locke, who taught at Howard, was the first   Rhodes scholar. Cameron Clarke: Senior, biology and community health majors, Speaking of Rhodes scholars, meet Cameron Clarke  —   one of four Howard students to receive the scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. The original plan was to ”go anywhere else but here.” Clarke says his brother graduated from Howard last year and he wanted to avoid following in his brother’s footsteps. Now, he says, ”it’s probably the best decision I could have made.” To Clarke, the history of the campus’ activism around social justice is part of what makes Howard special. Recently, there have been protests critical of the university’s president for a private meeting he had with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. On Tuesday, graffiti appeared on campus, including a walkway on The Yard that read: ”WELCOME TO THE TRUMP PLANTATION. OVERSEER: WAYNE A. I. FREDERICK.” Clarke says he expects that kind of activism. ”I’m actually excited by the fact that students are engaged and passionate and willing to go straight up to the president and call him out when he’s doing things that we object to from a moral or ethical standpoint,” he says. ”I think that bodes well for us lasting another 150 years.”"
"A United Nations report says both   Syrian forces and rebel factions committed war crimes in the besieged eastern districts of Aleppo between July 21 and Dec. 22, 2016, when the city was recaptured by the government. ”Parties to the battle for Aleppo committed serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law amounting to war crimes,” the   report, issued Wednesday by the U. N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said. ”As   forces and armed groups fought for control of eastern Aleppo city, civilians caught in the fighting were increasingly left vulnerable to repeated violations by all sides.” The evacuation of the last   districts of Aleppo in November 2016 amounted to ”forced displacement,” the report says: The warring sides struck the deal for strategic reasons  —   not for the safety of civilians or urgent military necessity  —   making it a war crime. The city is now under full control of Syrian troops and their allies, though rebels still fire deadly mortars from the countryside. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says many residents have returned to their homes in the eastern districts  —   if only to survey the damage. The area remains nearly uninhabitable. In January, Syria’s parliament allocated roughly $5. 1 million to begin restoring electricity and water, clearing rubble and starting reconstruction. The U. N. commission, which relied on information gleaned from 291 interviews, satellite imagery, photographs, videos and medical records, documented numerous human rights violations committed by Syria’s warring sides over the course of the battle for Aleppo last year. Among the most serious: an aerial attack on an authorized U. N.  Crescent aid convoy west of the city last November, which saw 14 people killed and critical humanitarian supplies destroyed. The report says that no Russian or coalition aircraft were in the area during the time of the attack and that satellite imagery and forensic evidence implicate Syria’s air force. Inside the city, Syrian or Russian warplanes carried out repeated attacks against critical civilian infrastructure including hospitals, markets and bakeries, the report says. A single attack in September on a bakery cut off almost 6, 000 families from critical sustenance and killed eight people, including one of the bakery’s owners. A blockade of the area by government troops and hoarding by rebel factions meant supplies grew scarce and food prices skyrocketed. Armed opposition factions launched a deadly offensive from the countryside over the summer, breaking through government lines and briefly imposing their own blockade. The U. N. commission says that rebels terrorized 1. 5 million residents and displaced people living in the   districts. Indiscriminate shelling was aimed at areas with no apparent military objective. Syrian and Russian warplanes launched a new aerial campaign in September, which the commission says killed approximately 300 people in the first four days alone. Doctors in the eastern,   districts were forced to amputate limbs that might have been saved, had there been sufficient supplies. As the siege tightened, the commission says rebels prevented civilians from leaving contested districts, both physically and through intimidation: One young woman the U. N. interviewed said opposition fighters killed her husband when he tried to escape in September. The commission also documented reprisal killings by   forces. In some cases, soldiers killed their own relatives for supporting the armed opposition. The commission says that the final evacuation deal, hammered out between the warring sides in the final days of the battle, amounted to forced displacement. A spokeswoman for the ICRC, which implemented the evacuation with Syria’s Red Crescent, tells NPR that the operation helped avoid an even greater humanitarian catastrophe. Spokesperson Ingy Sedky, reached in Aleppo via Skype, recounted how residents didn’t leave the buses transporting them, even on days when the evacuation was stalled, because they were so afraid to miss their chance to flee. Sedky says a number of people did stay in their homes, but most had lost everything and were desperate to escape an area with no hospitals, electricity or water supplies. The reality, Sedky says, is that people were simply out of options. ”All they wanted,” she says, ”was to end the suffering at any price.”"
"The U. S. is producing less air pollution, but smog levels are still rising in the western U. S. because of pollutants released in Asian countries that then drift over the Pacific Ocean. Researchers say their findings show the importance of a global approach to preserving air quality. ”Scientists found Asian air pollution contributed as much as 65 percent of an increase in Western ozone in recent years,” NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports from Shanghai. ”China and India, where many consumer products are manufactured, are the worst offenders.” The problem, scientists say, is that Asian countries’ emissions of nitrogen oxides  —   which sunlight then breaks down in reactions that produce ozone  —   have tripled since 1990. When those harmful gases circulate to North America, they offset gains in U. S. air quality that have come from cutting nitrogen oxide emissions by 50 percent. The researchers say that as China continues to cut its nitrogen oxide emissions, ”rising global methane and NOx emissions in the tropical countries (e. g. India) in Asia, where O3 [ozone] production is more efficient, may become more important in the coming decades.” ”A global perspective is necessary when designing a strategy to meet US O3 air quality objectives,” the scientists wrote. The research was published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The study looked at levels of   ozone (the key component in smog) from 1980 to 2014. To determine U. S. trends, pollution levels in cities, rural areas and national parks were collated. Scientist Meiyun Lin of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration led the work, along with others from her agency and the Environmental Protection Agency. They concluded that the spike in   emissions in Asia ”is the major driver” of the rise in ozone levels in the western U. S. for both spring and summer in recent decades. The researchers cited data that ranges from Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California to observations in Denver, Colo. and the eastern U. S. According to the EPA, high levels of   ozone ”can be harmful to people, animals, crops, and other materials.” The agency adds, ”Ozone can aggravate asthma, and can inflame and damage cells that line your lungs.” The study’s authors said their work was funded by NASA grants and also used ozone data that’s freely available online."
"Let’s start with Sunday night, because, how could we not? You already know about the Moonlight   (leave it to the British to give us a perfect word for what that was) but did you know this: although Moonlight’s Mahershala Ali was described as the first Muslim to win an Academy Award, Pakistan isn’t having it. Apparently, the sect to which Ali belongs is outlawed in Pakistan. The Atlantic broke it down for us. Then the next day, all hell broke loose over another picture  —   although it’s probably not being described as a best picture. Kellyanne Conway’s   in the Oval got the internet talking. And inspired some terriffic memes. The awkwardness occurred when the counselor to the president was in the room as a couple dozen presidents of HBCUs were ushered in to meet POTUS. Hard to tell from the photo who was more pleased. But apparently a lot of people weren’t pleased by what they saw as a Ms. Conway’s breach of etiquette. As usual, Awesomely Luvvie came with the crispy analysis. This is why we can’t have nice things. Tuesday brought the president’s Joint Address to Congress. (It wasn’t a State of the Union  —   that comes next year when he has governed for a year.) Many analysts said it was his inaugural American Carnage speech, sweetened with a few points of light and caramelized with a   analogy. Included among the Democrats’ guests: several Muslims who have contributed to the country, like the   doctor who sounded the alarm about Flint, Michigan’s heavily leaded water. Halfway around the world, a Toys R Us store had a big and problematic display in Portugal: a   high brick wall that bisected the front of its store in the city of Gaia. Miguel Layún, a star player for the Mexican National soccer team, noticed, was offended, and left. But not before tweeting: Social media worked: Appalled, the home office immediately apologized, and the wall quickly disappeared. Gol! Remember Rachel Dolezal? She’s baaaaack. Dolezal made headlines in 2015 when it was revealed she was white but passing for black. In interviews, she insisted she didn’t ”feel” white, and described herself as ”transracial.” Dolezal’s memoir, ”In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World” is about to be published at the end of this month. The byline says Rachel Dolezal, but that’s no longer her real name. She legally changed it at the end of last year, presumably to reflect the cultural ancestry biology has denied her. She is now legally known as Nkechi Amare Diallo. The three parts of her name come from at least two different African countries, which maybe makes her black after all. (Calm down  —   kidding!) Finally: What if you’re not one thing passing as another? What if you’re really two things, and you love them both and want to honor both? That’s what our latest podcast episode looks into, when   Shereen Marisol Meraji travels to Holyoke, Mass to visit the nation’s largest   Puerto Rican community. She did it to mark the centennial of the Jones Act, which made Puerto Ricans citizens. Sort of. But without full citizen power. (They don’t pay federal taxes, can’t vote in presidential elections.) Shereen talks to Boricuas about their love of the island and its culture, and how they’re working through being Puerto Rican and American. It’s an emotional listen. That’s it for now. Try to stay off the furniture this weekend, hear?"
"Ninet rocked the Tiny Desk in ways rarely seen. As I watched one of the most famous entertainers in Israel today here at NPR, I flashed back to a 1976 concert I saw by a    Joan Jett. Ninet has that same fierce and honest conviction, is walking that same path that Jett did and poised to find notoriety in this country, which she recently began to call home. Ninet won me over during a small concert at last year’s SXSW it was early in the day, but she was fully on fire and intense. She and her potent band have put out five albums and their most recent, Paper Parachute, is the home of the songs she brought to us. It’s filled with a her   voice and guitar lines straight out of stateside ’70s rock, with a Middle Eastern lean. It’s a winning sound, performed by an unrestrained talent. Paper Parachute is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Ninet Tayeb (vocals, guitar) Joseph   Mizrahi (guitar, backing vocals) Matt McJunkins (bass, backing vocals) Doron Kochli (keys) Yotam Weiss (drums, percussion) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Marian  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Updated 9:17 a. m. ET Sunday with White House press secretary statement, In a string of tweets posted early Saturday morning, President Trump let loose a barrage of accusations at his predecessor. He alleged that former President Obama had his ”wires tapped” in Trump Tower before Election Day last year, accusing Obama of ”McCarthyism” and being a ”bad (or sick) guy.” Trump, who is under significant scrutiny for his administration’s contacts with Russia before he took office, offered no evidence to support his claims Saturday morning. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, released a statement Sunday  —   which you can read in full at the bottom of this post  —   saying the White House is asking Congress to investigate ”whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.” Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis dismissed the allegation Saturday in a statement, which you can read below. Trump opened his volley on Twitter Saturday morning with a defense of his embattled attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who recused himself earlier this week from any investigations into Russian intervention in the presidential election. Sessions has been embroiled in controversy for two meetings he held with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. last year, which appear to contradict a statement he made to the Senate in his confirmation hearings. ”The first meeting Jeff Sessions had with the Russian Amb was set up by the Obama Administration under education program for 100 Ambs,” Trump tweeted. Later, Trump added that the same Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, visited the White House under Obama ”22 times, and 4 times last year alone.” In the midst of these defenses, the sitting president accused the former president of ” ’wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election.” ”Terrible!” Trump tweeted. ”Just found out that Obama had my ’wires tapped’ in Trump Tower before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Lewis, Obama’s spokesman, rejected the allegation that the former president was involved in surveillance: ”A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U. S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.” Trump did not produce evidence to support his assertions, nor did he cite the source of his information  —   though on Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR’s Ron Elving notes the fact that Trump says he ”just found out”: ”It appears perhaps to be a response to a narrative in Breitbart. com, the   website that was previously published by Steve Bannon, the president’s senior adviser. ”There, you will find a narrative about how the Obama administration was so intent on thwarting Donald Trump last fall that they had much of the intelligence community doing everything it could to gather skullduggery and information about Donald Trump. ”And that would have included, according to Donald Trump, wiretapping his phones. But there does not seem to be any direct evidence of that.” ”That is an extraordinary thing to hear from a sitting president about his predecessor,” NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly notes on Weekend Edition Saturday. For our Newscast unit, Mary Louise adds: ”Tapping his phones would require a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance court.” She also says the director of national intelligence is declining comment. The FBI has opened an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election to boost Trump’s campaign. Congressional intelligence committees are currently reviewing documents related to possible links between Russian officials and the campaign, as well as recent leaks of classified information. Shortly after his final tweet about Obama, which says ”this is ” Trump turned his attention to other matters, berating Arnold Schwarzenegger, his successor on Celebrity Apprentice. Schwarzenegger announced Friday he was leaving the show, blaming the show’s recent poor ratings on Trump. White House statement on Trump’s allegation, ”Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling.  ”President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.  ”Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted. ”"
"It was almost a year ago when   Donald Trump said the following (bolding ours): ”My wife is constantly saying, ’Darling, be more presidential.’ I just don’t know that I want to do it quite yet . .. because we have a job to do. . .. And we’re doing so good. And we have to be tough for a little while. And I’ll be  —   at some point, I’m going to be so presidential that you people will be so bored.” That was in Pennsylvania during the GOP primary. At that point, Trump was close to wrapping up the GOP nomination. But there were concerns about his temperament, and he was facing resistance within some corners of the party. A string of critical northeastern primaries, including Pennsylvania with a crucial cache of delegates, was just days away. Trump would wind up sweeping the day, setting him on a glide path for the nomination. There was talk that he was ”pivoting.” But did he become ”so presidential,” we all got ”so bored”? We know the answer to that one. This is what Trump does. Repeatedly during the campaign, and now during the first days of his presidency, Trump has found himself with his back against the wall. After chaos and controversy, he dangles a reset with a promise to be more presidential, a pledge to be cool and calm or a traditional Supreme Court nominee rollout. Observers wonder, ”Is this the pivot?” And it happened again this week. President Trump won plaudits for his scripted speech to a joint session of Congress  —   mostly because of his newly subdued ”tone.” He reassured nervous congressional Republicans and supporters who want him to be more presidential. More than    people who watched the speech thought that Trump, in fact, was presidential in the address, a CBS survey found. It all came again at a critical time, with his presidency at a danger point after a month of chaos. But by the end of the week, with more controversy swirling, he was back to grievance tweeting. Sunday: Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday: Thursday: Friday: These ebbs and flows, ups and downs, are just who Trump is. There are no two Trumps. There’s one Trump, and he pings back and forth within this spectrum. And he’s given us proof of that over the past year and a half. There two reasons he’s already told us for why he reverts: 1. When he feels wronged. This quote from a press conference during the campaign might sum up his thinking best. Almost exactly a year ago, on March 5, 2016, he defended bragging about the size of his genitalia during a nationally televised debate. When asked if the discourse should be at a ”higher level,” he responded this way (again, bolding ours): ”Here’s the story: I would love it to be at a high level. I will be the most presidential candidate in history, other than honest Abe Lincoln. He was very tough to beat, okay? You look at Abe Lincoln. He was serious, right? I will be a very  —   but when I get attacked by these people at a low level, I have to attack back. I can’t stand it. Some people say, you’re above it, you should stand it. That’s not me. I won’t do it. And you know what? I’ll never do that for our country, either.” So, if he feels attacked, don’t expect him to ever take the high road. 2. When reverting could mean bad ratings (or small crowds). This is the rest of the quote from his event in Pennsylvania from the beginning of this story: ”And I’ll come back as a presidential person, and instead of 10, 000 people, I’ll have about 150 people, and they’ll say, ’But, boy, he really looks presidential.’ ” In other words, the worst thing that could happen to Trump  —   is if no one pays attention."
"In early December, Joann Lee and her family were crossing the street in front of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A white van was stopped at the light. Out of nowhere, Lee says, the driver of the van, a white woman, said to Lee’s    daughter, ”You are the most disgusting girl in the whole world. Your family killed my family so you could enjoy a day at the museum.” Lee was shocked. Her daughter Terin was confused. ”It wasn’t overtly racist, but there were overtones. . .. We were clearly a large group of Asians crossing the street,” Lee said. Bystanders chastised the woman and unsuccessfully tried to snap a photo of her license plate. Meanwhile, Lee wasn’t sure what to tell her daughter. ”I think at that point it hit me,” Lee said. ”My kids were born during the Obama administration. It was nice for them to have an African American president. And I was looking forward to them having a female president. . .. It kind of made me sad. It made me realize I really have to prepare myself for how to explain things like that to them without becoming bitter and hateful of certain types of people.” In the wake of the presidential election, parents, guardians, and educators are grappling with how the political climate affects children and youth. In November, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report that found ”the results of the election are having a profoundly negative impact on schools and students.” Ninety percent of the 10, 000   educators surveyed reported that their school environment had been negatively affected. Eighty percent described increased anxiety on the part of students worried about the impact of the election on themselves and their families. A surge in raids by U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in February has heightened panic among immigrants living in Texas. Lupe Mendez said this is true at his school. He teaches English at a private high school in Houston whose population is almost entirely students of color about 70 percent are Latino, he said. Immediately after Donald Trump won the election, families started making emergency plans. One student said his parents showed him how to pay the rent and enroll his younger sister in high school in case they were detained by ICE. ”Here this child is trying to get through a reading of Shakespeare and some chemistry questions. And now [he has] this very real potential burden of being 15, 16 and having to take care of younger siblings. It’s such an immediate shock to the system that’s very difficult,” Mendez said. Another student came to Mendez’s class in tears because her father was scheduled to check in with ICE and she feared he would be deported. Angel Ramirez teaches creative writing at a public elementary school located in a Latino neighborhood in Houston. Unprompted, students write about the border wall, deportations, their dislike of Trump, and their wish that Barack Obama was still president, he said. ”One little girl said Donald Trump is going to get rid of all the Mexicans and ’I’m going to learn how to grow vegetables and fruits in my yard so I can feed myself.’ She’s in second grade . .. and that was her verbalizing her understanding of what’s happening,” he said. ”A lot of [colleagues] say it’s their parents instilling fear in them, that their parents shouldn’t be telling them these things. I don’t think that’s really the case,” Ramirez said. ”I think their parents are genuinely concerned and kids’ ears are open to all that’s said and felt in the home.” Dena Simmons, the director of education at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, says it’s important that educators and caretakers don’t neglect emotions. ”When we [as adults] understand how we’re feeling and identify what we’re feeling, then we can effectively regulate emotions,” she said. Because adults dictate much of what happens in a school, it’s important for them to set a tone of emotional well being, she said. Teachers can help create safe spaces for discussion. It’s also crucial that students take part in deciding what safety means. ”What do we need to create a safe space, what does that mean?” she said. ”When we disagree, what does that look like? What do we need to be able to say how we’re feeling?” Safety is a top concern for Christina   who teaches English Language Learners at a predominantly white public high school in Arlington, Va. She said that after the election, some students taunted immigrant students, asking if they had packed their bags because they would soon be deported. When some teachers in the school displayed signs meant to be welcoming, one student went on Fox News to say the signs were political propaganda. The signs read, ”Facts are not political   Diversity strengthens us   Science is real   Women’s rights are human rights   Justice is for all   We’re all Immigrants   Kindness is everything.” ”I cannot teach reading and writing and U. S. history without my kids [first] feeling safe and welcome. . .. You have to attend to the lower brain functions before you can expect any higher brain activity,” she said. Even in a school without incidents of bullying and controversy, student morale can be low. Terry Ashkinos teaches civics and journalism to   at a private school in San Francisco. While his students were initially energized after the election to work on petitions and participate in marches, lately he has observed that they seem numb and resigned. The girls are especially disheartened that a man who bragged about groping women is now president. ”The girls are being made aware that being a woman is a different position in the world than a man,” he said. Carol Young and Peter Kim try to keep their two boys, ages 7 and 9, engaged in politics because they want them to care about their community. They watched the debates with them, brought them to the voting booth, and walked with them in marches in Los Angeles after the election.    Hugo says he made a sign that read, ”Don’t Trump my Future.” He says that although teachers at his charter school say that talking about politics is not school appropriate, he and his friends sometimes ”talk politics in secret.” After the election, he wanted to do something. He, his younger brother, and four friends set up a lemonade stand on a busy street to raise money for charity. His mother suggested they donate to the ACLU. Their signs read: ”Come get fresh ice cold lemonade with snacks and support ACLU.” It was the weekend the travel ban went into effect and within two hours, they raised $406. Melissa Hung is journalist covering arts and culture, communities of color, immigration, and criminal justice. Follow her @fluffysharp."
"It was another big week for national education news. Here’s our take on the top stories of the week. Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump meet with HBCU leaders, The Education Secretary seems to be racking up controversies at the rate of about one per week. This week, it was for remarks she made Monday on the occasion of a ”listening session” with presidents of historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. She tied them to her favorite cause: school choice. ”HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” she said in a statement after the meeting. ”They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.” The comments drew immediate and sharp criticism from those who pointed out that HBCUs were created in response to widespread racial segregation. They weren’t just another choice, critics pointed out, they were often the only educational avenue for black students. When DeVos addressed HBCU leaders directly the next day, she struck a different tone, saying: ”Your history was born, not out of mere choice, but out of necessity, in the face of racism, and in the aftermath of the Civil War.” That listening session, meanwhile? It was cut short in favor of an Oval Office    between the college leaders and the president, as one of the invited guests, Dillard University President Walter Kimbrough, wrote on Medium: ”There was very little listening to HBCU presidents today  —   we were only given about 2 minutes each, and that was cut to one minute, so only about 7 of maybe 15 or so speakers were given an opportunity today.” (That meeting should have been a routine photo op, but it happened to feature White House aide Kellyanne Conway kneeling on a couch, a pose that some saw as too casual.) Kimbrough told NPR’s Ari Shapiro later that day that he’s ”waiting for the budget,” and specifically funding for Pell Grants for   students, before he decides whether Trump’s and DeVos’ interest in HBCUs is genuine. Meanwhile on HBCU campuses . .. At Howard University in Washington, D. C. graffiti was found throughout campus denouncing the Trump meeting, with phrases like ”Welcome to Trump plantation,” and ”Wayne Frederick [the university president] doesn’t care about black people.” Trump hints at his school choice plans, On Tuesday, President Trump delivered his first speech to a joint session of Congress. On education, he returned to a line he’d used on the campaign trail: ”Education is the civil rights issue of our time.” He continued, ”I am calling upon members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of   and Latino children. These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.” Trump also hinted at a way to pay for this. The President introduced a guest to his audience that night: Denisha Merriweather. While living in Florida, Merriweather struggled in her public elementary school, failing third grade twice. Ultimately, her family took advantage of what’s known as a   scholarship to pay for her to attend a private school.   scholarships allow individuals and corporations to receive a tax credit for donating to a   nonprofit. The nonprofit then distributes scholarships to qualified students. Most state constitutions prohibit the use of public money for religious institutions.   scholarships offer state governments a way of funding students to attend religious schools. According to the advocacy group EdChoice, 17 states currently offer   scholarships. Florida’s is the largest, serving 98, 000 students. Seventy percent attend religious schools. Without tinkering with the big federal education law, Trump and the   Congress could conceivably lean into the   idea, using the federal tax code to make it easier for students to leave the public school system. Trump made the first school visit of his presidency on Friday, with DeVos in tow. Their destination? A religious school, St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando, Fla where many students accept the tax credit scholarship. Legal action on transgender student rights, This week, a long list of organizations filed ”friend of the court” briefs in support of Gavin Grimm. He’s the transgender student in Virginia whose case is before the Supreme Court. Filers included school administrators from 31 states and the District of Columbia. The Gloucester, Va. school board, the defendant in the case, has asked for arguments to be postponed. This might give the Senate time to confirm Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled in favor of three transgender high school students, granting them access to the restrooms of their choice."
"Michael Rodriguez is both a military man and a muse. Years after President George W. Bush sent him into war, the two men now call each other friends. Rodriguez was a U. S. Army Special Forces Green Beret who served from 1992 to 2013. He’s featured in President Bush’s book of portraits of more than 60 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who served in wars under his watch. It’s called Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors. Rodriguez says the likeness is pretty good: ”I’m blown away that my former commander in chief would actually take the time to paint those that served under him,” Rodriguez says. ”And I’m humbled that he selected me as one of them. I think it’s a pretty good representation of me. . .. I’m still kind of processing the whole thing.” Rodriguez, who served nine deployments in 21 years, says he has big hopes for the former president’s project. ”My hope for this, for his book, is that it bridges that   divide that Americans feel,” he says. On whether he was ever angry with a president for sending him into conflict, No. I’ve never been upset. You know, growing up I was a patriotic American. Heck, my wife’s still active duty serving in the Army. She’s a combat veteran. . .. My oldest son is stationed here in the 82nd Airborne division. I’ve worked under all the presidents, you know, from President [George H. W.] Bush to President Obama and I’ve never, I’ve never been angry at my commander in chief. The burden of command is something that is something you’ll never really fully understand unless you’re that guy in that position. On the day he had to retire  I’ll never forget it. You know, it was like 17 different diagnoses, 17 things that were wrong with me. . .. I knew there were some issues but I had no idea how extensive they were. . .. They said: ”We’re initiating medical retirement proceedings because you can no longer perform your duties as Special Forces Green Beret.” And that’s a quote . .. I’ll never forget that. That was probably the hardest sentence I ever had to hear. On how retirement affected his identity, I think [in] the military . .. we identify ourselves by our job position or duty position. And after 21 years of service, I identified myself: I was a soldier. I was Special Forces Green Beret. That was my job. Yes, I was a father, I was a husband, a brother, a friend. But when I heard those words it was just difficult for me to process because it was almost like I was losing my identity. . .. I was dealing with not just the multiple traumatic brain injuries and neurological issues that come with that, but, you know, I had severe   stress. I was . .. finally having to face and deal with memories and things that I carried around from my first deployment as an    in Somalia to my last deployments to Afghanistan. So it was very difficult for me. And unfortunately I was dealing with it through alcohol. . .. I was  . On his own art, During my hospitalization I was exposed to art therapy. . .. You tell any Green Beret: ”Hey, we’re going to do some art,” and I’m like, ”What are you talking about. Art? . .. I don’t do any of this stuff.” . .. But I was like, ”All right, I’ll give it a try.”  And, you know, I found the gift of art. I’m not saying I’m a gifted artist by any means. But I think art is a gift. . .. Art allows us to express ourselves where words fall short. And it’s not only an expression, but it’s open to interpretation as well. It’s a beautiful thing and I think everyone has an artist inside them. I got into metalworking, blacksmithing, and I found the beauty in taking an unforgiving material or   metal. I want to make something out of it, but the material wants to become something as well  —   and we kind of meet in the middle. . .. It’s more of a physical art and, me being a physical guy, I really enjoy the freedoms of expression that it provides to me. On his hope that Bush’s book will help bridge the divide between military and civilians, Joining the military is a personal choice. But you know what? Before any one of us joined the military we were Americans. Whether you serve or not . .. that’s the commonality we all share  —   we love our country. And I really hope that people when they read this book and see this . .. they see we’re just normal people. Veterans aren’t that different. . .. My hope is that this book bridges that gap, because we all need to come together. . .. The onus is on both communities. But at the end of the day, we’re all Americans and I really think that this book will illustrate that. Jessica Deahl, James Delahoussaye and Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"When Amazon comes to town to sell books from a    store of its own, what happens to a neighborhood bookstore nearby? On Tuesday, the online retailer opened a    store in Dedham, Mass.  —   the company’s first bookstore on the East Coast. The suburban Boston store joins Amazon’s three other locations on the West Coast. Amazon  —   which started out by selling only books  —   has been the major reason that many traditional    bookstores have struggled and even shut down. As many people started going online to buy books, major book retailer Borders went out of business, while Barnes  Noble has closed stores over the years. Independent bookstores have struggled as well. Just about a mile up the road from the new bookstore in Dedham is Blue Bunny Books, an independent bookstore that specializes in children’s books. Store owner Peter Reynolds, a children’s book author, said he was a little worried when he heard Amazon was moving into town. ”Oh, yes. The minute that the news came out, I got hundreds of emails from friends and fans across the country and the world saying, ’Hey we just heard Amazon is moving up the street,’ ” Reynolds said. ”And at first my heart sort of sunk a bit, but I realized quickly the response from our friends was what you have in your independent bookstore is very, very different than what Amazon is providing, and I think that we’re going to be OK.” Blue Bunny Books has been around for about 14 years and also offers online sales and a coffee shop in store. Ellen Modi, who stopped in to grab a drink, said she plans to keep coming to the store because she likes bringing her two young daughters to book signings. ”They have nice events with authors, and it’s just personal,” Modi said. ”There’s something to be said about all these small businesses that are disappearing because all these bigger things are kind of taking over.” Reynolds said his store is often a gathering place for the community. He hopes the unique atmosphere will keep customers coming to independent bookstores like his. Meanwhile, Amazon hopes putting the best of online shopping on the ground helps it develop its own special and unique bookstore. Amazon spokeswoman Deborah Bass said the store is an extension of the company’s online business and offers a bit of that experience to help customers discover new books in person. ”Beneath every book is a review card, where we include a little bit more information with some of those things that you’re familiar with at Amazon. com,” Bass said. ”So, each book includes a review from a customer and it also shares the star rating. And all of the books featured in this store are four stars and above out of five stars.” The store’s selection of about 5, 700 books is based on browsing and buying data from Amazon’s website, including customer reviews and   sales, as well as what’s popular on Goodreads, an   book review site. Customers can also try out Kindles and other Amazon devices. Amazon has plans to open another bookstore north of Boston later this year and more locations in California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey. Zeninjor Enwemeka is a reporter for WBUR’s BostonomiX team, which covers the people, startups and companies driving the innovation economy. You can follow them @BostonomiX."
"Spending time in space changes people: Not just their outlook on life, but also their eyesight. For years, a North Texas doctor has been trying to find out what is causing this vision change among astronauts. His latest research provides some clues  —   and connects astronauts on the International Space Station, cancer patients on a roller coaster plane flight, and   sleeping sacks. After spending six months on the International Space Station, Michael Barratt had a strange request when he finally stepped foot on Earth. He wanted a spinal tap. Barratt isn’t a masochist, he’s a NASA astronaut. While flying hundreds of miles above Earth in 2009, he noticed his vision was changing. He was struggling to read manuals and checklists. ”I spent a lot of time on the Russian segment as well. When you’re reading in Russian in small print in a dark place, and your visual acuity starts to tank, you notice it!” Barratt says. Barratt is also a very curious physician, which brings us to his request for a spinal tap to check the pressure in his brain. He knew he wasn’t the first astronaut whose vision had changed while in space, and he hoped sticking a needle into his back might provide a clue to his vision loss. The leading theory at the time was that microgravity raises pressure in the head and reshapes the eyeballs, which could be problematic for   space travel to places like Mars. ”This is a medical issue that affects a large percentage of people who fly in space,” Barratt says. ”So the stakes are extremely high.” Scientists know that when people go into space, the fluid normally below their hearts goes into their heads. But is it creating enough pressure to damage the eyes? Does it flatten them and affect the optic nerve? Or is there something else at play? Dr. Benjamin Levine is on a mission to find out. He’s a professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine. Instead of sticking needles in astronauts’ backs, though, Levine decided to stick needles inside the brains of specific people who stay on Earth. He found eight healthy cancer survivors who still had ports in their heads, once used to deliver chemotherapy. Those ports would allow him to directly measure their intracranial pressure. Then, he convinced them to get on a plane for a sort of extreme roller coaster ride to simulate the zero gravity found on the ISS. You know that feeling of weightlessness when you drop on a roller coaster? Well, these folks did that, except they plunged 8, 000 feet in 30 seconds, dozens of times, all in the name of science. Trent Barton, a lymphoma survivor from Dallas, went on the wild trip above the   border. ”I enjoyed each and every rotation we did,” Barton says. During the flight, a needle in the port in his head monitored the pressure in the fluid surrounding his brain. Turns out, Levine says, space flight doesn’t cause pressure to be much higher than it is when you or I are standing up. But, it is a little higher. He published the results in The Journal of Physiology. But, unlike us earthlings, astronauts never get to rest their brains in lower pressure. When they’re standing up in zero gravity, the fluid stays in their heads and won’t go to their feet. So, researchers like Levine are now trying to find a way to give these astronaut brains a rest. So we now think this mild but persistent pressure may be the thing that’s stimulating remodeling the eye and causing the visual impairment,” Levine says. ”We’ve been working with UnderArmour, the garment company, to come up with a soft, but comfortable almost like a sleeping sack or pair of trousers, that you can put on at night, hook up to a vacuum cleaner, suck the blood and fluid into the feet and unload the heart and the brain while you’re sleeping,” he says. Astronaut Dr. Mike Barratt says he’d be willing to try the sleeping sack, but he also wants to do more tests on the ISS to better understand intracranial pressure before we send astronauts deeper into space. As for Barratt’s eyesight, six years after his flight? ”It’s my right eye that has apparently been permanently remodeled,” Barratt says. ”Other than that, I’m totally normal.” In other words, he’s still the same curious doctor, he just sees things a bit differently now that he’s back on Earth."
"On a brisk fall afternoon, Pat shows up at the Manhattan apartment dressed like your typical soccer dad. He’s wearing a baseball cap, sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers. He’s greeted at the door with a kiss on the cheek by the   Veronica Vera. In a few hours, after Vera and her team have asked Pat a few questions about his female persona and provided him some practical lessons in social graces and female aesthetics, he’ll walk back out as ”Bianca” —   a sassy,    strawberry blonde. ”That’s the perfect cue for my line, ’For every woman who burned her bra, there’s a man burning to wear one,’ ” says Vera, who goes by the name Miss Vera. These days, it would appear people are much more accepting of differences in gender and sexual orientation than what used to be the norm. But   is still widely misunderstood. This is where Miss Vera comes in. She’s the founder and   dean of Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want To Be Girls. Miss Vera is a former Wall Street trader, who’s now the author of three books on  . Her latest is called Miss Vera’s Cross Gender Fun For All. Her academy operates out of her Manhattan apartment. ”Many of the people who come here are going back and forth,” she says. ”They’re living their lives as men and are coming here and are living out their lives as female or learning to access those parts of themselves.” That’s pretty much the story of her student here on this day, Pat. He’s a married father of two in his early 40s from the Philadelphia area. Pat asked that we not use his last name because he’s concerned about how his colleagues and religious community will view him. Pat works in corporate consulting. Within a few minutes on arriving at Miss Vera’s, Pat starts to leave his entire male life behind. ”So let’s get you out of these male duds and into some female clothing,” Miss Vera tells him. ”The other deans will be here shortly.” The other deans include Miss Bridie  —   dean of cosmetology. ”You know, there’s a lot of different kinds of primers,” Miss Bridie explains. Miss Judy is dean of voice. She helps Pat sound more feminine. And there’s also Miss Julia  —   dean of high heels. ”Imagine doing hula hoop,” Miss Julia instructs Pat. ”Throw out your hip as you walk a bit, OK?” Miss Vera says all this is what puts men in touch with their ”femmeselves.” ”Freud only had it half right, penis envy exists. Venus envy also exists,” she says. ”And there are things that we as women have experienced and what men from their viewpoint see as very positive things that they want to experience too.” Pat puts it a little more simply. ”I consider myself the typical American straight married man who from time to time really likes to get dressed up and look pretty,” he says. About 60 percent of the people who come to Miss Vera’s academy describe themselves as straight married men. In fact, Pat came to Miss Vera’s Finishing School with the support of his wife of 15 years. She asked that we refer to her by her middle name, Leigh  —   because she too is concerned about potential scorn. Leigh says she sees how becoming Bianca lifts the weight of the world off her husband’s shoulders. ”It’s definitely a stress release for him,” she says. ”It definitely helps him have more balance in his life. And all of that is good. It’s good for me as his wife. It’s good for my children.” Leigh says she’s more concerned about her husband being judged than being judged herself. Pat says he never takes his wife’s acceptance for granted because he knows   has ended marriages. ”She can use this against me in all sorts of ways if we had to do that. She’s not going to do that.” Pat says they’ve both learned that you should never judge a person until you walk a mile in her   heels."
"This week, Puerto Ricans marked a century since they were granted U. S. citizenship by Congress, though it’s a limited form of citizenship. Puerto Ricans on the island can’t vote for the U. S. president in the general election and they lack representation in Congress. There is, however, one avenue where Puerto Ricans enjoy status as an ”independent entity”  —   that’s at the Olympics, where Puerto Ricans compete under their own flag. Puerto Rico is a member of the International Olympic Committee. The island has an expansive Olympic Village in Salinas  —   about an hour south of San Juan  —   where young athletes train. On this sunny and breezy afternoon, swimmers jump into the   swimming pool to warm up for a two and a half hour training session. This sports facility has a boarding school for grades seven through 12. Young people from around the island try out for athletic scholarships that could lead to a spot on Puerto Rico’s Olympic team, but there are no guarantees.    Paola Santiago, who started swimming at the age of 5, says, ”It’s an honor to represent Puerto Rico, our country in the sports,” even if it means hard work and sacrifice. Like Santiago, most Puerto Ricans refer to the island as ”pais” or country even though it is not  —   it’s a U. S. territory. The thought of trying out for the U. S. swim team has never crossed her mind. A passion for competitive sports, ”I wouldn’t feel that happy,” she says, ”because I feel like I feel more comfortable being here and represent Puerto Rico, I don’t live there, I don’t do anything there.” ”There,” meaning the mainland U. S. Santiago smiles easily, even when she’s on her second daily    training session. She’s preparing to try out for the Puerto Rican national swim team this April. She says she wants to make her island proud, just like tennis player Monica Puig did last summer in Rio. Puig, an underdog from the outset, defeated World No. 2 seed Angelique Kerber of Germany to cop gold medal in the women’s singles final. That winning match sent Puerto Ricans into a collective explosion of pride  —   Puig’s gold medal was the first ever in Puerto Rico’s Olympic history. Almost everyone on the island feels passionate about competitive sports  —   including politicians of all parties. ”Puerto Ricans value the sovereignty that we have in terms of sport,” says Manuel Natal, a member of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives. ”It’s something that’s part of our national identity.” The 51st state  Governor Ricardo Rosello, whose party is pushing for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state in the U. S. is especially proud of tennis player Monica Puig’s gold medal. ”You know, it’s a great pride to us,” he says. ”I feel just as proud, being from Puerto Rico . .. just as I’m sure Texans feel pride when somebody from Texas wins a gold medal.” Texans don’t compete as a state, however, but as part of the U. S. national team. At the Olympic Village in Salinas, swim coach Fernando Delgado runs the stopwatch on the pool deck, timing each of his 23 swimmers with precision. Delgado has been coaching here for 31 years and he’s marched alongside Puerto Rican athletes in several Olympic ceremonies around the world. ”I can’t explain you the emotion that we feel, the feelings about that moment,” he says in reference to parading at Olympic ceremonies. At a loss for words, he points to the goosebumps on his large tanned arms as a way to explain his emotions. Delgado’s overwhelming pride in Puerto Rico’s athletic independence is shared by many on the island. ”This is the only arena where we feel like an independent nation,” he says."
"A comic book about menstruation . .. aimed at boys? That’s what Indonesia has created. It started when a UNICEF team there looked at what happens when a girl gets her period. In a survey of over 1, 100 girls, the team found lots of concerns about the cruel remarks boys would make. They’d point at a girl’s stained skirt and say, ”Hey, it’s leaking.” Or when a girl put her book bag behind her back to hide any stains, they’d say things like, ”Why are you acting weird?” Why is staining a problem? There are not enough toilets in schools  —   only 1 per 100 students in Indonesia  —   so girls may not be able to change their pads as needed. Or there may not be a place to dispose of soiled pads in schools. The comic book tells boys that menstruation is perfectly normal. It’s experienced every month by millions of girls and women, including their moms. And it’s important to be courteous and supportive to friends. But this is not a   comic. The UNICEF survey also found that 1 in 6 girls skipped school while they were on their period. One reason was the lack of toilets. But sometimes they stayed home to avoid the taunts of boys. And some said they didn’t come to class because of a   local belief that it’s not a good idea to wash your hair when you’re having your period. They felt embarrassed to come to school with dirty hair. So the comic book is a    product. Hold it one way and it’s a   guide for boys. Turn it upside down and it’s a guide for girls, talking about everything from what menstruation is to how to put on a pad. And that yes, you can wash your hair when you’re on your period. And no, eating meat does not increase the flow of blood. The initial 3, 500 copies of the comic book were funded by UNICEF. The Indonesian health and education ministries will publish another 35, 000 this year and begin distributing them this spring. It wasn’t a bunch of adults who came up with the content. ”We didn’t want to do just want we thought was a good idea,” says Reza Hendrawan, UNICEF’s hygiene manager for the project in Indonesia. The team used a ”participatory design process,” says Aidan Cronin, UNICEF’s chief of water, sanitation and hygiene for Indonesia. Team members met with about 100 boys and girls age 10 to 14 as well as teachers and parents in six provinces. The idea for creating a comic came from the kids. UNICEF began testing the comic last June, sharing it with about 4, 000 boys and girls. The agency then hired Myriad Research, a research firm based in Jakarta, to talk to kids in two communities before and after the comic was published. They gathered survey responses from 245 girls and 129 boys. ”The overall feedback was great,” says Cronin. ”The students said challenging the myths gave them an opening to discuss menstruation with their parents and teachers.” Among the other findings from the survey: ”What does seem to be good about the comic is that it keeps the messaging simple and emphasizes that menstruation is a normal experience,” says Marni Sommer, an associate professor of sociomedical sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Sommer runs a conference with UNICEF each year on menstrual hygiene management in schools. She herself has created illustrated books on menstruation used in several countries in the developing world but was not involved in the development of the Indonesian comic. She likes the fact that the Indonesian comic book was produced with an eye to local traditions and taboos: ”You need to know the local culture as well as beliefs, perceptions and norms in that community,” she says, ”so you can gently challenge them.” It’s not only comic books that are doing the job. A new animated video on menstruation aimed at Indonesians  —   and also produced by UNICEF  —   is having an impact.  It hasn’t yet been widely shown to students, but when members of the Indonesian Council of Islamic Scholars viewed it, they decided it was time to partner with UNICEF on a book on menstrual issues that’ll be shared at women’s prayer groups. Fran Kritz is a health policy reporter based in Washington, D. C. Her work has appeared on the Goats and Soda blog as well as in the Washington Post and Kaiser Health News. Find her on Twitter @FranKritz"
"As horror movies go, 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was a B movie, in budget and, if I gave it one, a letter grade. It didn’t deserve an A for its scares or its innovation, as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho did two years earlier, or his movie The Birds would in the following year. But there was something about Baby Jane, with its story of two actress sisters  —   one confined to a wheelchair, the other obsessed by memories of her glory days as a child star  —   that was truly, deeply creepy. The director, Robert Aldrich, who had come up from live TV, was good, but was no Hitchcock: the movie didn’t belong to him. It belonged, completely, to Joan Crawford as the invalid Blanche, and especially to Bette Davis as the sadistic Baby Jane. Why make a miniseries out of the making of this particular cult motion picture? Ryan Murphy   the current craze of miniseries anthologies, with new stories and characters being presented each season, with American Horror Story, and he’s had even more success with The People v. O. J. Simpson, the first entry in his American Crime Story miniseries. Now he’s going back to the well a third time, for the same network, with a new FX anthology series called Feud, dramatizing memorable, very personal conflicts in history. And rather than starting large, with some political or philosophical battle, he’s starting small, with the   campy drama called Bette and Joan. Because it’s only an   commitment, the supporting cast of Feud is unusually strong. Alfred Molina plays Aldrich, the director who has to handle both temperamental actresses at the same time. Stanley Tucci plays studio head Jack Warner, who still resents Davis for suing him to shut down the old Hollywood studio system of   contracts. And there are plenty of other stars, including appearances from regular Murphy rep players Sarah Paulson and Kathy Bates. But the real electricity in Feud is generated from the same source as in Baby Jane. It’s the sight of two iconic actresses sharing the stage, and crossing swords. In Feud, it’s Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange. And in Feud, the dialogue is laden with comments, about Hollywood, ageism and sexism that are just as cutting, and as relevant, all these years later. Bette and Joan is a salute to the joys, and difficulties, and intricacies of filmmaking. It’s also a clear salute to female empowerment: both Sarandon and Lange are producers on this project  —   and Lange, playing several chameleonic parts on American Horror Story, has demonstrated her range on TV more than she’s been allowed to, of late, in the movies. Television, increasingly, is where the best and most challenging roles are, and not only for women  —   but as portrayed here, Davis and Crawford are wonderful roles indeed. And finally, there’s the whole idea behind Feud. With the nation as polarized as it is, watching a drama about a constant battle of wills and egos might not sound much like entertainment, let alone escapism. But it is. Sarandon and Lange are so vibrant, and so into their respective roles, that this first Feud, at least, is much more of a wickedly clever comedy. Bette and Joan has two guaranteed   performances at its center  —   and it’s a blast. "
"When Ryan Murphy explains what he does as a TV showrunner, he admits it can sound kind of lofty. ”The greatest thing that you have when you’re a showrunner is this opportunity to create worlds,” he says, laughing a bit. ”And it always sounds so insane when somebody says, ’Well, what do you do?’ And you say, ’I create worlds. ’” Murphy serves as the top creative voice on the TV shows he executive produces. His latest, Feud: Bette and Joan (debuting Sunday on FX) focuses on the friction between film legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. He says, ”What I do is I come up with an idea like Feud, and then I . .. cast it  —   I go out to Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon. . .. And then I gather a writing staff and we wrote eight episodes, and then I directed three of them. . .. But also, like, I’m interested in everything else . .. the art department, the costumer, the director of photography.” Murphy, 51, has compared the process of developing a show to having a dream  —   and his dreams have quite a track record. A short list includes the   superconfident Miami plastic surgeons of   the crooning, occasionally dysfunctional high school students in Glee the cavalcade of terrors in his American Horror Story anthology series and the treatise on race, celebrity and policing offered by The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story. He says, ”What I’m interested in doing now is to go and give voices that are not being heard a platform, and just sort of bring people into people’s homes that you think you may hate or despise, but the truth of the matter is if you just sat in a room [with them] a) I think you would admire them and b) I think that you would have a lot more in common with them than you think.” Now, with Feud, Murphy has developed a project that unites many of his past influences and passions. There’s the affection for both old Hollywood and mature actresses there’s a story drawn from pop culture’s history, with resonance in the modern age and, of course, it’s an anthology show. Glee fan and All in the Family executive producer Norman Lear is a friend of Murphy’s. He says Murphy’s work stands out because of how much he cares. ”He’ll go deeper to try to understand everything he cares about. . .. I wouldn’t call it rule breaking or pushing boundaries I would call it raising a magnifying glass to the foolishness of the human condition.” In Feud, Susan Sarandon plays Bette Davis and Jessica Lange is Joan Crawford. The series begins in the early 1960s and finds the two   actresses struggling: Both are over 50 and roles are drying up. Though they’ve hated each other for years, Crawford approaches Davis with an unexpected offer to join forces. She wants them to make a movie about a crazed former child star abusing her   sister, who also used to be a film star. The name of the film would be taken from the book it’s based on: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? ”If something’s going to happen, we have to make it happen,” Lange’s Joan Crawford says in one scene, acknowledging that she’s suggesting something revolutionary. ”No one’s looking to cast women our age. But together? They wouldn’t dare say no.” ”People think it’s going to be campy or lighthearted or dishy,” Murphy says, ”[but] it really isn’t.” He notes that Feud shows Crawford’s problems with alcohol, Davis’ trouble connecting with her daughter and the way studio executives manipulated the women into fighting with each other for tabloid fodder. He says, ”It’s, I think, a much more a sad look at these two women who were national treasures who were not treated well.” Murphy and his team were filming Feud during the presidential election. ”We all thought Hillary Clinton was going to be the president,” he says. ”. .. So we thought, OK, we’re making an ironic statement here about women in our culture. And then we woke up . .. and she lost. And we’re like, OK, well wow, this is still happening. You know, and I think it really lays into that misogynistic undertone [in the culture] that has been around for a long time that I think a lot of us thought we were finally getting over, but we’re not.” Murphy’s connection to Bette Davis goes all the way back to his days as a    in 1970s Indiana. He says he felt alone and isolated in a religious household where his bold, opinionated grandmother often cared for him. When he saw Davis shoot somebody in her 1940 film The Letter, she reminded him of his grandmother. ”I only wrote two fan letters in my life,” Murphy says. ”One was to Bette Davis and one was to Ron [Palillo] who played Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter. And Ron did not write me back, but Bette Davis did.” Later, Murphy had a career as a journalist, writing for outlets like The Miami Herald and Entertainment Weekly. He eventually got to meet Davis and spent hours interviewing her, not long before her death. ”And the thing that struck me about her when I got to meet her was how real she was,” he says. ”You know, when you think of her at the end or in some of her later movies, she’s pure exaggeration. And she told me that a lot of that she put on when she was out in public because she thought she was never going to be remembered unless the female impersonators did her in their acts.” Murphy has a passion for featuring mature women who are often overlooked by Hollywood. Now he’s formed an organization, the Half Foundation, to ensure women get jobs behind the camera as directors. The organization has helped fill more than half the directing jobs on his shows. ”I’m reaching out to all sorts of women: young women, gay women, women of color, older women who feel like they don’t have a way into the system,” he says. ”. .. In the first year of operation, our goal was 50 percent women we’ve sort of hit the 60 percent of all of the [directing] slots have been filled by women.” When Murphy started working as a showrunner and producer, the TV industry was exploding around him. After Glee, when the typical network TV series framework seemed too limiting, he developed an anthology series for FX in American Horror Story, reinventing the show every season with new stories in a way that would keep him from running out of things to say. He’s heard the criticism that he loses interest in series once they get going. While he bristles at that notion, he admits that he had finished what he wanted to say with Glee in Season 4, though the show ended in its sixth season. And as a married man who had a tough time growing up gay in Indiana, Murphy’s ready for our modern political moment. The second season of American Crime Story will focus on Hurricane Katrina, and a   second season of Feud will tell the story of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. He hopes to start conversations between liberals, who might love the gay characters in Glee, and conservatives, who elected a vice president from Indiana who has opposed   marriage. He says, ”I look at the election and I’m like: OK, well, we can get mad. We can be bitter. But the truth of the matter is this was a group of people that we weren’t listening to for a long time  —   or they to us, for that matter.” He thinks the best thing he can do is launch a cultural dialogue. ”Do I think it’s going to change everybody’s opinion? No. But maybe it will change one person’s mind, and that’s really all I can aim for.” Editor Nina Gregory and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this piece."
"Updated at 7 p. m. EST, FBI Director James Comey has requested that the Justice Department publicly deny President Trump’s allegation that President Barack Obama had ordered a wiretap of candidate Trump, a law enforcement official confirms to NPR’s Carrie Johnson. The New York Times first broke that story. The Department of Justice has so far issued no comment on this development. Our original story continues: A day after President Trump tweeted, without any evidence, charges that his predecessor wiretapped his phones, the White House asked Congress to investigate whether the Obama administration had abused its investigative powers. The White House has yet to provide proof for the president’s claims, which were denied Sunday by the former director of national intelligence. In a statement, White House press secretary Sean Spicer says ”reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling.” It’s not clear what reports he is referring to or what prompted President Trump’s explosive charges on Saturday. And the statement dials back several notches from what the president actually alleged on Saturday. The White House went radio silent for the entire day following Trump’s early Saturday morning tweetstorm, not providing evidence or an explanation for the claims the president made. Appearing on ABC’s This Week, principal deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders cited reports in a variety of news outlets, none of which went as far as what Trump tweeted. ”If this happened. If this is accurate, this is the biggest overreach and the biggest scandal,” Sanders said, again providing no evidence. Asked where the basis of the president’s claims come from, Sanders said ”I think he is going off of information that he’s seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential.” ”Very real potential” is quite different from Trump tweeting that a good lawyer ”could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October.” In the Sunday morning statement, Spicer goes on to say ”President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.” The House and Senate intelligence committees are both headed by Republicans. They are currently investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election. Much like Trump’s claims earlier this year of widespread voter fraud, rather than provide proof or a basis for the president’s charges, the White House is asking for an investigation. ”All we’re saying is let’s take a closer look,” Sanders said on ABC. Spicer concludes the statement saying neither the White House nor the president will comment further until the investigation is conducted. Though, 40 minutes later, the press secretary tweeted about an interview on ABC that would seem to reinforce the president’s claim. Mukasey was attorney general under George W. Bush and was a vocal critic of Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign. What he actually said in the interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz was more nuanced than Spicer’s tweet would make it seem. ”I think the president was not correct certainly in saying that President Obama ordered a tap on a server in Trump Tower,” Mukasey said. ”However, I think he’s right in that there was surveillance and that it was conducted at the behest of the Justice Department through the FISA court.” Mukasey said he based this assessment on news reports, meaning he had no direct knowledge. On NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday morning, James Clapper, the recently former director of national intelligence, said that to his knowledge there was no wiretapping on   Trump or his campaign. You can see a clip of his interview in the video below. When asked by host Chuck Todd if he could confirm or deny the existence of a court order authorizing electronic surveillance of Trump, Clapper said he could deny one existed, to his knowledge. The statement from Spicer leaves more questions than it answers. Here’s a sampling of the questions NPR sent to the White House Saturday, that remained unaddressed Sunday:  —   What led to the president’s tweets [Saturday] morning?  —   Can you confirm whether this is coming from   or whether the president is sharing information about an ongoing federal investigation?  —   What evidence does he have that President Obama ordered his phones tapped? Can you please provide a source and an explanation?  —   Did he speak to intelligence officials in the government to reach these conclusions?  —   Is he confirming that his campaign was under federal investigation and that a warrant was secured to monitor electronic communications from Trump Tower? NPR Weekend Editor Joe Ruiz contributed to this report."
"At least 6. 2 million people in Somalia  —   or just about half the country  —   are grappling with the prospect of an acute food shortage due to deepening drought. And on Saturday, Somalia’s prime minister made it clear that the conditions are exacting a stark human cost. Over a   span, at least 110 people died of hunger in just a single region, Hassan Ali Khaire said Saturday during a meeting with the Somali National Drought Committee. ”I can confirm that Bay region in the south and other parts of Somalia are deteriorating rapidly,” Khaire said, ”and my estimation is that half of the country’s population has felt the impact of this drought.” As NPR’s Eyder Peralta notes for our Newscast unit, the country already declared the drought a national disaster on Tuesday. As Somalia has dried up, Khaire says the lack of clean water has increased the risks of waterborne diseases, while the ability of malnourished people to fight off those diseases has plummeted. ”It is a difficult situation for the pastoralists and their livestock. Some people have been hit by [hunger] and diarrhoea at the same time,” Khaire’s office said in a statement. ”The Somali government will do its best, and we urge all Somalis, wherever they are, to help and save the dying Somalis.” The United Nations is putting out urgent calls for aid, saying as many as 5 million people need aid in the shadow of a looming famine, according to The Associated Press. ”Thousands have been streaming into Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in search of food aid, overwhelming local and international aid agencies,” the news service reports. ”Over 7, 000 internally displaced people checked into one feeding center recently.” If a   famine should descend on Somalia, the World Health Organization says it would be the country’s third famine in a    —   and the second in less than a decade. Citing a joint report by the U. N. and the United States Agency for International Development, CNN reports that famine killed about 258, 000 people in Somalia between 2010 and 2012. But famine is not yet a foregone conclusion. The AP reports the U. N. is currently appealing for $864 million in humanitarian aid, while ”the U. N. World Food Program recently requested an additional $26 million plan to respond to the drought.”"
"In a   village clinic converted into a field hospital a few miles from the Mosul front lines, there is no emergency care facility, so wounded Iraqi troops are just wheeled into the foyer for treatment. Over the crackle of   one of two men arriving with shrapnel wounds from a car bomb calls out, ”Mohammad Jassim, my brother, where is he?” He is right here, a medic reassures him. Both men are confused and in pain but expected to survive. They are federal policemen, a national force playing a key role in the fight by Iraqi forces to take Mosul back from ISIS. More federal police casualties arrive in ambulances throughout the day. The field hospital is one of several, along with   points for immediate treatment of the gravely wounded, set up after the   Mosul operation restarted on Feb. 19. ISIS is expected to lose Mosul. But its fighters are inflicting a terrible toll. The number of civilians and combatants killed and injured has far exceeded what was predicted, with hundreds of car bombs, land mines and booby traps adding to the danger. The impact on the Iraqi armed forces has been colossal. Iraqi officials do not give figures, but American military officials have told reporters some divisions had casualty rates of 30 percent, without specifying whether the men were killed or injured. Dr. Altaf Musani, the representative for the World Health Organization in Iraq, said in the first months of the offensive, many people died for lack of urgent care. When a person is seriously wounded and in danger of bleeding to death, ”there’s really a window within minutes that someone should be stabilized,” he said, speaking in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil. Stabilization usually means stopping the heavy bleeding caused by bullet or shrapnel wounds and making sure patients can breathe on their own while they await more treatment. Musani said typically in close vicinity to this kind of fighting, about 20 percent of the people in the area  —   civilians or fighters  —   sustain these kinds of wounds. But in Mosul that number has been much higher. Many civilians spoke of being deliberately targeted by ISIS as they left Mosul. Once the patient is stabilized, Musani said there is ”a golden hour” to get them more treatment  —   literally about 60 minutes. In the first months of the battle for Mosul, that deadline was rarely met. Hospitals in and around the city were destroyed in the fighting and the nearest functioning medical facilities were hours away along bumpy roads. Amid the uncertainty of war, WHO planned for mass displacement more than for mass casualties. ”It wasn’t anticipated that people would be stranded, caught inside East Mosul,” he said. ISIS forbids anyone from leaving the city. Now the World Health Organization, charities and Iraq’s health ministry have scrambled to move medics closer to the front lines to stabilize the wounded and then provide comprehensive treatment. ”This is very difficult,” he said. ”You need a certain level of medical expertise, equipment and mobility to be out in front lines in order to capture cases.” One organization, Samaritan’s Purse, opened a field hospital close to the east of Mosul in January in cooperation with the World Health Organization and Iraq’s health ministry. They have since treated hundreds of cases and have performed multiple surgeries on a daily basis. Throughout the operation, troops from the U. S.  coalition backing Iraqi forces have also helped on the front lines with emergency trauma care. Col. John Dorrian, the coalition’s spokesman in Baghdad, confirmed the accounts from Iraqi troops. In the field hospital near Hammam al Alil, a federal policeman named Ali Qassem said U. S. forces patched him up after he was shot in the shoulder in a surprise attack by ISIS fighters on a group of his men. ”We were with them 10 minutes before,” he said. ”We took pictures with them and joked with them, and then 10 minutes later I was injured and they came quickly. ”They were very close and very helpful.”"
"Kate McKinnon provided the most memorable political impressions of the night  —   far from the first time she’s done so  —   on Saturday as Saturday Night Live returned with its first live episode in three weeks. ”Hello. My name’s Jeff. Jeff Sessions. Would you like a chocolate?” McKinnon asks, in character as the attorney general in a Forrest   bus stop cold open scene. A few strangers sit down in succession next to Sessions. ”Being in the government is so fun,” he says. ”You meet so many nice people. Like this, this is my best good friend Kellyanne. She ain’t got no legs,”   says, showing the infamous photo of Kellyanne Conway kneeling on the couch and looking at her phone while presidents of historically black colleges and universities take a photo with President Trump. (It later became a running joke, with McKinnon as Conway kneeling and looking at her phone in various locations between sketches.) Sessions tells another stranger on the bench, ”Democrats want me to resign. I just gotta prove to everybody that I don’t have any ties to the Russians whatsoever.” This past week, the   Sessions recused himself from investigations into possible Russian involvement in the U. S. election, after reports emerged that he met with the Russian ambassador twice last year. Then the bus comes by, leaving a shirtless Vladimir Putin sitting next to Sessions. ”This meeting never happened,” Putin (Beck Bennett) says. ”I wasn’t going to remember it anyway,” Sessions says, as they bump fists. Actress Octavia Spencer hosted the show. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in last year’s Hidden Figures. In her monologue, she joked about people getting the movies Hidden Figures, Fences and Moonlight confused. ”So many people have been coming up to me saying, ’I loved Hidden Fences!’ . .. I get it, there were three black movies at the Oscars this year. And that’s a lot for Americans. So if you’re going to get confused anyway, I thought I might as well make some money off it. That’s why I produced Hidden Fence Light.” Later the show took a shot at congressional Republicans, with a fake movie trailer imagining what it would look like if a fictional Republican  —   person TBD  —   stood up to President Trump. ”A patriot who put country over party,” the   says. It’s a movie ”definitely not about Paul Ryan.” On ”Weekend Update,”   Michael Che and Colin Jost threw in a few political zingers as well. ”President Trump said that his budget will help enlarge what he calls a ’depleted military,’ ” Che says, after President Trump this past week proposed a $54 billion increase in the Department of Defense budget. ”Depleted military? In relation to what, the Death Star?” The U. S. already spends hundreds of billions of dollars more on military capability than any other country in the world. President Trump’s sons Eric (Alex Moffat) and Donald Jr. (Mikey Day) made an appearance to talk about their business dealings. Well, it was mostly just Donald Jr. who talked about opening a golf course in Dubai and hotel in Vancouver while he fed Eric Cheerios. Eric then struggled to open a Capri Sun. Overall, the episode didn’t stray as far into the political realm as previous ones this season  —   there was no surprise appearance of Melissa McCarthy as Sean ”Spicey” Spicer or Alec Baldwin as Trump. The show is live again next week with host Scarlett Johansson and musical guest Lorde. NPR’s Emma Bowman contributed to this report."
"Joshua Michael Tillman, a. k. a.   emoji Father John Misty, performed two songs on Saturday Night Live this weekend that questioned two of the bedrocks of Western civilization: entertainment and religion. ”Total Entertainment Forever” and ”Pure Comedy,” both from his upcoming album Pure Comedy (due out April 7 on Sub Pop) are      criticisms of societal opiates. Given the state of American political discourse right now, Tillman’s booking on late night’s premier stage  —   which typically hosts musicians much more popular than the Los   songwriter  —   was a clear message from the SNL staff bookers. Watch the videos of each performance below, and read the accompanying lyrics. Bedding Taylor Swift, Every night inside the Oculus Rift, After mister and the missus finish dinner and the dishes, And now the future’s definition is so much higher than it was last year, It’s like the images have all become real, And someone’s living my life for me out in the mirror, No, can you believe how far we’ve come, In the New Age? Freedom to have what you want, In the New Age we’ll all be entertained, Rich or poor, the channels are all the same, You’re a star now, baby, so dry your tears, You’re just like them, Wake on up from the nightmare, Come on, Oh ho oh, Oh, Oh ho oh, No gods to rule us, No drugs to soothe us, No myths to prove stuff, No love to confuse us, Not bad for a race of demented monkeys, From a cave to a city to a permanent party, Come on, Oh ho oh, Oh, Oh ho oh, When the historians find us we’ll be in our homes, Plugged into our hubs, Skin and bones, A frozen smile on every face, As the stories replay, This must have been a wonderful place, The comedy of man starts like this, Our brains are way too big for our mothers’ hips, And so Nature, she divines this alternative, We emerged   and hope that whoever greets us on the other end, Is kind enough to fill us in, And, babies, that’s pretty much how it’s been ever since, Now the miracle of birth leaves a few issues to address, Like, say, that half of us are periodically   So somebody’s got to go kill something while I look after the kids, I’d do it myself, but what, are you going to get this thing its milk? He says as soon as he gets back from the hunt, we can switch, It’s hard not to fall in love with something so helpless, Ladies, I hope we don’t end up regretting this, Comedy, now that’s what I call pure comedy, Just waiting until the part where they start to believe, They’re at the center of everything, And some   being endowed this horror show with meaning, Oh, their religions are the best, They worship themselves yet they’re totally obsessed, With risen zombies, celestial virgins, magic tricks, these unbelievable outfits, And they get terribly upset, When you question their sacred texts, Written by   epileptics, Their languages just serve to confuse them, Their confusion somehow makes them more sure, They build fortunes poisoning their offspring, And hand out prizes when someone patents the cure, Where did they find these goons they elected to rule them? What makes these clowns they idolize so remarkable? These mammals are   on fashioning new gods, So they can go on being godless animals, Oh comedy, their illusions they have no choice but to believe, Their horizons that just forever recede, And how’s this for irony, their idea of being free is a prison of beliefs, That they never ever have to leave, Oh comedy, oh it’s like something that a madman would conceive! The only thing that seems to make them feel alive is the struggle to survive, But the only thing that they request is something to numb the pain with, Until there’s nothing human left, Just random matter suspended in the dark, I hate to say it, but each other’s all we got"
"Democrats have a long way to go to rebuild their party after brutal losses across the board last November. But they’re seeing glimmers of hope in recent and upcoming special elections where they argue the backlash to President Trump is resulting in change at the ballot box. On Feb. 25, Democrats won a special election for a Delaware state senate seat that normally wouldn’t have gotten so much national attention. But party officials, including   Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, were quick to point to the margin of their win as evidence that liberal protests were being translated into real results. On NBC’s ”Meet The Press” Sunday, Perez called Democrat Stephanie Hansen’s victory that kept Democrats in the state senate majority, a prime example of ”how we are putting our activism into action.” The race had unusually high turnout for a special election and drew more than 1, 000 volunteers an   legislative race Democrats only won by 267 votes two years ago. Hansen told Delaware Public Media’s James Dawson the energy her race attracted was a direct result of frustration with national Republicans and President Trump. ”We are the home of a sleeping giant that I believe has awoken and that sleeping giant that’s representing the values, the Democratic values of inclusivity, of compassion, of kindness, of working together. You know, the opposite of prejudice,” Hansen said. Test of   backlash in Georgia, Keeping control of a state legislature in one of the country’s smallest states won’t have Democrats back on any type of path to redemption just yet. But they are looking to another key test case in a Georgia special congressional election. The suburban Atlanta district, vacated by Trump’s   and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is exactly the type that Democrats need to flip if they want to put the House in play. It voted for Mitt Romney by 24 points four years ago, but Trump only carried it by 1 point last November. The race has attracted 18 candidates, and if no candidate gets 50 percent of the vote in the April 18   primary  —   a virtual impossibility  —   the top two finishers, regardless of party, will advance to a June 20 runoff. There are several top Republicans in the crowded field who could come out on top, including former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel, who’s run statewide for governor and for the Senate. But national Democrats are coalescing behind    Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer. Ossoff has the backing of his former boss, Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson, as well as   congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis. His candidacy has attracted some star power too, with social media attention from actors like Kristen Bell and George Takei, which has helped him raise and   $2 million already. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee already has nine staffers on the ground in the district. Ossoff’s early attention has made him a target of Republicans. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a   aligned with House GOP leadership, announced this week it’s spending $1. 1 million on ads through the primary. It unleashed an ad with footage of Ossoff dressing up like Han Solo and advocating for an easing of his school’s alcohol policy in a parody with his Georgetown University a capella group. The early GOP investment is a signal that Republicans are taking the threat seriously. Still, they argue Ossoff is more from the progressive wing of the party, and that his candidacy isn’t indicative of the strategy   Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rahm Emanuel used in 2006 to win back the House by running more moderate candidates in swing districts. Then again, Democrats are divided internally —  evidenced by their contentious leadership race last week. So, such a strategy may no longer work for the party as a whole. Ossoff responded with his own ads on Friday that paint himself as more of a centrist and willing to work across the aisle. One ad also makes clear he’s running on an   platform, with the closing promise: ”When President Trump embarrasses our country or acts recklessly, I’ll hold him accountable.” National Republicans argue that Democrats already tried to run on an   message last fall, and it didn’t work. ”Democrats ran this play in 2016 and failed in dramatic fashion,” said National Republican Congressional Committee press secretary Jesse Hunt. ”The American people want results —  not blatant partisan obstruction.” Will marches and protests equal votes and volunteers?  But Trump’s approval numbers have taken a dramatic fall in the subsequent months and Republicans have been put on the defensive in recent town halls, with angry constituents demanding answers on Obamacare repeal, investigations into alleged Russian ties to Trump administration officials, and more. GOP leaders have tried to dismiss that as liberal organizing unrepresentative of the true will of the people, or simply ”astroturfing” by paid protesters. Mo Elleithee, a former Democratic strategist who now directs the Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions about any special election, and noted that both parties have learned over the past year that political trends can rapidly change. Still, he said that this is a ”level of energy and a level of organization that we haven’t typically seen by Democrats at this stage of the electoral cycle.” ”You don’t read too much into any single special but if suddenly you start to see Democrats building off of each one of these, and you start to see some sort of a trend in different special elections, then they may be tapping into something electorally,” Elleithee said. Carolyn Fiddler, communications director at the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said there’s evidence beyond Delaware or even Georgia that her party’s enthusiasm is being channeled in positive ways. There were also three legislative special elections in Connecticut this week. Democrats held onto two open seats, and by much larger than usual margins. And in a   seat that has about a    Republican advantage, they came within 2, 000 votes of an upset compared to a 16, 000 vote loss the last time the seat was up. ”Trump’s presidency has really crystallized priorities for a lot of progressives and Democrats out there,” said Fiddler. ”Not only are they looking for ways to make their voices heard through marches and protests, they’re directing their activism in really critical ways, by volunteering and voting.”"
"Supporters of President Trump are gathering at locations across the U. S. on Saturday, in a bid to challenge what rally organizers call the country’s ”seditious fringe.” In a series of demonstrations dubbed the ”March 4 Trump”  —   or the Spirit of America Rallies  —   organizers have pledged to provide ”forgotten voices a mechanism so they can be heard.” ”They aren’t giving [Trump] a chance,” Patty Collins, a local organizer, told The Indianapolis Star. ”We are here to show support for the president of the United States.” Saturday’s demonstrations  —   which were intended to be small, according to the Main Street Patriots  —   come just one week after Trump tweeted something of a call for rallies backing his administration. ”Maybe the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN should have their own rally,” Trump tweeted. ”It would be the biggest of them all!” From New York City to Raleigh, N. C. from Austin to Washington, D. C. Trump supporters answered that call  —   though in many instances, counterprotesters were also there to meet them. At the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, scuffles broke out between   demonstrators and a smaller group of   protesters, according to the Star Tribune. While the two parties were quickly separated by police and fellow demonstrators, the Minneapolis newspaper reports that both sides continued to lob insults at each other from close range: ”The two groups continued to trade taunts  —   ’Get a job!’ was one volleyed at the counterprotesters  —   and chants and shouts reverbated through the rotunda. Someone  —   it was unclear who, except that it was not police  —   sprayed a chemical irritant, causing some scattering and coughing on both sides. ”At least two people were arrested.” Kerfuffles like the one in Minnesota broke out elsewhere, as well. Outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin, where police estimate roughly 300 supporters gathered, Taylor Goldenstein of the Austin Statesman witnessed heated confrontations between the two groups amid chants of ”No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!” Those skirmishes were broken up by police without serious injury. For the most part, however, the demonstrations have been peaceful  —   and in Austin, at least, charitable as well. The Austin   notes that   ”attendees are told to bring donations for the homeless and veterans, such as canned goods, clothing, blankets and hygiene products, according to the [organizers’] Facebook page.” ”There have been so many protests against [Trump] we just want to spend a day showing him there are people who support him,” Jennifer Drabbant, a local organizer, told the Statesman. It was a sentiment echoed at the D. C. rally, where a man who identified himself as a registered Democrat told the gathering he was frustrated with the worldwide women’s marches the day after Trump’s inauguration. Most of the people who joined those marches expressed opposition to the new president’s agenda. ”He was in office less than 24 hours,” the man told the crowd from stage. Meanwhile, Michigan Public Radio’s Cheyna Roth reports ”it was a clash of the signs and chants” outside the State Capitol on Saturday, as demonstrators gathered near counterprotesters. ”He’s doing a good job, I think,” Trump supporter Trent Herbert told Roth. ”I think a lot of times he should stay off Twitter.” Christy Trammell of Franklin, Tenn. says she’s attending the Nashville demonstration  —   her first political rally  —   as a direct response to January’s women’s marches. ”Seeing the people there that were trying to act like they represent women,” she told Blake Farmer of member station WPLN, ”it was appalling to me.” Farmer reports that the Nashville rally, which wasn’t quite as big as organizers would have liked, nevertheless voiced their support of Trump’s proposed wall along the border with Mexico, as well as rolling back transgender bathroom protections. Still, in Nashville, as elsewhere, protesters persistently chanted slogans from the edges. Organizers of one counterprotest in D. C. summed up their motivations behind showing up in opposition. ”We won’t sit idly by when Trump supporters come to town and celebrate: fear, hate, and misogyny,” Smash Racism DC wrote on its Facebook page."
"Trump administration policies toward refugees and immigrants, as well as a recent   shooting in Kansas, have some international students thinking twice about enrolling in American colleges and universities. Relatives of the Kansas shooting victims are urging other Indians to not send their kids to study in the U. S. The shooter, who is behind bars, killed one of the three people who were shot. It’s too soon to know if international applicants or enrollees will decline nationally. But uncertainty and fear linger over whether Trump’s political actions, rhetoric and tweets will freeze the flow of international students. Federal courts have blocked Trump’s travel ban of people from seven   countries, but the White House has said it may issue a revised version as early as this week. That previous executive order spooked many international students, as we’ve reported. More than a million international students attend American colleges and universities. More than 160, 000 of them are from India, second only to China with more than 300, 000. While opposition to a travel ban by most U. S. colleges and universities is about academic freedom and diversity, it’s also very much about protecting their budgets. Higher education in America relies, in part, on foreign students, who often pay full fare, helping universities to meet budgets and subsidize American students. I reached out to Esther Brimmer, the executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a nonprofit dedicated to international education and exchange, for more on the issue. This interview has been edited for clarity. What are you hearing? Are more students from India and China questioning whether Trump’s America is a hospitable place? We have been hearing from our members that there’s a great deal of concern about studying in the United States, indeed that there are families who have seen these news reports. And it’s a tragedy in that sense, because across the United States, colleges and universities want to welcome international students. But the recent news reports have raised concerns, as have recent actions by the administration. What reasons are they giving? The administration’s pledge to build a wall, the   travel ban? Is it all of it? There are several sets of concerns. The first set was the executive orders that were promulgated by this administration. By banning people from the seven countries, everybody from those seven countries was affected. It meant that there [were] students and scholars who were split up from their families. And people saw this  —   we had scholars who might have gone to conferences, they might have gone home to see their families. We had cases where, you know, a mother who was a Ph. D. student went home, she wasn’t able to get back to see her family. We had people going to conferences who all the sudden were stranded outside the United States  —   there were approximately 17, 000 students from those countries affected. And then even beyond that, concerns that this was evidence of a changing attitude in the United States towards international students. And while there’s been some relief with the judicial action that has paused this, there are people who are worried that if they come to the United States this year, maybe they might be stranded in their second or third year, not able to complete their program. Anecdotally, we’re seeing reports that more international students are looking at blue states or to Europe or Canada  —   are there any numbers to back that up? As you’ve indicated, this is actually an especially difficult time because colleges have issued their invitations to students to come to study. So students both in the United States and internationally are making their decisions. Several educational associations  —   including ours  —   are working together to conduct a survey this spring to get more information from admissions officers so we can understand what’s happening. At the moment, the United States is the leading destination for international students, but we are losing market share. Increasingly, students are recognizing they do have choices  —   some students may choose to go to Australia or Canada or other countries that also have excellent institutions. We may be losing them for years. If they don’t come this year, they’re not coming for the next four if they’re an undergraduate. A decision made now by an international student could have   consequences for that student, for the students who would have worked with that person, and for colleges and universities across the United States. Foreign students often pay full fare, which helps subsidize U. S. students. Isn’t there a potential huge economic impact of all this? Indeed. While we stress the intellectual impact, there is an important economic impact as well. There are over 1 million international students and their families in the United States. And that group of people accounts for over 400, 000 jobs and over $32 billion worth of economic activity in the United States. Beyond the economic impact, what is the value of having international students on campus?  For decades, the United States has recognized that by having international students here, we benefit from the exchange of ideas from bringing together smart people which fosters innovation, which helps the United States economy. But also, international students affect our informal ambassadors. People around the world who have studied in the United States usually go home with a positive view of the United States  —   they learn more about the United States. And as they go on to their careers  —   and many of them have careers as diplomats and business leaders  —   they retain that positive view of the United States."
"Like most comedians, Cristela Alonzo draws upon her own experiences for her source material. That means, as a   American, Alonzo has also always tackled challenging topics in her comedy. She now lives in California, but she grew up just 9 miles from the Mexico border, in San Juan, Texas. From her mom’s aversion to Girl Scouts to living in the Trump era as a Mexican American, Alonzo spoke with NPR’s Lulu   about how she brings elements of her hometown to life on a national stage, most recently on her Netflix special, Cristela Alonzo: Lower Classy. ”I don’t like when people try to make generalizations about people they’ve never met,” she tells Lulu. Through the digestible form of   though, Alonzo attempts to break down stereotypes that inevitably go with straddling two cultures. For example, in her special, Alonzo touches on things she’s had to explain to her   mother. ”First time she saw Girl Scouts, she thought they were border patrol agents . .. in training,” Alonzo says. ”She thought border patrol had a kid unit and every time she saw the cookies she would hide from them. And I’d say ’Mom, they’re not trying to deport you, they’re trying to sell you cookies.’ ” To which her mom would respond, ”Ah, that’s what you think! That’s how they get you, mija, ah, you’re stupid!” imitates Alonzo. But although that joke gets a lot of laughs, Alonzo says it reveals a difficult truth. ”In reality, my mom actually had a fear of people in uniforms because she didn’t know who could deport her or not when she was becoming a resident alien. Therefore, anytime someone had a uniform she was scared.” To listen to the full interview, click the audio link above. On her childhood on the   border  Even during the recession my hometown area was booming because of Mexico. Without Mexicans coming to buy our products, our economy in the United States in that area would be ruined. So my grandmother lived in Mexico, she lived in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and we would go visit her every Monday. And a lot of my life was basically crossing over the bridge, going to Mexico, coming back. . .. That’s another thing that people don’t understand about that area, is that it’s very normal for Mexicans to come to the United States, Americans to go to Mexico, to work and then they go back to their country at the end of the day. On how her family came to live in the U. S. When [my mother] was a little kid, she lived in this village. She lived in a rancho called El Zancarron. It’s in the middle of nowhere. And she saw this piece of cardboard, when she was 11 or 12 I think she’s told me, and the cardboard said ”McAllen, Texas.” And to her, it just sounded so exotic. That her goal in life to was move to McAllen, Texas. Because her village didn’t have running water, didn’t have electricity  —   nothing. She just wanted to go to a place with running water and electricity. On the long, misunderstood process of becoming a permanent legal resident, My mom was undocumented in the United States for a while because the system takes so long to get your status clear that you have to become undocumented while you wait to become a resident alien. Even though she has the paperwork, she’s still technically undocumented because it takes so long to get the paperwork done. It’s really frustrating. . .. On how the Girl Scout story exemplifies Alonzo’s approach to her comedy, I tell this story quite often to people because a lot of people think that immigrants come here and they take advantage of our system, they use the government programs for their benefit. And my mom actually ended up passing away very young because she refused to go to the doctor she refused to seek any medical attention that might’ve been provided for by the government, because A, she didn’t know what programs existed, but B, she just didn’t want to take advantage, and she was actually kind of scared to use the programs [although she was entitled to as a legal resident by that point] and that’s the reality for a lot of people. On whether her life has changed after the election of President Donald Trump, [On a family trip to Honolulu, Hawaii, two weeks after the election,] we are going to have dinner and there’s an hour wait at the restaurant we’re at. My family decides to go away, and it’s my oldest brother, me and my oldest nephew who is   he’s special needs. . .. And these two people come up  —   strangers, don’t know them  —   and they ask my brother, ”Where you from?” And my brother, sweetest man ever, I adore this guy, says, ”I’m from Texas.” And these two guys are like, ”Liar, you’re from Mexico, go back to Mexico.” And these guys start getting very aggressive with us. They look at my nephew, and I don’t think they realize he’s special needs  —   he’s on his Nintendo. And one of the guys thinks that the Nintendo DS is a phone. And he thinks that my nephew is recording what’s happening. So they come and they lunge at my nephew and try to take the Nintendo away from him, and I have to push the guy. And I tell them that they can’t ever touch my nephew again. And these guys are so aggressive that I start yelling, my brother starts yelling, nobody’s helping us, they’re just letting everything happen and finally, the guys just decide to run away. The power that these two people felt that they had was something I never felt that I had in my life. On how she turns these tough stories into comedic material, If I wanted to tell that story in my   I actually tell the truth about it. But I start to break it down into certain, specific levels, like why are they like that? What kind of life do they have that they’re in paradise and they can’t even have fun, they can’t swim with the dolphins because they look at my brother and they’re like, ”That guy looks like he belongs in Mexico.” And that’s an interesting way to mock them. But you tell people what happened, so that at the end of the joke, that was the truth  —   that was her truth  —   and she made it funny. NPR’s Emma Bowman contributed to this story."
"Along a snowy highway in the Rockies lies Buford, Wyo. elevation: 8, 000 feet, population: one. This tiny town is in danger of losing its last  —   and only  —   resident, as the town’s longest running business may have to close. But this is really a story about three people. The first is Jason Hirsch, Buford’s town manager. He mans the Buford Trading Post, which is also the gas station, the store and well, town hall basically. ”The politics are pretty easy around here,” Hirsch says. ”Sometimes you know, you have arguments with yourself.” Now despite his role as town manager, Hirsch is not the town’s one resident. ”I live about three miles south of here, so I like to say I live in the suburbs of Buford,” Hirsch says. He leases this tiny little enclave with its very own zip code. The owner  —   stay with me  —   is actually a Vietnamese investor named Pham Dinh Nguyen. He’s the second character in this story. ”Yeah, he bought the place for the sole purpose of promoting his coffee,” Hirsch says. Nguyen made international news when he bought Buford a few years ago in an online auction for $900, 000. Buford is home to the only store in America where people can buy his PhinDeli Coffee. ”He wears a cowboy hat around town in Vietnam and people call him the mayor, ” says Hirsch. ”He is very famous for owning the smallest town in America.” In the store, the usual Wyoming convenience store staples line the shelves. There’s the jerky, the chips, the Coors Light  —   and then there are bags and bags of Vietnamese specialty coffee. ”We have what’s called Giot Dang  —   that’s their gourmet coffee,” says Hirsch. There are four other flavors, including a new mocha blend. It’s strong and a hit with the truckers who pass through. There just aren’t enough customers to last through the long, slow winter. Hirsch is trying to work out a deal with the owner to stay open until summer, but for now he says it’s pretty week by week. ”I grew up, born and raised on this mountain, so it’s in my blood,” Hirsch says. ”I love Buford and if there’s anything I can do to keep it open I would love to do it. It’s part of me.” But if the Trading Post shuts down, so does the town. In its heyday, Buford, an old railroad town, had a couple thousand residents. Later came the highway workers when the old Lincoln Highway  —   one of America’s first coast to coast routes  —   was built. That’s now Interstate 80 and most of the maintenance crews who used to call Buford home have moved on. ”It’s been around since 1886, right. I mean why end it now?” says Brandon Hoover. Hoover is the one actual resident of Buford. He’s the third character in this story. He just took a job running the place and living here full time. ”Solitude is my attitude,” Hoover says with a laugh. Outside in the biting wind, Hoover gives the full tour of the sprawling metropolis. ”Alright, we got the highway right next to us about 30 feet that way,” he says. There’s the office back here.” For Hoover, it was a   to quit his job at the Candlewood Suites in Cheyenne, 30 miles down the mountain from here. ”I was looking for just a way to get out of the rigamarole, get out of the rat race and just be able to regain my whole sense of perspective and sense of what this land will give you,” Hoover says. But for now, his mind is on his chores. ”Let’s see if we can find Sug,” he says. Hoover calls out, ’Sug, where you at?’ ” Buford’s population is technically two. The town comes with a horse, Sugar  —   and it’s his dinner time."
"After the upset results of the presidential election, some people felt motivated to become politically active. Justine Lee? She got the urge to host a dinner. But not your typical dinner party, where, if politics seeps into the conversation, things typically don’t turn volatile because all the guests likely share the same views. No, Lee was interested in the opposite: a gathering over a meal where all sorts of perspectives get aired. So Lee, a marketing professional, teamed up with her friend Tria Chang, who works education technology, to launch ”Make America Dinner Again,” a series of dinners in the Bay Area that brings together strangers whose views range the political spectrum. They figured that a dinner is a warm and   way to chew on different ideas and have diverse opinions  . While some people they invited had the opposite reaction, careful planning and gentle wording helped them convince others. At the first such gathering, in late January, they gathered 10 people, including themselves, at Local Kitchen  Wine Merchant, a swanky pizza restaurant in San Francisco. Tucked into a private room, they reveal a bit of their histories as they start to talk politics. Among the dinner guests is Walt Shjeflo, an attorney originally from North Dakota. ”I voted for Trump,” Shjeflo reveals, ”but the vile statements surprised me,” referring to the reactions from his liberal friends after the election.  Another guest, Rachel Williams, heads diversity at Yelp. ”Eight years of a black president does not excuse or erase 400 years of slavery and oppression and all that,” she told her fellow guests. And Affan Khokhar, who works at a technology company, is a     who was raised in a Muslim family. He grew up in a Trump stronghold in New Jersey, but he says he’s never tested politically in the very liberal Bay Area. ”I mean, it’s pretty much just like my Facebook [feed] living in front of me,” he says, referring to the liberal bubble of the Bay Area. As the guests dine on margherita, mushroom and pepperoni pizzas, organizers Lee and Chang pose questions to stir discussion. The group quickly delves into different issues that strike a personal chord. At one point, Shjeflo compares North Dakota with the Bay Area when it comes to certain struggles. ”In my experience, North Dakota has a lot less racism than the Bay Area does,” he says. ”There’s a lot less sexism than the Bay Area [has].” ”Is that because there’s a lot less women and a lot less black people?” Williams, who is African American, asks with a laugh. ”Because I don’t know too many sisters that live in North Dakota!” To which Shjeflo, who is white, replies: ”Rachel . ..You’re right, I’ll tell you this on that.” ”You know anybody who looks like me?” she asks. His answer: ”I never saw a black person live till I was 12 years old.” Alongside the dinner’s larger group discussion is time set aside to talk in pairs. Dom Brassey, an LGBTQ activist, says her own reaction to hearing Shjeflo’s more conservative opinions was a   call. ”It reminded me of why I think so many people give into the temptation to retreat from the dispute. ’I’m not convinced I need to convince!’ . .. Why do I need to build this relationship, why do I need to hear this kind of framing?” She asks Shjeflo, ”What did you think?” He says, ”That would be really nice, wouldn’t it, to have some place where you go where there’s both sides of the story?”   They all agree that this dinner is one way to speak and listen rather than argue. But, while it remains cordial, no one has a complete change of heart in the end. Khokhar says what he realized most during the dinner has more to do with himself. ”You only learn from testing your beliefs, defending your beliefs, being able to be coherent and articulate about your beliefs  —   and being challenged,” he says.  The hosts of this event have created an online guide for people around the country who want to organize something similar  —   so people anywhere can try to Make America Dinner Again."
"For more than a year, Donald Trump has harped on white nostalgia. A hearkening back to a rosy, but ambiguous, time in American history with his Make America Great Again slogan propelled his presidential run. It was a message, though, largely not embraced in minority communities, given that blacks, Latinos and women were fighting for equal rights during the same period Trump has indicated he believes America was great (the Industrial Revolution and the   War II 1940s and ’50s). President Trump did it again during his first address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, as he vowed that ”dying industries will come roaring back to life.” But appealing to white (specifically white male) nostalgia is nothing new. It was a consistent strain within pop rock of a generation ago (now, the Classic Rock popular with older, white men). For example . .. Listen to the first and third verses of Tom Petty’s ”Here Comes My Girl”: ”You know, sometimes, I don’t know why, but this old town just seems so hopeless I ain’t really sure, but it seems I remember the good times were just a little bit more in focus. . .. ”Every now and then, I get down to the end of a day, I’ll have to stop, ask myself, ’What’ve I done?’ It just seems so useless to have to work so hard, and nothin’ ever really seem to come from it.” That was from 1979. Probably the most famous from this nostalgia genre, though, came out five years later, with Bruce Springsteen’s ”Glory Days.” It tells melancholy anecdotes  —   a man who was a star baseball player, a woman who pines to recapture her sex appeal of a younger day. Around the same time as ”Here Comes My Girl” and ”Glory Days,” Billy Joel’s ”Allentown,” was released. In 1982, it retold the story of a town that saw shuttered coal factories  —   despite generations since World War II (there’s that time again) working there, living decent,   lives and spending ”weekends on the Jersey Shore.” But all that collapsed  —   and there was plenty of blame to go around, from the companies to the ”union people” who ”crawled away.” Resentment, bitterness and the loss of belief in the American Dream was left: ”Every child has a pretty good shot to get at least as far as their old man got. But something happened on the way to that place. They threw an American flag in our face.” Sound familiar? The reality is that every period in American history has had its tumult. There wasn’t a time that was ”great” for everyone. Going back through American history, before even the founding of the republic,   were enslaved  —   and even after the Civil War, blacks had to march and fight for equal rights because of Jim Crow. Women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920, and as late as the 1970s, women still largely weren’t allowed to wear pants to work  —   and there’s still a sizable wage gap between men and women. (It wasn’t until last year that flight attendants on British Airways won the right to wear pants.) Latinos marched for farm workers’ rights in the   century  —   and still feel under siege because of immigration perceptions. Gays and lesbians only won the right to marry in 2015. And on. But Trump doesn’t talk about that. He focuses, in fact, on a time when life was very different for minorities and women. It was a time of separate water fountains. ”Eisenhower, I don’t see him too much on lists of great, great presidents, but it was a nice time in the country,” Trump told Larry King in 1999 on his CNN talk show. ”The country had a prestige, and he had a certain, you know, demeanor. He was a quality, class act. There are certain people who have that.” That time happens to be when Trump was a child, son of a wealthy   owner. So it’s no surprise that minority communities largely don’t feel that Trump is talking to them. And for all the politicians that keep going back to places like Youngstown, Ohio, for photo ops of a city down on its luck and promising jobs, that is a very   view. The town’s fate had nothing to do with    NAFTA, which has been in Trump’s crosshairs. The problems are 40 years old, going back to this era of classic rock. It’s something more scripted for Petty and Joel and Springsteen  —   than Trump. Undoubtedly, changing economies do this  —   inspire nostalgia for something ”great again,” for those glory days. This isn’t the first economy to leave some behind or down on their luck. The problem is all the nostalgic daydreamers of ”Glory Days” end up at the same place  —   ”the well” drinking ” ’til I get my fill.” Springsteen, instead of trying to play up resentment, seemed to be making a larger point  —   that staying stuck in the past doesn’t leave you with much: ”Well, time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days.” If Springsteen was too subtle, Joel tries drives it home more explicitly in 1983’s ”Keeping the Faith”: ”You can linger too long in your dreams. Say goodbye to the oldies but goodies, ’cause the good ole days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.” In other words, linger too long on the past, and you don’t advance, you don’t get better, you stagnate and get passed by. Democrats, because of a recovering economy quarterbacked by their president, largely missed how this economic recovery had resurfaced those resentments (which also led to immigrant scapegoats). Trump exploited those feelings, and fueled his run to the White House. But it’s a familiar song  —   with familiar ends. Making good on his promises might prove tough, because no one can ever fully recapture the glory days."
"Tom Hanks of Sully, Joe Versus the Volcano, Forrest Gump and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me fame wants the White House press corps to stay caffeinated. The   actor sent a fancy Pasquini espresso machine and a bunch of espresso pods along with a typewritten note, which arrived on Thursday. ”To the White House Press Corps,” Hanks wrote. ”Keep up the good fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Especially the Truth part.” The story of Hanks and his efforts to keep the press corps alert dates back to the George W. Bush presidency. In 2004, the Washington Post’s Reliable Sources column ran this item: ”Touring the briefing room over Memorial Day weekend with his wife and one of his sons, and discovering that it lacked a coffee maker, Hanks had a caffeine machine delivered last week with a note: ”I hope this machine will make the   cycle of news a bit more pleasant. Add water, insert pod, press button and REPORT. All good things, Tom Hanks.” One glitch: The $1, 000 Illy machine currently isn’t working. A replacement part is on the way. ”It is going to come in handy during those background briefings,” says Knight Ridder’s Ron Hutcheson, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who wrote Hanks: ”I can’t promise favorable coverage if you ever run for president, but you have at least earned the gratitude of the White House press corps with your generous gift.” In 2010, Hanks visited the White House for a private screening of his HBO series The Pacific. So, of course, he ventured back to the press work area to check on his espresso machine. An ABC News report from the time indicates he found a mess. ”’Let me see what I can do for the poor slobs in the Fourth estate here,” Hanks said picking up the dirty coffee filter, ’You know you are supposed to clean this after every use!’ Director Steven Spielberg stood behind Hanks studying the machine. ’We’re just trying to combat sleep deprivation,’ Hanks said.” Shortly after, Hanks sent over another machine. But it, too, fell into neglect and disrepair. It’s not clear what inspired Hanks to send a new machine this week. Perhaps he simply assumed that after nearly seven years there’s no way the ”poor slobs” of the press corps had cleaned the machine after every use, as recommended. Or perhaps he’s been following the president’s twitter feed. .. . ..and figured the press corps needed a jolt. Whatever the case may be, it brought a flurry of excitement to the break room in the press work area in the midst of a very busy week. The reporters covering the White House aren’t the only journalists to benefit from the generosity of Tom Hanks. In 2010, he sent a bunch of pies to NPR member station KPCC in southern California."
"After years of waiting, it’s finally here. The Republican plan to reshape the Affordable Care Act  —   what they call ”repeal and replace”  —   kills the requirement that everyone buy health insurance by eliminating the tax penalty for those who don’t have coverage. It also makes significant changes in the financial assistance people can receive to buy a health plan. ”Our legislation transfers power from Washington back to the states,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, in a statement. ”We dismantle Obamacare’s damaging taxes and mandates so states can deliver quality affordable options.” The bill would offer tax credits, refundable in advance, to people with incomes below $75, 000. But those credits will be lower in many cases than the subsidies now offered in the ACA. The bill, which will go through many revisions and challenges, was released late Monday by two House committees, Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce. Members are expected to start voting on parts of the bill Wednesday. Rep. Frank Pallone,  . J. and Richard Neal,  . the ranking Democrats on the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committee, issued a joint statement saying the bill would ”rip healthcare away from millions of Americans, ration care for working families and put insurance companies back in charge.” The legislation will ultimately need approval by the full House and the Senate before it goes to President Trump for his signature. Until then, most of what is known as ”Obamacare” will stay in place. But it’s far from clear that Republicans in the House are unified in their support of the bill. Members of the   Freedom Caucus have said they oppose giving tax credits to people who don’t pay any federal income tax. And with only a slim majority in the Senate, only a few Republican defections could defeat the bill there. Four Republican senators wrote a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying they were concerned an early draft of the House plan would not adequately protect people who have insurance through Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. And Sen. Rand Paul was among three conservative Republicans who criticized an earlier version of the bill as ”Obamacare lite.” Under the proposed bill, tax credits would start at $2, 000 a year for individuals under age 30, rising to $4, 000 for those over 60. The proposal, first seen in a Feb. 10 draft of the bill, has been criticized as too meager to cover the full cost of a health insurance plan that provides full benefits. But the proposed tax credits could potentially pay for insurance that protects only against a catastrophic health event. They would begin to be phased out at incomes of $75, 000 for individuals and $150, 000 for families. To encourage people to buy coverage, the plan allows insurers to charge a 30 percent penalty to people who let their insurance lapse and then try to buy a new policy. In states that expanded Medicaid, people who are eligible can continue to enroll until Jan. 1, 2020, and those states would continue to benefit from the federal government paying a greater share of the health costs of those beneficiaries. The bill includes a couple of provisions to please abortion rights opponents. Tax credits won’t be available to pay for insurance policies if they include abortion coverage. And the bill ”defunds” Planned Parenthood, meaning it bars Medicaid from paying for health services provided at the clinics. Medicaid is already barred by federal law from paying for abortions, and women’s health advocates say the provision is likely to make it harder for   women to get birth control, screenings for cervical cancer and mammograms, which Planned Parenthood provides. Several taxes contained in the ACA would be repealed at the end of this year. These include taxes on health insurers, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers and a tax on     group health plans (aka Cadillac plans). An analysis by Avalere Health and McKinsey of an earlier draft of the bill, which contained many of the same provisions, concluded that it would lead to millions of people losing coverage. The plan offered by the House Republicans falls short of the outright repeal that has been demanded by more conservative members, including those in the House Freedom Caucus. That could be due to the shift in public attitudes toward the ACA in recent weeks. Public opinion has grown more favorable as major changes appeared imminent. A Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll in late February found 48 percent having a favorable opinion versus 42 percent viewing the law unfavorably. Kaiser says the shift is due largely to a change in the view of political independents, among which 50 percent now view the law favorably. We will have more on this story as it develops."
"President Trump signed a new executive order on Monday, after his first action temporarily barring refugees and travel from specific   countries faced a slew of criticism and lawsuits. The revised order has a number of changes, including dropping Iraq from the list of countries with restrictions. It also explicitly does not apply to lawful permanent residents (green card holders) or existing visa holders. The order goes into effect on March 16. Journalists across NPR will be annotating the full text of the order."
"Updated at 2:30 p. m. ET, President Trump has signed a new executive order that temporarily blocks visas from being issued to citizens of six   countries, revoking and replacing a controversial,   executive order known as the travel ban. Like the initial order signed Jan. 27, the new executive order bars arrivals from specific   countries for 90 days and suspends the entire U. S. refugee program for 120 days. It also caps the total number of refugees admitted this fiscal year at 50, 000, instead of 110, 000. But there are a series of differences. The ban announced Monday no longer includes Iraq. It explicitly doesn’t apply to lawful permanent residents (green card holders) or existing visa holders. Syrian refugees are not banned indefinitely. Refugees already formally scheduled for travel to the U. S. will be permitted to enter the country. The new order also omits a section about prioritizing refugees from minority religions in their home countries. That’s the part of the initial order that, as NPR’s Domenico Montanaro has reported, ”indicates prioritizing Christians,” and was one reason the order was challenged as a form of ”Muslim ban.” The order signed Monday will have a delayed implementation  —   going into effect at 12:01 a. m. ET on March 16  —   to avoid the chaotic situation created by the initial order, with people in transit when their visas were nullified. The new order blocks people traveling from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Iraq is no longer included because, the administration says, it has pledged to ”increase cooperation with the U. S.” and share more information about its citizens. A senior administration official told reporters about another reason: Iraq has agreed to the ”timely repatriation” of Iraqi citizens in the U. S. who are slated for deportation, the official said. As of last summer, Iraq was one of 23 countries considered ”recalcitrant” for refusing to cooperate with the U. S. in deporting their citizens. ”Recalcitrant countries” were raised as an issue in a separate executive order, but weren’t mentioned in either of the orders on visas and travel. Some ”recalcitrant” countries, including Iran and Libya, are affected by the visa ban most are not. Administration officials left open the possibility that other countries could be added to future   bans, or that countries currently on the list could be removed. ”Heightened Risks” The White House has consistently said that the travel ban was not and is not a ”Muslim ban,” but a policy designed to reduce the threat of a terrorist attack. Critics of the travel ban have challenged the selection of the seven (now six) countries, questioning whether it can be justified on any   national security grounds. The seven countries were on an Obama administration list of ”countries of concern” for the Visa Waiver Program, which had nothing to do with blocking travel entirely. As NPR’s Greg Myre has reported, the list ”doesn’t include any countries from which radicalized Muslims have actually killed Americans in the U. S. since Sept. 11, 2001”  —   like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan or Russia. The latest executive order apparently attempts to address this with a paragraph about ”conditions” in each targeted country, and the terrorist groups with a presence or connection there. ”Each of these countries is a state sponsor of terrorism, has been significantly compromised by terrorist organizations, or contains active conflict zones,” the new order states, alleging that the countries pose ”heightened risks” to U. S. security. The suspension of the U. S. refugee program has been similarly criticized. Since the Refugee Act of 1980, there have been no deadly terror attacks by refugees. Nine people were injured in an attack by a Somali refugee last year, which is still under investigation. In Monday’s executive order, the administration offered three examples of people who entered the U. S. as refugees and were convicted of   offenses. Two came from Iraq they are the men who lived in Bowling Green, Ky. and were charged with supporting a terrorist group. Another came from Somalia as a child refugee and was arrested for plotting an attack on a holiday event in Portland, Ore. He was a naturalized U. S. citizen by the time of his arrest. Speaking on Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said that ”people seeking to support or commit terrorist attacks here will try to enter through our refugee program.” He said hundreds of people who arrived as refugees are under FBI investigation for possible   crimes, although the Department of Justice has refused to provide any details about these reported investigations. Rounds of litigation, The White House insists the first order was legal and appropriate, even though it’s being replaced by the new order. That original order prompted chaos at airports and inspired protests  —   and dozens of lawsuits. The suits were filed by ”doctors, professors, students, people fleeing violence and Iraqis who have worked for the U. S. military,” as NPR’s Joel Rose and journalist Parker Yesko reported last month. They continued: ”Some [of the plaintiffs] were detained in American airports for hours over the weekend others were barred overseas from boarding planes bound for the U. S. Two Syrian brothers with visas to enter the country say they were turned around at Philadelphia International Airport and sent back to Damascus. ”Human rights organizations and attorneys general in five states jumped aboard some of the suits, and their lists of legal grievances were long. They alleged violations of the First, Fifth and 14th Amendments, which guarantee religious equality, due process and equal protection under the law, as well as denials of asylum and discriminatory visa processing.” One of the suits, brought by the state of Washington and joined by the state of Minnesota, prompted a federal judge to issue a nationwide temporary stay of Trump’s executive order on Feb. 3. The Department of Justice challenged the stay in a U. S. appeals court, but a panel of three judges upheld the suspension. As a result, the initial executive order has not been in effect for more than a month. The new order, which is twice as long as the original, is meant to ”address previous concerns” from the courts, according to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. But it’s not likely to be the end of legal challenges. ”I think everyone  —   and I assume the government as well  —   expects that there will be a new round of litigation,” Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU, told NPR before the new order was released. In a statement Monday, he said the new order is ”a   version that shares the same fatal flaws.” A ”dual track” strategy? Meanwhile, the signing of a new executive order doesn’t necessarily spell the end of lawsuits against the old order. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly said the administration plans follow a ”dual track” strategy of continuing to defend the old order from legal challenges even as a new order replaces it. However, the executive order signed Monday formally revokes the Jan. 27 order as of March 16, and a senior official at the Department of Justice told reporters on Monday that the DOJ believes a majority of the pending cases are now moot. That may well spell the end for many of those suits, especially those brought on more narrow grounds. But whether or not a lawsuit is still valid will be decided case by case. Judges might not necessarily be persuaded by the Justice Department’s arguments that a case is no longer relevant, says Catherine Kim, a law professor at the University of North Carolina Law School. She joined other law professors in signing an amicus brief against Trump’s initial order, and spoke to NPR before the new order was announced. Even for cases where the original complaint is no longer an issue under the new order  —   like, for instance, a case involving a lawful permanent resident  —   ”the courts may be worried that as soon as the case is dismissed the administration would just go back and reissue the [original] executive order,” Kim says. Other, broader challenges to the original order could apply equally to the new order, she says  —   such as the allegation that the order was ”done in bad faith,” she says. ”I don’t think that there is anything that the new executive order could do to address concerns raised by the courts [that] this was really motivated by animus, not by national security concerns,” she says. The Trump administration maintains that it will eventually triumph in the legal battle over the original executive action, based on the president’s broad authority on immigration issues. Some legal scholars, including Alan Dershowitz, believe the administration could win at least a partial victory on those grounds. ”I don’t think the ban is unconstitutional as it affects a family in Yemen who has had no contact with the United States and simply applies for a tourist visa to come see the Statue of Liberty,” he told NPR in early February. But, Dershowitz said, other elements of the ban  —   especially the initial interpretation that it applied to green card holders  —   are harder to defend. The issue could eventually end up before the U. S. Supreme Court."
"Over the weekend, President Trump accused his predecessor of ”wire tapping” communications from Trump Tower in New York, where   and   Trump lived and worked during the campaign and in the   to the inauguration. Former President Obama has denied the allegations, as has the former director of national intelligence. A spokesperson for Trump called on Congress to investigate the claim. The FBI, the House and the Senate are all investigating Russian attempts to influence the U. S. election. As we have reported, at least three people associated with Trump’s campaign communicated with Russian officials before Trump took office in January, but there are not many details about what was discussed in those communications, or details about what drew the U. S. intelligence community’s attention. Only Trump knows why he tweeted what he did early on Saturday morning, but there were previous reports and allegations that the Obama administration might have been conducting surveillance on people close to Trump. Here are some of those reports: Oct. 31: The New York Times reported that in the summer of 2016 the FBI had investigated whether the Trump Organization had connections to a Russian bank, but concluded that it did not. Nov. 7, 2016: The website Heat Street posted a piece by former Conservative British politician Louise Mensch stating that ”two separate sources with links to the   community have confirmed” that the FBI twice sought warrants to ”examine activities of ’U. S. persons’ in Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.” The article states that a June warrant request was denied, and that a second request in October was approved. Jan. 11: The Guardian reported that a June application by U. S. intelligence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been denied, and that the newspaper had not confirmed the Heat Street reporting about an October order. Jan. 12: The BBC reported that the June application had been denied, and quoted ”a lawyer outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case” saying the court had granted a request by U. S. intelligence to intercept electronic records from two Russian banks, and that the order involved three of    Trump’s associates. March 2: Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin accused Obama of using ”the instrumentalities of the federal government, intelligence activity, to surveil members of the Trump campaign and put that information out in the public,” on his radio show and podcast, The Mark Levin Show. March 3: The website Breitbart cited Levin in a post about alleged wiretaps dating back to October 2016. March 4: Trump tweeted, ”Just found out that Obama had my ’wires tapped’ in Trump Tower.” The director of the FBI, James Comey, asked the Justice Department to publicly deny the allegation. The Justice Department hasn’t said anything. On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning, James Clapper, who served as the director of national intelligence under Obama, said that to his knowledge there was no wiretapping on   Trump or his campaign. He also explicitly denied that there was any intelligence court order authorizing electronic surveillance of Trump. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, court is responsible for considering   requests from U. S. intelligence agencies. So, if the FBI wanted to listen in on telephone calls or other communications to and from Trump Tower, it might have requested a warrant from the FISA court, if the reasons for the surveillance pertained to foreign intelligence. A federal agency can also ask a federal district judge for a warrant to conduct electronic surveillance on U. S. citizens it believes are committing serious crimes. Such a criminal wiretap would go through the regular federal court system, not the special FISA court. As NPR’s justice correspondent Carrie Johnson says: ”No.” Surveillance of an American citizen by U. S. intelligence or law enforcement requires that a federal judge or the FISA court sign off, and those orders are requested not by the White House, but by the FBI or Justice Department if they believe a crime has occurred. Because the requests and the FISA court orders are secret, it’s difficult to get information about them. NPR’s Mara Liasson reports that, as president, Trump could release any court order allowing surveillance of Trump Tower, if such an order exists. ”He’s the only one in the United States with that power,” she explained. ”He could also easily ask the appropriate agencies whether there was a wiretap.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said such action would be interfering in an investigation, and that Congress should look into it, Mara reported. U. S. intelligence agents intercepted communications between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign, including Michael Flynn, who resigned from his post as national security adviser after he lied about the substance of a conversation he had with Russia’s ambassador. As we reported in February: ”Russian intelligence officials made repeated contact with members of President Trump’s campaign staff, according to new reports that cite anonymous U. S. officials. American agencies were concerned about the contacts but haven’t seen proof of collusion between the campaign and the Russian security apparatus, the reports say. ”Law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the calls at the same time as they investigated Russia’s attempts to tamper with the presidential election, according to The New York Times, which first reported the contacts.” Trump’s tweets have set off a public argument among the FBI, the White House, and the Department of Justice. On Monday, Spicer tweeted that the president wanted Congress to ”determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.” Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, and last week Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced he would recuse himself from any DOJ investigations or prosecution decisions involving the campaign. And the House Intelligence Committee is doing its own investigation into Trump’s possible ties to Russia, as is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And, to muddy the waters even further, the Justice Department is investigating the FBI director’s actions leading up to the election."
"Back in the olden days  —   maybe five years ago in Moscow time  —   the Russian word for barbershop was rather quaint: parikmakherskaya, or literally, ”wig shop.” While women could tend to their coiffures in ubiquitous salony krasoty, beauty salons, men had to content themselves with surly babushkas delivering awkward,   haircuts in spartan halls. Today, the Russian capital is experiencing a boom in   barbershops, where bearded, tattooed hairdressers style their   customers with the latest shadow fades and pompadours to the sounds of hard rock and screeching espresso machines. ”If you go to a regular parikmakherskaya, you tell them how you want your hair cut but it never turns out right,” said Maxim Kuzin, a young engineer waiting his turn in Pomades, one of    barbershops on a single block in downtown Moscow. ”Here, the technique is completely different. I like the result.” One of the newest words in the Russian language  —   the English word barbershop  —   exudes sophistication and hipness. In Pomades, the shelves up front are full of the gels, waxes and oils that modern men use to coif themselves. There’s a coffee bar, an   arcade video game, and in the back, five barber chairs. A haircut costs the equivalent of $17.     years ago, Roman Bagadayev, 31, and his partner, Yevgeniya Tolmachyova, 29, started Pomades as an online shop for men’s grooming products. That turned into a    store, which then morphed into their first barbershop. ”Moscow pushes people to do something,” said Tolmachyova. ”Everything here is very fast: people, traffic, business. So we’re expanding. Now we have three barbershops.” From its look and vibe, Pomades wouldn’t be out of place in Brooklyn or downtown San Francisco. Despite chilly U. S.  relations, Bagadayev says there’s no contradiction, since all his customers have grown up on American movies, listen to American music and wear American clothing brands. ”All Russians love American culture, actually,” said Tolmachyova. ”It’s all about image. It’s prestigious to have something from Western culture. It doesn’t matter what it is: any brands, what you wear, what you eat.” Muscovites are known for their trendiness  —   and it never takes very long for what’s cool in New York or London to show up on the streets of the Russian capital. From Moscow, fashions then filter to the rest of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Tolmachyova says she has had business inquiries from as far away as Kyrgyzstan. ”This boom is quite narrow,” said Stanislav Vazhenin, a client who studied in England and now works in a venture capital firm in Moscow. ”Where I’m from  —   northwestern Russia  —   there are no barbershops.” The fact that barbershops are now in vogue in Moscow is also a reflection of what could be called the emancipation of the Russian male. Until recently, Russian society took a narrow view of masculinity. Real men weren’t supposed to worry about what they looked like, as   to hair or skincare might raise suspicions. ”In Russia, people are homophobic a bit,” said Tolmachyova. ”A Russian man starts taking care of his appearance  —   it’s sometimes not socially approved.” Now young people who never knew the conformism of the Soviet Union are developing their own styles. With his bushy beard, nose ring and multiple tattoos, Pomades’ head barber, Artemy Zolotarevsky, would never have fit in back in those days. Even now, his look turns heads. ”Here in Moscow, it’s still not very typical for people to wear head tattoos and piercing and beards,” he said. ”When people see me, some are amazed, some give me mean looks. And so I think I’m a bit of an outlaw.” But he’s also a committed barber. The tattoo on his right hand depicts a barber’s pole crossed over electric clippers."
"Under the cover of darkness on a freezing March morning, 300 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents headed for New Bedford, Mass. Once there, they would raid a factory and arrest 361 immigrants in the country illegally, along with the people who hired them. It’s been 10 years since federal agents raided the textile plant. Hundreds of workers were detained on March 6, 2007, in an operation the governor at the time said brought on a ”humanitarian crisis.” The raid stemmed from an investigation into a Defense Department contractor that was hiring immigrants without work permits. It disrupted the lives of many, but some say it galvanized a community. ”When you talk about humanitarian, we covered every base,” says Bruce Foucart, the special agent in charge of homeland security investigations and the top ICE official overseeing the raid at Michael Bianco Inc. Families were broken up, but Foucart says ICE did what it could to prevent the children of factory workers from being left alone. ”We worked with [the then Massachusetts Department of Social Services] we worked with public safety, we worked with the New Bedford Police Department, we worked with the New Bedford School Department officials,” Foucart says. ”Our concern was we did not want to have children coming home to empty houses.” With tens of millions of dollars of Defense Department contracts, Bianco made gear for American soldiers like knapsacks and vests. The raid was a matter of critical infrastructure, Foucart says, and the order to arrest everyone who did not have papers came from the highest levels of government. A ”communitywide trauma” Ten years after the Bianco raid, several workers discuss their grievances with one of New Bedford’s two dozen fish factories. It’s a weeknight, and they’re meeting at the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, or Community Workers Center, a group founded in the aftermath of the raid. The group ”was like a fruit of the attack against us,” says Adrian Ventura, who heads the center that caters to workers from Central America. ”With every attack, something new is created.” Ventura says something fundamental changed with the raid. ”Many of the workers now know their rights,” he says. ”Many now fight for their benefits.” Some refer to the Bianco raid as a ”communitywide trauma” with effects still felt today. But it also brought people together. Ondine Sniffin, the first immigration attorney on the scene after the raid, says more people are willing to stand up for immigrants today. ”I think that gives the immigrant community some hope that before another raid like Michael Bianco happens, more people are aware, and there will be a greater outcry,” she says. Sniffin says her practice in New Bedford is getting flooded with calls from people afraid of what’s coming from the Trump administration. Maria del Carmen Villeda is one of the people desperate to know. Of the 361 Bianco workers who were arrested, Villeda was one of about 150 estimated by attorneys to be deported. Back in Honduras, she found herself facing unemployment, and she was menaced by gangs reaching new levels of brutality. ”This is why I went to the embassy to get a visa,” she says. ”But I was denied. After that, gang members killed an uncle and two cousins. I decided to leave. I left home at 1 in the morning  —   escaping from the gangs.” Villeda snuck back into the U. S. and turned herself in to authorities to apply for asylum. She’s back in New Bedford and has been wearing a government tracking monitor around her ankle for a year and a half. She has little recourse now but to pray that President Trump will embrace policies to help her people. ”We’ll see what happens with the new president,” Villeda says. ”I hope God will touch his heart.” Simon Rios is a general assignment reporter with NPR member station WBUR in Boston. You can follow him at @simonfrios. "
"Full Frontal host Samantha Bee makes no bones about the fact that she was caught off guard by Donald Trump’s victory on election night. ”We had a balloon drop planned. . .. We had balloons in our rafters, and we had to call it [off],” Bee tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”We were able to do a reset, but it was not an easy process by any means.” For Bee and Jo Miller, the show’s   Trump’s win meant doubling down on their coverage of the White House, much to their chagrin. ”There were so many other things we wanted to cover,” Bee says. ”It was kind of this endless pool of stories we wanted to tell.” Full Frontal with Samantha Bee is a satire news show with a feminist point of view. It’s now in its second season on TBS. Among the postelection challenges that Bee and Miller face is finding a way to criticize Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway while also being sensitive to the misogyny many public women have to deal with. ”I know that [Conway has] gotten the same kind of personal, nasty, misogynist attacks that Sam has . .. and that’s wrong,” Miller says. ”We wanted to make sure that we didn’t say anything that could be construed by anybody as being   or sexist or a personal attack on her, instead of the way she lives her life and does her business.” Bee and Miller will also be hosting an independent, televised roast of the president on April 29, at the same time as the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Bee says the special, called Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, will be a ”celebration of free press . .. a chance for us to celebrate the people who have helped us lift our show.” Interview Highlights, On the harassment Bee experienced on Twitter during election night, Bee: As the election results were becoming more clear, I checked into my Twitter feed and the tone of people’s @  to me went into violence. Like, it is indescribable what happened. I felt like the whole world shifted in those few hours in a way that was  —   everything about it was so unexpected, but I could feel this seismic shift in the way that people were interacting with me. . .. Miller: We took your phone away. Bee: Everyone took my phone away because it put me into such a dark place for a couple of really bad days. . .. I could feel me personally being a target. . .. It was vicious right out of the gate. And in that moment I kind of understood the way it was going to be from then on. And at that point everyone took away my Twitter because it was making me too depressed. Miller: And it was like night and day when we took it away. It’s like, ”Oh, Sam’s back!” On what it was like to work in The Daily Show’s   writers’ room, Bee: I personally didn’t have a very gendered experience there. . .. I’m a hard worker and I’m a gold  . I like to put my nose down and do the work. That’s how I felt about the experience. No one ever didn’t listen to my ideas there because I was female people didn’t listen to my ideas because they were sometimes bad ideas. Miller: In 2009, when Hallie Haglund and I were hired as writers, it was an   room at the time. There had been women there there weren’t at the time. So we came into a very masculine environment. Whenever you’re in a room with 16 guys, you get talked over. People pick up the thing you said five minutes ago and say it and then get heard. Jon was always the best about making eye contact with the person who was quiet or who had just gotten talked over and locking eyes with them and saying, ”No wait, talk. You.” I really appreciated that. I think I was completely shy and scared for a while, and something flipped and I just started being a complete bitch with sharp elbows and talking over other people. On why Bee doesn’t sit behind a desk like other late night hosts  Bee: Personally, as a viewer and as a consumer of   shows, I just didn’t want to see another one. I just didn’t want to see another desk. . .. When I sit behind things, I can’t move my body. It’s very constricting. It becomes like  —   well, for me it would’ve been a crutch. Believe me, I was very scared to not have a desk because I thought, Wouldn’t it be great to have something to hide behind? I need something that I can scoot behind. . .. But in the end I didn’t need it at all, and I’m so glad that we really don’t have anything for me to hide behind. It’s better that way. On deciding on Bee’s look for the show (a blazer and sneakers) Bee: It’s very similar to the uniform that I wear in daily life. I wear blazers in my life  —   I love them. I feel very protected in a blazer. It’s my uniform. When we were in the early days of doing test shows, I had it in my head that I had to wear a dress and high heels, I really did. I thought, OK, when you’re a woman and you’re on television you have to wear a dress and you have to wear high heels. We did another test show and I was wearing high heels and the heels were such stilettos that the heels were poking through the floor of the set and it was terrible. . .. And actually a couple executives from TBS were there and they pulled me aside after and they were like, ”You were so comfortable, you seemed to be having so much fun in rehearsal when you were wearing sneakers and a blazer, and then you put on your outfit for the show and you seem like you’re having a terrible time.” And they were right. I was having a terrible time because I was so physically uncomfortable. And they were like, ”Why don’t you just do the show in the clothes you want to wear?” I was like, ”You can do that? I think I will. Thank you!” "
"When you pick up a newspaper and read a story about the latest results on breast cancer, autism, depression or other ailments, what are the odds that finding will stand the test of time? The answer, according to a study in the journal PLOS One is: flip a coin. Only about half of the medical findings reported in 199   newspapers actually turn out to hold up when tested in further studies, the study found. And sorry, dear reader, you’re not likely to hear about those refutations. This is partly the fault of journalists, who are always on the lookout for new and unexpected findings, which science and medical journals happily highlight and promote. ”But I think the fault is also on scientists,” says Estelle   a biologist at the University of Bordeaux in France and lead author of the study. ”I think a lot of time they are so excited about their results they get carried away.” She and her colleagues plucked out several thousand journal studies to examine. To measure the veracity of those studies, they looked for more     studies. They then dug through the Dows Jones Factiva database of newspaper articles (television broadcasts,   sources and NPR stories were not included in the study) and identified 156 stories about a range of medical issues, including autism, depression, Alzheimer’s, breast cancer and glaucoma.   studies found that about half of those original, exciting findings didn’t stand up to deeper scrutiny. To determine that, the researchers looked at   which are studies that pull together information from multiple similar studies to draw an overarching conclusion more robust than any individual study. ”As a scientist, I must admit that I was sure that almost everything published in Science and Nature was absolutely true, and I was a bit disappointed when I understood this wasn’t the case,” Estelle   says. That’s truly the nature of science. But while scientists eventually set the record straight in the literature, those   studies rarely get covered by the news media. For example,   and her colleagues looked at a study published in 2003 in Science that reported a genetic variant linked to depression when people with that trait faced stressful life events. That news made the pages of 50 newspapers, they found. But when 11 subsequent studies tried and failed to find the same association, not a single newspaper in their database covered any of those studies. That may be because that kind of ”negative” result tends to get published in less prominent journals,   says. And journalists aren’t regularly patrolling those for news. Finally, in 2009, scientists published a   of these results in a prominent journal, JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, which showed the initial report didn’t hold up. Even then, only four newspapers covered that finding  —   and newspapers continued to report the original 2003 finding even after it had been clearly refuted. In fact, she found that none of the studies they examined that linked a gene to depression, schizophrenia or autism panned out. And when the scientists looked specifically at 53 studies that were   reports of a new phenomenon and reported in newspapers, they found that   were ”disconfirmed” by subsequent studies. What’s really going on here is a reminder that science progresses in fits and starts, with plenty of false leads. Any single finding is provisional. Careful journalists will remind readers of that fact, but it’s overlooked frequently.  ’s advice to readers is simple: ”Keep in mind that when a study is an initial study, even if it’s very exciting and amazing and a breakthrough  —   or whatever you want to call it  —   it still needs to be confirmed.” The adage ”Don’t believe everything you read” applies here as well."
"Robert Osborne, Hollywood historian and host of Turner Classic Movies, has died at 84, according to the TV network. Osborne’s partner, David Staller, told the Hollywood Reporter that Osborne died in his sleep. In a statement, TCM general manager Jennifer Dorian said that Osborne’s ”calming presence, gentlemanly style, encyclopedic knowledge of film history, fervent support for film preservation and highly personal interviewing style all combined to make him a truly   host.” NPR film critic Bob Mondello also highlighted Osborne’s ”encyclopedic” knowledge of film history. Osborne ”grew up before the Internet made film research easy  —   before there was even a book keeping track of Oscar winners,” Bob told our Newscast unit. ”So he spent hours at his college library scribbling notes that eventually helped him write film reference books, fill a column for The Hollywood Reporter, and host decades of Turner Classic Movies.” According to his biography, Osborne was born in a small town in Washington state and studied journalism before he headed to Hollywood, where Lucille Ball encouraged his writing career. He had a brief acting career  —   his biography mentions the pilot of The Beverly Hillbillies, and Bob Mondello notes uncredited bit parts in Psycho and Spartacus  —   but it was his work as a host and historian that earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He wrote the ”Rambling Reporter” column in The Hollywood Reporter for more than 25 years, and wrote a series of official histories of the Academy Awards. Osborne was the first host of Turner Classic Movies, when the network launched in 1994. He has been the face and voice of the network ever since, although he was eventually joined by two other hosts and had cut back on his duties in the last few years. About a year ago, in an interview with Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning, Osborne said he’d been training his whole life to host TCM  —   without imagining it would be an option. ”I was preparing for my ideal job that didn’t exist,” he said. He also told Rocca why he believed movies matter. ”I think we have to have dreams,” he said in the CBS interview. ”We need a little Carmen Miranda with all her tutti frutti hats. And we need some Fred and Ginger dancing. We need Gene Kelly hanging off that lamppost. We need to be taken into a fantasy world, and not be afraid to go there occasionally.”"
"President Trump, who still has hundreds of senior level positions to fill at nearly every federal agency, told interviewers last week that ”you don’t need all those jobs.” But even if that’s the case, simply leaving posts vacant may not be the best way to accomplish what adviser Stephen Bannon referred to as ”deconstructing the administrative state.” Some 1, 100 political positions require Senate confirmation, and so far Trump has nominated just a handful. None of the deputy secretaries or undersecretaries at the Department of State have been named, for instance. At the Pentagon, the No. 3 job, undersecretary for policy, remains unfilled. At Homeland Security, two key posts overseeing Trump’s immigration crackdown  —   the directors of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, are held by acting directors. Trump has yet to name a FEMA director or TSA administrator. Other high level posts at the Treasury, the Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services are likewise filled by acting heads or remain vacant. Paul Light, professor of public service at NYU, calls this a ”neckless government” many agency heads are in place, but ”you’re missing all those positions between the Cabinet secretaries, and the sort of    work of government. The result, Light says: ”government is basically frozen.” Maybe the president wants it that way. After all, he told Fox News last week, he doesn’t want to fill ”a lot of those jobs . .. (because) they’re unnecessary. It’s people, over people, over people. I say, what do all those people do? You don’t need all those jobs.” Light agrees the federal leadership hierarchy ”has been thickening, president after president, for the last 50 years.” But, he adds, Trump is making a mistake if he thinks that leaving many of these positions open ”is going to enhance control of his government. It isn’t.” And it is not ”deconstructing the administrative state.” Joseph Postell, assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, has written about that term. He says there is no clear definition of the administrative state. ”It’s typically used to describe   and sometimes it’s used to describe the rise of administrative agencies and the number of agencies that we have.” It’s not just a fancy name for bureaucracy. Postell says those who use the term  —   mostly conservatives  —   view the issue more as ”a structural or constitutional problem that has to do with agencies being able to make law,” as opposed to where laws are supposed to be made, in Congress. What Bannon means by the phrase ”deconstructing the administrative state,” a term he used at the CPAC conference last month, is not clear. But Postell says dismantling the administrative state will require acts of Congress and won’t be achieved simply by leaving important government posts unfilled."
"Over the last 15 years, drummer and composer Nate Smith has built the quintessential jazz resume: He’s been in bands led by jazz legends, such as bassist Dave Holland, and toured with some of the music’s rising stars, like saxophonist Chris Potter. Jazz musicians often lead nomadic lives they go where the gigs are. A growing contingent of younger players are musical nomads, too: They’re reworking the beats they grew up with  —     rock, RB  —   into settings for jazz creativity. Smith, 42, is among them. He comes from jazz  —   he’s happy when he can get sparks flying  —   but, like many of his peers, he’s searching beyond jazz history. His first solo album, Kinfolk: Postcards From Everywhere, emphasizes catchy, singable melodies and   backbeats. Smith often starts with a conventional pattern, then disrupts it by adding an extra hiccup of a beat. Just that slight modification gives the groove a serious jolt. Throughout the record, Smith tells multiple travel stories. Some reflect his experiences touring he’s soaked up breezy, wonderfully open grooves from all over the place. Some are more personal: His parents are heard in short interludes, recalling his family’s moves from the South to the North and back. Many songs express a deep wistfulness and the traveler’s longing for home. When Smith and vocalist Gretchen Parlato listened back to the tune ”Pages” in the studio, the drummer says he was seized with an unusual worry  —   that the track was too pretty, not cerebral enough. He got over that pretty quickly, when he realized that the journey of the project mirrored his own journey: He started out in jazz and wound up with the kind of sweeping travel diary only a nomad could make."
"For young adults, social media may not be so social after all. Among people in that age group, heavy use of platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram was associated with feelings of social isolation, a study finds. The results surprised study   Brian Primack. ”It’s social media, so aren’t people going to be socially connected?” he says. He’s director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh. And while his team’s previous research connecting social media use and depression in young adults wasn’t terribly surprising, these new results seemed counterintuitive. While    social connectedness is strongly associated with   it’s not clear what happens when those interactions happen virtually. To investigate, Primack and his colleagues surveyed 1, 787 U. S. adults ages 19 to 32 and asked them about their usage of 11 social media platforms outside of work. The survey also gauged social isolation by asking participants questions such as how often they felt left out. (As will happen in this type of survey, people may have lowballed their estimates of media use.) It turns out that the people who reported spending the most time on social media  —   more than two hours a day  —   had twice the odds of perceived social isolation than those who said they spent a half hour per day or less on those sites. And people who visited social media platforms most frequently, 58 visits per week or more, had more than three times the odds of perceived social isolation than those who visited fewer than nine times per week. The study appeared Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. This study can’t nail down causation. It could be that when people feel socially isolated, they go online a lot in an attempt to feel less lonely, says Primack. Or it might be that spending a lot of time on social media makes people feel isolated. ”You might watch all these interactions where it seems like everyone else is connecting,” he says. That could lead to feeling excluded. The images of other people’s seemingly perfect vacations, homes and lives, even though those are not likely to represent reality, can make you feel like you’re missing out. It could be that influence goes both ways  —   isolation drives social media use and vice versa. Or there might be some unknown factor that is leading to both social isolation and social media use. (The researchers controlled for the major potential influencers including age, gender, relationship status, household income and education.) Primack says the results shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that we should ditch our social media accounts, but there’s a lot to dig into to see how best to use them. For example, future research could focus on whether outcomes vary if people are using social media actively or passively, for heated political disagreements or to click ”like” on puppy pictures, and to extend their   social network or as an end in itself. ”What we know at this point is that we have evidence that replacing your   relationships with social media use is detrimental to your ” says Holly Shakya, an assistant professor in the division of global public health at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the study. ”But we need further research to tease out the mechanisms and replicate the findings,” she says. This study, she says, is another piece of the puzzle. Shakya was an author of a study published in January that tracked Facebook use and   over time and found the use of the social network was negatively associated with factors including physical health, mental health and life satisfaction. Offline interactions, meantime, had positive effects. ”Where we want to be cautious . .. is when the sound of a voice or a cup of coffee with a friend is replaced with ’likes’ on a post,” she says. Primack notes that his study was conducted in a specific age group, and shouldn’t be generalized to older or younger people. Both social isolation and social media use are very different across the age spectrum for example, young adults generally have a lot of different opportunities for   experiences and so social media use may represent a retreat from that, while older adults are more likely to feel socially isolated and might benefit from having opportunities to connect online. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson."
"In a reversal, the Supreme Court will not decide Gavin Grimm’s lawsuit over a school policy that requires students to use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex. The court was scheduled to hear the case this month. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the 4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. Its   order cites the Trump administration’s recent move to rescind federal guidelines that transgender students have the right to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity. Grimm is a    senior who designated female at birth and came out as transgender when he was a freshman in high school in Gloucester, Va. He had initially been allowed to use the boys’ restroom  —   but after parents complained, he was told to use a ”unisex” bathroom. Here’s what Grimm told NPR about the arrangement last month: ”The problem with mandating that I use alternate facilities is I’m essentially being forcibly segregated from my peers. This idea that it’s a unisex bathroom   sit down and go use it   is an idea of a compromise. And I’m not looking for a compromise. I’m looking for my right. I’m looking for the ability to live my life like every other one of my peers is able to do. I’m not unisex. I’m a boy. And it’s unreasonable to expect me to be the only peer that is not allowed to use the restrooms with my other peers.” Grimm’s case has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Council and other groups. Dozens of companies, from Amazon and Apple to Twitter, say they also support his argument, as the Christian Science Monitor recently reported."
"After Germany canceled a political rally featuring a Turkish minister, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan likened the German government to the Nazis. The comments mark a ”new low in   relations,” NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Berlin. German officials condemned the inflammatory remarks but ”stopped short of punitive actions against Ankara over the matter,” Soraya says. ”That’s because Germany desperately needs Turkey’s help to keep asylum seekers from flooding into Europe.” Germany is home to nearly 1. 5 million Turks eligible to vote in Turkey’s upcoming referendum, according to Turkish media. The vote will decide whether to expand the powers of the president. Authorities in southwest Germany cited security reasons in canceling the Turkish minister’s planned speech. ”Two other meetings between Turkish officials and Turkish citizens . .. went ahead anyway,” Soraya adds. Erdogan railed against the cancellation on Sunday, saying the practices are ”no different than the Nazi ones of the past,” according to Turkey’s   Anadolu news agency. He also appeared to threaten Germany if it tried to stop him from speaking in the country at some point in the future. ”If you don’t let me in, or if you don’t let me speak, I will make the whole world rise up,” he said, according to Deutsche Welle. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement that there was no justification for the comments, saying such comparisons serve only to diminish the suffering of the Nazis’ victims. Her spokesman Steffen Seibert said to the Turkish government: ”Let us be open and let us talk to each other when necessary, but let us keep in mind the special importance of our close   partnership and relationship.” He added, ”Let us keep a cool head.” The EU struck a deal with Turkey last year aimed at stemming the flow of migrants and refugees into Europe. Since then, some of Merkel’s critics have suggested that her reliance on Turkey has tempered her criticism of the country in the face of human rights abuses. An editorial Monday in Der Spiegel suggested that the refugee crisis ”prevents honest dealings with Turkey.” It argued that Merkel is ”sadly inhibited” and ”mostly driven by fear” when it comes to Turkey. Last month,   journalist Deniz Yucel, who is a correspondent for the newspaper Die Welt, was detained in Turkey ”on charges of terror propaganda,” according to Anadolu. Yucel has written articles critical of the Turkish government, which has a record of cracking down on press freedoms. In an attempt to defuse tensions, Merkel spoke with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on the phone on Saturday, Deutsche Welle reports, ”only for Erdogan to lash out at Berlin hours later.”"
"Tossing a coin into a pool is believed to be good luck. But it proved to be terrible luck for a green sea turtle who consumed nearly 1, 000 coins thrown into her pool. The female green sea turtle is now recovering from an   surgery on Monday. Veterinarians removed some 11 pounds of metal that she couldn’t digest, according to The Associated Press. ”It is hard to imagine how it swallowed such a large number of coins. I’ve never seen such a case before,” as Pasakorn Brikshavana, of Chulalongkorn University’s veterinary science department told the Bangkok Post. The animal reportedly consumed coins for years that tourists would throw into her pool in the town of Sri Racha. Eventually, the animal had difficulty swimming because of the weight of the money, as Reuters reported. And the large metal mass eventually caused the underside of her shell to crack, according to the BBC. The coins are visible on CT scans of the turtle, pictured here. It appears that the turtle is known by different names. The AP and BBC say she is called Bank, while the Bangkok Post and Reuters say she is named Om Sin, which is Thai for ”piggy bank.” After the operation, the veterinarians showed reporters the large pile of coins extracted from the animal. The AP describes the complicated surgery:  ”Five surgeons from Chulalongkorn University’s veterinary faculty patiently removed the coins over four hours while ’Bank’ was under general anesthesia. The stash was too big to take out through the   ( ) incision they had made, so it had to be removed a few coins at a time. Many of them had corroded or partially dissolved. ”’The result is satisfactory. Now it’s up to Bank how much she can recover,’ said Pasakorn Briksawan, one of the surgical team. While recovering in Chulalongkorn University’s animal hospital, the turtle will be on a liquid diet for the next two weeks.” The turtle was filmed by the BBC after the operation with a cloth over her eyes, head resting on a bright pink pillow."
"Historically, when humans have sought a reliable source of calories  —   particularly one that can be readily nabbed from an unsuspecting animal with minimal exertion and zero horticulture skills  —   we have often turned to eggs. We’ve pilfered the ova of countless creatures since Neolithic times. But it is the nutritive and symbolic capacities of the humble bird egg, primarily that of the chicken, that we have most consistently championed: reliable nourishment, a hangover cure, an emblem of rebirth  —   when necessary, a supreme projectile. As P. G. Wodehouse asked in his 1906 novel, Love Among The Chickens, ”Have you ever seen a man, woman, or child who wasn’t eating an egg or just going to eat an egg or just coming away from eating an egg? I tell you, the good old egg is the foundation of daily life.” Yet in the late 1970s, our egg appreciation soured. Doctors realized that excess cholesterol in our blood predicts a higher risk of heart disease. Cholesterol is a fatty substance necessary for digestion, cellular function and the production of hormones. When too much of it shuttles through our blood supply, it can accumulate on artery walls and up our risk for heart attack and stroke. By extension, many physicians of the day assumed that eating   foods like butter, red meat and eggs was probably disastrous for our health and should be avoided. Fat phobia ensued. We now know it’s more complicated than this. Cholesterol no doubt contributes to heart disease by literally blocking our blood vessels. And eating cholesterol can raise levels of it in the blood, but, as a growing body of research has shown, not by that much. Consuming sugar, transfats or excessive saturated fat can be more harmful to cholesterol levels than dietary cholesterol itself. Most of the cholesterol in our bodies we make ourselves in the liver, and total body levels are heavily influenced by genetics, gender and age. As more and more research suggests that some degree of cholesterol consumption is harmless, if not healthy, the egg’s reputation is gradually returning. Yet some experts worry that the science is being misinterpreted and spun by the media, the egg industry and even opportunistic doctors. Diet science tends to be presented and perceived as black or white. Take butter: bad for us one day, not so bad the next. It’s an eternal cycle of   revenue. Unfortunately, health and science are rarely this simple. And neither is the egg. Our collective fear of cholesterol and other fats in part traces back to results from the famous Framingham Heart Study. Launched in 1948 and still going today, the study began by tracking the lifestyles of 5, 209 people from Framingham, Mass. The results, which began to appear in journals in the early 1960s, led to our current understanding of heart health and how it’s affected by factors like exercise, smoking and diet. Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health’s Nutrition Department, was one of the first physicians to realize that while the Framingham findings showed that cholesterol in the blood is associated with a higher risk of heart disease, no studies at that point had shown that cholesterol consumption actually increased blood levels. Willett and his colleagues have since studied thousands of patients for years and have found no evidence that moderate dietary cholesterol or egg consumption increases the risk for heart disease and stroke, except in people with a strong genetic risk for high cholesterol and possibly people with diabetes. His findings echo those from a 2013 study published in BMJ reporting that eating one egg per day is not associated with impaired heart health. ”There is now general consensus that dietary cholesterol, primarily consumed in eggs, and to a lesser extent in certain seafoods like shrimp, has a relatively small effect in raising blood cholesterol,” explains Dr. Bruce Griffin, who studies the links between nutrition and cardiovascular disease at the University of Surrey in England. Griffin’s own study from 2009 found that overweight people prescribed a   diet that included two eggs a day actually saw a drop in cholesterol levels. The renaissance around cholesterol is not lost on guideline committees, many of which are softening their stance. In 2013 the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association rattled the medical community by releasing new cholesterol guidelines that abandoned the   goal of keeping our ”bad cholesterol”  —   our LDLs  —   under 100. The guideline authors based their decision on the lack of   trials supporting a specific target. Too many LDLs tumbling through our bloodstream are no doubt bad, they acknowledge, but dangerous levels in one person might be tolerable in someone else. Also, chasing a specific target through overtreatment could subject patients to drug side effects, which need to be considered. The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans  —     by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and U. S. Department of Health and Human Services  —   also broke with tradition. General clinical dogma had previously held that total cholesterol should be capped at 300 milligrams per day in healthy people, roughly the amount found in 1     chicken eggs. Yet the new guidelines don’t include a specific numerical goal. As the authors wrote, ”available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and [blood] cholesterol . .. Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” But some nutrition scientists worry that this softened official line on cholesterol sends the wrong message. ”The lack of dietary cholesterol recommendations in recently released . .. guidelines is controversial,” says Dr. Wahida Karmally, director of nutrition at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University. ”This should not be interpreted as an affirmation to ignore dietary cholesterol, since there is clear evidence that it does increase ” she says. And it does. But by some estimates, only by around 10 percent. Karmally also points out the danger in generalizing study results to the entire population. She notes that a significant portion of population  —   up to 30 percent, some estimate  —   are thought to be ”” meaning they experience abnormally high spikes in blood cholesterol as a result of consuming cholesterol. Most experts agree that   need to be especially diligent about limiting cholesterol consumption. Dr. J. David Spence, a professor of neurology and clinical pharmacology at Western University in London, Ontario, a known egg detractor, is livid at how the 2015 guidelines were interpreted. ”The egg industry and the media seized on the first paragraph of the media release of the new guideline, which said there is not strong data on which to base a specific numerical limit to a dietary cholesterol intake,” he points out. ”But if we read on, the guidelines recommend that cholesterol intake should be as low as possible and part of a generally healthy diet.” The report also cautions that foods high in cholesterol are often also high in saturated fat, which itself increases blood cholesterol and the risk of heart disease. Spence likens Big Egg to Big Tobacco in its loose interpretation of scientific data in the interest of profit. In December 2016, a   published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition reported that people who eat an average of one egg a day have a 12 percent lower risk for stroke compared with those who eat fewer eggs. The study also found no link, whether positive or negative, between egg consumption and coronary heart disease.  Yet note the fine print: The study was partially funded by something called the Egg Nutrition Center, a   ”nutrition education division of the American Egg Board (AEB) a national checkoff program on all egg farms with more than 75, 000 hens.” ”I am not trying to put egg farmers out of business,” says Spence. ”[But] the propaganda of the egg industry rests on a  .” He is referring to the fact that many past studies funded by the egg industry that support egg consumption measured fasting cholesterol levels rather than levels after a meal. Most of us spend a good portion of our day in a   state, when our cholesterol climbs to higher levels  —   and when it presumably does more damage to our arteries. What’s more, by not measuring cholesterol after meals, researchers are unable to identify the   for whom consuming cholesterol poses added health risks. Spence’s true gripe lies not with the egg itself, but with the yolk. One jumbo egg yolk contains around 240 milligrams of cholesterol, nearly as much as an entree I was frightened to Google: the ”  lb. Hardee’s Monster Thickburger.” In an email, Spence recommended I try his omelet and frittata recipes while writing this article. Both are made with egg whites, which he cedes is a healthy source of protein. Cholesterol aside, Willett points to other possible health benefits of eggs. They contain some unsaturated fats, associated with a lower risk of heart disease also iron and a number of vitamins and minerals. And a new Finnish  study  —   one not affiliated with the egg industry  —   even suggests that eating one egg a day could improve   cognitive function. ”Overall it is hard to say that eggs are good or bad,” says Willett. ”They’re almost certainly no worse than sugary breakfast cereal or a bagel with cream cheese  —   probably better. In terms of health, they seem to be in the middle somewhere.” However, in the interest of a healthy breakfast, before cracking into an egg, Willett says to consider fruit, nuts and whole grains, all thought to lower blood cholesterol and the risk of heart disease. ”A bowl of steel cut oats topped with nuts and berries will almost certainly reduce risk of heart disease compared to a breakfast centered on eggs,” he says. ”That’s what I have most mornings, sometimes adding a bit of yogurt. But eggs are clearly not a poison pill.” Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired and Scientific American, and on The Atlantic. com. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. He’s also on Twitter: @BretStetka"
"Bonuses paid to executives and administrators in the University of Missouri System ”may violate the Missouri Constitution,” the state auditor says in a new report that details hidden bonuses, ”excessive” luxury vehicle allowances  —   and $100, 000 in retention payments to a chancellor who resigned amid a furor, only to be rehired in a new post months later. ”Administrators appear to have forgotten that the system is a public institution, and that they are accountable to taxpayers, students and families,” Missouri State Auditor Nicole Galloway said in presenting her report on the University of Missouri System and its Board of Curators. That former chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, resigned his post at the flagship Columbia campus in 2015, on the same day University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe stepped down. While Wolfe was undone by his handling of racial incidents at the campus, Loftin resigned after nine deans from nine different departments called for his dismissal in a letter they sent to the school’s Board of Curators. Despite the deans’ repudiation of Loftin’s leadership  —   they said he had created a ”toxic environment through threat, fear and intimidation”  —   Loftin, who resigned in November of 2015, ”continued to receive his full chancellor salary of $459, 000 per year through April 30, 2016,” the auditor’s report states. The agreement that was approved when Loftin resigned had called for him to receive a salary at 75 percent of his chancellor pay. Detailing what the auditor calls ”financial mismanagement” of the former leader’s transition, Galloway says a new job was created for Loftin last May, paying him $344, 250 per year as the Director of National Security Research. When he returned, Loftin also received a $35, 000 annual stipend and a vehicle allowance of $15, 560  —   nearly $1, 300 per month. Noting that his base pay is 31 percent more than any other research administrator on campus, Galloway’s report says Loftin was granted ”developmental leave” almost immediately upon taking the job, giving him the rest of the year ”to travel the UM System and the country to ’learn what we do’”  —   citing the offer letter for the job. The auditor also found fault with the system’s payment of bonuses and vehicle allowances. From the report: ”In 2015, 2016 and 2017, the Board of Curators or System President approved approximately $1. 2 million in incentive payments to top executives and administrators for their performance during the preceding years. Incentive payments were made without a formalized and clearly defined process of how the additional compensation was to be earned, giving the appearance of   bonuses, which are a violation of the Missouri Constitution.” For the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years, the auditor says, the system paid some $407, 000 in vehicle allowance payments to ”an average of 15 top executive and administrative positions”  —   a system that, in the most recent fiscal year, meant those individuals were paid an average of around $1, 240 a month. Speaking of the wider ramifications of the university system’s financial stewardship, Galloway said, ”Missouri families often take on significant debt, even after spending years saving their   dollars, to send their sons and daughters to college. System leaders must work to accept responsibility for their actions and to regain the public’s confidence.” Tuition at the University of Missouri did not rise for most students last year, as part of a deal made with state leaders over an increase in funding. But with a new governor looking to cut the state’s higher education budget, some now say tuition hikes will result. The official audit includes the university system’s response, which says in part: ”Nothing in the System’s plan violates the state constitution or gives any reasonable appearance of doing so.” The system also refers to some of the laws cited by the state auditor as being written with either the general assembly or a municipality  —   not the university system  —   in mind. The system defended its handling of bonus pay, stating that the criteria it uses to judge job performance are ”quantifiable” or ”otherwise objective.” To that, the auditor replied in a comment of her own, ”Our review of the documentation determined the measurement criteria in place are almost entirely subjective.” On the subject of vehicle allowances, the UM System said it provides the payments to executives ”as one component of a compensation package,” adding that the allowances ”are not excessive but instead are market driven” by pay rates at peer institutions."
"Updated at 3:30 p. m. ET, A new weather satellite parked 22, 300 miles above Earth has sent back its first images of lightning storms on our planet, and they are, well, pretty flashy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the satellite, released the first image from a new instrument, a lightning detector. It shows lightning flashes over the course of an hour on Valentine’s Day, from the Gulf of Mexico down to the southern coast of South America. The agency also released the video below showing images of the lightning storms developing over southeast Texas on that day  —   part of the same system that created the bright blotch of lightning activity in the hemispheric image above. In the video, the green dotted lines designate the Texas and Louisiana coastlines. Tornadoes from that storm system destroyed homes near Houston. NOAA hopes information about lightning can help weather forecasters predict severe weather, including tornadoes, more accurately. The video animation strings together images from the weather satellite’s Geostationary Lightning Mapper to simulate ”what your eye might see from above the clouds,” according to the technical caption. Unlike traditional   animations that appear jerky because the images are presented more quickly than they were gathered, this video is a slower version of what the satellite sees, brought down from the satellite’s 500 frames per second to a more human 25 frames per second. In its announcement, NOAA called the lightning detector images ”data never before available to forecasters,” and expressed high hopes for what such information could do for disaster preparedness and response: ”During heavy rain, [lightning detector] data will show when thunderstorms are stalled or if they are gathering strength. When combined with radar and other satellite data, [lightning detector] data may help forecasters anticipate severe weather and issue flood and flash flood warnings sooner. In dry areas, especially in the western United States, information from the instrument will help forecasters, and ultimately firefighters, identify areas prone to wildfires sparked by lightning.” ”As you can imagine, we are pretty excited here at NOAA Satellites,” spokesperson Connie Barclay told NPR in an email. ”Lightning strikes the U. S. on average of 25 million times each year, and kills on average 49 people in the U. S. each year.” Earlier this year, the same weather satellite, known as   sent back its first   images of the sun. As we have reported,   launched in November 2016 and is still in a testing phase: ”  was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. in December and is a collaboration between NOAA and NASA. When it is fully up and running, the satellite will ’provide images of weather pattern and severe storms as frequently as every 30 seconds, which will contribute to more accurate and reliable weather forecasts and severe weather outlooks,’ according to its mission overview page. . .. ”  is in geostationary orbit, meaning its location does not move relative to the ground below it. It is 22, 300 miles above Earth. Its imaging device measures 16 different ’spectral bands,’ including two that are visible to the human eye and 14 that we experience as heat.” If all the tests go according to plan, the satellite will be fully operational in November, and a second, similar satellite that’s currently being tested in Colorado will begin operating about nine months later."
"A band from the fertile Latin alternative scene in Los Angeles is poised to break out in a big way. Their sound is   lounge grooves, RB with flavors from Mexico or Brazil and a funky swagger. Their look is matching puffy tuxedo shirts and bow ties, like they’re playing a prom in 1976. Even their name is unforgettable: Chicano Batman. NPR’s Kelly McEvers met up with two members of the band, singer Bardo Martinez and guitarist Carlos Arévalo, to discuss their new album Freedom Is Free, their wild stage shows and why their distinctive sound could have only come from their hometown. Hear the full conversation  —   recorded, at the artists’ suggestion, at one of their favorite LA guitar shops  —   at the audio link. On the genesis of their sound, Carlos Arévalo: I think definitely, one of the inspirations for the sound of the group is what we would call ”  oldies” music, and that’s a really Southwest thing. There’s a DJ out here called Art Laboe  —   he’s in his 90s and he’s still pushing that music, and that music wasn’t lost on us. We’d tune in every Sunday night on his show it’s syndicated. And you’d hear amazing sounds that you weren’t hearing in modern music . .. stuff by The Midnighters, The Sunglows, Ralfi Pagan, Barbara Lewis. Just classic music that just doesn’t go out of style, ever. On the band’s logo, a combination of the Batman bat and the United Farm Workers eagle, Bardo Martinez: The UFW, the logo, it’s just as powerful as Batman, you know? Creating a voice for the voiceless. And that’s kind of a part of Chicano Batman’s identity. But it’s not the principal [thing]  —   we’re many other things as well. On writing explicitly political songs, Arévalo: There’s a song called ”La Jura” that Eduardo [Arenas] our bass player, wrote. And that’s basically a   Black Lives Matter song. Martinez: [The lyrics go,] La otra noche fue una noche muy terrible, balaciaron un amigo mío: ”The other night was a terrible night. They killed a friend of mine.” No entiendo porque los que deben proteger hacen lo opuesto: ”I don’t understand why those who are supposed to protect us do the opposite. ’” Arévalo: There’s a lot of fear happening right now. I feel like people are making decisions based on fear  —   and if you look back in history, you’ll see that those decisions usually lead to a lot of human suffering. And I think if people can put those fears to rest and look with inside themselves, then their mind and spirit is truly free. On why Los Angeles is their home for the foreseeable future, Arévalo: It’s so rich culturally, you know? That’s something that I personally took for granted and didn’t realize I was taking for granted until I traveled the country in this band, and there’s some places that just don’t have as much diversity. It’s not a negative thing, it’s just how life is some other places. That’s a real blessing to be here and thrive here."
"Young kids are known for exploration and explanation they poke and they prod, they open and push, they ask: ”Why? Why? Why?” Some people describe these drives to explore and explain as a key characteristic of our species others highlight their intimate role in learning. It’s of particular interest, then, to understand the basis for exploration and   and to investigate how they affect the way we interact with the world. A paper by researchers M. D. Rutherford and Francys Subiaul, recently published in the journal Autism, offers a fresh approach to investigating our exploratory and explanatory drives by testing whether two populations of children  —   those diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those without known developmental delays  —   differ in how they explore and seek explanations in physical and social domains. The results suggest that children with ASD have a heightened drive to explain  —   but only in the physical domain. To address their research questions, Rutherford and Subiaul compared how two groups of children responded to a surprising situation that arose in the course of a physical task (balancing blocks) versus a social task (requesting stickers from an adult). In each case, one group of children (ages  ) had a confirmed diagnosis of ASD, and a control group (age 4) had no history of developmental delays. While children in the two groups differed in chronological age, they were matched in terms of ”mental age,” as determined by a battery of standard verbal and nonverbal tests. In the first experiment, the 18 children in the ASD group and the 21 children in the control group learned to balance wooden blocks that were decorated to look like dogs, with the children told to ”stand them up on their feet.” After several successful attempts, the experimenter provided a block that looked just like those that had previously balanced, but that contained a surreptitious weight. The weighted block wouldn’t balance, presenting children with an unexpected event. For the minutes that followed the failed balance attempt, the experimenters recorded what the children did. Did they explore the block manually? Did they touch the table? Did they ask an adult for help, or request an explanation for why it wouldn’t balance? The researchers found that overall, the children from the ASD group engaged in more exploratory and explanatory behaviors than children in the control group. For example, they were significantly more likely to touch the table, to ask a   and to offer a physical explanation for the problem. These findings are consistent with one hypothesis about autistic cognition, according to which people with ASD tend to approach the world by ”systematizing”  —   trying to figure out how systems work. But this   tendency goes    with a tendency to engage in less ”mental” reasoning: ASD is associated with less social engagement, including less eye contact and less facility in reasoning about other people’s mental states. This suggests that a heightened explanatory drive might be restricted to physical systems, such that a comparable situation in the social domain would generate quite different patterns of behavior. A second experiment tested this prediction by presenting 17 children with ASD and 15 children in a control group with a social analogue to the physical task. Rather than balancing wooden blocks, children requested stickers from an adult by putting out their hand. After a few successful attempts, the adult with stickers ignored the request, pretending to be totally preoccupied with the stickers themselves. Again, the researchers recorded how the children responded to this unexpected event. Would they try to request a sticker once again? Ask another adult for help? Look at the stickers or the faces of the adults involved? For this social version of the task, there was no evidence that the children with ASD had a heightened drive to explore or explain. They were no more likely than the control kids to engage in any of the recorded behaviors, and in fact significantly less likely to repeat the hand gesture to request a sticker, to attempt to get the adults’ attention in another way, or to repeatedly look at the sticker or the adults’ faces. One interpretation, then, is that children with ASD may have a heightened drive to explain in some domains, but not when it comes to the social world. These studies are among the first to investigate how children with ASD seek explanations, so it’s worth being cautious about drawing strong conclusions. For example, it’s hard to know whether children with ASD were less motivated to explore and explain in the social domain, or equally motivated but less able to effectively do so. It’s also difficult to interpret differences between small groups of children who differ in a number of ways, including their chronological age, or to interpret differences across the physical and social tasks, which varied in more than domain. That said, these findings raise a number of intriguing possibilities that merit further study. To what extent is our drive to explain   versus bound to particular domains? To what extent is   a universal human characteristic, versus one associated more or less with particular populations? And if we project forward throughout the lifespan, how do differences in exploration and explanation affect our experience of the world and what we learn from it? We don’t yet know the answers to these questions, but as an exploration and   species, we’re on our way to finding out. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Last summer Felicia Keesing returned from a long trip and found that her home in upstate New York had been subjected to an invasion. ”There was evidence of mice everywhere. They had completely taken over,” says Keesing, an ecologist at Bard College. It was a plague of mice. And it had landed right in Keesing’s kitchen. ”Not only were there mouse droppings on our countertops, but we also found dead mice on the kitchen floor,” says Keesing’s husband, Rick Ostfeld, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N. Y. The Hudson River Valley experienced a mouse plague during the summer of 2016. The critters were everywhere. For most people, it was just a nuisance. But for Keesing and Ostfeld, the mouse plague signaled something foreboding. ”We’re anticipating 2017 to be a particularly risky year for Lyme,” Ostfeld says. Keesing and Ostfeld, who have studied Lyme for more than 20 years, have come up with an early warning system for the disease. They can predict how many cases there will be a year in advance by looking at one key measurement: Count the mice the year before. The number of critters scampering around the forest in the summer correlates to the Lyme cases the following summer, they’ve reported. The explanation is simple: Mice are highly efficient transmitters of Lyme. They infect up to 95 percent of ticks that feed on them. Mice are responsible for infecting the majority of ticks carrying Lyme in the Northeast. And ticks love mice. ”An individual mouse might have 50, 60, even 100 ticks covering its ears and face,” Ostfeld says. So that mouse plague last year means there is going to be a Lyme plague this year. ”Yep. I’m sorry to say that’s the scenario we’re expecting,” Ostfeld says. He’s not exactly sure which parts of the Northeast will be at highest risk. But wherever Lyme exists, people should be vigilant, says epidemiologist Kiersten Kugeler at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ”Whether it’s a bad season or not, there’s still going to be a lot of human cases of   diseases,” she says. ”What’s important for people to know is that the ticks are spreading to new areas  —   and   diseases are coming with them.” Back in the early ’80s, the disease wasn’t that big a problem. Cases were confined to two small regions: western Wisconsin and the area from Connecticut to New Jersey. Since then, Lyme cases have shot up in number and spread in all directions: ”The only place that they haven’t really spread is into the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, for obvious reasons,” says biologist Rebecca Eisen, who’s also at the CDC. Now Lyme is present in more than 260 counties, the CDC reported in 2015. The disease shows up in Maine, swoops down the East Coast into Washington, D. C. and southern Virginia. Then it hops to the Midwest into northern Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. There are also small pockets of Lyme on the West Coast. Since the early ’90s, reported cases of Lyme disease have tripled, to about 30, 000 cases each year. The CDC thinks the actual number is 10 times higher. ”We think the true burden of Lyme disease in the U. S. is about 300, 000 cases,” Kugeler says. ”Lyme disease is quite a big public health problem.” The reasons for this Lyme explosion are many, Ostfeld says. Climate change is part of it. The surge in deer  —   which feed ticks and spread them around  —   has also been a factor. But Ostfeld has found another reason, something that happened more than 200 years ago. Today the Hudson River Valley in upstate New York is gorgeous. The hills are covered with oak forests, and the valleys are patchworks of hayfields and farms. But Ostfeld says the area didn’t always look like this. When the Europeans came here hundreds of years ago, they   nearly all of the forests to plant crops and raise livestock. ”They also cut down trees for commercial use,” Ostfeld says, ”to make masts for ships, and for firewood.” Since then a lot of the forest has come back  —   but it’s not the same forest as before, he says. Today it’s all broken up into little pieces, with roads, farms and housing developments. For mice, this has been great news. ”They tend to thrive in these degraded, fragmented landscapes,” Ostfeld says, because their predators need big forests to survive. Without as many foxes, hawks and owls to eat them, mice crank out babies. And we end up with forests packed with mice  —   mice that are chronically infected with Lyme and covered with ticks. So all these little patches of forest dotting the Northeast have basically turned into Lyme factories, spilling over with infected ticks. Then people come along and do the darndest thing, Keesing says: They build their dream homes right next door. ”So we see that humans are putting themselves in these areas where they’re most at risk,” she says. And that means people, in some areas, may be putting themselves at risk for Lyme every single day without even knowing it, says the CDC’s Kiersten Kugeler. ”In the Northeast, most people catch Lyme around their homes,” she says. ”People out gardening. People playing in their backyard. Mowing the lawn.” So what can you do to keep from getting infected? Add a tick check to your daily routine, Kugeler says. When you’re in the shower check your body for tiny ticks, especially the places they like to hide. ”That’s the scalp, behind the ears, the armpits and in the groin area,” she says. If you do find a tick, get it off as quickly as possible. The longer an infected tick stays on your skin, the greater the chance it will pass the Lyme bacteria on to you. Generally, it takes about 24 hours for the tick to infect a person after it starts biting. Then be on the lookout for Lyme symptoms  —   like a red rash or a fever. It anything crops up, go see a doctor immediately. Don’t wait: The earlier you get treated, the better chance you’ll have for a full recovery."
"This spring and summer may be a doozy for Lyme disease, at least in parts of the Northeast. ”We’re anticipating 2017 to be a particularly risky year for Lyme,” says Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. Ostfeld has been studying the debilitating   disease for more than 20 years, and has developed an early warning system based on mice. For more on that, check out the piece in our sister blog, Goats and Soda. He’s not exactly sure which parts of the Northeast will be most affected, but if recent history repeats itself, the risk will be high in New York state and Connecticut, he says, and possibly patches of the   region. In other parts of the New England and the upper Midwest, Lyme continues to spread, says epidemiologist Kiersten Kugeler at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ”Reported cases of Lyme have tripled in the past few decades,” she says. ”And today, we think that the true burden of Lyme disease in the U. S. is about 300, 000 cases each year.” (Our global health team is reporting on the anticipated surge in Lyme disease as part of its series on future pandemics.) Lyme disease  —   which causes   symptoms and arthritis  —   is spread by blacklegged ticks. They can be as small a a poppy seed. And they like to hang out in the nooks and crannies of the human body. ”That’s the scalp, behind the ears, the armpits and in the groin area,” she says. On the East Coast, most people catch Lyme right around their homes, Kugeler says, not just when they’re hiking or camping. ”People may be putting themselves at risk every day without knowing it.” Here are some tick   tips.) So if you live in places with Lyme, she recommends checking your body for ticks every day. Make it part of your daily routine. And when you find a tick: 1. Don’t panic, says Dr. Brian Fallon, who directs the Lyme and   Diseases Research at Columbia University Medical Center. 2. Get out the tweezers. ”Very carefully, go under the head of the tick with the tweezers and just pull out the mouth of the tick, which is embedded in the skin,” Fallon says. ”What you don’t want to do is squeeze the body of the tick,” he says. ”That will cause the tick to spew all of its stomach contents into the skin, and you’ll be more likely acquire whatever infection that tick was carrying.” Also, don’t put Vaseline or smoke from a cigarette or [a] match on it,” Fallon says. ”Just use tweezers.” 3. Check the Lyme map. Next you want to figure out if you picked up the tick in an area where Lyme is a problem. The CDC tracks Lyme cases and has detailed statistics  —   at the county level  —   about where doctors report cases. Another good place to check is the website of your state’s health department. The goal is to figure out if Lyme is present in your community. If the answer is, no, then you can relax. The chance you have Lyme is very, very low. If the answer is, yes, then you want to see how intense transmission is in your county. This information will come in handy down at No. 5. 4. Save that tick. If there’s a possibility you picked up the tick in an area where Lyme is common, Fallon says, you might want to hold onto the critter so a lab can test it for Lyme. ”Put the tick into a baggie,” he says. ”The tick doesn’t even need to stay alive for a lab to see if it carried Lyme.” You can also take a picture of the tick and send it to the TickEncounter Resource Center. Scientists there will help identify the tick and tell you the chance it could have Lyme. 5. Monitor your health. So now comes the big decision: Should you go see a doctor? That depends on two factors: your symptoms and your location. Be on the   for any red rash, Fallon says. It doesn’t have to be shaped like a target or bull’s eye. ”In fact, 80 percent of the time, the rash with Lyme isn’t shaped like that. It’s just red and expanding.” ”If you do develop an expanding rash, a fever or   symptoms, don’t wait. Go see a doctor,” Fallon says. The earlier you start taking antibiotics the more likely you will recover fully and not have any lingering problems. And while some symptoms persist even when people get treated, ”The good news with Lyme is the majority of people who get treatment early do very well,” he says. If you don’t have any symptoms, you don’t necessarily need to see a doctor, Fallon says. Not all blacklegged ticks have Lyme disease. And after it starts biting you, it takes about 24 to 36 hours to transmit the pathogen into your blood. So if the tick wasn’t on your body very long, you’re probably OK. But if you live in a place with a high number of Lyme cases, you might want to check in with a doctor even if you don’t have symptoms, Fallon says, especially if you think the tick was on your body for a while. ”The Infectious Diseases Society of America recommends a   treatment of doxycycline, prophylactically,” Fallon says, ”That’s believed to be protective, to some extent, from the disease.” "
"Hundreds of Marines are reportedly under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, after a trove of photographs were shared online that show female service members and veterans in the nude. The images were spread via a closed Facebook group with thousands of members. When the photos were shared via Marines United  —   a Facebook group that’s intended for male Marines and Marine veterans only  —   they drew bawdy and obscene comments, according to two nonprofit news sites: the War Horse and the Center for Investigative Reporting. According to War Horse founder Thomas James Brennan, many of the photos on the Marines United page included personal information about the female service members, from their name, rank and duty station to the names of their social media accounts. The Facebook page also included links to a Google Drive with even more images  —   and an invitation to any members to contribute photos. The images were obtained in a variety of ways, Brennan reports, from sharing by former partners to stalking and, potentially, the hacking of service members’ personal accounts. Almost immediately after the War Horse contacted the Marine Corps about the images in late January, the service asked Google and Facebook to delete accounts linked to the material, and an NCIS inquiry was begun, Brennan writes. But he adds that more nude photos soon appeared on the Marines United page. ”This behavior destroys morale, erodes trust and degrades the individual,” the Marine Corps says in a statement about what it calls ”social media misconduct.” The service says those involved could face charges based on at two portions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice  —   one that involves consent and an expectation of privacy, and another that centers on distributing indecent material. ”A Marine who directly participates in, encourages, or condones such actions could also be subjected to criminal proceedings or adverse administrative actions,” the Marine Corps says. At least two people have already been punished, according to Brennan: a Marine veteran who worked as a government subcontractor was fired after being the first to post a Google Drive link to the photos and a service member was fired for secretly taking photos of a woman who was picking up gear at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. ”He was standing close enough to smell my perfume,” that Marine tells Brennan. She added, ”This is going to follow me  —   just like he did.” There’s also been backlash against Brennan, according to Marine Corps Times: ”The news report was authored by Thomas Brennan, an Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient who founded The War Horse in 2016. The nonprofit news site focuses on military and veterans affairs, and tales of combat heroism. ”After its publication, several members of the Facebook group lashed out at Brennan, making threats against him and his family.” The revelation that hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of female service members have been targeted by their fellow Marines has set off intense reactions from members of the military service that often touts its motto: Semper Fidelis  —   ”Always Faithful.” Here’s one reaction to the Marine Corps’ statement on its Facebook page, from a female captain: ”What bothers me more than the actions of these few and the inaction of their   leaders is the number of commenters here and other places justifying the FB page. These are weak, leaderless men, probably low performers afraid of being outpaced, denigrating women in order to feel superior. And doing it online with Internet bravado. Pathetic. Some of them may be teachable, will learn from this, and grow up to be worthy of the title, but they’re not there yet.”"
"Symphony orchestras and opera companies across the country continually ask the same question: How do we attract a younger and more diverse audience? Saturday night, I discovered something of an answer at the Washington National Opera’s east coast premiere of Champion, a    opera by jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard. In 21 seasons of attending WNO performances, I’ve never witnessed a more diverse crowd. The opera’s themes of   sexual orientation and the American Dream seem to resound even more loudly today than when the opera premiered in St. Louis in 2013. Perhaps as a result, audience members  —   straights and gays, many   Hispanics and many young people  —   realized they would see characters who looked and acted like themselves on the stage. This is no opera where handsome, white tenors portray kings or beautiful European sopranos play consumptive heroines. Instead, Champion tells the true story of Emile Griffith, the resourceful Virgin Islands native who moves to New York to become a hat maker but ends up the welterweight boxing champion of the world throughout the 1960s. He also happens to be gay. A focal point of the story, which unfolds in flashback scenes from the elderly Griffith’s point of view, is the fighter’s pivotal bout in 1962. Battling Cuban boxer Benny Paret, who taunted with homophobic slurs, Griffith delivers a series of blows which sends his opponent into a coma, and subsequent death. Haunted by the victory, Griffiths, who struggles with his sexual identity and suffers a brutal beating at the hands of hoodlums, sings the line: ”I killed a man and the world forgave me, I love a man and the world wants to kill me.” Audiences interrupt operas to clap for arias and high notes, not for single lines in librettos. But Saturday night this line elicited an ardent round of applause. Not only did Champion’s characters mirror audience members in terms of looks, they also spoke like us, whether they were cajoling, cursing or just being honest about wanting to get laid.   playwright Michael Cristofer peppered his libretto with candid talk of sex, plenty of   (”F*** me sideways,” the proprietor of a gay bar bellows when Griffith walks in for the first time) but also tender dialogue dealing with dementia, with which the older Griffith, warmly sung by bass Arthur Woodley, suffers. Blanchard’s music reflected diversity too. There were lush strings and brass blends, in a post romantic classical style, not unlike what we’ve heard in his many movie scores to films like Spike Lee’s Inside Man or Malcolm X. Arguably, more distinctive music came from the jazz quartet Blanchard embedded within the orchestra pit. Still, he isn’t afraid to select a single instrument to accompany singers.   Denyce Graves, as Griffith’s wayward,   mother, delivered a heartfelt aria accompanied only by a double bass. It didn’t really bother me that some passages of the libretto were predictable, that a few of the voices weren’t at their best, or even that the opera might benefit from a little judicious trimming. What was more important Saturday night was that for once at WNO I felt like I wasn’t part of the opera elite but instead sitting with the citizens of my city. WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello, in a note inside the Playbill, rightly points out notes that ”opera can be an important voice to offer discussion about many moral questions.” But what does it matter if the only folks in on the ”discussion” are the same older, white audiences we usually see at the opera house? (Champion runs through March 18 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.)"
"It had been quite the week for Maren Morris: Four days before the    strolled into NPR’s offices, she’d pulled off a mighty duet with Alicia Keys during the 59th annual Grammys ceremony and taken home the evening’s award for Best Country Solo Performance. It’s no secret the Nashville    has star power her limber voice and the big,   gestures on her   debut, Hero, let her easily dominate a huge stage like the Grammys’. Our small stage suited Morris and her songs just as well. She’s cultivated a soulful, irreverent   aesthetic that trades in trucks, bros and beer for a vintage Mercedes, female friendships and boxed wine  —   and which owes much of its charm to details that shine in a   setting. Take, for instance, the     that punctuates the chorus of the    burn ”Rich,” or the intimate,   raggedness in her voice as she sings of jaded heartache in ”I Could Use A Love Song.” Between songs, Morris kept up a friendly banter with the audience on the other side of the desk  —   even shouting out Tiny Desk alumnus Anderson . Paak, who’d also been part of a memorable performance at the Grammys. By the time she got to ”My Church”  —   the radio megahit that had earned her that golden gramophone, performed here in a dazzlingly pure   harmony  —   everybody was part of her congregation. Download and stream Maren Morris’s album HERO. (Download) (Spotify) Set List, Musicians, Maren Morris (vocals, guitar) Bennett Lewis (guitar, vocals) Annie Clements (bass, vocals) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Rachel Horn, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith Editor: Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Practice is a physical activity, of course, but it’s also hard mental work  —   if you’re doing it right. A new video published by TED Ed gets down to the scientific   of what good practice looks like, and what it does to your brain. (Think axons and myelin, not ”muscle memory”  —   muscles don’t have ”memory. ”) As Annie Bosler and Don Greene, the creators of this TED Ed lesson, point out, this advice can apply to everything from music to sports. They define effective practice as ”consistent, intensely focused and target[ing] content or weaknesses that lie at the edge of one’s current abilities.” That’s another way of saying: Don’t waste your time practicing the stuff you already know, just to fill up those minutes. More of their specific advice, with each point bolstered by research: Of course, their advice about practicing isn’t new quite a bit of it has been floating around for some time now, like in a series of posts published here on Deceptive Cadence a few years ago. But having a better understanding why and how it works is inspiring  —   and helps you reinforce good habits."
"Rod Rosenstein, if appointed as deputy attorney general, could soon become the ultimate decider on the most politically sensitive subject in Washington. His confirmation hearing on Tuesday turned into a proxy war over the Trump administration’s ties to Russia. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from any investigation into the election and Russian officials, leaving the tough questions for his deputy. Rosenstein’s   hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee focused less on his record as a   Justice Department veteran and more on his superiors. ”How can you investigate your boss?” asked Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, pointing out that the attorney general could end up a witness in any investigation involving Russia. Blumenthal and other Democrats say there’s only one way to guarantee public confidence in the Russia investigation  —   by naming an independent prosecutor to lead it. Rosenstein, who has a long history in cases involving public corruption and national security, refused to make that commitment. He said he doesn’t have all the facts. ”Senator, I don’t know the details of what  —   if any  —   investigation is ongoing, but I can certainly assure you that if it’s America against Russia, or America against any other country, I think everyone in this room knows which side I’m on,” Rosenstein said. In a surprising turn, members of the committee spent some time clashing with each other  —   over the questioning of Sessions in January. Sessions clarified his testimony to the committee in writing on Monday, after the Washington Post reported he had given a misleading answer to Minnesota Sen. Al Franken. The   letter wasn’t enough for Franken. ”I think Sen. Sessions should come back. I think he owes it to the committee to come back and to explain himself,” Franken said. That prompted the top Republican on the committee, Chairman Chuck Grassley, to jump in and defend Sessions. ”I consider what Sen. Franken asked Sessions at that late moment  —   just as that story [had] come out  —   a gotcha question,” he said. Later in the hearing, Franken said he couldn’t have been nicer to the attorney general. Franken said Sessions had gotten himself into trouble by not mentioning he had two contacts with the Russian ambassador last year. ”It can’t be a gotcha question if he didn’t answer the question,” Franken said. ”So the thing that got him was him saying he had not met with Russians, but that wasn’t even my question.” Franken had asked about what Sessions would do as attorney general if it came out that Trump campaign associates had connections with Russian officials  —   not whether Sessions himself had any contact. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, says she is worried about press reports suggesting the White House has been trying to interfere in ongoing investigations and court cases. ”We need steel spines, not weak knees when it comes to political independence in the Department of Justice,” she said. Rosenstein attested to his independence but declined invitations from Democrats to criticize the president’s tweets. Last weekend, Trump claimed without evidence that President Obama had tapped his phones at Trump Tower. Rosenstein said he didn’t know anything about the matter but said the president has First Amendment rights just like anyone else. Rosenstein also pledged to enforce rules that limit contacts between the White House and people inside the department on law enforcement cases."
"Updated 5:15 p. m. ET, WikiLeaks has released thousands of files that it identifies as CIA documents related to the agency’s   tools and programs. The documents published on Tuesday include instruction manuals, support documents, notes and conversations about, among other things, efforts to exploit vulnerabilities in smartphones and turn smart TVs into listening devices. The tools appear to be designed for use against individual targets, as part of the CIA’s mandate to gather foreign intelligence. A CIA spokesperson would not confirm whether the documents were genuine, telling NPR, ”We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.” Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told MSNBC that if WikiLeaks’ account was true, the document dump would be ”very, very damaging.” And the   site says there’s more to come: WikiLeaks has dubbed Tuesday’s release ”Year Zero,” saying it is the first of a series of   leaks that the site is collectively calling ”Vault 7.” Nicholas Weaver, a computer scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, says the documents don’t seem to reveal significant news about the CIA’s capabilities  —   ”it’s describing a hacking organization that’s doing a reasonably good job,” he says. What is surprising is that the documents are being published. In a statement accompanying the document release, WikiLeaks alleges that the CIA has recently ”lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal,” and that an archive with ”several hundred million lines of code” has been circulating among former government hackers. One former government hacker or contractor gave a portion of that code to WikiLeaks, according to the organization. Weaver calls that story ”implausible,” and raises the possibility that someone from outside the U. S. government compromised the CIA’s systems to acquire the documents. And that, he says, would be a big deal: ”Spies gonna spy, that’s dog bites man. Spy dumps data on Wikileaks, proving that they exfiltrated it from a top secret system? That’s man bites dog.” Regardless of how they were acquired, the documents in the ”Year Zero” release do not include the code for any cyberespionage programs. In its press release, WikiLeaks says it is ”avoiding the distribution of ’armed’ cyberweapons until a consensus emerges” on how to analyze and disarm such weapons. Instead, the purported CIA documents reference and describe agency tools designed to extract information from computers, monitor communications and control electronic devices. WikiLeaks says the files came from the CIA’s internal Confluence system  —   a platform for team collaboration. They include instructions on how to use programs, and guides describing how to reduce the risk of CIA involvement being detected in a program. Some pages have comments from users whose names have been redacted, but appear to be software developers. The alleged CIA documents show techniques developed specifically for ”embedded systems”  —   which the files describe, in   terms, as ”the Things in the Internet of Things.” Think devices that don’t look like computers, but use the Internet to work. For instance, one program uses a Samsung TV as a listening device, turning the microphone on while the TV appears to be off. The documents also appear to show techniques the CIA has used to compromise and control individual smartphones. WikiLeaks notes that such tactics would allow the agency to read even encrypted communications  —   but Weaver says that’s misleading. ”The real story on encryption is not, ’Oh my God the CIA breaks encryption,’ but that encryption is so good that the CIA has to risk $1. 5 million assets to compromise a target’s iPhone if they want to read his messages,” he says, noting the high price of developing   techniques. There’s another concern about the methods that the CIA used to compromise phones. Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, says the documents suggest the CIA ”deliberately maintained vulnerabilities” in widely used devices. ”Those vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies, but by hackers and governments around the world,” he said in a statement. (Security consultant Tom Ritter tells NPR that according to the documents, the CIA does seem to have been aware of security vulnerabilities and not informed companies that could have fixed them.) The CIA has traditionally been responsible for human espionage  —   officially, the NSA gathers ”signals intelligence” and the CIA analyzes it. But the CIA also carries out its own cyber operations. In February 2016,   Director John Brennan spoke with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly about, in part, the agency’s desire to expand its cybercapabilities. ”The technological changes are taking place at a warped speed,” he said: ”So we here at CIA, we recently set up a fifth directorate for the first time in 50 years, a new directorate . .. the directorate of digital innovation, so that we can understand all of the opportunities and challenges associated with that digital environment. ”I’m not a technological expert by any means, but I recognize that more and more human transactions and interactions take place in that cyber environment. And it profoundly affects all of our ways of life, and it affects the intelligence mission. So I want to make sure that for CIA to be able to fulfill its responsibilities in the years ahead, we understand what the pitfalls are, what the opportunities are, so that we are able to master that environment consistent with our authorities, so we can carry out our respective missions.” Mike Pompeo, the new head of the CIA under President Trump, said in a written questionnaire accompanying his confirmation hearing that he understood that the agency, ”upon direction from the President and working in cooperation with other agencies when appropriate, has capabilities to perform a wide [array of] actions related to all forms of cybersecurity policies.”"
"President Trump is offering some Twitter support for the Obamacare replacement plan put forward by House Republicans. In a tweet Tuesday morning, Trump described the GOP blueprint as ”Our wonderful new Healthcare Bill.” He suggested it would be a welcome change from the Affordable Care Act, which he called ”a complete and total disaster.” ”I’m proud to support the replacement plan released by the House of Representatives,” the president said Tuesday afternoon during a White House meeting with GOP lawmakers. Trump’s support could be crucial since the House bill is already facing opposition from conservative Republicans who see it as too generous and more moderate GOP Senators who worry it’s not generous enough. The bill would preserve the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare through 2020 while continuing to offer tax subsidies for those who purchase health insurance on the individual market. The measure would repeal taxes on wealthy Americans that help pay for those subsidies, do away with a tax penalty for those who fail to obtain insurance, and adjust the rules governing insurance premiums so in general younger, healthy people pay less while older, sicker people pay more. Young adults would still be allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance until they turn 26. And insurance companies would have to offer coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions, though companies could charge a 30 percent premium if customers fail to maintain continuous coverage. In a letter to lawmakers, Health Secretary Tom Price calls the GOP bill ”a necessary and important first step.” But it would not achieve everything on the president’s health care wish list. Some ideas  —   like allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines or letting the government use its purchasing power to negotiate better drug prices  —   are not included, although the president still hopes to pursue those through other means. ”Don’t worry, getting rid of state lines, which will promote competition, will be in phase 2  3 of healthcare rollout,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. ”I am working on a new system where there will be competition in the Drug Industry. Pricing for the American people will come way down!” Price noted in his letter that congressional rules don’t allow these provisions to be included in a budget reconciliation bill. Republicans want to use reconciliation as a vehicle for their health care overhaul to prevent a filibuster by Senate Democrats. Trump was a fierce critic of Obamacare on the campaign trail, telling supporters in Jacksonville, Fla. just before the election, for example, that it’s a ”total catastrophe.” Trump was less definitive about his prescription to replace the Affordable Care Act, though he promised it would be ”something so much better and so much cheaper.” ”Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an   thing for me to say,” Trump told 60 Minutes in September. ”I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody is going to be taken care of, much better than they’re taken care of now.” Trump reiterated that goal in an interview with the Washington Post days before taking office. ”We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump told the newspaper. ”There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” While the Congressional Budget Office has not yet offered a forecast of how many people would gain or lose coverage under the House Republican plan, it’s likely to fall short of Trump’s goal of universal coverage. The Affordable Care Act helped extend health insurance to about 20 million people while pushing the nation’s uninsured rate to an   low."
"It took a lot to get to this point, but Republicans have released their   health care bill. (For more on the policy, check out the NPR health team’s reporting over at Shots.) The version that was released is likely to change as the bill goes through committees, but now that it’s released, here are four potential challenges President Trump and Republicans face: 1. Health care is complicated, ”It’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” That’s what President Trump told a gathering of governors about the health care system last week. President Obama was his team’s best messenger on health care  —   and the message still got very muddled. Republicans were effectively able to drum up fear and opposition because when something is so ”unbelievably complex” and ”so complicated,” it’s easy to pull out portions that can be spun as offensive. What’s more, Obama deeply understood this policy. Remember, most of the 2008 Democratic primary debates revolved around health care and mandates (which became Obama’s greatest flip flop). Does Trump really understand what’s being sold or does he just want to declare victory and put his name on it? So who is the messenger going to be  —   and who’s going to arm members with the clarity and talking points they need? Trump has been a very effective messenger when it comes to being against the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. That’s the easy part. The challenge now is trying to sell something he wants people to be for. And there’s always this complication  —   Trump might be currently touting the plan, but what happens if things go south? Does it suddenly become Ryancare? 2. Rebellion from within  —   right and center, Because Republicans don’t need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, their biggest hurdle is themselves. In 2009, remember progressives clamored for a ”public option.” That led to the White House spokesman deriding them as the ”professional left,” a term one might more expect to come from the Trump White House rather than Obama’s. Fast forward to 2017, and just because Trump won, it doesn’t mean everyone in the GOP is ready to fall in line. There are lingering feelings among some in the base that not only is Trump not a true fiscal conservative, but neither is House Speaker Paul Ryan or Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. It’s the same faction that thwarted the ”grand bargain,” pushed the government to a partial shutdown over the debt ceiling and eventually ousted a speaker. Don’t underestimate this group and their ability to stir rebellion. Get ready to hear much more about their opposition to ”refundable tax credits,” which many conservatives see as nothing more than a new entitlement, or the $100 billion fund the bill creates. Michael Needham, CEO of Heritage Action for America, went so far as to say in a statement: ”In many ways, the House Republican proposal released last night not only accepts the flawed progressive premises of Obamacare but expands upon them.” That’s not to mention provisions that moderates  —   Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski  —   won’t like, including changes to Medicaid and efforts to dismantle Planned Parenthood. As NPR’s Susan Davis notes, a group of GOP senators from Medicaid expansion states sent a letter Monday voicing concerns, and they would be tough votes for Collins and Murkowski if the bill includes Planned Parenthood defund language in the end. And remember, given that Republicans have only 52 senators, they can afford to lose just two votes (with Vice President Pence again needing to be called in to break a tie). 3. ”Resistance” and resentment  While Democrats don’t have the votes to stop the bill, that doesn’t mean they’ll go quietly. There will be zero Democratic support, which makes Ryan’s and McConnell’s jobs that much tougher, and town halls can cut both ways, as we’ve already seen. In 2009, the potential bipartisanship around health care was blown up by those town halls. Former Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, for example, by the time they got back to Washington after summer recess, they were all but off the train paying not much more than lip service to the potential for voting for it. Remember Snowe’s   ”trigger” option, designed to get that one whiff of bipartisanhip? It never happened. Expect Republicans to get an earful across the country. 4. Cost and perception, Three little letters for you: C, B, and O. The fight in 2009, and the strongest talking point Democrats had, was that the Affordable Care Act would ”bend the cost curve.” Republicans fumed at the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that it would save the government money in the long run. So what about this plan? We don’t yet know, because the CBO hasn’t scored the bill yet. But early signs aren’t promising for Republicans. Full and partial repeal projections showed it potentially blowing a gaping hole in the budget. It’s tough to balance the budget when a lot of the money going in, comes out (the mandate and tax revenue streams). Republicans, who are supposed to be fiscal conservatives, risk being perceived as the party trying to strip people of their health care, returning the system to the status quo  —   and blowing a hole in the budget. That is going to be part of the fight."
"House Republicans unveiled their   replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act Monday night. They’re calling it the American Health Care Act. Like the Affordable Care Act, it relies on tax credits to help with the cost of health insurance. But the proposed value of the credits is considerably lower than with the current law. The Republican plan may result in fewer   people getting help to pay for their care. The proposed overhaul also gets rid of one of the most unpopular features of the Affordable Care Act  —   the tax penalty for not having health insurance. In fact, if the Republicans’ bill becomes law, people who didn’t have insurance last year would not be liable for a penalty when they file their 2016 taxes this year. The GOP plan also retains many of the features the public likes in the Affordable Care Act, like protections for people with existing health conditions. Here are seven provisions to look out for as the congressional debate unfolds over the next few weeks and months: As my colleague Alison Kodjak pointed out in her post Monday night, ”it’s far from clear that Republicans in the House are unified in their support of the bill. Members of the   Freedom Caucus have said they oppose giving tax credits to people who don’t pay any federal income tax.” For their part, Democrats are denouncing the proposal. Reps. Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Richard Neal of Massachusetts say it ”would rip health care away from millions of Americans, ration care for working families and seniors, and put insurance companies back in charge of health care decisions  —   contrary to everything President Trump has said he would do with his health care plan.”"
"With two House committees set to take up the Republican replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, party leaders have begun trying to sell the proposal to the American public. Leading the effort is President Trump, who met with Republican House leaders at the White House, saying he is ”proud to support the replacement plan released by the House of Representatives.” Earlier, the President  tweeted on Tuesday morning that the ”wonderful new Healthcare Bill is now out for review and negotiation.” The word negotiation is important. Congressional Democrats are uniformly opposed to the Republican makeover of Obamacare. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted the GOP bill is ”just a skeletal, slapdash,   version of the ACA that would slash insurance coverage, spike costs.” Many Republicans are also expressing doubts, and GOP Congressional leaders can afford few defections. GOP Sen. Rand Paul called the plan ”Obamacare lite.” ”It will not pass. Conservatives aren’t going to take it,” Paul told Fox News. He said the bill was a bailout for insurance companies, citing a provision that would force people to pay a 30 percent penalty to insurance companies for going without and then resuming coverage. At a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady of Texas, one of the bill’s authors, responded to the charge, calling the proposal ”Obamacare gone.” He said that ”as Republicans, we have a choice, we can act now or we can keep fiddling around and squander this opportunity.” But the path ahead for the GOP plan looks increasingly uphill. Some key conservative outside groups  —   including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and The Club for Growth  —   now say they oppose the plan. The proposal would continue popular parts of the ACA, including stipulations that people with   conditions should be able to buy coverage and that adult children up to age 26 can be covered on their parents’ health plan. Republicans haven’t placed a price tag on their proposal. The Congressional Budget Office hasn’t yet ”scored” the plan, and won’t by the time the House starts work on the measure. On NBC’s Today show, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said it was unfair to compare how many people would be covered under the GOP plan to the ACA, also known as Obamacare. Mulvaney said Obamacare ”made insurance affordable, but care impossible to afford.” He said deductibles under the ACA were too high. ”So people could say they have coverage, but they couldn’t actually get the medical care they needed when they get sick.” He said the plan will bring ”tremendous savings” because it will allow states more control over Medicaid costs. At a White House briefing, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said the Trump administration believes ”there will be a decrease in premiums.” Asked if Trump supports the House measure, Price said the President does support what Price called ”this step in the right direction.” Price repeatedly said this was just the first part of the process. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer pointed to two stacks of papers next to his podium, a smaller stack, which he said was the Republican bill and a larger one which he said the the Affordable Care Act. ”Look at the size, this is the Democrat’s,” Spicer said, pointing to the tall stack. ”This is what big government does,” he said. But four Republican senators say they will oppose any plan that doesn’t protect people who qualify for coverage under the Medicaid program, which was expanded in some states under the ACA. The four are Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. All four states expanded Medicaid under the ACA."
"An estimated 11 million immigrants live and work in the United States illegally. Their fate is one of the big policy questions facing the country. The story of how that population grew so large is a long one that’s mostly about Mexico, and full of unintended consequences. Prior to the 1920s, the U. S. had few restrictions on immigration, save for a few notable exclusions. ”Basically, people could show up,” says Jeffrey Passel, of the Pew Research Center. For workers in Mexico, crossing into the U. S. made a lot of economic sense, then and now. ”That person can make seven, eight, perhaps even 10 times more than they make in Mexico,” says Jorge Castañeda, Mexico’s former foreign minister. As more people came into the U. S. to find work, Mexicans became a larger percentage of the workforce. ”Mexican immigration is something from our grandparents’ era,” says Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development. ”The fraction of the labor force in Kansas that was Mexican in 1929 was higher than it was in 1990. The same is true of Arizona. The same is true of New Mexico.” A legal worker program, During World War II, the federal government created a legal system for Mexican farmworkers to come work in the U. S. It was called the Bracero program, and its advocates were growers who wanted a ready supply of farm labor. In its peak year, it brought in 400, 000 legal workers nationwide. Critics said the Bracero program cost American farmworkers jobs. It was problematic in other ways, too. For one, workers were bound to one employer. ”That person had total control over your life,” says Doris Meissner, former commissioner for the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. ”And that leads to a very unequal relationship, and it’s a recipe for exploitation.” Another criticism of the program was that it was thought to depress the wages of American workers. President John F. Kennedy campaigned against the Bracero program, and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, ended it in 1965. It was not replaced. ”What came then was the market operating, which is people coming to the country anyway because the jobs were here, the relationships existed between Mexico and the United States, and there was limited enforcement across the Southwest border,” Meissner says. While it was a crime to bring unauthorized migrants into the country or harbor them, under a federal law passed in 1952 it was not a crime to employ them. A perfect storm, By 1980, the number of people in the U. S. without authorization had grown to 1. 5 million. That decade witnessed what Clemens calls a demographic and economic perfect storm. A Mexican economic crisis sent many young Mexicans looking for work, while a booming U. S. economy meant fewer young Americans were entering the workforce. By 1986, there were 3. 2 million unauthorized people in the U. S. prompting action from Congress. The   Act was introduced as a way to end illegal border crossings once and for all. It had three parts: Give amnesty to those who had been in the country for at least five years, crack down on employers who hire people who can’t legally work here, and pump up border security to prevent future illegal crossings. President Reagan supported the bill and signed it into law in 1986. Three million people were granted amnesty under the   Act, but by 1990 the number of unauthorized immigrants was back up to 3. 5 million. ”Border enforcement never really kicked in in any significant way until about a decade later  —   the mid ’90s,” Meissner says. ”Then, the real centerpiece of it, which was employer sanctions, was very weak. There was not really an effective way to enforce employer sanctions and lots of ways for both employers and workers to get around it.” Moreover, those who had been in the U. S. less than five years weren’t eligible for the amnesty. ”So those people who couldn’t apply for the legalization program became the seedbed for today’s 11 million,” Meissner says. Boom and bust, The U. S enjoyed huge economic expansion through the 1990s, which sent the number of unauthorized immigrants soaring. According to the Pew Research Center, by 1995, despite increased border enforcement, the population hit 5. 7 million. As it became more difficult and dangerous for migrants to go back and forth between their homes in Mexico and jobs in the U. S. many of them stayed in the U. S. The growth continued, reaching 8. 6 million in the year 2000. ”Things slowed down a little bit with the recession in 2001 to [2003],” Passel says. ”And then the flows picked up again as the economy heated up through 2006 to [2007].” It was then that the country hit the highest number  —   more than 12 million. ”With the onset of the Great Recession, the flows ceased, pretty much, for a couple of years,” Passel says. ”After 2009, the U. S. economy expanded, unemployment rates went down, but the unauthorized flows did not pick up again.” The number has been around 11 million for almost a decade. 2017 snapshot, Today, the population of unauthorized immigrants is more urban, less seasonal and less Mexican than it used to be. About 52 percent are from Mexico, and the population is less single and male than before. ”At this point, the unauthorized immigrant population is largely a   population,” Passel says. ”About half of the unauthorized immigrant adults in the United States have U. S.  children.” An estimated 40 percent of unauthorized immigrants did not sneak into the country they entered legally and overstayed their visas. The work they do has changed from being strictly agricultural to a range of mostly     jobs such as landscaping, meat rendering and back kitchen work in restaurants. All Things Considered editor Andrea Hsu and intern Esteban Bustillos contributed to this report."
"In 1944, World War II was dragging on and the Nazi forces seemed to be faltering. Yet, in military briefings, Adolf Hitler’s optimism did not wane. His generals wondered if he had a secret weapon up his sleeve, something that would change the war around in the last second. Author Norman Ohler tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that Hitler did have a secret, but it wasn’t a weapon. Instead, it was a mix of cocaine and opioids that he had become increasingly dependent upon. ”Hitler needed those highs to substitute [for] his natural charisma, which . .. he had lost in the course of the war,” Ohler says. Ohler’s new book, Blitzed, which is based in part on the papers of Hitler’s private physician, describes the role of drugs within the Third Reich. He cites three different phases of the Fuhrer’s drug use. ”The first one are the vitamins given in high doses intravenously. The second phase starts in the fall of 1941 with the first opiate, but especially with the first hormone injections,” Ohler says. ”Then in ’43 the third phase starts, which is the heavy opiate phase.” On Dr. Theodor Morell prescribing drugs to Hitler during the war years  Hitler met a doctor called Theo Morell in 1936. Morell was famous for giving vitamin injections, and Hitler, with his healthy diet, immediately believed in this doctor and got daily vitamin injections. But then as the war turned difficult for Germany in 1941 against Russia in the fall, Hitler got sick for the first time. He couldn’t go to the military briefing, which was unheard of before, and Morell gave him something different that day. He gave him an opiate that day, and he also gave him a hormone injection. Hitler, who had suffered from high fever, immediately felt well again and was able to go to the meeting and tell the generals how the war should continue, how the daily operations should continue. And he was really struck by this immediate recovery from this opiate, which was called Dolantin. From that moment on, he asked Morell to give him stronger stuff than just vitamins. We can see from the fall of 1941 to the winter of 1944 Hitler’s drug abuse increases significantly. On whether Hitler realized he was addicted to opiates, I assume that Hitler kind of pushed it back in his mind what was actually going on. For him it was important to be able to function at all times, to never have a day off, because he distrusted anyone in his surroundings, especially the generals. He had to make all the military decisions. He only came to the conclusion that Morell actually had made him addicted to opiates very late in the war, namely when he fired Morell in late April 1945. Several witnesses who were present in the bunker at that particular moment reported that Hitler shouted at Morell, ”You have been giving me opiates the whole time! Get out of the bunker and leave me alone.” So it looks like it came as a revelation to Hitler that he’d been drugging himself in a way, through Morell, the whole time. On whether Hitler suffered from withdrawal symptoms  What puzzles everyone who studies Hitler in those last months of his life is his shaking, his tremor. It can even been seen on some of the footage that has been shot and has been released, even by the Nazi propaganda machine, where we can see Hitler shaking the hands of young kids, Hitler Youth, very late in the war effort and his whole body is shaking and his hand is shaking without even shaking the hands of these kids. . .. Some historians have claimed that this is the result of Parkinson’s disease, because Morell, in fact, administered a medicine against Parkinson’s once in April 1945. So perhaps Hitler did suffer from Parkinson’s it’s a bit hard to say in retrospect. What we can say is that Morell writes in his notes that he is lacking the drugs that he had been giving Hitler in late 1944. In 1945, these drugs are not available to him anymore, or they’re hard to come by. . .. The fact is the Merck Co. in Darmstadt had been destroyed by British air raids in December 1944, so Merck was not able to produce Eukodal anymore, and Morell doesn’t give any of the potent substances that he gave Hitler before. He doesn’t give any of those in 1945. If you take oxycodone intravenously for some time and then suddenly you’re not able to get the drug anymore, you will certainly suffer from withdrawal symptoms. So I believe that Hitler’s deteriorating health in 1945 when he was in the bunker in Berlin  —   that wreck of a man that we can witness in certain photos and in that footage that came out of that time  —   is due to withdrawal symptoms. On how methamphetamine was given to soldiers, In the   there was a company in Berlin called Temmler which developed a new type of ”medicine” . .. which was methamphetamine, which they branded as Pervitin and Pervitin methamphetamine, which we now know as crystal meth, or at least is the street name. [It] was perfectly legal and was seen as a legitimate way of boosting your daily performance. It was like a potent cup of coffee. Professor Otto Ranke realized in 1938 that there was a medicine out there that was highly popular in the German civilian population. This was Pervatin methamphetamine, and he read some of the reports . .. [that] concluded that methamphetamine reduces the fear level, if given in high dosages, and also reduces the need to sleep. . .. So he started doing tests in 1938 and in 1939 on young medical officers in Berlin. . .. [And] he came to the conclusion that meth is the perfect drug for soldiers, and he suggested this to his superiors. He said, ”We should distribute meth officially among the troops.” On how methamphetamine was administered to German troops for the invasion of France  The surprising strategy of the attack against the West was . .. to move the whole army with the tank troops . .. through the Ardennes Mountains in a very rapid fashion. . .. The Western allies didn’t think the Ardennes mountains would be a threat, because any army would have to rest at night and then could easily be destroyed in that mountainous terrain, but the German strategy was to not stop and to reach the French border city of Sedan after three days and three restless nights.   million tablets of methamphetamine were being distributed just before the advance and were being taken by the tank troops in regular intervals. Two pills had to be taken once the advance [started] and then after 12 hours another pill, and then after 12 hours another pill. This was written down in the   stimulant decree. It actually worked. The Germans reached Sedan after an amazingly short period of time . .. while the French and British [armies] were still in northern Belgium, where they had actually expected the German attack."
"A federal judge has denied a request by the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River tribes to halt construction of the final piece of the Dakota Access Pipeline. In a decision on Tuesday, U. S. District Judge James Boasberg denied the tribe’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the pipeline company. The tribes are arguing that the completion of the pipeline construction just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation endangers their drinking water source, part of the Missouri River called Lake Oahe, and that the pipeline has damaged cultural sites. The pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, has been drilling under Lake Oahe for weeks, and said oil could start flowing through that section of the pipeline as early as next week. In explaining his decision, Judge Boasberg laid out the progression of the case since it was originally filed last summer: ”Since last summer, the question of whether Dakota Access should route its oil pipeline near the reservations of American Indian tribes has engendered substantial debate both on the ground in North and South Dakota and here in Washington. ”. .. At the start of 2017, that pipeline was nearly complete, save a stretch  —   awaiting an easement  —   that was designed to run under the bed of Lake Oahe, a federally regulated waterway that forms part of the Missouri River and straddles North and South Dakota. ”Upon assuming office, President Trump directed an expedited approval process, and on February 8, the Army Corps of Engineers issued the easement that permitted Dakota Access to drill under the lake. Fearing that the presence of oil in the pipeline under Lake Oahe will cause irreparable harm to its members’ religious exercise, Cheyenne River responded with a Motion for Preliminary Injunction, in which it argues that the easement’s grant violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and requests that the Court enjoin the effect of the easement and thus the flow of oil, which is expected to commence in the next week or two.” Explaining he believed the tribes were unlikely to prevail in their lawsuit at this point, Boasberg denied their request to halt construction on the pipeline, or stop oil from flowing through it once it is complete. The plaintiffs have not announced any change to their legal approach to the case. In a statement after the decision was announced, Chase Iron Eyes, the lead counsel for the Lakota People’s Law Project, which is supporting the legal challenges to the pipeline, wrote ”Oil should never be allowed to flow through this pipeline until the legal process has played out in the courts.” Iron Eyes also accused the federal government and the army of ”treating the original inhabitants of this land as though we are less than human, as though our lives and lands are something to be ignored and discarded in the   quest for profit.” As we have reported, in April 2016 a senior field archaeologist for the Army Corps identified about 30 sites near the route of the pipeline that were of potential cultural significance, but determined that ”no historic properties will be subject to effect,” by the crossing under Lake Oahe. In late February, North Dakota’s governor ordered people camped near the construction site, some of whom had been demonstrating against the pipeline for months, to leave the largest encampment, citing flooding concerns as snow melted. Others opposed to the pipeline have continued to protest elsewhere in the country. Over the weekend, a group of people gathered outside Trump Tower in New York City, some carrying signs advocating for the rights of indigenous Americans, and others expressing anger about President Trump’s decision to allow the pipeline to go forward. On March 10, a coalition of groups is planning a demonstration in Washington, D. C. known as the Native Nations March."
"Opponents of abortion rights have long argued that public funds for services like cancer screenings and contraception should go solely to health clinics that don’t provide abortions. They’ve made ”defunding Planned Parenthood”  —   or, to be more precise  —   blocking the organization from receiving funding through federal programs like Medicaid  —   a major goal. Now, Republicans in Congress have proposed an Affordable Care Act repeal that would, for one year, prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid reimbursements for providing services like contraception and cancer screenings to   patients. Worry about just that kind of action under a Trump administration and   Congress is what brought Dawn States of Lancaster City, Pa. back into her local Planned Parenthood recently. ”I wasn’t sure what was going to happen in the next foreseeable future  —   and I actually physically can’t have kids,” States says, after having two spinal surgeries as a teenager. She’s now 26 and has come to the Planned Parenthood clinic in York, Pa. to get a   intrauterine device, or IUD. ”My spine is fused, and I have two rods. So it’s just not really set up for carrying around an infant,” she says. States says she worries what will happen to women like her who receive Medicaid and depend on Planned Parenthood for this kind of care. The organization has been a focus of   activism because it provides about a third of the nation’s abortions, according to data gathered by the Guttmacher Institute  —   though, under current law, the clinics can’t and don’t use federal money to pay for the procedure, in most cases. For other services, like screening for sexually transmitted diseases, Planned Parenthood gets more than $500 million in public funds  —   much of it from Medicaid  —   according to the organization’s most recent annual report. ”Whether this funding goes directly for abortion or indirectly allows them to have access to a large population of potential abortion clients, and to keep the lights on and man their call centers and do all their political activity, they should not be receiving taxpayer dollars,” says Eric Scheidler, executive director of the   Action League, one of the groups pushing to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Instead, Scheidler says, those patients should go to community health centers that specialize in treating   patients. Other    groups, like Students for Life, also have been promoting the idea of redirecting those funds to federally qualified health centers, known as FQHCs  —   which perform a range of primary care services, often with a large share of Medicaid dollars. The locations, hours and availability of services at these public health clinics vary from place to place. For patients in York, there’s a center less than a mile from Planned Parenthood  —   but it’s busy. ”There are more patients who seek our care than we’re able to provide care for,” says Jenny Englerth, CEO of Family First Health, which offers primary medical care and dental care at several clinics in the area. More than half of the patients at these clinics receive Medicaid. Englerth says her patient loads keep growing, and the organization frequently has to turn away patients  —   sometimes daily, depending on the time of year. ”Sometimes in the height of the cold and flu season there just isn’t enough capacity to go around,” she says. What’s more, doctors here can decline to provide birth control if it violates their religious beliefs. Englerth says she tries to hire a good mix of providers so that patients are able to get the care they need. But some, like Dr. Luis Garcia, choose not to offer birth control options like implants and IUDs. Garcia says he does screenings for sexually transmitted diseases and talks with patients about a technique called fertility awareness that can reduce unwanted pregnancies. ”But if a patient comes in and they want to get a Nexplanon or IUD or other birth control, then they can go to another provider,” Garcia says. Heavy patient loads are common at these clinics, says Sara Rosenbaum, a health policy professor at George Washington University. Rosenbaum says these community health centers provide important services but aren’t as equipped to provide the reproductive services that Planned Parenthood is known for. ”There are all kinds of reasons why it’s not just a simple substitution of X for Y,” she says. Rosenbaum points to Texas, where state lawmakers in 2011 reduced Planned Parenthood’s funding. Dozens of family planning clinics closed and the birthrate for   women went up. Some patients, Rosenbaum says, are unwilling to use a clinic that, by design, serves the whole family. ”There may be people who were younger users who were uncomfortable where they might run into their aunt sitting in the waiting room,” Rosenbaum says. Sally Gambill, a certified nurse midwife at the Planned Parenthood in York, says she has seen too many patients over the years who became pregnant because they weren’t able to obtain birth control efficiently. ”The sperm and egg really, really want to meet they just do. That’s why we’re all here,” Gambill says. ”And if we don’t help people, if they want to be on contraception [and] we don’t help people when they want to be helped  —   that day, that hour  —   then sperm and egg find each other.” If Planned Parenthood were no longer an option for some patients, Englerth says, her network of health clinics would try to meet the need. ”But I also understand the reality of what we try to do every day and the pressures that we feel every day with our existing demand,” she adds, ”so there are going to be gaps and shortfalls. And I can only project the stories of those individual women that will fall in between.” If there are major changes to federal funding for   patients’ reproductive health services, Englerth says, she hopes they don’t happen too quickly, so centers like hers have time to try to close those gaps."
"Last week, when news surfaced about various meetings between the Russian ambassador and members of Donald Trump’s campaign, Huffington Post editor Howard Fineman appeared on MSNBC and said, ”If you think the Russian ambassador is just an ambassador, you haven’t been watching The Americans.”  Well, I have been watching  —   and it’s been fascinating from the start. But now, with Cold War intrigue hotter than it’s been in decades, many curious new viewers are likely to flock to this series. At first, they may be quite surprised, because The Americans, more than anything else, is a family drama, in which the parents just happen to be Russian spies living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. The husband and wife, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, were paired by mother Russia long ago to emigrate to the United States and have a couple of kids and run a small travel agency, while taking on serious and sometimes dangerous spy missions. Their kids are now teens, and their daughter Paige is old enough to ask questions, and notice and challenge things. She’s also embarked on a budding romance with the teen son of the   neighbor  —   who just happens to be an FBI agent investigating spies just like his seemingly innocent   neighbors. Elizabeth and Philip are played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, who are wonderful. The couple adopts various identities and disguises to spy for their homeland  —   sometimes together, other times alone. Based on the three episodes available for preview, the season features an overarching story about a possible U. S. plot to damage the Soviet wheat crops. But what really counts on The Americans, as always, are the dynamics within this quiet family suburb. As the season opens, mom Elizabeth introduces the teenage Paige to the real family business. Will Paige mature quickly enough to join her parents on a spy mission? And if so, how will that go? And the FBI agent has to learn, eventually, that the object of his investigation has been a trusted confidant the whole time  —   leading to the same sort of emotional climax as the one between Walter White and his    Hank on Breaking Bad.  These underlying tensions, between neighbors, and between children and parents, are what makes The Americans so quietly intense  —   and so interesting. It’s also interesting to reflect how television’s depictions of Cold War tensions have changed over the decades. In the ’60s, our mistrust of the Soviets was embodied by Boris Badenov, a scheming spy, along with his partner Natasha Fatale, for the fictional foreign country of Pottsylvania on the cartoon series Rocky  Bullwinkle. The American response to these foreign operatives, on TV, was the Mission: Impossible force, a U. S. spy operation so   that every mission began with a warning that the government, if confronted, would deny its existence. American TV viewers, in the 1960s, had no problem with that. But by the 1980s, the time frame in which The Americans is set, the concerns, and the paranoia, was heightened. ABC gave us 1983’s The Day After, a frightening   about a Russian nuclear missile attack on the American heartland  —   specifically, Lawrence, Kansas. ABC also gave us a 1987 miniseries called Amerika. It was set in the near future, and depicted life in the U. S. after the Soviets had succeeded in mounting a bloodless coup, with the President being a mere pawn for his Russian manipulators. Quite fittingly, an episode of The Americans, a few seasons ago, was all about the reactions of the various characters on that show, who were watching the 1983 premiere of The Day After. Its politics, and its power and topicality, got their attention then  —   just as FX’s The Americans deserves your attention now."
"Brazil’s recession was already of historic proportions. Today, government figures confirm that it has grown even worse. The economy last year actually dipped more sharply than expected. The national gross domestic product contracted by 3. 6 percent in 2016, statistics agency IBGE said Tuesday. ”The numbers for 2015 were slightly worse,” NPR’s Philip Reeves reports from Brazil. ”Added together, this means Latin America’s biggest country  —   once one of the world’s fastest growing economies  —   has undergone the longest and deepest recession since records began.” The country’s economy is ”now 8% smaller than it was in December 2014,” according to the BBC. Philip explains what’s driving the economic trouble: ”The downturn’s been fueled by a fall in commodity prices but also by corruption scandals and political turmoil. Nearly 13 million Brazilians are without jobs government departments are struggling to find funds for public services.” Discontent over the dismal economy contributed to last year’s impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff. New president Michel Temer ”says the first signs of recovery have already appeared,” as Phil reports. But he adds that ”economists tend to strike a more cautious note, saying that any recovery this year will likely be slight.” Some economists are even more pessimistic, such as Carlos Kawall, the chief economist at Banco Safra. ”We see zero growth in 2017, or maybe just a little bit above that,” Kawall told Reuters. ”We should not see any big recovery this year we will have to wait until 2018.” The unemployment crisis is so staggering that the BBC has this comparison: ”It is as if the entire population of a country like Greece or Portugal were now looking for jobs and not finding anything.” The broadcaster adds that there are signs of optimism in the country’s stabilizing monthly inflation rates and falling interest rates: ”This could fuel consumption and investment and speed up the country’s recovery.” And as Reuters notes, the crushing recession ”has not been marked by the financial upheaval seen in other crises in the country’s turbulent economic past.” Those include ”sovereign debt crises, capital flight and hyperinflation, not of which happened during the current slump.”"
"Late last month, famine was declared in two counties of the   torn East African country of South Sudan. With 100, 000 people at risk for dying of starvation in that area alone and millions more on the brink of   food shortages throughout the country, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir promised ”unimpeded access” to humanitarian aid organizations working there. A few days later the South Sudanese government hiked the fee for work permits for foreign aid workers from $100 to $10, 000. It’s unclear whether the fee would apply only to newcomers or to those already there as well. Whatever the case, the amount is ”absolutely unheard of globally,” said Julien Schopp, director for Humanitarian Practice at InterAction, an alliance of 180 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working around the world. ”No organization can afford this, and if NGOs go to their institutional donors to request that extra money, I’m pretty sure that [the donors] will be reluctant to pay this because they will see this to some extent as ransom.” With the South Sudan experiencing a poor economy, the government is seeking revenue ”wherever it can find it,” he says. Joel Charny, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council USA, similarly views this as an example of seeing foreigners and foreign aid workers as sources of income. As for the timing, it ”could not be worse,” he says. A famine was declared because people are already dying of starvation in some parts of the country and U. N. agencies predict the food situation will only worsen in coming months. Instead of another ”bureaucratic impediment,” Charny continues, ”what we need is collaboration, assistance from the government and from all the warring parties” to provide emergency food supplies, medical aid and shelter. The exact timing may have been less by design than by chance, according to Schopp, who says that, ”Some people in the country say this has been in the works for some time.” In addition, the extent to which the fee will be implemented remains unclear. ”I think there will be pushback from everyone concerned.” Charny also foresees a    between government and NGOs and wonders if the fee increase ”will stick.” But if the government insists on such a fee, he worries that organizations might have to make impossible decisions about their programs. It raises the question, he says: ”Is this the breaking point?” In the meantime, because of the already fraught situation, questions about the fee increase remain sensitive. Representatives of several organizations who work there would not comment to NPR, apparently concerned that might further impede their aid efforts. Even without this new obstacle, South Sudan is an incredibly difficult place for aid groups to work. Last November, NRC’s country director in the capital of Juba was expelled. ”And to this day we haven’t gotten an explanation as to why,” Charny says. ”What the rationale was for expelling him was never clarified.” Despite the expulsion, NRC continues to work in South Sudan. Operational challenges are abundant. There are no paved roads outside the capital. Dirt roads wash out and become impassable during rainy season, making it very hard to reach remote areas. In addition to the logistical challenges, since the onset of civil war in 2013, ongoing tensions between the South Sudanese government and international NGOs have led to further hurdles. In July rampaging government soldiers looted humanitarian compounds in the capital, raped foreign aid workers, attacked international peacekeepers and killed civilians who’d taken shelter on a U. N. base. The security concerns have continued. At the end of February, armed groups stormed and looted the compound and warehouse of Save the Children in Watt, South Sudan, an area classified as on the brink of famine. Food supplies for 1, 500 malnourished children were stolen. The country as a whole is also listed as the third most dangerous country for aid workers, after Somalia and Afghanistan, according to data on attacks on these workers collected by the Aid Worker Security Database. ”The situation is complicated and dangerous, especially for our South Sudanese colleagues that are bearing the brunt of this,” says Schopp. Given all these complexities, Schopp concludes that the drastic fee hike is ”part of a broader issue of trying to restrict access to the people in need.” As to why the government would try to impede the delivery of emergency aid one possibility may be that ”there is real panic about the conditions, the lack of food and about the press reporting on this,” suggests Ruth Messinger, global ambassador of the American Jewish World Service, whose mission is to end poverty and promote human rights in the developing world. ”It is a sign of their failure as a country if they cannot meet the needs of their country.” Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Jewish Week, and is book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is dianejcole. com. "
"Order in the court  —   but maybe not in movie theaters. With all the talk lately about politics and the judiciary  —   fights over Supreme Court vacancies, the President complaining about ” ” judges  —   I’ve been thinking about the judges I’ve seen on screen, and how their depiction might have intersected with public opinion through the years. Certainly, there was a time when judges were held in high esteem. When a teenage Mickey Rooney had a problem in the Andy Hardy movies, he turned to his onscreen dad, Judge Hardy. In the first of those films, A Family Affair (1937) the judge was played by Lionel Barrymore, who sat patiently with the young star, explaining why he needed to justify his request for five dollars. ”Gee Pa, says the frustrated teen, ”Sometimes I wish you weren’t a judge, because it’s kinda taking advantage of a guy to keep showing him two sides of a question.” Two sides of a question. In the 1930s, the fact that Judge Hardy was a judge made him virtually unassailable  —   thoughtful, wise,   rectitude made flesh. Somewhere along the way  —   in Hollywood at least  —   judges lost a bit of the rectitude. The farce What’s Up Doc? (1972) featured a judge who’d adopted the rhythms of vaudeville, a precursor of sorts for Fred Gwynne’s     judge, who interrupts   attorney Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny (1992) to ask ”what’s a yute.” And they’re both descendants of a comic tradition that goes back at least as far as the Marx Brothers . .. Groucho having picked up a gavel in Duck Soup (1933) remember, to suggest that Chico be sentenced either to ”10 years in Leavenworth or 11 years in Twelveworth.” Being held generally in high esteem, judges  —   like anyone on a pedestal  —   become targets to be knocked down, which is another way of saying Hollywood’s depiction of judges has been just as complicated as the public’s perception of judges. Hollywood’s version is easier to read, though, especially in terms of tone. When Groucho played a judge, no one thought he was mocking the judiciary. He was just being Groucho. Something slightly different is going on in, say, Miracle on 34th Street (1947) when a judge caves to public opinion and recognizes the existence of Santa Claus. Still a joke, but this time it’s a judge who’s caving, not a comedian. And something far more ”judgmental” is happening a few decades later in The People Versus Larry Flynt (1996) about the   publisher of the adult magazine, Hustler. In that film, the producers gave the real Larry Flynt a cameo as an appellate judge. He got to sentence himself, as it were, in a film where the whole point was that the judiciary kept getting first amendment freedoms wrong. Often, you can tell what filmmakers think of judges by looking at whom they cast as judges. In Anatomy of a Murder (1959) arguably the most riveting courtroom drama ever, the judge is played by   attorney Joseph N. Welch, famous   for facing down Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his communist witch hunts with an impassioned, ”Have you no sense of decency, sir?” In Anatomy of a Murder Welch was just a   surrounded by seasoned pros  —   prosecutor George C. Scott, defendant Ben Gazzara, and increasingly desperate defense attorney, Jimmy Stewart. Director Otto Preminger knew the way to give his   a big moment in that sort of company, was to pause in what was becoming a rush to judgment. Asked a   question, the judge flips open his pocket watch, winds it, and with great deliberation, makes up his mind. The pause encapsulates what judges are supposed to do  —   step back from the fray, look at things impartially, and render their considered judgement. Anatomy of a Murder came out at a time when the federal judiciary was respected as much as it has ever been. Not universally, mind you. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court had handed down a number of controversial decisions, including the one that outlawed racial segregation in public schools. That meant there were ”Impeach Earl Warren” signs on many lawns, but it also meant that the power of the judiciary to change society was on vivid display. Hollywood harnessed that power in early 1960s courtroom dramas  —   Inherit the Wind (1960) about the Scopes ”Monkey” trial and evolution, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) about racial prejudice, and the classic Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) in which Spencer Tracy presides over a military court holding Nazis accountable for crimes against humanity. The accused are themselves judges, guilty, as Burt Lancaster’s Judge Janning notes on the stand, of being swept up in a national hysteria. ”There was a fever over the land,” says Janning. ”We were a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Only when you understand that, can you understand what Hitler meant to us. He said be proud to be German. There are devils among us, communists, liberals, Jews, gypsies.” It was the ancient story of the sacrificial lamb, he continues, going on to explain how judges, sworn to protect society from barbarism, convinced themselves that barbarism was the lesser of two evils: ”Why did we take part? Because we loved our country. What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? The country is in danger.” Other movie judges have been swayed by love of country, or love of God, rather than insisting on the primacy of the law. In A Man for All Seasons, which was released that same decade, Sir Thomas More, an English philosopher now venerated as a saint, challenges both his king and his church, eventually losing his head for arguing that the law must be paramount. ”What would you do?” he asks a prelate, ”cut a great road through law to get after the devil?” Assured that his opponent would ”cut down every law in England” to do that, he responds, ”And when the last law was down and the devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide with the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast  —   man’s laws, not God’s  —   and if you cut them down . .. do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.” The great Paul Scofield won an Oscar playing More. Not all movie magistrates live up to his standard, of course. Film genres require different approaches from say, an action hero like Judge Dredd, or a ”toon,” like Roger Rabbit’s nemesis, Judge Doom. But serious dramas still lean heavily on the probity and respectability of judges. In the movie Amistad (1997) when Steven Spielberg needed someone to read the Supreme Court verdict that set a  ’s passengers free, he called on a real Supreme Court justice: Harry Blackmun. (You can hear Blackmun’s reading here.) Judging judges is not in my brief, as it were, but in cinematic terms, there’s little question that this guy’s judicial bearing sounds like the real thing."
"In his address to Congress last week, President Trump said this about the kinds of people his immigration agents are singling out for deportation: ”We are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our very innocent citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak.” Then why, some Houstonians are asking, did immigration agents target Piro Garcia, the owner of two popular taco trucks on the city’s Southside? ”Hi friends, good afternoon! I’m Piro, making fresh gorditas for you,” says the grinning taco king of South Post Oak Road, on an old Facebook video. He is wearing a red ball cap, standing inside his taco truck, throwing dough on the grill. Piro is Armando Garcia Mendez, 41 years old. He was born in Guatemala and fled to the United States in 1994 to avoid conscription by the armed forces in the midst of a civil war. He was caught by the Border Patrol and deported the first time. Then he tried again and made it to Houston. Garcia has spent the past 23 years living out the immigrant success story. He started as a restaurant cook and went on to own two taco trucks. But last month, his life changed abruptly. Shortly before dawn four weeks ago, Garcia was preparing one of his trucks for the breakfast crowd. Four agents in ballistic vests emblazoned with ”ICE Police” rushed out of an unmarked vehicle, handcuffed him, and took him away. ”He’s my right hand. He washed the trucks every day,” says his despondent wife, Rosie. ”He bought the meat and the vegetables. It takes two people to run these trucks. I don’t know how I’ll do it alone.” Garcia has had brushes with the law in Houston. His criminal record shows charges for misdemeanor assault, trespassing and having a fake vehicle inspection sticker. But the charge that got him arrested was the old deportation order from 1994. It languished under three different administrations that didn’t go after him. Obama’s immigration police, for instance, prioritized serious felons. Trump’s Homeland Security Department has said there will be ”no mass deportations” of the 11 million people believed to be in the country illegally. Among those immigrants whom authorities are aggressively pursuing are the nearly 1 million who have outstanding deportation orders, like Piro Garcia. ”Under the Trump administration, he’s considered a criminal because he has these three minor offenses. But they equate him and he’s at the same level of somebody who kills somebody,” says Garcia’s immigration lawyer, Raed Gonzalez. Asked to comment on Garcia’s case, the Houston ICE office emailed: We are ”focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that targets criminal aliens who present the greatest risk to the security of our communities.” This kind of statement outrages the fiercely loyal customers of Piro’s tacos. ”There’s plenty of illegal immigrants here that are breaking the law, selling drugs, prostitution. That’s who they should go after, not the   people that are trying to make a living honestly,” says Paul Eberson, an Army veteran who keeps a workshop next to one of Piro’s food trucks. ”He was a good guy, he always helped people. He had a good family. Everybody loves his tacos.” There is now a Go Fund Me page  —   ”Free Piro!”  —   to help with his legal defense, which looks increasingly bleak. It was started by local attorney Debra Catlett, who has known Garcia for nearly 20 years. ”Piro is just a very special person,” she says. ”Not to say he doesn’t have his faults. He’s worked hard. He’s a taxpaying member of our community.” The government’s widening dragnet to round up immigrants who have no legal status has sent a bolt of terror through unauthorized populations. The arrest of Piro, in particular, rocketed around social media in South Houston. ”I’m scared all the time,” says Leticia, her voice cracking. She owns a retail business down the street from one of his taco trucks. She asked to use only her first name because she, too, is in the country illegally, though she has no pending removal order. For 25 years in Houston, she quietly built her business, bought a home, and raised five children. Trump’s crackdown has changed everything. ”I don’t go to the Catholic church anymore,” Leticia says. ”I don’t go too much to the grocery stores. I work and come back home. I stay and tell my kids: Please lock the door. Don’t open the door to nobody.” If it can happen to Piro, she thinks it can happen to any of them. Piro Garcia sits in a detention center in Houston awaiting deportation back to the country he hasn’t seen in nearly a quarter century. Meanwhile, his wife, Rosie, is working   days to keep the taco trucks open."
"Poachers forced their way into a French zoo and killed a southern white rhinoceros named Vince, sawing off one of his horns before fleeing into the night. The Thoiry Zoo said police are investigating the killing of the    animal. The poachers remain at large. ”It is extremely shocking what just happened,” zoo director Thierry Duguet told France’s 20 Minutes newspaper. ”An act of such violence, never before seen in Europe.” Duguet told The Associated Press that Vince was shot three times in the head. The poachers likely used a chainsaw to cut off one of the horns, according to a statement from the zoo, which is nearly 40 miles west of Paris. It added that ”his second horn was only partially cut, which suggests that the criminals were disturbed or that their equipment proved defective.” A police spokesman told The Guardian that ”it’s possible the thieves didn’t have time to take the others.” The zoo confirmed that its two other white rhinos  —      Gracie and    Bruno  —   ”escaped the massacre and are safe and sound.” ”Vince was found this morning by his caretaker, who, being very attached to the animals she cares for, is deeply affected,” the zoo wrote. ”This odious act was perpetrated despite the presence of five members of the zoo staff living on site and surveillance cameras.” Despite bans by international convention and French law, the illegal sale of rhino horns persists because of demand for use in traditional Asian medicine. A kilogram of rhino horn sold on the black market for nearly $54, 000 in 2015, according to the zoo. Southern white rhinos like Vince were nearly extinct in the late 19th century, according to the WWF. Protection efforts were largely successful, with some 20, 000 animals in protected areas and private game reserves  —   in fact, they’re the ”only rhinos that are not endangered.” But there’s been a major uptick in poaching. ”Hundreds of white rhinos have been killed annually in recent years,” the WWF says. ”They are particularly vulnerable to hunting, because they are relatively unaggressive.” Vince was born at a zoo in the Netherlands, and had been living at Thoiry Zoo since 2015. In the aftermath of the attack, Thoiry is warning other European zoos. ”Animal parks throughout Europe have been put on alert to look out . .. to get into these places they have to climb 3. 5 metre fences, go through padlocked doors,” said Paul de La Panouse, the former director of the zoo’s African enclosure, according to The Guardian. He added: ”It’s not easy to kill a rhino weighing several tonnes just like that. It’s a job for professionals.”"
"A record number of people, at least 166, were exonerated last year after being wrongly convicted of crimes, according to the most recent annual report from the National Registry of Exonerations. It’s the third year in a row that data collected by a group of law schools showed a record number of exonerations in the U. S.  —   with 149 in 2015 and 125 the year before that. Using information on exonerations going back to 1989, the latest report also shows that black people continue to be more likely to be wrongly convicted in America than people of other races. There is no standardized reporting system for exonerations, but the registry is the most complete national data collected on the subject. Take the crime of murder. Last year, the report collected data on 52 people who were exonerated of murder. More than half of them, 28, were black. A companion report on race and wrongful conviction, also released Tuesday, states: ”African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1, 900 [total] exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016).” One of those exonerated, Devontae Sanford, was 14 years old when four people were killed in a house in his Detroit neighborhood. The black teenager confessed to the killings and, despite testing negative for gunshot residue and not matching descriptions of the perpetrators provided by witnesses, he was convicted and sentenced to 37 to 90 years in prison. As NPR’s Joe Shapiro reported last year, ”after almost nine years in prison, his conviction was overturned when a state investigation found that the real killer had later confessed to Wayne County police and prosecutors.” Joe also reported that court fees, including a $1, 500 bill for a public defender, nearly kept the     man from being released  —   even after he had been exonerated. Sanford was one of 16 people exonerated for murder last year who had been convicted when they were teenagers. As in past years, Texas leads the country in exonerations, many of them for nonviolent drug crimes. The report acknowledges that there are many possible reasons for the Texas numbers, including the possibility of a higher overall rate of wrongful conviction in the state, but it notes that the county that includes Houston has overturned dozens of convictions since it created a Conviction Integrity Unit to review past cases, and credits the unit with investigating questionable convictions. Last year, The Texas Tribune reported that the state had paid 101 people who were wrongly convicted nearly $100 million over the previous 25 years."
"Israel has passed a new law that allows it to bar entry to foreign activists who support a boycott of the country. The law takes aim at the BDS movement, which emerged more than a decade ago and is an acronym for ”boycott, divest and sanction.” The BDS movement aims to put economic pressure on Israel in support of Palestinian independence.   visitors ”who support a boycott of Israel or who represent an organization that publicly calls for a boycott” may be banned, as NPR’s Daniel Estrin reports from Jerusalem. Here’s more from Daniel: ”It’s part of an effort to combat a global movement that lobbies celebrities, companies and other groups to cut off ties with Israel. Boycott activists say it’s a pressure tactic to promote Palestinian independence, but Israel says the boycott movement seeks to destroy Israel as a Jewish state altogether.” Daniel reports that Israel hasn’t explained how it will identify the visitors that support a boycott. ”A spokeswoman for Israel’s Interior Ministry says Israel is now formulating ways to enforce the ban,” he adds. The new law includes a provision that would allow Israel to block entry to people who call for boycotts on Israeli settlements, according to Haaretz. Settlements, which are on land captured by Israel nearly 50 years ago that Palestinians want as part of a future state, are generally seen as an obstacle to peace, as we have reported, and the U. N. says settlements are illegal under international law. The committee that approved the bills’ final language also rejected a Justice Ministry recommendation ”to make an exception for Palestinians with temporary residency in Israel, like those admitted under the family unification program, who spend several years as temporary residents before receiving permanent residency,” Haaretz added. Hardline education minister Naftali Bennett praised the law as ”necessary and logical” in a post on Twitter. He said it ”allows Israel to defend itself.” Lawmaker Roy Folkman, who sponsored the bill, said, ”We can defend the reputation and the honor of the State of Israel, and that is nothing to be ashamed of,” according to The Washington Post. But it is eliciting sharp criticism elsewhere. The Israeli human rights group Peace Now slammed it as ”neither Jewish nor democratic.” It said in a statement that the law ”will prevent Jews as well as others supporting two states by boycotting settlement products from entering Israel, and it is a clear violation of freedom of expression.” Haaretz correspondent Allison Kaplan Sommer argues the new law fundamentally changes Israel’s posture toward the rest of the world: ”With this new law, the message to young Jews, and the rest of the world is no longer: ’Come, see for yourself, let’s have a discussion   even an argument in which I try to change your views. We know it’s complicated, but let’s not end our relationship.’ ”Instead, it is: ’Stay away. If you don’t agree with us, there is no place for you here. ’”"
"Women won’t be coming to work. That’s what Americans may think that International Women’s Day means this year. The event, which has been celebrated for 106 years, has no single organizer or agenda. That’s what makes it so effective, says Terry McGovern, professor and chair of population and family health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. ”There’s not an imposed agenda. It allows women to define what the day means for them, and what needs to happen for them to achieve equality.” The roots of the day are in the U. S. and European Socialist movements of the 1900s. In 1975, the United Nations adopted it as an official day of observance and for the past couple of decades has offered up a yearly theme for its member states  —   but it’s completely optional. This year’s theme, #BeBoldForChange, calls for gender equality in the workplace. Organizers in the U. S. are asking women to take the day off from paid and unpaid labor on March 8. But Jamaica, for example, has chosen an alternative theme:   violence, in light of an increased number of attacks against women. So the day has taken on a life of its own, particularly in many of the countries that we cover in this blog. Here’s a look at some of the ways it’s been celebrated in the past few years  —   for better and sometimes for worse. Government approved, In a handful of countries, including Cuba, Madagascar and Uzbekistan, it’s an official holiday. And here in the U. S. we now celebrate women all throughout the month of March. In 2016, President Obama proclaimed it as Women’s History Month. Say it with flowers,  Some countries, like Romania, treat International Women’s Day kind of like Mother’s Day. Men give the special ladies in their lives flowers and chocolates, or take ’em out for lunch. Pressing issues, In Lahore, Pakistan, for example, women from the Islamist party    used the day in 2016 to protest against honor killings, the act of murdering women for bringing shame upon her family. In Bhopal, India in 2011, more than 8, 000 women participated in a rally organized by the global advocacy group ActionAid to fight for free speech. The women wore chains on their hands and paper padlocks over their mouths. And this year in Poland, the big day falls smack in the middle of ongoing protests against the country’s tightened abortion laws. Tomorrow, women in 100 cities and villages across the country will dress in dark colors in solidarity, in a day they are calling ”Black Wednesday.” Inspiring ’wokeness’ For Yemeni activist Rasha Jarhum, International Women’s Day was the first time she witnessed what she calls ”pretend equality” in her country. In 2010, she joined a youth initiative called Kuni Wa Kun, which means ”to be” in Arabic. They organized an IWD event at a museum in Yemen, inviting a minister to deliver a speech. ”It was at that moment I realized how sad our reality was,” Jarhum wrote in an email to NPR. ”He went on and on about women’s achievement, quoting historic events of our   [like] Queen of Sheba and said we now have one [woman] minister and one [woman] ambassador, as if that was a huge achievement.” Tea and volleyball, Not all Women’s Day events are serious. Scroll through the International Women’s Day website and you’ll find listings for fun events. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, there’s a Global Mentoring Walk. At the Protea Lusaka Tower Hotel in Zambia, musician and activist Jasmine Kasoma is hosting a high tea. And in Ben Arous, Tunisia, women are invited to play volleyball with the guys to introduce women to the sport. Get off your high heels, With so many IWD events, there’s bound to be some missteps. For one establishment in Mumbai, India, it was literal. Last year, a bar called Old Wild West offered discounts to women who showed up on March 8 wearing their ”HIGHEST heels” and busting their ”best moves as our DJ will be belting his best tunes,” they wrote on their Facebook page. Another IWD event in Guangdong, China, last year also missed the mark. Men climbed a mountain while dressed up in women’s clothes and heels to feel the ”hardship of being a woman nowadays,” according to People’s Daily Online, a Chinese newspaper. Say it with a hashtag, Like every other event these days, IWD has its hashtags: #InternationalWomensDay, #WomensDay, #IWD2017 and #BeBoldForChange. Local groups are also hosting their own conversations. This year, Twitter India is working with She The People TV, a storytelling platform, to launch the hashtag #SheLeadsIndia. ”It’s an important day anywhere in the world as long as women haven’t achieved full gender equality,” says Nanette Braun, chief of communications and advocacy at U. N. Women. ”And we haven’t achieved it anywhere.”"
"When you step outside after a big rainstorm and take a deep whiff of that fresh, earthy smell, you’re mostly smelling a chemical called geosmin. It’s a byproduct of bacteria and fungi. And something about rain lofts the chemical  —   and sometimes the organisms themselves  —   into the air, a process that not only helps release that earthy smell but may, in very rare conditions, spread diseases. Somehow raindrops launch tiny living things off the ground. Wind can pick bacteria up from the ground and bring into the sky, sometimes settling in clouds thousands of feet above us. Sea spray can also send bacteria flying. The mystery has been, how does rain do it? Now, mechanical engineers writing Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications say they’ve figured it out. It has to do with tiny bubbles. Using   cameras and fluorescent dye, the researchers filmed drops of water as they fell on different types of soil infused with bacteria. They watched as the drops delicately catapulted the microbes into the air. When a raindrop hits the ground at the right speed, it traps air bubbles beneath it, each one no wider than a human hair. Like an air bubble stuck under a container at the bottom of a pool, those bubbles then rise, bursting when they reach the surface. As the bubbles burst, they send a spray of tiny water jets into the air, sometimes carrying bacteria with them. ”It’s very similar to what happens if you pour a glass of champagne or any carbonated beverage and you see that fizz on top,” says Cullen Buie, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author on the paper. In that case, the popping bubbles are full of carbon dioxide in this case, they’re full of air. In a few microseconds, Buie and his colleagues found, a single raindrop can create hundreds of tiny airborne droplets, each one carrying as many as several thousand live bacteria. It’s as if the ground has gently sneezed. The soaring microbes can survive inside a tiny water droplet for at least an hour. ”The next step is studying how far they can potentially travel,” says Cullen, who estimates that bacteria could travel for miles, if the winds are right and they don’t get dragged down by other raindrops.  The three kinds of soil bacteria involved in this study  —   Corynebacterium glutamicum, Pseudomonas syringae, Bacillus subtilis  —   are harmless. But pathogens can also get a lift from water droplets. Cullen and his colleagues got started on this study after a British scientist contacted them after noticing an uptick in a rare disease called melioidosis during the rainy season in parts of Southeast Asia and northern Australia. The lung infection is caused by the   bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Cullen’s results suggest rain could be a reason for that uptick. He and his colleagues varied the speed of the falling raindrops and the type and temperature of the soil. They found that the Goldilocks conditions for producing spray loaded with bacteria is exactly what you’d find in certain tropical places  —   sandy clay soils, a soil temperature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit and droplets falling at about 3 miles an hour. ”I don’t want people thinking they shouldn’t go outside after it rains because they might get some bacterial infection. I definitely don’t want people thinking that,” says Cullen. Melioidosis, he says, is very rare. And, if rain really is the culprit behind a small rise in cases, that would only be the case in the rare locations with exactly the right conditions  —   and with the   bacterium living in the soil. ”Bacteria, unfortunately, get a bad rap,” says Buie. Most, he says, are harmless or even beneficial. And sometimes they even smell good."
"Women with breast cancer sometimes get confusing messages about   foods, including soy milk, edamame and tofu. On one hand, studies have suggested that the   compounds in soy  —   called isoflavones  —   may inhibit the development or recurrence of breast cancer. On the other hand, there’s been concern that consuming   foods can interfere with the effectiveness of breast cancer drugs such as tamoxifen. A new study helps to resolve this question. ”Our finding would suggest that soy food consumption does not have a harmful effect,” says Fang Fang Zhang, a cancer epidemiologist at Tufts University. And for some breast cancer survivors, soy seems beneficial. The study tied higher soy consumption to a longer life after breast cancer, especially for women with hormone receptor negative breast cancers  —   which tend to be aggressive, and don’t respond to hormone therapy. ”We found a 21 percent reduction in   mortality among women with the highest dietary intake [of soy] compared to those with the lowest intake,” Zhang told us. The findings are based on a study of 6, 235 women with breast cancer in the United States and Canada, all of whom were enrolled in the Breast Cancer Family Registry. The women completed   questionnaires, so researchers could estimate how much soy they consumed. This benefit of better survival odds was limited to women in the study with hormone   cancers. The researchers found no associations for   women who had hormone   tumors or those who received hormone therapy. Research in Asian women has shown that soy can protect against breast cancer. And a 2009 study that included 5, 000 Chinese breast cancer survivors concluded that those who consumed the most soy did better in the four years following diagnosis and treatment. Zhang says that given the evidence from Asia, she wasn’t surprised to see a benefit for women in North America, too. Her findings are published in the journal Cancer. In an accompanying editorial, Omer Kucuk,  an oncologist who has studied nutrition and cancer prevention at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, argues that the new data helps answer the question of whether soy is safe for women. ”We now have evidence that soy foods not only prevent breast cancer but also benefit women who have breast cancer,” Kucuk concludes. But there are some limitations to the study. For instance, researchers point out that the women who consumed more soy in their study also tended to have higher incomes and healthier lifestyles, factors that can also influence longevity. And there are other unanswered questions, according to Marian Neuhouser, a registered dietician and nutritional epidemiologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She says the data from the new study is ”a piece of the puzzle.” She points out that the amount of soy isoflavones that the North American women in the study consumed was quite small  —   less than 2 milligrams a day. ”If you compare that to Asian populations that on average consume 40 to 50 milligrams, it’s pretty low,” she says. She says it’s not clear what the results  —   in terms of   survival  —   would be if women in the U. S. consumed a lot more. For now, she says ”soy seems to be safe” at the levels women in the U. S. typically consume it, ”and it could be beneficial for some women who have had a diagnosis of breast cancer.”"
"Having lived outside my native Britain for nearly 16 years, I recently lost my right to vote there. But I was still entitled to do so last June in the U. K.’s referendum on European Union membership. When I awoke on June 24 to hear that my country had voted in favor of a Brexit, I felt bereft. So, like many other British citizens living in Germany, I decided to apply for German citizenship. I was determined to remain a member of the EU, even if the narrow majority of British voters were not. Since 2001, I have been an EU migrant  —   the very type of person, or as it turned out, persona non grata, against whom much of the Leave campaign was pitted. While the xenophobic Brexit rhetoric was directed primarily at those, particularly from Eastern Europe, living and working in the U. K. I have never experienced such sentiment in Germany, where I have always felt welcome. Britain has been a member of the EU longer than I have, so I’ve always been aware of something greater than just Britain, and I’ve always considered myself both European and British. I have also benefited from EU membership my entire life  —   from studying free at the University of Salzburg in Austria to seizing the cultural,   and career opportunities afforded by freedom of movement: the right to travel, work and live in 28 European countries. Germany is the member state I came to in 2001  —   originally just for a year, but it is where I have lived happily ever since. So, in my own bid to ”remain,” I embarked on the bureaucratic path to obtaining a German passport. I met all the requirements for citizenship: I have been living in Germany for more than eight years, I pay my taxes and social welfare contributions and I speak the language fluently. As I pulled together the required paperwork, I came across my A Level certificates, the British equivalent of a high school diploma. These certificates were my passport to attaining a bachelor’s, master’s and Ph. D. in German studies, as well as the language skills needed to seek work in Germany. Funny enough, it was Theresa May who handed me these at my school graduation ceremony, back when she was just our local member of Parliament in Berkshire. May was previously in favor of remaining in the EU, but as Britain’s prime minister, she’s promising a ”hard Brexit.” I also had to pass a German citizenship test, the first multiple choice exam I’ve ever done. As I turned in the test paper, I realized that I am probably better versed in the history, politics and constitution of Germany than of Britain. But considering I’ve reported on Germany for the best part of a decade, it would have been embarrassing had I not passed. The whole procedure took just three months. When news of my forthcoming citizenship ceremony arrived in the mail in January, it caught me a little off guard. Suddenly, I was going to be German. None of my family are German, so what did this mean? My parents and my brother were very happy for me and consider my decision a wise one. I wonder, though, what my late grandparents would have thought of my becoming German. My paternal grandmother, who spoke to me about the Blitz on just one occasion, never entirely understood my decision to live in Berlin, even if she accepted and respected it. But Berlin has become my home. And once I’d digested the German authorities’ decision to accept me as one of their own, it dawned on me that  —   perhaps unwittingly  —   I’ve spent much of my life becoming German. I always attributed my fascination with German language and literature to my teachers and professors. But what really draws me to Germany, I’ve come to realize, is something central to the very essence of being German in this era ”after Auschwitz.” It’s the concept  —   or value, even  —   of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung, which means coming to terms with the past, specifically the Nazi past. It permeates German society, culture and politics, in which questions are raised again and again about collective responsibility for the atrocities of the Nazi regime. I first encountered this concept as a student, in the writings of Guenter Grass and Heinrich Boell. But I was surprised to find that German friends of my own age consider it a duty to deal with a past that they themselves did not live through. These friends’ parents were the generation known as ”1968ers”  —   West German baby boomers politicized by the student protest movement of the late 1960s. They questioned their own parents about what they did in World War II, and then passed on the responsibility to keep questioning to the next generation. Now I see these same friends helping their own children try to comprehend the barbarity of the Holocaust and what it demands of civil society, democracy and humanity  —   to ensure it never happens again. And now that I am also German with full suffrage, I realize I share this civic responsibility. Such diligent efforts to face up to the past are, perhaps, needed more than ever as Germany’s populist   Alternative for Germany  —   AfD  —   party whips up fears about the large numbers of refugees and migrants who have arrived in the past few years. But even as   populists like AfD member Bjoern Hoecke call upon Germans to stop atoning for their past, Germany’s perpetual act of   is facing other challenges. Some argue that Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung is actually enabling the resurgence of the far right, which labels it as elitist political correctness. (Others suggest that Hoecke’s comments are harming his party.) I hail from a country where reckoning with the past is not part of the culture. Unlike German schoolchildren, who are routinely taken to see what remains of the concentration camps, I was, regrettably, taught nothing at school of the darker sides of Britain’s colonial past. Like many of my friends back in England, I have never been overtly proud of being British. The very idea of waving a Union Jack flag has always struck me as somewhat distasteful and conjures up old images of the   British National Party. I was raised to believe that modesty, even   is preferable to glaring displays of patriotism. But perhaps this unease about national pride is another reason I found myself drawn to German culture. Many Germans, for obvious reasons, are not always proud of being German. Yes, since the country hosted the soccer World Cup in 2006, fans have lost this inhibition and wave their flags together with the rest of the world, but many Germans I know still feel uncomfortable at such a patent display of patriotism, even in the name of sport. So, on the day of my citizenship ceremony last month, I arrived at the     town hall in the Berlin borough of Neukoelln feeling somewhat detached from the process. That changed as soon as the service began. I was one of 50 people from 22 different countries being granted German citizenship that day. We came from Ethiopia, Italy, Britain, Iraq, France, Turkey, Syria, Korea, the U. S. and beyond. A pianist and cellist played the national anthem for the country of origin of every single person there. On hearing ”God Save the Queen,” my usual awkward reaction gave way to an emotion for which there is a very fitting word in German  —   Fremdschaemen  —   which means feeling shame on behalf of others. In this case, the shame I felt was on behalf of those who voted for Brexit because of  —   or in spite of  —   an ugly discourse about immigration. Yet as soon as the duo moved on to the national anthems of others, many of whom were forced to leave their countries for fear of persecution, the musical offerings moved me. It was a touching gesture of respect, a respect that is enshrined in German Basic Law, the constitution to which we all had to pledge our allegiance before receiving our certificates from the district mayor. Once we’d all been declared German citizens, we were required to stand and sing the German national anthem. It was the first time I’ve sung a national anthem of any country and I felt slightly uncomfortable doing so. Then again, so do most Germans I know. But one anthem that day moved me to tears, and led me to cast aside my cautious misgivings about national pride. Beethoven’s ”Ode to Joy,” the EU’s anthem, reminded me of my European identity and of the EU ideal that diverse nations and cultures work together for peace and prosperity. I left the ceremony feeling a sense of hope that had diminished over the past year, on account of political developments across the globe. My quiet optimism was triggered by the mayor, who quoted the German Constitution: ”Human dignity is inviolable. . .. All persons are equal before the law. . .. No person shall be favored or disfavored because of sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith or religious or political opinions. No person shall be disfavored because of disability. . .. There shall be no censorship.” These words, more than the national anthems, were music to my ears. So was the knowledge that I now have a voice and will be able to vote in Germany’s election later this year. After the ceremony, the mayor cut slices of heavy rye bread and handed them out with salt, a traditional German welcome gesture. I took my slice home, and spread Marmite on it. I may well be German now, but I remain a British citizen, too, and some habits die hard. Radio journalist Esme Nicholson reports and produces for NPR’s Berlin bureau. Her forthcoming book on the role of radio in Cold War Berlin, published by Peter Lang Oxford, is due out this fall."
"According to two new World Health Organization reports, about 1. 7 million children under the age of 5 die each year because of environmental hazards. It’s the first such estimate of the child death toll from environmental causes. ”That terrible figure” makes up about a quarter of child deaths under 5, says Dr. Maria Neira, WHO’s public health and environment department director and lead author on the reports. In addition, children can experience mental and physical developmental disorders and an increased lifelong risk for certain diseases because of exposure to pollutants. The causes of death include respiratory diseases and illnesses spread by water pollution like diarrhea and intestinal infections, as well as   diseases like cancer, congenital diseases and asthma. These might arise from air pollution or from exposure to toxins in the environment like heavy metals. Because unhealthy environments might include stagnant water where mosquitoes breed, deaths from   diseases like malaria or dengue are included. ”WHO is looking for things they can prevent so they define environment broadly,” says Dr. Philip Landrigan, the dean for global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, who did not work on the report. ”It does not in any way detract or diminish the gravity or credibility of the findings,” he says. The report finds that indoor and outdoor air pollution is one of the most extreme hazards to children’s health  —   and it’s on the rise. Even though air pollution levels have dropped over the years in   countries, on average the global figures for air pollutants have risen 8 percent between 2008 and 2013, according to the WHO. Air pollution is associated with a majority of the 600, 000 child deaths from respiratory illnesses each year.  Air pollution is the worst in urban areas with heavy traffic or   plants, and in homes that still use organic fuels like wood or animal dung for cooking. And pollution can take a toll in later years as well, she says: ”The earlier you are exposed to air pollution as a child, the risk [increases for] chronic respiratory diseases like asthma, lung cancer or stroke.” Electronic waste has also become a rising source of worry, Neira says. In many   and   countries, electronic parts are illegally or informally recycled. ”Sometimes for $2 a day, a mother will be trying to recycle heavy metals in a computer or old televisions or mobile phones. And children, because they have very little fingers, will help as well.” WHO has found that levels of heavy metals in the blood of young children engaged in these activities can sometimes exceed 30 times the recommended level, Neira says. The report helps to clearly establish the link between pollution and children’s health, Landrigan says. ”It nails down the connectionand documents what many of us have known and been saying for years  —   that unhealthy environments make people unhealthy,” he says. ”That’s very relevant at this time. People in Washington are talking about relaxing regulations, and they’re not acknowledging  —   maybe they don’t know  —   allowing waterways and the air to become polluted will result in death.” These deaths are also preventable, Neira says. Policies and regulations that improve housing, sanitation, clean water and emissions often result in large benefits to children’s health, she says. ”I want those figures [in the report] to provoke more action. To make sure that policymakers will not have the excuse of saying ’We didn’t know.’ ” Freelance writer Angus Chen is on Twitter @angRchen"
"Statues of Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are targeted for removal in New Orleans, after a federal appeals court approved the city’s plan to change how it treats symbols of its history. Opponents of the move vow to keep fighting it in court. When Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for the city to remove the statue of Lee back in 2015, he said, ”There may have been a time when that monument reflected who we were as a city, but times change. And so do we,” as member station WWNO reported. After an intense public debate, the city council voted to take the statues down and place them in a new area. The plan sparked legal challenges this week, the 5th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a district court that had ruled the city could go ahead with the removal because the plaintiffs weren’t likely to prevail. The court said plaintiffs in the case hadn’t proven their argument that removing the statues would bring irreparable harm. ”Appellants here have failed to put forward even a prima facie showing in support of their two claims that this federal court must interfere with this local political process,” the court wrote, ”which required consideration of heated and disagreeing viewpoints.” The legal challenge to the plan included four groups: The appeals court ruling comes as Southern states grapple with how to treat relics of the Confederacy without seeming to promote violent racism, as NPR’s Debbie Elliott reported last year. And as Debbie noted, a contractor who was initially hired to remove Confederate monuments in New Orleans pulled out ”after employees received death threats and his car was torched.” In addition to the statue of Lee, Landrieu and other city officials want to take down a statue honoring Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard and a monument to the paramilitary White League, which launched a   rebellion against the integrated Metropolitan New Orleans Police Force. As WWNO reports, ”Eleven members of that force were killed.” Even if the statues of Lee and Davis are removed, their names are embroidered into the geography of New Orleans: Lee’s statue is in Lee Circle, and Davis’ is on the parkway that was named after him. Other legal battles over symbols of the Confederacy are ongoing. For instance, arguments over the inclusion of Confederate symbols in the state flag of Mississippi are scheduled to be heard today in the 5th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals."
"When you think of illegal immigration in the U. S. do you picture a border crosser or a visa overstayer? A family or a single person? A farmworker or a waiter? People living in the U. S. without legal status are frequently invoked in American politics  —   especially in recent months. But the conversation is often short on facts about the millions of people who fall into this category. There are, however, outdated beliefs: A Pew Research Center survey in 2015 found that very few Americans are aware of recent changes in immigration patterns. And, of course, there are stereotypes, which often don’t always match up with reality. Most people in the U. S. illegally have been here for years, for instance, and people working service jobs far outnumber migrant farm labor. Here’s a look at the actual statistics about people living in the U. S. illegally. We should note that there are a few caveats about this data. Different research groups use different methodologies, and in some cases, they rely on estimates. We’ve included links to all our data sources so you can read about their methods in more detail. There are far more naturalized citizens than unauthorized immigrants in the U. S. and slightly more green card holders, according to the Pew Research Center. The total number of people living in the country illegally  —   about 11 million  —   has made headlines recently, because immigration advocates suggest that under the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies, almost all of them could be targeted for deportation. (More than 700, 000 ”DREAMers”  —   immigrants who were brought into the U. S. illegally or overstayed their visas as children  —   are still temporarily protected from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.) A large majority of those people currently living in the U. S. illegally have been here for a decade or longer, which is a major shift from the situation at the turn of the millennium. About   of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U. S. for 10 years or more, Pew says. Only 14 percent arrived within the past five years. In the late 1990s, the number of new arrivals was far higher, and the share of longtime residents far lower. Mexico is ”the leading nation of origin for U. S. unauthorized immigrants,” Pew writes, but the share of immigrants from Mexico is also declining. That is to say, Mexican immigrants are a shrinking majority of the population living in the country through illegal immigration. Of people living in the U. S. illegally, more than half are from Mexico. The population from that one country far outnumbers the population from entire continents. But there are fewer people of Mexican origin living in the U. S. now than there were a decade ago. You can see the trend lines clearly if you look just at people arriving in the U. S. illegally, instead of the millions who live here. The percentage arriving from Mexico has dropped markedly, while more immigrants are coming from Africa, Central America and Asia. The reasons for the shifting immigration patterns are complex. For Central American immigrants, conflicts in their home countries certainly play a role. The Migration Policy Institute suggests that there might be similar reasons for increased migration from Asia and Africa. ”As European countries have tightened migration restrictions after record inflows of asylum seekers and migrants in 2015, some Africans and Asians fleeing conflict and poverty appear to be flying to Latin American countries with relatively lenient visa policies, such as Ecuador, Brazil, and Cuba, then turning to established regional migration networks,” the Migration Policy Institute writes. The Department of Homeland Security has estimated that as of Jan. 4, 2016, about 416, 500 people overstayed their visas in fiscal year 2015. That’s less than 1 percent of visa holders who entered the U. S. during that period. Still, it’s unclear how many visa overstayers make up the total number of unauthorized immigrants. A Pew estimate from 2006 says it could be as high as 45 percent. A recent study by the Center for Migration Studies estimates that   of those who joined the unauthorized immigrant population in 2014 were visa overstayers. Why’s it so hard to nail down the details? In part, it’s because the data released last year are the first numbers on visa overstays that the government has released in more than two decades. Federal law requires the Department of Homeland Security to report how many people come into the U. S. and stay after their visas expire. But the government has been having trouble collecting that data for years, as a study by the U. S. Government Accountability Office found. The way airports and other ports of entry are currently set up makes it difficult to keep track of when a traveler leaves the U. S. The department has been piloting new programs to identify airport travelers by scanning their faces and irises. Without historical data, it’s hard to measure trends. But the estimates for fiscal year 2015 do show that Canadians made up the majority of visa overstays. If you’re a person living in the U. S. illegally, odds are you can be found in one of a few big cities and their surrounding suburbs.   percent of this population lives in 20 metropolitan areas, such as New York, Los Angeles and Houston, Pew reports. That’s very different from the stats for the U. S. as a whole  —   just 36 percent of the overall population live in those areas. But ”metropolitan” doesn’t mean ”urban,” and most people living there illegally reside in the suburbs instead of the city proper. (The only exception to that rule is Phoenix.) That can pose a challenge for city governments that want to take a stand on immigration issues, as NPR’s Richard Gonzalez reported last month: ”Many big city mayors have promised to resist President Trump’s threat to cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities. But the fact that most of the unauthorized immigrants live outside of city limits might complicate a mayor’s ability to protect them, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. ”He told the Chicago Tribune, ’This may raise questions of whether or not the sanctuary status is an umbrella one that covers the whole region.’ ” You probably know that people living in the U. S. without legal status, as well as other immigrants, are a big part of the farm labor force. That’s why the farm industry and farmworkers have been keenly concerned about Trump’s rhetoric and policies on immigration. But there just aren’t very many farming jobs in the U. S. overall. So farming is not a common industry for the 11 million  —   only 4 percent of people living here illegally work in agriculture. Far, far more work in service jobs or in construction. According to the Migration Policy Institute,   of people who are age 15 or older and staying in the U. S. without authorization live with at least one child under the age of 18 who is a U. S. citizen. That’s far more than the number who live only with noncitizen children  —   that’s just 6 percent of the population. Jennifer Van Hook, a demographer at Penn State University who studies immigration, points out that this statistic shows that deportations affect more than just unauthorized immigrants. ”When these people leave the country, who’s going to take care of their children? It’s likely that some of those U. S.  children will be accompanying their parents,” she says. Former President Barack Obama’s attempt to temporarily shield these parents of U. S. citizens from deportation through Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents  —   also known as DAPA  —   has never been implemented, and the future of the effort is unclear."
"Back in 2011, Alabama passed what was then considered the nation’s strictest immigration law. Much of it was later struck down by the courts. Now, the law offers a snapshot of potential challenges ahead for the Trump administration. For Fernanda Herrera, a senior at Samford University outside Birmingham, Ala. the current climate surrounding immigration has her scared, just as the Alabama law did in 2011. ”I don’t know if I’m going to see my parents tomorrow,” Herrera says. Her father crossed the Mexican border illegally when she was two. She and her mom flew in months later with visas now expired. Herrera is covered under DACA  —   deferred action for childhood arrivals  —   so for now, she likely won’t be deported, but she’s afraid. ”It’s supposed to be a happy time. I’m about to graduate from college, the first in my family to do so, and my parents have worked so hard to get me through these four years,” she says. ”And knowing how detention centers are, and thinking about my parents having to go through that, knowing that my family could be separated, it’s just really difficult.” Her family also feared that in 2011. Alabama had enacted a law that, among other things, nullified contracts  —   leases, water service, anything  —   and even made it a crime to give a ride to someone in the country illegally. The law’s author said the goal was to attack every aspect of life. Herrera sees something similar happening nationally now, but she hopes the U. S. will learn from Alabama. ”They’ll see in time that attacking a community is just not the way to have immigration reform happen. Because I mean here in Alabama, we fought back and had a lot of that repealed,” she says. Suits by advocacy groups and the Justice Department blocked much of the law, including a requirement that schools check students’ immigration status. But that was after farmers’ crops rotted and other industries lost labor and business as families fled the state. ’A lot of fear’ Jeremy Love, an immigration lawyer, says he’s feeling deja vu. ”There’s a lot of fear going on right now. I’ve had people say they want to do a phone consultation rather than come to my office because they were afraid of going out of their house,” he says. Love predicts mass deportations will hurt the U. S. economy and trigger legal backlash similar to what happened in Alabama. He has more immediate concerns for his clients though. ”People are leaving a very dangerous situation in their home country,” he says. State Rep. Jack Williams agrees but isn’t swayed. The   of the 2011 Alabama law thinks values, not necessarily physical danger, should determine who gets to stay. ”Today many people are coming to America from very unstable situations,” he says. ”A hundred years ago, people came to America because they wanted to be Americans.” He says his stance against illegal immigration is principle, not personal. ”I think there’s a richness that we enjoy from the diversity that comes from people coming from around the world, and I’m not opposed or afraid of immigrants,” he says. ”I just would like to see us follow the law. I think that gives everybody a clear road map on how we should operate as a civil society.” If Alabama is any indication, that road map could include    economic disruption and detours for costly court battles over how immigration laws are enforced."
"Updated at 5:15 p. m. ET, Some of the most conservative members of the House are at a crossroads over the plan from GOP leadership and the White House to replace the Affordable Care Act. Those lawmakers say their choice is between supporting a bill that goes against many of their principles, or falling in line behind President Trump  —   who won overwhelming support in their district. ”Do we need to lower the bar in what we believe as conservatives simply because a Republican is in the White House?” asked House Freedom Caucus member Mark Sanford, a Republican from South Carolina. The overwhelming answer from members of the conservative caucus and other major outside conservative groups is no  —   at least right now. But there are reasons that President Trump, Vice President Pence, House Speaker Paul Ryan and others sound confident. For a president who built his career on being a master negotiator, it’s now his job to sell these skeptical members on the merits of the bill  —   and the breadth of his win in their districts shows there could be fertile ground to do so. The president has repeatedly underscored that he believes he has a mandate to overhaul health care, given his win last November and GOP sweeps in Congress. In the areas that belong to those holding out on the replacement bill, Trump won, as he would say, ”big league.” Trump carried the districts of the House Freedom Caucus members by an average margin of about 26 points. He won more than 20 of these districts by 20 points or more and carried 27 of them by double digits. Yet the lawmakers almost all won their races comfortably, too  —   allowing them to claim a mandate from constituents just as Trump has. Lawmakers could even argue they have more purity on the issue, given Trump’s fluctuations on enumerating exactly what he wants in a health care bill and lack of specifics during the campaign. The GOP can still pass the American Health Care Act even if it loses as many as 20 votes  —   or more, if any Democrats change their minds. Looking at it another way, Trump needs to woo only 10 of these conservative members over to his side  —   but that also assumes other GOP centrists stay on board too. Ultimately, as the White House said on Wednesday, the president is prepared to do everything he needs to do to get there. ”We are out in full sell mode all around the country, talking about how we think this is the best way to solve the problem that the American people face and why we believe that the solutions that we put forward in this bill are the right ones and that will benefit them,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Wednesday. Members of the Freedom Caucus could still be swayed, as even the group’s chairman confessed on Wednesday. ”I would be the first to admit that calls from the president will certainly influence members and to suggest otherwise would be to ignore politics,” Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina told the Associated Press. ”Whether you fully supported Donald Trump or not, getting a call from President Trump obviously makes a difference.” Plus, some of Trump’s top lieutenants selling the bill once served in the House, where they had plenty of conservative bona fides. Pence spent 12 years there as a representative from Indiana Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price just left his position as a Georgia representative and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney was a South Carolina representative before Trump plucked him for the job. Mulvaney has already invited members of the Freedom Caucus to join him for a bowling night at the White House next week. Still, there are some   tensions evident in the conservative backlash to the new bill. Most members of the Freedom Caucus came around on Trump during the campaign, even if many did not initially support him. Yet the divide over health care underscores the skepticism some conservatives still have with the White House and GOP leadership. Conservative critics want a clean repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and say that this new replacement plan does not comport with their principles. Among the issues they have with the bill is the tax credits the new plan provides, which could actually result in a rebate from the IRS to cover premiums, and the delay in doing away with the original law’s Medicaid expansion program. This is the young White House’s first real legislative challenge, and it’s one that could still be tough for a president who entered office without any legislative or government experience. Trump expressed optimism on Tuesday that ”everybody” would eventually support the House bill he has now thrown his weight behind  —   even as members of the House Freedom Caucus and their allies on the Senate side held a news conference to malign the bill. Trump’s popularity has fallen since he took office, but he is still viewed favorably in the most conservative areas of the country. Trump himself seemed to acknowledge that could drastically change: He reportedly told House Republicans that the 2018 midterms could become a ”bloodbath” if they fumble this health care bill. At the same time, political action groups like the Club for Growth say they would use the vote in scoring how conservative a member is a vote for the bill could mean a lower ranking, and more vulnerability for a primary challenge. The Koch   Americans for Prosperity says the members who stand up to oppose the new bill will have its full support going forward. ”From our perspective, bad policy equals bad politics as well,” the advocacy group’s CEO, Luke Hilgemann, told NPR. ”This proposal needs to go to the ash heap of history, as does Obamacare.”"
"House Republicans’ plan to replace the Affordable Care Act would make significant changes to the U. S. health insurance system. But that’s just the beginning. ”There are three phases of this plan,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price told reporters this week. And the bill now being marked up in House committees is just the first step. That bill would repeal taxes on wealthy Americans, do away with a tax penalty on those who fail to obtain insurance, and adjust the rules governing insurance premiums so in general younger, healthy people pay less while older, sicker people pay more. The measure also makes big changes to Medicaid, beginning in 2020. And it adjusts the tax credits that people can use to buy health insurance on the individual market. President Trump has other ideas for tweaking the health care system. But those would have to be achieved later, either through   or future legislation. ”The previous administration used regulations to a  ” Price said, adding the Obama administration issued 192 specific rules related to the Affordable Care Act. ”We are going to go through every single one of those and make certain that if they help patients, then we need to continue them. If they harm patients or increase costs, then obviously they need to be addressed.” Regulatory adjustments are Phase 2 of the White House plan. Phase 3 involves going back to Congress with bills that let insurance companies sell policies across state lines or allow the government to use its purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. Price noted in a letter to lawmakers that congressional rules don’t allow the administration to include those ideas in the Obamacare replacement bill currently being considered. That’s because Republicans plan to use a procedural tactic known as ”reconciliation,” which would allow them to push the bill through the Senate without the threat of a Democratic filibuster. There are strict limits on what a reconciliation measure can include. ”It’s not able to be addressed specifically in this Phase One because it’s not a revenue or spending issue for the federal government,” Price told reporters. He hopes to tackle interstate insurance sales and drug pricing in subsequent legislation, though that would require at least some support from Senate Democrats."
"WikiLeaks is billing its latest document dump as the largest leak of CIA material in the history of the spy agency, and it describes   ways to hack into phones, computers and even televisions connected to the Internet. The thousands of documents, many of which are highly technical, are said to be internal CIA guides on how to create and use   tools  —   from turning smart TVs into bugs to designing customized USB drives to extract information from computers. The CIA has refused to comment on their authenticity. The full ramifications of the release are still not clear, but the case immediately calls to mind the 2013 episode when Edward Snowden, then an National Security Agency contractor, provided a trove of documents on that agency’s surveillance programs. But there are significant differences between the two revelations. Here’s a look at what we know so far about the CIA leaks, and how it compares with the NSA case four years ago. The NSA collected American data no evidence the CIA is doing so, The Edward Snowden leaks revealed the NSA was collecting bulk data on Americans’ phone usage, which was ruled to be illegal. The CIA spies abroad, and is barred by law from doing so domestically. Neither WikiLeaks nor anyone else is alleging that the CIA is using these methods inside the U. S. ”I can tell you that these tools would not be used against an American,” Michael Hayden, the former director of both the CIA and the NSA, told CBS’ The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. ”NSA develops tools, CIA develops tools that we can use. We just went through the drill about . .. how you get a warrant, and you’ve got to go to a judge,” Hayden added. ”That protects you and me, all U. S. citizens, all the time. But there are people out there that you want us to spy on. You want us to have the ability to actually turn on that listening device inside the TV to learn that person’s intentions.” Inside the U. S. the F. B. I. or another domestic law enforcement agency would typically go to court to get permission to tap the phone of a suspect. WikiLeaks did not provide examples of how any of these CIA tools might have been used. CIA spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak, without confirming the authenticity of the documents, tells NPR that the agency ”is legally prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals here at home, including our fellow Americans, and CIA does not do so.” Cyber security experts says the agency is sure to be poring over the documents that were disclosed to see how it might affect its operations around the globe. The NSA often worked in bulk the CIA is targeting individuals, Snowden’s leak revealed bulk collection of data  —   not just of American phone data, but conversations abroad, including all the calls in an entire country. It included surveillance on a massive scale, as well as efforts targeting individuals. If the NSA’s surveillance was often casting a broad net, the CIA’s hackers are mostly   based on the alleged agency documents. ”A lot of these are endpoint attacks, like, ’Can we compromise your router? Your iOS device or your Android device?’ ” says Matthew Green, a cryptographer and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. ”Those things don’t scale  —   you don’t do them to hundreds of thousands of people, you do them to one or two.” That’s not just because of the amount of time and effort involved. It’s also because many of the techniques rely on a loophole or flaw in a software system. The more you exploit that flaw, the more likely a manufacturer is to notice it  —   and fix it. The NSA discussed creating vulnerabilities the CIA exploits them  The documents suggest the CIA has been exploiting vulnerabilities and not telling companies about them. That’s controversial  —   if government agencies flagged such flaws, instead of taking advantage of them, millions of devices could be more secure. As Wired reported in 2014, the Obama administration nodded to the importance of revealing such bugs  —   while reserving the right to stay mum on them if there’s ”an urgent and significant national security priority.” But while the CIA appears to have not disclosed vulnerabilities, the NSA leaks revealed something far more alarming, Green says. ”In the NSA leaks, there was a project called Bullrun where the NSA was talking about introducing vulnerabilities into cryptostandards. And that’s really serious . .. because that’s going well above finding vulnerabilities to making them,” he says. ”There’s nothing like that, as far as I see, in these CIA documents.” Other leaks featured program overviews these are developer notes, The NSA leak included revealing, easily comprehensible documents  —   memos about a program’s goals and scope, slideshows about why and how a technology worked, details about where systems were being deployed and how many people were affected. Basically, that leak included lots of documents designed to explain what the NSA was doing (albeit never meant for public consumption). The U. S. diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks disclosed in 2010, meanwhile, were highly embarrassing for the U. S. government because they were filled with actual cases involving foreign individuals and leaders. The alleged CIA documents, in contrast, are internal files used by developers  —   with lots of program specifications, but a dearth of details about how or why the technology was actually used. In some cases, it’s not clear if the program was used, or was just being tested. ”This is developer chat on how they build these tools,” says Nicholas Weaver, a computer scientist at the University of California at Berkeley. But the tools themselves are missing, at least for now. And, significantly, details about when, why and where the programs were used, and with what results, aren’t included in this release. Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, calls the CIA leaks ’a big deal’ Snowden, who has been in Russia since shortly after he fled the U. S. in 2013 at the time of his disclosures, has been tweeting about the latest WikiLeaks disclosure. He’s highly critical of the CIA and U. S. government, saying it’s ”reckless beyond words” to find vulnerabilities in the software of smartphones and other electronic devices, and then exploit them rather than inform the companies so they could patch them. ”Still working through the publication, but what @WikiLeaks has here is genuinely a big deal. Looks authentic,” he tweeted initially on Tuesday. Followed by: Evidence mounts showing CIA  FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the   smartphones in America, but kept them open  —   to spy. And later: ”Imagine a world where the actual CIA spends its time figuring out how to spy on you through your TV. That’s today.” Snowden faces criminal charges in the U. S. but Russia recently said it would extend Snowden’s asylum until 2020. And lastly, a quick note on Russia, Like Russia, WikiLeaks is shaping up as a key actor in the early days of the Trump presidency. Trump and his campaign team cheered on WikiLeaks as it dribbled out Democratic Party emails during the presidential race last year. Now Trump will have to deal with the fallout of the latest WikiLeaks dump that reveals secrets of what is now his CIA. The U. S. intelligence community concluded that Russia hacked the Democratic targets last year, and then gave the documents to WikiLeaks to disclose. WikiLeaks and Russia have denied any collusion. Russia has not been linked to the latest WikiLeaks dump on the CIA. The Russians are, however, extremely interested in the contents as part of the ongoing espionage battle between the U. S. and Russia."
"Updated 1:28 a. m. ET Thursday, Hawaii is the first state to file a lawsuit to stop President Trump’s revised executive order limiting travel from six   countries. Attorneys for the state filed the lawsuit late Wednesday in federal court in Honolulu. Trump’s original ban, signed in January, caused immediate chaos at airports across the country before being frozen by a challenge from Washington State. The revised executive order, which Trump signed on Monday, has been rewritten to make it more difficult to challenge in court. But Hawaii hopes it has crafted a legal argument that can stop the new order from going into effect on March 16. ”This new executive order is nothing more than Muslim Ban 2. 0,” said Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin in a statement. ”Under the pretense of national security, it still targets immigrants and refugees. It leaves the door open for even further restrictions. Our office is reviewing the new order and will decide what next steps may be necessary.” The Justice Department declined comment on the lawsuit. The new order doesn’t allow visas for people from Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Libya. It also temporarily shuts down America’s refugee program, and reduces the number of refugees it will admit this fiscal year to 50, 000, instead of the 110, 000 the Obama administration had planned. Hawaii’s lawsuit argues that while the language in Trump’s revised executive order has changed, it is merely the president’s latest effort to enact what he promised early in his campaign: a Muslim ban. The suit brings Trump’s campaign promises into the courtroom, in order to illustrate the way that Trump has consistently linked Muslim immigration to terrorism, and his explicit desire to implement a Muslim ban. Among the statements cited in the lawsuit is a press release   Trump sent out on December 7, 2015, titled ”Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration” which said in part: ”Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.” Hawaii’s lawsuit names Ismail Elshikh as a   ”because the Executive Order inflicts a grave injury on Muslims in Hawai’i, including Dr. Elshikh, his Family, and members of his Mosque.” Elshikh is the Imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii. The suit alleges that a portion of Hawaii’s population is now subject to: ”discrimination and   treatment, in violation of both the Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Order denies them their right to associate with family members overseas on the basis of their religion and national origin. And it results in their having to live in a country and in a State where there is the perception that the Government has established a disfavored religion.” And by disfavoring a religion, the suit argues, Trump’s executive order is establishing a state religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Hawaii’s economy leans heavily on tourism, and the lawsuit cites both economic and familial hindrances caused by the ban. ”It is damaging Hawaii’s institutions, harming its economy, and eroding Hawaii’s sovereign interests in maintaining the separation between church and state as well as in welcoming persons from all nations around the world into the fabric of its society.” The plaintiffs seek an order that would invalidate the portions of the executive order that they challenge in the lawsuit, and have proposed a hearing for March 15  —   the day before the order is to go into effect. The new executive order ”is infected with the same legal problems as the first Order  —   undermining bedrock constitutional and statutory guarantees,” the state argues. ”The Executive Order purports to protect the country from terrorism, but sweeps in millions of people who have absolutely no connection to terrorism.”"
"There is such a thing as a memory athlete. These are people who can memorize a truly insane amount of information really quickly, like the order of playing cards in a deck in under 20 seconds, or 200 new names and faces in a matter of minutes. Neuroscientists writing Wednesday in the journal Neuron found these champs of memorization aren’t that different from the rest of us. ”We were interested in what differentiates memory champions from normal people, like you and me,” says Martin Dresler, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Were parts of their brains bigger, for example, or more dense with gray matter? To find out, Dresler and Boris Nikolai Konrad  —   a doctoral student in Dresler’s lab who happens to be a memory champion himself  —   rounded up nearly two dozen champs. ”We really took the world’s best memorizers  —   23 memory champions out of the top 50 of the world. You wouldn’t find anywhere in the world people more capable of memorizing stuff than them,” says Dresler. They did MRI scans of their brains, to take a look at the anatomy. Then they scanned the brains of 23 regular people who were matched in age, gender and even IQ to the memory athletes. When Dresler and his colleagues compared the brain scans, they found no difference. At least, no big, obvious difference. ”That was actually really a bit surprising,” he says. But, when Dresler and his colleagues did functional MRI scans, which measure brain activity by looking at how much blood is going to specific portions of it, they did see a subtle difference in brain activity. When memory athletes were asked to recite a long list of memorized words, some portions of brain were activating in unison  —   making 25 connections that seemed particularly significant among different parts of the brain. The scientists didn’t see that sort of unified activity in the brains of the regular subjects. In particular, parts of the brain associated with memory and with spatial learning seemed to be interacting a lot. That makes sense, when you consider the tricks these athletes had learned to use when they memorize. They weren’t born with extraordinary memorization skills. They had all learned and practiced the same kind of training to develop their seemingly superhuman abilities. Konrad, the memorizing whiz in Dresler’s lab who is also a   of the study, started using the memory strategy as a hobby in high school, after watching memory championships on TV. He holds the world record for memorizing faces and names  —   201 people in 15 minutes. ”I use my visual memory,” says Konrad. If he’s trying to remember a person called Miller, he says, ”I would picture this person looking at a mill, maybe during a vacation in the Netherlands.” For more abstract memory challenges, like memorizing the exact order of hundreds of digits, he’ll build memory palaces. It’s a method that’s been around since the Greeks and is covered extensively in the book Moonwalking With Einstein by journalist Joshua Foer. It works by recalling a building or place that is very familiar and charting a mental path through that building. ”The very first one I ever did was in the home of my parents, where I still lived back then when I was still in high school,” says Konrad. Then, he memorizes an order of walking through that house. ”It would start in my room,” he says. The first location would be my bed, and the second one would be the shelf above my bed then it’s my desk, the computer on it, the window, the mirror and so on.” To memorize abstract information, like a list of numbers, he would translate numbers into images and then distribute them along the mental path through his house. For example, to memorize my phone number, which starts with ”1202,” Konrad transforms pairs of numbers into images, using something called the Major System. The combination ”” for example, brings to mind (for him) a dinosaur, Konrad says. ”So I would then picture a dinosaur standing on my bed,” says Konrad. ”It’s a weird image. That’s why it sticks.” ”And then,   would be a sun. So, I would picture the sun illuminating the shelf over my bed,” he says. And so on. In a second part of their study, Konrad and Dresler recruited 51 university students, and had   of them do memory palace training for six weeks  —   once a week in person with Konrad, and half an hour a day at home on the computer. (If you want to give it whirl, here you go.) Another group did a different kind of memory training, and the last group did nothing special. Then, they were brought into the lab and were asked to memorize a list of words, like ”night, car, yardstick,” and so on. The researchers used functional MRI machines to scan the brains of subjects as they rested, and again as they recited the list of words. In the group that did memory palace training, Konrad, Dresler and their colleagues found that the volunteers’ brain activity had changed to become more like that of the champions of memorization. This was the case when they were reciting words, but also when they were at rest. ”We showed that, indeed, the brain is somehow driven into the patterns you see in memory champions,” says Dresler. The subjects came back into the lab four months after training and got a new list of words to memorize. The ones who had done memory palace training did really well compared to the others, and their brains were still connecting in that new way. ”Not only during a task, but even in the complete absence of any   activity, we see this effect  —   that memory champions differ from matched controls, and that after memory training your brain shows similar patterns,” says Dresler. ”There are very few actual studies of people with remarkably superior memory who compete in these memory contests. This is by far the largest,” says Roddy Roediger, a psychologist with Washington University in St Louis. Roediger has studied people with exceptional memory for a long time. He says people knew that something different had to be going on inside the brains of these people. ”These people are the first to really uncover what that something may be,” he says. But this method of memory training is not the key to unlocking intelligence. In fact, it doesn’t even seem to be the key to unlocking overall memory capability. For example, Roediger knows a man capable of playing dozens of games of chess at the same time, while blindfolded. ”He had never heard of memory palaces,” says Roediger. There are also people who have memorized the Bible in its entirety and can recite portions of it on demand. And there are others who have a condition known as Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, where they remember every day of their lives in sometimes excruciating detail. ”And yet, when you put them in memory tasks that memory competitors can do very easily, they can’t do them any easier than you or I could,” says Roediger. ”So that’s a real mystery.” The same limitations apply to people who have trained their memories. If, for example, you ask the chess player or a Bible memorizer to remember a long list of words, says Roediger, ”none of them can do that.” Their techniques are specific to their tasks. And, he says, intense memory training doesn’t cure everyday forgetfulness. ”They forget the milk on the way home from work just like we do,” says Roediger. Boris Nikolai Konrad says it has been years since he forgot something on his grocery list. But every now and then he does slip up with someone’s name  —   and that’s a moment people don’t let him forget."
"Edith Fuller, 5, has booked a trip to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, after she   dozens of older competitors to win a regional bee in Tulsa, Okla. The   student will be the youngest competitor ever in the national spelling bee, which will hold its 90th contest in May. The folks at Scripps are already calling Fuller the latest ”spellebrity.” Fuller beat kids more than twice her age at the Scripps Green Country Regional Spelling Bee this past weekend, outlasting dozens of other students and correctly spelling 37 words in around five hours of competition. Her final word, ”jnana,” is a Sanskrit word that refers to an elevated state of knowledge. Other words Fuller had to spell to earn her way to the national bee in Washington, D. C. include sevruga (a type of caviar) virgule (an accent mark) Nisei (a child of Japanese immigrants who is born in the U. S.) jacamar (a   bird) and alim (a Muslim scholar). It all started last summer, when Edith surprised her parents by spelling ”restaurant” correctly, her mother Annie, told the Tulsa World newspaper. Here’s how Edith Fuller described her daily training regimen, according to Tulsa’s KJRH TV, organizer of the regional bee in Oklahoma: ”My mommy asked me words, and every time I misspelled one, I would look at it.” As footage from KJRH shows, the bee’s young champion stood out from the field in more ways than one. Wearing a white bow, Fuller’s head barely topped the back of her chair as she shared the stage with her opponents, some of whom were    who are in the eighth grade. And while other students were sometimes prone to nervous fidgeting, Fuller resembled an island of calm. When she spoke to the judges, Fuller smiled as she navigated a list of words that would trip up many adults. When she returned to her seat, other students would sometimes offer a   or a smile  —   and some, perhaps understandably, simply stared as the littlest girl on stage kept advancing, using the shorter of two microphone stands so her soft voice could be heard in the auditorium at the Oral Roberts Global Learning Center. By the end of the day, four rows of seats had been emptied and the    was the last speller standing. Fuller represented the TBC Home Education Fellowship now she’ll be eastern Oklahoma’s speller at the national bee in Washington. ”I’m going to D. C.!” she said with a smile as the event wound down, drawing applause from the audience. If you’re wondering how the spelling bee includes   students, organizers of the Tulsa competition say that while schools can pay a fee of either $145 (for   entries) or $220 to enter their top speller, parents of   kids can pay an entrance fee of between $102 and $177."
"Keggie Carew’s father, Tom Carew, was once known as ”Lawrence of Burma” and ”the Mad Irishman,” and in her new book, Dadland, we find out why: Carew’s father was part of the Jedburghs, an elite British unit established during World War II. Carew had heard stories about her father’s war years, but she was never sure how much to believe until she went to a Jedburgh reunion with him. There, she learned that they were trained in everything from setting mines and neutralizing booby traps to silent killing and night parachuting. Carew’s book combines espionage and war stories with reflections on   relationships. But writing it wasn’t so straightforward: Carew started her project just as her father was losing his memory to dementia. ”It was a parallel journey,” she says. ”As my dad was losing his memory, I had set the task of retrieving it. But it was as his life was sort of going out of the station [and] I was chasing the train in the other direction.” On how much she knew about her dad’s past when she was growing up, I knew he was called ”Lawrence of Burma” and ”The Mad Irishman” because we had these newspaper reports from India from 1945 and, you know, I used to take them to school and show people. And I knew he parachuted out of planes into the jungle, and I knew he was a spy in Burma. But when I really found out, the truth was so much more outrageous and he was in a so much more, kind of, crucial part of history. When the Burmese guerrillas were trying to get their independence . .. from the Japanese and he was working with Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, who was later assassinated. Oh, it was so brilliant. It was much better than I thought. On the Jedburghs  They were a very elite unit of the Special Operations Executive, which was a very secret thing that was dreamt up between  —   well, actually it was the first collaboration between the American and the British secret services. And these were guys that they trained up to drop behind enemy lines in very small teams of three  —   they were American, British and French. And they had a radio operator in two offices and they would be dropped behind the lines and they would raise resistance to be as much a thorn in the enemy’s side as they could possibly do. You know, blow up bridges and sabotage, you know, the Germans first in France and then later on the Japanese in Burma. . .. They were really valuable because they were so trained. They just couldn’t, you know, put themselves in very dangerous situations because they needed to be there to blow up the next train and sort everybody out. I think their motto was ”Surprise, kill and vanish.” And their survival was very, very important, on the top of the list. So they had an incredibly good survival rate. On seeing her elderly dad’s Jedburgh training kick in at the theater, So we take him to The Lion King and we get up to the top of the steps, and on the top step, dad trips and he starts rolling, falling all the way down the stairs. Bump, bump, bump, bump, all the way down to the bottom. Everybody in the theater foyer just stares and freezes because, you know, there’s an    man tumbling down the stairs. And we all freeze and then he gets to the bottom and then he sits up, dusts himself down, completely unscathed, unbruised, perfectly fine. And there’s a loud, loud sigh of relief. I mean what we have just witnessed was him going straight into a parachute role. His [Jedburgh] training just clocked in straight away. And he was relaxed, got his arms in and was completely fine. Nobody could believe it in the theater. They were all amazed. And of course he enjoyed that. On the experience of writing a book about her dad’s past, It was extraordinary. One minute I would be with . .. nine men that had been mined on a road in Tipperary in Ireland, and the next minute I’d be in the Burmese jungle, and the next minute I’d be in France, the next minute I’d be with my dad in the garden. I’d be walking around the corner and I hear him say to the neighbor, ”I don’t remember you, but I do remember your teeth. They’re rather distinctive.” . .. It was never mundane with dad, even with dementia. There was really never a dull moment. On whether the book would have been different if she had written it before her dad’s dementia, I think it would have been a very, very different experience. First of all, in a way I had more freedom because he wasn’t there to ask. I had a lot of the very, very colorful anecdotes that I carried about with me since a child  —   and those were the stories that he told where he’d outwitted some general or done something smart. But the actual nuts and bolts of it, and also the really astonishing stuff, was buried in secret files that weren’t actually available until the last 15 years. They were all stamped with ”secret” and hidden away and you couldn’t actually access them. So I think it would have been a very different book. Digital producer Nicole Cohen, producer Art Silverman and editor Melissa Gray contributed to this piece."
"The FBI director has no plans to leave the post before the end of his   term. ”You’re stuck with me for about 6   years,” James Comey said at a cyber conference in Boston on Wednesday, urging conference organizers to invite him to speak again. In recent days, NPR and other news outlets have reported Comey pressed the Justice Department without success to issue a public denial of President Trump’s tweet that the FBI and President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said this week that Trump still has confidence in Comey’s ability to lead the FBI. Comey, who served as deputy U. S. attorney general under President George W. Bush and who was named FBI director by Obama, has demonstrated a nearly unique ability to draw critics from both ends of the political spectrum. Hillary Clinton has blamed his decision to send a letter about her email scandal to Congress 11 days before the 2016 presidential election as one key reason for her loss at the polls. Clinton aides have held the grudge. Early Wednesday, Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri called him a ”particularly infuriating character” and accused him of ”protecting his own reputation” instead of following the rules. Democratic and Republican veterans of the Justice Department blasted Comey for overriding   norms about not taking any law enforcement action that could tip the scales before an election. For his part, Trump has alternately praised and derided the FBI and its director. Early in his tenure, Trump greeted Comey with a handshake and partial hug, proclaiming the law enforcement officer had ”become more famous than me.” Just weeks later, Trump tweeted his frustration with the FBI for a series of national security leaks. ”The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ’leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time,” Trump tweeted. ”They can’t even. ..... find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U. S.”"
"President Trump is on his way to getting something he has wanted for a long time: dozens of valuable ”Trump” trademarks in China. China’s Trademark Office has now given preliminary approval to 38 new trademarks, covering everything from hotels to golf clubs, insurance and more. After AP reported the news Wednesday, Senate Democrats expressed outrage, noting that Trump’s lawyer Sheri Dillon had promised in January that there would be ”no new foreign deals” during the Trump presidency. But by pursuing new trademarks, the Trump Organization, which the president continues to own, may be laying the groundwork for expansions in China. Maryland’s Ben Cardin said, ”For a decade prior to his election as president, Donald Trump sought, with no success, to have lucrative and valuable trademarks granted in the world’s biggest market. He was turned down each and every time. The floodgates now appear to be open.” Cardin called on the federal departments of Justice, State and Commerce to ”brief Congress, immediately, on these matters and on the potential constitutional dangers that they present.” Cardin is concerned about violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which bars elected leaders from taking anything of value from foreign countries, unless approved by Congress. Dianne Feinstein of California said the trademark approvals are ”exactly what the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent, and President Trump is blatantly defying it.” Last month, China approved one registered trademark for a   construction services business. Kathleen Clark, a government ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told NPR at that time that by giving Trump valuable name rights, Chinese officials may hope they can influence policy decisions. And that represents a breach of the Emoluments Clause, she believes. ”What I think this demonstrates is that when Donald Trump is dealing with the Chinese government on behalf of the United States, he also may be thinking about what the Chinese government can do not just for the U. S. but for Donald Trump and his businesses and his own financial ” she said. The Trump Organization says it pushes for trademarks to prevent others from using them. ”[W]e zealously protect Mr. Trump’s valuable name, brand and trademarks,” Alan Garten, chief legal officer for the Trump Organization, told The Washington Post in a statement. Trump has been trying for a decade to nail down trademarks in China for a wide range of goods and services, including pet care products, lingerie and computer software. The Trump Organization has been frustrated that many   businesses have used the name ”Trump” without paying any licensing fees. The applications for these particular trademarks had been filed last April during the heat of the presidential campaign when Trump was claiming that China steals U. S. jobs. AP says China’s Trademark Office published the provisional approvals on Feb. 27. If no one in China objects, they will be automatically registered after 90 days."
"Updated at 6:20 p. m. ET  With Congress showing no signs of taking action, a group of ethics watchdogs is turning to U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara to look into whether President Trump’s many business interests violate the Emoluments Clause of the U. S. Constitution. ”Published reports indicate that the Trump Organization and related Trump business entities have been receiving payments from foreign government sources which benefit President Trump through his ownership of the Trump Organization and related business entities,” according to a letter sent to Bharara. It went on: ”A failure by your office to investigate these reports and to take appropriate action will leave the nation exposed to foreign governments directly and indirectly providing payments and financial benefits to President Trump when those foreign governments may be seeking to influence Executive Branch policies and positions. This is precisely the kind of problem that the Founding Fathers acted to prevent by including the Foreign Emoluments Clause in the Constitution.” The letter was signed by Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, which sued Trump in January, alleging ethics violations, and has worked hard to keep the issue on the table. Also signing were Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, and Paul Smith, vice president of the Campaign Legal Center, as well as former Obama ethics adviser Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, adviser to George W. Bush. Alan Garten, attorney for the Trump Organization, told NPR in an email that the letter was ”factually inaccurate, legally erroneous and politically motivated.” Bharara’s office declined to comment. The Emoluments Clause says that ”no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the U. S. government] shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” The letter says ”there is no question” the clause applies to Trump and that he is violating it, because of the Trump Organization’s extensive business operations, many of them tied to foreign governments. For example, tenants of Trump Tower include the Industrial Bank of China, which is owned by the Bejing government, as well as the Abu Dhabi Tourism  Culture Authority. The building is partly owned by the president. The letter notes that the Trump Organization has plans to build 20 to 30 luxury hotels in China, which will require permits from the Chinese government. The president is also part owner of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan that carries a loan held by the   Bank of China. The Justice Department has a ”broad mandate” to ensure compliance with the Emoluments Clause, the letter says. It also notes that Bharara has jurisdiction over the issue because he is the U. S. attorney of the southern district of New York, where the Trump Organization is headquartered, the letter says."
"As gun violence continues to plague some of Chicago’s neighborhoods, a violence prevention program is looking to tackle the issue by treating it like a public health crisis. Chicago’s murder rate is below that of other cities, but the actual number of murders in the city last year  —   most from gun violence  —   exceeded the combined total of murders in New York City and Los Angeles. Cure Violence, a violence prevention program, was launched more than 20 years ago by epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, a professor of public health at the University of  . The program has been a force in several cities in U. S. and abroad. It gained national attention with the 2011 release of a documentary called The Interrupters, which showed former gang members intervening to prevent disputes from turning deadly. In Illinois, the Cure Violence organization is called CeaseFire. Slutkin says violence is a public health problem and should be treated like any other contagious disease. ”The root cause of cholera is cholera,” he says. ”The root cause of violence is violence.” He says there’s a reason why some neighborhoods are plagued by gun violence. ”The definition of contagious is it produces more of itself, and how much you’ve been exposed is the predictor of whether you’re likely to do it,” he says. ”So this is a health problem.” Violence interrupters and hospital responders  —   typically former gang members themselves or    —   work like emergency room doctors to quickly sort out disagreements and to try to tamp down violence: ”As far as CeaseFire had helped me, I was out here crazy,” says Niko Williams, a former gang member. ”I got shot six times.” He’s on a panel of people who came to speak to state lawmakers about the impact of Cure Violence and CeaseFire. ”Even in the hospital, I was still in the hospital shot,” he says. ”Barely could talk, still thinking about getting out the hospital and killing somebody for shooting me.” Williams says it took the constant involvement of a CeaseFire worker to help him change that attitude. Multiple studies show the program can make a difference. One study was conducted by Wesley Skogan, a crime specialist at Northwestern University. ”So we looked at shootings within gang and crime networks and found that in fact in the CeaseFire area, shootings were much less likely to generate retaliatory shootings after CeaseFire was introduced.” But in 2013, the city of Chicago did not renew a million dollar grant to Cease Fire. Some officials claimed the program didn’t work closely enough with police. Others disliked that many of the violence interrupters were former criminals. During that hearing before state lawmakers, Andre Thomas said his experience makes him credible. ”If I can stop that person from being shot, who cares that I was in prison?” he asks. The program lost most of its funding from the state two years ago at the beginning of a long running budget battle in Illinois. It now runs a scaled down version with private donations and grants. On the streets of Chicago’s South Side, Jerusha Hodge is wearing an orange CeaseFire jacket. Years ago, she lost a    daughter to gun violence. She is one of six CeaseFire employees working to curtail violence in three sprawling South Side neighborhoods. ”Oh, we are stretched,” she says. ”Six people for three different communities. That’s not enough.” But in New York City, the program has been embraced wholeheartedly. Eric Cumberbatch, the executive director of the Office to Prevent Gun Violence, says New York expanded the program from five neighborhoods to nearly 20, and the city saw its lowest level of gun violence in three decades. ”In 2016, we saw shootings in the areas that the Crisis Management System Cure Violence is operating go down by 10 percent,” he says. ”We’re seeing young people in the areas where the Cure Violence model is operating even less likely to revert to violence to solve conflict,” he says. New York is currently investing $25 million in its Cure Violence efforts. Javier Lopez, the city’s assistant health commissioner, says police recognize the partnership between the public health workers and criminal justice, ”and I think there’s been growing understandings between both of those worlds,” he says. In Chicago, it’s an understanding that supporters of Cure Violence and CeaseFire say must also play a greater role here in reducing the deadly trend of gun violence infecting some neighborhoods."
"Today, for American women who are participating in A Day Without A Woman protest, the idea of taking a day off to celebrate their womanhood may be a new experience, despite the fact that International Women’s Day has been observed worldwide for over a century. Leave it to Italian feminists, however, to take a holiday that is steeped in the struggle for women’s rights and turn it into a day, the Festa della Donna, where women of all ages leave the menfolk behind to celebrate each other with flowers, wine and, above all, cake. The torta mimosa is not just any cake. It’s an airy confection designed to resemble the tiny, bright yellow mimosa flowers that dot the Italian landscape in early March, typically the first flowers to bloom each spring. Bouquets of the flowers are sold on nearly every street corner across Italy on March 8th, to be clutched in the hands of small boys who give them to their teachers, as well as sons to mothers, brothers to sisters, and husbands to wives. (Of course, women can and do buy bouquets for each other, too.) As evening approaches, women clad in yellow head out on the town together in droves to eat, drink, and be merry at restaurants offering special discounts for female diners.   food in shades of yellow dominates the menus of local trattorias, from mimosa eggs, the ancient Roman version of what Americans know as deviled eggs, to tagliatelle mimosa, fresh spinach pasta dotted with tiny   balls made of fish and breadcrumbs. The menu may vary from one locale to another, but the torta mimosa reigns supreme as the official dessert of the day across the country. Layers of sponge cake are brushed with citrus liqueur, usually tart limoncello or bitter orange Cointreau, then liberally spread with   pastry cream and sometimes even dolloped with fresh lemon curd. The domed exterior of the cake is covered in small cubes of even more sponge cake, meant to mimic the small blooms of the mimosa flower, which are then dusted all over with confectioner’s sugar. If the torta mimosa sounds heavenly, that’s because it is  —   and it tastes even better the next day as the flavors begin to meld. Beyond the torta mimosa, food is a theme that comes up more than once in connection to International Women’s Day. Perhaps that’s no coincidence, considering that even in our modern society, 68 percent of women are still largely responsible for food preparation in the home. The holiday is rooted in the labor movement: Today actually marks the 100th anniversary of the ”women’s demonstration for bread and peace” in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1917, when women took to the streets to demand an end to World War I and the regime of Czar Nicholas II, but particularly against the rationing of bread and flour. The strike of tens of thousands of female factory workers incensed by the food shortages of the war led in short order to the collapse of czarism, which was quickly replaced by a Communist government that not only gave women the right to vote, but also declared March 8th, International Women’s Day, as an official holiday  —   although they didn’t allow women to take the day off to celebrate. Women in other Communist societies around the world observed it as a   holiday for decades before Soviet women finally got the day off starting in 1965. The Italian holiday became more popular in 1946, on the first March 8th following the end of World War II, when Italian feminists chose the mimosa flower as a symbol of sensitivity, strength and sensibility. For some women, la Festa della Donna continues to be a serious day of reflecting on the political, social and economic impact of women. This year, museums across Italy will offer free admission to women, with special exhibits highlighting female artists. For others, the day may be an excuse to leave the boys at home and dance the night away at the local discotheque with a gaggle of girlfriends. But for every woman, there’s cake. There are several classic recipes for a torta mimosa, including this one by an Italian expat living in Australia, and even a vegan version made with homemade rice milk custard. If you’re pressed for time, you can make a quick version with a   vanilla pound cake brushed with citrus liqueur and layered with softly whipped cream sprinkled with fresh lemon zest, then topped with cubes of cake and a dusting of powdered sugar. Buona Festa della Donna! Kristen Hartke is a food writer based in Washington, D. C."
"Ty Waters is an    singer from Vancouver, Canada. His remarkable voice has won him recognition and opportunities from an appearance at the Apollo Theater in New York to the Music and Media Awards show in Hollywood. Now, he’s released his debut album, titled Only Human. Waters started singing at 4, rendering   renditions of Bobby Darrin and Frank Sinatra before moving on to his current heroes, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. If the song ”Nervous” from Only Human brings to mind a Jackson classic, that’s no accident. The song was written for Jackson, but never recorded. Initially, singing helped Waters overcome a speech impediment  ” but what began as therapy soon blossomed into a career. After attending a vocal music summit in California in 2015, Waters came under the wing of composer and producer Dawn Elder, who recognized an unusual talent and pulled together a crack team of seasoned composers and session players to record the album. The energy those veterans drew from Waters, just 10 when the recording was made, is evident in the funky pop numbers and torch songs. Virtuosity and optimism from someone so young is a beautiful thing, and Waters has uncanny charisma on stage. But much credit also goes to his arrangers and musicians. This album is clearly a labor of love, and it may well prove to be the start of an impressive pop career as well."
"Early Saturday morning, President Trump launched into one of his favorite pastimes  —   tweeting allegations with no evidence to back them up. His latest unfounded claims: an assertion that President Barack Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump Tower during last year’s elections. He accused his predecessor of ”McCarthyism” and being a ”bad (or sick) guy.” The explosive allegations seem to have originated on conservative talk radio and were then promulgated by the   Breitbart News, which Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon previously led. The site, which has ties to the   movement, frequently peddles conspiracy theories. The White House, through Tuesday’s press briefing, has still offered no proof for the allegation. This isn’t the first time Trump has blasted out such uncorroborated claims on Twitter, in national interviews and elsewhere  —   and gone on to ask for an investigation into them. It’s not even the first of his 6    presidency. (Remember those 3 million to 5 million he said he believes voted illegally, costing him the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton? She just so happened to beat him in that count by about 3 million votes. Trump has asked Vice President Pence to take it up. More on that below.) A slew of ”alternative facts”  —   in the words of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway  —   have been perpetuated by the Trump administration since taking office. It’s par for the course for the reality TV star, who rose to political prominence after questioning whether Obama was born in the U. S. Here’s a rundown and reminder of some of the other things Trump has incorrectly stated since taking office: 1. 3 million to 5 million people illegally voted in November, Just after taking office, the president again repeated an unproven claim that millions of people voted improperly last year. ”You have people that are registered who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states,” Trump told ABC News’ David Muir in his first Oval Office interview. ”You have people registered in two states. They’re registered in a New York and a New Jersey. They vote twice. There are millions of votes, in my opinion.” As NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben has covered exhaustively, there is no evidence to back up such a widespread claim. While some instances of voter fraud do occur, there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. And a 2012 Pew Charitable Trusts report Trump has cited does not, in fact, show any type of mass voter fraud. As for being registered in multiple states, digging by news organizations showed that some Trump staffers and family members were among those registered in two states  —   not uncommon, for example, if someone moves. It’s only voting in both states that is illegal. Trump’s claims culminated in him tweeting that he was going to be ”asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and . .. even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” After Gregg Phillips with the conservative group VoteStand went on CNN claiming he had names of the 3 million people who voted illegally  —   but then refused to produce such a list  —   Trump tweeted out praise for him and said he was looking forward to seeing the results. The president later said in a Fox News interview last month that he was going to tap Pence to investigate   claims. Over a month later, Trump has not signed any executive order calling for an investigation or commission to do so. 2. Trump’s feud with the intelligence community  Trump kicked off his first full day as president Jan. 21 with a visit to CIA headquarters  —   presumably to mend fences with the intelligence agency after he maligned intelligence officers during the transition. At a press conference earlier that month, he likened them to ”Nazi Germany” for leaking damaging information against him and repeatedly cast doubt on their finding that Russia did, in fact, look to meddle in the U. S. elections. After a December Washington Post report on the CIA’s conclusions, Trump dismissed the agency in a statement as simply ”the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” In his visit to the CIA, Trump denied there was any feud and said his comments had been misreported, when, in fact, they had not been. Some of his accusations were leveled on his own Twitter feed. What’s more, Trump then exaggerated the response he got from the intelligence community there. Many current and former intelligence officers were fuming after Trump stood in front of the hallowed memorial to fallen CIA officers and launched into a tirade against the media and leveled more false claims over his inaugural crowd size. ”I had a standing ovation like you wouldn’t believe. . .. They actually  —   they were standing from the beginning,” Trump claimed in a Fox News interview later. ”They didn’t even sit down. It was one standing ovation, the whole thing.” In fact, as the Huffington Post noted, Trump never told the CIA officers to sit at the beginning of his speech, and without such instruction from the president, these officers wouldn’t have sat down. He also claimed that ”it was the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl, and they said it was equal.” There were about 400 staffers at the speech. There were 71, 088 fans who attended the 2016 Super Bowl, where Manning led the Denver Broncos to the championship. 3. Inauguration crowd size  Another whopper that Trump and his administration clung to for quite a while was the size of his inauguration crowds. Though aerial photos  —   including ones now officially released by the National Park Service  —   show that Trump’s crowds were much smaller than President Obama’s, he’s continued to assert exactly the opposite. Even when TV ratings are added in, it still wasn’t larger. According to Nielsen, 30. 6 million people watched Trump’s inauguration, but 38 million people tuned in for President Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. It is more difficult to ascertain streaming numbers, though his White House press secretary claimed it ”was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration. Period. Both in person and around the globe.” Trump continued to dispute what clear photos and    reports showed. At the CIA, he claimed that ”it looked like a million, a     people” at his inauguration, but that the media had simply ”showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there” to try to diminish his crowd size. Trump oddly also claimed it had stopped raining when he began giving his inaugural address. In fact, it was raining the whole way through. Franklin Graham said during a prayer from the platform: ”Mr. President, in the Bible, rain is a sign of God’s blessing. And it started to rain, Mr. President, when you came to the platform” to speak. 4. Trump’s false crime statistics  To bolster his inaugural assertion that there’s ”American carnage” happening and that, as the new    president, only he can save the country, Trump has repeatedly relied on false and misleading crime statistics over the past six weeks. Trump told a group of   officers at the White House at the beginning of February: ”The murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years. . .. I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised, because the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, from 45 to 47 years.” The press doesn’t say that because it is false. The national homicide rate peaked in the 1990s and has largely continued to a steady decline since, though there was a brief spike from 2014 to 2015. As NPR’s Camila Domonoske reported, ”Even with an 11 percent annual increase, murder rates remain lower than at almost any point in the last 47 years.” He’s also made wrong claims about crime in major cities. Trump claimed that when President Obama gave his farewell address in Chicago: ”Two people were shot and killed during his speech.” However, the Chicago Tribune reported that police records show that, ”Not only did no homicides take place in Chicago during Obama’s address of about an hour Jan. 10, but the official Police Department records and the Tribune’s crime database show that no shootings at all occurred over that time frame.” And when Trump addressed the House GOP retreat in Philadelphia, he claimed the city’s murder rate had been steadily increasing, when, in fact, the 277 homicides in the city in 2016 were down from 280 the previous year. Those are both sharp drops from the 391 a decade ago, in 2007. 5. ”Biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan”  Trump made this claim in a February press conference where he was again boasting about his win of 306 electoral votes (though it was really 304 due to two defections from electors from Texas). He tried to clarify when pressed that he meant biggest Republican win since Reagan. Still he was off. George H. W. Bush got 426 electoral votes in 1988. When pressed again by NBC’s Peter Alexander on his repeated inaccuracy, Trump tried to dismiss it. ”Well, I don’t know,” he said. ”I was given that information. I was given  —   I actually  —   I’ve seen that information around. But it was a very substantial victory, do you agree with that?” Trump won, and winning with more than 300 electoral votes is significant. But his   total ranks just 46th out of the 58 U. S. presidential elections."
"Gunmen dressed as medical staff stormed a military hospital in Kabul on Wednesday morning, killing at least 30 people and injuring dozens more in a raid that lasted hours. In a statement published on the Islamic   Aamaq news agency, the militant group claimed responsibility for the assault in the Afghan capital. The attack on Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan hospital ended midafternoon local time, after several hours of    clashes with Afghan security forces left all four attackers dead, according to Gen. Dawlat Waziri, an Afghan defense ministry spokesman. ”While we work for peace, we’ll avenge the blood of our people,” tweeted Afghanistan’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said the assault ”trampled all human values,” the BBC reports, noting that Ghani added: ”In all religions, a hospital is regarded as an immune site and attacking it is attacking the whole of Afghanistan.” Citing the country’s military officials, The Washington Post reports the attack opened midmorning with the detonation of a suicide bomb at the   hospital’s front gates. Witnesses describe gunmen wearing white doctors’ coats, which hid the assault rifles and grenades they broke out to target the staff and patients. ”Late into the afternoon, government forces were still locked in sporadic exchanges of fire inside the hospital,” the Post reports. ”Television footage showed one Afghan military helicopter landing on the roof of the main compound and dropping reinforcements.” By the time security forces regained control, The Guardian reports that witnesses had already heard a second explosion rip through the hospital compound. The Afghan Taliban denied any involvement in the attack. As the BBC explains, this is by no means the only attack to rack the capital city recently: ”In July 2016, a suicide bomb attack on a rally in Kabul killed about 80 people. ”Three months later, two similar attacks during the religious festival of Ashura claimed about 30 lives and in November 2016 an attack at a mosque in Kabul killed more than 30. ”IS also claimed a suicide attack at Kabul’s Supreme Court last month that killed 22 people and has stepped up activity in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. ”The Taliban has also been carrying out attacks, killing 16 people in Kabul in suicide attacks a week ago, after beginning its Spring offensive early.”"
"What if your friend the robot could tell what you’re thinking, without you saying a word? Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and Boston University have created a system where humans can guide robots with their brainwaves. This may sound like a theory out of a   novel, but the goal of seamless   interaction is the next major frontier for robotic research. For now, the MIT system can only handle simple binary activities such as correcting a robot as it sorts objects into two boxes, but CSAIL Director Daniela Rus sees a future where one day we could control robots in more natural ways, rather than having to program them for specific tasks  —   like allowing a supervisor on a factory floor to control a robot without ever pushing a button. ”Imagine you look at the robots, and at some point one robot is not doing the job correctly,” Rus explained. ”You will think that, you will have that thought, and through this detection you would in fact communicate remotely with the robot to say ’stop.’ ” Rus admits the MIT development is a baby step, but she says it’s an important step toward improving the way humans and robots interact. Currently, most communication with robots requires thinking in a particular way that computers can recognize or vocalizing a command, which can be exhausting. ”We would like to change the paradigm,” Rus said. ”We would like to get the robot to adapt to the human language.” The MIT paper shows it’s possible to have a robot read your mind  —   at least when it comes to a super simplistic task. And Andres   a Boston University Ph. D. candidate working with the CSAIL research team, says this system could one day help people who can’t communicate verbally. Meet Baxter, For this study, MIT researchers used a robot named Baxter from Rethink Robotics. Baxter had a simple task: Put a can of spray paint into the box marked ”paint” and a spool of wire in the box labeled ”wire.” A volunteer hooked up to an EEG cap, which reads electrical activity in the brain, sat across from Baxter, and observed him doing his job. If they noticed a mistake, they would naturally emit a brain signal known as an ”  potential.” ”You can use [that signal] to tell a robot to stop or you can use that to alter the action of the robot,” Rus explained. The system then translates that brain signal to Baxter, so he understands he’s wrong, his cheeks blush to show he’s embarrassed, and he corrects his behavior. The MIT system correctly identified the volunteer’s brain signal and then corrected the robot’s behavior 70 percent of the time. Making robots effective ”collaborators” ”I think this is exciting work,” said Bin He, a biomedical engineer at the University of Minnesota, who published a paper in December that showed people can control a robotic arm with their minds. He was not affiliated with the MIT research, but he sees this as a ”clever” application in a growing yet nascent field. Researchers say there’s an increasing desire to find ways to make robots effective ”collaborators,” not just obedient servants. ”One key aspect of collaboration is being able . .. to know when you’re making a mistake,” said Siddhartha Srinivasa, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was not affiliated with the MIT study. ”What this paper shows is how you can use human intuition to   a robot’s learning of what its world looks like and how it can know right from wrong.” Srinivasa says this research could potentially have key implications for prosthetics, but cautions it’s an ”excellent first step toward solving a harder, much more complicated problem.” ”There’s a long gray line between not making a mistake and making a mistake,” Srinivasa said. ”Being able to decode more of the neuronal activity. .. is really critical.” And Srinivasa says that’s a topic that more scientists need to explore. Potential   applications, MIT’s Rus imagines a future where anybody can communicate with a robot without any training  —   a world where this technology could help steer a   car or clean up your home. ”Imagine . .. you have your robot pick up all the toys and socks from the floor, and you want the robot to put the socks in the sock bin and put the toys in the toy bin,” she said. She says that would save her a lot of time, but for now the mechanical house cleaner that can read your mind is still a dream."
"Lynne Stewart, a leftist lawyer who defended radicals and was eventually convicted in a terrorism case herself, has died at 77. Her son Geoffrey Stewart told NPR that Stewart died Tuesday. She was released from prison in 2014 because she suffered from terminal cancer. Stewart, who defended Black Panthers and Weather Underground members over the course of her career and considered herself a ”people’s lawyer,” is perhaps best known for representing Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman in his trial over plotting to attack New York City landmarks. While he served a life sentence, she passed along a statement from him to Reuters, saying that he no longer supported a   between a militant group and the Egyptian government. That act eventually resulted in her disbarment, and she was imprisoned from 2009 to 2014 on charges of aiding terrorists. Her critics argued that this was effectively an order to his followers to commit acts of violence, while Stewart said it was a way to advocate for better prison conditions by keeping his case in the media. She told NPR ahead of her sentencing in 2006 that as a ”” she had no interest in propping up Abdel Rahman’s Islamist agenda. ”The two couldn’t be further apart. But we’re inclusive people. They’re exclusive people. They want a theocracy.” At the time, NPR said the trial centered around the question of ”how far a lawyer can go in defending her client and whether the rules have shifted in an age of terrorism.” Stewart told us that she believed the   relationship was under threat: ”If we allow the government to listen in on our conversations, to say to us, ’You represent a dangerous client. You must operate in    a way,’ at the end of the day, no one who calls a defense lawyer will really be able to confident that that lawyer represents his or her interests and no one else’s.” The New York Times described her appearance during the trial, which became a major news event: ”Belying the image of a dangerous radical, Ms. Stewart, a short,   woman, often arrived at court wearing a New York Mets cap and a   housedress, dangling a cloth tote bag rather than the lawyer’s typical briefcase and inevitably drawing a clutch of news photographers.” Descriptions of Stewart as ”grandmotherly” angered her opponents, the newspaper added, ”who insisted that such a description distracted the public from seeing the ally of terrorists they saw.” She was convicted in 2005 and initially sentenced to a   sentence, which was later lengthened to a   sentence by an appellate court. She was granted a ”compassionate release” in 2014 because of her illness. Stewart, who hailed from Queens, started her career as a librarian and teacher in Harlem before she became an attorney. Her ”  instincts” quickly led her to criminal defense work, she told Guernica in a 2015 interview. She explained that prior to her disbarment, she would take almost any case  —   except defending police or people accused of child abuse. ”I’m particularly committed to the political people who needed defense,” Stewart told the magazine. ”There’re out there fighting the government on behalf of everybody.”"
"An iconic Maltese natural rock arch collapsed into the sea Wednesday during a powerful storm. The ”Azure Window” jutting off Malta’s Gozo Island is printed on innumerable Instagram posts and travel brochures. It was also featured in movies and TV shows, including HBO’s Game of Thrones. Local resident Roger Chessell was there when the iconic arch collapsed. ”There was a big raging sea beneath the window,” he told the Times of Malta. ”Suddenly, the arch collapsed into the sea with a loud whoomph, throwing up a huge spray. By the time the spray had faded, the stack had gone too.” Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat called the news ”heartbreaking.” ”Reports commissioned over the years indicated that this landmark would be hard hit by unavoidable natural corrosion,” he said on Twitter. ”That sad day has arrived.” In 2013, a study said that the rock formation would inevitably collapse but that it would ”likely survive for ’decades’ to come,” the Times of Malta reported. The BBC added that in recent years, tourists have apparently done some damage to the formation by ”jumping off the arch into the sea, dislodging clumps of rock in the process.” Authorities introduced fines for walking over the arch, according to The Guardian, but they were ”rarely enforced.” Game of Thrones fans might recognize it as the wedding backdrop of Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo in the show’s first episode. ”The flagship of the Gozitan touristic sites has sunk in its same birth place from where for thousands of years, it stood high and proud heralding one of the natural beauties our little island is endowed with,” the Gozo Tourism Association said in a statement. It added that about 80 percent of tourists to the island visited the famed rock formation. Now, it noted, ”only millions of photographs remain as testimony of this touristic spot.” Fans of the Azure Window are mourning its loss on social media:"
"Author Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, Exit West, is about knowing when it’s time to flee your country, and what happens when you migrate to a nation that’s hostile to immigrants. It’s a topic the author himself is personally familiar with. Hamid was born in Lahore, Pakistan, but spent part of his childhood in California. As a young adult, he lived in New York and London before returning to Lahore with his wife to raise their children. He tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that moving from country to country initially made him feel like ”kind of freak,” but as he got older, his outlook changed. ”I became more and more comfortable just being myself, a kind of mongrelized, hybridized, weird sort of character,” Hamid says. ”What I started to realize was everybody feels a bit foreign . .. even people who have lived in the same place.” Exit West is about a young couple who have to decide whether to leave their home in an unnamed city that is slowly being overtaken by militants. Hamid says it’s just a coincidence that the book was published shortly after President Trump announced his revised travel ban. He says that while his novel doesn’t explicitly address the ban, the themes it raises  —   about who belongs and who doesn’t  —   are directly related to the ban. ”Above all, [the travel ban is] about who has the right to move and who doesn’t have the right to move,” he says. ”I think that when we take the long view, the notion that some people are deemed less worthy of being able to move  —   to not have the right to cross borders  —   over time that’s going to seem as outmoded and as unfair, really, as racial discrimination or other kinds of discrimination.” On how Trump’s policies are being received outside the U. S. and the fear that they may fuel radicalization, Outside of America there are many people, myself included, who champion values that in some senses could be thought of as traditionally American: The idea that everybody is equal the idea that the rights of women and men should be the same that there should be no discrimination [based] on religious or sexual orientation that democracy and rule of law and due process are the ways in which society should govern themselves and minorities should be cared for. These, in a way, are values that America has championed internationally. Not exclusively, of course  —   America has a mixed history. But I think for many people around the world, the sense is they’ve lost an ally, that this very powerful force that used to speak for these things is now silent. That’s different [from] radicalization, but certainly it’s about undermining fellow travelers. At the same time, I think radicalization works in a slightly different way. When people  —   particularly young people and especially young men  —   can’t imagine themselves as heroes in narratives that they construct for themselves, they look to be heroes in some other way. So young men in America of, let’s say, Muslim background: Only a tiny, tiny minority  —   so small as to be almost zero  —   are likely to ever commit terrorist acts, but what goes through the mind of somebody like that? . .. In a sense, by closing off the idea that young Muslims, and particularly young Muslim men, can be American heroes, it increases the chance that they’ll try to be some other kind of hero. And that, I think, is entirely counterproductive. On whether he feels limited in what he can and can’t write living in Pakistan, which has Blasphemy Laws that call for the death penalty for anyone convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, It’s not that living in Pakistan I feel an enormous constraint on how I can write and what I can say rather, I recognize that one has to navigate these things. . .. Am I aware of things that one could say that would be risky or that could be dangerous? Certainly I’m aware of those things. And then being aware you make certain choices. Sometimes you’ll say something sometimes you’ll find a different way of saying something. And many things might be risky to say, but you have no desire to say them because they don’t reflect what you believe. But all of it connects to say that language is a living thing, stories are a living thing  —   they shape our societies. People will be passionate about what you write, and that is not so much a discouragement, but a reminder that what we’re doing isn’t pointless, that all of us who are writers are doing something that actually matters. On the anxiety that can come from following the constant stream of news and social media  This is something that living in Pakistan perhaps has taught me. We live in a world where there is a constant feed from social media, the news, etc. of things that can scare us, and we become so anxious because human beings are designed to be sensitized to dangerous stuff. . .. Contemporary culture in Pakistan, just like in America, is continuously hitting us with scary stuff, and so we are utterly anxious. I think that it’s very important to resist that anxiety, to think of ways of resisting the constant inflow of negative feelings  —   not to become depoliticized as a result, but to actually work actively to bring into being an optimistic future. For me, writing books and being someone who is politically active is part of that. I don’t want to be anxious in my    life I want to try to imagine a future I’d like to live in and then write books and do things that, in my own small way, make it more likely that that future will come to exist."
"Spotlights that illuminate the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor went dark for more than an hour Tuesday night, prompting speculation over the cause: Was it to do with a protest on International Women’s Day, or perhaps America’s immigration policies? A National Park Service official says they’re still looking into it, but they suspect recent work on the electrical system is the cause. ”The outage was most likely due to work related to an ongoing project to activate a new emergency backup generator which is part of our last remaining Hurricane Sandy recovery projects,” the NPS says. It added that the outage was ”unplanned.” The darkness on Liberty Island dramatically changed the look of one of the country’s most iconic monuments  —   and as an AP video shows, when the lights came back on, the effect was striking. Much of the reaction to the outage focused on the timing: Lady Liberty’s lights went dark on the eve of A Day Without A Woman, a strike that a coalition of groups have planned for Wednesday. One of the groups, Women’s March, tweeted, ”Thank you Lady Liberty for standing with the resistance and going dark for #DayWithoutAWoman.” Some who read the park service’s explanation replied with a wink  —   literally posting videos of women winking in reply to the NPS tweet. Others said the explanation of a power outage only served to cement the link between the monument’s brief time out of the spotlight and women’s circumstances in today’s world. Coinciding with International Women’s Day, today’s organized protest ”aims to highlight the economic power of women  —   as well as ongoing problems of discrimination and pay disparity,” as NPR reported this morning. The park service said it wouldn’t know the cause of the outage until crews get back to work Wednesday. The agency cited an ongoing project involving ”a new emergency backup generator which is part of our last remaining Hurricane Sandy recovery projects”  —   a project that involved hoisting the generator high enough to avoid potential floodwaters."
"Americans like to fantasize that a   future will free them from the clutches of racism. But this illusion is incompatible with an America in which the presidential election was won by the candidate who ran a ”Make America Great Again” campaign, which many critics have pointed out was widely heard as a call to ”Make America White Again.” If the election results are a vindication for those championing the politics of President Trump, the demographic trends point in the opposite direction. Today, the United States’   population is growing three times faster than the general population, and optimism about the impact that   people can have on a   country abounds. ”What Biracial People Know,” a recent   in The New York Times, argues that the growing multiracial population may act as a ”vaccine” to the bigotry that buoyed Trump’s campaign, granting America ”immunity” to the longstanding politics of exclusion shaped by racism. But this hope that a   future will result in a paradise of interracial and   babies is misleading. It presents racism as passive  —   a vestigial reflex that will fade with the presence of interracial offspring, rather than as an active system that can change with time. A 2015 study by Pew Research Center concluded that   Americans describe experiences of discrimination in the form of slurs, poor customer service, and police encounters. These figures were highest among people of   and   American descent. In their personal lives,   people may feel pressure to identify with one group or the other. They may have their sense of identity or belonging dismissed by the groups to which they belong, or by the dominant society. Diana Sanchez, an associate professor in psychology at Rutgers University and a scholar of multiracial identity and experiences, says   individuals may face subtle forms of aggression in their daily interactions. ”People have trouble putting multiracial people in a box . .. and have opinions about how they should be racially categorized,” she explained. In such instances,   people may not seamlessly blend in with others’ perceptions, but rather be told that they do not belong to a group, or that they must choose only one, contrary to their personal identity. For some, this disconnect between their sense of self and how the world identifies them can be difficult to navigate. But when it comes to systemic barriers, experts point out that instances of racial discrimination for   people may not be very different from the experiences of people who identify as belonging to a single race. Tanya Hernandez, professor of law at Fordham University and the author of the forthcoming book Multiracials and Civil Rights, points out that in legal cases covering a   of contexts, including education, employment, public accommodations, and criminal justice, ”people who identify as   . .. describe . .. strikingly binary,   or    forms of discrimination.” Hernandez adds that many   people find themselves discriminated against, not explicitly because of their   but because of their belonging to a   group. She explained that in most of these cases, ”the individual. ..is lumped together in stark contrast to whites, so it’s a    racial hierarchy.” The fact that   people who present as   face discrimination because of their proximity to a   group reinforces the idea of racial discrimination emphasizing categorization with one group, rather than hybridity. As Sanchez notes, regardless of personal identity, ”a lot of research points [out that]   people tend to be perceived along the lines of their minority identity.” But what happens to those who aren’t easily categorized? While not all   people are considered racially ambiguous, and not everyone perceived as racially ambiguous is of mixed parentage, there is evidence that the inability to categorize people as one race or the other may itself present new forms of bias. Sanchez’s research suggests that white people from   neighborhoods have more difficulty processing the faces of   individuals, and that this may result in bias. White people with less exposure to   ”have more discomfort trying to make decisions about   people. ..and that has consequences for their beliefs around those groups,” she notes. The upshot, according to Sanchez, is that ”the more [people] are exposed to   individuals, the more likely they are to see race as a social construct, not a biological one.” That realization, that race is a social fiction, ”would be a step in the right direction . .. in terms of trying to reduce racial prejudice and social inequalities,” she says. If people are willing to accept that race is a human fabrication, they may also be more willing to shift their attitudes and perceptions about other groups. Still, Hernandez, whose work often compares discrimination in the United States to parts of Latin America, is not particularly optimistic. She points out that the myth of racial mixture leading to societal harmony has long been a feature of many Latin American countries. She illustrates the point with the popular notion that Brazil has eluded racism through racial mixture, or the idea that Venezuela is a ”café con leche” society in which everyone is racially mixed and free of prejudice. In these cases, Hernandez reiterated that the mere existence of multiracial communities ”has not undermined the continuing racial hierarchy, in which the darker you are, the worse you are thought of . .. White supremacy is alive and well in Latin America.” Acknowledging that   people may experience discrimination and that institutional racism, along with individual prejudice, can take forms that target   people, is central to developing policies that address the dynamic face of racism and the effects it has on our communities. But realizing that a   society can also uphold racism is crucial to a nuanced understanding of the challenge of recognizing and overcoming racism and bias. Ultimately, the narrative that imagines   people as a panacea for racism is a flawed one that reinforces ideas around the very existence of race. Instead, we might want to refocus our conversation around how the collective fiction of race is weaponized to limit access to equality and justice for some groups and not others, then maybe we’re onto something. Alexandros Orphanides is a New York   writer of   descent. His work covers political, social and cultural issues. Follow him @bodega_gyro_ao."
"Witnesses to Wednesday’s deadly crash involving a freight train and a bus say that the charter bus appeared to be trapped on the tracks just ahead of the crash that killed at least four people and injured dozens more in Biloxi, Miss. Transportation agencies say the crossing is a known problem. ”Since 1976 there have been 16   collisions at this grade crossing prior to Tuesday’s accident,” the National Transportation Safety Board says. The train was traveling at around 19 mph when it struck the bus and pushed the crowded vehicle some 200 feet down the tracks, the NTSB says. The train’s engineer had spotted the bus and begun an emergency stop when his three engines and 52 cars were still 500 feet from the crossing. The NTSB and other agencies are looking into why the bus was on the tracks  —   and how to prevent the situation from repeating. Tuesday night, the Federal Railroad Administration said three of its inspectors and a state inspector were en route to the site where the train ran into the middle of a charter bus’ side. From Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Evelina Burnett reports for NPR’s Newscast unit: ”The charter bus was carrying about 50 people to a casino just north of the railroad tracks in Biloxi when it appears to have gotten stuck. Biloxi Fire Chief Joe Boney says it took just a few minutes for emergency responders to arrive. ” ’Upon our arrival, about two minutes later, we found there were many, many victim inside the bus, injured,’ Boney said. ”Officials said it’s not clear yet if the bus had some kind of mechanical trouble, but this intersection has a steep grade that has led to issues in the past. Just in January, a delivery truck was hit by a train at the crossing. There were no serious injuries reported in that crash, but according to the Federal Railroad Administration, there have been fatal accidents at this intersection at least twice before.” Witness Craig Robinson tells local newspaper the Sun Herald that he noticed that ”the bus. .. was stuck, so I took off running.” Robinson says he was running to tell people to get off the bus, but by the time he got there, ”the train already had hit it, and drug it to where it stands now.” Another witness tells the newspaper that some passengers were trying to get off the bus when it was struck  —   and that at least one person was then trapped beneath the bus. When a crowd that had gathered near the crash site Tuesday saw a group of survivors being led away by emergency crews, they broke into applause and cheers. According to the NTSB, grade crossings like the one in Biloxi were the scene of more than 2, 000 accidents across the U. S. last year. Those incidents resulted in 265 deaths."
"A top U. S. military official told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that he accepts ”full responsibility” for the widely criticized U. S. ground raid into Yemen in late January. At the same time, Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U. S. Central Command, said he was ”satisfied” after a review found that the tragic outcome of the raid was not a result of ”incompetence or poor   or poor judgment.” As a result, he said that he has decided there is ”no need for an additional investigation into this particular operation.” The raid has been repeatedly hailed by the White House as a success, because of intelligence that was gathered. A U. S. Navy SEAL, William ”Ryan” Owens, was killed during the operation. Votel was blunt: ”We lost a lot in this operation. We lost a valued operator, we had people wounded, we caused civilian casualties, lost an expensive aircraft.” At the same time, he insisted that because of the raid, ”we did gain some valuable information that will be helpful for us.” The value of some of this information has been questioned. As NPR’s Philip Ewing has reported, ”A terrorist video released . .. by the Pentagon to show what it called intelligence gleaned by the recent raid in Yemen actually was made about 10 years ago.” There have been varying reports of the number of civilian casualties in the raid. One local man told NPR that 24 people were killed in the operation, including nine men, six women and nine children. It was not clear exactly how many of the dead were civilians. Among the children killed was the    daughter of   terrorist Anwar  . Today, Votel stated that a ”determination based on our best information available is that we did cause casualties, somewhere between four and 12 casualties that we accept, I accept responsibility for.” NPR’s Alice Fordham and Tom Bowman have provided an account of the raid, based on conversations with local residents and U. S. military officials, which you can read here. Votel said officials are still carrying out an investigation into the loss of the aircraft. As NPR has reported, the ”$90 million Osprey, a   aircraft, was destroyed after crash landing.” The White House has said that planning for the raid began under the Obama administration. It was the first military operation authorized by President Trump."
"President Trump’s repeated and unsubstantiated claims over the weekend that   Barack Obama had him wiretapped at Trump Tower at the height of last year’s election season set off alarms in the corridors of power and also a constant refrain from lawmakers, former spymasters and journalists: Where’s your proof? Aides soon pointed to news reports for support, including a most unlikely source: an article by a former British politician who dryly notes that her reporting doesn’t back up Trump’s allegations. That would be Louise Mensch, founder of the   libertarian political site Heat Street. Her post back in November went largely unmentioned by major American news outlets. But since the White House sent out links to her story, among others, to reporters for PolitiFact, The Washington Post and other outlets, Heat Street’s Mensch has been in the hot seat. ”My phone’s been blowing up and my emails have been blowing up, and my direct messages on Twitter have been blowing up,” Mensch tells NPR. ”I’m just not answering any of them, because who knows what’s in them. But I did wonder why the White House was wasting an entire day on trying to make it seem like I  —   or even The New York Times  —   had reported a wiretap on Trump Tower.” Trump’s accusatory tweets had packed in a series of separate claims with these two being the most explosive: that a wiretap was ordered and that Obama had been personally involved in ordering it. Mensch did not cite Obama’s involvement or any wiretap. Back in November, the evening before the election, Mensch wrote that the FBI had sought and was granted a secret warrant, by a judge who oversees national security proceedings, to examine possible financial and banking offenses involving figures in the Trump campaign with ties to Russia  —   with no mention of wiretaps. Mensch also reported that a broader request by the FBI had been rejected back in June. It was an orphan report for a while. ”I was the only person to report this for some time,” Mensch says. ”Two months after I published my story, two other stories appeared in quick succession.” The BBC and The Guardian in January confirmed much of Mensch’s report and built on it. New York Times public editor Liz Spayd, a kind of   critic, wrote skeptically about coverage from The Times before the election on possible links between Trump’s camps and the Russians. ”I believe a strong case can be made that The Times was too timid in its decisions not to publish the material it had,” Spayd wrote in January. ”But The Times knew several critical facts: the F. B. I. had a sophisticated investigation underway on Trump’s organization, possibly including FISA warrants . .. [which are] an indication of probable cause.” Spayd tells NPR that Mensch’s report caught her eye. ”She’s made some interesting assertions. I have no idea whether they’re true or not. I don’t have my own independent sources,” Spayd says. ”But it does seem that she is out beyond what The New York Times and most other media has reported.” Dean Baquet, the Times’ executive editor, took issue with Spayd’s finding, telling her: ”We wrote everything we knew  —   and we wrote a lot. Anybody that thinks we sat on stuff is outrageous. It’s just false.” Mensch comes to journalism through a circuitous and unusual path. She is a former   romance novelist who won election to Parliament in the Conservative Party (and, for what it’s worth, who happens to be married to the manager of such acts as Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers). She made a splash in both the U. K. and the U. S. when she challenged News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch during a parliamentary inquiry into multiple scandals at his British tabloids. She confronted Murdoch, calling him the captain of his ship and then asking if he’d consider resigning. At the end of the inquiry, however, she rejected the criticism adopted by Parliament of Murdoch and his son James when she left Parliament, citing the time she was pulled away from her children, she was hired by the Murdoch British tabloid The Sun as a columnist. And then after moving to the U. S. she founded Heat Street for the Murdochs’ News Corp. She says before the Trump controversy, she had intended to move on from Heat Street and politics to develop two more digital projects for News Corp. As a lawmaker and as a columnist, Mensch frequently cited national security imperatives. She says that aided her reporting. So did her political beliefs, Mensch says. ”Maybe there are wonderful saintly journalists who could be completely objective,” she says. ”I know that I can’t be completely objective and I think that what I ought to do is openly wear my support on my sleeve.” Mensch won’t say on which side of the Atlantic her sources can be found. She does report, however, that American authorities relied on friendly foreign agencies. And it may not be a coincidence that only British reporters have confirmed the story. ”There were questions raised in recent days about how she would have any sources in this area,” the New York Times’ Spayd said. ”I think she makes a somewhat reasonable argument that she has been a strong backer of U. S. intelligence  —   U. K. intelligence  —   for a long period of time. And that is a clear way to gain sources. . .. It doesn’t strike me as wholly implausible.” Mensch had been highly critical of The Guardian for its extensive reporting on national security based on the vast cache of documents former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden released to journalist Glenn Greenwald (as well as to The Washington Post). She now credits The Guardian for taking her reporting seriously before many others did, despite her earlier criticism. There are two ironies in the White House’s efforts to cite Mensch’s reporting to bolster the boss’s case. First, as Mensch says, her report doesn’t say what they claim. Second, while Rupert Murdoch warmed to Trump and strongly supports him, Mensch openly opposes him. She called herself a ”Never Trumper” and earlier declared herself a Republican for Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Trump’s aides are relying on the reporting of a writer who thinks the man in the Oval Office should be impeached."
"The nation’s roads, bridges, airports, water and transit systems are in pretty bad shape, according to the civil engineers who plan and design such infrastructure. The new report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the infrastructure of the United States a  . That nearly failing grade should boost President Trump’s efforts to get a plan to invest up to $1 trillion in rebuilding everything from highways and bridges to tunnels and dams, even though the engineers’ group is recommending something the president and his party are unlikely to support: a huge increase in the gasoline tax. It’s not as though many of our bridges are about to collapse or our cars likely to be swallowed up by potholes, but according to ASCE, a significant number of the critical structures and systems that we rely on to get us to and from work, that provide us with clean drinking water, and that protect us from floods are in pretty bad shape. Take the nation’s roads, for example, which Greg DiLoreto, a former president of ASCE, says get the same disappointing grade as four years ago: a D. ”More than 2 out of every 5 miles of America’s urban interstates are congested, and traffic delays cost this country $160 billion in wasted fuel and time,” says DiLoreto. Because roads and highways are out of date and unable to handle today’s demand, DiLoreto says, ”on average, Americans waste 43 hours a year stuck in traffic. Or in other words, one in your two weeks’ vacation, gone.” He says the nation’s aging airports are increasingly congested, too. ”It is expected that by 2020, 24 of our 30 major airports will experience Thanksgiving Day peak traffic at least once a week,” DiLoreto says. In addition, America’s water systems are leaking trillions of gallons of water, more than 2, 000 dams are at high risk of failure, and there are 59, 000 structurally deficient bridges around the country. ”Structurally deficient doesn’t mean they are unsafe,” DiLoreto says. ”But it does mean they require more repair and more frequent inspections.” Mass transit earns the worst grade of all, a  . ”The nation’s transit systems are chronically underfunded, resulting in aging infrastructure and a $90 billion maintenance backlog,” DiLoreto says. Getting all of the nation’s infrastructure into relatively good shape by the year 2025 would cost $4. 59 trillion, according to the ASCE report that’s $2 trillion more than is budgeted by local, state and federal governments to address infrastructure needs. ASCE Executive Director Tom Smith says the chronic failure to invest in infrastructure is a huge drain on the nation’s economy, putting American jobs and lives at risk. ”Unfortunately, we have a tendency to wait for disasters and be reactive, and what we want to do is be proactive and not reactive,” Smith says. ”Because when we’re reactive, it ends up costing significantly more than when we’re proactive.” The engineers’ group applauds President Trump for bringing needed attention to fixing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, both during his campaign and since taking office. But it also notes his call to spend up to $1 trillion on infrastructure is not enough and that his plan to leverage private investment is inadequate. ”We, the American people, will have to pay for it,” says ASCE President Norma Jean Mattei. ”There’s no magic wand to address this crisis, no infrastructure money tree, no infrastructure private sector angel.” The ASCE is calling for a huge, 25 cents per gallon increase in the federal gasoline tax to help pay for infrastructure improvements. The group notes that the current tax of 18. 4 cents per gallon hasn’t been raised since 1993 and so hasn’t kept up with inflation and growing needs. But recent efforts to raise the gas tax even just a few cents or a nickel have been political nonstarters with Republicans in Congress. So a proposal to more than double the motor fuel tax is not likely to get off the ground. White House spokesman Sean Spicer says President Trump is likely to stick with his original plan. ”I think we’re looking at a   partnership as a funding mechanism,” Spicer said in his briefing Thursday. ”There’s a lot of work being done behind the scenes and I don’t want to put a timeline on that.” Despite the urgent call from the engineers, Spicer says for now, infrastructure will have to wait until after the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act and reform of the tax code."
"”This is the chance. This is a     opportunity,” said the speaker, roving the stage with a wireless mic, gesturing at both the audience in front of him and the PowerPoint presentation behind him. TED Talk?   infomercial? Nope  —   it was House Speaker Paul Ryan, making a hard pitch for his health care plan after a week of loud conservative criticism. After listening to conservative groups like the Club For Growth blast the bill as a ”  substitute for   health care,” Ryan went on offense, saying this is just the first step of an ongoing overhaul of the health system. The bill, drafted by Ryan and other House Republican leaders, cleared a key hurdle Thursday, passing two House committees after marathon markup sessions. But many members from the Tea Party wing are upset that it keeps too much of the Affordable Care Act in place and effectively replaces the law’s signature tax with a heavy surcharge assessed to people who forgo health insurance. ”There are only so many things you can do in that bill because of Senate floor rules, reconciliation,” Ryan said. ”You can’t put everything you want in that legislation, because if you did it would be filibustered, and you couldn’t even bring it up for a vote in the Senate.” Then Ryan applied some public pressure. ”We as Republicans have been waiting seven years to do this. We as Republicans, who fought the creation of [Obamacare] and accurately predicted it would not work, ran for office in 2010, in 2012, in 2014, in 2016, on a promise that if given the ability we would repeal and replace this law. ”This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare. The time is here the time is now. This is the moment,” said Ryan, summing up the situation as a ”binary choice” for Republicans: Ditch Obamacare, or keep it. Ryan’s pitch comes at a time when many key trade groups are voicing major concerns about the repeal. The American Medical Association sent a letter to lawmakers bemoaning an ”expected decline in health insurance coverage and the potential harm it would cause to vulnerable patient populations.” The American Hospital Association urged Republican leaders to wait until the Congressional Budget Office analyzes the bill. That’s something Democrats are homing in on. ”Look: No one likes this bill,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. ”Hospitals, doctors, governors. Conservatives, liberals, nonpartisan groups. And most of all, the people who would no longer have affordable health care. ”We Democrats are here today to tell our Republican friends, turn back. Drop this irresponsible plan.” Currently, Ryan and other Republican leaders don’t need Democrats to pass the bill. They can afford to ignore Schumer. But with just a   margin in the Senate, they can’t ignore Republican senators. So it was notable when Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted that the House bill won’t be able to win a Senate majority. ”To my friends in House: pause, start over. Get it right, don’t get it fast.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio voiced similar worries to the New York Times. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell want the bill on President Trump’s desk by the end of April. ”I think if that’s the approach they take, they won’t have the votes in the Senate,” Rubio warned. That’s why Republican leaders have now pulled out all the stops in their attempts to get    members on board. As Schumer and other Democrats were blasting the bill outside the Senate on Thursday morning, they had to raise their voices at one point to speak over sirens. It was Vice President Pence’s motorcade driving by. He was back on Capitol Hill for the second time this week, meeting with fellow Republicans to talk and pitch the health care bill."
"Got questions about the GOP plan to overhaul federal health law? Join us on Twitter Thursday   p. m. ET for our #ACAchat. Kaiser’s Julie Rovner, NPR’s Alison Kodjak and health policy analysts of various political persuasions will be online discussing how the Republican plan could work, who wins and who loses. See you there! After literally years of promises, House Republicans have a bill they say will ”repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. Some conservative Republicans have derided the new proposal  —   the American Health Care Act  —   calling it ”Obamacare Lite.” It keeps intact some of the more popular features of the ACA, such as allowing adult children to stay on their parents’ health plans to age 26 and, at least in theory, ensuring that people with   conditions will still have access to insurance. In some cases the elements of the law that remain are due to political popularity. In others, it’s because the special budget rules Congress is using so Republicans can avoid a Senate filibuster do not allow them to repeal the entire law. But there are some major changes in how people would choose and pay for health care and insurance. Here are some of the biggest. Tax credits to help buy insurance, Both the GOP bill and the ACA provide tax credits to help some people pay their premiums if they don’t get insurance through work or government programs. And in both, the credits are refundable (meaning people who owe no taxes still get the money) and advanceable (so people don’t have to wait until they file their taxes to get them). But the GOP’s tax credits would work very differently from those already in place. Under current law, the amount of the credit is tied to a person’s income (the less you earn the more you get) and the cost of insurance where you live. The GOP tax credits would be tied largely to age, with older people getting twice as much ($4, 000 per year) as younger people ($2, 000). But the Republican plan would also let insurers charge those older adults five times as much as younger adults, so even a credit twice as big might not make up the difference in premiums. The GOP credits also do not vary by location, so they would be worth more in places where health care and health insurance are less expensive. The GOP credits do phase out gradually, starting with incomes above $75, 000 for an individual and $150, 000 for families. Medicaid, The biggest changes the Republican bill would make are to the Medicaid program. Starting in 2020, it would roll back federal funding for the ACA’s expansion that allowed states to provide Medicaid coverage to all   individuals under 138 percent of the poverty level, rather than just the specific categories of poor people (children, pregnant women, elderly, disabled) who were previously eligible.   states opted to expand access to Medicaid. People who are covered under the expansion would continue to be funded by the federal government after that, but states would no longer be allowed to enroll anyone under those expanded criteria. And an enrollee who loses eligibility for the expansion program could not  . But the bill would go further as well, making changes to the underlying Medicaid program that House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden,  . described as ”the biggest entitlement reform in the last 20 years.” Currently, Medicaid costs are shared between states and the federal government, but the funding is   so the federal government pays its percentage of whatever states spend. Under the proposed bill, the amount of federal funding would be capped on a   basis, so funding would go up as more people qualify. But that   amount might not grow as fast as Medicaid costs, which could leave states on the hook for an   share of the costs of the program. ”Capping federal contributions to the Medicaid program will likely force states with already tight budgets to limit eligibility and cut benefits to   Americans,” said the American Public Health Association in a statement. Help for wealthier people, If you earn a lot of money, or even just enough to put aside something extra for health expenses, the GOP bill will provide a lot to like. First, it would repeal almost all of the taxes that were increased by the ACA to pay for the expansion of health coverage. Those include higher Medicare taxes for   earners, a tax on investment income and various taxes on health care providers, including insurance companies, makers of medical devices and even tanning salons. The bill would also provide new tax advantages for those who can afford to save, including allowing more money to be deposited into health savings accounts, and lower penalties for those who use those accounts to pay for nonmedical needs. In addition, the plan would lower the threshold for deducting medical expenses on income taxes and allow people with     ”flexible spending accounts” to put away more pretax money. It would also restore    drugs as eligible for reimbursement from those accounts. Mandates to buy or provide coverage, The GOP plan doesn’t actually repeal the requirements for individuals to have coverage or for employers to provide it. That’s because it can’t under budget rules. Instead, the bill would reduce the penalties in both cases to zero, rendering the requirements moot. The individual requirement was used by the health law to force healthy people into buying coverage to help improve insurers’ risk pools since they could no longer bar customers with   conditions. Instead, the Republican plan would provide a penalty for those who do not maintain ”continuous coverage.” Those with a break in insurance coverage of more than 63 days could still purchase insurance without regard to   health conditions, but they would be required to pay premiums that are 30 percent higher for 12 months. The employer ”mandate,” which requires firms with 50 or more workers to offer coverage or pay a fine, has actually had relatively little impact on insurance coverage, analysts have concluded, and probably is not necessary to prevent employers from dropping coverage. In both the ACA and the GOP bill, however, workers whose employers offer coverage could not decline that coverage and get a tax credit instead. How to pay for it, With all the taxes and fees stripped from the ACA, how will Republicans pay for their tax credits? The answer is not clear. ”We are still discussing details, but we are committed to repealing Obamacare and replacing it with fiscally responsible policies that restore the free market and protect taxpayers,” said the Republican fact sheet that accompanied the release of the bill. Also still missing is an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office that will detail not only how much the proposal will cost, but also how many people would gain or lose health insurance. Republicans insist that estimate will be available before the full House votes on the bill. Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"The Republican health care overhaul working its way through the House is opposed by Democrats and by many Republican conservatives. It’s none too popular with the people on the front lines of health care, either  —   including doctors, nurses and hospitals. The chief medical officer of Medicaid, Dr. Andrey Ostrovsky, tweeted out his opposition on Wednesday. ”Despite political messaging from others at HHS, I align with the experts . .. in opposition to #AHCA,” the career staffer said. Ostrovsky, who has been in his current job since September, has received praise from former Obama administration officials for speaking out. Former Medicare and Medicaid chief Andy Slavitt called Ostrovsky a ”hero.” Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, has been out front with other Republican leaders pitching the new bill. In a press briefing on Wednesday, he said the administration will be looking at Affordable Care Act regulations ”and make certain that if they help patients, then we need to continue them. If they harm patients or increase costs, then obviously they need to be addressed.” The organizations Ostrovsky cited in his tweet that have voiced concerns are the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association. The AMA sent a letter to congressional leaders saying it was unable to support the GOP bill largely due to the ”expected decline in health insurance coverage and the potential harm it would cause to vulnerable patient populations.” Among other things, the AMA cited the proposed rollback of Medicaid expansions that happened under the Affordable Care Act, which the group called ”highly successful in providing coverage for lower income individuals” the proposed repeal of the Prevention and Public Health Fund, also established by Obamacare and provisions targeting Planned Parenthood. In a similar letter, the American Nurses Association said the Republican plan ”threatens health care affordability, access, and delivery for individuals across the nation.” It points to changes the bill would make to Medicaid and says the measure ”restricts million of women from access to critical health services.” The ANA says the proposed changes ”in no way will improve care for the American people.” The American Hospital Association also weighed in, pointing out the Congressional Budget Office has yet to provide a cost estimate for the measure or say how it would change coverage levels. Without such analysis and ”needed transparency,” the group said, Congress ”should wait” before proceeding. It also points to the proposed restructuring of Medicaid, saying it will ”have the effect of making significant reductions in a program that provides services to our most vulnerable populations, and already pays providers significantly less than the cost of providing care.” The opposition to the GOP plan from health care groups, who say its provisions need to be more generous, puts GOP leaders in a quandary. On the other side of the equation, conservative House members are opposing the measure because they believe it is too generous and doesn’t go far enough to repeal subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. The bill’s authors have responded to the criticism. ”There’s a pretty big the   complex in America,” Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters. ”And when you touch it, I’ve discovered, it touches back.”"
"Vice President Pence has yet to begin a promised investigation into allegations by President Trump that millions of people voted illegally in November. But that hasn’t stopped state lawmakers from taking action they say would limit voter fraud, even though the president’s claims have been widely discredited. Legislation to tighten voter ID and other requirements has already been introduced in about half the states this year. And in statehouse after statehouse, the debate has had a familiar ring. ”We do not have a voter fraud problem in North Dakota,” Democratic Rep. Mary Schneider argued last month during a state House floor debate of a measure that would tighten that state’s voter ID requirements and increase penalties for voter fraud. ”To say that there’s not a voter fraud problem in North Dakota, I think that’s another inaccurate statement. Maybe there have been no convicted cases but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have an issue,” countered Republican Christopher Olson, shortly before the measure was approved by a vote of  . Proof of citizenship, In late January, Virginia Republican Bob Marshall argued in favor of a bill that would require voters in that state to provide proof of citizenship before casting ballots in state and local races. ”I’ve identified individuals who tell me they’re not citizens, but they’re on the voter database,” he argued. But Democrat Rip Sullivan said such measures will hurt legitimate voters who don’t have the required documents. ”We know it to be true, that there will be Virginians disenfranchised by this piece of legislation all because of some concern about voter fraud for which there is no proof,” he said. That bill passed the   House, but has stalled in the state Senate, also controlled by Republicans. Around the country, the issue has split legislators along party lines. Democrats say tighter voting rules are unnecessary and discourage legitimate voters from casting ballots. Republicans say they’re trying to assure voters that the system is secure, even if voter fraud isn’t as widespread as Trump claims. ”I don’t know if there’s a lot of cheating. I just know that because of our loose laws, people feel that way,” says New Hampshire Republican Sen. Regina Birdsell. She has sponsored legislation to tighten residency requirements for voters in her state, where Trump recently claimed thousands of Massachusetts voters were bused in to cast illegal ballots. That claim has been widely discredited  —   including by state Republicans  —   but Birdsell says her constituents still worry people from out of state can game the system. ”I call it trust but verify,” she says. Her voting bill is one of hundreds now before state legislatures. Most are unlikely to become law, and many would actually expand voter access with things like online voter registration. Voter ID rules, But many other bills under consideration would make it harder to vote. Just this week, Arkansas lawmakers agreed to put a constitutional amendment on next year’s ballot to require a photo ID at the polls and for those casting absentee ballots. West Virginia lawmakers also considered tightening voter ID rules, and Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate pushed a sweeping measure that would require voters in his state to show a card with a bar code to verify their identity. Pate doesn’t think fraud is rampant in Iowa but says all the talk of fraud has people worried. ”The public is now taking that perception as a reality,” he says. ”And my job, and other election officials, is we now have to work extra hard to try to show people all the things we are doing to protect the integrity so they can   the confidence in our voting system. Because when they don’t believe their vote counts, then they tend not to go vote. They go, ’Well, why should I vote?’ ” Pate insists no voters will be disenfranchised by his proposal. But opponents disagree. They argue that such measures are politically motivated to suppress the votes of those who tend to vote Democratic, such as minorities who often have more difficulty meeting the proposed requirements. And they say it’s being done under the guise of fighting voter fraud, which study after study shows is rare. ”Nobody says it never ever happens,” says Myrna Perez with the Brennan Center for Justice, which has fought a number of state voting restrictions in court. ”The question is not whether or not there’s a way we can get the number down to zero. The question is are the efforts that these states are taking to try and prevent this worth who is being disenfranchised in the process.” She believes that it could be hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters. It’s a debate being waged with new vigor this year in a number of states."
"The owners of a wine bar in Washington, D. C. say they face unfair competition from an unusual source: the president of the United States. Diane Gross and Khalid Pitts own the Cork Wine Bar, located about 20 blocks north of both the White House and the nearby Trump International Hotel. Gross and Pitts say that their restaurant is losing business to the hotel restaurant run by the Trump Organization, which is owned by President Trump. So they’re suing him and his hotel. ”We feel that the president of the United States, owning a hotel, owning restaurants, promoting those restaurants, is unfair and to the detriment of other businesses in the city,” Pitts said at a press conference Thursday. Pitts and Gross were joined by a platoon of lawyers to announce the lawsuit filed in D. C. Superior Court. The case involves Trump’s hotel located in a   building, known as the Old Post Office Building. In 2013, the federal General Services Administration leased the historic building to the Trump Organization, which opened the hotel in the fall of 2016. Here’s the issue: A provision in the lease says no federal elected official can be on the lease or benefit from it.  Despite that language, GSA has taken no action to force Trump out of the lease. Meanwhile, Trump’s hotel is earning a reputation as ”the place to be” for lobbyists, political players and foreign diplomats. The GSA hasn’t publicly addressed the lease since Trump took office. An agency spokeswoman said it had no comment.  The lawsuit cites examples that it says show the president, his family and administration officials were seeking to boost what the lawsuit calls the hotel’s   potential. The suit, filed on Wednesday, seeks no monetary compensation. Instead, the plaintiffs want Trump to divest from the hotel or close it for the duration of his presidency. At the press conference, lawyer Steven Schooner said an elected official shouldn’t be competing with the private sector.   ”It’s an unacceptable conflict and nobody ever intended that this be tolerated,” he said.   White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the lawsuit at a press briefing on Thursday. He didn’t speak to the lawsuit itself. But he reiterated that a president is not covered by the federal conflicts of interest law.   ”You know, obviously, the president has made very clear in that December press conference at Trump Tower, he doesn’t have conflicts and he’s done everything in accordance with the guidance that he’s been given and gone well beyond what he ever needed to do,” Spicer said. Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten called the lawsuit ”a wild publicity stunt completely lacking in legal merit.”"
"Earl Johnson II didn’t grow up dreaming about becoming a famous singer: For a long time, he didn’t even know he could sing. He discovered his talent almost by accident one night, at the recording studio he was working in as a producer. Now, Johnson performs under the stage name Earl St. Clair . But it was hard at first, which he sings about in the song ”Ain’t Got It Like That.” He recalls, ”I was producing the single while people was trappin’ chasing the dream and living for free. A whole lot of people helped the hell out of me.” ”I was doing production and writing where the money doesn’t come consistently,” Johnson explains to All Things Considered. ”A lot of my friends, you know, they were doing some illegal activities in order to keep their funds up. And that’s not my choice. .. so I had a lot of people who allowed me to stay on their couch, sleep in their basement, borrow their money to keep me afloat while I’m trying to chase my dreams. ..” Hear the rest of Earl St. Clair’s conversation with NPR’s Audie Cornish, including his impression of Ray Charles and philosophy on   at the audio link. Monika Evstatieva edited the broadcast version of this story."
"Updated at 4:06 p. m. ET, Washington state is asking a federal judge to apply the restraining order that temporarily halted President Trump’s initial travel ban to the revised ban he signed Monday. In an announcement Thursday, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson contended that Judge James Robart’s Feb. 3 ruling  —   which suspended Trump’s first ban nationwide until a challenge brought by Washington and Minnesota could be heard in court  —   ought to cover the second ban, despite revisions that narrowed who would be affected. The new ban is currently slated to go into effect on March 16. Attorneys general for New York, Massachusetts and Oregon also declared their intention Thursday to formally join Washington and Minnesota’s legal challenge to the ban. ”The bottom line is that the court issued, and we obtained, a temporary restraining order on the original executive order,” Ferguson told NPR’s Robert Siegel ahead of the announcement. ”Yes, the revised one is more narrow  —   that’s a success. But the core constitutional problems remain the same.” Ferguson added: ”The intent behind the executive order targeting those Muslim countries still remains, and that is unconstitutional.” The original executive order, issued in January, temporarily barred citizens from seven   countries  —   as well as all refugees  —   from entering the United States. Many of the ban’s critics, including Ferguson, argued that it violated the Constitution by specifically targeting immigrants of a single faith. The revised executive order adopted a narrower scope in a bid to soften some of its more controversial parts. It dropped Iraq from the list of banned countries  —   while keeping Syria, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Yemen and Sudan on there  —   and clarified that those legal residents who already have visas can still come to the U. S. But Ferguson is not convinced the changes are substantial enough to resolve their earlier complaints. ”Is it a narrower group of people who are impacted by the travel ban, the revised one? You bet,” Ferguson told NPR. ”But just because it’s a smaller number of individuals who are impacted, that doesn’t mean you can solve a constitutional problem of the magnitude that the revised ban still has.” In a statement released Thursday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey echoed Ferguson’s concerns: ”President Trump’s second travel ban remains a discriminatory and unconstitutional attempt to make good on his campaign promise to implement a Muslim ban. We are consolidating our legal efforts and joining fellow states, led by Washington, in continuing to challenge this Administration’s unlawful immigration policies.” And so the beating heart of Washington’s challenge remains the same. ”The test is whether or not a motivating factor behind the travel ban was an improper religious bias against Muslims,” Ferguson said. ”That doesn’t mean in some other context with immigration, he doesn’t have broad powers. He does. ”But for this particular travel ban, he’s going to run into this problem over and over again.” Washington’s request is separate from the new lawsuit that the state of Hawaii filed Wednesday against Trump’s new executive order. Yet as NPR’s Laurel Wamsley noted, the lawsuit also argues that despite the change in language, the new executive order ”is infected with the same legal problems as the first Order  —   undermining bedrock constitutional and statutory guarantees.” For more about Trump’s executive orders on immigration, read the rest of our coverage here."
"President Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency says he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a major cause of global warming. ”I would not agree that [CO2] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Scott Pruitt said Thursday in an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen. ”I believe that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact,” Pruitt said. Those statements are at odds with an overwhelming body of scientific evidence showing that humans are causing the climate to warm by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. The view that CO2 is a major   gas is supported by reams of data, included data collected by government agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Pruitt’s views are consistent with earlier comments he has made on the topic of climate change. As attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt often claimed that there was scientific uncertainty over whether humans are changing the climate. The New York Times reported earlier this week that Pruitt is bringing in   political appointees to help run the EPA. Many come from the office of Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and longtime climate change denier. Pruitt’s comments come just over two weeks after he took the helm of the EPA, the agency with the authority to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases as pollutants. In 2014, the EPA unveiled rules that would require substantial reductions to greenhouse gases from power plants as part of a broader effort to limit global warming. The rule was contested by industry and states, and is currently under review in the courts. Pruitt also said he believed that a major climate agreement reached in Paris was ”a bad deal,” and that he would soon be making an announcement about changes to   CAFE standards, which set fuel efficiency goals for cars and trucks. Pruitt’s latest statements on climate change come after the   February in the past 123 years, according to NOAA."
"In 2013, Charlotte, N. C. police officer Randall Kerrick shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell, a black man who was unarmed. Video from a police car captured part of the encounter, but the shooting took place  . Kerrick was subsequently charged with voluntary manslaughter for shooting Ferrell, and the trial unfolded in 2015. A key piece of evidence was the video. But the way you see that video depends on who you are. On this episode of Embedded, we travel to Charlotte for the stories behind the night of the shooting, the trial, and the aftermath."
"Like so many countries from the former Soviet bloc, Mongolia faced a terrible economic upheaval at the end of the Soviet Union. In the first few years, inflation went up over 250 percent employment went down. And people started drinking much more heavily. ”Alcoholism was devastating during the economic hardships of the ’90s,” writes Jargalsaikhan Mendee, a political scientist and former Mongolian defense attaché to the United States, in an email to Goats and Soda. The Dalai Lama says he made a difference. In an interview last Sunday with news comedian John Oliver, the Tibetan spiritual leader said, ”I suggested [to the Mongolians] drink much less vodka. Instead of that, drink horse milk.” ”You tried to wean them off vodka by giving them horse milk?” Oliver replied, incredulously. ”Oh yes. Then they follow,” the Dalai Lama said. ”Since then I think majority of Mongolians no longer any drink.” The Dalai Lama was actually encouraging people to drink more airag, a fermented brew made from mare’s milk, Mendee says. It’s a popular traditional beverage that has roots in Central Asian nomadic horse culture going back thousands of years and has an alcohol content similar to hard cider. The idea is that by consuming something less intoxicating than vodka, which is commonly drunk, people might be better off. Vodka often contains 30 or 40 percent alcohol whereas airag is around 5 to 10 percent alcohol by volume. It’s not clear when the Dalai Lama first encouraged Mongolians to lay off hard spirits. Some sources believe it was during his fourth visit to the country in 1995. He hasn’t been the only person promoting this message. The current president, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, began making a similar request of his countrymen in 2011, sometime after the Dalai Lama’s fourth visit to Mongolia. Ever since then the president has been urging people to toast with milk  —   the   variety pulled from goats, cows or sheep —   and asking officials not to serve alcohol at government events. The president’s office did not respond to a request for comment. ”Those were really good public health initiatives. When the Dalai Lama came up with that slogan for us, ’Drink less vodka. Drink more mare’s milk,’ that hit people a lot!” says Dr. Tsogtbataar Byambaa, the director of the National Center for Public Health in Mongolia. ”A significant percentage of Mongolians are Buddhists. So many people here worship Dalai Lama.” And Elbegdorj even received an award from the World Health Organization in 2012 for his efforts to reduce alcoholism. As the Dalai Lama claimed on Last Week Tonight, it does seem to be the case that most Mongolians don’t drink regularly. Only about 36 percent of Mongolians have had an alcoholic drink in the last month based on a WHO survey from 2013, Byambaa says. It was basically the same in 2009, though. Even before Elbegdorj asked people to consider taking it a little easy on the bottle, only 38 percent of Mongolians reported drinking in the past month. That’s low compared to the U. S. where 56 percent of people drink on a monthly basis (and about 27 percent report binge drinking in the past month). There is some indication that things changed in Mongolia between 2005 and 2009, however. The oldest WHO alcohol data on Mongolia is from a 2005 report, which put the percentage of drinkers at about 60 percent of the population. So the WHO data indicates that there really are fewer Mongolians who drink today than over a decade ago. But alcohol misuse is still a significant public health hurdle for the country, Byambaa says. ”There’s a mean number of standard drinks consumed per drinking occasion, he says. ”That’s 9 for us. Think about that number for a second.” The WHO surveys suggest that many Mongolians who do drink are binging on a staggering amount of booze, Byambaa says. That volume hasn’t changed much since 2009 either. ”[The mean number of drinks per occasion] was 8. 8 drinks in 2009. That one went up a little bit,” Byambaa says. ”It’s very alarming.” Did the Dalai Lama and Elbegdorj’s call to ”drink milk, not vodka” have any effect on Mongolian drinking habits? Byambaa demurs to the question. ”I can’t quantify the effect of that,” he says. ”Anecdotally? Well, I can’t say anecdotally.” He added with a chuckle: ”Well, who am I to judge Dalai Lama?” Mendee is a little more forthright on the issue. ”I don’t think that Dalai Lama and Elbegdorj changed it,” he says. After the country’s hard transition from communism to a market economy, Mongolia has enjoyed steady economic growth since the  . Mendee thinks that economic improvement may have done more for alcohol misuse than public health campaigns from dignitaries. Beer and wine are getting more popular nowadays, Mendee adds. As to whether or not people have begun drinking more fermented mare’s milk since His Holiness endorsed it, Byambaa says that airag has always been popular. ”Yeah, I don’t know. It looks like milk. It’s sour,” he says. ”I like it. It’s my favorite.” Angus Chen is on Twitter @angRchen"
"A noble beast gets shackled,   from his island home and dragged to America in: In the new, comparatively unambitious Kong: Skull Island, the big guy finally claims a perk of his eight decades of stardom: He gets to do the entire picture from home. Indeed, this new       Kong is at its mediocre best when it pretends to be a nature documentary about Skull Island’s bizarro flora and fauna. One of its most captivating scenes has the big ape bathing himself in a river  —   at last, computer animators have learned to make convincing water! But every time the movie threatens to get interesting, one of its hordes of ersatz,   characters shows up and starts talking again. There’s plenty of   talent  —   Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, the Johns Goodman and C. Reilly, and the Jacksons Samuel T. and Marc Evan  —   so it’s no chore to sit through. But good luck being able to remember in two months whether you saw this thing or not. Whaddayagonnado, catch this   creature feature on Netflix? Watch in on a flight? (Too many   for that, probably.) Pony up for IMAX or don’t bother. You won’t regret either choice. This version of the   myth is set in 1973, apparently because director Jordan   wanted to remake Apocalypse Now at least as much as he wanted to    Kong. So we’re treated to a terrific early set piece of Kong angrily swatting an assault company of Bell Hueys out of an orange jungle sky. (Not his fault they started it.) Later on, survivors of the chopper group embark on an upriver journey on a skiff rigged together from the husks of World War   warbirds. There are lines like, ”No man ever returns from war. Not really,” and ”Can you smell that? That’s death.” The allusions to Joseph        are as deliberate as when Samuel Jackson (playing an Army officer who’ll go full Colonel Kurtz before the movie is half over) says ”Hold onto your butts,” quoting his own line from Jurassic Park, 24 years ago. But the pileup of callbacks to monster movies and war pictures of old  —   plus the awkward soundtrack of   rock songs, like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ”Run Through the Jungle,” to cite the most    example  —   only makes you notice that Skull Island’s relationship to pop culture is all withdrawals and no deposits. Anyway, that helicopter company is escorting Goodman, who represents a shadowy defense contractor called Monarch, on what is supposedly a surveying mission to Skull Island. It’s surrounded by a perpetually violent storm system, a ”place where God never finished creation,” as Goodman heaves to his governmental patron. That would be beloved character actor Richard Jenkins, who shows up for just the one scene. This kind of movie covers a lot of tuition bills, probably. You already know that the choppers all crash  —   they should not have baited the bear, the poor fools  —   and the movie becomes a survival march to the extraction point on the far side of island. One faction, featuring Larson and Hiddleston as a photojournalist and a mercenary, figures out that Kong is not their enemy, while Sam Jackson resolves to avenge his men by slaying the beast at any cost. Jackson was also in last summer’s $200 million Tarzan reboot. (Remember that movie? Of course you don’t.) At 68, Jackson is one of the greatest actors of his generation, but only Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee can coax real performances out of him anymore he gives the same   effort here that he does in the many, many other movies he’s made in front of green screens this decade. (I should point out that Skull Island, unlike Tarzan, did some actual location shooting, mostly in Vietnam and Hawaii.) The comic relief Jackson would once have provided all comes from Reilly, who’s great fun as an Army Air Force pilot who’s been marooned since he was shot down in 1944. This version does away with the Kong’s    infatuation with a blonde lady, be it Fay Wray, or Jessica Lange, or Naomi Watts. This Kong  —   a brilliantly animated creation, it must be said  —   looks at Larson with as much interest as you or I might show to a ladybug crawling up our arm. And while Wray’s scream may be the most iconic in cinema, Larson, upon her close encounter, keeps her fear tamped down. ’Twas beauty killed the beast? Not this time! But taking away Kong’s hopeless lovesickness doesn’t leave you with much. If you stick around through the end credits, a   coda will hint that Skull Island is,     a prequel to Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla. Like   Edwards had only a single   indie feature to his credit before he was given an expensive studio assignment. But Edwards fared considerably better: Godzilla had majesty, poetry, a gathering sense of dread. Skull Island doesn’t have any of that. Nor does it possess the soul or warmth of Peter Jackson’s ’05 King Kong, which was set in 1933 so as to fold the production of the original RKO Pictures Kong into is expansive story. Jackson’s gloss on this prehistoric material was as heartfelt as it’s possible for a $200 million movie to be. (It was also scarier and more disgusting than Skull Island is.) This latest Kong is competent but cold, steady but sterile, and doomed to a speedy natural selection from our memories."
"The quietly momentous film The Sense of an Ending began life as a sublimely achy short novel by British writer Julian Barnes (for whom it won the 2011 Man Booker prize) about an apparently unremarkable man with the aptly flavorless name of Tony Webster. Partially retired and on the cusp of old age, Tony receives a blast from his youthful past back in the 1960s that shatters his conveniently doctored memory of a   act of vengeance wreaked on two school friends. How he comes to revise the blameless life he imagines he has lived ever since is his tale to tell, and retell, and tell again until he gets it right. Let’s just say that as unreliable narrators go, Tony’s a champ  —   and that the movie might just as well be titled The Humbling. I’m not sure that Ritesh Batra, who made the sweet but   The Lunchbox, was the right choice to direct Barnes’ intensely inward, rigorously unsentimental book. Indeed it may just be a hard nut for any filmmaker (except maybe Sunset Song’s Terence Davies, ace externalizer of the inner life) to crack, given that the action is mostly people talking to and, crucially, past each other, while feeling deeply. Still, with playwright Nick Payne’s respectful screenplay, Batra has made an absorbing, if somewhat stolid movie that’s saved by a stellar cast led by Jim Broadbent, for whom the part of Tony might have been written  —   and not just because the actor can do cranky in his sleep. Broadbent’s tonal range and his rubbery features lend themselves beautifully to this Everyman, recounting for us an adequate life in which the man has become a stranger to himself, to say nothing of those he purports to love, notably his wryly perceptive   (the great Harriet Walter) and heavily pregnant daughter (Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery). Governed by habit and   hostility to the many who annoy him with   civility and friendliness, Tony’s humdrum existence is rudely interrupted by a letter bearing news of a death that leaves him gifted with the diary of a fellow student who had dated Tony’s former girl friend, Veronica, and committed suicide soon after. The conduit for the letter turns out to be Veronica herself, played in flashbacks as a girl by Freya Mavor and by Charlotte Rampling with a precise ratio of irony to fury in the present. In what follows, The Sense of An Ending may be read as a   psychological thriller, with Veronica offering disquieting hints about what really transpired between the three. Peppering his narration with increasingly querulous interrogatives  —   ”isn’t it?” ”doesn’t it?”  —   that solicit our approval, Tony becomes a stalker, turning over stone after stone and, as Veronica drily repeats, still not getting it. Where Barnes artfully stretches and collapses time to reflect how little memory has in common with chronology, Batra sticks with conventional flashbacks to carry us back to a key weekend that young Tony (Billy Howle) spent at Veronica’s posh country seat, and where her twitchy, alluring mother (a miscast, palpably uncomfortable Emily Mortimer) issues a warning that he misconstrues with, he now learns, disastrous results. After graduation Tony loses touch with his friends and moves on to marry, raise a child after a fashion, divorce  —   only to learn, in the school of late hard knocks, that he’s been a textbook case of arrested development all his life. Without ever overplaying his hand, Broadbent gets to flex all his muscles, his green saucer eyes snapping in   fury, widening in horror, then filling with grief as he confronts the damage he may have done and sheds what a   history teacher (improbably but decoratively played by Matthew Goode) dubbed, in broader historical context, ”the   of the defeated.” If The Sense of an Ending is an object lesson in the heedless cruelty of the young, it’s also, in Broadbent’s versatile hands, a moving account of the inner turmoil of a man with little time left to right a wrong. What a pity, then, that Batra and Payne choose to lighten Tony’s load by tacking on a redemptive ending. His soft landing may have made all the difference to the movie’s prospects for theatrical release. I’m guessing, though, it must have made Barnes wince, if not bang his literary head on his desk outright."
"As a lascivious man of the cloth in Brimstone, a rigorously unpleasant revisionist Western, Guy Pearce resembles a cross between Robert Mitchum’s sinister preacher in The Night of the Hunter and Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. He’s a figure of Old Testament wrath, an almost supernatural being who shapes and symbolizes this new world, mainly by committing atrocities under the banner of Protestant righteousness. As with Mitchum, his religious stature grants him the legitimacy to commit violence and sin, but he’s not quite the same petty charlatan, grasping for a big score. He means what he says. Over the course of a portentous 149 minutes, director Martin Koolhoven (Winter in Wartime) a Dutchman making his   debut, advances a damning vision of the American experiment and the original sins that defined it. Pearce’s unnamed character, his accent still thickly European, reveals the lie of America as a haven of religious freedom, where faith could be practiced free of persecution. Its true legacy, Koolhoven implies, is as a home for false prophets, each spreading the gospel as a cover for unchecked misogyny. This is how the West was won. Though Koolhoven drives his point home with the merciless sting of Pearce’s lash, Brimstone chooses to tell its ambitious,   story from the perspective of a young woman who both absorbs and fights his abuses. The first three parts unfold in reverse chronological order, starting with Liz (Dakota Fanning) a mute frontierswoman, running afoul of the new preacher (Pearce) who’s electrified the village. The women in town turn to Liz to help deliver their babies, but she faces a quandary when a breach forces her to chose between saving the child or saving the life of the mother. The preacher believes that’s God’s choice to make, not hers, and takes steps to condemn Liz and destroy her family. From there, the film flashes back to her adolescence and the series of events that led her from a homestead to a brothel called Frank’s Inferno, where she’s pushed into indentured servitude. There are narrative surprises stringing one part to the next, but their common purpose is to show Liz coming into womanhood under extreme hardship and attempting to leverage some control over her destiny. Through it all, Pearce’s presence looms large even when he’s not in the picture: As an architect of the New World in the 19th century, he’s empowered himself to dictate social mores, especially when it comes to women. And he flexes his authority through sexual violence. Brimstone is almost perversely uncommercial. On top of the running time, Koolhoven supports his bleak dirge on the American West with scenes of unsettling violence against women and children, including the severing of two tongues as a graphic illustration of female voices silenced. There are no moments of levity or transcendence, and Pearce’s performance is stripped of the   charisma that made Mitchum such a seductive sinner. The chapter titles  —   ”Revelation,” ”Exodus,” ”Genesis”  —   suggest the film’s Biblical austerity, its commitment to plumbing the depths of human depravity and sadism. Pearce tells his congregation that Hell is worse than the mere flames the might imagine Koolhoven does his level best to honor that sermon. He succeeds to a point. Though Pearce’s character drives the action, the true center of Brimstone is Fanning, who’s typically superb as a woman who speaks through her eyes and her actions, and summons dogged courage in the bleakest of circumstances. (The first chapter, featuring Liz’s young daughter as her constant companion and translator, recalls Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin in The Piano.) The tricky chronology, too, pays off in a series of clever little twists that add depth to Liz’s backstory and persistently raises the stakes in her confrontation with the preacher. Koolhoven posits their conflict as a battle for the soul of America. After a while, however, Koolhoven’s inability to modulate the action with wit or even minor shifts in tone makes Brimstone an oppressive grind. Though the film ostensibly aligns itself with Liz and the other women being victimized, it winds up channeling the preacher in its formal severity and sadistic zeal. Koolhoven has made a feminist Western of robust masculinity, and that contradiction erodes its authority  —   not unlike the   who doesn’t practice what he preaches."
"The protagonist of Raw is a virgin and a vegetarian, and intent on becoming a veterinarian. Her path to that calling, however, leads through a place that’s literally awash in blood. That site is not an abbatoir or a torture chamber, but the world’s most disturbing veterinary college, a   institution somewhere in Francophone Europe. (The movie’s principal location is an actual vet school in Belgium.) Rather than a spot where   kids learn to care for house pets, it’s a training facility for industrial agriculture, packed with cows, horses, and cruelty. Justine (Garance Marillier) arrives at the school an innocent, and is quickly debauched by brutal hazing rituals. Vicious masked upperclassmen force the new arrivals to drink hard, party   and endure a   mass baptism. Oh yeah, and eat raw rabbit kidney. (On the   circuit, Raw was generally well received, but also caused fainting, vomiting, and fleeing.)  Why didn’t anyone warn this sensitive, intelligent celibate? French   Julia Ducournau is adept at sensory overload, black comedy, and   assault, but much less attuned to logic. Justine’s parents both attended the same school, and her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) is there now. Yet the mom who in the opening sequence passionately defends Justine from a meatball in her mashed potatoes does nothing to prepare her daughter for Hell Week at this inferno of a college. Abetting the frenzy is a lack of adult supervision. Justine encounters a hostile professor and a somewhat more sympathetic doctor, but that’s it for grownups until her parents reappear for the twist ending. In this Lord of the Flies environment, Justine has no recourse when she’s assigned a male roommate. ”I asked for a girl,” she tells Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella) he reassures her that he’s gay. Adrien actually becomes Justine’s pal, a more reliable ally than envious Alexia. Sibling rivalry turns as fierce as everything else in Justine’s overwhelming new life. Marillier and Rumpf appear utterly committed to their roles, and project a violently ambivalent rapport. Blood represents sexual awakening as well as carnivorous hunger, and of course there’s a conversation about AIDS. Animal instincts take over, and the results are a crimson mess. There are no safe spaces on this campus  —   or on the nearby roads, which are experiencing a mysterious increase in fatal car crashes. Making her feature debut, Ducournau goes for gasps and giggles, as well as sensory dislocation. Jim Williams’ score, generally droning and sometimes deafening, recalls the ”heavy organ” era, when massively amplified Bach was paired with abstract light shows. The vibe is psychedelic, although the principal   intoxicant is alcohol. Julia and Alexia’s other drug of choice is an antibiotic ointment to combat the rashes that come with their affliction. Raw is transgressive in that   even sanctimonious Gallic way. It’s in the queasy tradition of arthouse bloodbaths such as Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day and Gaspar Noe’s I Stand Alone. At least one critic has suggested that Justine was named for the title character of the novella by the Marquis de Sade, France’s patron saint of perversion. One affinity is that, like Sade’s book, Ducournau’s movie is as tiresome as it is scandalous. Rather than tell a story, Raw merely administers a series of shocks. As sheer spectacle, it’s gutsy. But narratively and thematically, it’s undercooked."
"Scientists have taken another important step toward creating different types of synthetic life in the laboratory. An international research consortium reports Thursday that it has figured out an efficient method for synthesizing a substantial part of the genetic code of yeast. ”We are absolutely thrilled,” says Jef Boeke, a geneticist at New York University School of Medicine, who is leading the project. ”This is a significant step toward our goal.” The milestone is the latest development in the intensifying quest to create living, complex organisms from scratch in the lab. This group previously reported it had completely synthesized one of yeast’s 16 chromosomes, which are the molecular structures that carry all of an organism’s genes. Now, in a series of seven papers published in the journal Science, the group reports it has completed five more, and is on track to having a fully synthetic yeast genome finished by the end of the year. ”We’re chugging along toward that goal,” Boeke says. The advance is being praised by many biologists, geneticists and others as an important advance. And even bioethicists and environmentalists who are worried about possible ethical and environmental implications praised the project for its careful approach. But the increasing ability to manipulate the basic building blocks of life is stirring concerns about someday using this technology to create synthetic genomes of other organisms, especially humans.  The yeast project is significant because it provides insights into how human cells work, Boeke says. Though   yeast are among the complicated group of organisms called eukaryotes. That means, like humans, yeast contain organelles, and package their DNA inside a nucleus. ”They are a great model for understanding the basic wiring of higher cells,” Boeke says. The project enlisted labs around the world to painstakingly assemble yeast chromosomes from the four basic chemical building blocks of DNA  —   adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. ”We’re essentially swapping out the code, if you will, in a living yeast cell with sort of a 21st Century version of the operating system,” he says. The team has shown that all six of the chromosomes assembled so far function inside yeast cells, even when several are simultaneously inserted into the same cell. That’s true even when significant portions of individual chromosomes have been rewritten. ”We can kind of torture the genome of the yeast in some pretty extreme ways and the yeast sort of shrugs its shoulders and doesn’t seem to care that much about it,” Boeke says.  That bodes well for one of the goals of the project: creating synthetic yeast that could be used like tiny factories to produce more than bread, beer and wine. The scientists hope to use yeast to produce new drugs to treat diseases as well as for other purposes, possibly including manufacturing new forms of fuel. ”We’re also developing some really practical tools for improving the yeast so that it can do a much better job at making useful products for us,” Boeke says. Others experts agree. ”This is really going to allow us to understand how to design cells from the bottom up that can be reprogrammed for many applications,” says Daniel Gibson, vice president of DNA technologies at Synthetic Genomics, of La Jolla, Calif. who wrote an article accompanying the new research, Another goal is to learn new things about basic biology, Boeke says.  ”A great quote from Richard Feynman of the Feynman lectures on physics is: ’What I cannot create, I cannot understand,’ ” says Boeke. ”And that’s kind of a motto for our field, I guess you would say.” The techniques the scientists are developing could also be used to synthesize from scratch the genomes of other much more complex organisms, Boeke says. For example, the group has developed an efficient way to identify and fix errors in the genomes they’re working on, similar to the way computer programmers debug computer programs.  ”This is absolutely setting the stage for being able to do these kinds of manipulations on a much larger scale in much larger genomes, such as those of plants and animals and even of the human genome,” Boeke says. That includes synthesizing the whole human genome. Boeke is already working on that with George Church, a prominent Harvard University geneticist.  ”This is a whole new era where we’re moving beyond little edits on single genes to being able to write whatever we want throughout the genome,” Church says. ”The goal is to be able to change it as radically as our understanding permits.”   That prospect worries some biologists, environmentalists, bioethicists and others. The concern is that synthetic microbes, plants or animals might damage the environment in unpredictable ways if they’re released either accidentally or on purpose. ”You can think of it of like introducing an invasive species into a different environment,” says Todd Kuiken, a senior research scholar at North Carolina State University’s Genetic Engineering and Society Center. ”It will have some type of impact to the system.” Others fear terrorists could use this technology to brew new biological weapons. Boeke says the yeast project is being done with careful safeguards and tight ethical scrutiny. But he acknowledges that the possibility of creating a synthetic human genome stirs alarm. ”The biggest concern, of course, is people are worried that our goal is to make a synthetic human  —   a human powered by a synthetic genome,” he says. ”And this is why we are very adamant that our applications are in engineering of cells that could be used as therapies for humans. Don’t make an organism from it.”  But others think society is nowhere near ready for the manufacturing of a synthetic human genome. ”Having that kind of knowledge and that kind of power over the human genome in a world as riven by injustice as the world in which we currently live would not be a good way to go  —   would not be a justifiable direction,” says Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University. But she praises the yeast project."
"Archaeologists working under difficult conditions in Cairo have discovered an ancient statue submerged in mud. A joint   research team found the   ( ) quartzite statue beneath the water level in a Cairo slum and suggests that it depicts Ramses II, according to Reuters. The team was working at what was once Heliopolis, one of the oldest cities in ancient Egypt and the cult center for the sun god. Khaled   Egypt’s antiquities minister, posted on Facebook that one of the researchers who found the statue called it ”one of the most important archaeological discoveries.” Anani also spoke to Reuters at the site of the statue’s unveiling. Here’s more from the wire service: ”The most powerful and celebrated ruler of ancient Egypt, the pharaoh also known as Ramses the Great was the third of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and ruled from 1279 to 1213 BCE. . .. His successors called him the ’Great Ancestor.’ ” ’We found the bust of the statue and the lower part of the head and now we removed the head and we found the crown and the right ear and a fragment of the right eye,’ Anani said. ”On Thursday, archaeologists, officials, local residents, and members of the news media looked on as a massive forklift pulled the statue’s head out of the water.” In addition to the massive statue, researchers also found part of a   limestone statue of Ramses II’s grandson, Pharaoh Seti II, Reuters says. The identification of the newly discovered colossus as the famous Ramses II is not yet confirmed, as Anani explained on Facebook: ”Dr. Ayman Ashmawy, the head of the Egyptian team, indicated that they are going now to complete the research and excavation work of the remaining sections of the statue to confirm the identity of its owner. On the discovered portions there is no inscription found that would make it possible to determine which king it is. But its discovery in front of the gate of the temple of Pharaoh Ramses II suggests that it is likely him.” Ashmawy and Dietrich Raue, of the University of Leipzig, have been working in ancient Heliopolis for more than a decade under trying conditions, as the American Research Center in Egypt explained in 2015: ”Heliopolis once stood at the centre of the ancient Egyptian   a core element of ancient Egyptian religion for more than three millennia. Today the site is seriously threatened by new construction and a rapidly rising water table. Eight meters of domestic and industrial waste as well as building rubble have been dumped on the site in the past four years. Added to this bleak scenario is the fact that the level of the water table on the site has risen alarmingly, and continues to do so.” As of 2015, ARCE explained, the archaeological items in Heliopolis were submerged in 1   to 3 feet of water  —   a ”most challenging environment” for archaeologists to work in, ARCE writes. The discovery of a forgotten, submerged statue of Ramses II brings to mind one of the most famous poems in English literature  —   albeit substituting muck for desert sands. Ramses II was known to the Greeks as Ozymandias. Today, that name is most familiar thanks to a sonnet on hubris and the implacable passage of time, by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley: I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said —  ”Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. That poem is widely believed to have been inspired by a broken statue of Ramses II that is now, like many priceless Egyptian artifacts, in the possession of the British Museum. The newly discovered statue won’t be traveling nearly so far. Once restored and its identity confirmed, it may be placed at the entrance of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is expected to open in Cairo in 2018. NPR’s Merrit Kennedy contributed to this report. "
"”Green Light” this is not. One week after the release of that surprisingly sleek   single, Lorde has released a somber piano ballad, ”Liability,” and announced the release date of her new record, Melodrama: June 16. The song, about pushing the boundaries of a relationship, was inspired by Rihanna. ”I was in this cab alone listening to ’Higher’ by Rihanna because Anti had just come out,” she told Zane Lowe on Beats 1. ”And I had a little cry and I was just like, ’It’s always going to be this way, at some point with everyone it’s going to be this way.’ But the song kind of ended up turning into a bit of a protective talisman for me. I was like, you know what, I’m always gonna have myself, so I have to really nurture this relationship and feel good about hanging out with myself and loving myself.”"
"Updated at 2:10 p. m. ET, WikiLeaks will be sharing alleged CIA hacking techniques with major technology companies such as Apple and Google to allow them to develop fixes for vulnerabilities in their phones and other electronic devices, according to Julian Assange. In a lengthy address from Ecuador’s Embassy in London, where he remains holed up since 2012, the WikiLeaks founder said the group would work with manufacturers to ”disarm” purported CIA hacking tools. When the fixes are in place, he said, WikiLeaks would publish the code for those tools online. On Tuesday, the group published what it calls a trove of internal CIA documents describing agency techniques and programs for hacking into phones, computers and   appliances. Many of the techniques take advantage of flaws in software that make programs or devices vulnerable. The document dump did not include the code itself. Instead, it consisted of user guides, troubleshooting manuals, program specifications and developer chatter. WikiLeaks said Tuesday it was ”avoiding the distribution of ’armed’ cyberweapons” until there was a ”consensus” on how to disable the tools. On Wednesday, the group suggested on Twitter that it might work with major tech companies to fix the vulnerabilities that allow the tools to work. On Thursday, Assange confirmed that would be the group’s strategy.  ”We have decided to work with [manufacturers] to give them exclusive access to the additional technological details we have so that fixes can be developed and pushed out,” Assange said. ”Once this material is effectively disarmed by us we will publish additional details.” He did not give a timeline for that publication. It was not immediately clear how the tech companies would respond to the WikiLeaks offer. Apple, for example, said Tuesday that it had already patched many of the problems cited in the WikiLeaks document dump, which allegedly covers the period of 2013 to 2016. The CIA hasn’t confirmed the authenticity of the documents released in the dump, but has criticized WikiLeaks for what it says is an attempt to undermine the agency’s operations. Immediately after Assange spoke on Thursday, CIA spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak responded by saying that the ”CIA continues to aggressively collect foreign intelligence overseas to protect America from terrorists, hostile nation states and other adversaries.” She added: ”As we’ve said previously, Julian Assange is not exactly a bastion of truth and integrity.” In the news conference, which was livestreamed online, Assange repeated WikiLeaks’ assertion that the CIA has lost control of its vast collection or hacking techniques. ”This is an historic act of devastating incompetence to have created such an arsenal and stored it all in one place and not secured it,” he said. Assange appeared in a dark suit and red tie, occasionally shuffling papers as he spoke. Over his shoulder, the WikiLeaks icon was present. He also suggested it was possible the CIA was using some of the tools against Americans, which is prohibited by law. He said WikiLeaks is investigating IP addresses associated with U. S. computers, to determine if they are ”attack systems” controlled by the CIA or ”victims” targeted by the CIA. WikiLeaks has not released those IP addresses. On Wednesday, the CIA denied that it targets Americans through electronic surveillance, saying the agency ”is legally prohibited” from targeting Americans and that it ”does not do so.”"
"In the span of 93 days, Chris Bertish crossed more than 4, 050 nautical miles of Atlantic Ocean  —   and he conquered this lonely crossing standing up. When the South African surfer entered English Harbour on the island of Antigua on Thursday, he was riding the same massive   paddleboard that bore him from Morocco’s Agadir Marina roughly three months ago. Still, if Bertish’s equipment wasn’t much different from when he started, his place in the record books now certainly is: On Thursday, Bertish became the first person in history to make a solo   journey on a   paddleboard. ”Across the entire Atlantic Ocean and I am finally here,” Bertish wrote Thursday on Facebook. ”I don’t need to be strong and keep it together any longer it’s been 93 days and it’s done and I let it all go. .. I am home!” By the time he made it to the West Indies, battling fittingly windy and rough conditions,” SUP Magazine reports he had already faced down ”shark encounters, equipment failures, unfavorable trade winds, loneliness and huge swells.” At one point, conditions were so rough  —   and rough for so long  —   that he and his navigational systems were ”just really embattled to just make it through and survive,” Bertish told SUP Magazine in a phone call about halfway through his   paddle. ”My craft was taking on water, I couldn’t open my hatches, I was underwater most of the time and I don’t think most people understand the severity of that kind of problem,” he continued. ”I have a sea grass growing on my entire deck because it’s underwater the entire time.” But it wasn’t all hardship. There were high marks, as well: Bertish says he smashed the records for longest distance paddled alone across open ocean, and for the longest distance paddled alone in a single   span  —   71. 96 nautical miles, nearly doubling the previous mark. He says he paddled about 60 miles in his last full day on the water alone. Now, as we noted in December, Bertish’s vessel isn’t exactly your granddad’s   paddleboard. The    behemoth  —   which he calls ImpiFish  —   boasts satellite weather forecasting equipment, handheld radio and GPS, solar panels and a tiny cabin where he could sleep at night. And he’s been sure to relay updates to landlubbing supporters on Facebook. Those same supporters helped Bertish in his quest to parlay his paddling into charity. He says that as of Thursday, his journey had managed to raise more than $490, 000 for Signature of Hope Trust, The Lunchbox Fund and Operation Smile. ”Bertish aims to raise enough money to build at least five schools in South Africa, provide monthly dividends to feed and educate thousands of children and pay for surgeons to carry out   cleft lip and palate operations,” CNN reports. ”I pretty much ate exactly the same thing every single day for 93 days,” he told a crowd assembled to greet him Thursday, as he was settling down to his first meal on land in quite a while. ”A lot of the kids we’re doing this for don’t even have enough money to go to school.” Bertish added: ”Every time I’d look down at the same packet of food I was going to have to eat another day in a row, I tell myself: ’Shut up, you’ve actually got food to eat.’ These kids have nothing.” He reminded the gathered crowd just how lucky they were to have anything to eat at all . .. until, his reminder spoken, the crowd politely told him to shut up and just eat his burger  —   his first after an ocean’s worth of paddling."
"The Pentagon is sending about 400 Marines to Syria to help local fighters wrest control of Raqqa, which ISIS considers its capital. The Pentagon says the new troops will fire artillery rounds at ISIS fighters in support of the local forces, as well as provide security for the Marine artillerymen, as NPR’s Phil Ewing reports. These 400 troops will bring the number of U. S. forces on the ground in Syria to about 900, Phil says. ”The military is trying to copy as much as it can from the playbook it’s using in Iraq, where American troops aren’t supposed to be in direct combat, but instead help local forces with indirect fire, airstrikes, training and weapons,” he adds. The aggressive new strategy marks a shift for the Pentagon, which has ”mostly shied away from using conventional forces in Syria,” as The Washington Post reports. The Syrian Defense Forces  —   the U. S.  coalition led by Kurds that also includes Arab and Turkmen fighters  —   have been working to isolate Raqqa since November, as we reported. The northern Syrian city, which fell under ISIS control in 2014, is the militant group’s most important stronghold in the country. The U. S.  coalition said Wednesday that it was winning the broader war against ISIS. ”The enemy is being degraded by every measure and is on a trajectory to lasting defeat,” the Pentagon said in a statement. Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U. S. Central Command, said at a Senate hearing Thursday that the purpose of the new deployment was to ”to ensure that we had redundant, capable fire support on the ground to support our partners and to ensure . .. that we could take advantage of opportunities and ensure continued progress that we’ve been seeing.” The Pentagon tells NPR that the Marine battalion will be equipped with howitzers. The weapon provides some hints as to how close to the fighting the artillerymen will stand, according to The Washington Post: ”For the base in Syria to be useful, it must be within about 20 miles of the operations that U. S.  forces are carrying out. That is the estimated maximum range on many rounds fired from the   howitzer.   Excalibur rounds, which the Marines also used after establishing Fire Base Bell [outside Mosul, Iraq] can travel closer to 30 miles.” Coalition spokesman U. S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian has told Reuters that the operation to isolate Raqqa ”could be completed in a few weeks.” Then, he told the wire service, ”the decision to move in can be made.”"
"Ridership for U. S.   programs was 10 times higher last year than it was in 2011, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials. From 2011 to 2016, usage grew from 2. 3 million trips yearly to 28 million  —   numbers that dwarf the 320, 000 trips taken in 2010, the group says. Despite that explosive growth, bike sharing systems are generally seen as remarkably safe: A cyclist who was killed in an accident in Chicago last summer is believed to be the only traffic fatality. In fact, the city transportation officials say the growth of cycling, along with the addition of bike lanes, helps increase visibility and has made biking safer, with a NACTO representative citing the group’s axiom, ”More cyclists + better lanes = reduced risk.” Since a new breed of U. S.   programs took hold in 2010, riders have used the systems to take some 88 million trips, NACTO says. It released data about the programs Thursday, in what it says is the first comprehensive nationwide review. ”By focusing on good system design and equitable ways to increase mobility, bike share systems are becoming an integral part of the transportation mix in cities across the country,” said Kate   NACTO’s Bike Share Program Director, in a message about the findings Thursday. The average trip on one of the systems’ bikes lasts around 12 minutes, NACTO says. The bikes are meant to fill the gap between transit trips and final destinations  —   or simply to give both residents and visitors a chance to stretch their legs while they get around a city. The biggest programs are in New York (Citi Bike) Chicago (Divvy) and Washington, D. C. (Capital Bikeshare). When taken along with Citi Bike in Miami and Hubway in Boston, they account for 85 percent of all   trips, according to NACTO. With the addition of new programs such as Biketown in Portland, Ore. and Metro Bike Share in Los Angeles, there are now 55   programs in the U. S. offering a total of more than 42, 000 bikes, the transportation group says. ”Biking saves time and money, improves health outcomes, and increases access to opportunities,” said Tracey Capers, executive vice president at   Restoration, a Brooklyn group that works to increase access to bike share in New York. In an   published last month, Capers wrote, ”Obesity and diabetes are endemic in NYC’s   and minority neighborhoods, and many communities are underserved by public transit, with residents waiting 30 minutes or longer for a bus. Citi Bike is an answer to those challenges.” Roughly a quarter of the nation’s bike share systems also offer a discount program to users based on income a program by Philadelphia’s Indego system, which last spring began providing $5 monthly memberships to residents who use EBT cards, driving a spike in usage by   cyclists."
"My father and I have a cheese habit. To feed this passion, and maybe save us some cash at the cheese counter, we decided it was time we learned to make the stuff ourselves. Our first goal: mozzarella. On a   January morning we arrived at Flint Hill Farm in eastern Pennsylvania, ready for a crash course in cheese. The instructor and farm owner, Kathy Fields, met us in the dairy shop. She took on this   farm in 1997 and a few years later began turning it into an educational center. Walking with the confidence of a woman who knows her way around a horse drawn plow, she led us to the cheese kitchen, a small   room built into one side of a barn, and presented us with a pot of glistening,   milk. Fields’s Jersey cows, Apple and Honey, each produce four to five gallons per day. The milk is rich  —   about one third cream. And Fields and her customers like it that way. ”I couldn’t drink low fat milk if I tried,” she said. ”I’d gag on it.” At Fields’ direction, I swept my hair under a knit cap and we got to work on mozzarella. My father poured some citric acid into a double boiler and I mixed in one gallon of milk. We needed to increase the acidity for the mozzarella to stretch well, Fields explained. Fields turned on the double boiler. Once the mixture reached about 88ºF, I added a mix of enzymes, known as rennet. Rennet causes much of the protein in milk to join together and form curds while the liquid is squeezed out as whey. It’s found naturally in the stomach lining of young ruminants, like calves or lambs, and is also produced by some microbes and even plants like the cardoon thistle. I excitedly mixed in the rennet as if I were whisking custard for a quiche, but Fields stopped me short at four whirls around the pot. ”If you whisk too much,” she warned, ”you’ll get something that looks like ricotta.” Fields told us to watch for the ”curds to sink and shrink.” Within four minutes, I understood what she meant. There, at the bottom of the pot, was a solid white mass  —  curds! And above it, a watery liquid  —   whey! I cut the curds into   squares and we raised the temperature further. We watched in amazement as the squares shrank more. My father and I took turns microwaving the curd squares in batches small enough to fit into our hands. After 90 seconds, we took out the warm gooey mass and squeezed and stretched it to drain more whey. Then we microwaved it again, and repeated until we had a warm soft ball of cheese that was stretchy, but not rubbery. The entire process took under thirty minutes. I know there’s nothing magical about mozzarella. When acidity and the proper enzymes meet milk at the right temperature, curds are bound to form. And yet, actually watching cheese take shape was astounding. I later called Paul Kindstedt, a food chemist at the University of Vermont and author of ”Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization,” to find out exactly why the curds formed so quickly after I added rennet. Kindstedt explained that a molecule called casein makes up about 80 percent of the protein in milk. Casein proteins lump together, about 10, 000 at a time, into balls called micelles. The rennet ”attacks” these little protein balls, forcing them to link together into an increasingly dense ”fishnet matrix.” ”The rest of cheese making from then on is to create opportunity for that fishnet to squeeze out more of the water trapped in the net,” he explained. I told Kindstedt about my overzealous whisking and he agreed with Fields. The mixture couldn’t actually become ricotta, but it would certainly look like it. ”If you keep stirring, any kind of movement of that milk while these   structures are forming will cause them to break apart and you’ll end up with flecks, particles, and not the curd,” he explained. ”You end up with a mess, in other words.” I also learned from Kindstedt that by making mozzarella, my father and I were practicing a culinary art that may well reach back to antiquity. Mozzarella is one form of pasta filata, a group of stretchy cheeses that likely originated in the Mediterranean. The process of making pasta filata resembles the ”hand cheese” described in written records from the first century A. D. Fields also taught us to make cheddar, which required a bit more patience. Thanks to a live bacterial culture and a lower cooking temperature, it takes over two whole hours for the curd to form and shrink. Then, there’s another two days in a press and a week or more to form a rind. We left the farm that day with a pint full of mozzarella, some generous wedges of cheddar prepared earlier, and the confidence to make both cheeses ourselves. Fields warned that cheese making doesn’t always go so smoothly. ”Cheese is this living creature,” she said. ”Some days it works. Other days you can do the same thing and the cheese says, ’Not today. ’” My father is going to take his chances. He’s planning a dinner party featuring his homemade mozzarella. He’ll wait until his guests arrive and then make cheese right in front of their eyes  —   a good party trick that is likely a couple of millennia old. Carolyn Beans is a freelance science journalist living in Washington, D. C. She specializes in ecology, evolution, and health. "
"Yesterday, on International Women’s Day, most of my friends were in full empowerment mode. They were sporting red clothes, naming their top five women artists, and posting photos of mothers and daughters. But over in the jazz world, International Women’s Day was a little more . .. awkward. We were busy attending to some much less celebratory women’s business, a series of online events that we’ll call the Saga of Musical Clitoris. Yes, according to some, there is ”musical clitoris”  —   though please don’t worry if you’ve never found yours. It all began with a Robert Glasper interview published last weekend on Do The Math, the blog of The Bad Plus’ pianist Ethan Iverson. The jazz world treasures Do The Math for its insightful content, particularly its revealing interviews, in which Iverson’s status as a fellow musician is a clear advantage. Midway through his interview, the charismatic Glasper decided to build some rapport with Iverson in a manner familiar to straight men the world over: by talking about how much the ladies love them. After asserting his own unusually authentic conversance in RB,   and jazz, Glasper brought on the flattery: ”I’ve had people tell me about your music. Like women you would think never listen to jazz: Young, fine, Euro chicks ask me, ’I heard this band, the Bad Plus, do you know them? ’” ”I guess that’s one of the reasons to play, really,” replied Iverson. Yes, Iverson knew what Glasper was talking about. Glasper went on. ”I’ve seen what that does to the audience, playing that groove. I love making the audience feel that way. Getting back to women: women love that. They don’t love a whole lot of soloing. When you hit that one groove and stay there, it’s like musical clitoris. You’re there, you stay on that groove, and the women’s eyes close and they start to sway, going into a trance.” Okay, it turns out I can’t really explain ”musical clitoris” as a workable phrase of the English language, even in context. It’s just bad. Glasper’s comments came as a shock to exactly zero people who’ve spent any time in the jazz world. I’ve heard variations on the ”women can’t really follow jazz” theme ever since I first started hitting jazz clubs and loving extremely long solos. To be a female jazz fan and critic is to live with a frustrating irreconcilability: I have an intellectual passion for creative, complex music and, sometimes, the musicians who make that music doubt my ability to appreciate its creativity and complexity. But I would like to thank Glasper for bringing up eroticism in jazz. Jazz fans too often cede bodily pleasure to more popular music, when jazz can also arouse the mind, body and soul. But there’s no agency in Glasper’s   construction of female eroticism asserting that women in general prefer groove to solos essentializes them as creatures of pure instinct. Conflating a musical mood with female anatomy makes women into passive vessels for male sounds. And how do female musicians figure in this gendered construction of improvisation? As Facebook commentators pointed out, Glasper didn’t even seem to realize that a female musician might read what he had to say at all. Still, even as social media criticized Glasper, it thanked Iverson for not editing Glasper’s sexism out of the interview. Better to let us see, people said. The truth was certainly good for some retaliatory humor. ”It is such a drag when someone starts doing a whole lot of soloing and just totally knocks me out of my    trance,” commented one woman. Cultivating any feminist rage over ridiculous language like ”musical clitoris” was certainly impossible for me —  especially when that language came from a   provocateur like Glasper. Unfortunately, it turned out Iverson was receiving some criticism for the Glasper interview himself. Even more unfortunately, Iverson reacted to this criticism by firing off a   explanatory   on his blog. ”I’m a liberal and I’m feminist this is a case of other liberals and feminists seeing a weakness and attacking. This is part of why Trump won.” And thusly social media went from #smh to #facepalm. If we’d read Glasper’s interview comments with disbelieving annoyance, we read Iverson’s response with disbelieving outrage. Iverson’s reply was a textbook defense of sexism: The notion that liberal politics somehow make men incapable of sexism is partly what mobilized women in the   movement to initiate   feminism. Inevitably, Iverson’s defensive position attracted some scrutiny. The jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, a MacArthur ”genius” grant winner and Harvard professor, did some math on Iverson’s blog and posted the results on Facebook: ”’I’m a liberal and I’m feminist,’ said a man who published interviews with   men and zero women.” Ouch. (I’ll admit right up front that I’d never noticed Iverson’s omission of women.) As one Facebook commentator said, ”Really, you have to wonder why there hasn’t been ONE.” She added: ”This is the sort of thing we get used to, sadly.” People by the hundreds liked Vijay’s post and many women musicians thanked him for having the character to stick his neck out. But I also recognize that not everyone enjoys Iyer’s relatively secure position in the jazz industry not everyone has the prestige to weather the potential career backlash from calling out Iverson’s hypocrisy. Meanwhile, on Twitter, Glasper was not taking the high road: ”’jazz police’ are funny. .if you love jazz so much stop whining about my quotes u don’t understand and make a good album and stop sucking.” Iverson returned to his blog yesterday to cite his feminist credentials, but however legit those credentials may be they don’t excuse him from taking responsibility for what he says and does. The many online apologists for Iverson and Glasper have been dismissing their sexist remarks as the clumsy gestures of good ol’ boys. But inadvertently sexist remarks, like inadvertently racist remarks, can be more telling, because they often point to more fundamental and systemic discrimination. The jazz world has a right  —   and, some would say, a duty  —   to criticize speech that promotes sexist culture, whether that speech had a malicious or benign intent. Iverson’s harshness toward his critics may be having an even darker effect. In another   post, Iverson said his online critics had taken the tone of a ”hate mob who found their next victim.” Most of us don’t want to be part of a hate mob and, tellingly, there’s been radio silence on this dustup from some typically opinionated members of the jazz industry. A fear to weigh in here would not be unfounded, as again, there could be negative professional repercussions for criticism of these powerful musicians. For better or worse, the Saga of Musical Clitoris has been unleashed on the jazz world. I’m glad it has. Much feminist work in jazz has focused on the noble goals of celebrating the genre’s marginalized women musicians and advocating towards equal representation for them on today’s bandstands. As necessary as representation may be, this scandal reveals that the issue of women in jazz goes deeper, into a gendered construction of the music itself. We need an intelligent public discussion about gendered notions of jazz, and this hot mess might as well be the impetus for that discussion. As one female industry veteran said online, ”it can take a bomb like this to reset course.” If anyone’s still wondering why we need an International Women’s Day, please check out the Saga of Musical Clitoris. Start here, or just keep your eyes open online. Fortunately for jazz, this tragicomedy is still unfolding, which means there’s still time to make it count for something good. Michelle Mercer reviews jazz and other music for All Things Considered. "
"There’s enough material in the life of Philippe Mora to warrant not just one movie, but maybe three or four. His career as the director of more than 40 films, for instance, including the Dennis Hopper outlaw flick Mad Dog Morgan. His prolific history as a visual artist  —   including the time the stench from his   statue raised the hackles of Princess Margaret. His relationship with legendary French mime Marcel Marceau, who also happened to be his godfather, or with the    musician Eric Clapton, who also happened to be his roommate. But it is Mora’s origins  —   complete with his dazzlingly kooky family  —   that take center stage in Monsieur Mayonnaise, the documentary from director Trevor Graham that premiered in February at the Berlinale Film Festival. And its star may not even be Mora himself, but a   baguette, slathered in mayonnaise. Graham’s film reaches way back into Mora family history to tell the story of Philippe’s mother, a visual artist born in France to Lithuanian Jewish   immigrants, and his father, a German Jewish member of the French Resistance, both of whom later became prominent figures in the Melbourne arts scene. Mayonnaise depicts the Moras’ years in hiding and their efforts to resist the forces of   European fascism. If that sounds like a recipe for tragedy, take heart. Graham tells the Moras’ story just as the Moras themselves would: vividly, optimistically and with unflagging good humor. And a love of food and art delivers this family, and the film, out of the recesses of despair. ”All kids want to know what their parents don’t want them to know,” Mora said after the premiere in Berlin, part of the Berlinale’s annual Culinary Cinema series. He described growing up in a ”historically sanitized” environment, in a family that maintained a certain joie de vivre and declined to dwell on  —   or even discuss  —   their experiences during World War II. The desire to look deeper into his family’s past, Mora said, sprung from his interest in finding answers  —   both about his own family history, and about the atrocities committed under the Third Reich. ”I don’t know whether the answers exist or not, but you’ve got to ask the question,” Mora said later in an interview with NPR. Mora’s friendship with Graham blossomed, as many   friendships do, over Facebook. (And in true   terms, they describe theirs as a ”bromance. ”) Mora had begun to investigate his family history, fearful of missing the opportunity to speak with some of its aging major players, and he posted his findings publicly. Graham’s interest was piqued, and he reached out to Mora about making a film. In Mayonnaise, we meet Mora in the depths of his research, documenting in a comic book the family stories he unearths. The     saga comes together in a collage of archival footage,   interviews with Mora and his mother, Mirka, and   panels   by Mora himself. From his family, Mora absorbed the message that the film delivers so affably to its audience: ”Love the good things in life . .. like art and mayonnaise.” And oh, the mayonnaise! Hellmann’s this is not: Deeply,   yellow, the beloved Mora condiment gets whisked up onscreen by Mirka herself  —   with great enthusiasm, and in seemingly industrial quantity. Mora knew that his father, Georges, who died in 1992, had earned the curious nickname ”Monsieur Mayonnaise” during the war. But it wasn’t until he was an adult that he learned why  —   from none other than Marcel Marceau himself. Mayonnaise, it turns out, was the key ingredient in a cunning little trick Georges devised to save the lives of Jewish children: Georges slipped resistance documents and passports (wrapped in wax paper) into baguette sandwiches and slathered them with mayonnaise. The Gestapo, he reasoned, wouldn’t inspect the sandwiches too closely  —   they wouldn’t want to get mayo on their gloved fingers. Graham, who also hails from Australia, is a veteran of the Berlinale and of culinary cinema. His last entry in the festival, 2013’s Make Hummus Not War, examined the   conflict through the lens of the popular chickpea paste, of which both nations claim ownership. Mora, too, has made something of a career chewing over the same themes that emerge in Mayonnaise. At the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Mora’s documentary Swastika provoked one of the most violent responses in Cannes history. Appalled that Mora had humanized Adolf Hitler  —   the film features home footage of the Führer playing with children and discussing Gone With the Wind with Eva Braun  —   audience members began to shout and throw things at the screen. According to Mora, the ruckus became so heated that a member of Cannes personnel had to yell into the agitated crowd, ”Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Cannes film festival, not a beer hall.” Mayonnaise’s premiere in Berlin transpired far more peaceably. A   dinner orchestrated by   chef Christian Lohse  —   with the title ”Mayonnaise Oils the Intelligence”  —   followed the screening in Berlin’s   Gropius Mirror Restaurant. The atmosphere was jovial, and both Mora and Graham reviewed Lohse’s (rather white) mayonnaise favorably. But during the dessert course, when the duo fielded a question about the historic parallels between the Europe of Mayonnaise and that of today, the room fell silent. The same question ”came up the very first screening we had [in Australia],” Graham said over a glass of wine the following evening, in a joint interview with Mora. ”There were 700 people, and someone right at the back said, ’Did you make this film deliberately with contemporary events, events about refugees in mind?’ I said, ’No, but yes.’ ” ”That’s a tricky answer,” Mora said wryly. ”I know. But that’s the reality,” Graham continued. ”What I wanted was for those sorts of things to resonate, but not to be sticking up a placard that’s saying, ’This is what the film is about.’ The film is about Philippe’s family story and what they experienced.” For his part, Mora responded to the question with a quote from Mark Twain. ”History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mora said, ”but it rhymes.” Morgan Childs is a freelance journalist based in Prague. She’s on Twitter @MorganAChilds"
"Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed it ”The Jewel of the Delta.” Booker T. Washington praised it as a model of ”thrift and  .” Mound Bayou, in the Mississippi Delta: a town founded in 1887 by former slaves, with a vision that was revolutionary for its time. From the start, it was designed to be a   autonomous,   community. For decades, Mound Bayou thrived and prospered, becoming famous for empowering its black citizens. The town also became known as a haven from the virulent racism of the Jim Crow South. ”It’s almost like it was an inverted or alternate universe, where being black was a positive thing,” says Rolando Herts, director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University. I came to Mound Bayou both to learn about the unique history of the town and to see what has become of it today. A drive through town reveals a place that has fallen, hard. There are just a few businesses left: a convenience store, a gas station, a funeral home. The population is down below 1, 500, a fraction of what it once was. More than half the children in Mound Bayou live below the poverty level. So what happened? ”I think desegregation happened,” says Herts. ”This is a case we’ve seen across the country in which black communities, people who had more options, left those communities to move to the suburbs, or to move to urban areas with more opportunities, and took their   and their resources with them.” But stop for a moment and imagine the Mound Bayou that was, and to picture what a remarkable feat it was to build this town in the first place. Back in 1887, the founders  —   freed slaves Isaiah T. Montgomery and his cousin, Benjamin T. Green  —   bought 840 acres of Mississippi swampland that was covered with dense hardwood forest. According to Booker T. Washington’s account, published in 1907, Montgomery led the first small group of prospective black settlers there by train: ”You see,” he said, waving his hand in the direction of the forest, ”this is a pretty wild place.” He paused, and the men looked hesitatingly in the direction he had indicated, but said nothing.  ”But this whole country,” he continued, ”was like this once. You have seen it change. You and your fathers have, for the most part, performed the work that has made it what it is. You and your fathers did this for some one else. Can’t you do as much now for yourselves?”  The men picked up their axes and attacked the wilderness. It was   work, but they succeeded. Mound Bayou became prime cotton land, and word spread of the economic opportunity there. It was not the ordinary Negro farmer who was attracted to Mound Bayou colony. It was rather an earnest and ambitious class prepared to face the hardships of this sort of pioneer work. The scheme was widely advertised among the Negro farmers throughout the state and drew immigrants from all parts of Mississippi, and a certain number from other states.  As Herts tells me: ”They wanted the best of the best. They wanted the most highly educated people who were entrepreneurial, who were going to come in and contribute something to making this community even more competitive, even better.” By the time Annyce Campbell was born in Mound Bayou in 1924, the town was thriving. ”You name it, we had it!” she tells me proudly. ”We had everything but a jail, to tell you the truth!” The    Campbell clearly recalls the heyday, when Mound Bayou was home to dozens of businesses, three cotton gins, a sawmill, a cottonseed oil mill, a bank  —   all of them  . Mound Bayou boasted several schools, a train station, a Carnegie library. By 1942, Taborian Hospital opened, serving blacks from all over the Delta. Herts, of Delta State University, points out how revolutionary that was for the time: ”Just being able to walk through the front door of a hospital and immediately receive the care that you need. Not having to go through a back door. Not having to wait for the white patrons to get their needs serviced first. That happened here in Mound Bayou.” Taborian Hospital is shuttered now. The home of Mound Bayou’s founder, Isaiah Montgomery, is abandoned, its foundation cracked and crumbling. Montgomery and his   Benjamin Green, are buried in a small cemetery in town. Every year, people gather graveside for Founders’ Day, with a memorial service and  . ”It gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect on the founding of Mound Bayou,” says Eulah Peterson, 68, who was born and raised in Mound Bayou. ”This was certainly a big undertaking in 1887,” Peterson continues. ”We were, what, 32 years from slaves being freed. Some 130 years later, we’re still here. While we’re not where we’d like to be, we’re still here.” Peterson’s family roots in Mound Bayou go back to 1903. Her maternal grandfather, born into slavery, was 7 when the slaves were freed. He and Peterson’s grandmother moved to Mound Bayou from Louisiana, attracted by the promise of this ”utopian society,” as Peterson puts it. Eulah Peterson moved back to Mound Bayou once she retired, after spending nearly two decades away. ”People said, ’Why are you going home to Mound Bayou?’ and I said, it’s because Mound Bayou is close enough to anything that I want to do and far enough away from anything I don’t want to be bothered with.” Peterson is a former alderman and vice mayor, and is now running for mayor. I ask if it saddens her to think about what Mound Bayou used to be, and what it is now. ”I would not necessarily say sad,” she replies, ”because I’m a realist. People are different, times are different, a sense of what was is not here. But,” she adds, ” I do feel that Mound Bayou will survive. Not necessarily the way it was, but maybe different and better in some ways.” Peterson envisions the Mound Bayou of the future as a retirement community, attracting more people who moved away but want to come home and help revive their hometown. ”I’ve not given up on the thought that we can get more people who are willing to come back to Mound Bayou.” The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"President Trump has reportedly offered former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman the job of U. S. ambassador to Russia. Huntsman has been a U. S. ambassador twice before, in Singapore ( ) and China ( ). Like all ambassadorships, the position requires Senate confirmation  —   but the diplomatic posting to Moscow was expected to face particular scrutiny in light of ongoing investigations into Russia’s attempts to meddle in U. S. politics and reports of repeated contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. Responding to reports of Huntsman’s selection, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the Kremlin would welcome any U. S. ambassador who wants to create a dialogue with Russia. From Moscow, Charles Maynes reports for NPR’s Newscast unit: ”Yet some in Moscow aren’t so sure Huntsman meets that bar. Russian Sen. Alexei Pushkov pointed to Huntsman’s recent work as head of the Atlantic Council think tank, where criticism of Russia suggested that as ambassador Huntsman would, in his words, ’be no dove.’ ”After openly celebrating Donald Trump’s election victory as a breakthrough in U. S.  relations, Moscow has since adopted a more cautious tone. Russian officials argue that several investigations into Kremlin interference in the election, as well as alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow, have forced the Trump White House to abandon its goal of improving relations.” Speaking to reporters Thursday, Peskov said the choice of ambassadors is up to Trump, adding, ”We have no intention to meddle in these internal affairs.” Back in the summer of 2011, Huntsman entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination he dropped out in January of 2012. At the time, Trump was a vocal critic. Weeks after Huntsman ended his presidential bid, Trump tweeted: ”Jon Huntsman called to see me. I said no, he gave away our country to China!”"
"Yesterday was International Women’s Day, a holiday that commemorates the global fight for gender equality and women’s rights. It was celebrated across the world with labor strikes, commentaries on the status of women and plenty of posts on social media. Many musicians got involved in the conversation notably, Beyonce, Coldplay, John Legend, Madonna  —   among other artists and activists  —   signed an open letter in support of women’s rights. The letter, posted by social action platform Global Citizen, calls the fight for gender equality ”the emergency and the opportunity of our time.” Though its language about the persistent need to fight for women’s rights was not particularly new, it was framed as a reaction to increasing threats faced by women in the current political climate. Chime for Change, who sponsored the open letter, is a campaign started by Gucci to raise awareness of (and money for) women’s and girls’ rights. And it wasn’t the only    collaboration of the day Madonna released ”” a deeply glamorous (if mildly  ) short film, made in collaboration with Vogue Italy, about the fight for women’s equality. (These collaborations are slightly ironic, given that International Women’s Day was originally organized as National Working Women’s Day by the Socialist Party of America in honor of protests against working conditions in garment factors.) Elsewhere on the internet, some of music’s most famous women shared relatively benign reflections on the holiday  —   unsurprising in an era where women musicians are expected to give an enthusiastic ”Yes!” whenever interviewers ask if they’re feminists, but when that response is hardly ever expected to evidence substantive political engagement. Adele tweeted a quotation about female dominance: Katy Perry expressed her gratitude for the women in her life: Nicki Minaj gave herself props for reaching a feminist milestone. .. kinda: she tied Aretha Franklin for most singles among women on the Billboard Hot 100: Britney Spears took a moment to express her love for two ”of the many women who inspire” her: Beyonce telegraphed her admiration for an inspiring woman, albeit one with less star power than Britney’s picks. Bey shared a blog post that honored Lynn Clark, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge, who has been helping to rebuild the city following a massive flood in August 2016. It’s fitting, as Beyonce has family roots in Louisiana, and the state has become a cornerstone of her recent music and charity work. International Women’s Day brought expressions of social media solidarity from many male artists who were happy to renew their allyship credentials  —   mainly by reminding fans how much they love their moms: The group that organized January’s   Women’s March called for a general strike on International Women’s Day, aptly named ”A Day Without A Woman.” Questions about whether musicians could or would strike are complicated and invoke larger questions about when art counts as work, what women artists’ silence means and what artists owe their fans. When women’s voices are already underrepresented in many areas of music, would these musicians’ silence force things to shut down  —   as the strike intends  —   or further marginalize their perspectives? In an interview with MTV News, Laetitia Tamko of Vagabon said, ”I’m always striking every day! I strike by existing, by demanding respect, by forcing my way into places that people make it difficult for women  —   all women  —   to be in and to thrive in. That feels like resistance, personally.” Other artists, like Margo Price and Katie Bennett of Free Cake for Every Creature, told MTV that striking from music would be akin to silencing themselves in an industry that needs more women’s voices to be heard. Still, some musicians publicly supported the strike. Sia, for example, posted a call to action to join on Instagram. Some musicians chose to tackle more complicated aspects of the feminist struggle. Folk duo First Aid Kit released a fiery rebuke of rape culture, called ”You Are The Problem Here.” It’s direct in its exasperation with entitled men, with lyrics like ”You are the problem here   No one made you do anything   That’s not how liquor works . .. And I hope you fucking suffer.” Songwriter and activist Taina Asili released a protest song and video, called ”No Es Mi Presidente,” about interconnected feminist struggles. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Asili explains that the video is a means of pushing back against the forces of ”white supremacy, patriarchy, the desecration of sacred sites and harm to our earth.” The song is in both English and Spanish Asili explains that ”as the Trump regime has taken hold, Latinos in this country are being targeted,” so she ”wanted to use this language as a voice to express our dissent, our resistance.” Downtown Boys’s Victoria Ruiz, who has been involved with the pushback against SXSW’s immigration language, shared some more terse thoughts on the racial divide in last year’s election and its relation to the feminist movement. In Seattle, members of Russian political punk group Pussy Riot appeared at a rally for women’s economic and social equality, focused mainly on access to healthcare and union organizing rights, before playing a show later that night. Other musicians took International Women’s Day as an opportunity to speak out about the challenges that gender inequality poses to nonbinary and trans people. Musician Mal Blum, who uses   pronouns, posted about the persistent misgendering they receive from the media. The most inspiring and   message of the day, though, probably  —   and not all that surprisingly  —   came from Cher."
"UPDATED    4:45 PM, Republican leaders in the U. S. House have pulled the American Health Care Act from the floor after failing to round up enough votes within their own caucus. Had the bill passed, Americans would have no longer been required to buy health insurance, and it would have eliminated the current subsidies that are used to bring down the cost of premiums. NPR and dozens of member stations collected public statements from members of Congress to help the public understand where lawmakers stood on this issue. Our reporting showed that Republicans lacked the votes needed pass the health care bill in the House. No Democrats support the bill, and Republicans can only lose 22 of their members before the bill fails. According to the reporting of NPR and its member stations, more than 30 House Republicans opposed the bill. Republicans faced an even greater challenge in the Senate, where they hold 52 of 100 seats. At least seven Republican senators opposed the House bill."
"Many millennials have their hands full now, as they launch into adulthood  —   jobs, homes and partners. But    Ford Inbody is already thinking about a time when he won’t be able to work. He has Parkinson’s disease. Every night after work, he and his wife Cortney walk their two dogs through their neighborhood in Overland Park, Kan. For now, going out for an evening’s stroll is easy. But many of their evening conversations revolve around a time they know is coming  —   when these walks will be more difficult. Inbody was diagnosed with   Parkinson’s disease three years ago. When he was 25, he started noticing confusing health symptoms like joint stiffness, tremors and loss of smell. He says initially he was relieved to get a definitive diagnosis. But, he says, ”I then started doing more research about it, that’s when it became a little bit scary. There is no cure. There is no way to slow the progression of the disease. There’s nothing really except just symptom management.” Since the diagnosis, the couple has had to dramatically rethink their future. ”We had to very much start considering life planning,” he says. ”We had to make sure, you know, are we going to have enough income.” They’re not planning to have kids and are bracing for a much more modest lifestyle than they once imagined. They live now with Ford’s grandmother, to save money for the day when the degenerative disease will eventually force him to stop working. For now he gets health insurance through his job at a law firm, training attorneys on corporate policies. But Ford and Cortney worry about how his condition will progress and how they’ll pay for health care when he can no longer work. Cortney works in the human resources department for a chocolatier. It is possible Ford could go on her insurance, but when they first ran the numbers, that was prohibitively expensive. So they thought Ford would get private insurance at a reasonable price despite his condition on the Affordable Care Act exchange then he’d probably transition to Medicaid when his condition gets bad enough. That’s been his plan. But ever since the election, he’s been preoccupied with the developments of repeal and replace. It’s a constant concern, he says  —   ”reading the news every day, checking out all the different stories that are going on.” Inbody read every word of the original GOP replacement plan, released on March 6. He was somewhat relieved to see that, at least so far, it includes the requirement that insurance companies cover preexisting conditions in every plan on the exchange. ”It’s not like a complete ’all is lost’ situation,” he says. ”And I certainly am not jumping from the roof and concerned that Republicans are trying to doom me to a life of no care.” But he does have questions about how this will all play out, in terms of his own situation. Chris Sloan, a senior manager with the research and consulting firm Avalere Health, says it’s true Inbody will be able to get some sort of insurance policy, regardless. But there’s a big difference between how the new tax credits he’d get under the GOP plan would compare with the subsidies he’d get under the ACA to help him pay for insurance costs. ”The changes to the tax credits and to the subsidies available could mean that he’s going to have to pay more,” Sloan says. ”Depending on his finances, some of those changes could mean that he has to pay a lot more to get coverage on the individual market.” Today the annual ACA subsidies are based on income and the cost of coverage in each region. Under the GOP proposal, Inbody and his wife would, instead, get a flat $5, 000 per year to help pay for health insurance coverage for them both. So when Inbody stops working and the couple’s income is much lower, they won’t get extra help in the GOP plan to pay for monthly health insurance premiums. That’s not all. Sloan also explains that, under the GOP plan, some extra help for    costs will disappear. ”With this new proposal, that just doesn’t exist anymore,” he says. Sloan says there’s also nothing in the new plan to stop another problem  —   many exchange policies cover fewer medications than   plans, and the networks of doctors and hospitals are getting narrower. The bill also proposes drastic changes to Medicaid. Inbody could very well end up on Medicaid  —   it’s the insurance many people with disabilities rely on. The Republican plan would limit how much money states get for each Medicaid recipient. And though that amount would go up each year, the increase would be based on overall inflation, not the increase in medical costs. So eventually, Sloan says, the federal government would be giving states a lot less money, relative to the cost of health care. ”Then the state has to make a decision. In Kansas’s case, they’ll have to say, ’How do we make up that difference?’ ” Sloan says. ”They can say, ’You know what, we’re just going to reduce eligibility. Previously, we gave Medicaid to people up to this income. Now we’re going to take that  —   a little bit  —   because we need the money. So we’ll save money by not covering these people.’ ” For example, consider Inbody’s case. Restricting eligibility for Medicaid, under the GOP plan, could mean it will be harder for Inbody to get that coverage, Sloan says. Then, ”even if he gets Medicaid down the line, how generous are the benefits? Do they cover everything that he needs for his Parkinson’s condition?” Inbody has hope that whatever legislation is ultimately passed will help him and others with their health problems. But the politics frustrates him. ”The Republicans, they want it their way,” Inbody says. ”And the Democrats are going to do everything they can to refuse a Republican victory. And really, what that means in the end is something completely ineffectual that doesn’t really help anybody is going to get passed  —   and nobody’s really going to be happy about it.” For now, Inbody says he’s enjoying the health he has. He and Cortney are heading out his weekend on a Colorado road trip. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KCUR and Kaiser Health News. Alex Smith is a health reporter at KCUR in Kansas, City, Mo."
"The Affordable Care Act changed women’s health care in some big ways: It stopped insurance companies from charging women extra, forced insurers to cover maternity care and contraceptives and allowed many women to get those contraceptives (as well as a variety of preventive services, like Pap smears and mammograms) at zero cost. Now Republicans have the opportunity to repeal that law, also known as Obamacare. But that doesn’t mean all those things will go away. In fact, many will remain. Confused? Here’s a rundown of how this bill would change some   areas of health care, what it wouldn’t change, and what we don’t know so far. Abortion coverage, There are restrictions on abortion under current law  —   the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal subsidies from being spent on abortions, except in the case of pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest or that threaten the life of the mother. So while health care plans can cover abortions, those being paid for with subsidies ”must follow particular administrative requirements to ensure that no federal funds go toward abortion,” as the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, explains. But the GOP bill tightens this. It says that the tax credits at the center of the plan cannot be spent at all on any health care plan that covers abortion (aside from the Hyde Amendment’s exceptions). So while health care plans can cover abortion, very few people may be able to purchase those sorts of plans, as they wouldn’t be able to use their tax credits on them. That could make it much more expensive and difficult to obtain an abortion under this law than under current law. Planned Parenthood funding, This bill partially ”defunds” Planned Parenthood, meaning it would cut back on the federal funding that can be used for services at the clinics. Fully 43 percent of Planned Parenthood’s revenue in fiscal year 2015  —   more than $550 million  —   came from government grants and reimbursements. Right now, under Obamacare, federal funds can be spent at Planned Parenthood, but they can’t be used for abortion  —   again, a result of the Hyde Amendment and again, with the three Hyde Amendment exceptions. But this bill goes further, saying that people couldn’t use Medicaid at Planned Parenthood. To be clear, it’s not that there’s a funding stream going directly from the government to Planned Parenthood that Congress can just turn off. Rather, the program reimburses Planned Parenthood for the care it provides to Medicaid recipients. So this bill would mean that Medicaid recipients who currently receive care at an organization that provides abortions would have to find a new provider (whom Medicaid would then reimburse). Abortion is a small part of what Planned Parenthood does: The organizations says it accounted for 3. 4 percent of all services provided in the year ending in September 2014. (Of course, some patients receive more than one service Planned Parenthood had around 2. 5 million patients in that year. Assuming one abortion per patient, that’s roughly 13 percent of all patients receiving abortions.) Together, providing contraception and the testing for and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases made up   of the services the organization provided in one year. That means   women (that is, women on Medicaid) could be among the most heavily affected by this bill, as it may force them to find other providers for reproductive health services. Of the other government money that goes to Planned Parenthood, most of it comes from Title X. That federal program, created under President Richard Nixon, provides family planning services to people beyond Medicaid, like   women who are not  . Earlier this year, Republicans started the process of stripping that funding. Republicans have stressed that this bill was just one of three parts, so it’s hard to say definitively what wouldn’t change at all as a result of their plan. But thus far, here’s what is holding steady: Maternity and contraceptive coverage, Because this was a reconciliation bill, it could cover   topics only. It couldn’t get into many of the particulars of what people’s coverage will look like, meaning some things won’t change. The essential health benefits set out in Obamacare  —   a list of 10 types of services that all plans must cover  —   do not change for other policies. Maternity care is included in those benefits, as is contraception, so plans will have to continue to cover those. The GOP bill also doesn’t change the Obamacare policy that gave women access to free contraception, as Vox’s Emily Crockett reported. In addition, maternity and contraception are still both ”mandatory benefits” under Medicaid. That doesn’t change in the GOP bill. (Confusingly, the bill does sunset essential health benefits for Medicaid recipients. But because there is overlap and these particular benefits remain ”mandatory,” they aren’t going away.) However, all of this won’t necessarily remain unchanged. In response to a question about defunding Planned Parenthood this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said that he didn’t want to ”violate anybody’s conscience.” When a reporter asked how this relates to birth control, Price did not give a definite answer. ”We’re working through all of those issues,” he said. ”As you know, many of those were through the   process, and we’re working through that. So that’s not a part of this piece of legislation right here.” So this is something that could easily change in the second ”phase” of the health care plan, when rules are changed. ”Preventative services [the category that includes contraception] hasn’t been touched, but we expect those to be touched probably via regulation,” said Laurie Sobel, associate director for women’s health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The end of gender rating, Prior to Obamacare, women were often charged more for the same health plans as men. The rationale was that women tend to use more health care services than men. However, Obamacare banned the practice, and that ban seems unlikely to change, as the GOP cites nondiscrimination as one of the bill’s selling points: ”Our proposal specifically prohibits any gender discrimination. Women will have equal access to the same affordable, quality health care options as men do under our proposal.”"
"Updated 7:30 p. m. ET, Dr. Scott Gottlieb is President Trump’s choice to lead the Food and Drug Administration, according to a statement from the White House. Gottlieb is a political conservative and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he has focused his research on the FDA and the Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services. An internist and hospitalist, Gottlieb has played leading roles in various government health agencies, including as deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs at the FDA during the George W. Bush administration. Before that, he was a senior policy adviser at CMS working on the implementation of Medicare’s   drug coverage for seniors. Gottlieb is a prolific writer on health care issues, particularly the pharmaceutical industry. He is seen as a strong supporter of that industry and has championed deregulation. ”I think Scott is absolutely qualified,” lawyer John Taylor of Greenleaf Health tells STAT. ”He has good professional credentials and personal integrity, and a track record that shows the ability to make difficult decisions.” While Trump has promised at various times to make fairly radical changes at the FDA, Gottlieb is a seen as a conventional choice for commissioner by a Republican president. Earlier in the year, odds were favoring the nomination of Jim O’Neill, an associate of Silicon Valley entrepreneur and billionaire Peter Thiel, a close Trump adviser. O’Neill created waves when he called for drugs to be approved as soon as they had been judged to be safe but before they are proved to be effective, as required under current law. Should Gottlieb be approved by the Senate, one early target he may aim for is     promotion of prescription drugs. The Obama administration issued tighter restrictions on how companies could market drugs for conditions not mentioned on drug labels  ” signifying the lack of FDA approval for that cause. Gottlieb has been highly critical of the Obama rules. Gottlieb has many possible financial conflicts that could feature prominently in his confirmation hearings. He serves on advisory boards for several major pharmaceutical companies. ”Gottlieb is entangled in an unprecedented web of Big Pharma ties,” says Dr. Michael Carome, the director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, a   advocacy group. ”He has spent most of his career dedicated to promoting the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U. S. Senate must reject him.” According to the ProPublica website Dollars for Docs, Gottlieb received more than $400, 000 between August 2013 and December 2015 in promotional talks, research, consulting and travel while practicing at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut. As FDA commissioner, Gottlieb would oversee an agency that has regulatory power over a quarter of the U. S. economy, including not just pharmaceuticals but medical devices, food safety, cosmetics and other areas of human and animal health."
"After purportedly stopping in at    President Trump’s Palm Beach resort, not long ago, a visitor went straight to Google’s online review site to complain about the restaurant ambience. ”Very loud and distracting dinner atmosphere,” the visitor noted. ”I just wanted a quiet peaceful meal, but White House staff and diplomats at the next table kept shouting out classified information.” People who dislike Trump politically have found a new way of venting their fury and in the process perhaps hitting him in his wallet: They can leave a lousy review on sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor and Google. Of course there are also plenty of   reviews from Trump fans. But since Trump’s nomination at the Republican convention last summer, negative reviews on Yelp and Google have begun outpacing positive reviews by a factor of 6 to 4, says Signpost, a marketing software company. Some of the reviews are funny others, just nasty. ”Not a pleasant experience,” noted one person about the Trump International Hotel  Tower in New York. ”I felt like I was going to be groped the whole time.” ”The person who runs these hotels is a giant racist which is pretty ironic for someone who is  . Would not recommend,” said another. It’s not just that some of the reviews are snarky. More and more users have also been giving Trump’s U. S. hotels and restaurants   ratings, Signpost says. ”In February, in particular, we saw a spike in   reviews. There were about 160   reviews written for Trump properties in the month of February alone,” noted Stuart Wall, Signpost’s founder and CEO. For the Trump Organization, which didn’t return requests for comment for this story, that’s a potential cause for concern. People who don’t even read reviews nevertheless may rely heavily on ratings systems to choose hotels and restaurants, research suggests. In fact, many people shopping for hotels begin by looking at the   properties, which puts those farther down the list at a disadvantage. Harvard Business School professor Michael Luca studied the impact of a Yelp ratings downgrade on restaurants in Seattle between January 2003 and October 2009. ”For independent restaurants, Yelp ratings matter a lot,” he concluded. ”A   increase maps to about a 5 [to] 9 percent increase in sales.” He cautions that the impact is not as strong for chain restaurants and for   brand names, which certainly includes Trump. For its part, Yelp tries to protect the integrity of its content by using humans to weed out politically tinged reviews. For example, a banner is now posted on the page for Trump SoHo New York warning, ”This business is being monitored by Yelp’s support team for content related to media reports.” The site also uses software that ”takes a whole number of factors into account as to whether we should trust or rely on that content, based on how much we know about that user,” says Vincent Sollitto, Yelp senior vice president. But not all review sites use such software and even if they do, no program can screen out all politically motivated content. Still, all is hardly lost for the Trump Organization, Luca says. He notes that the company has talked about building more properties in the U. S. and abroad, and recently doubled the    initiation fee. That suggests that for Trump, the benefits of being president still outweigh the disadvantages. ”It seems that at least Trump thinks that the benefits of the   of being president [have] a bigger effect than any negative effect that might be coming through an influx of negative reviews,” he says."
"Out of over 6, 000 entries  —   more submissions than we’ve ever received  —   Tank And The Bangas won, unanimously, this year’s Tiny Desk Contest. I fully expected their victory performance here at NPR headquarters in D. C. to be celebratory. I didn’t know we’d all end up in tears. This band combines RB with  ’s poetry and rollercoaster storytelling, with a flair and alchemy that could only come from New Orleans. Their winning song, ”Quick,” mixes liquor and revenge  —   a sort of modern day take on a great folk tale, but peppered with their own idiosyncratic flair and humor. What I couldn’t see, until they took over my desk, was the depth of their lyricism and the versatility of their players. At one moment   funk, the next   jazz,   blues  —   and it all flows seamlessly. And it’s fun to watch: There’s a magic kinship between Tarriona ”Tank” Ball and Anjelika ”Jelly” Joseph as they share singing roles, like two best friends finishing one another’s sentences. This is the third year that NPR Music has put out a call in hopes of finding a shining star. I’m still amazed how, after sifting through thousands of videos from abundantly talented musicians, we can find a common winner amongst a range of judges with such different musical backgrounds. But in the end, my All Songs Considered   Robin Hilton, Trey Anastasio (Phish) Miguel, Anthony Hamilton, Ben Hopkins (PWR BTTM) BANKS, and folks who listen to an awful lot of music  —   NPR member station hosts Rita Houston (WFUV) Talia Schlanger (WXPN) Stas THEE Boss (KEXP)  —   and myself were all equally charmed, delighted and captivated. And so here it is, a chance to see an artist truly blossoming. It’s just the beginning: A few years ago, for our first Contest, Fantastic Negrito won our hearts. This year he won a Grammy. Last year Gaelynn Lea, an unknown violinist, teacher and singer sent a video captured on a phone and won our affection and souls. A few weeks ago, her Tiny Desk Concert had been seen more than a million times. These days she’s taken to the road, touring the world. Tank And The Bangas will be hitting the road in April with NPR Music to find their new audience  —   I’ll be along for the ride  —   visiting many of our member stations with help from those   beer brewers at Lagunitas. I can’t wait to see the reaction in these crowds’ eyes, as they fill with wonder and tears like ours did, experiencing this band for the first time. Set List, Musicians, Tarriona Tank Ball (vocals) Jelly Joseph (vocals) Merell Burkett Jr. (keys) Norman Spence II (keys) Joshua Johnson (drums) Jonathan Johnson (bass) Albert Allenback (saxophone) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Nick Michael, Bronson Arcuri, Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistants: A Noah Harrison, Ameeta Ganatra Photo: Niki  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"When it comes to depictions of grief, comedian Patton Oswalt says pop culture failed him. Just look at super heroes, he says  —   their motivation is often rooted in loss that ”leads them to travel the world learning martial arts and doing CrossFit and getting really cut,” Oswalt says. ”And that’s not been my experience.” Oswalt experienced his own tragic loss on April 21, 2016, when his wife, writer Michelle McNamara, died unexpectedly, leaving behind Oswalt, and their young daughter, Alice. ”When you lose someone you tend to eat Wheat Thins for breakfast and rewatch The Princess Bride about 80 times and not sleep all that well,” Oswalt says. ”So I don’t know when the   are going to show up in my grieving process.” Less than a year after McNamara’s death, Oswalt won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album and his first Emmy award for his Netflix standup special Talking for Clapping. In his acceptance speech, he said he wanted to share his award with two people: ”One of them, my daughter, Alice, is waiting at home. The other one is waiting somewhere else  —   I hope.” Oswalt  —   who also starred in the sitcom The King of Queens and the animated movie Ratatouille  —   has now returned to the   stage. He recently headlined two shows in Washington, D. C. and he sat down to talk about how he handled a year that was professionally one of his best and personally his absolute worst. On never knowing how much other people are going through, One thing that I’ve learned since what happened to me happened is: You don’t know the kind of pain and loss other people may have gone through  —   even close friends and acquaintances. . .. In really awful science fiction terms it is like putting on the sunglasses in They Live and then seeing the world for what it really is. Do you know what I mean? Obviously I knew there was loss and death and depression, but you can only sympathize so far until it directly happens to you. On why he’s gone back to   I think the reason that I’m still doing   is because  —   before the movies and television and before the books  —     is what brought me into this world where I get to link up with way more creative, way more intelligent people than I am ever going to be. And to cut that off, it felt like an insult to Michelle. Especially because the person that I was before I met Michelle was very, you know, I think I was an OK comedian  —   I don’t think I was very deep and vulnerable. And then after falling in love with her, she led me to being secure enough to open myself up on stage. So then to completely reject that would have felt very, very insulting to her. On how it’s cathartic for him to know he’s helping other people, When I initially started talking about it on Facebook people reached out to me and said, Oh that really, really helped me. And it really helped me to get over my grief  —   like I take part in a grief group. Helping other people out who are going through this  —   this is a very selfish thing  —   but it helps me out. . .. My goal, as always, is I want to be funny and I want to get laughs. But laughter I think can loosen up a lot of poison that has kind of settled into your muscles and your soul  —   not to get too Oprah about it. And maybe incidentally I’m helping someone out with their grief. But I’m not going onstage and sitting in a chair and going: Let’s talk, everyone. I’m wandering around, and griping about Trump, and movies, and life, and getting older. On not buying Batman’s backstory, Bruce Wayne saw his parents gunned down in front of him when he was 9 and he travels the world and becomes this amazing [crime fighter]. . .. That’s ridiculous  —   he would have grown up to have been Gotham City’s most annoying slam poet. That’s what Bruce Wayne would have been. He would have been up there reading his horrible poems. On why the second year after a loss may be even harder than the first, At least in 2016 I had three months and 21 days of Michelle being in there. And now this is a year where there is no Michelle  —   and, like, that’s it. So when January first dawned it felt like a cell door slamming behind me like: You are now in this awful world where you don’t even have a memory of her being a part of this year. . .. There’s that famous line from Magnolia . .. I’m through with the past. . .. Well, the past isn’t through with you. And that is exactly what this is. You know, you can say you’re through with grief all you want, but grief will let you know when it’s done. On whether he’s disappointed people who expected him to be funny, Sorry for bumming you out. I’m very sorry. Go walk for half an hour it will flood you with endorphins. . .. What am I saying?! You’re NPR listeners. You’re used to being bummed out. Now let’s cut to some sad jazz. Stay tuned: We’re going to talk about things to do with sorghum. It’s sorghum season! Radio producer Jinae West and digital producer Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"The State Department is running out of visas for Afghans who are in danger because they worked with the U. S. government in Afghanistan. On Thursday, the U. S. State Department announced that it expected the visas to be depleted by June 1 and that ”No further interviews for Afghan principal applicants . .. will be scheduled after March 1, 2017.” NPR’s Quil Lawrence reported, ”The Special Immigrant Visa program was designed to reward Iraqis and Afghans who help U. S. forces at war, but it’s been plagued by a lengthy vetting process and changing politics in Washington.” The special visas also apply to spouses and children of people who worked as translators, drivers and other staff for the U. S. military and other agencies. A State Department official told NPR in an email on Thursday that more than 15, 000 Afghans are currently ”at some stage of the [special visa] application process” and that as of March 5, only 1, 437 visas remain to be given out. Last fall, military leaders, refugee advocates and some members of Congress warned that the program would run out of visas by the end of the year, and the Obama administration requested that Congress approve 4, 000 more. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of adding that many visas under the program would be $446 million over the next decade. In December, Congress approved 1, 500 new Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans. At the time, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said in a statement that ”It is no exaggeration to say that this is a matter of life and death as Afghans who served the U. S. mission continue to be systematically hunted down by the Taliban. The number of visas needed for those in danger far surpasses what’s provided in this bill.” Shaheen, a Democrat, has partnered with Sen. John McCain, a Republican, to push for the program to continue, and both have condemned what they see as a shortsighted policy of limiting visas, making it more difficult for the U. S. government to persuade local allies to work with them. ”It’s not just a quid pro quo, ’Hey you help me out [and] I’ll help you get to America,’ ” Marine veteran Zach Iscol told Quil. ”It’s taking care of those who took care of us when we were in their country.” Last month the top U. S. commander in Afghanistan asked Congress to send more troops to Afghanistan, where American soldiers have been assisting Afghan security forces since the U. S. formally ended its combat mission in 2014 and are increasingly drawn into battle there. There are currently 8, 400 U. S. service members deployed to Afghanistan. Last year, nine former Iraqi translators sued the federal government over delays in the program. Some had been waiting five years or more to get an answer about their visa applications. Mac McEachin of the International Refugee Assistance Project, which has helped Afghans apply through the special visa programs in both Afghanistan and Iraq, said in a statement that he believes allowing the program to lapse could affect U. S. operations outside the two countries. ”This news deals our ground efforts an especially harsh blow, as it comes on the heels of the announcement that troops from the 82nd Airborne will be deployed to Syria,” he wrote. ”Now that the world has seen how we turn our backs on our Afghan allies, there is almost no chance that local allies in Syria will be inclined to work with us.” The collapse of the U. S. special visa program is part of a larger closing of U. S. borders to people fleeing war and political violence. Last week, President Trump signed a new executive order banning travel from six predominantly Muslim countries and slashing the total number of refugees who can be offered asylum in the U. S. from 110, 000 to 50, 000. According to the U. N. refugee agency, Afghans make up the second largest group of refugees in the world right now, after Syrians. About 2. 7 million Afghan people and 4. 9 million Syrian people have fled their homes and are considered refugees."
"This story was updated on March 12 at 12:01 PM. Friday afternoon, the Italian trio Soviet Soviet posted a lengthy statement on Facebook explaining why it would not be keeping its U. S. tour dates this week and next: It had been deported. The band, which is based in the city of Pesaro, landed in Seattle on Wednesday afternoon. It was traveling under ESTA (also known as the Visa Waiver Program) which allows citizens of nearly 40 countries to travel to the United States without having to obtain a visa. Such visas are frequently used by bands coming to the United States when they only are slated to play unpaid showcases, as paid work while traveling on an ESTA is prohibited. According to the group, its three members were carrying a letter from its American record label explaining that the musicians were scheduled to perform a number of ”promotional,” nonpaid performances in the U. S. including a live performance at member station KEXP in Seattle, as well as a showcase at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. The band says that its three musicians were questioned for several hours, and ”agents” (presumably U. S. Customs and Border Protection officers) denied them entry into the country. From the airport, the band says, the three were taken to a jail and held overnight before being escorted to a plane and sent back to Italy. The three say that they were treated ”like criminals.” In its statement, Soviet Soviet says that the agents’ refusal to permit the band’s entry seems to have stemmed from the fact that the agents believed that the group needed work visas to enter the U. S. because two of the venues at which Soviet Soviet was slated to perform were going to charge audiences entry fees  —   even though the band says that its musicians were not going to earn any money while in the U. S. This afternoon, KEXP published a short statement about the situation, saying: ”Yesterday, Thursday, March 9th, Italian trio Soviet Soviet were scheduled to perform live on The Morning Show on KEXP. Their sophomore album Endless was released on felte Records back in December, and with its dark, anthemic,   sound, quickly became a favorite on the KEXP airwaves. Unfortunately, the    —   as well as their scheduled performances at Kremwerk, SXSW, and venues along the west coast  —   had to be canceled. . .. KEXP sincerely hopes we’ll be able to reschedule a session with the band in the near future.” It remains to be seen whether other musicians will face similar circumstances as they arrive at U. S. border points of entry in the coming days. This period is a particular pressure point as SXSW gets underway on March 13 nearly 600 foreign acts were showcased there during the 2016 festival. Just a week ago, the festival’s organizers faced intense scrutiny over their contractual statements regarding international artists coming into the U. S. to play in Austin, which led to an official apology and a promise to revise SXSW’s language. Update, March 12 at 12:01 PM: On Friday afternoon, KEXP added an update to their post about Soviet Soviet, after the station contacted the Department of Homeland Security for commentary: ”UPDATE    3:30 PM: When asked by KEXP for a comment, the Department of Homeland Security maintained the position that the band lacked the proper visa for entry into the United States. DHS did not immediately respond to a question as to whether the use of prison cells and handcuffs is standard operating procedure for musicians arriving without a proper visa. UPDATE    3:47 PM: The Department of Homeland Security has informed us of Customs and Border Protection policy: When a traveler is deemed inadmissible, CBP makes every effort to return the traveler without delay. CBP does not have an overnight detention facility at the airport. Therefore, it is standard procedure for any traveler who is deemed inadmissible and is awaiting return travel to be taken to a detention center until return travel is available. According to CBP policy, it is standard procedure to restrain a traveler who is being transported to a detention facility. The use of restraints on detainees during transport is in a manner that is safe, secure, humane, and professional. It is the responsibility of officers to ensure that the need and level of restraints used is consistent with the operational office’s policies and procedures. At no time are restraints used in a punitive manner or in a manner that causes detainees undue pain.” On Tuesday, prominent immigration attorney Brian Taylor Goldstein, whose practice is centered on working with artists seeking to tour the U. S. published a lengthy article advising international musicians about the current  —   and shifting  —   challenges regarding immigration policy under the Trump administration. Goldstein wrote: ”Given that the new Order specifically requires heightened vetting and screening of those ’who seek to enter the United States on a fraudulent basis’ there is going to be even more scrutiny and less forgiveness than ever before with regard to artists attempting to enter the US on visitor visas (   ) or through the Visa Waiver Program (’ESTA’). We are already receiving reports of artists being held and detained for hours upon entering the US to determine whether or not they are performing. Even artists entering as visitors for the purpose of attending a conference or ’performing a showcase’ are being pulled aside and, in many cases, being refused entry. Artists entering with     visas or through the Visa Waiver Program (ESTA) are being pulled aside the moment they say that they are ’entertainers’ ’performers’ or ’artists.’ . .. In short, an Immigration Officer has the unfettered authority and discretion to deny entry to any artist from any nationality for any reason. To what extent this authority will be exercised remains to be seen.” In a more hotly contested portion of his post, Goldstein also said that ESTA and visitor visas don’t provide artists enough cover, even for unpaid work, and that their continued use by bands could spur serious consequences: ”Artists cannot perform on visitor visas (   ) or through the Visa Waiver Program (”ESTA”) regardless of whether or not they are being paid and regarding of whether or not tickets are sold. Except in the most narrowly defined circumstances, US immigration law has always defined ”work” as it pertains to artists, as any kind of performance. Artists denied entry on the basis of fraud, will have a denied entry on their record, impeding future visas and travel.” Goldstein instead urged visiting bands to get ”O” or ”P” work visas designed for working entertainers."
"The White House is celebrating some encouraging numbers this week. Factory jobs are up. Illegal border crossings are down. The new administration is claiming credit on both fronts, although much of the change so far is psychological. The Labor Department released its first monthly jobs report of the new Trump administration Friday. The numbers were solid, if not spectacular. U. S. employers added 235, 000 jobs in February. Gains were especially strong in manufacturing, construction and oil drilling. ”I would characterize it as a very good report,” said Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh of IHS Markit. ”We had very strong,    gains in jobs in January and February. That puts us in a very good position. We’ve got some momentum going in the labor market. So this is good news.” During the campaign, Trump repeatedly called the government’s unemployment numbers ”phony”  —   arguing the jobless rate was higher than reported. Asked about the change in tune, press secretary Sean Spicer quoted Trump in Friday’s press briefing: ”They may have been phony in the past but it’s very real now.” The administration was so eager to trumpet that good news, officials ignored a   rule to withhold comment for at least an hour after the official report. The president waited just 11 minutes before retweeting a Drudge Report item with the jobs number and the headline ”GREAT AGAIN.” His press secretary followed 11 minutes later. Some forecasters were expecting even stronger job gains, after an encouraging private payroll report earlier in the week. Hiring in February was roughly on par with the last month of the Obama administration, as well as hiring this time last year. ”It’s important to remember that President Trump inherited an economy that was already making steady progress towards full employment,” said economist Elise Gould of the   Economic Policy Institute. ”Today’s numbers of 235, 000 are very much in line with what we saw in January  —   238, 000 jobs added  —   or what we saw in February of last year  —   237, 000 jobs.” Even if the latest jobs report was not a barn burner, it was certainly encouraging. Unemployment inched down to 4. 7 percent, and hundreds of thousands of new people started looking for work. ”There definitely has been an improvement in business confidence since the election, even before Mr. Trump took office,” Behravesh said. ”  confidence, for example, soared. Overall business confidence has improved. Consumer confidence has improved. So I think there is a confidence effect and that is translating into jobs growth.” The young Trump presidency is having a different kind of psychological effect on the Southwest border, where the number of illegal crossings fell by an estimated 40 percent last month.   migrants tell NPR they’ve been discouraged by the president’s   rhetoric as well as increased deportations. As with job growth, the White House painted the drop in illicit border crossings as a sign of progress. ”These measures reflect that both the economy and the border are already responding to the president’s agenda, even while we’re still in the beginning stages of putting his policies in place,” said Spicer. ”The country and the world are clearly ready and waiting for the change the president campaigned on and is already delivering.” The stock market is also on a roll, with the Dow up nearly 14 percent since the November election. Many of these gains are based on expectations about what Trump has promised to do, rather than what he has already done. ”There is some concern that businesses are getting ahead of themselves in the sense that while there’s been a lot of good talk about rolling back regulations, about cutting taxes, there’s only been very, very limited progress so far,” Behravesh said. ”So the worry is that we could be setting ourselves up for disappointment.” For the moment, the White House is happy to tout some positive results, as it begins the tougher task of pushing a contentious legislative agenda."
"The U. S. added 235, 000 jobs in February, while the unemployment rate nudged down a tenth of a percentage point to 4. 7 percent. The monthly report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics fell roughly in line with economists’ expectations: Healthy economic growth continuing January’s strong showing. The number of unemployed Americans saw little change last month, as well, hovering at roughly 7. 5 million people. At the same time, the January payroll number was revised to 238, 000 jobs, up from last month’s initial estimate of 227, 000. Solid gains in construction, manufacturing and health care helped drive February’s robust numbers. And there was cause for optimism in wages, as well: Average hourly earnings last month increased 2. 8 percent from a year ago. As NPR’s John Ydstie reports for our Newscast unit, the economy had already shown signs of momentum ahead of Friday’s report. Growth in construction jobs had helped a private sector report earlier this week exceed expectations. John explains that part of that boost might arise from anticipation of policies President Trump has promised: a combination of hefty tax cuts and infrastructure investment. ”President Trump won’t be shy about claiming credit for a good number even though his main economic policies are not yet in place,” John notes. ”However, the expectation of big tax cuts and infrastructure spending may have contributed to some additional hiring by businesses.” Trump, who dismissed government jobs data as exaggerations or a ”hoax” before he took office, retweeted the conservative news aggregator Drudge Report on Friday. That tweet linked to a Bloomberg report and said simply: ”GREAT AGAIN: +235, 000.” ”It’s definitely a solid report,” Tara Sinclair, economist at George Washington University, tells The Washington Post. ”This is the kind of number that the Federal Reserve was looking to receive before their meetings next week.” Partly on the strength of recent jobs reports, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said in December that the central bank expects to bump its benchmark interest rate three times in 2017. The Fed’s announcement predicted ”only gradual increases” in the rate, NPR’s Bill Chappell noted at the time. February’s healthy report likely will do little to dissuade the Fed from this course when it meets next week to vote on raising the interest rate."
"A day after reports that a scandal involving Marines accused of sharing nude photos of female service members may also include other branches of the military, U. S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis responded with a message to those under his command: ”Lack of respect for the dignity and humanity of fellow members of the Department of Defense is unacceptable and counter to unit cohesion.” Mattis addressed the issue days after Thomas James Brennan, a Marine veteran and journalist, reported that the private Facebook group Marines United, which began as a way for   and veteran Marines to form a community based on collegiality and mental health, was being used to either share or promote the sharing of nude images of female service members. ”We will not excuse or tolerate such behavior if we are to uphold our values and maintain our ability to defeat the enemy on the battlefield,” Mattis said. The Pentagon is investigation the    —   and in the past 24 hours, both CBS News and Business Insider have reported that members of other branches of the U. S. military were involved in similar activities, and that online bulletin boards were being used to either share or solicit nude or explicit photos and videos of women in the military. A visit to one of the   sites Friday confirmed that it was still active. Providing an update of the situation in a Pentagon briefing Friday, Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said, ”There’s been nobody charged so far.” He added that the inquiry by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is ongoing. Neller did not dismiss reports that other sites have been used to share the photos, saying, ”My sense is, there’s probably others out there.” ”These allegations themselves, they undermine everything that we stand for as a Marine Corps, and as Marines: discipline, honor, professionalism, and respect and trust amongst each other,” Neller said. When asked what he has to say to female Marines, Neller said, ”I’m going to ask them to trust us, and I understand why that might be a reach for them right now.” Brennan, who runs the War Horse news site, published his story on the Center for Investigative Reporting’s site Reveal last weekend. Almost immediately, Brennan received threats  —   a development that Neller called ”disgusting.” Calling himself ”generationally challenged” because he isn’t on Facebook and other social media outlets, Neller also acknowledged that he and other leaders in the Marines are now studying an area they hadn’t expected to learn about: what the limits of the law are when it comes to naked photos that are shared without permission. One legal question, he said, involves whether a photo that was taken consensually can then be shared by one of the parties involved. ”There are going to be consequences to this type of behavior,” Neller said. ”But I think that’s going to be down the road.” As we’ve reported: ”Almost immediately after the War Horse contacted the Marine Corps about the images in late January, the service asked Google and Facebook to delete accounts linked to the material, and an NCIS inquiry was begun, Brennan writes. But he adds that more nude photos soon appeared on the Marines United page.” Directing his remarks at any Marines watching him today who are involved in sharing the photos and images, Neller told them they’re not helping the service. ”We claim that being a Marine is a special title, and something that you earn,” Neller said. ”There is honor here. But there is no honor in denigrating a fellow Marine in any way, shape or form.” At the start of Friday’s news conference, Neller said that he had wanted to have a smaller gathering, a roundtable talk with reporters about the story  —   ”But clearly, this has kind of gone beyond that,” he said."
"The Trump administration has cleared out the top echelons at the State Department. The latest departures include the assistant secretaries of state for Asia and Africa, who left this week. Foreign governments are noticing all the vacancies  —   and so is Congress. ”We’ve had a lot of hearings and we’ve not had any Trump presentations at any of those hearings,” said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ”There’s no one to speak on behalf of the Trump administration.” Cardin spoke to reporters ahead of a Thursday hearing on Yemen, a country where the Trump administration has already carried out a military operation that resulted in civilian casualties and the loss of an American service member. ”I mean, Yemen could explode,” Cardin said. ”It is already boiling . .. and yet we don’t have a policy for Yemen. That’s just one example.” The same vacuum could also be felt at the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which held a hearing Thursday into Russian disinformation campaigns in Europe and the U. S. Republican Chairman Ed Royce warned that Russia is trying to discredit Western democratic institutions and splinter NATO. But again, no Trump officials were present to speak on behalf of the administration. Former Utah Gov. Jon Hunstman has reportedly accepted the job of ambassador to Russia  —   but there’s been no official nomination yet. Congress might soon have an opportunity to ask him questions about Russia policy at a confirmation hearing. However, congressional aides say no such hearings are scheduled. The administration’s few ambassadorial picks haven’t even advanced to that stage. Take Trump’s apparent choice for ambassador to the U. K. At a luncheon back in January, Trump pointed to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, describing him as ”the ambassador Woody Johnson, going to Saint James,” meaning ambassador to the Court of Saint James, the formal diplomatic title for the U. S. ambassador to Britain. The White House has not yet made that official. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is still waiting for an ethics review and other paperwork to consider Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad as ambassador to China. And it has yet to receive all the needed paperwork for two career diplomats to serve as ambassadors to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal. Meanwhile, the White House has yet to name any other top diplomats  —   some 60 slots remain vacant  —   or fill any of the 30 top jobs at headquarters requiring Senate confirmation, from deputy secretary of state on down to regional assistant secretaries. But according to ProPublica, the administration has placed hundreds of officials in agency jobs not requiring Senate confirmation  —   including nearly two dozen advisers and assistants at the State Department. For now, career diplomats remain in the top jobs requiring Senate confirmation. But Cardin pointed out that Congress can’t call these diplomats up to Capitol Hill to speak on behalf of Trump administration policies. ”It wouldn’t be fair and that’s not useful,” Cardin said. Four of his Democratic colleagues have written to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, raising concerns that the State Department is ”experiencing significant management challenges, being cut out of important Administration foreign policy decisions, and facing potentially devastating budget cuts that would severely undermine U. S. diplomatic leadership and weaken National Security.” In another sign of a vacuum at the State Department, Mexico’s foreign secretary, Luis Videgaray, arrived in Washington Thursday and skipped Foggy Bottom altogether. When asked about the visit, a State Department spokesman didn’t even know the Mexican delegation was meeting President Trump’s    Jared Kushner, and other White House officials."
"Today, Hurray for the Riff Raff unleashes The Navigator. Laura Marling unravels Semper Femina. Valerie June contemplates The Order Of Time. Marty Stuart twangs Way Out West. It’s a great day for record releases! But chances are you’ve already heard some of those albums in full online long before they hit stores, thanks to the internet and digital outlets like NPR Music’s First Listen series (which has already offered full streams of the aforementioned records). We’re not complaining  —   it’s a music fan’s dream to catch an exclusive early stream. But gone are the days when record release day meant a line around the block, or when holding a record in your hand meant more than holding your smartphone. So in the era of digital distribution, what does record release day really mean? In this segment, David and I debate the merits of TGIRRD, starting with David’s 1969 experience at Tower Records in San Francisco, where he lined up to score Santana’s   masterpiece. Patti Smith tells the story of riding the bus into Philly every Saturday for a month to see if her local record store finally had a copy of Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde. We discuss what happens when an artist eschews the rules altogether and drops a record unannounced in the middle of the night. (We’re looking at you, Beyoncé.) We discuss how TGIRRD became synonymous with TGIF, and why the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) decided to change the standard American album release day from Tuesday to Friday. And we’ll play you a song by Conor Oberst from his record Salutations, which doesn’t come out until next Friday (but is, of course, already streaming). Below, dig into our   playlist, updated to include fresh tracks from records that just came out today  —   whatever that means!"
"Valerie June releases her new album, The Order Of Time, Friday. It’s the   to her 2013 breakout album, Pushin’ Against A Stone, which was produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. June was influenced by the church, family members and the music of Memphis, where she grew up and first began performing. She may have relocated since then, but her roots are strong. In this session, hear an interview that begins with June walking into the room and remarking, ”I really don’t want to be in control anymore, of anything.” Check out where our conversation went from there in the player above, and watch a song from her World Cafe Live performance via VuHaus below."
"In Louisiana, people arrested for serious crimes who can’t afford a lawyer often are put on a waiting list for representation. A new lawsuit says the situation is unconstitutional. Frederick Bell is one of the plaintiffs in the class action suit. Bell lives ”down the bayou” as locals say  —   in LaFourche Parish, defined by its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. He does cement work in the oilfield industry, but things are on hold as he awaits trial on a drug charge from last October. Officers say they found drugs in his car during a traffic stop. Bell says he saw the public defender the day after he was arrested, in jail, for about 5 minutes. ”That was really just to tell me what I was charged with and how much my bond was,” Bell says. They didn’t speak again until a court appearance a month later. He says when his name was called, the lawyer told him what prosecutors were offering in exchange for a guilty plea. ”I hadn’t spoken with anybody about what went down for them to even give me a plea deal,” he says. He declined the offer, and his trial was set for April. But just a few weeks out, he still has not discussed his case with a public defender. ”I wish my attorney would at least get in touch with me or let me know what’s going on,” Bell says. ”If they do have evidence or if they don’t? But no word.” Bell and 12 others are suing the governor and the state public defender board in a class action brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The lawsuit claims Louisiana’s indigent defense system violates both the federal and state constitutions, which affirm the right to legal counsel for poor defendants. Bell is out on bond, but other plaintiffs have been in jail for months with little or no contact with a lawyer. Bell says he’s getting no guidance on how to fight his charges. ”To me it’s like you got a noose around your neck standing on a   stool trying to balance yourself cause you don’t know what’s going on,” Bell says. How Louisiana pays for public defense, Public defenders say they’re performing a balancing act themselves. They handle more than 80 percent of criminal cases in Louisiana. ”I’m the only   employee with the public defenders’ office,” explains Rhonda Covington, the public defender for East and West Feliciana  —   two mostly rural parishes. Covington says she’s got 265 open cases. Seven of them are felony life without parole situations, and she also handles juvenile delinquencies, family services and misdemeanors. ”Everything from doing 60 in a 55 to   murder, so it’s a wide expanse,” she says. ”And I clean the office.” Two   paralegals and two   contract attorneys help with the load. But there’s nothing in the budget for other resources lawyers typically use. ”I’ve got people who are homeless but I don’t have a social worker to help me,” she says. ”I have murder cases that I’m doing my own investigation on because I can’t afford an investigator. I need experts. Can’t get those.” Chronic underfunding for indigent defense has been an issue in Louisiana for decades. But it reached a crisis level last year when the public defender in New Orleans stopped taking new felony cases. People accused of serious crimes were put on a waiting list for a lawyer. When NPR reported on it at the time, public defenders in 12 districts said they couldn’t keep up with caseloads. Now 33 of the state’s 44 judicial districts are in that position, and Louisiana’s chief justice has declared an emergency shortfall in public defense funding. ”Public defense is not popular,” Covington says. ”So politicians do not like it.” Covington says her budget is a fraction of what prosecutors get. ”People think that criminals have more rights than victims. You hear that a lot,” she says. ”This is giving rights to people who are accused. They haven’t been convicted of anything. They’re innocent until proven guilty. That’s the American system.” At issue is the way Louisiana pays for public defense. While the state provides some money, the system depends primarily on traffic tickets and local court costs, which vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and have nothing to do with the demand for   lawyers. Louisiana Administrative Commissioner Jay Dardenne says there’s no question that there are longstanding challenges funding the system. But he says it’s not that the state doesn’t want to provide indigent defense as a matter of policy. ”We have evidenced a recognition of the state’s obligation to provide a portion of the funding in that we have not reduced their funding at a time when we’ve reduced everything else in state government,” Dardenne says. He says with the state facing a nearly billion dollar budget shortfall this fiscal year and next, it’s about priorities. ”They’re competing for state dollars with a lot of other needs that the state has at a time when we’re going through a very tumultuous budget experience,” he says. ’Running a mill’ Critics say that’s no excuse. ”The Constitution doesn’t accept a budget deficit as a reason not to comply with the Constitution,” says Lisa Graybill with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which filed the lawsuit. ”When you don’t have adequate defense, when you don’t have a zealous defense, you really are just running a mill for processing people into prison,” Graybill says. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country, and also one of the highest rates of exonerations. But it’s not alone when it comes to a chronic shortage of public defenders. Similar lawsuits have been filed at least six other states. Earlier this year, a Louisiana federal judge threw out a lawsuit brought by the ACLU when the New Orleans office stopped taking new felony clients. But his ruling said it was clear Louisiana is ”failing miserably at upholding its obligations” to provide lawyers for defendants who can’t afford private counsel. The crisis has judges looking for ways to keep their courts moving. ”I started with A’s on that with attorneys in the phone book,” says Lafayette Judge Patrick Michot. He turned to the private bar, recruiting pro bono lawyers by phone to help defendants who would otherwise be in limbo. ”They can’t afford a lawyer and nothing is happening with their case and the cases are just piling up and they’re not going to trial and these people are giving up their time to come to court,” Michot says. Now it’s up to a state judge to consider whether Louisiana is living up to its constitutional obligation to provide for indigent defense."
"Oh sure, the Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, capturing breathtaking images of the beringed gas giant and illuminating a   pocket of our solar system for the sake of scientific inquiry. But  —   you’re surely asking  —   what good is all that if the craft hasn’t taken any quality photographs of space ravioli? Well, on Thursday, Cassini finally sent back what armchair astronomers are saying is the world’s definitive depiction of space ravioli  —   or, depending on whom you ask, a space walnut . .. or a space empanada. Or, if you insist on getting technical: The image sent back Thursday depicts Saturn’s tiny moon Pan, a distinctively ridged satellite that’s so close to the planet, it completes a full orbit roughly every 14 hours. The moon, which has a diameter of just about 20 miles, follows in the footsteps of its ancient Greek namesake by acting as a shepherd to the material that makes up Saturn’s rings, clearing an empty space in their midst known as the Encke Gap. Still, whatever its other qualities, Pan’s curious shape is tough to ignore because it bears more than a passing resemblance to a sight you may find much closer to home  —   or rather, in your home on your dinner table. As researchers posited in Science magazine in 2007, Pan and another of Saturn’s moons earned their equatorial ridges from the accumulation of ring particles, picked up over time as the moons orbit. The authors put it this way: ”We propose that Pan and Atlas ridges are   ’  piles’ formed after the satellites themselves and after the flattening of the rings but before the complete depletion of ring material from their surroundings.” It’s safe to say the images released Thursday are some of the clearest we’ve ever seen of Pan. ”I saw this picture, and I thought, that’s an artist’s conception,” Carolyn C. Porco, leader of Cassini’s imaging team and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, tells the New York Times. ”Then I realized it was real.” And it might very well be among the last images sent by Cassini, a robotic spacecraft spearheaded jointly by NASA, the European Space Agency and Italy’s space agency. After more than a decade circling Saturn, the craft has just a few months left before it commences what NASA calls the Grand Finale, a ”daring set of orbits” that will end with Cassini plunging past Saturn to collect information on the planet’s gravitational fields, atmosphere and ring mass. Yet above and beyond the incalculable value it has offered scientists, Cassini’s recent flyby has also offered journalists a humbler  —   though no less joyous  —   kind of gift: the chance to make a whole lot of pasta jokes."
"Members of American Indian tribes, indigenous communities and their supporters are demonstrating today in Washington, D. C. calling on the Trump administration to meet with tribal leaders and protesting the construction of the nearly complete Dakota Access Pipeline. The protest is partly led by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which has been battling the federal government for more than a year over an oil pipeline that members say endangers their drinking water and has destroyed sacred sites in North Dakota. In drizzling rain and snow, people marched from the headquarters of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, which handled route approval for a controversial section of the pipeline just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, to the White House. ”They’re holding up signs, they’re beating drums, they’re chanting,” NPR’s Windsor Johnston reported from the protest site in downtown D. C. Some signs read, ”We are here to protect,” ”water is life” and ”stand up to big oil.” Lonnie Whitemountain said he’s a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and drove 33 hours to take part. ”I would tell [President Trump] they need to stop these pipelines that are destroying our water,” he said. ”He needs to listen to us and realize that he should think about all of our lives.” ”Honor our treaties,” protester Allison Seneguls of Minnesota told Johnston. ”We’re indigenous to this country, and we should be honored and respected.” Judith LeBlanc is a member of the Caddo tribe in Oklahoma, and the director of the Native Organizer’s Alliance, one of the groups that organized the march. ”Indian country needs a huge infrastructure building program. What we want are sustainable green jobs,” she told NPR. ”What’s good for Indians, and tribal sovereignty and our right to say ’no,’ is good for our neighbors, our relatives and our entire planet.” Some people arrived earlier this week and camped on the National Mall in protest, setting up teepees and other shelters. Eryn Wise is a member of the Jicarilla Apache and Laguna Pueblo tribes of New Mexico and told The Washington Post she spent four months protesting the pipeline in North Dakota. ”We’ve never been a part of a movement that represented us in such a powerful and important way. An   resistance,” the    told the newspaper on Friday. According to a website set up by march organizers, the goal of the demonstrations is to highlight the responsibility of the federal government to respect tribal sovereignty. One of the hashtags supporters used on social media was #ConsentNotConsultation, calling on federal agencies to do more than consult with indigenous communities about policies that affect them or their land. ”We have that message here loud and strong,” explained Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, one of the groups that has organized and funded the movement against the pipeline. ”We’re not going away, we’re never going away and we are the first peoples of this continent.” Since the Dakota Access Pipeline route near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation was approved in July 2016, tribal leaders have argued in public statements and court filings that their concerns about the pipeline were not adequately considered by the federal government. The march comes days after the latest legal setback for the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes, who are suing the Army Corps and the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline. On Tuesday, a federal judge denied a motion by the tribes to halt final construction of the portion of the pipeline that runs under part of the Missouri River called Lake Oahe. The pipeline company says oil could begin flowing as early as Monday."
"The maximum workday for   medical residents just got substantially longer. The group that sets rules for training doctors announced Friday it will be scrapping the   cap on shifts worked by doctors who have just graduated from medical school. As of July 1, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education will allow these   residents, also known as interns, to work 24 hours without a break  —   and sometimes as long as 28, if a particular transition between doctors demands it. The ACGME is discarding a requirement that was implemented in 2011, arguing that the   cap simply did not deliver on its promises  —   and caused some new problems to boot. ”The Task Force [review panel] has determined that the hypothesized benefits associated with the changes made to   resident scheduled hours in 2011 have not been realized,” the ACGME notes in its announcement of the rule changes, ”and the disruption of   care and supervisory systems has had a significant negative impact on the professional education of the   resident, and effectiveness of care delivery of the team as a whole.” For instance, task force member Dr. Anai Kothari tells Forbes the cap would occasionally prevent doctors from seeing a treatment or surgery through from beginning to end. Patients want to know ”you are the doctor taking care of them,” Kothari says. ”The long shifts are infrequent, but they are important when needed.” The group says its conclusion is based on ”over 4, 200 hours formulating the new requirements, including systematically reviewing over 1, 000 published articles and extensive input from all stakeholders.” As NPR’s Rob Stein reported when the rule change was proposed in November 2016, the move has its fair share of critics. ”Study after study shows that   resident physicians are a danger to themselves, their patients and the public,” Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, told Rob. ”It’s disheartening to see the ACGME cave to pressure from organized medicine and let their misguided wishes trump public health.” The Associated Press notes the American Medical Student Association and the Committee of Interns and Residents also oppose the change. The long shifts are ”based on a patriarchal hazing system,”   resident Samantha Harrington tells the wire service. She says the underlying message from longtime physicians is: ”I went through it, so therefore you have to go through it too.” ”The question of work hour standards appropriately provokes great emotion in both the graduate medical education community and among segments of the general public,” the ACGME acknowledges in its Friday announcement. But ”it is important to note that 24 hours is a ceiling, not a floor,” the group adds. ”Residents in many specialties may never experience a   clinical work period.” While the ACGME is relaxing its restrictions on interns’ shifts, it is maintaining previous regulations in other areas. Residents and fellows still cannot work more than 80 hours in a single week, and they must have at least one day off from clinical experience or education in any   span."
"Since 2003, strict rules have limited how long medical residents can work without a break. The rules are supposed to minimize the risk that these    will make mistakes that threaten patients’ safety because of fatigue. But are these rules really the best for new doctors and their patients? There’s been intense debate over that and some say little data to resolve the question. So a group of researchers decided to follow thousands of medical residents at dozens of hospitals around the country. The study compares the current rules, which limit   residents to working no more than 16 hours without a break, with a more flexible schedule that could allow the young doctors to work up to 30 hours. Researchers will examine whether more mistakes happen on one schedule or the other and whether the residents learn more one way or the other. The yearlong study started in July. ”If we want to take the best care of patients now and in the future, we really need to understand much more about the intricate balance of hours, education and care,” says David Asch, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who is leading the study. But this study and a similar project have triggered objections from Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, an advocacy organization based in Washington, D. C. and the American Medical Student Association, which represents medical students. The groups argue the studies put patients and residents at risk.   residents are more likely to injure themselves while doing procedures such as drawing blood, inserting intravenous lines or suturing wounds, says Michael Carome, who heads the health research group. The accidents could lead to infections with viruses such as hepatitis and HIV, he says. And tired residents tend to get into more car accidents after work. He argues that the studies raise concerns about patients, too. ”Tired residents are more likely to make mistakes when they’re caring for patients,” Carome says. ”And those mistakes in some cases can lead to catastrophic complications and even death.” A   example is the 1984 case of Libby Zion. Zion was a college freshman who died at a New York hospital while being cared for by residents. Other cases in which patients were harmed or even killed by mistakes made by tired residents finally resulted in the new work rules, which were adopted in 2003. These rules were revised in 2011, adding the   restriction for   residents. Because longer hours are so risky, Carome argues, the studies are unethical, especially since the researchers are not being required to ask the residents or the patients for permission to include them. ”Patients are not being informed at all, so the patients are completely unwitting subjects of this research,” Carome says. ”The residents are aware that they are in this trial, but they have no choice to participate unless they want to leave the residency training program.” That’s the case for David Harari, a   medical resident at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. He knew his hours would be grueling but says he was shocked when he discovered he may have to work 30 hours straight. ”I can’t see how anyone could work optimally with such little sleep,” Harari says. ”It’s extremely difficult to stay awake, stay alert and function optimally at that level.” Harari was offended by the fact he had no choice in the matter. ”Being asked to partake in a study in which I never provided informed consent felt extremely unethical and really uncomfortable,” Harari says. Carome argues hospitals are pushing to relax the rules to save money. But Asch argues that the research is needed to determine which schedule is safest and teaches residents the best. Longer shifts may actually be safer than shorter shifts, he says, because shorter shifts can lead to more night shifts, which can be even more fatiguing than long shifts. And, Asch says, mistakes often occur when residents have to hand off their patients to other doctors because a rigid schedule forces them to go home. ”The new doctor taking care of you never knows you as well as the doctor who was taking care of you before,” Asch says. Information handoffs are ”like in a relay race, where the baton gets dropped between two runners. And it’s known as a critical point where medical errors are common.” Asch also maintains that it isn’t practical to get consent from all the doctors and patients in the study. Some independent bioethicists agree. ”They’re asking important questions that we need to answer in order to create competent doctors, and I think they’re doing it in an ethically sound manner,” says Mildred Solomon, who heads the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank. The federal Office for Human Research Protections is reviewing the complaints about the studies, according to a spokesman."
"Wisconsin creamed the competition. America’s Dairyland took home the first, second and   prizes at the U. S. Championship Cheese Contest this week  —   with a    hard cheese from Antigo, Wisc. at the top. Second place went to an aged cheddar from Weyauwega, and third place to a gouda from Thorp. A record 2, 303 dairy products  —   included butter, yogurt and cheese  —   were submitted to the contest, according to the organizers. Daniel Higgins of the Green Bay   reported from the awards ceremony on Thursday. He said that winning cheesemaker Mike Matucheski thanked ”those wonderful cows” in his victory speech. The U. S. Championship Cheese Contest started in 1957 and is held every other year  —   alternating with the World Championship Cheese Contest. Both events are hosted in Wisconsin, and run by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, but the state doesn’t always dominate so thoroughly. In the 2015 U. S. championship, a Swiss wheel from Ohio came in first in 2013, a Wisconsin cheese was the top winner, but Vermont and Illinois were also represented in the top three. And while a Wisconsin cheesemaker won the 2016 world championship, it was the first U. S. victory since 1988. In the decades between, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia and Switzerland were the conquering countries. (We should note there is a rival global cheese competition  —   the World Cheese Awards. The U. S. has never won top honors in that annual contest, which is run by a British organization.)"
"The buses line up at the Invepi refugee camp in northern Uganda. One after the other they drop off dozens of South Sudanese seeking refuge on this side of the border. They come off carrying whatever possessions they still have: sometimes that means empty plastic jugs, sometimes it means chickens that provide food along the way. Many of the refugees are barefoot. When they’ve finished with their registration and vaccinations, some just sit there, staring into space. As the fighting in South Sudan has intensified, so has the flow of refugees to Uganda. Just over the past week, Invepi went from receiving about 1, 000 refugees a day to about 3, 000. Perhaps one of the most stunning statistics is that most of them  —   the U. N. Refugee Agency estimates 86 percent  —   are women and children. Many of these women are fleeing from ”war, hunger and appalling acts of   violence,” said Refugees International, a humanitarian organization that advocates for displaced people, in a statement on Friday. ”We are yet again seeing the use of rape and other forms of violence against women fleeing South Sudan.” Angurese, 14, lives about at the Bidibidi refugee camp in Uganda, about two hours away from the nearest paved road. NPR is only using first names of refugees to protect their security. She sits inside a mud hut holding her baby son. She says that over the past few months, fighting between the Dinkas and Nuers, the two biggest ethnic groups in South Sudan, had gotten really bad around her home right outside of Lainya, a village southwest of Juba. At one point, she says, the fighters even started attacking civilians. ”When the Dinkas come, they either slaughter you with the knife or they cut you with a machete, so we’re now running away because we could not wait,” she says. The only midwife in town took off. And Angurese’s mother told her she had no choice but to follow the midwife because at that time, she was pregnant. Fatuma, the midwife, says their group walked four days through the bush. South Sudan has been an ethnic battleground on and off for decades, but Fatuma says this conflict is different. She says she saw young pregnant women raped  —   and the road in front of her house had become a killing field. ”They used not to kill women but these days now they’re killing women, children, elderly even the pastors, the bishops, they don’t spare us,” she says. It wasn’t long ago that the world had high hopes for South Sudan. In 2011, amid massive celebrations, it became the world’s newest independent nation. But just a few years later, South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, accused his vice president Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer, of planning a coup. As Kiir’s Dinka troops disarmed and attacked Machar’s Nuer fighters, the country quickly descended into a civil war. This week, the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a report that found the country was on the brink of genocide. And last month, the U. N. declared a famine in some of parts of country. The situation for women and children is bleak: Human rights groups have documented fighters raping girls and sexually mutilating boys by castrating them. Both sides have abducted over 3, 000 children for use as soldiers since 2013, according to the U. N. Jerry Farrell, South Sudan country director for the aid group Catholic Relief Services, says in most conflicts, it is women and children who suffer most. But the number of them being displaced in this conflict is ”extremely high.” He says that in a lot of ways the civilians in South Sudan have been caught in a perfect storm: Conflict has combined with an economic collapse and a bad drought. The number of women and children affected, he says, is also testing the aid response. For example, it’s become clear that his group’s efforts to help that population would have to be scaled up many times over to meet the needs of the displaced. He says that many children, for example, are not being educated, because much of the aid simply goes toward keeping people alive by feeding them. ”So the long term prospects of the country are grim,” he says. Cecilia Tabu is a case worker for the aid group Save the Children. She works with South Sudanese children at Camp Rhino in Uganda. A big part of her job is to find foster families for children who flee South Sudan on their own. She moves through the vast camp talking to families and checking up on those who have been placed in foster homes. On a recent day, she stops to visit Kani Jane. Kani Jane came with two children of her own  —   then began accepting foster kids. Now, she lives with 13 children in a small mud hut that the older kids built. Tabu points to one of the little ones  —      Santo, whose parents took whatever money they had saved and sent him off to search for a refugee camp. It might seem unfathomable that young children can find the camps on their own, but they usually find an older kid or an adult to tag along with. ”The father just sent him to come, so sometimes he doesn’t talk,” she says. She calls Ludiya, one of the young people in her care. She gives her a smile and asks how she’s doing. When Ludiya was 17 last year, her mother did not have enough money for the whole family to flee. So she sent Ludiya off with four younger kids. Now, she has peace, but she doesn’t have her mother, she says. And while she is in school, she sits in a classroom with dozens of other students. Some classes have more than 100 kids. Tabu, the case worker, says that many of the children are traumatized and have yet to come to terms with what they’ve witnessed. She says some of the kids still don’t have shoes and at school they don’t have educational materials. But here in Uganda, she says, they have a chance. She knows that from personal experience. Back in the ’90s, when Tabu was 13 and war was raging between north Sudan and south Sudan, her parents sent her off to Uganda on her own. She landed in Camp Rhino. It was hard, she says, but she was safe and eventually managed to reunite with her parents and go to college. Tabu walks from the family’s house in the camp to a big playground built by Save the Children. When the playground first opened, Tabu says, the kids would fight along ethnic lines. But slowly, Tabu and other case workers helped them understand how to solve problems without violence. It’s simple things, she says, pointing at the swing set, where there’s a long line of kids waiting their turn. Each one counts to ten swings, they jumps off and give the other one a turn. Tabu smiles as she watches the kids play tag through a cloud of dust. They slide and they swing and they chase a football. For that moment at least, the world here feels normal."
"Two of the armed occupiers who took over a wildlife refuge last year have been convicted on felony conspiracy charges, member station Oregon Public Broadcasting reports. Two other participants in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon were found guilty on lesser felonies. The four men  —   Jason Patrick and Darryl Thorn, Jake Ryan and Duane Ehmer  —   were all charged with conspiring to keep federal employees from doing their jobs. Patrick and Thorn were found guilty of that crime, while Ryan and Ehmer were convicted on lesser charges. All four occupiers were seen as ”less prominent players” in the   occupation of the refuge, compared with other participants, OPB’s Conrad Wilson reports. The actual leaders of the occupation, including brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, went to trial last year  —   and, in a surprising verdict, were all found not guilty of conspiracy. The verdicts announced on Friday mark a ”stark contrast” to that trial, Wilson writes. Wilson has more on the latest trial: ”During closing arguments in this trial, the government acknowledged there was no signed document or recording that showed the occupiers’ goal was to prevent federal employees from going to work. But federal prosecutors argued there was more than enough circumstantial evidence for jurors to conclude there was a conspiracy to block federal workers from their jobs at the refuge. . .. ”The government’s case relied heavily on testimony from law enforcement  —   largely FBI agents  —   but also several federal employees who worked at the refuge. ”Agents testified about their roles in processing evidence at the refuge, response to the occupation and   investigations. Refuge employees talked about the work they weren’t able to do because of the occupation, as well as the deep sense of fear they felt in the weeks leading up to and throughout the occupation.”"
"Somaliland can’t catch a break. Its arranged marriage to Somalia fell apart more than a quarter century ago, yet the world refuses to recognize the divorce. Now Somalilanders find themselves temporarily barred from the United States under President Trump’s new travel ban, and they’re not happy about it. ”Somaliland should not be mixed with Somalia. We are two different states,” says Saad Ali Shire, the foreign minister of the   Republic of Somaliland. Somalia is a hotbed of terrorist activity, particularly for the extremist Islamist group  . The U. S. State Department strongly warns American citizens against visiting any part of Somalia  —   and Somaliland as well  —   saying they face a serious threat of kidnapping. Things have gotten so bad in parts of Somalia that Washington also has banned U. S. planes from entering Somali airspace and urges Americans to avoid sailing ”near the coast of Somalia due to the risk of pirate attacks.” ”Somaliland is a separate country,” Shire protests. ”We don’t have the troubles and problems with terrorism and extremism that they have in Somalia.” Then again, it is understandable that Somaliland and Somalia are linked. Up until 1960, Somaliland was a British protectorate known as British Somaliland. When it won independence from the U. K. Somaliland merged with the former Italian colony, Italian Somaliland, to form the Somali Republic. In a region sharply divided by clan rivalries, it was never a great union. In 1991, Somaliland declared itself an independent nation  —   although it has never been formally recognized by the U. N. (or the U. S.) in part because Somalia refuses to accept the breakup. After the split, Somalia, with Mogadishu as its capital, disintegrated into chaos and became the global poster child for a failed state. From 1991 to 2012 there was no functioning central government. Mogadishu became one of the most dangerous cities on Earth. The world isn’t entirely convinced that the breakaway province of Somaliland to the north is a bastion of peace and stability. The British government strongly urges Brits not to go there. The Foreign Office warning says there is a ”high threat to Western, including British, interests from terrorism in Somalia, including Somaliland.” But that same warning goes on to state that there’ve been no major terrorist attacks in Somaliland since 2008. The CIA Fact Book entry from Somalia also describes Somaliland as a territory that’s valiantly trying to function normally: ”Although not recognized by any government, this entity has maintained a stable existence and continues efforts to establish a constitutional democracy, including holding municipal, parliamentary and presidential elections.” The Somaliland Foreign Ministry has formally asked the U. S. State Department to remove Somaliland from the new travel policy, which temporarily blocks residents of six   countries. ”Immigration policies directed at Somalia must not be applied to our country,” Shire says. Shire, speaking by phone from the Somaliland capital of Hargeisa, says Somaliland is being unfairly blamed for the problems of its dysfunctional neighbor. ”I think we should be judged on our own merits,” Shire says. ”Have we controlled terrorism? Have we controlled our borders? I think the answer is all yes. Do we pose a risk? No.” But for at least the next 90 days, no Somalilander can be issued a new visa to enter the United States."
"An interview about South Korea’s political upheaval became one of the most popular things on the Internet on Friday, when the children of professor Robert E. Kelly became the inadvertent stars of his spot on the BBC. The BBC News video of the sequence was retweeted and ”liked” thousands of times, and Kelly won empathy  —   especially from those who said they can identify with the struggle to be both a professional and a parent in the same moment. ”I think it’s awesome that a man can be world class in his field and have a family where their kids feel comfortable enough to play with him,” Rob Erickson said via Twitter. Kelly was offering his thoughts about the impeachment of President Park   when his daughter infiltrated the live Skype interview  —   and in an instant, viewers who had been pondering the Korean peninsula were instead watching the pigtailed girl bop into the room, clearly pleased to have found her daddy. ”I think one of your children has just walked in,” the BBC anchor said, prompting Kelly to reach behind him to keep his daughter back from the camera. Kelly smiled, and the girl settled onto a table in what looks to be his home office in Pusan to have a snack, and all seemed settled. And that’s when Kelly’s toddler son got into the act, bursting into the room in a rolling walker and making a beeline toward the camera. At that point,   giggles erupted from the BBC set, and while Kelly did his best to keep his composure, a woman rushed into the room to retrieve the children. ”Pardon me,” Kelly said. ”My apologies.” He proceeded to go over recent events on the Korean peninsula, even as an obviously emotional scene played out outside his door. When a BBC producer asked him via Twitter about reposting the video, Kelly responded by asking, ”What would that mean, please? Rebroadcasting it on BBC TV, or just here on Twitter? Is this kinda thing that goes ’viral’ and gets weird?” While the majority of responses we’ve seen have been positive, some viewers have questioned the way Kelly pushed his daughter  —   one person wrote on Twitter that he ”stiff armed his kid without breaking his steely, unflinching camera gaze.” And on the BBC Newsbeat’s Facebook posting of the video, a top comment by Joe Gee Karanja reads, ”I wouldn’t be embarrassed by my kids. .. he could’ve just grabbed the child with yellow sweater and place her on his lap. Nothing wrong with that.” To that, Micaela Doran replied, ”Really? He’s trying to remain professional. There is a time and place for family time. This was work time. Children need to learn this too.” By the time he was on the BBC (watch the full interview here) Kelly had already spoken to CNN International and Australia’s ABC network, as he monitored the fallout from Park’s removal from office. In reply to Kelly’s tweet about the video going viral, defense researcher Ziya Meral wrote, ”do not worry! It is not a negative even if it goes viral. All of us who give interviews from home would smile and love it.” Adding to that sentiment, Canadian relationship expert Dr. Kimberly Moffitt responded, ”This is TV GOLD and in the best possible way. We can all relate my friend. I’ve had a similar experience!”"
"Nickolas Butler’s second novel, The Hearts of Men, unfolds over three generations at a Boy Scout camp in Wisconsin, and explores what it means to be a good man in a changing America. ”I was sorting through some feelings about being a young dad with a young son and thinking about my own dad,” Butler says. ”. .. And there you go. . .. I had this book inside me at this time. It needed to get out.” Like his characters, Butler also grew up in Wisconsin and went to Boy Scout camp from age of 7 to 17. (He started as a Cub and worked his way up to Eagle.) He says the Boy Scouts gave him a love of nature along with a strong sense of right and wrong. ”This is sort of hokey in the 21st century, but it goes back to a lot of these old scout laws or ideas: loyalty, bravery, kindness. Stuff like that.” The Hearts of Men opens in 1962 with the camp bugler, a boy named Nelson. He’s a good kid: He likes school, he likes the Boy Scouts and he’s working to earn more badges than any one. He’s eager to please adults, but other kids just don’t like him and he doesn’t understand why. Then that summer Nelson becomes friends with a boy named Jonathan. He’s a cool guy  —   athletic and popular. The two aren’t exactly close, but Nelson is just grateful for whatever attention Jonathan throws his way, even when it leads to a painfully humiliating incident that forges an unusual bond between the two. Their unlikely friendship ends up lasting a lifetime. ”One of the satisfying things for me in writing this book was the way that childhood relationships can sort of evolve over the years,” Butler says, ”and why it is that adult people maintain these sort of tenuous bonds that they created in childhood? And for Jonathan and Nelson, you know, it seems to be . .. an interesting,    relationship. But then over the course of years, they recognize in each other qualities that they themselves maybe don’t possess, but wish they did.” In the second section of the book, we meet Jonathan and Nelson as adults: Jonathan is bringing his teenage son to the same Boy Scout camp, and Nelson now runs it. Nelson is also a Vietnam veteran who returned from the war a changed man. He has neither money nor status, but Butler sees him as a heroic figure. ”When a person can be strong or aggressive but chooses to be quiet and gentle and light on the planet, I find that incredibly inspiring and important,” he says. ”And I think Nelson has seen so much horror that he’s just trying to be the light and the goodness in the world, and he understands that this camp is sort of a refuge.” On their way to the camp, Jonathan and his son stop for dinner at a nearby restaurant where they’re joined by a woman who Jonathan first introduces as a friend. During dinner, he tells his stunned son that they are actually having an affair and he plans to divorce his mother. The scene is exactly how Butler’s father told him about his affair. ”My whole paradigm of good and evil, and promises and love really broke apart,” he says. ”And also my image of my dad was totally shattered. And part of the project of this book was to see my dad in 360 degrees, to understand who he was as a human being and why he’d put me in that position. And also try and forgive him, because he wasn’t a totally bad man.” The book ends in the near future, this time with a mother taking her son to the camp. She’s Jonathan’s    Rachel. Her son has no interest in going to the camp, but his mother loves the place and plans to stay there as a parent volunteer. As the only woman in the camp, her stay turns out to be less than idyllic. Butler says it was important for him to end his book with a mother’s story. ”After that incident with my dad at the restaurant, I began to understand that my family was not held together by my dad at all, but that my mom was the hero of our family. So I think it was sort of natural that the third act of this book goes to a mom, a single mom who’s holding her son’s world together.” By the book’s end, the camp faces an uncertain future. For Butler, the book is a lament for what’s lost when such a world disappears: He says young people lose their connection to the natural world and to a code of honor that follows them through life. Editor Tom Cole and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this report."
"The Office of Government Ethics has informed the Trump administration that the White House has an ”incorrect” view of ethics laws. In a Thursday letter, OGE director Walter Shaub contradicted what he called the White House’s ”extraordinary assertion,” made in a recent letter, that ”many regulations promulgated by the Office of Government Ethics (’OGE’) do not apply to employees of the Executive Office of the President.” Shaub was having no part of that: ”The assertion is incorrect, and the letter cites no legal basis for it.” The exchange over ethics rules first unfolded as a result of Kellyanne Conway’s endorsement of Ivanka Trump’s fashion line on Fox  Friends. After that, Shaub informed the White House that there was ”strong reason to believe that Ms. Conway has violated the Standards of Conduct” by promoting private gain for the president’s family. In addition, he concluded that ”disciplinary action is warranted.” White House deputy counsel Stefan Passantino responded in a letter that Conway had ”acted inadvertently,” and he did not say that the White House would take any disciplinary action. In that letter, he also said this: ”We note initially that although many regulations promulgated by the Office of Government Ethics (”OGE”) do not apply to employees of the Executive Office of the President, the Office of the White House Counsel has instructed all such employees to abide by 3 CFR 100. 1,” the segment of ethics law that pertains to Executive Office employees. In Thursday’s letter, Shaub said he ”remain[s] concerned” about the White House’s Conway response (or lack thereof). He was more forceful about the ethics claim, however: ”I am more concerned about the extraordinary assertion that ’many’ of OGE’s regulations are inapplicable to employees of the Executive Office of the President. The assertion is incorrect, and the letter cites no legal basis for it. Presidential administrations have not considered it appropriate to challenge the applicability of ethics rules to the entire executive branch.” There are some big uncertainties here: The White House has not specified what it means by ”many,” nor explained why it believes those rules do not apply to EOP employees. In addition, the White House has said that the rules are not binding for EOP employees, but that it has also advised them to abide by ethics rules. When NPR first reported on Passantino’s statement about ethics last week, George W. Bush ethics official Richard Painter said that OGE is entitled to know which rules the White House believes do and don’t apply, as well as what, exactly, the White House is telling employees about the rules. Ethics experts have told NPR that the White House’s argument that ”many” ethics rules don’t apply to EOP employees may rest on the definition of the word ”agency.” A number of ethics rules state that they apply to employees of government ”agencies,” so this definition is a crucial one in determining which rules apply to whom. Indeed, Passantino had said in a footnote that the White House Office, a subsection of the Executive Office of the President, is not an ”agency.” Shaub disagreed with that as well. Painter told NPR last week that hinging the argument on the word ”agency” could be a losing fight. ”I am not sure this argument is right so I never would have tried it and would not recommend that the White House do so,” he said. Likewise, Obama administration ethics official Norman Eisen said he believes the Trump White House’s approach here is wrongheaded. ”This is nonsense. There are debates about whether for other purposes the [White House] is an agency,” Norman Eisen wrote in an email to NPR. ”Never before for ethics purposes.” The OGE did not ask any questions in its Thursday letter, but now, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee is. In his own letter to White House counsel Donald McGahn, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings called Passantino’s statement ”troubling” and asked, among other things, which regulations the White House believes are ”inapplicable to employees of the Executive Office of the President” and what its justification is for believing the rules do not apply to EOP employees."
"This story was updated at 5:45 p. m. U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara, one of 46 federal prosecutors asked to resign Friday, refused to step down, and was fired. ”I did not resign,” Bharara tweeted. ”I was fired. Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life.” As the federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Bharara pursued a number of   cases, including criminal cases against defendants like Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and won a $1. 8 billion settlement against SAC Capital Advisors for insider trading, shutting down the hedge fund. The Justice Department asked Bharara and 45 other federal prosecutors to resign. Such requests are standard from a new administration, as it seeks to clear out political appointees from the previous president. NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports the Justice Department has confirmed that Bharara was fired. The department said Bharara is no longer U. S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, and that he is being treated like the other U. S. Attorneys. Career attorneys will continue the work of the office. Bharara had previously told reporters that Trump had asked him to stay on. On Wednesday, NPR’s Jim Zarroli reported that a group of ethics watchdogs sent a letter to Bharara, requesting that he look into Trump’s businesses and whether they violate the Emoluments Clause of the U. S. Constitution. Bharara’s office declined to comment. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released a statement praising Bharara. ”Preet Bharara has been an exemplary U. S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. His relentless drive to root out public corruption, lock up terrorists, take on Wall Street, and stand up for what is right should serve as a model for all U. S. attorneys across the country. He will be sorely missed,” Schumer’s statement said."
"About half of all U. S. deaths from heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes are linked to poor diets, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And eating more  —   or less  —   of just 10 types of food can help raise or lower the risk of death from these causes, the researchers found. Scientists at Tufts University identified the foods that seem to contribute the most to the risk. At the top of the list? Salt. Consuming too much salt was associated with 9. 5 percent of the deaths. Next  —   and I sympathize with all of you who love to eat these  —   high intake of red meat and processed meats such as bacon was linked to 8 percent of the deaths. And sugary drinks were a factor in 7. 4 percent of the deaths. We know, it may be tough to cut back on foods you love. Bacon is so alluring to many that it has even been called the ’gateway’ to meat for vegetarians! But, here’s the flip side: The researchers also found there’s a significant risk in eating too little of certain healthy foods. So, think of it this way: You can start consuming more of the foods that are protective. For instance, the study found that low consumption of nuts and seeds was linked to about 9 percent of deaths. In addition, diets low in seafood, whole grains and fruits and vegetables were found to contribute to about   percent of the deaths. ”The good news is that we now understand which foods we need to target to prevent Americans from dying prematurely from cardiometabolic diseases,” says lead study author Renata Micha, a public health nutritionist and epidemiologist at the Friedman School at Tufts University. In 2012, about 700, 000 Americans died from these diseases. Diet was linked to nearly 319, 000 of these deaths. ”This is a remarkable burden, nearly 1, 000 deaths each day” linked to dietary habits, says senior study author Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School at Tufts. So, changing Americans dietary habits could have a significant impact, the authors argue. ”Our research suggests that nearly half of the risk can be reduced [by] eating a healthy diet,” Mozaffarian says. The new analysis is based on data from the federal survey known as NHANES, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Researchers asked some 8, 500 participants about their eating habits. In addition, Mozaffarian and his colleagues estimated associations of diet and disease from prior studies and clinical trials. Now, the task of estimating death or disease linked to diet is tricky. Scientists use statistical methods to try to tease apart the impact of diet as part of people’s overall lifestyle. One challenge: People who have healthy diets often have other healthy habits, too  —   such as getting regular exercise. Dietary habits also track with   status. So, people with lower incomes are more likely to have poorer diets compared with wealthier people. The Tufts researchers used studies that had controlled for these lifestyle factors, but it’s not a perfect science. ”Relying on evidence from observational studies. ..carries the potential limitation of confounding bias,” states an editorial that was published alongside the study. The editorial raises the possibility that the effect of confounding factors such as socioeconomic status and physical activity could be substantial. ”For instance, it’s possible that processed meat consumption merely reflects a Westernized dietary pattern.” Mozaffarian acknowledges the limitations. ”At the end of the day, our findings might modestly over   or   the health burdens,” he told us. He says the bigger point is this: ”Whether poor diet is causing 1, 000 cardiovascular and diabetes deaths per day, or 500, it remains among the leading causes of preventable suffering.” Poor diets are also linked to billions of dollars in healthcare spending. For instance, diabetes costs the U. S. $245 billion a year. In the U. S. a women with diabetes incurs, on average, about $283, 000 in lifetime health care costs. (Many cost studies don’t separate Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.) If you love foods that are associated with cardiovascular risks, you don’t have to give them up entirely. As most nutrition studies show, it’s excessive consumption that drives up the risk. For instance, dietary guidelines recommend limiting sugar consumption to no more than 10 percent of daily calories. This means that a single   sugary drink may be OK for a person who typically consumes a 2, 000    diet. The problem: Most Americans consume much more."
"You might be asking yourself, whatever happened to Vice President Mike Pence’s investigation into President Trump’s claim that millions of people voted illegally in November? It’s been over a month since the president said he would ask Pence to lead a ”major investigation” into those claims and the overall issue of voter fraud. Well, apparently, not much has happened so far. A spokesman for Pence said in an   this week that they’re ”still doing the necessary groundwork.” And White House Spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday that the Vice President has been ”talking to folks potentially to serve on” his task force and that several secretaries of state have expressed interest. But a spokesperson for the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) says they’re unaware of any of their members being approached to participate in the investigation. And when NASS representatives went to the White House Tuesday to get an update on the vice president’s plans, they were told there was ”no information to share” at this time. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone involved in voting issues who’s been approached to be on the vice president’s task force  —   or at least to admit it. Some obvious candidates haven’t been asked to take part, Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation says he’s neither been asked to participate in the investigation or been consulted about it. ”Which seems a bit odd given that I’m one of the leading experts on voter fraud,” he wrote in an  . Von Spakovsky is a former Justice Department official, who’s been talking and writing about the issue for well over a decade and maintains a database of voter fraud cases around the country. What about David Becker, author of a 2012 Pew Center on the States report that Trump and White House aides have cited numerous times  —   often inaccurately  —   to back up their claims of widespread voter fraud? Becker says he hasn’t been consulted either, and doesn’t know of anyone who has. (For the record, Becker says his study found that state voter rolls were filled with outdated and duplicate registrations, but no evidence of fraud.) Maybe Tammy Patrick, a former Arizona election official, who served on President Obama’s bipartisan commission on election administration? She’s a highly respected  —   and well connected  —   expert in the field. But she hasn’t heard anything either. Catherine Engelbrecht? She heads True the Vote, a grassroots group based in Texas that has been at the forefront of a national campaign to ferret out fraudulent votes. ”I haven’t been contacted,” she replied. But a few people, when contacted, were more vague. ”I’m not at liberty to say,” responded Gregg Phillips, a True the Vote board member, whose claim last November that he had evidence of more than three million   casting ballots appears to be the source of Trump’s initial assertion. Phillips has yet to produce that evidence, but promises to do so in the coming months. He says it will reveal ”simply the biggest election fraud case” ever. And J. Christian Adams, another former Justice Department attorney, who has launched lawsuits against state and local officials arguing that their voter rolls are filled with illegal registrations, especially for  . When asked if he had been approached, or knew of anyone who had, Adams was noncommittal: ”Hopefully good experienced people who have prosecuted voter fraud cases.” Another likely candidate? Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. He’s one of the only election officials in the country to be out front defending Trump’s     claim. Kobach has made prosecuting fraudulent voters in his state a top priority  —   although so far, he’s only unearthed a few cases. His office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether he’ll have any role in the Pence investigation. Credible investigation? The vice president’s biggest challenge could be pulling together a credible investigation when so few people think the President’s voter fraud claims are valid. Just this week, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Jason Chaffetz, said his panel would not be looking into the President’s allegations because ”I don’t see any evidence” of it. Many other Republicans have said the same. That’s led to speculation that the Pence task force will be stacked with those who already believe fraud is widespread to justify efforts to tighten voting rules  —   with things like strict ID requirements. Many Democrats argue that these rules are intended to suppress the votes of minorities and others who usually support their candidates. Democratic election attorney Bob Bauer, who   the bipartisan Obama commission, recently wrote that ”few with credibility will be anxious to sign up to validate the work of a commission launched to validate a conclusion already reached.” He said instead election experts should encourage the Trump administration to drop this investigation and work with state and local officials to improve the voting process. If there’s one thing on which most election officials agree, it’s that more can be done to clean up state voter rolls  —   which are still filled with many duplicate and outdated registrations. And Trump himself seemed to indicate a willingness to shift his focus in an interview last month with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who challenged the president’s voter fraud claims. ”Look, Bill, we can be babies, but you take a look at the registration. You have illegals, you have dead people, you have this  —   it’s a really bad situation. It’s really bad,” said Trump. When O’Reilly pressed the president again on evidence to back up his claim of millions of people voting illegally in November, the President responded: ”Forget all that. Just take a look at the registration, and we’re going to do it. And I’m going to set up a commission to be headed by Vice President Mike Pence, and we’re going to look at it very carefully.”"
"To President Trump, bigger is better. He has inflated the size of his buildings (counting stories that aren’t there). He exaggerated the size of the crowd at his inauguration (a million and a half  —   it wasn’t). And he, of course, famously lashed out when he was accused of having small hands. (If that implied something else must be small, he said during a nationally televised debate, ”There’s no problem. I guarantee you. ”) But when it comes to the health care bill, the Trump administration believes smaller is better. When House Republicans released their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, press secretary Sean Spicer brought props to his daily briefing  —   a table next to his lectern with the   GOP bill, sitting next to a   Affordable Care Act. ”As you’ll see, this bill right here was the bill that was introduced in 2009 and 10 by the previous administration,” Spicer said Wednesday. ”Notice how thick that is.” He later went on to elaborate that the GOP replacement plan is even smaller than it looks. ”So far, we’re at 57 for the repeal plan and 66 pages for the replacement portion,” Spicer said. ”We’ll undo this. And remember, half of it, 57 of those pages, are the repeal part. So when you really get down to it, our plan is 66 pages long, half of what we actually even have there.” This tactic isn’t new to the Trump administration making page counts into a talking point has been a fixture of policy debates since at least the Reagan administration, particularly among conservatives. But a bill’s length has very, very little to do with its quality. And experts say that keeping major legislation short is getting tougher. Why all the hate for long bills? Politicians have criticized long bills for decades, and that history shows a few reasons why people feel (or say they feel) that those bills are a problem. For one, critics believe these lengthy bills are signs of legislative inefficiency. President Reagan in his 1988 State of the Union address gave a particularly memorable example of it. ”The budget process has broken down it needs a drastic overhaul,” he declared, shaming Congress for late and ”monstrous” budget resolutions. And like Spicer this week, Reagan made his point with his own table piled high with paper (the relevant portion begins around 15:50 in the below video): ”Along came these behemoths. This is the conference report  —   1, 053 pages, report weighing 14 pounds. Then this  —   a reconciliation bill six months late that was 1, 186 pages long, weighing 15 pounds. And the   continuing resolution  —   this one was two months late, and it’s 1, 057 pages long, weighing 14 pounds. Now, that was a total of 43 pounds of paper and ink. You had three hours  —   yes, three hours  —   to consider each, and it took 300 people at my Office of Management and Budget just to read the bill so the government wouldn’t shut down. Congress shouldn’t send another one of these. No, and if you do, I will not sign it.” Reagan held up each of three different, massive budget bills, to laughter and applause from congressional members. He underlined his point by dropping each stack of papers with a theatrical thump. (He added a final flourish of shaking out his hand, as if he had injured it.) A bill’s length has also been taken as a sign that bills were simply unworkably byzantine. The Atlantic’s James Fallows in 1995 cited the 1, 342 pages of Hillary Clinton’s health care overhaul as evidence that the bill was ”fatally overcomplicated” and ”impossible for anyone except the plan’s creators . .. to understand.” Yet another dimension to the fear of long legislation is the fear that it will contain buried, objectionable provisions that lawmakers won’t find until it’s too late. After the George W. Bush White House passed its   plan, for example, one Republican lawmaker told 60 Minutes that members of Congress weren’t given enough time to understand the legislation. ”The bill was over 1, 000 pages,” North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones said. ”And it got to the members of the House that morning, and we voted for it at about 3 a. m. in the morning.” This is a regular concern, said one former Hill staffer. ”What got snuck into there? What got airdropped into there in conference or whatever?” said Billy Pitts, a longtime GOP congressional aide, explaining a common reaction to long bills. ”That’s always the threat of a big, fat bill  —   there’s always something hidden inside of it.” That notion was hammered home for conservatives with Nancy Pelosi’s infamous 2010 remark to the Legislative Conference for the National Association of Counties, that ”we have to pass the bill, so that you can find out what’s in it.” She has since said that that quote was taken out of context, but Republicans seized upon it as evidence of shady lawmaking.   website the Daily Signal characterized its view of Pelosi’s message as follows: ”What lurks within the House and Senate health care bills will be revealed in the fullness of time, and it’s really good for us if we only knew better.” And finally, there is the symbolic argument  —   perhaps the most common type of argument against long bills. It makes an intuitive sense that Republicans often lambast legislation for being lengthy. ”For conservatives, [long legislation] becomes a metaphor for complicated government,” said Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a   think tank. ”You throw down 1, 000 pages or 1, 500 pages, and it looks like they’re doing stuff that gets into every detail of everybody’s lives.” Here’s how bills get so long (and are getting longer all the time)  A thousand pages might sound insane to people who don’t read legislation on a daily basis. But there are substantive reasons why bills can become so large. The following three reasons explain why worries about lengthy bills are often overblown: 1. Making laws is harder than it looks, Interestingly, Spicer hinted at one of these reasons in his comments this week, when he said that repealing Obamacare itself took 57 pages. That’s a lot of pages for doing something that can be explained in two words: ”repeal Obamacare.” So while it might seem repealing a law would be simple  —   say, writing a bill that says something along the lines of, ”This bill will fully repeal the Affordable Care Act”  —   it often instead requires making many, many changes to many, many different parts of different, specific and carefully crafted laws. ”The fact is even most aficionados could not read most bills and get anything out of them,” Ornstein said of the desire to cut length, ”which is why we have this army of people in the legislative branch, the Legislative Counsel’s Office, to take policies and translate it into the gibberish.” 2. Polarization means bills crammed full of things, Another reason why laws can get so long is that polarization has created gridlock that makes passing laws remarkably hard, said Sarah Binder, professor of political science at Georgetown University. ”Laws are long  —   and probably longer today than in the past,” she said in an email to NPR, ”because the difficulty of legislating pushes lawmakers to craft new laws with big, multidimensional deals: Your team gets X my team gets Y we sew them up into one huge bill.” She added, ”When you come up against a deadline, everything is multiple trains are leaving the station, and you put them all on the same track. And that’s how you make deals.” To illustrate, she points to the fact that the number of bills passed keeps dropping  —   but the length of those bills keeps rising. In other words, less legislation (by number of bills) is getting passed, but each bill that’s passed has way more legislation in it (by number of pages). This means that the fear of surprise policies being shoehorned into a large bill makes some sense. But as Binder points out, cramming things into bills is also often the only option for passing legislation these days. 3. Some policy areas are just super complicated, Pitts emphasized to NPR the benefits of simple legislation: It’s easier to understand, and it’s easier to foresee its effects and how it will interact with existing laws. However, it’s also true that some legislation simply deals in complicated policy areas that can’t be boiled down to a few dozen pages. ”What you have to keep in mind here in something like this area is you’re talking about policy that affects close to   of the economy,” Ornstein said. ”And it gets into tax law it gets into Medicare and Medicaid, which have grown greatly in complexity it gets into divisions between the states and the federal government.” A similar principle applies to the tax code  —   another area where the     argument is often made, as Ed Kleinbard, professor of law and business at the University of Southern California, told NPR last year. ”The tax code is thousands of pages long for a very simple reason: It is a model, in the economic sense, of all of economic activity,” he said. ”Most Americans don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the taxation of cutting timber or of being crew on a tuna boat. But there are rules for that, and you may find the rules irrelevant to you, but the rules are complex for a reason.” So putting too much stock in the length of the bill often makes little sense. This may be something repeal proponents will want to keep in mind in the coming weeks, because this bill is just the first part of a   plan. ”One of the reasons that this bill is shorter at this point,” Ornstein points out, ”is they’re taking on only parts of the Affordable Care Act and making changes. ”If they manage to do all these things, and you look at the nature of the regulations and then you do a third bill, it’s probably going to be about as long as the Affordable Care Act.”"
"Once again, it was another big week for national education news. Here’s our quick take on the top stories. Senate scraps federal regulations, On Thursday, the Senate voted to roll back   rules that clarified and elaborated on a wide range of accountability requirements in the federal education law known as The Every Student Succeeds Act. The vote was narrow, 50 to 49. To be clear, Congress is not scrapping or even changing the law itself. When it comes to school accountability, ESSA still requires that states flag schools where groups of students are ”consistently underperforming.” And it requires that the measurement of school performance include not just test scores and graduation rates but also some other indicator of school quality, including absenteeism or access to AP courses. After ESSA became law, the Obama administration was tasked with writing rules to clarify key sections. What the Senate voted to do this week was to scrap the previous Education Department’s interpretation of the law’s accountability requirements, not the requirements themselves. If that’s not clear enough, here’s a handy,    comparison of the law and that interpretation by Education Week’s Alyson Klein. Senator Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who is himself a former Education Secretary, hailed the change. He called the vote ”a victory for everyone who was fed up with Washington telling them so much about what to do about their children in 100, 000 public schools, and I look forward to President Trump’s signature of this resolution.” The Education Trust, an advocacy group where John B. King Jr. the most recent education secretary under President Obama, is now president and CEO, called the rollback ”misguided.” ”This resolution will cause unnecessary confusion,” the group said in a statement, ”disrupting the work in states and wasting time that students  —   particularly those who are most vulnerable  —   cannot afford for us to waste.” New Executive Order on Immigration  President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on Monday, a new version of his initial ban against the arrivals from seven   countries. This time, Iraq was not included because of its promises to ”increase cooperation with the U. S.” and share citizens’ information. NPR’s Eric Westervelt spoke with Esther Brimmer, executive director of the Association of International Educators, about how policies like the travel ban  —   and recent violent events against immigrants  —   could have a lasting effect on higher education if international student enrollment numbers drop. The revised ban is scheduled to go into effect on March 16. Another online resource for students goes dark, First, the website that provides help to families of students with disabilities went down last month with little explanation. Now, it’s the IRS’ Data Retrieval Tool. If those words, ”Data Retrieval Tool,” put you to sleep, it means you’re not a high school senior rushing to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. The FAFSA is the form  —   famously complicated and difficult to finish  —   that stands between many     and the federal Pell Grant that will help them pay for college. In the past, many students weren’t finishing the FAFSA because it required them to manually enter their parents’ tax data. That was a big hurdle for   students. But there was a clear fix, and in late 2015, the Obama administration agreed to the fix, allowing most applicants to use this IRS Data Retrieval Tool to automatically answer some of the FAFSA’s toughest questions. Yet students who have tried to use the IRS tool in recent days have, instead, been told: ”This service will be unavailable due to system maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.” According to a joint statement released Thursday by the IRS and the Department of Education: ”As part of a wider, ongoing effort at the IRS to protect the security of data, the IRS decided to temporarily suspend the Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) as a precautionary step following concerns that information from the tool could potentially be misused by identity thieves.” And it won’t be back soon: ”The IRS anticipates the online data tool will be unavailable for several weeks.” That’s a problem because now is primetime for FAFSA filers, with many states’   deadlines fast approaching. In short: Students are in for ”a rude awakening,” says the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, or NASFAA. Until the problem is resolved, NASFAA’s president and CEO, Justin Draeger, called on the Education Department ”to take immediate steps to ease application and verification burdens that will fall squarely on students, potentially delaying or complicating their application process, not to mention increasing work on college campuses that could lead to delays and backlogs.” School districts close for #DayWithoutAWoman, On Wednesday, at least three school districts closed because of a national protest aimed at calling attention to the inequities women face in the workforce, such as unequal pay and harassment. Women make up 76 percent of the public school teacher workforce. Among the schools that shut down were: the   Chapel   district in North Carolina, which announced an ”optional teacher workday.” About 300 staff members requested the day off in the Alexandria schools in Virginia. And an estimated 1, 700 staff members, including transportation staff, did the same in Maryland’s Prince George’s County. Officials in the three districts said the number of staff who requested the day off left them unable to operate safely and effectively. The   cancellations caused some irritation among families scrambling to find child care. Transgender bathroom case back to lower court, On Monday, the Supreme Court sidestepped the controversial question of whether transgender students should be allowed to use the school bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. The case was brought by Gavin Grimm, 17, a transgender senior at Gloucester High School in eastern Virginia. He had been using the boys’ restroom but, after parents complained, the school board required that he use a private, unisex bathroom instead. As we wrote earlier: ”Last year, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled in Grimm’s favor, citing the Obama administration’s guidance on Title IX that has now been rescinded.” That   guidance specified that Title IX’s protections against sexual discrimination should be read to include a student’s gender identity. But the Trump administration recently rescinded those guidelines, giving states and school districts more flexibility in interpreting the law. Because the 4th Circuit’s decision was based on old guidance, the Supreme Court chose the path of least resistance, asking the lower court to give Grimm a new hearing taking into account the new,   guidance. 177 private colleges fail federal   test, The Chronicle of Higher Education analyzed data from the Education Department and found that 177 private colleges failed the department’s test for financial responsibility  —   18 more than the previous year. The data was taken from the   school year. Of the total, 112 were   and 65 were  ."
"On Christmas Day, I found out that I was pregnant. It was the best present I could have hoped for. My husband and I have wanted to start a family for years, and we could not wait to share the news with our loved ones. But my initial exhilaration quickly turned to anxiety. As a physician, I knew many of the things that could go wrong. I wanted to do everything I could do to have a healthy baby. I found an obstetrician and made an appointment for my first prenatal visit. I was so relieved when I saw the baby’s heartbeat on the ultrasound. My blood was drawn to check for anemia and thyroid problems. I had the rest of my recommended first trimester tests, including a Pap smear and testing for HIV and   infections. The appointment also provided other valuable information. I talked to my doctor and his nurse practitioner about combating morning sickness and eating nutritious meals. I don’t smoke, but if I did (as 1 in 10 pregnant women do) they would have counseled on why and how to quit. My providers asked additional questions to assess for domestic violence, a concern for up to 1 in 6 pregnant women. Even though I’m a relatively healthy    I have several medical conditions that call for more frequent monitoring. My doctor recommended that I return every two weeks for a physical exam and ultrasound. Closer to delivery, I should plan to see him every week. I didn’t hesitate to follow my doctor’s recommendations. I have excellent health insurance with no copay for doctor’s visits and a minimal cost for tests. But what would I have done if I didn’t have insurance? One obstetrician visit would cost $150. With an ultrasound each time, it would be $400. A Pap smear would cost $53. One set of blood tests would add another $300. All told, my prenatal care with all visits and tests included would be over $10, 000. This is not counting labor and delivery, which in my area is estimated to be up to $30, 000 for a vaginal birth and $50, 000 for a cesarean section. Facing these astronomical costs, would I be forced to pick and choose care based on my ability to pay, rather than the best available medical evidence? What services would I forgo, and with what consequences? These are not hypothetical questions. The Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act would drastically cut Medicaid, which provides health coverage for women, children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities. In Baltimore, where I serve as the health commissioner, the majority of pregnant women are insured through Medicaid. Thousands of   women could lose coverage and have to pay    for services others who have insurance may only be able to afford   plans that don’t cover needed services. As a physician who worked in the ER before the Affordable Care Act went into effect, I have seen what happens when patients forgo needed interventions because of cost. I have treated patients who end up in irreversible comas because they couldn’t afford seizure medications. I have treated people who died from drug overdoses because their insurance didn’t cover addiction treatment. And I have treated women who were priced out of prenatal care, whose babies suffered the consequences in the form of preventable diseases, prematurity, birth defects, and even death. Prenatal and maternity care are considered an essential benefit under the Affordable Care Act the American Health Care Act introduced in Congress last week doesn’t address that because it can only cover fiscal topics. However, the bill does propose cutting essential benefits for Medicaid recipients. And it aims to defund services to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide birth control and reproductive services. That will only result in more unintended pregnancies. There are those who attribute these consequences to choice: Isn’t it a woman’s choice to become pregnant? But nearly 1 in 2 pregnancies in the United States are unintended. For women whose insurance stops offering maternity coverage, and for the others who do not have at all, what kind of ”choice” do they actually have, and at what cost? Women without prenatal care are seven times more likely give birth to premature babies, and five times more likely to have infants who die. The consequences are not only poor health, but also higher cost passed down to taxpayers. The average medical cost for a baby with problems of prematurity is $79, 000, compared to $1, 000 for a healthy newborn. Hospitalizations for a preemie in the first year can be upwards of $500, 000 intensive care can cost in the millions. Conversely, studies have shown that for every dollar spent on prenatal care, there are expected savings of nearly $5. Early intervention saves lives and cuts cost. Our health care system should incentivize prevention and discourage rationing of needed services. Like other expecting moms, I hope more than anything to have a healthy child. I am fortunate to have access to   affordable health care. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for all mothers of the nearly 4 million babies born in the U. S. each year. Our nation needs to safeguard the   of our families. The next generation, and the generations to come, depend on it. Dr. Leana Wen is an emergency physician and the health commissioner of Baltimore City. She is the author of  When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Care. And she’s on Twitter: @DrLeanaWen"
"The Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would make significant changes to the U. S. health insurance system. It would unwind many of the taxes and coverage mandates of the law, also known as Obamacare. And it would gradually overhaul Medicaid. The bill would affect incomes and health coverage for millions of Americans. Some people would be better off. Others would be worse off. The original bill could change as it makes its way through Congress, but here’s an early forecast of some of the winners and losers. Young, healthy people who should find cheaper insurance policies, Under Obamacare, insurance companies selling on the individual market are required to offer relatively robust coverage, and they can only charge their oldest customers three times as much as the youngest. This means young, healthy customers sometimes have to buy more coverage than they want, and pay a higher price for it. (That’s one reason   among young people has fallen short of expectations and why the resulting ”risk pool” has been older, sicker, and more costly than expected.) The GOP replacement plan would allow insurance companies to sell more   polices, and they could charge their oldest customers five times as much as the youngest. The result should be cheaper, more attractive policies for the young and healthy. SP Global Market Intelligence predicts the average premium for a    would drop by about 20 percent, to around $2, 600 per year, much of which would be covered by the plan’s $2, 000 tax credit. ”  dollars for someone in their 20s does go a long way, which is why we think there will be more people in that age group who can afford it and will sign up,” says Deep Banerjee, director at SP Global Ratings. Residents of   states, Subsidies for insurance customers under the Affordable Care Act are pegged to actual insurance costs in each region: higher where insurance (and medical care) are costly lower where policies are more affordable. Under the GOP replacement plan, tax credits for each age group would be the same nationwide. That would be a boon for people in areas where insurance costs are low relative to the credits. (This interactive map from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows how the costs vary by state.) Wealthy people who would see a tax break, Obamacare is funded in part through higher taxes on the wealthy, including a 3. 8 percent tax on investment income and a 0. 9 percent payroll tax for individuals making more than $200, 000 and couples making more than $250, 000. The GOP replacement plan would eliminate these taxes, giving a windfall to the wealthy. ”Clearly the biggest winners are those people,” says Roberton Williams of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, who notes the tax savings on $1 million in investment income would be $38, 000. ”That’s not chicken feed.” Libertarians who want to take the risk, People who simply don’t want to purchase insurance would no longer face a tax penalty for failing to do so. The penalty under Obamacare for 2016 was $695 or 2. 5 percent of income. Older, sicker people who would likely have to pay more for insurance, Under the GOP replacement plan, insurance companies could charge their oldest customers five times as much as their youngest  —   up from a maximum    ratio under Obamacare. SP predicts the average premium for a    would jump nearly 30 percent, to $13, 125. The GOP plan’s maximum tax credit of $4, 000 would cover less than a third of that. SP’s Banerjee notes: ”$3, 500 or $4, 000 for someone in their 50s and 60s really doesn’t go a long way.” Residents of   states, Unlike the insurance subsidies in Obamacare, tax credits in the GOP plan don’t vary with regional insurance costs. So people who live in areas where health care and insurance policies are expensive may end up paying more for their own coverage.  Medicaid recipients, The GOP replacement plan preserves Medicaid   through 2019, including the Affordable Care Act expansion, which is funded almost entirely by the federal government. Beginning in 2020, the GOP plan would limit the federal contribution on a per capita basis, while shifting control of Medicaid to the states. Depending on what happens to costs, states could be forced to provide skimpier coverage, reduce their Medicaid rolls, or both. SP estimates there would be 4 to 6 million fewer Medicaid recipients by 2024. Hospitals, For hospitals, the 20 million Americans who gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act means 20 million more paying customers. To the extent the GOP replacement results in fewer people having insurance, hospitals could be forced to provide more uncompensated care. The American Hospital Association urged lawmakers to ”make continued coverage a priority,” so as to avoid harmful impacts on ”the backbone of the nation’s health care safety net.” ”There really needs to be an understanding of the fact that real lives are impacted,” says Karen Teitelbaum, CEO of Sinai Health System in Chicago. ”People who were just getting used to having care may feel that they don’t have the choice now in terms of primary care physicians and good prenatal care. I’d hate to see people go back to using the emergency department or waiting till they’re so sick that there’s a very high cost to human life with this.” People who get health care through an employer  Around half of all Americans get health care coverage through a workplace policy. These people would be largely unaffected if Obamacare gives way to the GOP replacement plan. The Affordable Care Act included a tax on   ”Cadillac” insurance policies, but Congress has already postponed the effective date to 2020. The GOP plan would push that back further, to 2025. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows costs for   insurance have been rising relatively slowly in recent years, since the Affordable Care Act took effect. The slow growth in premiums has been partly offset, though, by rising deductibles and  . Insurance companies  Although insurance companies expected to benefit from additional customers under Obamacare, many companies have lost money trying to serve the individual market. SP predicts insurance company profitability would improve under the GOP replacement plan. However, insurance companies could lose out on a growth opportunity in managing Medicaid for states."
"Carfentanil is an opiate 10, 000 times more powerful than morphine. And since last summer, it’s been killing addicts and confounding first responders across the country. The drug was never intended to be consumed by humans. But it has been used to kill and immobilize humans  —   reportedly, in assassination attempts and by Russian Special Forces in 2002. They apparently used it in aerosol form as a knockout gas to end a hostage situation. Tragically, the gas ended up killing more than 100 hostages. ”Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid. It’s of a drug class similar to fentanyl and other fentanyl analogs,” Terry Boos says. Boos is the section chief for the Diversion Control Division, of the DEA’s Drug and Chemical Evaluation section. He says the only legitimate use of the drug is as a tranquilizer for very large animals, like elephants or hippos. So there’s no medical literature to consult for its effects on humans. That knowledge is being gained the hard way, by first responders. ”During the month of July [2016] paramedics in Akron registered more than 230 drug overdoses, with 14 of those being fatal,” DEA spokesman Russ Baer says. ”Those were eventually linked to carfentanil. Thereafter we saw outbreaks throughout Ohio, particularly in Cincinnati.” Carfentanil oubreaks in several states, Baer says that since then, the DEA has found the drug in a number of states: ”Florida, Georgia, Rhode Island, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Jersey and Illinois.” He says the agency is still ”tracking the presence and the proliferation” of carfentanil. When the drug first appeared in Ohio, authorities had no idea what they were dealing with. ”In Cincinnati it took several days to get a sample of to be able to check it. And sure enough, many of the overdoses that had occurred in a spike were related to this carfentanil,” Ohio Sen. Rob Portman says. The DEA rushed to bring toxicology labs across the country up to speed. It’s important for first responders to be able to recognize a carfentanil overdose. They might, for instance, require multiple doses of the   drug naloxone. And since even the tiniest amount of carfentanil can kill, first responders who might encounter the drug need to take extra precautions. That includes agents screening packages from overseas. Carfentanil ”normally comes in  —   we’re told  —   by the U. S. mail system, usually from China,” Portman says. ”Some laboratory in China producing it, and then shipping it to the United States by mail.” He says the illicit sellers in China avoid private carriers like FedEx or UPS because they require tracking information from the sender. ”With the U. S. mail system, that’s not required. So China has an arrangement with the U. S. mail system where they send it through without that information,” Portman says. A bill for the U. S. Postal Service to track senders, Portman has   a bill, the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention, or STOP act. Juliette Kayyem is a senior adviser to Americans for Securing All Packages (ASAP) one group backing the STOP act. She says the new law would require the U. S. Postal Service to track senders the same way private shippers do. ”The sender is required to give you a valid name, address, content size of the package, who they’re sending it to in the United States,” Kayyem says. Supporters say that even if illicit drug sellers put in false information, when the data from all the packages gets crunched, algorithms can still identify suspicious packages  —   so screeners know which ones to scrutinize out of the millions the postal service handles. The STOP act stalled in the Senate last year, but Sen. Portman reintroduced the legislation last month, and is hopeful it can pass with bipartisan support. China ban on carfentanil exports, In the meantime, the Chinese government has taken action of its own. Largely at the request of the U. S. last month China announced the banning of the export of carfentanil along with three other opioids. Baer of the DEA says a similar ban in 2015 helped get the drug known as ”flakka” or   off the streets here. ”Once China scheduled,   . .. virtually fell off the radar and we’ve not seen any extent of flakka being in the distribution chain. So we’ve seen what the scheduling actions in China can do,” Baer says. He says that while fentanyl and its analogs remain a deadly problem, the percentage of overdoses associated with carfentanil have been on the decline in recent weeks. And he’s hopeful China’s new ban on sales will help keep the deadly opioid out."
"In   an affable,    man from Everett, Mass. overdosed at his mom’s home after almost 25 years of heroin use. Joe Salemi had overdosed before, but this time couldn’t be revived. Salemi’s brother, Anthony, says he was pretty sure when his brother died that there must have been something besides heroin in the syringe. The medical examiner later confirmed it. ”I knew, deep in my mind, it was going to be the stuff that everyone’s talking about now  —   fentanyl,” Anthony says. ”Because I never thought straight heroin would kill him.” Anthony Salemi was familiar with fentanyl. He’d been prescribed the powerful painkiller after surgery in 2006. Anthony had warned his younger brother about reports that dealers were adding an illicit version of the drug to heroin, sometimes promising a more intense high. Fentanyl is more than 50 times more potent than heroin, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But people like Joe rarely know for sure if there is fentanyl in the tiny plastic bags of illegal powder they buy  —   or how much. Just a few grains of pure fentanyl, doctors say, is enough to kill most users. In Massachusetts, 75 percent of the people who overdosed this year tested positive for the drug. ”It just seems like the dealers and the drugs are ravaging the whole country, says Anthony Salemi. ”The supply just keeps coming in, no matter how many cops you put at the border, it just keeps coming in. This is scary.” The Obama administration agrees that the increasing supply of fentanyl on the street is a major challenge and says agencies are doing a lot. But reducing the supply is complicated. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, constructed with lab chemicals  —   unlike heroin or morphine, which start with the opium sap of a poppy plant. Drug enforcement agents say clandestine labs across China are the main source of the illegally sold fentanyl. Producers then ship the drug to Mexico, where drug cartels mix it into heroin or press it into blue, pink or white tablets that look like prescription pills for anxiety or pain. The powder or pills are delivered to dealers, or directly to users, via the Internet or darknet, an online area used for illegal purchases. ”Synthetic drugs are a real winner because they are easy to make, and they’re cheap to produce,” says Kara McDonald, director of policy, planning and coordination at the international narcotics and law enforcement bureau of the U. S. Department of State. ”They’re not dependent on a season or the weather like a   drug,” McDonald says. ”And with the distribution system  —   through mail order  —   they can be delivered directly to the door in some cases. Like a pizza.” The profit margin is huge, says Drug Enforcement Administration spokesperson Russ Baer. He says it costs from $3, 000 to $4, 000 to produce a kilo  —   2. 2 pounds  —   of fentanyl. The fentanyl is then cut with cheap fillers to make pills, or mixed into bags and fraudulently sold as pure heroin. ”Drug traffickers involved in the wholesale distribution of those products can yield close to $1. 5 million off that one kilogram,” says Baer. The DEA has six agents who operate out of Beijing and work closely with China’s Ministry of Public Security, Baer says. Chinese officials established controls on 116 new chemicals last year, including 19 that have much the same molecular structure as fentanyl. Baer says that helped reduce the supply of some of these designer analogs of the drug. (Though each analog drug has a slightly different chemical structure from fentanyl, they work much the same way in the body.) And in September, the DEA moved to declare another fentanyl analog called   illegal. But the producers always seem to be one step ahead of enforcement agencies, Baer says. ”Once we control a substance, whether here in the U. S. or in China, for example,” he says, ”the drug manufacturers simply change a molecule, tweak a molecule, in an attempt to circumvent the law.” Keeping up with the inventive chemists sounds nearly impossible. ”We’re identifying one to two new synthetic substances every week,” Baer says. If a drug compound is similar to fentanyl, or if it produces the same physiological effect, the DEA can file trafficking charges here in the U. S. But these variations are not illegal in many countries. McDonald says the State Department is working, through the United Nations and with individual nations, to make sure police everywhere can identify new drugs and prosecute dealers. The international control system is only able to detect, process and outlaw about 10 new psychoactive substances a year, McDonald says. ”It doesn’t take a mathematician to identify that we have a real challenge here.” To get in front of production, the State Department and a group of U. S. senators asked the United Nations in October to add to the list of tightly controlled substances two key ingredients used to make fentanyl. A decision is expected next year. McDonald and Baer at the DEA say slowing demand for illicit uses of fentanyl and other opioids has become an urgent priority. The office of the U. S. Surgeon General this week also issued a report on the growing problem of substance abuse and the need for more widespread implementation of     treatment programs to address the problem. In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition Thursday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called addiction ”a chronic disease of the brain.” ”We need to treat it with the same urgency and compassion that we do any other illness,” Murthy told Inskeep. But some lawmakers, physicians and families who’ve lost loved ones say the Obama administration has done too little too late to tackle the epidemic. U. S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, says it’s time to make the illegal production and trafficking of fentanyl the top policy issue in relations with China and Mexico. ”Many more people are going to die from this than [from] any threat from nuclear weapons or any devastation that’s caused by an imbalance in trade,” Markey says. Baer says trying to stop the supply of opioids is part of the solution, but so is tackling demand by addressing addiction as a disease. ”The community needs to embrace these folks, create treatment opportunity,” Baer says. ”We need to educate the public. It’s the No. 1 priority and it represents a public health crisis that all of us must work together to try to resolve.” The CDC offers a sobering perspective. While about 78 Americans will die today after an overdose, another 580 will try heroin  —   or what they think is heroin  —   for the first time. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WBUR and Kaiser Health News."
"The Velvet Underground and Nico, released 50 years ago tomorrow (there is actually some disagreement on the exact date) is the definitive      album. With a   collection of songs  —   nearly all written by frontman Lou Reed  —   and an iconic,   cover designed by band benefactor Andy Warhol, this jarring and innovative collection was initially a cult success at best, with no hit singles and a ”peak” of No. 171 on Billboard’s albums chart in December 1967. But the world eventually caught up with it, and for the past 30 years it’s had perennial placement on   lists, including No. 13 on Rolling Stone’s 2012 ”500 Greatest Albums of All Time” tally. It’s the first album to truly combine a novelist’s gritty realism with equally confrontational rock music, yet it’s also a fount of soft, vulnerable songs like ”Femme Fatale” and ”I’ll Be Your Mirror”  —   songs that are all the more poignant because you can sense, somehow, that the sensitive soul who wrote them is also kind of an asshole. It has spawned multiple generations of obsessives and influencees. Among the first was a young David Bowie, whose early manager Ken Pitt had   connections and met with Warhol and Reed at the former’s famous studio The Factory during a November 1966 trip to New York. Pitt returned to London with a test pressing of TheVelvet Underground and Nico that his young charge promptly appropriated in every sense of the word. Upon his rise to fame five years later, Bowie paid back his vast Velvets influence by producing Reed’s Transformer that album’s single, ”Walk on the Wild Side,”   the grumpy bard’s solo career and remains his   hit. Ensuing generations of The Velvet Underground and Nico’s spiritual progeny have included punk pioneer Patti Smith (who covered at least two Velvets songs in her early days) R. E. M. (who covered three songs from the album in their early days) and   titan Beck (who covered the entire album with some friends in 2009). Still, it was initially considered a commercial failure, selling approximately 60, 000 copies in its first two years  —   not bad, but no More of The Monkees. This was due partially to a legally induced (more on that shortly) factory recall that removed the album from shelves just as its   publicity was peaking. But that certainly wasn’t the only challenge to its commercial prospects the group’s ensuing albums met an even more dismal commercial fate, and a disillusioned Reed left the band in August, 1970. Despite his solo success, The Velvets’ catalog gradually slipped out of print over the next few years. In today’s era of ubiquitous ubiquity, of YouTube and eBay and streaming services, it’s difficult to convey just how hard it was to find a copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico in the late 1970s and early 1980s.   stores were just beginning to become a thing and even in those shrines to things past a scratched copy often would fetch $   —   as things go, this actually added to the band’s burgeoning legend. The Velvets gradually assumed their proper, lofty place in rock history, their oeuvre was reissued in the U. S. in 1984 (although The Velvet Underground and Nico’s cover was a   reduction of the original gatefold with a printed banana instead of a sticker). Thus another generation of obsessives was spawned. And on and on. Yet the most atypical obsession of those five decades may be that of veteran music publicist and longtime Velvets fan Mark Satlof, who collects original pressings of the album. He owns more than 800 of them  —   he’s actually not sure exactly how many  —   which are neatly filed on shelves in his study. They account for an estimated 1 percent of all copies manufactured in the U. S. before March 1969. A first mono pressing, still in its shrink wrap? Check. Promo copies  —   both the version with the yellow label and the much rarer,   edition? Natch. The ”Close Cut” 1972 edition with an alternate printing of the banana sticker, without the border? Over there. Original U. K. Canadian and New Zealand editions that don’t that doesn’t even have a banana on the cover? Yup. . .. the covers featuring a shirtless Warhol acolyte Eric Emerson in the background of the group photo on the back (”The Torso Cover”) . .. the ones with a sticker pasted over Emerson’s photo after he sued (”The Lawsuit Cover”) . .. the ones with his photo airbrushed out (”The Airbrushed Cover”) . .. (Anyone seeking more detailed info, knock yourself out. ). The   rarest version, of which just two copies are known to exist, is an April 1966 acetate containing alternate takes and mixes that was purchased at a New York sidewalk sale in 2002 for 75 cents  —   and eventually auctioned off for $25, 200. Satlof doesn’t have one of those the bulk of his collection is commercial stock copies in varying states of dishevelment. Copies with the banana partially or (usually) completely peeled off, copies with retail stickers or stamps or   letters on them, copies bearing someone’s name, copies people have drawn or painted on. A mysterious copy with multiple   holes in the cover. Each one has a birthplace and a journey. Satlof’s journey began when he was a student at Columbia University in the 1980s. ”A friend of mine had the album and we listened to it late at night in the common room, he recalls. ”I listened to it over and over again, watching the record spin but also looking out the window at this panoramic view of New York City  —   Harlem from Morningside Heights, and east of us was Lexington and 125th Street”  —   the location of the drug deal in the lyrics of ”Waiting for My Man.” ”I recall thinking even at the time, ’I will always remember this’.” (Asked an obvious question, he admits, ”I was definitely in a   state. ”) Satlof’s collection began in earnest in 1987: a $90 autographed copy from ”a record dealer in an antiques mall on Canal Street,” with a scrawled signature that the seller said was Warhol’s, but turned out to be Reed’s. Satlof casually picked up more of the albums over the years, paying ”$10, $20, like $100 for ones with the full banana.” But when eBay launched in 1995, ”I was off to the races,” he laughs. ”You could see the auction winner’s screen name on eBay at the time, and I found out later that I was known as ’Mr. Bananas. ’” He stresses that his hobby is due to the brilliance of the music and his love for it. But really: 800 copies? ”Yes, it’s obsessive,” he laughs, again, well aware. ”But  —   and I say this as someone without an   background  —   in a way each one of these is a piece of Warhol art. And each one has been messed with in some way by a previous owner, which makes each one unique.” Since Reed’s death in October 2013, the going rate for the discs has become too steep even for Mr. Bananas. ”The prices are insane,” he says. ”People are asking way, way more than they’re worth, and at this point I’m the   or   bidder on most items.” Indeed, a brief perusal of eBay and Discogs shows an original stereo copy with a pristine sleeve going for more than $4, 000 a mono lawsuit edition minus ”around 10 percent” of the banana for $2, 500 a     promo copy with ”a few scuffs” on the vinyl for $1, 700 and  —   ulp  —   an item that the seller claims is an official Verve advance pressing of the album, with different mixes from the officially released version (possibly the same as the 1966 acetate?) yours for $22, 400. But with few exceptions, the single greatest factor in determining the financial value of these albums comes down to one thing: the freshness of the banana. Consequently, one question remains. With over 800 albums at Satlof’s disposal, has he ever  —   to paraphrase the words on the cover  —   peeled one slowly to see what it felt like? Even just a little? He’s visibly aghast. ”No!” he exclaims. ”Come on!” Still mortified, he reconsiders slightly. ”Maybe I’d [peel] one of the reissues that has the sticker, but not an original.” He shudders. ”Never.”"
"Updated at 6:10 a. m. ET Sunday  After being stripped of her powers and removed from office on Friday, former South Korean President Park   has left the presidential office and compound, the Blue House. Our original post continues below: For so many Saturdays, throngs of South Koreans showed up on the streets of central Seoul to rally for the removal of their president, Park  . This Saturday evening, they showed up to celebrate: the nation’s highest court upheld the National Assembly’s impeachment of the president, removing her from office and immediately stripping her of power. Jubilant Koreans sang patriotic songs and fireworks went off in the skies. The nation’s placeholder government leaders are calling for calm, unity and a smooth transition. ”The Korean Government has been carrying out state affairs stably, with all ministries and agencies functioning as usual under the leadership of the acting president,” said government spokesman Song Sookeun, in a statement. But not everyone in South Korea is pleased. While public opinion polls showed three out of four South Koreans supported the president’s ouster over her alleged involvement in the nation’s   political corruption scandal, there remains a vocal minority of Park’s supporters who want to ”impeach the impeachment” and reacted violently to the court’s decision. Three senior citizens have died in   demonstrations this weekend, one of them after a speaker fell off the top of a bus and onto his head. Park remains in the presidential Blue House, and has yet to make a statement about her removal. Her critics worry her silence so far is emboldening supporters who are refusing to accept the impeachment decision by the court. A spokesman for Park says part of the reason she hasn’t moved out is because her private residence ”is currently under construction for security and other matters.” But the next steps for South Korea are clear. The country will hold a snap election in two months, as mandated by law, and a compressed contest for leadership will soon get under way. After nearly a decade of conservatives in charge here, ”It’s really the liberals race to lose,” says John Delury, an international relations professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University. One of the biggest differences between conservatives and liberals in South Korea is how they approach North Korea, a particularly big question of late following the assassination by nerve gas of regime family member Kim Jong Nam, and the   of four missiles toward Japan, on Monday. Traditionally, South Korea’s liberals are more interested in engagement with the North and drawing them out, a fundamentally different approach than what the conservatives have been doing, which has increasingly frozen out Pyongyang. But North Korea isn’t the only challenge ahead. There’s uncertainty in the overall region, as relations with Japan aren’t great over history and territorial issues, relations with China are tense because Korea is installing a controversial U. S. missile defense system. And there’s unease about where Northeast Asia stands with Washington. Despite all the questions, Delury argues the real turmoil was avoided: Things would have been far more unstable had Park gotten   by the court. ”People were truly concerned about chaos, martial law, these kinds of scenarios given that an overwhelming majority of South Koreans wanted this president to go and the Assembly had decided she should go,” Delury says. Park will go. But so far, she has yet to leave the building. Jihye Lee contributed to this story."
"When Atoosa Moinzadeh filled out past census forms, she found herself in a racial identification conundrum. Moinzadeh identifies as Iranian American. But the census forms don’t have a box for Iranian American. The closest she could come to identifying herself the way she wanted was to choose the box for ”white,” which had ”Middle East” listed as an example. That wasn’t quite right for her. ”I’ve always identified as not white, and so the expectation to check off ’white’ on forms has never felt accurate to me,” Moinzadeh said. She has brown skin and grew up in a white neighborhood in a Seattle suburb. Like many other people of Middle Eastern or North African descent, the world did not treat Moinzadeh as white. And so, on past census forms, Moinzadeh would select the box for ”other” and write in ”Iranian American.” For Alex Shams, an anthropology grad student in Chicago, whose mother is a white Christian and whose father is a Muslim immigrant from Iran, the question of which identification to choose was always puzzling  —   especially since he could pass as white. Sometimes he chose to identify as ”other” on official forms, including the census, and if there was no option for that, he’d select ”white” or ”Asian.” But the bullying and discrimination he faced growing up in Los Angeles made him aware he was not white. After the   attacks, he recalled, kids at his evangelical Christian school would whisper ”Saddam Hussein” in his face. ”I think I’ve really come to realize that in the wake of the war in Iraq . .. I began to see myself as Middle Eastern, and I began to identify with that because that’s how I was being seen and perceived by people around me,” said Shams, who has penned a piece investigating the complicated question of whether or not Iranians are people of color. Now, after years of advocacy groups pressuring the U. S. Census Bureau to create a separate geographic category for people of Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) descent, the bureau is recommending that MENA be added to the 2020 census. That could mean that the approximately 3. 7 million   in the U. S. might have their own box to check off. Collecting accurate demographic information is crucial, especially for ethnic minority communities, since data gleaned from census forms affects funding for services such as voter protections or English as a second language programs in schools, and also is included in research on topics like housing discrimination. And in 2015, when the bureau tested potential new categories, including MENA, it found that people of Middle Eastern or North African descent would check off the MENA box when it was available when it wasn’t, they’d select white. But with policies and political rhetoric that are     and   some worry the MENA census category might be used against the very people it’s supposed to include. ”The downside is concerns about misuse of this data and how it could be used by the government in a time of national crisis,” said Ibrahim Hooper, the communications director for the Council on   Relations. Concerns like these have been around for almost as long as the census itself, which was started in 1790 to keep record of Americans. Between 1880 and 1930, Congress and statisticians tried to create standards to mandate that census information couldn’t be used for ”taxation, regulation or investigation” or to ”harm” a people or organizations, as explained by Margo Anderson, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in a related paper. Circumventing those standards, the U. S. government used census data to locate and deliver more than 100, 000 Japanese Americans to incarceration camps. This happened, Anderson pointed out, before the United States was an ”equal opportunity, affirmative action, civil rights society” and when Japanese immigrants were considered ”aliens ineligible for citizenship.” She pointed out in a conversation with NPR that at the time, ”nobody disputed the legal foundation for incarcerating” the   aliens. In the case of Japanese Americans, the question was not ”who was Japanese, but where did Japanese mainly live,” said Kenneth Prewitt, a former director of the U. S. Census Bureau who is now a professor at Columbia University. ”Yes, census data can be inappropriately used to target for attention particular neighborhoods where persons of MENA ancestry are concentrated,” Prewitt said. But, he said, doing so would not be any more illegal than targeting ”places where elderly people live, to know where to send rescue vehicles in case of flooding or power outings or where veterans live in order to place VA hospitals nearby. So the issue is not who clusters where but for what purposes is that information used.” Looking back, the incarceration of Japanese Americans and wartime relocation was really ”the result of . .. prejudice, wartime hysteria and a failure of political leadership,” Anderson told NPR. ”Because the political has shifted so radically [today] we’re going to have a really complicated debate about this.” A key player in the MENA category debate is Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, one of a handful of advocacy groups pushing for its inclusion in the next census. ”The whole point of all of this is that it is about arriving at better data,” Berry told NPR in the fall. ”There are many in our community who do identify as white, who do identify as black and brown and everything in between. And I think that’s the point. .. It allows us to identify the way we want to identify.” Berry acknowledged that census data has been used before to monitor Americans, and said that concerns the data might be misappropriated are fair. She pointed to the New York Police Department’s   demographics unit, which the NYPD hoped would be an ”early warning system for terrorism” but never yielded any leads. Following outcry, it was disbanded in 2014. ”The elements of our government that have wanted to do heightened surveillance in our community, they’ve done so without requiring this category,” Berry said. She concludes that if the government wants to monitor Muslims, or Americans of Middle Eastern or North African descent, which it has done in the past, it will find a way. The MENA category, Berry said, would be an opportunity for the community to get of policy makers to show more of their needs in areas including education, voter protections, language resources. And that’s the complicated part, according to Jamal Abdi, the policy director of the National Iranian American Council, one of the nonpartisan groups that previously pushed for the MENA category. ”This census issue is sort of the frontline of it,” he said. ”Just identifying as   is something that’s viewed as dangerous.” The whole point of NIAC, he said, is to help   build political power by identifying themselves. He thinks it would be difficult for the government to misuse the data, but acknowledges that this sentiment would be hard to convey to NIAC’s constituents, who’ve long been wary of the government. ”I just don’t think there’s going to be much reception to   as   right now,” Abdi said, because some fear the ”protection of your rights is under assault by the administration.” Prewitt, the former director of the U. S. Census Bureau, underscored in an email that the various census protections are not easily set aside. ”The census has strong procedures to protect the confidentiality of individuals,” Prewitt said, ”and efforts to circumvent those procedures, I am confident, would be successfully resisted by the Bureau.” He said that to round up residents based on nationality would, ”of course, be a ’misuse’ of census data, and [he] suspect[s] would be so ruled by courts.” ”The difficult thing about this issue is that it comes and goes with intensity,” Anderson, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee professor, said. ”And when it hits, it hits like a firestorm.” If the Census Bureau’s recommendation for the new MENA category moves forward through Congress, people like Moinzadeh and Shams could see part of their identity better reflected on the 2020 census. And in their eyes, at least, that acknowledgment is good. Wassim Hassan, a Dartmouth student, identifies as an African Muslim American. On official forms, including the census, he selects ”African American” or ”black.” And even if the census adds a new MENA category, which in theory could work for him, he said he would prefer not to use that box. As a Muslim and as an   with darker skin, Hassan said ”black” aligns better with his identity, more so than ”white” or ”MENA.” ”The growing fear is that actually signing up [in the census] and becoming visible is a   sword, that one, you could assert your rights, and two, you could be targeted,” Shams said. ”One thing I’ve come to understand and become very passionate about in the wake of the ban on the Muslim countries . .. is we need to show people that we’re here and that we’ve always been here, and that Islam isn’t a new religion in the country, and that Muslims and Middle Easterners have been a part of this fabric.” Moinzadeh said that racism is so much more than what one can check off on the census. ”I get why some MENA folks may choose white because it feels safer, but to me, it won’t save them. . ... If there was a MENA box, I would do it,” she said. However, she was quick to point out that even a MENA box on the census isn’t a perfect solution. It lumps together a   group of people of varying skin tones, from different geographic places who speak various languages."
"A federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of President Trump’s revised travel ban on Friday, but only as it applies to a family of Syrian asylum seekers. The ruling, issued by U. S. District Court Judge William M. Conley, said the wife and    daughter of a Syrian Muslim man living in Wisconsin faced the possibility of ”suffering irreparable harm” if the executive order forced them to remain in Aleppo. It marks the first legal setback for Trump’s revised order on immigration, though its impact is limited to just the man and his family. The plaintiff is listed as John Doe in court filings for the safety of his family. He says he fled Aleppo after being imprisoned and tortured separately by forces aligned with President Bashar Assad and   rebels. The plaintiff was granted asylum in the United States in May 2016. In July 2016, he applied for asylum on behalf of his wife and daughter. He first filed suit against Trump in February after the president’s Jan. 27 executive order on immigration halted the processing of the family’s visas. The Syrian man withdrew his suit after a Washington state court blocked enforcement of the travel ban nationwide, and processing of asylum applications resumed. The man refiled on Friday, citing concerns that the new executive order, signed this week, will again prevent his family from entering the country when it takes effect on March 16. The plaintiff argues that the executive order targets Muslims unfairly and implements a Trump campaign promise of a ”total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The Syrian man also maintains that ”the Executive Order exceeds the scope of the President’s authority and is unconstitutional.” Department of Justice attorneys for Trump objected to the man’s request for a temporary restraining order and argued that the new executive order may not even apply to him. ”The court appreciates that there may be important differences between the original executive order, and the revised executive order issued on March 6, 2017,” Conley wrote in his ruling. ”As the order applies to the plaintiff here, however, the court finds his claims have at least some chance of prevailing for the reasons articulated by other courts.” In a   hearing scheduled for March 21, Conley will consider extending his order that visas for the man’s family be processed. Several other legal challenges to the new executive order will be heard in courts across the country next week."
"Updated: March 11, 2:46 p. m. ET  According to member station WBUR, the OutVet group has accepted the invitation to march in the parade.  The organizers of the privately run St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston have reversed course and will invite a group of LGBTQ veterans to participate in this year’s event. The announcement came in a terse Twitter message. The South Boston Allied War Veterans Council said it had signed an ”acceptance letter” to allow OutVets to join the march. Member station WBUR reports a lawyer for the group announced Friday night that the members had accepted the invitation after reviewing it. ”We are honored and humbled by all the outpouring of support that has been displayed for our LGBTQ veterans  —   who are one of the most unrepresented demographics in our veterans community,” lawyer Dee Dee Edmondson said in a statement. As the   reported, the parade organizers had come under heavy criticism for barring the LGBTQ group this year after the gay veterans had marched in the event the past two years. Organizers had objected to the group’s display of the rainbow flag, the traditional symbol of gay pride. Many   politicians, including Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, had withdrawn their support from the parade and said they would not march unless the gay vets were included, according to the Boston Globe. OutVets is not the only veterans group at odds with the parade organizers. A group called Veterans for Peace has been barred from the event for several years."
"It all started in the shower. Tucker Lane looked down, and there they were. ”Two ticks, on my right hip, directly next to each other,” he says. At the time, Lane didn’t think much about it. He grew up on Cape Cod. Ticks are everywhere there in the summer. ”Just another tick bite. Not a big deal,” he thought. That was June. In September, everything changed. ”I was working outside, and I just had a pounding headache,” says Lane, 24, who works as a plumber and at a pizza restaurant. He tried taking ibuprofen. But that night the headache got worse. ”I was sweating but was cold. And I had tremors,” he says. He started projectile vomiting. He developed a high fever and double vision. After two trips to the doctors  —   and no improvement  —   Lane’s mother, Lynn Cash, called an ambulance. At first, doctors wouldn’t treat him, Cash says. ”They accused him of opiate abuse.” They thought Lane was going through withdrawal. But scans of his brain showed that it was swelling. And he was quickly losing consciousness. His doctors decided to rush him to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. ”By the time they got him upstairs [into a room] within another 48 hours, he was in a coma,” Cash says. At that point, doctors were stumped. They thought he might have some kind of infection. ”His MRI was very severe,” says Jennifer Lyons, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. ”He had a lot of inflammation in the very deep parts of his brain.” But she didn’t know what was causing the infection. Cash felt differently. She says she knew exactly where the problem was coming from: ”I knew it was a tick thing.” Cash’s family has been on Cape Cod for many generations she has seen a lot of Lyme disease and even had it herself. But she had never seen anything like this. This was something new. Something even more frightening. The more we look, the more we find, The world is in a new age of infectious diseases. Over the past 60 years, the number of new diseases cropping up per decade has almost quadrupled. The number of disease outbreaks each year has more than tripled since 1980. The U. S. is no exception. The country is a hot spot for   diseases. In the past 50 years, scientists have detected at least a dozen new diseases transmitted by ticks. ”The more we look, in a sense, the more we find,” says Felicia Keesing, an ecologist at Bard College in upstate New York. ”Around here, there’s anaplasmosis, babesiosis and a bacterium related to Lyme, which causes similar symptoms.” And that’s just in the Northeast. In the Midwest, you can find Heartland virus, a new   disease and Bourbon virus  —   which is thought to be spread by ticks but hasn’t been proven yet. In the South, there’s Southern   rash illness. Out west, there’s a new type of spotted fever. And across a big swath of the country, there’s a disease called ehrlichiosis. Most of these diseases are still rare. But one is especially worrying. ”It’s a scary one,” Keesing says. ”Our local tick  —   this blacklegged tick  —   occasionally carries a deadly virus that’s called Powassan virus,” says Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N. Y.  Powassan is named after a town in Ontario, Canada, where the virus was discovered in 1958. Now it’s here in the U. S. The country records about seven cases each year on the East Coast and in the Upper Midwest. What makes Powassan so dangerous is that it attacks the brain, making it swell up. In about 10 percent of cases, Powassan is deadly. And if you do recover, you have about a 50 percent chance of permanent neurological damage. He was gone, just gone, Although doctors didn’t realize it at the time, it was Powassan flooding Lane’s brain. Just a few days after he came down with his terrible headache, he was on life support in the ICU. His mother was sure she had lost him. ”If you opened his eyelids, he was just gone,” she says. ”I have never been so devastated in my whole life.” Doctors told her there really wasn’t anything else they could do for her son. But she never lost hope. ”I did a lot of praying. I’ll tell you that much,” she says. Then one morning, Cash went to visit Lane. He had been in a coma for a week. When she opened the door, she recalls, ”he turned his head and looked at me.” Then he tried to speak. ”The only thing that came out was a ’Ha,’ ” she says. ”But he recognized me.”   From then on, Lane started to get better, quickly. He started to breathe on his own, to recognize people. In a couple of weeks he was out of the hospital. As he woke up, Lane says, he was never scared or worried, because he was always surrounded by his family. ”My family and I are really close,” he says. ”So when I woke up, they were all around me. My cousins were just joking with me and making me laugh and stuff like that. So it was all good.” And it was all good. Lane’s recovery stunned doctors. ”His recovery was truly remarkable,” says Lyons, his doctor. But not everyone is as lucky as Lane. Back in 2013, Lyn Snow of Rockland, Maine, also was bitten by a tick. She was 73, a   watercolor artist. Less than a week later, she was in the ICU, just like Lane. ”She subsequently went downhill, so unbelievably quickly,” says her daughter, Susan Whittington. ”She became incoherent and delusional. She was talking to paintings.” Within a few weeks, she was on a ventilator and completely unresponsive. Weeks went by. Eventually, Whittington got a diagnosis: Powassan. ”That’s when we knew it was unrecoverable,” Whittington says. ”That’s when we knew that we would have to let her go. And that’s what we did.” ”It was all horrific,” she adds. ”Just before my mom was bitten by the tick, she would walk 3 miles every day, ride horses with her grandchildren. She was an amazing grandma.” Fighting back, There are many ways to protect yourself from   diseases. Wear long sleeves, spray on DEET and check yourself every night in the mirror  —   just to name a few. But protecting whole towns, or even just a neighborhood, has been difficult. ”So far there have been no success stories of treating people’s individual properties in reducing cases of   diseases,” says Keesing. But she and Ostfeld, her collaborator and husband, are trying to change that. They think they’ve come up with a way that may finally cut down on the cases of Lyme, Powassan and other   illnesses in the Northeast. Their secret weapon is an unlikely critter. ”I can already feel that it’s a pretty fat mouse,” Ostfeld says, as he pulls out a   mouse from a trap that’s been set up in a forest near his laboratory. The traps are metal boxes, about the size of wine bottles, hidden underneath leaves. ”Mice love to enter them,” Ostfeld says. ”They love to enter dark tunnels.” Ostfeld has been trapping and studying these little mice for more than 25 years. And he has found something critical to understanding   diseases: The mice are covered in ticks. For some reason, ticks flock to mice. Other animals groom the bloodsuckers off and kill them. But mice don’t. They let the critters attach and feed on their face and ears. Ostfeld says he has seen mice with 50, 60, even 100 ticks on their face and ears. ”When I first noticed this, it really grabbed my attention.” Most of these ticks are carrying Lyme disease, Ostfeld has found. Others are carrying anaplasmosis, babesiosis or Powassan. Some ticks harbor two, three or even four pathogens at once. Theses observations gave him an idea: Use the mice to kill the ticks. Turn the mice into a little assassins, who run around the forest executing ticks. This idea is surprisingly simple to carry out. Remember those boxes Ostfeld uses to trap mice? What if you put a   chemical inside the boxes? A mouse walks into the box and is swiped with a little brush that applies a drop of the insecticide on its back. ”The chemical is the same that people put on their dogs and cats,” Ostfeld says. ”But it’s an even tinier drop, much tinier. So a little bit goes a long way.” And it lasts a long time. For weeks after the mouse leaves the box, it kills ticks that land on it. But will it work in the real world? This spring Ostfeld and Keesing have launched an experiment with 1, 200 families in upstate New York to find out. Some families will get these tick boxes in their yards. Some will get a fungus sprayed on their shrubbery, which is known to kill ticks. And some will get neither. Over the next five years, Ostfeld and Keesing will check to see whether the boxes and fungus keep people from getting   diseases. Keesing is hopeful. ”If anything is going to work to reduce the number of   disease cases in neighborhoods, this is going to be it,” she says. Because here’s the thing about ticks: It’s not enough for just one or two families in a neighborhood to protect their yards, Keesing says. The whole community has to come together, in a concerted effort, to fight the onslaught of   diseases."
"Saturday Night Live had a lot of goofy, apolitical fun Saturday, but took some time to take the occasional dig at the Trump administration. Anyone who’s seen the movie Independence Day remembers the scene when President Thomas J. Whitmore, played by Bill Pullman, gives the ultimate inspirational speech to rally the troops  —   that against all odds, they can fight and defeat the evil aliens bent on destroying humanity. On Saturday, SNL imagined if President Trump were in that same position. Alec Baldwin returned as Trump, decked out in a flight jacket, as Trump has been seen wearing recently. Trump tries and fails to give a similar inspirational speech to the soldiers gathered, but largely goes off topic. In the movie, President Whitmore says: ”We can’t be consumed by our petty differences any more. We will be united in our common interest.” Baldwin’s Trump takes a different approach. ”Actually,” he says, ”the aliens are already here. They’ve been hiding in this country for hundreds of years, it’s a fact. They’re shapeshifters. They look like regular people but they’re aliens. Look, there’s one right there.” He points to Leslie Jones, a black woman. ”What? I am not an alien,” she says. ”Yes she is, and so is the woman next to her, right there.” He points to Sasheer Zamata, who is also black. She looks at Jones, and looks back. ”Oh, OK. . .. No.” Scarlett Johansson was the host of the show. It was her fifth time  —   she joined the ”  club.” In a recorded fake commercial, she played Ivanka Trump. It’s an ad for a new perfume: Complicit. ”She’s a woman who knows what she wants and knows what she’s doing,” the   says. ”A feminist, an advocate, a champion for women, but like, how?” Ivanka Trump has talked about women in the workforce and portrayed her father as an advocate for working women. ”The fragrance for the woman who could stop all this, but won’t,” the   says. On ”Weekend Update,” Kate McKinnon once again played Attorney General Jeff Sessions, joining Alex Moffat’s Sen. Al Franken. (Coincidentally, the real Al Franken used to appear on and write for SNL at times in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.) Earlier this month, Sessions recused himself from investigations into Russian influence in the election after he told Franken in his confirmation hearing under oath that he ”did not have communications with the Russians.” Reports later emerged that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador last year. Moffat’s Franken asks Sessions to put his hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth, but Franken has some trouble getting Sessions to agree: The show returns live April 8 with host Louis C. K. and musical guest The Chainsmokers."
"Along a barren dirt road, Border Patrol agents spot a mother and son, carrying nothing as they walk along the river’s edge. The sun beats down on them as the patrol car pulls up. ”Where are you from?” Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Marlene Castro asks the mother. ”How much did you pay to get here?” Recent statistics from the Department of Homeland Security show ”an unprecedented decline” in the numbers of people crossing the U. S.  border illegally. It announced a 40 percent drop from January to February, and credited the Trump administration’s tough actions on immigration as the cause. But in this corner of south Texas, every day still sees migrants trying to make it to the United States. Celia, the mother, says she’s from El Salvador. (We are not using her last name, at her request, because she fears for her safety.) On this part of the border, the majority of those trying to cross illegally are from Central America. Celia says she fled her country to protect her    son from one of the most feared gangs in the country, the Mara Salvatrucha, better known as  . ”They wanted to take him. I had to hide him at a friend’s house while we fled the country. They wanted him to join them. And they threatened that, if he didn’t, they would kill both of us,” she recounts, crying. ”The situation is terrible because you can’t trust the police. The police are linked to the gangs,” Celia says. ”I was going to file a complaint for the threats against us, but the gangs would have known about it immediately. That would have made it worse.” It’s an irony that she’s fleeing a gang that originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s.   was initially set up by Salvadoran immigrants who had relocated to the U. S. to get away from their country’s brutal civil war, in which the U. S. was heavily involved. The FBI calls the group highly dangerous and violent. The chaos and insecurity they’ve brought to the region is one of the main causes of much of the migration from Central America. ”I’ve got a Christmas present for you,” agent Castro speaks into her radio as she spots two more migrants down the road. It’s a boy and a girl, both 17, who come from Guatemala and Honduras, respectively. Castro then points to the other side of the Rio Grande toward Mexico, as other people pull a raft up from the water. ”Those are the smugglers,” Castro says. The river is narrow here and it’s easy to spot them. She says she’s seen cases of women and girls who have been sexually abused by the traffickers men and boys who have been beaten. ”They prey on their desperation, on their ignorance, because they’re not familiar with the laws, processes, anything.” Castro says U. S. Border Patrol has a good working relationship with the Mexican police. Still, she acknowledges the smugglers use the same safe houses over and over again, with little interference from Mexican authorities. Under former President Obama, families likes these who were caught at the border would be processed and then set free until an immigration hearing could be scheduled, possibly years into the future, due to overburdened courts. But that’s changing under the Trump administration. Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Daniel Hughbanks was called to the scene of the apprehensions. It’s been frustrating to spend time capturing people, he says, only to see them let go. ”As a Border Patrol agent, it ties people up here doing this. If we’re going to let people come in and just release them, why don’t they just let them come to the port of entry and do it? It seems like we should be discouraging people from making illegal entries,” Hughbanks says. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has announced officials are now considering separating children from parents who entered the country illegally. The adults would be kept in detention and the children would be placed into protective custody until they can be handed over to a relative or put into foster care. And it’s not just new arrivals being threatened with separation from their children. New threats call for new precautionary measures, Just north of the border, in the poor neighborhood of Las Milpas in Pharr, Texas, a community center holds a meeting packed full of mothers and children. The organization, ARISE, is helping the families prepare for possible deportation. The organizers hand out ”preparation kits.” Most of the people in attendance are not authorized to be in the country. While the Obama administration deported criminals who were in the country illegally, it generally left   families without documentation alone. Since the Trump administration has encouraged a more aggressive deportation strategy, many in this community say they’re very afraid. The kits have information on what the   immigrants’ legal rights are if they’re stopped by Border Patrol or even regular police. The kits also include draft custody forms the organizers explain that it’s vital for the parents to designate a legal guardian because their children could be put into foster care if they don’t have one and the parents are deported. The mothers’ faces look grave as they listen. Eva is among them. (At her request, we’re using only Eva’s first name because she’s in the U. S. illegally.) She has six children, but it’s her    boy who has become terrified that she’ll be taken away. ”He comes home from school and the first thing he does is look for me,” Eva says as she begins to cry. ”He tells me, ’When I don’t see you mommy, I think that you’ve been sent away to Mexico.’ He can’t concentrate at school because he is always so worried about his mom and dad.” She says she’s planning to fill out the custody document but she’s torn over whom to appoint. It’s such a terrifying decision, she says, ”I just don’t trust that many people.” Eva knows how difficult a burden this will be on whoever may have to take her kids  —   she’s already looking after the son of one of her friends who was deported. He has special needs and it’s been very hard. She says she tells her little ones to be brave. ”We don’t want so many deportations, so many families being separated. That’s not what we want,” Eva says. Debbie Nathan, who’s with the American Civil Liberties Union, was also at the community meeting. She runs a hotline to report abuses by the Border Patrol or police and says she’s hearing about an uptick in aggressive policing of neighborhoods where unauthorized immigrants live. ”It’s terrorizing,” she says. ”People are telling me they don’t go out of their houses. They used to take walks at night. They would walk the dog, they would go to the grocery store. I’ve heard stories about people not taking their children to child doctor visits  —   trying to figure out whether the child is sick or well enough that they can skip the visit.” Nathan says people feel intimidated. And while this has been going on for a while, it’s gotten more pronounced under Trump. ”I’ve been on the border on and off for many years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” she adds. A treacherous waiting ground, Across the border in Mexico, things are also difficult. NPR’s John Burnett went to Reynosa, where the industrial city of 650, 000 is feeling the burden of Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies. The U. S. is deporting busloads of Mexicans and Central Americans who were in the country without permission and dropping them off in Reynosa and other Mexican border cities, sometimes in the middle of the night. Reynosa is no place for immigrants, says Sister Maria   the director of the city’s migrant shelter, Casa de Migrante. ”They’re looking for a place to live,” she says. ”They’re looking for work. They need food. They’re insecure and poor. What are they to do?” Reynosa is dealing with the dual influx of deportees from the north and migrants from the south  —   with little infrastructure to deal with the overflow. This city has traditionally been a popular staging ground for people coming from elsewhere in Mexico and Central America to jump the border into Texas. Migrants who made the long, dangerous trek to Reynosa are now finding themselves in limbo. Antonio Herrera came all the way from La Ceiba, Honduras, with the intention of crossing illegally and finding work in the U. S. Now he’s having second thoughts, as he kills time  —   day after day  —   in an immigrant shelter on the south side of the Rio Grande. ”Truthfully, we hope that God touches Mr. Trump’s heart,” Herrera says, adjusting his fedora, ”and he gives us opportunity to come to the United States to work.” Coping from south of the border, But some in Mexico feel Trump’s tough immigration is the harsh medicine that Mexico needs. Inside the downtown Zaragoza Market, president of the local merchants’ association, Patricio Hernandez, congratulates Trump for forcing Mexico to face reality. ”I don’t like Trump’s politics, but there’s a good side to everything,” he says. ”Trump is taking care of Americans. We have to take care of our house. The Mexican government should be concerned about the illegals who went to the U. S. and the lack of work here in Mexico. Trump is forcing us to be responsible for our own house.” Hernandez recently did his part by hiring an unemployed man from southern Mexico to work in his jewelry store, making keys. Horacio Gutierrez is a husky    who traveled here, like many others, with the intention of using Reynosa as his departure point. ”My plan was to go to the United States,” he says, ”but then this president came and it’s gotten tough for us. We’re seeing he’s deporting lots of people.” So Gutierrez makes keys in the marketplace, unable to send any money home to his family in Chiapas. ”But,” he says with a wan smile, ”it’s better to make less money here in Mexico, and not live in fear of the immigration police.” Back across the border in the U. S. we find the migrants we met being detained by Border Patrol. Celia and her son are at a migrant shelter, preparing for their journey to Los Angeles, where her brother lives. She says she’s happy she’s been let go from detention, but she has a court date in a few weeks where her fate will be decided. ”I feel some hope,” she says. ”I don’t want to go back. I dream of my son studying in safety, that he will be fine. I hope I can find a job to support him.” I ask her if her long journey has been worth it. The answer is one word. ”Yes.” NPR’s Samantha Balaban and Ravenna Koenig contributed to this story."
"When my daughter turned 1, a routine toe prick revealed that her iron levels were low. Because our family doesn’t eat much   red meat, the pediatrician advised that we feed our daughter spinach. Every. Single. Day. This was bad. My daughter had just entered a picky eating phase and leafy greens were ”yuck.” Things were going poorly until I made popsicles. These frozen treats were chock full of blended spinach, peanut butter, yogurt, carrots, other miscellaneous healthy stuff, and blueberries, which conveniently turned the entire concoction purple. My daughter devoured the pops. Yes! Parenting win! Hmm, says Gillian Harris, among the world’s foremost experts on picky eating in children and a consultant and clinical psychologist at the University of Birmingham in the UK, when I describe my pops to her over the phone. ”You want the child to look at the vegetable, taste the vegetable, get used to the vegetable and eat that vegetable when they’re 7 or 8,” she says. In other words, getting your kid to eat veggies through subterfuge  —   whether via awesome pops or in those now ubiquitous pouches that let children squeeze a mix of fruits and     vegetable into their mouths through a makeshift straw  —   sets the bar too low. Your child must actually learn to like veggies, weird textures and all. With research showing that low vegetable consumption early in life tracks to low consumption later, and with poor diet correlated with a host of diseases later in life, including weight problems, cardiovascular disease and cancer, getting kids to eat unadulterated veggies has   public health implications. Yet research suggests that a whopping 93 percent of U. S. children between the ages of 1 and 18 do not meet current recommendations for vegetable intake. That makes sense, Harris says. ”When you look at vegetables, they don’t have much going for them. They don’t have any immediate calories. They’re stringy. And they quite often taste bitter.” Some research shows that when a mother eats a   diet during pregnancy or while nursing, those sharp flavors transfer to their amniotic fluid and breastmilk, thus priming the babies for eating actual veggies later on. Other research shows that introducing babies to vegetable flavors through milk prior to introducing solids can have the same priming effect. Yet even those babies who appear to eat everything will often start to distrust any food that looks vaguely foreign around age 2. That stage can last for years. That’s because, from an evolutionary perspective, that’s the age at which children would have started foraging on their own. Chomping on the wrong thing could have had dire consequences. So what’s a concerned parent to do? Researchers have come up with a cornucopia of ideas: Make veggies fun by giving them superhero names like   Vision Carrots! Add some salt to those green beans! Pair broccoli with dip (low fat, of course)!  While great suggestions, says Lucy Cooke, a psychologist at University College London in the U. K. ”nobody has come up with anything that works better than mere exposure.” She’s referring to research (including her own) showing that the surest way to get kids to eat a given veggie, or any food for that matter, is to offer it a lot, or somewhere in the window of   times. But most parents tend to give up on a food after just a handful of tries  —   in part, perhaps, because exposing a child to new vegetable, say Brussels sprouts, 15 times is approximately equal to 14 moments spent picking small, soggy leaves out of the rug. And what     parent wants that? Cooke has come up with one possible workaround. In a series of carefully controlled studies, conducted both at schools and within the home, Cooke found that when children were offered a   amount of a given veggie in exchange for a sticker reward, they ate more of that veggie three months later  —   sans reward  —   than children who had merely received praise. Those studies contained some crucial tenets: Portion sizes were small, children who chose not to eat the veggie didn’t receive a sticker but weren’t criticized, either, and the veggies were offered outside of   mealtimes. Cooke has now packaged the basics of her program into a program called Tiny Tastes. While that may work great for some veggies, especially those that kids aren’t terrified of at the onset, what about those veggies that make kids shudder or even vomit? The assumption underlying most studies, says Helen Coulthard, a developmental health psychologist at De Montfort University in Leicester, U. K. is that the single most important factor in getting kids to eat  —   and presumably enjoy  —   their veggies is for them to taste them. How, after all, can children learn to like rutabaga without sticking it in their mouths? But Coulthard and others say that just letting kids touch, tear, and smush their vegetables so that they can imagine what they might feel like inside their mouths will eventually lead to tasting. In a study appearing last month, Coulthard and her team showed that children who were allowed to play with fruits and vegetables were more likely to try those  —   and even other  —   fruits and vegetables immediately after play time than children who watched an adult play with those foods or children who played with traditional craft items. ”We were really surprised that it worked so well with just one session,” Coulthard says. But even if the process takes a while, parents need to take the long view, Harris adds. Letting a tot treat food like   after all, is preferable to trying to feed your      pouches. Which brings me back to my daughter. Now 2, she still turns up her nose at anything leafy and green. To that, Harris offers up this sage advice: ”Spinach doesn’t have as much iron as you think. Give her chocolate instead.” Talk about a parenting win. Sujata Gupta is a freelance science writer based in Burlington, Vt. Her work has appeared online and in print in the New Yorker, BBC, NovaNext, Scientific American and others. Follow her on Twitter @sujatagupta"
"Darvin Bentlage says his health insurance plan used to be the same as all the other cattle farmers in Barton County, Mo.: Stay healthy until he turned 65, then get on Medicare. But when he turned 50, things did not go according to plan. ”Well, I had a couple of issues,” he says. He’s putting it mildly. Over two years, he had Hepatitis C and diverticulitis. That was on top of his persistent kidney stones, diabetes and other health problems. ”I had to go back and refinance the farm,” he says. ”By the time the two years was up, I had run up between $70, 000 and $100, 000 in hospital bills.” He does not want to end up in that situation again, so he is paying close attention to what the the Republican health care bill working its way through Congress may mean for him. He racked up those medical bills in 2007. Bentlage says with all those preexisting conditions, health insurance became impossibly expensive, which was a problem, because he needed more health care. So when the Affordable Care Act exchanges opened in 2013, he says, ”I was probably one of the first ones to get online with it and walk through it.” About a quarter of the people on the exchanges are between 55 and 64, and they have more health problems than younger people do. So they have a lot on the line if the Affordable Care Act gets replaced. Under the GOP plan, older people’s insurance cost could rise dramatically, but the subsidies would be capped at $4, 000. That’s less than half of what Bentlage is getting now under the ACA. ”And my estimated income is less than $20, 000. So I’d have to go back to Plan A and hope I make it to 65, you know?” he chuckles. Insurance premiums tend to be higher in rural areas where the population also tends to be older, poorer and sicker than most. And Maggie Elehwany of the National Rural Health Association says there’s another issue: 80 rural hospitals have closed across the country since 2010. ”We’ve got an access crisis going on,” she says. ”What this House bill does is nothing  —   nothing to address the rural hospital closure crisis. You’ve got to understand that so much of that is linked to not only the health, but to the economic vitality of the community. If a hospital closes in a rural area, it closes for good.” One reason for these hospital closures is that 19 states, including Missouri, chose not to expand Medicaid, which left poor rural patients uninsured. The GOP proposal would cut Medicaid more over time. Bentlage says his county recently increased property taxes to keep its hospital open. ”It falls on the farmers,” he says. ”My property tax on the hospital went from about $80 to about $400. And it’s still in trouble.” Missouri’s Republican congressional delegation has said Obamacare has failed. And Bentlage, whose positive experience with the health law was once featured in a Healthcare. gov video, says the ACA does need work. ”There’s problems with it,” he says, ”but I don’t think it’s worth scrapping.” All you need to do, he says, is look how it’s helped him. This story is part of a reporting partnership between NPR, Side Effects Public Media and Kaiser Health News. "
"For four to eight hours a day, Chris Schranck sits between three computer monitors and a green screen in his   apartment in Queens, N. Y. It’s his job  —     himself playing video games. ”I think    me would be in shock,” he says. ”I could have never imagined that this is what I would be doing.” Hundreds of viewers watch Schranck play video games on the website Twitch  —   and pay for it. While video games are the common interest that attracts millions of viewers to Twitch, players often become as big a draw as the game they’re playing. And Twitch has been experimenting with ways to take advantage of that. The latest and broadest expansion yet is Twitch IRL, ”in real life.” Users can stream video of themselves doing just about anything: shopping for shoes, unboxing new gadgets, singing Christmas Carols. The latter was exactly what Schranck did when he was visiting family in St. Louis for the holidays. ”The party was kind of winding down but there was still some people hanging and kind of singing around the piano,” Schranck says. ”The light bulb kind of went on. There’s the IRL section. I could broadcast this.” Schranck, who is on Twitch under than name Futureman, streamed about three hours of the party  —   and fans watched. ”I stayed there for the whole thing,” says Jake Maddux, who goes by the username Fatality2X on Twitch. The stream gave Maddux a glimpse into a Christmas celebration unlike his family’s, and also let Maddux see a different side of Futureman, an Internet personality he spends so much time watching. Moneymaker, Twitch made a name for itself when it launched in 2011 by letting players stream themselves playing video games live. According to the website, nearly 10 million people visit Twitch every day, outpacing YouTube and other competitors. Its acclaim caught the attention of Amazon, which purchased Twitch in 2014 for $970 million. Given the popularity of cable networks devoted to people cooking, traveling, decorating houses or making art, ”it’s kind of unsurprising that people would want to watch each other play video games as well,” says Twitch CEO Emmett Shear. ”Especially watching really great players.” Schranck isn’t one of those great players. Instead, he says, what draws fans is his personality and the community he built around his stream. ”They’re coming to my stream to hang with the community, to hear my thoughts on anything and everything and to laugh and have fun and relax,” he says. As Futureman on Twitch, Schranck makes more than his previous job as a   and   teacher. Over 17, 000 streamers have a deal with Twitch that gives them a cut from the advertising sold on their streams. Fans can also donate directly to the streamers, and some pay a monthly fee for additional perks like access to exclusive chat rooms. According to Twitch, several of its streamers are making more than six figures. Harassment concerns, Kevin Tihon lives in Germany and volunteers for Schranck’s stream as a moderator, removing offensive and harassing messages from the stream’s chat. Part of what draws him to Twitch is the chance to interact with American culture. ”I’ve always been super interested in English language,” Tihon says. ”I’ve read a lot of English books. I’ve watched a lot of movies in the original English language. So it wasn’t that big a jump for me to jump into English conversation.” One danger with loosening Twitch’s gaming focus and exposing more of the streamers’ real lives is a potential increase in harassment. Even with moderators like Tihon, Twitch has had issues in the past with sexist and racist comments. ”I certainly think there’s a bigger moderation challenge with any broader category,” says CEO Shear. ”It’s harder to draw the lines.” While Twitch doesn’t pay moderators, the site did introduce a feature to chats to automatically blog messages that included flagged words. Despite the possible pitfalls, Shear says he hasn’t seen anything that’s caused him to question IRL’s release. ”The community has decided on ways to use IRL that are mostly positive,” Shear says. ”And so while it is certainly a concern . .. it’s not something that keeps me up at night.” IRL roots, While Twitch is closely associated with gaming today, the website’s roots bear a closer resemblance to Twitch IRL. In 2007, Shear launched Justin. TV with his former Yale classmate, Justin Kan. The plan was to live stream Kan’s life in San Francisco. The website struggled to gain much traction until they allowed viewers to start their own stream. Out of the random assortment of activities people were streaming, gaming became a clear favorite. Justin. TV   as Twitch in 2011 with a laser focus on only streaming video games. Now, even with the addition of Twitch IRL  —   or partial return to the Justin. TV roots  —     streaming remains the most popular part of Twitch. While several thousand people could be watching Twitch IRL at any given moment, hundreds of thousands will be watching streams of League of Legends, the most popular game on the website. And, for now, most of the IRL streams look exactly like the gaming streams, minus the games  —   people sitting in office chairs, in front of screens, talking. Twitch plans to make it easier to   from anywhere by adding functionality to its mobile app later this year. Ultimately, Twitch IRL is still new, so it may take some time to catch on, says Nicolas Cerrato,   of Gamoloco, a site that tracks what games are being  . ”Even if something is great, it takes a long time for it grow,” he says, noting that the early viewership numbers for Twitch IRL ”are very encouraging.” Virtual   Meghan Tobin, aka SinfullyRiddling, starts most of her streams using Twitch IRL. Much of the stream is spent responding to messages from her viewers that appear in a chat bar on the right side of the screen. When she does eventually get to the video games, they function as a backdrop while she continues the conversation with her viewers. ”I think for many people what makes them love Twitch so much is not the game,” Tobin says. ”When you remove the game you still have those main aspects that they’re there looking for.” Andrew Loftus has been watching Twitch for years and he connects Twitch’s popularity to an ancient human pastime  —    . ”You go to the mall or you go to a department store and you ” he says. ”At least I do.” It might sound like geeky reality TV, but the major difference is the lack of editing. Loftus says this can lead to some dry moments, but also some surprising, candid moments enhanced by watching them in real time. And that’s part of the addictiveness  —   the ”just five more minutes” mentality, even if those extra minutes go unrewarded. ”So maybe another five minutes,” Loftus says. ”And it just keeps building and building. And maybe, you know, 20 minutes or an hour later sometime does happen and you’re like, ’I knew I should have stayed.’ ”"
"Trekking season begins this month in the Himalayas, and visitors are sure to experience a common  —   if    —   sight: local porters carrying towering loads on their backs, often supported by a strap over their foreheads. Their packs are sometimes heavier than their bodies, says Norman Heglund, a muscle physiologist of Belgium’s University de Louvain. Think: a   pound pack on a   man. And the porters carry their cargo up and down mountains, day after day, year after year. Trekkers often wonder how the porters manage such feats of strength and endurance. As a scientist, Heglund had the equipment and experience to find out. In previous research, he had discovered some invisible tricks of bodily movement that Kikuyu women in Kenya use to carry heavy loads on their heads  —   altering their gait in subtle ways to conserve energy so they use fewer calories than a Westerner would given the same task. He expected to find similar results among porters, who he says, are ”the ones who carry the biggest loads [proportional to body weight] under the worst conditions.” But when he and colleagues measured the movements of Nepalese porters, they reported in a recent study, they didn’t find anything particularly special about how they walk. They simply go. And they keep going. ”They haven’t got any trick,” Heglund says. ”And what they do is pretty amazing.” For the study, he spent half a year in Nepal, where he set up a field site on a busy trade route in the Everest Valley. The route starts in Jiri, at the end of the road from Kathmandu toward Mt. Everest. From there, professional porters regularly carry food and other goods over about 60 miles of steep terrain that takes more than a week each way and includes more than 26, 200 vertical feet of ascents and more than 20, 000 feet of descents. Their destination is a bustling marketplace in Namche. About half a day’s walk before Namche, Heglund and his team offered lemonade and cookies to any porter who would agree to get weighed and then filmed while walking over a   long platform made out of force plates that were placed on a flat stretch of ground. Electronic equipment and computers allowed the researchers to measure how much work went into each stride. It was a popular offer that revealed just how hardcore the porters are. On average, the men carried nearly 90 percent of their body weight. A quarter of them carried more than 125 percent of their own weight, according to the new study, which appeared in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The heaviest load, Heglund says, totaled 175 percent  —   or nearly twice as much as the porter’s weight. The porters in the study weighed between about 100 and 140 pounds. The women carried an average of 70 percent of their weight  —   a good 10 percent more than the heaviest of loads carried by women in the African studies. Compared to the muscles of European graduate students, the study found, the porters’ muscles were slightly more efficient at turning oxygen into work. But there was nothing unusual about their gait or energy use. That finding emphasizes just how remarkable the human body is, says David Carrier, a comparative biomechanist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who was not involved with the study. A physically fit American can comfortably carry a backpack loaded with 25 percent of his or her body weight, he says. But even people in good shape start to crack after a day or two in the mountains with twice that much weight on their backs. Carrier suspects that Nepalese porters adapt over a lifetime of carrying loads, often beginning in childhood. And injuries appeared to be remarkably rare, Heglund found in his informal interviews, perhaps because the porters tend to move slowly. If they were running late for the Saturday morning market, he says, they would walk late into the night to get there in time. But they wouldn’t ever go fast. What all that load carrying does for the   health of porters wasn’t addressed by the new study. Some recent research has found that compared to other Nepalese groups, porters have worse diets, lower rates of school attendance and higher risk of anemia. A variety of organizations now advocate for porter health, with some progress to report: guidelines now recommend a   limit for porters who work for the tourism industry, Heglund says. Still lacking are regulations for porters who do commercial work. The new results are unlikely to provide much in the way of advice for Westerners who want to carry more weight without paying a price, Carrier says. Without a lifetime of practice, we might just be permanently soft. ”What these porters are doing, from our perspective, is sort of unimaginable,” he says, even for athletes. ”In Western society, we no longer have a real handle on what humans can do physically because we’re so far removed from this level of daily work that we physically can’t do it anymore.” Emily Sohn is a freelance journalist in Minneapolis who writes regularly about health and science for Nature, the Washington Post, bioGraphic, Hakai and others. More at www. tidepoolsinc. com. On Twitter: @tidepoolsinc"
"Did a thirst for lemonade, the beverage that launched a thousand childhood businesses, keep Paris safe from the bubonic plague? Did ergot poisoning lead to the Crusades? According to a new book by Tom Nealon, food writer and antiquarian bookseller, it’s a distinct possibility. Nealon’s book, Food Fights and Culture Wars, searches through patchy historical records to trace subjects like how chocolate led to war. In a chapter on ”cacao and conflict,” Nealon traces some of the violent history spawned by a love of chocolate.  He posits that one reason for chocolate’s popularity among one sect of Catholics may have been that the bitter taste of dark chocolate concealed ”the acrid taste of Jesuit poisons.” One cardinal hired his own chocolatier to avoid being poisoned through an adulterant in his delicious treats. And he wasn’t the only one enchanted by the taste of chocolate. By the   the sweet stuff was popular enough in England, too, that Oliver Cromwell (fresh off a regicide) decided to wage war with Spain over its Caribbean cacao plantations. In another chapter, Nealon posits that fighters may have been convinced to march across Asia for the bloody Crusades, in part, thanks to the woes caused by St. Anthony’s Fire  —   a disease that today is known as ergot poisoning, resulting from fungus that infects grains, causing hallucinations, vomiting, mania, convulsions and eventually gangrene when eaten. ”Medieval farmers did not know what the infestation was,” Nealon writes, ”so it grew year by year.” Unfortunately, the peasant diet consisted of beer, soup and bread and, as close to starvation as they often were, even if they had known the source of ergot poisoning, they didn’t have many substitutes for infected grain. In the year 1095, Pope Urban II gave a rousing speech calling on Christian nations to reclaim Jerusalem from the Muslims in which he made a great deal of the woes befalling European peasants. ”His intention was to blame Muslims for the starvation and madness that was stalking Europe,” Nealon writes. Europe was a long way from the milk and honey promised in the Holy Land. Despite the book’s title, some stories are about the wars and illnesses food prevented. When Nealon first started researching the connection between lemonade and the plague, he thought street lemonade sellers may have actually been responsible for spreading the disease. ”I knew the last wave of plagues happened right when these beverages were getting popular,” he said in an interview. Yet when he started tracing lemonade’s history, he discovered something odd in Paris: While other major French cities were stricken with another round of the plague in the late 1600s that killed hundreds of thousands, this major metropolis was spared. The plague, as people learned later, was spread by infected fleas that transferred from rats to humans as their host died. Cities in the 17th century were a haven for rats that feasted on the trash created by people in the growing urban areas. (It would be nearly another century before cities started regularly using sanitation services.) Today, pet owners with itchy animals may invest in a number of shampoos that contain the adult   and   ingredients limonene and linalool. Both of these chemicals occur naturally in the peels of many citrus fruits, lemons included. Not only was lemonade a favorite   it may also have been an accidental   too. Its popularity didn’t spread to Paris until the   century, at which point, Nealon writes, ”Lemonade was not only popular but ubiquitous, and carried by limonadiers into every profitable corner of the city.” It wasn’t until heartier varieties of lemon and new trade routes were developed that lemons spread across Europe. Where these limonadiers went, piles of spent lemon peels followed. Rats, being omnivorous eaters, likely were just as happy as the Parisians to sample the newly popular lemon. As they nibbled, he argues, they killed off   fleas. Of course, it’s impossible to know whether it was lemonade or dumb luck that spared Paris from the 1670s plague. One 1900 book about treatments for bubonic plague mentions that patients may be helped by putting citrate of magnesium in lemonade for its laxative effects  —   though it mentions nothing about using the peels as a potential deterrent for plague outbreaks. Nealon points out that readers should take some of this history with a grain of salt. ”There are a lot of facts in this book my conclusions may be suspect, but my facts are not,” he says. In history, the only way to know exactly what happened was to be there. Ergot baguettes and time travel, anyone? Tove Danovich is a journalist based in Portland, Ore."
"A new report finds that the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion over a decade but would also leave 24 million more Americans uninsured during that same period. The uninsured estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could create even greater political hurdles for the GOP bill. That legislation has already drawn opposition from major interest groups, health policy experts and even some GOP lawmakers. The bill’s defenders are touting the lower premiums and deficits that the CBO estimated, but they are also facing questions about what to do about tens of millions of uninsured Americans. More uninsured, due to Medicaid and mandate repeal, With the current law in place, the CBO estimates, the uninsured count for 2017 would stand at around 26 million. In 2026, that number would remain barely changed under current law  —   there would be 28 million uninsured Americans if the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, remained in place. That means the uninsured rate would tick up only slightly, from around 9. 5 to 10 percent. However, if the GOP bill were enacted, the uptick of uninsured would begin this year, to 31 million. By 2026, 52 million would be uninsured under the American Health Care Act, which is the first step in the Republican    plan. That would bring the uninsured rate from 11. 4 to 18. 6 percent. Much of the initial spike in uninsured Americans would come from repealing the individual mandate. ”Some of those people would choose not to have insurance because they chose to be covered by insurance under current law only to avoid paying the penalties, and some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums,” the CBO wrote. But overall, a big chunk of that increase in the uninsured comes from Medicaid, as the Republican bill rolls back the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. In 2026, 14 million fewer people would be enrolled in Medicaid under the GOP health care bill, accounting for half the total increase in uninsureds. In addition, CBO estimates that the Republican bill would reduce the number of employers offering health insurance, in part because it repeals the employer mandate to provide insurance. The CBO also notes that the GOP plan’s tax credits (available only to people who aren’t offered insurance at their jobs) would be available to more people than under Obamacare. That covers the number of people who would be insured under the legislation, but the type of people covered would also shift: Namely, the people in the individual market would skew younger than they would otherwise. That’s because younger people would have comparatively more financial help, the CBO explained: ”Under the legislation, premiums for older people could be five times larger than those for younger people in many states, but the size of the tax credits for older people would only be twice the size of the credits for younger people,” they wrote. Obamacare has had difficulty getting enough young and healthy Americans to sign up and help bring premiums down. It appears the GOP plan would shift the balance in the individual insurance market more toward those young, healthy people. But it may not be able to do so while keeping older, less healthy people on board as well. Premiums would rise, then fall (but not necessarily for everyone) While the number of uninsured Americans would immediately climb, the trajectory for premiums is more complicated. In the near future, average premiums for single people buying insurance in the individual market would be up to 20 percent higher than they would be under Obamacare. However, those premiums would eventually settle below where they would be under Obamacare. By 2026, those same premiums would be 10 percent below where they would be under the Affordable Care Act. Importantly, that doesn’t mean that everyone’s premiums would fall. The GOP’s bill expands how much more insurers can charge older people than younger people. Under the AHCA, older Americans could be charged five times more than younger people, up from three times under current law. That means premiums would be ”substantially” smaller for younger insurance buyers and ”substantially” bigger for older Americans, the CBO wrote. Deficits to fall, The Republicans’ new plan would reduce the deficit by just under $34 billion a year, on average, over the next 10 years. For fiscal year 2016, the total federal budget deficit was $587 billion. The $337 billion deficit reduction estimate is what is known as a ”static” score  —   that is, it does not take the bill’s potential economic effects into account. In 2015, the Republican Congress made a rule saying that for major legislation, the CBO also has to include ”dynamic” scores that do incorporate those potential effects. However, the CBO said it didn’t have time to do so for this report: ”Because of the very short time available to prepare this cost estimate, quantifying and incorporating those macroeconomic effects have not been practicable.” The White House takes on the CBO, The bill is just the first part of the Republicans’ plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Written as part of the budget reconciliation process, it can make only   changes. Part 2 of the GOP’s process, as described by House Speaker Paul Ryan, will include deregulation. Part 3 will include changes to the law that could not be made in the reconciliation bill. Because of this, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney protested on Monday that the CBO was not taking into account their full plan. ”We disagree strenuously with the report that was put out,” Price said. This continues a recent pattern from the White House, in the   to the CBO’s report, of questioning the agency’s ability to create accurate estimates. (In a fact check, the New York Times found that the CBO was off on an initial estimate of how big the Obamacare exchanges would be but that its overall track record is good.) Mulvaney did pick out a piece of the report that he liked. ”Everyplace else where the market is allowed to function, quality goes up and costs go down, and I think if you look for something the CBO may have gotten right in this report, it’s that the premiums are actually going to come down in cost,” he said. This also continues a Trump administration pattern of casting favorable data as true and unfavorable data as false. President Trump has not yet responded directly on Twitter to the CBO’s report. However, he did tweet shortly after the report’s release, drawing attention to a report that the Obama administration spent $77 million on promoting Obamacare in 2016. He later tweeted more Obamacare criticism, asking, ”How has it impacted YOU?”"
"On Monday, as GOP leaders tried to rally Republican lawmakers to support their health care proposal, the   Congressional Budget Office released a report showing that the plan would lead to an estimated 14 million fewer people with health insurance by next year. The CBO also found the proposed plan would reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion. Atul Gawande is a cancer surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass. and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. He has spoken out against the GOP bill, expressing concern that it would cause poor and sick people to lose health coverage. The stakes for patients, he argues, are ”extremely high,” and he says the bill is at the ”center of the debate [about] what our responsibilities are for covering people over the course of their lives.” Gawande discusses the Republican plan with NPR’s Robert Siegel, including how his experience as a surgeon changed after the first universal health care bill was passed in his state, the ways in which the Affordable Care Act could be improved and the problem of high medical costs. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. On the potential effects for his patients of repealing parts of the Affordable Care Act  ”Well, I’m a cancer surgeon, and in many ways it will affect the patients widely. [President] Trump has said his aim is better coverage than the [Affordable Care Act] at lower cost, and if that were where it was going, it would likely protect the people that unexpectedly come in to see me. But that is in conflict with this other goal that Republicans have, which is actually to dismantle the ACA and its funding, and it’s that pull that lies in the middle of this.” On how people who use the Medicaid program could be affected by the bill, ”Before Romneycare, [which is] a version of the ACA passed here in Massachusetts where I practice, about 10 to 15 percent of my cancer patients were people who didn’t have coverage. They gained coverage in two ways. One way was that they gained coverage by Medicaid. Second, they gained coverage, if they didn’t have an employer who covered them, on the online exchanges. ”I haven’t taken care of an uninsured patient in years.” On how the Affordable Care Act could improve, ”There are some obvious things to do. We have the group of people who don’t have coverage under Medicare, don’t have coverage under Medicaid, and their employer is not providing coverage or they don’t have an employer. They are in the online exchanges, going to Healthcare. gov, and with some tweaks we would get more young and healthy [people] in to go along with the sicker, older population and that would help flatten the premiums and keep that system [grow]. ”One thing that has people really angry is . .. where you have    deductibles and copayments, so you still have some major barriers in your care. We’ve made huge progress [on that] and should be making more.” On the goals of the Republican health bill, ”What is the human goal of this bill? What’s it aiming to solve? If the aim is to solve the problems they criticize, they’ve not put forward solutions that actually do that. There are directions to get there. And there’s a moment when [President] Trump talked about [the fact] that he could get a bipartisan group around this goal of insurance for everybody. ”But what we have right now is a bill that doesn’t . .. [address those] problems that have been singled out. Now we just are waiting to see how much worse the costs will be for individual people.”"
"The   Truman Bowling Alley isn’t glamorous or grand, but as bowling alleys go, the location is mighty exclusive. It’s in the basement of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, inside the White House complex. And on Tuesday night it will be the latest backdrop for a high stakes sales pitch to a group of conservative House Republicans known as the Freedom Caucus. They are skeptical of what the president is selling: the American Health Care Act, or as Breitbart called it derisively, ”Obamacare 2. 0.” If the roughly 40 members of the House Freedom Caucus stick together and vote against it, the bill will fail. Hence, the charm offensive. ”You know I’m not a bowler,” said Rep. Mark Meadows,  . C. when asked if he’d be bowling at the White House. I’m going over next Tuesday for pizza and policy  —   is what I’m calling it  —   at the bowling alley. How about that?” Meadows is chairman of the Freedom Caucus, and with a slight Southern drawl, he chooses his words carefully. He went to the White House last Thursday for a meeting with the president and several other congressional conservatives. ”Anytime that you’re with the president of the United States, you feel like you’re with a guy that you’ve known for years,” Meadows said a few hours later. Count him as charmed, but not sold. He gives the president an   for listening. The question, though, is whether he’ll see any changes to the legislation that reflect his concerns and those of others in his caucus. Meadows said he just wants President Trump to uphold his campaign promise. For Meadows, that means Americans need to see lower insurance premiums. Independent analyses of the bill find that for many Americans, especially those who are older and have lower incomes, their    expenses are likely to rise. Trump and those in his administration insist this bill is just the first stage in a   plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. But the other stages will require the support of Senate Democrats, something that is far from guaranteed. Meadows said he’s learned the hard way that people in Washington make lots of promises, but Washington fails to keep them. ”I think [Trump] understands if it was personality driven, most of the Freedom Caucus would already be with him,” said Meadows. ”Hopefully he knows that it has nothing to do with the respect or admiration that we have for the president as much as it is just real policy concerns.” And those House members considering a ”no” vote on the health care bill are getting some encouragement from across the Capitol. ”I’m afraid that if they vote for this bill, they’re going to put the House majority at risk next year,” Sen. Tom Cotton,  . said on ABC’s This Week. ”Do not walk the plank and vote for a bill that cannot pass the Senate and then have to face the consequences of that vote,” Cotton urged House Republicans. Even though President Trump is leading the way on the charm offensive, it’s not entirely clear who is leading the horse trading behind the scenes that could lead to changes in the bill. Trump appears to be both   and   at the same time, leaving it to Congress to, as Meadows put it, ”work its will.” It’s not even clear the White House and congressional leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan are open to making modifications. It has been presented to Republicans in the House as a binary choice  —   either you support repealing and replacing Obamacare and you vote for this bill, or you don’t. But this wooing of Congress doesn’t stop with the Freedom Caucus. President Trump is inviting so many members of Congress over to the White House, they might want to consider setting up a shuttle from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other. Take last Tuesday when Trump met with two Republican senators. And had lunch with one more, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. During the contentious Republican primary, Trump read Graham’s cellphone number out loud at a rally that was carried live on TV. Graham got swamped with calls and had to change it. After his White House lunch, Graham said it went so well he gave the president his new number. Two days later, Graham was chipper, ”So far so good,” he said before adding that Trump had already called him on the new number. ”I think he’s doing a good job of trying to get to know people personally.” After the lunch that day with Graham, Trump met with nearly two dozen members of the House GOP whip team  —   the members of Congress tasked with getting their colleagues to vote for the health care bill.  ”You know he’s very good at [it],” Rep. Tom Cole,  . who was at that meeting, said of the president’s wooing members of Congress. ”I think actually it’s the part of the job he may like the most.”  As the representatives introduced themselves, Cole said Trump keyed in on New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. ”It got to her and he said, ’Youngest woman ever elected to Congress.’ And then he goes, ’None of the rest of us can say anything like that’,” said Cole. ”And the whole place burst out into laughter. He was like really engaging.” Trump told others at the table he had seen them on TV and complimented them. Cole said this is the kind of thing that can make lawmakers giddy and put them in the mood to help the president. Another thing that can put them in the mood to support the president is his popularity in their districts. For Republicans from deep red districts, there could be a lot of pressure (spoken or unspoken) to fall in line with a president who comes from the same party. For the majority of House members, this is a new dynamic, one they didn’t experience in eight years of the Obama presidency and two years in the minority before that. They aren’t in the opposition anymore. Trump’s week of wooing lawmakers  —   including past adversaries  —   didn’t stop on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he and first lady Melania Trump hosted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi Cruz, for dinner at the White House. Cruz described the meal as ”delightful,” which might be an exercise in diplomatic word choice. When asked whether they discussed the comments Trump had made about Cruz’s wife and father during the campaign, Cruz didn’t respond. He also refused to say what he ate, only saying it was ”delicious.” Earlier that day, Trump met with Rep. Elijah Cummings,  . who has often been quite critical of the president from his perch on the House Oversight Committee. They discussed a shared goal of bringing down prescription drug prices. Cummings said Trump followed up with him in a phone call on Friday night. During the Obama presidency there was a regular complaint that the former president didn’t spend enough time personally courting members of Congress. Trump is clearly going in the opposite direction. ”It’s not just the fact that you meet,” said Graham. ”It’s the fact that you’re listening. I think he’s a darn good listener. The thing about him is when you’re in the room he puts full attention on you. That’s a really good quality.” But passing bills is about ultimately getting votes. And the charm offensive for this health care bill will be the first big test of the persuasive powers of President Trump."
"Updated 6:30 p. m. ET, The Justice Department has asked for more time to respond to a congressional committee about any evidence that President Barack Obama ordered surveillance of   Donald Trump last year, as Trump has claimed. The House Intelligence Committee had set the deadline of Monday in a letter to Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente last week in which it asked for proof of the claim, which Obama and others have said is baseless. Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and ranking Democrat Adam Schiff requested any applications for surveillance of Trump or his associates that were made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any court orders supporting such surveillance made by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, NPR’s David Welna reports. David adds that a copy of the letter also was sent to FBI Director James Comey, who has asked the Justice Department to publicly deny President Trump’s claims. The Justice Department issued this statement Monday: ”This afternoon, the Department of Justice placed calls to representatives of the Chairman and Ranking Member of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to ask for additional time to review the request in compliance with the governing legal authorities and to determine what if any responsive documents may exist.” The wiretapping claims came as the House Intelligence Committee was already in the process of looking into U. S. allegations that Russia sought to influence last year’s presidential election  —   allegations that have also included ties between some in Trump’s camp and Russian officials. Nunes has said the panel will also look at the president’s accusation. Sen. John McCain is among those who have asked for proof of Trump’s claim, telling CNN on Sunday, ”I think the president has one of two choices: either retract or . .. provide the information that the American people deserve, because, if his predecessor violated the law, President Obama violated the law, we have got a serious issue here, to say the least.” Monday’s deadline came more than a week after Trump said Obama ”was tapping my phones in October,” in a series of tweets that accused his predecessor of ”McCarthyism” and called Obama a ”Bad (or sick) guy!” Trump did not provide any evidence to bolster his claim instead, the White House released a statement calling for Congress to investigate the allegations made by one president against another. As NPR’s David Folkenflik has reported, Trump’s claim is seen as having its origins in a March 2 broadcast by conservative talk radio host Mark Levin, who accused Obama ”and his surrogates” of using ”intelligence activities to surveil members of the Trump campaign” to help Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. After that, David said, the claim was repeated by the Breitbart website. ”That seems to have inspired, very directly, a series of tweets,” Folkenflik said. Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis says the Obama White House observed a policy against interfering with ”any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.” Lewis added, ”As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U. S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.” The morning after Trump made his claim, principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about it on ABC’s This Week here’s what she said: ”Look, I think he is going off of information that he’s saying that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential.”"
"Much attention has been paid in recent years to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. But Ukraine is not the only place where Russia has exploited ethnic conflicts and disputed territories along its borders. In the foothills of the Caucasus mountains, 2, 500 feet up, Russia is steadily building what it says is a new international border. It’s marked by a hodgepodge of barbed wire fences, large green signs, hastily dug trenches and   checkpoints. Villages are divided by it and people are regularly thrown in jail for crossing it. But according to most of the world, this border doesn’t exist, and neither does the land it defines  —   the Republic of South Ossetia. South Ossetia, a region roughly the size of Rhode Island with a population of some 40, 000 ethnic Ossetians, declared its independence from Georgia in 1990, following the breakup of the Soviet Union. After a   war and an imperfect ceasefire, South Ossetia operated for nearly two decades as a   independent state, with periodic   in fighting. The region had its own government, but no enforced border. That changed in 2008. In August of that year, Georgia launched an offensive to retake control of the breakaway region. In a war that lasted five days, Russia responded by invading and occupying South Ossetia. Then it recognized it as a sovereign state. Most of the rest of the world, including the United States and Europe, declined to follow suit. The only other countries that recognize South Ossetia are Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru. Since then, despite a tenuous peace, the conflict remains unresolved, as Russia has slowly been turning the previously theoretical borders of South Ossetia into real lines on the ground. The village of Khurvaleti, home to perhaps 700 people, is literally split in two by the new boundary  —   one side in   territory, the other under Georgian control. ”To start with, this wasn’t a great village,” said Givi Khuroshvili, a lifelong,   resident sitting with friends on a park bench in the center of town. ”Now, after this conflict, everyone tries to avoid it,” he says. The village, explains music teacher Zizi Kurmashvili, used to be prosperous  —   people had huge apple, peach and plum orchards and there was a thriving market. Now, she says, Russia has stolen their land and their water, and people can’t make any money. Concertina wire runs through the center of Khurvaleti, dividing neighbor from neighbor. Russian border guards are stationed in bunkers overlooking the town from three sides. ”If you go up on the mountain after your cows or your animals, they take you to Tskhinvali,” Khuroshvili said, referring to the de facto capital of South Ossetia, where those arrested for crossing the boundary line are typically imprisoned  —   most frequently for several days, but sometimes for much longer. The Georgia State Security Service reports that in 2016 alone, 134 people were detained by Russian border guards and thrown in jail for crossing the boundary from Georgia to South Ossetia. But if the consequences of crossing the line are very clear, it is not at all clear where that line is. Farmers along the boundary have gone to bed one night thinking their fields and orchards were in Georgia, only to wake up and discover fencing and trenches indicating otherwise. New green signs announcing the presence of a South Ossetian ”state border” occasionally pop up in places previously understood to be well within Georgian territory. For now, the boundary is, effectively, wherever Russia says it is. Russia claims it is following old Soviet military maps defining the border of South Ossetia, which was considered a province of sorts in Soviet times. But maps defining that territory are unpublished. ”If you have a   border in the middle of a village, in the middle of the orchards, it creates huge problems for the local community, for the society,” says Tomasz Szablowski, a monitor for the European Union. Several times a week, EU monitors visit a small Russian checkpoint just outside the village of Odzisi, along what has become Georgia’s de facto northern border, to observe and document Russia’s   ”borderization” activities. Clad in blue vests emblazoned with the EU flag and carrying binoculars and cameras, the monitors pile out of their Nissan Patrol SUVs about 50 feet in front of the checkpoint. On the other side of the    gate blocking the entrance to the checkpoint, the Russian border guards, dressed in green camouflage fatigues with rifles slung over their shoulders, pull out their own binoculars and cameras. For half an hour or so, each side takes photos of the other side taking photos. A stray dog nicknamed Putin wanders the empty road in between. Eventually, the European Union monitors pile back into their SUVs and drive away. The Russian guards go back to searching cars of people crossing from one side to the other. What passes for normality resumes. It’s a tenuous peace, but one that Georgia says it is determined to keep  —   though it still wants Russia out of South Ossetia. ”I always say that Georgia is a stable country, our interest is in stability. But that doesn’t mean we are interested in stabilizing [the] current situation, which is an ongoing conflict and process of Russification on the ground,” says Ketevan Tsikhelashvili, Georgia’s Minister for Reconciliation and Civic Equality. She’s in charge of bringing South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another   breakaway region, back under her government’s control. South Ossetia’s de facto president has scheduled a referendum next month on whether to change the region’s name to South   to mirror the name of its   neighbor, North  . Some observers see this as a possible step on the way from de facto Russian control of the region to its annexation. Tsikhelashvili says the fencing and detentions are Russia’s way of creating uncertainty that it can exploit for its own ends. ”In Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Russia seems to see the conflicts as part of its foreign strategy,” she said. ”Ukraine was just the last in the row.” But Georgia, she says, will resist efforts to draw it back into conflict. ”We are not keen to attract the world’s attention by pictures of war,” Tsikhelashvili said. ”We have had enough of that.” Even so, for those living along the boundary, the memory of what was  —   and the fear of what could be  —   is never far away. Music teacher Zizi Kurmashvili’s    son, Giorgi Muzashvili, barely remembers a time before fences divided Khurvaleti and Russian border guards patrolled the hills. But he does remember the war and watching Russian tanks roll into their yard. ”I put books and my clothes [in a bag] because I thought that in two or three days maybe, I will be in refugee camp,” Muzashvili said. They were able to stay, living today on the Georgian side of the fence. Muzashvili hopes to make his home here in the decades to come  —   assuming, of course, the border doesn’t change yet again. Stephanie Joyce is reporting in Georgia as NPR’s Above the Fray fellow. The fellowship is sponsored by the John Alexander Project, which supports foreign reporting in undercovered parts of the world."
"Should the Irish Giant be allowed to rest in peace? That’s the question swirling around the bones of Charles Byrne, a literal giant from Ireland who was an 18th century celebrity. His enormous skeleton is on public display today at a London museum, part of a collection of anatomical specimens acquired by the eminent surgeon and scientist Dr. John Hunter, who died in 1793. The bizarre story of how Byrne’s skeleton got there dismays medical ethicists. Although the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum has resisted calls to give Byrne’s remains a dignified burial, some are urging the museum to reconsider the matter this spring, as it shuts down for renovations. The tragic tale of Charles Byrne started in 1761. He was born to a poor family, and grew, and grew, and grew and grew  —   until he reached the astonishing height of about 7 feet 7 inches. ”And this is at a time when the national height average, of course, was much lower than it is now,” says Thomas Muinzer, a legal scholar at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He’s been fascinated by Byrne’s story ever since he was a student and read a legal text that mentioned the Irish Giant in an obscure footnote. ”I’m Northern Irish,” says Muinzer. ”And I’m also tall. Perhaps it resonated with me a bit as a human being.” He learned that Byrne made his way to London as a young man, making a living showing off his height. Newspapers of the day called him ”the most extraordinary curiosity ever known or ever heard of in history,” and he even inspired a hit London stage show. The tumor in his pituitary gland that made him tall, however, also made him sick, and he reportedly drank a lot. At the age of 22, Byrne was on his deathbed, surrounded by friends. And he was scared  —   but not just of dying. ”He had a fear that if he was buried in the ground,” says Muinzer, ”his body could be snatched by what were then called resurrectionists.” The resurrectionists were the shady grave robbers who sold corpses to medical schools or scientists who needed human bodies to dissect. Byrne knew his remarkable body would be a real prize. So he made this unusual final request: ”Charles directed his pals to weigh him down in a kind of lead coffin and bury him at sea,” says Muinzer. Only at the bottom of the English Channel would his body be safe from dissection, Byrne thought. ”Charles was well aware that the surgical establishment had their eyes on him, if you like, and in all likelihood he was concerned about Hunter specifically,” Muinzer says. And with good reason. Hunter was, in fact, hunting the Irish Giant. An unscrupulous undertaker secretly opened Byrne’s coffin and switched his dead body for dead weight. The funeral went on, but the huge corpse got spirited away to Hunter’s house. The surgeon kept all this under wraps for a few years. But the story eventually came out  —   as did Byrne’s skeleton, which became one of the highlights of Hunter’s collection. And incredibly, more than two centuries later, you can go see the bones for free at the museum named after Hunter. ”In the sort of center of the ground floor,” Muinzer says, ”you have this enormous skeleton in an illuminated display case. And that’s Charles Byrne.” Muinzer has written journal articles calling for Byrne to get his burial at sea. He’s not the only one who has been drawn in by the pathos in Byrne’s story  —   the giant has showed up as a character in more than one novel, and there’s even a song about him. ”Do we want to live in a world where people die, they’re gone, who cares about what they wanted in life in terms of the remains or in terms of their burial?” says Muinzer. ”Or do we want to live in a world where we respect people’s wishes after they’ve passed away?” Even now, the wishes of the dead and their families aren’t always followed, says Jeffrey Kahn, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University. ”There have been numerous cases in the not so distant past of bodies that were supposed to go to cemeteries ending up in medical school dissection classes,” he notes. ”That happened in New York state, not so long ago.” In this case, Byrne was very clear about what he wanted, Kahn says. ”It wasn’t to display him in a museum. And I wonder what the value of continuing to display his skeleton actually is. Is there more to be learned?” A spokesperson for the museum said that she could not provide anyone for an interview with NPR, but emailed this statement: ”The Royal College of Surgeons believes that the value of Charles Byrne’s remains, to living and future communities, currently outweighs the benefits of carrying out Byrne’s apparent request to dispose of his remains at sea. No will or testament survives  —   there is no direct evidence of his burial wishes.” The museum cited research into familial isolated pituitary adenoma, which recently was done using DNA extracted from Byrne’s teeth, as evidence that the remains have value. But critics say such studies could be done on living people with this condition who give consent. And anyway, they note, the bones could be kept for research without having them on display for the public to gawk at. A spokesperson for the museum told NPR via email, ”Charles Byrne’s remains will remain on display after the redevelopment. This will be kept under review.” The DNA research done on Byrne has genetically linked him to living people, ”including individuals who have requested that the skeleton should remain on display in the museum,” according to the spokesperson, who said the museum found their views ”significant.” But some ethicists question why the views of these individuals should be given any special weight at all, since they are only distantly related to Byrne  —   their shared common ancestor lived some 1, 500 years ago. ”It seems perfectly clear to me that it’s far more compelling to obey the refusal  —   and it’s undisputed refusal, of the person himself,” says Raanan Gillon, an emeritus professor of medical ethics at Imperial College London. One person who has been genetically linked to Byrne is Brendan Holland, another man from Northern Ireland who grew to a height of 6 feet 10 inches before being diagnosed and treated. To Holland, the most important thing now is to screen for the genetic mutations that can give rise to a   pituitary tumor. Early diagnosis and treatment often can largely prevent the illnesses that the excess hormones cause in living people. Holland says he doesn’t have the scientific or medical expertise to say whether the skeleton can yield up any more helpful information. Personally, says Holland, he wouldn’t care if his dead body ended up in a glass case for a couple of hundred years. ”I’m one of those people who take the view that when you’re dead, you’re dead,” says Holland. He has been face to face with Byrne’s skeleton and isn’t sure what should be done with it. ”I’m not 100 percent convinced one way or the other,” says Holland. ”I can see both sides of the argument.” Museums are full of human remains that didn’t arrive with signed consent forms. The ancient Egyptians probably wouldn’t have been thrilled about having their bodies taken to   lands and photographed by many generations of tourists. But Muinzer, the legal scholar, says that Byrne’s case is unique. ”He is now, after having being stolen on the way to his funeral,” says Muinzer, ”on display permanently as a sort of freak exhibit in the memorial museum to the person who screwed him over, effectively.”"
"Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who has a history of controversial statements on immigration and race, is drawing condemnation for a Sunday tweet in support of a   Dutch politician, in which King wrote, ”We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” King’s tweet came in support of Geert Wilders, a Dutch parliamentarian who hopes to lead that country’s government in Wednesday’s elections. Wilders has called for banning the Quran in the Netherlands and shutting down mosques. That has led to a series of statements and tweets slamming King. Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said, ”I do not agree with Congressman King’s statement. We are a nation of immigrants, and diversity is the strength of any nation and any community.” Conservative commentator Bill Kristol tweeted: ”Is it worth making the obvious point that what American history has been about is ’restoring’ ourselves with ’somebody else’s babies?’ ” NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation, sounded a similar note: But King also has his supporters, including former KKK grand wizard David Duke, who tweeted ”GOD BLESS STEVE KING! !! #TruthRISING.” Duke also suggested ”sanity reigns supreme” in King’s congressional district. Duke’s support seemed to spur the response from Kaufmann, the Iowa GOP chairman, which came under the heading: ”David Duke isn’t welcome in Iowa.” And King himself refused to back away from the tweet. On CNN Monday morning, King said, ”I meant exactly what I said,” and that he’d ”like to see an America that’s just so homogeneous that we look a lot the same, from that perspective.”"
"This story was updated on March 14 at 4:35 PM. Three more bands have announced that they would not be performing at this year’s South by Southwest [SXSW] music festival because their members have been prevented from entering the United States. On Monday afternoon, the label Brownswood Recordings, founded by DJ, producer and broadcaster Gilles Peterson, announced that the drummer Yussef Dayes  —   who performs in two bands, the   duo Yussef Kamaal, which is signed to Brownswood, and United Vibrations alongside his brothers Ahmed and Kareem  —   had his ”visa revoked at the 11th hour.” The label added that Yussef Kamaal believes this decision ”to be discrimination based on religion and race.” According to a statement from Brownswood, all three Dayes brothers, originally scheduled to travel to the U. S. on Tuesday, have had their status under the Visa Waiver Program (ESTA) revoked. United Vibrations also released its own statement on Monday: ”We are sad to announce we will NOT be performing at SXSW in Texas because our ESTA’s have been revoked under the new Executive order. We were looking forward to connecting with our brothers and sisters stateside to share our music. Why weren’t we let in? Our Names? The music? The color of our skin?” The   band Massive Scar Era, which is based dually in Vancouver, Canada and Cairo, Egypt, posted a video on Facebook very early Monday morning saying that its members were denied entry into the United States in advance of a planned showcase performance at SXSW. The relevant material begins in the video at 1:33. In it, the band’s songwriter, guitarist and vocalist, Cherine Amr, says that the group was denied entry at the U. S.   Canada border near Seattle because, as performing artists, a CBP officer told the group that it needed to enter the U. S. with   visas instead of   (tourist) visas. The group was carrying a letter from SXSW asserting that its musicians could travel to the U. S. under the   ”showcase exception” with tourist visas. (The band Soviet Soviet, which was denied entry to the U. S. last week and returned to its native Italy, had also attempted to employ a letter from SXSW in a similar fashion.) According to Massive Scar Era’s Facebook page, the group had at least four American tour dates planned for the next two weeks, including a stop in Austin during SXSW Denver Provo, Utah and Seattle. In a question similar to United Vibrations’ statement, Amr asks whether or not the denial is due to the fact that both she and   Nancy Mounir are Egyptian. She also claims in the video that the immigration officer posited that they could be coming into the U. S. as some sort of ”protest.” According to Massive Scar Era, a Customs and Border Protection [CBP] official also questioned the band’s bassist, Dylan Pieter   about proving his ethnic identity. In the video, Amr recounts a purported exchange between the immigration officer and  . ”Dylan is a First Nation,” she exclaims. ”He’s allowed to go to the States whenever he wants to, work whenever he wants to, because he’s First Nation . .. He [the CBP officer] looked at him and he’s like, ’Next time when you come, you have to show a blood test that you’re First Nation. ’” The band says that   was carrying an official card identifying him as a First Nation member. Update, March 14 at 4:35 PM: In an interview Amr gave Monday night to NPR, she said that the immigration officer told her band that he was specifically concerned with the SXSW performance, and not the   performances. ”We spent two hours trying to convince him,” Amr said, ”and we pointed out that not only had we played SXSW before on the same kind of visas, but that our visas for this visit had been issued by the consulate in Cairo specifically so that we could perform at SXSW. They knew we had played SXSW before, and that was why we were coming again  —   the government had all that information.” Amr said that his reply confounded the band. ”He told us,” she recounted, ”’Just because the consulate granted you those visas, it doesn’t make their decision lawful. ’” In addition, Amr asserted that the information on the band’s Facebook page regarding the additional show in Seattle (which was slated to be a     show) was left online in error. ”After talking with the American Federation of Musicians [AFM, the musicians’ union] I understood that even   free shows were not allowed under the   visas, so we cancelled that,” she said. ”We just didn’t update that part of our Facebook page.” Amr says that the officer told her that he was ”not concerned” with the   shows, and that his objections were based upon the band’s performance in Austin. Amr added that her band did not speak with an attorney specializing in U. S. visas and immigration, but that she had believed that the group had understood the visa restrictions fully after consulting with AFM. Amr characterized the hours of conversation the band had with this CBP officer as generally ”polite and civilized”  —   though she also repeated her assertion that the official advised   to carry blood test results proving his First Nation status next time he tried to enter the U. S. (According to the band,   is currently speaking to tribal officials about this border patrol officer’s statement.) It is unclear whether   initially presented himself to the CBP officer with Canadian identification and paperwork, or with First Nation identification. In her NPR interview, Amr also elaborated upon her claim in the video about musicians entering the U. S. in order to foment dissent. ”He said, ’People and media are using SXSW to protest. ’” She added that she did not ask for the officer’s name at any point, because she said she understood that he had the power to permit or deny the band entry into the U. S. ”I did not want to provoke him,” she told NPR. When asked about the circumstances surrounding Massive Scar Era’s attempt to enter the U. S. a CBP spokesperson said that the agency could not comment on specific international travelers due to privacy policies, but sent NPR a statement that reads in part: ”All travelers arriving to the United States must possess valid travel documents. For foreign nationals, this includes a current passport and a valid visa or visa waiver issued by the U. S. Government. The foreign national must possess the appropriate visa for their intended purpose of travel. For example, if an individual is a member of an internationally recognized entertainment group, they must apply for and be granted a   visa . .. Applicants for admission bear the burden of proof to establish that they are clearly eligible to enter the United States. In order to demonstrate that they are admissible, the applicant must overcome ALL grounds of inadmissibility . .. [U. S. immigration law lists] more than 60 grounds of inadmissibility divided into several major categories, including   grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds.” Billboard was sent the same statement as NPR, but characterized its language as an ”advisory.” However, in an email to NPR this afternoon, a CBP spokesperson called Billboard’s description of the statement ”incorrect.”"
"Last Friday afternoon, a controversy erupted about the Italian   band Soviet Soviet, who were denied entrance to the United States on Wednesday and detained overnight before being deported back to Italy. In the wake of that news, there was a huge wellspring of reader commentary and questions about what had happened. To help clarify, we’re digging into the thickets of U. S. policy, specifically the regulations surrounding performing artists, as well as various interpretations of those regulations, to figure out what exactly happened  —   and what musicians, fans and industry professionals alike can learn from the Soviet Soviet situation. It is also very likely that there will be other denials of entry for other performers trying to enter the U. S. in the coming days and weeks, especially as the South by Southwest [SXSW] festival, which begins today, continues. Just last night, the band Massive Scar Era, who were like Soviet Soviet also hoping to perform at SXSW, posted a video claiming that they were denied entry as well, though under a different set of circumstances. This afternoon, two British acts, Yussef Kamaal and United Vibrations (who share drummer Kamaal Dayes) also announced that they would be canceling their SXSW dates. Their cancellations came after travel permission for Dayes and two of his brothers, who also play in United Vibrations, was allegedly revoked. What exactly did Soviet Soviet do wrong? The Italian trio has stated it tried to come into the U. S. for a number of performances: a showcase at SXSW, a live performance at Member Station KEXP and at least two other shows. It’s those two other shows that seem to have formed the basis of the Custom and Border Protection [CBP] officials’ decision to deport the bands’ members. NPR is basing our interpretation of these events on statements made by Soviet Soviet and the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] as well as in articles by and interviews with several immigration lawyers. According to Soviet Soviet, its members told immigration officials that at two of the planned shows, the venues would be charging fans entry fees, but that the band itself would not get paid for those performances. The group seemed to believe that not receiving income from those shows would keep it on the right side of CBP  —   but this is exactly where Soviet Soviet’s case goes sideways. How so? As Italians, the band tried to entered the U. S. under the Visa Waiver Program (also known as ESTA) which permits citizens of nearly 40, mostly Western European countries to come into the U. S. for up to 90 days as   tourists. However, under the Visa Waiver Program or as holders of tourist visas, travelers to the U. S. are theoretically allowed to solicit future business while in the U. S. As immigration lawyer Leena Khandwala explained to NPR earlier this month, this can mean doing things like attending a conference or convention, meeting with clients, or attending a meeting. Musicians often interpret this regulation as permitting them to perform at a showcase at a large industry event, such as SXSW. Is the ”showcase exception” a real thing? That’s up for interpretation  —   and the ”showcase exception” is not a universally accepted standard. One prominent immigration attorney who specializes in working with international performers, Brian Taylor Goldstein of GG Arts Law, wrote an article last week arguing that there is no such exception: ”Artists cannot perform on visitor visas (   ) or through the Visa Waiver Program (’ESTA’) regardless of whether or not they are being paid and regarding of whether or not tickets are sold. Except in the most narrowly defined circumstances, US immigration law has always defined ’work’ as it pertains to artists, as any kind of performance. Artists denied entry on the basis of fraud, will have a denied entry on their record, impeding future visas and travel.” On the other hand, certain presenters and festivals  —   including SXSW  —   do encourage artists to utilize this theoretical exception, provided that they don’t try to do other performances or activities while in the U. S. As Roland Swenson, SXSW’s   and CEO, argued to NPR earlier this month, securing a work visa is beyond the reach of many musicians, especially younger or emerging acts. (More on those work visas below.) ”If the artists had to qualify for other types of visas,” Swenson said, ”they might not have the career credentials to gain those.” In essence, what SXSW was saying was that if bands choose to try to come into the U. S. under the   ”showcase exception,” then they can only perform at an   event like SXSW. (Whether or not SXSW is solely an industry event at this point  —   considering the fact that tens of thousands of SXSW passes are sold to fans and not just to   professionals  —   is a matter for another day.) Did Soviet Soviet even use the ”showcase exception” correctly?  Apparently not  —   the band seemed to believe that their planned   appearances were equivalent to showcases, and CBP apparently disagreed. (KEXP reported on Friday that the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] ”maintained the position that the band lacked the proper visa for entry into the United States. ”) Two immigration attorneys who specialize in securing visas for performing artists  —   Matthew Covey and Will Spitz of the   organization Tamizdat  —   posted a piece on Facebook over the weekend that posited why Soviet Soviet were specifically wrong. They wrote: ”Soviet Soviet was doing precisely what the much maligned SXSW invitation letter was attempting to caution them against doing. As monstrous as reports of CBP’s handling of Soviet Soviet sound, it is clear that these artists were entering the U. S. intending to violate U. S. law. They were scheduled to play   events, and even after all last week’s fuss, they still did not understand: not getting paid does not mean you don’t need a visa. That they did not understand the law is, of course, unfortunately ’no defense. ’” Soviet Soviet says that its members were handcuffed and kept in jail overnight before being put on a flight back to Italy. Is that standard treatment? According to the statement that DHS gave to KEXP, the answer is yes, though the response referred to ”restraints” rather than ”handcuffs,” and described the place in which the three men were held as a ”detention facility” rather than a ”jail.” ”When a traveler is deemed inadmissible, CBP makes every effort to return the traveler without delay. CBP does not have an overnight detention facility at the airport. Therefore, it is standard procedure for any traveler who is deemed inadmissible and is awaiting return travel to be taken to a detention center until return travel is available. According to CBP policy, it is standard procedure to restrain a traveler who is being transported to a detention facility. The use of restraints on detainees during transport is in a manner that is safe, secure, humane, and professional. It is the responsibility of officers to ensure that the need and level of restraints used is consistent with the operational office’s policies and procedures. At no time are restraints used in a punitive manner or in a manner that causes detainees undue pain.” So was the band denied entry on security grounds, or for economic reasons? Covey and Spitz argue that the CBP’s rationale in the Soviet Soviet case is entirely economic. They say that the reason that the current regulations exist in the way they do is a matter of protecting American labor: ”In this case, the U. S. artist visa laws were written for Congress by the artists’ labor unions in the late eighties with the intent of protecting the interests of U. S. labor  —   American performing artists. So let’s do a hypothetical: Imagine a group of lumberjacks in British Columbia wanted to enter the U. S. to log in Washington State naturally the U. S. government would say ’No way, not unless you can get a work visa first.’ But these loggers reply, ’Well we like logging so much, how about we do it for free! That’s ok, right?’ No, it’s not, and in fact from a labor standpoint, the fact that they are working for free is WORSE than them getting paid: not only are they taking the jobs of individual American lumberjacks, they are generally depressing the value of the labor of U. S. lumberjacks! So from a labor standpoint, foreign musicians playing in the U. S. for free is anything but harmless. (Artists can get visas to perform in the U. S. of course but they have to prove that they are eligible for an O or P visa, which is issued when the artist’s importance to American business or cultural interests is deemed to outweigh their threat to labor interests. )” But it also seems true that there are plenty of performance opportunities to go around: in 2016, nearly 600 international acts from more than 65 countries played SXSW showcases  —   but there were more than 2, 200 official performers in total. Is it going to be harder for international artists to come to the United States in the future? In a word: possibly. Of course, if more artists try to skirt visa regulations, it’s very likely that CBP will scrutinize all musicians’ entries even more closely. However, it’s already very challenging to obtain what’s called an O or P visa, which are two of the kinds of visas granted to musicians and other performers. In order to qualify, individual artists (who would apply for an O category visa) or bands (a P visa) have to qualify as ”aliens of extraordinary ability in the arts.” Getting one of these O or P visas takes many months, thousands of dollars and piles of paperwork, reviews and letters of recommendation attesting that the applying musicians have already built a professionally significant and generally recognized career. As the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] website explains, the government will grant these visas only under very specific conditions: ”Extraordinary ability in the field of arts means distinction. Distinction means a high level of achievement in the field of the arts evidenced by a degree of skill and recognition substantially above that ordinarily encountered to the extent that a person described as prominent is renowned, leading, or   in the field of arts.” That is to say, if you’re a young, independent artist or band only starting to make your mark on the music scene  —   and hoping that a performance at an event like SXSW is going to boost your visibility to American bookers, agents, record labels and the like  —   it’s pretty improbable that the U. S. government is going to deem you ”renowned.” And as lawyer Brian Taylor Goldstein explained in his article, even if an O or P visa is issued, it remains totally up to the discretion of an individual immigration officer at the border to allow  —   or refuse  —   someone’s entry into the U. S. regardless of what visa that person is carrying. ”An Immigration Officer has the unfettered authority and discretion to deny entry to any artist from any nationality for any reason,” he wrote. ”To what extent this authority will be exercised remains to be seen.” But will things be harder in the immediate future, given the heavy emphasis the Trump administration has put on travel, border control and immigration? The laws regarding visa work rules have existed for years  —   well before the Trump administration took office. But the process for obtaining permission to travel to the U. S. including petitioning for an O or P visa, is becoming potentially more onerous and   than it was even a few months ago. This is partly because of President Trump’s most recent executive order on immigration, which was issued on March 6. In the past, officials at individual consulates could choose to waive   interview requirements if someone was seeking to renew an O or P visa within 12 months of a previous O or P visa expiring. The idea was that since such an applicant had already been interviewed and vetted fairly recently, and since that person would have a demonstrated professional history already on the books, it wasn’t necessary to have the applicant come back to the U. S. consulate for another interview. According to Section 9 of this executive order, however, all individuals seeking a   visa  —   including previous holders of O or P visas  —   must return to U. S. consulates for personal interviews. As Goldstein noted, ”Until additional consular staff is hired, [the] Order will place enormous burdens on U. S. consulates and embassies  —   particularly   consulates  —   by increasing already extended interview wait times and processing times, wasting limited resources and potentially decreasing the quality of consular interviews.” "
"Two former   Penn State administrators pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor charges of child endangerment, for their roles in covering up child sex abuse by disgraced assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Former Vice President Gary Schultz and former Athletic Director Tim Curley each took a plea bargain that  —   if accepted by the judge  —   will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $10, 000 fine. As part of the plea bargain, the felony charges they originally faced were reduced to misdemeanors. As Penn Live notes, the pleas also open the possibility they may testify against former university President Graham Spanier, the only remaining defendant in the case. Jury selection begins next week for Spanier, who has been charged with a conspiracy felony and a child endangerment misdemeanor. The charges against all three men pertain to how they handled the multiple allegations of sexual abuse against Sandusky, who in 2012 was convicted of sexually abusing 10 boys over a   span. ”Prosecutors said Spanier, Curley and Schultz knew of complaints involving Sandusky showering with boys in 1998 and 2001,” The Associated Press reported in 2012. The Philadelphia Inquirer explains that the case against all three men has hinged partly on emails that allegedly reveal their knowledge of the incidents: ”A series of 2001 emails  —   now key to the government’s case  —   show that the men at least considered the situation serious enough to possibly warrant police intervention. They ultimately rejected the idea of calling authorities, opting instead to bar Sandusky from bringing children on campus, to urge the former coach to submit to counseling and to inform his children’s charity, the Second Mile, of the allegations.” ”This was not a mistake by these men, this was not an oversight,”   Attorney General Linda Kelly said in 2012, as we noted at the time. ”It was not misjudgment on their part. This was a conspiracy of silence by top officials to actively conceal the truth.” Spanier, who led Penn State’s administration for 16 years and now faces charges including perjury and obstruction of justice, has maintained his innocence. ”As I have stated in the clearest possible terms, at no time during my presidency did anyone ever report to me that Jerry Sandusky was observed abusing a child or youth or engaged in a sexual act with a child or a youth,” he wrote in a 2012 letter to trustees, according to the Inquirer. The    Sandusky, for his part, is serving a term of 30 to 60 years in prison. The AP reports that was recently transferred from a   prison to a   prison in western Pennsylvania."
"Disagreements over immigration policy could flare when German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits the White House later this week. In just the past two years, more than 1 million refugees  —   many of them Syrians  —   have inundated Germany as Merkel opened Germany’s borders. President Trump called that policy ”catastrophic.” In fact, integrating refugees into German society has become a challenge for Merkel as she seeks  . When the wave of refugees first surged into Germany there was lots of talk that they might be the answer to the country’s declining population and big worker shortage. But the mood soured after the assaults by male refugees on women during New Year’s Eve celebrations just over a year ago. It darkened further following the attack on a Berlin Christmas market by a Tunisian refugee three months ago. Waiting for an interview, Those incidents raised even more hurdles for    Akhlaq Hussain. A math teacher in his former life, he fled to Germany from Pakistan after he and his school received threats of kidnapping and death from the Taliban. ”They demand some money. If we pay monies then childrens will be free,” Hussain says. ”If we don’t pay monies, they kill the peoples and childrens and cut the head, you know, they say ’Allahu Akbar.’ ” But a year and a half after a harrowing journey, much of it on foot, crossing mountainous borders and being beaten by police in Bulgaria, Hussain is stuck in refugee housing in Neuss, a German town across the Rhine River from Duesseldorf. Hussain says he has been treated well at the local refugee center, even though the   kitchen needs renovation and the bathrooms need work. He has spent more than a year and a half here waiting just to get an asylum interview. In the meantime, there’s not much to do except chores like vacuuming the carpets in the room he shares with another refugee. Refugee from the wrong country, Hussain’s big problem is that he is Pakistani. Germany doesn’t recognize Pakistan as a country dangerous enough for its citizens to automatically receive asylum. As a result, few social services are available to him. Some local volunteers, like Ilona Valero, have been providing some aid. ”I try to help with all the papers. In Germany there are a lot of papers,” she says with a resigned laugh. ”They are waiting such a long time. There is no structure in the day. They’re waiting for German lessons. They’re waiting for permission to stay and permission to work.”  Recently the volunteers have managed to get temporary jobs for a few refugees, including work at a garden center for Hussain. It will help him pass the time while he awaits an asylum decision. But his odds are not good  —   during the past two years fewer than 10 percent of Pakistanis seeking asylum in Germany were successful. Language versus alienation, Thirty miles up the Rhine River, in Cologne, refugees, most of them Syrians, sit in a classroom with the hum of traffic and fresh air flowing through an open window. They’re absorbing information about German laws and customs at an integration center in a new   office building. Karim Khayal, a counselor here, says the key to success for refugees is learning German. ”There is no integration without language.” He says that’s something the refugees have internalized. Khayal says they know that language is the No. 1 requirement and they understand that ”speaking efficient German means having arrived in Germany.” And there’s a lot at stake, Khayal says. He points to Germany’s experience with Turkish guest workers starting in the 1960s. The government failed to integrate them into German society, and there continues to be alienation in that community  —   which now numbers 3 million. Khayal says the danger is very real that ”if we don’t take care now, we’re going to have a larger group of alienated young men  —   men who are angry, who are bitter, who are both distant to their country of origin and distant to their new home country and who are going to, of course, have radical ideas.” Integrating successfully      Ibrahim Habib, a refugee from Syria, appears to be well on his way to successful integration. He was at the center meeting with Khayal. In Damascus, Habib designed and cut clothing. He says that job is out of reach in Germany, so he wants be a bicycle mechanic. Like nearly all Syrian refugees, Habib has been granted asylum. That makes him eligible for government support while he learns German and gets job training. Habib says Germany is home now and he wants to be a German in the future. ”The past life is gone,” he says, ”and seeing the respect you got from the German society only means that you have to give this respect back, and want to be part of this society  —   not go back to your Syrian past.” But with language and integration courses, plus an apprenticeship, it could still be years before Habib is fully employed. Christoph Moeller, until recently chief spokesman for the German Employment Agency, estimates it could take six years for Germany to fully integrate this wave of refugees into the workforce. ”It’s a long journey and it’s going to be an expensive journey,” says Moeller, ”but in the end for society these costs are actually justified, because the costs in not doing anything will be much higher.” In the past year around 40, 000 refugees found jobs in Germany. Meanwhile, close to half a million are seeking employment, but they need language and vocational training first. One modest success story  Solomon Yhdego is one refugee who has found a job. He works 20 hours a week in a vast Deutsche   sorting facility in Duisburg. He makes about $12 an hour moving big yellow boxes of mail onto metal racks for delivery. Yhdego, who’s 31, easily gained asylum in Germany after escaping from Eritrea, which has one of the most repressive governments in the world. He was about to enter the university there when he was forced to join the army. He fled, leaving behind his wife. Yhdego says it has been very difficult, but going home is not an option. ”When I go, they kill me,” he says. ”It is very hard.” Yhdego learned enough German to get an internship. He impressed Georg Schikowski, the plant manager, who gave him a   contract. ”The goal is to [keep] him for a long, long time,” says Schikowski, ”because he has shown us that he works good, and that’s the test.” Some Germans are skeptical about the usefulness of   refugee workers. But Christof Ehrhart, a Deutsche   vice president, says they’re valuable, especially at companies like his that have lots of   jobs. And, he says, the refugees have demonstrated that they are motivated and engaged, ”because what they had to do in order to leave their country and come to a different place needed a lot of ’entrepreneurship’ and willingness to run risks.” Deutsche   is a leading corporate employer of refugees, but so far it has fewer than 300 on the payroll. For integration to be successful, big German firms will have to do better, and Ehrhart says Germany can’t afford to fail. ”I think the world is watching us,” he says. ”I have to put it another way: I think there is no alternative than finding a solution. Because if we don’t find a solution as one of the richest countries on the planet, who else should?” Frustration and despair, Back at the refugee barracks in Neuss, another Pakistani, Kamal Hussain, is waiting for his asylum decision. He fled Pakistan more than two years ago after the Taliban threatened to kill him for administering polio vaccine. He left behind a pregnant wife. She gave birth, but the son Hussain never saw died within months. Hussain is frustrated. He has little to occupy his time. He knows that’s dangerous. ”If you’re alone here and you have no activities right now, you will be negative,” he says. ”You will be fighting with someone, or maybe you do something bad.” Germans are worried about that, too  —   frustrated young men who might turn to crime or even terrorism. It has fueled a rise in support for the nationalist Alternative for Germany party, which is threatening Merkel’s bid for  . There’s no doubt that integrating refugees into German society is a   project."
"Olly the Jack Russell terrier forgot the first rule of skills competitions: It’s generally best to avoid falling flat on your face. Still, that didn’t dampen the rescue dog’s enthusiasm at a Friday skills competition at the annual Crufts dog show in the United Kingdom. Paws akimbo, mug applied directly to turf, Olly simply scrambled to collect himself, gathered some momentum and conquered every one of the remaining obstacles  —   often by missing them entirely. He earned the world’s enduring admiration in the process. Now, we could comment on the brewing controversy surrounding the looks of the dog that ultimately won Best in Show. Or, we could dredge up the intrigue that followed the 2015 show. But really, that would distract from the real hero here. So instead we’ll simply recommend you open your week with the video above, and let the trusty announcer sum things up for us. ”What a nosedive! And he couldn’t care less.”"
"Reading isn’t usually a competitive sport. But it’s become one for Braille readers because of a lack of excitement about Braille. Right now, the Los   Braille Institute is putting on regional competitions like this one in a classroom at the Tennessee School for the Blind. A braille reading competition actually looks more like a typing contest. As competition begins, students flip through their packets. Their spread fingers sweep over the square pages. In some events, they proofread Braille. But in this session, they interpret charts and graphs, typing their answers into mechanical   Braille writers. The   equipment is akin to taking a math test without a calculator these days. Digital technology, especially a computer’s ability to read text aloud, makes Braille seem more and more antiquated. But   Marcus Johnson finds it a necessary skill. ”Because you cannot use technology for every aspect of education, so sometimes you just have to have that physical writing there,” he says. For Johnson, there’s also something about the written word, even in an alphabet of dots. ”To me, it’s kind of reminiscent,” he says. ”I’ve had vision before in my life. I lost my vision while I was young. But it kind of just helps to bring back the feeling of actually having a physical book.” But it’s not easy, even for someone who’s been blind since birth. Sydney Walker made her middle   son learn Braille as a baby, putting raised labels on things all over the house. ”It wasn’t easy, I’ll say,” she says. ”I think some people have the idea that if you’re born blind, you’re automatically going to be great Braille reader.” It’s far from automatic. And Braille literacy has fallen to around 10 percent for children. ”The kids are not wanting to do it because it takes extra time, and it’s harder,” says Joanne Weatherall, a retired teacher from the Tennessee School for the Blind. She’s blind herself and comes back to be a scorekeeper each year. She says no sighted person would ever think they could forget about learning to write with a pencil and paper just because they type most of the time. ”It should not occur to a blind person to not be where they can’t write something down,” she says. She says people might be entertaining the idea of getting through life without knowing Braille because it’s easier and faster. ”The only thing I would think is because kids that start out in school very young learning technology  —   it’s very easy for them,” she says. ”It’s faster than reading and writing in Braille because that can be very slow and cumbersome.” This national competition that is fed by these regional events was set up 16 years ago as a fun way to make sure Braille didn’t fall out of use. And Weatherall says she still has to convince students to compete. ”What to do to really get the kids really charged up about Braille, I don’t know because many of them hate it, which just makes me crazy,” she says. What makes Weatherall grin are Braille lovers like Marcus Johnson, who plans to attend a local university in the fall, though he says Braille will not be particularly useful in his college classes. Blake Farmer is the news director of NPR member station WPLN. You can follow him at @flakebarmer."
"The man at the heart of the legal resistance to the Trump agenda works in an unfinished office a block away from the White House. David Cole, the new national legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, hasn’t had time to hang pictures on the wall or remember to bring a mug to hold his morning tea. ”I get to wake up every morning and I get paid to think about how to respond in ways that will preserve our basic rights and liberties,” Cole said. ”That’s a tremendous privilege.” Weeks into the Trump administration, the ACLU is positioning itself as the chief enforcer of the government’s system of checks and balances. And near the center of that effort is Cole, who is on a   leave from his teaching job at Georgetown Law. When he accepted the ACLU job in the summer of 2016, Cole says, he had a very different idea about what was to come. ”The way Anthony Romero, the executive director, sold me on it was, ’Look you’re going to have a liberal Supreme Court for the first time in your career as a constitutional lawyer,’ ” Cole recalled. ”And that sounded like a great opportunity. I didn’t put in a little condition at the bottom of the contract saying what happens if somebody else gets elected because nobody thought that was a possibility.” In some ways, Cole has spent his life preparing for this job at this moment. It so happens that one of Cole’s big breaks came nearly 30 years ago, writing legal briefs in a case where the Supreme Court, led by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, upheld flag burning as an expression of the right to free speech. That issue took on new relevance after the election, when    Donald Trump tweeted that people who burn the flag should be prosecuted and have their citizenship revoked. Republican leaders in Congress denounced the idea. So far, Cole said, the ACLU legal team has been keeping odd hours to try to keep track of the new administration. When one week into the Trump presidency  —   and two weeks into Cole’s new job  —   Trump signed a travel ban, a team of lawyers from the ACLU stayed up all night and took the administration to court. ”Never before in the history of this country have we used the immigration law to favor one religion over another, and the bedrock principle of the Establishment Clause is that the government cannot in any area of its authority favor one religion over another religion,” Cole said. The courts mostly agreed with the ACLU, putting Trump’s original travel ban on hold. The White House has now revoked the original order and issued a new one that narrows its reach. But the ACLU says it is going to keep fighting, based on the argument that religious discrimination against Muslims permeates the whole plan. To Jay Sekulow, a lawyer at the American Center for Law and Justice, which bills itself as a counterweight to the ACLU, that’s a bad approach. ”I think the ACLU is taking an extreme position,” Sekulow said. ”They have the right to do it. They have the right to advocate their position. But I think what they’ve done in their proceedings is put the country at risk.” Sekulow said he is convinced there is a valid national security purpose for the travel limits. But, he said, it makes sense for the ACLU to take its opponents to court, just as he did when he challenged President Barack Obama’s actions on immigration. As for Cole, he has devoted his entire adult life to the Constitution and the courts. But he is more enthusiastic about street marches and rallies and those little blue ribbons that actors wore at the Academy Awards to honor the ACLU. In fact, Cole said in his new book, Engines of Liberty, it is the actions by people that power change. ”If you think of constitutional evolution as a sentence, the Supreme Court’s decision is the period at the end of the sentence but the words in the sentence are the work of citizen activists joined together in organizations, what we call civil society, that are committed to a particular vision,” he said. Cole said he and the hundreds of others on the ACLU legal team are prepared to test that proposition and to help organize those activists."
"Amy Krouse Rosenthal, the   author who recently announced her illness by penning a personals ad for her beloved husband, has died at 51. Rosenthal had ovarian cancer. Her longtime literary agent confirmed her death to The Associated Press. As an author, Rosenthal won hearts with her children’s books and her memoirs  —   and broke them with her ”Modern Love” column called ”You May Want To Marry My Husband.” It ran in the New York Times earlier this month. In the piece, Rosenthal announced her illness, celebrated her family and sought a new partner for her husband, Jason. She finished the essay  —   difficult to write through a haze of drugs and illness  —   on Valentine’s Day, she said, ”and the most genuine,    gift I can hope for is that the right person reads this, finds Jason, and another love story begins.” Rosenthal was a prolific writer, with more than 30 books to her name, the AP reports  —   including children’s books Uni the Unicorn and Duck! Rabbit! The wire service continues: ”She made short films and YouTube videos, gave TED talks and provided radio commentary for NPR, among others. ”She also raised three children and had a flair for random acts of kindness, whether hanging dollar bills from a tree or leaving notes on ATM machines. . .. ”Rosenthal loved experimenting with different media, and blending the virtual and physical worlds. One of her favorite projects began with a YouTube video, ’17 Things I Made,’ featuring everything from books she had written to her three children to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. At the end of the video, she welcomed fans to join her at Chicago’s Millennium Park, on August 8, 2008, at 8:08 p. m. The goal was to make a ’cool’ 18th thing. ”Hundreds turned out to ’make’ things  —   a grand entrance, a new friend, a splash, something pretty.” Rosenthal was famously upbeat  —   an NPR book critic once called her ”preternaturally cheerful.” Even her essay announcing her terminal disease was   and, in its own way, profoundly joyful. But the popular essay left many a reader in tears, as Rosenthal celebrated her husband and the life she was about to leave behind: ”If you’re looking for a dreamy, let’    travel companion, Jason is your man. He also has an affinity for tiny things: taster spoons, little jars, a   of a couple sitting on a bench, which he presented to me as a reminder of how our family began. ”Here is the kind of man Jason is: He showed up at our first pregnancy ultrasound with flowers. This is a man who, because he is always up early, surprises me every Sunday morning by making some kind of oddball smiley face out of items near the coffeepot: a spoon, a mug, a banana. . .. ”If he sounds like a prince and our relationship seems like a fairy tale, it’s not too far off, except for all of the regular stuff that comes from two and a half decades of playing house together. And the part about me getting cancer. Blech.” Rosenthal contributed to NPR several times, including a   commentary from 1997 about what she was grateful for. ”I’m thankful for hot soup on cold Sundays,” she said. ”I’m thankful every time I pull up to a parking meter with free time remaining. I’m thankful for pockets.” You can hear that commentary here: You can also read an excerpt from her first memoir, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. One of the items was ”Dying.” ”People are just dying everywhere, all the time, every which way,” she wrote. ”What can the rest of us do but hold on for dear life.”"
"Conservationists are sounding the alarm over a South African proposal that would legalize and regulate the domestic trade of rhinoceros horn, as well as allow some limited exports. A public comment period ended last week on the draft regulations from the Department of Environmental Affairs, published on Feb. 8 in the official government gazette. ”South African rhino breeders want the government to legalize the sale so, they say, they can flood the market and decrease the cost of rhino horn,” reporter Peter Granitz in Pretoria tells NPR’s Newscast unit. ”They argue that would drive down demand for poached rhinos.” However, Granitz says conservationists opposed to the regulation say this ”makes no sense because there’s no domestic demand. Any horn sold locally would be smuggled to Asia, where demand for rhino horn is booming.” The proposed regulation would legalize domestic trade of rhino horn, and allow for foreigners with a permit to export no more than two horns for ”personal purposes.” The draft did not elaborate on what ”personal purposes” means. Individuals traveling with horns may only go through the O. R. Tambo International Airport and may not take them in their hand baggage. They must present freight agents with genetic profile information of each horn, according to the regulations. A separate proposed regulation would ban powdering a rhino horn for a period of three years, noting that powdered horn is more difficult to identify and easier to smuggle. ”The public comments need to be reviewed, and Parliament would need to pass a law. So any change could take several months,” Granitz reports. South Africa imposed a moratorium on the domestic trade of rhino horn in 2009. The issue has been in the courts on and off for years. Poaching is a huge problem in South Africa, with more than 1, 000 rhinos poached in 2016, according to government figures. ”These criminal gangs are armed to the teeth,   and part of transnational syndicates who will stop at nothing to get their hands on rhino horn,” said Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa. She said the government was cracking down on poaching, beefing up security and arresting perpetrators. ”Banning the trade in horn has made the horn more and more and more valuable. Had we never banned it, the price of horn would never have got to where it is now,” John Hume, a rhino breeder in South Africa, told The Associated Press. But conservationists say the envisioned rhino horn trade system actually empowers criminals. As the Species Survival Network wrote, the legal trade ”provides a cover for illegal exports” and is difficult to enforce. Rhino horn is in high demand for its use in traditional Asian medicine, though rhino advocates argue it has no medicinal value. Demand has driven up the price  —   a French zoo that was victim to a recent poaching attack said that in 2015, a kilogram of rhino horn sold on the black market for nearly $54, 000. In what is believed to be a first in Europe, poachers entered France’s Thoiry Zoo on March 7, killed a white rhinoceros and sawed off his horn. ”Zoos around the world should be on alert. I think all rhinos are under threat whether they’re in zoos or in the wild. ” CeCe Sieffert of the International Rhino Foundation told NPR. ”And so if the trend continues, we might lose rhinos in our lifetime.”"
"Countersurveillance fashion designs are being spotlighted at this year’s South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, by a group of young women of color who started a company called  . They are scientists, architects and engineers turned artists ”creating critical work for critical times,” says Ashley   a speculative neuroscientist and member of the collective, which includes designers from around the globe. Clark was trained as a molecular biologist, while one of her partners, Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, used to work as a structural engineer. At the conference, they’re offering participants a look at their covert fashion accessories. Their art installation begins with a virtual reality experience they call NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism. It’s a    beauty salon for black women that anyone can live through using VR goggles. Inside this virtual world, beauticians braid the clients’ hair with electrodes meant to boost brain power. ”What we’re projecting here is that black women are the pioneers of brain optimization,” Aguilar says. Not all of their inventions are as abstract and theoretical as the VR salon, which they first rolled out at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. They also showcased a small line of covert fashion products designed to protect the wearers’ identities  —   particularly for people of color. Among the fashion prototypes they showed was an incandescent sun visor. ”You can put it in front of your face to deflect any malicious gaze and control your identity,” Aguilar says. ”Whomever you’re looking at can’t see in,” Clark adds. ”What they see is a reflection of themselves. So if they’re saying something to you that isn’t nice, then they’re forced to view their own maliciousness in the mirror.” The women also introduced oversize,   style ”door knocker” earrings with hidden cameras and microphones. Clark says they could be useful during police stops ”to begin recording any sort of altercation or ambiguous interaction at the touch of a button.” She says this is meant to put power in the hands of the person wearing the earrings, in an age when police are wearing body cams and using dashboard cameras.   also unveiled a purple and pink silk scarf that camouflages the wearer from facial recognition software  —   the kind used by social media, online retailers, law enforcement and the military. The scarf’s fabric is designed with 1, 200 pixelated faces meant to mislead computer algorithms. ”We’re looking at like, what if people were to wear this to protests?” Clark says. ”When you have so many faces on a garment, you can ultimately, if enough people are wearing it, break the surveillance system entirely.” The   HyperFace scarf was designed by Adam Harvey, an American artist living in Berlin. ”The idea here is that you’re misleading the face detection algorithms by providing false positives,” he says. ”And the way that would work in practice is if you’re able to reduce the confidence score of your true face, then you blend into the background of fake faces.” A few years ago, Harvey began working on designs like this when he was a student at New York University. Now, he has a whole line of nouveau camouflage, including what he calls stealth wear:   burkas and hijabs. They’re made from textiles fabricated with silver, which makes them very expensive. They’re meant to thwart   drones and spyware. ”If you introduce a barrier between your body’s radiation of heat, which is equivalent to about a   lightbulb, then you disappear,” Harvey says. ”So it’s a little bit magical. I wouldn’t go so far to say that it’s a Harry Potter cloak, which people seem to really want it to be sometimes.” Harvey says a   Mylar blanket could do the same, but isn’t nearly as fashionable. He is now working with   to come up with even more covert designs."
"Baby injuries associated with nursery products like carriers, strollers and cribs are on the rise, a study shows. The study, published Monday, found a 23. 7 percent increase in injuries to young children related to nursery products between 2003 and 2011. In all, the authors analyzed 21 years of emergency department data. The vast majority of these injuries were to the head, neck or face, and 80 percent of infants were injured because they fell  —   almost always at home. This could include situations like a child wiggling and causing his or her carrier to fall off a countertop, or a baby careening down the stairs in his or her walker. The numbers aren’t surprising, says Jerri Rose, a physician and assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine at Case Western Reserve University Medical School, who was not involved with the study. She says when kids fall, they tend to fall headfirst. ”Babies have such large heads and so little control of their bodies, so in young children we often see injuries to their head and neck area,” Rose says. ”The head is a big target.” She is curious about the uptick in injuries, though, and speculates that the numbers may have climbed in recent years because of an increase in concussion identification by doctors and caregivers. Another factor may be that more nursery products are on the market and that they’re increasing in popularity. For example, if more people are using baby carriers, which in the study included both soft carriers and hard carriers such as detachable car seats, more injuries could follow. Overall, the injuries in the study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics, weren’t associated with one particular product: The numbers came from a public database of emergency department records across the United States. Researchers ultimately looked at 48, 653 cases of patients younger than three years between 1991 to 2011. Based on these cases, researchers estimate that a child 3 years old or younger is treated in a United States emergency department for a    injury every eight minutes. Of course, most interactions between infants and their nursery products are perfectly safe and go as planned. But the increase in injuries does call for changes in both how caregivers are using baby products and in the design of the products, says Tracy Mehan, the manager of translational research at the Center for Injury Research and Policy in Ohio. Mehan worked with the authors on the study. For parents and caregivers, the authors suggest following the ”four Rs” to keep their kids safe: research the product, check for recalls, register the product and read the manual. Before buying a product, Mehan says, check the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission website to see whether it has been recalled. Typically, a product recall will be put into place by the government or by the manufacturer if it becomes aware of a safety issue  —   like an infant bathtub that has a drowning risk, or a carrier that puts children at risk of falling. At that point, the government or company will place notices on its website to notify consumers about the recall. But because caregivers don’t often check these sites, Mehan adds it’s also important for caregivers to register the product with the manufacturer, because the company can notify them if something turns out to be wrong with the product. And while it might seem like common sense to read the manual, Mehan says many people forget. ”It can be really exciting to bring home a new product, and you want to try it out and use it right away,” she says. ”But taking a few minutes and look at [the manual] to see how [the product] works, where to use it and confirming the it’s the right one for your child’s age and size can prevent mishaps.” For more information on using products safely, the authors also suggest MakeSafeHappen. com, HealthyChildren. org and the Nationwide Children’s Hospital website. Of course, regulators and manufacturers also have a responsibility to make nursery products safe. For example, in the 1990s some children were using baby walkers to traverse living spaces so easily and quickly that they would end up tumbling down the stairs. After it became clear that baby walkers were causing an estimated 18, 500 injuries every year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission voted in 1994 to guide their redesign. The current models don’t move quickly. ”You could be the most vigilant parent in the world, but if your child was in a baby walker [before the reform] he could take off really fast and fall headfirst down a set of stairs,” Mehan says. After the mandated walker redesign made them less mobile, she adds, injuries associated with the product fell. That redesign was a main driver of the dip in infant injury noted in the early years of the study published Monday."
"A   campaign in Howard County, Md. aimed at curbing the community’s sweet tooth led to a significant decline in sales of sugary drinks. According to an analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Internal Medicine, the Unsweetened campaign led to a 20 percent decrease in sales of soda and a 15 percent decline in fruit drink sales between January 2013 and December 2015. ”This   campaign provides a road map for other communities to reduce consumption of sugary drinks,” write the authors of the JAMA Internal Medicine paper who evaluated the Unsweetened campaign. The   campaign, funded by the Horizon Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to health and wellness, included TV and outdoor advertising, as well as a social media campaign. The campaign also worked with healthcare professionals  —   including pediatricians  —   to improve messaging that pediatricians could use to educate their patients on the risks associated with excessive sugar intake, including obesity and Type 2 diabetes. In addition, community partners advocated for policies to reduce consumption of all sugary drinks  —   including a new local law that promotes access to healthier food and drink options on local government property, such as vending machines at parks and other government buildings. The campaign ran some edgy ads and activities. For instance, this ad dubbed Hey   There’s a Better Way mimicked   ads with a snappy jingle. The ad shows volunteers for the Unsweetened campaign approaching people drinking sodas in public places, such as parks, and trying to convince them to swap their sugary drinks for water. The ” ” wasn’t just a   activity to film the ad. Volunteers led these swaps at public events throughout the campaign. ”This was a way they tried to have active conversations with people in the community,” explains Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Obesity  Food Policy. She’s an author of the new paper that evaluates the campaign. The volunteers took a playful, polite approach to the ”swaps,” but it was a fairly    tactic. I asked the campaign, did they ruffled feathers with this technique? ”We didn’t have pushback or negative responses,” Horizon Foundation President and CEO Nikki Highsmith Vernick told us. ”But . .. we acknowledge that change can be hard.” ”One response we’ve often heard from people is that they don’t just want water,” Vernick told us. The group points people to its Better Beverage Finder, a tool that offers 300+   and   alternatives to sugary drinks. It’s hard to know which components of the Unsweetened campaign had the most impact in changing people’s sugary drink habits. ”We were evaluating the program as a whole, so we don’t know which components made a difference,” says Marlene Schwartz. ”But my personal opinion is that changes to the actual environment . .. [have] a big impact,” she says. She points to policy changes that limited beverage choices at schools. ”You’re changing what’s easiest for people to purchase.” Schwartz says her other hypothesis is that ”some of the most controversial things the [Unsweetened campaign] did  —   such as changing what was allowed to be sold in vending machines on government property  —   got a lot of discussion in the press.” There were people who were against the policy, and there were debates about it. While criticism may sound like a negative outcome, Schwartz’s hunch is that the controversy brought more attention to the issue. ”What it does is it engages the community in the conversation about sugary drinks,” she says. ”So even if you disagree with the policy, you can’t help but learn that sugary drinks are a big enough deal that government is [considering] a new policy.” One thing Maryland’s Howard County did not do? Pass a soda tax. ”In Howard County, we do not have the legislative authority to institute a tax,” explains a Horizon Foundation spokesperson. ”Sugary drink taxes are gaining momentum around the country, and early results are showing that they work,” Horizon’s Vernick told us. But she says when it comes to nudging communities to make healthier choices, it ”should not be an   question.” She says a comprehensive approach seems to work best. ”Ultimately, we believe that the combination of good policies and strong community outreach will create the most effective results,” Vernick says."
"Finally, a piece of matzo you can Instagram. No one has ever been all that excited about matzo, the bread of affliction. But two New Yorkers, Kevin Rodriguez and Ashley Albert, are looking to make matzo  —   the unleavened bread that Jews eat during the eight days of Passover  —   as ubiquitous as that other cracker that jumped the cultural hurdle: the pita chip. ”Our goal is to move matzo out of the dusty, shadowy, ethnic food corner and into the cracker aisle. I think matzo chips will be that foray,” says Albert. Both from Miami, the pair officially met 30 years ago at Blue Star Camp, a private Jewish summer camp for kids, in North Carolina. They reconnected as adults in New York City, seeing each other at birthdays. But while Albert had multiple careers  —   shuffleboard champion,   artist,   owner  —   Rodriguez had only one, in product development, and he didn’t love it. He danced around the food aisle, trying to determine what he was most excited about, running each edible by Albert. She nixed   noodles, then gelato, proclaiming that, ”If you’re going to embark on a new business, it’s gotta be something the world needs.” Instead, she pitched an idea that had been simmering in her head for 20 years: ”Kev, what about matzo?” Albert recalls passing Streit’s kosher food and matzo company while walking around the Lower East Side of Manhattan with her mom. ”You would walk by and peek in and they would give you a piece [of matzo]  —   and what was so shocking was that it tasted stale fresh off the line,” says Albert. With matzo in hand, young Albert went off in search of some   salt. ”The Matzo Project” was born two years ago, about the same time that Streit’s was abandoning its   home in exchange for the more economical expanse of New Jersey. With the launch, the pair can finally share their unleavened bread with the world, and New York City can say, once again, that matzo is being made within its five boroughs. Brooklyn, which has a robust Jewish population, has become the project’s home base. For its simple ingredients  —   flour and water  —   matzo is surprisingly hard to get right. But first, the pair had to decide how to spell their name, because as many Jews will tell you, even basic spelling of Yiddish is a pickle. ”I put a thing on my Facebook page, I have 4, 500 friends: ’How do you spell matzo?’ ” says Albert. ”They were like: ’matzoh, matza, dried tasteless cardboard, yucky seasonal cracker.’ . .. There was no consensus. So we just went with what Manischewitz and Streit’s used.” When you’re reinventing what many consider to be a lackluster product, there is a   field of opportunity however, it takes a steady hand to stay true to the original and still innovate. While Albert worked on packaging, Rodriguez   the recipe. He bought a bag of flour, turned on the tap and set his pasta roller to thin. ”I tried a lot  —   ancient grains, which were delicious, durum to add strength  —   but whenever we started to get fancy . .. it was really like simplicity was the underlying winner,” says Rodriguez. There were fun things to think about, like flavors. The pair jokingly considered things like wasabi chili lemon vanilla lavender (one flavor) but in the end they came back to more familiar tastes. Salted rosemary was high on the list, but when Albert mentioned ”The Matzo Project” to Josh Russ Tupper,   of Russ  Daughters, a    market for Jewish cuisine in New York City, Tupper thought differently. ”He was like, ’Oh, this is great. I can use it for my chopped liver,’ ” says Albert. Then he asked if we were going to make an ”everything” flavor. ”I was like, mmhmm. Yes, of course,” says Albert. For this first big launch there will be salted, cinnamon sugar and   . Plus two? For its ”everything” matzo crackers and chips, Albert and Rodriguez added a dash of paprika and chili flake to the traditional blend of poppy, sesame, minced onion, garlic and salt. With flavors sorted, spices gathered, and logo and packaging approved, Albert and Rodriguez still faced the hardest hurdle: the actual manufacturing. This winding path took the pair from a commissary kitchen to an innovation lab in Pennsylvania, a kosher bakery in Coney Island and, finally, to an undisclosed location in Brooklyn. (  are notoriously kept a trade secret.) Along the way, friends were roped in to help cut, poke holes, salt and catch matzo as it came out piping hot from the oven. Finding a   with the right oven was another complexity, because the oven is what lends the product its indisputable matzo flavor and the brown flecks dotting the spines of the cracker. ”The thing that transformed it from cracker to matzo was the ’toast points.’ That’s the technical term. Who knew we would be so excited about ’toast points?’ ” Albert asks. But to get a toast point, you need a direct oven, and most   use convection ovens. ”Modern ovens are made to be efficient and they’re made to make 100, 000 perfect Oreos. What we want to do is instill a quality that is ancient and inefficient,” says Rodriguez. Getting the color right, not unlike the Goldilocks story, was crucial. So, too, was the salting. In the early days, Albert would stand on a bucket and toss out the seasonings, but her small hands and short arms meant that there were often wide gaps in coverage, something we all know is a  . Next, they used a planter bucket, but that clogged up. Rodriguez, worried that they would have to   every single sheet, scoured the Internet for solutions. His search uncovered an antiquated salter and an owner willing to loan it out for a test run. When it worked, Rodriguez hugged the machine, shed a tear and bought it for $8, 000. With salt checked off the list, the pair had their matzo certified kosher  —   but not kosher for Passover, which requires that it be made in strictly regulated and monitored facilities. For Albert and Rodriguez, while it was important to get the boxes on the shelf in time for the Jewish holiday  —   the first night falls on April 10th  —   the goal of ”The Matzo Project” isn’t to become a staple for one week out of the year, but for all 52 of them. Getting matzo off the ground has been a unique challenge for the   friends, and along the way they’ve had some unexpected discoveries. ”I feel more connected to my own background,” says Rodriguez. And Albert feels like she’s been welcomed into a new version of Judaism, plus a cool club of food makers. ”The food world is more earnest and personal and wholesome,” says Albert. ”It’s less about money. They started doing [food] because they had something they wanted to make. I like these people a lot.”"
"In a recent post, Adam Frank introduced some key ideas behind Bayesian statistics. He began with the example of a medical test for a disease, asking the question: How likely is it that I have the disease, given a positive result from a test that’s 80 percent accurate? This probability can be calculated using Bayes’ theorem, a simple formula that follows from the axioms of probability theory. To calculate the number we want, we’d need to know how common the disease is in the relevant population, how often the test generates a false positive, and how often it generates a false negative. As Adam’s post was making the Internet rounds, I was  —   by coincidence  —   teaching Bayes’ theorem in my undergraduate class, Sense  Sensibility  Science. We went through examples just like Adam’s, including the psychology behind why people so often estimate the relevant probability incorrectly. I also shared an important lesson with my students. The lesson is this: Beware of ”accuracy.” The term ”accuracy” seems innocuous enough. We often want to know how accurately we responded on an exam, or how ”accurate” a statement is. But when it comes to something like a medical test, ”accuracy” underspecifies what we’re after, because there are two importantly different ways to get things right, and two importantly different ways to get things wrong. To see this, consider the two possible states of the world (having the disease, not having the disease) and the two possible results of the test (positive, negative). All combinations can occur, and two of these combinations get things right: We both have the disease and get a positive test result, or we don’t have the disease and we get a negative test result. But the remaining two combinations get things wrong in very different ways. One way to get things wrong is to have a false positive: A person without the disease gets a positive test result. Another way to get things wrong is to have a false negative: Someone who does have the disease gets a negative test result. In Adam’s example, he uses the ”accuracy” of 80 percent to refer to an 80 percent chance of having a positive test result given that a person has the disease. But in many contexts, accuracy is totally ambiguous  —   it tells us how often the answer is wrong, but not how it is wrong. The example I use in my class is a pregnancy test that advertises ”99 percent accuracy.” How many of those errors are false positives (telling a   woman that she’s pregnant) versus false negatives (telling a pregnant woman that she isn’t)? Those are very different kinds of errors  —   a consumer may very reasonably want to know which kind is more likely. Going beyond ”accuracy” is important for a few reasons. First, we need to go beyond accuracy to do the math. Bayes’ theorem takes into account both the false positive and the false negative rate  —   not undifferentiated ”accuracy.” That means that if we want to know what a test result means for our probability of having a disease, we need to know how often each type of error occurs. More generally, if we want to know how to update our beliefs in light of some new piece of evidence, we need to know how often that evidence should arise under each hypothesis we’re entertaining. Second, not all errors are equal. For some diseases, a false positive might come at little cost  —   perhaps it means a   test that reveals the initial error. But a false negative could mean that symptoms go untreated and complications develop in some cases, it could mean death. The relative costs of a false positive versus a false negative depend on the specific case in question, but it’s almost always an error to treat them as one and the same. Finally  —   and more speculatively  —   it could be that a more   vocabulary for describing the relationship between reality and what we say or think gives us better tools for calling out misstatements of fact,   and fabrications. Invoking a ”Bowling Green Massacre” that never occurred is one type of error (call it a ”false positive”) failing to mention meetings with Russian ambassadors is another (call it a ”false negative”). Just as we need to be wary of ”accuracy,” we may need to be wary of ”inaccuracy,” too. When it comes to errors, it matters how we get things wrong. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Could smartphones and other screens be decreasing the human attention span? Author Adam Alter thinks so. ”Ten years ago, before the iPad and iPhone were mainstream, the average person had an attention span of about 12 seconds,” Alter tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies. Now, he says, ”research suggests that there’s been a drop from 12 to eight seconds . .. shorter than the attention of the average goldfish, which is nine seconds.” Alter links our diminished attention spans to the ”mainstream adoption of screens.” His new book, Irresistible, explores the consequences of living in an increasingly computerized world. Alter says that technology is designed to be addictive and that the gratification it provides is similar to that of other addictive behaviors, such as drug abuse or gambling. ”If I’m addicted to, say, World of Warcraft, the minute I start firing up the game . .. my brain will look [in a scan] very much like the brain of someone who’s addicted to heroin and is preparing the next hit,” he says. ”During the act of playing the game . .. my brain will look very much like that person’s brain will look as they’re taking heroin, or the brain of someone who is addicted to gambling, as they sit in front of a slot machine and play the game.” On how World of Warcraft game designers make it to be more addictive, One hundred million, roughly, have played the game, and by many measures, about half of them have developed an addiction, at least temporarily. So that to me suggests that it’s a weaponized game it’s an experience that’s very, very hard to resist. Part of the reason for that is, I think, that these large game companies have access to an incredible trove of data. So one thing that a lot of the designers do is they’ll release different versions of missions . .. to different people, sort of   test these different missions. They’ll look at how long you play, whether you return to the game, and generally how engaged you are. They generally call this ”time on device,” which is a term that’s borrowed from the gambling world  —   how long are you on the slot machine. What they’ll find is, for example, when you have to save [rescue] something, you spend more time playing than say, when you have to kill or find something. So what they’ll do is they’ll take the missions that aren’t as successful and they’ll cast them aside, and now they’ll form three new versions of saving missions. . .. They’ll continue that process through generation after generation after generation. So what you’re left with after, say, 20 generations is this weaponized evolved version of the game, or a weaponized evolved mission, that is maximally addictive. On an extreme case of World of Warcraft addiction, There was a person I spoke to, he was a   student, he was very   and he was also on the football team at his college. He started playing World of Warcraft because he, as he described it, was quite lonely and he found that there were a lot of other   people on the game. He developed an addiction pretty quickly because he found that it was basically a much better alternative world to the real one, and he spent a lot of time there. . .. He played instead of sleeping, and his greatest binge was a   binge where he played almost continuously. He paid a doorman in the building to bring up pizza, so by the end of this binge there were stacks of pizza boxes to the ceiling. He put on about 40 pounds of fat. His skin was pale. He lost hair. He ignored hundreds of phone calls. He eventually picked up a phone call 45 days later after sleeping roughly an hour each night. It happened to be his mother and she came, collected him, and took him to reSTART, this Internet addiction treatment center. He’s now thriving, he’s doing very well, but he had to go through multiple rounds of treatment. On the idea that tech designers should have an oath similar to the Hippocratic oath that doctors take, pledging not to harm their patients, Google, for example, had for a while a person on board known as a ”design ethicist.” Now, you don’t have a design ethicist on board unless you’re concerned about the ethics of the products you’re creating. This person, named Tristan Harris, worked at Google for a while and eventually there was a sense that perhaps they weren’t responsive enough to some of his concerns. . .. The suggestion there that you need an ethicist, it suggests at least to me that they’re concerned about the addictiveness of the products. In fact, Tristan himself has written about that, and that’s exactly what he says. He suggests that there should be, in the design world, a Hippocratic oath  —   just as in medicine doctors should ”do no harm,” he believes the same should be true of designers of these kinds of platforms that people who design tech, people who design social media platforms, should be forced to obey the same rules  —   do no harm. On how virtual reality is the next big thing to become mainstream, Virtual reality is basically when you put on goggles and you inhabit a virtual world that feels like it’s real. You can move around in that world, you can interact with other things in that world, you basically are living in that world for all intents and purposes, and your brain often can’t distinguish. There’s amazing footage of people doing all sorts of things when they’re in the virtual reality world. They will walk into walls, not realizing the walls are there. They will not walk forward if in the virtual world there’s a cliff, even though they know, they know they’re in a world where they’re safe  —   the real world. . .. If you talk to experts in the industry they’ll say something like, say, between two and four years from now just as most of us own smartphones, we will pretty much all own these virtual reality goggles. . .. What that will mean is that at any moment in time you’ll have a device that will allow you to escape the imperfect real world, and you’ll be able to go to a perfect virtual world. . .. You can be where you are right now, or you can go to a beach in Greece, which might sound more appealing. You can be where you are right now, or you can interact with a beautiful person. You can be where you are now, or you can go traveling. You can do basically whatever it is you want to do, so it’s hard to imagine people will want to inhabit the real world, when there’s this perfect virtual world right there ready for the taking."
"In the wake of the Trump administration’s plans to crack down on illegal immigration, fear is sweeping through immigrant communities. Parents are being advised to put a plan in place for their children in case they find themselves detained or deported. Brothers Miguel, 14, and Angel, 15, know exactly what to do if they come home from school one day and their mom isn’t there. ”I would immediately just grab the binder and just call my family here,” Angel says. He’s talking about a black,   binder they keep in a closet. Their mother, whose name is not used because of her fear of being deported, put it together a few months ago. Her six children are all U. S. citizens, but she came here illegally from Mexico 18 years ago. And while she prays every day that she won’t be picked up and deported, Angel says she’s prepared them all for the worst. Angel says after grabbing the binder, he would, ”call to a friend of mine that’s a police, have him to come to the house and take care of us while we figure out what happened to my mom and where she is.” The mother says she’s given her two oldest boys instructions on what to do and who to call. She also put a notarized letter in the binder giving her cousin, an American citizen, legal authority to take care of all of her children until they can be reunited with her in Mexico. Her    daughter doesn’t really know about any of this. She’s busy being young  —   playing basketball and violin and winning her school’s spelling bee. She’s mostly unaware of the panic seeping in around her. Her mother says she wants to preserve that sense of innocence for as long as possible. ”I felt horrible when I had this conversation with the three older kids because even though they are older, they would cry and hug me,” the mother says, as translated from Spanish. ”I understand that I am in a country that’s not mine but it is the country of my children. So, if they were older I wouldn’t worry, but they still need me.” It’s estimated that there are more than 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U. S. and that more than four million children who were born in this country have at least one parent who’s unauthorized. Jess Hanson is a lawyer with the National Immigration Law Center based in Los Angeles, Calif. She teaches ”know your rights” workshops and says the anxiety across the country is palpable. Her advice to parents? Make a plan. ”If you’re detained in a workplace raid at 1 p. m. and you’re supposed to pick your kids up at 3, you know, who’s going to pick up your children?” she asks. ”Who’s going to feed them dinner? Those kinds of very practical considerations need to be taken into account.” Other things to include in a plan are updated passports, key phone numbers and a power of attorney to watch over your kids, ”to allow a relative or close friend to make medical decisions on the child’s behalf and a place for the child to live temporarily if the parents are not around,” she says. Hanson says if families don’t make a detailed plan  —   if they don’t have their own black binder with details on who can legally step in to take care of their kids  —   they run the risk of the state stepping in and placing their children into foster care. Jennifer Guerra is a reporter with with NPR member station Michigan Radio. You can follow her at @RadioJenG."
"The remotely operated underwater research vessel known as Boaty McBoatface is preparing for its first research mission  —   an expedition into ”some of the deepest and coldest abyssal ocean waters on earth.” Boaty McBoatface, of course, was the moniker that emerged triumphant in an online poll meant to name the newest research ship in the U. K.’s Natural Environment Research Council fleet. But the council opted to overrule the will of the people, and named the ship the Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough instead. As a consolation gesture, however, a smaller autonomous underwater vehicle was named Boaty McBoatface. So the name lives on  —   albeit in a way that makes less sense, because a submersible vehicle isn’t actually a boat. (Subby McSubface, anybody?) The RRS Sir David Attenborough is still under construction, but Boaty McBoatface is already on the job. The British Antarctic Survey explains that the submersible will be investigating ”an abyssal current of Antarctic Bottom Water along the Orkney Passage,” as part of an expedition that begins Friday. Antarctic Bottom Water is cold and dense, and its movement contributes to ocean circulation worldwide, the BAS writes. Boaty McBoatface will gather information on the intensity of turbulence in the Orkney Passage  —   information that could help improve climate change models. ”One of the most surprising features of the climate change that we are currently experiencing is that the abyssal waters of the world ocean have been warming steadily over the last few decades,” professor Alberto Naveira Garabato wrote in the press release. ”Establishing the causes of this warming is important because the warming plays an important role in moderating the ongoing (and likely future) increases in atmospheric temperature and sea level around the globe.” The BBC notes that there are actually three Boaty McBoatfaces: ”The name covers a trio of vehicles in the new Autosub Long Range class of underwater robots developed at Southampton’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC). ”These machines can all be configured slightly differently depending on the science tasks they are given. ”The one that will initiate the ’adventures of Boaty’ will head out of Punta Arenas, Chile, on Friday aboard Britain’s current polar ship, the RRS James Clark Ross.” The U. K.’s National Oceanography Centre has designed a cartoon version of Boaty McBoatface to help teach children about marine research. According to The Guardian, a   inflatable version of the submersible will ”travel to events across the country.”"
"Red Baraat’s fusion of bhangra,     and jazz is driven by frontman Sunny Jain’s percolating playing of the dhol, a   drum which forms the rhythmic lattice of support for their boisterous horns and guitar. And though Red Baraat graced the Tiny Desk five years ago, we had to have Jain’s band back to celebrate Holi, the Hindu festival of color, of good over evil, and the coming of spring. Usually you’d see the dusting of brightly colored perfumed powders strewn in the air, covering bodies and clothing. The notion of doing that in the office was a fun thought, but the band (with my nudging) opted instead for confetti cannons and passing candied treats. It made for quicker cleanup, but their uplifting spirits lingered on, giving us a chance to shake off the final days of winter and demonstrating why music is so essential to the soul. Bhangra Pirates is available for   now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Sunny Jain (dhol, vocals) Rohin Khemani (percussion) Chris Eddleton (drums) Sonny Singh (trumpet, vocals) Jonathan Goldberger (guitar) Jonathon Haffner (soprano sax) Raymond James Mason (trombone) Steven Duffy (sousaphone) CreditsProducers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Colin Marshall, Nick Michael, Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistants: A Noah Harrison, Bronson Arcuri, Ameeta Ganatra Photo: Marian  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"For tens of millions in the Northeast, the name of the hour is ”Stella”  —   as in Winter Storm Stella, the Weather   nor’easter poised to bring heavy snowfall to a number of cities along the   corridor. I’m among those who will soon be hunkering down (and later, shoveling out) but my first involuntary response is to start humming a familiar melody. As any actual Stella can surely attest with a weary sigh, the name has a special purchase in popular culture, thanks to a scrap of dialogue by Tennessee Williams  —   and more to the point, its indelible delivery by Marlon Brando, in the movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire. We’re not here to talk about that. What’s stuck in my head is the melody to ”Stella By Starlight,” a song composed by Victor Young for another film, a 1944 Paramount supernatural horror picture called The Uninvited. I’ve never seen this movie, which stars Gail Russell as the Stella in question, but I’ve heard the song at least a few thousand times, and probably more. As a vocal number, with lyrics tacked on by Ned Washington, it enjoyed some popular success in versions by (among others) Frank Sinatra (1947) Tony Bennett (1961) and Ella Fitzgerald, who included it on her Verve album Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! in ’61. The lyrics open with a couplet suitable for   though not for our current conditions: ”The song a robin sings   Through years of endless springs.” As always, Fitzgerald is clear as a bell, and manages to make the song’s melody feel easygoing in its unconventionally winding form. In his recent book The Jazz Standards, Ted Gioia brings a special warmth to his analysis of ”Stella By Starlight,” making the case that it’s ”a masterpiece of   misdirection.” Among the particulars are a delayed deployment of the root chord a surprise modulation after the second eight bars and a mere, fleeting tease of the core motif in the final eight. ”This bold framework, which violates our ingrained expectations, was precisely what made me embrace ’Stella By Starlight’ as an essentially modernistic composition,” Gioia writes, and in that he is far from alone. Jazz instrumentalists, more than singers, have been responsible for keeping ”Stella” in active circulation over the last 70 years. You’ll have no problem finding dozens of recorded versions, by some of the music’s most familiar names, including alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and pianist Bill Evans. But no one did more to standardize the song than Miles Davis and Lee Konitz. Davis, the trumpeter and bandleader, recorded ”Stella By Starlight” a handful of times from the late 1950s on: It was among the small handful of standards he always seemed to keep in a side pocket. One early version, with Evans on piano, was released almost 20 years after it was recorded, and subsequently included in The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis with John Coltrane, on Legacy. For many fans, Davis immortalized ”Stella” as a vehicle for lyrical elaboration in his set lists of the  ’60s. Here is a   treatment of the song from the Plugged Nickel in Chicago in 1965, with too many stray details to enumerate. But notice how Herbie Hancock sneaks in an   chordal fillip from ”So What” at the piano, just after 1:20. Note, too, the double time that seems almost to materialize out of a mist, spurred by bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams. (And lest it seem like a slight of omission, Wayne Shorter’s solo on tenor saxophone blazes like a searchlight.) Because of the slipstream innovations of Davis’s young rhythm team, successive generations of jazz musicians have internalized ”Stella By Starlight” as a point of departure. But Konitz, an alto saxophonist of equally intrepid ideals, has also framed the song this way. There are no hard numbers on this point, but it seems reasonable to suggest that no one on earth has played ”Stella” more times than Konitz, who is now 89, and still very much on the scene. He even included a new version on his Frescalalto, a quartet album featuring Kenny Barron on piano, released on Impulse! in digital formats last month. Any longtime Konitz admirer will recognize this performance as fully characteristic: a melodic improvisation with the unknowing ease of someone feeling around for the light switch in his own room. When Barron enters at the piano, just before the   mark, it’s as if that light has been flipped on. But what Konitz does in the   isn’t fumbling or unsure, and neither are his later statements over an ambulatory swing beat. He’s finding, not just seeking. One more example before you grab that snow shovel: A couple of years ago, Robert Glasper refocused attention on his acoustic piano trio, after garnering a lot of attention for the Robert Glasper Experiment, his RB crossover band. Covered was the album he made with the trio, which features bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Damion Reid. For the most part Covered features acts of stylistic translation: deft trio arrangements of tunes by Radiohead, Jhene Aiko and Kendrick Lamar. But Glasper does include one jazz standard, as if to assert that he’s still bonded to that repertoire. And his ”Stella” does have a fair amount of piano fireworks, without knocking the band out of its groove. ”In all honesty,” Gioia observes, ”I still have trouble understanding the appeal of such a   art song among the general public.” Glasper’s arrangement offers one solution: Provide the hooks yourself. But the enduring hold of ”Stella By Starlight,” over these many decades, suggests that even a   art song can stick around in the popular consciousness, if enough sterling interpreters keep finding reasons to play it."
"You might say that Heretics, a sprawling novel by celebrated Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, has been in the works since the early 1990s. It was back then that Padura began writing a series of books featuring an   detective in Havana named Mario Conde. Funny and philosophical, Conde, like the sharpest of detectives, devotes more time to investigating the mysteries of his own society than he does to investigating crime. Padura also writes ”straight” literary fiction, too, including his   2009 historical novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky called, The Man Who Loved Dogs. Which brings us to Heretics, where Padura has upped the ante. For over 500 tightly packed pages here, Padura manages to sustain his signature tone of wry, elegant cool as he juggles the demands of a story that oscillates between Cuba in the 1930s and the present, with a long central   in the Amsterdam of the 17th century. This historical narrative is spliced together with a mystery tale featuring the radiant return of detective Conde. Like Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer, which won both last year’s Pulitzer Prize and The Edgar Award given by the Mystery Writers of America, Padura’s Heretics spans and defies literary categories. All of which would only be of   technical interest if Heretics weren’t also an arresting novel about fanaticism,   and the long   of a   moment of political cowardice. Heretics opens on that notorious moment, which took place in Cuba in 1939. A young boy named Daniel Kaminsky has been living with his uncle in Havana ever since his parents got him out of Poland. On the morning of May 27, Daniel’s parents and his younger sister are due to arrive in Havana, along with 934 other refugees from Europe. They’re sailing on the S. S. Saint Louis, a boat, as Padura says, that was ”loaded [down] with Jews and trust.” Here’s Padura’s description of the scene at the dock where the Saint Louis sat in bureaucratic limbo: The port would soon become a sort of grotesque carnival. . .. [T]he thousands of Jews living in Havana, . ..  had camped out on the docks, . .. [B]usinesses and stands had gone up selling food and drink, . .. fans and  . . .. The most lucrative business . .. was the rental of boats aboard which people with relatives on the passenger ship could get as close to the vessel . .. as police and navy launches would allow, to see their family members there and . .. to convey some message of encouragement. Daniel’s parents remain optimistic because they carry something with them that they can barter for their freedom: a Rembrandt portrait of Christ. But on June 2, The Saint Louis was ordered to leave Cuba and Daniel watches, stunned, as his family along with the other passengers sail out of the harbor and toward, what will be for many, death. At that moment, Daniel renounces Judaism, decides he’s ”Cuban and that’s it” and thus becomes a ”heretic.” The intricate plot revolves around that missing Rembrandt painting  —   detective Conde is hired some seven decades later to find out what happened to it. It’s to Padura’s credit that he writes with such gusto, most readers will forget that his novel is built on the old ”missing painting” cliché. Indeed, it’s that powerful word ”heretic” that’s the most crucial link among the many stories here. We hear murmurs of that word in the central tale, set in Rembrandt’s studio in Amsterdam where a Jewish apprentice blasphemously poses for that portrait of Christ. Much later, we also hear the word ”heretic” coming out of Conde’s mouth as he walks down a street in Cuba in 2008 and surveys teenagers, dressed as Goths, punks, and ”emos.” Conde, who’s in his 60s, thinks resignedly of these young Cubans as the ”most remarkable tip of the iceberg of a generation of certified heretics,” left with no slogans or politics to believe in. Cloaked within familiar narrative conventions, Padura’s ingenious novel is something of a heretic itself: by turns playful, dark, and moving, it traces the great psychic costs  —   and rewards  —   that come from nestling so deeply into dogma that nothing is permitted to trigger doubt. This was the great theme of classic works of the fascist and communist 20th century like, of course, Orwell’s 1984. We were supposed to have awoken from those nightmares. But, as Padura reminds us, perhaps we haven’t."
"College basketball fans  —   the choice is yours. Fill out your bracket now if you haven’t already. Or experience angst until Thursday, when the first round of the men’s NCAA tournament starts. On Sunday, the selection committee set the field for the annual descent into March Madness. While the tournament officially starts Tuesday with the First Four in Dayton, Ohio, the first round  —   and where ballots start counting  —   is Thursday. The four No. 1 seeds are defending champion Villanova, North Carolina, Kansas and Gonzaga. It appears there’s a minimum of the controversy and grumbling that traditionally follows Selection Sunday. Most of the unhappiness is coming from the state of North Carolina, where the heated rivalry between Duke and North Carolina is playing out in the bracket. Duke was given a two seed  —   many Blue Devil fans and basketball pundits think Duke got a bit jobbed by the committee  —   after all, Duke beat North Carolina two out of three times this season, including in last week’s ACC championship tournament. Duke won four games in four straight days to claim the tournament title, beating ranked teams Louisville and Notre Dame, as well as the Tar Heels. But the squabbles should fade as Thursday approaches  —   this first week often captures most of the drama with early round upsets providing the madness in March Madness. And whether or not there’s more madness this time, there’s a good chance there’ll be a bevy of good, close games. Selection Committee chairman Mark Hollis said after the bracket was revealed, ”By far, I can say with 100 percent certainty that this is the most competitive bracket I’ve seen [in his five years on the committee].” Today is Selection Monday for the women’s tournament. The   bracket will feature 63 teams chasing overall No. 1 seed Connecticut, whose win streak stands at a gaudy 107 games."
"The top U. S. Marine vowed in a Senate hearing to hold members of the Marine Corps accountable for sharing nude photos of female Marines online. But many members of the Senate Armed Services Committee responded with tough questions Tuesday, asking why more isn’t being done to protect female service members. ”We have to commit to get rid of this perversion to our culture. Enough is enough,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller told the senators. ”We will take action to correct this stain on our Marine Corps.” The scandal has prompted a Pentagon investigation, and Neller said perpetrators may be subject to punishment through the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Neller added that officials are in the process of revising their policy to make the consequences of actions like the   more direct, and said he believes that the current policy is not taught to Marines ”with enough time or reinforcement.” The explicit photos at the center of this scandal were published on a private Facebook group with some 30, 000 members called Marines United, initially set up for current and veteran Marines to support each other. Neller said the photos were shared on a smaller group linked to on the main page. ”Some of the photos included detailed information,” NPR’s Tom Bowman reported, ”and some of the women have been subject to harassment.” The Facebook group has been taken down, but the photos remain online on a different page. ”It’s hard to believe that something is really going to be done when we hear this repeated again and again, and we see these kind of situations again and again,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen,  . H. ”Why should we believe that it’s going to be different this time than it’s been in the past?” Similarly, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,  . Y. said that after reports of online exploitation of women dating back to 2013, promises to fix the problem ”ring hollow.” She said: ”You have demanded that you maintain control of all these issues, but where is the accountability for failure? . .. I am very concerned that this is part of a culture that is resulting in the high levels of sexual assault.” Gillibrand has been an ”outspoken critic of the way the Pentagon has handled sexual harassment and assault,” Tom added. And Neller was frank in his response to Gillibrand, taking responsibility for the current problem: ”I don’t have a good answer for you. I’m not going to sit here and duck around this thing, I’m not. I’m responsible. I’m the Commandant. I own this. . .. I know you’ve heard it before, but we are going to have to change how we see ourselves and how we treat each other. That’s a lame answer, but ma’am, that’s the best I can tell you right now. We’ve got to change, and that’s on me.” Tom added that the Marine Corps has prided itself on being ”macho and traditional.” He described the somewhat uneasy transition for women into ground combat roles: ”There are some who are having trouble accepting women who recently started going into ground combat jobs. Now two years ago . .. to get ready for women in ground combat, all the Marines had mandatory training on ’unconscious prejudice’ to help deal with any cultural resistance. [Neller] told senators today that he doesn’t know if there’s a connection between not accepting women and posting nude photos. What he did say was this: ’We have to change the way we see each other as Marines. ’” It’s not just the Marines  —   Tom added that officials are also investigating similar websites linked to other services."
"Federal records indicate that a key adviser to President Trump held substantial investments in 18 companies when he joined Trump in meetings with their CEOs. The investments of Christopher Liddell, the president’s director of strategic initiatives, totaled between $3 million and $4 million. Among the companies in Liddell’s portfolio, and whose CEOs were in the meetings: Dell Technologies, Dow Chemical, Johnson  Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin and  . When Trump conferred with the chiefs of Ford, General Motors and   last month, Liddell attended the session. He was invested in all three companies at the time. Details of Liddell’s investments are contained in documents he filed with the White House ethics officer in preparation for divesting his holdings. He was seeking certificates of divestiture, which allow federal appointees to defer paying   taxes by reinvesting in a blind trust or similar arrangement. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint Tuesday with White House Counsel Donald McGahn, raising concerns that Liddell may have violated the federal conflict of interest law, a criminal statute. The complaint states: ”If Mr. Liddell personally participated in meetings with companies in which he held significant amounts of stock, he may have violated these rules.” The White House responded with this statement: ”Mr. Liddell has been working with the Office of the White House Counsel to ensure he is fully compliant with his legal and ethical obligations in connection with his holdings and his duties in the White House.” Liddell was born in New Zealand and is a U. S. citizen. In the past he has worked as chief financial officer of Ford Motors, International Paper and Microsoft. It’s not clear whether Liddell now has sold off his investments, but he apparently had not done so before the meetings in question. The meetings were held on Jan. 23, Jan. 24 and Feb. 3. On Feb. 9, the Office of Government Ethics issued four certificates of divestiture for Liddell and his wife. They would be worthless if the assets had already been sold. The complaint is one of several actions by CREW on White House ethics issues. The group says in a lawsuit that Trump is violating the Constitution’s ban on foreign emoluments (gifts) it has questioned the ethics of presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway after she urged TV viewers to buy Ivanka Trump’s fashion merchandise and it challenged the lack of transparency of two White House advisory committees. CREW Director Noah Bookbinder said of the White House, ”It seems nobody is concerned about people making decisions based on their personal interests and not the interests of the American people.”"
"The proposed American Health Care Act targets the health provider Planned Parenthood with a set of proposed limits on Medicaid payments to the organization. Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirmed the magnitude of those limits. The CBO found the Republican plan would reduce overall federal spending on reproductive care for women by $178 million in 2017. In all, it would block about $400 million in Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood each year, according to Jacqueline Ayers, the director of legislative affairs for the organization. ”The vast majority of our patients are on some kind of federal program,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, told NPR’s Ari Shapiro on Tuesday. In all, she said, about 1. 6 million patients receive health care from the organization each year through federal programs such as Medicaid. ”Planned Parenthood operates just like every other health care provider in this country that provides abortion services. We get reimbursed for preventive care,” she explained. ”I guess if you want to reduce unintended pregnancy and the need for abortion, the last thing you should do is try to deny women the access to family planning,” Richards said. Tom Glessner, the president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, which gives legal advice and other support to   pregnancy clinics, is optimistic about the projected savings for the federal government. ”On the positive side, taxpayers benefit from this provision,” he told NPR. ”Taxpayers would spend $156 million less, over a decade, by defunding Planned Parenthood, even if women used more Medicaid dollars during their pregnancies.” Glessner was referring to the increase in births the CBO projects if Medicaid patients are cut off from Planned Parenthood. The costs associated with about 45 percent of all births in the U. S. are paid for by the Medicaid program. ”In the   period in which federal funds for Planned Parenthood would be prohibited under the legislation, the number of births in the Medicaid program would increase by several thousand, increasing direct spending for Medicaid by $21 million in 2017,” the CBO report notes. The Republican plan technically cuts off funding to Planned Parenthood for only one year. If the organization stops providing abortions, it will be eligible for Medicaid reimbursements again. But Richards said there is no chance that will happen. ”We provide full reproductive health care for people in this country,” she said. ”And even though abortions may make up a small portion of what we do, women and families and young people come to Planned Parenthood because they count on us to be on their side, and to provide them with health care they need.” Federal spending on abortions is already illegal, except in the case of pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest or that threaten the life of the mother, as NPR has reported. Republican lawmakers and some clinicians have said that if Planned Parenthood closes clinics, other health providers would try to take on those patients. But community health clinics say they are already overburdened. The Republican plan currently calls for tens of billions of dollars for states to spend as they see fit, including on preventive care for women. ”How will the states use that money? They have great flexibility,” Douglas   former director of the Congressional Budget Office and current president of the conservative think tank American Action Forum, told Ari on Tuesday. ”They can give it to insurers as reinsurance for expensive patients they can give it directly to individuals to cover    costs they can create a variety of other programs like   pools for expensive patients.” But Richards argued that spending would need to address a supply problem in rural or poor communities. ”The public health community has been abundantly clear that they cannot absorb the 2. 5 million patients that Planned Parenthood sees each year,” she said. ”And particularly for women who have found a lump in their breast or need birth control immediately, and maybe a community health center can see them in a month or two months, that’s not good enough.”"
"Things are spiraling downward in South Sudan, one of four nations where, according to the U. N. the greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945 is unfolding. And in the case of South Sudan, it’s not drought or climate change that’s causing the catastrophe. It’s civil war. Last month the U. N. declared a famine in two parts of the country and warned that nearly half the population is in urgent need of food assistance. Soon after this declaration, the American relief agency Samaritan’s Purse was forced to pull most of its staff out of one of the   zones because of fighting in the area. A skeleton crew of 7 local staff members remained behind. Then on Sunday, armed gunmen abducted those workers. A spokesman for the South Sudanese military said the aid workers were being held for ransom by rebel fighters demanding food aid in exchange for their release. On Tuesday, Samaritan’s Purse confirmed that their employees had been let go. ”At the very moment that we are talking they are in a helicopter on their way to Juba. They’ve been released,” says Ken Isaacs, vice president of programs for Samaritan’s Purse, who spoke to NPR by phone earlier today from the aid agency’s headquarters in North Carolina. ”I think they’re OK. I don’t know if they were manhandled. We are under the assumption that they’re safe, OK and they’re headed out.” Negotiations involving local military leaders on both sides of the conflict, he says, brought about their release. He adds that no ransom was paid. The abduction, however, has forced the aid group to halt operations in the epicenter of one of the worst famines in the world. ”This incident clearly illustrates the complexities and dangers of working in South Sudan,” Isaacs says. At the same time that people are starving, fighting has turned parts of the country into   zones for relief agencies. This same pattern is playing out in three other countries in the world right now, prompting the U. N. to declare that it’s facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. Violence in Yemen, according to the U. N. has left 18 million people  —   nearly   of the country  —   in need of humanitarian aid. Drought combined with chaos and extremist militants in Somalia are leaving millions hungry there. And in West Africa, Boko Haram fighters have terrorized people across large swaths of Northern Nigeria, driven farmers from their land and left a massive food shortage in their wake. Back in South Sudan, another area where famine has been declared is Leer County, just south of where the Samaritan’s Purse team was working. Nellie Kingston, emergency coordinator for Concern Worldwide in South Sudan, visited Leer last week. Reached by phone in the capital Juba, Kingston says Leer is a wasteland. ”I saw no planting in Leer County. Villages are deserted. People are hiding in swamps to avoid the fighting,” Kingston says. Most of the fit,   residents have fled to camps set up by the United Nations, she says. Those left behind have almost nothing to eat. ”The people I met are living on what they can forage in the swamps where they live. Luckily those people have access to fish [from the swampy water] which adds some protein to their diet.” Kingston says this is a manmade food crisis. Fighters from both the government and the rebel side in the war have been accused of robbing, raping and killing civilians. Gunmen have torched crops and chased farmers from their fields. Logistically, she says, it’s very hard for aid agencies to deliver food rations to people hiding in remote swamps. And when the rains hit later this spring, she says, most of the dirt roads will turn to rivers of mud, making the delivery of aid across much of Leer County nearly impossible. ”In the next rainy season, those people are locked into where they are,” she says. The World Food Programme has been trying to reach some of them by dropping bags of grain from airplanes into some parts of the country. Last year the WFP distributed a record 265, 000 metric tons of food supplies by air and truck across South Sudan, the most since South Sudan gained independence in 2011. Ken Isaacs of Samaritan’s Purse says that just when it looked as if things couldn’t get any worse in South Sudan, the country has become even more chaotic. ”If something isn’t done to bring a stable government to the area soon,” he says, ”we are going to see much more loss of life and a lot more bloodshed.”"
"A recent lawsuit brought by a blind theatergoer against the producers of the hit musical Hamilton has highlighted Broadway’s spotty track record in serving audiences with disabilities. Hamilton opened almost a year and a half ago, but it’s still the hottest ticket on Broadway. Mark Lasser of Denver, who is blind, wanted to take his wife to the show and get audio description services to help him enjoy a performance. That means he hoped to get a headset and hear the stage action being described in real time, during the show. But he discovered that Hamilton doesn’t offer this particular service. ”I think what this suit brings to light is that you have a hidden population out there that is not gaining the full access to Broadway,” says attorney Scott Dinin, who is representing Lasser in the   suit against the show’s producers and theater owner. ”Sometimes you need a lawsuit like this to bring this to the public’s attention,” Dinin says. Broadway has taken great strides in the decades since the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, was passed in 1990. Last year, a new website called Theatre Access NYC launched  —   a collaboration between the Broadway League, which represents producers and theater owners, and the Theatre Development Fund, a nonprofit that offers discount tickets and services to theatergoers with disabilities. Lisa Carling, TDF’s director of accessibility programs, says the goal of the website is to provide one stop where people with disabilities can find accessible performances. A quick glance shows that most Broadway theaters are wheelchair accessible and offer open captioning and hearing assistance devices there are also occasional special performances for people on the autism spectrum. But only four   musicals, including The Lion King and The Book of Mormon, offer audio description. Audio description has been around since the 1980s, says Mark Annunziato, vice president for operations and engineering at Sound Associates, a company that rents audio and video equipment to Broadway shows and develops audio description services. In the past, groups of blind and   customers attended special performances with a live interpreter. Since Broadway shows now use computers to trigger light, set and sound cues, automated audio description can be set up to work with those systems and offered at every performance, with minimal cost  —   especially when Broadway musicals have budgets between $5 million and $25 million. ”The base system varies, but it usually ranges in and around $20, 000,” Annunziato says. ”So that would be the automation system, the computer system and the wireless broadcast system to all the devices.” Then add $5, 000 more to write, record and sync a script, and a monthly maintenance fee. When you’re talking about a hit show, the cost of setting up an audio description system more than pays for itself, says Howard Sherman, of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. ”Certainly once a show sets up a sustained run  —   and when we look at musicals that run five, 10, 15, 20 years  —   it really is a very small price to pay for opening up a show to a much, much wider audience,” Sherman says. That’s really what Dinin, Lasser’s attorney, is trying to say with this legal action. He is not seeking damages for his client  —   he can’t, under the terms of the ADA. He is trying to make sure that theater becomes more inclusive, by spotlighting the problem, using Broadway’s biggest hit. ”Audio description is so necessary,” Dinin says. ”It’s the right thing to do. It’s not that expensive. And it’s just a thinking process. It’s a mindset. We have to get a mindset: How do we increase inclusion? It should be   . Equality, accommodation and respect. Because once people put that at the   table, all the services will flow from that.” With the case ongoing, Hamilton’s producers declined to comment for this story. So did a number of other Broadway producers. Radio editor Tom Cole and Web producer Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"A former Brazilian soccer player, sentenced to more than two decades in prison for ordering the murder of an   has returned to the sport. He was released from prison on a technicality and swiftly signed by a team. The decision has prompted outrage in Brazil, The Associated Press reports. Multiple sponsors have pledging to drop their support for Boa Esporte, the team that signed Bruno Fernandes de Souza. Souza  —   known as ”Bruno” in Brazil  —   used to play for Flamengo, in Rio de Janeiro. But his career seemed to be over after he was convicted in the grisly 2010 murder of a former girlfriend, Eliza Samudio. CNN has more on the case: ”Bruno, his lover and his   were among nine people charged with torturing and murdering Samudio, who had been trying to prove [Souza] had fathered her son. . .. ”Samudio’s body was never found, but the goalkeeper’s cousin told the court Samudio had been demanding child support payments and that he had helped to dismember her body and fed her to several dogs.” DNA eventually proved that Souza, who was married at the time, was indeed the father of Samudio’s child, the AP reports. In 2013, Souza was convicted of ordering her murder, hiding her body and kidnapping their son. He confessed that he knew she was strangled and fed to dogs, but denied ordering her death himself, according to the BBC. Souza was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison, but he was unexpectedly released about a month ago. ”A Supreme Court justice ordered his release on the grounds that his appeal to a higher court was languishing,” the AP reports. Brazil is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, as NPR’s Lulu Garcia Navarro reported in depth last summer. ”In Brazil, a woman is killed every two hours and assaulted every 15 seconds  —   often by someone she knows  —   according to a report from the nonprofit Mapa da Violencia,” Lulu wrote. There are ”specific laws against femicide and violence against women” meant to stem the epidemic  —   ”But those laws haven’t been working.” For example, Lulu spoke with Andreza da Silva, whose sister was murdered after she reported her husband for abuse. Here’s more from Lulu: ”Her sister’s husband became relentless, Silva tells me. He would show up outside the house and threatened that if she didn’t come back to him, he would kill her. ”She and the family asked for help, but the police did nothing. The neighbors said nothing. ”She thought he would eventually leave her alone. But on that December morning in 2015, he finally made good on his threats  —   murdering her in plain view. She was 32. ” ’Why do you think this happened?’ I ask Silva. ” ’The men here think that if you are with a woman, you own her,’ she tells me.” Teresa Cristina Cabral, a state judge in Brazil who works on domestic violence training and education initiatives, notes that when Bruno de Souza’s case was first unfolding some people were critical of Samudio, the murdered woman, for having been Souza’s lover in the first place. ”Her behavior was kind of judged . .. [like] since she was not a ’good girl,’ she deserved to die,” she says. And now, Souza’s return to professional soccer sends a disturbing message about Brazilian attitudes toward domestic violence, Cabral says. ”We don’t care if he killed a woman  —   it doesn’t matter, really, because it doesn’t have anything to do with his ’professional’ behavior,” she says. And she worries about the impact on young soccer fans who might absorb the message: ” ’Well, it’s just a woman that was killed, whatever.’ ” Cabral says she was encouraged to see some companies taking a stand against Boa Esporte for signing Souza, but that it’s clear cultural attitudes haven’t shifted on the issue. Meanwhile, Boa Esporte stands by the controversial decision. In one Facebook post, the president of the team suggested the team was doing something positive by giving him a job, which could provide ”dignity.” In another post, the team said Souza ”deserves a new opportunity as a professional,” according to a CNN translation. "
"Recent executive orders on immigration have sparked an outpouring of donations from the general public, with national groups like the American Civil Liberties Union seeing the bulk of the financial windfall. For example, the ACLU recently raised $24 million in a single weekend. But with the spotlight on large nonprofits, some smaller,   groups find that the focus on   courtroom showdowns with the current administration has come at the expense of support for   work. ”For folks who are new to the issues of immigration or immigrant and refugee rights, [  groups] aren’t the first thing that pops up on Google when you’re trying to figure out what to donate your time or money to,” said Tara Raghuveer, deputy director of the National Partnership for New Americans, which is a coalition of 37 regional immigrant and   groups across 31 states. ”If you live in a family that has never had to ask the question of who is going to take care of my kids if I’m deported, you won’t naturally think of the fact that you need a   organization or institution like a church or school to provide the information that isn’t necessarily a legal consultation but supports people facing continuous anxiety and fear during these times,” Raghuveer said. NPNA members provide rapid responses to urgent community needs from ”Know Your Rights” workshops to assistance in formulating plans for what to do in case a family member is deported. While the organization has received increased support following the election, the demand for services has also risen. The U. S. is home to over 1. 5 million charities, most of which are small organizations that deliver a wide range of services while financially challenged by their overhead. According to GuideStar, which reports on U. S. charities, only 10 percent of registered nonprofits have annual revenues of $500, 000 or more. The   donations following the presidential election are the exception rather than the rule. For donors like Clarissa Marzán, an account executive in New York City, giving to advocacy organizations like the ACLU is a way to maximize the impact of her contributions. ”I wanted to donate to organizations that have a diverse mission so that I can still pitch in for other important causes such as immigration rights and LGBTQ rights,” she said. ”I liked that organizations like the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center had that broad reach.” To approximate that reach,   organizations are banding together to share resources. ”None of our partners are new  —   we’ve talked and worked together for years. But it certainly does feel different in this political climate,” said Nadia Tonova, director of the National Network for Arab American Communities, whose mission is to develop local nonprofits across the country. In contrast to the ACLU, which raised nearly seven times what it raised during 2015 in the weekend following the executive order, NNAAC donations have risen by only 15 percent since the election. At the state and national level, NNAAC partners with a variety of   groups like South Asian Americans Leading Together and Muslim Advocates, which is a legal and education advocacy group. ”We’re talking much more frequently as things are happening. We’re sharing news, talking points, and policy analysis to help accelerate our rapid response, so that we can have space for everyone who wants to be engaged,” Tonova said. Suman Raghunathan, executive director of SAALT, commends large advocacy organizations for supporting their efforts as she works to build a   coalition with organizations like United We Dream and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Some donors, like Austin Chanu, a music teacher in Los Angeles, support the efforts of these   groups to expand their community outreach in the aftermath of the election. ”I have donated to larger groups or local political candidates [in the past] but have slowly come to the realization that my money is better being directed toward local   organizations that are working for racial, economic and social justice,” Chanu said. ”I found out about BAJI just last month and after reading about its history and roots in Oakland and San Francisco, I knew I had to donate. They are doing important work organizing and educating   and black immigrant communities.” But despite the support of donors like Chanu, some small,   immigrant rights groups express frustration at not being included in the latest national organizing campaigns. On March 11, the ACLU launched PeoplePower. org, a platform to organize mass resistance to renewed threats to civil rights and civil liberties. The program builds on the widespread donations and support the group has received since President Trump’s inauguration and controversial executive orders, and it aims to take on the cause of   organizing nationwide. In response to these critiques, Faiz Shakir, the ACLU’s national political director, said the organization is ”coming to the fight and bringing even more resources and personnel to lift up all of the fights that some of these groups are waging on the ground. We want to provide a platform that any   group could use to reach larger numbers of people.” Still, one minority group leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, cast a skeptical eye on such initiatives. Although he acknowledges a good working relationship with the ACLU and National Immigration Law Center over the years, he is wary of attempts to expand their   work. ”It appears to us that we need to order our priorities not only because of what Donald Trump is doing but also due to what groups like the ACLU are doing,” he said. ”I don’t want to be in a competitive space because we have scarce resources, and we need to find the best way to use them.” To Mijente, a Latino advocacy group in Chicago, the dominance of more ”mainstream” organizations is nothing new. ”  has been a central pillar of all successful social change movements, and it’s been one that’s historically been ignored in the   movement,” said Tania Unzueta, Mijente’s policy and legal director. ”The people we need to be looking to and supporting right now are veteran organizers of red states who have lessons to share from the front lines of Trump’s America.” For   groups, close engagement with and awareness of community needs provides an advantage in developing programming. Some organizations, like BAJI, strive for a   approach through   outreach. According to Carl Lipscombe, deputy director, ”We’re out there in communities talking to them about their lives, so we have a better sense of the priorities of immigrant families and what they face day to day.” James Zogby, founder and president of the   Institute, concedes that groups with resources and expertise to mount complex courtroom cases might be better placed to spearhead legal challenges, but he champions protecting a seat at the table for   groups. ”We challenge people to reflect on the cultural definition of America, who we are as a country, and what we want to be,” he said. ”I think that’s something we can do, and that we are uniquely positioned to do, because of our experience, who we are, and our story.” Akinyi Ochieng is a writer and researcher studying at the London School of Economics. Follow her @kikiochieng."
"After the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s U. S. victory last year, political analysts wonder if populism will gain ground on the European continent amid the impact of a migration crisis and dissatisfaction with the European Union. With elections approaching in France, Germany and the Netherlands, the question has gained urgency. The answer may start to become clearer Wednesday, when the first of these elections takes place and Dutch voters head to the polls. Among the   in the Netherlands parliamentary election is Geert Wilders’   Freedom Party. Wilders, who’s been compared to Trump by the Dutch press and some voters, is a colorful figure, known for his   pompadour and extreme rhetoric. He has been running an     ”Holland First”  campaign and has vowed to ”make the Netherlands ours again.” The Freedom Party had been leading in the polls, but recently slipped. So how much does Wilders matter? Two political analysts in Amsterdam weigh in. André Krouwel is a political scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam and Emilie Van Outeren, a political reporter with NRC, a leading Dutch newspaper, spent five months in the U. S. covering the presidential race. Their responses have been condensed and edited for space. Who are Wilders’ supporters? Krouwel: He actually mobilizes quite a broad range of people. There’s a lot of older voters who feel very insecure about how this country is changing with immigration. They feel like the undeserving are coming into our country, taking away or undermining our welfare state, our healthcare. The other group is people who are at the lower end of the labor market and they feel threatened by labor immigration. Then there’s, of course, just people who think that Dutch culture is going down the drain by immigration. They don’t like the multicultural society, or they feel like their neighborhood is changing too much. Do you see any connections between the concerns of these voters and some of the concerns that played out in the Brexit vote and Trump victory?  Krouwel: I think they’re exactly the same people. They are people who not necessarily are poor, but actually have a lot to lose. Trump voters, they earned over $70, 000 per annum. You see a large part of the Wilders vote, they’re earning a lot of money. Most of them earn more this year than last year, but they feel that they might lose everything. So, it’s not what they have, it’s what they think they might lose. How does the European migration crisis, the refugee crisis, fit into this? Krouwel: If every night you see hordes of people [on TV] walking down roads with whole families moving this way, people feel anxious about it. They feel like hordes of immigrants and refugees are coming into our country and we’re swamped by them. That’s also the language that Wilders is using, that we’re [being] taken over and we have to take back our country. Is Wilders the Dutch Donald Trump? Van Outeren: No, he’s so establishment. He’s never held a job outside of the government. Trump’s appeal was obviously that he was an outsider and this was a change election for the United States. What you do see is the language. That’s something that they definitely have in common and this nativist idea, Trump’s slogan ”America First.” Wilders has made his slogan ”Let’s Make the Netherlands Ours Again.” So there are a lot of similarities, but not as many as people might think. And then there’s the hair, of course. If Wilders were to get the most votes, what kind of impact would that have in the Netherlands? Van Outeren: What is new is that in this campaign, other parties have already said they exclude governing with Wilders. So what it will mean is that if his       narrative wins and draws people to the polls, then that says something to the leaders of all these other parties  —   and they will run a very different government with him as a huge opposition force than they will if he comes in third. How significant is this election in the broader Western context? Krouwel: If you see Brexit, which is an   vote, if you see Trump beating the hell out of the Democrats, you can see that, wow! Two times, the whole establishment is put to shame. If Wilders also succeeds and then in France, [National Front leader] Marine Le Pen wins in the summer, and then in Germany, the   [Alternative for Germany] party does, well, yeah, then I would be really worried. What I think will happen is that Wilders will not be first, but second or third  —   not play a role in government. In Germany, the Social Democrats will probably be big and govern with the Christian Democrats, very normal coalition. Le Pen will not be president of France, so I think, come early 2018, it has all blown over. But then again, a small thing can happen. What do you fear most in politics? Events, because they can change the course of history."
"”This is a first for me,” says Rabbi Andy Dubin, as he sits down on a collapsible chair opposite Ann Justi and Don Boyer. The three of them are in the compact living room of Boyer’s apartment in Yonkers, N. Y. standing between the sofa, TV and writing desk. Dubin is in his socks, having shed his   boots out in the hallway. Boyer and Justi are getting married. Never mind the   conditions that kept one set of friends home, and a bad cold that waylaid another. They’re determined to tie the knot this afternoon. So they recruited their landlord from downstairs and a public radio reporter to be witnesses. Why the rush? Boyer and Justi have been listening to the news. They were planning to get married in the fall, but it occurred to them that there’s no knowing what could happen to health insurance if the Trump administration and congressional Republicans dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Justi has several preexisting conditions  —   osteoporosis, asthma, allergies and Vitamin   malabsorption  —   and the insurance she carried over from her previous job will expire this summer. She had   insurance for more than a decade, but was laid off last year. Justi and Boyer knew they could wait until the spring to get married, and she then could go on the health plan he receives as a concierge for a residential building  —   it’s a union job, and the health insurance is good. But Boyer worries about Republicans unspooling crucial Obamacare safeguards. ”There’s so much uncertainty as far as what’s going to be law tomorrow, what’s going to be law next month,” he says. ”Nobody really knows, unfortunately.” Much of the focus in the ”repeal and replace” debate has been on the 20 million Americans who have received coverage via state and federal health insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion. But most Americans still get coverage from employers, and their plans now have protections that could also be rolled back. Under the Affordable Care Act, private insurers can no longer reject people with preexisting conditions, or charge them more for their insurance. As of now, the GOP bill in front of Congress also has language requiring that people with preexisting conditions be able to get health insurance. But there are other factors that could make that insurance much more expensive  —   such as the applicant’s age and the lack of a mandate, under the GOP plan, that everyone have health insurance. If you get rid of the mandate, many health care analysts say, it’s likely that the people buying that insurance would mostly be sick  —   further driving up the cost of the insurance, and driving out of the insurance pool the healthy, younger people who tend to bring down the cost of the insurance. Justi’s current situation of having temporary insurance with an expiration date  —   instead of being on a stable health plan that can’t kick her off  —   takes her back to an earlier, uglier time in her life. ”I went from one employer to another, and the new employer’s insurance didn’t cover my preexisting conditions for a year and that nearly bankrupted me,” she says. So Justi and Boyer decided to get legally married as soon as possible, and have a more ceremonial, celebratory wedding in the fall. They found Rabbi Andy Dubin online, on a list of licensed local wedding officiants. They warmed to his profile, even though neither is Jewish. The service in their living room is casual but formal. Dubin wears a suit, and both bride and groom are fashionably attired in black. Boyer sports a white rose boutonnière. Justi holds a bouquet wrapped in silk. Dubin talks about marriage and commitment and faith. And he nods to their need to protect themselves. ”Every marriage is important  —   but it’s also important because you are living in times, as we all are, when sometimes we have to take things into our own hands to make sure we come out all right on the other side,” he says. For about 20 minutes, they discuss the journey behind the couple and the one ahead. Boyer and Justi read vows they’ve written to each other, and then give each other rings. Dubin declares, ”By the authority vested me by state of NY, I now pronounce you, Don and Ann, husband and wife.” They kiss, then sign some paperwork, raise a toast of sparkling water, take some smartphone pictures and embrace the rabbi. They’re beaming like newlyweds  —   albeit very practical newlyweds who are planning for the future. ”As quickly as possible, I want to get you and this form down to the union headquarters tomorrow,” Boyer says. And that’s it. The landlord heads back downstairs. The rabbi and I head out into the snow. And Justi and Boyer bundle up for a   honeymoon in a White Plains, N. Y, hotel. They say they’re prepared to face whatever comes next together  —    in sickness and in health. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WNYC and Kaiser Health News. Fred Mogul has been covering health care and medicine for WNYC since 2002. "
"The debate over how many people would lose health insurance under the Republican health care overhaul and its impact on the budget deficit obscures one of the major and most   effects of the proposal: sweeping changes to Medicaid. As a candidate, President Trump had promised ”no cuts” to Medicaid. The Republicans’ American Health Care Act, which Trump supports, would end an expansion of the coverage and restructure funding for it. The bill is the first part of a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act enacted under President Obama. Medicaid provides assistance to some 74 million   Americans, through a combination of federal and state funds. Everything from maternity coverage to pediatric care to care for people with disabilities and senior nursing home care is covered. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly half of all births are paid for through the program, and the vast majority of nursing home stays. Almost   of all spending is for the elderly and people with disabilities, the foundation finds. The federal and state cost of Medicaid was a total $532 billion in fiscal year 2015. Under the Affordable Care Act, 31 states and the District of Columbia chose to accept expanded coverage, which allowed people earning up to 138 percent of the poverty level to enroll in the program. Some 11 million people did. Under the GOP replacement, that expansion would be phased out, although those now in the program would not lose their coverage. But the changes are more widespread than that. Currently, Medicaid payments to states are based on a matching formula, with the federal government paying states a share of their costs. The GOP proposes capping payments to states, with different amounts going to different categories of recipients  —   children, the elderly and people with disabilities. The Congressional Budget Office, in its analysis of the GOP program, said those changes would reduce federal spending on Medicaid by $880 billion over the next 10 years, a 17. 6 percent cut. And it says the changes would mean Medicaid beneficiaries would be reduced by some 14 million people  —   about half of the additional uninsured under the GOP bill  —   by 2026. House Speaker Paul Ryan says the changes ”modernize Medicaid.” But advocates for the program call it something else. After the CBO released its analysis Monday, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called on Republicans to pull their bill from consideration, saying it’s ”the only decent thing to do.” And AARP, the seniors advocacy group, calls the bill a ”bad deal” for older Americans."
"When the Congressional Budget Office on Monday announced that the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would lead to 24 million people losing insurance coverage, Tom Price cried foul. Price, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said the estimate that 14 million people would lose insurance in a year, and another 10 million over the following nine years, was ”virtually impossible.” ”It basically says that we’ll be right back at   status with about 40 million people uninsured in this country, ” Price said outside the White House on Monday. ”We believe that the plan that we’re putting in place is going to insure more individuals than currently are insured, so we think that CBO simply has it wrong.” Why the disagreement? In part, it’s obviously politics. Republicans can’t let a projection that so many people will lose insurance under their proposal, called the American Health Care Act, go unchallenged. But it also lies in how you define ”health insurance.” Republicans have said repeatedly that they want insurance companies to be able to offer cheap,   policies that don’t cover as many services as those under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. That way, consumers will have the choice to spend less on premiums if they don’t want comprehensive coverage. But the Congressional Budget Office is evaluating their plan by the Affordable Care Act rules. ”Republicans feel like they’re being held to the rules for football, but the game is actually soccer. They’re trying to redefine the game,” says Rodney Whitlock, a vice president at ML Strategies who was Republican policy director at the Senate Finance Committee when the Affordable Care Act first passed. The problem is Republicans have a   strategy to reshape health care. The first is the American Health Care act, which essentially repeals Obamacare’s individual mandate, taxes and subsidies, and replaces them with smaller tax credits to help people buy insurance. Then they intend to make changes in regulations and pass additional legislation to reduce the benefits insurers have to offer and allow more competition between insurers. They say their ultimate goal is to reduce the cost of insurance so more people will buy coverage. The CBO, however, has to evaluate the plan based on current law. In a December memo, it laid out how it would determine whether a policy would be deemed actual health insurance. ”CBO broadly defines private health insurance coverage as a comprehensive major medical policy that, at a minimum, covers   medical events and various services, including those provided by physicians and hospitals,” the memo says. ”When specific requirements are established in law, CBO relies on those definitions to further determine what policies count as private insurance coverage.” The Affordable Care Act lays out 10 categories of ”essential health benefits” that must be included in all insurance policies  —   including mental health care, and maternity and newborn care. The Republican proposal doesn’t repeal that essential benefits package, which can drive up the cost of insurance. So the CBO concludes that the tax credits under the Republican proposal aren’t sufficient to persuade many people to buy   insurance. ”For many   people, the new tax credits under the legislation would tend to be smaller than the premium tax credits under current law,” the agency said in its analysis released Monday. It concludes ”fewer   people would obtain coverage through the   market under the legislation than under current law.” The Republican plan does allow insurance companies to offer coverage that pays for a lower share of a person’s health care costs  —   just half of all costs rather than the 60 percent to 90 percent mandated under the ACA. So Price may have a point when he says the estimate that 24 million people will lose their insurance is too high. But Whitlock says there’s risk in assuming that Republicans can complete the next steps in their strategy to reshape the health care system. ”Maybe what they really need to do is step back and say you can’t have this conversation unless you’re ready to put it all out there,” he said. Republicans will have a hard time stripping out the benefits that are included in the current health care law, according to Nicholas Bagley, a professor of law at the University of Michigan. Democrats certainly won’t vote to water them down, he says, and Republicans don’t have a big enough majority in the Senate to overcome a Democratic filibuster. And at HHS, Price may not be able to change much in the regulations, Bagley says in a post on the ”Incidental Economist” blog. ”Price is hemmed in by the text of the ACA, which says that ’the scope of the essential health benefits’ must be ’equal to the scope of benefits provided under a typical employer plan,’ ” he says. An Institute of Medicine study found that employer plans generally are quite generous. ”If most employer plans cover the same stuff, you can’t squeeze much juice out of a redefinition of the essential health benefits,” Bagley says."
"Updated at 1:20 p. m. ET, Two of the biggest cities standing in the way of Tuesday’s nor’easter, New York City and Philadelphia, have lifted their blizzard warnings as the storm’s path has shifted to the west and meteorologists have tempered their forecasts for the major urban areas. But not before the storm managed to leave a considerable heap of flight cancellations, power outages and school closures in its wake. By midday, The Associated Press reports that some 6, 000 flights had been canceled and more than 200, 000 customers had lost power in roughly half a dozen states in the   and Northeast regions. The college basketball playoffs have not escaped the storm’s effects, either. To beat the snow, teams began their travel early so they could be sure to make their tournament time. ”We are closely tracking the weather and working with our travel partners and teams in the tournament to ensure the safety of our   coaches, administrators, officials and fans,” the NCAA said in a statement. ”This includes looking at departure times for teams that will play in affected cities.” Even a meeting between President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which had been planned for Tuesday in Washington, D. C. was postponed Monday amid fears of the storm’s looming shadow. That meeting has been rescheduled for Friday. Still, in some areas the fearsome nor’easter that had been promised turned into a paper tiger by the time it showed. In New York City, for instance, predictions of up to 20 inches of snow were downgraded to a range of 4 to 8 inches as the day went on  —   though west of the city, along the New   border, predictions still range up to 30 inches. The storm whiffed on Pittsburgh almost entirely  —   despite forecasters’ predictions  —   prompting a few residents to crack wise about the M. Night   twist. Meanwhile, the storm’s arrival in Boston was so gradual, the Massachusetts’ state highway administrator, Thomas Tinlin, had to roll out reassurances in the morning that the storm was indeed on its way. ”It feels a little bit like you invited all your friends over for a party and then you are kind of hanging around, saying, ’Where are they?’ ” Tinlin quipped at an 8 a. m news conference, according to the Boston Globe. ”Rest assured,” he added, ”your friends are coming.” The nor’easter is still expected to bring up to 2   feet of snow to parts of New England as the day stretches on  —   a heavy blow to those who had hoped the warm temperatures recently had signaled an early farewell to snowfall. Those hopes were dashed when the powerful nor’easter caused the National Weather Service to issue blizzard warnings earlier this week in parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. State officials continue to encourage residents to stay home amid the inclement weather, if at all possible. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker asked drivers to stay off the roads, and Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy even had some suggestions on how to pass the time. It’s a ”good day to make brownies,” Malloy said, according to the AP, ”  read a book.”"
"Scientists have caught sight of a star extremely close to what they think is a black hole, whizzing around it at an extraordinary speed  —   at least twice an hour. As NASA put it, ”This may be the tightest orbital dance ever witnessed for a likely black hole and a companion star.” The pair is in our galaxy, in an area dense with stars some 14, 800   from Earth. Researchers believe the object is a black hole, although other explanations are possible, Michigan State University’s Arash Bahramian tells The  . He’s the lead author of a recent paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society detailing the team’s findings. They’re confident the star caught in the dance is a white dwarf, which is the dense remnant of a star, like our sun, after it has died. The white dwarf is close enough to the black hole that it is ”pulling matter from the white dwarf onto itself,” another indicator of how close the pair is, Bahramian says. It’s the first time that they’ve identified a system like this one, although they expect there are others. ”So that’s why it’s exciting that we found one, so that we can say they exist,” he says. In 2015, scientists uncovered evidence that one of the objects in the system might be a black hole, because of its ”extreme radio brightness.” Bahramian says that prompted the researchers to seek observations from three different telescopes: NASA’s Chandra   Observatory, NASA’s NuSTAR and CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array. They were able to observe variations in the brightness every 28 minutes, pointing to an extremely fast orbital period of this binary  —   a term for a pair of celestial objects orbiting each other. Bahramian said they think the star involved is a white dwarf because it would need to be small to fit into such a rapid orbit. The scientists also found evidence of large amounts of oxygen in the system, an element found in white dwarfs. So how did this dance start? It’s likely a product of the crowded neighborhood, he says: ”Probably the white dwarf was within another binary with another star, and the black hole started interacting with the binaries. So because of the crowded region within the cluster, they interact with each other and a strong gravitation of the black hole pulled the white dwarf out of that binary and made a binary with it, while the other third possible star was kicked away from this system.” It’s unclear how this dangerous dance will end. Bahramian explains that ”we expect that in the future, the white dwarf will lose so much mass that it will become just a very dense   sphere.” He adds that it is ”unlikely for it to actually fall toward the black hole.” And what if it’s not actually a black hole? He says there’s a   scenario where the white dwarf is actually spinning around a neutron star, which are far denser and smaller stars  —   but ”most of the evidence suggests so far that this is a black hole.”   Vlad Tudor of Curtin University told NASA that the team will continue to ”watch this binary closely in the future, since we know little about how such an extreme system should behave.”"
"When a TV show really connects with viewers, it’s often a     experience a collision of talent, material and public mood that is difficult to define. But that hasn’t stopped people from asking Dan Fogelman, the creator of NBC’s supersuccessful family drama This Is Us, this question: How did you pull this off? Fogelman’s answer: tone, timing and cast. ”There is a form of storytelling  —   a tone  —   that lives in between the laugh and the [heavy] emotion,” says Fogelman, noting that This Is Us strikes a balance between the dark stories critics seem to love and the lighter, more populist fare. ”If you hit that tone right, it can be everything.” [Editors’ note: The rest of this story discusses some major plot points, so if you’re not caught up on episodes, you may want to watch before reading further.] Cast member Ron Cephas Jones explains the show’s appeal a little differently. Jones played William Hill, a beloved character who was shown dying of cancer in the Feb. 21 episode. He draws a line between material that an audience can tell is contrived to stir up emotions  —   Jones calls it ”melodrama”  —   and the feelings that come from identifying with authentic characters, which he says is simply good drama. And at a time when the news seems filled with stories about political conflict, racism, sexism, fear of immigrants and terrorism and more, Jones notes This Is Us offers a meditation on something different: love. ”It’s become timely to remind people that love is the key, and not hate and not fear,” he says. ”The root of everything in the show is about redemption, it’s about forgiveness it really is about love. And I think that’s what people are longing for. They want to see the richness of love.” This Is Us has struck a nerve. The show regularly tops ratings on Tuesdays among young viewers  —   those ages 18 to 49, whom TV advertisers love  —   and it has already been renewed for a second and third season before its freshman run ends Tuesday. The episode on Feb. 21 drew more than 15 million viewers  —   NBC’s best numbers in that time slot in 10 years. And it wasn’t the most obvious hit on network TV. Its pilot episode had a complicated structure, centered on three    and a young couple about to have triplets. Viewers were introduced to Randall, a tightly wound corporate executive who finally tracked down the biological father who gave him up for adoption Kevin, the star of a dumb, yet successful TV sitcom who wanted a bigger challenge Kate, Kevin’s sister, who is struggling with obesity and also served as his personal assistant and the earnest couple Rebecca and Jack Pearson. It wasn’t until the pilot’s end that viewers learned the twist that changed everything: Jack and Rebecca were parents to Kate, Kevin and Randall. The couple’s moments as young parents in the pilot were flashbacks in time. Randall was a black child adopted into this white family when the Pearsons’ third triplet died during birth. And William, Ron Cephas Jones’ character, is Randall’s biological father, who left him at a firehouse after realizing his drug addiction made being a good father impossible. Kevin Falls calls that kind of writing ”Fogeldust”  —   the twists and emotional monologues that Fogelman sprinkles into scripts that elevate his shows. Falls is executive producer and showrunner of the other show Fogelman helped create for network TV last fall, Fox’s Pitch, about the first woman to play on a Major League Baseball team. ”They’re emotional gut punches that   an audience member in the best possible way,” says Falls, who worked directly with Fogelman as the show creator shuttled between the offices of Pitch and This Is Us when both shows were in production. ”Every writer manipulates [the audience] . .. so it is about hiding the strings . .. not letting you know you’re being manipulated. So when you have that big reveal at the end, the audience doesn’t see it coming.” [Editors’ note: Speaking of seeing things coming, if you aren’t caught up on Pitch, you’ll want to skip over the next paragraph.] In Pitch, it’s the moment when we learn that pitcher Ginny Baker’s crusty father  —   whom we have seen mentor her through the trials of becoming the first female MLB player  —   is actually dead. Baker is just imagining her father at her side. For This Is Us, ”Fogeldust” moments come at least once an episode, particularly during the emotional conclusion of William’s story, which aired Feb. 21. Welcomed into Randall’s family as he’s dying of cancer, William takes a final trip to Memphis with his son to visit old haunts and wrap up an old family conflict, dying in a local hospital before they can return. ”Dan writes beautiful monologues. . .. It feels like a play,” says Jones, a veteran of New York’s theater scene. ”So scenes have the space to breathe. He’s giving the audience a moment to open themselves up [to what’s happening  ].” That skill in tapping into emotions has led to the most mystifying result for Fogelman: news that scenes from the show regularly make viewers cry. ”If you had said a year ago, ’Hey Dan, your show is going to be this big success, what do you think everybody’s going to be talking about?’ In a million years, I never would have thought it would be how much they are crying watching the show,” Fogelman says, laughing. ”It was not the intent, nor something I expected.” In fact, Fogelman takes less credit for writing the show than he does for its   casting. He says TV shows in development are often derailed by two problems: Popular actors often refuse to audition for parts, and network TV executives   the casting, refusing to let producers hire the actors they know are right for roles. But This Is Us was different. Fogelman insisted actors read for parts, and he cast his top choices in every role. That meant hiring hunky Heroes alum Milo Ventimiglia as Jack Pearson, though Fogelman originally envisioned a more   actor in a role the executive producer based on himself. Singer Mandy Moore turned out to be a perfect Rebecca for Ventimiglia’s Jack. Jones was hired as William, though the actor admits he is more often cast as criminals or villains than fathers or grandfathers. Fogelman, however, had no doubts. ”I knew the cast was going to kill before we shot a frame [of film],” he adds. ”The actors are so truthful, it feels real.” Known as an inventive writer behind films like Cars and Crazy Stupid Love as well as the TV musical Galavant, Fogelman has found unexpected success in This Is Us. It’s a family drama that bounces around in time, showing the Pearson siblings at different ages and revealing the history of family frictions that shape their current lives. It has offered affecting, incisive portrayals of Randall’s struggle to handle growing up the only black child raised by a white family, along with Kate’s issues with binge eating, weight and romance. And Randall’s discovery that his mother knew William’s identity and hid it from him until he found his biological father on his own has jolted the series. There are critics who say the show is too manipulative, that it uses the emotion of powerful moments to paper over inconsistencies in plot or characters’ actions. Or that the show is so focused on delivering stuff for fans to talk about later on social media and elsewhere that it sacrifices nuance. But it’s tough for a network TV show to completely avoid clunkers over an entire season. And some of the grousing feels a bit like snobbery, as though a network TV show with so many viewers couldn’t possibly offer dramatic quality, too. Fogelman promises the show’s season finale has more dark moments, in which characters viewers have come to love will make bad choices that could test the allegiance of fans. But the drama of watching people with the best intentions occasionally make the worst decisions could be the secret sauce powering This Is Us’ success. ”What I think the show might be appealing to is that person who wakes up every day determined to be a better person . .. and probably fails 99 percent of the time,” Fogelman says. ”[They go] to sleep that night bummed out that they didn’t do better and wake up the next day determined to do it again. Regardless of politics . .. everybody’s living the same existence where you’re trying to live better and do better. How we get there is what’s up for debate.” Editor Nina Gregory contributed to this report."
"Once the   in France’s presidential election, mainstream conservative candidate Francois Fillon is now confronting serious doubts he will even make it to the final round of voting. That uncertainty only deepened for the   politician Tuesday, as French authorities officially announced they are investigating Fillon on allegations he illegally diverted public money. Officials filed preliminary charges against Fillon in a probe of the publicly funded jobs arranged for his wife and children  —   jobs they allegedly never did. Citing the national financial prosecutor’s office, The Associated Press reports Fillon is ”accused of misusing public funds, receiving money from the misuse of public funds, complicity in misusing public funds and improper declaration of assets, among other charges.” ”Under French law, being put under formal investigation means there is ’serious or consistent evidence’ that points to probable involvement in a crime,” The Guardian notes. ”It is a step toward a trial but investigations can be dropped without proceeding to court.” Nevertheless, the charges mark a significant escalation in a scandal that first broke in late January. That’s when French media first reported that Fillon used taxpayer money to pay his wife, Penelope, a handsome salary for years for doing a fictitious job. He is also accused of paying two of his children for similarly fake jobs. It is legal in France for politicians to hire family members, on condition that the work that they are paid for is in fact real. Fillon, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the matter, has vowed to stay in the presidential race  —   despite previously stating that he would drop out if placed under formal investigation. ”Those who don’t respect the laws of the Republic should not be allowed to run. There’s no point in talking about authority when one’s not beyond reproach,” he said during his campaign for the conservative nomination, according to the AP. He has changed his position, however, casting himself as a victim of ”political assassination” and laying blame instead at the feet of the media and the justice system. As NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports for our Newscast unit, Fillon delivered a speech laying out his policies and presenting himself as the only man for the job as recently as Monday. Yet his bid for office has bowed beneath the weight of the unfolding scandal, and as France draws closer to its   presidential election, Fillon’s prospects continue to sink. Where once he was the   favorite, Fillon has lately placed third in polls  —   behind Marine Le Pen, of the   National Front party, and independent centrist Emmanuel Macron. The first round of France’s presidential election will be held in late April, after which the top two finishers will compete in a    runoff on May 7. If Fillon can take some small solace, it’s that he is not alone among the candidates in drawing investigators’ scrutiny. As NPR’s Rebecca Hersher previously reported, Le Pen, who has been a member of European Parliament since 2004, ”has been asked to pay back more than $320, 000 to the European Parliament because two of her aides in Brussels were actually working for her campaign in France.” And earlier this month, the legislative body stripped Le Pen of parliamentary immunity for tweeting graphic images of violence perpetrated by Islamic State militants. The move allows French prosecutors to pursue legal action against her if they choose. ”I have always voted but I’ve never seen anything like this,” one octogenarian French voter tells Eleanor. ”I feel like I’m watching a film.” And with Fillon’s recent struggles, that voter is not wrong, as Eleanor reports. ”It’s a first in modern times that the two top candidates for president are from outside the traditional   system.”"
"As Erwan Humbert turns his tractor off and climbs down from the seat, the rumble of a motor gives way to the twittering of birds. The scent of fresh earth fills the air. This   farmer, with his long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, used to be an engineer. But the    traded in his job in Paris’ business district to grow organic vegetables in the countryside. Humbert says he makes a good living, and most of all, he’s happy. ”I might not earn as much as I used to,” he says, ”but I’m my own boss and now I can listen to the sound of the birds.” Humbert, like most residents in the town of    is astounded by this year’s presidential election. The race is like no other. The two traditional mainstream parties have been upended, leaving more extremist and inexperienced candidates to take the lead. Party infighting has left people feeling uncertain. Less than six weeks before the first round of voting, this presidential election is still up in the air.    population 7, 000, is about an hour’s drive south of Paris. Part rural, part town, it’s far enough beyond the Paris suburbs to have its own outlook and vibe. And it’s definitely outside the political fishbowl of the French capital. Since medieval days, the town has been a stop along the pilgrimage route to Compostela, Spain. Its 11th century basilica dominates the town square. Mayor Philippe Hamon, who represents a small,   party, says this is a town of moderate professionals who initially lined up behind the mainstream conservative candidate, Francois Fillon. But Hamon says allegations that Fillon used taxpayer money to create a fake job for his wife have not gone down well. And that could change things. ”I’m getting echoes that a large proportion of voters  —   maybe 50 percent  —   could be tempted to vote for [Marine] Le Pen,” he says. Hamon calls that a worrying sign. Le Pen, the country’s     candidate, is currently leading the polls. But just barely. Emmanuel Macron, a    former economy minister and political newcomer running as an independent, is    with her. Polls say he would beat her in the   runoff, which determines who will be president. But Hamon says people are a bit suspicious of Macron because he served in the government of unpopular Socialist President Francois Hollande. Macron stepped down in August to launch his own political movement, which he calls progressive. The name of his party, En Marche! means On the Move. Macron says France is stuck between the old ideologies of left and right that don’t mean anything in today’s world. He wants to revolutionize France. Hamon believes the frenzy around Fillon and the allegations that his wife had a fake job could have been stoked by the media for the benefit of Macron, whom many politicians accuse the French media of favoring. As he takes me into his town’s 11th century basilica to see the impressive collection of saints’ relics, one of the largest in France, an organ is playing. Its massive pipes cover an entire wall. Michel Poillot, the organist for 45 years, says he can’t decide whether he will stick with Fillon, who was the   before the scandal. Poillot is trying to make sense of what he reads, sees and hears on the news. ”Sometimes we wonder about the role of the French media in this jobs scandal,” he says. ”But we can’t exactly verify the facts. It’s all very complicated.” At lunchtime, one of the town’s main restaurants, l’Origan, is packed with young professionals and retirees. Despite what the mayor says, it’s difficult to find a Le Pen voter here. Jean Seguin, a    engineer, works at the nearby Caterpillar plant. ”I’m voting for Macron because I think he incarnates renewal,” he says. ”We need change. We’ve got to break with these same people who run against each other for president every five years.” Retired floral shop owners Patrick and Monique Letter are tucking into hamburgers, one of the restaurant’s specialties. They say this election is not about voting for someone but rather about voting against someone. For them, that’s Le Pen. ”She’s our Donald Trump,” Patrick Letter says. ”And we have to pick the candidate who has the best chance of beating her,” his wife adds. Macron is the man to do it, they believe, despite his lack of experience. But Monique Letter says a lot of her friends are voting for Le Pen. The couple says France is a wonderful place to live, and the European Union is one of the best things to happen to the country. And Le Pen, who opposes the EU, would destroy that, they fear. ”She would bring this country to the ground, just like your president is doing with your country right now,” says Monique Letter, referring to Donald Trump. Not far from the restaurant, a sprightly looking Odile Dupuis is walking down the street, heading to the bakery when I stop her to ask a few questions. The octogenarian doesn’t look anywhere near her age, but she still refers to herself as old. ”I have always voted but I’ve never seen anything like this,” she says. ”I feel like I’m watching a film.” Dupuis says all the turmoil is very serious, but at the same time it’s a sign that a complete and total change is coming about. So who is she backing? ”It’s not really polite to ask that question,” she responds. Back in his freshly plowed field, farmer Erwan Humbert says he will definitely be casting his ballot, but he still doesn’t know for whom. He’s never seen people so confused. ”Many people don’t even want to vote,” says Humbert. ”And they don’t want to hear about politics anymore.”"
"In music, a coda is a passage that brings a musical composition to an end. This is the coda to a musical saga  —   the story of the Stradivarius violin that was stolen 37 years ago from my late father, violinist Roman Totenberg, and recovered in 2015. That violin, made by Antonio Stradivari in 1734, was my father’s ”musical partner” for 38 years as he toured the world. He used to dream of opening his violin case and seeing it there again. But when he died at the age of 101  —   literally teaching on his death bed  —   he still was seeing the Strad only in those dreams. We three Totenberg sisters finally saw it again a year and a half ago after it was turned over to us at the U. S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan following a mammoth press conference. Since then, the violin has been living at Rare Violins of New York, undergoing restoration by amazing craftsmen. On Monday it had its debut at a private concert in New York, played by my father’s former student Mira Wang, now a virtuoso performer in her own right. There never was any doubt she would be the one to play it first. In the family, she is known as the fourth Totenberg sister. She arrived in the U. S. from China in 1986 to study with my father, living with my parents for a time, and years later marrying her cellist husband, Jan Vogler, on our porch. She and her family remain part of our family to this day. But as she reminded me this week, she ”actually never met the violin, only the ghost of the violin”  —   and the poster that bore its image outside my parents’ bedroom. But for the last month the Totenberg Strad  —   and all its vivid colors of sound  —   has become a reality for Wang as she got the violin ready for its debut. ”It’s like meeting a new stranger, but the most fabulous stranger you can imagine,” she says. Musicians know that every great instrument is like an individual, she observes. ”So when I first got it, I truly thought the violin hated me. Great masterpieces like these they have their own character. They don’t let you do anything you like. So as a player, being able to control the violin, it’s always a tricky business.” ”You need time to learn how . .. to be friends with the instrument, and what it likes and what it doesn’t, and to discover the beauty of the true great master, you just need time,” she adds. And so, Wang has been sawing away on the fiddle, every day for hours, becoming its friend  —   while my father watches. ”I actually have a picture of him right in front of me when I play the violin, and that’s where I stand,” she says. ”I feel he’s watching over me saying don’t do terrible things to the violin!” And then she laughs."
"The denouement of a   drama takes place Thursday at the U. S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. And I trust that my father, virtuoso violinist Roman Totenberg, who died three years ago, will be watching from somewhere. For decades he played his beloved Stradivarius violin all over the world. And then one day, he turned around and it was gone. Stolen. While he was greeting   after a concert, it was snatched from his office at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass. It was a crushing loss for my father. As he put it, he had lost his ”musical partner of 38 years.” And when he would ultimately buy a Guarneri violin from the same period as the Stradivarius, he’d have to rework the fingering of his entire repertoire for the new instrument. My father would dream of opening his violin case and seeing the Strad there again, but he never laid eyes on it again. He died in 2012, but the Stradivarius lived on  —   somewhere. Then, on the last day in June, I got a call from FBI Special Agent Christopher McKeogh. ”We believe that the FBI has recovered your father’s stolen violin,” he said. As the reality of his message washed over me, I had a hard time actually believing it. I called my sisters right away, and we were soon laughing and crying on the phone. I would love to tell you some bizarre story of the violin’s travels through the underworld, but the true story is much more mundane, even pathetic. My father had always suspected who had stolen the violin  —   a young aspiring violinist named Phillip Johnson, who was largely unknown to my father but had been seen outside my dad’s office around the time the violin was stolen. Soon thereafter, Johnson’s   went to my parents and told them she was quite sure Johnson had taken it. Law enforcement officials believed, however, that was not enough for a search warrant. My mother was so frustrated that she famously would ask friends if they knew anyone in the mob willing to break into an apartment and search for the violin. Phillip Johnson eventually moved to California, had an undistinguished musical career and died of cancer at age 58, a year before my father died at the age of 101.   four more years. Johnson’s   and her boyfriend were cleaning house, and they came across a violin case that her former husband had left to her, with a combination lock on it. They broke the lock and opened the case to find a violin with a label inside that said it was made in 1734 by the most famous   of all time  —   Antonio Stradivari. A musician friend put her in touch with   and appraiser Phillip Injeian in Pittsburgh. ”Of course I hear almost every day people telling me that they found a Stradivarius in the attic,” Injeian says. That’s because, while there are only about 550 Stradivarius violins in existence today, there are thousands and thousands of violins that have a ”Stradivarius” label stamped inside them  —   some of them good copies, and some just cheap imitations. So Injeian suggested the   send him photographs rather than waste a trip to the East Coast. The photos she sent looked ”so remarkably good,” he says, that he went to the Violin Iconography of Antonio Stradivari, the compilation of all Stradivarius instruments known to exist, and looked at instruments made in 1734. There he saw that a famous violin belonging to Roman Totenberg had been stolen and never recovered. It was known as the ”Ames Stradivarius,” after violinist George Ames, who performed on it in the late 1800s. Soon the appraiser and the   agreed to meet in New York. And on June 26, Injeian went to her hotel. ”I opened the case and looked at the instrument” and ”checked it out for over a   before I said anything,” he recalls. ”And I said these words: ’Well, I’ve got good news for you, and I’ve got bad news for you,’ ” Injeian says. ” ’The good news is that this is a Stradivarius. The bad news is it was stolen 35, 36 years ago from Roman Totenberg.’ ” Injeian also told her he had to report the discovery to law enforcement authorities right away. Within two hours, special agents McKeogh and John Iannuzzi from the FBI’s art theft team were at the hotel. ”It’s rare in our business that we have the opportunity for   shopping,” McKeogh says, noting that the stolen violin, the person who possessed it and the expert appraiser were all there. ”Having those three things in the same place was very rare, but good for us.” En route to the hotel, McKeogh and his partner had pulled up on their cellphones photos of the Ames Stradivarius taken before it was stolen, along with its precise measurements to the millimeter. Now, appraiser Injeian measured, calling out the numbers, and they matched exactly. That was a Friday. McKeogh remembers the following Monday ”because I can say that I have probably never been so excited to come to work as I was [that] morning, simply because I couldn’t wait to see the instrument again.” He knew, as well, that further authentication of the violin was necessary, and it came, amazingly, in that first call to me. ”You mentioned little pieces of pearl on the tuning pegs, and I went back to the violin as I was speaking to you and noticed those features, which is very unique,” McKeogh says. A third confirmation would come later from another appraiser. So, the mystery was solved. All these years, the violin had been in the same guilty hands. Appraiser Injeian says Johnson had tried to preserve the instrument himself, but knowing that any reputable restorer or dealer would recognize it, he had not had the violin properly maintained by the expert craftsmen who do this kind of work. ”It’s a real miracle that it didn’t take any major hits or cracks or anything of that nature,” Injeian says. And so on Thursday, at the U. S. attorney’s office in New York, there will be a formal ceremony turning the violin over to the Totenberg sisters  —   Nina, Jill and Amy  —   under an agreement filed in federal court. (You can hear more on the ceremony on Thursday’s All Things Considered, and we will update this post after the event in New York. UPDATE: The All Things Considered story is here.) ”It’s nice to return something of great value to a family or a country or an institution,” says U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara, adding that these ”are moments of celebration that we don’t have that often here.” Of course, Stradivarius owners are really just guardians of these great artistic instruments. We will sell the Ames Strad  —   now perhaps the   Stradivarius. We will make sure it is in the hands of another virtuoso violinist. And once again, the beautiful, brilliant and throaty voice of that   violin will thrill audiences in concert halls around the world. Stolen with my father’s violin was a bow made by the Stradivarius of   Francois Tourte. Special Agent McKeogh is ”hopeful” that in light of this story, someone with information about the bow will come forward. In addition, there is another stolen Stradivarius out there, the   Strad, taken from the apartment of violinist Erica Morini in 1995. Anyone with information about either the bow or the violin is asked to contact the New York office of the FBI at    and ask for agent McKeogh."
"Updated at 4:05 p. m. EDT, The Trump era has opened with the promise of a White House foothold for media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It looks to be the kind of warm and solicitous reception in the corridors of presidential power that he has long enjoyed abroad. Murdoch has told close associates that the nation’s 45th president calls to confer frequently  —   as often as multiple times a week  —   and that he has visited the White House to meet with Trump more than once. ”They have been friends for a long time,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer wrote in an email to NPR. ”They speak on occasion as the president does with all his friends.” Murdoch sits atop a twin media empire, made up of 21st Century Fox and News Corp, which together include such properties in the United States as The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, New York Post and more than two dozen local television stations. His interests span journalism, commerce and politics. But Murdoch has repeatedly proved a more pragmatic conservative entrepreneur than pure ideologue. The White House did not respond to requests to elaborate on the nature or content of Murdoch’s conversations with the president. The Trump administration has not yet released any lists of visitors to the White House, though press aides have said they’re working to set that up. Murdoch’s aides declined to comment altogether, saying his travel and conversations must remain private. A relationship with benefits, The rapport forged by Murdoch and Trump may prove handy for both men. Murdoch’s news outlets often shine a favorable light on the new president meanwhile, his media properties have many interests pending before the federal government. Several examples: The Justice Department last week fired U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, after he refused to resign. Political appointees customarily resign at the beginning of a new administration. Bharara’s former office is overseeing the Fox News investigation, among many other   cases. The New York Times is reporting that the investigation is moving into the grand jury phase. Earlier, Bharara had declined to return a phone call placed to his office by President Trump. Without knowing the purpose of the call, Bharara concluded it would be improper to speak with the president. Ties beyond politics, Trump and Murdoch  —   two billionaires with   enterprises  —   would seem to share common interests. Yet their political views do not always align. Murdoch has publicly adopted a different stance than Trump on some issues, among them immigration. During the transition, Murdoch urged Trump not to embark on mass deportations of people in the country without legal status. And Murdoch did not initially support Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Some accounts had Murdoch leaning toward Republicans Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. He spoke favorably, briefly, of Ben Carson, now the U. S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Via tweet, Murdoch urged former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, himself a billionaire media magnate, to run as an independent. Yet Murdoch has embraced the new president. And their links extend beyond business and politics. Murdoch once mentored Trump’s    and adviser Jared Kushner as the younger man expanded his real estate holdings into New York City. And Ivanka Trump, Jared’s wife and the president’s daughter, until recently helped oversee a trust fund for Murdoch’s young daughters by his   Wendi Deng. Murdoch’s journalism and the president, The alliance is most visibly reflected in the sympathetic coverage Trump generally receives on the front pages of the New York Post, on Fox News’ most popular shows and on the Fox Business Network. Former Fox Business staffer Andrew Kirell recently argued that Fox Business has outflanked even Fox News in its   tilt. The Wall Street Journal has broken news that cast Trump officials and advisers in a bad light. Even so, many reporters have been critical of the paper under its top editor, Gerard Baker, saying that it went easy on Trump during the campaign to mirror the Republican sympathies of Baker and Murdoch. Baker told reporters and editors at a town hall session held last month that they should find work in other newsrooms they admired more if they did not like the way the Journal’s coverage was shaped. A week later, Devlin Barrett, a widely respected   reporter who covered national security, left the Journal to join The Washington Post. When asked why he was leaving in a meeting with Journal Washington bureau chief Paul Beckett, Barrett cited Baker’s pointed remarks, according to two reporters with direct knowledge of the incident. Murdoch has overseen Fox News since Ailes’ ouster last summer. Though Murdoch’s sons were laying the groundwork for a more centrist tone for the channel, Hillary Clinton’s election loss scuttled those plans. Instead, the tenor of coverage has shifted even further to the right, echoing Trump’s nationalism and hostility to mainstream media. Murdoch personally selected the largely   host Tucker Carlson to replace the departing Megyn Kelly  —   who was vilified by Trump during the campaign  —   for her pivotal 9 p. m. nightly spot. Carlson is scheduled to interview Trump on Wednesday. (The New York Times Magazine is set to interview the president as well.) At ease in the halls of power, The Oval Office is not foreign terrain for Murdoch, a naturalized U. S. citizen. For more than a   Murdoch has met presidents, including White House meetings with John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Kennedy submitted to interviews with Murdoch and one of his editors for two Murdoch newspapers in his native Australia. Incautious remarks by Kennedy led to intense White House pressure to kill the interview, which Murdoch did, according to an extensive account in the Australian Financial Review by one of Murdoch’s Australian biographers, Neil Chenoweth. Murdoch’s relationships have typically been far closer, however, with prime ministers in Australia and the United Kingdom, where Murdoch expanded his business. Each country’s leader concluded the support of Murdoch’s newspapers could prove crucial to their prospects. It has become a somewhat humiliating rite of passage for Australian political leaders to stop by Murdoch’s offices on Sixth Avenue in New York City in private visits that almost invariably become public. Some Murdoch aides call that process ”kissing the ring.” In 1995, two years before he became prime minister, British Labour Party leader Tony Blair flew to a small island off the Australian coast to meet the News Corp corporate board and curry favor with Murdoch. Ahead of his own successful bid, British Conservative leader David Cameron similarly flew (on a plane owned by Murdoch’s then   ) to a Greek island for a brief stop on Murdoch’s yacht. Britain’s new prime minister Theresa May appears to also have made a practice of such cultivation, even as the Murdoch family presses ahead with ambitions to take over the 61 percent of the British satellite TV company Sky that 21st Century Fox does not already own, an acquisition subject to government approval. And back on this side of the Atlantic, Murdoch may have landed a closer friend in the White House than he has ever enjoyed. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik is the author of Murdoch’s World: The Last of the Old Media Empires."
"The makers of the   a line of vibrators that can be paired with an app for   use, have reached a $3. 75 million class action settlement with users following allegations that the company was collecting data on when and how the sex toy was used. Standard Innovations, the Canadian manufacturer of the   does not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement finalized Monday. The   product line includes a number of   vibrators that, when linked to the ” ” app, can be controlled from a smartphone. It allows a user to vary rhythms, patterns and settings  —   or give a partner, in the room or anywhere in the world, control of the device. (You can see a video promoting the app’s features here be advised, it is briefly not safe for work.) Since the app was released in 2014, some observers have raised concerns that   sex toys could be vulnerable to hacking. But the lawsuit doesn’t involve any outside meddling  —   instead, it centers on concerns that the company itself was tracking users’ sex lives. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Illinois in September. It alleges that  —   without customers’ knowledge  —   the app was designed to collect information about how often, and with what settings, the vibrator was used. The lawyers for the anonymous plaintiffs contended that the app, ”incredibly,” collected users’ email addresses, allowing the company ”to link the usage information to specific customer accounts.” Customers’ email addresses and usage data were transmitted to the company’s Canadian servers, the lawsuit alleges. When a   was remotely linked to a partner, the connection was described as ”secure,” but some information was also routed through   and collected, the lawsuit says. The unhappy users allege in their lawsuit that they never agreed to the collection of this data. Standard Innovations maintains that users ”consented to the conduct alleged”  —   but instead of taking the case to court, the company agreed to settle. An estimated 300, 000 people bought   WeVibes, according to court documents, and about 100, 000 of them used the app. Under the terms of the settlement, anyone who bought an   vibrator can receive up to $199 dollars anyone who actually connected it to the app can collect up to $10, 000. The actual amount paid out will depend on how many people file claims the company estimates people who bought the app will get around $40, and people who used the app around $500. The   vibrators cost between $119 and $199, if purchased through the   website. Standard Innovation also agreed to stop collecting users’ email addresses and to update its privacy notice to be clearer about how data is collected. In a statement, Standard Innovation called the settlement ”fair and reasonable.”"
"As the Trump administration cracks down on undocumented immigration, religious communities across the country are responding by preparing to shelter people at risk of deportation. In Denver, a congregation is already hosting an undocumented person avoiding immigration enforcement. And the Episcopal church in Los Angeles has declared itself a sanctuary diocese. U. S. immigration officials have a policy of staying away from what are called ”sensitive locations”  —   places such as schools, hospitals and places of worship. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson says this policy remains in effect under the new administration. On a narrow side street in Cambridge, Mass. music spills out of University Lutheran Church. Inside the front door are rainbow Adirondack chairs. There’s a pipe organ in the chapel, and if you head up the back stairs, you’ll see a room where there will soon be a trundle bed. Pastor Kari Jo Verhult is converting the Sunday school classrooms of her church to living quarters with the help of a group of nearby Christian and Jewish congregations. ”This is bedding,” she says. ”So lots and lots of bedding and towels.” With a   air mattresses and a futon lined up, the church is ready to host undocumented immigrants who fear deportation. Pastor Verhult hopes it will hold. But she says another, older policy comes to mind. She pulls out her Bible. ”OK, so this is the Book of Numbers,” she says. She flips to the Old Testament. ”You shall designate three cities beyond the Jordan and three cities in the land of Canaan to be cities of refuge,” she says. ”These six cities shall serve as a refuge for the Israelites. For the resident or transient alien among them.” In these cities, people were beyond the reach of law enforcement. And it wasn’t just the Israelites. In ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece, temples were sanctuaries. ”It’s a fairly natural progression for Christian churches to claim the same ability to protect fugitives that others had,” says Karl Shoemaker, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and an expert in the history of sanctuary law. He says for centuries, congregations have provided for those on the run. In America, churches were key stations on the Underground Railroad. And in the 1980s, a network of churches helped people flee wars in Central America. ”These churches are certainly situating themselves within a very long  —   a    tradition,” he says. Just a few blocks from the University Lutheran is the Old Cambridge Baptist Church. It too has a history of sheltering people like Magdalena Rivas. ”And I have in here my bedroom,” she says. ”I this side. And the people they sleeping with me in the other side.” In 1984, Rivas escaped El Salvador’s bloody civil war. She was undocumented, so congregants here took turns staying with her. Beneath big blue stained glass windows, they kept watch for immigration authorities. Rivas says one place in the church was particularly soothing. She peers into the baptismal basin where she used to bathe. ”Your feeling is safe,” she says. ”Well, you know, you’re relaxing. You’re both feeling Jesus with you.” It was there, submerged in the waters of the baptistery, that she felt the safest. Rivas eventually received political asylum and citizenship. She says she feels lucky and glad there were houses of worship to shelter her then and so many others today. Gabrielle Emanuel is a reporter for NPR member station WGBH News. You can follow her at @gabrieman."
"Sea ice in the Arctic has been melting at a   pace. Scientists blame a warming climate for most of that, but researchers have now teased out a natural cycle for how Arctic sea ice melts   . Based on that cycle, they conclude that 30 percent to 50 percent of the melting is due to natural causes, while   warming is responsible for the rest. Climate scientists have always acknowledged a natural cause for shifts in the rate of Arctic melting. But nailing down just how much nature contributes compared with greenhouse gases rising into the atmosphere has been difficult. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and several other institutions focused on shifts in atmospheric circulation above the Arctic over the past four decades. In particular, they studied circulation over Greenland and the Arctic Ocean during summers. They found a lot of   variation in temperature and humidity, which influences how much solar radiation reaches the surface. The group concludes that ”decadal trends in the hemispheric circulation are an important driver of Arctic climate change, and therefore a significant source of uncertainty in projections of sea ice,” according to lead author Qinghua Ding of UCSB. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, the authors note that   warming due to the rise in greenhouse gases still causes at least half of the increase in melting. In fact, surface temperatures in the Arctic have been rising at twice the rate as the rest of world at least. Neil Swart, a climate scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis who commented on the study, says the results ”do not call into question whether   warming has led to Arctic   decline  —   a wide range of evidence shows that it has.” ”Rather, the implication is that Arctic   is less sensitive to   forcing than if one assumes that all loss observed to date is anthropogenically driven,” he adds. But the authors also note that the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could influence this natural variation in circulation  —   thus making it something less than ”natural.” They say their research should help scientists make better predictions of whether and how soon the Arctic Ocean might lose all its floating sea ice."
"A few months ago, at her office in Houston, Kate Rubins was feeling weird. She was dizzy, she says  —   ”staggering around like a    who had just learned to walk.” She was constantly looking at her desk to make sure the objects on top weren’t floating away. Rubins wasn’t going nuts. She was just readjusting to Earth after living without gravity for four months, hundreds of miles above the planet’s surface. Floating around up there, with blood rushing to her head like she was hanging   on monkey bars, had been disorienting at first, though she eventually learned to move around using all four limbs.  Coming back to Earth’s gravity at the end of October was even more disorienting. But Rubins is used to drastic transitions. Oddly enough, her journey to space had started years before, in central Africa.  ”If you put your finger on a map in the middle of Africa, that’s about where our field site was located,” says Rubins, a microbiologist as well as an astronaut. It was 2007, and an airplane touching down on a grass runway in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had brought Rubins and her colleagues to study a nasty outbreak of monkey pox in a remote village. She’d already spent time studying HIV, Ebola and smallpox in the lab. This time the airplane wouldn’t be back for six weeks. Rubins didn’t know it at the time, but that remote expedition gave her experience she’d eventually draw on during a much bigger journey  —   to outer space. After the work in Africa, Rubins returned to Cambridge, Mass. and a fellowship at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, where she spent a lot of time writing grants. All that paperwork was ”” Rubins says. Just to get a break, a colleague suggested they try filling out a different sort of application  —   to become NASA astronauts. ”So, I found the application online,” Rubins says, and filled it out on a lark. ”I’ll take this chance,” she figured, ”and maybe it’ll be a good story someday of how I applied to be an astronaut.” A few months later, she got a call from Houston asking her to come down for an interview. Rubins doesn’t fit the normal astronaut profile. Many start out as military pilots, engineers or doctors  —   not microbiologists studying viruses. But she got the job. ”There’s been a lot of growth in people’s interest in doing biological research on the space station,” explains Julie Robinson, NASA’s chief scientist for the International Space Station program. Before the shuttle program ended in 2011, Robinson says, ”our commanders and our pilots had to be ready to land the shuttle, so that implied a really strong piloting [and] aerospace background, and that isn’t as important now.” But once NASA’s shuttle program ended and U. S. astronauts started hitching rides to space on Russian rockets, the focus for the American personnel shifted away from piloting skills  —   they no longer have to be counted on to land the shuttle. ”What’s more important now is the time they spend in orbit, when they’re carrying out a variety of experiments,” says Robinson. ”We can take what we learn in space to help us understand aging, disease processes, and even the basic biology of cells.” There’s another reason it’s useful to have molecular biologists and microbiologists in space: While there aren’t viruses like Ebola or monkeypox on the space station (astronauts get quarantined before liftoff to make sure of that) space travel has never been sterile. Take this moment from the Apollo 10 mission in 1969, for example, when three astronauts on board notice a loose turd floating through their spacecraft. Back then, a few astronauts were sealed in a small capsule for a few days. But now there’s the space station  —   a habitat the size of a   house that circles the Earth, about 200 miles above our heads. The station may have started out pristine, but its astronaut crews didn’t. ”We cannot send up a sterile crew,” says Sarah   a microbiologist at NASA Johnson Space Center. Astronauts need their gut bacteria and other friendly microbes to help keep them healthy. And for 16 years straight, crew after crew has been sweating, pooping and puking inside the space station. The microbes they release tend to stick around, because the station is essentially sealed  —   like an airplane that never gets opened. Today, it’s teeming with   life. It has its own unique microbiome. ”Staphylococcus aureus we’ll find once in a while Staphylococcus epidermidis all the time,” says   running down a list of resident space station microorganisms. There’s also Staphylococcus hominis (usually harmless) Micrococcus luteus (lives in the mouth and throat) Burkholderia (common in soil some types can cause lung infection) Sphingomonas (common in water, and rarely harmful) Penicillium (the fungus we find in bread mold) and Aspergillus (more mold) just to name a few. Recently, an entire wall panel of the station turned green with mold. ”Imagine your shower curtain at its worst,” says   pointing out that the wall of mold happened on the Russian side of the space station. She’s particularly interested in Staph. aureus a strain of the bacterium that’s resistant to multiple drugs is a particular problem in hospitals, and can turn something as simple as a paper cut dangerous. ”If it got into a cut, it could be life threatening,”   says. It’s become clear that scientists need to know what else is living up there, she says  —   particularly because research suggests that microgravity can change gene expression in certain bacteria and make them more virulent. (  has found that Staph. aureus changes color in simulated microgravity, an indicator that the bacterium might act differently in space than on Earth.) Right now, astronauts swab surfaces of the station and send samples back to Houston for identification. But that can take weeks or months. It’s a big reason why NASA hired Kate Rubins  —   and shot her into the sky. Last July, after seven years of training at NASA  —   working at Mission Control, doing mock space expeditions underwater and flying supersonic fighter jets to keep her reflexes sharp  —   Rubins blasted off from Kazakhstan aboard a Russian rocket. She had 115 days to help set up a microbiology lab on the station. She drew on her earlier experience studying viruses  —   working quickly in a remote place, with minimal equipment. ”There’s actually an incredible amount of parallels between working in central Congo in a remote, isolated village and doing research aboard the space station,” Rubins says. When I called her in space, while she was on the station last fall, Rubins had just gotten the lab up and running and was really excited about it. ”It’s absolutely a working laboratory,” she told me, as she floated around, describing the scene. ”We have experiments all over the place.” Just weeks before, Rubins had sequenced DNA in space  —   the first time anyone had ever done that. The fact that the technology worked in microgravity showed that, in the near future, it should be possible to swab a moldy wall, for example, and immediately determine the type of mold. She’d also grown stem cells into heart cells without gravity, and  —   peering through a microscope that she’d set up  —   watched them beat in unison. Rubins has proved that it’s possible to do molecular biology at least 200 miles beyond Earth  —   and maybe 200 million miles away, too. ”The world of sequencing and molecular biology has opened up to us on the space station,” she says. She and NASA’s Julie Robinson are the kind of people who start sentences with the words ”When we go to Mars,” as if the journey to that planet is as inevitable as their next trip to the grocery store. ”It’s the plan,” says Robinson. ”Absolutely,” says Rubins, who is now Deputy Director of Human Health and Performance at Johnson Space Center. When  —   or if  —   that expedition happens,   biology labs will be crucial resources for astronauts there. They’ll need the tools of molecular biology to identify   life, so these emissaries from Earth can make sure that they aren’t contaminating Mars with their own microbes, and to be able to detect any new life forms they might encounter. They’ll also need the labs to diagnose sick space travelers, so they don’t waste precious antibiotics or antivirals. And, of course, they’ll need the technology to figure out what’s growing on their walls. Because one thing is for sure: Any   Mars habitat will soon become at least as gross as the International Space Station."
"”It tasted like rotten compost,” recalls Max Falkowitz, executive digital editor of the food and wine magazine Saveur, of the time in college he sipped one of the most   teas in the world. That would be pu’er  —   a legendary, fermented dark tea sourced from ancient trees in the isolated forest canopies of the Yunnan Province in southwest China. Falkowitz didn’t give up on pu’er. He tried a different variety years later, when visiting a tiny tea shop in Flushing, N. Y.: ”It was like nothing I’d ever had,” he told NPR. ”Gentle, elegant and comforting, like an embrace from a parent. I save it for really soft, snowy days now. It’s my reset button.” Though we most often see tea (camellia sinensis) in the shape of neat ornamental bushes with small leaves, these can grow into trees with large leaves if left alone, and the assamica variety that produces pu’er grows particularly large. And though we sometimes think of tea as fermented, in truth, black and oolong teas oxidize when they are exposed to air. Most teas, unlike pu’er, do not undergo fermentation with bacteria and yeasts. That fermentation can produce a wide array of complex flavors  —   from the poorly processed and moldy (like Falkowitz’s first taste) to a palate so desirable that some pu’er has commanded a higher price per gram than silver. At its best, Falkowitz says, pu’er provides a kind of ”bodily revelation, with a finish that lasts for hours.” Pu’er is a ”slow” beverage, intended to be sipped, aged and savored like fine wine. And, much like a fine wine or a Dom Perignon, pu’er has established brands, labels and revered productions that can reach iconic status. ”The Menghai Tea Factory, Xiaguan, Changtai, Chen Yuan Hao, Yang Qing Hao,” says Falkowitz, ”these are all names people in pu’er know as brands like Dom Perignon, Moet, Veuve, and the like in Champagne.” Pu’er has vintages, as well. The 88 Qingbing is a portion of a production run of Menghai Factory pu’er that was produced between 1988 and 1992, and aged in dry storage by a specialist named Vesper Chan. ”It’s a pu’er with near totemic status,” says Falkowitz. ”Everyone can point to it and say, there it is, that’s this remarkable thing.” To be considered true pu’er, the leaves must be grown in Yunnan Province, dried in the sun, come from the plant Camellia sinensis var. assamica, and allowed to ferment over weeks, months, years or even decades. Pu’er’s essence apparently embodies the idealized   that is remote Yunnan, with its rich variety of landscapes (from jungles to   mountains) and people (more than half of China’s ethnic minorities live here). In fact, pu’er is named after a Yunnan town that was a center for trade in the early 17th century, and it’s also one of the few teas that the Chinese government has designated as a   product. But pu’er is more than a beverage  —   it’s a distillation of a certain aspect of Chinese culture, according to Jinghong Zhang, a lecturer at Yunnan University and author of Pu’er Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic. The Chinese were the first people in the world to domesticate   Camellia sinensis plants and begin producing, drinking and trading tea. Serving tea is an act of hospitality tea is given as a betrothal gift during wedding negotiations, and offered to ancestors during religious rituals. Chinese essays and poems often associate tea with frugality, benevolence and moderation. Zhang notes that some indigenous peoples in Yunnan worship tea trees and will not let them be cut down. ”With tea,” one    Chinese man told Zhang, ”everyone becomes elegant and refined in manner.” And as an   Chinese proverb suggests, pu’er is considered the apex of that refinement: ”Pu’er tea won’t be good until it has been aged for a long time by means of a natural process . .. just as a man won’t be mature and wise until he has had enough life experience.” Pu’er prices vary greatly depending on where the leaves were grown. Forest tea is more prized than terrace tea. Some pu’er can be had for just a few dollars a kilogram, while a few of the more prized producing villages, such as Lao Banzhang, sell maocha (the raw material used to make pu’er) for around $725 per kilogram, according to Tony Gebely, author of Tea: A User’s Guide. And in 2005, a mere 500 grams of a   old ”vintage” sold for over a million Chinese yuan (nearly $150, 000). ”Chinese plutocrats collect it,” explains Gebely, with a laugh. Not surprisingly, the astonishing cost, more than the price of silver, led to a    pu’er bubble, with a tenfold increase in price between 1999 and 2007 of pu’er forest tea (da shu cha) which is grown in Bulang and Hani in Yunnan, and is thought to taste better. The bubble popped in 2007, when widespread counterfeit pu’er was discovered, and prices then stabilized. Another part of the allure of pu’er is its presentation: It is routinely compressed into cakes, called bings, and wrapped in paper printed with the name of the tea. A cake of pu’er continues to change as it ages, and bits of tea are broken or chipped off  —   often with a small knife  —   to brew. This method was forged centuries ago for the long journey along the famous Teahorse Road, which ran across sweeping mountain vistas between China and Tibet and went all the way north into Siberia and south into Thailand. The cakes were stacked in piles of seven, and wrapped in bamboo, then strapped to either side of a mule or horse. Chinese brought tea to Tibet, and Tibet offered horses in exchange. Indeed, pu’er may have evolved by lucky happenstance, when tea being transported was exposed to heat, rain and sun, and began to ferment. Those physical cakes can become ”objects you can kind of fetishize, with fancy wrappers,” Falkowitz maintains, unlike loose tea sold by weight. He compares peeling your cake of pu’er off its stack to ”retrieving a rare wine from the cellar for a fancy dinner.” Some aged and valuable pu’er tea cakes are seen as ideal specimens and have inspired connoisseurs to make a pilgrimage to their place of origin. Pu’er is to be brewed for a very short time in boiling water (15 to 60 seconds) then   again and again  —   as many as a few dozen brief brews, altering the flavor until the drinker arrives at the desired taste. ”It is amazing to experience the changes that happen as a cake of pu’er ages,” says Scott Wilson, owner of Yunnan Sourcing: A Pu’er Tea Shop. Wilson lives in Austin but travels frequently to China to source his teas. ”The pu’er I drink today will be different a year later,” he says. ”I’ve been living and breathing pu’er full time for 13 years now. I consider it a kind of curse, it’s so  .” Wilson says the American taste for pu’er has blossomed since he first started selling cakes on eBay in 2004. ”There was a huge wholesale market, with thousands of kinds of pu’er in China, but only a few Western tea vendors selling one or two cakes online. I would sell cakes for 10 or 20 bucks.” Today, says Wilson, a tea that would have sold for $10 when he started will sell for $200. And the West now boasts pu’er connoisseurs who can not only differentiate between forest tea (taken from tall, old tea trees) and terrace tea (from tea bushes arranged in rows, a style that arose in the late 1970s) but who may prefer one hamlet over another. Says Wilson: ”If one field gets more sunlight than another, the tea will taste different, and people today know that.” For the average   buying a less expensive but aged pu’er, expect the palate to be ”dark, with fruity and leathery notes,” says Falkowitz. ”Really old tea can taste like dried fruit and Chinese medicine, and is sometimes earthy like mushrooms.” The most recent pu’er that Falkowitz tasted was, he says, the most remarkable of all. In a January feature for Saveur, he describes being invited by a Western pu’er devotee and purveyor to trek to a ”magical mountain grove” in Yunnan Province. Just three Americans have previously been to this grove, which is renowned for its rare pu’er, Falkowitz says. ”It’s primordial there, like stepping into Eden,” he told NPR. He sipped the coveted Lao Banzhang, a variety usually bought up by wealthy Chinese before it can be exported. ”It was a shock to my system, far more potent than most tea. Everything was sunlight and ecstasy and I was sweating profusely.” Falkowitz has a cake of that rare pu’er in his apartment in New York City now, he says, but is waiting for it to age more before trying it again. ”Pu’er offers a narrative and emotional thread over the course of time and brewing the leaf again and again. You’re not just drinking tea you’re participating in a story.” Tea Tuesdays is an occasional series exploring the science, history, culture and economics of this ancient brewed beverage. Jill Neimark is an   writer whose work has been featured in Discover, Scientific American, Science, Nautilus, Aeon, Psychology Today and The New York Times."
"Bodies are still being recovered from a clandestine grave in Mexico’s Veracruz state that a local prosecutor says could turn out to be the largest in the country. Jorge Winckler Ortiz, the state attorney general of Veracruz, says that at one large site, 250 skulls have been found, with more excavation to be done. Winckler says the bodies are those of people murdered by gangs, with the complicity of the government. He added that officials had also deceived families who asked for help in identifying whether their missing loved ones might be in the graves. ”Veracruz is a huge grave, when they finish opening the clandestine cemetery in the state it will be seen as the largest grave,” Winckler said on the Televisa network, ”because for years organized crime has disappeared and murdered people with the complicity of the authorities.” The comments represent the most direct official acknowledgement of the scope of mass graves in Veracruz, the Gulf coast state east of Mexico City that has been a stronghold of the brutal Zetas cartel. As NPR’s Carrie Kahn reported last fall, relatives of people who’ve gone missing during Mexico’s drug wars have grown impatient in Veracruz. As the government failed to act, mothers and other family members took on the grisly task of recovering bodies from mass graves. From Carrie’s report: ”Government officials put the number of Mexico’s missing at around 28, 000. Some were crime gang members, others just caught up in the violence and associated corruption. However, two years ago, the case of 43 students kidnapped and presumably murdered in Guerrero awoke the nation to the plight of the missing and sparked a movement by relatives searching for clandestine graves. ”Groups have formed in several Mexican states. In Veracruz, the mothers have unearthed nearly 100 graves. Authorities removed 42 bodies so far. And by the time they get through all the graves, it’s estimated that as many as 400 bodies may be found, the largest discovery of its kind in Mexico.” The authorities in Veracruz no longer include its former governor, Javier Duarte, who led the state for eight   years but is now living as a fugitive. Shortly after he resigned his post in October, a warrant was issued for Duarte’s arrest on charges of racketeering and  . He’s accused of diverting millions of dollars in public funds to bogus shell companies. In December, Winckler was elected to serve as the top prosecutor in Veracruz through 2025."
"Mathematician Carlos   says that pi is so important to math that using its simple, geometric definition denies its greater powers. ”[Pi] brings you into the world of mathematics, which is magic, mysterious and exciting and always full of challenges for everybody,”   said. First calculated 4, 000 years ago, pi represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. You learned it as 3. 14, which is why today some take the chance to bask in the brilliance and beauty of the mathematical constant, while others try to tear it down.   is firmly in the   camp. He studies epidemics at Arizona State University, and he says pi is used to study everything that cycles  —   waves and heart pulses and anything that recurs. In his own work,   uses pi to try to understand why certain strains of influenza seem to reappear every 20 years. In math, he says, pi pops up in the most unexpected places. ”Pi, with its infinite number of digits, is an introduction to the kinds of mathematics that we do, which often involve the study of infinite processes,”   said. What’s more,   says that pi is most people’s introduction to a   concept invented by Georg Cantor that says there is a hierarchy of infinities. In simple terms, the infinity in between numbers is larger than the infinity of, say, countable numbers. Pi, whose decimals extend into infinity, opens up that parable, says  . YouTube star Vi Hart, who calls herself a recreational mathematician, is not impressed with pi. She’s made it a habit of posting   videos on Pi Day. ”Pi is not special,” she says in one. ”Yeah, pie can be fun and I’d never deny you your desserts, but maybe try some real food every once in a while.” Her beef? She says there are plenty of other mathematical constants that are just as beautiful and just as infinite as pi. Also, pi doesn’t make sense, she says. The equation for the circumference of a circle is 2πr. Wouldn’t it be simpler, she says, if we created a new constant that makes equations easier? Hart has jumped on the tau movement, which says that π should really be 2π and be called tau. In other words, instead of the angles of a full circle being equal to 2π, they would be equal to T. ”Every mathematician should care about the simplicity and beauty of the constants we choose,” Hart said. ”But students find it confusing when they’re dealing with radians and they find radians to be so unnatural because we use pi radians. Whereas if we used tau radians, students suddenly find it very easy to say, ’Well, half a tau is halfway around a circle, 180 degrees. A quarter tau is a quarter of the way around the circle.’ It’s obvious. It’s simple. If we’re dealing with radians, we should be using tau, and that makes all the math much easier for everyone, not just students.” But I remind Vi Hart that her name rhymes with pi, and that makes me question the sincerity of her opposition. ”Some people might think there’s a conspiracy there, that all along I’ve only been pretending to hate pi, but really I’m just trying to rally people behind the cause of pi through manufactured outrage,” she said, adding that it’s only a theory. It’s also worth noting, however, that Hart also collaborated with math artist John Sims on a song they call the ”Pi Day Anthem.” To our ears, it sounds a lot like an appreciation."
"Updated at 3:30 a. m. ET Thursday, Hours after a federal judge in Hawaii issued a nationwide temporary restraining order against President Trump’s travel ban, U. S. District Court Judge Theodore D. Chuang, in Maryland, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the   ban against travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Chuang’s order denies the plaintiffs’ request to block other parts of Trump’s March 6 executive order, including the temporary ban on refugees.  Updated at 10:00 p. m. ET Wednesday, U. S. District Court Judge Derrick K. Watson has issued a nationwide temporary restraining order, preventing President Trump’s revised travel ban from taking effect at midnight Wednesday. Trump’s executive order would have temporarily halted the U. S. refugee program and travel from six   countries. Trump, speaking at a rally in Nashville, Tenn. called the restraining order ”unprecedented judicial overreach.” He said, ”The law and the Constitution give the president the power to suspend immigration  —   when he deems  —   or she, fortunately it will not be Hillary, ’she’  —   when he or she deems it to be in the national interests of our country.” He said he would fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Department of Justice attorneys had argued that the ban was necessary to protect the nation’s security and that it had been revised to address legal concerns. State attorneys general and immigrant rights activists argued the travel ban amounted to an unconstitutional Muslim ban. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores released this statement after the ruling: ”The Department of Justice strongly disagrees with the federal district court’s ruling, which is flawed both in reasoning and in scope. The President’s Executive Order falls squarely within his lawful authority in seeking to protect our Nation’s security, and the Department will continue to defend this Executive Order in the courts.” Executive order was revised after court defeat, After a federal district court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the first travel ban, the revised version temporarily suspended entry by travelers from six mostly Muslim countries, not seven, as the original did. (Iraq was dropped from the list.) And the new order made clear that it didn’t apply to lawful permanent residents, also known as green card holders, or to people holding valid visas issued before the ban’s effective date. It still suspended the U. S. refugee program for 120 days. It also cut the number of refugees the U. S. would accept this year by more than half, from 110, 000 to 50, 000. Refugees from Syria were no longer banned indefinitely. And the revised order dropped language that was intended to favor religious minorities, which Trump had signaled would apply to persecuted Christians from the Middle East. Hawaii, Watson wrote that the state of Hawaii, challenging the executive order, has a strong likelihood of succeeding in pursuing the claims that the president’s action would violate protections against religious discrimination and would hurt state businesses and universities, as well as the tourism industry. The judge concluded, based on the historical context of the travel ban and public statements made by the president, that ”a reasonable, objective observer . .. would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion[. ]” Lawyers for the Justice Department had argued that Trump acted within his powers to set immigration policy and protect national security. They also argued that Hawaii’s claims of harm were speculative. But attorneys for Hawaii offered the case of Ismail Elshikh, the imam of a Honolulu mosque. His    has applied for an immigrant visa from Syria. Elshikh said that she would be barred from the United States if the executive order were implemented. Along with Hawaii, courts in Maryland and Washington state have heard challenges to the new revised travel ban. Washington, Federal District Judge James L. Robart, who had blocked much of the White House’s first travel ban last month in Seattle, is also handling two cases challenging the new ban. One case involves four citizens or permanent residents who argue that access to visas for their family members would be disrupted. The other challenge comes from Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson  —   along with his counterparts from Minnesota, New York, California, Maryland, Massachusetts and Oregon. ”What we’re looking at is what Donald Trump said when he was running for president,” Ferguson told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”He said he wanted to create a Muslim ban.” Ferguson argues that’s ”strong evidence that the intent behind these executive orders was actually less about national security and more about a Muslim ban.” Maryland, In a case before U. S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang in Maryland, Department of Justice lawyer Jeffrey Wall argued that the executive order ”doesn’t say anything about religion” and ”doesn’t send a religious message.” In that case, the plaintiffs are two refugee rights groups being helped by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center. They maintain the order is a Muslim ban, like Trump proposed on the campaign trail. Lee Gelernt of the ACLU tells NPR that the context of the order, including Trump’s campaign statements, should be considered and makes the order’s intent clear. ”The purpose of this was to ban Muslims and we are hopeful that the judge, like other courts, will . .. not turn a blind eye to what’s happening  —   that the administration just made certain tweaks to get around a court order but still has the same policy purpose,” Gelernt said. National security  When the White House announced the second travel ban last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered some new support for the temporary freeze on refugee resettlement. ”More than 300 people who came here as refugees are under FBI investigation for potential   activities,” Sessions said. But the Department of Justice declined to provide further information about the nature of those cases or which countries those refugees came from. Refugee resettlement organizations argue that there’s no legitimate reason for the ban. They say it would cause lasting harm to them and the people they assist. ”It’s not just about picking up refugees at the airport,” said Mark Hetfield, CEO of HIAS, one of the nine major resettlement agencies and a plaintiff in the Maryland case. On a conference call with reporters, Hetfield said that agencies like his offer a range of services, such as help locating and furnishing apartments, finding a job and getting kids signed up for school. If the refugee program is suspended, Hetfield says, it will be ”very difficult to get things going again.” Lawyers for DOJ said a travel ban gives time to shore up vetting procedures for travelers from six countries that either are state sponsors of terrorism or have harbored terrorists."
"Updated at 1:50 a. m. ET Thursday, Early results in the Netherlands indicate Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s VVD Party will win Wednesday’s parliamentary election, while populist Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom will come in third. Rutte’s party was on track to win 32 seats in the lower house of parliament, while Wilders’ party was projected to win 19 seats. The full results of the election  —   which in the Netherlands is conducted on paper ballots using red pencils  —   are not expected to be known until Thursday morning here. But if early results are accurate, the tallies will be seen as a significant defeat for Wilders and his brand of  . In interviews across the country in the past week, even Wilder’s supporters found some of his rhetoric too incendiary, including his suggestions that the Netherlands kick some Moroccans out of the country. Voting in The Hague Wednesday morning, Wilders tried to portray populism as something that would surge forward regardless of the results here. ”Whatever the outcome of the election today, the genie will not go back into the bottle,” he said. ”People feel misrepresented.” Indeed, Wilders did tap into very real concerns in the Netherlands about immigration, national identity and government austerity. The country took in more than 50, 000 refugees in 2015 during the European migration crisis. That created strains on social services and some people complained that Dutch citizens lost out on public housing to help people fleeing Syria. Wilders supporters saw him as the defender of white,   Dutch. Wilders is a political insider, one of the longest serving members of parliament here, but he captured global attention this year because of the surge in populism that began last June when the United Kingdom stunned the world and voted to leave the European Union. Donald Trump continued what looked like a possible trend with his upset victory last November, and Wilders hoped to become the third populist politician to defy the odds. As news of the early results spread, governments in Western Europe appeared to breathe a sigh of relief. ”The Netherlands, oh the Netherlands you are a champion!” tweeted Peter Altmaier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff. ”Congratulations on this great result.” But there is more to come. The next  —   and far more consequential  —   test for political populism begins next month in France where the National Front’s Marine Le Pen is running an     Union campaign."
"When Democrats held a majority of the seats in the U. S. House of Representatives, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi was the House speaker, she helped pass the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Now, after more than six years in the minority party, she is watching House Republicans move to repeal and replace parts of the law. She says that although Democrats don’t have the votes to stop the GOP legislation alone, they can still show their opposition to it. ”In my office I have a painting of Abraham Lincoln, who said, ’Public sentiment is everything,’ ” Pelosi told NPR’s Robert Siegel. ”Regardless of the number of Democrats in the House, the number of people who are affected, 24 million [people] who would lose their care, I’m depending on public opinion. . .. The fact is the more we point out the shortcomings of the legislation, the fewer votes [Republicans] will have.” The interview below has been edited for length and clarity. On the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act, Let’s go back to where we were before the Affordable Care Act, because that was a time where [some people] wouldn’t even be able to have any insurance. So what was the purpose of the Affordable Care Act? [It was] threefold. One, to lower cost. Two, to improve benefits. And three, to expand access for millions more people. And it’s done all three. . .. Look, there hasn’t been a bill ever passed of this magnitude, whether it was Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, voting rights, civil rights bill, that was not revisited. Some of the improvements we [could] have [had] in the Affordable Care Act were there, but the Republicans prevented them from happening. So you can be a   prophecy and say, ”I’m gonna make sure this doesn’t work now. Now see, it didn’t work.” On whether the Democrats could work with President Trump or House Speaker Paul Ryan on health care legislation, We have a responsibility to the American people to find as much common ground as we can. There has to be sincerity, though. . .. I don’t think he has the faintest idea  —   the president  —   about the health care thing. [But Rep. Paul] Ryan . .. is [a] philosophical,     [person] and so an act of mercy for him is to reduce the government’s role. So we’re talking about two different things. They’re debating whether it’s ”Trumpcare” or ”Ryancare,” but neither of them wants it identified with themselves because it’s such a failure in the public mind. On Trump’s knowledge of health care, The more the president might learn about [health care] then he might see where there’s a path [to working with Democrats] because to tell you the truth, the Affordable Care Act is a private sector initiative. It contains many Republican ideas. Understand this about Republicans, and then you’ll understand part of what our challenge is here: They always are gearing whatever they do to benefit the high end. This is the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of our country, in terms of hundreds of billions of dollars going into the pockets of the top 1 percent of the people in our country, at the expense of the good health of our middle class and those who aspire to the middle class."
"Michael Botticelli served as President Obama’s director of National Drug Control Policy, and pushed Congress to pass a funding measure last year making more money available for the treatment of opioid addiction. Now he’s concerned that the proposed Republican health plan will reduce access to health services for people with addiction. ”We know that people with addiction, and particularly in the opioid epidemic, need access to high quality health care in general,” Botticelli told NPR. ”We know that many people who are injecting drugs have viral hepatitis. We’ve seen outbreaks in parts of the country with people with HIV. . .. People need access to   comprehensive health care if they’re really going to deal with these issues.” Botticelli discussed access to addiction treatment with NPR’s Robert Siegel, including how the proposed Republican health plan differs from the approach taken by the Obama administration and the broad societal effects of widespread opioid abuse. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. On historically sparse coverage of addiction treatment, We knew going into the Obama administration that, historically, only a small percentage of people were able to access [addiction] care in the United States, about 10 percent, largely based on their inability to pay, not having insurance coverage, or having insurance coverage that didn’t cover addiction treatment services. So a large part not only of the Affordable Care Act but of our work with Congress was to pass the President’s budget proposal to give states and local [governments] additional resources for this. On the societal cost of addiction, I would say we all pay the price for untreated addiction. Certainly we know that it raises health care costs. We know that untreated addiction actually has other costs to it, associated with crime and prison costs, that drive up our taxes. We have seen what historically has been a bipartisan effort to really use addiction treatment to make sure that we’re not filling our jails and prisons with people. So we’re all paying the cost for this. Given the magnitude of this issue, I’ve been   to find a family that hasn’t been impacted by addiction and particularly the opioid epidemic. On Congressional support for addiction treatment funding, We had a tremendous amount of bipartisan support. Every member of Congress understands the impact that addiction, and particularly the opioid epidemic, has been having on their communities.   Trump certainly heard this on the campaign trail, and quite honestly promised access to treatment as one of the prime strategies. So it’s. .. perplexing to me that members of Congress who support this [proposed health care] bill know the devastating effect that not having, and ratcheting back, addiction coverage is going to have, particularly for people in their districts. On the potential effects of decreased access to addiction treatment, I think it’s not hyperbolic to forecast that we’re going to see dramatic increases in mortality associated with drug overdose deaths [if the proposed bill goes into effect.] I think we’re likely to see a significant impact on our emergency departments. Certainly we know crime rates go up with people with untreated addiction. . .. We know that untreated addiction has a nexus to homelessness. So the implications for this are profound, not only in terms of the mortality that we see with drug overdoses, but in health and human services and public safety systems. On controlling the drug supply in the U. S. Our approach to drug policy under the Obama administration really tried to strike this balance between supply and demand. In my interactions with the Mexican government, I made very clear that the United States has an obligation to reduce the demand for drugs, which we know will continue to prompt supply, but that the Mexican government had a responsibility as well to help us in this battle by reducing the supply, particularly of heroin and fentanyl that we see. I have a lot of concerns in terms of the rhetoric that we hear now. Are we going to see the same of cooperation from the Mexican government to meet their obligations in this battle?"
"The Republican Party’s most passionate pitch man for its health care bill was at it again Wednesday morning with the same message: Everything is going according to plan. ”This is the plan we ran on all of last year. This is the plan that we’ve been working  —   House, Senate, White House  —   together on,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told FOX Business News. ”Now as we get closer to finish, going through the committee process, you inevitably make those refinements and improvements as you go through that process. That’s exactly where we are right now.” Right now, Republicans are fighting each other, while Democrats sit on the sidelines. They are as unified against President Trump and the American Health Care Act as Republicans were against President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. The speaker is possessed by an unshaken confidence that this bill is better policy for the country, and that failure would be disastrous for the Republican Party politically. ”The worst thing we could do is not follow up on our word,” he told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. ”We need to keep our word. And our word was: We would repeal and replace this law. It is within our own power as Republicans to do as much of repeal and replace as possible. It is our obligation to do that.” Even against a backdrop this week that includes   conservatives and activists groups rallying against the bill, increasing opposition to the bill from Senate Republicans, and tepid public support from President Trump  —   who has tweeted more this week about Snoop Dogg than the Congressional Budget Office report  —   the speaker rejects any questions that suggest the health care bill is faltering in Congress. ”We are all on the same page. Absolutely,” Ryan told Ingraham. The speaker has a point. Much of the infighting around the health care bill is normal for a legislative battle of this size and impact. The fact that right now senators are skeptical, party activists are angry, and the health care industry is opposed are not, by themselves, unusual. There’s still a long way to go before this fight is over. It’s just unclear who will be declared the winner. Vice President Mike Pence, one of Ryan’s closest allies on health care, continues to work the halls of the U. S. Capitol, meeting with Republican factions and working to assuage concerns that the bill is not conservative enough. One troubling sign for Republicans is just how uncoordinated, and sometimes conflicting, their messages are to their members and the public. When the CBO dropped a report that Republicans had already anticipated would forecast lower coverage rates and higher costs for some Americans, the reaction from the White House and key players in Congress was completely scattershot. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price attacked the CBO (even though he helped pick its director, Keith Hall) the speaker embraced it, Senate Republicans used it to call for changing course, and President Trump himself has largely stayed quiet. Now Republicans are under increasing pressure to change the bill, but it’s unclear how they can find a path to passage in both the House and Senate. The bill is not subject to a filibuster, which should make it easier in the Senate, but it also means they can lose only two Republican senators and get it through the chamber. House Republicans have effectively one more chance to change the bill before it comes to the floor for a vote. The House Rules Committee, effectively run by the speaker’s office, sets the terms for floor debate. The committee can make changes to the bill via amendment before it comes to the floor. Members will have their own chance to offer amendments on the floor, but that process is largely for show as party leaders largely control which amendments get votes. Some   conservatives want to speed up the timeline to end the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, but doing so would likely doom the bill in the Senate. Across the Capitol, an increasing number of senators, including Sen. John Thune,  . D. a member of party leadership, want to change the bill to make refundable tax credits more generous for older, lower income Americans. But that could increase the cost of the legislation, and in turn, make it tougher to get through the House. Back at the White House, President Trump’s personal thoughts on all of this remain entirely unclear. White House spokesman Sean Spicer insists the president is   as do Pence, Ryan and Price. Yet, The Washington Post reports that Trump’s inner circle is increasingly skeptical that the health care bill as written is a good idea. Influential conservative media outlets in the Trump administration, including Breitbart News and Newsmax, have come out in opposition to the legislation. The president is travelling to Kentucky next Monday for a rally in Louisville where he will presumably make the case for the health care bill. Trump won the state by a large margin, but Kentucky has seen one of the highest drops in uninsured rates under the ACA. The state’s junior senator, Rand Paul, is almost certain to vote against the health care bill if it comes up for a vote. It’s an odd choice to make the case for the GOP health care plan, or to try to pick up a vote. Or maybe, as Ryan says, it’s all according to plan."
"Scientists have long hoped that stem cells might have the power to treat diseases. But it’s always been clear that they could be dangerous too, especially if they’re not used carefully. Now a pair of papers published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine is underscoring both the promise and the peril of using stem cells for therapy. In one report, researchers document the cases of three elderly women who were blinded after getting stem cells derived from fat tissue at a   clinic in Florida. The treatment was marketed as a treatment for macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness among the elderly. Each woman got cells injected into both eyes. In a second report, a patient suffering from the same condition had a halt in the inexorable loss of vision patients usually experience, which may or may not have been related to the treatment. That patient got a different kind of stem cell derived from skin cells as part of a carefully designed Japanese study. The Japanese case marks the first time anyone has given induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to a patient to treat any condition. ”These two reports are about as stark a contrast as it gets,” says George Q. Daley, Harvard Medical School’s dean and a leading stem cell researcher. He wrote an editorial accompanying the two papers. ”It’s really striking.” The report about the three women in their 70s and 80s who were blinded in Florida is renewing calls for the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on the hundreds of clinics that are selling unproven stem cell treatments for a wide variety of medical conditions, including arthritis, autism and stroke. ”One of the big mysteries about this particular case and the mushrooming stem cell clinic industry more generally is why the FDA has chosen to effectively sit itself out on the sidelines even as this situation overall grows increasingly risky to patients,” says Paul Knoepfler, a University of California, Davis, stem cell researcher who has studied the proliferation of stem cell clinics. ”The inaction by the FDA not only puts many patients at serious risk from unproven stem cell offerings, but also it undermines the agency’s credibility,” Knoepfler wrote in an email. In response to a query from Shots, an FDA spokeswoman wrote in an email that the agency is in the process of finalizing four new guidelines aimed at clarifying how clinics could use stem cells as treatments. The agency also noted that it had previously issued a warning to patients. In the meantime, ”consumers are encouraged to contact FDA and the appropriate state authorities in their jurisdictions to report any potentially illegal or harmful activity related to stem cell based products,” the FDA email says. Other researchers say the cases should stand as a warning to patients considering unproved stem cell treatments, especially those tried outside carefully designed research studies. ”Patients have to be wary and tell the difference between the snake oil salesmen who are going to exploit them and the kind of slow, painstaking legitimate clinical trials that are also going on,” Daley says. The New England Journal of Medicine report did not name the Florida clinic, but noted that the treatment was listed on a government website that serves as a clearinghouse for research studies. The sponsor is listed as Bioheart, Inc. which is part of U. S. Stem Cell Inc. in Sunrise, Fla. Kristen Comella, the scientific director of U. S. Stem Cell, would not discuss the cases. ”There were legal cases associated with eye patients that were settled under confidentiality, so I am not permitted to speak on any details of those cases due to the confidentiality clause,” Comella said by phone. She acknowledged, however, that the clinic had been performing the stem cell procedures. They were discontinued after at least two patients suffered detached retinas, she says. But Comella defended the use of stem cells from fat tissue to treat a wide variety of other health problems. ”We have treated more than 7, 000 patients and we’ve have had very few adverse events reported. So the safety track record is very strong,” Comella says. ”We feel very confident about the procedures that we do, and we’ve had great success in many different indications.” According to the New England Journal of Medicine report, The Florida clinic was using adult stem cells, which circulate in various parts of the body, including in fat tissue. While those cells may someday be turn out to be useful for treating disease, none have been proven to work. The body produces a variety of stem cells. The kind that have generated the most excitement  —   and controversy  —   are human embryonic stem cells, which are derived from early human embryos and can be coaxed to become any kind of cell in the body. Scientists are also excited about iPS cells, which can be made in the laboratory by turning any cell in the body, such as skin cells, into cells that resemble embryonic stem cells. Those are the cells that were tested by the Japanese scientists. The stem cells were converted into retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells, which are the cells that are destroyed by macular degeneration. ”This represents a landmark,” says Daley. ”It’s the first time any patient has been treated with cellular derivatives of iPS cells. So it’s definitely a world first.” Daley noted that the scientists only treated one of the patient’s eyes in case something went wrong, to ensure remaining vision would not be threatened in the other eye. After at least a year, no complications had occurred and the patient had not experienced any further deterioration of vision in the treated eye. While that is promising, more patients would have to be treated and followed for much longer to know whether that approach is successful, Daley says. ”Given that macular degeneration is the most frequent cause of vision loss and blindness in the elderly and our population is aging, the prevalence of macular degeneration is going up dramatically,” Daley says. ”So to be able to preserve or even restore sight would be a really remarkable medical advance.” Despite the potentially encouraging results with the first patient, Daley noted that the Japanese scientists decided not to treat a second patient and suspended the study. That’s because they discovered worrisome genetic variations in the RPE cells they had produced for the second patient. ”They weren’t certain these would cause problems for the patient, but they were restrained enough and cautious enough that they decided not to go forward,” Daley says. ”That’s what contrasts so markedly with the approach of the second group, who treated the three patients with an unproven stem cell therapy that ended up have devastating effects on their vision.” In this case, the New England Journal of Medicine report says, patients paid $5, 000 each to receive injections of solutions that supposedly contained stem cells that were obtained from fat removed from their abdomens through liposuction. Even though the safety and effectiveness of this procedure is unknown, all three patients received injections in both eyes. ”That’s what led to these horrible results,” says Thomas Albini, a retina specialist at the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, who helped write the report. Before the procedure, all three women still had at least some vision. Afterwards, one woman was left completely blind while the other two were effectively blind, Albini and his colleagues reported. The cases show that patients need to be warned that something that ”sounds too good to be true may indeed be too good to be true and may even be horrible,” Albini says."
"It sounds like the beginning to a buddy comedy movie: Two congressmen, whose opposing parties couldn’t be more at odds right now, are stranded after their flights were canceled because of a snowstorm. In order to make it back to Washington, D. C. in time for votes, they rent a car and begin making the roughly   trek. That’s exactly what Texas Reps. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, and Will Hurd, a Republican, have been doing for the past two days, allowing anyone to ride along with them in their rented Chevy Impala via Facebook video stream. ”At a time where so many people wonder whether our institutions still work, whether members of Congress still listen to the people they represent, whether a Republican and a Democrat can get along and work together. I thought, let’s try to prove the concept,” O’Rourke told the Dallas Morning News about his somewhat    moment suggestion. The two had been stranded after a veterans’ roundtable discussion in San Antonio. They weren’t incredibly close at the outset of their long journey, but spending so long in a car, talking about everything from policy issues to their families to doughnuts, quickly helped bridge any awkward divides. By the end of their trip, the two were talking about having Thanksgiving together. They approached the trip like a town hall on wheels, taking questions from people who were commenting on Facebook. And, of course, they were talking about one of the hottest issues of the day  —   health care. ”I think we came to some common ground,” O’Rourke told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”We want to see more people afford health care, but I think we have some differences of opinions on expansion of Medicaid.” ”I’ve learned a lot about Beto,” Hurd mused about his neighboring colleague during one point in the trip. ”We’ve learned that we can work together on a lot more issues than what we have been.” The whole drive turned into a radio show of sorts  —   a mix of them picking songs to play, ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Johnny Cash to Robert Earl Keen. It also became a   show, as they would dial up fellow colleagues and began encouraging them to undertake their own bipartisan road trip with a member of the opposite party. The duo began asking people on Twitter for their thoughts on possible pairings with the hashtag #CongressionalCannonballRun. Throughout their drive, they amassed quite a following on social media, drawing thousands of people watching at a time. When they swung by Memphis late Tuesday night to see Graceland (it was closed) they were enticed by some people who had been commenting on their feed to stop at Gibson’s Donuts instead, where they held court with several patrons and the shop’s staff. As they picked back up on Wednesday after stopping to sleep for a few hours in Nashville, there was an Amazing   urgency for them to get back to D. C. by the time votes were scheduled at 6:30 p. m. ET. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy promised them he would do whatever he could to hold votes open and would even reserve a parking space in front of the Capitol for them. The two pulled in front of the Capitol steps just before 6 p. m. with about 30 minutes before votes to spare. Their staff and other onlookers had gathered, with one waving a Texas flag. As they headed into D. C. O’Rourke began blasting ”The Final Countdown” and even Hurd admitted he was already beginning to feel a bit of separation anxiety from his colleague and newfound friend as their trip approached its end. ”I learned something  —   this is a guy I can work with,” O’Rourke told Fox 5 DC as they started to go into the Capitol. ”It just happens that we’re on opposite sides of the aisle.” Hurd reflected that at the outset of their trip, some of the comments weren’t as encouraging about their unique undertaking. But by the end, they had plenty of people cheering them on and holding the two men up as examples of bipartisanship that is sorely needed in Washington. ”The fact that people enjoyed it and the fact that people really changed the kind of language they were using while they were commenting at us was pretty cool,” the Texas Republican said."
"President Trump has made clear he doesn’t like the alternative minimum tax, a complex federal levy that will hit some 4. 8 million taxpayers this year. A   tax return, filed by Trump for 2005 and revealed Tuesday, may suggest one reason. Because of the AMT, Trump was required to pay about $38 million in taxes on income of more than $150 million that year. Without it, Trump’s bill would have been a lot lower. The AMT, which Trump has proposed eliminating, operates as a sort of parallel tax: If you claim too many of the wrong kind of deductions and try to get by with paying too little, you automatically find yourself bumped into the world of the AMT, where different rules  —   and higher rates  —   apply. In other words, if you thought you were going to lower your tax bill by claiming a lot of deductions, think again. The AMT was passed into law in 1969, amid public outrage over reports that some 155 ultrawealthy people had escaped paying federal taxes altogether by using loopholes and tax shelters, says Leonard E. Burman, director of the   Tax Policy Center. But over time, it has morphed and changed and now sucks in a lot of taxpayers who are merely very comfortable. ”It is a stupid tax. It’s poorly targeted,” Burman says. The people most likely to be hit with the AMT are not billionaires, but people earning incomes of $500, 000 to $1 million a year. Burman says 62 percent of them are expected to pay the tax in 2017. Of those who earn between $200, 000 and $500, 000 a year, 31 percent will pay the tax. But among those making more than $1 million a year, only 18 percent get hit. That’s because the AMT tends to kick in for certain kinds of deductions more than others. If you live in a   place such as New Jersey or New York and deduct the state and local taxes you pay, that deduction will be counted toward the AMT. The same goes for people who claim children and other dependents as personal exemptions. But the types of deductions favored by the ultrawealthy, such as tax shelters, don’t get counted, Burman says. Income from capital gains also gets preferential treatment under the AMT. That means someone like Warren Buffett, who gets most of his income from stock investments, can pay a very low rate without triggering the AMT, while a   executive from Westchester County with lots of kids probably can’t. Why Trump got hit by the AMT in 2005 isn’t clear without more details than were included in the   return released Tuesday night by journalist David Cay Johnston. ”There are a bunch of technical preferences that can throw you onto the AMT, and it looks like Donald Trump fell afoul of one or two of them,” Burman says. Whatever the reasons, the AMT meant Trump had to pay much higher taxes than he otherwise would. ”Without the alternative minimum tax, Donald Trump would have paid a lower tax rate in 2005 than the poorest half of Americans  —   just 3. 48 percent  —   despite income of more than $150 million. Trump wants to abolish the AMT. Now we know why,” said Americans for Tax Fairness Executive Director Frank Clemente. Trump is by no means the first politician to take aim at the AMT. In fact, economists, tax lawyers and members of Congress have long discussed abolishing or reforming it. But it’s never happened, in part because it raises too much money. The AMT is projected to bring in some $40 billion to $50 billion a year to the federal government over the next decade."
"Donald Trump and his wife Melania earned about $150 million in 2005 and paid federal taxes of about $38 million, the White House said tonight. The Trump administration made the revelation after copies of the tax returns anonymously were put in the mailbox of journalist David Cay Johnston. The numbers have not been independently verified by NPR. Unlike other recent presidents, Trump has steadfastly refused to release his tax returns, saying he was under federal audit, which has led to enormous speculation about how much he really earns and where he gets his money. The   return doesn’t really answer many questions, but does begin to shed a little light on Trump’s finances. Trump paid just $5. 3 million in regular federal tax, perhaps because he was continuing to benefit from large losses he suffered when his real estate empire collapsed in the 90s. But because of the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, he actually ended up paying $38 million. Trump has proposed eliminating the AMT, which is aimed at preventing taxpayers from paring down their tax bills by using an inordinate number of deductions and exemptions. The returns released tonight were mailed to Johnston, a Pulitzer   journalist, who appeared this evening on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Johnston, who recently founded the website DCReport. org, said the   return had been sent to him ”over the transom” and suggested he didn’t know who sent them. A White House spokesman criticized the release in a statement: ”You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago. Before being elected President, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required. That being said, Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that. Despite this substantial income figure and tax paid, it is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns. The dishonest media can continue to make this part of their agenda, while the President will focus on his, which includes tax reform that will benefit all Americans.” The $38 million figure quoted by the White House included payroll taxes, Johnston said. When they are excluded, the Trump’s total federal bill amounted to about $36. 5 million."
"The new film, Get Out, defies easy classification. Though it has funny moments, it’s primarily a horror film, with racial anxiety at its center.   Jordan Peele tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that he thinks of Get Out as a ”social thriller.” The movie tells the story of a young black man named Chris whose white girlfriend, Rose, takes him to meet her parents for the first time  —   without first telling them he’s black. Rose’s parents go out of their way to show Chris how open minded they are, but there’s something suspicious in the liberal facade they present. The film takes several twists and turns (which we won’t spoil here) as Chris figures out what is going on. Peele wanted the audience, regardless of race, to see the subtle racism through Chris’ eyes. ”It was very important to me to just get the entire audience in touch in some way with the fears inherent [in] being black in this country,” Peele says. ”Part of being black in this country, and I presume being any minority, is constantly being told that . .. we’re seeing racism where there just isn’t racism.” Previously known for his comedic work on the Comedy Central sketch series Key  Peele, Peele says that his current turn as the director of a   film comes from a ”deeper place in my soul” than his comic work. ”This [movie] is just simply my truest passion,” he says. ”It comes from this fact that in order to deal with my own fears, I wanted to be able to sort of master them. It’s really just want I want to be doing.” On racism as a device for a horror movie plot  Every great horror movie comes from a true fear, and ideally it’s a universal fear. The tricky nature of this project is that the fear I’m pulling from is very human, but it’s not necessarily a universal experience, so that’s why the first third of the movie is showing, and not in an    way, in a sort of real, grounded way, just getting everybody to be able to see the world through my protagonist’s eyes and his fears. On a lack of black representation in horror films  The gestation period for this idea kind of spanned several years, and I think one of the most important milestones in that process was just realizing that every true horror, human horror, American horror has a horror movie that deals with it and allows us to face that fear, except [that] race in a modern sense, hadn’t been touched. It really hadn’t been touched in my opinion since Night of the Living Dead 50 years ago. Maybe with the film Candyman. That to me, I just saw a void there. So it really started with this notion of like, this has to be possible, let’s figure it out. On writing a film that would play differently to black and white people, but is meant to be inclusive  This was an exercise in . .. making a movie that is meant to be inclusive. . .. In any good story, whoever you are, you should be able to relate to the protagonist. At the same time, I had to recognize that black people would be watching this movie and having a different experience . .. than white people would. . .. Often when I thought about a specific scene or a specific moment I’d think, I hope the black audience here is [saying] ’You know what? This is my experience. I’ve never seen it done in film like this, that’s awesome.’ And at the same moment I might recognize that there would be a lot of white people who would watch the scene and either recognize these moments as something that maybe they’ve done, or that they’ve seen someone do. On Chris trying to connect with the black groundskeeper and housekeeper at Rose’s house and not getting the response he expected, You know the stereotype of all black people know each other, well I think it probably comes from the fact that we can identify with each other’s experience in a way that others may have a harder time. So yes, you see a black person anywhere where you’re the only two, it’s like there’s an instant bond, or there should be, is sort of the feeling. There’s also this feeling, the fear of dating outside of one’s race also brings with it a loaded group of fears. Am I abandoning my blackness in some way? Am I turning my back on my roots in some way? So I wanted Chris to be dealing with that uncomfortableness of not knowing how he’s being judged by the housekeeper and the groundskeeper in this situation. On his biracial identity growing up  I’d been taught from an early age that I was in the ”other” category on the standardized tests. I had to go down the list, ”Caucasian, African American, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander,” and then at the bottom is ”other.” Very early on I was taught in a way that I was somehow this anomaly. . .. It’s probably one of the reasons that I fell in love with horror and comedy, which I think are genres that really appeal to someone who identifies with the outsider or the other, which is many of us. I remember it being a very confusing notion that we were on the one hand learning about Martin Luther King’s dream and then on the other hand we were having to fill in these boxes and declare what we were. By the time I was a little older, maybe fourth or fifth grade, I would check the ”African American” box, which brought me comfort to be able to identify with a group more. . .. By the time Barack Obama was elected it changed a lot of my feelings of identity and really inspired both Key  Peele and Get Out. . .. All of a sudden being mixed was an identity, and one that was the identity of a man who I consider [to be] the very best of us. I feel like the discussions about being biracial weren’t even in existence, so when Barack Obama was elected it definitely inspired us to explore that and the notions of   and everything."
"(Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t watched the movie Logan and are planning to, you may want to read this essay only after you do.) In generic heroic sagas, the hero leaves home to face numerous tribulations in a pilgrimage of the self. The obstacles along the way are tests of the hero’s strength, molding   character through pain and suffering. Glory, when achieved, is bittersweet, as it comes heavy with loss, usually of loved ones, family or companions. In tragic sagas, the hero pays with   life in the end so that others may be free. The narrative line of the new blockbuster movie Logan, starring Hugh Jackman with story and direction by James Mangold, follows this structure to the core. It’s a classic tragedy on steroids, with   graphic violence, the kind we don’t usually associate with Marvel characters. It’s the end of the   as we know and love them. A dark, oppressive end, exploring, once again, the worse of humanity. It brings to the fore the theme I explored in this space a few weeks back, the moral choices of those in power as they apply scientific knowledge. In the case of Logan, it’s an evil corporation, no doubt a defense contractor, attempting to design the ultimate killing machine, mutant soldiers without the ability for empathy. The horror is that the corporation does this by genetically inserting mutant genes into the human genome, creating a gang of children they try to mold into heartless assassins, a sort of Neverland meets H. G. Wells Dr. Moreau. The movie is so utterly sad it’s painful to watch. Logan, the conflicted and beloved Wolverine, is old and broken, alone, drowning his sorrows in alcohol, driving a limo to survive in a harsh 2029 America. His sole job is to care for a nonagenarian   Professor X, who suffers from seizures that threaten anyone near him. A ”ticking ” ”a weapon of mass destruction,” is how his brain is now described. But good Professor X is still in there, and he feels the presence of a new mutant, the first in 25 years.   character Magneto’s worse fears are realized: Humans obliterated the mutants, the Final Solution working as well as it could. No redemption in this story, no Allies to defeat the evil dictators. Only death and loss to an entire kind. Fortunately, the   transhuman children  —   the only redeeming aspect of the movie  —   survived and escaped their torturing captors. One of them, Laura (played with beautiful intensity by Dafne Keen) carries Logan’s genes and powers of regeneration. She even has his claws and metal core, although we don’t quite know how this inner armor grows with her. But these are details. Much against his will, Logan is roped into rescuing his engineered daughter and taking her to Eden, the Neverland of mutant children, a meeting point near the Canadian border. Mirroring the dark days we are experiencing in America, the mutant children must leave the country to become immigrants in search of a society that will embrace them. Faithful to the tragic storyline, the heroes all perish. In the darkest scene of the movie, Laura must bury her own father, after a brief moment of   tenderness as Logan finally understands what loving someone means. The other mutant children walk away, and Laura is alone by Logan’s burial place. She picks up the cross that marks his grave and turns it sideways, making it into an X. The saga ends for our beloved  . But the children do cross the border  —   and mutants survive, hopefully to thrive again. As in real life, the Final Solution will never work."
"The new movie Life, which opens March 24, is about astronauts who discover an alien life form and live to regret it. You could say exactly the same thing about Alien: Covenant, which was originally scheduled to open the following Friday  —   until someone realized that was a recipe for   disaster. Alien: Covenant will now open in early May, and that close call, crazy as it is, isn’t uncommon in Hollywood. Rival studios often stare each other down, refusing to blink, in showdowns that didn’t need to happen. In 1998,   asteroids were blown up in the nick of time by nuclear warheads not once, but twice: with much electronic beeping and enormous special effects in Armageddon, and slightly higher beeping and enormous special effects in Deep Impact. That same year, animated insects skittered onto movie screens in both Antz and A Bug’s Life  —   and all of that just one year after dueling lava flows erupted in Dante’s Peak and Volcano. Hollywood is not a big town. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and movies that cost millions of dollars require many people and many months of development. Yet still they end up with Red Planet and Mission to Mars in 2000 two romantic comedies about presidential daughters in 2004 (Chasing Liberty and First Daughter) and two animated penguin movies in   (Happy Feet with animated dancing penguins, and Surf’s Up with animated surfing penguins). One film in each of these pairs will necessarily emerge victorious at the box office, but both will arguably be damaged by their proximity. So why bring them out together? Well, it can sometimes make a perverse kind of sense. 1992 saw rival movies about Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage. (Entirely understandable, considering 500th anniversaries don’t come around often.) And with everyone figuring there was a chance they’d sail off the end of the world, it was, at least theoretically, a good story. Still, both 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery sank like stones at the box office, even though one had Marlon Brando and the other Gérard Depardieu (don’t ask me which was which). At least there was a reason for those to come out at the same time, as opposed to 2013’s two presidential kidnapping movies (White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen) or 1985’s competing high school nerd comedies (Real Genius and Weird Science) or, for that matter, dueling   musicals. Godspell was still a hit   in 1972, and if it had waited a year, it might’ve been one   too but put it in a multiplex opposite   Andrew Lloyd Webber and it’s bound to look puny  —   which is precisely what happened when Jesus Christ Superstar opened. Hollywood history is littered with corpses from other double   but sometimes lightning strikes more than twice. Three vampire flicks opened in ’79  —   Nosferatu the Vampyre, Dracula and Love at First Bite. And then there was the year (’ ’88) that audiences had to choose among four   comedies: George Burns had an accident that made him, as the title had it, 18 Again! Judge Reinhold touched a magic Tibetan skull and switched places with his son in Vice Versa Dudley Moore took a potion to do the same thing in Like Father Like Son and in Big it was an amusement park wish that turned a little boy into Tom Hanks. (Audiences only showed up en masse for Big.) Now, there have also been times when Hollywood duplication involved a bit of duplicity. When Gone with the Wind was still auditioning Scarlett O’Haras, Warner Bros. decided to steal MGM’s thunder by beating it into theaters with a Confederacy epic of its own. It bought the rights to the Broadway play Jezebel, cast Bette Davis as its vain,   Southern belle, shot it more cheaply in black and white, and opened it while Gone with the Wind was still shooting. Jezebel won Davis an Oscar, which gave Warner Bros. bragging rights in February 1939  —   bragging rights that pretty much evaporated a few months later. Close on Scarlett and Rhett’s heels came two biopics about the guy who ended their way of life: Young Mr. Lincoln starring Henry Fonda, and Abe Lincoln in Illinois starring Raymond Massey. Biopics often seem to inspire a herd instinct in Tinseltown. Both Oscar Wilde and The Trials of Oscar Wilde came out, as it were, in 1960. More recently, there was a big year for another gay icon, with two stars not only doing Truman Capote impressions but telling the same stories: Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote and Toby Jones in Infamous. Infamous was an indie, while Capote was from a major studio, which perhaps explained the overlap. That was also true of two competing blonde bombshell biopics about Jean Harlow in 1965. One starred Carroll Baker and the other Carol Lynley  —   two Carols in films released months apart called, believe it or not, Harlow and Harlow. It’s as though the producers had a death wish. Still, if films are sufficiently different in tone, there won’t be audience confusion. In 1964  —   after the Cuban missile crisis and with the whole world nervous about the Cold War turning hot  —   there were two movies about the start of World War III. Nuclear annihilation played straight in   and for laughs in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. There were no reports of moviegoers laughing at the wrong movie. About a decade after that, for the first time in Hollywood history, wiser heads prevailed. Two   novels about burning skyscrapers were optioned by Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox. Irwin Allen, who had just made The Poseidon Adventure, suggested they do something that no major studios had ever done before: join forces and make The Towering Inferno. Not that there weren’t issues. Fox had Steve McQueen under contract, Warner Bros. had Paul Newman, and both insisted on top billing, which was tricky. McQueen also insisted not just that his salary equal Newman’s but that they have the same number of lines. (You can almost feel the screenwriters divvying them up.) Still, audiences got a bigger movie, and Fox and Warner Bros. got the biggest attendance of 1974  —   roughly the same as for one of the Lord of the Rings movies. So everybody won, proving that it can be profitable to not go   . Which is not to suggest that Hollywood has learned that lesson: Witness last year’s twin terrible opera singers Marguerite and Florence Foster Jenkins, and the not two, but seven Robin Hood movies currently in development, including feminist,   and   versions. Because the gazillion previous ones listed in IMDB just weren’t enough. Editor Nina Gregory, producer Andrew Limbong and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this piece."
"The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee has voted   to increase its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point and said it aims to raise interest rates twice more by the end of the year. The only dissenting vote came from Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve’s regional bank in Minneapolis, according to the Fed’s statement. Wednesday’s move brings the federal funds rate to a range of 0. 75 percent to 1 percent. The increase was expected by the market and is consistent with what Fed officials had been signaling. The Fed also said it is looking to increase rates three times next year, as inflation approaches the central bank’s target annual rate of 2 percent, and the unemployment rate  —   now at 4. 7 percent  —   appears stable. ”The Committee expects that economic conditions will evolve in a manner that will warrant gradual increases in the federal funds rate,” the central bank said in its statement, pointing to recent increases in inflation to within its target rate and to the continued improvements in the labor market. The critical change, says PNC economist Gus Faucher, is that the Fed’s previous statement had promised ”only gradual increases.” Removing the word ”only” from Wednesday’s statement gave the Fed greater leeway to increase rates more rapidly. In the news conference following the release of its statement, Fed Chair Janet Yellen underscored the greater optimism. ”We’re closing in, I think, on our employment objective we’re coming closer on our inflation objective. . .. It looks to us to be appropriate to gradually raise the federal funds rate to neutral,” Yellen said. She described ”neutral” as a state where the central bank is neither putting on brakes nor accelerating monetary policy to juice the economy. Not everyone was pleased with the decision to hike rates, saying the economy is not as strong as the Fed makes it out to be and that while employment is stable, wages have been stagnant. ”The economy still remains far below where it was predicted it should be in the beginning of the crisis,” said Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, in arguing for continued low rates. Some other economists echoed that sentiment. ”The share of adults between the ages of 25 and 54 with a job hasn’t even recovered to   Recession levels, which were, in turn, far below the peaks reached in the late 1990s,” Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog. ”And, most importantly, no durable and significant acceleration of wage growth to healthy levels has happened yet.” Yellen responded to those critics in her news conference, saying the Fed was concerned about putting off further increases much longer. ”Waiting too long to scale back some accommodation,” she said, ”could potentially require us to raise rates rapidly sometime down the road, which in turn could risk disrupting financial markets and pushing the economy into recession.”"
"Updated at 10:15 a. m ET Thursday, The U. S. Women’s National Hockey Team  —   the reigning world champions  —   won’t be defending their title this year. They announced Wednesday that they will be boycotting the championships later this month as a protest against USA Hockey, citing stalled negotiations for ”fair wages and equitable support” from the organization. There may still be a women’s national team on the ice, though. The boycotting players said in a statement Thursday that they ”have heard that USA Hockey is attempting to field an alternative team to play in the World Championship games.” A spokesman for USA Hockey says they do still intend to field a team for the event, but that they are currently speaking with the   team on a    basis. ”We will take a look at what the responses are and then we will go from there,” spokesman Dave Fischer told NPR. The existing U. S. national team is a dominant player in women’s ice hockey  —   they’ve medaled in all five Olympic Games that featured women’s hockey and won the world championships seven times since 2000. (Over the same time frame, the men won two Olympic and two World Championship silvers.) The players are asking for higher wages  —   pointing out that in the past, USA Hockey paid them $1, 000 a month for six months every Olympic cycle, and ”virtually nothing” for the other 3   years. That works out to $1, 500 a year. Forward Meghan Duggan says it’s not fair for USA Hockey to pay them for only six months every four years when they train full time. ”It’s 365 days a year to be an Olympic athlete,” she says. ”It’s our life, our everything.” The players do receive   support directly from the U. S. Olympic Committee  —   without which, Duggan says, ”there would be no financial survival at all.” Approximately half of the national team players hold ”second or third jobs,” according to a press release from the lawyers representing the team. Players on the men’s national team can also play on the NHL  —   where the minimum salary is more than half a million dollars. The NWHL, meanwhile, recently slashed its salaries, which were $ $26, 000 before the pay reduction. In short, there’s ”no apples to apples comparison” between the financial positions of the male and female Olympic teams, says John Langel, a lawyer representing the women’s team. But their protest extends beyond paychecks. The women say there are pervasive, possibly illegal inequities in how USA Hockey treats male and female players  —   in terms of equipment, meals, hotel accommodations, staffing, marketing and PR, among other things. The team’s lawyers highlight youth programs, in particular: ”At the younger levels, USA Hockey spends approximately $3. 5 million annually to support a schedule of more than 60 games a season for boys participating in its National Team Development Program. There are no comparable development opportunities for girls, and the Women’s National Team plays only nine games in   years. Over the course of its yearlong negotiations, the players have made repeated requests of USA Hockey for increased playing opportunities and financial support consistent with the boys’ teams.” In a press release, USA Hockey said it was ”disappointed” by the players’ decision to boycott the championships. ”USA Hockey has a   commitment to the support, advancement and growth of girls and women’s hockey and any claims to the contrary are unfounded,” the organization said. It also suggested that it has ”proactively” increased its financial support for the women’s team and is preparing a package that ”could result in each player receiving nearly $85, 000 in cash over the Olympic training and performance period.” Duggans and Langel say that’s misleading. Most of those funds wouldn’t come from USA Hockey. The figure represents mainly the money the players would get anyway from the USOC and is variable, depending on whether they win a medal and what kind. It also only addresses payments during an Olympic year, not in the other three years that the women have to train and compete, the team says. Besides, the stipend increase ”does nothing to address the marketing and training support [which] is not on par with what it provides to the men’s and boys’ teams,” the women’s team said in a statement. In the USA Hockey statement, president Jim Smith says, ”USA Hockey’s role is not to employ athletes and we will not do so.” Duggan said that was ”difficult” to hear. ”They tell us when to be places, how long to be there. . .. We base where we live, what we do, when our alarms go off, when we sleep, what we eat, based on their orders, and their anticipation that we will show up and perform for them when asked. ”It is our life, every day, every minute  —   it’s for USA Hockey and this program.”"
"In truth, there is no way to come with a 100 percent accurate count of all the health workers who have died since the conflict in Syria that began six years ago this month. That’s because it takes a lot of checking to verify a death  —   Physicians for Human Rights, for example, wants to know the victim’s name, job, the location and date of death and the cause of death. And they want three sources who can back up the account. So not every death has been officially confirmed. In fact, Elise Baker, a researcher for PHR, says she believes that the organization has only been able to verify 50 to 65 percent of reported health worker deaths. But now there is at least a minimum number of confirmed deaths: 814. That’s the figure in a new study in the British medical journal Lancet, which compiles data from groups like PHR that carefully document health worker deaths from all kinds of organizations. Dr. Samer Jabbour of the American University of Beirut is the study author. The toll includes doctors, nurses, medics and others, including dentists and pharmacy students. Cases where the health worker was not deliberately targeted as part of an attack on a health facility were not counted. Jabbour says that the researchers looked at numbers that had been verified up to 2016 and added in deaths in early 2017 that could also be confirmed. The chart below gives the death toll year by year. The paper notes: ”We propose the idea of weaponization of health care to capture the phenomenon of   use of violence to restrict or deny access to care as a weapon of war.” ”Our point was to say, this is the story of the conflict,” says Jabbour, ”and that we should not accept this situation.” And yet the situation goes on. ”The study goes to print,” he says, ”and then boom, you hear about another health worker killed.”"
"The IRS Data Retrieval Tool is down. If those words don’t send a shiver up your spine, it means you’re not a high school senior or college student rushing to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. The FAFSA is the form  —   famously complicated and difficult to finish  —   that stands between many   students and the federal, state and institutional aid they need to pay for college. In the past, many students weren’t finishing the FAFSA because it required them to manually enter their parents’ tax data from the previous year. That was a big hurdle, but there were also clear fixes, including making the FAFSA available earlier and requiring parents’ ” ” year tax data instead. The latter allowed more students to utilize the IRS tool, which can automatically answer most of the FAFSA’s tough tax questions. In 2015, the Obama administration agreed to these fixes, and so far this year, FAFSA completion rates are soaring. ”Particularly for high school seniors, filing rates are up 74 percent through the middle of February,” says Carrie Warick, director of policy and advocacy with the National College Access Network. But that progress may be on hold. Students who recently tried to use the IRS tool were told: ”This service will be unavailable due to system maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.” ”System maintenance,” it turns out, wasn’t the full story, either. According to a joint statement released Thursday by the IRS and the Department of Education: ”As part of a wider, ongoing effort at the IRS to protect the security of data, the IRS decided to temporarily suspend the Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) as a precautionary step following concerns that information from the tool could potentially be misused by identity thieves.” At first, Warick says, many students and school counselors assumed it was a temporary glitch and simply waited a day or two to try again. That’s a problem.  ”They can’t just wait for it to work,” Warick says, because according to the statement, ”the online data tool will be unavailable for several weeks.” To make matters worse, now is prime time for FAFSA filers, with many states’ ”priority”   deadlines approaching. Students who apply in time are most likely to get the aid they qualify for before the money runs out. In Texas, where Sarah Jensen works, that deadline is technically today. Jensen is the director of college access and success for the Commit Partnership in Dallas. She says students can still enter their parents’ 2015 tax data by hand, assuming they can get it.  ”Imagine what it would feel like if, on April First, two weeks before the tax deadline, TurboTax and all your online filing sites went down with no notice,” Jensen says. And answering those tough tax questions will be especially hard for   students who may be   transient or not live with the parent whose tax information they’re required to provide. ”If you don’t come from the stable background with two parents who are living at home and have both gone to college, trying to find those answers can be a large impediment for those students,” says Warick. In short: Students are in for ”a rude awakening,” says the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, or NASFAA. Until the problem is resolved, NASFAA’s president and CEO, Justin Draeger, called on the Education Department ”to take immediate steps to ease application and verification burdens that will fall squarely on students, potentially delaying or complicating their application process, not to mention increasing work on college campuses that could lead to delays and backlogs.”"
"Updated at 2:40 p. m. ET, The Justice Department has announced charges against four people, including two Russian security officials, over cybercrimes linked to a massive hack of millions of Yahoo user accounts. Two of the defendants  —   Dmitry Dokuchaev and his superior Igor Sushchin  —   are officers of the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB. According to court documents, they ”protected, directed, facilitated and paid” two criminal hackers, Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov, to access information that has intelligence value. Belan also allegedly used the information obtained for his personal financial gain. ”The criminal conduct at issue, carried out and otherwise facilitated by officers from an FSB unit that serves as the FBI’s point of contact in Moscow on cybercrime matters, is beyond the pale,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord said. She told reporters that U. S. investigators believe Dokuchaev and Sushchin were working in their official capacity as FSB agents at the time. Baratov was arrested Tuesday in Canada. NPR’s Greg Myre reports that the U. S. plans to seek his extradition, and that three other defendants are in Russia, which has no extradition treaty with the U. S. Belan is one of the world’s most notorious hackers. There’s an Interpol ”Red Notice” for his arrest, and he has been listed as one of the FBI’s Most Wanted hackers since 2012. ”Rather than arrest him, however, the FSB officers used him,” the indictment reads. It alleges that the officers also ”provided him with sensitive FSB law enforcement and intelligence information that would have helped him avoid detection by law enforcement.” The massive hack against at least 500 million Yahoo user accounts happened in 2014. The company publicly acknowledged the breach last September, saying at the time that it believed a ”  actor” was responsible, without naming any foreign government. The disclosure prompted an investigation by U. S. authorities. Some of the accounts breached had obvious intelligence value. According to court documents, these included: ”Russian journalists and politicians critical of the Russian government Russian citizens and government officials former officials from countries bordering Russia and U. S. government officials, including cyber security, diplomatic, military, and White House personnel.” Other targets included businesses, such as a Russian investment banking firm as well as ”a French transportation company U. S. financial services and private equity firms a Swiss bitcoin and banking firm and a U. S. airline.” The court documents state that Belan ”provided his FSB conspirators . .. with the unauthorized access to Yahoo’s network.” He is also accused of using the access to the network for personal financial gain. For example, he allegedly stole financial and gift card information from the Yahoo accounts, and implemented a spam marketing scheme that impacted millions of users, according to the documents. Baratov allegedly helped the FSB agents access accounts at other providers such as Google, often assisted by information stolen from the breached Yahoo accounts. He was allegedly paid about $100 per account accessed. You can read more details of the allegations in the indictment: The company has also indicated in regulatory filings that forged cookies may have been used to access user accounts. It said today that those cookies are also part of the alleged Russian security breach. ”We appreciate the FBI’s diligent investigative work and the DOJ’s decisive action to bring to justice those responsible for the crimes against Yahoo and its users,” the company said in a statement Wednesday. ”We’re committed to keeping our users and our platforms secure and will continue to engage with law enforcement to combat cybercrime.” This wasn’t the only major breach Yahoo has reported in recent years. The company revealed an even larger hacking incident impacting more than 1 billion accounts that occurred in 2013, as we reported. It’s not clear whether the intrusions are related. Today’s charges are also distinct from the U. S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia launched an ”influence campaign” in order to help President Trump win the election. The Department of Justice is trying to ratchet up pressure on foreign hackers accused of carrying out cyberattacks on U. S. targets. Federal officials have also recently charged individuals from China and Iran over hacking allegations. In 2014, as NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported, the Department of Justice ”charged five uniformed members of Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army of China with stealing secrets from American business competitors.” Last year, U. S. officials indicted seven hackers with links to the Iranian government for cyberattacks. ”Court papers said the intruders attacked the web sites of dozens of major U. S. banks and breached controls at a dam in Rye, N. Y. raising alarms about safeguards in American infrastructure,” Carrie reported."
"Updated March 16, 6:30 p. m. ET, The Republican and Democrat leading the Senate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election appeared Thursday to counter White House claims that there may have been surveillance of some sort on Trump Tower around the campaign, even if there was not specific wiretapping as President Trump said in a tweet nearly two weeks ago. Meanwhile, the White House aggressively defended the president’s assertions on Thursday. ”Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016,” Sen. Richard Burr,  . C. and Sen. Mark Warner,  . said in a joint statement. The White House has asserted in recent days that when Trump tweeted that ”Obama had my ’wires tapped’ in Trump Tower,” he was referring to various surveillance measures available to the U. S. government. In a Fox News interview on Wednesday night, Trump said that ”wiretap covers a lot of different things.” He also said in the interview that he expects ”some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer reacted heatedly when asked about the statement from the intelligence committee on Thursday afternoon, accusing the media of covering the Russia investigation in a biased manner. Spicer said the president ”stands by” his claim, then went on to read off a number of media reports, many of which revolved around the investigation of possible Russian interference in the campaign but not necessarily surveillance of Trump Tower. The response from Spicer lasted approximately nine minutes and involved the press secretary repeating the accusation of possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, which the intelligence committees have not said they have evidence to support. Spicer also repeated an accusation from a report on Fox News, based on anonymous sources, that   Barack Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump during the campaign. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said on Wednesday he doesn’t believe ”there was an actual tap of Trump Tower,” but the statement from the Senate intelligence leaders represents broader pushback. Asked Thursday to weigh in on wiretapping, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, ”We’ve cleared that up. That  —   that we’ve seen no evidence of that.” Trump has not produced any evidence to back his assertion. Spicer said this week, ”I think there is significant reporting about surveillance techniques that have existed throughout the 2016 election.” And, referring to the president, ”I think he feels very confident that what will ultimately come of this will vindicate him.” The top Democrat on the House committee, Adam Schiff, told NPR’s All Things Considered on Wednesday ”there’s no evidence” to support Trump’s claim. Schiff says the question will remain: ”Why would the president do this? And that’s a question the president will have to answer.” Speaking at a Capitol Hill news conference on Wednesday, Nunes, a Republican from California, said: ”President Obama wouldn’t physically go over and wiretap Trump Tower. So now you have to decide, as I mentioned to [the press] last week, are you going to take the tweets literally? And if you are then clearly the president was wrong. But if you’re not going to take the tweets literally and there is a concern that the president has about other people, other surveillance activities looking at him and his associates  —   either appropriately or inappropriately  —   we want to find that out.” FBI Director James Comey is likely to face questions about whether the agency obtained a warrant to wiretap Trump Tower at a House committee hearing on March 20. Nunes and Schiff confirmed NSA Director Mike Rogers will appear along with Comey at the hearing. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of a Senate judiciary subcommittee investigating Russia, is also expecting some answers. In an interview on NBC’s Today show, Graham threatened to subpoena the Department of Justice to force officials to reveal whether they have been investigating the Trump campaign. Graham said the Senate will also hold up the nomination of Rod Rosenstein, Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general, until Congress is provided with information ”to finally clear the air as to whether there was ever a warrant issued against the Trump campaign.” Graham and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, sent a letter to Comey two weeks ago asking him to provide the information by Wednesday. The former president’s office has denied the charge. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said he knew of no warrant to wiretap Trump. Graham says he knows of no evidence of such a warrant but added that he is now ”getting concerned, because it’s taking so long to answer my letter.” The House Intelligence Committee had asked the Department of Justice to provide evidence backing up the president’s claim by March 13. Nunes and Schiff now say they expect an answer by March 20. Intelligence officials have concluded that Russia employed cyberattacks during the presidential campaign intended to hurt Hillary Clinton and aid Trump. Nunes said it is possible that conversations Trump campaign officials had with Russia were captured in surveillance of Russian officials, such as contact between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. Nunes expressed concern that such surveillance was leaked for political motivation and is asking for more information on such surveillance from the intelligence community."
"A passenger on a flight from Beijing to Melbourne, Australia, was listening to music on her own personal headphones when the headphones suddenly caught fire, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau says. The ATSB assessed that the batteries within the headphones were probably the cause of the fire. The Australian safety agency released information about the incident on its website, omitting the woman’s name and any details about the kind of headphones she was using. They quoted the woman’s description of what happened, beginning with the loud explosion she heard while she was sleeping: ”As I went to turn around I felt burning on my face. . .. I just grabbed my face which caused the headphones to go around my neck. ”I continued to feel burning so I grabbed them off and threw them on the floor. They were sparking and had small amounts of fire. ”As I went to stamp my foot on them the flight attendants were already there with a bucket of water to pour on them. They put them into the bucket at the rear of the plane.” The ATSB says the battery and cover of the headphones melted to the floor of the aircraft, and the smell of melted plastic and burnt hair filled the aircraft. The press release doesn’t identify the type of battery. But   batteries, the kind widely used in rechargeable small electronics, have caused issues on planes before. Between March 1991 and December 2016, the Federal Aviation Administration documented 138 incidents at airports and in airplanes of devices smoking and catching on fire. The tally ”should not be considered as a complete listing,” the agency says. Culprits included   devices, laptops, loose batteries and small devices crushed in   mechanisms. There are several documented incidents of fires erupting on cargo planes carrying large volumes of   batteries, causing at least one deadly crash. Last year, the U. N. urged national aviation regulators to ban such batteries from being carried as cargo on passenger planes. And the Galaxy Note 7, a Samsung smartphone whose   batteries infamously caused explosions and fires, were banned on all U. S. flights months ago."
"After missing two chances to control the compositions he   while in The Beatles  —   once in 1969 when he and John Lennon were outbid and again to Michael Jackson, in a duplicitous move by the King of Pop, in the ’80s  —   Paul McCartney is not taking any chances. First, the fine print. In the U. S. authors are allowed to regain copyrights they had previously assigned to other parties, such as a music publishing company, after 56 years, a feature of stateside copyright law designed to give    artists and their families a financial silver lining (not that McCartney needs it). McCartney is extremely keen, after the previously mentioned burns he sustained, to regain control of his Beatles work  —   so much so that he filed termination notices, the legal mechanism for him to regain his copyrights, on The Beatles’ ”Love Me Do” and ”P. S. I Love You,” about 10 years ahead of schedule. (They turn 56 years old in October, 2018.) Despite that due diligence the pop genius filed suit this past January against    —   the world’s largest music publisher, which controls much of the   songbook  —   based essentially on a conversation, shared in court documents, in late 2016 during a Billy Joel concert between his lawyer and   chairman and CEO Martin Bandier. The talk seemed to indicate that McCartney’s reclamations, which should be protected by U. S. law, may not go as smoothly as he’d hoped. The pair’s chat focused on a recent U. K. court case in which   successfully prevented members of Duran Duran from regaining control of hit songs they’d signed away to publishers in the ’80s, despite filing notices much as McCartney has. The discussion alarmed McCartney enough that he brought suit against the publishing giant to ensure it wasn’t planning on using the same legal strategy against him next year. The company urged calm. In both an email thread before McCartney sued and in subsequent court documents,   has maintained that it does not plan to challenge the notices McCartney filed to get back his landmark Beatles compositions. Bandier emailed McCartney’s lawyer that ”the previously served notices of termination . .. constitute an effective exercise . .. and will become effective on the dates stated in the notices.”   also wrote in a court memo Monday (Mar. 13) that it ”has never stated that it intends to assert” a claim similar to the one in the Duran Duran case. Here’s the rub, though: The purpose of  ’s filing on Mar. 13 was to claim that McCartney’s suit is premature  —   or ”unripe”  —   since the Duran Duran case in the U. K. in ongoing (it is currently awaiting appeal). Because of this, the publisher wants to have McCartney’s suit against the company dismissed without prejudice (”without” allows McCartney to bring his case again). That the company is looking to dismiss McCartney’s case until Duran Duran’s is finished could, however, be an ominous sign  —   one that McCartney and his lawyers clearly picked up on.   maintains it is simply protecting itself by not signing away rights before they’re fully determined via the Duran Duran case  —   rights it could, ostensibly, use to challenge McCartney’s termination claims in the U. K. Which, again, it says it does not plan on doing. McCartney, wisely given his past experience, isn’t waiting around to find out whether or not   is as benevolent as it claims."
"Two years ago, a U. N.  scientific agency declared that the popular weedkiller glyphosate probably causes cancer. That finding from the International Agency for Research on Cancer caused an international uproar. Monsanto, the company that invented glyphosate and still sells most of it, unleashed a fierce campaign to discredit the IARC’s conclusions. New details of the company’s counterattack came to light this week. Internal company emails, released as part of a lawsuit against the company, show how Monsanto recruited outside scientists to   reports defending the safety of glyphosate, sold under the brand name Roundup. Monsanto executive William Heydens proposed that the company ” ” one paper. In an email, Heydens wrote that ”we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit  sign their names so to speak.” Heydens wrote that this is how Monsanto had ”handled” an earlier paper on glyphosate’s safety. That earlier paper, published in 2000, acknowledges Monsanto’s help in assembling the data, but does not list any Monsanto employees as  . The emails also offer hints of a friendly relationship between Monsanto and a senior regulator at the Environmental Protection Agency, Jess Rowland. The EPA was already doing its own assessment of glyphosate’s health risks, but after the U. N. report appeared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention apparently was considering launching its own study. In late April, 2015, Rowland called a regulatory expert at Monsanto, Daniel Jenkins, to ask who at the CDC was working on the glyphosate study. Jenkins reported on the conversation in an email to his colleagues. He wrote that Rowland ”told me no coordination is going on and he wanted to establish some saying ’If I can kill this I should get a medal.” In a separate email in September, 2015, Jenkins wrote that ”Jess will be retiring from EPA in ~5 —  6 months and could be useful as we move forward with ongoing glyphosate defense.” Rowland has since retired from the EPA. The documents were collected as evidence in a lawsuit that a group of cancer victims have brought against Monsanto in California. Lawyers for the plaintiffs are arguing that Monsanto executives colluded with officials at the EPA to downplay glyphosate’s health risks. The EPA concluded last fall that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer. Other scientific groups have come to similar conclusions, including a committee from the European Food Safety Agency, another U. N. agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and just today, the European Chemical Agency, ECHA."
"In a new video for the slinky,   BADBADNOTGOOD song ”Lavender,” a character named ”Ronald Klump,” a satirical Donald Trump   is the victim of a Looney   ”BANG,” fired by Snoop Dogg. (The video is also heavy on Snoop’s favorite subject, the continuous ingestion of pot.) The video, remixed by Kaytranada and newly bedrocked by verses from Snoop Dogg, was released Monday, and since then, the GOP health care bill and President Trump’s tax returns have dominated the national conversation. Nevertheless, Trump took time this morning to respond to the video: Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen also responded to the music video, telling TMZ that ”it’s totally disgraceful. Snoop owes the president an apology.” Jail time, under Obama or Trump, seems unlikely, given the First Amendment protections afforded satire and parody. As the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press explains: ” . .. subjects of even the most biting satire or criticism cannot successfully sue unless the irreverent comments contain a provably false fact.” It may be an uphill climb to establish the fact of Ronald Klump. (An apology from Snoop Dogg also does not seem forthcoming.) Over a    career, Snoop Dogg hasn’t exactly cultivated an image as a politically engaged justice warrior, but in our present moment, the cultural calculus has changed. Also, as my colleague Rodney Carmichael wrote of recent work from Joey Bada$$: ”Even when totally devoid of overt sociopolitical commentary, rap consistently speaks volumes about the state of The Union.” Warning: The video below contains language that some may find offensive."
"”I’m alone in this world,” sobs the woman, tears smudging her black eyeliner as she clutches a handbag with medicine inside  —   antiretroviral pills for HIV. Wearing a hijab that covers her long hair, a traditional Arabic dress with roses and wedge heels, she sits in the office of a community group that offers support to LGBT sex workers, trying to regain her composure. ”Princess Shadya,” as she is known to friends, is transgender and identifies as a woman. And she lives in Tanzania, where LGBT people are increasingly coming under attack from the government. ”I’m getting worried if they know I’m transgender they will refuse to give me medicine,” says Shadya, who asked that her real name not be used because of the government’s crackdown. Last August, the justice minister suspended HIV prevention programs, funded by the U. S. that were aimed at gay men  —   and warned that any nonprofit that supports homosexuality would be suspended. Since then, there has been a continued effort to wind back or stop such programs. In February, the government banned 40 private   health centers from providing services for   to ”key populations”  —   a category that includes gay men, transgender people and sex workers. The reason: Health minister Ummy Mwalimu stated at a press conference that ”it was established that the centers were promoting homosexuality, which is against Tanzania’s laws.” And on March 5, deputy health minister Dr. Hamisi Kigwangalla tweeted: ”The war against promotion and normalization of homosexuality in Tanzania is real. I commend recent efforts by the police force on our cause.” Kigwangalla, who is a medical doctor, has also ordered three men to turn themselves into the police for ”spreading” homosexuality. Among his other Twitter remarks: This kind of   attitude is part of Tanzania’s history. From 1885 until World War I, Tanzania was a Germany colony and the German   law was in force. Then the British took over their laws against ”gross indecency”  —   basically sexual acts between men  —   were in place until 1945. That year, the colony passed its own criminal code that prescribed 30 years to life in jail for male sex. Lesbian sex, however, is not criminalized. Despite the legal prohibitions, the country had a reputation for accepting its LGBT community  —   until John Magufuli was elected president in late 2015. Nicknamed the ”Bulldozer” for his pragmatic attitude, Magufuli has stepped up efforts to penalize homosexual behavior, part of a wider crackdown during which journalists have also been targeted, Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner for Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania, said in 2016 he personally would look for gay people on Facebook and Instagram and arrest them. He publicly said that those who follow gays are ”just as guilty as the homosexual.” Even when programs for people with HIV are in place, patients may be afraid to come for help. At one clinic that works with the LGBT population, around 30 people would come in each month for free testing for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, medication, condoms and lubricants. Now, no one shows up, says Wenty, a a staff member who asked to be identified only by his first name because of the fear of government persecution. ”People have stopped [coming in for] their HIV medication, they don’t go for HIV testing and counseling,” he adds. The clinic would also pay for community health educators to escort patients to private clinics for treatment of sexually transmitted infections. They’d make sure the patient got to the right departments. This service was discontinued last year out of fear. The clinic directors decided to paint over the words ”HIV testing and counseling and psychological support” on the inside walls. And they’re planning to take down the outdoor sign with the clinic’s name. ”I think people have never feared like this before,” says Wenty. Tanzania currently receives approximately $380 million a year from PEPFAR, the U. S. program that supports programs to prevent HIV and AIDS and provides medications for people who are HIV positive. ”We have been consistent in expressing concern on the statements and actions taken by certain Tanzanian officials targeting health care providers and civil society organizations that provide services to key populations at risk of ” a USAID spokesman wrote in an email to NPR. ”We urge Tanzania to maintain its prior commitments to combat the   epidemic and to serve all of its people and populations equally without bias or discrimination.” In a statement posted to its Facebook page on February 17 after the government announced the ban on   centers, the U. S, embassy in Tanzania said it anticipated the decision will ”result in fewer Tanzanians receiving lifesaving services and expand the epidemic among those most in need of viral suppression.” Neela Ghoshal, a researcher in the LGBT rights division of Human Rights Watch, said the Tanzanian government ”ought to know better  —   if you begin shutting down health services dedicated to key populations, including men who have sex with men, it’s quite likely that you’ll see an uptake in HIV prevalence among these groups,” she says. ”You’ll also see people stop adhering to their drugs because it can even become unsafe for them in some cases to go out and get ARVs.” For Princess Shadya, who’s 23, the new atmosphere is the latest in a series of obstacles. Once she worried that she didn’t have tap water in her home so it was hard to down her pills. Now she’s afraid to go to the hospital to pick up her medications because police officers are patients there, she says, and she worries she could be arrested. Rama, a gay    man, sits next to Princess Shadya, trying to comfort his friend. ”Here in Africa when you’re gay there’s a big problem,” he says, crossing two fingers to make an ”x,” underlining his point that homosexuality is taboo in Tanzania. ”Gays here live in fear.” Freelance journalist Amy Fallon has reported from Africa, Asia, Australia and the United Kingdom. She is on Twitter @amyfallon"
"Blizzards and deep snow walloped the East Coast this week, and for glade skiers, the late blast of winter was a joy. Glades are steep, wooded trails, sort of a cross between a   route and the downhill slopes you find at groomed ski areas. These days, you can find glades at many resorts. But the most beautiful are hidden away in remote, alpine forests, far from the crowds and the chairlifts. One of the most popular in the northeast is Lyon Mountain, located in a remote corner of the Adirondacks in upstate New York. I’m a novice at this sport, but I figure there’s no better place to get a glade skiing lesson than here on a recent bright winter morning. My guide is Chris Morris of Saranac Lake, N. Y. an experienced back country skier who’s been coming here since he was a kid. The trip promises the excitement and challenge of steep slopes and the remoteness and solitude of the deep woods. ”There’s a lot of snow out here,” Morris says as we set off. ”It’s beautiful, a bluebird day. We are in the woods by ourselves and I think this is probably the place to be today.” We climb along gorgeous switchbacks through birch and maple. It’s not easy trudging up, especially for my   legs. But after 90 minutes or so of steady climbing, we’re finally there, not too far off the summit. Looking down the side of the   mountain, I’m excited but I’m also nervous. Carving a line between those trees looks risky. Suddenly, the glade looks a lot less open, a lot more difficult to navigate. But we set off, letting gravity take over. In some sections, it’s an absolute blast  ” sort of like sledding as a kid, on the biggest hill you can imagine. But the truth is I’m a clumsy skier and the snow is heavy. Often my best strategy for missing trees is to sprawl like a toddler in the deep powder. The joy is watching Chris. He slices confidently through the forest like a character in a fairy tale, flitting through sun and shadow. ”I don’t know if it’s the way my brain is wired, but I like the challenge of coming down through the trees,” Morris says. ”There’s something about it, picking your way down and picking your line. I feel really at peace when I’m doing it.” Chris shows me what it’s really like to fly through the trees, following the shape of the mountain. I can’t wait to go back and try again."
"Polling places saw strong turnout for today’s election in the Netherlands, with 55 percent of voters casting a ballot before 6 p. m. local time, according to local media. The crowd was manageable at a house in Marle, in the eastern Netherlands, that’s hosted a voting booth for decades. While Holland’s national vote is being seen as a barometer of populism, it’s also reminding us of the wide range of polling places in Holland, from a gleaming   to an old windmill. It’s not a challenge for the Westhoff family to reach a voting booth there’s one in their living room at the bed and breakfast they run in Marle. In an arrangement that goes back to 1948, the Westhoffs’ farm house has hosted voters in their small community of fewer than 100 people. The town is nestled between a river and a dike  —   a geography that can make it hard to visit nearby polling stations. It’s been years since the property was a commercial farm, the Westhoss say on their website. But, they add, ”There are still animals: some cows, five donkeys, two dogs and a cat.” A comparison of photos from today and from the 2010 election shows that Wim and Elly Westhoff have kept their house as tidy as ever  —   and this time around, they’ve added a bit more color to their décor. They’ve also removed a carpet runner that protected their wood floors. While the Netherlands’ high voter turnout was expected, due to the divisive and passionate debates over nationalism and inclusion that have gripped parts of Europe, we have to think that other nations could boost voter participation if they put more ballot booths in quaint houses. It also wouldn’t hurt to follow the Westhoffs’ example, and lay out some   bread on the coffee table. Other polling places in the Netherlands include a maritime museum and a cafe a historic church and a beachfront. And while there’s also a ballot box set up on the 20th floor of The A’dam Tower in Amsterdam, we wouldn’t mind exercising democracy  —   or simply visiting  —   a windmill in Oisterwijk that’s been converted into a voting booth in south central Netherlands."
"Dutch voters are choosing a new government Wednesday, in parliamentary elections that   politician Geert Wilders  —   aka ”the Dutch Donald Trump”  —   hopes will put his Freedom Party in power. The vote is seen as a test of the power of populist nationalism, which won key votes in Britain and the U. S. High voter turnout was reported by local media in the first hours of voting, with 33 percent of voters hitting the polls by 1:45 p. m. local time, according to public broadcaster NOS. The last polls are scheduled to close at 9 p. m.  —   4 p. m. ET here in the U. S.  —   and the tabulation will begin. The Dutch vote is being watched closely in Europe  —   particularly because Wilders has pledged to take the Netherlands out of the EU. The vote also comes before national elections in France and Germany, where   candidates are eyeing gains. After voting in The Hague, Prime Minister Mark Rutte addressed camera crews and urged voters to reject Wilders, asking the Dutch public to think about how a Freedom Party win would look. ”I think the rest of the world will then see that after Brexit, after the American elections, again the wrong sort of populism has won the day,” he said, according to the BBC. When Wilders voted around an hour earlier, he told reporters, ”Whatever the outcome of the election today, the genie will not go back into the bottle.” Wilders’ party was among the leaders in opinion polls, riding a wave of concerns about migrants and Muslims. The Freedom Party slipped in the last round of polls before today’s vote  —   but we’ll note that polls in both Britain and the U. S. proved unreliable in the face of strong voter sentiment. Rutte and his ruling Liberal Party are among the 13 parties that hope to win seats and set the national agenda by either picking a leader outright or forming a coalition government. In recent appearances, Wilders has been seen wearing a bulletproof vest. As NPR’s Frank Langfitt has reported, ”  and ISIS have threatened to kill him.” Here’s how Frank lays out Wilders’ strategy: ”Wilders, who’s been compared to Trump by the Dutch press and some voters, is a colorful figure, known for his   pompadour and extreme rhetoric. He has been running an     ’Holland First’  campaign and has vowed to ’make the Netherlands ours again.’ ” Saying that Wilders appeals to ”a broad range of people,” from older voters to those who feel immigration threatens to take away their livelihoods, a Dutch political analyst discussed the people who’ve swayed elections in Britain and the U. S.  —   and are now giving Wilders momentum: ”I think they’re exactly the same people. They are people who not necessarily are poor, but actually have a lot to lose. Trump voters, they earned over $70, 000 per annum. You see a large part of the Wilders vote, they’re earning a lot of money. Most of them earn more this year than last year, but they feel that they might lose everything. So, it’s not what they have, it’s what they think they might lose.”"
"Whether you’re a Bobcat, Colonial, Catamount or Bulldog, there’s nearly no doubt you’ve heard of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament that kicks off in full on Thursday. On Tuesday, we asked NPR’s Facebook audience to pick all 67 games of the NCAA Tournament, and you came through, ultimately picking the Villanova Wildcats to repeat as men’s basketball champions. You can watch the broadcast in the videos attached to the story. The second video is every pick from the second round until the national championship game. You can see the bracket chosen solely by our Facebook audience below. Judging by the comments, the audience picked based on basketball knowledge, uniform colors, mascot strength and other criteria. During the broadcast, we offered up mascot matchups between teams: Would you choose a wildcat over a cavalier? (to represent the Villanova vs. Virginia game) Frankly, there were so many emoji picks that we lost count, but rest assured that more than 200, 000 people saw the stream and could participate if they so chose. We’re thankful for all of you who did. Over the combined 2    broadcast, our Facebook audience ultimately ended up with a fairly   bracket. We submitted the bracket chosen by the audience to ESPN (as of Wednesday afternoon, we were already eliminated from perfect bracket contention since the audience chose Wake Forest over Kansas State in the First Four matchup from Tuesday evening). Since we were actually pretty tired after yesterday’s broadcast, we didn’t get the submission in until Wednesday morning, so in all fairness, we just replaced Wake Forest with Kansas State and had it go as far as you chose Wake Forest to advance. One last thing: We have created a group tournament challenge between the NPR Live team and other NPR staffers. We’d like you to join as well and compete against us and NPR’s audience. There are no prizes being given, but you will be able to tout your picking prowess should you come out on top. You can create your bracket at ESPN in the Nipper Live group with the password ”gooddognipper” (sans quotes). We’ll revisit your picks from Tuesday throughout the tournament and see just how well NPR’s audience knows its basketball, even if we’re not going to beat those 1 in 9.  odds of a perfect bracket."
"Atlanta eats its young. That might be a   accusation to level at a town dripping with so much black cultural currency. But the   capital has gained more than it’s ever contributed to its greatest export. Welcome to the city too player to hate. Where a handful of Dungeon dragons gave birth to an extended Family  —   from Goodie Mob and OutKast to Killer Mike and Future  —   that permanently shifted  ’s center of gravity. Where the trap transformed from literal   to hypothetical escape route for the discarded and forgotten. Where a generation left to its own digital devices created a content craze by teaching the world to Dab, Whip, Drop that Nae Nae, Hit Them Folks and Whoop Rico. Like music to capitalism’s ears, these are the signs of a sonic identity 20 years in the making. Meanwhile, the city continues to reinvent itself for the sake of outward appearances. Now it’s the Hollywood of the South. Next it’s the Silicon Valley of the South. But the one thing Atlanta has consistently been, the   pedigree that’s kept its international flame perennially lit, still gets the shaft on the low. Consider this irony: Donald Glover’s celebrated FX show Atlanta, which earned record ratings and Golden Globe statues following its debut season, received Georgia film tax incentives legislated within the last decade to lure film and TV production to the Peach State. Yet the    homegrown music industry, on which the show’s plot is centered, still runs off an ecosystem largely unsupported by state funding or investment from the city’s civic and corporate communities. The resulting failure to leverage this global cultural cachet suggests too many people in high places don’t fully understand, appreciate or respect the value of   as an economic growth engine. While local politicos and power brokers look outside the city for   inspiration, they often overlook the one thing the rest of the world looks to Atlanta for. In the last two months alone, a steady stream of mainstream dominance has kept all eyes on the ATL: Migos popped the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with ”Bad and Boujee” and the group’s album, C U L T U R E, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Future became the first solo artist in history to release two albums that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in    weeks. Lil Yachty added a major Target endorsement  —   and the longest commercial aired during the Grammy Awards’ February broadcast  —   to his portfolio. 21 Savage signed a deal with Epic Records, where CEO L. A. Reid continues to corral talent fresh from the southern city where he   the   LaFace Records a quarter century ago. And the latest virtual unknown to continue Atlanta’s streak of seemingly overnight phenoms is newcomer SahBabii, who spits melodies so tender they belie the explicit reality he represents. His seductive street anthem ”Pull Up Wit Ah Stick”  —   slang for a   weapon  —   serves as a subtle reminder of Atlanta’s national ranking as the city with the highest gap between the rich and poor. Like the rose that grew from concrete, it’s the shameful little secret buried in Georgia’s red clay. And the resulting divide is the basis of a culture war being waged over the city’s most fetishized and stigmatized commodity. The rise of Traplanta is the untold story of a city split in half by historic income inequality, shifting racial demographics, and an equally enigmatic identity crisis. The irony, of course, is how that inequity has helped to cultivate a   innovation economy from which Atlanta perpetually feeds. ”Young rich n***** you know we ain’t really never had no old money. We got a whole lotta new money, though.”  —   Migos, ”Bad and Boujee” One month after Donald Glover made Migos a household name, two of the trio’s members  —   Quavo and Takeoff  —   found themselves receiving another honorable distinction. A flier circulating on the web suggested the rappers were scheduled to school New York University on the subject of culture. The ratchet Dab daddies who made the dance they created so ubiquitous it earned copycats Cam Newton and Hillary Clinton equal amounts of contempt were set to take on the halls of the academy. It sounded too good to miss.   in 2017 is certainly no stranger to academia. This semester alone has already seen the introduction of popular new courses on Georgia college campuses covering the trap and OutKast, alike. But Migos’ members didn’t subject themselves to two hours of QA at NYU to earn the academy’s praise. They did it for the C U L T U R E LP. A twist on the typical release party, the event was part of the rollout campaign, produced by New   music marketing firm NUE Agency, that helped them achieve their first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. It only took ten minutes for Migos’ CULTURECLASS at NYU’s Cantor Center to morph into    absurdity. Curious about Migos’ effortless ability to stride the line between culture and commerce, Julie Anne Quay  —   the stylish founder of   social media hub VFiles  —   asked: ”How is cash a fashion statement, and is there a duffle bag full of cash nearby right now?” Taking it as a cue to turn up, Quavo responded in kind: ”There’s a pocket nearby,” he said, pulling out an obscene stash of stacks like a magician retrieving a rabbit from his hat. ”Yo,” a guy in third row laughed as cheers erupted from the   of 315 students and press, ”pass some this way!” If OutKast represents the hope of Atlantis, a destination equal parts real and phantasmic, the music fertilized by Atlanta drug traps signifies the forgotten stepchild complicating the city’s purported legacy of black wealth and equal opportunity. Borne of a     wave that shot T. I. to superstardom, trap music’s original incarnation crested with the likes of Jeezy and Gucci Mane. Today the subgenre barely resembles the   struggles of its predecessors. New age flavors range from 21 Savage’s morose flows to Rae Sremmurd’s   anthems to the trippy psychedelia of Young Thug. The main difference: Trappers today are as likely to rap about using drugs as they are selling them. Still, trap largely reflects the other extreme within Atlanta’s   binary and, by extension, solidifies the   tale of two cities —  one prosperous, the other impoverished. Yet it’s trap that has succeeded in creating an ecosystem that makes the world turn up. Even in a city like Atlanta where black cool is a proven commodity, leveraging  ’s hustle has been a trying proposition. ChooseATL, the branding campaign launched by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, uses the city’s   swag to market Atlanta as a premier destination for   millennials and entrepreneurs. But the   corporate community it represents maintains an arm’  distance from many of the culture’s most marketable artists. ”People are scared of the young black creative,” says Wil May, the founder of   lifestyle, media, and hospitality company #COOL. ”That’s really frightening to America’s way of doing business.” An Emory University alum who once was roommates with Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun, May’s own evolution from   to creative entrepreneur has given him the advantage of both angles. ”It’s obvious that people don’t want to empower   on a civic or global level because they feel like it’s too dirty or too street or uplifts criminal activity,” May says. ”And while that may be true in a lot of places, in Atlanta black people have done a good job at making this a constructive movement as well.” To understand how broad trap’s fascination has traveled one need only watch the 2015   Noisey: Atlanta. The   doc racked up tens of millions of views and boatloads of controversy for its   expose of Traplanta. Even Waka Flocka Flame took to Twitter to voice criticism: ”Noisey I really feel like y’all exploitin the bad and the good in Atlanta #NotF******Kool #atall! !!!! !” In the series, Noisey offered unprecedented access to the zones of the city that people all over the world celebrate without ever grappling with the reality. (That’s true of many who call Atlanta home.) The episode featuring Migos turned the trappings of the group’s success  —     weapons and Ziploc bags of weed in a suburban Stockbridge    —   into something resembling a theater of the absurd. It wound up having   consequences. Footage from the Migos episode was used to deny group member Offset’s bond after the trio was arrested on gun and drug charges following a performance at Georgia Southern University. In a   interview from jail to a local radio show, he called Noisey ”the police” while insinuating the creators of the documentary tricked them into playing themselves on camera. This January, the week after Atlanta lost Super Bowl LI, Noisey: Atlanta 2 premiered. The   episode was a   to the original, and a chance to counterbalance the sensationalistic depiction. ”We really wanted to go back and make amends for how people took our documentary and used it against people,” Andy Capper, who produced both series, says. ”We were mad about that [and] we got some criticism and flack, too.” To return they sought the approval of Migos and the trio’s managers Kevin ”Coach K” Lee and Pierre ”Pee” Thomas. The two men behind the indie label Quality Control, home to both Migos and Lil Yachty, are the main conduits between Atlanta trap and the   music industry. Coach K’s industry influence includes formerly managing both Jeezy and Gucci Mane at different times in their careers. ”The most significant permit we got from the city was the blessing of Coach K and Pee,” Capper says. This time Noisey traded the    imagery of guns and drugs for sincere depictions of the violence and despair that undergirds the music. A kitchen scene in which 21 Savage pulls out a collection of funeral programs and begins counting off all the friends he’s tragically lost feels more climactic than anything in the first series. But Noisey also understands why trap’s subversive elements are so compelling to commercial audiences. ”The music sounds so dangerous and allows them to live vicariously through [acts like] the Migos,” Capper says. ”The Rolling Stones and Robert Johnson would sing about the devil. It’s in the tradition of all the best RB, blues and rock and roll music. That’s why it’s so successful.” Noisey: Atlanta 2 host Zach Goldbaum, who does a solid job addressing the roots of the subculture without shying away from all the vice, agrees. ”Since the early ’90s people have been obsessed with street culture,” he says. ”Trap music is a brand and [Atlanta’s] able to own that so exquisitely. That’s why we love Atlanta so much. That independent spirit of Atlanta is what we wanted to come through in the documentary. The level of influence is crazy . ... The entire coast from Miami to New York sounds like Atlanta, so we wanted to make something that really celebrates the effect the city’s had on the music industry and the sound of popular music.” But you can’t talk about the popularity of Traplanta without dredging up the socioeconomic mess that undergirds it. Not even Noisey’s daring brand of cultural tourism delves deep enough to reckon with such systemic failures as an Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal that’s left behind a whole generation of students an income inequality gap ranked No. 1 in the nation by the Brookings Institute two years in a row ( ) and an upward mobility deficit that determines metro Atlanta children have a smaller chance of moving out of poverty than those born on the bottom rungs of any other major urban region in the country, according to the Harvard   Equality of Opportunity Project. ”Many of the young people who grow up in the margins of our society in a city like Atlanta are becoming extremely successful by creating something that the whole world is acclaiming,” says Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall, who is among the   candidates in the city’s upcoming mayoral election. ”It’s a direct reflection of the inequality that we keep hearing everybody harp about in our city: the lack of equity, the lack of inclusion, the income differential that we see between those who have and those who have not.” Raised on the black and bougie side of southwest Atlanta, the local politician’s late father served as one of Martin Luther King’s youngest staff members. Hall’s three terms on city council, representing the same Old Fourth Ward neighborhood Dr. King grew up in, have been marked by attempts to reach across broad cultural lines. Though he isn’t considered a forerunner at this early stage in the race, he probably bears more genuine ties to Atlanta’s   community than any other candidate. He presented the most vocal opposition on city council to a controversial local ordinance proposed last December that would have severely tightened restrictions on music recording studios in a city whose cultural lifeblood flows from them. But Hall also acknowledges the concerns that inspired the ordinance due to the number of recording studios located in residential areas where they tend to blend in with the surrounding neighborhood. Last March, popular local rapper Bankroll Fresh died violently during a shootout outside of northwest Atlanta’s Street Execs Studio  —   the same recording home of Billboard   2 Chainz. The ordinance would have banned studios within 500 feet of residential areas. ”This is an environment that is constantly evolving,” Hall says. ”It has an impact on the expectations of quality of life that new residents, and sometimes longtime residents, feel they deserve because they’ve invested as well.” Hall believes the solution lies in fostering ties that reach beyond the typical distinctions of race and class. ”There’s an opportunity for a cultural connection,” he says, ”but right now we have some[thing] of a disconnect.” Yet the Street Execs shooting also represents an outgrowth of the same failed socioeconomic policies that have turned trap into a more viable career path out of the hood. For those whose realities contradict Atlanta’s black mecca mythology, rap is often seen as a way out of no way. It’s no coincidence, then, that the most neglected and historically deprived parts of town have produced the city’s most treasured assets. ”We’re creating a culture that’s going all around the world,” Hall says. ”So consequently, we have influence. How we leverage that influence could mean economic opportunity or it could mean strife and civil war. It’s that powerful.” A   after Atlanta began its emergence as a music powerhouse, local and peach state politicians are finally arriving late to the party. After decades spent reaping the economic impact of Atlanta rap’s local boosterism, there’s a concerted push to invest in Georgia’s music industry, which generates $3. 7 billion annually  —   largely driven by Atlanta’s   bona fides. New legislation introduced under the gold dome in Atlanta in January could offer a   percent tax credit to projects recorded or scored   that meet a $70, 000 threshold. If passed, the Georgia Music Investment Act will put music production on par with the state tax credit offered for the last decade to film and TV productions like Donald Glover’s Atlanta. When the plans for Glover’s show initially began to circulate, the city responded with a collective side eye. Residents questioned whether he was authentic enough, black enough, Atlanta enough to do the city justice. By the time the premiere rolled around last September, it drew the largest   demo audience of a basic cable or primetime scripted comedy series in the last three years. The season would go on to disprove all the doubts surrounding its star and creator. By shaping the plot of Atlanta around an average    and his exceptional Ivy League dropout    Glover accomplished something equally profound by humanizing the trap. ”Donald Glover’s doing a tremendous service by being honest about certain parts of Atlanta,” Andrew Aydin, an Atlanta native and congressional staffer for Congressman John Lewis tells me. But Atlanta alone is not at fault for its failure to embrace its   identity. As a blue city surrounded by purple ’burbs in a blood red state, racial politics throughout the region have long kept the black mecca from attaining its vision. The   push for a music tax credit is coming at the same time that MARTA, the city’s rapid transit system, is on the cusp of a partial expansion denied it for more than 40 years. Atlanta’s legacy of racialized transportation policies is symptomatic of a larger disease. ”How many statewide politicians have won elections by running against Atlanta?” Aydin asks. ”And yet, those same campaigns are financed by some of the same corporations that exist in Atlanta.” The music tax credit will require statewide politicians to buy into a predominantly black music industry, just as MARTA’s economic stability and growth has always been dependent on white suburbanites and state regulators opposed to supporting mass transit purportedly used for Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta. Even the bigoted old nickname coined for MARTA still speaks volumes. ”When your state government is telling the rest of the state that Atlanta is the problem not the answer, it breeds that strife. It breeds that conflict,” Aydin continues. ”And eventually I think everybody, the state and city folks, are going to have to realize you have to embrace Atlanta  —   you have to embrace the weird you have to embrace the different  —   because that’s our best product. That’s our best potential for future growth.” Nayvadius Wilburn is the present embodiment of that future. Quite literally. The rapper Future got his stage name from his older cousin Rico Wade,   of the legendary Dungeon Family and Organized Noize. As the story goes, Wade would tell his younger cousin, then an aspiring emcee known as Meathead, that he was indeed the future, the one to carry on the Dungeon Family legacy and, in turn, Atlanta  . The same year Future launched the first in a trio of   mixtapes (Monster, Beast Mode, 56 Nights) that set him up for his first No. 1 album, DS2, Phil W. Hudson began covering music, sports and finance at the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Hudson quickly recognized the huge chasm that existed between the city’s   culture and its business community. While hanging out with one of his finance sources, who worked for a multinational accounting firm that was soliciting a new pro athlete as a client, Hudson asked him, ”’Do you guys have any rappers on your roster? ’” The answer surprised him. ”I asked why the hell not,” Hudson says. ”And he said, ’We just never really thought about that.’ I said, ’Well that’s ridiculous because I’m sure Jermaine Dupri, at the height of his career, was worth more money than some of these major executives in town. ’” The more Hudson interviewed     talent and executives, the clearer the issue became: Black music’s worldwide marketing power was being slept on by some of Atlanta’s biggest global brands. ”One of the best points that was ever made about the disconnect in Atlanta came from Jermaine Dupri,” Hudson says. ”He told me he was really shocked that Usher was signed with Pepsi. He was like, ’How can   the world’s biggest behemoth in the soft drink industry, let their fierce rival come into their own backyard and take what is potentially one of our biggest music brands in Usher?” The missed opportunity is even clearer in rap, where artists derive their clout from bragging about lifestyle and luxury brands in songs and videos that often double as major commercial endorsements. It’s a simple equation, according to Hudson: ”Rappers make things cool. What’s cool becomes pop culture. What becomes pop culture sells.” Of course, there are exceptions to this alienation. Lil Yachty may not have gotten any stage time at the Grammys this year, despite his   nomination, but he still managed to bumrush the show. The Atlanta bubblegum trap act starred alongside pop star Carly Rae Jepsen in an epic Target commercial, the longest of the night at three minutes. Atlanta superproducer Mike Will   was also featured. With his   braids and a   persona as playful as his music, Yachty’s become a brand unto himself. His endorsements include Nautica, the apparel brand he’s reviving as its   creative designer, and hometown beverage Sprite. Coke’s cooler decaffeinated cousin has actually enjoyed a long relationship with  . It dates as far back as 1986, when Kurtis Blow appeared in an early commercial rapping the tagline ”Now More Than Ever It’s Sprite.” Along with a host of East Coast legends, other Sprite endorsers over the years have included such foundational Atlanta acts as Kris Kross and Goodie Mob. But most of Atlanta’s   artists over the past couple of decades have remained noticeably absent from the soft drink’s    campaigns. Trap rap, in particular, has its own cross to bear. When Future released DS2, the name was abbreviated from Dirty Sprite 2 for obvious legal reasons. There’s no way   would’ve given Epic Records permission to associate its brand with the   laced ”Dirty Sprite” that Future references in his signature codeine flows. Sex, drugs and rock and roll may be as American as cherry pie, but   has always faced greater persecution over its illicit content than whiter music genres. ”It’s definitely a complex scenario,” Hudson says. ”There’s racial elements, there’s business elements, there’s marketing elements.” But there’s also ”a lot of missed opportunity,” he acknowledges, recalling the widespread response he got while traveling abroad to China. ”When I’d say I’m from Atlanta, it wasn’t   that the Chinese knew us by. It was the Olympics and OutKast. We have this incredible brand, so how can we capitalize on this? That’s partly the job of Christopher Hicks, a former music industry exec who wants to help connect the dots as the new director of the Mayor’s Office of Film and Entertainment. ”We have a plethora of large brands here [that] exist in the city and have not necessarily leveraged the musical stakeholders in the city, so I want to create relationships there,” he told Billboard last March. But Hicks’ position in an office originally created to exploit opportunities within the nascent film industry speaks directly to the disconnect. ”The music industry was really put off at how hard the state worked to recruit film, an industry from out of state that really doesn’t have any loyalty to Georgia other than our tax incentive,” Hudson says. ”So why do we have this homegrown industry that we’re not helping? L. A. Reid doesn’t live in Atlanta anymore. He should. And if we catered to our music industry better and incentivized it more we might be able to get more record labels to come here and stay here and leave their offices here. It creates jobs and brings revenue to the state. It’s the whole economic impact. I feel like we’re missing out on a lot by not embracing it.” The onus is on the city of Atlanta to figure out how to harness  ’s hustle. Because the culture doesn’t need Atlanta to succeed Atlanta needs the culture. The question is whether an independent ecosystem that has turned Atlanta’s underserved music community into a global beacon would be helped or hampered by the city’s interference? Kwanza Hall wants to find ways to create infrastructure around what has essentially been a cottage industry. ”I want to industrialize it and formalize it,” says Hall, who considers the city’s wealth of home recording studios greater innovation zones than Georgia Tech, the only university to make Fast Company’s recent list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. ”People are working with far less and making a whole lot more out of nothing. They’re taking thin air and turning it into something that is of value in this society,” Hall says. But true investment in the culture has to dive much deeper than industry infrastructure, according to one of the most devout advocates of Atlanta’s creative economy, Bem Joiner. ”The lack of affordable housing, gentrification,   public schools, those are key cogs in the wheel,” he says. ”That’s like the secret sauce to how the culture is made.” Secret sauce, indeed. Meanwhile, Atlanta’s next ingenious reincarnation could ironically mimic the birthplace of  . A new proposal to loosen downtown signage restrictions could result in a district full of bright, oversized   ads  —   just like Times Square. Hudson, for one, thinks ATL should seek inspiration a tad closer to home. ”Nashville did such a good job embracing country music that it turned Nashville into Music City,” he says. ”Well, Nashville didn’t really invent country music, it came there. We didn’t really invent   it kinda came here. They created this culture around country and it’s put the city on the international music map. Atlanta needs to do that with  .” Sounds like a bright idea. But what would it look like if Atlanta and the state of Georgia were to truly leverage its biggest cultural export and invest in its success? Might we see an Atlanta   Hall of Fame located on Peachtree Street? Or maybe a Music Row district could set up shop in south Downtown for hundreds of   related businesses  —   major and independent labels, recording studios and publishing houses, consumer tech startups and media outlets  —   to flourish within an economic incubator driven by the culture? Perhaps a Grand Ole   performance hall for rap would serve as a major tourist attraction and cultural nexus for the   creatives and the city’s wealthy elite to meet? Not even in the last black mecca is that a likely scenario. Outsiders may have zero qualms with embracing the culture. But closer to home, Traplanta is saddled with too much of the same racial baggage and class exclusion that criminalizes the music in the eyes and ears of many in power. The same pols who disgrace their districts by failing to advocate for economic equity find themselves more offended by crass lyrical content than the crass conditions that inspire it. Meanwhile, systemic ills continue to fester at will. It’s enough to make you wonder who the real trappers are in this town."
"Editor’s Note: The following images contain graphic content.  Suicide bombers attacked a judicial building and a restaurant in Damascus on Wednesday, killing more than two dozen people as the country marked the sixth anniversary of its civil war. In one attack, a suicide bomber detonated explosives inside the main judicial building in the capital city. The Associated Press reports that a man arrived at the gates of the Palace of Justice with grenades and a shotgun. Guards stopped him and seized those weapons, but when they attempted to search him, the man threw himself inside the building and exploded his vest. That attack, which state media said happened at about 1:20 p. m. local time, seems to have been timed to inflict the greatest number of casualties on the lawyers, judges and others in the building. ”This is a dirty action as people who enter the palace are innocent,” Syria’s attorney general, Ahmad   told state TV, according to the AP.   who reportedly was just a few meters from the explosion, said 30 people died and 45 others were wounded. NPR’s Alison Meuse, reporting from Beirut, says the judicial building is where people gather to wait for news about loved ones detained in Syrian prisons. The second suicide bombing occurred inside a restaurant in the Rabweh district of Damascus. Several people were killed in that attack, though the number of casualties wasn’t immediately clear. The AP reports that according to the Ikhbariyeh TV channel, the bomber detonated explosives while being chased by security agents. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for either attack, which come after two explosions in the capital city on Saturday. Those bombings targeted Shiites visiting the city’s holy sites from Iraq at least 40 people were killed. An alliance of jihadist groups known as Tahrir   claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attacks."
"With the Senate Judiciary Committee set to open hearings on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court, the game of confirmation cat and mouse is about to begin. Senators will try to get a fix on Gorsuch’s legal views  —   and the nominee will try to say as little as possible. Supreme Court scholars and practitioners on the right and left may disagree about whether they want to see Gorsuch confirmed, but in general there is little doubt about the nominee’s conservatism. Indeed, his conservative pedigree is the reason he was picked. ”On issues like abortion and affirmative action and gun rights and states’ rights, we can expect him overall to be a reliable conservative vote and someone who is going to forcibly and eloquently put forward conservative positions on the court,” predicts Richard Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine. Not that Gorsuch has ruled on all these issues. He has not. But the legal road signs are there. Gorsuch, for instance, has never ruled directly on an abortion question, but he has ruled on questions involving contraception and public funding for Planned Parenthood  —   unrelated to abortion. And in none of these cases has he sided with advocates of birth control or abortion rights. Setting the Supreme Court up for Hobby Lobby ruling, One of his most controversial opinions involved Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores that employs 13, 000   employees, most of them women. The company challenged the federal law requiring   corporations to provide health insurance plans that cover birth control. Gorsuch and a majority of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the corporation had a religious right not to provide birth control coverage. A sharply divided U. S. Supreme Court would later agree, ruling for the first time that certain   corporations have protected religious rights. What makes this case particularly interesting is a concurring opinion that Gorsuch wrote about the corporate owners’ rights. ”All of us face the problem of complicity,” he wrote. ”All must answer . .. to what degree we are willing to be involved in the wrongdoing of others.” Here, he noted, the owners believe that for their company providing insurance that includes coverage for birth control drugs or devices ”violates their faith.” In many ways, he continued, ”this case is a tale of two statutes.” One, the Affordable Care Act, compels the owners to provide such inclusive health coverage. The other, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, ”says they need not.” And the ”” Gorsuch said, is the religious protection law because it is a ” ” that trumps others, except in special circumstances. Debate over extent of religious freedom, Gorsuch critics disagree with his assessment. ”To what extent do people with religious beliefs have to follow the law if they believe it violates their conscience? What is the outer limit of that?” asks Caroline Fredrickson of the liberal American Constitution Society. ”I think that’s a potentially very frightening direction for the law to go.” What if, for example, a hotel or restaurant owner has a religious belief that bars serving   or   or gay people? Indeed, there are a variety of such legal clashes working their way up to the Supreme Court right now. One case pending before the court tests whether a bakery can refuse to make a cake for a   wedding. Melissa Hart, director of the University of Colorado’s Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law, knows and respects Gorsuch, who also teaches at the school in Boulder. Still, she understands the wariness about his views on religious freedom. ”I think it’s reasonable for people to look at Hobby Lobby and, for those who support marriage equality, to be concerned,” she says. But Mark Rienzi of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty says that the Hobby Lobby decision is in line with the religious freedom law that Congress passed by overwhelming margins in 1993. ”It says that the baseline rule in America will be that we respect religious diversity and, for the most part, we’re not going to force people to violate their religious beliefs unless we have a really good reason to,” Rienzi explains. Rienzi contends that there are other ways women can get health coverage for birth control outside of their employer’s health plans. But women’s rights advocates, backed by health care experts, say that such coverage in reality is not available, and they note that for most women of childbearing age, contraception is a substantial regular health expense. More confirmation fodder, Other Gorsuch decisions relating to religion will undoubtedly come up in next week’s confirmation hearings among them, a vigorous dissenting opinion Gorsuch gave concerning a series of   crosses along the roadside on public land. The Utah Highway Patrol Association wanted to erect the crosses to memorialize fallen troopers. Gorsuch’s colleagues on the 10th Circuit ruled against the crosses because a reasonable observer would take them as a sign of a state endorsement of Christianity. The Supreme Court declined review, leaving in place the decision that forbids the crosses. Although Gorsuch has not written directly about abortion, he did write a book called The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, in which he says that ”human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable” and ”the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.” But he describes the court’s decisions on abortion in a straightforward way, without adding almost anything in the way of a personal opinion. The book, academic in tone but lucid in presentation, concludes that there is no necessary connection between the right to abortion and a right to assisted suicide. It does, however, quite clearly subscribe to the notion, adopted in most state laws, that individuals have the right to hasten their own deaths by refusing nutrition, water or medical treatment."
"In 2016, a mass bleaching event caused unprecedented destruction to the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs around the world. Now, a new study in Nature has concluded that securing a future for coral reefs ”ultimately requires urgent and rapid action to reduce global warming.” It finds that local measures, such as protecting reefs and water quality, ultimately yield little protection against bleaching caused by higher water temperatures. The researchers documented the extent of the damage the reef off the coast of Australia sustained during the 2016 bleaching event, and found that only 8. 9 percent of more than 1, 000 reefs escaped with no bleaching along a stretch more than 2, 300 kilometers long. That’s far worse that the two previous major Great Barrier Reef bleaching events, in 1998 and 2002. In both cases more than 40 percent of the reef escaped bleaching. James Cook University’s Mia Hoogenboom, one of the   of the paper, told Morning Edition that when she went diving to document the reef’s condition, it was a shock to see the extent of the damage. ”It’s confronting to go from a reef which is colorful, which is swarming with life, to a reef that’s covered in dead corals and corals that are covered in a slimy green algae,” she said. ”So it doesn’t feel like the same reef and it doesn’t engender that same sense of wonder at the biodiversity that’s present in those areas.” The three major bleaching events occurred in different but overlapping areas, which allowed the researchers to test a hypothesis that previous exposure to bleaching may make coral more resilient to the effect of high water temperatures. Unfortunately, the researchers found that ”bleaching in previous years didn’t confer any resistance to bleaching in the most recent bleaching event.” Hoogenboom said ”the bleaching was just as severe on reefs that had previously been bleached than on reefs that hadn’t bleached before in that event last year.” The   has explained how coral bleaching occurs as water temperatures rise: ”Coral bleaching occurs when the living organisms that make up coral reefs expel the colorful, photosynthetic algae that normally live inside their bodies, and provide them with food. Those algae give coral reefs their color and disappear when the reefs are exposed to stressful climatic conditions, such as temperatures even a few degrees higher than normal.” Hoogenboom says the researchers found that other factors can help mitigate the severity of the bleaching. For example, good water flow can reduce the severity of bleaching at a site. But ultimately, she says, ”temperature is really the main driver of these mass coral bleaching events,” prompting the team’s push for global action against climate change. In recent weeks, her team received more bad news  —   they’ve found that a bleaching event is occurring on the Great Barrier Reef for the second successive year."
"President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, collected more than $50, 000 from Russian companies, including a   television network, according to documents released in a congressional inquiry. That total came from several sources. In one case, Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, was paid more than $33, 000 to speak at a conference in Moscow sponsored by RT, the   news organization. Flynn sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin during dinner at the event. The speaking engagement was held in December 2015, just two months before Flynn became a formal adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign. The documents include emails from RT explaining that Flynn was invited to the event for his ”expertise as an intelligence professional” and ”to talk about the   process in the White House  —   and the role of the intelligence community in it.” Those documents were obtained from Leading Authorities, a firm that arranges Flynn’s speaking engagements. It was paid more than $11, 000 to arrange the December dinner event. Other documents released show Flynn was paid $11, 250 by a Russian airline. He was paid the same amount by Kaspersky Government Security Solutions. The Russian cybersecurity firm is a subsidiary of Kaspersky Labs, an underwriter of NPR. Rep. Elijah Cummings,  . ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released a statement saying he wants the Defense Department to recover those payments. He says they violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars retired military officials from accepting gifts or payments from any foreign government. Cummings has sent a letter to Trump, Defense Secretary James Mattis and FBI Director James Comey, asking whether Flynn disclosed his communications with and payments from Russian agents during his vetting process for national security adviser. Flynn resigned from that role last month after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Pence and other senior White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. This is not the first time Flynn has conducted business associated with foreign governments. He recently registered with the Justice Department acknowledging he worked as a foreign agent last year representing the Turkish government. Papers showed he was paid $530, 000 for lobbying work on its behalf."
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks to Greg Miller of The Washington Post and NPR’s Scott Detrow about Attorney General Sessions’ contact with the Russian ambassador before the election.
"Updated: 5:08 p. m. ET, The Trump administration’s new budget blueprint aims to quantify the president’s nationalistic agenda in dollars and cents. The plan, released Thursday morning, calls for significant increases in military and   spending, along with corresponding cuts in many other parts of the government. The blueprint was designed to ”send a message to our allies and our potential adversaries that this is a   administration,” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney explained on Wednesday as he previewed the document in a briefing with reporters. It also sends a clear message domestically: This administration is willing to make drastic, controversial cuts to fund that ” ” message. That includes slashing spending on foreign aid and the environment, as well as   programs aimed at boosting the arts and humanities, as well as the fortunes of the most vulnerable Americans. The question now is how much the   Congress will go along with that vision. Like any White House budget, Trump’s blueprint is more of a political document than an accurate predictor of government spending. Congress controls the purse strings and lawmakers may have very different priorities. As a statement of presidential intention, though, the blueprint is crystal clear. ”This is the America First budget,” said Mulvaney Wednesday. ”In fact, we wrote it using the president’s own words. We went through his speeches. We went through articles that have been written about his policies . .. and we turned those policies into numbers.” ”There’s no question this is a   budget,” Mulvaney also said Wednesday. ”It is not a   budget. This is a   budget. And that was done intentionally.” Trump wants lawmakers to boost military spending in the coming fiscal year by 10 percent, or $54 billion. Rather than raise taxes or increase the deficit, the president is calling for equivalent cuts in other areas. Foreign aid would be especially hard hit, with the State Department’s budget cut by about 28 percent. Alongside Defense, the agencies for which the White House proposes spending increases are almost entirely   and national  . The Department of Homeland Security would see a hike in funding of 6. 8 percent, as would the Department of Veterans Affairs (5. 9 percent) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (11. 3 percent). ”The president ran [his campaign] saying he would spend less money overseas and more money back home,” Mulvaney said Wednesday. ”When you go to implement that policy, you go to things like foreign aid, and those get reduced.” Critics argue the administration’s   focus on hard power is   and could ultimately be detrimental to national security. They point to past comments from Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired Marine general, who once told lawmakers, ”If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition, ultimately.” The White House blueprint does not address major safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which the president has promised to protect. But Trump is calling for sharp cuts in discretionary spending, including the Environmental Protection Agency. The administration is proposing cutting the EPA’s budget by 31 percent, from $8. 3 billion in fiscal year 2017 to $5. 7 billion in fiscal year 2018. That’s the largest cut among all Cabinet departments and major agencies. The budget says that slash in funding is necessary ”to ease the burden of unnecessary Federal regulations that impose significant costs for workers and consumers without justifiable environmental benefits.” Instead of carrying out many of its current functions, the agency would ”primarily support States and Tribes in their important role protecting air, land, and water in the 21st Century,” the document adds. The EPA’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt, is a longtime critic of what he sees as the agency’s activist agenda. He and the president have both promised to scale back environmental regulation, including efforts to curb carbon pollution and promote alternative energy. Last week, Pruitt reiterated his doubts that carbon emissions are a primary contributor to climate change. That puts him at odds with the overwhelming scientific consensus. Climate research at NASA could also take a hit under Trump’s budget. The plan would reduce overall spending at NASA by around 1 percent, Mulvaney said, but would increase spending on space exploration, which Trump supports. ”We’re not spending money on this anymore. We consider that a waste of your money,” Mulvaney said about climate change research as he took questions from White House reporters at Thursday’s afternoon press briefing. In addition, funding for the National Institutes of Health would fall by 18 percent, or $5. 8 billion. That cut involves ”a major reorganization of NIH’s Institutes and Centers,” including closing some of those centers, ”to help focus resources on the highest priority research.” In a speech to a joint session of Congress last month, Trump promised to bring renewed hope and opportunity to what he called ”our neglected inner cities.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development will not be the vehicle for that effort, though. ”We’ve spent a lot of money on housing and urban development over the last decades without a lot to show for it,” Mulvaney said Wednesday. He added that Trump prefers to invest in cities’ infrastructure and school choice. ”Nobody’s going to get kicked out of their houses,” Mulvaney told reporters Thursday afternoon, reiterating that many of the HUD cuts were related to infrastructure and would be addressed in the massive infrastructure plan the president wants to implement. The president’s plan calls for a 6 percent increase in spending by the Department of Homeland Security, including $2. 6 billion to begin work on a planned border wall. The White House is also asking Congress to devote $1. 5 billion to the wall in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Trump claimed throughout the campaign that he would get Mexico to pay for the wall, but Mulvaney said Thursday afternoon that, ”as to the source of funds, that’s up to the president, the Treasury and the State Department” and wouldn’t commit to getting the funds from Mexico. Leading Democrats on Capitol Hill slammed Trump’s budget blueprint as wrongheaded. ”President Trump is not making anyone more secure with a budget that hollows out our economy and endangers working families,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, of California, said in a statement, adding, ”The budget is a statement of values, and President Trump has shown he does not value the future of children and working families.” The Senate’s top Democrat was more direct: ”Democrats in Congress will emphatically oppose these cuts  urge our Republican colleagues to reject them as well,” Sen. Charles Schumer, of New York, said on Twitter. The two Republican Hill leaders were supportive of the blueprint but both signaled a long process lay ahead. ”I welcome the president’s blueprint for next year’s budget, which turns the page from the last eight years,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin, said in a statement, adding that he looked forward to ”reviewing this with the Appropriations Committee and our entire conference.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, said he ”pleased to see an increased focus on our national security and veterans budgets,” calling them ”positive steps in the right direction,” according to the Washington Examiner. But McConnell added he looked forward ”to reviewing this and the full budget when it is released later this spring.” Among all the proposed spending hikes and cuts, some areas would see spending cuts of 100 percent. The administration wants to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Together, the two groups receive about $300 million annually. Trump also wants to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps to finance public radio and television stations. CPB received $445 million in the current fiscal year. Several of these eliminated programs aim to help the poorest Americans. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) helps people pay utility bills and weatherize their homes. And the Community Development Block Grant, a part of HUD, helps support affordable housing and infrastructure (among many other things). Grants to Meals on Wheels would also likely be eliminated as part of the cuts to the Community Development Block Grant program, and Mulvaney defended those cuts Thursday afternoon, claiming the block granting program was ”not showing any results.” Pressed on whether cutting back or eliminating altogether programs that help the poor was not being compassionate toward people who needed help the most, Mulvaney said that passing this budget was ”one of the most compassionate things we can do” because it was being compassionate toward taxpayers who are funding those programs. The budget also proposes eliminating the Appalachian Regional Commission, which promotes economic development in the region stretching from northern Mississippi to western New York. Many counties in that swath heavily supported Trump in November. NPR intern Maya Fitzpatrick contributed to this report."
"This morning President Trump released a proposed 2018 budget that calls for a $9 billion, or 13. 5 percent, cut for the U. S. Department of Education. The document released today is only an initial sketch  —   a proposal, really  —   one that must compete with Congress’s own ideas. It indicates how Trump plans to make good on his pledge to dramatically reduce parts of the federal government while increasing military spending. And, it provides some direction on how the administration plans to promote school choice, the president’s signature education issue. As we’ve noted before, federal education spending provides a small fraction of the resources spent on public schools and colleges in the U. S. For example, the Education Department’s entire budget for 2017 was $69. 4 billion. Meanwhile, the budget for the New York City public schools  —   the nation’s largest district  —   was $29. 2 billion, of which $1. 7 billion came from the federal government. Still, the blueprint gives the clearest indication to date of where schools and colleges fall on the priority list for this administration, and its plans for education policy going forward. Here’s our breakdown. Added, Eliminated, Cut, For the Pell Grant, the federal government’s main   college aid program, the proposal calls for ”level funding.” But, that ”level” technically includes ”a cancellation of $3. 9 billion from unobligated carryover funding.” So, while Pell Grant funding would not go down, that $3. 9 billion would not be available. Pell spending has actually been on a downward trend since   but it had been expected to rise following a series of Obama administration changes to make it easier for families to apply for the grant. Other, The proposal ”eliminates or reduces” a list of programs without giving further details, including: ”Striving Readers, Teacher Quality Partnership, Impact Aid Support Payments for Federal Property, and International Education programs.”"
"President Trump has released a budget blueprint outlining increased military spending and cuts across other agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department. Congress will still have to draft a formal budget, but the plan released Thursday by the White House indicates the president’s priorities. Read the full document below. Read more about the specific proposals and their implications here."
"In the introduction to his proposed federal budget, President Donald Trump states clearly that he plans to spend far less abroad and on international issues than did previous administrations. One of the five bullet points in the introduction to the document ”America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again” states that the fiscal plan ”puts America first by keeping more of America’s   tax dollars here at home.” To accomplish that goal, the administration proposes slashing the appropriation for the State Department and USAID by $10 billion or roughly 28 percent and cutting Treasury International Programs by nearly a billion dollars, almost a 35 percent drop from last year. The budget proposal states that the cuts to foreign aid ”free up funding for critical priorities here at home.” Here’s a rundown of agencies and programs in the global health and development sphere that would lose funding if the budget is passed by Congress  —   and the ones that won’t be affected. FACING CUTS: United Nations and affiliates. The blueprint says the administration will reduce funding for the United Nations, U. N. agencies, U. N. peacekeeping operations and ”other international organizations.” It doesn’t give a dollar figure or a target of what percentage funding would go down. Banks that finance global development. The World Bank and others would lose $650 million over the next 3 years. Climate change efforts in developing countries. The document explicitly says that funding will be eliminated for the Global Climate Change Initiative (GCCI). The Congressional Research Service sums up the GCCI this way. ”The United States supports international financial assistance for global climate change initiatives in developing countries . ... The GCCI aims to integrate climate change considerations into U. S. foreign assistance through a range of bilateral, multilateral and private sector mechanisms to promote sustainable and   societies, foster   economic growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and land degradation.” In addition to slashing direct funding to federal programs related to climate in developing nations, the president’s new budget also says it would stop payments to U. N. programs on climate change. Agencies that address global issues. President Trump proposes eliminating federal funding entirely to these specific organizations involved in global issues: The Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, The African Development Foundation, The Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health (devoted to global health research and training) The   Foundation, The U. S. Trade and Development Agency, The U. S. Institute of Peace, The   Center, SPARED BY THE BUDGET CUTS, Vaccine efforts. The President’s budget explicitly mentions two international health programs that it does plan to continue to support. The first is Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a   partnership based in Geneva and Washington, D. C. that helps develop and fund immunization programs primarily for the developing world. Their goal is to make sure 300 million children in the poorest parts of the world get access to routine vaccinations. The second is PEPFAR, the incredibly successful   program that started under President George W. Bush. PEPFAR is credited with getting   drugs and other HIV related assistance to millions of people, particularly in Africa. Through PEPFAR the U. S. channels nearly $7 billion a year in to   programs around the globe. While the proposal calls for major cuts to the State Department’s base funding, it gives the agency $2. 2 billion for new embassy construction and security upgrades, $3. 1 billion for security assistance for Israel and $12 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding. The OCO is a joint program between the State Department and the Defense Department that covers training foreign security forces and   operations among other   activities."
"Biomedical research and public health are among the big losers in the Trump administration’s proposed budget. The proposal promises: Funding from the National Institutes of Health flows to more than 2, 600 institutions around the country and creates more than 313, 000   and   jobs, according to a 2016 study. So it’s not obvious how slashing billions from the NIH budget, as the Trump administration proposes, will bring more jobs to America. That $5. 8 billion cut represents a 20 percent reduction in the NIH budget, which is about $30 billion. The federal government hands out most of this funding rather than spending it on its own employees, but the budget proposal is not clear on how much of the spending cuts target grants to university scientists. Federal research grant money flows primarily to universities, and they in turn spend billions to buy equipment and services from local companies. Economist Bruce Weinberg and colleagues at Ohio State University looked at what happened to federal research dollars that flowed to nine major Midwestern universities. In 2012, these nine institutions received about $7 billion for research, more than half of which came from the NIH, the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies. Of that, the universities spent almost $1 billion on goods and services from U. S. vendors and subcontractors, the study found. Of that, 16 percent went to vendors in the university’s home county, over 16 percent was spent elsewhere in the state, and the balance was spread to companies across the United States. University researchers buy chemicals and other ingredients needed for experiments and purchase laboratory equipment. There are entire industries devoted to supporting biomedical research. ”We were surprised by how many were small, niche   companies,” Weinberg and his colleagues wrote. ”Of course, science funding is not primarily a jobs or economic stimulus program,” they added. After all, research is a   investment in knowledge and the driving force for economic growth. The budget proposal doesn’t include a specific funding figure for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had a budget of $7 billion in 2016. But the proposed budget says it ”reforms” the CDC through a new $500 million block grant that would ”increase state flexibility and focus on the leading public health challenges to each state.” No additional details are included, but that could mean diverting those funds from the CDC’s core budget to provide block grants to individual states. ”We are encouraged to see that state health agency priorities, such as flexible funding to meet state and territorial public health needs and the public health Emergency Fund, are in the President’s Budget,” said Michael Fraser, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, in an email. ”Those are things we really do want to see,” Fraser continued. ”However, the fact is that support for those priorities comes at what looks like a very significant cost to existing programs. The proposed reductions to HHS may have serious negative impacts on both federal and state responses to public health needs and that leaves many of us extremely concerned.” The budget also calls for the creation of a new ”Federal Emergency Response Fund” that would be designed to ”rapidly respond to public health outbreaks,” such as Zika. This is an idea that has been gaining support recently, especially in the wake of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the emergence of Zika as a threat to pregnant women and their babies. President Obama’s emergency funding request to respond to Zika got mired in politics in Congress. The budget doesn’t specify how big this new fund would be. The proposed budget is silent on the National Science Foundation, which provides about $7 billion a year in grants to researchers in many fields."
"President Trump’s proposed budget calls for big cuts in a wide array of domestic programs  —   among them, agencies that fund the arts, humanities and public media. Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be cut to zero under the proposal, and the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely, the first time any president has proposed such a measure. The spending outline is what White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney calls a ”  budget,” with spending increases for defense and homeland security at the expense of many other programs in the discretionary part of the budget. Mulvaney appeared on MSNBC Thursday morning to defend the proposal. ”Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs?” he asked. ”The answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” CPB received $445 million in federal funding in the last fiscal year the NEA and NEH got about $148 million each  —   a tiny portion of the roughly $4 trillion federal budget. In a statement, CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said, ”There is no viable substitute for federal funding that ensures Americans have universal access to public media’s education and informational programming and services.” She called public media ”one of America’s best investments,” costing ”approximately $1. 35 per citizen per year.” Most CPB funds go directly to local radio and TV stations. NPR’s funding sources include the program fees those stations pay, and the network receives less than 2 percent of its budget directly from CPB. In a statement, NPR COO Loren Mayor said: ”Millions of Americans depend on their local public radio station for the   objective, public service journalism they need to stay informed about the world and about the news in their own communities. Public media serves the public interest with essential educational, news and cultural programming not found anywhere else, as well as vital information during local and regional emergencies. Federal funding is an essential ingredient to making this possible.” The federal funds are especially crucial for local stations, as well as local arts groups, which often receive matching funds from other donors based on their federal allocations. NEH Chairman William D. Adams issued a statement saying his agency is ”greatly saddened to learn of this proposal for elimination.” NEA Chairman Jane Chu said, ”We are disappointed because we see our funding actively making a difference with individuals of all ages in thousands of communities, large, small, urban and rural, and in every Congressional District in the nation.” That reference to every congressional district is key for the survival prospects of all three agencies. Congress will have the final say about the fate of Trump’s budget, and while some conservatives have long targeted arts and public media for cuts, lawmakers from both parties have supported the agencies in the past. The NEH says its grants ”have reached into every part of the country,” noting: ”Residents in Whitesburg, Kentucky are preserving the photographs and films of their local Appalachian region through Appalshop cultural center. Veterans returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan connect with classic texts and the public through Aquila Theatre. Students, teachers and historians have access to the papers of Founding Father George Washington.” According to Americans for the Arts, NEA’s annual appropriation supports a $730 billion arts and culture industry, 4. 8 million jobs and a $26 billion trade surplus for the nation."
"Updated at 4:02 p. m. ET, If there was any doubt over President Trump’s views on climate change, those doubts evaporated with the unveiling of his proposed federal budget on Thursday. The budget would end programs to lower domestic greenhouse gas emissions, slash diplomatic efforts to slow climate change and cut scientific missions to study the climate. ”It’s terrible from the perspective of having any concern at all about climate change,” says Andrew Light, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute’s climate program and a professor at George Mason University. ”They can cut the funding, but climate change is real and we’re going to have to deal with it,” says Chris McEntee, director of the American Geophysical Union. ”Slashing this kind of funding is not going to assist in building the resiliency to climate and the impacts of climate change that this country needs.” Previously, the Trump administration had sent somewhat mixed signals about climate change. Trump himself had described climate change as a hoax, but he also said he had an   toward efforts to control it. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has acknowledged climate change, while EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has questioned whether CO2 is causing the globe to warm. In a press briefing Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, the head of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, was unequivocal about the administration’s attitude toward the issue. ”We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Mulvaney said when asked about climate funding. ”We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.” At the Environmental Protection Agency, the proposed budget ”discontinues funding for the Clean Power Plan, international climate change programs, climate change research and partnership programs, and related efforts.” The Clean Power Plan is the Obama administration’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants  —   an effort that Pruitt has been highly critical of. At the State Department, the budget proposal ”eliminates the Global Climate Change Initiative and fulfills the President’s pledge to cease payments to the United Nations’ (UN) climate change programs by eliminating U. S. funding related to the Green Climate Fund and its two precursor Climate Investment Funds.” The Green Climate Fund is the U. N. effort to help countries adapt to climate change or develop   energy technologies, and the Global Climate Change Initiative is a kind of umbrella program that paid for dozens of assistance programs to other countries working on things such as clean energy. ”For the last three years, up until last May, I was a senor climate change official at the State Department, and they basically are eviscerating all of the programs that we had created over the course of the last eight years,” says Light of the World Resources Institute. One of his jobs was to coordinate climate and clean energy work with India, a major greenhouse gas emitter. ”We created this whole raft of programs on this, and the basis for the funding of all those programs is now eliminated,” Light says. ”So that means that one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, and also one of the biggest emerging emitters, is going to get zero help from the United States on this.” The Trump administration does not appear to believe that climate change from greenhouse gases is a real problem, Light says, but it needs to realize that the rest of the world does view global warming as a threat. ”Now we’re saying, ’Well, we don’t agree with you, you shouldn’t actually be worried about that.’ That’s just something that they’re not going to buy,” says Light. ”That’s going to diminish our influence. That’s going to make us less safe.” He notes that the Department of Defense has identified climate change as a potentially destabilizing force. Scientific agencies that study the climate fared little better in the budget proposal. NASA’s Earth sciences budget got whacked by about $102 million, down to $1. 8 billion. The budget would reduce funding for Earth science research grants. It would also ax several NASA missions designed to study climate: The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission, the Orbiting Carbon   mission and the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder mission. The budget plan is just a proposal, and Congress ultimately decides federal spending. And advocates for science will be knocking on doors on Capitol Hill to try to stop all of this from happening  —   plus marching on Washington, D. C. on April 22. ”Congress has a long bipartisan history of protecting research investments,” Rush Holt, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey who is now CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in a statement. ”The administration’s cuts threaten our nation’s ability to advance cures for disease, maintain our technological leadership, ensure a more prosperous energy future, and train the next generation of scientists and innovators to address the complex challenges we face today and in the future,” he said. ”However, this is the President’s proposal, and it’s up to Congress to respond and make decisions on budget and appropriations.”"
"There’s something very, very off about all those chipper household objects in Disney’s expensive, soulless new   retelling of Beauty and the Beast. But we don’t realize quite what it is until ”Be Our Guest,” the intended showstopper at the film’s midway point, in which all these transmogrified servants band together to make Belle, their lovely young prisoner, feel like royalty. You of course remember what this was like in the 1991 animated film, with that cabaret of plates and forks in     that crossed every inch of the screen, as Lumiere the talking candelabra carried us along with his big eyes and the expressiveness of his elastic,    body. It was one of those perfect,   ”Disney moments”: Lumiere and his friends, after all, were wholly Mouse House creations, meant to help justify the film’s existence distinct from Jean Cocteau’s magisterial 1946 version, and their daffy, colorful presence in the brooding French fairy tale injected just enough comic energy to let keep things ticking along as sharp as Cogsworth’s clockwork. But under director Bill Condon, the new Lumiere’s body is a single shade of murky CGI bronze featuring a molded   that  —   amid the darkness of the Beast’s castle  —   is barely recognizable as a face, out of which streams Ewan McGregor’s atrocious French accent. He’s still eager to please, prostrating his flames in gleeful servitude  —   but his joints creak noisily as he moves, and his eyes seem to lack pupils: He has been drained of his humanity in the name of ”realism.” Mrs. Potts, the genteel teapot matron voiced this time by Emma Thompson, fares slightly better, in that her face is clearly painted onto the side of her fine china (minus the iconic   of Angela Lansbury’s animated incarnation). But when that penciled eye winks at the camera in horrifying   we realize that our demand for Disney remakes is the 21st century’s   that dooms these   thingamabobs to a different kind of bodily prison. As if wary of unleashing any more monsters than it already has, the new Beauty otherwise treats the script and camerawork of the animated version as sacred text. Look, here’s the little town filled with little people, every day like the one before. Here’s ol’ Beastie (Dan Stevens) the prince transformed by a witch until he can find true love. Stevens is fine in the role, or so one assumes: he’s heavily obscured by his digitized mask of horns and fur, which can’t possibly allow for the tragic contradiction of   emotions Jean Marais once brilliantly conveyed, under heavy makeup, in the Cocteau version. Emma Watson, who rose to superstardom in Harry Potter’s more convincing   world, certainly looks the part of Belle with that yellow dress and the    provincial rags that she gets to twirl in a computerized meadow, The Sound of  . But her vocal chops aren’t soaring enough to support the weight of the film, and her performance is eternally distant, even when she should be plugged into the wonder. There’s not much of a difference between the spacey,    Belle who wanders through her village in the opening number, the Belle who selflessly sacrifices herself to the Beast’s prison in order to free her father from his clutches, and the Belle who later falls in love with her captor and his magic friends. The bookish maiden is still a prized object d’art for vain war hero Gaston, played with a smart, practiced nastiness by Luke Evans  —   in his braggadocious delivery, he recognizes how well the villain’s oafish   translates to our current moment. While Gaston plots to wed Belle by hook or crook, Josh Gad steals the film as his sidekick LeFou, who represents a progressive step for Disney: their first   evil lackey. LeFou goes along with his leader’s schemes while bearing a giant, dopey grin on his face he legitimately cares for his sick boss’s   and shoots him looks of longing  . When he finally does find love, it’s in the form of a   dance with an unnamed man, an image that could only shock people predisposed to be shocked. Very little is new, apart from some superfluous backstories and the occasional household object. But everything old feels empty and dull. It seems like it would be more fun to skip the film altogether and just install the sets at Disney World, where a Belle impersonator in a familiar yellow dress could snap photos with children who only want to confirm that the film in their minds could exist in real life. Disney has many more      heading to live revivals. This in itself is not necessarily cause for alarm: Last year’s The Jungle Book was marvelous entertainment, using its immersive technology to strike just the right   tone, and even the somewhat staid Cinderella found a newly elegant sensibility in its tale of inner beauty. But those two films had the advantage of varied takes on animated source material that was more than five decades old. In contrast, Beauty’s chief directive is not to conjure wonder, but nostalgia  —   in service of a generation trying to meme its childhood back from the enchanted castle of the past. There must be more than this provincial life."
"If you’ve ever spent an afternoon with ”Under the Sea” or ”A Whole New World” or ”Be Our Guest” stuck in your head, you can thank composer Alan Menken. Menken scored The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and many other Disney classics. He says he prefers his songs ”to be hummable.” A new live action   version of Beauty and the Beast opens Friday. For the 25th anniversary of the beloved animated version, the studio is   the story with real people  —   Emma Watson and a cast of famous voices. They’ve kept the old songs, and added some new ones. Menken wrote three new songs for the live action version. When Menken’s writing for Disney, he says he’s trying to move the story forward through song. ”Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm,” he says. They ”should elicit an emotion, of happiness, or of celebration, or of sadness, or of sorrow, or of love, or of laughter  —   whatever.” The songs also need to fit the character and the dramatic situation. The composer and various lyricists have followed these rules in a passel of Disney pictures. At an upright piano on press day in a fancy Beverly Hills hotel, Menken played us a medley of familiar Disney tunes: ”It’s new music, but it really isn’t new music,” says Tim Page, a Pulitzer   music critic, who is now a professor of music and journalism at the University of Southern California. Page points out that there’s always something familiar about Disney songs. ”I think the whole idea is to make the viewer feel very comfortable, almost like slipping into a warm bath,” he says. ”It’s just the same sounds, the same vibes. Again, not the same melody, but it’s a situation where everything is combined for a comfort feeling.” Hardworking Menken reaped plenty of comfort and reward  —   the awards cabinet in his studio holds eight Oscars, 11 Grammys, seven Golden Globes and a Tony award. The Oscars were sometimes for Best Song and Best Score. And the music keeps coming. He’s about to work with   Miranda on a new live action version of The Little Mermaid. But a new job doesn’t send the    Menken racing to the piano. First, he needs lots of information: What’s the story? Who’s the protagonist? Where would a song fit? What’s the reason for singing? ”Where does it start and where does it end, and what’s the title and what song might it remind us of? . ..” Menken asks. ”A million questions and only then will I sit and . .. start to play the piano.” Menken’s musical chops were developed  . He and lyricist Howard Ashman’s success with the 1982 comedy rock horror musical Little Shop of Horrors got Hollywood’s attention. But when he first started working at Disney animation, he had some reservations. ”I can’t tell you how many people said to me: Ugh, man, take a powder. Nobody takes animated musicals seriously,” he recalls. Menken and Ashman’s first musical film  —   The Little Mermaid animation in 1989  —   was a life saver for Disney. It lifted the studio out of a slump, and led to more big hits. There were also clunkers  —   1997’s Hercules didn’t do that well. And yet, when asked for a best song that never made it to the screen, Menken picked this Hercules tune: ”That was a song we lost, and it was a beautiful song, I thought,” he says. But it just didn’t fit, so it hit the   floor. For most of his career, Menken has written keepers. And, dubbed a Disney Legend in 2001, he understands the power of the films he helps to make. In some very dark days  —   the death of his longtime lyricist Howard Ashman, and other friends  —   he’d sit with his young daughters and watch old animated films. ”It was the only safe space I could be where it just felt,” he says. ”I went back to being a child, in a magical way. I couldn’t get there with Saturday morning cartoons or a traditional Hollywood movie, necessarily. But there’s a primal thread in the Disney animated art that just lands. And, I felt it as an adult. I still do  —   it’s powerful.” It’s a pretty sure bet that a new generation of children will grow up knowing Menken’s songs from the new Beauty and the Beast. Just as they know, so well, his ’80s and ’90s classics. Radio producer Danny Hajek and web producer Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"Updated at 4:30 p. m. ET Friday, President Trump’s second attempt at a ”travel ban” was supposed to go into effect Thursday. Instead, the central components of the executive order have been blocked by judges on opposite sides of the country. In both cases, the judges relied heavily on public statements from Trump and his advisers to conclude that the order  —   despite being ”facially” neutral on religion  —   was designed to target Muslims. As we’ve reported, the order would deny entry to citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and suspend the U. S refugee program for 120 days. (Iraqi citizens, people who already have visas and refugees whose travel plans were already finalized were all exempted from this order  —   although they were barred under the first version of the travel ban.) The first order prompted chaos, and advocates say the second does little to alleviate fear and uncertainly. The original ban was blocked by a federal court, and an appeals court stood behind the lower court’s decision. The new version was supposed to address the courts’ objections. But judges in Hawaii and Maryland  —   ruling on cases originally filed against the first order  —   found that the changes didn’t address the underlying concerns and blocked it, too, from going into effect. A third court, in Washington state, has declined to enforce a previous restraining order but is expected to rule on a request to block the revised order. From Hawaii: a broad, temporary order, On Wednesday night, a federal judge in Hawaii blocked the ban on citizens from the six countries, as well as the suspension of the refugee program. He imposed a temporary restraining order, a   measure meant to prevent irreparable harm while court proceedings move forward. U. S. District Court Judge Derrick K. Watson leaned heavily on public statements by Trump and his advisers to determine that ”a reasonable, objective observer” would conclude that the order targeted Muslims. The judge determined that Trump wasn’t even subtle about his actual intent, writing: ”The Government appropriately cautions that, in determining purpose, courts should not look into the ’veiled psyche’ and ’secret motives’ of government decisionmakers and may not undertake a ’judicial psychoanalysis of a drafter’s heart of hearts.’ . .. ”The Government need not fear. The remarkable facts at issue here require no such impermissible inquiry. For instance, there is nothing ’veiled’ about this press release: ’Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.’ ” Watson notes that Trump later said he changed to ”talking territory instead of Muslim,” because ”people were so upset when I used the word Muslim.” And former New York Mayor and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani, discussing the first executive order, said Trump had asked about finding a way to impose a Muslim ban ”legally.” And there were several other examples in the full court decision. In short, Watson found, there was ”significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus” driving the executive order. In a statement responding to the Hawaii ruling, the Justice Department called it ”flawed both in reasoning and in scope.” And at a rally Wednesday night in Nashville, Tenn. Trump said he thought his administration ought to return to the original ruling  —   not the ”watered down” second version  —   and ”go all the way” to the Supreme Court. From Maryland: a narrower injunction, In a decision published early Thursday, a federal judge in Maryland blocked just one element of the travel ban  —   the section affecting citizens of the six countries. He didn’t interfere in the order’s suspension of the refugee program, despite the plaintiffs’ request. That judge, Theodore D. Chuang, issued a preliminary injunction  —   a more permanent way of blocking the measure, which could last longer than the restraining order issued by Hawaii. Like Watson, Chuang also listed public statements from Trump and his advisers about a ”Muslim ban.” There’s no reason to disregard those statements when analyzing the order, he said  —   since court precedent holds that ”the world is not made brand new every morning” and ”reasonable observers have reasonable memories.” (This appears to be a response to arguments that the court ought not to consider Trump’s   rhetoric.) He also directly challenged the Trump administration’s claim that the ban was primarily driven by national security interests. Chuang writes that, as the Trump administration has repeatedly emphasized, courts should generally defer to the executive branch on national security judgments. But he says there are ”strong indications” that any such concerns were secondary to religious bias. After all, he reasoned, if security concerns were central, wouldn’t Trump have conferred with ”the relevant national security agencies” before passing the original ban, instead of after? The travel ban ”bears no resemblance” to any other government response to a national security risk. But it ”bears a clear resemblance” to Trump’s descriptions of how he would enact a Muslim ban, Chuang writes. The Justice Department has filed an appeal, asking the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Chuang’s decision. In Washington state: considering a second restraining order, Judge James L. Robart, a federal judge in Washington, blocked the original travel ban from being enforced back in February. The states involved in that case asked Robart to extend the suspension so that it also covered the new version. But on Thursday, Robart announced he was rejecting that request. He said there were ”notable distinctions” between the original and revised order  —   including the narrower scope of the new one, and the removal of references to religion  —   that mean it has to be considered separately. There’s still the possibility that Robart will issue a new temporary restraining order. The states in Washington v. Trump have already asked for one, having anticipated that the judge might not extend the first one. And a second, separate case before Robart  —   brought not by states but by a collection of individuals  —   also asks that he block the new order. Robart heard that case on Wednesday it’s not clear when he will respond."
"Ask any veteran lawyer about her worst fear, and you’ll hear this: the client who digs a hole for himself  —   and then keeps on digging. The challenge of defending a difficult client is once again in the news this week as the Justice Department has struggled to convince federal judges that President Trump’s executive order, imposing limits on travelers from six majority Muslim countries, is not, in fact, a ban on Muslims. In rulings from Hawaii, Maryland, Washington and beyond, courts have cited Trump’s own words as evidence the travel ban is infected by an intent to disfavor Muslim visitors and refugees. That, Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii concluded Wednesday, violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which prohibits Congress from establishing a state religion or favoring one over another. ”A reasonable, objective observer  —   enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance  —   would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion,” the judge wrote. The predicament of the Justice Department lawyers defending the president’s order reminded one criminal defense attorney of this remark from the Roman philosopher Cicero: ”Man is his own worst enemy.” ”A lawyer’s first job is to try to prevent his client from doing something that may come back to bite him,” said Barry Pollack, the attorney and president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. ”A lawyer’s second job is to prevent his client from getting bitten.” On the campaign trail, President Trump called for a ”total and complete shutdown” of Muslims at the U. S. border. The Justice Department has been arguing those statements before the November election should be out of bounds in court. And some legal scholars agree. Problem is, Trump keeps on talking. At the time he unveiled his first executive order, on Jan. 27, the president told the Christian Broadcasting Network that Christians would be given priority when they sought status as refugees. ”We are going to help them,” Trump said. ”They have been horribly treated.” That weekend, his close adviser Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, told Fox News that the president had directed him to come up with a way to enact a Muslim ban that would pass legal muster. Advocates for refugees and civil liberties groups used those remarks to persuade a judge to block the order. ”There’s a concept in the Rules of Evidence called ’Party Admission,’ ” said longtime lawyer Mark MacDougall. ”When you make a statement that’s unfriendly to your case, it can be used against you in court. That’s why all good lawyers tell their clients to keep their mouths shut. That’s your first conversation.” MacDougall, who has defended government officials, intelligence agents and corporate executives, said most defendants are ”usually sufficiently scared that they listen. Politicians are different.” Inside the Trump White House, the president and his top aides indeed are adopting their own approach, one that in part targets the judges ruling against them. After courts blocked the first order, dealing the White House a political and public relations blow, White House aide Stephen Miller told interviewers that a newly envisioned order would include technical changes but have the same basic purpose. That remark wound up in an adverse court decision this week. Again, Wednesday evening, just hours after a court restrained the new travel ban, Trump told an audience at a Nashville, Tenn. rally that the ruling was ”terrible” and politically motivated. With television cameras trained on him, the president said the new executive order, issued March 6, was a ”  version of the first order.” ”This new order was tailored to the dictates of the 9th Circuit’s, in my opinion, flawed ruling,” Trump added. ”This was, in the opinion of many, an unprecedented judicial overreach.” A reply came swiftly on Twitter from one of the many courtroom opponents of the idea. ACLU Deputy Legal Director Cecillia Wang entreated, ”Keep talking, Mr. President. Keep on talking.” Among those who would prefer the president stop talking: federal judges themselves. Five appeals court judges from the 9th Circuit, who wrote Wednesday in support of Trump’s sweeping powers on immigration, nevertheless went out of their way to decry some of his rhetoric. ”The personal attacks on the distinguished district judge and our colleagues were out of all bounds of civic and persuasive discourse  —   particularly when they came from the parties,” the judges said. ”Such personal attacks treat the court as though it were merely a political forum in which bargaining, compromise, and even intimidation are acceptable principles.” It’s not clear what kind of advice the president is getting from his White House counsel, Don McGahn, or the Justice Department  —   or whether Trump is taking it. Longtime defense lawyer William Taylor III said he has concluded Trump wants to talk to his political supporters and ”just doesn’t care” about legal advice to the contrary. There’s been no public hint of criticism from the lawyers taking a beating in court on behalf of the president. But at least one former Obama Justice Department spokeswoman, Dena Iverson, suggested a lot is going on behind the scenes: Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for DOJ, called the Hawaii ruling flawed in its reasoning and scope and pledged ”the Department will continue to defend this Executive Order in the courts.” The question in the legal community is, what will President Trump and his top aides say before then."
"The president and CEO of USA Gymnastics has resigned, months after an investigative report by The Indianapolis Star alleged that the organization ignored reports of sexual abuse by adults working in the sport, including coaches and a prominent doctor. Steve Penny, who served as the group’s head for more than a decade, announced his resignation on Thursday. In a statement, Penny did not apologize or admit any wrongdoing. He said he’s stepping aside ”solely to support the best interests of USA Gymnastics.” ”It has been heartbreaking to learn of instances of abuse and it sickens me that young athletes would be exploited in such a manner,” he said. The Indianapolis Star, which broke the story about allegations of widespread child sex abuse in the U. S. gymnastics world, reports that Penny ”has been personally responsible for handling sexual abuse complaints since becoming president in 2005, according to his sworn testimony in a Georgia lawsuit.” It also notes that Penny ”has grown the organization financially” in his tenure, and earned more than $600, 000 in 2015. Paul Parilla, the chairman of USA Gymnastics’ board of directors and the interim head of the organization, said the board believes Penny’s resignation ”will help USA Gymnastics face its current challenges. . .. USA Gymnastics and the entire gymnastics community must work together to focus on keeping athletes safe.” The organization is currently undergoing a review of its practices, in the wake of the explosive report from the Indianapolis Star.  As The   wrote in December, IndyStar journalists Tim Evans, Mark Alesia and Marisa Kwiatkowski reviewed hundreds of police and court documents and found that over two decades, at least 368 gymnasts alleged they were sexually assaulted or exploited by adults connected to the sport: ”[The journalists] reported that USA Gymnastics had ignored complaints and warnings about predatory coaches, and failed to report allegations to authorities. ”They now conclude that abusive coaches were ’allowed to move from gym to gym’  —   quietly fired from one gym before being hired at another. . .. ”They say it’s unclear from the records how many accusers and alleged abusers were USA Gymnastics members, ’because the organization does not disclose that information,’ but that their research reveals widespread abuse across American gymnastics.” You can read the Indianapolis Star investigation here. One of the reporters, Kwiatkowski, recently spoke with NPR about the pressure on Penny to resign. You can hear that interview here."
"Environmentalists love ”cover crops.” These are plants that tolerate cool weather and grow on farm fields after the crops are harvested. They hold the soil in place and are probably the most effective way to keep nutrients in fields, rather than polluting nearby streams. Unfortunately, the average farmer doesn’t love these crops quite so much. The Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization, studied satellite images of the Midwest and found that farmers in Iowa and Illinois had planted cover crops on less than three percent of their corn and soybean fields. Indiana’s farmers did slightly better, with cover crops on about seven percent of cropland. That’s tiny, compared to what’s needed to dramatically reduce water pollution from farms. Soren Rundquist, one of the authors of the EWG report, tells The Salt that Iowa’s environmental planners want cover crops on at least 60 percent of the state’s corn and soybean acres. Illinois has set a similar goal. The number of acres with cover crops in both states is increasing, Rundquist says, but at current rates these states won’t meet their goals for decades to come. There is, however, a proven way to get farmers to cover their fields. Pay them a lot of money for it. It’s worked well in one state  —   Maryland. In a part of the state known as the Eastern Shore, a heavily agricultural area along the Chesapeake Bay, farmers now plant cover crops on well over 50 percent of all corn fields, says Ken Staver, a scientist at the University of Maryland’s Wye Research and Education Center. ”The whole system is structured to get maximum impact,” says Staver. The state of Maryland pays farmers for a whole range of practices  —   like cover crops  —   that cut nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into streams. The more effective the practice in cutting pollution, the more money the farmers get. The biggest payments  —   up to $90 per acre  —   go to farmers who plant a cover crop of rye on corn fields early in the fall, and avoid spreading manure as fertilizer on their fields until spring arrives. (Spreading manure in the fall is more convenient for farmers, but it’s also more likely to wash away over the winter.) Some advocates of cover crops don’t think that farmers really need such payments, because a cover crop can pay for itself. It keeps soil healthy and keeps valuable nutrients in the field, so farmers don’t need to spend as much money on fertilizer. In practice, Staver says, those arguments haven’t changed farmers’ behavior. ”We’ve been at this a really long time,” he says. ”We tried that, 20 years ago, and it just wasn’t happening.” Farmers can be reluctant to plant cover crops because it means extra work, especially at crucial times in the fall and spring. Last year, some farmers in Indiana reportedly had trouble killing off their thriving cover crops when it was time to plant corn in those fields. When Maryland offered farmers about $20 per acre to plant cover crops, some farmers signed up, but not enough of them. It took more generous payments to convince the majority of farmers to get on board. Staver admits that this may be more feasible for Maryland than for Iowa, because Maryland has a much smaller amount of crop land to protect, compared to its state budget. But Rundquist, from the EWG, says there’s another way to look at it. Currently, he says, farmers in Iowa get about $10 million each year as incentives to plant cover crops. That’s dwarfed by other federal subsidies that farmers receive farmers in Iowa got over $1 billion from the federal government in 2015 in the form of subsidies for crop insurance and as compensation for low prices or poor yields. Rundquist wants the federal government to shift its priorities. ”Is [spending more money to promote cover crops] too expensive, considering how much money we spend on agricultural subsidies?” he says."
"Surely, Oakhurst Dairy would have done well to heed the immortal words of the ’80s hair band Cinderella: ”Don’t know what you got (till it’s gone).” The milk and cream company based in Portland, Maine, likely never appreciated the serial comma  —   also known as an Oxford comma  —   so much as it did Monday, when the lack of that little curved stroke cost the company an appeals court ruling that centered on overtime rules for drivers. Specifically, the ruling in favor of Oakhurst delivery drivers came down to Maine state law, which dictates that the following activities are not subject to overtime protections: ”The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:(1) Agricultural produce( 2) Meat and fish products and( 3) Perishable foods.” The trouble rests with ”or.” The presence of that tiny conjunction without a comma as a companion makes for some muddled meanings: Is ”packing for shipment or distribution” exempt from overtime regulations? Or are both ”packing for shipment” and ”distribution” exempt? These aren’t idle questions for the five delivery drivers who sued Oakhurst, because as Quartz notes, ”the drivers do distribute, but do not pack, the perishable food.” In other words, one interpretation of the law’s list would make the drivers eligible for overtime pay the other would mean they won’t get those extra dollars for extra time on the job. Enter the appeals court judges. In the opinion, 1st Circuit Judge David Barron writes that the lack of a comma renders the whole phrase too ambiguous to agree with Oakhurst  —   and the district court that originally ruled in its favor  —   that the drivers don’t get rights to overtime pay: ”The District Court concluded that, despite the absent comma, the Maine legislature unambiguously intended for the last term in the exemption’s list of activities to identify an exempt activity in its own right. . .. But, we conclude that the exemption’s scope is actually not so clear in this regard.” Even making allowances for the fact that Maine’s legislative style guidance eschews the Oxford comma, Barron argued that the ambiguity of the sentence ”must be construed liberally”  —   and so adopted ”the drivers’ narrower reading of the exemption.” Case closed . .. for now, at least. With the district court ruling in favor of Oakhurst reversed, Quartz reports the case can now be heard in a lower court. Now, as adherents of the great and terrible AP Stylebook  —   which also eschews the Oxford comma  —   we must admit the moral of this story flies in the face of everything (or one thing) NPR’s own sentences stand for. But we offer the above fable as a reminder that every punctuation mark deserves a fair hearing, a glimpse into the glories of grammar(,) and a quiet rebellion against the tyranny of copy editors everywhere.* *Just a joke, NPR copy desk! Please don’t break out the red pen. Note from the copy chief: While NPR does generally follow the AP Stylebook, we on the copy desk take a more liberal approach in deciding when a series is complex enough to warrant the comma’s use. "
"Rising drug prices are one of the biggest challenges in health care in the United States. More people are using prescription drugs on a regular basis, and the costs of specialty drugs are rising faster than inflation. President Donald Trump has promised over and over again to drive down drug prices. Just last week on Twitter he wrote: ”I am working on a new system where there will be competition in the Drug Industry. Pricing for the American people will come way down!” But Trump already has a weapon he could deploy to cut the prices of at least some expensive medications. That weapon is called ”  rights.”  Here’s how it works. When the federal government  —   through an agency like the National Institutes of Health  —   pays for medical research that leads to an invention that can be patented, federal law gives the government a license to use that intellectual property. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, wants the U. S. to exercise those rights to force down drug prices. ”I believe that when taxpayers finance research that produces a pharmaceutical, they have an interest in being able to afford that pharmaceutical, and that’s not happening now,” Doggett told Shots. What is happening is that the government pays for the research and the doctors and companies market the medications. The government retains a license to the intellectual property as a check, to ensure that the medicines are available to the public on ”reasonable terms.” But, Doggett said, the government has never used its   authority. ”Millions of dollars go out and federal research dollars pharmaceuticals result, and then they get priced at such outrageous levels,” Doggett said. ”They’re so high that some people cannot afford them.” Last year Doggett, along with 50 other members of Congress, backed a request by the group Knowledge Ecology International for NIH to use its   authority to lower the price of Xtandi  a prostate cancer drug. At the time the medication was sold by a Japanese company for about $88 a pill, according to KEI, a nonprofit organization that advocates for social justice. Last April, KEI said, a Canadian drug company offered to sell a generic version of Xtandi to the government for just $3 per pill. NIH declined to use its license or take that offer. Doggett and KEI appealed to former Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, who declined to overrule the NIH. Doggett then asked HHS to simply hold hearings, and lay out guidelines for when it might consider exercising   rights in response to price gouging. Again, the agency refused. Burwell said   authority is only allowed if certain criteria are met, ”such as alleviating health or safety needs, or when effective steps are not being taken to achieve practical application of the inventions.” She said the agency considered, in 2004, whether high prices meet those criteria and determined they do not. In that case the agency was looking at expensive drugs to treat HIV and AIDS. ”The attitude there seems to be, ’We’re not in the pricing business, we’re only in the research business and we’re not too interested in getting into the pricing business,’ ” Doggett said. But Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who studies intellectual property law and drug development, thinks the agency should be interested. ”When you think of the phrase ’reasonable terms’  —   reasonable terms inherently means, I think, the price that a drug is available for,” he told Shots. If the Trump administration decided to go that route, Kesselheim said, it could use its license to contract with a generic pharmaceutical manufacturer to make the drugs at a lower price. Or it could, potentially, take that license and buy the medications from a foreign drug maker. A radical move like that could have an effect on drug prices across the board, said Sara Fisher Ellison, an economist at MIT. ”Definitely an unusual action like that could have spillover effects on the drug prices of other companies,” she said, ”because obviously they might see themselves as the next potential target, and might want to make themselves a less attractive target by lowering their prices.” But those lower prices could also make drug companies less eager to invest lots of money in new medications. That’s the   the government has always had to wrestle with. But it’s one Trump could very well decide is worthwhile. ”Perhaps we as a country would rather have lower drug prices and a little less innovation,” Ellison said. Doggett hopes Trump might just take that deal. ”This is something where President Trump, if he wants to fulfill a campaign promise, can take action that the last administration refused to take in order to protect consumers,” Doggett said."
"Microscopic,   animals called tardigrades are one of the most resilient animals on earth. Known colloquially as water bears, they can survive freezing temperatures, radiation, even a trip to outer space. The creatures are famous for their ability to withstand extremely dry conditions. Water bears can go without water for 10 years, surviving as a dessicated shell. Just how they come back to life when their environment is friendlier has baffled scientists for years. Now researchers think they have the answer, and it may someday help us ship pharmaceuticals more efficiently.      Scientists initially thought tardigrades were surviving desiccation by using a sugar called trehalose. In bacteria and fungi, trehalose can turn the inside of cells to a   matrix that keeps proteins from being damaged in super dry conditions. The process, called vitrification, allows   organisms to hold proteins and molecules together until the organism is rehydrated and can get back to business. But when they looked closely, researchers found that trehalose was barely detectable in water bears, and that some species don’t have the ability to make the sugar at all. So researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill set out to find what the tardigrades were doing to regenerate. Led by UNC postdoctoral fellow Thomas Boothby, the team of biochemists started by drying out tardigrades and determining which genes were ”switched on” in response. One group of proteins called IDPs, or intrinsically disordered proteins, stood out. ”When we looked at which genes are activated most during that drying stress, the genes that encode the disordered proteins jumped right to the top of the list,” Boothby said. IDPs are the oddballs of the protein world. Most proteins have a stable   structure that’s important for their function, but intrinsically disordered proteins have no set shape. That means they’re flexible and can wiggle and move to bind things in the cell. Boothby says IDPs are like ”wiggly spaghetti springs where they are constantly changing shape.” Water bears that lacked functional IDPs couldn’t survive extremely dry conditions, as the biochemists noted in a study published Thursday in Molecular Cell. Boothby found that IDPs form   much like trehalose does in bacteria and fungi. Essentially, when the water bears get stressed, they start cranking out IDPs that fill up the cells and form the protective matrix. Once they determined that IDPs prevented tardigrades from drying up and dying, the researchers put IDPs in yeast and bacteria to see if it could protect them as well. The borrowed tardigrade proteins increased the ability of some bacteria and yeast to survive desiccation by  . That means that tardigrade proteins are functional even when you put them in other organisms. Boothby thinks these proteins could be useful in pharmaceutical storage. ”A lot of   pharmaceuticals are very effective but also very unstable,” he says. To keep them stable, some drugs need to be kept very cold as they’re transported and stored. This makes shipping and storage very expensive  —   which can be an insurmountable challenge in developing countries. Boothby thinks that using the tardigrade proteins to help stabilize the medicines could eventually bring down that cost. ”Essentially, what we envision is using these tardigrade proteins to stabilize sensitive proteins in a dried state, and then being able to ship and store these lifesaving drugs all over the world at room temperature.” So water bear proteins might bear benefits for humans, too."
"Silicon Valley, a region that attracts a diverse population from across the country and world due to its thriving tech sector, faces an existential question with   consequences: how might its mix of cultures change local policing? Some recent history has created fertile ground for such a question. In 2008, Palo Alto’s police chief reportedly retired after a controversial order for officers to specifically stop   men. Last year, Stanford researchers found that Oakland police officers were more likely to handcuff, search and arrest   men than any other group. The Justice Department recently said the San Francisco Police Department disproportionately targets people of color. In San Jose, local media reported disparate treatment by police of   and Latinos  —   even leading to a federal lawsuit. Overall, Bay Area residents are almost a quarter Hispanic or Latino, a quarter Asian, and markedly   (30 percent). More than 112 languages are spoken across the Bay Area, according to the San Francisco government. The region’s   economy might continue pushing up those numbers tech leaders are calling for more diversity in their predominantly white and Asian campuses. (Facebook did not reply to requests for comment about its diversity statistics. Both Apple and Google responded but said they do not provide further granularity than the demographic data on their diversity websites.) In Menlo Park, home to Facebook, police commander Dave Bertini says, ”It’s important that we try with all our might to hire people who are mirroring our communities.” While Menlo Park is mostly white (70 percent) recent census data show the city’s population as 18 percent Hispanic or Latino, about 10 percent Asian and just shy of 5 percent  . As of 2015, Menlo Park Police Department personnel were 25 percent Hispanic, about 8 percent Asian and 5 percent  . ”You’re dealing with people of different cultures, different backgrounds, different experiences, who perceive things differently,” said Bertini, who believes his police force’s education level exposes them to more ideas and allows officers to better understand different people. About half of the Menlo Park police department has at least an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. In California, all officers are required to undergo cultural diversity and discrimination training as part of the police academy, which includes understanding the cultural composition of the state and discussing the impact of racial profiling. In neighboring Palo Alto, where 64 percent are white, 6 percent are Hispanic, 27 percent are Asian and about 2 percent are   the officers are: 64 percent white, 12 percent Hispanic, 11 percent Asian and 7 percent African American. In Menlo Park, where most officers can’t afford to live in the neighborhoods they patrol (Zillow lists the median home value at $1. 9 million) they are expected to be aware that people’s unique experiences affect their interaction with law enforcement, Bertini said. ”There are certain people on both sides of the aisle  —   when it comes to law enforcement and the public  —   who just have ingrained in them for whatever reason, whether it’s their experience or what they’ve been told or what they’ve seen or what they assume or presume, that we’re all one thing,” Bertini said. While experts say relying too heavily on using the demographics of a population to monitor police behavior is not ideal, doing so can be helpful for residents to feel represented in how and by whom they are being policed. ”When law enforcement can’t figure out what’s going on in a given situation, when they can’t relate to and engage with folks, then you’re much more likely to have escalation during a conflict or during an encounter  —   and you’re going to have lack of trust,” said Phillip Atiba Goff,   and president of the Center for Policing Equity at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. That trust eroded Dominique Carter, who was driving her new BMW sedan with her mother in East Palo Alto in February when, she says, city police stopped them. Dominique and her mother, Joan Carter, a longtime technology executive, believed there was no probable cause for being stopped: they said they were going the speed limit, did not roll through stop signs, and   registration papers were displayed in the front windshield. The two police officers told them they were checking to make sure their new vehicle was not stolen. ”We felt harassed,” Dominique said. ”We felt that we had been racially profiled. And we felt that these officers had not treated us with much dignity and felt that they could take liberties with us and speak down to us.” The Carters felt they were racially profiled as two black women driving a new luxury car. So they filed a complaint letter with the city. ”The way he [one of the East Palo Alto officers] talked to me, the way he treated us, the disrespect, was like he didn’t even look at me like I was a person. .. that hurt,” the elder Carter said. East Palo Alto Police Department said it has received the complaint, assigned it for ”an internal affairs investigation” but would not discuss it further, citing it as a personnel matter. Ed Maguire, an Arizona State University criminologist who studies public perceptions of police, says a growing body of research suggests ”When police treat people in a way that they perceive as procedurally unfair, those people not only less likely to obey or comply with the requests of that specific officer, but they end up sort of registering lower levels of legitimacy for the police as an institution.” Simple things like how officers talk to people really matter, he said. Devin Guillory, an   software engineer at Etsy in San Francisco, says he hasn’t had any dramatic experiences with police in the Bay Area. But his parents advised him at a young age to make sure he crosses the street correctly, and not to have a smart mouth, and not to talk back to police. ”Even within the privileged class of people who exist at these great institutions, that have these great jobs . .. I think you’d be unsurprised at the number of people of color who had very negative experiences with police,” said Guillory, a former Stanford University football player. ”You always have your guard up as a black man, anyway,” said Ato Walker, an   San Jose resident who sued city police for their treatment of him. In 2013, Walker was charged with resisting arrest, after an argument with a parking officer escalated, eventually involving multiple officers. ”We need to do better to train our officers better,” Walker said. ”We need to have more citizen oversight of the police officers’ roles and relationships with community.” ASU’s Maguire’s research found that while most of the general population in the United States has positive feelings towards and trusts the police, among specialized populations, like   communities, the ratings can be ”dramatically low.” It’s not just someone’s personal experiences, Maguire says, but also that of siblings, parents, friends and neighbors that contribute to beliefs about police. ”So you end up having communities where you have these really dramatic deficits in   relationships,” he said. In recent years social media has brought an unprecedented level of raw witness accounts of police encounters, but that exposure does not necessarily help. ”Among people who already have reasons to have concerns about the police, social media dynamics tend to amplify those   concerns,” Maguire said. Center for Policing Equity’s Goff says good law enforcement officers are attuned to their audience. ”It just doesn’t make sense to talk to a group of community members who are angry with police treatment in the same way you would to someone who’s at the top of a political hierarchy,” Goff said. Goff, who helps run the National Justice Database, believes gathering traffic stop data about who is getting stopped, analyzing it and providing that analysis back to the police and communities can help move things forward. ”We put nerds in the middle and the nerds create the table where traditional adversaries can sit down,” he said. California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 (AB 953) is rolling out mandates for law enforcement agencies across the state to collect and report races of people they are stopping during traffic stops  —   if they are not already doing so. Menlo Park’s Bertini says his department will likely be participating sooner than its mandate in 2023, but it might be challenging since a person’s race is not printed on the California driver’s license. ”When someone stops you and they’re giving you a ticket, they’re assuming your race. Unless they ask you,” Bertini said. ”It’s impolite, it’s kind of awkward to say, ”Hey, what race are you? Where do you come from?” Could a techie solution help ease the awkwardness? Duke University students Vaibhav Tadepalli and Chris Reyes developed a prototype robot that could someday conduct the initial phase of a traffic stop, possibly easing concerns for both drivers and police officers. With the press of a button, an officer can deploy the ”Sentinel” robot from a patrol car that rides over to the stopped driver’s car, raises a screen and starts a   video conference between the driver and the police officer. Vignesh Ramachandran is a freelance journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow him @VigneshR."
"This frog really lights up a room. The South American polka dot tree frog initially appears unremarkable. But researchers in Argentina recently got a huge surprise when they shone an ultraviolet light on it, revealing that the creature is actually fluorescent and glows bright  . The fluorescence is ”unprecedented” in amphibians, the researchers said in a recent paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It means that ”  electromagnetic radiation is absorbed and then reemitted at longer wavelength.” The phenomenon had previously been documented primarily in certain fishes and sea turtles, though not in amphibians. And among   vertebrates, according to the scientists, it had been spotted in parrots. The frog also had a second surprise for the scientists, as   Norberto Peporine Lopes, a chemist at the University of Sao Paulo, tells The  . The chemical compounds causing the frog to glow are ”amazing and it’s a new chemistry,” he says. ”Three molecules  —       and    —   in the animals’ lymph tissue, skin and glandular secretions were responsible for the green fluorescence,” according to an article in Nature. ”The molecules contain a ring structure and a chain of hydrocarbons, and are unique among known fluorescent molecules in animals.” These frogs, Hypsiboas punctatus, emit a significant amount of light. The scientists say the fluorescence ”contributes  % of the total emerging light under twilight and nocturnal scenarios, largely enhancing brightness of the individuals and matching the sensitivity of night vision in amphibians.” Or as the Nature article puts it, ”about 18% as much visible light as a full Moon.” The frogs might use the fluorescence for communication, Lopes says, particularly to attract a mate. In addition to sound and smell, this would allow a male to clearly signal his location to a female frog. ”It’s to coordinate the attraction,” he says, ”because it’s specific for the frog eyes.” And while further study is required on the visual perception of this species of tree frog, Lopes says he suspects the light emitted is particularly exciting to the frog’s eyes. Before this discovery, fluorescence was considered ”irrelevant” to frog visual perception on land, according to the paper. Lopes says there are other frogs with similar body structures and transparent skin, and that this discovery suggests fluorescence is likely more common than scientists previously thought. They’re now researching other possible candidates, he says. Julián Faivovich, a herpetologist at the University of Buenos Aires, tells Nature he wants other researchers to pitch in: ”I’m really hoping that other colleagues will be very interested in this phenomenon, and they will start carrying a UV flashlight to the field.”"
"Nearly five years ago, the nation’s leading group of obstetricians and gynecologists issued a policy statement saying the time had come for oral contraception to be available without a prescription. We wrote about it and everything. In the intervening years, some states have changed their laws. California authorized pharmacists to distribute most types of hormonal birth control. Oregon passed a similar law covering both pills and patches. But neither law changed the status of birth control pills from prescription to   . Only the Food and Drug Administration can do that. And in Oregon’s case, the law does not apply to people of all ages. People under 18 are still required to get their first contraceptive prescription from a doctor. But researchers say there is no evidence that adolescents are at greater risk from birth control pills than adult women. A review of oral contraceptive research presents the most comprehensive evidence yet that, as the authors state, ”There is no scientific rationale for limiting access to a future    oral contraceptive product by age.” ”There is a growing body of evidence that the safety risks are low and benefits are large,” says Krishna Upadhya, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the lead author of the review, which was published this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health. In fact, she says, some of the potential negative side effects of oral contraception are less likely in younger people. For example, birth control pills that contain both estrogen and progestin come with an increased risk of a type of blood clot called a venous thromboembolism, but that risk is lower in teenagers than in older women. As a result, the pill is ”potentially safer the younger you are,” says Upadhya. The review also found no evidence that increased access to birth control would lead teenagers to have more sex or engage in riskier sex, a concern voiced by some critics of oral contraception access. Teen pregnancy rates are way down in the U. S. and teenagers are using contraceptives more often. Between 2007 and 2013, the number of 15 to    giving birth dropped 36 percent. The abortion rate has also fallen. ”These pills are safe and effective and we should reduce barriers to using them. And teens should benefit just as adult women do,” Upadhya says. One reason more girls and women are using birth control is that the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to fully cover prescribed contraception. That includes the pill, implanted hormonal birth control and intrauterine devices. So what would happen if oral contraception no longer required a prescription? The Affordable Care Act does not require insurance companies to cover    birth control like condoms, sponges and spermicide. If hormonal birth control was available over the counter, it too would fall outside the law’s coverage mandate. Sen. Patty Murray,  . introduced a bill in 2015 that would automatically amend the language of the ACA to require insurance companies to pay for any contraceptive approved for    sale by the FDA. Sen. Kelly Ayotte,  . H. introduced a separate bill that proposed giving priority to any request from a birth control manufacturer asking the FDA to consider    status for its drug, as long as it only applied to women over 18. Neither bill has made it out of committee. The current Republican proposal to repeal part of the ACA would not affect mandatory coverage for prescription contraceptives, as we have reported. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has issued multiple statements in the past year stressing that, while the group still supports making oral contraception available without a prescription to teens as well as adults, such a change is not enough on its own for making birth control available to everyone who needs it. ”   contraception is not an acceptable substitute for the ACA contraceptive coverage mandate,” the group wrote in a statement issued in February. Of course, there is currently no version of the pill has been approved by the FDA for use without a prescription. An FDA spokesperson said the agency ”generally cannot confirm or deny the existence of a pending product application,” so it is difficult to know whether any birth control manufacturers have requested that that their products be considered for    status. If a manufacturer did apply, the FDA would consider many of the same things Upadhya and her team looked at, including safety and efficacy data and potential age restrictions."
"Updated at 6:55 p. m. ET, A post on McDonald’s corporate Twitter account caused a stir Thursday morning, denigrating President Trump and calling for Barack Obama’s return. The tweet was up for about 20 minutes only  —   but in that time, it was liked and retweeted more than 1, 000 times. ”You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back,” said the tweet, which was briefly pinned to the top of the McDonald’s page. It concluded, ”also you have tiny hands.” McDonald’s apologized, saying its account had been ”hacked by an external source.” Posted at 9:16 a. m. ET, the tweet quickly drew a wide range of responses  —   and guesses over whether it was the work of an external hacker or a disgruntled employee. The tweet came as a significant departure on a corporate account that normally contents itself with marking holidays, promoting McDonald’s outlets and informing investors about company strategy. ”I assume somebody decided to quit their social media job in style,” reads one popular comment. Others joked that perhaps the Hamburglar, the McDonald’s cartoon character, had infiltrated the company’s social media division. And some, assuming that the tweet would be   posted a Web Archives link to the message. While people posting those early responses didn’t seem to believe the message reflected a shift in McDonald’s public stance on America’s leadership, several of them did say that they’re now planning to eat a Big Mac today. Other reactions came from Trump supporters  —   within an hour, one Twitter user had asked McDonald’s: ”Why would you post this! You think it’s ok to insult our president? For the record Obama was a failure!” That tweet included a new hashtag, #BoycottMcDonalds. The   tweet comes one year after Trump explained his appreciation for McDonald’s and other   chains, saying on CNN that the restaurants were run to tight standards. And, he added, he likes the    as well as the burgers. After clinching the Republican presidential nomination last May, Trump posted a photo of himself eating a meal from McDonald’s on his private jet, in an image that inspired a number of digital retouches."
"NPR’s Scott Simon spoke to James Cotton in 2013. Hear an encore of their conversation at the audio link. James Cotton, one of the foremost blues harmonica players of the 20th century, died Thursday of pneumonia while being treated at St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas. He was 81 years old. A note from Cotton’s label, Alligator Records, confirmed his passing. The Grammy   Cotton was born July 1, 1935, on a Mississippi cotton plantation and began playing the harmonica at age 9. As a teenager, he was mentored by Sonny Boy Williamson II, toured with Howlin’ Wolf and recorded sessions at the legendary Sun Records studio. Starting at the age of 20, Cotton spent 12 years on the road with Muddy Waters and was featured on Waters’ records At Newport 1960. Cotton formed The James Cotton Band in 1966, eventually drawing him into the orbit of the new era through collaborations with, among many others, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin. His status cemented, Cotton’s accolades began to pile up  —   a Grammy in 1996 for his album Deep In the Blues, a 2010   tribute concert at New York’s Lincoln Center, and the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal’s 2015 B. B. King award. Cotton is survived by his wife Jacklyn Hairston Cotton, daughters Teresa Hampton and Marshall Ann Cotton, and son James Patrick Cotton. He also leaves behind numerous grandchildren and  . Cotton explained his life best, in an interview with NPR in 2013: ”I guess I was born with the blues, and I don’t know nothing else but the blues.”"
"Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte dealt a sharp defeat to   nationalist Geert Wilders in what was seen as the first of three electoral tests of populism on the European continent this year. Rutte’s   VVD party took 33 out of 150 seats in the lower house of the Dutch parliament. Wilders’ Party for Freedom got 20 seats and came in second. The   Dutch Labor Party, took a major hit, losing 29 seats. The GreenLeft Party gained 10. A new coalition government will be formed, but most Dutch political parties have said they won’t work with the Party for Freedom. Wilders had hoped to notch a third big populist victory in the West since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union last summer and Donald Trump won last November in the U. S. Wilders ran on an     platform, which included vows to close all mosques and ban the Quran. He had led in the polls for nearly two years before slipping in the last week or so before the election. ”The Netherlands, after Brexit, after the American elections, said ’whoa!’ to the wrong kind of populism,” Rutte said Wednesday. Still, Wilders’ party picked up five additional seats in parliament  —   and the man known for his   pompadour vowed he would not go away. ”It’s not the 30 seats I hoped for, but we have gained seats,” Wilders said. ”This patriotic spring will happen.” Even as he voted Wednesday, he warned, ”The genie will not go back into the bottle.” Many Dutch who voted for parties other than Wilders’ exhaled when they awoke to the news of his defeat this morning. Waiting for a bus in The Hague, Tamara Venema said she was happy to see Rutte come out on top and the Netherlands not follow the path of the U. K. and the U. S. ”I’m very glad that happened, because I was afraid Wilders would win and  —   after Trump and after Brexit  —   we were going to be the next polarized country,” she said. In the end, Wilders’ policies and rhetoric  —   he had called Moroccans ”scum” and suggested the Netherlands deport some  —   proved too extreme for voters in a small country that was built on foreign trade and immigration and has been traditionally viewed as liberal and tolerant. Wilders’   finish also played well in European capitals. Wilders had repeatedly said he wanted to pull the Netherlands out of the EU. French President Francois Hollande called Rutte’s win a ”clear victory against extremism.” The next electoral battle focusing on populism will take place in France, where Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, is running for president. The first round of voting is set for next month."
"Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s   party is celebrating a resounding win over populist Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, in a result that’s being welcomed by centrists and progressives in France and Germany, which will also hold national elections this year. ”I warmly congratulate @markrutte for his clear victory against extremism,” French President Francois Hollande tweeted Thursday. ”The Netherlands, oh the Netherlands you are a champion!” tweeted Peter Altmaier, chief of staff for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. ”Congratulations on this great result.” Maintaining the edge it established in early poll results, Rutte’s VVD Party currently has 33 seats in the   legislature, compared with 20 for Wilders’ party. Two other parties are close behind, with 19 seats each. That’s the picture as of around noon local time Thursday in the Netherlands, with ballots in 382 of 388 municipalities counted, according to public broadcast outlet NOS. The decisive victory comes after months of polls that suggested either a Wilders victory or at least a tight outcome in an election that was defined by talk of immigration and   Union sentiment. During the campaign, Wilders’   stance helped him ride a wave of support  —   his party was once projected to win nearly 40 seats. But in the Netherlands, at least, that wave seems to have crested in the wake of   votes in the U. K. and the U. S. last year. ”In interviews across the country in the past week, even Wilders’ supporters found some of his rhetoric too incendiary,” NPR’s Frank Langfitt reported from Holland on Wednesday, ”including his suggestions that the Netherlands kick some Moroccans out of the country.” With Rutte’s allies in the Labour Party (also known by the acronym PvdA) suffering deep losses in Wednesday’s vote, the prime minister’s party will need to form a new governing coalition. As the news outlet NL Times notes, progressive and centrist parties such as GroenLinks gained seats this week. Polling stations saw high turnout, creating a tough task for Dutch election officials who’ve been   ballots due to concerns over possible hacking of the vote. Both Rutte and Wilders cast their ballots in The Hague. After he visited the polling station, Wilders told reporters that momentum was on his side, regardless of the results. ”Whatever the outcome of the election today, the genie will not go back into the bottle,” he said. ”People feel misrepresented.”"
"Forget basketball. March Mammal Madness may be more   than the NCAA’s version of March Madness. Sure, basketball players can jump. But can they jump like the giant pouched rat, which leaps 5 feet in the air? Not only that, the   weighing in at around 3 pounds, can sniff out land mines and identify TB in sputum samples. In the first round of the mammal tournament, the pouched rat (seeded 11th in its bracket of 16) took on the   fox (seeded 6th). The fox quit after the rat used its sneaky leaping skills to jump on the fox’s head and run down its back. Okay, so the animals didn’t actually fight. What happens in the tournament is this: Animals are paired up, just like basketball teams. Then a group of scientists imagines what an   battle would look like. They consider each animal’s temperament, body armor (if that applies) weaponry, fighting style and other factors. Adding in an element of chance, they create a story of what would happen if the two animals clashed. Fans can follow along live on Twitter at #2017MMM or find archived results through Arizona State University, which also offers a printable bracket, showing which animals face each other as the tournament progresses. The first ”round” took place last Wednesday. Videos, created by fans and narrated by animal puppets, summarize the results with help from real photos and video footage of the animals. No animals are harmed in these battles, which, of course, do not really take place. Thousands of people play, printing out the bracket and picking their favorites, Up to tens of thousands more check in, according to Katie Hinde, the anthropologist at Arizona State University who started the tournament. Educators keep tabs, too, using the event to teach their students about the biology and conservation of small and   mammals. Danielle Lee, a mammalogist and animal behavior scientist who studies pouched rats at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, says the pouched rat had the upper hand because the fox didn’t see it as potential prey. Normally,   foxes pounce on smaller prey, like grasshoppers, rodents and dung beetles. The pouched rat was too big and tenacious to fall for the fox’s wily ways. ”In the end,” says Lee, who   the battle, ”the pouched rat’s moxie is what gave it the advantage.” In one of Lee’s first tweets about the imaginary battle, which took place between the two creatures after sundown on imaginary open grassland last Wednesday, she wrote that the pouched rat reared up on its hind legs and sniffed the air. That move illustrates a keen sense of smell that has also propelled the pouched rat into   scientific collaborations off the battlefield. In Tanzania and Mozambique, a group called APOPO trains the rodents to sniff out tuberculosis in samples of human mucous. They call their animals ”HeroRATS.” The   rats are faster and cheaper than traditional lab techniques for diagnosing TB, according to APOPO. The organization has also used giant pouched rats to sniff out land mines in Cambodia, Thailand and elsewhere. Can the pouched rat advance another round? It’s not a sure thing. In its next battle, Thursday at 8:30 p. m. ET, the pouched rat will face off against the maned wolf, which weighs around 50 pounds and is about 60 inches long. It’s seeded third in the bracket. ”Judging by how easily ’maned wolf’ dispatched ’red squirrel,’ ” Lee says. ”I’m worried.” Even if the rat loses, it’s got its day job to fall back on. There are plenty of land mines and TB samples just waiting for a sniff. Emily Sohn is a freelance journalist in Minneapolis who writes regularly about health and science for Nature, the Washington Post, bioGraphic, Hakai and others. More at www. tidepoolsinc. com. On Twitter: @tidepoolsinc"
"If you had to rank Harriet Tubman and Kanye West in order of blackness, who would be first? Who’s blacker, Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr.? These are the type of questions a new card game, Trading Races, asks players to ponder. The rules are simple: Each player gets five cards from a   deck each card has the image of a different famous person. In every round, participants take turns throwing down one card. To win, you have to throw down the card with the ”blackest” person in the bunch  —   a feat that players agree upon after a civil discussion (read:   argument) about what makes some people blacker, or less black, than others. Kenyatta Forbes, who created the game, said she wanted to get people talking about their definitions of blackness. The idea came to her years ago, when she was the only person of color in her graduate cohort. Forbes, who was studying film and video animation, said her white professors sometimes had trouble critiquing her work in a meaningful way, ”because they felt like they couldn’t talk about work that was rooted in blackness.” One way of breaking through those blocks, she said, was humor. If she could get people laughing, she could get them talking. Trading Races does just that. But despite it’s levity, the game can lead to some pretty serious  —   and sometimes uncomfortable  —   discussions about history, culture, appropriation, science and community. ”It is really looking at how we, for lack of a better word, quantify race,” Forbes said. ”At the end of it, I’m not expecting a kumbaya moment. That’s not going to happen. But what I’m hoping is that it opens up a space to have the dialogue that [people] wouldn’t have had otherwise.” Forbes said that despite the fact that race doesn’t have a real biological definition, people have very real opinions about what it means to be black. This game is a fun way to parse out those views, and maybe even start to unpack them. Although Trading Races doesn’t offer any suggestions about how to define blackness, Forbes said that after playing the game hundreds of times with friends, coworkers, even strangers  —   including the creators of ”Cards Against Humanity”  —   she has noticed some themes. People tend to give higher rank to people who have done something significant for fellow black people. That means a Stacey Dash card, she said, usually doesn’t stand a chance against a Sojourner Truth card, and it’s hard to beat an MLK card. Right now, Trading Races is in production. The game should be available for mass purchase   with official game nights coming to Chicago, New York, Washington D. C. Atlanta, Oakland and New Orleans. Forbes has big plans for the future. For each deck of cards sold, she wants to donate one to a school. Though right now the game focuses mostly on black and white folks, she’s already planning expansion packs with people from other racial backgrounds."
"When Stephen Bosio of Pasadena, Calif. fed his    son a pasty, the act felt, by his assessment, more important than it should have. ”Teddy is a fifth generation   man,” Stephen told me. Outside the rural Midwest, the term ”pasty” is associated with a particular type of nipple cover rather than a pastry shell stuffed with ground beef and root vegetables, although the pronunciations of these terms differ. The food variety, ironically, rhymes with ”nasty” rather than ”tasty.” In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U. P.) where Stephen and I grew up, the dish is as culturally ubiquitous as   pizza is to Chicago. It did not strike me as absurd that a baby eating a pasty would mark a milestone on par with a first step or first word. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is a landmass jutting out of the northern tip of Wisconsin. The pasty’s prevalence is linked to an early 1800s rush to mine copper deposits in the region. The resulting onslaught of laborers from Cornwall, England, brought over the pasty. The Cornish miners favored the dish due to its portable nature  —   a small meat pie that could easily be carried into the mines for   workdays. In 1864, an even bigger wave of Finnish immigrants flooded the area. Folklorists William and Yvonne Lockwood noted that Finnish immigrants took cues from the Cornish population on how to behave American and adopted the pasty as their own. Different ethnic groups would make their own version of the dish and the Finnish were known for sometimes substituting carrots for rutabaga. The pasty became so popular with the Finnish miners, there remains a prevalent misconception that the dish is Finnish in origin. The pasty certainly feels Finnish. It embodies the Finnish term Sisu,   in the English language. Sisu is a Nordic stoicism, tenacity without   romanticisms. I define Sisu via a   Matt Groening cartoon, his era of anthropomorphized rabbits. In one comic, a rabbit runs the gamut of    highlights  —   birth, death, marriage, divorce  —   while a voice assures him, ”You’ll never make it. Quit squirming.” Sisu would say, ”You’ll never make it. Keep squirming.” The pasty is a dish born in the name of raw  . Pasties are rarely seasoned with anything other than salt and pepper, but tantalizing the taste buds is not the point. The dish’s strength lays in its practicality. A mix of complex carbs and protein, the pasty values sustainability over gastronomic gratification. Pasty making takes grit. David Livermore, a former line cook who worked in U. P. pasty restaurants in the late ’90s, can attest to that. Livermore worked in two different restaurants near the Mackinac Bridge connecting the Upper and Lower peninsulas. The pasties Livermore made contained ground beef, carrots, rutabaga and diced potatoes. These ingredients needed to be sliced into precise portions to ensure everything would cook to the same texture, a process that took a full morning. Despite the prep work’s complexity, the pasty’s seasonings are consistently simple. They are always seasoned with salt and pepper only and served with ketchup or gravy. (The    debate remains a point of contention. Livermore comes from a gravy family. I come from a ketchup one.) The dish retains its   roots. Livermore’s father runs a logging business, where the pasty is a favorite with Upper Peninsula loggers. The pasty’s trademark practicality has remained stable over time, defying food trends. I explain Stephen’s story to Livermore, mentioning my relief at hearing Stephen’s recipe resisted Californication. ”When I heard about a Pasadena pasty, I worried it would include avocado,” I said. ”I think, with pasties, the flavors come together great, but nothing is super overpowering,” Livermore says, ”There’s no Cajun, there’s no paprika, there’s no huge flavor burst . .. You take a bite, and it’s filling. That’s what Michigan is for me.” There is a slight difference between Michigan as a whole and Upper Michigan. The pasty is often unknown to downstate tourists. As soon as you cross the Mackinac Bridge, you are bombarded with restaurants sporting signs reading ”Pasties Sold Here.” This gets confusing. ”Tourists assumed it was pronounced ’’” Livermore says. ”They would come in wondering what exactly we were selling.” Tourists were eager to try the dish, enticed by the smell and fascinated by the food’s link to the mines. ”It was like tasting a bit of history,” Livermore says. It was actually history that compelled Stephen to share the dish with his   children. He wants his kids to learn the tradition his   was a Finnish immigrant who worked in the copper mines. ”Which mine?” I asked. ”” Stephen answered. ”No way!” I said, ”My grandpa sued them a whole bunch over workers’ rights issues.” This was no surprise to Stephen, whose   survived a  . The event was one factor that led to a 1913 miners’ strike. The strike culminated in the infamous Italian Hall Disaster, which Stephen’s   witnessed. On Christmas Eve, the mining union held a party in a building known as the Italian Hall. Someone falsely shouted ”Fire,” leading partygoers to stampede to the door. The resulting   caused 73 deaths. They never apprehended the culprit, but eight witnesses swore the man wore an   button on his coat. After the strike’s end, Stephen’s   was blacklisted from the mines. Unperturbed by the setbacks, he built a house and began farming. ”He is Sisu,” Stephen said. I was not surprised that Stephen linked the pasty to a Finnish miner’s tenacity. Sisu is encased in dish. The food is pure fuel, which fed miners and then loggers, and encourages squirming in the face of trying conditions. This mentality remains vital to Upper Peninsula culture. Recent decreases in snowfall has caused tourism to plummet. Mines continue to close. The region’s economic future is uncertain, but there is a glimmer of hope. There is talk of a limestone mine opening in the eastern Upper Peninsula. The pasty may once again descend underground to be served in the name of perseverance over pleasure."
"A Norwegian fund that manages government employees’ pensions has decided to remove its investments from the companies behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, a move that was reportedly inspired by pressure from Norway’s indigenous Sami peoples. The pipeline is being built by Energy Transfer Partners, or ETP. Allowing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River in North Dakota was opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which argued the route would threaten the tribe’s water sources and sacred sites. After legal challenges and lengthy protests, the pipeline’s construction was halted, but the project was reinstated by the Trump administration. The fund, KLP, says it went through a ”long and thorough”   process before deciding to exclude ETP and three other companies from its portfolio. KLP had about $68 million in those companies in total, it manages nearly $70 billion in assets. As NPR has reported, several U. S. cities have chosen to divest from   businesses  —   that is, intentionally step away from investments and business dealings with them. Most recently, San Francisco’s board of supervisors has voted in favor of divestment. Most of those divestments, many driven by the #DefundDAPL movement, have targeted the banks that lend money to the oil and gas companies building the pipeline. The Norwegian pension fund, in contrast, went directly after the petroleum companies. The Guardian and Investment  Pensions Europe both report that the decision was apparently driven by pressure from the Sami Parliament of Norway, a group representing the nation’s indigenous peoples. Vibeke Larsen, the Parliament’s president, tells The Guardian her group has been lobbying KLP in solidarity with indigenous groups in the U. S. Here’s more from the newspaper: ”KLP had previously argued it could not justify divestment from the project, saying that even though it visited the site in December, it had found no evidence of ’serious or systematic violations of environmental or human rights.’ ”But Larsen alerted the investment fund to a report earlier this month by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria   which concluded the tribes affected by the pipeline had not been consulted sufficiently.” In a lengthy explanation of their reasoning, the pension fund managers draw heavily on that report to conclude that the lack of consultation did qualify as a human rights violation. NLP says it wasn’t able to persuade the companies  —   ETP, which is building the pipeline, and Phillips 66, Enbridge Inc. and Marathon Petroleum Corp. which own stakes in it  —   to change their behavior through ”active ownership,” prompting the decision to divest. It’s not the first time KLP has divested funds. The group has moved away from coal investments and divested funds over companies’ actions in the West Bank. Norway has made DAPL divestment headlines before  —   the country’s largest bank has announced it is investigating the pipeline’s construction to evaluate ”how the indigenous people’s rights are being treated.”"
"It wasn’t the common ground that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was looking for. When President Trump was asked at their joint press conference Friday about the White House claims that President Obama had enlisted British intelligence in spying on him, Trump looked toward Merkel and quipped, ”At least we have something in common, perhaps.” Trump was referring to reports that the National Security Agency had tapped the German leader’s phone during the Obama administration. Merkel wasn’t laughing. It was the second awkward moment on Friday between the United States and a European ally. Earlier in the day, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May refuted the allegations of British spying, calling them ”ridiculous.” Such is the state of the Western alliance. Merkel traveled to Washington this week in hopes of establishing a working relationship with the U. S. president who, on the campaign trail, had accused her of ”ruining Germany.” As she said from her podium a few feet from Trump, ”It’s much, much better to talk to one another and not about one another.” And with a number of pressing issues on their agenda  —   the future of NATO, the strength of the European Union, deterring Russia, combating terrorism  —   there is no shortage of items to discuss. It will take time to see whether the leaders of the West’s two most powerful countries forged any ground in their first    meeting. It is hard to imagine two more different political figures, either in substance or in style. Merkel took the biggest political gamble of her life by welcoming roughly 1 million refugees to Germany. Trump is busy litigating a travel ban on people from six   nations. Merkel is pragmatic, a committed internationalist and the unquestioned champion of the EU. Trump fires off brash tweets, has expressed disdain for multilateral cooperation and promotes an ”America first” policy at the risk of jeopardizing   alliances. Yet whether these polar opposites can collaborate may be the single biggest factor in determining the future of the   partnership. Merkel, Germany’s chancellor since 2005, was meeting her third sitting U. S. president on Friday. She succeeded in establishing a strong working relationship with both of Trump’s predecessors, despite occasionally substantial policy differences. Disagreement over policy  —   even something as large as the war in Iraq  —   is one thing. It may be a greater test for Merkel to find common ground with a president who peddles unproven allegations and celebrates the weakening of the European project. On Friday, a Politico Magazine headline declared: ”The Leader of the Free World Meets Donald Trump.” It is fair to ask who at today’s press conference better represents traditional American democratic ideals. Oddly, Merkel’s belief in American exceptionalism may be stronger than the U. S. president’s. Her commitment to liberal democratic principles is surely more exceptional today than when she came into office. Judging by Trump and Merkel’s awkward, relatively chilly press conference, the German chancellor may be feeling even more alone on the world stage. William Dobson is NPR’s chief international editor. Follow him on Twitter: @WilliamJDobson"
"Updated at 4:50 p. m. ET, At a   and occasionally tense news conference after their first   meeting Friday, President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed trade and border policy  —   and had one notable exchange when Trump was asked about his unproven claims that former President Obama tapped the phones at Trump Tower last year. Trump declined the opportunity to retract the claim, telling the media that ”we said nothing” when he tweeted, ”How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process,” and that he was merely quoting a ”very talented legal mind” he had seen on Fox News. ”You should be talking to Fox,” Trump said. After the conference, Fox’s Shepard Smith responded: ”Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary,” apparently referring to the report Trump cited. But first, when addressing the question about wiretapping from a German reporter, Trump told Merkel: ”At least we have something in common, perhaps”  —   making an implied reference to the 2013 revelations that the National Security Administration had spied on European leaders, including Merkel. Merkel did not reply. The moment punctuated remarks that focused predominantly on trade and training the countries’ workers for manufacturing in the 21st century. In his statement at the start, Trump praised Germany’s apprenticeship program that trains people to join the industrial workforce. He also took a moment to thank Merkel for Germany’s continued support of the war effort in Afghanistan and for its role as a ”  coalition member.” Still, while Trump said he reiterated to Merkel his strong support for NATO, he was also careful to emphasize that NATO allies need to ”pay their fair share for the cost of defense.” It’s a point he has repeated often, maintaining a skeptical view of the defensive alliance  —   a position that has made Germany and other European countries wary. ”Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States,” Trump continued. ”These nations must pay what they owe.” Toward that end, both leaders said that Germany is committed to increasing its defense spending to 2 percent of its GDP  —   a goal already established for NATO members by the treaty’s terms. Merkel, for her part, focused on business from the outset as a centerpiece of her visit. Indeed she embarked on her   trip with some notable companions: top executives at BMW, Siemens and the industrial parts manufacturer Schaeffler. Her   company sent as good a message as any about the direction Merkel expected these introductory talks to take. ”She wants to make the point that the companies have created thousands of jobs in the United States,” Tanit Koch, the editor of the German newspaper Bild, tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. Citing Merkel’s interview with another German paper, Saarbruecker Zeitung, the BBC says the chancellor planned to remind Trump that BMW’s plant in South Carolina exported ”more cars than GM and Ford together” from America. ”I’ll make that clear,” Merkel added. And unavoidably with business comes the question of trade. At the news conference, Merkel praised international trade agreements, saying they work best when they work as a   for the parties involved. ”The English word she puts a lot of emphasis on right now is the word ’reciprocity,’ ” Koch says. Yet the German publication Deutsche Welle points out that ”the bar of what to expect from their first meeting [is] rather low, especially given the prior verbal tiffs between them and their different domestic audiences.” And those ”prior verbal tiffs” are not insignificant. Both as a candidate and as   Trump had some harsh words for the German leader, saying she was ”ruining Germany” and had ”made a catastrophic mistake” in welcoming more than 1 million migrants and refugees in recent years. The stark difference between their immigration policies surfaced again occasionally in the course of their news conference  —   with Trump pointedly asserting that ”immigration is a privilege, not a right.” In turn, Merkel maintained that while efforts must be made to stop illegal trafficking, such efforts have ”to be done by looking at the refugees as well, giving them opportunities to shape their own lives. . .. Help countries who right now are not [able] to do so.” On the campaign trail, Trump stressed this difference in beliefs in harsh terms, once saying, ”The German people are going to end up overthrowing this woman. I don’t know what the hell she’s thinking.” And shortly after Trump’s election, Merkel offered a rebuttal of her own in a tepid note of congratulations, taking the opportunity to state: ”Germany and America are bound by their values: democracy, freedom, the respect for the law and the dignity of human beings, independent of their origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political position. On the basis of these values I offer the future president of the United States, Donald Trump, close  .” The tensions have made for a tenuous balance for both leaders  —   perhaps more so for the German chancellor, who faces a tough national election of her own in September. ”What we know from the polls  —   as much as we can trust them nowadays  —   is that you have 80 to 90 percent of Germans saying they pretty much abhor what [Trump is] doing,” Koch tells NPR. But Merkel can’t fully separate herself from the U. S. president. Quite the opposite, in fact: Hopes remain that the meeting, if nothing else, might help reset the relationship between the two leaders. Or as Merkel told Saarbruecker Zeitung: ”It’s always better to talk with each other than about each other.” They are likely to have at least one more opportunity to talk with each other after this visit. Trump has accepted Merkel’s invitation to the   Summit, which will be held in Germany this summer."
"The Trump administration is appealing a federal judge’s decision to temporarily block the president’s second travel ban from going into effect  —   setting up another legal showdown in an appeals court. The first version of the ban, temporarily suspending the U. S. refugee program and barring entry into the U. S. from residents of seven   countries, was quickly blocked by a federal judge in Washington state. The Justice Department appealed that temporary restraining order, but a panel of judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the suspension of the ban. Then President Trump issued a new ban  —   one designed to address the legal concerns of the 9th Circuit, the administration says. It omitted Iraq from the list of barred countries, removed references to religion and excluded green card holders and people who already had visas, among other changes. That new executive order was also swiftly challenged in court. Earlier this week, two federal judges in separate courts blocked portions of the ban  —   a judge in Hawaii imposed a temporary restraining order, and a judge in Maryland granted a narrower, but potentially   preliminary injunction. It’s the Maryland injunction that the Trump administration is moving to appeal, asking the 4th Circuit Court to intervene. Omar Jadwat, the director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the Maryland case, says the ban has ”fared miserably in the courts.” ”We look forward to defending this careful and   decision in the appeals court,” he says, referring to Judge Theodore D. Chuang’s decision to grant the preliminary injunction. The Trump administration had signaled on Thursday that it planned to appeal Chuang’s decision press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration would seek clarification on the Hawaii ruling before appealing that case."
"Updated at 3:25 a. m. ET Sunday, Late Saturday night, another person threatening the White House was taken into custody, making the third threat in just over a week, and the second in one day. The Secret Service says a driver was detained after ”a suspicious vehicle” approached a White House checkpoint, according to Reuters. CNN, which first reported the incident, cites two law enforcement sources who said the man claimed to have a bomb in the vehicle. There was no confirmation of an explosive, CNN reports. Earlier Saturday, U. S. Secret Service agents armed with rifles appeared on the White House north lawn for a few minutes, as the agency dealt with another security scare. Federal officials say the response was prompted by a man who tried to get past a low security fence on Pennsylvania Avenue. The man was arrested without incident. President Trump was in Florida at the time. The Secret Service issued a brief statement about the incident: ”At approximately 1243 pm, an individual jumped over the bike rack on Pennsylvania Ave in an apparent attempt to get to the White House Fence. The individual was immediately apprehended by United States Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers before reaching the White House Fence. As standard operating procedure, Secret Service personnel increased their posture of readiness. Criminal charges are pending.” White House Spokesman Sean Spicer tweeted about the incident: ”Individual jumped bike rack on Pennsylvania Ave, not @WhiteHouse fence. Great response by @SecretService” The response, what one federal official called a ”show of force from tactical elements,” came just hours after the Secret Service reported that a man who breached the White House perimeter last week spent nearly 17 minutes on the grounds before being captured. U. S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz ( ) chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has sent a letter to the acting director of the Secret Service, demanding a briefing on that incident by March 20 at 5:00 p. m. The agency’s report on last week’s   came on the same day the agency revealed that a Secret Service employee’s   laptop computer was stolen in New York. It’s unclear what information was on the laptop, but spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said   laptops ”contain multiple layers of security including full disk encryption and are not permitted to contain classified information.” Some news outlets have reported the laptop contained sensitive information, including floor plans for Trump Tower and information about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. NPR has not confirmed this. The Secret Service is asking anyone with information about the theft to contact the New York Police Department and the Secret Service in New York. The agency says it has taken additional steps to address the security lapse at the White House on March 10, when a suspect, identified as    Jonathan Tran, first scaled an outer perimeter fence near the Treasury building, then climbed over an   vehicle gate and a 3    fence near the East Wing of the White House before being captured. President Trump was in the White House at the time of that security breach. The statement says the ”men and women of the Secret Service are extremely disappointed and angry” about the incident and that steps have been taken to ”mitigate lapses in security protocols.” NPR’s James Doubek contributed to this report."
"No matter how you slice it, outbreaks are becoming more common. Overseas, there’s been Ebola, Zika and yellow fever. And here at home, we’re seeing a surge in   diseases, with Lyme leading the way. For the past month, NPR has been looking at why this is the case. Deforestation lets animal viruses jump into people. Factory farming amplifies the problem. And then international tourism spreads the new diseases around the globe. But throughout our series, there’s been something else on people’s minds. Listeners and readers sent in 250 questions about pandemics. One kept popping up: ”If we believe that an unknown pandemic is overdue, what precautions are reasonable to take now?” asked Wade Schuette. We turned to four infectious disease experts for answers. From their collective advice, we created NPR’s Pandemic Preparedness Kit (no trademark necessary).  Now, this isn’t your traditional kit that you tuck under the kitchen sink. This kit is scattered around your life. In your car. In your purse. In your blood. And in your brain. And there are only three items. Good luck collecting them all! (If you really want to create a traditional ”emergency kit” for outbreaks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has suggestions. But chances are very, very low that you’ll need extra batteries and a gallon of water for a flu pandemic. Thank goodness.) 1. Vaccines, At first this sounds like public health propaganda  —   just another excuse to plug the MMWR vaccines. How could a vaccine for known diseases prepare you for a pandemic for a new disease that doesn’t have a vaccine yet? ”It absolutely can,” says Dr. William Powderly, an infectious disease doctor at Washington University in St. Louis and the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Here’s an example. ”Suppose we have an outbreak of a new influenza, something that’s deadly  —   and so new that there’s no vaccine for it,” he says. ”Well, how do people die of influenza?” It’s not just from the virus itself. ”One of the most common causes is secondary pneumonia  —   people getting pneumonia on top of the flu,” Powderly says. ”Completely new infections can weaken your immune system and set you up for a known infection.” And guess what we have a vaccine for? Yup, the bacteria that cause pneumonia. ”We recommend the pneumococcal vaccine for people over age 65 and those with certain underlying illness, like chronic heart disease,” Powderly says. ”Right now, though, just under half that population has taken the advice.” So to maximize your protection from a new disease, make sure you and your family are up to date on vaccines for known diseases, from the flu and pneumonia to shingles and whooping cough. 2. Virus knowledge, For this one, you’re gonna need the old noggin. And some skepticism. One of your best weapons during a disease outbreak is knowledge, says Dr. Jonathan Temte of the University of Wisconsin. ”Keep up with the news and try to understand what threats might be out there,” he says. For example, new types of influenza are one of the biggest threats right now  —   in terms of pandemic potential, Temte says. But if you know how to protect yourself from one type of influenza, you can protect yourself from all of them.  ”All forms of influenza spread through people coughing and sneezing  —   the respiratory route,” he says. ”So you can break transmission simply by maintaining distance and wearing a mask around sick people.”  Picking up a mask at the corner drugstore is easy. Finding accurate information on the Web isn’t quite as simple. There’s a lot of information about diseases on the Web, but it can be hard to tell what’s accurate. So Temte recommends going to governmental sites. If a disease catches your eye on a news media site, then look up the topic on governmental or nonprofit websites, Temte says, such as the World Health Organization or the CDC. ”Just go to your favorite search engine and type in the disease you’re concerned about and then add ’WHO’ or ’CDC’ along with it,” Temte says. These websites also post information about current disease outbreaks on their home pages  —   even when the outbreaks are small. So if you check them on a regular basis, you’ll stay one step ahead of any developing pandemic. Other good sites are those hosted by state health departments, CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota, and Medline at the National Institutes of Health  —   although while Medline isn’t typically up to date on the latest outbreak news, Temte says, it’s good for background information. 3. Very clean hands, When swine flu hit the U. S. in 2009, Dr. Abigail Carlson was on the front line. She was working in a hospital and was exposed to the virus every day. But she never got sick. Why? ”I got my vaccines and washed my hands. A lot,” says Carlson, an infectious disease expert at Washington University in St. Louis and an epidemiologist for the VA St. Louis Health Care System. ”Every emerging disease is different,” she says. ”But many of the basic control measures  —   like washing your hands  —   will work to combat it. They are still the most effective ways.” The CDC calls   the ”   vaccine.” And all the experts repeated the recommendation: Learn how to clean your hands properly and do it. ”It’s shocking the number of people who don’t do basic hand hygiene,” says Dr. Elizabeth Lee Daughtery, who studies infection control at Johns Hopkins University. ”That means washing with soap after the bathroom, before you cook, after you’ve been shopping  —   really anytime after you’ve after been out in public places, opening a bunch of doors, pressing a bunch of elevator buttons, touching the grocery cart,” she says. And don’t skimp on hand sanitizer and wipes, Daughtery says. Have them in the car, in your purse or backpack and around the house. And make sure you have enough stockpiled for when an outbreak hits. We’re talking about regular sanitizer and soap here, not those labeled ”antibacterial.” There’s no evidence that antibacterial compounds improve the effectiveness of soap and santizers, the Food and Drug Administration reports. Finally, don’t forget the kids. Make sure they are practicing good hand hygiene as well, Daughtery says. Have them sing ”Happy Birthday”  —   two times  —   while they’re scrubbing under the water. Then they’ll be sure to knock off all those bacteria and virus particles from their skin. Thanks to our readers who submitted questions to #CuriousGoat. Want to propose a question for our next callout, on the topic of climate change and global  ? Click here."
"Earth Day is coming up on April 22. It’s an occasion to think about the risks we all face from climate change  —   and to recognize the toll these problems take on the people in the developing world, who are especially vulnerable. When oceans rise, when drought strikes, the consequences can be dire. People are losing their homes and becoming climate refugees, losing their crops, losing their water sources.   insects are moving into new territory. ”People who are poorly off are always going to bear the brunt when things go badly,” says Dr. Alfred Sommer, epidemiologist and dean emeritus at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. We’d like to hear from you: What do you want to know about climate change and its effect on global  ? Use the form below to submit your question. Thank you for submitting your question. The submission round is now closed.  You have until Friday, March 24, to submit a question. We’ll pick one and publish a story that answers that question next month."
"There’s high drama in Florida over a prosecutor’s decision not to seek the death penalty for a man accused of killing a police officer. And the Florida governor’s decision to assign a different state attorney to the case is reigniting Florida’s death penalty debate yet again, after the law spent a contentious year in court. For much of last year, executions in Florida were on hold. That’s because Florida’s Supreme Court said the way judges and juries decided on the death penalty was unconstitutional. At the time, the law said only seven of 12 jurors needed to recommend a death sentence. The legislature passed a law to change that, requiring a unanimous jury decision for death. Gov. Rick Scott signed it into law earlier this week, which forced the state attorney in the Orlando area, Aramis Ayala, to act. ”What has become abundantly clear through this process is that while I currently do have discretion to pursue death sentences, I have determined that doing so is not in the best interest of this community or the best interest of justice,” she says. Ayala, who represents one of the largest judicial circuits in Florida, said the death penalty is not a deterrent. She cited FBI research showing that the South accounts for 80 percent of executions but still has the highest murder rate. Ayala also didn’t find any compelling evidence that the death penalty protects law enforcement. She said the blanket decision to not pursue the death penalty includes the recent case of Markeith Loyd. He’s accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend and an Orlando police officer. The decision not to seek the death penalty in that case does not sit well with Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings. ”To put it bluntly, law enforcement officers throughout Florida are outraged over the decision that was made in this case,” he says. ”I’ve also heard from many citizens who share the same feeling.” Backlash from the state attorney’s decision quickly followed. State Attorney General Pam Bondi called the measure a ”blanket neglect of duty.” Gov. Scott asked for Ayala to recuse herself from the police shooting case. When she refused, the governor issued an executive order assigning it to another state attorney. Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles Wells says that while the state’s death penalty system might be broken, ”it is the law,” he says. ”And when you have adopted a law, then it’s the function of everyone who has a role in it to make it work,” he says. The special prosecutor who took over Loyd’s case Thursday said he has not made a decision whether he will seek a death sentence. A grand jury indicted Loyd on two counts of murder last month."
"Kiev’s Solomyansky District Court is a   pink building squeezed between an Orthodox church with golden domes and the soaring office tower of Ukraine’s tax service. ”It’s a very symbolic place,” said Maxim Eristavi, a journalist and activist, as he returned to the site of a dramatic standoff that took place in early March. Inside the court, a judge was preparing to rule on extending the   detention of Roman Nasirov, the suspended head of Ukraine’s State Fiscal Service. Afraid that Nasirov would be allowed to escape the country’s first major graft trial, Eristavi and other protestors blocked the narrow access ways to the courthouse for 48 hours straight. Feeling the pressure from the street, the judge prolonged Nasirov’s detention by 60 days and set bail at nearly $4 million, a record for Ukraine. Activists like Eristavi call this the biggest victory in the fight against corruption since Ukraine became an independent country in 1991. Three years after bloody protests took place on the Maidan, Kiev’s main square, against   Viktor Yanukovych, Ukrainians are impatient with the pace of reform under President Petro Poroshenko. ”Those two nights showed us that there is still public anger and civil society is a powerful force,” said Eristavi. ”It doesn’t mean the revolution is a success. But it means it’s not dead yet.” Ukraine aspires to join the European Union, but is considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Activists and international donors like the International Monetary Fund are placing their hope in the fledgling National   Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and special prosecutors, who brought Nasirov’s case to court. Nasirov is accused of benefiting from an embezzlement scheme amounting to more than $70 million. NABU officers detained him March 2 in a Kiev hospital, where he claimed to be recovering from an illness. Nasirov was wheeled in on a gurney and lay in the courtroom without a shirt. Prosecutors suspected the    tax chief of feigning sickness  —   a tradition for Ukrainian officials caught up in legal troubles. ”This is a person who is extremely close and indispensable for President Poroshenko and his administration,” Eristavi said, so it was ” ” to see him in court. Thanks to the peaceful outcome of the courthouse protest, Ukraine avoided a major political crisis, says political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko. The country suffers from a ”Maidan syndrome,” he says, with activists using blockades and other direct action to put pressure on the government. ”If they use them too often and for any reason, they could end up destroying the state. That’s the biggest danger,” Fesenko said. Daria Kaleniuk, the director of the     Action Center, says the protesters were justified in blocking the exits to the court. ”In an ideal world, there’d be no need for citizens to enter the courtyard and wait for the judge to appear,” she said. ”But in the Ukrainian reality, where the court system is not reformed yet, we have to introduce enhanced civil society control.” A new generation of professionals is beginning to go into government, Kaleniuk said, and the introduction of   courts should help justice runs its course. She gives little credit to Poroshenko, elected on a reform platform in May 2014, for the changes. She calls him part of the old system. Rostyslav Pavlenko, the deputy head of the presidential administration, insists there has been progress. ”Much was done to cut this tail that goes into the Soviet times  —   or   times  —   and actually   the new institutional outfit,” he said. ”In three years, we have had to do the work that was neglected for more than 20.” Pavlenko lists tough reforms that Poroshenko’s government has pushed through: the reorganization of the armed forces in wartime conditions, asset declarations for government officials, the establishment of NABU and hiring of special   prosecutors. Still, 72 percent of Ukrainians believe their country is headed in the wrong direction, according to a poll taken in the fall. Corruption is named as the No. 2 problem, after the war against   separatists in eastern Ukraine. ”I think now, we’re probably at the most critical point because all the externalities and collateral damage have happened,” Pavlenko said, referring to the war and economic hardship. ”The positive results are only starting to surface.” The presidential administration is a   walk from the Maidan, where there are memorials to the   protesters who were picked off by snipers back in 2014. Yevgeniy Bulgakov, an engineering student crossing the square, draws a blank when asked if he knows who Nasirov, the disgraced tax chief, is. The    says he hasn’t seen any serious changes since the Maidan protest. ”The old guys left, some new guys came in,” he said. ”Since independence, we’ve been fighting corruption without any result. It’s how we live.” Yuliya Laktionova, 32, who works in publishing, disagrees. Many Ukrainians complain that when they interact with officials, teachers, even doctors, they are expected to pay bribes to get what they need. Laktionova says the Maidan protest made people more aware of their civic duty not to pay bribes. ”I think that’s a personal decision for each individual,” she said. ”Either you play by those rules or you don’t. There’s always a choice.” The European Union, the United States and the IMF have all prodded the Ukrainian government to change its ways. ”We know that many of these   officials might not have been so genuine when they were pressing for   measures and steps,” said David Stulik, spokesman for the EU delegation in Kiev. ”On the other hand, there was such wide pressure  —   from the international community and their own society  —   that they could not have behaved differently.” While acknowledging progress, Stulik says there is still significant institutional resistance to independent   courts and investigators. In the case of the former tax chief, Nasirov posted bail on Thursday and was released from prison in advance of the trial. Activists like Eristavi say that doesn’t change anything for them, since civil society has shown that it’s still a force to be reckoned with. Ukraine’s reformers know that if they are successful, their victory will send a powerful signal to neighboring Russia. And Kaleniuk of the   Action Center believes the United States can also learn from her country. ”Ukraine is a case study for Americans on what close ties between politics and business could result in: the abuse of power,   corruption, embezzlement of state funds, abuse of natural resources,” she said. When business and government are too close, Kaleniuk said, it impoverishes citizens and gives rise to authoritarianism."
"At a ceremony in New York on Thursday, one of America’s most celebrated writers had a new reason to celebrate. Louise Erdrich won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for her novel LaRose, the story of an accidental shooting  —   and the fraught tale of family and reparation that follows. Erdrich, who already has an NBCC Award to her name for her debut novel, Love Medicine, wasn’t the only author to be feted on Thursday. In fact, a number of writers from across six categories took home prizes. Not to mention a few more winners for good measure  —   including Margaret Atwood, who earned a lifetime achievement award. As The New York Times reports, the NBCC Awards, which are open to any book published in English in the U. S. ”stand out from other major awards because book critics deliver the verdicts.” Here’s a glimpse of the winners, as well as NPR’s previous coverage. Fiction: LaRose, by Louise Erdrich. Nonfiction: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond. Poetry: House of Lords and Commons, by Ishion Hutchinson. Criticism: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, by Carol Anderson. Autobiography: Lab Girl, Hope Jahren. Biography: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. John Leonard Prize for first book: Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi. Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Michelle Dean. Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award: Margaret Atwood. Emerging Critics Fellows: Taylor BrorbyPaul W. GleasonZachary GrahamYalie Saweed KamaraSummer McDonaldIsmail MuhamadHeather Scott Partington"
"This Friday is Match Day, an annual rite of passage for seniors in medical school, when they find out at noon if they’ve ”matched” with a residency in the specialty and location of their choice. But many of those being matched will be happy to go pretty much anywhere. They are international medical graduates  —   either U. S citizens who’ve attended school out of the country (think the Caribbean or Mexico) or doctors who are citizens of other countries and want to train here. Though getting into medical school in the U. S. is highly competitive, the simple fact of the matter is that there aren’t enough graduates of those medical schools to fill all of the residency training slots, especially in the   primary care fields. It’s been this way for decades, and we’ve depended on   doctors to fill out our training cohorts. Nationwide, 24 percent of medical residents are graduates of foreign medical schools, many of them at urban hospitals that serve   patients or hospitals in rural areas. Throughout my medical career, I’ve benefited greatly from working with doctors from other nations. Regardless of their country of origin, doctors who come to the U. S. to train and work are ambassadors of humane values, learning the mores of American culture while sharing their skills and knowledge. A recent study even suggests that patients do slightly better when treated by doctors born and educated outside of the United States. In my days as a medical student in Cleveland, my favorite rotations were at our county hospital. There the mission was clear: Treat any patient who walked through the door. There were no insurance requirements or other barriers to patients seeking help. Another benefit was that as a student, I could get the most   experience. As a   medical student, I had to learn to draw blood from patients, usually the ones with the    veins that the regular lab techs and nurses couldn’t get. I was blessed to work with a resident named Ahmad who was originally from Pakistan, where he’d trained as a surgeon. Ahmad gave up his dreams of performing surgery when he obtained a student visa and matched in internal medicine in Cleveland. He moved his family to Ohio, where they shivered through their first experience of real winter. Ahmad’s dexterity skills were in high demand among his   fellow residents, who were happy to learn procedures like intubation and inserting central lines from him. One night on call, a patient with an IV drug habit had a fever, which made us worry that he had a bloodstream infection. The problem was that his veins were so scarred that drawing blood to verify our hunch was a real challenge. It was no problem for Ahmad. He coached me through a couple of tricks like obtaining blood from a leg vein and the external jugular vein in the neck. And he did all of this while talking the patient through it to distract him from the unpleasantness. Ahmad’s skill made it easier for both of us  —   the patient, who didn’t even flinch, and me, a     student. Residents like Ahmad who train in the U. S. often decide to stay here, where physician incomes are higher and educational opportunities for their children are more abundant. Because of their visa requirements, doctors like Ahmad often move to locales that find it hard to attract health care professionals, including rural and   areas. I see this as a  : highly skilled foreigners move along the pathway to becoming permanent residents or U. S. citizens, and areas with a shortage of health professionals get doctors willing to ply their trade and become members of the community. Such is the American melting pot in the medical profession. However, the recent rise in   sentiment in our country threatens to undermine this balance  —   which leaves us vulnerable to worsening doctor shortages in smaller cities and community health centers. The president’s revised immigration executive order, which was slated to go into effect Wednesday, would cloud the picture for those who would come here to train. Foremost are those from the six countries that are temporarily banned. But other visa holders, while still allowed to travel to the U. S. may find a less welcoming environment, too. Foreign medical graduates already undergo rigorous screening as part of the visa process, notes Darrell Kirch, CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges. He said of the executive order in a statement: ”This order will not only have   negative implications, but will have a lasting impact on our nation’s patients, particularly those in rural and urban underserved areas.” Here’s hoping that Friday’s match brings more Ahmads to our country’s training programs. The medical profession could sure use more of that skill, worldliness and wisdom. John Henning Schumann is an internal medicine doctor and serves as president of the University of Oklahoma’s Tulsa campus. He also hosts Studio Tulsa: Medical Monday on KWGS Public Radio Tulsa. You can follow him on Twitter: @GlassHospital."
"Dr. Amin Rabiei knew he wanted to work in medicine from an early age. When he was growing up in Iran, he watched his dad experience seizures and his mom struggle to help. Rabiei went on to medical school in Iran, then practiced at a rural clinic there, all the while working toward an important career point that culminates Friday: getting matched to a medical residency training program in the United States. ”I decided to come here to have better opportunities for research and clinical education,” says Rabiei, who is already in Philadelphia on a research visa doing postdoctoral research at Thomas Jefferson University. His ultimate aim? ”Hopefully to share this information and these skills for the people who need this in the undeveloped countries.” Rabiei hopes to train in neurology with a focus on epilepsy. For international medical graduates like Rabiei, becoming eligible for residency training in the U. S. is a rigorous process that can take years of planning, financing and work. In general, landing one of these coveted spots, a requirement for anyone aspiring to train and practice medicine in the U. S. is already competitive about 32, 000 slots are available to an applicant pool of 42, 000. Last year, about half the applicants from outside the U. S. were successful in getting a match. But now, as Rabiei braces for Friday, when these decisions will be finalized, he and others worry that the recent White House executive orders on immigration have further diminished their chances of getting a match. ”It becomes like double stress,” Rabiei says. ”It is a valid concern,” says Dr. William Pinsky, president of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates. And that valid concern continues, even though the most recent executive order on travel was blocked nationwide, at least temporarily, Wednesday afternoon. Here’s why: Pinsky says President Trump’s executive orders have created new unknowns in the visa process for foreign medical graduates  —   and the ambiguity puts the residency programs, as well as the applicants, in a bind. Though the training programs rank applicants according to their merits and qualifications, the matching system hinges on these young doctors being available and ready to start caring for patients in July. Many residency programs can’t risk having an empty seat because of visa processing delays. ”Program directors have to weigh various factors of applicants, from their medical knowledge, ability to communicate, their observed level of empathy, their leadership capabilities  —   and their ability to be available when July 1 comes,” Pinsky says. He estimates that roughly 300 to 400 applicants this year from the countries covered by the White House executive orders would now need to apply for a visa  —   or change or renew the one they have  —   to train in the U. S.  ”I have talked to a few program directors that were probably going to rank individuals from these countries lower on their preference order than they would have otherwise,” Pinsky says. About 1, 800 people from these countries are already in medical residencies in the United States. Further complicating this year’s ”match week,” most residency programs ranked their preferences of applicants on Feb. 22  —   in between the issuing of the first and second executive orders on travel restrictions. Those match decisions are to be released Friday, March 17. ”The timing and uncertainty of the executive order could not have come at a worse time,” Pinsky says. The first White House executive order restricting travel came out in January and applied to seven Muslim majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The more recent version, announced in early March, removed Iraq from the list. It bans new visas from the remaining six countries for 90 days, but also includes some exceptions that allow U. S. entry  —   such as for lawful permanent residents of the U. S. and those with other valid documents. The Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, which is based in Philadelphia, is responsible for certifying all international graduates who wish to apply for residency and practice medicine in the U. S. This involves administering qualifying exams and overseeing other background checks. ECFMG is also closely involved in the visa process, as a main sponsor of   clinical visas for international graduates  —   the most common type of visa granted for training and practicing medicine in the United States. A smaller number of institutions may directly sponsor residents through an   visa. ”If someone has a visa, as I understand, even though they’re from one of these six countries, it’s not an issue,” Pinsky says. Even so, it’s still unclear who is eligible to get a visa or how long it will take. His organization is awaiting clarification from the federal government on that process and whether, as before, the process can be expedited in order to be completed by the start of a medical residency. Dr. Atul Grover, vice president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, says large residency programs may be less affected by the executive orders than small ones. ”I think our bigger institutions, like Penn and CHOP [Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia] have very much said, ’Just on principle we’re going to rank these people if we think these are the best people,’ ” Grover says. ”You know, if I’m Penn and I’ve got an internal medicine class of like 45 residents, maybe I can take more of a chance. If one resident doesn’t come maybe I can figure it out.” (Indeed, a spokesperson from Penn tells Shots they don’t think the executive order will impact the institution’s ability to train residents who match there.) But waiting for somebody’s visa to come through can be a greater risk for smaller programs, Grover says. ”You can’t afford to lose 10 or 25 percent of your class. It’d be a big gamble for them.” Dr. Robert Wimmer heads a small pediatric residency program at Einstein Medical Center in North Philadelphia, and says about half the residents there are medical graduates from another country. The program can’t afford to accept someone in their new class of 10 if there’s a chance they might not be able to start in July because of visa issues. ”It’s unfortunate,” Wimmer says. ”Many work their tails off to get to the U. S. We might be losing a lot of talent.” While the United States has long been known as an epicenter for top medical research and care, Pinsky worries that reputation and the whole system could suffer if an uncertain immigration climate discourages young doctors from trying to train and practice in the United States. ”There could be an issue of access to health care as well as a quality situation,” he says. Rabiei says he and his Iranian peers are trying to stay positive. They feel encouraged by the support they’ve received from colleagues and their universities. ”When you try so hard to get to your dream, and all of a sudden you feel that there are some issues  —   unexpected problems  —   it’s a really bad feeling,” he says. Rabei won’t know until Friday exactly where he’ll be a medical resident, but he was thrilled to learn Monday that he has been offered a position by at least one institution. He knows other Iranians who were not so lucky. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WHYY’s The Pulse and Kaiser Health News."
"David Higginbotham contracted hepatitis C more than 35 years ago. He’d like to rid his body of the virus, but Colorado’s Medicaid program says he’s not sick enough to justify the cost. And he’s not alone. Since 2013, when Gilead Sciences Inc. released Sovaldi, the first medication that can reliably cure hepatitis C, health insurers and state Medicaid programs have been coming up with ways to limit access to it and a sister drug, Harvoni, because they’re priced so high  —   more than $80, 000 for a   course of Sovaldi at the outset. Both drugs are produced by Gilead, and their price has dropped some, as competitors have hit the market, but Higginbotham still hasn’t been able to get the cure. Gilead isn’t the only company that produces expensive drugs. Prices for prescription medications for various conditions have been rising faster than inflation for years. President Donald Trump says the pharmaceutical industry is ”getting away with murder,” and he’s vowed to do something about it. So what could he do in the case of hepatitis C medications? One solution that’s been proposed is to buy the company. Specifically buy Gilead Sciences Inc. Dr. Peter Bach, the director of health policy and outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, says the U. S. government could save money and treat everyone in the nation who has hepatitis C if it bought Gilead Sciences, rather than just buying Gilead’s products. Hepatitis C kills more Americans than any other infectious disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it leads to a liver transplant more often than any other condition. A year after Gilead got FDA approval for Sovaldi, it launched Harvoni,  —   a combination medicine that includes Sovaldi’s key ingredient and a second medication that attacks the hepatitis C virus in a different way. Sovaldi and Harvoni are the first drugs to consistently eradicate the virus, which has infected an estimated 2. 7 to 3. 3 million people in the U. S. Bach says that in the three years since the drugs hit the market, only about 600, 000 people have been treated  —   a low number considering there is a cure available. ”We’re doing a pretty poor job right now of finding patients with hepatitis C,” he says. The slow uptake, Bach says, is because of the drugs’ price. When Harvoni came on the market, it was listed at $94, 000 for a course of treatment that cures most patients. The price has since dropped to about half that, but is still out of reach for most people. Medicaid programs are limiting access and many insurance companies list it as a specialty drug and cover only a percentage of its cost. ”Because nobody can afford Gilead’s prices, there really isn’t much sense in investing to go find these patients and get them into treatment,” Bach says. He says the U. S. government, however, could cut the cost of treatment by almost   by buying Gilead on the open market  —   its market capitalization on March 17 was about $90 billion  —   and selling off all its assets except the U. S. rights to Sovaldi and Harvoni. The savings would be   he explains. The cost of treatment would decline. The disease would stop spreading. And the number of liver transplants prompted by hepatitis C infections would drop significantly. ”There’s a queue right now for liver transplants, so it will free up those livers for other people who have other diseases that we can’t cure who otherwise will die,” Bach points out. That would help states like Colorado, for example, which is limiting access to Medicaid patients because the costs of treating everyone at once would be too high. If the state were to treat every Medicaid beneficiary who is diagnosed with hepatitis C, it would cost an additional $500 million. So to get the drug, Higginbotham has to wait until his liver is more damaged that it is today. Bach says if the federal government treated hepatitis C as a public health issue, rather than as a Medicaid budget problem, buying Gilead would make sense. Gilead’s senior vice president, Gregg Alton, says Bach’s idea is  . What it really demonstrates, Alton says, is that the system to pay for prescription drugs isn’t equipped to deal with quick, expensive cures. ”Because we have a cure, the costs are paid in a short period of time,” he says. ”Our payment systems have a real tough time with that because they’re used to these sorts of   chronic therapies that pay a little bit at a time  —   but, over time, cost a lot more.”   In other words, it can cost a lot more to treat diabetes or multiple sclerosis over a lifetime than to cure hepatitis C in three months. From a public health perspective, buying Gilead isn’t a bad idea, says Sara Fisher Ellison, an economics lecturer at MIT. But that assumption rests on the notion that the government would buy the company’s shares at full price on the open market. That would avert any reaction from drugmakers or other companies who would fear that the government could use its power just to force them to lower prices. ”The reason this proposal could work is that right now the drugs are only serving a fraction of the potential patients,” Fisher Ellison says, ”and there’s a big public health benefit to serving all of the patents. That’s something that Gilead doesn’t take into account in its pricing policy, but it’s something that a government does take into account.” The idea is a long shot of course. But Higginbotham, who is still waiting in Colorado for his chance to take the hepatitis C drug, sees an opening with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. ”With our present administration,” he says, ”a hostile takeover might be just up his alley.”"
"From time to time in Hirokazu  ’s gently incisive family drama After the Storm, the soundtrack produces a few bars of casual whistling backed by a soft fragment of melody that noodles along with its lead character, stalled novelist and private detective Ryôta Shinoda (Hiroshi Abe). As he bumbles through another dispiriting day in the life, we learn that a typhoon is on its way to the Japanese town where he lives. If you’ve seen any other of  ’s leisurely character studies  —   Nobody Knows, say, or last year’s lovely Our Little Sister  —   you’ll know not to expect much in the way of action, let alone spectacles. Watch and listen closely, though, and worlds of deeply felt, awkwardly expressed passion will unfold in and around a cramped apartment in a nondescript   that has aged along with the inhabitants who raised families there. There, Ryôta’s mother, Yoshiko (Kilin Kiki) ekes out her last years on an income slashed to the rind by her late husband’s gambling losses. No victim, she: In her ebulliently acid way Yoshiko is a resilient survivor. Which is more than can be said of her son as he comes and goes, trying to make his peace with a family that doesn’t exactly run on oiled wheels. Every   family portrait functions, the director has said, as an inquiry from different angles into his own early experience. Almost invariably there’s a feckless father maternal dragons in various shades of bracing and in the foreground a floundering younger generation struggling not to repeat their elders’ mistakes even as they do that very thing. As lost souls go, Ryôta may be  ’s most hapless: Tall and handsome but   and   this   with shirt perennially untucked walks with the shambling,   gait of one who fears he’s as much of a   as his father. While gathering material for a new novel that’s not noticeably getting written, Ryôta shakes down cheaters and adulterers for his sleazy boss at the agency, then squanders his meager earnings at the racetrack instead of paying child support to his beautiful   Kyoko (Yoko Maki) whom he clearly loves as much as he does his sweet young son (Taiyo Yoshizawa) whom he manages to serially fail. It’s telling that Ryôta still seeks validation from his plainspoken mother, who has her son’s number (”You’re taking too long to bloom”) but who, we will see, has given up neither on him nor on life. As always,   offers little by way of plot. Instead he builds the dynamic between his characters out of an accumulating wealth of seemingly banal detail: A woman wordlessly vacuuming up broken glass a tangerine tree that bears no blossom or fruit but ”I water it every day like it’s you” a man obsessively rummaging through drawers for the wrong treasure. Like his creator, Ryôta is a meticulous observer of others. But he’s pretty clueless about his own motives until the arrival of the typhoon brings the family together, not entirely by accident, for the night in his mother’s apartment. If Yoshiko provides much of the movie’s tartly unsentimental comedy (who else would make someone a gift of her son’s umbilical cord?) she’s also the source of its wisdom and the carrier of  ’s insight into how mired we are in   delusion, how harsh in our judgment of others, how wacky in our fantasies that Action A will lead inexorably to Desired Outcome B. Before the film’s end, more than one member of this   clumsily durable family will cry out piteously that things weren’t supposed to turn out like this. On paper such insights can seem trite, but   fills them to the brim with the rich muddle of life, of endless aspiration, repeated failure,   internal reboots. Near the end of the movie, Ryôta and two of his imperfectly loved ones sit out the storm inside a ridiculous pink structure in a nearby park, eating stale cookies and sharing memories. There’s no Hollywood ending here, only a mutual nudging toward rueful understanding of how to go forward, and the creation of one of those cherished moments out of which, in the gospel according to   the good life is built."
"The annual South by Southwest conference is in full swing in Austin, Texas, where thousands of musicians go in hopes of making the right connections for their big break. The number of bands from Latin America and from Latino communities has increased so much that organizers have created a   within the larger festival. It’s called SXAmericas and Felix Contreras  —   the host of   NPR Music’s weekly podcast about Latino arts and culture  —   spoke with NPR’s Audie Cornish about a trend he’s spotted there. Audie Cornish: So this year, in terms of the music, what are we hearing from these Latin American artists? Felix Contreras: In a word, resistance with a capital ”R.” You know, ever since the election in November, there’s been a growing movement among artists of all stripes that’s been a reaction to the immigration policies of the new administration. Musicians in particular have been critical of the mass deportations  —   what immigration activists are referring to as the breaking up of families  —   and they have reacted through their music. Last night, the voter registration group Voto Latino sponsored a big concert here in Austin. It was an official South By Southwest show, but it was also free to the public and held in a very large outdoor facility known as Auditorium Shores, just south of downtown. And that’s kind of a big deal  —   the fact that the public could attend this, right? Usually, you go to these showcases and you have to have a badge or you have to be some kind of industry person who’s paid all this money to be there.  They do have shows there once a night for folks who don’t have badges. And every year since they started doing SXAmericas, which has been a couple of years now, they’ve always had these large Latin concerts that bring in the population around Austin, which is largely Latino. Judging by the flags flown last night that I saw in the crowd, it was largely Mexican or   some of whom I’m sure were affected by the recent immigration raids here in Austin that were attracting headlines. They were incredibly enthusiastic about the themes of resistance in the   messages shouted from the stage, and it felt really more like a rally than a concert. I want to focus on one artist in particular who is huge: René Pérez Joglar. He goes by the stage name Residente, and he was part of one of the biggest Latin groups for a decade, Calle 13.  Calle 13 was a phenomenon in Latin music  —   there’s no other way to say it. Residente and his   who calls himself Visitante  —   they’ve won a total of 25 Grammys and Latin Grammys. That is unprecedented. This artist grew up in Puerto Rico and his music, I guess, makes a lot of sense when you know that his dad was a labor lawyer and his mom was an actress. Correct. I mean, they were definitely paying attention to what was going on in the island, and it was absorbed  —   all of the social conditions and the political situations  —   in their personalities and their musical vision. And so their music has often been considered stridently political, but I’ve always considered it more of a reinforcement of what we Latinos have in common: a language, a shared history. You know, it’s music that definitely brings people together. To hear the band take on things like racism, income equality and violence in their home  —   not just in Puerto Rico but throughout Latin America and here in the US  —   Calle 13 is that rare example of intense, critical and popular success so far unmatched in anything that I’ve ever seen. NPR producer Christina Cala caught up with Residente in Austin to talk about his latest project  —   a   documentary and an album based on his DNA. Hear their conversation in the full version of this story, at the audio link."
"On Friday, the streaming service Netflix unveils the entire first season  —   all 13 episodes  —   of its newest children’s series, called Julie’s Greenroom. It stars Julie Andrews, who also is its executive producer along with her daughter, children’s book author Emma Walton Hamilton. Another collaborator is Lisa Henson, daughter of the late Muppets creator Jim Henson, whose Jim Henson’s Creature Shop provides the puppet characters with whom Andrews interacts. These include a dog, a duck and five little kids  —   children, not goats. With help from weekly celebrity guests, Andrews guides them in how to stage a musical. This first season of Julie’s Greenroom is actually a miniseries with a continuing narrative. It tells the story, from start to finish, of the creation, development and presentation of an original musical. Even though she has a human stage manager to help, Andrews is there to run things and to provide a dose of sanity amid all the backstage craziness and enthusiasm  —   the same function Kermit the Frog provided on the classic 1970s series The Muppet Show. Andrews should know  —   she guest starred on The Muppet Show in ’77, singing to, and with, a bunch of muppet kids. (Goats, not children this time.) Andrews, of course, sang to real children in the movie The Sound of Music. In that film, as in Mary Poppins, she was a role model for youngsters and had an almost magical effect on the whole family. All these years later, she still does. Julie’s Greenroom isn’t as manic or as hilarious as The Muppet Show  —   it’s closer to Mister Rogers than Miss Piggy  —   but it’s a quiet, comfortable delight. In Julie’s Greenroom, she presides over a quintet of youngsters, whom she calls ”Greenies,” who are getting their first chance at putting on a play in a real theater. One’s a tiny prima donna, another’s a   prodigy in a wheelchair, and they all want to take part in a local theater production. In each episode, Andrews invites guests to come in and demonstrate their craft. Alec Baldwin talks about acting. Bill Irwin talks about clowning. And Idina Menzel takes the kids on a field trip to Broadway and to the musical Wicked, where the actress playing the current Wicked Witch of the West explains how she applies her intricate makeup. After all, it’s not easy being green  —   but if you’re a Muppets fan, you knew that already. Julie’s Greenroom, the series, is a deconstruction, and a celebration, of the act of creative collaboration. It reveals that mounting a performance is hard work  —   but also a thrill and a valuable learning experience. The series fits right in with the spirit of The Muppet Show, and also with the long TV legacy of Andrews. In 1962, she starred with Carol Burnett in a fabulous   CBS special, Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall.   years later, she reunites with Carol Burnett for the first season finale of Julie’s Greenroom. Burnett plays Edna, a wealthy benefactor who has come to see the play  —   and whom Julie hopes will support the program financially so that it can continue. The message of much of Julie’s Greenroom is timeless, but the moral that the performing arts need financial support to survive couldn’t be more timely. The White House has just proposed a federal budget defunding, among other things, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In Julie’s Greenroom, the musical they put on is about an ogre who crushes the spirit of his kingdom by stealing its music, its dance and its writings. Several times in Julie’s Greenroom, Andrews quotes the theatrical maxim that ”The show must go on.” Her new Netflix series demonstrates how that happens, and in the musical within the TV show, what might happen if it doesn’t."
"President Trump has developed a consistent tactic when he’s criticized: say that someone else is worse. This week, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Republicans’ health care plan would leave 24 million additional people uninsured in 2026, Trump’s first move wasn’t a direct response. Instead, he took to Twitter to blast the Affordable Care Act (commonly referred to as Obamacare) criticizing how much was spent on promoting it and asking people to tweet their own criticisms. Prior to that, when the floodlights were on communications between   Sen. Jeff Sessions and the Russian ambassador, Trump’s tweets were all about Democrats’ contact with the Russians: Famously, he even did a reverse version of this  —   defending not the U. S. but Russia  —   when he told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly about his ”respect” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, as former Hillary Clinton State Department and campaign adviser Jake Sullivan noted in Foreign Policy in February. When O’Reilly countered that ”Putin is a killer,” Trump responded, ”There are a lot of killers. You got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?” This particular brand of changing the subject is called ”whataboutism”  —   a simple rhetorical tactic heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. And its use in Russia helps illustrate how it could be such a useful tool now, in America. As Russian political experts told NPR, it’s an attractive tactic for populists in particular, allowing them to be vague but appear   at the same time. A schoolyard taunt, brought to a global level, The idea behind whataboutism is simple: Party A accuses Party B of doing something bad. Party B responds by changing the subject and pointing out one of Party A’s faults  —   ”Yeah? Well what about that bad thing you did?” (Hence the name.) It’s not exactly a complicated tactic  —   any   can master the ”      ” defense. But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union’s heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia. Whataboutism  —   particularly directed toward the U. S.  —   was so pervasive in the USSR that it became a joke among Soviets, often in a subversive genre called ”Armenian Radio” jokes, explains one Russia analyst. ”Armenian Radio would be asked, ’How much does a Soviet engineer get paid?’ and they’d be like, ’I don’t know, but you [in America] lynch Negroes,’” said Vadim Nikitin, a Russia analyst and freelance writer. Eventually, that punchline came to be synonymous with the whole phenomenon of whataboutism, Nikitin said. But whataboutism extends beyond rhetoric, said Dmitry Dubrovsky, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. ”It’s not only a narrative practice it’s real policy,” he said. ”For example, the Russians installed a special institute to cover the violation of human rights in the United States.” Dubrovsky is referring to a branch of the organization called the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, which is widely considered  . In fact, IDC shuttered its New York office in 2015 because it said it had achieved its goals, Buzzfeed reported: ”The   situation has improved in the United States,” IDC Director Andranik Migranyan told Gazeta. ru. One big reason whataboutism is so attractive: it’s a simple way to shrug off criticism or even responsibility for any wrongdoings. ”You’re saying that in the negotiations we have, that no one is perfect, and no one can claim to be, and as such, what this does is let you off the hook,” Nikitin said. So when Trump denigrated Obamacare amid heavy criticism of the GOP’s health care plan, he seemed to be saying that whatever the GOP plan’s flaws, at least it isn’t the worst they could do (the worst, in his eyes, being Obamacare). Instead of giving a reasoned defense, he went for blunt offense, which is a hallmark of whataboutism. Trump and Putin’s common weapon, Whataboutism has been common in Putin’s Russia. The Atlantic cited one such example in 2014, noting that when the Kremlin faced criticisms of its treatment of protesters, government officials responded, ”What about the United Kingdom? Breaking the law during public gatherings there could lead to a fine of 5, 800 pounds sterling there or even prison.” One reason that Trump and Putin might both find whataboutism useful, said one expert in Russian politics, is that they have common political impulses. ”[Putin and Trump] are both populist leaders. They always try to be as uncertain as possible. And for a populist that’s important,” Dubrovsky said. ”Whataboutism is a very substantial part of populism rhetoric.” The idea, Dubrovsky posited, is that a populist leader wants to keep his masses of supporters on his side. Getting too specific on a policy or a position risks creating rifts within that base of support. Pointing to a common enemy, on the other hand, is a great way to unify a group. In addition, there can be an implicit toughness to whataboutism, in that it openly acknowledges that nobody is perfect. ”I think what the Russian discourse is [is] that it’s, in fact, very difficult to cleave perfectly to [a set of morals],” Nikitin said. ”And anyone that claims to the contrary can be unmasked as, in fact, being just as flawed as anyone else is.” Whataboutism flattens moral nuances into a    worldview. But in this worldview, it’s very difficult to be the good guy idealism is the ultimate naïveté, and anyone who dares to criticize another can be ”unmasked” as a hypocrite. This creates a useful moral equivalency, as Nikitin added: if nobody is perfect, there’s license to do all sorts of imperfect things. The idea, he said, is that ”you’ve got to be practical and kind of   and get your hands dirty. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying.” That closely mirrors what Trump told O’Reilly: ”What, and we’re so innocent?” It might come off as brash   but it’s nevertheless a defense of a world leader who has been accused of killing his critics. At least one Russian foresaw the   rhetorical parallels, even in the early days of the administration. In late January, Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev warned American journalists that Trump might take on some Putinesque media tactics: ”The thing is that when you think it’s your mission to make him [Putin] admit a lie, or an inconsistency in his previous statements [because he tends to make   in his statements on policies] when you try to point out those inconsistencies or catch him   lying, there’s no point because he’ll evade your question, he knows that he can just drown you in meaningless factoids or false moral equivalencies or by using what is called ’whataboutism. ’” Kovalev was right on many counts: Trump has indeed proved to be inconsistent, make political ”” repeatedly state falsehoods, and, of course, engage in whataboutism. And while Kovalev (and perhaps others) may have foreseen it, it’s no less striking that while Putin’s Russia is causing the Trump administration so much trouble, Trump nevertheless often sounds an awful lot like Putin."
"Republican leaders plan to bring the American Health Care Act to the floor of the House for a vote next Thursday, and President Trump is now publicly applying his   skills to ensure passage. ”I just want to let the world know, I am 100 percent in favor,” Trump told reporters brought to the Oval Office to see the tail end of his meeting with about a dozen members of the Republican Study Committee. That group of House members includes some who’d been lukewarm about the bill going into the meeting. Trump claimed to have converted everyone he met with, saying ”these folks were mostly no’s yesterday and now every single one is a yes.” NPR and its member stations have been tracking where members of Congress stand on the health care bill, and several of those in the meeting had already indicated they would vote for it. But some came in looking for changes to the legislation and changes they got. A senior GOP aide says they won two modifications to the bill during the White House meeting: an optional change to the way states receive Medicaid funding (if they want a block grant instead of federal payments based on per capita enrollment they can) and states would be given incentives to impose work requirements on those receiving Medicaid. ”We had a nice meeting. And we’ve been talking all during the night,” Trump said. ”This has been going all night long and we are doing some incredible things.” Later he added ”they are tough,” seeming to imply there had been some negotiating involved. Afterward, Rep Mia Love,   crowed on Twitter about extracting concessions. But the Republican Study Committee is far from the only constituency within the House GOP that President Trump has to deal with. Moderate Republicans like Ileana    . have announced their opposition, and the changes agreed to by the president are likely to harden that opposition. And some of the most conservative Republicans, those in the Freedom Caucus, remain unpersuaded. Justin Amash,  . turned to Twitter after the president spoke to make it clear not all conservatives had been flipped."
"20 years ago, a   film with a great soundtrack (Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Blur) became a huge hit. And then a lot of people ended up with a poster on their bedroom wall featuring an epically profane rant that began, ”Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family . ..” The film was, of course, Trainspotting, based on Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name. It’s set in Edinburgh, and it’s about a working class guy named Mark Renton and his mates  —   Spud, Begbie, Simon, and Tommy  —   who chose drugs, namely heroin, over the straight life. At the end of the film (spoiler alert) Renton betrays his friends and skips town with a stash of stolen money. Now, he’s come back to Edinburgh for the first time, as sequel T2 Trainspotting gets the original cast back together. Director Danny Boyle and star Ewan McGregor, who played Renton, say they’d always wanted to do a sequel, but earlier efforts didn’t work out. ”If we were going to revive these guys, or reintroduce people to them, there would have to be a very good idea beyond the original film,” Boyle says. ”And it’s this   gap that did it for us, and when we started to work on this a couple of years ago, it became very personal, I think, for all of us, about male behavior over time. And a period of 20 years is an extraordinary kind of measuring point.” McGregor on why Renton comes back to Edinburgh, He comes back in not a good frame of mind, that’s true. I think he had to find a way to get away from them, I think he had to find a way to find himself, he had to get away from his mates. Because everywhere he went, they kept following him around. He goes to London, and for a moment he enjoys a life  —   he’s an estate agent, he’s enjoying his life, and then suddenly Begbie’s there . .. he has to betray them in order to make sure that he gets away from them, maybe. Then once he’s been away from them for 20 years, well now he’s got to find his way back to them, in order to figure out who he is and what he’s going to do. Boyle on what people should take from these two films  —   are we all just stuck in our pasts? As an elder of these events, all I can do is  —   something that we do recommend in the film, which is one of the few compensations of aging  —   is the realization that time isn’t a straight line, actually that it loops. It’s one of the few consolations available, I have to warn everybody. It does begin to loop rather beautifully, and that was the idea of Spud’s character, who begins in a hopeless cycle of addiction and rehab and addiction and rehab, and as he finds his voice, really, towards the end of the film, and the film begins to loop back to the original book and the original film . .. it’s like an extended madeleine moment, you know, from Proust. The beauty of time. Because it can be terrifying, time, when you see its consequences  —   as you do with these actors, the same actors you remember in the first film but now you see what they’re like now. There’s a beautiful thing that happens as well, which is they do find some kind of atonement, and it’s led, in a curious poetic way, by Spud beginning to say, ”no, let’s find the value of the past as well, in our stories.” Producer Graham Smith, editor Becky Sullivan, and web producer Petra Mayer contributed to this report."
"The opening minutes of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting stand as a defining pop salvo in the movies, akin to The Beatles dashing away from screaming fans in A Hard Day’s Night or Rosie Perez   her way through Public Enemy’s ”Fight the Power” in the opening credits of Do the Right Thing. To the propulsive thump of Iggy Pop’s ”Lust for Life,” we’re introduced to motley quintet of young Scottish heroin junkies, as two of them, Renton (Ewan McGregor) and Spud (Ewen Bremner) evade the police on foot. In voiceover narration, Renton riffs sarcastically on ”Choose Life” sloganeering, mocking the conformist expectations of family and   televisions and ”fixed interest mortgage repayments.” He rejects those expectations, and for what reasons? ”Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?” A full 20 years after Trainspotting, Boyle and his cast return to the scuzzy Edinburgh environs so memorably defined by novelist Irvine Welsh, all older but not necessarily wiser. Yet the clumsily titled T2 Trainspotting offers an odd set of expectations that’s not unlike the Bond films that Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) mimics in his Sean Connery voice. Instead of ”Bond. .. James Bond” or ”shaken, not stirred,” we’re left to wonder when the ”Lust for Life” music cue will kick in or which sacred cows will be slaughtered in Renton’s latest ”Choose Life” monologue. It is a studio sequel, in other words, and thus harder to separate moments of authentic feeling from the obligations of fan service. Shenanigans help. The important   from one Trainspotting to the other are the episodic bits of chaos and   that fill in days that are otherwise empty and meaningless. While Boyle, Welsh, and the screenwriter, John Hodges, note the profound changes that have reshaped the dynamic between these five characters, T2 Trainspotting is rife with   misadventures, perpetually buzzing with comic energy. These men may be decades into their   lives, but they still know how to pass the time with   bar fights and petty criminality. As for the story itself, it’s a    shambles, exposing the thin rationale for bringing these character back together in the first place. Twenty years after fleeing from his friends with the money from a heroin deal, Renton returns to Edinburgh a broken man, hollowed out by a   career working in stock management software in Amsterdam. He gets less than a hero’s welcome: Spud still struggles with addiction, the vengeful Begbie (Robert Carlyle) and Sick Boy, his former best friend, has switched from heroin to a raging cocaine habit, funded by a lucrative sideline in prostitution and blackmail. After a short visit becomes an   one, Renton involves himself in Sick Boy’s   scheme to convert a dingy pub into a brothel, with his Bulgarian girlfriend (Anjela Nedyalkova) installed as the house madam. Aside from an amusing scene where the men try to secure public financing for their sordid little venture, the brothel subplot is a   attempt to add structure to a film that’s more comfortable with the spontaneous and anecdotal. T2 Trainspotting works best as a variation on the themes of middle age and nostalgia that Edgar Wright slipped into The World’s End, his   thriller about another group of estranged buddies reuniting in a hometown that’s no longer the same. The sad truth of Renton and company is that they never had the power to change the world around them or the willingness to buy into societal expectations. That’s fine for the young and the reckless, but 20 years of mucking around is exhausting and pitiful, like being a grizzled old townie at a punk show. The main difference between Trainspotting and T2 Trainspotting is that the original film, for all its unexpected and delightful little detours, is a secretly rigorous portrait of addiction and misspent youth. The sequel doesn’t have the same discipline or the same     insight into the narrow set of choices facing Britain’s poor and disenfranchised. It’s a fitfully joyous reunion, held aloft by the performances and the little bursts of energy pumped onto the soundtrack and a few inspired setpieces. (Renton and Sick Boy stealing ATM cards from a party of a Protestant nationalists is particularly brilliant.) But it never comes up with a coherent answer for why it exists, other than to indulge in the same nostalgia that its characters find so toxic. The filmmakers should know, better than most, the folly of reliving past glories."
"A score based on common blood tests may someday help people gauge their risk of developing a chronic disease like diabetes or dementia within three years of taking the test. The Intermountain Chronic Disease Risk Score was 77 to 78 percent accurate in predicting whether someone would be diagnosed with diabetes, kidney failure, coronary artery disease and dementia, among other illnesses. It’s based on the results of a comprehensive metabolic panel, which includes tests for blood glucose and liver function, and complete blood count, which measures the quantity of different types of blood cells. The hope is that the score could eventually help physicians better allocate their time and resources, says Heidi May, a cardiovascular epidemiologist with the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, and principal investigator of the study. For example, a patient whose score puts her in the   group might get more intense patient education about lifestyle or other prevention measures, and a   visit in six months rather than a year. The tests used in the score are commonly performed at checkups, and the score itself can be calculated by the hospital’s electronic health record, making it easier for doctors to use. ”Clinicians are so busy and have to worry about so many things,” says May. The   ICHRON score is similar to risk scores previously developed and now used by Intermountain Healthcare, a nonprofit hospital system, to predict the future risk of death, hospital readmission and serious disease. The research was presented Friday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology and hasn’t been published in a   journal. ”It’s a fascinating concept,” says Wayne Dysinger, a preventive and family medicine physician and CEO of Lifestyle Medicine Solutions, a primary care practice in southern California, who wasn’t involved in the study. ”They may be on to something, but it’s too early to say for sure.” For one thing, the score would have to be shown to be accurate in a more general population outside Utah, which is largely white and has lower rates of smoking and obesity than other states. The score was developed based on the data in one group of primary care patients and then tested again in another group, and it is  . Among the more than 144, 000 patients studied, 7 percent of women and 9 percent of men were diagnosed with at least one chronic disease in the next three years, most commonly diabetes or coronary artery disease. Among women, those with a high ICHRON score were 11 times more likely to be diagnosed with a chronic disease than those with a low score. Women with a moderate score were three times more likely to be diagnosed. Men with a high score were 14 times more likely to be diagnosed than those with a low score, and those with a moderate score more than five times more likely to be diagnosed. Dysinger notes the prediction isn’t perfect, and that people don’t have to wait to be identified as   to change their lifestyle, starting with turning away from processed foods to whole foods. According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of premature heart disease, stroke and diabetes can be prevented through lifestyle measures like avoiding tobacco use, keeping weight at a healthy level and exercise. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson."
"We hear a lot about U. S. companies laying off workers and shipping jobs overseas. So, amid the global pressures to downsize, how do you hang onto your workforce? We went looking for answers in Chelsea, Mich. home to a family owned manufacturer that’s managed to thrive over four generations, since the company’s founding in 1907. The Chelsea Milling Co. is better known as the manufacturer of Jiffy baking mixes. You know the ones. They come in those signature little blue and white boxes: mixes for muffins, cakes, pie crusts, biscuits, brownies and more. It’s a company that’s made a virtue out of being  . As President and CEO Howdy Holmes tells me, ”We are clearly so far from trendy, with our products, with our packaging, with the way we do business. I mean, we’re so boring, it’s attractive!” As for that iconic 6      box? ”We would be out of our mind to change that,” Holmes says. ”Absolutely bonkers out of our mind to consider doing that.” When Howdy Holmes talks about the ”boring” way they do business, here’s what he means: ”We don’t advertise, at all. No coupons, no sample packaging, no billboards, no radio, no TV, no celebrity endorsements. Nothing.” Holmes explains that by avoiding marketing costs, they can keep their retail price substantially below the competition. Chelsea Milling also controls all parts of production. They store the grain, grind it into flour, mix the mixes, print those blue and white boxes: everything but grow the crops themselves. That keeps prices down, too. It was Howdy Holmes’ great grandfather Harmon who started the Chelsea Milling Company just west of Ann Arbor in the early 1900s. It was his grandmother Mabel who created the country’s first packaged baking mix, and she came up with the name, ”Jiffy.” That mix went on the market in 1930, and the rest is baking history. The company’s    grain silos tower over the small city of Chelsea (population 5, 000) where they’ve always been: right in the middle of town, just off Main Street. Holmes leads us out on the factory floor, where we watch a mesmerizing parade of those familiar blue and white boxes march past on a conveyor belt. As Holmes shows us around, it becomes clear he knows virtually all of his workers by name. ”Hey,  !” he calls out to one worker passing by ”Hi Donnie, how are ya?” to another, driving a forklift, who replies with the delightfully redundant, ”Hi, Howdy!” Jiffy employs 311 people, and as we tour the plant, Holmes tells me a remarkable thing: ”In the history of our company,” he says, ”we have never laid anyone off.” Remember, the company’s been in business for over a century. Over time, the work force here has shrunk, but the company has managed to downsize through attrition, as older workers retire. And the future is clear as we walk past two giant yellow robotic arms, poised to stack cases of baking mix on pallets. Howdy Holmes figures each robot does the work of 12 humans. So, from 311 workers now, Holmes anticipates that ”10 years from now, we’ll probably have 240 people. And we’ll be doing four times the volume.” Chalk that up to automation. So what will keep this business growing? As a family business owner, Holmes says he’d like to see some changes from Washington: a lower corporate tax rate, for one. He does expect the Trump administration to improve things. ”I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t be better for business,” he says. ”We’re talking about business guys. You hear a lot of conversation from elected officials about business who’ve never run one. I find that fascinating. I also find it not exactly favorable.” Here’s the stark reality this company faces: People don’t bake nearly as much as they used to. Since 1991, retail sales of packaged baking mixes have been on the skids, down about 39 percent across the board. So the company is adapting. A growing part of Jiffy’s business now is sales to institutions: They sell huge bags of mix to hospitals, prisons, schools and restaurants. For the rest of us, it’s still the little    box, leading to a small batch of piping hot corn muffins. With maybe a pat of butter to sweeten the deal. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"Updated at 5:10 p. m. ET, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the U. S. doesn’t want to take military action against North Korea, but ”all of the options are on the table” if a serious threat arises. Tillerson made his frank remarks in a visit to South Korea on Friday, a day after saying diplomatic efforts ”have failed” to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. Tillerson’s Asia tour began in Japan and will end in China. The top American diplomat is traveling without a press contingent. ”The policy of strategic patience has ended,” Tillerson said, according to The Korea Times, in an apparent reference to the Obama administration’s approach. ”We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table.” Discussing potential military action, Tillerson said that while the U. S. would prefer to avoid an armed conflict, ”If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, then that option’s on the table.” ”I think he’s being very straight with China, and the regional allies in the Asia region  —   South Korea and Japan  —   that we’re looking at negotiations all the way to preemption,” Joseph DeTrani, former special envoy for   talks with North Korea, tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. ”If there’s an imminent strike against the United States, we have to look at all options on the table.” North Korea is casting a long shadow over this trip, both for its potential nuclear threat and the recent flurry of missiles it tested, in a launch that sent weapons hundreds of miles toward Japan before landing in the Sea of Japan. In a news conference with Tillerson and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday, the Korean peninsula was mentioned more than 40 times. On Friday, concerns about North Korea prompted a missile evacuation drill on Japan’s coast, where more than 100 residents of a town heard sirens and were told to take cover in an exercise that’s seen as unprecedented. But it’s not only reactive measure that are necessary, DeTrani tells NPR. ”We’ve got to be as creative, we’ve got to be as   as possible to give North Korea those   so they realize there are opportunities available to them that will not be available if they continue on the path of building nuclear and missile capabilities,” he says. ”And part of that will be international legitimacy  —   normal relations with the United States  —   but also part of that will be having a better relationship with the country that, whether they like it or not, they’re tethered to, and that’s the People’s Republic of China.” Tillerson will head to China this weekend, as NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing: ”The State Department says that an important part of Tillerson’s agenda here will be to push Beijing to push North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. He is also expected to plan for a visit by President Xi Jinping to meet with President Trump at his private club in    Fla. next month, although that hasn’t been formally announced yet.” Anthony adds, ”For its part, China wants ties with the U. S. to remain stable, so as not to distract from a leadership reshuffle this fall.”"
"In some parts of the country, cold weather is threatening crops. Meanwhile, California has been so unseasonably wet that its deserts are experiencing what’s called a ”super bloom.” After years of drought, the normally arid desert is lush. ”It just looks like a sea of flowers,” says Janet Gordon, a geologist from Los Angeles. ”You got purple, red, yellows and blues,” adds Joe Sheidness, visiting from San Diego. ”It’s fantastic,” says Dennis Brian, from Reno, Nev. who says he was a flower child in the 1960s. ”You don’t see this very often. The little flowers look so delicate, but yet they’re prolific. They’re everywhere.” ”It’s neat to see so much color on something that’s usually so tan and stone color with all the rocks,” says Andrea Smith, who brought her    baby here in the 90 degree heat at high noon on Wednesday. These were just a few of the many people flocking to see the colors blanketing the hills and valleys of  . It is California’s largest state park, in the desert south of Palm Springs, a nearly   car drive from Los Angeles. Visitors are coming from as far as Europe, Africa and Asia. This super bloom is so rare, so special, that   are causing traffic jams, getting lost in the hillsides and fainting from dehydration  —   just to take in the beauty. ”I’m looking at a whole field of this bluish purple phacelia. And in this foreground of the Coyote Mountains, that’s nothing but poppies going 5, 6 miles ” says park ranger Steve Bier. He says this is a really big deal there are flowers in places where you usually don’t see them, like in the badlands that are home to snakes and bobcats and coyotes. There are desert sunflowers and dune evening primrose, sand verbena, ghost flowers, monkey flowers and wild Canterbury bells. The ocotillo and beavertail cactus are beginning to bloom. Bier says this year’s conditions were perfect for such a phenomenon: long steady rain throughout the winter  —   a remarkable 6 inches in all here  —   that soaked into the ground. And temperatures that were not too hot. ”Some of these seeds have been underground for maybe decades, if not a century or more, we just don’t know,” he says. ”Some of these places have not seen water in 10, 15, 20 years, and now they’re a blanket of flowers.” In other words, they are survivors. ”You have to be tough to be out in the desert. That’s for sure,” Bier says. ”And these are an ephemeral resource, so what you’re looking at today could be gone tomorrow. It just depends on how hot we get today, and how hungry the caterpillars get.” Bier says anyone who wants to see this super bloom had better get there before those sphinx moth caterpillars eat up all the flowers. Don’t forget your camera, sunscreen and water. Lots of water."
"In March of 1907, Congress passed the Expatriation Act, which decreed, among other things, that U. S. women who married   were no longer Americans. If their husband later became a naturalized citizen, they could go through the naturalization process to regain citizenship. But none of these rules applied to American men when they chose a spouse. ”It’s as though she walks under his umbrella. He puts his arm around her and poof! she’s a citizen,” says Linda Kerber, a professor who teaches gender and legal history at the University of Iowa. ”She has had the good sense to come out from these monarchies and opt for an American. She’s a sensible woman, we adore her.” ”Whereas an   woman who marries a foreign man, oh my goodness, she is disloyal,” Kerber said. When Mackenzie v. Hare  —   a case challenging the expatriation act that involved a woman married to a British citizen  —   reached the Supreme Court in 1915, the justices upheld the law, arguing that the women chose to marry knowing this was a consequence so they weren’t being forced to expatriate. Then World War I began and hundreds of women found themselves affected by the law. ”When we enter the war in 1917,   women who had married German men, like German immigrants who had not yet been naturalized. .. lost their citizenship, and they had to register as enemy aliens,” Kerber says. Changing this law became an important part of the agenda for the women’s suffrage movement, along with things like prenatal care and   labor laws. ”The key item on that list is what we would describe as the integrity of the citizenship of married women,” says Kerber. Once American women got the right to vote in 1920, they started lobbying lawmakers, pushing them to recognize that their citizenship should not be tethered to that of a husband. ”There’s a big scramble in those first two years for members of Congress to get on the good side of women and to get women to join their constituency,” Kerber said. Eventually Rep. John Cable, of Ohio, introduced a bill to address the disparity. He may have been motivated by a nearing bid for  . The Cable Act of 1922, also known as the Married Women’s Independent Nationality Act, said women kept their citizenship if they married a man who could become a citizen even if he opted not to. ”It sounds as though the Cable Act fixed it, if they married a man eligible for citizenship,” Kerber says. However, ”there’s a lot of fine print.” These expatriated women had to petition the government to regain their citizenship, and their husband’s status still played a role in theirs: if he wasn’t eligible for citizenship, she could be denied. And if she lived on foreign soil for two years, she could lose her citizenship. But, as attitudes changed, laws evolved and by the 1940s women born in the U. S. no longer had to limit their marriage prospects to   men or naturalized citizens."
"At most Supreme Court confirmation hearings, questions focus on   social issues  —   abortion, affirmative action,   marriage  —   and the hearings next week on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will be no exception. But senators are also likely to spend a lot of time examining the nominee’s views on federal regulations  —   of the environment, health and safety laws for workers, and laws on consumer rights and business. In question is a doctrine that Gorsuch has criticized but that also once helped his mother. The Chevron doctrine, The Chevron decision is perhaps the most cited case in American law. Decided unanimously in 1984, it established a general rule of deferring to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of a statute. The idea is that in passing a law, Congress sets out broad provisions and tells agencies that have considerable expertise to establish rules for carrying out the law’s mandates. In short, the agency is to fill in the details. The Chevron case stems from the Reagan administration. When President Ronald Reagan took office in the early 1980s, the White House adopted more permissive rules for air pollution caused by manufacturing plants. The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the Environmental Protection Agency, then under the leadership of Anne Gorsuch, contending the agency had exceeded its authority. Recognize that name, Gorsuch? Yes indeed, her son is the current Supreme Court nominee. Back then, the Supreme Court ultimately sided with the Reagan administration and EPA Administrator Gorsuch, declaring that where a statute is ambiguous, the courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation. Judge Gorsuch’s aversion to agency deference, Ironically, Judge Gorsuch has increasingly criticized that rule as an abdication of judicial responsibility. In some of his dissenting and concurring opinions on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, he has called for reconsideration of the Chevron decision. It is one of the ways in which he is more conservative than the justice he has been nominated to succeed, the late Antonin Scalia. Scalia was generally an advocate of Chevron deference to agencies  —   his view was that agencies are at least politically accountable, whereas judges are not. But Chevron ”cuts both ways,” as professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University School of Law points out. ”An agency might want Chevron deference when it wants to regulate more, but under the Trump administration, agencies will want to claim Chevron deference when they’re trying to deregulate,” Adler says. Many Gorsuch defenders argue that having someone on the Supreme Court who is less deferential to agencies should reassure those who don’t trust the Trump administration. It would be ”harder” for a Trump administration to get its way if there were no Supreme Court decision requiring the courts to defer to the agencies, says Jeffrey Pojanowski, professor at Notre Dame Law School. Yet Elliot Mincberg, senior fellow at the liberal People For the American Way, argues Gorsuch himself is ”incredibly inconsistent.” He says the judge sides with agencies when they rule in favor of business, and against agencies when they rule in favor of workers or consumers. Mincberg has looked at all of Gorsuch’s dissenting opinions on the appeals court. ”Any judge’s dissents are particularly interesting because dissents are essentially written for yourself and express your point of view, and they show where you disagree with your own colleagues,” Mincberg says. ”In Gorsuch’s case, even though the 10th Circuit until fairly recently was a majority Republican circuit, Gorsuch is consistently to the right of even staunch conservatives.” The case of the frozen trucker, Perhaps no Gorsuch opinion sticks in the craw of liberals more than the   frozen trucker case. The trucker, Alphonse Maddin, was transporting cargo through Illinois when the brakes on his trailer froze. The temperature outside was 27 degrees below zero. He called the company and was told help was on the way. But after three hours, he was desperate. ”I could not feel my feet . .. my speech was slurred, and I was having trouble breathing,” Maddin said at a press event hosted by Democratic senators on Wednesday. ”I started to have thoughts I was going to die.” So with great difficulty, Maddin unhitched the trailer and drove away, returning about 15 minutes later when help arrived. He was fired by the company, which the Department of Labor later ruled was a violation of federal law. A 10th Circuit panel agreed, ruling against the company and citing language in the statute that protects workers who refuse to operate a vehicle out of safety concerns. Gorsuch dissented. ”What was particularly disturbing was . .. for a textualist to pretty much dismiss the text of the statute,” says Gorsuch critic Caroline Fredrickson of the American Constitution Society. Conservative commentator Ed Whelan defends the Gorsuch opinion. ”[The driver] did not operate his truck he abandoned his truck,” Whelan asserts. Deferring to the White House, More central yet is the question of whether outside of the agency context, Gorsuch would be likely to defer to the president. ”When it comes to a president like President Trump,” there is ”a very big difference between the kind of authority that administrative agencies exercise, which is in essence delegated from Congress, and the kind of authority that the president exercises, which is executive power itself,” Mincberg says. ”In those areas Judge Gorsuch has shown himself increasingly deferential to the chief executive officer.” Ultimately, there is no getting away from the fact that the Supreme Court is the final check on the other branches of government. But as law professor Richard Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, puts it: People are tapped to be justices because their ideologies align with the politicians in power. ”Neil Gorsuch is being chosen not because he’s a Republican Party hack. Far from it,” Hasen explains. ”He’s a principled conservative, but the way he’s going to vote is going to line up with what Republican partisans want.” Intern Lauren Russell contributed to this report."
"St. Patrick’s Day always involves cheery faces, shamrocks, usually more than a few people dressed in green and if you’re lucky, some people even dress up as leprechauns. Jess Buzzutto was one of those of lucky leprechauns. At 5 feet tall, dressed from head to toe in green, he was known as ”The Leprechaun of Yonkers.” Buzzutto died in 2012 at 70 years old, but before then he explained to StoryCorps how he became a town favorite. ”I saw this guy with a hat. It was a green felt hat. And I looked at it and I said, ’I want that,’ ” Buzzutto said. ”Then one day I grew my beard and my mustache and all of sudden behind me I keep hearing, ’Leprechaun, leprechaun’ and I started to enjoy it.” Buzzutto said he then started to emphasize and embrace the leprechaun culture more, and would walk down the street when he would get greetings such as ”Top of the morning to ya,” questions including ”Where’s your pot of gold?” and even some pleas for things that money can’t buy: ”Hey Mr. Leprechaun, give me some luck.” For the people that would ask him if he was a real leprechaun, Buzzutto would reply: ”I’m the realest leprechaun you’re ever going to see in your life, man.” While Buzzutto said he enjoyed being a leprechaun to those who saw him decked out in green, he also said embracing the character had given him ”a warped view of the world.” ”Everybody is happy when they see a leprechaun,” Buzzutto said. For Buzzutto this was the case even at a place that most people dread going to: the DMV. As he stood in line one day, he said he noticed the person behind the counter was giving everyone a hard time. When he reached the front and gave her his paperwork, she just replied with, ”This is wrong. Next!” but didn’t tell him what was wrong. Buzzutto went home to take another look at what might have been wrong. He returned the next day and the same woman took the paperwork and again said it was wrong, but then she looked up. ”She got a big smile on her face,” Buzzutto said. ”She said, ’No, no, that’s all right,’ and she corrected what was wrong. I got outside and I scratched my head and when my hand hit my hat, I said, ’That’s what happened  —   she saw the leprechaun and she changed 180 degrees.” Call that leprechaun’s luck, but Buzzutto said he didn’t get the same reaction from people when he didn’t wear green. ”Every couple of years I’ll go out without a hat and I’ll dig way down in the bottom of my closet and find something that isn’t green and wear it out just to see the different reactions from people,” Buzzutto said. ”All of a sudden people don’t want to meet your eye, don’t want to talk to you, because I’m so small that they’re afraid that they’re going to insult me if I catch them looking at me.” It wasn’t the same when he was in character. ”But when I become the leprechaun they look and they say, ’Well that guy doesn’t mind being looked at, I mean, he couldn’t possibly if he dresses like that,’ ” he says. Last week, Buzzutto’s sister, Eileen Logiudice, and his niece, Tori Medina, sat down with StoryCorps to share their memories of Buzzutto and his lasting impact in Yonkers. Logiudice says she has a lot of his clothes, like   and polos, all of which are green. ”I remember a lady came up to me and she said ’Are you the leprechaun’s sister?’ ” Logiudice says. When Logiudice asked the woman how she knew, the woman said she just looked like Buzzutto. It wasn’t until then, she said, that she realized just how popular he was. His niece, Medina, remembers seeing so many people at his funeral  —   including Yonkers’ mayor. During his life Buzzutto said an important lesson he learned was to not ”take today too seriously.” ”Things may look very bleak right now but they’ll be turned around,” he said. ”It’s just a matter of holding on until they do. I never planned on being a leprechaun. People don’t even know what a leprechaun is. Neither do I, tell you the truth. But when something good is dumped in your lap, you take it.” Not taking each day too seriously may have been one of the lessons Buzzutto learned in his life, but for Medina, his life served lessons for her. ”You know, the thing I really learned about life from him was basically: love thy neighbor,” Medina says. ”I think he made me kinder person.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by John White and Chanda Khatso.  StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"Legendary musician Chuck Berry, who was central to the development of rock ’n’ roll beginning in the ’50s with indelible hits like ”Roll Over Beethoven,” ”Rock and Roll Music” and ”Johnny B. Goode,” died today in St. Charles County, Mo. He was 90 years old. His death was confirmed by the St. Charles County, Mo. police department. Charles Edward Berry grew up in Saint Louis, Mo. as the fourth of six children, developing a career that epitomized a   image, which musicians have tried to copy ever since. Berry was the real thing. He spent time in reform school for robbery at 18 (with a nonfunctional pistol, he claimed) went to prison for income tax evasion and transported a minor across state lines for quote ”immoral purposes.” Initially beginning his career as a beautician with a lifelong interest in music (he first performed in high school) Berry began to slowly ease towards the St. Louis nightlife scene in the early ’50s as a member of the Johnnie Johnson trio. As a solo musician, he emulated the smooth vocals of his idol Nat King Cole and admired the gritty blues of another idol, Muddy Waters. ”And I listened to him for his entire set,” Mr. Berry recalled to NPR in 2000 of seeing Muddy Waters in Chicago. ”When he was over, I went up to him, I asked him for his autograph and told him that I played guitar. ’How do you get in touch with a record company?’ He said, ’Why don’t you go see Leonard Chess over on 47th?’ ” So early Monday morning, Berry made his way to Chess Records and positioned himself in a store across the street. When Leonard Chess arrived, Berry ran over and made his pitch. Chess was impressed by the young man’s   and told him to come back with a tape of his own material. Berry returned the following week, bringing with him the other members of the trio, pianist Johnnie Johnson and drummer Eddie Hardy, and four new songs. Searching for a name for his first hit on Chess Records, ”Maybellene,” pianist Johnnie Johnson told NPR that ”we looked up on the windowsill, and there was a mascara box up there with ’Maybelline’ written on it. And Leonard Chess said, ’Why don’t we name the damn thing ”Maybellene”? ’” The record was the first by a black artist to outsell covers of it by white musicians (and led to a   battle over its credits). Berry’s first  —   and only  —     hit came in 1972, with the louche novelty single ”My   .” Through the late ’50s and ’60s Berry defined the contours of rock ’n’ roll and, along with peers like Little Richard and James Brown, the   energy on stage that this     electrified style of blues required. His work influenced nearly every popular musician that came after. A recording of ”Johnny B. Goode” was included on the interstellar Voyager spacecrafts’ famed ”Golden Record”  —   it left our solar system in 2013. ”Writing a song can be a peculiar task,” he wrote in Chuck Berry: The Autobiography. ”The kind of music I like then, thereafter, right now and forever, is the kind I heard when I was a teenager. So the guitar styles of Carl Hogan,   Walker, Charlie Christian and Elmore James, not to leave out many of my peers who I’ve heard on the road, must be the total of what is called Chuck Berry’s style.” As John Lennon once put it, ”If you tried to give rock ’n’ roll another name, you might have called it Chuck Berry.” Six years ago Berry’s health began to decline, though he maintained his signature defiance even then, refusing an ambulance and leaving the theater on his own after collapsing onstage. Berry announced a record last October at the age of 90 following a   hiatus. ”This record is dedicated to my beloved Toddy,” said Berry at this time of its announcement in reference to, Themetta, his wife of 68 years. ”My darlin’ I’m growing old! I’ve worked on this record for a long time. Now I can hang up my shoes!”"
"The Trump administration has gone to court to try to bring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under its control. The bureau is an executive branch entity, but the president doesn’t have direct control over the    agency. The Justice Department filed a brief with a federal appeals court in Washington on Friday, making the case that the structure of the agency violates the Constitution. NPR’s Chris Arnold reports that, by law, the head of the bureau can be fired by the president  —   but only for ”inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance.” Chris adds: ”[The government argues that limit] means the consumer bureau could engage in ’extreme departures from the president’s executive policy.’ ”But that’s exactly the point, argue the CFPB’s defenders. They say that independence from political influence is crucial for a consumer watchdog regulator. Director Richard Cordray has said that preserving that independence is worth fighting for. ”Industry groups have objected to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since it was created under the   Wall Street Reform Act.” Rep. Jeb Hensarling,   the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told NPR last month that bureau policies have hurt consumers: ”Free checking at banks has been cut in half. Banking fees have gone up. Working people are finding it more difficult to get mortgages. ”The bottom line is the best consumer protection [is] competitive, innovative markets that are transparent. Now, they need to be vigorously policed for force and fraud, but the agencies that do that need to be accountable. And instead, we’ve had this agency ruled totally unaccountable. It is a rogue agency.” President Trump has larger targets in the financial services area, as NPR’s Yuki Noguchi and Tamara Keith have reported: ”[Trump] signed two directives on [Feb. 3] ordering a review of financial industry regulations known as   and halting implementation of a rule that requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of their clients, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. ”Trump himself made his intentions clear in a meeting with small business owners Monday. ’  is a disaster,’ Trump said. ’We’re going to be doing a big number on  .’ ”These executive actions are the start of a Trump administration effort to reverse or revise financial regulations put in place by the Obama administration and seen by Trump and his advisers as onerous and ineffective.”"
"Updated at 4:40 p. m. A man was shot and killed by soldiers at Orly Airport outside Paris this morning after he attacked a soldier and stole her rifle. Paris prosecutor François Molins said that the attacker held a pistol to the soldier’s head and used her as a shield, the Associated Press reports. The attacker yelled that he wanted to die for Allah and said that ”whatever happens, there will be deaths.” Molins said that French soldiers fired eight rounds in order to kill the attacker. He said that a Quran was found among the items found on the attacker’s body. NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports that French interior minister Bruno Le Roux said the man was the same person who had shot a police officer earlier in the day during a routine traffic stop, and who had then hijacked a car. ”Le Roux confirmed that the    man had a petty criminal record and that his house had previously been searched under expanded security measures granted by France’s state of emergency,” Beardsley reports. The AP reports that the attacker has been identified as Ziyed Ben Belgacem, a    born in France. The Paris prosecutor’s office says that the suspect’s house was among many searched after attacks in November 2015 that killed 130 in Paris. The searches were aimed at those suspected of having radical leanings.   police are handling the investigation into the airport incident. The man’s father and brother have been taken into custody for questioning, Reuters reports. ”I salute the courage and efficiency of the police and military in the face of assaults committed by a particularly dangerous individual,” tweeted French president François Hollande. The officer who was attacked was part of a special unit called Sentinelle, which was created in the wake of the terrorist attacks in 2015, the AP reports. The force numbers 7, 500 soldiers  —   half in Paris, half in the provinces. This attack was the fourth attack on Sentinelle since its creation. More than 250 people have died in France in the last two years in attacks linked to groups allied with ISIS. A similar event happened last month at the Louvre, when a   man shouted ”Allahu Akbar” and attacked a security patrol, before a soldier shot and wounded him. Terminals at Orly Airport have now reopened. Some flights that landed while the incident unfolded sat on the tarmac for hours other flights were rerouted to Charles de Gaulle, the larger airport in Paris. France has been on high alert for more than a year. French presidential elections will take place in April and May, and this incident ensures that security will continue to be a major issue in the campaign."
"Think of the Mississippi Delta. Maybe you imagine cotton fields, sharecroppers and blues music. It’s been all that. But for more than a century, the Delta has also been a magnet for immigrants. I was intrigued to learn about one immigrant group in particular: the Delta Chinese. To find out more, I travelled to Greenville, Miss. a small city along the Mississippi River. I meet Raymond Wong in Greenville’s Chinese cemetery, right across a quiet road from an   cemetery. Wong’s family has long been part of a thriving  —   but separate  —   Chinese community. ”We were ” Wong explains, ”right in between the blacks and the whites. We’re not black, we’re not white. So that by itself gives you some isolation.” We walk in the shade of a huge magnolia tree that stretches out over the gravestones. They’re carved with Chinese characters, and bear the names of the Chinese families whose history here goes back decades: Quong, Yu, Jung, Fu. ... and Wong. Raymond Wong leads me to the graves of his parents, Pon Chu Lum Wong and Suey (Henry) Heong Wong. His father immigrated to the Mississippi Delta from Canton, or Guangdong, province when he was 15 in the 1930s his mother arrived several years later. Like most of the Delta Chinese, they were merchants. Virtually all the Chinese families of that generation opened and ran grocery stores. The first wave of Chinese immigrants came to the Delta soon after the Civil War, and the pace picked up by the early 1900s. The Chinese originally came to work picking cotton, but they quickly soured on farming. They started opening grocery stores, mostly in the   communities where they lived. Greenville, in particular, was known for the dozens of Chinese groceries open here in the heyday: as many as 50 stores in a city of some 40, 000 people. ”I was raised in a grocery store,” Wong says, and he means it literally. The Wong family lived  —   all six of them  —   in a couple of rooms at the back of their store. ”Everyone else I know grew up in grocery stores,” Wong says. ”I’m sure as soon as we could count money we had to work in the front.” The stores stocked meat, fresh vegetables, canned goods, laundry soap, washtubs, anything you might need. Nothing Chinese about them, except the owners. ”On my block itself, we had at least four grocery stores,” Wong recalls. ”I’m talking about a small block, too.”  In 1968, Wong’s father opened a Chinese restaurant called How Joy in Greenville, one of the first in the Mississippi interior. Raymond Wong says it was a gamble. At the time, he says, ”nobody knew what Chinese food is.” But the restaurant flourished for 40 years. Raymond worked there, too, serving How Joy steak, butterfly shrimp, chow mein and chop suey. ”We had all that kind of stuff,” Wong recalls. ”Give the people what they want!” Wong remembers hearing ethnic slurs as he grew up, which he got used to ignoring. But the family felt more pernicious discrimination, too. Wong remembers a time of big excitement when he was young: The family was finally going to get to move out of the cramped grocery store. His father had found a house he wanted to buy, in a white neighborhood. Then suddenly, that conversation stopped. There would be no deal. Later, his father told him that the white residents had made it quite clear they didn’t want Chinese in their neighborhood. ”When people found out that we were moving,” Wong says, ”they started throwing bottles . .. in the driveway. Glass everywhere. And we knew it had to be directed at us. Father told me he didn’t want to subject us [to that]. Somebody might get hurt.” The family ended up building a house directly behind the grocery store. ”But at least it was a house!” Wong says, laughing. ”We’d never lived in a house!” We hop in the car to see what’s left of Greenville’s Chinese grocery tradition. As we drive, Wong points to one battered building after another: ”There was a Chinese grocery store right here. Right here was another grocery store, right on this corner.” Most have long since closed, but the store Raymond’s family ran is still going, under different ownership. It’s now the Kim Ma grocery store, run by Cindy and Danny Ma, selling chips, soda, beer and cigarillos to a steady stream of customers. Cindy Ma tells me business is slow, as a lot of people have moved away from Greenville. Still, with this business, the Mas have managed to put their two sons through college and graduate school. One son is in medical school in Jackson, Miss. the other is studying accounting at Ole Miss in Oxford. That’s been the story of many Delta Chinese: Work hard. Send your kids to college. Watch them move away. We hear that same narrative 70 miles north of Greenville, in Clarksdale, Miss. We’ve come to the home of Gilroy and Sally Chow, who greet us enthusiastically at the front door. ”Come on in!” Gilroy says. ”It’s your lucky day! This is comfort food day!” Every week, the Chows get together with friends and relatives to try to recreate the dishes they remember their mothers making when they were young. They’re attempting to summon up flavors they fear are getting lost. Sally Chow wonders out loud, ”Why didn’t I ask mom how she did that?” Sally teaches special education and has a   business with her    Alice. Gilroy is a former industrial engineer who worked for NASA for seven years. United in their Chinese heritage, the Chows are divided by their passionate school loyalties. Sally and the Chows’ daughter Lisa went to the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss. Gilroy and their son Bradley went to Mississippi State. The family even has a football     ritual. Whoever wins the Egg Bowl each year gets to fly their school’s flag on top, right in front of the Chows’ house. They all march out front, and the loser has to sing the fight sing of the other school. This year, MSU’s flag is on top: ”Very sad,” Sally notes. ”When the Rebels win,” she says (that’s her school, Ole Miss) ”we come out the front and we play ’From Dixie with Love’ very slow, and we sway.” But let’s get back to dinner. As the group gets busy chopping and sauteing in the kitchen, Gilroy heads outside and starts tossing fried rice in a gigantic wok nestled into a   custom burner stand. He tosses in some cubed ham: ”This is what makes it Southern fried rice!” he says. Before long, an impressive feast is laid out before us: beef with cauliflower. Whole fish garnished with fried ginger. Spare ribs with carrots and potatoes. Roast pork with a   glaze, and much more. The flavors of their youth. After Gilroy says grace, we settle in around the dining room table. All of the eight people at dinner are the first generation born in America. Like Raymond Wong, they are all the children of grocery store owners. And they all grew up speaking Chinese at home. Sally’s brother Sammy tells us, ”When I first started school I had a difficult time in the first grade, because I couldn’t speak English.” But now few around this table can speak Chinese. Everyone here describes a common experience. When they travel, jaws drop as soon as people realize they’re Chinese. And from Mississippi. ”They ask you, ’What are you doing there! ’” says Frieda Quon, who has the thickest, most syrupy southern drawl of all the group. ”I guess they just have this idea that it is black and white.” ”The Chinese face with a Southern accent throws people off,” Jean Maskas chimes in. ”I was at my daughter’s school, and we’d taken some friends out to eat, and they all said, ’I just can’t get used to talking to your mother! It’s like an identity theft! ’” The others chuckle knowingly. Quon says the more she’s traveled, the more she’s come to realize how unique this Mississippi Chinese community is. ”We are all connected,” she says. ”The other states are not like that, truly. We knew Chinese from Memphis to Vicksburg.” As outsiders, they stuck together. They all remember driving for miles to dances that would draw Chinese young people from all over. ”They were infamous!” someone says, drawing big laughs around the table. Their children’s generation doesn’t have that. They’re more assimilated, more accepted. And their future? It’s probably not in the Delta: Retired pharmacist Sammy Chow remembers the question his son asked when he was still in high school: ”’Dad, do you want me to take over the drugstore when you retire? ’” Sammy’s response was immediate: ”I said, ’No. I want you to do better than me. ’” His son, Matthew, is now a dentist in Clinton, Miss. ”I think all of this generation realize that the opportunities are not here,” adds his sister, Sally. Gilroy Chow figures that the Chinese population in the Mississippi Delta has shrunk from 2, 500 at its peak in the mid 1970s to about 500 now. ”In these small towns, the population is dwindling,” says Sandra Chow, Sammy’s wife. ”For these children who’ve been educated . .. a lot of them want what’s in the big cities. Lots of things to do, and things for their families to grow up doing.” ”But,” she concludes, ”I don’t think it bothers any of us. We’re happy that our children are doing well and enjoying life, and experiencing a lot of things that we didn’t get to experience because of being in small towns.” Dinner over and dishes washed, there’s an important challenge still to come. The group is trying to master making steamed buns: working late into the night to keep the old traditions alive. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"If the election results of 2016 were really about rejecting the political establishment, then Congress didn’t get the memo. After all, 97 percent of incumbents in the U. S. House of Representatives seeking   won even as national polls show overwhelming disapproval of Congress. Advocates for redistricting reform hope voters are ready to pay more attention to the otherwise wonky issue of legislative districts are drawn, a system that’s helped send so many incumbents back to Washington and state capitols, year after year.  One group trying to change that system is One Virginia 2021, a nonpartisan organization that’s challenging the constitutionality of 11 state legislative district boundaries. Executive director Brian Cannon says many of the Virginia General Assembly boundaries are so convoluted they no longer serve the people. ”I think when people scratch the surface on the concept of, ’Are these elections rigged?’ it might not be rigged in the same way that Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump was saying it, but it doesn’t take you too long to get to gerrymandering,” Cannon says. In the Virginia General Assembly, like in Congress, incumbents have a huge advantage all who ran in the last election, in 2015, kept their seats. Cannon and his allies are waging a   war on that system, which allows state lawmakers to draw the lines for state legislative and Congressional districts. A decision in the Virginia case is expected next month. Independent commissions, In a separate effort, the group is also calling for the creation of an independent redistricting commission, similar to ones in Arizona and California. Cannon and his colleagues are traveling the state, showing a documentary about gerrymandering several times a month and pushing to elect candidates who support redistricting reform in Virginia’s statehouse races this fall. Shane Brown runs a theater in Richmond that hosted a screening this week. He describes himself as a   independent and who’s concerned about the increasingly polarized nature of American politics. ”I think a lot of people are actually delving more and more into the intricacies of how all this works   especially when you see how not knowing it can be crazy when you see it breaking down,” Brown says. Cannon argues that   districts would force lawmakers to be more responsive and work across party lines. ”There’s a number of ways to do this,” he says. ”Anything would be better than our current system.” National campaign, The issue of partisan gerrymandering appears to be energizing voters in several states. Last month in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, hundreds showed up for a meeting hosted by a group pushing for a nonpartisan redistricting commission. Others, including Texas and Florida, have seen legal challenges to their congressional district boundary lines. In Wisconsin, a federal judge in November ruled state legislative districts unconstitutional as drawn by Republican lawmakers. The biggest pushback to redistricting reform tends to come from   incumbents. In Virginia, Republican Chris Jones sponsored the bill that created the current districts for the House of Delegates.  ”There’s no   way to do this,” Jones says. ”Those who claim to be   if you look at most of their affiliations, they have party affiliations so it’s not nonpartisan. So I think you’re folly to think that’s the case.” Critics have also raised questions about whether some proponents have failed to acknowledge the limitations of redistricting reform, instead of focusing on issues like voter turnout. Reform advocates say while there are many potential approaches to drawing legislative boundaries, and no system is likely to be perfect, legislators shouldn’t be designing their own districts. Ruth Greenwood, the deputy director of redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center, acknowledges that change can be a tough sell to lawmakers who control state legislatures   but she hopes they will take the long view. ”Maybe it will be 2020 maybe it’s 2030, but the Republicans will no doubt fall out of favor again, and the Democrats will be back ready to gerrymander,” Greenwood says. ”And hopefully at some point, both sides will realize that it’s easier if we just have a fair, level playing system.”"
"There is a photograph that’s been seen around the world this week. It seems to hold both civilization and destruction in the same frame. The photo shows a   man sitting on a bed in the midst of rubble. He sits in front of broad windows, which have been shattered and gauzy white curtains, which flap like wounded white birds. There are deep gouges in the walls. The man wears —  can it be? —  house slippers as he sits in the litter of debris and smokes —  can this be? —  a pipe. You see the ruins of what must have once been a splendid city apartment. White wicker furniture has been splintered and scorched. White walls have been blasted into rubbish and dust. There is an old   gramophone at the edge of the bed. There is a record on the turntable, and the needle is down. The man holds his pipe in contemplation. A great photograph invites our minds inside the frame. This photograph might make you wonder: what is that man listening to? What does he think? Who does he miss? The photograph was taken by Joseph Eid, an AFP photojournalist from Lebanon who has covered the war in Syria. He has photographed that man before. He is Mohammed Anis, who refused to leave Aleppo as government forces surrounded and besieged the city with bombs, mortar fire, and starvation. Mohammed Anis has a collection of old vintage American cars. He says he admires their durability and style. He has just returned to his apartment, after the last push of the Assad regime obliterated so much of the city. Joseph Eid and a crew from AFP went to find the man they remembered as so determined. He still is. Many of his cars have been flattened. Mohammed Anis told the photographer that he will repair them. ”It’s my home,” he says of Aleppo. He wants his children to inherit those cars, for their beauty and artisanship, and the city that once bristled with life. When the photographer saw the phonograph had survived, Mohammed Anis told him, ”I will play it for you. .. But first, I have to light my pipe. Because I never listen to music without it.” And this week, the photographer wrote on the AFP blog: ”Anis puffed on his pipe. He seemed to be somewhere else as well. He seemed to forget that we were there. He looked out the window and he had a look on his face of a person watching a beautiful sunset. He sat there, puffing on his broken pipe and staring out the window as the music floated over the ruins of his house and the city outside. ..After six years of war, the Syrians want life. They just want to let the music play.”"
" Last September, a tiny, itchy welt appeared just above my left hip. I thought I had an insect bite. I was visiting New York City at the time, and I worried it might be a sign of bed bugs. But after I flew home, the welt began to swell. Soon it was as big as a blueberry. But rather than being blue, the lump turned scarlet. Because I am the type of person who can’t leave well enough alone, I tried to pop it. That just made the lump angry. It began to ache. This is bad, I thought. This is not good at all. I worried that my bite had become infected. I thought about trying to lance the lump with a sterile needle. But what if I had necrotizing fasciitis, a disease caused by   bacteria. I Googled ”necrotizing fasciitis.” (Do not Google necrotizing fasciitis.) I snapped a picture of my lump and sent it to a friend who also dabbles in  . She told me a story about a friend of a friend whose brother was bitten by a poisonous brown recluse spider in Brooklyn and developed necrotizing fasciitis. I Googled ”brown recluse spider necrotizing fasciitis.” (Do not Google this either.) When the throbbing lump reached the size of a plump grape, I went to the doctor. Dr. Karen congratulated me for coming in and sliced the lump open with a scalpel. ”Purulent” was the term she used, which means full of pus. And indeed it was. She dipped a swab into the incision, and hustled it off to the lab to be cultured. ”To see if it’s MRSA?” I asked. ”Exactly,” she said. I had been joking. She was not. The results came in three days later: ”Light Staphylococcus aureus  —   Methicillin Resistant (MRSA).”   Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is a fancy name for staph bacteria that have picked up resistance to a many common antibiotics. Staph bacteria are everywhere, and they’re not typically troublemakers. ”It’s part of our flora,” says Robert Daum, a physician at the University of Chicago who studies MRSA. Even MRSA doesn’t have to be dangerous. But some strains are. I didn’t know much about MRSA, but what I did know led me to believe it’s an infection  —   a terrible,   infection  —   that you pick up in hospitals. And it can be, but that’s only part of the story. About two decades ago, MRSA infections began cropping up outside health care facilities. At first researchers suspected that these infections had been brought into the community by former hospital patients. But they soon realized they were looking at new, genetically distinct strains. And those strains begin to spread and infect even young, healthy people. By 2012, the country was in the midst of a MRSA epidemic. At the time, Daum had hired two nurses to help him recruit patients for a study he was conducting. ”They were down in the emergency room running from one patient to the next because patients were coming in so frequently with skin and soft tissue infections,” he says. Treating MRSA skin infections is relatively straightforward. Most simply need to be opened up and drained. My wound healed quickly. But just because the infection is gone doesn’t necessarily mean I’m free of MRSA. Staph likes to take up residence on the body, a process called colonization. ”Most people believe that if you get an infection that you’ve been colonized first,” Daum says. But colonization can be difficult to prove. According to the Centers for Disease Control, about one in three people carries staph in their nose and one out of fifty people carries MRSA. So, a month after my infection, I had Dr. Karen take a nasal swab, which came back negative for MRSA. But Daum points out that’s not enough. ”We now know that the nose is not the primary place where you’re colonized,” he says. Colonization rates seem to climb when researchers take multiple samples. A 2015 study recruited patients in ten emergency rooms across the US: 147 patients with lumps like the one I had, and 147 people without skin infections. Researchers swabbed four different spots on patients’ bodies  —   nose, throat, rectum and groin  —   to search for staph. They found that a whopping 94 percent of patients with a   infection also carried MRSA in at least one of these four sites. But so did 18 percent of patients in the control group, those without any sign of a skin infection. If I am colonized, which seems likely, it may or may not be problematic. Perhaps I’ll get another skin infection. One study found that half of patients with a MRSA skin infection developed another lump within six months. But it’s also possible I’ll never have another one. Researchers don’t yet understand what factors contribute to recurrence, Daum says. The uncertainty is frustrating. Should I be worried about myself? Should I be worried about my family? My daughter had a bump that looked suspiciously similar to mine. And when I sat her on my hip, our wounds lined up perfectly. But her lump never amounted to much, and there was no way to culture its contents. Even if my family discovers that we’re all colonized with MRSA, it’s not clear what we should do about it. You can find all kinds of laborious decolonization protocols involving bleach baths and special soaps online. And while some studies suggest decolonization strategies do reduce recurrent skin infections in the short term, staph tends to come back. Decolonization is ”fraught with problems and generally doesn’t work,” Daum says. So all I can do is wait, and hope that if I get another MRSA infection, it’s as mild and treatable as the last. I’ve got to live with my unlovely lump, or at least with the looming likelihood of its return. But next time I’ll be prepared. Cassandra Willyard is a freelance science journalist in Madison, Wisconsin. Her stories have appeared in Popular Science, Discover, Nature and more. Find her on Twitter: @cwillyard"
"Got an idea for a new world order? Swedish billionaire Laszlo Szombatfalvy will pay you at least a million for it. A competition from the Global Challenges Foundation, founded in 2012 by the Szombatfalvy, is calling for solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, like conflict, climate change and extreme poverty. The competition, called ”A New Shape: Remodeling Global ” is open to all. Proposals can be in English, Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, Arabic or French, with a cap of 9, 250 words. A team of     judges  —   academics, business leaders and others  —   will evaluate the entries. The pot of $5 million dollars prize money will be distributed among the top submissions. The best entry will receive ”at least U. S. $1 million,” according to the rules. The world certainly does need a change in the way things are run, says Abhijit Banerjee, an economist at MIT who is not involved with New Shape competition. ”The world is broken,” he says. The U. N. is a particularly good example of that brokenness, he says. The U. N. can’t compel countries to act one way or another, and attempting to do so may be seen as an affront to a nation’s sovereignty. ”Countries get away with whatever they want to do,” Banerjee says. For instance, if the U. S. opts to abandon the Paris Agreement on climate change, there will be no repercussions from the United Nations. And that’s not all. ”The U. N. is full of sulking people, basically,” says Banerjee. ”People sulk, and you can’t do anything about it. And lots of countries have veto (power).” So a mildly unpopular proposal is likely to stall, he says. The folks at the New Shapes competition don’t think the U. N. is totally useless. It’s been successful in some ways, notes Maria Ivanova, a professor of global governance at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and an ambassador for the New Shapes competition. Some of its institutions, like the World Health Organization or the cultural agency UNESCO, have done valuable work, she notes. But the U. N. might simply be outdated, Ivanova says. ”The U. N. that was created 70 years ago was to deal with the problems of a   War II world. It has not evolved as rapidly as the world around it.” ”[We’re looking] for a new way of managing our affairs as humanity,” she says. ”We’re looking for a framework. There’s a possibility for new creative ideas and linking them together. That’s what’s exciting about this.” Ivanova and Banerjee both have ideas about how they’d like the world to be ruled. For Banerjee, an ideal world government would have lots of money and the ability to hand it out for different purposes  —   similar to how the U. S. federal government funds state projects. ”Having influence without resources is very difficult,” he says. ”This is a pie in the sky but, 10 percent of [global] GDP should go into a pot which will be used for dealing with climate change and world poverty and things like that. Right now, not even one percent of global GDP is available. If it was 10, we’d see change.” Ivanova wants changes to world institutions so countries aren’t the only members. She’d like to see private citizens, nongovernmental organizations and businesses play a part: ”In this century, it’s imperative to figure out governance structures not based solely on nation states.” The Global Challenges Foundation has no preconceived notions of what the winning proposal will look like, says Mats Andersson, vice chairman of the foundation. ”The prize competition is to reach out and see what ideas there are and try to support them to become a reality,” he says. ”We’re agnostic about the kind of solution we want to have. If the solution is adjusting the current system or a totally new idea, I welcome them both.” The Global Challenges Foundation isn’t running the only competition to save the world. The MacArthur Foundation has a competition called ”100Change,” which asks for proposals targeting specific problems on Earth. The prize is a $100 million grant to make the proposal a reality, but the deadline for ”100Change” has already passed. Registration for ”A New Shape” is open until March 31 and proposals are due by September 30. Angus Chen is on Twitter @angRchen"
"The St. Patrick’s parade is over and the Irish (and honorary Irish) have gone home to sleep off their annual bout of intemperance, but the   marchers of the   St. Joseph Society in New Orleans are only just dusting off their tuxedos and straightening their bow ties. Once the shamrocks and shenanigans have vanished from the narrow streets of the French Quarter, and the keg of green beer is empty, another parade  —   in honor of an entirely different saint  —   is beginning to gear up. Every year on the Saturday nearest March 19,   Catholic revelers flood the streets in honor of the Feast of St. Joseph, the patron saint of Sicily. The differences between the St. Patrick’s Day festivities and the St. Joseph’s Day parade are unmistakable. Instead of green, St. Joseph’s marchers wear red. Instead of shamrocks, they carry lucky fava beans. The parade in New Orleans is rooted to a reverent, yet humble start: In 1970, a single pickup truck honoring St. Joseph trailed behind the yearly Irish Channel Parade, according to Mark Fonte, historian for the St. Joseph Society. But the   community in the city longed for a public way to express their heritage and appreciation for St. Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary and foster father to Jesus. In the early 1970s, the society petitioned for their own parade. ”It was around the time that the first Godfather movie came out,” says Fonte. ”It gave us a big boost. Everybody wanted to be Italian.” There are St. Joseph’s celebrations across the country  —   and the world  —   but none so big, bold or festive as in New Orleans. This year, more than 300 marchers and 11 floats will trek down Chartres Street, past the   building where former New Orleans Mayor Nicholas Girod offered his residence as a haven to exiled Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. Leading the procession is a rolling altar bearing Italian food and relics dedicated to St. Joseph. Many local Catholic churches, families and stores also construct altars. The St. Joseph’s Day parade route takes a veritable stroll through French Quarter history. And though Creole culture is now uniquely synonymous with the modern New Orleans tableau, Fonte explains that there is a storied history of Italian heritage in the French Quarter. In the   century, thousands of families immigrated to the United States from Sicily, many traveling the long, arduous route from the capital city of Palermo to the bustling port of New Orleans. Desperate to escape famine and political turmoil in Italy, many immigrants settled in the lower French Quarter, establishing their own tiny enclave  —   known as Little Palermo. According to Fonte, the celebration of the Feast of St. Joseph was one ”tradition that came over with these immigrants  —   and it just stayed.” During the Middle Ages, legend claims, Sicily was in the midst of a great drought. The desperate citizens prayed to St. Joseph, beseeching him for rain. Amazingly, one crop endured to sustain them: the hearty fava bean. When God sent Joseph to grant them rain and the drought ended, the grateful people of Sicily vowed to honor their blessings each year on March 19, the Feast of St. Joseph. Historically, throughout small towns in Sicily, a communal meal was held near the center of town to celebrate St. Joseph’s Day, where food donated and prepared by the wealthy was shared with those less fortunate. In some U. S. cities, opening up your home to the neighborhood and the poor is still part of the celebration. As they travel the parade route, tuxedoed men distribute symbols of both their history and their present: strings of colorful beads, dried fava beans and genuine Italian kisses. At the end of procession, the crowd gathers at a local hotel for a ball where old customs and modern tastes fully converge. Families pass around bottles of hearty table wine and the band strikes up a Louis Prima tune. The couples dance the Tarantella. And together, they all feast on a mountain of local New Orleans muffuletta. Resplendent Shrines, In the middle of Susan Vacarella’s living room is a   altar to St. Joseph built to rival any in New Orleans. More than   wide and   long, it’s taken years of   to fashion a shrine glorious enough to entice more than 100 family and friends to bask in its magnificence. Although many people in New Orleans create altars to celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph, there are few as extravagant as the Vacarella’s. Susan’s husband, Morris Vacarella, says it was inspired by the one he remembered at his grandparents’ house while growing up in the 1940s and ’50s. Many of the relics have a poignant, personal meaning. The faded painting of the Holy Family hails from his grandparents a friend donated the tall wooden statue of St. Joseph from a mission trip to an Italian convent. After Hurricane Betsy swept through New Orleans in 1965, Morris Vaccarella’s grandparents no longer could muster up the energy to create such a grand display. But Susan Vaccarella was ready  —   and willing  —   to carry on the family tradition. ”I had it in my heart to bring it back one day. Our altar really began in honor of them.” Over the years, the Vacarella’s altar has become an amalgamation of   tradition and contemporary New Orleans soul. There is the platter with the large scaly fish, representing Jesus, which is adorned by 12 plump shrimp, which, although interpretations vary, most likely represent Jesus’ apostles. There are   loaves of bread (representing Jesus’ crown of thorns) called Cuchidati and thickly glazed cookies, a reminder of the fig trees that dominate the landscape of Southern Italy. Pasta Con Sarde, a traditional spaghetti dish made with anchovies and sprinkled with breadcrumbs, is the main dish. The breadcrumbs symbolize sawdust  —   a tribute to Joseph’s career as a carpenter. The guests make personal petitions to St. Joseph and the food on the altar is blessed. Finally, they share in one ritual that’s essential to any   celebration: ”We eat all afternoon,” says Susan Vacarella. Traditions Reign Supreme, There is an old Sicilian legend that states that if a single, unmarried woman pockets a lemon from the altar of St. Joseph when no one is looking, she will wed by the time the feast day rolls around again. But Susan Vacarella conveys the legend in another way. ”If a woman steals a lemon from the altar, she will soon have a baby,” she explains with a laugh. ”You have to put it under your pillow. That’s how it happens.” Nestled on the Vacarella’s St. Joseph’s Day altar, between the tempting, lucky lemons, the platters of plump N’Awlins prawns and frosted white lamb cakes, are framed photos of deceased family members, including Morris’ grandparents. The Vacarellas encourage guests to pen a short tribute to their loved ones and post it on a board near the altar. The parade, the feast and the altar are ways for Italian Americans to trace their family’s historic journey, along with honoring St. Joseph, who is also the patron saint of dying a ”happy death.” St. Joseph’s Day in New Orleans is a tradition woven out of diverse fabrics. It is a celebration of grateful abundance and a modern retelling of an   legend it’s a feast of the senses and a religious homage to a beloved saint. But threaded into the story of the big parade and meal is a   historical yarn of the resilient immigrant spirit in America. Nicole Jankowski is a freelance food, history and culture writer based in Detroit. You can find her on Facebook here."
"Remember Google Glass? They’re the headsets that look like regular glasses but have a small computer on the side to speak to and access the Internet. If that’s not ringing a bell, it could be because Google Glass fizzled out and was discontinued in the consumer market. But now, it’s getting a second life in the manufacturing industry. One of the pioneers of this technology is a company based in suburban Atlanta. AGCO has factories all over the world where it makes large tractors, chemical sprayers and other farm equipment. At one of AGCO’s factories, Heather Erickson is putting together a tractor engine before it goes on to the assembly line. She’s wearing a    uniform over her blue jeans at a facility in Jackson, Minn. And she’s wearing something else: Google Glass on her head. ”It took a little getting used to. But once I got used to it, it’s just been awesome,” Erickson says. Google Glass tells her what to do should she forget, for example, which part goes where. ”I don’t have to leave my area to go look at the computer every time I need to look up something,” she says. With Google Glass, she scans the serial number on the part she’s working on. This brings up manuals, photos or videos she may need. She can tap the side of headset or say ”OK Glass” and use voice commands to leave notes for the next shift worker. The headsets are being used in other industries as well. Companies working in the health care, entertainment and energy industries are listed as some of the Google Glass certified partners. And autistic children are using the technology to recognize emotions. Peggy Gullick, business process improvement director with AGCO, says the addition of Google Glass has been ”a total game changer.” Quality checks are now 20 percent faster, she says, and it’s also helpful for    training of new employees. Before this, workers used tablets. ”We had a lot of tablets on our floor, and the tablets were being broken just by being dropped. And tractors are very tall machines when you’re climbing on and off,” Gullick says. ”So we were looking for a solution that offered them more information in a more timely manner.” AGCO has about 100 employees using the custom Google Glass, which is attached to them and harder to lose. Each costs about $2, 000. Tiffany Tsai, who writes about technology, says it’s one of a growing number of companies  —   including General Electric and Boeing  —   testing it out. ”It was always my assumption that Google Glass was going to go into business for enterprises instead of mass consumer consumption,” she says. She was one of the early users of Google Glass when it came out in 2013. Two years later, it was discontinued for some consumers because people were concerned about privacy and security. And there were concerns that the headset could be distracting to drivers or that it wasn’t made with all people in mind. Tsai says another reason for it being discontinued was its challenging of social norms: With Google Glass, it may look like you’re listening to the person in front of you, but you could actually be watching a movie or looking up sports stats. You could be in a different world. ”On Google Glass, [another person] has no idea what’s happening, does not see anything that the user is looking at or analyzing,” Tsai says. ”And that creates this disconnect between people, and I think that that’s highly frowned upon right now, especially with older generations.” Millennials may be more open to it in the future, but Google Glass still has a long way to go until it’s considered more socially acceptable, she says. But at AGCO’s factories, it’s not only accepted it’s desired. Gullick says the company plans to double the number in use by the end of the year. WABE host Jim Burress contributed to this report."
"The   Appalachian Mountain range stretches so far that those on the northern and southern sides can’t agree on what to call it:    or   . The outside perspective on the people who live there might be even more mangled. Stories about Appalachia tend to center around subjects like poverty, the opioid epidemic and coal, but since 1966 a series called Foxfire has been sharing food, culture and life as it’s actually lived in the mountain region. Foxfire started as a class project at a Georgia high school  —   students interviewed neighbors and wrote a series of articles, which turned into a quarterly magazine and then a book, in 1972, with other books to follow soon after. (The name of the series comes from a term for a local form of bioluminescence caused by fungi on decaying wood.) Within the first decade, more than 9 million copies of Foxfire were sold. Today, there are specialized Foxfire books that focus on cooking, winemaking, religion and music. People who have been following the     food trends that have resurfaced in the past decade might find some of the recipes in Foxfire’s Appalachian Cookery familiar and focused around a simple,   way of life. There are instructions for making bread in a Dutch oven (specifically over coals in the fireplace.) For pork, the authors note that Appalachians ”stand by their belief that virtually no part of the hog should be thrown away,” and its recipes for homemade scrapple, hog’s head, jowl or sausage wouldn’t be out of place on a certain kind of Brooklyn menu. When Susi Gott Séguret, author of Appalachian Appetite, saw Nordic cuisine becoming a trend, she thought, ”What’s the big deal? It’s how I grew up and how Appalachian people have approached food from the beginning.” The food is defined by the mountains. ”There are certain restrictions and a richness born of that mountain setting,” Séguret says. Although foraging and using imperfect vegetables and local food are popular concepts today, they’ve been a way of life for generations in many cultures. Making charcuterie   has become a selling point for restaurants Foxfire was one of the few books to describe how to make sausage from scratch. Yet the Appalachian culture described in Foxfire is still often pushed to the wayside in favor of chefs who have made the traditional seem new. ”One important part of the Foxfire books is the way they elevated women’s work,” explains Melissa Hall, managing director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. ”Those first volumes are focused on home, and the unsung labor of women in creating those spaces and communities.” What other series would publish Granny Gibson’s suggestions on how to cook possum? (She advises boiling the possum until tender, then baking it with sliced sweet potatoes.) Or an interview with a woman named Ethel Corn who loves wild greens, and says that adding them into your diet can provide a corporeal ”spring cleaning”? There are long recollections of the everyday act of cooking for large groups of people  —   whether dinner for a big family or special events.  Despite the series’ esteemed reputation among its readers, there has been a lull in interest over the years. ”I think right now the audience is mostly Southern,” says TJ Smith, executive director of the Foxfire Fund, an educational center devoted to Appalachian culture which the books’ proceeds helped create. Some of Foxfire’s strongest advocates are survivalists who see it as an educational guide to topics as varied as building furniture or houses, harvesting crops, hunting and skinning animals, or cooking without electricity. One reason for the lull may be that Foxfire had to close ranks in order to survive a dark period of its history. In 1992, the teacher who started Foxfire pleaded guilty to child molestation. ”There was no way it couldn’t have affected things,” Smith says. ”I will say that some of the students who had been victims still supported the program because they believed in it and they built it.” The magazine project still continues in regional schools, and the Fund’s board is made up of Foxfire alumni. ”They put a lot of their heart into this place and the program,” Smith says. During the time when the future of Foxfire was in question, a local campaign to save the series had people filling their windows with signs saying: ”Foxfire still glows.” It’s a testament to the importance of Foxfire that it could survive such a horrible twist to its founding story. Séguret, whose family connected many early Foxfire students with neighbors to interview, says she believes the books are beloved because they show that Appalachian history is worth recording: ”Because the students were interviewing family, friends, neighbors and people who were unsung all this time, it served to knit the community together and validate who they were.” But even in a modern world where most things can be purchased   the skills outlined in Foxfire resonate with people who want to feel   linked to the past, and  —   of course  —   well fed."
"Rex Tillerson concluded his first trip to Asia as secretary of state, sounding optimistic about the prospects for U. S. cooperation with China on the North Korean nuclear issue. The upbeat notes he struck in Beijing contrasted with his remarks on Friday in Seoul about how all options, including military strikes against North Korea, remain on the table. As if to underline the seriousness of the situation, even as Tillerson was discussing North Korea with his Chinese hosts, North Korean leader Kim   presided over the test launch of a new rocket engine. Pyongyang called the test ”of historic significance,” although its capabilities and possible uses are not yet clear. On Sunday, Tillerson made no public mention of the test as he met with President Xi Jinping in the cavernous Great Hall of the People on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Both men effused about phone calls and letters exchanged so far between Xi and President Trump. Tillerson’s visit is expected to pave the way for their first meeting, as early as next month, at Trump’s private club in    Florida. ”I also appreciate your comment,” Xi told his guest, ”that the  . S. relationship can only be defined by cooperation and friendship.” It’s not clear when or to whom Tillerson made such a remark. At a press conference on Saturday with his Chinese counterpart, Tillerson noted that the U. S. would continue to raise thorny issues with China, including maritime disputes in the South China Sea, as well as human rights and religious freedoms. But North Korea’s continued progress towards putting a nuclear warhead on a missile capable of striking U. S. territory has forced the North Korea issue to the forefront of U. S.  relations. ”We renewed our determination to work together,” Tillerson said, ”to convince the North Korean government to choose a better path and a different future for its people.” Tillerson said Beijing and Washington agree that the situation on the Korean peninsula has ”reached a rather dangerous level.” He added, ”We’ve committed ourselves to do everything we can to prevent any type of conflict from breaking out, and we view there are a number of steps that we can take,” without saying what they might be. Tillerson dodged a reporter’s question about where the U. S. might draw a ”red line,” the crossing of which might trigger a military strike. Nor did he address a query about whether Trump’s remarks on Friday on Twitter, complaining about China’s inaction on the North Korean issue, had made Tillerson’s trip to China more difficult. Tillerson drew criticism back home for not taking the diplomatic press corps along on his Asia trip. The only journalist allowed on his plane was a reporter for the Independent Journal Review, which is reportedly owned, in part, by an advisor to Vice President Mike Pence. The U. S. embassy notified journalists of Saturday’s briefing about four hours before the event. Tillerson’s counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, meanwhile insisted at the briefing that the U. S. had reached a ”fundamental consensus” on dealing with the North Korean issue. Wang said that includes strictly implementing U. N. sanctions on North Korea, while seeking a resumption of   negotiations, with the ultimate goal of ridding the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. North Korea in 2009 walked out of the talks hosted by China, and swore it would not return. To the surprise of many observers, Tillerson referred to a mutual U. S.  understanding of ”    mutual respect, and   cooperation.” This was a   repetition of the Chinese government’s framework for relations with the U. S. Beijing refers to it as a ”New Type of Great Power Relations.” At its core, it implies that the U. S. and China are not only both great powers, but  . The Obama administration was reluctant to adopt Beijing’s formula. Instead, it envisioned using its signature ”pivot to Asia” policy to shore up American primacy in Asia and the Western Pacific. Tillerson’s use of Beijing’s formula may leave the Trump administration open to criticism that either Tillerson bent over too far backwards to placate his Chinese hosts, or he failed to articulate the U. S. vision of the relationship, perhaps because it has yet to come up with a coherent policy towards China and Asia. Or both. President Trump’s campaign rhetoric about a punishing China for its policies on trade, Taiwan and the South China Sea has somewhat moderated since taking office. China, for its part, has reacted to Trump with restraint, as it prepares for a crucial leadership transition this fall. The ruling communist party will hold its 19th national congress, which is expected to give Xi Jinping a second   term as head of the party, state and military. China’s dissatisfaction towards North Korea continues to grow with each missile or nuclear test that Pyongyang carries out, in defiance of Beijing’s warnings. But China has not changed its bottom line of avoiding actions that would destabilize Kim  ’s regime. And analysts point out that the North Korea crisis actually gives Beijing some leverage over Washington, or at least, distracts it from applying more pressure on China. For the meantime, China has vented most of its fury on South Korea, where the U. S. has deployed   defenses known as Terminal   Area Defense, or THAAD. Tourism, transport business and cultural exchanges between China and South Korea have all reportedly suffered since the spat."
"Chuck Berry, the legendary musician who was one of the founders of rock and roll, died Saturday night at age 90. Almost immediately, the tributes started rolling in from some of the most famous names in music. Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger wrote that he was ”so sad” to hear of Berry’s passing. ”I want to thank him for all the inspirational music he gave to us. He lit up our teenage years, and blew life into our dreams of being musicians and performers. His lyrics shone above others and threw a strange light on the American dream. Chuck, you were amazing, and your music is engraved inside us forever.” Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards chimed in. ”One of my big lights has gone out,” he tweeted. ”RIP #ChuckBerry, the genesis behind the great sound of rock n roll. All of us in rock have now lost our father,” tweeted heavy metal singer Alice Cooper. (Cooper being   to some of us for this legendary cameo.) Beatles drummer Ringo Starr tweeted lyrics from one of Berry’s biggest hits, ”Rock And Roll Music.” ”Just let me hear some of that rock ’n’ roll music any old way you use it I am playing I’m talking about you. God bless Chuck Berry,” tweeted Starr. Beach Boy Brian Wilson tweeted his appreciation. ”I am so sad to hear about Chuck Berry passing   a big inspiration! He will be missed by everyone who loves Rock ’n Roll. Love  Mercy”. Back in 1963, Berry’s lawyers contended that the Beach Boys’ hit ”Surfin’ USA” ripped off Berry’s ”Sweet Little Sixteen.” Wilson’s father and the band’s manager, Murry Wilson, signed over the song’s publishing rights to Berry’s publisher. The Los Angeles Times notes that Wilson regularly plays Berry’s songs in his live shows, even weaving ”Sweet Little Sixteen” into ”Surfin’ USA.” Questlove, drummer and bandleader of The Roots, had a simple message for people trying to discuss Berry’s legacy, tweeting ”he literally was THE STANDARD for rock n roll.” The Boss weighs in, Bruce Springsteen also tweeted what Berry meant to him. ”Chuck Berry was rock’s greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock ’n’ roll writer who ever lived,” he wrote. ”This is a tremendous loss of a giant for the ages.” Springsteen and Berry played together on at least two occasions. The Boss and his E Street Band played backup for Berry at the University of Maryland in 1973. Springsteen asked what songs they were going to do, to which Berry replied, ”Well, we’re going to do some Chuck Berry songs.” More than two decades later, Springsteen again played backup for Berry, at a concert at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, celebrating the opening of the Rock and Roll Music Hall of Fame. Berry was inducted into the hall in 1986 its first class, alongside musicians including Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, and Sam Cooke. Springsteen’s grin says it all, as Berry leads the   crowd in yelling ”Go!” before shimmying his   duck walk across the stage. It was a show for the ages."
"It’s a story with a happy ending about a demonstration that didn’t happen  —   after activist Afghan women beat back the Ministry of Education decision that schoolgirls must exchange their current already modest uniforms for styles that are more restrictive and concealing. On March 14, the Afghan ministry unveiled the new designs. Schools in the country were closed at the time (the school year in Afghanistan goes from March through January and set to reopen on the 20th or 21st. The ministry said the change would be effective when classes resumed. The change was the result of complaints by schoolgirls about the color of the uniforms, according to Afghan news reports. They were black, which absorbs the heat in the already hot summer months when Afghan schools remain in session. In addition, they said, girls found black a sad, unhappy color. That is why the new uniforms would be blue for primary school girls, grey for middle schoolers and navy blue for high schoolers. As before, the new uniform also required girls to wear a white scarf on their heads. But changing colors was not what upset Bahar Sohaili, 31, a women’s rights activist in Kabul. She had gone to school in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over, had herself worn a black uniform back then, and in fact agreed that wearing black makes you hot and shows the dirt in the very dusty environment that is Afghanistan. The problem was that the new uniforms were replacing uniforms that consisted of black dresses that hit just a few inches below the knee and were worn over pants leggings  —   a design that served the   Afghan society’s mandate for modesty and also provided enough flexibility for girls to walk and participate in sports. Not so the new design, which mandated that elementary school girls as young as five would have to wear tunics that would fall several inches below their knees for girls 12 and up, the tunics had to extend all the way to the floor. And although the head scarves would continue to be required and would still be white, they had to conform to a style that no longer allowed bangs to show but would have to conceal every strand of hair, as is the custom in Iran. ”They are telling us the length is to protect Islamic values,” said Sohaili. But she believes that the changes were unacceptable for several reasons. First, they are not practical. ”Students have to be comfortable, they need to be able to exercise.” And in a country where terror attacks are commonplace, girls may need to literally run for their lives without being impeded by lengthy gowns that could make them trip and fall. To protest, she and others began to organize a demonstration for the coming weekend  —   that would have been March 18th and 19th. Freshta Ibrahimi also opposed the change. She’s a graduate of the American University of Afghanistan who lives in Kabul and is now the program coordinator for Ascend, a team of women mountaineers, ”We women in Afghanistan never want to go back to [the] Taliban era,” when women were forced to wear burkas, she wrote to NPR in an email. ”If women accept this uniform for me [that] means that government will also design another [ ] role for women. Women in Afghanistan want to experience freedom, [and] it will happen if all women stick together.” Word of the controversial uniform spread in the community of Afghan women both at home and abroad. Maihan Wali, an activist with the Global Citizen and Global Changemakers organization who is currently a senior at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, voiced her protest on social media, staying up until 4 a. m. when she learned of the protest, on Tuesday, tweeting friends and brainstorming online on how to target the Afghan government to retreat. From London, Afghan writer Zuhra Bahman also began an online petition to oppose the uniform change. ”Women need to be able to decide what they can or cannot wear, and that starts when they are in school,” Wali said. Her intense drive to get the word out to protest was further driven by the knowledge that families needed to know as soon as possible whether they would be required to buy new clothes for their children for the new school year. ”We had to take action as fast as possible” in order to prevent families from ”suffering economically by starting to buy these clothes,” she said. Not everyone can afford to buy new clothes every year, and it would cost a lot.” Then on March 16 the government backtracked, issuing a statement that read: ”President Ghani says the new school uniform which was announced by the Ministry of Education is not representative of the culture and tradition of the [Afghan] people . .. He has directed the Ministry of Education to work on a new design that is affordable together with a nationally representative group of teachers, parents and students.” At that point, Sohaili called off the protest. But she’s definitely going to keep an eye on the pending uniform design. Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Jewish Week, and is book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is dianejcole. com. NPR correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson contributed to this story."
"Supreme Court confirmation hearings are the stuff of novels and movies, but they are the stuff of reality TV, too. For critics of the nominee  —   any nominee  —   the object is drama, even confrontation. For defenders of the nominee, the object is boredom. A confirmation hearing with no sparks and no controversy is a surefire path to a seat on the court. So far, Gorsuch critics have been having difficulty getting traction  —   having been trumped, as it were, by other controversies. But there has been plenty going on behind the scenes. Gorsuch has met privately with 72 senators, and for the past week has been holed up with former clerks and Trump administration aides for mock hearings known as ”murder boards,” practicing for his public grilling. Robert Bork, who in 1987 famously went into his confirmation hearing the   favorite for confirmation, refused to submit himself to these practice sessions, and paid dearly with a performance that made him sometimes sound arrogant and less than fully candid. ”Nomination is the phrase that would be technically used, but candidacy is really more accurate, given what the Supreme Court confirmation process has become these days,” says Paul Clement, who served as solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration. In anticipation of this week’s hearings, liberal and conservative groups have been marshaling their forces for and against the nominee with TV ads and grassroots efforts. Though exact numbers are hard to come by, the liberals clearly are being outspent by wide margins. The conservative Judicial Crisis Network alone has budgeted $10 million for the fight, aimed principally at 10 states Trump carried in the 2016 election and where Democratic senators will face   contests next year. In one ad, they say Gorsuch is ”just who we need on the Supreme Court.” At previous confirmation hearings, critics have focused on big social issues like affirmative action or abortion. This time the critics’ strategy is to portray Gorsuch as someone who’s sided with corporations at the expense of regular folks. Democratic senators are under enormous pressure from their left flank to resist the nomination, even though they privately admit the votes aren’t there right now to stop Gorsuch. Still, they are trying  —   and it doesn’t take much for confirmation hearings to take an unexpected turn. ”Gorsuch might act like a neutral, calm judge, but his record and his career clearly show he harbors a     special interest agenda,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer at a press conference last week. ”Far too often, he sides with the powerful few over everyday Americans trying to just get a fair shake.” That theme is echoed in ads paid for by liberal groups ranging from the Alliance for Justice to People for the American Way. The Democrats already have telegraphed another aspect of their strategy: If the nomineedodges, or refuses to answer their questions, that will be more fodder for their opposition. Knowing that, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch took to the senate floor last week in prebuttal. ”There is a plague threatening judicial independence here,” Hatch said. ”This plague takes the form of the [Democrats’] attempts to extract these sort of inappropriate answers, and Judge Gorsuch is wise to avoid that.” As Yale Law Professor Reva Siegel observes, no senator should ask questions that bind a nominee about how he or she will rule in future Supreme Court cases. ”On the other hand, it is totally appropriate and within role for the senators to explore the judicial philosophy of the nominee,” Siegel says. In truth, nominees answer as much as they have to.   Ruth Bader Ginsburg answered questions about some 30   Supreme Court cases when she was before the Judiciary Committee in 1993, but she had a long paper trail as a scholar, litigator and judge. Others, like Obama nominee Sonia Sotomayor and George W. Bush nominee Samuel Alito, nearly bored their inquisitors to death with repetitive answers that said as little as possible. All three were confirmed. Charm and humor  —   which Obama nominee Elena Kagan and Bush nominee John Roberts excelled at  —   also go a long way. Judge Gorsuch is likely to have that skill as well, unless nerves or something else get the better of him. One issue Gorsuch will have some difficulty dodging is his role in the Bush administration’s war on terror. As principal deputy associate attorney general from 2005 to 2006, he played a significant role in some of the controversies involving   ”enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding. He also seemed to support an expansive exercise of presidential power at the time, a position that is especially of interest in the time of Trump. Much of this is spelled out in tens of thousands of pages of Department of Justice documents turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week  —   material that doubtlessly will provide further fodder for Democrats. While not even the most critical Democrats deny that Gorsuch is an experienced and skilled judge, the question is what standard they should use in evaluating his suitability for the Supreme Court. For many Democrats, as Professor Siegel observes, that standard will have a great deal to do with the GOP’s refusal to consider President Obama’s similarly   Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. ”There was a nomination on the table it wasn’t acted on as it should have been under the Constitution,” Siegel says. That nearly   political stall, she suggests, should be the basis for evaluating the Republican nominee. That would be well and good, except that the Republicans hold the majority in the Senate with 52 votes. In the unlikely event that Democrats could block Gorsuch with a filibuster, the Republican leadership would certainly exercise the   ”nuclear option” and simply unblock the nomination by getting rid of the filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominations. Privately, some Democrats would rather wave Gorsuch through this time without a filibuster, given that he is nominated to fill a seat previously occupied by a the similarly conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. These Democrats would rather save the filibuster for if there is a second Supreme Court vacancy during the Trump administration, threatening to fill a seat now occupied by a liberal justice. But that sort of strategic   is difficult at a time when the Democratic base doesn’t see any benefit to cooperating with Trump. Intern Lauren Russell contributed to this report."
"The Wisconsin Badgers ousted the   Wildcats in a surprising upset in the second round of the men’s tournament. The   Wisconsin closed the game at   thanks to momentum brought by Nigel Hayes in the closing seconds. Hayes’ layup lifted the Badgers from a tie before Vitto Brown’s free throw sealed the win for good. Wisconsin gained the edge when Villanova called a timeout with 11 seconds remaining. On Villanova’s next possession, star Josh Hart’s drive to the basket was disrupted by a clean steal by Wisconsin’s Vitto Brown. Brown was soon fouled, and missed his second free throw attempt. Villanova grabbed the rebound, but the Wildcats weren’t able to get a shot off within the final three seconds. Hayes led Wisconsin with 19 points, while Bronson Koenig put up 3   for his 17 points. Josh Hart led Villanova with 19 points. Wisconsin now advances to their fourth consecutive Sweet 16 round to play the winner of the Florida vs. Virginia game on Friday night."
"Depeche Mode burst onto the scene in the 1980s with a new,   sound and an appeal to the dark and broody. Decades later, the band’s sound remains familiar  —   but its latest album, Spirit, feels rooted in the present. Singer Dave Gahan says songs like ”The Worst Crime” were written as tension mounted worldwide around the 2016 presidential campaign in the US and Brexit in the UK. ”Actually, this is one of my favorite songs on the album: It has a beautiful melody, but lyrically it’s pretty slamming,” he says. ”The way we divide each other  —   you know, racial divides. [It’s] kind of calling out to really question that, to kind of check yourself  —   me included, everyone else included. Like, where do you really stand, what are the choices you’re really making? Do you really love thy neighbor, and are you willing to accept the differences? We just seem to be slipping backwards.” Gahan spoke with NPR’s Lulu   about dealing with divisions within his own band, and why he believes Depeche Mode became the preferred music of misfits and outsiders. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link. Ned Wharton produced the broadcast version of this story."
"Designing skateboards is just one of Luke Franco’s gigs. He has just enough time before his next shift to chat at a café in downtown Providence, R. I. ”I work at the YMCA Monday through Friday with kindergartners through fifth graders. It’s split shift seven to nine, two to six daily,” he says. ”With the rest of my day, I also work at a local pizza place. And in addition to that, I also own and operate a small skateboard company.” But none of his jobs offers health insurance. I ask him if he worries about that. ”Yes, especially being an avid skateboarder,” the    says. ”That’s constantly something in the back of my head now  —   before I try this trick, what happens if I get hurt?” So he’s looking for a full time job with benefits. Until then? Franco hasn’t really explored his options. He’s a member of the millennial generation. They represent more than a quarter of the nation’s population. These are people 18 to 34 years old, and we’re hearing a lot about them in the health care debate. How they fare under the GOP health care bill going through Congress is complicated. Franco doesn’t know whether he qualifies for Medicaid or a subsidy to buy coverage on the exchange set up under the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare. If the Republican plan to repeal and replace the ACA goes forward, his options might be more limited than that. ”I’m assuming that paying full price for it [health care] would be completely unaffordable for me,” he says. The GOP plan would offer Franco a tax credit of $2, 000 a year  —   that’s the amount for which   to    would be eligible. The amount goes up to $2, 500 for those ages 30 to 39. But even if Franco could buy a plan for a few hundred dollars a month, he wants to hold on to what little pocket money he has for dinner or drinks with friends. Jen Mishory heads an organization called Young Invincibles, a    name for millennials who think they’re too healthy to need health insurance. But the organization is serious about advocating for young people. Mishory says the ACA helped this generation. ”You’re starting   with an uninsurance rate of about 29 percent for young people. We see that uninsurance rate drop, over the course of the last five, six years to about 16 percent,” she says. That’s thanks to many factors, the expansion of Medicaid, for one, and children being able to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26. But coverage on the exchange is still expensive for some millennials. Even with subsidies, they didn’t sign up for the ACA exchanges in the numbers insurers were hoping for. Mishory points out the GOP proposal to roll back Medicaid expansion could hurt some young, single adults. The proposed tax credit might help others. ”For some young people [the tax credit] may be more than what they received under the ACA,” she says. ”But for a lot of the   young people, they could see reductions in that subsidy.” What concerns Mishory most is the Republican provision that insurance companies could charge customers 30 percent more for a plan if their coverage lapses. ”Young people are the most likely to see gaps in coverage,” she says. That’s because young adults move and change jobs a lot. They also tend to have lower incomes, so the penalty might discourage millennials, especially healthy ones, from enrolling in coverage again. Molly Tracy says she’ll buy insurance, penalty or not. She’s 25 and works at a charter school. She worries the Republican model won’t be affordable. ”I’m not rich! I work in public education. So even if I do have coverage, having a $3, 000 medical bill . .. that’s going to pose a significant challenge for me,” she says. Right now, Tracy is covered by her father’s health insurance. But her 26th birthday is coming soon, she says, ”So I’m trying to get a tonsillectomy before my insurance lapses. That’s one of the issues. The other issue is scheduling, having enough time to recover.” When Tracy does get her own health insurance through work this fall, she wants to know what she will be getting. Will birth control remain affordable? Will mental health care be covered? A Congressional Budget Office analysis finds people like Tracy might end up paying much more out of pocket for those benefits than they would now. This story is part of a partnership with NPR, Rhode Island Public Radio and Kaiser Health News."
"The Republican health care bill would not affect Americans equally. Older, poorer people would see big reductions in coverage and cost increases, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. This first step in the GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, would also create a modest deficit reduction. The report hands Democrats more ammunition in attacking the bill, while Republicans are divided: Some are playing defense, while others are backing away, and some are also proposing changes. To see the potential impact of the bill as it stands, here are five charts, based on the CBO analysis. Uninsured spike immediately, then rise more slowly, First things first: The Republican health care bill would greatly ramp up the number of people who are uninsured. Currently, around 9. 5 percent of Americans younger than 65 are uninsured. Under the Republican bill, the uninsured rate in 2026 would be nearly double that, at 18. 6 percent, compared with 10 percent under the Affordable Care Act. Put into raw numbers, here’s how the growth in the number of uninsured looks: In 2018, the number of uninsured would be 14 million larger under the Republican bill than under Obamacare. In 2026, it would be 24 million larger. That big upswing in 2018 would be largely attributed to repealing the penalties that came as part of the individual mandate  —   not having a fine would lead lots of people to decide not to get insured. In addition, rising premiums would deter some from buying insurance. In subsequent years, Medicaid changes would account for an increasing number of uninsured, eventually hitting 14 million. The rollback of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion would begin in 2020, cutting the number of people on the program. In addition, no states would be able to take up the expansion in the future, further dropping the number of potential Medicaid enrollees. Premiums go up, then down (but not for everyone) The CBO’s report shows that premiums in the individual insurance market would increase first, then decrease, ending up 10 percent lower than they would be under the current law in 2026. That’s because young and healthy people would likely drop out early on, bringing premiums up. But the mix of people would eventually shift younger, pushing premiums down  —   younger people tend to be healthier, and therefore cost less to insure. In addition, insurers will not have the same requirements for sharing the cost of certain benefits. Republicans are applauding this. In fact, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said this week that while he (and others in the administration) are shrugging off the CBO’s findings as unreliable, this was one part of the report he believed: ”Everyplace else where the market is allowed to function, quality goes up and costs go down,” he said, ”and I think if you look for something the CBO may have gotten right in this report, it’s that the premiums are actually going to come down in cost.” But it wouldn’t work out the same for everyone. Many younger Americans would end up paying less, as would people young and old alike making     incomes, according to the CBO analysis. However, premium costs would hit many   adults hard, particularly older   adults. A    making $26, 500 a year would pay around $1, 700 in premiums right now. Under the proposed changes, that person would pay $14, 600, more than eight times more. One big reason for that is that the new health care bill would change the gap between what young and old people will pay for their premiums. Currently, insurers can charge older enrollees three times what they charge someone younger. The Republican plan would up that from    to   . Big leaps in the poor and uninsured, The uninsurance rate will increase among the poor and nonpoor alike. But it appears it would grow the most  —   more than doubling  —   among older,   insurance buyers. Not coincidentally, that’s also the group that would see its cost of insurance climb in a huge way. The uninsurance rate among people ages 50 to 64 who are below 200 percent of the federal poverty level would leap from 12 percent uninsured to 30 percent. Smaller deficit, Under the Republican bill, the deficit would shrink by $337 billion over 10 years, or $33. 7 billion per year on average. That reduction would mainly come from the Medicaid rollback and, to a lesser degree, the end of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Both of those changes would reduce spending by a little more each year. All told, Medicaid savings will come out to $880 billion over the decade. That reflects the massive changes that will be made to Medicaid under the plan. Existing enrollees could stay on, but the expanded income threshold that the Affordable Care Act set would move. That would mean fewer people could sign on in the future. Not only that, but the new plan would cap how much the federal government spends on Medicaid, making it much more expensive for states to keep up current levels of coverage. A smaller deficit may make fiscal conservatives happy, but it’s altogether a modest shift. The deficit reduction here averages out to $33. 7 billion per year. For comparison, the 2016 deficit was $587 billion."
"This past November was a   call for the Democratic Party. Many Democratic women, in particular, are feeling a strong need to answer that call. Less than a quarter of elected positions are filled by women in the U. S. There are many reasons for that, but Democratic activist Diane Fink says women are often discouraged somewhere along the way. She runs Emerge Maryland, a group that helps Democratic women run for office. ”What we’ve learned is that the women, their ambition is crushed by somebody in their life. Oftentimes they’ll say, ’I mentioned this to my family and they just laughed,’ or, ’I went to a community leader or party leader and they told me, ’Well, no, that probably isn’t for you.’ ” Democrats are now figuring out how to rebuild their party  —   and capitalize on the energy in progressive circles, shown in demonstrations like the Women’s March, where millions of women took to the streets the day after the inauguration. In Maryland, Fink says, her group’s aim is to have at least half of Maryland’s political power belong to females. ”And to build the pipeline,” she adds. ”We have no female delegates to Congress.” We sat down with some of these women in the training program to talk about how they got here, and what sparked their political ambitions. Ciara Robinson, 29, running for Town Council in Capitol Heights, Md. Robinson grew up under extremely difficult circumstances. She was raised by her single mom, while her father was in and out of prison. ”My sister had a daughter when she was 15, so a lot of the things in my family influence my interest in politics.” She was the only one of her siblings to graduate high school and the first and only in her entire family to go to college. She has three degrees, including a master’s in public policy. ”I knew from my master’s degree that I was interested and ready” to get into politics, she says. But it was the 2016 election that drove her to apply for the program. ”When [Hillary Clinton] lost, it made me want to help other women get into office but kind of set the bar for me. I was originally thinking I’d run for local government, but now I’m doing research about running for higher offices.” Christiana Rigby, 32, running for Howard County Council, District 3.  ”I get asked a lot, ’Why now?’ mostly because I just had a baby,” Rigby says, holding her    son, Arlo, on her lap. ”For me it really was, ’If not now, then when?’ Because otherwise you just keep going to those County Council meetings and you get your three minutes to testify and then the vote happens without you anyway.” When women get elected, Rigby says, it’s a win for all women. ”It’s having those representatives, having those faces and those experiences. ”I remember hearing a speaker say that a man will run and lose, and run again and lose, and run again and win. And that women often don’t run again. And that really made me feel like, well, if that happens I should think about running again. I shouldn’t count myself out.” Lenora Dawson, 51, running for clerk of court in Baltimore, Md. Dawson agrees. ”I know I would certainly run again because, for me, it’s about being of service and not running for office. So that can have many different faces for many different aspects. And I think that we have to be relentless and continue to push forward.” Lesley Lopez, 33, running to represent District 39 in the Maryland General Assembly, Lopez became interested in politics while working with immigrant families. In 2008, she worked as a press secretary for Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, Texas, then became head of communications of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and later, worked for the National Immigration Forum. ”I had a great   experience and it gave me an opportunity to feel like I impacted families like my own.” She says she figured she’d run for office at one point, but took time away from Washington to focus on family. ”But then this past election cycle happened and my heart took a drop kick,” she says. ”I realized that no matter how qualified you were, there are double standards for women. But at the end of the day, if you don’t have women in positions of power, women’s perspectives just aren’t being heard. ”If you look at what’s happening in Maryland, they’re still talking about parental rights for rapists. And this state is supposed to be progressive. So the realization of putting all these pieces together . .. we need to be represented more.” Marisol Johnson, 37, running for Baltimore County Council, District 2.  ”My identity is one of a cultural melting pot,” Johnson says, ”but ultimately, I am a proud Latina woman. I say all of that, because I have the gift and blessing to be able to work in communities of different faiths, sexual orientations and races. In today’s landscape a good public servant must be able to navigate the   world. My background gives me that ability.” When the mother of four children joined the school board, she saw a new side of politics, she says. ”I realize politics doesn’t belong in the school system but it’s there. And I’m aware now of disparities.” The catalyst that launched her political engagement was the November election. When ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, carried out two raids in her neighborhood, she felt she had a responsibility to take action. ”I realized that women who are not documented are putting themselves beyond the limb to empower and teach other immigrants. So if I’m a documented successful businesswoman, I have to help now.” But, Johnson argues, not all elected female politicians are necessarily serving all women. ”If you’re on the wrong side of the aisle, voting for things against funding Planned Parenthood and those sort of things, it is not a win for women,” she says. ”Having something for our little girls to look up to is challenging and it is heartbreaking sometimes, but it is a job that we have to continue to fight through and fight for our future little girls’ leaders.” Producer Lucy Perkins contributed to this story."
"U. S. Customs and Border Protection is asking for design proposals and prototypes of President Trump’s proposed wall on the U. S.  border. Late Friday, the agency released specifics for the first time on how tough the barrier must be. CBP posted online two different options for contractors: one proposal must be for a solid concrete wall, another is for a wall with ”a    ” that is ”operationally advantageous.” ”The wall design shall be physically imposing in height,” the CBP outlines say. The government says its ”nominal concept” is for a    wall, but adds that designs as low as 18 feet ”may be acceptable.” The proposal document asks contractors for    prototypes and   of 10 feet by 10 feet. A CBP official told NPR’s John Burnett that contractors will have to make   of their ideas in San Diego. ”It’s a way for the agency to identify designs. We’re looking for industry’s designs, to take a fresh look at the wall. We’ll have industry propose and then we’ll  .” The CBP, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, requires the wall designs to be impossible for humans to climb without a ladder. It wants proposals that will prevent people from tunneling underneath by at least 6 feet underground. The government outlines the types of things both types of walls have to stand up to: ”sledgehammer, car jack, pick axe, chisel, battery operated impact tools, battery operated cutting tools,   torch or other similar   tools.” It has to look good, too. ”The north side of wall (i. e. U. S. facing side) shall be aesthetically pleasing in color,   texture, etc. to be consistent with general surrounding environment,” the CBP says. There’s no mention of the aesthetics on the Mexican side. More than 400 companies have told the Department of Homeland Security they’re interested in the project, NPR’s Richard Gonzales reported last week. Cost estimates of the wall vary widely: President Trump said it would cost $12 billion an MIT study said $38 billion. The deadline for contractors to submit their proposals for the first phase is March 29. NPR’s John Burnett contributed to this report."
"At an   public hearing on Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency is investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, and he pushed back against President Trump’s allegations that he was wiretapped by former President Barack Obama. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence also heard from Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers about Russia’s general attempts to influence the U. S. presidential election and the controversial, possibly illegal leak of classified information to the press. The congressional intelligence committees rarely hold public hearings  —   their work is often done behind closed doors. And you can see why, as Comey and Rogers responded to question after question by saying they weren’t able to comment in an unclassified setting. They frequently limited themselves to confirming the contents of a report issued in January, which said the Kremlin actively attempted to help Trump during the presidential campaign. But despite the difficulty of discussing classified data in an open hearing, there were a number of revelations. Here are a few highlights: Yes, there is an FBI investigation, Until Monday, the FBI had not publicly confirmed it was investigating allegations that officials from the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin as Russia was waging an influence campaign to try to shape the U. S. election. At the hearing, Comey said: ”I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. ”As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.” The investigation has been underway since July, Comey said, and he could not provide a timetable for when it would end. No evidence of Trump’s wiretapping allegations  —   and not for lack of looking, Earlier this month, Trump tweeted that ”Obama had my ’wires tapped.’ ” His administration has stood by the explosive, unfounded allegation even as lawmaker after lawmaker has stepped forward to say there is absolutely no evidence to support it. The White House tried to expand the definition of ”wiretapping” to include all forms of surveillance, but there has been no evidence to support even the broader claim. Comey said, ”I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI” and the broader Justice Department. No president has the authority to unilaterally order a wiretap anyway, he said. Over the past few weeks the White House shifted to claiming that a British intelligence agency was surveilling Trump Tower on Obama’s orders  —   another claim devoid of evidence that has also been strongly rebutted at the highest levels. Rogers was asked if he had ordered such surveillance. ”No, sir, nor would I,” Rogers said, noting that would violate a     agreement. Misleading presidential tweets continue, even midhearing, Several past tweets, like the ones mentioned above, were occasionally introduced into the hearing for discussion  —   but a very recent tweet was also raised as an issue. Jim Himes,  . read aloud an @POTUS tweet from midhearing, about the hearing, claiming that Comey and Rogers had testified that ”Russia did not influence [the] electoral process.” In fact, the two men had testified that there was no evidence Russia directly changed votes, like by hacking voting machines. But as they later noted, they didn’t comment on the question of overall influence  —   their agencies have not evaluated whether Russia had successfully affected the election. ”It certainly wasn’t our intention to say that today,” Comey said, when asked to essentially    the presidential Twitter account. ”We don’t have any information on that subject.” Another tweet from the presidential Twitter account noted Comey was ”refusing to deny” a briefing to Obama. That, too, was misleading Comey repeatedly told the lawmakers not to read too much into his inability to comment on a question because there were so many constraints on what he was allowed to discuss. Lawmakers divided on prioritizing Russian activity or U. S. leaks, We should note, as a caveat, that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle said it was important both to investigate Russia’s activities and to protect classified data. But there was an obvious difference in how the committee’s Democratic and Republican lawmakers approached the questioning. The Democrats, for the most part, emphasized the possibility of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. They acknowledged a lack of hard evidence but said that is a reason for more investigation, not less. Ranking member Adam Schiff,  . exemplified this approach in his lengthy opening remarks. He included a timeline of interactions between the campaign and Russia and questioned whether changes to the GOP platform, among other things, were ”coincidences” or signs of collusion. If the latter, Schiff said, that would be a ”shocking betrayal of democracy.” (Trump has long denied such allegations. On Monday, Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign manager who was among the people named by Schiff and other Democrats as having suspicious ties to Russia, issued a statement saying there is ”constant scrutiny and innuendo” around his connections to Moscow, but ”no facts. ”) The Republicans, in general, focused instead on the leaking of classified information to the media  —   noting that there may or may not have been crimes committed through collusion with Russia but there have apparently been crimes in the ”felonious release of classified material,” as Trey Gowdy,  . C. put it. For example: The Democrats frequently returned to false statements by former national security adviser Michael Flynn concealing the fact that he had spoken with the Russian ambassador, and the question of other ties between Flynn and Russia. ”Isn’t the American public right to be concerned about Mr. Flynn’s conduct, his failure to disclose that contact with the Russian ambassador, his attempts to cover it up and what looks like the White House’s attempts to sweep this under the rug?” Rep. Terri Sewell,  . asked. Republican members of the committee, meanwhile, focused instead on the question of who had ”unmasked” Flynn’s identity in documents revealing those conversations. They asked who would have the ability to reveal Flynn’s name, and what their motivation might be. If a U. S. person’s name ”has been unmasked and disseminated by intelligence community officials, would that leaking to the press hurt or help our ability to conduct national security matters?” Rep. Tom Rooney,  . asked. Rogers responded, ”Hurt.” More to come, on every front, There are multiple investigations into Russia’s actions during 2016. There’s the House committee investigation, which is continuing  —   a second hearing is scheduled for March 28. There’s the parallel investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as by the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. And, of course, there’s the   investigation by the FBI. Meanwhile, both Comey and Rogers say they expect Russia will continue to attempt to influence elections, both in the U. S. and abroad. ”I think we have to assume they’re coming back,” Comey said. ”I fully expect them to continue this level of activity,” Rogers said. Both men declined to comment on whether Russia’s attempt to influence the U. S. elections had actually changed the outcome. But they said it was definitely a ”success,” in Russia’s eyes, on at least one front  —   it ”introduced chaos and division and discord, and sowed doubt,” as Comey put it."
"FBI Director James Comey lit the fuse Monday on a political time bomb and no one  —   including him  —   knows how long it will take to burn or what kind of damage it may cause when it goes off. Comey confirmed to members of Congress that his investigators are looking into possible collusion between the campaign that elected President Trump and the Russian government. In fact, he said, the FBI has been doing so since last July. The signs had been there, from press reports to the announcement by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that Sessions would recuse himself from any such probe. Now, Comey’s disclosure to the House Intelligence Committee removes all doubt that the FBI believes there is sufficient evidence to look into the connections between Trump’s onetime political aides and the Kremlin. The case that Russia interfered in the presidential campaign has been made  —   the U. S. intelligence community laid out an unclassified version in December and   Barack Obama responded by expelling a group of Russian spies and sanctioning some of its key officials. But details about the role Trump’s team might have played in the making of that mischief still are murky, and Monday’s hearing did not include much explosive new information. In fact, the panel’s chairman, California Rep. Devin Nunes  —   who served on Trump’s transition team  —   and his fellow Republicans spent as much of their time as they could drawing the focus away from the Russian collusion narrative. The real outrage, Republicans argue, is the leaking of classified information to the Washington Post and other newspapers, especially the identity of former Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as having been swept up in U. S. government surveillance of Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn resigned after a brief stint as Trump’s national security adviser and has since retroactively registered as a foreign agent for his work representing Turkish interests. Democrats revealed on Friday that Flynn had also taken more than $50, 000 in payments from Russian government entities. Democrats, led by ranking member Adam Schiff, also of California, used their time on Monday to put Trump and the Russians together as closely as possible, including in an extended opening statement by Schiff that laid out his theory of the case. Much of Schiff’s statement, however, relied on information that’s already publicly available or which has been called into question. Monday’s session did not include major new details about the alleged ways that the Trump camp may have worked with the Russian intelligence services. But it did raise new questions about the imbroglio  —   some of which lawmakers may answer at a second session now scheduled for March 28, and some of which might not be cleared up until the FBI announces the results of its investigation.  1. How much evidence is still to be discovered? And how reliable is what’s now public? Schiff crafted a narrative about the Russians’ first exploration of the presidential candidates to a critical period from July to August of 2016. If Moscow began by trying simply to learn more about the potential next U. S. president, it shifted to trying to hurt the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and then helping her opponent  —   or so the argument goes. Schiff relied on information that has appeared in press reports and some that appears in a controversial dossier passed from a former British intelligence officer to Comey by Arizona Sen. John McCain. NPR and other news organizations have refrained from reporting such details because of the unknown provenance of the dossier  —   but does Schiff’s use of it in the public hearing indicate that at least some of the information has been verified? The Democrats’ case also rests on conversations between Trump advisers and people connected to the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, or other top Russians. But how much more detail exists about what was said in those meetings? How much effort are congressional or FBI investigators making to interview Trump’s campaign advisers?  2. Might Trump aides have colluded with Russia without knowing it? One new thread that emerged from Monday’s hearing came as part of an exchange between Comey and Illinois Democrat Mike Quigley, who asked whether it’s possible for Americans to help a foreign power and not know about it. Yes, Comey answered cautiously  —   an American might give information to someone he legitimately believes is a Chinese researcher and isn’t aware is actually a Chinese intelligence officer. Or an American might fall in love with someone and not realize he or she is in a relationship with a foreign agent: ”Romance could be a feature,” he said. That could explain denials by people at the center of the   imbroglio, including former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who resigned after reports about his connections to   government factions in Ukraine. The New York Times referred to Manafort in a story in February about U. S. intelligence officials documenting many alleged connections between the Trump camp and the Russians. Manafort called the report ”absurd” and told the newspaper: ”It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ’I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’ ” Manafort’s comment caused   at the time it appeared, but Comey and Quigley’s exchange on Monday created the prospect for a story about Russia not necessarily using Trump campaign aides as agents but as dupes.  3. What did Trump know  —   and when did he know it? If Comey’s investigation results in no charges or new information about ties between Trump’s camp and Russia, the White House would get rid of an albatross that has been around its neck for months. But if the FBI charges former Trump campaign officials, or reveals links between the Trump camp that haven’t already been aired publicly, that could escalate quickly and land the president or his top campaign aides in hot water. Trump never retreats and never apologizes and so far has mounted a brash defense. He flits between sometimes acknowledging the Russian mischief during the presidential race and sometimes dismissing it as a fiction created by Democrats to excuse their loss. That strategy has continued to be workable, and Republican aides on Capitol Hill have shown continued willingness to carry water for the White House in responding to press reports or handling inquiries like those on Monday. But charges against Trump aides, or new revelations about collusion between the campaign and Russian agents, would change all that  —   and fast. Democrats may never forgive Comey for revealing just before Election Day that the FBI had resumed some inquiries into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, which Clinton and Democrats say threw a close election to Trump. Now the president, the White House and their Republican allies on Capitol Hill are under a similar Sword of Damocles.  4. How will Russia respond to the investigations and their outcome? Comey, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers and other top U. S. intelligence officials have taken care not to say whether they believe Russia succeeded in influencing the outcome of the 2016 election  —   only that they’re confident Moscow conducted an influence campaign. Will Russian President Vladimir Putin turn out to have invested wisely or to have been the dog that caught the car? If Putin wanted the U. S. to relax the   sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that ship may have sailed  —   the scrutiny of Trump’s connections to Moscow may have now made even the appearance of any deal impossible. And American military deployments in Eastern Europe, including of armored units along NATO’s frontier with Russia and of ships and aircraft in the Black Sea, have continued. None of this means, however, that Putin is finished meddling in American politics, Comey warned. He told members of Congress on Monday that the Russians, for their own purposes, likely are satisfied with their work  —   having sowed confusion and undercut faith in the U. S. democratic process  —   and may try it again. ”We have to assume they’re coming back,” he said."
"One of the themes that developed on Day 1 of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s hearings is that Democrats plan to make an issue of what they say is the Supreme Court’s   leanings. In their opening statements on Monday, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee argued that Gorsuch is likely to continue the trend. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island alleged that when the court’s majority is made of Republican appointees, the narrow   decisions ”line up to help corporations against humans.” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said that the court under Chief Justice John Roberts is often called ”a corporate court” and said a study by the   Constitutional Accountability Center found that it ruled for the U. S. Chamber of Commerce 69 percent of the time. Durbin also cited Gorsuch’s dissent in a case in which a truck driver lost his job after his rig broke down one bitterly cold night. (NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported on the case here.) The driver was instructed to stay with the truck, but he found himself growing numb in the unheated cab and so drove away to find warmth, leaving the trailer behind, and was fired for disobeying orders. Durbin said it was 14 below that night, adding, ”but not as cold as your dissent, Judge Gorsuch.” He added, ”Thank goodness that the majority in this case pointed out that common sense and the Oxford dictionary” supported their view that the firing was without merit. In his own opening statement, Gorsuch spoke of striving for impartiality and the support he has received across the political spectrum. ”In my decade on the bench, I have tried to treat all who come to court fairly and with respect. . .. My decisions have never reflected a judgment about the people before me  —   only my best judgment about the law and facts at issue in each particular case,” the nominee said. ”For the truth is, a judge who likes every outcome he reaches is probably a pretty bad judge, stretching for the policy results he prefers rather than those the law compels.” Gorsuch will begin taking questions from the senators on Tuesday morning."
"At his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Neil Gorsuch pitched himself as a reasonable jurist who would do his best to uphold the rule of law without any bias. ”Sitting here, I am acutely aware of my own imperfections,” the federal appeals court judge told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. ”But I pledge to each of you and to the American people that, if confirmed, I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of our great nation.” The    who was nominated by President Trump in January to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia, did his best to strike a chord of unity in his testimony. But his comments followed four hours of opening statements from the committee members in which Democrats made clear they believed it was not Gorsuch who should be sitting before them, but President Barack Obama’s original nominee, Merrick Garland. The federal judge appeared nonplussed by the Democrats’ comments and the perpetual Garland shadow that hung over the first day of testimony. He will take questions from the committee on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by testimony from expert witnesses. Gorsuch touted his successful record as a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, saying that ”97 percent of the 2, 700 cases I’ve decided were decided unanimously  —   and that I’ve been in the majority 99 percent of the time.” He also underscored his commitment to the separation of powers, stating, ”It is for this body, the people’s representatives, to make new laws, for the executive to ensure those laws are faithfully enforced and for neutral and independent judges to apply the law in the people’s disputes.” He added: ”If judges were just secret legislators, declaring not what the law is but what they would like it to be, the very idea of a government by the people and for the people would be at risk.” In their opening remarks, Republicans on the committee heaped plenty of praise on the federal judge. ”His grasp on the separation of powers  —   including judicial independence  —   enlivens his body of work,” committee Chairman Chuck Grassley,   said. Democrats, meanwhile, repeatedly invoked Garland, who was denied a hearing by Senate Republicans during an election year after Scalia’s death in February 2016. ”I am deeply disappointed that it is under these circumstances that we begin these hearings,” said Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein,  . She went on to say that Democrats would give Gorsuch a courtesy that Senate Republicans did not give Garland: a fair hearing. ”Our job is to determine whether Judge Gorsuch is a reasonable mainstream conservative or is he not,” Feinstein continued. She then outlined her concerns with some of Gorsuch’s past writings that hinted he opposed Roe v. Wade, calling the case a ”super precedent” that legalized abortion and gave women a right to privacy. The Colorado judge was introduced, as is customary, by his home state’s senators. Republican Sen. Cory Gardner underscored that Gorsuch was not ”an activist judge” and was   to serve on the nation’s highest court. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado also had words of praise for Gorsuch, though he, too, decried Senate Republicans’ treatment of Garland, calling it ”an embarrassment to this body that will be recorded in history.” Yet he, like Feinstein, argued that ”two wrongs never make a right” and said Gorsuch should get a fair hearing. Former Obama administration acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, a Georgetown Law professor, also spoke in support of Gorsuch, calling him a ”  intellect and a fair and decent man” who had a ”dedication to the rule of law.” But Katyal also bemoaned the circumstances under which he was nominated, calling it ”a tragedy of national proportions that Merrick Garland does not sit on the court.” Overall, the first day of testimony underscored that the hearings would remain sharply divided along party lines, with each senator accusing the opposing side of political posturing. Sen. Orrin Hatch,   argued that the Senate owes a president discretion in picking his judicial nominees and pointed out that Gorsuch had received the highest rating possible from the American Bar Association, the ”gold standard” in vetting judicial nominees. Hatch blasted Democrats for wanting Gorsuch to outline how he would vote on certain cases, saying that to them, ”judicial independence requires he be beholden to them and [their] political agenda” on issues like abortion. Other Republicans argued that Gorsuch should be judged on his own merits, legal writings and decisions  —   not compared to the man who nominated him. Sen. Thom Tillis,  . C. said, ”The nominee before us today is not President Trump,” nor is he Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Judge Garland. Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. joked that he was certainly no fan of Trump during the campaign and made the case that Republicans didn’t blockade Gorsuch’s nomination to allow Trump to make a nomination because most of them didn’t believe Trump would win. ”If you believe this has been a great plan to get a Trump nominee on the court, then you had to believe Trump was going to win to begin with,” said Graham. The South Carolina Republican pointed out that he had voted to confirm President Obama’s two Supreme Court nominees, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, because they were qualified for the bench and not because he agreed with their politics. Graham urged his Democratic colleagues to give Gorsuch the same deference. ”I’m dying to hear someone over there tell me why [Gorsuch] is not qualified to be sitting here,” Graham said. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz claimed in his comments that Gorsuch’s nomination carried with it a ”superlegitimacy” because Trump made the Supreme Court vacancy a major campaign issue. Still, Democrats devoted many of their opening statements to pushing back against the   Republican obstructionism that they believe caused Scalia’s seat to remain vacant for more than a year. ”The Judiciary Committee once stood against a   scheme that would have eroded judicial independence. That was a proud moment. Now, Republicans on this committee are guilty of their own ’court unpacking scheme,’” said Sen. Patrick Leahy,  . ”The blockade of Chief Judge Merrick Garland was never grounded in principle or precedent.”"
"A restoration team Monday announced the completion of a historic renovation of one of Christianity’s holiest sites  —   the shrine that, according to tradition, houses the tomb of Jesus. The ornate shrine, called the Edicule, sits in the center of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the world’s oldest churches, a 12th century building sitting on fourth century remains in Jerusalem’s Old City. According to Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian belief, the Edicule encases the ancient cave where Jesus’ body was entombed and resurrected. The Edicule shrine is built around the original cave visitors can kneel before a marble niche that covers what is believed to be the bench where Jesus’ body was placed. The shrine, almost completely destroyed in an 1808 fire and restored in 1810, had not been maintained since, and its stone walls were buckling outward. Water, humidity and candle smoke all wore down the structure. ”I would venture to say that if this intervention hadn’t happened now, there was a very great risk that there could have been a collapse,” said Bonnie Burnham of the World Monuments Fund, a nonprofit in New York that helped raise funds for the $4 million project. King Abdullah of Jordan and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also donated about $165, 000 each for the renovation efforts, she said. Starting last May, a Greek restoration team from Athens spent nearly a year removing parts of the Edicule shrine and putting them back together. Stone slabs were removed from the walls decades of black candle soot and pigeon droppings were scrubbed off and while the stone slabs of the facade were removed, titanium mesh and grout were inserted to strengthen the building’s core. Most strikingly, the hulking and unsightly iron cage built around the shrine in 1947 to reinforce it, approximately 30 feet high, was removed. ”This monument today is free. It is emancipated from the iron grids,” said Antonia Moropoulou, who supervised the renovations. The most dramatic moment of the restoration took place in late October, when Moropoulou’s team entered the inner sanctum of the Edicule  —   which is open to visitors  —   and slid back layer after marble layer covering the   bench where believers say Jesus’ body was placed after he died on the cross. There was a layer from the   era of the 14th century, and an earlier layer from the fourth century, when the emperor Constantine built the original church. Underneath that was the exposed rock bench. ”It was really important to see the bench, very flat and almost complete, from the right to the left, almost for the shape of one man [who] can stay on it,” said Eugenio Alliata, an Italian archaeologist in Jerusalem who is a member of a Franciscan group that looks after Christian sites in the Holy Land. ”This was really something very important. And it was the first time it has been documented as it is.” The marble layers were put back in place, but one change was made in the shrine’s inner sanctum: A small window was cut into one of the walls. Now, for the first time, visitors can get a glimpse of what’s behind: the original rock wall of what tradition says is Jesus’ tomb."
"In the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, 60, 000 Syrians are camped out along the Syrian and Jordanian border in what has become one of the biggest and most desperate refugee settlements in the region. Few outsiders have ever seen it. NPR visited an area near the camp last week in a trip organized by the Jordanian military. Aid groups, who have no direct access to the    camp, track its growth by analyzing satellite images showing thousands of makeshift tents clustered between two berms  —   earthen embankments in a  ’s land along Jordan’s far northeastern border. Jordan says the camp, located in  ’s land between the two countries, is infiltrated by ISIS and won’t allow any aid workers to go there. With limited food getting through, some children are in danger of starving. ”The United Nations staff doesn’t have access to the  ’s land, so the assistance has to be provided from this end,” Helene Daubelcour, a spokeswoman for the U. N. High Commissioner for Refugees, tells NPR at a U. N.  clinic on the Jordanian side of the border, more than a mile from the camp. ”The area is now a closed military zone, so we are helping as close as we can  —   but we cannot go on the other side of the berm.” From the closest point that aid workers are allowed to go, the tents in the camp are visible only as white dots in the distance. Sand swirls around the aid compound, which is protected by Jordanian tanks and edged with barbed wire. Outside a clinic operating from a trailer, refugee women sit in plastic chairs, holding coughing children. Enshara Mustafa has brought her    granddaughter, Nada. The little girl with wide brown eyes burned her leg with scalding water two days earlier. But she also suffers from asthma, and they couldn’t move her in a sandstorm the day before. ”It’s like death,” says Mustafa, when I ask her what the camp is like. ”They send us aid every two or three months. We can’t even afford to buy an aspirin.” She and her family left Homs more than a year ago, she says, after their house was destroyed. ”We kept moving from one place to another, and every place we went, there were airstrikes,” she says. Finally, they reached the Jordanian border and could go no further. Jordan has always restricted access to the refugees at Rukban, but after a suicide car bomb at a checkpoint killed seven Jordanian border guards last June, it sealed the border with Syria entirely. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. ”Everything is different after the bombing,” says Sabah Jaradeen, a retired Jordanian army officer who runs a   feeding center for children. She says before the attack and the restrictions, she and her team used to see more than 100 children a day  —   assessing them and treating the ones who were malnourished. Now, she says, ”The number depends on the military bringing them in the morning and taking them back.” UNICEF says on a typical day there are fewer than a dozen children brought in. It has seen 16 severely malnourished infants since its clinic opened in December. In November, the U. N. was allowed to drop food across the border, after months of negotiations with the Jordanian government. To reduce the risk, Jordan required that it be dropped into the  ’s land from cranes. The U. N. has set up a center in the neutral zone, where refugee community leaders are responsible for distributing U. N.  food. But the last delivery of a month’s supply of food for the refugees ran out more than a month ago. People are relying, when they can, on stockpiled food, are using whatever money they have to buy more  —   or, as with the malnourished children, they’re not eating at all. As for water, to minimize risk, UNICEF pumps it into Rukban from Jordanian reservoirs rather than trucking it in. Calculating the rate of water consumption, in addition to analyzing the satellite imagery, is what helps the U. N. estimate the number of people in the camp, the U. N.’s Daubelcour says. Only refugees who are brought to a checkpoint by Rukban community leaders and are searched by Jordanian border guards are allowed access to the U. N. medical clinic. The border guards transport patients to the clinic and then take them back again to the checkpoint after they are treated. ”We try our best to advocate with the government of Jordan,” says Samir Badran of UNICEF, ”and we hope there will be a solution in the long run.” Jordanian Brig. Gen. Barakat   says his border force is implementing a political decision by the Jordanian government to close the border. While 90 percent of the residents of Rukban are ordinary civilians, he says, another 10 percent are affiliated with ISIS. ”The danger is very high,” he tells us. ”We are always expecting the worst regarding the possibility of anyone carrying explosives to blow up our soldiers.” As we speak, residents of the camp bring an elderly man on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance on the Jordanian side of the border. The man’s family members stop at the nearest point they’re allowed to come  —   a checkpoint between   barriers topped with barbed wire. ”It’s far from ideal if you have to operate without full access to the population,” Daubelcour says. ”It’s difficult to understand their needs and address them in the way we would like to do.” And then she and the other U. N. staff leave to return to Amman. The U. N.’s own security rules deem this desert too dangerous for their staff to be out after dark. For the past two years, aid officials have been reluctant to speak publicly about Rukban, afraid of upsetting the Jordanian government and jeopardizing their chances of access to the camp. Jordan, which has taken in some 650, 000 Syrian refugees, has said it is at the breaking point and called for more international aid."
"The Department of Homeland Security made good Monday on a Trump administration promise to publicly shame cities and counties that don’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released its first weekly list of local jails and jurisdictions that haven’t honored   immigrant detainer requests. Such requests on behalf of immigration officials go to cities and counties asking that local law enforcement hold an inmate who is in the country illegally and has been arrested or charged with a crime. The intent is to have such prisoners detained for up to 48 hours so that federal officials can decide whether to pick them up and deport them. Such cities and counties, commonly described as ”sanctuary jurisdictions,” may not cooperate with the detainer requests for a variety of reasons. Some say that cooperating can undermine local trust in the police if immigrants are afraid that reporting a crime will result in their own deportation. Other jurisdictions cite court rulings that have cast doubt on the constitutionality of the detainers. The list published Monday covers the period from Jan. 28 to Feb. 3. It comes during the week following President Trump’s executive order on the interior enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. The order directed DHS to compile and publicize a list ”of criminal actions committed by aliens” and identify any jurisdiction that ignored any federal detainer requests. The list covers the cases of 206 unnamed individuals who ICE says committed ”notable criminal activity” and the jails from which they were released. The crimes listed include drug possession, DUI, domestic violence and aggravated assault. The vast majority of the offenders are from Mexico and Central America. The jurisdictions listed include Los Angeles, Colorado, New York and Travis County, Texas. As NPR’s John Burnett reports, ”While 206 of these detainers were ignored, that represents less than 10 percent of the 3, 083 detainer requests that were issued nationwide.” ICE says that since local law enforcement agencies don’t notify the feds when a detainer is not honored, the list includes declined detainers ICE personnel learned of during their enforcement activities. Publication of the list drew fire from immigrants advocates in Congress. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez,  . denounced the list as an effort ”to paint all immigrants as killers and rapists. Trump and his team incorrectly see Fourth Amendment policies that require warrants to hold prisoners for the Feds as a threat to public safety, but the reality is that in most cities, the police have found that acting as deportation police makes it harder to keep their cities safe.” But Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan said, ”When law enforcement agencies fail to honor immigration detainers and release serious criminal offenders, it undermines ICE’s ability to protect the public safety and carry out its mission.”"
"Fake news has been, well, in the news a lot lately. It seems no claim is too absurd to be aired. For example, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal has just become the fourth NBA star to make public remarks that he believes the Earth is flat, not round. ”I’m just saying. I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat to me,” he said on a podcast he hosts. For the world’s largest crowdsourced encyclopedia, combating myths like this is nothing new. (Check its entry on contemporary   titled, ”Modern flat Earth societies. ”) ”Wikipedia has been dealing with fake news since it started 16 years ago,” notes LiAnna Davis, deputy director of the Wiki Education Foundation. To combat misinformation, Wikipedia has developed a robust corps of volunteer editors. Anyone can write new entries and scrutinize existing ones for adherence to Wikipedia’s rules on sourcing and neutrality. While it’s not free of errors or pranks, what results is a resource that 50 million people turn to daily on hundreds of thousands of topics in a few dozen languages. Today, educators are among those more concerned than ever with standards of truth and evidence and with the   spread of misinformation online. And the Wiki Education Foundation, a freestanding nonprofit, is sharing Wikipedia’s methods with a growing number of college students, striking a blow for information literacy along the way. The foundation gives professors the technical assistance they need to assign students to write a   Wikipedia entry, or expand an existing entry, on any topic in virtually any discipline.  This spring, 7, 500 students are expected to participate. Among the many items past students have written on are: Since the program began six years ago, Davis says, students have collectively added more than 25 million words of content to Wikipedia. Jennifer Malkowski, an assistant professor of film and media studies at Smith College, assigned her class on new media and participatory culture to write and contribute to Wikipedia entries this past fall. ”One of the things they really liked about it was the ability to share knowledge beyond the professor  —   that audience of one,” she says. While all Smith students are expected to use good research methods in their classes, knowing that their entries might be rejected outright if they didn’t conform to Wikipedia’s standards ”felt like a higher stake than the difference between a B and an ” she says. Malkowski will be leading a workshop to help her colleagues, some of whom are less technically minded, learn how to make Wikipedia assignments in their own classes as well. Davis says many professors report a greater level of effort from their students on Wikipedia assignments. ”If you’re writing something millions of people are going to read, it’s a reason to do a really good job, to go into a library and get a deep understanding of the topic.” Some professors, like Tamar Carroll, an assistant professor of history at the Rochester Institute of Technology, see Wikipedia as a way to make previously neglected areas of knowledge more visible. For Carroll, it’s women’s history. She says a former student recently emailed her to say that her Wikipedia entry on Mary Stafford Anthony, the suffragist and sister of Susan B. Anthony, was ”the most meaningful assignment she had” as an undergraduate. There’s another learning opportunity too. Every Wikipedia entry has a ”talk” page, where editors discuss changes, and a ”view history” page that shows additions and deletions over time. Peeking behind that curtain, says Malkowski, helps ”expose how knowledge is collectively created and how different voices might come to consensus, or not, on a particular topic.” Right now, she adds, ”is an especially important time to be asking these epistemological questions.” According to the foundation’s own survey, 87 percent of university faculty who participated in the program reported an increase in their students’ media literacy. By grinding some Internet   themselves, essentially, they gained a better understanding of what goes into it. It’s an interesting turn of events for Wikipedia, which, as Davis acknowledges, has had a bad rap in academic circles as the lazy student’s substitute for real research. ”When I first started going to academic conferences, people would hide and say, ’Don’t let my department chair see me talking to you,’ ” says Davis. She added that Wikipedia should only be a starting point for a   research paper. But if you want to check what shape the Earth is, it’s a pretty reliable source. A version of this story originally ran on NPR Ed in February."
"Norway can be frigid. And the winters bring lots of darkness. But it’s the happiest nation in world, according to the 2017 World Happiness Report. Denmark comes in at #2, followed by Iceland and Switzerland. Finland takes 5th place. And, it turns out, these countries have more in common than a tolerance for cold.   is shaped by a range of factors. ”All of the top countries rank highly on all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance,” according to the report. The second tier of the top ten includes the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden (the last two tied for 9th position). The developing world has its share of unhappy countries. According to the report, some of the unhappiest nations in the world are Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti. But there are encouraging signs in   and   countries. Cameroon, Latvia, Nicaragua and Sierra Leone, for example, are all on the list of the 20 countries reporting the highest gains in happiness. Meanwhile, happiness in the U. S. has slipped a bit, according to the report. ”The reasons are declining social support” as well as a decline in trust  —   and an increased sense of corruption, write the   in a summary report. In 2015, the U. S. ranked 13th. This year, it slipped to 14th. The report draws on survey data from 155 countries. ”We ask people to think of their lives as a whole,” explains report   John Helliwell, an economist at the University of British Columbia who studies   and comparative economic growth. Each year, researchers survey 1, 000 people in each country. Some questions are quite simple, such as: In times of trouble, do you have family   friends to count on? Other questions measure people’s perceived levels of freedom, generosity and trust  —   both in each other and in their governments and businesses. The Nordic countries have among the most generous social safety nets. ”Access to higher education, access to   health services are part of it, explains   Øyslebø, minister of communications, cultural affairs and education at the Norwegian Embassy. (We reached out to him before he had heard about the top spot his country had earned in the new report.) There are also generous social support programs. For instance, new parents in Norway are eligible for nearly a year of leave with pay. ”Norway is a relatively egalitarian society with regard to both to income differences and gender,” Øyslebø told us. He says he thinks this is an important part of the happiness equation. Another factor, of course, is the economy. Overall, Norway is pretty wealthy, in part due to the natural resource of oil. But even though oil prices have declined, Norwegian level of happiness has risen, at least according to the report. ”Absolutely there’s more to it than money,” Øyslebø says. Many studies have shown that after people’s basic needs are met, additional income is not necessarily a path to happiness. So what’s the value of these global ranking? After all, the survey data that they’re based on are pretty crude measures. And at any given time, in any nation, some people are suffering while others thrive. ”The reason for taking this [report] seriously,”   John Helliwell told us, is that it offers an alternative to thinking of ”income as the measure of progress.”"
"March 20 is the International Day of Happiness, the result of a UN resolution adopted in 2012 that identifies the pursuit of happiness as ”a fundamental human goal” and promotes a more holistic approach to public policy and economic growth  —   one that recognizes happiness and wellbeing as important pieces of sustainable and equitable development. The official page for the International Day of Happiness, HappinessDay. org, goes one step further in declaring happiness a ”universal human right.” But is happiness really a human right? And is happiness a goal we should actively pursue? I think the answers are ”no” and ”it depends.” First, consider the analogy between psychological wellbeing  —   including happiness  —   and physical wellbeing, or health. The World Health Organization endorses a ”right to health,” but the details make it clear that it isn’t health, per se, that is a right, but rather the means to achieve the best health possible. The WHO constitution recognizes ”. ..the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being,” with the right to health including ”access to timely, acceptable, and affordable health care of appropriate quality.” Similarly, the Declaration of Independence doesn’t recognize happiness as a right, but rather the pursuit of happiness. So it may be that the best way to understand a ”right to happiness” is as a right to pursue happiness. Happiness just doesn’t seem like the right sort of thing to proclaim as a right in itself. The trouble is that a right to the pursuit of happiness may be counterproductive. For most Americans, actively pursuing happiness isn’t a reliable route to attaining it. Studies conducted in the U. S. have consistently found that actively seeking happiness can backfire: Those who strongly value and pursue happiness are more likely to feel disappointed about their own feelings, to report loneliness, and to have depressive symptoms. One reason for these negative effects is that in many Western cultures, happiness is conceptualized in individualistic terms  —   as a personal pursuit that leads to personal achievements. Actively pursuing happiness (so defined) can thus decrease social connection, which is one of the best predictors of a person’s wellbeing. These findings suggest that, at least in the United States, promoting a right to pursue happiness could lead to behaviors and outcomes that are quite distinct from those that support happiness itself. Put more strongly, supporting people in actively pursuing happiness could actually prevent people from achieving happiness. And it is presumably the latter  —   the actual achievement of happiness  —   that the UN resolution aims to recognize and support. In light of this research, a right to the pursuit of happiness may seem deeply misguided  —   a right we should simply abandon. Instead of a right to pursue happiness, we should endorse a right to the conditions that successfully foster happiness. Or, to borrow the WHO’s formulation regarding health, we should endorse a right to the highest attainable standard of mental health and wellbeing. But here’s another thought: Maybe the problem isn’t with the pursuit of happiness, but with how we conceptualize happiness itself. When it comes to defining happiness, perhaps there’s another way  —   a better way.   research suggests that there is. In a paper published in 2015, psychologist Brett Ford and her colleagues found that the negative association between pursuing happiness and achieving happiness isn’t   universal. In the U. S. they found the previously reported link between pursuing happiness and failing to achieve it. But in Germany, there was no reliable association between the strength of individuals’ motivation to pursue happiness and their actual wellbeing. And in Russia, Japan, and Taiwan, the association was positive: Those who were more motivated to pursue happiness also reported greater wellbeing. The researchers hypothesized that these   differences were driven by differing conceptions of happiness itself. They expected  —   and found support for  —   the idea that in more collectivist cultures, happiness is more likely to be defined in terms of social engagement, including   behaviors (such as seeing to other people’s wellbeing) and social relationships (such as being surrounded by caring family and friends). For those with a   definition of happiness, pursuing happiness presumably supported the kinds of social connections that are known to foster wellbeing, reversing the negative pattern observed in the U. S. If these ideas are right, then the effects of pursuing happiness crucially depend on one’s notion of happiness itself. Promoting a right to the pursuit of happiness could yield positive consequences when happiness is understood in social terms. But with the more individualistic definition prevalent in the U. S. promoting the active pursuit of happiness could lead to less happiness, not to more. More likely than not, the UN’s original advocates for the International Day of Happiness had a broad and   notion of happiness in mind  —   not the more narrowly individualistic one that many Americans seem to posses. For instance, the resolution itself doesn’t simply call for more personal wellbeing, but for ”a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and the   of all peoples.” In celebrating the International Day of Happiness, then, we might do well to examine rather than reaffirm our tacit assumptions about happiness and its pursuit. And we might do well to join the UN’s resolution in aspiring to the wellbeing of all peoples, not only to our own happiness as individuals. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"For three years, recreational pot has been legal in Colorado, but using it in public is still against the law. That will change this summer when pot clubs are slated to open. A blinking ”open” sign hangs on the outside of an old building in a dark industrial zone just outside the Denver city limits. When the front door opens, smoke billows out. Inside is one of the state’s few pot clubs, called iBake. Recently, members celebrated the anniversary of its opening.   patrons bounce off each other in the small space. People can smoke pot in here because the club is private you have to be a member. And it’s outside city limits, away from city police. It’s not the easiest way to make money, but Steve Nelson Jr. started iBake to fill a need. ”It’s recreation, so it’s to have fun, it’s to relax, it’s to lounge,” he says. ”You don’t necessarily want to do that just by yourself.” But that’s exactly how many tourists, like Alberto Aviles, end up using it. Aviles was visiting from New York. He had no problem finding a place to buy pot at one of Denver’s 150 stores, but aside from iBake, he couldn’t find anywhere to use it. ”Even in the hotels, like the Ramada Inn, they gave me a problem, you know, tried to kick me out just off the smell,” he says. Hotel owners aren’t the only ones happy to see that city and state lawmakers are close to permitting a mix of private and public communal places to use pot. It’s something akin to what you’d find in Amsterdam. Vicki Marble, a Republican state senator, says that’s better than cops handing out tickets to tourists using pot in parks and on sidewalks. ”We do not want people coming on vacation and leaving on probation,” she says. Colorado Republicans have brushed off concerns from the Trump administration about the spread of recreational marijuana, throwing their weight behind a bipartisan bill at the state legislature that would officially allow private marijuana clubs. But people would still have to B. Y. O. P. or bring your own pot. ”It’s not ideal for consumers, but it is a step in the right direction,” says Kayvan Khalatbari, a marijuana businessman and advocate for public pot consumption. Seven other states have legal recreational pot, but among those seven, only Nevada is close to licensing public pot use. ”It’s not only something that obviously Colorado’s dealing with, but every single state that’s legalizing recreational cannabis, this will be a conundrum that gets recreated,” he says. One conundrum is around smoking. Colorado, like many states, doesn’t allow indoor smoking in public places. But Khalatbari says half of Colorado’s pot sales are for the type of marijuana you have to smoke. Many people prefer that. ”I don’t like edibles,” Khalatbari says. ”I don’t like the way they make me feel. I don’t feel that vaporization gives me the sensation that I’m looking for” Rachel O’Bryan has long fought against the expansion of pot. ”Yes, I’m happy to be the bad guy who rains on the parade,” she says. She says no filtration system can remove all the   smoke from a room. And Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has said he’d veto the state’s pot club bill if it allows indoor smoking. Think outdoor patios and rooftop bars. But O’Bryan’s concerns go beyond that. She’s worried that some proposals would allow any type of business  —   like a yoga studio or a laundromat  —   to permit marijuana use. ”You know, the encouragement of anything, whether it’s alcohol or marijuana while you’re going about your daily business of, you know, doing laundry  —   is that a good direction for society to take?” she asked. ”And my guess is not.” She laments that again, Colorado is at the forefront of a big social experiment. She wonders what the effect will be on drugged driving or addiction. No one knows for sure. Ben Markus is a general assignment reporter with NPR member station Colorado Public Radio. You can follow him @CPRMarkus."
"Robert Silvers, whose long career as an editor included terms at The Paris Review, Harper’s and, most notably, as   of The New York Review of Books, died Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87. Silvers launched The New York Review of Books in 1963 with Barbara Epstein, intending to raise the standard of book reviewing. In its pages, a given book under consideration could be little more than a   point for an extended essay that directly engaged the political and cultural moment. He encouraged writers to craft each review as a vigorous intellectual argument, and delighted in pairing reviewers with books that challenged their personal or political worldview. Silvers was loath to give interviews, and sought no measure of the fame in which his writers often basked, though he was renowned within New York literary circles. When he had a pacemaker installed in 2011, there was widespread speculation that he might step down as editor of the publication. (His   Epstein had died in 2006.) But he continued to serve, with the energy and enthusiasm he was known for, often working late into the night  —   or sleeping at the office. Silver’s longtime companion, Grace, Countess of Dudley, died in December of last year. He is survived by several nieces and nephews."
"Donald Trump likes to move fast. But to this point, for all the bravado, executive actions and tweets, much of Trump’s presidency has been showy without a lot of practical effect. For that to change, much could depend on the next three weeks. This critical phase could set his ambitious agenda on course or derail it. The reason: Republicans have set a goal of passing the first phase of the Affordable Care Act replacement before the April recess, so they don’t have to go home for two weeks and hear it from both sides. That means getting it through by the week of April 3. House leaders plan to bring the bill to a full House vote on Thursday. That’s despite its facing pushback left, right and center. ”It’s an important transition time,” said Mike DuHaime, who ran New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign and is close to Bill Stepien, Trump’s political director. He added, ”The next three weeks are important in setting the table and making progress. . .. They do need to start showing progress.” But first, Trump’s agenda faces a trio of major tests Monday with dueling congressional hearings  —   into the confirmation of his Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, and the investigation into Russian meddling in the election  —   as well as his ability to make the sale on health care when he rallies in Kentucky. Despite Democrats being under pressure to resist, Gorsuch, who has sterling legal credentials, is expected to be confirmed. He has so far shown himself to be poised and unlikely to be caught in any of the usual traps. But Gorsuch could be tested when it comes to his social conservatism, his role in   terrorism policies (including the use of torture and warrantless surveillance) his views of the judiciary and Trump’s travel ban. The Russia issue threatens to hobble Trump’s presidency, as it is likely to be an ongoing nuisance for the Trump White House. Controversy related to it has already cost Trump his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. And his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from any investigations into the Trump presidential campaign following revelations that Sessions wasn’t completely forthcoming during his confirmation hearing about his own contact with the Russian ambassador. Congress has subpoena power, which means that something could come out of the investigation that hasn’t been in the public domain as yet. So far, there has been some smoke between Trump and Russia, but no fire. And for liberals thinking (hoping) Trump will be impeached because of it, that’s highly unlikely. Short of Trump being found to be on the payroll of the Kremlin, don’t expect a Republican Congress to impeach a president of its own party. What’s more, next year is an election year, and the campaign for 2020, believe it or not, is right around the corner. The likelihood is if Democrats want to take down Trump, they’re going to have to do it at the ballot box. Health care is key, Trump has set out an ambitious agenda meant to capitalize on his campaign promises. That has consisted of more than two dozen executive actions (including a travel ban of first seven, then six   countries and moving toward building a wall along the U. S.  border) as well as picking Gorsuch to replace conservative icon Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Not everything has gone well. Two iterations of his travel ban have gotten hung up in the courts Trump introduced a radical budget that ramps up military spending and cuts almost everything else, but is dead on arrival in Congress and intraparty fighting is threatening to derail the GOP health care plan. ”I’m wary of assigning the term ’defining moment’ on anything related to Trump, since he has demonstrated an ability to create entirely new news cycles or controversies as soon as the current one presents him problems,” said GOP strategist Kevin Madden, who was a senior adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and worked on Capitol Hill for Tom DeLay and John Boehner when they were majority leaders. ”He [Trump] has an ability to persevere not shared by many conventional politicians. But the    effort is important, because it’s a promise that has been promoted for seven years, and the expectations for delivering on it are high.” But delivering might be tougher than Republicans and Trump may have thought. Right now, it seems, the bill, as currently written, doesn’t have the votes. Asked if it did by CNN’s Jake Tapper, House Speaker Paul Ryan deflected, calling Tapper’s question ”goofy.” ”When you make the case to voters for three consecutive election cycles that the only ingredients needed for repealing Obamacare are a Republican Congress and control of the White House, the pressure is on to deliver,” Madden reiterated. Trump takes the show on the road Monday in Kentucky, a state that has had  —   by most standards  —   success in implementing the Affordable Care Act through its exchange, Kynect. The bill took a hit last week when the Congressional Budget Office said it would increase premiums in the short run, provide plans with less coverage and very likely cause millions to lose their health insurance. Kentucky is a state with lots of Trump voters, and he will be tested on his ability to convince them that this bill  —   or something else  —   is something they should support. ”I think he’s going to be very important doing that, especially in districts he won overwhelmingly,” DuHaime said. He noted that Trump’s ”personal popularity and willingness to use that could be influential” in those places. But that’s going to be tested. That’s key, because without health care out of the way, it will be very difficult for the GOP to move on to tax reform or a big infrastructure bill, something that is a priority of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who sees it as key to Trump’s  . ”Republicans are very much expecting significant tax reform,” DuHaime said, adding, ”If we’re into the summer, and we don’t see any movement on tax reform,” that would be a problem. Overall, Madden pointed out, ”We’re talking about a legislative agenda that, if you include tax reform, immigration, infrastructure and other priorities, would ordinarily consume two full terms. Passing this first test with health care reform will be an important gauge for the prospects of that larger agenda.”"
"As the father of two sons with schizophrenia, author Ron Powers is familiar with the pain and frustration of dealing with a chronic, incurable disease of the brain. Powers’ younger son, Kevin, was a talented musician whose struggles with schizophrenia began at age 17. Just before his 21st birthday, in 2005, Kevin took his own life. A few years later, Powers’ older son, Dean, started experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia and had a psychotic break. ”There is no greater . .. feeling of helplessness than to watch two beloved sons deteriorate before [your] eyes, not knowing what to do to bring them back,” Powers tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. Powers’ new book, No One Cares About Crazy People, is both a memoir about his sons and a history of how the mentally ill have been treated medically, legally and socially. Although Dean is now medicated and doing well, Powers notes that many people with schizophrenia don’t receive the treatment they need  —   in part because they often don’t believe they are ill. ”This unwillingness to believe that one is afflicted has led to tremendous problems,” Powers says. ”To force that person into being helped is a violation of his or her civil rights . .. and the law may penalize the care workers who give [people with schizophrenia] medications or admit them to a hospital against their will. . .. That is the great reigning   of the way our society deals  —   or fails to deal  —   with schizophrenia.” On why symptoms of schizophrenia often surface around the age of 17  It has to do with the maturation of the brain. . .. In order to start functioning as an adult brain, the brain must undergo a period of what is called ”synaptic pruning,” really a cleansing away of all of the neurons, all of the connective material that is built up since infancy. That is no longer useful and it’s quickly replaced, but there is a period of vacancy, almost, in which the brain is very vulnerable to any kind of disruption. It’s unprotected, and this is the period of life, roughly clustered around the age of 17, when the disease can make its appearance. On how denial impacted his sons’ treatment, Each of our sons was afflicted with this companion condition called anosognosia. . .. [It’s] defined as an inability to understand the self, a blockage of insight into what is happening. Many, perhaps most, of schizophrenic victims deny that they are schizophrenic, and this has led to many important social and legal and ideological conflicts. . .. The denial that took place, with Kevin the symptoms occurred before he reached the age of 18, meaning he could be treated without his consent. He was a juvenile and he was taken into care and custody without his consent. Dean was over the age [of consent] and resisted treatment, denied that he needed to be treated, and it was only after a series of psychotic breaks that he came around to the understanding that he needed help. Dean is accountable to a clinician. He has to report there is a record of him taking his meds. Kevin was taking oral medication only on his own consent and we weren’t sophisticated enough to perceive that instead of taking the meds Kevin might be hiding the meds. This happened in the later stages of his descent and it was after he finally announced to us, ”I’m fine. I’m healed. I’m OK, I’m not going to take my pills.” Within a few months after that, Kevin hanged himself in our basement. On trying to understand the degree of Kevin’s suffering, He was hearing voices. We know that. We could watch him through the kitchen window as he walked out of the house and toward the hot tub that he loved to sit in. We could see him climb into the hot tub and sit down, his profile was to us, and we could see him laugh. He would laugh, he would giggle. . .. Something was talking to him, and I think because of that happy response we saw from him we told ourselves that he had made friends with the voices, that the voices were beckoning him, they were coaxing him into their world, and that he finally decided to join them. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. I’ll tell you that it got me through the first five years of trying to figure out where Kevin’s mind had gone. On still having dreams of Kevin  In the dreams Kevin is alive. He’s a small boy, around 10, 11, 12 years old. We know he’s a gifted guitar player, but he’s stopped playing his guitar, and he won’t start again. The odd thing is that both Honoree and I have had this dream. It might be a metaphor for his death, but he shows up, almost every night, as I say. . .. I’m glad to see him. In the dreams he is etched so perfectly. The reality of him, the physical   reality of Kevin is overwhelming and all of his kindness and his goodness are there. On the effects of deinstitutionalization in the 1960s on people with mental illness, The advent of the   ”wonder drugs” like Thorazine . .. were touted as cures for schizophrenia  —   they weren’t. At best they were cures for symptoms. But on the strength of Thorazine and its great consumer success and promise, President Kennedy, seeking to do the right thing, signed legislation . .. in 1963 . .. that authorized the emptying out of mental asylums and the transferring of their patients, their inmates, hopefully into community care centers that were going to be built around the country to receive them. Deinstitutionalization was a catastrophic social experiment, one of the worst we’ve ever had. It ended up creating the [mentally ill] homeless population that still plagues us today. The second terrible effect of deinstitutionalization was that many of the people never ended up in the community centers. The government ran out of money. They couldn’t build enough to contain this outflow of patients, so they ended up on the streets, and from the streets they ended up in prison. Many of them. Today our prisons are overflowing with the mentally ill. Prisons are our de facto mental hospitals. "
"David Rockefeller, who died Monday morning at the age of 101, leaves a legacy that eludes a simple description. At once the grandchild and heir of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller and a   billionaire banker in his own right, Rockefeller also earned a reputation as a prodigious patron of the arts. Rockefeller died of congestive heart failure at his home in Pocantico Hills, N. Y. family spokesman Fraser P. Seitel confirmed to NPR. In a statement released Monday, former President George W. Bush commended Rockefeller as ”one of the most generous philanthropists  —   and brightest Points of Light  —   whose caring and commitment to the widest range of worthy causes touched and lifted innumerable lives.” ”David’s Bank” At the time of his death, Forbes estimates, Rockefeller’s net worth was $3. 3 billion  —   a fortune he inherited and built upon as a longtime executive at Chase Manhattan Bank. For roughly two decades, according to the family’s statement, Rockefeller occupied the lofty heights of the bank’s management  —   serving as chairman of the board and   executive beginning in 1961 and ultimately taking the reins as sole CEO in 1969. He would eventually step down from that position in 1980, retiring entirely about a year later. During that time, Rockefeller’s leadership  —   and internationally oriented policies  —   became synonymous with Chase Manhattan, an institution so shaped by his reputation and vision it was occasionally tagged with the moniker ”David’s Bank.” As Reuters reports, that could be a   sword: ”Chase Manhattan grew from a $4. 8 billion institution in 1946 when he joined to a bank with $76. 2 billion in assets when he stepped down in April 1981. But it slipped from its standing then as No. 3 in the world and was purchased by Chemical Bank of New York in 1996. Today it is part of JPMorgan Chase  Co.” ”From 1974 to 1976 its earnings fell 36 percent, while those of its biggest rivals  —   Bank of America, Citibank, Manufacturers Hanover and J. P. Morgan  —   rose 12 to 31 percent,” the New York Times notes, adding that a scandal in the   led the Federal Reserve and the comptroller to term Chase a ”problem” bank. Rockefeller took an intensive interest in foreign relations during this time  —   again, for better and for worse. His frequent meetings with world leaders helped Chase Manhattan ”become the first American bank with operations in those countries,” says the Times. As he told NPR’s Scott Simon in 2002, he even debated Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on the merits of capitalism in the  . ”It was quite fascinating,” Rockefeller recalled. ”We went at one another with strong views each on our own side, yet throughout I think we did respect one another and it was never a hostile debate.” At the same time, he earned his fair share of bad press for meeting with dictators such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. In fact, it was partly on the basis of his and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s urging that President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to enter the U. S. for medical treatment in 1979  —   a decision that Bloomberg reports led to ”the seizure of American hostages in Tehran from 1979 to 1981.” Still, Rockefeller retained the respect of politicians from both sides of the U. S. political spectrum. As the Times reports, both Carter and President Richard Nixon asked him to serve as their Treasury secretary. He turned down both offers. He ”would like to be thought of as having seen that there was an important role for the private sector in world affairs and cooperating with governments for the benefit of both sides,” Rockefeller told the Times in 1995. ”Other things which . .. bring much greater satisfaction” Despite his long tenure at the top of the banking world, Rockefeller crafted a legacy as much from his philanthropy as from his time in the office. To say that Rockefeller was well off while growing up would be a remarkable understatement. In his 2002 memoir, the first such autobiography to be published by a member of his family, Rockefeller recounted a gilded youth  —   one in which he delivered food to the poor with the help of a chauffeur,   along Fifth Avenue tailed by a limousine in case he should grow tired, and attended dinner with a father and mother who ate every night in their formal wear. But he said he also aimed to emulate aspects of his grandfather, the founder of Standard Oil  —   a man who ”along with Andrew Carnegie, [was] the father of philanthropy in this country,” he told NPR  —   and his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who helped found New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. David Rockefeller gave away nearly $2 billion in his lifetime, Reuters reports, and in 2010 he declared he would donate even more, signing a pledge with 39 other American billionaires to give at least half their wealth to charity during their lifetimes or after their death. On the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2015, the BBC reports, he donated 1, 000 acres of land to the state of Maine. And he never forgot the institution his mother had a hand in creating, serving as its chairman for many years and leaving it a $100 million bequest in 2005, according to the Times. As much as he gave, Rockefeller had nearly the same propensity for collecting. At one point, his private art collection was valued at $500 million, and his famously vast collection of contacts  —   which the Times says had roughly 150, 000 names in it  —   needed a whole room to house it. Still, his   collection was significantly less ostentatious: his beetle collection. From a young age until his death, the unlikely amateur entomologist avidly collected just about as many beetles as he could find. ”It’s nice to live well and eat well and own things, but there comes a time, if you have enough money, when you just can’t enjoy them all,” Rockefeller told NPR in 2002. ”And there are other things which I think can bring much greater satisfaction  —   and that’s doing things for others.”"
"Safety advocates are worried that lawmakers are getting ready to make it harder to penalize companies that don’t keep track of workers’ injuries. Since 1971, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has required many employers to keep careful records of any worker injuries or illnesses. David Michaels, the former head of OSHA who now is a professor at George Washington University’s School of Public Health, says the rules affect millions of Americans employed in ”everything from steel mills to poultry processing plants.” Companies are required to keep injury records for five years, and he says this isn’t pointless paperwork. ”The only way employers and workers understand what’s going on in the workplace and why workers are being hurt is by looking at the log and by investigating the injuries that occurred,” says Michaels. If employers’ logs are inaccurate, or fake, they can be fined. But in 2012, there was a big change that made it a lot harder for the government to punish companies for bad logs. A court ruled that if a worker got injured  —   maybe burned, or cut  —   and that injury didn’t make it into the log, the government has only six months to check the log and issue a fine. Michaels says there just aren’t enough safety inspectors to catch problems that fast. And the effect of this change has been dramatic  —   citations for bad   have dropped by about 75 percent. ”Enforcement actions around record keeping are way down,” he says. ”And the big cases that OSHA used to have where they could issue fines because an employer had not recorded dozens of injuries  —   they’ve essentially disappeared.” So, government officials wrote up a new regulation, to basically put things back the way they’d been for the agency’s first four decades that rule was finalized late last year. But a slew of industry groups oppose it. ”The regulation was trying to do something that OSHA didn’t have the authority to do,” says Marc Freedman, executive director of labor law policy at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. ”And I know I’ve heard various comments on the other side, that this is bad for good employers. But at the end of the day it’s about the rule of law.” That’s why he wants Congress to act. Lawmakers can review and cancel regulations issued in the last days of an outgoing administration, under the Congressional Review Act. The House has already voted to do away with this one, and the Senate is expected to vote soon. Rosario Palmieri,   for labor, legal and regulatory policy with the National Association of Manufacturers, says ditching this regulation will help businesses ”that have had the uncertainty hanging over their head about whether they could be cited for   issues from many, many years ago.” But if Congress kills this, some worry that accurate record keeping on injuries will effectively become voluntary. ”There won’t be any ability to make sure that injury and illness records are accurate,” says Peg Seminario, with the   which represents more than 50 labor unions. ”Employers will have license and they’ll know that they can falsify their records and not be held accountable.” That will make it harder, she says, to find and fix problems that hurt people at work. That’s why two former commissioners of the Bureau of Labor Statistics  —   one appointed by President George W. Bush and one appointed by President Barack Obama  —   have written lawmakers to warn that national data on workplace injuries would become less reliable. ”It is important to protect the accuracy of employer injury data, and passage of this legislation is likely to result in less accurate data,” wrote Kathleen Utgoff and Erica Groshen. They note in their letter that this data is used to set national strategy for workplace safety and to provide benchmarks that let employers evaluate how well they protect workers."
"Gerard Sanacora, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, has treated hundreds of severely depressed patients with low doses of ketamine, an anesthetic and popular club drug that isn’t approved for depression. This sort of ” ” prescribing is legal. But Sanacora says other doctors sometimes ask him, ”How can you be offering this to patients based on the limited amount of information that’s out there and not knowing the potential   risk?” Sanacora has a simple answer. ”If you have patients that are likely to seriously injure themselves or kill themselves within a short period of time, and they’ve tried the standard treatments, how do you not offer this treatment?” he says. More and more doctors seem to agree with Sanacora. Dozens of clinics now offer ketamine to patients with depression. And a survey of providers in the U. S. and Canada showed that ”well over 3, 000” patients have been treated so far, Sanacora says. A number of small studies have found that ketamine can do something no other drug can: it often relieves even suicidal depression in a matter of hours in patients who have not responded to other treatments. Ketamine’s potential as an antidepressant was recognized more than a decade ago. And studies done since then provide ”compelling evidence that the antidepressant effects of ketamine infusion are both rapid and robust, albeit transient,” according to a consensus statement from a task force of the American Psychiatric Association. Sanacora is one of the task force members. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions about ketamine, says James Murrough, an assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York. ”We haven’t had   trials. We don’t know how much or how often it should be given for it to be effective or safe,” says Murrough, who is an author of a review of ketamine published in the journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. Doctors know a lot about the   effects of ketamine because it has been used as an anesthetic in emergency rooms for decades. But there’s still not much information about the effects of using ketamine for years. That’s worrisome because ketamine’s antidepressant effect tends to wear off after a few days or weeks, meaning patients need repeated infusions to keep depression at bay, Murrough says. Still, Murrough thinks the case for using ketamine is much stronger than it was just a few years ago. ”There’s warranted caution that’s balanced with an optimism that says we’ve never had a new medication for depression since the era of Prozac,” Murrough says. Prozac arrived in the 1980s, and became the first of a new class of depression drugs that target the neurotransmitter serotonin. Ketamine acts on a different neurotransmitter called glutamate. The drug’s success has pharmaceutical companies excited about the possibility of creating a whole new class of drugs for depression, Murrough says. ”Companies are reopening programs,” he says. ”They are pulling [old] drugs off the shelf that they know act on the glutamate system.” One promising candidate is a chemical sibling of ketamine called esketamine. It’s now in the final phase of testing before consideration by the Food and Drug Administration, which designated esketamine as a breakthrough therapy. And esketamine is just one of several   drugs in development, says Sanacora, who consults for companies developing these drugs. ”This is probably the most interesting and exciting new development that I’ve seen in my career, and probably going back over the past 50 to 60 years,” he says."
"Brazil has long been awash with corruption scandals, but the latest to erupt is about an issue that is particularly close to the nation’s heart and stomach  —   and its wallet. Few people are more prolific   than the Brazilians, and few are more passionate about the merits of the barbecue, or churrasco. They grill with gusto at almost any opportunity  —   on the beach, the sidewalk, at soccer games and even at protest rallies, where the whiff of sizzling sausage competes with the   stink of tear gas. So it is easy to see why this country of 200 million is struggling to digest the news that its favorite food might not be quite as wonderful as everyone thought, and that rotten meat may have been finding its way onto the menu. Brazil’s federal police say they have unearthed evidence that the employees of some   companies bribed ministry inspectors to ignore outdated and adulterated produce. The scandal has significant economic implications: Brazil is one of the world’s biggest meat exporters, generating some $12 billion in annual export revenues and selling to around 150 countries. The threat of damage to the international image of one of the nation’s most important industries comes as Brazil is struggling to extract itself from the deepest recession on record. The allegations emerged after Brazil’s federal police  —   who are the equivalent of the FBI in the U. S.  —   conducted a major search and seizure operation across six Brazilian states and the country’s capital of Brasilia. The sting was the result of a   investigation triggered by a whistleblower, police said. More than 1, 100 officers carried out nearly 200 raids in an operation that the force labeled Carne Fraca  —   ”The Flesh is Weak”  —   a Biblical reference aimed at the health officials who allegedly succumbed to temptation by accepting bribes which reportedly included prime cuts of beef. Afterwards, police announced that they’d found 40 cases of suspected malpractice, including the use of chemicals to improve the smell of expired meat, and of flour and even cardboard to pad out sausages. They also allege that meatpackers were able to hand pick their Ministry of Agriculture inspectors, who issued approval and export certificates regardless of adulteration. They claim that schoolchildren in one area  —   the southern state of Parana  —   were given food that included ”outdated, rotten and many times cancerous products,” and described the culprits as a ”mighty criminal gang.” One of the companies accused of bribing officials is JBS SA, one of the world’s largest meat processors. The company has responded with a volley of media advertisements, including   newspaper ads, stressing its   standards and vehemently denying that any of its brands used adulterated produce. A second major Brazilian company, BRF SA, confirmed the arrest of one executive, but also denied wrongdoing, saying that some of the police claims are false or are the result of misunderstandings. ”BRF never sold rotten meat,” the company said in a statement. Brazil’s government is racing to minimize the damage. President Michel Temer appeared in front of cameras on Sunday, tucking enthusiastically into a steak at a churrascaria  —   a BBQ restaurant  —   where he held a dinner to reassure ambassadors from countries that buy Brazilian meat. However, a spokesman for the European Commission on Monday said it would ensure that ”any of the establishments implicated in the fraud are suspended from exporting to the EU.” Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture has suspended 33 officials, but is portraying the affair as an isolated issue. It denies cardboard was mixed with food, and blames that allegation on a misinterpretation by police investigators of   evidence. ”Brazilian meat is in 150 countries because it’s good quality,” said Eumar Novacki, a spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture. ”Those countries also have their agencies that inspect products.” The scandal appears to be prompting a mixture of anger and   indignation among Brazilians. ”We feel pretty saddened because of the terrible crisis that the country is already going through,” says Enos Souza, a civil servant. ”People are buying stuff without knowing if they are being cheated. This is terrible.” ”It’s very likely people will be more careful about knowing the source of what they’re buying, but even then it is pretty hard to know whether the quality of meat is good or not,” he adds. But public disgust is tinged with the bleak humor of a nation that’s been battered for years by a daily   of news about vast corruption scandals involving dozens of top politicians, the national oil company, Petrobras, and a construction giant, Odebrecht. One witty Internet posting is proving particularly popular: It shows a grill with barbecue skewers that are loaded not with tasty morsels of meat  —   but chunks of cardboard."
"I recently visited China on a business trip. While there, I decided I wanted to get a pedicure. My search turned into quite the adventure  —   one that involved cutting edge translation technology, and a key word lost in translation. Google and Baidu (which is often referred to as China’s Google) have built voice translation apps, available here and here. You speak into them, they listen and then they translate into the language you choose. They do it in writing, by displaying text on the screen as you talk and out loud, by using your phone’s speaker to narrate what you’ve said once you’re done talking. These robot translators can radically change your experience in a foreign land  —   or at least that’s what happened for me. Though it was not a promising start. A small miracle, I was in the city of Zhengzhou. It was 10 p. m. and I had cabin fever. For days I’d felt stuck in the tourist vortex, and the Internet said that just four kilometers away, there was a   pedicure salon open. A hotel concierge put me in a cab. Using my Baidu Translate app, I asked him: ”Will [the driver] put on the meter for the taxi?” I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get charged inflated prices for a quick ride. But he didn’t quite understand. The translation was butchered. No matter. I took off anyway. The driver dropped me at a crowded corner, but I didn’t see the salon. And I couldn’t read the numbers on the buildings. It’s all Chinese. So I walked into a store and went up to a woman inside. I shoved the address and my phone in her face. And a small miracle happened. She spoke slowly and clearly, and the app began to transcribe. I read the words on my screen: ”Go forward 10 meters and turn right.” This is  . The directions are so specific, something you could never get with just body language. I thanked her (undoubtedly butchering the word for ”thank you”) and set off. I turned the corner, just as she instructed, and I saw a storefront with feet on the window. I had arrived. ”Pedicure” Only it’s not quite what I had in mind. Turns out the pedicure salon was actually a dingy     kind of like a dive bar. Aging men were paying to get their enormous callouses pounded down and their toenails scraped with large,   scalpels. I decided to stick around because, hey, it’s an authentic local experience. Trouble is, my translation apps kept crashing. It could be because the Internet connection was weak. The apps need the Internet to work. I tried to ask the lady attending to me about the service options: What do I get for one hour exactly? She spoke into my phone over and over, and I got this broken   back  —   with a key word repeated. Money! The lady wanted me to pay 88 yuan (a little less than $13). She put me in a torn faux leather recliner, right across from a drunk guy who was shouting   and threw his complimentary green tea to the floor. This is my Chinese ”pedicure.” Experts weigh in, ”That actually raises a good issue, which is that there’s a lot more to translation than mapping one word to another,” says Macduff Hughes. ”The cultural understanding is something that’s hard to fully capture just in translation.” Hughes is translation chief at Google, in charge of the main app I used in China. I went to his office in Mountain View, Calif. and it turns out, he’s more critical of the app than I am. Hughes says Google has worked for nearly two decades to perfect search so that even if you (the user) don’t quite know the words for what you want or can’t spell them, Google helps you figure it out. Hughes wants the translation tool to do that: not just fixate on grammar, syntax and diction, but pay attention to intent and cultural differences. ”You can imagine that if in addition to translating the word ’pedicure’ from English to Chinese, we had shown you some pictures of Chinese pedicure salons, that might have been more helpful to you,” he says. Google and Baidu use machine learning to power their translation technology. Here’s how it works, in principle: you could have a human linguist dictate all the rules for going from one language to another. But that would be tedious, and yield poor results because a lot of languages aren’t structured in parallel form. So instead, these companies have moved to pattern recognition through ”neural machine translation.” They take a mountain of data  —   really good translations  —   and load it into their computers. Algorithms then mine through the data to look for patterns. The end product is translation that’s not just    but entire thoughts and sentences at a time. Wu Hua and Zhao Shiqi, leaders with Baidu’s translation team, say that according to their data, Chinese nationals traveling abroad  —   say to Europe or the U. S.  —   rely on their app to talk with locals. Baidu has also developed an   neural translation system, enabling the users to use the translation service when a 3G or better connection isn’t available. Pedicure, round 2, Before harping too much on what went wrong for me, let’s turn to Chapter 2 of my quest, which took place in Shanghai. I spotted a shop with nail polish in the window and the word ”pedicure” in English on the door. It felt like a safe bet. I stepped in and used the Google Translate app to ask the pedicurist for her name. She told me it’s   Zu.   was patient, curious and willing to talk with me using this strange new tool. It also helped that the app behaved, and the store was quiet. She put my feet in water that’s the perfect temperature, and we chatted just like in salons back home. I learned that  ’s parents are farmers. She’s 36 years old and followed her big sister to Shanghai. She met her husband here and has a teenage boy. (A human translator listened to these exchanges and confirmed their accuracy.) I asked her if life in the big city is hard or easy. She answered, and the app said: ”Shanghai outsiders difficult place to exist because the housing is very expensive. Rent is also high.” I was surprised by how nuanced that answer was. Then   and I had this seamless exchange: I learned that her rent is 3, 000 yuan per month and her pay is 8, 000 yuan. As I got personal, she got personal too and asked a question women around the world seem to love asking each other: ”Do you have a boyfriend?” This experience strikes me as profound. While political leaders, like President Trump, talk about erecting walls and closing borders, technology is marching in the opposite direction, knocking down the most fundamental wall that divides us: language. Technology is enabling this little foray into pedicure diplomacy. ”You are awesome!” she told me. I told her she is too. We talked for about an hour this way. Google’s Hughes says, ”That is fantastic.” According to the tech companies’ data, my pedicurist and I set a world record of sorts. Google tracks how long conversations typically last, and the vast majority are just three to four exchanges. Baidu says conversations on its translation app average seven to eight exchanges."
"Comedian Iliza Shlesinger has a lot to say about what it’s like to be a lady these days  —   and what things could have been like in the past. ”Do you think for a second, that if women were physically stronger than men, we would have waited for the right to vote?” she asks in her latest Netflix special, Confirmed Kills. She goes on to imagine a ”jacked up housewife” in 1910, with a ”shaker of horse testosterone and creatine,” shoving her husband out of the way because ”mama’s going to the polls.” Shlesinger’s comedy is both topical and physical  —   she contorts, she snorts, she stalks the stage, she pretty much becomes the characters in her own jokes. The    comedian grew up in Dallas, studied film in college, and nine years ago became the first woman to win NBC’s competitive reality show Last Comic Standing. Shlesinger says she doesn’t love the label ”female comic”  —   she says she competes with men all the time, but if you must compare her act to other female stand ups, there is a difference: While she does riff on being a woman, she doesn’t make a lot of jokes about sex. ”Me on stage is an extension of who I am in real life,” she says. ”What you see is what you’re getting. Obviously it’s an exacerbated version, but in general I’m not the girl who walks around yelling things like ’p —   —   power. ’” On being called raunchy, I’m not brash, and I think people with lack of a better vocabulary will say things like, ”Oh, you’re raunchy.” I’m like, am I raunchy because I’ve pointed out something that makes you uncomfortable, and I was honest, or am I raunchy because you don’t know other words? It’s probably a longer road because I’m not naturally dirty, and I don’t own my sexuality in the way that other comedians might choose to make public, but I think at the end of the day, you have to go to bed knowing that you did it your way. On her ”party goblin” character, Your party goblin  —   everybody has one  —   she lives in the back of your brain and she’s basically the creature that comes out when you don’t expect it, and is responsible for any crazy night you’ve had. The thing is, she doesn’t come out when you’re like, ”It’s my birthday, let’s go out!” She might  —   but she comes out on the night where you’re like, ”I’ll just have one drink.” And then you’re like, ”Oh my god, I woke up in Tijuana.” On addressing serious issues around being a woman, It’s the idea of  —   everybody has an agenda, and everybody has a perspective  —   and I’m speaking to the people who need comfort but I’m also speaking to the people who might not understand this message on its own. And getting up on a stage and ranting  —   first of all it has to be funny. You can cloak intelligence and  —   I’m using ”agenda” softly  —   you can shroud it in comedy, and it’s more digestible. Of course the laughs come first, but the message is, once I’ve gotten you laughing, I want to get you thinking. And there are so many men that are allowed to get up there . .. and give their social commentary. And for some reason, women haven’t either stepped up to that as standup comedians  —   some of them have, for sure  —   but en masse, not really. I just wanted to stand up for the girls who felt that no one was standing up for them, and I wanted to say what people were thinking, and I wanted girls to feel a little less alone."
"Updated at 2:10 p. m. ET Tuesday, With the stroke of a pen on Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson separated a holiday that has for decades celebrated both Martin Luther King Jr. and Gen. Robert E. Lee in the state. Under the bill that Hutchinson signed into law, King now has the third Monday of January entirely to himself, as dictated by federal law Lee will now be commemorated in a state holiday on the second Saturday of October. If the civil rights icon and Confederate general would seem to make for rather odd bedfellows, the state’s Legislature came to agree. Member station KUAR reports that by a   vote Friday  —   with 18 members not voting and five voting present  —   the Arkansas House of Representatives passed a bill to ”eliminate the dual status of the joint holiday,” and to ”specify the teaching of content related to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in conjunction with the corresponding holiday.” The Senate had already approved the change. In a statement, Hutchinson commended the passage of the bill, which was   by state Sen. David Wallace and state Rep. Grant Hodges, both Republicans. According to KUAR, the governor thanked lawmakers for the bipartisan effort: ”The support for a separate holiday to recognize Martin Luther King far exceeded my expectations and speaks well of the General Assembly and our state. This bill was one of my priorities, and I was honored to testify for it in both Chambers. I look forward to having a signing ceremony that emphasizes the historic dynamic of this new day.” Arkansas has celebrated Lee’s memory since 1947 and King’s memory since 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed a law enacting a federal holiday for the reverend. Their respective holidays were combined in 1985 under Bill Clinton, who was then governor of the state. As KUAR notes, not every lawmaker was in favor of putting the two asunder. ”We are taking Robert E. Lee and we are putting him in the basement and we are acting embarrassed that he ever existed,” Republican Rep. Jana Della Rosa said during debate before the bill’s passage. ”It’s no different than if we went out and we took that statue of the Confederate Soldiers and put it down in the basement and said nobody’s going to look at it again.” Still, Friday’s vote brings Arkansas in line with much of the rest of the country. When the bill was signed into law Tuesday  —   after the originally scheduled signing ceremony was bumped from Monday  —   Arkansas left the exclusive club of states that celebrate both men on the same day. Without Arkansas, that group dwindles just to Alabama and Mississippi. ”It’s an opportunity to show the citizens of our state and the whole country that we are capable of coming together,” Hodges said, according to the Southwest   ”not out of political correctness or any other silly reason, but out of respect and out of mutual understanding.”"
"For the first time in a decade, the classic children’s television show Sesame Street will introduce a new Muppet on the air. Her name is Julia. She’s a shy and winsome    with striking red hair and green eyes. Julia likes to paint and pick flowers. When Julia speaks, she often echoes what she’s just heard her friends Abby and Elmo say. Julia has autism. ”There’s so many people that have given her what she is. I’m just hoping to bring her the heart,” says Stacy Gordon, the veteran puppeteer selected to play the part. Presenting Julia to the gang requires a bit more explanation of her differences and hidden talents for the other Muppets  —   and their young viewers. As Abby Cadabby (the    fairy played by Leslie  ) explained during NPR’s recent visit to the set in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, N. Y. it can be hard to get Julia’s attention. Big Bird had to repeat himself to get her to listen, for example. And she sees things where others don’t. ”That’s just Julia being Julia,” Abby said. The role of Julia has a personal dimension for Gordon: She says she used do therapeutic work for people with autism. And Gordon says her son is on the autism spectrum, too. She believes the show will be a great resource  —   for students with the disorder and for their playmates. ”Man, I really wish that kids in my son’s class had grown up with a Sesame Street that had modeling [of] the behavior of inclusion of characters with autism,” Gordon said. Jeanette Betancourt, senior vice president for U. S. social impact at parent company Sesame Workshop, has been helping plot the development of Julia for about three years. Sesame Workshop is a    media company and an educational outfit that conducts its own research. Betancourt says the introduction of Julia’s character is a natural outcropping from other initiatives Sesame Workshop has done, pointing to programs for children with a parent who is incarcerated and for military families enduring deployments. ”Basically, in terms of vulnerable families, we’re looking at families who may have particular stressors in their lives that are impacting their young children,” Betancourt says, ”whether it’s economic or social emotional stresses or differences that they’re handling at the time.” Parents of children with autism told officials at Sesame how important the show was for their kids. According to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control, one in 68 American children have autism. Julia started last year as a character in Sesame’s books and digital offerings. Sesame decided on a   mission for the related campaign ”See Amazing in All Children,” to give children with autism and their families someone to identify with  —   and those that don’t a window into their world. The materials appear on a dedicated site. Sherrie Westin, an executive vice president at Sesame Workshop who oversaw the initiative, said the campaign quickly struck a chord. ”One of my favorite stories is a mother who said that she used the book to explain to her child that she had autism like Julia,” Westin said, shaking her head slightly as she teared up. ”This became the tool for her to have a conversation with her    daughter.” ”And you’ll love this. At the end her daughter said, ’So I’m amazing too, right?’ ” The surfacing of a new permanent Sesame character is rare. Westin said it’s the next logical step. ”We realized if we brought her to life appearing in Sesame Street on air as well, she would have even more impact [and] be able to reach even more children,” Westin said. The character herself is set to appear in two episodes in the current season and more the next. ”The character Julia, she has wonderful drawing skills. She’s like a little budding artist,” said Rose Jochum, director of internal initiatives at the Autism Society of America, which characterizes itself as the nation’s oldest advocacy group for people with the disorder. ”You know  —   autism  —   it brings wonderful gifts.” The society was one of 14 such autism groups consulted by Sesame Workshop. They often differ on how the disorder should be treated or addressed in public policy. Yet Jochum says they found common ground around Julia. ”She’s one of the kids, she’s one of the gang,” Jochum said. ”It’s really meaningful to see her there, singing with Elmo, Big Bird and all the other characters. It’s great.” A team of researchers from Georgetown University is studying how effective the program has proven for families who have experienced Sesame’s autism materials. The researchers surveyed more than 1, 000 families, more than a third of whom have children with autism. Preliminary findings suggest the material helps families with autistic children feel more comfortable incorporating them in broader community activities, and that families whose children do not have autism are more accepting of those kids who do. The character Julia makes her television debut April 10 on Sesame Street on various platforms where the show’s programs can be found, including PBS Kids, HBO and YouTube. She will initially appear in English and Spanish in the U. S. Australia, the U. K. and Mexico and will subsequently appear in more languages in countries throughout the world later in the year. ”It’s not like there is a typical example of an autistic child, but we do believe that [with] Julia, we worked so carefully to make sure that she had certain characteristics that would allow children to identify with her,” Westin said. ”It’s what Sesame does best, you know: Reaching children, looking at these things through their lens and building a greater sort of sense of commonality.”"
"Quarterback Tom Brady led the New England Patriots to one of the greatest comebacks in football history at the Super Bowl this year. Immediately afterward, his   jersey was stolen from the Patriots’ locker room in Houston. Now, police say it has been recovered in Mexico. The NFL stated that it was found ”in the possession of a credentialed member of the international media.” That’s not all  —   with the same person, authorities also recovered another of Brady’s Super Bowl jerseys, this one from his team’s victory over the Seattle Seahawks in 2015. The NFL said this was a surprise because ”it was not previously known that Brady was missing his previous Super Bowl uniform in addition.” An informant in Houston led the investigators to Mexico, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told reporters, and the FBI and Mexican authorities also took part in the probe. The suspect had legitimate access to the event, and wasn’t a ticketholder, he said, adding that he anticipates charges against the alleged perpetrator. Those could include transporting stolen goods across state lines and internationally. ”We’re highly confident that these are in fact the jerseys, based on our investigative efforts,” he said. Investigators are still working to be authenticate the items. Acevedo says that while the investigation was not a top priority for the department, it became a matter of state pride to recover the jersey. ”You don’t come to Texas and you don’t steal when the eyes of the world are upon our state,” he said. Brady has estimated that the jersey is worth $500, 000, as NPR has reported. He appears visibly annoyed in locker room video captured by Alan Springer of Yahoo Sports. ”I absolutely, 100 percent put it in my bag,” Brady says despairingly as he searches through his possessions for the lost jersey. ”It’s unfortunate because that’s a nice piece of memorabilia, so if it shows up on eBay somewhere, someone let me know and I’ll track that down,” he told reporters at a news conference shortly after the game. Last month, Brady jokingly waded into investigating the missing jersey  —   and put together a ”Suspect Board” that included Gollum, Lady Gaga and Jaws. As SB Nation noted, ”It did not, however, appear to include anyone posing as a member of the international media.”"
"Kansas lawmakers know they are late to the Medicaid expansion party, but they appear determined to show up anyway. ”I feel like now is as good a time as any,” says Anthony Hensley, the leader of the Democratic minority in the state Senate. For the past three years, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and legislative leaders were able to block debate on expanding health care for the disabled and working poor via Medicaid, a component of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Not anymore. In last year’s primary and general elections, Kansas voters  —   frustrated by chronic budget problems caused in large part by income tax cuts that Brownback pushed through the Legislature  —   replaced several conservative incumbents with moderate Republicans and Democrats who promised to stabilize the state’s finances, fund public education and push for Medicaid expansion. Coalitions energized by the influx of new lawmakers wasted little time in making good on those promises. The Kansas House recently passed an expansion bill by a margin close to what would be needed to override a Brownback veto, should it come to that. A Kansas Senate committee is holding hearings on the expansion bill and may vote on Thursday to send it to the floor. That is the same day the U. S. House of Representatives has scheduled a vote on a Republican proposal to replace the ACA. The replacement bill before Congress would phase out federal funding, starting in January 2020, for expansion programs in 31 states and the District of Columbia as well as any others to implement programs between now and then. But it would not immediately close the expansion window for states that have not acted, says Tom Bell, president of the Kansas Hospital Association. ”From our perspective, this provides some encouragement for states to expand their programs prior to that Jan. 1 of 2020 date,” Bell says, noting that the bill would continue funding 90 percent of expansion costs for people enrolled by the deadline. David Jordan, executive director of a Kansas coalition pushing for expansion, is making a similar pitch to lawmakers. ”This is really an invitation to states like Kansas to expand their Medicaid programs,” Jordan says. ”We have everything to gain by taking this step and nothing to lose.” To date, Jordan says, the failure to expand Medicaid has cost health care providers and the Kansas economy an estimated $1. 7 billion. Currently, Kansas limits Medicaid eligibility to children and pregnant women in   families, people with developmental and physical disabilities, and seniors who cannot afford nursing home care. Parents are eligible only if they earn less than a third of the federal poverty level, or about $9, 200 annually for a   family. Single adults without children are not eligible. Expansion would qualify all Kansans earning up to 138 percent of the poverty level, annually about $16, 642 for individuals and $33, 465 for a family of four. An estimated 300, 000 Kansans would qualify for coverage under expansion, though only about half that number are expected to initially enroll. Senate President Susan Wagle, a Republican, says she expects the Kansas Senate to pass the expansion bill next week, perhaps by a vetoproof margin. But even if Kansas lawmakers are able to advance an expansion plan to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, she is not convinced federal officials would give it serious consideration. ”The timing is wrong,” Wagle says. ”It could just sit there because what I see the feds doing is winding that program down.”"
"If you’ve been out of loop on the American contemporary art scene, the Whitney Biennial is here to catch you up. This year’s show opened Friday, and features 63 different artists and many new works that have never been shown before. Some artists are responding to the most pressing issues of our time, while others are tackling mammoth projects on a tight deadline. Photographer   Lê and artist Raúl de Nieves represent the range of this year’s contributors. A Photograph That’s ”Anonymous But Important” During the Vietnam War, in the tense days before Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese,   Lê and her family were evacuated in an American  . ”The American military saved my life,” she says. ”The U. S. saved my life.” Since then, war has become a preoccupation for Lê. She spent years photographing the military  —   its uneasy soldiers, its training camps  —   and went back to Vietnam to shoot landscapes and portraits. More recently, Lê traveled to Louisiana to take pictures of Vietnamese fishermen there. But her focus changed after the 2016 election. In her Brooklyn, New York, studio, Lê points to a large photograph that she’s submitted to the Whitney Biennial. It shows three men gardening in a small plot of land next to the water. She was told that they’re Mexicans who work for the Vietnamese fishermen outside New Orleans. All three are wearing sweatshirts with hoods that hide their faces. She took the photo a day or two after the election. As an immigrant herself, the scene grabbed her.  ”I knew that there was something with the fact that they were somehow shrouded even though it wasn’t that cold,” she says. ”There was something anonymous but important about the way they were working.” She says that after the election, the image felt symbolic ”because of, I think, Trump’s rhetoric about undocumented workers, about illegal immigrants.” Lê is drawn to subjects that are personal, but according to Gilles Peress, a photographer and colleague of Lê’s, the stories her pictures tell have a much wider frame. ”She doesn’t stay locked into the personal experience,” he says. ”She’s able to shift from the Vietnamese community, which could be predictable from an autobiographical point of view, and turn the camera around and shoot this picture of the Mexican workers working on that garden.” Lê says that when she was younger, she would have identified with these men and their anonymity. ”Once I became an artist, I felt I had a voice, so I’m not so anonymous. But I used to feel that way, and I think many Vietnamese feel that way. And I think we’re taught to not stand out.” Clearly Lê hasn’t followed that advice. Fear And A Deadline, Artist Raúl de Nieves made one of the largest pieces of art at this year’s Whitney Biennial: a huge, mock   window that he created in just four months. De Nieves makes everything by hand, from beaded sculptures to paper and glue costumes. Growing up in Michoacán, Mexico, his mom taught him and his siblings how to crochet, and they learned how to sew in school so they could make their own clothing. Today, de Nieves makes art out of junk like tiny, plastic beads or scraps of fabric. It’s tedious,   work, so he was really nervous when he met with Whitney curators to talk about what he might do for the Biennial. ”We’re walking through the museum and then we get to a point where we’re staring through    windows,” he recalls. ”And they’re like, ’We thought you could maybe work with this.’ And I was like, ’Wait, what?’ ” De Nieves had never worked on something that big  —   as in billboard big. At first, he considered using machines to help him finish the project, but Whitney Biennial Curator Chris Lew nixed the idea. ”That felt a little bit outside of the way that he works,” Lew says. So for four months, de Nieves worked by hand and  . The resulting window fills the room. There’s a dragon, figures dancing, green flies and white doves. It looks like   stained glass, but there isn’t actually any glass in it. In typical de Nieves fashion, it’s made entirely from everyday material: tape, paper, glue, beads and more. Chris Lew is thrilled with the result, especially since you can see the colors from outside the building. ”It kind of announces itself before you even arrive,” he says. And the artist is even more excited: ”When we put up the last panels . .. I was like, ’Aaaaaaah!’ . .. I am just so happy that the challenge was there and that I said yes.” Nothing motivates like fear and a deadline. Editor Rose Friedman, digital producer Nicole Cohen and photo editors Ariel Zambelich and Meg Kelly contributed to this story."
"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s inaugural trip to East Asia was marred by misunderstandings that arguably could have been avoided had Tillerson followed   practice and spoken for himself  —   to the State Department press corps aboard his plane. But there was no State Department press corps aboard his plane. Tillerson had one reporter along  —   from a   news site who does not cover the State Department. In another break with tradition, the reporter did not offer a pool report to colleagues on the ground. The effect? In both China and South Korea, voices speaking on behalf of Tillerson’s hosts filled the news void. And they weren’t always story lines that he would want. One example is from my patch here in Seoul. In our social   environment, the South Korea vacuum led to a meme: #TillersonIsTired. It’s something that might stick to the new secretary. Here’s what happened: On Friday, when Tillerson stopped in Seoul, the South Korean cable TV pundits griped about the new U. S. secretary of state opting not to have dinner with South Korean leaders. They compared his visit with Tillerson’s earlier stop in Japan, where his meetings with the foreign minister were not only longer, he dined with Japanese leaders. There was never a dinner with South Korean leaders on Tillerson’s schedule. He left Seoul Saturday morning for Beijing, just as planned, and not a moment earlier. But the speculation by pundits led to a Korea Herald piece that used the word ”shortened,” in the context of shorter meetings than in Japan. And there was an anonymously sourced line in the Korean media report that didn’t help Tillerson much: ”Seoul officials said the U. S. side opted not to have a meal together, citing the secretary’s ’fatigue. ’” Then, the Washington Post’s   Glenn Kessler, read the report and tweeted the Korea Herald article. In an email to NPR, Kessler explained: ”The reason I tweeted that report from the Korean Herald was precisely to point out how foreign officials can spin the situation if a secretary doesn’t have correspondents traveling with him. ”I covered three secretaries over the course of nine years as the Post diplomatic correspondent, and I have never seen such limited press access on such a major trip. I looked it up  —   when Condi Rice made her first trip to    in March 2005, she took at least 12 reporters + camera crew and had 16 press availabilities and interviews over three days.” The State Department cleaned this up on Saturday, saying the reports that Tillerson was too tired to hold extended meetings were untrue, and adding that no joint meal had been scheduled in Seoul. (True.) It may sound picayune, but all of this confusion argues for exactly what the American diplomatic press wanted: more access to Tillerson. A traveling press pooler, had there been one, could have filled the vacuum by witnessing and reporting a) Tillerson’s whereabouts and b) the truth, which is that he did not cut short his Seoul leg and left the following morning, just as planned. Instead, the State Department silence allowed South Korea’s pundits and unnamed ”officials” to do the talking. They labeled him as ”fatigued,” and the inaccurate reports about a trip cut short zoomed around the world before State got around to rebutting them. The New York Times’ David Sanger presents another example of what happened in the vacuum created by the lack of traveling press with Tillerson, and this time, it was with regard to a deadly serious topic  —   North Korea: ”China tried to box him in by reviving an old proposal for a ’freeze’ of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs in return for an   freeze of all military exercises with South Korea. ”[Tillerson] accurately noted that a freeze ’would leave North Korea with significant capabilities that would represent a true threat, not just to the region, but to American forces.’ But other than that, he never grappled   with the Chinese arguments in favor of their proposal  —   which left the door open for his Chinese counterpart to restate his case in Beijing. ”The Chinese example here is a small one, but it is telling. In past administrations, the State Department would have used the long flight to Asia to give reporters a sense of its arguments and   strategy. The secretary of state would have wandered back to the press seats on the plane and offered, on ’background,’ the administration’s thinking about the major issue of the day.” In the end, the rockiest moments of Tillerson’s diplomatic trip to Asia weren’t what he said or did, but rather, what he didn’t say and didn’t do. ”Superpower diplomacy abhors a news vacuum,” Sanger notes. ”When America’s top diplomats create one, adversaries and allies usually fill it with their own narrative of events, their own proposals, their own accounts of encounters with Washington.”"
"On a bitterly cold day in February 1846, the French writer Victor Hugo was on his way to work when he saw something that affected him profoundly. A thin young man with a loaf of bread under his arm was being led away by police. Bystanders said he was being arrested for stealing the loaf. He was dressed in   clothes, his bare feet thrust into clogs, his ankles wrapped in bloodied rags in lieu of stockings. ”It made me think,” wrote Hugo. ”The man was no longer a man in my eyes but the specter of la misère, of poverty.” Anyone who has read or watched Les Misérables will recognize that wretched scene immediately. It is retold in The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables, a new book out this month by Princeton professor David Bellos, which tells the fascinating story behind Hugo’s 1862 masterpiece. When Hugo witnessed that scene, he was already three months into writing his novel. Until then, it had centered around Fantine, a poor woman forced into prostitution to earn a crust of bread. Into that plot, he folded the story of Jean Valjean, an    peasant who steals a loaf of bread in order feed not just himself but his sister and her seven children. Hugo lays out the family’s circumstances in a few short, harsh lines: ”A very hard winter came. Jean had no work. The family had no bread. No bread literally. Seven children!” For his crime, Valjean is sentenced to five years’ hard labor. Hugo uses that loaf to smite society’s conscience and highlight the injustice of the penal system. Much of his   novel turns on that one desperate act. After describing the theft, he breaks the narrative thread to make an authorial intervention: ”This is the second time . .. that the author of this book has come across the theft of a loaf of bread as the point of departure for the disaster of a destiny. . .. English statistics prove the fact that four thefts out of five in London have hunger for their immediate cause.” Hugo fought the social injustice of poverty all his life. ”Like Dickens in England, Hugo wanted to alert people that something had to be done about the paupers in Paris,” writes Bellos. ”His maiden speech in the Chambre des pairs, the upper House, to which he had been appointed a peer, was on la misère. After all, he was writing at a time when children were imprisoned even for minor offences like stealing peaches from a tree.” Bread, of course, had a radical symbolism in a novel set in the shadow of the French Revolution. Whether or not the doomed Marie Antoinette said, ’Let them eat cake,’ the rumblings that led to the storming of the Bastille in 1789 started with bread riots. A string of failed harvests had caused an acute bread shortage and spiraling prices, which brought women out on the street. Their target were the city’s bakeries, which were ransacked and cleaned out. Most bakeries  —   including the one Jean Valjean steals from  —   were fronted with an iron grating to protect them from the fury of the mob. There was no sharper marker of economic status in   France than bread. The country was divided into rich people who ate soft white bread (larton savonné) and poor people who ate coarse black bread (larton brutal) made from rye, into which bakers mixed sawdust, tree bark and other additives. The loaf that Valjean steals, in the winter of 1796, is ”not the stick loaf we now think of as ’French bread,’ ” writes Bellos. ”The   baguette was not invented until 1838, and it remained a   specialty for decades after that. The standard loaf of the poor in   France was an oval loaf weighing four and a half pounds, with a thick black crust and heavy grey meal inside. Not the sort of thing you would want to eat nowadays.” Almost everyone in Les Misérables eats black bread. But, as the novel shows, not all black bread is equal. The rural poor are reduced to eating black bread ”so hard that they cut it up with an axe, and soak it for   hours, before they can eat it.” In one scene, an abject prisoner ”raised to his mouth something like a black stone, which he seemed to be gnawing it was bread.” And in another, a starving young girl named Eponine catches sight ”of a dry crust of bread on the commode, which was molding there amid the dust she flung herself upon it and bit into it, muttering: ’That’s good! it’s hard! it breaks my teeth!’ ” Two characters who can easily afford soft white bread choose instead to eat the pauper’s loaf  —   in both cases, bread becomes a barometer of character. The first is the good Bishop Myriel, whose frugal breakfast is ”rye bread dipped in the milk of his own cows.” And the second is Valjean, who is tormented by his tragic past. His   sentence balloons to 19 years because of his repeated and failed attempts to escape. When he eventually manages to spring free, he works hard to become an extremely wealthy man. But he continues to eat black bread. Cosette, his beloved adopted daughter, is horrified. ”Father, why do you eat horrible bread like that?”  ”Because, my daughter.”  ”Well, if you eat it, I will eat it too.”  Then, in order to prevent Cosette eating black bread, Jean Valjean ate white bread. There is an unplumbed world of heartbreak and sorrow in that seemingly inarticulate ”Because.” Despite his long imprisonment and atonement through innumerable acts of charity, Valjean is still haunted by a trail of crumbs from the loaf he stole as a young man. Les Misérables was an instant bestseller, not just in Europe but in the U. S. a country then in the throes of civil war. It became the favorite reading material of weary Union and Confederate troops  —   the latter even called themselves Lee’s Miserables. One can imagine the hungry men reading installments by campfire light and relating to the    bread that Fantine, Eponine and Valjean ate. The Confederate soldiers as they chewed on their Johnnycakes  —   griddle cakes made of corn meal, salt, and boiling water  —   and the Union soldiers as they gnawed on hard tack (made from wheat flour, salt, water) jeeringly nicknamed jawbreakers and worm castles. Hugo’s campaign against poverty wasn’t limited to his writing. Bellos spotlights his unique role in informally initiating the free school lunch scheme that feeds millions of children today. Recalling Hugo’s contribution is especially timely right now, with President Trump’s new budget calling for the elimination of the United States’   program, which provides meals to millions of schoolchildren in poor countries. During his political exile on the island of Guernsey, Hugo, finding himself at a loose end one day while waiting for a batch of proofs of Les Misérables to arrive, spontaneously invited 10 poor children to his house for a meal. ”The first diner des pauvres, or ’poor dinner’ was a great success,” says Bellos. ”Hugo decided to repeat it every other Tuesday.” As news of the meals spread, the idea was replicated in the poor parishes of London and other cities. ”It ultimately led to the introduction of canteens in publicly funded schools,” writes Bellos. ”Free school lunches, which became a universal right in Britain and France only two generations ago, can be traced back directly to the initiative Hugo took.” Alongside the free lunches, Hugo’s great novel, too, has endured. As he wrote to his Italian publisher: ”Wherever men go in ignorance or despair, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children lack a book to learn from or a warm hearth, Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: ’open up, I am here for you.’ ” Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
President Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia answered questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. NPR’s live coverage picks up again on Wednesday morning.
"After a day of statements, Tuesday’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing was all about answers. Judge Neil Gorsuch was careful in his responses to Senate Judiciary Committee members, but there were still a number of insights that marked the day. Read our full Day 2 coverage here. These are five highlights: 1. Judicial independence, Gorsuch says he will be an independent voice on the court. Senators have repeatedly questioned Gorsuch about his willingness to possibly rule against the man who nominated him, should a case involving President Trump come before the court. Trump has not hesitated to criticize judges who have ruled against him, but Gorsuch told senators on the Judiciary Committee that ”no man is above the law.” He said if Trump had asked him during interviews about his position on Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, ”I would have walked out the door.” And asked   by Republican Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley if he would have any trouble ruling against ”the president who appointed you,” Gorsuch called it a ”softball question,” adding he would have no difficulty ruling for or against anyone. 2. Gender equality statements, Democrats asked Gorsuch a number of times about a charge from a former student at a University Of Colorado law ethics class he taught. The woman alleged Gorsuch asked students to raise their hands if they knew of anyone who had used their companies for maternity benefits, had a baby and then left. But Gorsuch said the student misinterpreted his question and that he was actually asking how many students knew of times when companies asked prospective hires if they intended to become pregnant soon. He said he was ”shocked every year how many young women raise their hand,” adding ”it’s disturbing to me.” 3.   critique, The case of the frozen trucker was another favorite line of attack from Democrats. It was a case before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in which Gorsuch sided with a company that fired a truck driver. The driver had left behind a disabled trailer and driven away in the truck cab on a subzero night to get warm. The court’s majority sided with the driver, saying he was wrongly fired, but Gorsuch said he was merely upholding the law in his dissent. Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota said he ”had a career in identifying absurdity, and I know it when I see it.” Franken told Gorsuch the position ”makes me question your judgment.” Gorsuch rejected the idea that his position on the case indicates he is too  . ”I can point you to so many where I’ve found for a worker in an employment action,” Gorsuch said. 4. Childhood hero, Much has been made of his similarities to the justice he would replace, the late Antonin Scalia, but Gorsuch is really very fond of Justice Byron White. Gorsuch was a clerk for White, who was nominated to the court in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy and who, like Gorsuch, was from Colorado. Gorsuch recalled fondly how White’s hearing lasted just 90 minutes and how he ”smoked cigarettes through the entire process.” Gorsuch said White ”really was my childhood hero” and that ”to actually get picked out of the pile to spend the year with him . .. remains the privilege of a lifetime.” 5.   There were a few moments of levity. For one, Gorsuch talked about taking his daughters ”mutton busting,” or   after Republican Sen. Ted Cruz gave Gorsuch an opportunity to go on about the rodeo in Denver  —   perhaps offering a break from some tense questioning by Democrats. Later, Nebraska Republican Ben Sasse noted Gorsuch’s ability to sit through several hours of questioning without needing to  —   as the senator put it  —   ”pee.” ”The SCOTUS bladder is something the country stands in awe of,” said Sasse, thereby inaugurating a new meme."
"When Donald Trump was elected president, his daughter Ivanka Trump said she would move to Washington, D. C. but not into a White House office. Since then, she has often been photographed in key White House meetings with foreign leaders and Cabinet members. Now she will have her own office in the West Wing, along with a security clearance and   communications devices. In her unpaid role, Ivanka will ”continue to be the eyes and ears of her father and provide candid advice as she has for her entire adult life,” her attorney, Jamie Gorelick, said in an NPR interview. ”She is intending to spend some time on initiatives that she cares about, particularly with regard to women in the workplace.” Ivanka’s elevated position has historians and ethics experts questioning the appropriateness of having one of the president’s adult children serving directly in the administration, especially while continuing to own a business. Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University, says Ivanka’s White House role raises concerns such as: ”Do the rules apply on nepotism, on conflict of interest, on other kinds of regulations that employees face?” Zelizer says previous presidents have relied upon children for input. For example, President Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice frequently offered political advice, and George W. Bush often played an advisory role when his father, George H. W. Bush, was president. But this situation is different because it appears Ivanka will be have an expansive portfolio, not just offer insights. She will not be sworn in, nor need Senate approval. Her husband, Jared Kushner, also is serving in the administration, but he has official status as a senior adviser who took an oath of office. Earlier this year, some critics questioned whether his role violated the   law passed in 1967 to prevent a president from placing a relative in a Cabinet or federal agency job. But that law was challenged when President Bill Clinton named his wife, Hillary Clinton, to lead a task force on health care. A federal judge ruled in that case the   law doesn’t apply to White House staff jobs. When Kushner came into the White House job, he turned over his role in his family’s real estate empire to family members, who continue to own the business. Ivanka plans to continue to own her eponymous fashion and jewelry business, even though she has stepped back from daily management. Her father has followed that pattern, too, continuing to own The Trump Organization while putting his two eldest sons in charge of management.  Gorelick said Ivanka spoke with the White House counsel about the ethical implication of taking this role and ”they are comfortable with what she’s doing.” She added that Ivanka will ”abide by all the ethical rules that she would abide by if she were an employee.” But just having a   role could stir up questions about whether her White House presence could be seen as promoting her products as people try to curry favor with her. ”She is not simply part of the family she is a businesswoman,” Zelizer notes. Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St Louis and a specialist in government ethics, says the Trump administration’s arguments that    rules don’t bind the president or his daughter are disheartening. ”My biggest concern is that this is yet another erosion of government ethics standards in this White House,” Clark said."
"President Trump made the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to close the deal with members of his own party on a bill that, on the face of it, does what Republicans have been promising to do for years: Repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. He came with a tough love message for members of his own party. ”Looks like you’d be ripe for a primary if you don’t keep your promise,” the president told the group of lawmakers in a   meeting, according to Rep. Blake Farenthold. ”He did say that,” the Texas Republican adds. Farenthold thinks Trump moved a handful of votes in what has become a narrow path to passage for a bill with Democratic and conservative critics. ”Many of the people that were elected in that room were elected because of Obamacare, and so he was just being realistic,” said Rep. Peter King,  . Y. explaining President Trump’s pitch. In short, when Republicans didn’t hold the White House, Congress voted dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, ”and now you can’t get it done. It will really make us look bad in the eyes of the public, and this unity we have now  —   House, Senate and the presidency  —   it could go down. We could lose in 2018,” King said, paraphrasing the president. Trump reiterated that ”the American people gave us serious instructions” during a fundraiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee on Tuesday evening. King, who still counts himself among the undecided, was singled out by the president in the   meeting. It was friendly, he says, and possibly persuasive. ”After he told everybody that he and I grew up near each other, it will be hard for me to vote no.” They are both from Queens, N. Y.  —   Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates. King grew up in Sunnyside. ”He was basically saying this is bad for the whole Republican agenda. If we don’t make it on this one, which we spoke about so much, then it hurts us on everything going forward,” said King. Most significantly, tax reform could be in jeopardy, something that congressional Republicans and the president have made clear they want to get to. Trump also called out Rep. Mark Meadows,  . C. the chairman of the   House Freedom Caucus. According to people in the room, Trump said, ”Mark Meadows. I’m coming after you.” Meadows did not take it as a threat. And he thinks if anyone can ”bring this home and close out this deal,” it’s the president. But at the moment, Meadows remains a ”no” vote, and while he refused to get into numbers, Meadows claimed there are enough people who agree with him to bring the bill down. The president, he said, ”is aware of a vote count issue,” and he believes Trump remains open to negotiating changes that could move people like Meadows to vote for the bill. At the White House daily press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, press secretary Sean Spicer said that Trump ”continues to meet with members and walk away with a very, very optimistic view of where the bill is headed.” Spicer also said he didn’t want to ”rule anything out” with regard to further changes to the bill. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found 14 million fewer people would have health coverage almost immediately if the GOP bill is passed, with that number rising to 24 million fewer people insured by 2026. It also found that insurance premiums would initially rise before falling by 10 percent in later years. It’s the premiums that are giving Meadows pause, while for more moderate Republicans the concern is millions of people who would be without health care or would see their out of pocket costs increase drastically as less generous tax credits replace Obamacare subsidies under the GOP bill. Trump and House leaders are setting this up as a binary choice for Republicans: Do you want to keep Obamacare and break your pledge to your voters to repeal it? Or do you want to vote for this bill, which they admit isn’t perfect, but which they promise will get better as the legislative process moves along, and which GOP leaders insist is far better than the Affordable Care Act. ”President Trump was here to do what he does best, and that is to close the deal,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan at a press conference after the meeting. ”He is all in and we are all in to end this Obamacare nightmare.” But a question remains. ”All in” for what? As Trump left the meeting, he predicted, ”We’re going to have a real winner.” But then he added, ”There are going to be adjustments made, but I think we’ll get the vote on Thursday.” Already House leaders have introduced a series of amendments to the bill aimed at bringing on board reluctant Republicans. The amendments, announced last night, cut taxes on the wealthy that were put in place by the Affordable Care Act a year sooner, give states the option of imposing work requirements on   Medicaid recipients, and offer more generous reimbursement for elderly and disabled people on Medicaid (while still freezing and rolling back the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act). It’s unclear whether Trump is negotiating for additional changes now, as he looks to close the deal with House conservatives before Thursday’s vote, or whether any changes would come in the Senate, which would take up the House bill once it passes, if it passes. ”This is our chance and this is our moment,” said Ryan. ”It’s a big moment. And I think our members are beginning to appreciate just what kind of a rendezvous with destiny we have right here.”"
"On Tuesday morning, the Department of Homeland Security announced new restrictions for personal electronics on direct flights to the U. S. from 10 airports in the Middle East and North Africa. Devices larger than a cellphone will not be allowed in the cabin, though they will be allowed in checked baggage. Later Tuesday, the U. K. announced it would be enforcing a similar rule  —   using a slightly different list of countries. The rule change in both countries was unexpected and the explanations for it cryptic. Here’s a quick look at what we know, and what we don’t. We know the U. S. restrictions are motivated by concern about terrorism . .. The Department of Homeland Security says: ”Evaluated intelligence indicates that terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation and are aggressively pursuing innovative methods to undertake their attacks, to include smuggling explosive devices in various consumer items.” . .. but why now? Is there new intelligence, or new analysis? Is there a specific threat? DHS has been   about its motivations for the change. ”It simply has to be based on some specific intelligence,” security expert Bruce Schneier told NPR by email. ”It’s too focused on a particular tactic to be anything else.” But DHS wouldn’t confirm any specific threat or say whether it is drawing on newly discovered intelligence or a new analysis of existing intel instead, it simply refers to ”ongoing,” ”longstanding” and ”continue[d]” threats. Given deep rivalries between Middle Eastern and U. S. carriers, some analysts have implied or outright alleged business interests are at play as well. The DHS restrictions will inconvenience some passengers but not hurt U. S. carriers, since they don’t use those airports. That logic doesn’t explain the U. K. rule, however, which affects both foreign carriers and British companies, including British Airways and EasyJet. We know the countries affected . .. There are 10 specific airports covered by the U. S. policy, located in eight countries: Worth noting: This list of   countries has no overlap with the list in President Trump’s   travel ban. The countries affected by the electronics policy are generally wealthier, generally stable and all traditional U. S. allies, NPR’s Greg Myre says. The U. K. version of the rule has a different list of countries, which omits Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and Morocco. (It also adds Tunisia and Lebanon, which don’t have direct flights to the U. S. according to Skyscanner.) . .. but why those countries? The choice of affected flights to the U. S. is based on ”evaluated intelligence” that ”the threat exists at the 10 last point of departure airports,” DHS says. That’s why it doesn’t cover flights to those countries, or flights from those countries with a connection elsewhere. But, again, officials have offered no details on that intelligence or that ”threat,” and there’s no indication of why the U. K. would have a different list. The focus on individual airports could suggest possible concerns over screening or security procedures  —   security at the Cairo airport has come under scrutiny before, for instance. But the list also includes the Abu Dhabi airport, which is one of relatively few airports where U. S. Customs officials are stationed abroad to conduct   inspections. And DHS, again, offered no details about any such concerns. We know the rule focuses on electronics . .. Specifically, devices larger than smartphones  —   like laptops, tablets,   cameras, portable DVD players, ”electronic game units” and travel printers or scanners. Medical devices will be allowed in cabins, after extra screening. (A quick note: The U. S. rule doesn’t specify how big a ”smartphone” is. DHS seems to have little patience for the question, saying the size of a smartphone is ”well understood by most passengers.” The Brits are more helpful, defining a   smartphone as no bigger than 16 cm x 9. 3 cm x 1. 5 cm [6. 3 inches x 3. 7 inches x 0. 6 inches]) . .. but why electronic devices, specifically? You probably remember some previous airport security changes inspired by specific threats. The ”shoe bomber” tried to set off a bomb, and passengers had to take off their shoes authorities uncovered a plot to use liquid explosives, and the TSA banned liquids in  . It’s not clear what may have inspired the change announced Tuesday. The agency does point to two recent attacks on airplanes  —   but only one involved a laptop packed with explosives. That failed attack, in Somalia, happened more than a year ago at an airport with no flights to the U. S. The other was the deadly downing of a Russian passenger jet over Egypt in 2015. ISIS claimed to have carried out that attack with a bomb inside a soda can, which some analysts call plausible. DHS noted the incident in a QA Tuesday but didn’t suggest consumer electronics were involved. We know the rule puts most electronics in the cargo hold . .. Checking the devices means they’ll still be on the plane, just in a different location. Of course, this will frustrate some passengers. It’s not just a question of having the devices handy for a lengthy flight. There’s also the risk of expensive electronics being broken, lost or stolen while out of the passenger’s control. . .. so what exactly does that achieve? Analysts have a mixed view on what this policy  —   phones allowed in the cabin, other devices in the hold  —   would actually do. Nicholas Weaver, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Guardian it was a ”weird” way to promote security. ”If you assume the attacker is interested in turning a laptop into a bomb, it would work just as well in the cargo hold,” he told the British newspaper. ”If you’re worried about hacking, a cellphone is a computer.” Others note that while a bomb in the cargo hold can bring down a plane, it’s more challenging. ”Forcing it in the plane’s hold would make it much harder to detonate, since the terrorist has to design an automatic mechanism rather than doing it manually,” Schneier told NPR. ”Remember the crude techniques by the shoe and underwear bombers?” And if a bomb does go off, Wired reports that the cargo hold is a safer place  —   relatively speaking  —   for that to happen. Alternatively, moving electronics into checked baggage might allow more intense screening of the devices, as The Atlantic notes. At the risk of being repetitive: DHS has offered no details on what its rule is meant to prevent or ensure. And finally, we know the rule is going into effect soon . .. DHS says airlines have 96 hours to put it into effect, as of Tuesday’s 6 a. m. ET announcement. White House press secretary Sean Spicer, asked for the reason for the delayed implementation, said you need to give airlines an ”opportunity to get those procedures in place.” ”I will tell you that implementing something of this nature in that time frame is pretty darn quick,” he said. . .. but how long will it be in place? It’s not clear. DHS says the limits will be in place ”until the threat changes.” DHS and TSA ”continue to evaluate our aviation security processes and policies,” the department says, and ”as threats change, so too will TSA’s security requirements.”"
"The United Kingdom has joined the U. S. in restricting large electronics from being carried on flights that depart airports in certain Middle Eastern and North African countries. Security officials won’t explain precisely why they have ordered the restrictions, but it’s thought there could be dangers associated with laptops or other such devices being used as weapons."
"Note: This report has been significantly updated since its original online publication on March 21. The news that the U. S. is placing restrictions on what airline passengers can carry in the cabin on direct flights from eight   nations is creating ripples of concern throughout the arts community. According to the rules recently issued by President Trump’s administration, all passengers must check most electronic devices  —   including laptops, cameras and tablets  —   into their checked baggage. Travelers will still be allowed to carry their mobile phones in their hand luggage. Just as international businesspeople and tourists may be concerned about possible thefts, data breaches, lithium battery hazards and other potential forms of damage, musicians are beginning to grapple with the possible effects that these restrictions may have on their live performances. Many artists bring along work gear in the cabin when they tour  —   and elements of their shows (including electronic music and visual projections) might well be stored on their laptops, tablets and other devices that now will be relegated to the cargo hold, if the artists travel on the affected carriers. Some prominent American musicians have tour dates in several cities within these eight countries in the coming weeks, including pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, who is performing at NYU Abu Dhabi’s Arts Center with his trio Tirtha and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) the group Pink Martini, who has dates at the Tunisian seaside resort of Gammarth (April 8) Casablanca (April 9 at the Jazzablanca festival) and Istanbul (April 15 at the Volkswagen Arena) All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro will be performing with Pink Martini at their Tunisian and Moroccan dates. Meanwhile,   artists Earl Sweatshirt and Danny Brown, as well as singer Julianna Barwick, who are all slated to perform in Dubai on April 14 as part of the RBMA Weekender Dubai festival. Pink Martini had already made arrangements to route through Europe for this tour, so the electronics ban won’t impact them directly right now. However, the group’s managing director, William Tennant, says that, while the dates in Tunisia and Morocco mark the band’s first North African appearances, they’ve long had a foothold in the Middle East  —   and the group takes a great deal of pride in the cultural connections they’ve forged there. ”There’s so much amazing music that comes from that region,” Tennant says. ”We’ve been performing songs in Arabic and Turkish and Farsi and a lot of the languages of the Middle East for so many years.” Pink Martini has connected hugely with local audiences, Tennant adds, and the Middle East has become an important part of their touring circuit. ”We’ve played in Lebanon and even Syria  —   though obviously not recently  —   and Turkey for over a decade,” he says, ”and all of our records have gone gold in Turkey.” Vijay Iyer’s concerts with ICE and Tirtha include quite a bit of the exact kinds of equipment that the new regulations target. The performances are of Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, a film and   project which Iyer created with the late filmmaker Prashant Bhargava. ”We need to keep this equipment safe, just like we need to keep our violins and cellos safe. It’s for us an instrument like any other instrument,” says Ross Karre, a percussionist and   director of ICE. The tech they need is exactly the kind of equipment that is being banned from   Karre observes. He and his bandmates had no problem getting the equipment to Abu Dhabi  —   but bringing it back, they have to check it all. ”The piece uses four laptops  —   two to play the video content, and two to run the audio and the click track,” Karre explains. ”And then on top of that, basically everyone in the orchestra reads their music from an iPad Pro, which is a larger iPad that allows you to see music and change the pages with a foot pedal.” The Radhe Radhe musicians were booked by Bill Bragin, the executive artistic director of the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi. He says that smaller electronics are crucial  —   and not just for music. Nowadays, many artists are managing their own careers. ”Their office is often the airport lounge, you know?” Bragin points out. ”In the two hours that they have to wait before they board the plane, that’s when they do their major correspondence, that might be when they write grants, it might be when they are writing new material, or editing music. It’s not a   interruption.” And as Bragin adds, many musicians now release their own recordings, too  —   and what they capture at live shows can become the basis of an album. ”And so being able to capture all of their performances is actually a really significant part of what happens after the shows,” he says. If that archival material is stolen, lost or otherwise compromised, the impact would resonate long after that concert date. The money involved in rerouting travel through Europe or other hubs is daunting, Bragin says. ”In many cases, flights have been purchased long, long ago, and so anybody who’s got a tour that’s kind of in the works, and that has been planned, they don’t have the ability necessarily  —   nor can they afford to  —   change their route,” he notes. ”Anything that’s already in motion I think is particularly at risk.” The regulations are directed towards flights coming into the U. S. from eight   countries who are all traditionally allies of the U. S.: Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. According to our colleague Greg Myre who reported on this story for Morning Edition, the new rules affect passengers on about 50 incoming flights per day, on travelers flying with  . S. carriers. As Myre also notes, the eight affected countries include ”every major travel hub in the region except Israel’s main airport just outside Tel Aviv.” Some of the airports on the list also serve as major transportation hubs to other international destinations, including Dubai (which is now the busiest airport in the world, beating out the likes of London’s Heathrow and Hong Kong) Istanbul, an important connection point between Europe and Asia and Casablanca, a popular hub for travelers coming to and leaving from elsewhere in Africa. Rebooking flights through Europe also potentially carries additional, hidden costs. Especially for artists who need to live close to the bone, uninterrupted   flights from the Middle East serve another purpose, according to Bragin. ”They are living on the road and going from gig to gig,” he notes. ”In many cases, they don’t even take a hotel room, and then that long plane ride becomes their hotel room for the night.” Three of the affected airlines  —   Emirates, Etihad, and Turkish Airlines  —   have already announced that they will allow their passengers to pack and   their devices right before boarding. Still, artists are sorting through their options. One alternative to carrying expensive electronic gear on planes is uploading musical information to a secure cloud, and then downloading it when musicians get to the gig. But Ross Karre says that’s risky too. ”Maybe you could bring it over on an external hard drive that would be allowed in the cabin,” Karre muses. ”But even that would rely on having exactly the same hardware and software configuration, both on our rehearsal electronics that we use in the United States, and on the performance electronics.” So for now, Karre and the other musicians in his group are traveling with their laptops and tablets, and hoping they come back safe and sound."
"The   podcast Missing Richard Simmons dropped its final episode on Monday, two days ahead of schedule. For a project nominally devoted to finding out more about what happened to onetime fitness guru Richard Simmons, it wasn’t very satisfying by that standard. Host Dan Taberski concluded, in effect, that Richard Simmons was safe and physically healthy and had withdrawn voluntarily from public life without much fanfare, which is . .. pretty much what we already knew. That’s what Simmons had said in a call to Today that Taberski played again and again. That’s what the police had said after they checked on him. Stripped to the frame, the beginning of the podcast gave the back story, the ending mused about the anticlimax of it all, and the middle largely traced a couple of more sensational theories for which Taberski ultimately didn’t find any evidence. But as unsatisfying as the show was as a mystery, it was fascinating as a study of what we ask of public figures  —   of what we feel entitled to ask of them. If there’s one thing that the podcast showed, and in fact if there’s one thing on which Taberski rested his thesis that Simmons’ withdrawal was worthy of further investigation, it’s that Richard Simmons gave a preposterous amount of himself away to the people who bought his products, came to his classes, went on his cruises, and simply told him how much pain they were in because they thought he would understand. The thesis of the show is largely that a man who was so close to people and loved being close to people would never just stop doing it. It’s one of Taberski’s apparent blind spots that Simmons didn’t connect at this profound and personal level with all fat people  —   he connected with a certain kind of person who wanted and reached for something personal from him. After all, plenty of people just watched the videos. I should know I can still do ”It’s My Party” from Sweatin’ To The Oldies. But there was a kind of Richard Simmons person who wanted to touch him, stuff dollar bills in his shorts on the cruise ship, and talk to him on the phone. And the way Taberski tells the story, Simmons turned himself inside out trying to give every one of them whatever it was they wanted. I interviewed Judy Blume a couple of years ago and asked her whether the intimate connection readers felt, particularly as young people, with her books like Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret made her their assumed confidante in a way that was overwhelming. ”Yes,” she told me without hesitation. ”For a while there, I got too involved with some of the kids who wrote to me. I got very emotionally involved with them. I had to go to a counselor to help me, because I’m not trained in the helping professions.” She said she needed to understand how to ”be supportive, and yet step back. Because there were a couple of kids I wanted to save. You know, I wanted to bring them to live with me. . .. This never would have worked out.” I wanted to bring them to live with me. It sounds remarkable, but can you imagine what Judy Blume’s mail must have been like? I cannot imagine it didn’t daily consist of someone is hurting me, someone is hitting me, I feel alone, you are the only one who understands me, you are the only one who I’m telling this to, you are the only one I trust. And these were kids. What I thought over and over while listening to Missing Richard Simmons is that Richard Simmons may have been the Judy Blume who never got the counselor. Who tried to save everyone. I don’t really believe in the old Andy Warhol prediction that in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. What I believe is that fame will indeed be served in small portions, limited not by time but by scope. If that’s the case, then instead of being famous for 15 minutes, many will be famous to 15 people. Or perhaps 1, 500 or 15, 000 people  —   a small enough number that you can move through most of the world unnoticed, but a large enough number that the circle of people who follow you with intensity necessarily includes people who don’t know you. What to do about that is something I think more and more people have faced. The emotionally healthiest people I’ve ever met who are in the public eye are the ones who are capable, figuratively speaking, of extending a toe in front of them and scratching a line in the dirt. They know how to say, ”We can shake hands across this line, we can talk across this line, and we can express gratitude to each other across this line, but I wouldn’t ask you to babysit my children, and you can’t sleep on my couch.” It’s not apathy, it’s not superiority, and it’s not disdain. It’s a recognition of the physics of personal connection. There is only so much energy. There is only so much to give, and there is only so much you can turn yourself inside out for so many people before something runs low, or runs out. Taberski presumed some pathology in Simmons’ disappearance but doesn’t seem to have worried about what was happening before that, despite the fact that there were red flags all over his very own descriptions. In arguing that Simmons should have said goodbye (or, more precisely, should have said goodbye differently) he likened Simmons’ relationships with the people he called and counseled and coached over the years to two things over and over again: friendship and therapy. Weren’t they friends? Wasn’t it like therapy? Friendship isn’t therapy. Holy moly, people, if you never believe anything else you read on the Internet, believe that friendship isn’t therapy and therapy isn’t friendship. When you’re asking both ”weren’t these friendships?” and ”weren’t these therapeutic relationships?” you are diagnosing in real time the problem with the direction such things can go. Without professional structure and rules, it’s not therapy. Without reciprocity, it’s not friendship. I know almost nothing about my therapist’s life that’s by design. He wouldn’t be invited to my birthday party that’s by design, too. I only ask my friends to listen as much as I will listen. Were these people listening to Richard Simmons as much as he was listening to them? It’s hard to feel bad for people who receive other people’s admiration, and it’s hard to feel bad for people who make a lot of money by being beloved. No argument. But while what Simmons did may be different from a musician or a novelist  —   or someone who makes a podcast  —   I’m confident he had something in common with many of those people, which is that what meant the most to him was what his work meant to others. I can tell you that I have pinned to my cubicle walls almost every paper note and letter I’ve ever received from readers and listeners. But, speaking metaphorically, not every expression of gratitude arrives on paper, which you can keep with you, pinned to your life indefinitely. Some  ’s arrive written on rocks, and if you feel obligated to carry all of those rocks everywhere you go for the rest of your life, if you can’t learn to look at them, be grateful for them, and set them down, even they become a lot to carry. The more the gratitude is for what has already been done, the more it is written on paper: I’m so grateful for the thing you made it meant the world to me. That is weightless it is wonderful. The closer it gets to expecting something from you in the future, something that must continue, the more it is written on stone: You’re the only one who understands me. You’re the only reason I can get out of bed every day. I have a feeling Richard Simmons received a lot of gratitude written on stones, just as Judy Blume did, but it certainly sounds like it was much harder for him to put down. The sad thing about Missing Richard Simmons is that if Richard Simmons finally decided to drop all of those rocks and rest  —   whatever state he was in when he did  —   then nothing makes it clearer how he got to that point than someone making a hit out of demanding over and over some kind of explanation. Perhaps he finally drew a boundary. Perhaps he finally put his sneakered toe out and drew that line in the dirt, in which case it’s uncomfortable to think the response was, ”How could you?”"
"Republican House leaders are making   changes to their health care proposal in a bid to woo more conservatives ahead of a vote scheduled for Thursday. One of those changes would let states impose work requirements on some Medicaid recipients. A handful of states asked the Obama administration for that authority but were denied. To further examine how requiring millions of Medicaid recipients to work could impact lives across the country, NPR’s Audie Cornish spoke with Leighton Ku, a professor of health policy at George Washington University. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Interview Highlights, On whom this requirement could affect  The way it’s written right now, it might affect millions of adults on Medicaid who aren’t elderly, disabled or pregnant. They could be required to work to get their health insurance. Among the people who enrolled in Medicaid under the expansion, about 13 percent might be considered   but not working right now. Of those, the great majority said the reason they weren’t working was because they were taking care of family members. If you look across the nation, it might be millions of individuals who receive Medicaid benefits at the moment but potentially could be required to work under the rules Congress is considering. On why requiring people to work to get Medicaid could prove problematic, Most Medicaid recipients want to work, and a majority of those on Medicaid [who can work] are already working. The problem is that many of them live in places where jobs aren’t available or they don’t have the right sorts of skills. Others have health problems or family obligations, or in some cases they’re trying to better themselves in other ways like going to college. If someone is going to college to get training so they can have a meaningful job later on, that doesn’t count as meeting the work requirement in these policies. There are people who are trying to better themselves [but] have problems, whether related to work or family obligations, and this’ll say, ”You can’t keep your health insurance anymore.” I disagree that this creates opportunity for people. People already had the opportunity to go look for work and get job training. This will actually disallow some of them to pursue other opportunities. On how requiring work for health insurance differs from requiring work for food stamps  There are some work requirements in the food stamp program (SNAP). But that makes a little more sense in this context: If people work, they’ll make more income and help make them economically  . In the context of Medicaid, that makes less sense. Only a quarter of jobs available to people enrolled in Medicaid offer health insurance to their workers. It’s not as though work requirements get them to the point where they’ll be   with respect to health insurance coverage."
"If you’re poor and you want to keep your health insurance, you may have to go to work. That’s the message from Republican lawmakers who Monday night released a series of changes to their plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. A key change, designed to help attract votes from conservative Republicans, would let state governors require people to work to qualify for health insurance under Medicaid. ”The work requirements are important,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Sunday on ABC News. ”They are something that is restorative to people’s   sense of themselves.” But policy analysts dispute that. ”Forcing people to work as a condition of Medicaid doesn’t help people to get jobs. It’s a barrier to getting care,” says Elizabeth   director of income and work supports at the Center for Law and Social Policy. Today, more than half of all adult Medicaid recipients work, according to CLASP, and 78 percent live in a home where an adult works. Those who aren’t working often have medical barriers to work that don’t reach the level of full disability, says  . Work requirements won’t help them get care, she says, and are unlikely to help them get better jobs. She points to the experience of welfare reform as a guide. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton pushed for reform of the cash welfare system that imposed work requirements on beneficiaries. But studies have shown those mandates did little to boost the job prospects of poor women. Instead, the requirements led to people being kicked off the program and more children living in poverty, according to  . The Republican proposal uses the same definition for work as the welfare reform law uses  —   including a job, community service and certain job training. It doesn’t include college attendance, however. And one study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that as many as 18 percent of   Medicaid beneficiaries are in school. In addition to the Medicaid work requirements, the Republican health care bill, which is scheduled to be considered by the House on Thursday, would make other changes to Medicaid. It would turn the program from a   entitlement that covers all the health care costs of those who are eligible to one in which the federal government gives the states a fixed amount of money each year to cover their   residents. The states could elect to receive a specific amount for each Medicaid beneficiary, or a simple block grant that’s not tied to their Medicaid population. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the proposed changes in Medicaid, before the work requirements were added to the bill, would save the federal government about $880 billion over 10 years. The work requirements will very likely be embraced by a handful of state governors who in the past have asked the federal government for permission to impose them but were denied. The Obama administration routinely said no to such requests from states including Arizona, Indiana and Montana that sought waivers to change their Medicaid programs. Kentucky already has a request in to the Department of Health and Human services to make changes to its Medicaid program that would include requiring   adults who don’t have children under age 6 to work to be eligible for benefits. Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, says states are split on the idea. ”There are clearly going to be states who think this is a good idea for some populations, and states who think this is a bad idea,” he says. But no matter how many states decide to adopt the work requirement, it won’t have much impact on the overall cost of Medicaid. ”This will affect a relatively small subsection of Medicaid that’s responsible for an even smaller portion of total spending,” he says. That’s because about 60 percent of Medicaid spending  —   which totals about $550 billion a year between the federal and state governments  —   goes to care for senior citizens, people with disabilities, people in   care and children. ”These are people who are not, and never will be, in the workforce,” Salo says. The decision to add a work requirement is more an ideological choice than a fiscal one, Salo says."
"The biopic Selena tells the story of   pop star Selena Quintanilla Perez, a Tejano music singer who made a rare crossover to mainstream American audiences. The movie debuted 20 years ago Tuesday, two years after the singer was killed by the former president of her fan club. Deborah Paredez, author of Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory, says the film is more concerned with the triumph of Selena’s life than the tragedy of her death. ”We learn about how she ascended to fame as both a Tejana superstar, but also as an international superstar,” she says. ”And only at the very end do we have the tragic end of her life. But even in that ending, we get a sense of what her promise was.” Selena started her career singing Tejano music, which is popular in Texas and among  . But her music also drew from a range of Latin genres as well as American pop music. ”Because of her particular sound and her style and her particular talent,” Paredez says, ”and because of the kind of global reach of the recording industry, she became truly a kind of international sensation.” Even after her death, the singer was so popular that when Warner Bros. held highly publicized open auditions for the film, more than 20, 000 young girls and women showed up to be considered. According to Paredez, who interview some of them for her book, they traveled from all over the country. ”So many of them talked about going to audition not so much because they were aspiring to be stars necessarily, or even be connected to Hollywood, but auditioning for Selena was, for so many young Latinas, a way of just asserting their own sense of their own specific Latina identity.” That may also be why the film has endured. ”Times for Latinos aren’t much better at this moment,” Paredez says. There aren’t a lot of other inspirational films for Latinos to turn to, and Selena, after all, represents two success stories: that of its subject and that of its Puerto Rican star, Jennifer Lopez, whose career the film helped catapult. Paredez also points to another Selena legacy that doesn’t often get talked about  —   one with queer Latino communities. ”She provided a kind of a drag icon, for some,” she says. ”. .. Also, talking with queer communities who were deeply affected by the AIDS crisis, as Latino communities were, Selena’s death and her legacy really was something that resonated for them as someone who died too young and yet who also had a life beyond death. . .. And I think often that particular part of the story gets left out.” Editor Melissa Gray, producer   Smith and intern Esteban Bustillos contributed to this story."
"Designers are rolling out their spring lines and the runways are looking more diverse than ever. But the comparative abundance of models who are people of color didn’t happen overnight. There was the occasional  —   very occasional  —   model who wasn’t white in the 50s and early 60s on runways. But   models put American couture on the map in 1973 when they walked the runway in France in what’s become known as The Battle of Versailles. Almost instantly, black models were The Thing for a brief, halcyon period. But by the   with a few glorious exceptions, the catwalks had regained a distinctly milky aspect. Many designers’ casting directors  —   the people choose models for shows  —   would specify they wanted a ”certain look.” And for a long time that look was very, very pale. Things got so monochromatic that in 2013 Bethann Hardison, a former model and modeling agency owner, and supermodels Iman and Naomi Campbell formed an organization called Diversity Coalition, to insist on runways that included women of color. The Coalition even penned a manifesto addressed to the international fashion industry, saying the runways needed to be a lot more varied in hue, especially at the darker end of the spectrum. ”The decision to use basically   models reveals a trait that is unbecoming to modern society,” the authors wrote. Then they named names. That, said James Scully, is what gets people’s attention. Scully, a model, casting director and activist, recently wrote an Instagram post that claimed that the House of Lanvin had requested no women of color be included in the   for casting its latest show. Lanvin insisted that was incorrect —  but in the end, 6 women of color were in its lineup. Earlier this month, The Fashion Spot, an online forum for fashion insiders, released its Runway Diversity Report for Fall 2017. The report surveyed 241 shows during the fall 2017 season. Almost 28 percent of the models in those shows, collectively, were people of color. The report looked at national and international runways and found the highest racial diversity across the four major participating cities (New York, London, Milan, and Paris) was in New York, where 31. 5 percent of the models were people of color. Jennifer Davidson, editor in chief of The Fashion Spot, told The New York Times ”I personally don’t think 31. 5 is enough, but it’s definitely an improvement.” It’s a tricky thing, casting. Directors have a vision for their lines  —   but what if that vision doesn’t include a more inclusive palette? ”It’s an aesthetic decision, it’s not personal” used to be a standard response from some designers. Marc Jacobs is one of the designers the Diversity Coalition called out in 2013 for being  . He again found himself in the fashion world’s crosshairs last year when he sent mostly white models down the runway in   yarn dreadlocks. Jacobs was mystified at some of the outrage from people who charged him with cultural appropriation. Openly questioning why white models wearing dreadlocks was offensive, he suggested that his critics wouldn’t ”criticize women of color for straightening their hair.” Eventually Jacobs apologized on Instagram ”for the lack of sensitivity unintentionally expressed by my brevity.” And, tellingly, he was among the designers with one of the most diverse runway lineups for fall 2017  —   66 percent models of color (see photo above). The Fashion Spot has begun to tabulate not just racial diversity, but other kinds as well: designers that use older models, models who are transgender and   models. Of those groups, there has been more representation of   women than any other difference, but the door has been opened for other kinds of diversity. (Dolce  Gabbana dressed Italian nonnas (gramdmas) in its current campaign, and have for a few seasons. At J Crew, entire families replaced models to show off the retailer’s wares.) These steps are not only good, but smart: the world, and fashion’s consumer base, is getting more varied by the day. Having the runway mirror the real world a little more closely will lead to the industry’s favorite sound:    ."
"This spring, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D. C. will host a   event   by a business group. That’s not unusual. But here’s what is: The group’s chair founded the company that paid President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for lobbying work that may have benefited the Turkish government. This mashup of money involving Turks, Flynn and Trump has concerned ethics experts who worry about a ”pay to play” atmosphere in Washington. Here are the basics: What: The 36th Annual Conference on U. S.  Relations is scheduled for May  . Where: At the Trump hotel, just blocks from the White House. It had been held in recent years at the   hotel in Washington. Who: The  . S. Business Council, known as TAIK, and the American Turkish Council are the sponsors. The former group is chaired by a   businessman, Ekim Alptekin, who has ties to the Turkish government. More about who: Alptekin also is the founder of Inovo BV, a company that paid Flynn’s consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, $530, 000 for lobbying work that may have benefited the Turkish government. Ruya Eichelberger, a spokeswoman for the American Turkish Council, says the dates when the organization wanted to hold the conference this year weren’t open at the  . The group did its first   at the Trump hotel in 2015, she says, while it was under construction, and booked it in October 2016. The previous annual conference took place at the   from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, 2016. But ethics experts have concerns about special interest groups, lobbyists and foreign governments bringing their business to Trump, who has a dual role as president and innkeeper. These critics point to the U. S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits presidents from accepting benefits from foreign powers. Despite such concerns, Trump has not divested from the   hotel bearing his name and in fact has dropped in for dinner and to mingle with patrons. The website for the Turkish conference says ”hundreds of stakeholders” are expected to convene at the hotel ”to address key bilateral commercial and diplomatic topics.” Business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, members of the U. S. Congress and the Turkish Parliament are also expected to attend. In the view of those concerned about the Emoluments Clause, it doesn’t matter when the event sponsors made plans to move to the Trump hotel the decision to go forward with it now is inappropriate because of Trump’s role as president. Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a leading independent scholar on government ethics, said that by choosing a Trump hotel, the sponsors of the event ”may be trying to amplify its voice, increase its influence, and purchase access to the Trump administration by enriching President Trump and his family.” The issue was raised last month, when Kuwait moved its national day celebration to the Trump hotel. At the time, Norman Eisen, who had served as President Barack Obama’s ethics czar, told NPR that the Founding Fathers wrote the clause ”because they were so worried about swag, any kind of swag, coming to an American president just for the reasons . .. that it would distort presidential   to benefit himself.”"
"Many people these days might be getting worked up about the fact that President Trump owns a lot of businesses. Not Chris Kinney. ”I think this country really needs to be run more like a business at this point,” says the    Lino Lakes, Minn. resident, a former business owner who fixes printers for a living. The United States faces a lot of serious problems, such as the growing federal deficit, and the fact that Trump brings a businessman’s sensibility to solving them is a plus, Kinney says. As for those people who have been calling on Trump to divest himself of his companies? They are ”probably a bunch of people that have never been in business, so they probably wouldn’t understand he’s not going to just hand everything over,” Kinney says. Trump’s unprecedented decision to hold onto his many businesses while in office has generated plenty of criticism from ethics experts in both major parties and led to a lawsuit by watchdog groups accusing him of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Critics say his many hotels, golf courses and condo buildings all over the world allow him to use the White House to enrich himself in a way no president ever has. But among Trump’s supporters, the issue doesn’t seem to be registering much, at least so far. Democratic political strategist Stanley Greenberg recently returned to Macomb County, Mich. to talk to Trump voters. Among his many findings was that the president’s supporters aren’t particularly concerned about Trump’s conflicts of interest, an issue that has gotten widespread attention. Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns barely came up in the discussions, Greenberg says. Trump voters remain loyal to him so far and see him as under siege by opponents who refuse to accept him as president, the strategist says. ”They trust him. They know he’s a businessman. They think he’ll know how to cut deals that are good for the country, but that he’ll fight for American jobs,” Greenberg says. More broadly, while Trump’s approval ratings are historically low for a new president, he remains highly popular with Republican voters. His approval ratings among Republicans are generally in the low to  . Only 40 percent of Americans say they are very or somewhat confident that Trump keeps his business interests separate from his presidency, according to a survey released last month by the Pew Research Center.   percent of Republicans say that. None of that comes as a surprise to Susan Welch, professor of political science at Penn State and dean of its College of the Liberal Arts, who has studied voter attitudes toward public corruption. Some kinds of corruption, such as sex scandals, tend to get a lot of media attention and can hurt politicians, she says. But voters tend to be pretty forgiving of politicians who become embroiled in other kinds of corruption, especially campaign finance violations and conflicts of interest, which aren’t seen as that serious. Partisanship plays a part in this, Welch says. Voters tend to be more willing to overlook wrongdoing by members of their own parties. In Trump’s case, voters knew he was a businessman when he was elected and were willing to shrug off any problems that might present, Welch notes. ”They probably knew he wasn’t going to do much about it, given his resistance to revealing his income tax return, and they just didn’t care that much because they thought he would bring about the kind of change they wanted,” Welch says. ”They don’t care who’s staying in his hotel,” says former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma. ”They already know he’s a zillionaire. ’So fine, OK. Let him make more zillions.’ ” Trump’s support among his base will only really fall if he fails to make progress on the issues that matter most to them, such as improving the job market, Edwards says. ”The thing that could undermine him would be that in year two or year three the jobs have not come back and the things that he promised he was going to do, he didn’t get done,” he says."
"Bangladesh has done a great job of getting more toilets to more people. Now it needs to figure out how to empty them. According to the World Bank, rates of ”open defecation” (development jargon for pooing in public) in Bangladesh have dropped from 34 percent in 1990 to just 1 percent nationwide in 2015. Other surveys put the rates of open defecation at a slightly higher rate than 1 percent but still note a significant decline in the amount of human waste on the streets over the last couple of decades. The reason for this is a boom in pit latrines, aka outhouses, privies, crappers. This recent ”expansion of access to sanitation” (to stick with the development jargon) has made neighborhoods look and smell better all across the country. But particularly in rural areas, many of the new sanitation facilities are no more than a   shack on top of a hole in the ground. And when those pits get full, emptying them can be an unpleasant, arduous . .. and a financial burden for poor families. It currently costs roughly $13 to have a pit latrine emptied  —   roughly 14 percent of an average family’s monthly income in rural Bangladesh. Rizwan Ahmed with the NGO Forum for Public Health in Dhaka, Bangladesh, says pit latrine maintenance can also be a community health problem. ”The sludge is taken out from the pit latrines and transported to nearby [irrigation] canals,” Ahmed says. ”It’s discharged into the canals, nearby rivers, nearby small ponds, polluting the surface water. Also sometimes, it’s buried under the soil.” And then local ground water can be contaminated. Ahmed says part of the problem is that there’s no established way to empty pit latrines. Some families do it themselves and bury the waste elsewhere on their property. Some people hire young men to clear out the sludge and haul it away. But Ahmed says that even when latrine owners pay to have the sewage removed, it likely ends up dumped in a waterway. Ahmed, along with a group of academics and clean water advocates, have just completed a pilot program in a rural part of Bangladesh to try to solve the pit latrine sludge conundrum. The program uses pumps to suck the sludge out of the pits, as opposed to the old shovel and bucket method. It sets up a monthly payment system so that families aren’t hit with a big expense every three to four years when their latrine is overflowing. And it establishes a composting system to turn the sludge in to fertilizer for flowers, rubber trees and other   plants. ”This is a research project,” Ahmed says. ”We are trying to see the feasibility of doing this.” They’ve determined that it is feasible. They’ve calculated that a system, including the cost of labor, pumps, trucks and a composting facility, would cost each privy owner roughly 31 U. S. cents a month. This is opposed to the current average cost of $13 every three years or so to hire informal laborers to clear out the pit and haul away the sewage. The research has just been published in the journal PLOS ONE. ”In recent years, Bangladesh has made rapid progress in improving sanitation in rural areas and around 40 million new pit latrines have been built,” the study says. ”However, this rapid increase in use of household latrines has not been accompanied by a growth in appropriate management of fecal sludge.” Rolf Halden, the curator of the National Sewage and Sludge Repository at Arizona State University, says managing pit latrine waste is a problem all over the developing world but an even bigger challenge in Bangladesh. He is not part of the pit latrine project. ”Bangladesh is peculiar in the fact that it has a very shallow ground water and sees lots of raining. It’s also an area that’s subject to flooding,” he says. ”That really makes the problem [in Bangladesh] much more prominent than in other locations.” The problem of sewage disposal is further complicated because Bangladesh is extremely poor and incredibly crowded. Only the capital, Dhaka, has a sewer system, and even there those pipes only serve about 18 percent of the city, according to the World Bank. So most of the nation’s 160 million people relieve themselves in pit latrines. Halden, who is also a professor of environmental engineering and the director of the Biodesign Center for Environmental Security, says all that sludge poses a risk to public health both while it’s sitting in the latrine and when the latrines are emptied. ”[The waste] contains viable organisms  —   viruses, bacteria  —   and they cause diarrheal disease,” he says. And pit latrines aren’t just a Bangladesh issue. ”We know that 1 in 4 people on this earth use pit latrines,” Halden says. ”So it’s a significant amount of sludge that’s being produced by these systems.” Rizwan Ahmed says the hope is that the Forum for Public Health’s pilot program for a safe,   latrine waste management system will be used across Bangladesh and eventually spread across the developing world."
"Piotr Anderszewski might be one of the most revered pianists of his generation, but he’s also one of the most impulsive. In 1990, at age 21, the young Pole entered the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition. He was nearly finished with his   performance when he quit playing  —   just walked off the stage. He felt he wasn’t good enough to continue. It was a gutsy move that actually helped launch his career. These days, Anderszewski is still taking chances  —   taking time off to direct a wistful documentary about his hometown of Warsaw (watch an excerpt below) and releasing Fantasies, a new album filled with arresting music, beginning with Mozart. In Anderszewski’s searching performance, Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor slides from shadowy, agitated moods to delicate, bittersweet spaces of diffused light. Mozart, Anderszewski says, seemed to have the entire piece in his head, and then effortlessly wrote it down without a hitch. It didn’t work quite that way for Robert Schumann, the other composer on this album. Anderszewski is drawn to both composers because they seemed to have a short, direct line from brainstorm to finished masterpiece. Schumann could write as quickly as Mozart, but from a more vulnerable heart. In his Fantasie, Op. 17, Anderszewski isn’t afraid to let the music struggle, laying Schumann’s heart right out on the sleeve in huffing, puffing, syncopated beats. The pianist closes the album with music from the other side of Schumann’s career  —   at the very end, when the composer’s mind had started to crumble. Hardly anyone plays Schumann’s Ghost Variations, but Anderszewski’s detail to light and color makes a strong case for this undervalued music. The tender, gently swaying theme came to Schumann in the middle of the night. Five variations on that theme follow, including an agitated one where Anderszewski lets the tune smolder in the bass while sparks fly above. It closes with a kind of musical enigma as the theme gets swept up in a whirlwind of notes. I guess we’re lucky Anderszewski makes albums at all. He’s prone to sabbaticals, and he’s fussy. He doesn’t like to perform with orchestras, doesn’t like solo recitals. And he complains about recording studios. Maybe it’s     —   and I certainly hope so  —   but he’s even said that the ultimate temptation is to lie down and wait for the beat of his heart to stop. Meanwhile, we’ll look for more from this gifted, restless artist, who’s willing to rethink just about everything."
"Updated at 10 a. m. ET Thursday, Nevada has ratified the Equal Rights Amendment  —   roughly 35 years after a deadline imposed by Congress. On Wednesday, the state Senate approved the   ERA, which among other things guarantees that ”equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The senators passed a measure sent to them by the state Assembly, which had already approved it earlier this week. It has been a long, twisty path for the ERA, which was first passed by Congress in 1972 and last approved by a state (Indiana) in 1977. The amendment teetered just three states short of the threshold necessary to see it adopted into law nationwide  —   a threshold it failed to achieve by the time Congress’ deadline came and went. But for ERA supporters such as Democratic state Sen. Pat Spearman, that deadline is little more than a paper tiger. ”It was in the resolving clause, but it wasn’t a part of the amendment that was proposed by Congress,” she tells KNPR. ”That’s why the time limit is irrelevant.” After all, Spearman and others argue, Congress’ original ratification deadline was 1979, and national lawmakers already bumped that forward to 1982  —   so what’s stopping them from bumping it forward again? ”The Equal Rights Amendment is about equality, period,” says Spearman, the Nevada bill’s chief sponsor. A former Army lieutenant colonel and one of two openly gay senators in the Legislature, she says that regardless of timing, the goals of the amendment endure. ”We have delayed passage long enough,” she says. ”Now is the time to show the country, and the global neighborhood, we as Nevadans lead when it comes to equality for all.” The measure’s Republican critics weren’t convinced. Many of them had argued that the ERA would be a detriment to families and a boost to abortion rights activists, while still others found the exercise useless, given the lapsed deadline. They said the more laudable aspects of the amendment have been rendered obsolete by the enactment of separate laws that fulfill the same function. And then, there’s the matter of that deadline, which Republican Assemblywoman Robin Titus was far less inclined to dismiss. She says she was ”deeply disturbed by the theatrics” of ratifying an overdue amendment, according to the Los Angeles Times. As she tells the newspaper, ”I don’t believe my constituents sent me to cast symbolic votes with no chance of success.” ”I would argue that this chamber is full of symbolism,” Jill Tolles, the sole Republican assemblywoman who voted for the measure, tells the Reno   adding: ”On my left hand, I wear a ring that symbolizes my promise to love and respect and be faithful to one man for the rest of my life. We stand underneath a seal that reminds us that we are a battle born state and home means Nevada. We pledge allegiance to a flag every single day to celebrate the freedom that was so hard fought for.” For   groups such as the National Organization for Women, the matter is more than simply symbolic. After Indiana became the 35th state to ratify the amendment, in 1977, the group pursued what it called a ”  strategy”  —   a plan to identify and persuade the states it needed to put it over the threshold. That plan didn’t succeed, but Nevada has given NOW President Terry O’Neill new cause for hope. ”Now it’s a   strategy,” she tells the Times. ”It’s very exciting. Over the past five years, Illinois and Virginia have come close. I think there is clear interest in this.” For now the   Nevada lawmakers  —   who don’t need GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval’s signature but have his support  —   are celebrating the symbolic victory with some auspicious timing: They ratified the ERA 45 years to the day since Congress originally passed it."
"If you saw any people leaping over fires, grilling fragrant kebabs or holding elaborate picnics this weekend, you may have witnessed celebrations of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which marks the start of spring across large parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. Nowruz is often associated with the Iranian community, but it is also popular among Afghans, among others. And though the holiday officially falls on Tuesday, March 21, this year, many Afghan immigrants and refugees in the U. S. took advantage of its proximity to the weekend and celebrated it early in community centers, hotel ballrooms, private homes  —   and, wherever possible, the great outdoors. Nowruz originates from   Zoroastrian traditions. During the Taliban years in Afghanistan, the government’s rigid adherence to fundamentalist Islam resulted in a ban on the holiday. But in many parts of the country, it continued to be celebrated in secret. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the holiday that resisted regime and religious change for three millennia has also survived the   journeys of Afghan immigrants and refugees to the United States, often via Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. Nowruz and the feasts that accompany it are an important cultural and social link to Afghanistan. Wazhmah Osman is an   writer and filmmaker whose family immigrated to New York City in 1984 after years as refugees in Pakistan. Of all the Afghan traditions that her family has maintained, for her, Nowruz is the most poignant, in part because it had been banned. It also reminds her of her childhood in a cosmopolitan Kabul that no longer exists. ”My first English word was ’hippie,’ ” she says as an example, referring to the   Hippie Trail on which Afghanistan was a popular stop in the ’60s and ’70s. These days, her family comes together at her aunt’s home in Manhattan to celebrate, cooking traditional Afghan meals such as the popular qabuli pilau, a rice dish mixed with caramelized raisins and carrots, and   the sweet Nowruz dessert made with seven symbolic dried fruits. In Northern Virginia, a large Nowruz celebration took place this weekend in Manassas, with nearly 80 families in attendance. Just as it would be back home, the hall was split  —   with one side for men and another for women  —   with a catered buffet of traditional Afghan foods and a band playing Afghan music. In the weeks to come, neighbors and new friends will pay each other visits at home, in lieu of the extended family visits that they would make back in Afghanistan. According to Mohammad Shafiq, a former senior media adviser to NATO who arrived in the U. S. three years ago under the Special Immigrant Visa program (a special program for Afghans and Iraqis who worked closely with the American government or military) Nowruz is ultimately about community. ”For Nowruz, we cook more food than usual . .. so that if someone comes, we should always be prepared,” Shafiq says. And considering that his apartment building alone is home to 24 Afghan families, there will be many such visits. Chicago also hosted the first part of its Nowruz celebrations this weekend in a local hotel the second will take place, as per Nowruz tradition, approximately 13 days later at an outdoor picnic. In the warmer months in Afghanistan, picnics are the social events of the season, with the Nowruz picnic serving as the unofficial kickoff. Samiye Rajabi, a    Afghan refugee, was one of the attendees in Chicago. She arrived in the Windy City by herself in January 2016, as the rest of her family members awaited the finalization of their refugee processing in Turkey, where they had already spent eight years in limbo. While she appreciated Chicago’s Afghan community coming together, she had looked forward to a reunion, and a homier celebration, with her family this year. She was especially homesick for samanak, a special Nowruz sweet paste made of wheat flour she remembered her mother and aunts spending all night preparing it in the   to Nowruz. Since it was a difficult task requiring a lot of strength, she had never taken part. This year, she thought she might. But that was before President Trump put a   moratorium on the processing of all refugees. Rajabi believes that her family was at the very end of its processing, but now, she has four more months to go before a possible reunion. Preserving the food traditions of the Persian New Year takes on an even deeper significance for those who do not have extended Afghan communities to celebrate with. Sabira Ebaady, who refers to herself as ”one of two Afghans in the state of Louisiana” (the other is her younger sister) spent many of her 10 Nowruzes in the United States alone before her sister joined her in New Orleans last year. Their planning for Nowruz began weeks ago, when they let lentils take sprout, a tradition that serves as a physical representation of the process of rebirth. Her lentil sprouts will be the centerpiece of her Nowruz table, or haftseen, one of seven items meant to symbolize renewal. The day before the big feast, she will cook many dishes, including sebzah, a rice dish with green vegetables, which symbolize wealth and health, and the haft mewa (seven fruits) dessert. And then, she will head outdoors to enjoy an   picnic. It’ll be less elaborate than the ones that she remembers from her childhood in Ghazni and among the refugee community in Pakistan. And rather than celebrating atop a scenic hillside, she’ll instead head to a plantation outside New Orleans for the requisite picnic. Eileen Guo is a journalist based in New York City who writes about food, culture and identity. She enjoyed two Nowruzes and numerous picnics as a digital media entrepreneur in Afghanistan. "
"Google will give advertisers more control over where their ads appear and improve its internal controls, as the owner of AdWords and YouTube apologized for ”a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values.” The move comes days after reports of ads ”showing up in YouTube alongside videos of white nationalists and terrorists” prompted both advertising companies and branches of the U. K. government to halt ad campaigns handled by Google, as Adweek reported. ”We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us,” Google Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said in a blog post Tuesday that promised the company would take ”a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content” as of Tuesday. On Friday, the U. K. arm of the Havas agency, whose clients include the BBC and Royal Mail, said it would halt spending on YouTube and Web display ads in Google’s digital advertising network. In doing so, Havas UK CEO Paul Frampton cited a duty to protect clients and ”ensure their brands are not at all compromised” by appearing alongside or seeming to sponsor inappropriate content. The decision by a global marketing group with a U. K. digital budget of more than $200 million to put its dealings with Google on ”pause” followed a recent controversy over YouTube star Felix ”PewDiePie” Kjellberg, who lost a lucrative production contract with Maker Studios and its owner, Walt Disney Co. over ”a series of   jokes and   images in his videos,” as the   reported. As the BBC reports, ”Several high profile companies, including Marks and Spencer, Audi, RBS and L’Oreal, have pulled online advertising from YouTube.” Concerns over inappropriate content have risen despite Google’s coming off a year in 2016 when it ”removed over 100, 000 publishers from our AdSense program, and prevented ads from serving on over 300 million YouTube videos,” as Google U. K. Managing Director Ronan Harris said last week. He said the company has relied on technology to help it manage a system that sees 400 hours of video uploaded every minute. On Tuesday, Google promised a number of changes, from tightening its ad policies and giving advertisers the ability to ”  where they want their ads to appear” to making it easier for advertisers to escalate a problem. Pledging to speed up its review process, Schindler wrote, ”We’ll be hiring significant numbers of people and developing new tools powered by our latest advancements in AI and machine learning to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising.”"
"I was an immigrant’s kid growing up in the 1970s in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York. From an early age I learned that because I carried this weird name and my family ate, dressed and worshipped differently than most of my neighbors, being fluent in American popular culture connected me with others  —   especially the neighborhood boys who often ignored and sometimes threatened me. So I devoured everything I could find about baseball and watched an unhealthy amount of television. But music frustrated me. I had little access to the major currents of American popular music until I was almost into my teens. My folks were not big on recorded music. My father, a scientist, had come from India and never expressed interest in music of any kind. My   mother played a few guitar chords and sang some folk songs. Neither listened to the radio in the car or home. I only knew the performers who appeared on television: Glen Campbell Sonny and Cher the Jackson Five and the cast and guests of Hee Haw. One day in 1975, when I was 9 years old, my father brought home one of those plastic,    Emerson stereo systems. It had a turntable, an   player (as was the style at the time) and   capability. It sat in the living room on a table that we had brought back from India, so the table’s carved rosewood elephants held the stereo system up. I took an instant interest in it, spreading out my baseball cards on the carpet in front of it as I explored FM radio stations. When my father purchased the stereo he also grabbed a pile of a dozen or so LPs from the discount rack at Kmart. Almost every record was terrible: overblown  ’70s psychedelic or progressive rock from unknown bands on tertiary labels folk tinged with Celtic influence and forgettable lyrics what looked like some cheap   or   of older artists. I remember an unbearable album called Keyboard Tales by a musician named Michael Perlitch that begins with a   song called ”Captain Zanzibar.” Most of these albums got played once. But two of them impressed me. Starved of just about anything else, I played them incessantly for years until they were worn and scratched. The first was a Johnny Cash album called Big River. I had watched The Johnny Cash Show on TV, so I knew he was a big deal. It had songs like ”Country Boy” and ”Home of the Blues.” I loved that record. Every song told a clear story and his voice was mesmerizing. The other was an odd collection of Chuck Berry songs. Berry’s likeness appeared nowhere on the album. On the front cover sat a blond woman, cigarette draping from in her mouth, naked except for a   oversized, studded leather jacket. The back cover was a    drawing of an indistinguishable man facing away. It most definitely was not Berry. So I had no idea who Chuck Berry was or that he was born on the banks of the ”Big River” about which Johnny Cash sang. But the first cut on the album changed everything for me. It was ”Sweet Little Rock and Roller.” Unlike all that   muddy folk and   that 1958 song made sense to me. It was tight. It was clear. It conjured emotions and made my feet move. It invited me listen to the elements that made up the song. The best adjective I can find to describe the experience is ”immediate.” It sounded like Chuck Berry was in the living room with me and those wooden elephants, right at that moment. ”Check Me Out,” ”Ramblin’ Rose,” ”Carol” and ”Oh, Baby Doll” filled out that bootleg album. These were songs about dances, cars and girls. Even at that young age I felt the draw, the urgency, to learn and experience those central themes of American male youth. ”Ramblin’ Rose” swung with horns. ”It Hurts Me, Too” was the first pure blues song I ever knew, felt, or memorized. These songs became crucial to me, but I had no idea that they were canonical to the world. For a little, suburban, Indian kid like me, with no older siblings, there was no way to learn about the context of these songs or the importance of Chuck Berry. I knew nothing of his interpretations of traditional blues or his invention of rock guitar. And since none of my friends had heard of him, I assumed Berry was obscure  —   his songs meaningful only for me. For all I knew, ”C. C. Rider” was as marginal as ”Captain Zanzibar.” When I was about 10 I read a profile of The Rolling Stones in Dynamite magazine. By then I had heard every cut on Hot Rocks, the Stones’ first greatest hits collection. My uncle had it and I copied it onto a blank   (as was the style at the time). I can’t say that I recognized much Chuck Berry in the Stones. At first listen cuts like ”Mother’s Little Helper” and ”Sympathy for the Devil” seemed to live on an island. But that Dynamite profile of the Stones opened with a scene of young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards running into each other in London, Mick holding a freshly purchased copy of ”Roll Over Beethoven.” They bonded over it and decided to form a band. Only then did I realize Chuck Berry was not my personal, geeky infatuation. He was the source of a revolution. I started hearing his echoes as I dug deeper into The Beatles, Stones, The Beach Boys (no kidding) Jimi Hendrix, The Band and The Who. By my high school years I was fully aware that Chuck Berry was a rock saint, if not a god. Even as I dove into The Ramones and The Clash, Berry remained the purest rocker. Though I worshipped The Jam, Berry  —   with his   shoes  —   was the more dapper than the mods. In 1982 I saved up some money to purchase a copy of The Great 28, which was the most comprehensive collection of his studio singles. Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf collections soon followed. But Berry connected it all and remained at the center. His music grew even more personal to me as I actually learned to drive a car and pursued romantic attention from actual, living girls. All through high school I hoped that I might soon grow into a ”Brown Eyed Handsome Man.” ”Back in the U. S. A.” became my anthem when my family would spend months at a time in India, where I grew terribly homesick and craved a hamburger. I got chills when I saw Simon and Garfunkel cover ”Maybellene” in their 1982   concert in Central Park. ”Roll Over Beethoven” became the bridge between Berry and The Beatles, whom I’d already dug since I was about 7 after I had seen Help! on television. Once that all came together for me, I started to think about influences and histories. Discerning interconnected patterns among expressions, technologies and social forces became the defining theme of my life’s work. I first worked those chops by thinking about Chuck Berry. As I thought back about my old LP on Sunday, the day I learned Berry had passed away, I assumed it was some bootleg European import. I had never come across it in any of my adult dives into Berry collections. And it does not show up among the major discographies of Berry’s work. It turns out that both the Berry album and the Cash album  —   which also fails to appear in the major Cash discographies  —   were released in the early 1970s by a label called Pickwick Records. Pickwick was notorious for   major hits with   artists and for repackaging albums from old singles that no longer generated sales. Because almost no 1950s and 1960s recording artists owned the rights to their recordings, Pickwick was able to clear the rights cheaply and the artists themselves did not have a say over the presentation or production. And for cover songs, American copyright provides a ”compulsory license” preventing the songwriter from declining to have her or his song recorded by others but guaranteeing royalties. Pickwick was a   in the American music industry. But its enterprising ways and low prices placed these two artists into my life. And for that I will be forever grateful. I have always counted myself lucky that I discovered Chuck Berry before I found The Rolling Stones. It was an accident, of course  —   the product of the Kmart discount bin and a loving father who knew his son wanted some American music but hadn’t a clue what to buy. Chuck Berry gave me a sense that I had a personal soundtrack. And later, through him I had a more personal connection to a much larger world. Chuck Berry was an American. He declared his Americanness loudly and fought to assert his standing as a citizen and a man, even though too many others would deny that of him. If I could feel what he sang about, I could be an American, too. When I was a lonely, insecure teen, that meant much to me. Today, when some violence or ugliness reminds me that my family is not always welcomed by all in America, it still means a lot today. Chuck Berry lighted my path to cultural citizenship. After living half a century and traveling the world, seeing my country lift my hopes by letting my family thrive and then shake me with its hatred and xenophobia, I can still say, ”I’m so glad I’m living in the U. S. A.” Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. His latest book is Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is writing a book about how Facebook affects our lives and politics."
"Coming up in the New York City   scene, Pete Holmes was something of an anomaly, working clean alongside other comics whose jokes were raunchy or sexually explicit. Holmes, who grew up a devout Christian, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that he saw himself as the ”Good Boy” in the early days of his career. ”I was trying to do the comedy that I thought my parents wanted me to do,” Holmes says. ”I was basically picturing [Jesus] in the back of the club, and if I could go up and not say the   I thought he would love me more.” Holmes’ new HBO comedy series, Crashing, draws on his early years as a comic, shortly after his wife left him, when he was finding his voice in comedy as a devout Christian. Though his character struggles to reconcile faith and comedy, Holmes has gradually found his footing on both fronts. He says he no longer worries about offending God on stage. ”I really believe that there’s nothing you can do to increase or decrease the love that God . .. has for you, but there are things you can do or not do that increase your awareness of that love,” he says. ”You want to be plugged in . .. [to] that place where life is beautiful, where wonder abounds.” On how his first marriage ended, In real life, [when] my wife leaves me, I’m 28 years old. I was religious, like the guy on the show. She was the first person I had ever slept with or dated or anything like that, but we had moved upstate to Sleepy Hollow, which is near Tarrytown, N. Y. It’s about an hour driving, maybe 45 minutes, from the city. And we moved there and I was so miserable because . .. this is where I started to learn that comedy was the most important thing to me that I was happy in our marriage, but one of the things that made our marriage so happy was that we were living in Brooklyn and that I was able to do sets as often as I wanted to. So when she left there was a glimmer  —   even when she was breaking the news to me  —   there was a glimmer of like, At least I can go back to comedy. I know that sounds crazy, but I think that’s what we’re trying to do in Crashing, is show that [the character of] Pete is having an affair as well, if that makes sense. He’s cheating on her with comedy. On his devout Christian upbringing  I grew up   but that really is just kind of code, many times, for evangelical, meaning I went on missions, trips when I was [16]. I went to the Amazon to build a house I went to Uganda to build a house. I was building a lot of houses for poor people, and I ran a Bible study at my high school called Mustard Seeds, which is a reference to one of Jesus’ parables about faith. . .. I was the dorky . .. churchy guy. That was my identity. I played, like, a moderately funky bass in the worship choir, you know? I brought   alternatives to parties. . .. I became way more religious than my parents. . .. I took it in, hook, line and sinker, and really went through that very churchy phase. I look like a youth pastor. I almost was a youth pastor! On the pep talk fellow comic T. J. Miller once gave him about how comedians are like priests  I was lonely touring colleges and I called him and he gave me this pep talk that I always remembered. . .. He goes, ”It’s like you’re in service to our comedy god. You have to put things on the altar and sacrifice your time and your leisure and your comfort to the service of this thing. . .. You’re like a traveling priest . .. except you’re better than a priest because you’re not lying. You’re giving people an opportunity to laugh at their fears.” . .. And to experience solidarity . .. where you’re talking about how weak you are and how scared you are and how vulnerable we all are  —   that’s a very therapeutic thing for an audience. And when comedy’s at its best, it can really get to that sort of churchy, spiritual . .. place where people are unified. On recognizing and correcting how his faith made him unfairly judgmental  Being judgmental isn’t just toxic and negative and gross, it’s actually really tiring. Going around and hearing people and then sending it through your filters in your brain of morality and seeing which side that person or that behavior comes out on  —   it’s just no way to live. It’s really a drag. But it also, I think, brought to light that I didn’t believe what I thought I believed in my head. . .. If I really believed, I would’ve been very concerned that all of my friends were going to hell. . .. And I started actually listening to my heart, listening to my intuition and wondering what it was that I really believed. On coming to a new understanding of his faith, and developing a new moral compass,  Part of the process was seeing the rich and true morality of my atheist friends. . .. I went from a lot of Christian friends to almost exclusively atheist friends. And I remember  —   this isn’t that crazy of a story, but it was huge to me  —   I was on the road with a couple of comedians, one of them was T. J. [Miller] and they were both atheists and we’re in this hotel and it had one of those   . .. but they’re always unattended. And [I] just said to them, ”No one’s here. If there’s no God, why don’t . .. I just take these MMs?” And T. J. was like, ”Because we’re doing it for one another. It’s not to please some god somewhere else who’s mad when you steal MMs you’re doing it so the woman who is not at the counter doesn’t get fired when they count the MMs and count the cash.” I started to see that you didn’t need a fear model to be beautifully compassionate and kind to one another."
"A green sea turtle in Thailand that drew international sympathy when it emerged that she had consumed nearly 1, 000 coins thrown into her pool has died. The turtle nicknamed Omsin, the Thai word for ”piggy bank,” had an   emergency surgery to remove the coins earlier this month. But she never woke up from a second emergency surgery. The dean of the veterinary school at Chulalongkorn University told reporters Tuesday that ”the cause of death was intestinal obstruction that blocked Omsin’s protein intake, while nickel toxicity from the coins damaged her immune system,” according to The Associated Press. For years, the turtle reportedly ate the coins that people tossed into her pool in Chonburi province, as The   has reported. The coins became so heavy that her shell cracked. CT scans taken before the turtle’s first surgery clearly show a mass of metal in her innards. And afterward, the veterinarians showed reporters the pile of hundreds of coins that she had consumed. The death of this turtle, believed to be about 25 years old, is prompting some   about a practice that is believed to bring good luck in Thailand. As the Bangkok Post reported, veterinarian Nantarika Chansue told reporters that she wants this tragedy ”to be an example for people in general who may wrongly believe that throwing coins into ponds where there are live animals brings good fortune. It only hurts the animals.” Chansue pointed out one happier aspect, according to the AP: ”She at least had the chance to swim freely and eat happily before she passed.” The vets are hoping that a necropsy might help them learn more about Omsin’s condition, which could help them save other turtles."
"Updated at 10:15 a. m. ET Thursday, Students throughout Boston are getting a radically different view of the world, one laminated     sheet of paper at a time. Beginning last Thursday, Boston Public Schools administrators have been sending social studies teachers in the second, seventh and 11th grades new maps for their classrooms  —   depictions that more accurately portray the sizes of Earth’s continents. When many people picture a map of the world, what they’re probably thinking of is a Mercator projection, a representation that despite its apparent distortions has been around more than 400 years. It’s that map that hangs in most classrooms throughout the U. S. including those in Boston. By contrast, the map known as the Peters projection, which city authorities are now meting out to many of the city’s classrooms, is a relative fledgling. Introduced at a conference in Germany in 1974, historian Arno Peters’ map aims to fix the Mercator’s inaccuracies, which vastly exaggerate the size of land masses approaching the north and south poles  —   and in doing so, help prop up a decidedly eurocentric worldview. Therein lies the rub. ”This is the start of a   effort to decolonize the curriculum in our public schools,” said Colin Rose, assistant superintendent of opportunity and achievement gaps for Boston Public Schools, tells The Guardian. ”  percent of our students are students of color,” Hayden   director of cultural proficiency for BPS, tells member station WBUR. ”Maps that they are presented with generally classify the places that they’re from as small and insignificant. It only seems right that we would present them with an accurate view of themselves.” The issue rests partly in the problem of how to transpose the   shape of Earth onto a   sheet of paper. For Gerardus Mercator  —   the Flemish cartographer who in 1569 came up with the map still most commonly used today  —   the central goal was to support navigation along colonial trade routes. And the central point on the globe for him was, of course, Europe. The trouble is that his projection, which places northern Europe at the heart of the world and shrinks Africa and South America, is far from precise. The Guardian breaks down some of the most notable discrepancies: ”South America is made to look about the same size as Europe, when in fact it is almost twice as large, and Greenland looks roughly the size of Africa when it is actually about 14 times smaller. Alaska looks bigger than Mexico and Germany is in the middle of the picture, not to the north  —   because Mercator moved the equator.” In an email to NPR after this story was published, Bob Abramms, founder of map publisher ODT, clarifies that shift in the equator’s position is not Mercator’s doing, exactly, but rather a function of just how massive his projection unintentionally renders Antarctica. ”The Mercator ’projection’ does have the equator at the ” Abramms writes. ”Only map PUBLISHERS made a decision not to waste paper and ink on a huge Antarctica, so the publishers frequently crop off the continent and then   the map . .. resulting in the equator being   the way down the map.” All this adds up to a view of the world that sets one set of cultures center stage, while marginalizing and even radically shrinking others. And that can have a real effect on students of all backgrounds. ”Once students feel like the school isn’t being truthful, there’s a tendency to shut down and reject information,”   tells WBUR. Enter Peters’ projection  —   which is also known as the   projection, since it’s virtually identical to a projection put forward by the Scottish cartographer James Gall in the 19th century. This vision of the world harbors its own fair share of inaccuracies, but generally it comes closer to depicting the continents as they are. ”The Peters projection has created a lot of controversy over the years because it distorts shapes,” Abramms tells the Guardian, ”but it’s enormously visually important in terms of the scale and position of the terrain on the Earth, showing correct size and proportion of the continents.” ”So this is about maps, but it isn’t about maps,” Rose tells the Boston Globe. ”It’s about a paradigm shift in our district. We’ve had a very fixed view that is very Eurocentric. How do we talk about other viewpoints? This is a great jump off point.” Natacha Scott, Boston Public Schools history and social studies director, believes the   district is the first in the U. S. to make the formal shift. And while the Mercator projections are not getting removed, she tells the Guardian that the influx of Peters projections is already having an effect on the students who encounter them. ”Some of their reactions were quite funny,” she says, ”but it was also amazingly interesting to see them questioning what they thought they knew.”"
"Being pregnant can sometimes feel like traversing a minefield of advice: You want to do the right thing for your baby and yourself, but conflicting input from physicians, relatives, friends and even total strangers makes it difficult to know exactly what is helpful and what is potentially harmful. A group of researchers want women to know that when it comes to exercise, there is a strong consensus of benefit for both the mother and developing fetus. ”Within reason, with adequate cautions, it’s important for [everyone] to get over this fear,” says Alejandro Lucia, a professor of exercise physiology at the European University of Madrid, an author of the viewpoint published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which updated its recommendations in 2015, women without major medical or obstetric complications should get at least 20 to 30 minutes of   aerobic exercise  —   enough to get you moving, while still being able to carry on a conversation  —   on most days of the week. A study published last fall suggests that most women weren’t meeting that recommendation, even when active transport, like walking 10 minutes to the store, was included. For a long time, the belief was that if you weren’t already exercising regularly, pregnancy wasn’t a good time to start, Lucia says. No longer. Now the evidence suggests that it’s actually a good time to begin adding physical activity  —   it can provide health benefits, and pregnancy may be a time when women are particularly open to positive behavior change. Obviously, though, if you’re new to exercise, take it slowly  —   you can work up to that 20 or 30 minutes. The authors say physical activity can prevent excessive weight gain, which can complicate the pregnancy and contribute to obesity. A review of existing research published in 2015 by the Cochrane Library found ”  evidence” that exercise during pregnancy can help prevent gaining too much weight, and may possibly lower the likelihood of a cesarean section, breathing problems in newborns, maternal hypertension and a baby that is significantly bigger than average. And of course, exercise promotes general cardiovascular and muscular health. Even many women with chronic high blood pressure, gestational diabetes or who are overweight or obese should be encouraged to exercise, the researchers say. But there are women who need to be careful with exercise or avoid it. According to the ACOG guidelines, women should avoid aerobic exercise if they have significant heart disease, persistent bleeding in the second or third trimester, severe anemia and risk of premature labor, among other conditions. And certain symptoms, such as contractions or dizziness during exercise, should be checked out ASAP. The bottom line is that women need to make a plan with their physician, taking into account their exercise history, their health, and the risk of pregnancy complications, says James Pivarnik, a professor of kinesiology and epidemiology at Michigan State University. He wasn’t an author of the viewpoint but has conducted research on exercise and pregnancy. So how much is too much? Moderation is the goal. The worry is that   exercise might lead to dehydration and divert blood flow to the muscles instead of the placenta. So the viewpoint recommends avoiding exercise that makes your heart pump at 90 percent or more of its maximum beats per minute. It also recommends against long distance running, more from caution than extensive evidence, and against frequent heavy weight lifting, because it may involve what’s called the Valsalva maneuver. (That’s what you do when you close your mouth, pinch your nose and try to expel air, like you do when you’re popping your ears.) ACOG also recommends against contact sports, hot yoga, and exercises done in the supine position, i. e. lying face up, starting in the second trimester. The upper limits of exercise in trained, elite athletes while pregnant aren’t known, Pivarnik notes, nor is the optimal amount in any individual women. After all, there are anecdotal reports of women who complete running races while pregnant and have perfectly healthy babies. Among the general population and pregnant women specifically, people will respond differently to an exercise program. ”But we know if you do the kind of things they’re talking about here, the odds are your risk will be lower,” he says. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson."
"A few years ago, Dr. Gregory Thomas thought he had finally found the Holy Grail of heart disease. And it was even found in a tomb. He was studying the arteries of    Egyptian mummies, and he thought this was finally it: a culture that would be free of heart disease. Heart disease couldn’t be more than 3, 000 years old, could it? Man, he was disappointed. ”The mummies had a great deal of atherosclerosis in their peripheral arteries,” says Thomas, who directs the MemorialCare Heart  Vascular Institute at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif. ”So our assumption was that plaque in arteries was a universal part of aging.” In other words, no matter how much you exercise, how much kale you eat and how many cigarettes you avoid, heart disease is inevitable. Eventually everyone’s arteries will harden up with some calcium plaque as they age, Thomas thought, increasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Now a group of farmers in Bolivia have blown that theory out of the water, Thomas says. The Tsimane are a native population in the Amazon who make a living by hunting, fishing, foraging and farming. The group has preserved their culture and language for thousands of years. And their way of life is incredibly good at protecting the heart, Thomas and his colleagues reported Friday in The Lancet. Of Tsimane people over age 40, about 85 percent have no atherosclerosis. And nearly   over age 75 were apparently free of arterial plaque. Compare that to Americans  —   who have exactly the opposite statistics. Nearly 85 percent of Americans over age 45 have atherosclerosis. And only 14 percent are free of the plaque. That data means the heart of an    Tsimane has the ”vascular age” of an American in his or her  . And the Tsimane have officially dethroned Japanese women as the group of people with the healthiest hearts in the world, the study reports. The Tsimane now have the lowest levels of coronary artery disease ever recorded. ”I was just floored by the data,” Thomas says. ”The Tsimane have extraordinarily healthy hearts.” So what’s their secret? To figure that out, Thomas and his colleagues measured the amount of calcium deposited in the coronary arteries of more than 700 Tsimanes between age 40 and 94. The team also measured other factors connected to heart disease, such as blood pressure,   index, cholesterol levels and inflammation levels. On the surface, it wasn’t clearcut that the Tsimane’s would have such remarkable heart health. Their risk factors for heart disease are a mixed bag. The group has low blood pressure and low cholesterol, on average. But they have low levels of the ”good” cholesterol and high levels of chronic inflammation, which has been linked to heart disease. In terms of weight: None of the Tsimane are obese but about a quarter of adults qualify as ”overweight,” says Michael Gurven, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who contributed to the study. The average BMI was about 24, which is near the upper end of normal, with a BMI of 25 considered overweight. ”So it’s not that they are ” Gurven says. The Tsimane get a ton of exercise, Gurven says, but it’s not really intense exercise. ”I think there’s a general stereotype that if you’re a   and farmer, that you’re exercising vigorously every day, like the equivalent of running a marathon, and that’s not the case,” Gurven says. ”It’s really just that they’re not sedentary.” Instead the Tsimanes do a lot of walking  —   about 7   miles each day. And they’re active for more than 90 percent of daylight hours. In contrast, Americans spend about half their waking hours sitting down. And finally, there’s diet. When you hear ”” people often think of the   paleodiet. But the Tsimane diet couldn’t be further from that. More than 70 percent of their calories come from carbohydrates  —   ones that are packed with fiber, such as corn, cassava and plantains. The other 30 percent of the calories are split evenly between protein and fat. The Tsimane eat no transfat and very little simple sugars. In contrast, Americans still eat more than a gram of transfat each day and 22 teaspoons of extra sugar. So in the end, what’s the key to their superb heart health? The     diet? The abundance of   exercise? A relatively healthy weight? Gurven says they don’t know yet. But it’s probably a combination. ”You know it’s not exactly the answer people want to hear,” Gurven says. ”There’s no silver bullet against heart disease.” But the findings also show that you don’t have to go to extremes to boost your heart health. A little extra walking, a little less fat and a few pounds off your frame probably work in concert to cut your risk of heart disease."
"”There’s nothing new under the sun   It’s never what you do, but how it’s done,” Nas rapped on ”No Idea’s Original.” Such is the case with the South London singer, songwriter and producer Sampha. His originality lies in delivery and tone, which is why he’s been summoned by some of   and RB’s biggest names years before the release of his first album. (Kanye’s ”Saint Pablo” and Drake’s ”Too Much,” for example, could have lacked emotional value without Sampha’s contributions.) Sampha’s music is more feel everything than feel good, which is why his fans hold him so close to their hearts. The vulnerability on his debut, Process, isn’t hard to dissect, but can be downright agonizing to digest his immediate family has been riddled with disease and ailments, with both his parents succumbing to cancer. Process finds Sampha interpreting this complicated emotional prism  —   and confronting his own mortality through it. Sampha stopped by the NPR offices to perform 3 tracks from Process. The result is a Tiny Desk Concert as intimate as it gets (and that’s saying something). It’s just him, a piano and these   songs that we reckon double as coping mechanisms. Process is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Sampha (vocals, keys) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Bobby Carter, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith Editor: Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"When we announce the winner of our Tiny Desk Contest, it’s always a momentous day. Tank and the Bangas won this year’s Contest, and we’ve been thrilled with the response that the band’s received. We know Tank and her bandmates are going to keep doing great things. But the Contest isn’t just one long push to the day we announce the winner. And it’s about more than just that one winner. It is about everyone  —   our winner included  —   coming together to share that most precious part of themselves: their music. It’s about a community of artists lifting one another up. It is, and has always been, about the undiscovered musicians in this country and the dreams that sustain them. In that spirit, we’re featuring 10 more of the many incredible acts we saw in this year’s Contest. Find a new musician to fall in love with, and spread the word about them."
"A friend of mine, a professor at a university in Canada, confided to me a few days ago that she thinks she might be addicted to email. She feels compelled to check her email all the time. And she feels bad about it. She experiences anxiety if she doesn’t check, and anxiety if she does. Email gets in the way of her productivity at work and makes her feel distracted from family when she is at home. Yup, sounds like addiction to me. Behavioral addiction, especially to the new technologies so prevalent today, is the topic of Adam Alter’s book Irresistible. I couldn’t resist reading his book. Addiction is a topic I return to again and again here at 13. 7. It’s such an important topic, not only because it affects so many of us (according to Alter, about 41 percent have suffered from addiction in the past year)  —   but also because it is such an interesting point of intersection of moral and political and medical and social problems. I’ve also got kids  —   a child, a tween, and a teen  —   and I see every day the power of the screen in shaping their lives. Alter gets a lot right. He avoids the silly reductionism of ”addiction is a disease of the brain.” The brain is a part of the story, of course. But addiction is much more complicated than that. Addictions face backward in the sense that they are learned strategies for coping with real life problems, anxieties, traumas and vacancies. As author Maia Szalavitz argues, they are learned and they are also, in a way, learning disabilities. (Alter discusses Szalavitz in the book.) But they also face outward to the situations and contexts and ”behavioral architectures” of a person’s life. The reason 95 percent of the war veterans who got hooked on heroin when they were in Vietnam managed to simply give up heroin when they got home is that their addictions were, very truly, products of a particular environmental situation (stress of war, boredom, easy access to a cheap supply, etc). Coming home meant getting away from all that. Now part of what is so special about social media and all the new media devices and systems is that they have become, basically, mandatory. You can’t go home and leave them behind. They are everywhere. My friend can’t be a professor who doesn’t read her email. And given that she carries the whole Internet around in her pocket, she carries her triggers with her. Nor can children opt out of social media. The social world of children has migrated onto social media. There is no opting out of a new reality. But there’s another dimension here that Alter illuminates. Video games, social media, gambling and pornography sites, but also wearable devices for keeping track of your fitness, these are designed, and they are designed precisely to fascinate and capture  —   to get you and keep you hooked. Games use, as Alter explains, sonic and visual feedback (”juice”) goals and gradations, challenges and cliffhangers, to lure you and keep you there. By far, the most powerful device for entrapping us is the social dimension. Hot or Not? was an Internet sensation before Facebook because not only did it let you judge other people’s looks, but it let you compare your judgments with those of others  —   and also to submit your own photo for evaluation. Facebook and Instagram are so indispensable, and games like World of Warcraft, so difficult to put on pause, because of their social character. Not that all gamers aim at getting their users hooked. The video game world is a large and diverse one, and Alter explains that some hugely influential designers have taken their games off the market because of how easily they can lead to suffering and abuse. They are not all in it for the money. The book doesn’t really help answer How much is too much? According to Alter, most people use their smartphones way more than they think they do and they’re using them a lot (one to four hours a day). There are, I would propose, two criteria for differentiating between the  ’s integration of technology into the fabric of our lives and behavioral addiction to new technologies. The first is whether the devices are crowding out the rest of our lives. Are they deforming the ability of children, for example, to understand each other and feel empathy, as Louis CK warns (quoted by Alter)? The second is whether our new   are making us feel bad, as with my friend in Canada. My kids use their phones a lot. I worry about this, but when I apply these two criteria, I have to say they’re not addicted. They depend on their phones the way they depend on their shoes. And I’ve never had the sense that they are compelled to use their phones. They might feel a bit compelled to keep in touch with others, but I felt that way, too, when I was their age. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Before Carmencita Misa became bedridden, she was a veritable ”dancing queen,” says her daughter, Charlotte Altieri. ”Even though she would work about 60 hours a week, she would make sure to go out dancing once a week  —   no matter what,” Altieri, says. ”She was the     kind of person, the central nervous system for all her friends.” A massive stroke in March 2014 changed all that. It robbed Misa, 71, of her   memory, her eyesight and her mobility  —   and it left her dependent on a feeding tube for nourishment. Now, she lives in a nursing home. Altieri is 39 and lives in Long Beach, Calif. with her husband and two small children. She can’t provide the   care her mother now gets at the nursing home three miles away  —   all of it paid by  . That’s California’s version of Medicaid, which is government insurance for   people. Advocates for the elderly now worry that Misa and other   seniors all across the U. S. who receive   care in facilities or at home could see their benefits shrink or disappear under   legislation to limit federal Medicaid contributions to states. The proposal is part of a broader GOP plan to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. ”My mom is getting the basic of basic care,” Altieri says. ”If they cut it, I don’t know what to do.” Nationwide, Medicaid provides   care and support to more than 2 million   Americans who are 65 and over. Medicaid is funded jointly by the federal government and the states and pays more than half of all   care in the country  —   ”more than Medicare, private   care insurance and    spending combined,” says Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. And, Salo says, it’s the only public insurance that offers such care on an ongoing basis. Medicare, government insurance for people 65 and older, provides only limited   care to those who need it after being hospitalized. The GOP bill, scheduled for a vote on the floor of the House Thursday, would transform Medicaid from an   system, in which the federal government matches state spending, to one that limits its contribution  —   either giving a fixed amount per enrollee, or a lump sum to the states. Critics say such caps on funding would not accommodate the inevitable hikes in cost that will come from the introduction of expensive new treatments or other cost variables. Congress has already amended the bill to allocate additional money for elderly and disabled people on Medicaid. But Eric Carlson, a directing attorney in the Los Angeles office of the nonprofit group Justice in Aging, says such an allocation would not offset the wide funding gap created by caps on federal spending. ”It doesn’t matter whether it’s a block grant or   cap,” Carlson says. ”Either way the federal government is setting a hard limit on federal funding available, and states are going to be forced to make due with whatever is sent to them. And it’s not going to be enough.” Carlson is   of an analysis released by Justice in Aging that says capping federal Medicaid spending, with either   funding or   payments would harm older Americans, in part by forcing states to cut services for them ”to the bone.” ”It’s really a form of rationing, where you have the care based on the money that’s been budgeted rather than on the needs of the people,” Carlson says. ”And that’s entirely backwards.” In 2015, Medicaid spending topped $552 billion nationwide. People who receive both Medicaid and Medicare, and people with disabilities account for more than half of overall Medicaid spending. In addition to helping   seniors with   care, Medicaid also helps pay for some of their Medicare premiums and copays. Under the GOP proposal, nursing care in a facility would remain a guaranteed Medicaid benefit, though states could reduce how much they spend on it if they were forced to cut their budgets. And Republicans might well attempt to loosen or undo federal requirements on the program, with subsequent legislation that would give states more control. Such a shift would ”decimate Medicaid’s current guarantee of adequate and affordable care,” according to the Justice in Aging analysis. In the meantime, states could do away with benefits not guaranteed under federal law, which include   nursing care, personal care  —   which   covers for qualified beneficiaries  —   and even inpatient and nursing care in mental health facilities for the elderly. A report released last week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office suggests states might cut provider payments or eliminate some of their optional services to fill the funding gap left by the restricted flow of federal money. But Oren Cass, a senior fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute who specializes in   law, says the current system leads to state overspending. And that overspending comes at that expense of other things, like education, he says. Cass doesn’t think the GOP plan would necessarily harm elderly Medicaid beneficiaries. ”A state that wants to continue the spending it does on the elderly can do that if it would rather make cuts elsewhere,” he says. ”Or it can put up more of its own money.” Having more flexibility, Cass says, might appeal to state legislators and health care leaders. ”If you ask California today whether it would rather have Donald Trump run its Medicaid program or run it itself, I think most people there  —   especially liberal people  —   would say they would rather have the state making the rules,” he says. But Pat McGinnis, who heads the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, says that prospect worries her. ”There are so many federal protections under the current Medicaid system,” she says, ”and I think most of those would be gone.” McGinnis worries that current requirements on hospital inpatient and outpatient services could disappear, for example, along with asset protections designed to keep spouses of those on Medicaid from becoming impoverished. For now, however, the debate over the GOP bill is largely speculative, since there may be enough Republicans with serious concerns about the legislation to sink or significantly amend it. As the debate heats up in Washington, Charlotte Altieri of Long Beach remains hopeful that her mother’s nursing home care will be spared any cuts. ”We’re not at some grandiose nursing home right now,” she says. ”Where are we going to find one that costs less than this one?” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR and Kaiser Health News. Stephanie O’Neill is freelance journalist in Los Angeles who covers health care. You can find her on twitter @ReporterSteph."
"Thursday will mark seven years since President Obama signed the   Affordable Care Act before a crowd in the   East Room of the White House. It was the signature legislative moment of his presidency, underscored by   President Biden, who whispered into the president’s ear that it was a ”big f****** deal.” The mic picked up the remark, which created quite a stir. Now, Republicans hope to mark the anniversary with a successful House vote to repeal the law known as Obamacare. Democrats still hope to derail that effort  —   though their best chance lies in complaints about the GOP proposal by conservative Republicans, some of whom label it ”Obamacare Lite.” So it was that Democrats marked the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act on the east steps of the U. S. Capitol building on Wednesday morning. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer were there. Standing behind them were members of the House Democratic Caucus, as well as advocates for keeping the ACA in place  —   a rural hospital administrator from Illinois, the head of the National Physicians Alliance, a millennial entrepreneur who credits the health law with saving her company and a business owner whose family relies on its disability coverage. California Gov. Jerry Brown was there, too. And so was Biden. There were multiple references to Biden’s indelicate moment at the White House on March 23, 2010. ”Now, if we can beat Trumpcare and prevent it from passing, it will be as our former Vice President once said, a ’BFD,’ ” Schumer said. He added, ”Look, no matter how you slice it, Trumpcare is dangerous and would hurt Americans in all 50 states.” Dr. Manan Trivedi, president of the nonprofit National Physicians Alliance, said cuts contained in the GOP sponsored American Health Care Act will harm the fight against opioid addiction, while making it harder to combat disease outbreaks and childhood lead poisoning. He added, ”As the vice president said seven years ago, the Affordable Care Act was a ’big flipping deal,’ and I’ll say that this Republican bill is just a bad flippin’ deal. It’s a bad deal for seniors. It’s a bad deal for children. It’s a bad deal for women. It’s a bad deal if you’re sick, or ever gonna get sick. It’s a bad deal for America.” Pelosi said of the Republican proposal, ”Less care for more money. Pay more, get less. Premiums and    costs will go up. Coverage will be reduced.” The Democratic leader added, ”And all of this to give a tax break to the wealthiest people in our country, and corporate America, especially the pharmaceutical and insurance companies.” Each speaker, in his or her own way, stressed that the Affordable Care Act  —   endangered as it is today  —   remains a very ”big deal.” Biden was the final speaker. He also recalled his long ago quote, saying, ”Thank God my mother wasn’t around when that comment was picked up.” He spoke of how he told Obama back then that the Affordable Care Act would give peace of mind to a lot of people Biden grew up with in places like Scranton, a   town in northeast Pennsylvania. But he also said they knew that the law would need to be improved and adapted once passed. ”Just like when Social Security was passed, there’d have to be improvements made. We’d watch it and see what happens,” Biden said on Wednesday. ”And improvements are all doable. They’re all within our  .” But the former vice president stressed that the way to fix it is not to scrap it. ”Eliminating the Affordable Care Act means eliminating things people badly need.” Biden stepped away from the mic after a relatively short,   speech. Pelosi thanked him for joining them. Biden leaned back into the mic, ”I ain’t going anywhere. This is not going to pass.”"
"Updated at 7:12 p. m. ET, Explosive accusations and countercharges on Wednesday threatened to derail one of Congress’ investigations into the potential connections between President Trump’s 2016 campaign aides and Russia’s meddling in the election. The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, announced that he had learned that    Donald Trump and some of his staff had been caught up in U. S. surveillance of foreign targets overseas in the months after the election. Nunes cited information he said was brought to him by credible sources  —   but did not share it with his fellow Republicans or with the Democrats on the committee. Instead, after making an announcement to reporters at the Capitol, he traveled to the White House because, he said, he needed to brief President Trump. Then Nunes talked to reporters again outside the White House and returned to the Capitol, where he finally discussed his charges with the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, a fellow California lawmaker. Schiff used a late afternoon press conference to denounce the ”extraordinary” conduct by Nunes, saying Nunes had damaged any hope that the regular House Intelligence Committee could pursue a credible, bipartisan investigation into the Russia connections. Instead, Schiff said, Congress must impanel some kind of special committee like the ones it has created after crises in the past, including the terrorist attacks of 2001. ”Today’s events have underscored the imperative of an independent commission,” Schiff said. The twist in the story represented another bizarre zigzag in the often surreal soap opera involving Trump, Russia, the election and his campaign aides. Nunes’ charges followed a report earlier in the day by the Associated Press that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been paid millions by a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin to draft a strategy to improve Putin’s image in the West. And the    Wednesday came only two days after FBI Director James Comey told Nunes’ committee that his investigators have been looking into Trump aides’ connections to Russia since last July. ”I have to hope this is not part of a broader campaign from the White House to deflect from the director’s testimony this week,” Schiff said. Nunes called his actions appropriate given that the material he viewed did not involve Russia and because as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he was doing his job. ”The president needs to know these intelligence reports are out there and I have a duty to tell him that,” Nunes said. But Schiff complained that Nunes did not share whatever material had been brought to him with anyone else on the committee and that all he, other lawmakers and the public had to go on were Nunes’ comments. The chairman’s revelations served to partly vindicate Trump’s March 4 claim on Twitter about being incredulous that President Obama had sunk to ”a new low” by ordering a wiretap of his phones before the election. Trump’s Republican allies  —   including Nunes  —   and Comey all had said there was no evidence of any wiretap. But Nunes said Wednesday his discovery did prove there was more general surveillance of Trump and his camp, apparently as part of legal and routine monitoring by U. S. intelligence of foreign targets overseas. Not only that, Nunes said, the names of Trump and aides were ”unmasked” by American intelligence officers  —   revealed openly in their classified reports as opposed to being listed as, for example, ”U. S. Person 1.” Such names can be revealed to help analysts and   understand what to make of what American spies have collected, but Nunes charged that the intercepts he had viewed weren’t important enough to justify that. Schiff, in his response, said that   incidental collection doesn’t necessarily mean that American intelligence hears a U. S. person talking on the phone to a foreign target. It could involve two foreign spies saying the name of a U. S. person. Schiff also said he understood that most of the names in the intercepts were properly ”masked,” and that Nunes was complaining because the context of the material made it easy to deduce the identities of the people under discussion. By sunset on Wednesday the issue had become a truth vacuum  —   nearly impossible to verify definitively because of the secret nature of the material and the secondhand nature of the accounts about it. Nunes’ accusations help Republicans strengthen a narrative about discontented Obama administration   abusing their powers to spy on the incoming Trump team and, in some cases, leak details about them to the press. A report in the Washington Post describing intercepted conversations between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak ultimately forced Flynn to resign. Republicans want the investigation that Nunes’ committee is leading to be about these issues  —   information security, leaks and the press  —   which is all ground on which they feel comfortable fighting. A second hearing, scheduled for March 28, is set to include   appointees, and Nunes’ disclosure gives Republicans who make up the majority on the committee a new weapon against them. Democrats, however, want the House Intelligence Committee probe to be about Trump’s connections to Russia, like those in the AP story about Manafort and those laid out Monday in an extended opening statement by Schiff. Nunes’ public charges and visit to the White House on Wednesday raise the prospect that Democrats might not go along with any future proceedings to protest what they perceive as the partisan bent of the committee’s investigation. Then the question will become whether Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, would appoint a special independent panel to investigate their own president."
"A Russian billionaire paid former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort millions of dollars to boost the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Associated Press reports. The new allegations arise months after Manafort resigned from the campaign amid concerns over his work for a   political party in Ukraine. ”According to documents that we’ve reviewed, Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian oligarch who wanted him to promote Russian interests,” the AP’s Chad Day tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. ”And in particular, he wrote a memo that outlined this kind of vast plan for him to promote Russian interests in the former Soviet republics  —   and also to specifically benefit the Putin government.” The financial arrangement dates to at least 2006, when Manafort signed a $10 million yearly contract with Russian aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally, Day says. Their business relationship lasted through at least 2009, according to Day’s story for the AP. The report of Manafort’s   work comes days after FBI Director James Comey ”confirmed that his agency is investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia” in last year’s U. S. election, as the   reported. Investigations are also being pursued in Congress. Earlier this week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer sought to minimize Manafort’s involvement with the Trump campaign, saying that Manafort ”played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.” Spicer returned to the topic at Wednesday’s midday briefing. ”Nothing in this morning’s report references any actions by the president, the White House, or any Trump administration official,” Spicer said. He added, ”The report is entirely focused on actions that Paul took a decade ago.” As early as last August, reports emerged that Manafort was the subject of a U. S. investigation into his dealings in Ukraine. And in January, The New York Times reported that Trump associates and campaign officials had ”repeated contacts with Russian intelligence.” In his deal with Deripaska, Manafort promised to counter   sentiment, according to Day and his AP colleague Jeff Horwitz. Citing a strategy memo from 2005, they say Manafort told Deripaska that he would advocate a   agenda both in former republics and ”at the highest levels of the U. S. government  —   the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department.” In response to their report, Day and Horwitz quote a statement from Manafort in which he confirmed that he worked for Deripaska  —   but he also said that characterizing the work as ”inappropriate or nefarious” amounted to a ”smear campaign.” ”My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russia’s political interests,” Manafort told the AP, saying that he instead focused on representing Deripaska in countries where he had investments. Discussing Deripaska’s ties to Putin, Day cites WikiLeaks cables that showed U. S. officials referring to Deripaska as ”one of the top two or three oligarchs that are very close to him.” Manafort has an apartment at Trump Tower in New York and is a veteran of politics and lobbying his career stretches back to Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. His lobbying firm has been known for working on behalf of ”unsavory governments in Nigeria and Kenya, the UNITA rebels in Angola and a group with ties to Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos,” as NPR reported last summer. Initially hired last March as the Trump campaign’s Republican convention manager, Manafort rose to the role of campaign chairman. He resigned in August, shortly after news reports that he had been paid $12. 7 million by the political party of Ukraine’s former   president, Viktor Yanukovych, between 2007 and 2012. As NPR’s Scott Horsley reported when Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign late last summer: ”Manafort’s consulting work in Ukraine was already under a microscope, given Trump’s favorable comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin, an ally of Yanukovych’s. Trump raised eyebrows last month when he said he would consider recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Russia invaded the Ukrainian territory in 2014 after Yanukovych was ousted in a   revolt. ”The Trump campaign also worked to weaken language in the GOP platform on aid to Ukraine’s   government. At the campaign’s urging, platform language calling for the U. S. to provide ’lethal defensive weapons’ to Ukraine was watered down to ’appropriate assistance.’ ” Many of the records that snarled Manafort in recent months emerged from Ukraine’s new   bureau. In this case, Day says his reporting ”is not just based on anonymous sources. . .. The bedrock of this story is based on documents that we’ve authenticated, and documents that have been corroborated through sources.”"
"School districts must give students with disabilities the chance to make meaningful, ”appropriately ambitious” progress, the Supreme Court said Wednesday in an   ruling. The decision in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District could have   implications for the 6. 5 million students with disabilities in the United States. The case centered on a child with autism and attention deficit disorder whose parents removed him from public school in fifth grade. He went on to make better progress in a private school. His parents argued that the individualized education plan provided by the public school was inadequate, and they sued to compel the school district to pay his private school tuition. The Supreme Court today sided with the family, overturning a lower court ruling in the school district’s favor. The federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act guarantees a ”free appropriate public education” to all students with disabilities. Today’s opinion held that ”appropriate” goes further than what the lower courts had held. ”It cannot be right that the IDEA generally contemplates   advancement for children with disabilities who are fully integrated in the regular classroom, but is satisfied with barely more than de minimis progress for children who are not,” read the opinion, signed by Chief Justice John Roberts. The case drew a dozen friend of the court briefs from advocates for students with disabilities who argued that it is time to increase rigor, expectations and accommodations for all. ”A standard more meaningful than just above trivial is the norm today,” wrote the National Association of State Directors of Special Education. The ruling seems likely to increase pressure from families and advocates in that direction. Significantly, Judge Neil Gorsuch, currently in confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court’s vacant ninth seat, has repeatedly ruled the other way on similar cases. IDEA’s standard of a ”free appropriate public education,” reads Gorsuch’s opinion in one of these cases, also about an autistic child in Colorado, ”is not an onerous one.” His precedent was directly contradicted by the Supreme Court this week.  Texas Sen. John Cornyn questioned him in light of this new ruling during his hearing, asking: ”Why . .. did you want to lower the bar so low? ” Gorsuch responded that he had made a mistake. ”I was wrong, Senator, because I was bound by circuit precedent, and I’m sorry.”"
"In a hearing that stretched through nearly 12 hours Tuesday, the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch took a long step toward Senate confirmation. Barring an utterly unforeseen reversal when the questioning resumes Wednesday, observers expect Judiciary Committee approval along party lines on April 3 and a similar win on the Senate floor. Twenty senators took turns asking questions for half an hour each. The Republicans tried to get the country to share their affinity for the nominee. The Democrats tried to tie him to President Trump. The nominee himself tried to project an affable, likable and even folksy persona to go with his stellar legal credentials. Of course, many who tuned in may have just been trying to stay awake. If you follow Supreme Court jurisprudence obsessively and can use the phrase stare decisis in a sentence, you were mesmerized. Otherwise, you were more likely anesthetized. The proceedings simply did not live up to the expectations of those who witnessed the battles over High Court nominees in each of the past five presidencies  —   some of which made for high drama, indeed. To some degree, this was testament to Gorsuch’s own temperament. He kept an even keel throughout the day, rarely betraying more than a hint of impatience or pique. He smiled a lot, made jokes about family and matched the mood of each of his interrogators. Ever hear of ”mutton busting?” Gorsuch explained it was bronco busting for kids (they hang on to handfuls of wool on the backs of sheep). We heard more than once about how, at the age of 9, he was walking precincts for his politician mother. And then there were those games of HORSE the Supreme Court clerks played with Justice Byron White. .. But there were also sober exegeses about sending people to federal prison ”for a long, long time” and the sanctity of human life at all stages and the prime importance of limiting the reach of the federal government. By day’s end there were surely those who had been charmed and won over by the mixture of erudition and aw shucks. But there were also those who heard legal theories and attitudes akin to those of current Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. Supreme Court litigator Tom Goldstein, who also founded SCOTUSBlog, offered the personal assessment that Gorsuch on some issues might be closer to Justice Clarence Thomas, the current court’s undisputed anchor on the right. The memory of Thomas’s confirmation hearings in 1991 was one of several ghosts (or penumbra, to borrow a term from the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade) emanating around the edges of Tuesday’s session. Thomas was nominated to the top court in 1991 by President George H. W. Bush, replacing Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to reach that pinnacle. Thomas squeaked through on a narrow Senate vote, mostly because he was accused of sexual harassment by a former colleague (Anita Hill). But even before Hill’s accusations emerged, Thomas was raising eyebrows by avoiding answering questions about controversies. Asked about Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide, Thomas insisted he had not formed an opinion about it  —   even though he was a law school student when the ruling shocked the nation in 1973. Democrats greeted that bit of Thomas memoir with incredulity, but they knew why Thomas was refusing to engage. In the late 1980s, a more truculent acolyte of conservative judicial theory, Robert Bork, had been named to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan. Through tempestuous days of hearings, Bork espoused his     theories of the Constitution and said he was looking forward to ”an intellectual feast.” The Democrats grilling Bork in 1987 had just taken back control of the Senate majority and were spoiling for a fight with Reagan. Bork gave them one, and it turned out to be one they could win. Bork was rejected first by the Judiciary Committee and then by the full Senate. To this day, some in Washington cite the Bork episode as the bilious wellspring of extreme partisanship so familiar in the capital for 30 years since. Following those traumatic interludes, the naming of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 by President Bill Clinton was something of a relief. Ginsburg was the court’s second woman and she was magisterial in her hearings. She set parameters for a nominee, talking about how even a hint of her predisposition toward a given case or question would undermine the entire judicial system. Things got more contentious again when President George W. Bush nominated two hardcore conservatives in 2005: eventual Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Both followed the ”Ginsburg standard” to the letter, deflecting questions about key cases and legal issues. The Republican majority in the Senate meant both would glide through so long as Democrats were denied a plausible cause for a filibuster. No filibuster came about, but Alito came closest to such a challenge. He was not as glossy as Roberts, and Democrats entertained thoughts of drawing a line in the sand. Then came the day Alito’s wife left one of the hearings in tears, overcome by a litany of nasty things being said about her husband. The video and still pictures played and played, and that was that. President Barack Obama had the distinction of nominating not one but two women to the top court. The first was Sonia Sotomayor, who got some flak for her statements about ”a wise Latina” making better decisions in some cases. Her hearings were also fraught with racial overtones because, as an appellate judge, she had ruled in a controversial case regarding firefighters and race  —   one from which Republicans such as Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (now the U. S. attorney general) thought she should recuse herself. But Sotomayor was confident and a touch defiant in her hearings, and Democrats had nearly 60 seats in the Senate at the time. Obama’s next choice was the witty and, at times, acerbic Elana Kagan, who 15 years earlier had penned a Harvard Law Review article calling the   hearings for the Supreme Court ”a vapid and hollow charade” because the nominees gave ”evasive answers.” When Kagan’s own turn in the dock arrived, she was a good deal more circumspect in her own answers, as well. All these nominees went before the bright lights and cameras in the Senate hearing room amidst an atmosphere of apprehension and uncertainty. Would there be a landmine in the road, a torpedo in the water? It was as if the defeat of Bork and the   of Thomas had heightened the natural anxiety attached to a position of such historical significance. There is, by contrast, almost no tension at all around the Gorsuch nomination. He is all but certain to be confirmed. Much of the intrigue and drama is gone when you know that the Senate’s Republicans can either confirm him with their own majority of 52 votes or, in the event of a filibuster, change the Senate rules to prevail. But the Democrats, driven by the   rage of their own base, will continue to resist Gorsuch as a surrogate for Trump, whom Sen. Richard Blumenthal spoke of as ”the elephant in the room.” They will fashion Trump’s vow to nominate a judge ”who will overturn Roe v. Wade” as an albatross around Gorsuch’s neck. They will pound away at his curious opinion in the TransAmerica Trucking case involving a truck driver fired for leaving his disabled rig in subzero weather. The court on which Gorsuch serves sided with the trucker, Gorsuch went with the employer. Blumenthal and other Democrats also brought up Trump’s disparagement of the Hispanic judge in the Trump University fraud case. Gorsuch repeated his earlier statement that: ”Attacks on judges’ integrity are disheartening and demoralizing.” The White House immediately sent a Tweet saying this remark was not meant to pertain to the president. This claim prompted guffaws and disbelief, and for a time distracted from the overall smoothness of the Gorsuch performance. It is not unusual for the opposition party to put the sitting president on trial in a hearing for one of the president’s nominees. But in this case, it is not likely to work. In personality, resume and demeanor, Gorsuch remains too much the   for the two men to be equated in the public imagination. And that is likely to be the bottom line on these hearings and the coming votes in the committee and the full Senate."
"Updated at 4:30 a. m. ET Thursday, British authorities have made eight arrests in their investigation into Wednesday’s attack in London, police said Thursday morning. Mark Rowley, the national lead for counterterrorism policing, told reporters that there were four dead, including the attacker, and 29 people have been treated in hospitals. Seven people are in critical condition, he said. Police had earlier said there were five dead including the attacker. Overnight, police raided properties, including in London and in the city of Birmingham, which is located in central England to the northwest of London. Rowley said police have searched six addresses in connection with the investigation. ”It is still our belief  —   which continues to be born out by our investigation  —   that this attacker acted alone yesterday and was inspired by international terrorism,” he said, reading from a statement. ”To be explicit  —   at this stage, we have no specific information about further threats to the public.” The attack happened midday Wednesday, near the U. K. Parliament building. An assailant killed two civilians and a police officer before being shot to death, British authorities say. Police described it as a terrorist incident Wednesday. Rowley said police believe they know, but aren’t ready to release, the name of the man they believe was a single attacker. Rowley requested that journalists refrain from ”unnecessary reporting” while investigators check into the suspect’s background and any associates. He said police suspect the attack was inspired by Islamist extremism. He identified the police officer who was killed as Keith Palmer, 48, an officer for 15 years and a husband and father. Rowley said the public will see more police officers on patrol, especially in crowded places and ”iconic locations.” Prime Minister Theresa May condemned the attack as ”sick and depraved” in remarks on Wednesday evening. Authorities say a small SUV barreled into pedestrians along the sidewalk of Westminster Bridge, causing multiple ”catastrophic injuries” to pedestrians. Rowley said he believes this is where the civilian deaths occurred. Three police officers, who happened to be returning from a commendation ceremony, were also injured by the vehicle, he said. Three teenage French students on a school trip to London were also among the wounded, Reuters reports. A woman was found in the Thames after the attack, alive but injured how she fell in the river is not clear. After striking the pedestrians on the bridge, the SUV then crashed into the fence that surrounds Parliament. A man armed with a knife emerged and stabbed a police officer before being shot to death by police. British law enforcement officers do not typically carry guns, but the Metropolitan Police said on Twitter that armed officers were among the law enforcement personnel ”on scene and dealing with the incident.” The officer who was fatally stabbed was not armed, Rowley said. The British press reports that a member of Parliament was among the people providing first aid to the police officer who was stabbed. Photographs show Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood, his face bloodied, crouched at the heart of a group of emergency responders. Ellwood is a former soldier whose brother died in the 2002 terrorist attack in Bali, The Telegraph reports. The U. K. House of Commons was put under lockdown, as NPR’s Frank Langfitt in London reports. Here’s more from Frank on how the incident unfolded, beginning with the events on Westminster Bridge: ”This is the bridge that goes right up to Big Ben  —   it crosses the Thames. And it appears that a vehicle went across the bridge [and] went down the sidewalk. And we can see from aerial helicopter shots that in fact there are at least four or five people being treated, lying on sidewalk. Then it came across the bridge [and] crashed into a gate the front end is smashed up. ”And then somehow a man . .. got actually inside the gates of the Parliament building and apparently stabbed a police officer.” House of Commons business was suspended for approximately 15 minutes before Commons Leader David Lidington told members of Parliament about the situation, saying a police officer had been stabbed and the alleged assailant shot by armed police. During the lockdown, members of the House of Commons nearly filled the chamber’s famed green benches  —   moments earlier, the benches sat empty after a sparsely attended debate over pension plan rules. MPs later voted to adjourn Parliament for the remainder of the day. But Parliament says it will return to its normal schedule Thursday. ”For this to happen right in the heart of the city is very shocking,” Frank added. It’s also surprising that an attacker appears to have gotten into the heavily fortified premises of Parliament. The nearby Westminster metro station was closed ”due to a police investigation,” city authorities said Wednesday, and police asked members of the public to steer clear of the area. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said President Trump spoke with the prime minister. ”The victims in this are in our thoughts and our prayers. The city of London and her majesty’s government have the full support of the U. S. government in responding to the attack and bringing those to justice who are responsible. This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"In August 2016, an outbreak of mumps began in Arkansas. Since then, there have been nearly 3, 000 cases of the disease across 33 counties in the state. As a public health practitioner, I wondered: Why did this outbreak take off? My team at HealthMap, a computational epidemiology lab based out of Boston Children’s Hospital, began by rounding up as much data as we could. We quickly discovered that the Arkansas Department of Health was releasing   PDF reports on the outbreak. The reports broke down cases by county, age and school district (many of the people who have contracted mumps in the Arkansas outbreak are children). But there were no historical archives that could give us a sense of how the outbreak had grown over time. So we turned to a tool called the HealthMap Digital Surveillance System, which collects social media reports and news about public health issues around the world and turns them into usable epidemiological data. (For example, this blog previously reported on how we used our surveillance system to collect Google search and participatory public health data to track and predict flu outbreaks.) From the HealthMap data about the mumps outbreak, we were able to estimate the total number of cases that had occurred since August 2016. At that point, we had all the information we needed to tackle a more difficult question: What could the data tell us about vaccination in communities affected by the outbreak? Before we get to our answer to that question, let’s talk about mumps. Mumps, like measles and rubella, is extremely contagious. Because of this, the    or MMR, vaccine is given in two doses. Even with both doses, the vaccine is imperfect. One out of every 10 individuals who receives it remains susceptible to the mumps virus. In the event of a mumps outbreak, some people who get sick will be people who were vaccinated how many depends on what percentage of the people in the affected community are vaccinated. For a disease as contagious as mumps, a     vaccination rate as high as 96 percent may be necessary to prevent active transmission of the virus, maintaining   herd immunity. When the vaccination rate drops, herd immunity breaks down and outbreaks can take off. The Arkansas Department of Health doesn’t generally report   vaccination statistics to the public. But it has been collecting   data on vaccination from individuals who were diagnosed with mumps during this particular outbreak. In the department’s latest report, an average of about 70 percent of people who got mumps said they had received both doses of the mumps vaccine. However, studies have shown that   vaccination rates are typically 1. 5 to 2 times greater than actual vaccination rates. This means that the true   vaccination rate among mumps cases in Arkansas was probably closer to 35 percent to 46 percent. But what about vaccination rates in the larger communities that these cases came from? After pairing our surveillance data with mathematical modeling methods, we estimated that the average   vaccination rate in communities affected by the outbreak was likely no higher than 89 percent and may have been as low as 70 percent, well below that ideal rate of 96 percent. Our complete methodology can be found in a study published Wednesday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. As vaccine hesitancy gains ground in the United States, we place ourselves at risk for   diseases like measles, mumps and rubella. While these childhood illnesses aren’t fatal to most people, those who are most susceptible to serious adverse effects, such as children under the age of 1 and cancer patients, are often those who can’t be vaccinated. And this is why herd immunity is so important. When we vaccinate, we protect not only ourselves but the most vulnerable members of our communities, too. After our study and this blog post were originally published, Dr. Dirk Haselow, the state epidemiologist and outbreak response medical director for the Arkansas Department of Health, contacted Shots to say that all vaccination rates among children in the ongoing mumps outbreak have been validated via immunization registry. However, validation of vaccination rates among adults above the age of 20 has been tricky. ”Up until 2013, our immunization registry was not allowed to retain adult immunizations,” said Haselow. Because of this legislative issue, the Arkansas Department of Health has been collecting   vaccination rates among adults in this age group. As I explain, the mumps vaccine isn’t 100 percent effective. Because of this, some individuals remain vulnerable to the mumps virus despite receiving the vaccine. That said, Haselow emphasized the safety and utility of the mumps vaccine. Though the vaccine isn’t perfect, it seems to prevent severe symptoms among the unlucky few who are vaccinated but still get sick. Furthermore, the majority of individuals who receive both doses of the vaccine are successfully protected by it. Because of this, the Arkansas Department of Health recommends that both children and adults check with their health care providers to ensure that they are sufficiently vaccinated against mumps. Maimuna Majumder is an engineering systems Ph. D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a computational epidemiology research fellow at HealthMap. Find her on Twitter @maiamajumder."
"Angela Chen makes money hawking her ties to important people, running a consulting firm that helps companies connect with Asia’s power players. So it inevitably attracted notice when Chen spent nearly $16 million recently to buy a   Park Avenue penthouse owned by President Trump himself. The February deal, which was first reported by Mother Jones, underscores one of the problems posed by Trump’s ongoing business interests. Trump famously made his mark in real estate, a business where prices inevitably fluctuate, making it possible to hide attempts to influence the president. ”The nature of his businesses make it much more complicated than it would be if he worked sort of in a commodities kind of business, with a public corporation. But he has a family, private business surrounded by secrecy in markets that are not transparent,” says Robert Weissman, president of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen. The issue is especially problematic because Trump has long done business with foreign buyers, especially those from Russia and China. Reuters reported recently that at least 63 people with Russian passports or addresses had spent nearly $100 million buying real estate at seven   properties in Florida. Sometimes, those buyers have had what can best be described as shady pasts, such as David Bogatin, who was identified by U. S. officials as a member of the Semion Mogilevich organized crime family in the 1990s and once reportedly owned five condos in Trump Tower in Manhattan. In 2008, Trump sold a Florida mansion to Russian ”fertilizer king” Dmitry Rybolovlev for almost $100 million, after buying it four years earlier for $41 million. Rybolovlev has denied any wrongdoing, and the purchase took place well before Trump was seen as a plausible presidential candidate. Still, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California questioned FBI Director James Comey about the deal at Monday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing, suggesting that it was an attempt to influence Trump. ”Would a foreign adversary’s oligarch purchasing a home in the United States for 129 percent more than the home was purchased four years before, would that be a tool that a foreign adversary would use to try to recruit, develop or bring somebody on to their side?” Swalwell asked. Comey declined to answer, and in fact, it can be hard to say sometimes what motivates a real estate deal. Take the apartment purchased by Chen, who is described on the website of her firm, Global Alliance Associates, as having developed ”a well deserved reputation as a respected and   advisor on establishing business relationships in China.” Chen also chairs the China Arts Foundation, a nonprofit started by the   daughter of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. The apartment was in Trump Park Avenue, a condo building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner reportedly lived. The sale wasn’t listed and so the property had no initial asking price. But Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers  Consultants, says that in a saturated market for   properties, the sale price seems on the face of it a little on the high side. ”In any transaction, you can have the seller do a little better than the market or a little worse. In my view, the seller did a little better than what the market conditions would suggest,” Miller says. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization said the sale to Chen was above board. ”All transactions, including this one, are vetted in accordance with our ethical guidelines and procedures which include thorough background checks and independent analysis conducted by third parties,” the spokesperson said. Chen did not respond to requests for comment. Was Chen trying to influence the president? It’s hard to say, Public Citizen’s Weissman notes. ”She just put $16 million into the pocket of the president. Did she do that because she just really wanted to buy this penthouse, or did she do that because she wanted to curry favor with the president?” Weissman asks. The only way to take the issue off the table is for Trump to divest himself of the businesses he owns, something he has refused to do, Weissman says."
"Dan Fazio says his phone is ”ringing off the hook” these days. He’s executive director of WAFLA, an organization that helps fruit growers in Washington state find workers  —   and specifically, foreign workers who are allowed to enter the U. S. specifically as seasonal workers on farms. WAFLA takes care of the bureaucratic details. It applies for permission from the Department of Labor to bring in workers for specific jobs. It certifies that it has looked for U. S. citizens to do these jobs and can’t find them. Then it locates people in places like Mexico, or Central America. These ”guest workers” get a special visa, called an   visa, that lets them stay in the country temporarily, usually for no more than 10 months. WAFLA brings them by bus to the fields and orchards of Washington. ”This year, we’ll get labor certifications for over 10, 000 workers,” Fazio says. Interest in WAFLA’s services is surging for two different reasons. There’s a shortage of farm workers across the country. But more recently, it’s also been driven by fear of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. ”We haven’t seen any raids, but we have seen the paranoia,” says Fazio. ”A government vehicle drives by a farm, and all the farm workers run away.” The workers, many of whom are in the country without legal authorization, are worried about deportation. But farm employers are worried, too. Because if they lose their workers, they could also lose their harvest. So they’re getting on the phone to Fazio, looking for workers who are here legally, and won’t run away. Use of these   visas has already been growing in recent years, because farmers are finding it hard to find enough workers. Users of the program include tobacco and sweet potato growers in North Carolina, small organic farms in Pennsylvania, even the Trump Winery, in Virginia. They’re turning to workers like Felipe Montan. Montan’s home is in Veracruz, Mexico. That’s where I reached him, by phone. But he’ll soon leave his family there and get on a bus to North Carolina, to work in sweet potato fields. He’s been doing this for the past ten years. He’ll spend most of the year there. The separation from his family is hard, Montan says, but there’s just not much work at home in Veracruz. He’s also moved to other parts of Mexico, for months at a time, to find work. But the work in North Carolina pays much more. ”It has helped me to improve my house,” he says. ”It has allowed me to pay for education for my kids. I have a daughter who’s in the university.” The guest worker program has plenty of critics. The   visa ties a worker to one employer. That can leave workers vulnerable to abuse or exploitation.  Montan says it’s generally worked out well for him. He gives a lot of credit to a union contract between a group of North Carolina growers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, which is part of the  . These are the only   workers who are covered by a union contract. In California, the country’s biggest agricultural state, guest workers are rare. Most farmers there have refused to use the   program, due to the many regulations that come with it. Employers are required to provide free housing and transportation to workers. They also have to pay a wage that the government sets for each area. This year, in California, that minimum hourly wage is $12. 57. But some of those farmers now are so worried about immigration enforcement that they’re calling Jeanne Malitz, a lawyer in San Diego who specializes in guest worker applications. Malitz is hiring more people in her law firm to handle the workload. ”I don’t sleep very much these days!” she says. I reached Malitz right after she finished talking to farmers in the town of San Luis Obisbo. ”They want to know, what are all the rules? What do we do? Where are we going to get housing?” Malitz says. Last year, nationwide, about 160, 000 farm jobs were filled by guest workers. That comes to about 10 percent of all the jobs in fields and orchards, taking care of planting, pruning, and harvesting. Malitz wouldn’t be surprised if that number doubled over the next five years.  In fact, she’s wondering if the Department of Labor will have enough people to handle all the applications that they’re about to receive."
"It’s not every day that the world gets a new tool that could save 100, 000 children each year. And it’s definitely not every day that the secret to that tool is the same thing that makes space ice cream so memorable. Sounds crazy. But bear with me a moment. Scientists say they have a new vaccine that’s about 70 percent effective against rotavirus  —   a nasty little pathogen that gives children bad diarrhea here in the U. S. but kills more than 200, 000 children each year in developing countries. This oral vaccine isn’t the first for rotavirus. Several versions have been available for more than decade. One of them has drastically slashed the number of rotavirus cases in the U. S. But this is the first rotavirus vaccine specially designed to be effective where kids need it the most  —   in   Africa, scientists report Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. ”The bottom line is: This is a fantastic new development,” says Zulfiqar Bhutta, who studies global health at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and wasn’t involved in the study. All previous rotavirus vaccines need to be refrigerated. So they haven’t been as useful  —   or effective  —   in   Africa or southern Asia, Bhutta says. But this new vaccine can sit at room temperature for years and at temperatures around 100 degrees Fahrenheit for months. So the vaccine  —   called    —   is more likely to work in places where there’s no electricity or health clinics, Bhutta says. ”You don’t have to lug a cold box scores of kilometers to reach kids in very rural places,” he says. ”This is important for increasing the reach of the vaccine, for reaching those who need the vaccine the most  —   the poorest of the poor.” To make the vaccine stable at room temperature, scientists at the Serum Institute of India borrowed a trick from the food world: They   it. They literally dunked the vaccine into liquid nitrogen and then sucked all the water out of it with a vacuum. All that’s left is a dry powder that’s stable sitting on your desk or on a truck driving many miles to a rural area. When the vaccine is ready to be used, a health worker simply dissolves the powder in a salt solution and puts a few drops on a baby’s tongue.   still needs to be approved by the World Health Organization. But it is well on its way, says Rebecca Grais at the nonprofit Epicentre, who led testing of the vaccine. In an experiment that started in 2014, Grais and her colleagues tested   on more than 3, 500 babies in Niger. They found the vaccine was just as safe and effective as those available now. When babies received three doses,   cut the number of severe rotavirus cases by more than  . ”And once it’s approved, the vaccine will be cheaper than current ones,” Grais says. ”We can’t say how much yet, but the price will be lower.”"
"At the State Department on Wednesday, officials from 68 countries and organizations gathered for a   summit to coordinate plans to fight ISIS. This was the first full meeting of the Global Coalition on the Defeat of ISIS since 2014, and a chance for the Trump administration to flesh out what it wants to do differently. So far, it is mainly stepping up a fight that the Obama administration put in motion. But the language is certainly different. While the Obama administration used to talk about the need to ”degrade and destroy” ISIS, the Trump administration speaks only of destroying and defeating the group. ”Degradation of ISIS is not the end goal. We must defeat ISIS,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the gathered officials. ”I recognize there are many pressing challenges in the Middle East, but defeating ISIS is the United States’ No. 1 goal in the region.” Iraq’s prime minister, Haider   said the coalition’s goal is not to contain ISIS but to ”decimate” it. President Trump used to tout his secret plan to defeat ISIS on the campaign trail, but officials gathered for this week’s meeting say they have yet to see it. The French foreign minister,   Ayrault, says administration officials at the conference told him they need more time to finalize a plan, though he says Defense Secretary James Mattis spoke of threats emanating from the   Syrian city of Raqqa and the need to act quickly. Ayrault says France has been advocating for that for a while. Tillerson spoke in a conference room decorated with flags from the coalition members and huge banners saying ”Defeat ISIS.” Tillerson says the U. S. and its partners are promising more than $2 billion this year to help areas that have been liberated from ISIS in Iraq and Syria. At a time of massive budget cuts to his department, though, he also made clear that he is counting on others to do more. Tillerson pointed out that the U. S. provides about 75 percent of the military resources in the fight and a quarter of the humanitarian resources. ”As a coalition, we are not in the business of   or reconstruction,” he said. ”We must ensure that our respective nations’ precious and limited resources are devoted to preventing the resurgence of ISIS and equipping the   communities to take the lead in rebuilding their institutions and returning to stability.” The secretary said in Iraq, the coalition will focus on clearing land mines and returning water and electricity  —   while the Iraqi government will take the lead in rebuilding. Syria, though, is a different story. The key players there  —   the Syrian government and its backers, Russia and Iran  —   are not part of this   coalition. Tillerson offered only some broad hints about next steps there. ”While a more defined course of action is still coming together, I can say the United States will increase our pressure on ISIS and   and we will work to establish interim zones of stability to allow refugees to go home,” he said. Trump has talked about possible safe zones in Syria. That may require more cooperation with Russia  —   and with Turkey, which opposes U. S. support for Kurdish forces that are fighting ISIS."
"Connie Dotts is a big fan of her insurance. ”I like that we can choose our own doctors,” says the    resident of Mesa, Ariz. ”They also have extensive mental health coverage.” Dotts isn’t on some pricey plan, either. She’s among the nearly 2 million people enrolled in Medicaid in Arizona and one of the more than 400, 000 who have signed up since the   state expanded Medicaid in 2013. Her eight prescription drugs are cheap, Dotts says, and she has no copays or premiums. The Medicaid benefits have allowed her to stay on top of her emphysema, depression and osteoarthritis. ”I have torn ligaments in my ankles and I can’t take the time off work to go to physical therapy or surgery,” she says. So she’s grateful to be able to manage her other conditions. Dotts works retail and lives paycheck to paycheck. Without Medicaid, she says, she wouldn’t be able to afford to see a doctor. ”It’s just barely above what they consider livable income. Any extensive medical issues would put an excessive burden on me,” she says. She wouldn’t be eligible for Medicaid, except that Arizona started accepting extra funding from the federal government via the Affordable Care Act in 2014 to raise the income threshold for Medicaid in the state. That enabled Arizona to expand Medicaid to cover more people. The replacement plan the GOP leaders in Congress have proposed would cut off the federal funding for that sort of expanded eligibility after 2020. Swapna Reddy, a professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Science of Health Care Delivery, says as Congress overhauls the health care law, a state like Arizona might particularly suffer. Unlike some states that expanded Medicaid, Arizona saw a rush of people joining the rolls, Reddy says, because it had a ”  uninsured” population. The Republican bill would continue to pay the higher federal rates that the ACA’s Medicaid expansion offered people like Dotts, Reddy says  —   but only if they’re already enrolled in Medicaid, and their personal income stays about the same. ”What we know about the Medicaid population is that they kind of fall in and out of eligibility on a regular basis,” she says, because the amount of money they earn tends to fluctuate. ”So it has the real potential of eradicating Medicaid expansion over a period of time,” Reddy says. The states and the federal government share the cost of Medicaid. Instead of an   entitlement, the bill making its way through Congress right now would cap the federal government’s contribution. But putting a fixed limit on the federal government’s contribution is unlikely to allow Arizona Medicaid to keep up with the growing cost of covering people, Reddy says. ”The states will have to come up with the remaining money to cover these folks,” she says. The Republican health plan would eventually cost Arizona nearly half a billion dollars a year, according to calculations by the state, just to keep the adults with the lowest income in the expansion population insured. It’s a group that Arizona voters actually required the state to cover in 2000 through a ballot initiative. But during the recession in later years, financial pressure led state lawmakers to freeze enrollment for those adults. Scaling back Medicaid could be a particularly risky proposition for Arizona, according to the state program’s administrators, because Arizona is already one of the most efficient, lean programs in the country. Getting locked in at the current funding rates would give other states a leg up, explains Tom Betlach, who runs Medicaid in Arizona. ”If they are able to achieve improved outcomes and reduced costs, they are able to capture those savings,” Betlach says. ”Versus we actually get penalized for being a good steward of taxpayer funds.” Betlach says Arizona needs more control than it currently has over who and what types of treatments and procedures are covered if the federal government intends to give Arizona only a fixed amount of cash. The current federal fight over health care puts the state’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, in a tricky situation. Ducey has said he would like the ACA repealed, but he has also said he doesn’t want hundreds of thousands of people to lose coverage. He has expressed concern that the GOP bill doesn’t give the state enough flexibility. And it wasn’t even on Ducey’s watch that Arizona expanded Medicaid. The expansion happened under Jan Brewer, Arizona’s former governor and a Trump ally. To pull that off, Brewer had to band together with Democrats and buck some of her fellow Republicans in the state Legislature, who then sued her over the expansion. In their lawsuit, the legislators claimed that the way the state pays its share  —   a fee on hospitals  —   is unconstitutional. At a recent court hearing for that   lawsuit, Brewer defended her controversial decision to accept the ACA’s expansion funding. ”I think it was the right thing to do,” she said in an interview outside the courtroom. ”It saved lives. It insured more people. It brought money into the state. It kept rural hospitals from being closed down. And today there are tens of thousands of people that are very, very grateful.” But some Republicans, like state Sen. Debbie Lesko, who was among the Arizona legislators who sued Brewer, figured the day would come when the feds would go back on their promise. ”I voted against Medicaid expansion, not because I don’t want people to get health coverage,” Lesko says, ”but because I’m a realist and I know how much we can afford in our budget.” Dozens of states and their legislatures could soon be grappling with the same lean reality, as Republicans in Washington cinch the purse strings tight. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Kaiser Health News and KJZZ. Will Stone is a senior field correspondent for KJZZ."
"Musicians from all over the world are settling back at home, recovering from last week’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. Hundreds of musicians played throughout the week, for crowds big and small. One of this year’s showcases was the first in the festival’s history to feature a lineup made up entirely of   artists. The event took place on a warm Thursday night in the upstairs lounge of a barbecue restaurant in downtown Austin. It was hosted by the Los   nonprofit organization Kollaboration, which supports   creatives.   Melissa Polinar stands on a small raised stage at midnight, playing her acoustic guitar for a small group of people. Toward the end of her set, she pauses between songs to talk a little bit about her struggles breaking into the music industry. ”They were a little confused with what to do with me, in terms of the industry,” she says from the stage. ”There’s this guy who came up to me after my first showcase [and he said] ’Okay, so, you grew up in Texas and you’re an Asian that sings like a black girl that is now writing in Nashville.’ So, as much as people say ’we’ll embrace who you are and your uniqueness’  —   now, it’s a huge movement, but back in the day, I didn’t really have that support.” Polinar starts crying as the crowd cheers her on. ”Tonight is just kind of like a cool little thing,” she says with a shaking voice. ”A lot of people have backed me and believed in me and what I do  —   not because I’m an Asian chick, but because I sing and write songs.” And, laughing a little, she begins to play her last song. The atmosphere is warm and friendly as she finishes her set. People mill around the room, drinks in hand, as they wait for Run River North, the last band of the night, to play.   Reonda, who performed earlier in the night, walks around the room, taking photos. This is her first time playing at SXSW, and she’s really grateful to Kollaboration for the opportunity to play. ”Without them, I wouldn’t be here,” she says. ”You know, I think South by [Southwest] is diverse  —   like they have Japan night, Taiwan night. But there was never anything for Asian Americans, which is kind of  —   I don’t know why that was missing.” That’s not to say that   artists haven’t ever performed at the music festival. It’s just that they haven’t been highlighted in this way. ”There has been a very   history of invisibility and narrow representations of Asian Americans in media,” Christine Minji Chang, Kollaboration’s global executive director, says. That’s exactly what the organization was looking to change with its showcase. In 2015, during her first year at South by Southwest, Chang found herself at a panel of   executives. During the QA portion, she got up and asked if any of them had ever signed an   artist. ”And there was a bit of an awkward pause,” she says. One of the executives said that while he had noticed plenty of   musicians with huge followings on YouTube, signing these artists ultimately came down to one thing. Chang says he told her, ”’I don’t know how we could make this work. I don’t know what to do with them. That’s the way it is in 2015, but it still feels like a risk.’ ” That conversation was the catalyst for her to organize a showcase. ”We have so many amazing   artists and this is bananas!” she says. Chang jokes that her goal is to work herself out of a job. ”It’d be nice if you don’t look at an   artist and go ’I don’t know what to do with you,’ ” she says. ”Like, you can just say, ’All right, perform for me. Let’s hear what you got and then we’ll go from there.’ The art should be what it is.” Alex Hwang, the lead singer of   band Run River North, agrees. ”Our   is something that we can’t not be, but as a band, that shouldn’t be what we’re about,” he says. ”We should have good music for you to listen to.” His band, whose members all happen to be   has a solid following. At the SXSW showcase, as they set up their equipment and run through a sound check, the room gradually fills with people. One of those people, Priscilla Lee, says she’s there to hear Run River North. ”I’m Korean, and I’ve been trying to identify more with my   identity,” Lee says. ”It’s really cool to support artists who also have that same identity.” But others, like Andrew Ramirez and his friend Josh Thomas, are just fans of the music. ”Their sound is pretty unique,” Ramirez says. ”I just love the way they sound. [Josh and I] have seen them live twice, and they put on a great show.” It’s past 1 a. m. when Run River North starts its set, but the crowd’s enthusiasm and energy never flags. And by the time the set is over, the focus isn’t only on the band members’ identities as Asian Americans. It’s also about the music."
"The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has adopted the   a classification system designed to champion women in film. The new rating was created three years ago by Holly Tarquini, executive director of the Bath Film Festival, to ”support women in film and change the stories we see on screen.” The Bath festival created a website for the rating, which says: ”The   is a classification for any film which, Tarquini says that the rating was inspired by the Bechdel test, a system devised by cartoonist Alison Bechdel to identify works of fiction that feature at least two women talking about topics other than a man. Ellen Telje’s ”A” rating did something similar in Swedish cinemas in 2013, but Tarquini broadened the scope for her   to include women’s contributions not just   but behind the camera. At the 2014 Bath Film Festival, where the rating was first introduced, 17 of the 42 films received the  . More than 40 festivals and theater chains have adopted the rating since its inception. Now they’ve been joined by IMDb, an online database of info about films, TV programs and video games, which is a subsidiary of Amazon. With listings of more than 4. 1 million titles (including TV episodes) IMDb’s adoption of the   will significantly broaden the new rating’s reach. IMDb has attached the   to more than 22, 000 films in its listings, and for films that feature all three qualifiers  —   that is, that were written by, directed by, and feature complex women characters  —   the site awards a   rating. Thus far, there are 81 films that have qualified for a   including Clueless, Pixar’s Brave, Belle, My Brilliant Career, and the upcoming The Zookeeper’s Wife. That said, the site does not feature the F or   ratings nearly as prominently as it does, say, such MPAA ratings as   and R. To find   films on IMDb. com you need to use ” ” as a keyword search, and then sort through some 22, 000 titles. Or you can reduce the search by looking only for   titles (of which there are nearly 1, 500) or films with a female protagonist."
"I’ll be honest at first, I feared the whole series was a bit of a dodge. Watching the first episode of Shots Fired  —   Fox’s highly anticipated limited series about a federal investigation into a police shooting in a small North Carolina town  —   one thing became clear rather quickly. The shooting, which draws two hotshot investigators from the Department of Justice, involves the town’s only black police officer, who kills an unarmed, white   . At a time when most broadcast networks struggle to reflect the conversation on race and policing sparked by the deaths of black men like Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Philando Castile  —   more on that later  —   I worried Shots Fired would be another show that looked away, even after the show’s investigators realized that local police were also covering up the death of an unarmed black teen at the hands of a white cop. But Shots Fired   Reggie Rock Bythewood told me he had a specific reason for beginning the   series with the murder of a white teenager by a black police officer. He wanted   viewers to care about the victims of police shootings, too. ”That case . .. forces a segment of the audience to look at it from a different view,” notes Bythewood, a black man whose grandfather was a police officer who gave him ”the talk” about how to handle himself if a racist police officer stopped him for any reason. ”[It] forces people, in a way, to say ’What if that was your child? . .. What if it looked like your son?’ It challenges the audience more.” His wife, Gina   also   the show. She says they were inspired, in part, by the support some people showed for George Zimmerman back in 2013, when he was acquitted of charges resulting from killing unarmed black    Trayvon Martin. ”It was shocking to us after the Zimmerman verdict  —   it was so personal and emotional to us and to our son,” she says, noting that her son cried. ”And then to turn on the TV or go online and see people start to make excuses for everything that happened. And it felt that they weren’t seeing Trayvon as their child.” Both Bythewoods are directors, producers and writers. They’ve got an impressive list of credits together and separately, including the films Love and Basketball, Get on the Bus, and Beyond the Lights and the TV show A Different World. So when they decided to make a TV drama about a police shooting, they tapped an   cast. Richard Dreyfuss plays a wealthy booster of the local police. Helen Hunt is the governor of North Carolina, torn between black residents who fear a coverup of the black teen’s death and white residents who wonder why the Caucasian teen’s death hasn’t become a civil rights issue. Stuck in the middle are the two DOJ representatives, a straight arrow prosecutor played by Stephan James and a rebellious, street smart investigator, played by Sanaa Lathan. There are bits here that shine: When a crowd of black people surrounding one shooting scene is pushed around by police, they whip out smartphones to record video and hold up their hands in a silent, #BlackLivesMatter moment. And Aisha Hinds  —   who is having a moment playing Harriet Tubman on WGN’s Underground and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer on HBO’s movie All the Way  —   is captivating as a local pastor wavering between capitalizing on the controversy and following her values. But for all its ambition, Shots Fired has a lot of clunky dialogue where characters are used to dramatize different sides of an argument, instead of reacting as people. The pastor played by Hinds, for example, yells at the federal prosecutor for coming to town only when a white teen is killed, only to have a white man respond with, ”So only black lives matter?” It’s a bit like an earnest high school civics class debate turned into TV drama. But at least Shots Fired is trying to deal directly with the racial and social impact of questionable police shootings. I’ve been amazed at how many new cop shows this year seem hesitant to focus on the issues that sparked nationwide protests over the past few years. The Department of Justice released a report earlier this year saying the Chicago Police Department was poorly trained and too quick to use excessive force, especially against black and Latino suspects. But when NBC’s Chicago Justice centered an episode on an officer accused of fatally injuring a black suspect during an arrest  —   spoiler alert  —   the officer wasn’t guilty of the crime. And at a time when there are serious questions about how to curb the violence in poor Chicago neighborhoods, Fox’s new series APB depicts a tech billionaire taking over a police precinct in the city, having adventures which feel more escapist than incisive. So kudos to Shots Fired for trying to make a statement, even if it falls short at times. Fox only made six of the limited series’ 10 episodes available to TV critics before the show launches, so I’m hopeful the remaining episodes will improve. Because, given how polarized our   political dialogue has become, it’s great to see an ambitious series tackle a tough social issue by asking viewers to feel a little empathy, first."
"For the first time in birds, researchers say they have found evidence that a New Zealand parrot has the avian equivalent of an infectious laugh. They call it ”positive emotional contagion”  —   which they define as ”outwardly emotional actions that spread from one individual to another.” In humans, this is what happens when one person hears another laugh and also starts cracking up. And in research published in Current Biology, the researchers say that when kea parrots hear a call associated with play, they start playful tussling, aerial acrobatics, or throwing objects into the air. The kea, native to the mountains of New Zealand, is known to be particularly intelligent, curious and social. It’s also nationally endangered. Lead author Raoul Schwing of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna’s Messerli Research Institute tells the   that during the course of his research, he had noticed that the parrots’ warbling call almost always happened during times of play. He and his   from the University of Auckland and the University of Canterbury decided to test the effect of playing recordings of the playful call to parrots at a lookout point in Arthur’s Pass National Park. Schwing says they were trying to determine the meaning of the call  —   was it seen as an invitation to play from another bird? Or was simply hearing this type of call enough to make the bird want to play, even if it wasn’t with the bird making the call? To their surprise, it appears to be the latter. ”In many, many cases, the bird started to play spontaneously when there was no play going on before,” he says. Take a listen to this clip, for example. Schwing says there were two kea parrots sitting quietly for several minutes. The first sound is the researchers playing the play call to two birds. Almost immediately, the birds get excited and start playfully chasing each other. The scientists found this to be common, he says: ”Two birds that weren’t playing at all, and there was no play anywhere else, just start playing with one another. We also have instances of individuals just taking off and then doing aerial acrobatics or grabbing a rock or a stick next to them and starting to toss it around and stuff.” What’s more, he says, ”The moment we stopped playing, it all started going back down to reach   levels.” In their paper, the researchers add that the behavior does not appear to be associated with courtship or ”other social benefits,” like finding food. For controls during the experiment, they also played two other kinds of kea calls, another local bird’s call, and a basic tone of about the same frequency as their play call  —   which all elicited comparatively small responses from the birds. Other animals, such as primates and rats, are also known to demonstrate positive emotional contagion. But its appearance in birds is particularly surprising, Schwing says: ”Unlike rats and primates that we have a direct ancestor with fairly recently . .. we haven’t had a common ancestor with birds since before the dinosaurs.” That may suggest that this behavior evolved in parallel between humans and this kind of bird, he says. ”Even though we really are very distantly related, finding these kind of things that are not just similar but in specific contexts even the same, is fascinating,” Schwing says. He adds that it has implications for how humans should treat these animals."
"By a largely   vote Tuesday, the Senate approved a bill that repeals   hunting restrictions on national wildlife refuges in Alaska. The House already voted last month to abolish those restrictions  —   which were instituted by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2016 to protect predator species from hunters  —   and so the bill now heads to the desk of President Trump, who is widely expected to sign it. The FWS rule facing repeal explicitly prohibited many kinds of ”predator control” on the 16 federally owned refuges in Alaska. That prohibition included a ban on the aerial hunting, live trapping or baiting of predators such as bears and wolves  —   as well as on killing those predators while near their dens or their cubs. Alaska Rep. Don Young, the Republican sponsor of the bill passed Tuesday, says these restrictions represented federal overreach. ”Not only does this action undermine Alaska’s ability to manage fish and wildlife upon refuge lands,” Young said, ”it fundamentally destroys a cooperative relationship between Alaska and the federal government.” Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, also representing Alaska, echoed those concerns Tuesday, saying the restrictions changed the state’s relationship with FWS ”from one of cooperation to subservience,” The Associated Press reports. ”This rule is about Alaska,” he said. Others, like Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, were not convinced. ”This isn’t about states’ rights,” she said, according to the wire service. ”It’s not about prohibiting hunting. . .. It’s about how we can manage these wildlife refuges to the degree that agencies believe are necessary for the preservation of these wildlife heritage areas.” As the Alaska Dispatch News points out, this debate gets to the core of a   dispute: ”At the heart of the disagreement between state and federal wildlife managers is what each group thinks should guide its purpose. The federal government has argued that the goal on refuges and in parks should be biodiversity. The state Board of Game has an interest in ensuring maximum sustained populations for hunting.” Ensuring the ”maximum sustained populations” of commonly hunted prey species like elk, moose and caribou often means reining in the populations of their predators  —   namely, bears and wolves. In the 2016 restrictions, federal regulators argued that the Alaskan Board of Game had gone too far in prioritizing the populations of prey species over predators. It was an argument pursued by several Democratic senators, including New Jersey’s Cory Booker, and environmental groups who were opposed to the rollback. ”This isn’t hunting  —   it’s slaughter,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. ”Killing wolves and bears in this cruel, unsportsmanlike fashion is outrageous, especially in national wildlife refuges that belong to all Americans.” He added: ”Repealing these protections also undermines the critical role predators play in healthy ecosystems.” Still, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska says these objections come from activists unfamiliar with Alaska, where ”state management of fish and wildlife is practically sacrosanct.” ”Opponents will allege that the repeal of this rule will legalize brutal predator control practices,” Murkowski said, according to the Dispatch News. ”The Senate should know that it is already illegal for hunters to use certain practices  —   gas against wolves, traps to bears. You can’t do this in national wildlife refuges in Alaska.” In working to repeal the FWS rule, Republican lawmakers turned again to the Congressional Review Act, a measure they also used to great effect last month in rolling back another   regulation. As we explained then, the CRA is a means to review and cancel regulations issued in the final days of an outgoing administration: ”The move allows the Senate to proceed with a simple majority, thus enabling GOP senators to avoid a filibuster by Democrats.”"
"Chuck Barris, the game show producer, emcee, author and songwriter who died Tuesday at his home in Palisades, N. J. at age 87, was in his time called ”The King of Shlock,” ”The Baron of Bad Taste” and ”The Ayatollah of Trasherola.” (. .. In fairness: It was the ’70s.) Barris was a product of television. One of his first jobs was traveling the country trying to talk local stations into leasing the   technology TelePrompTers. Trying, and failing  —   though he was the first to admit he never tried particularly hard. In a 2003 interview he told The A. V. Club: I would come to the station and dump the equipment there, and you know the engineers: They didn’t have a whole lot to do, so they got a kick out of looking at this crap. Then they would look at it, and I’d take off. Like if I went to Louisville, I’d go the Louisville station and give them the TelePrompTer equipment and say, ”You’re the first station in Louisville that I’m going to, so you have a leg up here. I’m not going to give you a sales pitch, it speaks for itself.” Then I’d take off. I’d go around Louisville, checking out the horses, the big stables, and the countryside, and so on and so forth. I was fired a year later because I hadn’t sold a single TelePrompTer. He then got a job as an NBC page at Rockefeller Center, and parlayed that into a gig backstage at ABC’s American Bandstand  —   where his duties included shadowing Dick Clark to reassure the network that Clark was not taking part in a payola scheme (he wasn’t). During this time, he began writing and producing music, most notably ”Pallisades Park,” which became a hit for Freddy ”Boom Boom” Cannon in 1962  —   peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard charts. ABC placed Barris in charge of its daytime schedule, because television was growing more competitive: NBC and CBS were beginning to program game shows, which were famously cheap to produce, earlier and earlier in the afternoon. Barris felt confident he could come up with better ideas than those he was being pitched, and formed his own production company in 1965. He built his career on game shows, because, as he said in that same A. V. Club interview, ”a) they were inexpensive, and b) if they hit, they hit big, and if they didn’t hit, they could be replaced immediately.” The Dating Game premiered in ABC’s daytime lineup in December 1965. On the show, young, attractive contestants quizzed three prospective  —   but unseen  —   dates for the right to take them out to dinner. It was a simple concept, and the contestant pool was stocked with toned, tanned,   wannabe actors, and the set was gloriously cheesy: a stucco wall splashed with a bright   design scheme  —   think Rubbermaid daisies  —   separated the contestant from Bachelors Nos. 1, 2, and 3. The Dating Game was followed by The Newlywed Game, logically enough, on which newly married couples would guess how their spouses would answer a series of lightly risque questions. The show was responsible for hauling the phrase ”making whoopie”  —   first popularized by a 1928 Broadway tune  —   out of the Great American Songbook and into television history. (Barris would go on to produce subsequent shows that continued to trace the arc of an American marriage, at least as it was popularly portrayed at the time: Three’s a Crowd was built around the question, ”Who knows a man better: his wife, or his secretary?” How’s Your   ? doubled down on its howlingly schticky titular premise and The Family Game assembled adorable tots and beleaguered parents and applied Barris’ ”Who knows whom better?” formula to the mix. None of the three took off.) The ’Gong Show’ Both The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game proved hugely successful for Barris. Not coincidentally, both came in for light criticism for lewdness, and a general    approach to mass entertainment. And then came The Gong Show. Barris was fond of telling interviewers that The Gong Show was originally conceived as a sincere,   showcase of amateur talent. (Note: Here’s a good place to point out that Barris also wrote a book claiming to be a CIA assassin.) According to Barris, it was only after he noticed that most of the acts auditioning for him were hilariously terrible, that he revised the show’s concept. This was a turning point. Barris could easily have continued to enjoy a long and successful career as a producer, behind the scenes of the television industry. But when he replaced original host John Barbour as the show’s emcee, he became the public face of a kind of television loathed by critics, if not the public. Part of it was the show itself, of course: It was cheap (deliberately so) it was crass (exultantly so) and it traded on a specific species of casual   that felt like bad taste  —   and that left one in the viewer’s mouth. But there was also Barris’s style, or lack of it. For a former TelePrompTer salesman, he was famously uncomfortable in front of the camera, and it showed. He attempted to overcorrect by creating a goofy, grinning,   persona partial to silly hats (that he could tilt over his eyes and thus avoid looking into the camera). Where you or I would fill pauses with an ”um” or an ”uh,” he’d forcefully punctuate the end of most phrases with a resounding clap of his hands. It became a signature tic  —   audiences grew to anticipate this move, and frequently joined in. The Gong Show’s premise:   celebrities sit in judgment of a series of amateur acts, who are given a few seconds to sing (or dance, or play the spoons, or spin plates) until they are summarily dismissed by the striking of a huge gong. Barris comes over to ”comfort” them, (”I don’t why they did that, I liked your act. But then again, I like rancid milk. ”) he quizzes the celebrities as to their motivations, at which time they deliver a canned insult. Repeat, until the   is up, at which time any act which was not gonged receives a modest check ($516. 32, originally). The twist: Barris stacked the deck. Producers always included a ringer  —   a recognizably talented act  —   among the gongers. This implicated the viewing audience. Instead of empathizing with the     strivers, we found our sympathies nestled firmly with the conventionally ”good” acts. We wondered to ourselves why the     acts would even go on the show in the first place, to submit themselves to such humiliation. We told ourselves they must be too deluded or egotistical to understand the limits of their talents. We reassured ourselves it was thus OK to laugh at them. Had he not struck upon that formula, television today would look much different than it does. Barris would go back to that well with The $1. 98 Beauty Show, which was to beauty pageants what The Gong Show was to talent shows: something intended as a light spoof which only served to intensify  —   to weaponize  —   the ugliest aspects about the very thing they were ostensibly making fun of. The joke, on The $1. 98 Beauty Show, was that women whose appearance did not conform to the calcified beauty standards of 1970s popular culture (read: Southern California   blondes) would dare to put themselves out there, alongside wannabe   to be judged by the Jamie Farrs and Jaye P. Morgans of the world. The twist: On The $1. 98 Beauty Show, the ringers always lost, because the winners were  . The blonde models would be passed over, and the prize would instead go to a contestant of a certain age,   a certain size. The audience would, dependably, jeer. Legacy, Put that in context: Other popular game shows at the time, like Match Game and The Hollywood Squares, exuded a wholly different sensibility. There was a   glamour to them, because of the relationship between their celebrities and their contestants. On those shows, their various   celebrities seemed like a pantheon of boozy, convivial Greek gods, eagerly inviting contestants to join them on their    Olympus. It’s just a party, they seemed to say. Come in. The relationship between celebrities and contestants on Barris’s shows, despite his   fondness for ”regular people,” was instead one of exclusion. Figures who have achieved a modest level of fame exist as gatekeepers, using ridicule and crowd mentality to keep wannabes from entering. How dare you, they seem to say. Stay out. Plenty of shows before and since The Gong Show have been dubbed schlock a slightly smaller number have even deserved it. For every   cultural touchstone like Playhouse 90 or I, Claudius in television history, there are 10 or 12 My Mother the Cars and The Bachelorettes. Television needs both, and always has. Over his career, Barris dutifully supplied the medium with the kind of schlock that would get ratings  —   and that would encourage audiences to feel superior to the people onscreen. That legacy endures. It’s not pretty, or   or even, strictly speaking, decent. But we go to television, at different times, for different reasons. Sometimes it’s to be uplifted by art, or to be informed by experts, or to bask in the light and warmth of human achievement. Other times, after a bad day, we might just need to say: Geez, look at this guy. That ability to generate, and to run on, our collective disdain, or at least disbelief, later went on to fuel a spate of television talk shows like Jerry Springer, of course. But the feeling that animated The Gong Show  —   ”Can you believe this? That someone put this on TV?”  —   will always be part of the fuel mixture of television. When hosting The Gong Show, Barris would often cut away to commercial the same way: ”We’ll be right back [CLAP] after the break [CLAP] with moooorrre STUFF.” That’s all he ever called it. Stuff. He knew."
"Chuck Barris not only hosted The Gong Show, but he is responsible for creating such iconic TV game shows as The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. Barris died of natural causes Tuesday at his home in Palisades, N. Y. according to publicist Paul Shefrin. On Barris’ gambit into game shows, Variety reports: ”He formed Chuck Barris Productions in 1965 and created The Dating Game, hosted by Jim Lange, which introduced swinging 1960s double entendres to the formerly staid game show genre and ran for 11 out of the next 15 years. In 1966 he launched The Newlywed Game, hosted by Bob Eubanks, which ran for 19 years Game Show Network still airs a version of the show. ”Barris finally made it in front of the camera when he began hosting The Gong Show in 1976. Though it only ran two years on NBC and four years in syndication, the show is still remembered for its wacky spoof of the talent show format. He introduced the amateur contestants dressed in colorful clothing with odd props, with judges Jamie Farr, Jaye P. Morgan and Arte Johnson adding to the goofy atmosphere. Other offbeat characters on the show included ”Gene Gene the Dancing Machine” and Murray Langston, the ”Unknown Comic,” who wore a paper bag over his head. In 1962, before his time in game shows, Barris wrote a popular pop song called ”Palisades Park.” The tribute to the old amusement park in New Jersey was a hit for singer Freddy Cannon. Barris, a Philadelphia native, also put pen to paper in 1984 for his autobiography: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Biography. In it, he claimed to be an assassin for the CIA. The book was turned into a movie in 2002 and was a   directing gig for George Clooney. As far as the CIA assassin claim goes, The Associated Press reports: ”It sounds like he has been standing too close to the gong all those years,” quipped CIA spokesman Tom Crispell. ”Chuck Barris has never been employed by the CIA and the allegation that he was a hired assassin is absurd,” Crispell added. Perhaps the closest Barris got to working for the CIA was when he was hired by a TV network. According to The Hollywood Reporter: ”After working various odd jobs, including traveling around the country selling teleprompters, Barris moved to New York and became an NBC page. He went through a management training program and took a sales job, but then the network fired everyone in the department. ”He then was hired by ABC, which offered him the dubious assignment of tailing Dick Clark, the young and popular host of TV’s American Bandstand, at Philadelphia station  . Barris’ task was to ascertain whether Clark was involved in the illegal practice of payola. ”It was so ridiculous. If I left at 6 o’clock, what’s to say he couldn’t be doing anything nefarious after 6 o’clock?” Barris said. ”Still, he wrote daily memos detailing the   at American Bandstand for about a year, and his notes were presented before a House of Representatives subcommittee in Washington. Ultimately, Clark was absolved of any wrongdoing.” Chuck Barris, who critics called ”The King of Schlock” or ”The Baron of Bad Taste” was 87."
"Sears used to be the titan of American retailing. But now its future is in doubt. Shares of the company’s stock tumbled 12 percent today after the company acknowledged Tuesday in its annual   filing that its future viability is not a sure thing. A   is a report that public companies file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, giving a comprehensive summary of the company’s financial performance. ”Our historical operating results indicate substantial doubt exists related to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the company reported. The company says that it is taking steps to improve its financial position. However, ”we cannot predict, with certainty, the outcome of our actions to generate liquidity, including the availability of additional debt financing, or whether such actions would generate the expected liquidity as currently planned,” it said. Sears Holdings’ CEO, Eddie Lampert, is a hedge fund manager who is also the company’s biggest investor. He has been attempting to orchestrate a turnaround for the brand, which struggles to survive in a retail environment that has become increasingly tricky for physical stores. Sales at locations of Sears and Kmart that have been open at least a year dropped 10. 3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016, the Associated Press reports. Earlier this month, Sears sold off its Craftsman brand of tools to Stanley Black  Decker. The company plans to use the profits from that sale to shore up its pension plan, which Sears acknowledges ties up a significant portion of the company’s cash on an annual basis. A blog post from Sears Holdings’ chief financial officer Jason Hollar seeks to focus attention on what the company is doing to mitigate the risks associated with the company’s current financial situation. ”[W]e are firmly focused on improving the operational performance and financial flexibility of Sears Holdings. This is evident in the decisive actions we have taken in recent months,” he writes. Hollar points to increased liquidity and the restructuring program the company launched last month, which aims to reduce corporate overhead costs and achieve savings through further integration of Sears and Kmart operations. But Noel Hebert, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, says Sears has ”all kinds of issues”: ”Though the company has enough cash to get through 2017, there are plenty of troubling signs, he said. Its declining    ratio, for instance, shows that vendors have been increasingly reluctant to keep the retailer stocked.” The    company lost more than $2 billion dollars last year, the AP reports."
", Men may soon be able to take their own sperm count  —   at home. With a smartphone. Yes, there’s an app for that. You may be asking yourself, why? Low sperm count is a marker for male infertility, a condition that is actually a neglected health issue worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Current methods to diagnose male infertility require laboratory equipment that can cost up to $100, 000. On top of that, standard methods often require a specially trained technician. A team of researchers at Harvard is trying to change that. A smartphone accessory and complementary app allow users to determine male fertility quickly and easily from the privacy of their home.  Led by Hadi Shafiee, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who works on developing new tools for patient care, researchers have developed a rapid infertility diagnostic tool that attaches to a smartphone. The phone attachment works with a smartphone app the researchers created to count the number of sperm and measure motility, which are markers for infertility. The process is fairly simple. First, you load a small amount of a semen sample onto a disposable microchip. Then you put the microchip into the cell phone attachment through a slot. The attachment turns the phone’s camera into a microscope. After the sample is loaded, you run the app, which allows the user to see a video of the sample. Then hit record, and the app analyzes the video to identify sperm cells and track their movements. At no point does semen touch the smartphone. The Harvard team isn’t the first to develop an   fertility test for men, but they are the first to be able to determine sperm concentration as well as motility. The scientists compared the smartphone sperm tracker to current lab equipment by analyzing the same semen samples side by side. They analyzed over 350 semen samples of both infertile and fertile men. The smartphone system was able to identify abnormal sperm samples with 98 percent accuracy. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday. But could the average Joe really do this at home? Shafiee’s group looked at exactly that. ”We wanted to see what happens when this is operated by an untrained user with no scientific background.” he says. Turns out you don’t need any special training to measure your own swimmers. Both untrained and trained users were able to operate the   test without any difficulty. The cell phone attachment is currently designed for use with Android devices, but Shafiee is busy at work designing a version that would work with iPhones. The device costs about $5 to make in the lab. This low cost could help provide   infertility care in developing nations, which often lack the resources for currently available diagnostics. Although the device is designed to test for male infertility, Shafiee thinks it could also help men who have recently undergone a vasectomy. After a vasectomy, men are supposed to have their sperm count tested to tell whether the procedure worked. Unfortunately, many men do not take the time to come back to a clinic and have their sample tested. ”Urologists will love something like this,” says Shafiee. ”They can hand it to the patients and ask them to perform the analysis by themselves.” Ideally, the results would be sent through the app directly to the doctor. Shafiee says the next steps are getting FDA approval, starting a company, and beginning mass production of the devices. ”I am confident that this can go to customers at below 50. 00 dollars when it is ready” says Shafiee. Shafiee says he hopes that in the future, fertility tests for men will be as easy and common as at home pregnancy tests for women."
"A viral social media campaign to fight the looming famine in Somalia has already raised more than $2 million. The goal is to send 60 tons of food to the country. But as the campaign has unfolded, it’s become clear that it’s still a work in progress. With the distribution set for March 27, some critical details are changing or not yet available. The unlikely man behind the plan is French social media celebrity Jerome Jarre (who had 8 million followers on Vine and is now on Snapchat). In a video he posted on social media platforms on March 15, he says he got the idea for the campaign after a volunteer in Somalia called him on the phone to recount watching a    girl die from dehydration. As he put it, ”The movement started with a crazy idea, what if we could convince Turkish Airlines to let us use one of their flights to Somalia? And fill it with food!” Jarre challenged viewers to post on social media with #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia to lobby Turkish Airlines, the only commercial airline he could find that flies to Somalia, to donate a cargo plane for a onetime food delivery. The campaign began to attract other celebrities, including actor Ben Stiller and former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who boosted publicity and donated their own money. Along with Jerome, they formed a   campaign on GoFundMe and called it ”Love Army For Somalia.” Stiller’s foundation is accepting donations for the cause so they are tax deductible.  Filmmaker Casey Niestat created a video to document the   efforts, which was published on March 17 and is now at 3 million pageviews and still trending. Also on the 17th, Turkish airlines responded. Then midday on March 21, the group changed its plans. An announcement by Jérôme Jarre on its GoFundMe page notes: We are learning from multiple experienced NGOs that sending tonnes of     is not the best thing to do. It can crash the local market price and hurt the small businesses there. Plus babies are not able to eat rice.  Instead of buying from Istanbul we will get small NGOs on the ground to buy food directly in Somalia. We will constantly be checking that everything we give to those NGOs is spent on food  water. However, WE HAVE A FULL TURKISH AIRLINES CARGO FLIGHT TO FILL WITH FOOD ! !! (woohoo!) So we’ve decided to use that space (60 Tonnes) to fly special food for malnourished babies. The name of the food is PLUMPY’NUT. The evolving nature of the campaign shows the potential problems with a grassroots humanitarian effort but reveals a trait donors may value just as much as predictability  —     transparency. And there’s a sense of excitement in comments from the donors on the GoFundMe page. ”First cause I donated to,” says one. ”I feel happy.” ”I decided to give to Somalia, because people are dying, and nobody before Jérôme talked about it, to my knowledge,” Déborah Cotillon, a    student in Tours, France, tells NPR via Twitter. For her, one of the most attractive aspects of the campaign was that ”Jerome promised to be completely transparent about what he does with the money.” Humanitarian aid specialists are excited about the attention the campaign is generating for Somalia. Drought has put 3 million people at risk of famine in Somalia, according to the United Nations. The last famine in 2011 killed almost 260, 000 Somalis. The country’s political instability can complicate aid efforts. (Although Jarre’s claim that ”mainstream media” hasn’t ignored the issue isn’t accurate.) And the specialists are glad to hear about the campaign’s change of plans: ”More and more as opposed to flying in goods, we’re looking for local areas” to get food, said Paul Spiegel, a professor and the director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins. What’s more, transport by truck is less costly than by plane and so would be a better   model if the Love Army campaign continues. But the source of the food is just one issue. There’s also the matter of protecting food before it is handed out so it isn’t looted, says Challiss McDonough, a World Food Programme senior regional spokesperson based in Nairobi, Kenya. ”We have the strictest regulations for operations in Somalia because we’ve had to,” says McDonough. The lack of infrastructure and potential for government corruption means goods could be stolen by local officials or other community members if not carefully monitored. WFP has its own warehouse where goods are sent as soon as they’re delivered to a port in Somalia permanent staff constantly checks the stock. When transporters vie for contracts with WFP, they must pay a bond used to reimburse the organization if food is not successfully delivered. These precautions, McDonough says, help donors know their money will go to feeding the people most in need. NPR asked parties involved with the Love Army food delivery about such safeguards. A Turkish Airlines spokesperson did not respond to requests for details about who would be present when the plane landed, how food from the plane would be distributed and whether security measures will be set up. A spokesperson for the GoFundMe campaign could not provide these details by midday March 21. Chris Kindler, a spokesperson for the American Refugee Committee, which is partnering with the campaign to organize the food delivery, also didn’t know these details as of the 21st and was unable to find someone who did know. As for the decision to go with   instead of a variety of foods, Spiegel and McDonough say that changes for grassroots aid efforts are par for the course. The explanation for the switch, they say, reflects positively on the campaign because it shows willingness to incorporate the input of reputable NGOs like the American Refugee Committee. Plumpy’nut is a fortified peanut butter paste is a ”   therapeutic food” that is considered to be beneficial for severely malnourished children. Public health professionals in areas with high rates of malnutrition typically favor distributing the food to feed children   months old but it is nutritious for older children and adults as well. The unconventional nature of the campaign has been a plus, says McDonough: ”This degree of attention [to the Somalian situation] is somewhat unprecedented.” But she still sounds a cautionary note: ”Security is always something that needs to be considered, regardless of what is being transported.” So for the future of the Love Army  —   led by Jarre, Stiller and others  —   may depend on the success of its March 27 distribution. And the group clearly doesn’t want this to be a   campaign. Its #NominatedForSomalia Challenge asks each donor to approach three friends to donate via social media. The goal is to come up with permanent solutions to prevent famine in Somalia. Natalie Jacewicz is a freelance writer and law school student. Follow her @NatalieJacewicz."
"The Food and Drug Administration says at least nine women have died of a rare blood cancer after receiving breast implants, and that the agency is officially acknowledging an association between the implants and the disease. On Tuesday, the agency announced that as of Feb. 1, it had received 359 breast   reports of a rare type of  ’s lymphoma called anaplastic large cell lymphoma, or ALCL. The cancers were more common in women who had implants with textured, rather than smooth, surfaces. About 290, 000 people received breast implants in the U. S. last year, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, which does not track the surface textures of implants in its yearly reports. Of the 359 cases reported to the FDA, 231 had information on the types of implants. Of those, 28 of the cancers were in women who received breast implants with smooth surfaces and 203 were in women who had a version with a textured surface. It is still unclear whether the texturing is actually responsible for the cancer, or is just associated with a higher incidence of the disease. The surfaces of the textured implants are designed to allow tissue to grow around the interstices of the implant surface, explains Dhivya Srinivasa, a plastic surgery resident at the University of Michigan and the lead author on a recent review of data on breast   ALCL worldwide. The texturing can help prevent a surgical complication called capsular contracture, where the scar tissue around the implant becomes hard and painful. ”There’s many kinds of texturing, and different companies do it differently,” Srinivasa says, so it’s difficult to know what specific quality of textured implants could be associated with the cancer. Doctors and researchers have been investigating a connection between breast implants and ALCL for years. The FDA first reported on it back in 2011, but did not cite any reports of deaths from the disease and said there were too few cases to conclude anything beyond a ”possible association between breast implants and ALCL.” Since then, the Plastic Surgery Foundation has launched a reporting system specifically for doctors to report cases of the disease in implant patients. Last year, the World Health Organization classified breast   ALCL as a separate diagnosis, and authorities in Australia and France took steps to track and assess the connection. A study published earlier this year estimated the lifetime prevalence of ALCL in people with textured implants is 33 per 1 million persons. That rate is about 65 times higher than the overall risk of developing ALCL if you do not have breast implants. Women choose to get receive breast implants for multiple reasons, including to replace tissue removed as a result of breast cancer or during cosmetic surgery to make breasts larger or change their shape. More women with breast cancer are choosing to have mastectomies rather than   procedures that leave part of the breast intact. But as NPR’s Patty Neighmond has reported, there is evidence that a full mastectomy with reconstruction ”is more costly and has more complications after surgery than lumpectomy with   irradiation, while the rate of cancer recurrence and survival is essentially the same under both regimens.”"
"A few days ago, one of my students asked me what I was reading, so I told her about Jean Hanff Korelitz’s new novel, called The Devil and Webster. My student’s eyes got wider as I finished lightly summarizing the plot, and she said, with some concern about Korelitz: ”I hope she’s ready for all the angry tweets and emails.” Yeah, I think she probably is. Korelitz’s new novel is a smart,   about the reign of identity politics on college campuses today. That, in itself, is a tricky subject for a white novelist to tackle, unless she or he is a   conservative, which Korelitz is not. But then Korelitz makes matters even more complicated. Her heroine is a Jewish feminist college president named Naomi Roth. Facing off against her are an   professor and a Palestinian undergraduate these two men turn out to be the most ”duplicitous” characters in the story. You see why my student’s eyes widened at what sounds like a deliberately provocative  . Recently, the novelist Lionel Shriver stirred up a lot of criticism on the left by publicly denouncing what she called ” ” fiction constrained by identity politics. Korelitz is not   here rather, she’s asserting the novelist’s right to imagine a story that’s messier than a homily, and characters who are more nuanced than mere emblems. Korelitz’s setting is the fictional Webster College. Webster is an elite liberal arts college in the mode of Amherst or Williams. It used to be a bastion of old boys and old money, but it remade itself in the 1970s now Webster boasts a much more diverse student body, along with a dining hall that serves culturally sensitive cuisine of all nations and a college portfolio divested of all trace elements of nuclear energy and diamond dust. And Webster has its first female president in Naomi Roth. Naomi is our moral center and she couldn’t be more likable: a single mother, astute and beleaguered, wild haired and a tad frumpy. She still harbors a lingering case of ”imposter syndrome” under her proper Eileen Fisher outfits. When the story begins, Naomi has become aware of a growing band of students —   her own daughter among them  —   camped out around ”the Stump,” the epicenter of campus and the traditional gathering place for protests. But this group of protesters is maddeningly   refusing to meet with the administration to discuss their grievances. At one point, Naomi talks with her friend Francine, the director of admissions at Webster, and Francine shrewdly characterizes this new mutation of campus protest in the Internet age. Naomi says: ”My door’s been open for months. . .. What kind of protest declines dialogue with its opponent?” ”A modern one,” Francine said dryly. ”These kids are not like we were. . .. Interaction across the battle lines isn’t what they’re after. . .. They want to represent something to their peers more than they want to gain respect from their opponents.” ”Or accomplish anything,” Naomi said, rolling her eyes. ”Oh, they’re accomplishing plenty. They’re compiling influence. . .. ” ”Gaining ’likes.’ Getting ’retweeted.’ ” ”That’s part of it. No point denying it.” One of the causes of the protest turns out to be the fact that a popular anthropology professor has been denied tenure because he’s   students accuse Webster of institutional racism. Naomi and the tenure committee have to remain silent for legal reasons, even though they know that the professor is guilty of something more damning than suspiciously high ”Rate My Professor” scores complimenting his astronomically inflated grades. When a young student, a Palestinian refugee named Omar Khayal, emerges as the professor’s most eloquent defender, the situation becomes so heated that Naomi has real cause to fear that she’ll be ousted from the presidency of Webster. The Devil and Webster is wittily on target about, among other things, social class, privilege, silencing and   feminist ambivalence about power. It also takes on Korelitz’s home subject, the insanity of the college admissions process. But its central dilemma  —   whether we can form a cosmopolitan community where we affirm our individual identities, yet remain connected to one another  —   is, in realistic fashion, no closer to being resolved by the time we get to the end of the book."
"Acting on a request from three influential U. S. senators, the government’s accountability arm confirmed Tuesday that it will investigate potential abuses of the Orphan Drug Act. The Government Accountability Office still must determine the full scope of the investigation. That scope will take some months, says Chuck Young, GAO’s managing director for public affairs. Earlier this month, Sens. Orrin Hatch,   Chuck Grassley,   and Tom Cotton,  . sent a letter to the GAO and raised the possibility that regulatory or legislative changes might be needed ”to preserve the intent of this vital law” that gives drugmakers lucrative incentives to develop drugs for rare diseases. Grassley’s office said Tuesday it expected the GAO to begin its work in about nine months. The delay is typical, as the agency has a queue of requests it is pursuing. The senators have asked the GAO to ”investigate whether the ODA is still incentivizing product development for diseases with fewer than 200, 000 affected individuals, as intended.” Congress overwhelmingly passed the 1983 Orphan Drug Act to motivate pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for people whose rare diseases had been ignored. Drugs approved as orphans are granted tax incentives and seven years of exclusive rights to market drugs that are needed by fewer than 200, 000 patients in the U. S. In recent months, reports of   and   annual price tags for orphan drugs have amplified   concerns about abuse of the law. The senators’ call for a GAO investigation reflects that sentiment. ”While few will argue against the importance of the development of these drugs, several recent press reports suggest that some pharmaceutical manufacturers might be taking advantage of the multiple designation allowance in the orphan drug approval process,” the letter states. In January, NPR and Kaiser Health News collaborated on an investigation that found the orphan drug program is being manipulated by drugmakers to maximize profits and to protect niche markets for medicines being taken by millions. That investigation found that many drugs that now have orphan status aren’t entirely new. More than 70 were drugs first approved by the Food and Drug Administration for   use. Those include cholesterol blockbuster Crestor, Abilify for psychiatric disorders and the rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira, the world’s   drug. Others are drugs that have received multiple exclusivity periods for two or more rare conditions. The senators asked the GAO for a list of drugs approved or denied orphan status by the FDA. It also asked if resources at the FDA, which oversees the law, have ”kept up with the number of requests” from drugmakers and whether there is consistency in the department’s reviews. And they said it would be important to include patient experiences in the GAO review. The GAO does not provide updates on ongoing work, but rather reports its findings once they complete an assignment. The   drugs have become increasingly popular with pharmaceutical and biotech companies and are expected to comprise 21. 4 percent of worldwide prescription sales by 2022, not including generics, according to consulting firm EvaluatePharma’s 2017 orphan drug report. That’s in part because of the exorbitant prices that can be charged. Of the top 100 drugs in the U. S. the average cost per patient per year for an orphan drug was $140, 443 in 2016, compared with $27, 756 for a   EvaluatePharma said. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent newsroom that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN’s coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation."
"How are a family   in 1983, a string of serial killings in 2014, and a   crack house connected? One answer in Dan Chaon’s disturbing, amazing, masterful new novel, Ill Will by a prison psychiatrist to the novel’s protagonist, Dustin Tillman: ”When you’ve been abused in the way you were, you have a virus. And the virus will demand that you pass it on to someone else. You don’t even have that much of a choice.” So masterful is Chaon’s command of this story that the character’s abuse needs only the roughest of scenes sketched out for readers to know it was horrific. One of the author’s lodestones in this book seems to be that even the kindest people can mete out the unkindest cuts. Mothers punish, or ignore, or frighten their offspring. Fathers have no idea what’s going on, even when they make an effort. The most reliable friends, the ones who will rescue you from drowning, are also the ones who lead you down the garden path, straight to your friendly neighborhood heroin pusher. The American Dream has turned to dread. The dread starts early and ratchets up fast: Dustin is a   psychologist in Cleveland whose seemingly normal childhood was upended one night when his mother, father, aunt, and uncle were killed, purportedly by his cousin Rusty, who is now in prison for the crimes. Dustin and his twin cousins Katelynn and Waverna were sent to live with their maternal Grandmother in a dry corner of Nebraska, where their unhealthy adolescent predilections are allowed too much freedom  —   Dustin spends too many nights in Kate’s bed and Wave (as she prefers to be called) spends too many nights engaging in   Satanic rituals with new friends. Yet even these hijinks turn grim and frightening through the author’s pen he has an incisive perspective on how small acts turn into big terror.   Dustin has a tough road to hoe. His wife is dying of cancer, one of his sons is experimenting with heroin, and one of his patients keeps pushing him to learn more about a series of strange local deaths by drowning. What Dustin does know is painful, but it’s what he doesn’t know that will hurt him, and badly. Chaon has such command over the suspense in his novel that even some narrative experimentation doesn’t derail the horror: At one point the son’s perspective splits into three, and the reader must follow columns on the page, which are a little challenging. Somehow this only adds to the fright. And there’s a lot of fright. Professionally Dustin is the protégé of a famous   expert, and he wrote his dissertation Satanic ritual abuse. But as his world unravels, his own memories do, as well  —   even if he could reclaim them, he wouldn’t know if they were accurate. When exactly did he wake up on the night his parents died? What does his cousin Rusty know? Should Dustin ever try and find out? Some of the most affecting scenes are the ones in which the widowed Dustin snaps back to life for an hour or two and realizes how much he has lost: No wife, no family dinners, no children to guide through life’s troubles. While Dustin trolls his past for truth and, a more sinister storyline emerges. Chaon fans who have read his previous novels will be pleased to know that, as is his wont, the author waits until the uncanniest moment to loop characters and plots together, providing a frightening finish. Nothing is resolved and not everything is explained, but that matters very little. Bethanne Patrick is a freelance writer and critic who tweets @TheBookMaven."
"Picture this: You are in the bathroom, doing your usual thing after breakfast, when you notice blood in the water sitting in your white, porcelain toilet. Scared, you schedule an appointment with a gastroenterologist, who recommends a colonoscopy and a biopsy. It could be cancer, it could be a harmless colitis. But there you are, confronted, perhaps for the first time of your life, with your own mortality. You get to the doctor’s office and are told to wait. Reading some glossy magazine to kill time (pun intended) you notice a peculiar   add: ”Want to live forever? Explore our cryogenics facilities at Alcor Life Extension Foundation.” What a coincidence, you think. Checking the website on your smartphone, you find out that this place actually exists, outside Scottsdale, Arizona. The idea is, in principle, simple. As you die, your body is caught fresh and rushed to a   cylinder filled with liquid nitrogen, where it will be frozen, either in full or just the head, until such time when either the cure for your ailment is available, or the technology for a full brain upload is ready. In both cases, the goal is to give you the possibility to live forever, even if this thing that lives forever is not really you. Or is it? What defines you, anyway? Such is the premise of Mark O’Connell’s outstanding book on transhumanism, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death. O’Connell decides to dive into the transhumanist culture in the best possible way: by traveling the world in search of the key figures in the movement to see what makes them believe so completely that science can, in fact, beat death. The result is a       inquiry into the science and the religious significance of this   human desire to live forever: To become, in effect, a god. ”A man is a god in ruins,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. This quote, which O’Connell places at the book’s opening page, captures the essence of the quest. If man is a failed god, there may be a way to fix this. Since ”The Fall,” we ”lost” our   immortality, and have been looking for ways to regain it. Can science do this? Is mortality merely a scientific question? Suppose that it is  —   and that we can fix it, as we can a headache. Would you pay the price by transferring your ”essence” to a   entity that will hold it, be it silicone or some kind of artificial robot? Can you be you when you don’t have your body? Are you really just transferrable information? As O’Connell meets an extraordinary group of people, from serious scientists and philosophers to wackos, he keeps asking himself this question, knowing fully well his answer: Absolutely not! What makes us human is precisely our fallibility, our connection to our bodies, the existential threat of death. Remove that and we are a huge question mark, something we can’t even contemplate. No thanks, says O’Connell, in a deliciously satiric style, at once lyrical, informative, and captivating. Every page breathes with his humanity, thankfully. For the prospects can be either beatific or terrifying, depending where you come from: Is transhumanism the essence of the Resurrection, bodiless souls basking under the eternal light of the Singularity? Or is it the nightmarish dystopia of a   future, our humanity lost, our struggles forgotten, our creations left behind as irrelevant? Whatever your choice, transhumanism is here to stay. Don’t believe me? Look at your smart phone: the world at your fingertips, its apps an extension of yourself, your digital persona, your connectivity to the global community. Imagine the angst of not having one for one or two days, a sense of loss, of loneliness. Even if the science behind the grand promise of transhumanism remains decidedly elusive, we are already blending with machines. To a large extent, they already define us. How far this will go, and what will happen to us, is left for the future  —   and for those who make it happen. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"Updated at 9:48 p. m. ET, The White House issued an ultimatum to House Republicans on Thursday: Vote for the current GOP health care replacement plan or leave the Affordable Care Act in place and suffer the political consequences. President Trump is done negotiating over the health care bill and wants a vote on Friday, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers. The former South Carolina congressman said that if the House does not pass the bill, the president is moving on to other priorities and leaving the law known as Obamacare in place, a source who was in the meeting tells NPR’s Susan Davis. House Speaker Paul Ryan emerged from the GOP conference meeting to issue a terse statement: ”For seven and a half years we have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it’s collapsing and it’s failing families. And tomorrow we’re proceeding.” Ryan then left the gathering of reporters without taking questions. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy indicated a short time later that the Rules Committee will meet Friday morning to set the terms for debate. He hopes to have a vote by the afternoon so lawmakers can get home for the weekend, but there are still plenty of reasons that a vote could get delayed into Friday. The Republicans’ longtime campaign pledge is in peril just as they have finally wrested control of both the legislative and executive branch. From the start, the health care replacement plan has had Republican defectors from both the right and the center. Thursday’s planned vote was postponed when it became clear the votes were not there to pass the bill. There’s little indication, though, that a delay in the vote could move the whip count. Trump, famous for his   abilities, has tried to woo both unhappy factions of the GOP conference with little success. No consensus was reached during a meeting with the president and the roughly 40 members of the House Freedom Caucus at the White House earlier Thursday. Vice President Pence met with the maybe two dozen moderates in the   Tuesday Group, many of whom are also opposed to the bill. White House press secretary Sean Spicer had insisted  —   about an hour before the delay  —   that the vote for the night was still on. He tried to spin the meeting with the Freedom Caucus as a ”very positive step.” But that’s not the same thing as having the votes. Republican leadership can lose up to 22 Republican votes and still pass the legislation. (That’s if everyone who is supposed to vote does so. With the full 435 House members voting, it takes 218 votes to pass. But there are five vacancies, and Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, who is dealing with the death of his wife, is not expected to vote. That drops the total to 429, a majority of which is 215. That’s the magic number if everyone votes. There are 237 Republicans.) Mark Meadows, a representative from North Carolina and chairman of the Freedom Caucus, emerged after the meeting with the president and said there was still no deal. ”We’re certainly trying to get to yes,” Meadows said, ”but indeed we’ve made very reasonable requests, and we’re hopeful that those reasonable requests will be listened to and ultimately agreed to.” It’s a familiar story  —   Republicans, once again, unable to hold their fractious conference together to get enough votes. It happened continually during the Obama presidency. John Boehner, when he was speaker of the   House, once likened his job to keeping 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow. But this is a crucial first test of Trump’s and Republicans’ ability to govern. It’s the first time in a decade that the GOP has control of the House, Senate and White House. For many members, this is their first time legislating under a Republican president. That has presented opportunity  —   and complication. Throw into the mix that Trump did well in many of the Freedom Caucus’ members’ districts in the presidential election, and you have a complex, intertwined political situation. The Tuesday Group is seen as being steadfast in its objections to the bill  —   that it would drive up the cost for seniors and increase the rolls of the uninsured. That puts a lot on the Freedom Caucus. Despite Trump’s popularity in their districts, many of those Freedom Caucus members have steadfast ideological objections to this bill, too. For one thing, it keeps premiums too high, they believe. Dave Brat, a Virginia representative who defeated former Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said he wants to see an ”ironclad” document from the White House that shows premiums would be lowered under this bill. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would increase premiums as much as 15 to 20 percent in the short run. The caucus believes that to lower those premiums, it’s necessary to cut ”essential health benefits.” Those are types of coverage that insurance companies are required to provide. Of course, that is a nonstarter with moderates. Many of those Freedom Caucus members would also like to eliminate popular provisions, like allowing children to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26 and requiring insurance companies to provide plans for those with   conditions. That, however, is seen as nonnegotiable. And they’d like to see the Medicaid expansion funds to states sunset sooner than 2020, as is proposed in the current bill. The CBO, however, projects 24 million people could lose their health insurance under the Republican health care plan, most of that from the proposed Medicaid rollbacks. That presents Republicans with a potentially very dicey political situation ahead of the midterms and next presidential election. Spicer said Trump was working the phones through 11 p. m. ET Wednesday night. If this bill fails, it would mar an essential image Trump has tried to create of himself  —   of a shrewd businessman who makes the best deals. The song that seemed to snarkily play in the background at nearly every Trump rally in 2016 was the Rolling Stones’ ”You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” The White House seemed to make that its explicit sell to House members who have a problem with the bill. Spicer chided that GOP members ”took free votes” over eight years of the Obama presidency on repealing Obamacare. Now, he said, the party has to ”keep our word.” He added, ”At the end of the day, we can’t make people vote.” But Trump and Ryan have set this bill up as the only vehicle to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. If it doesn’t pass, it endangers their entire agenda."
"Former President Obama took a victory lap Thursday on seventh anniversary of his signature health care law even as Republicans had planned to formally begin the process of gutting it in celebration. But now, it’s the GOP replacement plan that remains on life support. Republicans postponed a planned evening vote in the House, denying them a symbolic chance to make good on their   promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Obama ticked off the law’s successes in a statement released Thursday morning: 20 million more people insured, preexisting conditions covered, young people staying on their parents’ plans until 26, lowered costs for women’s health care and free preventive care. And while he acknowledged the law could get better, he charged that Republicans’ plan would be moving backward. He said: ”So the reality is clear: America is stronger because of the Affordable Care Act. There will always be work to do to reduce costs, stabilize markets, improve quality, and help the millions of Americans who remain uninsured in states that have so far refused to expand Medicaid. ”I’ve always said we should build on this law, just as Americans of both parties worked to improve Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over the years. So if Republicans are serious about lowering costs while expanding coverage to those who need it, and if they’re prepared to work with Democrats and objective evaluators in finding solutions that accomplish those goals  —   that’s something we all should welcome. But we should start from the baseline that any changes will make our health care system better, not worse for hardworking Americans. That should always be our priority. ”The Affordable Care Act is law only because millions of Americans mobilized, and organized, and decided that this fight was about more than health care  —   it was about the character of our country. It was about whether the wealthiest nation on Earth would make sure that neither illness nor twist of fate would rob us of everything we’ve worked so hard to build. It was about whether we look out for one another, as neighbors, and fellow citizens, who care about each other’s success. This fight is still about all that today. And Americans who love their country still have the power to change it.” At the daily White House briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer jabbed that the former president’s lengthy statement came because he was ”feeling time is up” for the law. Spicer insisted this would be the last anniversary Obamacare was celebrated. ”President Obama attempted to move the goalposts on costs, downplaying the skyrocketing premiums, some in the case of over 100 percent in some places, and unaffordable deductibles,” Spicer said. He said the Affordable Care Act was in a ”death spiral.” But his comments came just before Republicans postponed the vote in the House for their alternative, as they were still unable to muster a majority to pass the GOP plan."
"When House Speaker Paul Ryan says he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act so that people can buy insurance that’s right for them, and not something created in Washington, part of what he’s saying is that he wants to get rid of   essential health benefits. That’s a list of 10 general categories of medical care that all insurance policies are required to cover under the Affordable Care Act. Getting rid of that requirement, or trimming it, is central to the Republican strategy, because they say those benefits drive up insurance premiums so much that healthy people won’t buy coverage. But if Republicans repeal that list, they essentially renege on a promise they’ve repeated over and over to voters, that they will protect people with   medical conditions. ”Protections for   conditions only work as long as plans have to cover the services you need because of your   condition,” says Rodney Whitlock, a vice president at the consulting group ML Strategies who was a Republican staffer on the Senate Finance Committee when the Affordable Care Act was passed. ”By repealing [essential health benefits] a plan may no longer have to cover those services, making the protection potentially meaningless.” That’s because if insurance companies don’t have a list of medical services they have to include in their policies, they can sell   policies and then charge extra for specific types of coverage. This isn’t theoretical.   Before the Affordable Care Act went into effect, insurance companies routinely found ways to avoid paying for expensive health care. Beyond refusing to cover people with existing medical conditions, they sold policies that excluded coverage for some medical care, including prenatal care, childbirth and mental health care.  According to the Century Foundation, 9 percent of policies didn’t even cover prescription drugs. A survey by HealthPocket Inc. shows that before Obamacare, only 61 percent of health plans included coverage for mental health care, and that coverage was often limited. People who wanted better coverage could often buy a special plan to add to their basic insurance. But insurers know that those who buy   insurance do so because they need it, or expect to need it in the future, so such plans are quite expensive. That’s especially clear when it comes to maternity care, which has been a frequent target of Republican ire. A 2012 study by the National Women’s Law Center found that, before Obamacare, only about 6 percent of policies available on the individual insurance market included maternity coverage. One plan offered a maternity rider that cost more than $1, 600 a month on top of the regular premium. Many of those policies had   deductibles as high as $10, 000, or did not actually kick in for two years. Even insurance provided by employers had limits for maternity care. A study by Truven found that in 2010, women who had insurance through their employers still paid about $12, 000 to $16, 000 for childbirth. Since maternity care and childbirth costs about $30, 000 for a vaginal delivery, families who had coverage before the Affordable Care Act were essentially prepaying for the care they were getting. That’s because insurers know that only those expecting to have children will buy the coverage. The risk is not spread across a broad population. The point of including essential health benefits in the ACA is to spread the risk of all medical conditions across the entire population. That makes basic insurance policies more expensive, and allows those policies to protect people from more risks. It also means that when people become ill, they are less likely to find that their health plan doesn’t cover the cost of their medical care. ”Before the ACA, plans often had skimpier benefits. If the House bill moves forward without essential health benefits, we are likely to see even skimpier plans than before the ACA,” says Cynthia Cox, associate director of the Program for the Study of Health Reform and Private Insurance at the Kaiser Family Foundation. ”People who have more serious or expensive   conditions may not be able to find any plan that covers their condition,” she says. Insurance companies have also avoided covering people with expensive medical conditions by making their treatment expensive through high copayments and deductibles. According to a 2014 letter signed by 300 patient advocacy groups including the American Lung Association, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the AIDS Institute, some insurance companies are keeping patients away by not covering the medications essential to their treatment, or by covering only a small portion of the costs these patients are certain to incur. The federal government isn’t alone in requiring minimum benefits. ”States have their own essential health benefit rules, so insurers would have to adhere to those,” says Avik Roy, a conservative policy analyst and president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. However,   benefit requirements could be undercut by another pillar of President Trump’s strategy to overhaul the health care system by allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines. Many analysts say that could lead to a degradation of the quality of health insurance as companies develop plans for states that have the fewest rules."
"President Trump got good news on Thursday from the federal agency that oversees the    lease on his   hotel in Washington, D. C. The General Services Administration said in a letter that the Trump Organization is in ”full compliance” with the lease on the luxury hotel that’s located just blocks from the White House. Many ethics and contract experts have called upon GSA to end the lease, noting that the contract language specifically says no ”elected official of the Government of the United States . .. shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom[. ]” But GSA contracting officer Kevin Terry wrote that reaching ”simplistic ’black and white’ conclusions regarding the meaning” of the contract’s ban on elected officials was not appropriate. He determined the lease is valid because Trump moved his interests in the building to a revocable trust, which is being managed by Trump’s oldest sons and other associates. Trump is the sole beneficiary of that trust. Terry led contract negotiations with Trump in 2013. In his letter Thursday, Terry said the property had been a money loser for the federal government before Trump landed the lease. The Trump Organization has been paying $250, 000 a month in rent since it signed the lease, according to Terry. Stephen Schooner, an expert on government procurement law at George Washington University, said the GSA decision was ”unbelievable.” Terry’s conclusion is ”unpersuasive, as a matter of law” and harmful to the ”integrity  —   and thus credibility  —   of GSA, the presidency and procurement process,” Schooner said. Reps. Elijah Cummings and Peter DeFazio, top Democrats on the House Government Oversight and the House Transportation and Infrastructure committees, respectively, condemned the GSA conclusion. They argue that GSA never intended for politicians to profit from the   building, which is why it included the language banning elected officials. ”This new interpretation renders this lease provision completely meaningless —  any elected official can now defy the restriction by following this blueprint” of creating a trust, they said in a statement. Trump signed a   lease in 2013 for the building that once served as headquarters of the U. S. Post Office. The Trump Organization spent upwards of $200 million on renovations and reopened it as a hotel about a month before the Nov. 8 presidential election."
"Updated at 11 a. m. ET Friday, The U. S. State Department has signed and issued a presidential permit to construct the Keystone XL pipeline. That reverses former President Barack Obama’s 2015 decision to reject the controversial pipeline. Pipeline company TransCanada says that in conjunction with the Trump administration signing off on its pipeline, it will drop a claim for more than $15 billion that it filed under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The company also says it will drop a lawsuit that claimed Obama’s decision was unconstitutional. ”We greatly appreciate President Trump’s Administration for reviewing and approving this important initiative and we look forward to working with them as we continue to invest in and strengthen North America’s energy infrastructure,” said Russ Girling, TransCanada president and CEO. Four days after Trump was sworn into office, he invited TransCanada to resubmit its application for the pipeline. The president also directed the State Department to determine within 60 days whether the pipeline is in the national interest. Praising the pipeline on Friday as the ”greatest technology known to man or woman,” Trump touted the reversal as the first of many energy and infrastructure projects his administration plans to spearhead. ”This announcement is part of a new era of American energy policy that will lower costs for American families and very significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create thousands of jobs right here in America, ” the president said in remarks from the Oval Office. A State Department spokesman says Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recused himself from that review process. Tillerson was CEO of Exxon Mobil, which has supported construction of the pipeline. Undersecretary for Political Affairs Thomas A. Shannon Jr. signed the determination. The proposed pipeline is controversial because of the oil it would transport. It’s designed to move crude from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta south to the U. S. Gulf Coast, where it could be refined or exported. Environmentalists oppose oil sands because producing it requires additional processing that emits more pollution. ”The same communities who defeated this pipeline before  —   indigenous leaders, landowners, farmers and   activists  —   are ready to fight again,” says 350. org Executive Director May Boeve. That fight is expected to take place in states the pipeline would travel through, especially in Nebraska, where some landowners and environmentalists have led a   legal battle to stop the pipeline. The oil industry and some labor unions have supported the pipeline, largely for the thousands of construction jobs it would provide. But those jobs are temporary. The State Department has estimated that once built, the pipeline will employ about 35 people."
"The outlook for a key congressional investigation into potential ties between President Trump and Russia’s election meddling remained in doubt Thursday, after an unusual,   flap involving its top two members. Committee Chairman Devin Nunes,  . has reportedly apologized for briefing Trump, on what he described as evidence that Trump and his aides were caught up in U. S. surveillance operations, while keeping his committee in the dark. And ranking member Adam Schiff,  . appeared to confirm reports that the U. S. has serious evidence of coordinated activities between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election. As NPR reported Wednesday, Nunes raised eyebrows when he said he had ”new intelligence” from unidentified sources about members of the Trump campaign being caught up in surveillance of foreign targets. Instead of sharing that information with the members of his committee, he made an announcement to reporters  —   then briefed Trump. The outcry on Capitol Hill was immediate and impassioned. Schiff said Wednesday that his chairman will ”need to decide if he’s leading an investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House. Because he cannot do both.” Schiff told NPR on Thursday morning that Nunes still hadn’t shared the intelligence in question with his colleagues on the committee. He says it was ”wholly inappropriate” for Nunes to brief Trump and not the committee, given the active investigations into the Trump campaign. ”Everything about it was wrong,” Schiff said. He called Nunes’ actions ”disturbing” and ”bizarre.” Nunes has reportedly apologized to the members of the committee for talking to the press and the president before talking to them. Dueling disclosures, for and against Trump, At least one person welcomed Nunes’ unusual choice of how to handle classified information. Trump, you’ll remember, has accused former President Barack Obama of ”wiretapping” him during the election  —   a stunning claim, presented without evidence, that has been rejected as baseless by prominent lawmakers and the heads of multiple intelligence agencies. Trump said he felt ”somewhat vindicated” by Nunes’ briefing, although nothing Nunes said suggested that Trump or his associates had been targeted for surveillance. Meanwhile, Schiff stepped forward after Nunes’ surprise announcement to drop a bombshell of his own. He said that the committee had now seen ”more than circumstantial” evidence suggesting coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. Previously, he had only said there was ”circumstantial evidence” of such coordination. He tells NPR the committee has been receiving ”additional information” every day, and he sees the current evidence as ”not merely circumstantial.” ”While I can’t go into . .. any of the contents of the evidence we’ve been presented,” he said, ”I think that’s a fair assessment at this point.” That means the top Republican and top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee are both describing classified material to the press  —   one of them to bolster the president, another to tear him down. This is happening even as the committee they helm is investigating, in part, the mishandling of classified information  —   including the precise kind of intelligence that Nunes, at least, appeared to be describing. What’s next for the investigation?  The tension between the two men is palpable, and the very public failure of bipartisanship in this investigation has raised concerns about whether the House committee will be able to do its job at all. Sen. John McCain,  . used the words ”bizarre” and ”disturbing” to describe the situation. McCain told MSNBC the astonishing rift between the two men heading the House investigation suggests that Congress lacks the credibility ”to handle this alone.” ”I don’t say that lightly,” he said. He said the situation requires a select committee, created just to investigate Russian influence over the election  —   which Schiff, too, has called for. But as NPR’s Phil Ewing noted Wednesday, calls for an independent investigation raise an obvious question: Would the Republican leadership in Congress be willing to appoint, fund and empower a special panel to investigate their own president? Meanwhile, there are other investigations into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia  —   most prominently, by the FBI and the Senate Intelligence Committee. But those proceedings are happening almost entirely behind closed doors. The House committee was unusual in holding hearings open to the public."
"U. S. Marine artillerymen are now in place on Syrian soil, north of the last stronghold of the Islamic State. A force of local Kurdish and Arab fighters is moving south, continuing to isolate the city of Raqqa. They’re in the opening stages of a major military operation that officials say could last into the fall. What comes next is expected to have huge implications not only for the fate of ISIS but also for the relationship between Turkey and Russia, as well as the geographic outlines of the future Syrian state. It will be very complicated. Sometime next month, following a Turkish referendum that could give more power to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the U. S. is expected to take a controversial step: equipping local Arab and Kurdish forces in Syria with small arms, heavy machine guns and other weapons to begin the final battle for Raqqa. ISIS has been dug in there for years, and has mostly lost its grip on the other major city it controlled  —   Mosul, in Iraq. The fight for Raqqa will not only be a difficult military challenge. Its political dimensions are fraught, too: Turkey considers the Kurdish fighters aided by the U. S. to be terrorists. The U. S. says those Kurds are the best fighters on the ground. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently sent a clear message about his country’s stance on the Syrian Kurds. ”We do not wish any of our allies to stand with terrorist groups,” he said. The U. S. commander overseeing the ISIS fight, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, said the operation in Raqqa will include Kurdish fighters  —   emphasizing they, too, are Syrian. ”The facts are, there are Kurds from Raqqa and larger Raqqa District and province,” Townsend said. ”So there are Kurds from there, local Kurds who will participate. I don’t think we’re going to change the demographics of Raqqa by Kurds or Turkmen or any group participating in the operation.” The Kurdish question, The potential pitfall is the Turkish response to increased American support for the Kurds. After U. S.  Kurdish forces captured the Syrian town of Manbij from ISIS last August and then began moving farther north, Turkey launched what it called Operation Euphrates Shield, which pitted   forces against these   forces, as well as against ISIS. The resulting clashes required U. S. Army Rangers to intervene  —   including by openly flying American flags from their armored vehicles  —   to separate the forces. Pentagon officials denied these were ”peacekeeping forces”  —   and struggled to define their mission. Mostly, they seem to have been there to keep everyone else apart. ”The U. S. military has carved out a new role in Syria, with small numbers of troops now positioned to prevent an escalation of violence among an array of militias and other forces that have converged on an increasingly complex battlefield,” Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said earlier this month. Residents of Manbij said the U. S. presence did calm things down. ”The increase in the number of forces and patrol forces reassured the people of Manbij,” said Shervan Darwish, a Kurdish member of the Manbij Military Council. ”It was a very welcome step because the threats directed towards Manbij were a source of worry for the people, especially threats by Turkey. The increase of the American presence in the area . .. quieted people’s fears.” Middle East observers warn, however, that the Turks have the ability to poke the United States if Washington’s tactical alliance with disfavored Kurds grows into a stronger political relationship. Ankara could cut off American access to an airbase from which warplanes now support the war in Syria  —   or deploy more of their own forces to key areas over the border. ”What can the Turks do? Well, they can make life difficult,” said Amberin Zaman, a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center. The Arab question, Even as Washington continues to figure out how to deal with Turkey, another big question involves its Arab allies. The United States has long pressed for Arab states to participate in the   campaign, but has never been satisfied about their commitments. Jordan has sent some troops into Syria along its shared border, and Saudi Arabia has promised to send ground troops  —   but has not delivered. Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince and minister of defense, Mohammed bin Salman, repeated that promise last week. ”We are ready to do anything that will eradicate terrorism, anything without limits,” he said. The Turks have said they, too, want to participate in the Raqqa operation  —   but have yet to talk about troop numbers, officials say. Erdogan has said an   group with which he feels comfortable  —   the Free Syrian Army  —   could lead the Raqqa offensive. Washington’s position is not clear Townsend would not detail the state of negotiations with Middle Eastern allies. The Turks, meanwhile, have pressed for larger numbers of U. S. ground troops  —   many thousands  —   for Syria. But that seems to be a nonstarter. All indications are that President Trump will largely follow the strategy of President Barack Obama: send in U. S. trainers to arm and assist local fighters allow special operations forces to accompany local combat units and provide airstrikes and surveillance for the local forces. ”American and coalition air power is important in support, but cannot, itself, take the lead on liberating Raqqa and other cities from thousands of entrenched ISIS fighters,” wrote Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, in The National Interest. ”The solution to this conundrum has to involve providing arms to the Kurds, whether Turkey loves the idea or not.” To move forward on the Raqqa plan, the U. S. is considering sending hundreds more U. S. trainers  —   and more special operations forces  —   to Syria in the coming weeks. Defense Secretary James Mattis has yet to sign off on the plan to send those troops to northern Syria, near the town of Kobane. If he does, the total number of U. S. forces in Syria will approach 3, 000. The U. S. now says there are roughly 400 Marines north of Raqqa, along with more than 500 special operations troops. Some officials place the number of special operations forces at around 1, 000.   the conflict, The crowded battlefield is a headache for commanders and policymakers. There are various armed groups, along with Turkish, Russian, Syrian and   Hezbollah forces. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently sat down with his Turkish and Russian counterparts to talk about how to handle the situation. One possibility could be carving out zones of operation, so that Russia and Syria would continue operating in areas like Palmyra and the U. S. could focus on Raqqa, defense officials say. Dunford hinted at such a strategy during a talk last month at the Brookings Institution. ”It’s about as complex an environment as it can be,” Dunford said. ”If you just look, you’ve got Iran there, you’ve got Russia there, you have the Syrian regime, obviously Turkish concerns, Kurdish concerns, Arab concerns, Shia concerns, Sunni concerns. . .. What I think is, what you’re getting at is, we do need to have a vision of how our military actions set conditions on the ground that actually then become the platform . .. to come up with a political solution.” The way ahead for the Trump administration amounts only to a ” ’supersize’ of the Obama plan,” says Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War, which laid out a blueprint last week for the way ahead in Syria. But that isn’t enough, she argues. The sometimes hawkish ISW is known for its work with top U. S. commanders in the Middle East, including Gen. David Petraeus. It supported the 2007 ”surge” of American troops in Iraq. Today, Carafella argues the U. S. is too focused on the   fight and not on a more important counterinsurgency effort that focuses on the population. ”We’re not winning the fight for popular support,” she says. ISW’s report calls for the U. S. to send in some 10, 000 combat and support troops to seize a foothold along the   border and then, with local Arab partners, mount clearing operations northwest toward Raqqa. The U. S. would set up a   zone and mediate disputes between Turkey and the Kurdish fighters in Syria, according to the ISW paper, which warns that ”Syrian Kurdish political aims threaten U. S. interests”  —   putting the institute in a position close to that of Ankara. The deployment sounds wildly ambitious, given what officials are saying about the way ahead, and the reluctance of the new president to pour in more troops and money abroad. If the status quo today and the ISW plan are the extreme ends of the American menu for Syria, all indications point to the Trump administration picking the middle course with a ”supersize.” The new map of the Middle East, American officials have begun looking down the road to the future of the Syrian state, they tell NPR. Their analysis begins with the reality on the ground: The Russians have propped up Syria’s strongman, Bashar Assad, and helped him secure a long stretch of the country in the south and west. The Kurds have two enclaves in the north. And Sunni Arabs are are in control along both the Iraq and Jordanian borders. Trump administration officials are looking at encouraging some form of ”confederation” in Syria once the fighting stops and will press Sunni Arab countries to help rebuild Syria in an effort that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, says having ”autonomous zones” in a confederation seems to make sense. And he says such an effort would require ”some number of American forces” to help monitor the movement of people and impede the movement of arms across the   border. There would very likely be a need for a   Turkish presence as well in northern Syria, he says, because Ankara might want to keep an eye on what it perceives as a potential threat. ”If there is one thing we should have learned by now in the Middle East,” O’Hanlon says, ”it’s that military successes built on weak political foundations won’t last  —   if they can be achieved in the first place.” NPR Istanbul correspondent Peter Kenyon contributed to this report."
"Dr. Hussam   a Syrian psychiatrist, writes poetry that reflects his deep longing for a lost homeland. ”Poetry and art is another way to cope,” he says, ”we are all grieving in our own ways. The country is no longer the one that I left and it still haunts me in my dreams.” (Click here to read one of his poems.) He has turned his grief into an action plan. From the United States, where he’s lived since he arrived for a medical residency in 2009, he’s using his mental health expertise to help Syrians traumatized by years of violence and displacement. Syria was still intact when   arrived in the U. S. His journey west was fueled by medical ambition.   wanted to become a psychiatrist in a country that only had an estimated 70 psychiatrists for a population of 23 million. Advanced studies in psychiatry, unavailable in Syria, would mean a long stay in the U. S. When he finished medical school in Damascus, he came to the University of Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and furthered his training at Yale Medical School. He became a successful immigrant, securing a position as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts. His specialty: addiction psychiatry. He treats Americans caught up in this country’s opioid addiction crisis. But his distance from home weighed heavily as his country descended into a protracted war. ”The problem with our situation, it’s chronic, it’s keeps on producing suffering and people who are displaced by the day,” he says about a war that has entered its sixth year. In 2014, he launched the Syrian Telemental Health Network. It’s an online platform to help mental health workers inside Syria and in clinics around the region. The site offers basic training. But the key to the project, says   is its ability to connect health workers in Syria, including the small band of trained psychiatrists, to mental health specialists in the West. ”For every mental health provider there is a specialist who is holding their hands through difficult cases and help[ing] and train[ing] them,” he says.  ’s network links therapists and   workers in Syria to a growing list of volunteers  ” more than a dozen Syrian psychiatrists practicing in the U. S. the U. K. and Canada. Such consultations can be critical for an undertrained   worker, who can upload video and audio of a patient to the secure platform and ask for advice. The partnership has led to better outcomes. In one case a    Syrian boy in a refugee camp in Turkey was diagnosed with autism. When his behavior became dangerously aggressive, his case was referred to a Syrian psychiatrist in the U. S. who diagnosed a severe case of PTSD. When the site first opened,   conducted   exercises with   workers in a clinic near the Syrian border to show them how to interact with patients in distress. He showed me a video of a session subtitled in English. A woman has come to the clinic because, ”the world is closing in on me,” she says. Two of her sons are dead, her daughters are grieving, her husband is disabled, and her family lives in a warehouse with more than 100 other refugees.   offers a guide to ”active listening,” a technique outlined in the World Health Organization’s Psychological First Aid concepts. The next steps are helping a patient prioritize their problems and then linking them to available resources. ”The most important thing is to be able to listen to people. Most of these people they don’t have anyone to talk to. They need to tell their stories,” says  . These training sessions target the young volunteers at the clinic, with no medical training or clinical experience, who could take some of the cases from the only trained psychiatrist on staff. ”The main thing is trying to help the people to regain control of their lives. It’s the thing that gets lost. There is a sense of loss and despair and loss of control, basically,” he says. It is a concept that he says is common in treating opioid addition as well as refugee trauma from displacement. It can takes years of work, but   says it’s important to help people   their routines. For refugees, he encourages them to ”  in activities they used to like an enjoy, playing soccer, talking to friends, praying. In a conflict where the needs are so great, Dr.   hopes he is doing his small part with this long distance learning. It’s not as flashy as surgeons who are consulting long distance, he says. ”In psychiatry, the nature of change is slow,” he says and adds, ”From that aspect, it might be demoralizing because you can’t really change much. It’s better to be a surgeon because at least you’ve saved someone’s life.” But there is no denying that the war has created a mental health emergency as acute as the medical crisis.   says he’s learned some lessons about   training. The      exercises have now been replaced by a series of video lectures based on mental health first aid as outlines in a World Health Organization manual to deal with survivors of trauma and war. Now, field workers can carry out the   exercises on their own. More than 1, 000 have signed on for the courses, he says. ”It’s really practical. In these situations you cannot be anything but practical. The main thing is really trying to help the people to regain control over their life,” says  . ”I’m doing this because I’m Syrian. It’s my way of coping.”"
"With his skill as a psychiatrist, Dr. Hussam   is reaching out to the troubled people of his Syrian homeland, offering guidance for health workers who work with mental health issues in a population traumatized by war. And with his love of words, he tries to capture his longing for his homeland in poetry. Born in Lattakia, Syria, in 1983 and now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, he has published two books of poems in Arabic: The Opener of Canned Hope and Bird Smoking Marijuana. He has also founded   a project that poetry with art and music in choreographed performances. The poem ” ” appears in his collection Bird Smoking Marijuana. It was translated into English by Samantha Kostmayer and Hussam   and is reprinted with his permission.      There, at the entrance of the chest, between a throat and a tongue, stands a long line of humans, workers in morose clothing, restless with weary faces, making plans, and strategizing hope, waiting for the end of war, frightened by, the price of bread and potatoes, and the cost of words, amused by, the concerns of global warming, and conspiracy theories, while Ebola butterflies, tickle the nose of their imagination, until they laugh, their only consolation, a cigarette, and ashes that drown entire cities, And when   is over, they draw crosses and middle fingers, with the coal of time, on the walls of the lung, and return to work, This is how the years of war pass, one, by one, falling like calendar pages, fueling his grandiose plans, the lumberjack of lives, the bookkeeper of martyrs, he who answers the prayers of the dead, who with one hand, places medals on Generals, while with the other, writes on clouds his poetry of lament, This is how the years of war pass, ordinary. .. nothing changes but the order of numbers, and the faith of those who chant in the streets, while up there, in ” ” somebody lifts his eyes for a moment, leaning forward to check on the loud noises, from below, only to, bury his gray beard, again in his new iPhone."
"Updated at 5:30 p. m. ET  The man who is believed to have carried out a deadly attack near the U. K. Parliament has been identified by Britain’s Metropolitan Police as Khalid Masood, 52. Police believe the man acted alone. He was shot and killed after carrying out an attack that killed a police officer and three civilians and wounded several others around 2:40 p. m. local time Wednesday. (Two of the civilian victims died on Wednesday the third was hospitalized after the attack and died Thursday.) Masood was born in Kent and is believed to have been living in the West Midlands. Police say he ”was not the subject of any current investigations and there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack.” ”However, he was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including [grievous bodily harm ] possession of offensive weapons and public order offences,” Scotland Yard said Thursday. Masood, who used ”a number of aliases,” according to police, has a criminal record that dates to at least November 1983, when he was convicted of criminal damage. His last conviction was in December 2003 for possession of a knife, police say. ”He has not been convicted for any terrorism offences,” the agency says. Those killed include an American, Kurt Cochran of Utah, who was visiting London and was hit by the attacker’s vehicle on Westminster Bridge. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Cochran, 54, was on the final day of a   trip with his wife, who was injured in the attack. ”A great American, Kurt Cochran, was killed in the London terror attack,” President Trump said in a tweet. ”My prayers and condolences are with his family and friends.” Two other civilian victims have died, the Metropolitan Police say: a woman in her 40s, and a man in his 70s who was taken off life support on Thursday. In a visit to the House of Commons Thursday morning, Prime Minister Theresa May said the suspect in the case was   and had previously been under the eye of security agencies. ”Some years ago, he was once investigated by MI5 in relation to concerns about violent extremism. He was a peripheral figure the case was historic he was not part of the current intelligence picture,” May said of the attacker. She added that investigations are continuing. ”Our working assumption is that the attacker was inspired by Islamist ideology,” the prime minister said. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, through a media outlet with ties to the extremist group. In a brief statement, it called the attacker an ISIS soldier  —   but the British government says a direct link with ISIS has not been confirmed. Calling it ”an attack on free people everywhere,” May said, ”We are not afraid, and our resolve will never waver in the face of terrorism.” In a counterterrorism operation launched after the attack, Britain’s Metropolitan Police made eight arrests and searched six addresses in Birmingham and London. In London Thursday, extra officers  —   both armed and unarmed  —   are out on the streets, the Metropolitan Police says. The department observed a moment of silence this morning, and a public vigil is scheduled for 6 p. m. local time Thursday in Trafalgar Square. May also shared more details about the attack and those it harmed, saying it injured around 40 people. Of three police officers who were wounded, two remain hospitalized. The wounded are from around the world, May said. In addition to 12 Britons, there are four South Koreans, three French children, two Romanians and two Greeks, along with nationals of the U. S. Germany, Poland, Ireland, China, Italy and other nations. Speaking of slain police officer Keith Palmer, 48, a husband and father who had previously been in the military, May said, ”He was every inch a hero, and his actions will never be forgotten.” On Thursday, Queen Elizabeth said via a statement: ”My thoughts, prayers, and deepest sympathy are with all those who have been affected by yesterday’s awful violence. ”I know I speak for everyone in expressing my enduring thanks and admiration for the members of the Metropolitan Police Service and all who work so selflessly to help and protect others.” As we reported Wednesday: ”Authorities say a small SUV barreled into pedestrians along the sidewalk of Westminster Bridge, causing multiple ’catastrophic injuries’ to pedestrians. . .. After striking the pedestrians on the bridge, the SUV then crashed into the fence that surrounds Parliament. A man armed with a knife emerged and stabbed a police officer before being shot to death by police.”"
"Monday’s attack on a Christmas market in Berlin that killed at least 12 and injured scores more is the latest in a series of atrocities claimed in the name of the Islamic State. In this operation, an assailant  —   the suspect now sought by German police has been identified as   Anis Amri  —   rammed a truck into pedestrians and street stalls. The attack was eerily reminiscent of this year’s Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, which killed more than 80 people, and even the   attack by a student at Ohio State University who plowed his car into a Columbus crowd, injuring more than a dozen people. The use of this particular method is eminently unsurprising. In fact, what’s rather odd is that ramming vehicles into massed civilians hasn’t been used more often to sow terror across the globe. Why? Because the Islamic State has been calling for this type of operation for a long time, using it to deadly effect in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. It and similar terrorist organizations have been calling for vehicle operations for years, because they’re easy to mount and very difficult to stop once the wheels start turning. It’s a   method to kill scores of people, given innumerable soft, mostly unprotected targets. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that we tend to forget how many attacks like this have taken place in the past. Using cars to kill as a terror tactic is nothing new, and certainly not an Islamic State innovation by any stretch of the imagination. For example, in   at least three separate Palestinian attackers used cars and bulldozers to kill and injure multiple people in and around Jerusalem. That same year, a Uighur militant group rammed a dump truck into a group of 70 Chinese police officers and then attacked them with machetes, killing 16. British soldier Lee Rigby was rammed and decapitated by radicals influenced by   on a London street in 2013. And in 2014, a deliberate    attack in Quebec killed a uniformed Canadian soldier and injured another. Weaponizing vehicles is a tried and true tactic of   and the Islamic State. As far back as 2010,   in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) publicly called on its adherents to attack by using cars in its   online magazine Inspire, advising attackers to ”pick your location and timing carefully. Go for the most crowded locations . .. The ideal location is a place where there are a maximum number of pedestrians and the least number of vehicles.” And as recently as last month, the Islamic State’s Rumiyah magazine called for utilizing vehicles to strike the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Of course, U. S. authorities have known about this tactic for a while. In late 2010, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued an unclassified paper entitled ”Terrorist Use of Vehicle Ramming Tactics.” This was in part due to AQAP’s public call that year, but was also a reminder that these kinds of attacks have happened here in the U. S. as well. Few remember that a decade ago, in 2006, Mohammed   plowed his Jeep into a crowd of students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill  —   or that in January 2001, Mike Bowers, a recent parolee, smashed his   semi into the Capitol building in Sacramento, Calif. incinerating himself in a giant fireball. Christmas markets appear to be a favored target of some radicalized individuals inspired to murder. In late December 2014, a man drove a car into a crowded market in Dijon, France, injuring 13, while a similar attack by a man driving a van a day later on the other side of the country, in Nantes, killed one and injured nine. As it happens, this week’s Berlin attack occurred just a week after a      boy was accused of planning a nail bomb attack in a Christmas market in the southern city of Ludwigshafen. Setting aside possible theological or cultural rationales for striking these venues, maybe the attackers’ rationale was much simpler: These were small places where they could inflict mass casualties. As we’ve seen in Nice and Berlin, once a tactic is deemed ”effective,” it’ll be utilized over and over again. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently reported there were 48 ramming attacks from   2015 to November 2016. Next time, it could be a parade or a secular street fair or an outdoor concert venue. The potential targets are too numerous to defend them all. And unlike the Paris attacks in November 2015, a vehicle attack takes only one determined attacker. Sadly, if there are others out there looking to kill and die in the name of the Islamic State or other murderous organizations, it is likely this tactic will be employed again, to devastating effect. Aki Peritz is a former CIA analyst and   of Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda.  Follow him on Twitter @AkiPeritz."
"To fully understand the   appeal of Power Rangers, the first   iteration of the media and   line in two decades, one must sit through at least one or two of the five Michael   Transformers movies, which is by no means an advisable experience. The two franchises are more or less the same  —   a busy assemblage of thinly wrought characters, unforgivably dense mythology, and barely comprehensible action sequences, all in service of gleaming battlebots for kids to smash together in the sandbox. Neither one is worthy of the remainder bins in which they’ll inevitably land. And yet the difference in tone is striking. The Transformers movies may be dumb spectacles, but they’re freighted with patriotic gravitas, not unlike the   formations that streak over a professional football game. In Bay’s hands, Optimus Prime is a   for American military might, an outsized expression of its destructive technology and abiding values of honor, sacrifice, and teamwork. The films feel oppressive not for their stupidity but for their seriousness, and it takes the   chintziness of Power Rangers to throw those qualities into sharp relief. As   Godard once said, ”In order to criticize a movie, you have to make another movie.” Getting to the fun part is a struggle, however. First, there’s the laboriousness of another superhero origin story, which director Dean Israelite (Project Almanac) and screenwriter John Gatins stage as an ersatz Breakfast Club. Three of the five teenagers that eventually form a mighty morphin’ unit meet at Saturday detention, including disgraced quarterback Jason (Dacre Montgomery) autistic brainiac Billy (RJ Cyler) and exiled cheerleader Kimberly (Naomi Scott). (Breakfast Club fans will recognize them as Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, and Molly Ringwald types, respectively.) They are joined eventually by two loners, Zack (Ludi Lin) and Trini (Becky G) the latter defined  —   far too timidly by the film  —   as a lesbian. The quartet comes together after an explosion at the local gold mine unearths a series of colorful gems that had been buried in the earth for 60 million years. The gems give them extraordinary superpowers, but the incident also revives an   battle between Zordon (Bryan Cranston) and the evil Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks) who unleashes stone monsters called Putties and a golden, winged giant called Goldar. Rita comes seeking the Zeo Crystal that’s buried beneath the local Krispy Kreme, and unless our young heroes can activate their full morphing power, they’ll be unable to stop Rita from destroying their hometown and everybody in it. Power Rangers cost a little over $100 million to make and looks about half as expensive, unless catering services were provided by Eric Ripert. The five Power Rangers are appealing but bland, as if skimmed from a CW casting call, and Israelite stages the action sequences in a chaotic mass of   and   edits, perhaps to hide the daytime special effects. And yet the film grows steadily more disarming as it approaches the grand finale, in part because it believes so earnestly in the unity necessary for good to defeat evil and in part because everyone appears to be having a ball. The ringers in the supporting cast make the strongest impression, from Bill Hader’s voicework as   alien android called Alpha 5 to Banks’   camp as Rita, which is like a sour twist on her   Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games series. Rita Repulsa pausing a   melee in order to sample her first donut is a good indicator of how silly and unpretentious Power Rangers allows itself to be. By the time the ”Go Go Power Rangers” theme kicks in, it takes an effort not to smile a little and more effort still to keep from laughing at yourself for giving in to it. Best just to surrender."
"”Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence,” Chief Medical Officer Leonard ”Bones” McCoy once lamented. And that was on Star Trek, far and away the most optimistic vision of humanity’s spacefaring destiny ever presented onscreen. Far more prevalent in movies is the sort of   ’t pessimism peddled by Life, a nasty    nailbiter that believes those with the Right Stuff were in the wrong line. It’s Alien in  . It’s Gravity with a hostile  —  and apparently intelligent  —   Martian jellyfish. Though the script is by Deadpool scribes Rhett Reese  Paul Wernick, and     Ryan Reynolds gets top billing, there’s not much intentional humor. It is, to be kind, an imperfect organism, this movie. But it has a few attributes worth hailing. For one thing, Life is reasonably accurate in its depiction of the International Space Station, a modular structure with visibly older and newer sections that’s been regularly expanded since its launch 19 years ago. The movie is set in some unspecified   when a Martian   mission has come to pass. (Jake Gyllenhaal’s character remembers being a kid in school when the shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, so the movie would have to be set close to the present unless the    actor is playing a much older character.) Anyway, production designer Nigel Phelps expands the real ISS in a plausible way, conceiving of modules contributed by various nations at different times. Also, the movie’s illusion of microgravity  —   achieved the old fashioned way, by hanging actors and props on wires that were removed in    —   is convincing. Swedish director Daniel Espinosa’s camera appears unmoored by gravity, too, roaming the station’s various compartments as its   crew members try to figure out how to kill the   tentacular terror they picked up in a soil sample from the Red Planet. Best of all, none of the characters have a hoary backstory of the sort that dragged down Gravity just a little. The irony of the team’s exobiologist (British   Ariyon Bakare) being   on Earth but as mobile as anybody else in space, goes mostly unremarked, thank goodness. As in The Martian, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) all seem to have instituted a strict hotness requirement for   spaceflight, but the actors are an interesting mix: Rounding out the crew are Rebecca Ferguson, who played a resourceful British intelligence agent in the last Mission: Impossible, Olga Dihovichnaya as the mission commander, and Hiroyuki Sanada, who was in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine a decade ago  —   which was a stronger   space adventure than this one. Unfortunately, content follows form here. Life is an unwieldly and modular   of   cliches vintage and recent: The crew watching helplessly as a hostile blip and a friendly blip intersect on a computer monitor. The instrument panels reflected in a helmet visor. The gross bodily violations. The    winnowing of the cast. ”The film is a saddening bore,” David Bowie sang in ”Life on Mars,” a tune from a far more optimistic era. It ain’t quite as bad as that, but it ain’t much."
"Brutal in both subject matter and presentation, the   biopic I, Olga tells the story of the last woman to be given the death penalty in Czechoslovakia. Olga Hepnarova, a suicidal    who drove her truck onto a Prague sidewalk and killed eight pedestrians in 1973, attributed her act of mass murder to her own sense of alienation from the world. To communicate this, it’s understandable that directors Tomás Weinreb and Petr Kazda would choose to, well, alienate their audience. Cue the standbys of austere Eastern European cinema: the chilly    cinematography, the lack of a musical score, the Dostoyevskian themes of brutality begetting brutality. Look, there’s no denying the film, which premiered at the Berlinale more than a year ago, is a hard sit. It opens with scenes of implied familial abuse and closes with a   execution from Olga’s mother telling her she lacks the ”strong will” for suicide to Olga committing suicide by state. But this week’s vehicular terrorism in London, combined with the similar attacks last year in Nice and Berlin, are a reminder that such methods of terror are not new and are not exclusive to any particular ideology. The film’s position, rigorously distilled if not entirely original, is that these inhumane tactics are more reliably symptoms of a general sense of isolation from the world, and a desire to inflict pain and suffering on as many people as possible. Any other reason may not matter much beyond this grim, basic truth. The title comes from a manifesto Olga sends to the newspaper to explain her murders, highlighting that she was in full command of her behavior and giving the state enough cause to execute her. We follow the paths Olga takes until she arrives at such a horrific destination, beginning with her troubled home life and suicide attempt at age 13, which precipitates a year in a psych ward where her fellow inmates also abuse her. Olga later moves out of her house and into a   hut with no electricity, casually explaining to one of her only confidantes that she gets her water ”from the pump.” Working at a mechanic shop, Olga sticks out with her lanky frame and paranoid gaze, and her   male colleagues eye her warily as she stacks tires. There will always be something   about films centered on mass murderers, since they represent our unending need to romanticize and explain away the needless deaths of other human beings. Polish actress Michalina Olszanska (The Lure) helps assuage those fears with her frightening, but never less than deeply human, turn as Olga. Her   understated rendition of a woman who’s lost all touch with reality jars us from our senses, despite  —   or perhaps because of  —   the filmmakers’ clear fascination with their protagonist’s sex appeal. Olga is gay, a detail that is never explicitly linked to her sense of isolation, although her few moments of genuine human connection come when she gets to be with other women (some simply use her and then toss her aside). But Olszanska plays the character as someone who doesn’t so much project her queerness as operate through the world ignorant of typical feminine social cues  —   with a lumbering gait and slouched posture that occasionally slips into a   flirtatiousness. Once she makes use of her intelligence to share her worldview she slips into   delusion, claiming her history as a victim of bullying has made her suffer worse than black Americans. Should Weinreb and Kazda have allowed her quite so much time to philosophize her way out of a sense of compassion? Cinematographer Adam Sikora often strands Olga on her own within the frame, her black bob obscuring her face, but he also makes effective use of open spaces to show how she remains at odds with the outside world. His images of barren dinner tables and shuffling workers are the film’s only real clues to the spectre of Communism and the impending Velvet Revolution. Fifteen years from the date of Olga’s execution, the Czech Republic will outlaw the death penalty  —   her chosen instrument of her own demise. But since Olga lives in isolation and remains convinced everyone is out to harm her, she doesn’t seem to care about societal change either way. Because the actual deed doesn’t unfold until the final act, we are left with kind of a patchwork of behavioral traits. The scene of the truck attack itself is a   blip of detached horror: from the driver’s seat, we glimpse lives ending as they disappear under the hood with sickening thuds. It’s the only scene a film about Hepnarova was actually obligated to restage, yet it’s also the scene that feels the slimiest, conjuring the ghosts of the people who never wanted this role to begin with. What follows the attack, though, is fascinating. Olga’s trial period, during which she asserts several times that she wants to be put to death so her actions will gain more attention, precedes her hanging, when something finally rights itself within her and we see a person only coming to grips with her fear of death in the moments before the inevitable occurs. She’s like the   young murderer who breaks down sobbing just before his execution in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s A Short Film About Killing. No amount of terror campaigns, by Hepnarova or anyone mimicking her in the present day, will change an artist’s need to process the fact that humans, and only humans, are responsible. In the eyes of filmmakers, at least, no one is so low as to be below remorse."
"The namesake of Wilson is the kind of guy people try to avoid on the bus, at the sidewalk cafe, or while using the adjacent urinal. Yet the makers of this deadpan comedy want us to spend 90 minutes with him. The experience isn’t painful, but it is a little frustrating. Playing the reclusive, misanthropic, yet oddly gregarious title character, Woody Harrelson is as engaging as the man’s personality allows. But Wilson struggles with tone, shifting from monotonously bleak to predictably satirical to improbably sanguine. The movie was adapted from a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, and offers another take on the premise of Ghost World, the best of the three films derived from his work: A disaffected   man bonds with an alienated teenage girl. But this time the story takes the viewpoint of the man, who lacks the winning adolescent sass of Ghost World’s Enid and her pal, Rebecca. (The other1 film based on Clowes comic was 2006’s Art School Confidential.) Wilson is a lonely guy who’s about to get lonelier: His dad is dying and his best friend is moving to St. Louis. (Wilson’s tattered,   habitat is not identified, but the comic is set in Oakland, where Clowes lives.) Wilson will be left with just his adorable terrier, so he makes some tentative attempts to broaden his social circle. He fails, but in the process is introduced to something he’s been carefully avoiding: the Internet. Suddenly, it becomes possible to track Pippi (Laura Dern) the   who abandoned him 17 years ago. She reluctantly renews their acquaintance, and casually reveals that she didn’t terminate the pregnancy that began around the time their marriage ended. Wilson, as needful of human connection as he is disdainful of it, is elated. He’s a dad! There’s a complication. Claire (Isabella Amara) was put up for adoption, and Wilson has no legal right to see her. He introduces himself anyway, and the goth girl develops an affinity for the eccentric curmudgeon who says he’s her father. Pippi joins in, and the three pretend to be a family. Briefly. Things go very wrong, but then sort of right again. One reason for the turnaround is the presence of easygoing Shelly (Judy Greer) a dogsitter who later becomes a fitness instructor. That’s two more jobs than are indicated for Wilson, who seems to be independently not very wealthy. This material was more striking in its original form because Clowes took an experimental approach, dividing the story into short vignettes and varying his drawing style. The cartoonist scripted the movie, but it was directed by Craig Johnson, who previously balanced the gamy and the sweet in The Skeleton Twins. Like Wilson, that   farce took a conventional approach to outlandish events.  ”Modern civilization is a scam,” announces Wilson in his opening narration, and that stance is something else this film shares with Ghost World. Yet while Wilson takes the occasional swipe at recent cultural abominations  —   teen pop, shops that sell nothing but multiple varieties of olive oil  —   it never marshals much vehemence. Clowes’ vision of an ideal world is reduced to such throwaways as the film on the marquee of the local cinema: Umberto D. a 1952 Italian neorealist drama about a solitary man who, unlike Wilson, is actually battling to survive in a hostile world. Compared to Umberto D. ’s travails, Wilson’s existential funk seems something of a scam. —   "
"Updated at 5:45 p. m. ET, On the final day of the confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch, the Senate Democratic leader announced his opposition to the Supreme Court nominee. In a speech on the Senate floor, Chuck Schumer said Gorsuch ”will have to earn 60 votes for confirmation,” setting up a showdown with Republican leaders who may attempt to change Senate rules. If Gorsuch ”cannot earn 60 votes, a bar met by each of President Obama’s nominees and George Bush’s last two nominees, the answer isn’t to change the rules,” Schumer said. ”It’s to change the nominee.” Democrats changed Senate rules in 2013 to require a simple majority on most presidential nominees, but they left in place the supermajority requirement for Supreme Court nominees. Republicans control 52 Senate seats and would need eight Democrats to join them to move Gorsuch’s nomination forward under current Senate rules. Short of that, Republican Senate leaders may trigger the   nuclear option, changing the rules to allow a simple majority to proceed. The Gorsuch nomination has put Democrats in an excruciatingly difficult position. They do not have the votes to vote down the Trump nominee outright, as they are a minority in the Senate. But they are being pressed hard by liberal groups and their base to do the impossible  —   stop Gorsuch. The task is impossible because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear that if there is a filibuster, Republicans will change the Senate rules, just as the Democrats did for lower court judges in 2013 when they were in the majority. Senate Democrats’ essential bind is this: They can mount a filibuster of Gorsuch because Republicans don’t have 60 votes to put an end to any filibuster. But if Democrats were to do so, then McConnell could simply change Senate rules and lower the threshold for moving the nomination forward. To change the rules McConnell would need only 51 votes, and the Senate Republican caucus has 52 members. In short, the Democrats have few cards to play, and several Democratic senators and their aides say that Schumer’s filibuster announcement was an attempt to strengthen his hand in negotiations with McConnell. Democrats are seeking a   way to oppose Gorsuch, knowing they cannot defeat him. But when McConnell announced this week that he intended to get Gorsuch confirmed by the Senate’s Easter recess on April 7, that was a clock that forced the Democrats’ hand. An April 7 deadline does not allow time for more than a few days of debate once the nomination is sent to the Senate floor after a committee vote on April 3, nor does it allow time for more than one vote to cut off debate, known as a cloture vote. So, either the Democrats have to alienate their own base by casting enough votes to kill their own filibuster, or the likelihood is that Republicans will change the rules to get rid of the filibuster on Supreme Court nominations. And Democrats would dearly like to preserve that tool, knowing that there is a strong possibility there will be at least one more Supreme Court vacancy during the Trump presidency. Democratic sources say the leadership would not mind losing the cloture vote, but they would have to lose eight of their 48 members to do that. In days gone by, it would have been easy for senators to say, in essence, that they will not vote to continue a filibuster, that the nominee deserves an    vote. But as one Democrat put it, ”This place is so polarized right now, and our constituents are so polarized, it’s hard to sell that.” There is, of course, the possibility of a deal. Among the proposals offered by Democrats is an agreement to vote on Gorsuch if Republicans would agree to preserve the filibuster for the next high court vacancy, should it occur. Sources say that offer was immediately rejected. There are still some other deal permutations possible. Some Democrats would be willing to vote to end the filibuster on a second cloture vote, which in the past has been common, to allow more time for debate. Some would even agree to forgo a filibuster if the vote on Gorsuch is scheduled after the Easter recess later in April. But they say that so far McConnell has not been interested. The Republican leader has been a tough advocate of using judgeships to bolster the Republican vote. In 2013 when Democrats were in despair over GOP delaying tactics on lower court judgeships, Sen. John McCain worked out a deal with them to avoid changing the filibuster rule. The deal centered on three vacancies on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. President Obama had nominated three people for those vacancies, and all had cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under the deal worked out with McCain, the Democrats would forgo a change in the filibuster rule if the Republicans would allow a vote on one of those nominees. McCain brought the deal to the Republican caucus. But it was rejected, whereupon the Democrats voted to get rid of the filibuster for lower court judges and executive branch nominees. Schumer said Gorsuch ”was unable to sufficiently convince me he’d be an independent check” on President Trump. He said Gorsuch was not ”a neutral legal mind, but someone with a   conservative ideology.” Progressive groups have been urging Democrats to uniformly oppose all of Trump’s nominees. But several are facing tough   campaigns next year in states that Trump won in November. One of them, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, announced Thursday he will oppose Gorsuch, saying he does not think ”Judge Gorsuch’s judicial approach will ensure fairness for workers and families in Pennsylvania.” Democrats have expressed frustration with Gorsuch’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee, in which he sidestepped most of their questions aimed at getting a sense of how he might rule on the high court. Many are also still angry that President Obama’s nominee for the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, Judge Merrick Garland, was never given a hearing by Republicans. If enough Democrats join Schumer in attempting to block Gorsuch’s nomination, at least one Republican seems ready to go nuclear. Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Mike Gallagher Show that he is willing to do ”whatever it takes” to get Gorsuch on the court. Graham’s comments were first reported by CNN. McConnell has yet to tip his hand about whether he would call for a rules change, but he told reporters this week, ”If Judge Gorsuch can’t achieve 60 votes in the Senate, could any judge appointed by a Republican president be approved with 60 or more votes in the Senate?” And McConnell has vowed Gorsuch will be confirmed by the Senate before it takes its Easter recess on April 7."
"Growing up in a hungry household in the first couple of years of life can hurt how well a child performs in school years later, according to a new study. An estimated 13. 1 million children live in homes with insufficient food, according to the most recent figures from the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Many of those children experience hunger during their first few years of life, or their parents are hungry and stressed out about food during those years  —   the most crucial time for a child’s development. The new study, published in the latest issue of the journal Child Development, suggests that such early experience of hunger in the family is likely to make those children less ready for kindergarten than their classmates who came from homes with enough to eat. It shows that kids who experienced food insecurity in their first five years of life are more likely to be lagging behind in social, emotional and to some degree, cognitive skills when they begin kindergarten. And many previous studies have shown ”that kids who enter the kindergarten door behind, tend to stay behind. They do not catch up,” says Anna Johnson, a psychologist and an author of the new study. Johnson and her colleague used data from an older study by the U. S. Department of Education conducted between 2000 and 2006, which followed about 10, 700 children born in   households in 2000. It surveyed the parents of these children on various aspects of their lives, including the quantity and quality of food in their households. Johnson says surveyors asked parents a range of questions that are part of a standardized USDA measure for food security, like, ”In the last 12 months, did you worry your food would run out before you could buy more? In the last 12 months, could you afford to eat balanced meals? In the last 12 months, were you ever hungry because there wasn’t enough food?” The surveyors collected the data at different time points in the children’s lives: When they were 9 months old, 2 years old and when they were in preschool. When the children started kindergarten, the scientists tested the kids on their math and reading skills (a measure of their cognitive development). They also worked with the kids’ teachers to assess their ability to pay attention in class, their tendencies to throw tantrums or be hyperactive, and their eagerness to learn (all measures for emotional and social skills). Analyzing this data, Johnson found that early experience of high levels of hunger in the household strongly correlated with poor performance in kindergarten. And the younger the children were when the family struggled with hunger, the stronger the effect on their performance once they started school. In other words, Johnson says, ”When children were 9 months old, those who experienced food insecurity were more likely five years later, in kindergarten, to have lower reading and math scores than similar      who didn’t experience food insecurity.” They were also more likely to be hyperactive and throw tantrums in the classroom. Growing up in a hungry family at age 2 had a similarly strong negative effect on children’s social, emotional and cognitive abilities in kindergarten. Hunger experienced at preschool also seemed to affect reading scores and how the children approached learning, but the overall effects were weaker than food deprivation at earlier ages. ”Preschoolers at least are getting some access to food in their preschool classrooms if they go to preschools, or their child care centers,” says Johnson. Little babies and toddlers, on the other hand, don’t have this option. However, these effects aren’t necessarily because the children themselves went hungry. They could also be an indirect result of parents being hungry, which also affects a child’s development, says Johnson. Previous research shows that when parents are hungry, they tend to ”be irritable, harsh and impatient with their children,” she says. They can also be distracted or depressed. And irritable, distracted and depressed parents engage less with their children. ”They’re not playing games with the children, they’re not getting down to their levels and playing a puzzle and talking about colors, or holding the child in their lap and tickling their feet and singing songs to them,” she says. ”All of these things we know to be important for supporting early [brain] development.” ”The findings from the study weren’t surprising, in the sense that they’re consistent with previous research,” says John Cook, the lead scientist at Boston Medical Center’s Children’s Health Watch, a research group that monitors the effects of economic condition and public policies on the health of very young kids. A growing number of studies in neuroscience and social science show that hunger experienced early in life can have serious consequences for a child’s development. Cook says the strength of the new study is in showing how hunger during specific times in infancy and early childhood can result in subtle but significant differences in learning abilities later in childhood. ”It really highlights the range of effects that food insecurity can have on a child’s readiness to learn, which then sets the tone for their academic attainment, essentially for the rest of their school years,” Cook says. The findings further reinforce the importance of food assistance programs like SNAP, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Food and Nutrition Service, says Cook. ”Those programs have been proven to be very effective in proving both the food security and the health of school children and enabling them to go to school ready to learn,” he says. And making sure kids get enough to eat pays societal dividends in the long run, he says, because hunger experienced early in life can really set the trajectory for a child’s ”ability to compete in the workforce and to earn enough to be a fully functional member of society.”"
"Things are coming to a boil. If you listen closely, you can hear the chatter on the streets, in coffee shops or in meetings: Musicians are raising their voices to protest again. I heard it when I was a teen during the Vietnam War, when musicians wore their passions on their sleeves in speaking out against an unpopular war. I’ve heard it at various times since then, coming largely from Latin America. But now a new generation of artists is finding an audience for music with a message. And that kind of music was on full display at this year’s SXSW. In fact, it was highlighted at a large, free outdoor concert on the Thursday night of the international music festival, a showcase labeled a night of resistance. But it wasn’t limited to that night. Throughout the week  —   in clubs, in auditoriums and on street corners  —   audiences were communing with bands to protest any number of social or political forces rearing up across the country. This week we hear from the musicians themselves, including Gina Chavez, Dr. Shenka of Panteón Rococó and Phanie Diaz and Jenn Alva of Fea, about what’s motivating them to speak out. And we hear their music  —   which is, after all, their final word on the matter."
"The 2015 hit ”Classic Man” introduced the world to Jidenna. His look matched his sound:   suits,   ascots and red hair slicked down in a wave that would’ve made Nat King Cole jealous. At one point, a friend’s manager took him aside and said he thought Jidenna had a ton of potential as an artist  —   but there was just one problem. ”He said, ’You’re too perfect,’ ” Jidenna says. ”And man, that stuck with me.” So for his first   album, the singer and rapper found himself drawn back to his roots: Nigerian highlife singers and the story of his father, who passed away seven years ago. ”My father would tell the story like this,” Jidenna says. ”He said, ’You were conceived in Nigeria, and then I brought you to Wisconsin to make damn sure that you and your mother  —   make sure you had the blue passports.’ ” With his Nigerian dad and Bostonian mother, Jidenna spent his childhood moving across cities, continents and boundaries. Now, he’s released his debut album, The Chief. ”The chief is really my father and my grandfather,” he explains. ”It’s also my highest self  —   the best parts of them in me. My father came from a village, and then he and my mother worked hard to create a   upbringing for us. Sometimes we were below the poverty line sometimes it was an EBT card that we were using for my pops’ groceries. But we did get to a decent   life and we did  —   my siblings [and I] went to great schools. ”So that, I realized, is what a chief is,” Jidenna says. ”It comes from a place of love, oddly enough, but it is the darkness that can occur in somebody when they’re defending the people they love.” That darkness, he recalls, wasn’t always easy to see through. In ”Bully Of The Earth,” he sings about his tumultuous relationship with his father. But according to Jidenna, reconciling himself to that relationship might have been a necessary part of growing up. ”When I was younger, I looked at my father as the bully of the earth,” he says. ”I hated him, couldn’t stand him. Now I got an album dedicated to him. And that’s how it goes: You grow up and you realize, hey  —   the bully was not so bad. ”There’s a proverb I use in ’Bully Of The Earth’ where I say, ’You’re not a man until your father dies,’ ” Jidenna continues. ”My father said that to me  —   it was one of the last things he said to me before he passed. And I didn’t believe in it until he passed.” Hear more of Jidenna’s conversation with All Things Considered at the audio link. Radio editor Monika Evstatieva, web producer Jake Witz and web editor Rachel Horn contributed to this story."
"In 2015, when researchers Anne Case and Angus Deaton discovered that death rates had been rising dramatically since 1999 among   white Americans, they weren’t sure why people were dying younger, reversing decades of longer life expectancy. Now the    economists say they have a better understanding of what’s causing these ”deaths of despair” by suicide, drugs and alcohol. In a   to their groundbreaking 2015 work, they say that a lack of steady,   jobs for whites without college degrees has caused pain, distress and social dysfunction to build up over time. The mortality rate for that group, ages 45 to 54, increased by a half percent each year from 1999 to 2013. But whites with college degrees haven’t suffered the same lack of economic opportunity and haven’t seen the same loss of life expectancy. The study was published Thursday in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Case and Deaton, who are both at Princeton University, spoke with NPR’s David Greene about what’s driving these trends. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Interview Highlights, On the original discovery of rising mortality rates for   whites, Angus Deaton: Mortality rates have been going down forever. There’s been a huge increase in life expectancy and reduction in mortality over 100 years or more, and then for all of this to suddenly go into reverse [for whites ages 45 to 54] we thought it must be wrong. We spent weeks checking out numbers because we just couldn’t believe that this could have happened, or that if it had, someone else must have already noticed. It seems like we were right and that no one else had picked it up. We knew the proximate causes  —   we know what they were dying from. We knew suicides were going up rapidly, and that overdoses mostly from prescription drugs were going up, and that alcoholic liver disease was going up. The deeper questions were why those were happening  —   there’s obviously some underlying malaise, reasons for which we [didn’t] know. On what’s driving these early deaths, Anne Case: These deaths of despair have been accompanied by reduced labor force participation, reduced marriage rates, increases in reports of poor health and poor mental health. So we are beginning to thread a story in that it’s possible that [the trend is] consistent with the labor market collapsing for people with less than a college degree. In turn, those people are being less able to form stable marriages, and in turn that has effects on the kind of economic and social supports that people need in order to thrive. In general, the longer you’re in the labor force, the more you earn  —   in part because you understand your job better and you’re more efficient at your job, you’ve had    training, you belong to a union, and so your wages go up with age. That’s happened less and less the later and later you’ve been born and the later you enter this labor market. Deaton: We’re thinking of this in terms of something that’s been going on for a long time, something that’s emerged as the iceberg has risen out of the water. We think of this as part of the decline of the white working class. If you go back to the early ’70s when you had the     aristocrats, those jobs have slowly crumbled away and many more men are finding themselves in a much more hostile labor market with lower wages, lower quality and less permanent jobs. That’s made it harder for them to get married. They don’t get to know their own kids. There’s a lot of social dysfunction building up over time. There’s a sense that these people have lost this sense of status and belonging. And these are classic preconditions for suicide. Case: The rates of suicide are much higher among men [than women]. And drug overdoses and   liver death are higher among men, too. But the [mortality] trends are identical for men and women with a high school degree or less. So we think of this as people, either quickly with a gun or slowly with drugs and alcohol, are killing themselves. Under that body count there’s a lot of social dysfunction that we think ultimately we may be able to pin to poor job prospects over the life course. On how mortality rates differ among races, Deaton: Hispanics [have always had lower mortality rates] than whites. It’s a bit of a puzzle that’s not fully resolved, to put it mildly. It’s always been true that mortality rates have been higher and life expectancy shorter for   than for whites. What is happening now is that gap is closing and, for some groups, it’s actually crossed. What we see in the new work is if you compare whites with a high school degree or less, at least their mortality rates are now higher than mortality rates for   as a whole. If you compare whites with a high school degree or less with blacks with a high school degree or less, their mortality rates have converged. It’s as if poorly educated whites have now taken over from blacks as the lowest rung of society in terms of mortality rates. On the geography of mortality rates, Case: There’s not a part of the country that has not been touched by this. We like to make the comparison between Nevada and Utah to look at the extent to which good health behaviors lead to longer life.   of Utahans are Mormons. They don’t drink, they don’t smoke and they don’t drink tea or coffee.   of Nevadans live in Las Vegas paradise, where there is a little more of everything, so the heart disease mortality rates are twice as high in Nevada as they are in Utah. But both states are [in the] top 10 for deaths of despair. Utah has had a terrifically hard time dealing with the opioid crisis, and suicide rates [are] going up as well. There’s a lot of surprise here in parts of the country that we weren’t really expecting to see."
"A former Russian parliamentarian named Denis Voronenkov, who fled Russia last October and has criticized President Vladimir Putin’s government, was killed in Kiev on Thursday, in an apparent assassination that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is reportedly calling ”state terrorism.” Voronenkov, 45, had just left the Premier Palace hotel when he was shot twice in the head on a sidewalk along a busy street in Ukraine’s capital, according to the Kyiv Post. Citing police, the newspaper adds that both Voronenkov’s bodyguard and the attacker were wounded and in the hospital. The killing has the ”handwriting” of the Russian special services, Poroshenko said in a statement Thursday. According to a translation by Reuters, he said Voronenkov’s murder was ”an act of state terrorism on the part of Russia, which he was forced to leave for political reasons.” Responding to those accusations, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, ”We believe that all speculations about a Russian connection are absurd,” according to   Tass media. He also said Ukraine ”had proved unable to take care of Voronenkov’s security,” the outlet reports. Poroshenko said Voronenkov was a key witness in Ukraine’s inquiry into former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian military involvement in the country. When he fled Russia, Voronenkov did so along with his wife, Maria Maksakova, who is also a former lawmaker. She was seen at the site of her husband’s killing today, being restrained by police and emergency workers. Here’s how Radio Free Europe recently described Voronenkov: ”A former Communist Party legislator elected in the 2011 Russian vote viewed by many as rigged, Voronenkov is perhaps best known for   the 2014 bill in the State Duma that banned the foreign ownership of Russian media, a move Bloomberg View columnist Leonid Bershidsky called ’perhaps the single worst thing that happened to press freedom as an institution in Putin’s Russia. ’” ”Now, though, Voronenkov appears to have flipped, becoming a fiery critic of most everything he once supported in Russia and a citizen of Ukraine, to boot.” In an interview last month, Voronenkov told RFE that Russia ”has gone crazy. People are behaving in a   frenzy.” Describing the dynamic in Russia, he and Maksakova told the news outlet that lying had become commonplace, and ”the lack of professionalism has been replaced by loyalty to power.”"
"Cancer can be caused by tobacco smoke or by an inherited trait, but new research finds that most of the mutations that lead to cancer crop up naturally. The authors of the study published Thursday poked a hornet’s nest by suggesting that many cancers are unavoidable. The provocative findings by Bert Vogelstein and Cristian Tomasetti at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, have stirred up a heated scientific debate that started two years ago, when they published a report along similar lines. Back then, critics said they were undercutting important messages about cancer prevention. So when these scientists had new results to report, Vogelstein addressed that concern  . ”We all agree that 40 percent of cancers are preventable,” he said at a news conference. ”The question is, what about the other cancers that aren’t known to be preventable?” Vogelstein, who is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, explained how he and Tomasetti have refined that question. He notes that every time a perfectly normal cell divides, it makes several mistakes when it copies its DNA. These are naturally occurring mutations. Most of the time, those mutations are in unimportant bits of DNA. That’s good luck. ”But occasionally they occur in a cancer driver gene. That’s bad luck,” Vogelstein says. After two or three of these driver genes get mutated in the same cell, they can transform that healthy cell into a cancer cell. In their new paper in Science, the researchers set out to quantify how often those random errors are an inevitable part of cell division, how often they’re caused by nasty chemicals like tobacco smoke and how often they’re inherited. The answer: 66 percent of the total mutations are random, about 29 percent are due to the environment and the remaining five percent are due to heredity. These numbers vary depending on the type of cancer, they found. Lung cancer is largely the result of environmental causes, while the vast majority of childhood cancer is a result of these   mutations, they found. Vogelstein says parents often think they, somehow, are responsible for their child’s cancer, but that is not the case. ”They need to understand that these cancers would have happened no matter what they did,” he says. ”We don’t need to add guilt to an already tragic situation.” Of course, people can reduce their risk of preventable cancer by avoiding tobacco, eating well and maintaining a healthy body weight. But the bad news is that most mutations arise naturally. So, what can people do? ”Nothing. Right now, nothing,” Vogelstein says. But, he’s hopeful that if scientists focus on that question, they will have a more encouraging answer someday. Even without an action plan, the question of how much human cancer is caused by bad luck and how much is caused by bad things we do ”is super fascinating,” says Martin Nowak, a biologist and mathematician at Harvard who wrote a commentary about the study for Science. He says the findings are stirring up the field, and that’s a good thing. ”It’s very unclear to me about whether we have the tools to answer these questions,” he says. And, rather than settling the controversy raised by the scientists’ previous paper, ”I think it will raise an even bigger controversy,” Nowak says. One of the new sticking points is that mutations, while necessary for cancer to develop, aren’t the whole story. For example, some scientists say the study doesn’t fully account for how hormones can influence cancer. Dr. Graham Colditz, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis isn’t convinced that hazards can been neatly sorted into the categories of hereditary, environmental and unavoidable mutations. ”How these interplay with each other, I think is potentially more complex,” he says. Vogelstein and Tomasetti agree on that point. The causes of cancer are complex. ”We’re not saying the only thing that determines the seriousness of the cancer, or its aggressiveness, or its likelihood to cause the patient’s death, are these mutations,” Vogelstein tells Shots. ”We’re simply saying that they are necessary to get the cancer.”"
"The U. S. Senate has a lot going on: confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court nominee, negotiations on repealing the Affordable Care Act, votes on gun sales regulations and   rules for Alaska. But a big telecom matter found its way into the schedule: privacy rules for Internet service providers. In a     vote Thursday, senators approved a resolution to undo sweeping privacy rules adopted by the   Federal Communications Commission. If it becomes law, it would also prevent the FCC from setting similar rules again. Those rules have not gone into effect, but they require ISPs to tell consumers what information is being collected and how it is being used or shared. Most notably, the rules require ISPs in some cases to get users’ explicit consent, for example to sell information such as geolocation or browsing history for advertising. Republicans in Congress and at the FCC have objected to these rules, passed by the Democratic majority at the FCC in October. Together with major cable and telcom companies, they have argued that the rules put ISPs on unequal footing with other major   companies like Google or Facebook, which are overseen instead by the Federal Trade Commission. As we’ve reported, ”The FTC’s privacy guidelines are less stringent than the ones passed by the FCC and they are implemented through investigations and enforcement, rather than   regulations.” ”The Senate’s action represents a critical step towards reestablishing a balanced framework that is grounded in the   and successful FTC privacy framework that applies equally to all parties operating online,” the trade group   Internet  Television Association, which represents some major ISPs such as Comcast, said in a statement. Privacy and consumer advocates, including the Center for Democracy  Technology and the American Civil Liberties Union, decried the Senate vote. ”The resolution would undo privacy rules that ensure consumers control how their most sensitive information is used,” Neema Singh Guliani, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, said in a statement. It’s unclear when the House of Representatives might take up the bill. If the   House also votes to overturn FCC’s privacy rules, the matter would then go to President Trump for a signature. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had voted against the rules as a Republican commissioner. On Thursday, when asked about the Senate vote during a regularly scheduled FCC meeting, Pai said he would study how to protect user privacy in a different way if the bill becomes law. He didn’t specify how, but told reporters: ”The FCC should have made sure that its regulatory approach matched the FTC’s framework. And to the extent that they are dissimilar and created an asymmetry in terms of regulation of companies that are in the same space  —   online advertising space  —   then that kind of disjunction is something that doesn’t ultimately serve consumers well. . .. My own core goal is to make sure that that uniform expectation of privacy . .. is vindicated through the use of regulatory framework that establishes a level playing field.” Pai himself has been working to block the privacy rules at the FCC. He is also expected to move to reel back other Internet regulations, including the legal framework that enforces   net neutrality principles. Commission procedure would take a while to rewrite adopted regulations."
"Almost three years ago, the ferry Sewol sank in rough seas off South Korea. More than 300 people perished, mostly high school students on a field trip. Now, South Korea’s government is trying to raise what’s left of the   ship. As NPR’s Elise Hu reports from Seoul, nine of the people who were aboard that day in April 2014 remain missing, and families hope to recover those bodies once the Sewol has been lifted out of the water and put in dry dock. Dozens of divers are involved in the salvage operation, Elise says. Crews had the ship partway out of the water when their efforts hit what could be a significant snag. An official from the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Lee Cheoljo, told reporters that workers have discovered that a vehicle ramp is dangling from the Sewol’s left side, according to The Associated Press. Until the ramp is cut away, crews can’t load the ferry onto the     vessel that would carry it into port. Cheoljo said divers will need to remove the ramp using welding equipment, and that it’s vital to finish the work in enough time for the ferry to be loaded by midnight Friday. The mission is up against impending weather  —   currents are expected to strengthen on Saturday. Workers had hoped to finish the job Thursday morning, but they hit an earlier snag when the Sewol began rubbing against the pulleys and equipment on the barges lifting it, requiring the workers to rebalance it. Some family members of the dead and missing watched the crews try to raise the ship. The Associated Press reports that some cried as they watched the wreckage through telescopes: ”I shouted in joy when we heard that the ship surfaced at dawn. I thought we finally can find the missing nine,” Lee   the mother of a missing school girl, told a television crew. ”But when I actually saw the ship coming up, I was devastated. All this time my poor child was in that cold, dirty place. It was heart wrenching.” In addition to searching for the bodies of the missing, there are also plans to form an investigation committee to better understand what caused the ferry to sink on April 16, 2014. Investigators found that the ship was carrying twice the legal limit of cargo when it sank the captain and crew were rescued, but the students were told to stay in place, costing many lives, Elise reports. The ferry’s captain was sentenced to life in prison after an appeals court found him guilty of committing ”murder through willful negligence.” The project to salvage the ship in one piece comes after the recent ouster of South Korean President Park  . Prime Minister Hwang   is temporarily running the government until the results of a presidential   on May 9."
"Meals on Wheels brings food to hundreds of thousands of homebound seniors and people with disabilities. But President Trump’s proposed budget has this   program, like many others, facing cuts. On a hazy morning, Alan Zebker and and Vicki Kysella are organizing packages of food in the back of Zebker’s SUV. They’re volunteers with Meals on Wheels West in Santa Monica. They’ve got their routine down. ”Alan packs the bags I make the deliveries,” Kysella says. ”When she’s delivering, I pack more bags,” Zebker says. Every client gets a hot meal along with a couple of lighter meals or snacks. Altogether, it provides a day’s worth of calories: about 2, 000 in total. Kysella’s been volunteering for about six months. She’s found that Santa Monica’s upscale, beachy image masks a lot of isolation and suffering. ”I just didn’t believe that people with these sorts of disabilities or their lack of mobility were living in these apartments virtually next door to me,” she says. ”It’s just very  .” Kysella works with a farmers market to add some fresh fruits and vegetables to the packages she delivers. Client Betty Hanover is thrilled with the zucchini, the lettuce and the enormous grapefruit. ”Oh, there was so much good stuff today,” Kysella says. Hanover thanks her. ”You’re just so good to me,” she says. Hanover is 93. She can’t drive to the market because of her poor eyesight. She can’t walk there because she can’t be on her feet for very long. Meals on Wheels, she says, makes all the difference. ”It helps me stay in my own home here rather than go to a nursing facility,” she says. Meals on Wheels could bring Hanover food for nearly seven years for the cost of just one month in a nursing home. And that nursing home cost would probably be paid for by Medicaid. But saving the government money isn’t why Hanover loves to hear the Meals on Wheels volunteers knock on her door. ”It’s my big meal of the day and big excitement of the day,” she says. ”It’s fun.” As we’ve reported, Meals on Wheels gets a little over a third of its money from the federal government. The rest comes from local governments, foundations and individuals. But each of the 5, 000 local Meals on Wheels programs has its own mix of funders. The federal program slated for elimination, called Community Development Block Grants, supplies very little money for Meals on Wheels overall. But in some locations, it’s crucial, says Ellie Hollander, the president of Meals on Wheels America. ”I know we have a couple of programs in Pennsylvania and at least two that I’ve talked to in Michigan that are very concerned about the elimination of those grants,” she says. Most of the federal money for Meals on Wheels comes through the Older Americans Act. That’s part of the Department of Health and Human Services budget, which is slated for a cut of nearly 18 percent. How that would affect Meals on Wheels, Hollander says, is anyone’s guess. ”It would be difficult to imagine a scenario that would be free from harm,” she says. Studies show that Meals on Wheels protects its clients from harm. They have better nutrition, fewer hospitalizations and fewer falls. Vickey Healy, 75, became a Meals on Wheels client after she suffered a serious fall in her bathroom. ”I was there for one night and two days,” she says. Now that she has Meals on Wheels, she’s doesn’t think she would wait so long to be rescued. ”I realize the value of having somebody come every day and I know they’re going to come,” she says. It brings her food, a little company and peace of mind."
"Advocates for the poor say the budget plan the Trump administration rolled out on Thursday would be a kick in the shins for   Americans. Sheryl Braxton, who relies on public housing, explained at a hearing in New York City this week that her community needs reinvestment, not less funding. ”We have more mold issues, garbage issues, a water issue with lead, and it’s really bad,” she said. The city has a backlog of about $17 billion in needed repairs for its aging public housing, but the federal program that funds this work would be jeopardized under President Trump’s budget plan. He has proposed cutting $6 billion  —   or 13 percent  —   from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provides aid to more than 4 million families. ”[That includes] the most vulnerable households, the most extremely   households, so it’s very alarming,” says Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities. Zaterman says the cuts, which need congressional approval, would add to an already severe housing shortage for the poor. ”Almost half of the occupants are either seniors or persons with disabilities,” she says. ”We have over 700, 000 children living in public housing.” She says many of these people could be affected by other cuts proposed in Trump’s budget. The president wants to eliminate legal services for the poor, as well as money to help   families pay their heating bills. The budget also would get rid of the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which cities use to fix up distressed neighborhoods. The budget also targets Community Services Block Grant funding, which supports local   programs, such as Meals on Wheels for homebound seniors. ”I can’t understand why something like that would be cut,” says Dan Pruett, president and CEO of Meals on Wheels Central Texas. Pruett says Meals on Wheels Central Texas gets one third of its funding from the government. He says the meals they deliver allow many   seniors to stay in their own homes, something that might now be threatened. ”I would say that the number of people having to go to nursing home care or some alternate type of care that’s more expensive  —   that’s very real,” Pruett says. ”So we save the taxpayers money, no question about it.” Trump officials say they too want to save the taxpayers money, and that the programs targeted for cuts are wasteful and ineffective. Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, says that includes community block grants that fund things like Meals on Wheels. He says the government has spent billions of dollars with little to show for it. ”I can’t defend that any more,” Mulvaney said in a press conference on Thursday. ”We’re $20 trillion in debt. We’re going to spend money  —   we’re going to spend a lot of money  —   but we’re not going to spend it on programs that cannot show that they actually deliver the promises that we’ve made to people.”   advocates insist there is evidence that not helping the poor will hurt in the long run. Olivia Golden, executive director of CLASP, the Center for Law and Social Policy, notes that the Trump administration wants to shift money from   Americans to spend more in areas such as defense, security and law enforcement. ”I think you’ll hear a lot of mayors pointing out that, on the justice side, the way to achieve safety is not to take away training, summer employment, youth resources and put it all on the back end,” Golden says. ”So I think it’s a very counterproductive budget.” That’s the same argument   groups will take to Capitol Hill. Many conservatives in the   Congress agree with Trump that domestic spending should be trimmed  —   but just how much should be cut is what lawmakers will start debating soon."
"The Affordable Care Act replacement plan championed by President Trump would hurt   people in rural areas that voted heavily for the Republican last fall, according to an NPR analysis of data on proposed subsidy changes from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The new changes in tax credits and subsidies for older Americans are a big reason many Republicans are hesitant to get behind the American Health Care Act, which is set for a vote in the House on Thursday. A major component of the Affordable Care Act, subsidies helped   and   people offset the cost of the health care premiums. If the new GOP replacement plan does pass  —   which is still very much in up in the air  —   the bill would still face substantial hurdles in the Senate. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins articulated her opposition to the bill in its current form Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, citing how it ”disproportionately affects older rural Americans.” In an effort to woo reluctant members, one of the amendments announced on Monday evening by House leaders would give the Senate the opportunity to give more tax credits to people aged 50 to 64. However, there’s no requirement to make that happen once it passes over to the Senate. Still, as the Congressional Budget Office also found, it’s older, poorer people who would see some of the largest reduction in both cost and coverage. And they’re also largely in rural areas and smaller counties that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. According to NPR’s analysis of the 2016 election results, Trump won 68. 5 percent of the vote in rural counties, and he also carried smaller counties with a similar 63. 4 percent of the vote. That’s based on classifications by the U. S. Department of Agriculture that factors in both their level of urbanization and their proximity to metro areas the groupings of rural counties and small counties are reliant on the degree of urbanization in the county. But in major metropolitan areas, Trump only got 44 percent of the vote compared to Clinton’s majority. And ultimately it’s those major metro areas that would see some of the smallest changes to the health care subsidies they’re receiving. For example, both    and    making $20, 000 per year would only see a drop in their subsidies by about $1, 000. However,    in metro areas in that same income bracket would see their subsidies decrease by almost $5, 000. But   and    in higher income brackets from $40, 000 to $75, 000 a year would actually see an uptick in their subsidies, ranging from $1, 500 to $3, 000. In    though, only those making $75, 000 a year would see an increase in subsidies of about $4, 000.    in other income groups would see a dip. In the more   areas, those differences are far more pronounced. In rural counties, a    who makes just $20, 000 a year would see their subsidies drop by $6, 700. Only a    who makes $75, 000 or more a year would see an uptick. However,   and    who make at least $40, 000 a year in rural areas would see an increase in subsidies, ranging from just over $1, 000 to $3, 000 more for a    who makes $75, 000. Smaller counties would also see similar changes. Why the change in different areas around the country? The major reason seems to be because, unlike the Affordable Care Act, the Republican bill does not take the local cost of insurance into account  —   usually much higher in rural areas  —   and doesn’t increase the subsidies if local insurance premiums rise. And credits are the same across the board regardless of income. Overall, though, despite the fact that premiums are typically higher in rural areas, people in metro areas would be less affected by the potential subsidy changes. For a    who makes $30, 000 a year, subsidies would drop in rural and small areas, but there’s about a $1, 016 difference between rural areas and metro areas, where    in that income bracket would see an increase. Ultimately, the discrepancies between rural and metro areas only begins to close in higher income brackets. Trump has traveled over the past week to some of the areas that might be most adversely affected by the bill, though both in Nashville, Tenn. and Louisville, Ky. his lobbying at the campaign rallies he held was not that pronounced. And many of the conservative members who are on the fence about the bill come from rural areas or small towns  —   that went heavily for Trump. But even if the law does pass and these changes go into effect, it’s unclear if   voters would turn on Trump or even place the blame with him. A telling anecdote from the Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson covering Trump’s rally last week was a woman who praised Trump for lowering her son’s premiums by almost $500 since he took office. However, those changes were due to the Affordable Care Act, not anything enacted by Trump in the two months since he took office. Kaiser Family Foundation estimated differences in federal subsidies under the proposed Republican plan in 2020 at the county level. A caveat: Kaiser’s analysis at the $20, 000 income level excludes Alaska, Minnesota, New York and Washington, D. C. In 2020, those residents would be eligible for Medicaid (Alaska and Washington, D. C.) or the Basic Health Program (Minnesota and New York). We grouped each county into one of three groups based on its USDA   Continuum Code. Metro counties had a code between 1 and 3,   counties had a code between 4 and 7, rural counties had a code of either 8 or 9. Election results data came from the Associated Press. These results were last updated on Nov. 28, 2016, and are not the final certified results. The average vote calculations for rural, smaller and metro counties do not include Alaska, as the AP does not report election results on the county level in Alaska. We calculated an average value for each county grouping, weighted by population. For each county, we multiplied the county’s dollar difference for each age and income bracket by the county’s population (according to 2015 American Community Survey   data) to create a weighted score. Then, for each county grouping (metro, small town, metro) we summed the weighted scores for each age and income bracket and divided it by the summed population of those county groupings."
"It was a meeting of nerds and sharks. The   ”biotech nerds” and ”robotic nerds” were seven high school students from Washington, D. C. The eight teens who call themselves ”sharks” and flew in from Ghana. ”The shark is a big fish so it means you’re big. Knowledgeable,” explains Stephanie Obbo of Ghana, an aspiring medical doctor. Together, the 15 high schoolers formed a team for the first World Smarts STEM Challenge. That’s a science competition run by IREX, a global development nonprofit that strives to promote student enthusiasm for science, tech, engineering and math (aka STEM). Each of the 17 teams had teenagers in the D. C. area partnering with Ghanaians to identify and solve a   problem. NPR’s Goats and Soda followed ”Team McKwiny”  —   a name that blends D. C.’s McKinley Technology High School and Winneba Senior High School in Ghana. They had collaborated since September over the internet. The Americans kicked around the idea of minimizing carbon emissions. The Ghanaians wanted to tackle water pollution. They finally agreed to design and build a water purifier. Both contingents had a personal stake in the project. The McKinley students found high levels of lead in the Anacostia River that flows through Washington, D. C. And the Winneba students in southern Ghana found pesticides, hospital waste, sewage and other pollutants in a nearby lagoon used for fishing and irrigation. And because water shortages cause locals to rely on streams and ponds for clean drinking water, more than 100 cases of cholera swept through a neighboring district just in October 2016. The Ghanaian teenagers proposed using local materials, like leaves from neem trees, to help filter the water. (The medicinal and antibacterial properties of neem leaves and oil have been studied.) The Americans, with no access to neem leaves, suggested substituting cilantro after learning that it removes lead from water  —   a property discovered by undergraduate researchers in 2013. Meeting in person for the first time was a little awkward, since being social mattered at least as much as being scientific. American Miara Bonner, wearing a lab coat and hoop earrings, suggested an icebreaker. ”What’s that?” asked the Ghanaians in unison. A    game revealed similarities and differences. ”I also don’t like the food at my school,” said Cassell Robinson of McKinley. ”We have many tribes and festivals to remember the past and sacrifice animals,” said Winneba junior Stephanie Obbo. Bonner’s jaw dropped. ”I did not know any of that.” She remembers thinking, ”They hunt. They sacrifice. They don’t teach you that in history!” Their purification device consisted of four interconnected plastic buckets. In the first chamber, the water is filtered through gravel and sand. Then moringa seeds and neem leaves (or cilantro) in the sedimentation chamber extract particles before the water is boiled in a different chamber and then stored. Team McKwiny tested their treated water samples and said they were able to remove contaminants from both fresh and salt water, meeting World Health Organization standards for safety. ”It opens up my eyes that there are a lot of things that are useful out in the world that I just haven’t found yet,” said McKinley’s Megan Richardson. The goal of the competition is to encourage that kind of curiosity. Especially because few American students are embracing STEM. ”Only about 16 percent of American high school seniors are proficient in math and interested in a STEM career,” said Rebecca Bell Meszaros, associate vice president for education with IREX. ”This program is combining STEM and 21st century skills like problem solving, innovation and   communication.” She adds that IREX chose to focus the program, made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, in Ghana because the nonprofit has good access to schools with reliable internet. By Saturday’s final event, American and Ghanaian members of Team McKwiny were whispering into each other’s ears and holding hands. But they didn’t get the grand prize. That went to Team ”Big Bang . .. Brains of the World!” The students had filled ice trays with soil, added copper wire that was coiled around   nails and then poured lemon juice on top. Their battery produced enough voltage to light an LED. The team now has a chance to pitch their battery to investors IREX will match up to $10, 000 raised. ”The winning soil battery demystifies energy production and storage at a time when battery storage is evolving faster than ever,” said judge Jim Egenrieder, director of Virginia Tech’s National Capital Region Thinkabit Labs. ”And the water filtration system prototype represents what may become part of every household in the future, as we learn to use and reuse precious water resources.” Team McKwiny came in second and plans to keep going. The Ghanaian students hope to apply for funding from nongovernmental organizations to construct their filter on the outskirts of the Winneba Township. They want to put the first filter near a school where students lack access to clean water and sometimes have no option but to use water shared by livestock. In the end, the students didn’t just learn about science. The Americans got new insights into life in the developing world. ”I didn’t know that there are lagoons that people get their drinking water from  —   the water that they bathe in and wash their clothes in,” said Miara Bonner, who hopes to one day become an endodontic surgeon. ”I don’t like the idea of that. When I heard that, I thought this is the problem we need to focus on.” And the Ghanaians tossed out their stereotypes of Americans. Belinda Dogbe had the preconception that Americans would be ”snobbish, always wanting to be alone, not friendly”  —   a stereotype that came from Hollywood movies. ”I realized we are wrong,” she said. ”They are very friendly, they are open. They love to ask questions.” Sasha Ingber is a multimedia journalist who covers science, culture and foreign affairs for such publications as National Geographic and Smithsonian. She can be reached @SashaIngber "
"There’s no denying it: Los Angeles isn’t exactly gentle on the ears. That’s one lesson, at least, from a comprehensive noise map created by the U. S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. On the interactive U. S. map the agency released this week, which depicts data on noise produced primarily by airports and interstate highways, few spots glare with such deep and angry color as the City of Angels. Blame the area’s handful of major airports and its legendary snarls of traffic  —   ranked this year as the worst in the nation. If any Angelenos would like to escape to quieter pastures, though, they’ve got options. ”More than 97 percent of the U. S. population has the potential to be exposed to noise from aviation and Interstate highways at levels below 50 decibels or roughly comparable to the noise level of a humming refrigerator,” the BTS notes in its release. The agency says it used data compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Highway Administration to draw up its map, also borrowing the tools of both to determine average daily noise levels produced by transportation. So if you should happen to find yourself stuck beside a particularly cacophonous construction site or concert venue, sadly your aural plight won’t get any mention from BTS. But cities like New York City and Chicago naturally offer plenty of visual proof of just how loud it can be to live in a big city. Those bright spots of purple on the pointillist displays below can pack an average of more than 80 decibels of transportation noise a day  —   or, as BTS puts it, about as much noise as a garbage disposal. Concerned? Well if all else fails, you city slickers, remember: It’s not all clatter and clamor. There’s always Twin Falls, Idaho. Check out the map for yourself here."
"In 1921, an ad in The Seattle Times touted a brand new candy called ”Aplets,” a new confection made ”from the finest Washington apples and honey and walnuts.” A few years later, Aplets were joined by ”Cotlets,” a similar candy made from an apricot base. In most of the world, ”Aplets  Cotlets” were based on a treat called lokum, a word derived from Arabic, but the British and Americans know it as ”Turkish delight.” The origins of Turkish delight are a bit mysterious. According to Sweets: A History of Candy, it was ”invented by Arab apothecaries some time around the ninth century.” But Sherbet and Spice: The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts alleges that it was invented by Ottoman palace confectioners in the 18th century. Versions of the candy are made in the Middle East, Russia, the Balkans and Greece. Though there are variations, the delights are usually made from a sweetener, cornflower starch, flavoring (usually rose or orange blossom water) and sometimes nuts. The English originally called it ”lumps of delight,” a name that was wisely changed by the time C. S. Lewis thought to make it the candy that tempted young Edmund Pevensie to betray his siblings in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. If Americans have heard of Turkish delight, it’s likely because this book, published in 1950, made the mysterious confection seem like the most delicious candy in the world. Aplets came to America thanks to two Armenian immigrants  —   Armen Tertsagian and Mark Balaban  —   who bought an orchard in Cashmere, Wash. and had to find something to do with their excess fruit. Greg Taylor, president of Liberty Orchards  —   the company that makes Aplets  Cotlets  —   is the grandson of both founders. (The unmarried sister of one of the men ”got sent over to be the wife of my grandfather,” he explains.) The men met at a YMCA, where Taylor says they were likely ”the only Armenian guys within 100 miles.” Together, they started a restaurant, which failed, and then a yogurt business, which also failed. But their fruit business has carried on for almost 100 years  —   even though the orchards were sold long ago, when the owners realized that producing Aplets from   apples didn’t offer the quality control needed to make a   lokum. The business partners had grown up eating lokum and wanted to be the first to produce it commercially in the United States. Thanks in part to the inclusion of Washington apples, Aplets became a popular gift for tourists, and got an extra publicity boost through sales at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. ”It’s still our   product,” Taylor says, largely because of its popularity in the Pacific Northwest. But Aplets  Cotlets, just like more traditional versions of Turkish delight, can be an acquired taste. Many people find it overly sweet and aren’t used to eating desserts with floral flavors. One of the few changes Liberty Orchards has made to the confection was to decrease the amount of rose flavor. ”We got too many negative comments about the flowery taste,” Taylor says. Another change was to add pectin to the candies to make it less stringy than original Turkish delight, which can easily be pulled apart like taffy but also gives it a much longer  . The company’s marketing is a little different, too. Because of historic animosity between Armenians and Turks, Aplets  Cotlets downplayed its association with ”Turkish delight” for many years. ”At some point we decided, heck, we make Turkish delight and let’s not be afraid to say it,” Taylor says. ”Some of the older Armenians weren’t happy that we’d done that.” When asked if he thought the original founders would be proud to see their candy still in stores, Taylor became thoughtful. ”I think they’d be proud that the company has lasted this long and that the business is still in the family. But it’s conceivable that they’d think, ’Why didn’t they do more?’ ” Taylor explains that most of the company’s innovation occurred in the first and second generations, and he sees himself as being ”less entrepreneurial.” Despite his misgivings, fans have filled Liberty Orchards’ social media with memories of the candy  —   which evidently still tastes as good as it did decades ago. One man writes about how he used to buy the candy with the money he made from his newspaper route 40 years ago. A woman mentions that her grandmother used to keep the candies at home and ”each time I eat one, I have wonderful memories of the time I spent with this special lady.” Sadly, for another family it was their dog who enjoyed the treats after breaking into the boxes they’d purchased for holiday gifts. For now, Aplets  Cotlets remains a regional secret. Yet it exemplifies the very best of American food culture  —   immigrants who refashioned their childhood treats by using the foods of their new home. Tove K. Danovich is a journalist based in Portland, Ore."
"Here’s a classic big city dilemma (sorry suburban folks): It’s late at night, the weather is bad, and you’re hungry. Your favorite restaurant is less than a mile away, but you don’t want to leave the house, and you don’t want to pay a $5 delivery fee  —   plus tip  —   for a $10 meal. So, what do you do? Back in the old days, you would have braved the elements  —   or learned to plan ahead. But those days are coming to an end, at least in Washington, D. C. A fleet of about 20 autonomous,   robots recently has appeared on the sidewalks of the nation’s capital, and they’re out to revolutionize   delivery in big cities. Their mission? Bring takeout food from restaurants to hungry customers at home  —   while keeping the delivery cost to around a dollar. The robots are European, created in Estonia by a company called Starship Technologies. The company is new, but its tech experience runs deep: It was founded by two of the   of Skype, Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla. Each   bot is essentially a   cooler on six wheels, and drives at an average speed of about 4 miles per hour. It has lights and a tall, bright orange flag to make it more visible to pedestrians on the sidewalk. A smartphone app unlocks the shiny black lid to access the hollow, insulated holding area, and then automatically locks back into place. Here in Washington, Starship has teamed up with Postmates, the online delivery service, and the robots already are completing deliveries around the city. We wanted to see how they work, so we met up with Nick Handrick, the director of operations for Starship in the District, to go for a walk with one of the little bots. ”It’s pretty small, pretty cute,” he says, as we wait for the bot to get a new set of coordinates for the journey. This is just a test drive, but in an actual delivery, those coordinates would come after a consumer had placed a delivery through the Postmates app. Suddenly, the robot begins to move, almost silently. It’s electric, so there isn’t much sound aside from the quiet hum of the wheels on the pavement. The bot moves like a giant   car, except there’s no remote. It’s driving entirely on its own, navigating the sidewalk using artificial intelligence technology that draws input from nine cameras all around the rim, GPS, and sensors that can help identify the speed of pedestrians in the immediate area. The bot’s cameras recognize a lot  —   including walk signals and traffic lights, crosswalks and stop signs, Handrick explains. And they get smarter the more they drive, learning more about the sidewalks and traffic patterns of busy streets with every trip they take. And, Handrick says, if a bot finds itself in a situation it doesn’t understand  —   an unfamiliar driveway, for instance, or next to a parked car with flashing lights  —   there’s always a human operator monitoring things, so all the machine has to do is send a call for help. The human on the other side can look through the cameras and figure out the best action to take. The catch? That human might be all the way in Estonia, at the original Starship Technologies headquarters  —   so if your   takeout delivery gets stuck, it could be someone in another country who helps get things back on track. That camera and human combo also provides security. If someone tries to steal the robot, for example, an alarm sounds and the operator can speak through   speakers. The cameras can photograph the thief, and there are multiple tracking devices that can track the bot’s location. And the bot won’t work or open unless you reprogram it  —   which Handrick says isn’t easy. ”It will be an embarrassing day for the person who decides to try and take one,” he says. ”You’d be stealing a beacon for the police to follow us right to you.” The robots have only been in Washington for about a month, and they’re still causing quite a stir, often getting stopped for photos. While we’re walking, Maria Garcia is on the sidewalk, pointing out the robot to her    daughter. ”It’s super cool,” Garcia says. ”The only thing I worry about  —   is it going to put people out of jobs?” Russell Cook, the director of operations at Postmates, says absolutely not. The company sees robots as a supplemental form of delivery, not a replacement, he says. Robots like these ideally will complete deliveries that normally wouldn’t have been placed with the   delivery options of the past. ”We have people that drive cars, they walk, they bike, and we see robots as another type of vehicle that enables a whole bunch of different things from a delivery perspective,” Cook says. Legislation has passed to make   robots like these legal on the sidewalks in the District of Columbia and Virginia, and similar laws are in the works in Florida and Idaho. Other states also have expressed interest. But for everything these robots do have, there is one thing they’re lacking  —   a name. This bot we’ve been walking with is simply called 6D57. Handrick says Starship is constantly asking people for suggestions. Got an idea? The company would love to hear it."
"This is the story of a hoax that almost was. Its motivating force was a hunger for fame, or infamy, or whispered legend in a particularly American sort of way. It begins on a beach somewhere in south Florida. Earlier this year, a test pressing (literally a test, for labels and artists to hear before ordering a full run of new record) of an unknown musician’s record was put up for sale on Discogs, a resale website popular with collectors. Two days later that test pressing almost became, at a price tag of $18, 000, the most expensive album ever sold on the site, besting a record set last year for a sublimely rare Prince piece which sold for $15, 000. The   turnaround on this   sale, however, seems to have been a fiction woven by the record’s creator. This morning, Discogs canceled the transaction. The album, called 301 Jackson St. was recorded by Billy Yeager, a Florida man who has pursued musical fame (or at least notoriety) for 37 years, by his own account. Despite a clear talent for guitar and a cosmically eccentric and dubiously effective knack for   Yeager has been stymied repeatedly. The most eccentric  —   and    —   example of his promotional facility, bar none, came when Yeager spent two years planning and executing a hoax that would eventually convince a television station and a weekly paper to believe that he was Jimmy Story, the son of Jimi Hendrix, who was in possession of lost recordings from the psychedelic legend. To pull off the scam, Yeager dyed his skin brown. As The Miami Herald wrote in 1996: The recently proclaimed, mumbling, mentally defective,     love child of Jimi Hendrix is really a   singing surfer guy from Hollywood beach. Both the TV station and the newspaper were victims of an incredibly detailed hoax  —   including forged photos, signatures and birth certificate  —   that was two years in the making by itinerant   Billy Yeager. He then called The Herald to claim, er, credit for the hoax, executed for attention. Now, it seems clear that Yeager has attempted to perpetrate another hoax: He is, it seems, the seller who posted 301 Jackson St. on Discogs. He’s also likely the buyer. Which means that $18, 000 never changed hands and also raises the possibility that the test pressing of 301 Jackson St. does not exist at all. Could this story get any weirder? As the Herald notes, the Jimmy Story hoax (you can see a picture of Yeager as Jimmy Story, with dyed   on his website  —   note that    of the clippings included in that image, such as a cover story from The New York Times, are clearly fake) began, as few things do, with Bruce Hornsby. (Yes, that Bruce Hornsby.) In 1990, the story goes, Hornsby heard a demo tape of Yeager’s, liked what he heard and connected Yeager with Capitol Records, who gave Yeager a shot. It was the closest he would come to fame, but it cemented in Yeager’s mind what he’d thought for some time: that he was destined for, perhaps owed, greatness. The catalyst Hornsby provided would become a source of obsession. As the Herald wrote, years after Hornsby’s   Yeager was far from success, surviving ”on odd jobs,” living ”in a cramped beach apartment with surfboards on the walls” with ”a drawer jammed with hundreds of terse rejection letters from recording companies.” Embittered, Yeager began to plan the Jimmy Story bamboozle. After two years of preparation, Jimmy Story became a cover star. Less than two years after that, Yeager had assembled, roughshod and chaotic, a documentary about his life, with the Jimmy Story hoax as its centrifugal force. An excellent piece by John F. Stacey for the New Times   Beach, published in late 1997, chronicles Yeager’s production of the film  —   Jimmy’s Story  —   culled from many, many hours of tape. The film featured interviews with family members, including Bunny Yeager, a former Playboy model and photographer best known for helping to craft   Betty Page’s image. In his story Stacey percolates some useful insights: In his movie, quotations from Scripture in   frame this personal journey of trying to ”make it” in biblical proportions akin to Job or Moses in the desert. This quixotic   struggle is what led to the creation of Jimmy Story. A tumble down the rabbit hole of Yeager’s life is quixotic indeed  —   relentless failures and his ceaseless drive to reverse them form a closed loop that only occasionally reaches out into the real world. Diving in, you realize quickly you are not in control here, like Alice chasing the rabbit. Like a dog chasing a car. John F. Stacey says he stayed in touch with Yeager for years after he wrote that piece, but lost touch about a decade ago because, as he says, ”he always wants something off of me.” But the release of Jimmy’s Story, which Stacey praised, drew the attention of a Spanish woman named Anais, who traveled to Florida and became Yeager’s wife, Stacey says. After the pair married they began producing films like Jesus of Malibu and Sebastien Beach, One Fine Day, which attracted minor attention. Eventually, Yeager began experimenting with the web and the infinite possibilities it offers, to those with ample time on their hands, for invention, obfuscation and, most importantly,  . But, true to form, Yeager didn’t go about harnessing the web like most do  —   sharing and promoting his work and hoping it would draw eyeballs. For all his purported virtuosity and the ostensible existence of multiple recordings, his music is  —   besides grainy footage of Yeager shredding,   and   in a backyard jam session  —   practically inaccessible in an age of ubiquitous access. Instead, Yeager created a murkier  —   possibly entirely fictional  —   network of identities with the purpose of propping himself up, like stilts under a   beach house. This network appears to be composed of publicists, managers, film producers and retailers of Yeager memorabilia  —   or what normal folks call items of sentimental value. The trail of (quite arguably) collectible Yeager ephemera online forms another closed system of dubious worth, with Yeager at its center and pseudonymous retailers encircling him.   items can be found across eBay, YouTube, Discogs and Etsy, always priced exorbitantly. A surfboard once offered for $15, 000 by a seller in Lake Worth, Fla. A recording by Yeager and bass god Jaco Pastorius for $99, 000, offered by South Florida Collectables [sic]. A guitar that Yeager played in Jesus of Malibu for $250, 000 from a shop named Vonweinberg (remember that name) in West Palm Beach, Fla. On YouTube, one of the few videos of Yeager playing  —   ably  —   is said to be for sale by ”South Florida Collectibles.” On Discogs, the user who attempted to sell 301 Jackson St. and nearly broke the site’s record under the name ”southflamusic” has several other Yeager records for sale, none priced less than $3, 200. (Asked about the pricing of Yeager’s records, Dave Thompson, the editor of price guides for the music collector’s magazine Goldmine, told NPR, ”All it comes down to is: How badly does someone want it, and can they afford to buy it? The question I cannot answer is. .. why? ”) Reached over email, ”southflamusic” responded using the name ”Al Sharpton,” a pseudonym they said was meant to protect their business interests. Asked how they acquired their copy of 301 Jackson St. Sharpton responded: ”I can’t say.” Asked what the record sounded like and how, given Yeager’s mercurial anonymity, they had arrived at these prices, Sharpton responded with over 600 words about Yeager’s life. Here’s a selection: it is totally original, think for a moment that he is a guitar player, and consider Bruce Hornsby is a piano player, what would make him want to help Billy? Yeager is a genius, there is not one single artist on the planet that can do what he does, not even Mozart. Your next question is yes it is expensive, you should know that famous artists albums are a dime a dozen, there is not hardly any of Billy’s records   take any, ANY obscure artist and look them up on discogs, I bet you find over 600 to 1000 albums listed for sale, I know, Billy’s records are rare. Yeager’s life story will also probably become a major feature film, I have heard that one is in the works [. ..] as I said, you should watch the film, and a tip for you. ... if you are covering just a story about the album on discogs, you are making a mistake, leaving a big story to someone else is foolish, word to the wise, invest your time, Asked for a phone call, Sharpton responded that they were ”in the middle of talks all day with some business.” Sharpton did not respond at press time when asked   if they were in fact Billy Yeager. Discogs, which initially notified NPR of the   sale of 301 Jackson St. says they verify sales of this magnitude by making sure each side of the transaction has no complaints following the transaction’s completion. (In this case, the mailing of a physical check.) However, in this case an employee named Aaron Marquez, a community engagement specialist, thought something seemed fishy. (As did NPR, when we began investigating Yeager’s life.) The company canceled the sale as of this morning, but not before reporting about the   transaction began to make its way across the Internet. In a statement on the transaction’s cancellation, founder and CEO Kevin Lewandowski writes: ”Discogs’ mission will continue to be built on the love of music, not the duplicitous nature of the hustle.” The press contact Yeager lists on his site  —   Chris Von Weinberg, who is also listed as the writer, producer and director of a recent documentary about Yeager and who has no other film credits on iMDB  —   did not respond to a request for an interview. That’s because Von Weinberg is Yeager, says John F. Stacey. ”Chris Von Weinberg. That’s Billy. As he’s migrated onto the Internet he’s created all these fake identities.” As Stacey wrote in 1997, Yeager had a teacher: Once, when young Billy accompanied his dad to a meeting about a potential record deal as a country artist, he was amazed how Ray suddenly adopted a hillbilly drawl and bumbling demeanor. It isn’t hard to see where the younger Yeager might have picked up his penchant for affecting voices, for impersonating his own manager on the phone, for all the compulsive artifice that has overshadowed his music for so long. Everything about this tale points to Yeager having bought his own unknown record from himself, short of Yeager actually admitting it. But to what end? Likely the one you’re reading. What comes after this, Yeager’s latest arguable success (however fleetingly, he held a sales record over Prince  —   more than most can hope for, at least) might be a form of infamy that he could, for once, be satisfied with. But this is a man more interested in the chase than in the catching. The story of Billy Yeager is one of purposeless obfuscation. Yeager told Stacey he should be playing stadiums, not local bars. But anyone in a stadium, their fame achieved, has played a bar once in their life. Yeager, for all the belief he has in his promise and his failures expressing it, has repeatedly poured more of his creative energy into being a   than he has an artist. If that art does indeed exist, we’ll probably never hear it at a price we’re willing to pay."
"Kendrick Lamar, deservedly hailed as the god MC of his generation, made a peculiar pronouncement from on high (i. e.   Internet) today that has fans genuflecting in collective anticipation. The rapper’s Instagram account was wiped clean Thursday morning, replaced with one cryptic post added around sunrise. The simple    image of the Roman numeral ”IV,” with no caption provided, has led to a   interpretation: Prepare ye the way for the impending release of Lamar’s fourth studio album. Of course, it’s a move meant to provoke wild conjecture. It is standard practice now for artists  —   or even presidents  —   to use social media to make major announcements. But nothing has been confirmed. DJBooth’s editorial site The Plug speculates Lamar’s post could be an allusion to a forthcoming single, potentially produced by The Alchemist, who tweeted the same image hours later. Either way, the timing is telling, as it comes not even a full week after Drake, streaming king, released his More Life playlist. Yet, the bigger question is not when, or if, but how Lamar’s next LP will make a connection between God and gangsta rap. In a New York Times’ T Magazine  interview published earlier this month, Lamar hinted that his next album would explore themes around God even more explicitly than he has in past projects. ”I think now, how wayward things have gone within the past few months, my focus is ultimately going back to my community and the other communities around the world where they’re doing the groundwork,” he told Times contributor Wyatt Mason. ”To Pimp a Butterfly was addressing the problem. I’m in a space now where I’m not addressing the problem anymore. We’re in a time where we exclude one major component out of this whole thing called life: God. Nobody speaks on it because it’s almost in conflict with what’s going on in the world when you talk about politics and government and the system.” But the gospel according to Kendrick Lamar  —   and the suggestion that his next album would focus on that theme  —   spawned widespread disapproval online after the Times piece went viral. ”If I wanted to hear about God I’d listen to gospel,” read one choice tweet. ”Pls just go back to rapping about Compton bruh,” another response read. Others implied Lamar was attempting to ride a wave, following the tremendous success of Chance the Rapper’s   mixtape Coloring Book. While Chance’s release was perhaps the strongest example yet of gospel rap gone mainstream, Lamar has flirted with overt themes of Christianity in past works. The climax to Lamar’s 2012   debut Good Kid, M. A. A. D. City features a skit with Lamar and his friends accepting Christ in a neighborhood parking lot following a gang tragedy. Both Lamar and Chance have emerged as   artists in an increasingly unchurched generation. Both hail from cities with notorious gang problems and gun violence. And both are using mainstream rap to promote a relationship with God as part of the solution to these problems. Yet it’s Lamar’s sober approach that’s considered the more radical of the two. Unlike Chance, whose Coloring Book is just that  —   a bright sonic display of his faith in the face of reality  —   Lamar tends toward much darker,   territory in his masterful works. Even his personal displays of faith have drawn raised eyebrows. A 2015 BuzzFeed story, ”The Radical Christianity of Kendrick Lamar,” recounts his unusual Halloween costume in 2014, the year he dressed as Jesus Christ. ”If I want to idolize somebody, I’m not going to do a scary monster, I’m not gonna do another artist or a human being  —   I’m gonna idolize the Master, who I feel is the Master, and try to walk in His light,” he told The FADER the same year. ”It’s hard, it’s something I probably could never do, but I’m gonna try. Not just with the outfit but with everyday life. The outfit is just the imagery, but what’s inside me will display longer.” Prepare yourselves for the fourth coming, in whatever form it may assume."
"It’s hard not to get excited about news of a potentially effective treatment for sepsis, a condition that leads to multiple organ failure and kills more people in the hospital than any other disease. But there have been so many false promises about this condition over the years, it’s also wise to treat announcements  —   like one published online by the journal, Chest  —   with caution. The study, from Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va. reported some remarkable success in treating patients who were at high risk of sudden death. The story began in January, 2016, when Dr. Paul Marik was running the intensive care unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. A    woman came in with a severe case of sepsis  —   inflammation frequently triggered by an overwhelming infection. ”Her kidneys weren’t working. Her lungs weren’t working. She was going to die,” Marik said. ”In a situation like this, you start thinking out of the box.” Marik had recently read a study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Dr. Berry Fowler and his colleagues had shown some moderate success in treating people who had sepsis with intravenous vitamin C. Marik decided to give it a try. He added in a low dose of corticosteroids, which are sometimes used to treat sepsis, along with a bit of another vitamin, thiamine. His desperately ill patient got an infusion of this mixture. ”I was expecting the next morning when I came to work she would be dead,” Marik said. ”But when I walked in the next morning, I got the shock of my life.” The patient was well on the road to recovery. Marik tried this treatment with the next two sepsis patients he encountered, and was similarly surprised. So he started treating his sepsis patients regularly with the vitamin and steroid infusion. After he’d treated 50 patients, he decided to write up his results. As he described it in Chest, only four of those 47 patients died in the hospital  —   and all the deaths were from their underlying diseases, not from sepsis. For comparison, he looked back at 47 patients the hospital had treated before he tried the vitamin C infusion and found that 19 had died in the hospital. This is not the standard way to evaluate a potential new treatment. Ordinarily, the potential treatment would be tested head to head with a placebo or standard treatment, and neither the doctors nor the patients would know who in the study was getting the new therapy. But the results were so stunning, Marik decided that from that point on he would treat all his sepsis patients with the vitamin C infusion. So far, he’s treated about 150 patients, and only one has died of sepsis, he said. That’s a phenomenal claim, considering that of the million Americans a year who get sepsis, about 300, 000 die. ”So that’s the equivalent of three jumbo jets crashing every single day,” Marik said. An effective treatment for sepsis would be a really big deal. ”If it turns out in further studies that this is true, and we can validate it, then this will be an unbelievably huge deal,” said Dr. Craig Coopersmith, a surgery professor at Emory University School of Medicine. ”But right now we should treat it as a preliminary deal that needs to be validated.” Coopersmith, a top sepsis researcher, is cautious for a reason. There have been hundreds of exciting results from sepsis studies that failed in   research. A result ”can look really exciting when you do it on a group in one hospital with one set of clinicians, and then when you try to validate with a larger group in multiple centers  —   thus far we’ve been unsuccessful with anything,” Coopersmith said. Marik may face extra skepticism because the main ingredient is vitamin C, which has attracted a great deal of skepticism over the years. Fowler at VCU was concerned about that when he wanted to launch a study about the role of vitamin C in sepsis. ”Honestly, when we submitted the grant to the NIH, I was fully expecting them to say ’vitamin C? Really?’ ” Fowler tells Shots. But he’d made the case that vitamin C wasn’t simply a   antioxidant. When the vitamin is injected, as opposed to taken orally, it can influence the immune system’s response to inflammation, he told Shots. The NIH gave him a $3. 2 million grant to run a carefully controlled study of vitamin C to treat sepsis, with all the usual conditions: It includes placebos the scientists don’t know who’s getting the active drug and it’s being conducted at several universities. That study could wrap up later this year. Fowler says some patients in the trial will probably have been given corticosteroids, as Marik’s patients were, but that’s not a formal part of the study. Coopersmith said the extraordinary results reported from Norfolk clearly need that kind of careful scrutiny. Marik said he agrees, though he’s obviously not waiting for those results to emerge. Taxpayers and drug companies have spent billions of dollars searching for an effective treatment for sepsis. Drug companies could reap billions in profits if they can develop a successful treatment for this common and often fatal disease. But profit is not the motive here, Marik says. The ingredients cost about as much as a single dose of antibiotics. ”I obviously have no vested interest,” he says. ”Nobody’s going to make money from this  —   so this is a very   thing!” You can reach Richard Harris at rharris@npr. org."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Bob Dylan is evidently not finished with his (grand, now exhaustive) inquiry into the Great American Songbook. The 2016 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who was hailed by the Swedish Academy for ”having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” is releasing a     from the   era of that tradition on March 31. Triplicate, recorded at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles with Dylan’s touring band, follows two similar efforts  —   Fallen Angels (2016) and Shadows in the Night (2015)  —   and is his 38th studio release. Its 30 songs bring Dylan’s recorded output of standards to just over 50  —   or seven more than the 43 songs contained on his   landmarks Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. The sheer volume of material prompts a distancing step backward: What is going on here? What’s the intention behind this   serving of unabashedly romantic tunes? La La Land notwithstanding, these compositions are out of step with contemporary culture as Dylan sings on ”September of My Years,” they ”reach back to yesterday” with   chords and quaint lyrics about quaint courtship rituals. It’s fair to say that few in Dylan’s core audience know these tunes, and even fewer have been waiting for their revival by a    road warrior with a compromised vocal instrument. In the past, it’s been possible to dismiss Dylan’s crooner jag as a lark, an old man’s sentimental journey, the Early Bird Special version of Carpool Karaoke. Now, tripling down on swing with a slow, slinky version of ”Sentimental Journey” and a languid ”Stardust,” Dylan appears  —   and sounds  —   deeply committed to this music. He seems to be saying something major about the art of the song, about what constitutes a song. Here’s a theory: Maybe all this time on the bandstand of the mythic Starlite Ballroom has left Dylan alarmed about the current state of popular song. He’s checked out the works of the reigning superstars and observed  —   because for all his poetry, he’s also a   guy  —   that most of what’s successful today centers around static harmony (looped one or two chord vamps) and   melodic lines that resemble playground taunts. High tech production masking a deficit of melody. In terms of musical sophistication, they’re a long, devolved way from the sweeping grace of ”Stardust.” Dylan is not the first to notice this, of course. (And, it should be noted, lots of   pop stars have schmaltzed their way through the Songbook, to lucrative ends.) But Dylan occupies a unique place in music. Having written so many songs that profoundly upended conventional wisdom about what a song could be, his decisions have some gravitas. Dylan going deep on tunes written for Broadway musicals and   pop stars can be read as an act of radical conservation  —   the work of a Noah figure who’s out to rescue not just specific songs but an entire approach to songwriting. A discipline. An ideal. Because as Frank Sinatra and Chet Baker and countless others knew, the concise songs of the Songbook era are magical   energy systems. In the space of just 32 measures, less than a minute, they lay out an idea or narrative, develop it, take it into a different tonality for new perspective, and return ”home” in a way that makes listeners want to take the ride again. The composers  —   and among those covered on Triplicate are Harold Arlen, Cy Coleman, Hoagy Carmichael  —   created   melodies that are challenging to sing casually, yet somehow burrow into the ear. Around those, they created   chord sequences that detour abruptly into different keys and inspire endless variations as the tune unfolds. Examine the formative work of Dylan, Chuck Berry (RIP) The Beatles, any significant   figure, and you find that at one point or another, they came to understand and appreciate the structure of the standard tune, along with related structures like the blues. In every case, that understanding became crucial to the development of their own material. Dylan seems keenly aware of this debt he moves with great reverence through these melodies, catching the   emotions and the more delicious whispered grace notes between them. He understands the innerworkings of a song like ”These Foolish Things,” which tells how small things, like ”a tinkling piano in the next apartment,” trigger the memory of a   lover. In his version, the nostalgia hangs in the air like stale smoke, and his wise, old, serrated voice does illuminating justice to the pain of looking back. Dylan sings it at close range and at human scale  —   he’s sketching the intimate moments that make up a life, and pulling from them universal truths about longing and loneliness, the way all the great singers have done. On that song and others, his interpretations seem gentle, methodical and profoundly intentional  —   it’s like he’s mapping the DNA of these tunes for future generations. The title, Triplicate, suggests old mimeograph technology, and implies that the three individual   journeys are mirror images of each other. That’s not the case really, though there are a lot of ballads here, and they move in a tempo range somewhere between ”stately crawl” and ”stillborn rubato.” Likewise, there are more than a few   tunes that land in that zone between ”  foxtrot” and the cadence jazz drummers once derisively referred to as the ”businessman’s bounce.” There are, however, plenty of moments of sublime grace, and many of them are authored (or enhanced) by the guitar team of Dean Parks, Charlie Sexton and (on breathtakingly weeping steel guitar punctuation) Donnie Herron. Given the scope of this project, some rhythmic repetition was perhaps inevitable. What’s remarkable is that things rarely bog down. Now fully inhabiting the crisp snap as well as the breathy nuances of swing, Dylan’s band hums with a serene authority, never overloading the music with showmanship. They leave enough space for the old guy to do his thing  —   and as he sings these   melodies and conjures the ghosts of vanished lovers hovering over the verses, he doesn’t just bring these songs back to life. He makes a pretty good case for why they should live forever."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. As a musician, Aimee Mann has long indulged her bleaker side, dating all the way back to her  ’80s debut as the lead singer of ’Til Tuesday. In the   since she launched her solo career, Mann has released nine solo albums  —   not counting her classic film work in 1999’s Magnolia  —   and formed a duo called The Both with Ted Leo. But she’s never made an album quite like Mental Illness, which (as its title might indicate) delves into matters that afflict worried minds. Mann is nothing if not an intellectually lively songwriter, not to mention a deeply funny person, so there’s much more to Mental Illness than mere dirges, or waltzes, or rundowns of life’s accumulated disappointments. Most notably, these songs are buoyantly catchy in their own way, with calmly dispensed beauty that consistently outweighs their dourness. Take the single ”Patient Zero,” for example, with its tales of Hollywood disillusionment: Mann hardly brims over with hope at even her brightest moments, but she does leaven the song with wry queries like, ”Life is grand   And wouldn’t you like to have it go as planned?” From its opening moments, there’s a still quality to Mental Illness: In ”Goose Snow Cone,” for example, Mann’s voice recalls the plaintively angelic quality of Low’s Mimi Parker, a comparison that pays a high compliment to both singers. Mann herself has described Mental Illness as an effort ”to write the saddest, slowest, most acoustic,  ’      record I could,” and the results  —   performed with the aid of Jonathan Coulton, Ted Leo, Jay Bellerose and others  —   reflect that, at least to a point. But even at its slowest, the album never feels leaden or dull. One of the smartest songwriters in the business, Mann is way too smart not to throw a clever twist into everything she does."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Americana has had a banner few years, to put it mildly, and the roots of its current incarnation can be traced back to Rodney Crowell. The   songwriter has collaborated with everyone from Emmylou Harris to Waylon Jennings, all while maintaining a solo career that’s netted him two Grammys and an induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. It’s fitting, then, that Crowell’s new album Close Ties unfolds like a history lesson, both of his personal mythology and the music that shaped it. Produced by Jordan Lehning and Kim Buie, the   collection considers Crowell’s influences while looking to the future, each song delivered with Crowell’s slight growl and poet’s eye for detail. Opener ”East Houston Blues,” a rollicking shuffle buoyed by acoustic slide guitar, offers a glimpse into Crowell’s difficult childhood, a topic the artist has never shied away from. (In his revealing 2011 memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks, he shared, among other painful details, that at the age of 5 he broke up a fight between his parents by firing a shotgun.) He continues to reckon with his past throughout Close Ties, from the mournful, twangy dreamscape of ”Reckless,” to the plainspoken regret of ”Forgive Me Annabelle,” an affecting piano ballad that revisits past romantic indiscretions through the unforgiving lens of time and age. ”Life Without Susanna,” one of the album’s standout tracks, is a bittersweet goodbye to Susanna Clark, an established country songwriter who formed quite the team with her husband, Guy Clark. Crowell references her again in the album’s closing track, ”Nashville 1972,” a   roll call of the musical luminaries (Steve Earle and David Olney, among others) he encountered upon moving to Nashville that year. If ”Nashville 1972” is a paean to the good old days, ”It Ain’t Over Yet” is Crowell’s history  —   musical and otherwise  —   reconciled in just over five minutes. Featuring John Paul White and Crowell’s   Rosanne Cash, the song is a gently triumphant ode to life’s ups and downs, ”ship[s] rolling in” and others ”right back out.” The choice of Crowell’s   and one of his genre’s brightest new stars can’t be a coincidence. There’s no doubt that Crowell was an architect of Americana as we know it, and with Close Ties, we’re fortunate to have a look at his blueprints."
"The    couldn’t seal the deal. President Trump, the former businessman who has never been shy about touting his negotiating skills, has for several weeks been involved in a   negotiation and persuasion effort with members of his own party in an effort to pass the American Health Care Act. That effort failed. But this is how Trump sold himself. ”All those politicians in Washington, and not one good negotiator,” he bemoaned in August 2011. It was the day after   Obama and congressional Republicans struck a deal over raising the debt ceiling in a   negotiation. A year and a half later, he offered, ”If the Republicans need a chief negotiator I am always available.” In his 1987 book, Trump: The Art of The Deal, the president and his   Tony Schwartz wrote about how Trump approaches negotiations. In Chapter 2, Trump describes ”The Elements of the Deal,” with sections like ”Think Big,” ”Enhance Your Location” and ”Contain the Costs.” Here are a few excerpts that seem newly relevant in light of the health care bill’s failure: ”Deliver the Goods” ”You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on . .. I’d never understood how Jimmy Carter became president. The answer is that as poorly qualified as he was for the job, Jimmy Carter had the nerve, the guts, the balls, to ask for something extraordinary. That ability above all helped him get elected president. But, then, of course, the American people caught on pretty quickly that Carter couldn’t do the job, and he lost in a landslide when he ran for reelection.” This is what you might call a cautionary tale. Trump is only two months into his presidency. He has time to start delivering the goods. But at the moment, many of his biggest promises remain unfulfilled or stalled. He promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act way back in 2011, when he was contemplating a run for president, and he promised it throughout his successful 2016 campaign. Now it remains the ”law of the land,” as House Speaker Paul Ryan put it on Friday. Trump says he plans to move on to tax reform  —   something people on both sides of the aisle say will be an incredibly heavy lift. It’s been 30 years since Congress last found consensus to rewrite the tax code, and there have been numerous failed attempts since. ”Maximize Your Options” ”I also protect myself by being flexible. I never get too attached to one deal or one approach.” Trump is known to be ideologically flexible. Some have argued it is an asset. In the case of the health care bill, it may have been a liability. His decision to move in the direction of conservative House Freedom Caucus members made the bill unpalatable for moderate Republicans, and even for some    representatives. ”Know Your Market” ”I’m a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. It’s a natural reflex.” House Republicans praised Trump for listening to their concerns. Even as recently as early this week, representatives left meetings with Trump saying he had heard them out. But listening is not the same thing as closing a deal.  ”Protect the Downside and the Upside Will Take Care of Itself” ”It’s been said I believe in the power of positive thinking. In fact, I believe in the power of negative thinking. I happen to be very conservative in business. I always go into the deal anticipating the worst. If you plan for the worst  —   if you can live with the worst  —   the good will always take care of itself.” Maybe that’s what Trump was doing on Jan. 4 as congressional Republicans gathered to discuss their agenda for the year ahead. Vice   Mike Pence was in the room giving House Republicans a pep talk, while Trump sent out three tweets warning Republicans to ”be careful” with health care. This was before Trump took the oath of office and before the American Health Care Act was even introduced. Trump has spent almost as much time talking about the idea of letting Obamacare fail as promoting the legislation, potentially sending mixed messages to congressional Republicans, whose jobs could be on the line and whose constituents would be personally affected by the changes. ”The chaos that Obamacare has created and for which congressional Democrats  —   and you see that  —   are alone responsible for requires swift action,” Trump said in a Feb. 27 meeting with health care executives at the White House. ”I actually told the Republicans that if we did nothing, just did nothing for a   period, let Obamacare totally implode  —   which it’s doing right now anyway  —   that would be from a political standpoint the best thing we could do.” He repeated that talking point again in brief remarks in the Oval Office on Friday, after deciding to pull the bill. At times it has seemed as though the president wasn’t completely invested in the legislation, even as he said he was 100 percent behind the bill. ”Use Your Leverage” ”The worst thing you can possibly to in a deal is seem desperate to make it. . .. In other words, you have to convince the other guy it’s in his interest to make a deal.” Thursday night, Trump sent a message to members of his own party that he was done negotiating. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers that the president wanted a vote and would move on, leaving the Affordable Care Act in place if it failed. He argued their failure to vote would be a political disaster after they had spent years campaigning on the message of repealing and replacing the law. Trump was essentially walking away from the table and arguing that passing the bill was more important to members of Congress than it was to him. They called his bluff. As the day went on Friday, it became increasingly clear the bill would fail as lawmakers who previously had been undecided said they would vote no.  ”Fight Back” ”Much as it pays to emphasize the positive, there are times when the only choice is confrontation. In most cases I’m very easy to get along with. I’m very good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard.” During the campaign, Trump described himself as a  . Will he punch back at congressional Republicans who didn’t support the health care bill? He was asked if he feels betrayed by members of the Freedom Caucus, who negotiated concessions from him before ultimately saying they still couldn’t support the bill. ”I’m not betrayed,” Trump said. ”They’re friends of mine. I’m disappointed because we could’ve had it. So I’m disappointed. I’m a little surprised, I could tell you.” Trump doesn’t quickly forget. We’ll know how he really feels when he starts tweeting, or starts backing   in Republican primaries."
"Updated at 5 p. m. ET, House Republicans scrapped a vote on their health care replacement plan on Friday after defections from both the right and center that made it clear the bill would not pass. ”Obamacare is the law of the land. It is going to remain the law of the land,” House Speaker Paul Ryan admitted shortly after he pulled the bill. ”We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to replace this law.” Ryan may have admitted defeat, but President Trump chalked it up to a ”learning experience.” Trump also tried to spin the setback as an opportunity for a potential ”bipartisan” bill in the future. ”Both parties can get together . .. and have a better bill,” he said, adding, ”Having bipartisan would be a big, big improvement.” But Trump and Ryan both said health care is being put on the shelf for the time being. They’re moving on to tax reform. The failure of the health care bill is a major setback for Trump’s leadership and Ryan’s ability to control his conference. That control was something that eluded his predecessor, John Boehner, and eventually led to Boehner’s ouster. ”The best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode,” Trump argued in the Oval Office. ”It is exploding right now.” Trump  —   who is the first president to enter office without any political or legislative experience  —   seemed to admit there was a bit of a learning curve. ”This was an interesting period of time,” Trump said. ”We all learned a lot. We learned a lot about loyalty and we learned a lot about the   process. And we learned about very arcane rules in both the Senate and the House. Certainly, for me, it was a very interesting experience, but for me, it’ll be an experience that leads to an even better health care plan.” Striking a more solemn tone, a dejected Ryan admitted that fulfilling the GOP’s pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act was tougher than expected. ”Moving from an opposition party to a governing party,” Ryan said, ”comes with growing pains, and, well, we’re feeling those growing pains now.” He added, ”This is a setback  —   no two ways about it. . .. I will not sugarcoat this  —   this is a disappointing day for us.” The way forward for Republicans on exactly how to replace Obamacare remains murky. And it’s not clear whether they will try again. Ryan had already delayed the bill a day to try to muster support. Trump had delivered an ultimatum to House Republicans  —   pass the GOP replacement, the American Health Care Act, or Obamacare will stand. Ultimately, the votes never came together for a fractured GOP caucus, and Ryan traveled to the White House to tell Trump he was pulling the bill. Democrats, meanwhile, were more than happy to take a victory lap in the GOP’s defeat. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose caucus was decimated in 2010 after the health care bill was passed, appeared flanked by Democratic leadership to gloat just a day after the seventh anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act. ”It’s pretty exciting for us,” the California Democrat said, beaming. ”Yesterday the anniversary. Today is a victory for us.” The inability of Republicans to reach consensus on a bill, given their control of the House, Senate and White House, badly hurts the GOP’s image as a party that can govern, and Ryan admitted as much on Friday. The GOP has vowed repeatedly over the past eight years that it would repeal and replace Obamacare. The legislative stalemate endangers Trump’s and the GOP’s agenda and casts a cloud over the legislative path forward after an election waged almost entirely as the antithesis to a progressive agenda enacted by former President Barack Obama, Trump’s predecessor. The risks were high for Trump on the bill. He has hyped a brand of someone able to strike the best deals. Being unable to get this through, after giving an ultimatum to congressional Republicans Thursday, raises questions about just how good a   he is and underscores his lack of legislative and policy experience upon entering the White House. Vice President Pence, who canceled a trip out of Washington, had hoped to make one last sale in a meeting with the roughly     conservative Freedom Caucus, which had also refused to budge from its ideological objections to the bill. In an attempt to win the caucus over, an amendment was added to the bill late Wednesday night, cutting essential health benefits, 10 types of medical care that insurance companies are required to cover. The Freedom Caucus wants to see premiums come down and believes cutting benefits is the way to do that. But that also had an effect on moderates. For example, Rep. Barbara Comstock,  . who represents a swing district in the D. C. suburbs, said she wouldn’t back the bill, joining more moderate Republicans who are top 2018 Democratic targets who don’t want to take a tough vote that might come back to bite them during the midterms. Rep. David Joyce,   another centrist Republican, announced he wouldn’t support the bill either, saying in a statement that the GOP’s replacement plan was no better than Obamacare. And House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen,  . J. also broke ranks with GOP leadership on Friday, announcing that he was a no vote. His reasoning: The current bill adds too many new costs and barriers, along with taking away benefits requirements. White House press secretary Sean Spicer had maintained at his daily briefing that a vote was still slated for this afternoon. He said Trump had ”left everything on the field” to try to woo Republican members, having contacted over 120 members. But his tone and tense were notable. Spicer wouldn’t concede that the bill might fail, but he did admit that ”at the end of the day, you can’t force somebody to do something.” He added, ”At the end of the day, this isn’t a dictatorship.”"
"It’s a love story for the ages: a boy, a girl and more than a million bugs. Lois and Charlie O’Brien, two octogenarian entomologists, have spent their life together chasing insects around the world  —   some 60 years of romance and field work. Now the married scientists are donating their vast insect collection to Arizona State University. ASU estimates the collection is worth $10 million, and says the carefully curated insects within it are a ”transformative” gift with ”enormous scientific value.” The couple also donated $2 million to endow professorships dedicated to identifying new species. The trove of insects reflects the passions of the two entomologists. There are more than a million weevils  —   Charlie’s great insect love, famous for the damage they can wreak on agriculture. And there are 250, 000 planthoppers, the colorfully camouflaged bug of choice for Lois. Lois, 89, and Charlie, 83, met at the University of Arizona in the late ’50s. Here’s how The Guardian describes their romance: ”Lois was a working chemist at the time, with a   job in the school’s toxicology department, when she decided to take a course in entomology. She fell in love with insects and Charles, a teaching assistant, in that order. ” ’They’re such wonderful creatures,’ she said. ’Wouldn’t you like to fly? Wouldn’t you like to swim underwater for three days? Not to mention stinging. I have a neighbor I would like to sting.’ . .. ”In class she bickered and bantered with Charles, who felt awkward about any appearance of preferential treatment. Eventually he left for a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, though not before singing the school’s praises to Lois. She wanted her own PhD. ” ’I didn’t want to stop,’ she said. ’And I was also chasing Charlie the whole time.’ ” They both earned their Ph. D. s in entomology. ASU reports that Lois got hers first, despite Charlie’s head start, because he took some time off for field work in Antarctica  —   where he found some lice on penguins, and precious few other insects. But eventually he made it back to California, and he and Lois were married. ”They launched their personal and professional collaboration by collecting insects during their honeymoon in Canada,” ASU reports, ”and eventually they traveled all over the world.” The rest of their lives were spent collecting, examining, labeling and storing their massive collection of bugs  —   a mix of exhausting field work and exhaustive categorizing at home. They were a coordinated pair in most ways, but Lois told ASU there was one ”little bit of difficulty.” ”He would like me to know more about weevils,” she said. ”But the more I know about weevils the more I have to help him.” She said the world at large is more interested in his weevils than her planthoppers still, she’s written more than 50 papers on her own interests. At one point they drove from Florida to Panama and back, collecting all the way. They lived in Chile, in Texas and in Florida, where Charlie O’Brien taught at Florida Agricultural  Mechanical University. There were adventures  —   a case of mistaken identity in the Solomon Islands, where alarmed villagers thought Charlie was a government officers, and armed men in Venezuela who suspected Lois was trying to steal caimans. When they ”retired” to Arizona, they filled multiple rooms with the specimen shelves Lois built, and kept working. ”Age has slowed the couple down,” The Guardian reports, but . .. well, it’s all relative. The couple used to work 14 hours a day, seven days a week. Now they say they’re down to 10 hours a day, seven days a week  —   mostly at home, pinning specimens in front of the TV. ”It’s been a great life,” Charlie told The Arizona Republic. ”And it’s been our life.”"
"Former Penn State president Graham Spanier was convicted Friday of child endangerment for his role in the sexual abuse scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. In a split verdict, the Pennsylvania jury found that Spanier’s handling of a 2001 complaint alleging abuse by Sandusky, warranted conviction on one of three charges against him. The jury did, however, acquit Spanier of conspiracy and a second count of child endangerment, the Associated Press reports. Pennlive reports the case against Spanier as such: ”Prosecutors had argued that Spanier broke the law when, after receiving a 2001 report that graduate assistant Mike McQueary had seen Sandusky naked with a young boy in the showers at Penn State’s Lasch Building, he did not demand that it be reported immediately to child protection authorities. ”The result, prosecutor Patrick Schulte said in opening statements Monday, was that ”evil in the form of Jerry Sandusky was allowed to run wild” for another decade. Prosecutors maintained that Sandusky sexually assaulted at least three more boys before he was charged with a crime in 2011.” As we’ve previously reported, several Penn State officials, including the school’s   football coach Joe Paterno, were fired or resigned in the wake of the scandal. Sandusky was arrested and eventually convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse for molesting 10 boys over a   period. He is currently serving a term of   years in prison. Earlier this year, two of Spanier’s former administrators pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and were expected to testify against their former boss. The Associated Press confirms both former VP Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley testified during the Spanier’s trial."
"In a series of memorandums sent to U. S. embassies, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has offered a glimpse of what President Trump’s promised ”extreme vetting” will mean for visa applicants when put into practice. The strengthened screening procedures instruct consular officials to develop criteria for identifying ”populations warranting increased scrutiny,” according to a March 17 cable obtained by Reuters. The cable does not offer further definition for the ”population sets” it refers to in its instructions. Among those warranting deepened scrutiny are applicants who have ever been ”present in an   territory.” Those who have must undergo a mandatory review of their social media accounts. The State Department’s instructions also call for what it calls ”interagency counterterrorism screening,” NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports for our Newscast unit  —   procedures ”designed to effectively identify individuals who could pose a threat to the United States.” The instructions were laid out in four memos sent over the course of a very tumultuous week for President Trump’s immigration policy. The State Department sent the first on March 10, according to Reuters, just days after Trump signed his revised executive order on immigration. That order temporarily barred citizens from six   countries from entering the U. S.  —   adopting a slightly narrower scope than his first travel ban, which had been put on hold in federal court. Yet the second, revised version ultimately met the same fate as the first, blocked nationwide by two separate federal court rulings the day before it was set to take effect on March 16. That drama is reflected in the cables sent on March 15 and March 16. The first of these messages set forth lengthy preliminary measures on how to implement the executive order, laying out questions and advising the introduction of additional screening measures according to the ”conclusions of the interagency working group mandated” by Trump’s order. The second, much briefer message rescinded much of that March 15 memo. While none of the memos delves deeply into detail on procedures, they are already receiving pushback from advocacy groups. ”Amnesty International has sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calling on him to publish the messages he sent to embassies about this,” Michele notes. She reports that the human rights organization decried the memos’ reference to ”population sets,” calling it a ”license for discrimination based on national origin and religion.” In a statement, U. S. Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow also called upon Trump to adjust his stance and rhetoric on travel policy: ”Mr. President, please tell the world that while we’re closed to terror, we’re open for business. Imbalanced communication is especially susceptible to being ’lost in translation’ —  so let’s work together to inform our friends and neighbors, who could benefit from reassurance, not just who is no longer welcome here, but who remains invited to invest and vacation here.” As The New York Times reports, the instructions set forth by the State Department generally do not pertain to ”citizens of 38 countries  —   including most of Europe and longstanding allies like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea  —   who can be speedily admitted into the United States under the visa waiver program.” But, the paper notes, that program does not apply to citizens from the Middle East or Africa, the regions covered under Trump’s two suspended travel bans."
"Most baby boomers say that they plan to keep working past conventional retirement age. But to do that, they have to get hired first. New research shows that can be harder when you’re older. The study was conducted by David Neumark, who is a professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, and two other economists. They sent out 40, 000 resumes for thousands of real jobs. The resumes for any given job were identical except for age. ”The   rate  —   the rate by which employers contact us and say we’d like to interview you  —   drops from young applicants to   applicants and drops further from   applicants to older applicants,” Neumark says. He also found the results were worse for older women than for older men. For women, he says, ”the   rates dropped by around a quarter when you go from the young group to the   group. . .. And they drop by another quarter when you go from the   group to . .. around age 65.” Blatant discrimination against older workers is illegal. For example, an employer couldn’t advertise a job saying ”people over 40 need not apply.” A    law called the Age Discrimination in Employment Act prevents that. But there are other ways employers try to screen for age. For example, one company said that ideal candidates for regional sales jobs would be just two to three years out of college and that applicants with eight to 10 years of experience should be avoided. These were actual guidelines that tobacco company R. J. Reynolds gave to job recruiters. As a result, out of about 1, 000 people hired for these positions, only 19 were over the age of 40. This resulted in a lawsuit  —   made possible by a job recruiter who turned whistleblower and gave documents with the hiring guidelines to lawyers at the San Francisco firm Altshuler Berzon, which specializes in employment law. The lawyers contacted the rejected job seekers, including a Georgia man named Billy Carter. He said he’d had no idea why he didn’t get the R. J. Reynolds job until he got a letter from the lawyers. ”It made me mad,” says Carter, especially when he realized that he wasn’t the only one. ”I know I could have been an asset to that company. It was very upsetting.” Below is an exhibit from an age discrimination complaint filed by Richard M. Villarreal against R. J. Reynolds. It shows resume review guidelines provided by R. J. Reynolds to Kelly Services to screen job applicants. It says Kelly should ”stay away from” applicants who have been ”in sales for   years.” Carter is not yet a plaintiff in the lawsuit. He is one of a dozen people Reynolds rejected who have petitioned the court to join the suit as additional plaintiffs. Currently, the only plaintiff is a man named Richard Villarreal. (Read his complaint.) R. J. Reynolds and its attorney declined to comment because of the pending litigation. But in court documents, it doesn’t deal with the discrimination charge. Its argument is that Villarreal doesn’t even have a right to sue, that he waited too long to take action and that the age discrimination law protects people who have jobs  —   not people looking for jobs. This is an exhibit in a complaint filed by Richard Villarreal against R. J. Reynolds for age discrimination. It shows that R. J. Reynolds considered the least desirable candidates for its territory manager positions to be those with the most experience. The company called ideal candidates for these jobs ”Blue Chip TM.” The courts have been torn on these issues. Reynolds won in federal district court, but Villarreal won on appeal. Reynolds then asked for the full appeals court of the 11th Circuit to hear the case and won that round. However, even the judges who sided with Reynolds did so for different reasons, authoring three separate opinions. Villarreal is now waiting to hear whether the Supreme Court will take his case. The Villarreal lawsuit has attracted the attention of advocates for older adults. AARP has filed a friend of the court brief, as have some labor economists, including Neumark. Meanwhile, Congress could take action. A bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill that would clarify the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Whatever happens in Congress or in the courts, discrimination against older workers is going to be a bigger issue if for no other reason than people are living longer lives and wanting  —   and needing  —   to work longer, too."
"Updated at 3:30 p. m. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has volunteered to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, as turmoil within the committee continues and the future of the investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere with the election sunk deeper into doubt. In dueling news conferences Friday morning, committee Chairman Devin Nunes,  . said the committee had postponed its next open hearing for what amounted to logistical reasons  —   while ranking member Adam Schiff,  . said that hearing had been canceled over Democratic objections. Let’s start with Nunes. Speaking first, he said that Manafort  —   who has been accused of having undisclosed entanglements with Russia, including allegations of   payouts from a   political party  —   had volunteered to be interviewed by the committee. Nunes gave no details on when the conversation would happen, or whether it would be a closed or open hearing. He urged anyone else with information relevant to the investigation, which is looking into Russian meddling as well as the mishandling of classified information, to approach the committee. Since then, Roger Stone announced on Twitter he has volunteered to testify, and CNN reports that Carter Page has also volunteered. Both are Trump associates who have been under scrutiny  —   Stone for alleged collusion with Wikileaks and Page for trips to Russia, among other things. Nunes also said the committee had decided to ask more questions of FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers, who appeared at an open hearing on Monday. This time, he said it will be a closed hearing. ”There are just questions that we have . .. that they just couldn’t answer in a public setting,” he said. ”But it’s necessary to get both of them back down here before we can move on to other issues.” As a result, he said the next open hearing  —   scheduled for Tuesday, with Obama administration officials  —   was postponed to make time for the closed hearing. After Nunes spoke, Schiff came out and blasted the decision to call off Tuesday’s hearing. He said that Nunes’ explanation, that they needed time to question Comey and Rogers, ”is at most a dodge,” adding that the committee could hold that closed hearing ”at any time.” ”What really is involved here is a cancellation of the open hearing,” Schiff said. ”We strongly object,” he said, speaking for the Democratic minority. As for why the Tuesday hearing was called off, ”I think that there must have been a very strong pushback from the White House,” Schiff said. ”It’s hard for me to come to any other conclusion.” He welcomed the news that Manafort would testify, but called for it to happen in an open session if possible. Both Schiff and Nunes also addressed the issue of President Trump’s baseless claims that former President Obama had his campaign under illegal surveillance. On Wednesday, Nunes held a surprise press conference to say he’d seen evidence that the Trump transition team had been captured in ”incidental surveillance,” which would not be illegal, but which Trump interpreted as ”somewhat vindicating” his   claims. On Friday, Nunes walked further away from Trump’s position. ”There was no wiretapping of Trump Tower,” he said. ”That didn’t happen. . .. It looks like this was all legal surveillance, from what I can tell,” the chairman said, alluding to the mysterious evidence. That’s not a different stance than he took on Wednesday, but it is a blunter one. Schiff, meanwhile described Trump’s claim as a ”slanderous accusation.” He called Nunes’ Wednesday conference a ”peculiar excursion” that seemed like an attempt to bolster Trump, even though the evidence did not support the allegation. ”That effort to defend the indefensible has led us down this terrible rabbit hole and threatens the integrity of the only investigation [into Russian meddling] that’s authorized in the House,” Schiff said."
"The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that has long held a disputed position in Middle Eastern politics, is now a focus of controversy in the United States. Known in Arabic as the Ikhwan and founded nearly a century ago in Egypt, it advocates the application of Islamic principles in public life. The movement has so far pushed that agenda only in   countries, but some critics now claim  —   without evidence  —   that it is doing the same in the United States. Harshly repressed by many governments in the region, the movement was popular among university students in the Middle East in the 1960s and 1970s  —   and when some of those activists immigrated to the United States with student visas, they brought their Muslim Brotherhood ideology with them. ”They were helped even by our State Department,” says Hossein Goal, who emigrated from Iran during the period. ”They gave them sanctuary to come here.” In the years that followed, members of the Muslim Brotherhood played significant roles in the establishment of mosques, Islamic schools and other organizations in the United States. At issue is whether their aim was to participate in American life or to advance an Islamist political agenda in the U. S. Among those who portray the Muslim Brotherhood as a domestic threat is Frank Gaffney, a security analyst whose views are popular in the Trump White House. In a   2012 ”video briefing” titled The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within, Gaffney argued that the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged in the ”infiltration of our civil institutions and government.” His views are rejected by most scholars of Islam in America, but the allegation that many mainstream Muslim American organizations serve as Muslim Brotherhood ”fronts” has gained a foothold in conservative circles. For several years, Sen. Ted Cruz,   and other members of Congress have pushed to have the Muslim Brotherhood designated as a ”foreign terrorist organization,” and they hope to get a sympathetic hearing from the Trump administration. The Muslim Brotherhood is officially committed to nonviolence however, some   groups, such as Hamas, have endorsed and used violence in pursuit of their goals. An assimilation story? Any designation of the group as a ”terrorist organization” would have to come from the State Department. Muslim leaders and some civil rights groups say such a designation could expose Muslim American civic groups to harsh new scrutiny. Mosques, schools and Muslim charities that have received past support from the Muslim Brotherhood could face investigations. Many of those groups were established with the support of Muslim Brotherhood activists who had immigrated as students. Having arrived in the United States still focused on the struggles of Muslims overseas from Kashmir to Palestine, the brotherhood members gradually turned their attention to the situation of Muslims in America. ”When they realized they weren’t going home, they built new entities in America that would incorporate those values that they had, and also lobby to make sure America continued to be the ally of Muslims in Africa, Asia and the Middle East,” says Johari   who was born in the United States but met many of the Muslim immigrants during his own college days. The young immigrants, spurred in part by Muslim Brotherhood activists, raised money overseas for the construction of mosques, schools and other Islamic institutions in the United States, with the hope that Muslims arriving in the country would remain faithful to Islam and have places to congregate and worship. Another goal was to organize the Muslim immigrants politically. ”As fellow Muslims, we worked together to establish institutions that would help our community,” recalls Goal, ”to teach them about democracy, how democracy worked, and how to be engaged in civic work.” One institution established during those years, the Muslim American Society, openly acknowledges its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in a statement on its website. ”Many immigrant organizations would likely have had some founders who had some involvement or even membership in the Ikhwan,” the statement says. A document brings groups’ intentions into question, The brotherhood’s role in Muslim American life became more controversial, however, with the rise of militant Islamist movements overseas. An investigation into one Muslim charity with alleged Muslim Brotherhood links, the Holy Land Foundation, resulted in five employees of the shuttered foundation being convicted of having funneled money to Hamas, the Palestinian group whose military wing is considered a terrorist organization. The investigation uncovered some apparent evidence for those alleging the brotherhood had subversive designs in the United States: a memorandum written in 1991 from one Muslim Brotherhood member in the United States to others in the group’s leadership, which laid out a plan for ”civilizational jihad” in America. There is no evidence, however, that the memorandum was approved by the brotherhood leadership. The memorandum did not come to light until 2007, during the Holy Land Foundation trial. The president of the Muslim American Society at the time, Esam Omeish, disavowed the memorandum in an email to his board members. ”While some of these ideas were part of the debate that preceded MAS,” Omeish wrote, ”what MAS emerged with was a new framework and an intellectual paradigm that negates some of these advocated positions and ideas. MAS clearly and genuinely does not offer its Islamic program as an alternative to Western Civilization, nor is it bent on training its members ’to eliminate and destroy Western Civilization.’ ” The author of the memorandum no longer lives in the United States, but the document regularly is cited as an indication of the Muslim Brotherhood agenda. Public ties severed, financial ties maintained? Muslim American leaders, in fact, say that the Muslim Brotherhood is no longer active in the United States, and that the civic groups established with Muslim Brotherhood support are now independent of it. Largely as a result of the controversy surrounding the Muslim Brotherhood, its history has become a somewhat taboo subject in the Muslim community.   who now serves as an imam at the Dar   mosque in Northern Virginia, says he has found longtime members of the mosque are reluctant to talk about their early days as immigrants in the United States. ”If you ask them today, ’Are most of the organizations that were established by you guys rooted in the ideologies of your student movements back home  —   mostly, not at all, or I don’t want to answer that question?’  —   most of them say, ’I don’t want to answer that question,’ ” he says. The secretive nature of the Muslim Brotherhood presents a challenge for scholars studying the group from the outside. ”I’ve been studying the brotherhood for 15 years,” says Lorenzo Vidino, who directs the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. ”I maybe understand 10 percent of how it works.” Vidino nonetheless believes the Muslim Brotherhood organizations abroad at a minimum have retained financial ties to supporters in the United States  —   a conclusion he bases on documents uncovered during government investigations of U. S. individuals or institutions with ties to Islamist groups overseas. ”Interviews [and] internal documents show a financial network which is very, very substantial, and clearly linked to the brotherhood abroad,” he says. A common creation of immigrant communities, Whether there is any sinister significance to the Muslim Brotherhood’s historic links to Muslim American institutions in the United States is far from clear, however. ”The American Muslim experience has been so organic,” says Afeefa Syeed, a   of the Al Fatih Academy in Reston, Va.  —   one of about 270   Islamic schools in the United States. ”It has been so connected to community that it’s hard to say, ’This has been a very strategic,   effort.’ And I say that because I’ve been through so many of these institutions.” Syeed’s parents were among the Muslim immigrants who came to the United States as students in the 1970s. She readily acknowledges that her parents’ generation was determined to establish Muslim institutions here but notes there was nothing out of the ordinary in that effort. ”That process is parallel to every other group that’s come here,” she says. ”The Catholics built their schools they built their churches, their institutions. They created their organizations. The Jewish community did the same. I think we’re following along the same natural progression.”"
"A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Friday to charges from an armed encounter within a Washington, D. C. pizzeria that was the focus of pernicious and baseless Internet rumors. On Dec. 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch entered the Comet Ping Pong restaurant and fired an   rifle into a door. The    man told police that he had driven from his home in Salisbury, N. C. to ” ” the ”pizzagate” conspiracy theory that the restaurant was the site of a child   ring involving powerful Democrats such as Hillary Clinton. Welch was charged with illegally transporting firearms over state lines and assault with a dangerous weapon. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The U. S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement that Welch will may receive far less time  —   likely a range of 18 to 24 months for the federal firearms charge and 18 to 60 months for the District of Columbia assault charge. The statement goes on to read: ”According to the government’s evidence, on Sunday, December 4, 2016, Welch transported three loaded firearms, together with ammunition, from North Carolina to Washington, D. C. The firearms included a 9mm   assault rifle loaded with approximately 29 rounds of ammunition, a     .  revolver, and a loaded shotgun with additional shotgun shells. He drove directly to the Comet Ping Pong restaurant on Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington. . .. ”Upon arriving at the restaurant, Welch parked his car and armed himself. At about 3 p. m. he marched inside the restaurant, which was occupied by employees and customers, including children. He was carrying the   assault rifle and the revolver. He was carrying the   openly, with one hand on the pistol grip, and the other hand on the hand guard around the barrel, such that anyone with an unobstructed view could see the gun.” Welch surrendered to law enforcement following the incident, but his armed entrance shocked the pizzeria’s staff and management, already beleaguered by the fake news story. Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis talked with NPR about the Internet rumors about a week before the incident: ”Well, it started when I was receiving many direct messages on Instagram and comments on my Instagram page. And I realized that something had come up. It turned out that there was a worldwide conspiracy theory . .. based inside of Reddit and was being sent out through YouTube and Facebook and other places and that’s sort of an insanely complicated,   fictional   story. This was a coordinated political attack. . .. ”They would go into our social media accounts and they would take photographs that were on my Instagram of my friends’ children or of my associates’ children and post them around thousands and thousands of fake news sites and on Reddit and on YouTube and use these images of happily playing, innocent children as proof of some kind of human trafficking scheme led by the Clintons.” Welch, who has been in custody since his arrest, is scheduled to be sentenced on June 22."
"Inside a Berlin bookstore on a recent Friday night, an unusual scene unfolded. Thirty people sat around a long table, sharing   dishes like matbucha (a side of roasted red peppers and tomatoes) ptitim (a toasted pasta shaped in little balls) and a modern twist on the traditional challah or egg bread  —   a vegan one filled with dry fruits, quinoa, herbs and pomegranate juice. They were celebrating the end of the week and the beginning of a day of rest, known as the Sabbath in Jewish communities. While observant Jews commonly have a Sabbath dinner on Friday nights called Shabbat, many of the guests were   Germans who purchased tickets. The Shabbat celebration in the book store was a   dinner organized by a new Israeli business called Kiddush in conjunction with the March 19 start of Berlin’s   Jewish food week celebration called Nosh Berlin. Other Nosh Berlin events include a discussion about   coffeehouse culture of the 1920s and dinners featuring Yemeni, Persian and Roman Jewish recipes. ”Food is always a warm and welcoming way to approach a culture,” says Laurel Kratochvila. She teamed up with food writer Liv Fleischhacker to organize Nosh Berlin to unite Jews and   of all backgrounds. Since the Holocaust led to the extermination of some 6 million European Jews, Germany has striven to encourage its citizens to understand the history of what happened. ”We were taught a lot about the Second World War and the Holocaust, and that leads to a feeling of    at some point,” says Fleischhacker. She wants people to learn about different aspects of German Jewish life, not only the tragedy. ”I think there needs to be a bit of a modernization, a youthfulness to it  —   a different approach.” The organizers, both of whom are Jewish, also want to stir Jewish pride in Berlin. ”Jews shaped Berlin before the Holocaust,” Fleischhacker says. ”There should be a celebration of the past and of the future.” Before the Holocaust, Jews didn’t really open up restaurants serving food labeled as ”Jewish.” Jews were well integrated, certainly in cities. ”There is no such thing as   culture,” says Cilly Kugelmann, program director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. ”German Jewish culture is mainstream culture. It’s classical music, it’s [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe and [Friedrich] Schiller. It’s not an ethnic culture.” Also, German Jews didn’t eat the Jewish foods that Jews from Eastern Europe did  —   Ashkenazi foods like matzo ball soup or blintzes (crepes with cheese.) They ate mostly German food. Sometimes it’s even hard to distinguish the two. Germans, for example, eat fried potato pancakes and call them Kartoffelpuffer. Jews call them latkes. Still, the Nazis ensured Jews had a hard time eating Jewish food, anyways. When they seized power in 1933, one of the first laws they passed banned the kosher slaughter of animals. In the   era, Jews did go into the restaurant industry, ”but definitely not kosher food because you wanted to make money,” explains Kugelmann, whose own parents owned a restaurant and only cooked kosher food at home. ”And you had so few Jews here that you would never be able to make money with a kosher food restaurant.” Not until the 1970s did the Jewish community start to grow in any measurable way, with the first wave of Jews coming from the former Soviet Union, where Judaism, like all religions, was oppressed. That immigration to Germany lasted through the USSR’s breakup in the early 1990s. Thousands of Israelis have moved to Berlin in the last five to 10 years. Some cite as motivation the high cost of living in Israel others say they disagree with Israeli politics. Some of these immigrants qualify for German citizenship if their German Jewish ancestors were persecuted by the Nazis. In 2015, the German government estimated that about 4, 000 Israelis live in Berlin, but other estimates suggest there are up to 20, 000, according to the American Jewish Committee Berlin. Yuval Belhans of the Kiddush Shabbat   project is one of them, and so is his business partner, Maayan Meir. Meir thinks serving Jewish food has been rare here until recently because ”people don’t like to mix guilt and food,” she says. But she says the more that Israelis move here and open restaurants, the more normal it will seem. Kratochvila of Nosh Berlin is optimistic that the Jewish food scene will evolve beyond the basics. ”The more you have, the more exciting it gets,” she says. ”You can’t stay at a base level if you have competition.” Jews will likely keep moving here. The city is welcoming, despite an increase in   acts in recent years. The Berlin Police Department records   acts according to their political motivation. In the first half of 2015, the department logged 62 incidents by   groups. In 2016, it went up to 64. While no one knows the cause for sure, during this time, media reports covered   remarks made by members of the   party Alternative for Germany, which had been gaining public support. Another entity in Berlin that tracks   acts is called the Department for Research and Information on  . Last month, it reported   attacks increased by 16 percent from 2015 to 2016, but it has a much broader definition of   acts and can’t be compared directly with the police department’s data. Cilly Kugelmann of the Jewish Museum points out that food weeks like this one do more than sell food. They are educational. That appeals to Kratochvila of Nosh Berlin, who hopes to make this an annual event. ”I wouldn’t dream of calling the cuisine here homogeneous  —   there’s a really diverse food scene in Berlin,” she says. ”But this is a component of the food landscape that’s been sort of removed from it by history, that should be growing here.” Judging by the turnout for Nosh Berlin so far, people are enthusiastic about Jewish life here. By Sunday evening, all but one of the Shabbat dinners lined up for this Friday had sold out. Veronica Zaragovia is a public radio reporter who lives in Berlin and is a fellow with the Robert Bosch Foundation. You can find her on Twitter @verozaragovia and on Instagram @veronicazaragovia."
"Doctors say it all started eight years ago, when a urology clinic in Oregon ran an ad promoting the benefits of scheduling a vasectomy in March. ”You go in for a little snip, snip and come out with doctor’s orders to sit back and watch nonstop basketball,” the   promises. ”If you miss out on this, you’ll end up recovering during a weekend marathon of Desperate Housewives!” Copycat ads followed. Now a sports radio show in Washington, D. C. has an annual Vasectomy Madness contest, where the prize is a free vasectomy. Here’s how it works: Three guys come on the air to make their cases for getting snipped. The announcers ruthlessly roast them, and then listeners vote on their favorite. ”All right, let’s bring in our next contestant,” a host says. ”I believe it’s Abe from Warrenton, Va. So tell us your story. Why are you here?” Abe has three kids now, ages 9, 6 and 3. ”Another one  —   surprise! Due in July,” Abe says. ”I was shopping after the third for a vasectomy, and like a dope, dragged my feet.” There’s Mike, also expecting his fourth child  —   also a surprise. ”My wife and I have had enough,” he pleads. ”We need help to stop the flow.” And then there’s Charles. ”Four kids. Three different women,” Charles says, inspiring a roar of jeers from the hosts. Procrastination can be so common with the ”Big V” that it takes a panel of sports jocks offering a free procedure for some guys to finally let a doctor take a scalpel to their nether regions. That may be one reason vasectomy rates are low: About 5 percent of women rely on their partner’s vasectomy for contraception, unchanged from a decade ago. The CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth compares that to 20 percent of women who have had a sterilization procedure, even though women’s surgery is more invasive and more expensive. ”Men are culturally the providers. It’s hard for them to seek care,” says Dr. Paul Turek, a California urologist. ”They don’t know how to be a patient.” Turek has clinics in San Francisco and Beverly Hills. He sees an uptick in vasectomy visits during March Madness, and he’s also noticed more guys coming in together. ”One group came in from a tech company in a limousine,” he says. Last year, five college buddies scheduled a group vasectomy in March. They live all over the U. S. now, and one of them had an idea to reunite in San Francisco and undergo the outpatient procedure together. ”I gave ’em a deal,” Turek says. ”I closed the doors. We had sports TV on. They were having fun.” As each guy returned to the waiting room, he was greeted with fist bumps and  . Then the men hobbled back to their hotel to bet on the games and yell at the television. Turek made an interesting observation during that bro basketball weekend: The guys seemed to recover faster than his typical patients. ”They had no complaints,” he says. ”They were back at work sooner. They took fewer pain pills. It was the best anesthesia, having their buddies with them.” Turek gives all his vasectomy patients a certificate of honor for ”uncommon bravery and meritorious performance.” There is another theory about why vasectomies aren’t more popular: the cost. The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover contraceptives without charging    costs. But vasectomy wasn’t included in the rule. The procedure costs about $500, but some doctors charge up to $1, 000. That’s why Charles subjected himself to the free vasectomy contest at the D. C. radio station. His insurance covers a portion of the procedure, ”but I’d still have to pay my deductible, which is, like, a thousand bucks.” Vasectomy was overlooked in Obamacare because, under the law, birth control was considered a women’s health service. ”Right now the policy says to a couple: Your insurance will cover birth control without any    costs on your end, as long as it’s the woman who’s using it,” says Adam Sonfield, senior policy manager at the Guttmacher Institute. Last year, 12, 000 people signed a petition asking regulators to cover vasectomy without cost sharing. Doctors’ groups even drafted language to this effect to add to the regulations. But when the Trump administration took over, it told the groups to stop trying, according to Aaron Hamlin, executive director of the Male Contraception Initiative. ”The birth control benefit has been under pretty much continual political attack since the ACA was enacted,” says Sonfield. The vasectomy battle is now moot, he added, because President Trump’s health officials want to get rid of the contraceptive mandate altogether, even for women. ”They are very much in danger at the moment,” Sonfield says. So for now that leaves guys like Charles, Mike and Abe vying for a free March Madness vasectomy. The winner in the end? Abe  —   one of the guys expecting his fourth child. His prize comes with a catch, though. He has to let one of the sportscasters come to his appointment, to broadcast a ”  .” This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with KQED and Kaiser Health News."
"The number of men getting vasectomies spiked during the Great Recession, rising   from 2006 to 2010, a study finds. In 2006, 3. 9 percent of men said they had had a vasectomy in 2010, 4. 4 percent reported having the surgery. That means an additional 150, 000 to 180, 000 men per year had vasectomies in each year of the recession. That squares with earlier research that showed birth rates dropped during the recession, falling 4 percent between 2007 and 2009. After the recession, man were making less money, were less likely to be working full time, and were less likely to have health insurance, according to the National Survey for Family Growth, which researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College used to come up with the vasectomy numbers. They reported their results Monday at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in Hawaii. OK, so what were women up to? The Weill Cornell researchers didn’t look at this, but the survey did ask   women about birth control, and there was no increase in the number of women who got birth control or had sterilization surgery from 2002. Men typically aren’t nearly as apt to embrace sterilization as a form of birth control as are women. For women who use contraception, 26. 6 percent chose tubal sterilization, which is permanent, compared to 27. 5 percent for the pill, according to 2010 numbers from the Guttmacher Institute. But just 10 percent of women said they’re relying on their partner’s vasectomy to avoid pregnancy, according to Guttmacher. We’ll have to stay tuned to see if guys’ seeming embrace of vasectomy was just a recessionary blip, or if they really are saying no (or no mas) to fatherhood."
"A plane flies over a field in South Sudan. Out of the sky drops a cascade of pallets, sacks or boxes filled with emergency food supplies that, once they reach the ground, can make the difference between sustenance and starvation. It can make for quite a show: Unlike ordinary truck or barge deliveries, an airdrop is full of drama. Specially trained pilots must carefully calibrate the altitude that will allow the containers, each with its own parachute to cushion the landing, to hit the ground intact and undamaged  ” and also not accidentally land on and injure those waiting in the field below to begin the job of sorting and delivering the foodstuffs to the communities in need. The news magazine 60 Minutes featured airdrops in South Sudan in a story last Sunday. But the purpose of such airdrops is not at all for show. ”We don’t want to do [airdrops]. We only do them when there is no other way,” says Steve Taravella, senior spokesperson for the U. N. World Food Programme, which provides the deliveries. They represent the ”last resort” for transporting essential rations to some of the most inaccessible areas of this     country, riddled with ongoing conflict and additionally difficult to traverse because of its mostly unpaved roadways and not always safe waterways.  And it’s not an economical way of getting food to the hungry. ”The cost of air dropping food is massively expensive,” says Brian Duss, a spokesman for World Vision. The cost is about $1, 000 per ton of food, according to a spokesperson for Mercy Corps, which says that transporting food by truck can cost up to 80 percent less. Famine has been declared in two counties in South Sudan, and millions more in other regions are suffering from food shortages. Given such untenable conditions, the extra expense incurred through airdrops ”is not even a question,” says Taravella, ”because there is no other way” to get food to those in need. The drops have succeeded, says Taravella. Since the airdrops to South Sudan began in March 2014, WFP has done ”thousands” of flights, he says, with each flight delivering approximately 30 tons of rations, which include cereals (sorghum and, sometimes, the maize) pulses (such as yellow split peas or lentils) vegetable oil and nutritionally fortified foods like Super Cereal and Super Cereal Plus. ”The latter two are specialized blended foods, sort of like fortified porridge mixes designed to treat and prevent malnutrition. Super Cereal Plus is specifically designed for young children,” explains Taravella. Deepmala Mahla, the South Sudan country director for Mercy Corps, agrees that the current dire situation demands emergency airdrops. Mercy Corps has worked with WFP to coordinate distribution of soap supplies at the same time as the food provisions, in order to avoid people already weakened from hunger having to make separate trips. ”Food insecurity is unprecedented,” with 47 percent of the population (about 5. 5 million) facing the prospect of hunger and worse, Mahla says. Over the course of the war, crops were not grown or were destroyed or have been looted. ”When a population is on the brink they cannot wait,” she says. ”I myself have seen people who have survived only on water lilies because that is all that is available” in some of the swampy areas that people have been driven to for   by the fighting. ”There is so much need,” says Noah Gottschalk, senior humanitarian policy adviser for Oxfam in Washington, D. C. But there is also ingenuity and resilience, he notes. After an airdrop people often find innovative ways to make practical use of every part of the shipment, and not just the food stuffs: for instance, turning a wood palette into a door, banging a large metal can into a window frame or   the sacks to carry charcoal or even to help string together a   bed. Still, the airdrops present only an immediate rather than a   answer, Mahla says. ”There is a risk that we might [fall] perpetually into a cycle of more and more relief.” It’s necessary to ”layer” the food distributions with other programs that, for instance, ”provide the people with the seeds, the tools, the fishing nets to produce their own food.” Where possible Mercy Corps and other organizations are trying to keep such programs going. ”Our goals are not only to save their lives today but to reverse the situation and make people more food secure,” says Mahla. Oxfam is similarly working to support local markets and to provide seeds and tools for people to grow food. But to reduce the need for emergency aid requires a reduction in conflict. To see so much hunger and famine in the South Sudan is especially ironic, Mahla says, because the land itself is fertile. The Nile provides abundant water, and then there are the bees. ”Honey from the South Sudan could be in a supermarket in the United States!” she says. ”All we need is peace.”"
"There are beers that can make headlines simply by existing, especially if they use unique ingredients. That’s the case with Stone Brewing’s Full Circle Pale Ale, whose key component  —   water  —   came from an advanced filtration system that recycles and purifies San Diego wastewater that had previously been used in taps, toilets and showers. The beer is like many other modern pale ales, Stone says, with a rich caramel body underpinning the hops’ floral, fruity notes. It was brewed to be ”refreshingly clean,” the brewer says, and was declared ”fantastic” by San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer. ”I thought it was excellent,” said Tim Suydam, Stone’s senior water operations manager. ”I thought it was a great beer.” For a batch of beer that was only around five   and was limited to a special event for San Diego’s recycled water campaign, ”there is an amazing amount of interest in this story,” says Stone representative Colleen Gatlin. And that includes both the media and beer fans. ”We’ve had a lot of people asking, ’How do we get it?’ ” Gatlin says. Suydam oversaw a large part of Stone’s project, which began as a way for city leaders to show the merits of its Pure Water demonstration facility in San Diego, which plans to use recycled water for   of its water supply within the next 20 years. Stone wasn’t alone in using recycled water to make beer. Timed to coincide with this week’s World Water Day and the WateReuse California Annual Conference, San Diego also held a ”Pure Brew” competition for homebrewers using its reclaimed water. Also this week, Ballast Point, another large and respected brewer in the area, released Padre Dam Pilsner, which it made with water that was recycled at a similar demonstration facility in neighboring East County. We asked Suydam to describe how water goes from a specialized treatment plant to a brewery. Here’s what he had to say: ”It starts off with what we call Title 22 water. The water is secondary effluent from a wastewater treatment plant, and it goes through . .. media filters, similar to what would be at a regular water treatment plant. And then it goes through a whole host of additional treatments, so that the water that comes out the back end is very high quality  —   it’s better than what comes out of the tap. ”It goes through ozonation. It goes through biologically active carbon contactors, and it goes through microfiltration, which is a membrane filtration process. Then it goes through reverse osmosis, then it goes through UV chemical oxidation.” Finally, Suydam said, ”Because that water is so pure, they add some minerals back to it, so it won’t corrode the pipes as they distribute it.” But many people  —   perhaps forgetting that most water we encounter has a complex and decidedly organic past  —   seem to be fixated on the provenance of Full Circle’s water. Even as they acknowledged the beer’s quality, some news outlets seemed to have trouble getting past the water: Sample headlines include, ”Stone Brewing Creates ’Toilet to Tap’ Sewer Beer” and ”This Brewery Is Making Beer Out Of Poop Water, And It’s ’Delicious.’ ” Another asked, ”Would You Drink It?” The current plan to make beer from recycled water dates to at least 2015, when concerns about drought and California’s water supply were making headlines. That same year, a wastewater company in Oregon began working with brewers in the Portland area with the aim of testing a similar project. Asked how the recycled water differs from the water Stone normally uses, Suydam said, ”It’s   water than what we use to brew. And we actually had to add minerals to it, to meet our brewing water quality requirements.” Those requirements have to do with the water profile Stone and other brewers look for. In addition to hardness requirements, Suydam said, ”We also have what we call a    ratio.” With all the filtration and processing the water undergoes, we asked Suydam if Stone would have been able to create an identical pale ale if it had been made from Stone’s normal water source. ”We try to,” he said. ”It’s science and kind of some   stuff. You hope to get that with every water that you start with.” Of course, the process of making beer also generates wastewater, from the brewing process to cleaning and packaging. In Stone’s case, Suydam says, the company recycles all of its wastewater, amounting to about 100, 000 gallons per day  —   or about 25 percent of the total amount of water used in the brewery. After it filters and treats the water, the brewery then circulates its own recycled water back into the building  —   but not into its brewing system. ”We only use it for cooling, cleaning and our boilers, as well,” Suydam says. Any water that’s left over, he says, flows back to the city’s pipes."
"Updated at 7:50 p. m. ET, The death toll in Wednesday’s terrorist attack near the U. K. Parliament has risen, after a    man died of his injuries. Police say Leslie Rhodes of south London is the fourth person killed by   Khalid Masood, who was killed in the attack. Other victims include Kurt Cochran of Utah, 54, whose wife was also seriously injured Police Constable Keith Palmer, 48 and Aysha Frade, 43, who was reportedly on her way to pick her children up from school. Police arrested 11 people in connection to the case, but have released eight of them with no action, and released one on bail. Providing an update on the wounded, Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Mark Rowley said, ”two people remain in hospital in what is described as a critical condition, and one person is considered to have life threatening injuries.” ”Two of our officers who were injured on Westminster Bridge in the attack also remain in hospital and also have sustained significant injuries,” Rowley said. When police identified the dead suspect as Khalid Masood, 52, on Thursday, they added that he had used ”a number of aliases.” And now they say that his name at birth was Adrian Russell Ajao. ”He is thought to have changed his name when he converted to Islam,” NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports from London. Masood was born in Kent and ”was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including [grievous bodily harm ] possession of offensive weapons and public order offences,” Scotland Yard said Thursday. Discussing the suspect yesterday, Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons, ”Some years ago, he was once investigated by MI5 in relation to concerns about violent extremism. He was a peripheral figure the case was historic he was not part of the current intelligence picture.” Masood’s criminal record dates to at least November 1983, when he was convicted of criminal damage. His last conviction was in December 2003 for possession of a knife. On Friday, Rowley thanked journalists who agreed to police requests not to publish Masood’s name while investigators were still taking stock of the potential threat and arranging arrests and searches. After the attack, the authorities launched a   investigation called Operation Classific, Rowley says. Police believe Masood acted alone, but they also want to know if he was inspired by propaganda from extremist groups such as ISIS  —   which issued a claim of responsibility Thursday  —   or if he might also have had support or direction from other people in Britain. After a string of raids and arrests in the wake of the attack, two more arrests were made last night, Rowley said. Of the people arrested, six have since been released with ”no further police action.” Another person, a woman, was arrested and released on bail. Four people remain in police custody. Searches have been either completed or are   at 21 locations, Rowley said. He added that police ”have seized 2, 700 items from our searches including massive of amounts of computer data.” At least 50 people were injured in the attack, in which Masood drove a small SUV onto the crowded sidewalk of Westminster Bridge. After crashing the vehicle into the fence around Parliament, Masood emerged with a large knife. He killed Palmer before another officer shot him to death. As we reported Thursday, the attack’s victims are from a wide   representing at least 12 nationalities. Looking to ensure security heading into the weekend, police have nearly doubled the number of armed officers in London elsewhere in the U. K. up to a third more armed officers are on duty. On Friday, the Queen honored U. K. foreign affairs minister, Tobias Ellwood, who attempted to resuscitate Palmer in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Ellwood, along with security minister Ben Wallace, were appointed to the Privy Council which advises the monarchy. Wallace helped coordinate the government’s response to the attack."
"Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has signed a bill into law that lowers the maximum blood alcohol limit for drivers to . 05 percent from the current legal threshold of . 08 percent  —   giving Utah the strictest drunken driving law in the nation. In addition to drivers, the law applies to anyone carrying a dangerous weapon. Lowering the limit has been controversial, pitting opponents in the tourism and hospitality industry against backers in the health and transportation fields. As member station KUER’s Julia Ritchey reports, ”The governor’s office has been inundated with hundreds of calls on the bill, most of them in opposition.” NPR’s Allison Aubrey reports for our Newscast unit: ”The American Beverage Institute opposes the measure. The industry says a   woman can reach . 05 with little more than one drink. The group argues that at that level, a driver is less impaired than a driver talking   on a cell phone. ”But some public health experts have pushed for stricter limits. As recently as last year, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that all states drop blood alcohol levels down to . 05, to deter more people from drinking and driving.” The law also has repercussions for people who carry guns in Utah. The state allows the open carry of dangerous weapons without a permit  —   but it restricts that right based on the blood alcohol maximum set for drivers. That connection prompted the Utah Shooting Sports Council to send an alert to its members, urging them to ask Herbert to veto the bill and avoid an ”ugly hidden Easter egg for gun owners,” as it said on its Facebook page. ”Apparently the legislature never saw the connection between this bill and gun rights, and as such, this issue was never debated,” the group says, in a form letter it provided to supporters to send to the governor. Despite being signed, there will likely be more arguments over the new law, which isn’t scheduled to take effect until Dec. 30, 2018. Even as he signed the bill Thursday, Herbert said the state needs to   at how it penalizes drivers who are over the limit. From KUER: ”There are some areas of improvement I think are warranted and are necessary,” the governor said. ”And we can look at impaired driving and distracted driving and repeat offenders  —   those who in fact have been arrested for DUIs on multiple occasions  —   and our punishment, and what are the consequences of the punishment."
"The U. S. women’s national soccer team got some disappointing (and not unexpected) news Friday  —   it fell out of first place in the FIFA world rankings for the first time in years. The demotion follows a   finish in a U. S.  tournament of some of the world’s best teams earlier this month. The U. S. is now No. 2, behind Germany and ahead of France, England and Canada. The American squad has been ranked in the top two spots since FIFA created the world rankings for women back in 2003. Since the U. S. women won the World Cup in 2015, the team has had a tough go. The U. S. was expected to win gold at the Summer Olympics last year in Rio. (It had won gold in the three previous Olympics.) Instead, the U. S. didn’t even medal, losing to Sweden in the quarterfinals. After the Olympics, the U. S. had a spate of easy wins against mostly   powerhouses. But when it got to the SheBelieves Cup in March, the team stumbled. It beat Germany but lost to England and France. Afterward, U. S. head coach Jill Ellis said the losses would help the team in the long run. ”Does change sometimes come at a cost? At times, it does. Losing for us can be an unfamiliar experience, but internally we know we are not close to being a finished product and these growing pains will pay off,” she said. Ellis has been tinkering with the starting lineup  —   choosing youth over experience as she looks to rebuild and deepen the team’s bench of players. Some superstars such as Carli Lloyd are getting older. And the absence of arguably the best goalkeeper in the world is noticeable. Hope Solo was suspended for six months after a series of   and   missteps. Her suspension was lifted last month, but she wasn’t reactivated to play on the national team. There may be no real cause for concern yet. The U. S. plays a pair of friendlies against Russia next month in Texas. Coach Ellis says her focus and preparations are all about 2019 and the next Women’s World Cup  —   a tournament the U. S. will be entering as reigning champions. Meanwhile, as much of the soccer world dissects the latest FIFA rankings, the U. S. men’s national soccer team plays a crucial game tonight in a World Cup qualifier against Honduras. The U. S. men are struggling to make the 2018 World Cup after losing their two opening games in qualifying. At the moment, the U. S. is in last place in the   ”Hexagonal.” Teams have bounced back from similar deficits, but it’s not easy. The U. S. enters tonight’s game with a new coach, Bruce Arena, and some player absences due to injuries and suspensions. The match in San Jose, Calif. starts at 10:30 p. m. ET on FS1, UniMas and Univision Deportes."
"North Dakota’s Republican governor signed legislation Thursday night that allows people to carry concealed handguns without needing a permit. This makes North Dakota the latest of about a dozen states to adopt what gun rights proponents often call ”constitutional carry,” according to the National Rifle Association. As Dave Thompson of Prairie Public Broadcasting reports, ”The measure allows people 18 and older to carry hidden firearms without having to undergo background checks or training  —   as long as they’re   citizens.” Anyone who is eligible to possess a Class 2 firearm license and has had a valid driver’s license or state ID card for at least a year may carry a concealed firearm. In a statement, Gov. Doug Burgum said, ”Gun ownership is both a right and a responsibility, and that responsibility begins with individuals and families.” The statement also said the governor ”encouraged anyone considering carrying a concealed weapon to enroll in one of North Dakota’s many certified gun safety courses.” The number of   permits in the state has more than doubled in the past five years, to 48, 700, according to The Associated Press. Critics of the legislation had argued that it was already easy to get a   permit in North Dakota. Democratic state Sen. Carolyn Nelson of Fargo said the measure was unnecessary. ”If you can read, you can pass the test,” she was quoted as saying by the AP. South Dakota’s Republican governor, Dennis Daugaard, vetoed a similar measure in his state earlier this month. In an   in the Rapid City Journal, Daugaard wrote that he could not support ”bad legislation which would lead to a whole host of unintended consequences. The laws we currently have in place are effective, appropriate and minimal.” Idaho, Mississippi and West Virginia passed similar laws last year, and New Hampshire did so last month."
"When China took control of Hong Kong from Great Britain back in 1997, voting rights for all was one of the promises it made. These were rights Britain never gave the island’s citizens during its   rule. This Sunday’s election in Hong Kong was expected to be the first in which each and every resident would be allowed to vote for the city’s top leader, the chief executive. But it won’t be the case. Many city residents are calling Sunday ”Selection Day,” since they won’t be allowed to vote directly. Anson Chan, who oversaw Great Britain’s 1997 handover to China as the city’s chief secretary, remembers ”being rolled out” 20 years ago ”to tell the rest of the world: ’You should put your hearts and minds at ease, because we have all these promises the two countries have agreed to. ’” Chan’s message back then to her fellow Hong Kong citizens was: Don’t worry, the flag flying in Hong Kong is now a Chinese one, but everything else will remain the same. ”And yet,” Chan says, ”we are now just 20 years after the handover, and if I knew then what I know today, I would never have gone to do these ’pitch sales’ with such enthusiasm.” Hong Kong’s handover to China kicked off a lengthy consultation period, during which city leaders  —   many backed by Beijing  —   met with residents to gather opinions on how the city should implement voting rights. Like many others, Hong   writer Suzanne Pepper, an American, advised the Chinese to let everyone vote. ”At the end of it,” she says, ”Beijing issued a decision and they said no. They ignored everybody. They ignored all the opinions.” Beijing’s edict, delivered by China’s top leadership in August 2014, was that all the people of Hong Kong would be able to vote for their city leader  —   but only after a nominating committee loyal to Beijing selected the candidates. The city reacted quickly: Tens of thousands of protesters shut down the financial district for more than two months in what was later dubbed the Umbrella Movement, named for the umbrellas used to shield protesters from police teargas. Months later, Hong Kong’s legislative council rejected Beijing’s plan for electoral reform, leaving Hong Kong with its old system  —   one in which members of business and   groups dominate an election committee of 1, 194 people who vote for the city’s chief executive. The candidate China’s government favors, Carrie Lam, is almost certain to win on Sunday. For the past five years, Lam has been Hong Kong’s chief secretary  —   the city’s   . In 2014, she faced off against protesting students in a televised debate, a performance that pleased Beijing but left her unpopular with many Hong Kong residents. Nearly all public opinion polls show her main opponent, former city financial secretary John Tsang, would likely win in a citywide election. That’s who office worker Ashley Lam would vote for, if he could. ”We need someone who has a sense of civic duty,” Lam says outside his office in the city’s Quarry Bay neighborhood. ”Hong Kong is changing. Mainland Chinese are immigrating here, and they don’t understand democracy. They bring with them the sense that money and connections are the way to get things done. This really disturbs me.” Lam says he struggles to explain what’s happening to his children. His best advice, he says with a frown, is for them to move someday to Australia or New Zealand, places where people have rights. Former chief secretary Chan says she’s sad to admit that she has doled out the same advice to her own grandchildren. ”That is not the only thing that makes me sad and angry,” Chan says. ”It is to see the systematic demolition of a perfectly good system. And the fact that, increasingly, the top levels in the government are not filled by able people who have some credibility and standing within the community, but by people whose criteria is not merit, but simply whether you’re loyal and whether you’ll toe the line. This is what makes young people very afraid of the Chinese model of governance being imported into Hong Kong.” This sense of hopelessness is what Hong Kong elected official Claudia Mo predicts will lead to anger if  —   or when  —   Carrie Lam prevails as the city’s chief executive. ”It’s going to look very ugly,” Mo says. ”Hong Kong people once again will feel that they’re being horrendously let down. We got cheated again. ’You like A, we’ll give you B.’ This is not going to go down well.”"
"Uber is in crisis. This week the president resigned, after just six months on the job. Morale has been shaken following a damning account of sexual harassment. The board of directors is so concerned about the CEO’s ability to lead, they’re looking for a No. 2 to help steer the company. And now  —   in a curious plot twist  —   media mogul Arianna Huffington is emerging as chief of Uber’s campaign for ”culture change.” The company decided to hold a conference call on Tuesday with reporters. Huffington, who joined the board of Uber almost a year ago, led the call and explained at the outset that the purpose was ”not to create yet more headlines.” Uber employees tell NPR they’ve seen a dramatic shift in Huffington’s leadership. For the first several months of her tenure, she had not been a high profile presence at the company. Then about four weeks ago, a female engineer who was a former employee wrote a detailed open letter alleging she was sexually harassed and management refused to step in. Huffington decided to step up. She suddenly appeared at the weekly   staff meeting. And she’s counseling CEO Travis Kalanick. She told reporters, ”Going forward there can be no room at Uber for brilliant jerks.” Interestingly, not a single man from Uber was on the call. Kalanick and other men were busy interviewing candidates for the position of chief operating officer, so the work of explaining the company commitment to clean up became women’s work. Though Huffington said it’s ”exciting” to have so many ”amazing women” on the call. They are real leaders at the company, not actresses put on for a show. ”It’s not like we got them from central casting,” she said. ”We have to wait and see what Uber does next,” says Rosabeth Kanter, a culture change expert at Harvard Business School. ”Having three or four women appear to speak for Uber, which has never had a female presence visible before, could be just tokenism and it doesn’t really signal change. We have to see what the men do.” There is a lot to do. If sexual harassment were the only problem at Uber, Kanter argues, they could fix it and she ”wouldn’t worry about it so much.” But Uber’s got a lot of relationships to repair: with passengers, who recently reacted against the company with a #DeleteUber campaign with the more than 600, 000 people in the U. S. alone who drive for the company, many of whom feel mistreated and with local elected leaders, some of whom say Uber is illegal. ”It’s such a fascinating example of growing big in terms of market valuation, and yet managing to offend nearly every stakeholder,” Kanter says. Uber was recently valued at nearly $70 billion. It is not the first Silicon Valley company started by young men  —     ” ”  —   who needed to grow up. But Uber is different from, say, Google and Facebook (which have had their share of meltdowns) because Uber is far more reliant on outside partnerships. So, Kanter says, they’ve got to be that much more emotionally intelligent. The bar is higher. ”There’s so much more to do than just having a female presence and some ways to make sure that the young guys know how to treat women appropriately,” she says. On the call with women leaders, one of them did talk about drivers specifically. Rachel Holt, head of Uber’s U. S. and Canada business, said Uber leaders need to ”bring more humanity” to the way they interact with drivers. While Huffington is committed to holding the CEO and management’s feet to the fire, as a board member, she’s indicated she is not interested in the open position for COO or another staff role. A spokesperson for her tells NPR she has her own company to run. Perhaps fittingly, it’s a company with a mission to end stress and burnout."
"Six years after the Arab Spring, Egypt’s former leader Hosni Mubarak has left a military hospital and is heading home. Mubarak, 88 and ailing, was acquitted by Egypt’s top appeals court of charges that he ordered police to kill   protesters in 2011. Mubarak had ruled Egypt for 30 years now he will live in his home in Cairo’s wealthy Heliopolis district, according to local media reports. ”The former president is not completely out of the clear,” NPR’s Jane Arraf reports from Cairo. ”He faces potential charges on allegations he received gifts from a   newspaper. But he’s not expected to be taken back into custody unless he’s convicted.” The ousted dictator was acquitted on March 2, but it wasn’t clear whether he was well enough to leave the Maadi Military Hospital where he received care while detained. In televised court appearances, Mubarak was wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher. When prosecutors ordered Mubarak to be released on March 19, his supporters held a rally outside the hospital, drawing an appreciative wave from their former leader at the window of his room. As NPR’s Merrit Kennedy has reported of the protester case, ”This marks the end of a   court battle, during which the political landscape in Egypt has shifted dramatically. Many of the protesters who led the 2011 uprising sit in prison, while many figures associated with the Mubarak regime have   political life.”"
"Isabel Kouyoumjian was a tough metzmama  —   that’s Armenian for grandmother. Long before she was a grandmother though, Kouyoumjian was born in a refugee camp after her parents left the area now known as Turkey. They left around 1915, when they were fleeing the Armenian Genocide, which killed nearly a million and a half people. Kouyoumjian eventually immigrated to the United States and raised two generations of her family. She died last March, but Joanne Nucho, one of her granddaughters, still remembers her. ”My grandmother was a large woman, but on the shorter side she was just kind of round,” Nucho says with a laugh. ”She did not have much formal education, but [she] spoke and read five languages.” Nucho remembers her grandmother as sweet, warm and loving, ”but she had this really tough streak.” When Nucho and her younger sister needed a hero, their metzmama was there. ”One incident I remember, we were kids and there was a lizard in the backyard. My younger sister saw it and screamed, so my grandmother picked it up and broke it in half with her bare hands. It was a mixture of being horrified but also really impressed,” Nucho says. ”I just thought that she was like a superhero.” Kouyoumjian didn’t smile much, Nucho says. Instead, she had a bit of a permanent scowl. What caused the scowl is unclear, but Nucho says she heard stories about how her grandmother raised two kids by herself. ”So much of her ways of seeing the world were really bound up with knowing the ground could fall out from beneath you at any moment, and that she would weather whatever storm,” Nucho says. Nucho’s husband, Jeff Ono says that Kouyoumjian wasn’t just a grandmother. ”She was my best friend,” Nucho says. ”That last week when she was dying, I just kept telling her, ’It’s okay to go. You’ve done your work. You don’t have to fight this if you don’t want to. ’” Though Kouyoumjian had her superhero moments, that’s not all Nucho misses about her grandmother. ”I miss the little things, like speaking Armenian with somebody  —   not something I do very often anymore,” Nucho says. ”I miss feeling like there’s this one person who really believes in me. It’s something I’m trying to do for myself, but nobody else could convince me the way that she could. And there isn’t really a replacement for that.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jud  . StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"Kendrick Lamar wasted no time following through on his mysterious ”IV” Instagram post. Last night, the Compton MC released a new song, ”The Heart Part 4,” and it’s a    lyrical onslaught. Within the span of five minutes, over shifting beats produced by Syk Sense, The Alchemist, DJ Dahi and Axlfolie, Lamar waxes philosophical, adversarial and political while dropping heat on everyone from phony rappers to President Trump. ”Donald Trump is a chump, know how we feel, punkTell ’em that God comin’And Russia need a replay button, y’all up to somethin’Electoral votes look like memorial votesBut America’s truth ain’t ignorin’ the votes.” The song showcases his uncontested dominance in rap, even as he shrugs off  ’s obsession with determining who holds the crown: ”I’ll let y’all worry about a list, I’m on some other s***,” he raps. ”A difference between accomplishments and astonishments.” The release of ”The Heart Part 4” sparked an immediate eruption on social media, comparable to his controversial ”Control” verse in 2013, with fans speculating on the identity of his unnamed targets. Twelve hours later, Twitter reported over half a million tweets about the song. Yet it’s almost surreal how Lamar continues to command such a captive audience with his mastery of what is essentially an old trick. In an industry that currently prizes style over technical proficiency, he remains an anomaly. A peerless one. Lamar saves the biggest shocker for the song’s end. Just as he used 2012’s ”The Heart Part 3” to set up his   debut Good Kid, M. A. A. D. City, he concludes ”The Heart Part 4” with what seems to be release date for his fourth, and yet unnamed, studio album. ”You know what time it is, ante up, this is in forever,” he rhymes. ”Y’all got till April the 7th to get ya’ll s*** together.”"
"You need only watch Steve Marion’s face. This fierce and lyrical guitar player, who performs as Delicate Steve, writes playful instrumental music led by hooky vocals  —   but there is no voice. His electric guitar is often played with a glass slide, mimicking a human being and bringing a palpable personality to his songs. The music swings from gospel to cartoon, melancholy to funny. Steve played all the instruments on his third studio album This is Steve, but in order to perform the songs for us at the Tiny Desk he brought along his band  —   Max Jaffe (drums) Jon Wiley (acoustic guitar) Jessica Pavone (bass guitar) and an old friend, a Panasonic   Premium Stereo Cassette   to plug his trusty custom guitar into. The sound came out warm and a little worn, emphasizing a vocal range he loves. Enjoy their unique, charming performance. This Is Steve is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Steve Marion (electric guitar) Max Jaffe (drums) Jon Wiley (acoustic guitar) Jessica Pavone (bass guitar) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Marian  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Lenny Kaye became my hero in 1972, after he assembled one of rock’s greatest anthologies, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965 —  1968.  I spent countless hours listening to that compilation, discovering   bands from around the country. Many  —   most  —   of these artists would likely never have been heard outside of their hometowns without his help. That album was, in more ways than one, the spark that lit the coming punk movement. Outside of his curatorial brilliance on Nuggets and the inspiration it provided to artists like Iggy and The Stooges, Lenny Kaye played an even more elemental role in the development of punk as the guitarist on Patti Smith’s revolutionary first album Horses. His legacy, with Patti and through his work as record producer, continues. In the  ’90s, while conducting research for the autobiography of Waylon Jennings he would   with the country legend, Kaye met Waylon’s wife, the musician Jessi Colter. All these years later, Kaye has produced Jessi Colter’s   album The Psalms. Its origins go back to their first meeting. On this edition of All Songs Considered, Kaye plays DJ, sharing with us music including (naturally) Patti Smith, Phil Spector and so much more. It’s a conversation about spirituality, both in music and in our lives. You can listen to our full conversation at the link above, read excerpts from it below and peruse a playlist of songs featured in this episode. ”It’s really mystical how this album came to be. I was in Nashville probably more than 20 years ago, working with Waylon Jennings on his autobiography. And one day, I came into the living room and saw Jessi Coulter, his wife, singing the Psalms  —   just had the Bible open, placing her fingers on the keys with no conception of making a song out of them or anything, but just singing them as the chords came to her. And I just watched for 20 minutes, half an hour while she sang and it was so transcendent, so beautiful, such a pure expression of belief. I thought, wow, I would love to hear that on the record.” ”I believe there’s a spirituality in music that’s inescapable and I believe when you tap into that emotion, that sense of otherness, that sense of channeling the spheres of the universe, that’s a blessed thing. I don’t really feel that the approaches that Patti [on the song ’Gloria’] and Jessi [on The Psalms] are dissimilar because what each of them embody is a personal spirituality. I believe our version of ’Gloria’ is about looking past the strictures of the church or the strictures of the bureaucracy that grows up between us and the light, in the same way that when Jessi and I perform The Psalms. We’re not really doing it within any particular sect or even religion. We’re using the mythologies of the Old Testament to look beyond, into the light. Simple as that.” ”As a practicing religious person. .. I practice all religions, to be honest. I’ve grown up Jewish and I love those traditions. I’ll find the crack in the matzah, and I’ll light the Hanukkah candles and those speak to me. But that doesn’t mean that I devalue the traditions of any other religion. To me, all religions speak to the same awe and wonder of life. That is our gift and religion tries to explain it, exalt the miracle, and take us transcendent. That’s what I tried to do with The Psalms with Jessi and it’s what I do each night that Patti and I are on stage. It is speaking to the same sense of the sacred within us.” ”You’re not trying to steer something in a direction. You’re not trying to analyze the song. You choose musicians who you feel are empathic with what you’re doing and allow them to express themselves. The process is very organic, and that’s the way I like it. I think if you try to analyze too much of what you do, you tend to take the charm and the magic out of it.” ”Putting together Nuggets was a great privilege for me because it was paying a debt back to these bands that helped inspire me and gave me a reason to be on that stage. Really, one of the gifts of that moment in time, [with an] electric guitar and a hand, was one of the ways in which you could define yourself. You could find yourself, that yearning of desire, and it happened all over America. We’re still finding great records from that time of bands who just loved to plug in and see who they might be.” ”I believe you make music from the tools you’re given. Certainly, a lot of the music of the ’60s and ’70s was the electric guitar. Now, I have to feel that the electric guitar has been explored in every conceivable way, and I’m curious to see what the next music sounds like. The music that we make digitally, the textures and the patterns and the rhythms and the way we disseminate it  —   that’s the lifeline of the present. I love old music and I probably spend far too much time listening to music from the 20th century but that doesn’t mean that I think it’s ’better’ than the music of this moment or the music that’s being made five moments from now. It is the soundtrack of a time and a place, and we’ll reveal who we are as a people and as individuals.” "
"Jenni Konner and Lena Dunham are creative partners and best friends. From their cozy office in Los Angeles, they oversee their hit show Girls, work on their online feminist newsletter Lenny Letter and develop other film and TV projects. (Currently in the works: an HBO animated series about Planned Parenthood.) Their office is adorned with photos of the BFF posing together for magazine covers, and provocative artworks. ”This one is about perky boobies,” Konner says, pointing to a framed needlepoint sampler. It’s the kind of brazen humor Konner and Dunham brandish on Girls, now in its sixth and final season on HBO. The   follows a group of   young women living in Brooklyn. They’re all friends of aspiring writer Hannah Horvath, who describes herself has ”witty and narcissistic.” Dunham created, wrote and produced the series with Konner, and they’ve also launched a production company together. You can hear from the way they talk that they’re smitten with one another. ”Jenni and I have a very, very symbiotic working relationship,” Dunham says. ”It’s very hard to know where one of us stops and one of us ends at this point. I’m always at her house. I mean, she’s my family.” And here’s Konner on Dunham: ”She’s the bravest person I’ve ever met. She’s also just a lovely friend. She makes sure I’m alive every single morning, which is maybe part her anxiety. But she’s my valentine.” Konner, 45, has two children and has worked as a showrunner, a writer and a director. For the past few years, she’s also been a sort of den mother to Dunham and the show’s three other millennial actresses. ”I was definitely hired to be the   on set,” she says. ”The hardest part was trying to get them not get tattoos and haircuts during the off season.” Working in television is in Konner’s DNA. Her mom was a writer on Hart to Hart and Cagney  Lacey, and her dad wrote for everything from Little House on the Prairie to The Sopranos. Growing up in Los Angeles, Konner attended Crossroads, a progressive prep school that counts several celebrities among its alumni. ”I was there during the Jack   Rudolph era, so that was very fun,” Konner says. ”Jack was my improv coach.” In the   after attending Sarah Lawrence College, Konner moved to New York. While everyone she knew was working at   she was selling cigars in Midtown and doing temp work  —   basically riding through her 20s like a character in Girls would. ”I was living in the very edge of Carroll Gardens, almost Red Hook, in a parlor floor apartment with my friend who turned out to be a secret junkie,” Konner recalls. ”I remember we got robbed by crack heads because I left all the windows open all night and they climbed in and took my Kate Spade bag I had saved up so much for.” Eventually, Konner found work punching up Hollywood scripts, composing lines for the female characters in Transformers 3. She also wrote an episode of Judd Apatow’s Undeclared, a   TV series about college life. He remembers being impressed with Konner’s work. ”She writes very deep characters,” he says. ”At the same time, she’s really funny  —   funny in both a light way and darkly comic way.” Konner was working for Apatow when she first saw Dunham’s 2010 indie film, Tiny Furniture, about a recent college graduate who returns home to try to figure out what to do with her life. She became a huge fan. ”I felt so connected to that entitled girl who didn’t know what she should be doing, was kind of lost,” Konner says. ”I just couldn’t believe what an amazing voice Lena had. I mean, just to see a girl spend 45 seconds putting on Spanx. It just felt so real and hilarious.” When HBO gave Dunham her own show (based on a premise similar to Tiny Furniture) Apatow, the show’s executive producer, brought Konner on board. He says, ”Part of Jenni’s job is to be paying attention to Lena: what she needs, how she can write with her, how she can know when she needs a break.” ”She started out basically having to babysit me,” Dunham admits, adding that Konner helps her curb her workaholic tendencies. ”Acting, getting naked in front of people, the public criticism that comes with it has been really emotionally draining, and unfortunately Jenni’s been put in the position of having to  . But it’s something she does with so much grace you would never think it was hard for her.” Konner and Dunham’s partnership isn’t just limited to film and TV. Their online feminist newsletter, Lenny Letter, which also has its own imprint at Random House, explores issues like abortion and gender parity in Hollywood. Actress Jennifer Lawrence contributed a column entitled ”Why Do I Make Less Than My Male  ? ,” and singer Alicia Keys wrote about why she no longer wears makeup. The newsletter has allowed Konner and Dunham to give voice to their politics in a way they could never do on Girls. It just wouldn’t fit the show’s characters, Konner says. ”Our girls, honestly, [are] too narcissistic to be political.” Editor Nina Gregory and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this report."
"Late on a Wednesday afternoon at Nashville’s 3rd and Lindsley Bar and Grill, Emoni Wilkins, Jason Eskridge and Mike Hicks are trying to tack a bit of   rehearsing onto their sound check for the night’s show. They’re each slated to perform a solo set, before wrapping up with a collective finale. With guidance from Eskridge, who’s strumming an acoustic guitar, they ease into sympathetic   harmony on the chorus of James Taylor’s ”Shower the People.” Eskridge encourages Wilkins to vamp, and she responds with fluttery, athletic vocal runs. Then Hicks, a mellow presence bent over a keyboard next to them, succumbs to delighted laughter. ”You’re gonna take me out,” he tells Wilkins. ”I quit. I’m packing up my stuff and going on home. I’m done. That’s some good singin’.” During any given week, these three friends work as musicians for hire, tugged in diverging directions by tour dates and recording sessions with nationally known acts. It’s hard enough for Eskridge, Hicks and Wilkins to find a night that they’re all available to appear on one bill. Scheduling a separate   would be out of the question, and hardly necessary for singers at their level anyhow. But what draws them together on this and other occasions is a shared commitment to helping foster an underground Nashville RB and soul scene, a music community in which they have a satisfying creative outlet and a real stake. There was a time when Nashville was actually in the RB business. The city’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum devoted a lavish exhibit to the period from the   up through the ’60s when the influence of the RB programming on local radio station WLAC could be felt throughout the southern U. S. nightclubs on Jefferson Street hosted local and touring acts, labels like Bullet took a chance on talent, a bustling recording scene yielded occasional hits like Robert Knight’s ”Everlasting Love” and the variety show Night Train, a precursor to Soul Train, beamed performances into living rooms. Eventually, that work dried up. Though there are countless examples of meaningful exchange between country and Southern RB (see: rock ’n’ roll) for musicians of color, possessing professional chops honed in RB didn’t necessarily translate into a lot of opportunities in Nashville’s dominant country scene. The exhibit’s mastermind, museum editor Michael Gray, says that the handful of exceptions  —   like Bobby Hebb, who was in Roy Acuff’s band and later scored a pop hit, and Jimmy Sweeney, who wrote country songs while fronting a   group  —   largely proved the rule. That mostly held true in the ’90s, when    Tommy Sims and Keith Thomas parlayed massive CCM success into pop and RB work, and the early 2000s, by which time Shannon Sanders was starting to pick up RB and country credits with his interracial production duo Drew  Shannon. Wilkins, Eskridge, Hicks and a number of their   peers represent a slightly more recent phenomenon. Side by side, they’re straddling Nashville’s music scenes, trying to make themselves indispensible to the industry even as they band together outside of it. Like countless   musicians before them, these three received early lessons in musicianship from church music. Eskridge’s grandfather sang bass in a   gospel group in East Tennessee, and both   Hicks and   Wilkins were preachers’ kids. Wilkins cut her teeth in the youth choir New Direction and learned her way around her hometown’s storied gospel scene. But she insists of her move to Nashville, ”I didn’t come here to sing only gospel.” That’s abundantly clear looking at the wall of her suburban apartment she’s transformed it into a    chalkboard so that she can more easily keep track of each day’s gigs. Besides harmonizing behind gospel star CeCe Winans, Wilkins has also become a resident   at a downtown blues club, sung on artists’ albums and Disney theme park soundtracks, studied Dolly Parton’s material and mannerisms for a tribute show and appeared on the reality competition The Sing Off and   tours. Wilkins was already living in Nashville when she was approached about the television show. That was her introduction to the world of a cappella pop, and it led her to explore new uses of her extravagant instrument, cavernous and sensual in its lower ranges, meteoric at its high notes and used with thrilling control. Not long ago, an artist asked her to emulate a Tarzan call in the studio, and she had no trouble figuring out how to perfectly recreate the primal bellowing. ”I remember going out on the back porch when I was a kid and listening to the birds sing or chirp and trying to imitate that sound,” Wilkins says. ”It was always like, ’Oh, I hear this sound,’ and trying to figure out how I could make that happen. I didn’t know until a couple of years ago, ’Hey, this is a real thing. This could really make me money.’ ” A fan made a YouTube video out of clips of her performing on TV and in concert. It was meant to showcase her ability to hit notes from the basement to the rafters, but it also put a different sort of range on display. When she saw it, she says, ”I was just floored by the vastly different genres I was singing.” Eskridge started looking for singing opportunities in Nashville a couple of decades ago. Not long out of college, he was making his living as a NASA engineer, pulling in a respectable salary and benefits and devoting his downtime to music. As he made contacts in Nashville, he started commuting from Huntsville, Ala. on weekends. ”I had friends who were in the   industry, friends who were in the CCM industry, friends that were even in the country industry,” he recalls. ”Yeah, anytime somebody asked me to sing I would do it.” Eskridge had a gig with contemporary Christian   balladeer Nicole C. Mullen waiting for him the moment he left Rocket City behind. Another friend, Shannon Sanders, handled choir arrangements and production work for the wryly swinging country   Lyle Lovett and the     Jonny Lang, and helped Eskridge land spots with both. After that, Eskridge signed on with jammy, stylistically diffuse   outfit the Zac Brown Band. Eskridge acclimated to each new situation by putting his   musical sensibilities to use. ”You find out pretty quickly that to have any sort of longevity here, unless you’re the 1 or 2 percent of artists who end up being huge or whatever, you have to be able to multitask and do other things,” he observes. Hicks can identify. He wouldn’t have pictured himself playing keyboards for Keb’ Mo’. After the easeful   performer moved to Nashville half a decade ago, Hicks was introduced to the artist by his given name, Kevin Moore, at a recording session. ”I was on my way home and I Googled,” Hicks admits. ”I was like, ’Let me see who this dude is.’ Keb’ Mo’ kept coming up. I was like, ’Oh no!’ . .. I wasn’t really a blues aficionado, so I wasn’t hip. And I surely didn’t see it turning into what it has. I tell folks all the time, I feel like I am forever indebted to Keb’ for taking a risk on a young kid.” Not only did Hicks master a new repertoire, he encountered a new audience —  one that tends to skew     and white. On the road, he found it hard to process news about the suicide of Sandra Bland, who was jailed after a racially motivated altercation with a traffic cop, and the massacre at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, S. C. ”It’s tough,” he says, ”because in those moments, I’m away from my family and the people who we normally cling to . ..There was a time when I think I had written probably about 10 or 12 songs in a span of a couple of weeks, all centered around the heaviness of injustice, specifically racial injustice.” Like Hicks, Eskridge has solo projects of his own, including a new album in the works. It’s when he’s working under his own name that he really displays the scope of his instincts, gliding between the roles of gospel shouter, sensual   loverman and    . ”It’s always been important to me to make sure that as a musician, at any point in time I could draw from any one of those sources and still be legit and not be faking it, but it really be kind of a part of who I am musically,” he says. ”As much as there’s the soul singer that’s going for it and singing about whatever, there’s also the guy who has stories about his own life that he wants to tell. I take pride in being able to seamlessly transition between those folks and it still make sense.” Wilkins, too, is working on confessional new music. She was inspired to get back to writerly   by both a string of personal losses and a transcendent experience at a Peter Gabriel arena show. She marvels, ”The amazing thing is that we all do different projects with other artists, but never forget about our first love, and that is music that speaks to us within our hearts.” Earlier in her Nashville tenure, she recorded a mixtape, When Worlds Collide, stocked with imaginative reinterpretations of pop and RB songs, including a dogged rendition of Aretha Franklin’s ”Rock Steady,” featuring the band that backs Wilkins around town, and an a cappella reading of the ZEDD and Hayley Williams dance number ”Stay The Night.” With sly, tentative syncopation and robotic harmonies cocooning her breathy delivery, Wilkins finds melancholy in the fleeting nature of the latter’s romantic rendezvous in her hands, the song really does have a new meaning. Hicks points out that it’s his touring income that enables him to record his socially conscious   songs. He’ll book one of his friends’ studios when he can, and aim for lush, Earth, Wind    orchestration with singers, players and engineers from his inner circle. ”The money that you make out there, you pour it back into the folks who believe in you enough to help out with music,” he explains. ”The sideman thing pays for, at least at this point, it’s paying for the hustle of doing my own artistry and my own vision.” He goes on, ”The Nashville music scene, at least the circles that I’m involved with, they’re very good at looking out for each other and challenging each other. So it’s not merely, ’Well, let me call my friend to play bass, because he plays bass and he’s my friend. I can pay him.’ If he wasn’t good, I wouldn’t call him.” Regardless of how accomplished they are musically, Hicks, Eskridge and Wilkins strike a welcoming posture toward new arrivals. Hicks relishes being one of the first people musicians reach out to when they get to Nashville, and one of the first to offer them a platform in his role as music director for occasional   tributes to   like Missy Elliot, Kanye West and Erykah Badu. When Hicks planned the set list for a show devoted to Outkast’s catalog, he couldn’t find anyone able to nail the early track ”SpottieOttieDopaliscious.” During a rehearsal, a young stranger strode up to the microphone and announced that he’d heard they needed someone to tackle the song and was there to deliver. Hicks was prepared to let him down easy. ”Now I’m gonna have to tell this kid, ’We appreciate you coming out, but it’s OK,’” Hicks remembers. ”And he ran through it and blew us all away. And then that moment at the show was probably one of the hypest moments I’ve ever been a part of in any capacity.” Sometimes the roles are reversed. Due to his stature in multiple Nashville music communities, Eskridge finds himself getting called on to bring diversity to otherwise homogeneous live lineups, like a Tom Petty tribute show he played with local   and   fixtures. ”Quite frankly, I’m the only African American or person of color that has anything to do with the show,” he observes. ”That being said, I always try to say ’yes’ just for the sake of letting people know, ’Hey, there is soul music in Nashville.’ ” Several years back he decided that the best thing he could do for the scene would be to start a gathering for its   music makers and music lovers. The result, Sunday Night Soul, happens twice a month at the East Nashville bar The 5 Spot, a venue Eskridge selected ”because they don’t pigeonhole themselves as being the rock club or country or whatever.” His band can be counted on to get people onto the small dance floor with rootsy, mischievous reimaginings of Prince, Stevie Wonder and Blackstreet covers. Every show also features guest performers: artists from elsewhere swinging through town locals like Classik Levine, Kyshona Armstrong and CoCo Ko fellow pros for hire like Jonny Lang’s keyboardist Dwan Hill, LeAnn Rimes’ guitarist Akil Thompson and DeMarco Johnson, who’s played keyboards for Marc Broussard. Hicks and Wilkins are most certainly regulars too. ”Sunday Night Soul is probably one of the places where I’ve found so much peace, because it felt like that’s where all the working musicians from all walks of life would come to get, like, a refill musically,” Wilkins reflects. ”We all just hug and love on each other and laugh and have a good time.” Others have tried to foster similar spaces. 3rd and Lindsley has its Soul Machine series, presented by promoter Tatia Rose and Rose Music Group. The Hype Artist Collective has put on     showcases. And Lovenoise, a longtime concert promoter and presenter of music and poetry nights, rolled out a festival named for a historic Jefferson Street nightclub. Bilal, Mint Condition and Talib Kweli headlined, but the lineup also drew from local scenes with Hicks, Nashville emcee Mike Floss and   singer Kiya Lacey. What Lacey and Floss are up to appeals to the college crowd, at whom the blog 2 L’s On a Cloud is aimed. (It’s the place to hear the latest from lots of other young,   talent, like Milly Roze, Bella Moon, Saaneah, Johnny Phrank and Villz). Hicks, Wilkins and Eskridge, on the other hand, are associated with adult RB,     and nostalgic ’90s   that draws a slightly more mature audience. But given the chance, they champion the full range of Nashville artists making RB, soul and   with minimal support from Music Row’s infrastructure. ”Competition is good in a setting where there’s a lot of one thing happening,” observes Eskridge. ”But when you’re small like the soul music community in Nashville is, I think it’s important that competition kind of go out the door and it be more of, ’We’re working together to build this thing, to let people know, to have a voice that can be heard and not diluted.’ ”"
"Even as they lick their wounds from a failed Affordable Care Act repeal effort, Republican leaders in Washington are looking ahead to the next battle  —   over taxes. ”I would say that we will probably start going very, very strongly for the big tax cuts and tax reform,” President Trump told reporters Friday. ”That will be next.” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan agreed, though he conceded that the defeat on health care was a setback. ”This does make tax reform more difficult,” Ryan said. ”But it does not in any way make it impossible.” The challenges are both political and procedural. Republicans had hoped success in their   goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, would generate momentum and team spirit that would carry over into other fights. Instead, they’re saddled with an embarrassing failure  —   and squabbling factions that torpedoed the Obamacare repeal and aren’t likely to settle down anytime soon. ”If Trump can’t line up support for health care, it’s going to be hard to see how he will be able to lead on tax reform,” said William Gale, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and   of the Tax Policy Center. Tax policy is arguably as hard or harder than health care, in terms of juggling all the interest groups, Gale says. ”You need a president to be able to take the argument to the people and basically provide cover for individual legislators who are going to be besieged by constituents and lobbyists who are losing benefits,” he says. The Obamacare repeal bill faltered among some moderate Republicans after forecasters from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted it would leave 24 million more Americans uninsured after a decade and raise insurance costs for people in their 50s and 60s. More conservative legislators, including members of the Freedom Caucus, were frustrated the bill didn’t fully roll back the Affordable Care Act before building something new. The measure also would have given a sizeable tax break to people making more than $200, 000 a year. White House aides insist the health care debacle won’t spread to other parts of the president’s agenda. ”I don’t think you can tie any of these together,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Friday. ”Whether it’s immigration or tax reform, there’s still a huge appetite out there.” Trump and Ryan agreed during the transition process to tackle health care first, partly for procedural reasons: With both health care and tax reform, Republicans planned to use a legislative tactic known as ”budget reconciliation” that prevents Senate Democrats from blocking measures with a filibuster. The budget resolution for the current fiscal year dictates that any reconciliation measure must reduce the deficit, which the GOP’s Obamacare repeal was designed to do. Republicans then could draft a new budget resolution for the upcoming fiscal year with easier deficit targets, allowing for more aggressive tax cuts. Technically, tax reform passed through reconciliation still can’t add to the deficit. But there are ways for lawmakers to sidestep that rule, for instance by adopting alternative baselines. The tax plan Trump proposed during the presidential campaign would balloon the deficit by trillions of dollars, according to forecasters at both the centrist Tax Policy Center and the conservative Tax Foundation. Both groups found that the biggest savings under that plan would go to the wealthiest taxpayers, with the top one percent of earners seeing a 10 to 20 percent boost in their income, while   families would see more modest gains of 1 to 10 percent."
"Vice President Mike Pence traveled to West Virginia Saturday where he met with small business owners before delivering public remarks, which included some lines about repealing Barack Obama’s health care law, a day after Republicans efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act went down in flames. ”West Virginia and President Trump, we all know the truth about this failed law, that every day Obamacare survives is another day that America suffers,” Pence told a crowd gathered at a Charleston construction supply company. In his remarks Pence praised the president’s ”resolve” and said Trump worked ”tirelessly over the last couple weeks to get Congress to repeal and replace” the health care law. He also gave House Speaker Paul Ryan a shout out, saying that both he and the President are grateful to Ryan and all the House Republicans who led the push to ”begin the end of Obamacare.” Up to that point, it seemed as if the vice president was delivering remarks to build support for the American Health Care Act, the bill Ryan penned that was pulled indefinitely Friday afternoon ahead of a scheduled vote. The bill was supposed to make good on years of Republican campaign promises to finally start the dismantling of Barack Obama’s signature law. As NPR reported earlier this week, Republicans did not need Democratic support to prevail. In fact, the Republican leadership could have lost up to 22 GOP votes and still passed the bill. Pence, perhaps reflecting on the enormity of the loss, paused before acknowledging what took place Friday afternoon. ”But as we all learned yesterday Congress just wasn’t ready. You saw it.” As NPR’s Jessica Taylor reported Friday, it was clear House Republicans had defections ”from both the right and the center” ensuring the bill would fail, even before a single vote was cast. Echoing remarks President Trump made from the Oval Office on Friday after the GOP bill was dumped, Pence attempted to blame Democrats for the   bill’s failure. ”With 100 percent of House Democrats, every single one, and a handful of Republicans actually standing in the way of President Trump’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, we’re back to the drawing board.” Former World Wrestling Entertainment head Linda McMahon, who now leads the Trump Administration’s Small Business Administration, accompanied Pence at the event. At one point, the vice president singled her out and joked her expertise could have been used in Washington a day earlier. ”You know Linda, we’re grateful to your leadership, but maybe we could have used some of your WWE superstars on Capitol Hill yesterday.”"
"Some basketball viewers on Friday night were subjected to television commercials that were guilty of peddling some alternative facts. That’s because in some markets with   districts, commercials aired praising some Republican House members for their efforts in repealing the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. The problem of course is that repeal effort, which many thought would be a slam dunk, was abandoned because the House Republicans didn’t have enough support from within their own ranks. In the generic ads, the American Action Network, a   advocacy group, urged viewers to call their member of Congress to thank them for keeping their ”promise and replacing the Affordable Care Act with a better health care you deserve.” According to the sports and culture website Deadspin, at least four of these ads ran Friday thanking Reps. Barbara Comstock ( ) Will Hurd ( ) David Valadao ( ) David Young ( ). As of Saturday, another eight ads were still on the American Action Network’s YouTube page praising Brian Fitzpatrick ( ) Darrell Issa ( ) Rod Blum ( ) Gred Walden ( ) Don Bacon ( ) Kevin Brady ( ) Mike Coffman ( ) and Carlos Curbelo ( ). The premature ad buy was supposed to coincide with the   victory lap Washington Republicans campaigned on  —   that once they controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, Obamacare would be tossed out. Instead, in the midst of March Madness yet another upset took place. This one took place in the halls of Congress, when Speaker Ryan told reporters Friday: ”I don’t know what else to say other than Obamacare is the law of the land. It’s going to remain the law of the land.” As NPR has reported, Speaker Ryan called the defeat a ”learning experience.” President Trump and House Republicans are now expected to turn their attention to another difficult overhaul  —   taxes."
"Washington, D. C.’s Capital City Public Charter School feels like a mini United Nations. Many of the school’s 981 students are   Americans with backgrounds spanning the globe, from El Salvador to Nigeria to Vietnam. So when the staff of the literacy   826DC began a   project with the junior class, they picked a topic everyone could relate to that also left room for cultural expression: food. Writing coaches asked students to think of a family recipe with a backstory  —   and then write an essay around that dish. The 81 recipes and their accompanying stories that resulted make up a cookbook of global cuisine with a heartfelt touch, revealing that storytelling may be the most important step in any recipe. Some students shared tales of beloved dishes, the mere thought of which can make their mouths water. ”As the steam from the macaroni rose, the smell seemed as if it had fallen from heaven,” writes Mark St. John Pete about his grandmother’s macaroni and cheese, eaten around a full table in Washington, D. C.  Others focused on less, uh, beloved foods. ”I think tamales do not rot because they can be in a fridge for weeks and look the same,” says Rolando Fuentes, who lost his taste for the bundled packages of corn masa, from his mother’s native El Salvador, as a result of what you might call overexposure. As the current class of 2017, many (maybe all) of these students are preparing to head to college. (Since graduating its first class in 2012, 100 percent of Capital City Public Charter School students have been accepted to college.) Writing these   stories has helped the students become better writers, but it’s also forced them to delve into their identities and hone their reporting skills with their families, reinforcing important connections before they leave home. In order to fill holes in their narratives, many of the young writers had to reach out to older family members for more information. When they didn’t know a detail or an ingredient, the writing coaches would encourage them to ask. ”We’d say, ’Talk to your dad about it,” explains 826 D. C’s Lacey Dunham. ”And they’d say, ’Well I did talk to my dad. We had a conversation, and he told me all this stuff. I had no idea. ’” On the last day of the project, the students celebrated their accomplishment with a potluck  —   each bringing in the dish they’d so thoughtfully written about. A few even read their stories aloud. ”It’s a fun way to get students to think critically about who they are,” says Zachary Clark, executive director of 826DC, ”to tell their stories through a mechanism where the outcome is everyone gets to eat.” Excerpts from five of the 81 stories are below, recipes included: Recipe Origin: Nigeria  My mom came to this country on Halloween night in 1990 (she still doesn’t understand the purpose of the holiday) it was an experience. She was a petite,      Nigerian who had never been out of the country, but who was brave enough to go into the unexpected. She was pushing towards another life outside of what her parents expected of her back home. It was dark and cold, and she felt as if the little children in masks were a projection of what she felt inside. She went to her cousin’s house in Rockville, Maryland, and the first thing they tried to feed her was pizza, but she was not having it. There were too many new and unusual flavors that she was not used to, all on one slice that she could not handle it. It just tasted artificial. So she made them go out in the middle of the night to get some okra soup because, after such a long journey to a foreign country, she needed something to remind her of her home and what she was used to. She needed the sliminess of the okra and chewiness of the cow skin to let her know, no matter how far away she was from home, no matter how much things changed, she would always have the comfort that the food would always be the same. Recipe Origin: El Salvador  I always helped my mom make nuegados as much as I could . .. I would help her peel the yucca with a plastic knife. It took me forever but, you know, safety first. My face would lighten up brighter than the sun when my mom dropped the mushy balls of yucca into the roaring fire. The heat was so intense that over time my mom lost almost all of her lashes. I would help her pack them in bags of five, but I would always take a bite from one of them and put it back in. I called this taste testing for customers, satisfaction guaranteed. My mom would always laugh loudly at my shenanigans, you could hear it from miles away, but she would never get mad. How could I not bite those delicious nuegados itching to be eaten? The smell of the atado de dulce was like a pool of sugar that mixed with my saliva and the rest of the nuegados. (Of course, she took the bitten nuegados out, they had my cooties on them!) Then, after all the food was prepared, my mom would head out to the streets to sell her yummy food to the hungry people. Recipe Origin: United States, As a child in junior high school, my mother loved chili. A couple blocks away from her school, there was a concession stand owned by a man named Mr. Steven. Mr. Steven was a skinny   man who wore a hat and had a mustache. He was always happy and took pride in his ”shop,” which was just a small stand. Every day after school, my mom and a couple of her friends would go to Mr. Steven’s hot dog stand because he sold the best chili she ever had. He told her that you couldn’t get his chili anywhere because it was his wife’s homemade recipe.      After becoming an adult and living on her own, my mother was determined to   the chili she remembered from Mr. Steven’s stand. Recipe Origin: Vietnam   In a country filled with many diverse cultures, I always felt like the outcast at school. When there was a potluck for Christmas or Thanksgiving, I was the kid who brought a bag of chips, not because I couldn’t bring cooked dishes, but because I lived in a Western culture with a Vietnamese background. I’m in a country mainly dominated by foods my family doesn’t normally cook. When I was little, I never ate cereal for breakfast. I would have it as a rare snack, without milk. The few times I brought my culture into the school, I received remarks like, ”It looks weird,” ”It made me want to barf,” and ”What is that?” . .. One day, two of my close friends came over. They were your average   teenagers. It was   and over 90 degrees outside, around noon. The three of us sat around a small table in the dining room adjacent to the kitchen. Then, my mom brought in cháo for us to eat. The preparations began in my mind. I prepared my mom an excuse as to why they wouldn’t eat it. Why I would probably eat most of it. Why I would ask her not to share Vietnamese food with my friends. I watched as they both took a sip of the alien soup. A long silence passed  —   in reality several seconds  —   and I hesitantly asked, ”How does it taste?” To my surprise they loved it. Recipe Origin: El Salvador    Even though I was born on March 26, 1999, I feel as if my life didn’t start until I was 5 years old. Although many people go as far as to say that they remember everything since they were in the womb  —   which, by the way, I find a little unreliable  —   I do have some memories of when I was a little boy. One of my most vivid memories is drinking atole de elote in a small restaurant in El Salvador near the neighborhood where I used to live. Atole de elote is made out of corn and milk. There are some traditional beliefs that surround the making of atole de elote. It’s believed that only one person can stir the atole de elote or it will taste bad, and that pregnant women and anyone in a bad mood can’t stir it because it will make the atole de elote taste bitter.    See the rest of the 81 recipes featured in 826DC’s Delicious Havoc here. To download the recipes in this post, click on the title of the recipe."
"The House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential connections to Russia’s election meddling isn’t dead  —   but it’s not exactly dancing a jig, either. Lawmakers are looking ahead to a second week with nothing on their public calendar following a decision by the Republican chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, to cancel an open hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday with former national security leaders from the Obama administration. Democrats, led by Nunes’ fellow Californian Rep. Adam Schiff, complained that Nunes was trying to ”choke off” public information about the inquiry, and accused him of ”obstruction of justice” after he announced he’d been given secret material that he didn’t share with anyone else on the committee  —   but took straight to the White House. Nunes said the documents he’d viewed showed that Trump and his aides had been swept up as part of U. S. surveillance of foreign targets after the election, and that identifying information about Americans had been improperly revealed within the classified channels. Nunes acknowledged that he’d made a ”judgment call” to tell reporters and then Trump but not his colleagues  —   one he ultimately defended. ”This is not an easy process,” he said. ”There’s politics on both sides of this and I’m trying to navigate as best I can.” Despite howls from Democrats, the investigation appears to be moving ahead. Nunes said the committee has invited back FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers for a closed, classified hearing on Tuesday following their appearance at an open one on March 20. Meanwhile, staff members are negotiating with three key figures in the   imbroglio about coming to testify. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page and   ”dirty trickster” and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone all have come forward to say they are willing to meet with the House Intelligence Committee. But Nunes’ insistence on making such arrangements ”voluntary” means that witnesses could speak to the committee behind closed doors, or make deals about topics that might be off limits, which Democrats say defeats the whole purpose. Or the potential witnesses could not show up or just walk away in the middle of testifying because they are not under subpoena. Schiff and his fellow Democrats on the committee, however, have little choice but to continue with an investigation they’ve condemned or walk away and have with nothing at all. Schiff said Friday that he still hopes the committee can move ahead with a credible bipartisan investigation, but said what’s really needed is an independent, special process. Some Republicans, most notably Arizona Sen. John McCain, agree. Congress has used them in the past, including with a bill in 2002 that created the ”National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States”  —   better known as the   Commission, chaired by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton. What are the odds, however, that the Republicans who control the House and Senate would pass a bill to create such a panel, and that President Trump himself would sign it? They’re about the same as Congress creating a special select committee on its own, or authorizing a special investigator within the Justice Department  —   virtually nil. The House Intelligence Committee isn’t the only game in town. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also investigating, so far with a much lower profile and no dedicated public events. And the biggest and most potent process is the one that has been underway since last July, being undertaken by the FBI. The Bureau’s director, Comey, said as little about it as he could on Monday when he appeared before Nunes, Schiff and their colleagues. He declined to respond to most questions about the people with whom the FBI was talking or give any other details. Comey also declined to give any sense of how long it might take FBI counterintelligence investigators to wrap up their work, meaning that Washington is sitting on top a volcano with no sense about when it might erupt, or how powerfully. A best case scenario for Republicans might involve a quiet press release by the FBI some Friday evening that says it concluded its work with no charges or no new evidence. A   scenario might involve Comey stepping before the TV lights to announce a criminal case in the final days before next year’s midterm election, when Democrats want to take away Republicans’ governing majorities in Congress."
"Political predictions are a dangerous business, especially this year. But it does look as though one way or another, the U. S. Senate will vote to confirm the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court. The open question is how much damage Democrats will do to their own long game in the process. The long game is this: confirming Gorsuch will not change the overall   balance on the Supreme Court. But two of the current sitting justices are over 80, and a third is nearly 79. These three are considerably less conservative than Justice Antonin Scalia, whose death created the vacancy that Gorsuch has been nominated to fill. So if any of these three justices were to retire in the next four years, or perhaps eight, President Donald Trump would have the opportunity to nominate a conservative justice to replace a liberal or centrist justice, and the balance of the nation’s highest court would be dramatically tipped to the right. In short, the next confirmation fight will be Armageddon. And if Democrats have a weak hand this time, they could have a much weaker one next time if political pressure from the Democrats’ left flank succeeds in forcing the abolition of the filibuster. More on this in a moment. But first, let’s take a look at this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Gorsuch nomination. A rehearsed performance at the confirmation hearing, The judge emerged from more than 20 hours of questioning largely unscathed. His performance was skilled and schooled. He looked the part of a distinguished,   but youthful, judge, and projected an image of dispassionate judicial neutrality to the point of chilliness. The old adage is that the secret to spontaneity is to know how to fake it. And spontaneity was the one score on which Gorsuch may have rated a less than stellar grade. He was so practiced in his answers that even his obviously planned jokes fell flat. Indeed, his desire to avoid committing himself to any substantive answer, even about longstanding and popular Supreme Court decisions, almost trapped him into refusing to strongly endorse Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional. His initial answer may have been dodgy because he was tired at hour nine of what ended up being an almost   day of testimony. But whatever the reason, Gorsuch finally woke up and realized he was taking the principle of hedging too far. When pressed by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Gorsuch asserted that Brown ”corrected a badly erroneous decision,” referring to the    ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. ”It’s one of the great stains of the Supreme Court’s history that it took it so long to get to that decision,” Gorsuch said. That said, he continued to hedge when asked whether he thought the Court ruled correctly in two decisions issued roughly fifty years ago that declared unconstitutional state laws that made it a crime to distribute or provide medical advice on birth control. In contrast, Blumenthal told Gorsuch, the last two Republican Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, directly answered that question and said they agreed with the result. ” You have been . .. able to avoid specificity like no one I have ever seen before, added a frustrated Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Tough questions from the Democratic Senators, The Senators on the left sought repeatedly to portray Gorsuch as a tool of corporate America who had no sympathy for the little guy. Exhibit A in that effort was the   case of the frozen trucker. A commercial truck driver named Alphonse Maddin was driving his trailer truck through Illinois when the brakes on the trailer froze. Maddin pulled over, reported the problem to his employer, TransAm Trucking, and was told to wait for help. After waiting three hours in   temperatures with no heat working in the cab, he could no longer feel his legs and was having trouble breathing. So he unhitched the trailer from the cab and drove to a service station for help, returning after about 15 minutes when he finally heard servicemen were on the way. He was fired for abandoning the trailer. Maddin sued under a federal law that protects whistleblowers from being fired for refusing to operate an unsafe vehicle. He won at every level, including before an appeals court panel. Judge Gorsuch was the lone dissenter, writing that Maddin ”was fired only after” he declined to take the action protected by law ”and chose instead to operate his vehicle in a manner he thought wise but his employer did not.” Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota called Gorsuch’s dissenting opinion ”absurd” in view of the fact that if the trucker hadn’t left the trailer behind while he drove away to get help, he would either have risked ”dying” from the cold himself by staying put, or risked the lives of innocent motorists by driving the trailer with the frozen brakes on to the highway. Gorsuch said he ”totally empathized” with Maddin, but otherwise dodged questions on the case. The nominee did suffer one embarrassment when a decision he wrote limiting the rights of disabled children in public school was for all practical purposes unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court  —   at the very hour Gorsuch was discussing this at his hearing. He defended the decision, saying that he was bound at the time by the precedent of his appeals court, and that in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, he had been ”wrong” and was ”sorry.” The frozen trucker case and the disabled kids case caused Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois to lament that he was having difficulty finding evidence of a ”beating heart” in Gorsuch’s jurisprudence. Gorsuch responded by citing a half dozen cases in which he had ruled ”for the little guy.” More to the point, he said, while his dissenting opinion in the frozen trucker case may have been ”unkind,” it was required by law, and the job of a judge, he said, is to be faithful to the law. He did have some Gary Cooper moments that left his inquisitors  . Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island sought repeatedly to get a fix on the nominee’s views about campaign finance laws. Noting that recent Supreme Court decisions have opened politics to an unprecedented ”flood of cash,” Whitehouse worried about the ability of big money to capture Congress, federal agencies, and even the Supreme Court. You could almost hear the guns on his hips clanking as Gorsuch,   replied: ”Nobody will capture me.” After the second long day of testimony was over, Gorsuch stayed in the hearing room to greet friends and supporters. It looked much like a celebration without drinks. The minority party’s political quagmire, On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he would lead a filibuster. Democratic sources saw the move as an attempt by Schumer to shore up a weak hand. A few numbers are instructive here: It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, meaning 60 votes to cut off debate and move to an    vote on a Supreme Court nomination. There are 52 Republican senators, a majority, but they would need the votes of eight Democrats to cut off debate. It would be one thing if this were an unchangeable rule. The Democrats could hold up the Gorsuch nomination forever —  something that in their heart of hearts they would love to do. They remain   furious over the GOP refusal for almost a year to give even a hearing to Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee to fill the Scalia seat. Although Democrats refer to the open Supreme Court seat as one that was ”stolen” from them, most Senators are political pros. They know that if they are able to block the Gorsuch nomination with a filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will almost certainly launch the   ”nuclear option.” McConnell and other more centrist Republicans like Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have made clear they will change the   rule for cutting off debate if need be. The majority party can change the rules with a majority vote, and thereafter, it will only take 51 senators to move to an    vote on a Supreme Court nomination. Gorsuch would sail through with at least the 52 Republican Senators voting for him, and the filibuster option would be gone. If there is a political Armageddon, the Democrats would have disarmed themselves —  wasting a fight over the filibuster on a nominee who already seems to be guaranteed confirmation. The problem is that even though senators can easily game out this scenario, their Democratic base is leaning on them, hard, to do something —  anything —  to stop Gorsuch, even though it is a hopeless cause. The Gorsuch nomination could even mark the last tiny gasp of bipartisanship on Supreme Court nominations. The failed Robert Bork nomination in 1987 was defeated by 58 senators, including six Republicans. Consensus seemed to rebound when the Republican nomination of Anthony Kennedy was confirmed    and David Souter in a    vote. In between, a   Senate confirmed Republican nominee Clarence Thomas by a narrow    vote. But after that, Democratic nominees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer were confirmed by votes of    and    respectively. Eleven years passed before there were vacancies again. Nominated by Republican President George W. Bush in 2005, John Roberts was confirmed as chief justice by a   Senate, but he managed to get the votes of half the Democrats. In 2006, Bush nominee Samuel Alito got only four Democratic votes. In 2009 and 2010, President Obama’s nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were confirmed with 9 Republican votes and 5 Republican votes, respectively. Ultimately, President Trump will get his Gorsuch nominee through the Senate, but only because his party has a majority there. As conservative Ed Whelan, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, observes, the ”underlying politics have shifted” on judicial nominations and confirmations. Formerly, if a nominee had stellar legal and character credentials, most senators would defer to the President’s choice. But now, he says, ”the political bases on both sides have driven their senators to explore and oppose nominees based on judicial philosophy.” Intern Lauren Russell contributed to this report."
"Editor’s Note: This story includes videos and descriptions of violent encounters between police and civilians, as well as language that may not be appropriate for all readers. For three days last summer, many of us watched as TV and computer screens showed violence between police and civilians. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot and killed by police. Then a gunman killed five police officers in Dallas. That week made clear just how much these videos of police violence have become part of our lives. The videos are not new, of course  —   the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police was filmed in 1991. But from dashcams to body cameras to bystanders’ cellphones, more and more interactions between civilians and police are being captured on camera. How are these videos changing the police? How are they changing civilians? And what can we learn from them? These are the questions we tried to answer as we looked at three very different videos. The death of Jonathan Ferrell is one of the few police shootings where nearly every piece of evidence and every perspective was publicly examined and presented. And yet people still came to startlingly different conclusions about what happened. Around 2:30 a. m. on Sept. 14, 2013, a woman calls 911 and says a black man is trying to break into her house. Three officers respond one has his dashcam rolling. His headlights shine on Ferrell, a black man in a green shirt and   pants. He matches the description the woman gave to 911. At first you see Ferrell walking toward officers. Then you see both his hands go to his waist, like he might be pulling up his pants. Then you see a red dot on his chest. We later learn it’s from a second officer’s Taser. Then Ferrell starts to run, and he runs right off camera. You hear a third officer, Randall Kerrick, tell Ferrell to get on the ground. And then you hear 12 gunshots. Ten of those shots hit Ferrell. Officers handcuff him, and tell him not to move. At some point, Ferrell dies. Rodney Monroe was chief of police at the time  —   the first black chief of the   department. He is now retired. Monroe says investigators could not escape the fact that Ferrell was so clearly unarmed in the video. Three officers should have been able to handle one unarmed man without shooting. ”Fear can engulf you in a manner that won’t allow you to think logically or based on your training,” Monroe says. ”And I think more force was used than what was necessary, than what [Kerrick] was met with.” So Monroe and his team of investigators decide to charge Kerrick with voluntary manslaughter. It is the first time in 30 years that a   police officer has been charged for shooting someone on the job. When the case goes to trial in 2015, the video is played several times. The prosecution argues that Ferrell was at the woman’s door, looking for help. And when he saw those red dots on his chest, he was running away from police, in fear. The defense says Ferrell was trying to break into the woman’s house, that he was fixing for a fight when he hitched up his pants, and that he was charging at police in that video. In the end, eight jurors side with the defense and vote to acquit Kerrick. Of those jurors, six were white, one was black, and one was Hispanic. Four jurors, vote to convict. Of those jurors, two were black, one was Hispanic, and one was white. The judge declares a mistrial, and the prosecution decides not to retry the case. Kerrick goes free. But as part of a settlement, he resigns from the police force. How could 12 jurors see the same piece of evidence and come to such different conclusions? ”Confirmation bias is what that’s called,” says Charles Monnett, a lawyer who represented the Ferrell family in a civil case against the city of Charlotte. ”People see what they want to see and they take their previous beliefs and they use the film to confirm whatever they are.” But, Monnett says, the prosecution could have used the video more effectively during the trial. When Monnett deposed the other two police officers who were there that night  —   Adam Neal and Thornell Little  —   for the civil case, he took their statements about what happened and compared them to the video, frame by frame. The depositions allowed the lawyer to show discrepancies. For instance, Neal had said that just before Ferrell started running that night, he hitched up his shoulders as if he were preparing to fight. But then they watch the video, and it looks like Ferrell is just pulling up his pants. In the end, the city settles Monnett’s case and pays the Ferrell family $2. 25 million. It is not an admission of guilt. As unsatisfying as this might be for Ferrell’s family, the dashcam video did move the needle. Lawyers were able to challenge what the police officers said. And the case would never have even gone to trial without the video. ”The police no longer own the narrative,” says criminologist Phil Stinson of Bowling Green State University. Before we had these videos, he says, the dead man couldn’t talk. Now, Stinson says, in some ways, he can. The next video we looked at is the kind that police watch and share, a lot. It was the first known case where an officer’s death was captured on his own bodycam. And afterward, the video took on a kind of afterlife  —   and came to mean very different things to different people. It was taken on Dec. 28, 2014, from the bodycam of Tyler Stewart, a police officer in Flagstaff, Ariz. A college student calls the police and says her boyfriend has damaged her apartment after a big argument. Stewart, who is white, has talked to the woman. In the video, he walks up an alley, to the back door of the boyfriend’s house. The boyfriend, Robert Smith, is also white. He’s 28 years old, and he’s pretty skinny. His eyes and cheeks are kind of sunken. He’s wearing a winter coat. He looks nervous. Stewart asks if they can talk outside. Smith says yes, but turns back inside. He comes back out with a stocking hat on and his hands in his pockets. And then, they just talk. Officer Stewart wants to know about the damage to the girlfriend’s apartment. You can see Stewart look down at Smith’s pockets. Then the police officer finally asks Smith if he can pat him down. ”You don’t have anything in there?” Stewart says. ”No, no, just my smokes,” Smith says. Stewart reaches out. And then, out of nowhere, Smith whips a gun out of his pocket. It happens so fast you can barely see it. And the video stops. Smith shoots Stewart five times, then shoots himself. They both die. The facts of what happened that day are not in dispute. The video has been seen hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube. It gets shared on Facebook groups and blogs. And police use it in training. We go to one of these classes, in Prescott, Ariz. Jim Glennon, a former cop from the Chicago area who now trains police, leads the class. Mostly, he plays videos  —   of cops shooting people, and of people shooting cops. The idea is to show how dangerous a police officer’s job can be, and to teach police to be prepared for the worst, all the time. Glennon plays the video from Flagstaff. ”People are programmed to believe violence is what they see on TV,” he says. ”The music starts to well up. You’ve got a different camera angle. You know the guy’s a bad guy. But in real life, it happens in the blink of an eye.” We wonder if it’s hard for the relatives of Tyler Stewart and Robert Smith for this video to be used this way. Turns out Stewart’s dad was a state cop for 28 years. And he says he’s OK with the fact that the video is being watched in classes around the country. Frank Stewart lives in a log cabin house in the woods a few miles outside of Flagstaff. It’s a house he and Tyler were building together. When he was younger, Tyler would ride around with his dad. By the time he was killed, Tyler was 24 years old and had been a cop for seven months. Frank says his son loved his job. We want to know if the video has come to mean anything to Frank Stewart. Has it helped him understand what happened or why it happened? ”Absolutely, Tyler made some mistakes that day,” Frank says. ”The first one is he allowed the kid to walk back in the house . .. and I believe that’s when he went and got his gun.” Tyler also could have drawn his weapon first, Frank says. He could have called for backup. And, when he saw Smith reach into his pocket, he could have acted more defensively. Some of Smith’s friends and relatives have not watched the video. Others have, and they have come to regret it. Taylor Mahoney was Robert Smith’s best friend. Mahoney was texting with Smith the day of the shooting. Smith said he hadn’t been getting sleep, because of pain from a rotten tooth. And after his girlfriend called the police, he texted that he was afraid of going to jail. Mahoney says he waited about six months before he watched the video. He immediately regretted it. ”It was just sickening to watch really,” Mahoney says. He says he simply didn’t recognize his friend in the video. Mahoney says the fact that the video is out there means the worst day of his life will just keep playing on loop over and over. ”It’s never going to be laid to rest fully . .. there really can’t ever be any closure,” he says. This is the thing with these videos: They document the last moments of these people’s lives. And because of that, we want them to mean something. For the police, a video like this is a way to justify what they do. For Frank Stewart, Tyler’s dad, it’s a reminder that ultimately it’s all up to God. For Taylor Mahoney, it’s a constant loop of the worst day of his life. A video like this can give us some closure, or it can remind us there are some things that can’t actually be explained. In the third video we looked at, nobody shoots anybody. On April 16, 2015, in a suburb outside of Cincinnati, Jesse Kidder of the New Richmond Police Department is following Michael Wilcox in a car. Wilcox is suspected of killing a person. And he has told police he has a gun. Wilcox drives onto a side street, gets out, and starts running at Kidder. Kidder exits his car with his gun drawn. He tells Wilcox to put his hands up. Wilcox yells, ”Shoot me!” Kidder says he doesn’t want to shoot. Wilcox puts his hand in his pocket then starts running at Kidder. At one point Kidder loses his balance and falls on his back. But he jumps back up and you hear sirens. More police are coming. Wilcox turns around and lies on the ground. This is not the kind of police video we usually see in the news. And it all points to how these videos are changing the way police  —   and the rest of us  —   react in extreme situations. The video was taken from Kidder’s body camera. His police chief later releases the footage to local media. The story makes national news. A few weeks later, Kidder speaks at a conference in Washington, D. C. put on by a police think tank. ”I knew he had crossed the line to where I could have used deadly force,” Kidder tells the conference. ”But I just felt that, you know, just because you can take a life, it doesn’t mean you should.” The moderator tells Kidder’s boss that he’s got a ”brave officer.” There’s a big round of applause. Still, is there another reason why Kidder didn’t shoot that day? Commentators think they have an answer: Jesse Kidder is white. Michael Wilcox is white. People say if Wilcox had been black, Kidder would have shot him. Decades of research have shown we all have implicit bias, even if we aren’t overtly racist. And many studies have shown that this bias will affect how police interact with people. But when you ask individual police officers if race was a factor in an incident like this, they almost always say no. We wanted to talk to Jesse Kidder about this. But he did not want to talk on the record. So we go to New Richmond, Ohio, and ask his police chief at the time of the incident, Randy Harvey, if race played a role in this case. ”That’s the farthest thing from the truth,” Harvey says. He says there’s a different reason why Kidder didn’t shoot Wilcox: Kidder was a Marine who did two tours in Iraq. Kidder told people at the D. C. conference that he’d been in ”deadly force situations” while he was a Marine. And the Marine Corps says Kidder was awarded a Combat Action Ribbon in Iraq, which means he was under enemy fire and engaged the enemy. This is something more and more police chiefs and trainers are coming to understand: There’s a stereotype of a soldier who comes home from a war, becomes a cop, and then is trigger happy. But actually, in many cases, they have more life experience, in stressful situations, than young recruits right out of the police academy. Eventually, other cops criticize Kidder for not shooting Wilcox that day. At one point, Harvey says the criticism gets so bad, Kidder wants to quit his job. It all points to how much more scrutiny police are under these days, even from each other. In the end, Harvey talks Kidder out of quitting. And Kidder moves on to a different department. This is not the end of the story. It turns out the encounter with Kidder is the second time that day Michael Wilcox was not shot by a cop. About half an hour earlier, Wilcox was stopped by Vicky and Buddy Coburn. At the time, Vicky was working for a local police department, and Buddy was an investigator with the prosecutor’s office. They’re also married. At the time, Vicky was working for a local police department, and Buddy was an investigator with the prosecutor’s office. That day, the Coburns were off work and had gone out for dinner. They get a call saying a woman had been shot and killed in a house. They go to the house, and head back out to the car to get a search warrant. On the way, they get a description of the car the suspect is driving. They see the car and force him over to the side of the road. Buddy draws his gun and goes to the driver’s side. Vicky goes to the passenger side. Buddy grabs Wilcox by the shirt. ”He’s screaming, screaming, ’Kill me, kill me,’” Buddy says. ”And he says, ’I did it, I did it. I killed her. I got a gun. ’” By this point Vicky has come around to the driver’s side. Both Buddy and Vicky are holding onto Wilcox. Buddy has the gun to Wilcox’s head. At one point, Buddy says, Wilcox tries to grab his gun. And then, Wilcox lunges forward and reaches to the floorboard. ”We both simultaneously jerk him back up,” Buddy says. ”And as he came back up he hit the ignition switch . .. and slammed it in gear and away we all three went.” Wilcox drags Buddy and Vicky for a few seconds until they let go. Wilcox keeps driving. Here again, we had to ask, why didn’t they shoot him? Especially if they thought he was going for Buddy’s gun? Buddy says he believes he didn’t kill Wilcox because of something called the Ferguson effect. ”I think a lot of it has to do with the media and the portrayal of police officers shooting people,” he says. The Ferguson effect is the idea that ever since white police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in 2014, and the massive protests and scrutiny of police that followed, cops say they’re more reluctant to use force. And that, some say, has led to a rise in crime. The Pew Research Center asked nearly 8, 000 cops how the recent media scrutiny has affected their jobs.   of them said they are more reluctant to use force. But has that led to a rise in crime? People on the right say yes. People on the left say no. Researchers say, this is a really hard thing to study. Crime rates are complicated. There’s one more person in this story to talk about: Michael Wilcox. Turns out he didn’t kill just one person that day. Police later found out he had killed two people: his girlfriend, Courtney Fowler, and his best friend, Zachary Gilkison. Wilcox pleaded guilty to both murders and is now in prison. We were able to get access to the recordings of police interviews with Wilcox just after his   with police, and after he was arrested. And they tell us something we didn’t know: that these videos of police shootings were in Wilcox’s mind that day, too. Here’s an exchange: WILCOX: I want to die. . .. ’Cause I see on the TV all the time that people get out and act crazy and get shot. Know what I mean? DETECTIVE: So you purposely did that? WILCOX: Yeah. . .. DETECTIVE: If you could talk to that officer right now what would you tell him? WILCOX: . .. I just want to tell him thank you and that he is . .. I didn’t know there’s officers like that. . .. But whatever I hear on TV, that’s what I wanted to happen. It didn’t happen. All the people involved in this case were affected by the videos we’re seeing in the news. Michael Wilcox tried to get shot because he had seen that happen to other people in the news. Buddy Coburn didn’t shoot Michael Wilcox because he didn’t want to end up in the news. Jesse Kidder got criticized by other cops because they watched the video and said he was too reluctant. In other words, these videos are changing us. For some in law enforcement, the videos are making them more defensive, and perhaps more wary on the job. Others are doing a lot of   talking, and retraining. For other people, the videos are making them more scared. If you’re an   you might be worried you could be the next one killed. For all the difficulties these videos present, we are better off with them, says Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina and former police officer. He says there were two major moments in recent history where seeing how police do their jobs radically changed our relationships with the police: the civil rights period and after the Rodney King beating. The aftermath of these periods wasn’t pretty, he says, but things did change. And he says we’re in a moment like that now. We might not know how it’s all going to pan out, but these videos are here. They’re not going away. What we have to do is figure out how to watch them."
"Valerie June started performing in the Memphis club scene when she was still a teenager. She’s a New Yorker now, with a vocal style that takes traditional blues, country and soul and pushes them into another realm. On her new album, The Order of Time, she takes other voices to that world with her: Her brothers, Jason and Patrick Hockett, provide background vocals, as does her late father, who was a gospel and RB promoter involved with one of Prince’s first shows in the 1980s. June says that it’s far from the first time her family’s sung together. ”I come from a singing family and we all sang around the house, and I never thought about it,” she says. ”People would ask me, ’Are you from a musical family?’ I’d be like, no, because we didn’t play instruments. . .. We just sang everything and we sang all together and all different styles and ways.” Having grown up in a singing household, June says her songwriting process is centered around the voice. ”It’s similar to the way that composers hear a symphony in their head: They hear the strings, they hear the bass, the horns, everything,” she says. ”With me, it’s usually not instruments that I hear. It’s usually voices, and it usually starts with one voice. . .. And as soon as I hear one, then 500 more come in and surround it, so it begins to sound a lot like a choir or a chorus in my head. ”Sometimes when I do receive a song, I do feel like I’m going to the place where that song was originating from,” she adds. ”Like with ’Astral Plane’ . .. I do feel like I escaped and I was in this very iridescent space. . .. The voice came and it took me to wherever it was.” Hear the rest of June’s conversation with NPR’s Scott Simon at the audio link. Radio producer Peter Breslow, web producer Jake Witz and web editor Rachel Horn contributed to this story."
"If you’re a fan of The Americans, you probably have strong feelings about Alison Wright’s character, Martha. Poor, loving, trusting Martha had to be smuggled out of the U. S. because she married a man who was no good for her  —   a man who turned out to be a Russian spy. Wright created a sensation with her performance on The Americans. She’s also in FX’s Feud, about the rivalry between actresses Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, and she’s making her Broadway debut in Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, about the deindustrialization of a   town. Wright notes that her recent roles have all been remarkably timely. ”I’ve just been lucky enough to get on all these projects that are   or about the   American people and about the Russians, too. . .. Everything that I’m involved in at the moment feels extraordinarily on point. On what drew her to Martha, I really like that she’s the everyday woman. She’s who we would all most likely be in this situation if we were dropped into the real life   of The Americans, you know. She’s the human, average, everyday person that’s open and trusting and loving and hasn’t really been jaded and isn’t cynical and, up until this point, I think hadn’t really been burned in life too badly. On how public opinion about Martha evolved over the course of the show, It’s very touching that I think we’ve succeeded in affecting people and creating sympathy and empathy in the viewers [where] maybe in the beginning they really didn’t have that much. You know, when we first started out in season one, I remember seeing or hearing comments about . .. you know, the typical let’s blame the woman: How could she be so stupid? How could she not realize? She didn’t figure out this, this and this. You know, that’s very much akin to, you know: What was she wearing? How short was her skirt? Was she really asking for it? Did she deserve it? It’s a similar sort of blatant, underlying sexism that we have and a little bit of misogyny that we just have in our culture and across cultures. So there was a little bit of that at the beginning, and it’s been tremendous to see that wiped out, to see that replaced with understanding and empathy and sympathy and heartbreak, really, for this woman. So to change people’s minds and to let them into a life that they maybe wouldn’t have understood themselves initially is, I think, a massive achievement. On the play Sweat, Lynn Nottage went to Reading, Pa. and conducted a lot of interviews with teachers, teenagers, parole officers, across the board. And eventually she created the play Sweat. She set it in 2000 and 2008, and really it’s about deindustrialization in America and the   people who put decades of their lives working in these plants, these American institutions that weren’t supposed to go anywhere  —   where their parents worked and their grandparents worked, generations of families, loyalty and dedication to companies that all of a sudden disappeared and went overseas and took the jobs elsewhere. And whole cities were decapitated, really, in a sense, because their life source was cut off. When everybody in a place works in these factories, you know, what happens when they all go? What happens to these people? On what made her want to act, It may well be the performance of Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan in [the film] Annie. It may well all come down to that. . .. She’s untouchable. She’s a phenomenal comedian and that performance is beyond perfect, in my opinion. And I think I wanted to be Miss Hannigan. I also wanted to be one of the orphans. I was also adopted myself, so there [were] lots of things tied in there in that story. But I definitely wanted to be Miss Hannigan in those silk drawers and drunk on gin most days long. On being adopted, which she hasn’t spoken publicly about before, There is no doubt in my mind that I would not be sitting here today had I not been adopted. I would not have the career that I have, be in this country, be sitting here at NPR. No way. So if that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is. You know, it all turned out to be a very positive experience for me. It did come full circle for me. I did make contact with many members of my birth family and we have a great relationship now. It was something that was always a dark cloud hanging over me my whole life and it turned out that it didn’t need to be. I did come to get the closure and learn that it was indeed a miracle in my situation. So it was a very positive thing. Producer James Delahoussaye, digital producer Nicole Cohen and editor Martha Wexler contributed to this report."
"It’s hardly unusual for athletes, both amateur and professional, to have pregame rituals. But the NBA’s peculiar commitment to one   snack goes deep: ESPN Magazine calls the PBJ sandwich the league’s ”secret addiction.” ”In every NBA locker room, you’ll see a variety of different foods on the table, but PBJ  —   if there’s a locker room that doesn’t have it, I haven’t seen it,” ESPN reporter Baxter Holmes tells Scott Simon. In this week’s ESPN Magazine, Holmes dug into how a  ’s lunch ended up as a locker room staple for professional basketballers. The origin of the sandwich’s   residence traces back to a   season Boston Celtics anecdote. Former star Kevin Garnett, who’s hailed for revolutionizing the league’s pregame diet, fatefully ”decreed one day when he was hungry  —   after a fellow teammate likewise said he was hungry  —   and wanted a PBJ  —   that, ’Let’s get on that,’ ” Holmes says. And, because Garnett played well that game: ”We’re going to need PBJ in here every game now.” ”It spread from there,” Holmes says. ”And that’s not to say that peanut butter jellies haven’t been consumed by athletes for a long time, but I’m certainly talking about on a   scale.” But in the NBA, where a player’s body isn’t just a temple, but a corporation, it’s not the healthiest snack. So why PBJ? In short, it’s a quick,    comfort food that lifts players’ mentality. And, as busy as the athletes are, with ”41 road games a year  —   they could have poor travel, they could not be feeling well, traffic,” Holmes says, they crave something familiar and easily digestible.   might not have taken his first step in search of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but, Holmes says, ”all these components that he was looking for are contained within, it’s one of those magical foods in that way and because of it, the mental health benefits are what a lot of experts around the NBA say is actually one of its biggest benefit, just in simply, the opioids are released. It’s calming players down, making them happy. . .. There are some healthy fats and proteins and that gives them a little bit of energy. But the mental side of things, I mean, it truly is a comfort food.” And these athletes aren’t scarfing down your average PBJ. Within the league, a number of players are known for their preferences. ”Russell Westbrook likes to butter the inside of the bread and then put peanut butter on it after it’s toasted,” Holmes relays. Carmelo Anthony likes his on a cinnamon raisin bagel.   Knicks player Kristaps Porzingis hadn’t heard of a PBJ until he was drafted. ”I fell in love,” he told The Wall Street Journal. ”I grew up on PBJ’s as a kid  —   it fueled me,” Kevin Durant told Nike, amid a sneaker collaboration inspired by the star player’s penchant. ”Actually, PBJ is still my   snack.” On whether different teams have different PBJ traditions, Certainly. So much depends on location, preferences of certain players. The Lakers have theirs catered by Whole Foods, the San Antonio Spurs have theirs catered by HEB Central Market which they have a partnership with in San Antonio. You go up to Portland: Half of their peanut butter and jelly sandwich order is toasted because the star player Damian Lillard likes them that way. You go up to Milwaukee and they’re kind of one of the more interesting operations in the NBA. They do a PBJ buffet before the games, but the variety of nut butters and Nutella, all kinds of jams and jellies, different kinds of bread  —   they do peanut butter and jelly shakes, peanut butter and jelly oatmeal, waffles. On whether the PBJ is a nutritional choice, Nutritionists I’ve talked to said it’s not the healthiest snack, but it is healthier than, say, greasy junk food that they might get in arena concessions  —   fried food, hamburgers, whatever the case may be  —   particularly if there’s just a little bit of hunger before a game. And then you dive a little bit into the science of it, and peanut butter and jelly is comprised of various components that humans enjoy, dating back to basically the Neanderthals when they were craving certain things for survival. Different kinds of fats and proteins and starches and what not, and this marriage of all these essential components are combined into PBJ. So when you ingest one, when you bite into one, these varied opioids are released. You’re happy, most people kind of recognize that. On the Golden State Warriors’ PBJ ban that   the ”Great PBJ War of 2015” They hired a sports scientist from Australia who wasn’t familiar with the peanut butter and jelly fad in the NBA. And he wanted to do away with a lot of unhealthy foods like candies and sodas, cookies, but he included peanut butter and jelly in that umbrella. And when the team got on the team plane for their first flight of the year, they saw it was gone and that was the first shot fired in what became a peanut butter and jelly war between him and the players. Eventually they got them back and he is no longer employed by the team. On the Cleveland Cavaliers’ practice of keeping the good stuff to themselves, If you go around the NBA, you’re going to find all these little quirks all over the place when it comes to the peanut butter and jelly. But so they have a partnership with a fellow   outfit in Smucker’s and they provide about a dozen of the company’s prepackaged ”Uncrustables” PBJ’s to opposing teams every night, even though there are a few teams that have told me they try to keep their players away from those because they’re not very healthy. Meanwhile, the Cavs make their own artisanal PBJ’s prior to tipoff with homemade grape and raspberry jelly, almond butter and banana, and peanut butter and banana sandwiches. So they give the opposing teams one thing and they make themselves something completely different. Well there’s a whole new insight into how they were able to defeat Golden State in the last few seconds, of course which opens  —   what kind of PBJ does LeBron have? I’m not particularly sure on his exact likes, but, I say this with feeling pretty confident, whatever it is that they’re making, I’m sure he likes. I mean you have to remember around the NBA  —   and I mentioned it earlier with the Portland Trailblazers  —   if a player who’s a star on that team has a particular preference, whether it’s crust or no crust, a certain kind of bread, a certain kind of jelly, nut butter, whatever the case may be  —   I guarantee you that that team is going to accommodate it, and that that’s probably going to be the key reason why they make whatever it is they make. NPR’s Emma Bowman contributed to this story. More importantly, she takes her PBJ with raspberry jam, in between creamy peanut butter on both bread slices a la Lakers’ Brandon Ingram."
"The African Global Economic and Development Summit took place at the University of Southern California from March 16th to 18th. None of the approximately 60 invited guests from Africa were able to attend. The problem was that none of the African delegates were able to get U. S. visas. Humphrey Mutaasa from the mayor’s office in Kampala, Uganda, had organized a delegation of 11 business leaders from Uganda to attend the African Global Economic and Development Summit at the University of Southern California. He says it was a very high level group of leaders from private businesses, the Ugandan ministry of trade, chambers of commerce and the Kampala mayor’s office. ”The delegation that was coming from Uganda to that summit was very, very disappointed,” he says. The conference was first held in 2013 and seeks to strengthen business ties between U. S. investors and African companies, says summit chairwoman Mary Flowers. Visa problems have been an issue before, she says. In the past, she says roughly 40 percent of African invitees are unable to get the papers they need to attend, mainly due to a combination of red tape and bureaucracy. ”This year we were thinking there are going to be some rejections but some will still come,” she says. ”But it was 100 percent blocked across the board.” It’s hard to find out exactly why. Delegations were invited from 12 countries across the continent. None of them were from the three African nations (Libya, Somalia and Sudan) covered by President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travel from 6 majority Muslim countries. Flowers speculates new vetting procedures put in place by the Trump administration are discriminating against travelers from Africa. ”Obviously because this has never happened before,” she says of the inability of anyone to come. The White House has called for ”enhanced screening and vetting of applications for visas” worldwide as part of stepped up efforts to keep out terrorists. A State Department official on background tells NPR that they can’t comment on any individual visa applications but says all applications are screened on a    basis. And the eligibility requirements for getting a visa haven’t changed. Some of the African delegates to the summit say their visa applications were denied because they didn’t show a compelling reason why they would return home after the event. Others say bureaucratic hurdles were so big that they were not able to submit a visa application in the first place. Humphrey Mutaasa in Kampala says the online application is complicated. You can’t even see how long the process will take until after you’ve paid a $160 application fee at a local bank. Then you have to wait a day to get a confirmation code to book an interview at the U. S. embassy. ”Then when you’ve finished that and you have the codes from the bank . .. there are the challenges of internet connectivity,” he says. ”When you get online then the calendar [from the Embassy] will tell you the whole of February, there are no appointments, You can only secure an appointment after the 15th of March.” Which meant he wouldn’t have a ruling on his visa until after the three day conference had concluded. The end result of this year’s visa outcome, says Flowers, is going to be fewer connections between American business and the continent. ”I don’t know whether there’s some secret message going to the U. S. embassies in these African countries but it’s ridiculous,” she says. ”The [visa] process was already somewhat discriminatory against the African nations in the past. We don’t know what the story is now but I do hope that America remains open to the world.”"
"No rest for the weary in our weekly roundup of national education news. Supreme Court rules on special education case, ”I’m thrilled,” said Amanda Morin, a parent and advocate with the website Understood. org, after the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in a case that could affect 6. 5 million special education students. ”Now I can actually go into a school system and say ’The Supreme Court has said, based on my child’s abilities, he is legally entitled to make progress.’ ” In Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District, a Colorado family asked the district to pay for their son’s private school tuition. They felt Endrew, who has autism and ADHD, wasn’t making sufficient progress in his public school. Federal law guarantees a ”Free Appropriate Public Education” for all students with disabilities. In writing the court’s opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts held that schools must meet a more demanding standard than ”merely more than de minimis” and that a child’s education plan must be ”appropriately ambitious.” But the court stopped short of offering a simple formula. ”We will not attempt to elaborate on what ’appropriate’ progress will look like from case to case,” reads the opinion, saying it depends on ”the unique circumstances of the child.” Advocates for children with disabilities hailed the ruling. ”Today is a good day for children with disabilities,” Mimi Corcoran, president and CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said in a statement. ”The Court . .. soundly rejected the belief that just some small benefit is enough.” ”The Supreme Court’s decision today acknowledges what we all know: that virtually all students with disabilities can be educated in regular classrooms and can meet the same high expectations we have for students without disabilities,” Ira Burnim, legal director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, said in a statement. While commending the decision, some public school advocates made a subtly different point, that ”appropriately ambitious” is already the norm in many schools. Nancy Reder, deputy executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, told NPR Ed, ”A higher standard is already playing out throughout the country.” And Julie Wright Halbert, legislative counsel for the Council of the Great City Schools, said, ”I think this really reflects what we currently are already doing.” If that’s true, this ruling may not lead to big changes after all. Time will tell. DeVos makes case for less activist Department of Education, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spoke to two big groups of state education leaders this week, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Association of State Boards of Education. Just days after President Trump unveiled his budget blueprint, which calls for a 13. 5 percent cut in the department, DeVos stressed her desire to give state and local education leaders more freedom. ”Too often, the Department of Education has gone outside of its established authority and created roadblocks  —   wittingly or unwittingly  —   for parents and educators alike,” she told the Council of Chief State School Officers. ”This isn’t right, nor is it acceptable. Under this administration, we will break this habit.” Speaking of roadblocks, states have an initial deadline to submit their school accountability plans to the department next month. But Congress recently threw out the regulations that spelled out exactly how they are supposed to conform with federal law. And as Education Week reported recently, DeVos’ department is notably understaffed, lacking a deputy and assistant secretaries. Former   college lobbyist steps down  One more Ed Department post opened up when Taylor Hansen, a former registered lobbyist for the major   college trade association, made an exit after just one month. This was after Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  . sent a letter to Secretary DeVos raising    questions about both Hansen and Robert Eitel, who previously worked at the   college company Bridgepoint Education. Eitel remains at the department. The Murray memorandum, On Wednesday, Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that handles education, sent an unusual memo to her Senate colleagues titled, ”Real Choice vs. False Choice: The Repercussions of Privatization Programs for Students, Parents, and Public Schools.” In the   document, Murray lays out her argument against the kind of   choice programs that President Trump says his administration will champion and that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has long supported. Murray writes that school choice too often ignores students in rural areas where options are limited and fails to protect the interests of students with disabilities or who face discrimination. Warning of lax standards for private schools in some states, Murray tells the story of one Florida student who used a voucher to attend a private school only to realize, when he later tried to transfer to a public school, that his voucher school had not been accredited. Another concern: private schools failing to provide services to students with disabilities or using selective admissions policies to turn them away. Instead of private school choice, Murray argues, ”every child in this country deserves a choice to attend an excellent public school.” The memo comes just a week after President Trump used his first budget proposal to push choice nationwide, including a $1 billion increase to encourage districts toward a system in which federal, state, and local dollars follow students as they choose between public schools. Outcry on behalf of DACA students calls for passage of BRIDGE Act  The fate of immigrants who arrived in the U. S. as children and who had been protected by executive order under President Obama remains unclear under Trump’s immigration crackdown. More than 600 college and university presidents signed a statement calling Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a ”moral imperative” and a ”national necessity.” And 1, 200 educators signed a similar letter, vowing to make sure students are welcomed and protected in their classrooms. The teacher group called on Congress to pass the BRIDGE Act, a bill sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. that would solidify DACA protection into federal law."
"   Na Da Laing struggled in elementary school. ”I was different from other students,” she remembers. ”I couldn’t speak English at all.” Now, eight years later, she’s reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In the U. S. roughly one in 10 students is an English language learner. Many schools struggle to help them feel comfortable with their new language. Helping them get ahead and to college is another challenge entirely. But East Allen University, Laing’s high school in Fort Wayne, Ind. has developed a unique program to do just that: English language learners there can graduate with a diploma and an associate’s degree. It’s a public high school  —   anyone can enroll  —   but the focus is on college prep and college credit. Fort Wayne has one of the largest Burmese refugee populations in the country. At East Allen University, 20 percent of students are Burmese refugees. Principal Doug Hicks says the district started this   program five years ago. They chose a building in one of the poorest parts of the city, where a growing number of refugee families live. ”They don’t speak English in their household . .. they didn’t live in the country from day one,” Hicks says, adding that many of these students also struggle with poverty. ”They have all these strikes against them that we would think, as educators, would keep people from achieving. Yet, they continue to do it.” Even when her Burmese students are comfortable with English, Shannon Eichenauer, Laing’s English teacher, says they may struggle with context  —   but that can create powerful learning opportunities for all. Eichenauer remembers covering The Great Gatsby. Her American students didn’t think twice about the characters drinking alcohol during Prohibition. ”Then you have some Burmese students who don’t understand  —   to them, why would you break the law? ,” she says. ”So we have these conversations. It’s good, it’s rich. It adds to the classroom for sure.” Eichenauer was teaching at a local college when Principal Hicks recruited her to get licensed in high school English and come to East Allen. It’s a similar story for other teachers here too, who feel like they’re now more than educators  —   they’re ambassadors for families who sometimes don’t understand the college system. The school also offers college counseling and tutors, because even the paperwork can be new and unfamiliar. For Na Da Laing, she’ll be the first in her family to have career options after she graduates high school next year. Back in Myanmar, her parents had to work before they reached eighth grade. She plans to attend Indiana   University in Fort Wayne and work part time to help support her parents. As for academics? ”I want to major in education and communication  —   a bachelor’s degree,” she says. Na Da Laing wants to be an English teacher."
"This was to have been the week when President Trump turned his fledgling presidency around, setting a course for success and letting the wind fill its sails at last. Instead, it became his worst week to date, ending with the ship becalmed and its crew in disarray. After other controversies had spoiled the weather, the Republicans proved unable to muster the votes to pass their    Obamacare bill in the House. The president and Speaker Paul Ryan had to call off the vote scheduled on the floor  —   not once but twice. The media world, waiting in rapt attention, exploded in amazement and derision  —   from all sides of the political kaleidoscope. The Drudge Report featured the historic photo of the dirigible Hindenburg bursting into flames. (The night before, the equally   New York Post had shown him in the cab of a truck, consumed with road rage and shouting ”My way or the highway!” It was astounding that the turnaround turned out to be the other way around. Just five days ago there had been talk of a trifecta of triumph. On Monday, the House Intelligence Committee was going to take the president’s side on the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and Trump’s accusations that his own operations were ”wiretapped” by President Obama. By Thursday, the   Obamacare repeal would be done in the House. And, throughout the week the Senate Judiciary Committee would be throwing bouquets at Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s widely praised pick for the U. S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch might still be able to join the eight current justices before the current term ends in June. But matters went south rather quickly on Monday, when the first hour of the hearings in the House Intelligence Committee produced a blockbuster quite different from what the White House expected. FBI Director James Comey and the National Security Administration Director Mike Rogers told the committee they had zero evidence that anyone in the Obama administration tapped Trump. Moreover, they said there was an ongoing investigation, begun as far back as July, of Russian interference in the campaign that was intended to hurt Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump. The White House promptly sent out tweets indicating the Obama tapping allegation might still be proven and that the suggestion anyone from Trump’s team had talked to any Russians had not and would not be proven. But that prompted widespread contradictions and media corrections. Nor did it help that House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes went to the White House to brief the president on information indicating some Trump ”associates” may have been inadvertently caught up in surveillance of certain foreign agents. Nunes wound up making news and appearing often in the media nearly every day of the week, keeping Monday’s bad story alive and kicking. The Russia story surely contributed to a downturn to the president’s approval rating, which headed back down in the Gallup Poll and other closely watched national measures. No help, to be sure, in a week when Trump could have used a boost. On Tuesday, even the Gorsuch hearings got uncomfortable. While Gorsuch himself evoked a folksy Western affability, the questions about his court decisions piled up. Why did he think it okay to fire a trucker who left his disabled rig in   temperatures? And why was the list of his decisions in favor of corporations so much longer than his history of siding with the little guy? On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York announced that he and other Democrats would filibuster the Gorsuch nomination. The Gorsuch filibuster may be as much about the Republicans’ refusal to process Obama nominee Merrick Garland last year as it is about Gorsuch. And it may simply be a move to force Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to invoke the ”nuclear option” and confirm Gorsuch with a simple majority. But it also robbed the Gorsuch nomination of some of its luster, given the rarity of such tactics. In truth, the Gorsuch hearings were still a relative bright spot. But they were also overshadowed, first by the Russia story and then by the collapse of the health care repeal. The stubborn resistance of the House’s   Freedom Caucus forced Ryan and Trump to make several concessions that made their bill palpably less popular. The key move was to strip the federal mandate on insurers to cover a basic list of 10 ”essential health benefits,” including maternity and prescription drugs and treatment for addictions. This news was meant to sew up the Freedom Caucus, but it did not quite succeed. It did effectively alienate several House moderates who were already worried about funding for states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare. The tricky calculus was elusive enough to force a postponement on Thursday, which had been chosen because it was the seventh anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act into law. Knowing how much the symbolism meant to the leadership, the media could see something was seriously amiss. A meeting of the whole Republican House majority was called behind closed doors. The president sent emissaries to the Capitol to insist the vote take place on Friday, hell or high water. If it failed, they said, the president would abandon the issue and work on tax reform. Could the president be serious? Walk away from the issue the GOP had spent so much of the seven intervening years making its top priority? Leave Obamacare in place after voting to repeal it more than 50 times before? Leave it in place after saying it was collapsing? Trump has prided himself on his success negotiating real estate deals and show business contracts, and the craft of the bluff was surely part of his Art of the Deal. But in this instance, his bluff was called. And he did not have the cards  —   or in this case, votes. On Friday, at least two dozen House Republicans were still indicating they were not on board. And neither Ryan nor Trump wanted to lose a vote on the floor. Some of the rebels were from the party’s far right, others from its most conventional middle. The chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, broke with the leadership around midday. Other mainstreamers usually aligned with the speaker followed suit. The unraveling had begun.  Late on Friday, the president appeared in an Oval Office video with Vice President Pence and Tom Price, the former House member now heading the Department of Health and Human Services. In that video, Trump said Ryan had come close to winning and blamed the health care failure on the Democrats, ”who weren’t going to give us a single vote.” He said as a result the Democrats would now own the consequences as the ACA ”exploded.” If they did not want that, he said, they should come to him and negotiate and put together ”a great plan for the whole country.” But other voices within the White House, speaking anonymously to a variety of reporters, were talking of the failure of Ryan to put together a bill that could cement a coalition, relying too much on the president to bring the bill home at the eleventh hour. Indeed, other leaks from within the president’s inner circle indicated he had been displeased by his    Jared Kushner’s absence this week (he and presidential daughter Ivanka Trump were skiing with their children) and cast doubt on the performance of Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. In other words, the week had done nothing to dispel the air of dissension within the West Wing. That was perhaps the least surprising development in a week that had fallen so far short of its high expectations."
"Telehealth takes a lot of forms these days. Virtual visits with a health care provider can take place by video, phone or text, or via the Web or a mobile app. The one commonality: You get to consult a doctor from your home, the office, Starbucks or anywhere with a wifi or mobile connection. These appointments can be quick, and save you from having to schlep across town and sit in a waiting room, leafing through   Time magazine articles, as prelude to every visit with a doc. There’s no debating that telehealth appointments can be convenient  —   and potentially even   for people who live in remote areas. But are they also cheaper than   visits, as the telehealth companies claim? Not necessarily, according to a study published this month by the RAND Corporation, in the journal Health Affairs. The study found that total annual spending, which the researchers defined as costs to insurers and    payments by patients, was $45 more per patient for people who used telehealth to treat acute respiratory illnesses than it was for patients who saw doctors for the same conditions. That’s because 88 percent of the telehealth visits represented people who would not have gone to a doctor otherwise  —   what the industry calls new utilization. Just 12 percent of the telehealth sessions, the researchers concluded, amounted to a substitute for going to see the doc. RAND health policy researcher Lori   was one of the authors on the study, and says she’s not surprised. ”When you make services that are convenient, it’s an ’If you build it, they will come’ kind of thing,” says  . Most of the patients in the study who chose these virtual appointments might have stuck to   if telehealth wasn’t available, she says. ”You sit at home, you watch Netflix, you take Tylenol,”   says. ”But now, because of these kinds of services that are so easy to access, you have a visit that would not have otherwise occurred.” And patients who get advice via a virtual appointment may be more likely to be scheduled for an     appointment  —   which increases the cost of treating that episode of illness. The RAND study is the fourth on telehealth funded by the California Health Care Foundation. Researchers examined claims data from more than 300, 000 enrollees in the Blue Shield of California HMO plans offered by CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. In 2012, CalPERS began offering the telehealth appointments to selected members through Teladoc, a   public company that contracts with independent licensed physicians to be able to offer patients a virtual consultation  —   24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The current study looked at 981 people who used the Teladoc service over 18 months in   to seek help for acute respiratory infections, such as bronchitis, pneumonia, sinusitis or an ear infection. The researchers compared these users with patients who had their acute respiratory infections evaluated by a doctor  . The research team focused on respiratory ailments because they are the conditions most commonly treated by    telehealth providers, the scientists say. Teladoc, which markets its service as a   says the information it gathered at the time of care contradicts the RAND findings. Courtney McLeod, the company’s director of public relations, says just 13 percent of appointments for more than 400, 000 patients with acute respiratory infections represented new health care utilization. That is pretty much the reverse of the 88 percent new utilization that the RAND researchers found. The RAND study asserts that the discrepancies between its numbers and those of the telehealth company’s could be because the company relied on surveys of patients, as opposed to actual utilization data. In other words, the patients that Teladoc surveyed may have overestimated the likelihood they would have gone to see a doctor in person if the virtual visits hadn’t been available. The RAND researchers do acknowledge that use of telehealth services for different types of medical conditions might produce more economical results. And there could be economic benefits from having easy, virtual access to a doctor   that the study didn’t capture,   adds. These services can be offering patients reassurance, she says, and a less worried patient may be more productive. It’s also possible that telehealth visits initiated from a patient’s work site reduce absenteeism. Nonetheless,   cautions, ”You have to take this with a grain of salt when a company says we’re going to prevent emergency department visits. It’s unclear whether that’s likely to happen, given the fact that the literature on innovations in health care delivery frequently tells us that when you increase convenience you increase utilization.” David Cowling, another author on the RAND study and a research scientist at CalPERS, says the study revealed the   that telehealth presents. ”We have increased access to our members, which is a good thing,” he says. ”  percent were new utilization, so they wouldn’t have gotten care previously. Our members were seeking care, and I’m sure their satisfaction with their health plan was higher.” But the RAND finding that the virtual approach to care may not save money could prompt a change in the benefit when CalPERS   its benefit package, Cowling says. The benefits fund could potentially limit telehealth access to rural areas  —   which was one of the original aims of introducing the service  —   or tailor it to specific conditions. Melissa Buckley, the director of the California Health Care Foundation’s Innovation Fund, says that sort of strategic thinking may be the best bet when it comes to telehealth. ”If you use it naively you can drive up utilization,” she says. ”You have to use it as a more precise tool with particular populations in order to serve their needs. Don’t just go into it blindly.” This story was produced by KQED’s Future of You blog. Jon Brooks is a longtime KQED reporter and editor, and the blog’s host."
"For Jernica Quiñones, the reality of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, hit close to home this year when a friend woke up on New Year’s Day and discovered the lifeless body of her baby girl. That’s why Quiñones’    son, Bless’n, has spent a lot of his life so far sleeping in a cardboard box. The    mother of five took part in a program in New Jersey that promotes safe sleep education through the distribution of ”baby boxes” that double as bassinets. ”Some mothers can’t buy a    or a crib,” Quiñones says. And that can lead to bed sharing, a risk factor for SIDS. The program is a riff on Finland’s   baby box, or maternity package, which the government gives to expectant mothers who get a prenatal checkup: It’s the box, plus clothing, blankets and other supplies. Now that Finnish model is making inroads in the U. S. but with a twist. Instead of being a prenatal incentive, it’s being used to deliver a postpartum safe sleep message. This week, Alabama will join Ohio and New Jersey in making free baby boxes available to the families of all newborns in the state. Parents watch online videos about SIDS and safe sleep and complete a short quiz. They can pick up a box at a local distribution center or have it mailed to them. The sturdy, portable box comes with a firm foam mattress and   sheet also included are breastfeeding accessories, a onesie, diapers and wipes. New Jersey plans to distribute 105, 000 boxes Ohio, 140, 000 Alabama, 60, 000. The boxes are provided by the   Baby Box Co. which also helps produce the educational videos, hosted on its Babybox University website and tailored to local communities. ”The whole premise is that people like free things,” says Dr. Kathryn McCans, chair of New Jersey’s Child Fatality and Near Fatality Review Board, which is partnering with the Baby Box Co. for the New Jersey program. ”It’s about getting the information out there.” ”Through education and awareness, people can make better choices and hopefully we can see fewer children dying,” she says. There are about 3, 500 sudden unexpected infant deaths a year in the U. S. The rate dropped significantly after the launch of 1994’s Back to Sleep campaign, which urged parents to put their babies to sleep on their back. But after a plateau, the rate has seen a slight uptick in recent years. By comparison, Finland began its baby box program 80 years ago, when nearly one out of every 10 children in the country died before age 1. To qualify, women must get a health check before the end of their fourth month of pregnancy. Now, the country has one of the world’s lowest infant mortality rates. In the U. S. it’s impossible to require pregnant women to get a prenatal checkup. Instead, the New Jersey and Ohio programs rely on educating new moms through videos. With a running time of 15 to 20 minutes, the videos reflect the American Academy of Pediatrics safe sleep guidelines, which includes advice to put babies to sleep alone on a firm mattress, with no toys or soft bedding in the crib. Kyle Stimpert, a mother of twins in Cleveland, received some of the first baby boxes in the Ohio program, which launched this month. She says she would have been a lot less anxious if she’d had them when her son and daughter came home from the hospital in December. ”You don’t have to research, you don’t have to text a friend, you just know it’s a safe place,” the    says. In most cases, a baby box can be used for the first six months of life. The risk of SIDS is greatest between two and four months. The Baby Box Co. says on its website that their boxes ”meet or exceed all applicable tenets” of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But the CPSC does not have standards for baby boxes. Dr. Rachel Moon, a SIDS researcher at the University of Virginia and chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ SIDS Task Force, cautions that cardboard boxes are not bassinets, which have firm frames with legs or other supports. ”The box companies want to do the right thing and want to make sure their products are safe,” Moon says ”But we’re not quite there yet. There’s still more testing that needs to be done.” It’s a cool box, and a great hook for safe sleep education. But how effective is this approach? People certainly are attracted by the free baby box. And the program has reached more people in less time than some of the state’s other   efforts, McCans says. Since the New Jersey program began in January, approximately 17, 000 boxes have been distributed in Ohio, 6, 000 boxes have been distributed since its program launched earlier this month. Ultimately, McCans says she doesn’t care whether babies actually sleep in the boxes. ”I’m not wedded to the box itself. It’s about the education,” she says. And, she says, it’s about making the boxes available to everyone so no one feels stigmatized. Dr. Kristi Watterberg, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on the fetus and newborn, applauds the effort but worries that the process  —   learning about the program, going online, watching the videos and taking a quiz  —   may be too overwhelming or complicated for the people who need the education the most. ”The people who can really benefit from this are those who don’t have any clue what you need when you take a baby home,” she says. ”They don’t have the social structure to support them. These are the moms who most need what’s in that box and the box itself.” Watterberg also doesn’t want to see videos take the place of prenatal care, which remains the most important factor for healthy babies. A study underway at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, a city with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the U. S. may yield some answers. In the study’s first phase, mothers who delivered at the hospital received standard postpartum talks about SIDS, shaken baby syndrome and other topics. The hospital followed up with a phone call that included questions about risk factors for SIDS, such as bed sharing. The results: Within 72 hours of leaving the hospital, 6. 3 percent of mothers     with their babies  —   just after they were told not to. Those findings are lower than the national rate, which is 11. 2 percent of parents   with infants 7 months and younger, according to the National Infant Sleep Position Study. ”We identified the lack of a place for the baby to sleep as a risk factor for bed sharing,” says Dr. Megan Heere, medical director of the well baby nursery at Temple University Hospital. The study’s second phase, which ended in November, introduced the baby box and a revamped educational component. Every mother had a    discussion exclusively about safe sleep with a specially trained nurse. The sessions lasted up to 45 minutes. At discharge, new moms were given a baby box and taught how to use it. They also got a review of   practices and watched a   video provided by the Baby Box Co. The results are expected in May. Heere hopes the baby box helps promote the cause of safe sleep, but she’s skeptical about the videos. ”Videos can be on and nobody watches them,” she says. About a month after Quiñones, the New Jersey mom, watched the BabyBox University videos, she can quickly recall what she learned: That breastfeeding reduces the risk of SIDS, that you shouldn’t use bumpers or put teddy bears in the crib. Though she’s not a   mom, Quiñones says those facts were all new to her. And word of the baby boxes has spread: Her sister and a friend have gotten them, too. ”Everyone wants a baby box,” Quiñones says. But the best part of the program, she says, is that it’s raising awareness: ”I’m excited even if it saves one child.”"
"Our global health team has just finished up a series called ”What Causes Pandemics? We Do.” In radio and online stories, we looked at the causes behind our new hyperinfectious era. We’ll continue covering this topic in future stories, but we thought our readers might want a chance to brush up on their pandemic facts. So roll up your sleeves, wash your hands and then try this quiz."
"After yesterday’s pulled health care vote, many on the left and the right are seeing it as a failure for Republicans  —   but former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says it’s actually a blessing in disguise. Tom DeLay served in Congress as representative for Texas’s 22nd district from 1984 to 2005, when he resigned in the midst of a money laundering scandal. In 1995, DeLay was elected House Majority Whip and in 2002, he was elected House Majority Leader. DeLay gained a reputation for his ability to whip votes  —   he became known as ”The Hammer” and still claims he never lost a vote in his time in Congress. DeLay spoke to Michel Martin on Weekend All Things Considered about how Congressional Republicans can move forward after the failure of this vote. On why the American Health Care Act failed, I did see it coming  —   I want to kind of put it in perspective, because I’m no guru, but the beginning of the end for this bill started in 2010. The American people were demanding that Obamacare be repealed. They weren’t demanding replacement  —   replacement came as a political move by the politicians to respond to the liberal media and to the Democrats, who were complaining that, ”If you’re going to repeal, what are you going to replace it with?” This whole replacement idea is the reason it failed, because when they came and they wrote write a bill without checking with their members  —   which is always a bad idea  —   they wrote a bill that basically kept Obamacare in place. On DeLay’s health care philosophy, I don’t believe health care is a right. It’s a responsibility. The Democrats and Obama feel it’s a right and the federal government has a right to be involved in your health insurance. So that’s where I come from. This whole notion that the government can run a health insurance is doomed to failure in the first place. The problem is you have some that have been elected in the House and the Senate that we call moderates that believe that the federal government has a constitutional role in health insurance. But the base of the party, as exhibited by the last four elections, wanted repeal of Obamacare because they basically understood that it was wrong and something needed to be done about it. On how to unite Republicans in Congress, I invented a whole new process of whipping the vote, and I called it ”grow the vote.” It was much harder to do, but what I did for 11 years as the Majority Whip and never lost a vote, was I had an agenda, that agenda was developed with our members, and once they bought into the agenda, we would check with our members before we even attempted to write the bill or introduce it, so that we knew where they were. So by the time the members got to the point of voting, they had ownership in the bill and they wanted to vote for it  —   I didn’t have to break legs. That’s the way the Democrats do it, and now it’s the way the Republicans do it, if you looked at what happened over the last couple of weeks. On whether President Trump is tearing the Republican party apart,  I’m off of that. I don’t think he’ll tear the Republican party apart. . ..He tried to work with Congress on a failed strategy and he accepted their strategy rather than demanding his strategy. I think he’s learning. I think this was a good experience for them. To be honest, I think right now, after yesterday, it’s a great opportunity to move forward on Obamacare. Now we can back up and do the things that should have been done. The situation is we have people that it’s hard for them to afford health insurance right now, and frankly, the health insurance market is totally shattered. And so what we need to do is rebuild that market  —   and the way the federal government can do that is get out of the way. I would take Rand Paul’s idea that I heard last night: Come to the Senate floor next week, and pass a bill that allows people with   conditions to join pools, associations,   to buy insurance, and show that you’re going to remove the government and the regulatory structure away from it, so that the insurance companies can sell to people the kinds of policies they want. And while you’re doing all of that, the whole Obamacare implosion that’s going on is going to raise the political pressure to repeal Obamacare. So the whole idea is those that want health insurance and can’t afford it, you’re helping them afford it, and at the same time, getting ready to just repeal Obamacare, and it’s a place for them to go."
"These days just about every device is ”smart.” There are smart cars, phones, TVs, grills and speakers, and most people don’t think twice about buying a new TV, hooking it up to the internet and giving it access to different apps. But all that connectivity means data is being shared and collected by the devices and the apps used. Earlier this month, Consumer Reports announced a new initiative to create standards for consumer privacy and security protections that will later allow them to rate products and services and see how well consumer information is protected. To do this, CR is partnering with Ranking Digital Rights, a nonprofit that specializes in evaluating privacy standards of telecom and internet companies. In other words, they carefully read through all the privacy agreements most others accept without question. ”What we’re looking in the Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index is companies’ public commitments and disclosures about what their policies are affecting users’ privacy as well as their freedom of expression, and the company’s general governance,” says Rebecca MacKinnon, director of Ranking Digital Rights. ”So, do they have institutional mechanisms in place to make sure that all their managers and employees are thinking about their users rights in the course of day to day operations?” This year’s rankings were the first that included Apple and Samsung, two large industry players. Despite their influence in the markets, both companies received failing grades. ”They disclose less information than you’d expect, which we believe is a baseline for companies to demonstrate to users what’s happening to their information, with whom it’s being shared, both in terms of governments, but also commercially,” MacKinnon says. ”Apple has no transparency about its rules about what can and can’t be in the app store, or about what kind of government requests they’re getting to remove content from the app store.” But really none of the companies received a grade above a D, with the top two companies being Google and Microsoft. ”It’s not necessarily that they’re doing all the right things, but at least they’re telling us what their policies are to a greater degree than the other companies,” MacKinnon says. ”They’re disclosing more data about the kinds of things they’re handing over to the government, the kinds of content that they’re removing both in response to external demands but also forcing terms of service and they also have strong governance.” Digital Ranking Rights also looks at freedom of expression and how transparent companies are in terms of what content users can access. Issues like this made news at the beginning of year when The New York Times’  app was blocked in China.  MacKinnon says a lot of companies have started transparency reporting, or releasing data about the number of requests they’re getting to block and remove content as a form of censorship. ”The relationship between the law and human rights is complicated,” MacKinnon says. ”In pretty much all countries you have governments demanding that companies do things that based on international human right standards of free expression or privacy are violating privacy rights. And companies are caught in the middle.” While transparency is important, legal requirements for companies to disclose this information don’t exist at this time. ”What’s really important is that companies be transparent so people know who to hold accountable,” MacKinnon says. ”If your content is being removed or you’re being prevented from accessing certain information you need to know who is responsible for that decision.” MacKinnon says companies need to be more transparent, so users can decide for themselves what, if any, actions they can and want to take. ”In the very least if they’re in a country where they can influence the policy, then as citizens and voters, they can try and do so,” she says. ”They can try and hold their political leaders accountable. If they’re not in a place where they can influence the policy, they can at least make more informed decisions about how they’re going to use the technology and how they’re going to protect themselves.”   is on the minds of many people, especially after stories of baby monitors and cars being hacked surfaced. Seamus Tuohy, a consultant with the digital security firm Prudent innovation says there are some ways to keep data secure and personal information private, especially when using mobile devices. Tuohy says while it’s possible to get virus from clicking on a link, it’s less likely to happen when you visit a site than when you download a file and open it. Another good practice Tuohy suggests is checking to see if the site is secure. If begins with ”https,” the ”s” means the site is secure. Tuohy says this is easier to check on laptops or other computers than on apps, but he says if a company’s main website is secure, there’s a good chance the company took the same security precautions in its app. This type of app and site security also matters to people who are concerned about connecting to public   networks. ”These days about half the websites on the internet are secured this way and that protects from the   hotspot or from the mobile network seeing what you’re going to,” Tuohy says. ”They can see the basic site you’re on when you go to a browser . .. but they can’t see what you’re searching for.” As for the cases of hackers taking control of cameras on computers, Tuohy says he personally would choose to cover up the camera with a small piece of paper or plastic cover. Audio was produced for Weekend Edition by Ian Stewart and edited by Barrie Hardymon."
"With the start of baseball season in sight, millions of Latino fans in the U. S. the Caribbean, and Latin America will be rooting for their favorite players, many of whom are transplants from places like Venezuela, Dominican Republic, and Cuba. But   fans, millions of whom watch   broadcasts of baseball games, will have little idea of the lingering challenge some Latino players in the States have long faced: inadequate language support from the minor and majorleagues. Much of the issues surround the inability of the Latino players to meaningfully communicate with the press. This can be the result of simply not speaking each other’s language, a barrier in how cultural norms affect the use of language, or from poor reporting on Latino players. One such incident of lackluster coverage happened last year when Brian T. Smith from the Houston Chronicle wrote an article on the struggling performance of Carlos Gómez during his season with the Houston Astros. Gómez, born in the Dominican Republic, speaks English, but not with native proficiency. When Smith quoted Gómez as saying, ”For the last year and this year, I not really do much for this team. The fans be angry. They be disappointed,” the mangled language sparked a backlash about how the media can sometimes cover players in a way that demeans their intelligence or leaves them embarrassed. Adrian Burgos Jr. a professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in Latino and sports history, says there is a history of   media being insensitive in the coverage Latino players have received in the past. ”The practice of poking fun at the accents that Latino players used has been a traditional exercise of the   press,” Burgos said. He says they tend to highlight the accents and fail to adequately convey the ideas that Latino players are trying to express. When the backlash against Gómez quotes began, freelance writer Britni De La Cretaz wrote an article pointing to the lack of diversity in newsrooms as contributing to the lack of sensitivity from both Smith and the editors who did not address the   quotes before publishing the article. De La Cretaz pointed to The 2014 Associated Press Sports Editors Racial and Gender Report Card which concluded that more than 91 percent of sports editors and 85 percent of reporters are white. ”For me, what’s important is talking to journalists in the community and trying to make sure that I am respectfully representing people,” De La Cretaz, who does not speak Spanish, said about covering these players. ”I think the responsibility there lies with newsrooms and that’s kind of part of the problem, too,” she said. ”Since I’m a white writer, who is writing and my editor is a white editor there’s a huge blind spot there.” According to the 2014 AP report, there has been an increase in people of color in sports newsrooms, but most of the progress can be attributed to the diversity found at ESPN. For instance, if the male columnists of color employed by ESPN were removed from the total number of sports staffers at the over 100 newspapers and websites AP reviewed, the percentage of columnists of color would drop from more than 17 percent to three percent. Significantly, ESPN has dedicated major resources to its   viewers and, by extension, to the coverage it gives   athletes in general. Freddy Rolón, vice president and general manager at ESPN Deportes, oversees the network’s business and television’s more than 4, 500 live hours of   content every year. ”When we look at the marketplace for the Hispanic audience, we see actually growth in both the English side and the   side. And we’re seeing a big growth in the overlap as well with the bilingual audience,” he said. Rolón points out that while the bilingual market is growing, Latinos tend to gravitate towards the Spanish ESPN Deportes network for sports like fútbol, soccer, and English ESPN for American football despite the complex overlap in the bilingual audience. That, Rolón says, is the result of each English or Spanish side of the network having cultivated more expertise through a longer history of covering the two different sports. But covering baseball is complicated, in large part because of its astronomical popularity in and equally important fan bases in the U. S. and Latin America. ”When you speak about baseball, it speaks to Latinos on both sides of their being,” Rolón said. ”There’s a question of identity and how that is mixed between your country of origin and the country that you are part of and you live in. That is very much a fabric of baseball.” Rolón says when ESPN Deportes launched in 2004, they found a ”huge void” at the intersection of Spanish and baseball that was not being filled. This gap in Spanish coverage led ESPN to realize there was an opportunity to get that coverage from the reporters to bleed into the English programming. ”By getting more candid conversations with the players, by letting them open up a little bit more because we’re talking to them in their native languages, we got better stories and we were better at serving fans because we could tell them things they might not have heard if they were just looking at it from an   lens,” Rolón said. ESPN’s Pedro Gomez, a bilingual journalist who has covered baseball for more than 20 years, says covering the players in two languages has improved the reporting and how the players express themselves. ”I remember when I started back in the late ’80s, early ’90s, I can’t think of another bilingual reporter that existed on the baseball beat,” Gomez said. ”And now you walk into a club house and there are more and more bilingual reporters covering Major League Baseball.” While there are more bilingual reporters, Gomez says he would not go as far as agreeing that   players are not comfortable enough to approach the press more readily today than in the past. For the 2016 season, MLB mandated that all teams provide interpreters for players with limited or no English proficiency.   Latinos made up a quarter of the players on opening day of the 2016 season and come from countries where English proficiency may be limited and Spanish is the primary language. Gomez believes interpreters are a step in the right direction. ”Players used to have to grab a coach, a teammate who spoke both languages and kind of use them as a translator and of course these people weren’t trained as professional translators,” Gomez said. Paul Mifsud, an MLB vice president and deputy general counsel, says the interpreters the teams are required to hire, which are subsidized by the league and included in negotiations with the players union, will be in place for the next five years. ”There was initial skepticism about the value of it, but at this point all teams, I think, have really bitten into it and find it extremely useful,” Mifsud said. ”It’s really started to improve the communication dynamic in the clubhouse and the ability of the players who may have felt uncomfortable talking to the media.” Ozzie Guillén, former White Sox shortstop and manager, said there has been improvement but there is much still needed to help Latinos when it comes to language. ”Baseball [has] improved a lot, but it’s hard right now to speak the language because you don’t need to,” Guillén said. ”Some players think, ’If I produce, I don’t need to speak English and they have to figure [it] out to understand what I’m saying. ’” Guillén also joked that when you’re good you don’t need to learn English, but if you’re not you had better learn English. However, he did say it was important that players learn English. But he added that a language barrier is accompanied by a cultural barrier in how that language is used: what is being said and how it is interpreted by the public. Guillén says that gap in cultural translation landed him in trouble because what is appropriate in Spanish and his culture might not be perceived the same way in the U. S. In one instance Guillén received backlash while managing the White Sox for saying it was unfair for Asian players to be given interpreters while Latinos were left without them. In 2010, USA Today reported him as saying: ”Very bad. I say, why do we have Japanese interpreters and we don’t have a Spanish one. I always say that. Why do they have that privilege and we don’t?” Guillen said Sunday before Chicago played the Oakland Athletics. ”Don’t take this wrong, but they take advantage of us. We bring a Japanese player and they are very good and they bring all these privileges to them. We bring a Dominican kid . .. go to the minor leagues, good luck. Good luck. And it’s always going to be like that. It’s never going to change. But that’s the way it is.” There was a divide in the media over what Guillén said and how it was interpreted, leading to friction between him and the MLB. While there were some interpreters before the 2016 requirement was put in place, they were not mandated by MLB and were hired at the discretion of the teams. With just a handful of Asian players in the league and on different teams around the country, coaching staff and fellow players were not readily available to translate. This generalized ”lost in translation” effect is being addressed by MLB with acculturation and language lessons to Latino players while in minor league teams. ”Players who are going to be successful major leaguers for many years, there’s obvious advantages to having those players be bilingual and not just speak Spanish,” Mifsud said. Guillén agrees that there are missed opportunities for Latino players to take up leadership roles because they cannot be outspoken about what they feel and think. That, he says, is a reason some great Latino players never become managers or join a team’s leadership ranks. Guillén says learning English and acclimating to U. S. culture is most important for young players in the minors who have less money and support, both on and off the field. During the 2016 Minor League Baseball season, Latinos accounted for more than 41 percent of the players. While long overdue, MLB’s plan to improve language services and cultural acclimation, and the press’s continued efforts to more accurately cover   players should result in players feeling more at ease with the press and their fans, and fans gaining more access to and insights into their favorites. Jorge Encinas is a freelance journalist based in Tucson, Ariz. and former intern with the Code Switch team. Follow him @jencinas9."
"Filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud does not like being typecast. ”The Israelis say, you don’t look Arab or Palestinian,” she says, rolling her eyes. ”Huh? If I wear a dress or outfit that [doesn’t look] religious, I cannot be a Palestinian? I have to be, like, exactly how you design me?” Hamoud is 35, wearing a long skirt, tank top and   sunglasses. The title of her acclaimed and controversial film Bar Bahar  —   or In Between in English  —   is tattooed in Arabic and English on her right forearm. We meet at a cafe near her home in the seaside port of Jaffa, next to Tel Aviv. She’s hugging her pet Siberian Husky. The intense child of Palestinian communists from the Arab village of Deir Hanna in the Galilee, Hamoud was born in Budapest, Hungary, and grew up in Beersheba, Israel. She is among the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians. So are the three main characters in her film. Layla, Salma and Nour are three young women who share an apartment in Tel Aviv’s Yemenite quarter. ”There is a lot of me in each of these three characters,” Hamoud says. ”I wrote them from my soul.” As a film student, Hamoud made four short films, including Shades of Light, which explored gender and identity in Palestinian society. In Between, an     is her first   feature. The film chronicles how Layla, Salma and Nour try to be their true selves  —   ambitious, educated, sexually liberated  —   while caught between a conservative Palestinian culture and a more liberal Israeli state that does not see them as equals. ”They are fighters,” Hamoud says. ”Each of them, in her way, fights to not compromise herself.” Layla, for instance, played by Mouna Hawa, is a successful lawyer who wins over her Israeli Jewish colleagues by negotiating tough deals. But her Palestinian boyfriend won’t introduce her to his family. He wants her to give up her liberated lifestyle. ”So if I give up smoking and drinking and dressing as I do, not to mention partying,” she says to him in the film, ”what are you planning to give up?” (Not much, as it happens). Her housemate Salma, played by Sana Jammelieh, is a D. J. with a pierced nose. She pays her share of the rent by cooking in a restaurant. Her Israeli Jewish supervisor chews her out for speaking Arabic with the other kitchen staff. She gives him the finger and walks off the job. Yet she’s afraid to tell her Christian family that she’s gay. And then there’s Nour. She’s a pious Muslim and wears a headscarf. She also studies computer science, even though her controlling fiance wants her to be a housewife. In one scene, Layla and Salma tenderly wash her in the shower after her fiance rapes her. But Nour, played by Shaden Kanboura, doesn’t tell her family, hiding the rape from her father when he talks about the new house her fiance is building for their married life. ”Believe me, Father,” she tells him. ”Some people live in palaces, but God only knows what their lives are like inside.” Hamoud says she’s received hundreds of messages from women saying, ”That’s me.” ”A lot of people see themselves in the movie, and see people they know,” she says. ”Those characters are all over, around us. Just we don’t see them.” One place did not like seeing itself in the movie. Umm   a busy town of 52, 000 in the green hills of northern Israel near the West Bank city of Jenin, is where the character of Nour comes from. Umm   has been run since the 1990s by politicians close to the northern branch of the Islamic Movement of Israel, which promotes Islam to Arab citizens of Israel. This branch of the party was banned by the Israeli government in 2015 because of ties to the militant group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip. The Umm   municipality told its citizens to boycott Hamoud’s film, saying it hurts the town’s reputation. Abeer Mahameed, a    mother of three who lives near the town’s main mosque, says she’s heeding the boycott. ”Our mayor says our girls are good, clean, pure, decent women,” she says, ”unlike the portrayal in the film of our girls as loose women.” Many townspeople had strong opinions about the film, but only two with whom NPR spoke admitted to seeing it. One was Said Mahazheh, a    engineer. He says the female characters are too sexually liberated, so he’s forbidden his economist wife and    daughter from going to the film. ”I would be extremely upset if they saw the film,” he says. ”I want freedom but this freedom must be constrained within our habits and customs and traditions. We live in a traditional, highly moral society. I don’t want my wife and daughter to see a film that distorts this image.” Waseem Hosary, a lawyer, liked the film  —   and says its exploration of male chauvinism masquerading as moralism is devastating. ”Our society is not ready at all to deal with this issue,” he says over espresso and dates in his modern office in Umm  . ”If anyone, not just Maysaloun, any girl and woman, wants to discuss this issue, she will be in trouble. If Maysaloun was named Mohammad, she may have dared.” Up to now, many Palestinian films have shown men as the heroes, Hamoud says. ”Usually women are presented as a stereotype, as sisters or mothers only, not full characters that lead the stories and the point of view of the story,” she says. That’s why her film’s subtext of sex  —   and women’s freedom to do what they want with their bodies  —   has been controversial, she says. ”The whole issue of sex sits on the issue of patriarchy,” Hamoud says. ”Men still feel, think, behave as though women are property. Nothing will change in our societies until that’s no longer acceptable.” In Between has won acclaim at festivals in Spain and Canada and earned a standing ovation at the Haifa Film Festival. It’s now being shown internationally and is expected to arrive in U. S. theaters this summer. But Hamoud and the film’s actresses have received death threats since In Between was released in Israel in January. The director shrugs off the threats. What’s important to her, she says, is that the film is resonating  —   and not just with Palestinians. As we finish our interview at the cafe in Jaffa, a Jewish Israeli admirer comes over and asks to take a selfie with Hamoud. Einat   a young Israeli woman who works for a nonprofit that promotes   coexistence, says the movie ”leaves you with many things to think of, about a society that we actually don’t really know.” ”Even if you don’t think in stereotypes, you don’t see the choices [Palestinian] women have to make because of their society,”   says. ”They live among us, but also very separately.”"
"The numbers, in several cases, are astounding. 350. org, a climate action group, saw donations almost triple in the month after Donald Trump’s election. Since Trump’s win, Planned Parenthood told NPR it’s gained over 600, 000 new donors and more than 36, 000 new volunteers. And the American Civil Liberties Union has raised more than $80 million since Nov. 8. Key players in what’s being called ”The Resistance”  —   a vocal and growing progressive backlash to the Trump presidency  —   have been flooded with, and in some cases overwhelmed by an outpouring of money and volunteer support in the last few months. In many cases, these groups are struggling to keep up. For instance, MoveOn. org, an   group turned   group, and Indivisible, a group that created a playbook for progressives to lobby members of Congress and disrupt congressional town halls, held a joint conference call the day after the Women’s March on Washington in January. It was historic. ”We had 60, 000 people join one conference call,” says Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn Civic Action. ”Guinness Book of World Records told us we broke the record for one conference call.” (The current record for a conference call on the Guinness website is 16, 972 people on a call organized by Broadnet Teleservices.) Sandra Minuitti, vice president of marketing at Charity Navigator, a watchdog group that rates charities and nonprofits, has a name for all of this new money that groups in The Resistance have been receiving: ”rage giving.” National groups may be able to more easily adapt to all this new ”rage giving,” but for state and local groups, some of that adjustment requires an entire reworking of an organization. Alison Beyea, the executive director of the ACLU of Maine, says that the growth in her chapter has been astronomical. Membership has already doubled  —   twice. And she had to make big changes. ”I have to be honest, that initially when there was endless emails about people wanting to volunteer, there certainly was a bit of apprehension,” says Beyea. ”We haven’t traditionally been an organization that has worked with volunteers.” But the group has since adapted, and has even given those volunteers their own day, Beyea told NPR. ”We call them Team Tuesday.” Of all the groups interviewed, the ACLU’s national operation has the most   plan of how it will use all of its newfound support. Besides organizing volunteers at the state and local level, the ACLU recently organized a Resistance training called ”People Power” for new volunteers. And a memo on the organization’s website details just how its new influx of cash will be spent, with more than half the new funds being spent in key battleground states where fights are taking place over key issues important to the ACLU. The organization also joined a school for startups in Silicon Valley called Y Combinator, to figure out some best practices for spending money wisely. While having more money than you know what to do with can seem like the perfect problem, David Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University, says there is an inherent challenge: meeting the expectations of new donors and finding ways to keep them giving in the future. Some of that challenge, says Van Slyke, is remedied by specificity. ”What is it you’re resisting about the president,” says Van Slyke. ”Is it the president himself? Is it a particular executive order? A particular appointment?” Many donors to the   Resistance may find themselves aligned with some of a group’s aims, but not all of them. For instance, the ACLU recently defended conservative firebrand Milo Yiannapoulus and the organization in fact, does not endorse political candidates or advocate for any particular political party. Michael Cornfield, a professor of political management at George Washington University, says players in The Resistance can learn a lesson or two from the Tea Party, a group born out of resistance to America’s previous president. ”One of the unusual features and I think it’s a key to their success,” Cornfeild told NPR, ”is that there was no head of the Tea Party.” For Cornfield, a problem arises when ”you have someone or two people who think they personify the movement and their vanity creeps in.” Cornfield also says the Tea Party succeeded by focusing locally and trying to obstruct their opponents every chance they got. But he also notes that now, as the Tea Party celebrates the Republican Party’s return to power, it hasn’t all been a victory lap. ”The Tea Party is part of an extremely uneasy majority coalition that controls this Congress and a lot of legislatures and statehouses,” Cornfield said, ”and they don’t know what to do next.” As money continues to pile up for The Resistance, there’s another question facing key players: how quickly should they spend it? The half dozen groups that spoke with NPR said their goal was to use it soon, and not worry too much about stockpiling for a later day. ”People give us money today, to make a difference today and tomorrow,” said Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. ”I think that it’s really important that we put as much wood on this fire right now as we possibly can.” For Kelly Robinson, an organizer with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, that means collaborating as much as possible with   groups. ”It is clear that if we’re going to get free,” she told NPR, ”we’re all going to get free together.” Of course, for smaller and newer organizations involved in The Resistance, behind the waves of support there is also a bit of uncertainty. Ezra Levin is one of the founders of Indivisible, the campaign to help progressives lobby their members of Congress and engage them at town halls, Tea Party style. He says some of the group’s work is being figured out on the fly. Levin says Indivisible began as just a Google Doc, and when that crashed, he and his cofounders built a website, promising never to become an official organization, and only provide a guidebook for progressives that need it. Now Indivisible is a 501( c)4 nonprofit accepting donations and growing by the day. ”What we see right now is this fierce urgency,” Levin told NPR. ”We’re definitely building the plane while we fly it.”"
"Looking at Claire Rosen’s photographs can feel like walking into someone else’s dreams. One of her images shows a young girl about to be dragged into the sky by a pack of flying toy horses. Another series shows horses, hedgehogs, cockatoos and camels posed before different sumptuous feasts, as if having their own last suppers. ”I have a very sort of whimsical, surreal, view of the world that is deeply rooted in magic and fairy tales,” Rosen says. She couples that worldview with a deep appreciation for classical painting. The   photographer mines fairy tales, and the strange beauty of the natural world. Her work, she says, serves as a vehicle, ”to have this sense of adventure and exploration in the world, and to be able to learn things, and see new places, and meet interesting people.” Rosen explores the creative process in her new book Imaginarium  —   it’s filled with inspiring quotations, practical advice, resources and required reading, as well as thoughtful meditations on the methods of making art. On realizing how much of her inspiration came from images she saw in childhood, That was a big revelation for me. . .. I looked back at the things I was doing in my childhood, and the things that I cared about then . .. really imprinted this aesthetic on me that is carried through my work. For example, I spent a lot of time at the Museum of Natural History when I was little in New York, and my mom jokes that I would cry when we had to leave because I wanted to crawl into the dioramas with the animals and stay there. We would go to The Met frequently and I would get lost in those paintings. Even recently  —   I thought I was very original with my animal feasts project  —   and I dug up a bunch of my childhood books and there are all these wonderful children’s illustrations of animals eating dinner, and having parties, and carrying on in anthropomorphic ways. And I thought: I’m not being particularly original  —   I saw this when I was 5 years old. That’s been very interesting to connect those dots. On carving out space for creativity, I think that it’s amazing if you can take control of curating the input of your life. . .. I think it’s very easy to get sucked into a very busy, monotonous work life, and when you get home and you want to unwind, all you want to do is sit down and watch Netflix. But I think [one should try] to fight that  —   to actively curate your life so that you are having interesting experiences in the world. On seeking out creative activities, I don’t know that it has to be the sort of traditional formula of going to a museum. Maybe you take up archery. Maybe you are doing pottery but you’re really a banker. Maybe you’re going to see a talk on a field that has nothing to do with what you do. Or traveling. But [the important thing is] that you are seeking out experiences outside of your comfort zone, that you are experimenting and exploring and figuring out what it is that you actually like. You may come across something that you never knew you were interested in. Radio producer Ravenna Koenig, radio editor Jordana Hochman and web producer Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"Duncan Hines, traveling salesman and future purveyor of boxed cake mix, considered himself an authority on a great many things: hot coffee, Kentucky   ham and how to locate a tasty restaurant meal, in 1935, for under a dollar and a quarter. By the 1950s, Hines’ name would be plastered on boxes of cake mix housewives would turn to his products for consistent quality and superior taste. Newspaper photographs featured Hines clad in a white chef’s apron, hoisting a neatly frosted cake or thoughtfully dipping a spoon into a mixing bowl. But Duncan Hines wasn’t a chef  —   in truth, he could barely cook. For most of his career, he had just been a businessman, desperate for a decent meal on the road. Through his search for the best restaurants across America, he became an accidental gourmand, an unlikely author and homegrown connoisseur. Although boxed cake mix is the legacy that most people now associate with Duncan Hines (only after asking, ”Was he actually a real person? ”) the supermarket foods that bear his name are only an epilogue to a storied life traveling America’s back roads. It was really his book, Adventures in Good Eating, that first put Duncan Hines on the map. And it was his tireless pursuit of good food that inspired his book. A decent meal, Hines’ appreciation for a good meal arose out of mere necessity. From the 1920s through the ’40s, he motored across the country hawking letter openers and paperclips and subsisting on unreliable road food. It was an era long before any formal restaurant rating system existed in the U. S. The names and locations of good restaurants were conveyed by word of mouth for an    traveler, locating a decent supper was often a daunting and discouraging mission. And although Europe had relied on The Michelin Guide since 1900, middle America in the 1920s and ’30s was still a land of culinary mystery and inconsistency. It was also a time of growing wanderlust. Highways such as Route 66 were connecting small towns, and eager motorists often embarked on weekend road trips. According to the University of Michigan, in the ’20s ”the number of automobiles in America rose from eight million to   million and along with the increase came thousands of barbeque shacks, ice cream stands and diners.” Many new restaurants were not listed on maps. And they were often hidden on dusty back roads that health inspectors didn’t travel. (Even if they did, there was no standard for restaurant food safety in America at that time.) Desperate for a clean place to dine, Hines became an investigative epicurean and   restaurant critic. He carried a tiny journal in his coat pocket, jotting down the precise locations of his favorite places. No restaurant was off limits for the inquisitive Hines. ”The kitchen is the first spot I inspect in an eating place,” he wrote. ”More people will die from hit or miss eating than from hit and run driving,” he joked  —   though Hines clearly thought food safety was no laughing matter. He frequently popped into the kitchen to scrutinize how staff handled food and then swung around back to investigate the restaurant’s garbage pile. He meticulously recorded the names of the most pristine diners, the inns with the tastiest prime roast beef, and where to find the stickiest honey buns. He appreciated regional cuisine, quickly discovering in which part of the country to brake for broiled lobster tail (New England) and where to stop for fried chicken (Kentucky). Hines noted whether a restaurant had air conditioning, its hours of operation and its prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner. ”His restaurant notes were extraordinarily accurate,” says Louis Hatchett, author of the book, Duncan Hines: How a Traveling Salesman Became the Most Trusted Name in Food. ”As word spread among his family and friends, people were begging him to share the list he had created. There was nothing out there like it,” he says. ”In 1935, sick of being pestered, he finally sent out a little blue pamphlet in his Christmas cards, containing a list of 167 restaurants across 33 states that he could safely recommend.” Soon, Hines was receiving postcards from from salesmen, newlyweds and other travelers all over America seeking his recommendations for good, clean restaurants. In 1936, at 55, Hines   his first edition of Adventures in Good Eating and sold them for $1 each. It contained the names and locations of 475 restaurants from coast to coast that had Hines’ rigorous seal of approval. ”The books were sold through word of mouth, but they quickly sold out. The following year he raised the guide’s price to $1. 50  —   and that’s where the price would stay for the next 25 years,” explains Hatchett. Each year, until he retired in 1954, Hines broadened his exploration of America’s restaurants and published an updated edition of Adventures in Good Eating. Restaurants fell in and out of Hines’ favor  —   if they could not deliver a quality meal or allow a peek into the kitchen, they were removed from the book. He refused to accept any advertisements or endorsements from restaurants in exchange for reviews. Millions of discerning travelers kept his book in their glove compartments to guide them as they rumbled down gravelly country roads in unfamiliar locations. ”Recommended by Duncan Hines” became the gold standard in dining by the 1950s. Restaurants endorsed by Hines tacked up metal signs in their front windows. As his authority grew, Hines published Lodging for a Night (1938) and Adventures in Good Cooking (Famous Recipes) and the Art of Carving in the Home (1939). In 1952, when Hines was 72, he partnered with Roy H. Park to form   in Ithaca, N. Y. allowing the Duncan Hines name to appear on everything from cartons of ice cream to the   cake mixes. Two years before his death in March of 1959, the entire franchise was sold to Procter  Gamble. Renewed interest, Thanks to Ebay and rare book vendors, there is resurging interest in Adventures in Good Cooking. History lovers and discriminating foodies congregate on the forums of Roadfood. com to share modern forays into Hines’ antiquated restaurant scene. Jim Pfefferle, a forum member and engineer from Wisconsin, views Duncan Hines’ swift rise to fame as compelling as the material in his books. ”It’s kind of meteoric, what Duncan Hines did,” Pfefferle tells NPR. ”He was unknown when he published his first guidebook in 1936 and then there was a World War. By 1951 he was famous, the one person in the United States that anyone would go to for an authority on food. Less than 10 years later, he was gone.” Pfefferle, along with other members of the forum, has spent the past two years painstakingly gathering a list of restaurants from Hines’ books that are still in operation. He says it has been an intimidating task filled with many gastronomic   but he believes that about 37 of the original 167 restaurants on Hines’ 1935 list remain. Hines often said, ”Nearly everyone wants at least one outstanding meal a day.” This seems as true now as it did a   ago. But long before Yelp or TripAdvisor offered restaurant reviews with the click of a button, Hines was doing it his own way, by traveling the highway with his pencil and notebook, changing the way America ate on the open road  —   one adventure at a time. Nicole Jankowski is a freelance food, history and culture writer based in Detroit. You can find her on Facebook here."
"As Iraqi forces backed by the United States ramp up efforts to take Mosul back from ISIS, there are reports of scores of civilians killed by airstrikes from a U. S.  coalition. In a statement, the United States Central Command admitted that its airstrikes had hit an area where civilian casualties have been reported. The Central Command said that an initial review of strike data from March   indicates that ”the Coalition struck ISIS fighters and equipment, March 17, in West Mosul at the location corresponding to allegations of civilian casualties.” It said a formal assessment had been opened to determine the facts surrounding the strike and the validity of the charges that civilians were killed. As NPR’s Alice Fordham reports, an Iraqi rescue worker, Abdelsalam Abdelkadir, said his team had recovered dozens of bodies and thinks there are many more under the rubble of a   neighborhood of western Mosul. ”He said ISIS was using people as human shields, and that he didn’t know whether the strikes were by Iraq’s air force or the U. S.  coalition against ISIS,” Alice reports. There has been no official announcement by the U. S. that restrictions designed to prevent civilian casualties have been lifted, Alice reports. But there has been a sharp uptick in reports of civilians killed in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in recent weeks. The Associated Press says its reporters saw at least 50 bodies recovered from the wreckage of buildings following recent airstrikes. Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told the New York Times that there has been ”no loosening of the rules of engagement.” Captain Davis said that the investigation was looking into whether Islamic State fighters were responsible for the explosion in Mosul, or if an airstrike set something off. ”There are other people on the battlefield, too,” he said. ”It’s close quarters.” In an earlier statement this morning, the coalition said that its forces conducted six strikes in Iraq yesterday, including five near Mosul. The six strikes consisted of 46 engagements ”coordinated with and in support of the government of Iraq against ISIS targets,” according to the release. Figures on the number of civilians killed by coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since 2014 vary widely, according to the AP. The Pentagon has acknowledged 220 civilian deaths (not including last month’s fighting) while independent monitoring groups put the figure might higher, at over 2, 700. The United Nations expressed ”profound concern” about the reports of mass civilian casualties in Mosul. ”We are stunned by this terrible loss of life and wish to express our deepest condolences to the many families who have reportedly been impacted by this tragedy,” said Lise Grande, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. ”International humanitarian law is clear. Parties to the conflict  —   all parties  —   are obliged to do everything possible to protect civilians. This means that combatants cannot use people as human shields and cannot imperil lives through indiscriminate use of  .” The UN reports that more than 330, 000 people have been displaced by the Mosul crisis. ”Families are at risk of being shot if they leave and they are at risk if they stay,” said Grande. ”Hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped and they are in terrible danger.”"
"Undergoing treatment for cancer is hard enough by itself. And for many cancer patients who spend most of their time in a hospital, it gets even harder with the loss of basic comforts. The hospital’s sterile environment, the fluorescent lights and the disposable gowns do little to make medical treatment more bearable. Nikla Lancksweert, wanted to do a little something to help with that dehumanizing experience, focusing on an alternative for those uncomfortable hospital gowns. Lancksweert is   of INGA Wellbeing, which creates   clothing for patients. The    entrepreneur who’s originally from the U. K, lived in Philadelphia for several years before moving to Brussels, Belgium, where she’s now based. She named the clothing line, INGA, in honor of her mom, who was diagnosed of ovarian cancer at the age of 52 and then underwent three years of intense medical treatment. ”During this time she often had to put on a hospital gown or sit in her underwear to be examined or treated by strangers,” Lancksweert says on her Website. ”It was sad and worrying to see how my elegant, capable mother would, almost visibly, shrink. Be diminished. . .. Getting her out of the hospital gown and into clothes that looked ’normal’ but that really worked became my obsession!” Lancksweert’s mom died on Boxing Day, 2006. And a few years later, Lancksweert got the idea to create the clothing line. She teamed up with former public relations executive, Claire Robinson  —   whose mom was also a cancer patient  —   and fashion designer Fiona McGreal and in January this year, they officially launched the full collection of INGA Wellbeing. INGA Wellbeing offers worldwide shipping and in Belgium and the U. K. the collection is also available via a few specialist online and bricks and mortar retailers. In its short existence, INGA has won awards for health innovation and   among them Henry van de Velde, Janey Loves Platinum and Healthcare Think Tank. NPR’s Lulu   spoke with Lancksweert, who endorses the sentiment, ”INGA Wellbeing makes it possible to dress ’well’ even when unwell,” about the motivation behind her brand and how she’s helping patients feel more comfortable and dignified   as they battle cancer. On how her road to create fashionable hospital clothing began with her mother  My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was just 52 years old and suddenly plunged into the world of hospitals and medical treatment. And it was really notable to see how very quickly she lost her dignity. And it’s not intentionally so. Doctors and nurses certainly have every intention of being as respectful as they can of patients. It’s just if you’re wearing the wrong clothes then you have to be helped to dress and undress. Then you might not want to go for a walk, which means you end up sort of staying in your room and you become sort of institutionalized incredibly quickly.  On how she actually happened to start the clothing line, I was lucky enough to meet Claire Robinson whose own mother had breast cancer and who was experiencing much of the same issues that my mother had gone through. And then we realized that we needed to have somebody with real fashion design skills and not just determination. And so, we were lucky enough to meet Fiona McGreal who wanted to help us come up with a set of designs that really work in hospital but that look completely normal. And that for us was the key thing. . .. we wanted to   health. On what has to be taken into consideration when designing clothing for patients, We worked with nurses to say, ”OK, which parts of the body do you need to be able to get to most frequently?” And so we came up with the women, we have a back opening dress, which is actually the closest thing to a hospital gown. But you would never guess it. I’ve worn it in the playground. I’ve worn it to the supermarket, often meetings  —   not having had a chance to change  —   but it has all that sort of ease of opening in that it opens at the back and it also has openings down the arms and an a very discreet opening to the stomach. On why it’s important to have patients feeling better about the way that they look  If you feel   and therefore in charge of your medical treatment, then you are much more likely to want to get up and move around and ultimately recover faster and get home faster. This is the psychological element but there’s also a very physical aspect of it, which is if you don’t do those things if you just stay in bed, there’s actually a higher risk of infection and you lose your muscle tone much more quickly, which makes walking ultimately harder. So your hospital stay becomes longer. On naming the fashion company after her mom and what she thinks her mom would think  I think she would be amazed. I’ve got nothing to do with the fashion world and I don’t think I’m known particularly for being fashionable. But I think she would be amazed. And in fact, Inga was my mother’s name but it’s only afterwards that I realized  —   looking it up  —   that actually means ”a hero’s daughter.” And that’s very much how we feel, that this concept is in honor of the heroes in our life. And I hope brings a great deal of comfort and dignity to others and just break this vicious cycle that patients often find themselves in. NPR’s James Delahoussaye contributed to this report."
"In the introduction of Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales of Animal Brides and Grooms, Maria Tatar talks about how to classify a fairy tale using the   system. Developed and refined since the early 20th century, it’s a massive taxonomy that   our fundamental stories by subplots and themes. (The sheer volume of folklore would be overwhelming otherwise Tatar’s book alone contains stories from almost two dozen countries.) And stories of loathly brides and grooms generally fall under two types: The Man on a Quest for His Lost Wife, or The Search for the Lost Husband. Looking at these categories, however, doesn’t offer an easy place for Beauty and the Beast. The familiar   French version (which Disney borrowed for its tale as old as time) fits the letter of the   law: The lost husband is the beastly suitor, whom Beauty must return to and rescue at last. But other stories confound the classic about the girl who agrees to live with a gentle Beast until love softens her heart. The tales in Tatar’s compilation swing from vicious to romantic, from comedy to horror. There are stories of a steadfast prince being loyal to his   or a princess searching for her   ”east of the sun and west of the moon”  —   here, love is proven in action and rewarded with happiness. But Beauty and the Beast stories are about power as much as about love. So sometimes the prince steals a maiden’s animal skin to force her to stay with him, or he puts his   on display against her wishes, or he ignores his devoted wife’s warnings and discovers she’s actually a crane. And these stories, where power is abused, differ sharply from the stories of proof and trust: Almost all of them end with her escape. The   archetypes help us understand what connects the disparate versions of Beauty and the Beast they’re all stories of searching and longing. But the tale resists a definitive telling  —   because at heart, it’s psychologically preoccupied with trust, power, and change, which makes it a hard story to pin down, let alone guarantee a happy ending. By admitting the power of the individual in a relationship, these tales understand that this power can become abuse. (Sometimes all a princess can do is steal back her identity and bail.) It’s why there’s such visceral appeal in dark retellings we understand just how close love is to a horror story. The late Tanith Lee never met a horror story she didn’t love her   legacy stares unblinkingly into the dark. Her most famous might be White as Snow, a novel that reassembles shards of several folktales, with Beauty and the Beast thrown in amid Snow White and Persephone. But short fiction is Lee’s sharpest tool for pulling old tales apart. The posthumous Redder Than Blood arrives next month with 19   retellings steeped in Gothic prose and the undertones of sexual violence that lurk in so many fairy stories. Among the tales she chews up and spits out are four Beauty and the Beasts, which suggest both Lee’s affinity for the pairing and how variations on a theme can hook onto the spine of their archetype. The heroines of her Beauty and the Beast stories come to no good end. ”My Life as a Swan” tugs at the Swan Maiden’s skin of feathers, a death by a thousand mistakes. In ”Kiss Kiss,” the tentative companionship between a girl and her frog drops from bittersweet to bitter  —   since he can’t abuse her the way other men do, she comes to love him as he is, and his transformation is then a tragedy. And ”The Beast and Beauty” examines a handsome husband and the ugly wife for whom the weight of obligation and beauty’s sheer power eventually become a barrier to the thing she most longs for: escape. But ”The Beast,” a retelling of the French tale, is the Gothic favorite, weighted heavily toward Bluebeard and fascinated by the loathly husband, Isobel the sacrificial bride, and beauty as corrupting force. That last is everywhere beauty casts so insidious a spell that Isobel’s own father struggles against lust for her. (”She was in the library, sitting by the fire, an open book on her knee. She might have been waiting. He looked at her. He thought, Yes. ”) However, like many a Beauty, Isobel comes to realize the power she wields after she learns her lover’s pursuit of beauty is more beastly than she guessed. It’s a   iteration in which she finds out exactly what happens if she leaves him. It also allows that surely Beauty herself has a monstrous side his kills don’t horrify her, only his lies. (Here we also get an echo of the beastly brides in Tatar’s anthology to mistrust her is to misjudge her power  —   and lose her.) Lee’s stories, unlike those of her forebear Angela Carter, offer almost no happy endings on the other side of the mirror. They condemn the happy ending wholesale what magic may attempt, human frailty will eventually consume. In Lee’s stories, happiness is worth only as much as whatever power the prince is willing to give his up, and beauty  —   or Beauty  —   will never be enough currency to pay that price. It’s a story that hopes for the best, and recognizes the worst. Folkore is the bedrock of storytelling. These tales act as cultural timestamps, as geographic markers, as artifacts, and as living stories that show us something of ourselves. Beauty and the Beast stories are categorized in the folklore canon by a yearning for something that’s been lost. When retold, we see their core elements repeated again and again, and while they reflect our awareness of the toxic dynamics of power, they also reflect our hope for romance and our desire for something subversive at the heart of love  —   its ability to change us. Fairy tales occupy a space between narrative and history, with our own perspective as a   narrative remove. To read fairy tales is, in itself, to participate in something transformative, with the hope of finding something to love and understand in reading them, we retell the story all over again. Genevieve Valentine’s latest novel is Icon."
"Married at 14 and divorced by 16, Seema Parveen had a marriage as brutal as it was short. Now 42, Parveen remembers her husband threatening to hurl her from the balcony of their home. She blinks back tears recalling his rage when she bore him a daughter and not a son. ”His whole family was upset,” she says. In conservative northern India where they lived, boys are preferred over girls  —   who have been traditionally viewed as a burden. When her daughter was one month old, Parveen went to stay with her mother. ”That’s when my husband wrote and said, ’Talaq.’ ” All that’s required for a Muslim man in India to end a marriage is to declare, talaq, which means divorce in Arabic. Pronounced three times, it’s irrevocable. Many Islamic countries have banned the practice. Parveen says her husband rebuffed all her attempts to return to him. ”I was so young,” she says, ”I didn’t know what was happening.” Maimoona Mollah, president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, Delhi Chapter, condemns the practice of talaq as ”unilateral” and ”arbitrary.” Mollah says women can also initiate divorce. But members of the community say a woman must first consult a cleric, while a man, she says, ”severs the relationship” on his own. She says there needs to be a ”formal process” for any divorce where a woman and her children receive financial support. The way talaq is practiced, ”it definitely stands in the way of a woman getting her rightful place,” Mollah says. Several divorced women have petitioned India’s Supreme Court to ban this form of instant divorce. Countries including Pakistan, Tunisia, and Egypt have curbed the practice and moved divorce into the orbit of the state and judiciary. Parveen has been divorced three times by three different men. None provided financial support. She went back to school to support herself and her child, and she began teaching Urdu. Her third    demanded that she quit her teaching job after what she describes as his lavish promises to keep her financially sound. She complied and, in 2010, Parveen married him only to be treated like a ”servant,” she says  —   ”mentally and psychologically abused.” ”My husband and his sons would beat me, lock me in a room and deprive me of food,” she says. Parveen says husband number three abandoned her, then delivered talaq by telephone. But Parveen has gone to court to defend her right to be in his home. When pressed on why she would subject herself to such maltreatment, Parveen answers softly but   : ”Where will I go? My father’s dead. There’s no one to take care of me. But I have rights to my husband’s pension, and I’m not giving that up.” She brought a lawsuit in a district court and won the right to financial support from her third husband, although she’s not seen any yet. Zakia Soman,   of the Indian Muslim Women’s Movement, says her organization sees many women who want to stay in unhappy marriages to avoid becoming destitute. These women seek to keep ”the status of wife” because they are so vulnerable, she says. Soman calls talaq a ”sword hanging over a woman’s head,” and says domestic violence and the male prerogative to declare instant divorce are intimately linked. She says frequently the husband threatens: ”’Do this, or I’ll talaq you! Don’t do that, otherwise I’ll talaq you. ’” She says: ”I should know because I’ve had a very bad marriage myself and being beaten was my fate for 16 long years.” Soman fled after she and her son were savagely beaten. Days later the letter arrived from her husband announcing divorce. Up until then, Soman says the social pressure to remain in that marriage was immense. She calls it ”the woman trap”  —   the feeling that you need to make it work. Like many women, she assumed ”that whole burden of the institution of marriage,” she says. In 2015, Soman’s organization surveyed India’s Muslim community, the world’s third largest. It found that 1 in every 11 women has had their marriage ended by talaq. Of those divorced women, fewer than five percent ever gets any financial support. Activists like Soman say India’s conservative clerics sanction this practice, relegating Muslim women to second class citizens. ”’Where is the need to consult a woman? Where is the need to take her opinion,’ is what they feel,” she says. And ”they are passing it off in the garb of religion.” India’s Supreme Court will consider whether talaq is integral to Islam and thus a practice constitutionally protected under freedom of religion. The Muslim Personal Law Board, which unofficially governs the community, says talaq is valid as divine law and opposes any reforms. ”Talaq is an honorable way of dissolving a marriage, without going to the court of law,” says S. Q. R. Ilyas, a member of the Muslim Personal Law Board. ”The wife can   . .. life goes on.” But Tahir Mahmood, a renowned expert on Islamic law, says the Quran sanctions divorce only after a period of reflection and attempted reconciliation, usually lasting three months. ”This is a precondition of divorce. Who bothers about it? Nobody bothers about it,” Mahmood says. ”No man is free to pronounce an instant divorce.” He calls that practice a perversion of Islam and says it should be struck down. ”The original version of the Quran . .. insists on gender equality. And that is precisely what is missing in India,” he says. He says many of the country’s politicians are careful not to offend powerful clerics within India’s sizable Muslim community. Such politicians are interested ”in votes” not ”in social change,” Mahmood says. ”The only hope is the judiciary.” Some of the women who have petitioned the courts to abolish instant divorce say aligning it with the Quran would end the exploitation. Others, like   Seema Parveen, would like divorce placed before the civil courts, removed from religion altogether. Zakia Soman says the courts provide women ”a level playing field.” But she says reforming the Indian Muslim community’s divorce customs won’t be easy. ”Legal reform is just one part of overall reform which is required in society . .. This is just the beginning,” she says."
"Earlier this year, NPR Music held the third installment of the Tiny Desk Contest, our annual search for a talented, unsigned musician to play a Tiny Desk concert here at NPR headquarters. More than 6, 000 bands and artists entered, and many (including this year’s winner, Tank and the Bangas) were new to the Contest. But we also saw a number of familiar faces  —   some of whom have been with us since the beginning. Diana Gameros is one of those   entrants. After submitting videos in 2015 and 2016, the      filmed this year’s entry on a cold morning, as dawn broke over the San Francisco Bay. As she sings, the camera zooms out to reveal a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge. As beautiful as the vista in her video is, the song she chose to perform is even lovelier. Gameros says she wrote ”¿Cómo Hacer?” to express some of the emotion she felt at being unable to return to her home country, Mexico. She’d traveled to Holland, Mich. at age 13 to visit an aunt and had chosen to stay   but when she applied to college, she was unable to get a student visa. ”So I went through four years of college as an undocumented student,” she says. And when Gameros wrote ”¿Cómo Hacer?” in 2011, she still couldn’t travel outside the U. S. ”I was in a very vulnerable state,” she says of that time. ”I was really missing home in Mexico, and several things happened. A very dear aunt who lived in Mexico had lost her battle to cancer. My hometown, Ciudad Juárez, where my parents and siblings and little nephews still live, was going through really tough times, since it was enduring a militarized policing of streets and drug cartel conflicts  —   and my father and sister experienced direct violence by getting pulled out of their car at gunpoint in broad daylight.” But Gameros’ immigration status prevented her from returning to Mexico to be with her family during that time of crisis. ”I just felt that my family needed me,” she says. ”I wanted to be there when my nephews were born. I wanted to tell my brother I loved him and that I was proud of him for raising these beautiful kids. I wanted to be by my sister when she was going through puberty and she needed to talk to me. ”Being away from my family and my land in such hard times just brought up a certain feeling of guilt and fear and powerlessness and doubt, and I began to question many things in my own life,” she says. Those sorts of questions make up the lyrics of ”¿Cómo Hacer?” Gameros says. ”The translation of some of these lines are, ’How can I make life last? How can I dissolve borders? How can I make my land forgive me?’ ” she says. Gameros says she now has the proper documentation to live and work in the U. S. but she likely won’t get her green card until next year. ”When I get it, I will be able to finally visit my homeland,” she says. ”It’s been 15 years since the last time I was there, so I’m really, really looking forward to that time.” Lucy Perkins produced the broadcast version of this story."
"Updated at 8:15 p. m. ET, The head of the House Intelligence Committee secretly went to the White House grounds to meet with a source, before he surprised his colleagues by briefing the president  —   and the press  —   on information they hadn’t seen. The revelation, first reported by CNN and later confirmed by a spokesman for the chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, is the latest twist in the strange saga of Nunes’ unorthodox actions last week. Rep. Adam Schiff,  . the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in this tweet that Nunes should recuse himself ”from involvement in   of Trump campaign  transition.” ”This is not a recommendation I make lightly,” added Schiff. House minority leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi,  . also called for Nunes to recuse himself from investigations of any Trump connections with Russia. The statements came shortly after Nunes, in a live interview with CNN, said that it is very common for him to go to an executive branch building such as the White House, Pentagon, or CIA to review classified documents. Nunes said he did not meet with the president or his aides while he was on the White House grounds. ”I’m quite sure that people in the West Wing had no idea that I was there,” he said. Earlier in the day, Nunes announced that the House Intelligence Committee will not hold a closed hearing on Tuesday as scheduled with the directors of the FBI and National Security Agency. You’ll remember that President Trump has claimed, without evidence, that his campaign was illegally surveilled by the Obama administration. The claim has been denounced at the highest levels of the intelligence community. But the explosive allegation has come up several times as the committee attempts to investigate Russian meddling in the U. S. election, and the handling of classified information in connection to that story. Nunes ( .) the committee chairman, raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he gave a press conference to say President Trump and his transition team were accidentally caught up in routine U. S. surveillance of foreign targets. Nunes himself said there was no sign the Trump team was targeted specifically, and that the surveillance appeared to be wholly legal. The conversations in question also happened after the election and, as observers have noted, could include remarks about Trump and his team. Still, Trump claimed the press conference as partial vindication. Nunes said his announcement was based on classified intelligence from an unnamed source and that he had briefed the president. Notably, no one else had seen the information  —   including the other members of the House Intelligence Committee. Rep. Schiff called that ”bizarre” and ”wrong.” (Nunes later apologized to his colleagues.) The briefing raised a number of questions. One big one: Where did that intelligence come from? ”Democrats were skeptical, and immediately questioned whether Nunes had obtained his information from the White House itself,” NPR’s Scott Detrow reports. ”Now, a Nunes spokesman says the Republican did meet with his source on the White House grounds.” The spokesman says that the location was chosen for its ”proximity to a secure location.” There are, of course, other secure locations available on Capitol Hill. The Trump administration has denied that it provided the information to Nunes. On Thursday White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that idea didn’t pass the ”smell test,” asking why Nunes would brief the president on information if it came from the president’s team. At a press conference on Monday, Spicer said he didn’t know what Nunes saw or what he said to Trump. He referred questions about the origin of the information to Nunes, but when pressed on whether it might have come from a White House staffer, Spicer said ”anything’s possible.” The administration has delivered some harsh rhetoric over earlier leaks of information, but Spicer didn’t express concern that there might be a leak from inside the administration. Instead, he noted that Nunes was cleared to view classified material  —   drawing a contrast between leaks to reporters and the passing of any information to Nunes. Here’s more on what we know about Nunes’ meeting, from The Associated Press: ”Nunes’ office said the information provided to the chairman came from ’executive branch documents that have not been provided to Congress.’ ” ’Because of classification rules, the source could not simply put the documents in a backpack and walk them over to the House Intelligence Committee space,’ [Nunes spokesman Jack] Langer said. ’The White House grounds was the best location to safeguard the proper chain of custody and classification of these documents, so the chairman could view them in a legal way.’ ” Nunes has not identified his source. Any White House staffer can approve a visitor to the White House grounds, the AP notes. Nunes’ spokesman did not specify when he visited White House property. Last week the Daily Beast reported, citing anonymous sources, that Nunes ”jumped out out of an Uber” on Tuesday evening after receiving a message on his phone, and didn’t tell his staffers where he went. The press conference was held on Wednesday. CNN has since reported a similar account of Nunes abruptly leaving a staffer on Tuesday night. On Friday, ranking member Rep. Schiff appeared to allude to the incident as a mysterious ”dead of night excursion.” Schiff has been sharply critical of Nunes’ recent decisions, including holding Wednesday’s press conference and cancelling a public hearing this Tuesday. Schiff is one of several voices on Capitol Hill calling for an independent investigation of Russian intrusion in the 2016 U. S. presidential election. Meanwhile, the Senate’s investigation is moving forward. Trump’s    Jared Kushner will be talking to the Senate committee, and the committee will hold its first open hearing on Thursday."
"President Trump is doing his best to put a good face on defeat in his party’s attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. His strategy is simple: declare that the law is failing. And he is selling that message in his own distinctly Trumpian way: concocting it out of simple, bold words and then hammering that message home, over and over: Obamacare, in his words, will ”explode.” ”The best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode,” he said in the Oval Office on Friday after the GOP health care bill went down. ”It’s exploding right now.” Again on Twitter on Saturday, he repeated his case: ”ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!” The law has its problems  —   but it is far from ”exploding,” using any reasonable definition of the word. Here is a quick rundown of where the Affordable Care Act stands right now, what’s going well and what’s not so great. 1) The exchanges are stable . .. Supporters of the current health law received something of a boost last week with the Congressional Budget Office’s initial assessment of the Republicans’ bill. If the Affordable Care Act were kept in place, the CBO wrote, the exchanges wouldn’t explode at all. ”The nongroup market would probably be stable in most areas under either current law or the [Republican] legislation,” the nonpartisan office wrote. The CBO cites two reasons: First, it said the law requiring people to buy insurance or pay a penalty works to bring people into the market, further stabilizing the customer base. Second, and more importantly, a strong majority of people who buy insurance through the marketplaces get financial help from the government to pay their premiums, and those subsidies rise when premiums rise. So those people are likely to continue buying insurance through the marketplaces. 2) . .. In part because many people are shielded from premium hikes. Indeed, premiums have climbed substantially in some states’ exchanges, but PolitiFact found this week that ”most people purchasing health care through the marketplace didn’t feel it.” (The   organization was vetting former President Obama’s claim that most exchange enrollees ”have experienced no average premium hike at all. ”) A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that a    who makes $30, 000 could have paid the same $208 a month for an average marketplace health insurance policy in both 2016 and 2017, as long as they were willing to shop for the best price. 3) The uninsured rate has fallen  —   a lot. Probably the biggest positive supporters of the Affordable Care Act point to is the   rate of people who don’t have health insurance. Before the ACA, more than 16 percent of the population was uninsured. Then in 2013, the first year that the Obamacare marketplaces went live, the uninsured rate fell to 13. 3 percent, and then to 10. 5 percent in 2015, and to 8. 9 percent in the first half of 2016, the lowest ever. Much of that decline is because many   people became eligible for Medicaid under the Obamacare expansion of that program. The rest are people who bought insurance through those exchanges. That has had   effects throughout the health care industry. Most notably, hospitals are losing less money, because they don’t have to treat as many people in emergency rooms who don’t pay their bills. The American Hospital Association says that uncompensated care dropped from 6. 1 percent of their expenses in 2012 to 4. 2 percent in 2015. 4) Premiums are holding steady (but don’t praise Obamacare for that) One more point that’s not exactly great, but is an improvement: Premiums continue to grow for enrollees in   plans, but that growth is slower than it was in the years prior to the Affordable Care Act’s passage. However, the law doesn’t appear to have played a big part in slowing that growth. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s Gary Claxton told FactCheck. org recently that it’s difficult to figure out exactly how much Obamacare affected employer premiums  —   there are ”so many moving parts,” he said  —   but he doesn’t believe there’s much of an effect. ”There was nothing fundamentally large about the ACA overall which had a noticeable effect” on those premiums, he said. Fredric Blavin, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, likewise told FactCheck that any effects on premiums were likely small. That works against both the Obama administration, which implied that it was slowing down premium growth, and the Trump administration, which has blamed the Obama administration for premium growth. For example, the Kaiser Family Foundation found in 2013 that a slowing economy probably had something to do with the slowing growth, as FactCheck. org noted. Not only that, but deductibles have grown quickly in recent years, helping to keep premiums down. Ultimately, Obama’s health law doesn’t seem to have held premiums down all that much  —   but it also hasn’t caused them to explode. 1) Few insurance options for many Americans. The Affordable Care Act does have its weaknesses. As more companies have pulled out of the exchanges, Americans are left with fewer choices in their coverage. In many parts of the country, as Trump and his fellow Republicans often point out, enrollees in the insurance exchanges have only one choice of insurer. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that five states  —   Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming  —   have only one insurance company selling policies on the Obamacare exchanges. And the share of the population that has three or more companies to choose from fell from 85 percent in 2016 to 57 percent this year. The uncertainty over the future of the Affordable Care Act exchanges has likely made this situation worse. Insurers have to decide in the next few weeks whether to offer policies on the federal and state exchanges for 2018. Humana has already announced it intends to leave the exchanges altogether. 2) Big premium hikes for some Americans. And while it’s true that many Americans in the exchanges  —   64 percent, according to PolitiFact  —   haven’t seen their    spending on premiums rise, around   did. Those premium hikes were steep in some states, such as Arizona, which saw its average premiums more than double. And for those who were shielded from rising premiums by subsidies, the government picked up that much more of the bill. 3) Higher deductibles making health care more expensive for many. And premiums aren’t the extent of health care spending. For most people,    costs such as deductibles and   have also risen. The average deductible for workers getting individual insurance through their employers was $1, 478 last year. That’s up by 49 percent over five years. That helps counterbalance the slower growth in premiums. 4) (Very) (very) expensive health care, One more sign of problems with U. S. health care today: The U. S. spends much more on health care than other countries do  —   more than $9, 400 per capita per year, as of 2016, compared to around $3, 800 for other developed countries. That’s not caused by the Affordable Care Act  —   this was a problem before the bill was passed  —   but it’s a sign that there’s still a lot that could be done to improve the U. S. health care system."
"President Trump was downright low energy. The look on his face, as he meandered through unscripted remarks Friday after the defeat of the Republican health care plan he supported, told the story. The unusually subdued Trump called the loss a ”learning experience.” Then he seemed to shrug it all off and said he was moving on. But it’s hardly going to be that simple or easy. The same fissures in the GOP that derailed the health care bill will be there when it comes to any big issue moving forward, whether it’s tax reform, infrastructure or funding the government. And Republicans warn that, unless the president is willing to learn and own the details, the result will likely be the same  —   failure. ”Trump’s defeat this week was entirely predictable,” said Alex Conant, who worked on Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign and was a spokesman for the Republican National Committee and the Bush White House. ”He has never showed any detailed knowledge of health care policy and has few relationships in Congress. Getting health care passed was always going to be a heavy lift, but Republicans should be concerned that Trump couldn’t even get it off the ground.” During the campaign, Trump connected with a significant chunk of the country with big, bold promises. But on arguably his (and the GOP’s)   promise  —   repealing and replacing Obamacare  —   he flamed out in one of the most embarrassing ways possible just 64 days into his presidency. It’s unlikely that Republican voters will be satisfied with leaving Obamacare in place. ”It failed brilliantly,” said another Republican strategist, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about a president the strategist may be working with on upcoming priorities. ”Going forward, I would expect there would be a greater ownership on the White House’s part on the legislation that is being advanced, and he’s going to have to be in a position to know the details.” No one looks good, No one comes off looking good in the debacle  —   not House Speaker Paul Ryan, who was the brains behind the bill and led the legislative strategy not White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who is close to Ryan not White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who reportedly tried to play hardball with the roughly 40   conservatives of the House Freedom Caucus, who were largely responsible for the bill’s defeat. ”I don’t give a s*** what you guys think,” Bannon reportedly told them, per CNN, in a meeting Thursday before the bill went down. ”Guys, look, this is not a discussion,” Bannon said, per Axios. ”This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill.” Trump himself showed a level of impetuousness with the Freedom Caucus and a lack of policy understanding that eventually did him in. ”Forget about that little s***,” Trump told the group Thursday, per Politico. ”Let’s focus on the big picture here.” That might be how campaigning works, but it’s not how governing does. Sweating the little stuff is important when it comes to legislating. That’s especially true for the big things Trump wants to tackle. But, though Trump said he had ”learned a lot” and wants to move on, he was looking backward over the weekend, tweeting blame at the Freedom Caucus  —   a group he underestimated: It’s a group that won’t be intimidated by ultimatums or tweets. Current House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes of California once referred to the conservatives who became the Freedom Caucus as ”lemmings with suicide vests.” Trump is going to have to figure out how to deal with them. He also faced opposition from more moderate Republicans, like Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who were averse to the ramifications of the policy laid out in the GOP bill. Dent did not deny an exchange reported by Robert Draper in the New York Times Magazine, in which Trump said he was ”destroying the Republican Party” and was going to be blamed for foiling tax reform by blocking the health care plan. Part of Trump’s ”learning experience” was seeing how members of Congress may care more about what their constituents think than their president does. Trump may be the leader of the Republican Party, but he isn’t its CEO. Winning isn’t everything, and the ”little s***” matters, Trump likes to win. He told the country during the presidential campaign that we would all get so tired of winning under him that we would all be so bored. The Art of the Deal author hyped himself as the best dealmaker anyone’s ever seen. Instead, his first major effort at legislating handed him a stunning loss. It was a textbook chapter in how not to legislate. Part of the problem is that Trump wanted a win on health care so badly that he may have been blinded by his willingness to take any win. He outsourced the details to Ryan and others, and when it got difficult, Trump didn’t have enough policy knowledge to close the deal. ”How he was dismissive of policy concerns, and instead focused on the big picture and big political issue, that is never going to get you a win when you’re negotiating with Congress,” Conant warned. Health care affects   of the U. S. economy and includes lots of ”little” things that are important to real people’s lives. Every year Medicaid expansion is limited or rolled back means potentially millions of people who don’t have access to health care. Every ”essential health benefit” that’s put on the chopping block, for, oh say, whether your insurance is required to cover emergency room visits, means potentially thousands of dollars in or out of constituents’ and hospitals’ pockets. The ”little” stuff is the important stuff. Conservative writer Matt Lewis observed during the brief debate over the GOP health care bill how far it strayed from Trump’s campaign platform. ”He ran as a guy, ’I will solve your problems. I want to take care of everybody. Nobody’s going to lose anything. Everybody’s going to have the best health care.’ This health care plan is   for Donald Trump,” Lewis told NPR’s Mara Liasson. An enduring problem for the president may be that his brand of populism doesn’t necessarily match the   conservatism that defines the House GOP Conference. Sure, Trump made the phone calls and lobbied wavering Republicans, but he grew impatient and frustrated. After less than three weeks, he issued an ultimatum to those hardline conservatives  —   he was done negotiating: vote for this bill, or Obamacare stays in place. It was a big gamble, and he lost. ”Winning” isn’t everything it really is how you play the game in Washington that enables winning. And when it came to playing the legislative game, Trump’s lack of attention to policy detail, impatience and cavalier impetuousness cost him. ”He should know, from being engaged in a lot of negotiations, if you’re constantly looking over your shoulder and needing someone to fill in the details in the conversation sometimes that doesn’t wear real well,” the strategist said. Learning from Obama, There’s a reason it took former President Obama more than a year to pass the Affordable Care Act. He knew the details, and was often the best  —   and only  —   salesperson for it. He took the show on the road and got into the nitty gritty. Pete Souza, the former White House photographer, subtly made that point in a post on Instagram on Saturday: ”Give credit where it’s due, Obama was really good at that,” the strategist said. ”Obama was really good at working with individual members knowing the legislation as well or better than they did. They [the Trump White House] need to get to that level, or close to it, or there are going to be gross inefficiencies built in and opportunities that are lost.” That is going to have to include more   inside and outside the GOP conference, with outside conservative groups, as well as industry groups. ”He didn’t spend much time or political capital to get this bill through,” Conant said. Conant also pointed out that part of the problem is a level of distrust within the White House for everyone in ”the establishment” and anyone who hasn’t been on Team Trump all along. ”There continue to be a lot of vacancies,” Conant said, ”and they have rejected a lot of people who have government experience because of loyalty tests from the campaign.” That eliminates a lot of professionals with experience on Capitol Hill. If Trump doesn’t start to focus on the details and become more invested in how government works  —   something he has always been loath to do  —   he should expect similar results. ”There’s an eagerness on all sides to move on, to put this episode behind and move on to a new issue,” Conant said. ”But regardless of what issue we turn to next, Trump will likely run into the same internal GOP divisions and partisan opposition. To be a successful president, Trump will have to display skills that we have not yet seen from him. ”It will require humility, patience, outreach to opponents and the forging of consensus.”"
"Venezuela’s deeply unpopular government is holding more than 100 political prisoners  —   and some legal experts are including an American among them. Utah native Joshua Holt traveled to Venezuela last year to marry his Venezuelan fiancée. But in a bizarre twist, he’s ended up behind bars on weapons charges. An Eagle Scout and a Mormon missionary, Holt, 24, met Thamara Candelo through a religious website. After a whirlwind online romance, Holt and Candelo, a Venezuelan Mormon, agreed to get married in her home country. Venezuela is plagued by high crime, food shortages and political unrest that President Nicolás Maduro often blames on the United States. Holt’s mother, Laurie, says she urged her son not to go. ”I had heard things  —   that it was dangerous there, that they didn’t like the Americans there,” she tells NPR via Skype. ”And he’s like: ’Mom, it’s not that bad. Don’t worry. I’ll be safe. ’” After their honeymoon last year, the couple settled into Candelo’s apartment in a housing project on the outskirts of Caracas. They had planned to move to the U. S. with Candelo’s two young daughters, and were waiting for approval for her U. S. visa. But on June 30, an   police squad burst into Candelo’s apartment, where agents claimed to find an   assault rifle and a grenade. Holt and Candelo were hauled off to jail. On state television, Interior Minister Gustavo González linked the couple to a paramilitary gang that had recently killed a ruling party politician. But to some analysts, his evidence seemed thin. ”They don’t have a single fingerprint from the arms that match those of my client,” says Holt’s lawyer, Jeannette Prieto. Holt’s    María Candelo  —   who was in the couple’s apartment on the day of the raid  —   tells me she saw police slip the weapons into Holt’s luggage. She recalls a police agent shouting, ”Look what we found!”  This type of legal persecution happens all the time in Venezuela, says Alfredo Romero, who directs Foro Penal, an organization of lawyers that defends political prisoners. ”The executive power systematically has been repressing people and detaining people without any kind of legal justification,” Romero says. Facing waves of protests, the Maduro government arrested more than 5, 000 people on what Romero calls   charges since Maduro’s election in 2013. Most were eventually released. Romero believes Holt is being held to justify Maduro’s claim that the United States is trying to overthrow his government. ”Everything that can be used to support this propaganda, it’s OK for them,” he says. Holt and his wife have now spent nine months in jail without even a preliminary hearing. On visiting day, María Candelo arrives at the jail with clean clothes and a pot of spaghetti for her daughter and Holt. She says prison food doesn’t agree with Holt and he’s lost about 60 pounds. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch has pressed Holt’s case with the State Department, and issued a statement after meeting Jan. 18 with Rex Tillerson, now secretary of state, saying, ”What’s happening to one of our fellow Utahns in Venezuela is egregious.” William Cocks, a spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, told NPR in a statement that the U. S. embassy in Venezuela and the State Department ”are following this case closely.” The embassy, Cocks said, ”has repeatedly raised concerns about [Holt’s] health, the conditions of his detention, and his treatment with Venezuelan authorities. We call on the Venezuelan government to immediately release Joshua Holt on humanitarian grounds.” Venezuelan officials did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment. Back in Utah, Laurie Holt says she has been advised by the State Department not to travel to Venezuela to visit her son. (The State Department would not comment on what they call a private matter. A U. S. travel warning advises Americans not to travel to Venezuela ”due to violent crime, social unrest, and pervasive food and medicine shortages. ”) But she hasn’t given up hope. ”Eventually,” she says, ”he’ll come home and we’ll be able to go back to our normal lives. And I can stop crying every night.”"
"The number was nothing less than a shock to the system. In text set beside a series of photographs, each one depicting a girl of color staring back at the camera, the image that went viral on social media last week claims to lay bare an appalling truth: ”14 Girls Have Gone Missing in DC in the Last 24 Hours.” Trouble is, police say the claim is not true. On Friday, the city’s Metropolitan Police Department told NBC’s local affiliate that at no point in recent weeks have 14 girls disappeared from the city in a single day. Rather, D. C. ”has logged a total of 501 cases of missing juveniles, many of them black or Latino,” NBC reports, citing law enforcement. As of March 26, police say all but 22 of those cases have been solved. And as BuzzFeed News points out, New York Daily News writer Shaun King also rebutted the claim: Still, though the specific claim may be spurious, it has drawn national attention to an issue that has lately spurred some very real actions in the political realm. Activists argue the inaccuracy of the post itself should not detract from the wider issues it has highlighted: the dangers confronting runaway youth, and the racial dimensions of how law enforcement treats missing kids. First, let’s take the political implications. The Associated Press reports Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond,  . and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D. C.’s nonvoting representative in Congress, sent a letter last week to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director James Comey. In the letter, they called on Sessions and Comey to ”devote the resources necessary to determine whether these developments are an anomaly or whether they are indicative of an underlying trend that must be addressed.” The lawmakers pointed to an alarming number of their own. ”Ten children of color went missing in our nation’s capital in a period of two weeks and at first garnered very little media attention,” they wrote, according to the AP. ”That’s deeply disturbing.” The Metropolitan Police Department disputes the notion that there has been a recent uptick in the number of missing children. Statistics provided by the department indicate that so far in 2017, roughly 175 juvenile missing person cases have been opened per month  —   slightly less than the department’s monthly average over the past five years. These statistics did not offer a breakdown of demographics. Authorities instead contend that the public perception of an increase is actually a product of their more dedicated push to publicize these cases. As the Washington Post notes, the department recently began ”tweeting the name and photo of every missing person in the city whose case is deemed ’critical. ’” That has not deterred politicians’ efforts to solve what they see as the root problem of many of these cases. ”Often times, these girls are repeat runaways,” Kevin Harris, a spokesman for Mayor Muriel Bowser, tells the Post. ”So if we really want to help solve this problem and bring down the numbers, we have to break the cycle of young people, especially young girls, who repeatedly run away from home.” Toward that end, Bowser announced Friday that she will pursue a   initiatives ”to locate young people who have been reported as missing, provide critical resources to better address the issues that cause young people to run away from home, and support young people who may be considering leaving home.” Robert Lowery, vice president at The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, tells CNN that people sometimes dismiss runaways as innocuous, or entirely voluntary: ”The natural inclination (about a runaway) is the child’s behavioral problem is why they’ve left. We also see significant numbers of runaway children who are running away from a situation, whether it’s abuse or neglect or sexual abuse in the home. These children face unique risks when they’re gone so we applaud the conversation and we applaud the attention that this issue is being given.” Some activists see another problem at work here, too  —   an issue that exceeds D. C.’s city limits. According to the FBI’s crime statistics for 2014, nearly 37 percent of all missing persons under 18 in the U. S. were black  —   a disproportionate number that some see as a reflection of how law enforcement nationwide handles these cases. ”We also noticed that a lot of African American children that go missing are initially classified as runaways,” Natalie Wilson,   of the Black and Missing Foundation, tells USA Today. ”They do not get an Amber Alert or media coverage.” D. C. City Councilmember Trayon White puts the matter more bluntly to CNN. ”We just feel like, you know, if this was a white person or from another neighborhood, there would be more alarm about it.” D. C. police say simply that none of the open cases meet the fairly extensive criteria the Justice Department has set for issuing an Amber Alert. But Harris, the D. C. mayor’s spokesman, says questions and conversations such as these are welcomed, even encouraged by the city’s recent shift in approach to publicizing missing persons. ”This is what the [social media] policy was intended to do,” Harris said. ”It was intended to get these teens’ faces out there. It was intended to provoke conversation. We don’t ever want this to become the norm.”"
"The Justice Department is following through on an executive order to withhold as much as $4. 1 billion in federal grants from   ”sanctuary cities,” generally defined as places where local law enforcement limit their cooperation with federal authorities on immigration enforcement. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ appearance at the daily White House briefing is a signal that President Trump wants to move on to one of the issues he’s most comfortable talking about  —   illegal immigration  —   and to shift the conversation away from health care, after his failure last week to get the GOP alternative to replace and repeal the Affordable Care Act through Congress. While there is not a set definition of a ”sanctuary” state or city, the Justice Department gives the example of states or cities refusing immigration agents’ requests to hold immigrants who came to the country illegally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has identified 118 such jurisdictions. ”Such policies cannot continue,” Sessions said in Monday’s briefing. ”They make our nation less safe by putting dangerous criminals back on our streets.” Sessions said that in order to receive federal funds, state and local jurisdictions must certify they are complying with federal immigration laws. In addition, Sessions said that the Justice Department will take steps to ”claw back” grants already awarded to noncompliant cities as well. The announcement is in line with a January executive order that Trump signed shortly after taking office that directed the attorney general and the Homeland Security secretary to withhold such federal funds. Several major cities could be affected by the Justice Departments’ threat, including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D. C. After Trump’s elections, mayors in those cities reaffirmed their status as sanctuary cities. After president’s executive order on the issue, San Francisco sued the Trump administration over the orders, saying they violated the city’s sovereignty under the 10th Amendment. Sessions on Monday pointed to crimes allegedly perpetrated by immigrants who came to the U. S. illegally as a prime reason to enforce such policies, and argued that cities who fail to do so are putting their citizens at risk. ”DUIs, assaults, burglaries, drug crimes, gang crimes, rapes, crimes against children and murders,” the attorney general said. ”Countless Americans would be alive today  —   and countless loved ones would not be grieving today  —   if the policies of these sanctuary jurisdictions were ended.” As the New York Times has reported, a number of studies ”have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. And experts say the available evidence does not support the idea that undocumented immigrants commit a disproportionate share of crime.” Trump has campaigned with families whose loved ones were victims of crimes by immigrants, featuring speakers at the Republican National Convention and inviting several to his joint address to Congress last month. Opponents of such crackdowns on sanctuary cities say the order undermines the ability of localities to build trust with its citizens and protect them appropriately. ”Pressuring local law enforcement to take on immigration responsibilities undercuts the very oath they take to ’serve and protect’ the entirety of their community,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, told NPR after Trump’s January executive order. ”Smart law enforcement is built on intelligence gathering and trust, which are dramatically undermined once the cop on the corner is asking victims of crime about their immigration status.”"
"The Associated Press has tallied up business lost in North Carolina because of the controversial ”bathroom bill,” and estimates the total cost is at least $3. 76 billion over 12 years. That estimate is probably low, the wire service says. The law in question, HB2, was passed just over a year ago. It blocks local jurisdictions from passing protections for gay and transgender people, and requires transgender people in government facilities to use bathrooms that match the sex on their birth certificate. The bill has prompted a backlash from businesses and sports organizations, from Paypal to the NCAA. In December, the state and the city of Charlotte struck a deal to repeal the law, but it fell apart amid accusations of bad faith, and the law remains in place. To estimate how much the bill has cost the state, the AP drew on interviews and public records to tally up canceled relocations, conventions, projects, concerts and sporting events. ”A business project was counted only if AP determined through public records or interviews that HB2 was why it pulled out,” the wire service writes. Some business leaders are concerned that decisions might be made ”quietly,” where HB2 is a factor but not publicly discussed as such, AP notes. You can read the full piece from the Associated Press here, and see the full list of events and projects here. The largest loss is also the highest profile one: $2. 66 billion from Paypal backing out of plans to expand a center in Charlotte, creating some 400 jobs. Other major blows, according to the AP’s estimates: a half a billion dollars from Deutsche Bank canceling plans in Cary, N. C. a quarter of a billion from CoStar opening a research center in Virginia instead of North Carolina and $100 million from an NBA   Game being moved out of Charlotte. The AP notes that North Carolina is, in general, doing well economically: ”The vast majority of large companies with existing operations in the state   such as American Airlines, with its   hub in Charlotte   made no public moves to financially penalize North Carolina. ”Shortly after he signed the law, Republican  . Pat McCrory issued a statement assuring residents it wouldn’t affect North Carolina’s status as ’one of the top states to do business in the country.’ ”HB2 supporters say its costs have been tiny compared with an economy estimated at more than $500 billion a year, roughly the size of Sweden’s. . .. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, one of the strongest supporters, accused news organizations of creating a false picture of economic upheaval.”"
"Primate brains may have grown larger and more complex thanks to a   diet, a new study suggests. The researchers analyzed the brain sizes and diets of over 140 primate species spanning apes, monkeys, lemurs and lorises and found that those who munched on fruit instead of leaves had 25 percent more brain tissue, even when controlling for body size and species relatedness. Take spider monkeys and howler monkeys, for example. They both live in the rain forests of South America in groups of about 10. But where howler monkeys leisurely munch on trumpet tree leaves all day, spider monkeys venture out in small groups shortly after sunrise to forage for passion fruit and other ripe morsels. Despite their similar environments and social setting, spider monkeys have bigger brains than howlers. ”If you are foraging on    food, like fruit instead of leaves, then you need to have all the cognitive strategies to deal with that,” says Alex DeCasien, a doctoral candidate at New York University and   on the study. Fruit can vary from season to season, be tucked away in    nooks, and require skill and strength to crack into, smarter primates could be more apt to scope it out and reap its nutritious rewards. ”All of that is so much more complicated than just grabbing a leaf and eating it,” she says. And so, a diet of fruit may in turn have led to the evolution of the bigger brains over generations, she adds. Monkeys and apes who incorporated animal proteins into their diets also had slightly larger brains than the leaf eaters, the Nature Ecology and Evolution study found. Again, the researchers speculate this could be because primates need more cognitive power to hunt and consume things like frogs, birds, and insects compared to the brain power needed to eat leaves. But DeCasien says she and her colleagues were surprised to find that these omnivores have significantly smaller brains than  . They suspect it could be because many of these omnivores, like lemurs and lorises, eat insects. ”[Insects] may be abundant like leaves and might be easy to capture,” she says. The findings challenge a   scientific hypothesis that the size of social groups among primates is the biggest determinant of brain size. The bigger the social group, the more complex the social interactions, leading to the evolution of larger brains with more computing power, the theory suggests. Previous studies have shown that larger groups of primates with more complex social structures are correlated with larger brains. In fact, scientists have used that idea  —   called the social brain hypothesis  —   to explain why humans and certain other primates like chimpanzees and bonobos have bigger brains than other primate species. (Now, diet is thought to have played a big role in making human brains bigger than any of our primate cousin’s. As we’ve reported before, scientists think eating cooked meat gave our bodies some extra energy to fuel the building of bigger brains.) But the authors of the new study compared body size, diet, and social lives (factors like whether they were solitary or lived in pairs, monogamous or polygynous, and the size of their groups) of these various primate species to their average brain sizes. Overall, diet appeared to be a more consistent predictor of brain size for a species than social complexity  —   brain sized increased with fruit eating more consistently than with greater number of social connections. ”This study shows social group size is not a global predictor of brain size,” says Stephen Montgomery, a researcher studying brain and behavioral evolution at the University of Cambridge who wasn’t involved with the work. He adds that size of social groups don’t always correlate with bigger brains. Montgomery says this is because primates are really diverse in behavior and habitat  —   from solitary slow lorises that creep through swamp forests to zippy capuchin monkeys that live in groups nearing 40 members. So while a complex social life might drive one species to evolve bigger brains, another species’ brain size might be influenced by other factors, like diet. ”As the authors show, one exception may be diet,” he says, ”which directly relates to the basic currency of any biological system: energy.” But Robin Dunbar, a professor or evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford and creator of the social brain hypothesis isn’t entirely convinced by the new findings. Dunbar has researched the social brain hypothesis for two decades but wasn’t involved in the new study. ”They assume that social group size and diet are two alternative explanations for brain evolution,” he told The Salt in an email. ”They are not,” he says, suggesting that both could contribute together. Also, he adds that group size and social complexity is more of a predictor of the volume of the neocortex, a part of the brain that’s responsible for sensory perception, language, cognition and more. In other words, the more complex a social group, the bigger the size of the neocortex, according to previous studies. The authors of the new study should have considered looking more closely at the neocortex, Dunbar suggests. DeCasien agrees that diet and social lives are probably both at play here. ”Diet, social structures, cognitive abilities  —   they’re likely to have   together in primates,” DeCasien says. However, she is quick to note that these evolutionary trends take many generations and millions of years to manifest. So don’t go looking to eat more fruit because of the new findings  —   sure, they pack a nutritional punch, but it doesn’t mean they will make you and me any smarter."
"On the fringes of Beijing, surrounded by affluent housing compounds and the headquarters of some of China’s leading   firms, there’s a slum folks call Didi Village. Cars with mainly    license plates are parked under makeshift shelters outside crowded, ramshackle dwellings. Many of the village’s inhabitants are migrant workers who, until recently, worked for Didi Chuxing, China’s largest   service. One of them,    Wang Fei, started driving last July. Back then, he recalls, Didi and its main competitor, Uber, were locked in a price war. They were offering bonuses to drivers and steep discounts to riders in order to grab market share. ”We got into this business because of the bonuses,” he recalls in an interview in the village. ”Without them, there’s no point. And then, they started banning    cars and drivers.” These bans were announced by some local governments in January, apparently intended to protect local jobs and keep migrants from swelling urban populations. The political battle in China underscores a key fact about   around the world: they’re fighting to exist and that fight is supremely, intensively local. ”Now we can’t make any money” In China, it’s a migration issue, with local regulators concerned that these   jobs are bringing too many migrants into their cities. Meanwhile in the U. S. municipalities are often concerned for the legacy taxicab industry. In both countries, the companies have to pour resources into lobbying and public relations campaigns. It’s easy to gloss over what these   companies have in common because they’re also battling each other to exist. Uber went into China and ended up in an aggressive price war with Didi (which gave riders very cheap rates). It finally ended when, last August, Didi bought out Uber’s China arm, creating a company worth an estimated $35 billion. Rides have become scarcer and scarcer, and some commuters say they’ve gone back to hailing taxis. Wang Fei said he was forced to quit driving for Didi and go back to his old job moving homes. ”Hundreds of people in this village thought they had a chance to make money and bought cars. Now we can’t make any money, and we still have to pay for our cars’ maintenance,” he says. Wang Jun, an expert on corporate law at China University of Politics and Law in Beijing, describes the local rules as a step backward. ”As soon as they started trying to regulate it like the taxi industry, it undermined the legalization of the   business,” he says. In Beijing and many other cities, taxi companies are often monopolies with ties to municipal governments. Wang Jun argues that the government’s strategy is to try to force the   companies into a higher price segment, so as not to compete with taxi companies. The local regulations have also apparently hurt the government’s strategy to rescue China’s rust belt. Didi says that it provided 17 million   jobs last year, including 2. 4 million to workers laid off from   coal and steel plants last year, or about 60 percent of the total. It’s not clear where these workers will now go. Wang Jun says that in making the policy, China’s government apparently tried to balance the interests of the competing parties. ”On one hand, they considered the jobs created by   services,” he says. ”But on the other, they also considered the taxi driver’s income, and the interests of the taxi companies.” A partnership, Wang Jun says he advised the government not to make its   regulations too restrictive. ”Our main concern is that the regulations will kill off this fledgling industry,” he says, ”in which case the taxi industry won’t improve, and people’s transportation won’t get better.” He draws several conclusions from the fate of the   business in China. ”We mustn’t make rules too hastily. We’ve got to give innovations time and space to develop,” Wang Jun says. ”Also, we shouldn’t stifle the development of innovative industries by forcing them into the regulatory frameworks of existing industries.” Recently Didi signed an agreement with the government in Shenzhen, China, to share data that the private company is collecting  ” for example, on ridership trends, where there’s congestion and at what times. The purported purpose is to help a municipality troubleshoot transportation and improve it.  That novel partnership may be politically savvy. If Didi wants to survive, the company may benefit from becoming indispensable to potential enemies. Back in Didi Village, women   cured pork for dinner. It’s a specialty of China’s southwest region of Chongqing, where Wang Fei and many of the drivers come from. Wang criticizes the local government regulations as  . ”The central government’s policies aren’t bad,” he says. ”But they change when they get to the local level. Local governments just don’t obey Beijing.” But just in case, Wang still has his car, and if the rules change again, he says he can go back to driving for Didi."
"More than 650, 000 prisoners are released every year in the U. S. but no federal agency tracks the unemployment rate for this population. Experts say low reading and technological literacy, as well as reluctance among employers to hire former convicts, means many drop out of the labor force altogether. Low employment levels for that group cost between $57 billion and $65 billion annually in lost economic activity, according to a 2010 study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. But there are a handful of novel initiatives trying to turn that narrative around, by bringing college education and professional training, and even entrepreneurship programs behind bars. Advocates of such programs say by teaching inmates at a higher level, they reduce financial and social costs to society. One that gets a lot of attention is the Bard Prison Initiative. The privately funded college baccalaureate program started in 1999, and now provides college education to more than 300 students in six locations within the New York state prison system. Last year, in addition to education, BPI started a pilot program to pair graduates with employers to give them yearlong professional internships. ”We simply look for employers who will treat our alumni like they would anyone else,” says Max Kenner, BPI’s founder. But these students are not like everyone else, in many respects. That is clear the moment you try to enter the classrooms at the maximum security Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, N. Y, where BPI runs one of its biggest programs. Getting there means passing through security, two checkpoints and four rolling steel cage doors. Professor Delia Mellis teaches a modern U. S. history class and, when I arrive, 18 men dressed in green jumpsuits are discussing sexual identity politics. ”I don’t think he’s saying that I think he’s making a distinction between it being gay acts  —   homosexual acts  —   and it being a gay identity,” one student interjects. Mellis responds, ”That’s absolutely his central idea, right?” The students appear more engaged than some of the history seminars I remember. And in fact, the syllabus, requirements and professors are no different than they are at Bard College’s main campus, 30 miles away. Glenn Rodriguez is a BPI social studies major in his senior year. An avid reader, he says he still refers back to his notes on cultural anthropology, a class he adored. ”We kind of dealt with the notion of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. . .. It shows you how we have a tendency to kind of see people as ’other,’ ” he says, a frame of mind that helped him put his own troubled childhood in context. Rodriguez’ parents died in a violent   when he was 3. At age, 16 he was convicted of murder before finishing high school. Now 43, his release is scheduled in May. He then plans to finish his senior credits and get his master’s in social work. When he isn’t in class, he says, he’s hitting the books. ”The weekends and Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’m locked in the cell reading and studying. . .. It never ends, it seems like it never ends,” he laughs. ”I was always the kind of kid who wanted a challenge, and so this is my approach now.” Professor Robert Tynes, who teaches African politics at BPI, says his inmate students all show high levels of motivation. ”The close reading, the questions they have are so fine and well thought out that the class just takes off by itself,” he says. ”It’s great. It’s one of the best teaching experiences I’ve ever had.” Bard is exceptional, both in the sense that it is rare, and that in the level of academic rigor it demands. BPI is highly selective only 10 to 25 percent of applicants are accepted. It was born when   incarcerations rapidly filled prisons, and politics favored those arguing criminals deserved punishment, not education. The 1994 crime bill passed under President Bill Clinton made prisoners ineligible for government education subsidies, effectively eliminating access to college behind bars. Since then, about two dozen college baccalaureate programs have returned in 28 states. Kenner was a Bard undergraduate when he founded BPI. He says the cardinal error many people make is setting limits on what’s possible for prisoners. ”If we’re going to provide higher education in unusual circumstances, why assume less of people?” he says. ”If we came in and offered something that aspired to less, attrition would be higher and the impact would be lower.” The recidivism rate for BPI graduates is 4 percent, compared to averages that run as high as 60 percent. A 2013 RAND Corp. study found providing college education cost far less than housing inmates, because it increased the odds of   employment, and reduced the incidence of repeat offenses by 43 percent. Still, employment remains a challenge because of low literacy rates and little familiarity with technology. Many employers shy away from hiring criminals with violent pasts, which includes most BPI students. Hiring policies are also starting to destigmatize incarceration. More than 150 cities and counties have laws preventing employers from asking about prior convictions in initial job screenings. President Barack Obama adopted similar policies at federal agencies, and publicly encouraged businesses to hire more former inmates. Joanne Page says she sees that in her work as CEO of The Fortune Society, a nonprofit that provides job training to former inmates. She says the odds are already stacked against prisoners, who are often ineligible for social safety net programs, may have strained family relations and have little to no professional network to fall back on. ”What college does is give you better odds,” she says. ”And it also gives you a skill set and a sense of self that give you better odds also.” Increasingly, some conservative scholars agree. ”Economically, it doesn’t make sense to keep people incarcerated as long as we have with no great results,” says Gerard Robinson, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. ”Also, the right thing to do is not only give them a second chance, but to also admit the fact that many of them didn’t receive a first chance at school.” At Eastern Correctional, Dyjuan Tatro is trying to take as many BPI classes as he can before he is released this summer. Tatro has nothing of a hardened criminal look. His youthful face is framed by a manicured goatee. Inside the bare walls of prison where sounds echo everywhere, you have to lean in to hear his   voice. ”You know, I wake up in the morning, and I don’t say to myself, ’I’m in prison,’ ” he says. ”I try to think of it like I’m in college. And you can’t entirely separate the two out, but it’s healthier to think about it that way. It gives you meaning and it gives you purpose.” In 2015, Tatro was on a team of Bard student inmates who beat Harvard in a debate. Tatro is a math major with a 3. 72 GPA. The    has served 11 years for drug crimes and gang shootings  —   half of it at Eastern Correctional, which has become a desired destination among prisoners because of Bard. There is a photo of Tatro bowing and getting hugs from his teammates after winning the debate. I ask him how that moment felt. ”It was just like: Whew! there’s good things in the world, that the possibilities are out there,” he says. ”It allows you to dream in a different way.” For Tatro the dream includes a career in cancer research and bioinformatics. When I ask him how he intends to break into a professional career, he says he hopes to lean on the tight network of other BPI grads before him. And, he says, ”what I leave and go do also creates opportunities and prospects for the guys leaving here behind me.” One of the people in his that network is Lavar Gibson, a BPI graduate and one of its interns now working in the financial division of the Ford Foundation in New York City. When Gibson was released two years ago, after 20 years in New York State’s maximum security prison system, he had never used the Internet or a cellphone. Now, at age 38, he’s finishing his degree, taking an online finance course at Cornell, and hoping to start a career in finance. If that seems like a long shot, it doesn’t faze him. ”It’s always been the challenges that I’ve gone for,” he tells me. ”Professors that people said, ’stay away from.’ Those are the professors that I wanted, the classes I wanted to take, because I believed they offered the opportunity for growth.” Prison made a bookish man of Gibson. In the prison yards, his informal education started by reading books and learning from older inmates with similar interests. His new identity as a learned man did not help him at the law firm where he worked soon after his release. Coworkers treated him differently when they discovered he had been in prison. Even now, he says, family and friends struggle to accept he is a changed man. ”It’s easy to want to keep somebody at a certain place,” he explains. ”People do it with their children every day. And their children change and they grow, and they become. And if you can’t appreciate that change, you really can’t appreciate life, but that’s life.”"
"By an overwhelming   vote, NFL owners have approved the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas  —   though the team will still remain in the Bay Area for at least the 2017 season and possibly longer. ”My father always said, ’the greatness of the Raiders is in its future,’ ” Raiders owner Mark Davis said in a statement Monday, ”and the opportunity to build a   stadium in the entertainment capital of the world is a significant step toward achieving that greatness.” The move  —   whenever it should inevitably take place  —   will end the Raiders’     relationship with the team’s longtime home. Founded in 1960, the Raiders spent their first two decades as a club in Oakland, notching two Super Bowl titles before they left town for Los Angeles in the early 1980s. That southern sojourn ended in 1995, when the team returned to the waiting embrace of the city it left more than a decade earlier. But recently, Davis had appeared to be itching to leave the city once more, going in on a bid with the Chargers to move both teams to Los Angeles  —   a bid that voted down by NFL owners early last year. The Chargers ultimately did complete a deal to move to LA earlier this year, though. Now, the Raiders will be joining the Vegas Golden Knights  —   an expansion ice hockey team recently also approved by the NHL  —   as the shiny new professional franchises in a city that long had none to call its own. ”It truly is an exciting time to be from Las Vegas,” Golden Knights chairman and CEO said in a statement, according to ESPN. ”There is only a select group of cities in North America that are home to both an NHL and an NFL franchise and Vegas is now one of them. This alone should be a great source of pride for our community and our fans.” ESPN noted that the Raiders’ star quarterback, Derek Carr, tweeted a statement thick with mixed feelings about the move. Still, Carr and Co. will have a little while longer to get their things packed  —   likely years, in fact. As The Wall Street Journal reports, ”The Raiders have previously said they plan to remain in Oakland until at least 2020”  —   partly because the stadium the team intends to share with University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is not expected to be ready until then. And The Washington Post points out the Raiders have a lease on their Oakland stadium that gives them   term options for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. The jury’s out on how well this long goodbye will play with the team’s Bay Area fan base. ”I just hope that in the future, as we play in Oakland this year, that they understand that it wasn’t the players, it wasn’t the coaches that made this decision. It was me that made it. And if they have anybody to talk to about it, it should be me,” Davis said at a news conference. ”And I will, in the coming days, try to explain to them what went into making this difficult decision.”"
"One of Germany’s largest banks mistakenly sent more than $5 billion to other banks, according to German media. It’s not the first stumble for   development bank KfW, which famously sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Lehman Brothers on the same day the U. S. bank filed for bankruptcy. The most recent error took place in February and was flagged by Germany’s central Bundesbank, according to business newspaper Handelsblatt. In an emailed statement, KfW  —   full name: Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau  —   told German media that it recovered the money that it had transferred by mistake. The bank says the problem was due to human error, as a computer programming mistake prompted the bank’s automated payment system to repeat transfers to four banks multiple times. The bank says it’s investigating the mistake to ensure it won’t be repeated. The scale of the error prompted Deutsche Welle to resurrect the title of ”Germany’s dumbest bank” to describe KfW. That’s the label that was first applied to the bank by the tabloid Bild, when it erroneously sent Lehman Brothers more than $300 million in 2008. Despite its unflattering nickname, KfW currently reigns as the World’s Safest Bank, according to Global Finance magazine, which has ranked the bank in its top spot for five years running. In September, KfW reported having balance sheet volume of half a trillion euros and a   profit of more than $2 billion, according to Bild. Other banks have also made   mistakes. As Deutsche Welle reports, ”In 2015, Deutsche Bank managed to make an erroneous payment of nearly $6 billion to a hedge fund. The money was returned the next day.”"
"Updated 2:45 p. m. ET, President Trump’s    and adviser Jared Kushner is going to talk to the Senate Intelligence Committee about his meetings with Russian officials, Senate sources tell NPR. The committee is looking into Russia’s attempt to meddle in last year’s presidential election, as well as possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. Kushner’s appearance before the committee was first reported by The New York Times. The newspaper reported that Kushner met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December at Trump Tower and also with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Russian bank that is under U. S. sanctions imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It is unclear when Kushner will appear before the committee or whether the meeting will be open. A senior White House official tells NPR’s Tamara Keith that Kushner volunteered to speak to the panel and notes that he was the official primary point of contact with foreign governments and officials. White House press secretary Sean Spicer addressed this at Monday’s press briefing and contended there was nothing to see here. ”Given the role that he played” as a point of contact with foreign governments for the Trump team, Spicer said, ”he met with countless individuals. That was part of his job.” He added, ”You’re acting as though there’s something nefarious about doing what he was actually tasked to do.” Spicer said that it’s not every day a person in a senior position volunteers to talk to the Senate Intelligence Committee and that ”based on the media frenzy that existed around this, he volunteered to make sure that he said, ’Hey, we made some contacts, I’d be glad to explain them. Let me know if you’d like to talk.’ Plain and simple.” The committee is scheduled to hold its first open hearing in its Russia investigation on Thursday with expert witnesses on Russia and cybersecurity. The revelation about the committee’s interest in Kushner comes as the White House was preparing to announce that he’ll be in charge of a new White House Office of American Innovation, which the Washington Post reports will be a sort of ”SWAT Team of strategic consultants . .. staffed by former business executives and . .. designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington.” This is by no means the first time a presidential administration has attempted to rework the Washington bureaucracy. In recent history, similar efforts were undertaken at least as far back as the Reagan administration, often resulting in thick reports that, more often than not, were quietly shelved."
"In Lewiston, Maine, more people than ever are showing up at the Franco Center for La Rencontre, a monthly luncheon that encourages French conversation. Of the 200 people who come to break bread together, most are Lewiston natives who are older and white. But these days, you’ll also find black immigrants from Africa gathered around the luncheon tables. They’re French speakers who want to improve their English and get to know their neighbors. That interest has also spurred creation of local French clubs that meet several times a week. It’s the latest chapter in the story of French Canadian immigrants whose labor powered mill towns around New England but whose children and grandchildren felt the sting of discrimination. Many continued to be discouraged from speaking French until as late as the 1960s. Cecile Thornton of Lewiston says as a teenager, she felt embarrassed  —   even ashamed  —   of her French Canadian heritage. ”A lot of the ’dumb Frenchmen’ jokes were going around back then,” she says. ”And so I worked really hard actually to lose my Franco accent.” Now, at 61 years old, she says it’s a different story. In French club, Thornton and other Lewiston locals regularly swap stories with refugees and asylum seekers from Burundi, Rwanda and Congo. In French, Julie Mushiya of Kinshasa tells Thornton and others about health care in her country. And Thornton has become so close with the new Maine residents that in January, she attended a friend’s wedding in Rwanda. The French clubs have also become de facto support groups. Many of the African immigrants are anxious about the climate for refugees in the U. S. ”We definitely do talk about the politics, and, you know, the Americans try to comfort us and tell us hopefully it’s going to be OK,” says Bright Lukusa, a    asylum seeker from Congo. ”And I choose to believe.” There have always been pockets of French speakers in Maine. But Mary   a French professor at Bates College, says the new immigrants have made that skill useful. ”They’re not fluent in English, and they need to speak French,” she says. ”And so these   who can speak French suddenly can find a public function for their French language.” She says it’s also a way of validating the French Canadians who made history here and welcoming a new wave of French speakers  —   this time, from Africa. Susan Sharon is the deputy news director with the NPR member Maine Public Radio. You can follow her @SusanSharon1."
"  colleges have faced federal and state investigations in recent years for their aggressive recruiting tactics  —   accusations that come as no surprise to author Tressie McMillan Cottom. Cottom worked as an enrollment officer at two different   colleges, but quit because she felt uncomfortable selling students an education they couldn’t afford. Her new book, Lower Ed, argues that   colleges exploit racial, gender and economic inequality. Cottom tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that   institutions tend to focus their recruiting on students who qualify for the maximum amount of student aid. ”That happens to be the poorest among us,” she says. ”And because of how our society is set up, the poorest among us tend to be women and people of color.” Though   colleges hold out the promise of a better future, Cottom notes that the credentials they offer tend to be 30 to 40 percent more expensive than the same credentials from a nonprofit public institution. What’s more, she says, students at   institutions often drop out before completing their degree, which means many students are left mired in debt and with credits that are not easily transferable. ”The system that we’ve come to rely on to increase access to higher education to the most vulnerable among us really only compounds their poverty and their risk factors,” Cottom says. ”That’s the exact opposite of what higher education is supposed to do.” On what the enrollment process was like when she was working at a   college, The process starts with the first phone call. So when you see those ads that say, ”Call      to change your life today,” when you call that number someone like me would answer on the other line. And the first thing we would do was to try to get as much of your contact information and your demographic information as possible, because we needed to know how to find you. Once I had gotten that information, my next goal was to get you to visit the school as quickly as possible, and I mean in the next 24 to 48 hours. . .. To sign up for school, they had to physically sign what we called an enrollment agreement. So having them physically there removed all of the barriers to them not signing up. . .. Once that decision [to enroll] had been made, all of your other decisions were made for you. . .. We ordered all of your books we handled all of your financial aid paperwork for you we ordered your high school transcripts for you. The process from the point of contacting someone like me at the technical school to the first time you could show up for the first day of class was, on average, about two weeks. It’s a pretty rapid process and part of making the process rapid was to have someone like me holding your hand throughout. On why   colleges are more expensive than nonprofit colleges, The only way they have to generate revenue or profit is from tuition. So if you’re a financialized organization or a corporate     college that relies on tuition growth to generate your profit, the only way you can do that is to keep increasing costs. So they tend to peg the tuition costs to the fully allowable amount that students are allowed to borrow from the federal student aid program. On when she started to feel conflicted about working at a   college, When I saw relatively poor and   students deciding to take on both [federal] student loan debt and private student loan debt and inviting in their family members to cosign on additional loans  —   so sort of spreading their risk around into their social networks so that they could afford this education  —   I really started to ask whether they could ever afford it at all. Should they have been there if they had to go through all of those steps to afford the tuition? On what happens when students drop out of a   college, Debt has made our choice of higher education options far riskier than they were 20 or 30 years ago. And in the   college sector that’s especially acute because those students are more likely to be poor or   or sort of dancing along the line of poverty. . .. Because of that,   colleges really aren’t set up to transform these students’ lives in the way that we think higher education is supposed to do. . .. What we see in the   college sector is those students drop out with more debt, making it harder for them to return, especially if they have problems repaying that debt while they are out of school. . .. When they do return, it is easier for them to return to another   college because those credits earned . .. are not as portable. So in many ways what happens is that the students in the   college sector are really cycling in and out and through the   college sector, which we know is more expensive, where they will incur more debt and where they have lower outcomes when they graduate, if they ever do graduate. On how   colleges exploit the belief that all education is good education  Education is foundational to the narrative of social mobility in this country. . .. Probably nothing is more American than the idea that, through hard work, everybody can separate themselves from the circumstances of their birth through achievement and hard work we can all get ahead. . .. People actually believe in that  —   even poor people who have very little reason to believe in it because they’ve gone to relatively poor   schools and had negative experiences. Over and over again, I heard people espousing their faith in education. . .. The problem is when our education gospel doesn’t make a distinction between good education and risky education. And here in that gap is where   colleges flourish. . .. If we say there’s no such thing as ”bad school,” it makes a job like the one I once had at the technical school much easier to do. It is easy [to] sell people when they . .. [don’t] understand the idea that school could actually leave them worse off than when they started."
"A new report shows that the refugee crisis hasn’t slowed down  —   and people don’t always end up where you think. The flow of refugees is steadily increasing, according to the U. N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). As of   there were 16. 5 million refugees globally, 5 million more than in  . More than 30 percent of all refugees as of   came from Syria, the largest source of global refugees. This growing refugee population brings many challenges. Because of school shortages in overcrowded camps, refugee children are five times more likely to be out of school than   children, reports the UNHCR. Preventable, treatable diseases like diarrhea, measles and malaria threaten the health of refugee children, especially those under 5. And in many cases, parents aren’t able to secure jobs outside the camps to provide an income for their families. The latest figures from the U. N. Refugee Agency give a sense of the global numbers. They also illustrate how complicated the refugee situation is today. First things first: Who is a refugee?  Refugees are defined by the UNHCR as people forced to flee their country because of persecution, war or violence. They are granted refugee status by the country they entered  —   a designation that protects their human rights by international law and makes them eligible for many types of aid. UNHCR’s figures also include people in   situations: those who’ve entered another country for the same reasons as refugees but have not been granted refugee status by the government. Pakistan and Turkey host lots of refugees, but the story behind each country’s refugee situation is very different.  The UNHCR report, released in March, shows that Lebanon, Pakistan and Turkey hosted most of the world’s refugees as of    —   a combined total of 5. 4 million. In Turkey, 2. 7 million of its 2. 8 million refugees have come from neighboring Syria, pouring into the country as a result of the Syrian civil war in 2011. The majority of Pakistan’s 1. 6 million refugees, by contrast, are Afghans who’ve been there for more than 30 years. In some cases, the children of those Afghans, although born in Pakistan, are considered refugees largely because Pakistan doesn’t offer a path to citizenship, says the UNCHR. That’s not the case in Turkey. In January, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, in a television broadcast, that his government would grant citizenship to some Syrian and Iraqi refugees as long as ”all the necessary checks have been carried out.” The U. S. also provides a pathway to citizenship. After 12 months, refugees admitted to the country are required to apply for a green card, giving them the status of legal permanent resident. Today’s new refugees do not all want to head west. ”There’s a misconception that refugees want to come to the U. S. to get jobs or go to our shopping malls,” says Chris Boian, a UNHCR spokesperson. ”But they want to stay as close to their homes as possible so that they can return to their lives as soon as they are able to do so.” That explains why the top   countries neighbor conflict areas like South Sudan and Syria, he says. ”As long as it’s safe there and [the country] has things that people need to have a life, they’ll remain there.” It’s only when refugees realize they may not be able to get access to basic resources and a decent quality of life in their new host countries that they attempt the often dangerous journey to the West, says Marta Foresti, managing director at the Overseas Development Institute. A new study from the Overseas Development Institute found that the main reason that Eritrean refugees decide to move on to Europe as a last resort is when they’ve been denied the right to work in neighboring Ethiopia. Refugees often end up in poor countries and small countries that don’t have ample resources to support them. UNHCR compared the number of refugees as of   to the overall size of a country’s economy, measured by gross domestic product (see chart, above). The report found that   and   nations in the Middle East, Asia and Africa carry the biggest burden. ”A fairly small number of   or   countries carry the weight for everyone else,” says Boian. These countries do not have enough wealth to provide basic resources for newcomers  —   and the influx puts a strain on their economies, says Boian. Although the countries receive UNHCR aid, the agency can’t keep up, he says. ”We’re one of the only agencies that starts our budget at zero every year. We rely very heavily on support of the governments of the world.” The U. S. for example, has given $5. 9 billion in humanitarian aid to Syria since their civil war started in 2011, which works to about $1 billion a year. That includes funding for relief groups assisting refugees and for refugee support in neighboring countries. Still, it’s not enough. In January, the U. N. and NGO partners appealed for $4. 6 billion to aid Syrian refugees and host nations. Smaller countries are also playing an outsize role. Looking at the proportion of refugees to national population, UNHCR found that smaller nations have some of the highest proportions of hosted refugees. For some countries like South Sudan and Chad, that’s a result of geography  —   they’re closest to big sources of refugees. For others, it’s a result of policy. For example, if refugees attempt to arrive to Australia by boat, they’re sent instead a detention camp on the tiny island republic of Nauru. Palestine is not included in the U. N. Refugee Agency report.  There are over 5 million Palestinian refugees  —   the largest group of refugees in the world, according to the U. N. But they’re not included in the UNHCR data and are under the jurisdiction of another U. N. agency, United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The reason for the separate category rests in their history. NPR’s Greg Myre explained, in a story from October 2015: ”The 1948   War created the original Palestinian refugee population of some 700, 000. Many have long since died, but their descendants are also classified as refugees and are concentrated in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinian territories.” There are actually more internally displaced people than refugees.  IDPs, as they’re called, leave their towns, cities and villages for the same reasons as refugees but remain in their own country. Out of 63. 9 million people that UNHCR calls ”persons of concern”  —   refugees,   IDPs, stateless individuals and others  —   37. 5 million were IDPs in 2015."
"President Trump continues to own hundreds of businesses around the world, and he has staffed his administration with wealthy people who have ties to a complex web of companies. Those financial entanglements have prompted government ethics experts to raise concerns about conflicts of interest. They are worried that this president is violating the U. S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars elected officials from benefiting from foreign governments. Also, in various legal filings and lawsuits, they have raised questions about whether the financial interests of the president and his appointees may be influencing public policy. As NPR and other media outlets continue to cover these concerns and conflicts of interest, a question frequently arises: Who oversees the ethics of the president and other   officials? Who has the power to investigate or enforce ethics rules and laws? The answer can be as entangled as the government bureaucracies involved. Of course, the media, whistleblowers and the courts are key elements of the accountability ecosystem. A number of agencies or government bodies also have a hand in holding presidents and appointees accountable on ethics and conflicts of interest. But a few play an outsize role  —   though only some of them have direct purview over the activities of the president. Below is a reference sheet. Power: Investigative, Disciplinary, Along with the ultimate power to impeach a president, lawmakers can subpoena executive branch documents and officials, making them one of the most powerful investigators when it comes to the actions of the president individually and the executive branch broadly. This power can be claimed by any congressional committee, depending on the subject matter, including ad hoc special committees. Ethics experts particularly point to the House Oversight Committee and sometimes the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz,   has launched inquiries into the actions of Trump’s first national security pick, Michael Flynn urged a review of presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway for promoting a Trump brand and asked questions about Trump’s Washington hotel and the president’s handling of classified information. Chaffetz has faced criticism, including at a February town hall meeting, for not doing enough to keep a check on the White House. Several other congressional panels  —   such as Senate Judiciary and House Intelligence  —   have pursued additional inquiries in recent months, including Russia’s role in the election and Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the Obama administration wiretapped his phones during the campaign. Power: Investigative, Disciplinary, The Justice Department is the one agency with the power to investigate and prosecute potential criminal violations by all public officials, including the president. The Public Integrity Section often receives referrals on conflicts of interest. ”Most paths lead to the Justice Department,” says Peter Henning, law professor at Wayne State University and a former federal criminal prosecutor. The president and vice president are exempt from many of the ethics rules that apply to Cabinet members and other government employees. But criminal laws that do apply  —   such as   and illegal gratuity or some of the federal election laws  —   are enforced by the DOJ, typically at the discretion of the attorney general. The DOJ also has the authority to interpret the Emoluments Clause of the U. S. Constitution, which is the subject of one of the early lawsuits against Trump. It prohibits federal officeholders, including the president, from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments. A group of ethics advocates had pushed the U. S. attorney in Manhattan to investigate foreign payments accepted by the Trump Organization. That U. S. attorney has since been fired, as the new administration has dismissed federal prosecutors appointed by former President Barack Obama. Advocacy groups have called for a special prosecutor  —   independent of the Justice Department  —   to investigate Russia’s role in the election and other matters. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, has recused himself from investigations related to the presidential campaigns, following questions about whether he misled Congress regarding communications with the Russian ambassador. Power: Advisory, OGE, formed in the fallout of the Watergate scandal, reviews financial disclosures of Cabinet appointees and negotiates ethics agreements  —   often involving sales of assets  —   to avoid the influence of personal financial holdings on policy decisions. OGE also oversees an ethics program that vets thousands of federal employees across agencies to review their financial disclosures and ensure they comply with various    rules. Presidents and vice presidents, however, are exempt from some government ethics regulations, including the financial    statute. Director Walter M. Shaub Jr. has publicly criticized Trump’s decision to remain the owner of hundreds of businesses while president and has pushed against what he called an ”extraordinary assertion” by the White House lawyer that many OGE rules didn’t apply to Executive Office employees. OGE documents obtained by NPR also show the Trump administration has been slow to submit ethics documents. These documents also reflect highly complex financial holdings. The White House, in response, said the reports undergo extensive legal review before submission to OGE. Power: Investigative, The FBI is part of the Justice Department, but it acts with autonomy. It can start independent investigations into potential violations of criminal (not civil) statutes, though it depends on the attorney general and DOJ prosecutors to file charges. FBI Director James Comey has confirmed that the agency is investigating ”the nature of any links” between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government and ”whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts” to influence the election. Trump, without offering any evidence, has charged that Obama’s FBI wiretapped his phones during the campaign  —   an accusation rejected by Comey, who was appointed by Obama in 2013. Comey has 6   years left in his term and has said he has no plans to resign. Power: Investigative, Advisory, Virtually all major federal agencies  —   though not the White House  —   have an independent,   watchdog known as an inspector general. That means, with the exception of White House officials, most Cabinet secretaries and other key staff in departments and agencies would fall under the purview of one of these internal investigators. The same goes for White   matters linked to the agencies, for instance the   Government Services Administration, which has been criticized for maintaining  —   and later affirming as valid  —   a   lease contract with the Trump Organization despite a ban on leases involving elected officials. Though IGs cannot prosecute, they issue public reports, make corrective recommendations and sometimes have the power to sanction employees or otherwise curtail questionable behavior that might be taking place at their agency or department. And they can refer cases to the Justice Department. ”Criminal referrals are paid attention to at the DOJ,” Henning says. Power: Advisory, Investigative, The president’s legal advisers  —   led by general counsel Don McGahn  —   are the team meant to prevent any potential ethics violations by White House staff. But unlike inspectors general  —   who don’t take direction of agency chiefs  —   the White House lawyers ”generally act at the direction [of] and for the president,” says Kathleen Clark, who teaches government ethics law at Washington University in St. Louis. ”The president is their client.” Chief ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino has been front and center in one of the earliest White House ethics disputes, involving Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway, who was widely seen as having violated ethics rules by promoting Ivanka Trump’s brand during a TV interview. Passantino argued that Conway’s mistake was inadvertent and he did not pursue disciplinary action, as advised by the Office of Government Ethics. In the same letter, Passantino also stated that ”many regulations promulgated by [OGE] do not apply to employees of the Executive Office of the President”  —   a stance forcefully countered by the OGE director. Power: Investigative, Advisory, GAO is an independent arm of Congress that keeps account of how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars  —   a sort of internal government auditor or accountant. When reviewing spending by agencies, GAO’s audits are typically broad  —   not focusing on individuals or looking for wrongdoing. GAO is the office that looks into potential abuses of funding or investigates questions about the president misusing public funds, says Lawrence Noble, senior director of regulatory reform programs and general counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. Power: Investigative, State AGs have limited power when it comes to federal officials. But given Trump’s ongoing ownership of hundreds of businesses  —   and his advisers and staff keeping some business ties  —   state attorneys general have purview over those financial connections. For instance, the Trump Organization has corporate registration in the states of New York, Florida and Delaware. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has gone after the Trump Foundation and Trump University. Lucia Maffei is an NPR Business Desk intern."
"Airlines have surprisingly strict dress codes for people traveling on ”buddy passes,” and astonishingly   explanations. Those are two takeaways from a story on Sunday that prompted shock and outrage on social media. Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America,   as United turned away two girls in their early teens trying to board a flight. The reason? They were wearing leggings. Another girl, who Watts estimates was around 10, put on a dress and was allowed on the plane. The apparent father, who was wearing shorts, was also allowed to board, Watts says. The official United Twitter account responded that United has ”the right to refuse transport for passengers who are barefoot or not properly clothed.” Cue uproar: Who would say a preteen girl wearing leggings or yoga pants wasn’t ”properly clothed”? Since when do airlines police the attire of young women anyway? Celebrities from Chrissy Teigen to William Shatner chimed in to the tidal wave of   outrage. Almost immediately, Twitter users who work in aviation, or have family who do, suspected what was actually going on  —   that is, that despite United’s response, the girls weren’t ordinary passengers but were flying on ”buddy passes.” Two hours later, United confirmed that. Here’s what most air travelers don’t know: When an airline employee gives free or discounted flights to a relative or friend, the ticket comes with strings and limitations. There’s no guarantee that ” ” travelers will actually get a seat  —   you’re flying standby, and only get to board if there’s room. And there’s a code of conduct behaving obnoxiously might get the person who gave you the pass in trouble. That also includes a dress code. It seems archaic, given the casual attire of modern air travel, but airlines believe that buddy pass users, like employees, are representing the airline. Online guides to using buddy passes warn that the dress codes are no joke. On Twitter, people with experience said that it’s not just leggings  —   depending on the airline, all kinds of ordinary clothes can keep a   user grounded. United’s   guidelines currently allow jeans and some shorts  —   hence why the father was allowed to board  —   but don’t allow   pants, among other things. In a statement on Monday, United did not apologize for enforcing its buddy pass dress code. They explained the rule and said they regularly remind employees of it. ”To our regular customers, your leggings are welcome,” the airline said. The explanation hasn’t been as popular as the outrage. And it hasn’t satisfied everybody: Some people have said that even a strict dress code shouldn’t bar girls from wearing leggings. One popular   site argues that United’s dress code for buddy passes is sexist, in comparison to other airlines, because it sets limits that mostly affect women. (The site still noted that the buddy pass users should have followed the dress code, and the gate agent did nothing wrong.) But there’s one thing everyone agrees on: United’s original response on Twitter was wrong and totally unhelpful. Also, there’s general agreement that we’ve all paid too much attention to this brouhaha already. Even Watts, the woman who originally tweeted about the scene, is frustrated by how much attention she’s received for it. ”Even more outrageous than leggings discrimination and lousy corporate policy, is the fact that there was a shooting in Cincinnati and a shooting in Las Vegas this weekend and so many more shootings this week and weekend in which people were killed and injured,” the gun control advocate wrote on Medium. ”Not to mention, a serious issue with missing black women and girls . .. ”But here we are talking about leggings.”"
"Leaders of the large and unprecedented   protests that roiled parts of Hong Kong in 2014 have been told to report to police on charges of causing a public nuisance, in an apparent crackdown that comes one day after Hong Kong selected a new chief executive. On Monday, police called at least nine people behind the Umbrella Movement demonstrations to inform them of the charges, which could result in jail time, according to the South China Morning Post. In its rolling coverage today, the newspaper said that leaders of the group have reported to a police station to be arrested. ”This kind of political persecution will not destroy our determination to strive for democracy,” the Morning Post quotes one of the organizers, Chan   saying. Even if I am jailed, I will be proud that I have joined the Umbrella Movement.” Demonstrators gathered at the police station where Chan appeared along with his fellow activists Benny Tai and Chu  . The arrest orders quickly sparked speculation over whether they were ordered by the current government in collaboration with the incoming chief executive  —   who spoke about the importance of unity after her win on Sunday  —   or perhaps with the intent of influencing her policies. ”The arrests come just a day after a mostly   election committee selected Carrie Lam as the city’s next chief executive. Lam had backed a Beijing plan to reform Hong Kong’s electoral law that spurred tens of thousands of protesters to shut down the city’s financial district for more than two months in 2014,” NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports from Shanghai. ”After yesterday’s election, Umbrella Movement leaders announced they would organize citywide protests for July 1, Lam’s first day in office and the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Great Britain to China.” The Umbrella Movement, also called the Umbrella Revolution, was named for demonstrators’ use of umbrellas to protect themselves from both the elements and from police pepper spray. The Occupy Central activists had called for the protests after it became clear Hong Kong’s residents wouldn’t be able to participate in direct democracy, with an open field of candidates."
"What’s it like to sue President Trump? For Jeffrey Lovitky, with a   firm in Washington, D. C. it’s not a great feeling. ”It is intimidating. I am intimidated,” he said in an interview with NPR. ”I mean, I would rather not be doing this.” But he has done it, and when he couldn’t enlist anyone else to be the plaintiff, he took on that role, too. ”I think people are afraid to put their name out there on a lawsuit against the president,” he said. ”There is a sense that Donald Trump can be very difficult on people who oppose him.” So the case is Jeffrey A. Lovitky, attorney at law, v. Donald J. Trump, in his official capacity as President of the United States, filed in federal district court in Washington. It’s one of 108 federal lawsuits naming Trump as a defendant since he took office Jan. 20. Lovitky called Trump’s ascension to the Oval Office ”unprecedented,” since Trump owns an international business empire and also will be ”making the most critical decisions that will affect our country for years to come.” Lovitky said, ”We need to know as much about his financial situation as we can.” Since 1990, Lovitky has been lawyering in the esoterica of government, a   law firm specializing in federal contracting law and health care. His office is a single room just large enough for a desk, a credenza, three bookcases and two chairs. His lawsuits often name a Cabinet secretary as defendant, but Lovitky has never before sued a president. When he decided to look into Trump, he focused on the president’s personal financial disclosure, filed last May. Indeed, there was something wrong in the report. It is supposed to disclose a candidate’s personal liabilities, but not corporate liabilities, which it doesn’t even ask for. Trump’s report lists some corporate debt along with the personal, and it’s impossible to tell which is which. Odd, but not exactly Watergate. ”It’s very possible it was just an error,” Lovitky said. ”May have been very well intentioned even.” But, he said, accidental or not, the report withholds from citizens something the law says they should have: an accounting of the president’s personal liabilities. He filed his lawsuit. ”That’s all it means. It means insisting on compliance,” he said.  Now that the suit is filed, Lovitky is preparing a brief for the expected counterattack: a motion to dismiss the case for lack of standing. If he can get over that hurdle, he could end up setting a precedent that ordinary Americans can sue to seek enforcement of federal ethics laws. He said his decision to sue came from a sense of duty, saying: ”You go back to the basic premise of what is each individual’s civic responsibility? What do you owe?” No date has been set for the White House to respond to the suit."
"President Trump’s continued business dealings have generated plenty of   about whether the occupant of the White House will be profiting off his new role. The question is who has the ”standing” to do anything about it? This week a group of legal scholars and former government ethics officials teamed up to file a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Trump’s overseas commercial activities violate the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars presidents from taking gifts from foreign governments. The suit faces some significant legal hurdles, among them the question of whether Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the advocacy group behind the lawsuit, actually has the standing to sue the president. ”Standing is a basic doctrine of the federal courts. No one has the right to go into court and get a judgment unless they’ve been injured by the action they’re complaining about, so we don’t just have miscellaneous busybodies filing lawsuits,” says Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford University. ”If your neighbor is hit by a car, you may be outraged. You may think he ought to sue. But you can’t sue on his behalf. He’s the only one who can sue,” McConnell says. CREW argues that, as a government ethics watchdog, it should be looked at like a business whose main ”product” is ethics advocacy and commentary. ”Because of Donald Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest, the cost to produce that product has gone up. The resources have had to shift away from the business they engage in typically, and that affects them. It affects them directly. It affects the way they spend money,” says Deepak Gupta, a Supreme Court litigator who is representing CREW. Gupta says some precedent exists for the argument. In the 1982 Havens Realty case, the Supreme Court ruled that a housing rights group could claim damages because it was forced to put money and resources into opposing discrimination by a private real estate firm. But McConnell, who believes CREW’s argument for standing is something of a stretch, says that case was ”quite a different situation.” ”That organization was providing actual services to people who were purchasing housing,” he says. ”They were ushering clients through the process, and when the defendants were discriminating, and hiding the type of discrimination, it actually made it more difficult for them to provide the services that they were providing.” Since the Havens Realty case, numerous   groups have tried to argue that they have standing because laws were being violated, says Jonathan Adler, professor of law at Case Western Reserve University. ”In all these cases, the court has made clear that being a   organization is not enough to establish standing. You still have to show something more concrete than alleging a legal violation that touches upon your mission,” Adler says. If CREW doesn’t have the legal standing to challenge Trump, who does? One possibility is Trump’s business competitors. For example, a hotel could argue that it’s facing unfair competition because its customers are switching to Trump properties in an effort to curry favor with the president. Something like that is actually happening, Gupta says. ”We have been contacted since we filed the lawsuit by all sorts of people who believe they have economic injuries as a result of the streams of foreign payments that go to Donald Trump’s businesses, and we are considering very carefully the potential claims that those people have,” Gupta says. The courts could also decide that no one really has the standing to sue the president over his conflicts of interest, and that Congress will ultimately have to decide whether Trump’s business dealings are a problem, Adler says. ”The impeachment clause [of the Constitution] specifically mentions bribery as an impeachable offense,” Adler says. ”So if we believe that the president is violating the Emoluments Clause or is otherwise so enmeshed in conflicts of interest that they are tantamount to bribery or that they prevent him from being able to discharge his responsibilities, the primary mechanism for dealing with that is the impeachment clause. ”That’s obviously a severe remedy. That’s obviously something that’s unlikely when Congress is controlled by the same party. But that is the structure,” he says."
"In a rare show of force, thousands of Russians took to the streets of Moscow and other cities in the biggest   protests in years. In Moscow, police arrested hundreds of demonstrators, including prominent Russian opposition leader and   activist, Alexei Navalny, who orchestrated the uprising. On Monday, officials announced that Navalny will serve a   jail term, saying that he disobeyed police. ”Under laws passed in the wake of   protests in 2011, Russians must request protests be sanctioned by the government or face imprisonment and fines,” reporter Charles Maynes tells NPR from Moscow. Maynes adds, ”Police report over 600 were detained over the rallies  —   but human rights groups say the number is higher.” As for the Kremlin’s reaction, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the protests were ”instigated” by organizers and were carried out by misguided people. ”We cannot respect those who deliberately misled underage minors promising them some payment in return for participating in an unauthorized protest, thereby exposing them to danger,” Peskov said, according to   news agency Tass. The crowds gathered to protest government corruption, with many people calling for Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s resignation. Navalny had called for nationwide protests after publishing an investigation earlier this month alleging mass corruption charges against Medvedev, whose large fortune far exceeded his position’s salary. At least 500 demonstrators were arrested in Moscow, reporter Charles Maynes tells NPR, among the tens of thousands who turned out nationwide  —   despite warnings from authorities that protesters would face fines and arrest for taking part in the illegal protest. ”There were reports of 2, 000 people showing up in Novosibirsk in Siberia, we had 10, 000 in St. Petersburg, the estimates here in Moscow are about 20, 000,” he says. But Navalny saw little of the protest he organized. Maynes says ”Riot police detained the opposition leader as soon as he arrived in downtown Moscow, with Navalny supporters briefly attempting to pry open the police van that held him,” in the capital’s iconic Pushkin Square. A total of 17 employees with Navalny’s   Foundation, were also arrested, the foundation’s director and press secretary Roman Rubanov tells Reuters. The AP cites sporadic scuffles, most notably, ”a   man whom police dragged along the pavement.” Russian state media, meanwhile, mostly ignored the day’s events, save for earlier cursory coverage, and no comments have been reported from top Russian politicians. Following criticism of the Trump administration’s silence on Sunday’s crack down, the State Department condemned the arrests by evening, calling the move ”an affront to core democratic values.” Spokesman Mark Toner said ”the United States will monitor this situation, and we call on the government of Russia to immediately release all peaceful protesters,” adding that Washington was ”troubled” to hear of the arrest of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Sunday amounts to ”the biggest show of defiance since the   wave of demonstrations that rattled the Kremlin and led to harsh new laws aimed at suppressing dissent,” says the AP. At the time, President Vladimir Putin accused then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of inciting the protests. Navalny is also credited with instigating those demonstrations, when he first rose as an   threat through his blog and social media. As NPR’s Lucian Kim reported, ”he called on Russians to go out on the street and protest voter fraud in the parliamentary elections.” A fierce Putin critic, Navalny plans to run for president next year, when Putin’s term ends. Putin is expected to run for a fourth term. But last month, Navalny was found guilty of embezzlement in a case he claims is politically charged to disqualify him from running for president. Though the candidate is essentially barred from state media coverage, as reporter Charles Maynes says, his heavy internet presence appears to be helping him use his   message to expand his base, and attract younger crowds. ”Navalny has united people who think the same that people don’t agree with the authorities is obvious from what is going on in the country today,”    Anna Ivanova told the AP at the Moscow demonstration. ”I am a bit scared.”"
"Editor’s Note: This story has been edited throughout. An earlier version was inadvertently published. Hossein Mahrammi, who helped U. S. development authorities in Kabul rebuild his   country, expected a warm welcome when he arrived in the United States this month. The economist had planned to stay in Afghanistan but left because he feared for himself and his family. One by one, he saw that his colleagues were assaulted or killed because they worked with Americans. But when he landed with his wife and four young sons at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, they were detained. ”I was expecting or dreaming that they welcome in a way,” Mahrammi said, ”Maybe through some separate line, offering us tea, and welcome us. But it was not like that.” Mahrammi had a   special immigrant visa, or SIV. This category of visa was created for people who worked with the U. S. government or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, at great risk to themselves. In return, they were promised green cards. Several such visa holders have been detained or threatened with deportation by federal immigration officers in recent weeks. While courts have put President Trump’s travel ban on hold, his administration is making it tougher to get visas from certain parts of the world, and has vowed to ramp up screening of people entering the U. S. And the law gives federal immigration officers broad discretion to turn away foreigners at ports of entry, even if they have proper documentation. Immigrant rights groups say officers with U. S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, have become too aggressive at airports and border crossings. The International Refugee Assistance Project is trying to document cases of visa holders and refugees, who had been vetted, encountering trouble getting past federal border agents. Immigration advocates point out that it’s not easy to get an SIV. The process involves extensive background checks by the State and Homeland Security departments. In the case of Hossein Mahrammi, it took two years. Becca Heller, director International Refugee Assistance Project, said she couldn’t find a single example of anyone holding a special immigrant visa being detained or deported by CBP officers  —   until this month. ”I would assume that there are dozens, if not hundreds more cases, that nobody ever finds out about,” Heller said. ”It just begs the question of whether what they’re doing is based on actual actionable intelligence, or just on the fact that they are sort of running amok right now.” A Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman declined to comment on individual cases. David Aguilar, a former acting commissioner of CBP, disputes that officers are acting improperly. ”What it tells me is that Customs and Border Protection is doing what they have been charged with doing,” he said. He noted that a visa alone doesn’t guarantee entry to the US. The law specifies 60 different grounds for a border protection officer to reject someone. Aguilar says those officers are even trained to look at body language. Aguilar said officers are trained to heed red flags, including ”if the officer believes the individual is nervous, is evasive, eye contact is not there, or the line of questioning just does not match up with the answers.” ”If they are not allowing immediate entry into the US, there is a reason for it,” he said. CBP officers pulled Mahrammi and his family aside when they got off the plane, and started asking a lot of questions. Finally, after five hours, he and his family were allowed in. But his case could have gone very differently. That same week, another SIV holder from Afghanistan landed at the airport in Newark, New Jersey. ”Once he arrived, he was put into detention, questioned without a lawyer, and forced to sign papers he didn’t want to sign,” said Alexander Shalom, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of New Jersey. He’s representing the man known in court papers only as John Doe, to protect his privacy. Hours before the man was set to be deported, his lawyers raced to court. One federal judge ruled against them. So they asked for an emergency hearing before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. ”The government was planning to put him back on a plane,” Shalom says, ”until we got the Third Circuit to prevent them from doing that.” That man is still in detention. Federal authorities have yet to tell the ACLU why they won’t let him into the country. Also this month, in Los Angeles, officers detained a family of five travelling on a special immigrant visa. They were eventually released, but only after an emergency court order. ”What seems to be going on is a tremendous amount of discretion being given to these CBP agents, without much guidance,” said attorney Robert Blume of the firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, which is representing the family. A week after landing in the U. S. Mahrammi and his family still don’t have any furniture at their apartment in Maryland. So they’re sleeping on the rugs they brought with them from Kabul. Mahrammi isn’t complaining. If his family had to go back to Afghanistan now, he said, they’d become targets. ”This time, much in danger,” Mahrammi said. ”Because we would be clear and distinguished target.” The broadcast version of this story was produced by Wilma Consul and edited by Laura Smitherman."
"Overcoats’ music has been undeniable for me from the first time I saw the duo perform. The deep friendship between Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell comes across in their vibrant harmonies and the bountiful dance parties that pop up as they go. Behind those rich voices lies a spare electronic backdrop that feels spacious and refreshing. Not long ago, these songs would likely be backed by a   guitar, but their healthy energy feels more urgent with an underpinning drone and Joao Gonzalez’s drumming at the Tiny Desk. Elion and Mitchell carry the melody, and I always find myself uplifted, wanting more. Young, Overcoats’ debut album, comes out April 21. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Hana Elion (vocals, guitar) JJ Mitchell (vocals) Joao Gonzalez (percussion). Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Bronson Arcuri Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Director: Colin Marshall Videographers: Colin Marshall, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Marian  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Blogger Tania Lombrozo is an academic  —   and a mom. Here, she gives a window into what that’s like   .  6:00 a. m. I’m yanked from sleep by the little one calling from her room. ”Mommy! Is it time to wake up yet? Can I get up now? Pleeeeeeaaaase?” The answer is ”no,” but I get up anyway. 7:00 a. m. The little one wants oatmeal. The big one wants cereal. I just want coffee. I feed the kids, unload the dishwasher, assemble lunches and backpacks and sweaters and water bottles, brush teeth and hair. I am an octopus, all limbs in motion. Is that letter of reference due today? 8:00 a. m. My husband is taking the children to school I go for a short run. Did my older daughter remember to take her violin to school? Did we forget the sunscreen (again)? 9:00 a. m. I’m finally in my office, a glorious hour of uninterrupted work time ahead. My glorious hour is quickly lost to email. Questions from students, questions from colleagues, questions from strangers, forms that need signatures and additions and approvals. The letter of reference is not due today. But what about that grant report? 10:00 a. m. I’m in a committee meeting. We’re doing something terribly important, but I’ve forgotten what it is. I should review my lecture slides. We make a little progress. Did I RSVP for the birthday party on Saturday? I agree to write up part of a report. I need to buy a good present for a   . 11:00 a. m. I’m meeting with a PhD student. And then another. I eat a hasty lunch while we talk. We review ongoing projects, we rejoice over beautiful data, we puzzle over surprises. This is fun. We analyze data and design new experiments. Did I print out that paper I need to review? Did I reschedule the pediatric dentist?  12:00 p. m. I’m teaching, lecturing, guiding, discussing. From the front of the class I can pretend rapt attention, a sea of engaged learners. (From the back I would see the screens on social media, the   smartphones.) 1:00 p. m. Still teaching. I finish my lecture. I finish discussion. The class is dismissed. My phone vibrates. Panic. Not one of the kids’ schools. Relief. I let it go to voicemail.  2:00 p. m. Office hours for my undergraduate lecture course. I settle into some writing. I’m interrupted by an earnest student with a page full of questions. I remember why the relevant experiment is so cool, I explain with poetic mastery, with passion, with unmatched clarity. My eloquence is breathtaking, the scribbles on the whiteboard are a thing of beauty. The student is unmoved, remains confused. I like this student. The second student is grumpy and indignant  —   upset about a grade. The grade is appropriate. I do not like this student. There is no third student. The grant report is not due today. But what about the fellowship application? I answer some emails. Was the little one supposed to take a favorite book to school today, or is that tomorrow? I add the committee report to my   list. 3:00 p. m. I’m meeting with a postdoctoral researcher in my lab. We discuss the peer reviews we’ve just received for a paper we submitted to an academic journal. Reviewer 1 is lovely Reviewer 2 is sensible Reviewer 3 is insane. (It’s usually Reviewer 2 who is insane.) We devise a strategy to revise the paper, we check in on the other 2, 000 projects we’re trying to complete, we run out of time. I need to check the kids again for lice. Do we have a plan for dinner? 4:00 p. m. I ignore my escalating email and return to the paper I’m writing.   splendid minutes speed by it’s time to pick up the kids. I didn’t write the fellowship application. It’s due tomorrow. Did we figure out a plan for dinner? 5:00 p. m. I retrieve two bouncy kids, joyful until they start bickering in the back seat of the car. I forgot to respond to that email. They can’t agree on a song to sing. I didn’t post next week’s readings to the course website. Now they’re best friends, enchanted by the wild turkeys we just spotted. We all sing ”Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” the kids take turns choosing farm animals. I’ve figured out the right way to run that experiment  —   I should email my student tonight. We arrive home. Is tonight a bath night? 6:00 p. m. My husband has cooked Mexican food. I eat bites between filling water cups, asking questions, advocating beans and broccoli. I should book my flight for that conference. We talk about our days. Is it a bath night? We negotiate dessert. Where’s bunny? 7:00 p. m. It is a bath night. I’m ready to go to sleep. We dry wet kids, find pajamas, brush, cuddle, read, sing, coax into bed. Where’s bunny? 8:00 p. m. The kids are wakeful in bed. We find bunny the little one is in raptures. We find teddy the older one is appeased. I keep my ears to the ground as we collect laundry, clear dishes, prep lunches, clean floors, find the little one’s favorite book to take to school tomorrow. Can I sleep yet? The little one needs to pee her sister wants more water. 9:00 p. m. The kids are finally asleep. I email my student the experiment idea. I book my conference travel. I open the document with the paper I’m working on. Can I sleep yet? I close it again. We didn’t check the kids for lice. I update my   list. I need to write that committee report. I get ready for bed. 10:00 p. m. In bed, I read fiction to clear my mind. Can I sleep yet? I turn out the lights. I need to RSVP for that party. I try to go to sleep. I need to write that report. I sleep. 2:00 a. m. The little one is yelling. Do I have to get out of bed? She’s wriggled out of her blankets. I cover her and rub her back. Can I sleep yet? She goes back to sleep. 5:00 a. m. That periodic thumping noise is the    practicing handstands against the wall of her room. Really? I send her back to bed. 6:00 a. m. I’m yanked from sleep by the little one calling from her room. ”Mommy! Is it time to wake up yet?” We need to remember that book for school. I struggle out of bed. Is the fellowship application due today? A new day begins. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"The House of Representatives has gone along with the Senate and voted   to overturn a     regulation that would have required Internet service providers  —   like Comcast, Verizon and Charter  —   to get consumers’ permission before selling their data. President Trump is expected to sign the rollback, according to a White House statement. The measure is a victory for the ISPs, which have argued that the regulation would put them at a disadvantage compared with   edge providers, like Google and Facebook. Those companies are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and face less stringent requirements. Congress’ approval is a loss for privacy advocates, who fought for the regulation, passed in October of last year by the   majority on the Federal Communications Commission. ISPs collect huge amounts of data on the websites people visit, including medical, financial and other personal information. The FCC regulation would have required ISPs to ask permission before selling that information to advertisers and others, a     provision. During Tuesday’s House debate, Rep. Anna Eshoo,  . said the   measure would blow ”a gaping hole in federal privacy protections.” She said if consumers don’t like Google’s privacy protections, they can switch to another search engine, like Bing. But many consumers have little choice when it comes to their Internet provider, she said, especially in rural areas. Republicans argued that the FCC overstepped its bounds and that it was up to the Federal Trade Commission to regulate privacy. Rep. Marsha Blackburn,  . said allowing the FCC and FTC to regulate different swaths of consumers’ Internet use would ”create confusion within the Internet ecosystem and end up harming consumers.” The chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, echoed this argument in a statement praising lawmakers. He said the regulations picked ”winners and losers,” benefiting certain companies over others. The NCTA, the Internet  Television Association, said the vote ”marks an important step toward restoring consumer privacy protections that apply consistently to all Internet companies.” The Center for Democracy and Technology, however, argued that Congress ”voted today to erase basic privacy protections for Americans in favor of the internet service providers’ (ISPs) bottom line,” calling the regulations ”  privacy and security protections for some of their most sensitive personal information.” By overturning the FCC rule under the Congressional Review Act, lawmakers effectively precluded the FCC from restoring these rules in the future."
"President Trump is expected to sign into law a decision by Congress to overturn new privacy rules for Internet service providers. Passed by the Federal Communications Commission in October, the rules never went into effect. If they had, it would have given consumers more control over how ISPs use the data they collect. Most notably, the rules would have required explicit consent from consumers if sensitive data  —   like financial or health information, or browsing history  —   were to be shared or sold. These rules wouldn’t have applied to the likes of Google or Facebook  —   massive data collectors and digital advertisers  —   and that has been a major point of contention for ISPs. But consumer groups argue that’s no reason to roll back restrictions on Internet providers. Plus, they point out, you could abandon those companies in favor of other websites, if you disagree with their policies switching Internet providers is not so easy. ISPs have long attempted to break into the   and online marketing world, where the competition is intense. For context on what that market looks like, I turned to Jules Polonetsky, privacy expert and CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, a nonprofit organization promoting responsible data collection. Below are excerpts of the interview, edited for clarity and length. On what’s going on and what changes, For the average consumer, just about every site they visit online is sharing data with other ad networks, with other third parties, for the purpose of either measuring or targeting ads. . .. Even most privacy organizations end up using Google Analytics or some other basic tools. . .. Jules Polonetsky, privacy expert and CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, offers some suggestions, though he says they won’t deliver absolute privacy. For better or worse, the predominant business model online has become  . . .. So for the average user, the experience isn’t likely to change one way or another  —   today they see ads targeted based on their activity tomorrow they’ll see ads based on their activity. Now, what choices people have maybe has gotten a little bit more complicated. . .. ISPs have historically played a very small role in (the ad targeting) market for a range of reasons. The most interesting and valuable data is search, social media data  —   and that is typically only available to the big portals that have that data. The ISPs don’t have it if it’s encrypted. . .. The big challenge for big advertisers is that their audience is dispersed across laptop, and mobile, and tablet, and TV and elsewhere. And linking that user’s identity is a challenge. . .. And this is a place where ISPs are able to play a role. . .. They now have something to offer  —     capabilities  —   that others can do, but others have to do it differently. . .. On existing   options, The ad networks of the world offer an   of ad targeting today. If there’s a triangle ”i” on your banner ad, that means that that company is tailoring ads based on your Web surfing and is offering you an  . Mobile devices offer a bunch of options to allow or not allow information about apps to be used. My iPhone lets me clear my ad ID if I don’t want apps to be able to track me or work with their ad network partners to track me. . .. Apps don’t support cookies, but the ad ID supplied by the operating system  —   Apple now lets you wipe that out, Google lets you reset it. So that’s a pretty effective   system for apps at least. Use of location, similarly. On ISPs’ argument that Google, Facebook, et al. are collecting more data and yet have less stringent regulation, For better or worse, online data has been democratized and there are   ad exchanges where anybody can show up and have access to a big swath of your Web surfing. The BlueKai Bluebook, which is provided to potential advertisers, has 80 sources of data where Oracle’s BlueKai data exchange has linked together data from Web surfing, from offline purchases, from all sorts of providers who have pulled data about you that they have online. . .. So I’ve kind of looked at some of this debate with a bit of bemusement because I see the activity in these   data markets and that horse is out of that barn. I think for consumers who a more   experience, there are a number of options, none of them are perfect  —   other than, perhaps using a VPN, which may not be easy for everyone to use. . .. The good news is that an increasing amount of the activity online is encrypted, due to lots of advocacy. . .. Increasingly, much of what you do is shielded from third parties because of encryption in place. The ISPs typically  —   in their efforts to use this data even before this (FCC) rule  —   have been providing consumers with    . . .. People should look for emails  —   typically they do push out an announcement when they roll out an   program. On the regulatory oversight of privacy, The FTC has generally been the lead privacy enforcer, and I think has been very aggressive at doing so. If you look at the recent Vizio case, they were able to take very strong action against sharing of your viewing history. . .. At the end of the day, the willingness of the FCC and the FTC to use their authority effectively is what will determine whether the consumers are protected. The FCC (has in the past) used even its   authority very aggressively, and the FTC certainly historically has. We obviously don’t know exactly how the new chairs will. . .. On how ISPs’ data collection compares to that of Google, Facebook and others, The ad networks of the world typically share, swap and trade data via various exchanges. Google and Facebook have policies that to some degree use your data for ad targeting, but may limit the further use of it. For instance, Facebook does not want your Facebook data being shared  —   they’d like advertisers to come to Facebook to (place) ads on Facebook. That may be a nuance because . .. to a consumer, data being used to tailor their experience is probably what makes a difference  —   whether it’s being sold or used in a way that tracks and targets them. So the implementations that we see in the market of ISPs have focused on allowing the ISP to help ad network partners to do a better job of recognizing users. . .. I think at the end of the day, for consumers, it ends up being parsing hairs. So the question is . .. do the sites I visit get information that allows ads to be targeted based on other information about me? And that information isn’t just Web browsing  —   a big part of   today involves pinging on offline data, my actual purchases at a supermarket, my actual transactions. . .. So what the advertisers are often looking to do is to work with partners who are able to put them and their offers in front of the users they want to reach. Sometimes, that’s ”here’s the Web browsing history,” which they can get from an exchange, or they can get by going on one of the big portals, or presumably they’ll be able to get by going to ISPs. The market doesn’t think about it in terms of selling data  —   the market thinks about it in terms of ”how does an advertiser find the audience that it thinks it wants.” . .. And different providers in the market will create those audiences. On what users can do to restrict or entirely limit their data from being collected, It pays to opt out of the behavioral advertising, when you see that triangle ”i,” because thousands of companies will at least not target you  —   they may still be collecting data, but they’re not gonna be tailoring the ads that you see. I think turning on    on your browser, despite the fact that only a small number of companies respect it  —   a significant number of companies like Twitter, Medium and others do respect it. . .. Choosing encrypted tools when you use email or make decisions about what sites and services (to use)  —   far less information about what you do during the day is going to be available. For the changes that have been made today, those tools are going to be effective, because the uses that the ISPs are likely to be interested are, frankly, these tailoring and targeting uses  —   and so (these tools) for most people are going to be reasonable. They’re not going to promise you absolute privacy, but neither would have the FCC rule. . .. If you’re really looking to disengage from the commercial world, it’s hard to take advantage of much of the Web without being fairly technically savvy. . .. If today’s vote allows ISPs broader latitude with how they can use data, primarily for advertising and marketing uses, most of these tools will turn off those functions. And consumers should look for the options that the ISPs should offer in addition."
"A paralyzed man has regained the use of his arm and hand using a system that decodes his thoughts and controls his muscles. ”I thought about moving my arm and I could move it,” says Bill Kochevar, 56. ”I ate a pretzel, I drank water,” he says in a video produced by Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Kochevar was paralyzed in a bicycle accident when he was in his 40s. And for the next eight years, he was unable to move any part of his body below his shoulders. The damage to his spine meant signals from his brain had no way to reach those distant muscles. Then researchers offered Kochevar a chance to try an experimental system called BrainGate2. The effort to restore movement to his arm and hand is described in The Lancet. It involved Case Western, the Cleveland VA Medical Center and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. The idea was to create a new connection between Kochevar’s brain and his right arm and hand. First, surgeons implanted two electrode arrays in Kochevar’s brain. The electrodes detect signals coming from areas of his brain that once controlled his right hand and arm. ”We have an algorithm that sort of transforms those neural signals into the movements he intended to make,” says Robert Kirsch, a professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western. But movement requires muscles. So doctors also implanted electrodes in muscles that control his arm and hand movements. The final result was a system that could determine which movements Kochevar wanted to perform, then electrically stimulate the appropriate muscles in his arm. When he’s connected to the system, Kochevar can extend his arm and grasp things with his hand, the researchers report in The Lancet. He’s even found a way to scratch his nose. A previous effort in a different paralyzed patient restored only hand movement. And several teams have used brain interfaces to let patients control robotic arms. The system Kochevar uses has taken scientists more than a decade to develop. Yet it’s still limited to research labs and depends on wires that penetrate the skull and skin, Kirsch says. ”I think what we’ve done, though, is shown that we can put this all together and it’s feasible,” Kirsch says. ”We can actually record signals from his brain, determine what he’s trying to do and make that happen.” For Kochevar, this is a big deal. ”I’m still wowed every time I do something,” he says. ”Amazing.”"
"Groups that help   families get food assistance are alarmed by a recent drop in the number of immigrants seeking help. Some families are even canceling their food stamps and other government benefits, for fear that receiving them will affect their immigration status or lead to deportation. Many of the concerns appear to be unfounded but have been fueled by the Trump administration’s tough stance on immigration. Officials at Manna Food Center in Montgomery County, Md. report that about 20 percent of the 561 families they have helped apply for food stamps, or SNAP benefits, in the past few months have asked that their cases be closed. Maria Chavez, an outreach worker for Manna, says her immigrant clients are scared, especially if they’re unauthorized parents getting SNAP benefits for their eligible American children. ”They say, ’I want to close my food stamp.’ And I say, ’Why you want to close it?’ They say, ’Well, because I am afraid that something [will] happen to me or they [will] deport me,’ ” says Chavez. Jim Wengler, director of benefits access at Hunger Free New York City, says fewer immigrants have also been showing up recently at the 20 sites his group serves around the city. And he says some noncitizens  —   even those in the country legally  —   want all of their government benefits canceled, including Medicaid. ”Which is really frightening because these are families that are often working   jobs, trying to raise children, trying to do the right thing, and with the help of these benefits are getting by. But without them, [they] will be in a really desperate situation,” Wengler says. Nonprofits around the country say they’re seeing similar declines, although there are no hard numbers to back up the claims. Advocates say the concerns seem to be twofold. Unauthorized immigrants, who can’t get benefits themselves, are worried about getting deported if they receive benefits for their children. And lawful permanent residents are worried that receiving government aid  —   which they generally have to wait five years to do  —   will jeopardize their chances of becoming citizens. There’s no evidence either of these things will happen, but rumors have been flying. ”There’s so much misinformation that it’s creating a lot of anxiety among all immigrants right now,” says Matthew Lopas, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, which is trying to allay people’s fears. ”Nothing in the law has changed as of now, and there’s certainly no danger at this point in using programs for which a person is eligible.” Still, President Trump has made clear that he would like to restrict both illegal and legal immigration. In an address to Congress last month, he said that the nation’s current immigration system is a drain on American taxpayers and that the country should be more selective about whom it lets in. ”It’s a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially. Yet, in America we do not enforce this rule, straining the very public resources that our poorest citizens rely upon,” Trump told Congress. Many economists disagree that’s the case, but there are those within the administration who are concerned about immigrants’ use of government aid. In January, a draft White House executive order was leaked that proposes new limits on the use of public benefits by those seeking admission into the United States and lawful residency. The order hasn’t been signed, and it might never be signed. But Marco Liu, director of advocacy and outreach for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, says the draft order and   immigration enforcement make it difficult to convince noncitizens that they should continue to apply for the benefits they need. ”That’s the sensitive and tricky part, because honestly, if I were in their shoes, I might be just as apprehensive,” says Liu. One additional note. We tried repeatedly to find immigrants willing to talk to us for the story, even without using their names. But we were unable to do so, which is highly unusual. Liu says people are so worried, they don’t want to take any risks."
"The Constitution and the Supreme Court both say a president is largely immune from civil lawsuits. The chief executive does critical work leading the nation, the logic goes, and shouldn’t be bedeviled by ordinary civil lawsuits. That’s the argument that President Bill Clinton used almost exactly 20 years ago, when he tried but failed to stop the sexual harassment suit brought by Paula Jones. Now it’s being made by lawyers for President Trump, against a sexual harassment suit brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s TV show The Apprentice. Zervos alleges that Trump kissed her and engaged in ”disgusting touching” in 2007. She accused him publicly during the presidential campaign last fall he counterattacked on Twitter. Her lawsuit landed a few days before he was inaugurated in January. The Trump legal team  —   private lawyers, not government employees  —   now says in a court filing that the immunity question should be settled immediately. This approach could let them avoid wrangling over the allegations made by Zervos. The immunity question they raise is one laid out by the Supreme Court in the Paula Jones case: whether a lawsuit in state court (like Zervos’) has less clout than a federal case (like Jones’) when it comes to challenging presidential immunity. Trump’s lawyers say that’s so, and they want the Zervos case dismissed, at least until after he leaves office. In 1997, the Supreme Court rejected Clinton’s claim that the Jones case would harm his ability to fulfill the president’s duties. But it’s the case that led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1998."
"Russians are still trying to understand exactly what happened over the weekend, when thousands of people  —   many of them teenagers  —   turned out for   rallies in dozens of cities across the country. Sunday’s rallies were the biggest public demonstration of discontent with the Kremlin since a wave of protests five winters ago that failed to stop the   of Vladimir Putin for an unprecedented third term as president. Two years later, the Kremlin’s military intervention in Ukraine effectively rallied the country around a common cause  —   and split what was left of the diffuse protest movement. What brought people out into the streets again this time was a viral YouTube video by Putin challenger Alexei Navalny, 40, who accused Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of having amassed a real estate empire. To everyone’s surprise, kids who shun Facebook and swap memes via messaging services turned out en masse. Some of them brought rubber ducks, a reference to Navalny’s allegation that Medvedev keeps a house for raising ducks at one of his estates. Russian journalist Kirill Martynov calls the young demonstrators ”nobody’s people” who have nothing to lose by protesting. ”The experience of today’s 11th grader is   Putin and Medvedev, enmity with the whole world, crazy propaganda and   who lie,” he wrote. A video of Gleb Takmakov, a   in the Siberian city of Tomsk, is emblematic of this new generation of protester. Dressed in a wool cap and a Converse sweatshirt, the boy takes to the microphone at a rally, explaining that it’s not about Putin or Navalny but about changing the entire system. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted to the outburst of youthful rebellion skeptically, claiming that minors participating at the demonstration in Moscow had been promised monetary rewards if they were arrested. Navalny, who was among hundreds arrested on Sunday, provides continuity with Russia’s last mass demonstrations. He set those off in December 2011, when he was a relatively unknown   blogger, after calling Muscovites to a rally following reports of   in parliamentary elections. Then, as now, he was thrown in jail for two weeks for not obeying the police. But if Navalny was just one of many opposition figures during the rallies in the winter of   Sunday’s protests have established him as today’s undisputed leader. Many of the organizers five years ago had already passed their political zenith, including Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015. Back then, Navalny emerged as a forceful, charismatic speaker who wasn’t afraid to talk about storming the Kremlin if need be. Undaunted by fraud cases launched by the authorities against him and his brother, Navalny pursued a political career and won 27 percent of the vote in the 2013 Moscow mayoral race. In February, two months after announcing his bid to run for president next year, he was convicted of embezzlement in a fraud case, casting doubt on his campaign. Navalny has insisted on his right to be a candidate and began traveling around Russia opening campaign offices. By breaking out of the Moscow bubble, he reached out to disillusioned youth in provincial towns  —   who returned the favor by coming to Sunday’s rallies. That may prove key to his political future. One of the reasons the last wave of protests petered out was the disconnect between Moscow activists such as Navalny and   organizers in the regions, says Mischa Gabowitsch, author of the book Protest in Putin’s Russia. ”The most surprising thing about Sunday’s protest is that Navalny has managed to wed enough of that   energy to his   agenda,” said Gabowitsch. ”The obvious explanation is the intervening economic downturn.” Navalny’s popularity creates a dilemma for Russia’s leaders: if they jail him on his corruption conviction, they create a martyr. But by letting him walk free, they run the risk of even more protests. The desire to strike a balance between overreaction and intimidation was on full display at last weekend’s Moscow rally. The police had orders to go soft on demonstrators, but by the end of the day Sunday, rights activists said up to 1, 000 people had been detained, some in rough conditions. Navalny’s   Foundation, which made the film about Medvedev, has reportedly been closed as law enforcement searches the premises. Medvedev, who in 2008 served one term as president because the constitution barred Putin from holding office for three consecutive terms, is coming under increasing pressure. He reaped ridicule by posting on Instagram that he was skiing on Sunday. Moscow journalists then speculated why he wasn’t present at a Kremlin ceremony held in honor of the National Guard Monday night  —   but his wife, Svetlana, was. On Tuesday, a report was published claiming the prime minister is paying the equivalent of 70 cents per year to lease a   plot of land northeast of Moscow. More   to the younger generation, perhaps, is the appearance of an online game in which the object is to guide Medvedev  —   wearing skis and held up by three riot policemen  —   past huge rubber ducks on a city street."
"Wilson ”Bill” Minor, an investigative reporter and syndicated columnist who documented Mississippi politics for almost seven decades, has died at 94, The Associated Press reports. Minor was an institution, inspiring awe from fellow reporters for the depth of his knowledge  —   and the astonishing length of his career. The Louisiana native began reporting in Mississippi in 1947, after he returned from fighting in World War II. He was writing his regular column until just a few months ago. When he started his journalism career, ”I assumed my job would be covering the governor, the legislature, and the state’s gothic politics,” he wrote for the South Writ Large journal in 2012. ”Instead, I would soon find myself covering a   social revolution”  —   that is, the Civil Rights Movement, and white society’s violent resistance to change. Minor covered the trial and acquittal of Emmett Till’s murderers, the desegregation of the University of Mississippi, and the riots that followed and the assassination of Medgar Evers, among countless other stories. In the late ’70s he ran his own newspaper, a weekly called The Capitol Reporter that focused on investigative stories. The AP has more on the history Minor recorded  —   and influenced: ”In May 2013, Minor attended a 50th anniversary commemoration of an event he had covered   a 1963   by a racially mixed group of Tougaloo College students at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in downtown Jackson. It happened about a month before Evers was killed, and Minor said Evers called reporters to tip them to the news. White students from nearby Central High School and many white adults, including an infamous local bootlegger, dumped mustard and ketchup on the heads of the Tougaloo students and then beat and kicked some of them. ” ’There were a lot of just plain old segregationist thugs,’ Minor said in 2013. ”In 1967, Minor covered the election of Democrat Robert Clark as the first black member of the Mississippi House of Representatives since Reconstruction. After Clark took office in 1968, white lawmakers refused to sit with him at the   desks on the House floor, and House leaders refused to recognize him to speak. A frustrated Clark left the Capitol one rainy night, ready to quit   and Minor followed him to the parking lot and persuaded him to stay. ” ’In essence, what he told me was that if I quit, I was doing what they wanted me to do,’ Clark said in a 1997 interview. ’I came back then.’ ”Clark remained in the Legislature until 2004 and became the first black House speaker pro tempore.” A 2015 documentary looked at the state’s history through Minor’s eyes. Producer Ellen Ann Fentress told the Jackson Free Press that the title, Eyes on Mississippi, is the name of a column Minor used to write  —   and a good description of his goal. ”As a reporter, Bill felt the best thing he could do was to get as many eyes as possible on Mississippi, to bear witness,” Fentress said. Minor was committed to bearing witness to bigotry, racial oppression and the fight for black equality. As a columnist, he was a progressive voice in a conservative state. Here’s more from his essay for South Writ Large:  ”Long ago I discovered Mississippi is an extraordinarily quaint society, deeply influenced by a devotion to the lost cause of the Confederacy, and amazingly not too far removed from the rawness of the frontier. Even after all these years, I truthfully admit that I can’t fathom the depths of Mississippi’s soul. ”No matter that I am a native of neighboring Louisiana, born just 50 miles below the   state line, I’ve always been viewed as an outlier here, somewhat suspect because of my sympathy for the cause of black people, possibly also because I’m a Roman Catholic in a predominantly Baptist state. And, of course, because I am a liberal and a   Democrat.” He also went after powerful politicians, with no fear. ”  ’sacred cows’ go through the wringer that is Minor’s typewriter and come out looking like hamburger meat,” James Featherston reported in a 1978 profile in Nieman Reports. The crusading journalism made Minor ”rather famous, though not rich,” and garnered him both awards and enemies. A burning cross nearly set his building on fire, Featherston writes. His windows were smashed in. Advertising boycotts hurt his bottom line. At the time of the profile, Minor was 56  —   less than halfway through his journalism career. ”Even though Minor has received numerous telephone threats, his home has occasionally been put under police surveillance, and an underworld source once told him that a ’contract’ was out on his life,” Featherston wrote, ”he remains a true Mississippi muckraker, and continues to do what he has always done  —   print the truth as he sees it.”"
"In 2008, candidate Barack Obama ran an ad with this opening line: ”The hands that built this nation can build a new economy. The hands that harvest crops can also harvest the wind.” And then it showed men working on roofs: ”The hands that install roofs can also install solar panels.” The ad was directed at a group Obama was acutely aware he had to win over  —   white,   men. A quarter of those same men deserted Democrats in 2016, according to a New York Times analysis, and voted either for Donald Trump or a   candidate. On Tuesday, President Trump is trying to start making good on his promises to many of those same white men  —   coal workers. The Trump administration is doing an   on President Obama’s climate and environmental policies. The president signed an executive order with a goal of taking restraints off businesses and boosting the coal industry. ”He made a pledge to the coal industry, and he’s going to do whatever he can to help those workers,” a senior administrative official said Monday ahead of the executive order’s signing. Speaking at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters, Trump said a ”new era” in energy production is starting Tuesday. Surrounded by about a dozen coal miners, he said, per NPR’s Jennifer Ludden, ”You’re going back to work.” He pledged to ”end the war on coal and have clean coal, really clean coal.” But there are problems with both Trump’s nostalgic Make America Great Again coal promises and Obama’s radical vision for a reshaped economy. Trump’s ignores the reality of a changing energy industry. Solar jobs, for example, have taken off over the past decade. The Obama administration tried hard to incentivize clean energy (so much so that it got caught up in the Solyndra scandal. The head of Solyndra was an Obama campaign bundler. Obama visited the company and touted it. His administration incentivized companies like it. In 2011, the government helped Solyndra refinance, but just months later, the company failed). But solar now accounts for some 260, 000 energy jobs in the country, the majority of which are held by installers. That’s almost four times the number of coal industry jobs, about 70, 000, as of May 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that industry has been on a steady and steep decline over the past 30 years: In the energy industry, solar is outpaced only by the oil industry, according to a major report by the Solar Foundation. And solar’s gotten cheaper to produce (despite Trump’s proclamations during the campaign that he loves solar except that it’s expensive). As KQED, an NPR member station in San Francisco, reported in December, ”Power from big solar projects is about 70 percent cheaper today than it was a decade ago. Wind power has also come down.” The problem for Democrats is where those jobs are created. It’s not like the coal jobs that faded in West Virginia and Kentucky were replaced by solar. In fact, those two states rank 45th and 41st in solar jobs per capita, respectively, according to the Solar Foundation. That’s not to mention Michigan (28) Wisconsin (26) and Pennsylvania (43) which flipped blue to red for the first time in decades. The top six  —   Massachusetts, Nevada, Vermont, California, Hawaii and Washington, D. C.  —   all went for Hillary Clinton. (California had more than a third of all solar jobs in 2016, over 100, 000. And that was up 32 percent from the year before.) Conversely, the bottom 11 all went for Trump: Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, West Virginia, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wyoming and Kentucky. The states that voted for Clinton are largely run by Democrats the ones that went for Trump are largely run by Republicans. In the Democratic states, clean energy is incentivized. In the Republican ones, it’s largely not. People in those places also identify heavily as Democrats or Republicans, and there are stark splits on how to deal with the environment. On climate change, for example, a Pew poll from October found that 36 percent of Americans care ”a great deal” about the issue of global climate change. But of that group, almost   (72 percent) were Democrats just under a quarter (24 percent) were Republicans. There may be a fundamental reshaping that’s taking place economically and politically, and the reverberations will continue to be felt."
"President Trump signed a sweeping executive order Tuesday that takes aim at a number of his predecessor’s climate policies. The   order seeks to undo the centerpiece of former President Obama’s environmental legacy and national efforts to address climate change. It could also jeopardize America’s current role in international efforts to confront climate change. In a symbolic gesture, Trump signed the document at the headquarters of Environmental Protection Agency. Standing next to a group of coal miners, Trump said that the changes signal a ”new energy revolution that celebrates American production on American soil.” The executive order is about ”bringing back our jobs, bringing back our dreams, and making America wealthy again,” Trump said. As he signed the document, he turned to the miners and asked, ”You know what this says, right? You’re going back to work.” The major regulation targeted by the executive order is the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s signature climate measure that restricts greenhouse gas emissions from   power plants. Trump will order a review of that and a number of other climate efforts, including: ”In taking a sledgehammer to U. S. climate action, the administration will push the country backward, making it harder and more expensive to reduce emissions,” said Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, in a statement. ”Climate science is clear and unwavering: mounting greenhouse gas emissions are warming our planet, putting people and business in harm’s way.” Some energy companies are celebrating the move. Trump is expected to be accompanied by energy executives when he signs the order. In a written statement, American Petroleum Institute president and CEO Jack Gerard said, ”We look forward to working with the Trump administration and Congress on   energy policies that will help ensure the United States continues leading the world in the production and refining of oil and natural gas, and in the reduction of carbon emissions.” The current head of the EPA, former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, is a longtime critic of environmental regulation. Earlier this month Pruitt said carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to climate change, rejecting established science. Before becoming EPA administrator, Pruitt joined dozens of other state attorneys general who sued the agency to halt the Clean Power Plan. While some of the policies that Trump is targeting will be easy to overturn, the Clean Power Plan could prove more complicated. Environmental law experts say it could take the administration years to fully undo it. Here’s more on that policy and some of the others that Trump has addressed: The Clean Power Plan is a set of national standards that are designed to slow   climate change by limiting carbon pollution from power plants. The power sector accounts for almost 40 percent of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. The Clean Power Plan would cut those emissions and carbon pollution 32 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030. When he introduced it in 2015, Obama called the Clean Power Plan ”the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against climate change.” It’s the centerpiece of the U. S. commitment to the Paris climate agreement. Trump and Republicans though, have called the plan a ” ” and have pledged to kill it instead. Today’s executive order does not address the Paris climate deal. ”Whether we stay in or out is still under discussion,” a senior White House official said during a briefing. Trump’s executive order kicks off a   process with the goal of ending the Clean Power Plan. But it won’t end the policy outright, nor does is say how his administration will get rid of it, and the devil may be in the details. Any effort to repeal the rule could prove lengthy, difficult and fraught with litigation. ”Once you have something like the Clean Power Plan  —   a final    —   then that can’t be withdrawn using any process other than the one that was used to create it,” says Nathan Richardson, a visiting fellow at Resources for the Future. That means notices, public comment and a   procedure that could take years. The Trump administration has time. Currently, the Clean Power Plan is held up in federal court after lawsuits from industry groups and states challenged its legality. A ruling could be months away and any decision  —   for or against the plan  —   will likely be appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court. Congress could also step in and amend the Clean Air Act to say the EPA shouldn’t regulate greenhouse gases, nullifying the Clean Power Plan, but that could prove politically challenging. The Obama administration placed a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands in January 2016, citing concerns over pricing and pollution. During the estimated   hold on leasing, the Department of the Interior said it was going to review the country’s   program to make sure it was providing ”a fair return to taxpayers and reflect its impacts on the environment, while continuing to help meet our energy needs.” Federal lands account for roughly 40 percent of all U. S. coal production. Hundreds of millions of tons of coal are mined on federal lands every year, generating nearly $1. 3 billion for the government in 2015. Environmental groups say that money doesn’t offset the societal costs of pollution from coal mining and consumption. Burning coal is a leading cause of carbon dioxide emissions. Trump’s order to lift the moratorium should take immediate effect, allowing the Bureau of Land Management to issue new coal leases on federal lands. But it’s not at all clear there will be any immediate rush for new leases. ”Coal production fell in 2016,” says Robert Godby, director of the Center for Energy Economics and Public Policy at the University of Wyoming. In fact, it’s fallen for several years as utilities have switched to cheaper natural gas. That means existing coal reserves have grown bigger. ”The coal market is so weak,” Godby says, ”and some companies are coming out of bankruptcy.” He says they simply don’t have the cash to make the enormous investment required to lease federal land for future coal production. Godby says the decline in coal leasing  —   and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars a year in royalties  —   has been painful for Wyoming. The state had been using the money to build new schools, but is now facing a large budget deficit. The ”social cost of carbon” is another   policy that directed government agencies to factor in the effects of climate change on their  . It essentially put a price tag on carbon emissions and told agencies to factor that price tag in when making a regulation. The current cost is $36 per metric ton. Trump appears to be trying to neuter the policy by directing the EPA to lower that cost to the point where it won’t have much weight in  . An   elimination of the cost would likely have left the administration with weaker legal standing should it be challenged in court. The Trump administration is aiming to cut federal climate change efforts across government. Trump’s budget called for steep cuts to climate change research, domestic programs to combat climate change and funding for international climate efforts. Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has told reporters that federal funding to fight climate change is ”a waste of your money.”"
"President Trump faced a whopping defeat on Friday, when Republicans pulled their bill to repeal and replace Obamacare as it was headed to certain failure. But this isn’t the first time Trump has faced defeat. Nor it is the first time a president has faced defeat on the very issue of health care. In 1991, the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City was deeply in debt and so was Donald Trump. It was the first of his four business bankruptcies. Trump’s response to that business setback could provide a template for how he will respond to the collapse of the health care bill.  ”I don’t think he would call it defeat,” said Gwenda Blair, author of The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President. Blair said Trump saw, or at least reframed, that 1991 bankruptcy as a win, even as he lost part of his stake in the hotel and had to sell his yacht and airline.  ”At the end of the day he made a lot of money,” said Blair. ”Other people lost a lot of money, bond holders, etc. But he made a lot of money and he sailed on into three more corporate bankruptcies, which he handled the same way.” When Trump was asked about his bankruptcies in one of the presidential debates, he painted them as a sign of his business sense, his ability to use the bankruptcy laws to his advantage. ”And frankly so has everybody else in my position,” Trump said.  Much like the bankruptcies, on Friday afternoon Trump began reframing the health care bill’s defeat as ”perhaps the best thing that could happen.” ”We’ll end up with a truly great health care bill in the future after this mess known as Obamacare explodes,” Trump added. Health policy experts say the Affordable Care Act isn’t exploding and likely won’t explode unless the Trump administration actively works to make that happen. Another president’s approach to failure, In 1994, President Bill Clinton also ran into the rocks on major health care legislation. ”I think we were right to try to find a way to stop health care costs from going up three times the rate of inflation,” Clinton said after the legislative effort on health care had officially ended in failure.  The Clinton administration tried for 18 months to get health care reform through Congress. And Clinton was dealt yet another blow less than two months later when Democrats lost control of both the House and the Senate in the midterm elections. Initially his administration moved on by looking for bipartisan wins. Like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Clinton signed late that year. ”It is not a Republican agreement or a Democratic one,” Clinton said. ”it is an American agreement designed to benefit all the American people in every region of our country from every walk of life.” Clinton would go on, in his second term, to work with Republicans in Congress to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, eliminate the deficit and pass welfare reform (which is seen as a huge legislative accomplishment even if many Democrats wish he hadn’t been able to make that deal). But first there were small things  —   that built up to the big ones. ”It’s better if you can win one,” said Leon Panetta, who was Clinton’s chief of staff at the time. ”My experience is that if you can win something, that success breeds success.” Just 66 days into Trump’s presidency, White House officials say they plan to move on from health care to tax reform. It’s something many people, including Panetta, say may just be too ambitious. ”The last thing you want is another loss that makes it that much tougher to be able to govern,” said Panetta. Rather than jump right into tax reform, which hasn’t been accomplished in 30 years, Panetta suggests starting small and bipartisan, like Clinton did.  ”Pick some   fruit that can be accomplished,” Panetta said. ”Get it done. Show that you can govern. And then start working on some of the bigger issues.” Panetta suggests perhaps something related to veterans or agriculture  —   something even Democrats who have been flexing their opposition party muscles can get behind.  But Trump has never been one to think small. After two of his bankruptcies, Trump launched an ambitious project to convert the old Gulf and Western Building on New York City’s Central Park, into the Trump International Hotel and Tower. With a new facade of gleaming golden glass, the building became a monument to Trump’s resilience. Now after such a major political defeat, President Trump may be looking for the legislative equivalent of that shining tower."
"Michelle Taylor is 26 years old and keenly interested in the past. The research associate at Virginia Commonwealth University is taking part in a program to reconstruct the grounds of Montpelier, the former estate of President James Madison, in Virginia. Taylor also has a personal connection to one of the slaves Madison owned, which makes her work rebuilding slave cabins especially meaningful to her. Through her research at VCU’s Virtual Curation Laboratory, Taylor discovered that her aunt’s   George Gilmore, was part of the enslaved community at Madison’s estate. ”When I looked at the landscape at Montpelier, you see mountains and acres and acres of empty land, and it made me think about my ancestors not having an opportunity to go anywhere, nowhere to run away,” Taylor says. ”It was very emotional, just being able to know that I had an opportunity  —   I could have left at any time  —   but I wanted to be there to make a difference and rebuild this home that represents where my family would have lived during that time period.” As part of the Log Cabin Expedition at Montpelier, Taylor and other participants are building cabins like the kind slaves lived in on the plantation. They are about the size of an apartment living room, but they housed three to four families at a time. ”Having the log cabins on Montpelier’s plantation shows not only a complete story of American history, but it also gives a sense of purpose to those descendants who hadn’t been aware of their ancestors’ contributions to not only President Madison’s estate,” Taylor says, ”but the contributions and sacrifices they made daily for us now as descendants to be able to live better lives than they did during a time period where they didn’t have any choices.” Use audio link above to hear the full story. Kelley Libby is an independent producer. You can follow her @kelleylibby."
"Why don’t the police fire warning shots? That’s a question that comes up a lot, especially after controversial shooting deaths. Last fall, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and 10 other law enforcement groups got together to work out a consensus policy on the use of force  —   a sort of model document for local departments that want to update their rules. When the document came out in January, it contained a surprise: It allowed for warning shots. For police trainers and use of force experts around the country, that news is still sinking in. ”The idea of warning shots has been prohibited for decades in policing,” says Lou Hayes Jr. a police officer and trainer with the Virtus Group Inc. ”And to now open the door up again is pretty  .” There’s never been a binding national rule against warning shots, but the IACP used to recommend that departments ban the practice. Leading agencies such as the New York Police Department have long had such bans in place. The main concern is the risk. ”When you raise the gun and blindly fire, you don’t know where that bullet will land,” says Massad Ayoob, a longtime cop and widely respected firearms trainer. ”A few decades ago I followed a case in New England where the guy raised his gun, fired what he thought was into the air, and the bullet struck and killed someone on the top floor porch of a nearby tenement building.” Firing at the ground can be just as dangerous, especially on streets or confined spaces. And Ayoob says the payoff usually isn’t what people imagine. ”Movies show people firing a shot in the air and the running man stops,” Ayoob says. ”And that just ain’t how it happens in real life.” Often, he says, the gunshots just persuade a suspect to run faster. Return of an old tool, Ayoob says fear of mishaps drove warning shots out of policing by the time he started as a cop in the 1970s. But now it may be making a comeback. ”There was a lot of discussion,” says the IACP’s Terry Cunningham, describing the process that led the 11 law enforcement organizations to include warning shots in the new consensus use of force policy. Cunningham was struck by the anecdotes of situations in which warning shots saved a life  —   or might have, had they been allowed. The new policy still sets strict conditions for warning shots: 1. The use of deadly force is justified, 2. The warning shot will not pose a substantial risk of injury or death to the officer or others and, 3. The officer reasonably believes that the warning shot will reduce the possibility that deadly force will have to be used. But Cunningham says the motivation for the change is to give officers a little more wiggle room when faced with a threat. ”We’re kind of entering into this new environment in use of force where everybody is trying to learn how to better ” Cunningham says. Many police trainers have come to believe that overly rigid use of force rules, however   may sometimes leave officers with no other option than to kill someone. The new model policy is a response to those concerns. ”Why not give the officers more tools?” Cunningham says. ”I think it’s the right thing to do.” It’s still up to local departments and trainers to decide whether to follow the national groups’ lead on warning shots. So far, reactions have varied. In an email to NPR, the NYPD says its policy banning warning shots ”will not be amended.” But trainers and experts are more positive. Greg Meyer, a retired Los Angeles Police Department captain and use of force expert, calls the new policy an ”overdue good idea.” Shooting to wound, Dave Blake, a retired police officer who trains officers for   situations, says he is on the fence. He points to some research suggesting warning shots can persuade suspects to give up, but he thinks more study is needed. ”I don’t think police officers are lab rats,” he says. ”And I think we need to be very careful with  —   because of political pressure or social issues  —   how far we go in mass implementation of new programs and policies.” Police trainer Hayes welcomes the new flexibility, but he says there will be pushback, especially from officers who worry about creating an expectation among the public that warning shots should precede every use of deadly force. He says allowing warning shots also raises another, more controversial question: whether cops should try to shoot to wound. Police usually scoff at the suggestion that they try to shoot someone in the leg before aiming at the suspect’s center of mass. They call it ”Hollywood thinking” because it assumes sharpshooting skills that are simply unrealistic, especially in a chaotic situation. But in a recent blog post, Hayes said that the blanket prohibition against ”shooting to wound” might have to be reconsidered once you’ve allowed for warning shots. ”A warning shot is essentially deadly force,” Hayes says. ”It’s just purposely aimed away from a person. So if we’re going to aim away from a person, why is there not some incentive to potentially aim for a nonvital area on a person?” Allowing warning shots, he says, may open the door to the idea of a ”spectrum of deadly force.” That’s not a logic most trainers accept, but firearms trainer Ayoob does worry that allowing warning shots ”opens a can of worms.” The rules allowing police to use deadly force are clear: If an officer reasonably perceives someone to be an imminent mortal threat, the officer is allowed to shoot. Adding the possibility of warning shots to that   process could confuse things. ”If a danger ipso facto is that immediate, why are we taking our eyes off the threat and firing a warning shot?” he asks. ”If deadly force is justified, deadly force should probably be applied.”"
"Scientists say they’ve made a device in the lab that can mimic the human female reproductive cycle. The researchers hope the device, assembled from living tissue, will lead to new treatments for many medical problems that plague some women, ranging from fibroids and endometriosis to infertility, miscarriages and gynecologic cancers. The researchers described the device Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications and dubbed it the EVATAR. The name, they say, is a play on the word ”avatar.” ”An avatar is kind of a digital representation of an individual in a virtual environment,” says Teresa Woodruff, a biomedical engineer in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University who helped create the system. ”So when we thought about this synthetic version of the female reproductive tract we thought of the word EVATAR.” To create the EVATAR, the researchers used tissues from human fallopian tubes, a uterus and cervix donated by women who had undergone surgery. The researchers placed each tissue type in separate plastic chambers that were connected through passageways that allow fluid to circulate among them. One chamber contained ovarian tissue from mice because human ovarian tissue is difficult to obtain. The device is about the size of a paperback book. It also includes human liver tissue to filter toxins from the system. The researchers were able to trigger the system to produce the cascade of hormones that usually occur during a woman’s   reproductive cycle. The cycle culminated in the ovarian tissue releasing an egg. ”We were able to recapitulate the full menstrual cycle  —   a complete menstrual cycle,” Woodruff says.   The scientists hope to use the system to learn more about the basic biology of how the female reproductive tract functions. The researchers hope that one day such devices might be able to be   from the stem cells of individual women, to test the safety and effectiveness of new drugs for that individual.   ”EVATAR allows us to think about all the organs kind of connected in a way that eventually we hope will be the future of personalized medicine,” Woodruff says. Lansing Taylor, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Drug Discovery Institute, who was not involved in developing the system, says it could be especially useful in research because of the complexity of the female reproductive system. ”It’s a very important paper,” Taylor says. ”Human reproductive tissues and organs have been particularly difficult to investigate.” The scientists stress that they only want to use the EVATAR to study anatomy and try to develop new treatments. But at least one bioethicist wonders if others may someday try to combine this kind of technology in worrisome ways with other advances in reproductive medicine. ”Certainly the technologies are rapidly moving forward where one could imagine these technologies being used to create a baby outside the womb in the laboratory,” says Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University. That would raise many ethical issues.  ”If, hypothetically, you can fertilize an egg outside a body and carry it all the way to term outside the body, then who’s responsible for this baby now?” Hyun says. He also stresses that scientists are nowhere near being able to do that yet.  In the meantime, the Northwestern researchers have already started to work on a male equivalent of the EVATAR. They’ve created a system involving male testes and prostate tissue they call the ”Dude Cube.” They are working on a more complex system that would connect the Dude Tube to other parts of the anatomy  —   a system they dub the ”ADATAR.”"
"The ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee is asking a government watchdog to investigate recent remarks by Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin as a possible ethical violation. Sen. Ron Wyden,  . says in a statement Mnuchin’s plug for a movie he helped produce signals ”a blatant disregard and disrespect to the office he serves and the power it holds.” A Treasury spokesman said Mnuchin mentioned the movie during a ”  moment,” when directly asked for movie recommendations  —   and that the secretary acknowledged the relevant ethics law in his comment. The remarks in question came during an event with the media company Axios on Friday. Mnuchin was asked to give a movie recommendation. Mnuchin, a former Hollywood financier, was an executive producer of The Lego Batman Movie, among other credits. ”Well, I’m not allowed to promote anything that I’m involved in,” the Treasury secretary said. ”So I just want to have the legal disclosure  —   you’ve asked me the question, and I am not promoting any product. ”But you should send all your kids to Lego Batman.” He grinned. The audience laughed. Wyden isn’t so amused. On Monday, the senator sent a letter to the U. S. Office of Government Ethics asking that Mnuchin’s remarks be investigated. He noted that in the same conversation, Mnuchin praised Avatar  —   a film his company helped produce  —   while denigrating The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, two movies he wasn’t involved in. Mnuchin’s cheeky ”legal disclosure” doesn’t insulate him from ethical obligations, Wyden suggests. He noted that there’s no evidence Mnuchin has separated himself, financially speaking, from his Hollywood production firm. (The Treasury secretary has pledged to divest, but has a few months to fulfill that promise.) Even if Mnuchin has divested from the company, Wyden writes, government employees aren’t supposed to use their position, title or authority to ”endorse any product, service or enterprise.” He asked the government watchdog to examine whether the remarks qualify. A Treasury spokesman says that in his remarks, Mnuchin ”clearly recognized that he generally may not promote private interests and specifically gave the legal disclosure that he was not promoting a movie, but answering a question he was asked directly.” The spokesman also notes that the comment was ” .” Last month another Trump associate was in hot water for promoting a product  —   adviser Kellyanne Conway urged Fox News watchers to ”go buy Ivanka’s stuff.” The Office of Government Ethics said there was ”strong reason” to believe that was an ethical violation that warranted disciplinary action. The White House defended Conway’s remarks as ”inadvertent,” ”light” and ” .”"
"NPR’s Audie Cornish talks to Erich Schwartzel, a reporter who covers the film industry for the Wall Street Journal, about Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s choice for treasury secretary, and his ties to Hollywood."
"Updated at 2:55 p. m. ET with additional reporting, The wonkiest soap opera in Washington served up yet more of its trademark plot twists on Tuesday as the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russia detoured even further into partisan bickering. The upshot of the day’s    was this: Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the previous administration whom President Trump fired on Jan. 31, is not barred by the White House from testifying in open hearings in Congress. When  —   or whether  —   Yates actually does appear is another matter. She was supposed to have been on a panel Tuesday, along with other former national security leaders who served under President Obama. But that hearing, and then another closed session that took its place, were both canceled last week. The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff, charged on Tuesday that the White House had interfered behind the scenes to stop Yates from appearing. Administration officials were nervous, Schiff said in an interview with NPR journalists, about what Yates might reveal about the FBI and Justice Department’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn  —   and how President Trump and his team responded. Yates met with White House officials shortly after Trump’s inauguration to tell them Flynn was under FBI investigation and that he hadn’t told the truth about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Not only that but the Russians’ knowledge about what Flynn had said left him open to blackmail, the FBI warned. At the same moments that Schiff was making that connection in a visit to NPR headquarters, another story appeared from The Washington Post: The White House might consider Yates’ comments from her time as acting attorney general to be covered by executive privilege. The Post cited letters from Yates’ attorneys to the Justice Department. Almost as soon as that story appeared, the White House denied it. Spokesman Sean Spicer called it ”entirely false.” Later, in a briefing with reporters, he was given a chance to clarify more broadly  —   so executive privilege would not be an issue for Yates? ”That’s correct,” Spicer said. And had the White House put any pressure on House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes to cancel the hearing at which Yates was scheduled to appear? ”No,” Spicer said. Nunes’ independence, however, has been called into question by Schiff and some other members of Congress following the last big cliffhanger in this melodrama. Last week, Nunes made a secret visit to the White House to meet a person he called a confidential source  —   a visit that Nunes and Spicer say was unknown to Trump and his aides. During his trip, Nunes said, he viewed documents that show Trump and his transition team were swept up in U. S. surveillance of foreign targets after the election. Nunes does not have those documents, he said, nor has he shared them with any of the Republicans or Democrats on the committee. The morning after Nunes’ visit, he convened a press conference at the Capitol to tell reporters he had gotten information that partly verified Trump’s earlier claim that Obama had, if not ”wiretapped him,” conducted some kind of surveillance. Nunes then traveled to the White House because, he said, he needed to brief Trump on what he had learned, and then he talked with reporters again before returning to the Capitol to meet with Schiff. That has prompted Schiff to call for Nunes to recuse himself from the Intelligence Committee’s investigation into last year’s meddling by Russia in the presidential election. Nunes said Tuesday he would not. Schiff told NPR journalists that the situation was not ”sustainable,” but if he and Democrats were to walk away from the process, the chamber’s only Russia investigation would very likely fold. Schiff and a few key Republicans, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, want some kind of independent process to look into the Russia story  —   a select committee, or a special commission like that created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. House and Senate leaders, however, are unlikely to agree, and Trump would not sign legislation to create such a commission. So the House Intelligence Committee saga rolls on, at least in name only. The panel has no public hearings on its calendar, but Schiff told NPR on Tuesday that Republican and Democratic staffers are continuing to review documents and assemble lists of potential witnesses. A number of Trump campaign aides, including Trump’s    Jared Kushner, who serves as a top adviser inside the White House, have said they would ”volunteer” to talk with congressional investigators. Meanwhile, the next story arc is expected to get underway later this week when the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee step into the center ring. Republican Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina and Democratic Vice Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia are scheduled to brief reporters on Wednesday, then have their first hearing on Thursday. Our original post, from 12:26 p. m. ET, A key House Democrat on Tuesday blamed the White House for preventing a former top Justice Department leader from testifying in public about the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russian election meddling. Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration who was fired by President Trump on Jan. 31, reportedly notified the White House ahead of an appearance that was scheduled for an open hearing before the House Intelligence Committee this week. Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the committee chairman, then canceled that hearing and another closed session that was supposed to have taken its place. The top Democrat on the panel, California Rep. Adam Schiff, told NPR journalists on Tuesday that he believes the White House’s worries about what Yates might say led administration leaders to tell the Justice Department not to authorize Yates’ testimony. ”Sally Yates had a big role to play in why this hearing was canceled,” Schiff said. She could have discussed the details about what the FBI and Justice Department knew about former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s talks with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Schiff said. ”It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was a vigorous pushback on having her testify, among other things, about how long did [Trump] know Flynn had lied before he was willing to do anything about it?” Separately, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration told Yates that what she might have said publicly violated the executive branch’s privilege about internal communications. White House spokesman Sean Spicer disputes the Post report. In a statement Tuesday, he said: ”The Washington Post story is entirely false. The White House has taken no action to prevent Sally Yates from testifying and the Department of Justice specifically told her that it would not stop her and to suggest otherwise is completely irresponsible.” Yates notified the White House shortly after Trump was inaugurated that Flynn was the target of an FBI investigation and may have been subject to Russian blackmail because he hadn’t told the truth about his discussions with Kislyak. Trump fired her over a separate issue  —   Yates told the Justice Department’s attorneys not to defend in court Trump’s order restricting travel from some   countries. Yates may still appear before Nunes and Schiff’s committee, Schiff said on Tuesday, but no hearings are on the calendar and the process is still in disarray after a strange    last week. Nunes revealed that he had seen secret documents that suggested Trump and his aides had been swept up in U. S. surveillance of foreign targets. He declined to share the documents with his fellow committee members  —   even Republicans  —   and it later emerged he didn’t even have them in his possession. Nunes went to the White House to view them late one night, then convened a press conference the next morning and returned to the White House because he said he needed to brief Trump about what he had learned. That kerfuffle, along with Nunes’ decision to cancel this week’s hearings, led Schiff to call for Nunes to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Nunes said on Tuesday he would not. So the inquiry technically continues to go forward, but now with partisan overtones. Schiff and some Republicans, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, want a special process to investigate Russia’s election meddling, either a select committee within the Congress or something like the   Commission that followed the 2001 terrorist attacks. But Republican leaders in the House and Senate appear unenthusiastic about anything like that and Trump would not sign any legislation that created a nuisance for himself."
"Calls are growing for the Republican chairman of a key intelligence panel to recuse himself. ”There is such a cloud over the chairman’s leadership,” Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. Schiff was referring to Chairman Devin Nunes, who revealed Monday that he had met with an intelligence official on the White House grounds a day before announcing that there was evidence he had seen to indicate the Trump campaign and transition were scooped up in incidental surveillance. ”At least for the Russia investigation or issues involving the transition team,” Schiff said, ”it would benefit the public if on those two areas, he recuse himself.” On Tuesday, asked by reporters if he would continue leading the investigation, Nunes said, ”Why would I not?” He referred questions back to Democrats for why they were asking him to step aside. ”We’re doing a very thorough job on this investigation,” he added. ”Everything is moving forward as is.” Schiff also called for a supplemental independent investigation to go forward. The revelations threaten to undercut the House’s investigation on a committee that has been run in one of the most bipartisan fashions of any on Capitol Hill. Now, the Senate’s investigation is likely to take center stage with the House investigation marred and bad feelings left behind. Here are five problems for Nunes and the White House: 1. Timing: It’s not just the fact that Nunes went to the White House grounds the day before making his announcement (where he says he met with an intelligence official not a member of the White House staff) it’s also that his meeting came the day after FBI Director James Comey debunked President Trump’s claim that former President Obama wiretapped him. Nunes also then told President Trump about the information he’d seen. Trump said he felt vindicated, though the information clearly did not vindicate his accusation that Obama wiretapped him. White House press secretary Sean Spicer called it a ”startling revelation.” 2. Breaking protocol and trust: Nunes did all this without telling anyone on the intelligence committee, a committee that has traditionally been one of the most bipartisan in Congress. Now, the committee appears hobbled. Democrat Jim Himes of Connecticut told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Nunes has scrapped all meetings and open hearings that were scheduled for this week. ”The committee has been put into suspended animation,” Himes said. 3. Optics: That, combined with the fact that Nunes himself was part of the Trump transition, all makes it look like Nunes was attempting to help the president. What’s more, The Washington Post led its story detailing how Nunes made his way to the White House this way: ”After taking a brief phone call, Rep. Devin Nunes ( .) swapped cars and slipped away from his staff, congressional officials said. He appears to have used that   stretch of time to review classified intelligence files brought to his attention by sources he has said he will not name.” Swapped cars and slipped away from staff has all the cloak and dagger of a spy novel. For his part, Nunes has said the trip was not at night but during the day, and he wasn’t trying to hide. ”There was no sneaking around,” Nunes told Fox News on Monday night. He said it was not unusual and that ”we go to the executive branch at least one or twice a week.” Still, for Schiff, it’s all a problem. ”Everything is wrong with the fact that he went to the White House to obtain material that he didn’t share with his own committee,” Schiff told Morning Edition, ”but then went back to the White House, reportedly to disclose to the White House. You know, it just doesn’t add up.” Nunes doesn’t see it that way. ”I’m sure the Democrats do want me to quit,” Nunes contended on Fox, ”because they know that I’m quite effective at getting to the bottom of things.” The bottom line, though, is that it’s difficult to lead an investigation when your impartiality is called into question. 4. Who signed him in? That brings us to a couple of problems for the Trump White House. The first is a question Spicer didn’t answer at Monday’s briefing: Who signed Nunes onto the White House grounds? ”I’ll be glad to check on that,” Spicer said. ”I’m not sure that that’s how that works. But I will follow up on that point.” And reporters certainly will follow up Tuesday. Democrats will continue to beat the drum on that point, too. Here was Schiff on Morning Edition: ”Someone on the White House staff would have had to have let him onto the grounds it’s not something he could wander onto.” And Himes on Morning Joe: we ”don’t know who Nunes was signed in by at the White House.” 5. Double standard: But beyond Nunes and the House investigation, the episode has revealed something else about this White House. It seems to care about leaks when the information hurts it, but doesn’t think they’re relevant when they help. The president and White House decried anonymous leaks in the early days of Trump’s presidency. But on Monday when Spicer was asked whether this was an ”inappropriate leak,” Spicer replied: ”No, we’re not concerned about that.” There is a degree of irony to that when the White House was found to have asked Nunes and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr last month to counter negative stories about Russia ties. Both acted on that. Nunes’ response then to whether he had compromised his role as an investigator if he was going to do White House messenger? ”How is that compromised if I’m trying to be transparent with the press?” he contended. ”The White House has been very critical of a lot of you, so here you have the White House actually trying to communicate . .. and now suddenly that’s wrong? There’s nothing wrong with that. . .. What we’re trying to do is have a very good working relationship with the executive branch.”"
"Of all the men who have been U. S. president, just one is buried on the grounds of a state capitol. But that might be about to change. Lawmakers in Tennessee have taken the first step to exhume the body of James K. Polk, who for a century has rested in a small, white,   tomb with his wife, Sarah. Teresa Elam remembers picnicking here with her grandfather, just downhill from the Tennessee Capitol. ”And so I did that with my children, and now we’re doing it with our grandchildren,” she says. Elam claims to be a distant relative of the nation’s 11th president  —   a niece, seven generations removed. In his single term, Polk took control of the Southwest from Texas to California, established the Smithsonian Institution and the U. S. Naval Academy, and reorganized the Treasury and postal system. Elam believes his body should remain here. ”I just have a lot of bad feelings about disturbing the grave,” she says. ”But also, taking him out of Nashville, which he truly loved. In his will, he wanted to stay here.” Well, it wasn’t here precisely. It was actually about 400 yards away. And therein lies the dispute. Perhaps no president has had his remains fought over more than Polk. He passed away in 1849 just months after leaving the White House, and from the beginning, his wishes were ignored. Because he died of cholera, he received a quick burial in a city cemetery for sanitary reasons. The next year, Sarah Polk insisted he be moved to their Nashville home, Polk Place, as stated in his will. He lay there until after Sarah’s death in 1891. With no direct heirs, a judge divided the estate, leading to Polk Place’s demolition and the tomb’s relocation. ”I don’t know that we’re taking an honor away, and I would agree it is an honor to be buried at the Capitol, but it’s a little bit difficult to get to,” says Thomas Price, the curator of the James K. Polk Home and Museum in Columbia, Tenn. Price says he wants the tomb moved an hour away, to the only home still standing where Polk actually lived. ”Like the Capitol grounds, we’re a state historic site,” he says. ”Like the Capitol grounds, we’re a national historic landmark. We’ve been open to public since 1929 with one goal: to perpetuate the memory of the 11th president.” Price argues Polk didn’t intend so much to be buried in Nashville as to be laid to rest at his residence. Andrew Jackson’s grave at the Hermitage and George Washington’s grave at Mount Vernon would’ve been templates. The Tennessee Senate has approved the moving of Polk’s remains. But the state House, the governor, the Historical Commission and the courts still have to sign off, setting up what’s likely to be yet another protracted debate over where he should finally rest. Chas Sisk is a reporter with NPR member Nashville Public Radio. You can follow him @chassisk."
"House Republicans emerged from a   meeting Tuesday morning to bullishly declare the health care legislative battle is not over. ”We promised that we would repeal and replace Obamacare, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,  . told reporters after the meeting. The regular House GOP weekly meeting ran unusually long and lawmakers kicked staff out so they could vent properly after Friday’s demoralizing setback. House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . decided to pull the American Health Care Act, the GOP’s alternative to Obamacare, from a scheduled floor vote after it became clear it did not have the support to pass the House. President Trump signed off on that decision, and the president declared he was moving on from health care to focus on his bigger priority, reforming the federal tax code. But after a weekend of bruising headlines about the GOP’s failures to deliver on their signature campaign pledge in the previous four elections, Republicans are walking back their admission that the health care battle is over. ”I don’t really believe anyone is going to quit,” said Rep. Scott DesJarlais,  . ”I think we’ll do it until we get it done.” DesJarlais is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a   member group of   conservatives whose opposition to the health care bill helped defeat it. DesJarlais says the Freedom Caucus members are reaching out to different factions of lawmakers to try to find a path forward. ”The point is to get these groups together and find out where a compromise would be to make this happen,” he said. Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows,  . C. said he wanted lawmakers to delay a planned upcoming   April recess to work on the bill. ”I don’t think we need to go home until we get the solution done,” he said, adding that he spoke Monday to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and that he had some specific changes in mind. ”Obviously we do, but we’re not going to discuss those (publicly),” Meadows said. ”We’re looking at all kinds of options to get to ’yes. ’” On Friday, Ryan declared Obamacare ”the law of the land” for the foreseeable future. On Tuesday, he suggested Republicans weren’t giving up. ”The way I would describe the meeting we just had with our members is we are going to work together and listen together until we get this right,” he said, adding a caution: ”And in the meantime, we’re going to do all of our other work that we came here to do.” House Republicans’ optimism that they could find a   solution to health care is undercut by comments this week by the White House and Senate Republicans who say any future health care legislation will likely require Democratic support  —   a tacit acknowledgement that repealing Obamacare is off the table. White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday suggested health care legislation could be revived with bipartisan support. ”Starting Friday afternoon through late yesterday, (the president) received a number of calls, as well as other members of the senior staff that had been working on health care, from members of both sides saying that they would like to work together, offer up ideas, and had suggestions about how to come to resolution on this and get to a House vote on this,” Spicer said. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn,   likewise told the Associated Press that it was time for Congress to try a new legislative approach on health care. ”I don’t think we can give up,” Cornyn said, ”But it’s clear it needs to be done on a bipartisan basis.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,  . sent a letter to House Democrats requesting input for legislation that aimed at ”improving” the Affordable Care Act. ”We can then discuss these suggestions in our caucus and be prepared at the earliest possible time to go forward,” she wrote. ”It would be my hope to create a list of priorities to engage with our colleagues, with social media and advocacy groups, and perhaps even with the president.” While some House Republicans remain focused on ”repeal and replace,” a new conversation in Congress is starting on a different ’R’ word when it comes to Obamacare: repair."
"The first opera hit the stage over 400 years ago. More recently, the art form has been adapted to modern media: In the 1920s and ’30s, operas were written to be performed on the radio, and in 1951, NBC commissioned Gian Carlo Menotti to compose Amahl And The Night Visitors for television. Now, a company called Rainy Park Opera is creating operas for the internet. The project started over a beer. On one stool: Adam Taylor, a young filmmaker based in Los Angeles. On the other: Scott Joiner, an opera singer working on his doctorate at the Manhattan School of Music. ”We had both   come out of long relationships, and we had both discovered, in our 30s, this dating app [Tinder],” Joiner says. ”[It] makes dating so different from when we first started dating, before the millennium.” Joiner composed the music for and sings the lead in ”Connection Lost: The Tinder Opera,” an opera about a young man trying to connect through Tinder and failing. His character goes from scene to scene around New York, phone in front of him  —   just like all the women he finds. Taylor, who directed and wrote the screenplay, says that the entire   soundtrack was recorded first, and the video was shot to fit. That turned out to be very handy for the singers. ”They’re holding the phone in the shots, mimicking the Tinder app, and at the same time, the playback is coming through their phone, so they’re holding it right by their face, they’re able to   it,” Taylor says. ”Then we edit the film and we place the original recorded tracks over the   and put it together that way.” Heidi Waleson, the opera critic for The Wall Street Journal, says it ”felt very millennial.” ”It just puts opera in a different medium,” she says. ”And since that medium is something that so many people participate in, then why not have opera as a  —   you know  —   integral part of that medium?” ”The Tinder Opera” is scored for 10 female singers, two male singers, a pair of pianos and a string quartet. Everyone volunteered their services, so the entire budget was just $2, 000. After the opera debuted last April on YouTube, a backer offered to pay for a sequel. With a cast dominated by women, Taylor immediately thought of The Bachelor. ”’The Tinder Opera’ sort of talked about how the phone has devolved our ability to interact on a relationship level,” Taylor says. ”The television  —   or, more specifically, a show like The Bachelor  —   has sort of destroyed this idea of marriage, where, you know, two people can meet on a television show, and on the last episode they get married.” Much to Joiner and Taylor’s surprise, Opera Carolina in Charlotte, N. C. staged ”The Tinder Opera” this past fall. Next season, they’re doing it again as a double bill with the sequel: ”The Bachelor Opera.” ”The operas that were written for television didn’t mean that you never saw it in the theater again,” Waleson explains. ”The operas that were written for radio didn’t mean you never saw it in the theater again. So, you know, the operas that are purely online  —   it’s the same thing!” A month after ”The Tinder Opera” debuted online, the New   ensemble Experiments in Opera premiered five video works in a theater. And later this spring, a West Coast project called Vireo will release an episodic opera online and on public television. Scott Joiner is thrilled by the activity. ”We’re all trying to integrate this old singing art form with a new visual film, television medium,” Joiner says. ”But the results of the few people doing it are wildly different.” Joiner and Taylor’s next work will be . .. what else? ”L’Opera di Facebook.”"
"America has some noisy neighborhoods  —   and Los Angeles is number one. That’s what you can learn from a new noise map from the U. S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. I sympathize with the beleaguered ears of Los Angelenos  —   up to a point. That’s because I live in India. Our cities are so noisy that just last month, the Central Pollution Control Board banned ”sharp, shrill and alarming” car horns and urged drivers to curb their honking: no needless honks, no nonstop honks, no honking more than necessary. But honking is just part of the problem both in Mumbai, where I live, and in Delhi, where my parents reside. When I visit my parents there, everything seems to sound louder and larger than life. I often walk to the market in their genteel,   class, residential neighborhood, and in that half mile, there’s no telling what I could encounter: traffic jams and honking in all registers, of course, but also brass bands in wedding processions, PA systems blasting prayer services in religious rallies, planes winging by overhead and, of course, stray dogs yowling and barking. All that noise can’t be good for you. Study after study has established that people living near traffic, industrial noise or in flight paths have elevated anxiety levels and stress hormones. The impact of street noise on hearing is less definitive. ”Unless you spent very long periods of time outside I wouldn’t expect urban noise to be hazardous to hearing on its own, although it may add to the hazard if you work in a noisy place or go to a lot of clubs and concerts,” says Colleen Le Prell, a professor of audiology at the University of Texas at Dallas who specializes in hearing loss. But just being outside in Delhi seems like an aural hazard. I was curious to see how loud it can get there, so I used my phone’s decibel meter app to measure sound levels both indoors and out. (Keep in mind that decibels follow an interval scale, so 80db is not twice as loud as 40db. It’s actually twice as loud as 70db.) From inside my parents’ house, which is on a quiet block flanked with bungalows, the average levels were at 65db thanks to humming generators (for electricity backup for the frequent power cuts). That’s noisier than the hum of an air conditioner but not as high as a vacuum cleaner, which hits the high 70s. And it’s higher than the World Health Organization’s recommendation: ”30 decibels in bedrooms during the night for a sleep of good quality.” The decibel count flew to about 70db when airplanes roared overhead, or on a festival day, when music blasted from revelries several blocks away. On the streets, traffic is the worst, most consistent offender when it comes to noise pollution. A recent journal article that looks at India’s noise pollution policy puts road traffic sound above industrial noise and construction, even. According to data from India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPBC) and independent reports, traffic sound averages 100db from the street, which is approximately like the sound of a leaf blower from about three feet away —   or a rock concert, but a lot less melodious. In Vienna, Austria, the city ranked lowest on the Index, traffic whispers along at 55db. A 2011 report from the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi puts busy arteries and bus stops at   with some areas going up to 125db. That’s higher than rock concert levels. The Centers for Disease Control sets 15 minutes as ”permissible exposure time” for 100 db before possible damage can occur. Standing at a crossroads 100 feet from my parents’ gate, my decibel meter app averaged at 75db, peaking at 86db when an auto rickshaw or motorcycle went by honking. According to data from the Awaaz Foundation, an   pollution group, construction is the next biggest ear basher. Not only is there residential construction ever present, seemingly the entire city of Delhi is being dug up as the Metro expands. (Awaaz is Hindi for sound or voice.) As per the Ministry of the Forest and Environment, construction equipment like concrete mixers, movable cranes, vibrators and saws should not exceed the noise limits of 75db in industrial areas and 65db in other areas. But according to data collected by Awaaz, concrete breakers or demolition drills in India generally emit 120db, drills 100db, and cement mixers 85db. According to Awaaz’s data, the next biggest culprits in Delhi are aircrafts that have flight paths over the city. Both Delhi and Mumbai have airports within city limits and numerous flights over residential areas. A Boeing 737 at the height of one nautical mile (6, 080 feet) clocks in at 90db  —   about the same as a powerful hair dryer or garbage disposal. Finally we have fun. Fun is hard on your ears. Festivals, weddings and religious processions are public phenomena in India. In traditional North Indian weddings, the bridegroom reaches the bride’s home on a white mare accompanied by a brass band and dancing relatives. And all festivals mean public celebrations with either a DJ or live music as well as firecrackers for the entire neighborhood to, erm, enjoy. That is, if you can hear the music over the honking and construction noise."
"Fans are embracing a San Diego group’s effort to bring a Major League Soccer team to the city  —   or at least, they’re embracing the most unlikely name for the squad. With the final round of an online vote set to close Friday, Footy McFooty Face has more than twice the votes of any other potential name. As of Monday, Footy McFooty Face led the way with nearly 7, 700 votes, well ahead of San Diego Surf (2, 341) and San Diego Bad Hombres (1, 644)  —   the only other names that have attracted more than 1, 000 votes. By tapping into the Internet’s love for silly names, the episode evokes the famous ”Boaty McBoatface” saga of last year, in which online voters chose that name to grace a $300 million British ocean research vessel. That U. K. result was overruled  —   and it seems likely that if MLS does expand to San Diego, its team won’t be wearing Footy McFooty Face jerseys. FS Investors, the backers of San Diego’s MLS bid, say they’ll submit the top 10 names to the league for review. As The San Diego   notes, the online vote plays into the hopes of FS Investors, as the group vies for attention and support for its plan to land an MLS team in Qualcomm Stadium, which up until January was known as the home of the San Diego Chargers. Perhaps Footy McFooty Face will go the way of Boaty, and be given to a less imposing entity. While Boaty McBoatface is now the name of a small submersible, might San Diego someday have a sports mascot named Footy McFooty Face? As the organizers note on their Facebook page, ”a nickname or mascot can be added to traditional names.” Here’s looking forward to the day we see an oversized foam foot patrolling the sidelines in Qualcomm Stadium."
"On July 2, Adele will make the final stop on a   tour to support her 2015 blockbuster 25. The tour certainly hasn’t hurt: Far and away the   album of recent years  —   it was top seller of 2015 and 2016, and no other record came close  —   25 also won the Grammy for Album Of The Year back in February. But all those live shows have also taken their toll on a singer who’s battled issues with her vocal cords, and who hasn’t always had an easy time of it as a live performer. At recent shows in Australia and New Zealand, the singer  —   never one to keep her feelings closely guarded  —   has suggested that, at 28, she may be ready to retire from touring altogether. According to The Guardian, she told a crowd in Perth that ”I don’t know if I’ll ever tour again.” Though far from definitive, let alone legally binding, it’s a sentiment she’s expressed on stage at other stops in recent days. It’s idle speculation to place odds on whether Adele will, in fact, tour again. So it is with deep and abiding shame that we lean back, assess the pros and cons, and bring you the following idle speculation about whether Adele will, in fact, tour again. Plenty of reasons to stop, plenty of reasons to carry on. For now, considering she’s been on a continuous cycle of promotion and performance for quite some time, let’s just go with: Give her a minute."
"There’s no one way to define a great voice: Genius might lie in the phrasing, the range, the power, the control, the words themselves, or some sort of indescribable something else. But one way to diagnose genius for sure is to have a singer walk into a crowded room with little to no accompaniment, open his or her mouth, and command breathless attention in a matter of seconds. A   U. K. pop singer, Adele rocketed to fame a few years ago, alongside a handful of other soulful throwbacks. But unlike many other past recipients of the Best New Artist Grammy (Adele won the award in 2009) it’s hard to imagine her fading from the public consciousness in the years to come her voice is too pure, too charismatic. Witness this   Tiny Desk Concert at the NPR Music offices, wherein she belts out three songs  —   the heartbreaking ballad ”Someone Like You,” the ubiquitous hit ”Chasing Pavements” and the first single from 21, ”Rolling in the Deep”  —   with only the   accompaniment of keyboardist Miles Robertson and guitarist Ben Thomas. Moments before performing, Adele breezed up to our makeshift stage with little fanfare, and proceeded to blaze through her set without so much as bothering to take off her gloves. Between songs, she showcased the   chasm between her mesmerizing singing voice and her far less polished speaking voice, occasionally even unleashing a truly magnificent cackle. At 22, Adele still isn’t quite fully formed as an artist  —   which, after witnessing this set, is really saying something. She may well get even better, and even now, she’s a marvel. Michael Katzif (camera) edited by Bob Boilen photo by Adele Hampton"
"Exposure to lead as a child can affect an adult decades later, according to a study out Tuesday that suggests a link between early childhood lead exposure and a dip in a person’s later cognitive ability and socioeconomic status. Lead in the United States can come from lots of sources: old, peeling paint contaminated soil or water that’s passed through lead pipes. Before policies were enacted to get rid of lead in gasoline, it could even come from particles in the fumes that leave car tailpipes. And when lead gets into a human body, it can mess with brain development, decades of research has shown. ”It’s toxic to many parts of the body, but in particular in can accumulate in the bloodstream and pass through the blood brain barrier to reach the brain,” says the study’s first author, Aaron Reuben, a graduate student in clinical psychology at Duke University. Reuben and his colleagues published the results of a   study on the lingering effects of lead. Researchers had kept in touch with about 560 people for decades  —   starting when they were born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in the 1970s, all the way up to the present. As children, the study participants were tested on their cognitive abilities researchers determined IQ scores based on tests of working memory, pattern recognition, verbal comprehension and ability to solve problems, among other skills. When the kids were 11 years old, researchers tested their blood for lead. (That measurement is thought to be a rough indicator of lead exposure in the few months before the blood draw.) Then, when they turned 38 years old, the cognitive ability of these study participants was tested again. As Reuben and his colleagues write in this week’s issue of JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, they found a subtle but worrisome pattern in the data. As expected, the participants in the study who had low blood levels as children had an adult IQ that was as high as when they were kids. However, Reuben says, children who experienced higher lead exposures ”saw their intellectual abilities decline from their baseline starting point” as time wore on. And, he adds, ”people who saw that decline also experienced downward social mobility.” The children who’d had high lead exposure  —   defined at the time as more than 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood  —   were more likely than the other kids to go on to have jobs that required slightly less education and brought in a little less income compared to their parents’ jobs.  In Reuben’s study, every 5 microgram increase in lead concentration in the blood at age 11 corresponded to a drop in IQ of 1. 6 points at age 38  —   primarily because of a drop in scores on perceptual reasoning and working memory. (Today the health standards for lead are stricter 5 micrograms per deciliter is considered high exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and no amount of lead is considered safe.) The dips in IQ and in socioeconomic status were mild. But, Reuben says, ”even small changes in IQ had some significant influence on the course that people’s lives took.” There is one thin silver lining to the study, points out David Bellinger, a neuropsychologist and environmental epidemiologist with Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and a longtime researcher of lead’s effects: The findings lend credence to an estimate that, in the U. S. over the last 40 years, interventions to reduce lead exposure may have ”raised the mean IQ in adults by as much as 4. 5 points.” Still, Bellinger notes in an editorial accompanying the JAMA study that progress has not solved the problem. There’s no reason to think the findings in the New Zealand study wouldn’t hold for an American population, too, he says  —   and they don’t just apply to the generation now entering middle age. Years after policies went into place in the U. S. limiting or eliminating lead in paint, plumbing and gasoline, there’s still a lot of legacy lead hanging around, which kids can still ingest today. ”We will continue to have to deal with the impact of lead on children  —   and adults  —   until we address these legacy sources of lead that are still in our environment,” Bellinger says. And unlike in New Zealand, where lead exposure appears to have been an equal opportunity toxin  —   impacting all socioeconomic groups  —   in the U. S. children living in   areas tend to be most at risk. ”In Flint and other places we know now experiencing higher lead exposures than we would like, most of these kids are starting out already disadvantaged in life,” Reuben says. This study, he says, suggests that exposure to lead may be one more thing holding them back for decades to come."
"In a victory for Flint residents, the state of Michigan has agreed to spend up to $97 million for new water lines in the city of Flint, which has been struggling with a crisis over lead in its water for the past three years. A federal judge at the U. S. District Court for Michigan’s eastern district approved the agreement Tuesday. Within three years, authorities must examine water service lines for at least 18, 000 households and replace those made of lead and galvanized steel. The state is required to allocate $87 million for the pipe replacement, according to the terms of the deal. The money will come from both state and federal funds. The state will also reserve an additional $10 million in case the job requires it. ”This is the first little battle won in this huge overall war,” plaintiff and Flint resident Melissa Mays told All Things Considered. ”For the first time, we’ve been able to have a federal court enforce the state to do the right thing, which is to replace the pipes that their agencies and their administration broke. And now people can start to see progress.” The water problem began when Flint switched to a new water source in 2014 in order to save money, but failed to implement corrosion controls. This damaged the pipes and caused lead to leach into the city’s water system. ”More than 700 water lines already have been replaced and work is ongoing, but the agreement would rid Flint’s roughly 100, 000 residents of uncertainty over how to pay for the enormous task,” The Associated Press reported. But the wire service added that for some residents, three years waiting for replacement pipes sounds like a long time. ”When I see someone on TV just turn on the water and wash their hands  —   I haven’t been able to do that for years,” Renata Richard told AP. Recent tests showed lead levels in the water to be within federal limits, though residents are still advised to use filters. Many still don’t trust water coming from the tap and prefer to drink bottled water. ”The residents who filed this lawsuit had also wanted bottled water delivered to every Flint home without a working water filter,” Michigan Radio’s Kate Wells told our Newscast unit. ”Instead, the state’s now promising to go door to door, to make sure everybody’s got a filter and knows how to work it.” Mays and three groups  —   Concerned Pastors for Social Action, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan  —   filed the lawsuit in January 2016. The court appointed a mediator in December to draft an agreement with city and state officials. Dimple Chaudhary, the NRDC’s lead counsel in the lawsuit, hailed the deal in a statement: ”For the first time, there will be an enforceable commitment to get the lead pipes out of the ground.” The agreement includes state monitoring of homes where it has replaced service lines. The deal also requires the state to continue to operate nine bottled water and filter distribution centers until at least May 1 and outlines procedures for closing them based on demand. Depending on water quality, all nine may be closed by Sept. 1. The state will continue to deliver water to homebound residents for the next few months, Wells added. Michigan has also agreed to keep funding above federal levels for health programs, particularly those applicable to pregnant women and children affected by the high lead levels. The settlement extends the funding for some of these programs until March 2021 for others, the funding stops in September 2018. ”Does this settlement agreement solve every problem Flint faces as a result of the water crisis? No, it doesn’t, we will still have lots to do to rebuild our city,” Allen Overton of Concerned Pastors for Social Action said in a conference call with reporters. ”Does this agreement leave the community better off than it was before? Yes, it does.”  Michigan Radio’s Wells noted this is one of several major lawsuits over Flint’s tainted water."
"Celiac disease, the autoimmune disorder that prevents people from digesting gluten, affects about 1 percent of the population. But there’s not enough evidence to recommend screening everybody to find that 1 percent, an advisory panel said Tuesday. In people with celiac disease, eating foods with gluten inflames the lining of the intestine and makes it difficult to absorb nutrients. People who are diagnosed with the condition are told to cut gluten out of their diets entirely, which can be difficult and expensive, even as   products have become more widely available. Gluten is found in wheat, barley and rye, and those three grains are found in an awfully large number of prepared and processed foods. ”  diets are widely promoted, and I think a lot of individuals question and ask and wonder if gluten is bad for their health,” says Dr. Alexander Krist, a family physician in Fairfax, Va. and a member of the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent group that evaluates the effectiveness of preventive treatments. ”It’s not uncommon for people to come to the doctor and ask if they should be avoiding gluten, and if they might have celiac disease and if they should be tested.” On Tuesday, the task force announced there is not enough evidence to recommend, or not recommend, that patients without symptoms of celiac disease should be screened for the condition. ”There are a group of individuals who have asymptomatic celiac or have subtle symptoms,” says Krist. ”Our main message is just that there really isn’t evidence right now to say whether checking people if they don’t have any signs or symptoms is beneficial.” The subtler symptoms of celiac disease include common things like abdominal pain, gas and diarrhea, so the task force’s findings could still lead to more people getting tested. The task force is also calling for more studies, especially of people who are at higher risk for celiac, including those with family members who have already been diagnosed and people with Type 1 diabetes. As for consumers, Krist says, ”If you’re concerned that you might have celiac disease, or that you’re having symptoms of celiac disease, I’d encourage people to talk with their doctor and to figure out what’s right for them.” Dr. Ivor Hill directs the Celiac Disease Center at Nationwide Children’s hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He says it’s a challenge for physicians to figure out whether to test a patient for celiac disease, given the wide range of symptoms associated with the condition. ”It’s extremely weird in its clinical presentation,” he explains. ”Although the disease affects the intestinal system, in fact more than half of patients have symptoms that are not even related to the gastrointestinal tract.” For example, people with celiac can suffer from anemia, weight loss, diarrhea, abdominal pain, chronic fatigue, osteoporosis, infertility and peripheral neurological problems. He says the medical community is still split over how to handle people who do not have clear symptoms of celiac disease but are at higher risk for the condition. ”I think you’ll get people on both sides of the fence who deal with celiac disease,” Hill says. ”There are those that avidly recommend everybody should be screened, and others who say, ’No, because we don’t know, [I’d] rather follow those people closely and, if they develop symptoms, consider screening.’ ” Hill says he generally lets patients choose. For example, if a child is diagnosed with celiac disease, parents wonder often whether to test their other children immediately, or test them only if symptoms of the condition emerge later. Hill says he generally tells them there is no evidence that either decision is harmful or beneficial, and they should choose whichever is right for them. The primary test for celiac disease is simple blood test to look for the presence of an antibody that shows up in almost all people with celiac disease who are eating a diet that contains gluten. The   test, as it is called, is often covered by insurance for people with symptoms of celiac disease. Dr. Joseph Murray, a celiac specialist and researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. warns that recognizing symptoms can be difficult for patients. ”There are a lot of people out there who might have symptoms but they don’t associate them with celiac disease,” he says. ”They might be living with symptoms without knowing it. Maybe they move their bowels and it stinks so bad, you’d think something died up there. Or they have chronic fatigue, but maybe they attribute it to something else.” For that reason, Murray thinks doctors need to increase their level of suspicion when it comes to diagnosing celiac disease. And, in an editorial accompanying the task force announcement published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Murray and   Rok Seon Choung write: ”Patients with atypical or nonspecific symptoms often report a delay in diagnosis of celiac disease that may last for years. Thus, screening would enable the earlier detection of symptomatic but undetected celiac disease and shorten the duration of symptoms.” Since the blood test is relatively cheap and   and   food is easier to find than ever before, Murray says the medical community must come up with better data to decide who should be screened and treated for celiac disease. For people who are concerned they might have celiac disease, Murray has the same advice as Krist and Hill: Go see your doctor."
"The Revolutionary War and Civil War are in the distant past, but their remnants continue to be problems today. In Charleston, S. C. cannonballs from those wars wash up on beaches or are found underground regularly. And while some are benign pieces of history, others have the potential to explode and military bomb experts are called in to detonate them. Detective Carl Makins, with the Charleston County bomb squad, says a lot of people don’t understand how dangerous these cannonballs are. He, along with Grahame Long, the curator at the Charleston Museum, get several calls a year that an old relic has been found. The museum has over 200 cannonballs, but Long can’t even display them all. Recently, he’s received some small,   iron balls from the Revolutionary War. And because the Union siege of Charleston lasted more than 500 days, it’s common to find Civil   remains of the constant bombardment. ”On any given day [during the siege] there are several, if not dozens of shells coming into town. Some going off, some aren’t,” he says. ”And these are heavy, heavy pieces going far distances, hitting the ground hard and getting buried.” In fact, Long believes only a fraction of the cannonballs have been unearthed. He expects they’ll be found here for years to come. Alexandra Olgin is a reporter with NPR member South Carolina Public Radio. You can follow her @Alexolgin."
"One day before the U. K. is widely expected to formally begin its departure from the European Union, Scottish lawmakers took another crucial step toward voting on a departure of their own. By a   vote Tuesday, members of Scottish Parliament backed First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s pursuit of a new independence referendum. The motion grants Sturgeon the authority to negotiate with the U. K. government in London on behalf of Edinburgh, placing Scotland one step closer to granting its voters another say on whether to leave the United Kingdom. The move comes fewer than three years after Scotland last voted on declaring independence. In that 2014 referendum, 55 percent of Scottish voters chose to stay in the union. Yet Sturgeon argues that the U. K.’s June 2016 decision to leave the European Union  —   a decision Scottish voters rejected to the tune of 62 percent to 38 percent  —   has changed the political situation sufficiently to warrant a second referendum. ”What Scotland deserves, in the light of the material change of circumstances brought about by the Brexit vote, is the chance to decide our future in a fair, free and democratic way  —   and at a time when we are equipped with the facts we need,” the Scottish first minister and head of the Scottish National Party declared earlier this month. Theresa May staunchly disagrees. The U. K. prime minister, who is set to trigger the country’s exit from the EU on Wednesday, has repeatedly said that ”now is not the time” for a referendum, the BBC reports. After Tuesday’s vote, a U. K. government spokeswoman rejected the idea of a referendum, which could take place as early as fall 2018 under Sturgeon’s proposal  —   in other words, before Brexit negotiations are expected to formally wrap up. ”It would be unfair to the people of Scotland to ask them to make a crucial decision without the necessary information about our future relationship with Europe, or what an independent Scotland would look like,” the official said, according to Reuters. During debate over the motion passed Tuesday, Sturgeon reaffirmed Scotland’s ”right to choose between Brexit  —   possibly a very hard Brexit  —   or becoming an independent country, able to chart our own course and create true partnership of equals across these islands.” And, Sturgeon added, she would not be deterred if the U. K. government declined to negotiate over the proposed referendum. ”If it chooses not to do so, I will return to the [ScottishParliament following the Easter recess to set out the steps that the Scottish government will take to progress the will of parliament.”"
"Ahmed Kathrada, a former political prisoner, politician,   activist and lifelong friend to Nelson Mandela, died Tuesday at a Johannesburg hospital at age 87. In recent years, he had expressed concerns about his country’s direction, and called last year for the resignation of President Jacob Zuma. An activist with the African National Congress, Kathrada  —   known for decades by his nickname Kathy, and later in life, as Uncle Kathy  —   was jailed for decades along with Mandela. He was a defendant in South Africa’s two historic trials: the   Treason Trial, which started in 1956 and precipitated a turn in the African National Congress’s reaction to apartheid, and the 1964 Rivonia Trial, in which   leaders were charged with plotting violent revolution. In the first trial, all 156 defendants  —     figures including Kathrada and Mandela  —   were acquitted of treason. In 1960, while the trial was still going on, South Africa’s apartheid government banned the ANC. A year later, the ANC formed its armed wing, uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation) to lead a campaign of sabotage and bombings against the government. With the ANC banned, Kathrada and other leaders went underground. While in hiding, he helped organize a 1961 television interview with Nelson Mandela, explaining the ANC’s shift from passive resistance to armed struggle. Kathrada was tasked with driving the interviewer, Brian Widlake, to the ANC’s hideout. ”Being me, with my expertise in direction, I lost my way,” Kathrada joked in an interview with NPR earlier this year. ”This way and that way and this way. Eventually, I reached him. And this man says, ’Mr. Mandela, before we start this interview, I want to compliment you on your security.’ He doesn’t know I’m lost.” On July 11, 1963, apartheid police raided Liliesleaf Farm, where prominent   leaders had taken refuge. Police arrested Kathrada and others there, and discovered the ANC’s military plans. The arrests led to the Rivonia Trial. All the defendants agreed at the outset to not contest the verdict or sentence, which could have been death by hanging. Kathrada was among those convicted of treason. ”He [the judge] passed the sentence, then walked. I couldn’t hear. And many of us couldn’t hear what he said. [  leader] Denis Goldberg heard we asked him, and he said ’Life.’ So there was a collective sigh of relief,” Kathrada recalled. He entered the maximum security prison on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town, at age 34. He remained locked up for the next 26 years, until he was 60. In 1982, along with Mandela and other leaders, he was transferred to another jail, the maximum security Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. But the ANC leadership ”insisted you did not waste your time in jail,” Kathrada told NPR earlier this year. It was a lesson he took personally, earning four university degrees through correspondence  —   in history, criminology, African politics and library science, two of them honors degrees. The lesson, he believed, ”applied particularly to the angry youth of  ’76 Soweto. Angry. Full of revenge. Hatred.” The 1976 Soweto uprising was led by students in the Johannesburg township. Thousands protested the introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in black schools. Police fired on protesters, killing and wounding an unknown number of schoolchildren. Kathrada wanted to ensure that those imprisoned afterward would be able to forgive when they were eventually released. ”Anger, revenge, are negative emotions,” he told NPR in January. ”If one harbors those emotions, you suffer more. And that is where our very progressive policy of forgiveness [came from] in which the ANC started with the transformation from apartheid to democracy  —   forgive. Don’t harbor hatred and revenge. ”We live in a South Africa [where] unlike other colonial countries where the colonists went home after freedom, our oppressors were South Africans, born and bred in South Africa. And not a few thousand, but a few million. So we had to get our people to understand that these are not a few thousand that you can drown in the sea.” Later in life, Kathrada often asked school groups what they imagined he missed most while he was in prison. Food and family, he said, were always the first two guesses. But they were wrong. ”The exact thing is children. That’s what you miss most,” Kathrada said. ”Sometimes you want to hear a child cry.” He did not see a child for 20 years. He had none of his own. He refused conditional releases, and finally left prison for good in 1989. With the ANC   Kathrada joined the party again. After the elections of 1994  —   the first truly democratic,   elections in South African history, in which Mandela was elected president  —   he served as Mandela’s parliamentary advisor. ”It was a   thing where I learned, but learned quickly enough, that this is not for me,” Kathrada said of his single term in Parliament. When he and Mandela stepped down in 1999, he became chairman of the Robben Island Museum. He maintained a residence on the island and gave VIP tours of the prison, including one for President Obama and his family in 2013. He quipped there was ”no crime or pollution” on the island, making it the best place to live in Cape Town. Later in life, he wrote memoirs and established the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, which seeks to end racialism in South Africa. But 23 years after the dawn of democracy and the fall of apartheid, Kathrada, whose family was of Indian origin, lamented that South Africa remained so geographically divided and economically disparate. ”Indians still live in Lenasia. Coloureds still live in Eldorado. Blacks still live in Soweto,” he said of areas of Johannesburg, using the legal language for races in South Africa. In his final years, Kathrada remained relatively active with the ANC. He was a member of his neighborhood branch and attended national functions. But he was not a fan of South Africa’s current leader, President Jacob Zuma, who South Africa’s highest court says has flouted the constitution. Last year, Kathrada wrote a scathing critique in the form of an open letter to Zuma, demanding his resignation. He said he ”had agonized” before writing it because he never wanted to criticize the ANC or its leaders. In the letter, Kathrada asked Zuma, ”Don’t you think your continued stay as president will only serve to deepen the crisis of confidence in the government of the country?” It is unclear if Zuma will attend Kathrada’s funeral on Wednesday."
"Ahmed Kathrada spent decades in jail with Nelson Mandela, then spent the first years of democracy helping to shape the country’s government after the fall of apartheid. Kathrada, 87, died in Johannesburg on Tuesday morning. According to a statement posted by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, he ”passed away peacefully after a short period of illness, following surgery to the brain.” Friends and strangers alike called Kathrada by the nickname Kathy, which was bestowed on him by his   teacher, who was Afrikaans, a member of the white minority descended from Dutch colonists. ”  chap,” Kathrada explained in an interview with NPR earlier this year. ”And he could not pronounce my name  —   Kathrada  —   so he changed it to Kathy. And it stuck. Since 1944.” Kathy was a leader in the fledgling   movement in Johannesburg in the 1950s. He moved there when he was 8 to attend school because there was no school for Indians in his hometown of  . His parents were immigrants from Gujarat. Indian families in rural South Africa were quite rare. ”So when I was arrested in the Free State in 1955, the head of police said, ’I’ve never seen an Indian in my life. I’ve got a cell for whites, I’ve got a cell for blacks. I don’t have a cell to put you,’” Kathrada recalled. Kathrada told NPR that he initially supported passive resistance, then eventually agreed with the African National Congress, the struggle movement turned political party, to create an armed resistance to overthrow the apartheid government. When the ANC was banned in 1960, Kathrada went underground. On July 11, 1963, he was arrested with other ANC leaders. It led to the Rivonia Trial, the most famous case in South Africa’s history. Kathrada, with fellow defendants including Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu, agreed from the outset not to appeal their convictions of treason.  ”They said prepare for the worst,” he said. ”They didn’t say the word hang, but they said prepare for the very worst.” Convicted and sentenced to life in prison, the    was sent to Robben Island, the infamous prison off Cape Town. He remained locked up until he was 60. He says he never lost faith he would one day be freed. He and other ANC leaders helped Mandela draft his memoirs in prison and smuggle them outside. After his release, Kathrada preached forgiveness. Indeed, his best friend later in life was one of his prison guards. ”Unlike in other colonial countries where the colonists went home after freedom came, our oppressors were South Africans,” he explained. ”Born and bred in South Africa. And not a few thousand, but a few million.” When the ANC won control of South Africa in the first   elections in 1994 and dismantled apartheid, Kathrada served as President Mandela’s parliamentary adviser. He, like Mandela, stepped down after one term. Later, he actually moved back to Robben Island  —   this time to a private house, where he lived for nearly five years as president of the Robben Island Museum. He enjoyed giving VIP tours of the    to world leaders. ”That’s on my CV,” he said with a laugh. ”Professional, unpaid tour guide. I’ve been there more than 300 times.” Kathrada is survived by his longtime partner Barbara Hogan, herself a former political prisoner and government minister."
"The Justice Department has joined a California whistleblower’s lawsuit that accuses insurance giant UnitedHealth Group of fraud in its popular Medicare Advantage health plans. Justice officials filed legal papers to intervene in the suit, first brought by whistleblower James Swoben in 2009, on Friday in federal court in Los Angeles. On Monday, they sought a court order to combine Swoben’s case with that of another whistleblower. Swoben has accused the insurer of ”gaming” the Medicare Advantage payment system by ”making patients look sicker than they are,” said his attorney, William K. Hanagami. He said the combined cases could prove to be among the ”larger frauds” ever against Medicare, with damages that he speculates could top $1 billion. UnitedHealth spokesman Matt Burns denied any wrongdoing by the company. ”We are honored to serve millions of seniors through Medicare Advantage, proud of the access to quality health care we provided, and confident we complied with program rules,” he wrote in an email. Burns also said that ”litigating against Medicare Advantage plans to create new rules through the courts will not fix widely acknowledged government policy shortcomings or help Medicare Advantage members and is wrong.” Medicare Advantage is a popular alternative to traditional Medicare. The privately run health plans have enrolled more than 18 million elderly and people with disabilities  —   about a third of those eligible for Medicare  —   at a cost to taxpayers of more than $150 billion a year. Although the plans generally enjoy strong support in Congress, they have been the target of at least a   whistleblower lawsuits alleging patterns of overbilling and fraud. In most of the prior cases, Justice Department officials have decided not to intervene, which often limits the financial recovery by the government and also by whistleblowers, who can be awarded a portion of recovered funds. A decision to intervene means that the Justice Department is taking over investigating the case, greatly raising the stakes. ”This is a very big development and sends a strong signal that the Trump administration is very serious when it comes to fighting fraud in the health care arena,” says Patrick Burns, associate director of Taxpayers Against Fraud in Washington, a nonprofit supported by whistleblowers and their lawyers. Burns says the ”winners here are going to be American taxpayers.” Patrick Burns also says that the cases against UnitedHealth could potentially exceed $1 billion in damages, which would place them among the top two or three   cases on record. ”This is not one company engaged in episodic bad behavior, but a lucrative business plan that appears to be national in scope,” Patrick Burns says. On Monday, the government said it wants to consolidate the Swoben case with another whistleblower action filed in 2011 by former UnitedHealth executive Benjamin Poehling and unsealed in March by a federal judge. Poehling also has alleged that the insurer generated hundreds of millions of dollars or more in overpayments. When Congress created the current Medicare Advantage program in 2003, it expected to pay higher rates for sicker patients than for people in good health using a formula called a risk score. But overspending tied to inflated risk scores has repeatedly been cited by government auditors, including the Government Accountability Office. A series of articles published in 2014 by the Center for Public Integrity found that these improper payments have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. ”If the goal of fraud is to artificially increase risk scores and you do that wholesale, that results in some rather significant dollars,” Hanagami says. David Lipschutz, senior policy attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit offering legal assistance and other resources for those eligible for Medicare, said his group is ”deeply concerned by ongoing improper payments” to Medicare Advantage health plans. These overpayments ”undermine the finances of the overall Medicare program,” he said in an emailed statement. He said his group supports ”more rigorous oversight” of payments made to the health plans. The two whistleblower complaints allege that UnitedHealth has had a practice of asking the government to reimburse it for underpayments, but did not report claims for which it had received too much money, despite knowing some these claims had inflated risk scores. The federal Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services said in draft regulations issued in January 2014 it would begin requiring that Medicare Advantage plans report any improper payment  —   either too much or too little. These reviews ”cannot be designed only to identify diagnoses that would trigger additional payments,” the proposal stated. But CMS backed off the regulation’s reporting requirements in the face of opposition from the insurance industry. The agency didn’t say why it did so. The Justice Department said in an April 2016 amicus brief in the Swoben case that CMS’ decision not to move ahead with the reporting regulation ”does not relieve defendants of the broad obligation to exercise due diligence in ensuring the accuracy” of claims submitted for payment. The Justice Department concluded in the brief that the insurers ”chose not to connect the dots,” even though they knew of both overpayments and underpayments. Instead, the insurers ”acted in a deliberately ignorant or reckless manner in falsely certifying the accuracy, completeness and truthfulness of submitted data,” the 2016 brief states. The Justice Department has said it also is investigating   payments to other Medicare Advantage insurers, but has not said whether it plans to take action against any of them. Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation."
"The number of American breweries topped 5, 000 for the first time last year, with craft beer makers accounting for 5, 234 of 5, 301 U. S. breweries, according to new figures from the Brewers Association. Just five years ago, there were only about 2, 000 U. S. craft brewers, which the Brewers Association defines as small or independent beer makers. Last year alone, more than 800 opened for business. Compared to those increases, changes in the overall American beer market were less dramatic, the industry group says. While craft brewers managed to capture $23. 5 billion of the money spent on beer last year  —   a 10 percent gain over 2015  —   their volume share remained essentially flat, at 12. 3 percent of the amount of beer sold in the U. S. ”Small and independent brewers are operating in a new brewing reality still filled with opportunity, but within a much more competitive landscape,” said Bart Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association. In particular, Watson pointed to the acquisition of several successful craft breweries by large beer companies in recent years. When popular breweries such as Ballast Point, Elysian and Devil’s Backbone are acquired by multinational corporations, their results are either removed from the craft beer ranks or prorated over the year. With some 1. 2 million barrels of production stripped from the 2016 tally, the craft beer segment still managed to post 6 percent growth in volume, Watson said. ”Small and independent brewers were able to fill in the barrels lost to acquisitions and show steady growth,” he said, ”but at a rate more reflective of today’s industry dynamics.” Taken together, the number of U. S. breweries rose by 17 percent in 2016, with craft microbreweries leading the way with a 21 percent increase (to 3, 132). The rest of the craft segment includes 1, 916 craft brewpubs and 186 regional craft breweries. Addressing the increasingly common question of another potential snag for the industry  —   whether the legalization of recreational marijuana might cut into the beer market  —   Watson told reporters in a briefing, ”I haven’t seen any strong evidence” that beer consumption has dropped in states that have legalized pot. He also noted that beer’s popularity rose last year in Colorado, one of the first states to embrace marijuana sales."
"On March 18, Drake released More Life, 22 songs packaged as what he’s calling a playlist and what everyone else (including the streaming svengalis at Apple Music and Spotify) have categorized as an album. Whatever you call it, on Monday, Billboard announced that More Life had arrived at the top of the Billboard 200, which tracks the performance of the world’s most popular albums, mostly through fans streaming it on Spotify and Apple Music. And today, the   rapper broke his own record for most simultaneous songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart  —   all 22 songs on More Life plus appearances on two hits by other artists, ”Both” by Gucci Mane and ”No Frauds” by Nicki Minaj, for a total of 24. Drake cast a wide net with More Life, both artistically and in his business decisions around it. Between wider distribution, an expanded palette of global sounds and a digital world of instant availability, the weather conditions were perfect. .. by design. Drake’s last album, Views  —   a ”proper” album released in late April  —   was 2016’s most successful album by a very wide margin, as reported at the end of the year by both Nielsen Music, which powers the Billboard charts, and BuzzAngle, an upstart competitor to Nielsen Music. Released as an Apple Music and iTunes Store exclusive (his deal was reportedly not cheap) with Spotify initially only receiving its   singles. Despite this significant limitation on its availability, Views’ various songs were streamed 245. 1 million times within its first week of release. More Life, by comparison, was made available widely following its debut on OVO Sound, the radio show hosted biweekly by Drake’s manager, Oliver   on Apple’s Beats 1 station. Songs from the record were streamed 384. 8 million times over the ”tracking week,” as Billboard refers to it  —   a 63 percent increase. Zooming in, within its first day songs from the More Life were streamed, globally, 89. 9 million times on Apple Music, a new record. (Also consider that Apple Music has just 20 million subscribers.) More Life also set a record over on Spotify, where songs from the   generated 61. 3 million streams its first day. That is a lot. (Note: That Spotify, which has far more listeners than Apple Music, claimed nearly 30 million fewer streams than Apple is something NPR has been unable to reconcile. Apple told NPR that Beats 1 streams were not included in its aggregate number, but demurred when pressed for a more detailed explanation. Spotify, asked to clarify whether its 61. 3 million streams were U. S.  which could explain the discrepancy, also refused to comment. If these numbers are accurate, we’re forced to guess that central placement within Apple Music contributed to the disparity in streams.) More Life’s is also a sign of music streaming’s maturation. Around the time Views was released last April, Spotify had 30 million subscribers (and many more free listeners) while Apple Music claimed 13 million subscribers (and zero free listeners). Spotify now has 50 million subscribers and Apple Music 20 million. That’s a 62. 5 percent increase in paying subscribers across both services  —   just about exactly the increase in streams that More Life received over Views. (As well, last year song consumption increased by 27. 2 percent, according to BuzzAngle. Overall music consumption increased by 4. 9 percent.) To further illustrate the point: Universal Music Group, Drake’s corporate home and the largest record label in the world, made most of its recorded music earnings through streaming last year. Streaming is how the world listens now. More Life has an almost comically diverse range of influences across its vast   tracklist. The record, contoured smoothly, transitions from house music (via Detroit legend Moodymann and South Africa’s Black Coffee) to grime (with two guest spots from Giggs) and Atlanta (Young Thug and Future both make appearances). Drake is in  —   and practically defines  —   the   of musical artists worldwide that kind of visibility leaves few places to draw new fans. Bringing in big names and attendant styles from subcultures he hasn’t penetrated is one way to go about it. The tactic drew, along with memes about his   linguistic and stylistic appropriation, accusations of sonic dilettantism, but for every detractor there is almost certainly a genre representative happy to see some shine. Drake’s deal with Apple buys the tech giant a few favors, such as an appearance in a   ad for Apple Music  —   an ad that has the double effect of getting Drake’s name next to Taylor Swift’s in headlines and humanizing one of the world’s   artists. As well, it gets you top billing in articles like this from The Verge, wherein your success is the story being told by some of the most powerful people in music. (Unfortunately, that article is rife with confusing assertions, such as crediting Beats 1 with Drake’s streaming record despite Beats1 plays not counting towards streams, saying that it replaced SoundCloud for the rapper despite the two properties’ vast fundamental differences and letting Apple executive Larry Jackson claim Beats 1 is the largest radio station in the world without providing the numbers to back it up.) Oh also  —   a pretty   jacket. Taken together, the continuing and growing success of Drake is both anomalous and relatively easy to understand. That he’s been so ahead of the curve both artistically (something for everyone) and strategically (getting Apple executives to promote a record available everywhere is a trick you’re not likely to see repeated anytime soon) is both an illustration of Aubrey Drake Graham’s business savvy and an expression of a new world. Some people can do some of what he accomplishes, but only he can do all of it. When she released 25, Adele saw that keeping her music off streaming would net her one of the most lucrative records in recent memory. Drake and his team recognized the same, just in the inverse."
"The great jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis once told an interviewer: ”There’s only freedom in structure, my man. There’s no freedom in freedom.” He meant that when an artist chooses to work within the structure of something like a sonata or a   play, their creativity can actually be heightened. Constraints, ironically, can lead to freedom. And what’s true of music and theater is equally true of fiction, as we are seeing in the second season of SyFy’s epic series The Expanse. Last year, I wrote two pieces on Season 1 of the Expanse. The first came before the show aired and was my plea to show runners not to   my favorite   book series. The second came after the season was well underway, and I happily reported the show was nothing short of the best   show in a decade. I am, once again, happy to say the new season is just as good  —   and getting better. While there are moments of uneven pacing, overall The Expanse continues to build a story as wide as the solar system and, yet, as personal as the bonds between friends, lovers and enemies. It is awesome! But from my place as a scientist, what is most remarkable about the show’s development is its realism. More than any other TV   show, it gets the science right. It does this because it has to  —   and that’s what makes it interesting. The Expanse imposes constraints on itself that are the real rules of real physics. That’s a key point because, in many ways, The Expanse is the first real attempt to map out in TV fiction the ”world” we’ll face as we begin working our way off Earth. The Expanse takes place 200 years in the future when humanity has settled Mars, the asteroid belt and the moons of the giant planets. That means gravity (or lack of it) and space travel constitute an essential constraint on the characters’ lives. Instead of dreaming up some kind of ”artificial gravity” as most   does, the story lives in the real world where thrust (i. e. engines turned on) means the floor is pushed against your feet. It feels like you’re standing on a planet. A spinning space station can also produce a   effect (you walk on the inside of a spinning tube). But without thrust or spin, you are floating, weightless. While the story focuses on the politics of prejudice, oppression, war and discovery, the real world of real space remains a fundamental player setting the limits within which that human story gets told. In order to better understand how the show has managed to make these constraints a key to its success, I spent a wonderful hour talking with the show’s writers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. The writing team have pretty impressive credentials, being responsible for the original Iron Man and the acclaimed Children of Men.  What follows is an edited version of the interview. So were you both fans of the books before the show? Hawk: When doing The Expanse was first suggested, the books were sent to us and I just remember looking at one of the covers and not wanting to read them. I thought it was going to be all  . Only when I had my   did I crack the first book. Then, I read it all in a single afternoon and screamed at Mark: ”Jesus, get the meeting.” What was it that convinced you? Hawk: The thing about it was the story. It’s all these people in this amazing setting  —   a   setting  —   that felt real. The story really felt like that’s what it could be like 200 years in the future where things like gravity and the coldness of space really mattered. All those space sorts of things came into play and were nicely balanced with the characters’ story in the way both Mark and I like it to be.  The great thing about the story was you got engaged with these people and their issues, but they’re also living in this impossible environment. So, I am really interested in how the real physics constraints affected your job as writers. Most   just finds workarounds. I once heard that the transporter in Star Trek was ”invented” because the show didn’t have the budget to keep showing shuttles flying back and forth. How did you see The Expanse’s need to exist in a real environment  —   in terms of living and working in space  —   make the story more interesting from the narrative point of view? Mark: The problem with a lot of science fiction is when anything is possible, then anything is possible. Things don’t have measure. So for us, gravity is really gravity. You can’t just throw away the constraints science imposes because technology solved everything, which is what   tends to do. I feel like cell phones destroyed the modern thriller because everyone can communicate all the time. But in the   universe of The Expanse, the spaces are vast. With the [finite] speed of light, that means messages take time. It’s like the railroads in America or wooden ships in Columbus’s days. So in this real solar system of The Expanse, light travel times mean delay in communication. You don’t have instant communications anymore  —   and that matters. So we’re in a story where to speed up you have accelerate, which nearly kills the body which you then have to dope up just so it can survive. It takes months to get anywhere. And when you do conduct a battle, there’s a   time delay across space. By the time you put an order out to your soldiers and get back a response, the battle’s already over. With all these things, the physical world matters again in a way that   always just blows off. The show does a beautiful job of making it clear to viewers how the real world of real physics in space shapes the character’s world. There are some signature scenes where you show a character floating weightless and then the engines turn on and they drop to the floor. Or if they are on a rotating space station, they fall away and backwards from an open airlock. Other times, though, you relax the realism. I imagine this is for budget reasons. I am interested in how you decide when to show the constraints and when to just imply them. Mark: Yeah, you can’t do it all the time. So you just save it for really important moments. That’s when the audience will really see what’s happening and feel how the physics matter. That puts you on a path where in less important moments you can do without it. We do gravity really well in the important scenes. And the audience will go with us because we’ve told them that we care about how gravity really works and how it affects the lives of the characters. Hawk: Yeah, one of things that blew me away along these lines was wrapping my mind around how the decks were oriented on the ships. I loved that from the books. The ships are like flying skyscrapers and the decks are oriented like the floors in a buildings. Hawk: Yes, before in   shows, you would have these long decks like you have on a supertanker. You have one long deck, then, you go down to the next level and you another long deck running from the font of the ship to the back. Yeah, but in reality the decks are always oriented so that ”down” is pointed at the engines. Hawk: That took a little bit of my brain to adjust. Me too. But that is kind of my point. It may take us a while to figure out, but if humanity ever actually builds this kind of society, it will just be normal everyday life for people a century or so from now. It will be the texture of their lives just like boarding an airliner is no big deal for us  —   but would have freaked out someone from 200 years ago. Mark: Yeah. That’s why the esthetic [in the show] was we’re not on   ships. We’re not on vessels on the ocean. You’re in a rocket and your feet are pointing towards the engine and there are no windows. Hawk: The one area of we didn’t follow the science though was sound. That was a big decision on the outset. Obviously there’s no sound in space. But when you take space travel and remove all the sound, the drama just goes into nothing. Mark: For a storyteller, sound is almost as, if not more, important than the visual. It’s is a huge part of your ”crayon box” as a storyteller. Well, as a   astrophysicist, I forgive you. Speaking of realism, you know I have always been intrigued by The Expanse’s idea that we’ll settle the asteroid belt by hallowing out the big ones and spinning them up. That way millions of people could live inside with spin gravity.  I tried calculating if that would work once. My initial try made it seem like it wouldn’t. You would have to spin the rocks up so much they’d break apart. I was kind of bummed by that. Hawk: When you did that calculation, did you take into account the Flux Capacitor? Oh my God, no. That could be the solution! Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"At the very southernmost tip of Illinois, the pancake flat cornfields give way to the rolling, forested hills of the Delta. Here, at the windy confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, it feels more southern than Midwest when you arrive at the old river port and factory town of Cairo, once made famous in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But Twain might not recognize Cairo today. ”People come through Cairo and say ’wow,’ ” says Phillip Matthews, a pastor and community activist. In the past three decades, his hometown lost half its population. Alexander County is not only the poorest county in Illinois it’s also one of the fastest depopulating counties in the United States. In Cairo, weeds creep up through the cracks in the old brick streets. Whole city blocks are condemned. ”I’ve watched for 40 years this city decline,” Matthews says, on a recent tour. Nature is taking over at the abandoned lot that used to house Cairo’s largest employer, the Burkart Foam company. It closed more than a decade ago. More recently, the paper mill just across the river in Kentucky closed. More people moved out. In December of 2015, the only grocery store closed, soon followed by the gas station. ”They no longer have pumps,” Matthews says, frowning as he points it out. All this blight: the abandoned businesses, the old, partly burned down mansions with roofs caving in, it’s unsettling. But Matthews says state grants promised for demolition of properties like these dried up long ago, and the job was barely half done. ”We need help” There is a lot of talk right now about how best to try and bring back struggling small towns, especially in the rural Midwest, which Donald Trump carried easily. Many of these places would also see steep cuts in aid if the president’s budget gains traction in Congress. Visit Cairo, and at times it feels like a town on life support. ”You know, you say to your government, we want to clean it up,” Matthews says. ”But we need help.” In Cairo, there is a lot of anger and many people feel slighted. A few years back,   Gov. Pat Quinn visited with reportedly great fanfare at the time and designated Cairo as a port authority. The idea was that the town could once again take advantage of all the barge traffic on the rivers. The governor left town, and so did the promise of funds. A frustrated Tyrone Coleman, Cairo’s mayor, says the town is well positioned to take advantage of the expected increased barge traffic due to the Panama Canal expansion. After all, it’s what put the city on the map in the 1800s. ”Strategically, geographically, this is one of the most untapped resource areas in the country,” Coleman says. Lately, some state lawmakers have made renewed commitments. In a statement, Gov. Bruce Rauner’s office says he is working to make Cairo and other small Illinois towns competitive. But in Cairo, that’s a tough task. Coleman says the City Council is making progress and studying the feasibility of starting a port authority on its own. The town may also be close to getting a grocery store back. But it’s hard to recruit companies, let alone new residents, when a lot of neighborhoods look abandoned. Cairo as a ”microcosm” The mayor and other leaders say there’s plenty of blame to go around, and locals aren’t off the hook by any means. Corruption has been a big problem here. Cairo has also struggled with a lot of racial tension over the years. There were violent race riots in the 1960s. The federal government intervened in the 1980s to get more minority representation at City Hall, and over the years Cairo’s population has shifted from being majority white to majority black. A lot of people here say the town never fully recovered from the race riots. Jerome Carr is one of them. He moved here in 1994 from the Chicago area, drawn by the slower pace and the fact that locals didn’t lock their doors at night. But he has grown cynical over all the promises made to bring new life into this town. ”Cairo is kind of like the microcosm of what’s going on in our society or in our country on a larger scale  —   dysfunction and politics,” Carr says. He got so frustrated recently that he decided to enter politics himself for the first time, running for a seat on the local school board. He sees his town at a critical juncture. The federal government recently took over Alexander County’s housing authority after a corruption scandal. There are hopes that officials from the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will turn things around, repair and modernize the units. But Carr worries they could just decide to bring in the bulldozers. ”It’s a known fact, if they lose the projects, it’s a wrap,” Carr says. He isn’t being dramatic. Just like in a struggling neighborhood in a city, everything here is connected. First, you lose the grocery store, then maybe the housing development, and then, the biggest fear, what happens to the school? The heart of the community, Two schools in town recently closed. Now, the junior high has merged with the high school. And no one is sure about its future. ”Anyone who spends much time in rural America sees that when a high school leaves or an elementary school leaves, then families move,” says Andrea Evers, the superintendent. Since she arrived five years ago, 120 students have left. There isn’t much property tax revenue in Cairo. Most of the school’s state and federal funding is based on enrollment. ”We’re hoping for brighter days ahead,” Evers says. ”We’re very, very optimistic that the grocery store will come back, and the paper mill.” If some stability returns, Evers says, her school district can weather through it. But another closure would be devastating. This school is the center of the community. It’s open late most nights for kids to use the gym and library. There are town forums here, meetings and weddings. It even houses Cairo’s only food bank. Sophomore Nigel Williams, who wants to be a high school principal someday, says it’s tough watching his friends move away. He says his town gets a bad rap, but there’s a lot of talent and potential here. ”A lot of people discriminate Cairo for what they see,” says Williams. ”But they don’t actually come in and get to know it . .. it’s the difference between seeing and actually knowing.” This is something you hear a lot in Cairo. Like in much of rural America, people’s identity is tightly wrapped in their town. And then there’s the sense that places like this have been forgotten. For the first time in years, Alexander County voted Republican in the last presidential election, though most of Cairo itself went blue. Phillip Matthews, the community organizer, steers his sedan through a small entry gate and into one of Cairo’s two main housing projects. The roofs are in need of repair. Some of the worn brick buildings have faulty heat. There’s no playground, so some kids have made do by fastening a basketball hoop out of some old milk crates. Matthews has a question for the new president. ”If you can find billions of dollars to build a wall in Mexico, you can’t find the money to fix this?” he asks. Matthews says people here see government failing them at all levels. They’re tired of listening to the promises and talking about the problems. They want them solved."
"They come from places like Vietnam, China, Mexico and Guatemala, lured by promises of   jobs and legal immigration. Instead, they’re smuggled into the U. S. forced to work around the clock as bussers, wait staff and cooks, and housed in cramped living quarters. For this, they must pay exorbitant fees that become an insurmountable debt, even as their pay is often withheld, stolen or unfairly docked. In restaurants, bars and food trucks across America, many workers are entrapped in a form of modern slavery. That’s according to a new report by Polaris, an organization that fights human trafficking and helps survivors. In the report the group offers a detailed portrait of human trafficking as it occurs in the U. S. breaking it down into 25 distinct business models, from nail salons to hotel work and domestic service. ”Because human trafficking is so diverse . .. you can’t fight it all at once and there are no single, silver bullet solutions. You have to . .. fight it type by type,” Bradley Myles, CEO of Polaris, told reporters on a press call. ”We see this report as a major breakthrough in the field.” He called the report the largest data set on human trafficking in the U. S. ever compiled and publicly analyzed. The Polaris team analyzed 32, 208 reports of human trafficking, and 10, 085 reports of labor exploitation processed through its hotlines for victims between 2007 and 2016. The goal: to identify profiles of traffickers and their victims  —   and the methods they use to recruit and control them  —   across industries, in order to better thwart them. Janet Drake, a senior assistant attorney general in Colorado who has prosecuted human trafficking cases, called the new report ”a game changer.” Only 16 percent of cases identified through the hotline calls involved labor trafficking, Drake says, ”but now we realize through the work we’ve done that labor trafficking is probably at least as prevalent, if not more so, than sex trafficking. And that’s a real problem we’ve had as prosecutors  —   being able to identify and disrupt these labor trafficking networks.” Three of the 25 categories the group tracked involve the food industry: restaurants, bars and agriculture. From dairy farms to orange orchards, nearly 2, 000 of the cases involved the agriculture industry. Workers  —   mostly men from Mexico and Central America  —   often were enticed with assurances of an hourly rate, but once they showed up in the U. S. they were paid on a much lower   basis. Many reported being denied medical care and protective gear to do their job, forced to live in squalid conditions, and threatened with deportation. Of the more than 1, 700 restaurant industry cases, the vast majority of victims involved immigrants, recruited from Mexico, Central America and East and Southeast Asia. Nearly one in five was a minor. They included cooks, wait staff and bussers at restaurants, food trucks, buffets and taquerias. Traffickers often take advantage ”of language barriers between exploited workers and patrons  —   and in some cases other workers at the same restaurant who are not being abused  —   to help avoid detection,” the report says. Workers who try to leave may face threats of deportation. Traffickers also may threaten to injure or even kill the worker’s family back home. About a third of the cases involved immigrants without legal status in the U. S. but many other victims were here on valid work visas. Some victims were forced to provide both sex and labor. Women from Latin America  —   including many minors  —   come to America beguiled by promises of good wages, safe migration or even a romantic relationship. They’re put to work selling drinks, and sex, at bars and cantinas, says Jennifer Penrose, data analysis director for Polaris and   of the report. Many times these are ”legitimate bars and restaurants, where they’ll sell alcohol, often at inflated prices,” Penrose says. But behind the scenes, ”forced commercial sex may occur   or nearby at a hotel or warehouse.” In this model, she says, traffickers tend to be ”part of larger criminal organizations.” Because the report was based solely on calls and text messages to Polaris’ hotlines, Myles notes there are limits to what it can tell us. ”Potentially, restaurant trafficking may be much higher than we’re learning about, but we’re just not getting enough of those hotline calls to be able to describe that,” he said. Maria Godoy is a senior editor with NPR and host of The Salt. She’s on Twitter @mgodoyh."
"Two separate   incidents broadcast this week highlighted the criticism black women regularly face in the workplace and spurred many to share their own experiences on social media. ”It’s high time that people recognize it’s not just happening on television  —   it’s happening at the cube right next to them, and they have something they can do about it,” says educator and activist Brittany Packnett. On Tuesday, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly dismissed comments about President Trump made by Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, mocking her hair and saying, ”I didn’t hear a word she said, I was looking at the James Brown wig.” O’Reilly later apologized. The same day, at the daily White House briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer lectured veteran reporter April Ryan as she pressed him on the Trump administration’s alleged ties to Russia during the campaign. ”Please, stop shaking your head again,” Spicer told Ryan, who reports for American Urban Radio Networks. At the next day’s briefing, Spicer called on Ryan first in an apparent attempt to smooth over the incident. To many black women, including Packnett, the treatment both Waters and Ryan received while doing their jobs was not surprising. Packnett encouraged women to share their stories with the hashtag #BlackWomenAtWork. ”It was important that people recognize that what happened to April Ryan and Congresswoman Waters [on Tuesday] is not a rarity,” she told NPR’s Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered. ”The kind of slights, both big and small, that black women experience at work are happening every single day.” Packnett said that, like many black women, she had been told that her natural hair, or wearing it in braids, was unprofessional. Others shared stories online about being told they were too intimidating or having people assume they were the cleaning staff or an assistant when they’re actually the one in charge. ”This idea that a black woman’s presence is to be policed or politicized in the workplace is what we’re talking about,” Packnett said. ”The idea that Sean Spicer can tell April Ryan what to do with her face, irrespective of her years in journalism, the idea that Maxine Waters’ voice is less important than her hair, is what black women are experiencing every single day.” Ultimately, she hopes that the hashtag and that the two incidents start a needed conversation about how women of color are treated in the workplace. ”It’s time we make the invisible visible, and it’s high time that people create inclusive work environments,” Packnett said."
"The White House says President Trump has a new special assistant on his staff  —   his daughter Ivanka. The announcement comes a week after the president’s oldest daughter moved into her own office in the West Wing to work on women’s issues. Her shift from an informal adviser at the White House to an unpaid government employee is small but important. She was already applying for security clearance, had access to classified information and was meeting with world leaders. But she did not have to abide by ethics rules, which concerned many ethics experts who said it would allow her to skirt some rules and disclosures. In a statement, she says she was voluntarily complying with all ethics rules, but was aware of the concerns about advising her father in a personal capacity. ”I will instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House Office, subject to all of the same rules as other federal employees. Throughout this process I have been working closely and in good faith with the White House Counsel and my personal counsel to address the unprecedented nature of my role,” she said. Her husband, Jared Kushner, already is a senior adviser to his    the president. A senior administration official tells NPR that the Office of Government Ethics had already determined Ivanka Trump met the standard of employee. For example, on Monday, she chaired a roundtable at the White House for women in leadership roles in small business. The meeting included at least two appointees in the administration. She will face ethics rules in her new position. For example, a    provision bars her from participating in any official matter that could affect her personal financial interests, and she can’t take gifts from ”prohibited sources”  —   that is, people or entities seeking to do business with the White House. She will not be allowed an earned income, such as a salary, from outside sources. So she can’t be paid for an appearance to promote her merchandise. The ban doesn’t include income from investments. Additionally she will not be allowed gifts and cash from foreign governments or officials. The White House said, ”Ivanka’s service as an unpaid employee furthers our commitment to ethics, transparency, and compliance.”"
"For years, a State Department employee allegedly received tens of thousands of dollars in gifts from Chinese intelligence agents and failed to report the repeated contacts to U. S. officials. Candace Claiborne pleaded not guilty at a federal court appearance Wednesday to charges of obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI, over her relationship with the Chinese agents. Claiborne ”used her position and her access to sensitive diplomatic data for personal profit,” Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Mary McCord said in a statement. Since 1999, Claiborne worked as an office management specialist in numerous posts, including in China, Iraq and Sudan. She had top secret security clearance. Court documents state that two agents of China’s intelligence services provided gifts to and sought information from Claiborne about ”internal United States government positions on matters of U. S.  —   Sino relations.” The gifts included cash, fancy meals, and an Apple iPhone and MacBook. The Chinese agents also provided some of the gifts and benefits to a male U. S. citizen, including rental payments for a Shanghai apartment, fashion school tuition, a monthly stipend, and an   paid vacation to Thailand. After that man allegedly committed a ”serious crime in China,” court documents state the agents intervened to stop the police from investigating. The documents do not specify the relationship between Claiborne, 60, and the unidentified man, who was 21 years old in 2007, when they initially became ”well acquainted” with the first of the two agents. Claiborne ”appeared motivated by the profitable nature of her   relationship” with the agents, the court documents say. For example, she once wrote in her journal that she could ”Generate 20k in 1 year” by working with one of the agents. She actively tried to conceal her relationship with the Chinese intelligence officers to the State Department and FBI, the court documents allege. But in January 2017, an undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese agent stopped Claiborne on the street in Washington, D. C. She then invited him to her home. For an hour and a half, they spoke and the undercover FBI agent thanked her for helping the ”Ministry,” which she allegedly did not deny. ”As a State Department employee with Top Secret clearance, she received training and briefing about the need for caution and transparency,” U. S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips of the District of Columbia said in a statement. ”This case demonstrates that U. S. government employees will be held accountable for failing to honor the trust placed in them when they take on such sensitive assignments.” As NPR’s Michele Kelemen reported, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that ”when a public servant is suspected of potential misconduct or federal crimes that violate the public trust, we vigorously investigate such claims.”"
"When President Trump signed an order to roll back climate policies, he promised more jobs for coal miners. ”My administration is putting an end to the war on coal. Gonna have clean coal, really clean coal,” Trump said in making the announcement at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters Tuesday. There is a big effort to do reduce coal’s effect on climate change by capturing the carbon emissions from coal plants before they escape into the atmosphere. In 2014, coal generated only about 39 percent of the electricity in the U. S. but was responsible for about 77 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, according to the EPA. Mississippi Power’s Kemper County Energy Facility is the most ambitious carbon capture project in the U. S. right now. It’s a new coal power plant, built from the ground up. But there have been a few problems during construction. Originally the plant was estimated to cost $2. 4 billion. Now the price tag is nearly three times that at about $7. 1 billion. It’s also nearly three years behind schedule. The utility got some help paying for the project, including a $270 million grant from the U. S. Department of Energy. But because the plant was not finished by a 2014 deadline, Mississippi Power had to pay back $133 million in investment tax credits. ”What I think is important to remember about those cost overruns is that they didn’t really have much to do  —   if at all  —   with the technology of carbon capture,” says John Thompson, director of the Fossil Transition Project at the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental advocacy group. Thompson says most of the problems are with another part of the plant where coal is turned into a gas before it’s burned. Some environmental groups don’t support carbon capture projects like this. They want coal left in the ground and renewable energy to take its place. But the wind and solar industries likely won’t grow fast enough to meet the world’s energy needs for decades. Thompson worries that in the meantime climate change will harm the natural areas and endangered species environmentalists have worked for a century to protect. ”All that [progress] can change with just a few degrees of temperature rise on the planet, and I’m just not willing to bet everything that we’ve worked for as an environmental movement,” he says. There are some carbon capture projects that have had an easier time getting off the ground. Outside Houston, the company NRG Energy has built its Petra Nova project. Unlike Kemper, it’s been added on to an existing coal plant. It uses a chemical process to capture carbon dioxide before it’s released into the air. As with the Kemper facility, the carbon dioxide from Petra Nova is piped to a nearby oil field. There, it is injected deep underground where the CO2 makes existing wells more productive. ”The oil field is over a mile deep and is a formation that’s held hydrocarbons for millions of years,” says David Greeson, vice president for development at NRG Energy. He says the carbon dioxide is injected into that formation, ”and that’s where it will remain for the next millions of years.” This is a common practice in the oil business called ”enhanced oil recovery.” It turns CO2 emission from a liability into an asset because oil companies will pay for it. For Petra Nova, that means NRG was able to build this $1 billion facility without increasing electricity rates  —   that is, if oil prices don’t collapse. ”We’re really counting on the oil market being at $50 or more over the next 10 to 15 years,” Greeson says. Overall, the Petra Nova project captures only about 10 percent of the emissions from this one coal plant. Still, NRG says that’s about 5, 000 tons of carbon dioxide per day. The company says that’s the equivalent of taking more than 350, 000 cars off the road. The coal industry still hasn’t signed on to the idea that climate change is a huge problem. But if the country wants coal companies to reduce CO2 emissions, American Coal Council CEO Betsy Monseu says her industry will need more help. ”The U. S. supported renewables development with tax credits of about $37 billion over the period of 2010 to 2014 and coal technology received $1 billion during that time,” she says. And the industry believes it has a strong argument to justify more subsidies to capture carbon dioxide. The Energy Information Administration says the U. S. has the largest coal reserves in the world  —   enough to supply the country for 222 years at current mining levels. With a president who clearly wants to help coal companies thrive, Monseu says the industry is optimistic about its future."
"Church volunteers on their way from Ontario to New Jersey were stopped at the U. S.  border and turned away. So were Canadian nurses who work at a hospital in Detroit. Scores of Canadians say they’ve been refused entry at U. S. border checkpoints in recent weeks, and their stories have gotten a lot of attention. At 4, 000 miles, the U. S.  line is the longest unprotected land border in the world, and it’s relatively easy for Canadians to visit the U. S. most don’t require visas. But immigration lawyers on both sides of the border say officers from U. S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, have gotten more aggressive in their questioning of Canadian citizens, and about who they’re letting into the country, since President Trump took office. ”Definitely things have changed on the northern border,” said Heather Segal, an immigration attorney in Toronto. She said CBP agents are ”denying people, erring on the side of denial, slowing people down and preventing people from getting into the United States . .. with this notion by CBP that this is how they’re supposed to be behaving right now.” A CBP spokeswoman declined to comment on individual cases. She did note that officers have broad discretion in deciding who gets to cross the border. Thomas Winkowski, a former acting commissioner of CBP, says concerns about the incidents stemming from the new Trump administration may be overblown. ”It’s business as usual in many regards up on the northern border,” Winkowski says. ”When you have an incident that happens, people start saying, ’Hey this is a result of the administration,’ when in fact, it really isn’t.” Some aren’t taking any chances, including the Girl Guides of Canada, the equivalent of the Girl Scouts. They’ve cancelled field trips to the U. S. So have several school districts, including Toronto’s, because school officials say they don’t want to deal with students being rejected at the border. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was asked about those concerns at a press conference this week in Detroit. ”If they’re in Canada legally, and they have the proper paperwork, they don’t have to worry about anything,” Kelly said. ”I don’t get it. But it’s their business. And if they feel that way, that’s their loss, I guess.” CBP officials say a tiny percentage of Canadians are rejected at the border. Out of 13 million visitors since October, an agency spokeswoman said, fewer than 7, 000 were turned back. Segal, the immigration attorney, says that’s partly because fewer Canadians are visiting the U. S. in the first place. ”It’s so difficult to navigate the entrance that it creates a chilling effect  —   whether intended or unintended,” she says. ”Why is this happening to me?” Earlier this month Bill McLevin and his wife were stopped on their way from Calgary, Alberta, to Phoenix, where McLevin’s    owns a condo. It’s a trip McLevin says he’s made many times before. But this time, CBP officers asked him a question they hadn’t before: Do you have a criminal record? Turns out that 45 years ago McLevin, who is now 66, was arrested for selling a psychedelic drug to undercover police. McLevin insists he was not a drug dealer, and that the incident was a   mistake. He served six months in prison, and says the Canadian government pardoned him more than 30 years ago. ”They treated me like I was criminal right off the bat again, like it just happened yesterday,” McLevin said. ”They mug shot me, they fingerprinted me. I was in a room that was glass on all sides, and everybody in the waiting room could see this happening. It was embarrassing.” CBP officers wouldn’t let McLevin into the country, and added him to their database. They told him he shouldn’t try to enter the U. S. again without a special waiver that costs hundreds of dollars. Others, like the nurses who work in Detroit, were told they had the wrong work visas. The confusion has since been cleared up. But the church volunteers never made it to the Jersey Shore, where they were planning to help Hurricane Sandy victims who are still rebuilding their homes. Then there’s the story of Manpreet Kooner, who lives in Montreal. She said she was stopped at the U. S. border this month and told she had to have a visa to enter. Kooner says she’s a   citizen of Canada, so there’s no apparent reason she needs one to visit as a tourist. ”Honestly, I wanted to just go to Vermont with my girlfriends for like a day getaway,” Kooner said in an interview with the Canadian TV network Global News. ”I’ve asked the officers, ’Why is this happening to me?’ ” Kooner told Global News. ”And nobody can give me an answer. They tell me that they’re not entitled to tell me.”"
"There was no such thing as Classic Rock in 1976  —   the phrase, and the radio format it inspired, wouldn’t come into common usage until the  . But there was already some notion of a rock and roll canon, a list of key albums that FM listeners needed to have in their collection. At the start of 1976, Bob Seger had zero albums on that list. Twelve months later, he had two: Live Bullet, the double LP documenting some blistering hometown sets at Detroit’s Cobo Hall, and Night Moves, his first platinum album, whose title single would peak at No. 4 as 1977 began. His next record, 1978’s Stranger in Town, would go platinum within a month. I bought all three at once that year, because they were the ones Columbia House offered. But I knew there were others. As a budding,    music obsessive, every record in the canon triggered a cascading need for several more. Some might be content with Elton John’s Greatest Hits, but I wanted the entirety of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and then some way to prioritize the rest of his back catalog. Destroyer was not enough KISS At Budokan was not the sum total of Cheap Trick. But there were always more records than money to buy them with, even if you stocked your initial collection with 13 titles for the mere penny Columbia House demanded. So every few weeks, when I’d scrounged together $10, I’d flip through the stacks in my local record store, starting at A (Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic was the must have, then the   debut, which had ”Dream On,” but was Get Your Wings worth the $4. 95?) and ending at Y (so many Neil Young albums besides Harvest) trying to decide which one or two LPs were the next to be added to my shelves. I spent a lot of time lingering in the S bin, studying Seger’s back catalog as well as that of another rock and roll true believer: Bruce Springsteen. Both were all over the radio with songs that sounded a lot simpler than they really were, and tackled similar subjects  —   humble roots, wanting to escape, fearing your chance had passed  —   in similar ways, transforming the RB singers who’d inspired them into something a little less groovy, a lot more driving and therefore more immediately digestible for white suburban kids. Bruce only had four LPs then, whereas Bob seemed to have a new old one every time I returned to the S rack: Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man, Mongrel, Back in ’72, Smokin’ O. P.’s, Seven, Beautiful Loser. They weren’t all there every time (though I didn’t know it then, two others, Noah and Brand New Morning, had already fallen out of print) so it was hard to tell whether one going missing meant it was a good one I should have grabbed when I had the chance, or simply wasn’t worth restocking because so few people wanted it. It had taken Seger a decade of false starts to secure his place in the canon, and the very size of his back catalog and the way the band name kept changing  —   from The Bob Seger System to plain old Bob Seger to Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band  —   implied it had taken him a while to figure out what he was doing. Most visits, I slipped the Seger records back in the bin and went home with something else, though I congratulate my younger self for eventually gambling on Back in ’72 and Smokin’ O. P.’s. In those   days, we relied on magazines such as Rolling Stone and Creem to fill us in on artists’ back stories, and every new piece about a given performer came with an obligatory summary of their career to date. Reading these all in a row in 2017 can be grimly amusing, as it’s clear Seger was   by the cognoscenti from his very first   single (1966’s ”East Side Story,” credited to Bob Seger and the Last Heard, recorded at the behest of manager Eddie ”Punch” Andrews, who still oversees Seger’s affairs today). But writers greeted every new release with some variation of ”Bob is great hopefully this record will put him over the top.” As the years went by, each new review then felt obliged to explain why the last LP hadn’t done so after all. Here’s a small sample of that pattern, all taken from back issues of Rolling Stone:    Ben Edmonds, reviewing Mongrel”It’s easily his best overall work to date, but there are still some crucial musical problems he must come to grips with if he is to realize the tremendous potential he displayed on his earlier   singles . .. why recognition has been so long in coming to one so obviously talented is beyond me.”    Jon Landau, reviewing Back in ’72”. ..ironically, it seems to me to have a better shot at commercial success than any of its more calculated predecessors . .. he belongs at the very top of the rock  roll heap. Back in ’72 is just the record to put him there.”    Dave Marsh, reviewing Seven”Bob Seger has been touted for years as a   John Fogerty but has never had the monster hit needed to break out nationally . .. what he really needs is a good producer.”    Ken Barnes, reviewing Beautiful Loser”Bob Seger is a superb songwriter and Midwestern rocker who’s been ignored for far too long . ... With this LP, he deserves his long delayed recognition  —   now.”    Dave Marsh again, reviewing Live Bullet”. ..because of poor recording, lack of record company support and what has at times seemed like willful career mismanagement . .. Seger remains anonymous . .. he still has not been properly produced.” By 1976, Marsh was not the only observer blaming Seger’s inability to become a household name on odd management choices. In a small Rolling Stone feature that year headlined, ”A Star in His Own State,” Patrick Goldstein repeated the mantra that ”Seger’s lack of national prominence is viewed as something of a mystery,” ascribed some of the responsibility to Andrews’ ”  decision to release Seger’s string of Warners albums on his own label, Palladium,” then quoted ”a local publicist” who expressed frustration with Punch Management: ”’They just seem to reflect his attitudes . ... They’ve got to convince him to tour the coasts more often if he really wants to break nationally. ’” But the surprise success of Live Bullet, Seger’s ninth album, quickly silenced such sniping. Despite Marsh’s quibbling about production, Bullet gained Seger the national audience all those writers had been sure he deserved. Like most of Seger’s other recordings, which could reliably sell 10, 000 to 50, 000 copies in Michigan and Ohio, if nowhere else, Bullet began as a regional hit, selling its first 300, 000 copies in Detroit before finally getting Seger spun elsewhere in the country. Maybe he could have toured the coasts more often, but regular airplay in Los Angeles and New York quickly accomplished the same thing: He was no longer just a local hero. It’s tempting now to draw a line in Seger’s career: a variety of noble commercial and artistic misfires prior to Live Bullet, then a string of increasingly successful exhibitions of his craft thereafter. But all the ingredients that made the albums after Live Bullet sell millions were present from the beginning. There’s an amiable haphazardness to Seger’s first seven or eight records (and the  ’60s singles that preceded them) which saw Seger adopting then discarding a variety of different approaches, from the   psychedelic rocker heard on his earliest hit, 1968’s ”Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” to acoustic   to   purveyor of slightly sanitized Stones riffs. But what might have come off as cynical careerism in another artist just felt like a true fan’s promiscuousness with Seger. He’d inhaled rock and roll’s history with an acolyte’s belief in its redemptive power and a gifted composer’s ability to intuit the specific elements that made certain songs work. He was a human radio antenna, with a conviction so genuine and a melodic skill so great that he could turn the most basic elements  —   Chuck Berry leads plus Ike  Tina howls on the rockers restrained but steadily building arrangements from the Muscle Shoals rhythm section on the ballads  —   into perfectly realized creations that leapt straight from the speakers into your soul, bypassing your brain entirely. The gold record he earned with Bullet simply gave him a sorely needed combination of confidence, clout and cash. He promptly spent all three realizing a vision one could only catch glimpses of in his previous recordings, like 1970’s cover of ”River Deep, Mountain High,” an early display of his agility at translating RB into hard rock. ”Turn the Page,” from 1972, is the original brooding,   power ballad. Both now sound like templates for multiple   Seger would have later that decade. He’d been called   (as a compliment) in 1973 and was referred to (with zero irony) as punk in 1977. These are not contradictions  —   in 1977, punk was   musically, an effort to strip away every extraneous filigree that had accreted like barnacles on the hull of rock music. Bob Seger was basic, when basicness was a good thing the world lacked. The main thing that distinguishes the albums from ’76 on is just how much better he got at distilling his various inspirations. Spending more time in better studios with more accomplished producers certainly helped, but so did the fact that Bullet, which was nothing but live versions of the most fully realized songs from his first eight records, had already proven there was a wider audience for Seger’s particular mélange. 1980’s Against the Wind continued Seger’s platinum streak, and savvy licensing deals extended Seger’s presence far beyond radio and record stores. The iconic scene in Risky Business where Tom Cruise lets the audience know just how liberating having your parent’s mansion to yourself can be by   Seger’s ”Old Time Rock  Roll” while dancing around in his underwear rocketed the movie, the star and the song into the broader pop cultural firmament. In 1991, Chevrolet’s use of ”Like a Rock” to advertise their trucks proved so powerful that the campaign, which was planned to last three to six months, ran for 13 years. Fast forward to this decade. I hear someone singing ”If I Were a Carpenter,” which reminds me Seger did a surprisingly heavy version of that song on Smokin’ O. P.’s, which I haven’t heard for a while. I reach for my copy, only to find that it’s gone. This is bothersome, but correctable, I imagine. I am a gainfully employed adult, living in a city with multiple wonderful used record stores, plus there’s an entire Internet at my fingertips. I decide to go on a spree, replacing not just the missing album, but finally adding the several I never purchased to my collection.  But I discover something odd: Bob Seger’s old albums are not only missing from my shelves. They seem to be missing from the world. Seger is one of the few remaining digital holdouts  —   there’s nothing beyond the odd Christmas tune available on subscription services, and even on iTunes his only studio album for sale is 2014’s Ride Out, which sits beside two anthologies and two live albums. (Disclosure: I already knew this. As a content executive at Rhapsody and, later, Google Play, I have been involved in at least two attempts to convince his label and management to make his catalog available on demand. This entire article can maybe be read as my third attempt, though I’m no longer in a position to benefit professionally from such a development. The benefits to me as a fan are hopefully obvious. The benefits to Seger as an artist, I will argue, are incalculable.) But this is not merely a case of   being cautious about digital distribution, because most of his studio albums are no longer in print physically, either. Out of 17 total, his own website shows only six available for purchase: his ’75 through ’80 run of Beautiful Loser, Night Moves, Stranger in Town and Against the Wind, plus this century’s Face The Promise and Ride Out. Used copies of his first seven albums start around $30, and go as high as $200, if you can even find one. Those   prices suggest I made several wrong calls back in 1978. They also convince me I know who took my copy of Smokin’ OP’s  —   a former housemate who worked in a record store, and was apparently savvier than I about its slowly increasing value. Copies of ’80s and ’90s albums The Distance, Like a Rock, The Fire Inside and It’s a Mystery are a bit easier to locate, and accordingly more affordable, but also, officially, out of print. Simply stated, this is a bizarre state of affairs. Catalog sales (traditionally defined as anything not released in the past 18 months) have always represented a huge chunk of record industry revenue, and catalog’s percentage of total revenue has been increasing steadily for a decade  —   according to Nielsen Music, catalog accounted for 37% of all sales in 2005, had risen to 49% of all sales by 2014 and surpassed new releases to represent the majority of all sales for the first time in 2015. That same year, Nielsen reported that catalog represented nearly 70% of plays on streaming services. Labels take those percentages so seriously they have entire divisions devoted to back catalog. As Adam Block, President of Sony Music’s Legacy Recordings, explains, ”Legacy exists to make sure the stories that are our artists, their albums, their songs, get told and  . If they’re not, they’ll drift off into the great digital void we’re standing on the precipice of.” Such efforts are not just a canny way to get existing fans to repurchase records they already own. As Bruce Resnikoff, CEO of UMe, says, ”Generally speaking, if your first fan and your last fan are the same, then you have failed to grow your artist’s audience.” UMe’s strategy with back catalog bears that out: Resnikoff describes super deluxe editions ”geared towards the longtime, core fan base (with) demos, outtakes and rare materials as well as the full essays and photos all housed in a collector’s box,” and explains why he offers those in tandem with ”an introduction edition for a new fan. It is a delicate balance to be true to the existing fans, while creating releases that reach new fans who are consuming and discovering music through new platforms.” Seger’s absence from digital services, combined with the gradual disappearance of even physical copies of half his catalog, suggest a rare level of indifference to his legacy. I can’t think of any other artist of his stature, with such a string of   hits, who’s been content to let his past work fade away in this manner. Contemporaries from the ’70s and ’80s regularly issue 25th anniversary editions of old LPs while basking in critical   of their early work. Bruce Springsteen, the other artist I lingered over in those S bins in the 1970s, has embraced this reality. A significant chunk of fans who bought all his albums on vinyl as teenagers have since added anniversary editions (with tempting bonus CDs of outtakes and   documentaries on DVD) of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River. But with Seger, all you hear is crickets. It’s 2017, but for some reason it’s easier for casual music fans to start playing deep cuts by Bing Crosby, who had a No. 1 record in 1940, than most anything by Bob Seger, who had a No. 1 record in 1980. Seger declined to comment for this article, but we know for sure he has a dim view of portions of his catalog. As he told an interviewer in 2007, ”There’s a bunch of songs on Back In ’72 that are bums. People keep saying: ’I want to hear that album.’ And I go: ’No, that’s okay. ’” We also know that, whatever Seger’s thoughts about online music might be, he lets Punch Andrews make all the business calls, as he explained to the Wall Street Journal years ago: ”I do music, he does business. It’s a great division of labor and we don’t get into each other’s areas.” He said much the same to Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene in 2014: ”It’s an ongoing issue with my manager and Capitol Records . .. I’ve had the same manager for 49 years and he’s been right most of the time.” The dispute with Capitol seems to revolve around what percentage of any online royalties Capitol is obligated to pay Seger, though reading through the many pages of testimony Punch and Gear Publishing, which has handled Seger’s publishing for the past 50 years, submitted to the Copyright Office in 2011 and 2014 concerning various rate setting procedures, Punch is equally skeptical about the benefits online services offer his client. Asked via email what needs to change before more of Seger’s catalog comes online, Andrews replied, ”For years, we have been asked to bring the catalog to streaming. We have not pulled the trigger there because the rates are low so low, in fact, that the label would not break it down and show the artist how little he would make. Bob has always been an album artist and that format has served him very well. Streaming and downloads have always favored singles artists.” Punch’s opinion on going digital can be boiled down to: ”Not yet in the artist’s interest.” And Seger’s take is essentially: ”Punch is usually right.” But there’s a lot of space in that ”usually.” Punch has had the last laugh when others were convinced he was woefully misguided before. Who should be smirking this time round? Is Seger doing better or worse in 2017 than he should be? We can use some straightforward methods to check. Let’s start with record sales. Reliable figures prior to the introduction of Nielsen Music’s Soundscan in 1992 can be hard to come by, and RIAA gold and platinum certifications are notoriously suspect (Nielsen Music consistently reports lower numbers for titles the RIAA has certified as   platinum albums on a particular date) but we know that all nine Bob Seger albums from 1975’s Beautiful Loser through 1991’s The Fire Inside had been certified platinum by the end of 1991, with several of those being certified   (Stranger in Town and Night Moves were each certified 5x platinum, Live Bullet and Against the Wind were each certified 4x) totaling something in the general vicinity of 25 million albums sold, plus or minus a grain of salt. After 1992 we can get a lot more precise, thanks to statistics collected by Nielsen. According to their figures, Seger’s sold about another 22 million since then. That’s almost 50 million albums sold since 1975. But look how   those ’  sales are: That chart suggests that, excepting spikes around new album releases and tours to promote them (as in ’95, ’06 and ’14) or new compilations (as in ’94, ’03 and ’11) Seger was reliably selling over 600, 000 albums per year for most of the ’90s and ’00s. Whatever other artists might have been experiencing, the music business was still working the way it always had for Bob Seger in 2006. Face The Promise came out that September and was certified platinum before the year was out, as all but one of his albums since 1977 had managed. And all those sales of Face The Promise were physical albums. Though iTunes was introduced in 2003 and digital sales saw huge growth year over year, Punch’s suspicion of digital music services’ effect on album oriented artists lasted until Seger’s annual sales dropped below 350, 000. That happened in 2010 in 2011 Seger’s latest anthology, Ultimate Hits, was released on iTunes as well as physically. But 2011 proved poor timing to make a big deal about finally coming to iTunes. The next year, download sales would plateau, before decreasing after 2013, as on demand streaming came to represent the largest share of music consumption. By that point, even Bob Seger fans had stopped buying records the way they used to. 2014’s Ride Out has yet to crack 250, 000, despite generally positive reviews (and a nifty,   cover of Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Woody Guthrie cover, ”California Stars”). Broadcast radio spins provide another gauge of how Seger’s presence might have waxed or waned over time. Several classic rockers have had remarkably steady numbers, even as digital distribution upended the rest of the music business in the new millennium. Look how consistent spins of Led Zeppelin and Queen have been, per Mediabase’s ”Big Picture” chart, which has tracked total plays across the major stations in the most popular formats for any artist with a song in the top 1000 since 2006: These two artists provide a pretty good illustration of classic rock acts who’ve remained culturally relevant enough to keep songs from a quarter century ago in the top 1000. Now let’s see how Seger’s totals compare. Holy canoli. A decade ago, Seger was being spun by DJ’s almost as frequently as Led Zeppelin, but he’d plummeted 80% by 2014, before dropping out of the top 1000 songs list entirely last year. Narrowing our focus just to Classic Rock stations, we can see similar signs of trouble: Per Mediabase, Seger was the    artist in the format in 2000. In 2008, he was No. 13. Last year, He was No. 27. I asked Mike Boila, the Vice President of Gear Publishing Company, if the pace of licensing requests, which had proven so effective for Risky Business and Chevrolet, had seen any changes since Seger’s ’80s and ’90s triumphs. Those, at least, seem to have held steady: ”The number of synch requests has remained consistent over the years,” he said. He then reeled off an impressive list of uses, and if the movies (The Rose, Body Heat, Forrest Gump, The Mask, Armageddon, Grown Ups) were mostly from the ’80s and ’90s, the TV shows displayed a more expansive range, extending back from Cheers and Miami Vice to more recent entries such as 30 Rock, Ray Donovan and Mr. Robot, and even included several Spanish translations of Seger tunes for HBO’s East Bound  Down (you can get a taste of the Spanish version of ”Night Moves” here). Boila discusses ”reviewing all requests large or small,” with a care and attention to creative nuance that makes clear how seriously management treats Seger’s songs. They’re not simply looking to squeeze the maximum revenue out of his catalog, they want to honor it, and they recognize that such uses can be an important discovery mechanism for new fans. However, ”the extent to which you are making a first impression with an audience makes it all the more important to be careful what impression you are making. It’s important to us that the use does not recast the song in a different light  —   for example, we do not approve uses which make the song itself the butt of a joke. Also, sometimes the music will fit the tempo of a scene very well, but the lyrics don’t make sense in context.” Making sure a given use works creatively, Boila says, ”is the key to maintaining the   integrity of a catalog.” But what use is courting new fans through licensing deals if so little of Seger’s catalog is available where the majority of listeners are looking for it? And how does letting so many of the original albums fall out of print square with maintaining the integrity of his catalog? Seger’s relatively steady album sales numbers prior to 2007 mask an earlier, more troubling change: The vast majority of sales through the ’00s were driven by the original Greatest Hits compilation, which by 2009 was not just Seger’s   record at over eight times platinum, but was also the   catalog CD of the ’00s, surpassing greatest hits discs by both Michael Jackson and The Beatles. In other words, if Punch is right that that Bob Seger is an album artist, he’s wrong that iTunes represented the biggest existential threat to Seger’s artistic expression. Once Greatest Hits was released in 1994, listeners no longer had much need, or demonstrated much desire, to obtain old Bob Seger LPs. Through 1991, over 70% of Bob Seger’s sales were driven by his 14 studio albums. But that percentage has flipped in the years since. Compilations  —   greatest hits and live sets  —   have accounted for more than 70% of his sales since Nielsen Music started tracking the numbers. That shift seems to have created a weird feedback loop that mimicks what happened to Seger’s back catalog in the ’70s. Back then, the fact that no one was buying the old albums made it easier for manager and artist to treat them with a sort of benign neglect, letting their influence wane while focusing on what was working better: raucous live shows to rapturous audiences from the Midwest down to Florida. It feels like a pattern might be repeating. Much as Seger’s status as a regional star from 1964 through 1976 left him free to record and tour where he felt most comfortable, but those same decisions prevented him from breaking out to the wider national audience he craved, his current level of very substantial success eliminates any pressing need to participate more fully in the digital age. Even at their reduced levels, his sales remain enviable, so royalties, steady synch fees and his ability to sell out arenas whenever he feels like hitting the road risk obscuring any missed opportunities when it comes to securing his legacy more completely for future generations. He’s returned to having a core base of rabid supporters, but once again there are millions more he could be reaching but isn’t. Seger might simply be too humble to consider the kind of catalog curation someone like Bruce Springsteen’s been overseeing with his early work as a necessary endeavor. Reading through 40 years’ worth of Bob Seger interviews drives home how embarrassed he seems by talking about himself, as well as how unimpressed he remains with a fair portion of his old records. That personality, coupled with a   musician’s innate suspicion of anything that could be perceived as taking advantage of fans, has left Seger one of the few multiplatinum artists with a   career who’s never even released a boxed set. Though he’s worked hard to maintain a consistent level of quality in both his songwriting and recording since breaking through in ’76, he’s demonstrated little interest in having a public profile beyond the work itself. He does few interviews when he doesn’t have a new album to promote. He resisted making music videos well into the ’80s, and only engaged   once he succumbed. He took a long break between albums and tours after ’96 to raise his kids. He’s stayed in Michigan, and has left all the business decisions to Punch, possibly because a more mercenary manager might have talked him out of more than one of those choices. These are admirable qualities in a superstar! And through 2007, the public profile of the work itself didn’t suffer overmuch. Ten years ago, it was still a safe bet that a new Bob Seger record would go platinum. Now, one can barely get halfway to gold. He’s not unique in that regard, but he is unique in this one: He’s not making it possible for anyone who hasn’t already purchased that new record to ever hear it. Punch is aware of the new reality, though to hear him tell it, retailers are the ones to blame for the unavailability of Seger’s back catalog. When I ask him why he hasn’t kept more of the old titles in print physically, or at least released them as album only downloads online, he explains: ”iTunes has a policy of not permitting ’album only’ downloads except in some instances. From the very beginning, we were very concerned as to how this policy would affect album oriented rock artists in the long run and certainly there is evidence that this policy has contributed to a decline in the format. At the same time, physical retailers have been reducing the footprint of music in their stores to such a degree where deeper, back catalog titles have a tougher time reaching an audience.” If Punch is right about the state of the industry, Seger is in a pickle: The priorities of iTunes and Spotify might have changed the way people listen in the digital era, but those new priorities make it harder for him to argue for a reversal for the sake of Seger’s back catalog. And if shrinking physical retail space means it’s harder to market Seger’s early LPs, letting them all fall out of print only makes it harder for anyone hear them as the artist intended. In the name of preserving his client’s vision as an album artist, compilations have become the default option in both environments, causing the old albums to fade in favor of individual songs. And those choices have left us with fewer of those songs than there used to be. Back in 1978, flipping through that S bin, there were four Springsteen albums, compared to 11 Bob Seger records. Today, in iTunes, there are 30 Springsteen albums compared to just five of Seger’s more than 400 Bruce songs, only 81 Bob songs. The Early Seger Volume 1 compilation you can buy in iTunes features precisely six of the 66 total tracks from his out of print albums. Can an artist will the culture to forget work he no longer considers worth remembering? Does the artist risk that same culture forgetting the impact he once had if he simply doesn’t   with the standard corporate imperatives to join in every new format shift, to eagerly repackage and   previously successful material? These questions matter, because as time passes, popular culture has its own way of doing the same sort of culling I was engaged in as a    record shopper  —   indeed, the combination of choices made by millions of other shoppers is just one of the mechanisms through which that larger winnowing occurs in the first place. The program directors who invented and expanded on the concept of Classic Rock as a distinct radio format in the ’80s did another, rather literal form of culling, reducing the more freeform AOR playlists of the ’70s into an   menu of reliably   songs. Seger’s records survived the initial narrowing of the Classic Rock canon. But I fear they won’t fare so well as the industry format shifts yet again to a streaming model. We’ve moved to an age of algorithms, in which huge amounts of data about artists, songs and the people who play them determine what new listeners are exposed to. Since Seger’s material is barely counted in that data today, he might be writing himself out of the canon. The songs are powerful, though  —   hopefully powerful enough to weather the drought until they’re finally fully available online. Pressed for details about if and when that might happen, Punch offers the same answer he and Seger have been giving fans for years: ”We are working on some plans to reintroduce back catalog in a variety of traditional and   ways. Stay tuned . .. ” I’ll stay tuned, because I already care. I remain worried about those who could, but don’t yet  —   if it takes too long for those old albums to come online, Seger’s chance to capture their attention could pass. He may become like Bing Crosby, with all those old albums once again available, but only the nostalgic bothering to play them."
"The U. S. Census Bureau published a list on Tuesday of more than 50 planned topics of questions for the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey. Hours after it first appeared online, one of those topics was removed from a revised report: sexual orientation and gender identity, which was listed as ”proposed” on the    page of the original report. In a written statement, a Census Bureau spokesperson says the report ”inadvertently listed sexual orientation and gender identity as a proposed topic in the appendix. This topic is not being proposed to Congress for the 2020 Census or American Community Survey.” Questionnaires for the census and the American Community Survey have not asked for sexual orientation and gender identity before, although the bureau has collected information about   couples based on answers to questions about a respondent’s sex and relationship to other people in a household. Many LGBT rights groups were disappointed to see the topic disappear from that list. Reliable data about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are hard to come by, and advocates say policymakers need that information to make informed decisions. ”We feel like it’s a lost opportunity,” says Meghan Maury, director of the Criminal and Economic Justice Project at the National LGBTQ Task Force. Maury sees the Census Bureau’s decision as part of a pattern of recent moves by the Trump administration to remove questions about sexual orientation from other surveys by federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, as the Associated Press recently reported. The Census Bureau’s director, John Thompson, published a blog post on Wednesday to explain why the bureau decided to not include questions about sexual orientation or gender identity in its upcoming surveys: ”In April 2016, more than 75 members of Congress wrote to the Census Bureau to request the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity as a subject for the American Community Survey. We carefully considered this thoughtful request and again worked with federal agencies and the [Office of Management and Budget] Interagency Working Group on Measuring Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity to determine if there was a legislative mandate to collect this data. Our review concluded there was no federal data need to change the planned census and [American Community Survey] subjects.” Still, Maury says she’s not convinced that the appearance of ”sexual orientation and gender identity” in Tuesday’s report was just a typo. ”Leaving something off of a list, that can be a typo. But this was added to a list for some reason,” she says. The Census Bureau is required by law to share a report of planned topics to Congress three years before the   of a new census of every resident in the U. S. The report also includes subjects for questions in the American Community Survey, which is conducted every year with about 3 million households. New questions are added more frequently to the American Community Survey than the census. Maury says that could give the bureau some leeway to start asking questions about sexual orientation and gender identity without having to wait until the 2030 Census. But she warns that even small delays in collecting this information can have large consequences, especially within the LGBT community. ”They’re read by many people in our community as saying affirmatively that we don’t count, that we don’t matter,” she says. ”Decisions like this really contribute to that feeling that we’re invisible.”"
"The   government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is taking steps that could cause a popular American university in Budapest to close. Under a bill submitted to the Hungarian Parliament late Tuesday,   universities issuing diplomas in Hungary would be required to have a campus in their home country. Central European University  —   which was founded in 1991 by liberal philanthropist and investor George Soros and is widely considered to be the top private university in Hungary  —   does not have a campus in the United States, even though it is registered in New York state. Students from scores of countries are enrolled in the university’s   graduate and   programs. Orban and the   Soros have a strained relationship, even though the prime minister received a scholarship from the Soros foundation that allowed him to study briefly at Oxford. Hungarian officials say the legislation doesn’t have anything to do with Soros or CEU, even though the new requirement doesn’t affect Hungary’s 27 other   universities, which all have campuses abroad. They say the changes are needed because   universities are operating outside the law. But many Hungarians, and certainly Orban’s critics in and outside of the country, believe the legislation is a clear attempt to shut down CEU. If the legislation passes, the law would take effect in September and CEU would have to open a campus in the United States by Feb. 15, 2018, if it wants to stay open. That is something the university says ”would have no educational benefit and would incur needless financial and human resource costs.” The bill ”is a threat to our continued existence in Hungary,” Michael Ignatieff, CEU’s president and rector, told reporters at a news conference. He vowed to fight back, adding: ”This university is not going to close under any circumstance and we won’t be pushed around.” Ignatieff met with Hungary’s education minister Wednesday night in Budapest to try to resolve the conflict, CEU spokeswoman Colleen Sharkey told NPR. She said Ignatieff described the meeting as ”icy cool” and that it left him ”confused.” Patrick Gaspard, vice president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, flew to Budapest to offer his support to Ignatieff and the university. (The Open Society Foundations is a financial supporter of NPR.) ”CEU represents the best set of values that have really helped to open democratic space in central Europe,” he told NPR. ”It’s clear that scholars, students and those who are committed to the expansion of civil society space will continue to defend those values even in the face of this repressive legislation.” Orban has pledged to turn Hungary into an ”illiberal state” and is a staunch supporter of President Trump. Gaspard said it was ”difficult to speculate” whether the Hungarian leader was counting on President Trump not to intervene because Trump and Soros also don’t get along. ”But it’s clear that there is a trend to closing off civil society space in a number of capitals around the world,” Gaspard said. Education Ministry State Secretary Laszlo Palkovics earlier told a news conference: ”If the current [U. S.] administration supports it, then so will we.” The U. S. Embassy in Budapest criticized the Hungarian action. Reuters reported Charge d’Affaires David Kostelancik saying in a statement that CEU ”enjoys strong bipartisan support in the U. S. government.”"
"La Vida Boheme plays upbeat music on somber themes. The Venezuelan rockers’ last album, Será, came as student protests were erupting in their home town of Caracas. The band’s booking agent was murdered their tour manager was kidnapped. The four members of the group locked themselves inside their apartments. They would later describe the record, which won a Latin Grammy, as ”the soundtrack to an apocalypse.” ”In our country, people are having a really hard time,” says lead singer Henry D’Arthenay. ”Our families are having a hard time. The people who are poor are now poorer, the ones who are richer are now experiencing scarcities, the ones that made deals with the government are just rich as hell, and many government officials are being looked at by the DEA for drug trafficking. It’s such a crisis of a situation.” Three years ago, the members decided they’d had enough: They packed up and moved from Venezuela to Mexico City. Their life in a foreign country became the inspiration for the band’s latest project, called La Lucha, or ”the struggle.” ”We just had this hunch that if we were to ask the right questions to the right people  —   you know, ’What was your struggle? What is your struggle?’  —   we may get some answers ourselves,” D’Arthenay says. ”I don’t believe life gets easier to keep going, you cannot do it by the force of dictating your life, like controlling. You just have to have your ears open and hope to be the best man you can, you know? And I believe that’s good enough.” All Things Considered caught up with La Vida Boheme recently in Austin, Texas, where the band was performing at the annual South by Southwest music conference. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"A new Missouri law cuts off a line of funding to all organizations that provide abortions in the state, including hospitals. For years, Missouri has helped   women pay for family planning under a Medicaid program called Extended Women’s Health Services, which is funded by both the state and the federal governments. Federal law already prevents Medicaid from reimbursing providers for most abortions. Missouri’s new measure rejects $8. 3 million in federal funds for the women’s health program, allowing the state to block state funds for other family planning services from going to abortion providers. Other states, including Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi and Indiana, have tried to exclude abortion providers from Medicaid funds before, but courts have said that would violate a federal law that gives patients the right to choose their health care providers. Missouri hopes to get around that by rejecting the federal money. The rule has not been challenged in court. Missouri’s Medicaid program for women’s health services currently serves nearly 70, 000   patients. To make up for the lost federal funds, the state is increasing its own funding of women’s health services for   residents. Under the new measure, Missouri will spend $8. 3 million to create its own program in place of the federal program it has opted out of. Implications For Health Providers, Under the new measure, the St. Louis hospital where Robin Utz had an abortion may no longer be eligible for state funds for women’s health services. When she and her husband went in for a   ultrasound in the fall of 2016, Utz had finally started to feel confident about the little girl she was carrying. ”Everything was looking fantastic. She was measuring one day ahead. I had a friend that had a home doppler [fetal heart monitor] that she gave me, and I would listen to the baby’s heartbeat, just to hear it,” she remembered. But as the appointment dragged on, the nurse grew quiet, and said she needed to bring in the doctor. ”I don’t know what the diagnosis is, right?” Utz said as she brushed away tears months later. ”I just know that it’s not good.” Their daughter had developed a fatal complication. ”Her kidneys weren’t working, and there was, therefore, no amniotic fluid and without amniotic fluid she would never develop lungs,” said Utz. ”And I asked what her chances were and they said there weren’t any.” Utz and her husband had just a few hours to make a decision about whether to terminate the pregnancy, or wait until she gave birth. Doctors warned her that the baby would likely be stillborn. ”We just felt so strongly that allowing her to be born, to immediately suffer, and to go through the trauma of childbirth, not to be able to be held by us necessarily, but to go into a [neonatal intensive care unit] and be held alive just to die was so inhumane,” she said. Utz terminated her pregnancy at   Hospital in St. Louis. Generally, abortions done in hospitals are higher risk, for example when a mother’s life is in danger, or there is a severe fetal anomaly. The services at   Hospital will not change under Missouri’s new rule, a spokesperson said. But other organizations may not continue to provide abortions under the new funding restrictions. The state government has sent about five hundred letters to hospitals, obstetricians, gynecologists and clinics with the qualifications to perform abortions. It includes a form that requires providers to attest that they do not provide abortions. So far, more than 300 providers have signed the form, and will continue to get state funds, according to the Missouri Department of Social Services. Those who do not sign it will no longer be eligible for state funds for women’s health services. The rule, which was passed as part of last year’s state budget, does appear to include an exception for organizations that provide abortions to save the mother’s life. But that language is restricted to the budget’s preamble, and hospitals say the language is still unclear. As a result, Missouri’s hospital association is counseling its members not to bill the state program for any family planning services if they provide abortions, including procedures to save the life of the mother, or cases of rape or incest. A National Trend, Like similar measures curbing funding to abortion providers in other states, Missouri’s measure was originally introduced in the wake of videos purporting to show the sale of fetal tissue by Planned Parenthood employees in Texas. As we have reported, a grand jury found no evidence of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood and instead indicted two people who recorded the videos for tampering with a government record and illegally offering to purchase human organs. The indictments were later dismissed on technical grounds. After the videos were released, Missouri Rep. Robert Ross moved to cut all funding to organizations in the state that provided abortions. ”Simple amendment,” he said on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives in March 2016. ”This stops your tax dollars from being used to fund abortions.” Several Missouri House Democrats questioned Ross, including Rep. Michael Butler of St. Louis, with whom he had the following exchange: Butler: ”Answer this for me. If women have complications through pregnancy, and they don’t have a primary doctor, where do they go?” Ross: ”Gentleman, it’s really simple. You agree with my amendment, you’re going to vote for it, or you don’t agree, you’re going to vote against it.” The measure passed. Ross has not returned requests for comment. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, St. Louis Public Radio and Kaiser Health News."
"After millions of dollars of flood damage and mass evacuations this year, California is grappling with how to update its aging flood infrastructure. Some say a natural approach might be part of the answer. All the water that poured down spillways at the Oroville Dam in northern California did a lot of damage to the area  —   and for miles down the river. ”It looks like a bomb’s gone off,” says John Carlon of River Partners, a nonprofit that does river restoration. ”That’s what it looks like.” Carlon is looking at a levee on the Feather River, about an hour south of the Oroville Dam. The earthen levee right on the water has a huge gouge in it. ”You can see this hole that develops and then it just starts eating away,” he says. ”And on the other side of that is thousands of acres that would flood if it just eats through that little hole.” The levees here were hit with a huge amount of water, almost 60 million gallons per minute, during the worst storms in February. So this levee needs repairs, and that’s pretty common for aging infrastructure. ”This levee is at least 80 years old,” Carlon says. ”It’s actually old and outdated.” But all of the damage to these levees, and the needed repairs, has some people calling for a new approach to flood control  —   one that mimics nature instead of trying to contain it. And projects like that are happening just down the river. About eight miles past the damaged levee, the riverbank is covered in cottonwoods, willows and sycamores, and they are caked in mud. The mud line reaches almost over our heads and shows just how high the floodwaters rose. This makes Carlon grin. ”It’s absolutely amazing to see,” he says. ”It’s designed to take that.” This area is supposed to flood. It used to look like the scenes upstream, where the levees are right next to the river. But a decade ago, after a flood, the levee was moved back by a   of so. Carlon says the change made the space a zone that acts as a floodplain. So, when the river is running high, ”the water just spreads out, flows across the whole 700 acres, slows down and has the ability to soak in.” Giving the floodwater somewhere to go takes pressure off the levees, and with less pressure from all that recent water, the levees here are fine. Carlon says this is how rivers used to work in California. They’d flood every year. Levees and concrete don’t allow that to happen. ”A natural approach to flood protection is a lot more flexible and resilient,” Carlon says. ”Another way to think of this, these are pressure relief valves in the system.” Those relief valves will become even more necessary with climate change  —   says Carson Jeffres, a researcher at the University of California Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. Warmer temperatures could make flooding more common. ”There’s always a bigger storm out there and the events are predicted to become more extreme,” Jeffres says. But moving levees isn’t easy to do. For one, there are cities and towns built right next to rivers. ”You’re not going to displace people,” he says. ”That’s the hard thing. So you really have to find those places that are primarily agriculture.” Restoring floodplains can also be expensive  —   but maybe not if you look at the big picture. ”It’s interesting how funding restoration is considered expensive but then when disaster happens, all of a sudden it’s relatively cheap,” Jeffres says. ”So this is really an investment in our infrastructure to try and minimize costs down the road.” California is deciding how to spend billions of dollars on improving flood protection infrastructure. A new flood control plan is expected to be finalized later this year, and Jeffres and others hope creating these floodplains is a big part of that. Lauren Sommer covers environment, water and energy for member station KQED. You can follow her on Twitter @lesommer."
"Lawmakers from both parties are increasingly convinced that the United States Senate is on a collision course that will permanently change the dynamics of the chamber  —   and the United States Supreme Court. There’s a growing bipartisan sadness and resignation about next week’s showdown over the rules that govern high court nominations. But that doesn’t mean there’s any serious attempt from either party to avoid it. Here’s where things stand: after the Senate Judiciary Committee approves Neil Gorsuch’s nomination Monday, as it’s expected to, Senate Democrats will insist on a cloture vote. ”He will have to earn 60 votes for his nomination,” Minority Leader Charles Schumer, of New York, said on the Senate floor last week. ”My vote will be no, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.” That means Gorsuch would need support from at least 8 Democrats to advance to a final vote. And it’s increasingly clear that’s not going to happen. But if Senate Democrats are determined to oppose Gorsuch, Senate Republicans are just as determined to confirm him. ”We are optimistic that they will not be successful in keeping this good man from joining the Supreme Court very soon,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, said Tuesday, essentially guaranteeing Gorsuch will be confirmed next week. How would that happen? Republicans would vote, with a simple majority, to change the Senate’s rules, so that Supreme Court nominees aren’t subject to a   filibuster. A procedural and technical change, for sure. But one that could lead to profound,   changes. ”Understand what’s getting ready to happen,” Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, told reporters Tuesday. ”We move through this process. The Democrats filibuster. The Republicans invoke the nuclear option. That means that every president who comes down the pike in the future knows that if their side’s in the majority, they have no reason to appoint a Boy Scout like Gorsuch. On the Republican side, it would be hard to find a better candidate, OK?” ”So the next president coming in really doesn’t have to worry about that,” reasoned Corker. ”They can nominate somebody  —   an extreme person  —  because they know that after what’s getting ready to take place over the next 10 days, in all likelihood, they will no longer be bound by having to put someone forth that would at least meet some type of minimal criteria.” Corker said the impending rules change is the latest signpost of a ”spiral downward,” where each party holds grudges from when the other was in power. ”Since I’ve been here over the last decade, it’s been a spiral to the bottom,” he said. ”I think this is tragic,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told MSNBC’s Morning Joe. ”And in talking to friends on both sides of the aisle  —   we’ve got a lot of senators concerned about where we’re headed.” ”There’s Republicans still very mad at us over the 2013 change to the filibuster rule. We’re mad at them about shutting down the government. They’re mad at us about Gorsuch. And we’re not headed in a good direction. I’m very concerned about where we’re headed,” he said. That 2013 change is a key plot point here. Democrats controlled the Senate then, and they made this same change  —   eliminating the   threshold for lower court nominations. Another, more recent development: McConnell’s decision last year to block President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the high court. Schumer pointed out in his floor speech that Gorsuch repeatedly said during his hearings there are no Republican judges or Democratic judges. ”But if that were true we wouldn’t be here, would we?” asked Schumer. ”If that were true, if the Senate were merely evaluating a nominee based on his or her qualifications, Merrick Garland would be seated on the Supreme Court right now.” Democratic base voters and activist groups view the spot as a ”stolen seat,” and have genuine concerns about Gorsuch’s judicial record. They’re urging Democrats to do everything they can to block Gorsuch from joining the Supreme Court, where he could remain for decades to come. ”Anybody who votes for Gorsuch is creating a big problem for themselves on their left flank, as well as doing a generation of damage to the nation,” warned Dan Cantor, the national director for the Working Families Party. That’s why Corker sees a rule change as inevitable. ”If the Democrats know that Mitch is ready to vote the nuclear option, they have no desire to not filibuster, right? They know he’s going to be confirmed either way,” he reasoned. ”Why would they sully themselves with their base to vote not to filibuster?” The Senate has been on this sort of brink before  —   and often, groups of lawmakers from both parties would come together at the last minute and hash out some sort of agreement. Sen. John McCain of Arizona usually played a role in those deals. This time, the Republican said the air is ”much more poisoned,” and he doesn’t see it happening. Eliminating the   threshold for Supreme Court nominations ”would fundamentally change the character of the United States Senate,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat. ”And that would be deeply concerning.” And yet, both Stabenow and McCain are supporting their respective party’s strategies here. ”We all know how this movie ends, OK?” said Corker. ”And the big concern I have is there be an acknowledgment  —   if we don’t respect the institution, who’s going to?”"
"Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet with President Trump next week, a senior State Department official said Tuesday. This visit will be the first   meeting between Trump and Xi, after Trump’s sharp criticisms of China during the presidential campaign. Trump and Xi are likely to get together at Trump’s    resort, though the White House hasn’t officially announced the visit. Likely topics for discussion are Trump’s threats to counter China’s trade policies, which he has called unfair. As Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reports, an informal meeting of the two leaders  —   in Florida rather than at the White House  —   may be intended to reduce pressure for any concrete results, which could be difficult to achieve at the moment. The meeting echoes Xi’s 2013 visit with President Obama at the Sunnylands estate in California, where Xi and Obama were photographed strolling along a lake in their shirtsleeves. The Post says: ”Truly impressed, the official mainland media then hailed the Sunnylands encounter as a new style of diplomacy known as ’Manor Diplomacy’ praising Xi’s confidence and maturity regarding bilateral ties. ”It is interesting to note that while US officials proposed Sunnylands in 2013, it was China that reportedly pushed for an invitation to Trump’s private resort. Xi would be the second foreign leader to visit the resort, following Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who met with Xi earlier this month, will also be in attendance, according to the senior State Department official. As NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reported at the time of Tillerson’s Asia tour: ”To the surprise of many observers, Tillerson referred to a mutual U. S.  understanding of ’    mutual respect, and   cooperation.’ ”This was a   repetition of the Chinese government’s framework for relations with the U. S. Beijing refers to it as a ’New Type of Great Power Relations.’ At its core, it implies that the U. S. and China are not only both great powers, but  . . .. ”Tillerson’s use of Beijing’s formula may leave the Trump administration open to criticism that either Tillerson bent over too far backwards to placate his Chinese hosts, or he failed to articulate the U. S. vision of the relationship, perhaps because it has yet to come up with a coherent policy towards China and Asia. Or both.” The Palm Beach Post reports that Xi will be in Palm Beach on April 6 and 7, and will not stay at   . The Government Accountability Office announced Tuesday that it will be examining the costs and security issues associated with Trump’s frequent visits to   . Senate Democrats introduced a bill last week that would call on the president to release logs of visitors to the White House and Trump’s private properties, including     —   information that isn’t currently available. It was Richard Nixon’s visits to his home on Florida that prompted Congress to create the Presidential Protection Assistance Act to cap spending on Secret Service protection of presidents with multiple residences, according to NPR member station WLRN (posted here and here): ”Nixon owned a 1950s,   ranch home at 500 Bay Lane in Key Biscayne. It became known as the ’Winter White House.’ When the Watergate scandal unfolded, Nixon spent a lot of time there. ”In 1969, Nixon bought the ’Western White House,’ a home in San Clemente, California. ”The combined cost of securing both homes  —   more than $1 million, according to a General Accounting Office report  —   prompted Congress to limit this kind of spending.” The act was signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976. Trump has spent half of his weekends since taking office at   . Based on a GAO estimate of a weekend trip by President Obama, the estimated price tag for taxpayers is $3. 6 million per trip."
"The Government Accountability Office has agreed to examine costs and security issues surrounding President Trump’s frequent visits to   . The president has spent half of his weekends since taking office at the private club he owns in Palm Beach, Fla. The GAO is responding to a request from four Democratic members of Congress  —   Sens. Elizabeth Warren,  . Sheldon Whitehouse,  . I. and Tom Udall,  . M. along with Rep. Elijah Cummings,  . They asked for the review in February, just after Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at   . Guests at the club posted photos on social media of the leaders conferring about a North Korean missile test. Cummings says that raised concerns about security at the private club and who has access to the president. ”Anybody can get a membership at the club for $200, 000,” says Cummings. ”We want to know what privileges do they have? And what privileges do they have with regard to bringing their guests?” The GAO, the government’s watchdog agency, says it will review what security screening is in place for guests and staff at   . Last week, Democrats in the Senate introduced a bill that would call on the president to release logs of visitors to the White House and his private properties, including   . That information currently isn’t available. The GAO will also examine the security of presidential communications and how Trump and his staff are protecting classified information while at the private club. Democrats are concerned about another issue related to the president’s visits  —   the cost. An earlier GAO report estimated the cost of a weekend trip to Chicago and Palm Beach, Fla. by former President Obama in 2013 at about $3. 6 million. That report was requested by Sen. John Barrasso,  . Democrats want to know what measures are being taken to make sure the costs the Trump Organization is passing along to taxpayers are ”fair and reasonable.” Cummings says he’s been disappointed Republicans in Congress don’t share his concerns about possible ethics violations. ”We have now a president,” he says, ”who it has become normal for him to be able to reap the profits from these hotels while still being president. So, you know it’s difficult but we have to keep raising the issue.” The GAO has also agreed to review whether the U. S. Treasury has received any payments from hotels owned by Trump. The company, now run by Trump’s two eldest sons but still owned by the president, has agreed to turn over to the treasury any profits from payments foreign governments have made to his properties. That’s a question with possible constitutional implications. The Constitution’s emoluments clause forbids U. S. officials, including the president, from receiving any payments from foreign governments."
"Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the world’s most recognizable people. An international soccer superstar, blessed with good looks and a golden foot, Ronaldo indisputably stands as one of the greatest to take the pitch. He’s so beloved, in fact, that he just got an international airport named after him in his native Madeira Islands in Portugal  —   plus a bust fashioned in his likeness. ”Seeing my name being given to this airport is something very special,” Ronaldo told reporters at the unveiling Wednesday. ”Everyone knows that I am proud of my country and especially my home city.” It was a lovely, heartfelt moment  —   but real quick, could we get back to that bust? It is, well . .. perhaps a bit inaccurate to say it’s his likeness. The bust to some may bear less of a resemblance to the legendary forward than it does to another figure of recent legend: ”Scary Lucy,” the   bronze statue of Lucille Ball that bared its teeth at   for years in Celoron, N. Y. The Associated Press astutely breaks down some of the, er, discrepancies: ”The bronze bust squashes the player’s eyes close together, and the cheeky   smile more resembles a leer. The face is also unusually chubby, in contrast to Ronaldo’s chiseled looks.” ”It’s always a great honor to work on project like that,” the bust’s sculptor, Madeira native Emanuel Santos, told local TV channel RTP, according to the AP. The wire service notes he says it took him 15 days to finish the work. ”I still haven’t had the chance to personally talk to [Ronaldo] but I’ll try to reach out to him to know his feedback.” Naturally, the denizens of Twitter, never ones to leave a single snark unspent, didn’t hesitate to offer some    feedback of their own. Some were quick to note that the bust isn’t the first time Ronaldo has been depicted in bronze  —   nor is it the first time that such a bronze has received the wrong kind of attention. In 2014, he got a   statue set up outside his personal museum, the CR7 Museum, which had opened the year before in Funchal, the capital of the Madeira archipelago. Let’s have another look at that statue. OK, back to the bust . .. . .. which, like nearly everything else on the Internet, returned in the end to that mysterious reigning king of all sports memes: Crying Jordan. NPR’s Laurel Wamsley contributed to this report."
"Last fall, the Nobel Committee for Literature announced that its newest honoree would be Bob Dylan, immediately generating heated debates on whether he deserved the prize. Dylan, in the midst of a tour at the time, did not acknowledge the prestigious honor, either in a statement or from the stage. After a week of nothing, a member of the academy that had given Dylan the honor called him ”arrogant” and the situation ”unprecedented.” (Dylan, true to form, announced two weeks later that he had simply been rendered speechless and that he would, if possible, attend the ceremony. Patti Smith accepted the award in his stead.) Amidst the criticism and his speechlessness, Dylan had been revisiting his own development. Nobody seemed to notice at the time, though proof of it has been out in plain view since late autumn. About a     after the Nobel announcement, during a tour stop in Tulsa, Okla.  —   where his own archives will live  —   Dylan paid a visit to the archives of Woody Guthrie, the artist who had as profound an influence on his artistic development as anyone. Dylan’s spokesperson and the director of the Woody Guthrie Center both confirmed his appearance to NPR. There is  —   as Dylan prepares to accept his award during a tour stop in Stockholm  —   a poetic something to the thought of him walking amongst the exhibits, recalling the childhood bedroom (in Hibbing, amid the taconite) where he listened to the polemic young Guthrie, far from speechless, sing songs of liberation."
"Bob Dylan will be accepting his Nobel Prize in literature this weekend, according to the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. In a blog post Tuesday, Sara Danius announced the ”good news” that members of the academy will be meeting with Dylan when he makes a tour stop in Stockholm. ”The Swedish Academy is very much looking forward to the weekend and will show up at one of the performances” Dylan is delivering on Saturday and Sunday, Danius writes. ”The Academy will then hand over Dylan’s Nobel diploma and the Nobel medal, and congratulate him on the Nobel Prize in Literature.” She adds: ”The setting will be small and intimate, and no media will be present only Bob Dylan and members of the Academy will attend, all according to Dylan’s wishes.” In a previous post, Danius was careful to note that the tour date in Stockholm had been planned well before Dylan won the prize, which he was awarded in October ”for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” according to the Swedish Academy’s citation. ”He is a great poet in the   tradition, and he is a wonderful sampler  —   a very original sampler,” Danius said at the time, explaining the decision to award a musician a prize that for more than a century has principally been doled out to novelists, poets and essayists. Yet the unusual decision was just the first installment of what came to be an unusual saga  —   as Dylan first waited more than two weeks to acknowledge the award, then begged off attending the December ceremony where it was to be doled out. Dylan sent a personal letter to the academy saying he could not make it to Stockholm then due to ”  commitments.” Instead, Patti Smith spelled Dylan for a moving rendition of his classic, ”A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” It remains unclear whether this weekend’s meeting portends warmer embrace of the prize from Dylan, who has yet to fulfill his one requirement to receive the roughly $900, 000 that comes with it: delivery of the Nobel lecture, a traditional talk on a topic of the laureate’s choosing. That requirement, set by the rules of the Nobel Foundation, must be satisfied by June 10 for Dylan to pick up the prize money. ”Please note that no Nobel Lecture will be held. The Academy has reason to believe that a taped version will be sent at a later point,” Danius says in her post, noting that if he sends a taped lecture, he will not be the first. Alice Munro, the 2013 laureate, had to send a taped lecture because of health woes, as we reported then. Dylan did, however, write an acceptance speech for the December ceremony that was delivered by the U. S. ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji. ”If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel prize,” Dylan wrote, ”I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon.”"
"After seven years of trying, Republicans failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act last week. That doesn’t mean the health care drama is over, though. House Speaker Paul Ryan this week told donors that the party is ”going to keep getting at this thing,” according to The Washington Post. But whatever Ryan and his colleagues manage to do, plenty could still change in the Affordable Care Act. Last week’s failed bill, after all, was only one part of the GOP’s plan. The second part  —   making changes to regulations and how Obamacare is administered  —   doesn’t even require Congress’ help. And those changes could make or break the health law. ”There are things the Trump administration might do that could prop up the markets, and there are things they might do that could help the markets explode, if that’s what they want to happen,” says Cynthia Cox, who studies Obamacare’s effects on private insurance at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Here are a few possible changes: 1. Cut off the subsidies, One of the biggest threats to the Affordable Care Act has been a lawsuit filed by House Republicans that could have ended what are called   subsidies, which help people limit their    expenses. As Kaiser Health News’ Julie Rovner reported last year, the suit, filed in 2014, ”charged that the Obama administration was unconstitutionally spending money that Congress hadn’t formally appropriated, to reimburse health insurers who were providing coverage to   policyholders.” Last spring, a judge sided with House Republicans, but allowed the subsidies to remain in force pending appeal. With Trump’s election, his administration took responsibility for the appeal. Should the Trump administration decide to drop that appeal, it would be quick, easy and potentially crippling to Obamacare. That might sound like a simple decision for a president who detests Obamacare, but it could come with heavy political consequences. ”If they stop defending the litigation, then they have to stop reimbursing insurers for the [subsidies] and the markets would crater,” says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. ”It seems politically risky to think voters wouldn’t blame them for that. The Congress could step in and appropriate the money, but it’s hard to see that getting   from the far right.” Perhaps with those political realities in mind, some in the GOP now say they are willing to spend that money anyway. On Tuesday evening, after NPR spoke to Corlette, some top House Republicans said they wanted to keep the subsidies going. 2. Remove the individual mandate’s teeth, The Trump administration can’t do away with the mandate requiring individuals to have health insurance on its own, but it can greatly weaken it. Doing so would be another way to seriously undermine the Affordable Care Act. One way is through the IRS. That individual mandate is about tax incentives  —   fail to get insurance, and you have to pay a penalty. So to hobble Obamacare, the Trump administration can decide not to enforce that penalty. In fact, the IRS already took a small step in that direction earlier this year. The agency said it will not reject ”silent returns”  —   tax returns on which a person declines to say whether they have insurance. The IRS explained in a statement that this year, for the first time, the agency had been set to reject those silent returns. But Trump’s January executive order on Obamacare changed that, telling the heads of executive branch offices to ”waive, defer, grand exemptions from, or delay” parts of the act. ”Consistent with that, the IRS has decided to make changes that would continue to allow electronic and paper returns to be accepted for processing in instances where a taxpayer doesn’t indicate their coverage status,” the IRS said. ”However, legislative provisions of the ACA law are still in force until changed by the Congress, and taxpayers remain required to follow the law and pay what they may owe.” In other words, a lot still won’t change here  —   the penalties remain the law of the land. However, the IRS’ statement left considerable uncertainty about what enforcement would now look like, as the Society for Human Resource Management reported in February. One other option here, Cox says, is that the Trump administration could loosen up the rules on who can get hardship exemptions. People with particularly tough circumstances  —   homelessness, domestic violence, bankruptcy  —   can currently apply to get an exemption from any penalties for not holding insurance. The Trump administration could approve more people in more circumstances for those hardships, Cox says. (Likewise, the administration could also approve fewer people if it wanted to.) Were the administration to approve more waivers, it could mean fewer people in the marketplaces. And to the degree that that pulls healthy people out, it would create sicker pools that create more costly coverage, which in turn could cause more people to drop out. 3. Let states be looser in defining ”essential health benefits” The ACA requires that health plans cover 10 ”essential health benefits”  —   health services in basic, broad areas like emergency services, prescription drugs and maternity care. And the administration has a few paths for changing exactly what those are  —   changes that could weaken some people’s health care but also maybe nudge more insurers into the marketplaces. The federal government laid out and defined the benefits (known among health care wonks as EHBs) but the   of a state’s essential health benefits can be found in its ”benchmark plan.” ”Right now each state has picked a small group plan or similar plan that would have existed before the ACA and used that as a benchmark for what all the plans in each state now have to cover,” Cox says. The Trump administration could loosen that, giving plans much more wiggle room for what services they include or exclude, Cox added. ”Price could come back in and say, ’We’ve changed how each state can define their [essential health benefit] plan as long as it looks reasonably like an employer plan,’ ” she says. 4. Redefine the EHBs, The administration could also simply tweak the EHBs by broadening or narrowing the definitions of some of the 10 broad benefit categories. For example, one of the 10 benefits set by law includes preventive care. But the law itself didn’t say exactly what that meant  —   rather, the Obama administration defined what exactly preventive services are through regulation. That means the Trump White House could undo some of that through regulation, making particular benefits disappear. Contraception, for example, is a part of the preventive service EHB, and the Obama administration also made sure that in many plans, that birth control is  . HHS Secretary Tom Price has opposed that rule in the past. Once again, loosening rules around essential health benefits could reduce the kinds of things people get coverage for, but it could also potentially nudge more insurers into a state’s exchanges, Cox says. That could address a key Obamacare problem: Some areas of the country only have one insurer in their marketplaces. 5. Let states experiment more, States can apply for waivers to deviate from the ACA as written in some way  —   the idea, Cox says, is to ”allow for some experimentation or innovation at the state level” to improve the system. States could pass laws that change their health care system, then apply to the federal government for the waiver. Price has promoted waivers as ways for states to alter their health care systems. Under a Trump administration that’s no fan of the ACA, approved waivers might look substantially different than they would have under Obama. For example, California had passed a law and filed a waiver that would have allowed people in the state illegally to get health insurance on the state exchange (though they would not have been allowed to get federal subsidies). When Trump won the presidency, California withdrew the waiver. An administration so opposed to illegal immigration likely wouldn’t have approved that kind of change. But the Trump administration might be more open to conservative tweaks. One example might be in states that didn’t expand Medicaid, and now have higher premiums and more unhealthy people in their individual market, Cox says. The idea here is that sicker people could have moved out of the exchanges and into Medicaid, had those states opted into a Medicaid expansion offered to them under Obamacare. ”There may be some conservative states where they are allowed to expand Medicaid if they have work requirements  —   waivers or exemptions that the Obama administration would not have allowed,” she added. Likewise, Alaska has already passed a law and filed a waiver creating a reinsurance program  —   in a basic sense, a pool of money that comes from insurers and helps pay for particular health conditions. Obamacare had something similar for a   transition period  —   insurers paid into a pot, which then reimbursed insurers for people’s medical costs that were particularly high, between $45, 000 and $250, 000. Price highlighted this effort in his statement, signaling to other states that they could potentially get approval for their own reinsurance plans. 6. Let the architecture crumble, It takes a lot of upkeep to keep Obamacare running  —   the exchange websites need to hum along, and people need to be ready to answer the helpline. But the administration could hypothetically make a lot of that a lower priority, Georgetown’s Corlette says, essentially letting the Obamacare system atrophy. ”The Price administration [at HHS] can redirect resources so they would have a fair amount of flexibility for how they direct resources for the fall enrollment,” Corlette says. In his first week on the job, Trump killed the advertising surrounding the Affordable Care Act, as well as outreach, as Politico explained: ”Emails are no longer being sent out to individuals who visited HealthCare. gov, the enrollment website, to encourage them to finish signing up. Those emails had proven highly successful in getting stragglers to complete enrollment before the deadline.” Take all of this to its logical conclusion, and even these fixes could lead to a sicker mix of people in the markets. ”If you’re a sick person, you’re going to do whatever it takes to get that coverage,” Corlette says. ”You will sit on the phone for two hours. You will hit the refresh button. If you’re healthy, you’re going to say, ’Forget it.’ ”"
"Hillary Clinton criticized the lack of diversity in the Trump White House and the   Republican health care proposal in what were her most political public remarks since losing the November presidential election to Donald Trump. Clinton made her observations in an address to the Professional BusinessWomen of California in San Francisco on Tuesday night. ”There’s no place I’d rather be than here with you,” she told the gathering, adding, ”other than the White House.” Clinton said she was appalled by a photo that circulated last week of an   group of Republican lawmakers meeting at the White House with Vice President Pence discussing women’s health care. And she chastised Trump, whom she did not mention by name, for having the fewest number of women in top jobs ”in a generation.” There are just four women holding   jobs in the administration out of 23 such positions. Clinton had promised women would fill half of her Cabinet jobs. She also was critical of comments by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who told American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan, ”Please, stop shaking your head,” during Tuesday’s press briefing. ”Too many women have had a lifetime of practice taking this kind of indignity in stride,” Clinton said. She said the withdrawal of the GOP health care bill last week was ”a victory for all Americans,” singling out efforts to end coverage mandates in particular. ”Really? Take away maternity care?” she asked. ”Who do these people talk to?” Clinton said the death of the measure was a sign that efforts to organize in opposition to Trump’s agenda could work, citing the Women’s March on Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration. ”There were plenty of people, as you might expect, who wondered whether that level of energy and enthusiasm would be sustained and whether it would make any difference,” Clinton said. ”I’m here to tell you, last week we saw the first indication that the answer to both of those questions is yes.” Clinton has generally kept a low profile since her defeat in November, but has said that she intends to start speaking out again on issues. She was critical of the Trump administration’s efforts to bar refugees from entering the country, and to take action against what Trump insists was voter fraud during his successful campaign last year. ”These are bad policies that will hurt people and take our country in the wrong direction.” And referring to the hiking she has been seen doing with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, near their suburban New York home, she added, ”It’s the kind of things you think about when you take long walks in the woods: Resist, insist, persist, enlist.”"
"The fallout from Friday’s Republican health care bill collapse is still trying to be understood. Right after the bill was pulled, President Trump teased that he wanted to work with Democrats and believed a bipartisan bill would be possible. But it wasn’t clear if that was just talk. On Tuesday night, he may have taken the first step to trying to reach across the aisle. ”I know that we’re all going to make a deal on health care, that’s such an easy one,” Trump told a bipartisan group of senators gathered at the White House. ”I have no doubt that’s going to happen very quickly.” Speed is relative. The   Ryan health care bill was   and collapsed in 17 days. It took President Obama more than a year to pass the Affordable Care Act, with more members of his own party in the Senate than Republicans have now. ”We have all been promising it  —   Democrat, Republican  —   to the public,” Trump said Tuesday night. That’s the rub for Republicans. Health care has been one of the most hotly partisan issues of the past decade. It has been the issue that has animated Republican opposition to Obama. The prospect of repealing and replacing Obamacare has been so critical to Republican success, it is arguably responsible for hollowing out the Democratic Party. Obama’s focus on instituting the law gave the Tea Party a clear focus. ”What brought everything together was the Obamacare idea, which contains every odiferous objection,” Mark Williams of Tea Party Express told CNN in August of 2009. It was a staple of every Tea Party rally through that election cycle, so it is unlikely the GOP base shrugs its collective shoulders and moves on the way Trump promised to do Thursday and Friday  —   and wait for Obamacare to ”explode.” Waiting for the law to fall apart puts Republicans in a terrible bind. Trump could get it left, right and center. If the Trump administration doesn’t work as hard as it can to implement and administer the law, and you start seeing reporting from unnamed career officials verifying that, it very well could mean the Trump administration is blamed for harming real people’s lives. That would enrage not just Democrats, but independents and some Republicans. If the Trump administration does administer the law the way the Obama administration did, the GOP base would likely be enraged, especially without a    option. Is this what they voted for all these years? ”We are going to be doing a great job,” Trump added in his remarks to senators Tuesday night. ”Hopefully it will start being bipartisan, because everybody really wants the same thing. We want greatness for this country that we love.” But there is little muscle memory for anything bipartisan with this Congress. And there are challenges. Democrats may be open to it, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said only if repeal is off the table. Would Republicans in Congress be OK with that? Maybe some, but it’s unlikely  —   and could cost Ryan his job as speaker if he doesn’t have the majority of his conference and winds up working with Democrats. Plus, congressional Republicans viewed Trump’s election as their chance, finally, to enact sweeping changes with traditional Republican agenda items. They won’t give that up easily. NPR’s Susan Davis noted Tuesday that congressional Republicans are insisting they are closer now to passing health care than they were Friday and aren’t giving up, reversing course on the tone Ryan took Friday that Obamacare is now ”the law of the land.” But, as Davis put it: ”House Republicans’ optimism that they could find a   solution to health care is undercut by comments this week by the White House and Senate Republicans who say any future health care legislation will likely require Democratic support  —   a tacit acknowledgement that repealing Obamacare is off the table.” Will Trump really force their hand on ”repair”? So far, there’s no real evidence of that. His whole presidency to this point has been bold appeals to his base, not reaching across the aisle. What’s more, would    Republican voters be OK with it? They’d be skeptical, and it’d be up to Trump to make the sale  —   something he didn’t do the first   with health care. ”Bipartisanship” is just an idea at this point. There is no discernible White House strategy for getting a bill through right now, and no evidence to suggest his team could shepherd it through. Trump took a first step Tuesday night. He acknowledged Schumer, whom he hasn’t spoken with since shortly after the inauguration. ”I think we are going to have some very good relationships  —   right, Chuck?” Trump said. ”I see Chuck. Hello, Chuck.” But, as the health care failure showed, legislating is a lot harder than talking."
"Today the United Kingdom formally told the European Union it is leaving, after decades of membership in the   political alliance and trading bloc. The move triggers an estimated   divorce process that will involve many months of tough negotiations and will launch Britain on a new, uncertain path. Addressing the House of Commons in London, Prime Minister Theresa May said Brexit is an opportunity for her country to chart a new course, unencumbered by the bureaucracy of the multilateral organization based in Brussels. ”This is an historic moment from which there can be no turning back,” said May. ”We’re going to make our own decisions and our own laws. We’re going to take control of the things that matter most to us.” Britain’s feisty press captured the ambivalence of the U. K. people, who voted 52 percent to 48 percent last June to quit the EU. ”Freedom!” crowed the Daily Mail, the conservative tabloid. The   Guardian ran a map of Western Europe as a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces of the U. K. taken out. In the empty white space that remained were the words: ”Today, Britain steps into the unknown.” While May tried to strike a confident tone, many who voted to remain in the EU fear Brexit will damage the country. ”I feel rather concerned and worried about it, really,” said Linda Roberts, 68, as she waited at London’s Euston station earlier this week for a train home to the north of England. Roberts said many people voted to leave the EU because they were unhappy with the free flow of immigrants into Britain that EU membership required, and hadn’t thought through the broader implications. She worries Brexit will impose a huge opportunity cost on many young British citizens, including her own daughter. Coming from outside the EU, they are unlikely to be able to work   in European cities like Paris or Barcelona. Roberts’ daughter is in advertising, said Roberts, ”and a lot of the work is abroad. I know they say [Brexit is] opening up everything. Well, we’re already opened up to the rest of the world. Actually, we are just cutting off Europe, which I think is a big mistake.”   sentiment has strong parallels to the political climate in the United States, where President Trump has criticized the European Union, shunned multilateral trade deals and declared an ”America First” agenda. In fact, Trump was a big supporter of Brexit and called himself ”Mr. Brexit” during his presidential campaign, correctly predicting he would pull off a similar upset in November’s election. As in the U. S. immigration and rural resentment also played a role in the Brexit vote. ”There is a sense, certainly amongst the rural parts of the U. K. that they feel London and the elites running the country are part of a globalist conspiracy,” said Christoph Meyer, a professor of European and international politics at King’s College London. ”That is something you see in other countries as well, the sense that local, national identities are seen as threatened by markets and by immigration.” The British are known for understatement, but political observers here speak of Brexit in superlatives. They say it could prove transformational for the country  —   for good or ill. Although the British economy has held up well so far, British people are already poorer as the value of the British pound remains 16 percent below its high last June. ”Brexit is a weird combination of looking at the [2008] global financial crisis and knowing it is going to happen . .. blended in with a kind of Suez Crisis,” said Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House, the London think tank. The 1956 Suez Crisis erupted when Britain and France invaded Egypt to take back the Suez Canal, only to have a far more powerful United States force them to withdraw. It was seen as a major milestone in the continuing decline of the British Empire. ”At that moment, we were suddenly discovering that we couldn’t keep empire  —   that the United States was coming up and becoming the big kid on the block,” said Niblett. ”It required a real redefinition of self  —   not just of the British government, but the British people.” Not unlike where the United Kingdom finds itself today. After Brexit, Britain will have to define itself independently and outside of the European Union, where it has enjoyed far more economic bargaining power as part of the world’s largest collective market. Niblett said Britain may choose to see itself through the lens of its national mythology  —   as a plucky island nation off the coast of Europe with global ambitions, punching above its weight. ”If it can get a good deal with the EU, then Britain can  —   in a way  —   have its cake and eat it,” said Niblett. That’s a big if. Even as it turns its back on the European Union, the U. K. wants to maintain as much access as possible to this huge single market. But with 27 nations, the EU will have far more leverage than the United Kingdom in the coming negotiations over a new trade deal. ”There is very little incentive for the current EU member states to give the U. K. a great deal,” said Meyer. ”If the U. K. was able to go home and say, ’This is a political victory,’ that would be seen as a threat to the rest of the EU because it would encourage populist movements.” There are populist movements in Europe, like Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, that want to pull out of the EU as well. Meyer says the last thing the EU needs are populists looking at a future U. K.  trade deal and saying, ”Look, it’s not so bad.”"
"Updated 5:15 p. m. ET, ”The Article 50 process is now underway, and in accordance with the wishes of the British people, the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said Wednesday, informing the House of Commons that she has begun the formal process of unraveling the U. K.’s membership in the European bloc. May spoke after signing a letter to the EU that affirms the Brexit that voters embraced last June. She said that letter has now been delivered to the president of the European Council. The prime minister said: ”This is an historic moment, from which there can be no turning back. Britain is leaving the European Union. We are going to make our own decisions and our own laws. We are going to take control of the things that matter most to us. And we are going to take this opportunity to build a stronger, fairer Britain  —   a country that our children and grandchildren are proud to call home. That is our ambition and our opportunity, and that is what this government is determined to do.” May called the moment a great turning point in Britain’s national history, adding, ”The choices we make define the character of our nation.” Calling for optimism and determination in charting the U. K.’s new course, May said, ”I choose to believe in Britain, and that our best days lie ahead.” We’ve updated this post with news from Britain and May’s speech. Ahead of her speech, May gave her usual question time  —   using the opportunity to tell ministers of Parliament, ”On today of all days, we should be coming together as a United Kingdom.” That sentiment didn’t prevent interruptions to May’s speech on Article 50. Her remarks on Britain’s future were interrupted by an outburst that prompted House of Commons Speaker John Bercow to call for quiet. And moments later, as May spoke of potential cooperation with the EU, she told the chamber, ”Perhaps now more than ever, the world needs the liberal democratic values of Europe”  —   a statement that drew open jeers and laughter from across the aisle. After a pause, May said Britain shares those values, adding, ”That is why, while we are leaving the institutions of the European Union, we are not leaving Europe.” The British ambassador to the U. S. Kim Darroch, told All Things Considered that he thinks May’s future vision is an ”exciting one.” He added that ”the U. K. which has always been open and outward looking, can maintain a very strong relationship with Europe, but a lot of strengthened relationships with the rest of the world.” The prime minister’s letter triggers Article 50, the exit clause in the EU constitution. Leaving the EU won’t be a simple affair: While business and travel concerns often get the most attention, Britain’s government will also have to figure out how it will incorporate the thousands of laws and rules that the EU has approved over the years. It’s the latest repercussion of a vote that shocked many and forced the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron last summer. With Britain looking to exit from the EU, the nation may also be forced to contemplate an internal exit of its own: One day before May visited Parliament, Scottish lawmakers voted to back First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s pursuit of a new independence referendum. In 2014, 55 percent of Scottish voters chose to stay in the U. K.  —   but backers of a new referendum note that conditions have now changed, with the pending exit from the EU. With Article 50 invoked, Britain will have two years to negotiate its  . Next steps in the process will begin Thursday with the publishing of a Great Repeal Bill. Formal talks could begin by late spring, but before a deal is enacted, both houses of Parliament will need to vote on it."
"Update 7:06 P. M. Eastern: The EPA says it’s reversing course and keeping chlorpyrifos on the market. That’s despite the agency’s earlier conclusion, reached during the Obama administration, that this pesticide could pose risks to consumers. It’s a signal that toxic chemicals will face less restrictive regulation by the Trump administration. In its decision, the EPA didn’t exactly repudiate its earlier scientific findings. But the agency did say that there’s still a lot of scientific uncertainty about the risks of chlorpyrifos, and it said that because of that uncertainty, the court had no right to set a firm deadline for a decision. A federal court had ordered the EPA to decide by midnight on Friday whether to ban chlorpyrifos. The Obama administration proposed this ban back in 2015. The EPA says it will keep studying the chemical. Patti Goldman, from the environmental group Earth Justice, calls the decision ”unconscionable,” and says that her group will fight it in court. New EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt made his reputation opposing the agency’s regulations, and many farm organizations expected him to renounce the proposed ban. But doing so would mean disregarding a substantial pile of scientific evidence that his agency has assembled on the risks of this chemical. Our original story continues. Farmers have been using chlorpyrifos since 1965. Most of them know it by its trade name, Lorsban. When Wesley Spurlock, a farmer in the panhandle of Texas, sees worms on his corn or aphids on his wheat, this is the chemical that he typically loads into his sprayer. ”This chemical doesn’t scare us at all,” he says. He does wear special clothing to protect himself, though. Because this chemical attacks the nervous systems of insects and people. It can cause dizziness, vomiting and diarrhea. So he’s careful when handling it. ”You don’t spill any of it. It goes into the sprayer, we don’t splash it around and make a mess,” he says. If he’s spraying near the house, he might tell the kids to say inside until the job is done. ”By doing all this, it’s a safe product,” he says. ”It’s doing it’s job and it’s doing it well.”  Fruit and vegetable farmers use this chemical on citrus trees, strawberries, broccoli and cauliflower. This can leave residues on those foods in the supermarket. Several environmental advocacy groups have gone to court to force the EPA to ban the use of chlorpyrifos by farmers because of the risks that the chemical poses to consumers and to people who live near fields where it’s used. ”Based on the harm that this pesticide causes, the EPA cannot, consistent with the law, allow it in our food,” says Patti Goldman, an attorney with the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice.  More than a decade ago, the EPA banned the spraying of chlorpyrifos indoors to get rid of household bugs. At that time, though, the EPA thought that use on the farm posed little risk. The agency was relying on scientific studies that directly measured the immediate effect of chlorpyrifos on the nervous system. Residues on food weren’t nearly enough to keep nerves from working normally. But then new evidence surfaced. Jim Jones, who was assistant administrator of the EPA and responsible for pesticide regulation before he left the agency in January, says the new evidence came from studies in which scientists followed hundreds of mothers and their newborn children, monitoring their exposure to lots of chemicals. One of these studies, by researchers at Columbia University, measured the levels of chlorpyrifos in blood taken from umbilical cords when babies were born.  While the study was going on, the ban on indoor uses of chlorpyrifos came into effect. So over the course of those years, scientists were able to gather data on children who had been exposed to very different levels of the pesticide. They found that exposure to chlorpyrifos caused small but measurable differences in brain function. At age 7, the average IQ of children who had been exposed to high levels of chlorpyrifos was a few percentage points lower than children who hadn’t been exposed to much of the chemical at all. Other studies showed that some people are much more vulnerable to chlorpyrifos because of their genetic makeup. The studies suggested that this chemical was more dangerous than people had previously realized. Jones says the EPA struggled to translate the findings of these studies into a prediction of risk from chlorpyrifos residues on food. For one thing, the agency had to come up with an estimate of how much chlorpyrifos the women had been exposed to, based on levels of chlorpyrifos in their blood. ”But once we cracked that nut, and you had the risk evaluated and in front of you, it became, in my view, a very straightforward decision, with not a lot of ambiguity in terms of what you would do,” he says. The law on pesticides is very strict: It requires ”a reasonable certainty that no harm will result” to consumers or people living in the areas where pesticides are applied. In 2015, the EPA proposed a ban on chlorpyrifos. Dow Agrosciences, the company that sells chlorpyrifos, insists that a ban is unjustified. Jim Aidala, a former pesticide regulator at the EPA who now works as a consultant to Dow, says that many scientists  —   including those on a committee that the EPA asked to look at this question  —   aren’t convinced by the scientific methods the EPA used. ”There’s a lot of controversy about this,” he says. But the EPA is facing a deadline, because of legal challenges from environmental groups, including Earthjustice, which have submitted a petition that the EPA ban chlorpyrifos. A federal judge ordered the agency to make a final decision on this petition by March 31. ”I’m waiting with bated breath for Friday, to see what they’re going to go,” Jones says. ”I just don’t know what basis they would have to deny the petition [to ban the chemical] given the vast scientific record that the EPA’s got right now.”"
"Canyon Mansfield and his dog were walking the ridge line near his house in Pocatello, Idaho, when the    spotted a curious device that looked like a sprinkler nestled in the ground. When he reached down to inspect it, the device detonated, erupting with a ”loud popping noise that knocked Canyon off his feet” and dowsed his face and clothes with an ”orange, powdery substance,” The Idaho State Journal reports. After cleaning himself off, Mansfield turned to his dog  —   only to find the    lab with ”red froth coming from his mouth and his eyes turning glassy,” Mansfield later told the newspaper. The device that detonated in Mansfield’s face, sent him to the hospital and, ultimately, killed his dog on March 16 was an  . Often known as a ”cyanide bomb,” it’s a device used by the U. S. Department of Agriculture to prevent predators such as coyotes from harming livestock on farm and ranch lands. When triggered, the   spits a potentially lethal dose of sodium cyanide powder at the interloper. ”This device is extremely dangerous to animals and humans,” the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement released the next day. ”If a device such as this is ever located please do not touch or go near the device and contact your local law enforcement agency.” Which raises a question, asked by Mansfield’s parents, conservation groups and federal agencies alike: What was the ”cyanide bomb” doing on land owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management, so close to the house of a family unaware of its existence? According to a fact sheet published in 2010 by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, its Wildlife Services personnel ”do not use   on any property unless requested by the land’s owner or manager,” and when they use   they are to be marked with bilingual warning signs. In a statement after the incident, Wildlife Services said the agency ”has removed   in that immediate area” and is conducting a review of what happened. ”The unintentional lethal take of a dog is a rare occurrence,” Wildlife Services said, adding: ”This is the first unintentional take with an   device in Idaho since 2014.” The agency defends its use of   as effective and  . The Los Angeles Times, citing government data, reports that 12, 511 coyotes were intentionally killed by   nationwide last year, compared to the unintentional deaths of seven domesticated pets or livestock. The USDA told the State Journal that the device that hit Mansfield was placed by one of its employees, though it would not confirm the   was installed on BLM land  —   a situation nevertheless confirmed by BLM spokeswoman Erin Curtis, who said it was placed there accidentally in February, according to the newspaper. Installation of that device, then, came months after the USDA said Wildlife Services ”would stop using the devices last November on all federally owned Idaho land to reduce health risks to people and domestic animals,” The Associated Press reports. The federal response to the incident hasn’t satisfied either the Mansfields or national conservation groups, both of whom filed petitions this week against the use of  . Matt Guilhem of Boise State Public Radio explains: ”The   Western Watersheds Project is leading a coalition of organizations petitioning the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services branch to stop using   devices in the state and to remove all devices currently deployed in Idaho. ”Several cases of humans being injured by   cyanide bombs are listed in the petition. The document goes on to cite numerous instances of pets being killed by   which are sometimes installed on private land without the owner’s knowledge or just feet from public roads.” ”Clearly, it is unsafe and immoral for Wildlife Services to use these poisonous land mines to target native wildlife for killing on lands of any ownership,” Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, said in a statement. ”The USDA maintains they resolve conflict between wildlife and people ’in the safest and most humane ways possible,’ but the nature of the cyanide bomb is neither safe nor humane,” physician Mark Mansfield, Canyon’s father, wrote in his own petition to the White House, according to the State Journal. ”Cyanide gas has been used throughout history to murder masses of people.” Canyon’s mother, Theresa Mansfield, offered an even more personal rationale for removing them. ”We’re still in shock that this has happened,” she told the Idaho paper. ”Like, someone put a loaded gun on the top of my hill. Someone planted a bomb right out in my backyard, and the federal government makes it so that this is okay. I see this as murder.”"
"As China prepares to impose a domestic ban on the ivory trade, a new report has found that the price of raw ivory there is plummeting. It’s good news for Africa’s elephants, which have been poached by the thousands for their tusks. Many of those tusks are then smuggled to China, which has been one of the world’s largest markets for the banned material. The Save the Elephants researchers found that the wholesale price in early 2014 was $2, 100 per kilogram by last month, it had dropped to $730 per kilogram. There are a few reasons behind the price drop, the conservation organization wrote in a press release. ”An economic slowdown has resulted in fewer people able to afford luxury goods a   on corruption is dissuading business people from buying expensive ivory items as ’favours’ for government officials, and the Chinese government has made a strong commitment to close down the nation’s legal ivory trade,” Save the Elephants said. China made the announcement last year after years of pressure from environmental groups. As NPR’s Chris Joyce has reported, U. S. and Chinese officials have been negotiating an end to China’s domestic ivory trade since 2015. At the time of the announcement, environmentalists hailed it as a crucial move that could prevent elephants from becoming extinct. But even before the 2016 announcement, the ivory market was in decline in China, the researchers found. For example, the researchers said in their report that legal retailers in Beijing and Shanghai had dwindling stocks and were trying to diversify the materials used in their products. Those involved in the legal ivory trade were ”gloomy” about the future of the market. Illegal traders of ivory that the researchers spoke with were comparatively less concerned about the new regulations. However, some were now keeping ivory at more discreet locations in their shops, or had started selling ivory online instead. Some carvers have turned to the tusks of prehistoric mammoths as an alternative, the report said, but the ivory is of comparatively lower quality and therefore less appealing to the traders. A major census of African elephants recently reported that between 2007 and 2014, the African elephant population decreased by nearly a third, as The   has reported. The report concludes with a major question that remains  —   what will happen to China’s illegal ivory market, once the legal market is officially closed? ”Will demand for illicit ivory items go up or down?” the report asks. ”Will prices rise or fall? Will carvers continue to produce ivory items in larger or smaller quantities illegally?” However, it says it’s clear that China has experienced a ”major turning point to close down China’s ivory industry.” That’s worth applauding, says Save the Elephants President Iain  . ”With the end of the legal ivory trade in China, the survival chances for elephants have distinctly improved,” he said. ”We must give credit to China for having done the right thing by closing the ivory trade. There is still a long way to go to end the excessive killing of elephants for ivory, but there is not greater hope for the species.”"
"Michael Sharp believed in the power of persuasion. The    Kansan with the round face and a penchant for plaid shirts would walk, unarmed, deep into   territory in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sit in the shade of banana trees with rebels and exchange stories. Inevitably, those stories would turn to the past. ”Rebels love talking about the past,” Michael once told me. Michael’s deep understanding of how these rebels saw their country’s past  —   the mythical version of that past that they used to justify their own violence  —   allowed him to emerge from the jungle each time unscathed. And it enabled him, and his Congolese colleagues, to connect with rebels in a way few others managed to do. After every trip, the team of church workers would be followed, days later, by rebels who had been persuaded to surrender and give up the fight. By his count, Michael’s team persuaded at least 1, 600 rebels to abandon the jungle and come home. Michael entered   territory for the last time two weeks ago. He was no longer working for the church group, which had lost its funding. He had been appointed to the U. N. Security Council Group of Experts and was investigating a relatively new rebellion in the   province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He did what he’s always done  —   headed into the jungle, this time with his interpreter his Swedish colleague, Zaida Catalan and their motorbike drivers. The bodies of Michael and Zaida were discovered in a shallow grave on Monday. The Congolese nationals who were with them are still missing. I had the opportunity to meet Michael in January 2015. I was struck not only by his optimism and kindness but by his determination  —   increasingly rare today  —   to engage in dialogue with violent people who perceive the world so differently from how he did. Michael’s particular calling was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, persuading rebels to surrender, but he believed his approach could be applied to other violent groups, from ISIS to   that rely on myths to recruit members and sustain themselves. Michael and I met by accident, both passengers on a commuter boat crossing Lake Kivu, the   lake dividing DRC from Rwanda. The ferry boat had been chartered by the U. S. State Department for a VIP entourage that included former Sen. Russ Feingold, then special envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa. I was there to follow Feingold’s mission for a few days. Michael Sharp had talked his way onto the boat to try to save his Peace and Reconciliation program, part of the Congolese Protestant Council of Churches, the program that sent people into the forest to persuade rebels to come home. Their shoestring budget  —   $12, 000 a month  —   once provided by the government of Norway, had just been pulled. (Sharp was told that the money was diverted to help Syrian refugees.) Michael was far happier to sit with me, in the stern of the boat, answering my many questions about how he persuades rebels to give up the fight than he was in walking over to the former senator to make a plea for funding. In our conversation, Michael explained how he approached the very violent rebels. It starts, he said, with understanding their world view of the past as ”the good old days and we need to go back to that. And that is the classic narrative of exile.” The rebels, he said, were nostalgic for a mythical home and aimed to rewind history to a time that never really existed in the first place. For the Congolese rebels, their fantasy was an era when they  —   in their imagination  —   ruled neighboring Rwanda and killed their ethnic enemies with impunity. How do you find common ground with that? Michael did not condone the violent ethnic fantasy but acknowledged its existence and understood the psychology behind it. One who dreams so deeply of home, isn’t he deeply homesick? That homesickness became a weakness that Michael and his church colleagues aimed to exploit. Later I sought out some of Michael’s Congolese colleagues to understand this better. As I reported on this blog in 2015, one of Michael’s colleagues, Emmanuel Kambale, explained the blunt message that he’d deliver to older rebels: ”You,” he tells them, ”you’re over 50 years old, it’s too late for you to take over Rwanda. But your children are growing up uneducated in the bush. Don’t you see that your children, who are the future of Rwanda, when they go back they’ll be the slaves of those who are there! Because they are illiterate!” That use of the word ”slave” is deliberate. For those who dream of ethnic domination, there could be no greater terror. I spoke to Michael a few times after that ferry ride, but we never met again, despite our plans to. My last image of him will always be back on that boat, watching him talk to Russ Feingold, having finally mustered the courage to approach the former senator. Feingold looks interested, as he often does Michael is smiling and talks with his hands. I can’t hear what he’s saying over the boat’s motor, but I know he’s attempting to raise money for the church workers to allow them to continue their risky forays into the bush. That funding never came. Of course, even Michael didn’t believe that his strategy of ”getting to yes” under the banana trees could by itself resolve a   conflict with complex international roots. But he believed that without those quiet conversations, the war would never end."
"Editor’s note: This post about activist Michael Sharp was originally published on January 2, 2015. On Monday, March 13, the government of Congo announced that Sharp, now a U. N. official, his colleague Zaida Catalan and four Congolese had been abducted by ”negative forces not yet identified.”  Sharp and Catalan are part of a U. N. group that looks into violations of Security COuncil sanctions imposed on the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U. N. has not confirmed the kidnapping but has said that U. N. peacekeepers in Congo are searching for Sharp and Catalan. When we profiled Sharp, he was working with the Congolese Protestant Council of Churches in their Peace and Reconciliation Program. Today marked a U. N. deadline for one of Africa’s most notorious rebel groups to surrender. It didn’t. Instead, the group known as the FDLR is said to be recruiting and   and continuing its   sexual and economic exploitation of villagers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The International Crisis Group warns that the continuing failure of the United Nations to deal with armed groups in this part of the world has exacerbated a regional conflict that’s already left an estimated 5 million dead. But previous U. N.  military actions against this guerrilla group have only resulted in more civilian casualties. Could there be a third way? A negotiation strategy that uses ”Getting to Yes,” not guns? A negotiation tactic for aligning incentives with the rebel group? I met Michael Sharp, an American in his early 30s, last year on a commuter boat crossing Lake Kivu. At the time, he was working with the Congolese Protestant Council of Churches in something called their Peace and Reconciliation Program. Every few weeks Sharp and his church colleagues would walk, unarmed, to the base of the rebels known as the FDLR (Forces Démocratiques de Liberation du Rwanda). There they’d sit in the shade of banana trees to drink tea with the rebels and listen to their stories. Certain sensitive subjects  —   sexual violence against villagers, recruitment of child soldiers  —   were   he says, because the aim was building rapport with the rebel faction. ”The more we interact [with them] the more they trust us to turn themselves in to us.” Sharp says the church program helped persuade some 1, 600 fighters to lay down their weapons and leave the forest they’d occupied for two decades. To put that in context, that’s about about a quarter of the total rebel force when the church program started in 2007. How did they do it? The magic words they used turned out to be deceptively simple. To come up with them, Sharp and his colleagues first needed to understand the story the rebels tell about themselves  —   a story that begins with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The original founders of the FDLR were some of those who committed that genocide. They were part of the Hutu militias that killed Tutsi civilians. When the Tutsi army came, many Hutus were pushed out over the border, from Rwanda into eastern Congo. There in the Congolese forest, they conceived and nurtured the intention to return to Rwanda and take over the country in a few years. A few years turned to two decades. Many have fled, some have died, but those who remained created a seemingly permanent society. The children of the rebels are now fighters themselves  —   and yet they miss their former lives. Anna Hedlund, an anthropologist at Lund University in Sweden, did her field research in a remote FDLR rebel camp. She was shocked to find these fearsome rebels were so homesick that they spent their   dancing and singing. ”They practice their language, they teach the children how to dance Rwandan dances. They have memorial Sundays where they   the memory of Rwanda,” she said. Their homesickness turned out to be a weakness that Sharp and his church colleagues could exploit. One of those colleagues, Emmanuel Kambale, says that when he meets a younger FDLR fighter, he explains to him that since he was under 14 during the Rwandan genocide, he can go back to Rwanda without fear of prison time. ”They believe that once they go back to Rwanda they’ll be killed,” he says. For the older rebels, he delivers a more blunt message. ”You,” he tells them, ”you’re over 50 years old, it’s too late for you to take over Rwanda. But your children are growing up uneducated in the bush. Don’t you see that your children, who are the future of Rwanda, when they go back they’ll be the slaves of those who are there! Because they are illiterate!” That use of the word ”slave” is deliberate. For those who dream of ethnic domination, there could be no greater terror. Sharp points out that this negotiation tactic is not only more effective and less bloody than military campaigns but also exponentially cheaper. When I met him, the program’s shoestring budget  —   $12, 000 a month  —   once provided by the government of Norway, had just been pulled. (Sharp was told the money was diverted to help victims of the Syrian war.) Sharp had talked his way onto the chartered commuter boat to rescue his program. While he and I were talking in the stern of the boat, the bow was occupied by VIPs from the U. S. State Department, including Special Envoy Russ Feingold, who reports directly to Secretary of State John Kerry. But walking 10 feet to bend the ear of an   proved almost more intimidating than walking into the   forest. In the end, Sharp had more success with the older rebel leaders. He got an audience with the State Department, but no callback and no check. The project will run out of funding in March. Many dozens of the fighters who had been persuaded to leave the forest are reportedly frustrated by government and U. N. inaction, heading back to the forest, the only life they’ve known."
"The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D. C. has generated plenty of controversy since it opened last fall. But concerns about President Trump’s conflicts of interest might not be enough to stop his company from opening a second hotel in the nation’s capital. The Washington Post says executives with The Trump Organization are scouring D. C. neighborhoods. They are reportedly planning to open a Scion Hotel, which is a more modest,   hotel chain than the Trump luxury hotels. The Post says the goal is to convert an existing   hotel in or near Washington’s downtown area. In a statement sent to NPR, Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger said the company is ”exploring many markets as opportunities for our new Scion hotel brand.” He said the company doesn’t discuss hotel projects that have not been finalized, but ”to date, we have over 30 signed Letters of Intent for the Scion hotel brand.” Earlier this year, Danziger revealed plans for dramatically expanding the Trump hotel business. He said the company is looking to triple its luxury properties across the United States and to expand the more affordable Scion hotels. The existing   Trump International Hotel, just blocks from the White House, has been a lightning rod for critics of the president’s decision not to divest himself from his business interests. Many ethics experts say special interest groups, lobbyists and foreign governments could use the hotel to try to curry favor with the president. Trump has moved his businesses into a revocable trust and turned management over to his two oldest sons, but the president continues to be the sole beneficiary of the trust. Earlier this month, Diane Gross and Khalid Pitts, owners of the Cork Wine Bar in Washington, sued the president and his company, saying they are unfairly losing business to the Trump hotel restaurant. ”We feel that the president of the United States, owning a hotel, owning restaurants, promoting those restaurants, is unfair and to the detriment of other businesses in the city,” Pitts said. Ethics experts also have questioned whether the Trump Organization should be allowed to own even one hotel in Washington because of language in its lease. Trump International Hotel operates inside of a   building, the historic Old Post Office building. A provision in the   lease, signed in 2013, specifically states that the hotel cannot be run by an ”elected official of the Government of the United States.” But just last week, the General Services Administration said in a letter that the Trump Organization is in ”full compliance” with the lease because the asset has been moved to the Trump revocable trust. Reps. Elijah Cummings and Peter DeFazio, top Democrats on the House Oversight and the House Transportation and Infrastructure committees, respectively, condemned the GSA conclusion. ”This new interpretation renders this lease provision completely meaningless,” they said in a statement."
"Code Switch’s Adrian Florido has been covering the new sanctuary movement for us. For this episode, he spoke to key players to understand why hundreds of churches are ready to start a public fight with the current administration to prevent deportations of immigrants living in the U. S. illegally. He also looks at why the movement has to wrestle with important questions: Who controls the story and the message? How much say does an individual or family have in how a sanctuary church leverages their story? Adrian also has a candid talk with Jeanette Vizguerra, who is living inside a Colorado church, as she fights a legal deportation battle. It could be years before she is able to step outside the church. As Adrian reports, the decisions, intentions and relationships complicate the work of sanctuary churches."
"What follows is an allegory in which blogger Marcelo Gleiser imagines a conversation between a geneticist, a Buddhist, a physicist, a psychologist, and a theologian about life and the future of humanity. At an undisclosed location, a geneticist, a Buddhist, a physicist, a psychologist, and a theologian sat waiting for dinner. The idea was to engage in the almost lost art of conversation, where a group of people exchange opinions with an open mind, eager to put forward their views but also with the shared goal of learning from one another. Cell phones were turned off. The host, the psychologist, chose the topic: life. Not life as in ”what are you up to these days,” but rather ”what is life?” and ”can and should technology interfere with the ’natural’ flow of things?” The Buddhist started by asking the geneticist to define life. ”Funny,” he answered, ”I can’t.” He continued: ”No one can, actually, at least in some sort of universally accepted way. What life is remains unclear, although we do know quite well what life does: It’s a molecular machinery with the sole purpose of perpetuating itself. Living things have   mechanisms we get fixed when we tear a muscle, break a bone or get a cold. There are genetic   mechanisms as well. Things are not always effective, of course, and they shouldn’t since mutations are essential. But it’s a wonder it all works. The more I learn about it in my lab, as I see replicating molecules unfold, the more amazed I am at the whole thing.” ”What about intentionality?” asked the theologian. ”Doesn’t life have intentionality? Isn’t purpose a key part of it?” The physicist jumped in. ”Well, does fire have intentionality as it spreads? Do stars want to replicate in stellar nurseries, those giant molecular clouds where new stars are born? I say this because sometimes it’s hard to draw a dividing line between purpose and contingency. In the case of fires and stars, there are physical mechanisms that describe what goes on and they don’t involve purpose.” ”Unless you call this urge to spread out some kind of purpose,” said the psychologist. ”I guess you could,” replied the physicist more out of politeness than conviction, ”although I don’t think you can ascribe intentionality to fires and stars.” ”Is that, then, the defining difference between living and   things: intentionality?” asked the Buddhist. ”I am not sure,” replied the geneticist, ”that DNA has intentionality. It’s all chemistry, potential differences, energy optimization. Although when, exactly, it happens, the point in time when a cell divides, remains a mystery. It all follows the processes of natural selection, of course. But natural selection is descriptive and not predictive.” ”I guess this means that the future of life is unpredictable, then?” asked the theologian. ”Well, it is, but there is a complication,” said the geneticist. ”Yeah,” interrupted the psychologist, ”we are messing up with evolution, right?” ”Well, messing up is a bit too strong,” said the geneticist. ”But yes, for the first time in history we have decoded the genome of many living things, and are able to design creatures and experiment creating new ones at the genetic level.” ”It’s the true Frankenstein awakening,” remarked the theologian, despondently. ”Maybe this is the new face of evolution,” said the physicist. ”We will design our successors.” ”And become obsolete in the process,” said the psychologist. ”Is it really possible?” she asked. ”Can we create a humanoid artificial intelligence? I’m skeptical.” ”It’s not obvious, really,” said the physicist. ”Many smart people are working on this, and progress has been fast. Still, we remain far away from simulating anything like human intelligence.” ”Maybe,” said the geneticist, ”but it’s a matter of time, no? I mean, I visited the headquarters of the Human Brain Project in Geneva, and saw for myself. The complexity of the connectome, the map of neurons and their synaptic connections, the flow of neurotransmitters  —   it’s really  . But I don’t see a fundamental impossibility here, just complexity.” ”Of course you would say that,” interrupted the theologian. ”But this kind of reductionist view, that all is matter and we can adopt a   approach to decode our minds, sounds too simplistic. We see complex irreducible phenomena all the time, stuff that is of course material but that develops its own laws, laws that can’t be explained using the lower level.” ”Like DNA replication can’t be understood using the equations that describe quarks, electrons and photons,” said the physicist. ”As Nobel laureate Phil Anderson once wrote, ’More is different.’ Still, no need to invoke anything beyond the material. We don’t want to go to the God of the Gaps stuff.” ”Oh, that’s very passé,” says the theologian. ”No serious theologian goes there. What I’m saying is that even the material may have unexplainable aspects to it.” ”Yes, some aspects of the word are unknowable to us,” said the physicist. ”And then there is the whole issue of how we acquire information about the world and ourselves,” said the Buddhist. ”We can’t take the self from the picture. And we get tangled up in knots trying to get an objective view of how our minds work that doesn’t depend on our own experience of our minds.” ”That’s true,” said the psychologist. ”People that think they can separate brain from body don’t really see how they are weaved into one thing. Mind is embodied. We function within this unity all along. I’m amazed that some people think you can have a brain in a vat. Ridiculous!” ”Well,” says the geneticist, ”I still think it’s all information. All we need to do is to have sufficient information and we will be done.” ”Ah, the typical triumphalist view of science,” interrupts the physicist. ”C’mon, you know as well as I do that every measurement we make is limited, that we can’t describe a system, whatever it is, exactly. Science is an approximation to nature, not nature. The difference between the map and the territory is essential here.” ”Precisely,” said the theologian, pleasantly surprised that he and the physicist agreed. ”All we get through science is the map, a simplified version of the territory.” ”Any AI we develop will not replicate a human brain it will approximate a human brain,” completed the physicist. ”And that’s the danger,” said the Buddhist. ”We will create something that we have no clue what it is, something that can think, that may even have autonomy.” ”How dreadful,” said the psychologist. ”These things will be grotesque puppets, almost human but not quite.” ”Unless we can dump our consciousness into them,” observes the geneticist. ”Ah, the transhuman dream,” says the theologian. ”A modern version of our   desire for transcendence of the flesh.” ”I hope this will never happen,” said the psychologist. ”I can’t bear the notion of having my essence transplanted into a fake repository.” ”Even if the repository is an identical genetic replica of yourself?” asked the geneticist. ”Yes, even so. We evolved to live and die. This is our human prerogative. To circumvent this is to violate our every essence.” ”It would be unknown territory, for sure,” said the Buddhist. ”I am skeptical, though. We must work hard to find a level of peace in this life, and not relegate the search to other lives. It takes time, for sure. Buddhists even say that that’s why we come back, so we can perfect our path each time. But the work is here and now.” ”It’s amazing to me that we are actually able to consider this kind of scientific breakthrough, the genetics, the physics, the cognitive neuroscience, as evolving to the point of human transcendence,” said the geneticist. ”Exciting times!” ”Exciting but dangerous,” cautioned the theologian. ”Morally, we are too primitive to deal with such things.” ”I agree,” said the physicist. ”But isn’t this how great advances happen, because creative people push the envelope of the possible? We may be witnessing the beginning of a true revolution, where the experience of being and the science of being will finally join hands.” ”I hope there will be safeguards we can control so these things don’t run us off the map forever,” said the psychologist. ”Let’s hope that what emerges from this will be a wiser version of us,” said the Buddhist. ”I’ll drink to that,” said the physicist. And with glasses full, they retired to the dining room. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"Updated at 8:40 p. m. ET March 30, On Saturday morning a team of six aid workers from the Grassroots Education and Development Organisation in South Sudan decided to get an early start on their day. A grueling 185 mile drive over   roads lay ahead of them. In their Toyota Land Cruiser, the crew were supposed to be part of a convoy of trucks heading from Mongalla just north of the capital to the town of Pibor, in the east of the country near the Ethiopian border. The dirt road skirts Bandingilo National Park and cuts through territory contested by armed militias from both sides of South Sudan’s brutal civil war. Before they pulled out of Mongalla, they took on an extra passenger, also headed to Pibor. ”They did not leave together with the rest of the trucks. They left earlier. Very early,” says Jaffar Mbugua, the program director for GREDO, a small aid group with a staff of just 30, based in Juba. It’s a UNICEF partner that works with children released from armed groups. ”And then on the way they were attacked.” In the deadliest attack on humanitarian workers in South Sudan since the war broke out in 2013, all six staff members from GREDO, along with their hitchhiker, were killed. In an instant the organization lost a fifth of its staff. It is still unclear who carried out the lethal ambush. The government says rebel soldiers staged the attack. The rebels say government troops were the attackers. The GREDO team was all men ranging in age from their   to  . Three were South Sudanese. Three were Kenyans. They were on their way to Pibor to build a youth center. Mbugua says the men were working to make South Sudan a better country. He says they all knew that the drive and their work in a constantly shifting conflict zone were dangerous. ”They were taking a risk to work here,” says Mbugua. ”It was for the sake of humanity that they were trying to make a difference in the life of other people.” Elisa Yani, Joseph Wanjau and David Wanaina were going to construct the new youth center. Samson Mbuga from Kenya and John Riti from South Sudan were both English teachers. They were going to give language classes and vocational training in leather work and carpentry. Kil Chop was a driver for GREDO and would have been behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser when they were attacked. Back in Juba, Chop’s wife had given birth to a baby just before the New Year. In early December Samson Mbuga, the teacher from Kenya, had lost his wife. His children are now orphans. ”These were all people who had their own challenges,” Jaffar Mbugua says. ”They were working here hoping to make things better, hoping that things would be different.” Eugene Owusu, the United Nation’s Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs in South Sudan, swiftly condemned the attack. ”At a time when humanitarian needs have reached unprecedented levels, it is entirely unacceptable that those who are trying to help are being attacked and killed,” Owusu said. Other U. N. officials have suggested the slaughter could be a war crime under international law. The U. N. says at least 79 aid workers have been killed in South Sudan since the conflict began in December 2013. Twelve of those deaths have occurred in the last three months. In addition, convoys of food supplies have been looted. Humanitarian warehouses have been torched. Earlier this month local employees of Samaritan’s Purse, an American Christian charity that’s been distributing food, were held captive by gunmen for four days in the town of Mayendit. ”For many, many years Afghanistan has been the country with the highest number of attacks on aid workers but in 2015, South Sudan overtook Afghanistan,” says Adele Harmer of Humanitarian Outcomes. Her organization analyzes security risks for aid organizations. ”I think what makes South Sudan different from other extremely violent contexts for aid workers like Syria, southern Somalia, Afghanistan is the ethnic nature of the conflict,” Harmer says. The civil war in South Sudan began in 2013 when vice president Riek Machar, who’s ethnically Nuer, took up arms against the president, Salva Kiir, who’s from the Dinka tribe. The war has been so ethnically driven that some human rights groups have warned that South Sudan could be on the brink of a genocide. Even refugee camps have become segregated along ethnic lines. The ethnic nature of this conflict has led some people, including some combatants, to question whether aid groups are secretly favoring one tribe over another. Another problem for local aid groups, Harmer says, is that they may not have the resources to keep their employees safe. ”The U. N. and big international NGOs operating in South Sudan are doing so with air assets,” Harmer says. ”They’re using fixed wing [planes] and helicopters to move food, staff and other materials in to some of the most vulnerable states.” She says around the globe the most dangerous moment for aid workers in conflict zones is ”when they’re traveling on the road in between locations that are not areas where they work.” Which is exactly the situation the staff from GREDO found themselves in . .. out on an empty road, alone in their Toyota Land Cruiser."
"Quick quiz: What do Judy Garland’s rendition of ”Over the Rainbow,” N. W. A’s seminal Straight Outta Compton and the inaugural episode of NPR’s All Things Considered have in common? That little riddle just got a little easier to answer on Wednesday: The Library of Congress announced that all three ”aural treasures”  —   along with roughly two dozen other recordings  —   have been inducted into its National Recording Registry. ”These sounds of the past enrich our understanding of the nation’s cultural history and our history in general,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement. The release also notes that these titles have been inducted for ”their cultural, artistic and historical importance to American society and the nation’s audio heritage.” Below, take a listen to a piece from the debut of All Things Considered, which focused on May Day protests against the Vietnam War on May 3, 1971, roughly one month after NPR itself got its start. ”It is such an honor and a privilege to be brought into this distinguished company,” said Susan Stamberg, who has been with NPR since the very start, and had a   run as host of All Things Considered, beginning in 1972. ”For the sounds that we made on the first day to be right up there with Martin Luther King Jr. ’s ’I Have a Dream’ speech or Neil Armstrong’s first words spoken by a human being on the moon  —   that’s very lofty company for us.” Now, with the first All Things Considered  —   plus other 2016 inductees such as Barbra Streisand’s 1964 debut, ”People,” and the Brooklyn Dodgers’ and New York Giants’ last game at the Polo Grounds  —   the total number of works on the National Recording Registry comes to 475. To see more about the induction, and what NPR eminences have to say about it, head right here."
"Updated 7:55 p. m. ET, The most expensive part of doing business in outer space is getting there. The private space flight company SpaceX thinks it can change all that, and Thursday’s successful reuse of a rocket was a big test of its business model. SpaceX launched a communications satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using a rocket stage that had already been to space and back. SpaceX is betting that this kind of recycling will lower its costs and revolutionize space flight. The rocket landed vertically on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes after the launch. The aerospace industry essentially has been throwing away its hefty rockets. Partway into orbit, the big, expensive first stage falls off and plunges back to Earth. It’s a unique business model within the transportation sector, says Bobby Braun, the dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He says to see how strange it is, imagine flying from Denver to Washington, D. C.: ”When I got there, the airline wouldn’t throw away that airplane and put me on a new one to bring me back a few days later,” he says. Braun says there have been attempts to reuse rockets before, most notably the space shuttle, which could be relaunched multiple times. But he says the shuttle was a complex machine that was expensive to run. ”It required a standing army of people to keep it operational,” he says. SpaceX founder Elon Musk thinks that reusing the much simpler stages from his Falcon 9 rockets will also save money: ”I try to tell my team to imagine that there was a pallet of cash that was plummeting through the atmosphere, and it was going to burn up and smash into tiny pieces, would you try to save it? Probably yes,” he told attendees of last year’s Code Conference. That philosophy is why SpaceX rockets don’t crash back to Earth. Instead, they come back and land vertically on a ship in the middle of the ocean (the rockets also can land at the launch site). The company’s first ocean landing happened almost exactly a year ago, and Thursday it took that exact same rocket and launched it again. ”This is indeed a first,” says Michele Franci, the chief technology officer of Inmarsat, a London company that runs a satellite network for tracking ships and planes. Inmarsat is a SpaceX customer, and Franci says if launch costs come down, companies like his could launch more satellites, more often, and build a better network. But he says that to really bring prices down, SpaceX will have to recycle each rocket more than just once. ”The question is how many times they can reuse each individual rocket, and how often they can do it,” he says."
"The Trump administration has appealed an order by a federal judge in Hawaii that indefinitely blocks the president’s executive order restricting travel to the U. S. from six   countries and suspending the U. S. refugee program. The state of Hawaii sued to stop the travel ban, arguing the president’s policy violates the Constitution. U. S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson extended his nationwide order blocking the executive order while the lawsuit continues. The administration has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule against Watson. Hawaii officials argued that the ban  —   a modified version issued after the first executive order was also blocked by federal courts  —   discriminates against travelers on the basis of religion. Watson said in his ruling that the state had shown ”a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their Establishment Clause claim, that irreparable injury is likely if the requested relief is not issued.” As the   has reported, the president sought to deny entry to citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and suspend the U. S. refugee program for 120 days. The first part of the executive order, affecting travelers from the six   countries, was also blocked by a U. S. district judge in Maryland. That preliminary injunction remains in effect. The Trump administration is appealing the Maryland ruling to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Trump administration promised ”extreme vetting” of people seeking visas and has issued guidelines in a series of memorandums from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to U. S. embassies."
"It has been more than eight decades since the last known Tasmanian tiger died. In that time, the marsupial has become the stuff of textbook sketches and yellowing photographs, little more than a memory aging into oblivion. But Thylacinus cynocephalus may still be out there. Recent ”plausible sightings” have challenged the accepted wisdom that the animal has gone extinct  —   and have inspired researchers at Australia’s James Cook University to commence a quest to find it themselves. Let’s clarify one thing right away: this animal is no feline. In fact, it’s a marsupial  —   in the same family as kangaroos  —   but its face looks a lot like a dog. ”It’s a dog with a pouch,” the university’s Sandra Abell tells All Things Considered. She’s one of the people leading the search in Queensland, Australia. ”It has a very   face,” she says, ”but its back and the tail in particular looks a little bit  . Its hind quarters are very distinctive  —   so they have stripes on the back end and that large tail, very interesting looking.” The team is planning to place dozens of cameras in the area the elusive animal has reportedly been spotted, in hopes of catching it on tape. The researchers also plan to use the cameras to collect more general information about declining populations of mammals in Australia. Abell says that north Queensland has recently experienced ”small mammal crashes,” and the tapes might help explain why. Once common in Australia and Tasmania, the last known Tasmanian tiger died in 1936 at Tasmania’s Hobart Zoo, according to the Australian government. That was more than 100 years after a prominent land company in Tasmania offered a bounty to settlers to kill the tigers, which were hunting newly introduced sheep, according to the Tasmanian government. It later introduced its own bounties and paid more than 2, 000 of them between 1888 and 1909. In 1986, the species was declared ”extinct by international standards,” the Tasmanian government adds. Still, reported sightings have persisted ever since the death of the Hobart Zoo animal. There’s even a group  —   the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia  —   that tracks reports and is dedicated to the idea that the Tasmanian tiger still exists. Some claims appear more credible than others. Australia’s ABC reports that researchers were particularly intrigued by a recent account given by former tour operator Brian Hobbs about a camping trip in 1983: ” ’I hopped out of bed and put her [the dog] on a short leash, grabbed a spotlight and started to look around the camp towards the ravine area where I’d been walking the dog previously,’ he said. ” ’All of a sudden I had these sets of red eyes looking at me and there was a male, a female and two pups  —   I got within 20 metres of them.’ . .. ” ’These animals, I’ve never seen anything like them before in my life,’ he said. ” ’They were    —   I had a shepherd with me so I certainly know what dogs are about  —   and in the spotlight I could see they were tan in color and they had stripes on their sides.” Abell rebuffs comparisons to searches for rumored animals like the Yeti or the Loch Ness monster. ”This isn’t a mythical animal, this is something that is real. We have real fossils and we have images and video footage of this real animal,” she said. ”But the probability that it will be discovered is very low, so I’m not persuaded that they’re out there. For me, I’ll need some hard data to be able to satisfy my curiosity.” She adds: ”I really hope they’re out there. I think it would be an amazing thing to discover.”"
"The astronomer Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Last week, a physician made the extraordinary claim that he had an effective treatment for sepsis, sometimes known as blood poisoning. Sepsis is a bodywide inflammation, usually triggered by infection, and the leading cause of death in hospitals, taking 300, 000 lives a year. So, even a 15 percent improvement in survival would save 40, 000 lives  —   the number of Americans who die on the highway each year, or from breast cancer. Dr. Paul Marik, a   intensive care physician at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va. is the doctor with the extraordinary claim. As we reported last week, he says he has treated about 150 patients with sepsis and that only one died of that often fatal condition (though some died of other causes). The question is how to find out whether he is right  —   and, ideally, how to do that quickly. Marik’s treatment involves a mix of intravenous corticosteroids, vitamin C and vitamin B, along with careful management of fluids. And his experience, so far, falls far short of the ”extraordinary evidence” that a claim like his requires. The first step in getting more evidence is to confront an appropriate skepticism that has grown up around purported treatments for sepsis. ”Nothing has worked despite all the great ideas people have had, often ballyhooed with observational data like this, claiming that it’s a big effect,” says Dr. Robert Califf, who recently returned to Duke University after running the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. ”So, I’d say the odds are still that it doesn’t work,” Califf says, ”but every once in a while something works in an unexpected way.” He wants to see solid evidence. In the world of medicine, that’s a randomized controlled trial, in which patients are randomly assigned to get the experimental treatment or the standard of care, and neither patients nor medical personnel know who is getting what. An experiment like this should also be run at multiple hospitals. Considering how big an effect Marik is reporting, ”it would take a very small study, done by people independent of him, to prove it,” Califf says. ”And then the whole world would benefit,” whatever the results may be. But these trials don’t happen overnight. There’s no new drug to test, so pharmaceutical companies aren’t interested. The National Institutes of Health, which funds many of these studies, would welcome a research proposal, says Sarah Dunsmore at NIGMS. But the experiment must be designed and approved by researchers first, she says, and then it would likely go into the standard   review process, where it would compete for scarce funds with other research proposals. Califf just started a nonprofit called the   Clinical Research Foundation and says this is potentially a project the foundation could fund. Likewise the Society for Critical Care Medicine is interested in sponsoring a study to follow up on the research, says Dr. Craig Coopersmith, an Emory University professor of surgery and associate director of the medical school’s critical care center. Even so, under the   scenario, results wouldn’t be available from a randomized controlled trial for about two years. Some doctors aren’t waiting. Dr. David Carlbom, medical director of the sepsis program at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, heard Marik give a talk about his protocol and decided to offer it to his sepsis patients. ”Because of the potential benefit and I think very few harms, I talk to families when I’m caring for a septic shock patient and discuss this with them and get their consent when trying this therapy,” he says. (Septic shock is a particularly severe form of sepsis.) Carlbom’s impressions, after just five patients, are strictly impressionistic, not scientific, but he says some patients seem to have responded well. ”I don’t know if it’s the medicine maybe it’s just us taking good care of them,” he says. ”Maybe it’s them and their disease. But I was a little surprised. They did seem to heal faster from their septic shock.” Carlbom says he is an early adopter. Other doctors who work in his hospital’s intensive care unit are taking a ”wait and see” approach. Of course, Carlbom is eager for scientific evidence as well. Dr. Mark Rumbak, a pulmonologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, is also trying the protocol. Marik is an old friend, Rumbak says, so he heard about Marik’s treatment months ago. So far, Rumbak has tried it on at least 30 patients, and most have done well, he says. ”Not only do they do better they do better quickly,” he says. ”Within 24 to 48 hours you see the patients responding. It’s actually quite nice, it’s quite dramatic.” Some of the skepticism around this treatment has arisen because it includes vitamin C  —   which has been hailed repeatedly for its curative powers, though those claims have rarely been backed by solid science. In this case, Rumbak suspects that vitamin C is making the body more receptive to another part of the treatment  —   corticosteroids  —   which are   drugs. Dr. Berry Fowler, head of pulmonary disease at Virginia Commonwealth University’s school of medicine, inspired Marik to use vitamin C in his hospital. Marik had heard about Fowler’s experiments with IV vitamin C for sepsis and so started his own protocol with the mix of vitamins and steroids. Fowler is now running a controlled trial of vitamin C for sepsis, but his study does not include the corticosteroids or the vitamin B, which are part of the Marik protocol. Part of the challenge is that there is no   treatment for sepsis. Doctors have different beliefs about how much fluid to give patients, which kinds of fluids to give, which kinds of antibiotics and whether to administer corticosteroids. So there is no established ”standard care” to use as a clear point of comparison. Dr. Gordon Bernard, a pulmonary medicine and critical care specialist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who has been studying sepsis for 30 years, is firmly in the skeptics’ camp on this potential treatment. Bernard says wishful thinking might have led Marik to conclude that only one out of 150 of his patients has died of sepsis. ”You could spend all day long adjudicating some of these cases, as to whether these people died of sepsis or something else,” Bernard says. That question would get careful scrutiny in a randomized study. Yet scientists know there’s also a danger in being too skeptical of extraordinary claims, because sometimes they do turn out to be true. In 1982, two scientists in Australia concluded that stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium and could be treated successfully with antibiotics. It took well over a decade for doctors to believe it and start using that effective treatment. ”We always have to be aware that every now and then something works,” Califf says. ”And we don’t want to miss that opportunity.” You can contact Richard Harris at rharris@npr. org."
"As California water officials confirmed Thursday that the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada remains well above average, pressure was mounting on the state to lift emergency water restrictions that have been in place for two years. The snowpack across the mountains is now 164 percent of average, a closely watched marker in the nation’s most populous state  —   and biggest economy  —   where   of all the drinking water comes from   reservoirs. Two years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown stood in a barren,   meadow near Lake Tahoe and ordered a mandatory 25 percent cut in urban water use. State regulators also followed with a series of tough conservation and enforcement measures against water wasters. Most users in the state met  —   and in some cases exceeded  —   the targets, and today, according to the federal government’s drought monitor, only about 8 percent of California remains in severe drought. ”This is not an emergency,” says Rob Hunter, general manager of the Municipal Water District of Orange County, which secures water for more than 2 million people in the suburbs. Hunter says his agency is losing credibility with customers who are being told to keep cutting back even when the reservoirs are full and the Sierra Nevada is blanketed in white. ”We’re still in a drought,” Hunter says. ”To be truthful, Southern California is almost always in some form of drought, but it’s not an emergency.” Earlier this year, Hunter’s agency passed a resolution that declared the drought emergency over, and have since been calling on the state to do the same. Hunter says his county is using on average 20 percent less water than it did at the start of the drought. Overall, water consumption mirrors the rates of the 1980s, even though Orange County has added a million people. Gov. Brown indicated recently that the emergency order may get rescinded as early as next month. But nothing is final. ”You can’t stay at Defcon 1 forever, but you can figure out how to maintain that sort of sensible vigilance,” says Felicia Marcus, chairperson of the California Water Resources Control Board. Marcus, whose board enforces the drought restrictions, wants to see some of them made permanent, like the requirement that utilities publicly report their conservation targets monthly and the tougher penalties against water wasters. The debate over whether the restrictions should stay or go is leading to some   among Californians, especially amid predictions that with climate change, droughts could be more severe and prolonged. ”I don’t think they should lift it,” said Nicole Garcia, while hiking with her dog this week near Pasadena. Los Angeles County boasts a maze of open space trails that offer a respite from the grit and smog of L. A. Garcia marveled at how green and lush the mountains were. Nearby, a creek was running for the first time in years, as was a waterfall farther up Eaton Canyon. Still, she worried that lifting the order could cause complacency. ”Californians aren’t that respectful of water,” Garcia says. ”They kind of waste a lot of it.” That’s a common stereotype in Southern California particularly, where imported water has long been used to make the arid land look more tropical in places. During the latest drought, xeriscape lawns replaced green turf, and, more generally, water use was slashed by more than 30 percent in some cities at the height of the crisis. Gene Schugg, a hiker from Orange County, said the restrictions were good because they made people care about the crisis. ”But it is time to lift we do have a lot,” Schugg says. ”But what about our water rates will they come back down?” That’s one thing that no one is counting on, in an arid region where drought always looms right around the corner and the population keeps rising."
"Updated: 5:13 p. m. The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday of ordering a ”deliberate campaign carefully constructed to undermine” last year’s presidential election. Sen. Mark Warner,  . made the charge as the Senate panel held a rare public hearing about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. In his opening statement, Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr,  . C. avoided any mention of last year’s presidential campaign, but said efforts by Russia to ”discredit the United States and weaken the West are not new.” But the biggest revelation in Thursday’s hearing was the disclosure of two new   targets of Russian cyber efforts: House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Marco Rubio,  . Rubio said that his presidential campaign was targeted last July, and he said, within the last 24 hours a second attempt was made against former members of his campaign staff. Rubio said both attacks were traced to a Russian IP address, and that neither attack was successful. The attack against Ryan was revealed by Clint Watts, a cyber expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute Program on National Security. Watts testified social media campaigns targeted Ryan ”hoping to foment further unrest amongst U. S. democratic institutions.” Watts told reporters that other GOP presidential campaigns had also been targeted. He also said that Russian ”gray outlets” or fake accounts tweet at President Trump ”at high volumes when they know he is online, pushing conspiracy theories,” in hopes he will repeat them. Watts also said that Russian ”active measures” to sow disinformation in the 2016 campaign worked because Trump sowed his own disinformation during the presidential race about opponents, alleged voter fraud and persistent concerns that the election was being rigged. ”Part of the reason active measures work,” Watt said, mentioning Trump’s recent unsubstantiated claim that Trump Tower had been wiretapped at the direction of President Obama, ”is that they parrot the same lines.” Another witness, retired Gen. Keith Alexander, a former head of the National Security Agency and of the U. S. Cyber Command, said the Trump administration needs to ”cool this down,” referring to the Russian cyber attacks aimed at the U. S. and its allies. He said the U. S. needs to let Russia know ”what things they can’t do and why they cannot do those,” and called on the committee to address the issue in a bipartisan approach, ”for the good of the nation.” Putin on Thursday again dismissed charges that he sought to disrupt the U. S. election as ”endless and groundless.” At a news conference Wednesday, Burr and Warner pledged ”to go wherever the intelligence leads us,” in Burr’s words, in their investigation. Their posture stands in stark contrast to the House Intelligence Committee probe, which has stalled after Committee Chairman Devin Nunes,  . reported he viewed intelligence documents on the White House grounds which he then briefed President Trump about, but refused to share with other committee members. Democrats have called on Nunes, who also served on the Trump transition team, to recuse himself, but Nunes has said he sees no reason to do so. The New York Times reported the identities Thursday of two White House staffers the newspaper said had helped give Nunes the intelligence reports the California lawmaker then used to brief Trump. NPR has not confirmed that report and at Thursday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not confirm the newspaper’s report. Spicer did, however, say Thursday that the White House has invited the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to review documents it says are related to ”whether information collected on U. S. persons was mishandled or leaked.” Spicer wouldn’t say exactly what the information was but said it was found by national security staff ”in the ordinary course of business.” He also said the information was relevant to a letter earlier this month from Nunes asking the intelligence community for any such information. The FBI is also conducting an investigation. Warner said the Senate panel will look into reports that ”there were upwards of 1, 000 paid Internet trolls” in Russia that might have sent fake news stories targeted in swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania."
"Back in 2015, Brazil reported a horrific a surge in birth defects. Thousands of babies were born with brain damage and abnormally small heads, a condition called microcephaly. Scientists quickly concluded the Zika virus was the culprit. So when Zika returned last year during Brazil’s summer months of December, January and February  —   when mosquitoes are most active  —   health officials expected another surge in microcephaly cases. But that never happened. ”We apparently saw a lot of cases Zika virus in 2016. But there was no microcephaly,” says Christopher Dye of the World Health Organization. The difference between 2015 and 2016 ”is spectacular,” he says. Health officials were predicting more than 1, 000 cases of microcephaly in the northeast of Brazil last year. But there were fewer than 100, Dye and his colleagues report Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. ”This is a huge, huge discrepancy,” Dye says. ”So what could possibly be the explanation for that?” Scientists aren’t sure, Dye says. But he and his colleagues suggest a few possibilities in their study. First off, Dye says, health officials could have vastly overestimated the number of Zika cases in Brazil. Zika can be misdiagnosed as another   virus, called chikungunya. Both viruses cause a fever, a rash and joint pain. ”So chikungunya can easily be mistaken for Zika,” Dye says. But chikungunya doesn’t cause microcephaly. So perhaps Brazil actually didn’t have that many Zika cases in 2016. And in turn, there weren’t a lot of babies born with microcephaly. Now for this theory to hold true, we’re talking about thousands of Zika cases being mistaken for a totally different virus that’s not even closely related to Zika. Could this really happen? ”Yes, I do think it’s a possibility,” Dye says. ”This is this is our best view of what happened in 2016.” But Albert Ko at Yale School of Public Health doesn’t quite buy it. ”Misdiagnosis is a reasonable hypothesis. But it’s not clear that this explanation accounts for the whole story,” says Ko, an epidemiologist, who is studying mothers and babies born with Zika in the northeast part of Brazil.  Ko think’s there’s another possible explanation: Zika might not be working alone. When a pregnant woman contracts Zika, that might not be enough to cause microcephaly in all cases. Since the surge in Brazil’s microcephaly cases in 2015, many scientists began to wonder whether a second virus could be involved. Maybe another infection combines with Zika to make the disease worse and increase the risk of birth defects. Dye agrees that this phenomenon could be contributing to the overestimation of microcephaly cases. In particular, scientists have their eyes on another   virus, which is common in Brazil, called dengue. In 2015, the country recorded more than 1. 5 million cases of dengue, including many in the northeast, where many of the birth defects occurred. ”Everything is probably speculation at this point,” Ko says. ”But many groups are concerned about the exposure to dengue in Brazil.” Here’s why. Dengue is a complex virus. There are actually five different versions. Prior exposure to one version of dengue can actually make your illness worse when you’re exposed to a second version. And what’s closely related to dengue? Zika. ”So another hypothesis is that prior exposure to dengue may actually enhance or promote the risk of birth defects from Zika,” Ko says. Right now, there is no evidence that a dengue infection exacerbates the symptoms of Zika  —   or increases its risk to pregnant women. But several studies suggest it could happen. For starters, the presence of dengue antibodies helps the Zika virus infect cells in a petri dish. And now, scientists are reporting that dengue antibodies make a Zika infection more deadly in mice. Typically mice don’t get Zika. But a team at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York engineered the animals to be susceptible to a Zika infection by crippling their immune systems. The engineered mice get a fever and show signs of neurological problems when they’re infected with Zika. Fewer than 10 percent of them die from the infection. But when the mice received dengue antibodies before the Zika infection, the outcome was quite different. More than 80 percent of the mice died after eight days, immunologist Jean Lim and her colleagues report Thursday in the journal Science. So now the big question is: Does a similar phenomenon occur in people? Ko is working on epidemiological studies in northeast Brazil, right now, to see whether that is the case. If the dengue theory turns out to be true, it could mean the global threat of Zika for pregnant women is less dire than scientists originally thought."
"Updated at 12:30 p. m. ET Friday, If there’s ever been a moment to be cliche and say the cat’s out of the bag, now is it. Crayola, the supplier of colorful art materials, was set to announce the retirement of one of its classic colors in the popular   pack of crayons. The company planned to do the big reveal during a live broadcast on Facebook Friday morning in New York’s Times Square. Instead, on Thursday, the colorful company announced that Dandelion  —   that bright yellow hue  —   is the crayon retiring to the Crayola Hall of Fame, calling the color ”an adventurous spirit” with ”a case of wanderlust.” But Dandelion is pretty young for retirement: It was introduced in 1990, after the Crayola Hall of Fame inducted its first eight members. Not to put too fine a point on it, but can you live a fulfilling life and retire before the age of 30? And, if it has a case of wanderlust, how will those adventures happen if it is sitting on a shelf not spreading its colorful demeanor to art projects everywhere? Right now, it’s unclear why Dandelion’s announcement came a day early the countdown clock to the big Friday announcement was still on Crayola’s website at 3:30 p. m. ET on Thursday. Twitter may hold the answer: A user posted a photo of Crayola’s   box of crayons in what he says is a Target store  —   and the box clearly says ”Dandelion is retiring!” This tweet was posted two hours before Crayola made its announcement on the company’s social media channels. Jackie Miller, a spokesperson for Crayola, said that the retailer didn’t spoil the surprise with the early announcement, but rather that ”Dandelion was so excited to announce his retirement he snuck a few packages out of the factory and onto the shelves of a handful of his favorite retailers last night. One lucky fan came across the box and couldn’t wait to share the news with the world, and neither could we!” So, maybe it was a mistake, or just an oddly timed marketing ploy, but don’t feel (Cerulean?) blue  —   Crayola still had a colorful announcement on Friday. Remember, a   pack can’t have just 23 crayons. Crayola’s senior vice president of U. S. and global marketing, Melanie Boulden said the company is ”hard at work getting ready to introduce a new color.” Boulden said more details will come in May, but that the color will be part of the blue hue family and, as the box at Target also said, there will be a contest to name the incoming crayon that will take place over the summer. Boulden also told fans of Dandelion not to worry about his retirement because it won’t be immediate. In true celebrity fashion, he’ll have a retirement tour across North America to ”do the things he’s always dreamed about doing.” The tour wouldn’t be complete without Instagram updates to document his travel and he’ll be taking requests on where to go next. If you’re still grieving Dandelion, however, you’re probably in good company, as Crayola has retired colors before. Eight of them  —   Maize, Lemon Yellow, Blue Gray, Raw Umber, Green Blue, Orange Red, Orange Yellow and Violet Blue  —   were retired in 1990. As those colors left the box, we welcomed Vivid Tangerine, Jungle Green, Cerulean, Fuschia, Dandelion, Teal Blue, Royal Purple and Wild Strawberry. When the company celebrated its centennial in 2003, four more colors  —   Blizzard Blue, Magic Mint, Mulberry and Teal Blue  —   were retired, when color addicts chose to save Burnt Sienna from melting away. Their replacements were Inchworm, Mango Tango, Wild Blue Yonder and Jazzberry Jam. All that’s left to do is hope that the new color isn’t as redundant as Red Orange is to Scarlet, as bland as Indigo or as putrid as Green Yellow. All in all, if Dandelion was your favorite color, accept that it was chosen for the Hall of Fame, be proud through your tears, and remember  —   there’s probably a color similar to it in one of Crayola’s larger packs. Goodbye, Dandelion. Gone, but never forgotten. And, here:"
"The Trump administration is gearing up for a rework of the NAFTA treaty between the U. S. Mexico and Canada. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday the administration hopes to soon start the   countdown clock to opening talks. A letter circulating on Capitol Hill suggests the administration may take a less extreme approach to negotiations than expected. During the election campaign President Trump threatened to pull out of NAFTA, which he called the worst trade deal in U. S. history. But, a draft outline of the U. S. objectives from the Trade Representative’s office suggests a more temperate approach, including goals on investment and labor that have enjoyed bipartisan support. Jeffrey Schott, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says the letter provides the basis for constructive negotiations. But, Schott says, ”It also contains a few seeds that could poison those talks and disrupt and perhaps blow up those negotiations.” Among those ”seeds” is a reference to tax fairness that could foreshadow conflict over the border taxes Trump has threatened to impose on Mexico, or the Border Adjustable tax supported by the House leadership that would levy a 20 percent tax on all imports. Ross described the letter as ”the very broad outlines of the topics we will be discussing.” Ross said it did not represent a change in the administration’s thinking."
"Think about the avocados you mash for your Super Bowl guacamole, or the fresh tomatoes you enjoy in the winter. There’s a good chance they came from Mexico. Our southern neighbor is the United States’ leading supplier of fresh produce, providing 70 percent of the fresh vegetables we import and more than 40 percent of our fresh fruit imports. That trade has boomed since NAFTA  —   the North American Free Trade Agreement  —   was signed in 1994. ”We expect to have access to mangoes and passion fruit and tomatoes in the middle of February in Arctic regions,” explains Jessie Gunn, a spokeswoman for Wholesum Harvest  —   an organic, Fair Trade   produce company with operations in both Arizona and Mexico. The grower sells tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini and more to Costco, Whole Foods, Safeway, and Albertsons and other U. S. grocery stores. President Trump’s repeated campaign threats to pull out of NAFTA and impose a tax on Mexican imports have caused jitters for Wholesum and other businesses on both sides of the U. S.  border. We head south to check out one of Wholesum’s Mexican operations. As we drive across the Nogales border, we pass dozens of   lined up to cross into the U. S. ”These are all produce trucks, every single one of ’em,” says Gunn. She reads off the names of the trucking companies as we drive by: ”Agrofresa. CFI  —   very common transporter. Sí Señor. Agrofresa again . ..” Nogales, Ariz. is the No. 1 port of entry for Mexican produce coming into the U. S.: A whopping 6. 3 billion pounds of fresh produce crossed the border there during the   season. That’s more than 19 pounds per American consumer. Going back the other way? Lots of U. S. corn and soybeans. If Trump were to impose a tariff on Mexican goods, Gunn says, she has no doubt that would ignite a   trade war. Tax for tax. ”It is the law of the universe,” she says. ”Equal and opposite force. No country with any common sense would allow a tariff to be put on their exports without meeting that with an equitable tariff of their own.” About 30 miles south of the border, we reach the tiny town of Los Janos and pull into Wholesum Harvest’s organic farm, with greenhouses stretching as far as the eye can see. Our car tires are hosed down with disinfectant to keep us from spreading disease and pests, and  —   after we disinfect ourselves and slip into protective gear  —   we enter one of the greenhouses to see what’s growing. Wow. It’s a steamy, verdant tomato jungle: about two football fields’ worth of tomato plants, shooting some 10 feet up into the air. The plants grow out of   pots, like the ones you might buy at a garden center, but from those small bases the tomato vines turn gargantuan, each about 80 feet long, twisting in a labyrinth. Francisco Landell, the general manager of this farm, has thought a lot about what it would mean if NAFTA were to disappear. ”I think we will lose a lot of jobs,” he says, ”and I think it will be disastrous.” He wonders, is it all just tough talk from Donald Trump? Or is the president really serious about pulling out of NAFTA and imposing a border tax on Mexican goods? ”We are concerned,” Landell says. ”Right now we’re not making any investment plans or any expansion plans, because you don’t know what will happen next year. Everything is on hold.” By U. S. standards, the workers at Wholesum Harvest don’t make much  —   about $10 a day. But they also get free housing, along with free medical, dental and child care. Because this is a   company, premiums also go back to the community. With those funds, it has built a soccer field and a tortilleria, improved local public schools and is building a community center. Landell says his workers tell him that with those benefits, they’re not as tempted to illegally cross the border: ”If they can make a decent living and put food on the table of their child [by] working in Mexico, they will stay in Mexico.” Without the guarantee of free trade, it’s hard to know how stable these jobs would be. Still, Landell is dreaming of a bright future. His hope is that this farm’s success will propel the next generation to better things: ”My dream is to go into a bank, ask for a loan for the company, and they say, ’Francisco, you really don’t recognize me? I used to live there by the farm! My dad used to pick tomatoes!’ ” If that tomato picker’s kid ends up being the banker lending him money, Landell will be a happy man. We leave the farm, and head north, back toward Arizona, alongside a fleet of produce trucks. Wholesum Harvest’s headquarters is back on the U. S. side of Nogales. Next to the corporate offices is a warehouse stacked to the rafters with cartons of cucumbers, squash, peppers and  —   more than anything else  —   tomatoes: cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, beefsteaks and TOVs (tomatoes on the vine, for the uninitiated). There’s a small packing house  —   known as ”repack”  —   where workers have a second opportunity to sort through the produce, inspecting for quality, checking the labeling and weighing the cartons. By the time we reach the warehouse it’s dark out, but the Wholesum team is still hard at work  —   packing trucks for delivery. The process is nearly complete as we watch   pull off into the night, ferrying tons of fresh Mexican produce to a supermarket near you. This story was produced by Anjuli Sastry. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"If you were to try and list the biggest   for the American food system in the last two decades, you might note the Food Network, or the writing of Michael Pollan, or maybe even the evolution of Walmart. But you’d probably overlook NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. And that would be a mistake, according to a lengthy report out early February from the U. S. Department of Agriculture. In one fell swoop, the report finds, President Bill Clinton’s 1994 landmark legislation unleashed a dizzying array of market forces on agriculture, with vast   impacts. And with greater access to the neighboring markets, farmers and other food producers in the U. S. Mexico and Canada have helped reshape diets in some pretty significant ways. If you take the report at face value, NAFTA has greatly increased the ”economic integration” between the U. S. Mexico and Canada. Instead of giving preferential treatment to domestic products by imposing tariffs on imports, the three NAFTA countries let goods flow relatively freely between them. And that includes food  —   a lot of it. Today, Americans consume twice as much fruit, and three times as many vegetables, from both Mexico and Canada as we did two decades ago, according to the report. A parade of greenhouse tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers now come down, often by truck, from Canada. From Mexico, we’ve seen huge increases in imports of seasonal fruit. Mexican berries are an obvious example, but 20 percent of the imported watermelon we consumed in   also came from Mexico, compared with 5 percent in  . As for imported avocados, 49 percent now come from Mexico, up from 0 in  . Lots more tomatoes and papaya are coming from south of the border, too. This produce trade boom, says the report, is only partly a product of tariff changes. It’s also a result of the improved food safety standards now in place in Mexican fields, which allow more produce to get past U. S. inspectors. But while NAFTA has largely meant that we’re getting more of our favorite fresh foods from our   neighbors, the USDA suggests that NAFTA is profoundly transforming the food system in Mexico, sometimes in less healthful ways. While Mexico is now the largest market for American apples and pears, U. S. meat exports to Mexico have doubled in the last two decades. Our exports of feed corn for livestock also now account for nearly   of the country’s supply  —   meaning that even when Mexicans eat domestic meat, it’s often been fed on American corn. But the biggest change is how much more processed food and   supermarkets our neighbors have been importing. Indeed, American investment in Mexican food manufacturing  —   rather than agriculture, for example  —   has tripled since 1999, as have sales of American processed food products there. American companies are also sending Mexico the ingredients to make foods like   corn syrup HFCS exports to Mexico are now 863 times what they were before NAFTA. And all of that ends upon the shelves of supermarkets, whose business model relies heavily on processed food. Walmart, which opened its first Mexican store in 1991, four years after it began selling groceries, now operates 2, 114 stores that offer food in Mexico. You’ve likely heard that America’s in the middle of a craft beer revolution. Well, we’re also, apparently, swooning for cerveza de Mexico. In 2013, we imported about 2 million tons of Coronas and Modelos, making beer Mexico’s largest agricultural export to the U. S. While we may be glad that Corona is now plentiful across the U. S. (and that we’re washing down more guacamole made with Mexican limes and avocados with it) there is a dark side to how NAFTA has reshaped the region’s food systems: working conditions. And you won’t find much exploration of that in the USDA report. While the USDA report discusses immigration and guest worker programs, it does not address the disconnect between improved attention to produce without a corresponding attention to workers’ welfare. As a recent Los Angeles Times investigation of Mexican farms growing tomatoes bound for the U. S. market found, ”The contrast between the treatment of produce and of people is stark.” Mexico has also likely paid a price for opening its gates to so much processed food laden with   syrup and other   healthful ingredients. As the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a   think tank, has shown, Mexico’s recent spike in obesity and soda consumption correlates with the passage of NAFTA. Tracie McMillan is the author of The American Way of Eating, a New York Times bestseller, and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. You can follow her on Twitter @tmmcmillan."
"Jerry Miller spent more than 25 years behind bars for kidnapping, rape and robbery  —   crimes he didn’t commit. Miller was released from prison in 2006. In 2007, after decades of insisting he was innocent, Miller was finally vindicated: He became the 200th American to be cleared by DNA evidence of a wrongful conviction. Today, that number is closer to 350. Miller’s story is now part of a new book called Anatomy of Innocence. It fleshes out personal accounts of wrongful convictions, with a twist: In each chapter, a mystery or thriller writer tells the story of a   exoneree. Miller was paired with John Mankiewicz, an executive producer of the Netflix show House of Cards. Their chapter goes beyond the years Miller spent behind bars, and describes life after prison but before exoneration, when Miller had to wear an ankle bracelet, keep a 9 p. m. curfew and register as a sex offender. He couldn’t attend nieces and nephews’ birthday parties because he wasn’t allowed to be around children. Miller shares his memories of the day he was exonerated, and Mankiewicz discusses the challenges of telling Miller’s story. On how Miller managed to stay hopeful after his conviction  Miller: I had a life to live, so I had to choose how I wanted to live it, you know. What comes from a man who is negative and basically is mad at the world because he was wronged? You can’t, I can’t function  —   I couldn’t function like that. And I couldn’t draw people to my aid like that. You just have to accept what has happened and grow from it. You know, to just walk around angry, you know, in some cases an angry old man  —   I mean, that’s a waste of the rest of your life. I’m more practical than that. I made a logical decision to do positive things and to think positive. On the day Miller was exonerated, Miller: Even now I kind of get a little shook. . .. I was getting ready to get my life back. I knew it was going to happen. It was strange and, you know, my family, we basically had a caravan. We rode out to the [Cook County, Ill. ,] court building down at 26th and California. And everybody was dressed sharp and, you know, was happy for me. And I just was real proud that I didn’t give up. . .. When they called me up before the judge, I passed through people who was waiting to have their cases heard or whatever, and they saw the news media and they was like, ”Who is that? Who is that? What’s going on?” . .. I’m hearing them, but I’m focused. I have to go up here and maintain my cool in front of this judge. And so when it all happened and they saw what was taking place, everybody  —   it was a lot of people, you know, waiting  —   and everybody started clapping. On how writing Miller’s story was different from writing House of Cards, Mankiewicz: I felt a big responsibility to tell the story right. . .. I had a very small audience of one [Miller] that I cared about . .. thinking that I’d gotten it right. . .. So many other people had been telling lies about him over a period of 26 years, you know, what happened to him. And I wanted to get it right for him. And, by the way, you’re writing House of Cards the worst thing that can happen is it’s a bad show. It’s TV. I felt the stakes were a little higher here. . .. If you think about every exoneree, every single one who’s actually innocent, no one has believed them and no one has been interested in hearing what the real story was until they’re exonerated. You know, they’re just another man or woman in jail saying, ”I’m innocent. I didn’t do it. How am I going to prove it?” . .. While we were doing this, writing the story, which I over reported by a factor of 10 because I was so nervous . .. I wanted to get it right. On what Miller hopes the book will accomplish, Miller: I’ve heard stories even worse than mine, but the interesting stories in there are about reality. You know, it’s not a fantasy, it’s nothing   these are real people who suffered real pain, who [have] to find their way back to being a productive citizen. And they need support. For people not to hear this story, I mean, they would be missing out on the triumphs of human beings and how they’re able to struggle hard enough to regain their life back and, you know, clear their family’s name. They’re important stories that need to be told. . .. People don’t know . .. what it takes to accomplish what exonerees do. They’re like the phoenix: They’re redone, resurrected. Editor Jessica Deahl, producer Sam Gringlas and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this report."
"The Swedish word uppgivenhetssyndrom sounds like what it is: a syndrome in which kids have given up on life. That’s what several hundred children and adolescents have done  —   literally checked out of the world for months or years. They go to bed and don’t get up. They’re unable to move, eat, drink, speak or respond. All of the victims of the disorder, sometimes called resignation syndrome, have been youngsters seeking asylum after a traumatic migration, mostly from former Soviet and Yugoslav states. And all of them live in Sweden. Rachel Aviv, a staff writer at The New Yorker, described these children in the April 3, 2017, article ”The Trauma of Facing Deportation.” The children go into these comalike states when their families are notified that they will be deported. The only known cure is for their families to receive residency permits allowing them to stay in Sweden. It’s not a sudden, magical reawakening when family members read the approved residency permit in the nonresponsive child’s presence. Somehow, the information gets through. While there are no     studies, Aviv says, over a period of days, weeks, sometimes a few months, the child begins to eat, move, react and come back to the world. Goats  Soda talked with Aviv about the story. The story is shocking. It reads like one of those ancient fairy tales where terrible things happen to innocent children. Were you initially skeptical that this was a real disorder? I first read about it in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. Because I was reading about it in an academic article, I didn’t think to doubt it. But when I met the two girls I wrote about, it felt very strange. There was a sense of unreality. There was a disconnect between how young and healthy, even beautiful, they looked. They looked like they were sleeping. It was a sickening feeling to know that they were in that position for years. People make comparisons to bears hibernating. But humans don’t hibernate. It felt surreal. The two sisters you wrote about were Roma, from Kosovo. The older sister lost her ability to walk within 24 hours of the family’s application for residency being turned down. Her younger sister is also ”bedridden and unresponsive.” They were lying in bed. Their doctors were manipulating their bodies, and the girls did not show any signs that they were aware that there were people around them. When I met them, one of the girls had been in that state for two years, the other one only for a few months. When the doctor shined a flashlight on the girls’ eyes, the one who had been sick the longest, she just sort of stared directly at the doctor as if she didn’t even notice that someone was opening her eyelid. I met a boy that I didn’t write about. He lived in a hotel. He and his mother had received a residency permit already. He had been apathetic for about two years [while the family waited and worried that they would be deported]. Even though his family had received the residency permit about three months before, the only progress he had made was to open his eyes. He was sitting up, but he could not hold his head up on his own. We’d be talking  —   his family, his doctors  —   and suddenly I’d remember that he was in the room. It was almost as if there was a mannequin in the room that I kept forgetting about. He didn’t seem to be there mentally. That was concerning. He should have been recovering by then. His doctors were hopeful that he’d get better, but there have been almost no   studies about what happens to these children. You did write extensively about Georgi from the Russian province of North Ossetia, who went to bed and stayed there when his family’s permit was denied in 2015. ”In late May, 2016, Georgi’s family received another letter from the Migration Board. Their neighbor Ellina Zapolskaia translated it. ’The Migration Board finds no reason to question what is stated about Georgi’s health,’ she read out loud. ’He is therefore considered to be in need of a safe and stable environment and living conditions in order to recuperate.’ ” What was his recovery like? I would never have known that he was sick. He looked and acted completely normal. But even with complete recovery, some of these children have missed two years of their lives, and that’s a big deal. Is it possible that the children who went into these comalike states knew of the syndrome? And if so, might they have been unintentionally showing symptoms as a way of saving their families from deportation?  I think everyone acknowledges that there’s a degree of psychological contagion. Georgi had a family friend with the condition the two sisters had a cousin and the boy in the hotel saw at least three other children in the hotel with the syndrome. It’s a little like the way anorexia emerged in the U. S. at a moment in time when people were preoccupied with body image and the media were emphasizing thinness. The illness borrows from the culture, and suddenly you have all these people who are starving themselves and doctors began diagnosing anorexia. It’s hard to pinpoint what the mechanism would be for children to develop resignation syndrome. It seems to have become a culturally permissible way of expressing one’s despair. There was a government report that came out in 2006. The report posed a theory that the children, many of them Roma, came from holistic cultures, without a clear boundary between the individual self and the family. The children were sacrificing themselves for their families. They take on a martyr role. And, in fact, the illness does allow the family to stay. [Sweden’s Migration Board has decided that families of uppgivenhetssyndrom children will be granted residency permits.] Immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers all over the world suffer. Has this happened anywhere else? I’ve not heard of children with these symptoms anywhere else. I have no doubt that children from Syria, for example, are experiencing fears and traumatic reactions, but there is no evidence that they are slipping into this syndrome. There was a slang term, muselmann, referring to captives in concentration camps in World War II. They were people who decided to stop trying, to just sort of give up. Once you realize that nothing you do will change your situation, you give up and become passive. But that wasn’t quite the same thing. Why is this happening to children in Sweden? Yes, why Sweden? Refugees there are among the best treated in the world. There’s a national conversation about refugees people are consumed about how best to treat people seeking asylum. People feel a lot of guilt about whether the country is living up to its humanitarian ideals and doing enough. So doctors are primed to think about how social conditions can affect health. And I think culture shapes the way we express our despair. Once a particular set of symptoms becomes sanctioned as a way of showing suffering, it becomes more common. One thing I admired in Sweden was the way these children galvanized the national conversation. The government was concerned, the media were concerned and politicians were concerned. At so many levels, there was so much conversation about symptoms of children seeking asylum. Susan Brink is a freelance writer who covers health and medicine. She is the author of The Fourth Trimester, and   of A Change of Heart."
"Updated at 4:14 p. m. ET, Just three weeks after South Korean President Park   was formally ousted from power, she has been arrested for her role in the scandal that led to her impeachment. A district court in Seoul issued the warrant early Friday local time, hours after the disgraced politician appeared before the court for questioning. Park’s marathon   hearing Thursday lasted nearly nine hours  —   the longest in South Korean history for such a hearing. Park faces 13 charges in total, including bribery, abuse of power and the leaking of state secrets. She can be held in jail for up to 20 days as the investigation unfolds. ”There is a concern over destruction of evidence, so the grounds and necessity for [her] arrest are acknowledged,” warrant judge Kang   explained in a statement. Park had been immune from criminal prosecution while in office, and she had repeatedly refused to be questioned by special prosecutors. But after South Korea’s top court affirmed her impeachment by lawmakers earlier this month, Park was removed from the post and the prosecutors seized their opportunity. The case stems from the same sprawling scandal that ensnared the acting head of the country’s biggest conglomerate and the world’s leading smartphone seller, Samsung. Park is accused of helping extort some $38 million from Samsung and a total of $70 million from South Korean companies for the private slush fund of her friend and confidant Choi  . She has been taken to the same detention center where Samsung’s de facto head, Jay Y. Lee, is also being held in connection to the same corruption scandal. Worth some $6 billion, Lee is accused of approving the millions in bribes to Choi. Park is also accused to leaking state secrets to Choi, whose tablet PC revealed copies of dozens of presidential speeches, with Choi’s revisions on them. It broke open the scandal in the fall, which led quickly to Park’s fall. With her arrest, Park becomes the third former president in South Korean history to face the possibility of prison time. Two other former leaders, Chun   and Roh   were charged after they left office with improperly collecting millions from businesses while they were in office. They were both pardoned after short jail stints and now live near one another in a tony Seoul neighborhood."
"Cézanne et Moi opens with one of the most difficult things to depict on screen: the inner toil of an artist at work. Yet the first character to appear is not painter Paul Cezanne but the movie’s ”moi”: novelist Emile Zola, a friend of Cézanne for most of his life. Aside from being historically authentic, the relationship is neatly suited to a twin biopic. Zola was a poor outsider in    when he met   classmate Cézanne, who came from a wealthy family. Cézanne protected Zola, but later the roles reversed. The writer became successful and prosperous, while the painter rarely sold a canvas. After Cézanne’s father cut his allowance, Zola subsidized his friend.   Danièle Thompson, who’s known for such lithe comedies as Avenue Montaigne, gives this   saga a contemporary look. Working with cinematographer   Dreujou, Thompson contrasts the widescreen format with a restless handheld camera and many closeups, so the movie feels both sweeping and intimate. Dreujou captures natural light a painter might well envy, while Guillaume Canet (best known as the director of Tell No One) and Guillaume Gallienne persuasively embody Zola and Cézanne, respectively, across several decades. Thompson’s dialogue, especially as rendered in the English subtitles, is less subtle. Its    bluntness and vulgarity may be designed to engage viewers who’ve barely heard of the central characters. But the movie is still most likely to appeal to those who know not only them, but also such supporting players as Manet, Pissaro, Renoir, and Maupassant. The story opens in 1888, when the two men were   and antagonistic, then flashes back and forward in a mostly chronological progression. The break comes when Cézanne accuses Zola of pillaging the painter’s life for his 1886 novel, usually rendered in English as The Masterpiece. According to Thompson’s lightly fictionalized account, Cézanne was indeed Zola’s source of inspiration, but only in part. There was another (and not too surprising) component to the novelist’s characterization of an artist who failed to fulfill his potential. Thompson focuses so tightly on Cézanne and Zola’s contentious friendship that she barely mentions the most dramatic episode in the latter’s life: his defense of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jewish officer wrongly convicted of treason. This heroic episode was the crux of a 1937 Hollywood drama, The Life of Emile Zola, but here it’s dismissed quickly in an epilogue. The director is more interested in the men and women around them, many of them artist’s models seen in various states of undress. The lusty Cézanne paints and beds Alexandrine (Alice Pol) then moves on the more cautious Zola marries her, although that’s not the final chapter in his romantic life. Also significant to the story are Cézanne and Zola’s mothers (Sabine Azéma, who’s unusually subdued, and Isabelle Candelier). The film’s title suggests that Zola is its narrator, but Thompson avoids that hackneyed device. Instead, she highlights the writer’s words in a series of cunningly staged scenes in which one man overhears the other. Cézanne gets top billing not because he’s Zola’s subject, but because  —   in this telling  —   the novelist who was hailed in his lifetime has proved to be less influential than the painter who was reviled during his. Such a conclusion may be a cliche of   biopics, but in the case of Cézanne and Zola, it’s also a valid judgment."
"You’d think the absolute worst thing that a WWII movie could do is compare its huddled masses of Jews to animals. But The Zookeeper’s Wife turns out to have a pretty good justification for equating the two. It tells the story of the Zabinski family, who ran the Warsaw Zoo during the war and who secretly helped relocate hundreds of Jews fleeing   Poland. The Zabinskis used their abandoned cages in storage  —   which had held animals, until the Nazis either relocated the beasts to German zoos or shot them  —   as waystations for the refugees, who’d just escaped a much harsher caged existence in the Warsaw Ghetto. Now they had to huddle amidst the hay and feeding products, and train themselves not to fidget or make a sound until they heard Antonina Zabinski play a certain melody on the piano. We are seeing this story play out from the perspective of the Zabinskis, who are naturally compassionate people but prior to the war had only needed to exercise that compassion on their zoo collection. So it makes perfect sense not to encounter the Jews they saved all that closely as true characters, even though the omission feels crude from a distance. Director Niki Caro and screenwriter Angela Workman have created, perhaps unintentionally, a sensible balance sheet for all living things. Zookeepers protect animals because they are alive and unique and deserving of our love why not do the same for people, just because? When it comes to spotlighting its heroes, though, there’s another balance sheet the film can’t square. As we see, patriarch Jan Zabinski (Flemish actor Johan Heldenbergh, from The Broken Circle Breakdown) is the family member who first decides to house Jews on their grounds. Once Jan convinces the Germans to let him turn the empty zoo into a pig farm, he’s also the one who must venture in and out of the ghetto to smuggle people out in a truck filled with pig feed  —   Jews saved by treyf. But author Diane Ackerman, who wrote the nonfiction book the film is based on, drew from Jan’s wife Antonina’s diaries for research this explains why Antonina’s title is front and center, and why the film insists Jessica Chastain’s   portrayal of her is the only lead role. (Chastain is also an executive producer.) To be sure, Antonina worked in tandem with Jan and was as essential to the   operation as she was to the animal upkeep  —   the title is meant to be ironic. And Chastain (who, like Heldenbergh, can fake a good Polish accent to distract us from the fact she’s still speaking English) makes her into a magnetic, principled force who can hold her own even when sharing the screen with a live rabbit. But the movie never shows Antonina writing in her diary, so we miss the context of why it’s her story. We also miss a lot of the fascinating details of her character that informed the book: for example, that she gave animal code names to her refugees, further drawing home the unsettling parallel that makes the story so distinctive. Instead, to fill time and add artificial layers of steely determination, we see Antonina try to outmaneuver some horndoggery from villain Lutz Heck, head of the Berlin Zoo and Hitler’s chief zoologist (played by poor Daniel Brühl, Hollywood’s   Nazi   Nazi descendant). Heck was, in real life, a man of untenable contradictions. Though a professed lover of animals, he didn’t hesitate to kill the   denizens of the Warsaw Zoo he also launched a Jurassic   breeding program attempting to resurrect extinct species of cattle and horse, including the mythical auroch. But the film’s characterization of him is lazy, making him a kind face for the first act before flipping him to abject, predatory evil. Jan pouts jealously in the background whenever Heck pays Antonina any attention, as though she chose to entertain the affections of her zoo’s Nazi occupier. The early scenes in 1939, as the war breaches Poland, are the most compelling. When the zoo becomes the target of a sustained bombing campaign, Caro cuts between several heartbreaking shots of the animals in their cages, panicking at this strange threat but unable to flee it: cheetahs pawing uselessly, monkeys screeching to no one. Having already been put on display for man’s enjoyment, they must now die at the hands of man’s wars. Caro overdoes this symbolic power a few scenes later, when Heck shoots a bald eagle (of all things). But this feels, for a little while, like the rare WWII movie with the power to speak to injustice in many different forms. If only a lumpy second act didn’t come along to mute that power with      and some truly idiotic behavior on the part of Antonina’s bratty son Ryszard (Val Maloku). We are invited to compare The Zookeeper’s Wife to its most obvious reference point, Schindler’s List, which also revolved around one citizen’s clandestine operations to save hundreds of Jews. Though Oskar Schindler’s evolution from proud servant of the Nazi Party to secret humanitarian was a far more cinematic journey, the Zabinskis were local figures of merit who took a principled stand for goodness, making them more appropriate to our current era. The Zookeeper’s Wife is more of a utilitarian exercise than Spielberg’s   monument, as Caro fails to find the same spark of compassionate moviemaking that ignited her masterpiece Whale Rider, or even her perfectly enjoyable take on sports movies, McFarland, USA. But it certainly has more going for it than, say, 2015’s Woman in Gold, which cynically   its audience in an effort to convince them a battle over art restitution could count as a variant on ”Never Forget.” Perhaps this film’s promotional partnership with the International Rescue Commission, which aims to help today’s refugee populations from all over the world, has given it a grander sense of purpose. Too bad no one could let it out of the cage where we keep the   Holocaust melodramas. The Zookeeper’s Wife will be condemned to pace back and forth on display for an easily pigeonholed audience, never truly knowing freedom."
"While the political world continues to focus on the machinations of congressional investigations about Russia (which won’t have conclusions drawn for months, if not longer) and where health care goes from here, there’s another, arguably more important story going on  —     military engagement. Here’s the New York Times Thursday: ”The United States launched more airstrikes in Yemen this month than during all of last year. In Syria, it has airlifted local forces to   positions and has been accused of killing civilians in airstrikes. In Iraq, American troops and aircraft are central in supporting an urban offensive in Mosul, where airstrikes killed scores of people on March 17. ”Two months after the inauguration of President Trump, indications are mounting that the United States military is deepening its involvement in a string of complex wars in the Middle East that lack clear endgames.” Trump vowed to ”bomb the s*** out of them,” said he knew more about fighting ISIS than the generals (”believe me”) and that the generals had been reduced to ”rubble” under President Obama. Now, it appears Trump is giving the generals more room to run. While some of the tactics are similar to what Obama was doing, there is clearly a   effort. NPR’s Tom Bowman reports that the Trump administration has been more aggressive with increased bombing  —   some 7, 000 allied strikes in the past two months, more than any   period since the campaign against ISIS began in 2014. There are more troops fighting now and possibly more to come. Trump promised as many as 30, 000 more during the presidential race. The   use of American military muscle in multiple conflicts in the Middle East is a risky move by Trump because it is being undertaken without apparent accompanying diplomatic and political strategies for when the conflicts come to an end. The   complaint inside the national security world was that President Obama and national security adviser Susan Rice micromanaged everything from the White House, including matters that should have been left to the Pentagon or commanders in the field. Now, as Trump swings this pendulum the other way, the Pentagon says that doesn’t mean it is not being careful. ”We have not relaxed the rules of engagement,” Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U. S. Central Command, said in a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday. He added, ”We acknowledge our responsibility to act at a higher standard.” U. S. forces have been criticized for an airstrike carried out in Mosul, as allied forces try to take back the city from ISIS. Iraqi officials say the strike killed more than 100 civilians. There is evidence ISIS is using civilians as shields and provoked the airstrike by herding civilians into the building and putting a sniper on the roof. The U. S. is investigating the incident. The Times reports, per Votel, that ”the new procedures made it easier for commanders in the field to call in airstrikes without waiting for permission from more senior officers.” All of that points to a more   approach from Trump. That didn’t work out so well in Trump’s first authorized mission  —   in Yemen, where an American Navy SEAL was killed. The focus isn’t just on ISIS and  . Gen. John W. Nicholson, the commander in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U. S. has ”a shortfall of a few thousand” in the country. And what happens with Iran? Former national security adviser Michael Flynn said Iran was ”on notice,” but he’s gone. John Bolton, the former U. N. ambassador under George W. Bush and noted Iran hawk, was spotted a week ago going into the White House. A week earlier, he said this: ”It’s a time for America not to be a shrinking violet, but to show strength.” Bolton was also under consideration for secretary of state and as Flynn’s replacement. Does his influence grow stronger with Trump? And what happens if there’s an Iranian provocation in the Persian Gulf, like grabbing sailors or swarming U. S. ships? Remember, two months before his election, Trump said this about Iran: ”When they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water, OK? Believe me.” At the same time, Trump has proposed decreasing funding to the State Department. On Thursday, his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, meets with Turkey’s president, an early test of Tillerson’s diplomatic skills. Turkey is critical in the fight against ISIS, but the relationship with Turkey has grown thorny. And Tillerson, who is trying to find his diplomatic sea legs, still hasn’t hired a deputy. Even though Trump’s budget proposals are just those  —   proposals  —   they do indicate Trump’s agenda priorities. If it’s increased defense spending and a military response and decreased diplomacy and political solutions, the U. S.  —   and Trump  —   risk being in similar or worse shape than during the Iraq War. Diplomatic and political solutions, after all, are necessary for rebuilding efforts. As Robert Malley, vice president for policy at the International Crisis Group and a former Obama administration official, told the Times: ”The military will be the first to tell you that a military operation is only as good as the diplomatic and political plan that comes with it.” And while Americans may be more apt to support some level of intervention since the rise of ISIS,   is a different story."
"Updated at 4:50 p. m. ET, North Carolina has repealed portions of the state’s controversial ”bathroom bill,” including the requirement that trans people use the bathroom that matches their birth certificate, member station WUNC reports. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said he has signed the repeal measure, which he said is ”not perfect” but is ”an important step forward.” At a news conference on Thursday he said the compromise repeal, which leaves in place a temporary prohibition on local   measures, was a necessary compromise with a   Legislature. ”It stops short of many things we need to do as a state,” he said, calling for a ”clean repeal” of HB2 and statewide LGBT protections in the future. The compromise deal was announced late on Wednesday by Cooper and Republican state lawmakers. They said they had agreed on a way to repeal portions of HB2  —   just in time for a deadline set by the NCAA. The agreement removes the limits on trans bathroom use but ”would still leave state legislators in charge of policy on public restrooms,” WUNC reports. Like HB2, it also blocks local jurisdictions from passing   measures protecting LGBT people  —   but only until 2020, instead of indefinitely. Cooper also emphasized on Thursday that the compromise measure allows local governments to set LGBT protections for their own employees and contractors, even though they can’t set them for the public. Debate on the measure showed Democrats were divided on the measure, WUNC’s Jeff Tiberii reports. You can see more coverage of the debate at WUNC’s website. LGBT activists quickly denounced the proposal, which would limit the ability of local officials to extend protections to transgender citizens for several years. Cooper acknowledged that he was frustrated, even as he defended the compromise. ”Under HB2 that kind of justice was permanently denied,” Cooper said, whereas under the compromise it’s only delayed. ”I wish it were sooner than 2020, I really do.” The compromise has also angered some conservatives who supported the original measure. One senator who supported the bill spoke during the Senate debate on Thursday, calling it ”at best a punt at worst, a betrayal of principle,” Tiberii reports. Republican leaders Rep. Tim Moore and Sen. Phil Berger of North Carolina’s General Assembly said in a statement late Wednesday: ”Compromise requires give and take from all sides, and we are pleased this proposal fully protects bathroom safety and privacy.” According to Moore and Berger, the bill leaves regulation of ”  facilities to the state” and puts in place a ”temporary moratorium on local ordinances similar to Charlotte’s until December 1, 2020, to allow federal litigation to play out.” Cooper, who eked out a win over former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in November’s election, said he supports the bill. The agreement was reached shortly before a deadline that would have caused North Carolina to lose the option of hosting NCAA basketball championships, Reuters reports. The college athletic association and other civic and business groups had taken steps to sanction or boycott North Carolina because of the law. It’s not yet clear whether the deal will be sufficient for the NCAA. Lawmakers passed HB2 in March 2016 under McCrory. In addition to the bathroom restrictions, the law also limits localities’ ability to pass nondiscrimination protections and minimum wage measures. State lawmakers passed the measure in response to a Charlotte ordinance that would have protected the rights of transgender people to use restrooms corresponding to their gender identity. Chad Griffin, president of the LGBT rights organization Human Rights Campaign, tweeted that the deal was a ”  prohibition on equality” and ”doubles down on discrimination.” Previous deals to repeal HB2 have fallen apart. Earlier this week, The Associated Press estimated that a continuation of HB2 would cost North Carolina $3. 76 billion over the course of 12 years."
"They’re called ”my wife,” and it seems they’ve done it all: typed, transcribed and even researched for their scholar husbands. And, through a hashtag that started last weekend, their work also started a conversation on the uncredited female labor in academia. #ThanksForTyping began making its mark on Saturday morning as Bruce Holsinger sat at a Starbucks, waiting for his son to finish his soccer tournament. The English professor was speaking with some colleagues over Twitter about housewives assisting their scholar husbands. From that, the fiction writer and literary scholar at the University of Virginia thought about acknowledgment pages, where he’d often seen husbands thanking their wives for typing up their manuscripts. And then, he says, something in his mind sparked. He went to Google Books, took screenshots of these  ’s and posted them to Twitter, adding some snark, as he says, in the process. ”I put the kind of slightly sarcastic #ThanksForTyping along with a maybe cynical comment or two about women being anonymous or unrecognized or, you know, unnamed in their husbands’ work,” he says. And from there, Holsinger says, #ThanksForTyping took off, adding a layer of conversation about social and political implications to his tweets. ”A number of the responses that came in talked about the politics of academic labor and writing, the role of women as collaborators, often even unacknowledged   of academic work,” he says. But what really struck him was the breadth of contributions of these unnamed wives. Kathleen Kennedy, an associate professor of English at Penn   says people found it shocking that the women thanked for their labor were much more than typists, which already could be considered a hefty job. They were translators, editors, proofreaders and copy editors, she says. ”We know how many different jobs that is,” she says. ”Those are individual job categories, and it was all being held down by one woman who also was tasked with getting dinner ready. And that’s an extraordinary thing, and I think it’s a good reminder of how far we’ve come and also hopefully how far we have yet to go.” Though many of the examples used in the hashtag were screenshots found on Google Books, Kennedy says there are examples of a lack of acknowledgment given by famous writers. She said even the blind   English poet John Milton is said to have dictated verses from Paradise Lost to his daughters, who then wrote them down. ”He did need a secretary,” Kennedy says. ”So he chose his daughters.” And Leo Tolstoy’s wife, Sofia, reportedly copied at least seven drafts of his magnum opus, War and Peace. The hashtag struck a familiar chord with Anne Bornschein, a lecturer in French at the University of Pennsylvania, who’d seen examples like these before in the course of her research. ”Everybody has seen a book with a preface or acknowledgments that contain something along these lines, you know, ’Thanks to my wife for doing the typing, doing the editing or doing the indexing for doing this kind of work,’ ” she says. ”But to see them all put together like that, it really did create a picture for me of 20th century scholarship. It was very striking for me.” Bornschein says she began to think how much is expected of current scholars. ”I thought about how that tendency back in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and to an extent, to this day, has helped shape expectations about how much work is expected of a scholar,” she says. ”And then how much invisible labor is behind that expectation.” But for a topic that some found infuriating, Bornschein says she was heartened ”to see how it has really got a lot of people to engage on the question of female work in academia and how it’s been trivialized, minimized, erased.” It’s an important acknowledgment for the academic community to make, she says. Kennedy says the conversation sparked on Twitter was not about blaming men, but about reminding people that there is still ”equity work” left to do. ”It’s just worth asking these questions and maybe being a little more active in our  ’s to people that do a wide range of underappreciated work that helps us do our jobs,” she says."
"Some of President Trump’s proposed spending cuts would cripple programs that benefit communities full of his rural supporters, but at least in Strong City, Kan. some say they are ready ”to bleed a little bit.” Strong City is a former railroad town of about 460 people, less than half the size it was in 1890. Trump’s proposed budget aims at killing the program that threw a lifeline to the town’s water system. Shari DeWitt, the city clerk, says a couple of years ago, even its water treatment plant was dying. DeWitt says the plant was built 40 years ago inside the town’s abandoned high school, but the plant kept breaking down. ”Water’s very important and a lot of people don’t realize it until they don’t have it,” she says. Strong City banded together with Cottonwood Falls, the town next door, to build a $6 million water treatment system. It serves only about 500 homes and businesses. The treatment plant is paid for, and it started operation about a year ago. More than $2. 7 million in federal grants made it possible. ”Oh, it would have been inconceivable. We couldn’t have done it. People couldn’t afford for us to do it,” says Larry Sigler, who works at the plant. Many of the proposed budget cuts would hit places where Trump got lots of votes: isolated, rural communities, says Johnathan Hladik, who heads the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska. ”Bewildering might be the best way to describe it,” Hladik says. ”The more remote you are and the more rural you are, the worse you’re going to have it, as a result.” If passed   the budget would kill programs that train workers, back small town startups and help pay for roads, sewers and broadband in some of the nation’s poorest counties. Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture under President Obama, says the Trump administration is packed with urban political operatives and needs an advocate for rural communities ”so that someone is pounding the table, as I had to when I was secretary of agriculture, to make sure that people understood how things would impact and affect rural Americans.” Some governors are pounding the table pretty hard. And Al Cross, who runs the Institute of Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, says lawmakers and powerful farm state senators are also fighting for key programs, like the    Appalachian Regional Commission. ”We’ve already seen Mitch McConnell lay down the law that not only is the Appalachian Regional Commission not going to be eliminated, its budget is not going to be cut,” he says. But for all the anger and anxiety over possible budget cuts in policy circles, in Strong City, quite a few people actually embrace those cuts. ”They’ve got to make cuts somewhere. Somebody’s going to get cut, somebody’s going to bleed a little bit. That’s just a fact of life, but to get things back into balance,” says Jim Fritch, who works at Clark’s Farm and Home Store. Jim Fink runs the store, and he agrees. Both Fritch and Fink voted for Trump. ”If you ask me would I rather see the money go for our water plant, or to possibly try to control our borders and the security of our nation, the security of our nation is more important to me,” Fink says. Rural communities do have their own pressing needs. Wages tend to be lower and health care harder to find. Opioid addiction and suicide are much more common. Federal programs address rural ills but quietly enough that they can be overlooked by people historically leery of anything coming from Washington."
"On the afternoon of April 14, 2016, Yu Huan, 22, and his mother were working at their brake disc company in eastern China’s Shandong Province, when 11 men arrived and blocked the company’s entrance, set up a grill and started drinking alcohol and barbecuing outside. It was the second day in a row that they’d been harassing the family. Awhile later, the men cornered Yu, his mother and an employee in an office. One of the intruders exposed himself in front of Yu’s mother, Su Yinxia, in an attempt to humiliate her in front of her son, an eyewitness told the Southern Weekend newspaper. Then things got worse. ”One guy grabbed me by the neck and tried to drag me to the reception room,” Yu told police, according to a court verdict posted online. ”I resisted and they started to beat me.” The men were debt collectors, coming to demand payment from the family. In 2014 and 2015, Su Yinxia had borrowed nearly $196, 000 from a real estate agent, at a monthly interest rate of 10 percent. She’d paid back most of it but still owed $25, 000. Yu’s aunt, Yu Xiurong, managed to call police, according to the Southern Weekend, but the creditors kicked her to the ground and smashed her phone. The police arrived. ”You can try to collect your debt,” they reportedly told the debt collectors, ”but you can’t beat people.” Then they left. Things escalated. ”I picked up a knife from a table, pointed it at [the debt collectors] and told them not to come at me,” Yu later told police. ”They continued to beat me, and I thrust the knife at the bellies of the men surrounding me.” Later, one of the men whom Yu had stabbed died of blood loss. Yu was charged with inflicting intentional injury. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison on Feb. 17, avoiding the death penalty due his good behavior in cooperating with law enforcement authorities. The court’s verdict found fault with both Yu’s actions and those of the debt collectors, all of whom have been arrested on suspicion to ties with organized crime. The case has triggered a heated debate on social media in China about citizens’ right to   as well as the plight of small entrepreneurs under China’s economic policy amid a prolonged downturn in China’s economy. The debate has been particularly sharp among China’s legal scholars. ”China’s law does not really encourage people to defend themselves, because that would be encouraging them to rise up and resist [authority],” Anhui   lawyer Wang Liang Qi commented online. ”That is not something that the nation’s rulers hope to see.”   is in fact permitted by Chinese law. Several lawyers, however, argued that while Yu was right to defend himself, the threat level did not justify taking a life, even if doing so was not his intention. ”The police might even have turned a blind eye to the commission of a crime, so the person defending himself had no other option but to fight for his life and his freedom,”   lawyer Yu Wenxin wrote on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, in response to people’s questions. But, he added: ”Under Chinese law, the protection of human dignity is a lower priority than the protection of the right to human life.”   lawyer Zhang Qingfang, meanwhile, points out that the debt collectors had been harassing Yu and his mother for two days. He argues that Yu snapped and committed a crime of passion, something for which Chinese law does not have clear provisions. Zhang also links reaction to the case to government censorship. ”It is precisely because of official controls on expression that some cases touch a raw nerve of the entire nation, and the government allows it to become an outlet for people’s opinion,” he told NPR in a phone interview. Commentators and experts have also focused on economic aspects of the case. The court noted that the $196, 000 loan to Su Yinxia was illegal, as the monthly interest rate of 10 percent, totaling 120 percent annually, far exceeded the legal annual limit of 36 percent. The   Global Times newspaper quotes Feng Liguo, an expert with the China Enterprise Confederation, a   business association, saying that Chinese banks loan most of their money to large,   enterprises, and largely ignore small, private ones. China’s economy grew by 6. 7 percent in 2016, its slowest pace in a  . Many   small enterprises have been forced in recent years to turn to private lenders and loan sharks. Zhang Qingfang, the lawyer, notes that local officials are often involved in loan sharking, fueling popular anger. Last August, police arrested Wu Xuezhan, the real estate merchant who made the loan to Yu’s mother, for suspected involvement in organized crime. He is facing trial. But Yu’s sister Jiale and his mother were also arrested in December, on suspicion of illegal fundraising. Authorization is required from China’s central bank to raise funds legally, something Yu’s mother did not have when she tried to raise funds to save her business. Yu Huan’s case follows two others in China that attracted similarly intense public debate last year. One was the posthumous exoneration of Nie Shubin, more than two decades after he was wrongly executed for a murder to which another man later confessed. The other was the case of a young environmentalist, Lei Yang, who died in police custody, spurring an outcry from middle class college graduates who felt threatened by the arbitrary and unaccountable exercise of Chinese police powers. Apparently spurred to action by the public outcry over Yu’s case, the central government sent top prosecutors to Shandong Province to   the case. A higher provincial court has accepted Yu Huan’s appeal, and his family members say they intend to clear his name. ”If my nephew’s sentence is not overturned, I’ll keep on appealing,” Yu Xiurong, Yu Huan’s aunt, told NPR in a phone interview. ”I’ll appeal all the way to President Xi Jinping, if I have to.”"
"In February of last year, Alaskan Gov. Bill Walker signed an administrative order to help jumpstart mariculture, or sea farming, in the state. One Juneau couple is whipping up a recipe to make local kelp an enticing business and snack. They’re part of a growing number of startups that see Alaska seaweed as a marketable food. Kelp has become a big part of Matt Kern and Lia Heifetz’s relationship. ”It’s basically all we talk about it,” Heifetz says with a laugh. ”Every day of the week. Every night of the week. Every weekend.” Kern and Heifetz are dedicating so much of their time to seaweed because they’ve been laying the groundwork for a new business. ”Kelp salsa,” Kern says. ”It’s made predominantly from bull kelp that we harvest from around Juneau.” The Alaska Department of Fish and Game doesn’t have a formalized process for collecting wild kelp for commercial use  —   at least not yet. So, the couple forages under an experimental permit. A lot of work and late nights go into making a batch of salsa. Kern pops the lid off a small mason jar and opens a bag of corn chips. ”Today we have a green salsa verde,” he says. ”And another flavor called campfire that has roasted garlic and onions.” Both jars of salsa contain lots of minced bull kelp. The campfire flavor is tart from the seaweed and mildly spiced. The couple recently received a $40, 000 Path to Prosperity grant, which helps Southeast Alaskan entrepreneurs grow their business. Last year, they made about 2, 000 jars of salsa, mostly cooked up in their home kitchen and sold at the local public market. But they want to eventually expand distribution beyond Juneau. Having access to enough foraged seaweed for that expansion could be difficult, but a   startup might be able to help. Blue Evolution is looking at the prospect of seaweed farming in Alaska. Right now, the company grows the plant in Mexico, dries it and turns it into pasta. ”They were really interested in doing domestic production,” says marine biologist Tamsen Peeples, who is employed by Blue Evolution and works on the science of seaweed farming at the University of Alaska Southeast. She says coastal states like Maine are already kelp farming, but developing it in Alaska has its advantages. ”Alaska has bountiful amounts of coastline, obviously, and clean water,” Peeples says. ”As an Alaskan, I think it’s a great opportunity for individuals who otherwise in the winter are laying low between commercial fishing and tourism.” But one thing Alaska doesn’t have is easy access to kelp seed. The department of fish and game says you can only farm with plants native to the region. An oyster company in Homer, Alaska sells some wild seaweed that grows on its lines. But the farmed variety is only growing at a couple of test sites in the state. That’s where Peeples’ research comes in. She’s been working on propagating seed from local kelp spores. ”In order for this industry to grow, we’re going to have to get a number of other hatcheries to come online,” Peeples says. A new House bill could make it easier for nonprofit hatcheries to receive state loans. Even though those wouldn’t apply to a company like Blue Evolution, Peeples thinks it’s a good thing. So far, she has successfully incubated varieties like sugar and ribbon kelp. And those plants are growing in the waters of Kodiak and Ketchikan. Blue Evolution will buy the seaweed back in the spring. As their kelp salsa business grows, Kern and Heifetz say they’re also interested. ”We plan to be sourcing directly from farms in the future,” Heifetz says. For them, it’s not about building a seaweed snack empire. ”This wasn’t a huge    leap in our lives . .. to go from doing it on our home scale,” Kern says. ”’Because this is what we’d be doing with our time anyway.” That means building their business sustainably, making thousands of jars of kelp salsa and sharing it with friends and customers. This report comes from Alaska’s Energy Desk, a public media collaboration focused on energy and the environment. You can hear the audio here."
"Thirteen members of a church choir were killed when their bus collided   with a pickup truck Wednesday afternoon in Texas. The crash happened about 75 miles west of San Antonio, outside Garner State Park in Uvalde County. On Thursday morning, the Texas Department of Public Safety released the names of the victims, who ranged in age from 61 to 87. One passenger on the bus survived and is in critical condition. The department also released the name of the pickup truck’s driver,    Jack Dillon Young of Leakey, Texas, who was in stable condition at a San Antonio hospital. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board have begun looking into the cause of the crash, which shut down the highway for about 12 hours, according to Texas Public Radio. The Associated Press reports: ”Authorities said the vehicles collided about 12:25 p. m. on U. S. 83 near the town of Concan. At a briefing near the crash site Wednesday night, DPS Sgt. Orlando Moreno said the wreck occurred along a curve in the road where the speed limit is 65 mph. ” ’For reasons unknown the truck veered into the southbound lane and struck the bus ’ Moreno said. The 13 members of First Baptist Church in New Braunfels were returning from a retreat in Leakey. The Washington Post spoke with Marcia Dean, a church member and former employee of the church, who said the choir members on the bus ”had a fabulous time” at the retreat. ”They sang and laughed and praised the Lord.” The San Antonio   reported that congregation members gathered outside the church on Wednesday night many had come for services and didn’t learn of the crash until they arrived. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his wife, Cecilia, offered their condolences. ”We are saddened by the loss of life and our hearts go out to all those affected,” Abbott said in a statement. ”We thank the first responders working on the scene in the wake of this unimaginable tragedy, and ask that all Texans join us in offering their thoughts and prayers.” On its Facebook page, the church posted a statement thanking people for the outpouring of love and support. ”Please continue to pray,” it said."
"The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided that despite the historic flub at this year’s Oscars, PricewaterhouseCoopers will continue to be involved in the balloting and ceremony  —   with a few new safeguards. In case you’ve somehow forgotten, the accounting firm handed presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelope for Best Picture winner. The La La Land cast and crew was already on stage and delivering acceptance speeches when it emerged that Moonlight had actually won. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a letter to academy members that their board of governors has decided to continue the   working relationship with PwC. But new protocols will be put in place intended to prevent another mistake of that magnitude. The error was blamed on a distracted PwC partner said to be tweeting moments before handing over the wrong envelope. Now, electronic devices will be removed from backstage. Additional measures include a PwC employee ”with knowledge of the award winners who will sit in the control room with the show’s director throughout the ceremony,” and the ”implementation of partner rehearsals for possible onstage issues.” The new protocols also expand the oversight roles of two members of PwC’s senior management in the balloting. The board of governors made the decision at its first meeting since the ceremony. Boone Isaacs added that PwC ”has taken full responsibility for the mistake” and that the academy ”has been unsparing in our assessment that the mistake make by representatives of the firm was unacceptable.” At the same time, she said, this year was ”the most extraordinary and memorable Oscars ceremony in decades.” Earlier this month, Boone Isaacs told The Associated Press that the two PwC accountants who were handing out envelopes backstage during this year’s ceremony have been ”permanently removed from all film academy dealings.”"
"A Mexican state’s top law enforcement official has been accused of conspiring to smuggle and sell heroin, cocaine and other drugs, after he was arrested by U. S. agents this week in San Diego. According to an arrest warrant, Nayarit state Attorney General Edgar Veytia used the name ”Diablo” and other aliases. U. S. prosecutors say they’ll seek to compel Veytia to forfeit some $250 million if he’s convicted. U. S. Customs and Border Protection officers arrested Veytia at the Cross Border Xpress airport terminal, a transit point that links San Diego to the Tijuana airport. A warrant for his arrest was issued March 2 on the basis of a sealed indictment. In that   indictment, the U. S. says Veytia used aliases such as ”Diablo,” ”Eepp” and ”Lic veytia” as he worked with a criminal enterprise to manufacture and distribute heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana. The document accuses Veytia of crimes dating from January 2013 to last month. From Mexico City, NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports: ”Veytia has been the top law enforcement official of the Pacific Mexican state of Nayarit since 2013. Allegations of the attorney general’s ties to the rising Jalisco New Generation cartel have long been raised in the Mexican press. ”Nayarit’s governor told the national Milenio newpaper he was surprised at the arrest, given the low crime rate in the state.” The FBI says the arrest stems from a joint investigation that also involved the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations. Here are the minimum amounts of each drug the indictment accuses Veytia of dealing with: We’ll remind you that a kilogram is equivalent to roughly 2. 2 pounds. Veytia is named in at least two federal court documents, including one in New York, where he was indicted on three counts of conspiracy to sell, import or export, and distribute narcotics, and another in California, where he was arraigned this week. The state attorney general’s case is drawing international attention at a time when Mexico’s state executives have been targeted by corruption probes. Two former governors who recently left office are currently considered to be fugitives. Earlier this week, the governor of Chihuahua said an arrest warrant had been issued for his predecessor as part of an embezzlement inquiry. The state is reportedly asking both the U. S. and Interpol for help in apprehending César Duarte, whom they believe fled to El Paso, Texas. And since last October, the former governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, has been on the run, accused of racketeering and  . His   state is also where more than 250 bodies were found in a mass grave that has been linked to drug cartels."
"Driving up the coast toward Bay Center, Wash. it’s obvious when you start to approach Willapa Bay.   high piles of empty shells begin to appear on the side of the road. This is an oyster town. But it’s also home to a sinking piece of history. Scott McDougall, director of the Pacific County Emergency Management Agency, points out what remains of the Hero, an Antarctic research vessel from the 1960s. The ship, which had been docked near Willapa Bay for a decade, sank on March 4  —   McDougall was the first person to file a report. While walking across the street to the Palix River, he points out one of many inlets and waterways that feed into the bay. ”That’s one of the beauties of Willapa Bay,” McDougall explains. ”There’s all sorts of streams and tributaries that feed into it, and there’s a good strong tidal inflow and outflow. This is one of the most pristine bays on the West Coast. And we have a lot of pride in that.” That sense of pride has been jolted by an oil sheen floating on the water’s surface. The Hero’s faded green wooden bow, now covered in rust, peeks out of the water. By high tide, most of it will be underwater. That oil flowing from the wreckage is a huge concern for people that live and work here. Willapa Bay is where more than half of the state’s oysters are grown. ”It has an adverse effect on the bay, it has an adverse effect potentially on their pocketbooks,” McDougall says of the ship. ”It has some fairly significant ramifications.” In its prime, the Hero sailed through frigid temperatures and   waters in the South Pole. According to a 1968 article in the Antarctic Journal, the ship was named after the sloop of    Nathaniel Palmer, a seal hunter who is credited as the first person to sight Antarctica. Throughout the late 1960s and ’70s, the boat carried scientists to and from Palmer Station, a research center on Antarctica’s Anvers Island. After the National Science Foundation retired the floating laboratory in 1984, a group of maritime enthusiasts purchased the Hero and created a foundation with hopes of restoring the vessel. But they failed to raise enough money and the Hero was sold to a private owner, who docked it in a river near Willapa Bay. For 10 years the Hero sat there, with little or no maintenance, before finally sinking earlier this month. ”This is a vessel with an amazing amount of history,” McDougall says. ”Just on a personal note, it makes me really sad to see what was once a beautiful vessel that was dedicated to promoting good ecology and good stewardship of the environment, to see it resting on the bottom and dying the death that it’s dying.” Global Diving and Salvage, a   company contracted by the state of Washington, has been helping with daily cleanup. Workers are using booms in the water and absorbent pads to soak up the materials. So far, they’ve removed about 1, 000 gallons of oily water and more than 60 gallons of diesel fuel and petroleum. ”We’re taking water samples and pictures every day and we’re changing out the absorbents as we see fit,” says Shawn Zaniewski, a spill responder with the Washington state Department of Ecology. ”This is a very old vessel. There could be small containers of oil on board. As the tide goes up and down, it’s going to continue to sheen like that until that stuff washes out.” ”When you have a vessel this old and made of wood, all of the surfaces of the area are impregnated with oil,” adds McDougall. ”So, as long as the vessel is in the water, there’s going to be a sheen that comes off of it.” Nobody knows that more than Dick Wilson, one of Bay Center’s 276 residents. He moved to the area from Oregon in 1971 and has been farming oysters for more than 40 years. His business, Bay Center Mariculture, owns about 1, 000 acres in the bay. His processing plant and storefront are just down the road, about 800 feet from the sinking Hero. ”It’s something that shouldn’t have happened,” says Wilson, who drove down the hill from his house to check on the progress on the cleanup. ”An incident like this is probably rather typical in a lot of places. But for here, it’s abhorrent. We don’t want it and it’s something we just don’t need in the bay.” Wilson and other local residents have been warning the state about the poor conditions of the Hero since it first arrived nearly a decade ago. The Department of Ecology is still investigating who owns the wreck  —   and who is liable for the environmental damage it’s causing. ”You can’t have a wooden boat and have it sit here for 10 years and not have it go to pot and leak,” says Wilson. ”That’s just what they do.” For now, the future of how to remove the boat lies with the Washington state Department of Natural Resources. ”The department is researching ways to remove and dispose of the vessel, but every avenue we go down, there seems to be roadblocks,” says Troy Wood, manager of the state’s Department of Natural Resource’s Derelict Vessel Removal Program. According to Wood, the Hero’s situation is unique. The   vessel is too large to carry down the river. He estimates lifting it out of the water would require the construction of two large land cranes on site. The cost of those cranes would greatly exceed the DNR’s current budget. With only $130, 000 left in the biennium budget, a   removal seems unlikely and unaffordable. Estimates on the cost of that project range from $750, 000 to $1, 000, 000. Since the program began in 2003, the Derelict Vessel Removal Program has removed almost 670 abandoned boats and ships. This story comes to us from Oregon Public Broadcasting."
"Take a deep breath in through your nose, and slowly let it out through your mouth. Do you feel calmer? Controlled breathing like this can combat anxiety, panic attacks and depression. It’s one reason so many people experience tranquility after meditation or a pranayama yoga class. How exactly the brain associates slow breathing with calmness and quick breathing with nervousness, though, has been a mystery. Now, researchers say they’ve found the link, at least in mice. The key is a smattering of about 175 neurons in a part of the brain the researchers call the breathing pacemaker, which is a cluster of nearly 3, 000 neurons that sit in the brainstem and control autonomic breathing. Through their research is in mice, the researchers found that those 175 neurons are the communication highway between the breathing pacemaker and the part of the brain responsible for attention, arousal and panic. So breathing rate could directly affect feeling calm or anxious, and vice versa. If that mouse pathway works the same way in humans, it would explain why we get so chilled out after slowing down our breathing. To figure this out, researchers first divvied up the 3, 000 neurons in the breathing pacemaker by their genetics, as neurons with similar genes might have similar roles in the brain. That’s how they zeroed in on that 175. The next challenge was to uncover their function. Sometimes the best way to see what something does is to see what happens when it’s gone, so the researchers inactivated those neurons. To do so, they first genetically engineered mice to have receptors to a toxin only on the neurons of interest. That let them kill off only those neurons by injecting the mice with the toxin, which is made by bacteria called diphtheria. Diphtheria can cause serious respiratory illness in humans, but doesn’t normally affect mice. In the engineered mice, though, the toxin could kill the cells it attached to: the 175 neurons. That way, those neurons were knocked out and the rest were left intact and fully functional, as the researchers explain in their study, published Thursday in Science. Finally, researchers looked at how the loss of those neurons affected the breathing and behavior of the mice by putting them in a pressurized chamber that’s sensitive enough to measure the size and frequency of even the tiniest mouse breath. ”We expected that [inactivating the neurons] might completely eliminate or dramatically alter the breathing pattern of the mice,” like making them gasp or cough, says Mark Krasnow, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine and an author on the study. But there wasn’t a change in the breathing pattern. For a few days, the researchers thought they had made a mistake in their experiment and failed altogether. After retesting the mice in the chamber under various conditions —  during sleep, with elevated carbon dioxide levels and more  —   Krasnow finally realized that ”there was a change in these animals,” he says. ”They had become chill. Mellow fellows.” Before losing the 175 neurons, the mice did in the chamber ”what mice love to do,” Krasnow says: explore and sniff. After the neurons were gone, the mice spent much more time engaging in classic calm mouse behavior, including relaxing and grooming themselves. Upon closer examination, they also breathed more slowly. That chill behavior reminded Kevin Yackle, lead author on the study and Sandler Fellow at the University of California San Francisco, of animals —  humans included —  who had lost function in the arousal center of the brain that induces alertness and panic. They too were mellow fellows, giving Yackle the idea that the arousal centers in the brains of his mice weren’t getting any input from the breathing centers, so they didn’t act alert. At the same time, those breathing centers weren’t getting any panic or alert messages from the arousal center, so their breathing stayed slow. The connection between the two brain areas, the 175 neurons, had been removed. And that connection is key, Krasnow says. ”If you’re choking, or if you have a plastic bag that’s suffocating you, you better be awake and alert and dealing with that crisis because there is nothing more serious than a disruption to your breathing pattern.” Krasnow and Yackle think that if this mouse pathway also exists in humans, it could be useful in treating people with anxiety, where the pathway may be overactivated. Controlled breathing or medication could help lower activity in the pathway, he speculates, by lowering feelings of panic and the rate of breath. Krasnow notes that human brains have breathing and arousal centers, and that he’s hopeful for similarity between species. ”The   connection between emotion and breathing is important and puzzling,” Robert Banzett, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School told Shots in an email. Banzett didn’t work on the new study. ”It’s a long way from this to human emotion and behavior, but one must start someplace.” Alicia Meuret, an associate professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University who also wasn’t involved in the study, wasn’t sure if what the authors described as calm mouse behavior could be described as such. ”It’s hard to determine what calm behavior is [in mice],” Meuret says. ”We can see their behavior, but we don’t know what effect the loss of neurons has on their emotions.” Banzett echoed that concern, noting the authors inferred emotion because ”they equate the increase in grooming behavior with the emotional state of calmness.” There’s plenty of   research out there to show that the slow, deep, controlled breathing done in yoga and meditation does help alleviate anxiety and depression. The authors say that identifying the human neurons that connect breathing and arousal centers is the next step for their research. ”This connection between breathing and   brain function is an idea that’s been around for millennia,” Krasnow says, ”at least dating back to the time of development of pranayama yoga practices. The way that pranayama yoga and these other approaches try to calm the mind is to simply take control of your breathing by taking. .. slow. .. regular. .. breaths.” With this in mind, Krasnow and his colleagues have named the 175 neurons and their corresponding pathway after the ancient practice: the pranayama neurons and pranayama pathway."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Alex Luciano is a   human tornado on a Pixy Stix bender. As the singer, guitarist and one half of the undeniably charming duo Diet Cig, Luciano is known to bop, flail and   around the stage. And that boundless exuberance is infectious, coaxing crowds into   sock hops. It’s also emblematic of the joyful musical bond between Luciano and drummer Noah Bowman, who can frequently be spotted sharing a glance and a wide grin in the split seconds before Luciano leaps off the front of his bass drum. What began as a chance meeting at a house show in the Hudson   college town of New Paltz, N. Y. has sparked a vital collaboration and friendship. Diet Cig brilliantly bottles Luciano’s energy on the duo’s debut album, Swear I’m Good At This. Every track here is a frenetic showcase for Luciano’s thrashing guitars and cooing harmonies and Bowman’s pounding drums. The record benefits from a   chemistry that yields sharper hooks and fuller production than any of Diet Cig’s previous singles: Listen for the little synth phrase floating up from the distorted fray of ”Maid Of The Mist” or the softly strummed guitar that opens ”Bath Bomb.” And with every taut banger comes the kind of   melodies that dare you to resist shouting along in unison. For all the fizzy fun Diet Cig uncorks, those irresistible dynamics cloak the intimacy at the album’s core. Writing with revealing honesty and searing wit, Luciano shows an innate knack for lyrics that reflect equal parts   wonder, earnest vulnerability, and a fearless, ”doing it on my own terms” ferocity. Frequently harvesting from her own past formative romances and breakups, it’s Luciano’s tiniest details that prove the most relatable. Luciano is capable of capturing the flittering giddiness of a new crush on ”Leo” and ”Apricots” (”I wanna kiss you in the middle of a party   I wanna to cause a scene”) depicting   conversations on ”I Don’t Know Her” (”I don’t want you to feel nostalgic for something that never happened”) and even derives   humor from an awkward fling with someone who shares her name on ”Sixteen.” Similarly, ”Barf Day” revisits the sadness of being ignored on her birthday (”I’m sick of being my own best friend   Will you be there in the end? ”) only to stave off loneliness with a satisfying  : ”I just wanna have ice cream on my birthday!   I know that you’re sorry, I just don’t care!” Yet Diet Cig is at its most potent when deploying Luciano’s experiences to wrestle with bigger ideas, like consent, identity and flipping gender roles. ”I don’t need a man to hold my hand   That’s just something you’ll never understand!” Luciano proudly proclaims on the invigorating closer ”Tummy Ache.” Elsewhere, ”Maid Of The Mist” addresses past exes (”I am bigger than the outside shell of my body and if you touch it without asking then you’ll be sorry”) while turning her assurances into an empowering mantra: ”I’m fine   You’re alive   You’ll be O. K. in some time.” And on ”Link In Bio,” Luciano voices her frustrations over how women are all too often singularly defined or silenced for being too outspoken: ”They say speak your mind   But not too loud   I’m not being dramatic   I’ve just f —   —   —   had it with the things that you say you think that I should be   I’m done with being a chill girl   I’m trying to take over the world.” Swear I’m Good At This all adds up to a snapshot of a young songwriter navigating through the yearning and boredom, ambition and insecurity that accumulates along the rocky path from adolescence to adulthood. The power of Diet Cig comes from the way Luciano and Bowman bolster these themes with affirming positivity in the form of delightful, explosive anthems. These songs will surely give anyone weathering their own tough moments the confidence to pick themselves up and dance. Swear I’m Good At This is out April 7 on Frenchkiss Records."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. When Taylor Kirk and his bandmates in Timber Timbre set out for France a year ago to record their newest record, Sincerely, Future Pollution, they envisioned a sound you could dance to, that was worthy of celebration. For more than a decade, the   band  —   led by Kirk, who handles much of the writing and recording  —   has explored the gnarled and shadowy corners of rock, evolving from   cabin beams (Timber Timbre) to ’70s country twang (Hot Dreams). None of it has exactly been the stuff that gets one shaking, outside of a narcotized sway in the corner of a plywood bar. Sincerely, Future Pollution isn’t, either. But maybe it’s not the time to dance. ”I had the idea that we could do something that was fun. Which . .. we can’t,” laughed Kirk in a measured whisper from a phone in his rehearsal space in eastern Montreal. Instead, Sincerely, Future Pollution is another window into Kirk’s sweetly darkened sensibility, this time filtered through holistic collaborations with Timber Timbre’s supporting cast, keyboardist Mathieu Charbonneau and   Simon Trottier. Along for the ride are a wealth of prototypical electronics the trio found in that French studio where they recorded their sixth album. ”We were using a palette that I didn’t feel was ours,” said Kirk. Those unfamiliar instruments lend the album a patina of Reaganism, a vintage sound that feels all too relevant these days. Sincerely, Future Pollution deals with that unease most directly on ”Western Questions,” which opens with a sweeping guitar melody before sinking into a burlesque swoon. Kirk exhales: ”International witness protection   Through mass migration   The imminent surrender of land. Tucked in safety   At the counter of a luxury liner   With a noose in my hand.” It’s evocative of urban failure and our modern dilemma of slick disbelief. It ends, improbably, with a celebratory drum bridge worthy of Phil Collins and a guitar hook as indelible and catchy as Hall  Oates could hope for. ”Moment” might be the most beautiful and affecting love song Timber Timbre  —   a band that has always possessed a brilliance for capturing frustrated laments to the unrequited  —   has ever written. It opens, after a wash of those   synths, with a buried bass and a   drumline, while Kirk quietly  : ”Timing’s off   And everything’s lost   And I know it.   Elixirs wear off   And each dose the cost   Of a memory.” The frustration of feeling undeserving, of loving what you have in your hands despite that shame, is run ashore by the song’s ending, a jagged, perpendicular tantrum of pure frustration. (That character in ”Moment,” questioning what he deserves, his agency, and the means to keep or throw it away, is a continual presence in Kirk’s work.) Sincerely, Future Pollution is an agitated document for surreal times. Where Timber Timbre would previously beckon us into its slinking visions of wintertime woods or 16mm strip clubs, this time Kirk is drawn toward us. The group sounds, understandably, wary of the reversal. Sincerely, Future Pollution is out April 7 on City Slang Records."
"Updated at 2:55 p. m. ET, Airline passengers coming to the U. S. and Britain on direct flights from a number of   nations must now place most electronic devices, including laptops, tablets and cameras, in checked baggage under   security measures, the Trump administration and the British government said. Passengers can still carry smartphones into the plane’s cabin, but nothing larger, officials from the two countries added. The measures took effect Tuesday morning, and in the U. S. they cover about 50 incoming flights a day from the eight countries on the list  —   Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. All are traditional U. S. allies and none is among the six   nations on President Trump’s controversial executive order that seeks to temporarily suspend immigration. The president issued a revised executive order on March 6, and that one, like the original in January, has been halted by the courts. The six countries cited in Trump’s order all have fraught relations with the U. S. and several are plagued by unrest or civil war, including Syria, Libya and Yemen. In contrast, the countries on the new U. S. airline list are mostly stable, have generally good relations with the U. S. and include four wealthy states in the Gulf. Britain, meanwhile, has six countries on its list  —   Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Tunisia. The differences appear to be based on the different airlines that fly into Britain and the United States. The two countries held consultations before making their separate announcements. ”We have been in close tough with the Americans to fully understand their position,” the British government said in a statement. The U. S. officials said the airplane restrictions are based on intelligence indicating that terrorist groups are still plotting to blow up civilian planes. The officials stress that the latest measure is not related to the president’s executive order, but it’s certain to draw comparisons amid the ongoing political and legal battle over Trump’s immigration order. Royal Jordanian informs passengers, Royal Jordanian Airlines announced the security steps on Twitter on Monday afternoon. The tweet was deleted shortly afterward, but it prompted Trump administration officials to speak to reporters Monday evening, in advance of the measures taking effect Tuesday morning. The U. S. action covers 10 airports in the eight countries  —   Amman, Jordan Cairo Istanbul Kuwait City Casablanca, Morocco Doha, Qatar Jiddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. That list appears to include every airport in the region that offers direct flights to the U. S. except one  —   Israel’s main airport just outside Tel Aviv. U. S. authorities have expressed concerns in the past that explosives could be placed inside electronic devices. However, the administration officials declined to say specifically how this move would enhance security since it doesn’t ban electronic items currently permitted on planes but just requires that most be placed in checked bags. Passengers can still take smartphones or essential medical devices into the cabin. But larger items, including laptops, tablets, cameras, DVD players and electronic games, will have to be checked. Recent attacks, The officials cited attacks in recent years by extremists, including the downing of a Russian charter plane in Egypt in 2015, which was apparently caused by an explosive device on the aircraft. The officials also noted airport attacks carried out by gunmen in Brussels and Istanbul in 2016. U. S. carriers are not affected because none travel directly to the U. S. from airports in the eight named countries. The measure does not cover flights leaving the U. S. However, Britain said its rules apply to six U. K. carriers that fly back to Britain from the Middle East or North Africa, including British Airways and EasyJet. American officials said they started reaching out on Sunday to make sure the countries and airlines knew the new regulations were coming. For the past several years, U. S. authorities have expressed great concern about the   skills of the   satellite in Yemen and have cited group member Ibrahim   in particular. Yemen is on Trump’s immigration ban, but there are no direct flights from that country to the U. S. However, Yemen is relatively close to the four Persian Gulf states on the airline list."
"In the heart of Beirut, architect Mona El Hallak herds a group of students together outside a monumental mansion  —   a vast, elegant building whose yellow walls and graceful pillars are ravaged by thousands of bullet holes. ”We are,” she shouts over the cacophonous traffic, ”at the intersection of Damascus Road and Independence Avenue.” Once upon a time, nearly a century ago, this spot lay not at the center of today’s energetic if dysfunctional city, but on the breezy outskirts of a much smaller Beirut  —   just the place where a wealthy family with exquisite taste might commission a fabulous home. So a building that would eventually become symbolic of all Beirut’s elegance, wealth and violence was begun in 1924, says Hallak as she points to a chipped inscription over the door. ”You can still see the etching in the stone.” The sandstone building’s architect was the famed Youssef Aftimos, born in the Chouf Mountains in the 19th century, when Lebanon was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Aftimos worked in Lebanon  —   and elsewhere  —   through the dawn of the 20th century as it morphed from Ottoman province to French colony and finally, an independent state in 1943. Many of the mansions built during the period he worked still lend central Beirut much of its charm, their shapes reimagining Ottoman and European styles: groups of three arches topping slender pillars and tall windows, red roofs, balconies overlooking the Mediterranean and airy salons where richly colored tiles glowed beneath crystal chandeliers. For a wealthy family named Barakat, Aftimos dreamed up a mansion of ochre sandstone decorated with carvings made from another harder local stone known in Arabic as furne. It is really two houses, each with several apartments, joined together by an unusual central hall, straddling a corner that allowed light to pour into almost every room. The Barakats lived on the second floor, on the side with the best view down the hill to the Mediterranean, and rented out the other apartments. ”And they lived happily ever after,” Hallak says. ”Until 1975.” That was the year when simmering tensions in Lebanon bubbled up into a civil war that would seethe  —   multifactional and fueled by regional powers  —   for 15 years. The death toll is still highly contested, but tens or even hundreds of thousands are believed to have died. When it was over, Beirut was a shattered city, in some areas every building was damaged or destroyed. Many families left, although some of the Barakats stayed and still live in Lebanon. Paul Barakat runs a carpet business next to a Beirut museum. He welcomed this visitor, although he politely declined an interview. There was no clear winner or loser. Trials for crimes committed during the war have been few: Senior commanders of some of the factions are politically influential today, including President Michel Aoun and Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri. Hallak and many other Lebanese people say there is a pervasive fear that public discussion of the war could rekindle tensions  —   so much is contentious that trying to tell the story could result in contradictions, denials, even violence. The country has no war memorial, and the details of the war are not taught in schools. But with great, great care, Hallak is trying to start the conversation. For two decades, she has headed a campaign to conserve the Barakats’ old house and make it into a museum. To raise awareness of her campaign and of the building, she has guided hundreds of groups around it. The students she is addressing are mainly Lebanese, who learn about the war through the lens of their parents’ own experiences. ”As we all know, Damascus Road became a demarcation line which divided the city in two,” she says. The building struck her because it was divided in two by its central hall, and was located on the Green Line, which divided the city during the war. The Green Line, so called for the plants that sprang up during the war in the untended strip of city, split the factions of West Beirut from the east. The Barakat family fled to a safer area of Lebanon north of Beirut as soon as the war began. Militias moved into their house: A building designed so that sunshine could stream into thés dansants, tea dances, also offered ideal sight lines for snipers. The building was notorious during Hallak’s frightening childhood, when she and her family lived nearby. After the war sputtered out in 1990, she came across it again as a young architect  —   a destroyed building among many others. ”This building was equally demolished, equally   there was a bullet in every square centimeter,” she says. ”But to me, I looked, and I saw suddenly the sky, the blue sky, through this building. There was this amazing hope in this building.” As she walked through the house, memories of hiding in her own home under a table with her mother, as fighting raged outside, came flooding back. ”If I have all these memories,” she realized, ”then somebody else will have all these memories  —   so this is a place of memory.” In 2003, Hallak persuaded the Beirut authorities to confiscate the house from its owners the Barakats, who planned to demolish it, and compensate them. She wanted to turn it into a museum of memory  —   including of the civil war  —   called the House of Beirut. For the parts of the museum that do touch on the war, she plans not to include facts, timelines, dates  —   but rather, she says, ”the human experience of war  —   what happens to you and to your city during war?” She hopes personal stories will play a role in the exhibits. Gradually, the Beirut municipality allocated $19. 8 million to renovate the building, preserving some of the old features and traces of the fighting. It now stands ready for exhibits and visitors to arrive. But final paperwork from Beirut authorities that would enable it to open has not materialized. Hallak thinks the delay stems from the fear of touching on sensitive issues. ”I think that there will always be fear within the government, within the municipality, that: What have we done?” she says. ”We really started talking about the war in an officially owned building.” Beirut’s governor, Ziad Chebib, said there are no such sensitivities, just bureaucratic hurdles. He thinks a museum covering the civil war now is a good idea, especially as a cautionary tale as the Middle East is consumed by conflict. ”I cannot give you an exact date for it,” he said. ”But I can promise, I can promise you that it will be very, very, very soon.” Hallak finishes her tour in the charred remains of what was once a vaulted hall. She tells the students to fight for what they believe in, and they applaud and thank her. Afterward, one of them, Nancy Hawat, says she was inspired by Hallak and fascinated by the house. She is too young to remember the war. But she isn’t sure her parents, who lived through the war, would visit the museum. ”I felt so weird, actually. I am young and it felt so weird for me, so for my parents and their generation, they will remember the war,” she says. ”And I don’t think they will be happy to remember.”"
"They say too many cooks can spoil the broth. But in cities like San Francisco and Boston, restaurants are facing a shortage of kitchen staff, caused largely by low pay. The problem can be traced to the wage gap between tipped and nontipped employees. In an effort to bridge that gap and attract kitchen workers, some restaurants are now trying an experiment: revenue sharing. You can see that experiment play out at Mamaleh’s Delicatessen, a Jewish deli in Cambridge, Mass. On the day we visited, the   crowd noshed on knishes, pastrami and chopped liver, which is made by line cooks like Marvin Bonilla. Bonilla loves his job  —   but there’s a ”but.” On average at Mamaleh’s, those who work in the front of the house and earn tips make twice as much as do staffers in the kitchen. ”If we get busy or we are slow, we make the same, but for these people upfront, if they get busy they make more money,” Bonilla says. ”And then you see who really does the hard job. The back kitchen is the part of the kitchen that’s making [all the] food.” Restaurant owners say the wage gap is at the root of a shortage of kitchen workers. To address the problem, Mamaleh’s is one of at least a dozen restaurants in the Boston area to adopt revenue sharing. It varies from restaurant to restaurant, but the mechanics of revenue sharing are simple: take a percentage of sales and funnel it to kitchen workers. At Mamaleh’s, they’re experimenting with raising prices and dedicating 5 percent of food sales to kitchen staff. Restaurateur Keith Harmon is trying a different approach at his three Jamaica Plain, Mass. restaurants. There, customers pay a 3 percent fee on all sales that goes directly to the kitchen staff. The goal, says Harmon, is to help close the wage gap so that ”the busier the restaurant is, the better it is for everyone who is working in the back of house.” And he wanted a way to close the wage gap without eliminating tipping entirely. ”We didn’t want to alienate the tipped staff to take care of the nontipped staff, and so we came up with this     approach,” he says. Before revenue sharing, tipped employees earned about 2   times as much as     staff, according to Harmon. Now, that pay gap has been cut by a third. Harmon admits revenue sharing is only a partial solution, but he calls it a highly effective form of ”duct tape.” Revenue sharing seems to be confined to a handful of wealthy cities on the East and West coasts. Officials at restaurant associations in Texas and Pennsylvania, for example, say they don’t know of anyone implementing the model in their states. But it’s taking off in California. Sharokina Shams, vice president of communications for the California Restaurant Association, calls revenue sharing ”the emerging new norm,” especially in the Bay Area. ”The costs of operating a business in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, are astronomically high,” Shams says. That has forced restaurants to experiment with new ways to raise revenue to pay staff, she says. Back at Mamaleh’s in Cambridge, the higher prices are fine by regular Dan Meyers. ”I’m happy to pay another 20 percent  —   no really, I mean it,” Meyers says. ”It’s a great thing, and it shows that the people running the place  —   it’s not just lip service. They actually care about their people.” Mamaleh’s also cares about keeping its kitchen staffed. The restaurant is constantly hiring, and its management hopes revenue sharing will reduce turnover. Meanwhile, the only thing line cook Bonilla is turning over is the potato latkes. He is beaming at the idea that his pay will go up by as much as $3 per hour. ”We are all happy about that,” Bonilla says, adding, ”This is one of the best places I’ve ever worked in my life.” And then there are the fringe benefits: all the matzo balls, chopped liver and latkes a line cook could want. A version of this story first aired on member station WBUR in Boston, where Simón Rios is a reporter."
"New York Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to close the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail. But even he acknowledges that the process will not be quick or easy. ”It will take many years,” de Blasio said at a news conference today at City Hall. ”It will take many tough decisions along the way. But it will happen.” There are currently about 10, 000 inmates at the Rikers Island jail complex, most of them waiting for trial. Amid reports of widespread violence by inmates and guards, the push to replace Rikers has been gaining momentum. Last year, de Blasio called that a ”noble concept.” But he stopped short of endorsing the idea because of concerns about the high cost. His administration pushed to reform Rikers Island instead. Now de Blasio is throwing his support behind a plan to phase out and replace the jail over the next decade. The pressure to close Rikers Island has been mounting since a scathing report issued by the Department of Justice in 2014 that found a ”pattern and practice of excessive force” against adolescent inmates at the jail. That pressure grew after the suicide of Kalief Browder, a young man who was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. Browder spent three years at the jail  —   much of that time in solitary confinement  —   before the charges were dropped. ”The death of Kalief Browder was a   call to this city,” de Blasio said. ”His death shook the whole city and opened everyone’s eyes and made people think twice.” An expert panel that’s been studying the issue for more than a year is expected to release its recommendations on Sunday. According to a draft plan obtained by The New York Times, the panel recommends replacing the Rikers Island complex and building smaller jails in each of the city’s five boroughs, at a total cost of more than $10 billion. De Blasio would not say where those new jail facilities might be located. Any potential locations would require approval from the city council, and would likely face significant local opposition. ”Right now, Rikers is an abomination,” said City Council Speaker Melissa   because inmates are ”warehoused” on an island in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, far from their families and friends. ”That does not help anyone on a path to rehabilitation,”   said, ”so the idea of a   approach is laudable, I think. And it will have to lead to tough conversations and tough decisions.” Mayor de Blasio, who is running for reelection this year, said he was reluctant to close Rikers Island until a viable replacement was in sight. But de Blasio says falling crime rates and bail reform efforts convinced him that the city jail population could be brought down to about 5000 within a decade, making the plan to replace Rikers possible. ”A year ago, we didn’t think it could be done,” de Blasio said. ”It would been irresponsible for me to say we had a plan if we didn’t have a real plan. We now have a real plan.”"
"Sure, the news from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service arrived just a little late for Manatee Appreciation Day  —   but it’s unlikely the gentle finned blimp will be too upset about the belated gift: The announcement that the agency is removing the West Indian manatee from the list of endangered species is welcome, no matter when it arrives. In some ways, this moment marks nothing less than a ”success story” for the giant marine mammal, which roams from the Southeastern U. S. into the Caribbean. That’s what Phil Kloer, spokesman for the agency, tells Reuters. ”It has been doing very well,” Kloer says. ”It has been coming back.” ”While there is still more work to be done to fully recover manatee populations, particularly in the Caribbean, manatee numbers are increasing and we are actively working with partners to address threats,” the agency’s acting director, Jim Kurth, said in a statement. The FWS says there are about 6, 620 manatees in Florida waters now, the third straight year the agency has recorded numbers above 6, 000. The agency attributes the comeback partly to the establishment of sanctuaries, the retrofitting of locks and levees, and regulations to reduce boater collisions. So, great news . .. right? Many conservationists argue the manatee’s reclassification from ”endangered” to ”threatened” under the Endangered Species Act is far from the unalloyed victory it may appear to be. ”We believe this is a devastating blow to manatees,” Patrick Rose, executive director of the Save the Manatee Club, said in a statement: ”A federal reclassification at this time will seriously undermine the chances of securing the manatee’s   survival. With the new federal administration threatening to cut 75% of regulations, including those that protect our wildlife and air and water quality, the move to downlist manatees can only be seen as a political one.” The organization argues that the FWS ”failed to adequately consider data from 2010 to 2016, during which time manatees suffered from unprecedented mortality events linked to habitat pollution, dependence on artificial warm water sources, and record deaths from watercraft strikes.” And GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida tweeted that the ”decision to weaken manatee protections” was ”HUGELY disappointing.” As The Washington Post points out, ”the Center for Biological Diversity also opposed the federal reclassification, calling 2016 ’the deadliest year to date’ for the animals.” Still, the FWS emphasized that the downlisting will not have an appreciable effect on existing federal protections and that the manatee will ”continue to be protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.”"
"Since 2010, the default avatar on Twitter has been an egg. The idea apparently was that a new user was like a gestating bird, soon to make its first tweet. It was designed to be playful and cute. But over time, Twitter’s eggs came to symbolize something different: users who remain shadowy on purpose, to harass their fellow tweeters. Today, Twitter announced that it was doing away with the egg as its default avatar, opting instead for a nondescript   figure. No more bright colors, either  —   the new avatar is all gray. In a blog post, the company gave three reasons for the change, which it seemed to list in order of least to most important. First, the company says, it has a new look as of last year, and it wants users’ avatars to reflect the ”diversity and expressiveness” of the platform. Second, it says, the egg was cute  —   too cute. The egg didn’t inspire enough people to want to change their avatar. So Twitter is making the default avatar . .. worse on purpose: ”The new default image feels more like an empty state or placeholder and we hope it encourages people to upload images that express themselves.” (It’s as if Twitter is giving the ”flair” talk to its users: ”You do want to express yourself, don’t you? ”) Third, Twitter addresses the elephant in the virtual room: that the egg often became a symbol of harassment: ”We’ve noticed patterns of behavior with accounts that are created only to harass others  —   often they don’t take the time to personalize their accounts. This has created an association between the default egg profile photo and negative behavior, which isn’t fair to people who are still new to Twitter and haven’t yet personalized their profile photo.” As anyone who has been trolled can attest, the most virulent tweets often come from people not using their real names. And many of those accounts sport the egg avatar, because when you’re creating an account for the sole purpose of harassing others anonymously, why take the time to upload a picture and risk giving clues to your identity? One problem that the egg had obviated, Twitter’s design team explained, was that ”generic person” avatars employed by social networks often look masculine. (Those generic people rarely have long hair, for starters.) To make its new avatar more   Twitter explained that it gave the generic figure narrower shoulders and made the head less circle, more oblong. Perhaps the eggs were ready to be cracked when Twitter added functionality earlier this month to filter out tweets from accounts that had the default avatar. The company has been under pressure to deal with the harassment that plagues certain reaches of the platform. The abuse was reportedly one of the factors that dissuaded Salesforce from buying Twitter last year. Naturally, people used Twitter to criticize Twitter. ”Twitter says egg avatars were being associated  . Instead of working on harassment, they changed the avi,” tweeted Jill Pantozzi, a pop culture writer. ”This is like, a comedy at this point.” ”We hope this new default profile photo encourages more people to express themselves on Twitter!” the company wrote in its post. But not the trolls presumably."
"Authorities in Atlanta say investigators have questioned three people in connection with Thursday’s fire that caused part of Interstate 85 to collapse. Two of the individuals have been released but a third is still in custody. Atlanta Fire Rescue Sgt. Cortez Stafford identifies the third person as Basil Eleby, saying, ”He is the individual we are holding responsible for the fire and Fire Investigators believe it was set maliciously.” Stafford says investigators aren’t releasing details on how the blaze was started. He says the other two individuals are charged with criminal trespass. No one was hurt in the fire or the collapse but officials in Georgia are scrambling to cope with a traffic crisis. Gov. Nathan Deal has declared a state of emergency, and with the heavily used road closed in both directions, drivers are being told to find other options  —   from detours to mass transit. The shutdown affects a roughly   portion of   blocking a major artery that runs through the heart of Atlanta. Friday morning, officials said they don’t yet know what caused the fire. In an update around midday, they said repairs will likely take ”several months.” Officials say no injuries were reported as a result of the fire. Police had cleared the interstate before part of the overpass failed catastrophically. The road normally carries some 250, 000 vehicles a day. While the collapse took out northbound lanes of   officials say damage to the southbound lanes must also be repaired before they can be reopened. Mark McDonough, commissioner of the Georgia State Patrol’s Department of Public Safety, is asking drivers to be patient, as member station WABE reports. But he acknowledges that other highways will be ”slammed” with traffic. ”It’s going to take a while for everybody to adjust to this  —   what is the new normal?” McDonough said. ”We’re going to find out over the next couple of weeks.” In addition to complicating daily commutes and deliveries through the heavily populated   portion of Atlanta, the interstate closure stands to complicate the plans of drivers that range from spring break tourists to fans of the Atlanta Braves  —   which is hosting the   exhibition baseball game in its new ballpark Friday night. The Braves’ new stadium sits at the intersection of    —   Atlanta’s perimeter loop that will be used as a detour during repairs  —   and  . It’s about 10 miles northwest of the closures that begin at the spot where   and   join. As of Friday morning, hot spots from the fire were still preventing crews from assessing the full extent of the damage. Repairs are ”expected to be a   event,” Georgia DOT Commissioner Russell R. McMurry said Friday morning. WABE’s Lisa George tells NPR’s Newscast unit, ”What appear to have been plastic pipes stored under the highway caught fire no one knows how yet. They burned for about an hour, sending black smoke into the air  —   and then the northbound lane of the interstate just fell. ” George also spoke to a nearby resident, Elizabeth Gaston, who lives in an apartment building next to the overpass. Gaston says she saw a ”bunch of fire coming out, shooting out from under the underpass and all up over the bridge. And then, [after] a couple of minutes, all of a sudden you heard just ’boom.’ And I guess that was when the, 85 collapsed. It was pretty scary.” The fire struck a spot used to store construction supplies. The DOT’s McMurry called it ”a secured area containing materials such as PVC piping, which is a stable,   material.” He added, ”We are as eager to learn the cause of this fire as anyone, which is why we will continue to work closely and in full cooperation with fire investigators to determine exactly how the fire was started.”"
"A former nurse’s aide convicted of killing more than three dozen people died on Thursday, two days after he was attacked and beaten in his Ohio prison cell. As Ohio Public Radio’s Karen Kasler reports, ”   Donald Harvey had been nicknamed the ’Angel of Death’ in 1987, after admitting to killing 37 elderly or chronically ill people in hospitals in Cincinnati and rural Kentucky beginning in 1970. But after his conviction, he claimed that he had killed up to 50 people.” Harvey was serving consecutive life sentences. He had been in prison for 30 years when he was assaulted Tuesday inside his cell at the Toledo Correctional Institution, as the Toledo Blade reports: ”He died Thursday at Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center. . .. The Ohio Highway Patrol continues to investigate his death, said spokesman Lt. Robert Sellers. He would not comment on the attack or Harvey’s injuries. Authorities have identified a suspect, but not yet filed charges, Lieutenant Sellers said.” Before Harvey was caught, his hospital   would joke about how many patients died under his care, according to The New York Times. The newspaper adds: ”Mr. Harvey joined in the joking, and because his victims were old or in poor health, their deaths did not arouse much suspicion. ”He’d say, ’I got another one today,’ ” the prosecutor told the court. ”And everybody thought it was just a joke.” Harvey killed his victims by putting poisons such as cyanide or arsenic in their food, not refilling their oxygen tanks, or suffocating them with pillows. He was finally caught in Cincinnati when he fatally poisoned a man hospitalized after a motorcycle accident. During the motorcyclist’s autopsy, the doctor smelled cyanide in the man’s stomach cavity, according to the Times. Harvey pleaded guilty to murders in Ohio and Kentucky, avoiding the death penalty. A former prosecutor in the Kentucky case described Harvey as a cruel man without sympathy for his victims. ”My reaction is he went by the same method by which he killed scores of other people while they were helplessly lying in bed,” Tom Handy told the Blade. ”I don’t want to come off as   but at the same time, I think justice has been rendered.” Harvey has said he would have kept killing had he not been caught. ”I felt what I was doing was right,” he said. ”I was putting people out of their misery. I hope if I’m ever sick and full of tubes or on a respirator someone will come and end it.” But former Hamilton County Prosecutor Arthur Ney Jr. who prosecuted the cases in Cincinnati, disputes the idea that Harvey was a mercy killer. ”He killed because he liked to kill,” Ney told the AP."
"Here’s an update on a story that NPR started following almost two years ago in Izmir, Turkey, a city on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. That’s where NPR’s Ari Shapiro first met a teacher from Syria  —   a father in his early 30s named Monzer  . Omar had been in Izmir for a week, waiting for a phone call from a human smuggler who would put him onto a crowded raft heading for Greece. Once the call came, Omar said, he would have just five minutes to gather his belongings, run to the beach, get on a raft and go. Over the months that followed, NPR reporters followed Omar on his journey  —   joining him by foot, bus and train across Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and finally to Germany, where he settled in the city of Dortmund. Omar, originally from a village near the city of Hama, had left his pregnant wife, Walaa Ahmed, and two young daughters in Syria with his parents. He didn’t want them to risk their lives making the dangerous journey with him to Europe. But every day, he would send a voice message home to his wife, children and parents, whom he missed terribly. ”Maybe I will never see them again,” he said of his parents. But he held out hope that he would someday see his wife and kids. By last summer, his wife had given birth to another girl. In June, Omar, still in Germany, was among a group of refugees who met Samantha Power, then the U. S. ambassador to the U. N. By then, he was feeling increasingly anxious. ”Maybe my family will die. Maybe my children will die, OK? What’s the use of coming here? I came here just to help them,” he said. ”What’s the use if I come here and I lose my family?” ”I think his heart is breaking,” Power told NPR. But a few weeks ago, Omar got back in touch with NPR with some good news. ”My life completely changed,” he said. His wife and daughters arrived in Germany in January. First, they were smuggled overnight across the Syrian border into Turkey. Walaa Omar carried their baby, now 14 months old, during the   trek in November. Lamar, 4, and Lojain, 2, walked alongside. Once in Turkey, they registered with the German Embassy, which contacted Omar. Omar described the January day when he saw his wife and children for the first time in more than a year. ”I feel my heart will go out of my chest,” he said. ”I’m waiting at the airport and I look to the people who get out from the airplane  —   no, not my wife, not my family.” And then, he said, ”I saw my little girl, she saw me, and I run immediately to hug my daughter and I was crying with my daughter and my wife. Everyone in the airport was taking photo for us.” Omar says that for the first five days after the reunion, he couldn’t sleep. He would wake up and look at his daughters sleeping beside him. ”I’m not dreaming,” he said. ”I ask myself  —   I’m not dreaming. I speak with my wife. We are here together again. We are not dreaming.” This is the end of a chapter, but not the end of Omar’s story. Omar’s wife and children only have a temporary visa. They’re hoping for permission to stay permanently in Germany. Omar, who has been granted a   asylum period, is working on getting his teaching qualifications and enrolling the kids in school. His wife wants to start learning German. And the entire family is about to move into a new, bigger home, with a garden."
"Faced with an expiring supply of a controversial sedative, the state of Arkansas plans to execute eight men over 11 days  —   a pace that is unprecedented in recent U. S. history and that has been criticized by lawyers and former corrections officials. The state is set to carry out the executions two a day on four days between April 17 and April 27. Multiple lawsuits have been filed over the schedule, citing concerns about the speed. Arkansas’ governor and attorney general say the deaths will bring closure to victims’ families. Arkansas carried out a triple execution in 1994 and another in 1997. (Those executions were also unusual at the time, compared with other states.) But it’s been more than a decade since Arkansas killed any death row inmates. And the state has never before used midazolam, one of the three drugs used in the state’s lethal injection protocol. The sedative is supposed to render inmates unconscious so they don’t feel pain from the subsequent drugs that cause death. But in several midazolam executions, death row inmates were seen writhing or gasping as they died. (In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled the use of midazolam does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.) The drug is the source of the sudden urgency: Arkansas’ supply expires at the end of April. In late February, Gov. Asa Hutchinson scheduled the executions, specifically to end before the drugs expire. ”One of the three drugs in the lethal injection protocol expires at the end of April,” Hutchinson says in a statement emailed to NPR. ”In order to fulfill my duty as Governor, which is to carry out the lawful sentence imposed by a jury, it is necessary to schedule the executions prior to the expiration of that drug.” The haste has been criticized by some as unseemly. (It has also led to an apparent shortage of witnesses: At one point, the director of Arkansas’ Department of Correction reportedly asked a Rotary Club for volunteers to watch the executions.) And there has been outcry over the risk of botched executions, violations of due process  —   or psychological damage to executioners. Does speed raise risk of executions gone wrong? Dale Baich, a federal public defender in Arizona, says Arkansas’ rush is ”irresponsible,” especially given the history of midazolam. He was one of the lawyers for Joseph Wood, who died in a botched 2014 execution that used midazolam. Along with other witnesses, Baich says he watched as his client lay on the gurney ”gasping and struggling to breathe.” Wood took nearly two hours to die and required 15 injections. Baich also points out that the last time a state tried to do a double execution with midazolam, in Oklahoma in 2014, ”things went very wrong.” The first execution left Clayton Lockett writhing on the gurney before he eventually died of a heart attack. The second execution was called off. A state investigation into that botched execution suggested the tight schedule caused ”extra stress” for staff and recommended future executions be spaced apart, among other advice. The precedent should give Arkansas pause, Baich says. ”There will be stress on the prison and medical staff, and the risks of making mistakes will be multiplied,” he tells NPR. ”This, along with using a drug that has been used in numerous botched executions, should make prison officials in Arkansas very nervous about going forward.” Hutchinson, however, said in the statement that corrections staff ”have confidence” in the execution schedule and drug protocol. Does a compressed schedule deprive inmates of rights? Arkansas’ schedule is the fastest pace of execution in any state since the death penalty was reinstated in the U. S. in the  . John Williams, a federal public defender in Arkansas, is part of a team representing four of the eight inmates set to die next month. He says the schedule doesn’t leave sufficient time for essential parts of the defense process, such as clemency appeals. ”At least in Arkansas, you can’t apply for clemency on death row until the execution date is set,” Williams says. ”In some of these guys’ cases, [the deadline] was, like, 10 days from the day they learned they had an execution date.” Then there’s the fact that Williams and other lawyers are working for multiple inmates scheduled to die around the same time. There are several legal processes that have to be pursued for each. ”It’s hard enough doing that in a short period of time for one client,” says Baich, the public defender in Arizona. ”To do it for two or three or four clients all at the same time is an impossible challenge”  —   and could deprive inmates of their right to counsel. The governor, in his public statements, notes that the inmates, all of whom were convicted of murder, have pursued an array of legal remedies already. Hutchinson cites ”the exhaustion of all appeals and court reviews that have been ongoing for more than a decade.” Baich says it doesn’t matter how many appeals failed before once an execution is scheduled, new legal issues arise, including clemency appeals as well as claims of mental impairment and the possibility of new testimony. Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project, meanwhile, alleges that some of the men were poorly represented in the past, calling for more examination of the prior appeals. Former corrections officials worry about effect on staff, More than two dozen former corrections officials from across the U. S. have signed an open letter with a different focus: the impact on the executioners. ”We believe that performing so many executions in so little time will impose extraordinary and unnecessary stress and trauma on the staff responsible with carrying out the executions,” the letter reads. It also mentions the risk of botched executions. Allen Ault, a former commissioner of the Georgia, Mississippi and Colorado departments of corrections, signed the letter and also wrote a separate  . He oversaw five executions over the course of two years and is now opposed to the death penalty. ”Killing somebody in a premeditated way is extremely traumatic, except for a psychopath,” he tells NPR. ”Anybody with a conscience, it really wears on you. . .. And here we have two by two by two by two  —   two a day.” ”This isn’t hypothetical,” he says, citing colleagues who turned to drugs, struggled with   stress disorder or committed suicide after overseeing executions. ”I have known a lot of people who have been involved,” Ault says. ”I have known none who have come out of it unscathed.” Hutchinson says the Arkansas Department of Correction staff members have told him they are satisfied with the planned schedule. ”We have experienced staff here in Arkansas,” he says in the statement. ”I will continue to listen to our professional staff as we go through the steps of this process.” A spokesman for the state Department of Correction declined to comment to NPR. Victims’ families ask for closure state anticipates no delays, The governor says he had the victims’ families in mind as he set this schedule. In the statement, Hutchinson says it is ”important to bring closure to the victims’ families who have lived with the court appeals and uncertainty for a very long time.” If the drugs were allowed to expire, he notes, ”it is uncertain as to whether another drug can be obtained, and the families of the victims do not need to live with continued uncertainty after decades of review.” The men scheduled for execution  —   Jack Harold Jones Jr. Marcel Williams, Stacey E. Johnson, Ledell Lee, Jason F. McGehee, Kenneth Williams, Don Davis and Bruce Earl Ward  —   were all convicted of murders, and in some cases rapes, committed before 2000. Some of their victims’ relatives have spoken in support of the executions, as The Associated Press has reported, including family members who asked a parole board to deny clemency appeals and grant them closure. ”I want justice to be done,” said Melissa Cassidy, whose sister was killed by Stacey Johnson. Crime victim advocate Elaine Colclasure, who is not connected to the inmates on this execution schedule, told the AP she rejected criticisms of the pace of the Arkansas executions. ”These people have been waiting for 25 or 30 years,” she said of the victims’ families. ”That’s not quick.” NPR reached out to the office of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge about the execution schedule. Spokesman Judd Deere said the office could make only a brief comment, given ongoing litigation. ”Attorney General Rutledge supports the death penalty and believes it is past time for the victims’ families to see justice for the horrible murders of their loved ones,” Deere said. ”This office is prepared to respond to any and all challenges that might occur between now and the execution dates. The attorney general continues to expect that the executions will proceed as scheduled.”"
"For the second consecutive year, Japanese whalers have returned to port after an Antarctic expedition with the carcasses of 333 whales. The   fleet, put forth by the country’s Fisheries Agency, killed the minke whales during a   voyage to southern waters for what it calls ecological research. The agency released a statement describing the mission as ”research for the purpose of studying the ecological system in the Antarctic Sea,” according to Agence  . The Associated Press reports that Fisheries Agency official Shigeto Hase lauded a successful expedition in Shimonoseki, the home port for Nisshin Maru, mother ship of the Japanese fleet. ”It was great that we have achieved our plan,” Hase told those gathered for a welcome ceremony, including the city’s mayor and about 200 local people, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. notes. ”We will steadily continue our research toward a resumption of commercial whaling.” It is not by chance that the word ”research” served as the centerpiece of both statements. Under the rules of the International Whaling Commission, of which Japan is a member, there has been an international ban on commercial whaling since 1986  —   though there is an exception for whaling conducted with ecological research in mind. It is this exception that allows Japan’s whaling fleet to embark on its yearly hunt in the icy waters of Antarctica. Yet many critics view this use of the exception as a fig leaf, exploited by Japan’s Fisheries Agency to cover for the practice of reportedly selling whale meat commercially. In fact, as NPR’s Bill Chappell reported in 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled that the whaling program  —   which has been going on since 2005 and killed thousands of minke whales, according to the ICJ  —   has generated only limited scientific output. Not enough, in other words, to justify the program. Despite the ruling, and opposition from neighbors such as Australia, Japan refrained for just one year from killing whales on its annual expedition before returning to the practice under a document submitted to the ICW, which laid out the scope and techniques of its resumed program. Still, the ABC reports that the exception that has allowed for Japan’s whaling expeditions might soon see further restrictions: ”Japan will have to submit its proposed catch to a scientific working group within the IWC. ”The commission will ask for further justification about why the scientific program needs to kill the whales to study them.” For conservationists such as Humane Society International Executive Vice President Kitty Block, this change is not enough. ”It is an obscene cruelty in the name of science that must end,” she said in a statement, according to the AP."
"A federal judge has approved a $25 million settlement deal between President Trump and students who paid for Trump University real estate seminars, bringing lengthy litigation to a close. The deal, which calls for Trump to reimburse the students who say they were defrauded, was struck in November but needed approval from U. S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel. He signed off on the settlement Friday in San Diego. Trump doesn’t admit any wrongdoing under the terms of the settlement. The settlement applies to three separate lawsuits  —   two   and a fraud case. The $25 million deal includes payouts to more than 6, 000 Trump U students who paid thousands of dollars for courses they describe as worthless. One student had pushed against the deal, as The Associated Press reports: ”The only holdup appeared to be a Florida woman’s claim that she should be allowed to opt out of the settlement and sue the president on her own  —   a move that would likely scuttle the entire agreement. ”Attorneys for former customers said that their clients would get at least 90 percent of their money back under the deal, based on the roughly 3, 730 claims submitted. . .. ”Curiel said the high payments weighed in favor of approval and he noted that only two of about 7, 000 eligible   members objected to the terms.” You may recall that on the campaign trail, Trump accused Curiel of being biased because he is ”Mexican.” That claim was false  —   Curiel was born in Indiana  —   and even House Speaker Paul Ryan acknowledged that it was ”sort of like the textbook definition of racism.” Trump doubled down on the comments before saying he wouldn’t talk about Curiel any more. Curiel had urged both sides to settle. And what about the fraud allegations that underpin these lawsuits? NPR’s Ina Jaffe reported last year that students paid $1, 500 to $35, 000 for courses on ”real estate investment secrets” ostensibly taught by instructors handpicked by Trump. ”They claim that the promised Donald Trump investment techniques were mostly stuff that you could find on the Internet, some of which was illegal in some of the states where the seminars took place,” she said. ”They say that the promised mentoring was worthless or nonexistent, that the instructors were unqualified and that they were definitely not handpicked by Donald Trump, as he claimed. ”And transcripts of Donald Trump’s deposition . .. confirm that he was relatively unengaged with what went on in Trump University.” Trump’s lawyers said the allegations are false. NPR’s Jim Zarroli spoke with an unhappy Trump University customer who said he paid $35, 000 for ”secrets” such as the fact that he could go to the IRS website to learn about federal tax deductions. ”The more and more I got involved in Trump University, the more and more I found out that I had truly been scammed,” Bob Guillo, 76, told NPR. ”At first it was embarrassing,” Guillo said. ”Then I became very, very angry that the man that scammed me out of all that money had the audacity to run for president. And I’m still angry.”"
"Don’t be tricked by their appearance  —   fangblenny fish aren’t just a cute face. They use special   venom to avoid being eaten. The fish are 2 inches long and live in places such as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. When one is caught and swallowed up by a predator, the blenny literally bites its way out. The venom disorients the bigger fish, and the blenny escapes to freedom. Bryan Fry, an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, leads a group of researchers that has learned more about how venomous fangblennies do their thing. The first step was to get some venom from the fangblenny fangs. Researchers had to pull the blennies out of a fish tank using a net. Then ”we would just put a little cotton swab in front of them and they would instantly bite it and seconds later they were back in the water,” Fry says. His group studied the chemical makeup of the blennies’ toxin. The venom contains components similar to those found in the venom of scorpions. Surprisingly, it also contains an opioid peptide similar to those in painkillers. The researchers’ findings were published in the journal Current Biology on Wednesday. When the researchers injected the blenny venom into mice, it didn’t seem to cause the mice any pain. This came as a big surprise, Fry says. ”We expected that . .. it’s a defensive venom, so it’s going to hurt like every other defensive venom,” he adds. Fry believes the venom causes the larger fish to become dizzy. The disorientation allows the little   to give it the slip. ”Dizziness brought about by low blood pressure is a very common side effect for any kind of opioid. In this case, the side effect is what’s being used by the blenny,” he says. Fry says studying the unique opioid peptides in the fangblenny venom could be beneficial in the future. He thinks it’s possible that researchers could stumble on a useful opioid drug. ”If you have one that’s a bit less potent but a lot less addictive than something like Vicodin, that’s already going to be a good thing.” According to Fry, that’s one of the many arguments for conserving places such as the Great Barrier Reef. ”You have these beautiful little fish that could potentially yield the next wonder drug, but we can’t do that if these animals aren’t around.”"
"A little seminar in documentary technique is being offered by two docs about women this week. The filmmakers for All This Panic take a     approach with their teenage subjects  —   no narration, no explainers. The directors of God Knows Where I Am tease out their story as if it were a mystery novel. Both approaches prove effective, albeit for reasons that have everything to do with their respective subject matter. The makers of All This Panic must’ve been   just to keep up with teenage sisters Dusty and Ginger and their pals as they careen around their Brooklyn neighborhood. When we meet them, they’re tooling around on their bikes, ricocheting from game arcade to beachfront to party, pondering the great questions of our age: ”If you could, like, go back and start high school over,” wonders one, ”knowing everything you know now about, like, high school, would you?” Make that the great questions of their age. Still, these kids are figuring out boyfriends, weekends, lives  —   things in general. Ginger has artistic inclinations but seems to lack the drive to put them to much use. Her sister, Dusty, initially appears mostly concerned with cliques and lunchroom etiquette. And their best pal Lena has a complicated home life from which she escapes by planning to be a philosopher, a baker and a variety of other careers. She’ll end up at Sarah Lawrence College, so the planning and being responsible pay off. Also responsible is Sage, the one   girl in their circle  —   one of the few in their school, in fact. Sage has thought deeply about who she is, and about how she is viewed. ”The teenage body is so oversexualized,” she tells the camera, ”the teenage female body, especially. People want to see you, but they don’t want to hear what you have to say.” Married filmmakers Jenny Gage and Tom Betterton did want to hear what these girls had to say. They got close to them as Brooklyn neighbors and spent three years following them as they matured and began to separate from parents and forge their own identities. The camera captures intimate moments with musing, chattering young women who, as All This Panic goes on, seem not so much consumed by panic as by motion  —   dancing in a club, running on a beach, hopping a subway or a cab, exploring . .. trajectories. The first words spoken in God Knows Where I Am set a very different tone: ”Dear God, please save me,” says a woman’s   voice. ”I’m trying, but I don’t know what to do.” Those words, voiced by actress Lori Singer, come from a journal that Linda Bishop kept of her final days  —   a journal that was found next to her body in a New Hampshire farmhouse and that said her death was the result of domestic abuse. How did she end up in that vacant house? The filmmakers start where the police did, with no information, just what they think may be a crime scene, and a note that could be a suicide note. It isn’t . .. quite. By talking with Linda’s sister, the man who owns the house in which she died, forensics experts, and psychiatrists, the filmmakers piece together what happened to Linda during the roughest winter New Hampshire had seen in years. And why. Excerpts from the journal set the stage again and again  —   how Linda found an apple tree nearby, and gathered the more than 300 apples that sustained her for months. Or looked out a window to see ”a cardinal and a chickadee, on top of a lilac outside the window.” The images that accompany these words are cinematic still lifes  —   still, but hardly lifeless as the camera roves the grounds and   rooms of the house, painting a portrait of solitary quiet. And then, the police tell us something startling: that from the window where she saw that cardinal and chickadee, she could also have watched the   TV in her neighbor’s window. The journal makes it sound as if she was, as a police officer says at one point, ”isolated in some hidden valley with nobody around to help her.” In fact, she was less than 500 feet from potential help. So why, wonder the authorities, didn’t she seek it? Filmmaking brothers Todd and Jedd Wider  —   who produced Alex Gibney’s   documentary about torture in the Middle East, Taxi to the Dark Side  —   are making their joint debut as directors here. An unexplained death is again their subject, but they’re not just solving the mystery behind it. They’re using the pacing and the lachrymose visuals to get us inside Linda’s head, giving us a sense of how she saw the world as it closed in on her: the loneliness, the   pace of a life ebbing. God Knows Where I Am turns out to be every bit as much a story of panic as All This Panic. But where teenagers flail, Linda is resigned . .. her tragic story a study in stillness and, ultimately, in silence."
"President Trump escalated a Twitter war with lawmakers in his own party on Thursday evening, calling out three members of the Freedom Caucus by name. ”If @RepMarkMeadows, @Jim_Jordan and @Raul_Labrador would get on board we would have both great healthcare and massive tax cuts  reform,” he tweeted. The attack follows an earlier   missive aimed at both the Freedom Caucus and Democrats. It’s a curious tactic, given that Trump’s only two options to pass his agenda through Congress are to either unite the fractured GOP or to form new alliances across the aisle. ”The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team,  fast. We must fight them,  Dems, in 2018!” Trump tweeted on Thursday morning. It did not change hearts or minds. ”Freedom Caucus stood with u when others ran. Remember who your real friends are. We’re trying to help u succeed,” replied Rep. Raúl Labrador,   a member of the group of conservatives who helped take down the GOP health care bill. The public and personal feuding among Republicans percolated throughout the U. S. Capitol this week as GOP confidence in their party’s ability to govern alongside the Trump administration is shaken. ”It’s clear that tensions are running high,” said Sen. Ted Cruz,  . ”I believe we can come together, and the only way for us to govern and deliver on our promises is for Republicans not to turn the cannons on each other, but stand united behind shared principles, and that’s what I hope all of us do.” The White House has provoked congressional Republicans further in recent days by suggesting he’ll just go around them and cut deals with Democrats instead. House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . tried to head off any potential alliance, telling CBS: ”I don’t want that to happen.” Ryan’s reasoning  —   correctly  —   is that if the president needs Democrats to pass major legislation, it will be a lot less conservative than anything the speaker hopes to enact in the next two years. Ryan was more conciliatory toward the president than Labrador. ”This is a   president, who’s a business guy, who wants to get things done, and I know that he wants to get things done with a Republican Congress,” Ryan told CBS. ”But if this Republican Congress allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good, I worry we’ll push the president into working with the Democrats. He’s suggested as much.” Across the Capitol, Ryan’s argument did not impress at least one prominent fellow Republican. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker,  . called out Ryan, again on Twitter: ”We have come a long way in our country when the speaker of one party urges a president NOT to work with the other party to solve a problem.” House Republicans’ health care failure has left Senate Republicans wondering if they need to shoulder more of the legislative burden. In that event, Democrats will be integral to the process because of the   hurdle to do most of the legislating in the Senate. For their part, Democrats say they are ready  —   if not exactly excited  —   to work with the president. ”We say, ’any time, anywhere,’ ” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,  . told reporters on Thursday. ”We never stand in the way of anyone meeting with a Democratic or a Republican president.” Rep. Jim Himes,  . chairs the New Democrat Coalition, a faction of about four dozen   Democrats that, in theory, stand ready to work with the president on certain agenda items, like infrastructure spending. But Himes hasn’t heard from the president. ”No, the White House has not reached out,” he said. ”We’re totally willing to engage in that, provided that it’s consistent with our values.” Himes also said the burden to extend the olive branch rests on the other side of the aisle. ”Look, these guys run the show now. They’ve got the Oval Office, they’ve got the Senate and the House. If they’re interested in having our support, it’s kind of on them to come to us.” At least in the short term, Republicans have decided they need to work with Democrats to keep the government open. The federal government faces a shutdown on April 28 unless Congress enacts another stopgap spending bill or passes the remaining annual spending bills. Seeking to head off another shutdown fight, GOP leaders and the appropriations committees are working behind the scenes on a bill to enact the remaining 11 spending bills at previously agreed to spending levels that conservatives opposed in the past. They are also looking to separate out the president’s funding request to start building a U. S.  border wall, and the speaker has indicated Republicans will not add in ”poison pill” policy riders on things like defunding Planned Parenthood. All of those concessions are intended to bring Democrats on board to make sure Congress can pass the legislation. The end result is a less conservative vision of how Congress should spend the nation’s money. If it works, it might also provide a framework for how this Congress will work going forward."
"When people find out that Malebogo Malefhe uses a wheelchair because she was shot by her boyfriend, the first question they ask is: ”What did you do to him?” Now Malefhe, who sustained eight bullets from her boyfriend of 10 years, wants to make sure that no woman who has faced domestic abuse is asked this question ever again. The incident in 2009 nearly cost Malefhe her life. Since then, she has devoted herself to fighting   violence in her native Botswana and teaching women that when men hurt them, it’s not their fault. This year, the U. S. State Department gave her the 2017 International Women of Courage award. Now in its 11th year, the prize recognizes women who have put their lives on the line to improve their communities. ”Malebogo is being honored for her tenacity, strength and resilience to help other women and girls overcome the scourge of domestic violence,” said Thomas A. Shannon Jr. undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department, speaking at the awards ceremony in Washington, D. C. on Wednesday. Malefhe, 37, a former basketball player for Botswana’s national team, also advocates for the advancement of women in sports, with a focus on women with disabilities. She spoke with us about the shooting, her goals and how she stays motivated to help others. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It’s a tragic story. After your boyfriend shot you, he took his own life.  They call it passion killing, and it’s been a trend [in Botswana] over the past 15 to 20 years. You hear stories of men in relationships who disagree about certain things, then brutalize women or hang themselves. Passion killings seem to be a common topic in the news, and there’s been a study about their portrayal in the media. And in a   period in 2009, the police reported 89 deaths in Botswana from crimes of passion  —   seven men and 82 women. Where do you think this horrific phenomenon stems from? We have cultural norms that limit women, like the bride’s price  —   the dowry. It bounds women to men and makes men think that once they have paid the price, then they own the woman. Culturally, women are not allowed to speak out against their husbands. When they try to talk to them or voice their concerns, men become threatened. They don’t really like it. So they take action. You barely survived. You were left with spinal cord injuries and now you use a wheelchair. How did you find the strength to overcome it all? I don’t want to lie  —   it was one of the scariest moments of my life. It was not easy. My injury was extensive. I almost lost my life. I had to learn how to use my body again. I had to learn to live over again. My friends and family stood by me and gave me the hope to keep living my life. To find myself in that bottomless pit took so much courage to rise. And when I did, I looked at my life and said, I can use my story to help women. If I don’t tell my story, who else is going to do that? Did you ever feel sorry for yourself? Yes I did. Absolutely, I felt [starts to cry] sorry for myself so many times. I regretted so much. It was not like it just happened that night. The red flags had always been there. I just needed to have spotted the moment and left. How are you helping women make sure they never have to go what you went through? I tell women to look at the signs while they still have the time. Walk out while they still have the chance. They may not have the same opportunity as me. Some women have lost their lives because of violence. Others have been locked up in a mental institution because they’ve lost their mind because of the beatings or abuse. I tell women that every time a crime is perpetrated, they should report it. But they report issues of abuse, then withdraw them. It’s difficult for authorities to follow up on their issues or assist them accordingly. Women need education to open them up to the realization that abuse is prevalent and they need to find ways to overcome it. What part of your story surprises them the most? My strength. It still shocks me as well. I don’t drown in  . That is past now. Now I am the new me, in a wheelchair. You were a basketball player on Botswana’s national team before you were shot. How are you staying connected to sports? I’m trying to get people in wheelchairs to partake in the Paralympics. I’m trying to get as many women involved in this as possible. At this point, I’m the only one playing [basketball] with men. But I know there are so many women who have this same potential. You’re also a champion of ” .” What does that mean, exactly? We meet monthly with a group of girls. They are from small villages, impoverished many are school dropouts. We teach them the value of living your purpose. To do that, they have to look inside themselves and note what they want to do with their lives. If they know this, it will help them be vigilant about their own lives. It seems like you’ve found your purpose. I’m just in the right place."
"For the past 40 years, John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten, has brandished his rebellious songs  —   first with the 1970s punk band The Sex Pistols, then with Public Image Ltd. He’s now 61 years old. He may be a bit rounder than he was in his youth, but he still has an impish glare and spiky hair. He’s still punk rock. ”I’m a   anarchist,” Lydon says. ”I’ve never in my life supported any government anywhere, and I never will.” Lydon was born in London, the son of   Irish immigrants. When he was 7 years old, he contracted spinal meningitis, ”which damned well nearly killed me,” he recalls. ”Apart from surviving that, it was the lack of memory when I came out of the coma. And that took me some four years to fully recover properly.” He says that experience fueled the turmoil he felt as a teenager in the 1970s  —   when he was recruited to join The Sex Pistols as ”Johnny Rotten.” ”That’s my nickname,” he says. ”It was given to me because I had green teeth.” Lydon railed against the establishment, religion and politics, singing, ”anger is an energy.” You can hear all that in his lyrics, which he’s collected in Mr. Rotten’s Songbook  —   a new,     book with the words to every song he’s ever written. He also illustrated it with doodles and sketches ”so I could put myself right back in the moment and know what it was that was thundering away between me ears to make me write these lyrics,” he says. He flips through the book to find one of his   songs, ”Anarchy in the U. K.,” which he notes is ”to be sung with love.” ”I’ve got all these nice little anarchists running around with swords,” he says, describing the drawings on the page, ”and the black and red anarchist flag. And of course, the Union Jack.” Lydon wrote ”Anarchy in the U. K.” in 1976, a week before writing his sarcastic ”God Save The Queen.” ”I hit on the right note and tone of a country on that was on the verge of political collapse,” he says. ”You know, rigid conservative government, it was not   about anything. Beginning to sound familiar, isn’t it?” Brian Cogan, author of The Encyclopedia Of Punk, says Lydon wrote songs that were designed to impress, shock and challenge. ”Lydon has always been a sort of a trickster fellow that is there to disrupt,” Cogan says. ”His lyrics had insight, they were witty, they were biting. And he was always trying to upset people in a lot of ways and trying to get them to rethink what they thought about the world.” After The Sex Pistols broke up, Lydon formed Public Image Ltd. He wrote songs like ”Death Disco,” which he says was a tribute to his late mother, and ”Rise,” an anthem against apartheid in South Africa. ”This is my international letter to the world,” Lydon says of the latter. ”It’s about decency to your fellow human beings. ’Your time has come, your second skin.’ ’You could be black, you could be white.’ ” Lydon’s songbook is eclectic: It includes the words to ”Psycho’s Path,” about serial killer John Wayne Gacy, and ”Out Of The Woods,” about Confederate general Stonewall Jackson. And in ”Deeper Waters,” Lydon documented an underwater adventure of his, when he wore an   diving suit to see sharks up close. With ”500 pounds of iron” wrapped around his head, he says, ”I could not move, not one inch. Monstrous sharks were hovering around.” Lydon says he was inspired to compile the songbook after playing a gig in China a few years ago. He says government officials there insisted on reading his lyrics before allowing him to perform. ”I thought the Chinese would be most wicked on censorship. No! Welcome arms,” he says. ”So I don’t need to yodel on about Tibet. I need to, like, sing my stuff to the peoples out there.” These days, Lydon lives with his wife in Los Angeles, near the ocean. And he’s made some changes. ”I really liked what Obama was promising and that’s when I became an American citizen,” he says. When the conversation turns to President Trump, Lydon is provocative as ever. ”I think he’s absolutely magnificent. He’s a total cat amongst the pigeons,” Lydon says of Trump. ”It’s got everybody now involving themselves in a political way. And I’ve been struggling for years to get people to wake up and do that.” As he heads off to promote his songbook at a record store, John Lydon  —   Johnny Rotten  —   bids farewell with this saying: ”May the road rise with you and your enemies always be behind you. May you scatter, flatter, batter and shatter.”"
"There’s a compelling question at the heart of a report released this week by the Metropolitan Planning Council: If more people  —   especially educated professional white Americans  —   knew exactly how they are harmed by the country’s pervasive racial segregation, would they be moved to try to decrease it? Researchers from the MPC, a   nonprofit, and from the   Urban Institute tried to create a workable formula for estimating the cost, collectively and individually, of the persistent problem in their report, ”The Cost of Segregation: Lost income. Lost lives. Lost potential. The steep costs all of us in the Chicago region pay by living so separately from each other.” The researchers analyzed segregation patterns in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country and found that if Chicago  —   the fifth most racially and economically segregated city in the country  —   were to lower its level of segregation to the national median of those 100 cities, it would have a profound impact on the entire Chicago region, including raising the region’s gross domestic product, raising incomes and lowering the homicide rate. ”Segregation is not only an issue in   communities or communities of color,” the report says. ”Economic and racial segregation has strangled opportunities for millions of people. Disinvestment has devastated entire city neighborhoods and suburban villages, towns and cities. Lack of diversity also hurts affluent communities, where limited housing options often mean that young people cannot afford to return when starting their own families, retirees cannot afford to stay and valued employees are priced out. Add it up, and it’s clear that segregation holds back the entire region’s economy and potential  —  and whether we realize it or not, it’s costing all of us.” Amanda E. Lewis, director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of   called the MPC report ”very important.” ”The findings are pretty stark,” Lewis said. ”They’re hard to ignore.” The report concluded that the Chicago region would gain many benefits from lowering its segregation level to the national median. Chief among them would be that incomes for   in the Chicago region would rise an average of $2, 982 per person per year, which would increase the earnings of the region by $4. 4 billion and raise the Chicago region’s gross domestic product, a leading measure of economic performance, by approximately $8 billion. Chicago’s notorious crime would also be positively impacted. The region’s homicide rate would drop by 30 percent, which would have saved 229 lives in Chicago in 2016. In 2010, the last year for which regional numbers are available, a 30 percent drop in the homicide rate would have saved 167 lives and saved $65 million in policing costs and an estimated $218 million in corrections costs. In addition, residential real estate values would have increased by at least $6 billion. Less segregation would also make Chicago and its environs more educated, with an estimated 83, 000 more people who have bachelor’s degrees, bringing the region an added $90 billion in total lifetime earnings. Marisa Novara, vice president of MPC and one of the report’s authors, said the MPC was trying to change the narrative around segregation away from the commonly held view that white people clustered in   communities are not touched by it. ”That has absolutely been the way our society has understood this,” she said in an interview. ”This report really changes that. It shows that it’s not true that segregation only works in white people’s favor. We all pay a price  —   billions of dollars. The way we’ve talked about segregation to this point has really left a big part of our region feeling like segregation is not their problem and they don’t need to be part of the solution. That’s problematic.” Novara said the MPC will follow up ”The Cost of Segregation” with another report that details the steps the region needs to take to decrease segregation. ”I think it’s interesting to try to say, ’Hey this is your problem, too,’” said Anne Dodge, executive director of UChicago Urban, an institute at the University of Chicago that focuses on research on cities. ”I like that the report talks collectively about the city. This is one place and we all own it, and we need to own each other’s problems and each other’s successes.” The MPC report points out that racist government policies initially created segregated neighborhoods in Chicago, when the Chicago Real Estate Board (CREB) instituted racially restrictive covenants in the early 20th century that prohibited   from purchasing, leasing and occupying housing outside of a small area on the city’s South Side. The covenants led to widespread ”redlining” by denying black communities access to financial capital and resources to purchase homes and start small businesses. That kind of institutional racism has continued in the modern era by banks disproportionately saddling   home buyers with predatory loans. At its root, Lewis of the University of   said, the issue is racism and the   white view that anything associated with black people is bad. ”This isn’t some abstract thing about the market  —   it’s because white people don’t tend to want to buy in black neighborhoods, and they are still the majority of people buying homes. It’s a   prophecy,” said Lewis,   of Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, a book about how even liberal white people make individual decisions that exacerbate inequality. ”If you don’t have the largest group in society, who happen to control the greatest amount of resources, being interested in buying in certain neighborhoods, the market forces suggest those neighborhoods won’t accrue value as quickly. It has serious consequences for middle and upper   black folks who want to be in communities with folks who look like them.” Amara Enyia, a municipal policy consultant and 2014 Chicago mayoral candidate, complained on social media that the report spent too much time focusing on getting black people and white people to live together and not enough on gaining equity for black communities. ”Yes, I believe there is a significant societal value to diversity and inclusion, but for now I’m focused on the premise of this report as it relates to the public space and public goods (i. e. education, housing, healthcare, etc. ),” she wrote. While she feels the report is valuable, Lewis, who is white, said she is disturbed that it is even necessary to make the case to white people that segregation also hurts them in order for white people to care about segregation. ”Why isn’t it enough to show negative consequences for black and brown people?” she asked. ”Why wouldn’t that be enough to motivate us? Why shouldn’t that be the driving thing that says to us, ’This is unjust.’ Having to make the case that all of us lose says a lot about our society writ large and why we are so segregated.” Nick Chiles is a Pulitzer   journalist and   New York Times bestselling author. Follow him @nickwrite."
"Now that the trees are easing into their green, many people in China have the past on their minds. The   spring holiday known as Qingming  —   or   Festival  —   is at hand. Every year around this time, typically on April 4 or April 5 on the Gregorian calendar, China honors the dead by taking a few days off and returning to ancestors’ grave sites. There, as the holiday’s name suggests, they break out their cleaning tools and get to work ensuring everything is in fine order. When they’re not flying kites on the occasion, families often place offerings of food at memorials, pour out wine and lay some budding willow branches to welcome the arrival of spring. These celebrations of life  —   lives past and life renewed with spring  —   are commonly accompanied by acts of destruction. NPR’s Anthony Kuhn notes that many people burn fake paper money for their ancestors to spend in the afterlife, often going so far as to set ablaze effigies of modern luxuries like cars and iPads. This concurrence of old and new has shaped the festival’s recent history, too. For a holiday that has evolved over the course of more than 2, 500 years, it’s modern iteration is actually quite young. The country’s 1949 Communist Revolution ushered in decades of discouragement under regimes that viewed the holiday as a bourgeois habit that needed to be stifled. It wasn’t reinstated as a national holiday until 2008, when the Chinese government set aside some time each year for people to escape their jobs, pack their things and commemorate the past. As The New York Times noted last year, though, the Communist government has maintained a particular idea of which aspects of the past ought to take precedence: ” ’Qingming is here, filling our hearts with longing,’ read the text message signed by the Ministry of Civil Affairs that popped up, unsolicited, on the mobile phones of many Chinese . .. ” ’Cherish the memory of our revolutionary martyrs,’ was the first item on the message. ’Don’t forget their heroic undertakings,’ it continued. ’Carry forward the spirit of the Chinese people. Look forward to the great rebirth of the Chinese nation.’ ” And then there’s a   way that the holiday has been changed by the decades. Even as more and more people have filtered into big urban centers, the plots of land where these city folks’ relatives remain are still in the country. Anthony explains. So, like Americans packing into cars for Memorial Day trips, many Chinese will pile into their vehicles and battle the traffic back to hometowns they haven’t seen for some time. Luckily for them, at least, they won’t have to worry about the tolls: Those little roadway annoyances are suspended for the holiday."
"Ernie Colón does a lot for a business suit. Two types of people populate The Torture Report, a new graphical adaptation of the 2014 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques under George W. Bush. There are the detainees  —   usually nearly nude in frigid temperatures, their bodies wracked with agony  —   and there are the bureaucrats at whose mercy they suffer. These men are inevitably clad in that uniform of conservatism and civilization, the business suit. There’s even a besuited silhouette on the cover, hands shoved in his pockets, radiating placid certainty. That certainty led the   members of the CIA not only to authorize the use of brutal, often untested, dubiously effective interrogation techniques throughout the 2000s, but to mislead multiple branches of government and the media about their efficacy. They also led George W. Bush to authorize the techniques’ further use. Colón and writer Sid Jacobson must have begun work on this project long before the election, and yet events have made it more timely than could have been imagined even a few months ago. President Trump takes an even stronger line on enhanced interrogation than Bush did, repeatedly saying ”waterboarding works” and equating the practices explicitly with torture. Last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein grilled Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, on apparently condoning waterboarding and other techniques. This book is clearly meant to serve the same function as the duo’s   collaboration, The   Report: A Graphic Adaptation, making hundreds of pages of documents and testimony live and breathe using    illustrations. It might seem that the topic would prove   for this treatment, given the obvious  —   if excruciating  —   visual interest it provides. But the results are mixed. This book is certainly an accessible and digestible depiction of what Scott Horton, author of 2015’s Lords of Secrecy, sums up in an afterword as ”one of the most dysfunctional and embarrassing episodes in the history of American spycraft.” But numerous flaws dampen the book’s effectiveness. Colón, an artist with   experience working at top comics publishers, seems strangely daunted by the material. His drawings alternate between operatic and muddled. He’s at his best when he’s pointing up the divide between the tortured detainees and the bureaucrats who hold them at their mercy. The former are usually   while the bureaucrats, naturally, all wear the aforementioned suits. These guys could have come out of Get Your War On, David Rees’   comic that used cheesy clip art of office workers to emphasize the absurdities of the War on Terror. They’re drawn the same way, and the irony is the same. Colón’s depictions of the enhanced interrogation techniques themselves  —   among them facial slaps, abdominal slaps, ”walling” (slamming the detainee’s head against a wall) stress positions, cramped confinement, sleep deprivation and waterboarding  —   aren’t as chilling as you might expect. The uneven quality and varying styles of the drawings keep the brutality at a remove. The most affecting representations are simple silhouettes of the men who were hung by their wrists for hours. Colón’s experiments with panel organization and    are more successful. Each page bursts with different shapes and arrangements of artwork, providing a sense of catastrophic momentum. Jacobson has distilled and arranged the material in the report to create a powerful narrative. The effect of reading, again and again, that CIA assertions about the program ”included inaccurate information” or ”are not supported by CIA records” is potent. Still, Jacobson’s own (albeit highly understandable) bias occasionally undercuts his storytelling. He keeps throwing in exclamation points and editorializing asides. When he recounts how Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury authorized the use of 13 enhanced techniques in 2005, he adds a speech bubble reading, ”Good to be back in action again!” It’s unclear who’s supposed to be speaking (or thinking) this, and it doesn’t mesh with the parts of the text hewing narrowly to the report. Despite these weaknesses, The Torture Report remains a deeply necessary book  —   particularly now, when the full report may never be made public. It shouldn’t require all the skill and passion of two experienced comics creators to bring information like this to the average reader, but such is the case in our saturated media climate. Flawed or no, this book will doubtless be a crucial resource for years to come. Etelka Lehoczky has written about books for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Salon. com. She tweets at @EtelkaL."
"If your enormous   collective takes seven years between albums, might as well return with the whole crew and then some, right? Last night, Broken Social Scene played ”Halfway Home” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert with no less than 13 musicians onstage. Kevin Drew was out front with Metric’s Emily Haines and James Shaw, and Stars’ Amy Millan and Evan Cranely. With   blazing and a horn section blaring, it was Broken Social Scene in Fleetwood Mac mode, but with lots of unexpected turns jutting out from   of euphoria throughout. Hear the studio version of ”Halfway Home” below and a Broken Social Scene concert from the NPR archives. The band’s new album will be out this fall."
"Actor and singer Jack Black interrupted a performance with his band Tenacious D to break into an a cappella version of Prince’s ”When Doves Cry.” The moment came while the band was playing the song ”Double Team” during the German music festival Rock Am Ring. Black and Tenacious D have always been a novelty act, playing ironic, overtly sexual and comically exaggerated heavy metal songs (on acoustic guitar). But the actor and his musical partner Kyle Gass are undeniably talented musicians who know what they’re doing, even if it’s all mostly a joke. Fan comments on Black’s version of ”When Doves Cry” range from ”god awful terrible” and ”garbage” to ”I thought it was moving” and ”One of our generation’s greatest entertainers.” Regardless of which side you come down on, you’ve gotta give it to the guy for putting it all out there. He clearly loves Prince . .. maybe just a little too much."
"Updated at 1:25 p. m. ET Friday, Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is negotiating with the House and Senate intelligence committees to testify about any Trump campaign dealings with Russia  —   after he is given immunity from prosecution, according to his lawyer. The Wall Street Journal first reported Flynn was seeking immunity. Flynn’s attorney Robert Kelner released a statement that said in part that ”General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.” Kelner said in the statement that he would not comment on discussions with the intelligence committees but added that ”no reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.” Although Kelner says ”discussions have taken place” with the House and Senate committees, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly reports: ”Spokesman for House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, Jack Langer, says otherwise: ’Michael Flynn has not offered to testify to HPSCI in exchange for immunity.’ A House Democratic aide concurs: ’HPSCI Dems have not received an offer to testify to the committee for immunity.’ ” California Democrat Adam Schiff, the ranking member on the House committee, released a statement saying in part, ”We should first acknowledge what a grave and momentous step it is for a former National Security Advisor to the President of the United States to ask for immunity from prosecution. ”We will be discussing the matter with our counterparts on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Department of Justice,” Schiff said, noting ”there is still much work and many more witnesses and documents to obtain before any immunity request from any witness can be considered.” The committees and the FBI are looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 U. S. elections, and what contacts the Donald Trump campaign had with Russian officials. They want to talk to Flynn about meetings he had with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. before   Trump was inaugurated and legally entitled to conduct foreign policy. They also have questions about more than $50, 000 Flynn collected from Russian entities. House hearings are on hold following criticism of Nunes for discussing the investigation at the White House without telling the other committee members. The Senate panel held its first public hearing Thursday. Early Friday, President Trump tweeted his support for Flynn’s immunity request amid what he called ”a witch hunt.”"
"Updated at 5 a. m. ET Sunday, Financial disclosures from members of the Trump administration are revealing the extent of their wealth and much of where it comes from. Beginning on Friday, the White House said it would make available roughly 180 financial disclosures for White House officials. It begins to paint the picture of just how the Trump administration is the wealthiest administration ever. Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and real estate, In 54 pages of a financial disclosure, President Trump’s    and key White House adviser Jared Kushner lists assets and debts owned by him and his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka. Pages and pages are devoted to the family’s massive real estate investments. The couple has emerged as influential advisers in Trump’s White House, unpaid to avoid triggering   rules. Kushner was cleared for the job in January, while Ivanka Trump announced this past week that she would assume an official role. Friday’s financial disclosures show that Trump’s daughter and    have assets valued at more than $200 million. According to the The New York Times, they ”will remain the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment business still worth as much as $741 million, despite their new government responsibilities.” The documents show Kushner divested dozens of businesses and investments to avoid conflicts of interest with his public service. He has also resigned from more than 260 posts at various organizations and corporations. According to the AP, Kushner’s lawyers, ”in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics, determined that his real estate assets, many of them in New York City, are unlikely to pose the kinds of conflicts that would trigger a need to divest.” In the documents, Ivanka Trump also reports a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D. C. with her share valued between $5 million and $25 million. The filing says she made between $1 million and $5 million in profit off this stake in 2016 and part of 2017. Given Ivanka Trump’s recent decision to become an official White House employee, her financial disclosures and ethics agreements are expected to be filed later. The Times reports that Ivanka Trump will maintain her stake in the Trump hotel in Washington even as she takes on official government duties. Stephen Bannon and the Mercers, Others disclosures include Steve Bannon, former Breitbart executive chairman and Trump’s chief strategist at the White House. Bannon ”earned at least $1. 4 million in the last year and held assets valued between $10. 7 million and $48. 6 million when he joined the administration,” according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal. Bannon reports income of $191, 000 from the   Breitbart News, $125, 333 from Cambridge Analytica, which analyzes election data, and $61, 539 from the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit he  . The three organizations all have links to hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, both of whom are active in funding conservative political causes, as The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer detailed. Bannon’s largest single source of income listed is just over $493, 000 from Bannon Strategic Advisors, Inc. The New York Times notes: ”The disclosure suggests that Bannon Strategic Advisors served as an umbrella company for receiving fees he earned from interests in other companies such as Breitbart News, Cambridge Analytica and Glittering Steel, a company that produced the documentary ”Clinton Cash,” on which Ms. Mercer served as an executive producer, as well as ads for Republican candidates.” Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn, the National Economic Council director who is a former Goldman Sachs president, is one of the wealthiest members of Trump’s team. He reported assets worth at least $254 million and income of at least $48. 3 million over 2016 through early 2017, according to Bloomberg. Cohn lists his 2016 salary from Goldman Sachs as $1. 85 million with a cash bonus of $5. 74 million from 2015. Adding in dividends and interest from   assets, Cohn made at least $40 million from the organization, according to the AP and CNBC. He made more than $1 million  —   there are no details of how much more  —   from dividends from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Flynn and Russia, On Saturday, the White House released two forms detailing the assets of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The first, electronically signed by Flynn on Feb. 11, did not include details of payments he received from organizations linked to Russia. Two days after that, he resigned as national security adviser after reports emerged about his meeting with Russia’s ambassador and his misleading of Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about the meeting. The second form, signed by Flynn on March 31, lists ”speaking engagements” with RT TV, the Russian   news network, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Government Security Solutions, Inc. (the parent company, Kaspersky Labs, has underwritten NPR) and   Airlines. The payments are in the section labeled as ”sources of compensation exceeding $5, 000 in a year.” Last month, NPR’s Jackie Northam reported that Flynn’s income from the three organizations totaled more than $50, 000, as detailed in separate documents released by congressional Democrats. Flynn lists an income of at least $1. 37 million on the more recent disclosure. Of that, he made $827, 055 from Flynn Intel Group LLC, his consulting firm, which has been ”inactive” since December. Trump, Pence disclosures to come later, The disclosed documents provide a snapshot of each appointee’s holdings as they took office. Many of the records showing subsequent divestitures or resignations will be released later this year. The White House says some appointees are still in the process of divesting assets. Typically, appointees in a new administration hash out their financial agreements and divestitures before assuming public office. However, the Trump administration has announced a number of appointees before these negotiations took place. Data from the Office of Government Ethics has shown that compared with the Obama administration, the Trump White House has been much slower to submit its nominees’ financial arrangements for review by OGE. As Trump has appointed numerous   individuals, the White House points out that its ethics lawyers have been working through highly complex financial arrangements. Estimates for the cumulative wealth of the Trump Cabinet by various media organizations have ranged from $6 billion to $14 billion. The release of the financial disclosure forms is in compliance with a federal ethics law that requires   executive branch appointees to disclose their financial holdings and reach agreements with ethics officials. These agreements aim to ensure that none of the appointee’s holdings conflict with his or her duties. Often, the agreements require a sale of assets, resignations from posts or recusals from handling particular matters. The president and vice president, as elected officials, do have to file financial disclosures, but at a later time. The two of them are also exempt from many    and ethics laws that apply to their staff. NPR’s Peter Overby and Tamara Keith contributed to this report."
"Since the Republican health care bill collapsed a little more than a week ago, President Trump’s White House has struggled with a path forward. Trump is dealing with   and infighting that threatens to derail his agenda, as well as nagging Russia investigations on Capitol Hill that are raising more questions than answers about his team. And Trump has a real perception problem with the American public  —   he has the lowest approval rating at this point of any president in more than half a century. This past week didn’t help matters. Let’s recap as well as look ahead: 1. They will never take away our freedom (caucus): There was continued GOP infighting over health care, including Trump all but declaring war on the House Freedom Caucus. Members of the Freedom Caucus weren’t taking it lying down: 2. GOP in a box: Trump flirted with potentially working with Democrats (”Hello, Chuck”) only to have that undermined by House Speaker Paul Ryan. ”What I worry about,” Ryan told CBS, ”is if we don’t do this, then he’ll just go work with Democrats.” Was that Ryan really just talking to the Freedom Caucus? Either way, Republicans are in a very tight corner  —   if you aren’t going to work with Democrats and you’re going to go to war with a group that, if it sticks together, can block anything you want to do, nothing will get done. Something has to give. Ryan’s posture didn’t sit well with one Republican senator: 3. Executive actions don’t equal legislation: That lack of an ability to get much done on Capitol Hill has hobbled Trump’s agenda. During the campaign, Trump made big, bold promises. So far, he has tried to follow through on them with big, bold. .. executive orders. (He’s on pace for 100 or more this year, which would be a higher rate than any president back to Truman.) This week, Trump sought to curtail President Obama’s environmental rules and appeared to soften his harsh stance on NAFTA espoused during last year’s campaign. But here’s a reality check on executive orders: they’re usually something presidents resort to when they can’t get legislation through. (See: Obama, Barack and immigration.) They’re only so useful. They have their limits, which is why presidents still need Congress. 4. High Nunes and a Burr in the saddle: The revelation that Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, got his information on the White House grounds about communications of Trump transition officials that were incidentally scooped up by lawful U. S. surveillance, undermined the bipartisanship of the committee. It has left the panel far less relevant, if at all anymore, especially with the buddy show put on by the heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sens. Richard Burr,  . C. and Mark Warner,  . ”I have confidence in Richard Burr,” Warner said in response to NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, who asked Burr if he could swear with his hand over his heart that he could conduct an impartial investigation even though he was a Trump supporter during the campaign. What a difference from the House committee, where the ranking Democratic member, Adam Schiff, has called on Nunes to step aside from leading the Russia investigation. House Speaker Paul Ryan, however, has said he has no problem with Nunes, who was a Trump transition official, continuing as chairman. The Senate committee held a rare public hearing this week and is going to be interviewing Jared Kushner, Trump’s    and adviser. Time TBD. He came forward voluntarily after it was revealed he, too, had met with the Russian ambassador and the head of a Russian bank that is dealing with sanctions after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. 5. Commander in tweet: Nunes wasn’t the only Russia complication for the White House. By the end of the week, former national security adviser Michael Flynn was asking for immunity from the FBI and congressional committees. (So far, no takers.) Amazingly, the president (the president!) was tweeting support for Flynn, saying he should seek immunity because this is a ”witch hunt.” As NPR’s Carrie Johnson has reported, Trump continues to violate lawyers’ first rule for clients: keep your mouth shut. 6. Processed responses: White House press secretary Sean Spicer introduced a new talking point for diverting questions about the Russia investigations  —   criticizing the questions as ”process,” not ”substance.” Questions like, who signed in Nunes onto the White House grounds, for example, were dismissed. On Wednesday, Spicer said he would look into it and other ”process” questions. But, by Thursday, he was firing back with this: ”No, no, no  —   no, don’t  —   please don’t put words in my mouth. I never said I would provide you answers. I said we would look into it.” That is quite the distinction. But the fact is this  —   Burr said the Russia investigation is one of the biggest he’s seen since coming to Washington. That’s 25 years. The investigation will take months, if not longer, which means the White House and the president will continue to be dogged by Russia questions, process or not, for quite some time. 7. Shake it up: Internally at the White House, there was a big departure  —   Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Walsh. Walsh, who came from the Republican National Committee, was a key ally of Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. ”Katie is, No. 1, not getting fired,” a White House adviser told a small group of reporters, per Time. The White House is spinning this as Walsh departing to launch a   group America First Policies, because, in part, it didn’t have ”air cover” when it came to the health care effort. But Axios reported that Walsh had become ”fed up with the internal ’Game of Thrones,’” and was ”treated with suspicion by some prominent West Wing colleagues.” It left some wondering about Priebus’ fate (and that of those aligned with him). ”Reince is not next,” one senior White House official told CNN. When asked at Thursday’s briefing if Walsh’s departure could mean others will be let go too, Spicer’s curt response before turning to another reporter: ”No.” Still, any time a key member of the staff exits, it raises questions about the cohesiveness of the president’s team and the confidence he has in them. 8. Going ”nuclear”? The Senate appears to be on a collision course over the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. If Democrats stand in the way, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is threatening to go ”nuclear” and eliminate the rule requiring 60 votes to advance a nominee. That would still need a vote, and there are a couple of Republicans who have indicated in the past an unwillingness to go along with that. But the odds are, if McConnell wants to do it, he’ll find the votes. If it happens, it could mean a whole new world for the kinds of nominees to the highest court in the land, which had been one of the last remaining trusted institutions in the country, but has seen declines in recent years, following Bush v. Gore and the decision regarding key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. 9. State of disapproval: Trump is stuck. His approval ratings are the worst for any modern president at the same point in a first term. His approval rating has fluctuated between the    30s to 40 percent. Compare that to where other presidents were on April 1 of their first year in office, and he’s far below where any of them were. In fact, if you look back as far as John F. Kennedy and compare the first six months of presidencies, you can see how low Trump is comparatively with this helpful chart from Charles Franklin, who runs the respected Marquette University Law School poll: Those are brutal numbers. But then again, Trump was the most disliked presidential candidate since polling began. .. and he still won."
"In the hands of Japanese netsuke carvers like Ryushi Komada, something quite mundane becomes sublime. From a simple block of wood emerges a delicate and expressive face, the sense of movement in the folds of a dress, the fine strings on an ancient instrument. A   carver, Komada is a master creator of these   pieces that are the perfect embodiment of ”necessity is the mother of invention”  —   and, in this instance, artistry. They look like miniature sculptures, just an inch or two tall. But they serve a specific purpose. Netsuke emerged in the late 17th century during Japan’s Edo period, when men wore kimonos every day. Those garments didn’t have pockets, so men stashed items such as pens, tobacco or medicines in pouches or pillboxes, called inro, which hung from their kimono sashes, or obi, by cords. The containers were attached to one end of the cord a netsuke was attached to the other, and served as an anchor, hooking over the obi. What could have been purely functional  —   like a toggle, button or zipper  —   became tiny works of art, eventually coveted by collectors in the U. S. and Europe after Japan opened up to the wider world in the late 1800s. ”They were portable, they were intriguing, they were often carefully worked,” says James Ulak, senior curator of Japanese art at the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, D. C. ”They were charming, the best of them told little stories about Japan that you could dig into forever. All of this was a collector’s delight.” Netsuke designs and motifs reflected nature and the seasons, myths and mythical creatures, theatrical masks, the animals of the zodiac, scenes of everyday life  —   in short, the themes of Japanese art writ small. Some were humorous others erotic. They were made of ivory, ebony, wood, ceramics, and could be inlaid with metals, painted or lacquered. In the Edo period’s rigid social order  —   with the warrior class atop the hierarchy, followed by farmers, artisans and merchants  —   netsuke were an acceptable way for those who weren’t necessarily of high social class  —   but had money or aspirations of urbanity  —   to express themselves. They were small, delicate things that made a ”tiny inflection statement in the overall fashion ensemble,” says Ulak. ”These were largely things worn by wealthy people . .. and could be changed in and out depending on mood or season . .. and showed a degree of wealth and a knowledge about cultural subtleties.” Komada is helping to keep the art of netsuke alive. The renowned artist and teacher has been carving netsuke for nearly 60 years. Komada and his daughter and interpreter, Makiko, were in Washington, D. C. recently to demonstrate the craft in conjunction with an exhibit of netsuke that’s on display at the Japan Information  Culture Center, until May 15. Born in 1934, Komada first learned to carve from his father, who himself learned from his father. When he was 15, Komada began to specialize in netsuke. These days, he works in a studio filled with more than 700 tools  —   he has 300 carving knives alone  —   many of which he made by hand. After the ban of the ivory trade, Komada switched to using materials such as wood, animal bone and antlers. Carving a single netsuke can take up to two months. Komada cuts, carves and shaves, often using very fine blades, explains Makiko. He must work with the grain of the wood. The work is precise and meticulous: He carves eyes, a nose and a mouth on a face that’s less than half an inch big out of wood he works details like the three strings of a Japanese shamisen, the texture of a straw hat and the string of the hat that ties under a woman’s chin. It can take up to 10 days to carve a face. ”He is always tense when he does carving of the face,” Makiko says. ”It has to be carved in relation to other parts. He moves the carving knife really slowly. One stroke can make a huge difference. If he’s careless, he can ruin it.” Even after all these years, the work still thrills Komada. Ulak, the curator, recalls Komada speaking animatedly over dinner recently about his craft. What I really enjoyed the most about him was this notion of he’s accepted serendipity, that you can go in with a plan, and then things develop as you’re carving. The wood tells you something else, or you slip here and there, and you say, well, where will this go? And so it’s not a perfect plan. And to see how that works out in a very tiny scale to me is amazing. I just love the way he talked about, the essential thing in a figural carving is the nose. Once you lay that out, everything falls into place. Everyone thinks there are these secrets and . .. ancient formula passed down through generations  —   and there is that to a degree. But the moment of taking up the carving utensils, even at 80 whatever, he described his nervousness at doing this. That’s terribly engaging, at least for me, and how he loves it. He just loves it. Komada carves only his own original designs  —   ”He doesn’t like to copy other people’s designs,” Makiko says  —   and his inspiration sometimes comes from unlikely quarters. At that dinner, Ulak learned that Komada is a big fan of Western movies of the 1940s and ’50s and of Hitchcock, Deborah Kerr, Jimmy Stewart and his glamorous, starlet leading ladies. ”He loves those faces, you get an idea of his tastes. I just had images of black and white glossies running through my head,” Ulak says. Whether contemporary or classic in inspiration, ”holding a netsuke is, in some ways, like holding a miniature world in the palm of your hands,” write the organizers of the D. C. netsuke exhibit. These days, says Takaaki Nemoto, a diplomat at the Japanese embassy and   of the exhibit, many Japanese aren’t familiar with netsuke. But that is changing, thanks to masters such as Komada and the growing interest of young Japanese artists who are less tied to tradition and fans inside the country, such as the late Prince Takamado. As for actually using netsuke in contemporary Japan, the prince had a suggestion: that they could adorn the indispensable tool for modern living, the cellphone."
"Activists in Mexico are taking aim at male riders of the capital city’s packed public transit system. They are hoping that a new, provocative campaign that includes a good dose of shock and shame will change men’s behavior toward female transit customers. Activists outfitted a subway car with nude male torso on a single seat back and prominent genitalia where riders would sit. Above the unusual bench a sign reads ”for men only.” They recorded men’s startled reactions, especially after sitting down the online video has more than 800 million hits to date. Be aware, this video contains a subway seat that you may find offensive. In a national survey conducted last year, 9 out of 10 women said they had felt unsafe riding the country’s public transportation. In Mexico City, seven out of 10 female passengers responded in a recent survey that they had been harassed on buses and subways. Mexican officials and a United Nation’s women’s group teamed up for the provocative public awareness effort. Yeliz Osman, a program coordinator with Mexico’s UN Women’s office told the New York Times, ”We wanted to target men because on a global level, the majority of programs talking about sexual violence or sexual harassment always target women and girls. We wanted to change that because we don’t think that women are the problem.” In fact, a city campaign last year sparked much criticism and derision from activists after authorities handed out whistles for women to blow when accosted. Many complained that campaign put more burden on female victims than on male perpetrators. This time around activists hope men get the message. To drive the point home, they placed a plaque on the floor in front of the anatomically explicit seat, which read, ”It’s uncomfortable to sit here but not as uncomfortable as the sexual violence women suffer every day in their commute.”"
"Before Friday night’s national semifinal game, the Mississippi State women’s basketball coach gave an unusual motivational speech. ”I will not be scared,” Vic Schaefer told his players. ”There is no reason to be scared. You are one heck of a basketball team.” The tactic makes more sense in light of the opponent:   University of Connecticut, riding a   winning streak that included a   thrashing of Mississippi State in last year’s Sweet 16. At the time, it was the worst defeat in tournament history. On Friday night, Mississippi wiped all that away, prevailing   on Morgan William’s overtime  . Connecticut hadn’t lost since Nov. 17, 2014. The Lady Bulldogs came right at the Huskies from the start, doubling up Connecticut   early in the second quarter and taking a   lead into halftime. That was just the second time all season, and the fourth time in the Huskies’ lengthy winning streak, that the team had trailed at the half. It was Connecticut that was playing scared, coach Geno Auriemma told his players at halftime, junior forward Gabby Williams said. Auriemma, making his 10th straight appearance in the Final Four, said earlier in the day that this year’s team lacked killer instinct, KERA’s Gus Contreras reported. ”They haven’t become what I hoped they would become  —   you know, like, edgy,” he said. ”They just have this attitude like, ’Everything will be fine, don’t worry about it.’ And yet they keep winning.” Connecticut recovered quickly after halftime, taking their first lead within three minutes. But that momentum dissipated, leading to a    game the rest of the way and tie scores after the third and fourth quarters. Mississippi State had a chance to win at the end of regulation, but Lady Bulldogs guard Morgan William passed up a     for a drive to the basket that was smothered by Connecticut’s Gabby Williams. A flagrant foul with less than 30 seconds left in overtime let Connecticut tie the score and have a chance for the last shot, but a turnover gave William the second chance she needed. The    William  —   hero for the second game in a row after scoring 41 against Baylor  —   ended the game with 13 points, six assists and three steals. Junior guard Victorian Vivians led the Lady Bulldogs with 19 points. Gabby Williams led Connecticut with 21 points on   shooting, as well as eight rebounds and four blocks. Sophomore guard Katie Lou Samuelson added 15 points and five rebounds. After the game Auriemma said the outcome didn’t surprise him, and suggested the team might not have been mature enough for the intensity of the Final Four. ”We talk about it all the time how hard it is to win in this environment,” he said. ”At this time of the year you start thinking about what’s at stake. Maybe we just weren’t ready for this.” He said his message to the Huskies after the game was that ”college basketball has given them a lot, you know? They’ve sent a lot of kids to the locker room over the years feeling the way they’re feeling.” In the first game of the night, South Carolina, a   pulled away in the fourth quarter to avoid an upset against Stanford, a    . It’s the Gamecocks’ first trip to the championship game. South Carolina was led by junior guard Allisha Gray, who scored 18 points on   shooting and had 8 rebounds. Junior forward A’ja Wilson, an Associated Press     added 19 rebounds and 13 points. Stanford’s senior forward Erica McCall and sophomore forward Alanna Smith each scored 14 points and pulled down more than a dozen rebounds in the losing effort. Stanford had led   at halftime, but South Carolina dominated the second half, The State newspaper of Columbia, S. C. reports, scoring 42 after being held to 20 in the first, and holding Stanford to a season low of 24   points: ”Staley said she could tell during halftime that her team would be fine. ” ’The looks in their faces weren’t looks of defeat. It was looks of, ”Ok, we’re going to figure it out,” ’ she said. ’We couldn’t play that sleep time basketball. We were allowing Stanford to put us to sleep, and we knew they were going to do that. We just had to get to halftime and make our adjustments. No matter how much we were down I felt like we were going to make a comeback.’ ” Mississippi State and South Carolina, both members of the Southeastern Conference, played twice this year, with South Carolina winning both games by scores of   and  . The title game will be 6 p. m. ET on Sunday in Dallas, and will air on ESPN."
"Welcome to another weekly roundup from the NPR Ed Team, where we lasso the latest news on student aid, school choice, and more. Trump University settlement finalized, Thousands of students are set to get money back now that U. S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has finalized the $25 million fraud settlement against Trump University. The nonaccredited series of seminars, which shut down in 2010, was advertised as a way to share Donald Trump’s expertise in real estate. Several lawsuits argued that the focus instead was on participants’ wallets. One playbook for staff members instructed them to target the financially vulnerable. ”[f]or example: are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food?” Solution: encourage them to put the expensive course on a credit card or even multiple cards. A holdout member of the class covered in the lawsuit, Sherri Simpson of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. sought to sue Trump individually. The judge dismissed her objection on Friday. DeVos on choice: like taxis vs. Uber?  At the Brookings Institution, a centrist, Washington D. C.  think tank, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos criticized her predecessor, Arne Duncan, for spending $7 billion on school turnaround programs with no discernible result. She also compared charter and private schools to startups Uber and Lyft: ”Just as the traditional taxi system revolted against ridesharing, so too does the education establishment feel threatened by the rise of school choice.” Some on Twitter seized on the remark, pointing out that Uber has been in a whirlwind of scandal lately and that her analogy left out any public options, including the bus, train or bikeshare."
"While preparing for my departure from World Cafe as   host, I’ve been looking back on the last 25 years of the show. Flip back through the calendar pages with Talia Schlanger and me as we explore some of the greatest albums I’ve spun since the show’s beginning, going all the way back to Richard Thompson’s Rumor And Sigh from 1991. Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit (2015) We fell    in love with Melbourne, Australia’s Courtney Barnett thanks to her 2015 debut   Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit. It was a collection of material from her first two EPs, with clever lyrics that managed to feel like a loose stream of consciousness and sharp poetry at the same time. We featured Barnett on a World Cafe session, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy our   love affair. So we flew halfway around the world to catch her in her native habitat of Melbourne and take in a night of music from artists on her label, Milk! Records  —   which proves she’s not only a tremendous musician, but also a powerful influencer from whom we can’t wait to hear more.  —  TS, Lost In The Dream (2014) Our World Cafe listeners span the U. S. from Anchorage to Zanesville, but for the past 25 years, we’ve made the show in Philadelphia. We try to stay unbiased and avoid ringing the bells louder for Philly bands than for other artists. But in 2014, there was no choice. It was the year the whole world was talking about a band from our backyard: Philly’s The War on Drugs, thanks to its tremendous album Lost In The Dream. The band’s third   was a masterpiece that topped some pretty prestigious   lists, including those of the New York Times and BBC Radio 6, and nailed a silver spot in the Guardian’s best of 2014. We’re told that lead singer Adam Granduciel took exceptional pains to make the album, including numerous   and   sessions. That’s to say nothing of the pains you’ll hear on the album: a bad breakup and major tour burnout wrapped in swirling psychedelia and sprawling rock. We’ve been holding our breath ever since Lost In The Dream, waiting for that next release. Until then, we’ll settle for running into The War on Drugs at the grocery store.  —  TS,  Southeastern (2013) One of the greatest rewards of following artists over a long period of time is that you grow to care for them and celebrate their successes as if you truly know them. A major cause for celebration, then, was Jason Isbell’s 2013 record Southeastern. Isbell had recently graduated from rehab, having kicked the alcoholism that had plagued his time with the   Truckers and his first few solo releases. He opened up about all of it  —   the daily struggles and the   triumphs  —   and underscored his very personal story with true Americana swagger on Southeastern. The album opens with an ode to the woman who helped save him from himself: his wife and gifted fiddler and songwriter Amanda Shires. What follows is a phoenix rising from rock ’n’ roll ashes.  —  TS, Boys  Girls (2012) Alabama Shakes’   debut, Boys  Girls, was nothing short of explosive. The band released it in April 2012 and made its first appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman a couple days later. He introduced the group in true   Letterman fashion as ”a rock ’n’ roll band from Athens, Ala.” Then Alabama Shakes played the single ”Hold On,” and Letterman lost his marbles in adoration. So did the music community  —   including the band’s new best pal Jack White, whose endorsement is as good as it gets if you make   garage rock. Boys  Girls delivered a fresh take on the   sound that seemed to sweep the   Keys rock community and introduced us to knockout lead singer and guitarist Brittany Howard, who is raw, real and totally unforgettable.  —  TS, Brothers (2010) Speaking of The Black Keys, its 2010 album Brothers was a breakthrough for the band. Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach had been at it as a duo since making The Big Come Up in 2002. After that, they tried two different approaches to expanding their sound  —   first with the Danger   Attack  Release and then with Brothers, recorded partially in the soul mecca of Muscle Shoals, Ala. What made the difference might have been the Auerbach solo album Keep It Hid in between being out of the loop seemed to energize Carney as much as the solo project did Auerbach. Brothers is an inventive leap that references many things from the past (including T. rex!) without sounding anything but current. It’s hard not to like these guys when they sound this good.  —  DD, The Suburbs (2010) How do you pick just one record from Arcade Fire’s output over the last 10 years? In a way, I selected The Suburbs because of its breadth. This album explores the concept of ”the suburbs” from musical angles unexpected for a band that had made a first impression with   bombast. Plus, these songs are just so smart and true to the reality of the suburbs that many of us experienced. Resolved: There has to be one Arcade Fire album in any overview of the past 25 years of World Cafe, if only because you’re not allowed to choose one of their live shows!  —  DD, For Emma, Forever Ago (2007) A decade ago, a very lonely man holed up in a cabin in the woods. He entered as Justin Vernon, having broken up with a great love and with a great band. And he emerged as Bon Iver, with a debut album called For Emma, Forever Ago. He released it in 2007, and his gentle falsetto and wintery nostalgia made a whole lot of lonely people feel a whole lot less lonely. A few months later, the hip folks at Jagjaguwar decided more people needed to hear the album, so they signed Vernon and   For Emma, Forever Ago on their label. Just like that, an indie darling was born, and Bon Iver has continued to unite the lonely ever since.  —  TS, Raising Sand (2007) I do remember the first time I heard an inkling of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand project: It was their version of the Roly Salley song ”Killing The Blues,” and I thought even then that it was kinda perfect. Raising Sand won the 2009 Album of the Year Grammy and spawned subsequent tours that were so popular and went on so long that both artists had to put their own projects on hold. We’ll spread the credit for this one around: Plant had the original idea, but he had to pair his voice with that of the extraordinary Krauss, and producer T Bone Burnett provided the   perspective to tie it all together. Those great artists plus perfect song selection and flawless performances equals easily one of the best albums of the World Cafe years.  —  DD, Plans (2005) Plans was Death Cab For Cutie’s leap from indie label Barsuk to major label Atlantic. It is hard to argue with the quality of Chris Walla’s production of Ben Gibbard’s songs he makes Death Cab sound warm in contrast to what had been heard on the equally wonderful but more brittle Transatlanticism. Looking back, it is also hard not to see that embracing releases like this, The Postal Service’s Give Up and so many more to follow represented an expanding vision for the music heard on World Cafe.  —  DD, Trouble (2004) I wonder if RCA Records knew what they had when they signed Ray LaMontagne back in the early 2000s. They must have known he had an extraordinary voice, but were they aware they had signed a true artist? LaMontagne, a former factory worker from Maine, was an unlikely star: a recluse put on stage and out on the road to endure countless interviews and    audiences. His voice reminds many of an American Van Morrison, and his phrasing owes a lot both to RB and to the   he must have listened to growing up, like Stephen Stills. The work he has done since this first album, Trouble, has also been extraordinary, but this album is important because it was our introduction to an artist who even then showed great maturity of vision  —   and, of course, wrote great songs.  —  DD, Come Away With Me (2002) We were invested in Norah Jones’ career well before the release of her debut album, Come Away With Me, in 2002. We’d heard about this   Texas singer first from her   musician friends then, the EPs and singles distributed in advance of the album’s release hooked us. While nobody could have predicted the unprecedented sales of this debut  —   26   worldwide  —   nobody could deny her talent after hearing her voice, either. Jones’ sound, encompassing jazz, soul and country, was easily embraced by the World Cafe audience. She complemented her   songs with a soulful delivery and sympathetic backing, and the album won an armful of Grammys in 2003.  —  DD, O (2002) Damien Rice’s O was one of the most carefully conceived albums ever released. It started from the outside, with a textured cover that seemed more like an art edition of a novel than an album. When you got to the music inside, the intimacy of Rice’s singing and that of his   Lisa Hannigan, took your breath away. Rice is from Ireland and had some early success with the band Juniper, which also contained the members of what has become Bell X1. When he set out to make O, he said he wanted to do it on his own, fearing that any record company’s intervention would compromise the art. Maybe he was right  —   you almost can’t imagine a record label sanctioning an album this personal. The opening run of ”Delicate,” ”Volcano,” ”The Blower’s Daughter” and ”Cannonball” is otherworldly. Looking back, it remains Rice’s singularly stunning achievement Hannigan, his partner in song, has now become the more prolific of the two.  —  DD, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001) Maybe you remember when, back in 2001, Wilco’s label refused to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The band started streaming it on its website instead, and in 2002 Nonesuch Records solidified its image as an artist’s label by releasing the orphan album  —   which subsequently went on to garner the best reviews of the band’s career, topping the Village Voice’s 2002 Pazz  Jop critics’ poll. That’s the shorthand version of the turmoil surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. (For the   one, see the documentary film I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.) Foxtrot was the beginning of major   changes for Wilco, leading to what the band is today. It is also a far cry from what the band was on its debut, A. M. With the intricate drumming of Glenn Kotche and the mixing skill of engineer Jim O’Rourke, Wilco’s creativity exploded. It was also the last time Jeff Tweedy and the late Jay Bennett worked together. With the benefit of perspective, this remains Wilco’s masterpiece.  —  DD, Parachutes (2000) The British band’s 2000 debut spawned four hit singles while going platinum and beyond in almost every country around the globe. Quite a start. Parachutes was the world’s introduction to Chris Martin’s remarkable voice and the group’s way with a melody. The band’s admitted influences  —   most notably the Scottish band Travis  —   were apparent, but it was an album that gave the quartet a starting point for its own sound. The critical naysayers throughout Coldplay’s career seem to have been a driving force in the band’s urge to build on each release  —   and it all started with Parachutes.  —  DD, White Ladder (1998) The success of David Gray’s album White Ladder was something that took everyone  —   including, I suspect, the artist  —   by surprise. He was one of those artists we at World Cafe had always loved but could never imagine would have wide popularity. Gray’s early songs could be tough nuggets of lyrics held close, but he opened up on White Ladder. Initial credit for the album’s success goes to the astute   fans in Ireland who took to it in a major way. (I remember that, at the time, I couldn’t believe the videos of full theaters in Dublin singing along to every song.) But Dave Matthews also heard the album, believed, and started ATO Records to release it in the States.  —  DD, Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (1998) Lucinda Williams’ 1998 album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road was a long time coming. At the time World Cafe started, Williams was our first poster girl. Her career was underway before the Cafe was born, but Car Wheels was the album that broke her out to a wider audience  —   and, boy, did she take her time until she got it right. Meticulous and   Williams wore out more than one producer, including Steve Earle. But she proved the wait worthwhile when the album emerged, its rough honesty showing through the shiny surface. It was what she had been hearing all along.  —  DD, Buena Vista Social Club (1997) The Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon  —   with the eponymous album and the subsequent Wim Wenders documentary  —   was a major cultural occurrence at the end of the last century. Ry Cooder’s 1996 trip to Havana’s EGREM studios to record African musicians with their Cuban counterparts ran into visa trouble, which led him to find overlooked singers and musicians from Cuban music’s golden decades to record instead. Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer and Rubén González turned out to be just what America was looking for. These gentlemen had heartbreaking stories to go with their musicianship. ”Chan Chan,” the classic song that began the original Buena Vista disc, has become a classic, and González’s incredible, romantic jazz stylings on piano touched hearts. It was nostalgic and exotic. It was perfect.  —  DD, Odelay (1996) In 1996 Beck’s Odelay topped the Pazz  Jop critics’ poll. The songs, the variety, the production and the sheer creativity make it our pick, too. It was the first in a string of remarkable releases that showcased the increasing diversity of Beck’s work. After the   success of ”Loser” on the album Mellow Gold, Beck took his time making Odelay. (There is even a story that the title was really ”Oh Delay. ”) The album introduced us to ”two turntables and a microphone,” then turned around and hinted at the quieter material that Beck would explore further on Mutations.  —  DD, Under The Table And Dreaming (1994) It’s hard to believe that the Dave Matthews Band was once a fledgling regional phenomenon in the Southeast. But the success of the band’s live shows and   live record paved the way to its signing with RCA and releasing Under The Table And Dreaming in September 1994. Matthews has always been a charismatic singer, but it is the interplay of this band of equals, as captured on this album, that has made DMB a  . Under The Table is packed with the songs that, even today, still get arenas packed with fans to rise as one.  —  DD, Exile In Guyville (1993) Exile In Guyville was as much a cultural phenomenon as it was an album: Liz Phair succeeded in creating an   feminist manifesto that was fun to listen to. Guyville operated on so many levels: as a shot across the bow of the   Chicago   scene, as a purported    response to the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, as an    piece of sexual candor honoring women’s lust. But none of that would have worked without phenomenal songs. Go back and listen  —   it’s not simply the lyrics that propel these songs. Did she ever equal this again? Maybe not, but it provides us with a moment to ”All Hail Liz Phair!”  —  DD, Tuesday Night Music Club (1993) Sheryl Crow made quite an entrance with her 1993 debut, Tuesday Night Music Club. The Midwestern   incorporated enough SoCal bohemianism into her aesthetic to capture the times. You see, after her overproduced first stab at a debut album was rejected, she worked on her second try with a   ”Tuesday Night Music Club,” including   David Baerwald  —   and the informality of the new arrangements served the songs well. ”All I Wanna Do,” with its Stealers Wheel nod, was a piece of poetry turned into a hit, and it got Crow’s enduring career well under way.  —  DD, August And Everything After (1993) Few debut albums made their power as immediately apparent as the 1993 debut from Counting Crows, August And Everything After. In many ways, this record and The Wallflowers’ Bringing Down The Horse were part of the last gasp of the classic   bands rooted in the ’70s. Counting Crows displayed an underlying pop sensibility, along with a knack for impressionistic pieces like ”Raining In Baltimore” and ”Perfect Blue Buildings.” The album also helped solidify the commercial credentials of producer T Bone Burnett, whose   production style helped songwriter Adam Duritz render his best work.  —  DD, Automatic For The People (1992) It’s often tough to pick a particular album from an artist that had multiple releases out during the World Cafe years. But sometimes there was one that stood heads and shoulders above the others  —   such as R. E. M. ’s Automatic For The People, from 1992. It’s the critical, as well as popular, pinnacle of the band’s career. The four huge songs that   the album, from ”Drive” to ”Everybody Hurts,” also showed the artistic breadth of the mature band. And the songs ended up being heard everywhere, from Walkmen (!) to shopping malls. It wasn’t what one might have predicted after hearing Murmur almost a decade before.  —  DD, Kiko (1992) In 1992, Los Angeles roots band Los Lobos, already five albums into a respected career, made an album that pushed the group’s creativity into overdrive. Two things happened: First of all, the band worked with producer Mitchell Froom, whose facility with tape loops and other fringe sounds became a springboard for future experimentation. You hear that in songs like Cesar Rosas’ ”That Train Don’t Stop Here Anymore,” where the loping shuffle of the composition veers off onto the side streets. And you certainly hear it on the irresistible title track, ”Kiko And The Lavender Moon.” Secondly, the creative combination of drummer Louie Pérez and guitarist David Hidalgo, who’d begun to write together on the band’s previous album, The Neighborhood, really came into their own as a team with standouts like ”Reva’s House.” The band’s explorations would continue with its next major studio album, Colossal Head, and the spinoff band the Latin Playboys, but Kiko was the junction where Los Lobos’ creativity came together.  —  DD, Rumor And Sigh (1991) After forming Fairport Convention in the 1960s and recording emotionally intense and musically dense albums with his   Linda Thompson, in the ’70s and ’80s, Richard Thompson might have seemed ready for a break. But whether it was the chance to make a   record for Capitol (remember, this was 1991, back when ”major label” meant something) or just an abundance of stellar material, something led Thompson to make a   record with Rumor And Sigh. The album’s easy production was perfect for the beginning of the   decade if you didn’t really listen to the lyrics, which were often dark and at least slightly twisted, songs like ”Read About Love” and ”I Feel So Good” would breeze right by. Thompson coiled his   guitar breaks into tight knots to fit the songs. And then there was ”1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” Thompson’s masterpiece of a modern folk ballad.  —  DD"
"Amgad Naguib is a collector of ephemera  —   the fleeting, fragile and often overlooked objects of everyday life. The old matchbooks, toothbrushes and ticket stubs  —   a few of the objects among hundreds of thousands in his collections  —   normally spill from bags and boxes in his overstuffed Cairo warehouses. But for two months, a small part of his unusual collection was exhibited at a downtown Cairo art gallery, under a title borrowed from the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk: ”The Past Is Always an Invented Land.” And it’s a strange land Naguib inhabits  —   straddling the line between collection and obsession. ”You know ephemera? I learned the word from eBay,” says Naguib, walking through the chaotic exhibit. He tells me about his collection of paper and plastic bags from the 1970s that show who was selling what then in downtown Cairo. ”It’s a mosaic of our history,” he says. A rubber rope made of the coiled tubing from World War II gas masks cordons off tables covered with random displays including old telephones, a cardboard Nativity scene, bingo cards and a disposable toothbrush in the shape of a ship. Nearby is an antique dental drill, along with glass pharmacy bottles and old pharmacy log books. Naguib cherishes the entry by a Jewish pharmacist treating a Muslim sheikh  —   a glimpse of Egypt’s lost diversity. ”One gets a sense of the chaotic nature of the collection, which is what I wanted  —   the obsession of the collector,” says William Wells, the Townhouse gallery  . ”Amgad will walk into a space and buy up 100 objects, when he really only wanted one. For instance, there is a collection of wheels  —   hundreds of them, of every different variety, that some man quietly collected. Throughout this collection, there are other collections, other obsessions going on.” Naguib finds meaning in every battered toy and scrap of paper. He lists his collections as if they were old lovers. ”I collect photography  —   I love paper and ephemera and books and magazines,” he says, searching for a vintage framed Playboy centerfold that is a particular favorite. ”As you see,” he continues, there are ”locks and keys and clothes and lighters and cigarettes and bottles. I like tiles, I like architectural pieces. Everything is wonderful. I am sure I have more dresses and hats and handbags than you and all your friends.” The only things he’s not passionate about collecting are traditional collectors’ items  —   like stamps and silver utensils. But he collects these anyway  —   to sell and pay for more obscure finds. Naguib’s grandfather was the manager of Egyptian King Fuad’s Muntazah Palace, in Alexandria, until the 1930s. Naguib, now in his 50s, wanted to be a painter like his mother, but says his grades weren’t good enough for art school. Instead, he studied commerce, but later quit his job at a bank to move to the sleepy fishing village of Dahab in the Sinai, now a diving resort. ”I moved there in 1988 and it was better than paradise,” he says. He left when Egypt started receiving U. S. government aid and installed electricity, which he says ruined the town. He then worked as a park ranger, diving the coral reefs. In the Sinai, he met an American woman, Mandy McClure, lost her address and met her again by chance at a party in Cairo 10 years later. They are now married. Naguib sometimes buys the entire contents of apartments, including the furniture and the clothes at estate sales. But what he loves most are old photographs and letters. He sifts through them, putting together the pieces of Egyptian lives as far back as a century ago. ”Sometimes I buy a collection of letters,” he says, ”three or four hundred letters, and I get to know these people and I get to love these people.” Even better, he says, sometimes years later, he has stumbled across photographs of the same people. ”You know, when I read these letters, I read Egypt’s history with no lies, ” he says. One of his finds was a lifetime of letters, journals and documents by a girl from an aristocratic Egyptian Muslim family, educated at a   convent school. She met a Sufi sheikh after her husband died in 1958. They had only been married for three years. ”So I see her in the photographs, wearing black in Luxor with her family, and then with this Sufi sheikh, and she followed him until she died,” says Naguib. ”I have the receipts to the hotels in Mecca and Medina  —   they went on pilgrimage. I have reels of his talks I found in her house. ” Visiting one of his storage rooms is like entering an Aladdin’s cave of weirdness and wonder. Cats jump from piles of paper and vinyl records near the wigs and shoes that belonged to a Greek belly dancer. Antique leather airplane goggles that seem to have been burnt in a fire hang next to a battered mannequin. Almost everything is a history lesson. ”This is a piaster fez,” Naguib says holding a     cap with a black silk tassel from the 1930s  —   one of the first made in Egypt. A nationalist ”piaster plan” encouraged each Egyptian to donate a coin  —   a piaster  —   to build factories, rather than rely on imported goods such as the hats. Naguib’s cluttered apartment in downtown Cairo contains one of his most treasured possessions  —   a rare, early photo of a young Umm Kulthum, the legendary 20th century Egyptian singer. She is leaning against a pillar. He coveted the photo for years before he could afford to buy it. As for current history, he says he watched the revolution that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak unfold from his window six years ago. ”In 2011, I wrote 15 pages about the revolution and what happened and I buried it under the parquet floor,” says Naguib, pouring a cup of coffee from a French press carafe. He envisages the journal beneath the wooden floorboards as a surprise gift to an unknown future owner. ”Because for Amgad, this would be the most amazing thing that would happen to him  —   if he were fixing something and something fell out of the wall,” says his wife, McClure, a translator. She brings out a plate of homemade blueberry muffins and then perches on an art deco chair as she rolls a cigarette. For Naguib, the thrill of discovery is as much a lure as the   objects themselves. ”When I walk into a place  —   a basement or a villa or an apartment  —   and I find a thick layer of dust,” he says, ”my heart starts beating faster.”"
"It’s creeping toward 9 in the evening, but a group of young people is still busy at the National Front party’s office in Metz, in eastern France. They’re preparing for a rally for their presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen.     Arnaud de Rigné remembers when he first became interested in the party. ”I was just 16 and I saw that there was a big problem in France with massive immigration and also globalization with no economic borders,” he says. ”And there was insecurity and places in the city where police didn’t even want to go. And for me this was a very big problem.” De Rigné knows some people accuse his party of racism. But he says he’s not racist and hasn’t seen racism among other young National Front supporters. De Rigné believes all French citizens  —   no matter their religion or origin  —   are equal. But he says France can’t take any more immigrants because there aren’t enough jobs for French people. He thinks Le Pen has the strength needed to turn the country around. ”When you are in front of her, you know that she’s the boss,” he says. ”And for us this is very, very important.” The French go to the polls to elect a new president in April and May in a   vote. Right now the number one party with young people is the   National Front. Recent polls show Le Pen has 40 percent support among French youths aged 18 to 24, a startling fact for a country that’s traditionally been known for its leftist youth movements.   miles to the west in Paris, Gaëtan Dussausaye unlocks his office door at the National Front party headquarters. The    heads the National Front’s youth wing, the FNJ (Front National Jeunesse). Dussausaye says during the last presidential election five years ago, the FNJ had 10, 000 members it’s now swelled to 25, 000, the largest of any of the political parties’ youth factions. He says it’s not hard to see why. ”We saw our parents put their trust in the traditional parties from the left and right, only to be let down,” he says. His generation had only known conservative presidents until 2012, he says. ”We thought the right had failed because there was still high unemployment and more insecurity and social misery,” he says. ”So five years ago when we had a chance to vote for the left, we did. But President François Hollande has turned out to be exactly like former President Nicolas Sarkozy, and nothing has changed.” He says only Marine Le Pen will break with 40 years of globalization, multiculturalism and savage, free market policies that have hurt France. Dessausaye’s office walls are decorated with flyers designed by the party’s youth wing  —   trendy slogans against immigration and   and support for an end to the European Union and more generous government benefits for French citizens. He also has personal pictures of Marine Le Pen  —   on a sailboat, with her cats. Dessausaye says the candidate’s personality plays a huge role in the party’s popularity with young people. She has three children of her own in their late teens. He says young people feel Le Pen understands them. ”We feel like she’s always been out among the people and hearing their concerns and not in an ivory tower like the other mainstream politicians,” Dessausaye says. ”They are completely disconnected from reality.” Political reporter Olivier Beaumont has written a book about the Le Pen family and the party it founded. He says young supporters don’t remember the days when the National Front was widely seen as a pariah, fringe party run by Marine Le Pen’s father,   Le Pen. He was convicted several times for hate speech. Beaumont says his daughter has broken with that image and tried to change the party. Another reason why the party is so attractive to young people, Beaumont says, is if you are looking to get involved in politics and have some responsibility you can advance pretty quickly, ”whereas with the traditional parties it takes years to work your way up,” he says, comparing the National Front to ”a small company looking for people to grow nationwide.” Back in Metz,    Emilien Noé is instructing the young people on their duties at the rally. Noé runs the National Front youth movement in eastern France. In 2014, he ran for mayor of a small town on the   border. He lost, but he says his campaign shook up the entrenched mayor and he had the full support of the party behind him. Noé says he used to be a socialist, but then a friend took him to hear one of Le Pen’s speeches, and that was all it took. ”I liked her right away,” he says. ”She’s an exceptional woman.” A lot of young people are leaving France to find jobs, he says, and that’s sad for a country like France. ”What attracts young people to Marine Le Pen is her promise to restore French grandeur,” he says. ”We will not only have a better economy, but she will make us proud to be French again.” The young rally participants believe France needs to get back its sovereignty from the EU so it can control its borders and its economy. That group includes    Cedric Beaufort, the son of a woodcutter who grew up in the countryside. He says he has aspirations and wants to move forward, but he hasn’t been able to find a job. Youth unemployment is above the national average in France, hovering around 20 percent. Beaufort says Marine Le Pen is the only one who can change things. ”For me there is no one who can hold a candle to her,” he says. ”All the other politicians are just blah blah. Marine is the future.” The crowd is elated as Le Pen takes the stage at the rally in Metz, where the group of young activists also congregates. Le Pen, the frontrunner in the first round in April, is set to be one of the candidates in the runoff in May. Her promises to restore French jobs, French borders and French pride are met with roars from the crowd."
"Kendrick Lamar dropped the presumptive first single  —   titled ”Humble”  —   from his highly anticipated forthcoming album on Thursday night, just a week after teasing new music with a cryptic Instagram post. The song, less exploration of contrition on the part of Lamar than an instruction to his peers, picks up a thread NPR Music first examined following that album teaser: how the ”best rapper alive” might explore the theme of God, religion and personal growth. (In the previous   single, ”The Heart Part 4,” Lamar stuck to a similar narrative: ”Tell ’em that God comin’. ”) The video was directed by Dave Meyers and The Little Homies, the former responsible for innumerable iconic music videos himself, the latter for several Top Dawg Entertainment videos, including Lamar’s most notable. Together, they produced a PSA featuring the rapper and Barack Obama last year. Lamar opens his first verse with the rhyme ”Wicked or weakness, you gotta see this,” and truer words haven’t been spoken this year. ”Humble” is packed with heavy allusions and striking imagery: Kendrick in Jesus’ seat at The Last Supper, Kendrick in a sea of black heads, Kendrick passing the Grey Poupon. The video is a gorgeous volley, and Lamar raps in a consistently clipped, monotonic manner. It’s no wonder that in its first 90 minutes on YouTube, ”Humble” generated nearly 500, 000 views on YouTube. His fourth album, still untitled, is expected to be released April 7."
"The nation learned this week that Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, have had some unusually strict boundaries around their marriage. That’s something The Washington Post’s Ashley Parker dug up in writing a profile of Karen Pence this week. As Parker tweeted on Wednesday, ”Mike Pence never dines alone [with] a woman not his wife, nor does he attends events [with] alcohol,   her by his side.” This practice, of avoiding alone time with another woman, is what some Christians call the ”Billy Graham Rule,” after the famous evangelist. And the revelation that the vice president has practiced it made for a fiery (and important) debate about the function of gender in the halls of power. Perhaps the rule is purely a couple’s private decision for protecting their marriage, some said. But then, others countered, it could easily enable discrimination. After all, it was created by men, in a   profession. (And virtually all references to the rule refer to men, not women, practicing it.) And it’s easier to practice in a profession that’s    —   like, for example, Washington politics. Were a woman to act similarly, it would probably be tougher, perhaps even impracticable, in a heavily male Congress or White House. Congress, after all, has about the same share of women right now as the clergy. Fortunately, the Internet is hard at work debating all that, so we can get to something different here: the other rules that Graham set for his ministry. Graham knew something about leadership during his career, he was one of the most (if not the most) influential evangelists in America. Indeed, he has been close with presidents of both parties, and met with all the presidents from Truman to Obama (President Trump has met him, but before Trump was president). Trump won    evangelicals in November, but his actions have, to a remarkable degree, run counter to the strictures Graham set out, in part to keep his ministry running smoothly. At a 1948 meeting, Graham and his ministry team came up with what was called the Modesto Manifesto, a set of four guidelines (including the      rule many evangelical men follow). Here’s an abridged rundown of the rules, as Graham described them in his autobiography (emphasis ours): ”The first point on our combined list was money. . .. [T]here was little or no accountability for finances. In Modesto we determined to do all we could to avoid financial abuses and to downplay the offering and depend as much as possible on money raised by the local committee in advance. ”The second item on the list was the danger of sexual immorality. We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel. We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. . .. ”Our third concern was the tendency of many evangelists to carry on their work apart from the local church, even to criticize local pastors and churches openly and scathingly. We were convinced, however, that this was not only counterproductive but also wrong from the Bible’s standpoint. . .. ”The fourth and final issue was publicity. The tendency among some evangelists was to exaggerate their successes or to claim higher attendance numbers than they really had. . .. In Modesto we committed ourselves to integrity in our publicity and our reporting.” Ironically, the current president’s actions have at times quite brazenly run counter to these rules that Graham set out for himself, and that the vice president at least partially seems to follow closely. That first guideline, about money, Graham described as being about ”accountability.” Money and accountability is one area where the Trump White House has run into heavy criticism all presidents since Nixon have either released their tax returns or summaries of those returns. Trump, however, has not. In addition, big questions still loom about the degree to which he has separated himself from his businesses, as well as how much those businesses benefit from his presidency. On the sexuality rule, as many pointed out this week, Pence follows a rule designed to help men serve their God by avoiding temptation, while the president he serves has in the past spoken  —   quite explicitly  —   about embracing that temptation (”I’m automatically attracted to beautiful  —   I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. . .. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything. ”). Trump later apologized for the remarks. As far as Graham’s third item, Trump has no ”local churches” to speak of. Still, there are echoes here of the Republican ”11th commandment,” which is heavily associated with Ronald Reagan, whom the GOP has all but canonized. This week, Trump vowed to ”fight” Freedom Caucus members. And then there is the rule about inflating attendance numbers. The White House ran into trouble on this from Day One, literally. Of course, the White House is not a religious organization and does not have to (and, plenty would argue, should not) follow the exact rules of an evangelical preacher. However, much about Graham’s rules isn’t strictly biblical. Yes, the ideas are tied to the Christian idea that people are fundamentally sinful and therefore easily tempted. But many people who aren’t Christians can still get behind ideas like financial accountability and honesty, for example. After all, a lot of what Graham was aiming for here was not only keeping himself spiritually pure, but also keeping his organization from being derailed by scandal. The degree to which Graham’s sexuality rule could reinforce gender discrimination is troubling and important to examine. But that one bigger aim of Graham’s rules  —   helping keep an office beyond reproach  —   could be applied to White Houses, too. (Of course, even some presidents who relied on Graham for advice didn’t always live up to his standards.) For Graham, those close to him say that strategy paid off. ”In hindsight, Billy Graham and people close to him would say, ’Whatever inconvenience these practices might have involved, it was worth it to protect his reputation and the reputation of the ministry, and that for   years, there was no hint of scandal surrounding him,’” said Mark DeMoss, Graham’s spokesman. ”So I think it paid good dividends. ’”"
"For runners of road races, spring is a busy season. As temperatures rise, weekend racing ramps up  —   especially for those training for this month’s Boston Marathon. It’s also crunch time for the sleuths sniffing out runners who cheat to get to that crown jewel of races. Derek Murphy is one of these   race detectives. He’s a business analyst in suburban Cincinnati and recreational runner who pores over race data to catch cheaters across the country. It’s been his pastime for about two years, and he pays special attention to the Boston Marathon. This year, race day is April 17, so he’s now in the home stretch. ”It’s a good thing I’m not a tax accountant, too, because I wouldn’t get anything done,” Murphy says. He  —   and other sleuths like him  —   use publicly available race results and photographs taken on the course to root out suspicious finishers. This kind of detective work has been happening  —   sometimes obsessively  —   for years in online running forums, but Murphy’s methods often go a step beyond. He also uses spreadsheets, algorithms and analysis to put the pieces together. ”I enjoy solving things using data,” he says. ”I’ve run 10 marathons  —   I was never fast  —   so I can appreciate the work that goes into it.” The cases unfold like little mysteries that start with a tip or clues found in race results  —   which are essentially logs of time data collected as runners cross mats placed at intervals along the course. The mats read an RFID tag embedded on each runner’s number bib. When time results are reported online at the end of the race, runners can see how fast or slow they ran, say, the first 15 kilometers or the second half of a race. The data also gives sleuths a window into whether someone ran every single kilometer or whether a runner’s times are consistent with previous finishes. One clue sleuths look for: race results that show missed timing mats. It could mean they were intentionally skipped  —   as in, a runner cut the course to get a faster time. ”If they’re missing photos on that part of the course, that’s an even bigger one,” Murphy says. Murphy’s digging is methodical, and his posts read almost like forensic reports. Even his fellow race sleuths recognize that his approach makes him unique. ”I’m the guy with the pencil and the clipboard whereas he’s putting stuff into algorithms,” says Jonathan Cane, a running coach and race sleuth in Brooklyn, N. Y. A recent post on Murphy’s blog grabbed national headlines, in part because of the depth of his sleuthing. As running stories go, it was riveting  —   and there was a smoking gun. A runner had placed second in a   in Florida but was accused of cutting the course. As she maintained her innocence, Murphy gave her race data a closer look  —   literally  —   by zooming in on the face of her Garmin GPS tracking watch in a   photo. The distance it logged was less than 13. 1 miles. Murphy analyzed tracking data she had uploaded to a social network used by athletes, noting that her cadence was ”more consistent with what you would expect on a bike ride, not a run.” He was right. She later admitted that she had cut the course  —   and had attempted to cover her tracks by biking, For this year’s Boston Marathon, Murphy has been   the algorithm he uses to help him sort through the race results. In prior years, Murphy developed an algorithm to narrow down Boston Marathon finishers to those who ran 20 percent slower than their qualifying times. This flagged racers who may have given their bibs to faster runners so they could qualify for the prestigious race. He also created an algorithm to predict finishing times, which helped him root out racers who may have cut the course. ”You look for big variances where you wouldn’t expect them,” Murphy says. Sometimes signs may point to cheating, but through analysis he has concluded it’s actually a problem with a race’s timing equipment. This year, he’s been analyzing data from races that qualify runners for Boston in an effort to prevent cheaters from ever racing on April 17. So far he says he’s identified more than a dozen runners who had registered who he suspects cheated in one of the marathon’s qualifying races. (He estimates he’s called out a total of 250 to 300 people for cheating during the two years he’s been doing this.) ”The focus is on those who cheat and use an invalid time to get into Boston,” Murphy says. ”It’s oversold. People are getting in who don’t deserve it and people are getting left out who do deserve it.” He’s been busy refining his algorithm. ”This year the algorithm will be more complex,” Murphy wrote on his blog. ”My prioritized list of runners to review will be more sophisticated. I will take into account the qualifying marathon (slow or fast course?) prior Boston results, and I also will take into account if the runner was previously reviewed and cleared. There will also be adjustments based on weather and any meaningful variations relating to age and gender.” The Boston Marathon CEO Tom Grilk told NPR by email that while some may cheat to get to the race, generally, registrants are honest and compete fairly.  ”Miscreants can be found, but their numbers are dwarfed by those who are honest,” Grilk says. ”We believe our system of collaborating with races around the world both validates and encourages this phenomenon of honest, fair competition.” Playing by the rules, Course cutting is only one type of cheating. Some runners use bibs of faster runners who qualified for a race (a practice called bib swapping). Others ask faster runners to carry their bib (called bib mules) in order to qualify for competitive races. Cane generally says he scans race results  —   mostly in New York and Philadelphia  —   looking for red flags like missed mats and highly placed finishers with high bib numbers. Low numbers are usually reserved for the fastest competitors. For example, he says, what might catch his eye is seeing a   bib number among   numbers in top 10 race results for women runners. So he types in the bib number or runner’s name into the race photograph site to look at images of the runner taken on the course  —   only discover it’s a man. ”So often times it’s not someone who cut the course, it’s someone who gave a bib to someone else,” he says. Part of what drives these race sleuths is a desire to preserve the sport’s integrity. The threshold to running is fairly low. All you need is a pair of sneakers and a stretch of road. ”Left foot, right foot, repeat,” jokes Cane, the running coach. Races have also gotten democratized, he notes. Elites and amateurs alike can register. ”But I do think that we all have a responsibility to play by the rules,” he says. ”It sets off alarms if [a runner has] won prize money and they’ve cut a course, just as it would if they were taking   drugs. And yeah, that person who’s cutting the course because ’Hey, I wasn’t having a good day,’ the purist in me is still kind of offended.” Cane suspects sleuthing may have helped play a part in reducing the number of people who cheat to get into another big East Coast race, the New York City Marathon, held on the first Sunday in November. ”It used to be that on Sunday nights I’d scroll through and see dozens of suspicious looking ones. Now they’re very few and far between,” he says. ”I don’t know if that’s a result of runners becoming more savvy and realizing ’Oh wait, I’m not going get away with this,’ or they’re still doing it and [the race organizers] weed them out before they even go live with the results.”"
"Since the Republican health care bill died recently, President Trump has been looking to shift blame for the early failure in his administration. Last week, he found an easy scapegoat  —   the conservative House Freedom Caucus, that had voiced reservations about the Affordable Care Act replacement plan from the outset. In a series of tweets, the president raised the specter of even backing primary challengers against some of the caucus’s members, and later began calling out the group’s leaders by name. But the    threats by the president are likely to have little impact in these conservative districts, where most members easily outperformed Trump and, instead, would have faced more viable primary threats from the right if they had backed the deeply unpopular Obamacare bill. ”The Freedom Caucus members all won big and they all have essentially very, very safe seats,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program, who has done research on congressional primaries. ”And they would have faced hell if they hadn’t voted against this because their primary electorates are driving this, and they are very conservative.” Throughout the recent debate over the GOP health care bill, many Freedom Caucus members stood up and said the bill was not what they or their constituents had in mind when they promised for seven years to repeal Obamacare. To them, it left too many of the problems with Affordable Care Act in place, including tax credits and subsidies and expanding Medicaid. There was a   effort from the White House to woo these conservative members to the president’s side, promising to shift control over insurance requirements to cover ”essential health benefits” to the states, but then that change caused some moderate House Republicans in danger in 2018 to threaten to abandon the bill. Ultimately, Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan lacked enough votes from both GOP moderates and conservatives to be sure the bill would pass if Ryan put it on the House floor. An analysis from Republican pollster Chris Wilson of WPA Research, who worked for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, found that support for the GOP bill, the American Health Care Act, was at very low levels in districts of Freedom Caucus members. ”House Freedom Caucus members held the line, and the data show that is precisely what their constituents wanted,” Wilson wrote in an analysis. A Quinnipiac University poll showed that the bill only had 17 percent support nationally. Freedom Caucus members won their districts last November by bigger margins than Trump, too. An NPR analysis found that the roughly 30 members of the conservative caucus won reelection by an average of almost 37 points. Trump, however, carried their districts by about 26 points. But as Trump’s tweets indicate, the key to knocking off any of these members would lie in a primary. But for these lawmakers, running to their right is almost impossible  —   and that’s the only way to defeat them. According to NPR’s analysis, they won their primaries by an average of 77 points last year, and about half of them didn’t even have a primary challenger. In fact, the bigger threat for them was if they had supported the GOP bill. Conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Heritage Action had planned to keynote the health care vote  —   meaning that if they’d supported the   bill, their cumulative conservative score would have taken a hit on the groups’ annual scorecard and given ammunition to a primary challenger. But, the groups promised they would have the backs of anyone who opposed the bill. Two   groups, Americans For Prosperity and Freedom Partners, announced they planned to establish a   fund ”to stand by principled lawmakers who keep their promise of fully repealing Obamacare.” So, there’s good reason why Freedom Caucus members have seemed unconcerned by Trump’s threats. ”If somebody can get to the right of me in the primary, God bless him,” Arizona Rep. Trent Franks told Roll Call. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Trump ally, told the Dallas Morning News that if the president didn’t stop with the friendly fire, they would stop coming to his defense too. ”If he weakens and hurts those who stood with him when our leadership was coming after him and abandoning him, we may not be around to help him during the future assaults,” Gohmert said. Michigan Rep. Justin Amash likened Trump’s threats to taunts from a schoolyard bully, telling reporters that, ”It’s constructive in 5th grade. It may allow a child to get his way, but that’s not how our government works.” There are reports and speculation that Trump and Vice President Pence could visit some of these Freedom Caucus districts over the upcoming recess to try to get back at them for not supporting the GOP health care bill. Such a move would not just be unprecedented by a sitting commander in chief  —   it would be politically unwise. The reality is that defeating an incumbent is hard work  —   it not only takes recruiting viable candidates but helping them with fundraising and campaign infrastructure.   outside groups have helped knock off lawmakers in the past, but that’s usually been when they deem the lawmaker too liberal for a conservative district. Over the past two cycles, only five incumbents have lost their primaries the numbers only typically spike in years after redistricting, like 2002 and 2012, when some lawmakers are grappling with radically different district lines or are forced into primaries with fellow incumbents because of reapportionment. On top of the political reality of primaries, Trump is also looking at a House of Representatives that is very much in play in 2018, and becomes more so every day as his approval ratings fall. Spending what little  —   if any  —   political capital he has to defeat safe GOP members would be a suicide mission that would only give Democrats more ammunition during the midterms and further drain an already depleted base. Ultimately, the political sin that Trump is claiming here of not signing onto his   bill is unlikely to be a negative with voters in these districts. Instead, it’s only likely to help the House Freedom Caucus with voters  —   many of whom may only be more skeptical of Trump’s conservative bona fides, even if they did vote for him, after his   on health care. ”I think it is, at this point, unproductive,” Wilson, the GOP pollster, said of Trump backing primary challengers against Freedom Caucus members. ”He would be far better off inviting them to the White House and crafting a piece of legislation that has a better chance of passage.” James Davis of Freedom Partners, one of the conservative groups that has pledged to help members who opposed the bill, also said he wanted to see more outreach from the White House over the issue to find a solution instead of striking out at members. ”We’re going to stand by those folks, whether it’s now or in the future,” Davis said. ”We are working together to try to find a solution.” The approach Trump has taken over the past week, by lashing out at the Freedom Caucus is, as NPR’s Tamara Keith noted, straight out of his 1987 book, Trump: The Art of The Deal: ”Much as it pays to emphasize the positive, there are times when the only choice is confrontation. In most cases I’m very easy to get along with. I’m very good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard.” But, if Trump continues down a futile road of turning Freedom Caucus members who should be his allies into enemies by backing uphill primary challenges to them, it’s the next line in that paragraph that may be the most predictive and foreboding: ”The risk is that you’ll make a bad situation worse, and I certainly don’t recommend this approach for everyone.” He goes on to say that ”things usually work out for the best in the end,” and that may have been true for Trump in business, when he was used to negotiating bilateral deals. But in a multilateral attack where he’s overmatched by lawmakers whose support runs much deeper and stronger than his, the outcome likely won’t be as positive."
"”Water was the biggest thing,” says journalist Tim McDonnell of the scene at the refugee settlement of Palorinya in northern Uganda. Since December, 146, 000 South Sudanese have crossed the border, fleeing the violence of the civil war. And without enough water to drink, they would quite literally die. He’d see them line up each day with their jerrycans to get the 15 liters of water for daily use. That’s a little less than 4 gallons  —   the minimum for daily needs according to the World Health Organization. And it has to cover drinking, cooking, washing up and other sanitation needs. By contrast, an average family in the U. S. goes through 300 gallons a day. McDonnell had come to Africa on a   Geographic Storytelling Fellowship. His goal was to cover climate change and its impact on food. At Palorinya, he saw that the simple need for water was a topic to explore as well. He made a short documentary about the challenge of getting water to hundreds of thousands of people. The film is premiering on Goats and Soda. Some of the refugees get their water from local ground wells, says Vanessa Cramond, an emergency medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, which is on the scene to aid in water distribution. But there’s not enough for everyone. So water is pumped from the Nile River, filtered to remove particles and purified with chemicals, then trucked to the settlement for 100, 000 or so of the refugees in this arid region. The drive could be up to an hour and a half. ”This is an emergency system” while ground water wells are drilled at the settlement, she says. ”Water is really life blood,” says Jaya Murphy, chief of communications for UNICEF in Uganda. ”It’s urgent to provide clean drinking water right off the bat.” One of the most striking scenes in the film is the long line of jerrycans set up at the distribution points. One of the women waiting for water is Leya Jogo, a widow in her 40s and an elementary school teacher. She has given birth to six children but only two survived. She spent six months trying to find a place to live that was safe from the violence plaguing South Sudan. Eventually she arrived at Palorinya with her kids, her mother and some children of family and friends she had informally adopted. ”When we reached here, really there was no water. You can stand the whole day, and you may not get water,” she says. ”We’re in great suffering because of water. Without water, one cannot go his or her life, especially mothers with children. That’s why I spend most of my time to struggle to the water.” Efforts are underway to create a permanent water source for Palorinya, says Cramond of Doctors Without Borders. But in the short term, the rainy season could pose new challenges for getting water to the refugees. Trucks may not be able to easily make the drive from the Nile to the camp in torrential rains. If mud slides into the river the water will need more filtering. And when puddles of water collect on the ground, children may drink out of them and be at risk of   diseases. Making the film gave McDonnell a deeper understanding of just how precious water is. In Palorinya, he says, ”You just dry right out when you’re standing there. It’s so dusty, and the idea of not being able to wash your hands or face or the clothing you’re sweating into . .. or just get a drink.”"
"Imagine you’re a military officer in World War I. Armies have grown so large, you can no longer communicate just by the sound of your voice or the wave of your hand. You need to synchronize movements of troops and artillery, far and wide. You need a wristwatch. ”The entire process of using artillery to protect folks in the trenches, as they advanced, was an elaborately timed, choreographed forward motion,” said Carlene Stephens of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who’s showing me a 1917 Elgin watch, the kind worn by many soldiers. The U. S. sat on the sidelines for nearly three years, as World War I raged in Europe. But after renewed submarine attacks by German submarines on civilian vessels, including American ships, President Woodrow Wilson called for war and Congress backed him on April 6, 1917, a century ago this Thursday. The war is best remembered for the brutal trench warfare, the millions of deaths and the failure to bring a lasting peace to Europe. But the conflict also saw a convergence of emerging technologies that would remake life on and off the battlefield. Before the war, wristwatches were worn mostly as jewelry by   women. But they become essential gear for   officers. The one at the museum has white numbers tipped with radium, a radioactive substance that makes them glow in the dark, and there’s a metal grill that partly covers the watch face. ”This guard is often referred to a shrapnel guard, so that if a soldier is out in the field, the guard protects the tender dial of the watch,” said Stephens. These watches were wound by hand, and we found one that’s still in working condition at the National Watch  Clock Museum in Columbia, Pa. After the war, watchmakers saw a marketing opportunity and soon watches became a common sight on the wrists of men and women. It’s just one small example of what grew out of the the first real technology war. Machine guns were introduced, as were tanks, radios, military aircraft  ” and chemical weapons. ”The soldiers rode in on horseback and flew out on airplanes,” said Libby O’Connell, a commissioner on the World War I Centennial Commission, created by Congress to mark this year’s anniversary. Like many historians, she feels Americans don’t appreciate the ways the war and its technology transformed this country and the world. The day after Congress declared war, the U. S. government banned private radio stations and equipment, fearing it might be misused. ”What the government does by taking over the radio industry, they pour funding into it for research and development, and were able to really fund technological advances that would have otherwise taken years,” said O’Connell. One result was the emergence of the first commercial radio stations in the U. S. shortly after the war. And these advances merged in ways no one had imagined before the war. Radio and phone communications proved vital to orchestrating troop movements along a front line that stretched hundreds of miles. Wristwatches also proved critical for pilots, serving as a backup fuel gauge. ”If you were out too long as a pilot, you didn’t make it back, because you ran out of fuel,” said Stephens. Perhaps you’ve never made the connection between tank treads and the distinctive metal wristband on some Cartier watches. But it’s straight from the war. ”That rotating wheel design is not only the way tanks will be able to cover muddy ground, it becomes the design for wristwatch bands,” said O’Connell. Louis Cartier, who founded the watch company, came up with the design after seeing France’s Renault tank. On its website today, Cartier boasts that the tank watch prototype was a gift to Gen. John Pershing, commander of the U. S. forces in Europe, before it was introduced to the public. Cartier’s Tank Americaine watch is still sold today, in more than a dozen styles ranging in price up to $67, 000. Of course, warfare and technology also collided in nefarious ways that produced mass death, most notably with chemical weapons. Christopher Capozzola, who teaches history at MIT, notes that the war came at a time of unprecedented technological innovation in the civilian world. ”Then what happens during the war is that those technologies are turned from production to destruction,” he said. ”Almost any of the new technologies that are used on the battlefield in World War I are things that had first actually been innovated in some other area of American business.” But when the war ended, the U. S. emerged as a true military power, with the world’s largest economy, a more global mindset and a new appreciation for technology. ”World War I will change everything,” said O’Connell. ”It changes the world in a way that turns it into the modern world. This will be the beginning of the truly modern era.” Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Kansas state Sen. Barbara Bollier is a Republican who has been fighting for years to get her colleagues to agree to expand Medicaid. For years she pushed against what she described as a ”Tea  ” Senate and a governor who wouldn’t consider the issue. In return for her efforts, she was stripped of her committee assignments and sidelined. But in last November’s election, the makeup of the Kansas legislature moved decidedly to the center. And last week, the state’s Senate joined the House in agreeing to expand eligibility for Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, to about 150, 000 more Kansans. ”This has been a long time and a hard road,” Bollier said in an interview shortly after the vote. The vote had reverberations back in Washington, D. C. because it came just days after Republicans in the U. S. House of Representatives failed in their effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. That failure breathed new life into efforts in the states expand Medicaid as the law allows. In all, 31 states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid after the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. The majority acted so that the expansion went into effect in 2014. A handful of states, including Louisiana and Montana, that first rejected the expansion have since embraced it. But those efforts face the same political and ideological fights that have plagued health care policy in Washington, You could hear the echoes in Topeka last week. State Sen. Ty Masterson, a Republican, urged his colleagues to reject expanding Medicaid because it was part of the Affordable Care Act. He likened the federal health law to a broken amusement park ride. ”We’re standing at an amusement park ride that’s closed. It’s broken. And we’re saying we want to go ahead and get on the ride,” Masterson said. ”There is a reason there is nobody in line behind us. Sign’s up: ’Out of Order.’ I don’t want to be first in that line. I want to get out of that line.” But Bollier says the Affordable Care Act is here to stay, and that makes taking federal money to expand health care to the poor, which has overwhelming support in the public, a  . ”I’ve never had anything like that in the legislature,” she said. ”It was just overwhelming support. Not just support begging, pleading, ’Please, we desperately need this in place.’ ” Bollier is a doctor, the daughter of a doctor and a nurse. She says getting health care to the working poor shouldn’t be a partisan issue. ”I have yet to meet a patient who comes in and says, ’I’m a Republican,’ or ’I’m Democrat, so mete out my care accordingly,’ ” she said. The law allows states to offer Medicaid coverage to people with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $16, 400 for a single adult. It also extended eligibility to ” ” adults with no children for the first time. But Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback didn’t see it that way. On Thursday, he vetoed the bill. ”It fails to serve the truly vulnerable before the   lacks work requirements to help   Kansans escape poverty, and burdens the state budget with unrestrainable entitlement costs,” he said in a statement. Brownback said he also opposed it because it allowed government money to go the what he called ”the abortion industry.” Bollier calls the governor’s’ arguments ”disingenuous.” ”He keeps claiming we just can’t afford this,” she says. ”You afford what you choose. Where you place your money is a reflection of your value system.” Now Bollier and other proponents are working furiously to change just two of their colleagues’ minds in hopes of overriding that veto  —   perhaps as soon as Monday. About 1, 200 miles due east from the fight in Topeka is Richmond, Va. When it comes to Medicaid expansion, the two capital cities are mirror images. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is a Democrat pushing his Republican legislature to expand Medicaid. ”I have had more excuses out of our Republican general assembly, none of them correct,” McAuliffe tells Shots. ”The most recent argument was this was going to be repealed. Well, now it’s not. It’s not going away.” McAuliffe says about 400, 000 Virginians could be eligible for Medicaid under an expansion. And the Federal government would send $2. 4 billion a year to the state to cover the costs. But the legislature in Richmond isn’t buying it. In a statement, Virginia’s Republicans said they’re still against the proposal. ”The House Republican majority remains strongly opposed to implementing ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion in Virginia,” the statement said. ”Virginia can barely afford our current program, much less an expansion. Every dollar spent on Medicaid is one less that can be spent on education, transportation or public safety.” McAuliffe says the barrier is political. Among Virginia Republicans, the specter of U. S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor unexpectedly losing his primary battle two years ago looms large. ”My legislature is terrified of the Tea Party,” McAuliffe says. ”That’s the only reason they’re not voting for it. Because they’re afraid they’ll get taken out in the primary, plain and simple.” So in Virginia, expanding Medicaid remains a long shot. But up north, in Augusta, Maine, lawmakers have handed the question to the people after that state’s governor vetoed measures passed by the legislature five different times. Tom Saviello is that state’s representative for Franklin County, a poor rural district where many people have no health care coverage. Expanding Medicaid would make people healthier, bring in federal money and help the local hospital that’s struggling to care for all the people who can’t pay, he says. ”To me it was a   absolutely a ” says Saviello, a Republican, in an interview. He sponsored bills to expand Medicaid in the past that were vetoed by Republican Gov. Paul LePage. Then on Election Day, a citizens group collected enough signatures  —   67, 000  —   in a single day to put the question to a referendum. Saviello says he withdrew his latest bill in order to let the public decide. ”Because we have the citizens’ petition, we’re putting it in the citizens’ hands,” he says. Polls show that 60 percent of Mainers want to expand Medicaid, Saviello says. So come November, he predicts: ”It’s going to happen. It’s coming.” James McLean from member station KCUR in Kansas City, Mo. contributed to this report."
"This weekend bicycles are ruling the road in Yellowstone National Park. Most park roads are closed until later this month, but every spring Yellowstone opens about 50 miles of its main thoroughfares to bikes only. After riding about two miles into the park I pull over for a minute and leave my bike by the side of the road. Walking about 20 yards over to the edge of the river, I can see a herd of bison on the other side of the water. They’re in a brown meadow spiked with rocks and silver sagebrush. There’s some snow on the ground, a backdrop of evergreen trees, and a couple of really huge bull bison. It’s so quiet, the only sound is the water in the river. ”We think of quietness as a resource here,” says Park Ranger Julie Hannaford. ”Silence as a resource.” Hannaford has worked in Yellowstone for 24 years. ”Those quieter experiences, just to provide an opportunity to have them, we’re pleased to be able to do that,” she says. But Hannaford also wants to make sure that   visitors know what they’re getting into. Riding a bicycle into Yellowstone this time of year isn’t something to be taken lightly. ”It’s not a zoo,” Hannaford says. ”This is a wilderness area that just happens to have a road through it. It’s a wild place where the animals and the weather and the environment are in their natural state, and so you have to be flexible and capable and willing to change your plans at any time, because things will change.” Flexible and adaptable pretty much describes the Grizzle family, who are enjoying their spring break at the park. I met them after more than an hour riding without seeing another soul. Randall and Valerie Grizzle and their two children are from Boise, Idaho. They had planned on driving through Yellowstone, but that didn’t work out. ”At first I was like, dang it! But we happened to have our bikes, and so, like, this is one of the most epic days of my life,” says Randall. ”Just to be out here, and like this whole park to ourselves is an amazing feeling.” Both of the Grizzle children, Troy and Sierra said it was an ”awesome” experience. The family was able to get up close with some of the wildlife. ”There’s some bison over there we just checked out,” Troy says. The animals were huge and Valerie says the experience was, ”kinda surreal and scary all at the same time.” And just in case the family got stuck in the park, they brought everything they needed, including bear spray and a gun. ”Yeah, we’re from Idaho, so that’s just kinda normal,” Randall says. It is legal to have guns in the park, but not to fire them. The park rangers say bear spray, which is a kind of pepper spray, is a lot more effective than guns at deterring grizzlies. Bears are just now starting to emerge from hibernation, and can be a little cranky. But most visitors never see one in Yellowstone. The Grizzle family said goodbye and got back on their bikes, hoping to complete a   round trip that day. As the weather warms up, more cyclists will take advantage of this brief,   window in Yellowstone, up to a few hundred a day on weekends. And then, on April 21, the park will throw the gates open to cars again for the summer season."
"The town of Whiteclay, Neb. has a population of 14 people. Its four liquor stores sell 4 million cans of beer each year, mostly to residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is officially dry and right across the state line. The effort to close the Whiteclay stores has spanned decades. But there’s an assault on two fronts, including one from a minister who’s looking to buy the stores. Pastor Bruce BonFleur is one of a dozen people who were appointed to the Whiteclay Task Force a year ago by Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts. Their goal was to find solutions to the long simmering conflict. ”It was about midway through that last year that at one of those meetings,” he says, ”one of the beer store owners in frustration just kind of blurted out, ’We just need to sell. I need to sell. Get out!’ ” Those comments echoed by all the store owners reflected frustration from years of protest over the sale of alcohol to tribal members. ”So when he said that, I said that to him, ’Well, if that really becomes the situation that you’re serious about, come see me,’ ” BonFleur says. ” ’I don’t have any money bags attached to me, but we do have some contacts with foundations and other groups of people.’ About four months later, one of the beer store owners representing all four drove into our driveway at our house in Whiteclay and said ’Hey, the guys have got together, and we want to sell.’ ” So BonFleur formed a   and went to work trying to raise the capital. His goal is to close the stores while helping the Oglala Sioux Tribe and revitalizing the tiny town of Whiteclay. The store owners confirmed that effort, but citing concerns over the sale, none agreed to go on record for this story. The price they gave BonFleur was $6. 3 million. ”We hope that the good people of Nebraska and whoever else hears this nationwide or worldwide whatever will say this is one way that we can end this  —   we can end this travesty,” he says. Outside State Line Liquor, April Thunder Hawk is just getting in her car. The young Lakota woman is neatly dressed in jeans and a light jacket and is carrying a small paper bag. She says that even though she stops by here regularly, she’d be happy if all the stores closed. ”It just looks depressing around here,” she says. ”It’s just horrible. I don’t like these four stores, but I still come here.” There aren’t many other options, even for snacks and soft drinks. But there are plans underway for a better future for Whiteclay. BonFleur says his friend is setting up a warehouse for donated building materials to create mini homes. And Family Dollar has announce a Whiteclay location once the liquor stores are gone. Nebraska State Sen. Tom Brewer is a member of the Oglala tribe and is the first Native American to serve in his state’s legislature. He says there are often other factors prompting the store owners to sell. ”There is charges right now against all four store owners for bootlegging and the fact that there’s been several hundred ambulance calls,” he says. ”And it just has become a terrible burden.” That burden could be lifted on Thursday when the Nebraska Liquor Commission decides whether to renew the stores’ licenses. Even if doesn’t, lawsuits are likely and sales could continue. So BonFleur will keep trying to raise the millions necessary to buy out the stores and close their businesses once and for all."
"Gilbert Baker, creator of the rainbow flag, which would endure as the symbol of gay activism and solidarity for 40 years, has died. Cleve Jones, a longtime friend and noted gay rights activist, announced the death on Twitter. Baker designed his first flag during the 1970s while an active member of San Francisco’s gay community. An Army veteran and drag performer, Baker found himself sought after for his deftness at costuming to make signs and banners for the burgeoning gay rights movement. At the time, the pink triangle, designed after the schema Nazi’s used to target homosexuals for extermination, was commonly appropriated by activists. Baker found himself dismayed by the appropriation. ”It came from such a horrible place of murder and holocaust and Hitler,” said Baker during a 2015 interview with the Museum of Modern Art. ”We needed something beautiful, something from us. The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things. Plus, it’s a natural flag —  it’s from the sky” The first rainbow flags debuted at San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978. The parade committee fronted $1, 000 for its design and construction and enlisted about 30 volunteers for the project, built at a gay community center. ”I wanted to make it at the center, with my friends —  it needed to have a real connection to nature and community, ” Baker said in the same interview. His original design included eight colored bars running horizontally, corresponding to values he believed represented the diversity of the gay community. Two colors  —   turquoise and pink  —   had to be dropped to due to the difficulty at that time of mass producing flags of that color. This compromise, however, allowed for an easily reproducible flag. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art acquired the flag for its design collection. Baker was born in Kansas in 1951, and served in the U. S. Army from  . The Army brought him to San Francisco where he found a place among the increasingly accepted and visible gay community there. During his years in San Francisco, he crossed paths with Harvey Milk, who became the first openly gay men to hold public office in 1978. When Milk’s life was turned into a biopic, Baker was tapped to design versions of his original flag for the film. Baker was 65 and died in his sleep at his New York City home."
"Updated 6 a. m. ET Sunday, A sudden avalanche of mud and water tore through the Colombian city of Mocoa overnight Friday night, killing scores of people while they slept. At least 193 people were killed, according to President Juan Manuel Santos. The Colombian Red Cross reported Saturday that 220 people are missing, and 400 were injured in the disaster. Mocoa is in the Putumayo province, along the country’s southern border with Ecuador. The   city sits between two mountains at the crux of two rivers that overflowed after intense rains, according to the Associated Press: ”Muddy water and debris quickly surged through the city’s streets, toppling homes, ripping trees from their roots, lifting cars and trucks and carrying them downstream.” President Santos visited the city on Saturday and declared a state of emergency, to mobilize rescue operations. ”We don’t know how many there are going to be,” he said about the death toll. ”We’re still looking.” An alarm reportedly went off to alert residents but wasn’t audible throughout the city. Witnesses told the AP that they felt buildings vibrate, and that many did not have enough time to retreat to roofs or higher ground. The AP spoke with Herman Granados, an anesthesiologist at the local hospital, who had worked throughout the night on victims. He said the hospital didn’t have enough blood to deal with the crisis, and they were running out of supplies. Some of the hospital workers had family among the missing. ”Under the mud,” Granados said, ”I am sure there are many more.” Colombia’s mountainous landscape and informally constructed homes make landslides relatively common when there are heavy rains, according to Reuters."
"Humans have long looked to animals for design inspiration. From basic camouflage to a quiet bullet train in Japan to the Wright brothers’ wings, the process called biomimicry is a basic tenet of human engineering. Jonathon Keats has turned it on its head. The artist and philosopher’s latest exhibit, at the Samek Art Museum at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, is a thought experiment on the selfish ways we humans innovate. The central question of the works: We steal the animal kingdom’s evolutionary inventions, so why shouldn’t the animal kingdom steal ours? ”What I’ve observed as I’ve researched these inventions is that they’re really great for us, but not necessarily so good for the species that came up with them in the first place,” Keats told NPR Here  Now host Robin Young. ”Or more broadly, that our technologies have made the world much more difficult for life on the planet aside from us.” He didn’t need to create anything new to show the absurdity of human    —   all he had to do was give our technology to animals. The pieces in his exhibit are based on actual problems, and demonstrate solutions that are technically within the realm of possibility. Take for instance, his ”GPS For Birds” model: The problem is  : Climate change is threatening bird populations because their normal migration patterns now lead them to spots where they no longer can nest safely. Keats’ proposed solution is a sort of drone magnet, which would neutralize a bird’s natural compass and create a new migration pattern that would lead them to a safer place to nest. Like a vicious innovation circle, Keats says humans create technology to fix problems caused by the technology they already have. His exhibit pushes that concept into the absurd. ”Where it gets more interesting for me is where all of this starts to fall apart,” Keats says. ”Does it really make much sense for us to have all of these flocks of drones as ways of getting birds around? Do we really want to bring other organisms into this kind of pileup of technology on top of technology that is very much the human way?” In other words, even if it’s possible, why create thousands or tens of thousands of drone GPS magnet planes, when we could just work to combat the damage to the planet that’s hurting the birds in the first place? ”This way to me seems, potentially, to be unsustainable  —   and certainly to be questionable in terms of the logic,” Keats says. His exhibit, which explores a number of other philosophical questions as well, is on display at the Samek Museum in Lewisburg, Pa. until June. You can see some of his other designs below:"
"New research published Monday adds fuel to an ongoing debate in the public health community over whether a few extra pounds are good, or bad, for you. Earlier research found that being somewhat overweight, but not obese, may result in a longer life. But today’s study in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that being slightly overweight may actually decrease a person’s life span, which is more in line with conventional wisdom about weight. So who’s right? It’s all about study design and statistical analysis. Let’s start with the newest study, headed by demographer Andrew Stokes at Boston University School of Public Health. His group found a 6 percent increased risk of dying from any cause among individuals with a history of being overweight. Although Stokes says that 6 percent ”is only a modest increase,” it’s still ”extremely worrisome” because so many Americans are overweight. ”Our findings confirm that there is no benefit of being overweight on risk of death, and indicate that [being] overweight is actually associated with an increased risk of dying,” he says. These findings apply only to those who are overweight, not to obese people. There is little debate that people who are obese are at increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers and even premature death. Overweight is defined as a body mass index, or BMI, of 25 to 29. 9, which is about ten to 30 pounds overweight depending on your height. Obese is defined as anyone with a BMI of 30 or above. You can calculate your BMI here. About 38 percent of Americans over 20 years old are considered overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 30 percent or so fall into the obese category. For their study, Stokes and colleagues gathered data on more than 225, 000 adults over the age of 50 to determine whether being overweight affected life span. They included people participating in three major studies that lasted between eight and 20 years. Stokes focused on each person’s maximum BMI over a   period, which he says makes the findings more reliable than earlier studies that have used a single BMI without regard to whether someone is gaining or losing weight at the time of the measurement. Stokes’s study was also more likely to exclude people who had temporarily lost weight due to illness. His approach is different from that taken by the authors of the 2013 study that startled many in the public health community by suggesting that being overweight could lead to a longer life. In that study, CDC epidemiologist Katherine Flegal and her colleagues analyzed results from 97 studies of obesity, covering nearly 3 million people, and found that the combined effect showed ”a slight decrease in mortality” among overweight individuals, when compared to those of normal weight. It was surprising news. ”Our article got called rubbish and ludicrous,” Flegal told NPR in 2013, ”so it really opens you to lots of criticism. I discovered, much to my sorrow, that this is kind of a flashpoint for people.” Flegal continues to stand by her results, and she criticized the new study for relying on people’s memories of their own weight. ”We know people don’t report their weight and height very accurately. Women tend to under report weight and men tend to over report height,” Flegal, now of Stanford University, says. She also says that her findings were more accurate than the new study’s findings because her work was not based on participants’ maximum weight, which might make them appear less healthy. But Stokes says Flegal’s study is ”seriously flawed” because it fails to separate the effects of illness on weight from the effect of weight on risk of disease. ”This new analysis provides a novel way of addressing this issue by using weight history to distinguish between people who were slim over time from those who were formerly heavy and lost weight after developing an illness,” he says. Meanwhile, it’s not clear why being overweight would be protective or even  . Some researchers speculate it could be that a little extra fat protects people if they fall, or that it offers an energy reserve during illness. Faced with these conflicting findings, Dr. Steven Heymsfield says people who are overweight should check with their doctor to see if they have other   health problems such as high blood pressure, blood sugar or cholesterol. Heymsfield is an obesity researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La. For people who do have those problems, there are generally effective treatments available for the conditions. At the same time, he says, people should work to prevent future weight gain and, if possible, lose weight and try to bring their BMI down to a healthier level. Stokes says future research should look at whether overweight people who diet, exercise and lose weight can turn back their risk of disease to that of an individual who never gained weight in the first place. ”Individuals should try as hard as possible to maintain weight in a normal range for as large a portion of their adult life as possible,” he says."
"A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit against Mississippi over the use of the Confederate battle flag in the state flag. A black Mississippi resident said that the use of the Confederate symbol amounted to   racial discrimination. But the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that any emotional harm caused by the flag is irrelevant, legally speaking, and doesn’t give him grounds to sue. Mississippians have been debating their flag for a very long time. In 2001, the state voted to stick with the controversial design. But some official bodies  —   cities, counties and universities, including the flagship University of Mississippi  —   refuse to fly the banner. The lawsuit that was dismissed on Friday was brought by a black lawyer who said he suffered because of the ”painful, threatening and offensive” flag, which made him feel like a   citizen. He noted that as a lawyer, he saw the flag frequently in court, compounding the pain it caused him. He cited both emotional and physical harms, including high blood pressure and anxiety. The central question was whether the man had standing to sue  —   which depended on whether he had experienced an ”injury in fact.” The appeals court didn’t deny that the flag might have a deep and personal effect on the man. They said he demonstrated that he feels stigmatized. But feeling stigmatized, they said, isn’t the kind of injury you can sue the state over. ”[E]xposure to a discriminatory message, without a corresponding denial of equal treatment, is insufficient to plead injury in an equal protection case,” the   panel ruled. The case had already been rejected by one federal judge, as NPR’s Debbie Elliott reported last month. ”U. S. District Judge Carlton Reeves threw out the case last year,” Debbie reported. ”But it’s interesting to note the words that Judge Reeves used. He’s also   . .. And he wrote that there’s no constitutional right to be free from anxiety at what he describes as a state display of historical racism. He called the Confederate emblem a repulsive symbol of the past, ’born of the South’s intention to maintain slavery.’ ” The 5th Circuit was less critical of the flag, although it did suggest that the stigmatizing effect of the flag might possibly be ”strongly, sincerely and severely felt,” without legal redress being possible. The 5th Circuit also rejected a claim on behalf of the Mississippi man’s daughter, who, under Mississippi law, will be taught ”the proper respect” for the state flag in school and learn the state pledge of allegiance to the flag. The man said that being forced to respect or pledge allegiance to a flag with Confederate imagery would violate his daughter’s First Amendment rights. The Circuit Court responded with an argument that, in a roundabout way, suggests the Mississippi flag might not be worth respecting. That is, they said ”proper respect” for the flag is the ”correct” or ”suitable” respect, not a particular amount of respect. So, they concluded, ”all that is required to be taught is the history of the flag and the respect that it is due, whatever that may be.” And that, they said, does not violate the Constitution."
"When he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, former FBI agent Clint Watts described how Russians used armies of Twitter bots to spread fake news using accounts that seem to be Midwestern   Republicans. ”So that way whenever you’re trying to socially engineer them and convince them that the information is true, it’s much more simple because you see somebody and they look exactly like you, even down to the pictures,” Watts told the panel, which is investigating Russia’s role in interfering in the U. S. elections. In an interview Monday with NPR’s Kelly McEvers, Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says the Russian misinformation campaign didn’t stop with the election of President Trump. ”If you went online today, you could see these accounts  —   either bots or actual personas somewhere  —   that are trying to connect with the administration. They might broadcast stories and then follow up with another tweet that tries to gain the president’s attention, or they’ll try and answer the tweets that the president puts out,” Watts says. Watts, a cybersecurity expert, says he’s been tracking this sort of activity by the Russians for more than three years. ”It’s a circular system. Sometimes the propaganda outlets themselves will put out false or manipulated stories. Other times, the president will go with a conspiracy.” One example, he says, is Trump’s claim that he was wiretapped at Trump Tower by the Obama administration. ”When they do that, they’ll then respond to the wiretapping claim with further conspiracy theories about that claim and that just amplifies the message in the ecosystem,” Watts says. ”Every time a conspiracy is floated from the administration, it provides every outlet around the world, in fact, an opportunity to amplify that conspiracy and to add more manipulated truths or falsehoods onto it.” Watts says the effort is being conducted by a ”very diffuse network.” It involves competing efforts ”even amongst hackers between different parts of Russian intelligence and propagandists  —   all with general guidelines about what to pursue, but doing it at different times and paces and rhythms.” The White House has blamed Democrats for the allegations of Russian interference in the U. S. election, saying the theory is a way to shift the blame for their election loss. But Watts says ”it’s way bigger” than that. ”What was being done by   in the social media influence landscape was so much more significant than the other things that were being talked about,” including the Islamic State’s use of social media to recruit followers, he says. Gabe O’Connor is a production assistant with All Things Considered. You can follow him @Galacticmule."
"The Senate Intelligence Committee stepped up its public role in investigating Russia’s attempts to hack the 2016 election, as the House investigation descended into chaos this week."
"”I never thought farming would be my venture,” says my sister, Faith. But perhaps it was her destiny. Our parents were farmers (and teachers as well) in a small farming community on the coast of Kenya, living in Mabafweni village in Kwale County. Their five children had to get up at 5 a. m. during growing season, roughly April to June, to weed grass from the fields and dig up the soil by hand to make it soft. Our parents took care of the big worries, like what to plant and how to manage the farm. Lots of Kenyans have a similar experience. Over 75 percent of Kenyans farm. Faith has a college education and works in the city as a counselor for patients with HIV at Kwale County hospital. Ever since she started working in 2009, family and friends assumed that she was financially stable. People would call her ”Sonko”  —   the name of a Kenyan senator whom Kenyans think of as a rich man. Because that’s how people thought of Faith. She has a job, so she must be comfortable. The truth was that she is struggling to meet her basic needs and those of her two sons. And no one seemed to understand that. Her problem is a too small salary: the equivalent of about $200 a month. To make a decent living in the city of Kwale in Kwale County, where she lives, a single person needs to make $500 or more a month. Faith would use her salary to pay bills. Then she’d have nothing to live off until the next payday. She tried lots of businesses to boost her income  —   selling   clothes, for example. But the businesses would fail. In a pinch, she’d turn to our mother for help. Last year, I visited Faith, who lives on a small piece of land, about a quarter of an acre. Could farming be a viable business, I wondered. Faith decided she’d give it a try. She didn’t want to bother our aging mother for help again. Being a farmer is a lot harder than when we were kids. Climate change makes it harder to predict weather, so farmers have a lot more worrying to do even before spring planting season. Back in the 1980s, when we were kids, the rains were consistent. Also, the soils were bit healthier than they are today. I remember they were dark brown, but, over the years, their color has changed to a lighter brown because the soil’s nutrients have been depleted. Farmers have repeatedly grown crops in the same soil without adding fertilizers, which are expensive. That didn’t stop Faith. She’s getting advice from an agricultural extension agent from Kwale County about the    of growing crops and how to deal with drought (the solution was buying a drip irrigation kit). Faith needed about $1, 000 to get started. I lent her part of my cash prize for winning the 2017 Emerging Sustainability award, and she took out a loan for the rest. She should be able to repay the loans when the crops are ready to sell at the market in two to three months. She’s starting small with just four crops: kale, sweet peppers, tomatoes and a smaller portion of spider weed  —   a leafy green vegetable that is generally considered a weed but that is actually quite high in vitamins and micronutrients. Also called African cabbage, it fills the role of spinach on the dinner plate. The extension agent gave recommendations for a variety of tomato, for example, that is drought resistant and less attractive to pests than other types. She bought the seeds and made a nursery to get them started, then transplanted the seedlings to her quarter acre. ”As I make the baby steps in it, I am excited and at the same time curious to see the end of it, whether I meet my target or not,” Faith told me. ”The biggest risk right now is balancing farming and working.” Since she lives close to her work place, she is able to keep up with her farm. She opens her drip in the morning to irrigate her plants and later in the evening she repeats the process. But she’s worried about what might happen: ”I am afraid once my employer gets to hear my progress in my shamba [garden] they may decide to transfer me just to frustrate me.” Of course there are risks in farming. Some Kenyans have become rich from farming but others that have continued to be poor as their small farms do not produce enough. ”The fear is making sure I meet the market demand once I start rolling,” says Faith. ”I know I will be successful because I have done all my extension officer has advised and I am open to learning. I want to make it in farming. I want to be successful badly and that urge will pull me to success.” Faith is looking forward to becoming one of the most successful woman farmers in Kwale town. And she’s already a role model. Some of the women she works with have heard about her farm and are asking her how they can start their own farms. And Faith has already learned a few lessons: that you can be a farmer even with a small plot of land. And that life is about making choices. Esther Ngumbi is a   researcher at Auburn University in Alabama. She serves as a 2017 Clinton Global Initiative University Mentor for Agriculture, and is a 2015 Food Security New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Reach her @EstherNgumbi "
"Updated at 7:15 p. m. ET.   Democratic senators have now publicly announced that they will vote against ending debate this week on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court. That means Republicans cannot at this time clear the   threshold needed to proceed to an    vote on the nomination. It also sets up an historic vote to end the Senate’s filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominees. ”If we have to, we will change the rules,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Monday as the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to send the nomination to the Senate floor. Graham’s comment came after two senior Democrats on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said they’d vote no on cloture for Gorsuch. They were seen as Senate traditionalists who may have voted yes, at least for the preliminary vote, in order to avoid what’s long been known as ”the nuclear option.” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware also announced on Monday that they would oppose cutting off debate on the Gorsuch nomination. With Democrats now able to hold up the Gorsuch nomination indefinitely under existing Senate rules, Republicans say they plan to trigger the   ”nuclear option” this week. In a complicated set of parliamentary maneuvers, it would take only a majority of the Senate to abandon the   filibuster rule  —   and with a   Republican Senate majority, the votes are there to do that. With that result all but certain at the Judiciary Committee on Monday, there was a sense of sadness that a way of life  —   indeed, a way of governance  —   was on the verge of ending.   years of escalating    politics over judicial nominations have finally reached the point of explosion, and in a sign of the times, neither side seems willing to step back from the brink. Republicans said that the Gorsuch nomination marks the first partisan filibuster in the nation’s history, while Democrats pointed to the unprecedented blockade of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, noting that the refusal to even consider the nomination for nearly a year was itself a form of partisan filibuster. Democrat Leahy, the dean of the Senate, with 42 years of service, has been privately ambivalent about the strategy of forcing the filibuster issue over Gorsuch, according to friends and colleagues. He has pointed out that the balance of the Supreme Court will be at stake if there is another vacancy in the next   years, and if the filibuster is eliminated now, there will be no such tool to fight a potentially more radical nominee next time. Leahy, however, indicated on Monday that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s promise ”to use whatever tactic is necessary to get his way, even if that means forever damaging the United States Senate” had caused him to view the current situation differently. ”I cannot vote solely to protect an institution when the rights of   Americans are at risk because I fear that the Senate I would be defending no longer exists.” Assistant Democratic leader Richard Durbin echoed that sentiment, lamenting, ”It breaks my heart to find us in this position.” Republican Sen. Graham said he hated the fact that Republicans are being forced to change the rules. But he noted that until the Gorsuch nomination, filibusters of Supreme Court nominees have been rare, and almost always unsuccessful. Moreover, he warned that the Democrats, by forcing the issue on a supremely   and highly reputed nominee, are setting in motion changes with   consequences. ”We’re headed to a world where you don’t need one person from” the opposition party ”to pick a judge.” That means, he said, that ”judges are going to be more ideological, not less.” And it means ”that every Senate seat is going to be a referendum on the Supreme Court.” At the same time, there is no doubt that while Judge Gorsuch delivered a smooth and practiced performance during two long days of testimony, he was considerably less responsive than most previous nominees, refusing even to say whether he would sustain   and accepted precedents. It was a performance that only fueled Democratic doubts about his nomination. With a ”nuclear” showdown now apparently inevitable, here’s how the rest of the week will likely play out: There’s a   process on the Senate floor. The key is a procedural vote expected Thursday to end debate on the nomination. That’s known as a ”cloture vote” and with at least 41 Democrats voting no, the motion to proceed to a final vote will fail. But at that point, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would be expected to change the rules that govern the Senate through a series of procedural votes. In the past, enough senators in the majority party have been leery of this rules change to avoid it. But it’s clear McConnell would have the votes he needs to invoke the ”nuclear option,” and while he has not specifically said he will do so, his declarative comments about getting Gorsuch confirmed this week make it clear that McConnell is prepared to make this move. If McConnell were to do so, a second cloture vote would then happen, but at this point, only 51 votes would be needed to end debate and move to a final vote. These are the rules that governed President Trump’s Cabinet confirmations, since Democrats changed cloture rules in 2013 for everything but the Supreme Court. The Senate would then proceed to 30 hours of debate, which is expected to go overnight Thursday into Friday. There will then be a final vote to confirm Gorsuch on Friday, which  —   after the rules change  —   would require only a simple majority of 51 senators. Gorsuch would be assured confirmation at that point, as he is expected to earn support from all 52 Republicans, as well as at least three Democrats  —   Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana."
"The U. S. Senate could make history this week, but no one is feeling particularly good about it. ”It is depressing I’m very depressed,” said Sen. John McCain,  . ”We’re all arguing against it, but we don’t know any other option.” The nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and the GOP blockade against Merrick Garland before him are forcing another showdown over whether to invoke the ”nuclear option” and change the rules of the Senate to make it easier for a president to get all of his nominations approved. It’s been dubbed the ”nuclear option” because it threatens to further erode one of the defining institutional quirks of the Senate  —   the filibuster  —   as well as the culture of the chamber that sees itself as more bipartisan and statesmanlike than the House of Representatives. The Senate already triggered the nuclear option in 2013 under Democratic control, when   Leader Harry Reid,  . on a   vote, set a new precedent to eliminate the ability to filibuster executive branch nominations and instead subject every nominee to a simple,   threshold for confirmation. Advocates then argued it was necessary to break through entrenched partisan warfare over President Obama’s lower court and other executive branch nominations. The 2013 precedent did not affect Supreme Court nominees because many Democrats who supported going nuclear at that time saw it as a bridge too far  —   the Supreme Court is a consequential, lifetime appointment that can span decades and shape the course of the entire nation. But that could all change this Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . has publicly promised to confirm Gorsuch on Friday no matter what, which means either eight Democrats need to side with 52 Republicans to clear the   hurdle to move forward with Gorsuch’s nomination, or McConnell will invoke the nuclear option to lower that hurdle to 51 votes to make it happen. McConnell can use the same procedural motions Reid invoked to overturn a ruling from the presiding officer in the Senate to lower the threshold  —   a simple    vote that will forever alter how the chamber operates going forward. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer,  . Y. is leading the effort to filibuster Gorsuch. ”The bottom line is very simple, and that is that (Gorsuch) did not acquit himself well at the hearings and did not impress our caucus in three ways,” he told reporters last week. Democrats are opposing Gorsuch because of his past judicial rulings, concern he would not be   about the Trump administration, and what they saw as evasive answers under questioning by the Judiciary Committee. A large part of the Democratic opposition is also fueled by lingering anger in the Senate and among the party’s base at McConnell’s successful 2016 blockade against Garland that allowed President Trump to ultimately fill a seat that was vacated under President Obama. ”It’s on (McConnell’s) shoulders and only on his shoulders” if the Senate goes nuclear, Schumer said. ”And let’s not forget, he doesn’t come to the court, so to speak, with clean hands. This is the man who broke 230 years of precedent and held Judge Garland up for a year and a half, and now is complaining.” Democrats are lining up behind Schumer. Just three centrist Democrats, Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, have announced they will not support a filibuster and will also vote for Gorsuch’s confirmation. They are also all Democrats up for   in 2018 in states that Trump won in 2016. There are 10 such senators in that position, but several others have said they will stick with the rest of their party and vote against Gorsuch. They include Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. One such red state Democrat who was thought to possibly support Gorsuch is Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, but on Sunday night he announced that he will vote against Gorsuch. That may be a strong indication of where this is headed. Manchin said his decision to vote for Gorsuch was made, in part, by concerns about what going nuclear would mean for the Senate over the long term. ”What’s the place going to look like 10 years from now, you know? What goes around comes around. People that have been here a long time know we’re going down the wrong path here,” Manchin told reporters last week, arguing that eroding the filibuster will make the Senate more reactive and partisan, like the House. ”The most unique political body in the world, meaning the United States Senate, will be no more than a   term in the House, and I don’t think anyone will want to be here with that.” While few senators are enthusiastic about the prospect of going nuclear this week, an increasing number of advocates, mostly Democrats, favor scrapping the filibuster for nominations  —   and even potentially rethinking how it’s used to block legislation. Neither the 2013 nuclear trigger nor what could happen this week affect the ability to block legislation that falls short of 60 votes. ”I’m a believer that we should change the rules of the Senate,” said Sen. Chris Murphy,  . ”I don’t think we should do it in the context of a particular legislative or confirmation fight, but I think we should stand back and have a discussion about whether we want the filibuster to be used in the way it historically has been.” But   deliberative discussion was the old Senate. This week, the country may usher in a new Senate, and with it, a new chapter in how the nation is governed."
"Updated at 3:50 p. m. ET, Russian investigators say an ”explosive device” ignited and ripped through a train car as it was traveling in between metro stations in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Monday afternoon. A second, unexploded device was found at a different metro stop. At least 10 people were killed in the blast, Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said on television. The St. Petersburg governor’s office released a statement saying that 43 people were taken to hospitals after the explosion in Russia’s   city. ”The blast happened between two stations, but the driver made a right decision not to stop the train and took it to the next station so that passengers could evacuate and the injured could be helped,” said spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, which is now in charge of the investigation. ”It is possible that this helped avoiding even more victims,” Petrenko said in a statement. The blast, at around 2:40 p. m. local time, occurred as Russian President Vladimir Putin was in St. Petersburg attending a   media forum, Charles Maynes reported for NPR from Moscow. ”Video from the scene showed chaos  —   the doors of the subway car twisted outward and   passengers scattered and dazed,” Maynes reported. ”After the blast, survivors pounded out the metro car windows and passersby pulled the injured onto the station platform as rescuers arrived on the scene.” As of   Monday, Maynes reported, Russian special services said ”that they have surveillance footage of what they say is the suspect.” Investigators now say they have issued warrants for two suspects, Maynes reported. One suspect allegedly placed the explosive device in the metro car and another is suspected of leaving the unexploded bomb. Officials said that second device was found in the metro station at Vosstaniya Square and that it contained shrapnel, according to Interfax. A photo posted by the REN TV news network shows what looks to be a repurposed fire extinguisher, its dismantled red cylinder sitting next to a sheath of ball bearings. Those details would seem to align with an emergency care official’s description, also given to REN TV, of victims who had been wounded by pieces of metal, balls and screws  —   presumably ones that had been packed around an explosive. Initially, news reports had suggested there were two explosions  —   one at the Sennaya station and another at the Technological Institute station one stop farther south. Citing Interfax, the RBC media outlet says most of the damage was limited to one car in the southbound train. TASS posted a YouTube video with cellphone footage showing people walking through a   station. In a post on Twitter, Putin vowed to take ”all necessary measures to provide assistance to those affected” by the blast. He was quoted by TASS as saying that in regard to motive, ”investigators are considering various theories, including those linked to terrorism.” The country’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, described the incident as a ”terrorist attack” in a post on Facebook. And the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation said it is investigating the incident as a ”terrorist act,” though it adds that the probe will also look into other possible explanations. The explosion happened in central St. Petersburg, which is popular with tourists, Maynes reported. He said that while authorities have not suggested who, if anyone, is responsible, there are several ”likely suspects”: ”One is, of course, ongoing problems [Russia has] with the Northern Caucasus. They’ve had several wars in Chechnya, the breakaway republic, which has essentially gone much quieter in recent years, but I think there’s a suggestion that that’s a possibility. ”More likely, though, is ISIS, frankly. Russia of course went into Syria, where they’ve been combating ISIS in theory though many say they’re also supporting the Syrian leader Bashar  .” Video posted on social media showed rescue workers rushing to the scene of Monday’s blast. An image posted by another Russian state news agency, RIA, showed a damaged metro car and scattered debris. The Sennaya station was evacuated immediately after the explosion and seven other stations were closed in the city, TASS added. Police were in the process of questioning witnesses and metro employees, according to RIA. Mourners lay flowers and lit candles at the Sennaya station, and Gov. Georgy Poltavchenko’s spokesman said on Twitter that he has declared three days of mourning. The U. S. Consulate in St. Petersburg issued an emergency message to American citizens in the city, telling them to avoid the area. ”Review your personal security plans remain aware of your surroundings, including local events and monitor local news stations for updates,” the consulate statement read. ”Maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to enhance your personal security.” This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"Let’s get something straight up front: Spain and the U. K. are not going to war over Gibraltar. That, at least, is what politicians from both countries have been carefully asserting since Michael Howard, a former British Conservative party leader, made a    suggestion Sunday that force would be on the table in some recent unpleasantness over the   peninsula. ”  years ago this week, another woman prime minister sent a task force halfway across the world to defend the freedom of another small group of British people against another   country,” Howard told an interviewer, referring to the brief 1982 Falklands War between the U. K. and Argentina, ”and I’m absolutely certain that our current prime minister will show the same resolve in standing by the people of Gibraltar.” Asked about Howard’s comment Monday, Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman made her answer plain, the Guardian reports: ”It isn’t going to happen.” May herself laughed when asked by reporters whether she’d rule out war with Spain. She told reporters the fraught talk over Gibraltar  —   a tiny chunk of land contiguous with Spain but controlled by the U. K.  —   is merely part and parcel of British negotiations to leave the European Union. Those talks formally kicked off last week, when May triggered the U. K.’s departure. ”What we are doing with all European countries in the European Union is sitting down and talking to them. We are going to talk to them about the best possible deal for the United Kingdom and for those countries, Spain included,” May said. ”Someone in the U. K. is losing their cool and there’s no need for it,” Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis also cautioned, when asked about Howard’s comment. Still, the question bears asking: Why is it that a roughly 2.   peninsula parked on the southwest tip of Europe  —   with just about 30, 000 people on it  —   has international leaders so worked up? The answer, as it turns out, can be taken in three parts: While there has been no lack of friction between the two countries over the past three centuries on the topic of Gibraltar  —   more on that in the next section  —   the point of contention that has stoked tensions lately pertains to (what else?) Brexit. Shortly after May triggered Brexit, the EU issued a   document that laid out its draft negotiating guidelines for the 27 countries remaining in the union. For the most part, those guidelines looked much as people expected  —   yet a surprising statement lurked near the end: ”After the United Kingdom leaves the union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom.” That proposed condition came as unwelcome news to British lawmakers, who widely viewed it as giving Spain veto power over any agreement on Gibraltar’s fate  —   and thus, an encroachment on British authority over the territory it has owned (despite occasional protests from Spain) since 1713. ”Gibraltar is not a bargaining chip in these negotiations. Gibraltar belongs to the Gibraltarians and we want to stay British,” Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said, according to the BBC. Likening Brexit to a divorce, he cast European Council President Donald Tusk as ”a cuckolded husband who is taking it out on the children.” May laughed off the prospect of war this time around  —   but the Rock of Gibraltar is no stranger to spilled blood. The land mass doesn’t boast much in the way of natural resources, but its position as a hinge point between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, standing between Europe and Africa, made it an attractive possession for the colonial powers. Captured from the Spanish in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, Gibraltar was ceded to the British ”in perpetuity” in the Treaty of Utrecht, the peace that ultimately brought that fight to a close in 1713. Naturally, that was by no means the end of the dispute, which has manifested itself by turns as heated words, blockades and even further violence. Later that century, for instance, the Spanish launched a yearslong  —   and unsuccessful  —   siege that bequeathed no greater fruit than a rather stirring painting by John Trumbull. More recently, Lauren Frayer reported for NPR that in 1969 Spanish dictator Francisco Franco closed the territory’s border with Spain, effectively isolating it from all but sea and air travel. Spain maintained this policy on and off for another 16 years before the border was opened again. ”For the Spanish, Gibraltar is an affront to their sense of national identity and their sense of sovereignty,” Jack Straw, former British foreign secretary, told BBC Radio 4. ”It’s a bit like having a part of Dover being owned by Spain.” But what do the Gibraltarians have to say about it? Well, even that is a tad complicated. Despite its geographical proximity to Spain, a visitor to Gibraltar would be forgiven for feeling much closer to London. People on the peninsula use British currency, pay taxes to British authorities, even boast London’s distinctive red phone booths. In fact, take away a map and the few facets of the scene that may give things away are the Mediterranean sun and omnipresence of apes  —   which, as Lauren notes, are the only ones to be found on the European continent. ”We’ve been British for 300 years, and we have a hostile neighbor. People here identify themselves at British, they feel British. The identity of this people is intimately linked to this rock,” local newspaper editor Brian Reyes told Lauren in 2014. ”Sure, it’s just a rock. But it’s a place  —   it’s a home. And it’s a pretty iconic rock.” In 2002, partly at Straw’s urging, Gibraltarians weighed in on whether they preferred Spain to share sovereignty over their territory. In that referendum, about 99 percent voted to remain with the U. K. Only 187 of people voted in favor of joining up with Spain, according to the Guardian. Still, the roughly 30, 000 Gibraltarians, many of whom commute across the border into Spain for work, voted in similarly overwhelming numbers to remain in the EU  —   about 96 percent in the June 2016 Brexit referendum. But Picardo warned that Spain should not take this in any way as an opening. ”Spain might like to use Gibraltar as a political pawn, the European Council may have allowed Spain to put this issue in this current draft of the guidelines, but Gibraltar is not going to be a political pawn of Brexit,” he told British media Friday. ”Gibraltar is going to be very prosperous and very successful and entirely British before, during and after Brexit.”"
"Florida Gov. Rick Scott is removing Orlando’s chief prosecutor from a number of murder cases in an ongoing dispute over the death penalty. Through executive order, the Republican governor is reassigning 22   murder cases from State Attorney Aramis Ayala to a prosecutor who handles a different judicial circuit. Ayala, a Democrat, is the first black elected prosecutor in Florida, and has said she will not seek the death penalty in Orange and Osceola counties, one of the largest judicial circuits in the state. Scott says he is reassigning the murder cases in the ”interest of justice.” ”State Attorney Ayala’s complete refusal to consider capital punishment for the entirety of her term sends an unacceptable message that she is not interested in considering every available option in the fight for justice,” Scott says in a statement. Scott and Ayala have been at odds since she announced last month that she would not seek the death penalty in a high profile murder case in which a police officer and a pregnant woman were killed. He removed that case from her jurisdiction as well. Ayala didn’t receive word of the latest reassignments until Scott issued his statement to the media, according to Eryka Washington, a spokesperson for Ayala. ”Ms. Ayala remains steadfast in her position the Governor is abusing his authority and has compromised the independence and integrity of the criminal justice system,” Washington says in an email. Ayala has hired an attorney  —   Roy L. Austin Jr. formerly civil rights lawyer in the U. S. Justice Department and former Obama White House official  —   and plans to fight Scott’s authority to take cases from her jurisdiction. In his executive orders, Scott says he’s acting ”in obedience to my solemn constitutional duty to ’take care that the laws be faithfully executed. ’” He cites Florida law that allows the governor to appoint a special prosecutor when it serves the ends of justice. State law does not mandate that state attorneys seek the death penalty in capital cases, but gives them discretion. Ayala took office in January, beating incumbent Jeff Ashton, also a Democrat. Her campaign was supported by a PAC with ties to billionaire liberal activist George Soros. She did not campaign on capital punishment but after taking office said she had determined through research that pursuing the death penalty ”is not in the best interest of this community or the best interest of justice.” She also said seeking death sentences gives victims’ families false hope that a killer will be executed."
"The world is doing a much better job of keeping babies alive long enough to become children, children alive long enough to become teens and teens alive long enough to fully grow up, according to a report in today’s JAMA Pediatrics. ”I think that the overall highlight of the report is good news,” says Dr. Nicholas J. Kassebaum, an author of the report by members of the Global Burden of Disease Child and Adolescent Health Collaboration. ”Without exception child mortality has improved throughout the world for the last 25 years.” But it’s not all good news. The children in poor countries who might have died as babies or toddlers a few years ago live long enough to suffer from the effects of birth defects or develop mental health problems or cancer. And increasingly, they live long enough to bear the burden of war and violence in their countries. We talked with Kassebaum, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, about how child and adolescent health has changed since 1990. First the good news: Deaths of children and adolescents to age 19 were nearly cut in half, from 14. 2 million deaths in 1990 to 7. 3 million deaths in 2015. How did that happen? A big part of that is improvement in vaccine coverage, in care for mothers during their pregnancy and in nutrition. Beginning in about the late 1980s, there was a global mobilization around the rights of the child. That brought together experts and a lot of governments saying that children should have a right to health, to education, to a life with opportunities. There was an increase in all kinds of things: development assistance, aid for HIV, immunization efforts, and efforts to help pregnant women. It was a synergistic effort. A lot of programs focused on children under five, so for the last two decades there has been enormous progress in young children not dying as much. A couple of countries stand out for the progress they’re making: Ethiopia and Malawi, for example. What have they done to bring about improvements?  Those two countries have made improvements in clean water supplies and in better sanitation practices. They’ve also taken really concerted efforts in trying to reach universal vaccine coverage. They also made strides in expanding education. Not so much health education but general education. We know that if moms are more educated, that correlates with women being more likely to be involved in the workforce, with women being more empowered in their own health care and the health of their children, and more in tune with their own nutrition and that of their families. So education is not a direct link to improved childhood health, but it sets things in motion for improved health. When children can be better protected through their first five years, what life and death challenges do they face as they grow older? The way it’s gone so far is absolutely the way it should go: really focusing on vaccines, clean water, sanitation and antenatal care. But once those are in place, and the children get older, the challenges become much more complex. You have lots of children surviving past their early years. But many of these countries may not have the necessary resources to have comprehensive childhood education. They may not be able to deal with congenital birth defects or cerebral palsy and childhood cancer and mental health disorders that start to crop up in later youth. A lot of countries are doing really well in reducing infectious diseases and providing better nutrition but haven’t gotten to the point where they can manage the more complicated cases. What kinds of complicated things happen after a child makes it safely through infancy?   It varies by location and age. In the youngest kids, a big problem is congenital birth defects, and the biggest of those is congenital heart disease, such as infants born with holes in their hearts or defects in heart valves. There’s also sickle cell disease, an inherited disease of misshapen red blood cells that inhibits oxygen from reaching tissue, in   Africa. Those kids are more susceptible to getting sick and needing care early. And then when you get to be older, pediatric cancer is a big problem. The treatment of common childhood cancers in the U. S. and Europe and Japan has been remarkable. But that has required a   health system. That’s not available in poor countries. Even a lot of   countries in Latin America have not seen improvements in the treatment of childhood cancer. Then during adolescence, you see more injuries: road traffic accidents, drownings,   and suicide are big problems. Systems are not in place to deal with immediate injuries. When girls get into adolescence, they start getting pregnant. Early teen pregnancy is still common in the developing world.   death is one of the biggest risks in adolescent females. Were there surprising findings in the report?  One thing that flies under the radar is the effect of war. In the Middle East, the biggest cause of death for all kids over the age of 5 in 2015 was the effects of war. [According to the report, ”The direct mortality burden of war was extremely large in North Africa and the Middle East, where it ranked second for each sex among children aged 1 to 4 years and first in all subsequent age groups in 2015. ”] Then there are the   effects of war: PTSD, some injuries that affect children for the rest of their lives and the consequences of families being separated. What’s the purpose of a report like this, looking at the global health of children over time? It’s a kind of report card. For the last two decades, enormous progress has been made. Children under five are not dying as much. But you have to think of childhood and adolescence as a continuum. We have to continue to address the health challenges of all children and adolescents."
"The NHL won’t be pausing its season to allow players to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics, officials announced on Monday. Many pro players have expressed a desire to compete in the Games at Pyeongchang, South Korea. But the league says it doesn’t see a benefit to the sport  —   and does see a risk of injuries. The NHL has allowed players to participate in every Olympic Games since 1998. Perhaps unsurprisingly, disputes over money played a role in the decision not to continue. The International Olympic Committee has previously paid for players to travel to the Olympics, and covered their insurance costs. But the IOC wasn’t planning to foot the bill for 2018. The International Ice Hockey Federation offered to cover the costs instead. But one NHL writer says ”there was concern the funds would come from assets that would otherwise be used to grow the game at the grassroots level.” The Associated Press, meanwhile, reports that ”the NHL had been looking for more concessions that were believed to include marketing opportunities tied to the Games.” Some of the world’s top hockey players have sent ”clear signs” that they want to compete at the Olympics, the AP reports. After the NHL announced its decision, one former NHL player tweeted, ”way to ruin the sport of hockey even more Gary”  —   that is, Commissioner Gary Bettman. NHL columnist Nicholas J. Cotsonika acknowledged that ”the players wanted to go,” in a column expressing support for the decision. He said that the NHL has been ”lending its players to someone else’s tournament,” without getting any boost in ratings or revenue. ”The NHL did it without the Olympics for 80 years and will do so again,” Cotsonika wrote. (Cotsonika also writes that the players’ Olympics careers were essentially subsidized by their NHL salaries. That’s a point that came up obliquely in a recent dispute between the women’s national hockey team and USA Hockey, where the women  —   who don’t have the benefit of hefty NHL checks  —   noted how poorly they were compensated for their Olympic efforts.) ESPN notes that the announcement might not be the end of the conversation: ”Some players, including Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin, have said they would play in the Olympics regardless of whether the league was formally committed or not. The league did not address this issue in its release, but league officials expect players to fulfill their contractual commitments to play with their respective clubs.”"
"As President Trump moves to fulfill his campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally, they’ll most likely include Mexicans whose children were born in the U. S.. Over half a million of these kids are already in Mexico. Researchers call them ”los invisibles” the invisible ones, because they often end up in an educational limbo of sorts. Most don’t read or write in Spanish, so they’re held back. Many get discouraged and stop going to school. In some cases schools even refuse to enroll them. In the border city of Tijuana, however, there’s a model program designed to help these children. At 20 de Noviembre Elementary, for example, roughly   of the school’s 700 students were born in the U. S. Administrators and teachers here have embraced kids like Anthony David Martinez, a skinny    who recently arrived from Barstow, Calif. That’s where he was born. Anthony could have stayed in California because he’s a U. S. citizen, but his parents are not. They were forced to return to Mexico and didn’t want to split up the family. ”I was like, ’Oh no, I’m going to have to make new friends, new school, new everything,’ ” says Anthony. ”But now I’m happy here.” Anthony’s   teacher says his Spanish is ”a work in progress,” but he has learned how to read and write in Spanish fairly quickly. It wasn’t easy switching from English to Spanish in class or when doing his homework, says Anthony. He’s still not used to saying the name of his school in English  —   20 November. ”It’s kind of weird,” he chuckles. At 20 de Noviembre, children like Anthony are not segregated or put in some corner of the school. They’re paired with native   and they get lots of    tutoring to build their vocabulary and grammar in Spanish. To keep them from feeling frustrated or isolated, they’re allowed to mingle with other   kids during the day so it’s not uncommon to hear English at recess or lunch. There’s no stigma to speaking English because it’s a highly prized skill in Mexican schools. Researchers say this is the model for how schools should treat and teach the half million U. S.  students who’ve enrolled throughout Mexico. It has become more urgent because their numbers are growing, says Amparo Lopez, a state coordinator with Baja California’s Department of Education. This school year alone, she says, more than 12, 000 students from all parts of the U. S. enrolled in schools across the state. That’s on top of the 58, 000 who were already here. Only the border state of Chihuahua has received more. Lopez says the surge began in 2006 with a sharp increase in deportations, followed by even bigger increases during the Obama administration. And it wasn’t just because people were being deported. Many Mexican immigrants working illegally in the U. S. returned on their own because they lost their job during the recession. Today, many of these families are struggling in Mexico, and their kids are feeling the stress in school. In Tijuana, school officials have been quick to identify those who need the most help. Recent arrivals are invited to meet with tutors and counselors at the school district’s offices at least once a week. It has been especially helpful for kids like    Julian Sanchez. He’s a U. S. citizen born in Los Angeles. His mom and dad had crossed into the U. S. illegally before he was born. They were recently deported and Julian had no choice but to come to Tijuana with them. He does not speak Spanish. ”I don’t know, like, how to read it or write it,” says Julian. His mother, Araceli Sanchez, says she tries to help him with his schoolwork in Spanish, but he’s still struggling to learn the language. ”At least here,” she says, ”with the help of tutors he’s learning more words and proper grammar.” But counselors say these kids need a lot more than that. Their   is really low when they arrive. Most are deeply sad about leaving their homes in the U. S. and schools don’t always know how to help them. Which brings us back to    Anthony and 20 de Noviembre Elementary in Tijuana. Anthony is thriving because he gets so much academic and emotional support. It’s the reason his Spanish has improved so quickly. But there’s something else about Anthony. He seems to be learning a lot about himself and the world he left behind in California. ”I was never white when I was in Barstow,” he says. ”I was always brown.” Now, he adds, ”I see myself more Mexican. I belong in Mexico. This is my home.” Anthony isn’t sure when he’ll return to the U. S. but says he wants to, some day, because it’s home, too. He is, after all, a U. S. citizen by birth."
"The pharmaceutical company Mylan NV announced a recall of some   EpiPen and EpiPen Jr.   on Friday. The announcement followed a separate recall of about 80, 000 EpiPens from the Australian market, which the company announced in March. Mylan did not immediately respond to a request for information about how many EpiPens are affected by the latest recall. The company said in a press release that the recall affecting the U. S. was prompted by two cases outside the U. S. in which consumers had trouble activating their EpiPens due to a ”potential defect in a supplier component.” In those cases, the company said the EpiPen was difficult to activate or couldn’t be activated at all, which could be bad news for someone experiencing a   allergic reaction. Epinephrine   are portable and easy to use, making them a   for anyone with a serious allergy, as we have reported. The EpiPens being recalled were distributed between December 2015 and July 2016. The Food and Drug Administration released a statement on Friday saying that the recall is being driven by ”the potential for   risk if a severe allergic reaction goes untreated.” Even if an EpiPen is included in the recall, the FDA is instructing consumers to keep and use the recalled   until their replacements arrive, adding that ”consumers should always seek emergency medical help right away after using their EpiPens, particularly if the device did not activate.” Mylan is directing consumers to their website to see if an EpiPen should be replaced, and for instructions on how to do so. Meridian Medical Technologies manufactures the EpiPen, which is distributed by Mylan. The price of the EpiPen has increased nearly fivefold in the past ten years. EpiPens were available for $47 in 2007. As NPR’s Alison Kodjak reported last year, the price shot up to $284 in 2016, and because the   were only available in pairs, the cost to fill an EpiPen prescription at Walgreens was about $634 as of August 2016. To address criticism of the price increase, last December Mylan introduced the generic EpiPen at $300, half the cost of the   alternative. They have also offered coupons in the past to reduce    EpiPen costs. Generic EpiPens are not included in this recent recall. According to the website GoodRX, the average retail price of a pair of EpiPens is now about $330. Last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services accused Mylan of misclassifying EpiPens and charging the government too much for Medicaid patients who used the  . The company settled for $465 million with the U. S. Justice Department along with other government agencies. This isn’t the first time an epinephrine   has been pulled from the shelves. In 2015, EpiPen competitor   was taken off the market after it was found to administer an unreliable dose of epinephrine. Now,   is available again, and its maker, the   drugmaker Kaleo Pharmaceuticals, says all commercially insured patients can pay nothing out of pocket for the  ."
"Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a laboratory? People in Pittsburgh could tell you it’s not so bad. They’ve been sharing city streets with Uber’s experimental   cars since last September. Six months in, no one has been hurt and there have been no major accidents. Plus, the project is bringing in investments and boosting the city’s reputation as a tech hub. While there are only a handful of autonomous vehicles climbing Pittsburgh’s hills, crossing its many bridges and boring through its tunnels, Uber says it’s learning what a tough, old city like this one can teach the   company. Uber also tests cars in Arizona, but on terrain that’s less challenging. Even so, last month a   car smashed into an Uber   car and tipped it on its side. After a brief suspension, Uber’s   vehicles were back on the road. ”It’s still very early in what we’re doing, but it’s going very well,” says Uber’s Emily Duff Bartel. One reason may be that each autonomous vehicle comes with two Uber employees in the front seat. Just in case. One is ready to grab the wheel and apply a foot to the brake pedal. The other, in the passenger seat, has a computer screen showing what the car’s rooftop   radar is seeing. ”Their primary focus is 100 percent of their time to be monitoring the system,” Bartel says. Last month, Recode reported that, on average, these Uber autonomous vehicles required a human operator to intervene in the driving every 0. 8 mile. When NPR took a short spin in one of the Uber vehicles, the car behaved like a very cautious driver, stopping for a full three seconds at stop signs and never going above the speed limit. The Uber humans had to take to get around a bulky, parked   and to get the car into and out of the Uber parking lot. When this testing began, Mayor William Peduto showered praise on the company. Over the six months, he’s become a bit more critical because he thinks Uber is not sharing what it’s learning. ”If we were able to utilize what Uber has and enhance it, we could create not only a more efficient traffic system in the city of Pittsburgh, but a much, much safer system,” Peduto says. He would like to have data on potholes, where pinch points are and what traffic patterns are. Nonetheless, he’s happy for the investment the company has made in the city. City Councilman Corey O’Connor is happy, too. Uber’s   test facility is in his district. Its facility is located in an old industrial site. ”That’s important because now that site has become a worldwide site,” O’Connor says. Another happy Pittsburgh institution is Carnegie Mellon University. At first, when Uber scooped up dozens of faculty members to work on the   car project, the school had to scramble. But the benefits soon outweighed the loss. ”That fact that Uber is out here investing megabucks makes the region very attractive,” says Carnegie Mellon electrical and computer engineering professor Raj Rajkumar. ”It retains our graduates  —   a brain drain from Pittsburgh to Pittsburgh.” Another positive report comes from bicyclists. Scott Bricker, executive director of Bike Pittsburgh, says members of his group feel a lot more comfortable around autonomous vehicles than human drivers. ”They can guarantee that the [autonomous vehicle] is not inebriated, that it is not programmed to drive aggressively,” he says. The autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh are programmed to maintain a   distance from bikes. While Uber’s vehicles are practicing good traffic etiquette, becoming   is a hard climb. Rajkumar, an early engineer on   cars, says that a world where such cars are the norm is a long way off. ”All these predictions that people made, including myself, going back several years, it turns out we are not there yet,” he says. ”It turns out that driving is a very complex activity. In fact, it may be the most complex activity that most adults on the planet engage in.” Even harder for autonomous cars to master are local quirks things like ”the Pittsburgh left.” That’s a custom unique to the city that allows the first driver trying to make a left turn to do so before oncoming cars pass through an intersection. It’s one thing that Emily Duff Bartel says Uber’s fleet of   cars won’t be programmed to practice. ”We’re following the rules on this one,” she says. That’s because an autonomous vehicle is a rational machine, so you can’t make it do human tricks. A real city like Pittsburgh is an irrational obstacle course, where the obstacles are sometimes at rest and sometimes in motion. We learn rules of the road that we then commonly violate. And we often use eye contact to communicate with pedestrians and other drivers. For all the automotive industry’s enthusiasm for autonomous vehicles, Uber’s Pittsburgh experiment is still truly experimental."
"An accident last month in Tempe, Ariz. involving a   Uber car highlighted some novel new issues regarding fault and liability that experts say will come up more often as autonomous vehicles hit the road. And that will have an increasing impact on an insurance industry that so far has no road map for how to deal with the new technologies. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whose company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns the insurance giant Geico, told CNBC in a February interview: ”If the day comes when a significant portion of the cars on the road are autonomous, it will hurt Geico’s business very significantly.” That would seem to make sense. If humans aren’t driving the cars, who needs a car insurance policy? ”It’s certainly a topic of heavy conversation right now,” says Rick Gorvett, staff actuary for the Casualty Actuarial Society, a trade group for people who analyze risk for insurance firms. Right now, insurance rates are calculated mostly based on attributes of drivers  —   their claims histories, driving records and such. Increasingly, some insurers also use apps or devices that allow them to track speeding and other behaviors. Insurers can then offer discounts as rewards for safe driving. A driverless car changes that model, shifting the insurance toward automakers, and away from drivers or car owners. It won’t be a complete or immediate shift. Gorvett says the conventional wisdom  —   not yet backed up by a lot of actual data  —   is that autonomous vehicles will help reduce the human error that is the cause of the vast majority (90 percent or more) of accidents. In other words, automation will mean fewer accidents, but the accidents that do occur will more likely be the fault of machine, not man. ”At least the current thinking is that the manufacturers will be ultimately responsible for a lot of these future accidents when an automated vehicle is involved,” Gorvett says. How much that burden shifts is also a key question. James Lynch, chief actuary for the Insurance Information Institute, says if manufacturers have to bear the entire cost of insuring vehicles, that would create a huge,   expense. That, in turn, would create disincentives for the development of a technology that many believe will ultimately lead to safer roads, he says. ”If you believe that the autonomous technology is going to be saving lives, then you would want [the automakers] to have some sort of a protection,” Lynch says. So some states, which primarily regulate insurance, may have to hammer out their own standards. A recently passed Michigan law, for example, specifies an automaker assumes liability and insures every car in its fleet when driverless systems are at fault. In the U. K. Parliament is considering legislation specifying insurers should pay out claims in accidents relating to autonomous vehicles, though the insurers could recover those costs from automakers. Still, for many years, there will not be a large number of fully driverless cars on the road. So for the most part, says Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, fault and liability will be determined case by case, as happens after accidents now. ” ’Who was speeding? Was there a stop sign? What was the weather? Did the vehicle fail?’  —   and in the future, the same questions will be asked,” Smith says, but the difference will be that the   cars of the future will gather far more data to help determine fault. ”Details of that will be worked out by courts in individual cases and those individual cases will provide the backdrop against which insurers start determining their exposure and then eventually the rates that they charge,” he says. But for now, the technology is too new and there are no cases working their way through the court system. Right now, Smith says, one of the biggest obstacles for insurers is a lack of data. ”Insurance is a   effort to really predict the future based on the past, and when you have dramatically different technologies and new applications for automated driving, it makes predicting the future much harder because you don’t have those reliable data about the past and present,” he says. Ash Hassib, senior vice president and general manager of auto and home insurance for LexisNexis, says carmakers need to collect uniform safety information to enable more analysis on the performance of driverless cars. ”There is no standard, and every manufacturer is going about this in a different way, so to try to normalize all these data sets from all these manufacturers is going to be of extreme importance,” he says."
"If you’ve been around long enough, you’ve probably seen The Anarchist Cookbook: It has a black cover, blocky white letters and instructions for making your own explosives. The book was published in the early 1970s with this warning: ”Read this book, but keep in mind that the topics written about here are illegal and constitutes a threat. Also, more importantly, almost all the recipes are dangerous, especially to the individual who plays around with them without knowing what he is doing. Use care, caution, and common sense. This book is not for children or morons.” William Powell was 19 when he wrote those words, during the height of the Vietnam War protests. Since then, The Anarchist Cookbook has sold more than 2 million copies. It has also been linked to the Columbine shooting and the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as other acts of violence. Over the decades, Powell didn’t talk much about the book. He died in July 2016, but his obituary only ran recently in a number of papers The New York Times said his family hadn’t thought to notify the media before. Now, a new documentary has increased curiosity around Powell’s life. It’s called American Anarchist and it’s the work of filmmaker Charlie Siskel. Siskel says he knew about the book when he was growing up. ”It was notorious. It was the kind of thing that kids in the suburbs had to get their parents angry.” He says knowing about the book’s legacy got him thinking about its author  —   so he tracked Powell down. American Anarchist, which was filmed before Powell’s death, is a dialogue between the author and filmmaker. On how Siskel convinced Powell to talk to him, I just tracked him down and I talked to him about what interested me about his story: the parallels between his story of writing this book at age 19 and, you know, creating a kind of Frankenstein’s monster  —   something that he was unable to control after creating it  —   because the book, I imagined, haunted him throughout his life. . .. Often there are stories of, you know, kids these days writing things online that they come to regret, but can’t take back. So I saw parallels between Bill’s story, which was kind of a   test case of this phenomenon, and this Internet phenomenon of people being publicly disgraced for things that they do at a very young age. On the source of Powell’s anger when he was 19  Bill was an angry young man, and with reason. I think Bill  —   like a number of kids who have gone on to commit acts of violence, usually males  —   was sort of let down by the adult world. There were people who could have been role models, teachers for example, who were abusive toward Bill, and he was bullied as a kid. All of this is not to excuse what happened in writing the book as it, I think, doesn’t excuse the acts of violence that young people who are taken advantage of or hurt go on to commit. But it does do something to explain how they got there. On what Powell did with his life after writing the book, I would say, you know, Bill sort of redeemed himself. He went to college and then became a teacher. He himself started working with kids who had emotional problems, kids who suffered from ADD and ADHD, and he worked in schools around the world. He traveled the world and really became an expert, a leading expert, in the field of work with kids with emotional needs. But he did it outside the United States, and I think part of it has to do with the fact that the book dogged him and kind of followed him throughout his adult life.  On how Powell felt about the book being linked to acts of violence, I know that when he learned about the associations between the book and acts of violence, I think it affected him deeply. It, as he says, filled him with remorse, although he distinguishes between remorse and regret. On some level I think he doesn’t regret having written the book because it sort of came to define who he was and I think he grew from it. I think he learned a lot from the experience. But I think it saddens him to know that the book was associated with acts of violence. But I also think it’s important to say that while the book has been connected to some of these acts of violence and it has been influential for the people who read it, I don’t think it is responsible in any kind of legal sense or causal sense. . .. The information that is in the book is now out on the Internet and in many other places, and was even at the time. I mean, Bill himself got it from the public library, so it was out there in other forms and I think people who were determined to act out violently probably would have found that information or found ways to do it in any case. . .. So drawing sort of a direct, causal link I think is problematic. But my sense is that none of that has been any great consolation for Bill throughout his life. . .. I think Bill has for many years wrestled with . .. feeling on the one hand that you deserve redemption, that you deserve a second chance, and on the other hand feeling that you have done something wrong and that you feel a sense of guilt over. And clearly I think Bill is a complex enough person to hold on to both of those emotions at once. Editor Courtney Dorning, producer Fatma Tanis and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"Two days after landslides and floods tore through the town of Mocoa, Colombia, and killed more than 200 people, rescuers were desperately searching for survivors in the mud and rubble. The ”sudden avalanche of mud and water” struck on Friday night, as people were sleeping, as NPR reported over the weekend. The death toll includes at least 43 children, John Otis reports for NPR. ”Hundreds are still missing after rivers overflowed Friday night, sending water, mud and boulders crashing through Mocoa,” Otis says. ”About half of the town’s neighborhoods were damaged or completely wiped out.” Family members and rescue teams were frantically looking for survivors, as the clock is ticking to save anyone who survived the initial catastrophe. The death toll is expected to rise as search efforts continue. The BBC reports that more than 1, 000 police officers and soldiers were involved in rescue efforts, and the Colombian Red Cross was working to help connect family members. Rescuers were moving debris and mud by hand, The Associated Press reports, as people traveled from out of town to search for missing loved ones: ”Dozens stood in the door of a hospital, hoping for news of family members who were not on the list of those confirmed dead or injured. Others frantically knocked on relatives’ doors, hoping to find someone with information about their loved ones. ”A rescue worker in an orange jumpsuit emerged from one search area with the body of an infant wrapped in a towel. Not far away, Abelardo Solarte, a    resident of Mocoa, held a child’s shoe as he helped clear debris. ” ’You have no idea how many kids there are around here,’ Solarte said.” Colombia’s El Tiempo described the scene on Sunday as ”desolation, impotence and one last hope. . .. On every corner there was someone mourning the death of a relative or a friend, or the sudden loss of the product of an entire lifetime’s work.” World leaders, including Pope Francis, have offered their condolences and support, Otis reports from Bogota. ”During a visit to Mocoa, President [Juan Manuel] Santos said workers are starting to rebuild bridges, restore electricity and provide emergency housing,” Otis says. Critics of Santos have said the government should have done more to protect the region from this kind of disaster, the BBC reports. A U. N. official pointed to climate change as an underlying cause of the flooding and landslides, while a conservationist cited deforestation. The AP provides some context: ”Mocoa is vulnerable to flooding. It is surrounded by the three rivers in a natural basin created by the surrounding mountains. ”The danger has grown worse in recent years because of deforestation, which eliminates some protection from runoff, and because many people built their homes close to the water. But the triggering event was rainfall of more than 5 inches (130 millimeters) that began late Friday. . .. ”A 1989 hydrology report for the Agricultural Ministry warned that just such a disaster could happen unless steps were taken to reinforce the riverbanks, channel water away from the town and restore some of the forest. It was not immediately clear why those steps had not been taken.”"
"Updated at 1 p. m. ET, A lawsuit filed on Monday morning by a paid political commentator for the Fox News Channel alleges the network’s past chairman, Roger Ailes, made unwanted sexual advances while leading her to believe that a big promotion would follow. The suit says Ailes encouraged Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky to date older, married men, repeatedly praised her looks and sought to get her to join him for drinks, even in his office, away from prying eyes that could get them ”into so much trouble.” Roginsky spurned the advances, according to the lawsuit, and as a result never received the promotion to become host of the popular early evening program The Five. Roginsky’s depiction of life at Fox News even after Ailes’ ouster last summer at the height of a sexual harassment scandal suggests a far cry from the changed corporate culture promised by the Murdoch family, which controls 21st Century Fox. Patriarch Rupert Murdoch has led Fox News since Ailes was felled by fallout from the lawsuit by former host Gretchen Carlson that triggered the scandal. Roginsky’s suit adds to the list of sexual harassment allegations against Ailes, which also includes those made by former Fox News journalists Megyn Kelly and Laurie Dhue. Through his lawyers, Ailes has denied all the previous allegations to date. Perhaps more troublingly for Fox News and its corporate parent, 21st Century Fox, Roginsky also accuses the network’s current president, Bill Shine its longtime top lawyer, Dianne Brandi and other senior executives of complicity in Ailes’ harassment and of punishing her for raising the issue. In a statement emailed to NPR, Ailes’ lawyer Susan Estrich called Roginsky’s descriptions of meetings with her client ”total hogwash.” ”The idea that Mr. Ailes would pressure Ms. Roginsky or any other women to have sexual relations with him is total nonsense,” the statement reads. ”This is about someone who wants to   in a massive character assassination in order to achieve what she did not accomplish on the merits.” NPR is seeking comment from Fox News, 21st Century Fox, Shine and Brandi in response to the allegations in Roginsky’s suit. Another in a long list of complaints about Fox, Roginsky’s allegations arrive as new attention is being given to similar accusations against Fox News’ brightest star, Bill O’Reilly. The    opinion host and Fox News have made payments totaling roughly $13 million over a dozen years to settle complaints that he harassed female former   according to The New York Times. Suspended Fox News host Andrea Tantaros has also filed suit, citing what she says was sexual harassment by Ailes and O’Reilly. She alleges that Shine also failed to take her complaints seriously. All three men deny her claims. Though some of O’Reilly’s offending remarks were captured on tape, he has repeatedly insisted he is a target for wrongful accusations because of his wealth and success. O’Reilly has said he only settles complaints to ensure his children do not have to endure public scorn. The enduring presence of O’Reilly on Fox’s prized 8 p. m. ET slot, despite that history, has led some critics to dismiss the commitment of Shine and Brandi to combating sexual harassment and even to question why they retain their posts. Roginsky’s suit is likely to fuel those critics further. ”Shine retaliated against plaintiff because of her complaints of harassment and retaliation [against Ailes],” the lawsuit reads, ”and because of plaintiff’s refusal to malign Gretchen Carlson and join ’Team Roger’ when Carlson sued Ailes . .. Shine also aided and abetted Ailes’ acts of retaliation and harassment.” Fox News promised to change the culture, Roginsky said in the complaint that Shine and Brandi took no action to investigate her allegations that Ailes had harassed her once they learned of his behavior toward her. The company had put new policies in place and hired an outside law firm to lead an inquiry into the mounting accusations against Ailes, but did not pursue her accusations, according to the lawsuit. Such concerns first arose at Fox well before last summer. In 2011, Shine and Brandi played a role in arranging a $3 million settlement with a former Fox News senior booker and events planner, Laurie Luhn, who alleged Ailes had blackmailed and harassed her into performing sexual acts for more than 20 years. They said they did not believe Luhn’s claims at that time. In this case, Roginsky alleges, Ailes’ former top deputies sought to forestall criticism and any legal exposure for the network. Roginsky is a    single mother who has advised and worked for such leading New Jersey Democrats as Sen. Cory Booker, the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg and the former senator and Gov. Jon Corzine. She joined Fox News formally in fall 2011 after seven years of appearing regularly as an unpaid commentator, the lawsuit states. In her suit, Roginsky alleges that Ailes repeatedly invoked the prospect of elevating her from a contributor’s job to be a permanent host on The Five. She contends she merited the promotion given her performance and the ratings when she appeared on the show. Such a perch at Fox would have given Roginsky greater visibility, likely increasing her pay from Fox News significantly into the upper six figures and also propelling an increase in possible outside revenues such as book contracts or speaking fees. Ailes routinely steered such conversations about Roginsky’s career to her personal life, her looks and his desire to see her socially, she alleges. The issue came to a head in a meeting in late April 2015, according to the lawsuit, after Ailes said loyalty had to be a   street. Ailes led Roginsky to believe she would get the one slot for a liberal commentator previously held by The Five host Bob Beckel. Ailes confided to Roginsky that Beckel would not return to Fox because of substance abuse problems, the suit states. (Two months later Fox cited substance abuse in firing Beckel, who has spoken openly about his past addiction to alcohol and drugs.) ”Ailes cynically toyed with Roginsky, saying that he would really like to give her a permanent spot on ’The Five,’” the lawsuit states. ”Immediately after this statement, Ailes remarked that ’if it wouldn’t get us both into so much trouble’ he would take Roginsky ’out for a drink.’ ” According to the suit, Ailes continued: ”Since being seen in public together would get us into trouble, maybe we could just do it privately in my office instead, so no one would know.” Roginsky alleges that when she conveyed she did not think that was a good idea, Ailes shut down any further talk of a promotion. The suit says Ailes refused ever to meet with Roginsky again and pulled her from guest appearances on The Five. Fox News claimed to have changed its climate, Beyond the allegations against Ailes, Roginsky’s suit contradicts the representation by Fox News and parent company 21st Century Fox that the network has changed its climate for its female employees since the departure of Ailes under duress last July. Carlson ultimately received a $20 million settlement and a rare public apology issued by Lachlan and James Murdoch, who together with their father lead 21st Century Fox. (Roginsky hired the same legal team used by Carlson, led by New Jersey workplace law attorney Nancy Erika Smith.) Unlike Carlson, Roginsky has no clause in her contract requiring she settle disputes in binding and confidential arbitration. Executives pressured Roginsky to join other prominent Fox News personalities on what they called ”Team Roger” to denigrate and discredit Carlson publicly. Greta Van Susteren, Geraldo Rivera, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Jeanine Pirro were among those who cast doubt on Carlson’s story. (Van Susteren later left the network and apologized to Carlson Rivera also apologized.) At the Republican National Convention last July, according to the lawsuit, as Ailes’ professional fate hung in the balance, Fox News contributor Angela McGlowan told Roginsky that ”it’s all hands on deck” in defending Ailes. Roginsky alleges she told McGlowan, a former lobbyist for the Murdochs’ media empire who served as a conduit to Fox News executives, that she believed Carlson’s allegations and could not participate in a campaign against her because Ailes had harassed her, too. When Roginsky and Shine met in late July, the longtime programming chief for Ailes was agitated, telling her that ”everything they are saying about Roger is true,” as Roginsky’s lawyer recounts the meeting in court papers. She was passed over for a hosting job on the midday show Outnumbered. In late November, Roginsky told Shine and his deputy, Suzanne Scott, that she awaited the fulfillment of Ailes’ earlier promise to host a show. No such job emerged. Instead, according to the suit, Shine praised a recent documentary, comparing the chemistry of the team that built Fox News to that of the rock group the Eagles."
"What do listening to music, hitting a baseball and solving a complex math problem have in common? They all activate less gray matter than drinking wine. According to Yale neuroscientist Gordon Shepherd, the flavor of wine ”engages more of our brain than any other human behavior.” The apparently simple act of sipping Merlot involves a complex interplay of air and liquid controlled by coordinated movements of the the tongue, jaw, diaphragm and throat. Inside the mouth, molecules in wine stimulate thousands of taste and odor receptors, sending a flavor signal to the brain that triggers massive cognitive computation involving pattern recognition, memory, value judgment, emotion and of course, pleasure. Whereas most wine writers tend to focus on the various elements that go into the wine itself  —   the grape, the oak, terroir, the winemaker  —   Shepherd’s subject is the drinker. He explores biomechanics, physiology and neuroscience to describe a journey that begins as wine passes the lips and ends with a lingering ”finish” that can last for minutes. If you’ve ever wondered how many muscles there are in the tongue (eight) if a   diet can affect the perception of wine (it can) or if it’s possible to experience the full flavor of a wine that’s been spat out (it is not) Shepherd has answers  —   extraordinarily detailed, scientifically rigorous answers. I spoke to Shepherd about his new book, Neuroenology: How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine. Our interview has been condensed and edited. The subtitle of your book is ”How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine.” Can you explain what that means? The analogy one can use is color. The objects we see don’t have color themselves  —   light hits them and bounces off. It’s when light strikes our eyes that it activates systems in the brain that create color from those different wavelengths. Similarly, the molecules in wine don’t have taste or flavor, but when they stimulate our brains, the brain creates flavor the same way it creates color. Chapter one is on fluid dynamics, a subject you almost never hear mentioned by wine connoisseurs. How does fluid dynamics inform our understanding of wine? You don’t just put wine in your mouth and leave it there. You move it about and then swallow it, which is a very complex motor act. If you search on YouTube for anyone doing serious wine tasting, they are working it with their mouths. It’s a very active process. So to understand the physiology of tasting wine, it’s necessary to give people a whole new context of how wine sensing and wine tasting takes place. You talk about a ”hidden force” in wine tasting. What is it? When you sniff wine in the glass, you appreciate the bouquet. That’s called ”orthonasal” smell  —   the external smelling we’re all familiar with. But what most people are unaware of is that when you take wine in your mouth and experience the flavor, most of that flavor is due to a kind of internal smelling. The air comes in from the throat, not your nostrils. That’s called ”retronasal” smell. The molecules are carried to the same receptor cells in the nose, but from the opposite direction. This is very important when it comes to wine flavor. An example is the famous jelly bean test. If you put a jelly bean in your mouth and plug your nose and sense it with your tongue, all you sense is sweet from the sugar. But if you then unplug your nose, suddenly you’re flooded with the full flavor experience, and it’s because you’re smelling through the back of your nose. One thing you write about that I’ve never read elsewhere is the effect saliva has on wine. Our bodies produce saliva all the time, and saliva has stuff in it  —   stuff that both dilutes the wine and interacts with it. So as soon as the wine enters your mouth, it immediately begins to change. For example, saliva contains enzymes that break down the molecules in the wine to create compounds that effervesce into the air to stimulate the smell receptors in your nose. This produces new compounds that were not originally in the wine  —   they were created by this interaction. The amount of saliva a person produces can affect their perception of wine. So can things like age, gender, or even the amount of acetone  —   a byproduct of energy metabolism  —   in a person’s breath. And the time of day. And whether or not they’re depressed. If we’re talking about smell, we have about 350 different kinds of olfactory receptors. They are not the same between individuals  —   yours will be different than mine. And they’re not always the same over the course of months or years. As the cells turn over, they can change. Given all these subjective variables, and the fact that the brain ”creates” the taste of wine, is it possible for two people to experience the same wine in the same way? There is still a commonality. We all know it’s a liquid, after all. We all know it comes from fruit. We all know it contains alcohol. And we all have saliva that is more or less the same. So probably 90 percent is the same and 10 percent is different. That’s part of the pleasure of wine  —  comparing your pleasure. Does your research suggest wine drinkers are doing anything wrong? Within a few sips or drinks, people are just downing the stuff. There needs to be more to it than that. If you take too large a sip, you’ve saturated your system. Is expensive stemware worth it? My wife and I have a   meal every night. We used to use modest stemware, but we would occasionally knock it over and it would break, so now we use plain water glasses. But if we’re having a proper sort of dinner, we use some kind of glass with a bowl so you can capture the aroma. Just fill the bottom few cubic centimeters, because if you fill up a glass you don’t get much aroma. The reason for having a large bowl is that it amplifies the headspace for sniffing in the bouquet and you take small sips. But once you understand the flow dynamics that I describe, you can make your own choice as to how important the glass will be. I will end with what may be the most enduring question in science. What’s the best value in wine for under $20? For table wine, we stick to around $10 or $12 per bottle, and it’s a fun challenge to find a wine in that range. I don’t want to mention any names, because that would give someone a commercial advantage. For more interesting wines, we like Sancerre because it seems to have an edge to it. [Editor’s note: Sancerre is a designated wine district in the eastern Loire Valley known mostly for wines made from Sauvignon Blanc.] One of the reasons I prefer European wines is they have a slightly lower alcoholic content. There is research that shows people prefer wines with less alcohol. This is important, because global warming is driving alcohol content up, not down. Mark Schatzker is the author of The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor."
"The campaign began under cover of darkness. It opened with a skirmish or two in Bristol more than a decade ago  —   a superfluous apostrophe scratched off a street sign here, a possessive rendered plural with the stroke of some tape there. But now, the battle between one mysterious man and the grammatical mistakes besieging the British city has spilled into the harsh light of international media. The BBC says it has discovered the identity of the ”Banksy of punctuation”  —   a   engineer by day, who by night transforms (presumably in a telephone booth) into the intrepid superhero of sentences everywhere. The network will not reveal his identity, but it says he has allowed reporters on something of a   to watch him as he moves from sign to sign to put apostrophes in their proper places. ”I’m a grammar vigilante. I do take it to heart  —   I think it’s a cause worth pursuing,” he told the BBC, in a documentary called The Apostrophiser airing Monday on BBC Radio Four. ”People might say what I am doing is wrong, but it is more of a crime to have the apostrophes wrong in the first place.” The documentary borrows its name from the man’s device of choice: the   ”apostrophizer,” which he uses to reach otherwise unreachable surfaces . .. and apply tape to them. With it, he can add or cover up apostrophes that have lost their way. As soon as the documentary was announced, people around the world stretched out their arms in relief and celebration  —   by immediately addressing the masked man with requests to come fix the local mistakes that have been plaguing them. ”Grammar vigilante” even began trending briefly on Twitter in the U. K. To paraphrase The Dark Knight: You either die an apostrophizer, or you live long enough to see yourself be apostrophized."
"As Donald Trump regularly spotlights violent crimes committed by immigrants who are in the country illegally, outrage is increasingly bubbling up in communities across the country. In San Antonio last month, authorities charged    Armando Rodrigo   a Mexican national, with double capital murder in the shooting death of a    girl, who was nine months pregnant with his child. The fetus died, too. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that   was in the country illegally. Under the Obama administration,   was twice picked up by federal immigration agents, released both times, and later granted a work permit. ”If he had been detained and deported for being here illegally the first time around, the impregnation, the murder, the crime would have been avoided,” says George Rodriguez, who writes a blog and hosts an Internet radio show called El Conservador, or The Conservative, from his home in San Antonio. Trump and his administration have pledged to deport more unauthorized immigrants arrested for or charged with crimes  —   people the president has referred to as ”bad hombres”  —   as part of a broader effort to more aggressively enforce federal immigration laws. And the San Antonio case enraged conservatives across the spectrum. In Washington, Sen. Charles Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees immigration, fired off a letter to ICE demanding answers. Grassley also asked ICE about two teenaged immigrants who are charged with allegedly raping a classmate in the bathroom of a high school in Rockville, Md. last month. The San Antonio story was covered by local media and by national outlets like Breitbart News, which featured it prominently on its website. And the story popped up on scores of   websites. Rodriguez, of El Conservador, writes once a week about the worst crimes he can find committed by unauthorized immigrants. ”And once a week, I come up with at least five, six of them committed in diverse places like Minnesota,” he tells NPR in an interview. ”There was a case in Massachusetts not too long ago that I read about where a teacher was murdered by her illegal immigrant boyfriend. They’re everywhere.” The boyfriend in the Massachusetts case has pleaded not guilty.   has not yet entered a plea in that case. Critics of the Trump administration say no one argues these are serious crimes and that the victims deserve sympathy. But those critics believe that focusing on the birthplace and immigration status of a criminal has the effect of demonizing all unauthorized immigrants. ”This attempt to use an anecdote to try to set up a false paradigm that there are good immigrants and bad immigrants is really just an attempt to call all immigrants bad,” says Jonathan Ryan. He’s an immigration attorney in San Antonio and director of the nonprofit RAICES, which advocates for immigrants. Ryan says a defendant should be charged, tried and adjudicated on the facts of the crime, not his immigration status. ”We undermine that criminal justice system by saying that immigrants need some kind of separate system of justice,” he says. ”What we’re really doing is saying that we don’t trust and we don’t believe in our own Constitution that affords fundamental rights, including due process, to all people in this country.” Immigration hardliners insist he’s missing the point. Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports Trump’s crackdown, says the public should be outraged about the uneven enforcement of immigration laws. She tweets prolifically on immigrant crimes. ”But I don’t think that translates into a generalized hostility toward immigrants,” Vaughan says. For well over a century, immigrants have faced hostility in the United States going back to Italians, Irish and Chinese. Social science research dating back nearly as long has consistently found there is no link between immigrants and criminality. The contemporary question is whether studies find a correlation between immigrants who are here unlawfully and crime. On this question, there is a paucity of research. Bianca Bersani, a criminologist at the University of   investigates immigration and crime. She says more researchers are looking at this subset of unauthorized immigrants who are much in the news. ”So far, the research is not finding that the undocumented is offending or being rearrested at rates that are any different from the U. S.  population,” Bersani says. She added that she is working on a project that compares criminal behavior among two groups of   immigrants  —   one here illegally and the other here legally. What is certain is that the increasing focus on the worst immigrant crimes  —   whether justified or not  —   helps to drum up support for the president’s immigration dragnet."
"The livestream has concluded. The NEA Jazz Masters Award is often described as the nation’s highest honor for a living jazz musician. From the first its program has celebrated a broad aesthetic range  —   its inaugural class of honorees, in 1982, consisted of bebop icon Dizzy Gillespie, his trumpet precursor Roy Eldridge and the interstellar visionary Sun Ra. As those initial inductees show, the roll call of NEA Jazz Masters have represented striking diversity within the uppermost echelon of achievement in this music. And every year, the NEA Jazz Masters Concert and Ceremony gathers this stylistically   constituency  —   current and past masters, younger artists, fans of every disposition  —   to an event that, for all its glittery pomp, often resembles an extended family reunion. The atmosphere onstage tends toward gracious warmth, wry humor and broad inclusion, and there are usually a handful of sterling musical exchanges to savor. That’s no less true of the live concert stream, which I’ve gratefully watched on those occasions when I couldn’t be in the room. This year’s class is as accomplished as they come, with Dee Dee Bridgewater on vocals, Dr. Lonnie Smith on organ, Dave Holland on bass, Dick Hyman on piano and Ira Gitler representing the ranks of jazz journalists. As always, their legacies will be celebrated in multiple forms, through spoken as well as video tributes, and in performance. I’ll be on hand to cover the event, and my recap will appear on Tuesday morning. But this page is where you can watch it unfold in real time."
"Earlier this winter, photographer Michael Furtman was driving along the North Shore of Lake Superior in search of great gray owls. Several of the giant, elusive birds had flown down from Canada looking for food. He pulled off on a dirt road where he had seen an owl the night before. An owl was there, perched in a spruce tree, but a pair of videographers were filming it. ”I backed off I was going to just let them have their time with the bird,” Furtman says. ”And then I saw them run out and put a mouse on the snow.” Predictably, the hungry owl dove, in front of the camera, snatching an easy meal. Furtman says he was so angry that he got in his car and drove away. But he soon returned to confront them and filmed the encounter on his phone. He later posted the video on Facebook. ”There are a lot of people who would like to photograph this bird hunting,” he said to the videographers through his car window. ”And it’s not going to hunt the rest of the day after you stuff it to the gills.” One responded saying, ”We understand . .. but we’re not hurting this bird in any way, shape or form. Absolutely not. Maybe we’re hurting the photographers, and I’m sorry if that’s the way people feel.” Those opposed to feeding say it’s unethical and doesn’t capture owls behaving naturally. Furtman has made it his mission to fight the practice, confronting people and outing them when they post baited photographs online. James Duncan, a Canadian biologist and an owl expert who directs Manitoba’s wildlife and fisheries branch, says the main concern is it can habituate owls to humans. ”You’re essentially training the owl to lose its fear of humans and associate food with humans, so then they become bolder,” Duncan says. He says this bolder behavior can increase the chances of the owls getting hit by cars. Others say there’s a lack of evidence showing that owls are being harmed by these staged, human interactions. ”It’s a nasty battle, but as far as I know, there’s no data to back up any of the negative,” says Terry Crayne, a longtime hobby wildlife photographer in northern Minnesota. Crayne admits he uses mice to entice owls for his photos. ”Most of the people I know who are against feeding owls are actually feeding deer,” Crayne says. ”The deer are associating humans with food. So which is worse? In my mind, if you’re against feeding one animal, you should be against feeding them all.” Photographers in Minnesota say they began to see widespread owl feeding about a dozen years ago. Furtman says he even tried it, but quickly soured on the practice. Still, it worked. ”I mean I have to admit, it’s really cool to watch an owl fly in and grab something,” Furtman says. ”How often do you get to see a predator pounce on prey?” Advances in digital cameras have attracted a lot more people into wildlife photography. And that has increased the conflicts around owl feeding. Several magazines and photo contests now reject baited shots of owls and other predators, including National Wildlife magazine, where Lisa Moore is editorial director. ”It’s unnatural behavior and it devalues the hard work of ethical wildlife photographers who are out there taking the time in the field to wait for that shot,” Moore says. She says her magazine’s goal is to feature ethical, authentic photos  ” not of wildlife in a game farm, or lured with bait. Dan Kraker covers northeastern Minnesota for Minnesota Public Radio. You can follow him @dankraker."
"Editor’s note: This feature, reported by Alex van Oss, first appeared on All Things Considered on June 23, 2000. It aired in advance of a performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and conductor Yuri Temirkanov  —   with poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko reading his own ”Babi Yar” as part of the performance. Yevtushenko died on April 1, 2017. During the 1950s and early ’60s, the Soviet Union went through a period called ”the thaw.” For a time, there was less censorship, abstract art was created and shown, and people began discussing   topics such as the gulag and the Stalin repressions. One of the pivotal figures during those days was the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who in 1961 wrote a work called ”Babi Yar.” It cried out against official   and caused a scandal when it was first published. It also inspired composer Dmitri Shostakovich to create a new work: his Thirteenth Symphony.  The name ”Babi Yar” refers to a ravine, a killing ground in the city of Kiev, where tens of thousands of Jews were shot and buried by German troops in 1941. Twenty years later, when Yevtushenko first went to Babi Yar, he says there still wasn’t even a marker there. [In 2016, the Ukrainian government pledged to create a memorial at the site in time for the 80th anniversary of the massacre in 2021.  —   Ed.] ”I was so ashamed that I wrote this poem very quickly,” Yevtushenko told NPR in 2000. ”Probably, it was three hours, four hours.” The dashing young Yevtushenko read his poem to a packed audience in Kiev. Years later, Yevtushenko learned a curious fact about that hall where he had read: It had been built right on top of cellars where in Stalin’s time the secret police had tortured their prisoners. ”You know, paradox was that I was reading poem about the bloodshed in 1941. But the stage was like a raft  —   a raft which was swaying on another blood, another blood of so many citizens who were tortured and they were killed under this stage. It’s like sandwich of sufferings, you know?” ”Babi Yar” was published in the main Soviet literary magazine, Literaturnaia Gazeta, but not printed again in Russia for decades. Yevtushenko was denounced by the Soviet authorities. What a shock it was when one night, Yevtushenko’s wife handed him the telephone  —   and on the line was none other than Dmitri Shostakovich, the   composer. Shostakovich sounded nervous and humble. He was asking, of all things, permission to set ”Babi Yar” to music. Yevtushenko was  . ”I just  —   I began to mumbled something  —   ’Of course,’” the poet recalled. ”And he said, `Oh, thank you for your kindness, dear Yevgeny Aleksandrovich.’ He was the first man who was calling me Yevgeny Aleksandrovich, using my patronymic. Nobody did it before.” Yuri Temirkanov and ”Babi Yar” go back a long way. After the choral symphony’s debut in 1962, Soviet authorities came down hard. They ordered changes in the text so it said that not only Jews perished at Babi Yar, but Russians and Ukrainians  —   meaning    —   as well. To save the work, Yevtushenko and the composer made adjustments, but the original score survived and was performed thanks to a few brave conductors, including Yuri Temirkanov in   (now St. Petersburg). ”They never wanted to change anything. They were forced to change it,” Temirkanov asserted in 2000, speaking to NPR through an interpreter. ”When I took the score, the original text was there, because it was visible. It was written over it, the new text. So I told the soloist to learn the original text and I knew it was a risk. Fortunately, those who had the power to forbid it, they didn’t know either text, so they wouldn’t know the difference.” Shostakovich’s symphony presents five Yevtushenko poems, ranging through the spiritual to the comical to the grim. The first movement is ”Babi Yar.” In this part, the soloist, or poet  —   who’s not Jewish himself  —   takes on different voices. Sometimes, he’s the victim of a pogrom or of the Holocaust. At one point, he’s even the young girl Anne Frank. But the poem also resonates with the experience of Soviets under Stalin: millions who heard a knock on the door at the wrong time of night. Here are some of lines from ”Babi Yar”: ”I seem to be, Anne Frank, transparent, as a branch in April. And I love. And I have no need of phrases. My need, is that we gaze into each other. How little we can see, or smell! We are denied the leaves, we are denied the sky. Yet we can do so much  —   tenderly embrace each other in a darkened room. They’re coming here? Be not afraid. Those are the booming, sounds of spring: spring is coming here. Come then to me. Quick, give me your lips. Are they smashing down the door? No. It’s the ice breaking . ..” There are official monuments now at Babi Yar. Much has changed in Russia. But Yevgeny Yevtushenko was cautious in 2000. He told NPR that the best memorial is the music of Dmitri Shostakovich itself, for the Thirteenth Symphony is movable: It can be played in Russia, or in Tel Aviv, or in Baltimore."
"It is perhaps no surprise that first lady Melania Trump’s first official portrait is a glamour shot. The former model’s bio page on the White House website goes into great detail about her career in the field. The White House released the photo on Monday, with a simple press release stating that the photo was taken in the residence at the White House. ”I am honored to serve in the role of First Lady, and look forward to working on behalf of the American people over the coming years,” Trump says in the announcement. The photo has a soft focus and features a giant rock on Trump’s ring finger. Reaction on Twitter included praise for her beauty and questions about whether there was too much airbrushing involved. Michelle Obama’s first official photograph was released at approximately the same time in her husband’s presidency and generated some controversy for her choice of a sleeveless dress that some thought was too casual  —   and others thought was  . For the purpose of comparison, the White House Historical Association has a slideshow of portraits of America’s first ladies. As for glamour, Edith Roosevelt and Helen Taft may come closest to Trump. According to her official bio, Trump ”has graced the covers of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, British GQ, Ocean Drive, Avenue, In Style, and New York Magazine. Her major layouts include the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Allure, Vogue, Self, Glamour, Vanity Fair, and Elle.” As first lady, Trump has had a relatively low profile. She continues to live in New York in Trump Tower while her son Barron finishes out the school year, and she has made relatively few appearances in Washington, D. C. Polling would indicate Mrs. Trump is significantly more popular than her husband (as is often the case with first ladies). A recent   poll found 52 percent of Americans have a positive opinion of her."
"Here’s a fun fact about Noname’s Tiny Desk Concert: It almost didn’t happen. Around the time of their D. C. stop, she (born Fatimah Warner) and her bandmates got their first dose of tour sickness. Thanks to rest, medicine and our mutual excitement, she made her way into the NPR offices the following day. If there ever was a ’Noname’ way of doing things, this is definitely her signature method. It’s in the way she’s able to muster a smile while performing a heartbreaking tale of abortion. It’s those sometimes bleak, melancholy lyrics over brilliant, colorful production. These intriguing juxtapositions are what propelled Telefone to our top 50 albums of 2016. She prefaced her performance of ”Reality Check” by saying: ”I kind of talk in like,   so hopefully you guys follow it.” ” ” refers to the clever metaphors she weaves in detailing the many ways she’s dodged destiny. On ”Bye Bye Baby,” she raps: Somebody let the yellow in, Bye bye blue, I’m gonna fall in love again, These lyrics, their colors, represent the sector she commands in   today. The yellow: The bright side. (Of course, there’s plenty of gloom and doom to rap about  —   especially coming from Chicago  —   but there’s also plenty of light.) There’s an appropriate moment of silence in the office, before the applause, following her emotional medley. She asked us if we liked it. We loved it  —   and you likely will too. Telefone is available now. (iTunes) (Spotify) Set List, Musicians, Noname (vox) Connor Baker (drums) Brian Sanborn (guitar) Phoelix (bass, vox) Akenya Seymour (keys, vox) Credits, Producers: Bobby Carter, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Long Beach, Calif. has produced such legendary rappers as Snoop Dogg, Warren G and the late Nate Dogg, all of whom won international acclaim  —   and persistent criticism  —   for work that some said glorified gang life. Now, a generation later, the city has a new star: Vince Staples. Staples first turned heads with his album Summertime ’06, released in 2015, about growing up in Long Beach and his time in the notorious Los Angeles gang the Crips. Two years later, Staples is still getting acclaim for his music. Rolling Stone called him ”one of  ’s true rising stars”  —   and he’s only 23. Now, Staples is getting ready to release a second album, which he told Vice will be called Big Fish Theory. He’s currently touring, and on his way through Washington, D. C. he stopped by NPR’s studios to speak with Michel Martin. Hear their conversation at the audio link, and read on for an edited transcript. Michel Martin: I take it you’re not all that comfortable with the acclaim you’ve received. I read in one interview that you said, ”I’m not a star. I’m a person with a job.”  Vince Staples: That was me being sarcastic because, you know, they liked it. No, it’s just  —   the idea of the ”magical Negro.” So you’re not magical. No, what a magical Negro means is ”Oh, you’re smart?” ”Oh, you’re talented?” That means they’re assuming that you’re not supposed to be. So they can kind of keep those compliments  —   they’re backhanded. One of the things that people have noted about you is that you take a lot of the tropes that people are used to and you twist it around. Your short film Prima Donna opens with this stereotypical   scene, with   women shaking their butts in your face, and then within a minute, you see it’s a set, it’s all made up. And you kind of turn it on its head and offer some really pointed reflections about fame, money and celebrity. You do seem like an old soul, like you’ve lived a lot longer than your years, and I’m wondering where those insights come from. Now, this would be my question, just to play devil’s advocate. What’s the appropriate amount of years to have that insight? I think it’s less about that and more just about what you take from your personal experiences. ’Cause you can learn something in 15 minutes, [that] it could take someone 15 years to learn. So I don’t think it’s really a timetable. I think it just depends on what you choose to pay attention to based on your experiences. ’Cause we all have opportunities to learn the same things, essentially. Sometimes we just avoid them. You’ve also been really open about the fact that a lot of the things you talk about have been real in your life  —   things that you’ve seen, things that you’ve experienced. You’ve said that gangbanging isn’t something you opt into, it’s something that’s around you. Is that how you’d describe it? I don’t really feel the need to describe it, for the simple fact that you can go see and ask someone that is there. This is my thing: We gotta stop pretending that we care about people, and what they do, if we don’t. That’s an honest thing  —   ’cause what it is, is a sense of camaraderie, sense of brotherhood, sense of belonging. The same way if you live in this country, you’re American if you live in another country you can be whatever they call it there. You’re a Democrat or you’re a Republican. You’re this or you’re that. You’re black or you’re white. We all belong to different sects and different  —   different spaces within something that exists above us. And there is no difference. There’s literally no difference. Because if someone goes to the Army it becomes, ”oh, I’m not in the Army, I’m in the Marines.” ”I’m not in the Marines, I’m in the Air Force.” There is a certain sense of belonging that they all get from there. And sometimes those things lead to things that are considered to be inhumane. Let’s not speak about crime, let’s speak about the thought of, you know, respecting humanity. This is my thing about that question. That question isn’t, ”Oh, why do gangs happen?” It [isn’t] like, ”Oh, wow, why do these black and brown and Pacific Islander  —   why do these little boys with no structure, no one guiding them, why do they need each other? Why are they trying to figure out life on their own?” That’s really what it is. It’s nothing else. [But] when you speak about gang structure, people ask about killing, robbing and things that are considered crime. They don’t care about anything else. I feel like it’s kind of annoying to hear those things. Because you can’t find a Jay Z article where they don’t speak about him selling drugs. You can’t find a Vince Staples article where it doesn’t say, ”  member, rapper from yada yada yada, Vince Staples says this, this, that and that.” Because we live in a space where your name isn’t enough. When you see an article about Adele they don’t say ”scorned  .” . .. but that’s us. See what I’m saying? But at the end of the day, no one’s asking why. In your song ”Lift Me Up,” you say, ”All these white folks chanting when I asked ’em where my n***** at   Goin’ crazy, got me goin’ crazy, I can’t get with that.” How do you feel about the fact that you have such a large fan base of white people? I don’t feel any type of way. . .. When you perform, when you say that line, you see people start to look at one another. And when they look at one another, they  : ”Is he talking about me? Is he talking about him? I love black people, I just kinda like the songs. How dare you judge me for listening to your music”  —   it forces people to think about themselves, which is a very hard thing to do sometimes. And, all I just say is it’s a statement. I wonder if they know that we notice it, is really where it came from. It was very lighthearted. Because it happens. You get to a song, certain songs  —   that’s part of the vocabulary. When we get to that part of that song, it’s quiet. Some of the same criticisms that attended to an earlier generation of rappers have resurfaced. Last October, a woman took exception to ”Norf Norf” and posted a video response that went viral  —   she said,”I cannot believe this stuff is on the radio! This is what our youth is being subjected to.” What made a lot of people turn their heads is that you were very kind about it. You defended her, you said that people should —   She was right. Really? What was she right about? I don’t really care what’s on the radio because the radio’s kind of secondary to how we consume music in today’s day and age. But what she said, ”this is what our children are being exposed to”? She’s right. That’s what the song is about: what our children are being exposed to. My question is, why can we listen to that and pass it off like it’s not a problem? When you see a film and you see a murder scene or a rape scene or something that’s displaying an element of trauma, we don’t look at it and go, ”This movie’s f****** great, I’m having a great time, are you?” We feel for that. Know what I’m saying? But it doesn’t necessarily happen in that sense when we’re speaking about music. So I didn’t make that song for it to make people happy. So I don’t have a problem with what she said. You got a reaction  —   isn’t that the point, essentially? But you could have rallied the troops. I mean, there were a lot of people dumping on her. And you didn’t do that. ’Cause that’s pathetic. It’s pathetic to attack someone for having an opinion or feeling some type of way, for wanting her children to not be exposed to something. ’Cause I’m 100 percent sure my mother would have loved for her children to not be exposed to gang life. The difference is it wasn’t on the radio  —   it was in our house, and it was outside, and it was at our schools, and it was at our churches, it was everywhere that we were. So it was kind of a little bit harder. If I have children one day I would hope that they will never be exposed to that. I hear you. But when you have people who are able to, you know, just write people off as if they don’t have an opinion or feelings or motives behind the things they say, that’s the corny part. You’re worse than her because she shared her opinion. She never said one negative thing about me. At all. Her statement was that she doesn’t understand how this is getting to major airwaves  —   which is debatable, it’s fair for her to feel that way. And most of [all] she kind of felt bad about the fact that it was possible that these things could really happen. Shouldn’t we be, you know, happy that someone actually is considering the fact that this really happens, rather than passing it off as fable or just ignoring it? So what are you dreaming about now? I think we just take it day by day, we try to find new methods of creating things and just trying to do something new and  —   making sure that when it’s all over, you know, we’ve added and not just taken away. Something that [producer] No I. D. says all the time is that there’s no museum for this. There’s no  —   there’s nothing dedicated to the quality of art, or the leaps and bounds taken, or the sacrifices and the risks that are made just for the sake of creation. There’s no museum for   you see, there’s no museum for music, essentially. We have a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but that word is what just kind of destroys it all for me. We’re speaking on fame, not the aspects of art, the creativity  —   which kind of can become two completely different things at a certain point in time. So just trying to be the most creative and create something that’s never been done before, which is a reoccurring challenge. Staples’ latest single ”BagBak” will be featured on the rapper’s upcoming album."
"Today’s selections grapple with the existential crisis presented by string cheese, plus rapper Vince Staples shares a couple of his favorites from #NPRPoetry. Hear Vince Staples’ interview with Michel Martin."
"In an official statement, President Trump described the recent chemical attack in Syria as ”reprehensible” and went on to argue the ”heinous actions by the Bashar   regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution.” In other words, he blamed former President Barack Obama. Returning to a common theme of his campaign, Trump’s statement concluded, ”President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ’red line’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing. The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this intolerable attack.” Trump’s criticism of Obama’s policy on Syria goes back to 2013. A private citizen at that time, he argued that the U. S. should not get involved in the conflict. On Tuesday, Trump’s statement did not include what  —   if anything  —   his administration would do about the recent attack or what his posture will be toward Assad in light of it. Press secretary Sean Spicer said that the president’s statement ”speaks for itself.” He said Trump is meeting with his national security team, is ”alarmed” at what is happening and that there will be further discussions with allies about the appropriate action. He added, ”I think, at this point, as things develop, I’m not ready to talk about our next step, but we’ll get there soon.” Spicer also referenced Obama’s red line comment, in which the   said, ”A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.” At the time, Trump didn’t say anything about it on Twitter. It wasn’t until Syria started dominating the headlines in the summer of 2013 that Trump began weighing in. Two days after the U. S. concluded the Assad regime had used chemical weapons, Trump tweeted that the U. S. ”should stay the hell out of Syria.” His message: Stay out Syria is not America’s problem. And Trump was relatively consistent on that as the conflict in Syria intensified and the Obama administration contemplated an expanded U. S. role. In late August 2013, the U. S. and international community concluded that the Syrian government had again used chemical weapons. The Obama administration was reportedly considering a military strike against Syria to send a message, and private citizen Trump questioned whether it was worth it. And long before he was a candidate, Trump was critical of politicians  —   including Obama  —   for telegraphing their military strategy. On Aug. 30, 2013, a U. S. intelligence assessment found more than 1, 400 Syrians were killed in the chemical weapons attack. Trump’s tweets focused on how that made the U. S. look. The next day, Aug. 31, Obama announced he would seek congressional approval to carry out strikes in Syria. This was widely seen as a way to back away from the red line he had drawn, putting the responsibility for a decision to escalate involvement in Syria on the shoulders of Congress. It rapidly became clear that Congress wasn’t going to be able to agree on authorizing force  —   and that Congress really didn’t want the responsibility. On Sept. 5, 2013, Trump’s concern was that Obama had set the red line in the first place. A day later, seemingly joking, Trump offered his own solution: Use Obamacare in Syria so ”they would  .” Secretary of State John Kerry ultimately worked out a multinational agreement, including Russia, in which Assad would agree to give up his chemical weapons. Trump’s assessment was not positive. In the end, he concluded the way Obama had handled Syria made America look weak. That’s a view President Trump continues to hold, as evidenced by the statement he released on Tuesday."
"Updated at 8:45 a. m. ET Wednesday, Poisonous chemicals are suspected of augmenting an aerial bombardment of a   town in Syria’s Idlib province Tuesday, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying at least 20 children were among those who died. The group says the initial death toll of 58 has risen to 72, and that all the victims were civilians. The attack was reportedly carried out in Khan Shaykhun, a town in northwest Syria that sits about halfway between Homs and Aleppo on the country’s main   highway. NPR’s Alison Meuse reports for our Newscast unit from Beirut: ”The   Syrian Observatory says warplanes carried out a number of strikes in the northern town, but that victims died of suffocation. Opposition activists published videos of purported victims, including one showing nine lifeless children. The U. N. finds Syrian government forces have used toxic chemicals in at least three attacks since 2014.” After the initial strikes early Tuesday, a hospital in Khan Shaykhun was also bombarded as it treated victims, according to Agence  . ”The entrance of the building was hit, bringing down rubble on top of medics who had earlier been seen dousing a steady stream of arrivals to wash away chemical residue,” AFP reports. Reports of the attack brought international condemnation. A U. N. spokesman said   Antonio Guterres is ”deeply disturbed by the reports.” And President Trump said in a statement: ”Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world. These heinous actions by the Bashar   regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ’red line’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing. The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this intolerable attack.” NPR’s Scott Horsley notes that in 2013, Trump had urged Obama not to bomb Syria. The Syrian Observatory’s report did not specify which   force might have attacked the town. Russia’s Defense Ministry ”strongly dismissed” any allegation that its warplanes had carried out airstrikes on Khan Shaykhun, Russian   TASS media reports. The   Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has begun an inquiry into reports that chemical weapons were used, and it reiterated Tuesday that it ”strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances.” The allegations about apparent chemical weapons come months after Syria’s government was accused of using chlorine gas in its fight to retake the city of Aleppo. In that instance, dozens of civilians were affected."
"President Trump may have said he is ready to move on, but the House Freedom Caucus can’t let health care go. The same firebrand conservatives who helped derail the GOP’s   legislation to repeal and replace key parts of the Affordable Care Act are now trying to breathe new life into the bill with a long shot effort to bring it back for a vote in May. Or at least keep it on life support through the   April recess when they’ll otherwise have to explain the bill’s derailment back home. ”We’re on the eve of going home and spending two weeks with our constituents . .. and they know they’re going to get questions about this,” said Rep. Steve Womack,  . ”And for the people who were ’no’ they’ll have justification to deal with.” Womack, who was a ”yes” on the GOP’s American Health Care Act, said despite encouraging talk from some corners of the House, a revival was not in sight. ”I did not get the message from our conference this morning that we’re nearing the finish on health care,” he said. ”It’s obvious those negotiations continue to take place  —   and there might be some movement in some areas that give leadership some hope we can get closer to the finish line  —   but I’m not suggesting at all that we are right there and this thing could change on a dime.” The   members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, led by Rep. Mark Meadows,  . C. are in active talks with the administration  —   in the aftermath of a skirmish between some of the group’s members and Trump over the failure of the health care bill. Those talks are being led by Vice President Pence, who spent Monday and Tuesday in the Capitol huddling with different factions of House Republicans. According to lawmakers and aides briefed on the negotiations, conservatives are talking with the White House about tweaking AHCA to allow states to seek waivers of Obamacare’s requirements for ”essential health benefits,” or basic health care services all insurance plans must offer, as well as restrictions on ”community ratings,” or how much insurers can charge for premiums based on age and gender. Originally, conservatives wanted to repeal those aspects of the law entirely to allow for health plans with lower premiums. Now there are talks about keeping them in place but allowing states to appeal to the Department of Health and Human Services to waive them on a    basis. It’s far less than conservatives had hoped for in negotiations. ”It perhaps is as much of a repeal as we can get done,” conceded Meadows, according to the Associated Press. ”That’s the calculation we have to make.” The talks have not so far publicly brought on board any of the moderate Republicans who already opposed rolling back essential health benefits or who worry that doing so would raise costs on people with   conditions. The talks also ignore the fact that many of the GOP’s ”no” votes were based on the legislation’s sweeping changes to how Medicaid is funded, and the current negotiations don’t address those concerns at all. It’s also unclear that including the updated proposal into the bill would even secure the votes of enough House Freedom Caucus members to pass it. Rep. Mo Brooks,  . is still a ”no” and said his colleagues should not expect the conservative faction to vote as a bloc. ”For some reason, some in the media think that we vote lockstep with each other. That is categorically not the case. If you were to think of us more as an intellectual conservative think tank with a backbone, that’s what we are,” Brooks told reporters. House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . spoke cautiously of the effort, describing talks as in ”the conceptual stage” and saying that any action before the April recess was highly unlikely. ”We want to make sure that when we go, we have the votes to pass this bill,” he said. White House spokesman Sean Spicer was similarly cautious. ”I’m not going to raise expectations, but I think that there are more and more people coming to the table with more and more ideas about how to grow that vote.” The House is operating under a tight timeline. Republicans on all sides of this debate agree that May is a    deadline for the bill because of budgetary constraints. The health care bill is moving under a process protected by this year’s budget resolution. Once Congress begins moving on next year’s resolution, the budget protections for their health care bill expire. Even if the House can muscle up the votes to revive the bill next month, it still must clear the Senate, which is expected to make significant changes to the House bill, and then the House would have to pass it again. Politically, most Republicans say they do not want to drag out the health care debate longer than they have to if it’s clear it can’t pass. The only thing worse than failing once to deliver on a central campaign promise is failing twice. ”Let me just tell you what we can’t do  —   we can’t try again and fail,” Womack said. ”So there will not be a   effort unless it is certain that we have the votes to pass it.”"
"Private contractors seeking to get in on the ground floor for construction of President Trump’s long promised wall along the U. S.  border had until Tuesday to submit their bids for prototype designs. At least 200 companies have expressed in interest in the project, but not all were expected to submit bids. Customs and Border Protection called for proposals for the border wall in March. Several prototypes of the wall will be built on federally controlled land in San Diego. Customs and Border Protection chose that site for its accessibility and to evaluate the bids ”as part of the larger existing border infrastructure,” said a CBP spokesperson. The agency said each wall prototype will be 30 feet long and range in height from 18 to 30 feet. Finalists will be announced in June with the expectation that prototype construction will be completed 30 days later. The Associated Press, citing government sources, reports that the administration expects that four to 10 companies will be chosen to build the prototypes costing $200, 000 to $500, 000 each. Customs and Border Protection has made it clear that is seeking prototypes for solid concrete barriers (or some with a   feature) and not designs that rely heavily on technology. The border wall faces stiff opposition in Congress. During the presidential campaign, Trump insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall. But he has since asked Congress for the funds. Democrats oppose it and some Republicans are also skeptical, suspecting that U. S. taxpayers would foot the bill. The Department of Homeland Security has estimated the cost of the wall at $21 billion. An MIT study puts the price tag at $38 billion. The project faces other obstacles. The administration might have to resort to eminent domain to acquire privately owned land along the border, which can be costly and  ."
"President Barack Obama stepped to the microphone in the White House briefing room and had a job to do  —   make the case for a major change made by his party’s Senate leader to how the chamber works. ”Ultimately, if you got a majority of folks who believe in something, then it should be able to pass,” Obama said in 2013 after   Majority Leader Harry Reid,  . changed the rules of the Senate to require a simple majority to allow for judiciary nominees other than those for the Supreme Court to proceed to a final vote for confirmation. The irony of that made it a line that conservatives were resurfacing Monday, as Democrats fielded enough votes to sustain a filibuster against Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. As a result, the Senate looks like it is careening toward a ”nuclear” showdown by the end of this week. It is increasingly likely that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell,  . will blow up  —   so to speak  —   how the Senate works (perhaps forever) and eliminate the   requirement to end debate and advance a nominee for the high court. Of course, the context for Obama’s speech is important. Back in 2013, nominee after nominee was thwarted by the GOP minority, despite each’s qualifications. As Obama also pointed out in his speech, the ones who did eventually get through did so with big majorities and few, if any, dissenters. There were a record number of cloture motions filed during the Obama years when the GOP was in the minority. (Cloture motions are essentially what’s used to end debate, which takes 60 votes, or stop a filibuster.) The filibuster has taken on new meaning over the years and been used by both parties. But its increased use by Republicans in particular over the past decade has been a big part of what has led the Senate to this point. The chart below shows just how much McConnell’s use of the filibuster spiked in the Obama era and how much it has grown over the past 40 years: ”It’s brought us to the point where a simple majority vote no longer seems to be sufficient for anything  —   even routine business  —   through what is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body,” Obama said in 2013. Modern use of the filibuster has frustrated presidents of both parties. But typically, the filibuster is not an issue with Supreme Court nominees. There’s long been a tradition of deferring to the president to pick his justices, so long as that nominee is qualified. Democrats didn’t filibuster Clarence Thomas, for example, and he was among the most controversial nominees in history. He was confirmed only  . But there was no deferring to the president last year, when Obama nominated Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the   court in the land, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Garland wasn’t filibustered there was never the opportunity. McConnell refused to even let him have a committee hearing. ”[I]f seven months of preventing Judge Merrick Garland from getting a hearing and a vote is anything, it is the longest and most successful partisan filibuster in Senate history,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said Monday in explaining why he was supporting a filibuster. Now, there are concerns that the elimination of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees will make the nominating process more partisan  —   that in 50 years if the court has changed with less qualified justices on it, people will look back on this week for when it all happened. George W. Bush’s pick of White House counsel Harriet Miers was derailed by conservatives  —   from those who were uncomfortable with the fact that she didn’t have a public record of opposition to abortion to those who thought she wasn’t qualified. Among those who didn’t think she was qualified, ironically, was conservative legal scholar Robert Bork. Bork is the same former Supreme Court nominee who is at the heart of the seeds of Republican resentment toward Democrats over high court nominees. Bork was the last nominee outright rejected by the Senate. That happened 30 years ago, but Republicans are still smarting over it. Bork’s name has even become a verb. As The Atlantic defines, being ”borked” means ”to have one’s nomination to high office be subject to zealous political attack.” After Bork, someone who didn’t shy away from making his views public, nominees instead became coached on how to say as little as possible in confirmation hearings. The other Republican irritation is Miguel Estrada, a Harvard Law grad who had his nomination to a federal judgeship on the D. C. Circuit in 2003 blocked by a Democratic filibuster. Democrats believed he was not forthcoming enough, because he didn’t provide ”documents and information about his legal views,” Janet Hook wrote in the Los Angeles Times. By the way, here’s a peek at the politics back then with some familiar storylines from the piece: ”Estrada’s nomination also has become a cause celebre among liberal and conservative activists, increasing the pressure on Democratic and Republican Senate leaders to lock horns over the issue. The activists view the nomination as a trial run for a future fight: a possible vacancy on the U. S. Supreme Court. Adding to the stakes, Republicans have sought to turn the battle over Estrada, 41, into a proxy war for the political loyalty of Latino voters, whom Bush has made a point of courting.” Both sides have their grievances. And those grievances are adding up to something that no one on either side seems happy about  —   forever changing the ”world’s greatest deliberative body” into . .. something else."
"Earlier this year, the Republican National Committee marked Abraham Lincoln’s birthday by sharing a charming, if banal, aphorism attributed to Lincoln: ”In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” The problem is there’s no evidence Lincoln ever wrote or said it, which critics on Twitter were only too delighted to point out. The RNC took down the tweet, but all that trouble could have been avoided if they’d first checked in with Garson O’Toole. That’s the pen name of a man who has tracked down the true origins of hundreds of quotes on his website, Quote Investigator. O’Toole has collected some of those investigations into a new book called Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations. He says, ”It’s a lot of fun to uncover these hidden histories, and I’m also very glad when I get to give credit to the person who actually said it.” On why quotes often get wrongly attributed to Mark Twain, Mark Twain is known for having a fantastic sense of humor, and if you preface a quotation by saying it’s from Twain, then people are prepared to laugh at it, to think that it’s wonderful. Many quotations, they’re anonymous or from   comedians reassigned to Twain. There might be a joke and somebody would say it’s   and then the next person will say, ”No, actually, it’s from Twain.” On the origin of the quote ”Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt,” which has been wrongly attributed to both to Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, The earliest evidence that I was able to find was a 1907 book by Maurice Switzer. And it seems to contain a lot of original material and it includes the statement ”It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” So it’s slightly different phrasing, but I believe that is what evolved to generate the modern common version. On the quote by author Anne Rice that even she mistakenly attributed to Franz Kafka, ”Don’t bend don’t water it down don’t try to make it logical don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion.” . .. It was in an introduction to a collection of stories by Franz Kafka, and she was talking about how she’d been inspired by him. It was her perception of the way Kafka thought when he was writing his stories, but somebody reading that introduction thought that it must have been Kafka that said this instead of Anne Rice and so it started being distributed in that way. I got an email from an individual who said that on Facebook Anne Rice had posted this quotation and she had attributed it to Kafka. And so that was enormously confusing to me because I thought that if anyone would be able to recognize that quotation, it would be the person who created it. So I sent a Facebook message to Anne Rice she replied very quickly and said she would look into it to try to find out who actually created it. And then she came back with another reply saying that she’d discovered that in fact it was her words and that she had written it in this introduction, and as evidence of that she gave me a URL that pointed to my website. . .. And it’s understandable: She’s written a large number of words and she’d written this more than a decade in the past. On why he feels this work is important, Many of these quotations are cultural landmarks. They affect the way we think about, say, environmentalism. Let me find this quote: ”We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors we borrow it from our children.” That’s been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson it’s considered a Native American proverb an Amish saying. But the earliest evidence I found: There’s an activist named Wendell Berry and he was discussing good stewardship of the environment . .. and I think he deserves credit for this kind of a cultural landmark. Editor Melissa Gray and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond has resigned after being investigated for potentially disclosing confidential information to a Wall Street analyst in 2012. Jeffrey Lacker, who led the bank in Virginia for more than a decade, did not admit to directly revealing information about policy options being considered by the Fed. But he said in his resignation letter that his actions during a phone interview with the analyst were inconsistent with Fed policy. He said the analyst who called him already knew an ”important   detail” about the policy options. When the analyst raised that detail, Lacker says, he should have ”declined to comment and perhaps ended the phone call,” but he did not. That conversation, with a Medley Global Advisors analyst, happened on Oct. 2, 2012. Reuters has more information about the consequences: ”The next day, Medley Global Advisors unveiled details of a September Fed   meeting, one day ahead of the publication of the central bank’s own record of the discussions. ”At the Fed meeting, officials laid the groundwork for the massive   stimulus they were to roll out later that year. Early knowledge of that discussion could have given traders an unfair edge.” After Medley’s report came out, Lacker said he ”realized that my failure to decline comment on the information could have been taken by the Analyst, in the context of the conversation, as an acknowledgment or confirmation of the information.” In his resignation letter, Lacker also said he was first questioned about the conversation more than four years ago, as part of an internal Federal Reserve investigation. At the time, he did not fully disclose what happened. Government investigations continued, and in 2015, Lacker told law enforcement more about his involvement in the conversation. ”I deeply regret the role I may have played in confirming this confidential information,” he said in the letter. ”It was never my intention to reveal confidential information.” The resignation is effective Tuesday. Lacker’s lawyer says the investigation into Lacker is complete and no charges will be brought. The Bank of Richmond  —   one of 12 Federal Reserve Banks  —   said in a statement that the search for a new president was already underway, based on Lacker’s previous plans to retire later this year. The bank did not explicitly say Lacker was forced out, but the statement suggested his departure may not have been voluntary. ”The Federal Reserve places a high priority on safeguarding information. We expect every employee to comply with all relevant policies and procedures, as well as our standards of conduct,” the statement said. ”Once our Bank’s Board of Directors learned of the outcome of the government investigations, they took appropriate actions.”"
"Murder is on the rise in Mexico. Ten years after the government launched its war on drugs and sent the military to combat cartels, homicides are at levels not seen since the height of that offensive. The violence is widespread, but it remains most prevalent in a few   towns and cities. Hugo del Angel says his city, Ecatepec, a sprawling, struggling suburb of nearly 2 million outside Mexico City, is definitely high on that list. ”It’s probably one of the three most problematic in the whole country,” he says. Del Angel isn’t that far off. According to new government figures, nearly half of all homicides in the country occur in just 50 cities Ecatepec is near the top. The past two years have seen a jump in violence in cities throughout Mexico. In January alone, 1, 938 people were killed, according to Mexico’s executive secretary for the National Public Security System, putting 2017 on track to be one of the deadliest years in a decade. As his employees unlock the chains around bar stools and high tables, del Angel opens his small pizza parlor in the food court of one of the city’s largest shopping centers. Late last year, he says, five men came into the restaurant and demanded service. ”One of the guys says, ’If you’re not going to serve us, we’re going to take everything you have,’ ” del Angel recalls. The man pulled a bat from under his shirt. Before del Angel knew it, they were beating him and his young employees. Del Angel recovered, but he says the shopping mall hasn’t. Crime has done it in. Last year, the movie theaters left, and dozens of stores shut down. The second floor is practically abandoned. The management stopped running the escalators and most of the lights. ”I can see the city’s violent situation reflected in the total abandonment of the mall,” says del Angel. Many blame last year’s capture of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzman for the spike. Rival gangs, especially the upstart New Generation Jalisco cartel, are making a play for El Chapo’s territory and unleashing feuds between smaller groups, which branch off into extortion and robbery for funds  —   especially in places like Ecatepec, the state of Mexico’s most problematic city. ”The state of Mexico has always been very violent, and has been the problem child for this administration,” says Ana Maria Salazar, a security expert and analyst in Mexico City. With just one year left in his term, President Enrique Peña Nieto hasn’t been able to calm the violence in the state of Mexico  —   or elsewhere in the country. Last fall, though, he launched a plan to combat violence in the 50 most violent cities. New technology, interagency coordination and a countrywide emergency phone service are all key to his plan. In Ecatepec, the emergency calls are fielded by an operator at a   police center in the city, where a    bank of monitors plays   images captured by the city’s 10, 000 new cameras. Dozens of agents watch, while others, like Damian Flores, pore over recordings from the day before, looking for suspicious activity. Flores plays back a recording of a kidnapping. ”You see four guys get out of a Ram pickup truck and run into this small grocery shop,” says Flores. Seconds later, they come out and shove a person into the vehicle, which takes off. No one, Flores says, reported the crime and no one at the grocery shop would talk to officers, highlighting a distrust of police that even the highest technology and coordination can’t overcome. Peña Nieto’s   plan is not doing too well. A review by the Mexican investigative website Animal Politico shows that homicides in nearly   of the cities rose in the past six months, some at alarmingly high rates. In Ecatepec, there were 200 in the past six months, no change over the same period in the year before. Pizza owner del Angel says he still feels unsafe. ”Earlier this year,” he says, ”we got a call demanding 10, 000 pesos”  —   about $500  —   a month. ”If I didn’t pay, they said they would burn my place down.” Del Angel says he’s hoping they don’t make good on the threat. He didn’t pay."
"South Korea and the U. S. confirm North Korea launched a single ballistic missile at a facility near Sinpo at 6:42 a. m. Wednesday Seoul time (5:42 p. m. Tuesday ET). It landed in the waters near near Japan. U. S. Pacific Command’s initial assessments indicate the type of missile was a     ballistic missile. It was North Korea’s fourth attempted missile launch of the year. The third failed at launch. The last successful attempt was on March 6, when North Korea fired four missiles at the same time, also into the same waters  —   the Sea of Japan (or as Koreans prefer to call it, the ”East Sea”). Three of the four landed in Japan’s special economic zone. U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson released this statement: ”North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.” The latest launch comes as South Korea and the U. S. wrap up their annual spring joint military exercises on the peninsula, which North Korea objects to because it views the drills as preparation for war. The U. S. has consistently said the war games are defensive. It’s also an uncertain time for the region as the nascent Trump administration has yet to spell out its broader strategy for North Korea, which has increased its nuclear capabilities over the past few years. Ignoring numerous condemnations and sanctions from the international community, North Korea has continued to test its missile capabilities and its nuclear devices. Another nuclear test could be coming, according to observers at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. China and the U. S. leaders will meet at President Trump’s private Florida golf club this week, and North Korea is expected to top the agenda. The U. S. has pressed China to take a tougher stand on its traditional ally and neighbor in North Korea, as China holds leverage because of its extensive trading and supply ties with Pyongyang. China, however, has said it has done plenty to try to curb the Kim Jong Un regime, including signing on to several rounds of United Nations sanctions. (Enforcement of the sanctions has been a trickier issue.) Trump, in an interview with the Financial Times this week, said, ”China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone.” It’s not clear what he meant by that, specifically. Jihye Lee contributed to this post."
"Maybe you heard it too: murmurs of a ”new Beyoncé song,” accompanied by whatever it is that gasping and genuflecting sounds like when transmitted via Twitter and Facebook, then the purr of a song playing through the headphones of the devoted everywhere, begun, as in a round, at slightly different moments. In the end, we’d pretty much literally heard it before: The song in question, a ballad of devotion titled ”Die With You,” has been around since at least 2015, but it’s newly packaged with a video depicting the endlessly dissected love affair between Beyoncé and Jay Z. (The video is available for viewing in full via Tidal, natch.) Ardent followers of Queen Bey, those who attend to her every announcement or outfit or vacation photo on Instagram (that’s all of us, right?) will know that today, April 4, is the couple’s ninth wedding anniversary, and ”Die With You” is intended to function as a definitive statement that the state of their union is strong. Wedding rings, hands held, lovers in repose, adorable Blue Ivy. .. it’s all here. So there you go. Just as your Tuesday afternoon seemed to be passing uneventfully, you’ve now got a new Beyoncé video for your cooing, swooning      pleasure."
"Dear dogs of America  —   sorry about bone broth. Since this   take on an ancient beverage started sweeping hip enclaves like New York, Austin and Los Angeles a few years ago, it’s getting harder to find cheap bones. Unlike many food fads, bone broth seems to be here for the long simmer. As more people switch to sipping, there are fewer bones to go around. Bone broth is commonly confused with broth (the   mix of meat, bones and aromatics used to make chicken soup) and stock (a similar but more   mixture that’s often cooked for 4 to 6 hours to extract collagen from the bones) though it’s closer to the latter. Many bone broth recipes say to simmer the mixture for anywhere from 14 to 48 hours, depending both on the type of bones and the patience of the cook. Meat broths have been touted for their restorative properties for centuries. In the 1800s, chemist Justus von Liebig began working on a   food to feed Europe’s poor  —   a reduction of meat and bones that he claimed could address ”all cases of weakness and digestive disorder.” By the 1860s, a London hospital was using 12, 000 pots of beef ”tea” every year to feed their patients. At more than $12 per quart at many stores, bone broth is no longer a food for the poor. Its healthful properties (and familiarity) have made it the elixir du jour. And it’s a relatively easy sell in a time when even   carries organic products and foods filled with the antioxidant of the month. Yet until recently, bone broth  —   even made from   meats  —   was relatively inexpensive to produce due to the low price of bones. That’s not the case any longer. Tressa Yellig, who started Portland, Ore. broth company Salt, Fire  Time in 2009 (and now runs Broth Bar with her sister Katie Yellig) has noticed a spike in prices over the past few years. The company only sources from local farms that meet specific environmental and humane standards, which leaves a short list of farms to partner with. ”Trying to get enough bones is really hard,” Yellig says. ”You have to remember, [bones] were waste products that were going to dog food. Farmers were ecstatic if they could get anything for them.” Today, a butcher in Seattle might be selling beef bones for $4 a pound retail when the Yelligs used to pay a farmer about $30 per case of bones  —   between 30 and 50 pounds. Just three years ago, it wasn’t worth it for Katherine Johnson of Virginia’s Dragonfly Farms to get her bones back from the butcher. ”They didn’t sell,” she explained. ”They take up a lot of space and we have to pay to have them packaged.” Then the calls started coming in. People and restaurants wanted bones. Now she’s charging $2 per pound. Jenni Harris of White Oak Pastures in Georgia is a   rancher whose family has been raising cattle since 1866. Today, White Oak tries to make use of every part of its animals by selling tallow soaps, leather bags and even candles. They used to grind up unused bones to use on the farm as fertilizer. So even Harris was surprised by the sudden demand for bones one winter a few years ago. ”Our knuckle, marrow and soup bones stayed sold out,” she said. Eventually she learned that her customers were making broths at home using the beef bones she sold. Since then, growth has been explosive, she says. ”We hardly have any bones left over at the end of the week.” Despite the sourcing difficulties, the Yelligs have used the high price of beef and chicken bones (still the most popular meats to make broth from) to try to expand their customers’ broth horizons. All of Salt, Fire  Time’s broths are priced the same, but the margins for chicken and beef keep getting smaller. ”No one wants to pay for broth the way they pay for steak,” Yellig said. Salt, Fire  Time also sells broths made from lamb, bison, pork, turkey and alpaca bones. But Tressa Yellig says many customers think the only way to make broth is with chicken. They often expect lamb or bison broth to taste gamey. ”When we do conferences or events we don’t take chicken for just that reason,” Yellig said. How will anyone know if they like alpaca broth if they never try it? Tove K. Danovich is a journalist based in Portland, Ore."
"The Trump administration will withhold $32. 5 million in funding that had been earmarked this current fiscal year for the United Nations’ lead agency on family planning and maternal health, known as the United Nations Population Fund or UNFPA. The administration says it’s doing so because it has determined that UNFPA helps to support a Chinese government family planning program that forces people to get abortions and sterilizations. The U. N. agency says that is not the case. Though the administration’s decision was widely expected, it was greeted with dismay by supporters of reproductive health programs, whose objections start with the Trump administration’s memorandum of justification. The memorandum stated that ”there is no evidence that UNFPA directly engages in coercive abortions or involuntary sterilizations in China” but asserted that that the agency ”continues to partner with [China’s national family planning agency] on family planning, and thus can be found to support, or participate in the management of China’s coercive policies.” In a statement, UNFPA countered that the claim was ”erroneous,” asserting that ”all of its work promotes the human rights of individuals and couples to make their own decisions, free of coercion or discrimination.” The statement added that U. N. member states ”have long described UNFPA’s work in China as a force for good.” At a press conference, U. N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric predicted the funding loss ”could have devastating effects on the health of vulnerable women and girls and their families around the world.” The ramifications would mainly be felt in countries other than China since UNFPA’s spending there has actually dwindled to minimal levels in recent years. The U. S. funding accounts for about 7 percent of UNFPA’s worldwide budget, according to agency officials. They said the U. S. contribution in 2016 enabled UNFPA to save 2, 340 women worldwide from dying during pregnancy and childbirth, prevent 947, 000 unintended pregnancies, prevent 295, 000 unsafe abortions and fund 1, 251 surgeries for fistula, a devastating condition resulting from obstructed labor that causes a woman’s urine or feces to leak out of her body. Supporters of reproductive health programs are all the more disheartened because the   decision comes on the heels of the administration’s   through executive action of a separate policy that bars U. S. funding of international family planning groups that provide or ”promote” abortions  —   defined to include health workers offering women referrals or basic information about the procedure. That ”Mexico City policy”  —   named for the city where   Ronald Reagan first unveiled it  —   did not apply to UNFPA because the agency is a ”public international organization” rather than a   group. Instead, the Trump administration is withdrawing UNFPA funding by invoking the ”  Amendment.” This provision, included by Congress in every foreign operations spending act since 1985, prohibits U. S. funding of any organization or program that the president determines ”supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The amendment was adopted in response to China’s introduction several years earlier of its ”  policy” to control population growth. At the time there were rampant reports of Chinese officials forcing women to have abortions. In October 2015 China officially ended the   policy. But it still sets limits on births per individual. The most recent human rights review by the U. S. State Department, released last month, found that this ”in some cases resulted in forced abortions (sometimes at advanced stages of pregnancy).” Craig Lasher, a senior fellow at the abortion rights advocacy group PAI, does not dispute such charges. But, he says, ”if you’re concerned about human rights abuses in family planning programs it’s better to constructively engage than to walk away. And UNFPA has been part of the solution  —   not the problem.” For instance, he notes, over the years the agency has limited its operations in China to localities where the government agreed to UNFPA’s   that it eliminate birth targets and quotas. And he says, ”UNFPA has tried to work with the Chinese on a more integrated,   health approach which included education and counseling regarding informed choice and reproductive rights.” Still, he notes, legally the   Amendment gives a president a lot of latitude. ”What does ’support or participate in the management of a [coercive] program’ mean? The language is so broad that you can interpret it to justify any decision you want to make.” And because of that latitude, a pattern has emerged over the past three decades that’s mirrored the Mexico City policy: Each time a Democratic president has followed a Republican  —   first Bill Clinton, then Barack Obama  —   he has restored UNFPA’s funding. Each time a Republican has come back into office he’s   it again, starting with George W. Bush, and now Donald Trump. (The one exception was in the 1999 fiscal year, when Congress explicitly barred funding for UNFPA in the national budget.) Even during the periods when a president has permitted funding of UNFPA, Congress has nonetheless imposed strict limits, notes Lasher. For instance, Congress has regularly required that the U. S. determine how much UNFPA spent in China and then reduce the overall U. S. contribution to the agency by that dollar amount. As required by the   Amendment, the money that has now been withdrawn from UNFPA will go back to the pool of aid money that Congress had appropriated to support family planning and maternal health overseas this fiscal year. But details remain unclear because much of that pool  —   about $607. 5 million annually  —   has been going to groups that will be blocked from U. S. funding under the Mexico City policy. Trump’s order reinstating the Mexico City policy was also more expansive than past versions. The administration is applying it not just to family planning aid disbursed by USAID but to all spending on global health  . The administration is expected to issue more information on which programs will be affected in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, at the press conference, U. N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the Secretary General António Guterres is appealing ”to donors to increase their support for UNFPA to allow it to continue its critical work during this difficult period.”"
"Just days before President Trump is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the administration has made a move that has some U. S.  experts scratching their heads. The Commerce Department has quietly put a notice into the Federal Register stating that the U. S. will review a   issue between the two superpowers. What’s in question is a longstanding designation of China as a ”  economy,” or a country that operates outside of the norms of developed nations when it comes to trade. The U. S. has more power to take action against China because of this   NME status if it believes that China is, for example, dumping steel into the U. S. at prices that are unnaturally low and that hurt U. S. industry. The U. S. can basically force Chinese companies to pay taxes that effectively raise the price of such products in the U. S. market. Escaping from this label is something China has sought for more than a decade and that Chinese leaders consider a matter of great national pride. ”From China’s perspective, they want to get out from underneath this distinction,” says Chad Bown, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D. C. But here’s what’s puzzling: After all its tough talk about China, why is the Trump administration doing this now? ”I find it very intriguing,” Bown says. ”It caught me off guard.” He didn’t expect the Trump administration to be delving into this issue right before the two leaders meet. Given Trump’s   rhetoric during the campaign, experts say it seems unlikely the administration would throw China a giant carrot by allowing it to escape from NME status. Bown says the move could be a response to China having recently initiated a dispute through the World Trade Organization challenging its NME status. So this might be a first step by the Commerce Department in the process of mounting, in effect, a rebuttal  —   to show that China should continue to be considered a   economy. We’ve reached out to the Commerce Department and will update this story with any response."
"This story starts with the mystery of a missing cow. University of Utah researchers placed seven cow carcasses in Utah’s Great Basin Desert, and set up cameras to learn about the behavior patterns of local scavengers. But a week later, researcher Evan Buechley returned to one of the sites and found no sign of the cow. ”And my first reaction was to be fairly disappointed,” he told The  . After all, it takes a lot of effort to drag a    cow through the desert. Buechley explained that he thought maybe a coyote had taken the cow away. Then, he noticed the ground was disturbed. The tape told a far more surprising story. It shows a badger on a    digging spree, painstakingly excavating the ground under the cow and ultimately completely burying the animal about four times its weight. As he watched the video while sitting in the desert, Buechley said he became ”more and more amazed at this kind of impossible feat that this badger had achieved.” You can watch a time lapse here: It’s the first time an American badger (Taxidea taxus) has been documented burying an animal larger than itself, the researchers said in a press release. Their findings were recently published in Western North American Naturalist. What’s more, when Buechley went to check the next carcass, he found that it had also been almost entirely buried by a different badger. The foot remained tied to a stake, but otherwise it was ”mostly buried,” he said. This suggests that the burying behavior was not a ”freak event of one badger just doing something really crazy,” but actually may be something that badgers do regularly. Badgers are known as excellent diggers and had been known to hide food underground. But the largest previously documented example was a rabbit, he adds. The feat of engineering likely serves two goals  —   storing the meat and hiding it from competitors. Here’s more from Buechley: ”So by burying it, it removed any competition from other birds or coyotes or any other animal that might scavenge on it. Which could be hugely important. If it was left out they could be losing tons of this awesome food resource daily to all kinds of other scavengers. So burying it helped with that. ”And then the other thing is by burying it, actually putting something underground, is kind of the equivalent of us putting something in the refrigerator in that it would slow the decomposition process of the carcass down, both from microbes because underground it would be cooler and darker and also potentially from insects, like flies laying maggots and stuff in it that would decompose the carcass.” The video shows the badger working day and night for five days. Then, it built a den connected to the carcass and did not surface often. ”So it worked overtime for five days like really, really intensely, and then it just had a   feeding fest,” Buechley added. The fact that this behavior was unknown until now suggests that we have much still to learn about scavengers, he said. It also suggests that badgers, common in North America, could be helping to regulate disease by burying dead animals. ”If a diseased cow, for example, dies out on the range, and it’s just sitting out in the sun and it’s rotting and there’s lots of flies in it, that could be a major disease vector,” Buechley said. ”But if that carcass within a couple of days of it dying is completely buried and effectively eliminated from that environment, where other cows are no longer going to come into contact with it, flies are not able to lay their maggots in it, etc. that could really be important for controlling infection and disease.” And if a badger can do this to a   carcass, Buechley says this implies that ”they could potentially be burying just about any carrion that they could encounter in North America.”"
"Gary Austin, who created and led one of improvisational theater’s most influential troupes, the Groundlings, died Saturday at the age of 75 of cancer. Austin was a writer, director, and musical performer whose students comprised a virtual Who’s Who of modern comedy, including many cast members of Saturday Night Live. As Deadline Hollywood reported, ”As the group’s artistic director, performer and teacher of improv skills, Austin would help shape modern comedy, introducing to the world such performers as SNL’s Newman, Phil Hartman and Paul Reubens (who, with Hartman by his side, developed his   Herman character as Groundlings). Later Austin students included Paul Feig, Lisa Kudrow, Helen Hunt, Jennifer Gray, Mindy Sterling, Loretta DeVine, Daphne Zuniga, Helen Slater, Lindsay Crouse and Robert David Hall.” Born in Oklahoma, Austin graduated from San Francisco State in 1964 earning a degree in theater arts. He was a stage manager and actor with the San   improvisational comedy troupe The Committee. He later moved to Los Angeles joining the Comedy Store. In 1972, Austin founded the Gary Austin Workshops where performers could practice improv, and two years later, the Groundlings. The group gained such a following that SNL producer Lorne Michaels recruited him to move to New York to direct the cast of that groundbreaking show. But Austin declined, choosing to stay in Los Angeles. Austin left the Groundlings in 1979, although he continued his teaching at the Gary Austin Workshops. ”I learned about acting by watching evangelists,” Austin told an interviewer in 2015 describing his experience growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas. ”I wanted to be three things as a kid. I wanted to be a preacher, I wanted to be a singing cowboy and I wanted to play centerfield for the Boston Red Sox. What do those three things have in common? They’re all in front of audiences.” Austin is survived by his wife, Wendy McKenzie his daughter, Audrey Moore a sister two brothers a grandson and three grandchildren."
"On March 24, Manish Khari, an Indian teenager in Greater Noida, a city on the outskirts of India’s capital New Delhi, went for a walk and did not come home. Someone said he had been seen with some Nigerian students who lived a few doors down. An angry crowd barged into their house but could not find the boy. A rumor spread that boy could not be found because the Nigerians were involved in cannibalism. The teenager eventually showed up but was thoroughly disoriented. He complained of heart palpitations and was rushed to the hospital, where he died. The cause of death is not known, although the family suspects that drugs were involved. Five Nigerian students were booked under charges of murder but let off when no evidence was found linking them with the boy or drugs. On the 27th, a candlelight vigil was held for the teenager outside a mall in the neighborhood. But the vigil turned violent a mob attacked some Africans with sticks, metal bins and chairs. Nigerian students Precious Amalawa and his brother, Endurance, were eating at a KFC in that mall and were caught in the melee as they tried to leave. ”There were kicking at us and shouting at us,” Precious Amalawa told the media outlet Scoopwhoop News from his hospital bed. ”We kept asking what had we done. Even dogs are treated better.” Four Nigerians were hospitalized that night. A few days later the Association of African Students in India (AASI) issued a statement: ”[Because of the] failure to secure the lives of African students and to ensure maximum security in areas where African students live, we will write to the African Union to cut all bilateral ties with India.”  Many do not realize that in its own modest way India is a magnet for African students looking for an international experience during higher studies. In his paper about perceptions of African students by the local community in the Indian city of Pune, anthropologist Wondwosen   says there are several ”push and pull factors” behind this. The push factors include ”shortage of higher academic institutions” in parts of Africa as well as ”political instability” in some African countries. The pull factors are the affordability of higher education in India as compared to the West, the fact that the medium of instruction is English and ”fast and less complicated” admission procedures. Many come to study IT since India is well known for that globally. India’s government and private universities are anxious to sell the country as an affordable destination for higher education, so they’ve been laying out the welcome mat for African students for a while. In 2007 the Indian government set up its Pan African   Project, linking some African and Indian universities to exchange expertise. And in 2016 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced 50, 000 scholarships for African students over the next five years. In 2014 over 10, 000 African students were studying in India with Sudan, Nigeria and Kenya leading the pack. In 2016, there were 42, 420 foreign students in India, and Sudan and Nigeria were both in the top 5 countries of origin for those students, while the other three top spots occupied by India’s immediate neighbors. Universities have hired registration agents in Africa and run seminars with prospective students and their parents. ”They do a lot of marketing, video conferencing and workshops,” says Samuel T. Jack, a Nigerian student in India who is the president of AASI. The slick promotional video for Sharda University, for example, stresses its ”global vision” and has idyllic images of smiling African students mingling with local students. An African student strums a guitar, others walk down the hallway with their backpacks alongside Indian classmates. African students are all over the video, sometimes in suit and tie discussing career options, sometimes in traditional tribal costumes dancing at the ”mega cultural festival.” It all has a very 21st century Kumbaya feel to it. The reality these students face in India has been rather different. ”I have been here five years,” says Jack bitterly. ”My classmates might laugh and talk with me in school. But no one has ever invited me to their house. No one has ever said ’Sam, come home and meet my parents. ’” What’s worse, he says are the assumptions. ”I don’t smoke but when I walk on the street I am asked, ’Bro, can I get some hash? ’” Africans are stereotyped as criminals, drug dealers, prostitutes and now, in a new low, cannibals. Jack does not deny that some African students are involved in the drug trade but angrily asks why Africans are singled out and racially profiled for what is a much broader social problem. The stereotypes have made life hard for the African students as they struggle to make a home in India’s teeming cities. Jack says he hears many complaints about how hard it is to find housing. Taxi drivers fleece them. He says it’s very difficult to get internships. Local landlords complain that the Africans drink, party and drive rashly. ”We are conservative people and these African women dress up badly,” a landlord in Delhi told Mail Today. Our children are influenced.” That culture clash has turned into something uglier. In 2016 in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, an allegedly inebriated Sudanese student driving a car accidentally ran over a woman on the sidewalk. An angry mob attacked a carload of Tanzanians who happened to be passing through the area, set their car on fire and tore the top off one of the Tanzanian women. In 2012, Yannick Nihangaza, a student from Burundi, was beaten up by locals who mistook him for someone they had an altercation with outside a liquor shop. He died after two years in a coma. In 2014, Delhi’s law minister led a   raid in a house where four African women lived on the suspicion of a drug and prostitution racket and allegedly forced them to give urine samples. The minister claimed community support for his vigilantism but eventually resigned. In 2016, Masonda Ketada Olivier, a young Congolese French teacher, got into an altercation with three men over an autorickshaw. He died after one of the men allegedly hit him on the head with a stone. The Indian government always calls the violent incidents ”deplorable” and promises ”stringent action” but also insists they are not racially motivated. In the Greater Noida case, the local district magistrate insisted ”It is absolutely not a hate crime, nor is it some kind of anger against a race.” Even as he said that, banners and posters appeared in the area, hanging at traffic intersections, calling for a ”  Greater Noida.” ”The government is saying this is not a racial issue. Then I want to know what it is,” says Jack. ”Whiteness has always been a preferred category in India,” says social scientist Shiv Visvanathan of O. P. Jindal Global University in Sonepat, pointing to the proliferation of newspaper and TV ads for   creams. He also notes that even within the Indian caste system there was a gradation of color with the lowest castes and   ”untouchables” often the darkest. But Visvanathan says that this is ”stereotyping beyond racism.” He says that those who attack Africans think they are not just black ”but ugly because they are lumpen, uncivilized and here just to have a good time.” He says there’s always an excuse for the provocation  —   a radio playing too loud, a traffic altercation, alcohol  —   but it boils down to neighborhood vigilantism where the ”crowd shows it knows how to deliver justice to the alien.” While the government shies away from terms like ”racial attack,” the envoys of Africa stationed here are not mincing their words. Categorically describing the attacks as ”racist” they said on Monday that they would take India to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations. Jack says African students are nervous and their parents back home are terrified. Local embassies are advising the students to not panic and keep calm and remain indoors. The universities are providing food, medical supplies and other essentials until the situation returns to normal. Jack hopes the fallout over the Indian teen will blow over soon. African students have also met with the police to discuss sensitization and were assured that the Indian government would compensate them for damages and medical bills. A football match between Indians and Africans is being planned by Sharda University to defuse the tension. But for jittery African students, such efforts may not be sufficient to make them feel safe. Jack says he’s doing his best to reassure them but he admits if today an African student tells him he is thinking about coming to India, he will have some tough advice. ”Don’t make India your study destination. I’ll tell them stay home, my friend.” Based in Kolkata, Sandip Roy is the author of the novel Don’t Let Him Know. He tweets @sandipr."
"Aimee Mann’s music has always been characterized as melancholy. So on her new album, Mental Illness, she decided to lean into the stereotype. ”A friend of mine was asking me what the record was about,” Mann says, ”And I said, ’Oh, you know, my usual songs about mental illness,’ kind of being glib about it. And then my other friend said, ’Maybe you should call it Mental Illness,’ also being glib. It’s so bald, but also accurate and funny, so it really made me laugh. And I felt like if it’s making you laugh, there must be something accurate about it.” Mann spoke with NPR’s Kelly McEvers about the inspirations for some of the songs on Mental Illness. Read interview highlights below, and listen to the full conversation at the audio link. On the encounter that inspired ”Patient Zero” I met the actor Andrew Garfield at a party. I was a big fan of him, and he had just come to LA, I think to be in  . I think he’s a real artist, I think he’s a very sensitive person and I worry about people like that sometimes in Los Angeles. When you’re dealing with big movies and big famous people and huge studios and large sums of money  —   sensitive, talented people tend to get caught beneath the wheel. And so I sort of wrote this story based on the idea of somebody coming to Hollywood and getting ground down by it, which I did feel like, captured a certain Los Angeles despair. . .. The image I had was that narcissism is an infectious agent  —   and here comes this guy, steps off the plane, and his immune system is nonexistent to fight against that type of psychic germ. On ”Goose Snow Cone” ”Goose Snow Cone” is based on an image of a cat friend of mine named Goose. . .. I saw a picture of her, and her face looked like a little snow cone, and I started writing the song with the idea that I would replace that phrase with something else. But the song sort of became a rumination on loneliness and isolation and homesickness. On empathy and the human condition, I think it is hard to be a person. It is really hard to negotiate relationships, it’s hard to negotiate loss, it’s hard to have perspective on your own problems, it’s hard to break out of the habits and dynamics of your childhood. . .. And people aren’t really naturally born with the skills to negotiate it. So I have a lot of compassion for people. Everyone’s struggling in some way. Radio editor Monika Evstatieva contributed to this story."
"Updated at 4 p. m. ET, It was the world’s biggest tunneling machine when it first chewed into the loose dirt and gravel on Seattle’s waterfront in 2013. With a cutting head nearly 60 feet wide, it had been built in Japan and shipped across the Pacific to dig a      highway tunnel under downtown. The machine was named ”Bertha” in honor of a   mayor  —   the prefatory ”Big” always implied, never stated. But just a few months and a thousand feet in, Bertha came to a grinding halt. Grit was getting into sealed parts of the machine, temperatures were spiking and an engineer likened it to all your dashboard warning lights going on at once. The cause of the breakdown was in dispute  —   still is, and will be, for the foreseeable future, as contractors and the state duke it out in court  —   but the effect was the same: Bertha was stuck. That’s when the machine’s hugeness began to look calamitous: You can’t just drive a tunneling machine to the shop. If it needs fixing, it needs fixing where it is. In Bertha’s case, that meant digging an    pit to perform Herculean engineering efforts that insiders say were more challenging than the tunnel project itself. That’s all behind Bertha now. After the   pit stop, it went on to complete its journey toward the Space Needle  —   so smoothly that most Seattleites forgot about it. Many assumed it was still being fixed. In fact, it’s at the finish line. Earlier today, the 57.  wide cutting head gnashed through the massive retaining wall on the north end of the tunnel, where a live video feed was waiting to capture the moment  —   and perhaps the   sound of engineers sighing with relief."
"Health officials have published the first comprehensive view of   birth defects occurring in the U. S. The study is the largest so far to estimate the risk of severe birth defects from Zika infections in pregnant women, researchers report Wednesday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, ”Although Zika may seem like last year’s problem, or an issue confined to Brazil, there have been more than 1, 600 cases in pregnant women reported here in the U. S.,” says the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Anne Schuchat. And the cases aren’t slowing down. ”We’re still seeing about 30 to 40 Zika cases in pregnant women each week in the U. S.,” Schuchat says. ”Zika is here to stay.” Here’s how the epidemic has affected babies in the U. S. so far: It may be helpful to compare these Zika statistics to those for other viruses that cause birth defects. Each year about 8, 000 babies are born in the U. S. with disabilities because of infection with cytomegalovirus, or CMV. And in general, birth defects from all causes affect more than 100, 000 babies in the U. S. each year, the CDC reports. Still, there are big gaps in our knowledge about Zika, says epidemiologist Margaret Honein, who led the study. Some of those gaps may lead to an underestimation of the problem, For starters, doctors still aren’t sure about the full range of problems caused by Zika infections in utero. A baby can be born healthy, with a normal head size, but then develop neurological problems later on. Some may have seizures or muscle spasms, or a baby may have problems that are only detectable by a brain scan. For this reason, the CDC now recommends babies infected with Zika have ultrasounds or CT scans of their brains to evaluate any abnormalities not apparent at birth. So far, Honein says only about one in four babies have had these exams. ”I want to highlight the need for care and evaluation of these infants,” she says. ”This brain imaging, such as a head ultrasound, is really important. We know that there can be babies who don’t have microcephaly but imaging of the brain can reveal serious brain defects.” Although cases of Zika have started to decline in many parts of Latin America, Honein says, the risk is still high for pregnant women. ”So we are trying to emphasize: Pregnant women should not travel to any areas where there’s a risk of Zika,” she says. Right now, Zika has been reported in most countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia as well as several counties in southern Florida and southern Texas."
"U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has begun issuing weekly reports that name sheriffs, the agency claims, who are uncooperative when it comes to enforcing federal immigration laws. ICE says some sheriffs are refusing the federal government’s requests to hold people in their jails believed to be in the country illegally. But many sheriffs argue what they’re being asked to do is not constitutional. For years, ICE made requests of sheriffs departments to hold people in their jails even after they were free to go on local charge the request was called a detainer. ”And we honored those for years believing that was legally correct,” says Mitch Barker, executive director of the Washington State Sheriffs’ Association. But, Barker says, a court ruling from April 2014 changed that. A federal judge in Portland ruled Oregon’s Clackamas County had violated the Fourth Amendment rights of Maria  .   a   had been arrested for allegedly violating a restraining order. While her criminal case was moving forward, the county received a notice from ICE requesting it detain her. And it did. ”Even though she would’ve probably otherwise have been released the following day after her arrest, she ended up staying in jail for 16 days,” says Juliet Stumpf, a professor at Lewis  Clark Law School in Portland. Stumpf says the ruling found ICE detainers weren’t the same as going before a judge to get a warrant, meaning they weren’t a legally sufficient way to hold a person in jail. ”Since, according to the federal judge, the police had no authority to hold her at all, those 16 days, of detention, of custody, were completely unlawful, they were a violation of the Constitution,” she says. Christopher Lasch, a law professor at the University of Denver, says there’s been an ”explosion in the number of jurisdictions that sort of recognize this basic legal principal that a detainer doesn’t provide a legal basis for prolonging the detention of somebody who should otherwise be released.” Months after the 2014 ruling, ICE did away with that type of detention request. Instead, it began asking sheriffs for what amounts to a heads up ICE has also referred to these requests as detainers. Today, it’s common for law enforcement agencies across the country to provide information to ICE. Sometimes the agency uses that information to make its own arrests. Lasch says the new weekly reports from ICE naming sheriff’s departments that don’t honor detainers is shaming law enforcement for something the courts have settled. ”Basically, these detainer requests are requests for local sheriffs to violate the law,” Lasch says. Starting this month, ICE says it is using a new detainer form. The agency says, in addition to the detainer, it will also issue what’s called an administrative warrant. The problem with that, Lasch says, is the warrant is issued by ICE, not a judge  —   doing nothing, in his view, to address constitutional concerns. ICE declined a recorded interview, but in an email a spokeswoman maintained detainers are a legal request local law enforcement can use to continue to hold someone for up to 48 hours. But Pat Garrett, the sheriff in Washington County, Ore. disagrees. ”If you use the term detainer, it’s something that the federal courts have said is not constitutional,” Garrett says. Garrett is frustrated the new reports from ICE make no mention of court rulings. ”And that omission leads readers to conclusions about the legal framework around ICE detainers that are simply not accurate,” Garrett says."
"Researchers at Stanford University this week published a study that may bolster the argument that policies aimed at encouraging immigrants to come out of the shadows actually improve public safety. They found that a 2013 California law granting driver’s licenses to immigrants in the country illegally reduced    accidents by 7 to 10 percent in 2015, meaning roughly 4, 000 fewer   . In that same year, 600, 000 people got driver’s licenses under the law. It was the first time researchers had studied the effectiveness of such driver’s license laws, which have generated significant controversy nationally. Opponents have argued that granting licenses to immigrants in the U. S. illegally is dangerous. It’s a rhetorical cudgel often wielded by those opposed to offering protection or other forms of help to immigrants in the U. S. illegally, and it frequently relies on a notion that immigrants without legal status are more prone to violence and other forms of delinquency. President Trump has often argued that those who oppose a federal government crackdown on illegal immigration do so at the expense of public safety. This idea was central to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement last month that the federal government intended to withhold federal funds from cities that adopt   sanctuary policies aimed at shielding immigrants in the U. S. illegally. ”These policies,” he said, ”endanger the lives of every American.” In fact, research has generally shown that cities that adopt sanctuary policies tend to be safer than those that don’t, because immigrants not fearful that a routine interaction with their local police could end in their deportation are more likely to report crimes in their communities. Nonetheless, claims that such policies endanger public safety are common, as they have been surrounding the debate about driver’s licenses. ”In many of the countries from which illegal aliens come, it is not uncommon for motorists involved in accidents to flee the scene,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for immigration restrictions, says on its website, making it ”probable that if more illegal aliens were encouraged to drive by issuing them driver’s licenses, it would lead to more accidents caused by uninsured motorists and more would be hit and run.” Yet the Stanford researchers said their findings show no evidence for those claims. ”Rather, our results suggest that, if anything, providing unauthorized immigrants access to driver’s licenses reduced their incentives to flee the scene of an accident,” authors Hans Lueders, Jens Hainmueller and Duncan Lawrence wrote, adding that their findings may help inform the debate over whether other states should grant driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants. Twelve states and the District of Columbia already do. In California, the licenses are available to immigrants who cannot prove they are legal residents of the U. S. Though markings on the ID card indicate to police that it is one of these special licenses, the 2013 law that approved them also prohibits police from reporting license holders to immigration agents. The researchers suggest that ”consequently, unauthorized immigrants with a valid form of   driving authorization have weaker incentives to flee the scene after an accident, because they are less likely to fear deportation.” Their study also found that the license law did not increase the number of traffic accidents overall, as opponents had claimed it would. It did not decrease the number either. But the decline in    accidents was a positive sign, the researchers wrote. ”Overall, the findings suggest that providing driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants led to improved traffic safety,” they said."
"These days the Web can seem like a dark place, filled with internet trolls and divisive discourse. But the man who invented the World Wide Web 28 years ago is still optimistic (sort of). That man is Tim   and on Tuesday he was awarded the prestigious Turing Award for his invention. It’s an honor thought of as a Nobel Prize for computer science that comes with a $1 million award from Google.   a researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, spoke to WBUR about his   technology and what the Web has evolved into over the years. Why he invented the Web,   created the Web in 1989 as a way for researchers to share information with each other on the Internet. He conceived of the idea while he was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN). At that time,   says, scientists were using many different kinds of computers  —   Macs, PCs, minicomputers, etc.  —   and there was no way for these computers to talk to each other. ”It was designed to be universal. The whole point was breaking apart silos,” he says. He wanted to make communication easier. And he believed deeply in the power of a connected world to help us all work more efficiently and collaboratively across cultural boundaries. ”The idea was that it could put anything on it. I never imagined that it would kind of have everything on it,”   says. A  :   is also known to have introduced the first Web browser, the language for creating webpages (HTML) and essentially the algorithms that have allowed the Web to grow into what it is today. On all those ”nasty people” on the Web,   initially imagined the Web as a beautiful platform that could help us overcome national and cultural boundaries. He envisioned it would break down silos, but many people today believe the Web has created silos. And he still largely sees the potential of the Web, but it has not turned out to be the complete cyber Utopian dream he had hoped. He’s particularly worried about the dark side of social media  —   places where he says anonymity is being used by ”misogynist bullies, by nasty people who just get a kick out of being nasty.” The future Web,   has been thinking a lot lately about the power of his invention and the Pandora’s box it has opened. On the Web’s most recent birthday (March 12) he wrote a sort of online manifesto that detailed three major challenges for the current state of the Web: personal data privacy, the spread of misinformation and the lack of transparency in online political advertising. ”I spent the first 20 years of the Web telling people, just give everybody unfettered nondiscriminatory access to the internet. Let people build websites, let them link to each other. Good stuff will happen,”   says. But now he’s not as confident. In the last year, he’s become increasingly worried about the Web’s potential to live up to his vision as a tool for humanity. He insists he’s still an optimist (in the  ) in part because he thinks the Web will inevitably evolve. It’s ”crazy to imagine the Web will remain just as it is,” he says.   says the people designing the current networks need to adjust their strategies, and have to rethink their roles and ensure they make online spaces into ”places where nice things happen.” But   doesn’t believe the Web’s current challenges can be fixed by tech experts alone. ”It’s only gonna happen because lots of people care about it very much, and it’s not just people writing code it’s people writing laws, teachers, people in the street,” he says."
"Depending on where you sit, the U. S.  border is: a) a dangerous frontier that allows drug traffickers and illegal immigrants to cross freely into the U. S. or, b) a familiar frontier that is navigated as a regular part of everyday life. For people who live along the border in the twinned cities of Nogales, Ariz. and Nogales, Mexico, it’s nearly always the latter. The sister cities are known collectively as Ambos Nogales, or ”Both Nogales.” Nogales, Ariz. is less than a tenth of the size of its Mexican counterpart: about 20, 000 people compared with 250, 000 on the Mexican side. In both directions,   excursions are a normal thing. If you live on the Arizona side, you just take a short walk to the crossing, follow the small sign with the red arrow that says ”TO MEXICO,” pass through a turnstile, and there you are in another country. One of the first things you’ll see is the border wall stretching between the two countries. In Nogales, it looms 18 to 30 feet tall. It’s made of rusted steel tubes reinforced with concrete, with steel plates on top. There are   gaps between the bars, wide enough for people on opposite sides of the border to hold hands through the openings. Walk just a bit farther into the city, and you’ll find pharmacies, salons and dental clinics offering services at a fraction of what they would cost in the U. S. In fact, many Arizonans we meet in Nogales tell us they cross over into Mexico all the time for haircuts, manicures or a bit of nightlife. (Many also swear the tacos are better on the Mexican side, though our unscientific taste tests could not confirm this.) At a nail salon a couple of blocks away from the border crossing, I meet Delia Garza. She has walked across the border on her day off from her job at Walgreens in Nogales, Ariz. and tells me she comes to Mexico all the time because it’s so much cheaper: 100 pesos for a manicure, or about $5. Dental clinics are in profusion on the Mexico side, offering the gamut of services: root canals, braces, implants, cosmetic dentistry. Outside the Smile Dental Care clinic, a sign promises customers they can ”SAVE UP TO 70% COMPARE TO THE USA,” and lists a dozen U. S. dental insurance companies whose plans the clinic accepts. In the Smile Dental Care waiting room we find Adriana Guerrero, 23, who has driven an hour south from Tucson to get her braces tightened. The price she was quoted for braces back home was $5, 000. Here in Mexico? $1, 600. Her husband’s mother lives on the Mexican side, so Guerrero can bring their baby and combine a braces   with a visit to Grandma. When we walk back across into the U. S. (just a few of the nearly 3. 5 million pedestrians who will cross into Nogales, Ariz. each year) we find Trinidad Leon in a shoe store, shopping for her grandchildren. She walks across from Mexico looking for bargains on the U. S. side, often at    —   shoes, clothing, certain groceries  —   ”every day,” she says, laughing, ”if I have the money!” And down the street, there’s another border crosser: Michelle, a frisky pug dog, who has just been let out of her crate by    Alexander Figueroa. He explains that Michelle got in a fight with a bigger dog back home in Tucson and needed stitches to mend her torn lip. The Tucson veterinarian was going to charge the family $675. In Mexico? ”It was like 600 pesos, which was around $30,” Alexander says, ”and we got her stitched up and everything, and it was a great deal.” ”And a shower!” his mother, Liliana Figueroa, chimes in. ”A free shower. She’s cute now, very cute and clean, and she’s ready to go home.” The border wall separating the two cities named Nogales extends for about 10 miles, and in that stretch there’s one crossing that doesn’t require a passport. That’s where we meet Juan Manuel Fleischer. He is a cattle broker based in Arizona, and the day we meet, he is waiting for the latest herd of cattle he bought in Mexico to cross into the U. S. through that border gate. ”A thousand, 1, 500 head come in here every day, and they leave every day,” Fleischer says. High above us, the steel gate creaks open. Cattle start careening down the dusty hillside and are funneled into pens on the U. S. side. U. S. Customs and Border Protection agents are standing by with clickers, counting off each one as it lumbers through. All of the Mexican cattle are branded with an ”M” on their right hip. Fleischer will be shipping his to California and Texas. Fleischer was born in Nogales, Ariz. His wife was born in Mexico. ”We’re all intertwined here on the border,” he says. He sees his own identity as an easy blend. ”I’m a ” he begins. ”I’m Latin. I’m white that’s what they make me sign [on] the papers. Yeah, I’m a   from the border.” Fleischer’s family lived here when all this land was part of Mexico. In fact, when the United States didn’t even exist. He can trace his lineage in this part of the world all the way back to the 1500s, to ancestors who came from Spain and Portugal. When he grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, he recalls, the border was open. ”Oh yeah,” he says. ”You could cross with nothing before. You didn’t need passports. People knew each other. Mexican people could come back and forth. You know, [at] customs, you say, ’Hey, I’m just gonna go get stuff at the grocery store . ..’ Yeah, it was different times.” Over time, the Nogales wall has evolved and grown, from a simple barbed wire fence to this latest version, put up in 2011. ”I don’t like the wall,” Fleischer says. ”I think it’s ugly. But as far as leaving no wall and no vigilance? It’d be ridiculous. We’re just looking for trouble.” Still, Fleischer flatly calls it ”stupid” to think the wall stops drug traffickers. He gestures to the barrier high above us. ”You’ll see people just hop over that fence with loads of dope on their backs and risk the cross,” he says. ”It happens a lot. They get a little ladder and they get up there. These are agile kids.” ”I couldn’t do it!” he adds, laughing. ”It’d scare the hell out of me to get up there!” Fleischer pauses to reflect on the relative dangers this border poses. ”I guess what I would tell people that aren’t from the border is, we aren’t in any risk of being invaded by drug dealers or terrorists or illegal aliens. The fact that they can cross through here is just a fact.” This land, spanning two countries, is close to his heart. ”I love the fact that I can live on both sides of the border and be OK with that,” he tells me. ”I think it’s a fair deal.” ”And,” he concludes, ”I think we’re fortunate as a country to have a country next to us that is our friend. It could be a lot worse.” The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny, with production help on this story from Anjuli Sastry. Thanks to Arizona Public   and the Fronteras Desk at   for research assistance."
"Growing up, punk rocker Laura Jane Grace always felt conflicted about gender. She tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that she felt like two ”twin souls” were warring inside of her, fighting for control. ”I thought that I was quite possibly schizophrenic,” she says. It wasn’t until Grace was 19 that she heard the term ”transgender” and had a context for what she was feeling. In 2012, at the age of 31, she transitioned from male to female. Grace, who is the founder of the band Against Me! writes about the transition and how it affected her wife and daughter, as well as her stage persona, in the new memoir Tranny. Overall, she says, the transition put her ”more in touch” with herself: ”It just, like, overall,   made me a more real, more there, present and    person. It broke down a wall.” On transitioning to female and wanting to avoid buying into stereotypes of women  You decide you’re going to transition and then all of a sudden you’re like  —   and now I’m still a public figure and now I face the fear of, Do I look fat in this dress? I have to do a photo shoot and I’m worried about the way I look, and I feel like all those pressures sometimes, from a transition standpoint, are so unrealistic to navigate in a public eye. It’s tough. On the appeal of punk clothes and style  It was a form of expression, in a way, that I couldn’t express myself how I wanted to otherwise. And it also served as a form of armor, because when you’re wearing a big leather jacket with spikes on it and you’re charging out your hair with Knox gelatin, I mean, you’re like, arming yourself. I got beat up a lot, so that was something to kind of hold onto. At first, especially living where I was living, like, the nihilism of it all attracted me  —   the idea of live fast, die young  —   because I didn’t think I was going to make it out of South Florida, especially [because] I got arrested and was already a felon by the time I was like 14, 15 years old, so I really thought I was going to get stuck there. So the idea of dying was appealing. On how the gender dysphoria she felt led to destructive behaviors  Being stuck in that . ..    cycle, where engaging in any kind of behavior that gave in to your dysphoria was then immediately met afterwards with intense feelings of shame and    —   I was a cutter. I actively sought out   things like deciding, like, I am going to smoke cigarettes. This tastes terrible, it just made me throw up, but I’m going to keep going until I like these cigarettes. Thinking in my head, How can I get a hold of drugs? How can I find cocaine? . .. And that’s like [at] 13 years old, because I didn’t know . .. I had no resources. I had no one to turn to, to talk about it. I used to go to a church group  —   the church paid for me to go to therapy. The church kicked me out of church eventually, because they thought I was a lost cause and there were just no words for it. Again, I didn’t hear the term ”transgender” until I was probably, like, 19 years old. Who wants to grow up to be something that you feel like is going to cost you a normal life? On her     daughter saying she wanted Grace to ”be daddy again” That overall feeling and that existential crisis crushed me. I want to be her dad, I am her dad, that’s my kid, no one else, especially separating from her mother, [I had] the feeling of I’ll be damned if someone else is coming in here and all of the sudden going to be ”dad” to my kid.  Maybe that’s a dumb, aggressive attitude to have about things, but as a parent I refuse to apologize for any way I feel over the protection of my kid. It was something that I wrestled with and eventually came to the conclusion that I am her dad, no matter what. And she says female pronouns, ”she” and ”her,” and she understands that I’m transgender and I am still her dad and she says ”dad.” People will often, in front of the two of us, refer to me as her mommy, and we’ve never said that. People have a hard time accepting that sometimes things are different."
"We all want breakthroughs in medicine. I’ve never met someone who doesn’t. Even with all the progress we have seen in medicine, millions of people suffer, or have family members who suffer, from diseases that are making their lives worse or threatening their lives. Time means something different to these people. They do not have the luxury of waiting patiently while researchers test new drugs. There is growing interest in reducing the evidence required to approve new drugs and to more rapidly deliver new therapies to patients. The sentiment behind speeding approval is a good one  —   no one wants to delay the availability of drugs that are beneficial and safe  —   but can lead to shortcuts in evidence generation that can also come with risk. One such shortcut is to study the effect of the drug on some outcome other than what happens to patients. The idea is that the intermediary marker, or what is called a surrogate outcome, can be obtained faster and be used in place of a patient outcome that would require more people to be studied over a longer period of time. For example, a study might focus on tumor shrinkage rather than survival. Or a study could evaluate cholesterol levels instead of heart attacks. By using these intermediate markers, the Food and Drug Administration can approve a drug for one use, cholesterol lowering, with the presumption that it reliably predicts an outcome patients care about, helping them avoid heart attacks. The problem is that the effect of a drug on a single marker of risk like cholesterol, or even a group of markers, may not ultimately translate into whether that drug produces a benefit for a given patient. When you actually do the study that measures patient outcomes, the results can  —   and have  —   surprised us. A legendary example is torceptrapib, which increased good cholesterol and decreased bad cholesterol. Pfizer invested heavily on this medication, and had the foresight to do a study that measured patient outcomes. For reasons that are still unclear, they found that despite its effect on cholesterol, the drug increased the risk of death. Fortunately, the drug had not yet come to market, which likely saved millions of patients from taking a drug that would have increased their risk. Other examples abound. We have seen cancer drugs approved on the basis of surrogate outcomes fail to improve overall mortality. We have seen that drugs approved for diabetes on the basis of reducing blood glucose to almost normal levels did not lower overall risk of heart attacks. We have seen that other cholesterol drugs like niacin and fenofibrate, blockbuster drugs whose big sales were based on how they affected lipid values, failed to improve patient survival or lower their risk of heart disease. We puzzle over why these disappointments happen. But it seems that drug effects in people are complex and hard to predict based on intermediary measures. Most drugs cause numerous changes at the same time, and we can only know the overall effect by focusing on patient outcomes. Last month we published a study of two decades of experience with intermediate markers of risk, or surrogates, in cardiovascular trials. We identified 157 studies published in prestigious medical journals in which the surrogate outcomes indicated the drug or intervention was favorable. Only a quarter of these studies ever had a major   study using patient outcomes. Of those, almost half reversed the initial conclusion. Robert Califf, a former FDA cCommissioner, stated in an accompanying editorial that ”one must question the simplistic approach to reducing standards for evidence across the board advocated by some  —   particularly when the FDA’s existing accelerated approval programs show that it is possible to create working pathways for streamlined drug development while maintaining standards that ensure ample empirical evidence.” There are no shortcuts to knowing how a drug might affect what happens to people. A recent FDA report identified 22 case studies where early, small clinical studies found drugs in development to have beneficial effects, but later, larger more definitive studies found no evidence of benefit and, in some cases, evidence of harm. The solution to speeding breakthroughs in medicine is not to take shortcuts in evidence generation, but to leverage emerging methods and networks that can potentially generate robust clinical evidence faster, cheaper and better. In a digital age, we can push for better evidence without sacrificing much time. One example is the   Research Foundation that is leveraging relationships with patients and health systems, as well as the digital transformation in health data to innovate knowledge generation. With new approaches, even for outcomes that occur years or decades later, we can be poised to collect data that are accumulating over time at much lower cost and more efficiently than was previously possible. Before any drug is approved, regulators must always take into consideration the available options and the threat of the condition. And if at times approval is made on less than strong evidence, then we need to acknowledge its weakness and commit to acquiring more. And we also need to ensure that each person who receives any drug approved under those circumstances is aware of our collective uncertainty of the drug’s risks and benefits and monitored closely. In the end, shortcuts will generally not serve us best. They may be necessary at times, but the knowledge that the evidence is not strong should push us to redouble our efforts to create the means to rapidly generate the evidence we need and the public deserves. Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist and the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. He directs the   Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation and is a   of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program. Joseph Ross is a primary care physician and an associate professor of medicine and public health at Yale School of Medicine."
"A rain forest sings with the sounds of insects, birds, maybe a howler monkey or two. But scientists are discovering that some forest dwellers also communicate in ways humans usually can’t hear  —   via ultrasound. A team from Dartmouth College has recorded these signals in treetops on a pristine Panamanian island called Barro Colorado, and slowed them down to make sense of them. The ultrasonic chatter, it turns out, is actually a complicated conversation between mating insects and the bats that aim to eat them. The insects are katydids, cousins to locusts and grasshoppers, which make their calls by rubbing their wings together. Some types live in North America, but the variety is nothing compared to the 250 or so species that live in Panama, where some behemoths are the size of a cell phone, and others are almost microscopic. Many look like they’re in a Halloween costume, with funny looking   or big horns. Hungry bats find them all irresistible. ”Katydids are the potato chips of the rainforest,” says Laurel Symes, a biologist at Dartmouth College. The hungry bats listen for the ultrasonic calls of the katydids, then use their own ultrasonic signals to locate the insects, much the way ships use sonar to find objects beneath the sea. Now, you’d think katydids would just shut up and save themselves. But males have to signal. It’s how they attract females. The Dartmouth team has spotted some interesting ways that katydids evolved to find mates but also fool bats  —   to navigate the tricky soundscape between sex and death. ”What’s cool about the katydids,” says Dartmouth biologist Hannah ter Hofstede, is that ”each species may have found a different way to resolve that conflict.” Katydids, she says, have a special organ in their necks, just above and between their front legs. It’s just a clump of cells, ”a white blob,” she says. But it acts as a minibrain. Using tiny recording electrodes inserted into the minibrain, ter Hofstede has confirmed that it responds to ultrasonic signals, either from another insect or from a bat, that the katydid hears. But her big question was, how do katydids use their ultrasonic sensory system in the real world  —   in the rain forest? To figure that out, she and her team traveled to Panama and wired up a rain forest with special microphones that record ultrasound. Their project required weeks of shooting ropes over branches, climbing into the canopy and setting up an array of   gear. They accumulated hours and hours of recordings, and noted an eerie babble, most of it in the ultrasonic range. To make sense of it, they lowered the frequency  —   in essence, slowing the conversations down to the point where the human ear can easily hear them. Symes decoded it for us: ”So this really low, continuous sound is the sound of crickets,” she explains. ”But all of these short, higher pitched sounds  —   the things that are two pulses or one short pulse, or maybe just a really short trill of sound  —   most of that is katydid calls. And then the really   regular sound, is the sound of the bat flying through.” There were some surprises. ”I think what I find the most interesting about the katydids,” says ter Hofstede, ”is how much they have adapted to deal with these kinds of predators. So, one of the things is that they don’t produce very much sound.” Some species only call for mates a few times a night, the scientists noticed, which makes them less vulnerable to bats, but also lowers their chances of finding a mate. And some species apparently recognize a bat signal and go quiet when they hear it. Others just keep calling because they live underneath leaves and are harder for bats to find. ”So the more we investigated,” says ter Hofstede, ”the more complicated everything gets. And these katydids are not solving the same problem in the same way. They’re all solving these problems in different ways.” All this variation comes from a brain the size of a grain of rice. ”But they’re capable of processing a lot of this information and basically coming to decisions,” says ter Hofstede. They apparently have neural circuits, she says, ”related to recognizing certain signals as being important for being a mate or being a bat.” Symes finds that sort of discernment an admirable product of natural selection. ”They live in an environment where there might be a hundred different species that make sound,” she says. ”And they have to find this particular sound within it.” NPR contributor Bill McQuay is an audio producer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He’s on Twitter: @mcquay_bill."
"Dee Dee Bridgewater found a moment in her acceptance speech at the 2017 NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert, on Monday night at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. to sound a note of thanks for the NEA itself. ”They have provided the possibility for artists to dream,” she said, ”and to share their art and their creativity with people all around these United States, and all around the world.” ”That’s something,” she added. ”It’s something to protect.” The stress on her last word was unmistakable, and it sparked a round of applause. This was the 35th edition of the NEA Jazz Masters program, this nation’s highest honor for living jazz musicians, presented by the National Endowment for the Arts. The anniversary, under normal circumstances, probably would have been the headline. But in recent weeks, following a proposed presidential budget that would eliminate the endowment outright, the conversation has awkwardly shifted. The New York Times put it succinctly: ”NEA to Honor Jazz Masters Under a Cloud of Uncertainty,” in a story that posted on Sunday, just as the honorees were receiving their accolades at a gala dinner here. Along with Bridgewater, 67, a singer and bandleader as well as an accomplished actress and former host of NPR’s JazzSet (produced by WBGO) this year’s class of Jazz Masters spans almost every conceivable style and subgenre of the music. The honorees include pianist, composer and historian Dick Hyman, who turned 90 last month, and   organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, who is 74. Bassist, composer and bandleader Dave Holland, 70, is also in this year’s distinguished ranks. And the recipient of the 2017 A. B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy is Ira Gitler, the prolific critic and historian. Notwithstanding Gitler, 88, who was recovering from an illness and unable to travel, every honoree delivered his or her own remarks at the concert, which according to custom was an affair at once sprawling and clipped, engaging and  . And it was hard not to notice an undercurrent of political will in the speeches, despite an overall tone of grace and gratitude. (Gitler had a   surrogate in his son, Fitz.) Holland, who grew up in England, recalled moving to New York at the invitation of Miles Davis: ”I came as an immigrant,” he said, in another line that elicited applause. He also spoke up in favor of more childhood arts education, and added that ”the positive energy of this music” is precisely what’s needed in our polarized and divisive age. ”It represents the best of who we are as human beings,” he said. (More applause.) Hyman sketched an eloquent appraisal of jazz as an American enterprise  —   ”historically, a gift from black Americans to the rest of us.” Extending a familiar metaphor of democracy and collective action, he was folksy and insightful, and his words are well worth chronicling: That the music has been fundamentally more or less improvised is also a very American attitude, it seems to me: a ”Let me figure this out and see how you like it” attitude. And an ”If you want to fix something, let’s work it out” attitude. It goes with the best impulses we have, to appreciate each other in the moment to support each other to delight in each other’s inspirations, each other’s differences, each other’s combinations of materials and each other’s grooves. It seems to me that to improvise together is American, because it announces that what you have going is the most remarkable, the most ingenious or charming thing you can say at a given moment  —   but on the other hand, who knows what might happen in the next chorus, when you combine what you’re doing with someone else? And who knows what marvelous thing might occur when your inspiration is supported by his or her performance, and the two or three of you then go on to create something never imagined before? Most of the other speeches were delivered extemporaneously, which had its upside and downside. Given that every honoree was warmly introduced by a peer or protégé and also profiled in a crisp video short, the discursive sprawl of their remarks became a liability. (There was apparently no ”WRAP IT UP” prompt, nor should there have been.) But if the speeches often had an unfocused muchness, the evening’s musical performances were largely tight and on point. The bar was set high from the start, as alto saxophonist and 2009 NEA Jazz Master Lee Konitz ambled through ”All the Things You Are,” in tribute to Gitler. The bright warble of Konitz’s alto was a beautiful sound in the room, and his rapport with pianist Dan Tepfer, a regular duet partner, made an exploratory impulse feel approachable and natural. Another duet  —   featuring Bill Charlap and Aaron Diehl at a dovetailed pair of grand pianos, in honor of Hyman  —   pushed the limits of dexterity without tipping into empty exhibitionism. There was balance and flair in their performance, which trotted through a medley of Hyman’s tunes, including a rumbling finale linking two   inventions, ”The Minotaur” and ”Rap #3.” Dianne Reeves, toasting Bridgewater, sang a version of ”I Wish You Love” with some new lyrics customized for the occasion, including this couplet: ”All of your friends and I agree   That you are jazz royalty.” It was both personal and regal, and because Reeves was backed by a band including trumpeter Theo Croker and drummer Kassa Overall  —   musicians whom Bridgewater has mentored  —   it made sense on multiple levels. The same could be said for a swinging take on ”Undecided” sung by Bridgewater’s daughter China Moses, even though it wasn’t the best fit for her style. (Moses, who typically sings a stylish mix of dance tracks and torch songs, was ably backed by the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, which had also played a tune with Konitz.) For the portion of the show honoring Dr. Lonnie Smith, a Hammond   organ and Leslie speaker were brought to the center of the stage. It was played first by the young turk Matthew Whitaker, who chose to carve up ”Mellow Mood” in a trio with Mike Moreno on guitar and Nate Smith on drums. That’s a tune by Jimmy Smith, an indisputably great organist and an NEA Jazz Master besides  —   but also, unless I’m missing something, the wrong Smith. The   organist in the tribute was Booker T. Jones, of Booker T.  the M. G.’s fame. His playing on ”It’s Changed,” a track from Lonnie Smith’s 1977 crossover album Funk Reaction, was chirpy and crisp  —   and so was the alto saxophone of Donald Harrison, and Moreno’s guitar. Still, this moment was one of several that highlighted an irresolvable craving at this event: It was hard not to desire Dr. Smith himself at the console, working the foot pedals. A similar issue might have bedeviled the Dave Holland musical tribute, were it not for the granite authority of his   James Genus, and the established chemistry elsewhere on the stage. Beyond the bass swap, it was a reunion of Prime Directive, the quintet that Holland led from the late 1990s into the  ’00s, with Chris Potter on saxophones, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Steve Nelson on vibraphone and Nate Smith (replacing Billy Kilson) on drums. The band played a medley of ”Prime Directive” and ”Make Believe,” moving from dreamy flow to funky chop, and demonstrating the flexible strength of a   crew. There was spectacular concentration among the ensemble, especially when, in the middle of the second tune, everyone dropped out but Eubanks and Potter. They kept the beat and the fury going, in a syncopated crosstalk, punchy and exhilarating. It evoked a   juggling act on a high wire, a perfect expression of the cooperative energies and improvisational genius that the evening had been designed to elevate. It was the sound of human transcendence, unconcerned with any issue beyond the onrushing moment at hand."
"I reach up into a sugar maple tree’s low branches and pluck a leaf. My fingers hold a seemingly unremarkable leaf, grown on a tree next to a suburban driveway. This leaf is not what it seems. I dip the leaf in alcohol, then in dilute bleach, long enough to kill fungi and bacteria on the surface. Then, with a sterile knife, I sliver the leaf and lay the cut segments onto Petri dishes filled with   agar. I’m using this simplest of microbiological techniques to query what might be living inside the leaf. Maple cells will not grow in the Petri dishes, but fungi will. I’m luring them out of hiding and, by feeding them, bringing them to a scale that my human senses can apprehend. Days later, fungal growth spills out of the sliced leaf:   lava flows, bright orange flecks, rippled cream, tangled puffs of white filaments, sulfurous shags, and purple velvet. The dishes were the nonpareils of moldy fridges, vibrant ecstasies of fungal growth. The ”control” dishes, those I had opened and knifed but not touched with maple, were bare or sparsely spotted with gray blobs. Here, then, were some of the leaf’s inhabitants coaxed into view. The colorful growths revealed that my high school and college textbooks had told a  . Elegant diagrams of leaf   depicted only plant cells. But a leaf is a community of fungus, bacteria, protist, alga, nematode, and plant. Just as diagrams of human skin or gut usually omit the microbes that are essential components of human bodies, our images of plants, seemingly so objective, missed the essential nature of a leaf. A ”maple” is not an individual made of plant cells, but a community of cells from many domains and kingdoms of life.   plants likely do not exist in nature and, if they could be constructed, would quickly die for want of the vital connections that sustain life. Most of the cells that comprise a maple leaf are smaller than plant cells and hard to see under   microscopes. The incomplete diagrams of early botanists are therefore understandable. But we now know that leaves also comprise millions of   cells. My backyard experiment revealed just the small a portion of the fungal community. Studies of the diversity of DNA in leaves reveal hundreds of species in every leaf. Worldwide, there may be a million species of   fungus. Global diversity of bacteria in leaves is unknown, but DNA sequencing can reveal hundreds per plant species. By eavesdropping on chemical conversations within the leaf, biologists have learned that the life processes of a plant  —   growing, moving nutrients, fighting disease, and coping with drought  —   are all networked tasks, emerging from physical and chemical connections among diverse cells. These leaf networks are dynamic. In some species, the network changes through the seasons, starting in spring with bacteria that resemble those of the soil, then shifting through the growing season to bacteria that can process the complex mix of nutrients inside a leaf. Fungi inside the leaf protect against herbivorous animals, encourage growth, and confer drought resistance to the plant. Bacteria also promote growth by processing nutrients, cleaning wastes, signaling to plant cells, producing growth hormones, and combatting pathogens. The leaf network is also a place of tension, its members caught in the evolutionary struggle between cooperation and conflict. Pathogenic bacteria and fungi continually threaten to overwhelm and destroy the leaf, a tendency held in check by a combination of plant defensive chemicals and competition from other microbes. The leaf community contains the seeds (or fungal hyphae) of its own mortality: When leaves weaken, fungi engulf the leaf and start the process of decomposition. This rot isn’t always a disadvantage for the rest of the plant. Death can prune shaded leaves, stopping them from draining the plant community’s energy. Fifty years ago, Lynn Margulis showed that plant cells are miniature networks, made of the union of three different evolutionary lineages:   chloroplasts,   mitochondria, and enveloping plant cells. We now know that the same is true of the leaf and indeed the whole plant. Biologists talk not of the ecology and evolution individual plants, but of ”holobionts,” entities made of many species, all inseparably linked. Living networks are ancient, perhaps as old as life itself. Models and lab experiments on the chemical origin of life show that interacting networks of molecules beat   molecules in a Darwinian struggle. Many of the first fossilized cells of life on Earth lived in integrated bacterial stacks called stromatolites. Today, all major ecosystems  —   forests, coral reefs, grasslands, ocean plankton  —   are built on conversations between interdependent partners. Cut these conversations and the ecosystems fall apart. The first artificial cells also have a networked character. When scientists organize chemical reactions into arrays of tiny, interconnected compartments,   properties emerge: cycles of protein production, gradients of signaling chemicals, and the ability to maintain a steady internal state. Without the network, the homogeneous chemical soup lacks any tang of life. The fundamental unit of biology is therefore not the ”self,” but the network. A maple tree is a plurality, its individuality a temporary manifestation of relationship. This view of life has practical consequences. If plants are made from relationships, then agricultural science can manage these relationships to increase yield and sustainability. In conservation biology, restoring ecological interactions will help species and ecosystems. In genetic engineering, the effects of manipulations emerge not from the essential quality of any stretch of DNA but from networked interactions among genes and their environments. The living communities within plants can be put to work remediating polluted soils, reducing the toxicity of agricultural chemicals applied to crops, and processing biofuels. The colorful fungal growths swarming my Petri dishes have a lesson beyond the immediate practical benefits of managing and studying living networks. Every textbook diagram and every written metaphor shape how we imagine the world. Microbiology and genetics are calling us to expand that imaginative space. When we gaze at a maple leaf, we now see not an individual made of plant cells, but a thrumming conversation, an embodied network. The ”self” is a society. David George Haskell’s latest book, The Songs of Trees, explores biological networks through the sounds and stories of a dozen trees around the world. He is a professor of biology at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. His first book, The Forest Unseen, was the winner of the National Academies’ Best Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, among other honors. You can connect with him on twitter: @DGHaskell"
"After false starts and odd twists in the White House’s counternarrative about the potential connections between President Trump’s campaign and Russia’s electoral meddling, the storyline has settled into a familiar arc: It’s all Susan Rice’s fault. The White House charges that it was Rice who may have abused her power as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser and effectively snooped on Trump’s presidential transition. It was Rice who may have leaked classified details from that surveillance to the press, it alleges. And in doing so, Trump mused on Wednesday, she might have committed a crime. Now it’s all there: The plot and the villain and the quest for a predicate to drive the story forward. Who will investigate? What’s to be done? Rice is probably not in any legal trouble, and she denied any improper behavior or leaking any information while working in the White House. But she has been a favorite target for Republicans for years, and bringing her back into the headlines reprises a familiar antagonist they love to hate  —   a   Darth Vader cameo in an untested Star Wars spinoff. Rice, in the Trump construction, may have masterminded a Richard   campaign of spying on Obama’s political opponents, one that stretched back years before the presidential transition in which she has been accused. ”I think it’s going to be the biggest story,” Trump told The New York Times on Wednesday, without offering any supporting evidence. ”It’s such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time.” The White House and its allies will try hard for that to be so. And making the story about Rice not only allows the White House to change the subject from what involvement Trump’s campaign aides may have had in the Russian intelligence services’ attempts to influence last year’s election. It also brings along sometime troublemakers who are only too glad to have an old foe back in the arena. ”Americans deserve to know if Pres Obamas National Security Adviser was involved in unmasking Trump transition figures for political purposes,” tweeted South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Rice enemy of many years. ”In terms of political manipulation of national security information, Susan Rice  —   in my view  —   has done it in the past.” Graham is the chairman of a Senate subcommittee that oversees the counterintelligence division of the FBI, which is investigating the potential ties between Trump’s camp and Russia. He has called for getting to the bottom of that story  —   but Rice being back in the mix is apparently too rich for him to pass up. Graham and his colleagues pilloried Rice following the 2012 attack on the U. S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, after she appeared on TV in Washington and said the deadly raid had been caused by protests over an incendiary   video. Republicans charged that Obama and his aides lied to protect his   claims about having nearly defeated  . The hounding was so intense that Rice asked Obama to withdraw her nomination to become secretary of state following the departure of Hillary Clinton. Instead, Obama made Rice national security adviser, a job within the executive office of the president and so without need for Senate confirmation. Rice remained a target, however, for conservatives and critics of Obama’s handling of the Syrian civil war  —   and she also made enemies within the government over what critics called her irresolution and micromanagement. That may mean she enjoys few defenders from the Obama era or the current administration, although Rice was not reticent this week in firing back on her own. ”I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would,” she said on MSNBC. Rice called herself ”shocked” when she saw Trump’s post on Twitter that said Obama had ”wiretapped” him  —   ”It wasn’t typical of the way presidents treat their predecessors,” she said. Trump’s post set in motion a sometimes baffling chain of events as the White House and its allies in Congress tried to make the president’s charge be true. Strictly speaking, it isn’t: FBI Director James Comey and the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence committees all say there was no wiretap of Trump. But when the dust settled, Republicans did reach ground on which they feel comfortable standing: Trump and his aides apparently were swept up in legal U. S. surveillance of foreign targets during the transition. Some of the names of the Americans involved may have been ”unmasked”  —   revealed within secret channels so senior leaders with the appropriate clearances could see them. That’s not wiretapping, but it’s good enough for government work  —   and it has uncovered a rich vein for Republicans to mine as they respond to the   storyline. Majority members on the House and Senate committees could call Rice, or other people from her era, to testify as Democrats seek Trump campaign aides. And Republicans can talk in open hearings, and to reporters, about the   narrative  —   not Russian cyberattacks or potential collusion with Trump aides."
"For Syrian activist Samer   Tuesday morning started much like any other. ”We woke up,” he says, ”as usual, to the sounds of warplanes that barely ever leave the skies of Idlib province.” He got word from fellow opposition activists that new strikes had targeted a nearby town, Khan Shaykhun. The    prepared to leave his wife and sons  —   a toddler and a newborn  —   and head to the scene. As they had many times before, he and other activists planned to document what happened, record the names of the victims and try to get the word out. Six years after they started protesting against President Bashar Assad’s rule, this is what much of their opposition activities have come down to. Before reaching the town, just a few miles away, it became clear this was no ordinary strike. Fellow activists in Khan Shaykhun, communicating via   warned them that the bombs had released chemicals. They heard the word ”sarin”  —   a toxic nerve gas  —   and pulled over. ”We were afraid of inhaling the smoke. We didn’t want to die, to be honest,” Hussein told NPR in a conversation over the WhatsApp messaging app. They waited for about 15 minutes, until they saw the flood of victims being evacuated past them. Then they decided to venture in. ”I saw something I’d never seen in my life,” Hussein said. ”Dozens of children, women, men and elderly people lying on the ground, getting hosed down with water, out in the cold. Children trying to breathe a gasp of air, with saliva and foam coming out of their mouths and nostrils.” Hussein wept as he watched first responders succumb to the chemicals themselves. He frantically searched for a ventilator for one of the children, but in those moments when he was looking, he says, ”was the difference between life and death.” He says he saw entire families being pulled from their apartments, lifeless. The strikes came just at daybreak, he said, ”before the children would be leaving for school or the parents for work.” Dumbstruck and with little else to do, Hussein covered victims with blankets, to give them a measure of dignity. They showed no signs of outward wounds or blood. The World Health Organization says its partners on the ground counted at least 70 fatalities, people who died of apparent exposure to ”highly toxic chemicals.” Hussein shared a list of names compiled by activists, typed painstakingly in Arabic: 74 victims.   were children. Hundreds of others suffered from the effects of toxic chemicals in the aftermath of the attack. WHO said area hospitals were unable to handle the flood of victims, and dozens were transported across the border to Turkey  —   more than 80 miles away  —   for treatment. That in itself was an ordeal, activists said, with some of the wounded waiting hours to cross the border. WHO said that two area hospitals, which should have been able to treat the victims, had been ”damaged”  —   one on Tuesday, the day of the attack, as it received victims, and the other on the previous Sunday. Hussein said Russian warplanes were to blame for targeting Khan Shaykhun’s only hospital hours after the initial attack and returning to bomb the town’s civil defense center, from where first responders work. He had been to the civil defense center just hours before, watching in horror as rescue workers stripped the wounded before they tried to hose off the toxic substance. ”Some of these people, their faces had turned yellow and they had stopped breathing,” said Hussein. ”As I’m describing the incident to you now, my hands are shaking. No, my whole body is shaking. We were all shaken by what we saw.” President Trump has blamed Assad’s forces for the attack. U. N. Ambassador Nikki Haley threatened that the United States could act unilaterally if the Security Council wasn’t willing to take action. Syria’s military has vehemently denied using chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun or in any previous attack. For those on the ground, the harsh statements and the denials brought back memories of 2013, when a sarin attack against the   suburbs of Damascus nearly provoked a U. S. strike. Syria agreed then to give up its chemical weapons stockpile  —   which it had never admitted possessing  —   under a U. S.  and   deal. In the years that followed, allegations of   chemical attacks have persisted, mainly involving chlorine  —   which is not banned because of its hygienic uses. The U. N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have been tasked jointly with investigating those allegations. They assessed that Syrian government forces used toxic chemicals as weapons on three occasions between 2014 and 2015. (The Islamic State was also identified as using chemical weapons in its attacks, but it is not active in Idlib province.) The U. N.  mission says it is in the process of investigating the new allegations. Meanwhile, Syria’s conventional war grinds on. On the same day that residents of Khan Shaykhun were suffocating to death, the   Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 34 people, most of them women and children, were killed in airstrikes elsewhere in Idlib province, while rebel factions, led by a former   affiliate, pressed an offensive against   areas of neighboring Hama province and shelled two isolated,   villages in Idlib. Syrian government forces are in a better position than they’ve been in years, seizing back territory with help from Iran and Russia, powerful allies. Rebels have been pushed into surrender deals from Aleppo to Homs, and opposition fighters have been evacuated with their families and peaceful dissidents to northern,   territory. But that territory, dominated by jihadist factions and under regular attack from the air, offers little freedom or security to civilians. Hussein says Syria needs a durable accord between all parties. ”At the end of the day, as Syrian people, we have lost a lot,” he says. ”We’ve lost our children, our women, our country as a whole. It’s something hard to put into words.”"
"Experts are increasingly confident that a powerful nerve agent was used to kill and injure victims in an attack on a   region of Syria on Tuesday. More than 70 people were killed in a bombing in Idlib province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The organization says that the death toll so far includes 20 children. Elsewhere in the province, more than 30 people were reported killed in conventional attacks. In a separate statement, Doctors Without Borders said one of its teams had examined eight survivors of the attack who had exhibited symptoms of exposure to ”a neurotoxic agent such as sarin”  —   including constricted pupils and muscle spasms. Those symptoms are consistent with ”any one of the chemicals in that chemical family of nerve agents,” agrees Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert with Strongpoint Security, a   consultancy. Kaszeta says it’s the strongest evidence of an attack using nerve agent since an August 2013 strike on a Damascus suburb that killed hundreds of people. After that incident, President Bashar Assad’s regime was pressured into surrendering more than 1, 000 tons of chemicals to international observers. Syria also joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty prohibiting the use of such weapons. The surrender of the weapons material was considered one of the few diplomatic wins for the Obama administration, which struggled to respond to the Syria crisis. Since then, combatants in Syria, including government forces, have been accused of regularly violating the convention. But Kaszeta says most chemical attacks in the region have involved chlorine gas, which is much less lethal. ”Chlorine is primarily is an irritant to the respiratory tract,” Kaszeta says. Although formally considered a chemical weapon, it only kills in extremely high concentrations. ”It’s sort of a glorified  .” By contrast, nerve agents such as sarin work by disrupting the nervous system’s communications with muscles throughout the body. Exposure to tiny quantities causes spasms and pinprick pupils  —   of the sort seen in videos from Tuesday’s attack, Kaszeta says. The Russian government has claimed the chemicals were released after Syrian government forces hit a rebel chemical depot. Kaszeta says that’s doubtful because nerve agents are unstable and are typically stored as two separate chemicals. With sarin, for example, one of those precursor chemicals is highly flammable isopropyl alcohol. ”You drop a bomb on it, the whole thing is going up in a huge fireball,” he says. Even if the nerve agent was   a bomb strike would fail to disperse it in a way that could cause mass casualties. Kaszeta says he thinks the most likely source of chemical was the Syrian regime. Sarin and other nerve agents are hard to make, and it’s unlikely that rebel groups would have access to it. Assad was known to hold large quantities of ”precursor chemicals” used to make sarin, and although the government surrendered much of that material, it’s possible that some was left undeclared to international inspectors. In addition, Kaszeta says, the Syrian regime is still believed to have experts who could make nerve agent from scratch. ”It’s not like we arrested their scientists and chemical engineers and technicians,” he says. ”Nothing happened to those guys.” The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it is ”seriously concerned about the alleged chemical weapons attack” and is gathering and analyzing information ”from all available sources.” If it is true that Syria is once again using nerve agents, Kaszeta says it would be a huge strike against the international system of treaties and inspections designed to prevent the use of chemical weapons. Three years ago, ”[Assad] used some, maybe all, of his chemical weapons as a poker chip, and gave that up for another chip that said, ’Don’t bomb me,” Kaszeta says. But the use of chemical weapons has continued, and the regime may now be emboldened. ”I hate to be pessimistic about this whole thing, but he’s gotten away with it so far, why wouldn’t he get away with it again?”"
"In a suspected chemical weapon attack like the one in Syria on Tuesday, children are the most vulnerable targets. They are more likely than adults to die from chemical agents and to suffer injures. If they survive, they also suffer from the physical and mental trauma of the attack for far more years than adults simply because they have more years left to live. The effects of chemical weapons are more devastating for kids for a number of reasons. ”Because kids are smaller, there’s a higher impact on a smaller body,” said Dr. Steven Hinrichs, director of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. A smaller dose of a chemical agent can do more damage to their organs. If the agent is sarin gas, as groups like Doctors Without Borders are reporting, a victim’s lungs and airways can fill up with fluid, causing suffocation. Children would die faster than adults because a child has smaller airways and a smaller chest. ”Children have fewer defenses,” says Dr. Sandro Galea, an emergency physician and epidemiologist at Boston University who has studied mass trauma and conflict globally. They can’t run away as quickly from the site of a chemical attack. And once the chemicals enter their system, their immune systems are less mature and not as good at fighting them off. ”It makes them more vulnerable, immunologically and physically,” Galea said. Twenty children were among the 72 civilian casualties from an air raid accompanied by the apparent chemical attack on the   city Khan Shaykhun in Idlib province in Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Moreover, if children survive a chemical attack, they will live with the   effects far longer than, say, a   . Survivors often have lifelong problems with fine motor skills like writing or cutting paper accurately with a pair of scissors. They often have gross motor disability as well, such as problems with their walking gait  —   trouble balancing or coordinating the movement of walking  —   and with the   coordination necessary to play sports or do many kinds of physical paid work. The impact of chemical attacks can be mental as well as physical, although it’s difficult to tease out the effects of nerve damage from   stress disorder since symptoms sometimes overlap. Researchers believe that chemical attacks, like other violent attacks, can lead to PTSD and severe depression for survivors of all ages. It’s also difficult to separate the impact of a single attack, chemical or conventional, from the larger trauma of living through a war. ”Toxic stress affects brain development, learning and the social emotional ability to regulate one’s own behavior,” said Lindsay Stark of Columbia University, who studies childhood trauma in refugee and conflict settings. But children are also incredibly resilient, Stark said. Child soldiers in   African countries didn’t turn out to be a lost generation as mental health professionals feared, she said. Many learned to cope with their traumatic pasts and went on to have productive lives. She cautions against pessimistic outlooks for Syria’s children. ”We have to be careful in terms of how we talk about this generation,” she said. ”All hope is not lost.” But, she cautioned, the longer children remain in conflict settings, the more challenging it can be to counteract the trauma they live through. Parents need to be able to buffer children from the chronic stress of war by creating a sense of normalcy with routines like going to school every day. ”It’s the best thing parents can do,” Stark said. But in   countries like Syria, she added, ”it may be just not possible.” Rina   is a science journalist who writes about medicine, global health and the life sciences. She can be reached @rinawrites"
"A day after a suspected chemical weapons strike in Syria killed more than 70 people, world powers are trading accusations and denials as investigations into the attack continue. Experts are still evaluating exactly what happened, but there’s widespread consensus that deadly chemicals were involved in the attack on Khan Shaykhun in Idlib province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that 72 people there were killed by toxic chemicals, including 20 children and 17 women. The World Health Organization has also received reports of scores of fatalities from deadly chemicals. ”According to Health Cluster partners on the ground treating the patients, at least 70 people have died and hundreds more have been affected,” the WHO wrote. ”Opposition activist videos show rescue workers hosing down survivors and the bodies of purported victims, showing no outward wounds,” NPR’s Alison Meuse reports from Beirut. ”In one video, nine   children are loaded in the back of a truck, staring lifelessly into space.” It’s not entirely confirmed what the chemicals were, but experts suspect a powerful nerve agent. Doctors Without Borders says victims were showing symptoms consistent with a chemical ”such as sarin gas or similar compounds.” In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s attack, international leaders  —   including British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and President Trump  —   censured Bashar Assad’s regime for the apparent use of chemical weapons against civilians. On Wednesday, Trump said the attack ”crossed a lot of lines with me.” ”When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines,” Trump said, adding, ”These heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated.” At an emergency U. N. Security Council meeting Wednesday, U. S. Ambassador Nikki Haley delivered a pointed message, saying that Russia and Iran ”have no interest in peace” and that the U. S. may need to act on its own. ”When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” she said. Envoys from Russia had a different response to the attack. ”The main task now is to have an objective inquiry into what happened,” Russia’s deputy U. N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the Security Council, according to The Associated Press. ”Up to now all falsified reports about this incident have come from the White Helmets or the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in London which have been discredited long ago.” Russia has an alternate narrative of events, as Charles Maynes reports for NPR from Moscow. ”Russia’s defense ministry says Syrian warplanes indeed carried out the strikes, but that civilian deaths were caused when those bombs struck a hidden ammunition depot that contained chemical weapons that belonged to terrorist groups on the ground,” Maynes says. ”Russia maintains the Assad government destroyed its entire chemical arsenal under a deal Moscow brokered with the Obama administration back in 2013.” That explanation has been challenged as ”completely unsustainable and completely untrue” by a British chemical weapons expert who spoke to the BBC. ”Axiomatically, if you blow up Sarin, you destroy it,” he told the BBC. This   is not new in the Syrian conflict. In 2013, hundreds of civilians died in an attack on a Damascus suburb that used sarin gas. Afterward, the regime and its Russian allies claimed that rebel fighters may have used the chemical weapons. The Obama administration quickly rejected that explanation. A U. N. inspection confirmed the use of weapons, but did not attribute any blame. The use of chemical weapons is a war crime, prohibited under a number of international treaties. In 2013, after the sarin attack on Damascus, Assad’s government agreed to hand over all of its remaining chemical weapons stockpile. But in the last month alone, chemical weapons have been reportedly used at in Syria least three times, according to NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. Ongoing investigations might confirm the type of weapon used Tuesday and who deployed it. But key questions will still remain  —   including where the weapons came from, and how the world will respond."
"By the time bidding closed Tuesday, there was no lack of companies competing to build the wall President Trump has proposed for the border between the U. S. and Mexico. In fact, by The Associated Press’ count, upwards of 200 organizations had expressed interest in designing and building it for Customs and Border Protection. Despite their common goal, the companies submitting bids have followed some radically different paths in their approach. Among the submissions are walls with solar panels, wire mesh and sloped, slippery surfaces. There are even walls that are no walls at all  —   statements standing instead as protests of a policy that from the start has drawn a lot of resistance. As NPR’s Richard Gonzales reports, the CBP plans to announce the finalists for the contract in June, at which point the companies still in the running would be expected to build a prototype roughly 30 feet long and anywhere from 18 to 30 feet tall. The AP notes the prototypes are expected to cost about $200, 000 to $500, 000 each estimates for the cost of the wall covering the   border, however, range up to $38 billion. Here’s a glimpse of just a few of the designs vying to stand between the U. S. and Mexico, complete with renderings and explanations of how they could take shape. The proposal from Riverdale Mills Corporation employs wire mesh, which is already used along the Mexican border with California and Arizona. Riverdale says the material can be manufactured up to 20 feet tall and installed up to 6 feet below ground, to prevent tunneling. ”The configurations of the wire mesh make it virtually impossible to climb or cut,” Jane Meehan Lanzillo, director of corporate communications for Riverdale, tells NPR in an email. ”I like the wall to be able to pay for itself,” Thomas Gleason, managing partner of Gleason Partners LLC, tells the AP. The company’s proposal sets solar panels on sections of the wall, generating what it says would be approximately 2. 0 megawatts of electricity per hour, according to the wire service. Composed of   steel packed into double wire mesh, the Penna Group’s proposed wall takes its cue from maximum security prisons. ”Nearly impossible to climb,” it would also be built to withstand pick axes, acetylene torches and other handheld weapons, with the first 12 feet of its   height packed more densely. Michael   CEO of the Penna Group, speaks to the aesthetics of the U. S.  side of the wall, telling NPR ”the wire mesh panels will be emblazoned with the Seal of the United States.” With its face pitched at an angle, the proposed wall put forth by San Diego Project Management, PSC, borrows medieval concepts to give to give guards a better view of possible ”villains” approaching the wall  —   and with its walkway toward the top, it gives those guards a place to patrol from a height. ”The surface finish on the south side of the wall is of the same quality as the finish on a smooth floor slab,” Patrick J. Balcazar, principal and managing partner at SDPM, writes in his proposal. ”Smooth surface on the glacis [sloped] and [vertical] surfaces make climbing harder, and there are no handholds.” It’s impossible to avoid: For a man bidding to build a massive wall, Rod Hadrian has a rather serendipitous name. Namesake of the Roman emperor who built the wall that once marked off the northernmost edge of the ancient empire  —   the wall that still stands in ruins in the U. K. today  —   Hadrian Construction Company has proposed a wall constructed in prefabricated panels. Its Tridipanel design makes for something of a   shape, which he says would create a   wall that’s at once lightweight and strong. The border wall should be ”a piece of art,” Russ Baumgartner, CEO of Concrete Contractors Interstate of San Diego, tells the AP. The wire service says the company’s proposal calls for stones and artifacts set in polished concrete, reflecting the areas the wall wends through and rendering both sides ”aesthetically pleasing”  —   unlike the CBP’s callout, which asks only that the U. S. side be pleasant to look at. Above, you can see a detail of the kind of decorative stones Baumgartner has in mind. It is reasonable to conclude that this proposal is not exactly what Trump has in mind for his signature campaign promise. ”We propose a   ’New Deal’ to build an innovative shared   based on local economic empowerment, energy independence and revolutionary infrastructure and transit,” says the MADE Collective, a   team that argues for the creation of what it calls the Otra Nation  —   a ”regenerative   shared by citizens of both Mexico and the United Stated and   by respective governments.” Far from a boundary between two states, the Otra Nation proposal envisions the construction of a hyperloop transit system and the rights to cross open borders of the three North American countries without impediment. One of at least three protest proposals ginned up by J. M. Design Studio of Pittsburgh, this one calls for ”a   wall of nearly 10 million pipe organs.” The long line of   organs breaks in regular intervals, offering   the opportunity to walk straight through  —   but not before playing a ditty of their choosing. Jennifer Meridian  —   an artist who says Trump’s actual border wall is ”preposterous for so many reasons,” according to the Wall Street Journal  —   also proposes a wall of hammocks and a wall of refugees’ gravestones for passersby to ”consider the danger, terror, and horror they must have faced in trying to cross.”"
"U. S. Customs and Border Protection reports that the number of people apprehended along the Southwest border continued to fall in March, after showing a sharp decline in February as well. The decrease comes at a time of year when apprehensions are usually on the rise. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly testified before a Senate committee on Wednesday, and said that since the beginning of the year the CBP has seen a ”sharp decline” in apprehensions in the Southwest. In March, he said, there were fewer than 17, 000 people stopped at the border. There were more than 58, 000 such apprehensions in December, he says. (These numbers include people apprehended by border patrols, as well as people stopped at a port of entry.) This is not the first month the Trump administration has reported a decline. Apprehensions dropped to less than 43, 000 in January and less than 24, 000 in February. But the change this month is particularly noteworthy because of the timing. Border apprehensions generally show a decline in January, driven at least in part by the weather. However, according to CBP numbers, border arrests in the Southwest usually show a small rise in February, and a marked increase in March. ”This decrease in apprehensions is no accident,” Kelly told the Senate. He credited the efforts of DHS staff along the border and ”the support of our leadership in the White House.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement the decrease demonstrated that President Trump’s   policy stances are ”already showing results.” Last month, when the decrease in February was announced, NPR’s Wade Goodwyn noted that immigration trends are driven by factors on both sides of the border  —   and things like the improving economy in Mexico have influenced a recent trend toward fewer apprehensions. But he also said it’s possible to credit the trend to the Trump administration, even without any widespread deportation or enforcement operations. ”The view is that this is a result of President Trump’s tough talk on illegal immigration and his executive orders beefing up border security and building a wall. And that’s led to a perception in this country and abroad that life for unauthorized immigrants in America could get a lot more unpleasant going forward,” Wade said. ”The sources I’ve talked to explained that perception can be a big factor in driving illegal immigration numbers. ”There have been a series of   raids around the country,” he said, ”and I don’t think that it takes a huge leap of faith to surmise that’s what’s driving this dramatic decline.”"
"The U. S. and Iraq are changing tactics in the fierce battle against ISIS for the Iraqi city of Mosul, NPR News has learned. The Iraqi commander coordinating the battle tells NPR the Iraqi military will slow an offensive pushing into the crowded old district of the city to try to minimize civilian casualties. The new tactics will mean fewer U. S. and Iraqi air strikes. ”We agreed among the commanders to not depend on the air strikes because that means we will maybe lose a lot of people,” says Maj. Gen. Najm Abdullah   head of the Ninevah Operations Command. More than 100 Iraqi civilians were killed in U. S. air strikes on March 17 in the Mosul Jadidah neighborhood. The Pentagon is investigating whether the air strikes also set off   explosives that contributed to houses collapsing. Jabouri says the military had not realized there were dozens of people sheltering in many of the houses. ”Because of the shortage of air strikes now we need to make some maneuvers to change our plans,” says Jabouri. The new plan will also involve repositioning troops to reinforce areas surrounding West Mosul rather than pushing south into the old city. Iraqi forces have entirely surrounded the city leaving ISIS with no escape route. But that plan has also trapped an estimated 400, 000 civilians being used by ISIS as human shields. Residents of Mosul say ISIS fighters routinely shoot at anyone trying to leave. While U. S. and coalition air strikes paved the way for Iraqi forces to retake less densely populated East Mosul, the battle across the river in streets too narrow for armored vehicles requires    fighting. ”We moved very quickly on the east side of the city but our mission now is very difficult,” says Jabouri. ”We have now liberated more than 50 percent of the city and we know very well the people still in the city are suffering a lot because of the shortage of food, water, electricity, everything.” Along with several thousand civilians killed or injured in the battle for Mosul, the Iraqi military has also suffered heavy losses. US and Iraqi commanders say almost 800 Iraqi forces have been killed and more than 4, 000 wounded. As they move further into West Mosul they have encountered more effective ISIS defensive lines. Jabouri estimates between 700 and 800 ISIS fighters remain in Mosul. ”That’s not very much but the problem is the number of civilians still in the city,” he says. ”What use is it to liberate Mosul if you have so many losses.”"
"Federal authorities raided a Los   business on Wednesday that the FBI suspects of orchestrating a $50 million visa fraud scheme. Filings in federal court allege that the California Investment Immigration Fund sought money from more than 100 Chinese investors, and in the process helped many of them to obtain U. S. green cards through a visa program called  . But, says FBI Special Agent Gary Chen in those filings, those projects were never built. ”As a result of the fraudulent scheme, many foreign nationals were able to improperly obtain U. S. green cards through the   visa program, even though those foreigners did not in fact truly invest in U. S. businesses, nor were new American jobs created,” wrote Chen, according to The Associated Press. Chen also noted that three of the investors who had gotten green cards were fugitives wanted by the Chinese government. Some of the money raised was refunded to the investors, while some of it was used to pay for houses for Victoria Chan, an attorney, and her father Tat Chan, who ran the fund, reports the AP. The company’s website promises ”an    solution for a successful   Visa process, concluding with a smooth transition into the United States,” and says it ”focuses on financing as well as developing commercial or   real estate.” The   program has been around since the 1990s, but its popularity took off in 2009, according to NPR’s Greg Allen. During the financial crisis, many U. S. developers ran out of sources for cash, and the   program helped meet that need by bringing in foreign investment, Greg reported in 2015: ”Under the   program, foreigners who invest at least a   dollars in a project approved by the federal government qualify for permanent U. S. residency. Each investment must create at least 10 jobs. The program was designed to encourage job creation in rural communities and targeted employment areas, neighborhoods where unemployment is 150 percent above average.” During Wednesday’s raids, computers, banking records and other documents were targeted by authorities, reported the Los Angeles Times. Investigators ”have yet to determine how many of the Chinese investors were complicit or victims in the alleged fraud, how much money ring leaders actually raised and what has happened to the money,” according to the Times. An FBI spokeswoman said no charges were filed Wednesday and no arrests were expected. The Government Accountability Office published a study on fraud in the   program last year, which found that progress had been made in fraud detection, but improvements were still needed."
"Updated at 12:59 p. m. ET, Steve Bannon has been removed from his controversial role on the National Security Council just months after he was elevated to the position. President Trump’s chief strategist will no longer be a regular attendee of the principals committee of the NSC, but he will retain his role as senior adviser for domestic affairs. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford have been elevated to the principals committee again after their roles within that group were changed shortly after Trump took office. Bannon’s presence on the NSC principals committee showed the considerable influence the former head of Breitbart News, the controversial   news outlet that became a platform for the     movement, now wielded in the West Wing. Now a new presidential memorandum, published Tuesday in the Federal Register, removes Bannon from his permanent place on the NSC, which no previous top White House political adviser had ever held. Bannon said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal that while Obama national security adviser ”Susan Rice operationalized the NSC during the last administration[,] I was put on to ensure that it was  . General McMaster has returned the NSC to its proper function.” McMaster was named national security adviser in late February after Michael Flynn, Trump’s first pick for that role, was fired less than a month into the job following revelations that he had misled Vice President Pence over his conversations with a Russian official on U. S. sanctions during the transition. According to the Federal Register, the new memo also adds the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations and the secretary of the Energy Department to the principals committee. And in another change, the national security adviser will set the agenda for the council as well as for the Homeland Security Council, and can delegate that at his discretion. Previously the homeland security adviser was able to set the agenda."
"  Mario Alberto Maciel Tinajero looks like a fairly healthy   . He has a few extra pounds on his chest but he’s relatively fit. Yet he’s suffered for the last 20 years from what he calls a ”terrible” condition: diabetes. ”I’ve never gotten used to this disease,” he says. Maciel runs a stall in the Lagunilla market in downtown Mexico City. This market is famous for its   quinceañera dresses and   suits. Diabetes has come to dominate Maciel’s life. It claimed the life of his mother. He has to take pills and injections every day to keep it under control. And because of the disease he’s supposed to eat a diet heavy in vegetables that he views as inconvenient and bland. ”Imagine not being able to eat a carnitas taco!” he says with indignation. His doctors have told him to stop eating the steaming hot street food that’s for sale all around the market  —   tacos, tamales, quesadillas, fat sandwiches called tortas. His eyes light up when talks about the roast pork taquitos and simmering beef barbacoa that he’s supposed to stay away from. ”A person who has to work 8 or 10 hours has to eat what’s at hand, what’s available,” he says. ”It’s difficult to follow a diabetic diet. The truth is it’s very difficult.” Diabetes is the leading cause of death in Mexico, according to the World Health Organization. The disease claims nearly 80, 000 lives each year, and forecasters say the health problem is expected to get worse in the decades to come. By contrast, in the U. S. it’s the sixth leading cause of death, with heart disease and cancer claiming 10 times more Americans each year than diabetes. Rising rates of obesity combined with a genetic predisposition for Type 2 diabetes has caused a slow steady rise in the condition in Mexico over the last 40 years. Now roughly 14 percent of adults in this country of 120 million are living with what can be a devastating and even fatal health condition. Diabetes poses an increasing burden on the nation’s hospitals and clinics. The surge in diabetes threatens the very stability of Mexico’s public health care system, according to new reports. For many people with diabetes in Mexico, like Maciel, managing the condition is a constant and significant challenge. ”I’d say I have it about 50 percent under control,” he says, even though he was diagnosed two decades ago. ”I take my medicine. I inject my insulin twice a day, in the morning and the night. I try to eat a proper diet as much as I can.” At times he says he can’t afford his medications. And trying to cut down on the amount of sugar, salt and fat in his diet, as his doctors tell him he should, is easier said than done. And Maciel’s experience helps explain how Type 2 diabetes has become the leading cause of death in Mexico. Type 2 diabetes is often considered a lifestyle disease because it’s far more likely to develop in people who are overweight. Mexico has seen a rapid increase in obesity, with the number of people categorized as overweight and obese tripling over the last four decades. The obesity problem is in part a side effect of Mexico’s economic progress. As wages have risen, the average daily intake of calories has soared. In 2012 Mexico was the world’s top per capita consumer of soda in the world guzzling 176 liters per person per year, according to the Mexican government. That’s nearly 500 cans of soda for every man, woman and child. (Mexico was recently overtaken by Argentina, the U. S. and Chile.)   is practically the national drink in Mexico. Type 2 diabetes has skyrocketed as soda consumption has risen. ”In the middle of the 1970s and especially after the ’80s, the prevalence of diabetes exploded,” says Dr. Carlos Aguilar Salinas, the vice head of the endocrine department at Mexico’s National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition in Mexico City. ”Diabetes is now one of the biggest problems in the health system in Mexico,” he says. It’s the first cause of death. It’s the first cause of disability. It’s the first cause of early retirement. It’s the main cost for the health system.” Diabetes costs the Mexican health care system billions of dollars each year. The disease can lead to serious eye problems including blindness, nerve damage that requires amputations and kidney failure, among other issues. Mexico’s public health care system attempts to manage the huge number of people with diabetes by trying to get them to manage their blood sugar levels, alter their diet and exercise more. But there diabetes is typically a lifelong condition. Once someone is diagnosed, the goal is to get the disease under control and keep it from getting worse. Just around the corner from where Mario Alberto Marciel Tinajero has his   shop, Dr. Rosa Estrella Calvillo Gomez runs a   medical clinic in the Lagunilla market. The free clinic was set up by the local government. People can come in for any kind of health problem. But Calvillo says roughly half her patients are coming for complications with diabetes. ”Diabetics don’t just come in with high blood sugar,” Calvillo says sitting behind a desk overflowing with promotional drug samples that she gets from pharmaceutical representatives. ”It’s about controlling multiple health problems at once,” she says, and most of her patients with diabetes don’t have the disease under control. ”The problem that I have here first, is the denial and second, the cost of the medication.” Patients don’t want to accept that they have a disease for which there is no cure. ”Tell me anything but don’t tell me that I’m a diabetic,’” she says they tell her. She melodramatically puts her hands over her eyes and shakes her head. ”They deny it.” Also, diabetes isn’t an easy condition to manage. The public health system treats severe complications like nerve damage or blindness, although dialysis and kidney transplants are not available. For the daily management of diabetes, patients are largely on their own. Calvillo says a diabetic can easily spend $150 a month out of pocket on insulin injections, blood sugar test strips and medications for hypertension and other complications. ”To get excellent control of diabetes costs a lot of money,” she says, ”It costs as much as renting an apartment.” Mario Alberto Maciel Tinajero is one of the doctor’s patients. He says coping with the disease is a real struggle, and many people with diabetes are desperate. ”The most dangerous thing for diabetics is to fall into the hands of charlatans, swindlers who offer miracle products,” he says. As diabetes took its final toll on his mother, he watched as she spent thousands of pesos on useless  —   he thinks possibly even toxic  —   herbs and injections. After both her feet had been amputated and doctors were only offering palliative care, salesmen came along offering ”magical” injections, alleging that they’d give her relief. ”With the promise of a cure, you can be left in the street with nothing,” he says. ”Absolutely nothing.” Maciel is grateful to have Dr. Calvillo to help him grapple with the condition. ”If this clinic didn’t exist,” he says, ”I would be dead.”"
"By the time they cut her from the program, Alishia Graham was angry, but not surprised. Her postman delivered the news in February. ”The letter was sitting at the top  —   and my stomach dropped because I knew what it was,” she says. The letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs informed Graham that her husband Jim, who sustained a brain injury on his third deployment to Iraq, no longer qualified for a caregiver to help with his daily life. ”It’s not even like . .. ’We think he doesn’t need as much help.’ No  —   ’We think he’s totally fine and he doesn’t need any help,’ ” says Graham. ”I’m insulted for him. Because I know what he struggles with.” The VA’s comprehensive caregiver support program pays a stipend to family members of veterans with disabilities, often wives who have had to leave their own careers to help their veteran with daily living. At its outset in 2011, families of veterans overwhelmed the VA with applications to become official caregivers. A program designed for   to 5, 000 has now grown to nearly 23, 000 approved caregivers. Alishia Graham had been on the program for six years, but she’d been hearing rumors from around the country of veterans getting dropped without experiencing improvements in their disability. ”I was watching as all these caregivers were going up to their  . And one by one . .. they were dropped,” says Graham. The VA denies any cuts to the size or funding of the caregiver program. ”The program is not cutting back in any way,” says Meg Kabat, director of the VA Caregiver Support Program. ”We’ve been able to expand the number of caregiver support coordinators and really continue to monitor that. We also train our staff on a regular basis.” But the VA is infamous for lacking consistency from station to station. And while the program has added 6, 300 caregivers since 2014, according to VA data, NPR discovered that 32 out of 140 VA medical centers were cutting their programs during the same period  —   some drastically. That included the VA in Fayetteville, N. C. which used to send Alishia Graham a monthly stipend of about $2, 000 and offer her health insurance, respite and support. Fayetteville cut more than half of its caregivers, dropping 314 families from the rolls between May 2014 and February 2017. And while data from the VA in Washington showed seven staff at Fayetteville were coordinating caregivers (a ratio of  ) the Fayetteville VA shows only two staff are doing that job, meaning that each coordinator is actually overseeing more than 125 veterans. Graham’s husband, Jim, was a Navy corpsman  —   a combat medic  —   for 13 years. In December 2006, on his third tour in Iraq, a mortar blast killed his best friend. Jim Graham was standing nearby and suffered a brain injury, as well as debilitating   stress disorder. The brain injury left him forgetful and in persistent pain for nearly 11 years. ”I’ve had a headache ever since I got hurt,” says Jim, who wears dark   sunglasses indoors, even with the blinds drawn, to prevent triggering an even worse pain. ”I get migraines on top of it. When I get one it lasts for days, months. If I’m someway able to get rid of the migraine, I’m lucky to get a week off before another one hits me,” he says. It’s hard to separate which condition causes what symptom, but Jim’s PTSD is probably what gives him anxiety about breaking his daily routine, about leaving the house, or about getting personal care from anyone outside his family. Alishia was studying to become a nurse when Jim got hit. She hasn’t been able to work outside the house since then, because Jim needs help with everything from cooking to bathing  —   mostly just reminders not to let things burn on the stove, or help to get in or out of the shower. That made the caregiver program a great fit for them, and VA rated Jim at the highest tier of need, which meant VA paid Alishia a stipend of nearly $2, 000 per month. The stipend is based on 75 percent of what a professional caregiver would make for 40 hours a week in their town of Jacksonville, N. C. Jim says it’s much better care than a stranger would give him. Alishia says 40 hours a week isn’t the half of it. NPR spoke with 10 couples who’d been cut from the program even though the husbands’ condition hadn’t improved. The Portland, Ore. VA cut 66 percent of its caregivers in three years. Seattle cut 49 percent the South Texas VA cut 48 percent and Charleston, S. C. went from 197 caregivers in 2014 to just 11 in February of 2017  —   a 94 percent reduction. The Charleston VA told NPR some of those vets improved and didn’t need the program, and said that others probably never should have qualified at the start. Congress and veterans organizations are aware of the problem, says Adrian Atizado of DAV, an advocacy nonprofit for veterans. ”We don’t have a good idea about how many caregivers are in the same situation we’re talking about. . .. We know some have appealed, but we don’t have enough reliable information, which we need,” says Atizado. He says the VA is promising to get better data and to look into the way clinical decisions about these veterans are made. Atizado adds that the program is a great first step toward recognizing the millions of family members, doing billions of dollars’ worth of work the VA might otherwise have to pay for, taking care of America’s veterans. For the moment, however, caregivers like Alishia Graham are not feeling that recognition and support. ”It means my family is  —   um, nicer word, hold on  —   is janked out of $2, 000 per month,” she says. Alishia says their financial situation is not exactly dire, though. She says made sure to never live paycheck to paycheck, and that Jim still has a pretty high disability check from VA. Plus, Jim hates leaving the house, she says, so it’s not like they were saving up for a big vacation. But Jim says the problem is more about Alishia’s hard work no longer being recognized. ”It’s insulting. Cause I know how much she does do. And how much help I do need with everything. I gave everything I have to what I was doing. Always did. To not get back the same or equivalent to I gave up is a slap to the face, basically,” he says. The Fayetteville VA told NPR that Jim is no longer clinically eligible for the program, and that the Grahams are welcome to appeal. The VA also says it ”can’t thank Caregivers enough for the vital role they play in helping Veterans recover from injury and illness.”"
"Investor Warren Buffett is the new face of Cherry Coke, at least in China. The billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is fond of the beverage  —   photos from shareholder meetings show him sipping on the soda year after year. He’s also a major investor: Berkshire Hathaway is the biggest shareholder in  . And according to Yahoo Finance, Buffett is ”something of a rockstar” in China, where his investing acumen has won him admirers. Out of some combination of preference, influence and fame, Buffett’s visage will be gracing new bottles of Cherry Coke in China, where it recently launched. Yahoo Finance reports that Buffett is not being paid for the privilege and didn’t sit for the portrait. In an article on  ’s website, Shelly Lin, the director of marketing for   in China, says her team thought of Buffett as Cherry Coke’s ”  fan.” ”We honestly were surprised when Mr. Buffett agreed to the idea,” Lin said. ”But we’re thrilled, and he’s selling well.”   says the cans featuring Buffett’s face are available for ”a limited promotional period.” If, for some reason, you’re jonesing for a Buffett Coke of your own, Yahoo Finance says you might be in luck: ”The   Cherry Coke cans will also be available in America during Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska this coming May.” We should note that Buffett has faced some criticism for his support of Coke. In 2014, he was challenged for not aggressively opposing Coke’s lucrative executive compensation package. And last year, a journalist asked about the health consequences of consuming sugary soda. Buffett pointed to his own fondness for soda as he defended the investment choice. According to CNBC, he said he consumed some 700 calories of Coke a day, and joked he was ”about    .”"
"It was about unity, Pepsi explained. But the company’s new ad, set at a protest march, was quickly called out for being   offensive, and perhaps worst of all for the brand: not ”woke.” The ad, which stars model and Kardashian sister Kendall Jenner, had been slated for a worldwide release. But Pepsi announced today that it would halt any further rollout of the ad. ”Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding,” the company said in a statement received by the Associated Press. ”Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize.” The company removed the ad from its YouTube channel on Wednesday afternoon, where it had garnered at least 1. 3 million views in two days. At least for now, the ad  —   all two minutes, 39 seconds, is still viewable on Jenner’s YouTube channel. The ad features a diverse cadre of young, happy protesters holding signs splashed with calls for peace, love, and in one odd instance, to ”Join the conversation.” In the ad’s key scene, Jenner hands a can of   Pepsi to a police officer, who accepts it and takes a sip, to raucous cheers from protesters. But on the Internet, the reaction was fierce. Many saw the ad’s climactic      moment as referencing  —   and exploiting  —   an important image from the Black Lives Matter movement  —   when a woman calmly, summer dress fluttering, stood before heavily equipped police in Baton Rouge, La.: In general, Pepsi was accused of trying to sell soda using the setting and symbolism of recent protests, such as those against police brutality. AdAge reports that the spot was created by Pepsi’s   creative team, Creators League. The company initially stood behind the ad. Earlier, Pepsi told Adweek in a statement: ”This is a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony, and we think that’s an important message to convey.” The soda company may not be the last brand to try to invoke the protests and ”resistance” ethos that are hallmarks of this political moment. But this ad may be one textbook example of what not to do."
"Editor’s note: This story contains language that may be offensive to some readers. Hate incidents can happen anywhere: the mall, the church, the office. But, in the wake of the 2016 election, hate’s been showing up a lot in school. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in the months following the election more hate incidents took place in America’s schools than anywhere else. Hundreds of elementary, middle and high schools have played host to an array of troubling events, from sophomoric stunts to much worse: a hijab pulled off a Muslim student, physical fights with racial epithets flung, even violent threats. Educators in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, are struggling with what to do. In Medway, a video began circulating showing a student with a rifle, saying the   and ”kill ’em all.” This was just one of dozens of school incidents called in to a hate hotline set up by the Massachusetts attorney general. One concerned parent called to ask about getting a restraining order. The staffer answering the phone explained the law and promised to follow up to make sure school and local law enforcement officials were taking it seriously. ”It’s especially concerning that a child was responsible,” the staffer offered sympathetically. ”And this is exactly the reason we started this hotline, so we really appreciate you taking the time to call.” But along with the anxious parents, schools themselves are also calling with their own concerns about how to handle it all. As Attorney General Maura Healey puts it, when it comes to student behavior, ”there’s right and there’s wrong.” But it’s not always as clear what crosses the line, legally. ”There is speech that may be ugly, that may be hateful, that may be harmful, but that may nevertheless be protected in certain instances,” says Healey. ”So schools have reached out to our office for assistance, and we are here to help them.” A high school in Attleboro called for help after finding   graffiti in the boys’ bathroom. It included a warning about how the KKK would ”handle” African Americans  —   again using the  . ”This one was one that they don’t teach you in Administration 101 classes,” says Attleboro High School Principal Bill Runey. ”There’s no playbook for this.” Indeed, many schools are figuring it out as they go. They’re grappling with how to prevent and respond to incidents, often under enormous pressure and amid public outcry. Some have come under fire  —    and investigation  —   for failing to report incidents. Administrators say they have to strike a delicate balance between being transparent and not giving offenders undue attention or provoking copycats. But Massachusetts Teachers Association President Barbara Madelonie says some schools are bungling cases because their first instinct is to avoid making headlines. ”I have seen administrators seem to want to run away from the issue,” Madelonie says. ”I think people are sort of back on their heels. They get caught up in a sense of ’I’ll take care of this’  —   and that’s troubling!” Stoughton High School recently took heat for being too soft on a student who hung a swastika at school  —   and too tough on the teachers who spoke out about it. One teacher was suspended for 20 days after calling a college to withdraw her recommendation for the student. Teachers are allowed to revoke a recommendation, but they must also follow strict rules about discussing student misconduct. Superintendent Marguerite Rizzi would not speak specifically to that case, but in general, she says, the district takes very seriously both student misconduct and student privacy. ”It is a complicated balance,” she says. ”But I do have to step in and make sure that everyone’s rights are protected, even a person who has engaged in behavior for which they are punished. There are still rights that they have.” Schools especially, Rizzi says, must strike a balance between punishing offenders and educating them. ”You want somebody who has done something, let’s say, really stupid at the age of 16 or 17  —   when they’re 18, to say ’Oh my gosh, I would never do that now! ’” says Rizzi. ”They’re going to be among us, and if they haven’t learned something, then they’re just angrier people when they come out than when they went in.” One of the gold standards in teaching tolerance is a program run by the   League called ”A World Of Difference.” The number of schools calling and asking for the program has jumped   recently. Brookline High School reached out after being hit with two incidents of racist and   graffiti. Administrators recruited 30 students to go through three full days of training  —   to learn to run tolerance workshops for their peers. ”Ok, folks! Showtime!” bellows the ADL’s New England Senior Training Consultant Rob Jones from the front of a gymnasium. His dreadlocks swinging out from under a felt fedora, Jones bounces around the circle of students, grilling them on what they’ve learned from the exercises they’ve done so far and getting them ready to be leaders instead of participants. They begin by practicing how they will introduce themselves to classmates when they run a workshop. ”My name is Josh Gladstone,” starts one. ”I’m doing this program because I have seen many issues at the high school, and even though we attempt to have a couple of assemblies, I don’t think it’s enough.” The students   and rehearse everything from   to exercises meant to encourage empathy and bystander intervention. Jones coaches and corrects. ”You don’t wanna preach,” he tells one. ”You do not wanna come off as better than [them]. .. like you really need to help them. We’ve all laughed at jokes we shouldn’t have laughed at and made comments we shouldn’t have made. We’re all trying to learn together.” Indeed, even in their   ”bubble”  —   as some Brookline students call it  —   they’ve seen an uptick in hate. Junior Talia Vos, who moved to Brookline from Mexico, says she felt it the day after the election. She was in the hallway between classes and yelled out to a friend  —    in Spanish  —   to save her a seat. ”A group of boys behind me, they started chanting, ’build a wall! ’” she recalls. ”It’s just these new social norms of how we treat each other.” After 30 years of doing this work, Rob Jones worries that many of the communities that need these programs the most are also in denial. ”Certain populations just won’t talk about it because they don’t get it  —   they don’t get it,” he says. ”They’re like, ’we don’t have any issues.’ But boy, they have a lot of bigoted behavior.” Along with prevention, many schools these days are also quickly learning the art of ”the healing response.” In Brookline, after the hateful graffiti was found, students banded together to   the table that was vandalized to ”reclaim it from hate.” Other schools have called in professional facilitators to moderate a ”community conversation.” Following the KKK graffiti in Attleboro, dozens of students mobilized to counter the hate with kindness. They wrote ”love notes” to each of the high school’s nearly 2000 students, staffers and teachers."
"In emergencies, administering drugs quickly and easily can be a matter of life and death. This has emergency departments turning to the nose as a delivery route because it’s so accessible and doesn’t require direct contact with a needle. Using the nose as a passage for steroids like Flonase and vaccines like FluMist has been common practice for decades. In recent years, more Americans have also become aware of the emergency drug naloxone, which is used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, even when someone has stopped breathing. The FDA approved naloxone in nasal spray form in late 2015. Police officers, emergency medical technicians and family members or friends can use a nasal spray version of naloxone to keep someone alive until they reach the hospital. ”It’s almost like having an EpiPen,” says Rana Biary, a toxicologist in the emergency department of New York University’s Langone Medical Center. ”Have it in case someone has a   overdose.” Developments in technology have made quickly delivering drugs through the nose easier than ever, increasing their popularity, says Megan Rech, an emergency medicine clinical pharmacist at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. To administer medication nasally, caregivers attach a   syringe to a device called an atomizer and put it into the patient’s nostril. By pushing down the syringe’s plunger, they expel the drug as a vapor that crosses the patient’s mucus membrane and starts to take effect. ”I’ve got nurses and residents to help out [in the hospital],” Biary says. ”But if someone overdoses and is in the street somewhere, it might just be you.” In hospital emergency departments, naloxone is still usually administered with an IV or an injection. But even in a hospital setting, doctors are increasingly using nasal versions of other drugs such as the benzodiazepine midazolam and the synthetic opioid fentanyl to relieve patients’ pain or sedate them. The pros and cons of using such drugs are detailed in a review published last week in Annals of Emergency Medicine. Rech, the lead author, notes that intranasal sprays typically deliver a maximum of only two milliliters of the drug at once, which is less than half of a teaspoon. That dosage tends to be just right for kids. Midazolam is often used to calm patients down, says Jerri Rose, an assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She says a nasal squirt of midazolam is great for when kids need stitches. ”They don’t need a really potent sedative, just something to calm them down and help with anxiety.” Intranasal midazolam can also relax patients having seizures. This is a welcome alternative to rectally administering another drug, diazepam, which is a common procedure for caregivers or family members outside of the hospital. Intranasal midazolam isn’t currently available outside of hospitals. The intranasal version of the synthetic opioid fentanyl is similarly   for some children who end up in the emergency department. Rose says she most often uses intranasal fentanyl for children who come in with burns. ”Burns happen really quickly and are so painful,” she says. ”It’s very frightening for everyone, and the parents probably drove their child, who is in tears, frantically to the emergency department.” Being able to pop the child into a room and spray the inside of the nose with a painkiller instead of further traumatizing them with a needle, Rose says, is a  . Because the intranasal dose is relatively small, it can be difficult to give adult patients enough medication to fully relieve their pain or anxiety. But Rose and Rech note that intranasal painkillers can be used alongside IVs in both in adults and children. For example, a dose of fentanyl up the nose can make all the difference to someone with a broken bone or a serious lesion who is waiting for emergency room staff to organize the equipment and personnel to set up the IV. Although both midazolam and fentanyl are potent medications  —   fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine  —   the review found hardly any negative   associated with administering either drug through the nose. Midazolam gave patients a slight burning sensation, and fentanyl occasionally slowed their breathing. ”They’re really nice options,” Rose says. ”For small children, it can be technically difficult to place an IV, and there’s often a lot of fear related to the IV itself.” The review also considered the nasal options for administering the sedatives ketamine and dexmedetomidine, which are used less often in emergency rooms, according to Rose and Rech. Both drugs presented potential problems. It’s hard to predict when ketamine will kick in when it’s delivered up the nose, they found. In one study some patients felt sedated after five minutes, while for others it took 23 minutes. As for nasal dexmedetomidine, it could be an attractive option for medical workers who need wiggly or traumatized kids to cooperate with procedures like CT scans. ”[Dexmedetomidine] takes a little time to kick in,” Rech says, usually about 25 minutes. ”So on the floor, you can administer it and physically take the patient over to [get a] CT. That could take 10 minutes to get down there, so by the time the patient is in the CT scanner, [the drug] is already working.” However, the review noted that in one study the drug slowed the heartbeat of one child who was sedated using it. ”I’d like to see some more study on [intranasal dexmedetomidine] before I feel like it would be become a routine part of my practice,” Rose says."
"YouTube is launching a streaming TV service Wednesday. It’s one of many  —   Sling, PlayStation Vue and local cable companies among them. But   YouTube TV offers several features the others don’t. They include a   DVR with no storage limits, allowing users to record as many shows as they want for later playback. Membership also gives access to original series and movies featured on its other subscription streaming service, YouTube Red. And customers can create up to six accounts on one membership, with up to three streams running at once. A subscription costs $35 a month, with a free   trial to start. The app can stream on phones, tablets or computers. After the first month’s payment, YouTube offers a free Google Chromecast for users to stream the service to their TVs  —   as long as supplies last. Many of these details were revealed in late February when the company first announced the service, but no launch date was provided then. Every TV watcher knows there’s still no perfect way to watch. Every service suffers from either high cost, limited offerings or restricted access. YouTube TV is no different: Initially, it offers about 40 channels to subscribers in five of the largest U. S. markets. Today, customers in New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago and Philadelphia can access the YouTube TV app, which will offer live streaming of networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, along with cable channels like USA, Fox News, MSNBC and ESPN. Users can pay extra for   channels like Showtime and Fox Soccer Plus. The company plans to add channels from AMC Networks, including IFC, AMC, BBC America and Sundance TV. It also says it will add new cities to its service. Time Warner and Viacom channels like CNN, TNT, MTV, Comedy Central and HBO aren’t included. And there’s lots of competition at hand  —   Hulu is reportedly developing its own bundle of channels available by streaming, joining services already offered by DirecTV Now, Dish Network’s Sling TV and PlayStation Vue. This rollout comes as YouTube struggles with an advertiser exodus since companies such as ATT began to discover their marketing campaigns sometimes were displayed alongside videos with extremist or controversial content. YouTube’s move still raises lots of questions. Will the many young viewers who watch YouTube videos actually consider paying for a streaming service to see more conventional TV? Can it help transform YouTube stars such as Tyler Oakley into more mainstream television celebrities? And how will YouTube TV compete with Hulu, which already has a large library of original content along with rights to stream shows on demand that have already aired on conventional TV outlets? Streaming services have had so many limitations that they seem more likely to appeal to consumers who don’t watch much TV or to cord cutters who have already ended cable TV or satellite subscriptions."
"One day in late February, the five members of Front Country were warming up for their record release show at the renowned bluegrass club the Station Inn, in their new home base of Nashville, Tenn. They’d never played most of these songs live before. It wasn’t a given that these musicians would wind up in anything remotely resembling a bluegrass band. Singer Melody Walker got into world music and belted out  . Bassist Jeremy Darrow studied jazz. Leif Karlstrom trained as a classical violinist, and still prefers that title to ”fiddle player.” Mandolinist Adam Roszkiewicz studied classical guitar at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The actual guitarist in the band, Jacob Groopman, did his share of exploring after college, too. ”I was in an Afrobeat group for about five years, touring around in this   kind of hippie Afrobeat band,” Groopman says. In the bluegrass world, musicians tend to define themselves by their relationships to tradition  —   specifically, the tradition of    singing and a   sound. There are regional variations from Virginia to Colorado. The West Coast has its own freewheeling tradition, and that’s where Front Country started out: at a monthly jam in San Francisco. Then its members heard about a band contest at a bluegrass festival. ”And we ended up winning that band competition,” Walker says. ”The very next day, I made a website for the band because I thought maybe people will be Googling Front Country at that point, possibly.” From that point on, Front Country was a serious band. The group made a mixtape reimagining songs by Don Henley, King Crimson and the   band  . Front Country does play traditional tunes on the new album, like the Carter Family’s ”The Storms Are On The Ocean”  —   though Roszkiewicz admits their arrangement makes it sort of unrecognizable. ”It’s not so much to ruin it on principle with the rock music,” he laughs. ”We might be doing things differently, but at the heart of it, it’s just songs, good songs we like that we can get behind.” Most of the new material, though, is original. Walker is the band’s primary songwriter, and for the album, she submitted 20 songs to her bandmates for a vote. One, called ”Good Looking Young People,” seemed an especially unlikely candidate. ”When I wrote it, I had an iPad drum machine app that I was using,” she explains. ”So I had this beat that was kind of this super   thing. .. Like, very Phil Collins, ’In the Air Tonight.’ ” The group decided to keep the rhythmic ideas and ditch the drum machine. And while Front Country’s members are more than capable of using traditional techniques on their instruments, they often choose not to. ”We’re always trying to do things we’ve never done before on our instruments,” Roszkiewicz says. ”I’ll be listening to the song, we’ll be working on the song and I’ll hear a synth line.” All of the musicians in Front Country also actually listen to, and respect, music made with beats, samples and electronic effects. ”I think sometimes, when people dismiss pop, one of the things they’re dismissing is the craft aspect of it. Because obviously bluegrass and   music requires an enormous amount of craftsmanship,” Darrow says. ”I think one of the things that we put on display is [that] rather than an element to be dismissed, the craft of pop music is just as intricate as it is in any other style. And maybe that’s a little clearer to see when we’re playing it on wooden instruments.” At this point, they realize it’s probably a stretch to call what they’re doing bluegrass at all.   pop is more like it. Front Country’s new album, Other Love Songs, will be out April 7."
"Alec Baldwin has been keeping busy lately. The star of the animated film The Boss Baby has a new memoir out and also keeps popping up on Saturday Night Live to play President Trump. Baldwin tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that his impression of the president is purposefully exaggerated. ”We’re doing it live on a TV show at 11:30 at night in front of a live audience, so there’s a kind of volume to it,” he says. ”It’s kind of the Macy’s Day Parade [version] of Trump  —   it’s a very    thing.” Baldwin grew up in a family of six kids on Long Island, N. Y. His father, a dedicated high school teacher, didn’t make much money, but they bonded over   classic movies. Initially, Baldwin thought he would pursue a career in law and government, but he decided instead to go into acting  —   much to the chagrin of his mother. ”She was apoplectic,” Baldwin says. ”She was screaming on the phone, ’What is wrong with you?’ ” Baldwin details his entry into show business, as well as the highs and lows of his career and his life, in his memoir, Nevertheless. On his Trump impression on SNL  I say, ”Left eyebrow up, right eyebrow down, stick your mouth out as far as you can like you’re trying to bite somebody’s nose off, and just kind of growl with that irritability. . ..” The [thing] I try to lock into and kind of hold on to just for that brief five minutes of the cold opening is [Trump] not having any fun. . .. He doesn’t shut up about how rich he is. He doesn’t stop talking about how much money he has, and how much privilege he has . .. and he just seems miserable. If he’s an advertisement for wealth and privilege, then, good God, I think it’s terrible. On how growing up in a household with five siblings affected him later in life, I walked out of that house with almost crippling OCD. Like I’d be standing in the hallway of my apartment in New York and the driver was downstairs and I needed to get into the car now, like right now, or I was going to miss my flight, and I’d be making sure that all the books were stacked neatly on the table in the entry hall of my apartment. I’d be sitting there literally with my thumbs squeezing the books so all the seams were right and the books were stacked just so, and whoever was primary in my life would be looking at me like, ”You’re kidding, right? You realize we’re going to miss the flight.” I’d be like, ”Excuse me?” I didn’t realize it was all coming out of this house of mine, which was just a hurricane and a mess all the time, because my mother just didn’t have the energy to clean up after six kids all the time. On taking   roles instead of following his passion for creative work  Even unconsciously, my whole life became about I don’t want to be like my dad. . .. I don’t want to get in trouble financially. A man’s job is to make as much money as he can, that’s it. That’s it. . .. That effed up my career in some ways I didn’t really do what I wanted to do careerwise. . .. There’s a turning point, which I view clearly as a turning point, there’s a spell of time there where I go and I don’t do Prelude to a Kiss on Broadway and I go do The Marrying Man, because they’re going to pay me a million dollars for the first time in my life, and I thought, ”Well, that’s who I am. I’m a guy that’s going to star in films, and you’re going to pay me a lot of money, and that’s the career I want to have.” The movie was not a good movie, and I should’ve done Prelude. I should’ve followed the instincts I had up ’till then. My instincts, if I had followed them, I would’ve gone to Broadway, and I would not have chased the money, but I did the money instead, because people talked me into that. On staying committed to his work as an actor, I think that people who are actors very often . .. have kind of a phobia of being caught undercommitted to their work. . .. When I did Mission Impossible a couple of years ago with Tom Cruise . .. I said to Tom, ”What motivates you?” In some way Tom is mesmerizing to me, in terms of his career and his work ethic. I said, ”What drives you now? You’re so many years into this.” . .. He says, ”I gotta give them their money’s worth . .. on both ends, the people who are writing me my check and the people who are buying tickets to the film. I’ve got to give on both ends.” . .. And I’ve felt that same way. A lot of actors . .. go to tremendous lengths to commit to their work as actors. On aging in Hollywood, Ian Parker from The New Yorker . .. wrote an article about me and he described me [as resembling] . .. ”an NFL football player in his broadcasting years,” and I thought that was a very funny description, in the way where you kind of let yourself go and don’t really tend to that grooming and that kind of  . I guess there was a part of me that it was maybe even a form of depression. . .. There was some of that. I didn’t care enough, and I started to care about other things. Plus, the really difficult thing was my divorce and my custody battle for my daughter, were right around 2002 and on through about 2007, 2008, it was a lot of more bad than good in my life, quite frankly."
"In Kansas, a student newspaper is being praised for its hard work in reporting that Pittsburg High School’s newly hired principal had seemingly overstated her credentials. The principal, Amy Robertson, has now resigned, after the paper found she claimed advanced degrees from Corllins University, an entity whose legitimacy has been questioned. ”In light of the issues that arose, Dr. Robertson felt it was in the best interest of the district to resign her position,” the school board said Tuesday, adding that it will now begin looking for a new principal. The turnabout came just weeks after Robertson was hired. Until Pittsburg High’s newspaper, The Booster Redux, published its findings last Friday, the main impediments to Robertson starting full time on July 1 had been her impending move from Dubai and the need to acquire a Kansas school administrator’s license. ”She was going to be the head of our school, and we wanted be assured that she was qualified and had the proper credentials,” said editor Trina Paul, a senior at Pittsburg High, according to The Kansas City Star. ”We stumbled on some things that most might not consider legitimate credentials.” Praise for the newspaper’s staff has been rolling in from beyond its hometown in southeast Kansas, as news of the students’ careful and diligent work spread. ”Loving all the support of the kids by professionals,” their adviser, Emily Smith, said in a tweet. She noted that after Topeka   reporter Justin Wingerter tweeted about the paper, he was retweeted by Todd Wallack, a member of The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team. The high school newspaper was preparing a feature article about the new principal when reporters found the irregularities. They brought their concerns to the school district and were encouraged to contact Robertson directly  —   so that’s what they did, in a conference call that included Smith and the head of the school board. ”During the call, Robertson presented incomplete answers, conflicting dates and inconsistencies in her responses,” the newspaper reports. ”The extensive amount of research that we had done really didn’t line up with what she said was true on her end,” Gina Mathew, a junior at Pittsburg High, tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. Mathew was one of the six reporters who led the paper’s investigation. As they did more research, Mathew tells Kelly on Wednesday’s All Things Considered, she and other reporters realized that ”those inconsistencies were what needed to be presented within our own newspaper, and to highlight to the community what we had found.” Mathew says that while some in the community tried to dismiss the students’ concerns, ”We knew that there was a story to be heard here, and that’s exactly what our paper sought out to do.” By conducting interviews and collecting details from online databases, the newspaper’s staff tracked down a complicated story with many moving parts, from an online university with seemingly no fixed U. S. address to Robertson’s travels between Spain, New York and what she described as a Corllins campus in Stockton, Calif. More   revealed doubts over Corllins’ accreditation and whether the school had a business license in Stockton’s San Joaquin County. As the staff of the Booster Redux worked through those details, doubts about Robertson’s qualifications were also raised in the local newspaper, The Morning Sun, in the form of an anonymous letter to the editor signed by ”Pittsburg Citizen X.” The student newspaper published the results of its investigation last Friday one day earlier, the Pittsburg Community Schools’ Board of Education had released a statement titled ”Dr. Robertson Brings Decades of Experience to PHS,” which seemed to be a response to questions about its new hire. ”Robertson comes to Pittsburg with decades of experience in education, which include international exposure as a teacher and administrator,” the board said. The statement also noted that high school staff and students had agreed Robertson was the top candidate for the job  —   a sentiment that, as The Booster Redux reported on Friday, was echoed by history and social studies teacher Marjorie Griffin, who was on the board’s search committee. ”I thought she interviewed very well,” Griffin told the paper. ”I thought she had all the answers.” But, Griffin told the Booster Redux, she became more uneasy as the issue of accreditation and other questions arose."
"Gene and guest host Glen Weldon (our play cousin from Pop Culture Happy Hour) explore how comics are used as spaces for mapping race and identity. Gene visits Amalgam Comics and Coffeehouse in Philadelphia and chats with proprietor Ariell Johnson, who is reclaiming the comic book store, which once made her uneasy as a black fan. Meanwhile, C. Spike Trotman, another black woman, has made a name for herself as an online comics publisher of Iron Circus Comics in Chicago. We also talk to artist and designer Ronald Wimberly for his perspective as a black creator who has worked for Marvel and DC, the titans of corporate comics."
"When you hear Alana Hope Levinson talk about the death threats she got late last year, in response to a Gizmodo story she wrote railing against ”manthreading,” she speaks so lackadaisically, you could almost forget how serious it all was. ”I had to alert security at work,” she   as if that really didn’t happen. (It happened.) ”Yeah, I mean people were just tweeting at me that they wanted to kill me, and stuff like that.” ”Threading” is the practice of repeatedly replying to your own tweets on Twitter, without mentioning yourself, in order to create a (usually rapid) series of tweets ”threaded” together that can weave a longer narrative than 140 characters ever could. In her piece, Levinson defined manthreading as when men, usually obnoxious men, do it. ”They are typically ’intellectual’ dribblings from men who love Explaining Things To Me (essentially a subtype of Online Mansplaining),” she wrote. Here is the first tweet in a     Levinson called out in her essay: Here is the 127th tweet: Levinson says the ”manthreading” piece, which she meant as a joke, turned out to be the most controversial story of her career, ”which is funny,” she says, ”because I’ve written about drug addiction.” Levinson is just the latest to wander into the jungle that is the Internet’s collective reservoir of emotion concerning the tweet thread, or the tweetstorm, or whatever you want to call it. Since as early as 2014, outlets like BuzzFeed have been saying they must be stopped. Just this week, Deadspin called tweetstorms about Trump conspiracies the ”the Infowars of the left.” Depending on your state of mind, they’re the terrible   stuff of blowhards, a sign of male privilege, or a new art form. I, myself, go back and forth over whether my propensity to thread is going to lose me followers, or even worse, my job. In the midst of unprecedented political discontent, with every new headline seeming to merit a thread from an armchair expert, it is time for us to assess the pros and cons of the tweetstorm, the thread, the whatever and figure out just what it all means. A whole new world? We should step back here to briefly discuss the history of the words ”thread” and ”storm” in relation to tweeting. Emily Brewster, an editor at   points out that ”tweetstorm” isn’t officially in their dictionary yet, but it’s being considered. She and others credit tech entrepreneur Marc Andreesen and Chris Dixon with coining and popularizing the term in 2014, though she says the word was used before then, as early as 2008, to describe any flurry of Twitter activity, threaded or not. ”That threaded quality is not essential to the word tweetstorm,” she says. ”When the president does tweetstorms, they are often not replies.” Also, use of the word ”storm” usually indicates a certain haste and strong emotion, perhaps more than in just a ”thread.” We should also note that there are so. Many. Threads. Perhaps the most prominent are the ones about politics. The    details of Russian plots to take over American government, complete with hyperlinks. The ones Levinson wrote about. But then there are the novellas. Remember Zola, the      who in 2015, tweetstormed a tale of stripping, prostitution, breakdowns and love triangles so compelling James Franco bought the movie rights? There’s the wonderful thread on infidelity and sexuality, called ”Tina and the Gucci Flip Flop,” that led to its own Kickstarter campaign (also to make a movie). It’s its own entire world that kind of seems like it just became a thing, overnight, out of nowhere. NPR spoke with two manthreaders called out in Levinson’s piece railing against ”manthreading.” ”I had zero plan,” Eric Garland said of his ”game theory” tweet thread, on the 2016 election and Russia. ”I just started, and that’s a little bit of why the story careens from side to side.” At the same time, he wrote every tweet knowing it was unchangeable  —   each ripe for a screengrab. ”You only get one shot at it, and it’s permanent,” Garland said. And he also knew that he would really only talk that way on that medium. ”You can say, ’Would you have had that cocktail party conversation differently if was in Harper’s?’ Well yes, I would have!” (For his part, Garland says he was surprised by the tone of the manthreading piece regarding his tweets, given that he also tweeted a long thread just the day before, all about the sexism he felt Hillary Clinton experienced over the course of the 2016 campaign.) Are threads changing the way we talk? This is the strange thing about threads, and the good thing, depending on who you ask. They are their own art form. Threads and storms straddle a certain fence, existing somewhere in that space between spoken and written word, often fully punctuated, but just as often full of traits meant to mimic the way we sometimes speak (or yell) like all caps. Jeet Heer, another ”manthreader” called out in Levinson’s story, says threading (and really all of Twitter) allows print language to move much closer to what he calls ”orality.” For Gretchen McCulloch, an Internet linguist and podcast host, threads are ”a   kind of discourse style,” not as stylized as a speech or an essay, and not as fragmentary as a conversation. ”They bridge the gap.” McCulloch also argues that threading makes you work harder. ”It [each tweet] needs to be   without context or without very, very minimal context,” she says. ”It’s like you’re trying to make every tweet as catchy as ’four score and seven years ago.’ You don’t have the option to make something just a serviceable sentence that then leads into something else.” And Mignon Fogarty, the author and podcast host most well known as ”Grammar Girl,” also thinks tweetstorms and threads, despite usually being off the cuff, actually lead to better, or at least more meticulous, writing on Twitter. ”The writing that I see in tweet threads seems to be more polished than the writing you see in just a   tweet,” she says. ”People are thinking of it more as maybe not a complete essay or blog post, but something that is more in that vein.” Where did threads come from? Besides assessing the linguistic benefits (or failings) of threading and tweetstorming, there’s also a philosophical consideration to be made about the form. As an artifact of online culture, you could see tweetstorms and threads as just another manifestation of one of the most beautiful things about the Internet: ingenuity. ”Constraints actually foster creativity,” Levinson says. ”When you have only 140 characters, it actually makes you more creative than if you were given a blank slate.” Heer agrees he thinks the Internet constantly lends itself to innovation, just like pretty much everything else. ”You’re in Trinidad, you find these steel containers, and you turn them into drums. You give a child a stick, and then they’ll use it to draw on the sand.” (Of course, Heer is the guy who wrote the following article: ”I Didn’t Create The Twitter essay genre. I just made it popular. ”) Heer goes even further. ”About 15 years ago, in the time of the early Iraq war, blogging was the   medium,” he says. ”And a lot of that’s sort of been absorbed by mainstream media. A lot of those writers were hired. There’s a lot of venues like Vox. com that institutionalized blogging.” Heer says tweet threading filled the gap. ”The energy of blogging, which came from the fact that it was not institutionalized, had to move somewhere else,” he says. ”Tweeting, especially because it’s so interactive, because people respond to you in kind, has a lot of the energy that the old blogs used to.” Basically, Heer’s saying threading is the new blogging. It’s a seductive premise. But there is a much simpler, and perhaps more dour, view of the rise of the thread: that it’s a symptom, a sign of a problem, not a creative force. Though Twitter refused to respond to NPR’s request for an interview, Jordan Kretchmer, GM of Adobe LiveFyre  Adobe Social, Adobe, did. Livefyre acquired Storify in 2013. One of Storify’s main priorities is helping people organize their tweets. Kretchmer argues that the rise of the thread is a sign of Twitter not giving users what they want and need, namely the ability to share ideas that are longer than 140 characters. ”It is just a flaw in the system,” Kretchmer says. ”It is a workaround because the platform did not adapt. It’s users finding a solution to the problem the platform should probably solve. And the end result is it’s not the most efficient way to communicate for even the people who are doing it.” Kretchmer argues that the biggest result of threading is not energy, but miscommunication and confusion, and individual tweets read out of succession, with no context. The verdict? No verdict. So who’s right? Should we all just stop threading right now? Or is the new frontier of the tweetstorm the future. Ultimately, it probably doesn’t actually matter. They’re here, and they’re likely to be here for a while. And they may not really be changing anything maybe they’re just the latest vessel through which we manifest all the hangups we had long before the thread, like   biases and   concerning privilege and class and race. ”A lot of feedback I got was people upset that I had sort of framed this as a male thing,” Levinson, author of the manthread post, told NPR, ”when in fact, in their experience, based on who they follow, women and especially women of color started the threading phenomenon.” This was not a problem created by tweetstorms or Levinson’s piece. And it will likely outlast both. If there is not greater meaning to come of the thread or the tweetstorm, other than it’s just the latest thing people on the Internet can get upset about (or not) McCulloch, the Internet linguist, says the rise of the thread proves a universal and lingering truth, online or off: ”I think what it says is everybody’s got an opinion.” And with that, we end with some tweet thread best practices, from Mignon Fogarty, the podcast host: 1) Take the first tweet very seriously. ”The first tweet is the most important,” she says. ”In my mind, the first tweet is kind of a combination between a headline and a lede. It has to grab your attention.” 2) Edit yourself. ”Like all other writing, it should be as long as it needs to be,” she says, ”but usually that’s shorter than the writer thinks.”"
"The idea that neuroscience is rediscovering the soul is, to most scientists and philosophers, nothing short of outrageous. Of course it is not. But the widespread, adverse,   attitude presupposes the   definition of the soul  —   the ethereal, immaterial entity that somehow encapsulates your essence. Surely, this kind of supernatural   has no place in modern science. And I agree. The Cartesian separation of body and soul, the res extensa (matter stuff) vs. res cogitans (mind stuff) has long been discarded as untenable in a strictly materialistic description of natural phenomena. After all, how would something immaterial interact with something material without any exchange of energy? And how would something immaterial  —   whatever that means  —   somehow maintain the essence of who you are beyond your bodily existence? So, this kind of immaterial soul really presents problems for science, although, as pointed out here recently by Adam Frank, the scientific understanding of matter is not without its challenges. But what if we revisit the definition of soul, abandoning its canonical meaning as the ”spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal” for something more modern? What if we consider your soul as the sum total of your neurocognitive essence, your very specific brain signature, the unique neuronal connections, synapses, and flow of neurotransmitters that makes you you? Just as we have unique fingerprints, our brains, their ”connectome,” are also unique. Surely, all brains are made of the same stuff, but wired in very individual ways. Recall that our brains are plastic, and mold themselves according to environmental and emotional inputs  —   the stories of our lives. To this, we must add our bodies and their relation to our brains. For the mind is embodied, the self not an isolated property of what’s inside your cranium but an emergent property of your whole   integration as mapped through the complex highways of nerves interlocking all of you. Consider, then, the modern soul as the unique   signature integrating brain and body through a complex electrochemical flow of neurotransmitters. Each person has one, and they are all different. That is, or can be considered, your essence from a materialist perspective. Once we have this definition of the soul, the next question is inevitable. Can all this be reduced to information, such as to be replicated or uploaded into    substrates? That is, can we obtain sufficient information about this   map so as to replicate it in other devices, be they machines or cloned biological replicas of your body? This would be, if technologically possible, the scientific equivalent of reincarnation, or of the   redemption from the flesh  —   an idea that is at least as old as organized religions in the East and West (as Mark O’Donnell remarked in his book To Be a Machine, reviewed here). Well, depending on who you talk to, this final transcendence of human into information is either around the corner  —   a logical step in our evolution  —   or an impossibility  —   a mad dream of people who can’t accept the inevitability of death, the transhumanist crowd. Silicon Valley is taking very seriously the possibility that aging is a technological problem that can be hacked. For example, the website of Google’s company Calico states right upfront that its mission is to tackle ”aging, one of life’s greatest mysteries.” The company’s approach is more one of prolonging life than of uploading yourself somewhere else, but in the end the key word that unites the different approaches is information. If life is a code written genetically, it can be dealt with, including the instructions for aging. Another Google company, DeepMind, is bent on cracking AI: ”Solve intelligence to make the world a better place.” Google is approaching the problem of death from both a genetic and a computational perspective. They clearly complement one another. Google is not alone, of course. There are many other companies working on similar projects and research. The race is on. What to make of this? It’s inevitable that science will be at the forefront of the quest to prolong or upload life. This is not a bad thing, per se, given that the knowledge this research will surely produce will open new pathways to healthier, longer lives. Accepting death is a hard pill to swallow, the hardest. As I wrote elsewhere, referring to my family in this context: ”Every day I have to love them is one less day I have to love them.” However, the possibility of extending life indefinitely also raises all sorts of moral and social questions, and possibly a lot of pain and loss. The curse of the immortal is to lose everyone he loves. Unless everyone jumps in. But how reasonable is this assumption? Who will benefit from these technologies? The very wealthy? The select few that have access to them? What of the rest of society? Would we end up creating a dual species of beings, humans and transhuman  ? Would there be mutual tolerance and respect? I can imagine all sorts of   scenarios unfolding, utopic and dystopic. Meanwhile, while the quest for immortality continues, what we can do is eat well, exercise, and try to live a life of meaning, leaving the world a better place than how we found it. Or, perhaps, for some in the future, never leaving it at all. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"A huge, internally flawless, 59.  diamond called the ”Pink Star” went for a whopping $71. 2 million at auction in Hong Kong  —   the highest price ever for a jewel. The oval gem was purchased at Sotheby’s by Hong   jewelry company Chow Tai Fook in a bid placed over the phone by the chairman, who renamed the jewel ”CTF PINK STAR” in honor of his late father. ”Not only was the price more than double the previous record for a fancy vivid pink diamond, but it was also a new record for any work ever sold at auction in Asia,” Sotheby’s said in a statement. The previous record for most expensive diamond sold at auction was $57. 5 million for the 14.  ”Oppenheimer Blue” sold last May in Geneva. The Pink Star was mined by De Beers in an unspecified location in Africa in 1999. Originally 132. 5 carats as a rough diamond, Sotheby’s says it was ”meticulously cut and polished over a period of two years.” The auction house describes it as the ”largest Internally Flawless Fancy Vivid Pink diamond that the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has ever graded.” It was sold just five minutes into bidding, the BBC reports. This is not the first time the jewel has gone up for auction. As The Associated Press reports: ”In November 2013 it was auctioned for a record $83 million to New York Diamond cutter Isaac Wolf. However, Sotheby’s revealed months later in its 2014 earnings report that Wolf defaulted on the transaction.”"
"In the annals of pop music history, the release of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on June 1, 1967 operated as a fulcrum upon which the scales of rock ’n’ roll were tipped forevermore towards ambitious refraction, sonic metaphor and unashamed exploration of the   spaces in our minds. Its 50th birthday, then, is something to be celebrated  —   and oh, how it is. A voluminous and varied reissue series of that momentous album was announced today. It will include deluxe and ”super deluxe” CD packages, a deluxe vinyl reprint and a limited 7” of ”Strawberry Fields Forever”   ”Penny Lane” (which were released as singles ahead of Sgt. Pepper’s release) for Record Store Day  —   all based on a new stereo remix of the album by engineer Sam Okell and producer Giles Martin, son of the album’s original producer George Martin, sourced from the original   sessions. The sets will have 34 previously unreleased recordings spread across the reissues’ various versions, made up of early takes from the Sgt. Pepper sessions. Some will also include digitally restored versions of the Making of Sgt. Pepper documentary and two videos produced to promote the album. ”It’s crazy to think,” Paul McCartney comments in a statement accompanying the release, ”that 50 years later we are looking back on this project with such fondness and a little bit of amazement at how four guys, a great producer and his engineers could make such a lasting piece of art.” But what can we expect it to, um, sound like? Thankfully, there is some precedent. In 2006, Giles Martin and his father worked on a ” ” set of Beatles songs for Cirque du Soleil that was released as Love. The process, in which songs were not only remixed but truncated, is a bit    with this current Sgt. Pepper project  —   but the result was was strikingly fresh, like a digital remaster of a 16mm film. Our own Bob Boilen interviewed Giles Martin around the release of Love, and Martin joked that he thought ”they were going to fire me at any stage.” He explained his process of taking those   recordings, digitizing them and, in a fashion not particularly rock and roll, creating a spreadsheet based on them ”with keys and tempos. It became essential for me to work,” he said. ”You have to start somewhere, and you can’t mess around with keys and tempos too much because then its not The Beatles anymore.” (Consider just how different even a stereo compared to a mono mix can sound  —   as we did back in 2014. And if you’d like to test your ears, we’ve got you covered there, too.) Not to be outdone, The Beatles’ original home, Liverpool, is planning three weeks of events, including one for each of the Sgt. Pepper’s 13 songs. The Cavern Club, where a   group of   first began to draw crowds (and screams) has its own house cover band that will perform the record in full on June 1."
"Driverless cars could transform the way our country moves, potentially making roads more efficient and possibly saving lives because of fewer traffic accidents. But for all the benefits of a driverless future, this   transportation is threatening the livelihood of America’s professional drivers, including scores of people of color. New research from the Center for Global Policy Solutions shows about 3 percent of all workers in the U. S. are in driving jobs. Truck, delivery and tractor drivers are still the most common jobs in most states. The study, supported by the Ford Foundation, found that while 62 percent of the nation’s 4. 1 million driving jobs are held by white Americans, many   Latinos and Native Americans rely on them since the median annual wages they earn are higher than in nondriving jobs. ”These are important   if not   jobs for people of color,” said Maya Rockeymoore, president of the Center for Global Policy Solutions. ”If these jobs go away, you’ve got a significant percentage of the   workforce [4. 23 percent] who would be negatively affected.”   professional drivers earn a median annual wage nearly $2, 500 higher than those in nondriving jobs. Latino drivers earn $5, 800 more, and Native American drivers earn $2, 000 more. The study also found that nonwhite bus drivers, taxi drivers and chauffeurs actually make more than their white counterparts. But technology and transportation companies are actively developing autonomous alternatives for everything from delivery trucks to taxis. Rockeymoore believes that while policymakers are thinking about automation in terms of safety and innovation, they are not paying enough attention to how it will affect the labor market. ”We don’t necessarily think that standing in the way of automation is the answer,” Rockeymoore said. ”At the same time, there needs to be a focus on strengthening the social insurance and   systems in our nation to make sure workers and their families don’t fall through the cracks.” Some professional truck drivers remain more optimistic and skeptical that their jobs are at risk. Charlton Paul Jr. an   UPS Freight driver based in New York state, says he has had a ”rewarding career” in professional driving that allows him to put his kids in college. Paul, who is also an industry ambassador for the American Trucking Associations, says he welcomes technology but sees it as complementary to his skills as a driver. ”You always have to have that human element,” said Paul, who drives more than 600 miles each day. He says autonomous cars are ”just a computer with four wheels and a motor.” But Silicon Valley is moving fast. One company, Starsky Robotics, is already retrofitting large trucks to make them driverless. By the end of the year, the startup hopes to operate one truck without a driver in the actual vehicle. CEO Stefan   says   trucks can be fully autonomous while on the highway but will need to be remotely controlled by humans when off the highway at distribution centers or truck yards: ”I see remote drivers being a key part of that for a long time  —   perhaps even forever.” Truck drivers are a part of Starsky Robotics’ team, serving as test drivers, collecting data and helping design for remote driving: ”All the conversation about ’get rid of all the truck drivers’ [is] a lot more real to us, because they’re people we know and that we care about,”   told NPR. ”We are actively hiring truck drivers and having them as a part of our team. We’re not a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds who look at truck drivers as some faraway, distant ’other.’ ” Otto  —   a   startup acquired by Uber  —   is also hoping to deploy   trucks: ”We don’t believe that the full responsibility of being a truck driver will ever be automated, but we are focusing on automating the most dangerous and mundane parts of the job,” an Otto spokeswoman said in a statement. We’ve seen Uber actively testing new autonomous cars. But the company says its technology is in the early days and still requires humans in the front seat to monitor conditions and intervene as necessary. ”Even when these technology issues are fixed, we believe ridesharing will be a mix for a long time  —   with rides provided by drivers and   Ubers,” an Uber spokesman said in a statement. Last week, the company was under fire after releasing mediocre diversity stats for its corporate employees  —   although a 2015 study found more than half of Uber drivers identified as nonwhite. Lyft, another major player in the driver market, says it will release a diversity report in the near future but that 66 percent of Lyft drivers identify as being part of a minority group. Lyft believes cars won’t be fully autonomous for five to 10 years and that once they are introduced, the need for human drivers will initially increase as   possibly becomes a cheaper option and more people may live  : ”When autonomous cars can only solve a portion of those trips, more Lyft drivers will be needed to provide service to the growing market of former car owners,” a Lyft spokesman said in a statement. So while leading companies like Ford, GM and Tesla are moving fast in developing driverless tech,   local truck driver Alphonso Lewis Sr. relates autonomous tech to airplanes: He would rather see a pilot sitting there when he gets on a plane. ”As a driver and as an individual, to me personally, I don’t think there’s anything safer than a professional driver behind a wheel,” said Lewis, who is   and has been a driver for about 30 years. He works for YRC Freight and has been an industry ambassador for the American Trucking Associations. ”If a system fails on these automated trucks, you want to have a driver there.” Vignesh Ramachandran is a freelance journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow him @VigneshR."
"It doesn’t take more than a few episodes of the Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch to get the idea that commercial fishing can be a career path rife with risk, making it one of the most dangerous occupations in the U. S. Sometimes the danger stems from how fish are harvested. Rules for catching fish can vary by region and species. About a third of U. S. fisheries operate under what’s known as   fishing  —   a season opens for a few weeks or months, and fishermen race to land their catch before it’s closed again. But   fishing means commercial fishermen are sometimes forced onto the water in stormy weather or before their boats can be properly maintained. Miss the window to catch fish, and for some, it can mean the difference between keeping their businesses afloat or not. But over the last decade or so, a different kind of fisheries management program known as catch shares has been gaining ground. The idea here is to allot fishermen a portion of the catch ahead of time, and allow them to fish until they reach it. Proponents claim catch shares create incentives for fishers to slow down, eliminating the need to race each other to fish. A new study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature proves they’re right. ”This is the first time we see broad systematic evidence that catch shares are slowing the race to fish,” says study   Martin Smith, professor of environmental economics at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Researchers looked at monthly data from 39 federally managed commercial fisheries (worth a combined $402 million) such as Pacific halibut, Atlantic cod, New England haddock, Gulf of Mexico red snapper and more, which operate under catch share programs. The researchers then compared that to data from a similar control fishery that did not operate under a catch share program. They found that under a catch share program, harvesters  —   on average  —   took an extra month to fish. That was a surprise, says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. ”When you think about it, a month [longer] means fishermen made decisions about not fishing in bad weather and took their trips when it was safer. That probably meant it saved lives and reduced injuries,” says Rosenberg, a former deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. He wrote a commentary on the findings also appearing in Nature. Indeed, other studies have found that catch share programs do reduce risky behavior by fishermen. And slower fishing has benefits for consumers, too: Some of the seafood we like best can be found fresh more frequently at seafood counters. ”For example, the Pacific halibut fishery used to operate under an extreme derby. It was caught in a matter of days and had to be frozen,” says Smith. ”Now fishing time is stretched out to most of the year. That means you now have a product that’s available fresh much of the year, that simply wasn’t before.” Despite the benefits, catch shares can be incredibly controversial. Opponents argue that such programs essentially privatize a shared public resource. They say it forces consolidation of the fishing fleet pushes smaller fishermen out of business prompts worries over   ownership of fishing quotas and can negatively impact fishing communities. Right now, opponents in North Carolina are fighting to keep catch shares out of their region. Last week, state Sen. Bill Rabon introduced legislation opposing the introduction of catch share programs. In March, South Carolina lawmakers adopted a resolution opposing catch shares in their region as well. But Doug Rader, chief oceans scientist with EDF and a proponent of catch shares, says the timing of today’s paper is critical. ”This paper provides compelling evidence that when it comes to fisheries, the U. S. is on the right course. Fish populations are the best they’ve ever been and rates of overfishing have come down, in part, due to catch shares and other programs like it,” he says. U. S. lawmakers are currently considering whether to reauthorize the   Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs U. S. fisheries and has been credited with reducing overfishing. But a bill introduced in February by Rep. Don Young ( ) could make it harder for some regions to adopt new catch share programs or expand existing ones. ”Political micromanagement of these things is not a good thing,” says Rosenberg. ”Then it’s political influence at the national level versus    at the local level,” he says. ”This study isn’t the last word on catch shares, but is another useful piece of information” about what happens when they’re in place. Clare   is a journalist based in San Diego who covers food policy and sustainability issues."
"FBI Director James Comey has warned that Russia will try once again to influence U. S. elections, possibly as early as next year. To prepare, the federal government has declared elections to be a part of the nation’s critical infrastructure that demands special attention. But the federal government’s focus has state and local election officials, who are very protective of how they do things now, extremely nervous. They’re mainly concerned that the federal government will tell them how to run their elections  —   even down to where polling sites should be located  —   in the name of security. Denise Merrill, Connecticut’s secretary of state and president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said this could jeopardize the best protection the nation already has against outside manipulation of elections. ”Because our system is highly decentralized there’s no way to disrupt the voting process in any   meaningful way through cyber attacks because there’s no national system to attack,” she said Tuesday at a hearing before the U. S. Election Assistance Commission on the impact of the critical infrastructure designation. Merrill noted that while two states  —   Arizona and Illinois  —   had their voter registration systems infiltrated last year by Russian hackers, no records were deleted or changed. And she said no actual votes were affected, despite signs that Russia had scanned election systems in at least 20 states. ”The voting process itself was not hacked, manipulated or rigged in any way,” said Merrill. Classified information, technical services, Neil Jenkins, director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Enterprise Performance Management Office, agreed that having thousands of local election offices, each with their own systems, makes hacking votes nearly impossible. But he said states are increasingly putting election data online, things like voter registration lists and preliminary vote counts, increasing the risk that an election can, at the very least, be disrupted. He said the Department of Homeland Security’s job is to help local officials secure elections, not to dictate what they should do. ”The way we work with critical infrastructure is not through regulation. It’s through voluntary partnerships. Sharing of information, listening to the community, determining what they want, and then working with them to provide that information,” said Jenkins. He said election officials will now have more access to classified information about potential threats. And that DHS can provide technical services, such as sending in penetration teams to try to break into a local voting system to see if it’s secure. Election officials say many of them have been doing this kind of testing for years, although they welcome the additional help. They say they could also use more money to help them secure elections, but Jenkins made clear that the critical infrastructure designation does not come with additional funds. One reason state and local election officials are so wary about working with DHS is that they’re not confident the agency understands how elections work. Jenkins admitted that he initially thought the problem with Russian hacking last year involved internet voting  —   which barely exists. He said he was quickly dispelled of that belief by election officials. Disturbing signs, But since then, election officials have seen other disturbing signs. They say they received little advance notice that former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson was about to make the formal critical infrastructure designation in January. And several states reported that their election systems have been scanned by someone using a DHS IP address, even though they had not authorized such activity. Jenkins said these scans were ”authorized normal activity coming from DHS users” and were unrelated to Russian hacking. He described it as normal traffic involving either professional or personal use of state sites by DHS employees, such as someone checking their own voter registration record. ”One of the things that we have worked hard with in our   partnership is to gain that level of trust,” Jenkins said. ”And the questions that we have received have shown us that we need to learn how to engage with state and local election officials and we have done that.” He said DHS will set up groups of election officials and vendors in the coming weeks to work on the critical infrastructure designation. EAC chairman Matthew Masterson says his agency has been helping state and local election offices already by providing cyber secruity training and checklists they can use to make sure their elections are secure. Masterson says while most election offices are already doing a good job, security can always be improved, especially as new systems are adopted, such as online voter registration systems. He said it’s important for the public to trust that the system works. When EAC Commissioner Christy McCormick asked election officials what they think is the greatest risk they face, the answer was not Russian hackers. ”I think the largest risk to be honest, is the risk of public perception and confidence,” said Ricky Hatch, who runs elections in Weber County, Utah. Hatch said he was mostly concerned about the impact of candidates and others talking so much about elections being hacked, when the chances are so low. ”We need to not only make sure that our elections are secure, but we need to make sure the public understands that they’re secure,” said Hatch. Of course, U. S. intelligence officials say Russia also tried to undermine confidence in U. S. elections last year by waging a disinformation campaign on social media questioning the validity of the vote."
"Imagine if one notice from the federal government could cause you to question your major life decisions. More than half a million people may have found themselves in that situation after a new legal filing by the Education Department. Under a program known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, some student loan borrowers were supposed to be able to have the balance of their student loans forgiven after ten years of both   payments and eligible work in the public sector. Meaning, a qualifying nonprofit, federal, local, state, or tribal government. The program started in 2007, so the first debt was set to be forgiven this coming fall. Last year a small group of borrowers learned that their eligibility for the program had revoked. These include four people, all attorneys, working for the American Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Vietnam Veterans of America. Nonprofits like these are not 501( c)3 charities or foundations, so it may be ambiguous whether they fall under the law’s definition of ”public service”. But the four argued in a lawsuit last December, joined by the bar association itself, that their status shouldn’t have been revoked, certainly not retroactively. They had followed all the necessary steps to qualify for forgiveness. They’d enrolled in the correct repayment program and filled out an Employment Certification Form with FedLoan Servicing, which acts on behalf of the Education Department. That form certifies that borrowers work for a qualifying organization or a federal, state, tribal or city agency. It’s suggested borrowers file an ECF every year. On March 23, the department responded to the suit, saying, ”FedLoan Servicing’s response to the ECF does not reflect a final agency action on the borrower’s qualifications for PSLF.” Meaning, in essence, all those years that borrowers submitted certification forms, the department wasn’t making any promises about forgiveness. Technically, the department is only responding to the narrow question about whether this small category of organizations is considered public service or not. However, ”The retroactive aspect of this filing reasonably causes people to be nervous,” says Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a former Deputy Undersecretary of Education under Obama, where he was responsible for overseeing the program during its early years. Nervous is right. More than half a million borrowers have signed up for the program. So we put the word out to find out how they were feeling. We heard ”frightened,” ”anxious,” ”uncertainty,” ”regret,” ”betrayed.” Sunrise Ayers, who works for a nonprofit providing legal services to the elderly in Boise, Idaho, has about $80, 000 in debt. Like many borrowers, she told us, ”A lot of my   decisions were made factoring the loan forgiveness into the equation.” She says she turned down   jobs in the private sector, for example. ”I would feel very betrayed, for both myself and my two sons, if this program is taken away,” she says. ”I would likely end up paying on my loans until I was in my 60s and would have no ability to save for retirement or to help pay for my children’s college.” Brian Jones is a parole officer in Texas with about $30, 000 in loans. ”It’s horrible,” he writes, ”because I was really depending on that to move on with my life and I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Not only have many people made financial and career decisions based on the program, some told us they avoided getting legally married because of the change in tax status. Another respondent, who has almost $70, 000 in loans and works as a community college counselor, says if it goes away, she and her husband, who has his own student loans, will reconsider having children. The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. A phone operator at FedLoan Servicing said that they did not have a communications department. So, what should borrowers do? If you’re already signed up for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, for now, nothing, says Shireman. Keep making your payments and filing the paperwork. This lawsuit ”should not be a problem” for anyone working in a 501( c)3 nonprofit, or for the government, he insists. For those currently in school or contemplating their career options, do keep in mind that going forward, Congress may eliminate the program. President Trump has talked about streamlining the many student loan repayment options currently available, a proposal that has bipartisan support. When Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, asked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos directly during the confirmation process whether she would uphold Public Service Loan Forgiveness, DeVos she said she ”look[ed] forward to discussing” it. It’s also possible that Congress keeps the program, but limits it. Under the Obama administration there was a proposal to cap forgiveness at $57, 500. Current rules allow graduate students to borrow into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Shireman says that inadvertently created a ”moral hazard.”"
"Recent college graduates who borrow are leaving school with an average of $34, 000 in student loans. That’s up from $20, 000 just 10 years ago, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In that report, out this week, the New York Fed took a careful look at the relationship between debt and homeownership. For people aged 30 to 36, the analysis shows having any student debt significantly hurts your chances of buying a home, compared to college graduates with no debt. The cliche of ”good debt” notwithstanding, the consequences of borrowing are real, and they are lasting. The report paints a mixed picture of how student borrowing has evolved over the last decade, since the financial crisis. There are some bright spots: For example, student loan defaults peaked five years ago and have declined ever since. And repayment seems to have slowed down among   borrowers  —  those who owe $75, 000 or more. Meaning, after 10 years, they have paid down only   to   of what they owe. On the face, this isn’t necessarily good. But taken alongside the decline in defaults, Fed president William Dudley said in a press briefing Monday, it reflects something good. That is, graduate students, in particular, are signing up for government programs intended to help make payments more affordable. [The fate of one of those programs, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, was in doubt last week after a legal filing by Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education.] Regardless of what happens with that program and others, nothing is holding back the rise of college tuition  —   up nine percent, after inflation, in the past five years at public universities. Dudley pointed out that in the last several years, public colleges have generally become less, not more, accessible to   students, when you look at tuition and aid policies. Living expenses are also a continuing burden for students, a significant number of whom are dealing with homelessness and hunger at the nation’s community colleges in particular. In the absence of more targeted grant or scholarship programs, more people are taking out student loans, and they are borrowing more. All that borrowing adds up to a total of $1. 3 trillion, nearly triple what it was a decade ago. So, is college still worth it? In the most simplistic terms, yes. Let’s look back at homeownership. Attending a   college  —   even if you borrow, and even if you do not graduate  —   still increases your chances of owning a home, compared to people who never enroll. More, results show that if even you come from a   family, graduating from college makes you almost as likely to own a home, by age 36, as someone from a   family."
"Updated at 3:15 p. m. ET on April 7, President Trump came into office promising big disruptive changes in the way America defined its role in the world. American foreign policy would no longer be aspirational  —   it would be transactional. ”What’s in it for us?” would guide the new ”America First” approach. Human rights? Downgraded. America as an idea, a beacon of freedom to tired, huddled masses? Been there, done that. Promoting democratic values as a way to strengthen America’s own economic and national security? Nope. Trump just didn’t see the connection. But as the new president is finding out, things happen. Chemical weapons are used. And the world’s greatest superpower has to respond. Here are some examples of how Trump’s approach to the world is changing. 1. Syria, The president claims to be very flexible and not rooted in a particular approach, but on Syria he had been remarkably consistent. For years Trump had argued that Syria wasn’t our fight. He repeatedly criticized Obama  —   not just for drawing a red line and then erasing it but for considering intervening in Syria at all. In just 48 hours, he has done a   flip on his position. On Wednesday, just six days after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Assad’s fate ”will be decided by the Syrian people,” Trump said the horrific images of children killed in a suspected chemical weapons attack had a big impact on him. ”It crossed a lot of lines with me,” Trump said, adding, ”when you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal.” He went on to say, ”My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.” And in a huge shift for a president whose tendency has been to blame his predecessor for everything, he acknowledged that Syria is now his ”responsibility.” By Thursday, he had ordered a strike on the air base from which Trump said the alleged chemical attack was launched. This was the first overt U. S. action against the regime. What are the next steps? That’s still not entirely clear. Tillerson said Thursday that ”it would seem” there is no role for Assad to govern his country moving forward, and that efforts are ”underway” to build a coalition to remove him. Trump’s own remarks on Thursday night announcing the attack didn’t shed much more light. ”Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types,” he said. 2. China, Trump’s actions in Syria also raise questions about his policy in China, which had already been shifting. White House officials are suggesting that the airstrike in Syria should send a cautionary message to North Korea that Trump is willing to take action there, too. Just this week Trump acknowledged that he has a responsibility for that country’s nuclear problem. However, a single threatening strike in Syria is not the same as taking action against a volatile North Korea. Amid these questions, Trump is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at    his resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump attacked China relentlessly during the campaign. But since he has been in the White House he’s been acting more like his predecessors. He promised to declare China a currency manipulator on Day 1. That didn’t happen. He promised to slap 45 percent tariffs on Chinese goods. He hasn’t. He said he would only reaffirm the ”One China” policy if he got something from China on trade or North Korea in return. But then he reaffirmed the policy without getting any concessions from China. 3. Mexico, Trump promised he would renegotiate NAFTA. So far he is proposing only tweaks. And he hasn’t found a way yet to force Mexico to pay for the border wall, one of the trademark initiatives of his presidential campaign. 4. The Middle East, The president flirted with dropping the U. S. commitment to a   solution. He has since backed off that and has reaffirmed his predecessor’s policy on settlements, saying they aren’t very helpful. And he hasn’t yet moved the U. S. Embassy to Jerusalem. 5. The European Union, The president once praised Brexit and predicted other countries would follow the United Kingdom. He disparaged the European Union as nothing more than ”a vehicle for Germany.” But in a recent interview with the Financial Times, he agreed the center seemed to be holding in Europe and that the EU was ”doing a better job.” 6. The National Security Council, This week Steve Bannon, the president’s top strategist, was removed from the principals committee of the National Security Council. Bannon, the architect of the president’s overarching ”America First” policy, was the first political adviser ever to be given a seat on the committee. Bannon’s removal shows that Trump’s new national security adviser, H. R. McMaster  —   a foreign policy professional and one of several establishment figures in the new administration  —   is taking control. It is another sign that Trump’s foreign policy process is getting a little more conventional. Yes, Trump’s action in Syria appears to be a departure from his ”America First” policy of nonintervention. But without an overall strategy and with many unanswered questions  —   including what this means for Russia and ISIS  —   Trump appears to have found himself in the same box that Obama did, with all the same frustrations and limitations (and crossed lines! )."
"Autopsies of victims of a deadly attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria, show they were killed by chemical weapons, Turkey’s Health Ministry says. The Turkish government says dozens of victims were treated across the border in Turkey, and several died. Their autopsies revealed evidence of exposure to sarin, the government said Thursday. Also on Thursday, U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said ”it would seem” there is no role for Syrian President Bashar Assad to continue governing his country and that efforts are ”underway” to build a coalition to remove him. He would not confirm whether the U. S. was considering military involvement, simply saying an attack using chemical weapons is ”a serious matter. It requires a serious response.” As NPR reported Wednesday, experts already suspected a powerful nerve agent like sarin was the toxic chemical used in the attack, based on the symptoms shown by victims. Sarin is a chemical weapon that is prohibited in war, under several international treaties. Turkish officials have now confirmed the experts’ suspicions, The Associated Press reports. The attack happened about 60 miles from the border with Turkey, the wire service reports: ”[T]he Turkish government  —   a close ally of Syria’s rebels  —   set up a decontamination center at a border crossing in Hatay province, where the victims were initially treated before being moved to hospitals. ”Turkish officials said nearly 60 victims of the attack were brought to Turkey for treatment and three of them died. . .. ”In Turkey, the   Anadolu and the private DHA news agencies on Thursday quoted Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying that ’it was determined after the autopsy that a chemical weapon was used.’ ”The Turkish Health Ministry later issued a statement saying that ’according to the results of the first analysis, there were findings suggesting that the patients were exposed to chemical substance (sarin).’ ” Victims were suffocating, convulsing and foaming at the mouth, aid agencies report. ”Paramedics used fire hoses to wash the chemicals from the bodies of victims,” the AP writes. An eyewitness to the attack’s aftermath, Syrian activist Samer   told NPR’s Alison Meuse what he encountered in Khan Shaykhun: ” ’I saw something I’d never seen in my life,’ Hussein said. ’Dozens of children, women, men and elderly people lying on the ground, getting hosed down with water, out in the cold. Children trying to breathe a gasp of air, with saliva and foam coming out of their mouths and nostrils.’ ”Hussein wept as he watched first responders succumb to the chemicals themselves. He frantically searched for a ventilator for one of the children, but in those moments when he was looking, he says, ’was the difference between life and death.’ ”He says he saw entire families being pulled from their apartments, lifeless. The strikes came just at daybreak, he said, ’before the children would be leaving for school or the parents for work.’ ” World leaders have denounced the Assad regime for the attack, which included a   shelling targeting a hospital treating victims of the initial attack. Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons before, including a sarin attack on a Damascus suburb in 2013 that left hundreds dead. But Assad and his Russian allies deny responsibility for the newest attack. They maintain that the Syrian government has destroyed all its chemical weapons, as it agreed to do after that 2013 strike. Instead, they claim the strike was a conventional weapons strike that accidentally hit an arsenal of chemical weapons belonging to the rebels. That explanation has been rejected as dubious by chemical weapons experts. One of them, Dan Kaszeta, spoke with NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel and explained why: ”Kaszeta says . .. nerve agents are unstable and are typically stored as two separate chemicals. With sarin, for example, one of those precursor chemicals is highly flammable isopropyl alcohol. ” ’You drop a bomb on it, the whole thing is going up in a huge fireball,’ he says. Even if the nerve agent was   a bomb strike would fail to disperse it in a way that could cause mass casualties. ”Kaszeta says he thinks the most likely source of chemical was the Syrian regime. Sarin and other nerve agents are hard to make, and it’s unlikely that rebel groups would have access to it. . .. The Syrian regime is still believed to have experts who could make nerve agent from scratch.” The U. N. Security Council has drafted a resolution to condemn the use of chemical weapons in Syria the U. S. hopes for a vote before the end of the day Thursday. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international watchdog group, has ”initiated contact” with Syria in connection to the attack, and is actively investigating the situation. Meanwhile, observers are wondering what options the U. S. is considering in its response. Tillerson’s comments on Thursday were vague, with references to Assad’s ”uncertain” future and the need for ”an appropriate response” to the strike. President Trump also addressed the Syrian strike in conversations with reporters on Air Force One Thursday afternoon. Asked if Assad should step down, Trump said, ”I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, and he’s there, and I guess he’s running things, so I guess something should happen.” Trump said the attack ”shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” but he refused to comment on specific responses. ”I don’t want to say what I’m going to be doing,” he said. ”A Pentagon official tells NPR that the administration is looking at a variety of options, ranging from economic to diplomatic to military to respond to a chemical attack in Syria this week,” NPR’s Tom Bowman reports. ”President Trump is slated to meet with his top national security officials Thursday at   .”"
"Texas Republican Mike Conaway will now preside over the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This comes after the announcement on Thursday morning that the embattled Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes,  . will be stepping away from the Russia probe. Conaway is a   congressman and the   Republican on the committee. Said to be   among his GOP colleagues, Conaway will have the difficult task of rebuilding trust and restoring credibility to a House probe that has, at times, resembled more of a soap opera than a collaborative bipartisan investigation. Nunes, who will continue to chair the committee, seemed to leave the door open to fully resuming his duties leading the Russia inquiry at some point. In a statement, Nunes said that Conaway along with Reps. Trey Gowdy,  . C. and Tom Rooney,  . will ”temporarily take charge of the Committee’s Russia investigation.” The House Ethics Committee is looking into allegations that Nunes possibly divulged classified information at a controversial press conference in March. That’s where Nunes told reporters about evidence of ”incidental” surveillance he viewed of   President Trump’s transition team. Nunes himself was a member of that transition team. Nunes’ statement said the accusations against him about possible ethics violations are politically motivated and launched by ”leftwing activist groups.” He added that he thought it was in the best interest of the Congress and the committee for him to step aside, ”despite the baselessness of the charges.” House Speaker Paul Ryan, speaking to reporters on Thursday, expressed his faith in Conaway’s ability to lead the investigation. ”I am confident that he will oversee a professional investigation into Russia’s actions and follow the facts wherever they may lead,” Ryan said. Meanwhile, Conaway has received some criticism for appearing to make light of Russia’s interference in the U. S. elections. The Dallas Morning News reported just days before the inauguration that Conaway equated Russian election meddling with Democrats using Mexican entertainers to energize their voters. He told the paper: ”Harry Reid and the Democrats brought in Mexican soap opera stars, singers and entertainers who had immense influence in those communities into Las Vegas, to entertain, get out the vote and so forth . .. Those are foreign actors, foreign people, influencing the vote in Nevada. You don’t hear the Democrats screaming and saying one word about that.” And just last month during a House Intelligence Committee hearing, Conaway set off on a peculiar line of questioning with FBI Director James Comey, comparing U. S.  relations to that of the Big 12 football rivalries between the Texas Longhorns and the Texas Tech Red Raiders. Conaway represents a sprawling, deeply red Texas district that includes the cities of Odessa and Midland. He easily won   last year, winning his district by a whopping 79 percentage points. On his congressional website bio page, Conaway describes himself as a conservative who ”believes in the principles of lower taxes, smaller government and a secure nation.” He is a certified public accountant by training and an ordained Baptist deacon. He also chairs the House Committee on Agriculture and is a member of the Armed Services Committee. In a statement, California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, struck an optimistic tone by saying that with Conaway at the helm of the Russia investigation there’s a ”fresh opportunity” to move the probe forward in a nonpartisan manner. ”With Respect to Representative Conaway, I look forward to joining with him and putting our investigation fully back on track,” Schiff said in a statement. It may be important to note that Schiff did not renew calls for an independent investigation as he has for a number of weeks, including in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep last month: Inskeep: If [Nunes] recuses himself, he remains chairman, and so that part of his work is taken over by Mike Conaway of Texas, I guess, who’s the number two guy  —   or Peter King of New York who’s the number three guy. They’re still Republicans. Are they going to be independent enough for you? Schiff: Well, look, I think it’s the best that we can do within the House Intelligence Committee. I do think that it calls up the need once again for a truly independent commission, something that would supplement whatever we do in Congress, but would be detached from Congress, would be beyond any kind of political interference by the White House. So the public ultimately can have confidence in the work product. That’s the ultimate goal.”"
"There’s a school of thought in politics that says there are key strategists who are puppet masters, pulling the strings of a president or politician. Understand them and their influence, and you understand the person in power. Some of us don’t subscribe 100 percent to that notion  —   and it’s especially true when it comes to Donald Trump. Now, there is plenty of drama in the Trump White House, maybe more than any White House in recent memory. Everyone is trying to figure out just who is in Trump’s ear, whom he is relying on most. But Trump’s attention span and focus are notoriously short and shifting. Trump also surrounds himself with competing power centers (by design) and is often influenced by whomever he spoke with last, meaning just when you think you’ve got things figured out, they change. A lot of the reporting Wednesday and Thursday after White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was demoted from the National Security Council’s Principals Committee has focused on whether Bannon’s influence is waning and whether others, like Trump’s    Jared Kushner, are ascendant. It has all played out like some drama worthy of House of Cards or Veep (or some combination of the two). And it’s all happening while this president is facing real and difficult challenges at home and abroad. Here’s a guide to what we know: 1. Bannon was demoted, and it may very well be an indication of his waning influence (at this moment, anyway) with Trump. He may have even threatened to quit (reported here and here) only to be persuaded to stay after talking with a major donor. Bannon’s camp says, no, that’s not the case at all. Bannon told NBC, for example, it’s ”total nonsense.” He ” ” the NSC after Obama’s White House was micromanaging foreign policy with it, and that was the real goal, Bannon said. That’s some heavy spin. But besides, he was really on the committee as a ”check” and to ”keep an eye on” Michael Flynn, the ousted and controversial former national security adviser who is now seeking immunity from the FBI and congressional committees investigating possible Trump team ties to Russia. Never mind that Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr. was blasting Bannon’s demotion, saying his father and Bannon have been the ”most loyal” to Trump: 2. H. R. McMaster exerted his own influence . .. McMaster is Trump’s new national security adviser. He replaced Flynn and is whom Flynn Jr. is referring to in his tweet. McMaster, 54, is a lifelong military man, an Army lieutenant general. It’s understandable that he would seem uncomfortable with the unique and unprecedented arrangement of the president’s chief strategist on the principals committee and would want something more traditional. He had to be given the ability to pick his staff. 3. . .. But McMaster’s influence is limited. He apparently didn’t get everything he wanted. He wanted Ezra   off the NSC, the New York Times reported last week, to no avail. The Times reported that   30, the senior director for intelligence on the NSC, was one of the sources for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. Nunes reviewed intelligence on the White House grounds that showed Trump officials were incidentally scooped up in lawful U. S. surveillance of other targets. Nunes then became embroiled in controversy because he didn’t share the information with others on the intelligence committee, which is investigating Russian meddling in last year’s election. Instead, he shared it with Trump. But when McMaster asked for  ’s firing,   complained to Kushner, who persuaded Trump to keep him on board. 4. Kushner and the New York Wing are ascendant: And that brings us to what appears to be the strongest faction in the White House: the New York moderates and establishmentarians  —   led by Kushner daughter Ivanka, and two   Sachs executives, Gary Cohn, Trump’s National Economic Council director (and a registered Democrat) and Dina Powell, Trump’s deputy national security adviser. Both are close to Kushner. The populist faction close to Bannon derisively refers to Cohn as ”Globalist Gary,” CNN reported. Despite his lack of policy, government or diplomatic experience, Kushner, 36, now has an expansive portfolio  —   from domestic to foreign policy. He is a key envoy for the president with foreign and business leaders, helping lead preparations for Chinese President Xi’s visit to the U. S. Thursday and Friday he made a surprise visit to Iraq Monday he is still point on trying to strike a Middle East peace deal and he is tasked with heading up an Office of American Innovation in the White House. Ivanka has now taken on an official advisory role in her father’s White House with her own West Wing office and a security clearance, raising all kinds of ethical questions. 5. Where does that leave Priebus and the ”Cheesehead Mafia”? Chief of Staff Reince Priebus isn’t seen as part of the New York Wing he is more Wisconsin Wing (or ”Cheesehead Mafia,” as The Atlantic’s Molly Ball put it) given his closeness to House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . But after the health care collapse in the House, Priebus lost his deputy, Katie Walsh. The spin was that the former RNC chief of staff left so she could help run an outside PAC in support of Trump. But the major legislative loss was a blow to the Cheesehead Mafia. Priebus created at least the show of an alliance with Bannon. The two spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference together, for example, and put on a show of camaraderie. ”I think the biggest misconception is everything that you’re reading,” Priebus said to a laughing audience a month and a half ago at CPAC. ”We share an office suite together. We’re basically together from 6:30 in the morning until about 11 o’clock at night.” Bannon followed up, affectionately: ”I have a little thing called The War Room. He has a fireplace with, you know, nice sofas.”  The storyline back then that they were trying to knock down was that they were competing for power. Now, they both appear on the outside looking in. Axios reported Thursday morning that ”Bannon’s friends worry he locked arms too tight with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and finds himself more isolated from     —   and therefore with the boss.” But maybe that shouldn’t have even been all that surprising. For Trump, after all, blood is thicker than staffers. 6. By the way, what’s happened to Kellyanne Conway? No one was more ubiquitous during the Trump campaign, the transition and in the first month or so of the Trump presidency than Conway, who was spoofed repeatedly on Saturday Night Live. But she made three big missteps: a) ”Alternative facts”: In trying to defend the White House on its attempts to inflate Trump’s Inauguration Day crowd size, she coined the phrase ”alternative facts.” That was just two days after Trump was sworn in. b) Promoting Ivanka Trump’s fashion line: On Feb. 9, Conway landed in hot water again when she urged Americans, ”Go buy Ivanka’s stuff.” That came after Nordstrom announced it was dropping her line. That appeared to be a clear violation of ethics rules and drew rebukes from Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Office of Government Ethics. c) ”Full confidence” in Flynn: Four days after that, she said Flynn had the ”full confidence” of the president. Hours later, that was undercut by the president himself. Flynn resigned that night. She wound up banned (temporarily) from CNN and more permanently from MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Lately, she has rarely been seen. Conway appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network Wednesday (which it billed as an ”exclusive”) but just five days ago Vanity Fair wondered whether she was being ”edged out” of the White House. Internal chaos while Trump faces external tests, The palace intrigue is sexy stuff and makes for a great read. What’s less sexy is the reality that more often than not in politics, staffers reflect their boss. Trump has always surrounded himself with chaos and competing fiefdoms. The Trump Organization operated that way, and so did his campaign. Of course, then, logically it would follow that his White House would function in much the same way. The chaos theory of Trump has always allowed him to be the most important person in the organization  —   with the competing factions trying to please him. That might work to retain power, with no one ever getting so big that they’re bigger than the boss, but it’s awfully hard to govern that way. That’s especially true with Trump at an inflection point in his presidency. He faces major tests domestically and overseas. Pressure is building for Trump to get something done on health care before moving on to a tax overhaul, leaving his agenda stalled. And international challenges are piling up  —   with North Korea’s missile test before Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi, Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons and ISIS carrying out its largest mass execution this year. And while Kushner is resurgent in Trump’s power circle, he is going to be interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee that is investigating possible ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign and Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential race. These are all the kinds of things that Candidate Trump would have provided simple clarity on and promised decisive action. But President Trump is dealing with the reality that the world is a more complicated place."
"Updated at 12:18 p. m. ET, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes says he is temporarily stepping aside from the committee’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as the House Ethics Committee opens an inquiry into whether he improperly disclosed classified information. Nunes will continue to serve as the committee’s chairman and remain involved in other matters before the panel. Rep. Mike Conaway,   will take the lead on the Russia investigation. Allegations that Nunes mishandled classified information center on a controversial press conference late last month, when he described intelligence that he says showed routine, legal surveillance of foreign individuals accidentally picked up conversations with or about associates of President Trump. After that disclosure, several watchdog and activist organizations filed complaints with the Office of Congressional Ethics asking for an investigation into whether Nunes violated House rules. Nunes calls the accusations against him ”entirely false” and said they were filed by ”leftwing activist groups.” The Office of Congressional Ethics, or OCE, would not comment on whether it was pursing an investigation. But the House Ethics Committee  —   a more powerful ethics group  —   said in a statement it was opening a review of Nunes’ actions. The committee only considers complaints filed or endorsed by House members and can recommend punishments. The House Ethics Committee did not mention the complaints to the OCE in its statement. Instead, it said it is aware of ”public accusations” that Nunes ”may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information, in violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or other standards of conduct.” Nunes said that it was in the intelligence committee’s best interests for him to hand over leadership of the probe to Conaway during the ethics panel’s inquiry. The allegations that Nunes mishandled classified data were prompted by his unusual press conference describing intelligence documents. The House Intelligence Committee (along with other groups) is looking into Russian meddling in the election. They’re also examining possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. And they’re asking how classified information about ties between Trump associates and Russia became public  —   looking into leaks, basically. In early March, President Trump accused former President Barack Obama of ”wiretapping” Trump Tower during the campaign. No evidence has ever supported this claim, which has been denounced at the highest levels of the intelligence community. The Russia investigation intersected with the president’s claims on March 22, when Nunes gave that press conference and said he had seen classified data showing ”incidental collection” of Trump associates during the transition. That’s not the same as wiretapping, and would not support Trump’s claims, but the president claimed it supported his allegation. The incident cast a cloud over the committee’s investigation, and over Nunes in particular. There was widespread criticism from both parties. His sources were challenged: He went to the White House grounds to view the classified information, and some outlets have reported that his sources were White House officials. There was outcry over how he briefed the president and the press, but did not share the data with his colleagues on the committee. There was concern that the presser showed Nunes was too entangled with Trump to properly investigate the Trump campaign. And there were concerns that his public comments about classified data may have been illegal or unethical  —   in short, may have constituted the same kind of leak Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee had been loudly denouncing. It’s those questions that appear to have prompted the ethics review and Nunes’ departure from the investigation. A White House spokesman told reporters Thursday that, as far as the Trump administration was concerned, ”This is an internal matter for the House.” NPR’s Peter Overby contributed to this report. "
"This is how the Senate changes  —   not with a bang, but with a motion to overturn the ruling of the chair. By a simple majority vote, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . set a new precedent in the Senate that will ease the confirmation for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch on Friday, after 30 more hours of debate on the floor. ”This will be the first, and last, partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court justice,” said McConnell in a closing floor speech. Senate Democrats voted against ending debate on Gorsuch’s nomination on a near   vote, leaving Republicans shy the   hurdle required by Senate rules to move on to a final confirmation vote. Democrats opposed Gorsuch for a variety of reasons, including his conservative judicial philosophy, dissatisfaction with his answers during his confirmation hearings and a simmering resentment towards McConnell’s decision to block any consideration of President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland last year. ”We believe that what Republicans did to Merrick Garland was worse than a filibuster,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer,  . Y. So McConnell then, as promised, used the power of his position and with all of his GOP colleagues lined up behind him, to essentially change the rules of the Senate  —   to lower that threshold on Supreme Court nominations to end debate from 60 to 51 votes. The change did not affect the legislative filibuster. McConnell made a point of order that ending debate on the nomination only requires a simple majority. The motion was not sustained by the chair because Senate rules required 60 votes, so McConnell then made a motion to overturn that ruling. And once that motion passed on a   vote, the Gorsuch nomination only needed 51 votes to clear the hurdle. That   parliamentary maneuver has the most destructive nickname, ”the nuclear option,” because it contains sweeping impact on the Senate, President Trump and all of his successors  —   and the nation as a whole. By essentially eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees  —   an extension of the 2013 nuclear option triggered by   Majority Leader Harry Reid,  . for all lower court and executive branch nominees  —   all presidential nominees will now face a far easier path navigating through the Senate confirmation process. It also could make it easier for presidents to appoint more overtly partisan justices to the Supreme Court. The change will also test the character of the Senate and the people who serve in it, and lay bare whether the upper chamber is slowly lurching towards becoming more like the   and reactionary House of Representatives, where the minority party has little substantive role. Opponents of easing the filibuster warn that the next and likely step is to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which allows any one senator to hold up a piece of legislation and requires a   threshold to break the logjam and move such a bill forward. Critics of the filibuster say the maneuver is abused and used so regularly that it has rendered the Senate incapable of acting on even routine legislative matters. The filibuster and the rights it gives to individual senators and the minority party are reasons why the Senate has long considered itself ”the greatest deliberative body in the world.” But the use of filibusters and the polarization between the two parties have dramatically increased in the past two decades, making it harder and harder for the Senate to reach bipartisan consensus even on matters like the annual 12 spending bills. The impact of McConnell’s move Thursday is a matter of heated debate, and its   effects are unpredictable. Advocates of changing the Senate rules on filibusters say it may be a necessary evolution for a polarized Congress to function in the modern era, while opponents say it threatens to send the nation further down a path where the two parties are so opposed that bipartisanship and centrism are relics of another era. ”Today’s vote is a cautionary tale about how unbridled partisan escalation can ultimately overwhelm our basic inclination to work together, and frustrate our efforts to pull back, blocking us from steering the ship of the Senate away from the rocks,” Schumer said."
"Twitter is suing the Department of Homeland Security after the agency demanded to know the identity of the person behind the ”@ALT_uscis” or ”Alt Immigration” Twitter account, one of several ”rogue” accounts ostensibly created by anonymous employees of the federal government. The lawsuit from Twitter alleges that DHS demanded to know the name, login information, phone number, mailing address and IP address of the user behind the account and threatened that failure to comply could lead to court actions. Twitter also says DHS ”requested” that the company not reveal the existence of the summons. Twitter did not comply with either the summons or the request for silence  —   instead, the company is asking a federal court to declare the summons ”unlawful and unenforceable.” The Twitter account in question is @ALT_uscis, as in ”alternative U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.” It’s one of a wave of accounts started in late January and early February after the Trump administration set limits on social media postings from a number of agencies. You may remember that a Twitter account for Badlands National Park went rogue, tweeting about climate change. After that act of resistance was shut down, a number of ”alternative” accounts  —   for national parks and all kinds of other government agencies  —   sprang up. Some accounts say they are run by  . Others claim to be run by actual government employees, which is difficult to verify. As for @ALT_uscis, The Associated Press reports that the people behind the account told the wire service they were ”employees and former employees of the agency.” Identifying which employees was apparently the goal of the DHS summons, demanding Twitter produce ”all records” associated with the account or face legal consequences. Lawyers for the social media giant say that the summons was itself illegal  —   a violation of the First Amendment rights of @ALT_uscis as well as of Twitter itself  —   and unenforceable. They note that @ALT_uscis was expressing dissent, criticizing immigration policies and disagreeing with other Trump administration policies. (The account’s older tweets have since been deleted some screenshots are shared in the court filing and more recent tweets follow the same trend.) Identifying the user ”would chill the expression of particularly valuable political speech,” Twitter says. The company says on its site it releases private user data only in case of emergency or through the proper legal processes, like a court order. In the lawsuit, it says that to demand a user be unmasked, the government must demonstrate a law was violated, prove that identifying the user is the ”least restrictive” way of investigating the offense, and make the case that it isn’t trying to suppress free speech or violate the First Amendment. (Twitter has a process for law enforcement officers seeking private information, which requires a court order, subpoena or proof of emergency.) ”Defendants have not come close to making any of those showings,” the company’s lawyers write. Furthermore, they say the tool DHS used to demand the information  —   a Customs and Border Patrol administrative summons  —   is only meant to allow CBP to demand information about imported merchandise. ”It is apparent that whatever investigation Defendants are conducting here does not pertain to imported merchandise,” the complaint says. As a side note, they point out that the summons was delivered on March 14, with a deadline of March 13  —   that is, already in the past. The larger question is one of First Amendment rights, the company maintains. ”Compelled disclosure of the identities of Twitter users who have engaged in pseudonymous speech would chill their exercise of the constitutionally protected right to speak anonymously,” Twitter’s lawyers write. ”A   tradition of pseudonymous free speech on matters of public moment runs deep in the political life of America,” they note elsewhere, NPR’s Laura Sydell reports that this isn’t the first time Twitter has gone to court over users’ privacy. ”Twitter has resisted other government attempts for information about its users including a demand from New York prosecutors for information about an Occupy Wall Street protester in 2012,” Laura says. ”Twitter lost that case.” Twitter and DHS both declined to comment about the new litigation. The user behind @ALT_uscis has responded, however, with several tweets. ”Last week: Unmasking is outrageous when it comes to Russian collusion,” he or she wrote, in a reference to Republican outrage over intelligence operations. ”Today: Unmask @alt_uscis because customs import code.” ”If they win here,” the anonymous user asked, ”where will they stop?”"
"A quiet change to the website photo banner of a relatively obscure federal agency is causing a bit of an outsize stir on social media. On the top of its home page, the Bureau of Land Management, which manages more than 200 million acres of public land under the U. S. Department of the Interior, swapped out a photo of a young boy and his companion backpacking across a mountain meadow in favor of one showing a massive coal seam at a mine in Wyoming. The agency’s mission is, after all, to manage federal land for multiple uses  —   which range from hiking trails along scenic vistas and in remote deserts to oil and gas fields and, yes, coal seams. But on Twitter, environmentalists  —   along with some satirists  —   were quick to pounce on the symbolism. The Trump administration hasn’t exactly been shy about its plans to increase fossil fuel development on federal land. The BLM is downplaying the latest Twittersphere uproar. More than anything else, spokesman Jeff Krauss tells NPR, the change in home page photos is due to an IT redesign that will once again allow different photos to be rotated through that reflect the agency’s   mission. That used to be standard practice until recently, Krauss says. Despite its   status when compared with other DOI agencies like the National Park Service, the BLM has long been a favorite political target from both sides of the aisle. During the George W. Bush administration, for instance, conservation groups criticized  —   and sued  —   the agency for approving a rapid expansion of drilling on public lands. Later, under President Barack Obama, mining groups accused the agency of being too restrictive, and Western ranchers led by Cliven Bundy even led armed standoffs against the agency, protesting its authority to control Western lands. For sure, the stakes are high when it comes to the BLM and the American public’s land, which might explain why a seemingly simple photo change ignited as much controversy as it did in this hyperpartisan political climate. Things will probably quiet down Friday, when the agency plans to swap out the coal photo for one reflecting the BLM’s recreation programs. Or will they?"
"The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee says he has seen ”no evidence” that former national security adviser Susan Rice may have improperly surveilled    Donald Trump or his aides during the transition. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly on Thursday that he and his committee would pursue the evidence in their investigation wherever it leads, but that so far nothing substantiates the White House’s Rice storyline. ”I have not seen any evidence or any indication of [anything] improper,” Warner said. ”But again, these are serious accusations against people affiliated with the Trump campaign. I have to treat the accusations that are made by the Trump administration officials as serious as well until we can actually get to the bottom of this and look at the facts.” Even so, Warner said, the Trump White House has fallen into a pattern of responding to criticism or inconvenient news with sometimes extreme countercharges. ”Boy oh boy, there’s a lot of smoke,” he said. ”You’ve got this administration which seems to try to deflect any story with some other outrageous claim, whether it be that the Obama administration somehow hacked into you, or you listened in on the Trump folks, or other claims that are, that have been outrageous about millions of unregistered voters voting.” Republicans do not call it ”outrageous” that Rice might have been involved in potentially asking for Americans to be ”unmasked” in classified reports about legal surveillance of foreign targets  —   including potentially of Trump or his aides. That must be the subject of the ongoing investigations, they argue, since they say there are indications the practice might have gone on for years and amounted to a political snooping operation. The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes of California, revealed last month that Trump and his campaign aides might have been swept up in U. S. surveillance of foreign targets during the presidential election. What’s more, he charged, the White House may have inappropriately asked intelligence agencies to reveal the identities of the Trump aides so that the Obama team could keep tabs on them. Nunes learned about these practices from officials in the Trump administration, and then announced them, and then publicly visited the White House because, he said, he needed to brief Trump about them. Nunes did not share the original materials or what he knew with the other members of his committee, which caused its investigation to stall. On Thursday, Nunes announced he had been the subject of accusations to the House Ethics Committee related to the White House episode, ones he called baseless. But rather than attempt to fight them and carry on with the Russia investigation, Nunes said he would recuse himself from that process while staying on as chairman of the full committee. In his statement, Nunes characterized the Rice eavesdropping storyline as the most urgent thread to follow. ”The charges [against Nunes] are entirely false and politically motivated, and are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of U. S. citizens and other abuses of power,” he said. The House Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, praised Nunes’ recusal. And in the Senate, both Warner and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina said they thought it was appropriate. Warner told NPR he thought Nunes’ behavior has been ”bizarre, to say the least,” but he repeated that he and Burr were committed to working together in a less dramatic fashion and would continue to stick together as the inquiry goes on. Americans deserve a credible accounting of the interference in last year’s election, including all the people who might have been involved with it, he said. ”This is why . .. our effort has to be bipartisan  —   nonpartisan in a more ideal sense,” Warner said. ”Tensions and feelings are so high among so many Americans on both sides of this debate.”"
"The opera firmament was shaken yesterday when a New York Times article, headlined ”The Diva Departs: Renée Fleming’s Farewell to Opera,” landed online. The lengthy piece gave the impression that Fleming, a beloved star of classical music and one of the most successful sopranos of her generation, was ready to call it quits as far as opera was concerned. Her ostensible final performance would come on May 13 in Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The   article begins with a wistful prelude probing Rosenkavalier’s themes of farewell and letting go. What follows are phrases such as ”Her departure is a watershed moment for her extravagant, expensive art form . .. ” and ”So Ms. Fleming is trying to say goodbye on her own terms,” and ”She isn’t temperamentally inclined to share her regrets, but on the eve of her farewell she offered a few.” But also this: ”Rosenkavalier may well be her farewell to staged opera. She will sing her final performance on the afternoon of Saturday, May 13.” The key word here is ”may.” Truth be told, Fleming has no plans to quit opera at all. ”I never said that I was stepping away from the opera stage for good. Never, never, never did I say that to anybody,” Fleming insisted in a phone conversation from her home in New York City earlier today. ”I think it misleads people,” she added. ”They sort of imagine that I’m an opera singer and I’m now retiring. So I just want to make sure that gets cleared up.” Fleming said she told the newspaper she was interested in pursuing new operas and had received proposals from composers. What Fleming is also clear about are her plans to shelve a number of roles she’s practically owned over the last decades, including Rosenkavalier’s Marschallin, the title role in Dvořák’s Rusalka and Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello. Her schedule, she says, is booked for the next two years, including appearances at the Met in 2019, and she’s ”in talks” with the Los Angeles Opera about a new role and a new production. ”As long as you’re singing well, there’s no reason to stop. I just sang a   show with Plácido [Domingo] in Tokyo,” she said. Rumors about Fleming’s retirement from opera have circulating for some time. That’s why opera mavens, seeing the Times’ article, might have thought that now the curtain was finally falling. That sentiment was evident in many of readers’ comments, where fans lamented her farewell. ”There’s been press about this now for last couple of years floating around,” Fleming says. ”I think it started with some paper in London, but it’s inaccurate.” Fleming has guarded her vocal resources carefully, singing roles that fit her creamy, lyric soprano as well as her designer gowns suit her elegance. Critics have complained of vocal mannerisms cropping up, but her instrument has remained remarkably intact. ”My voice has not gotten lower,” she says. ”In some ways I wish it had, then it would open other kinds of roles to me. It’s really just the same.” Although she’s excited about much new opera being written today, Fleming laments that standard repertoire roles for a lyric soprano of a certain age are few. She’s also concerned about her looks in front of   cameras. ”Unfortunately, the repertoire for my voice is mostly young girls. And it’s really important at this point, in the day of HD, to make sure that you’re not too far away from that ideal,” she observes. ”I can still sing Rusalka and a lot of the Massenet repertoire. But would I? No, at this point.” Given the demands of opera, which Fleming calls ”an Olympian sport,” she has slowly been cutting back on her staged performances, doing a couple per year. Instead she’s focused on concerts, recitals and recordings. Last November, she premiered Letters from Georgia, a new song cycle written for her by   composer Kevin Puts, which may be getting an operatic expansion. She’s also just released Distant Light, an album featuring another new song cycle composed for her and three songs by Björk. ”I don’t understand the focus on opera,” she says about the thrust of the Times story, especially the headline. ”I guess it’s because it’s the New York Times and the Metropolitan Opera is here, it becomes very, sort of, myopic.” But overall she liked the article: ”I’m not upset. I think the profile is wonderful. It’s one of the more balanced portrayals in that [writer Charles McGrath] sort of got who I am.” ”I don’t know why they insisted on that headline,” she concludes. ”I guess it’s more controversial.”"
"On April 6, 1917, the U. S. declared war on Germany and formally entered World War I. By late June, American infantry troops began arriving in Europe. One thing they couldn’t do without? Coffee. ”Coffee was as important as beef and bread,” a   Army official concluded after the war. A postwar review of the military’s coffee supply concurred, stating that it ”restored courage and strength” and ”kept up the morale.” In fact, U. S. troops had long looked toward coffee as a small source of salvation amid the hell of war. During the Civil War, Union soldiers received around 36 pounds of coffee a year, according to Jon Grinspan, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. ”Some Union soldiers got rifles with a mechanical grinder with a hand crank built into the buttstock,” he told NPR. ”They’d fill a hollowed space within the carbine’s stock with coffee beans, grind it up, dump it out and cook coffee that way.” In World War I, the U. S. War Department took things further, establishing local roasting and grinding plants in France to ensure fresh coffee for the troops. (Even if it was brewed in the worst possible of manners, with the grounds left in the pots for a number of successive meals.) The military also began offering coffee of a different type: instant. In 1901, a Japanese chemist working in Chicago named Satori Kato developed a successful way to make a soluble coffee powder, or dried coffee extract. At that year’s   Exposition in Buffalo, N. Y. the Kato Coffee Co. served hot samples in the Manufacturers Building, giving the brew its public debut. Two years later Sato received a patent for ”Coffee concentrate and process of making same.” But it was another immigrant in America, an   inventor named George Washington, who first successfully   instant coffee. (Washington’s presidential namesake was not only a coffee drinker but perhaps even an importer.) Established in 1910, the G. Washington Coffee Refining Co. with production facilities in Brooklyn, N. Y. initially sold as ”Red E Coffee.” While the name suggested convenience, marketing soon highlighted other benefits of the ”perfectly digestible coffee.” ”Now you can drink all the COFFEE you wish!” an early 1914 ad in the New York Times promised. ”No more do you have to risk indigestion when you drink coffee,” thanks to a ”wonderful process that removes the disturbing acids and oils (always present in ordinary coffee).” Competing products were hitting the market when demand for soluble coffee skyrocketed with the American entry into the Great War in 1917. The U. S. military snapped up all the instant coffee it could. By October 1918, just before the war’s end, Uncle Sam was trying to get 37, 000 pounds a day of the powder  —   far above the entire national daily output of 6, 000 pounds, according to Mark Pendergrast’s coffee history, Uncommon Grounds. ”After trying to put it up in sticks, tablets, capsules and other forms,” noted William Ukers in his authoritative All About Coffee, ”it was determined that the best method was to pack it in envelopes.” Each held a quarter ounce. Soluble coffee was notably used on the front lines. Soldiers stirred it into hot water, gulped from tin mugs, and called it ”a cup of George,” after the company’s founder  —   whose name was apparently familiar to at least some of them. In a letter from the front that Pendergrast quotes, a soldier wrote: ”There is one gentlemen I am going to look up first after I get through helping whip the Kaiser, and that is George Washington, of Brooklyn, the soldiers’ friend.” The U. S. War Department’s E. F. Holbrook, head of the coffee branch of the Subsistence Department, considered instant coffee instrumental in the face of chemical weapons: ”The use of mustard gas by the Germans made it one of the most important articles of subsistence used by the army,” he explained to the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal in 1919. The ”extensive use of mustard gas made it impossible to brew coffee by the ordinary methods in the rolling kitchens,” he said. Equally important was coffee’s effect on morale in the trenches. It was hot, familiar and offered a hint of home’s comforts. And it had caffeine, which helped energize the troops. For java addicts like   doughboy José de la Luz Sáenz, who served with the 360th Infantry Expeditionary Forces in France and Occupied Germany, that jolt also kept at bay ”the headaches caused by the lack of coffee in the morning,” he wrote in his journal on Sept. 26, 1918, after a sleepless night and gas attack on the Western Front. Rather than using his ”condiment can” to carry food, he filled one of its compartments with sugar and the other with instant coffee. Managing to get a small alcohol stove to heat water, he prepared cups in the trenches. ”The hot coffee with our reliable ’hardtack’ biscuits hit the spot and revived exhausted, hungry, and drowsy soldiers,” noted Sáenz, a teacher (and future civil rights activist) from South Texas. Sometimes Sáenz and his fellow soldiers had to do without heat  —   or even water  —   for their coffee. ”On occasions when the morning finds us on our feet, I am glad to be able to chew on a spoonful of coffee with a bit of sugar.” After the first world war ended, Washington’s company relaunched ”prepared coffee” for the household. ”Went to war! Home again,” read an advertisement with a saluting coffee can. The focus this time was on convenience: ”Fresh coffee whenever you want it  —   as strong as you want it.” While Washington’s company continued to sell coffee, its Swiss competitor, Nestlé, managed to develop a better technique for producing instant coffee. In 1938 it launched Nescafé, which soon dominated the global instant coffee market. In 1943, just before his death, Washington sold the company. (In 1961, the George Washington coffee brand was discontinued.) By then, World War II was raging, and American GIs were calling their coffee by a different name: Joe. One legend behind the origins of the new moniker is that it referred to Josephus Daniels, secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1921 under Woodrow Wilson, who banned alcohol onboard ships, making coffee the strongest drink in the mess. Snopes, though,   that claim and called it false. Yet ”Joe” very likely does originate in the military. ”The American soldier became so closely identified with his coffee that G. I. Joe gave his name to the brew,” according to Pendergrast. ”Nobody can soldier without coffee,” a Union cavalryman wrote in his diary at the end of the Civil War. Many servicemen and women who have fought since then would agree. Even when the coffee was instant and called George. Jeff Koehler’s Darjeeling won the 2016 IACP Award for literary food writing. Where the Wild Coffee Grows will be published in autumn. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram."
"April 6 marks 100 years since the U. S. Congress voted to declare war on Germany, entering World War I. The war took the lives of 17 million people worldwide. What’s not as   is the role that animals played at a time when they were still critical to warfare. Horses, in particular, served alongside troops on both sides, and several million died during the war. The animals were so crucial to the war effort that they also became military targets. ”You need these horses to move, to fight, to exist,” says Christopher Kolakowski, director of the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Va. ”It would be like maintaining your car today.” Hundreds of thousands of horses and mules were shipped to Europe from Newport News, Va. the largest departure point for horses and mules, during war years. The area around the port on the James River is now full of condos, office buildings, and even today  —   shipyards. Standing at the water’s edge, Kolakowski says Newport News was ideally situated on the East Coast near rail lines and waterways. ”You can get a sense here of the immensity of the harbor and why this is such a desirable port. . .. You’re not quite as crowded as New York. So it’s a tremendous asset,” he says. Animals were sold to the British and the other Allies in Europe even before the U. S. entered the war in 1917. Kolakowski says there was huge demand for horses and other supplies, and American businesses rushed to meet it. ”The United States economy needs the money, needs the influx of dollars there’s a new market that has opened  —   and the United States economy adjusted to meet that. . .. We’re going where the business is,” he says. At that time, animals were usually the best option for moving people and supplies, says Lynn Rainville, a research professor of humanities at Sweet Briar College. She’s the author of a forthcoming book on Virginia’s role in World War I, due out next year. ”[They] were crucial for the very, very rough conditions of the roads and any transport routes that horses  —   or these   animals  —   could maneuver better than the tanks and cars and trucks,” Rainville says. Horses and mules were so valuable that Germans devised a plot to sicken some of them, as they waited in the pens at Newport News. The plot to spread anthrax, and a naturally occurring disease called glanders, was developed by Anton Dilger, an   German sympathizer who spent much of his youth studying science and medicine in Germany. ”These diseases  —   anthrax and glanders  —   are so virulent that if he could infect them before they loaded onto the ships, that by the end of their journey most if not all of the mules would probably be dead,” Rainville says. It was a surprising choice for the son of Hubert Dilger, a German immigrant and decorated Civil War hero, who earned a Medal of Honor for his service. ”This guy’s father does this incredible service in the American Civil War, and then his son chooses to support Germany in World War I,” Kolakowski says. ”It’s a really interesting dichotomy in a family.” Anton Dilger’s plot was largely unsuccessful, says Robert Koenig, author of a book about Dilger, The Fourth Horseman: One Man’s Mission to Wage the Great War in America. Koenig says the weak link may have been dockworkers who were paid to secretly infect the animals, but may not have followed through as instructed. This early attempt at germ warfare was only one of several ways the Germans targeted animals, including using a submarine to try to sink transport ships filled with horses, Koenig says. ”They actually tried blowing up a train at one point that was carrying horses, and they went out to various stockyards in the Midwest, but that didn’t prove terribly effective,” he says. Had efforts to disrupt the supply of war horses succeeded on a large scale, Christopher Kolakowski says it would have been like disabling dozens of tanks, in today’s terms. ”That’s the modern term of it  —   you basically slow or possibly grind operations to a halt and you definitely would have lengthened the war,” Kolakowski says. Nefarious schemes aside, disease was still a constant threat to the horses living in close quarters. Bill Barker is an archivist at the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News. He’s been sorting through a trove of letters from a soldier named Joe Harlin to his parents in Liberty, Mo. while stationed at Newport News after the U. S. entered the war. A yellowed letter written on YMCA stationery, dated Aug. 15, 1918, is one of several that mention the animals. ”Everything is just the same at the [veterinary] hospital, just as many sick horses as ever,” the letter reads. Those animals that did survive their time at the stables and their journey across the ocean by ship often died of malnutrition, exhaustion or enemy fire, alongside the human soldiers who fought in World War I. ”That’s another piece that a lot of people forget about, is this was not just a war fought by . .. men and women at the home front,” Kolakowski says. ”But it’s also a war that was fought by animals.”"
"During World War I, some 223 members of the U. S. Army Signal Corps performed a highly specialized service which demanded great skill, nerve and tenacity: Over the vast network of telephone lines that had been hastily constructed across France, these soldiers worked the complicated switchboards connecting the   front lines with vital supply depots and military command. At the height of the fighting, they connected over 150, 000 calls per day. They had been specifically recruited for this task. They underwent physical training, they received medical examinations and inoculations, they swore the Army oath, they wore regulation uniforms and ”identity discs” (akin to dogtags) to identify their remains. They observed strict military protocol, they were subject to   and many found themselves stationed a few short miles from the front during the bloodiest days of that very bloody war, at outposts that came under sustained mortar fire. General ”Black Jack” Pershing, who had issued the call that caused so many of them to volunteer, singled them out for praise. They were brave. They were resourceful. But when they returned home, they discovered to their dismay that, according to the United States government at least, there was one thing they most certainly were not: veterans. They were the ”Hello Girls”  —   a cadre of patriotic women who volunteered when the U. S. Army realized that the war would be won or lost on the Allies’ ability to exploit the new technology of telephone communication. In the crisply written The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers, Elizabeth Cobbs details exactly what was asked of these women during the war, and reveals, with an authoritative, dispassionate,       lucidity, the dismaying extent to which their country failed them when it was over. Because they were women, the Department of War denied them veteran status  —   including benefits, medical care, commendations, honorable discharges, military funerals, even the right to wear their uniforms. For 60 years they fought to be recognized for their service. Although this struggle is relegated to The Hello Girls’ final chapter, the blunt    that marks Cobbs’ prose quietly   her thesis: Stubborn pride, bureaucratic arrogance, and the belief that women simply did not merit recompense blinded senior staff officers to faceless female veterans. The Hello Girls is built around the diaries of several young women who served as operators we come to know Berthe Hunt, Grace Banker, Merle Egan and others as they trace the arc familiar to every young soldier: raring to get as close to the fighting as possible, pining for home, and gradually growing    with the horrors of war. (Cobbs outlines the tactics of several WWI battles and offensives in which the Hello Girls played key roles with an unhurried precision that will keep even the least   reader’s eyes from glazing over.) Smartly, she also walks us through the sundry and simultaneous technical demands of switchboard operating, noting that women could connect five calls in the time it took a man to complete one. Cobbs is particularly good at spotlighting how closely the service of military women like the Hello Girls was tied to the success of the suffrage movement  —   specifically, how their example steadily wore down fervently held beliefs about the status of women, and changed that national mood. She painstakingly charts the steady shift in the attitudes of President Woodrow Wilson and his cabinet towards the women’s vote, with an eye for the perfect, lacerating detail. Here she is, for example, on Secretary of War Nelson Baker: ”. .. a small man, not much above five feet, the bespectacled secretary often sat with one leg bent under him to give an impression of greater height when receiving visitors at his giant desk in the War Department.”  . The Hello Girls is   about the root cause of the Army’s disingenuous confusion over these women’s status: the document signed by General ”Black Jack” Pershing that called them into being. ”Every word of Pershing’s order implied military service without stating it.” That imprecision proved something the U. S. government would successfully cower behind until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed the order granting the few surviving Hello Girls full veterans status. It’s an abiding irony of American military history that one poorly communicated order kept the very soldiers tasked with communicating orders from receiving, for six long decades, the recognition they deserved."
"World War I sometimes seems like the war America forgot. The U. S. entered the fight a century ago, on April 6, 1917, nearly three years after it erupted in Europe during the summer of 1914. The Americans made quite a splash, turning a stalemate in favor of their British and French allies. The cost was hefty, with the U. S. losing 116, 000 troops in a war that claimed some 9 million lives. Yet it also marked the coming of age of the American military, which transformed itself overnight from a small army engaged in regional battles into a major powerhouse  —   a role it maintains to this day. Still, World War I has been overshadowed by other American wars. It tends to be glossed over in schools, and this centennial has been muted compared to a pair of recent milestones: the 75th anniversary of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack that launched the U. S. into World War II, and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. ”The Civil War and the Second World War get a lot more attention from Americans,” said Christopher Capozzola, who teaches history at MIT and has written extensively about World War I. ”But I think if you step back, especially a century later, and look at the First World War, it touched nearly every aspect of American life, public and private, and every community in the country, in ways that are a little less visible but maybe just as important.” Prior to World War I, the U. S. fought a few limited skirmishes abroad, in places such as Mexico, Cuba and the Philippines. The U. S. had neither the inclination nor the military might to wage a major war in Europe, and the Americans initially sat on the sidelines under the banner of ”armed neutrality.” President Woodrow Wilson won   in 1916 with the slogan ”He kept us out of war.” But when German submarines launched a new round of attacks on civilian vessels in early 1917, including American ships, the American mood changed. With a sense of resignation, Wilson called for war  —   and Congress backed him. ”Armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable,” Wilson told Congress. But as historian Libby O’Connell noted, the American military was less than  . ”We had a tiny military. We had just a 130, 000 troops before we declared war,” said O’Connell, a commissioner on the U. S. World War I Centennial Commission, set up by Congress to mark the anniversary. The military needed to ramp up in a hurry, prompting a draft on an unprecedented scale. ”This machinery moves very quickly and does register 24 million men within the space of a    . Four million of those end up in uniform,” said Capozzola. Let’s pause to review the math: 130, 000 troops when the U. S. entered the war 4 million by the end. This means that for every American in the military in the spring of 1917, there were more than 30 by the fall of 1918  —   an astounding rate of expansion. Gen. John Pershing ”was essentially tasked with the full responsibility for mobilizing, recruiting, training, deploying and commanding the American forces,” said Bart Hacker, who’s curating an exhibit on Pershing at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History. ”It was an extraordinary accomplishment.” The fresh American troops made a huge difference, arriving at a time when the European armies were exhausted. Pershing was no fan of the trench warfare that had resulted in deadlock, and pushed for ”open warfare” and much greater mobility. Pershing resisted placing American troops under the command of more experienced British and French officers, and his aggressive tactics led to heavy casualties. The 116, 000 Americans who were killed almost matched the size of entire U. S. military when it entered the conflict. But the American forces played a crucial role in breaking the Germans. And under Pershing, the military also modernized and became more professional, according to many historians. The government’s military draft that created this force included large numbers of young men from the same community who registered together  —   and often fought side by side. ”Football teams would sign up together. Graduating classes would sign up together. It means that when there’s a large swathe of death on the battlefront, a neighborhood loses their boys,” said O’Connell. After the war, local communities paid tribute with memorials across the land. But it wasn’t until 2004 that Congress designated the official National World War I Museum, in Kansas City, Mo. where ceremonies are set for Thursday, the centennial. Capozzola offered a historian’s perspective on the day: ”Americans should take another look at the first World War and imagine it with all the noise and the color and conflict that it included,” he said. ”It has been handed down to us in    silent film. And I think we’ve thereby erased a lot of the intense humanity of the war.” Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Before Comedy Central’s celebrity roasts, before American Idol’s Simon Cowell, before Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, one man abused people on TV and in clubs like no other  —   as one emcee introduced him, ”the Sultan of Insults, the Merchant of Venom, the pussy cat with claws, Mr. Don Rickles!” Rickles died of kidney failure Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90. He wouldn’t be able to get away with it in quite the same way today, but from the 1950s on, Rickles had a simple, successful recipe. Be merciless and spare no one: ”That’s all Jews do, sit in their underwear, belch, and watch TV,” he told one audience. ”The Irish guys are staggering around the colored guys are going, ’Glory, glory hallelujah’ the Mexicans, ’I’m going to the toilet, I don’t care what the colored guys do.’ And the queers are going, ’Let’s go to the park and have a  .’ ” ”Oh, it’s very offensive, but not if you’re into comedy,” comedian Chris Rock said in the 2007 documentary Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. Rickles didn’t use   words  —   back then that would’ve been more transgressive than racial and ethnic stereotypes. For personal invective, he called people dummies and hockey pucks. And when people heckled him in clubs, he shot right back: ”Where you from, tiny? Alabama  —   that’s trouble boy, that’s trouble. What’s your first name? Rufus? Usually from the South they have those flukey names like Booker T. Abraham, Isaac Aloysius Whiteman, Kiss My Sink Alabama Harry.” Rickles was born in Queens, N. Y. in 1926, the son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. He served in the Navy during World War II and then began to pursue comedy full time, working East Coast nightclubs and burlesque houses. His career took off in the late 1950s and ’60s thanks, in part, to his friend and longtime supporter Frank Sinatra. Rickles was the Rat Pack’s court jester  —   Sinatra once appeared on The Tonight Show telling a legendary story about an incident in a restaurant, something no one but Rickles could’ve gotten away with. ”He came over to the table and he said, ’Frank, do me a favor, will you? I’m sitting with a very pretty girl and, uh, I’m trying to make out, you know,’ and he said, ’I told her I know you and she really doesn’t believe me. Would you stop by the table?’ And I said all right, I was just about finished, and I walked by the table and I said, ’How are ya, Don? Nice to see you.’ And he said, ’Can’t you see I’m eating, Frank?’ ” Rickles became a Las Vegas fixture at Rat Pack hangouts like the Sands Hotel, where every audience became a target. In 1968 he recorded a   comedy album live at the Sands called Hello, Dummy. And in Hollywood, being insulted by Rickles was a compliment. His most memorable  —   and ubiquitous  —   performances were on   talk shows. For decades, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman relied on Rickles’ ability to tickle viewers with his infinite arsenal of zingers. Rickles also acted in dozens of movies and TV shows and provided the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the Toy Story movies. There was always a sentimental side to Don Rickles. Not convinced? Then consider this, ya hockey puck, from that album Hello, Dummy: ”Will Rogers once said, ’I never picked on a little guy, only big people.’ May I say to this entire audience, on a hectic night, you are pretty big and I do thank each and every one of you.” Rickles wanted everyone to know that his insults were all in fun  —   but let’s face it, it’s the insults we’re remembering. Ya hockey puck."
"In the charming and soulful Japanese anime Your Name, two teenagers who have never met wake up rattled to discover that they have switched bodies in their sleep, or more precisely their dreams. And it’s not just their anatomies they’ve exchanged, or even the    each has managed to cobble together at such a tender age. Mitsuha, a spirited but restless   girl of   vintage, and Taki, a Tokyo high school boy, have also swapped the country for the city, with all the psychic and cultural adjustments that will entail. Soon it grows clear the two have also switched places in time as well, with potentially drastic consequences for at least one of them. Indeed Mitsuha’s village of Itomori may be in terrible danger from the fallout of a beautifully rendered approaching comet. The kicker is that the fallout fell three years ago. Your Name is a stirring tale of rescue with a boisterous edge of YA mischief. It’s also a love story with a swoony romantic affinity for the   tussle between chance and fate. The movie  —   which is released stateside in both dubbed and subtitled formats (for sheer atmospheric pleasure, the latter is overwhelmingly preferred)  —   is not a Studio Ghibli project, but visually it might as well be. The director of animation, Andou Masashi, is a longtime Ghibli artist who worked on the ravishing Spirited Away, and fans of Hayao Miyazaki will swoon over the   landscape with its   skies and lakes and   houses, its blowups of frying eggs and dripping taps. Itomori is the kind of place you wish you’d grown up in  —   unless you happen to be 16 years old, in which case the cityscapes may be more likely to thrill.  Your Name’s young director, Makoto Shinkai, brings a frisky pop vibe (the soundtrack is by the Japanese rock band Radwimps) to the lively interplay between the rural idylls and metropolitan Tokyo, with its rush of trains and looming, angled skyscrapers and entitled young hipsters bellowing orders in the restaurant where Mitsuha, uncomfortably lodged in Taki’s body, must learn to cope with urban folkways. For all its twitchy   appeal, Your Name often seems to cast its vote for history and rural tradition. Based on a classic Japanese poem, the story is shot through with reverence for ancient ritual, as spelled out by a prototypical   with an acerbic grasp of life’s real business. In many ways this is an   movie, exquisitely attuned to the dualism of mind and body, male and female, that strike deep roots in Japanese art and literature down the centuries. The plot does little more than glance incuriously at elements like cyborgs, hacking and gender fluidity. As in Miyazaki, Shinkai’s casual feminism gives us a boy who sews and a girl who spits, and its impulses are broadly humanistic rather than    challenging. Taki and Mitsuha’s entertainingly rendered initial panic on discovering strange new body parts where flatness once prevailed soon gives way to an intense desire to connect. The action segues nimbly from one to the other as the teens, both motherless and both suffering from inattentive fathers, find ways to communicate across space and time via text message and, when that fails, by other creative means. As the comet closes in, both draft their friends to try and save the town  —   and to get in sync with the mysterious Other who has invaded their dreams as well as their bodies. With its gods and   dimensions, its staccato beat of memory and forgetting that guide the journey, Your Name shimmers with the magic of a fairy tale, yet also has its feet firmly planted on the ground of Japan’s past and present. Undeterred by constant setbacks, Taki and Mitsuha move uncertainly toward one another in a journey to adulthood that must be carried out alone and entail the shedding of   illusions as well as their alternate selves. When they finally meet, the encounter will bring several new meanings to ”You had me at hello.”"
"The meat on an adult human’s bones could feed another person for over two weeks, or maybe a whole Stone Age tribe for a couple of days, according to a new report on the practice of Paleolithic cannibalism. No wonder, then, that evidence of cannibalism in ancient humans pops up in the archaeological record from time to time. When the human bones look like they’ve been eaten without ceremony or ritual, showing gnaw marks on the bones or gashes where the tendons would have been, archaeologists have chalked the motivation for cannibalism to the fact that there’s a decent amount of meat on a human, says James Cole, an archaeologist at the University of Brighton. But that story just doesn’t add up when you look at the calories in human meat when compared to other large prey, Cole says. Based on his calculations, published on Thursday in Nature Scientific Reports, a single human adult male is nutritionally worth about 143, 000 calories or 32, 000 calories, if you only ate the skeletal muscle. That’s a lot of calories, but by comparison, a horse carcass would get you six times as many. And humans probably took a lot more effort to hunt and kill than most other animals, Cole suggests. As NPR has reported, humans and horses are almost an even match when it comes to running. ”If you’re hunting your own species, it’s the same size as you and can think just as well as you and can fight back just as well as you can,” Cole says. In other words, hunting a fellow human for food would probably take more energy than hunting a horse, he says. ”We aren’t a great return of calories for the amount of effort.” Besides, bigger, better prey was available to the ancient humans that appear to have practiced cannibalism. ”We’re not dealing with populations on the edge of starvation. They’re successfully bringing in big game and butchering and eating them,” Cole says. So, why turn to human meat at all? Cole thinks that when cannibalism did happen among early humans, people might have just been taking advantage of a windfall of fresh meat rather than people hunting people for food. ”The motivation might have been more social in nature. It could be around something like territory defense  —   an interloper comes and you attack them and then  —   you eat them.” That much makes sense, says Bill Schutt, a zoologist at Long Island University and the author of Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History. It’s a hard rock life in the Paleolithic, he says. When human meat was available, perhaps because of a natural death or violent conflict, ”It’s likely that [early hominids] were extremely opportunistic and sometimes ate each other. Were they just going to leave [dead bodies]? No! I think you would have eaten them,” Schutt says. But if the decision was only based on caloric value, hunting humans might have still been a decent use of time when compared to similar sized animals, Schutt says. ”If you look at [Cole’s] table, the human has more caloric value per kilogram than an ibex. And an ibex is a pretty decent sized animal.” Plus people were probably an easier prey target for other people than what Cole suggests, says Deanna Grimstead, an archaeologist at Ohio State University who did not work on the study. ”Imagine the risk of hunting a mammoth versus hunting a hominid. ”They could be trampled,” Grimstead says. ”You’re never going to convince me that a hominid is going to outrun a cheetah. Easier? Well, it’s way easier to run down someone of your own species rather than something three times as fast as you.” It’s true that humans are puny and squishy compared to something like a bear, Cole says. ”But we do have great intelligence, stone tools and spears with which to fight back. I fail to see why that would make us any less dangerous or an easier option than a horse for example. We can outthink our attackers, lay traps for them.” Cole thinks that hunting humans would cost a hunter too many calories to make it a common practice. It would just be more efficient to go after almost anything else, he says. Grimstead, though, is unmoved by this argument. ”You have a chance of surviving a spear point, if it’s just a flesh wound. But if you get skewered by a mammoth tusk?” she says. If the only reason for eating people is a simple effort spent versus calories gained calculation, it would still make sense to eat humans for nutrition, she says. But she agrees with Cole that humans probably weren’t out actively hunting other humans all the time. Eating people might have had other, detrimental consequences. Conflict could start between different   groups should one person make lunch out of a member of a different group. And eating people within your group is undesirable because you might be related, she says. Grimstead thinks there’s really only one good reason why humans chowed down on fellow humans outside of cultural reasons. ”[Human cannibalism] is where people have nothing left to eat and they can’t leave to find other food options,” she says. ”It’s about survival.” Angus Chen is a journalist based in New York City. He is on Twitter @angRChen. "
"What President Trump may refer to as ”the art of the deal,” his guest at    on Thursday and Friday  —   Chinese President Xi Jinping  —   might call ”  cooperation.” In this first summit meeting between the two leaders, both sides have things they are willing to give and get. Both will be sizing the other up to see to what extent they can do business with each other. ”The Chinese quite like the idea of a   because I think they are looking for a deal,” says Kerry Brown, a professor of Chinese studies at King’s College London. ”They want to deal with very tangible things,” he says. ”Trade flows, investment flows, intellectual property.” A grand geopolitical bargain is not in the cards, though, says Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at People’s University in Beijing. ”Both sides have never made, or been willing to make, big concessions on major political issues in order to achieve breakthroughs,” he observes. Shi says China wanted the summit because it was alarmed by Trump’s campaign rhetoric, when he talked tough on China. ”We worried that if we did not take immediate stabilizing measures,” he says, ”the  . S. relationship could nosedive and pose serious problems for our finances, economy and strategic security.” Shi also notes that this is a political transition year for China: Xi Jinping is due to get a second   term this fall  —   and that’s no time to have a crisis with the U. S. China has moved quickly to prevent one, Shi believes. He points out that Trump initially threatened to upgrade unofficial ties with Taiwan, which China considers its territory. But Trump later backed down, during a February phone call with Xi Jinping. ”By prompting the U. S. to affirm its traditional One China policy, and by getting Trump to agree to a summit so early on, China has already won two fights,” Shi says. ’A dual game’ China has also demonstrated that it wants a greater global role in issues such as climate change and international trade. By reversing agreements on climate change and pulling the U. S. out of international trade agreements like the   Partnership, President Trump is ceding leadership to China, says   APCO Worldwide executive James McGregor. But China, he believes, is not fit to lead. ”What they’ve done so far is, they’ve joined all the international organizations,” McGregor says. ”When the rules work for them, they go along with them. When the rules don’t work for China, they just ignore them and act like they’re going along with them. They’ve got a dual game going.” Xi Jinping has spoken in favor of globalization and free trade, and against protectionism, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and in remarks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But back home, policies undercut the rhetoric. ”Xi goes to Davos and talks about the need to open the world and we shouldn’t be building walls,” says Christopher Balding, an economics professor at Peking University’s HSBC Business School in Shenzhen. ”And at the same time, in China, they’re literally criminalizing VPNs to access Internet servers that are not based in China. So the disconnect between what China says publicly and how they behave in China, when there’s a lot less press, is striking.” And while China’s president promotes free trade, Balding adds, the government also requires foreign companies to enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies and either forces them to hand over or their technology or simply takes it. Leadership questions, Beijing may not feel it needs to concede much, Brown says, on what may be the summit’s most urgent issue: the North Korean nuclear crisis. ”Mr. Trump seems to have very strong opinions about this issue, and he’s probably right that China’s the one that’s going to solve it,” Brown says. ”But he can’t tell them how to solve it. They’re going to have to work their way towards doing that themselves.” When China takes on a leadership role, Balding says, it does so out of  . Maintaining stability in North Korea is one example. Climate change is another. When it comes to clean energy investment and emissions goals, China is leading the world  —   but China’s carbon emissions are equal those of the U. S. and the European Union combined, says UCLA law professor Alex Wang, resulting in levels of air pollution so high, it’s become a social stability problem for China’s government. Meanwhile, the country continues to build   power plants. Wang worries that China might not be comfortable in the role of global climate leader. ”I think one of the fears about what’s going on in the U. S. with Trump stepping back from the climate action, is that Chinese leaders may not want to be out there by themselves,” he says. In other areas, Trump administration policies have given China opportunities it may be incapable of seizing. ”To different degrees, Trump has already alienated most of the U. S.’s allies and strategic partners,” Shi Yinhong argues. But China’s relations with many of these countries, especially in East Asia, also remain tense. Some analysts argue that President Trump has squandered American soft power and prestige through his support for the use of torture, for example, and his criticism of journalists as purveyors of ”fake news.” This has emboldened China to swat away criticism of its own domestic politics. ”China does not want to need to defend its value systems or its domestic issues,” says Brown. ”It feels like it doesn’t have to answer to anyone.” Reading Trump, Shi Yinhong says the arrival of the Trump administration was not the first signal to Chinese citizens that Western democracies are not as perfect as they might imagine. The 2008 financial crisis and the U. K.’s decision last year to leave the European Union, Shi says, sent a similar message. ”Western countries and the U. S. have not done a good job with their own domestic economies and politics,” he says. ”This has substantially, though indirectly, strengthened the Communist Party’s power in China.” Brown predicts that Beijing will get more from Trump than it gives, partly because China’s leadership has shrewdly judged the U. S. president’s character. ”I think that they absolutely have done a wonderful job at reading him,” he says. ”So I think that they have worked out that he’s a conceited man, and the Chinese are very good in the theater of their diplomacy in making people feel important.” He adds that the Chinese have also nimbly used the back channel to Trump provided by his    Jared Kushner. Shi, though, believes that China needs any handle on this administration that it can get. ”China has no other choice,” he says. ”Since Trump took office, U. S.  relations have faced a rather dangerous situation. Luckily, China discovered someone they can talk to who has direct access to the president.”"
"Back in the 1980s, Salman Rushdie wrote that the defining figure of the 20th century was the migrant. I think his claim may be even truer of the 21st century. These days, the whole world, including our politics, is being shaped by migration. Few people explore the nuances of this reality more skillfully than Valeria Luiselli, a strikingly gifted    Mexican writer who knows the migratory experience  . Born in Mexico City to an Italian family, Luiselli spent her childhood in South Africa, her teens in Mexico and now lives in New York with her husband and their kids. Not surprisingly, her first three books  —   two novels and a collection of essays  —   are bursting with ideas on dislocation, national identity and knowing where you belong. These   themes take immediate, painfully concrete form in her latest book, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, a deceptively slim volume just out from Coffee House Press. Where Luiselli’s earlier work was marked by an elegant,   sensibility, this compassionate new one finds her in a   confrontation with daily reality. The book is based on her experiences working as an interpreter for dozens of Central American child migrants who risked their lives crossing Mexico to escape their fraught existence back home. To stay in the U. S. each must be vetted by the Citizenship and Immigration Services, a vast, impersonal bureaucracy. It’s a bit like competing in the ultimate reality show, one in which it’s terrifyingly easy to get voted off the island and sent back to the country you fear wants to kill you. As a translator, it’s Luiselli’s task to help these kids, who range in age from 6 or 7 into their teens, most of whom came alone and were either caught at the border or went to the authorities themselves. They must answer 40 official questions that will determine their fate. While these sound simple enough  —   the first one is, ”Why did you come to the United States?”  —   answering each is like passing through a doorway covered in cobwebs that can’t be shaken off. For instance, Question 7 asks, ”Did anything happen on your trip to the U. S. that scared you or hurt you?” Luiselli says that children rarely give an honest answer, not because they’re lying or evasive, but because the truth is too awful to tell. You see, 80 percent of migrant girls and women who cross Mexico to the U. S are raped along the way. ”When I have to ask that seventh question,” Luiselli writes, ”All I want to do is cover my face and ears and disappear.” But she swallows her shame and rage in hopes of hearing details that will help the child’s case. This book is fueled, in no small part, by Luiselli’s bottled up shame and rage. She’s aghast at the gap between American ideals and the way we actually treat undocumented children, who are often seen as being ”like a biblical plague.” That said, this is no hectoring screed. It’s measured,   and expansive. Luiselli points out how cruelly Mexico treats Central American migrants, too. And she deftly shows how the U. S. and Central America aren’t distinct entities but part of the same complicated social  . The street gangs that migrant kids are fleeing in El Salvador emerged during the   civil war in that country. They began in L. A. their members got deported back to San Salvador, and now have branches on Long Island that menace refugees who left Central America to get away from them. Still, for all its    look at the immigration process, what makes Tell Me How It Ends so moving and humane is that Luiselli doesn’t serve up a catalogue of horror stories that soon grows numbing. In a touch that personalizes the migrant story, she deftly links the experiences of migrant children with her own efforts to get a green card and make a life here with her family. Luiselli takes us inside the grand dream of migration, offering the valuable reminder that exceedingly few immigrants abandon their past and brave death to come to America for dark or nasty reasons. They come as an expression of hope. ”Once you’re here,” Luiselli says near the end of the book, ”you’re ready to give everything, or almost everything, to stay and play a part in the great theater of belonging.”"
"In an elaborate ceremony, Thailand’s king has signed the country’s   constitution. The document paves the way for Thailand to hold elections in the coming months, but critics say it only solidifies the power of the military. Voters approved the constitution by a wide margin last August, two years after the Thai military seized power in a coup, as The   has reported. The junta has argued that this constitution was badly needed to restore stability. The new constitution ”constrains further elected governments with an appointed senate, and commits governments to follow the military’s   development plan,” according to the BBC. But this is actually a slightly different document than the one Thailand voted on. It contains six changes made at the request of new King Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, who acceded after the death of his father in October. Those changes expand the power of the monarchy. For example, according to the Bangkok Post, the king may leave the country without appointing another regent. Also, it removes a requirement for the king to call a meeting with the heads of top courts and the Senate in the event of a constitutional crisis. ”Thailand has had so many constitutions in its modern history  —   this is the 20th since 1932  —   that many of them were introduced with little fanfare,” the BBC reports. But the extravagant ceremony requested by the king is seen as a sign of ”royal approval,” the broadcaster adds. The Bangkok Post describes it as an ”ancient ceremony not seen in almost 50 years”: ”Officials beat gongs and blew trumpets and a royal guards band played marching music, followed by a   salute by the army, navy and air force. ”Temples throughout the country simultaneously recited prayers, rang bells and beat drums.” Rights groups were critical in the   to the referendum, saying that the ruling junta had stifled dissenting opinions and debate about the draft. Dozens were reportedly detained for encouraging people to vote no. Now, Amnesty International is concerned that the new document will not protect human rights, as the Associated Press reports. ”Thailand’s military government retains its carte blanche authority to rule by diktat until elections are held, and future governments will have free rein to restrict human rights on various vaguely defined grounds,” Amnesty’s director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Champa Patel told the wire service. ”The new constitution also keeps in place the full gamut of orders and decrees imposed by the military government since the 2014 coup, which have facilitated widespread human rights violations.” The timeline for elections is not clear. As Reuters reports, Prime Minister Prayuth   said in televised remarks that the country could now hold a vote ”within the 19 months set by the constitution” but did not provide an exact date."
"There’s a clear culprit in the rising drug overdose death count in Massachusetts, but it’s not heroin. It’s the synthetic opioid fentanyl.   percent of the state’s men and women who died after an unintentional overdose last year had fentanyl in their system, up from 57 percent in 2015. It’s a pattern cities and towns are seeing across the state and across the country, particularly in New England and the Rust Belt states. Fentanyl may be especially lethal because it’s strong, it’s mixed with other drugs in varying amounts unknown to the user, and it can trigger an overdose within seconds. ”It happens so fast, like instantly, as soon as you do the shot,” says Allyson, a    woman who started using heroin in her late teens. ”In the past, it [an overdose] was something that you saw happening, like, you could see the person start to slow down, their color would start to turn blue, and then they would go out, within 10 minutes or so,” Allyson says. With fentanyl, there’s no progression. ”Now it’s instant,” she says. Allyson leans back in a chair at the AAC Needle Exchange in Cambridge, Mass. and tugs the hood of her gray sweatshirt down to her eyes. We’ve agreed not to use her full name or the full names of any people in this story who buy illegal drugs, so as not to harm their future job prospects. Allyson is a regular client at the needle exchange, where manager Meghan Hynes urges everyone to carry naloxone, the drug that reverses an overdose. Hynes uses her own kit every few weeks. ”Recently we had a guy leave the bathroom and all the color just drained from his face, like immediately, and he just turned blue,” Hynes says, describing what’s become a typical fentanyl overdose. ”I’ve never seen anyone turn blue that fast. He was completely blue and he just fell down and was out  —   not breathing.” Hynes bent over the man turning blue to pump his heart, but she couldn’t. He was hit with ”wooden chest,” a side effect of fentanyl that may be increasing the death toll. ”Your chest seizes up. You literally have paralysis and that’s obviously really dangerous, because if someone needs CPR, you can’t do it,” Hynes says. ”And in this situation it spread, so he had lockjaw and his mouth was only open a tiny, tiny bit. And so I could hardly even do rescue breathing for him.” Breathing for overdose patients is critical because brain cells can die after just five minutes without oxygen. Hynes revived the man on the floor. Because of the increasing overdoses she sees with fentanyl in the mix, she urges clients to stick to a dealer they know, and use with a buddy. Many drug users also inject a small amount before they give themselves the full shot. ”But it’s really hard to tell these days, even if you do a tester shot,” Allyson says, because the grains of fentanyl that could kill you aren’t mixed uniformly in a bag. That’s a lesson she learned one   night a few months ago. Allyson, who is homeless, spent the night in a tent with a friend. She woke up and used the last of a bag from the day before to get herself going. ”And I actually said to my friend, I said, ’Wow, I can’t believe I only saved myself this much.’ It was a very small amount, like a third of what I did the night before,” Allyson says, shaking her head. ”I overdosed on it.” The friend had enough naloxone in the tent, which was far from a road or hospital, to bring Allyson back from the dead. Fentanyl is an opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin. There’s a legal, Food and Drug   version. But labs in China are churning out cheap versions of fentanyl that dealers are selling on the streets mixed with fillers, heroin or other drugs. Buyers have no idea how much fentanyl they are getting or how much risk they are taking with every injection. So, these days, drug users who frequent this needle exchange assume there’s fentanyl in every bag they buy. ”Most of us know that that’s what we’re getting,” says Sean, who started using heroin more than 20 years ago. ”And if you don’t believe it, you’re living in a fairy tale world.” There’s no reliable way for drug users to test the contents of bags bought on the street. Eddie relies on taste. ”It’s slightly bitter, but it’s mainly sweet if it’s fentanyl. If it’s heroin, you can tell right away because it’s got a bitter taste and it’s a   aftertaste,” Eddie says. ”I will not put anything in my arm before I taste it.” Eddie and Allyson say they try to avoid fentanyl. But when their last dose of drugs starts to wear off, they’ll take anything to avoid withdrawal, which they describe as the flu on steroids with fever, vomiting, diarrhea and high anxiety. ”It literally feels like your skin is crawling off. You’re sweating profusely,” Allyson says. ”Your nose is running, your eyes are running. And that’s all you can focus on. You can’t think.” Some drug users seek fentanyl because it’s a more immediate rush and intense high. But Allyson doesn’t like it. She says a fentanyl high fades much more quickly than heroin’s, which means she has to find more money to buy more drugs and inject more often, which leads to more risk. When fentanyl fades, she and Eddie say, they are more likely to take other drugs. ”You’re getting a fast rush but it doesn’t last, so people are mixing,” Allyson says. At 37, Allyson is having experiences most Americans don’t face until much later in life. ”As of two days ago, 30 people that I know have passed away. Basically my entire generation is gone in one year,” Allyson says. ”It’s the fentanyl, definitely the fentanyl.” Older drug users who have been through other epidemics say this moment with fentanyl is the worst they’ve seen. A man named Shug twists a towel in his hands. ”Addicts are dying, like, every day. It’s crazy, man,” Shug says, his eyes filling with tears. ”Nobody seems to give a damn.” Shug is grateful for the needle exchange, which hasn’t lost anyone to an overdose. But on the streets outside, the death toll keeps rising. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WBUR and Kaiser Health News."
"”We try to be friends with everybody, but we have to maintain our jurisdiction,” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday, describing his order for troops to fortify islands that his country has claimed in the South China Sea. The order applies to a group of islands in the western portion of the Spratly Islands. ”There’s so many islands,” Duterte said. ”I think nine or 10.” The Philippine military should raise the national flag on those islands, Duterte said, adding that he might do that himself on one island, Pagasa (also known as Thitu) on Philippine Independence Day in June, according to Philippine   News. Duterte’s order is likely to displease China, representing a potential provocation of the country he moved to embrace just months ago, after declaring a ”separation” from the United States. In recent years, China has been creating new military bases on artificial islands it makes out of converted reefs in the South China Sea. ”It looks like everybody is making a grab for the islands there, so we better live on those that are still vacant,” Duterte said, according to The Philippine Daily Inquirer. Duterte spoke during a visit to a military headquarters in Puerto Princesa City, near the disputed Spratly Islands. He also addressed soldiers,   reports, telling troops that they should fight to the death or take their own lives rather than surrendering to the Philippines’ enemies. ”You will be treated like a pig only to be executed,” Duterte told soldiers at a camp. His remarks seemed to focus on communist rebels that have fought his government  —   and who this week agreed to an interim ceasefire."
"Every rush hour,    traffic belches out diesel fumes along Madrid’s Gran Via, a   artery that bisects the Spanish capital. Art Deco facades line the grand boulevard. But they’re blackened with soot. ”The pollution hurts my eyes, and I can feel it in my throat,” says commuter María Villallega, 48, who lives in the city center and walks to work. ”I don’t own a car myself, and I’ll be happy when they’re not allowed here anymore. We need to protect the planet, and ourselves.” In three years, Gran Via will be   to all these cars  —   only public buses, taxis, cyclists and pedestrians will be allowed. It’s part of Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena’s   plan to cut air pollution: All cars will be banned from Gran Via in three years, and she has pledged to ban most   cars from the entire city by 2025. Madrid’s air pollution has exceeded European Union limits for the past eight years running  —   in part, because half of all cars here, and across Europe, run on diesel. By comparison, only about 3 percent of cars in the U. S. are diesels. Since the 1990s, European governments have levied lower taxes on diesel than on gasoline, because diesel was thought to be cleaner. ”Diesel cars go farther on a gallon of fuel, so they produce less carbon. European governments decided diesel technology was the way for Europe to hits its carbon dioxide targets,” explains Mike Rosenberg, an auto industry analyst at Spain’s IESE Business School. German automakers ”lobbied very hard” for a switch to diesel prominence in the 1990s, Rosenberg says. Diesel was seen as a    —   with lower fuel consumption and lower carbon emissions. But while less carbon is better for the planet, diesel cars emit something else that’s worse for human beings: nitrogen oxides and soot  —   tiny black particles that contain toxins. The World Health Organization estimates that outdoor air pollution led to some 3 million premature deaths worldwide in 2012. So with toxins fouling the air in its big cities, some parts of Europe are doing a   turnaround on diesel. In addition to Madrid, Paris and Athens also plan to ban diesel vehicles by 2025. All the cities announced their plans at a global mayors’ conference in December. While that may be promising for the environment, it’s created ”total panic” among car manufacturers, says Javier Quintaná, a salesman at a large Ford dealership in Madrid. Half of his inventory is diesel cars. He even drives a diesel himself. He says that while manufacturers are switching to producing more gas, hybrid and electric cars, they worry they’ll be unable to sell all the diesel cars they’ve already made  —   like the ones parked on his showroom floor. Quintaná says dealers are scrambling to offer customers incentives to buy diesel cars in the short term, while they still can. ”What we’re doing is modifying [diesel] cars to limit pollution. In the factory, we can use additives so the cars emit less  —   to comply with air quality rules,” Quintaná explains. ”And yes, we’ve also lowered the prices  —   to get people to buy these diesels.” But it’s a tough sell. Madrid has already hiked fees for registration, road tax, emissions tests and parking permits for diesel cars, but not for electric ones or those running on gasoline. In the past four months alone, sales of hybrid and electric cars have gone up by 90 percent in Madrid. Quintaná says a majority of his vehicle sales have been diesel in recent years, but he’s been selling mostly gasoline cars since plans for the diesel ban were announced late last year. All the diesel cars he’s trying to sell now will be banned from Madrid’s roads eventually, no matter what their emissions are, though they’ll still be allowed outside the city limits. Some of the diesel cars no one wants to buy end up being unloaded onto a vast parking lot south of Madrid, on the plains of La Mancha, where unsold vehicles sit and rust. It’s a car depot where rental car companies unload their inventory, and used car buyers come to find deals. ”I have no idea what to do with all these diesels,” says Miguel Buendía, who sells used cars and scrap metal on the lot. ”Their value will keep dropping, and if I can’t sell them in this country, I’ll have to sell them elsewhere.” For that, says auto industry expert Rosenberg, a new industry may pop up. ”There will be this enormous number of used diesels which no one wants to buy, that you won’t be able to drive in the city,” he says. ”My guess is an industry will appear out of nowhere to ship all these cars further east and further south, to Eastern Europe and Africa.” In other words, to places where air pollution in many cities is even worse than in Europe."
"Viruses are supposed to be tiny and simple  —   so tiny and simple that it’s debatable whether they’re even alive. They’re minimalist packets of genetic information, relying entirely on the cells the infect in order to survive and reproduce. But in 2003, researchers identified a new kind of virus that that turned scientific understanding of viruses upside down, and tested the boundary of what can be considered life. Mimiviruses, as they’re called, are so big and   that samples of them sat on a laboratory shelf for years because scientists assumed they just contained regular old bacteria. Now, researchers writing in the journal Science say they’ve found four new species of giant viruses at a wastewater treatment plant in Austria. More importantly, they say, they’ve found a hint about a persistent question: How these oddballs came to exist in the first place. ”This virus looks much, much more   than any previously discovered one,” says Eugene Koonin, an evolutionary biologist at the National Institutes of Health and a   on the paper, describing one of the four new viruses. They’re the lumbering Godzillas of the virus world, big enough to see under a regular microscope, although it would still take about 300 of the viruses side by side to reach the width of a human hair. Koonin and his   propose the four new species are a subfamily of the Mimiviruses, dubbing them the Klosneuviruses. (There are now three other families of giant viruses as well.) And don’t worry about getting sick from one of these guys, at least if you’re a human. ”As far as we know, for the time being, giant viruses only make tiny little creatures sick, like amoebas,” Koonin says. As for the mysterious origins of giant viruses, they found some hints in the genes of the newly discovered Klosneuviruses. After sequencing their genes, Koonin and his colleagues found a surprisingly large number that are involved in making proteins, in addition to some for copying DNA. Viruses aren’t supposed to have those kinds of genes, especially not such a comprehensive set of them, because they aren’t capable of doing those things themselves. It’s one reason why they’re usually so small, because instead of carrying around all the genetic machinery for replication, they just hijack the machinery of their host cells. But if viruses can’t reproduce on their own, then what’s the point of carrying around a bunch of genetic baggage? It’s unclear. Koonin speculates the genes might help viruses override cells that try to shut down replication when they notice they’ve been invaded by a virus. Koonin and his colleagues also compared the newly discovered viruses’   genes to a set of genes shared by all giant viruses and to the genes of cells to create an evolutionary tree showing the likely relationships between them. ”When we reconstruct the evolution of these genes, we see that they have very different origins,” he says. Based on that family tree, they conclude that giant viruses likely started out as much smaller viruses, snowballing into giant ones over many generations as they gathered bits and pieces of genetic material from various hosts they infected. If that’s true, it would mean they are like genetic hoarders, collecting lots of genes and rarely throwing any out, until they balloon into virus Godzillas. Others aren’t quite convinced about this explanation for the origin of giant viruses. ”We do think the opposite way. We think that the viruses were complex at the very beginning,” says Chantal Abergel, who studies giant viruses at the National Center for Scientific Research in Marseille, France. She wasn’t involved in the paper. According to another hypothesis, giant viruses didn’t start small and get big. They started enormous, as actual cellular life forms, and shrank down over time. They might have even originated from a   ”fourth domain” of life that no longer exists. (The current three domains are Eukarya, which includes us, Archaea and Bacteria). ”We all have questions about how they evolved, what is their origin and how they contributed to life and the evolution of life on Earth,” says Abergel. ”I don’t think anybody has a real answer.” This paper, she points out, focused on a few hundred genes with recognizable functions. But that handful of genes is only a tiny piece of a much bigger picture. The vast majority of giant virus genes have unknown functions. Koonin calls them ”dark matter genes,” and those genes, Abergel says, ”do not resemble anything in the cellular world or in the viral world.” Rodrigo Araujo Rodrigues, a virologist and evolutionary biologist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, thinks there’s compelling evidence for both hypotheses. ”The evidence is quite good,” he says, but applying a different method to analyze the genes in Koonin’s paper could have produced a different conclusion. Furthermore the authors of the paper did not isolate the actual viral particles, but instead sequenced all the genes in the wastewater samples and then identified what was inside based on that information. The approach, called metagenomics, is a powerful one. ”But as a virologist that works with evolution, I have to say it’s important to have the virus,” says Rodrigues. One thing that everyone in the field can agree on is how dramatically the discovery of giant viruses has turned scientific assumptions upside down. ”The discovery of giant viruses is clearly opening other ways of thinking. Everybody is understanding that we never understood anything about viruses in general,” says Abergel. ”This is one of the main accomplishments of the discovery of giant viruses, that everything has to be reconsidered.” For example, here’s something to chew on: ”Giant viruses are the only viruses that can get sick,” says Abergel. They can actually be infected by other viruses. So, she says, ”If you can get sick the question is: Can you be considered alive?”"
"Kendrick Lamar did not come to play. That’s the purest way to characterize the hilarious video meme that hit the web the same day  ’s   ”rhyme savior” released his warning shot, ”The Heart Part 4,” alerting the industry to what we’ve all come to expect is his impending April 14 release, DAMN. (which he announced on Twitter Tuesday morning). The   clip features a cutout of the Compton rapper’s frozen face attached to the   body of fictional   man Omar from The Wire. As he stalks down the street in a bulletproof vest, his   poking out from under his black trench coat, he can be heard whistling Omar’s signature tune, ”The Farmer in the Dell.” The first lookout man to spot him is a   Big Sean. The Detroit MC, whose relationship with Lamar has been on tenuous terms since Lamar used his guest verse on Sean’s ”Control” to spazz out on the entire industry, looks totally shook as he yells to forewarn his homies, digital stream king Drake and rumored Kendrick collaborator J. Cole, of the impending doom. ”Something ain’t right, yo,”   Cole says, heeding the warning as Lamar, aka Cornrow Kenny, approaches the stash house they’re supposed to be guarding. ”Oh my God, it’s Kendrick!” he yells. Predictably, Cole and Drake take off running in the opposite direction, with the crown left for the snatching. ”The cheese stands alone,” Omar says in the most quotable line of the actual scene from the HBO cult hit. The parody draws a similar conclusion: When it comes to the return of King Kendrick, nobody’s safe. Like the storm before the calm, his mere arrival on the scene can spark the kind of existential crisis that causes contemporaries, critics and consumers alike to lose their   minds: Is he the reaper back to send all competition to an early grave? Is he the benevolent conscience of the culture, returned to right the ship from conspicuous greed and glitz? Is he a conduit for the ancestral spirits whose voices were voided before their prime? Or is he God’s son and Son of man, a prophetic soul whose divine flows know no bounds, other than his own masculine shortcomings? Whenever Lamar signals a new project, things tend to get biblical. Since the March 30 release of ”HUMBLE. ,” the most   video of the year and presumed first single from a suspected new album, the Internet has been poring over his verses like holy scripture, debating visual interpretations and issuing digital decrees with more urgency than the Vatican. When it comes to driving the cultural discourse, Lamar has proven himself to be rap’s main course. But on the eve of what will be his first proper   statement since his masterful 2015 LP To Pimp a Butterfly, it stands to reason that the   landscape has changed  —   even if Lamar’s effect remains the same. Big Sean may be coming off his best album yet with I Decided. but he still has yet to take control of the conversation like Lamar. Future just made history by debuting two No. 1 albums on Billboard in    weeks, but even at his most introspective (HNDRXX) he remains an astronaut in solo flight, leaving the rest of us to ogle from below. Drake’s More Life playlist is likely destined to be the   project of the year, but it’s powered by a man who’s clearly more infatuated with protecting his aura than baring his soul. And J. Cole, the only other black hippie doing certifiable numbers, finds more comfort in withdrawing from his peers than confronting them. Unlike the other artists at the forefront, Lamar’s never been a huge radio star. Rarely, if ever, will you hear his voice vibrating from box Chevys or soundtracking table dances in Houstatlantavegas strip clubs. His ethnopolitical diatribes are probably more likely to bring the average party to a temporary halt. Prior to ”HUMBLE. ,” his   single, ”Swimming Pools (Drank),” is about the dangers of abusing alcohol in the age of the double Styrofoam cup. Meanwhile, his most culturally pervasive song to date, ”Alright,” became the unofficial anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement. The truth is dude has no business being here: In a singles market driven by short attention spans and streaming platforms, he’s an artist obsessed with conceptualizing sprawling   narratives rich with the kind of symbolism that rewards repeated listens. Yet his LPs still succeed commercially and critically, despite the regular declaration that his format of choice is on its deathbed. Lamar’s that rare breed of artist whose qualities seem contradictory on paper: He’s at once the   and plunderer of the royal court, a mad rapper with   whip whose gangland stories of survivor’s guilt have rightfully earned universal acclaim. While Drake  —   whose hunger for fame presents the antithesis to Lamar’s eternal vision quest  —   dodges accusations of   borrowing newcomers’ flows and riding other rappers’ waves to stay relevant (see: Future, Migos, Makonnen, XXXTentacion and, yes, even Jamaica and London) Kendrick’s true competition is buried deep among the dead MC scrolls. It’s no wonder he had to resurrect a dearly departed rapper for inspiration on To Pimp A Butterfly. (R. I. P. Pac.) The current moment, however, prompts a question: Can Lamar continue to raise the bar without hitting a ceiling? Lord knows it’s lonely at the top. The video for ”HUMBLE.”  —   which highlights black women with natural hair, unaltered butts, stretch marks and unretouched photos  —   received widespread criticism for what ultimately read less like an attempt to counter false beauty standards than part of an ongoing objectification of the female form. But with an album artist like Lamar, it can sometimes be hard to glean the full meaning of a song until it’s heard in its complete context. The same thing happened with ”The Blacker the Berry,” the single released in February of 2015 in the   to TPAB. The song’s climax likened the politicized mythology of    crime to the   killings of victims like Trayvon Martin during the height of the protest movement. It felt like a punch in the gut from one of the genre’s ostensibly woke voices. Yet hearing the song within a larger narrative upon TPAB’s release reframed its sentiment as the expression of personal torment he’d intended. Even the explicit hook for ”HUMBLE.”  —   ”Be humble (hol’ up, b****) sit down”  —   is hard to interpret without more context clues: Is he addressing testy rappers, the opposite sex, his own raging ego or, possibly, all three? It all goes to show that his ranking within  ’s horse race is the least compelling aspect of Lamar’s creative contribution. It’s not the shots he takes at perceived competitors but his provocation of thought that separates him from the pack.  In an interview with The New York Times’ T Magazine last month, Lamar suggested that DAMN. would expound on the gulf between God and geopolitics. That explains the religious overtones in the visual for ”HUMBLE. ,” where Lamar is seen dressed as the pope in the opening scene and, later, portraying a   Jesus in the hood while reenacting Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper with his homies.  Whether the next sacrificial offering from rap’s reigning GOAT will be rebuked or regaled is the only thing that remains to be seen. If history offers any lesson, the outcome is discernible. Until then, we’ll all be on the lookout."
"In telecom circles, Comcast’s plans and efforts to wade into the mobile market go back years. On Thursday, the company finally revealed the specifics of what its new service will look like. Comcast is calling its cellphone program Xfinity Mobile, expected to launch in the next few weeks. Its target audience is existing Comcast customers  —   the company hopes they’ll be drawn by the savings from adding mobile service to a home Internet service or bigger bundles. Here’s a quick rundown of the offer from The Wall Street Journal: ”Unlimited talk, text and data is $65 per line. But if you have one of Comcast’s more expensive internet and cable bundles, which start at $150 a month, the price for each unlimited line drops to $45. ”Comcast will also offer a     option for $12 per gigabyte  —   a very cheap option for people who don’t use much data. . .. The prices are generally lower than what the major carriers charge. . .. But unlike Verizon or ATT, adding more wireless lines doesn’t bring the price down.” Both the Journal and Bloomberg have really handy   charts. A couple of caveats include a prerequisite, for now, that customers must purchase a new phone (options include Apple, Samsung and LG) and a note that unlimited plans may face slower speeds after 20 gigabytes. Comcast is the largest cable operator, but its competition includes   and Verizon FiOS, both of which are part of large  —   and growing  —   telecom conglomerates. Bloomberg reports that Charter, which recently bought Time Warner Cable, plans to launch a wireless service in 2018. The entire industry is trying to figure out how to make money in new ways, as people’s   and   habits keep changing. Comcast’s new wireless service will rely on Comcast’s own   network and Verizon’s phone network, for which Comcast struck a resale contract years ago. (Charter has a similar deal.) Major wireless companies already rely on   hot spots to offload some wireless traffic to mitigate congestion, and some companies have tried to do a cellphone service fully based on  . As The Associated Press points out, Comcast’s ”   approach is similar to what Google is doing with its wireless service, Google Fi. . .. But Google Fi hasn’t caught on, in part because it works with only a few   phones and uses networks from   Sprint and U. S. Cellular, which aren’t as robust as Verizon’s.” Comcast will benefit from access to Verizon’s network, and for now, Comcast says phone calls won’t travel over  . The company has 16 million hot spots around the country, a network built largely through consumer hot spots. Comcast says Xfinity Mobile users will automatically connect to hot spots and toggle between   and mobile broadband.   reliability remains a challenge for all companies attempting this. Roger Entner of Recon Analytics says Comcast’s new wireless service might boost the company’s bottom line, while having a relatively low impact on competition. ”I just don’t see Xfinity Mobile being designed to be a market disrupter,” he says. ”I think the rest of the wireless industry breathed a collective sigh of relief after this announcement.”"
"Death penalty laws are on the books in 31 states, but only five carried out executions last year. Now Arkansas is rushing to execute death row inmates at an unprecedented pace this month, before the state’s supply of lethal drugs expires. Nationwide the number of executions are down, as states struggle to obtain execution drugs that pass constitutional muster. Pharmacies are refusing to provide the deadly combinations of paralytics and   sedatives needed to put prisoners to death. ”I’ll admit, it’s more and more difficult to carry out the sentence of the death penalty,” says Republican Andy Gipson, chairman of the Mississippi House Judiciary B Committee. Mississippi hasn’t executed anyone since 2012, but Gibson says that for the past six years lawmakers have had to tweak the state’s death penalty statute to keep it constitutional. ”It’s been a huge problem,” he says. ”We try to see if we can come up with another suitable formula of injection that will be humane, and then another lawsuit gets filed to say we can’t do that either.” This year Mississippi came up with a   plan: Should its lethal injection protocol not stand, it will turn to a hierarchy of   execution methods  —   the gas chamber, the electric chair or a firing squad. ”It is the law of the land  —   and until it’s changed, until it’s altered, you have to have a way to carry it out,” Gipson says. Utah also allows for the firing squad, and Alabama, Florida and Tennessee have brought back the electric chair. States are coming up with these alternatives to deal with what the Death Penalty Information Center deems a de facto moratorium on executions. The group has documented a drop in executions nationwide. ”There’s been a precipitous decline in the number of both executions and death sentences in the last five years,” says executive director Robert Dunham, adding that   of the states either don’t have the death penalty or haven’t executed anyone in more than a decade. ”Executions have been concentrated in a small number of southern states,” says Dunham. ”The rest of the country is largely not carrying out executions. If they do, they’re doing so rarely.” A total of 20 people were put to death last year  —   the fewest since 1991  —   all in Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Florida and Missouri. Seven states have abolished the death penalty in the past 15 years, but public support remains. For instance, after the Nebraska Legislature repealed capital punishment in 2015, voters reinstated it through a referendum last year. Dunham says courts have allowed for more convictions to be reviewed, and the result has been fewer death sentences carried out. ”The single most likely outcome of a capital case once somebody is sentenced to death is not that they will be executed  —   it’s that their conviction or death sentence will be overturned,” he says. That fact has led some officials to rethink capital punishment. Newly elected prosecutors in Denver and Orlando, Fla. have said they won’t seek death sentences. That decision sparked controversy in Florida, where Republican Gov. Rick Scott has removed State Attorney Aramis Ayala from handling 22 murder cases because of her refusal to seek the death penalty. ”It is a response to a broken system,” says Ayala, first black prosecutor elected in Florida. When she took office, Ayala says, Florida’s death penalty law was unconstitutional, and existing sentences were under judicial review. ”I’m looking at cases from 1970,” she says. ”I’m looking at cases that existed when I was 2 years old, and families have been waiting on death sentences since then. And I had to look at an open case in my office and say, ’am I going to throw this case into that pile of chaos?’ ” Now she faces a backlash as lawmakers are calling for her to be removed from office and threatening to cut her budget. Ayala is fighting back, and says she plans to sue the governor for taking away her caseload. As that plays out in Florida, Arkansas is making preparations to execute eight inmates in a   stretch later this month before its lethal injection drugs expire. It’s a pace never seen in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the 1970s."
"The U. S. women’s national soccer team has agreed to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement with U. S. Soccer, concluding a protracted dispute over their union contract. The deal will ”continue to build the women’s program in the U. S. grow the game of soccer worldwide, and improve the professional lives of players on and off the field,” the federation and the players association announced in a joint statement. The collective bargaining agreement announced Wednesday runs through 2021, meaning that the union has committed to playing under the contract for the 2019 World Cup in France and the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. Neither the union nor U. S. Soccer has released the specific terms of the agreement, though The Associated Press reports the players will get better base pay, bonuses and travel provisions, as well as ”some control of certain licensing and marketing rights.” The New York Times places the boost to base pay at 30 percent, which when coupled with match bonuses could double some of the players’ incomes, according to the newspaper. ”We believe our continued partnership will ensure a bright future for our sport for years to come,” U. S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati said in a statement. For a while, that partnership appeared in danger of running aground. As NPR’s Bill Chappell reported, the players’ previous CBA expired at the end of 2012, though it was extended by a memorandum of understanding while contract negotiations unfolded. But those talks were far from smooth, as players resorted to the courts to open the possibility of going on strike to protest a lack of progress at the negotiating table. U. S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman ruled against them last year. The new deal represents a marked improvement in players’ financial terms, though the Times reports it falls short of complete pay equity with the men’s national team, a sticking point in both these negotiations and a separate complaint filed last year by five star players for the women’s team. The latter   complaint is ongoing. In the meantime, soccer officials and players alike cast the new CBA as a sign of progress to be celebrated. ”It felt very empowering,” national team player Alex Morgan told the AP. ”Because there is a whole issue going on in the country as far as equal pay and the fight for the gender pay gap. And I felt really happy with the agreement that we reached and the fact that we can now do what we came for and play soccer.”"
"At a point during human prehistory, hunters’ reliance on the   or atlatl, shifted to another kind of weapon  —   the  . This change happened on multiple continents (though bows never really caught on in Australia, where atlatls tended to yield only later, to firearms). The first bows we know of conclusively, from archaeology, come from pine arrow shafts found at a bog site in Germany called Stellmoor, dating to around 11, 000 years ago. Though, it’s possible bows were in use much earlier in Africa. Why did the bow replace the atlatl, and what social consequences may have followed from that shift? These are questions being asked by University of Wyoming PhD candidate in anthropology Brigid Sky Grund in a new paper in American Anthropologist, from which I took the above information. As Grund notes in the article, most theories about this shift have pointed to the bow’s greater accuracy and faster reload rate in hunting smaller fauna or in warfare. But Grund herself is looking instead at a different factor: the comparative learnability of each weapon. She writes: ”Most studies of bow and atlatl performance characteristics focus on the inherent qualities of the weapons themselves, neglecting to consider that functional weapons are wielded by capable individuals of various ages, sexes, strengths, dexterities, and skill levels.” I like this insight, because it puts people, in all our formidable variation, back into the equation, front and center. It’s a   analysis if you will, in which a weapon and its user are inseparable. In her analysis of learnability, Grund uses     data sets  —   up to eight years’ worth  —   from competitors participating in the World Atlatl Association International Standard Accuracy Contest (ISAC) and the Society for Creative Anachronism   Archery Competition (IAC). Because she was able to track individual competitors’ scores over time, she could see something about the rapidity of the learning curve for each weapon. As it turned out, individuals’ atlatl scores increase rapidly right from the start, whereas people’s bow scores don’t  —   in fact only in the fourth year of competition do bow users begin to approach maximum skill level. In addition, youth scores from the two competitions, taken together with anthropological data on     use, show that ”biological constraints may preclude juveniles from wielding bows until later ages than atlatls.” Grund thinks, then, that less strong weapon users in the past  —   based on contemporary differences in strength and dexterity in men and women, this group was likely to have included some women as well as juveniles  —   may have been more likely to learn how to use an atlatl effectively. The stronger, skilled members of a population would, then, be the ones more likely to readily learn how to use a bow successfully. In an email message last week, Grund elaborated on this point: ”If entire family groups comprised of people of varying ages, sexes, and strengths wield projectile technologies as part of hunting parties, atlatls may be favored over bows because they are accessible to wider segments of human populations. On the other hand, if only a few individuals from a family or cultural group are required to participate in hunting behavior, then the exclusivity of bow technology might not matter, since projectiles would only be wielded by a few hunting specialists within that group.” It’s that line of reasoning that leads Grund straight into the realm of prehistoric social behavior. In her paper, she concludes that the bow’s favoring of highly skilled weapon users probably ”exacerbated prehistoric social disparities and likely catalyzed emergent      social divisions in prehistory.” If she’s right, that’s a broadly important finding in anthropology, because it clues us in to a cascade of major social changes in human groups over time. But what about our why question: Why the shift from an    to a    hunting weapon? Echoing the   perspective in her paper, Grund said (excerpted from a lengthier answer): ”Chronologically, in many regions of the world, the adoption of bow technology seems to be coarsely correlated with a broadening of diet breadth and an increased preponderance of small game hunting. Many human behavioral ecology studies of modern foragers have shown that under broad diet breadth   high resource stress conditions, the sexual division of labor increases. Therefore, a shift towards hunting smaller game under many prehistoric scenarios was likely associated with an increase in the division of labor, simply as a product of fluctuating resource exploitation strategies and dietary needs.” As she continues, Grund explains more precisely where the    shift comes in: ”Increased divisions of labor associated with broadened diet breadth and the appearance of hunting ’specialists’ might cause a shift from atlatl to bow technology, and, reciprocally, the adoption of bow technology might inherently intensify emergent divisions of labor since it is less accessible to people of varying ages, sexes, strengths,   dexterities. Though I haven’t disentangled cause and effect yet, it seems that both the shift from atlatl to bow and chronologically associated fluctuations in resource exploitation strategies likely worked together to increase divisions of labor in prehistoric societies.”  An acknowledgment that cause and effect can’t easily be distinguished in this case is welcome. Still, I think Grund is on to something by thinking broadly about generalists versus specialists in weapon use. In our prehistory, at certain times and places, individuals became more specialized for certain tasks that others in the group couldn’t, or didn’t, carry out  —   and this in turn set social changes into effect. Precisely how human groups might be affected by the exclusion of certain group members from effective use of hunting technology such as bows may vary by region and will require new hypotheses and further work. While discussing all this, I learned that for Grund, atlatls aren’t merely academic. She threw her first atlatl dart back in high school, continued to experiment with atlatls during archaeology fieldwork, and in 2011 took first place in the  ”  competitor” women’s division of an informal atlatl competition organized by the World Atlatl Association and the Wyoming Archaeological Society. ”We shot at homemade Pleistocene animal targets, including a paper mâché mammoth,” Grund explained. That paper mâché mammoth isn’t credited in Grund’s American Anthropologist paper. But who knows? Grund’s   experience may have played a role in her coming up with an innovative hypothesis about hunting patterns in our past. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s new book is Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"A surprising medical finding caught the eye of NPR’s veteran science correspondent Richard Harris in 2014. A scientist from the drug company Amgen had reviewed the results of 53 studies that were originally thought to be highly promising  —   findings likely to lead to important new drugs. But when the Amgen scientist tried to replicate those promising results, in most cases he couldn’t. ”He tried to reproduce them all,” Harris tells Morning Edition host David Greene. ”And of those 53, he found he could only reproduce six.” That was ”a real ” says Harris, whose new book Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions explores the ways even some talented scientists go wrong  —   pushed by tight funding, competition and other constraints to move too quickly and sloppily to produce useful results. ”A lot of what everybody has reported about medical research in the last few years is actually wrong,” Harris says. ”It seemed right at the time but has not stood up to the test of time.” The impact of weak biomedical research can be especially devastating, Harris learned, as he talked to doctors and patients. And some prominent scientists he interviewed told him they agree that it’s time to recognize the dysfunction in the system and fix it. ”If it’s not operating at full steam . .. and not doing everything right,” Harris says, ”it’s worth pointing that out and saying, ’No. Think about this. Let’s make it better.’ ” The following has been edited for clarity. On the ways unreliable research results affect patients, Tom Murphy was a healthy rugby player diagnosed with ALS in his 50s. . ... With his doctor’s help he signs up for an experimental treatment with a drug called dexpramipexole, or ”Dex.” At first, he’s very hopeful, and it seems to be helping him, but they run the tests and figure out that it actually doesn’t work. In fact none of the ALS drugs work. I focus on Tom Murphy because he’s a victim of the system here  —   of these failures. What happened in the case of ALS was there were at least a dozen drugs that had been tried in a handful of small studies  —   way too small  —   of animals. And they all seemed to have some sort of promise  —   some of them went into very large clinical trials. We spent tens of millions of dollars developing these drugs, and they all failed. There’s a group in Cambridge, Mass.  —   the ALS Therapy Development Institute  —   that went back and reviewed all these studies and realized all the initial studies were wrong. They used very few mice. They weren’t thinking enough about the different genetics of the mice. And a lot of other problems. . .. This therapy institute came away thinking none of these drug candidates were really realistic. On the ways the scientific enterprise in Charles Darwin’s time was very different  Darwin was very interesting. It took him decades to come up with his theory of evolution and he was not in a hurry  —   he was studying barnacles, he was studying birds, all sorts of things. He felt no pressure to publish until somebody came up with a similar idea, and he decided, ’Hmmm . .. maybe I do want to be first. . ..” But we’re not in that world anymore. Things are very competitive, very  . So the competitive world of biomedicine is shaping this problem of evidence that can’t be replicated a lot. On why the delight that’s long been an intrinsic part of science can disappear over time  —   and why that’s bad, I think a lot of people go into science out of a sense of wonder. But . .. as time goes on, people feel the career pressures, and they realize it isn’t just about exploring and having big ideas. They have to have research that helps them progress toward their first job, toward tenure, then the next grant, and so on. Those pressures are different from just, sort of, exploring and understanding fundamental biology. ... And the less you’re focusing on delight, the less maybe you’re aiming at the truth and the more you are, inadvertently, often aiming at other goals  —   career goals, financial goals and so on. This may give you a fruitful life as an individual, but may produce less value to us as a society. On how the public should respond when they hear of a big biomedical advance, I think it is good to question it. Every time you hear something like this, just remember, it’s all contingent  —   here is one study, and it may not stand the test of time. I think that’s healthy. . .. When scientists read the scientific literature, they realize, ”Oh, probably half of this is wrong.” It’s just, not knowing which half  —   that’s the vexing part. On the risk that pointing out flaws in science will make people question its value, It’s always uncomfortable to point out problems, but it’s also essential. I mean, we are taxpayers  —   we are citizens, and we support this enterprise and we expect to reap its rewards. If it’s not operating at full steam . .. and not doing everything right, it’s worth pointing that out and saying, ”No. Think about this. Let’s make it better.” Many prominent scientists agree with me and are concerned about this  —   and are thinking hard about how to make things better, from the top of NIH on down. There are solutions, and I talk about them in my book. On why the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to NIH funding wouldn’t make things better, It’s a very appealing idea, obviously, to say, ”Oh, well, let’s just identify the waste and root it out.” But that’s not the way science works. . .. If you cut the [$30 billion] budget of the National Institutes of Health, you’re going to shrink that already very small pool of money even smaller, and you’re going to increase the competitive pressures. You’re going to increase all these perverse incentives that put us in this position to begin with. So I think that would actually be devastating to biomedical research."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Every artist working in the shadow of country music lineage since Willie and Waylon were first branded as ”outlaws” has had that designation at their disposal. The same goes for marketing execs and music critics. ”Outlaw” is useful shorthand, an expedient way of advertising a performer’s resistance to mainstream norms and general aversion to docility. Often, it’s paired with a brawny aesthetic. The Los     Sam Outlaw strikes a much more artful,   oppositional posture. At a moment when blustery machismo rules the White House, he’s crafting a consciously softened identity. ”I always found more honesty in the tenderness than the toughness,” he recently told an interviewer. ”I very much intentionally wanted to combat any expectation that I’m trying to be a tough guy country singer.” And when he’s asked why he chooses to stay in Southern California rather than relocate to Nashville, a scene populated with artful, independent   troubadours like Andrew Combs, Caitlin Rose, Cale Tyson and Kelsey Waldon, he explains that he’d rather stay where he’s the odd man out. A couple of years back, Outlaw’s debut, Angeleno, turned heads of Americana fans throughout the U. S. and Europe, and enabled him to walk away from a career in ad sales. His second album, Tenderheart, is an elegant expansion of that original template, one in which he makes considered use of lessons learned from Jackson Browne’s genteel West Coast idealism, George Jones’s grounded melancholy and the lusty flourishes of Dwight Yoakam, for whom he’s opened shows. Much of the time, Outlaw situates pensive romanticism within   arrangements that open onto scenic vistas, framed by delicate guitar and piano figures, sometimes even mariachi horns, the latter a holdover from Ry Cooder’s involvement with his previous album. (Outlaw   this one with Martin Pradler, who’s engineered many of Cooder’s projects.) Exceptionally serene and pleasing, Tenderheart is easy to get lost in. It’s Outlaw’s singing  —   all   sensitivity and reedy grace  —   that brings quiet clarity to the tracks. Just two albums in, Outlaw’s already become a refined songwriter, able to capture contradictions with simple gestures. In the     number ”Bottomless Mimosas,” he teases out the hollowness of a weekly routine that culminates in conspicuous indulgence. With its stately,   melody and sway, ”Everyone’s Looking for Home” serves as a reminder that finding a sense of calling won’t banish all uncertainty from your life. You get the sense that he’s just as likely aiming the message at himself as any other listener. Outlaw ennobles a wounded heart’s ability to love in the throwback   ”Two Broken Hearts” and the tuneful Tom   title track, but his gentlemanly demeanor doesn’t preclude him from injecting acidic wit into the classic country sarcasm of ”She’s Playing Hard To Get (Rid Of)” and the deceptively mild and   narration of an ex’s depravity that is ”Now She Tells Me.” ”I’m not too likely to make you happy   I’ll never really try,” he intones over a twangy bossanova groove. ”I’m much too busy   You’ll always miss me   But I’ll never leave your sight.” It’s worth noting that the roles he takes on doesn’t always come with a spotless conscience. In ”Say It To Me,” he’s a guy who likes to play along with seductive delusions. In ”Diamond Ring,” the epitome of a windswept SoCal country ballad, his protagonist’s brutal honesty deflates the romantic hopes of the woman he’s slept with. And ”Bougainvillea, I Think” is a fetching and otherwise chivalrous vignette of a young man’s kindness toward an elderly neighbor, except for a telling detail: he can’t recall her name. To hear Outlaw glorify sincerity in such a   way, awake to a larger world of needs, feelings and perspectives, is a marvelously welcome thing right about now. Tenderheart is out April 14 on Six Shooter Records."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Mzansi Beat Code is Spoek Mathambo’s fifth solo album, the latest salvo of a    career during which the   has established himself as one of South Africa’s primary contributors to the global   zeitgeist. It is also a   sociopolitical unification statement that, in one form or another, isn’t new to Spoek. But unlike prior attempts, Mzansi Beat Code doesn’t simply consider and curate the diverse sounds of South Africa’s nine provinces it is a fully formed point of view that places the    musician at the country’s creative center. The focus, as it’s often been for Spoek (born Nthato Mokgata) is to ” ” South Africa’s   cultural history, its internal struggles, and its place in the global slipstream. In his music, such goals have rarely taken the form of straightforward political lyrics. Instead, as a product of the    era who in his teens created a music ’zine that chronicled SA’s sonic networks, Mathambo has always been more focused on freeing and uniting posteriors. That’s appropriate, since in Mzansi, a widely adapted Xhosa word for the republic, there are more beat codes than tribal languages. Throughout his career, Spoek has complemented his own recordings of    music (”Township Tech” to some) with projects like  ’s H. I. V. I. P. DJ mixes,    bursts of local     from all over SA that became Internet sensations, and used the social paranoia of the country’s AIDS pandemic as its thematic   point. Or there was Future Sound of Mzansi, the 2015 documentary Spoek directed with filmmaker Lebogang Rasethaba, profiling SA’s biggest electronic artists, DJs and   styles, still segregated from one another 20 years after Apartheid’s end. The past two years found him partnering with musicians he met making Future Sound in the   Batuk and Fantasma, Mathambo brought together some of SA’s finest talents under the rhythmic ideals of the worldwide funkadelic. Mzansi Beat Code reunites many of these collaborators back at Spoek’s house, building on his lifelong pursuit of a   aesthetic while also widening the garden of SA’s delights to incorporate global vibes. House music being SA’s hometown sound, it is the album’s cornerstone. Yet in Mzansi, house is less a genre than an assortment of adjacent galaxies  —   and it’s the variety encompassed in this universe that provides the album’s best thrills. At times, the music is extraordinarily catchy, direct without being obvious. ”Want Ur Love” and ”I Found U,” a pair of tracks that feature Kajama (the singing sisters, Nandi and Nongoma Ndlovu) and members of Fantasma (guitarist Andre Geldenhuys,   Bhekisenzo Cele and Bacardi house mastermind, DJ Spoko) are easily understood, popular attractions  —   deep house grooves, by turns ribald and soulful. Yet the former is a loud, sometimes coarse, proclamation in favor of   love, while the latter is steeped in sexual melancholy that is almost spiritual. More often, the fusion of sounds speaks directly to SA’s growing reputation as a prime electronic music melting pot, with Spoek as one of its most   chefs. The tracks with Johannesburg   Loui Lvndon include a slice of   industrial soul (”Landed”) and a     confection that sounds like an   R. Kelly production (”Nothing’s Ever Perfect”). ”Volcan,” a   collaboration with Mexican singer Ceci Bastida, spotlights the hyperactive kinship of punk rock, soca and shangaan electro. And then there’s ”The Mountain,” with Mathambo orchestrating a meeting of rhythm giants  —   Spoko, Pretoria DJ Mujava (whose 2008 track ”Township Funk” was one of SA  ’s biggest hits) and American jazz drummer Guillermo Brown in his   Pegasus Warning guise  —   into a   Bacardi house stormer. After all the hybrid futurism, it’s extraordinary and appropriate that ”Pula,” the track which ends Mzansi Beat Code, opens with a groove that discerning Western listeners of a certain age will find quite familiar: the jaiva, or township jive, that was lifted for both Malcolm McLaren’s ”Double Dutch” and much of Paul Simon’s Graceland. It is a reminder that Anglo artists have been biting parts of this beat code for quite a while, without unlocking it. Of course in Spoek’s house, such obvious reminders are only a gateway. By the end of its five minutes, ”Pula” has brought back Spoko, but also added the young producer Mash. O, the chanting kids of the rural community of Platfontein, and contemporized that jive. Mzansi Beat Code is out April 14 on Teka Records."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Sexmob first came together, just over 20 years ago, as the Downtown Scene version of a bar band: pugnacious and maniacal, insubordinate but astute. The group  —   Steven Bernstein on slide trumpet, Briggan Krauss on saxophones, Tony Scherr on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums  —   could always be found one night a week at the Knitting Factory’s Tap Room, putting pop tunes through the wringer for a boisterous crowd. Cultural Capital is the eighth Sexmob album, and the first in four years. It manages to be both a glowing embodiment of the band’s style and something of a departure, at least in one respect. While Sexmob has always been known for those reinterpretations of familiar tunes, from Prince’s ”Darling Nikki” to Paul McCartney’s ”Live and Let Die,” this album is the first to consist entirely of Bernstein originals, in an earthy range of styles. Whatever that frame of reference  —   from   jazz rumba on ”Step Apache” to Sun   exotica on ”Hear You”  —   the music holds true to the proprietary Sexmob sound, which hasn’t really changed in 20 years. (To be clear: that’s a good thing.) Wollesen and Scherr (who have deep experience as a rhythm team even outside the band, with guitarist Bill Frisell and others) know how to bring tension and unpredictability to any groove. And Bernstein’s hookup with Krauss is still a rugged yet reactive thing: Hear how naturally they move in and out of bleary sync on ”Bari Si,” over a fat, swinging beat. There are other nods to the jazz tradition on Cultural Capital, including ”Lacy,” a nifty tribute to soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, one of Bernstein’s heroes. ”Golden House,” with its   strut and bouncy horn riff, evokes the   Preservation Hall Jazz Band  —   at least for the first four minutes, before it steps through a side door. At this point, Sexmob is a collective ideal, as much as it is a band (or a brand). Every member has other affiliations, both as a leader and a sideman, but their vibe together remains distinct. Nobody else sounds like this band. And it’s no small marvel that Bernstein’s crew can still make it feel like a fresh idea. Cultural Capital will be   on April 14."
"The Kremlin’s rhetorical   is officially over. Following Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Russian government and its loyal media gave the new American president the soft touch. But following the U. S. missile strike on Syria, the gloves have come off in Moscow, as hopes for friendlier relations fizzle. When Rex Tillerson makes his first trip to Russia as secretary of state next week, he can no longer expect a warm welcome. Instead, he will be faced with   accusations of American hypocrisy and double standards. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the U. S. attack as ”an act of aggression against a sovereign state” and a blow to joint efforts in fighting terrorism. In response to the attack, Russia suspended an agreement with the U. S. to avoid   collisions over Syria and called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. The U. S. rationale that it had to respond to a Syrian chemical weapons attack on civilians was only a pretext for a   missile strike, the Kremlin said. ”The real estate billionaire has repeated the deplorable experience of his predecessors,” the Russian government’s official newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, said in a commentary Friday. ”This isn’t the first demonstration of a completely incompetent U. S. approach  —   similar to a big elephant in a small china shop  —   to solving the most acute international problems.” Syria has been the key to the Kremlin’s relations with the United States since 2015, when Russia intervened militarily to back Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s bloody civil war. Isolated internationally after seizing Crimea and backing separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Putin used military might in Syria to force himself back onto the world stage. Like it or not, the Obama administration had to deal with Putin as a Middle East power broker. Military cooperation between the two countries was limited to trying to stay out of each other’s way, and joint diplomatic efforts to find a political solution fell apart, mainly because the U. S. and Russia were backing Syrian forces on opposite sides of the battlefield. With the election of Trump, who said he’d work with Russia to defeat ISIS, Putin saw an opportunity to revive his idea of forming an international coalition to fight terrorism. The Kremlin has angrily denied that Russia tried to sway the U. S. presidential election in favor of Trump, saying accusations of Russian meddling were meant to distract from the Democrats’ own failures. Following Trump’s inauguration, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, met twice with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Before those contacts, the last meeting on that level had taken place before Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. After the U. S. missile strike on the Syrian airfield, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had been informed of the attack in advance ”through existing channels” but that Putin hadn’t been contacted directly. ”Those who feared U. S.  collusion will now have to fear their collision,” tweeted Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a regional think tank. In a statement on Friday, Russian Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the U. S. assertion that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons on civilians was ”groundless.” He called the effectiveness of the U. S. strike ”extremely low,” saying that only 23 of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from American warships had reached their targets at a Syrian airbase. A warehouse, a training facility, a mess hall, six   under repair and a radar station were destroyed in the attack, according to Konashenkov, but the airstrip and parked jets were not damaged. Konashenkov said he ”hoped” there had been no coordination between the U. S. and fighters from ISIS and the Nusra Front, who he said launched attacks on Syrian positions after the U. S. missile strike. ”It is not difficult to imagine how much the spirits of these terrorists have been raised after this support from Washington,” Russia’s deputy U. N. Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said during Friday’s Security Council session. The change in tone has also been noticeable in Russia’s foreign ministry, where Tillerson’s upcoming visit had been seen as a first step in getting relations back on track. The experience of John Kerry, Tillerson’s predecessor, served as a warning that even a good working relationship with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wouldn’t necessarily lead to success. Their repeated efforts to come up with a   plan for Syria were scuttled by developments on the ground. Tillerson, who headed Exxon Mobil’s operations in Russia before becoming its CEO, received a medal from Putin in 2012. On Thursday, hours before the missile strike, Tillerson said Russia had ”failed in its responsibility” to keep chemical weapons out of the hands of its Syrian allies and was either ”complicit or incompetent.” ”Possibly some people have held on to their illusion about the new American secretary of state,” the Rossiiskaya Gazeta commentary said. ”Once again we’re reminded that there’s no such thing as friends in business, especially with Washington, whose   actions are even more detrimental to   relations.” Before the missile strike, U. S. officials were hoping Tillerson’s trip to Moscow would improve ” ”  —   the avoidance of   collisions or other inadvertent attacks on each other’s forces in Syria  —   and   cooperation. Now the secretary of state’s trip will be focused on containing any more damage in relations, rather than turning a new page."
"In the early hours of Friday morning, the U. S. struck a Syrian airbase in retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack on Tuesday by Syrian government forces in the town of Khan Shaykhun. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it’s still establishing the facts behind the deaths of dozens of people. Syrians on the ground have mixed feelings about what the U. S. strikes might mean for their future. The barrage of Tomahawk missiles came as surprise for many Syrians, whether allied or opposed to President Bashar Assad. This is the first time the U. S. has intentionally bombed government forces over the course of the country’s   civil war. That might seem like it would be welcome news to those opposed to Assad, especially in the area where the apparent chemical attack took place. But that’s not how it was being talked about today. Samer   lives just a few miles outside Khan Shaykhun, the town that produced the images that horrified the world  —   of children and adults choking due to apparent chemical exposure. He visited the town shortly after Tuesday’s attack. Hussein spoke to NPR after attending Friday prayers. ”The imam of the mosque said the U. S. strikes were a joke,” he said. ”They were just to save face. They were strikes that were not fruitful  —   because today, Russia is still killing [Syrian] civilians.” What he meant is people are getting killed by conventional airstrikes carried out by Syrian  —   and even more powerful Russian  —   warplanes every day. Hussein said the imam’s sermon focused more on the importance of education than on the U. S. attack, and urged parents to   their children on the many days when airstrikes make going to class impossible, to prevent an ignorant next generation. Hussein says he and others are skeptical that the U. S. is truly concerned about their welfare. ”People are worried that [the attack is] just to make some media noise,” he said, ”that this was a   U. S. strike on the Shayrat airport, that they won’t strike again, and the reckoning has ended.” Another resident of the area is Muznah  . She runs a woman’s center in the   northwest, which recently cancelled its programming due to an uptick in airstrikes that received little international attention. Reached by phone, she said people are unsure what to make of the U. S. missile strikes. ”Honestly,” she said, ”our feelings today are mixed between happiness and sadness.” Jundi felt relieved that the Shayrat airport, from where Syrian planes took off to attack Khan Shaykhun, has been damaged. But she’s also upset over yet more destruction. ”As Syrians,” she said, ”we never wanted the situation to get to this point. We didn’t want it to get to this level where Syria is being completely destroyed. But unfortunately, this is the point we’ve reached.” She says that for this to be helpful, it needs to be part of a full U. S. strategy toward Syria, not just a   event. The Syrian military, for its part, condemned the U. S. strikes as an act of aggression. It said the damage will only make it harder for the Syrian air force to fight ISIS and other terrorist groups. The airbase the U. S. struck does provide support for government troops fighting ISIS. But Jundi knows when the government uses the word ”terrorist” it refers to all of Assad’s opponents. ”The regime made a statement today that they’re fighting terrorists,” she said. ”So this makes us more afraid. ”We’re tired inside. We’re tired of planes. We want to live a normal life.”"
"Updated at 3:15 p. m. ET, Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling the missile strike President Trump ordered against Syria on Thursday ”an act of aggression against a sovereign state delivered in violation of international law under a   pretext.” At Russia’s urging, an emergency meeting of the U. N. Security Council began shortly after 11:30 a. m. ET Friday to discuss the attack, in which two U. S.   destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria’s Shayrat air base, the facility that hosted warplanes that the U. S. says carried out a chemical weapons strike in Idlib province earlier this week. The emergency session was led by U. S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is currently serving as the Security Council’s president. In the past six years, Haley said, Syria has terrorized its own people and ”committed criminal acts that shocked the conscience of all humanity.” She continued, ”The international community has repeatedly expressed its outrage. The Joint Investigative Mechanism has found beyond any doubt that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against its own people multiple times.” Haley then discussed Tuesday’s apparent chemical attack, saying Syria had murdered ”innocent men, women, and children in the most gruesome way.” ”Assad did this because he thought he could get away with it,” Haley said. ”He thought he could get away with it because he knew Russia would have his back. That changed last night.” As Haley spoke, Syria’s ambassador to the U. N. Bashar Jaafari, was seen moving his translation earpiece further away on the desk in front of him. ”Our military destroyed the airfield from which this week’s chemical strike took place. We were fully justified in doing so,” Haley said. ”The moral stain of the Assad regime could no longer go unanswered. His crimes against humanity could no longer be met with empty words. It was time to say ’enough’  —   but not only say it. It was time to act. Bashar   must never use chemical weapons again, ever.” She then blamed Iran’s government for supporting Assad in Syria and said that Russia also bears ”considerable responsibility” for the regime’s transgressions. Haley added that Russia has used its Security Council veto seven times to quash actions on Syria. Syria’s Jaafari spoke at the end of the session, saying that in Thursday night’s attack, the U. S. ”waged a barbaric, flagrant act of aggression against a base of the Syrian Arab Air Force . .. using a number of missiles which led to a number of martyrs, many injured, including women and children, and   material damage.” The strike was a violation of the U. N. charter and international norms, Jaafari said, adding that the U. S. had tried to justify its actions with ”empty pretexts, fabricated arguments” about Syria’s use of chemical weapons. The ambassador insisted that Syria’s army doesn’t have chemical weapons and ”would never use such weapons in any of its operations against armed terrorist groups.” Earlier in the emergency session, the U. K. ambassador to the United Nations, Matthew Rycroft, said his country supports the U. S. strike ”because war crimes have consequences, and the greatest war criminal of all  —   Bashar    —   has now been put on notice.” Rycroft called the U. S. attack a proportionate response. Later, he added that Russia ”sits here today, humiliated by its failure to bring to heel a puppet dictator.” Russia’s deputy U. N. ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, told the Security Council that rebels and terrorists in Syria were celebrating the U. S. strike and using it as an opening for attacks of their own. Mentioning previous U. S. military actions in Iraq, Libya and Syria, Safronkov told the American delegation, ”Think of the consequences. Remember what you’ve produced in the Middle East.” Addressing Britain’s Ambassador Rycroft, the Russian diplomat said, ”Stop putting forward these unprofessional arguments and accusations against my country. These are not diplomatic. They are lies.” Safronkov continued emphatically, ”Once again, I warn you: Don’t even try to get into fights in the Arab world. Nothing will work, and nothing will be achieved. That’s why you’re getting annoyed. All Arab countries recall your colonial hypocrisy.” The U. S. strike was criticized as an extremely serious violation of international law by Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Llorenti, who referred to a copy of the U. N. charter as he said it ”prohibits unilateral actions.” Llorenti also said the U. S. has a history of intervening in other nations, including in Latin America  —   and to illustrate his argument he held up a photo of former U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2003, during his famous ”weapons of mass destruction” speech at the U. N. Before the U. N. session began, Russia notified the U. S.  coalition in Syria that it intends to suspend the ”deconfliction channel” that was created to prevent unintentional encounters between U. S. and Russian forces that are operating in the same country. Tuesday’s attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun has been blamed for dozens of civilian deaths. Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U. S. has ”very high confidence” that the attacks included the sarin nerve agent. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s office issued a statement calling the U. S. strike ”an unjust and arrogant aggression.” Of Trump’s justification for the attack on Russia’s ally  —   saying Syria used chemical weapons to kill dozens of its own citizens  —   the Kremlin’s press office said that an international group had ensured that ”The Syrian Army has no chemical weapons.” But that international group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, says that while all the chemical weapons Syria had officially acknowledged possessing were destroyed in 2013, it has since deployed its   mission in Syria on ”numerous occasions” to investigate repeated allegations that Assad’s regime was using chemical weapons. The OPCW says that it has confirmed with a ”high degree of confidence” that Syria has previously used chlorine and mustard gas. Of the accusations that sarin had been used in the April 4 attack, the OPCW said Thursday that it was still collecting and analyzing data, classifying its inquiry as ongoing. ”The OPCW cannot and will not release information about an   investigation,” the organization said in an update on Friday. It added, ”This policy exists to preserve the integrity of the investigatory process and its results as well as to ensure the safety and security of OPCW experts and personnel involved.” The U. S. strike came after widespread claims that Tuesday’s attack on the   town of Khan Shaykhun had deployed chemical agents. Those claims were bolstered Thursday, when the Turkish government  —   which is allied with Syrian rebels  —   said autopsies of victims showed evidence of sarin exposure, as the   reported. Khan Shaykhun is roughly 60 miles from the Turkish border. After the attack, dozens of victims were brought to a border crossing where the Turkish government had set up a decontamination center, the AP reported yesterday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said via   TASS media that the cruise missile strike was reminiscent of 2003, when the U. S. led an invasion of Iraq ”without the consent of the U. N. Security Council and in violation of international law.” Saying that the U. S. attack in Syria had been prompted by photographs rather than facts, Lavrov blamed ”speculations on children’s photos” for the American strike. He also accused nongovernmental organizations of staging incidents to prompt a move against the Syrian government. Russia also critiqued the U. S. strike’s accuracy: Only 23 out of the 59 cruise missiles that were fired at the air base hit their target, Defense Ministry spokesman   Igor Konashenkov said Friday, citing Russia’s data recording equipment. That’s according to TASS, which adds that Russia will now reinforce the Syrian army’s air defense system. Syria’s General Command of the Army has issued a statement calling the attack ”a blatant act of aggression targeting one of our air bases.” According to Syria’s   news agency, the army also said that with the attack, the U. S. is now a ”partner” of ISIS and other terrorist organizations that have targeted Syrian forces. As The   has reported, U. S. officials informed Russia  —   which launched its own military campaign in Syria in fall 2015  —   of the impending missile strike. And in planning the attack, White House national security adviser H. R. McMaster said, the U. S. was careful to avoid risk to ”third country nationals at that airport  —   I think you read Russians from that.” Today, Russia seems to be taking little solace from that effort, though Lavrov confirmed that no Russian service members had been harmed. ”This move by Washington . .. has dealt a serious blow to  . S. relations, which are already in a poor state,” said Putin’s press service."
"Hours after President Trump ordered a missile strike on a Syrian air base, responses from the rest of the world are beginning to stack up. The U. S. military operation, which fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat air base, was conducted in retaliation for an apparent chemical attack by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces. Russia, a staunch ally of Assad’s regime, swiftly condemned the U. S. strike as ”an act of aggression against a sovereign state delivered in violation of international law under a   pretext,” as NPR’s Bill Chappell reports. The Kremlin says it will suspend the ”deconfliction channel,” which is intended to prevent unintentional conflicts with the U. S. in Syria, and the strike prompted the U. N. Security Council to convene an emergency meeting Friday. A number of other international leaders also have responded to the U. S. show of force. Here’s a rundown of some of their statements, from Syria’s Middle Eastern neighbors outward. Turkey: ”I hope this operation marks a beginning” ”We find it important and significant that Mr. Trump particularly kept his promise and staged the operation, and we support it,” Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said, according to Hurriyet Daily News. ”We are also calling on all the international community to be in solidarity on this issue.” The paper reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the strike at a rally Friday. ”We find this [operation] positive as a step against the   regime’s war crimes committed with chemical and conventional weapons. But is it enough? I don’t see it as being enough,” he said. ”No one has the right to feel tranquil and secure in a world where children are brutally slaughtered.” He added: ”I hope this operation marks a beginning.” Iran: ”Such measures will strengthen terrorists” The ”unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law,” said Bahram Ghasemi of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, according to The New York Times. Like Russia, Iran is an ally of Assad’s regime. Citing the ISNA news agency,   also notes Ghasemi said that ”such measures will strengthen terrorists . .. and it will complicate the situation in Syria and the region.” Saudi Arabia: A ”courageous” response to ”odious crimes” ”Saudi Arabia fully supports the US military operations against military targets in Syria, which were a response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians,” a Foreign Ministry official said, according to the Saudi Press Agency. Jordan: ”A necessary and appropriate response” ”Jordan considers the strike as a necessary and appropriate response to the nonstop targeting of innocent civilians with WMDs and committing crimes against humanity,” said Mohammad Momani, the Jordanian minister of state for media affairs and communications. Israel: A ”strong and clear message” Israel ”fully supports” the ”strong and clear message” sent by the airstrikes,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He added that the message should ”resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere.” France and Germany: ”Assad alone bears responsibility” In a joint statement released after a phone call Friday, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel asserted that ”President Assad alone bears responsibility for this development.” ”His repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own population had to be sanctioned.” NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports that French Foreign Minister   Ayrault said Friday the strikes are a reminder that defeating the Islamic State is not the only priority for Western allies: ” ’Now a signal has been given,’ said Ayrault. ’And Russia and Iran must understand that their unquestioning support of the regime of Bashar   makes no sense.’ ”Ayrault said the parties must come back to Geneva for deep, sincere negotiations.” German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel also cautioned that there is need for a multilateral response. ”As understandable as a U. S. military strike against military structures is after the failure of the Security Council, it’s just as crucial to look at joint peace efforts in the framework of the U. N.,” he said in a statement. The U. K.: ”An appropriate response” ”The U. K. government fully supports the U. S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks,” a spokesperson for the British government said Friday. British Defense Minister Michael Fallon affirmed this support, telling the BBC that the U. K. received ”advance notice of the president’s final decision.” ”It is Russia that has the influence over the regime that could bring this war to a halt if they chose to do so,” Fallon said, ”and I hope will learn from what happened last night and use its influence against Assad to bring this slaughter to a stop.” But not every British politician was fully on board. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the minority Labour Party, said the U. K. should be urging the Trump administration to exercise restraint: ”Unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a   conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people.” China: No public response yet, Chinese President Xi Jinping wraps up his first   meetings with President Trump in Florida on Friday  —   but Xi has yet to make public remarks regarding the strikes on Syria. Nor has his government. Earlier in the week, China’s Foreign Ministry responded to Assad’s apparent chemical attack by urging an end to ”further deterioration” in Syria. The department condemned the apparent chemical attack specifically. It bears noting that Trump’s response in Syria has some implications for how he may approach North Korea, another country that has given the international community fits. China remains one of North Korea’s few allies, and NPR’s Elise Hu notes that Beijing’s defense agreement with Pyongyang means that if the U. S. decides to strike North Korea, the U. S. and China would be effectively at war. Japan: ”Highly praises” President Trump’s ”strong commitment” ”In Syria, chemical weapons have once again taken the lives of many innocent people. The international community is immensely shocked by this tragedy in which young children were among the victims. It is extremely inhumane and violates the relevant United Nations Security Council resolution,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a statement. ”The Government of Japan supports the resolve of the U. S. Government of never tolerating the proliferation and use of chemical weapons. We understand that the latest action taken by the United States was a measure intended to prevent the further worsening of the situation.” Bolivia: The U. N. ”prohibits unilateral actions” NPR’s Bill Chappell notes that Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Llorenti called the U. S. strike a serious violation of international law, referring ”to a copy of the U. N. charter as he said it ’prohibits unilateral actions.’ ” Bill adds: ”Llorenti also said the U. S. has a history of intervening in other nations, including in Latin America  —   and he held up a photo of former U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2003, during his famous ’weapons of mass destruction’ speech at the U. N. to illustrate his argument.”"
"Updated at 2:47 p. m. ET, Judge Neil Gorsuch was confirmed Friday as the 113th justice to serve on the nation’s highest court. The final vote was   mostly along party lines. Gorsuch will be sworn in Monday. Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the constitutional oath in a private ceremony at the Supreme Court. Later in the day, Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch once clerked, will administer the judicial oath in a ceremony at the White House. Rumors among conservative activists have been swirling around Washington this year that Kennedy will retire at the end of this term of the high court, but the    conservative justice, who sometimes votes with the court’s liberals, has remained mum on his plans. Were he to be replaced by a   conservative justice, the balance of the court would almost certainly be tipped in a dramatically more conservative direction, and even Kennedy’s own legacy on equality for gays and lesbians could be in jeopardy. For now, though, the focus is on the court’s newest justice, the    Gorsuch. His path to confirmation was relatively short by modern standards  —   just 65 days. But it was accomplished with a historic vote Thursday to end the U. S. Senate’s filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominees. Gorsuch takes the place of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon who died unexpectedly more than a year ago. The new justice is also a conservative who adheres to many of the same positions that Scalia did. Indeed, some believe that Gorsuch will be more conservative. While Scalia was enormously   and admired by fellow justices, his harsh written rhetoric sometimes diminished his influence internally on the court. Gorsuch, in contrast, is known for his clear writing, but not for a harsh or dismissive writing style, and that could make him an influential justice on a court that is often closely divided on some major issues. Though he obfuscated and evaded on many questions put to him during his confirmation hearing, all indications are that he will vote most often with the court’s conservative bloc of justices, providing a fifth vote for a conservative majority in   cases. The Supreme Court so far this year has punted on controversial issues, seemingly to avoid an indecisive   tie. But it has cases pending before it for next term that, if granted for review, could expand gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public uphold state voting restrictions that critics contend are aimed at suppressing minority voter turnout and allow business owners to refuse to serve gay couples, based on religious objections. Within days of his   Gorsuch is likely to face an issue that is particularly difficult for new justices  —   casting life or death votes on   appeals in capital cases. The number of these cases right now is unusually large. Arkansas has scheduled eight executions for the 11 days after Easter, and it is all but certain that some of those cases will reach the Supreme Court. Justices past and present have said that regardless of a new justice’s experience on the lower courts, it is something very different to have the last word, and that it typically takes several years to get used to the breadth of the caseload and that responsibility. But for a new justice who joins the court   that task and the fire hose of decisions faced with little time to prepare, is even greater. In 10 days, the justices will begin hearing their last round of arguments for this term. Among the cases to be heard is a closely watched case testing whether a Missouri church school was wrongly denied state funding for a program to make playgrounds safer. The state maintains that it cannot provide the funding without violating the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state. Republicans change the rules, Prodded Thursday by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate voted   along party lines, to trigger the   ”nuclear option,” eliminating the Senate filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations. With a series of choreographed parliamentary maneuvers, Republicans were able, by majority vote, to abolish the longstanding rule that required 60 votes to cut off debate on a Supreme Court nomination. The victory prompted   between Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and the majority whip, Sen. John Cornyn. Senators from both parties have warned that the move will have profound consequences for the Supreme Court, predicting that more ideologically extreme judges on the right and left will be nominated to the court if only a majority is needed for confirmation. Likewise, senators have predicted that the Supreme Court will itself be injected more and more as a central issue in Senate elections, further eroding the once prized bipartisanship that made the Senate ”the world’s most deliberative body.” Escalating    in the Senate, Republicans sought to blame Democrats for the shift in the Senate’s rules, noting that it was the Democrats who first abandoned the filibuster rule with a majority vote maneuver in 2013. But Democrats replied that they were left no choice after Republicans’ systematic abuse of the filibuster during the first four years of the Obama presidency, making it extraordinarily difficult to confirm lower court and executive branch nominees. Indeed, during President Barack Obama’s first term, Republicans blocked or delayed executive branch and lower court nominations 79 times. That’s more than half of all the 149 filibusters used against presidential nominees in the nation’s history. The Democrats noted that even as they abolished the filibuster for executive and lower court nominations in 2013, they left it in place for Supreme Court nominations, believing that lifetime appointments to the nation’s highest court are different. Some Republicans, like Sen. Ted Cruz, maintained on Thursday that the Democrats had bowed to demands from the ”radical left” in demanding that Democratic senators ”obstruct everything.” And indeed, liberal activists have pressed Democratic senators hard on the Gorsuch nomination, threatening some with primary opponents if they voted to allow a quick vote for Gorsuch. But Democrats cited a variety of reasons for their votes to bar a cutoff of debate on Gorsuch. Among them: his conservative judicial philosophy as expressed in his 10 years on the bench, his evasive answers during the confirmation hearing and a burning resentment at the Republicans’ unprecedented refusal for nearly a year to even hold a hearing on Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Thursday’s vote means that from now on, all nominations, including those to the Supreme Court, can be quickly approved by a majority vote in the Senate. The remaining question is whether Republicans will seek, by majority vote, to abolish the filibuster as it applies to legislation. On Thursday, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah poured cold water on that idea. ”Oh no, we’ll never do that,” he said in response to a question. ”If we do that, then the Senate will become like the House. The Senate is a place of deliberation. It’s not supposed to be a place where you just move things quickly through, and the filibuster rule is a very great protection for the minority.” Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico said there are plans afoot among a bipartisan group of senators to organize a private meeting in the Old Supreme Court Chamber, located in the Capitol, later this year. The goal, he said, is to see if senators can figure out a way to promote more bipartisanship in a body where the two parties barely work together at all anymore."
"Next week, between 150 and 200 people will gather for a Passover seder at Temple   in Richmond, Va. When the traditional Passover question is posed  —   ”Why is this night different from all other nights?”  —   there’s a new answer. Guests at the Seder,   by the refugee aid agency ReEstablish Richmond, will include about 50 locally resettled immigrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Passover, after all, is the ultimate refugee holiday. It’s about an ancient flight to freedom by Israelites who were oppressed in Egypt. And the world is currently facing an unprecedented refugee crisis, with 65. 3 million refugees worldwide. One new version of the Haggada, from the American Jewish World Service, makes a direct connection: ”Around the world today, courageous people are making similar journeys  —   leaving behind violence, poverty and persecution and seeking security, freedom, prosperity and peace.” Against this backdrop, a number of Jewish organizations are offering new readings and rituals to include at the festive meal known as the Seder. These additions, says Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, are in keeping with the fact that the Haggada  —   the text read at the Seder  —   has always been flexible, ”less of a fixed text than a user guide to tell the story.” Here are some suggestions from Jewish organizations to link the ancient holiday with the current crisis. Think of it as three more questions to add to the traditional four. Why put tropical fruit on the table? Both the banana and the pineapple are being suggested as additions to the Passover table. The banana is a connection to the story of    Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, who drowned on a beach in Turkey in 2015 on the cusp of reaching safety. In different interviews, the father of Aylan and his   old brother (who also drowned) said he’d bring them a banana as a treat. This ritual was introduced last year by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, of Temple Sholom Vancouver, British Columbia  —   the city where Aylan’s family had hoped to settle. The pineapple has been a traditional symbol of welcome and hospitality since colonial times because of its exotic pedigree and rich flavor. In bygone days, a pineapple on the table demonstrated that the hosts had gone to special trouble to welcome and honor their guests, says Rabbi Ronni Handler, executive editor of ritualwell. org of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. The fruit has another connection to the holiday of Passover, with its focus on the lives of Jews as slaves in Egypt. Pineapples were often farmed by slave laborers in the colonial era. What would you take with you? ”As we tell the Passover story each year, we relive our own Exodus,” says Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, vice president of community engagement at HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which focuses on protecting and aiding refugees. The HIAS Passover supplement encourages participants to think about what necessary or treasured object they would take on a journey to freedom. It also provides examples of actual objects taken by recent refugees, like Farhad, who hid a photograph of his mother under his clothes when smugglers told him to throw everything away as he escaped Afghanistan and Sajida, who kept the necklace her best friend gave her to remember her childhood in Syria. Why put shoes on the doorstep? HIAS also suggests continuing a ritual the organization introduced last year: putting a pair of shoes on the household doorstop to symbolize the fact that Jews have stood in the shoes of the refugee. This also provides an opportunity for Seder participants to discuss their own family journeys. For Rabbi Pesner, the contemporary immigration crisis echoes the story of his Grandma Fanny, who in 1916 at age 16 fled pogroms in Russia for a new life in America. And that’s why Rabbi Knopf will be placing a pair of shoes at the door for the Interfaith Refugee Seder in Richmond on April 11, the second night of the holiday."
"It’s safe to say that few people expected the first    meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping to unfold this way. Halfway through the Chinese president’s visit to Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump announced to the world that he had ordered a missile strike on a Syrian airfield in retaliation for an apparent chemical attack by Bashar Assad’s regime. ”It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,” Trump said Thursday night at   . Xi, for his part, has not commented publicly on the Syria strike. While it’s likely to loom large over the talks, the strike isn’t the only difficult issue confronting the two presidents. From trade policy to North Korea, from Taiwan to the South China Sea, the list of possible topics for their talks was about as long as it is thorny. This meeting had long promised to be a delicate dance between the leaders, whose relationship has had something of a rocky start. For much of the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Trump placed China squarely in his rhetorical crosshairs, decrying the United States’ $300   trade deficit with China and calling the country a currency manipulator. ”We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing,” Trump said during a campaign stop last year. ”It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.” And about a month after his election, Trump also upended decades of diplomatic policy by accepting a congratulatory phone call from the president of Taiwan  —   which China considers a breakaway territory. Still, those initial frictions have settled somewhat lately. In a telephone conversation in February, Trump reaffirmed his commitment to the   ”One China” doctrine, an intentionally ambiguous U. S. position that asserts both China and Taiwan are part of One China. And anxieties about a trade war between the U. S. and China have as yet shown no indications of becoming reality. A return to placid relations would seem to be welcome news for Xi, who has more than his country’s interests in mind. There are also Xi’s own political ambitions. With his eye on a second   term, which is set to start this fall, Xi is working to shore up his political power at home  —   which would be complicated by friction in his talks with Trump. NPR correspondents Anthony Kuhn and Rob Schmitz lay out how Xi also might use the meetings as a means to begin carving out a larger leadership role for China on the global stage. But first, Trump and Xi have some rather difficult topics to tackle. Here are three of the biggest  —   and here’s what’s at stake: North KoreaTrade and investmentSouth China Sea, ”North Korea clearly is a matter of urgent interest for the president and the administration as a whole,” a senior U. S. administration official told reporters this week. It’s easy to see why. The reclusive country fired a ballistic missile into the waters near Japan on Wednesday local time, in what NPR’s Elise Hu notes was its fourth attempted missile launch of the year. Thus far, international bids to get North Korea to end its missile program have proved fruitless, and the Trump administration is pressing China to take a harder line. ”The policy of strategic patience has ended,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during his recent visit to South Korea. ”We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table.” That statement is likely to carry even more weight given the U. S. missile strike in Syria. Arguably, China is best positioned to pressure dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime, as its   neighbor and by far its most important trading partner. North Korea conducts an estimated 90 percent of its trade with China. China has long been loath to exercise that leverage to its fullest for fear of destabilizing a nuclear neighbor  —   a nuclear neighbor with thousands of U. S. troops stationed just over the border in South Korea. So, while China has signed on to U. N. sanctions on North Korea, some argue that Beijing has been less than rigorous about enforcing them. ”As far as Beijing is concerned,” Anthony tells All Things Considered, ”it wants the U. S. to provide North Korea with some sort of security guarantee in exchange for either freezing its nuclear programs or denuclearizing, as it has already promised to do.” Trump has made his impatience apparent, however. ”China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t,” Trump told the Financial Times this week. ”And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone.” Trump’s bellicose statements on the stump haven’t materialized in the form of tariffs or particularly punitive measures directed toward China, though it’s clear he hasn’t forgotten about that hefty trade deficit between the two countries. ”We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible deals, trade deals with China for many, many years. So that’s one of the things we’re going to be talking about,” Trump said Thursday en route to the meeting in Florida. So it was something of a surprise, NPR’s Chris Arnold reports, when the U. S. Commerce Department quietly moved to begin reviewing China’s status as a ”  economy.” That designation, Chris says, allows the U. S. to tax Chinese imports ”if it believes that China is, for example, dumping steel into the U. S. at prices that are unnaturally low and that hurt U. S. industry.” Experts say China isn’t likely to shake its NME status. But the move still flies in the face of campaign rhetoric that suggested U. S. trade policy would be trending in the opposite direction. Couple that with Trump’s withdrawal earlier this year from the proposed   Partnership  —   a move welcomed by China, which had been pointedly excluded from the agreement  —   and Xi might have incentive to extend an offer of his own. ”In an effort to forestall trade friction, Mr Xi could promise more Chinese investment in US infrastructure and manufacturing,” the Financial Times posits. ”But while Chinese investment in the US more than tripled last year to $45 [billion] the vast majority came from private sector entrepreneurs.” At any rate, a senior U. S. administration official made clear that Xi and Trump’s discussions won’t stray too far from economic matters: ”The primary purpose of the meeting is to set a framework for discussions on trade and investment.” As with trade, the Trump administration has at times sent mixed signals when addressing maritime disputes in the South China Sea, where China has been gradually increasing its presence. The Obama administration pushed back against China’s territorial claims in the region, and Tillerson has said the U. S. opposes the country’s construction of an artificial island there. As The New York Times reports, the secretary of state has said the U. S. should ”send China a clear signal that, first, the   stops. And second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.” Yet Anthony Kuhn reports that even as Tillerson maintained his position on the South China Sea, he surprised observers during his visit to China by adopting Beijing’s language nearly verbatim when describing the U. S.  relationship: ”nonconflict, nonconfrontation, mutual respect and   cooperation.” Anthony explains: ”Tillerson’s use of Beijing’s formula may leave the Trump administration open to criticism that either Tillerson bent over too far backward to placate his Chinese hosts or he failed to articulate the U. S. vision of the relationship, perhaps because it has yet to come up with a coherent policy toward China and Asia. Or both.” As Xi and Trump embark on their negotiations, Charles Freeman, a former U. S. trade negotiator, offered Trump some advice: ”Listen. Just don’t speak first. Let the other side put its issues on the table and see what you like and what you don’t like,” Freeman tells NPR. ”It may be difficult for this president to practice silence, but that’s probably the best advice I can give him or anybody else in dealing with the Chinese.”"
"Donald Trump’s rhetoric on China and trade has been blunt, to say the least. ”We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country  —   and that’s what they’re doing,” he said at a May 2016 campaign rally. ”It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.” His tone was a bit more measured leading up to his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, though the message was similar: The U. S. must be tough on China when it comes to trade. ”The meeting next week with China will be a very difficult one in that we can no longer have massive trade deficits . .. and job losses,” the president wrote across two tweets. Trump continued, ”American companies must be prepared to look at other alternatives.” Trump’s   rhetoric was great politics during the campaign. But the hard truth is that getting those jobs back from China just won’t happen  —   indeed, China isn’t primarily responsible for manufacturing job losses in recent years. But if Trump is concerned about the jobs lost to China, there are other steps he can take right now, some of which don’t at all involve negotiating with President Xi. What exactly has (and hasn’t) the U. S. lost to China? The U. S. has most definitely lost jobs to China. In perhaps the most commonly cited recent paper on the matter, a group of economists led by MIT’s David Autor found that between 1990 and 2007, Chinese import competition accounted for the loss of 1 million manufacturing jobs  —   about 25 percent of the total manufacturing job loss over that period. (In fact, Trump may want to thank Xi for all his country’s exports those same economists plus Lund University’s Kaveh Majlesi found in a January paper that, all other things being equal, if ”the growth in Chinese import penetration had been 50 percent lower than the actual growth” in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania than it was between 2000 and 2016, those states would have chosen Hillary Clinton, and she would have won the Electoral College.) In addition, China has not lived up to a variety of commitments it made when it joined the World Trade Organization, according to a January report from the U. S. trade representative’s office. In areas including intellectual property protections, the government’s favoring of   enterprises and ”troubling agricultural policies that block U. S. market access,” the USTR said the Chinese government could stand to improve. ”Is a country like China different, and is it more likely that they are  —   cheating isn’t necessarily the right word, but  —   doing more of these kinds of things that are more worrisome than other countries?” said Chad Bown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. ”And I think the answer to that is probably yes.” So there are reasons for concern regarding the U. S. trade relationship with China. But if China did indeed suck 25 percent of manufacturing jobs out of the U. S. over nearly two decades, that leaves about 75 percent of those jobs that weren’t lost to China. What happened? Automation is a huge factor here. U. S. factories simply grew more efficient over time. In fact, while the number of manufacturing jobs plummeted  —   manufacturing output nevertheless grew. ”I used to go out on an auto factory floor and it looks like Fifth Avenue in New York at Christmastime,” said Carla Hills, who served as U. S. trade representative under George H. W. Bush. ”Today, you look at the floor and there are six people with long white smocks and buffers on their shoes.” There are a host of things that Trump might be able to do to improve the U. S. economy when it comes to trade with China. But let’s start with one thing he can’t do: Trump can’t bring back those lost jobs, He at one point threatened to impose a 45 percent tariff on China’s goods. There are some big problems with that approach. One is that it simply wouldn’t be that effective. ”That would bring some manufacturing production back to the U. S.,” said Gordon Hanson, who   that study on U. S. jobs moving to China. ”But that’s not the same thing as manufacturing employment. The jobs that left were 20th century jobs. That is, they were jobs in factories that were built using older vintage technology that was more labor intensive than 21st century tech in which automation is more present.” Not only that, but that could also have the pesky side effect of launching a trade war. Still, there’s plenty more that could be helpful to U. S. goods producers. Combating China’s trade practices, Rather than threaten massive tariffs, Trump could try to make the footing a little more equal for both U. S. and Chinese goods. ”There are a lot of industries in which you could make the case that China is violating existing trade rules,” said Hanson. ”But the response to that is not an    tariff. The response is to go industry by industry and pick those things apart.” That could be a long (but worthwhile) process of filing complaints with the World Trade Organization. Still, a long string of nonsplashy administrative actions may not suit President Trump’s decidedly unsubtle governing style. Work with other countries, China trades with a lot of other places besides the U. S. so the U. S. could band together with those places to put pressure on China to change its trade practices. According to Hanson, the U. S. could ”get together with the EU, get together with a bunch of WTO partners, document violations, and say, ’Look: if you don’t remove those subsidies, then we’re going to enact a series of retaliatory tariffs on other products.’ ” Negotiate, Trump loves to complain about the U. S. trade deficit with China. And it is indeed big  —   in 2016, the U. S. imported $347 billion more than it exported to China, accounting for almost half of the total U. S. trade deficit with the world. Trade deficits aren’t inherently bad, but if the U. S. does want to sell more goods to China, the Trump administration could try to negotiate China into being more open to U. S. products, says one expert. ”In general, China’s market access restrictions prevent the consumption of American goods and services,” wrote the Brookings Institution’s David Dollar this week. He points to one example: ”In automobiles, a 25 percent import tariff plus domestic content rules in the past mean that   cars sold in China have little U. S. content.” Likewise, he said, China could be more open to U. S. agricultural and service industries. However, it doesn’t make sense to make too big a deal (as Trump does) out of any single trade deficit with any country. ”Bilateral trade deficits are not as relevant as your overall trade deficit,” Hills said. ”I have a deficit with my grocery, and I have a surplus with my clients. But I can’t have a surplus with my grocer. I have to buy from them.” Mainstream economists often say that trade is ultimately a net good it creates broad, albeit       benefits, like cheaper goods and a wider variety of products. But it also comes with acute pain for those people who do lose jobs. That same pain is felt by people who lose their jobs to robots, though, said Hills, and if the U. S. is serious about getting former manufacturing workers back to work, that means adopting policies outside of trade pacts. ”We could be criticized for not addressing, in my opinion, the policy of skill training for those who have lost their jobs to automation, and the majority of job losses have been as a result of automation,” said Hills. ”But if you’re someone who lost their job  —   whether it’s a miner in West Virginia or on the floor of a Ford factory  —   you don’t really care if it’s automation or international competition.” She points to the transition from horses and buggies to cars. ”The question is, what do you do with the people who were driving the horses and the coaches?” she said. ”They don’t know how to drive cars. You’ve got to send them to a skill center.” But then, there’s a related problem: Often when new jobs do pop up, they’re not near the people who need those jobs, Bown pointed out. There’s a related problem in the energy sector, as NPR’s Domenico Montanaro wrote last week: The lion’s share of the nation’s new solar jobs aren’t exactly in coal country. That means there could be some sort of way to help people relocate to where the jobs are, Bown added. Of course, none of that kind of domestic policy will come up as Trump meets with Xi Jinping this week. Plenty of issues will be hanging over their heads  —   North Korea and missile defense, for example. One thing that won’t be hanging over them: the   Partnership. Because Trump scrapped the TPP, which had been in process for nearly a decade, the two leaders come to a table where the game board for trade has been overturned and reset. China was not a party to that deal, but the deal was written to allow the U. S. to hem China in on trade by setting stiff and transparent rules on trade in Asia. However imperfect the TPP was, Hanson said, the U. S. did give China a lot more trading power by giving up the deal. ”We just walked away from it and gave China carte blanche to dictate the way in which trade rules will be written in Asia for the next decade,” Hanson said."
"Updated at 4:40 a. m. ET Saturday, A suspect in Friday’s truck attack in Stockholm has been arrested, according to a Swedish prosecutor. Police in Sweden say the man they have arrested is ”likely” the driver of a truck which drove into pedestrians on a major shopping and tourist street in Stockholm, causing multiple injuries and fatalities. The vehicle, a stolen beer delivery truck, plowed through the pedestrian street and crashed into an upscale department store. Four people died and 15 were injured, according to police. ”It is likely him,” police spokesman Lars Bystrom told The Associated Press Saturday morning. Prosecutor Hans Ihrman said authorities identified the man as a suspect ”of terrorist offenses by murder,” the AP reports. Ihrman said the man should have a   hearing on whether he will remain in custody before the middle of the day Tuesday or be released. Ihrman and Bystrom told the wire service that police have only arrested one person in their investigation of the attack. Authorities earlier said they are investigating the incident as a possible terrorist attack. No group has yet claimed responsibility. One child and eight adults who were injured remain in Karolinska hospital, the AP reported early Saturday, and six people have been released. ”This is a day of mourning for Sweden. The attack targeted our society at its most vulnerable  —   when we are going about our daily lives. Our thoughts go to those affected and to their families,” Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said in a statement on the government’s website. The government says flags will be flown at half mast at government offices on Saturday, starting at 8 a. m. On Friday, police had questioned two people they did not identify as suspects. (At one point Sweden’s prime minister said someone had been arrested, but police said that was not true.) Then authorities released a photo of a man they said was wanted in connection with the crash. ”The picture shows a man clad in a hooded jacket on an escalator in what appears to be the Stockholm metro,” Radio Sweden reported. ”The police stressed he is not suspected of the deed, but is wanted for questioning.” Prime Minister Löfven, speaking shortly after the incident, said there were indications the truck hit pedestrians as ”a terror attack.” But Radio Sweden reports that the Swedish Security Service says there is no confirmation the incident was an act of terrorism. Police were unable to confirm early reports of gunfire at the scene. The incident occurred on Drottninggatan, or Queen Street, a popular walking destination lined with shops. The location of the crash was a   section of the street, according to Radio Sweden. ”It’s a very crowded part of the city,” Swedish journalist Lava Delo told NPR’s Morning Edition. Video footage shows people fleeing. The Local, an   news agency with reporters in Sweden, reports that a brewery says the truck was hijacked from one of its staff members: ”Swedish brewery company Spendrups, which owns the truck, said it had been hijacked earlier in the day. ” ’It’s one of our distribution vehicles which runs deliveries. During a delivery to the restaurant Caliente someone jumped into the driver’s cabin and drove off with the car, while the driver unloads,’ communication director Mårten Lyth told the TT news agency.” According to Radio Sweden, ”large parts of central Stockholm are cordoned off, all metro services are canceled [and] the parliament building (Riksdag) and the government headquarters Rosenbad are in  .” ”A number of busy shopping locations in Stockholm have been evacuated at the request of the police,” The Local reports, and theaters, concert venues and other events have also been shut down. The department store where the truck crashed into the building is a few blocks from the site of a 2010 bombing in Stockholm, the most recent terrorist attack in the country. In that bombing, the attacker succeeded only in killing himself. NPR’s James Doubek contributed to this report. This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported early may turn out to be inaccurate. We’ll move quickly to correct the record and we’ll only point to the best information we have at the time."
"This week marks the centennial of U. S. entry into World War I, a conflict that shattered empires and cost millions of lives. On the American home front, it made this country less culturally German. Today, when the question of loyalty of immigrants has again become contentious, what happened a century ago has special relevance. World War I inspired an outbreak of nativism and xenophobia that targeted German immigrants, Americans of German descent and even the German language. It was a remarkable reversal of fortune. Germans were the largest    minority group in the U. S. at the time. The 1910 census counted more than 8 million   and     in the population of 92 million. There were still more   families that had been in the country longer, many since Colonial times. They were Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Mennonites, Jews and free thinkers of no religion at all. ”During the 1850s, 900, 000  —   almost a million  —   Germans went to the United States,” says historian Kenneth Ledford of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. ”That’s at a time when the German population was only about 40 million.”   often worshipped in churches where German was used. They could live on city streets or in towns with German names. And while many immigrants assimilated into the   mainstream, many others sent their children to   public schools. Ledford says cities such as Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago gave parents the option for their children in elementary school to receive their instruction in German as well as in English. ”German was the lingua franca of the literary scene, of the entertainment scene, of the theaters,” says Richard Schade of the University of Cincinnati. He says many cities were also home to   newspapers and clubs where German was spoken. The social life of the community was lubricated with the beverage Germans brought from the old country. Lager beer was drunk cold in beer halls. Beer put Germans on a collision course with the growing temperance movement. But the biggest collision ahead was over language. Before World War I, German wasn’t just an ethnic minority language it was the most studied modern foreign language in America. Legal historian Paul Finkelman says in 1915 about 25 percent of all high school students in America studied German. But by the end of the World War I that had changed dramatically. German had become so stigmatized that only 1 percent of high schools even taught it. ”During the war, there is an argument that if you learn German, you will become the ’Hun,’ ” Finkelman says, using the pejorative term for anyone from Germany. ”And there was this notion that language was somehow organic to your soul. So if you spoke German, you would think like a German, you would become a totalitarian in favor of the kaiser.” For the first three years of the war, the American people were divided over getting involved. When members of minority groups spoke against entering the war in support of Britain, including some, but not all   their patriotism was questioned. They were disparaged as ”hyphenated Americans.” After President Woodrow Wilson took the country into war he said, ”Any man who carries a hyphen about with him, carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic when he gets ready.” Schade says this   sentiment extended to internment. ”Hans Kuhnwald, the concertmeister of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was interned the German language was forbidden the   press was heavily censored libraries had to pull German books off the shelves   organizations were targeted,” Schade says, ”and what happened, of course, is the   considered themselves to be good Americans of German extraction, several generations removed from the old country.” The demonization of   took its ugliest turn in Collinsville, Ill. which is now a suburb of St. Louis. On April 4, 1918, a German immigrant, Robert Prager, was lynched. Robert Stevens, vice president of the historical museum in Collinsville, says Prager’s nationality wasn’t the only thing that led to his murder. He was a socialist who worked at a local coal mine, and he was on the wrong side of the miners union. But that April night, Prager got on the wrong side of a drunken mob that accused him of spying for Imperial Germany. ”They stripped him totally naked, and they put a rope around his neck, and they paraded him down Main Street, making him sing patriotic songs,” Stevens says. ”And they would take their beer bottles and break them in front of him. So he had to step on the broken beer bottles, cut his feet really badly.” Prager professed his love for America and kissed the flag that his tormentors wrapped him in. Even so, he was taken to the edge of town to a hanging tree. ”The group lowered him down quickly and, you know, break his neck,” Stevens says. ”They hollered, ’once for the red,’ and they lowered him again, ’once for the white’ and ’once for the blue.’ ” Pete Stehman, who grew up in Collinsville, says the townspeople didn’t talk about Prager for decades, but over the years he became fascinated with the mob’s crime and the town’s silence. He has written a book about it. He says that when 11 men were put on trial for the lynching, they were all acquitted. And he points out that the local newspaper wrote about the verdict. ”The community is well convinced he was disloyal,” the newspaper article read. ”The city does not miss him. The lesson of his death has had a wholesome effect on the Germanists of Collinsville and the rest of the nation.” Years later, in his memoir, the editor who wrote that article would call the trial ”a farcical patriotic orgy.” While historians differ on what effect this had on   Frederick Luebke, author of Bonds of Loyalty:   and World War I, says ”a few reacted by asserting their Germanness with new vigor.” But he adds, ”others sought to slough off their ethnicity as painlessly as possible.” In the   hysteria of World War I, the assimilation of   was accelerated. And being a hyphenated American would mean being suspect in nativist eyes for decades to come."
"Twitter has dropped a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, saying the demand that prompted the suit  —   that Twitter reveal the anonymous user behind an ” ” account  —   has been withdrawn. The original lawsuit, filed by the social media giant on Thursday, alleged that DHS had demanded that Twitter reveal the user behind ”@ALT_uscis,” an account allegedly run by current and former Citizenship and Immigration Services employees. The summons threatened legal action if Twitter did not comply  —   and asked Twitter not to disclose the existence of the demand. Twitter sued, exposing the summons and asking a court to declare it unenforceable. ”Because the summons has now been withdrawn,” Twitter’s lawyers write in the latest filing, the company dropped the suit. As we reported Thursday: ”The Twitter account in question is . .. one of a wave of accounts started in late January and early February after the Trump administration set limits on social media postings from a number of agencies. ”You may remember that a Twitter account for Badlands National Park went rogue, tweeting about climate change. After that act of resistance was shut down, a number of ’alternative’ accounts  —   for national parks and all kinds of other government agencies  —   sprang up. ”Some accounts say they are run by  . Others claim to be run by actual government employees, which is difficult to verify. . .. ”[Twitter’s lawyers] note that @ALT_uscis was expressing dissent, criticizing immigration policies and disagreeing with other Trump administration policies. (The account’s older tweets have since been deleted some screenshots are shared in the court filing and more recent tweets follow the same trend.) ”Identifying the user ’would chill the expression of particularly valuable political speech,’ Twitter says.” Jamie Lee Williams, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells NPR’s Laura Sydell that First Amendment case law recognizes a strong value in anonymous speech, in particular. Twitter declined to comment to NPR, beyond pointing to the latest filing. DHS has not responded to requests for comment. The ACLU, which was also planning to pursue a legal challenge on behalf of the anonymous Twitter user, welcomed the news on Twitter. Meanwhile the @ALT_uscis account, which used to have around 30, 000 followers, now has about 100, 000."
"It has been quite a while since Californians have seen such green. Riding the coattails of an unseasonably wet season, some valleys have become riots of color, deserts have been blanketed with blooms so suffusive they earn the word ”super”  —   and the state’s officials have taken notice. Gov. Jerry Brown signed an executive order Friday lifting California’s drought emergency in all but four counties. That emergency had been in place since 2014 now, only Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Tuolumne counties remain under the emergency’s   umbrella. ”This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner,” Brown said in a statement. ”Conservation must remain a way of life.” That warning amounts to more than hollow rhetoric. Despite the end of the emergency, California will maintain several water restrictions of the past two years. Brown’s executive order continues prohibitions on wasteful water use such as hosing off sidewalks, watering lawns within 48 hours of a rainstorm and irrigating the turf on street medians. It also continues to require urban agencies to report their water use to the state. The state’s announcement also offered a sobering reminder of the effects of a drought that caused ”the driest   statewide precipitation on record,” from 2012 to 2015. ”The drought reduced farm production in some regions, killed an estimated 100 million trees, harmed wildlife and disrupted drinking water supplies for many rural communities. The consequences of millions of dead trees and the diminished groundwater basins will continue to challenge areas of the state for years.” Lately things have been looking up, though. NPR’s Kirk Siegler notes that snowpack in the Sierra Nevada this year is 164 percent of average  —   great news for a state highly dependent on its reservoirs. Only small patches of the state are now in danger of drought, according to the U. S. Drought Monitor. Still, officials remain wary, as California Water Resources Control Board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus told Kirk. ”You can’t stay at Defcon 1 forever, but you can figure out how to maintain that sort of sensible vigilance,” she said."
"The U. S. Food and Drug Administration approved 23andMe’s personal genetic test for some diseases on Thursday, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and celiac diseases. The tests assess genetic risk for the conditions but don’t diagnose them, the FDA says. The agency urges consumers to use their results to ”help to make decisions about lifestyle choices or to inform discussions with a health care professional,” according to a press release about the decision. Jeffrey Shuren, the director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, wrote, ”it is important that people understand that genetic risk is just one piece of the bigger puzzle, it does not mean they will or won’t ultimately develop a disease.” Other known factors that can play into the development of disease include diet, environment and tobacco use. The FDA has previously scolded the company for marketing the personal genetic testing kits without the agency’s consent. In 2013, the agency told 23andMe to stop selling its personal genome kits in the United States until they gained FDA approval by proving they were accurate. The company agreed to work with the FDA, as we reported, and a recent FDA review of   studies found more consistent links between certain gene variants and 10 diseases, the FDA says. As a result, the FDA is now allowing 23andMe to market tests that assess genetic risks for the following 10 diseases or conditions: The company’s $199 Health and Ancestry test is available directly to consumers, without seeing a physician or genetic counselor. Consumers’ DNA is extracted from a saliva sample. After mailing in their sample, people can see their results online. ”This is an important moment for people who want to know their genetic health risks and be more proactive about their health,” said Anne Wojcicki, the CEO and   of 23andMe, in a company press release. Sharon Terry, the CEO of the Genetic Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for health care for people with genetic disorders, likens it to another consumer test. ”Women learn they are pregnant using a test directly marketed to them and buy it off the shelf in a drugstore,” she told NPR. ”In 10 years we will marvel that this is an ’advance’ at all. Imagine pregnancy tests being only available through a doctor!” Robert Green, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, says people should be able to access genetic information in whatever way is best for them. ”Some people really want this [genetic] information on their own, and others want it through their physician,” he said. ”Both those channels are legitimate. People should just be aware that this information is complicated.” But some are still concerned about whether the genes in question actually correspond to a higher risk of disease reliably enough to warrant    marketing and testing, as opposed to genetic testing with the guidance of a professional. Some health professionals worry that consumers will ”take the results and run,” as Mary Freivogel put it. Freivogel, a certified genetic counselor and the president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, added that genetics are just ”one piece to the story when it comes to developing a disease.” Freivogel said speaking with a genetic counselor before getting tested for disease is important. ”   testing takes away a   conversation,” she said, where counselors can help patients think about questions like: ”What do you want to know? What are you going to do with this information? Is it something you’re prepared to know, or is it going to just make you anxious?” And it isn’t clear what consumers should do with their newly calculated disease risk, especially for conditions like Alzheimer’s for which there isn’t a cure or even a course of action to prevent the disease. What’s more, having the genes is not the same as having the diseases the genes are associated with. A person may have genes that are associated with Alzheimer’s, for example, but that doesn’t mean he or she will ever get the disease. Conversely, some people develop Alzheimer’s without the identified risk genes. The Alzheimer’s Association does not recommend routine genetic testing for the disease in the general population because it can’t ”productively guide medical treatment.” A genetic test result for Alzheimer’s is ”not going to provide useful information even if you’re at an increased risk,” said Keith Fargo, director of scientific programs at the Alzheimer’s Association. ”It’s not like there’s a drug you can take right now [to prevent the disease] or a lifestyle change you can make that you shouldn’t make anyway,” such as exercising and eating right to keep your brain healthy. John Lehr, the CEO of the Parkinson’s Foundation, says personal genetic tests can help identify risk for Parkinson’s disease. But, he wrote in a statement following the FDA’s announcement, the foundation recommends ”that people who are interested in testing first seek guidance from their doctors and from genetic counselors to understand what the process may mean for them and their families.”"
"Next week I’ll be hopping on a plane for an   ride to Europe with a   1     toddler. A big concern is how to deal with the inevitable meltdowns. But my top priority before boarding is about my little girl’s health: Is she protected from the measles? The virus  —   which kills almost 400 kids each day worldwide  —   is hitting Europe hard this year. Romania is fighting a large outbreak with more than 3, 400 cases, including 17 deaths. And Italy is seeing a big surge in cases, with at least 400 already in 2017, the World Health Organization reported last week, The outbreak is only going to get worse. ”Preliminary information for February indicates that the number of new infections is sharply rising,” WHO wrote. And the problem isn’t just in Europe. Guinea is battling a widespread outbreak, with nearly 3, 500 confirmed cases, Doctors Without Borders reports. Nigeria is having an emergency campaign to vaccinate 4 million kids after an outbreak flared up in a region crippled by violence.  And Mongolia  —   which was declared   in 2014  —   is still reeling from a massive outbreak nearly 20, 000 cases. In other words, 2017 is shaping to be bad year for the measles worldwide, says Dr. Seth Berkley, who leads the nonprofit Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, devoted to vaccinating children worldwide. There’s one big reason why: Vaccine rates around the world have stalled, Berkley says. Since the 1980s, the world has seen a massive plunge in measles cases, dropping from more than 4 million cases each year to fewer than 500, 000. But that improvement has plateaued. ”Over the past five years, measles vaccine coverage around the world has stagnated at around 78 percent,” Berkley says. ”That in combination with the European outbreak is worrisome.” For the measles, it’s not enough to have 78 percent of a population vaccinated. You need about 90 to 95 percent to stop outbreaks, Berkeley says. Because measles is one of the most contagious diseases on Earth. One sick person spreads it to 18 others, on average. The virus literally floats around in clouds through the air, seeking out the unvaccinated. ”You don’t even need to be in the same room with a sick person to catch measles,” Berkley says. ”If you were to leave a doctor’s office and someone came an hour later, that person could catch measles just from the virus left in the air.” ”So in places where vaccine coverage has dropped, we’re seeing a lot more cases,” he says. That includes includes poor countries, like Guinea, Mongolia and Nigeria, where families just don’t have access to vaccines. But also rich countries, like Romania, Italy and France, where false perceptions about vaccine’s risks have kept parents from immunizing some kids. For example, the French have the lowest confidence in vaccines in the world, researchers reported last year. Nearly 40 percent say they don’t think vaccines are safe. ”The problem is measles is a disease that people don’t remember because the vaccine has been quite successful,” Berkley says. ”But 1 out of 4 people who catch the measles will be hospitalized. One out of 1, 000 will end up with brain swelling, which could lead to brain damage. And 1 or 2 out of 1, 000 can die, even with the best care.”"
"In 1962, children’s book author Roald Dahl lost his oldest daughter, Olivia, to measles. She was 7 years old.   years later, Dahl wrote a letter to parents about what happened: ”As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured   and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. ” ’Are you feeling all right?’ I asked her. ” ’I feel all sleepy,’ she said. ”In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.” Olivia had what’s called measles encephalitis. The virus had spread to her brain. Her immune system rushed in to fight it. Her brain swelled up. ”A lot of folks feel measles isn’t a big deal. It just causes a rash and a fever,” says Dr. Alice Ackerman, chairwoman of the pediatrics department at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. ”In the majority of cases, that’s true.” But in about 1 in 1, 000 cases, the infection becomes systemic and moves to the brain. ”This causes behavioral changes, potential brain swelling and convulsions,” Ackerman says. There’s little doctors can do. Children can be left deaf, blind or with mental retardation  —   if they recover. Even after a mild, ”normal” case of measles, Ackerman says, there’s a very small chance brain damage could develop years later. ”It doesn’t matter how bad your initial measles infection was,” she says. ”Up to about eight years later, children can start showing behavioral changes. They may have problems sleeping or start acting funny. It’s a degenerative process: The brain gets more and more physically damaged [from inflammation] over time.” ”It’s heartbreaking,” Ackerman says. ”I’ve personally seen about about 10 children in my career with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE. It’s very scary. You just kind of say, ’I can’t treat this, once this damage is done.’ ” SSPE is very rare: Only about 1 in 5, 000 people with the measles will develop it, a study found. But other complications from measles aren’t so rare. ”As this outbreak here [in the U. S.] progresses, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see some cases with severe complications,” says Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. ”One in four cases, so far, have been hospitalized.” In terms of serious problems, the most common is pneumonia. Measles typically infects the upper respiratory tract, like the flu or common cold does. But when measles moves to the lower respiratory, it becomes pneumonia  —   and much more problematic. ”Pneumonia impairs the body’s ability to harness oxygen in the air,” Adalja says. ”Children don’t get enough oxygen in their lungs to supply the body. Some end up on a ventilator.” Up to 1 in 20 children worldwide who catch measles gets pneumonia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. It’s the most common way that measles kills 145, 000 children worldwide. And there’s no way to predict which children will develop severe complications to measles, Adalja says. ”For all [intents and] purposes, anyone can get pneumonia from the measles or encephalitis.” But people with weak immune systems are at higher risk, Adalja says. That includes those undergoing some cancer treatments, organ donor recipients, the elderly and babies. Malnourished children in poor countries are also vulnerable to measles encephalitis and pneumonia, says Virginia Tech’s Ackerman. ”Their immune systems can’t build an appropriate response against the virus.” In many instances, the parents of these children don’t have access to vaccines or treatments for measles complications. These parents experience what Dahl and his family faced a   ago: losing a child to measles."
"The Trump Organization has settled a legal battle with the chef José Andrés that had stretched on for two years. The lawsuit concerned a restaurant deal that Andrés pulled out of after Trump made comments disparaging Mexicans. Andrés’ restaurant was to be in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D. C. which operates inside the historic Old Post Office. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and both parties declined comment beyond a joint statement from the Trump Organization and Andrés’ restaurant group, Think Food Group. ”I am glad that we are able to put this matter behind us and move forward as friends,” Donald Trump Jr. said in the statement. ”Since opening in September 2016, Trump International Hotel, Washington, D. C. has been an incredible success and our entire team has great respect for the accomplishments of both José and TFG. Without question, this is a ’ ’ for both of our companies.” ”I am pleased that we were able to resolve our differences and move forward cooperatively, as friends,” said Andrés in the statement. ”I have great respect for the Trump Organization’s commitment to excellence in redeveloping the Old Post Office. . .. Going forward, we are excited about the prospects of working together with the Trump Organization on a variety of programs to benefit the community.” The Washington Post reports that Andrés had already planned a menu for the restaurant, which was to be called Topo Atrio, and that in the spring of 2015, ”Andrés and Trump’s daughter Ivanka traded design ideas and advanced plans for the restaurant.” But those plans fell apart in 2015, after Donald Trump made disparaging comments about Mexicans, calling them ”rapists” and saying that they were bringing drugs and crime into the U. S. Andrés pulled out of the deal, and Trump sued for $10 million in a breach of contract suit. Think Food Group countersued for $8 million, saying that Trump’s comments had hurt business: ”The perception that Mr. Trump’s statements were   made it very difficult to recruit appropriate staff for a Hispanic restaurant, to attract the requisite number of Hispanic food patrons for a profitable enterprise, and to raise capital for what was now an extraordinarily risky Spanish restaurant.” A few weeks before taking office in January, Trump sat for a videotaped deposition in the suit. The General Services Administration said last month that the Trump Organizations is in ”full compliance” with a lease that specifically says no ”elected official of the Government of the United States . .. shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom[. ]” That decision has been questioned by many ethics and contract experts. The Trump Organization is reportedly looking to open a second hotel in Washington."
"Taser International has sold a whole lot of stun guns since its founding in 1993. By the company’s estimation, nearly   of all law enforcement patrol officers in the U. S. carry a Taser. But since 2009, Taser has also been selling body cameras worn by police officers. The company says its cameras are now used by 36 of the 68 major law enforcement agencies across America, including the Los Angeles Police Department, which bought more than 7, 500 of the devices. So when the company announced this week that it was changing its name to Axon  —   the name of its line of body cameras  —   it signaled where the company thinks its future lies: in becoming a   platform for law enforcement data. Sales of body cameras have boomed since the national uproar over a number of   shootings, including the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. A recent Pew study found broad support for   body cameras, with a majority of both police officers (66 percent) and the public (93 percent) in favor of their use. Along with the name change, Axon announced a free trial program for its body cameras: It will send law enforcement agencies one body camera per sworn officer to use for a year. The company is also offering a year of free data storage on its Evidence. com service. That move reinforces the company’s shift from ”less lethal” weapons to a model driven more by data and devices. Officers are increasingly getting used to recording their interactions with the public, and now a key question is what police departments should do with all that footage, as NPR’s Martin Kaste has reported.  Axon says it has the answer: Use its cameras to capture the footage, and then use its service to upload it directly to the cloud, where artificial intelligence technology will analyze the video and audio. Axon and its   competitor Vievu say their products will save time for law enforcement agencies by, for example, making it easier to review footage. Axon’s Evidence. com platform offers automated facial redaction and tools to share evidence with prosecutors Vievu said it will integrate with an AI platform that offers facial recognition and sentiment analysis. But convenience comes with a cost. After the free trial is up, Axon’s Body 2 camera has a   cost of $399, while use of the company’s Evidence. com platform costs $15 to $89 per month, per officer. Axon spokesman Steve Tuttle says law enforcement agencies using body cameras have seen ”improved behavior on both sides of the badge,” citing decreases in both use of force and complaints from the public. Even as the company rolls out more features for its cameras and software, it will still sell Tasers, which made up about   of the company’s sales last year. Tasers are intended to stun and incapacitate  —   an alternative to firearms  —   but they can be lethal. An investigation by The Washington Post in November 2015 found that about one person a week that year had died in incidents in which they were Tasered by police. More than half of them suffered from mental illness or had illegal drugs in their system when they died, according to the newspaper. ”At least 10 were Tasered while handcuffed or shackled,” the report found. ”Only one was female. Nearly 55 percent of the people who died were minorities.”"
"The Montmorency tart cherry is pretty much the only sour cherry grown in the U. S. And cherry growers in Michigan know the tree really well. It was brought here from France a couple of hundred years ago. ”This is older than most people think of as heirloom varieties and it’s our main variety to this day,” says Jim Nugent, a cherry grower in northern Michigan. The tree is ”very cold hardy” in the dead of winter, he says, and grows well in the state. But it is susceptible to damage from spring frost, making it very sensitive to the extreme weather shifts made more likely by climate change. And that made tart cherry growers nervous. Warmer days in early spring have caused cherry buds to come out earlier on average. That, combined with erratic spring weather, especially when it brings severe cold snaps, has already proved disastrous for the crop. In 2002 and 2012, freezing spring temperatures wiped out almost the entire tart cherry crop here. Nugent jokes that he couldn’t harvest enough cherries to make a pie. In other years, the yields have varied widely. The hot spell in February this year alarmed cherry growers, but the trees are OK for now. However, Nugent hasn’t done anything to protect his orchards from the next severe cold snap. There is little he can do, in the short run. About 30 miles from Nugent’s orchard, Todd Springer, another grower, is trying to deal with a different problem related to climate change  —   poor pollination. He says the honey bees that usually pollinate his fruit don’t like the erratic spring weather. If there’s a strong wind or if it’s rainy or cold, honey bees stay in the hive. So, he is out in his orchard, hanging a homemade beehive for a kind of bee called  . The hive is made of a white bucket with brown cardboard tubes stacked inside. The bees hang out inside the tubes. These   bees will work in inclement weather to pollinate the cherry trees, even at night. Springer calls these bees his ”pollinator insurance.” Springer wants to make sure his family can keep farming land they have been on since 1868. ”If we don’t grow cherries,” he says, ”we don’t get to keep our farm.” Despite all these difficulties, Springer says it’s been hard for cherry growers to talk openly about climate change. Everyone has so much at stake, he says. ”It means we have to change,” he says. ”And what does that change look like?” He was at a conference once with a speaker talking about warming temperatures when a grower got angry and yelled, and claimed that this information was presented to cost farmers more money. Last month, Springer signed up for an   workshop, but it was canceled due to lack of interest. He says it’s ironic that one of the talks was about whether the public cares about the problems climate change might cause farmers. ”And we couldn’t get more than 11 farmers to come to the meeting, to care about it,” he says. ”I don’t know what that says, but like I said, it’s hard to talk about, it’s hard to listen to.” It turns out that the public does care about how climate change affects farmers, at least, in Michigan, says Julie Winkler, a geography professor at Michigan State University, who was supposed to share her research at that workshop. Winkler was involved in a survey that found that people do want the government to help farmers adapt to climate change, especially when asked during record hot weather. ”It was up to 80 percent but it fell back to about 70 percent after the warm spell, so it actually was quite strong,” she says. If there was money to help cherry farmers adapt, it’s not clear yet how it would best be spent. Many have fans blowing cold air out of valleys where it settles. Some growers are experimenting with sprinklers to cool trees and keep them dormant a little longer in the spring. Nugent thinks what’s really needed is a new breed of tart cherry that’s less susceptible to frost. ”I’m not sure if 50 years from now if Montmorency is still going to be a viable variety,” he says. ”I think we’ve got to find something that is going to be more  .” Researchers are trying to breed trees that bloom later, but introducing a new breed to the market can take decades. And Nugent says researchers have only been at it since the 1980s. For now, the tart cherry industry in Michigan continues to rely almost exclusively on the Montmorency. And there is no sign that growers are moving away from tarts and converting their orchards to other fruits."
"Updated at 11 a. m. ET with retail outlook, After adding more than 200, 000 jobs in each of the first two months of this year, the U. S. economy gained only 98, 000 jobs in March, according to the monthly report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That result falls short of expectations: While analysts had anticipated a slight dip to around 180, 000 new jobs, they had been looking for signs that job growth would keep pace with recent gains. Unemployment fell to 4. 5 percent from 4. 7 percent, the Labor Department agency says. That’s the lowest rate since May 2007. In addition to the data for March, the BLS also stripped nearly 40, 000 jobs from its previous estimates for January and February, revising its findings for those months from 238, 000 to 216, 000 for January and from 235, 000 to 219, 000 for February. ”Over the month, employment growth occurred in professional and business services (+56, 000) and in mining (+11, 000) while retail trade lost jobs (000),” the BLS says. The agency adds that the health care sector stayed on its positive trend, adding 14, 000 jobs in March. In the first three months of 2017, the BLS says, ”health care added an average of 20, 000 jobs per month, compared with an average monthly gain of 32, 000 in 2016.” One trend from the report is clear: Retail is in a mess of trouble. With 30, 000 jobs lost in March, the sector has seen 89, 000 jobs eliminated since last October. It’s a pretty dire situation for    retailers that are facing relentless pressure from Amazon slowing traffic at shopping malls and overcapacity  —   too many stores in many parts of the country. Retailers are cutting jobs because the future looks bleak they’re consolidating in order to survive. Just look at the recent tally. This week, Payless filed for bankruptcy protection and announced it’s shuttering 400 stores. J. C. Penney is closing its doors at 138 locations. Macy’s is in the process of shuttering 15 percent of its department stores. Last month, Sears warned that there is ”substantial doubt” it will survive. And this week, Ralph Lauren announced it will close its flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York. These are not incidental or unconnected events. On an earnings call last month, Richard Hayne of Urban Outfitters said a retail building boom in the 1990s and early 2000s ”created a bubble, and like housing, that bubble has now burst.” The U. S. now has more than six times as much retail capacity per capita as Europe or Japan, Hayne said. So it’s safe to assume that retail employment will not be rallying anytime soon. Among the questions that are still unanswered: How important is retail for the American workforce and the economic recovery? Retail jobs don’t normally pay very well. The median wage in 2016 for retail salespeople was $22, 680. But the jobs of retail salesperson and retail cashier are the two most common in the country. And together it’s estimated they employ more than 8 million Americans. Average hourly earnings continued a recent rise for employees on private nonfarm payrolls, increasing by 5 cents to $26. 14. That follows a   increase in February. For   production workers and employees who aren’t in supervisory positions, the average hourly wage rose to $21. 90  —   a   gain."
"President Trump’s updated executive order, the one restricting travel from six   countries, is blocked for now. But administrators at Northeastern University in Boston aren’t taking any chances. ”We’re in a state of limbo,” says Mike Armini, who oversees government relations. ”We don’t quite know what’s going to happen next, so we’ve advised them to stay here,” he says, talking about the 250 Northeastern students from those six countries. While those students stay put, Armini and his colleagues worry that potential students, who are receiving their college acceptance letters, will decide not to come to the U. S. Right now, international students represent about 20 percent of Northeastern’s campus. ”Even if you’re not from one of those six countries, there’s a sort of chilling effect that we’re very concerned about.” So he and other administrators are reaching out, telling possible students they’re welcome. ”We feel that something is lost if you have certain countries not represented on your campus,” he says. But there’s also the bottom line. A recent survey shows students from those six countries alone bring in more than $500 million to the U. S. economy each year. If Northeastern, and other schools, admit students who are later blocked from the country, universities could lose a lot. ”Our institutions are very concerned,” says Melanie Gottlieb, deputy director with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, which surveyed nearly 300 colleges to understand the early effects of President Trump’s immigration policies. Four in 10 of the colleges that responded say they have seen a drop in applications from around the globe. Nearly 80 percent expressed concerns about application yield. ”There are concerns that the rules might change,” Gottlieb says, adding that students are still applying to American colleges and universities  —   60 percent of responding schools say they haven’t seen a drop in international applications this year. But she adds that she has seen students hedging their bets, ”also applying to places like Canada, the U. K. Australia and New Zealand.” And in the survey, schools expressed a fear of losing students to other   countries. But it seems, schools in those countries haven’t missed a beat. In Canada, the government is providing millions of dollars to attract the best and brightest scientists and innovators from around the world. ”The international market is very lively. It’s very competitive,” says Bruce Dowton, president of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, which enrolls more than 12, 000 foreign students from 130 countries  —   about a quarter of its total enrollment. Dowton says there has been a 30 percent uptick in international applications since Trump’s election. ”We certainly look to provide an attractive offering for students to come to Macquarie, and I know other university presidents around Australia see it the same way,” Dowton says. While Macquarie is boosting its recruitment efforts abroad, it is still too early to know whether what happens in the U. S. will drive up enrollment Down Under."
"Let’s say you’d like to go for a run in Mexico City. Dr. Tonatiuh Barrientos, an epidemiologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, thinks that’s a good idea  —   in theory. An expert on diabetes, he’d like to see more people in the Mexican capital get out and exercise to combat the disease. But as a runner himself, he knows that Mexico City isn’t an easy place to jog. In a metropolis of 22 million, there are only a handful of parks where people can run. ”Look, this is a fairly crowded street. It’s a pretty noisy street. It’s polluted,” Barrientos says walking through the Tlalpan neighborhood that lies between his office and his home. ”Now just imagine trying to convince yourself to get out there and run.” It’s a tough sell. ”I mean the only place for you to really run is on the sidewalk. You can’t run on the street because you’ll probably get run over,” he says. The sidewalk is an uneven mix of broken cement slabs and cobblestones. Street vendors have set up little tables and carts to sell everything from electrical supplies to fried pork cracklings. There are so many people that it’s hard to even walk at a fast clip. And if you do manage to find a stretch of sidewalk, the elevation in Mexico City combined with the smog and the chances of getting mugged make running a hard thing to get excited about. ”There are a lot of obstacles,” Barrientos says as he dodges his way past   awnings. ”And you need to deal with that if you wanted to try to run here.” Professionally, Barrientos has tracked the slow, steady rise in Type 2 diabetes in Mexico. Roughly 14 million Mexicans are now living with diabetes  —   nearly triple the number who had the disease in 1990. Barrientos says for too long health officials considered it the responsibility of patients to change their diet and exercise routines. They either did it or didn’t. He says now it’s become clear that addressing one of Mexico’s biggest health crises requires changes at a much higher level and includes lobbying for healthier public spaces where people can easily get out and exercise. ”How do we change the world so that making healthy decisions is a lot easier than it is right now?” he asks. Diabetes has mushroomed as Mexicans’ lifestyles have changed dramatically over the last 40 years. Several generations ago diabetes was almost unheard of in Mexico. Now it’s the leading cause of death, according to the World Health Organization. Mexicans with indigenous ancestry have a genetic predisposition for the condition that makes them even more likely to develop it than Caucasians. But a key driver of Type 2 diabetes in Mexico  —   and globally  —   is still a person’s diet. Barrientos says current projections show that by 2030, 17 percent of all Mexican adults will have diabetes. ”And that of course opens a lot of questions about sustainability,” he says. ”Can you really sustain a public health system with 17 percent of your population being diabetic? Especially if you are not prepared to control that diabetes.” Some epidemiologists predict that by 2050, half the adults in the country could suffer from diabetes in their lifetime. Type 2 diabetes can be reversed with   surgery in some cases. Uncontrolled, the metabolic disorder can have grave health consequences. It can lead to blindness, nerve damage, kidney failure and, in some cases, foot amputations. Barrientos and others are now saying the focus of diabetes prevention in Mexico needs to shift away from shaming individuals to looking at new government policies to tackle this mounting health crisis. ”With tobacco we faced the same thing for many, many years. We were trying to encourage people to quit: Because if you don’t quit you’re going to die!” he says. ”The only time that we started to see real change was when we said, ’We are going to change the rules of the game.’ The more expensive it is the less you’re going to be willing to spend your precious money on something that isn’t good for you.” In an effort to reduce soda consumption, the government in 2014 imposed a 1 peso per liter tax on sugar sweetened beverages, the equivalent of about 10 U. S. cents on a standard 2 liter bottle. At the time Mexico was the leading per capita consumer of soda in the world. In regulatory filings in 2015,   said that the annual consumption of its beverages in Mexico was more than 600   servings per person per year. That means that, on average, every Mexican was drinking nearly two glasses of Coke beverages every day. And that doesn’t even count the amount of Pepsi or other brands of soda being consumed. Alejandro Calvillo, the head of a consumer group called El Poder del Consumidor, says soda is making Mexicans sick. Walking just outside his office in Mexico City, he points out little shops selling Coke and junk food on just about every block. In fact, the red   logo has become a symbol that declares snack shop. ”Coke in Mexico has more than 1. 5 million places that sell Coke,” Calvillo says. ”The presence of these products is everywhere.” Calvillo was one of the advocates behind the 2014 soda tax, although he would have liked the tax to have been even higher. A higher tax, he argues, would have pushed down consumption even more and given the government more resources to combat the lifestyle that’s linked to diabetes. In indigenous communities in Chiapas, he says, parents put Coke in baby bottles for their infants ”and the government isn’t doing anything. It’s crazy.” Like Barrientos, he says that if Mexico is going to successfully combat diabetes, the rules of the game need to change. His efforts to get the soda tax increased even more, however, have so far been unsuccessful. But Jorge Terrazas, the head of ANPRAC, the carbonated beverages trade association in Mexico City, says soda is unfairly blamed for Mexico’s extremely high rates of obesity and diabetes. ”There’s not conclusive scientific evidence demonstrating the relation between the intake of soft drinks with overweight,” he tells NPR. The average Mexican’s daily intake of calories far exceeds the World Health Organization recommendation of 2, 000, and Terrazas says the majority of those calories are coming from things other than soda. But   campaigners says sugar is a big part of the problem. They say calling for solutions that rely on individuals alone to change their lifestyles won’t solve Mexico’s diabetes crisis. Barrientos, the epidemiologist and runner, says the solution is going to require major changes to the way Mexicans live, eat and exercise."
"Fatuma Abdullahi and her sister Maryan Osman are originally from Somalia, but when they were little girls, their parents died during the civil war there and both girls became refugees. Since then, the girls, who are now teenagers, have found a stable home with Annie and Randall Johnson, a young couple from the Salt Lake City area. Last summer they welcomed their little brother, Roscoe, into the world. All in all, the five have become a family in their own way. ”Not a lot of people become a mom at 28 to teenage daughters,” Annie says. ”So, the learning curve has been steep.” Maryan laughs and agrees with Annie as she thinks back to when they all met for the first time. ”You just walked up to me with all of the confidence in the world, stuck your hand out there and you’re like, ’Hi, I’m Maryan,’ ” Annie says. Annie says Maryan sized her up a bit while asking if she was old enough to be a mom. ”And I remember, Fatuma, when you were just so shy, and quiet. Which was OK, because we were so nervous.” U. S. culture varies a lot from the girls’ homeland culture, which meant they had to adjust to life with their American family. The girls say their surroundings are noticeably different from their home in Africa. ”Here the neighbors, [are] so quiet, you feel like you’re living by yourself,” Maryan says. ”Even in the jungle animals made sounds, but here the sounds you hear is only the cars.” Language is also a big part of culture, but both the parents and daughters have worked to learn about each other’s. ”The funniest thing is teaching you guys weird American sayings,” Annie says. ”Like, ’beating a dead horse.’ ” Maryan responds by asking why anyone would beat a dead horse, and adding, ”It’s already dead!” She also says she finds it funny when Annie is learning Somali, and it reminds her of when she was learning English and ”would speak in funny ways.” ”I can say ’I love you,’ which is . .. Waan ku jeclahay,” Annie says. But saying ”I love you” in any language isn’t the only way the family shows that they care about each other. Last year around the time of Maryan’s birthday, she says she became overwhelmed about her past and had panic attacks at school. Annie says she was scared for Maryan, ”because you were really struggling at that time,” but Maryan remembers how her mother responded. ”You told me that, ’I am always there to talk to you,’ and you hugged me a lot,” Maryan says. Maryan says that was awesome, but there are other things she loves about her family. ”The best thing I love about you guys is no matter what I do, you still forgive me and give me chance to move on,” she says. Annie admits that being a mom is hard work and she has doubted herself a lot, but learned a lot as well. ”You don’t know if you’re doing things right. I’ve learned a lot about patience. And I’ve learned a lot about love. You guys have just given so much joy and meaning to my life. I love you so much. So happy that you are my daughters.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Von Diaz. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"For the first two months of this year, the teen romance Your Name. (the period is part of the title) was the biggest   hit of 2017. Never heard of it? Well, it was bigger than Fifty Shades Darker bigger than Lego Batman. A surprise anime hit in its native Japan, and subsequently across Asia, Your Name. had taken in more than a quarter of a billion dollars (as of this writing it has grossed $328 million) before getting knocked out of first place on worldwide   lists. And at that point it had yet to open in the world’s largest movie market: the U. S. With the recent flop of the   Ghost In The Shell, an adaptation of another anime treasure that seemed ideal for crossover success, the time may not be ripe for Your Name. But, well . .. never mind. It’s here, and it’s both gorgeous enough and emotionally engaging enough to be worth seeking out. The story concerns two teenagers, Taki and Mitsuha, who live a few hours by train apart, and couldn’t be more different. Taki’s a Tokyo high school boy, raging hormones in full rage. Mitsuha’s a few years younger, a country girl, bored with the homemaking rut in which she’s stuck in her village in the boondocks. They’d be unlikely even to know about each other, except one morning, Taki wakes up in an unfamiliar room, looks down at himself, and sees a girl’s body. His first impulse is exactly what you’d expect of a teenage boy: He brings his hands to his chest, and marvels at breasts that feel realistic. Then, a look in the mirror clarifies things. Figuring he’s dreaming, Taki reluctantly decides to go with the dream, checks a cellphone near the bed, and uses it to figure out what’s expected of him as Mitsuha. Something similar happens in his bedroom, where Mitsuha wakes up, looks at herself and sees Taki’s body. She’s even more alarmed, until she looks outside and realizes she is in bustling Tokyo, which has long been almost as mythical as Oz in her imaginings. She’s definitely going with it. They stumble through their respective days, both of them assuming they’re just having a strange dream. But over the course of a couple of weeks, they realize from the reactions of others that they are somewhat randomly ending up in each other’s bodies. They start working out ground rules, leaving helpful notes, trying not to wreck each other’s lives, and in fact helping out in some ways. Taki makes Mitsuha more assertive in class. She, meanwhile, arranges a date with a girl he has been afraid to ask out. And at about the moment you’re ready to scream at them to just meet already, what has seemed like a glistening, teen   turns into a darker, more affecting, very different sort of story  —   a harrowing survival tale that blends elements of Japan’s recent     meltdown with the last reel of the disaster movie Deep Impact, plus time travel  —   in short, anime doing what anime does best. Along the way you realize how smart   Makoto Shinkai has been in adapting his own novel for the screen  —   and not just with beautiful images. Take the  . With all the changes wrought by puberty, teenagers effectively wake up in new bodies each morning anyway. Developing breasts do, of course, interest Taki  —   he’s a boy. But they’re new and a little surprising for Mitsuha, too. So are the feelings these kids are experiencing, the tension between respect and rebellion, and of course, the urgent need to recall the name they can’t remember from the dream they’re not sure they’re having. By the time Taki sketches from memory a town he is sure he has never visited, and wonders ”Why does looking at it make my chest so tight?” you’ll have realized this is not the cute little switcheroo comedy you thought you were watching at the beginning. It’s deeper, more resonant, in some ways a meditation on fate. In the U. S. theaters have been offered a choice by the film’s distributor: They can show Your Name. dubbed into English, or in Japanese with subtitles. I’ve seen both versions, and while they have different drawbacks and virtues  —   the   bits feel overly cute in the English version, whereas the folkloric middle section feels stronger  —   the story is affecting either way. Taki and Mitsuha think they’re dreaming, and after about the first 40 minutes of their shimmering film, you may think you are, too."
"I am an expert  —   a     expert. Of course, there are only a few hundred people on the planet who care about the thing I’m an expert on: the death of stars like the sun. But, nonetheless, if the death of stars like the sun is something you want to know about, I’m one of the folks to call. I tell you this not to brag or make my mom proud, but because expertise has been getting a bad rap lately. It’s worth a moment of our time to understand exactly why this ”death of expertise” is happening  —   and what it means for the world. The attack on expertise was given its most visceral form by British politician Michael Gove during the Brexit campaign last year when he famously claimed, ”people in this country have had enough of experts.” The same kinds of issues, however, are also at stake here in the U. S. in our discussions about ”alternative facts,” ”fake news” and ”denial” of various kinds. That issue can be put as a simple question: When does one opinion count more than another? By definition, an expert is someone whose learning and experience lets them understand a subject deeper than you or I do (assuming we’re not an expert in that subject, too). The weird thing about having to write this essay at all is this: Who would have a problem with that? Doesn’t everyone want their brain surgery done by an expert surgeon rather than the guy who fixes their brakes? On the other hand, doesn’t everyone want their brakes fixed by an expert auto mechanic rather than a brain surgeon who has never fixed a flat? Every day, all of us entrust our lives to experts from airline pilots to pharmacists. Yet, somehow, we’ve come to a point where people can put their ignorance on a subject of national importance on display for all to see  —   and then call it a virtue. Here at 13. 7, we’ve seen this phenomenon many times. When we had a section for comments, it would quickly fill up with statements like ”the climate is always changing” or ”CO2 is a trace gas so it doesn’t matter” when we a posted pieces on the science of climate change. Sometimes, I would try and engage these commenters. I love science  —   and all I really want is for people to understand the remarkable process through which we’ve learned about the world, including Earth’s climate. But I’d quickly find these commenters had virtually no understanding of even the most basic principles of atmospheric science. Worse, they were not even interested in the fact that there were basic principles. Yet there they were proudly proclaiming to the world that their opinion trumped all those scientists who’d spent decades studying exactly those principles. It’s still always kind of stunning to me. What if I showed up at their jobs and told them everything they knew and put into daily practice was crap. How did we reach this remarkable state of affairs? The answer to that question can be found in a new book by Tom Nichols titled The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters. Nichols is a politically conservative professor of international relations at the U. S. War College. (He’s also a   undefeated Jeopardy! champion, so you don’t wanna mess with him.) First, it’s important to note, Nichols is not arguing for a slavish adherence to anything that comes out of an expert’s mouth. In a wonderful essay that preceded the book, he tells us: ”It’s true that experts can make mistakes, as disasters from thalidomide to the Challenger explosion tragically remind us.” Later he adds: ”Personally, I don’t think technocrats and intellectuals should rule the world: we had quite enough of that in the late 20th century, thank you, and it should be clear now that intellectualism makes for lousy policy without some sort of political common sense. Indeed, in an ideal world, experts are the servants, not the masters, of a democracy.” But Nichols is profoundly troubled by the willful ”  ” he sees around him. Its principle cause, he argues, are the new mechanisms that shape our discussions (i. e. the Internet and social media). He writes: ”There was once a time when participation in public debate, even in the pages of the local newspaper, required submission of a letter or an article, and that submission had to be written intelligently, pass editorial review, and stand with the author’s name attached. .. Now, anyone can bum rush the comments section of any major publication. Sometimes, that results in a    that spurs better thinking. Most of the time, however, it means that anyone can post anything they want, under any anonymous cover, and never have to defend their views or get called out for being wrong.” Nichols also points to excesses of partisanship in politics, the weakening of expectations in schools and, finally, to human nature. The last cause, he says, is particularly troubling. As he puts it: ”Its called the   effect, which says, in sum, that the dumber you are, the more confident you are that you’re not actually dumb. And when you get invested in being aggressively dumb. ..well, the last thing you want to encounter are experts who disagree with you, and so you dismiss them in order to maintain your unreasonably high opinion of yourself.” Part of the problem, says Nichols, is that while the democratization of knowledge is great, it’s threatened by the strange insistence that every opinion has equal weight. That’s an idea, he rightly says, that has nothing to do with democracy: ”Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge. It assuredly does not mean that ’everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.’ And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.” Nichols’ perspective is an essential one if we are to begin digging ourselves out of the hole we find ourselves in. In a complex, technological world, most of us are experts at something. More importantly, being a true expert means having a healthy dose of humility. If you have really studied something and really gone deep into how it works, then you should come away knowing how much you don’t know. In a sense, that is the real definition of an expert  —   knowing the limits of one’s own knowledge. In the end, we need to become insistent on the value of knowing things and the value of recognizing when others know what we do not. If we don’t, there will be a steep price to pay for the democracy we hold so dear. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"Last May, Tash Sultana posted a   video, just her in her living room with guitar, laptop and a great song called ”Jungle.” Within five days it had drawn a million views. This      got a guitar from her grandfather when she was three, she says, and has played it every day since. It’s astonishing to watch Sultana’s fluidity on her instrument, like a natural extension of her body. (She also plays bass, saxophone, trumpet, flute and more, but kept it ”simple” at the Tiny Desk.) I thought I had a lot of energy  —   watching her bounce from guitar to drum machine to two separate microphones  —   and then hopping barefoot from looping pedal to effect pedal as she builds her songs was exhilarating and exhausting. There’s more here than an exercise in virtuosity, her music is filled with adventure and ambition. These songs are rapturous and resonant. Tash has just finished a     U. S. tour. The EP Notion is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Tash Sultana (vocals, guitar) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Bronson Arcuri Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The videos are an infamous genre unto themselves: ”Mother Punches Her Daughter Dead in the Face for Having Sex in the House!” ”Dad Whups Daughter for Dressing Like Beyonce.” ”Son Left In Bloody Mess as Father Forces Him to ’Fight. ’” Their images stream from Facebook timelines and across YouTube channels, alternately horrifying and arresting: burly fathers, angry mothers, lips curled, curses flying, hands wrapped around electrical chords, tree branches, belts, slashing down on legs, arms, buttocks and flesh as children cry and plead and scream out in agony. Tens of millions have clicked ”play,” becoming voyeurs of this new form of child punishment  —   what some observers call ” .” Rather than sticking to the   tradition of physically disciplining their children behind closed doors, parents, many of them black, buoyed by the instant gratification and viral fame that social media provides, are increasingly uploading videos of the corporal punishment they mete out on their kids, sparking intense debate on the usefulness of this particular form of public shaming. The videos’ comments threads reveal where most viewers stand on the issue: the digital whoops, hollers and   rival those heard at championship boxing matches, with a majority of commenters encouraging the beatings and applauding the parents. ”Whup that trick,” one commenter wrote. ”Beat that THOT wannabe’s ass,” said another, using the slur du jour for ”slut.” Yet another chimed in with ”Good job .. now this is a father i salute him because if my daughter was doing this id whoop her ass too.” The running theme: It’s OK to beat children, and, if the millions of views each video garners tell the story, it’s acceptable to post tapings of the beatings on social media for feedback and ”likes.” Tameka   an   licensed clinical social worker whose practice includes working with victims of family trauma, said ” ” has become a new ”community experience” that lays bare generations of trauma corporal punishment has wreaked on  . Viewers, perhaps triggered by their own abuse, repeat the cycle of abuse by hitting their children or applauding those who publicly do so, rather than acquiring the language and skills they need to deal with their own trauma. ”When you have a group of people coming from the same population and circumstances who live by the same social rules and norms that say it’s OK to beat children, you don’t talk about problems or go to therapy and get the help you need from those kinds of cathartic outlets,”   said. ”Instead, you watch these videos and collectively join in and bond over the pain.” Corporal punishment is universally accepted by a large swath of American parents a 2014 study by Child Trends, a research organization that uses data to help shape public policy on children, reveals that 65 percent of women and 76 percent of men agree or strongly agree that it is sometimes necessary to give a child a ”good hard spanking.” But when broken down by race, black parents  —   particularly black mothers  —   are far more likely to agree that kids need beatings: 81 percent of black mothers, compared with 62 percent each of Hispanic and white mothers, advocate hard spanking, while 80 percent of black fathers felt the same, compared to 76 percent and 73 percent of white and Hispanic fathers respectively. Among blacks, commiserating over corporal punishment is nothing new before social media, parents would recount in conversations at the hair salon, barbershop, church, family gatherings or more intimate phone conversations the beatings they handed out for childhood infractions.   punishment advocate Stacey Patton, author of Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America, said in the past, ”It would be, ’girl, I tore her butt up for leaving this house without asking. ’” Today, she said, digital technology, social media and   sites ”allow that conversation to become much more public and widespread. It makes parents feel more powerful.” Patton notes that in a society where black people have limited political, economic and social power, one place they can both exercise authority and strike back at stereotypes that portray black parents as irresponsible and unloving is taking ”control” of their kids. Beating children and posting it on social media, then, is just as much about performing respectability as it is punishing wrongdoing. ”Rather than striking back at oppressive systems that justify beating and shaming your kids, you beat and shame your kids. You can say, ’I’m a responsible parent. I don’t let my kids run wild. ’” In some cases, those parents are rewarded when their videos go viral. LaToya Graham was crowned ”mom of the year” after being captured on tape smacking her son upside his head, yelling at him and chasing him down the street for participating in a Baltimore protest over the police killing of Freddie Gray. The video, filmed by a local TV news station, shot past 8 million views on YouTube after it aired on television and Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts shouted out Graham, saying he wished ”there were more parents out there who took charge of their kids.” Within weeks, Graham enjoyed a media whirlwind of praise, appearing on several popular news and talk shows, getting job offers from BET, Under Armour and a local hospital, and even receiving a phone call and a $15, 000 check from Oprah. Social media amplified the significance  —   and reward  —   of Graham’s actions, which led to an uptick in   videos, said Patton. ”Her success gave validation to other parents that this was OK,” she said. But not everyone gets rewarded for such public discipline. In the case of Virginia father Tavis Sellers, boxing his son on Facebook Live as punishment for leaving class earned the dad a domestic assault and battery charge after his video went viral. In it, Sellers orders his son to put on boxing gloves and fight him the father bests the son, tossing jabs that make the boy’s nose bleed. As he continues to beat him, Sellers chides the boy, telling both him and the viewing audience that when he ”cuts up in school, this is what [he] has to deal with when [he] comes home.” By the video’s end, the boy’s white   is covered with blood his father demands he look in the camera and apologize to his teacher. Sellers was arrested a few days later. Patton, whose outspoken advocacy teaches positive,   disciplinary practices to parents of color, has even called police to report parents who’ve uploaded videos of themselves beating their children, and encouraged her more than 44, 000 Facebook followers to do the same. ”People say, ’That’s [expletive] up. Another black man in jail, another black child in foster care  —   you need to mind your business.’ I’m like, ’This person put their business in the fiber optic streets and it’s our job as human beings to protect this kid. ’” Parents, she adds, need to spend less time posting   videos and more time actually learning how to parent their children. ”What they’re beating their kids over  —   bad report cards, cutting class, sexual behavior  —   is all developmental stuff. Sit down and have a conversation with them about healthy sexual choices. All that time they spent charging their phones, setting up the cameras, explaining why they’re about to beat the mess out of their kids, filming the abuse, uploading it on YouTube, captioning it and tagging their friends, they could have Googled ’How to talk to my daughter about sex. ’” Still, some parents find great value in    —   as a deterrent for their children and a lesson for mothers and fathers parenting in the digital age. ”I would do it all over again,” says author ReShonda Tate Billingsley, who set off a storm of controversy in 2012 when she punished her daughter for posting an Instagram photo of herself holding up a bottle of Vodka and saying she wished she could drink it. Billingsley countered with a photo of her own: a picture of her crying daughter holding a sign that read, ”Since I want to take pics holding liquor, I am obviously NOT ready for social media and will be taking a hiatus until I learn what is and isn’t appropriate to post.  .” The photo, which she posted on her Facebook page, was shared more than 10, 000 times hours after it went public. ”It resonated with her and to this day, she still thinks about that. They live on social media and that’s always in the back of her mind,” says Billingsley, adding that the picture inspired parents to pay attention to what their children post on social media. Still, the mom of three believes that beating children on camera goes ”way too far.” These days, parents, she said, ”are doing it for likes and shares.” Patton plans to lobby for legislation that would make it a crime to post videos and pictures of children getting beaten  —   and adds that she believes the only reason it hasn’t been introduced and passed already is because the videos predominately feature black children. ”This is a country that’s become numb to the destruction of black bodies. Whether it’s Toya Graham beating her son, or Tamir Rice being shot by cops, it’s OK  —   we’ve become accustomed to watching it. If these were white children in these degrading videos, something would have been done a long time ago.”   thinks a bit differently about this. ”Parents will continue to beat their children and there should be consequences for that,” she says quietly. ”But if we shut it down, it takes our attention off of it and we forget about those children. At least now, the videos stimulate dialogue and conversation and action because it’s in your face.” Denene Millner is a New York Times   author and a parenting expert, whose latest book is My Brown Baby: On the Joys and Challenges Of Raising African American Children. Follow her @MyBrownBaby."
"Updated: 10:31 a. m. President Trump made the biggest move of his presidency so far Thursday night  —   he struck Syrian military targets after an apparent chemical weapons attack allegedly ordered by Syria’s Bashar Assad against his own people. Trump  —   who said it was in the ”vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons”  —   can use this politically to paint himself as a strong leader who will act decisively. The move also came at a low point in his presidency, which has been marred lately by infighting in his White House and a lack of action on his domestic agenda. Between this Syria action, which his team is painting as a leadership moment, and the Senate’s confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Trump hopes to get his presidency on track. But the strike leaves more questions than answers, like how does it square with Trump’s ”America First” policy does this mean a change in approach toward Syria and Russia and, most importantly, what’s next? Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are supporting the decision, even if with reservations on the Democratic side. As it is, the legal justification for the bombing is murky  —   as are all unilateral military actions by an American president without congressional approval. And, any wider effort would seem to demand action from Congress. We asked NPR reporters, from the political team to the international desk, to explore those and some other key questions below: 1. Is this a   or is there more to come and what would that mean? Tom Bowman, NPR Pentagon correspondent: There’s no indication of further action. It was a narrowly focused mission. Sen. John McCain,  . is advocating for taking out the entire Syrian air force, but there’s no indication the Trump administration will do that. The White House is likely to forge ahead with trying to defeat ISIS as the focus in Syria  —   with the help of the Turkish arm of the Kurds. The political solution that has been talked about is turning Syria into a confederated state, split into various parts only partially governed by Assad. This action is a   kind of thing for Trump. Blow away aircraft you don’t kill any Russians, and that’s it. It’s good optics, like the Carrier deal. But there’s a big question here. Trump saw those pictures of children suffering and killed from the attack, and everyone was obviously disgusted. But if you’re someone in Syria, you might be asking, you got really upset over roughly 80 people being killed, but if they hit me with a conventional bomb, that’s OK? Thousands have already been killed and millions displaced. 2. Does this limited bombing then change Assad’s actions? Michelle Kelemen, State Department correspondent: That’s a hard one to answer since he has crossed so many red lines without facing any consequences. Remember, President Obama threatened action if Assad used chemical weapons. Chemical weapons were used, and Obama ultimately didn’t act militarily. Trump said this attack was ”beyond a red line.” But, as Will Dobson, NPR’s senior supervising editor for the International Desk points out, what if this was a provocation from Assad? Bassma Kodmani, a Syrian opposition negotiator and former spokesperson for the Syrian National Council, in fact, told Kelemen in a story that aired Wednesday that the apparent use of chemical weapons by Assad was exactly that  —   a ”provocation and a test.” On whether this will change Assad’s actions, Dobson says ask the Russians. Whether or not it changes Assad’s action may be determined by Moscow, who will be asked to rein him in and are best positioned to do so. 3. Speaking of the Russians, they have been harshly critical of this move by the United States. What does their response mean and are there potential ramifications for the relationship with Moscow?  Lucian Kim, NPR Moscow correspondent: The Russians cutting off the ”deconfliction” line is pretty serious. (The U. S. and Russia set up a line between the Pentagon and Moscow to make sure they get out of each other’s way in Syria, to alert the other if they will be operating on turf where the other country is.) Moscow viewed it as an accomplishment when they got it. It put them on a level with the Pentagon, where they were talking. It was a big shift. At the beginning of Russia’s getting involved there, even to have     with the U. S. was a prize. But now they cut that off. Their response was quite tough. What does it mean? The rhetorical   is officially over. Their response was really fast. They had a statement up at 9 a. m. in five different languages. They never act that fast. They’re really, really, really upset. They had such high hopes when Trump was elected. 4. Secretary of State Tillerson is slated to go to Moscow next week. He’s someone who got a medal of ”friendship” from Russian President Putin, but is now talking tough about Russia’s role in all this. How much pressure is he facing and can he prove his mettle on this upcoming trip? Kelemen: Already, U. S. officials said that the chemical weapons attack was going to ”cloud” Tillerson’s discussions. He was going to explore the possibility of cooperating with Russia in the fight against ISIS. Now, the Russians have cut off the ”deconfliction” talks with the U. S. There was already something of a showdown at the United Nations Friday. U. N. Ambassador Nikki Haley called the bombing a ”measured step” but warned that the U. S. is ”prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary.” Syria’s ambassador said it ”strongly condemns the act of aggression,” and Russia’s ambassador called on the U. S. ”to immediately cease its aggression” and instead to join efforts to find a political settlement in Syria and combat terrorism. Russia, which as Kim notes, had high hopes for the U. S. relationship, is in a bind. Dobson points out that Russia was not only upset with the U. S. but with Assad for carrying out the apparent chemical weapons attack. 5. Given the tensions, was it the right thing to tell the Russians beforehand?  Kelemen: The U. S. had to let the Russians know because there were apparently some Russian service members there. One of the arguments in the past for not striking Syria was that it would draw the U. S. into direct conflict with Russia. Dobson: Yes, agree with Michele. Russian troops are intermingled with Syrian troops. It was essential to warn the Russians or risk escalating the strike into a wider conflict. Plus, if you want Moscow to assist in any way, you must give them this notice. Shortly before the strike, Putin’s spokesman said that Russia’s support for Assad wasn’t ”unconditional.” 6. How does this change Trump’s calculus going forward?  This is a key question, because being interventionist runs counter to much of how Trump campaigned. Not only did he say in 2013 that Obama should not attack Syria, but he said of Hillary Clinton in a statement on his website during the 2016 campaign: ”We’re spending $6 trillion dollars on wars in the Middle East, while our own country falls into total disrepair. Now Hillary wants to start a shooting war in Syria, in conflict with a   Russia, which could lead to World War 3. As her own team has said in WikiLeaks emails, she has ’terrible’ instincts.” On Thursday night, Clinton called for bombing the airfields from where the chemical attacks were allegedly launched. And that’s exactly what Trump authorized. Tamara Keith, NPR White House correspondent: It’s unclear how this will affect Trump’s calculus. His ideology was not only more isolationist on the campaign trail, but as recently as Tuesday of this week, he told the Building Trades Unions National Legislative Conference: ”We enriched foreign countries at the expense of our own country, the great United States of America. But those days are over. I’m not  —   and I don’t want to be  —   the president of the world. I’m the president of the United States. And from now on, it’s going to be America First.” Mary Louise Kelly, NPR national security correspondent, makes a similar point: How do you square Thursday night’s action with Trump’s unilateralist, ”America First” doctrine? This was a line from his big address to Congress on Feb. 28: ”America must put its own citizens first, because only then can we truly make America great again.” Clearly, Trump, though, was affected by the pictures that were sprawled across cable news. Kelemen: Tillerson’s argument was that if the U. S. didn’t act, it would normalize the use of chemical weapons. One big, open question that NPR’s national security correspondent David Welna asks is why the U. S. did not enlist any other allies in this strike. Trump spoke to European allies who backed the action, but Britain, for example, ”said it would not participate if asked,” the Washington Post reported. What about Trump’s refugee ban? Does this change anything with that? No. As NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley points out, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters before the strike that the president supports the creation of ”safe zones” inside Syria. ”Every country’s No. 1 priority is to its own people and the protection of them,” Spicer said. ”We’ve got to do what we can to make sure that as we seek to root out ISIS and terrorism throughout the country  —   throughout the world, rather, that we don’t, at the same time, do things that would bring those same threats to our country.” Spicer didn’t respond to an email following up after the strike if Trump’s view has changed at all. 7. Stepping back, was this lawful? Even if it was a   what is the justification for it?  On the whole, Democrats and Republicans supported Trump’s move. But almost everyone in Congress said Trump would have to go to Congress for approval of wider action. And, as NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis said on the NPR podcast Up First, Trump would almost certainly want to get that approval from Congress since it has to appropriate funds. ”Assad’s use of chemical weapons to slaughter civilians was a heinous crime as well as a violation of international norms and Syria’s commitments to give up chemical weapons,” Sen. Mark Warner,  . said in a statement Friday. ”It could not go unpunished.” Davis: Sen. Marco Rubio,  . said on Good Morning America Friday morning that the president had the legal authority within the 2014 deal struck with Russia to rid Syria of chemical weapons. ”He was dealing with exigent circumstances, and as the commander in chief, not only does he have the right, he has an obligation to act,” Rubio said. He also said on CNN and Fox that American personnel in the region could have been at risk. But Bowman points out that U. S. troops are not anywhere near that area they’re many miles away, just north of Raqqa, where there are Marines, Green Berets and Army Rangers. Bowman: The legal rationale is the    concept used in Libya and the Balkans. Essentially, that says, if a country sees genocide or slaughter, it should do what’s necessary to protect innocent civilians. But an international body is supposed to approve. The U. N. Security Council signed off in Libya and NATO signed off in the Balkans. NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson: Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard professor and former George W. Bush lawyer, outlined some of the technicalities and legal language on the Lawfare blog. But the bottom line is this key paragraph: ”I can imagine the smile on Trump administration officials’ faces when they figured out that they would both enforce a red line that Obama wouldn’t and rely on Obama administration legal thinking to provide cover for doing so.” Asked for what legal guidance it had given the White House or what the president is relying on, the Justice Department didn’t divulge any information. ”The Department of Justice generally does not comment on what advice the Office of Legal Counsel may or may not have given to its clients,” Ian D. Prior, principal deputy director of public affairs, told Johnson. 8. Perhaps most importantly, does this action by Trump change the prospects for peace? Kelemen: The opposition negotiators certainly hope so. They’ve been calling for this for a long time. Kodmani, for example, suggested that the Trump administration strike the base from which Syria launched the chemical attack. ”A strike against one military target, maybe that airport from which that aircraft took off to go and bomb and spread chemical weapons,” Kodmani said, ”I think that might be one way of saying this cannot continue.” Dobson: Unlikely  —   especially if there is no   or it remains a limited action with symbolic value. Reporting from Syria, NPR’s Alison Meuse found a mixed reaction to the strikes. She spoke with one woman who said ”our feelings today are mixed between happiness and sadness.” A man who lives a few miles outside the town that produced the most graphic images, said the imam of a local mosque said the strikes ”were a joke,” intended ”just to save face. They were strikes that were not fruitful  —   because today, Russia is still killing [Syrian] civilians.” Russia, along with the Syrian military, is operating in the country and carrying out airstrikes daily. Note: Some other key, unanswerable questions to ponder, as NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence raises:   happens with the next strike against civilians with conventional weapons like crude barrel bombs?   Trump’s strike weaken Assad? Does weakening Assad prolong the civil war?   this help relations with Turkey and Sunni Arab states? How does this affect the Turkish stance toward the U. S. alliance with Kurdish fighters in Syria?   there expected blowback from Iran or Hezbollah, for example, through Shi’ite militias near U. S. troops in Mosul, Iraq?"
"A new study raises a novel idea about what might trigger celiac disease, a condition that makes patients unable to tolerate foods containing gluten. The study suggests that a common virus may be to blame. For people with celiac disease, gluten can wreak havoc on their digestive systems. Their immune systems mistake gluten as a dangerous substance. Scientists have known for a while that genetics predisposes some people to celiac. About 30 percent of Americans carry the genes that make them more susceptible to the disease. And yet, only about one percent of Americans have celiac. Researchers wondered why not everyone with the risk genes gets the disease. The answer is likely complicated, but one theory has emerged. Perhaps a ”viral infection can serve as a trigger to celiac,” explains Dr. Terence Dermody, who chairs the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh, and is an author of the new study published in Science. He and a team of collaborators, led by Bana Jabri of the University of Chicago, decided to test this in experimental mice. They had been studying reovirus  —   a common virus that infects most Americans beginning in childhood, yet isn’t considered dangerous. The researchers genetically engineered the mice to be more susceptible to celiac disease. Then they exposed mice to reovirus.  At the same time they also fed gluten to the mice. It turns out their hunch had been right. The mice developed ”an immunological response against gluten that mimics the features of humans with celiac disease,” Dermody says. The symptoms of celiac disease include diarrhea and other signs of gastrointestinal distress. ”It’s all about the timing,” Dermody says. The idea is that when the virus and gluten are introduced at the same time, the immune system mistakes the   food as dangerous. But could this be true in humans too? The second phase of the new study suggests an answer. Dermody and his collaborators analyzed the antibody levels to various viruses in a group of people. They found people who have celiac disease have   to   higher levels of   antibodies. ”It’s a clue that people who have celiac may have been exposed to reovirus before the development of their disease,” Dermody says. But, he stresses that ”it’s just a clue.” It will take a long time to figure out if there’s a causal link between reovirus infections and the onset of celiac disease. Dermody envisions a study involving thousands of children who would be followed for several years. For now, he and his collaborators have some grant funds from the National Institutes of Health to continue their research. The upside of understanding this possible connection is significant, explains Dr. Bana Jabri, of the University of Chicago, who is a   of the new study. If it’s true that the virus can trigger celiac disease, then young children who carry the risk genes for celiac could be vaccinated against Reovirus. ”It may be useful to start thinking about vaccinating people who are at a high risk of celiac disease against [these] types of viruses,” she says. Links between viral infection and the development of   disorders such as celiac disease have been proposed before, ”but this is the first tractable experimental model to tackle this question,” says Julie Pfeiffer, an Associate Professor of Microbiology at University of Texas Southwestern, who has followed the research, but is not involved in the new study. Given the interest and the findings, ”more studies in humans are warranted,” she says. As awareness of celiac disease has grown, so too has the number of people experimenting with   diets due to concerns about gluten sensitivities. This is evident from the growth in   food sales and most recently, the introduction of   dining halls on two college campuses."
"Last fall, the New   reproductive endocrinologist John Zhang made headlines when he reported the birth of a ” ” baby  —   a healthy boy carrying the blended DNA of the birth mother, her husband and an unrelated female donor. The technique, called mitochondrial replacement therapy, allowed the    mother to bypass a defect in her own genome that had led, twice before, to children born with Leigh syndrome, a devastating neurological disorder that typically culminates in death before age 3. While heralded in many circles as a breakthrough, the news triggered numerous ethical and scientific questions, many of which remained unanswered at the time. Last week, Zhang and his colleagues at the New Hope Fertility Center provided some answers  —   and raised yet more concerns. Their new report, published in the journal Reproductive BioMedicine Online, describes both the technique and the participants in greater detail, something that fellow researchers had demanded in order to properly scrutinize Zhang’s methodology. But in publishing the new material, the journal editors themselves also noted that Zhang’s report still contains ”weaknesses and limitations in a number of areas,” including lingering questions about informed consent, the full risks of mitochondrial replacement therapy and the   health of the child. ”Although we were able to encourage the authors to include more details of their work in the submission,” journal editor and clinical embryologist Mina Alikani noted in an accompanying editorial   with her colleagues, ”some uncertainties concerning methodologies and results still remain.” In a statement provided by the New Hope facility, Zhang conceded that more work needs to be done. ”There is always concern about any new procedure and innovation implemented on humans,” Zhang said. ”We agree that there are still a lot of unknowns about this technique and will make every effort to monitor the boy’s ongoing progress and test for any adverse outcomes.” A key weakness in Zhang’s work, according to critics, is that the procedure is not approved in the United States, which forced the team to undertake the procedure in Mexico. ”This particular experiment is being done almost entirely outside the normal regulatory structure,” says bioethicist and pediatrician Jeffrey Botkin of the University of Utah, who participated in an Institute of Medicine committee last year that issued a call for more animal research on mitochondrial replacement therapy. Without proper oversight, Botkin says, vital questions about the technique, as well as the impact of such experiments on resulting embryos, remain difficult to answer. As it stands, Congress last year prohibited the Food and Drug Administration from considering applications for research in this area, but in December the U. K.’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority agreed to let clinics apply to try the procedure on a    basis. In March, it granted a license to carry out the first procedure to Doug Turnbull, director of the Wellcome Trust Center for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University. ”We’re going to look to those in Britain,” Botkin says, ”to do careful trials and help us better understand how this technique works.” Before this technique, which replaces the entire mitochondrial genome with a donor genome, some children were born using a different concept called cytoplasmic transfer. Pioneered in the late 1990s by Jacques Cohen and colleagues at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N. J. it transferred a small portion of a donor egg’s cytoplasm, which might include some mitochondria, into a donor egg along with sperm. It was used to treat infertility and had both successes and failures before it was abandoned in 2001. One might view it as paving the way for a far more rigorous gene exchange technique. In broadest terms, Zhang and his colleagues lifted the nucleus out of the egg of the original mother, leaving behind most  —   though not all  —   of her defective mitochondria, which would have led to the almost certain development of Leigh syndrome in the fetus. They then placed that nucleus inside a healthy donor woman’s egg, whose own nucleus had been removed. The result was a hybrid egg with the original mother’s nuclear genes and the donor mother’s cytoplasm and mitochondria. The hybrid egg was fertilized by the father’s sperm and implanted in the birth mother. The technique could potentially prevent a wide range of mitochondrial diseases, ranging from hereditary blindness to progressive muscle wasting. A key problem, however, is that not all of the defective mitochondria can be eliminated. The boy, Zhang reports in the new paper, currently carries between 2. 36 and 9. 23 percent of potentially defective DNA, according to sampling of his urine, hair follicles and circumcised foreskin. ”That’s not surprising,” says Doug Wallace, head of the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who was not involved in the study. ”As far as I know, very few cases have been found where there is absolutely no carryover of mitochondria from the donor nucleus.” Even at a 9 percent load of defective DNA, Wallace said, most people with Leigh Syndrome will appear normal. He added that while it is unlikely, levels could be higher in the boy’s other tissues, such as the brain or heart. Zhang and his team report that physical examination of the boy has included detailed neurological investigation at regular waypoints, including at two weeks, four weeks, two months, three months and four months. All have proved normal, Zhang said, and the boy is still under close monitoring with ”a     plan.” Just what such a   plan might look like, however, is uncertain  —   particularly given that the parents have publicly said that they do not plan to have the boy regularly tested throughout his life to monitor levels of the errant DNA. University of California molecular biologist Patrick O’Farrell, who was not involved in the Zhang study, suggested that this was worrying, given that there could a rising load of mutations as the boy ages. In this case, a total five eggs underwent the transfer and were fertilized, Zhang and his team reported. The embryo that was ultimately implanted carried about a 5 percent load of the defective DNA, but the researchers did not examine how much defective DNA was carried over in the embryos that were not used. The remaining fertilized eggs are still available, says Zhang, but he has not tested them to see how much defective DNA each contains. Should the parents decide they’d like to have another baby, Zhang said he would test the others. Still, without readily accessible data on the transfer of defective DNA in all of the fertilized eggs, O’Farrell argues that important insights are being overlooked. A   baby, he said, offers the rare chance to study the ”segregation and transmission of mitochondrial genomes.” In a telephone interview, Zhang emphasized that analyses are ongoing. ”This is new ground, so there are many questions to ask and more studies to come,” Zhang said. ”With new tests in new studies, we will continue to learn more.”  For all of the lingering questions, Zhang’s groundbreaking research has sparked a flurry of similar research elsewhere. The editors of the journal carrying his new report credit Zhang with helping to nudge ”cautious use” of mitochondrial replacement therapy in the U. K. Meanwhile, the fertility specialist Valery Zukin has used the   technique in the Ukraine to help two infertile women who suffer from a syndrome known as embryo arrest, where their fertilized eggs stop growing before they can be implanted in the uterus. Both women gave birth to apparently healthy babies this year. Such news will surely be welcomed by desperate parents looking for new ways to conceive, but experts like O’Farrell continue to worry that the procedure is being deployed too quickly, and with too many question unanswered. ”I feel like extending this work into infertility cases is dangerous,” O’Farrell says. ”For every gene that compromises fertility, we need to know whether it also is going to affect later aspects of development. ”If you only rescue fertility,” he adds, ”the other defects that gene might cause will still be there.” Jill Neimark is an   science journalist and an author of adult and children’s books. Her most recent book is The Hugging Tree: A Story About Resilience. A version of this article originally appeared at Undark, a digital science magazine published by the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program at MIT. "
"As we head toward Tax Day, we’ve got student debt and state education plans on our minds in another edition of the NPR Ed Team’s weekly roundup. Student debtWe reported at the start of the week that the total balance of student loan debt has nearly tripled in the past decade to $1. 3 trillion. That growth is happening in several ways. More people are borrowing. They’re also borrowing more money. And repayment has slowed down. That’s all according to a new analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The analysis also showed that student loans reduce a borrower’s likelihood of owning a home. In other student debt news, the Education Department suggested in a court filing that some nonprofit and public sector workers who signed up to have their loans erased after a decade of public service and   payments may not be approved for the program after all. Public Service Loan Forgiveness started in 2007 the first participants were set to have their loans forgiven this coming fall. ”The retroactive aspect of this filing reasonably causes people to be nervous,” Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, told NPR Ed. He was also a deputy undersecretary in the Obama Education Department, where Shireman was responsible for overseeing the program during its early years. And, a few notices about debt collectors. ..  The Trump administration decided to give four   collectors a second chance. Pioneer Credit Recovery, Enterprise Recovery Systems, National Recoveries and Coast Professional are all ”servicers”  —   middlemen that collect student loans on behalf of the federal government. In 2015, the Obama administration ended their contracts, accusing them of misinforming borrowers who were trying to get out of default. The companies sued. According to a court filing reported this week by Politico, the Education Department now intends to reverse course and consider giving these servicers new business as soon as the lawsuit is resolved. By the way, Pioneer is owned by Navient, the nation’s largest servicer of federal and private student loans. In January, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed its own lawsuit against Navient, alleging that it ”illegally cheated borrowers” out of their rights and their money  —   as much as $4 billion  —   through patterns of deception and misapplying payments. Navient has denied wrongdoing, calling the suit ”unsubstantiated, unjustified and politically driven.” In a motion to dismiss the case, obtained by Bloomberg, Navient argued, ”there is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer.” ”That’s appalling,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  . in a Facebook post. ”The federal government paid this company more than $100 million last year to help borrowers manage their student loans, yet this company doesn’t believe it should try to act in the best interest of students? Then why the heck is the Education Department still paying them? !” State education plans arrive, It’s been more than a year since Congress passed the big, federal education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA, and earlier this week, we got our first glimpse of how some states have responded to its most important requirements. Monday, April 3 was the earliest deadline for states to submit their new ESSA plans. This comes not long after Congress voted to scrap   regulations that clarified and toughened some of the law’s key demands. The plans must include   goals for student achievement and the benchmarks they’ll use to measure success or failure. Illinois, for example, is giving itself 15 years to meet a handful of big goals, including at least 90 percent of   students ”reading at or above grade level” and, at the other end of the age continuum, 90 percent or more of students graduating from high school ”ready for college and career.” Compared to the previous law, ESSA also gives states freedom to define school quality using more than just test scores. That can include factors like attendance and access to arts, science and physical education. For more, here’s a handy Education Week breakdown of some of the ideas states have turned in so far. One more thorny issue states have to resolve in their ESSA plans: how to rate schools and explain those ratings to parents and politicians. Most of the early filers are using some form of   or   system, from the familiar   model (Tennessee) to Vermont’s   bull’s eye scheme, with green schools hitting the mark and red schools ” .”"
"It’s a Wednesday at Fantom Comics in Washington, D. C. and the store is bustling. Every Wednesday is New Comics Day  —   when subscribers come in to pick up the week’s new titles, check in with each other, and talk comics. This Wednesday is no different. Well. It’s a little different. I’m used to   chatter that revolves around things like which new books are worth checking out, what storylines have gone one way too long, and which hero could kick which other hero’s butt. Generally speaking, the word demographics doesn’t crop up as much as it does today. ”We live in 2017,” customer Erin Lisette tells me, ”in a day and age where there are so many different demographics reading these comics, and most importantly, children! And it’s like, GUYS. Maybe this was okay in the ’30s, ’40s, maybe even ’50s, but come on: there are these kids with brown skin and different textured hair and all these different features reading these books and they never see themselves represented as the good guy. And that sucks.” She’s reacting to remarks made to the website ICv2 last week by Marvel Comics’ VP of Sales, David Gabriel. He gave an interview about some of the feedback he had heard at a sales summit with the country’s top comics shop owners and managers. ”What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity,” he said. ”They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales.” He later clarified that even though some of those retailers weren’t happy with recent Marvel decisions (decisions which include making Iron Man a young black woman  —   long story) the company’s commitment to their increasingly diverse roster of heroes remained firm. Controversy, It didn’t much matter that only two of the retailers who attended the summit expressed misgivings about books featuring women and people of color, while the rest maintained that those books were selling well in their shops. The damage was done. The many, many headlines that followed  —   ”Marvel Blames Diversity For Sales Slump,” fueled a lot of online disbelief and outrage and thinkpieces offering alternative explanations for why Marvel’s titles might be selling less. Fantom’s    Leah Ly, wonders if Marvel’s recent strategy of big crossover events  —     that require readers to buy many different titles  —   might have some customers shying away. ”Marvel’s in a bit of event fatigue right now,” she says, ”because they’ve had two years of events, and people are a little tired.” Other potential reasons for a recent Marvel’s sales slump? Cover price (especially compared to DC, whose ”Rebirth” relaunch featured reduced prices across their entire line, at least at first) and the fact that some of their top writers and artists are making the jump to independent publishers, where they can own the characters and the stories they tell. New readers, But Ly is quick to point out that any readers and retailers who reject diversity aren’t the whole story. There’s a new comics readership coming in  —   she sees them every day  —   readers who are eager for different kinds of heroes. Readers like Lisa Fumia, visiting Fantom from Tulsa, Okla. ”I’m a mixed woman,” Fumia tells me, ”so I would like to see more people color, and more people who look like me, or that I can at least somewhat identify with. I think that’s important.” So even if it’s true that a core cohort of longtime readers prefer to stick to the old, male, white heroes, industry surveys show that the fastest growing demographic  —   there’s that word again  —   of comics readers are women aged  . And Fantom’s Ly says that means that readers who reject diversity are gonna have to get used to a new normal. ”They’re such a vocal minority at this point,” she says, ”because they’ve had everything to themselves for so long, and now they kind of have to share it  —   and they don’t want to.” Slump? But let’s back up  —   is there any evidence that diversity is depressing sales? John Jackson Miller is an author of books and comic books, and he maintains comichron. com, a website that exhaustively(!) tracks comic book sales. He doesn’t see much evidence of Marvel sales slump, because, he says, the numbers people are pointing to  —   the    sales of individual issues, sold at comics shops  —   don’t begin to tell the whole picture. One of the issues is just how many moving parts there are in the comics market. There are more ways for people to get comics than ever before: comics shops, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, indie bookstores and, just over the last few years, via digital download. Each of these channels reaches different readers, and have vastly different sales trends. So if some comic shops retailers and customers reject characters like Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, and Black Panther, comic book shops aren’t the whole story. ”I don’t see much evidence of a sales slump at all,” Millers says. ”In fact, the comics industry has seen its best stretch it’s seen in many decades over these last five years  —   we’ve seen five consecutive years of growth in the comics shop market.” Miller is a hard data guy, who’s only too happy to track how something concrete, like cover price changes or   books, affect sales. But when it comes to something as subjective and squishy as ”diversity,” he thinks trying to document a measurable sales impact is a fool’s errand. ”I have always discouraged people from looking too closely at the [  ] numbers,” he says. ”The comic shop market only represents a certain portion of what’s out there. The sales on a particular title or titles are not the whole picture at all.” And Fantom’s Ly stresses that different comics shop have different buying habits to reflect their different communities. Last year, when Marvel’s Black Panther #1 came out, it was a sales phenomenon at Fantom, which ordered 300 copies and sold out in hours. But she heard from stores in the Midwest that ordered far fewer, and never sold them. Even the term ”sales slump” demands context. If you’re comparing the past few months to the last couple years, when Marvel got the publishing rights to Star Wars titles again (which was itself responsible for a $35 million sales bump) and Black Panther, written by   Coates with art by Brian Stelfreeze, became the phenomenon it did, anything would look like a slump. ”I don’t think it’s really possible” Coates tells me he’d heard about the controversy over Gabriel’s remarks, and doesn’t think it was fair. ”All [Gabriel] was saying was that he’d heard from retailers who heard from people who said they didn’t want diversity,” he says. ”That might sound shocking to the outside world, but I’ve spent enough time in the world of comic book nerddom to know that it did happen. That’s a separate question from whether it’s responsible for any sort of sales slump.” For Coates, what matters is how much comics readership is changing. ”When I go out to talk about my book Between the World and Me, or something I wrote for The Atlantic, and I mention Black Panther, there are cheers,” he says. ”The Black Panther movie is probably the most anticipated movie of 2018. There’s a black   a female Thor, a black Captain America, and when I was a kid, you did not have this diverse group of heroes in the public consciousness.” Don’t worry about what executives say, he says. Look to what they put on the stands. ”Just this week Marvel published a comic starring a hero who’s a lesbian Latina,” he says, referring to America #2, starring America Chavez. ”That was inconceivable 20, 30 years ago. And [Marvel] is not in the business of charity . .. they must actually make a calculation that there’s probably people who’d buy that.” As for what comes next, Coates, at least, is confident that, given the shifting demographics of the readership, comics only move forward. ”That’s the key question,” he says. ”Iis there going to be a rollback of diversity? At this point, I don’t think it’s really possible.”"
"Anais Martinez is on the hunt in Mexico City’s Merced Market, a sprawling covered bazaar brimming with delicacies. ”So this is the   tamale!” she says with delight, as if she’d just found a fine mushroom specimen deep in a forest. The prized tamales are wrapped in corn husks and piled next to a bubbling cauldron of oil. ”It’s just like a corn dough patty mixed with lard, put in a corn husk or banana leaf, steamed and then deep fried,” says Martinez of this traditional Mexican breakfast. ”And then after you fry it, you can put it inside a bun and make a torta [sandwich] out of it. So it’s just like carbs and carbs and fat and fat. But it’s actually really good.” And it only costs 10 pesos  —   roughly 50 cents. Martinez is a designer in Mexico City. She studied gastronomy here and now moonlights for a company called Eat Mexico giving street food tours. Deeper in the market there’s an area packed with taco stalls. Customers stand at the counters or sit on wobbly plastic stools. The young cooks fry, flip and chop various meats into tortillas. They pound strips of flank steak out on wooden cutting boards. Piles of red chorizo sausage simmer in shallow pools of oil. Yellow slabs of tripe hang from meat hooks. We’ve just come to one of Martinez’s favorite taco stands. Its specialty is pork tacos served with french fried potatoes piled on top. ”The pork is really thinly sliced, rubbed with chiles and spices and then they fry it,” Martinez says as the meat sizzles on a long steel griddle in front of her. ”Also, really good.” Rich, fatty street food like this is available all over Mexico  —   at bus stops, at schools and on street corners. And it’s affordable to the masses. A heaping plate of Martinez’s favorite pork tacos costs less than a dollar. All that cheap food  —   in a country where incomes are rising  —   is contributing to Mexico’s massive diabetes epidemic. Diabetes is now the leading cause of death in Mexico according to the World Health Organization. The disease takes an estimated 80, 000 lives each year. Nearly 14 percent of adults in this country of 120 million suffer from the disease  —   one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. And it’s all happened over the last few decades. For roughly $2 a day, people in Mexico can now afford a diet heavy in carbohydrates, sugar and fat that delivers way more calories than the WHO’s recommended daily intake of 2, 000. A study in 2015 showed Mexico to be the leading consumer of junk food in Latin America, consuming 450 pounds of ultraprocessed foods and sugary beverages per person each year. Until just recently Mexico was the largest per capita consumer of soda in the world, chugging down 36 gallons of sugary drinks per person per year. That dubious distinction now falls to Argentina, with the U. S. and Chile not far behind. Excessive body fat is one of the main contributors to the onset of Type 2 diabetes. And obesity rates have been climbing steadily in Mexico. It’s now one of the world’s most overweight countries, coming in just behind the United States. Mexican health officials are well aware of the crisis. Late last year, the health minister declared diabetes and obesity to be public health emergencies  —   the first time they’d made such a declaration that wasn’t targeting an infectious disease. ”Diabetes is one of the biggest problems in the health system in Mexico,” says Dr. Carlos Aguilar Salinas at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition in Mexico City. ”It’s the first cause of death. It’s the first cause of disability. It’s the main cost for the health system.” Treating a patient with a severe case of diabetes in Mexico, he says, can cost upward of $40, 000 a year. But the bigger problem, Aguilar says, is that the Mexican health system isn’t prepared to treat the sheer number of diabetes patients with serious medical complications who show up in its clinics every day. ”The Mexican health system is very efficient to treat infectious disease,” he says. But chronic disorders like diabetes, which require lifelong attention and medical monitoring, call for a different skill set from doctors. And Mexico’s health system is still adjusting to this shift toward treating chronic disease. Recognizing how daunting it is to treat diabetes, Mexican officials are trying to prevent it in the next generation. In 2014 the country slapped a controversial 5 cents per liter tax on soda. New rules bar advertisements for high calorie junk food aimed at children. Public service announcements encourage people to exercise more. And there’s a major push to restrict the sale of soda and junk food in schools. The head of the World Health Organization’s office in Mexico, Dr. Gerry Eijkemans, says diabetes is a huge challenge to health care systems throughout Latin America. ”Diabetes used to be a disease of the rich,” she says. ”In Western Europe and the U. S. it was really the people who had the money who were obese, and now it’s actually the opposite.” This is forcing already overstretched public health systems in Latin America to devote more resources to this complex disease. ”In order to prevent an infectious disease, you reduce the mosquitoes and basically you’re done,” Eijkemans says. ”Not that it’s easy, but it’s much easier than changing a lifestyle, changing the way a society is basically organized [to encourage] people to consume unhealthy food with lots of fat and sugar.” An article earlier this year in the medical journal The Lancet warned: ”Rising levels of increasingly severe obesity mean that, worldwide, populations are on the brink of a catastrophic epidemic of diabetes.” In Latin America, Mexico isn’t on the brink of that epidemic, it’s already there."
"In the early 1980s, Niki Novak’s sister bit into a cake shaped like a man’s, um, member. It was disgusting. It wasn’t the idea of the cake she found distasteful, mind you, but its actual flavor. When Novak heard about the incident from her sister, she wondered: Why couldn’t you make risqué cakes that tasted good, too? Thus was born Sweet n’ Nasty, a Boston bakery that specializes in confections shaped like boobs, butts and vaginas, as well as an alarming array of penises. While bachelorette parties are a natural source of business, you’d be surprised by how many other events the bakery has catered over the past 35 years. Think birthdays, divorces, vasectomies, breast implants, job changes, prison releases, military deployments and even some bachelor parties. (”May your genitalia never fail ya. ”) And then there are the funerals. ” ’Asses to asses, dust to dust,’ ” Novak says. ”People just want it for their last  ”  —   a final laugh. (In at least one case, she says, the cake was a final request from the deceased.) Bakeries that make   cakes usually advertise them under a separate adult or erotic section of their websites. But Sweet n’ Nasty is hardly the only bakery to exclusively hustle these types of treats. Kim Say says she hadn’t thought about making adult treats until around 2010, when someone asked her to make a cake with boobs on it. When Say realized that the customer was asking because the owner of the only adult bakery in Houston had died, she decided to start a new one, Adult Cakes by Kim. For Say, ”adult” doesn’t always mean ”sexual.” Some of her cakes are infused with alcohol, or deal with the themes of adult life. ”I have an entire selection of divorce cakes,” she says, noting that she can design these cakes to address specific marital problems. For a woman who was divorcing a musician who had been cheating on her, ”I got a bunch of [little plastic] guitars and then I broke them in half and I threw them all over the cake,” she says. One of Say’s customers is a lawyer who usually buys five or six divorce cakes per year to give to his clients.   Say also receives orders for breast cancer survivors. She has made   corset cakes to mark mastectomies and catered many ”nipple parties” for women who have had nipple reconstruction surgery. You can order anything you want for these parties, including cupcakes that just look like huge nipples. But there is one line neither baker will cross: tiered wedding cakes. Novak says they come with too much   drama. Over the years, Novak’s bakery has received some celebrity attention. One time, when the singer Cher was signing autographs at Tower Records, a Sweet n’ Nasty employee ran over to present her with a penis pop. Cher, as Novak tells it, ”was all over it.” Novak says that her bakery is all about making people laugh while giving them something good to eat. But given the nature of her work, Novak sometimes hears customers worry about what Grandma will think when they’re picking up the cake. She says that if she hears back from those customers, ”usually Grandma is the one that thinks it’s the most fun. She’s been around the longest.” In fact, before a recent hip surgery, Novak’s    mother worked at Sweet n’ Nasty on Sundays. ”She loves it,” Novak says. ”My mother has a wonderful sense of humor. I think that’s where I get it.” Becky Little is a writer in Washington, D. C. Follow her on Twitter."
"When Maureen Hargrave, a    American who lives in San Diego, wrote an email to the chateau of Versailles in January, she wasn’t sure she would hear back. ”I went to the Versailles website,” she says, ”and pulled down the link, and just wrote, ’On December 16th, 1944, [Pearlie] Hargrave, my aunt, married Michael McKeogh, Eisenhower’s aide de camp. She was Eisenhower’s driver, and they were married in Marie Antoinette’s chapel. Can I come see it, please?’ ” Hargrave is referring to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War. And Marie Antoinette, of course, was the last queen of France  —   the     wife of France’s 18th century monarch, Louis XVI. Hargrave’s email was forwarded to Versailles archivist Karine McGrath, who responded immediately. ”I thought, this is incredible,” says McGrath. ”It’s a lovely story and a historical story and so I wrote her back, saying, ’We never heard this story, what can you tell us?’ ” Two months later, the native Midwesterner and the palace historian are standing side by side in that same Versailles chapel, built in 1710 by Louis XVI’s    Louis XIV. It rises in splendor on two tiers of sculpted marble columns and arches, with light pouring in through tall windows, illuminating ornate paintings on the ceiling. An altar and pipe organ are covered in gold. Hargrave’s aunt and uncle may have been the most recent couple to marry here. But the most famous marriage took place 174 years earlier, on May 16, 1770, between Louis XVI, France’s final monarch, and Marie Antoinette. Until Hargrave’s email arrived, the palace thought the royal nuptials were the last to be celebrated in the palace’s Chapelle Royale. ”We knew of the wedding of Eisenhower’s aide de camp and driver, but we thought it was held in the Trianon Palace,” says McGrath, referring to an early 20th century luxury hotel near the palace grounds. McGrath says Hargrave’s visit has helped reveal unknown details about this period. ”She’s piecing together family history,” McGrath says, ”and I’m piecing together the history of a very special moment at Versailles.” American troops liberated the town and its chateau in August 1944. Eisenhower stayed on for another six months, until February 1945, running the war from the palace. ”At the end of August [1944] the Germans left and the Americans arrived, and bombs fell in the chateau gardens that summer,” says McGrath. ”So this is a momentous time in the palace’s history and there are still many things we don’t know.” McGrath says the palace, now one of France’s major tourist attractions, was closed to the public during the war, but American soldiers came to visit, just as the German soldiers had. ”Not at the same time, of course,” she says with a laugh. ”But they did the same things and their offices were in the same places.” Even after the Germans left, a fear of spies remained. Both women talk about the fact that Eisenhower was locked down and kept out of sight for a few weeks in December 1944, due to fears that Germans were parachuting spies in to kill him. Hargrave says that Eisenhower wrote during this period to his wife, Mamie, saying, ”’They let me walk outside today and I’m finally able to breathe! ’” Versailles curators wanted to give Eisenhower the very best furnishings for his office, McGrath says. ”But he didn’t want them,” she says. ”He didn’t want to have to be careful. He just wanted to work normally.” She says the Americans showed particular concern about conserving the palace’s art and furnishings and conducted a full inventory when they arrived after the   German occupation. Pearlie Hargrave was serving at the time in the Women’s Army Corps or WAC, and met Sgt. Michael McKeogh, Eisenhower’s aide, in North Africa, where they began their courtship. ”My uncle had to ask for Eisenhower’s permission to marry my aunt because they were in a war,” says Hargrave. The couple adored Eisenhower and considered him the perfect boss, she says. McKeogh oversaw Eisenhower’s personal affairs  —   ”like clothing, food and getting him settled in a new place,” Hargrave says  —   so he could concentrate on the war. ”He loved to read Western novels and would read through the night,” she says. Hargrave says her uncle wrote to Mamie Eisenhower requesting ”more socks and more novels” for the general. Her aunt  —   Hargrave’s father’s youngest sister, in a family of 10  —   was part of a team of drivers serving Eisenhower. She wasn’t the only woman. McGrath says palace records show Eisenhower gave the newlyweds $100 as a wedding gift, but he had to leave their reception early. He had a good excuse: The Battle of the Bulge broke out on the same day. ”He didn’t have much time to socialize,” says McGrath. ”He was there to win the war.” The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive, fought in the Ardennes forest in eastern France. For her visit to Versailles in March, Hargrave brings a few old family photos and a copy of her uncle’s memoir, Sgt. Mickey and General Ike, which he wrote right after the war ended. McGrath opens the palace archives, which include photos of Fred Astaire and Dinah Shore performing for the troops in the palace gardens, and the guest book from the   wedding, signed by Eisenhower. The two women pore over an unknown signature in the guest book just beneath Eisenhower’s. They say their next project is to figure out whose it was. Hargrave says she only saw her Aunt Pearlie three times in her life. She died in 2005, and McKeogh died 12 years before her. Her family rarely talked about the story of their wedding. She says the couple had a daughter, whom she’s been trying to get in touch with. ”They must have obviously told her some of the stories about their time together in Versailles,” says Hargrave. ”Karine [McGrath] wants to know what Versailles was like then. So I’m hoping I can get the two of them together to talk about it.”"
"In the heart of an   New York City neighborhood, the Nuyorican Poets Café was once called ”the most integrated place on the planet” by none other than Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Today it remains a wildly diverse venue still influenced by its mostly Puerto Rican founders who claimed it as a site of artistry and resistance in 1973. Poet and founder Miguel Algarín and his artist friends just wanted a place to get together to create. By the 1990s, the Café was the epicenter of Slam Poetry in the country. With its focus on spoken word, and slam poetry in particular (though it also hosts   rap, and Latin jazz artists) the Café embodies the belief that anyone can take the stage and interpret one of the most accessible art forms. ”The philosophy and purpose of the Nuyorican Poets Café has always been to reveal poetry as a living art,” Algarín wrote in the anthology Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café. That feeling remains. On a recent Open Mic night, for example, audiences were treated to a raunchy   set about girls with big body parts by a tall Haitian man, a convulsive spit session by a wiry New Zealander, a rap performance about coffee and water that elicited plenty of hollering, and a moving socially conscious piece called ”Don’t Do That” that felt like a woke listicle come alive thanks to its thumping beats. ”Let’s all do the best to not elect a reptile,” the performer intoned, ”and don’t do any drugs made in the 80s.” It even called out the rampant homophobia that often greets provocative rap performers: ”Don’t say no homo we’re all gay as f***.” The crowds at the Café, through their loud clapping, peppery snaps, sarcastic hollers, and delighted screams during performances, creates one of the most welcoming spots in all of New York City. In the words of poet Portia Bartley, who was featured in a recent Poetry Slam night and who was a regular before moving to Los Angeles, the Café ”speaks to the marginalized, to anyone who’s usually not granted a safe space to express themselves and speak on their experiences.” The audience has also evolved and now includes not only   Latinos, but   and  . Daniel Gallant, executive director since 2008, believes that’s exactly the venue’s mission. ”What we’ve tried to do in my time at the Café is create as many opportunities as possible for artists who may not otherwise look at slam poetry or spoken word as an accessible art form,” he said. Those Open Mic spots, as well as multiple Poetry Slam Nights every week, are platforms to showcase budding artists to the eager young audience. Among the favorite theme nights is the Wednesday Night Poetry Slam Open where poets are rated by three randomly selected judges before a rapt and raucous audience. Winners earn a spot on the headlining Friday Night Poetry Slam. The reward is part of an embedded teaching philosophy that encourages experimenting and redrafting. ”We rather hear a noble failure than a polished success,” Gallant said. This echoes what Mahogany L. Browne, the poetry program curator at the Café, said via email about what makes the space such an invaluable resource. ”The reality is that art has been commodified for so long, it is a rarity that there is a space that cultivates community, invests in the act of the building the portfolio of   and is a purveyor of the preservation of this constantly   art form.” While the Café sporadically stages theatrical events (most famously in 2015 with Carmen: A Drinking Opera) the emphasis remains on the fleeting and the ephemeral. Much of the work showcased at the Café exists at the intersection of art and activism. Given its proximity to the worlds and words of activism, slam poetry remains a hotbed for   voices. While the Café, a registered nonprofit, is prohibited from taking political stances, performers are not. Recent projects like Benjamin Benne’s queer piece Querencia: An Imagined Autobiography about Forbidden Fruits, upcoming PEN World Voices events including ”US Borders and the Central American Diaspora,” as well as a summer workshop staging of Ishmael Reed’s new play, Life Among the Aryans, merely continue the cultural work that Algarín envisioned, work that speaks to complex cultural and political currents. ”If people want art that is easy to process, we politely encourage them to go elsewhere,” Gallant said. Manuel Betancourt is a New York   writer, editor, and critical thinker. Follow him @bmanuel."
"The Internal Revenue Service says it’s seeing a surge in phone scams. More than 5, 000 victims have been duped out of $26. 5 million since late 2013. It’s hard to know what exactly con artists are thinking when they target their victims. But now, we know what they are saying. Before we get started, keep this in mind: The IRS says it doesn’t call about outstanding taxes without first mailing you a bill. Pindrop Security, an   company that investigates phone fraud, recently gave NPR a recording. It’s a grueling conversation, more than an hour long, between an active fraud ring and a presumed victim, who is in reality a Pindrop researcher. Pindrop set up honeypots  —   dummy phone numbers, some of which are entered into online raffles (win a free iPhone, anyone?) that are run by criminal rings. Pindrop has traced at least 28 fraud incidents to this specific ring. According to phone metadata, the fake IRS call center is based in a Seattle suburb. But that could just be a proxy. Pindrop researchers say the ring is hard to pinpoint because it has tools to hide the physical location and the money trail. While the recording is a little hard to understand at times, it clearly illustrates how these scams, on a hunt for quick cash, exploit everyday resources like MoneyGram or    —   and people’s deepest fears. Below are five key parts of the recorded conversation between the fraudsters, posing as IRS agents, and the target, who is secretly a Pindrop researcher. An unidentified ”IRS” man speaks with ”Emma Lauder”  —   a covert Pindrop researcher whose real name we cannot disclose because that would blow her cover. The agent tells Emma Lauder that his office has audited her taxes  —   from 2009 to 2014  —   and there’s been a miscalculation. She owes money. The local authorities with an arrest warrant will come to her home any minute now. Her property will be seized, and she faces federal imprisonment of up to five years. This is not a fun call to get. But the punch line is how much she owes: $1, 986. 73. All of these threats are for an amount less than $2, 000. The call center operator wants cash. And he guides his target through what is clearly a routine drill, playing on fear and secrecy. He warns her to not disclose to anyone at work  —   not her boss, not anyone  —   that she is in trouble. The fraudster tells the target that the federal government accepts only Western Union or MoneyGram and that she must pay at  . Lauder asks a clever question about how much cash, exactly, she should withdraw from the ATM, given that the machine gives only $20 bills and the amount she owes is specific to a cent. The agent’s response is, ”Whatever, miss. It’s OK. Just take $1, 980 or something like that.” She is told to make the payment to a man named Gabriel Porter in Boston. The tone of the call really changes  —   from helpful to cruel  —   when the target confirms payment. She asks for a receipt and a few of the   IRS agents begin to taunt her. This section gets creepy. One man tells her ”You can, you know, take a bath. Relax. Relax. Cold water. Cold water.” They refer to her private parts and tell her to go look in the toilet, find the receipt there. WARNING: The following audio contains offensive language. If you get a strange message, one way to handle it is to not hand over information right away. Hang up and call the IRS directly at   ."
"The last few years have seen a bumper crop of published works by and biographies of many   century female writers: Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Lucia Berlin, Clarice Lispector  —   all reaching new generations of readers. Now, one more joins that list: the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, whose Complete Stories has just been published, to coincide with the   of her memoir Down Below. Complete Stories, a collection of Carrington’s published and unpublished short stories  —   many newly translated from their original French and Spanish  —   is a terrific introduction to her bizarre, dreamlike worlds. She creates hunters who are punished by God for farting in church, horses inviting passersby to play games in the House of Fear, and a hyena who takes a debutante’s place at her own ball. Carrington effortlessly slips from humor to horror in a single sentence, and while she describes increasingly odd, disturbing, and at times nearly indescribable scenarios, she does so with the dry, droll confidence of a diner reading off a menu. It takes a particular type of reader to appreciate this work, a particular love of absurdity and beauty and ugliness and the way they often occupy the same surreal space. These stories have the distinct affect of fairy tales  —   intuitive logic that carries the reader from one moment to the next without a sense of    the furthest distance from psychological realism as possible. A woman undresses down to her skeleton a witch gives birth to a litter of boars and kills all but the one that most resembles its father, a monstrous sister kills the maid and flees while her captor and her captor’s lover hold an orgy in the middle of a feast  —   all in Carrington’s   relatively abstract language. And speaking of feasts, one of the most pleasurable and disturbing recurring themes in these stories is that of consumption. In the introduction, Kathryn Davis writes that Carrington was very focused on stories of eating or being eaten, and once cut hair from a houseguest she disliked and served it to him in an omelet the next morning. The result of this dark and particular fascination reads like a demented hybrid of Lovecraft and the Redwall series: ”A plump fat chicken with stuffing made of brains and the livers of thrushes, truffles, crushed sweet almonds, rose conserve with a few drops of some divine liqueur. The chicken, which had been marinated  —   plucked but alive  —   for three days, had in the end been suffocated in vapors of boiling patchouli: its flesh was creamy and tender as a fresh mushroom.” A tad more sobering than the romp of the stories is Down Below, a slight but searing account of Carrington’s commitment to a sanatorium after her longtime partner was taken to a French internment camp during World War II. So vivid is Carrington’s    descent into madness  —   and the horrific treatment she endures, including the repeated administration of Cardiazol, a pharmaceutical equivalent to electroshock therapy  —   it is possible to read Down Below in a single sitting, but emotionally quite difficult. ”I tried to understand where I was and why I was there,” she writes. ”Was it a hospital or a concentration camp?” Reading these books alongside each other is a peculiar and singular experience. If you look at the fictional stories askance, you can see a familiar world ”with its pointless rules and cruelties,” as Davis writes in her introduction. You see the same with Carrington’s memoir, but instead of grandmothers with apple heads being carried around by    camels with cruel eyes (as in her story ”The Sand Camel”) you see the same pointless rules and cruelties executed by real people upon real people, and the surrealism takes on an even darker tone. In both books, you get the distinct impression that for Carrington, reality is malleable  —   but her stories suggest that this is because the landscape of her imagination is vast and unchartable, while the memoir suggests it is because that we have only begun to probe humanity’s very real cruelty. ”I elude myself,” one of her characters writes, and perhaps that’s the point  —   to stay one step ahead of this terrible world, you must stay one step ahead of yourself. Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, will be released in 2017. She has written for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta and elsewhere."
"Morphine. It’s why Zubair in Kerala, India, can ride his motorcycle, work at his coffee shop and bring an income home to his family. Without his daily dose, living a normal life is nearly impossible. ”The pain is like someone stabbing you with a needle on your body and joints,” he says of his life after being diagnosed with a bone tumor in 1979. Since then, he’s had to have a series of progressive amputations below his right knee. Zubair is the subject of a   film on access to morphine in India by Atish Patel. It will be shown on Saturday at a global health film festival organized by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference in Washington, D. C. Patel, a Pulitzer Center grantee, wanted to show people that palliative care  —   providing relief for pain from severe conditions  —   is not just for terminal patients. ”Before I took this reporting trip, I thought opioids were only given to people dying of an illness, unable to be cured,” he says. ”But what was nice about Zubair’s story, he’s still active.” Fewer than 1 percent of India’s 1 million cancer patients, and other patients with disabling diseases, have access to painkillers in the form of opioids, according to a study. But Zubair lives in Kerala, home to the country’s leading palliative care program. A lack of access to morphine seems to be a common story in the developing world, says Dr. Sydney Dy, a palliative care physician and researcher at Johns Hopkins University. ”Morphine, in its most basic form, is cheap. So there are no incentives for drug companies to distribute in these countries,” she says. ”And there are a lot of fears about addiction. Physicians aren’t trained on how to use [opioids] how to give them.” Over the past few years, Indian health officials have started to recognize that Zubair is not alone in his pain. In 2014, the government passed a law to make it easier for patients to receive palliative care by lifting license requirements for hospitals and pharmacies to administer opioids. Even if morphine does become more widely available, there are few studies that show it’s a sustainable,   treatment for patients like Zubair, says Dy. ”People become dependent on opioids without necessarily realizing it.” But despite the risk of dependency, she says, ”To give [patients] something basic that can relieve their suffering and make their families feel comfortable again, it’s amazing.”"
"Updated at 4:16 p. m. ET  At least 44 people were killed and more than 100 injured after suspected suicide bombings in two different Egyptian cities at Coptic Christian churches Sunday. The interior ministry said one of the explosions was a bombing in Mar Gerges church in Tanta, a city in the north of Egypt in the Nile Delta, located between Cairo and Alexandria. The church was full at the time with worshippers observing Coptic Christian Palm Sunday. Health ministry spokesman Khaled Mujahed told Egyptian state television that at least 27 people were killed and 78 injured. Just hours later and about 80 miles away in Alexandria, a second explosion outside the Mar Markas church killed 16 people and injured 41 others, Mujahed confirmed to state television. NPR’s Jane Arraf adds that the Coptic Pope was in the building, but unharmed by the attack. Reporter Bel Trew, Egypt correspondent for the Times of London, told NPR that the pope was leading prayers when the suspected bomber attempted to enter the church. Security forces managed to keep the attacker outside, but at least three officers were killed. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for both explosions through its   Amaq news agency. In a television address, Egyptian President     announced his intentions to declare a state of emergency. ”A series of steps will be taken, most importantly, the announcement of a state of emergency for three months after legal and constitution steps are taken,”   said during the live address. Jane explains the announcement to our Newscast unit: ”. ..  told Egyptians he was deploying more soldiers to protect public buildings and churches after the attacks. ”And he said he plans to impose a   state of emergency across the country. Parliament would have to approve the measure, which is already in place in Sinai province. ”Previous emergency measures have allowed police to arrest people without charge, banned large gatherings and tightened censorship.” Condemnations of attacks came from the region and further abroad. Both Israel and the Gaza’s Hamas leadership decried the attacks. Pope Francis, in his Palm Sunday Mass at the Vatican, mentioned the bombings and people who ”suffer from wars and terrorism, from interests that are armed and ready to strike.” He is scheduled to visit Egypt at the end of April. And President Trump tweeted: ”So sad to hear of the terrorist attack in Egypt. U. S. strongly condemns,” while expressing his ”great confidence” in  . Trump had hosted   at the White House last week. Christians in Egypt have been targeted before in attacks by Islamist extremists. In December, 25 people died when a bomb exploded during Sunday mass in Cairo, as NPR’s Bill Chappell reported. At the time it was ”the deadliest attack on Egypt’s Christian minority in years,” he notes. Two years ago, ISIS released a video appearing to show a mass beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya. And on New Year’s Day in 2011, a bombing at a church in Alexandria killed at least 21 people, as Jane noted. Christians make up roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s predominantly Muslim population and most Christians in Egypt are Coptic Christians, of the Coptic Orthodox Church.  Coptic Christians observe Palm Sunday and other religious holidays on a different schedule because they follow the Julian calendar, not the more widely accepted Gregorian calendar. Copts trace their ancestry back to the founding of the Church of Alexandria by St. Mark and are one of the oldest denominations in the Christian faith. The word ”Copt” comes from the an ancient Pharaonic language and roughly translates to ”Egyptian.” The Coptic Church, with its own clergy and a distinct pope, holds similar beliefs with the other Orthodox churches, though it diverges in some teachings, most predominantly concerning the nature of Christ. Ahmed Abuhamda contributed to this report. This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"President Trump and congressional Republicans are having some success with one of their   goals  —   rolling back federal regulations approved during the Obama administration. But the clock is ticking. The House and Senate have voted to repeal more than a dozen regulations approved in the final six months of Obama’s presidency, among them: In all, 11 regulations have been overturned using The Congressional Review Act, a heretofore obscure law passed by Congress in 1996. It allows lawmakers to overturn any regulation imposed during the final six months of the previous administration, with a simple majority vote in each chamber of Congress. It had only been used once previously, to overturn an ergonomics regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that had been approved during the Clinton administration. The 2016 election brought with it a perfect recipe for use of the law in the early months of the Trump administration:   control of both Congress and the White House, and a   stance following an administration that put many regulations in place. But there are some time limits. The deadline has already passed for Congress to introduce any new rollback proposals, and lawmakers have only a few weeks left to act on the ones now in the pipeline. Two regulations, relating to women’s health and state retirement savings plans, have been repealed by both the House and the Senate and are awaiting the president’s signature. And two more have been approved by the House but have not yet been acted on by the Senate. The Congressional Review Act gives lawmakers 60 legislative days to repeal regulations approved in the last six months of the previous administration. So that comes out to May 9, according to one estimate. The problem for Congress is that lawmakers are now on a   recess, and when they return, major work lies ahead on agreeing to a spending bill for the remainder of the current fiscal year. So it’s unclear how many more regulatory repeals they will be able to squeeze in."
"The cast of Saturday Night Live returned after a   break to take on Fox News host Bill O’Reilly amid recent sexual harassment allegations he is facing, all while continuing their coverage of the Trump administration. In the video above, Alec Baldwin portrays O’Reilly in a segment of his show, The O’Reilly Factor. It opens with O’Reilly addressing ”a scandal” of allegations against the Obama administration, As O’Reilly’s show goes on it’s apparent he’s having some issues with reporters, who all happen to be women. The first problem occurs when a reporter doesn’t appear. ”What’s that? Laura no longer works at the company? Well, did she get the check? OK, fine,” O’Reilly says. After a reference to the $13 million O’Reilly used to settle with five women who filed sexual harassment allegations against him, he moves to a segment from Malia Zimmerman (Cecily Strong) an investigative correspondent, who’s reporting from outside the building, away from O’Reilly. While O’Reilly questions Zimmerman about her interview with former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, it’s not exactly about the facts. When Zimmerman tells O’Reilly that Rice said she didn’t leak the names, O’Reilly continues looking for a different answer. ”OK, but when she said no, what was her vibe?” he says. ”Like, when she said ’no,’ did her eyes say ’yes?’ Sometimes they’ll do that.” O’Reilly pushes forward looking for some type of confession from Rice, all while Zimmerman is clearly uncomfortable with the host. O’Reilly’s language mirrors a common dilemma with sexual consent that’s often seen on college campuses. The conversation becomes more direct as O’Reilly addresses the allegations against him. ”Apparently several women have come forward and accused me of offering them exciting opportunities here at Fox News,” he says. ”Beyond that, the details are a bit fuzzy, but one man was brave enough . .. one man . .. to come to my defense, a man who was unimpeachable on all female issues. Now, he’s here tonight.” Donald Trump, also played by Alec Baldwin, enters the show and comes to O’Reilly’s defense, much as he did in   last week. When the allegations came out, President Trump told reporters from the New York Times, that he didn’t think O’Reilly did anything wrong. ”I think he’s a person I know well  —   he is a good person,” Trump said of O’Reilly in the Times interview. ”I think he shouldn’t have settled personally I think he shouldn’t have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.” Trump, who also had women make allegations of sexual assault against him during the campaign, made these comments at the beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which caused some to think the comments supporting O’Reilly were lacking substance. Even the short breaks in O’Reilly’s segment reflect his show’s reality. The ads were lacking major name players, a reference to the number of companies that have pulled ads from the program. The cast also took on Pepsi, another entity that spurred conversation this week with their ad, that they have since pulled, starring Kendall Jenner. They offered an idea to what the production of the ad might have looked like. As the final taping is about to begin, the   (Beck Bennett) a white man, gets a call from his sister in which he shares his vision. ”It was like completely my idea and now they’re doing it,” he says excitedly. ”OK, so well, it’s an homage to the resistance, so there’s this huge protest in the street reminiscent of Black Lives Matter. So everybody’s marching, right? And they get to these police officers and you think it’s going to go bad because there’s kind of like a standoff and then Kendall Jenner walks in and she walks up to one of the police officers and she hands him a Pepsi. And then that Pepsi brings everyone together. Isn’t that like the best ad ever?” The description is pretty accurate with the actual ad, but the sister does not think the ad is the best thing ever. She, along with two others, tell him it’s a ”sort of ” but there’s not time to change it. The SNL ad ends with a different message ”Live And Learn.” Later the show returned to Trump during the Weekend Update segment with Colin Jost and Michael Che. ”The only thing scarier than Donald Trump acting   is Donald Trump acting presidential,” Jost said. Jost went on to say that Trump’s response to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield after a chemical weapon attack on civilians was similar to the President’s tweets. Che then explained how Syria is part of a complicated relationship between the U. S. and Russia, but also an ally to the U. S. movement to defeat ISIS. Che likened the relationship between three countries to The Three Stooges, another trio. The show returns on April 15, with host Jimmy Fallon and musical guest Harry Styles."
"Before we headed out on our latest road trip for the Our Land series, we put a call out on social media, asking for ideas of places we should go in Arizona and New Mexico. Shannon Miller’s suggestion really caught our attention: ”White Sands are the only white gypsum ’sand’ dunes in the world. They are actually crystals and it is beautiful.” How could we resist? There’s really no place like it on the planet: White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico. It’s the world’s largest gypsum dunefield, miles and miles of stunning white landscape. Here are some things to know: 1. ”Beautiful”  —   Shannon Miller’s description  —   is an understatement. The landscape is spectacular and otherworldly. ”It’s like you’re in another planet,” as park ranger Eugene Ibarra tells us. ”The only thing that reminds you that you’re still in planet Earth is that the sky is blue.” 2. Most of the New Mexico dunefield actually lies outside the boundaries of the park. White Sands National Monument is dwarfed by the White Sands Missile Range, a military testing area for the U. S. Army, and most of the dunefield lies within that missile range. The world’s first atomic bomb was detonated at the Trinity test site in the missile range, just 65 miles north of this park, on July 16, 1945. Several weeks later, the U. S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 3. They’re not exactly the ”only” white gypsum sand dunes in the world, but pretty close. The New Mexico dunes cover a vast area: 275 square miles. The next biggest gypsum dunefield is in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas. Total dunefield area: about 3 square miles. 4. The dunes are made of the soft mineral gypsum, laid down 250 million years ago when the southwestern U. S. was covered by the Permian Sea. Later, that seabed was pushed up into the mountains that ring the basin that surrounds the area. Rainfall dissolves those deposits, carrying the gypsum down and replenishing these sand dunes, which shift constantly with the winds. 5. Even when the sun is broiling hot, the sand stays cool under your bare feet. That’s because the sand is made of gypsum crystals. 6. There are signs warning that there’s no water available beyond the visitor center, but it’s easy to forget just how unforgiving this park can be  —   because it’s so beautiful. And people have died here. Just two summers ago, a mother and a father didn’t bring enough water on their hike, and died along the Alkali Flat trail. Their    son survived. 7. Because White Sands National Monument is right next to White Sands Missile Range, the park occasionally shuts down during missile testing. The park service also warns visitors to avoid anything that looks like unexploded ordnance. Another neighbor is Holloman Air Force Base. Three years ago, an unmanned drone aircraft from Holloman crashed inside the park, spilling jet fuel and scattering debris. Cleanup and environmental remediation has been slow that part of the park is still off limits to visitors. 8. Park rangers lead daily sunset strolls through the dunes. Once the sun goes down, the sand gets pretty chilly underfoot. With a permit, you can also go horseback riding through the dunes. It’s purely BYOH. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny, with production help on this story from Anjuli Sastry. "
" I spent an alarmingly large chunk of 1989 trying to align a falling shower of digital building blocks into perfect rows of 10. The Russian video game Tetris had just caught on in the States. Like many American children, I was rapt. Plenty of video games are   yet there was a particular   entrancement to Tetris  —   something about the simplicity and repetition of rotating descending blocks so they snugly fit together that allowed a complete dissociation from self, and from parental provocations (”Maybe, uh, go do something outside? ”). I eventually emerged from our den, thumbs sore, eyes bleary, and found running around our Buffalo suburb with friends ultimately more fulfilling. But it turns out the particular brand of disconnection provided by Tetris may reflect a mental state long sought by healers to treat patients who have lived through a trauma. I’m referring to the idea that some combination of facing negative memories, but also being distracted from them, might help alleviate the vivid psychological scars of trauma. Clinicians and philosophers have tried countless ways of treating trauma and anxiety through the years  —   of finding, as Roman stoic philosopher Seneca called it, tranquillitas, or peace of mind. And many of them were, in all likelihood, bunk. But the science now shows that activities as simple as playing distracting video games or focusing on eye movements can help patients cope with a tragic experience.  ”Blocking” bad memories, Last week a group of researchers from the U. K. and Sweden published a study reporting that playing just 20 minutes of Tetris  —   in research parlance, a ”  intervention”  —   following an automobile accident can help prevent the formation of the painful, intrusive memories that can follow trauma. The new research looked at 71 patients who had presented to the John Radcliffe Hospital emergency room in Oxford, England, within six hours of being in a car accident. While waiting to be seen, patients were first asked to recall their trauma and recount the worst moments that sprang to mind. (If it helps, they were paid.) They were then randomized to either play Tetris for 20 minutes on a handheld Nintendo DS XL system or to instead fill out an activity log of what they had experienced since arriving at the hospital. The latter group served as the control. The gamers were found to have 62 percent fewer intrusive memories in the first week after their accident than the control group. What’s more, their bad memories diminished more quickly than in controls. The study was small, but the authors feel the results justify a larger   trial to test the   effects of Tetris therapy, for which they are now seeking funding. Traumatic memories and    flashbacks are central to anxiety conditions like acute stress disorder and   stress disorder. Per the criteria in the    —   psychiatry’s   diagnostic reference  —   a diagnosis of PTSD cannot be made until one month after the inciting incident if Tetris proves effective this far out, doctors and therapists treating the condition might have an effective and    option to turn to. ”More research is definitely needed to develop this approach,” says Emily Holmes, a psychology professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and lead author of the study. ”But we’re encouraged. And we need to develop preventative interventions that can be delivered soon after trauma to prevent the buildup of symptoms.” Think of such an intervention as a kind of ”cognitive vaccine.” Holmes feels that playing Tetris shortly after an accident can interfere with memory consolidation, or the gradual conversion of   memories into more permanent ones. Evidence suggests that there is a window following a trauma in which a bad memory can be disrupted or avoided  —   and in which memories can be uncoupled from the brain’s emotional centers. She admits that the findings are probably not unique to Tetris. Traumatic memories are often highly sensory: Sights and sounds of a trauma can flash back in horrifying detail. Holmes believes that any highly visual activity that stimulates the brain’s sensory centers might prevent graphic recollections from forming in the first place. The colors, shapes and constant movement of Tetris may do just that, but based on Holmes’ past research, activities like digital pub quizzes and counting exercises do not. She plans to study other visually engaging interventions like drawing and the video game Candy Crush in the near future.    trauma, The psychological effects of trauma were recognized long ago and were even mentioned in the Old Testament. Hippocrates and Lucretius each wrote of traumatic battle memories. And the 13th century Icelandic saga Gisli Súrsson finds the story’s eponymous hero reliving gruesome battle scenes and unable to spend his nights alone. ”Methought my foemen, axes wielding. .. Worse I dreamt  —   my forehead splitting,” he fretted. Various forms of trauma therapy have been tried over the centuries, often in the context of warfare. Among them is hypnosis, touted for at least a few hundred years as a means of purging or tempering bad memories. In the early 1900s, French psychologist Pierre Janet developed a stepwise hypnotic approach to treat the symptoms of what we would now call PTSD. He felt it could help people to perhaps divorce unpleasant recollections from emotion. Plenty of modern clinicians still turn to hypnosis to help manage trauma, yet as it was 100 years ago, the practice remains controversial. Some evidence suggests it could even be harmful to people plagued with traumatic memories. ”Hypnosis should not be used to recover traumatic memories, as studies consistently show that hypnosis can increase the production of inaccurate as well as accurate memories,” explains Binghamton University professor of psychology Steven Jay Lynn. ”Individuals who are hypnotized often hold such recovered memories with greater confidence or certainty, regardless of whether the memories are accurate or not.” Lynn feels the risk of solidifying false memories is too great to fully endorse hypnosis as a   trauma treatment. But he does cite evidence that it can be a valuable addition to proven psychotherapies such as cognitive processing therapy, based on changing upsetting thoughts, and prolonged exposure, which involves remembering and   with traumatic memories. Another controversial PTSD treatment is what is called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Developed in the 1980s by psychologist Francine Shapiro, EMDR is a form of psychotherapy that involves having patients recall traumatic events while moving their eyes from side to side or engaging in some other distracting activity. In theory, doing so allows patients to reprocess memories and render them less upsetting. Criticism of the treatment came in the 1990s, when clinical trials suggested that it is actually the recollection itself that explains EMDR’s efficacy, not the eye movements. At the time, recalling trauma was already known to be effective in helping patients cope with PTSD. However, as Harvard psychologist Richard J. McNally explains, ”Careful laboratory studies suggest that bilateral eye movements do tax memory in such a way that   images become degraded and less emotionally evocative.” McNally cites work by Dutch psychologist Marcel van den Hout, which concluded that eye movements, as well as other tasks that require   memory, are effective at alleviating trauma symptoms. Patients suffering from trauma now have a number of options to turn to. Multiple forms of psychotherapy can be effective, as can antidepressant medications and perhaps a compound called  . Among the growing research looking at psychoactive and psychedelic drugs for mental illness, the recreational drug MDMA, or ecstasy, looks promising in PTSD. Holmes’ application of Tetris shows promise, says McNally, who was not involved in the research. ”Our field needs to be open to possible breakthroughs. Just beware of people claiming ’miracle cures!’ ” And there are plenty to beware of  —   including the bevy of questionable supplements touted for trauma. Green tea might be healthy for the brain, but can it assuage the horrors of war by itself? Probably not. Perhaps soon the benefits of visual distraction by the right activity at the right time, coupled with reliving painful past experiences, will also be used to treat the traumatized. It remains to be seen whether doing so will require a Nintendo DS XL, or not. Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired and Scientific American, and on The Atlantic. com. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. He’s on Twitter: @BretStetka"
"Admit it. You only clicked on this story because of the photo of that insanely cute mountain lion kitten. You just wanted to gaze into her (yes, it’s a her) milky blue eyes. That’s fair. But there’s more to the story of this kitten. Researchers have named her  . She’s no more than a few months old. And  —   this is the sad part  —   it’s likely that she’s the product of inbreeding. The kitten was born amidst the urban sprawl of Southern California in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the largest urban national park in the country. The recreation area is bordered by the Pacific Ocean, agricultural fields and greater Los Angeles. ”Think of it like an island,” says Jeff Sikich, a biologist for the National Park Service, who’s been tracking the park’s mountain lions in its steep   canyons for more than a decade. ”[The mountain lions] are pretty much hemmed in by freeways and development on all sides.” As a result, few cats  —   or other wildlife, for that matter  —   are able to come and go, so adult mountain lions resort to inbreeding. Researchers know that the kitten’s mother is  . And they suspect the father is  ’s    . They’re waiting for genetic testing to confirm their suspicions. Sikich says it’s unlikely that   or other mountain lions know they’re inbreeding. Male mountain lions don’t stick around to raise their kids. But the results of inbreeding could be devastating to the population’s future. Limited genetic diversity can lead to mutations and abnormalities. Sikich points to the Florida panther, a population that almost went extinct from inbreeding. Researchers started to find genetic defects in the animals  —   holes in the heart, kinked tails and low sperm counts  —   before wildlife managers introduced outside panthers into the population to mix things up. The same thing could start to happen in the Santa Monica Mountains. Sikich says they’ve only seen one outside mountain lion come into the park in the last 12 years. Others have been turned away by the freeways or killed by passing cars. ”If that was to stay the same into the future, we could get to that Florida panther level in roughly 35 years,” he says. ”And then once we hit those levels, we can see pretty much 99 percent extinction within roughly 15 years.”   is a healthy kitten, Sikich says. And she’ll have a better chance at   survival than she would if she was a boy. Most male mountain lions are killed by the park’s dominant cats when they get old enough to leave their mother. Without a way to disperse outside of the mountains, they’re put in competition with the older males. And it’s not all bad. Sikich and other researchers are encouraged and excited that the kitten was born. ”They are successfully reproducing and raising their young, which is a good thing,” Sikich says. That’s impressive, he says, when you consider they’re large carnivores living just outside the   urban area in the U. S. And the lessons they’re learning by studying the animals and how they survive in an urban and fragmented habitat could be used in other parts of the country. The National Wildlife Federation says that habitat loss, like that caused by fragmentation, is the biggest threat to wildlife in the U. S. Park officials and wildlife advocates are hoping to address the fragmentation by building a wildlife overpass, which would connect the Santa Monica Mountains with other wilderness in Southern California. The proposed overpass would bridge over Route 101, a busy highway. There are challenges to getting the project done, but Sikich is optimistic that the overpass will be built, giving future mountain lion kittens a better chance at   success."
"With an attack on a Syrian air base, the United States has now bombed the two main players in Syrian war  —   President Bashar Assad’s military and the Islamic State. This raises a fundamental question about U. S. aims in the Syrian war: If the two most powerful groups in Syria are both unacceptable, what outcome is the U. S. seeking? Both Barack Obama and President Trump have sought to limit U. S. involvement in Syria for their own reasons. Yet both have been sucked in and struggled to clearly define their objectives in the messy, complicated war. Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said he supported the strikes. But, he added, ”There is no obvious military step that could follow. What is needed is a political strategy for Syria that squares this circle. Assad must go, yet he will likely stay. That is a paradox that requires creative thinking.” Here’s a look at several key questions surrounding U. S. policy: What is the U. S. goal? Obama wanted to shrink the U. S. military footprint in Middle East, and resisted pressure to take military action in the wake of Syria’s 2011 uprising. He never ordered an attack against the Syrian government, but Obama did launch the bombing campaign against the Islamic State as it rapidly expanded in 2014. His aim was to defeat ISIS on the battlefield and seek a negotiated political deal with Assad. Obama’s air war made progress against ISIS, but peace efforts with Assad went nowhere. Until this week, Trump’s stated goal was to ramp up Obama’s bombing campaign against ISIS, while accepting the reality of Assad as Syria’s leader. But after Tuesday’s apparent chemical weapons attack, Trump said Wednesday, ”My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.” Trump hasn’t defined the outcome he seeks. But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson now says Assad should have ”no role” in governing Syria  —   a reversal from the administration position just days earlier. Are more U. S. strikes against Assad likely? Many analysts see the U. S. strike, which included 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from two U. S. warships in the eastern Mediterranean, as a   response. ”The first thing I thought of was, ’Wow, just like [President] Bill Clinton used to lob cruise missiles at [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein in the 1990s,” Robert Ford, the former U. S. ambassador to Syria, told NPR. ”And Saddam Hussein never changed, and things just went on as they were.” By most assessments, Assad is in his strongest position in several years, though his country keeps spiraling downward in an unending humanitarian crisis. With help from Russia and Iran, Assad’s army has retaken the major cities in the heavily populated western part of the country, while the Islamic State remains on the defensive due to the U. S. bombing campaign in the eastern part. What does this mean for relations with Russia? U. S.  relations just became even more troubled. Russia is heavily invested in Syria, its only real ally in the Arab world, and it condemned the U. S. military action. Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Friday the U. S. strike ”deals a significant blow to relations between Russia and America, which are already in a poor state,” according to the news agency RIA. One of the few shared U. S.  aims is the fight against terrorism, and Peskov said the American action ”creates a serious obstacle for building an international coalition to fight it and to effectively resist this universal evil.” Tillerson heads to Moscow next week, and the Syrian conflict could supersede the swirling controversy over Russian meddling in last year’s U. S. presidential election. What’s the state of battle against the Islamic State? The U. S. bombing campaign, backed by close to 1, 000 U. S. forces on the ground and allied local fighters, has been edging closer to the ISIS headquarters in Raqqa. The U. S. and its local partners are about 20 miles from the town in   Syria, along the Euphrates River. But the Pentagon has warned that it could be a long, hard fight. Even if ISIS is driven out of Raqqa and a few smaller towns it controls, who would take over? The U. S. doesn’t want to occupy it, and the American partners are relatively small factions that aren’t well positioned to run the place. For example, the main U. S. ally in the region is a Kurdish faction, while Raqqa is a mostly Sunni Arab city. What’s happened to the other rebel groups supported by the U. S.? These moderate opposition groups were prominent in the early days of the uprising. But as the war intensified, they lost ground to the Syrian military and radical Islamist groups. The CIA and the U. S. military have tried to boost the moderate rebels, with no success. The U. S.  rebels are now bit players. They are involved in talks outside of Syria, and are still working with U. S. officials. But right now, they aren’t significant actors in the war and don’t have a realistic chance of taking on a major political role. In this environment, Assad argues he’s the only plausible option to lead the country. Otherwise, he claims, Syria would be overtaken by a terrorist group like ISIS. What are the prospects for ending the Syrian war? Periodic   talks in Kazakhstan have failed to stop the bloodletting. Political negotiations in Geneva have also proved futile, getting bogged down on the question of Assad’s future role. Spoiler alert: Assad says he must stay opponents say he must go. If the U. S. and its allies drive ISIS out of Raqqa and other cities, that could alter the trajectory of the war, but such a blow is likely months away at minimum, according to analysts. And if the U. S. strike against Assad’s military was just a   event, the impact will probably be limited. ”This isn’t a big blow for Assad and his forces,” said Ford, the former ambassador. ”He is still, little by little, advancing in the Syrian civil war. He is still, little by little, winning.” Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"President Trump’s missile strike against Syria is the first time the U. S. took direct military action against the Assad regime since the civil war began there in 2011. But some Syrians have been asking for more U. S. involvement for some time. Mouaz Moustafa is one of the most vocal —  and now, he feels that he’s finally been heard. Moustafa is the director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. He’s an American who was born in Syria and came to the U. S. with his family as a child. When the war began, he started lobbying for support for the rebel factions fighting Assad’s government. He famously helped sneak Senator John McCain into Syria in 2013 to meet with rebel leaders. He sat down with Michel Martin on Saturday to speak about how Syrians like him are reacting to the strike. On his reaction to Trump’s missile strike against Syria  My reaction —  and I can say that this speaks to the reaction of my friends inside the country and others —  is that honestly, they are thankful for this president for taking action in response to the chemical weapons attack done by the Assad regime against children. And I think that we are all urgently calling to move to end the killing once and for all in Syria. On if he’s disappointed that Obama didn’t take action  I’m incredibly disappointed in President Obama and his administration. We spent countless hours at the National Security Council and we had been begging —  this is a time before ISIS or   existed in Syria —  begging for greater leadership, for stronger action in Syria that can help bring a political solution to the conflict. And I can tell you that this president learned in three months a lesson that his predecessor did not learn in six years. On how he knows that this is anything more than a   reaction  Look, I don’t know exactly what the strategy for this president is. But what I do know is that the Assad regime only understands that he cannot kill people if there is a credible threat of force. For six years, the dictator of Damascus has understood that there is no accountability —  that he can act with impunity, using chemical weapons multiple times. And now that punitive action was taken for the use of it, I think that is the right approach with this dictator. On what his network of Assad supporters of Assad is saying, First of all, across the board, everyone that we spoke to has said that what happened —  the chemical weapons strike against civilians in Khan Shaykuhn and Idlib —  was abhorrent, it was horrible. This was, again, even from loyalists that were reporting. They were shocked that the United States actually acted —  that someone in the international community actually did something. They thought that it would be, again, more statements, but hollow statements, with no action behind it. On what next and if he thinks there’ll be more airstrikes, We have never wished that the United States commit troops to this fight. When I moved to the United States, I moved to Arkansas. I had many friends that served in the United States Army. I know the sacrifices. I know the people that came back losing limbs and people that lost lives. I understand, and I don’t want American troops to go to Syria, to fight someone else’s war. What we do want is a political transition, and a real one —  one that has an enforcement mechanism that would end the killing in Syria and end this horrendous slaughter that has been going on for way too long. On what’s his state of mind at the moment, You know, if you asked me a week ago, I would tell you how incredibly depressed I am, as many other Syrians were, at seeing another chemical weapons attack, seeing this violence going unabated, the slaughter in Syria continuing while the world watches or maybe makes some statements. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up when it comes to Syria. But for the first time ever, there’s a glimmer of hope that maybe the international community will wake up. That maybe with this punitive strike, it can sort of revitalize the United States and its allies to take Russia to the negotiating table and to lay out a settlement strategy. To bring an end to this war. And I can only pray for that."
"The CW’s Jane the Virgin is both a   of and a love letter to Latin telenovelas. So, not surprisingly, its plot is a little complicated. In the first season, Jane (a virgin) becomes pregnant after being accidentally artificially inseminated with sperm from Rafael, a married businessman who starts to develop feelings for Jane. On top of that, Jane’s father, telenovela star Rogelio De La Vega, is back in her life. From there, things only get more dramatic. Jaime Camil plays Jane’s father on the show (now in its third season) and he’s also a   telenovela star. He explains what sets telenovelas apart from American soap operas: ”It’s basically the same story with the same plot with the same actors told over and over again,” he says, ”but one story they’re pirates, the other one they’re accountants, the other one they run a PR firm. But it’s basically the same thing, you know: The poor girl meets the rich guy but then the rich guy has a girlfriend. . .. Lots of drama. Lots of intrigue.” On the character of Rogelio, who initially comes off as a vain,   celebrity, It’s a very balanced thing that we have to accomplish with Rogelio because otherwise, even though he’s perceived as a comic relief, imagine a character that just throws pies . .. again and again and again and again. It’s like, OK, enough, I need some depth. I need something, because otherwise a character just becomes this superficial clown. And so I thank [creator] Jennie Urman and her amazing team of writers for that because they really write beautiful material for Rogelio. They keep him grounded and they give him this beautiful, dramatic weight when needed with this lighthearted comedic tone that he has. On how the show gives depth to its   characters  Every character, especially mine, we may live in a completely ridiculous universe, or, you know, outrageous universe, but every single character, we come from a sincere and honest place. It’s not from the tip of your nose out, it’s from your guts and out. And I think that’s the difference. That’s why, you know, when my character says phrases like, ”I want my daughter to have the pleasure of knowing me,” you’re like, ”Wait, what?” . .. He just said something outrageous, but it comes from a very sincere and honest place. And also what the showrunner is accomplishing very successfully is portraying Latinos as normal human beings. Not because we’re Latinos we have to be saying, ”Ayayayayaaay!” in every single, you know, paragraph, or having piñatas hanging from the ceiling of our houses, or having our walls painted shocking pink. . .. It’s a beautiful [portrayal] of the story of human beings. They happen to be from a   background, but, you know, Jane’s family could be from Turkey, they could be from Vietnam, they could be from Hungary. It’s just a story about humans. On his career as a pop star and why he decided to transition to acting, I have accepted myself as an actor that is able to sing, and I love that. I started this business [wanting] to be a singer. . .. I studied opera . .. and I have a couple of CDs out and they did very well and we sold platinum and everything. But to be honest, it’s so much competition, especially in Latin America. . .. In the U. S. for example, if you’re a Will Smith and you’re an actor and a singer and a producer, you’re like, ”Wow, that’s amazing.” . .. But in Mexico or Latin America: ”So, what are you? A singer or an actor?” You have to decide. . .. And while I was pushing for my music career, the universe was sending me a lot of messages. . .. [Mexican actress] Lucero called me and, ”Hey, [producer] Carla Estrada is looking for the new antagonist, el villano”  —   the villain  —   ”of the telenovela Mi Destino Eres Tú.” I’m like, ”Oh great, yes, I’m gonna do it.” Because if I do it I’m gonna get screen time and if I get screen time I’m gonna sell CDs and sell some shows. . .. It was the universe or God or whoever slapping me in the face saying, ”Numbnuts, wake the hell up. You should pursue acting, you shouldn’t pursue music.” Thank God I had the wisdom to listen and pay attention to those signs. Radio producers Lucy Perkins and Gemma Watters, digital producer Nicole Cohen and radio editor Lauren Hodges contributed to this report."
"Have you ever noticed that when something important is missing in your life, your brain can only seem to focus on that missing thing? Two researchers have dubbed this phenomenon scarcity, and they say it touches on many aspects of our lives. ”It leads you to take certain behaviors that in the short term help you to manage scarcity, but in the long term only make matters worse,” says Sendhil Mullaianathan, an economics professor at Harvard University. Several years ago, he and Eldar Shafir, a psychology professor at Princeton, started researching this idea. Their theory was this: When you’re really desperate for something, you can focus on it so obsessively there’s no room for anything else. The   spend much of their mental energy juggling time. People with little money worry constantly about making ends meet. Scarcity takes a huge toll. It robs people of insight. And it helps to explain why, when we’re in a hole, we sometimes dig ourselves even deeper. This week on Hidden Brain, we’ll explore the concept of scarcity and how it affects people across the globe  —   from sugar cane farmers in India to   physicians in the United States. Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Maggie Penman, Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, and Renee Klahr. Our intern is Chloe Connelly and our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, and listen for Hidden Brain stories each week on your local public radio station."
"When Prince first signed with Warner Bros. Records, he didn’t want to be categorized as a black musician. This was the late 1970s, before music by black artists was widely marketed to multiracial audiences before kids in every household in America were glued to their screens watching ”Thriller” on MTV. To avoid being boxed in  —   which for black artists often meant making less money and reaching smaller audiences than their white counterparts  —   Prince encouraged rumors about his identity, hinting at being biracial when both his parents were black. In the 1984 movie Purple Rain, Prince’s parents are played by an   man and a white, Greek woman. The fiction of his racial background endured throughout his career, even creeping into some of last year’s obituaries. The way Prince worked to dissolve categories is one of the central themes that Ben Greenman explores in his new book, Dig If You Will The Picture. Greenman said that combining multiple, often conflicting identities, was integral to Prince’s work. And race wasn’t the only way Prince stirred things up. ”From very early on, he just shattered ideologies,” said Greenman, who has been a Prince fan since middle school in the early ’80s. ”[His] process was to isolate two theoretically opposed aspects of a self, of a person  —          . And he played out that opposition in his work. Sometimes he resolved it to his satisfaction usually he didn’t. And the tension between those two things powered the work. That was the engine at the center.” That tension resonated with Prince listeners of many different backgrounds. In an article for Time, Touré (who also wrote a book about Prince) wrote that ”Prince sits at the edges of race, gender, and sexuality and rejects all borders.” He said that in doing so, Prince was almost able to become ”a genre unto himself sonically and interpersonally.” According to Greenman, multiplicities played out in all sorts of ways  —   in terms of musical style, fashion, album art, even the members of his bands. Musically, it meant combining different genres, techniques and influences. Sometimes it even meant creating different identities, like his Camille persona, a higher pitched alter ego that he used in the 1987 song ”If I Was Your Girlfriend.” The song begins with the lyric, ”If I was your girlfriend would you remember to tell me all the things you forgot when I was your man?” Then there’s the 1981 song ”Controversy,” in which Prince delves into sexuality. In it, he asks, ”Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?”   years ago, that was a more fraught question than it might be today. ”Playing   was [a] very important thing for that time, in the ’80s, when AIDS was a relatively new major issue,” Greenman said. ”Here was this guy who was so flamboyant and nobody could really pinpoint or put their finger on his sexuality, and he didn’t really clarify.” Years later, Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness, ”and a lot of that early flamboyance and that early dissolution of category went away,” Greenman said. ”Part of it was that he just got older and his sense of himself, I’m sure, changed. But that early period Prince went to great lengths to blow up everything.” In blowing up everything, Prince made space for a new generation of artists. When Prince died in 2016, Frank Ocean posted a tribute acknowledging the ways in which Prince was a trailblazer. ”[Prince] was a straight black man who played his first televised set in bikini bottoms and   heeled boots, epic,” Ocean wrote. ”He made me feel more comfortable with how I identify sexually simply by his display of freedom from and irreverence for obviously archaic ideas like gender conformity.” Behind the scenes, Prince was notoriously shy, and he didn’t do a lot of interviews. But when he did, he committed hard to the idea that he and his music were not to be put into a box. In a 1999 TV appearance, Larry King expressed confusion at what to call Prince, who at the time was not going by Prince, but an unpronounceable symbol. Later in the conversation, King asked Prince, ”How would you describe your music? What idiom would you put it in?” Prince responded: ”The only thing I could think of, because I really don’t like categories, but the only thing I could think of is inspirational.” Greenman said that the way Prince forced fans to reckon with their own notions of identity was a form of subtle activism. Later in life, that propensity to address social injustices became more overt, even as Prince himself tended to speak more conservatively. After he died, fans started learning about the scope of Prince’s philanthropy. Van Jones, an activist and commentator on CNN, has talked about the lengths Prince went to support causes he believed in, like green jobs initiatives, and teaching black kids how to code. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Jones said that in 2006, when he was working on George W. Bush’s Green Jobs Act, he received an anonymous check for $50, 000. Later, he found out the check was from Prince. Prince also made direct reference to social issues in some of his later songs, like 2015’s ”Baltimore,” which talks about the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray at the hands of police. ”A lot of the way [Prince] addressed social issues was revolutionary early on, and sort of ” Greenman said. ”He would urge people to educate themselves, or overthrow the existing order, or don’t listen to everyone . .. It was hard to imagine being a Prince fan in 1984, 85, 86, and not going through that process of reassessing beliefs all the time. Both because as a fan you had to follow him, and because every message was about searching and finding and questioning what you were.”"
"All across Wall Street, humans are being replaced by computers. Even the people who make decisions about which stocks to buy and sell are being replaced by computer programs, by bots. To understand what goes on inside a   bot, we at Planet Money built our own. Bots are cheaper than   humans. They’re less emotional and more disciplined. They can process more information at once. They are doing things like scanning social media for consumer trends and counting the number of cars parked in   parking lots, then using that to trade. Our bot is doing something seemingly simple: It looks at President Trump’s Twitter feed, and when he tweets about a company, it trades stocks, with real money. Because the official Twitter handle of the president of the United States is @POTUS, we named our bot @BOTUS, bot of the United States. There’s $1, 000 on the line invested by the staff members of the Planet Money podcast from their personal funds. Follow along, and track whether we’re making money or losing it. Music: ”Rapture” and ”Now Son.” Find us:   Facebook. Subscribe to our show on iTunes or PocketCast. See what BOTUS has been up to lately: The Fine Print: This is for real. All decisions on buying and selling stocks are made automatically by BOTUS, a computer program. BOTUS makes trades by analyzing tweets from @realDonaldTrump to recognize when he mentions a publicly traded company. BOTUS also measures the sentiment using VADER Sentiment Analysis. If BOTUS decides a tweet is positive, it will buy the stock mentioned in the tweet if BOTUS decides the tweet is negative, it will sell the stock short. BOTUS will hold the position for 30 minutes, then get out. BOTUS was built with Tradeworx and trades through the Interactive Brokers platform."
"A ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Bataan Death March was held Saturday in San Francisco. A   salute honored the thousands of American and Filipino soldiers who died as they were forced to march 65 miles to a prison camp after their surrender at Bataan. The   battle that preceded the surrender on April 9, 1942, is part of an often forgotten history of the Philippines’ role in the World War II. The mostly Filipino soldiers defending Bataan had held off Japanese forces for three months without supplies of food or ammunition, a feat that is credited with delaying the timetable of the Japanese army. The event to commemorate this history and honor the thousands who lost their lives is being organized by the Bataan Legacy Historical Society, whose mission is to educate the public about the role of the Philippines in World War II. The historical society has previously advocated for the inclusion of the Philippines’ role in the war in California’s high school curriculum. The California State Board of Education approved the change last year, which makes the state the first to require students to learn about this history, according to the BLHS. As The AP reports, more than 250, 000 Filipino soldiers served in World War II, but until recent years, they did not receive much acknowledgment. There has been an effort to change that of late. In December, then President Obama signed legislation awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the Filipino and   veterans of World War II. Organizations like the Filipino Veterans Recognition and Education Project have worked to undo the diminishing of the Filipino contribution to the war effort that happened in the decades following WW II. A small number of the remaining Bataan survivors will gather for the ceremony in San Francisco today, including Ramon Regalado, who will be speaking. Regalado, who will turn 100 later this month, was honored earlier this week with medals for his service at his home in California."
"Updated at 9:05 p. m. ET, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has resigned after pleading guilty to abusing his office, allegedly to conceal an affair with a political adviser. Supernumerary District Attorney Ellen Brooks announced Monday that Bentley ”pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges: failing to file a major contribution report, in violation of Code of Alabama §  . 1( c) and knowingly converting campaign contributions to personal use, in violation of Code of Alabama §  .” She added, ”He has resigned from office.” The Associated Press describes the scene as the plea agreement was signed: ”Bentley appeared sullen and looked down at the floor during the Monday afternoon session. . .. ”The agreement specifies that Bentley must surrender campaign funds totaling $36, 912 within a week and perform 100 hours of community service as a physician. He also cannot seek public office again.” The governor, a Republican, was briefly booked into Montgomery jail, according to local media reports, before heading to the state Capitol to announce his resignation. Republican state Rep. Ed Henry, who had introduced articles of impeachment against Bentley last year, said, ”I think we have a great day for Alabama, where justice was done. Corruption was spotted, recognized and dealt with. . .. even though it was slower and little more painful than we had anticipated.” Bentley had vowed as recently as Friday not to resign, saying he had done nothing illegal. But the state Supreme Court decided to allow Alabama legislators to pursue impeachment hearings against Bentley, and calls for his resignation had been growing. Last week, a panel investigating Bentley’s actions released a scathing report, as NPR’s Debbie Elliott reported: ”It lays out in sometimes sordid detail an extramarital relationship between the    Bentley and political adviser Rebekah Caldwell Mason. ”The report accuses him of using state resources, including law enforcement, to hide the affair and protect his reputation, ’in a process characterized by increasing obsession and paranoia.’ ” ’Governor Bentley’s loyalty shifted from the State of Alabama to himself,’ [special counsel Jack] Sharman wrote in an executive summary. He said Bentley ’encouraged an atmosphere of intimidation’ to ensure the silence of his staff. . .. ”Political pressure for [Bentley] to resign has been growing since tape recordings were released in 2016 of him making sexually suggestive comments to Mason. Both were married at the time. ”Dianne Bentley later filed for divorce. The report says her suspicions of an affair were confirmed when Bentley mistakenly sent his wife a text that read ’I love you Rebekah’ with a   emoji.” Also last week, the Alabama Ethics Commission found ”probable cause” that Bentley improperly used campaign funds in connection with the alleged affair, among other ethical and legal violations. NPR’s Debbie Elliott notes that Bentley is the third Alabama official to lose his job in a year. Roy Moore was suspended from his post as chief justice of the state Supreme Court when he ordered state judges to disregard the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision supporting the legality of   marriage. Mike Hubbard was removed as speaker of the state House after being convicted of ethics charges."
"After you see a case of elephantiasis, you can never forget it. People’s legs, feet and toes swell up so much that they can’t walk. Or move easily. The skin thickens and breaks open, creating ulcers and infections. ”It causes so much pain. So much pain,” says epidemiologist Christine Kihembo, at Makerere University School of Public Health in Kampala, Uganda. The trigger for the disease is typically a tiny worm. About the width of human hair, the worm lodges inside lymph nodes. Instead of the bodily fluid draining and moving around the body properly, it gets trapped in the extremities but also sometimes around the genitals. So when Kihembo started hearing reports of farmers with swollen extremities and thickened skin in western Uganda in 2015, she and her colleagues thought they knew right away what the problem was: an outbreak of elephantiasis. They traveled out to the community, which lives high in the foothills of western Uganda. ”This is a very remote community in tropical forest,” Kihembo says. ”They receive about 4 feet of rain each year and live at an average elevation of 4, 000 feet.” When Kihembo and her colleagues reached the area, the team identified about 50 farmers with the telltale signs of elephantiasis. And they started looking for the worm. They took blood samples from people. Hunted down mosquitoes that spread the parasite. They even checked soil around the farmers’ homes. But time and again they came up  . There were no signs of the worm anywhere, Kihembo and her team report Monday in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. So Kihembo started doing disease epidemiology the   way: talking to people. They interviewed more than 40 people with the disease and found that nearly all of them had something in common: They farmed in volcanic rock  —   without wearing shoes. Back in the 1970s, Ernest Price was a British surgeon living in eastern Ethiopia. He noticed people had a risk of developing swollen feet, thickened skin and ulceration when they farmed barefoot in red clay soil. He called the disease podoconiosis, from the Greek ”podos” and ”konos,” which mean ”foot” and ”dust.” And since then, health workers have found cases of podoconiosis on three continents, from the mountains of Mexico to the volcanic ridges of Sri Lanka. The disease is widespread along the equator in Africa, with 10 countries reporting cases. Ethiopia alone has at least a million cases and Cameroon at least half a million, the World Health Organization says. Scientists aren’t exactly sure how red clay soil triggers the podoconiosis. One hypothesis is that silica  —   or some other mineral in the soil  —   creates tiny slices in the skin and makes its way into the lymphatic system. Then the immune system attacks the mineral, creating a massive inflammatory response that eventually damages lymph vessels. Instead of worms trapping fluid, the body’s own immune system causes the swelling. The disease takes years to develop, Kihembo says. ”At first, farmers say they have pain, itching and swelling in their feet, in the evening, after working on the farm,” she says. ”But in the morning it’s gone.” This cycle happens for years until one morning, the swelling and pain don’t go away in the morning. Then the damage is hard to reverse. ”These people probably have been suffering silently without help for more than 30 years,” Kihembo says. And there’s a surprisingly simple way to stop progression of the disease and prevent the problem in the future: Wear shoes while working in the fields. ”These people are not in a position to afford shoes,” Kihembo says. ”As much as we wanted, we didn’t give them shoes because we didn’t have the means to. ”But really what the community needs is economic capacity so they can buy shoes,” she adds. ”We pray and hope that we have the support to continue this work so we can help this community.”"
"Prompted by a chemical weapons attack, the U. S. loosed dozens of Tomahawk missiles last week on an air base operated by Syrian President Bashar Assad, the embattled ally of Russia. In the hours and days since the strike, Russian leaders have made no secret of their displeasure with the American intervention. U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has dismissed these protests from Russia, which helped broker a 2013 deal to destroy Assad’s chemical weapons  —   as, at best, ”simply not plausible.” And at worst? ”Regardless of whether Russia was complicit here or whether they were simply incompetent or whether they got outwitted by the Bashar   regime,” Tillerson told CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, ”you would have to ask the Russians that question.” For better or worse, Tillerson will have the opportunity to ask the Russians that question personally when he makes his first visit to Moscow as secretary of state Tuesday. But that difficult conversation will have to wait a day. First, Tillerson stopped in Italy to discuss the violence in Syria with a much friendlier audience: other   foreign ministers. That   summit, which opened Monday in Lucca, brings together diplomats from the U. S. U. K. France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan  —   all of whom have expressed uniform support for last week’s missile strike. While the conflict in Syria had always been on the docket for the   talks, which serve as a   of sorts for a bigger summit in late May, original plans had also included conversations about other global flashpoints such as Iraq, Libya and Ukraine. It’s unclear how much that agenda has narrowed  —   but it is quite clear the missile strike is already casting its shadow across the meeting. Even before   talks kicked off, Tillerson didn’t miss the opportunity to deliver a pointed reference to the suspected Syrian chemical attack. ”We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world,” Tillerson said during a visit to a World War II memorial to Italian civilian victims of the Nazis. Diplomats at this week’s   meetings are eager to hear the details behind that ”rededication.” So far, the messages out of the White House have been mixed, as Reuters notes: Tillerson said this weekend ”that the defeat of Islamic State remained the U. S. priority, while U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said ’regime change’ in Syria was also a priority for Trump.” Yet while   countries are seeking clarity, Russia  —   a former member of the group  —   has been perfectly clear about its own immediate reaction to recent events in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the U. S. missile strike ”an act of aggression against a sovereign state delivered in violation of international law under a   pretext.” And Russia threatened to cut off a hotline between the Pentagon and the Kremlin designed to prevent unintentional violence between the two countries in Syria. ”The rhetorical   is officially over,” NPR’s Lucian Kim reports. ”Their response was really fast. They had a statement up at 9 a. m. [last Friday] in five different languages. They never act that fast. They’re really, really, really upset.” In some ways, the feeling is mutual. Many U. S. lawmakers haven’t accepted the rationale behind Russian intervention in Syria, and they are hopeful the U. S. can help persuade Russia to change its policy there. ”Russia has said all along that their intervention in Syria is really only to oppose terrorism, but it’s blindingly clear . .. what they are doing is facilitating an Iranian beachhead into Syria and a sustained presence there, and making possible the survival of one of the worst regimes in modern human history,” Sen. Chris Coons tells NPR’s Michele Kelemen. Despite the friction ahead of the Moscow meeting, Tillerson himself has   connections to Russia, having led Exxon Mobil’s operations there before he was named CEO. Putin even awarded Tillerson the Order of Friendship. The relationship even attracted wary senators’ attention in Tillerson’s confirmation hearing earlier this year. Ties between Russia and some members of Trump’s campaign team have been the subject of much scrutiny in recent weeks. Congress and the FBI are still investigating alleged Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, a scandal that continues to dog the fledgling administration. Still, whatever friendly relations Tillerson and Russian officials might have enjoyed are showing some strain. Tillerson is set to meet with his counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov  —   but not with Putin. Reuters reports that Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, says that ”right now there is no meeting with Tillerson in the president’s diary.”"
"Updated at 4:23 p. m. ET, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is recommending the White House nominate Washington labor lawyer Eric Dreiband to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division, according to two NPR sources briefed on the hiring process. Dreiband represents companies at the law firm Jones Day, where his law partners included Donald McGahn, now the White House counsel. Dreiband served as the top lawyer at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President George W. Bush and previously worked in the office of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, where, according to his law firm biography, he led the investigation and successful prosecution of Clinton associate Webster Hubbell. In private practice, Dreiband has defended R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in an age discrimination case Bloomberg, against pregnancy discrimination claims and CVS Pharmacy. Civil rights advocates have been closely watching changes within the Justice Department, which under President Trump has already reversed course on oversight of local police departments, guidance for schools governing bathroom and locker room use for transgender students and voting rights cases initiated during the Obama administration. Conservative veterans of the division, which will celebrate its 60th anniversary this year, recently wrote to Sessions to blast the Obama administration’s record on civil rights and concluded ”it’s time to make changes,” such as rooting out ”ideological rot” among ”career bureaucrats.” The civil rights division at the Justice Department frequently generates controversy no matter which political party holds the White House. During the Obama years, the Senate rejected nominee Debo Adegbile, after lawmakers derided a legal brief he had filed on behalf of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal. The Obama team never formally submitted a nomination for ACLU lawyer Vanita Gupta, who went on to lead the civil rights unit through investigations of police in Ferguson, Mo. Baltimore and Chicago. The Trump team has considered a number of lawyers for the civil rights post, including Harmeet Dhillon, a California Republican who spoke at the GOP convention Ondray Harris, who once led the division’s Community Relations Service, which engages in conflict resolution and mediation in hot spots across the country and Robert Driscoll, a law partner at McGlinchey Stafford who served as deputy assistant attorney general and chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration. At the White House, a spokeswoman said, ”We do not have any personnel announcements to make at this time, but will let you know when we do.”"
"For a centenarian, the Pulitzer Prize appears to be as spry as ever. Now in its 101st year, the prestigious prize recognized writers, artists and musicians of nearly every bent  —   from breaking news and cartooning, to fiction and drama. At a New York City ceremony Monday, Pulitzer Prize Administrator Mike Pride announced the 21 winners of the 2017 award. Below, you can find a list of this year’s winners, linked to their winning works where available. You can also find the finalists  —   whose names were not released until Monday  —   right here."
"  composer Du Yun has taken home this year’s Pulitzer Prize for music for her opera Angel’s Bone, it was announced today during a ceremony in New York. In its announcement, the Pulitzer board wrote that the work ”integrates vocal and instrumental elements and a wide range of styles into a a harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world. The work, which includes a libretto by Royce Vavrek, premiered in January 2016 during the Prototype Festival in New York. The New York Times, in a glowing review of that show, wrote that it was ”appallingly good” and that Du’s music ”obeys only her own omnivorous tastes and assured dramatic instincts.” The piece tells the story of two fallen angels who are taken in, Misery style, by a couple that yearns for fame. A previous work, Zolle, which premiered in 2005, tackled similar themes as Angel’s Bone  —   displacement and an examination of the space between life and death. (You can hear that piece here, courtesy of member station WQXR.) She is also the artistic director of the MATA Festival and holds a PhD in composition from Harvard."
"A massive fire at a Fruitvale district live work space has reportedly left an unconfirmed number of people dead died at an East Oakland work space, authorities said. The fire apparently broke out about 11:30 p. m. in the 1300 block of 31st Avenue. No other information was immediately available. Check back for updates. So began the East Bay Times’ coverage, at 4:13 on the morning of Dec. 3, 2016 of a fire in Oakland. We would later learn the fire, which took place at a dense underground art space called ”Ghost Ship,” had taken 36 lives. Today, the paper’s coverage of the disaster won a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. For 19 hours and 27 minutes following that initial publication  —   at 53 words, including typos  —   the East Bay Times expanded its story before ending the day with 1, 388   words. The first paragraph of the final version of the story reads: Doomed partygoers trapped on the second floor of a crudely converted warehouse screamed, ”Help us! Help us!” as one of the deadliest structure fires in Oakland’s history ripped through a tinderbox of makeshift living spaces and a labyrinth cluttered with art late Friday night, killing at least nine people and possibly dozens more. Its coverage that day and in those that followed, including   accounts of the fire and a memorial to the victims, helped generate conversations worldwide both about local officials’ culpability in Ghost Ship’s lack of safety precautions to the wider responsibility of    and underground art spaces to monitor themselves. As the Pulitzer committee explained, The East Bay Times won for its ”relentless coverage of the ’Ghost Ship’ fire, which killed 36 people at a warehouse party, and for reporting after the tragedy that exposed the city’s failure to take actions that might have prevented it.”"
"Stella Nyanzi, one of Uganda’s most controversial academics and activists, appeared in court Monday, after being arrested and charged Friday with cyber harassment and the misuse of a computer, for ”shaming” the government. Nyanzi’s latest   with the    regime of President Yoweri Museveni began with a fight for free sanitary pads for   girls. ”She’s the one person who has dared to come out strongly in the country and say what many have feared to say many, many times,” said Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, an LGBT rights activist, shortly after leaving the courthouse. During the 2016 elections, Museveni and his wife, Janet, promised to provide free pads to poor young girls across the country. That’s important, because as this blog has reported, in several   surveys of girls across Africa many reported that they did not have access to products such as pads, that their schools lacked toilets and that they had not been given even basic information about managing their periods  —   all of which can make it challenging for a girl to attend class during her period. In the surveys, girls also reported a range of concerns about their periods including fear, shame and embarrassment. The elections passed Museveni won. Earlier this year, Janet Museveni told the country’s Parliament the promised free sanitary pads werent going to happen because the country was facing a tough economic climate. Nyanzi was furious. She decided if the government wasn’t going to do it, she would. So she started a crowdfunding campaign, and she also unleashed a torrent of criticism toward Museveni, his wife and his supporters. Her criticisms flowed into her Facebook timeline. They were always pointed and sometimes profane. In one of them, she writes that she refuses to call the president’s wife ”Mama Janet,” as most Ugandas do: ”What sort of mother allows her daughters to keep away from school because they are too poor to afford padding materials that would adequately protect them from the shame and ridicule that comes by staining their uniforms with menstrual blood? What malice plays in the heart of a woman who sleeps with a man who finds money for millions of bullets, billions of bribes, and uncountable ballots to stuff into boxes but she cannot ask him to prioritize sanitary pads for poor schoolgirls? She is no Mama! She is just Janet!” Uganda is a country where people usually speak ill of their president only in hushed tones. And with reason: The Ugandan government has been known to arbitrarily detain and in some cases torture its political opponents. Nyanzi, a social science researcher and anthropologist, has been known for years in Uganda as a  . Last year, when she had a dispute with her university, she protested by taking off all her clothes. She has used humor and shock value to educate Ugandans on issues of sexuality. She once wrote a lyrical post about getting an STD. When educating girls about their periods, she used song and dance to teach them that there is nothing not to love about their bodies. But the attacks on Uganda’s first lady got her suspended from her university job. And that just seemed to fuel her fire. She posted one video of herself in front of her mother’s grave. If Museveni had bought medicine instead of bullets, she says, her mother and father would still be alive today. She also posted a picture of her three young children. She wrote that people ask her: How could you speak so freely, so critically when you have young children to care for? ”My children will live through the coming liberation and the revolution,” she wrote. ”And so, I speak the dirty truth to power without fear or favor so that my children will learn to breathe living fire to frozen governments. I take my children to peaceful protests and meetings for civil disobedience so that they learn their civic duty to defy this evil regime. For the children, I refuse your silence, your inertia and your sweet hollow words.” When Nyanzi appeared in court Monday, prosecutors said she needed to be evaluated by a psychologist. They charged her with ”cyber harassment” for comparing President Museveni to ”a pair of buttocks.” Nyanzi was also charged with using the Internet to ”disturb the peace, quiet or right to privacy” of Museveni. Nyanzi rejected all those charges. Nabagesera, who is helping Nyanzi coordinate her response, says the arrest came on the same day they were supposed to deliver pads to the former parliamentary district of the first lady. The government, she says, was embarrassed. Nyanzi and her supporters will keep fighting, Nabagesera says."
"Most of us have about five dreams each night, though we’re not likely to remember any of them. But a team of researchers has found a pattern of brain activity that seems to reveal not only when the brain is generating a dream but something about the content of that dream. ”When subjects were having [dream] experiences during sleep, there was a region in the back of the brain that tended to be very active, as if this region was a little bit more awake,” says Francesca Siclari, a researcher at the Center for Research and Investigation in Sleep at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland. Patterns of brain activity in this region also suggested whether the dream included a face or movement, Siclari and a team of researchers at the University of   report in Nature Neuroscience. The team found that dreams occurred during both rapid eye movement  —   REM  —   and   sleep. But there were also periods of deep sleep in which dreaming did not occur. The team studied dreams by monitoring electrical activity in the brains of 32 people as they slept. Participants were awakened frequently and asked to report whether they’d been dreaming. This reduced the problem of people forgetting dreams over the course of a full night’s sleep. And sure enough, people in the study were able to recall not only whether they had been dreaming but often what they had been dreaming about. Dreams included riding a bicycle, seeing geometric shapes in motion and smelling perfume. After a person reported a dream, the investigators went back and reviewed brain activity patterns recorded with a technique known as   electroencephalography. This allowed researchers to connect dreaming with a decrease in   activity and an increase in   activity at the back of the brain. By looking for this electrical signature in the brain, the researchers were able to predict when a person had been dreaming about 90 percent of the time. In a smaller study, the researchers looked at activity in areas of the brain that respond to specific stimuli, like seeing a face, hearing speech or perceiving movement. Activity in these areas during dreams offered hints at what the person had been dreaming about. For example, when someone’s dream included a face, there was activity in a part of the brain used to recognize faces. And when a dream involved a sense of movement, there was activity in an area that is involved in the perception of movement. There was ”a very close correspondence [between] brain areas that are active when we dream about things compared to brain activities that are active when we see or perceive things during wakefulness,” Siclari says. ”We’re using our brains the same way when we’re dreaming that we use [them] to carry out those same functions when we’re awake,” says Robert Stickgold, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study. But Stickgold isn’t convinced that measuring activity in the back of the brain is a sure way to detect dreaming. Even people who are awakened every   probably don’t remember every dream, he says. ”What they’re really measuring is what’s happening before you wake someone up and the person remembers having been dreaming,” Stickgold says. And it’s possible that forgotten dreams have a different electrical signature in the brain. Even so, Stickgold thinks this sort of research has the potential to help scientists understand not only dreaming, but an even greater mystery: consciousness. When we sleep, our brains repeatedly cross the boundary between unconsciousness and dreaming, which researchers consider a form of consciousness, Stickgold says. The question is: ”How does the brain shift into a state of activity where we’re dreaming, as opposed to having dreamless sleep?” he says. Finding an answer to that question, Stickgold says, could help scientists understand how the brain becomes fully conscious when we wake up each morning. ”That’s a phenomenal question that we just don’t have an answer to,” he says."
"At a time of declining church attendance across America and growing disenchantment with traditional religion, a Catholic parish in Hyattsville, Md. thrives by embracing the very orthodoxy other congregations have abandoned. St. Jerome Catholic Church and its affiliated school, St. Jerome Academy, have both experienced dramatic growth over the past few years, largely due to an influx of families drawn to the parish’s reputation as a haven for conservative Catholics seeking to live among others who share their values. ”The parish life was very important to us,” says Daniel Gibbons, 40, who teaches at Catholic University in nearby Washington, D. C. and moved to Hyattsville with his young family four years ago. ”I know from my own childhood that it can be very hard to raise children as a Catholic if you don’t have a community of other Catholics who are trying to make the faith real in their everyday lives and raise the children in ways that are harmonious with their faith.” Several of the new St. Jerome families previously had been home schooling their children, after disappointing experiences in both public and parochial schools. ”  education was very important to us,” says Julia Dickson, 37, who moved to Hyattsville with her husband two years ago from a Baltimore suburb. ”There was no [private] school that I felt was any different from a public school with a religion class tacked on,” she says. ”I wanted something with the Lord as the center of the entire day.” St. Jerome Academy, which almost had to close its doors eight years ago because of financial difficulties and low enrollment, experienced a dramatic turnaround after switching to a ”classical” curriculum with a heavy emphasis on the history of Western civilization, taught always with reference to the Bible and the development of Christian faith. The town of Hyattsville itself, with a population of barely 17, 000, is also an attraction to these young Catholic families. Though located just beyond the D. C. limits, the historic community was established before the automobile age and is highly walkable. A key gathering spot is the Vigilante Coffee Roastery  Cafe, situated around the corner from the church and the school. Young mothers, many with babies in tow, congregate there each morning. The cafe manager is a former teacher from Los Angeles who also serves as the youth minister at St. Jerome. Most of the families live within a   radius. ”Our kids are continually at each other’s homes,” says Michelle Trudeau, 48, a mother of six who   her four oldest children before enrolling them at the parish school, where she is now the assistant principal. ”As parents, we know we can trust what’s going on in that other house,” she says. ”We know that if something goes on with our kids, other parents are looking out for them. We all become parents of each other’s children.” The tightness of the Hyattsville Catholic community developed deliberately, not accidentally. The key figure in its growth was Chris Currie, a former nonprofit executive who moved to Hyattsville 20 years ago and now serves as director of institutional advancement at the parish school. ”It started with me inviting people I knew to come here,” he says. ”My sister’s family was the first to move here, followed by a couple of friends. Other families came here to become part of the foundation, and then by word of mouth people heard about it and came here because of the heightened community life.” As an ”intentional” community centered on a parish and its school, Hyattsville came to the attention of Rod Dreher, a writer specializing in Christian culture. In his   and widely discussed new book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a   Nation, Dreher urges conservative Christians in America to withdraw from culture wars and partisan politics and focus instead on deepening their own faith through a   life. Dreher’s model is St. Benedict, the sixth century monk recognized as the founder of Western monasticism. ”We have to develop creative, communal solutions to help us hold on to our faith and our values in a world growing ever more hostile to them,” Dreher writes. He describes the Hyattsville Catholic community in his book as ”a strong model of being in the world but not of it.” In an interview with NPR, Dreher lamented the replacement of ”traditional” Christianity with ”” which he described as ”all about feeling good and happy about yourself.” ”For a lot of people in modernity,” Dreher said, ”religion has become sort of a psychological help. It has become a way of rationalizing what we want to do anyway and putting a little Jesus sauce on top to make it go down easily.” There is little ”pseudo” about the Catholicism lived in Hyattsville. Bible study groups meet regularly, and a dozen or more women in the community gather weekly to say the rosary together, a custom that has become rare among Catholics more generally. The women pray to the sound of crying babies and squealing toddlers. ”We’re very open to life,” explains    Jane Murphy, who has three children under the age of 5. ”In the Catholic Church, we don’t believe in artificial contraception, and that results in a lot of babies!” The community’s adherence to official church doctrine also means the Hyattsville Catholics are increasingly in a cultural minority. They differ with many in the LGBT world, for example, over such issues as   marriage, which the Vatican opposes. ”I think that what the church teaches about marriage is the best for family life,” says Gibbons, the Catholic University professor. Whether the community reflects Dreher’s ”Benedict Option” is a matter of some dispute, however, in part because many of the Hyattsville Catholics are deeply engaged in the broader society and say they do not feel marginalized, angry or alienated. Many have advanced degrees and work professionally. Unlike other conservative Christians, they are not easy to categorize politically, having split their votes about evenly between Donald Trump and other candidates in the 2016 election. Currie, the community founder, looks for comparison to the experience of the early Christians under Roman rule, when they thrived despite vicious persecution. ”They lived joyful lives, and they attracted converts by the example of their lives,” he says. ”I think that’s what we’re trying to do, live the way they did. Not live defensively, in sort of a paranoid xenophobic reaction to the rest of society, but to realize that we’re all human beings created in the image of God, and to live that life ourselves and share it with our neighbors.” Critics say the risk in people choosing deliberately to live in a   community is that it may not equip them well to deal with the challenges and opportunities of a pluralistic society, but the Hyattsville Catholics question that premise. ”For me personally,” says Murphy, ”living in this community has strengthened my faith so that I can go out to the wider community, the secular community, and talk with confidence about my faith. I can be accepting of other people but still be confident about telling them about my faith.”"
"Two executives who were publicly excoriated over Wells Fargo’s opening of millions of bogus accounts must give back millions more dollars in pay, the bank’s board announced Monday. The board is clawing back an additional $47 million from Carrie Tolstedt, who headed the troubled sales division, and $28 million from former CEO John Stumpf. Stumpf ”was too slow” to see problems in sales practices that brought a $185 million punishment from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a   report released Monday by Wells Fargo’s board. The report says he also failed to protect the bank’s reputation from what the CFPB has called ”the widespread illegal practice of secretly opening unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts.” Some 5, 300 Wells Fargo employees lost their jobs over the   scandal  —   a number far higher than the bank’s board says it was initially led to believe. The report says Stumpf ”did not appreciate the scope and severity of the problem” and that he ”continued to publicly support the appropriateness of Wells Fargo’s sales goals and to highlight that the vast majority of Wells Fargo employees ’got it right.’ ” Both Stumpf and Tolstedt had previously been forced to return tens of millions of dollars. With the new clawbacks, Wells Fargo’s board says, the bank has now recovered more than $180 million in executive compensation over the scandal. Of that total, $69 million has come from Stumpf and $67 million from Tolstedt, the bank says. Stumpf resigned in October of 2016. The Wells Fargo report cites ”distortion” of the sales culture and management system in the unit that was at the heart of the scandal, as well as other organizational issues, as reasons why essential problems weren’t addressed. Describing a system that sometimes ”imposed excessive pressure” on   workers during Tolstedt’s long tenure, the report says employees in the Community Bank division were ranked against each other on ”scorecards” that were updated daily. Workers were paid and promoted based on sales goals that executives knew were often unattainable, according to the report. Former Wells Fargo employees who tried to raise red flags about the sales practices have told NPR’s Chris Arnold that they were fired or pushed to resign  —   and an investigation showed that the bank had put black marks against those employees’ names in a permanent national database used by banks and regulators. As for how executives responded to problems within the sales division, the report states, ”Tolstedt and certain of her inner circle were insular and defensive and did not like to be challenged or hear negative information.” Tolstedt’s current perspective isn’t represented in the report  —   its authors say she ”declined, on advice of counsel, to be interviewed as part of this investigation.” The report notes that in January, Wells Fargo changed its incentive program to focus on ”customer service rather than selling products.” As we’ve previously reported:"
"For the second consecutive year, aerial surveys show severe coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. While severe bleaching events have occurred three other times in the past 20 years  —   in 1998, 2002 and 2016  —   this year marks the first time it’s known to have happened two years in a row. Scientists say the damage is caused by higher water temperatures due to global warming. ”It takes at least a decade for a full recovery of even the fastest growing corals, so mass bleaching events 12 months apart offers zero prospect of recovery for reefs that were damaged in 2016,” said James Kerry, a senior research officer at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Queensland, Australia. It was ”shocking” to see the extent of the damage in a different section of the reef, Kerry added. The damage last year was worst in the northern third of the massive reef. This year, it’s most severe in the middle third of the reef. As Kerry explained, those areas of damage overlap somewhat so ”some of the reefs now, in the central and northern section, have had a double dose of severe bleaching for two years in a row.” You can see how the impacted region has shifted in this map, released by the ARC Centre: Aerial footage released by the team shows large swaths of the reef that are now drained of color. Bleaching happens when coral is exposed to higher than normal water temperatures. The unusual conditions ”cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, called ’zooxanthellae,’ ” the ARC Centre said. ”The loss of these colorful algae causes the corals to turn white, and bleach.” They can recover if the ocean temperature returns to normal, but prolonged stress may cause the corals to eventually die. James Cook University’s Mia Hoogenboom carried out a number of underwater assessments for the survey, and said she documented damage to   corals that tend to be more resistant to bleaching. To make matters worse, Tropical Cyclone Debbie at the end of March ”struck a section of the reef that had largely escaped the worst of the bleaching,” the ARC Centre added. In research on last year’s bleaching event, the scientists have said that more than 90 percent of a   ( ) stretch of the reef had sustained some form of damage. A recently published study in Nature stated that local measures can ultimately do little to protect the reefs from bleaching. Securing a future for coral reefs ”ultimately requires urgent and rapid action to reduce global warming.”"
"The Obama administration created a rule to protect millions of American workers saving for retirement. President Trump has delayed this   fiduciary rule, which requires financial advisers to put consumers’ best interests ahead of their own. A battle over the rule is likely to continue in the courts. In the meantime, here’s what you need to know. Today was supposed to be the day you knew you could trust your financial adviser, Monday was the deadline for the industry to comply with a new rule crafted by the Obama administration to protect Americans saving for retirement. Obama’s economic team said everyday Americans are losing upwards of $17 billion a year from their retirement accounts because financial advisers have conflicts of interest that give them incentives to steer clients into mutual funds with excessive fees. The rule requires advisers to stop that practice and to act in their customers’ best interest. But Trump has delayed the rule for 60 days through an executive action. He has directed his administration to review the rule. The new administration may try to change the rule or get rid of it. Expect a legal battle over this financial adviser rule, Just about every retiree and worker protection group in the country supports this ”best interest” rule for financial advisers: AARP,   the Consumer Federation of America, US PIRG and many others. And some of these groups say they will sue the administration if it moves to weaken or scuttle the rule. ”They can’t rip this key safety protection for retirement savings away from the American people without having a substantial valid basis. And if they do, we’ll see ’em in court,” Dennis Kelleher, president of the nonprofit Better Markets, a Wall Street watchdog group, has told NPR. Phyllis Borzi, a former assistant labor secretary, worked for eight years crafting this rule during the Obama administration. She says she’s worried about the Trump administration’s delay, but she says, ”the courts are very reluctant to overturn a legitimately issued rule simply because of a change in politics.” Trump has already run afoul of the courts with other executive orders  —   judges have repeatedly blocked his immigration bans. So we may see the courts intervene here, too. Financial advisers are different from doctors and lawyers, Many people think financial advisers are like doctors or a lawyers  —   you go to see them, and their legal responsibility is to help you and to put your interests first. But most financial advisers are not held to a legal standard like that. Instead, they’re more like car salesmen. Financial advisers can get a bigger commission for selling you more expensive products  —   such as mutual funds with fees that are more than five times higher than   funds that invest in similar or even exactly the same mix of stocks. In this way, some advisers get paid more money for giving you bad advice and it’s legal for them to do that. It wouldn’t be legal anymore if this rule goes into effect. Why the industry says this is a bad rule, Many big Wall Street firms don’t like this rule. One argument against it is that it would make it too hard for advisers to make enough money when they work with people who haven’t saved much yet. Tim Pawlenty, the CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable, applauded the   delay in a statement, saying it will allow time for the Trump administration to ”begin its review of, and potentially revise or rescind, the rule.” Trump’s top economic adviser Gary Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, has also been critical of the rule, saying it limits consumer choice. Still, supporters of the rule say none of these criticisms are new. In fact, four federal judges have already upheld the rule and found these criticisms to be flawed and unconvincing. Those rulings came in lawsuits the industry brought to try to get the courts to overturn the rule. Without this rule in effect, how can investors get advice they can trust? In recent years more investors are moving to   ”roboadvisers.” Many of these online companies have attracted   investment experts to put together   and   retirement portfolios for customers at a fraction of the cost of a traditional adviser. Basically, since it’s all done online, and sometimes the phone, you’re not paying fees to pay for your own personal financial adviser to have a nice house and a nice car. And these roboadvisers favor   index fund investing so you’re not paying for Wall Street mutual fund managers to have nice houses in the Hamptons either. For decades, the dirty little secret of Wall Street has been that investing for retirement is pretty simple: Statistically you are much more likely to make more money over time if you invest in   index funds and   funds instead of paying mutual fund managers or brokers to try to pick stocks that will be ”winners.” Picking winners is just too hard to do and the research here is very clear. Roboadvisers embrace this approach. And with them, you don’t have to worry about having an adviser charging a big commission to steer you into mutual funds with really big fees. So that conflict of interest disappears. If you want to sit down with a real person for more complicated financial planning questions (What’s the right way to save for my kids’ college? Should I pay off student loans first or start saving for retirement first? Can I afford to buy a house this year?) experts recommend going with an adviser who is ” .” That means you pay a straightforward fee (you can shop around to find an adviser who’s not too expensive.) And again, you avoid the conflict of interest of an adviser who’s getting paid commissions to steer you into one investment product over another."
"The newest member of the Supreme Court celebrated his   with a public ceremony in the White House Rose Garden Monday morning. Neil Gorsuch will cement the conservative   majority on the high court, delivering on a key campaign promise of President Trump. ”I’ve always heard that the most important thing that a president of the United States does is appoint people  —   hopefully great people like this appointment  —   to the United States Supreme Court,” Trump said. ”And I got it done in the first 100 days.” Gorsuch will fill the seat left vacant more than a year ago by the death of Antonin Scalia. The    promised to remember that legacy as he puts his own mark on the court, likely for decades to come. ”I won’t ever forget that the seat I inherit today is that of a very, very great man,” Gorsuch said. ”To whom much is given, much will be expected,” Gorsuch said. ”I promise you that I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great nation, Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch once clerked, administered the judicial oath. All of the other justices were on hand for the outdoor ceremony. Gorsuch will be the first former Supreme Court law clerk to serve alongside his onetime mentor. Trump may get the chance to nominate another Supreme Court justice if Kennedy or one of his colleagues steps down. The president flattered the    Kennedy, calling him ”a great man of outstanding accomplishment.” ”Throughout his nearly 30 years on the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy has been praised by all for his dedicated and dignified service,” Trump said. ”We owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.” Trump also paid tribute to Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell,  . who helped engineer the moment. McConnell declared within hours of Scalia’s death in February of last year that   Barack Obama should not be allowed to fill the seat. He blocked a confirmation hearing for Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, preserving the vacancy and giving conservative voters another reason to side with Trump in last year’s election. ”Thank you, Mitch,” Trump said. Senate Democrats were still fuming over the treatment of Garland and threatened to filibuster Gorsuch’s confirmation last week. Republicans changed Senate rules to prevent that, and Gorsuch was confirmed,   on a largely   vote. Gorsuch, who spent the last decade on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Colorado, is expected to attend a private meeting with fellow justices on Thursday to consider new cases for the high court. He’ll also take part in the next round of oral arguments, set to begin next week."
"The Affordable Care Act’s worst enemies are now in charge of the vast range of health coverage the law created. They’re also discussing changes that could affect a wider net of   policies and Medicare coverage for seniors. Although Republicans failed last month in their first attempt to repeal and replace the ACA, President Donald Trump vows the effort will continue. And even if Congress does nothing, Trump has suggested he might sit by and ”let Obamacare explode.” Health insurance for the 20 million who benefited from the ACA’s expanded coverage is especially at risk. But they’re not the only ones potentially affected. Here’s how what’s going on in Washington might touch you. A    lawsuit threatens many health plans  A suit by the   House challenges some of the subsidies that support private plans sold to individuals and families through the ACA’s online insurance marketplaces (also called exchanges). The lawsuit has already gained one court victory. By many accounts, it would wreck the market if successful, leaving up to 12 million people without coverage. ”It’s the   problem facing the exchanges,” said Rachel Sachs, a health law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. ”That would make insurers not only exit tomorrow but also not want to offer plans in 2018.” The litigation involves   ACA subsidies that reduce    costs such as   and deductibles for   consumers. These are different from the law’s   tax credits, which help pay for premiums. Filed in 2014, when Barack Obama was president, the lawsuit could backfire by politically harming the Republicans now in charge. House leaders requested and were granted a delay of the litigation for now, and said they won’t drop the lawsuit but will continue the subsidies while it gets considered. The administration has not said how it plans to handle the lawsuit. Policy confusion undermines coverage  Even if Congress doesn’t repeal the ACA, the continuing battle is making insurance companies think twice about offering marketplace policies for next year. The less clarity insurance carriers have about subsidies and whether the administration will promote 2018 enrollment, the likelier they are to bail or jack up premiums on the policies they offer, to cover themselves. Preserving the subsidies, which limit    costs for   consumers, ”is essential,” said Kevin Lewis, CEO of Community Health Options, a nonprofit Maine insurer. ”Markets don’t like uncertainty,” Lewis said. ”The ’sword of Damocles’ hanging over our collective heads is unsettling, to say the least.” Democrats say Republicans are sabotaging Obamacare  Shortly after taking power, Trump officials yanked advertising designed to maximize enrollment in marketplace plans just before a Jan. 31 deadline. It was partly restored after an outcry. Then the administration said it would scrap an   plan of rejecting tax returns from individuals who decline to say whether they had health insurance. Scrapping that plan weakens the requirement that everyone have health coverage. Trump aide Kellyanne Conway suggested in January the administration might entirely stop enforcing that requirement  —   it’s the part of the law most hated by many Republicans. If officials persist with that message, health plans might attract even fewer of the young and healthy members whose insurance premiums are needed to support the ill. That would cause more hikes in premiums and exits by insurers. ”More mischief can be done,” said Dr. Peter Kongstvedt, a health industry consultant and senior faculty member at George Mason University. ”It is absolutely possible that some markets will end up with no carriers unless a combination of state and federal government act to preserve the market” with taxpayer money. Trump officials will move to roll back ACA coverage even if Congress doesn’t repeal  Tom Price, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has signaled his intent to reverse parts of the ACA through regulation even if Congress doesn’t repeal the law. For example, Price couldn’t unilaterally eliminate coverage for birth control or maternity care, both of which many Republicans object to on moral grounds or because of cost. But birth control might no longer be free as a preventive benefit. Maybe the administration would let states limit the number of prenatal visits in maternity coverage. Perhaps more employers could gain religious exemption from providing birth control. Medicaid coverage for people with low incomes could shrink  Obamacare’s coverage expansion included government Medicaid coverage for folks with lower incomes.   states and the District of Columbia expanded Medicaid to most adults who have incomes below about $16, 000 for singles and $28, 000 for a family of three (although eligibility varies). Republicans want to reduce the growth of Medicaid spending and give more control over the program to states. Discussions about a Medicaid overhaul have focused on replacing ACA provisions with   federal grants to states. But even if the ACA survives, it’s likely the administration will give states more say in who gets Medicaid coverage and how much. Many Republicans favor having work requirements for Medicaid recipients and raising    payments for patients. Under the failed House replacement bill, the American Health Care Act, 9 million people in those states would have lost Medicaid coverage in 2020, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, however, Republican support for the ACA’s Medicaid expansion is growing, which might mean overall cutbacks would be less severe or Medicaid coverage could increase among the 19 states that didn’t expand the program under the ACA. Some Republicans want to overhaul Medicare for seniors, House Speaker Paul Ryan wants to restrain Medicare growth by giving members fixed, ”premium support” payments to buy plans he’d also like to raise the age of eligibility for Medicare. Both those ideas could lead to less coverage or greater    expense. But those proposals weren’t part of the Republicans’ replacement bill. Changing Medicare likely would trigger loud objections from AARP and other powerful lobbies. And Trump doesn’t seem inclined to back a change. ”I don’t think . .. Trump wants to meddle with Medicare or Social Security,” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told the press in January.   coverage could become less generous  Although ditching Obamacare would end the requirement for large employers to offer health insurance, most companies would keep their plans as a way to attract workers, analysts say. But that coverage could become less generous. The ACA limits the annual    costs for members of   plans, and also prohibits caps on annual and lifetime benefits. The ACA also prohibits waiting periods for covering a new worker’s preexisting illness. Any replacement law signed by Trump might not include those protections. Kaiser Health News, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation. You can follow Jay Hancock on Twitter: @jayhancock1."
"Health care is a   industry in America, but are we getting what we pay for? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, a medical journalist who formerly worked as a medical doctor, warns that the existing system too often focuses on financial incentives over health or science. ”We’ve trusted a lot of our health care to   businesses and it’s their job, frankly, to make profit,” Rosenthal says. ”You can’t expect them to act like Mother Teresas.” Rosenthal’s new book, An American Sickness, examines the deeply rooted problems of the existing   system and also offers suggestions for a way forward. She notes that under the current system, it’s far more lucrative to provide a lifetime of treatments than a cure. ”One expert in the book joked to me . .. that if we relied on the current medical market to deal with polio, we would never have a polio vaccine,” Rosenthal says. ”Instead we would have iron lungs in seven colors with iPhone apps.” On what consolidation of hospitals is doing to the price of care  In the beginning, this was a good idea: Hospitals came together to share efficiencies. You didn’t need every hospital ordering bed sheets. You didn’t need every hospital doing every procedure. You could share records of patients so the patient could go to the medical center that was most appropriate. Now that consolidation trend has kind of snowballed and skyrocketed to a point . .. that in many parts of the country, major cities only have one, maybe two, hospital systems. And what you see with that level of consolidation is it’s kind of a  . What happens, of course, when you have a   is you have an enormous sway over price. And so, what we see in research over and over again is that the cities that have the most hospital consolidation tend to have the highest prices for health care without any benefit for patient results. So consolidation, which started as a good idea in many places, has evolved to a point where it’s not benefiting patients anymore, it is benefiting profits. On the ways the   industry stands to profit more from lifetime treatment than it does from curing disease, If you’re a pharmaceutical manufacturer and you have a problem like diabetes, for example, if I invented a pill tomorrow that would cure diabetes  ” that would kill a   dollar business market. It’s far better to have treatments, sometimes really great treatments . .. [that] go on for life. That’s much better than something that will make the disease go away overnight. On how prices will rise to whatever the market will bear, Another concept that I think is unique to medicine is what economists call ”sticky pricing,” which is a wonderful term. It basically means . .. once one drugmaker, one hospital, one doctor says ”Hey we could charge $10, 000 for that procedure or that medicine.” Maybe it was $5, 000 two months ago, but once everyone sees that someone’s getting away with charging $10, 000, the prices all go up to that sticky ceiling. . .. What you see often now is when generic drugs come out . .. the price doesn’t go down to 20 percent of the branded price, it maybe goes down to 90 percent of the branded price. So we’re not getting what we should get from a really competitive market where we, the consumers, are making those choices. On initiating conversations early on with doctors about fees and medical bills  You should start every conversation with a doctor’s office by asking ”Is there a concierge fee? Are they affiliated with a hospital? Which hospital are they affiliated with? Is the office considered part of a hospital?” In which case you’re going to be facing hospital fees in addition to your doctor’s office fees. You ask your doctor always . .. ”If I need a lab test, if I need an   will you send me to an   provider so I don’t get hit by    fees?” . .. Often that will be a little hard for your doctor, because they may have to fill out a different requisition, but it’s worth asking. And any doctor who won’t help you in that way, I think, isn’t attuned to the financial cost that we’re bearing today. On getting charged for ”  doctors” brought in by the hospital or primary doctor  You do have to say ”Who are you? Who called you?” and ”Am I going to be billed for this?” And it’s tragic that in recovery people have to think in this kind of     somewhat adversarial way, but I think if we don’t push back against the system in the way it bills, we’re complicit in allowing it to continue. On how to decipher coded medical bills  Don’t be alarmed by the ”prompt payment discount.” Go back to the hospital and say, ”I want a fully itemized bill. I want to know what I’m paying for.” Some of it will be in codes, some of it will be in medical abbreviations. I’ve discovered you can Google those codes and find out what you’re being charged for, often, and most importantly, you might find you’re being charged for stuff that obviously you know you didn’t have. Elizabeth Rosenthal is    of Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and a partner of NPR’s. Neither KFF nor KHN is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. Radio producers Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner and web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly   contributed to this story."
"Dylann Roof, who gunned down nine people in the basement of a historically black church in Charleston in 2015, pleaded guilty to murder charges at a South Carolina state court. In exchange, a circuit judge is expected to hand down a life sentence Monday afternoon, as The Post and Courier reported. Roof pleaded guilty to nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder and a weapons charge for the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which he planned for months. This is not Roof’s first trial. A federal jury unanimously sentenced him to death in January on federal hate crimes charges, as we have reported. ”The state plea agreement will avoid a second grueling trial for survivors and family members of the victims,” NPR’s Debbie Elliott told our Newscast unit. ”South Carolina prosecutor Scarlett Wilson has characterized the agreement as an insurance policy that Roof will spend the rest of his life in prison should his federal death sentence not stand.” Monday’s hearing ”could be one of the last times for victims and their family members to have Roof hear their words,” the Post and Courier reported. Roof is expected to be transferred from a local jail to a federal prison out of state, a law enforcement official tells The Associated Press. There, he will await execution."
"This story starts with a lost email. Annie Hudson had spent weeks crafting the text. She was documenting tiny elements of a memory  —   events so ordinary that they would certainly be forgotten, yet so treasured that she wanted to keep hold. She wanted the email to be perfect. Kept tinkering, revising. It lived in the ”Drafts” folder on her iPhone. Then, came a notice: ”Software Update.” Annie followed the prompts. Her phone got    fixes. The draft of the email disappeared. OK, it’s only an email. But not just any email. Annie went to the Apple store, hoping for a recovery. The Genius Bar couldn’t help. And then, on her podcast app, she heard an essay about the foibles of trusting the magic of technology  —   and a call for listeners to share ”  emotional breakdowns” for a chance of advice. Annie sent hers the next day: ”I know it’s probably a   but I have to try.” Which takes us to the real start of this story: the birth of Ava VonDerLinn. Home with newborn Ava, Annie obsessed over preserving memories. She was going to remember all the little moments, take all the pictures, record all the milestones. ”I was so afraid I was going to forget,” she says. There was going to be a baby book  —   obviously. ”You have no idea how many books I got from Amazon, looked at them and sent them back,” Annie says. They were formulaic and. ..not quite right. Which was also not entirely tangible: Is the book the cutest? The most colorful? The one with the most pertinent questions? ”I was driving my husband, my sister and my friends crazy,” Annie says. They told her: ”Just pick a book and start writing in it!” She did. On the pages, her handwriting shrunk and crammed toward the bottom. Overwhelmed and anxious, Annie one day called her sister: How did she handle it all with her son? ”You know,” Annie’s sister said, ”I write him emails.” She’d read about it on some parenting blog  —   a   version of the ”Book of Days” their own mother had done for them. And that’s how little Ava got her first email. It came from Annie’s husband, David VonDerLinn. TO: AvaFROM: DadSUBJECT: Your very first email ever! Hi Ava Bean! This is your dad (who is still getting use to that title) emailing you on Feb. 11th, 2015 at 8:49 in the AM, from his studio office. I just added you to my address book (that was sort of a powerful feeling by the way). Here is your profile picture! [. ..] From there, the emails poured in. A video of Ava learning to stand. Later, to walk. A quick photo from a trip to the zoo. A story of a special   preference (at her feet) a recurring song request (”Heigh Ho” from Snow White). All digitally marking the unforgiving passage of time  —   and with it, the phenomenal, relentless transformation unique to tiny humans. TO: AvaFROM: MomSUBJECT: Paco hosies, [. ..] Sometimes the days just blur together and it’s easy to forget that you will not always be this age, this size. I was reminded of this earlier today and it stopped me in my tracks and made me cry. [. ..] You started singing, ”Ring around the Rosies.” You love this tune and have been singing it for awhile now but you usually start it out with your own special rendition: ”Paco hosies” and then, ”ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” [. ..] You have always started the song out that way. Until today. You started out correctly: ”ring around the rosies.” It kinda broke my heart. Maybe you’ll still sometimes say ”Paco hosies,” but I fear I’ve heard it for the last time. [. ..] The emails have afforded Annie and David a reprieve from   angst. They’re easily done in the dark, from any device one parent can fire off a note while the other is watching the kid. Every message gets backed up to the cloud, and duplicates get sent to a secondary inbox. David has set a Monday reminder, but they don’t sweat the frequency too much. ”I mean, if we did it every (week) it would be 52 emails a year,” he says, adding under his breath: ”That would be crazy.” That lost iPhone draft, Annie never did recover. The email had recounted Ava’s   bedtime routine, her joy in playing with mom’s hair. Annie says she’s given it another take. The idea, of course, is for Ava to inherit a vault of recollections, a window into this time in her family’s life  —   ”because she probably won’t remember,” says Annie. She has read that children’s memory usually only starts after three. But are these emails for Ava, or for her mother and father? Annie and David say they’re for their daughter to know, for them to hold on. ”When you have kids, and when life is just going by faster and faster, you just forget things so easily,” says David. ”And you think you’re not going to forget,” adds Annie, ”but you do.” A Chinese proverb has stuck with her: The palest ink is better than the best memory. TO: AvaFROM: DadSUBJECT: My vision of you this morning, [. ..] I saw you running back and forth on the play equipment and you looked so happy and free. I didn’t want to interrupt you so I decided I would go ahead and leave without disturbing you. I went through the gate then turned around and there you were, standing at the other side of the playground looking back at me. The sun was shining behind you lighting up your rainbow dress and wild blonde hair. You looked like a colorful angel. You stared at me for a moment, I think wondering if you should run to me for a goodbye hug, and I wondered that too. Then you turned and ran back to play, and I suddenly realized that you have grown just a little bit. You are a little more independent, a little more brave, a little more powerful. [. ..] As we talk on the phone, Ava quietly watches Frozen in the next room. She’s supposed to be napping, but she’s almost three  —   you can imagine how that negotiation goes. Annie and David have different ideas for when they would share the email vault with their daughter. David suggests they could use them as leverage, if Ava becomes a rebellious teen. (”I don’t know if she’ll appreciate,” says Annie, laughing.) Or, maybe, they’ll wait for her   crisis, or a time when she’s old enough to relate. Or maybe  —   in the cruelest act of sentimental parents everywhere  —   they’ll deliver them on her wedding day, if she has one. ”I have an idea,” David   to Annie conspiratorially. ”We’ll download them to an ancient hard drive and we’ll put them up in the attic. And they’ll get all dusty, and some day when she’s an old lady, she’ll go up there and find them  —   we’ll be long gone.”"
"Updated at 6:11 p. m. ET, Passengers on a United Express flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky. were horrified when a man was forcibly removed  —   violently wrenched from his seat and physically dragged down the aisle  —   apparently to clear a seat for airline staff. Videos of the scene have prompted calls to boycott United Airlines. On Twitter, a representative of the United said the flight in question was ”overbooked” and that ”one customer refused to leave.” ”This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United,” company CEO Oscar Munoz later said in a statement. ”I apologize for having to   these customers.” He said the airline is conducting a ”detailed review” of what happened and reaching out to the passenger in question, who was left bloodied. The Chicago Department of Aviation, meanwhile, says the actions of the security officers were ”not condoned by the Department” and that one individual has been placed on leave pending a review. Airlines are legally allowed to remove passengers from flights for nearly any reason  —   including to vacate a seat for someone else. But the method shown on these videos is not typical. One aviation expert tells NPR that the scene on Flight 4311 was ”extremely unusual.” Multiple videos and photos were posted on social media, and other passengers described the incident online  —   at first upset about the delay, and then horrified by the violent turn of events. Witnesses say passengers had already boarded on Sunday evening at O’Hare International Airport when United asked for volunteers to take another flight the next day to make room for four United staff members who needed seats. The airline offered $400 and a free hotel, passenger Audra D. Bridges told the Louisville  . When no one volunteered, the offer was doubled to $800. When there were still no bites, the airline selected four passengers to leave the flight  —   including the man in the video and his wife. ”They told him he had been selected randomly to be taken off the flight,” Bridges said on Facebook. She said there was no incident involving the man until he was told to give up his seat. The man said he was a doctor and that he ”needed to work at the hospital the next day,” passenger Jayse D. Anspach said on Twitter. ”He said he wasn’t going to [get off the plane],” Bridges wrote on Facebook. ”He was talking to his lawyer on the phone.” Then United brought in security. Both Bridges and Anspach posted videos of three security officers, who appear to be wearing the uniforms of Chicago aviation police, wrenching the man out of his seat, prompting wails. His face appeared to strike an armrest. Then they dragged his limp body down the aisle. Footage shows the man was bleeding from the mouth as they dragged him away. His glasses were askew and his shirt was riding up over his belly. ”It looked like he was knocked out, because he went limp and quiet and they dragged him out of the plane like a rag doll,” Anspach wrote. ”10mins later, the doctor runs back into the plane with a bloody face, clings to a post in the back, chanting, ’I need to go home,’ ” he said. ”@united has everyone on this flight fully distressed and fearful! !” @JohnK tweeted. He later sent out an update: ”Just asked to leave plane so they can clean up blood from passenger.” After the cleanup, the passengers were allowed to reboard and fly to Louisville. The   spoke with Bridges about the troubled flight. She told the newspaper the plane was ultimately delayed about two hours, with no update to passengers about what happened to the injured man. This is the second   United incident in just two weeks. On March 26, the airline turned away girls wearing leggings, later explaining that they were violating the fairly strict dress code for people flying on ”buddy passes.” The incident went viral, partly because of the airline’s initial, unsatisfying attempts to justify what happened. The same happened on Sunday, when United’s first response to the outrage was to say that the passenger ”refused to leave.” It wasn’t untrue  —   but it didn’t address the violence shown on the video. Christopher Elliott, a consumer advocate and founder of the group Travelers United, notes  —   without defending United’s actions on this flight  —   that airlines have broad discretion to remove paying passengers from planes. ”He wasn’t leaving his seat, therefore he was uncooperative, therefore he was considered disruptive and they removed him,” Elliott says. ”The legal agreement between you and the airline basically says, ’We can remove you at any time for any reason from one of our flights.’ ” It happens ”routinely,” Elliott says. According to Department of Transportation numbers, some 46, 000 people were ”involuntarily denied boarding” by major airlines in 2015  —   although Elliott notes that most of those people were denied boarding in the first place, not dragged off a plane. And it doesn’t mean those people misbehaved. It’s perfectly legal for an airline to ”overbook,” or sell more tickets than it has, and then kick some unlucky travelers off the flight. But it’s ”extremely unusual” for that to prompt the kind of response shown on the video, says Patrick Smith, an airline pilot and travel blogger behind the website ”Ask The Pilot.” He notes that airlines almost always offer money or a voucher and then increase the offer if no one is interested. ”Almost always, someone takes the bait and it doesn’t come to this,” Smith says. But in this case, while United started by offering payouts, the situation turned hostile. ”Technically, an airline has a right to eject a passenger. At a certain point someone has to get off the plane. How they do that is where it gets tricky,” Smith said. ”I’m sure [United would be] the first to tell you that it was not handled as well as it should have been, and there were other options. . .. it doesn’t seem right to me.”"
"Updated: Tues.    9:50 a. m. ET, Democrats are hoping to prove that the growing opposition to President Trump is very real with an upset in one  —   or possibly even two  —   upcoming special congressional elections. Their best chance is in Georgia’s 6th District, where Republicans are scrambling to stop Democrat Jon Ossoff from winning the contest outright with a majority of the vote in an April 18   primary. But now there’s growing concern over a previously sleepy race in Kansas to replace new CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Fearing a   election and an underperforming GOP candidate, Republicans are sending in their cavalry at the eleventh hour to prevent an upset in the race that’s headed to the polls Tuesday. That’s still an unlikely outcome, but if Democrats keep the race in ruby red Kansas close, it could give them more momentum and optimism heading into Georgia the following week. Ossoff and Democrats hope to ”Make Trump Furious” A    documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer, Ossoff has become a vehicle for the   sentiment nationwide. He announced this week that he had raised an   $8. 3 million in the race  —   an unheard of number for a congressional contest in such a short time. But 95 percent of that came from    donors, with the help of progressive blogs and celebrity endorsements. Still, that money has allowed him to dwarf his opponents on air and build an impressive field organization that’s put him just within reach of winning with a majority outright on April 18  —   a nearly unthinkable feat in an   field. Republicans, at this point, just need to keep Ossoff below 50 percent and force him into a June 20 runoff, where they feel much better about the chances that one of several candidates who have emerged as   challengers  —   most likely former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, Johns Creek City Councilman Bob Gray, state Sen. Judson Hill or former state Sen. Dan Moody  —   would have against Ossoff then. National Republican groups have poured about $4 million into the race to knock down Ossoff, looking to tie him to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,  .  —   still toxic with the GOP base and a motivating factor to turn out their voters, Republicans say  —   at and to argue he’s tried to embellish his national security credentials. One ad last week from the Congressional Leadership Fund, a superPAC with ties to House leadership, went for the jugular by pointing out Ossoff’s documentary company had received money from ”Al Jazeera, a media outlet that has been described as a mouthpiece for terrorists.” This is the type of district that’s primed for a possible upset  —   even though   and Human Services Secretary Tom Price won   easily here time after time, Trump carried Georgia’s 6th District by only 1 point last year after Mitt Romney won it by 23 points in 2012. This is the northern Atlanta suburbs  —   a growing, diverse and   area, just like the places where Trump struggled mightily last fall. With the GOP field fractured, Ossoff has been able to corral his considerable resources into a sizable advantage, and his best shot is to deliver a knockout punch and win the April 18 contest outright. If he’s pushed into a runoff, and the race becomes a more traditional contest and GOP attacks have more time to permeate, winning Tom Price’s old House seat looks much harder for Ossoff. Panic in Kansas? This contest on Tuesday is giving Republicans some late heartburn, as they’re worried about a   contest, a depressed GOP base and an underperforming nominee. Unlike the Georgia district up for grabs next week, the 4th Congressional District in Kansas, which includes Wichita, is one Trump won comfortably by 27 points. But the race has largely flown under the radar, and Republicans worry their base may not show up for GOP nominee Rob Estes, the state treasurer. So in the eleventh hour, Republicans are now sending in their cavalry. The National Republican Congressional Committee went up with an ad last week hitting Democratic nominee James Thompson on his position on abortion rights, Vice President Pence has recorded a   on Estes’ behalf and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz  —   who won Kansas big in the state’s presidential caucuses last year  —   will campaign with Estes on Monday. Also working against Republicans is Gov. Sam Brownback’s unpopularity in the state, and Thompson has tried to tie Estes to the governor. Ultimately, the late help will still probably be enough to pull Estes over the finish line on Tuesday, and there’s been no major late surge of interest by national Democrats in the race that would signify that they have a real chance of pulling off an upset. In fact, the state party turned down requests from Thompson for help last month. But a    result could only give Democrats more momentum and optimism heading into Georgia the following week. Is Montana next on upset watch?  If there’s an upset in Georgia and if the Kansas contest is close, expect progressive activists to turn their sights to this May 25 contest between Republican Greg Gianforte and Democrat Rob Quist to become the state’s lone representative in the House. Democrats have been able to break through in the state’s gubernatorial and Senate races (though Sen. Jon Tester is a top target in 2018) but they haven’t held the state’s only House seat in almost two decades. And without a significant late shift toward Quist, Gianforte, a wealthy software executive who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year, still looks poised to win. Progressive groups such as the Daily Kos and Democracy for America have looked to boost Quist, a   folk and bluegrass singer who has written his own campaign song. The Democratic nominee, who’s making his first run for office, has jabbed at Gianforte for keeping a low profile while Quist has held town halls across the state. Quist, however, has his own problems with tax liens, which he has blamed on medical costs and insurance prices, according to Montana Public Radio. The GOP superPAC Congressional Leadership Fund has already hit Quist with $700, 000 in attack ads, too, painting him as too liberal. Ultimately, the   of the state which Trump won by 21 points and Gianforte’s deep pockets still looks like too much for Democrats to overcome. But, like Kansas, this one could take on a life of its own late in the game. Remember, special elections are still special  If Democrats are able to pull off wins in any of these contests, the party will be crowing that this spells doom for President Trump and Republicans in the 2018 midterms. And, to be sure, it would be a devastating blow for any House seat this early on in Trump’s   presidency to switch hands  —   especially ones previously held by his Cabinet members. Ultimately, House special elections are snapshots in time  —   and right now Democrats need to be able to prove their opposition to Trump, with protests and marches, isn’t just all talk and no results. Winning one of these races would prove they can turn their  ’   sentiment into real blowback at the ballot box. But it’s also not a guarantee of future success, and if Ossoff wins, for example, he’d start out with a target on his back in 2018, when the weird dynamics of a multicandidate field aren’t in play and he’d have much more trouble raising millions of dollars if he isn’t the only game in town. However, if Ossoff doesn’t win, that isn’t a signal, either, of Democratic fortunes in 2018. Democrats have plenty of other targets beyond Georgia’s 6th District to put the House in play, as well. Midterm elections of a   president are a referendum on the commander in chief, and if Trump’s approval continues to sink and his administration continues to be mired in controversy, there will by myriad opportunities for Democrats. California and South Carolina: the other races  Beyond that trio of more compelling contests, there are two other vacancies still to be voted on. The   California contest to succeed   Attorney General Xavier Becerra in California’s 34th Congressional District was whittled down April 4, with Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez and Los Angeles Planning Commissioner Robert Lee Ahn advancing to a June 6 runoff. Progressive groups had hoped to get one of their favorite candidates through in this Los Angeles district where Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary last year. But with that vote splintered, Ahn was able to edge through, benefiting from a growing Asian population in the district. Gomez was the   to begin with, and probably remains as such in the runoff. He raised the most money of any candidate in the race and has secured endorsements from many Democratic insiders, including Becerra. In South Carolina, whoever wins the GOP nomination in the 5th Congressional District will be a   to succeed White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. The overwhelming number of votes in this race will come from York County, the largest area of the district that’s seen a boom as a growing suburb of Charlotte. Former state Rep. Ralph Norman, whose family owns a major real estate development company in the area, already has a base in the area, and he resigned from the Legislature to focus on the race. State House Speaker Pro Tempore Tommy Pope represents part of the district’s base in Columbia, too, and he already has name recognition in the state from being the lead prosecutor on the   1994 case of Susan Smith, the mother who was found guilty of drowning her two young sons in a car. The primary is on May 2, and Republicans in the state say Pope and Norman have the best chance to advance to a likely May 16 runoff if no candidate gets a majority. But former state GOP Chairman Chad Connelly, who was faith engagement director for the Republican National Committee, has run a strong campaign too and could pull in votes from heavily evangelical voters. Ultimately, the GOP primary is shaping up to be a contest about who’s the most conservative, and don’t expect to see candidates shirk away from Trump as they play up their praise of Mulvaney. Whoever wins the nomination will be the heavy favorite come June. Democrats haven’t held the seat since John Spratt, the   Committee chairman, was defeated by Mulvaney in 2010, and the seat has only gotten more Republican since then, voting for Trump by almost 20 points."
"You don’t need to know all about Breaking Bad, and the     former schoolteacher Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, to enjoy Better Call Saul. This spinoff series more than stands on its own  —   and, as TV spinoffs go, is the best in the business since Cheers begat Frasier. Come to think of it, it’s even reinvented and refreshed its story line the same way the sitcom Frasier did  —   by giving the main character a brother, and making sibling rivalry and similar occupational interests a key to the new show’s central dynamic. In Frasier, Kelsey Grammer, as Frasier Crane, was given the gift of David Hyde Pierce, who played his   younger brother Niles, a fellow psychologist. In Better Call Saul, Bob Odenkirk, as Jimmy McGill, is given the gift of Michael McKean, playing the even   older brother Chuck, a fellow lawyer. This addition to, and expansion of, the Breaking Bad canon has been one of its great triumphs  —   and one of its best secret weapons. Chuck is a moral,    attorney, while Jimmy is fine cutting corners. As we’ve learned over the past two seasons, Chuck has disapproved of Jimmy and his approach  —   and, at the climax of last season, tricked Jimmy into confessing to having doctored some documents and secretly taped that confession. The new season premiere, written by series creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and directed by Gilligan, picks up shortly after that, and we quicky see that the tension between the brothers has not lifted. There’s a similar tension between Jimmy and his new law partner, Kim, played by Rhea Seehorn, who also dislikes Jimmy’s unethical antics. Kim represents another great new character, and performer, added to Better Call Saul, but there also are some classic carryovers. Foremost among them is Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut, a former cop turned private eye and   fixer, who was one of the standout players in Breaking Bad. This season, Mike is following a trail that leads, by episode two, to a   chicken place that Breaking Bad fans will recognize, and be delighted by, immediately. (I said you don’t have to know Breaking Bad to enjoy Better Call Saul, but you’ll enjoy it even more if you do.) When Mike sends Jimmy into Los Pollos Hermanos to order some food and act like a customer, Breaking Bad fans are waiting like crazy for a glimpse of Gus Fring, the chicken maven and drug kingpin played by Giancarlo Esposito. And that’s exactly what we get of Gus, at first  —   just an    glimpse, in which we never seeing his face. It’s like TV foreplay, but eventually, in that frighteningly polite voice, Gus quietly confronts Jimmy, who’s rooting through one of the restaurant’s garbage cans for possible evidence. Season three of Better Call Saul, like the previous seasons, opens with a    sequence set after the events of Breaking Bad, when Saul, once Jimmy, is now hiding in plain sight as a man named Gene, the manager of a Cinnabon store in Omaha. The music played during the scene is the Nancy Sinatra hit ”Sugar Town,” which is perfectly suited to a place with so much icing and sweetness. But    doesn’t belong there, and avoiding his past by toiling there will work for only so long. My dream, and my hope, is that eventually Better Call Saul will finish its flashback story of how Jimmy became Saul, and switch to its   Bad story of what happens to the poor guy next. It could be a prequel, and a sequel, in one  —   giving us not only a great origin story, but also a fabulous new chapter. But since Better Call Saul is the best drama series on TV, just as Breaking Bad was in its time, I’ll happily settle for whatever time frame, and episodes, I can get."
"His   parody of an Australian senator denying the impact of an oil spill once prompted a Snopes   report. Satirist John Clarke, whose career spanned from 1970s sketch comedy to bitingly dry political humor, has died, leaving legions of fans in mourning. He was 68. Clarke died from natural causes during a walk in the Victoria bushlands over the weekend, reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, citing a statement from his family. Since then, tributes have poured in from around Australia and Clarke’s native New Zealand. ”We’ll wait a long time to find another John Clarke. In fact, we never will,” Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said via Twitter. Clarke and his partner, Bryan Dawe, made up the Clarke and Dawe   team, which had a long run on the ABC. They performed their ”The Front Fell Off” oil spill sketch back in 1991. When a video of it was circulated online more than 15 years later, the sketch perplexed and amused millions of people, prompting Snopes to clarify that the pair were parodying reaction to an actual oil spill by a Greek tanker  —   which had indeed ”lost its bow off the coast of Western Australia,” as a government site notes. In 2010, the pair took on BP’s U. S. oil spill for another sketch in which Clarke’s character noted, ”The first thing to do in an event like that is to underestimate the problem.” Long before his turn as an Internet star, Clarke was a star in the comedy scenes in Australia and New Zealand. He wrote books and scripts he recorded songs he conjured up the sport of ”farnarkeling” and covered it doggedly. From the ABC: ”He came to attention in his native New Zealand in the 1970s when he created the iconic character, Fred Dagg, a country bloke dressed in a black singlet, shorts and gumboots. ”He   the   winning mockumentary The Games, about the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, which aired in 1999 and 2000.” The character of Fred Dagg remains beloved and admired. Upon learning of Clarke’s death, Jemaine Clement of the comedy duo The Conchords shared an early mockumentary segment featuring Dagg and his ”approximately half a dozen” sons  —   all of whom were named Trevor. ”So subtle and hilarious,” Clement wrote. Actor and director Taika Waititi tweeted, ”RIP John Clarke. Hugely influential to me and my mates, he was one of the fathers of NZ’s style of comedy. We all copied him at some point.”"
"President Trump wants America to use more ”clean coal” to make electricity. He hasn’t elaborated on what kind of coal that might be. But there is, in fact, a way to capture and contain or reuse one of coal’s worst pollutants  —   carbon dioxide, which warms the atmosphere. Though ”carbon capture” has been slow to catch on among those who run   power plants (despite billions spent on research) entrepreneurs are now starting to adapt the technology for natural gas  —   coal’s biggest competitor. Bill Brown,   of the venture capital firm 8 Rivers Capital, in Durham, N. C. is one of those entrepreneurs. I met him on a construction site near Houston. He’s a big guy in   boots and a hard hat, and he’s got a big idea: Build a demonstration power plant that burns fossil fuels without dumping carbon dioxide into the air. ”We’re doing something that no one else has thought of before,” he told me. Brown had a hard time persuading people to give him money to build the plant. ”They thought we were nuts,” he said. ”I mean, it’s funny. The look that comes across their face at that moment is, ’This guy is deluded.’ ” It didn’t help that Brown is a lawyer and former investment banker  —   not an engineer. Plus, no one before him has ever built such a thing. ”Let’s face it,” he said bluntly, ”we’ll be the first technology that takes fossil fuels and cleans up the carbon at no extra cost.” He’s not surprised people are skeptical, he said. ”That’s the way the world has been for a long, long time.” Brown’s project  —   the technology company NET Power (where he is also CEO)  —   eventually put together $140 million to build a demonstration plant outside Houston. Right now it’s a giant Lego set of girders, storage tanks and pipes rising up from the red Texas dirt. The engineering firm CBI, and power company Exelon are partners. So is Toshiba. Toshiba’s contribution is the turbine. Most turbines make electricity when you force   steam though them. But Brown’s turbine doesn’t use steam. The plant burns natural gas to make   carbon dioxide  —   and uses that CO2 to drive the turbine. Sitting atop a   set of scaffolding, the turbine looks like the topper on a wedding cake, except that it’s the size of an SUV. ”It’s like a [Chevy] Suburban,” said Walker Dimmig, who also works at 8 Rivers and manages commercial development for NET Power. ”One hundred megawatts out of a Suburban.” That’s enough to power tens of thousands of homes. Here’s what’s key: Almost all the CO2 used to drive this turbine will be routed back to the machine and reused, instead of wafting away. What isn’t used to drive the turbine will be captured and sent off for industrial uses that keep the gas out of the atmosphere. A lot of environmentalists would like the use of fossil fuels to simply disappear, Brown said, because fossil fuels threaten the world’s climate. His project will show that the use of such fuels can be   he said. ”Anybody who says keep it in the ground is asking the wrong question,” Brown said. ”The question is, are we putting CO2 into the atmosphere? And if the answer is no, then that should be sufficient.” Leaders in the Trump administration have made it clear they aren’t worried much about reducing carbon emissions to hold off climate change. But Dimmig said utilities and power companies are concerned about global warming and about reducing their contribution to it. ”They understand that the interim politics might be changing,” Dimmig said, ”but the general direction isn’t. And [utilities] are still moving in that direction. They’re still very   in their entire planning horizon.” The federal government has spent billions of dollars on research to make carbon capture attractive to utilities  —   partly to keep the coal industry alive. The irony here is that Brown has chosen to run his plant by burning natural gas  —   not coal. Natural gas is cheaper and cleaner, Brown said, and there’s lots of it. Some environmentalists are excited by the technology. ”From our point of view, we’re talking about climate protection,” said George Peridas, an engineer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of several environmental advocacy groups that support carbon capture research. ”From the standpoint of the fossil fuel producers, I think they are looking at the bottom line. They are looking at survival they are looking at creating new jobs.” But to make carbon capture work in the commercial world, investors have to believe in it, too, and some think carbon capture may have come along too late. Right now, renewable energy is growing faster than any other source of energy, said Jonathan Levy, an energy investment analyst at Vision Ridge Partners. ”With the cost of wind and solar where they are, and continuing to decline,” he told me, ”it’s hard to see why you’d go all in on a big fossil project that is more expensive than the other technologies.” Brown said he thinks his plant’s technology  —   applied to natural gas  —   can compete with any source of energy, including renewables. He acknowledged that many in the   business have made that promise and failed. But he expects to have proof later this year  —   once NET Power’s demonstration plant starts its turbine."
"To get you to buy a bottle of champagne, M. Cole Chilton, the face who was always behind the counter of my neighborhood wine store in Brooklyn, would send out emails with elaborate descriptions: ”I taste like sunshine, and I tell of brighter days ahead. I will make you forget that three people cheated on you last year. I will make you forget that you didn’t contribute anything to your 401( k). I will make you forget that dog sitting is not as easy as it sounds.” Rarely have I gotten so much enjoyment from a newsletter, but also, rarely have I been so confused. Did I want to buy these wines that smelled like ”Bing cherries burnt by a flaming walrus tusk and washed down with gulp of bitter Iron Goddess tea?” Yes, yes I did. Did I know what any of that meant or what to expect when I opened a bottle? God, no. This is a common problem with the average wine consumer. In her new book, Cork Dork, writer and certified sommelier Bianca Bosker says you can teach yourself to taste. She traces her wine education from being a total novice working as a cellar rat in a New York restaurant to becoming someone who could blind taste with impressive accuracy. Though the book is very much a glimpse into the strange world of wine, it’s even more about taste  —   how to do it, how to describe it, and whether anyone knows what they’re doing at all. Bosker describes having a ”crisis of confidence” after bringing a   exercise to her fellow sommeliers. She filled six plastic cups with herbs, covered them in foil, and poked holes into the top. ”If the somms could smell chervil in their wine, surely they could smell chervil in chervil?” Bosker writes. Unfortunately, this was not the case. According to a theory she notes elsewhere in the book, perhaps instead of real chervil, the aroma these sommeliers were noting was simply something they’d heard others describe as chervil in the past  —   a game of telephone for the nose. Tasting notes, which are meant to be a helpful guide, might just be creating new confusion for the lay drinker. ”If you’re a [wine] critic and you say you smell ’peppered raspberry’ and ’pomegranate’ and you, the drinker, don’t sense them, you’ll think there’s something wrong with the wine or something wrong with you,” Bosker tells NPR. While we may know as many as 30, 000 words in our native language, we’re not nearly so good at defining the hundreds of thousands of distinct smells our brains process. ”There’s an incredible richness of information we’re neglecting and we can remedy that by teaching ourselves how to taste,” Bosker says. In the 1980s, Ann Noble, a professor at the University of California, Davis, came up with a solution to this challenge, at least for wine. Frustrated by the lack of accountability in tasting notes  —   especially with    descriptions like ”  texture,” ”elegant,” or ”romantic”  —   Noble developed an aroma wheel, which culled and categorized some of the most common aromas identified by the wine industry. Does the wine seem reminiscent of tropical fruit? Take it a step further and try to identify whether it’s more like bubblegum or kiwi. If there’s a hint of vanilla, the aroma wheel hints that it’s likely to be caused by oak aging. It’s hard to state how influential this wheel has been. Variations of it can now be found to help identify distinct aromas in coffee, olive oil, honey and chocolate. ”You used to have all these emotional sort of words that would be   to someone who didn’t know what it meant  —   ’esoteric’ or ’exclusive,’ ” Noble says of   wheel tasting notes. ”Now you see more specific terminology.” Speaking the same language, whether in wine or life, is important for communication. For many consumers, a sommelier’s saying a wine is ”bold” means as much as saying it’s gobbeldygook. And these words are important. Unlike food  —   which gives us multiple sensory cues like crunchy, hot, squishy or stringy in addition to tasting salty or like apricot  —   with wine, it’s all about minute differences between taste and smell. In the interest of selling wine or passing sommelier exams, Bosker said, people sometimes take the poetry of wine too far without understanding where these words come from and how to use them. The terms we use to describe wine have often been representative of the times we live in. For example, in the ’80s there were a lot of terms like ”svelte and lithe and muscular,” Bosker says, reflecting a cultural attachment to spandex and Jazzercise. Today the foodie movement has led to terms like ”organic rutabaga,” while a need to ”quantify our hedonism” has started some tasters down a path of referring to the chemicals that we’re smelling like pyrazine (found in bell pepper) or mercaptans (the culprit behind the smell of odorous socks or rotten cabbage). ”Wine tasting, yes, it helps you appreciate wine, but it’s a discipline that can teach you how to appreciate anything in life more whether it’s a walk in the park or,” Bosker says, laughing, ”the smells of the subway.” All this isn’t to say that the poetry of wine should be lost forever. Perhaps it’s time wine was marketed more like food: Start with an objective list of ingredients and then use marketing language to make consumers feel a certain way to buy it. A wine can taste of red fruit and leather at the same time it makes you feel like you’re in a cabin listening to love songs on the radio. Now that’s a wine I’d like to drink. Tove K. Danovich is a journalist based in Portland, Ore."
"Film fans had an unusual opportunity this weekend to see classic movies the way they were originally projected: on   nitrate film stock. Nitrate film stock has been praised for the beauty of its images and for truly allowing cinematographers to paint with light  —   whites pop off the screen, blacks are deep and rich, and grey tones shimmer. It’s also extremely flammable. Casablanca was the first film Genevieve McGillicuddy saw projected on nitrate. McGillicuddy is director of the TCM Classic Film Festival, which sponsored the screenings. ”I felt like I was seeing Humphrey Bogart for the first time, and Ingrid Bergman never looked better, and the outfits just popped off the screen.” Color nitrate has been described as equally breathtaking. Dennis Bartok manages the Egyptian Theatre, where the films are playing. He says his single most unforgettable screening experience was watching a Technicolor nitrate print of the movie Black Narcissus. ”So, people will compare them to an illuminated manuscript or something like that. All I can say is watching Black Narcissus really is a spiritual experience for people who love cinema.” But there’s physical danger involved in nitrate film. It’s unstable, combustible, and contains a substance that was also used in explosives. Kodak stopped making it in the early 1950s, when it was replaced by more stable film stock. TCM wanted to screen some of the nitrate prints that exist in archives at its festival, so it worked with Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation. Together with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Academy Film Archive and the American Cinematheque, they brought the projection booth of The Egyptian Theater up to fire code, and Bartok says they also modified two vintage 35mm projectors. ”In the event, God forbid, of a fire, the projectionist hits the emergency button, which is now clearly displayed on the wall between the two projectors, that will immediately stop the projectors and the metal fire shutters slam down into place.” Good thing  —   because if nitrate film stock does catch fire, it will continue to burn even if you douse it with water. TCM screened the film noir classic Laura, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the musical Lady in the Dark, in addition to Black Narcissus. And now that its projection booth is up to code, the Egyptian Theatre will continue to show nitrate films from time to time."
"Most potential new drugs fail when they’re tested in people. These failures are not only a major disappointment, they sharply drive up the cost of developing new drugs. A major reason for these failures is that most new drugs are first tested out in mice, rats or other animals. Often those animal studies show great promise. But mice aren’t simply furry little people, so these studies often lead science astray. Some scientists are now rethinking animal studies to make them more effective for human health. When scientists first started using animals in research over a century ago, the animals were not regarded as human  . Scientists studying rats were initially trying to understand rats, says Todd Preuss, an anthropologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University. ”As this process went on, people stopped seeing them as specialized animals and started seeing them more and more as prototypical mammals,” Preuss says. But is a rat really a generic mammal? Preuss says emphatically no. But that’s how rodents were pitched when they became products sold to scientists. ”It wasn’t strictly a financial interest,” he says. The sellers ”really believed that you could do almost anything” with these animals. ”You could learn about almost any feature of human organization, you could cure almost any disease by studying these animals.” That was a dangerous assumption. Rats and humans have been on their own evolutionary paths for tens of millions of years. We’ve developed our own unique features, and so have the rodents. So it should come as no surprise that a drug that works in a mouse often doesn’t work in a person. Even so, Preuss says there’s tremendous momentum to keep using animals as human substitutes. Entire scientific communities are built up around rats, mice and other lab animals. ”Once these communities exist, then you have an infrastructure of knowledge: how to raise the animals, how to keep them healthy,” Preuss says. ”You have companies that spring up to provide you with specialized equipment to study these animals.” Chances are, people studying the same disease study the same   strain of animal. Journals and funding agencies actually expect it. ”So there’s a whole institution that develops,” Preuss says. And it’s hard to interrupt that culture. (Preuss spoke about this subject in a 2016 talk at the National Institutes of Health.) You can get a glimpse of the scale of this enterprise by passing through one of hundreds of facilities nationwide devoted to the care and feeding of mice. On the Stanford University campus, attendants roll supply carts through   hallways and past row after row of doors at an expansive mouse facility. I’m guided through the labyrinth by Joseph Garner, a behavioral scientist at the Stanford University Medical Center. We go into a windowless room stacked floor to ceiling with seemingly identical plastic cages full of mice. The philosophy behind mouse research has been to make everything as uniform as possible, so results from one facility would be the same as the identical experiment elsewhere. But despite extensive efforts to be consistent, this setup hides a huge amount of variation. Bedding may differ from one facility to the next. So might the diet. Mice respond strongly to individual human handlers. Mice also react differently depending on whether their cage is up near the fluorescent lights or hidden down in the shadows. Garner and colleagues tried to run identical experiments in six different mouse facilities, scattered throughout research centers in Europe. Even using genetically identical mice of the same age, the results varied all over the map. Garner says scientists shouldn’t even be trying to do experiments this way. ”Imagine you were doing a human drug trial and you said to the FDA, ’OK, I’m going to do this trial in    white males in one small town in California,’” Garner says  —   a town where everyone lives in identical ranch homes, with the same monotonous diets and the same thermostat set to the same temperature. ”Which is too cold, and they can’t change it,” he goes on. ”And oh, they all have the same grandfather!” The FDA would laugh that off as an insane setup, Garner says. ”But that’s exactly what we do in animals. We try to control everything we can possibly think of, and as a result we learn absolutely nothing.” Garner argues that research based on mice would be more reliable if it were set up more like experiments in humans  —   recognizing that variation is inevitable, and designing to embrace it rather than ignore it. He and his colleagues have recently published a manifesto, urging colleagues in the field to look at animals in this new light. ”Maybe we need to stop thinking of animals as these little furry test tubes that can be or even should be controlled,” he says. ”And maybe instead we should think of them as patients.” That could solve some of the problems with animal research, but by no means all. Scientists make far too many assumptions about the underlying biology of disease when creating animal models of those illnesses, says Gregory Petsko, who studies Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders at the Weill Cornell Medical School. ”It’s probably only when you get to try your treatments in people that you’re really going to have any idea how right those assumptions were,” Petsko says. In his field, the assumptions are often poor, or downright misleading. And Petsko says this mindset has been counterproductive. Scientists in his field have ”been led astray for many years by relying so heavily on animal models,” he says. For many years that was simply the best that science could do, Petsko says. So he doesn’t fault his colleagues for trying. ”What I am saying is at some point you have to cut your losses. You have to say, ’OK, this took us as far as it could take us, quite some time ago. ’” For neurological diseases, Petsko says, scientists might learn more from studying human cells than whole animals. Animals are still useful for studying the safety of potential new treatments, but beyond that, he says, don’t count on them. Preuss at Emory agrees that using animals as models of disease is a big reason that many results in biomedical research aren’t readily reproducible. ”I think that we have means to resolve that, though.” How? ”You have to think outside of the model box,” he says. Mice and rats aren’t simplified humans. Scientists should stop thinking they are. But Preuss says scientists can still learn a lot about biology and disease by studying animals  —   for example, by comparing how humans and other animals differ, or where they share common traits. Those can reveal a lot about biology without assuming that what’s true in a rat is likely true in a human. ”Scientists need to break out of a culture that is hampering progress,” Preuss says. That’s tough to do right now, in a world where science funding is on the chopping block. Many scientists are reluctant to take a risk that could backfire. But the upside could benefit us all, in the form of a better understanding of disease, and effective new drugs. Richard Harris did some of the reporting for this story while researching his book Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions. You can contact him at rharris@npr. org."
"It’s daunting to think about the number of products Apple has created that have transformed how most people use technology: the original Mac with the first   mouse, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. But   to 2017, and it appears that a lot of innovation is coming from other companies. Amazon has a hit with its Echo, a speaker device that responds to voice commands. Reviewers say Microsoft’s Surface competes with the Mac. And now, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 smartphone is getting raves because of its battery life and   screen. Both Apple fans and analysts who follow the company are beginning to wonder whether Apple has lost its mojo. All those innovations happened when Steve Jobs, Apple’s   was running the company. And some former employees say a cultural shift occurred at Apple after Jobs died in 2011. One of those former employees is Bob Burrough, a software engineer and a manager who worked on the team that helped create the iPhone. He says under Jobs, every employee was encouraged to take personal responsibility for improving the products. ”It was all about we’re all working towards the same goal,” Burrough says. ”We’re all working on the same product and if there’s something that you see that needs to get done you basically just stepped in and took care of it.” Burrough shares an example. He worked on the iPod nano. Just as they were about to ship the first units, Burrough realized that 2, 000 of them had been left running, draining the batteries. ”I told the distribution center, ’Look, you need to go pull them back out of the box, shut them down and make sure that the batteries are fully charged when they come out of the box to go into the customer’s hand for the very first time,’ ” Burrough says. But he argues the culture at Apple changed when Tim Cook took over as CEO. Burrough says employees were getting the message to look down and do their jobs. Burrough says that when he saw something wrong, ”the way that I was expected to deal with it was shut my mouth and do my job, and take care of whatever my assigned responsibility was and (not) worry about what anybody else is doing.” Burrough, who left Apple in 2014, thinks the culture shift has affected the products because employees feel less invested. Bryson Gardner has similar memories. He worked at Apple for nearly a decade and was one of the team leaders for iPod and iPhone development. Gardner says Jobs liked debate about how to make products better  —   and his style was to listen and then make a decision. ”His clarity of vision was very effective,” Gardner says. ”It actually made my job very easy in retrospect.” Cook is a more traditional CEO, Gardner says, and doesn’t like people arguing  —   instead, typically bringing together top managers and building consensus rather than letting them debate it out until he makes a decision. Apple has entered one new product category under Cook. It released the Apple Watch. But it was late to the wearables game and Apple has yet to release figures on sales of the Watch. It has also introduced Apple Pay and thumbprint security. But many analysts don’t think these compare to previous innovations. Gardner thinks, in some ways, Apple is a victim of its own success. And he thinks even Jobs may have had a harder time being innovative under the weight of the iPhone, which now brings in 70 percent of Apple’s revenue. ”Looking historically at Apple, there was more equal importance across a lot of the product lines and more opportunity to push into new spaces,” Gardner says. But now, ”one of the challenges is how do you manage the iPhone in relation to all the other technologies that you could be doing?” To Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey, Apple risks going down the same path as Sony, which used to be seen as the   and most innovative tech company. It once dominated the market for portable music players. ”As recently as 2000 people were still talking about the Walkman and what a big innovation that was,” McQuivey says. ”Well, you don’t hear people talk about Sony like that anymore.” Of course, it took a long time for Sony to lose its reputation for innovation, McQuivey says, and Apple’s place as an innovator isn’t likely to go away tomorrow. In fact, a lot of people are rooting for the company, including former employees Burrough and Gardner. ”Like many other customers, I would like them to make more things,” Gardner says. ”It would be great to have something else people lined up around the block for” besides the iPhone. But, for now, the iPhone is still a product that a lot of people love. Enough for Apple to still be the most valuable company in the world."
"Sinkane opened its Tiny Desk Concert with a song that has been a bit of an anthem for me lately. ”U’Huh” contains the Arabic phrase ”kulu shi tamaam,” which translates to ”everything’s great  —   it’s all going to be all right.” Sinkane is the music of Ahmed Gallab  —   and such hopeful music it is. He grew up in London and has lived in Sudan and in Ohio and, these days, New York City. His band reflects his own love for music from around the world you can hear a great New York jazz band in the rhythms of Sinkane, but you can also hear the influence of Bob Marley and the hypnotic repetition of Sudanese desert sounds. Life  Livin’ It is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Ahmed Gallab (vocals) Amanda Khiri (vocals) Elanna Canlas (keys, vocals) Jason Trammell (drums) Reggie Pace (percussion) Johnny Lam (guitar) Ish Montgomery (bass) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Bronson Arcuri Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bria Granville Production Assistant: Jake Witz Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The Trump administration has accused former President Barack Obama of ”weakness and irresolution” for drawing a red line in Syria then failing to enforce it. In the days before and after last week’s cruise missile strike, though, Trump’s own team has drawn sometimes blurry and conflicting lines. The administration has sent mixed signals about when and why it will use military force, the future of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and the role it sees for Russia. 1. Use of military force, Trump campaigned on a nationalistic platform that discouraged U. S. military intervention in other parts of the globe. ”We cannot be the policeman of the world,” Trump said last September. ”We cannot protect countries all over the world where they’re not paying us what we need.” But faced with the recent chemical weapons attack  —   and graphic television pictures of suffering civilians  —   Trump adopted a more expansive view of where America’s interests lie. He quickly responded by ordering a cruise missile strike on the Syrian air base from which the chemical attack was allegedly launched. ”It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,” Trump said in a televised address last week. At the White House Monday, spokesman Sean Spicer insisted not much had changed. ”We’re not just going to become the world’s policeman running around the world,” Spicer said. But he also put down his own marker, warning last week’s missile strike might not be the last. ”If you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb into innocent people, I think you can  —   you will see a response from this president. That is unacceptable.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went further this week, after a ceremony in Italy where he placed a wreath at the site of a World War II Nazi massacre.  ”We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world,” Tillerson said. 2. Assad’s future, Before last week’s chemical weapons attack, the Trump administration had   the removal of Syria’s president. ”You pick and choose your battles,” said United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, five days before the gas attack. ”Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.” The secretary of state echoed that sentiment, saying Assad’s fate ”will be decided by the Syrian people.” Even on the day of the attack, there was little talk of ousting Assad at the White House. ”There is not a fundamental option of regime change as there has been in the past,” Spicer said. ”I think we would look like, to some degree, rather silly not acknowledging the political realities that exist in Syria.” By the next day, though, Haley had adopted a tougher line at the U. N. ”There is an obvious truth here that must be spoken,” she told the Security Council. ”The truth is that Assad, Russia and Iran have no interest in peace. The illegitimate Syrian government, led by a man with no conscience, has committed untold atrocities against his people for more than six years. Assad has made it clear that he doesn’t want to take part in a meaningful political process.” As late as Sunday, Tillerson was downplaying the need for Assad’s ouster, noting that the removal of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya had created a dangerous power vacuum. ”I think we have to learn the lessons of the past and learn the lessons of what went wrong in Libya when you choose the path of regime change,” Tillerson said on ABC’s This Week. ”We believe the Syrian people will ultimately be able to decide the fate of Bashar  .” But the secretary gradually seemed to adjust his stance. ”It is clear to all of us that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” Tillerson said this week, while traveling to Italy and Russia. Back at the White House, Spicer also seemed to be cooling on Assad. ”You can’t imagine a stable and peaceful Syria with Assad in charge,” he said. ”I just don’t think that’s a scenario that’s possible.” 3. Russia, Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump said he wanted to build stronger ties with Russia. He hoped that with Russia’s influence in Syria, they could cooperate in fighting the Islamic State. ”If we can get along with Russia, that’s good,” Trump said in March of last year. ”If Russia wants to spend millions of dollars a day dropping bombs on ISIS, I’m OK with that.” But after last week’s chemical weapons attack, the administration was more critical of Russia’s role in propping up Assad. ”Russia is supposed to have removed all the chemical weapons from Syria,” Haley told the Security Council last week. ”But obviously that has not happened, as innocent Syrians continue to be murdered in chemical attacks. Let’s think about the possible reasons for Russia’s failure. It could be that Russia is knowingly allowing chemical weapons to remain in Syria. It could be that Russia has been incompetent in its efforts to remove the chemical weapons. Or, it could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools, telling them that there are no chemical weapons, all the while stockpiling them on their bases.” Spicer agreed that Russia’s alliance with Assad had become a liability. ”In this particular case, it’s no question that Russia is isolated,” Spicer said Tuesday. ”They have aligned themselves with North Korea, Syria, Iran. That’s not exactly a group of countries that you’re looking to hang out with.” Tillerson, who was traveling to Russia for key meetings this week, also put down a challenge. ”We want to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people. Russia can be a part of that future and play an important role,” he said. ”Or Russia can maintain its alliance” with Syria and Iran. These evolving and sometimes conflicting messages may leave both allies and adversaries uncertain about where the U. S. stands. But as far as Trump is concerned, that’s OK. He spoke often during the campaign about the benefits of being unpredictable. ”He’s not going to telegraph a response to every corresponding action because that just tells the opposition or the enemy what you’re going to do,” Spicer said Monday. ”The president is going to be very clear that he’s going to keep his cards close to the vest. But make no mistake. He will act.”"
"White House officials say the U. S. intelligence community is confident that Syrian President Bashar Assad attacked his own people with chemical weapons on April 4  —   and that an alternative explanation offered by Russia is an effort to deflect blame and ”confuse the world community.” Senior administration officials ”suggested that the attack may have been motivated by rebel gains in the surrounding area, as rebel forces approached a strategic Syrian air base,” NPR’s Scott Horsley reports. ”They said there was no consensus on whether the Russians were involved in the attack or had foreknowledge of it,” he adds. The attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun killed scores of people, including numerous children. Soon after the strike, experts said that victims’ symptoms suggested a toxic chemical was used  —   specifically the potent nerve agent sarin. World leaders, including President Trump, immediately accused Assad of using chemical weapons against his own people, again, in violation of international accords. But Russia maintained that a conventional weapons strike by the Assad regime accidentally hit a stockpile of chemical weapons that belonged to rebels or terrorists. In response to the attack, the U. S. launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles Thursday in a strike targeting a Syrian air base. Now a declassified report released by the National Security Council reiterates that the U. S. is confident Assad’s forces carried out the April 4 chemical attack and lays out the intelligence community’s reasoning  —   without including classified information used in the analysis. The report says the U. S. relied on ”signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence, laboratory analysis of physiological samples collected from multiple victims, as well as a significant body of credible open source reporting.” ”We are certain that the opposition could not have fabricated all of the videos and other reporting of chemical attacks,” the report reads. The report says that ”  social media reports” began suggesting an attack shortly before 7 a. m. local time on April 4, while Russia’s explanation maintained an airstrike occurred around noon local time. There’s also video and satellite imagery suggesting the attack hit ”in the middle of a street,” not a storage depot, the NSC report says. And while ISIS has used some chemical weapons, such as mustard gas, there’s no evidence that this attack ”involved chemicals in ISIS’s possession,” the White House says. The report cites previous Russian attempts at distraction, deflection and obfuscation, identifying a pattern of ”attempting to undermine the credibility of its opponents” and bolster the Assad regime. The report does not come to a conclusion about whether Russia bears culpability in the attack itself  —   that is, whether Russia had advance knowledge of the attack or cooperated in it. But it states strongly that Moscow was attempting to ”create confusion and sow doubt” to distract from the evidence against Assad. At a White House press briefing on Tuesday, press secretary Sean Spicer said Russia was ”isolated” in its support for Syria. ”Russia is on an island,” Spicer said. ”The facts are on our side.”"
"On Nov. 18, 1978, an itinerant preacher, faith healer and civil rights activist named the Rev. Jim Jones led more than 900 of his followers to kill themselves by drinking   Flavor Aid at their Jonestown settlement in the jungle of Guyana. Nearly 40 years later, questions still linger regarding the Jonestown massacre and the man who inspired it. Journalist Jeff Guinn details how Jones captivated his followers in his new book, The Road to Jonestown. He calls Jones a ”tremendous performer” who exhibited ”the classic tendencies of the demagogue.” Guinn says Jones, who founded Peoples Temple church, would take current events and exaggerate them to create a sense of fear and urgency. He drew his followers to Guyana by convincing them that America was facing imminent threats of martial law, concentration camps and nuclear war. After claims of abuse in Jonestown surfaced, Rep. Leo Ryan,  . came to Guyana to investigate. A number of Jonestown residents sought to return to the U. S. with Ryan, but others opened fire on the delegation, killing the congressmen and four others. The mass suicide followed. Guinn says the lessons of Jonestown still resonate today. ”Jim Jones epitomizes the worst that can happen when we let one person dictate what we hear [and] what we believe,” he says. ”We can only change that if we learn from the past and try to apply it to today.” On the idealistic side of Jones’ Peoples Temple church, Jim Jones originally organized Peoples Temple as a storefront church in Indianapolis in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It became one of the first major   churches in that part of the country, and Jones was instrumental in integrating Indianapolis, which had been one of the most segregated cities in America. They later moved to California. The purpose of Peoples Temple, as stated, was to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, ostensibly to try to raise up all the people who had been left out by society. Privately, within their organization, within their meetings where no outsiders were allowed, they also talked about what they were trying to do was set a ”socialist example,” everyone treated the same, where race, money, nothing mattered. Human dignity was at a premium. On how Jones tricked people but also appealed to their interest in social justice, Instinctively he understood the things that he would need to do in front of a crowd, not just to get their attention, but to hold it and be remembered by them. . .. He would [fake] being able to summon cancers from people’s bodies, which were actually rotten chicken parts that he would have planted earlier. And even then, as he starts to gain a following through these apparent miracles, he has a number of followers who are well aware [that] it’s a trick. But they tell themselves Jim is doing what he has to do to bring people in for the greater good, because at the same time he’s . .. tricking people, he’s also out there working for integration, for civil rights, for women’s rights, and that is his argument: ”I need to do whatever is necessary to get people into the cause. After that we can all accomplish great things.” On how Jones targeted poor people to join his following, The whole idea was that they would distribute these fliers, not in the    parts of town they would go into the ghettos, into the public housing, where people have absolutely nothing. He understood that when you believe life is almost hopeless, that’s when you’re most ready to buy into some miracle that might lift you up. . .. The people who followed Jim Jones, many of them, [were] intelligent, socially conscious, ready to work hard to make the world better, and ultimately he sacrificed them to his own ego and his own belief in himself. That is unforgivable. On Jones orchestrating a mass suicide of his followers, By the end in November 1978, Jones’ attitude towards his followers had changed. In the early stages of his ministry, when actually great things were often being accomplished, he thought of himself as the shepherd guarding his flock. More and more over the years, as his paranoia increased, as his drug use increased, he began to think of himself at war with almost everyone in the outside world  —   the United States government, all kinds of secret forces. . .. At the end he saw himself as a general, and his followers were his troops, and . .. Jones made the decision that there must be one last great gesture so that his name would live in history . .. [and that it] would require the deaths of his followers. . .. If Leo Ryan, the congressman, had not come to Jonestown there still would’ve been some event at this point that would’ve triggered Jones’ order to everyone to commit a ”revolutionary act,” as he called it. He tried to convince them it wasn’t suicide, it was something much grander than that. On trying to understand how 900 victims agreed to the suicide, One of the things that’s hardest for us to understand now, looking back almost 40 years, is how almost 900 people . .. could have followed what appeared to be ridiculous orders from an obvious demagogue to kill themselves  —   but it’s much more complicated than that. First of all, not everybody in Jonestown that day did agree to die, to drink the poison. . .. Out of over 900 human beings, 300 children, many of them infants, they have no choice. Their parents are making the choice for them. Then, we have another third, who are elderly people, who aren’t in the best of health, who if they don’t follow Jim Jones’ orders are going to be left out in the deepest, densest, most dangerous jungle in the world. Their choices essentially are die quickly or die long, lingering deaths. In the middle you have the adults, the younger people, and even among them there’s no unanimity. Some do believe that Jim Jones is God or something close to God and they worship him and if he says ”do this” they’re going to. Others don’t believe Jones is a god, but they believe in their cause, and they have bought into his preaching that the rest of the world is coming in to get them. On the day that the Guyanese troops came to Jonestown and saw what happened, The Guyanese troops that came in the next morning thought they were going to be facing armed revolutionaries. They guessed there might be 100 or more Jonestown men armed with rifles waiting for them, so they’re coming through the jungle cautiously. It’s the hot season in Guyana. There’s been a torrential downpour the day before and steam is coming up from the floor of the jungle. It’s almost like fog. And so they’re coming into Jonestown in the perimeter expecting to be attacked any minute. They’ve got their guns up and ready, the fog, the steam is in front of them, they can hardly see. All of a sudden they start to stumble and they think that maybe these revolutionaries placed logs on the ground to trip them up, and now they’re going to start shooting from ambush  —   and then a couple of the soldiers look down and they can see through the fog and they start screaming, because there are bodies everywhere, almost more than they can count, and they’re so horrified. Radio producers Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie and web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly   contributed to this story."
"Updated: 6:33 p. m. ET, White House spokesman Sean Spicer warned Russia today that its alliance with Syria is putting it ”on the wrong side of history, in a really bad way, really quickly.” The press secretary found himself in the same situation just a moment later, while trying to underscore the horror of Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons. ”You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” he said, overlooking the millions who were gassed to death in Nazi concentration camps. When reporters tried to give Spicer an opportunity to correct his mistake, he only made matters worse. ”He was not using the gas on his own people the same way that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad is doing,” Spicer said. ”He brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that. But I’m saying in the way Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent  —   into the middle of towns. It was brought  —   the use of it, I appreciate the clarification. That was not the intent.” This is not the first time this White House has struggled with historical amnesia. During President Trump’s first full week in office, he issued a statement honoring Holocaust Remembrance Day but somehow forgot to include any mention of Jews. The Holocaust Museum in Washington took Spicer to task via Twitter, showing footage of what American forces found when they liberated the death camp at Buchenwald. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect went further, calling on President Trump to fire Spicer. ”On Passover no less, Sean Spicer has engaged in Holocaust denial, the most offensive form of fake news imaginable, by denying Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death,” said the center’s executive director, Steven Goldstein. ”Spicer’s statement is the most evil slur upon a group of people we have ever heard from a White House press secretary.” Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi also called for Spicer’s dismissal. ”While Jewish families across America celebrate Passover, the chief spokesman of this White House is downplaying the horror of the Holocaust,” Pelosi said in a statement. ”Either he is speaking for the President, or the President should have known better than to hire him.” Late Tuesday, Spicer appeared on CNN to make amends. ”I apologize. It was a mistake to do that,” Spicer told Wolf Blitzer. ”It was insensitive and inappropriate. I should have stayed focused on the Assad regime and the dangers they have brought to their own people and the terrible atrocities they did and to drag any other comparisons into this was not appropriate.”"
"A special election in Kansas on Tuesday has Republicans sounding worried about an enthusiasm gap in the Trump era. Trump himself was apparently worried enough that he cut a robo call for Republican state party Treasurer Ron Estes. ”On Tuesday, Republican Ron Estes needs your vote  —   and needs it badly,” the president says in the recorded call intended to boost Estes in the race to replace Mike Pompeo, who is serving as Trump’s CIA director. ”Ron is a conservative leader who’s going to work with me to make American great again. We’re going to do things really great for our country. Our country needs help Ron is going to be helping us  —   big league. But I need Republicans like Ron Estes to help me get the job done. This is an important election. There’s really few very much more important. And I need your vote for Ron Estes on Tuesday.” This is a heavily Republican district that includes Wichita. It’s one that Trump won by 27 points in 2016. But in a   election, almost anything can happen. ”Our enemy right now is complacency,” said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was campaigning in the 4th congressional district with Estes on Monday, in an eleventh hour attempt to boost the Republican over Democrat James Thompson, a   attorney. This district has voted Democratic before. Pompeo was swept in with the Republican wave of 2010. Democratic enthusiasm, Republicans’ lack of it and independents’ dissatisfaction with incumbent GOP Gov. Sam Brownback are all making for what could be a    result. You never want to read too much into special elections, but this is Democrats’ first chance since Trump was elected to take out their frustrations at the ballot box. They intend to make their voices  —   and wallets  —   heard. Given this district’s ideological bent, the Republican is still favored. But a narrow result, especially one in single digits, could be a warning sign for the GOP ahead of a handful of upcoming special elections this year and next year’s midterm elections. Since World War II, a president’s party has lost an average of 29 seats in a president’s first midterm. The only exception was George W. Bush, a year after Sept. 11. Democrats need to pick up a net of 24 seats to regain the majority in the House. That’s a tough task, especially considering the way districts were drawn after the 2010 elections to favor Republicans. There are far fewer competitive or potentially competitive seats today than in years past. For Democrats to pull off the goal of taking back the House, they will have to win in unexpected places like Kansas and Georgia, where they have a chance next week. A week from Tuesday, in the   Atlanta suburbs, Democrats are taking aim at the seat formerly held by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Trump underperformed there in 2016, winning it by just 1. 5 percentage points. Price won it by 23 points, the exact margin Mitt Romney won it in 2012. It’s a sign not just of suburban Republicans’ reluctance to embrace Trump, but also potentially of the changing demographics in a booming part of the New South that is beginning to lean more Democratic. Democrats would relish the irony of winning a seat that was held by a staunch Obamacare opponent, especially after the GOP health care bill’s failure. They have rallied behind Jon Ossoff, a    former Capitol Hill staffer. Few gave him a chance when a vacancy opened up in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, but sensing an opportunity, liberals embraced him with money  —   lots of it. He has raked in an   $8. 3 million in just the first quarter of 2017. As political handicapper Nathan Gonzales points out in his Inside Elections report, former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio raised just $10. 7 million for the entire cycle in his failed Senate bid against Republican Rob Portman. It’s reflective of a broader trend since Trump was elected. ActBlue, an online fundraising tool for Democratic and progressive groups, for example, brought in a record $111 million from more than 4 million contributors in just the first three months of 2017. For context, after Obama was   in 2012, ActBlue handled just shy of $17 million from 467, 000 donors. The group, founded in 2004, says it previously had taken eight years to get 4 million total donors. It was able to surpass that in just the first couple of months of the Trump presidency. ”From the number of contributions we handled, to the sheer amount of money running through our servers, to the number of new donors who came into the fold in the last three months, the reaction to the Trump administration and the surge in action is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” ActBlue’s Chelsea McDonnell posted on its site. Ossoff has more money than he knows what to do with. He has 70 paid field staffers, triple the usual House campaign. A splintered Republican field has helped boost Ossoff, as the GOP is training its fire on itself. Outside groups have come in to help bring down Ossoff’s numbers with negative advertising. The big concern for Republicans is that the Democrat gets above 50 percent April 18. If that happens, Ossoff wins outright. If he’s held below 50 percent, there will be a runoff June 20. A    matchup with a Republican will be harder for Ossoff, especially with two more months of GOP ads targeting him. Far less time, attention and money have been paid to the Kansas race, but handicappers are taking notice. Gonzales moved the race from Solid Republican to Likely Republican. David Wasserman, who tracks House races for the Cook Political Report, moved it Monday from Likely Republican to Lean Republican."
"The reaction from the public started with gasps of horror and built to cries for a boycott. Now, a day and a half later, United Airlines is admitting it did something wrong. On Sunday night, a passenger on a United Express flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky. was told he had to give up his ticket so a United crew member could take his seat. The man refused: He’s a doctor and said he had patients he had to see. United called security officers, who violently wrenched the man from his seat, bloodying his face, and dragged his limp body down the aisle. The passenger, David Dao, is at a hospital in Chicago recovering from his injuries, member station WFPL reports. The scene was recorded by other passengers and posted online. You can hear witnesses shouting at the security officers, saying what they were doing was wrong. The outcry online was instantaneous, too, with prompt calls for a boycott. United’s first response was to defend its employees’ actions. A representative on Twitter said Sunday night that the flight was overbooked, no one had volunteered to leave, and the customer in question ”refused to leave his seat” when instructed. CEO Oscar Munoz issued a statement midday Monday that included an apology  —   kind of. ”This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United,” he said. ”I apologize for having to   these customers.” The idea that the scene was upsetting to United  —   with no mention of the trauma for Dao or witnesses  —   raised eyebrows. And the euphemistic phrase ” ” inspired a fresh round of outrage and no small amount of mockery. From there, incredibly enough, it went even further downhill. On Monday night Munoz sent an email to United Airlines staff that was obtained by the media, including The Associated Press. In the email, Munoz confirmed that the man had not posed a problem until he was asked to leave the plane to make room for crew. After the man refused, Munoz said it was ”necessary” for crew to contact security, and it was unclear ”why this customer defied Chicago Aviation Security Officers the way he did.” Security officers ”were unable to gain his cooperation and physically removed him from the flight as he continued to resist,” Munoz wrote  —   a bloodless description of the bloody encounter. Munoz said the passenger was ”disruptive and belligerent” and employees ”followed established procedures.” (The Chicago Aviation Department, we should note, said that its employees did not follow standard procedure, and that one security officer is on leave while the department looks into what happened.) The United CEO told employees he ”emphatically” stood behind them. His emphasis on the doctor’s ”defiance,” and lack of acknowledgement of the violence shown on the video, dug a deeper hole for United Airlines. As the hours passed, the online fury showed no sign of quelling. The story went viral in China  —   the doctor is Asian, and observers questioned whether a white passenger would have been treated so roughly. United stock shares fell dramatically. Now United is giving it another shot  —   with an apologetic statement that says, rather hopefully, ”it’s never too late to do the right thing.” Here’s more from Munoz’s Tuesday message to United employees: ”The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments, and one above all: my deepest apologies for what happened. Like you, I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way. ”I want you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right. ”It’s never too late to do the right thing. I have committed to our customers and our employees that we are going to fix what’s broken so this never happens again.” Munoz promises a ”thorough review” of United policies. Axios has more detail on a few of those policies  —   including the fact that the flight wasn’t originally overbooked but became ”oversold” as soon as United discovered it had crew to transport. The incident hasn’t just inspired shock and horror over the violence depicted. It has also brought attention to the limited rights of passengers on flights. Airlines have broad discretion to eject people from flights for nearly any reason, a consumer advocate tells NPR. And it’s perfectly legal for an airline to sell more tickets than seats and then block ticket holders from traveling. Many people give up their seat willingly in exchange for money, but last year some 40, 000 people were bumped involuntarily. The U. S. Department of Transportation has launched an investigation into whether United followed regulations in this incident. The debacle has also sparked a controversy in Kentucky, where a local newspaper reported on Dao’s past, leading to accusations of  . You can read more about that story at member station WFPL."
"The violent removal of a United Airlines passenger from his seat on an overbooked flight Sunday has been a PR and stock market disaster for the company and a viral video phenomenon as far away as China. George Hobica, founder and    of airfarewatchdog. com, says involuntary bumps from flights aren’t that common  —   out of ”millions and millions” of passengers on United last year, 3, 000 to 4, 000 were bumped from flights, versus many hundreds of thousands of passengers who voluntarily gave up their seats. In an interview with NPR’s Ari Shapiro, he explains what passengers need to look out for. What are passengers entitled to when they get bumped from a flight? For an involuntary bump the maximum compensation  —   and it has to be paid in cash, according to the DOT  —   is $1, 350. It’s less depending on certain circumstances. In some cases you’re not entitled to any compensation at all if the airline can get you to your destination close to the scheduled arrival time. Airlines do offer vouchers sometimes for involuntary bumps, but they have been fined by the DOT for doing so. It’s against the regulation, and it’s just a way of getting out of owing what they owe. For voluntary bumps, however, they are allowed to give passengers vouchers. And the problem with vouchers is that they expire within one year  —   and most passengers only fly once a year, and they’re ending up with these worthless vouchers. How do airlines decide which passengers to bump? I think every airline has a different set of criteria. . .. It’s usually never the   passenger it’s never the passenger with ultrahigh status in the   program. It’s usually the passenger who buys their ticket at a cheap fare, or who has no status in the program, or who checks in at the last minute, or sometimes who buys his ticket at the last minute. What are airlines’ rights and passengers’ rights in these situations? Airlines are entitled to remove people from planes. They do it all the time  —   if you’re improperly dressed, for example if you’re belligerent, if you’re drunk. They say it in their contracts of carriage  —   that basically we can deny service to anyone. . .. Unfortunately the passengers’ rights are not ironclad, except what you’ll see on the DOT website. . .. Anyone can Google the term ”United Airlines contract of carriage” or ”Delta contract of carriage,” and you’ll see what you’re actually getting into. And there isn’t a lot there. One thing, that if they cancel your flight or if it’s severely delayed, they will give you your money back even on a nonrefundable ticket. But other than things like that, there are very few protections. On how European airlines are different, If you travel to Europe . .. you have a different set of protections that the EU enforces, and actually they’re much better than the protections we have in the United States. . .. I always advise people, if you’re flying anywhere  —   it doesn’t have to be to Europe  —   fly on a European airline. Because if it’s on Virgin Atlantic, for example, even if you buy the ticket on Delta, you actually have a set of protections under the EU rules that you would not have [otherwise]."
"The Trump Organization is shutting down its New   modeling agency. A statement released by the company said it was ”choosing to exit the modeling industry.” ”While we enjoyed many years of success, we are focussed on our core business in the real estate and golf industries and the rapid expansion of our hospitality division,” the statement said. Started in 1999, Trump Model Management was part of Trump’s eclectic array of businesses, though it was never as visible as some of the others and didn’t play a major role in the fashion business. But like other Trump businesses, it has found itself under special scrutiny as a result of Trump’s decision to run for president. Despite Trump’s ongoing focus on illegal immigration, several of the   models hired by the agency told reporters they had been hired despite having no work visas. ”There was about six, seven or eight of us, at least in this models’ apartment. There might have been about three Americans, but the rest of us had no visa,”   Rachel Blais told PRI’s The World. An article in Mother Jones quoted two other former models as saying the Trump agency ”never obtained work visas on their behalf, even as they performed modeling assignments in the United States.” Trump Model Management denied using illegal labor practices. The agency also became the target of a boycott by some   directors, makeup artists and stylists, the website Refinery29 reported in February. One of the agency’s models, Maggie Rizer, said in an Instagram post the day after the election that she could no longer be associated with the Trump brand. ”I owe it to myself and to my children to proudly stand up for what I believe in and that is a world where Donald Trump has no voice for the future of our country,” she said. Last week, The Washington Post reported that one of the agency’s managers, Gabriel Ruas   had left to start his own firm called Anti Management, taking some of the models with him. He said the new agency’s title was not an allusion to Trump, telling the Post, ”I did not start an agency with the intent of taking someone out of business. Outside of that I have no comments.”"
"President Trump is responding to another tough foreign policy crisis with gunboat diplomacy, but the second deployment is likely to look very different from the first. U. S. Pacific Command has ordered the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its strike group, which includes a cruiser and two destroyers, to ”report on station in the Western Pacific Ocean,” instead of sailing for Australia as planned. The Navy’s official announcement about the decision did not mention North Korea, but leaders in Washington hope that leaders in its capital, Pyongyang, will get the picture. The strike group is heading back to Korean waters  —   it also visited last month  —   following North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile ahead of the recent visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Trump’s golf resort in Florida. Something else also has happened since then: Trump ordered U. S. Navy warships on the other side of the world to attack a Syrian airfield after warplanes based there used chemical weapons in an airstrike that killed scores of people in Idlib, including children. Trump’s choice to launch that missile strike was a surprise   after administration officials appeared to take the heat off Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, saying the U. S. would scrap its previous position that Assad could no longer govern. As the world continues watching to see whether Trump’s attack was a   outing designed to send a message  —   or the first shot in a new war against Assad’s regime  —   North Korea’s regime has new reason for pause. Or so Washington hopes. ”North Korea is looking for trouble,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. ”If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U. S. A.” The president’s warning followed tough talk over the weekend by other administration leaders. ”This is a rogue regime that is now a   regime, and President Xi and President Trump agreed that that is unacceptable,” national security adviser H. R. McMaster said on Fox News Sunday. ”The president has asked us to be prepared to give him a full range of options to remove that threat to the American people and to our allies and partners in the region.” And before that, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that ”all options are on the table” as the Trump administration calculates how to deal with the threats North Korea poses to its neighbors and, potentially, the United States. In practical terms, however, Trump and his aides may be able to do less than they did in Syria. In that case, Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from two Navy destroyers destroyed Syrian warplanes, air defense systems, fuel and other supplies. But nothing similar is likely from the Carl Vinson or its escorts  —   in fact, if any shots are fired it could be the start of a serious major conflict. In Syria, the United States could hit a target with a low chance of it striking back, in the midst of a conflict that’s already been raging for years. In Korea, Kim Jong Un has many potential ways to respond quickly and savagely by lashing out at a close U. S. ally, South Korea, which hosts nearly 30, 000 U. S. troops to help defend it. That means the Navy can’t change the conversation by hitting North Korea with a few cruise missiles the way it did in Syria. North and South Korea have tens of thousands of troops and huge arsenals pointed at each other on each side of the demilitarized zone that separates them. Occasional   since the armistice in 1953 have claimed some lives, but the peninsula hasn’t seen major combat. The stakes, however, are higher than they’ve ever been: North Korea is building nuclear weapons and marching toward the ability to fit them atop its ballistic missiles. That means it could hit South Korea another archenemy, Japan or potentially even the continental United States in a few years. North Korea says that it would respond to any military action by ordering a full retaliation, putting millions of lives in immediate danger. Pyongyang has further compounded the problem by deploying its ballistic missiles on mobile launchers. If a crisis reached a flashpoint, North Korea watchers say there’s no guarantee the U. S. military could find and destroy all the missiles quickly enough to stop a launch. There’s also no telling how North Korea’s youthful strongman, Kim Jong Un, might respond to a serious military crisis, or how brittle his regime might prove. If Kim and his top aides were killed in a U. S. attempt to decapitate North Korea before it could order a ballistic attack, that might cause the whole government to collapse. North Korea’s patron, China, which supplies much of its food and fuel, would not look kindly on any such outcome, or on any military action by the United States. Beijing faulted Trump’s attack on Syria after Xi’s visit and although the two leaders ”reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearized Korean peninsula,” per the White House, China has given Trump no commitment to rein in Kim. Pyongyang, meanwhile, warned of ”catastrophic consequences” if Washington tried to follow up its Syria attack in North Korea. That’s actually a step down from North Korea’s rhetoric from the last time the Carl Vinson strike group sailed near the Korean Peninsula, when it said ”a knife will be stabbed into the throat of the carrier.” But despite all the supercharged rhetoric and intense regional scrutiny, the ships came and went then without incident, the way American warships have for decades. As the Carl Vinson and its escorts make their way north again now, the world is watching to see whether this visit also goes according to routine."
"North Korea is threatening ”tough counteraction” after a U. S. Navy strike group was routed toward the Korean Peninsula following the rogue nation’s continued ballistic missile and nuclear testing. ”We never beg for peace but we will take the toughest counteraction against the provocateurs in order to defend ourselves by powerful force of arms and keep to the road chosen by ourselves,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported in English, quoting a Foreign Ministry official. ”We will hold the U. S. wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions,” the statement released Tuesday concluded. A version of the statement in Korean said the country will ”not miss a chance to sweep the imperialist group with a nuclear fire of justice,” but did not elaborate on what it meant. President Trump said in a tweet that North Korea ”is looking for trouble.” He has stated that China should take a larger role in pressuring the North Korean regime. ”If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U. S. A. ,” the president wrote. The Carl Vinson Strike Group is made up of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and several destroyers, as NPR reported. The Navy said Saturday that the group was relocating toward the peninsula, days after another North Korean ballistic missile test. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman told Morning Edition that the move is designed to send a message: ”A carrier, when you see it off the coast, is very impressive and it focuses the mind. But it’s not like planes are going to be flying off this aircraft carrier, taking out targets in North Korea. It is basically sending a message.” Last week, the U. S. fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria’s Idlib province. ABC’s This Week asked U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday about what message the strikes in Syria should send to North Korea. He replied: ”I think the message that any nation can take is if you violate international norms, if you violate international agreements, if you fail to live up to commitments, if you become a threat to others, at some point a response is likely to be undertaken.” The administration’s objective for North Korea is a ”denuclearized Korean Peninsula” and not regime change, Tillerson said. According to the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, a statement for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry called the strikes against Syria ”unpardonable.” It added: ”Our tremendous military muscle with a nuclear force as its pivot serves as a treasured sword of justice for foiling the U. S. shameless   and arbitrary practices and aggression moves and protecting the sovereignty of the country and the right of the nation to existence.”"
"U. S. presidents have a tradition of entering office and expressing hope for improved relations with Russia. With near perfect symmetry, this is matched by a tradition of presidents leaving office amid friction with Moscow. Sometimes it takes years for optimism to turn to disillusionment. In the case of President Trump, there are warning signs after just a few months. ”If we could get along with Russia, that’s a positive thing,” Trump said shortly after his inauguration. ”It would be great.” But as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives Tuesday in Moscow, a place where he was feted just a few years ago, the focus will be growing U. S.  tension over their opposing positions in the Syrian war. ”As it often happens to someone’s foreign policy, events intrude on what you might want to do,” said Alexander Vershbow, who served as ambassador to Russia under President George W. Bush. ”Syria has risen to the top of the agenda . .. and a very different kind of conversation is going to be taking place,” Vershbow told NPR. It feels very long ago, but after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush, and Russia sent military medical teams as part of the U. S.  coalition against   and the Taliban in Afghanistan. In Bush’s last year in office, 2008, Putin invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia and Bush told the Russian leader: ”Vladimir, you’re  .” In the 1990s, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin always seemed to be hugging at their frequent meetings. Then the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expanded eastward, the U. S. bombed Russia’s ally Yugoslavia and relations got sticky. Early in his administration, President Obama sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to meet her Russian counterpart in 2009 with a ”reset” button. Then Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and it ended with U. S. sanctions and very public recriminations. Now it’s Trump’s turn. His relations with Russia were already entangled by the ongoing investigations into Russia’s meddling in last year’s election and possible ties to the Trump campaign. Yet in recent days, Trump’s previously complimentary comments about Putin have turned into heated rhetoric between U. S. and Russian officials over the U. S. missile salvo into Syria  —   a Russian ally where the Russian military is fighting in support of the country’s embattled leader. That’s expected to make for a tense session in Moscow on Tuesday, a day in advance of a meeting between Tillerson and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. The Russians have said that Tillerson isn’t scheduled to meet Putin  —   in contrast to previous U. S. secretaries of state who often met the Russian leader. Speaking Tuesday at a meeting of   nations in Italy, Tillerson criticized Russia’s   support for Syrian President Bashar Assad and other U. S. adversaries in the region. ”Russia has really aligned itself with the Assad regime, the Iranians, and [the Lebanese group] Hezbollah,” he said. ”Is that   alliance that serves Russia’s interest, or would Russia prefer to realign with the United States, with other Western countries and Middle East countries who are seeking to resolve the Syrian crisis?” Tillerson’s remarks point to the fundamentally different world views that often lead to confrontations. The U. S. sees Russia aligning itself with bad actors in the Middle East. Russia sees the U. S. as trying to drive Moscow out of its one stronghold in the Middle East. Moscow prizes access to the naval base at Tartus and the airfield near Latakia. The Soviet Union, and now Russia, have been staunch backers of Syria for nearly a   supporting both the current ruler and his father, Hafez, since the early 1970s. ”For Putin, it was a story of misplaced hopes and rejection: he became convinced that, no matter how accommodating he might try to be, Western powers  —   the United States, above all  —   had an innate disinclination to treat Russia as a full partner and a respected member of the international order,” David Remnick, Evan Osnos and Joshua Yaffa wrote last month in The New Yorker. The Cold War may be a   in the past, yet Putin has never fully accepted the notion of a diminished Russia in the wake of the Soviet breakup, according to many analysts. And he tends to ascribe   motives in many U. S. actions. In his view, the expansion of NATO is not about making Europe safer, it’s about pushing the alliance closer to Russia’s border and jeopardizing its security. When the U. S. talks about democracy and human rights abroad, Putin considers it code for Washington’s intention to oust governments it doesn’t like. Putin blamed the U. S. for aiding revolutions that toppled   leaders in Ukraine and Georgia, and he blamed Hillary Clinton for inspiring Russian protesters when Putin was running for president in 2012. U. S. and Russian interests do overlap in some areas, such as combating extremist groups, placing limits on their nuclear weapons and missiles, and until a few years ago, working to expand economic ties. When Tillerson was running   his oil deals in Russia not only earned him an ”Order of Friendship” medal from Russia, the agreements also had backing of the Obama administration  —   at least until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, prompting U. S. sanctions. These cooperative efforts tend to be overshadowed by political and military crises, as with Syria. ”It has been a constant challenge for Washington to move forward on a constructive and productive agenda with Russia,” Angela Stent, a Russia expert at Georgetown University, wrote in her 2014 book, The Limits of Partnership, U. S.  Relations in the   Century. ”Periods of dialogue, progress, and optimism have been followed by tense periods, standoffs, mutual criticism, and pessimism.” Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"As congressional and FBI investigators in Washington explore potential ties between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian intelligence services’ meddling in the election, they’re searching for one particular clue: money. Loans, payments, sweetheart deals or other transactions are a tried and tested way that Russia’s spy agencies get access to or control over people who interest them. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, told NPR that evidence of such entanglements are one thing his panel is looking for. ”It may be that they work on energy deals or maybe they work on financial investments, but they try to get their financial hooks into parties of interest . .. and so there’s a question here whether those same tactics were used with respect to the Trump organization,” he said. William Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, knows Russia’s methods well. At one time, his company was one of the biggest foreign investors in Russia. Browder is one of the leading experts in fighting Russian corruption and is now blacklisted by Moscow he says Russia is always on the lookout for people who can be compromised. ”The Russians are looking for people that they think are important in the West, important in political, business and economic circles. . ..They target people they think are going to be useful to them one way or the other,” he says. And the flow of rubles into euros or dollars goes beyond the purchase of access, influence or information for spy agencies. Stephen Blank, a Russian expert at the American Foreign Policy Council, says some people might be useful in providing a way for Russians to park their own money. ”Nobody really trusts the Russian banking system or the political system  —   for that, money gets laundered abroad,” he says. Russians who don’t want to deposit cash in their home banks often make big investments in foreign countries that are safe, Blank says  —   a prime example of that, he says, is real estate in New York or Florida. Because of the    connections between Russia’s organized crime, intelligence agencies and government leaders, it’s sometimes not clear which one is acting. Browder says Kremlin leaders often want to gain political influence outside of Russia. They’ll cast a wide net and wait patiently until the time is right to exploit someone, he says. ”The two primary ways in which they recruit people is either through bribery or blackmail. . .. They find ways of threatening people through compromising information,” he says. Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a leading specialist on economic policy in Russia, says there are any number of methods to compromise people. It could be sex. Or sweetheart deals  —   awarding huge contracts with the help of loans from   banks such as Vnesheconombank, a   development bank that has been under U. S. sanctions for three years. ”It gives big loans. For example, $50 billion for the Sochi Olympics. . .. And the chairman, the CEO of the bank is always a KGB general,” he says. The old KGB is gone, but the bank’s current CEO, Sergei Gorkov, graduated from the training academy of a successor agency, the FSB. He was was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Jared Kushner, Trump’s    met with Gorkov in December during the presidential transition. Although Vnesheconombank was subject to U. S. sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gorkov himself was not and faced no restrictions about traveling to New York City. Aslund believes the meeting sends out all the wrong signals. ”Sergey Gorkov could only have two issues to discuss with Jared Kushner: One is to end the sanctions against the Vnesheconombank. The other is financing of Jared Kushner,” Aslund says. The White House says Kushner was acting as a Trump adviser  —   not as a private real estate developer  —   during the meeting with Gorkov. But he has agreed to be questioned by the Senate intelligence committee as the investigations into possible collusion with Russia continues."
"Rex Tillerson has touched down in Moscow. But well before his plane landed on the runway, heated words were already flying between the U. S. secretary of state and Russian officials over the situation in Syria. ”I hope that what the Russian government concludes is that they have aligned themselves with an unreliable partner in Bashar ” Tillerson said Tuesday at a meeting of   foreign ministers in Lucca, Italy, shortly before he left for Russia. Tillerson made plain that the chemical attack last week in Syria was unacceptable to the U. S. and that the U. S. retaliatory missile strike against a Syrian base presented Russia with a choice: either continue to side with Syria, Iran and the militant group Hezbollah, or join with the U. S. and other likeminded countries. Tillerson said there was no room for both. ”Stockpiles and continued use demonstrate that Russia has failed in its ability to deliver on its 2013 commitment [to help get rid of Assad’s chemical weapons]. It is unclear whether Russia failed to take this obligation serious or Russia has been incompetent,” Tillerson said. ”But this distinction doesn’t much matter to the dead.” Russian President Vladimir Putin  —   whom Tillerson will not be meeting with, according to the trip’s latest itinerary  —   said that in Tillerson’s recent rhetoric he heard echoes of the days leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. ”It reminds me of the events in 2003 when U. S. envoys to the Security Council were demonstrating what they said were chemical weapons found in Iraq,” Putin told reporters Tuesday, according to a translation by The Associated Press. ”We have seen it all already.” Putin said Russia will request that the United Nations investigate the April 4 chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun. He added that he has received information about planned ”provocations” intended to place blame on Assad. A minister in the Turkish government, which has launched an investigation of its own, reportedly said Tuesday there is ”concrete evidence” that sarin gas was used in the attack that killed dozens of people near its southern border. Health Minister Recep Akdag said traces of sarin gas was found in the blood and urine of victims, according to the   Anadolu news agency. NPR’s Lucian Kim reports that the unfolding drama surrounding the attack and its aftermath has soured Tillerson’s visit, which had once borne great expectations from U. S. and Russian diplomats. ”They basically thought this would be the start of a great relationship, and that this would be the first step in organizing a summit between Trump and Putin,” Kim says. ”And the missile strike really came as a shock and will overshadow the talks.” Those hopes have given way to much more modest goals. The New York Times, for instance, refers to a senior American official in reporting that State Department officials now aim simply to clarify the areas of disagreement. And even that might not be an easy task: Those areas of disagreement appear to be multiplying rather than diminishing. ”I think it is clear to all of us that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” Tillerson said of Russia’s ally. ”But the question of how that ends, and the transition itself could be very important, in our view, to the durability, the stability inside of a unified Syria.”"
"The burn unit at the U. S. Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio, Texas, is hot. Sometimes, it gets up to 102 degrees in there, among the patients. People with severe burns can’t regulate their own body temperatures well, so the air has to keep them warm. ”We see a lot of gruesome stuff,” says physical therapist Melissa Boddington. At the height of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 1, 000 wounded service members were flown to the hospital. The burn center’s mission is to treat members of the military for burns from fire, explosions, chemicals or radiation. The treatments can include skin grafts, amputations and inpatient rehabilitation to regain mobility or learn to live with a body that has changed dramatically. More than 15 years of war have led to major advances in burn care. In one case, a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan burned more than 97 percent of one Marine’s body. He was flown to San Antonio, and survived. Thousands of U. S. troops are still in war zones, but with the end of major combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and fewer soldiers coming home badly burned, the military burn center is treating more civilians. Col. Booker King, the director of clinical services, says burn specialists also work with orthopedists, eye doctors or kidney specialists because people who come in with burns often have other serious injuries as well. Most of the patients treated at the burn center right now are civilians who were burned in car wrecks, house fires, cooking incidents or workplace accidents in the oil industry. Because the hospital is on a military base, Fort Sam Houston, a special dispensation from the Secretary of the Army allows them to be treated there.    Marty Wender spent 90 days in the intensive care unit at the burn center after he fell while he was taking a hot shower. He either passed out or hit his head. By the time his wife found him unconscious, he had burns over 20 percent of his body. ”When EMS showed up, they thought I was dead,” he says. ”It was across my chest. The biggest burn was on my back and on my right arm and my two hands.” The staff at the burn center helped Wender recover from his injuries. He lost two fingers. ”It keeps everybody honed, ready to get the job done,” says James Williams, a physician assistant in the burn unit. ”It’s a very tactile type of medicine. If you’re not using your skills, you can lose them.” ”[We] treat a    who got burned from throwing gas on the grill the same as we would treat a soldier who may have gotten injured in combat,” he explains."
"When you’re facing a major life change, it helps to talk to someone who’s already been through it. All Things Considered is connecting people on either side of a shared experience, and they’re letting us eavesdrop on their conversations in our series Been There. Charles Johnson’s new job is tough. The training is minimal and expectations are high. It doesn’t pay much  —   in fact, he still works his old job at a chemical plant. And to top it off, he has to answer to thousands of bosses. They’re called voters. The new gig? City councilman in Baytown, Texas, population: 76, 335. Charles has wanted to run for office since he was a kid. Last year, he finally did it. ”Filled out the paperwork, entered my name, and 1, 500 doors later, here I am,” he says. Charles took the oath of office in January, and the weight of his new responsibilities hit home. ”I had someone tell me that, when I went up to my seat at the dais, the expression on my face was, ’Wow,’” he says. Ryan Coonerty knows that feeling well. He served in city government in Santa Cruz, Calif. for nearly a decade as a councilman and mayor. Now he’s on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Though the two cities are miles apart in distance and in culture, the issues facing municipal governments  —   zoning regulations, pothole repair, parking restrictions  —   are surprisingly universal. So, this January, before Charles’ first council meeting, Ryan shared some of the lessons he’s learned since his first day in office, which he remembers as ”humbling and inspiring and scary, all at the same time.” On being recognized in public, When you go to the grocery store, buy your frozen food last. Because, people are gonna stop you in the aisles, and they’re gonna want to talk to you, and your food will melt. Everything is gonna take you a little bit longer, cause people all have opinions. They’ll want to bend your ear about this or that. Always have your business cards on you. And don’t be afraid, when people are interrupting you and your family at a restaurant, hand them a business card and say, ”I’m with my family right now, I’d be happy to talk with you. Email or call me and we’ll make a time to meet.” Because otherwise, people will just eat up your time. And being in elective office is really fun and interesting for you. It’s a challenge for your family. On dealing with a constituent with a strong opinion on an issue, None of these votes are easy. If they were easy, it would have been decided by somebody at the building counter. So, it’s coming to you because it’s hard. But the best thing you can do is making sure that she understands, you know, when the public meetings will be, how she can participate. Even if you end up not voting with her, it gives her the opportunity to have her voice be heard, and that’s part of your job. On preparing for   ceremonies, It’s actually surprisingly tricky to cut things with those giant scissors. So, make sure you practice once at the office before you go out there. You don’t want to screw up somebody’s big opening of their restaurant by not being able to actually cut the ribbon."
"Leo Brouwer is considered one of the most important living figures of classical music in Latin America. His works are played regularly in concert halls around the world, and he’s scored more than 50 films. But at the age of 78, Brouwer finds it hard to reflect on his legacy. He’s just grateful that people are moved by his music. ”To be useful is something incredible, because you’re at the service of the world,” Brouwer says in Spanish. ”Humans, when they communicate, when they teach, when they show, when they give . .. they’re doing one of the most beautiful things in life . .. Perhaps my roots in solitude, of being an orphan  —   it forces me to these reflections.” His parents divorced when he was very young, and his mother died when he was 11. So he decided to go look for his father. ”I found him playing a guitar, and it was the instrument that fascinated me,” he says. Brouwer taught himself everything he knows about music. Even though his grandmother was the sister of renowned composer Ernesto Lecuona, the wealthy family refused to pay for any kind of music education and wanted nothing do to with him. ”I’d say that being in an orphanage made me reflect on the ’what’ and the ’why’  —   especially the ’why’  —   of the essential things in life,” he says. ”What is a man? What am I doing here? What is culture? Why am I fascinated with this?” Brouwer says he listened to Cuba’s classical radio station all the time and learned how to read sheet music by haunting music stores in Havana when he was 15 years old. ”I arrived and showed my clean hands, so I could touch the sheet music. ’Sure, come on in, boy,’ they’d say. I spent four hours a day standing, studying Stravinsky, including one of Mozart’s string quartets, who was one of my first teachers of the traditional forms . .. That’s the world in which I began to compose,” he says. ”I didn’t have a piano, I don’t need it. I trained the ear and I wrote on the table. And I still write music that way. The guitar was a reference, for fingerings and things like that.” Brouwer’s models were Bartok, Schumann, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky. He wanted to do for the guitar what they had done for instruments like piano and violin. Brazilian guitarist Carlos   first heard Brouwer’s music when he was touring in Europe, in the early 1970s. ”For me it was a new experience, because I saw a   with incredible view of the music and different styles too, including the popular roots, and also his knowledge,” Barbosa recalls. ”I think probably he had his style, when he was in his teens, already defined.” Part of that style is incorporating traditional music and Cuban instruments in classical music forms. But Brouwer is also a big fan of popular music and says it’s just as important as anything written for the concert hall. ”That’s the case of The Beatles, among others, or a Leonard Cohen. So many. Including those that could be labeled commercial,” Brouwer says. ”The composers of boleros from Cuba and Mexico are absolute geniuses . .. Those boleros they wrote will transcend history because they’re incredible.” Brouwer has a special place in his heart for The Beatles. He decided to arrange their music for classical instruments because of a particular Cuban minister of culture and his views on music. ”He even felt North American music deformed people. That view was widespread during the old Soviet era, that some music was degenerate, that it was a Nazi heritage,” Brouwer explains. ”That minister banned my music, too, and that of composer Silvio Rodriguez, who was a   revolutionary. We were forbidden, we became close friends, and here we are. The minister is long gone.” In addition to his prolific career as a composer, Brouwer also founded important cultural institutions in Cuba. In 1960, he created the Cuban Institute of Art and Film Industry and helped organize the conservatories on the island. He stopped playing the guitar in the late ’70s, after an accident permanently damaged the middle finger of his right hand. Today, he focuses all of his energy on composing, noting that he still has a lot of work to do. ”And now I have many more ideas. The problem is much more serious,” he says. ”It’s a lot harder to compose  —   not because I don’t have ideas, but because I have too many ideas . .. and I have to be selective.”"
"The state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties has sued Gov. Rick Scott, alleging that he acted unconstitutionally when he removed her from 23 homicide cases. Scott had reassigned Aramis Ayala’s cases to another state attorney by executive order because Ayala had declared her refusal to pursue the death penalty. ”The Governor did not take this drastic step because of any misconduct on Ayala’s part, but simply because he disagreed with her reasoned prosecutorial determination not to seek the death penalty under current circumstances,” Ayala’s attorney, Roy Austin, writes in her filing. The complaint also lists the prosecutor chosen to replace her, State Attorney Brad King, as a defendant. ”The people of Orange and Osceola Counties overwhelmingly elected State Attorney Aramis Ayala to serve as their prosecutor  —   not Governor Scott or State Attorney King,” Austin explained in a statement. The Republican Scott, for his part, has said he went around Ayala, a Democrat, in the ”interest of justice.” ”State Attorney Ayala’s complete refusal to consider capital punishment for the entirety of her term sends an unacceptable message that she is not interested in considering every available option in the fight for justice,” he said in a statement earlier this month, as NPR’s Debbie Elliott has reported. The simmering disagreement between Ayala and Scott was brought to a boil in March, when the Legislature passed  —   and Scott signed  —   a bill that amended the state’s procedures in determining the death penalty. Brendan Byrne of member station WMFE explains what changed: ”For much of last year, executions in Florida were on hold. That’s because Florida’s Supreme Court said the way judges and juries decided on the death penalty was unconstitutional. At the time, the law said only seven of 12 jurors needed to recommend a death sentence. ”The legislature passed a law to change that, requiring a unanimous jury decision for death.” Ayala, whose jurisdiction includes Orlando, confronted this newly restored death penalty by refusing to pursue it, citing what she saw as a lack of compelling evidence for its effectiveness  —   and beginning her pushback with the case of Markeith Loyd, who is accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend and a police officer. ”If there was any a case for the death penalty, this is the case,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina said in March, according to the Orlando Sentinel. ”I’ve seen the video, so I know the state attorney has seen the video of [Loyd] standing over defenseless and helpless Lt. Debra Clayton and executing her.” But Ayala’s complaint argues that by removing her from that case and nearly two dozen others, Scott and King ”deprived the voters of Ayala’s jurisdiction of the benefit of their votes  —   and violated Ayala’s constitutional rights  —   when they assumed the authority to veto the prosecutorial discretion of an independent elected official.” The Orlando paper notes a recent poll that shows 62 percent of Ayala’s constituents, who voted her into office over a Democratic rival in January, ”would prefer it if people convicted of   murder were sentenced to life in prison,” outpacing the 31 percent who would prefer the death penalty. Ayala says she called Scott before announcing her lawsuit, according to WMFE, ”he ended the call in less than 30 seconds, before she could explain her position.”"
"Updated at 6:00 p. m. ET, Three explosions went off near the bus of Germany’s Borussia Dortmund soccer team on Tuesday evening in the city of Dortmund, local police say. The team said on Twitter that one of its players, defender Marc Bartra, suffered a broken wrist and is being treated in a hospital. The injury required surgery. Initial reports suggest that the blasts were caused by ”serious explosives,” potentially hidden in a bush near a parking lot, Dortmund police said in a statement. Police and prosecutors have not identified who is behind the explosions. Dortmund police chief Gregor Lange said late Tuesday that police assume the team bus was intentionally targeted, but that the origin of the attack was unclear, Reuters reports. ”I do not want to suggest that this was a terrorist attack,” Lange said, according to Reuters. ”All that is still being investigated.” A letter was found near the site of the explosion, and investigators are looking into its authenticity, police say. The Associated Press reports that the letter allegedly takes responsibility for the blasts. The team was set to play against Monaco in the ”Champions League quarterfinal first leg game,” the AP reports. The explosions came ”as the players were leaving their hotel for the match at 7 p. m. local time,” the wire service writes. Police said in a statement that the bus’s windows were damaged. ”The match has been postponed until Wednesday,” NPR’s Lucian Kim reports from Berlin. The Dortmund police added there is no indication the people in the stadium were in danger. They later praised fans for their orderly departure from the stadium after the match was cancelled. Police also launched a drone to gather evidence, Lucian adds."
"It’s been 25 years since the National Academy of Sciences set its standards for appropriate scientific conduct, and the world of science has changed dramatically in that time. So now the academies of science, engineering and medicine have updated their standards. The report published Tuesday, ”Fostering Integrity in Research,” shines a spotlight on how the research enterprise as a whole creates incentives that can be detrimental to good research. Robert Nerem, a professor emeritus of bioengineering at Georgia Tech, was not expecting that outcome when he agreed to chair the academy committee five years ago. He thought the committee would simply be updating the 1992 standards. ”We hadn’t had more than a couple of meetings when we realized this wasn’t a question of updating, this was a question of taking a brand new look and a very different look,” Nerem told Shots. Science had changed. It was global and interconnected. Questions about the reproducibility of results had bubbled up. And it was increasingly clear that issues about proper conduct of research weren’t isolated to individual labs, but influenced by a continuously evolving academic, publishing and funding environment. ”This should not be something that gets looked at every 10 to 20 years, but is an ongoing discussion,” Nerem said. ”And somebody needs to lead that ongoing discussion.” That observation ultimately prompted the committee to recommend the creation of a Research Integrity Advisory Board. This nongovernmental board wouldn’t punish bad actors, but it would help foster good research and help institutions respond better to issues as they arise. The focus of the 2017 report also shifts dramatically from the 1992 report, which emphasized individual cases of misconduct and questionable behavior, as opposed to the research enterprise as a whole. ”We’ve been fond of the ’bad apple’ narrative, and we’re talking about switching to the barrels and the barrel makers,” said committee member C. K. Gunsalus, who heads the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics at the University of Illinois. ”We’re not just talking about misconduct here, which is formally defined in the U. S. as fabrication of data, falsification or plagiarism,” said committee member, Brian Martinson, from the HealthPartners Institute in Minneapolis. ”We recognize there’s a fuller range of behavior that we refer to as detrimental research practices.” These can include cutting corners, using dubious statistics, or not fully sharing what you’ve done so other scientists can reproduce your results. The previous report called some of these ”questionable” practices, but the new committee decided that word was inadequate. ”Sometimes these detrimental research practices can be as damaging as actual misconduct,” Nerem said. They can undercut the validity of findings and make them not reproducible in other labs. Other scientists can spend a long time chasing dead ends. ”You’ve wasted the time of a lot of people, and time is an irreplaceable resource,” Gunsalus said. ”And it’s valuable and you use highly trained people with expensive educations using expensive equipment in labs. When you waste the time you’ve done something really damaging.” These practices are far more common than outright fraud, and that adds up. How big a problem is this? That’s hard to say, Nerem told Shots. That’s why the report calls for more effort to study these issues. ”It’s interesting since we’re talking about research in science and engineering, which are fields that are data driven, that we have no data on this particular issue,” Nerem said. ”I don’t think this is prevalent, but I think research misconduct and what we call in the report ’detrimental research practices’ occur more often than any of us would like, and the research community has to step up to the plate to address this.” The report sets out a series of recommendations designed to improve the integrity of science, including steps that universities can take to improve their standards and protect  . Scientists are called upon to share their data and methods as rapidly as possible. And funders should make sure data and computer code are archived, Nerem’s committee said, to make it easier for findings to be reproduced by independent scientists. The report arrives at a time when many scientists feel that their enterprise is under siege in Washington, with threats of massive budget cuts and diminished interest in   facts. Still, the scientists behind this report remain committed to improving an enterprise that already provides a great deal of value to society."
"New York state has passed legislation that would create the largest experiment in the country to offer free tuition at   and   colleges. The Excelsior Scholarship, approved over the weekend as part of the state budget, would cover   students in the State University of New York system, which totals 64 campuses and 1. 3 million students. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, appeared with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and state education leaders in an event hailing the new program, which would begin this fall and is estimated to cost $163 million per year. Students from families making up to $100, 000 a year would be eligible in the program’s first year, and by the third year that would increase to $125, 000 a year. It’s a big step forward in a national trend: In the last decade, 85 states and municipalities have created similar scholarship programs, most of them for community college tuition. And the idea got plenty of airing in last year’s presidential election, when it was championed first by Sanders and then Hillary Clinton. Still, now that free public college is closer to being a reality, the cheerleading is accompanied by nitpicking among some college affordability advocates. Here are some ”catches” in the New York state plan. Tamara Draut, vice president of policy and research at Demos, a   think tank, praised the bill in a statement, but with a caveat: ”The bill is what’s known as a ’ ’ program.” Translation: Students must first apply for, and use, other money like federal Pell Grants, before turning to the scholarship. That, in turn, means that   students have less to gain from the scholarship than do students from families who are too wealthy to qualify for those grants. By the way, the U. S. Department of Education and the IRS recently made it more cumbersome to apply for federal student aid such as Pell Grants. And, President Trump’s budget proposal would withhold money from those grants. New York has a    cost of living. Books, fees, food, housing and incidentals aren’t covered by this scholarship, so students without family support must work or borrow. ”I have students choosing between a MetroCard and lunch, or sharing books with other students,” said Gail Mellow, the president of LaGuardia Community College. She nonetheless calls Excelsior a ”wonderful opportunity” and says that to complement the shift, her college will direct more of its own scholarship money toward living expenses. The Excelsior is good for two years for a   program like an associate’s degree, or four years for a   program. That sounds reasonable, except when you realize that, according to the most recent numbers, just 34 percent of freshmen at public universities nationwide graduated within four years. Mellow sees this as a healthy incentive for students: ”The data are incontrovertible: The faster you can get a student through college, the more likely they are to graduate.” There are hardship provisions in the new program for students who must pause their participation. Still, given the number of students who struggle with work, child care and other responsibilities, this provision makes the program a lot less universal than it might seem at first blush. The Excelsior requires people to work in New York state for at least two years after they receive an associate’s degree, or four years  ’s. If they leave, the full grant retroactively becomes a loan. This is seen as a way to ensure that New York taxpayers reap their investment in the form of a more educated workforce. But Sara   of Temple University, a noted ”free college” advocate, protested this idea at length on Twitter, calling it a ”trick”: ”as someone who has worked on almost every free college bill, I promise @NYGovCuomo won’t be remembered well if he keeps this provision.” In another tweet, she noted that ”Free college is about moving beyond a complex, untrustworthy aid system. This move perpetuates existing problems.”"
"Since he first announced his presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders has stuck to one simple promise. One that has many young people, in particular, #feelingthebern: free college. As Sanders put it in his New Hampshire victory speech: ”When we need the   workforce in the world, yes, we are going to make public colleges and universities  .” The Pitch, There’s a reason this promise has such powerful appeal. Earning some sort of postsecondary degree or certificate is more and more considered a necessity if you want to earn a   living. Meanwhile, on a percentage basis, by some measures, college tuition has increased in cost more than any other good or service in the U. S. economy since 1978. It rises at two or three times the rate of inflation every single year. And student loans have grown in tandem, to a total of $1. 2 trillion. There’s rising concern that this debt is stopping young people from buying homes, starting families or businesses, saving for their futures and generally being launched into their lives. The Critics, As with many other elements of his platform, critics of Sanders’   proposal have charged that it is unrealistic and that he hasn’t fully explained how to pay for it. Funding free college can be tricky because, as with other government benefits, the very act of promising to pay can drive up costs in a couple of different ways. Andrew Kelly, a prominent critic of the idea at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has written that capping tuition at zero ”limits college spending to whatever the public is willing to invest. But it does not change the cost of college, or what institutions actually spend per student. If the past is any guide, that cost will continue to grow, and an influx of federal money may lead profligate administrators to spend even more. Enrollments will also increase, further multiplying the cost of free college.” The Short Answer  But let’s assume that, somehow, it gets done. Would getting rid of tuition at public colleges and universities, by itself, really give the United States ”the most educated workforce in the world”? Probably not. Let’s look around the world and find out why. The Long Answer,  The United States currently has the    workforce in the world, with 45 percent of young adults having earned some form of diploma or certificate. That’s according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which compiles detailed statistics on developed countries. The U. S. is above the OECD average, making modest progress over the past decade, even as tuition has risen steadily. ”The most educated workforces in the world,” though, are smoking us. They are found in South Korea, where a whopping 67 percent of adults have some postsecondary education, and Japan and Canada (both at 58 percent). Now, here’s the problem with Sanders’ claim that free tuition is necessary: All three countries charge tuition at their universities, which are overwhelmingly public. The numbers are roughly on par with   tuition at many public universities here. In fact, Canada’s recent graduates have student loan burdens similar to those of U. S. students, and they’re not happy about it. So whatever the differences in education systems, policy, culture and demographics among these three countries and the United States, it’s clear, at least on the face of it, that free tuition is not required to produce ”the most educated workforce in the world.” The Other Side, Now, let’s look at the question a different way. As Sanders points out on his website, Germany recently abolished college tuition, and ”Finland, Norway, Sweden and many other countries around the world also offer free college to all of their citizens.” This is true. But again, there’s a catch: Only one of these   countries does better than the United States when it comes to educational attainment. Germany and Finland are both below the OECD average (Germany is a bit of a special case because of its extensive training and apprenticeship system, which tracks students as early as high school). Sweden’s rate is almost identical to that of the United States. Norway is just a tick higher: 47 percent. And two more   countries, Brazil and Slovenia, are below the average too. So ”the most educated workforces in the world” today don’t have free college. And countries that do have free public universities don’t necessarily have more educated workforces than we do. Is it an      case? Maybe not. Andreas Schleicher, a top education analyst at the OECD, had some final thoughts for NPR Ed. ”It is not possible to establish meaningful relationships between the cost of higher education and attainment, as there are too many intervening variables,” he said. (Translation: This armchair exercise is a bit futile.) ”However, it is clear that growth in attainment in the U. S. has been particularly low and cost is likely an impediment to this. Many European countries provide free public higher education and in virtually all of these countries taxpayers benefit from this (in the sense that the additional tax revenues paid by better educated workers far outweigh the public expenditure on higher education).” In other words, we probably could get some more people through college by footing the bill. Not only that, it would probably pay for itself. Schleicher also suggests that there’s a cheaper way to get the same benefits: by expanding our current Pell Grant program and student loan repayment options, similar to steps the U. K. has taken. Sanders has some ideas on that too, of course."
"When 1, 700 specialists in global health descended upon Washington, D. C. this past weekend, they brought suitcases full of data and experience. The Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference offered marathon sessions that covered everything from noncommunicable diseases and   to climate science and injury prevention. We edit a daily email newsletter, Global Health NOW. But we found out there’s still a lot to learn about our field. Here are some of the facts and figures that made an impression on us. Brian W. Simpson and Dayna Kerecman Myers edit Global Health NOW, an initiative of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health."
"The man accused of slamming a stolen truck into pedestrians before crashing into a Stockholm department store, killing four people and wounding 15 others, will plead guilty, his lawyer said Tuesday. ”The court has decided that I’m not allowed to tell anything about what happened inside court today, or in the questions with the police,” defense attorney Johan Eriksson told reporters outside the Stockholm District Court. ”So the only thing I am going to say is that he’s pleading guilty.” The suspect, identified as Rakhmat Akilov, was detained a few hours after the attack on Friday and arrested on Saturday morning. Eriksson said Akilov ”acknowledges the terrorist charge and agrees to be arrested,” The Associated Press reports. Akilov is a    Uzbek national who applied for Swedish residency in 2014 but was denied last year and ordered to leave the country. Police tried to find Akilov in February, but he had gone underground and was wanted by police, according to The New York Times. The Times also reports that the Swedish Security Service, Sapo, had warned in March that an attack by a lone terrorist was likely to happen in the country within the year. On Monday, Sweden observed a minute of silence as part of a national day of mourning for the victims of the attack. The U. N. Security Council condemned the incident as a ”barbaric and cowardly terrorist attack” and reiterated that ”any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed.” The AP reports that 163, 000   arrived in Sweden in 2015, the highest per capita rate in Europe."
"It’s a cliché that happens to be true: Bears love honey. And in Maryland, lawmakers have passed a bill making it legal to shoot a black bear if it threatens a beekeeper’s hive. In February, state Del. Mike McKay testified before the Environment and Transportation Committee on behalf of the bill. He wore a vest festooned with the image of Winnie the Pooh. Del. Herb McMillan noted McKay’s attire didn’t seem to square with his arguments. ”I know you came in here talking about Winnie the Pooh, but the gist of the bill is that you can shoot him,” McMillan said, according to The Baltimore Sun. Existing Maryland law requires a person to have a hunting license and a black bear hunting permit in order to hunt black bears in the state. Exempted is ”a person who kills or wounds a black bear in defense of   own life, the lives of other individuals, or the lives of animals on the individual’s property.” This week, Maryland’s General Assembly passed McKay’s bill. So, if the measure is signed by the governor, as of June, the exemption on hunting bears will extend to the owners of honeybee colonies, if the owner has contacted the state’s Department of Natural Resources and installed an electric fence to protect the hive. The measure also provides funds to provide electric fences to beekeepers. The DNR says it receives about six reports of damage to bee colonies annually, although those could be things other than bears. The state has a Black Bear Damage Reimbursement Fund, and it says it gets approximately two claim requests per year. ”We’re concerned about the beekeepers who raise bees for honey and other agricultural uses,” Del. McKay explained in a video interview with the Sun in February. ”We know that black bears do attack them, and we just need to figure out a way we can protect the investment, because it is livestock. If a black bear is hurting a lamb or a calf, you have the right to shoot that because it is your investment and your livestock. We just want to extend the same to those who are in the beekeeping industry.” Four counties in western Maryland have breeding populations of black bears the state estimates its population of black bears to be more than 1, 000. One thousand bears lusting for honey. ”The proverbial bull in the china shop is no comparison to a bear in the beeyard when it comes to damage and destruction,” warns the state’s Department of Natural Resources. If you’ve got a bear in your beeyard, the Maryland DNR recommends a   electrical fence, with a small piece of bacon coated with honey or molasses affixed to it. But Allen Hayes, president of the Maryland State Beekeepers Association, says that electric fences aren’t always effective in deterring bears, especially if the ground is very dry. His organization backed McKay’s bill. If bears really want the hive, says Hayes, ”they have been known to take the shock to the get the reward on the other side.” Eric Mussen is Emeritus Extension Apiculturist at the University of California, Davis. He says that bears have a pretty good sense of smell, and they can catch the scent of a beehive if they get downwind of a nearby colony. ”If the colony is living in a tree, often the bear literally tears the tree apart to get to the bees,” he writes in an email to NPR. Once a bear gets into a colony, Mussen says, it will eat a little honey, but it will devour the bee ”brood”: bee eggs, larvae, and pupae  —   a source of protein and fat. Bears bring that same appetite  —   for brood and destruction  —   to   beehives. ”They leave the covers scattered all over the hive boxes scattered and often broken the combs pulled out, broken, and strewn about in the apiary and the combs that had brood in them will have the comb eaten out,” writes Mussen. ”The colony will not survive and there may be very little undamaged equipment to salvage.” ”To a   beekeeper, the financial loss is not too severe,” Mussen adds. ”However, losing the colony, that requires so much effort to keep healthy these days, is quite a blow. For commercial operators, who may not revisit the apiary for a couple weeks, it can mean very substantial economic loss.” The Maryland legislature has been squarely in the bee camp lately. Last year lawmakers passed the Pollinator Protection Act, which bans consumers from buying pesticides that contain neonicotinoids, which are believed to harm bees. The Associated Press reports that Maryland beekeepers lost nearly 61 percent of their hives in 2015, about twice the national average. ”A beekeeper has the right to protect his or her property in an extreme situation,” Hayes said. ”The state legislature obviously agrees with us.”"
"About a month after an   device spit sodium cyanide in the face of an unsuspecting boy and killed his dog, the U. S. Department of Agriculture has announced it is ending its use of the   mechanisms in Idaho indefinitely. ”We take seriously the incident in Idaho,” Jason Suckow, western regional director of the USDA’s Wildlife Services agency, told conservation groups in a letter Monday. ”We immediately responded by removing all   from the area, initiating an inquiry into the incident, and launching a review of current [Wildlife Services] operating procedures.” Suckow noted the agency has ”removed all   currently deployed on all land ownerships in Idaho” and has refrained from planting new ones. Then he added: ”WS will notify you 30 days prior to placing any new  .” The move follows an incident last month in which    Canyon Mansfield inspected a     device while walking his dog near his family’s house  —   only to be hit immediately in the face with an ”orange, powdery substance.” The blast sent Mansfield to the hospital it killed his dog. As we reported last month, Mansfield, his family and the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office later learned the device had been placed there by the federal government: ”Often known as a ’cyanide bomb,’ it’s a device used by the U. S. Department of Agriculture to prevent predators such as coyotes from harming livestock on farm and ranch lands. When triggered, the   spits a potentially lethal dose of sodium cyanide powder at the interloper. ” ’This device is extremely dangerous to animals and humans,’ the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement released the next day. ’If a device such as this is ever located please do not touch or go near the device and contact your local law enforcement agency.’ ” In response to the incident, the Western Watersheds Project and more than a dozen other conservation groups filed a petition against the use of   in Idaho  —   a petition that ultimately helped prompt Wildlife Services to reverse its policy in the state. ”This is an important victory, at least a temporary one, for both wildlife and for public safety across Idaho,” Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, said in a statement celebrating the reversal. ”We thank Wildlife Services for doing the right thing by removing these deadly and indiscriminate killing devices, and urge them to make the moratorium permanent.” The Mansfield family, which also submitted a petition of its own, cast the decision as just the first step. They’re also pursuing federal legislation, which they call ”Canyon’s Law,” that would ban   across the U. S. ”We believe the use of these devices is too indiscriminate and imprecise,” said Canyon’s father, Mark Mansfield, tells the Idaho State Journal. ”The ban in Idaho is an exciting first step. But we don’t want Wildlife Services to issue a temporary ban and then reinstate   use once everything has blown over. That’s why we need a federal law like Canyon’s Law.”"
"Amnesty International says there were fewer executions worldwide last year than the year before  —   but the number of death sentences handed down is the highest it has ever recorded. In its annual report, Amnesty estimates that China carried out more executions than all the other countries put together. The human rights group says China put thousands of people to death. The exact figure is classified as a state secret and is not included in Amnesty’s worldwide total. Four other countries  —   Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan  —   carried out 87 percent of the remaining executions. ”Just a handful of countries are still executing people on a large scale. The majority of states no longer condone the state taking human life. With just four countries responsible for 87 percent of all recorded executions  —   the death penalty is itself living on borrowed time,” Amnesty   Salil Shetty said in a statement. Worldwide, at least 1, 032 people were put to death last year, not counting those killed in China. That’s a 37 percent drop from 2015. Amnesty also says that ”3, 117 people were sentenced to death in 55 countries for 2016,” surpassing Amnesty’s peak number of 2, 466 people sentenced in 2014. For the first time since 2006, the United States was not in the top five countries to carry out executions, Amnesty said. ”Use of the death penalty in the USA is at its lowest since the early 1990s. But we have to fight to keep it that way,” Shetty added. That could change this year, Shetty adds: ”The shocking number of executions scheduled over a   period in Arkansas this April is a clear example of how quickly the picture can change.” Seven people are currently scheduled to be put to death there later this month. The U. S. carried out 20 executions in 2016  —   eight fewer than the previous year. Amnesty said in its report that the decrease is ”linked to legal challenges that resulted in the revision of lethal injection protocols or problems faced by states in obtaining lethal injection chemicals.” For the eighth year in a row, the U. S. was ”the only country to carry out executions in the Americas region.” Amnesty argued that the death penalty should be abolished worldwide. It applauded two countries that completely abolished the practice in 2016: Benin and Nauru. As The   has reported, ”the death penalty has become historically unpopular among American voters and its use is also becoming increasingly rare.”"
"One of the most common reasons people go to the doctor is lower back pain, and one of the most common reasons doctors prescribe powerful, addictive narcotics is lower back pain. Now, research published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association offers the latest evidence that spinal manipulation can offer a modestly effective alternative. Researchers analyzed 26 studies involving more than 1, 700 patients with lower back pain. The analysis found spinal manipulation can reduce lower back pain as measured by patients on a pain scale  —   like this one  —   from zero to 10. Spinal manipulation, which is typically done by chiropractors, physical therapists, osteopaths, massage therapists and some other health providers, involves applying pressure and moving joints in the spine. Patients undergoing spinal manipulation experienced a decline of 1 point in their pain rating, says Dr. Paul Shekelle, an internist with the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Rand Corp. who headed the study. ”So if it had been a 7 it would be a 6, or if it had been a 5 it would be a 4,” Shekelle says. That’s about the same amount of pain relief as from NSAIDs,    nonsteroidal   medication, such as ibuprofen. The study also found spinal manipulation modestly improved function. On average, patients reported greater ease and comfort engaging in two    activities  —   such as finding they could walk more quickly, were having less difficulty turning over in bed or were sleeping more soundly. It’s not clear exactly how spinal manipulation relieves back pain. But it may reposition the small joints in the spine in a way that causes less pain, according to Dr. Richard Deyo, an internist and professor of   medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University. Deyo wrote an editorial published along with the study. Another possibility, Deyo says, is that spinal manipulation may restore some material in the disk between the vertebrae, or it may simply relax muscles, which could be important. There may also be   interaction that comes from the ”laying of hands” or a trusting relationship between patients and their health care provider, he says. Deyo notes that there are many possible treatments for lower back pain, including oral medicine, injected medicine, corsets, traction, surgery, acupuncture and massage therapy. But of about 200 treatment options, ”no single treatment is clearly superior,” he says. The findings of this study may slightly shift that evaluation of benefits. The findings are in line with guidelines the American College of Physicians released recently. Those guidelines suggest people with low back pain use techniques that may help speed up the healing process, including heat wraps, massage, acupuncture and spinal manipulation. The bottom line message, says Deyo, is to try to avoid medication. ”Even    medications have some important side effects and complications,” Deyo says. ”Spinal manipulation seems to be quite safe when it’s done in the lower back.” Medications can cause gastritis, an upset stomach and a rise in blood pressure. And if patients are prescribed stronger medication, such as opioids, they risk   use and even addiction. Dr. Steven Atlas, an internist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School who practices at Massachusetts General Hospital, says the study offers ”more support for alternative treatments,” particularly for patients who are not getting better with   techniques such as heating pads, exercise and yoga. Atlas says further research could help identify patients who would benefit most from spinal manipulation therapy. This could make it easier for doctors to refer patients for treatment by a chiropractor or physical therapist, he says."
"With a taste of just a single dish from a Jewish family’s table at Passover, Joan Nathan can tell a global story. The Jewish cooking legend, who has nearly a dozen books to her name, has documented the worldwide reach of Jewish food for her latest, King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World. ”I can track people by what their haroset is,” Nathan says. Haroset, a Passover staple, is a rough paste usually made of chopped fruits and nuts. It’s meant to symbolize the mortar Hebrew slaves used for building before the exodus from Egypt. The basic recipe has assumed different forms depending on local traditions and ingredients, evolving as it traveled from one continent to another over the centuries. Nathan’s newest cookbook has five recipes for haroset, from every part of the globe. They range from a Maine version with blueberries and cranberries to a Brazilian recipe with cashews to a Persian variety featuring pomegranate juice. ”This is a perfect way to illustrate the wandering of the Jews,” Nathan says. Jewish cuisine is not as distinct as Indian or Mexican food, Nathan says, because Jews live all over the world. Wherever she travels, she seeks out the local food traditions. For example, during a visit to Tbilisi, Georgia, in the 1980s, a rabbi served her a diced eggplant dish with herbs and spices from the region. A little later in Italy, she enjoyed practically the same mélange  —   only with a different palate of flavorings reflecting the local tastes. In King Solomon’s Table, Nathan also writes about the tradition of eggs on the Seder table. ”Many Jews have the custom of starting the Passover Seder with eggs, either cooked in salt water or even cooked overnight in sand, a custom still followed today in North Africa,” she writes. The recipe she shares for   eggs with spinach originated on the Greek island of Corfu. Nathan says she’s been studying these traditions for a long time, and her book is her way of ”putting everything together  —   things that I’ve been thinking about, that I’ve been ruminating about for years.” Recipe: Halleq, Persian Haroset with Dates, Apples, Pistachios and Pomegranate Juice  Yield: 6 cups  Every Passover, I make about five kinds of haroset from different parts of the world. For me, the various blends, representing the mortar used to make bricks in slavery in ancient Egypt, reflect the regional dispersal of the Jews throughout history. Haroset, a popular dipping sauce for feasts in Babylon, was brought to Jerusalem and later added to the Passover Seder after the destruction of the Second Temple. For centuries, the sauce, originally made of dates, was slowly cooked in copper pots, used to cook down the fruit into a syrupy honey, making the biblical date honey. Then it was topped with ground walnuts (see my Jewish Cooking in America, page 387). Later, in Baghdad (about thirty miles from Babylon) it was traditional to buy the dates, press them through a special machine, letting the syrup ooze out, and then heat the dates very slowly in a copper pot until they were the thick consistency of a   syrup. I have heard stories about men and women who would roam the streets of Baghdad hawking this date honey served with clotted cream on bread or matzo for breakfast. As Jews settled on the Silk Road or throughout the Mediterranean, they either brought with them their recipe for haroset, if they could find all the ingredients, or created new ones, based on ingredients where they lived. Egyptian haroset includes raisins, dates, and nuts, and Persian haroset, called halleq, is filled with nuts and dried fruits, pomegranate juice, bananas, and cardamom as the prominent spice, but uncooked. Recipe: Huevos Haminados con Spinaci,     Eggs with Spinach, Yield: 12 servings, NOTE: To see if the eggs are really boiled, remove one egg from the water and spin it on a flat cutting board. If it twirls in one place, it is  . If it wobbles all over the board, it is not cooked yet and the weight isn’t distributed evenly. The easiest way of peeling a hot   egg is to put it under cold water between your hands and rub it quickly until it cracks, then peel under the running water. To prepare the symbolic egg for the Passover Seder plate, boil the egg in its shell, dry it, and then light a match underneath to char it. Recipes from King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World by Joan Nathan. Published by Knopf."
"People are still dying of cancer linked to asbestos, the U. S. Centers for Disease Control says, despite decades of regulations meant to limit dangerous exposure. Starting in 1971, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has regulated how much asbestos workers can be exposed to, because it contains tiny fibers that can cause lung disease or cancer if they are swallowed or inhaled. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates asbestos too, setting requirements for inspecting, demolishing and renovating buildings that contain materials made with asbestos, like insulation, vinyl tiles, roofing, shingles and paint. But, a recent CDC analysis found that thousands of people are still dying each year from a type of cancer called malignant mesothelioma that is associated with inhaling asbestos fibers, even briefly or in small amounts. Even after decades of regulation, between 1999 and 2015 there were 45, 221 mesothelioma deaths in the U. S. The majority of those who died were men. The greatest increase is among people over 85 years old, who were likely exposed to asbestos many years ago. It can take anywhere from two to seven decades for mesothelioma to develop after a person inhales asbestos fibers. And early deaths among people 35 to 65 are down overall. But, investigators say, the fact that people younger than 55 are still dying of a disease linked to asbestos means that workers are still being exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos despite federal regulations. One source is asbestos that was originally installed years ago, and gets stirred up during a building renovation or a demolition project. People exposed in this way are sometimes referred to as the ”third wave” of people with asbestos disease, as we have reported. The first two waves were asbestos miners and manufacturers, and then tradesmen, such as pipe fitters or shipbuilders. For example, the CDC researchers note that although there appears to be a general decline in asbestos on worksites between 1979 and 2003, ”20 percent of air samples collected in the construcÂ tion industry in 2003 for compliance purposes exceeded the OSHA permissible exposure limit [for asbestos].” And asbestos is still being used in new products. A report on the findings published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, notes ”Asbestos production stopped in the United States in 2002, but it is imported into the country to produce chemicals used in manufacturing common items such as soap, fertilizers, and alkaline batteries.” More than 350 metric tons of the mineral were used in 2015 in the U. S. according to the U. S. Geological Survey. The CDC analysis also found that mesothelioma deaths were not evenly distributed across the country, despite the fact that the material is regulated at the federal level. It is difficult to say why some states seem to have higher rates of death associated with asbestos. The authors note that, because the analysis is based on death certificate data, it does not necessarily mean that more people are being exposed to asbestos in states with high rates of mesothelioma deaths, although that is possible. Alternatively, people may have been exposed to asbestos in a different state than the one where they eventually died. But the overall number of deaths nationally is concerning. ”The continuing occurrence of malignant mesothelioma deaths underscores the need for maintaining asbestos exposure prevention efforts and for ongoing surveillance,” the authors write. For homeowners and consumers who are concerned about asbestos, the EPA has guidelines about how to identify asbestos products and how to have the material safely removed during a renovation."
"As the Trump administration considers steps to implement what the president has called extreme vetting of foreigners at the border, one aspect of security screening has already been amped up. The number of people who have been asked to hand over their cellphones and passwords by Customs and Border Protection agents has increased nearly threefold in recent years. This is happening to American citizens as well as foreign visitors. It happened to Sidd Bikkannavar on Jan. 30, 10 days after President Trump’s inauguration. He was returning from a trip to Chile, where he took part in his hobby, racing   cars. At the Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Bikkannavar was told to report to passport control by CBP officers. He was asked a series of questions, all ”pretty benign and uneventful,” he tells NPR, and was then told ”to hand over my phone, and give the password to unlock it.” Bikkannavar is an American citizen, and had enrolled in the Global Entry program, which for a fee gives ”  travelers” expedited processing through customs, after a background check. Bikkannavar is also a NASA engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Bikannavar says he ”politely as I could,” told the CBP officer ”I wasn’t allowed to give up the password.” It was a   phone, Bikkannavar says he told the agent, pointing out the NASA bar codes and labels on the phone. But it didn’t matter to the CBP officer, who continued to insist, and handed Bikkannavar a document warning there would be consequences if Bikkannavar didn’t go along. And so he handed over the phone. Now you might be wondering, doesn’t the Constitution protect U. S. citizens from this sort of thing? Well, it turns out, the law isn’t entirely clear. Customs and Border Protection maintains it has the authority to look through everyone’s phones at border crossings and airport customs checkpoints. In an appearance before the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said such demands were, in general, ”just like an American citizen coming in and having his bags searched, at the port of entry. Generally speaking, it’s done for a reason.” In 2016, there were just under 23, 877 devices searched by CBP agents the year before, about 8, 500. Kelly says such searches ”aren’t routine,” and that the numbers haven’t ticked up appreciably since President Trump took office. But Neema Singh Guliani, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, sees the cellphone searches as part of a pattern. ”It’s hard not to view these searches in the broader context of some of the rhetoric and the actions that have been taken” by the Trump administration.  The ACLU says the government ought to obtain a search warrant before demanding the password for someone’s phone or laptop. Sen. Ron Wyden agrees. The Oregon Democrat has sponsored legislation that would require the government to get a   warrant before it can look through such devices. Republican Sen. Rand Paul and others from both parties and both chambers are   the bill. Wyden says he hopes that ”in a very polarized time, Americans of all political philosophies are going to say they’d like to have our agents at the borders focus on criminals and terrorists, rather than wasting their time thumbing through the personal phones and memorabilia of our people.” Wyden says Americans’ constitutional rights ”shouldn’t disappear at the border.” NASA scientist Bikkannavar says the episode has given him some doubts about the government he works for. ”I have no problems with government or authority, and I’ve always put a certain amount of trust in our elected government,” he says. ”I guess after this event and with everything else going on, the new travel policies, I guess I have to question how much I really trust the government to be looking out for everyone’s best interest.” The ACLU says Americans can refuse to give CBP agents their passwords, but at the risk of being detained and having their devices taken from them. Foreign travelers can be denied access to the country if they refuse to comply."
"Tennessee caused a stir earlier this year when it ran an audit of the state’s 2015 graduating class. The number crunchers in Nashville reported that nearly a third of students who received a diploma didn’t complete the required coursework. One in three. Naturally, parents and politicians alike were baffled and more than a little bothered. ”I’m just having a hard time reconciling ’requirement’ with ’didn’t do it,’” board member Wendy Tucker said at a public meeting, hypothesizing on the spot that this could explain Tennessee’s trouble with students succeeding in college. Less than a quarter of   graduates earn a postsecondary degree. She wasn’t the only one having a hard time. The state’s Department of Education struggled to explain the gap. After further review, it has since offered a combination of explanations: Let’s focus on that last group. Roughly 11 percent of students in the audited year graduated without the required two years of a foreign language. This was not a problem with data entry. There was no mistake. In 2011, Tennessee raised the bar to graduate after being scolded nationally for subpar standards that had effectively propped up its graduation rate. The state essentially got rid of its vocational track in an effort to make sure every student is ”college and career ready.” That decision forced every student onto what previously would have been considered the college track, including a requirement for two   credits. ”In a perfect world, you want every kid to go to college. Not going to happen,” says Billy Hall, director of schools in Scott County. His rural, mountainous district often has some of the highest unemployment in Tennessee. It also has some of the highest use of foreign language waivers. Under special circumstances, the state allows districts to give students a kind of free pass, exempting them from the foreign language requirement. In the year Tennessee officials audited, 30 percent of Scott County graduates received permission to skip French or Spanish. ”All this has been done with state notifications. It’s all been plain. It’s all been simple,” Hall says. ”It is in writing, and it is in law that it can be done.” State data show that rural districts are the heaviest users of these waivers. Administrators argue they’re doing students a favor, especially those with plans for a technical career. ”What is the benefit of having them take a foreign language class versus two additional welding courses that helps them earn hours toward their certificate to enter the job market sooner?” says Melissa Rector, principal at Scott County’s high school. Rector puts a priority on helping students land a job in her economically depressed region. And that’s why she’s happy to accept every waiver that students bring in each requires a parent’s signature but no other explanation. Those waivers have a clear disclaimer that the student will have trouble getting into college without the language credits. But Rector shares her superintendent’s view of higher education. ”College is something that, in today’s educational landscape, has tried to be marketed as the next step for everyone, and that’s just simply not true sometimes,” she says. ”In doing that, we have oftentimes ignored some of the other opportunities that are there, that can lead to very lucrative careers.” State officials have pushed back against this argument  —   that students are forgoing a language to focus on technical courses. According to the state’s data, 40 percent of those who were granted waivers in 2015 were not on track toward some kind of technical certification. Rector acknowledges that having to pass two years of a foreign language could prevent some students from even getting their diploma. And that would set them back even further in the job market. ”We do have students who are   high school graduates,” Rector says. ”They may or may not have the home support that they need to be successful, so that makes it even more challenging when they come into the school environment.” State officials are careful not to come down too hard on rural administrators, but they also insist that foreign language credits are part of what make a Tennessee diploma more meaningful than it used to be. ”We would not have those as part of our diploma project standards if we didn’t think they were important,” says Tennessee Commissioner of Education Candice McQueen. Does that mean students are required to take a foreign language? While state officials seem irritated by just how often waivers are being used, they haven’t suggested cracking down, which would almost certainly have negative effects on closely watched metrics like the state’s graduation rate. If anything needs changing, McQueen says, she wants to make sure parents and students get a clear warning about the implications on their future. Besides, she says, the waivers still serve an important purpose. ”Our job is to provide pathways and opportunities for kids and then to make sure they’re provided preparation that’s   around those opportunities and pathways,” McQueen says. ”But ultimately there is choice for students and parents around these pathways. You have to have some give and take.”"
"Cathy Malkasian creates fantastic worlds out of her proprietary blend of melancholy and   and peoples them with characters who are all too dully, achingly human. Her landscapes and cityscapes, rendered in gorgeous colored pencils, can seem as chilly and remote as her facial expressions seem warm and intimate. In graphic novels like Temperance, about the lies that the citizens of a   city tell themselves, and in her two Percy Gloom books, a gentle absurdism asserts itself so quietly that story elements like talking goats and heads that glow come off like prosaic details. That’s important, because without a sense of assured, implacable groundedness, Malkasian’s narratives could easily feel labored, built as they are on such baroque, involuted infrastructure. To wit: the opening pages of Eartha, Malkasian’s latest, ask the reader to unpack a series of   premises, any one of which could form the basis of its own book: 1. Eartha, ”big as a boulder and softer than the moss that grew on it,” lives in Echo Fjord, a bucolic land and whose citizens harvest dreams. 2. Said dreams belong to the residents of a faraway city. 3. The dreams that grow out of the ground are detained, and a thick paste called shadow applied to them, to keep them from floating away. 4. The dreams’ minders touch the dreams to provide ”a boost of energy to ignite them back into themselves.” 5. The dreams then scamper through Echo Fjord toward a doorway, giving off brilliant rays of light out of the top of their heads. 6. As they pass through the doorway, they dissolve, having achieved their purpose. That’s . .. a lot to take in, granted, but Malkasian is so careful and considered in rendering the array of dreams (the sad, the joyous, the horny and the hateful) that we don’t notice how much narrative work she’s doing. In the pages that follow, Eartha will depart her homeland to make her way to the nameless city, where she  —   and we  —   will meet the men and women who sent those dreams to her people across the vast sea.   connections among them will come to light insights gained in those opening pages will aid Eartha in her quest (as will a talking cat, an intoxicating plum tree, and an old woman who knows more than she’s letting on). Such   plotting is something new from Malkasian, whose previous graphic novels have felt free to abandon familiar storytelling structure to   on some surreal image or theme. She’s consistently shown an eagerness to walk the line between fabulist fiction and social satire, and Eartha is no different: the city’s residents are addicted to biscuits printed with headlines of lurid tragedy (”Sinister Dandruff Muzzle Hen! Septic Jackass Gambles Naked! Prominent Orgy Provokes Rabies! ”) and are ruled by thuggish,   figures who encourage the populace to embrace   cynicism and performative despair. Eartha will win the day, of course, because she maintains the ability to feel, and dream, and her sense of fairness will protect her from the city’s corrupt politicians and its emotionally bankrupt fascination with the ugliness of life. Eartha is an extended dream with a fixed moral compass, a story about the central and transformative power of believing in humanity, even when  —   especially when  —   it lets you down."
"”Water is never only about water.”  A few years ago, at one of Hoover Dam’s scenic   I stood beside a handful of strangers looking out over Lake Mead. The dam was impressive, but all I could see was the pale ring of bare rock that betrayed how low the water had fallen. Everyone around me was quiet I thought they were bored until a woman whispered, ”So that’s it?” and I realized we were terrified. We were right to worry. In Where the Water Goes, David Owen notes ”the lake today contains only about   percent as much water as it did in 1998,” and it will only get worse: Contrary to American ecological inertia, water’s a finite resource. It’s a particularly pressing concern for the Colorado River, legislated so intensely by   claims that more of its water is spoken for than actually exists. Water availability is a primary environmental concern of our age. It was a determining factor in development of the American West, from the forced displacement of Native American nations to the establishment of the Colorado River Compact across seven states and Mexico. That ”Law of the River” has shaped the policy and practicalities of the West, and Where the Water Goes traces all 1, 400 miles of it, trying to understand how fragile a web we’ve woven. It’s a staggering glimpse of just how complex the situation is  —   and how long the river has been a concern. In 1893, long before ”conservation” had anything but economic implications, geologist John Wesley Powell warned the National Irrigation Congress, ”When all the rivers are used . .. when all the wells are sunk or dug that can be dug, there is still not sufficient water to irrigate this arid region.” (Owen notes dryly: ”He was booed. ”) And while we laugh at   blowhard Horace Greeley’s assertion that ”rain follows the plow,” the current administration is rolling back environmental protections with similarly inaccurate bluster. The reality is something else entirely, and Where the Water Goes is, if nothing else, a crucial admission of the mess we’re in. Some of the ways people have tried to negotiate the desert are ludicrous (golf courses) and others are downright  : Wyoming shot silver iodide into the sky to make rain clouds, and Jefferson Davis imported camels for desert transport. Occasionally a data point just reads like dystopia  —   in the 1990s, Phoenix and Tucson essentially paid farmers to use Colorado River water they didn’t need, just so California couldn’t claim water rights and take it. But there are other, more subtle problems that aren’t so easy to pin down  —   agriculture, residential waste, and power sources are delicate tangles, involving concerns about invasive species, expediency vs.   results, and unintended consequences that might only be visible too late. Owens is effortlessly engaging, informally parceling out information about   allotments alongside sketches of notable, often dreadful figures in the river’s history. And though his sympathies are clear, he doesn’t shy away from the reality that these problems resist simple solutions every data point raises new questions, and governments, activists, and old guard are only beginning to work together to answer them. Where the Water Goes doesn’t pretend to solve the problems Owen acknowledges are overwhelming and, in some ways, impossible. It’s a restless travelogue of   human impact on the natural world, and how politics and economics have as much to do with redirecting rivers as any canal. But with its historical eddies, policy asides, and trips to the Hoover Dam, at heart Where the Water Goes is about water as a function of time, and a reminder that we’re running out of both. Genevieve Valentine’s latest novel is Icon."
"Updated at 5:35 p. m. ET, President Trump on Wednesday sharply reversed his 2016 campaign stance on NATO. ”I said it was obsolete it’s no longer obsolete,” Trump declared, after a meeting at the White House with the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg. Trump had criticized NATO members for failing to spend enough on their defense, and for what he wrongly said was the North Atlantic alliance’s failure to join the fight against terrorism. ”I complained about that a long time ago,” Trump said, ”and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.” In a joint news conference, Stoltenberg said that NATO members increased their individual defense spending by 3. 8 percent, or $10 billion, last year. He also reminded Trump that after the attacks on Sept. 11, NATO for the first time invoked Article 5, the collective defense clause, that says an attack on one member is a attack on all, and came to the aid of the U. S. Stoltenberg said NATO troops have been fighting ”shoulder to shoulder” with U. S. troops in Afghanistan for many years, and that ”more than 1, 000 have paid the ultimate price.” He said that in NATO, ”America has the best friends and the best allies in the world.” Trump said he had a phone conversation on Tuesday night with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who he said ”wants to do the right thing” and help the U. S. deal with North Korea. Trump said the two discussed trade, and that Trump told him, ”The way you’re going to make a good trade deal is to help us with North Korea.” If China does not help, Trump said, the U. S. will ”go it alone,” which he said ”means going it with lots of other nations.” He also said he has ”absolutely no doubt we did the right thing” in attacking Syria with cruise missiles after the Syrian chemical attack last week. Trump called Syrian President Bashar Assad ”a butcher.” In response to a question, he said, ”It’s certainly possible” that Syria carried out the attack without its ally Russia’s knowledge, but added, ”I think it’s probably unlikely.” Trump repeated his belief that the world ”is a mess,” but said by the time he finishes in office, ”It’s going to be a lot better place to live.” But for now, he said, ”It’s nasty.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson raised the issue of defense spending late last month at a NATO meeting in Brussels. ”As President Trump has made clear,” Tillerson said, ”it is no longer sustainable for the U. S. to maintain a disproportionate share of NATO’s defense expenditures.” Each NATO country has pledged to spend 2 percent of its gross domestic product on its own defense by 2024. Only a handful of alliance members meet that target now. U. S. defense spending accounts for somewhat over 3 percent of its GDP. Germany spends only about 1. 2 percent of its GDP on its defense. After a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in March, Trump complained that ”Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO  the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” NATO’s secretary general says defense spending is only part of the picture, though. ”We need many different tools to stabilize our neighborhood,” Stoltenberg said last month. ”It’s not either development or security. It’s development and security.” Trump’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year would boost U. S. military spending by 10 percent, while making deep cuts in development and foreign aid. Likewise, Trump wants to cut by half the number of refugees the U. S. takes in. He’s criticized Merkel for Germany’s welcoming attitude toward refugees. For all his questions about NATO, Trump looks forward to adding a new member to the alliance. The tiny Balkan nation of Montenegro has been approved to join NATO and is expected to take part in an alliance meeting next month. White House officials note that Montenegro already spends relatively more on its own defense than most other NATO countries  —   1. 7 percent of its GDP. Russia is strongly opposed to any Western tilt by Montenegro and its Balkan neighbors. White House officials say they’re concerned by possible Russian meddling in Montenegro’s election last October. Trump had previously pushed for improved ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Trump has been cooler towards Moscow since last week’s chemical weapons attack carried out by Russia’s longtime ally, Syria. ”Putin is backing a person that’s truly an evil person,” the president said this week in an interview with the Fox Business Network. ”I think it’s very bad for Russia. I think it’s very bad for mankind.” Aides say Russia’s conduct has only ”reinforced” Trump’s commitment to working with NATO."
"So far in her young life, New York City’s Fearless Girl has drawn countless tourists, a metric ton of media coverage and its fair share of praise as a symbol of the fight for gender equity  —   so much, in fact, that the statue staring down the financial district’s famous Charging Bull recently got a new lease on life, at least through 2018. For at least one person, though, the Girl has offered less than welcome company. ”The girl is standing there like this in front the bull, saying, ’Now, what are you going to do?’ ” the bull’s sculptor, Arturo Di Modica, said at a news conference Wednesday, according to CNN. He maintains that Fearless Girl  —   sculpted by Kristen Visbal and commissioned by the firm State Street Global Advisors, which intends to call attention to a lack of women leaders on Wall Street  —   at once distorts the intent of his statue from ”a symbol of prosperity and for strength” into a villain, and does so for the firm’s own commercial gain. He put a finer point on the matter in a March interview with the New York Post and MarketWatch: ”That is not a symbol! That’s an advertising trick.” And he’s prepared to fight for its removal. ”There are issues of copyright and trademark that needed to be  —   and still need to be  —   addressed,” Di Modica’s attorney, Norman Siegel, said at the news conference. Siegel, a longtime civil liberties lawyer, carefully emphasized that they, too, support the fight for gender equality and that they do not want the Fearless Girl banned entirely. ”Remove her and place her somewhere else in the city,” he said. ”We’ve got lots of ideas. And damages must be awarded to Arturo for violation of his legal, statutory rights.” Siegel said a lawsuit has not been filed, but left the door open to the possibility, according to The Guardian. The statue at the heart of the dispute went up last month in celebration of International Women’s Day, and though MarketWatch notes its temporary permit originally lasted only until April 2, the city renewed that permit through 2018. But Visbal has made no secret of her admiration for her statue’s massive counterpart: ”The bull is beautiful,” she told The New York Post in March. ”It’s a stunning piece of art.” Even the method of the statue’s installation  —   dropped unheralded in its spot overnight  —   paid homage to the bull it confronts. Di Modica himself plopped his 3    bovine beneath a Christmas tree in front of the New York Stock Exchange in December 1989 without a permit. The Italian immigrant intended the work to bolster American traders’ spirits after the stock crash of a few years before  —   though the NYSE, it must be said, was not pleased with its holiday gift, hefting away the bull by the end of the day. The Charging Bull eventually found a home two blocks away, at its current resting place just south of Wall Street. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has shown no inclination of moving the intrepid girl from the bronze bull’s path any time soon: ”Men who don’t like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl,” he tweeted Wednesday morning. Visbal, at least, feels some sympathy for Di Modica  —   ”poor Arturo,” she told the Post  —   but she, like her statue, doesn’t appear ready to back down either. ”The world changes and we are now running with this bull.”"
"Victor Pizarro, who runs a cab company in Plattsburgh, N. Y. started noticing something unusual in January, around the time of President Trump’s inauguration. People who didn’t speak English were getting off at the bus station in the city, located about 20 miles from the Canadian border, and handing his drivers a piece of paper that read, ”Take me to Roxham Road. How much?” Pizarro had never heard of Roxham Road. It’s a narrow street that   in a ditch marking the border between the U. S. and Canada. ”We didn’t have a full understanding of what was going on nationally that would affect our small community here,” he says. ”So . .. we weren’t prepared for it.” In the first two months of this year, Canada reported that more than 2, 000 people crossed from the U. S. seeking asylum. People with valid U. S. visas are able to cross at official checkpoints, but those without documentation have to find another way. When he drove to the border, Pizarro contacted U. S. Customs and Border Protection and gave them the taxi’s GPS tracking information, so Border Patrol agents could meet the cab and check his passengers’ papers. ”Each time we’ll get pulled over, the people get pulled out of the car, and sometimes they got arrested,” he says. ”Sometimes Border Patrol said, ’We’re not there don’t worry about it. Just take them.’ ” Mike Estrella, an operations officer with the Border Patrol, said the opposite in an interview. He said the agency has no protocol with taxicab companies. Then, one day, everything changed. Pizarro says he picked up a mother and son. The mom was Haitian, and the son was American and around 15 years old. They asked Pizarro to drive them to the border. He asked if their paperwork was in order, and the son said it was. So Pizarro stopped near the border, and border agents came up to the taxi and asked the passengers for their passports. He says the agents told the women to step out of the car. Her visa had expired. He looked in the rearview mirror at the son. ”And tears are just rolling, rolling, rolling down his face,” Pizarro says. ”I mean, there is nothing I can do because I have  —   I’m just driving.” Pizarro got out and asked the agents what was going to happen to the mother and son. He says they told him that she would be detained and likely deported. The kid, they said, would be sent to foster care. Pizarro says he felt like his heart had stopped. ”I mean, as a kid, I was taken away from my family, so it  —   it sort of hit me in a place that  —   it bothered me,” he says. ”It bothered me to a point, because when I looked in his eyes, I seen a reflection of myself. It brought me back to a feeling that I thought was gone. And I was like no, no, no, no.” No more, he decided. Pizarro called his drivers to an emergency meeting. He told them there would be a change of plans. From now on, he said, the goal is to make sure people get to the border safely. So if passengers don’t have valid visas, Pizarro tries to make sure Canadian officials are waiting at the end of Roxham Road. ”But as far as ripping families apart, we’re not in that business anymore,” he says. ”It happened once, and that’s it. It won’t happen again with us.” Estrella, the Border Patrol officer, said he couldn’t comment on this specific incident, but he stressed the agency is ”not trying to separate families by any means.” Recently, Pizarro has made some changes to his office, too. He transformed part of it into a waiting area. There’s a comfortable leather sofa, a small table and chairs so people waiting to go to the border have a place to relax or maybe take a nap. Pizarro says most passengers tell him they are seeking asylum in Canada because of how Trump has targeted immigrants and Muslims. Pizarro says that before all this, he had never taken a position on immigration. ”I get the fact that these people . .. they’ve overstayed their visas,” he says. ”I don’t know what side of the fence that I actually fall on on this issue. I just know that when they come here, and they call us, then our job is to get them from Point A to Point B safely, and we’re going to do that.” At 1 a. m. one night, Pizarro waits in his taxi as a bus pulls in from New York City. The bus driver walks over and asks Pizarro if he can take someone to the border. ”OK, we’ll take them,” Pizarro says. ”Let me go help these guys with their luggage.” A woman in a turquoise headscarf steps off the bus with three young boys. They drag eight massive suitcases and three overstuffed bags from the bus to the curb. They’re Palestinian, from Gaza. The woman gives only her first name, Amal, and says her sons are 15, 14 and 8. They got on a train two days ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala. They’re exhausted. She asks Pizarro to take her to the border. She wants to seek refuge in Canada. She and her sons have valid U. S. visas, so Pizarro calls U. S. border agents, who tell him to drop the family near the   store about a   from the official border crossing. It’s windy and just above freezing. Pizarro pulls their luggage out of the trunk and points to where they can walk. The three boys each grab a suitcase and run backward toward the border. It’s 2:30 a. m. by the time Pizarro starts back to Plattsburgh. He drives to the bus station to see if anyone getting off the 3 a. m. bus needs a ride to the border."
"A large church in Alabama is one step closer to creating its own police force, a move that seems to be without precedent in the U. S. The state’s Senate has approved legislation that would give church police officers the same powers other law enforcement officers have in Alabama. After being approved by Alabama’s Senate on a   vote, the bill now heads to the state House of Representatives, where an identical bill was sent to the Public Safety and Homeland Security committee in February. Both chambers’ legislation specifically names Briarwood Presbyterian Church, a Birmingham megachurch that ”says it needs its own police officers to keep its school as well as its more than 4, 000 person congregation safe,” Alabama Public Radio reports. Police officers hired by Briarwood Presbyterian would need to be certified by a state standards and training commission, according to the bill, SB193. The officers’ authority would be restricted to the church’s campuses and properties. The officers would be given ”all of the duties and invested with all of the powers of law enforcement officers in this state,” the bill says. A spokesman for the church tells reporter Andrew Yeager of member station WBHM in Birmingham that the church was moved to create its own police force after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shootings. In Yeager’s report for today’s All Things Considered, he says that the bill’s main sponsor, state Sen. Jabo Waggoner, is helping the church deal with security needs that aren’t met by the private security it’s already using. ”It was their decision,” Waggoner tells Yeager, ”and if they wanted to have their own police force, you know, I don’t see any reason why they can’t. It’s not unusual.” This isn’t the first time Briarwood’s effort to form a police force has been endorsed by both houses of Alabama’s Legislature. As The Associated Press reports, a similar bill that was approved last year eventually failed after  . Robert Bentley didn’t sign it into law. While churches have been known to form their own watch programs to enhance security and safety in North Carolina and elsewhere, it’s rare for an American church to form its own police force (see update below). Earlier this month, Alabama’s House adopted the Alabama Church Protection Act, which would help religious groups form armed security patrols. It authorizes ”any church or place of worship to establish a security program by which designated members are authorized to carry firearms for the protection of the congregation of the church or place of worship.” The act also provides ”limited immunity for members of such a program when they’re acting within their duties. Update On Churches And Police (April 13): After NPR initially published this story, readers pointed out other instances of American churches that have their own police forces. For instance, the Washington National Cathedral Police (see page 27 in this PDF) operates on the church’s properties in the nation’s capital. And in Utah, the L. D. S. Church had ”tremendous influence” in the Salt Lake City Police Department for decades after it was founded in 1851. Prior to that date, the department says, ”policing was handled by the LDS Church.” Along Utah’s border with Arizona, the shared police department of twin communities that were settled by members of the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been targeted for dismantlement by the Justice Department, which says the agency ”operates as an arm of the F. L. D. S. Church.”"
"Could a real   be coming soon to the Trump White House  —   and is his chief strategist Steve Bannon the one on the outs? The president sounds fed up with the infighting, and he appears to be picking sides  —   predictably with his family. In an interview with the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin, Trump seems to push away Bannon. ”I like Steve, but you have to remember, he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump said. ”I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist, and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.” That is brutal. Bannon, the former head of the   website Breitbart with a very particular world view, was brought on in August of 2016 and named the campaign’s ”CEO.” He was kept on when Trump won the presidency as White House chief strategist and has been seen as an inspirational leader for Trump  —   populist, nativist and  . Bannon’s fingerprints are everywhere, from Trump’s ”America First” doctrine to the dark vision laid out in his inaugural address. He even put himself on the Principals Committee of the National Security Council, an unprecedented and unusual step for the president’s top political strategist. But Bannon clashed with the wrong person, Trump’s    Jared Kushner. Kushner enjoys a broad portfolio in the White House and, most importantly, influence with Trump. He’s married to Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka, who always has her father’s ear  —   and now a West Wing office, too. She reportedly is ”angrier than anyone.” The president ordered Kushner and Bannon to sit down and work things out Friday at   . Trump confirmed that to Goodwin, and in the process, may have revealed which side he’s on. ”Steve is a good guy,” the president said, ”but I told them to straighten it out or I will.” It’s never good when your boss says you’re a ”good guy, but . .. .” It’s a remarkable turn of events for someone like Bannon, who seemed to rise in Trump’s orbit quickly, only to, like Icarus, have his wings melt away when he got too close to the sun. Steeped in controversy, Bannon has always been a controversial figure, having touted Breitbart as ”the platform for the ” which is closely aligned with white nationalism. The Trump campaign had difficulty balancing the fact that white nationalism, and white supremacists, were supportive of Trump and the need to push back against them publicly. Trump’s campaign team, even after the election, angrily denied that it had given a boost to racists. But Trump’s campaign and he himself repeatedly (his team says unwittingly) retweeted or used   memes. Now Bannon’s influence has taken a hit, especially when it comes to foreign policy and the Trump administration’s recent airstrike in Syria. Trump’s new national security adviser, Army Lt. Gen. Henry McMaster, ousted Bannon from the NSC Trump speaks regularly with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Rex Tillerson is resurgent, meeting with his counterpart in Russia on Wednesday. Trump appears to be moving away from the rigid ideology of Bannon’s grandiosity and more toward a more traditional Republican posture  —   and the   doesn’t like it. As Bannon fight goes public, Kushner faces rise in   As the   rivalry percolated in the media for a few days, the   League issued a press release Monday headlined, ”Explosive Growth of Hateful Memes and   Conspiracy Theories Against Jared Kushner.” The ADL wrote: ”This campaign of   has been driven by white supremacists and   and has all the hallmarks of classic Jewish conspiracy theories. The narratives include accusations that Jews in the Trump Administration are trying to start a war to advance the interests of Israel. They contend that Trump has abandoned his ’America First’ policy, which the alt right supported, because he is being manipulated by Kushner and other Jewish advisors.” Kushner is Jewish. Reporters and those who spoke out against Trump during the campaign reported repeated online harassment. The ADL noted the use of hashtags on Twitter like #firekushner, #kushnerswar and #Syriahoax, which began to appear a week ago. Trump’s comments to the New York Post also come amid a backlash aimed at White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who on Passover Tuesday said Syria’s Bashar Assad was worse than Hitler, because Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons ”on his own people.” Spicer apologized (apparently to GOP   Sheldon Adelson as well) but it’s not his first flub. Given Trump’s comments about Bannon, you wonder if he’s in an itchy mood and looking to shake things up all around as the   mark approaches. No president uses one press secretary for his entire presidency. President Obama had three over eight years (two in his first term) George W. Bush and Bill Clinton both had four (and also two in their first terms). Don’t mess with the family, In the campaign, Trump had seemed taken with Bannon’s verve and willingness to fight. His confrontational tactics appealed to Trump and played into the machismo he was offering up at packed rallies on the campaign trail. It was Bannon, you might remember, who ordered up the bringing of Bill Clinton’s former accusers of sexual misconduct to a national debate. They held a mock press conference beforehand and got   seats to the debate. All the while, Bannon, who shied away from media interviews, stood on the sidelines. Trump’s ”lock her up” base ate it up. But Bannon’s influence began to be scrutinized. Three weeks into Trump’s presidency, Time magazine put him on its cover as ”The Great Manipulator” and asked if he was ”the second most powerful man in the world.” Stories touting Bannon’s influence and leaks against Kushner or Ivanka Trump apparently rankled the president. Bannon should have learned that while his tactics might appeal to Trump, he should never direct his efforts at Trump’s family. Remember, a family meeting was partially responsible for Corey Lewandowski’s firing as campaign manager in the primaries. ”[Corey] knew there was a battle brewing. I am certain he thought he would win,” a source told NPR last summer. Lewandowski lost. The source described the ”weekly Monday morning family meeting” as a ”summary execution.” For years, Bannon made his money in Hollywood. Well, as Michael told Fredo in The Godfather: ”Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever.” Of course, the wild card here is this: If Bannon is eventually ousted, does he train Breitbart’s sights on Trump?"
"On the Navajo Nation, kids with the most severe developmental disabilities attend a school called Saint Michael’s Association for Special Education. Dameon David, 8, is waking up from a nap in his classroom. He has come to the school in northeastern Arizona for four years. He has cerebral palsy, seizures and scoliosis. His mom, Felencia Woodie, picks him up from a bed with Superman sheets. ”Other schools that he was going to go to, they didn’t have the nursing staff or the equipment he goes in, or the trained staff that they have here to do his suctioning, his feeding and his medications daily,” she says. Woodie, who also works at Saint Michael’s, says the only problem with the school is its water. ”It has a certain stench to it. Sometimes you’ll smell . .. kinda like a egg smell,” Woodie says. ”Sometimes it’s yellow, brown, or even we’ve seen black.” Many of the kids at Saint Michael’s are medically fragile. So they have equipment that needs to be cleaned daily. The staff refuses to use the tap water to wash equipment. Instead, they use   jugs of filtered water trucked in from many miles away. More than   of the Navajo Nation  —   which is the size of West Virginia  —   doesn’t have running water. And at some of the places that do, like Saint Michael’s, people don’t want to drink it because it smells, tastes funny and looks bad. In another classroom, volunteer Jacob Lundy helps two young girls with autism wash their hands at the sink. The water runs yellow. ”What’s odd to me is how normal it becomes for the water in the laundry room to come out black,” Lundy says. ”And it’s just like we don’t think about it anymore.” In the sink you can see the residue from the black water. It looks like sand. Gregory Bahe, water and waste water operations supervisor at the utility, says the strange color, smell and taste are all likely due to stagnant water. He says the water lines are so far apart that the water sits stagnant for long periods. The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority tests the water at Saint Michael’s monthly and says it meets national primary drinking water standards. While it’s not poisonous, there is still the matter of appearance. ”People typically won’t drink water if it tastes bad or if it looks bad or if it stinks,” says Adam Bringhurst, who studies water resources at Northern Arizona University. He says the Environmental Protection Agency has established two levels of standards. The primary standard  —   filtering contaminants that harm your health  —   is required by law. The secondary standard  —   eliminating taste, color and smell  —   is voluntary. ”The secondary standards are typically considered aesthetics,” Bringhurst says. But those secondary standards are still very important, he says. ”We all need to drink water. And when your only option is to go to the store and pay really high prices, that also carry a really big footprint with them, it’s a bad situation for everyone,” Bringhurst says. Saint Michael’s spent almost $3, 000 last year on bottled water alone. That’s a big cost for a school with so many expenses and one that a better water filtration system could alleviate. So a school volunteer contacted Dig Deep, a nonprofit that digs wells and makes water accessible throughout the region. George McGraw, Dig Deep’s founder and executive director, is especially concerned for the disabled kids. ”These are people that rely on us, on their teachers, on their government officials, on society at large, to make sure that their most basic needs are taken care of. And what’s more basic than having access to clean running water?” McGraw says. The organization is raising $100, 000 to build a water filtration system for Saint Michael’s. It hopes to install it this summer so the water is more than just technically safe. It will be something kids and staff actually want to drink. Laurel Morales is a reporter with NPR member station KJZZ in Flagstaff, Ariz. You can follow her @laurelgwyn. "
"Updated at 5:45 p. m. ET, U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says he had a ”productive” meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Wednesday, despite palpable tension between the U. S. and Russia. ”There is a low level of trust between our two countries,” Tillerson said after the meeting. ”The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship.” There had been speculation that Putin might snub Tillerson during the secretary of state’s Moscow trip. Instead, Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who had met earlier on Wednesday, joined Putin for more than two hours. At a news conference after that meeting, Lavrov said the two nations agreed there should be a U. N. investigation into the chemical attack in Syria last week. He also said Putin opened the door to restoring a military ”deconfliction” hotline between the two countries. The two nations agree a 2015   in Ukraine should be fulfilled, and are ”committed” to finding a way to ”avoid confrontation” in North Korea, Lavrov said. But Tillerson and Lavrov made it clear there were still profound disagreements over recent events in Syria, the future of Syrian president and Russian ally Bashar Assad, and allegations of Russian meddling in the U. S. election, among other issues. Tillerson’s talks in Moscow may seem disappointing considering that the only concrete result is Russia expressing a willingness to return to the   ”deconfliction” agreement it suspended last week. But NPR’s Lucian Kim reports that it’s significant that the meeting took place at all. The Kremlin has been anxious to restart relations with Washington that were largely frozen after the annexation of Crimea three years ago, Lucian notes. After a Syrian ceasefire negotiated by   of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov fell apart in September, there have been no   contacts between the two countries until now. President Vladimir Putin said in an interview published today that U. S.  relations are even worse than when President Trump took office. Tillerson, whom Putin awarded the Order of Friendship in 2012, was perhaps best suited for the mission of reestablishing communications. Tillerson formerly led Exxon Mobil’s oil operations in Russia, as NPR’s Colin Dwyer has reported. But amid the recent mutual recriminations over Syria, Tillerson demanded that Russia end its support of the Syrian regime following the April 4 chemical weapons attack in the town of Khan Shaykhun. The U. S. says Assad’s government carried out the attack, and it accuses Russia of trying to deflect blame from Assad. Days after that attack, Trump ordered a cruise missile strike that targeted a Syrian air base  —   a strike that Russia says violated international law. Moscow has accused the U. S. of using the chemical weapons attack as a pretext for hitting the Syrian base with Tomahawk missiles. Lucian reports that Lavrov went into talks with Tillerson early Wednesday ”warning that the U. S. not repeat strikes against Syrian government forces.” ”Most recently, we saw rather alarming steps, when an unlawful attack against Syria was carried out,” Lavrov said, according to Tass. ”Russia’s leadership has already voiced its principal assessments in this respect. We believe it is of principal importance to prevent risks of a repeat of such steps in the future.” ”The Kremlin argues Assad gave up his chemical weapons stores under a 2013 agreement Moscow brokered with the Obama administration Tillerson has accused Russia of ’incompetence’ in failing to enforce that deal,” Charles Maynes reports for NPR from Moscow. In opening remarks, Tillerson said he was looking forward to ”an open, candid, frank exchange” with Lavrov. ”Our meetings today come at an important moment in the relationship,” Tillerson said as he and Lavrov faced each other at a long conference table, ”so that we can further clarify areas of common objectives, areas of common interests, even when our tactical approaches might be different, and to clarify areas of sharp difference, so that we can better understand why these differences exist, and what the prospects for narrowing those differences may be.” Those differences seemed evident when the two top diplomats shook hands to kick off today’s session. Making little to no eye contact, Tillerson and Lavrov gripped hands and wore expressions that ranged mainly from grim to flat before a phalanx of photographers. Things didn’t get less tense from there. At the news conference after the Putin meeting, Tillerson reiterated the U. S. position that Assad’s regime was responsible for the chemical attack. Lavrov swiftly asserted that Russia was not convinced and called for more investigation. (Shortly afterward, Russia cast a veto at the United Nations Security Council, ”blocking a Western bid on Wednesday to condemn a deadly gas attack in Syria and push the Syrian government to cooperate with investigators,” Reuters reports.) At the joint press conference, Lavrov also extensively criticized past U. S. foreign policy, from Iraq to Yugoslavia. Reporters asked whether Tillerson had introduced evidence at Wednesday’s meetings of Russian interference in the U. S. election. The U. S. intelligence community has concluded Moscow attempted to influence the election in Trump’s favor. Tillerson sidestepped the question, but Lavrov said Russia had seen no proof for the ”slanderous” accusation. Later on Friday, President Trump addressed Tillerson’s efforts during a NATO press conference. ”I think he had a very successful meeting,” Trump said. ”We’ll see.” ”We may be at an   low in terms of relationship with Russia,” Trump said. ”But we’re going to see what happens. ”It would be a fantastic thing if we got along with Putin and if we got along with Russia. And that could happen. It may not happen,” Trump said. ”I can only tell you what I would like to do. I would love to be able to get along with everybody.”"
"There’s a lot of excitement at the Border Security Expo in San Antonio, where vendors schmooze with government buyers and peddle their wares. This year, the White House is asking Congress for billions of dollars for border security, and it could include thousands of new federal agents, many miles of a formidable wall and the latest surveillance and reconnaissance technology. And the vendors here in the exhibition hall at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center are ready. The Homeland Security Department is already the largest federal law enforcement agency with the biggest budget, and it may get even bigger. With that in mind, booths here are packed with cameras mounted on telescoping poles, facial recognition and biometric software, vehicle scanners, license plate readers and lots of drones. Unmanned Systems and Solutions, in Hinsdale, Ill. sells   (up to 30 pounds) unmanned aerial vehicles that get their power from a tethered cord instead of   batteries. ”We had plans to come to the expo before the presidential election, but we definitely came when this administration came into office,” says Pete Dwyer, a partner in the company. At the expo, merchants are showing off rubber guns, real guns and a peculiar,    spotlight gun. ”It’s for border control, for searching for people, and . .. also for blinding eyes,” says Hiro Yazawa, representing the   manufacturer, Japan Cell. The spotlight weapon  —   priced at $5, 000  —   has had a hard time finding U. S. customers, though Yazawa says the Japanese military uses them. The largest item is a mammoth, $750, 000,   truck and trailer that sleeps 33 it’s for deployment in remote areas. Mike Pine of CT Defense says he wants to sell the trucks to the Border Patrol. Trump’s focus on Southwest border defense got his attention and this is his first time at the expo. ”We’ve got another 5, 000 [Border Patrol] agents that are coming on board,” Pine says. ”The question is how will they deploy these agents to the front lines? . .. Today, the agency is using trailers and shipping containers.” For a reality check, there are certainly ”bad hombres” crossing illegally into the country, as the president claims. But most unauthorized immigrants are men looking for work in jobs like landscaping crews or Central American mothers with small children in tow seeking asylum. Nevertheless, the booths at the expo bristle with   tactical gear. ”We hope a bad guy shoots one of our   mounted cameras instead of an agent,” says Dennis Smith, of AgileMesh Inc. One of those looking to buy is Gabe Acosta, assistant chief patrol agent in Laredo, Texas. He is looking for new,   law enforcement gear, and he says so far his favorite ”is a certain night vision optic, which allows you to see color at night, versus your standard green screen.” Walking around the exhibit hall, you realize this is not a conference for wall builders. In fact, Trump’s ”big, beautiful wall” is not especially popular at the expo. Jay Ahern, former acting customs commissioner, called it ”dumb physical infrastructure” during his panel at the gathering. ”While the wall gets a lot of play publicly,” Ahern said, ”I think the technology piece will be critically important.” Far from San Antonio, dozens of contractors are designing prototypes of a border wall, ranging from 18 to 30 feet high, that must withstand sledgehammers and blowtorches. But here at the expo, current and former Homeland Security officials are looking for a smart border that may depend more on computer screens than on steel and concrete."
"Leave no man behind. That’s an old idea in warfare  —   it’s even part of the Soldier’s Creed that Army recruits learn in basic training. And never leaving a fallen comrade is also the rule for some warriors who are ants, according to a report published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. These ants, Megaponera analis, hunt and eat termites. Scouts will go out, find a group of termites, and then return to the ant nest to muster the troops. Biologist Erik Frank explains that 200 to 500 ants will march out in formation. ”Like three ants next to each other, in a    column,” he says. ”It’s very peculiar and it looks like a long snake walking on the ground.” When the termites spot this invading army, they try to escape, but the fighting is fierce. ”And after roughly 20 minutes the battle is over,” says Frank, a doctoral student with the University of Würzburg in Germany who is researching animal behavior and evolution. ”You have a lot of termites lying dead on the ground,” he says, ”and the ants start collecting the termites to return.” A few years ago, Frank was working at a field station in the Ivory Coast when he noticed that some of the ants marching home after battle weren’t carrying termites. Instead, they were carrying other ants. ”And I was wondering, ’What exactly was going on there? Why were they carrying some of the ants? ’” he recalls. It turns out, those transported ants weren’t dead  —   they were injured. Ants sometimes lose a leg or two, which makes it hard for them to walk. Or, they can be weighed down by a dead termite whose jaws had clamped onto them. Either way, they’re slower than uninjured, unburdened ants. By marking these injured ants with paint, Frank learned that in nearly all cases, they made a full recovery after being carried home to recuperate. They learn to walk with fewer legs, and their ant buddies apparently will pull off stuck termites. It doesn’t take long for an ant that’s been hurt to once again be ready for action. ”We saw them again, participating in hunts the next day,” says Frank. He and his colleagues did some experiments to see what would happen to injured ants that weren’t carried home. It turns out that these poor ants couldn’t march fast enough. So they fell behind  —   and frequently got eaten by spiders and other predators, the researchers report. It’s not so   says Frank, to compare these ant rescue missions to those performed by human soldiers. ”One big difference I would say, though, is that these ants are not doing it out of the goodness of their heart,” says Frank. He says they’re just responding to a chemical signal from the injured ants, rather than being motivated by empathy. Peggy Mason, a neurobiologist at the University of Chicago who has studied how rats will rescue other rats from traps, says this is a great study that confirms that ants will rescue each other in certain situations. ”Does it remind me of mammalian helping? Well, not really,” she says, noting that the ants don’t seem to be intentionally helping each other. ”One reason why one might think that they’re not is that if they encounter that same injured ant on the way to the hunt, they ignore it,” Mason says. Wounded ants only get carried home if they’re encountered after the battle. Rats, in contrast, seem to have some sort of emotional response that triggers helping. Mason and her colleagues have found that giving rats an   drug seemed to take away their urge to release a distressed rat from a trap. ”None of them helped,” she says. ”They didn’t help. They didn’t see a problem.” It’s clear that bringing injured warriors home has huge benefits for the ant colony. ”The number of ants that are saved by this behavior is about equivalent to the number of ants that are born each day in that colony.” Mason says. ”So they’re making this substantial contribution to the ant colony through this rescue behavior. That’s probably what drove this behavior to be selected for, and to evolve into a stable behavior.” After all, she notes, ”this is an army. They’re going off to attack the termites. It’s a battle. And the more numerous you are, the more successful you are.”"
"Wondering how many kinds of trees there are? There’s now a database that can answer that. Scientists from the U. K.  Botanic Gardens Conservation International say they have compiled the   comprehensive list of all known tree species, totaling 60, 065 different kinds. The database includes information about where each species is found geographically. More than half of those species are only found in one country, the researchers wrote in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry. And many of them are threatened with extinction. The researchers hope the database, called GlobalTreeSearch, will provide a practical tool for conservationists. It could help to develop ”  action” for threatened trees, they stated, ”as individual tree species face threats that are unique to that species. For example, scientists determined in late 2016 that a species found in remote locations in Tanzania called Karomia gigas had a ”single population of just six trees” because of   the BBC reports. ”They recruited local people to guard the trees and to notify them when the trees produced seeds.” Brazil has the highest number of different tree species, with 8, 715  —   about half of them unique to the country. Colombia has 5, 776 species, followed by Indonesia with 5, 142. The Arctic regions were found to have no species of tree. After that, the Nearctic biome of North America had fewer than 1, 400 species. In the paper, the team acknowledges that it’s surprising that this information was not available in one place before. ”This is ’big science’ involving the work of thousands of botanists over a period of centuries, and the advent of digital checklists and databases over the past few decades have made the collation and refinement of so many data sources possible,” the paper reads. Over a period of two years, they collected information from more than 500 published sources and 80 experts in the BGCI’s network. The scientists plan to continue to update GlobalTreeSearch as species are discovered, change in taxonomy  —   or go extinct. Smithsonian details other recent research that is trying to provide a better picture of the state of the world’s trees: ”In 2015, a study found that there are likely more than 3 trillion individual trees on the planet, significantly more than the 400 billion previously proposed. Last summer, ecologists combed natural history specimens to find that the Amazon Basin has at least 11, 676 species of trees, estimating that roughly 4, 000 species in the area have yet to be discovered.”"
"Violent crime has been decreasing over the past few decades, but for some families, it still defines daily life, as they cope with shootings and their aftermath. One of these families has experienced the devastation of gunfire across three generations. John Broughton says he’s been both in front of the gun and, once, behind it. It’s what his mother, Carmen Gonzalez, says she was trying to avoid when they moved away from Miami when John was 11. The family’s roots are in Liberty City, a neighborhood that’s experienced high rates of gun violence for decades. ”I’ve been gone for nine years,” she says. ”I moved back there for seven months, and was like, no I can’t. I can’t. I left for the evening, come back home, it’s bullet holes in my walls. And my son is in the house asleep.” ”Growing up, you’re going to see  —   you’re going to see stuff you don’t want to see,” John says. ”You’ll see a man beating up his wife or somebody literally getting shot right in front of you. . .. What you supposed to do?” John is 20 years old now. He goes back and forth between being fascinated with guns and mistrusting anybody carrying one. When he was 2, his grandmother was killed when gunmen opened fire outside a liquor store. John’s grandfather, Luis Gonzalez, says John and his grandmother were close. He says they’d watch TV together. ”We called her Neesie,” Luis says. ”He didn’t know how to say Neesie. He’d say Neechie, Neechie. He’d ask for Neechie and look where she would sit. She’d sit there with him on her lap with his bottle in his mouth watching TV, and now there was no Neechie.” John’s mother Carmen was just 17 at the time. Luis says the experience changed her profoundly. When they went to the hospital to identify the body, ”the medical people pulled the sheet back to show her face,” Luis says. ”Carmen ripped the entire sheets off and threw them on the floor, said, ’Yeah, that’s her,’ and walked away cold,” he says. ”She just turned so cold and bitter from that point on.” Despite recent upticks in a handful of U. S. cities, violent crime has declined dramatically across the country over the past 25 years. But the impacts of gun violence aren’t evenly distributed. Where you live, who you come across and who you’re related to can all contribute to a kind of network effect. John’s mother says murders and gunshot injuries were part of the backdrop of his childhood. ”He became extremely cold, trouble in school, and he had a nonchalant ’I don’t care’ attitude about everything,” Carmen says. ”And this was from, like, 7 years old. The only thing on his brain was ’who killed my grandmother, and how can I find them because I want to kill them.’ ” John has a tattoo on his neck with a phrase drawn from the Bible. It says ”No weapon formed against me shall prosper.” Alongside it is a drawing of an  . John says that’s the weapon his uncle Rob used to take his own life on his living room couch. It’s also the weapon that killed his   Jarvis. Luis says the family is ”riddled with bullets.” This past Sunday, he says, another relative  —   John’s uncle Pierre  —   was shot and killed in Central Florida. And he says that as John was growing up, he saw his grandson consumed by the violence that surrounded him. ”As far as following things that you know you need to get done, you need to graduate school so you can earn a respectable living  —   none of that comes into play,” Luis says. ”But he knows who got shot, where they got shot  —   they know he knows all those things, but he doesn’t know things that would make a positive impact in his life.” John doesn’t deny this. With everything going on in the neighborhood, he says, how could a kid be expected to focus on school? ”You can’t throw me in China and expect me not to learn Chinese,” he says. Despite all the pain gunfire has caused him over the years, John says guns have always been alluring. ”I ain’t going to lie,” he says. ”When you pull that trigger, it’s just so  —   I don’t know. You just get a feeling. You just want to do it. I don’t know. It’s like a stress reliever.” When he returned to Miami as a teenager, John and his friends would drive out to lakes near the Everglades and shoot at trees or into the water. He’s been infatuated with guns from the moment he fired one. ”I first fired a gun when I was, I think, 11 on the Fourth of July,” he says. ”It was a   shotgun.” But recently, something changed for John. He says losing his   has made him more wary of guns in general. ”Now, you can’t have no gun around me,” he says. ”Because now, I really don’t trust nobody.” But he still plans to buy a gun when he turns 21. John’s Facebook timeline shows some of this paradox. In one photo, he’s visiting his grandmother’s grave. In another, he’s mourning his dead uncle. And in a third, he grins ear to ear, holding a pump action shotgun. John’s grandfather called him the second he saw the post. John says that episode  —   posting a photo of himself with a gun  —   falls into the category of things he’ll never do again. Recently, he spent a month in jail after getting drunk and stealing a friend’s cellphone. The charges were dropped, but John says the experience was a   call. ”You’re a product of your environment,” he says. ”I ain’t trying to be a product of this environment no more. I don’t want to be the reason something happens to somebody else.” John’s in Jacksonville now, working at a warehouse where he drives a forklift. But it’s hard to leave the world you grew up in. He knows spending time in Liberty City might not go well for him. But John says Miami is a habit that’s hard to kick. This story is part of a series from NPR member station WLRN called Young Survivors, about the trauma that comes from surviving shootings. Rowan Moore Gerety is a reporter with WLRN. You can follow him @rowanmg."
"Across the country, there’s a backlog of kits containing potential evidence of sexual assaults. Victim advocates say the situation threatens public safety. Lawmakers in dozens of states are pushing for funding, and in Texas, one state representative has offered an innovative solution. Thousands of rape kits sit sealed and untested in forensics labs and law enforcement offices in Texas. What’s missing is state and local funding to pay to analyze the evidence in many of those kits. If state Rep. Victoria Neave has her way, residents could help chip in. When Texans go to the Department of Public Safety office to apply for a driver’s license, they’d be asked if they’d like to help the state pay to test DNA evidence from sexual assault cases  —   in the same way they’re asked if they want to donate to support veterans or organ donation. The bill, introduced by Neave, a Democrat from Dallas, has passed the House, and the state’s Senate is expected to vote on it soon. ”Our bill is expected to generate $1 million per year and would help address and end the backlog of untested rape kits,” Neave says. When rape victims go to the hospital, they can get forensic evidence taken to help identify and prosecute their assailant. Each kit can cost between $500 and $2, 000 to test, so many don’t get tested. The scale of the backlog in Texas is unclear. Neave says there are about 4, 000 in Dallas County, another 3, 000 or so in and around Austin, and 3, 600 more in a lab in Houston. ”That’s just in a few counties,” she says. ”We anticipate there are thousands more that are across the whole state that are untested.” A growing problem, The Lone Star State is not alone in amassing a backlog of untested rape kits. Lawmakers in 27 states filed legislation this year to help deal with the situation. And Texas has tried to deal with this before. Lawmakers allocated $11 million to clear a backlog of nearly 20, 000 rape kits discovered in 2011. The state is still working through kits dating far back to the  ’90s, but that money was restricted, so it only pays to test old kits. Lawmakers are planning to budget more money for testing this year, but advocates say that still won’t stop kits collected in the future from being backlogged because, again, it would only address old kits. Victims’ advocates say each kit represents a person who says she or he was raped. ”Sexual assault is unique because the victim’s body is the crime scene,” says Alisha Byerly from the Women’s Center of Tarrant County in Fort Worth, who supervises a team of advocates who help victims when they go to the hospital. Collecting a rape kit often takes hours, and Byerly says it’s a difficult process. The victim has to   all the details of the rape, and then a nurse examines, swabs and photographs her most private places, gathering samples of hair, semen, fabric fibers and skin cells. It’s evidence of a crime that’s just happened. In most cases, DNA evidence needs to be collected within 72 hours of the assault. ”In the process of already being very mentally traumatizing, and having all that control taken away from their body, and them trying to regain this control, they’re extremely uncomfortable and it’s extremely invasive,” Byerly says. After all of that, Byerly says, to put that evidence on a shelf and ignore it is deeply discouraging for victims. Ilse Knecht says it’s a symptom of a larger social and political problem. ”The rape kit backlog is actually a systemic failure of the criminal justice system to take sexual assault cases seriously,” she says. Knecht leads a national campaign called End the Backlog, which is funded by the Joyful Heart Foundation, and aims to help end the backlog of rape kits across the country. It’s impossible to know just how big the backlog is nationwide because a lot of states, like Texas, don’t keep track. But Knecht says it’s been a problem in states and cities across the country. And that, she says, threatens public safety. ”Rapists are very often serial offenders,” she says. ”They commit all kinds of crime. They commit crimes against people they know and people they don’t know and they just don’t stop.” When Detroit started testing 10, 000 untested kits that it had warehoused for years, it identified more than 780 suspected serial rapists. It led to dozens of convictions, and connected crimes in 40 states. In Cleveland, evidence from old rape kits connected a man to 15 sexual assaults. No nationwide standard, Even if there were adequate funding, not all kits should be tested, Knecht says, because victims have the right to have a rape kit collected without reporting the crime to the police. In Texas, the Department of Public Safety holds onto the kits for two years, giving survivors time to decide to file charges later. Other states save kits for different amounts of time. Still, Knecht stresses that the backlog is primarily made up of kits that should be tested, because they are evidence of a crime that has been reported to law enforcement. Knecht says states vary widely when it comes to standards for testing and tracking rape kits. Eventually, she hopes that every state develops laws to mandate testing of all rape kits connected to reported assaults quickly, and set up a system for survivors to track their own kit anonymously. In Texas, bills have also been introduced to require law enforcement to track rape kits after they’re collected. ”We are seeing legislators across the country finding the dollars in their budgets because they prioritized it, and saying this is something we need to invest in, it’s a public safety issue,” Knecht says. Neave says she still thinks it’s better for state and local governments to budget the money to pay for testing. At least through public donations, she says, there will be some money to help end the backlog. ”It shouldn’t get to the point of us having to ask individuals to contribute,” says Neave, ”but I believe in the hearts and compassion of our fellow Texans that a dollar here, a dollar there, and all of us working together can generate funds to help these women and victims of sexual assault get justice.” Christopher Connelly is a reporter for NPR member station KERA and covers Fort Worth, Texas. You can follow him on Twitter @hithisischris."
"North Miami police Officer Jonathan Aledda is facing charges of attempted manslaughter and negligence for shooting a behavioral therapist who had been trying to help a patient with autism return to a group home last summer, prosecutors say. The daytime shooting took place last July, when therapist Charles Kinsey was working to bring a    man in his care back to the group home for mentally disabled adults. Video from the scene showed Kinsey lying on the ground next to his patient, his hands in the air, shortly before he was shot. Coming after a string of   shootings of unarmed black men by U. S. police officers, the shooting ignited debate in Florida’s   County and beyond over whether it was an accident or part of what looked to be a disturbing trend. The inquiry into the shooting was performed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, at the request of both North Miami police and the state attorney’s office. Kinsey’s patient, identified by prosecutors as Arnaldo Soto, had wandered from the home holding a toy tanker truck  —   and when he pointed that object toward a motorist, the police were called. Moments later, Kinsey saw officers arrive and arm themselves with assault rifles, according to the arrest warrant sworn out against Aledda. That left Kinsey in the street pleading with Soto, whom the warrant describes as ” ’nonverbal’ and prone to displays of violence and aggression,” to cooperate and lie down on the pavement, to no avail. As the lead investigator’s affidavit describes, the officers had been called to the scene expecting to confront a suicidal man armed with a gun. They were not told the man might have a medical issue or that there was some uncertainty he was actually holding a gun, the warrant states. At one point, a commander said the man looked to be loading a gun  —   but another officer relayed information from Kinsey, who said the man was holding a toy. Aledda was positioned some 150 feet away  —   too far from Soto and Kinsey to hear what either was saying, the warrant states  —   but over the radio, officers were questioning the presence of a gun. At 5:06:55 p. m. ET, the warrant states, ”Officer Bemadeau said over the radio, ’I have a visual does not appear to be a firearm. Have units [stand by].’ ” But at 5:07:25 p. m. the commander on the scene announced, ” ’Shots fired.’ ” Following the shooting, a police union official said Aledda had fired at Soto out of concern for Kinsey’s life  —   ”And he missed, and accidentally struck Mr. Kinsey.” In an interview from his hospital bed, Kinsey said he was handcuffed and was left face down on the ground, bleeding from a wound to his leg, for around 20 minutes. Kinsey said he was surprised to have been shot: ”I’m saying, ’Sir, why did you shoot me?’ and his words to me, he said, ’I don’t know.’ ” In addition to the felony charge of   attempted manslaughter, Aledda faces a misdemeanor charge of culpable negligence over the injuries to Kinsey."
"The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Wednesday that its affiliates had filed 13 coordinated Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, demanding government documents related to implementation of the president’s executive orders on travel and immigration. The organization seeks records from local offices of U. S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security  —   records the ACLU says it first requested on Feb. 2. The ACLU says ”the government has failed to substantively respond.” The lawsuits seek information from 13 local CBP offices  —   primarily in cities with international airports ”where there were reports of some kind that we wanted to get information about, and we wanted to get it from the people handling it on the ground,” says Gabriela Melendez, political communications manager for the ACLU. The organization’s FOIA requests seek any records regarding implementation of the travel bans, including text messages, voicemails, emails, contracts, directives and training documents. The ACLU says the agency has a long history of not complying with FOIA rules. The civil liberties group sent a letter to   Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske in July 2016, complaining that often ”FOIA requesters receive no response whatsoever. Those who do receive a response are frequently told (erroneously) that no records exist, or they are provided with incomplete responses   overbroad and unlawful redactions that are contrary to the FOIA statute, case law, and implementing agency regulations.” In a statement to NPR, ACLU said that those frustrations persist under the new administration. ”CBP continues to treat the Freedom of Information Act with contempt,” it says. ”CBP routinely fails even to respond to FOIA requests and flouts its transparency obligations by forcing federal court intervention to pry loose information which the public is entitled to.” The ACLU says each lawsuit seeks ”unique and local information” about how CBP implemented Trump’s executive orders at specific airports and points of entry ”in the midst of rapidly developing and sometimes conflicting government guidance.” Melendez says the ACLU doesn’t know what it will uncover in the documents it seeks. ”The number one goal is transparency and getting to the bottom of what happened,” she says. As NPR’s Sam Sanders reported in March, the ACLU has raised more than $80 million since Donald Trump was elected on Nov. 8. It’s part of a wave of ”rage giving” among the progressive and vocal ”Resistance” to the Trump presidency."
"Midway through Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, the title character sketches a diagram of his intersecting business, political, and charitable connections. Norman Oppenheimer (Richard Gere) is at the center of the web, and yet he’s barely there at all. You might call Norman a    social network. He exists to link others, and though he must be driven by   it’s hard to tell.   Joseph Cedar, very intentionally, never shows Norman’s home or office  —   if he even has them  —   or the family he often mentions but may not exist. Norman seems tethered to Earth only by a nephew, Philip Cohen (Michael Sheen) a Manhattan attorney who pleads, ”don’t mention my name.” Most people avoid Norman if they possibly can. The movie’s story  —   intricate, rollicking and sometimes sad  —   turns on three who don’t scamper away: Israeli deputy trade minister Micha Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi, who starred in Cedar’s equally tricky previous film, Footnote). Rabbi Blumenthal (Steve Buscemi) who trusts Norman to find the $14 million needed to save his historic synagogue. And Alex Green (Charlotte Gainsbourg) a New   corruption investigator for the Israeli government. The first chapter is full of false starts and failed pacts, although it does see Norman make a possible friend in Micha. Then, three years later, Micha has become prime minister and Norman goes to see him at an AIPAL (read AIPAC) reception in D. C. Micha greets Norman warmly, and suddenly the nonentity is somebody. Micha even has a task for Norman: get his son into Harvard. Returning to New York by train  —   Amfleet, not the   Acela  —   Norman meets Alex. She tries very hard to ignore him, only to get interested when Norman starts describing his ”consulting” business. Since touting his connections is the essence of what Norman does, he could hardly tell her the truth, which is that he barely knows the new PM. Later, Israel is roiled by reports of an investigation into Micha’s ties to a ”New York businessman.” Norman wonders who that could be. Adding to the thematic complexity, Micha comes to power as a peace candidate. Yet Cedar, a military veteran whose eerie Beaufort was set in an Israeli outpost in southern Lebanon, doesn’t stress geopolitics. He’s more interested in the personal variety. At the reception, Micha mentions the diverse U. S. factions that support Israel, but that’s the end of the discussion. Norman doesn’t seem to have a position on such matters as a   solution, and the word ”Palestinian” is never uttered. In Israel, rather then debate Micha’s proposal, his opponents seek to destroy the PM with allegations of corruption. An Israeli who spent the first six years of his life in New York, Cedar is well attuned to the    Aviv nexus. He gets excellent performances from Gere  —   playing partway against type as a charmer who’s unnervingly hot rather than reassuringly cool  —   and the rest of the cast. Dan Stevens, Hank Azaria, Josh Charles, Isaach de Bankole, and others make strong impressions in small roles.  Less effective are the director’s visualizations of Norman’s interactions via montages and split screens. Such   gambits worked better in Footnote because that film was largely about the life of the mind, and its conflicts were more internal. The movie’s other quandary is integral to Cedar’s concept. The refusal to give Norman a backstory ultimately limits the impact of the man’s   tragedy. The final chapter’s machinations are fascinating, but they’d evoke stronger emotions if we had some idea where Norman was falling from."
"During the 2016 presidential campaign the FBI obtained a secret warrant to monitor the communications of Carter Page, who was then serving as an adviser to Donald Trump, over concerns that Page was acting as an agent of Russia, according to a report from The Washington Post. The article, which cites anonymous sources, says a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge granted the warrant to the FBI last summer. To get the warrant, the FBI ”definitely had to be able to show probable cause that [Page] was effectively acting as an agent of Russia,” Post reporter Adam Entous tells NPR’s Morning Edition. ”They knew from previous cases back in 2013 that Mr. Page had engaged with . .. what he thought was a Russian diplomat [who] turned out to be an intelligence officer for Russia,” Entous says. ”That was one piece of the puzzle . .. but that’s just one piece. We don’t have a full understanding of the intelligence that went into the request that ultimately the court approved.” ”This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents,” Entous and his colleagues wrote in their Post article. Entous told NPR’s Rachel Martin that ”it’s important to keep in mind we’re talking about probable cause.” ”He hasn’t been found guilty,” Entous said. ”He may never be charged with anything.” He noted that the FBI was granted a FISA warrant to surveil former American diplomat Robin Raphel over probable cause that she might have been acting as a foreign agent, but that the allegation ”turned out to be completely wrong.” ”The fact that they were able to get a warrant is obviously a piece of the puzzle,” Entous says. ”It shows what the FBI was interested in. It’s not the same thing as a conviction.” The extent of Page’s influence within the Trump campaign is unclear. In March 2016, candidate Trump included Page’s name on a ”very short list” of his advisers, Entous says. More recently, President Trump and his associates have been downplaying Page’s role in the campaign. FBI Director James Comey confirmed last month that the agency has been investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia since last July, as part of a larger investigation into Russian attempts to meddle with the U. S. election, but said he could not provide any details about the investigation. ”The FISA court and its orders are highly secretive,” The Associated Press notes. ”Judges grant permission for surveillance if they agree there’s probable cause that the target is an agent of a foreign power. Though the standard is a high bar to meet, applications are hardly ever denied.” ”Despite being overseen by judges, [the applications for FISA warrants] are not examined in the way that a normal application for a search warrant is,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported in 2013. The Washington Post notes that most counterintelligence probes do not result in criminal charges. Page, who had previously announced he was willing to testify as part of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation, told the Post he has ”nothing to hide.” ”This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” he said. As a reminder, the House, Senate and FBI are all conducting investigations into Russia’s actions during the 2016 presidential election. That includes the possibility that U. S. citizens  —   and particularly Trump advisers and associates  —   might have cooperated in Russian attempts to influence the election in Trump’s favor. Some investigators, particularly House Republicans, are also keenly interested in leaks of classified information about ties between Trump’s team and Moscow. They’re pursuing information about who released such information and why. And the White House has repeatedly attempted to focus attention on Trump’s widely rebutted allegations of illegal surveillance of Trump Tower, or claims of politically motivated ”unmasking” of the names of Trump allies in intelligence documents. The intelligence community has already concluded that Russia did meddle in the U. S. election. Open questions include how much it did, who knew about it and who may have cooperated. The AP has more on why Page fell under suspicion: ”Page’s relationship with Russia began to draw scrutiny during the campaign after he visited Moscow in July 2016 for a speech at the New Economic School. While Page said he was traveling in a personal capacity, the school cited his role in the Trump campaign in advertising the speech. ”Page was sharply critical of the U. S. in his remarks, saying Washington has a ’hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change.’ ”Days later, Page talked with Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. at an event on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention. Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke with the Russian envoy at the same event, a conversation he failed to reveal when asked about contacts with Russians during his Senate confirmation hearings. . .. ”Page, a former Merrill Lynch investment banker who worked out of its Moscow office for three years, now runs Global Energy Capital, a firm focused on energy sectors in emerging markets. According to the company’s website, he has advised on transactions for Gazprom and RAO UES, a pair of Russian entities.”"
"Bill O’Reilly is taking a vacation. The popular Fox News pundit announced his break from broadcasting at the end of The O’Reilly Factor on Tuesday night, pointedly noting that the family trip has long been in the works. ”Often around this time of year, I grab some vacation because it’s spring and Easter time,” O’Reilly told his audience. ”Last fall, I booked a trip that should be terrific.” What went unsaid in Tuesday’s announcement, however, is the rather conspicuous timing of the trip: O’Reilly is stepping away from his show about a week after advertisers began deserting it in droves, following revelations that O’Reilly, Fox News and parent company 21st Century Fox have quietly paid out a total of $13 million in five sexual harassment lawsuits against the star. At last count, dozens of companies have pulled their ads from the program. In other words, according to an analysis by the   firm iSpot. tv, The O’Reilly Factor has lost more than half its advertisers since The New York Times first reported the settlements less than two weeks ago. Even as advertisers’ support for the show has dwindled, NPR’s David Folkenflik reports that discontentment with O’Reilly and the Murdoch family  —   which owns Fox News  —   is building among other employees, as well. ”There’s sort of a contempt for O’Reilly from some of his colleagues, particularly female colleagues,” Folkenflik told Morning Edition last week. ”And there’s a cynicism about the degree of sincerity with which the Murdoch family and the top executives are operating.” O’Reilly, for his part, rejects the allegations as unfounded attacks against him because of his wealth and fame, saying he only agreed to the settlements to protect his family. He has also pointed out that no women have filed complaints against him through the company’s human resources department, as David reports. Others argue this defense is less than compelling, given the fact that O’Reilly was by no means the only  —   or the most powerful  —   figure at the network to be hit with sexual harassment complaints. The company also reached deals to settle a raft of allegations against Roger Ailes. The Fox News chairman was given a massive payout last year to leave the network after those allegations  —   all of which he has denied. And there are still reverberations from Ailes’ time there: For instance, some of the settlements have drawn the scrutiny of federal prosecutors, who are now investigating whether they ”were structured to avoid disclosing them to investors in 21st Century Fox,” David notes. That said, it’s not clear whether advertiser backlash over O’Reilly is particularly hurting his program or network. The Associated Press reports that The O’Reilly Factor, the No. 1 cable TV news show, has in fact gained viewers since news of the sexual harassment charges broke, helping contribute to a record   period for the pundit  —   ”his biggest quarter ever in the show’s   history.” And many advertisers haven’t simply withdrawn their ad buys from his show  —   they’ve reallocated them to other times of day on the network, diminishing any potential financial fallout for the network. So, while the timing of O’Reilly’s departure has ginned up speculation it might be permanent, there is no concrete sign O’Reilly won’t be keeping his promise to return on April 24. ”We all need RR,” O’Reilly advised his viewers Tuesday. ”Put it to good use. Plan it. Don’t run into horror on the road. All of us deserve a break, so make sure you take yours.” But before that, he offered this vow: ”I’ll have a full report when I return.”"
"Fox News Channel is once more under siege, facing several concurrent scandals and legal challenges scattered across different courtrooms, and casting a pall over the network’s executive suites. Fresh and harsh scrutiny cast on star host Bill O’Reilly over allegations that he sexually harassed multiple women has given major corporations pause about associating themselves with the   figure in cable news. In just the past 48 hours, at least 20 advertisers, including prominent automobile manufacturers, announced they would cancel upcoming ads on his   program or avoid placing future commercials there. The ouster of chairman Roger Ailes last summer during a sexual harassment scandal was supposed to calm the waters. Yet two new lawsuits involving unrelated charges of sexual and racial discrimination raise serious questions about the decisions of Fox News   Bill Shine and general counsel Dianne Brandi, among other executives. Each was a   Ailes lieutenant. Each survived his forced departure. Together, they’ve kept O’Reilly front and center on the network, despite all the payments that O’Reilly, Fox and parent company 21st Century Fox have made over the past dozen years to quell such accusations. A history of payouts and settlements, The two executives helped to arrange payments made to privately settle past sexual harassment complaints against Roger Ailes. One former Fox News booker was paid $3 million back in 2011, five years before Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit against him exploded publicly. Shine and Brandi said they did not believe her story to be true at the time but later changed their minds as they learned of additional accusations against Ailes. Some of those past payments by Fox News to women are being investigated by federal prosecutors to see if they were structured to avoid disclosing them to investors in 21st Century Fox, as first disclosed by a lawyer to suspended Fox News host Andrea Tantaros, who is currently suing Ailes and the network. Brandi, the network’s top lawyer, also stands accused of doing nothing after being informed in the fall of 2014 that Judith Slater, then the company’s comptroller, had created a racist work environment in a lawsuit filed by three   employees of Fox News.   Fox News, O’Reilly and 21st Century Fox together have paid roughly $13 million to women accusing him of sexual harassment, according to The New York Times. (The lion’s share went to a former Fox News producer who captured his advances on tape more than a decade ago.)   A senior official at 21st Century Fox tells NPR it has spoken to O’Reilly and that the host has given assurances he believes in the company’s commitment to offer a welcoming workplace for all staffers. Corporate executives did not respond to several requests for comment about the status of Shine and Brandi. Through his lawyer, Susan Estrich, Ailes denies all the allegations made against him, including the newest, this week, by paid Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky. Ailes blames an orchestrated campaign against him. O’Reilly says he’s victimized by people who target him because he’s successful and wealthy. He says he agreed to settlements to help his children avoid public scorn. Fox News typically denigrates those who file suit or criticize its stars and executives, but it is currently uncharacteristically subdued, in keeping with a promise made last summer that the culture of the network would change. Roginsky’s lawsuit against Ailes argues that promise from the Murdoch family, which controls the company, has rung hollow. In her sexual harassment lawsuit, Roginsky alleges that Shine and Brandi retaliated against her for failing to come to Ailes’ defense and for raising her complaints about Ailes’ conduct internally. Fox News did fire Slater, the comptroller at the heart of the racial discrimination lawsuit, but as the lawyers for the plaintiffs note, only in late March, several days before the suit was filed. Fox News and Brandi have not responded to the specific question of whether she was told of Slater’s behavior, in 2014 and 2015, and refused to take action, as alleged in the lawsuit by Monica Douglas, the head of credit and collection in Fox News’ accounting department, and one of the plaintiffs in the new racial bias suit. Shine and Brandi’s decisions have been challenged previously. Their continued presence raises the more fundamental question of the judgment of Rupert Murdoch, the family patriarch, who stepped in to oversee Fox News after Ailes was hustled out. O’Reilly’s continued presence has undercut the Murdochs’ contention of a shift in culture, according to several women who work at the network who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity. An audition is followed by an awkward dinner, Not everyone who has made allegations against O’Reilly or Ailes received or even sought money. Wendy Walsh, a   psychologist and former television news reporter and anchor, auditioned on the air for a paid slot with a recurring role  —   ”a very big opportunity,” in her words. Walsh told NPR that just three weeks in, she received a call from an O’Reilly producer saying he wanted to arrange a dinner during an upcoming trip in Los Angeles. Shortly after the outset of the meal at the restaurant Wolfgang Puck at Hotel   O’Reilly promised Walsh the job, she says. After a cordial dinner, O’Reilly said, ”Let’s get out of here,” and according to Walsh’s account to NPR, ”a kind of awkward thing happened”: he headed past the hostess stand to the right, toward the elevators to his hotel room. Walsh says she headed left, toward the bar. (A woman answering the phone at Wolfgang Puck at Hotel   confirmed the layout.) Walsh says she declined O’Reilly’s entreaties to come up to his room  —   and that he turned nasty at the bar, telling her there would be no job. ”It was a sad cocktail party story that women tell each other and shrug our shoulders and go, ’Ugh, another one,’ ” Walsh says. ”I can’t believe this is still going on.” O’Reilly has not directly responded to the substance of Walsh’s depiction of this episode but issued a more general statement saying no women had filed complaints through the network’s human resources department. O’Reilly’s show is the network’s top   program and the network has proved highly lucrative for 21st Century Fox. But any financial hit from balky advertisers is likely to be limited as Fox News relies more on licensing fees from cable providers than from advertising spots. And most advertisers are placing their commercials on different Fox News programs, not withdrawing altogether. One which is: SHRM, a leading trade group for the human resources industry."
"There’s a role reversal underway in political publishing. For years, conservative publishers have thrived as their readers flocked to buy books aimed directly at taking down the party in power. Now, with Republicans in control, they have to rethink their strategy. Left leaning publishers meanwhile are hoping to take advantage of the new political landscape. Regnery books  —   which marks its 70th anniversary this year  —   is the grand old dame of conservative publishing. Dinesh d’Souza, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham have all published with Regnery. ”For many years we would say what was bad for the country was good for Regnery,” says Marji Ross, Regnery’s president and publisher. ”And by that we meant that when the opposition was in power that made our job a little easier and our books more successful.” When Donald Trump was elected President in November, some conservative book publishers were caught off guard. Rolf Zettersten, head of Center Street Books, the conservative division of Hachette Publishing, was expecting Hillary Clinton to win. His company was poised to publish several books critical of her presidency. ”We had to pivot and say: What are we going to do with these books that were going to be  ?” Zettersten says. ”Instead we developed new approaches that talked about the Trump agenda.” But Trump’s presidency has exposed some deep divisions on the right, and conservative publishers have to reflect those differences. ”You have social conservatives, you have economic conservatives, you have people who are more libertarian,” Ross says. And a Republican in the White House brings all of those divisions into sharper focus, she says  —   ”because then all the different factions are lobbying for their version of what’s right for the future.” There is one almost surefire route to success in conservative publishing  —   Zettersten says books by   personalities on Fox TV or talk radio, with a ”take no prisoners” brand of politics often end up the   list. ”If you are a polite voice in this market you really don’t get listened to,” Zettersten says. ”We’ve certainly published our share of polite conservative books and they just don’t sell as well.” Center Street already has new book on the New York Times   list: It’s called Trump’s War: His Battle for America, written by conservative talk show host Michael Savage, who is not exactly known for politeness. But provocateurs can go too far. Threshold Editions, the conservative wing of Simon  Schuster, canceled its contract with Milo Yiannopoulos after it decided remarks the right wing commentator made about pedophilia were too controversial. Of course, Yiannopoulos built his reputation on inflammatory rhetoric. ”I love flame throwers,” says Marji Ross, who was offered the Yiannopoulos book but chose not publish it. Now Yiannopoulos is shopping it around again and it’s been reported that Regnery might pick it up this time. Ross declined to confirm or deny that rumor. She says she has no problem with provocative political books, but not everyone agrees. ”Some people gravitate to certain radio talk show hosts who are really bombastic, and other people just can’t deal with that,” she says. ”They want the more  . And our job is to try to reach as broad of an audience as we can without watering down the essence of an author either in their message or in their style.” While conservative publishers are getting used to a new political reality, those on the left are realizing they’ve got a new advantage. Andrew Hsiao, an editor with Verso Books, is in that situation. ”I feel a bit sheepish saying this,” he admits. ”I am so deeply opposed to Trump  —   but let’s face it  —   opposition is often good for political publishers. And our sales have already taken off. People feel hungry for criticism, analysis, knowledge and inspiration.” Verso Books has a history of opposition to the status quo in both the Republican and Democratic party. Hsiao says Verso comes out of the socialist tradition and publishes a wide range of progressive thinking. He sees their mission as  : To open people’s minds to new ways of thinking and to support the resistance. ”In a way, movements call up the literature that they need,” Hsiao says. ”And our fortunes in the last decade have exploded. I think it’s unquestionably because of a new movement, especially among young people, to look for more radical alternatives, radical solutions to American problems.” Hsiao says the country is engaged in an intense political   which he thinks is better than complacency. And publishers  —   on the right and the left  —   are in the middle of the fray."
"Blink while driving on Highway 34, east of Greeley, Colo. and you might miss the former town of Dearfield. All that’s left of the   town on Colorado’s eastern plains are a rundown gas station, a partially collapsed lunch counter and a former lodge. They are the only indication that there was once a community here. The grass around these buildings is crispy and   whipped back and forth by relentless winds. The snowcapped Rocky Mountains barely peek through the haze to the west. Abandoned towns from the early 20th century are far from unique on this stretch of the Great Plains. Withered storefronts and collapsed homes are common. Boom and bust economics and harsh weather made it tough for turn of the century settlers to succeed  . Few ghost towns, however, have all the elements that make Dearfield’s story so compelling: larger than life characters, struggles to live off the land, tales of racial integration at the height of the Jim Crow era. The Thriving Farms Of Dearfield, Nearly a hundred years have passed since Dearfield’s streets were bustling with homesteaders, the people who made this town special. ”It was the most successful, best known,   farming community in the United States at the time,” says George Junne, professor of Africana Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, and the resident expert on Dearfield. Starting in 1910, Dearfield began attracting hundreds of black homesteaders from across the South, the Midwest and the eastern portion of the Plains. They came for opportunity. At its height in the early 1920s, 700 residents lived in town, with churches, a school, a blacksmith shop, a dance hall and a restaurant. And nearly all of the residents were black. The community sustained itself on farming, taking advantage of the relatively abundant rains at the time. They had bumper crops  —   strawberries, squash, wheat  —   for more than a decade. Unlike many Colorado towns, Dearfield did not come to be during the large wave of westward expansion spurred by the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, but rather, a later iteration called the Enlarged Homestead Act. It enlarged the amount of land a homesteader could access and encouraged movement into more marginal lands, like where Dearfield was located. ”It pulled together primarily   who were interested in owning their own homes and their own farms,” Junne says. The Man Behind The Town, The community was the vision of its creator: Oliver T. Jackson, a successful black entrepreneur from Ohio. He started restaurants, ran the catering operation at Boulder’s Chautauqua Dining Hall, and acted as a messenger for a series of Colorado governors. Jackson wanted a place where black people could take out loans, work the land and get ahead. And he saw promise in the patch of land that eventually became Dearfield. ”He had a vision,” Jay Trask, head of the University of Northern Colorado’s archives, which houses found letters from Jackson and other Dearfield ephemera. ”He had a really exciting vision. And I think it was a vision shared by a lot of   folks in Denver. There was a desire to create an   community, an agricultural community that would be their own.” Jackson was Dearfield’s biggest cheerleader. He championed its early successes in farm magazines and newspapers that served   readers, and to local and regional politicians. ”He was not shy about getting his name out there,” says Trask. While Jackson spent his time marketing the community and working in Denver, his wife, Minerva, acted as the town’s ”judge, jury and executioner,” according to Junne. She ran the town’s    operations, and ran them tightly. ”When she snapped her fingers, you jumped,” Junne says. In promotional pamphlets, Jackson touted the community’s rich soil and view of the mountains. Always on the lookout for newcomers to town, he made clear they were looking to grow. He never stopped thinking up new ways to make Dearfield succeed and fill its coffers, Junne says. Even Prohibition offered Jackson an opportunity. ”For a while, this town was known as ’Beerfield’ because he was bootlegging here,” Junne says. ”He needed to make money to keep things going. The people all around here knew about it and they gave the nickname.” Early Signs Of Integration, Dearfield gained a foothold during an incredibly tense time in America. Along with other predominantly black towns like Nicodemus, Kan. and Boley, Okla. Dearfield sprang up at the height of the Jim Crow era. An active Ku Klux Klan chapter started in Denver around the same time, which was eventually infiltrated by Dr. Joseph H. P. Westbrook, a Denver resident and early Dearfield booster. Yet, Coloradans and other homesteaders on the plains did not see new black residents to the state as a threat, either culturally or economically, Junne says. Despite rampant racism and violence in parts of the country, Junne says Dearfield’s residents mostly found harmony with their neighbors. ”People had to work together. You had to work together, even if you didn’t like the person,” Junne says. ”So I think this whole thing about the solitary Westerner is a bit overdone because you had to rely on your neighbors.” Newspaper articles in nearby Greeley marveled at the work ethic of the new residents. Many black farmers would pick up extra work on the   farms surrounding the town, Junne says. A black Dearfield farmer was one of the first in the region to purchase a newly redesigned mechanical reaper and would lend it out to white farmers in the area. The plains communities, white and black, developed an interdependence on each other. Elsewhere in the country,     were marginalized and disenfranchised in a myriad ways. Their votes suppressed or never counted. Schools were   to black students. Violence against black communities was commonplace. And that’s part of why Dearfield gained its rosy reputation. Just the fact that it existed and was largely successful, became a bright spot for black Americans. While the town was certainly an agricultural experiment in testing out dryland farming techniques on Colorado’s plains, it quickly became a social experiment, too. Early signs of integration were on display at the town’s dance hall. Dearfield was home to Squire Brockman, a   black musician. He would set up shop on Saturday nights to play fiddle and mandolin. ”The white people in the area would come out here and they would dance,” Junne says. At the time, black people and white people were not dancing as couples, ”but they were on the same dance floor together.” ”So, again, you started to have the roots of integration because people respected each other,” Junne says. ”They needed each other.” An Endangered Landmark, For about 20 years, the town was a success. Then came the   punch of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. In the early 1930s, the large thunderhead clouds that were so common before, stopped materializing. Dearfield’s seasonal creeks dried up. So did its wells. The residents had not acquired water rights to properly irrigate fields instead, they relied on natural rainfall. Without rain, they could not grow their crops. By 1940, Dearfield was largely deserted. Its founder, O. T. Jackson stayed until his death in 1948. Many people moved to Denver’s Five Points neighborhood in search of work, or moved even further west. Just a few residents hung on. The last known   resident of Dearfield was Jackson’s niece, Jenny Jackson, who lived   until she died in 1973. Today, a plaque sits outside the dilapidated lunch counter that tells the history of Dearfield. The town site’s ownership is a patchwork: some owned by a real estate developer, other plots owned by descendants of the original homesteaders, and parcels owned by Denver’s Black American West Museum. Grant money over the years has allowed historians and anthropologists to restore and protect the few buildings still standing, but Junne says it is in serious danger of disappearing. There is little money available to keep Dearfield’s structures from further succumbing to the harsh weather. In 1999, the town was listed as one of Colorado’s ”Most Endangered Places.” Still, Dearfield’s legacy remains intact, Junne says. ”It was a wonderful idea, a wonderful experiment, and the spinoffs are just as important,” he says. Take for example, one of Colorado’s first integrated schools just down the road from Dearfield, and the dozens of other black farm communities on the plains that tried to replicate the town’s success. Denver’s Five Points neighborhood owes some of its history to the early homesteaders at Dearfield. That’s the legacy of Dearfield, Junne says. It thrived for years during a period that was fraught with racial tension. And its residents were able to build a community from scratch at a time when it seemed impossible. Luke Runyon reports for Harvest Public Media and is based at member station KUNC in Greeley, Colo."
"Legend has it that the band Pink Floyd once played so loudly at a show that the sheer volume had killed all the fish in a nearby pond. Now there’s a new species of shrimp, named after Pink Floyd, that can kill fish by making a loud noise. Synalpheus pinkfloydi rapidly opens then snaps closed its large claw, creating a sound that can reach up to 210 decibels  —   louder than a typical rock concert and loud enough to kill small fish nearby. It turns out, however, that its new name has nothing to do with that urban myth about Pink Floyd’s volume. Dr. Sammy DeGrave, head of research at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, says the inspiration for the shrimp’s name was really the color of its claw: pink. ”The reference is to the line, ’By the way, which one of you is Pink?’ from the song ’Have A Cigar’,” DeGrave told NPR when reached over the phone. ”The story is when Pink Floyd first went to America, people thought one of the band members was actually named Pink. A reporter asked, ’Which one of you is pink?” so that’s what stuck in our mind and that’s where [the name] came from.” DeGrave said he’d never heard the story about the deathly loud Pink Floyd concert. ”Yeah,” he says, ”that doesn’t really sound possible.” He’s probably right. The story has endured over the years in no small part because of Nicholas Schaffner, who wrote the biography A Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey. In describing a 1971 show at London’s Crystal Palace, Schaffner says, ”The performance climaxed with the emergence of a   inflatable octopus, shrouded in dry ice, from the little lake separating the audience from the stage, while fireworks exploded overhead. Unfortunately, the music’s volume was such that the real fish in the lake expired from the trauma.” The more likely cause of death, in retrospect, was the dry ice the band dumped in the water, and the underwater explosive flares used to inflate the Octopus. This isn’t the first time Dr. DeGrave and his colleagues have named crustaceans after their favorite bands  —   there’s another species of shrimp named Elephantis Jaggerai, after Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger."
"Alison Lu was in shock on election night. The Harvard Business School student had voted for Hillary Clinton, and she couldn’t fathom how Donald Trump had managed to win the presidency. She opened her Facebook page searching for answers, but she didn’t find any   friends. ”None of them [Trump voters] showed themselves on my Facebook feed,” she says. Lu, like many Americans, was living in a   social media world of   people. The Pew Research Center has found that about   of adults get news from social media. Analysts have blamed technology for creating an online echo chamber. But if technology created this problem, can it also help fix it? That’s the question the tech industry, including a couple of entrepreneurs and researchers, is trying to answer. Connecting to find civil offline conversation, Henry Tsai had worked in Silicon Valley for the past few years before coming to Harvard Business School. ”The day after the election, it was clear that discourse in this country was maybe not where we want it to be,” Tsai says. ”There’s a lot of either demonizing or dismissiveness.” He had this idea of bringing people together from opposing political views. In a burst of   inspiration, along with some help from a friend studying computer science at MIT, he created Hi From The Other Side. The goal is to take two people from different sides of the political spectrum  —   a Donald Trump supporter and a Hillary Clinton supporter  —   match them up, introduce them and allow them to talk to each other in real life. ”It’s not only to bring people together, but, more importantly, bringing them together in a way that’s productive or civil,” Tsai says. And that’s exactly what Lu wanted as she tried to make sense of things after the election. ”At that time, there was a general sense of helplessness on my end,” she says. ”I just wanted to do something to try to help me just understand.” Lu, 27, was one of the first Hi From The Other Side users. She was matched up with Dennis O’Brien, a    in New Hampshire working in IT security. O’Brien had voted for Trump, in part, because he hates the Affordable Care Act  —   also known as Obamacare. But after the election, he remembers seeing young women crying. ”All these people were legitimately terrified,” he says. ”And, I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around why.” The next day, he saw a blurb about Hi From The Other Side on Facebook, and he clicked on it. O’Brien figured ”what the heck”  —   he could meet someone new and learn what’s going through that person’s mind. Think of it as going on a blind date to talk politics. Lu and O’Brien were introduced to each other over email and agreed to meet up in person on a Tuesday night at a burger place in Cambridge. ”We were there for like two hours,” O’Brien recalls. O’Brien didn’t know what to expect. ”I was really hoping that I just wouldn’t get an extremist to talk to, someone who’s like ’Hillary or death,’ ” he says. But luckily, he says, Lu ”wasn’t crazy.” ”There was never a moment where I felt stupid or I felt like I was an idiot, and likewise, toward her  —   I never thought she was anything more than a normal person,” O’Brien says. Lu laughed and recalled her first impression of meeting O’Brien. ”He’s not like a racist, bigoted [person] like I think the stereotype of some Trump supporters are,” she says. ”I think what helped was also we were able to find a little bit of common ground.” The two found a bit of common ground on climate change. But they both realized they also probably just have different priorities. ”I really wouldn’t say that our conversation changed each other’s minds at all, but it was valuable to have that new perspective,” Lu says. About 4, 500 people have signed up to be matched, according to Tsai, and recently, his nascent startup formed a limited collaboration with Starbucks. Tsai’s project is essentially an online platform, but he admits that for it to work people have to move the conversation offline and meet in real life (or at least via video chat). Lu and O’Brien agree. ”I think social media just helps reinforce the hate it just pushes everybody apart,” O’Brien says. ”Because when I see something [online] I’m not talking to a person, I’m just typing a bunch of letters in a message.” ”Flip” your feed to find common interests, But while Tsai wanted to move the conversation off social media, Deb Roy and his team at the Laboratory for Social Machines in the MIT Media Lab were intrigued by the possibility of creating a more tolerant world within those platforms. In addition to his MIT job, Roy is the chief media scientist at Twitter. During the election, Roy had access to the entire fire hose of Twitter data, meaning he tracked essentially every tweet about presidential politics in the country. He noticed clusters of people,   based on their politics. And as he and his team looked at this big data, they wondered: What if you could flip your Twitter feed and see the world through someone else’s eyes? ”And, what if some of the things you experience actually aren’t so different, aren’t so foreign, aren’t so disconnected from your interests?” To answer some of those questions, Roy and his team created an online tool: a Google Chrome extension called FlipFeed. FlipFeed has a collection of accounts that span the political arena. ”We didn’t want to pigeonhole you,” Roy says. ”So if you flip your feed a few times, you’ll just naturally start sampling different parts of the political spectrum.” Roy doesn’t know what impact, if any, this MIT lab experiment could have. He acknowledged the entire experience could be ”really alienating to people.” He says FlipFeed downloads are ”in the thousands,” but he points out  —   it wasn’t created as a consumer product, it was a ”tiny little lab project.” Still, he’s optimistic that technology like FlipFeed can be used to create empathy. The major hitch is that all these tech experiments take effort from users. Maybe a lot of us are content to passively roam around our own social media bubbles."
"The Daily Mail has agreed to pay damages and issue an apology to first lady Melania Trump to settle defamation claims over the British tabloid’s insinuations that she ”provided services beyond simply modelling.” The basis for the lawsuits in the U. S. and the U. K. was the Mail’s report about Melania’s time as a model, published online and in a   article last summer under the headline, ”Racy photos and troubling questions about his wife’s past that could derail Trump.” A joint statement between the parties was read aloud by Melania Trump’s lawyer, John Kelly, in London’s Royal Courts of Justice, according to The Guardian. The statement read, in part: ”The allegations strike at the heart of the claimant’s personal integrity and dignity. The claimant has not acted as alleged. The suggestion that such allegations even merit investigation is deeply offensive and has caused a great deal of upset to the claimant.” The Mail posted its apology on its website: ”The Mail Online website and the Daily Mail newspaper published an article on 20th August 2016 about Melania Trump which questioned the nature of her work as a professional model, and republished allegations that she provided services beyond simply modelling. The article included statements that Mrs. Trump denied the allegations and Paulo Zampolli, who ran the modelling agency, also denied the allegations, and the article also stated that there was no evidence to support the allegations. The article also claimed that Mr and Mrs Trump may have met three years before they actually met, and ’staged’ their actual meeting as a ’ruse.’ We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them. We apologise to Mrs Trump for any distress that our publication caused her. To settle Mrs Trump’s two lawsuits against us, we have agreed to pay her damages and costs.” The terms of the settlement were not released in court. The Associated Press reports that the total for the U. S. and U. K. lawsuits is $2. 9 million. That’s far less than the $150 million in damages that she sought. In a lawsuit filed in February, her lawyers argued that the unfounded allegations the Mail published had hurt the prospects of the Melania Trump brand significantly, and at a crucial time: ”Plaintiff had the the unique,     opportunity, as an extremely famous and   person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman, to launch a   commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered   dollar business relationships for a   term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world. These product categories would have included, among other things, apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance.”"
"We humans have this uncanny ability to tell time and create schemes to measure its passage. Time is our greatest ally and our greatest enemy. We exist in it, are bound by it. We all have a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning, we haven’t much of a choice about it just happens, thanks to our parents. The middle, well, that’s the challenge, what to do with the decades we have allocated to us how to live a life of meaning, given the many compromises, disputes and limitations of existence. And the end, the unspoken, the terrible finality of life, the elephant in everyone’s closet, the ultimate demonstration of our powerlessness against nature’s unrelenting force. That one we speak little of, naively believing silence equates with oblivion. No wonder people feel time is hurrying up as they age. I hear this often, people asking whether there is some kind of astronomical phenomenon going on that’s speeding up time. This time is, essentially, the duration of a day, the precise ticks and tocks of clocks. And it turns out that, at least astronomically, the very opposite is happening. Existential time, of course, is another story. A day is defined in different ways and it has different names. As a unit of time, we define a solar day as having 24 hours or, better, 86, 400. 002 seconds  —   what we use in our clocks. There are 365. 242 solar days in one mean tropical year. (And a tropical year is the time it takes for the sun to return to the same position in the sky as seen from the Earth.) Now, because the Earth is tilted by 23. 5 degrees with respect to the vertical as it orbits the sun, and it wobbles like a spinning top (the precession of the equinoxes) the tropical year is about 20 minutes shorter than the time it takes for the Earth to complete a full orbit around the sun as measured with respect to the fixed stars (called the sidereal year). Confusing? Perhaps a bit. But what’s really interesting is that the moon plays a key role in the duration of a day defined as the time it takes for the Earth to spin once around its axis. The gravitational pull from the moon (and from the sun with   of the force) acts harder on the side of the Earth facing it. This causes the planet (and, more effectively, the oceans) to bulge. Since the Earth rotates around itself faster than the moon orbits it, this watery bulge travels ahead of the moon. The net result is that the extra mass from the tidal bulge tugs at the moon, giving it an orbital boost, while the friction on the ocean floor acts to brake Earth’s rotation ever so slightly. In the end, Earth’s spinning slows down by about 1. 7 milliseconds per century, while the moon slowly drifts away from us. In other words, if we think of a day as the time for Earth to complete a turn around its axis, days are getting longer, not shorter. For example, fossil records indicate that some 620 million years ago, a day lasted 21. 9 hours, and a year 400 days. Clearly, the widespread perception of shorter days and faster time is not coming from astronomy. What then? Well, for one thing, there is an   perception of time. We rarely hear children complaining that time is passing too fast for them to get things done. (Unless they are having a blast somewhere and want more.) In fact, this perception seems to get worse with age as many studies seem to corroborate. William James blamed it on the lack of novelty in old age: the less memorable events in our lives, the faster time passes. Compound that with stress: If we have more ”time pressure” to complete   or personal tasks, time seems to accelerate. Of course, as you grow older time passed also becomes a smaller fraction of your age. For a    a year is 10 percent of his life, while for a    it’s about 1. 67 percent. It seems that to slow down the passage of time, you need to find your own ways to slow down and create diversity in your life. Bring in novelty to your days, release yourself from overstressed activities, carve in a bit of time to just be. These seem to be the antidotes to the anguish of not having enough time to live. It’s simple enough, really: To feel more in control of time, live a little. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"As the United States Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera travels the nation reading poems to audiences in communities large and small, communities often starkly different from the U. S.  border region where Herrera grew up as a son of Mexican immigrants. Yet he said the response he gets from young people who hear his poems is similar regardless of where he is. ”They are standing up and they’re crying,” he said, ”and their emotion is coming from all the emotion we’re experiencing collectively.” Herrera stays keenly attuned to the social fault lines of our times  —   to the toxic politics and the stories about mass shootings and the distress among   Latinos, and other people of color who feel they enjoy only a tenuous claim on the American story. His poems evoke the sounds and smells and sights of this upheaval and its effects, because, ”as a poet, as a human being. .. I’m concerned about those things,” he said, ”And I want my poetry to be concerned about it too.” NPR recently sat down with Herrera in a poetry reading room at the Library of Congress, where he has an office. He read some recent poems in English and Spanish, spoke about his creative process, and reflected on how he thinks poems can create change in ”personal, intimate, and momentary” ways. Below are a few edited selections from that longer interview, which is available in full on NPR’s Facebook page. In this first video, Herrera reads ”Almost Livin’ Almost Dyin,’” which draws on the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner by police, and on the killings of two New York police officers by a man who later took his own life. Speaking about his creative process, Herrera said an idea will often start small. ”I’ll get a phrase or I’ll get this intensity sometimes,” he said, ”a great, intense rush of emotion” that propels him into a writing frenzy. ”I believe in beautiful messes,” he said. ”I like to splatter a lot.” He splatters both figuratively and literally. Herrera does much of his writing these days in airports or on airplanes, using leaky oil pens or, when he can, fountain pens. ”Fountain pens blow up when you’re 35, 000 feet above sea level. So I take them but I really can’t open them.” Much of Herrera’s poetry is in Spanish, or is bilingual. Even if he doesn’t speak a language, he said he’ll look for small ways to include it in his work as a way to make readers and audiences feel included. Here, he reads a Spanish poem about a traditional Mexican festival. His description feels like a vibrant explosion. A viewer who was watching our interview live on Facebook asked Herrera whether intensely personal work could also be useful politically. Herrera thought it could be, but he said the change that poems can effect in people is often subtle, by nudging along shifts in perception or understanding. Here’s one more poem for you. In this one, called ”Poem by Poem,” Herrera offers a tribute to the nine black worshippers who were murdered by a young white man at a church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015."
"Here’s the setup: Mad scientists send a guy (Joel) into space and force him to watch cheesy movies. He can’t get back home because he’s used parts from his spaceship to build two robots whose commentaries make the movies bearable. Sure, Mystery Science Theater 3000 had a silly premise  —   but it also had a cult following. The show aired in the 1990s and helped spawn the entire attitude of the Internet, where nothing is off limits from being mocked. MST3K eventually came to an end, but now, to the delight of millions, it’s back. The show was the brainchild of Joel Hodgson, a prop comic from Wisconsin who made a few appearances on Saturday Night Live. His combination of stoner absurdism and Midwestern nice proved perfect when he got the chance to start his own show on the UHF channel KTMA. Making fun of dumb movies with your friends is a   tradition, but with MST3K, your friends were much funnier. The program got picked up by Comedy Central, where it ran for six seasons, then moved to the   Channel for another three. In the middle of all that, in 1993, Hodgson left over creative differences and a new host took over. ”It was really like a tragedy for me the way it worked out,” he says. ”It was like the most public, frustrating thing I could imagine. And so that took a really long time to grapple with. And then once I started to get more distance from it, I started to kind of feel like it could happen again.” In the meantime, the show acquired such fans as Frank Zappa, Questlove from The Roots, Al Gore and Jonah Ray, a   comic who hosts a parody travel show called Hidden America. Ray grew up watching MST3K. He says, ”Mystery Science Theater was someone I could watch old   movies with and make fun of them by myself. You know, essentially you have these friends with you while you’re by yourself. And I think that’s why it connects with people.” A lot of people. When Hodgson got the rights back and launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce a new season, it broke the crowdfunding site’s record for video projects, raising more than $5. 5 million. Super fan Jonah Ray got the call of a lifetime when Hodgson asked him to be the new host. ”I was just like, ’Wha?’ ” he remembers. ”How does that even happen? . .. That’s the one thing I always wanted. Like, when I was growing up, that’s what I wanted.” Netflix signed on to distribute it and the new MST3K started shooting last fall. The cast includes Baron Vaughn and Hampton Yount as the new robots, and Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day as the new mad scientists. Day also grew up watching MST3K, and in addition to starring in Dr. Horrible’s   Blog she created a popular web series called The Guild. She says MST3K spawned a whole culture of silly online commentary. ”Nowadays people are used to having that commentary in their    lives, you know. They’re used to commenting on Twitter about, like, ’Hey, did you see Batman’s new codpiece? It looks like a misshapen face,’ or something.” The Internet is a     snarky place that can sometimes be downright mean  —   but not MST3K. ”I actually think there’s a kindness to the sense of humor and the overall aspect and tone of Mystery Science Theater,” Day says. ”Joel  —   on the conference calls when we talk about the movies before we started writing on them  —   would always talk with love about the movies, never hate. He would be like, ’Guys, this movie is so awesome. There’s this thing and he’s flying through the air.’ You’re like, ’Oh wait, this sounds terrible.’ But Joel loves it.” Hodgson makes a few   cameos in the new MST3K, but he mostly stays behind the camera as a writer and creative director. ”Honestly, I would have preferred that from the beginning,” he says. ”It kind of makes me uptight and it’s a lot of pressure and I just feel so relieved to not have to worry about being on camera. I’m like really happy just being the guy who came up with it and being creative.” Hodgson’s absence as host and head   may make nostalgic fans sad, and even lead to some snark online. But we suggest those fans take a cue from the show’s theme song: ”Just repeat to yourself, ’It’s just a show. I should really just relax.’ ” Netflix is releasing the full first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return on April 14. Editor Tom Cole and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this report."
"President Trump quietly signed legislation Thursday that rolls back an   rule protecting certain federal funds for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide legal abortions. That regulation, implemented in the waning days of the Obama administration, required that states pass along   grants  —   regardless of whether the groups they’re passing them along to offer abortion services as well. The rule was intended to prevent states from withholding these grants from any organization ”for reasons other than its ability to provide Title X services.” Now that the rule has been repealed, states can effectively block Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from funds associated with the Title X Family Planning program, which was established in 1970 to subsidize organizations that offer services related to contraception, pregnancy care, fertility and cancer screenings primarily for   people.   activists cheered the move as a way to return some measure of discretion to states, which will now have the latitude they once did in deciding how to mete out Title X funds. ”This is promise kept,” said the Susan B. Anthony List’s Marjorie Dannenfelser, who attended the signing which was conducted without media present. ”This puts an end to the outgoing gift that Obama gave the Trump administration which was to disallow states from being in charge of its own family planning funds.” In a statement, Dannenfelser said she sees this as just the first step. ”We expect to see Congress continue its efforts to redirect additional taxpayer funding away from Planned Parenthood through   health care reform after the spring recess.” NPR’s Scott Horsley reports that  —   with exceptions for cases of rape, incest or   situations  —   federal law already prohibits the use of federal tax money to pay for abortions. Yet Title X has long been in the   of conservative Republicans in Congress. Many see it as a vein of cash for Planned Parenthood, which many Republican lawmakers have vowed to defund entirely. As Julie Rovner notes for our Shots blog, Planned Parenthood obtains about $60 million annually from Title X, and in the group’s most recent annual report, its affiliates received $553. 7 million total from federal, state and local governments  —   or, about half its total funding. In 2014, roughly 3 percent of the services rendered by Planned Parenthood were  . ”People are sick and tired of politicians making it even harder for them to access health care, and this bill is just the latest example,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement: ”We should build on the tremendous progress made in this country with expanded access to birth control, instead of enacting policies that take us backward. Too many women still face barriers to health care, especially young women, women of color, those who live in rural areas, and women with low incomes.” The law signed Thursday by the president began in the House and narrowly passed the Senate, only after Vice President Pence stepped in to cast the   vote late last month. To move the measure through Congress, Republicans turned again to the Congressional Review Act  —   a   1996 law that, as we’ve reported, allows lawmakers ”to overturn any regulation imposed during the final six months of the previous administration, with a simple majority vote in each chamber of Congress.” Already this year, GOP lawmakers have repealed about a dozen   regulations in this manner  —   including a   rule, a restriction on gun sales to the mentally ill, and an   regulation on the oil industry."
"If you do a Google search for ”card catalog” it will likely return   images of antique furniture for sale  —   boxy, wooden cabinets with tiny drawers, great for storing   jewelry or art supplies. But before these cabinets held household objects, they held countless index cards  —   which, at the time, were the pathways to knowledge and information. A new book from the Library of Congress celebrates these catalogs as the analog ancestor of the search engine. There’s a huge card catalog in the basement of the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. ”There’s tens of millions of cards here,” says Peter Devereaux, author of The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures. ”It’s a city block long.” Some highlights from the Library of Congress’ collection include cards from Walt Whitman, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (you might know him as Mark Twain) Margaret Mitchell, James Baldwin, William Faulkner . .. the list goes on and on. Some of the cards are handwritten, others are typed with cross out marks and notes scribbled in the margins. Humans have been cataloging for as long as we’ve had stuff to keep track of. Information isn’t much good if you don’t know where to find it, right? There were the Sumerian catalogs of clay. The library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt had an impressive system for organizing and inventorying their scrolls. In the decades after the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, readers were panicking  —   with information being produced so rapidly, how could you possibly keep track of it all? ”The card catalog was a way of managing this increase in material,” explains Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress. The card catalog as we know it showed up right after the French Revolution  —   a few hundred years after Gutenberg. ”What we have today is a fire hose of information,” Hayden says. ”Being able to catalog or contain and make sense of all of this information is what the card catalog represents.” Handwritten cards began to be standardized in the 1800s, when New York State Library Director Melvil Dewey and inventor Thomas Edison perfected a handwriting style called ”library hand.” Its goal was to make the cards read the same no matter the library. Typewritten cards started appearing at the end of the 19th century. Cataloging wasn’t always neat and tidy  —   even for the old Congressional Library. An Annual Report from 1897 depicted a chaotic state of affairs: ”The Library was so congested, books were heaped up in so many crevices and     corners, down in the crypt, hidden in darkness from access of observation, that obtaining a volume, and especially, one out of the range of general reading, was a question of time and patience. Frequently, it depended upon the phenomenal memory of the distinguished Librarian.” That distinguished librarian was Ainsworth Rand Spofford  —   who had his own ”idiosyncratic” approach to cataloging. He said that without more space, he would be ”presiding over the greatest chaos in America.” Spofford got his way, and the library reorganized and expanded that same year. Card catalogs began to be phased out in the 1980s, but Hayden says there’s plenty of nostalgia for the perfectly organized drawers of cards. Generations of library users remember pulling out the drawers, fingering through the cards, and having those moments of discovery. ”It’s like a cabinet of curiosities,” she says. In the basement catalog at the Library of Congress, Hayden pulls out a card for her favorite childhood book  —   Bright April by Marguerite De Angeli, about a young Girl Scout. ”It was the first book that I saw that featured a young   Brownie and I loved it,” she recalls. And the card points Hayden to other books. ”If I was looking in the catalog at the time, I’d go ’What else did she write? ’” These cards take her to De Angeli’s Newbery Medal winner The Door in The Wall, and from there she’s down a rabbit hole. Human brains want to make connections. Whether it’s poring over a card catalog or scrolling down a screen of search results. The Library of Congress is working with universities and tech companies to create the next iteration of the card catalog  —   but unfortunately for all you tactile types, it probably won’t be stored in tiny wooden drawers."
"The U. S. has dropped the most powerful conventional weapon ever used in combat to hit an underground ISIS complex in Afghanistan, Pentagon officials say. The nearly   ”MOAB”  —   standing for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or as it’s also known, the ”Mother of All Bombs”  —   was designed during the Iraq War but had never before been used on the battlefield. The U. S. has used the bomb’s predecessor, a smaller but still massive weapon known as the ”Daisy Cutter,” in Afghanistan before. The Pentagon says it dropped the MOAB in Nangarhar province at around 7:30 p. m. local time, to counter ISIS efforts to use bunkers and tunnels as defense mechanisms. ”This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ” or the Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement. The Pentagon says the U. S. ”took every precaution to avoid civilian casualties” in the strike. At a news conference Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the bomb used was ”a large, powerful and accurately delivered weapon.” He declined to comment on whether the U. S. would use the weapon again, in Afghanistan or elsewhere. Speaking later Thursday, President Trump was asked if he had authorized the bombing. He said he’s given the military ”total authorization,” apparently referencing actions against ISIS in general, and praised the ”incredible leaders” of the military. He said he didn’t know if the use of the weapon sent a message to North Korea, and that it ”didn’t make any difference” if it did or not. The weapon used Thursday is officially known as the    NPR’s Phil Ewing explains: ”The    has been in the U. S. arsenal for more than 14 years, deployed to bases in the Middle East where it could be loaded aboard an American aircraft but never used until now. At more than 30 feet long, it’s too big to fit inside the weapons bay of a standard Air Force bomber. Instead, troops load it into the cargo compartment of a specialized transport, the   Combat Talon, which releases it over the target by opening its ramp in the same way it might for paratroopers or   supplies. The bomb is guided by satellite to its target. ”The MOAB is a replacement for the earlier, smaller, unguided   ’Daisy Cutter,’ which was about 15, 000 pounds. The Air Force used Daisy Cutters early in the war in Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda and Taliban cave complexes, like the ISIS base the Pentagon described destroying in Nangarhar Province on Thursday.” When deployed in combat, the smaller Daisy Cutter could be felt from miles away."
"An airstrike that was meant to target ISIS in Syria instead killed 18 Syrian Democratic Forces personnel because it was ”misdirected,” U. S. Central Command said Thursday. The strike Tuesday by an aircraft from the U. S.  coalition was called in by American allies, the U. S. military says. It adds that the coalition is now studying what went wrong to prevent similar mistakes in the future. ”The strike was requested by the partnered forces, who had identified the target location as an ISIS fighting position,” the command said in a statement about the April 11 attack. ”The target location was actually a forward Syrian Democratic Forces fighting position.” Central Command said the coalition extends its ”deepest condolences” to members of the SDF and their families, adding that members of that force ”have expressed a strong desire to remain focused on the fight against ISIS despite this tragic incident.” The strike took place south of Tabqa, Central Command says. That city is roughly 30 miles west of the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. News of the errant strike comes three weeks after activist groups that monitor Syria said an ”airstrike by U. S.  coalition forces leveled a school west of Raqqa and killed at least 33 people,” as NPR’s Colin Dwyer reported at the time. Reports of that strike initially came from the group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently and the the U. K.  Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. In response, coalition forces said they routinely strike ISIS targets in the area and would review reports of civilian casualties. In an update on the U. S.  coalition’s offensive against ISIS in Raqqa, the joint task force’s spokesman said Wednesday that the coalition was ”clearing ISIS fighters from the territory in the vicinity of Tabqa.” The spokesman added that ISIS was deploying vehicle bombs, direct and indirect fire, and human shields in the area, according to Central Command."
"If George W. Bush was the decider, consider Donald Trump the  . This week, the current president abandoned a string of his   policy positions over a matter of days. This is just a taste NBC’s First Read counted up 13   in the last few months. It’s certainly noteworthy that the president has undone so many positions in such a short time frame  —   Americans might reasonably want to know exactly what their leader believes. But what kind of political consequences will he suffer? Potentially very few  —   at least in the short term  —   according to political experts. Here’s why. 1) Lots of his supporters don’t love him for specific policies, anyway. In 2004, one massive   was a crippling blow to John Kerry’s campaign (See: his comments on how he ”actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it”). Last year, however, Trump made   after   during the presidential campaign  —   and he still won. Policy   simply didn’t seem to stick to him. One reason may be that very specific policy proposals just aren’t what people like about him. ”I think there probably is something to the idea that to a degree his appeal isn’t ” says Robert Van Houweling, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied  . ”One answer why he has more latitude than some politicians is that his appeal was more visceral.” Because of that, it’s quite possible that Trump’s approval rating won’t inch down much as a result of a   180s. ”I’ve just been out going to a bunch of town halls this week, and I don’t see any evidence that it’s hurting him at all,” says Mark McKinnon, a longtime strategist who served George W. Bush, among others. ”And in fact, what I would say is for opponents of Trump, they’re very happy to see him changing positions, and his supporters don’t really care. It’s remarkable.” Of course, it’s true that there are a few key policies that Trump’s voters did latch onto, like building a wall. But then, part of his ”visceral” appeal came not just from the idea of building a wall (or proposing a ”total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” or imposing massive tariffs on China) but from his tough image in general. That toughness continues to win voters over. ”When people vote for presidents, it’s more for attributes than it is for issues,” McKinnon adds. ”And there’s usually strength, trust, and you know, ’Does he reflect my values?’ Those are the three big ones. And he’s doing really well on strength right now” because of his recent actions in Syria  —   which also, by the way, constitute a  . Indeed, Republicans now overwhelmingly support missile strikes in Syria  —   a reversal from 2013, during the Obama presidency, when   said they did not. 2) He doesn’t have much support to lose. Speaking of that approval rating, it’s already at    for a new president. Those who approve of him have already stuck with him through a litany of  . Those who disapprove  —   well, they already disapprove. With an approval rating of around 60 percent, a president likely has more people who aren’t truly dedicated to them, Van Houweling says, ”so you quickly see the effect of sort of damaging political moves in that context.” That kind of signal may not show up when you have been riding at around 40 to 45 percent for a while, he says. ”It’s not easy to get a 10 percent decline in your popularity when you start out with really just your core supporters viewing your job being done well to begin with”  —   particularly, he adds, if those supporters are already used to Trump’s views on policy being easily changeable. 3) Some of these policies aren’t exactly emotional issues for Americans. Trump just did do more major policy   in a few days than other presidents might take years to do. But not all of these   are terribly meaningful to most Americans. Consider monetary policy. In 2015, 70 percent of Americans didn’t know who Janet Yellen was. So suddenly saying he might reappoint her as Federal Reserve chair might reasonably not bother many Americans all that much. Likewise, Trump said over and over and over that he’d label China a ”currency manipulator.” The average American has little reason to know exactly how currency manipulation works. One addendum here is that while Trump’s policy message on China has changed, his tone hasn’t budged much. He still proved on Twitter on Thursday morning that he’s willing to talk tough on China: ”I have great confidence that China will properly deal with North Korea. If they are unable to do so, the U. S. with its allies, will!” Trump does have some particularly strong policy views, but no particular ideology is so central to his identity as that   image. It may be that maintaining that image, as opposed to maintaining particular policy views, is what will allow him to remain constant in voters’ minds. 4) Some   can be seen as good  . One upside to the Trump China  : He flipped in the direction of truth. China really hasn’t been manipulating its currency recently. (The Washington Post’s Fact Checker in December called the currency manipulation claims ”way out of date. ”) To the extent that Trump’s   reflect changing circumstances  —   or him acknowledging current circumstances  —    could be viewed positively. ”Conditions do change, and you have to change with them. I mean, that’s part of the job,” says Stephen Wayne, professor of government and an expert in the American presidency at Georgetown University. Indeed, presidents have made   that were, in retrospect, smart moves, as Slate’s Jamelle Bouie has outlined. In his view,   can be seen as ”a skill,” as opposed to a weakness. In addition, Trump’s recent   may win him some respect among policymakers. ”He may face some compliments from mainstream Republicans who inhabit the swamp that he’s not so bad after all,” Wayne adds. Win Some, Lose Some? While the   may even endear a few more moderate Republicans to Trump, such endorsements could come at the expense of Washington Republicans who had been inclined to support him in the past, Wayne says. The question is how that plays out in the long term. Given enough   (and who knows how many that could be?) it could eventually make Trump a less effective president. Trump has a Republican majority in both the House and the Senate, but some of those GOP policymakers might reasonably find it difficult to sign onto Trump’s agenda when they can’t be sure that that agenda won’t change tomorrow. Then again, some Republicans see Trump’s   positions in a positive light: to them, he’s not so much squishy as flexible. That’s what McKinnon has learned from conversations from some Republican lawmakers. ”The sense is that he actually listens. He doesn’t have a rigid set of ideas and a rigid ideology and rigid convictions,” McKinnon says. ”Unlike other presidents, maybe he better responds to events as they unfold.”"
"”The Art of the Deal” appears to have edged out the ”The Art of War” for now, as the presidents of the U. S. and China spoke of agreements reached at their summit at President Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. last week, including an apparent deal to cooperate in grappling with the North Korean nuclear issue. ”You and I, Mr. President, increased our mutual understanding and established a good working relationship,” President Xi Jinping told Trump, when Trump called Xi on Tuesday night, a   to their meeting at   . Xi added that the two sides had ”reached important consensuses” on key issues, and that China ”is willing to communicate and coordinate” on the North Korean issue. ”I think we had a very good chemistry together,” President Trump said of Xi at a press briefing Wednesday. ”I think he wants to help us with North Korea.” While neither side would say exactly what sort of deal was struck, it seemed to confirm observers’ predictions that both leaders went into the summit expecting to size each other up and see to what extent they could do business with each other. ”The way you’re going to make a good trade deal,” Trump says he told Xi, according to The Wall Street Journal, ”is to help us with North Korea.” In an earlier tweet, Trump had threatened that the U. S. would resolve the North Korean issue by itself, if China refused to help. Chinese analysts say Beijing is receptive to a ”transactional” U. S. president. ”Both sides seem to have achieved some of the objectives they sought from each other’s concessions,” says Cheng Xiaohe, a North Korea expert at People’s University in Beijing. Cheng says Xi is likely to have sought  —   and received  —   assurances from Trump that the U. S. would hold off on using military force against North Korea, giving tougher sanctions and diplomacy more time to work. He adds that Beijing, meanwhile, has become ”more proactive and bold” on the North Korea issue, for example, banning North Korean coal imports to China for the rest of the year. Chinese customs statistics, though, indicate that trade between China and its neighbor increased 37 percent during the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year. Therefore, Cheng says, China still has many points of leverage over North Korea, from finance and tourism to the many North Koreans working in China. The Chinese are also aware that Trump sometimes bluffs, blunders and later backs down. That appears to have been the case when Trump threatened to upgrade relations with Taiwan as a way to get a better trade deal with Beijing. But he quickly found out that China would not negotiate issues related to sovereignty such as the   island, and Trump later backed down in a call to Xi Jinping in February. China’s government does not endorse the idea of explicit    deals. ”China consistently decides its positions and policies on important international issues based on their own merits,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters on Thursday. Another apparent dividend from the summit was that China on Wednesday abstained on a U. N. Security Council vote condemning Syria’s government for a chemical weapons attack last week. China has aligned itself with Russia and, since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, vetoed six Security Council measures on it. This time, Russia alone vetoed the measure. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that ”China made unremitting efforts to push the council to reach a consensus and speak with one voice,” and Beijing regrets, Lu added, that it did not happen. A senior U. S. administration on Thursday attributed China’s help to the bond Trump and Xi forged at the summit. He denied that it was a    exchange connected to any other issue. China, meanwhile, was spared being branded a currency manipulator by the Trump administration. One of Trump’s foremost campaign pledges was to punish China early in his presidency for depressing the value of its currency in order to boost exports and maintain a trade surplus with the U. S. That position is at odds with the facts, as China has been spending down its foreign reserves to prop up the value of the yuan since  . Reversing his position just before the summit, Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that China was no longer manipulating its currency, and that he realized that punishing China over this issue could cost the U. S. China’s cooperation on North Korea. Of course, currency exchange rates are not the only trade frictions between Beijing and Washington. China’s lax protection of intellectual property, dumping of commodities such as steel, and U. S. companies’ access to the China market are also of concern. Whether Chinese leverage on other issues, or naming the right price, might make these concerns go away, too, remains to be seen."
"The trouble started for Lisa when she took a blood pressure pill and one to control seizures, along with methadone, a drug used to help wean patients off heroin. ”I inadvertently did the methadone cocktail and I went to sleep for like 48 hours,” Lisa says, rolling her eyes and coughing out a laugh. ”It kicked my butt. It really kicked my butt.” The last thing this    Somerville, Mass. native remembers is starting to do laundry. That’s where Lisa’s daughter found her  —   passed out on the washing machine. ”My daughter brought me up and put me to bed. I hate the fact that she saw me like that,” says Lisa. We’re not using her last name because she’s used illegal drugs and fears going public about that could harm job prospects. Lisa lay in the same position on the bed, one leg bent under her body, arms folded across her chest, for more than a day. Family members checked to make sure she was still breathing. Lisa’s daughter noticed that her mom’s right leg had gone white and looked shriveled. ”She came in and massaged it really, really vigorously,” Lisa says. ”If she hadn’t done that, I don’t think I’d be walking on this leg. I think I would have killed it.” As it is, almost five years after the injury, Lisa says she still limps in some weather, ”or I have what I call flabberfoot. My foot, like, slaps the ground when I walk.” Lisa never told a nurse or doctor about her injury. ”I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anybody to know I had a drug problem,” she says. Lisa’s injury may reflect nerve damage, which doctors say is common in people who misuse opioids. Or it may have been the result of something called compartment syndrome, where muscles are damaged or die because blood can’t get in or out of part of an arm or a leg. In some such cases, the damaged muscles must be removed. Dr. Ed Boyer remembers one of the first patients he treated in Massachusetts, a man who injected heroin while sitting, and stayed in that position, leaning to one side, for hours on end. ”When he woke up, he had a compartment syndrome of his buttock and they had to remove half of it,” says Boyer, the director of academic development in the emergency medicine department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. ”So you can have very severe and disfiguring injuries,” Boyer says. ”Because now this individual has great difficulty even walking.” Lingering damage to those who survive overdose,  The common understanding of patients addicted to heroin or other opioids is that they either survive a high or die  —   but that there’s no real damage to those who get up and walk away. Increasingly, emergency room doctors will tell you that’s not the case. ”I would say at least 75 percent  —   every three of four patients who comes in after an overdose  —   has some sort of associated injury, whether it’s a minor injury or major injury from that overdose,” says Dr. Ali Raja, the vice chair of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, the busiest emergency room in the Boston area. The trauma ranges from frostbite or broken bones after a fall on the ice to serious brain damage. Raja says many injuries from drug use don’t get treated because patients who are revived never come to the hospital, and those who do are driven by their addiction to leave the hospital quickly and use again. ”They often believe that they’re just fine and they repeat the exact same circumstances that led to the overdose in the first place,” Raja says. ”And they’re definitely prone to repeating the same injuries we just talked about.” That prompts another question for the emerging science of drug and overdose injuries: What’s the effect of overdosing again and again? Dr. Alex Walley, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, offers a theory about the impact on the brain. ”One way to think about this would be that an overdose is like a concussion, where you have a traumatic injury to the brain,” Walley says. ”If the person doesn’t die, the brain recovers, but they may be, like with a concussion, more susceptible to a future event. And then there also may be cumulative damage that occurs.” That damage, Walley says, might make these patients more difficult to treat. Another injury that doctors see among some overdose patients is kidney failure. When a person spends hours in one position, blood stops circulating through muscles and that living tissue can break down, releasing chemicals into the bloodstream. ”They can clog up the filtration system in the kidneys,” says Dr. Melisa Lai Becker, chief of the Cambridge Health Alliance emergency department in Everett, Mass. ”And when that happens, the kidneys can shut down completely.” Patients coming out of an overdose often vomit, which can lead to aspiration into the lungs and pneumonia. And then there’s a condition called pulmonary edema, which hits some patients who are revived  —   their lungs fill suddenly with fluid. ”The lungs become so waterlogged that you can’t get any more oxygen into the body even though the patient is wide awake and they’re struggling to breathe,” Lai Becker says. Doctors offer different theories about why this occurs. Lai Becker says it may be related to a sudden change in blood pressure when a patient is revived abruptly with naloxone. Other doctors think it’s a reaction to some part of the drug combination patients take. There are lots of questions among emergency doctors about why this is happening  —   it’s why researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now wading into this new field of opioid use injuries, to try to get some data. ”We’re only beginning to scratch the surface and trying to understand what is going on, on this front,” says Mark Faul, a senior health scientist at the CDC. Faul is studying the possible link between the opioid overdose and traumatic brain injury. He plans to collect data about how often an overdose leaves patients with permanent or temporary brain damage that that can leave them blind or deaf, or with amnesia or other cognitive problems. Fentanyl compounds the problems,  And there’s one more complicating factor: fentanyl. This very powerful opioid gives those who use it recreationally a high that is more intense than heroin’s, but wears off more quickly. Traci Green, a senior scientist and deputy director of the injury prevention center at Boston Medical Center, says that means recreational drug users tend to use fentanyl more times a day than they would pure heroin. ”It also means more opportunity to overdose,” Green says. ”Simple math tells us that we’re going to have more visits to the emergency department and we’re going to potentially have more injury. And injury will beget injury.” Fentanyl can also change the kind of injuries some emergency rooms see  —   more falls and head trauma because taking too much of the opioid cuts off breathing immediately and patients collapse. But Lai Becker has a different perspective. She says she has treated fewer of what she calls ”in between” injuries in the last six months. On one end of the spectrum, she says, ”we’re seeing people who have fortunately had a good, full, complete reversal.” On the other extreme, she says, ”patients have either arrived dead, or we’re able to resuscitate them, but unfortunately, they’ve already undergone brain death.” To avoid fentanyl injuries and overdoses, Green urges people who are addicted to the drug to at least use it in pairs  —   making sure one partner is stable before the other person injects. She says the state could help, too, by allowing patients who are addicted to opioids to use the drugs in a supervised setting like a hospital or clinic. ”Individuals who are able to spend time there don’t have to worry about hypothermia,” Green says. ”They don’t have to worry about being hit or kicked or struck by a truck. This is something we should consider  —   this is a new era of prevention and intervention.” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WBUR and Kaiser Health News."
"Could there be life under the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus? Scientists have found a promising sign. NASA announced on Thursday that its Cassini spacecraft mission to Saturn has gathered new evidence that there’s a chemical reaction taking place under the moon’s icy surface that could provide conditions for life. They described their findings in the journal Science. ”This is the closest we’ve come, so far, to identifying a place with some of the ingredients needed for a habitable environment,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement. However, the scientists think that because the moon is young, there may not have been time for life to emerge. In 2015, researchers said that there was evidence of a warm ocean under the moon’s surface, as NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reported. This posed an exciting prospect  —   researchers wondered whether that warm ocean might be interacting with rock to create a form of chemical energy that could be used by some forms of life. If true, it would be analogous to ancient organisms on Earth fueled by the energy in   ocean vents. On Thursday, NASA scientists said they have detected evidence that this kind of chemical reaction is likely occurring under the surface of Enceladus. By flying through a plume spraying out of its icy shell, Cassini was able to detect molecular hydrogen. NASA said in a press release that the presence of hydrogen in the   ocean ”means that microbes  —   if any exist there  —   could use it to obtain energy by combining the hydrogen with carbon dioxide dissolved in water.” Called methanogenesis, it’s a reaction that it says is ”at the root of the tree of life on Earth.” As the lead author Hunter Waite put it, the reaction would basically provide a ”candy store for microbes.” So what exactly could be lurking under the surface? ”Most of us would be excited with any life, and certainly when we’re talking about the sources of energy, this is to feed the base of a food web. So we’re going to start with bacteria and if we get lucky, maybe there’s something that’s larger,” NASA astrobiology senior scientist Mary Voytek said at a news conference. The hydrogen found ”speaks to the habitability” of the moon, Voytek says. But paradoxically, the large amount detected could make finding life less likely. She explains: ”[The] fact that that we can measure such high concentrations of hydrogen and carbon dioxide mean that there might not be life there at all, and if there is life, it’s not very active. . .. We have this buildup of food that’s not being used. And part of that could be that we think Enceladus might be fairly young.” The findings were announced along with observations by the Hubble Space Telescope of another, much older moon  —   evidence of plumes spraying out of the surface of Jupiter’s Europa. Europa is potentially billions of years older than Enceladus, and life takes time to emerge. And there’s ”no reason” why the same process wouldn’t be happening on the moon orbiting Jupiter, Voytek says. That’s why she thinks it’s actually more likely that they’ll find life on Europa than Enceladus. ”My money for the moment is still on Europa,” she says. It’s going to take years for scientists to definitively determine whether there is life on either moon. The Europa Clipper mission is set to launch to Europa in the 2020s. Cassini will end its mission in September and as NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, it ”doesn’t have the instruments needed to look for life itself” on Enceladus. After that ends, it’s not clear when another spacecraft will head to Saturn’s moon. But NASA’s New Frontiers program is holding a competition for its next mission, and Enceladus is a potential target."
"For the last 10 years, on the eve of Passover, the Federman family has loaded a young male goat into their car and driven from their farm in a West Bank Jewish community to the Old City of Jerusalem, where they hoped to slaughter the animal in the ritual sacrifice prescribed in the Bible. The family is not alone in its mission. The number of Israeli Jews approaching Jerusalem with goats prepared for sacrifice has been growing in recent years, according to the Federmans. ”Thank God, more people are trying to carry out this commandment,” said Elisheva Federman, who has a herd of about 15 goats. Whenever a male goat is born, she does not vaccinate or brand it because that would make it ineligible to be sacrificed. According to the Book of Leviticus, an offering must be ”a male without blemish.” But each year, police prevent the Federmans and others from slaughtering goats on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. They fear such an act on this site, sacred to Jews for once housing the ancient Jewish temples but also home to Islam’s third holiest site, could ignite tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. Muslims refer to the hilltop compound, home to the iconic Dome of the Rock and   mosque, as the Noble Sanctuary. They believe the Prophet Muhammad journeyed to heaven from there. To keep these tensions in check, Israel and Jordan, which oversees religious affairs at the holy site, have agreed on certain policies. Israel bans   from praying there. Only Muslims can enter the Dome of the Rock and   mosque, a rule set by the Jordanian Waqf, or religious trust. Seeing this arrangement as a violation of their right to religious freedom, and eager to assert a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, a growing number of religious Jews try to pray, hold weddings and even carry out animal sacrifices there. A number of   Israeli politicians support such actions and advocate for increasing Jewish access to the area. But many politicians (and Israelis) see this stance as fueling the   conflict. This week, according to Israeli media, police detained at least 17 people heading for the Temple Mount, including two members of the Federman family, and confiscated six baby goats, saving them from being sacrificed. One of those arrested was    yeshiva student Dov Jacobs from the West Bank settlement of Hashmonaim. In a scheme that took weeks of planning in attempts to avoid police detection, Jacobs came to a certain address in Jerusalem’s Old City on Monday to pick up a goat. The goat was brought into the ancient walled city from a farm a week earlier, when police were less likely to be on the lookout for animals intended for sacrifice, Jacobs said. Jacobs was to carry the baby goat to the Temple Mount, where his cohorts would be waiting with priestly clothing, a portable altar and tools needed for sacrifice, all specially made according to biblical requirements. ”But from the beginning the police were following me,” Jacobs said. ”I had to sneak around for a couple of hours just to get inside of the house. Then after walking out of the house with the goat for 30 seconds, police stopped me and arrested me.” Jacobs was eventually released from detention just a couple of hours before the start of the Passover seder meal. The goat was turned over to the city’s veterinary services department. ”They will probably even question the goat,” quipped Jacobs, who will need to appear in court later this month on charges of conspiring to commit a crime. Animal sacrifice was once a central part of many cultures, including that of ancient Israel. The Bible commanded in great detail daily offerings as well as special offerings for holidays like Passover and for personal reasons, such as committing a sin. Both goats and sheep are acceptable for sacrifice, according to Jewish law. The practice ended for the most part when the Second Temple, which like the First Temple once stood on the Temple Mount, was destroyed in the year 70. Now, rather than daily burnt offerings, religious Jews offer daily prayers. Jews had no access to the Temple Mount between the 1948 and 1967 wars. That changed after Israel gained control of the Old City in the 1967 Mideast War. And the idea of reviving sacrifices has gained traction. Some religious Jews cite writings by the 12th century philosopher Maimonides, who argued that some sacrifices can be made without a temple. Although they remain a minority and are considered a radical fringe by mainstream Judaism, some Israeli rabbis argue that Jews today are still obligated to bring a Passover sacrifice to the Temple Mount because not doing so results in divine punishment. But the established rabbinical position remains that Jews should not set foot on the Temple Mount because it once contained the ”holy of holies,” the part of the temple that was so sacred that only the high priest entered  ” and only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. For more than a decade, organizations that hope to eventually build a third temple in Jerusalem have been holding what they call a ”practice drill” for the Passover sacrifice. An animal is slaughtered by someone wearing priestly clothing, with trumpets blowing in the background, and the blood is scattered on an altar but it is not considered an actual sacrifice because police have never allowed it to be held on the Temple Mount. This year, in a surprising move, police allowed the   to be held inside the Old City walls for the first time, in the main square of the Jewish Quarter, about a quarter of a mile from the Temple Mount. About 200 people attended the event, eating the meat of the slaughtered lamb, according to Israeli media reports. But all other attempts at ritual slaughter have been stopped this year. The confiscated goats were given to the city’s veterinary services department, which is caring for the animals while the police and the ministry of agriculture investigate the incidents. ”The goats were in very good health,” said Frayda Leibtag, the Jerusalem mayor’s adviser on international affairs and media. ”And they are in good hands now.” She said that once the investigation concludes they will be given back to their owners ”or good new homes will be found.” Federman said officials have never returned their confiscated goats in the past. The family has lost at least 10 goats this way over the years, a monetary loss totaling thousands of dollars. ”So for us,” she says, ”it really is a sacrifice.” Sara Toth Stub is a   journalist who has written for The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, The Associated Press and other publications. Contact her @saratothstub"
"David Dao, the    Kentucky doctor dragged off a United Express flight on Sunday night, suffered a concussion and broken nose in the incident and lost two teeth, his attorney said Thursday. Dao will need reconstructive surgery, lawyer Thomas Demetrio announced at a news conference in Chicago. He said there will ”probably” be a lawsuit over the airline’s actions. Dao’s lawyers have already filed in Illinois state court to compel United to preserve evidence related to the incident, to ensure that videos and other recordings are not destroyed before a case could start. The violence captured on bystander video was obviously unacceptable, showing ”unreasonable” force, Demetrio said. He also issued scathing broadsides against United and other airlines in general  —   saying the larger issue is that airlines have ”bullied” customers for a ”long time.” Among other things, Demetrio called for airlines to ”stop the  .” Airlines are legally allowed to ”overbook” flights, selling more tickets than they have seats. That means in some cases paying passengers are barred from the flight. In Dao’s case, the airline originally said the flight was overbooked but later clarified it only became ”oversold” when United discovered it had four crew members who needed to be on the flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky. The airline offered money for anyone who volunteered to leave, and when no one did, they ordered passengers to go. Dao refused, saying he had patients to see, and United called security  —   leading to a bloody altercation and officers with the Chicago Department of Aviation dragging Dao’s limp body down the aisle. Dao’s daughter, Crystal Dao Pepper, said the family was ”horrified, shocked and sickened” by what happened. What happened to Dao ”should never have happened to any human being,” Pepper said. Public outcry over how Dao was treated was prompt and passionate. United’s response, which early on blamed Dao for not obeying instructions, was widely seen as inadequate. The airline has since offered a fuller apology, and is refunding tickets for all passengers on Flight 3411."
"As United Airlines continues to grapple with a   public relations disaster, rival airlines are pouncing on the opportunity to poke fun and promote themselves. United has been roundly lambasted after a passenger was violently removed from a flight to make room for a crew member. The airline’s initial response was widely seen as inadequate, and in recent days United has been trying to apologize. Meanwhile, rival airlines have hastened to mock United and snag a little good PR for themselves  —   especially Middle Eastern airlines. The major Middle Eastern airlines have a longstanding, bitter rivalry with U. S. carriers, which accuse them of having an unfair advantage in competition for international passengers. In fact, United CEO Oscar Munoz’s comments about that issue  —   accusing the Middle Eastern competition of being ”branding” for their home countries, instead of a real airline  —   appear in a new ad spot by Emirates. Meanwhile, users on Twitter say some flight attendants for other U. S. airlines have been riffing on the controversy. But we should note that an   ”Southwest: We beat the competition. Not you” image was not produced or endorsed by Southwest, the company said on Twitter."
"United Airlines says it will never again use police to forcibly remove passengers from overfull flights. But this week’s public relations disaster for United highlights a problem that airlines face every day: how to entice people to give up their seats voluntarily. NPR reached out to some of the top thinkers in the world of ”game theory” who say they think the industry could be doing a much better job. Here are some solutions they offered. Treat the problem as a game. To keep seats full on planes, airlines overbook assuming that some people will be  . But when everybody actually shows up, you’ve got 100 seats on an airplane and you’ve sold 105 tickets. Sure, it’s a problem. But it’s also a game. ”Yeah, this is exactly a game   problem,” says Joshua Gans, a professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto. ”The airline wants some people off the plane every single person on the plane wants to stay on absent anything else changing.” It’s fair to say that United did not play this game very well when the game ended with a passenger being dragged, bloodied and screaming down the aisle. ”Everything should be designed so that that just never happens,” Gans says. Airlines overall actually have already been figuring out how to bump fewer passengers from their flights, though last year it was still about 41, 000 people, according to the Department of Transportation. Game theorists like Gans say there are several things the airlines could do to play the overbooked flight game much better. Don’t let passengers board the plane and then take their seats away. And if you do, offer them a lot more money. ”You tend to value something more once you have it,” says Kevin Zollman, a philosophy professor at Carnegie Mellon who studies game theory. There are studies that show that if you show someone a coffee mug and ask them how much they would pay for it, they might offer you $5. But if you instead give the person the same coffee mug and then say, ”Hey, I want that coffee mug back. How much will you sell it to me for?” the person is likely to want considerably more money, say $10. And, it’s the same thing with airplane seats. Once people get on a plane and sit down, they think: ”Now that’s my seat, I’m sitting in it,” Zollman says. ”So then to ask me to give up my seat would require more.” So when airlines offer passengers, say, $800 to give up their seat, that’s going to work a lot better in the airport terminal. If passengers are sitting on the plane, the airline should know it needs to offer a lot more money. Don’t make the offer in such a public way, because nobody wants to be a sucker. Zollman says this is what he’s seen most airlines do when they want people to voluntarily give up their seat: ”They make this big announcement where they say, ’Would anybody be willing to give up your seat for $400?’ ” He says the problem with that is that ”humans are really sensitive to being suckers.” Zollman says some people would be willing to give up their seat for a $400 ticket voucher. But, he says, ”everyone looks around and everyone sees, well, nobody else is doing it, so I must be a sucker if I do it, so I’m not going to do it either.” Analysts say Delta is one airline that has started to ask passengers when they check in whether they’d give up their seat, sometimes asking them how much they would want in exchange. That’s a much better approach, Zollman says. Make better use of technology and start with a big offer. We get text messages telling us if our flight is delayed. So why not send passengers a text saying, ”We are overbooked on your flight reply to this message if you would give up your seat for a $400 flight voucher.” Zollman says that’s a great start. But he says especially when a flight is really overbooked and the airline needs a lot of seats, it could get more passengers in on the game and willing to play if they started with a high offer and worked down from there. He says if the airline texted him and offered $2, 000, he’d say yes if he didn’t really need to get where he was going on time. ”So now I’m engaged in the process,” he says. ”Hopefully I’m gonna win it at $2, 000.” Of course too many people would say yes, so then the airline would offer a lower price. ”So now they’re bumping it down to $1, 500. Well, that’s still pretty good I’ll still take that,” Zollman says. He says by getting people engaged in the process and active from the beginning, ”that would go a long way to getting people to feel like now it’s a competition or a game.” He says it would likely result in the airlines getting more volunteers and fewer people involuntarily bumped from flights. Zollman says using games to get out of sticky standoffs can work in lots of other walks of life, too. He has written a parenting book about how to use game theory with kids. Use the information you get from the game to make better choices about who you bump off a flight.  Another advantage to starting with a high offer is that it would give the airlines a key piece of information. People who won’t even consider a lot of money in exchange for their seat probably really need to get where they’re going. Maybe it’s a job interview or their best friend’s wedding or they’re in a hurry to be with a sick parent who was just admitted to a hospital. Even if the person doesn’t scream and get dragged off the plane bleeding, those are passengers you don’t want to bump if you can help it."
"Beth Herman says she’s praying a lot these days for her brother, who was detained by Turkish authorities last October and has been in prison since December. Andrew Brunson is an evangelical Presbyterian pastor from North Carolina who has lived in Turkey for more than two decades, Herman says, serving as the pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church. ”He’s there because he loves Turkey and the people of Turkey,” Herman says. Brunson, 48, was charged with being part of an armed terrorist group, something Herman and his other supporters say is ”totally false.” The American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington, D. C.  legal organization founded by evangelical minister Pat Robertson, has been helping Brunson’s family raise awareness about the case. CeCe Heil, a lawyer with the organization, believes the pastor may have been caught up in a crackdown following last year’s failed coup attempt in Turkey. ”The only thing we can really just assume has happened is [that after] the failed coup last July, where President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan started sweeping up anyone who might be seen as a threat, that Pastor Brunson was caught up in that,” Heil said. Erdogan wants the U. S. to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a   Turkish cleric whom he blames for the coup attempt, and has been rounding up his followers. The American Center for Law and Justice says there is no connection between Brunson’s church and Gulen. Some have speculated that Brunson’s detention may be an attempt by Turkey to use him as a bargaining chip in securing Gulen’s extradition. Heil says the charges against Brunson are sealed and she has not had access to any Turkish court documents. State Department spokesman Mark Toner says that U. S. consular officials have been able to visit Brunson in prison on a regular basis. ”We have asked Turkish officials to consider releasing Mr. Brunson from custody, subject to whatever judicial conditions or controls that may be appropriate, while his legal case is resolved,” Toner said at a State Department briefing Thursday. ”He’s been in custody for far too long.” Vice President Mike Pence has written to Brunson’s family, saying he has a ”deep personal interest” in the case and describing it as a high priority for the Trump administration. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Brunson’s wife, Norine, in Ankara in March. He also raised Brunson’s case with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who called it a legal case, not a political one. He explained, without elaborating, that it arose because of a complaint from Brunson’s Turkish interpreter. ”It is a not [a] process that the judiciary and the police initiated themselves, but upon a complaint from his own translator,” Cavusoglu said. Herman, Brunson’s sister, calls her brother a peaceful man. ”My whole family and all our friends, many, many friends, have been praying very faithfully for him for a long time,” she says. ”And some of us are also fasting intermittently because we know that God is with him and God loves him.”"
"Young black and Latino men are more likely than any other group to be the victims of violent crime, but American society has devoted too few resources to helping these young men heal after their violent encounters, according to researchers with New York City’s Vera Institute of Justice. The nonprofit, which works to improve justice systems around the country, is embarking on an ambitious   study to figure out the best ways to help young black and Latino men heal after violent events. To reach as many young men of color as possible, Vera’s Center on Youth Justice is using an unusual corps of researchers: the young men themselves. The Institute is currently interviewing young men of color, age 18 to 24, from neighborhoods across the city to form an   research team that will spend the next year conducting 150 interviews with other young men of color, age 18 to 24. The research team will even be involved in analyzing the data so the Vera Institute can publish the findings. Ryan Shanahan, research director at the Center on Youth Justice, welcomes the initiative. ”What we understand to be true from the research is that young men of color  —   black men  —   are at heightened risk for being victims of violence, especially robbery and physical assault,” said Shanahan. ”They are disproportionately exposed to violence and the negative consequences associated with victimization. But we don’t have a lot of research about how they react to that and how they get help,” she said. This information is especially important for service and healthcare providers who work with victims of violence, she said. ”Without them knowing how to address the wants and needs of young men of color who have experienced harm, they are not going to be able to meet those needs for this population.” Among   to 24   homicide is the leading cause of death for   and the second leading cause of death for Hispanics, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Of the 4, 300 young people in the U. S. ages 10 to 24 who were victims of homicide in 2014 (an average of 12 a day) 86 percent (3, 703) were male and 14 percent (597) were female. Shanahan said if the young men who are victims of violent encounters are given the help that will allow them to heal from trauma, the researchers believe those young men will become less likely to commit acts of violence themselves. The working hypothesis is that the cycle of violence happens because hurt people hurt other people because they never heal, according to Shanahan. ”And that perpetuates the cycle of violence in certain neighborhoods that are already under the weight of systematic oppression around racism, that don’t have as many recourses as other communities and that are being  .” Saadiq Bey, a research associate at the Center, said the   research team, which is currently being formed, will come from all five boroughs in New York with a variety of educational backgrounds and encounters with violence themselves. Other New York City organizations have previously undertaken similar studies. Make It Happen, a   program that is part of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, conducted its own study in 2012 to see how young men of color respond to traumatic incidents. The study grew out of the program’s mission, which is to help young men between the ages of 16 and 24 who have experienced violence develop the tools to overcome traumatic incidents. The study found that this population relied heavily on their peers to help them process trauma, according to Kenton Kirby, director of Make It Happen. ”The challenge is a lot of the young men they’re going to are also experiencing trauma themselves,” said Kirby, a licensed social worker who has run the program for three years. ”So you have this disconnect of what does the help or support look like when so many of the young men are experiencing traumatic incidents.” He said that he and his staff are aware that traditional health services ”have been oppressive to communities of color.” Therefore, ”We approach the work we do with young men from that lens, understanding that it’s really important for us to build trust,” he said. Kirby said when his team is working with young men, the discussions often revolve around the question of how they define masculinity, which can get in the way of the healing process. ”Think about the messages they’re getting from a young age. When you’re learning how to walk and you fall, and you look like you’re going to cry, most likely you hear from the people around you, ’Boy, don’t cry. Get up, don’t cry,’” Kirby said. ”So that’s the first introduction to how you’re supposed to have the emotional experience. It’s either don’t cry or you lash out. When there are actually so many more layers to that. So these other emotions are viewed as weaknesses. People around us have been socialized to view us this way. Then add to it that many of them are living in communities below the poverty line. All of these layered issues get in the way of having that emotional experience they need to have.” Kirby said society’s perceptions of black men keep them from getting the help they need. ”Historically, the narrative that’s been out there for many years has been the scary black man, the angry black man, the man in the alley. That he doesn’t have an emotional life,” Kirby said. ”That needs to change.” One study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that the stereotype of black men as threatening is so ingrained in the consciousness of white people that they react to a black male face with the same level of alarm that they react to spiders and snakes. Growing up in New York City in the 1980’s and 90’s when the city was at the height of a crime wave, Kirby, who is 36 and   said he had numerous violent encounters. ”I got jumped so many times!” he said. ”I actually have a client who was jumped and it triggered in me, ’Oh my God, that’s my experience.’ My physical reaction in that moment allowed me to connect with him. I was able to validate his experience with my own experience. As a clinician you don’t usually disclose, but in that moment to disclose benefited the client.” Vera Institute received a $550, 000 grant from the National Institute of Justice, part of the Department of Justice, during the Obama administration to study how young men of color are affected by violence. Shanahan said she believes they were chosen because of their unique idea to use the young men as the researchers. She said the   goal of the study is to give teenagers and their communities the tools to support victims of violence without the use of the criminal justice system, which she said ”doesn’t do a great job of either holding people totally accountable or allowing victims to heal.” Nick Chiles is a Pulitzer   journalist and   New York Times bestselling author. Follow him @nickwrite."
"F. Scott Fitzgerald’s beloved American novel The Great Gatsby is about the messiness of chasing the American dream. But author Stephanie Powell Watts says something about the book left her unsatisfied. ”I loved it when I was a kid and read it for the first time. . .. But subsequent readings, I felt like I’m seeing other things. I’m seeing all of these black characters  —   never thought about them before. I’m seeing the women and the tiny, tiny roles that they have in the book, and I want them to speak. I want to hear what they have to say.” According to Watts, the only way to do that was to ”make them say it,” so she wrote her own novel. No One Is Coming to Save Us isn’t exactly a retelling of The Great Gatsby instead, Watts uses some of the same themes to tell a story about black characters in a declining furniture town in   North Carolina. Her   for Jay Gatsby is JJ Ferguson, a man who returns home wealthy after 17 years away. On how much her book relates to The Great Gatsby, The kernel, the seed of the book is very much in the spirit of Gatsby: the idea that someone returns to a place that is home for him, or he’s hoping is home for him, and he comes back and he is hoping to live out a fantasy life that he’s dreamed about for some time. And so that kernel to me is what my book is about, or is at least a starting place for my book. But it goes in different directions from there. On JJ’s belief that you never get over being poor, This is actually something that my father says: ”Poor people never get over it.” He is quoting from my father . .. [who] says it from experience. And I don’t think that you do. I mean, I’m many years from the time when I was worried that my car might not make it somewhere, or something like that, but I still remember the sting of that. I still remember the tears at the back of my throat from that, you know. And I think it’s very, very difficult to get over it. And I think that that’s what Jay Gatsby has experienced, and I think that’s what a lot of my characters experienced, too. On deciding to make so many of her central characters women, When you read Gatsby, or maybe even shortly afterwards, didn’t you want to know about Daisy? I mean, she’s so flighty and she seems so ridiculous, there has to be something in there that’s making her make this tremendous move in her life. Or Myrtle  —   I mean, she’s so much like Jay Gatsby, you know: She’s such a striver she’s trying so hard to you know ”better herself” she’s trying so hard to be in another class. And so those kinds of questions made me think about, ”Well, what about these women here?” I want to talk about the ones that are like my mother and like my grandmothers, who are striving and trying to figure out the world with not a whole lot of resources in all kinds of ways, but who want better for themselves and for their children. And so I’m really drawn to those characters that don’t get their say. On writing: ”Children need old people. . .. Old people can tell us what they know about the past. . .. Thank God the old tell it slant so the jagged edges don’t kill the babies.” There are a number of stories that I feel like we’re told in particular ways. My grandfather used to tell a story about being beaten up as he was walking home. And two white men stopped him on the road and called him the   and said that they would get out of their truck and beat him up. . .. He’s telling the story to the family and this story is so horrible, but he’s laughing about it. He’s telling, you know, he said, ”No, I don’t think you’ll get out of that truck.” And, you know, his hands are on his hips. And he says they do get out of the truck and they beat him up. And for a long time I could not see that story as a triumphant story because I could just see him there on the ground having been beaten. But he changed the story and he became heroic in the story, and his telling of it and just the fact of his telling of it made it a triumph. And he’s laughing at them  —   they’re the boobs in the story, they’re the ones who couldn’t figure things out. For a long time I did not get and I couldn’t find any humor or any triumph in it, but I have now. He did, he did win. He did get the best of that story. And it’s a hard story, but it’s one I’m really glad I have. On whether she ever finds herself sanding down the jagged edges of her own stories, Oh yes. I was telling a story to my son and we were coloring together  —   this was about crayons. And I told him that when I was a kid I so wanted this box of crayons, the 64 crayons. They were so beautiful, such exotic, wonderful names and I really wanted them but I didn’t get them. We couldn’t afford them. Later on in the day, when I thought he’d forgotten all about it, he brings me 64 of his own crayons and he says, ”Mama, I have 64 crayons for you.” I was blown away by it. It was so touching to me, but also that he wanted to make that story right for me. He wanted to make that good, and he could do it. It was in his power to do it and he did. And so now when I think about that story that might have been a story about poverty or might have been a story about deprivation, it’s now a story about my lovely sweet son and that story is right beside the other story. But I’m nervous about it. You know, I don’t want to tell him so much that it wounds him or that he feels responsible for my pain. So it’s a real balance that I’m kind of doing all the time. Radio producer Sam Gringlas, radio editor Ed McNulty and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"Many people are drawn to Emily Dickinson because of her mysterious life  —   the brilliant poet rarely left her family home in Amherst, Mass. and her work wasn’t recognized until after her death. But British film director Terence Davies says it was her poetry, more than her personal life, that drew him in. Davies discovered Dickinson on television. An actress was reading one of her poems and afterwards Davies immediately ran out to buy one of her collections. ”What moves me about all the poems I’ve read is everything is distilled down to the bare essential,” Davies explains. ”But it’s the very reticence of that that makes it desperately, desperately moving.” His new film, A Quiet Passion, stars Cynthia Nixon as Dickinson. The movie creates an image of a complicated woman whose poetry is steeped in pain. In the film Davies uses Dickinson’s poetry as a kind of commentary on her life. In the opening scene, Dickinson is severely chastised by the headmistress of her school because she refuses to say she wants to be Christian. Dickinson is dismissed as a ”no hoper.” As the scene ends she stands alone by a window as Nixon reads one of her poems: For each ecstatic instantWe must an anguish payIn keen and quivering ratioTo the ecstasy. For each beloved hourSharp pittances of years, Bitter contested farthingsAnd coffers heaped with tears. Much of A Quiet Passion focuses on Dickinson’s spiritual struggles. Davies says he identified with her because he also went through a spiritual crisis in his youth. ”From 15 to 22 there was seven years of doubt and I really, really prayed for God to reveal himself, and of course he didn’t,” he recalls. ”So I know what that is like. Faced with mortality, what do we do with this thing we call the soul?” In the film, Dickinson’s refusal to compromise her beliefs often puts her at odds with the conservative religious beliefs of her family and friends. In one scene, she refuses to kneel when a visiting minister leads her family in prayer. Her disobedience infuriates her father. ”My soul is my own,” she tells him. ”Your soul is God’s!” he replies. Dickinson has a few close relationships but is heartbroken when friends leave her. The only man she is attracted to is already married. He appreciates her poetry but few others do. She withdraws into her family home, sheltering herself from a world she doesn’t really understand. ”To interpret the world you have to be an observer of it,” Davies says. ”What being an observer does, it puts you on the outside of life. You’re never really part of it and life seems almost incomprehensible. How do other people manage their way through the world?” Dickinson’s reclusive life has been always been a source of fascination for artists. ”There’s a kind of mystery around Dickinson and where mystery is, stories bloom,” says Brenda Wineapple, author of White Heat, about Dickinson’s friendship with a   abolitionist. Wineapple sees Dickinson as a strong, witty woman who did have lasting friendships. She says Davies has created a Dickinson whose radical life choices cost her a great deal. ”Over time she becomes caustic and angry and disappointed, which is not necessarily how people, particularly in the recent past, have imagined Emily Dickinson,” Wineapple says. But Davies says of course Dickinson was angry  —   she wanted to be loved and she wanted her work recognized even though she chose to live as a recluse. ”In the end that haven becomes a prison,” he says. ”It’s sort of an emotional prison she can’t get away from. That’s very sad and very hard to bear, I think.” A Quiet Passion ends with Dickinson’s death, before the hundreds of poems that would make her famous, were discovered."
"”A sheltered life can be daring too,” the Southern writer Eudora Welty wrote in her 1984 memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings. Writing about what and whom she saw around her, Welty enjoyed robust literary fame without ever marrying or moving out of her parents’ house in Jackson, Mississippi. A century earlier, Emily Dickinson also remained single and stayed home, where she wrote some 1800 poems that  —   stranded between hope and despair of getting published  —   she stitched together into booklets. A few of her formally precocious modernist verses made it into the local Massachusetts press, but Dickinson’s lasting fame as a   American poet was posthumous. The illness and anguish that plagued her last years, until her death in 1886 at the age of 56, helped cement her reputation as a   difficult, neurotic spinster and, to some, an object of pity as a casualty of her puritanical time and place. Now comes British director Terence Davies, with a magnificently volatile Cynthia Nixon in tow, to set the record as straight as he sees it. A longtime fan of Dickinson (he can be heard reading one of her poems in his 2008 Of Time and the City) Davies sets out less to undo than to deeply complicate glib views of the poet as a depressive, downtrodden hermit with little interest in the world outside her perch in the country town of Amherst, Massachusetts. He succeeds brilliantly: No one would call Nixon’s Emily Dickinson a happy camper, but this is a riot grrl for her time, taking charge of her destiny and, in her tortured, compulsively honest way, her soul. For starters, Davies’ Dickinson could be a total gas given the right company  —   or the right adversary on whom to sharpen her wit. When first we meet her as a student played by Emma Bell, she’s a lively,   wench giving rebellious lip to an austere teacher who’s trying to bend her lone ” ” to the evangelical will. Her family rides to the rescue, and from then on she stays close to home, and then only at home, and finally only in her room, clad all in white and trading barbs with frustrated visitors from the safety of a doorway. Dickinson struggled all her life with organized religion and with her sternly Puritan father (Keith Carradine, if you please, with fire and brimstone flying out of his eyes). There is family conflict to burn, and in less imaginative hands than Davies’ this might make for a rote tale of domestic dysfunction. As devout Protestants go, though, the Dickinsons before us are lively, cultured free thinkers who provide the acknowledged family genius with the space and time to write (three a. m. till dawn) endless patience for her   and devoted care from her   sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle) when she fell prey to excruciating pain and hovering  . Intelligently feminist without ever shouting, A Quiet Passion gives us a poet who, physically but not intellectually isolated, is an avid reader of fellow   women writers George Eliot, the Brontes and ”even, heaven save us, Mrs. Gaskell also.” Dickinson rejoices in her feisty friend Miss Buffam (Catherine Bailey) and, above all, her    and most ardent supporter Susan (Jodhi May) even as she worships her depressive invalid mother (Joanna Bacon). She longs for a lover and a normal life, crushes on more than one male mentor, yet rejects marriage and chooses seclusion as artistic necessity. Davies comes to Dickinson as a fanboy, and more. A Quiet Passion is a low bow before an artist he has fashioned into a kind of mirror image of himself. Filmmaker and subject are a match made in heaven that, cohabiting in Davies’ delirious head, gives histrionic a good name. Both have spun gold out of stifling habitats  —   his an impoverished working class childhood in a Northern England industrial city, hers a hidebound small town in Massachusetts  —   that turned them inward, and gestated rich inner lives they turned into quiveringly sensitive experiments with form. Making a movie about someone who doesn’t get out much poses a special kind of challenge, but Davies has turned the Dickinson house into a schizoid place of opulent magic, now a dark, shadowy prison, now a gracefully lit, golden haven where Emily can retreat into her imagination. The insistently performative line readings, sprinkled with Nixon reciting Dickinson’s poetry, underscore the rigid formality of their surroundings, yet feel entirely organic to a community defined more by word and idea than by action. Known for her crisp edge in Sex and The City, Nixon gives off all manner of edges in A Quiet Passion. With her red hair scraped back into a tight bun and blue eyes sparkling with wit, glittering with rage or finally heavy with grief and pain, Nixon expertly runs up and down the emotional register, giving us an Emily in transition from playful, waggish, kind, loyal and busily social young woman to the angry,   critical, desperately ill yet always productive writer who, in her conflicted way, chooses to retreat from marriage, sexual love and children in her thirties in order to pursue her life’s work. Davies stops short of the family feuds over publication of Dickinson’s work that erupted after her death. We’ll never know whether his Emily might have savored the irony of having her work edited and published by her brother’s lover, Mabel Todd (Noemie Schellens) whom she had savaged for hurting her beloved Susan. By the time we bid farewell to Dickinson she is, by her own   admission, a bitter woman, dismissive of herself and others, at times vituperative and sour, incandescent with rage and coruscating wit  —   and also seething with the fevered energy that spurred her enormous, adventurous output. A sheltered life, and daring too."
"Clyde and Gracie Lawrence are not your typical    pair. For one thing, they’re in a band together: As Lawrence, they’ve toured across the country performing soulful pop songs. Though the two have been playing music together since they were toddlers, they say it was their more recent experience on the road that made them appreciate their relationship to home. ”We’re such homebodies and I get homesick constantly,” Gracie Lawrence says. ”So I think now I can appreciate how much affection we really have for our family and our home.” ”Home is a huge part of who we are,” her brother Clyde agrees. ”The question of how fluid of a concept home is something that . .. I’m constantly thinking about, and that is being tested all the time. . .. [Touring] redefines my sense of home in that I’m with family and I’m with my closest friends.” Hear the Lawrence siblings share more stories about life on the road and the songs on their Eric   debut, Breakfast, at the audio link. Radio producer Christina Cala produced the broadcast version of this story."
"Dan Rooney, who steered the Pittsburgh Steelers for decades and helped spearhead the NFL’s efforts at diverse hiring, has died at the age of 84. The team announced his death Thursday. ”Few men have contributed as much to the National Football League as Dan Rooney,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. ”A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he was one of the finest men in the history of our game and it was a privilege to work alongside him for so many years.” For decades Rooney took the team his father founded and guided it to the very heights of the NFL, winning a   six Super Bowls. The Steelers most recently won it all in 2009. But, just as the Steelers were not born a powerhouse, Rooney himself didn’t begin his career with the team at the top of the franchise. ”My father [Art] would take me to the training camp  —   and I went to the training camp before I was 5 years old,” Rooney once recalled. ”And he was not a doting father, that he was going to watch me. He would let the players take care of me.” He would take his homework on team trips as a child, and USA Today notes that his first official job with the team was water boy. He eventually took over    operations for the franchise in 1975, holding onto them  —   first with his father, then on his own  —   for nearly three decades until he passed them on to his own son, Arthur Rooney II, in 2003. But he remained a constant presence with the club long after that. ”When we first met in 2010 you embraced me with open arms,” Steelers’ star wide receiver Antonio Brown said in a note dedicated to Rooney on Instagram. ”You made me feel welcome. You looked at me as more than just another jersey number. One of the most genuine, and humble human beings I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.” Yet, as the Pittsburgh   reports, Rooney left a mark not simply on the Steelers but on the league as a whole, as well. ”He fought to give more opportunities for minority coaches to ascend in the NFL,” the paper writes, ”an effort that prompted the adoption of what is known as the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority coach in the process of hiring a head coach.” And ultimately, for Rooney, it was about opening doors for people of skill  —   of all races  —   to further the game that he loved. ”We are not here today to celebrate statistics,” Rooney said on the day he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame. ”We are here to celebrate excellence and the accomplishment of people reaching a level, collectively, to be the best they could be: Men of character helping each other to reach the heights of human achievement.”"
"In San Francisco, parking isn’t easy. When Echo Rowe moved here from Seattle in 2012, she had to move her Ford Ranger every couple of days to avoid street sweeping. It was hard to keep track of, and she started getting multiple tickets every month. On one Sunday night, she says, she left work just to take a break and move her car. But when she got to the space, she realized her truck had been towed. She’d racked up over $2, 000 in parking tickets. At the time, she was making a little over minimum wage, and she couldn’t afford to pay off the tickets or get the car out of impound. The towing company eventually sold it off. Years later, she still owes $1, 600 to the city. ”I don’t see myself really paying them until I have like a normal   job with benefits,” she says. ”But right now, I do three   jobs.” This punishment seems too severe to the city of San Francisco and its treasurer. So they’ve established the new Financial Justice Project to look for ways to make smaller fines more fair to poorer residents. ”We find that the practice is often    —   it can dig people into financial holes that they can’t get out of  —   and low gain. Less revenue is brought in than is anticipated,” says Anne Stuhldreher, who directs the project. She points to a similar situation that got national attention in Ferguson, Mo. In 2015, the U. S. Justice Department released a report saying that police there were focusing less on public safety and more on fining citizens for ”things like having your grass too high in your yard, driving with a broken tail light,” she says. ”And oftentimes people couldn’t pay it,” she says. ”Unfortunately, what we learned is that . .. this is a national problem.” It’s a problem that Stuhldreher thinks needs regional solutions. A municipal ticket costing a few hundred dollars hits a day care worker a lot harder than a doctor. One possibility her office is considering is looking at how much someone makes in a day and charging fines based on a percentage of that. This is already done in parts of Europe and was even attempted 30 years ago in the U. S. Judith Greene created those programs in parts of New York and Arizona. ”More people paid in full,” she says. ”And the court system actually ended up collecting more money.” Greene runs a criminal justice reform nonprofit called Justice Strategies. Programs from the 1980s didn’t last because of     attitudes, but Greene thinks now there’s renewed support in places that are focusing on financial justice. ”And now of course, public opinion has shifted and crime is down, and so its time may have come round again,” she says. And San Francisco is in a good position to tackle this it’s a   city with a lot of economic inequality. But Stuhldreher worries that other municipalities might not have the same momentum. ”We know that the research tells us that when budget times are tough  —   that’s a lot of times when governments increase fines and fees,” she says. Stuhldreher is concerned that with looming cuts to federal grants under the Trump administration, cities may be eyeing fines as an easy way to bring in money. Jeremy Dalmas is a reporter with NPR member station KALW. You can follow him @JeremyDalmas."
"Canada has taken a major step toward legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government introduced legislation that would allow adults to possess, share and purchase marijuana, while also strengthening penalties for those who give or sell the products to youth. This law has been hotly anticipated, with pot producers and the medical community watching closely. It makes Canada ”the largest federal jurisdiction in the world to legalize cannabis consumption,” according to The Toronto Star. Here’s what the Cannabis Act would allow for adults 18 or over to do legally, according to Health Canada: Provinces and territories would make their own decisions regarding the distribution and sale of marijuana, Health Canada says. Currently, ”processing and selling cannabis for   purposes” is against Canadian law in all parts of the country. In fact, the Department of Justice says that ”more than half of all drug offences reported by police are for cannabis possession,” and it had indicated that it was considering pardons for some of the people with cannabis offenses on their criminal records. Health Canada states that Canada ”has the highest rates of youth cannabis use of any country in the world.” The proposed Cannabis Act introduces penalties for two new criminal offenses: ”Giving or selling cannabis to youth” and ”using youth to commit a   offense.” Trudeau said during his campaign that he intended to legalize marijuana, and the government opened up the idea to 60 days of public comment last year. Now, Reuters reports that the bill will likely have a smooth ride to become law. ”The legislation will be reviewed in Parliamentary committees, where alterations could be made,” the wire service says. ”But it is ultimately all but guaranteed to pass, as the Liberals have a majority in the House of Commons.”"
"Easter is associated with     buns and chocolatey eggs  —   foods that symbolize rebirth and renewal. But what about Judas cake? Or Judas beer? Or Judas bread? Judas Iscariot, the archvillain of Christianity who betrayed Jesus with a kiss, has an intriguing range of food and drink named after him  —   some traditionally consumed in the days leading up to Easter. Some of Judas’ namesake foodstuffs, like the Judas fig, were so christened thanks to dark medieval depictions, while others, like the fiery Judas ketchup and the ultrastrong Judas ale, have more playful contemporary roots. What binds them, though, is their association with blood and death and treachery. ”Judas is mentioned 22 times across the four Gospels, but the only parts where he plays a key role are the Last Supper and at the Garden of Gethsemane, where he betrays Christ,” says Peter Stanford, author of Judas: The Most Hated Name in History. ”Judas’ name has become easy shorthand for treachery. Take, for instance, the Judas Blond, a popular Belgian beer which my publishers gave me when the book was published. It looks very pale and weak, but it’s actually quite strong, so it’s treacherously hiding its strength.” In his book, Stanford, who is British, points to the popular English Easter confection called simnel cake (from the Latin for ”fine flour”) which is sometimes referred to as Judas cake. ”It’s a delicious fruit cake with layers of marzipan, and it dates back to the 13th century,” he says. ”In the Victorian era, it was decorated with a circle of 11 marzipan balls to represent the apostles, sans Judas, of course. There was a double space left blank where the Judas ball is meant to be.” In recent years, bakers who feel that Judas has been punished enough have begun to boldly place a 12th ball on their simnel cakes. This act has opened them to charges of moral equivalence. But Stanford, who feels Judas has gotten a raw deal, is all approval. ”If you read Matthew’s Gospel  —   and Matthew is the only one who gives us the detail of the 30 pieces of silver  —   he shows Judas feeling remorseful and going back to the temple to give the money back to the high priests,” Stanford says. ”He wants to make atonement, and he is so   that he hangs himself. So he has paid his dues. On a theological level, too, if you believe God is   and that he sent his son to earth to be killed as part of a divine plan, the fact that Judas betrayed Jesus, unpleasant as it might be, is simply Judas doing God’s work. So, yes, he deserves his marzipan ball.” Others would agree. A few years ago, Peter’s Europa House, an upscale restaurant in Shohola, Pa. introduced an   menu with dishes named after the 12 apostles. Along with Matthew’s Mozzarella, Bartholomew’s Surf  Turf and Philip’s Shrimp Cocktail, it has offered patrons a Judas Casserole and Judas’ Chicken. ”I included Judas because he was one of the apostles,” says owner Peter Jajcay. ”My personal belief is that he was one of the strongest apostles, which is why I didn’t want to leave him out. To be able to betray Jesus you have to be very strong. And, no, I’ve never had any negative feedback from my customers.” The story of Judas’ hanging spawned a pretty Czech Easter bun called the Judas rope. These plaited buns  —   called Jidáše in the plural  —   are made with flour, butter, milk and egg yolks, and are traditionally served along with honey for breakfast on Maundy Thursday to commemorate the Last Supper. Even legends about the tree that Judas hanged himself from have become a rich source of Judas namesakes, especially since accounts vary wildly about what kind of tree it was. ”According to one popular European invention, it was the fig tree,” says Stanford. ”Renaissance paintings of the Last Supper have a standard array of symbolic fruit, such as pomegranates, whose seeds recall the Resurrection cherries, whose redness mark the blood of Christ that will soon be spilt and the Judas fig, a foretaste of the traitor’s death.” But another legend has it that Judas hanged himself from an elder tree. Which is why a rubbery,     fungus that grows profusely on the live and dead branches of the elder is known as Judas’ Ear. ”It’s supposed to be a manifestation of Judas’ unquiet spirit,” says Stanford. Cold and soft, it even has the texture of a human ear. And though it sounds unappealing, it tastes delicious in   noodle soup and pad thai. For wine lovers, there’s the Judas Malbec, a rich, ripe and potent red from Mendoza, Argentina, and the mildly fizzy Sangue di Giuda, which translates as ”Blood of Judas,” from Italy’s Lombardy region. From a rubbery fungus to an ale that ”may tempt you to evil deeds,” foods named after Judas resonate with the dark characteristics of their namesake. ”Christianity tends to paint the world in black and white terms, so we shuffle all the bad things onto Judas,” says Stanford. ”And though we live in a time where conventional religious belief is fading  —   many people, for instance, might not be able to tell you the whole Easter story  —   when it comes to Judas, there’s no confusion. In football, when a player changes teams for a higher fee and appears on the field, there are chants of ’Judas, Judas.’ When Bob Dylan was called Judas by a fan for abandoning his acoustic guitar for an electric one and thereby betraying folk music, he was absolutely furious. Forty years on, he was still furious about it. He may have overreacted, but it shows that Judas still has the power to wound.” Just ask Paul Hollywood, a judge on The Great British Bake Off (also known as The Great British Baking Show in the U. S.). Last year, when the BBC lost the beloved baking program to its rival, Channel 4, judge Mary Berry and the two     hosts, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, quit out of loyalty to the BBC. But Hollywood chose to stay on. Irate fans labeled him a Judas and accused him of chasing the dough rather than sticking with his mates. It should be noted that despite these angry charges, Hollywood’s recipe for simnel cake still calls for only 11 marzipan balls."
"Gustavo Falcon’s arrest Wednesday was more than a   in coming. He was indicted on   charges nearly 26 years ago to the day  —   along with his brother Augusto ”Willie” Falcon, their partner Salvador ”Sal” Magluta and several other accomplices. Authorities say that between the late 1970s and early ’90s, their drug ring conspired to import and distribute about 75 tons of cocaine. Though Willie and Sal were eventually caught and convicted, Gustavo Falcon appeared to disappear entirely from South Florida. ”Nobody thought he was in the United States,” U. S. Marshals Service spokesman Barry Golden said Wednesday, according to the Miami Herald for years, law enforcement believed they had lost Falcon to Colombia or Mexico. That is, until last month, when officers discovered he’d been living in the Orlando area under an assumed identity for nearly two decades, together with his wife and two children. It would be another several weeks of watching Falcon’s rental property in suburban Kissimmee before marshals felt comfortable enough to move on him  —   and even then, officers had to wait and watch while Falcon and his wife embarked on a   bike ride Wednesday. They finally stopped and arrested the pair at an intersection. ”We caught a break,” Golden told CNN. ”It was a lot of hard work, and some luck, and it paid off.” The Herald breaks down some of the history behind the apprehension: ”Willie and Sal, known as ’The Boys’ since dropping out of Miami Senior High School, were recognized as kingpins among the legendary Cocaine Cowboys who turned South Florida into a deadly hub of drug trafficking in the 1980s. The partners, who grew up in Miami’s   community, used their   speedboats to haul Colombian cocaine from the Caribbean to the shores of South Florida.” Gustavo Falcon’s brother and associates were taken in long before he was  —   but that’s not to say the going was smooth for police or prosecutors. Both Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta earned acquittals in 1996, but as it soon came to light, those acquittals were actually purchased by bribing at least one juror and threatening witnesses. The two men were eventually convicted after a retrial. And while Magluta was sentenced to roughly 200 years in prison, the Herald reports that Willie Falcon’s 2003 plea deal means he’s on track to be released from prison this summer. Gustavo Falcon is expected to appear at a hearing Thursday in Orlando, according to The Associated Press, before he’s likely sent to Miami for further legal proceedings. In the meantime, Golden and his fellow marshals are marking the end to a chase that spanned decades. ”He was the last of the Cocaine Cowboys,” Golden said."
"Sasheer Zamata clearly remembers the feeling she got when she did   for the first time: ”I went to an open mic by myself, didn’t tell anybody,” Zamata says. ”I came offstage and . .. was like, ’This is my life forever! I can do this forever now!’ ” Zamata is now an SNL cast member, and before that, did improv with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade. She has her own   special, Pizza Mind, which is available on NBC’s comedy streaming site Seeso. She also appears in the film Deidra  Laney Rob a Train, which just premiered on Netflix, and the film Sleight, which will be released later in April. Looking back, Zamata says her path from beginner to working comic happened in the best possible way: ”I just followed the fun. I just followed the things I was really interested in, and it turned out to be what I needed to do.” On pursing comedy as a career  The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater has a touring company and they go to colleges and a group came to my college at UVA [University of Virginia] and there was a talk back . .. and someone asked how you get a career in comedy, and Bobby Moynihan, who happened to be in the group said, ”Move to New York, go to UCB, and work really hard.” So I did that. When I moved to New York I didn’t know how much improv and comedy would play into my life. I thought I was going to do theater and Broadway and stuff. But I kept going to see UCB shows and was such a fan I was like, ”I should really just try this.” [I] dove in hard, starting taking classes    started taking sketch classes, and started doing   all at the same time, and then eventually I was like, ”Oh this is all I want to do.” . .. Eventually my mangers and agents saw me perform and signed me and then I started getting money for it and . .. it turned into my career. On getting hired after a public controversy about how few black women have been on SNL, It was mostly odd because it was so public. . .. I had been auditioning for the show for a couple years before this point and then they asked for a rushed showcase of black women in LA and in New York, and I was in the New York one, and then they chose people from those pools and then I found out after the holiday break. This was all in December and yeah, it was very stressful. I didn’t love that it was so public. On a coworker at SNL mixing her up with former Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams, As soon as that person realizes that they have made a mistake that may be construed as ignorant or even racist, the conversation gets so awkward, and they may be a nice person, they may even be my friend, so there’s like a little part of me that’s like, ”No, no, no, no, it’s OK, I don’t want you to feel bad.” . .. Like trying to coddle a scared kitten . .. But then it’s like, no, I don’t have to do that. You should learn. You should just learn from your mistakes. You should feel that emotion. And it feels awkward, and then don’t do it again and actually be conscious of what you’re saying next time. I really am over trying to make sure other people are comfortable in this conversation when they’re making me uncomfortable. It’s not my fault. Radio producers Lauren Krenzel and Heidi Saman and web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"Researchers have found that European eels can sense magnetic fields and may use this ability to navigate thousands of miles through the Atlantic Ocean. Eels have always been mysterious animals. More than 2, 000 years ago, Artistotle proposed that they were born spontaneously from mud. ”I think it’s fascinating because as humans we’ve been pondering the life history of eels for a long time,” says Lewis   a graduate student in marine biology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He’s one of the humans that, all these years later, is still pondering eels. No one has ever seen European or American eels, as these two species are known, spawn or collected their eggs in the wild. But it’s now known that the vast majority of eels in Europe and North America are born in the same place  —   deep in the Atlantic Ocean in a warm spot northeast of Cuba known as the Sargasso Sea. After they’re born, the baby eels make an epic journey, sometimes traveling thousands of miles to their new homes in rivers and lakes from North America to North Africa to Scandinavia. ”It’s pretty crazy,” says   who at the time of the study was at Aberystwyth University in the U. K. He wanted to know how those little eels do it. Other scientists had found that eels can somehow sense the Earth’s magnetic field, an ability dubbed ”magnetoreception” that sounds like something out of the movie  .   wondered if it eels picked up on those magnetic signals to guide their long journey home. To find out, he rounded up about a thousand young European eels (Anguilla anguilla) each about the length of a pinky finger and delicate as noodles. At that stage, they’re called ”glass eels,” because they’re transparent except for a dark spine down the middle. He spent a summer wrangling those baby eels into contraptions he built that imitated the Earth’s magnetic field at three points along the journey from the Sargasso Sea to Europe. The intensity and direction of that field changes with location. All day every day for about a month, he would scoop up batches of 16 eels from a tank, and place each one into the center of a little container. Then, he would turn on a magnetic coil surrounding the containers and let the eels decide where they wanted to go. They could choose between 12 chambers to swim into, like an eel version of a    . As   and his colleagues wrote in the journal Current Biology, they found that overall, the eels did indeed respond to the magnetic fields. And they did so in a way that, had they been in the Atlantic Ocean, would have directed them into the Gulf Stream. ”The eels oriented in a manner that would increase their entrainment into the Gulf Stream system,” says  . When exposed to the field they’d find in the northern   and to the ambient one in Wales, where the experiment took place, they swam in random directions. But when exposed to a magnetic field like the one in the Sargasso Sea, the eels tended to orient themselves southwest. And when exposed to a field like the one they’d encounter in the northwest Atlantic, many eels pointed themselves northeast. Getting into the Gulf Stream isn’t a guaranteed ride to Europe, he says, ”But it certainly increases their chances of eventually finding Europe, and if an eel has a magnetic map and it’s able to detect where it is, then it can adjust accordingly during its migration.” ”What we show here is that they’re able to detect the magnetic field and use that to orient as a magnetic map. They’re able to pick up on these predictable features of the magnetic field in order to gain positional information, kind of analogous to maybe a GPS positioning system,” says   who hopes to study whether adult eels use the same ability to find their way back to the Sargasso Sea years later to spawn. If eels really do navigate this way, then they join a long list of animals including sea turtles, salmon and homing pigeons that rely on what biologist James Gould calls ”innate magnetic coordinates.” Researchers and the military have long been interested in this type of navigation as a potential alternative to navigation systems that rely on satellites. ”The   ’map’ has been found in amphibians, fish, reptiles, birds, and aquatic mammals,” James Gould, a biologist affiliated with Princeton University, told NPR in an email. Some species use additional cues such as odors to supplement the magnetic ones.  ”The use of a grid of total magnetic intensity vs. vertical intensity seems to be evolutionarily quite ancient,” says Gould, who has investigated animal navigation in his own research and in the process of   a book on the topic. What’s particularly interesting about eels, he says, is not necessarily their ability to sense magnetic fields, but how that ability may have affected them over the years. ”Eel migration eons ago was quite short  —   perhaps only a few tens of miles. But as the Atlantic basin has spread, their journey has gotten longer and longer,” Gould says. ”They are trapped in an absurdly long journey by their reliance on this otherwise wonderful ’map.’ ” Now, each year, that magnetic sense launches every young eel on a slithery version of the Odyssey."
"In recent weeks, the stories of missing black and Latina girls sparked an outcry on Twitter and Facebook because there seemed to be a flurry of new cases that were being   by local news in the Washington D. C. area. The uproar prompted black lawmakers in Congress to formally ask the Justice Department to do more to investigate what seemed like a spike in new incidents of missing black girls. (As my colleague Ian Stewart reported, the number of missing persons cases in the city hadn’t gone up, but the police department had more actively publicized the cases on social media, which gave many people the false impression that there was suddenly more of them.) The sense that these cases were being ignored seemed like another example of ”missing white woman syndrome”  —   a phrase coined by Gwen Ifill, the late PBS anchor. It refers to the mainstream media’s seeming fascination with covering missing or endangered white women  —   like Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway  —   and its seeming disinterest in cases involving missing people of color. So what do we know about race and missing persons coverage? Not a whole lot, according to Zach Sommers, a sociologist at Northwestern University who studies crime. He said there’s a pretty sizable body of research that shows that white people are more likely than people of color to appear in news coverage as victims of violent crime, but relatively little when it comes to missing persons cases. It’s to that end that Sommers undertook a study that looked at every missing person case covered by four online media outlets in 2013. He wanted a mix of national and local outlets and news sources for cities from different regions with contrasting demographic profiles. He analyzed coverage in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, the Chicago Tribune and the Atlanta   and included CNN. com, which has an outsized influence on the national conversation. Sommers then   their coverage with the FBI’s national database of missing persons, which he said maps relatively well with the country’s broader demographics. What Sommers found was that white women were much more likely to be the subject of news coverage relative to their proportions among missing persons, and women in general, were significantly more likely than men to be covered. Though white women make up about a third of the national population, ”half of the articles in the data set are just about white females alone,” Sommers said. But he also found that the coverage of missing white women was different in intensity  —   outlets were more likely to repeatedly report on particular stories of missing white women, which then drove up the total number of articles about white women. ”By choosing to disproportionately highlight the experiences of whites and women, these four news websites are implicitly  —   or perhaps explicitly  —   intimating that the cases of those individuals matter more,” Sommers wrote. As an example of how coverage intensity can skew the number of articles about missing persons, Sommers pointed to the   case of three women in Cleveland who were held prisoner by a man in his home’s basement for 10 years. In 2013, about one in four articles in the four outlets Sommer analyzed that were about missing Latinas were about the Cleveland case, specifically. Sommer wondered if race increased the amount of media attention paid to that case as well. ”There were three women involved  —   two of them were white and one of them was Latina,” he said. ”Thinking about how the coverage would have differed if all three of them were women of color. ..we probably would have seen some very different numbers.” There are a few things that are likely happening here. Coverage decisions are informed, consciously and less so, by a newsroom’s racial makeup, and most major American newsrooms remain disproportionately white. But Sommers speculates that there’s also the economic calculus of news coverage to consider: in skewing this type of coverage toward white women, news outlets might be deciding that missing white women are worth more in terms of eyeballs and ad revenue. There are some important caveats to the FBI data that Sommers used. The Bureau’s breakdown of missing persons cases by race is roughly 60 percent white, 35 percent black, and four percent other  —   but it doesn’t disaggregate Latinos from white people, which suggests that the total number of missing white people could be inflated in the data. The FBI data also doesn’t break down race and gender combinations, making it difficult to determine, for example, how many black women might be among missing people relative to white women. But there’s one other big detail Sommers said we don’t know about missing persons coverage: as intuitive as seems, there’s little data to support the notion that media exposure helps resolve such cases. But Sommers said equitable coverage matters even if it’s of    investigative value  —   media attention shapes how and to whom people extend their sympathies. ”I think . .. [conceding] that the people who are most cognitively easy for us to accept as victims are girls and women is problematic on its own,” Sommers said. ”Then we start to think about race in conjunction with that, then the issues start to multiply even further from there.”"
"With her    son’s head resting in her lap, Zubaida was sitting at home with some other women from her village in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state when the military came  —   and the gunfire started. ”All the men from the village started running away, and my son ran with them,” Zubaida, 25, says. He didn’t get far: Myanmar soldiers shot him dead  —   in the back. That evening, the soldiers came back. ”They didn’t say anything,” she says. ”They just came with their guns into my house.” They raped her for almost an hour that time, Zubaida says. Two days later, the military returned and rounded up all the villagers. She says they separated the men from the women, beat the men and raped the women. ”Some tried to resist and got stabbed,” she says. ”That’s why the rest of the women didn’t hesitate, they didn’t want to die.” Zubaida was one of those picked. Her distraught father pleaded with the soldiers: ”Why are you doing this?” ”We are not doing as much to you as we have been ordered to do in Oula Para,” they replied, referring to a nearby village. Both Zubaida’s village, Naiyongsong, and Oula Para are in far west Rakhine near the border with Bangladesh. The villagers in this story have chosen to use pseudonyms to protect family members in Myanmar from possible retribution. The latest crackdown, Zubaida and her neighbors are Rohingya  —   a group the U. N. has described as one of the world’s most persecuted people. The Muslim minority Rohingya have lived in mainly Buddhist Myanmar for centuries. Even so, Myanmar’s government doesn’t consider the Rohingya to be citizens it says they are immigrants from Bangladesh who are living in Myanmar illegally. About 1 million Rohingya live in Rakhine state, and they are almost entirely disenfranchised and need permission, for instance, to travel outside their own villages or to marry. Many are restricted to living in internment camps, segregated from the local Buddhist population. In October, a new Rohingya militant group attacked several border guard posts and killed nearly a dozen policemen. The militants led another series of attacks in November that left a Myanmar army officer dead. The attacks shocked and infuriated Myanmar’s military. And its response has been a brutal form of collective punishment that has not spared villagers, who are accused of aiding and abetting the militants. What followed, witnesses and survivors say, was a campaign of murder, rape and arson. In the past six months, more than 70, 000 Rohingya fled in terror across the border into neighboring Bangladesh  —   a   nation that has provided those who fled with refuge, but not acceptance. This isn’t the first time the Rohingya have made that journey. In the late 1970s and early ’90s, hundreds of thousands fled violence in Myanmar. By some estimates, there are more than 500, 000 Rohingya now living in Bangladesh  —   and more in Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. In Bangladesh, about 35, 000 Rohingya live officially in two camps run by the government in tandem with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Hundreds of thousands more live, unofficially, in squatter camps like Balukali, where Zubaida lives now. Home to some 17, 000 people, Balukali is bleak. Small huts have been scraped out of the hillsides, with blue plastic sheeting for walls and roofs, held together by thin strips of bamboo. The homes sit amid pools of fetid water in a hilly area with little shade and lots of sand. Zubaida’s tiny hut is barely big enough to stand in. At midday, it is stiflingly hot. She recalls how the soldiers burned down a number of houses, as well as the mosque next to her house. After she was raped the second time, Zubaida says, she fled with her     daughter, her parents and a couple of siblings, furtively making their way through the jungle until they reached what they thought was a place of safety near the river. They were wrong. The military came there, too. ”The last rape took place in a school,” Zubaida says. ”The women were separated after the men were taken away,” and then it all began again. She and her family finally made it across the river about a week after starting their journey. Six years earlier, Zubaida’s husband, Mohammad, fled Myanmar by boat for Malaysia. The idea was to earn enough money to bring his family, too. Many others do the same, paying traffickers to make the often harrowing boat journey south to Thailand or Malaysia. But Mohammad’s boat broke down and now he is at a U. N. facility in Indonesia waiting to be processed to a third country. We reached him by phone at that facility in Medan, Indonesia. He was feeling guilty and powerless. ”I keep thinking if I had brought my wife and my son, I would not have lost my son and my wife would not have been raped,” Mohammad says. Now he is stuck in Indonesia, and Zubaida is stuck in Bangladesh. It’s not likely they’ll be reunited anytime soon. Rape as a tool of war, NPR could not independently verify Zubaida’s story, as the Myanmar government has restricted access to northern Rakhine state. But we talked to a dozen other women from other villages whose stories were depressingly similar, as have the U. N. Human Rights Watch and others. These stories suggest the Myanmar military was following a familiar playbook when it launched its ”counterinsurgency” operation in October. ”This is not something that has happened by rogue soldiers . .. a crime that was committed spontaneously,” says Matthew Smith, CEO of the advocacy group Fortify Rights, which focuses on Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia. ”It’s very clear to us at this point that state security forces set out to systematically rape Rohingya women and girls,” he says. Rape as a tool of war is not new: The Myanmar military has used it as a tactic against ethnic women, in particular, in other parts of the country for many years. But what is different about the past six months, he says, is the scale of rape that took place within a relatively short period of time. ”There has been widespread and systematic rape in other ethnic states,” says Smith. ”But there was an outburst of it, and particularly in November, that was unusual even by the Myanmar military’s brutal standards.” The Myanmar military continues to deny the systematic attacks against the Rohingya  —   despite the testimony of dozens of witnesses, satellite photos showing hundreds of homes burned to the ground and disturbing videos uploaded to YouTube that show the military rounding up and beating Rohingya men. The Myanmar government did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment on these stories. The silence of Aung San Suu Kyi, As for Myanmar’s de facto leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has seemed oddly indifferent in her rare public comments on the violence against the Rohingya. In a recent interview with Singapore’s Channel News Asia, Suu Kyi told her interviewer: ”I’m not saying there’s no difficulties. But it helps if people recognize the difficulties and focus on resolving instead of exaggerating them so that everything seems worse than it really is.” And last week, she denied that the military’s action against the Rohingya amounted to ethnic cleansing. ”I don’t think there is ethnic cleansing going on. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening,” Suu Kyi told the BBC. ”It is not just a matter of ethnic cleansing as you put it  —   it is a matter of people on different sides of the divide, and this divide we are trying to close up.” If this sounds odd coming from a Nobel laureate and onetime human rights champion, it shouldn’t. The general’s daughter has described herself as a politician long before she was a human rights champion. And in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, speaking out for the rights of a   Muslim minority doesn’t win votes. But there’s another explanation, too: Suu Kyi has no control over the military. The country’s Constitution cements the military’s role and power indefinitely. Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights accepts this, but what he doesn’t accept is what Suu Kyi could have done but hasn’t. ”We’ve seen terrible language coming out of   media referring to Rohingya as ’thorns that need to be removed’ and referring to Rohingya as ’human fleas,’ ” says Smith. ”This is a shameful discourse that she has failed to change.” Last month, the U. N.’s Human Rights Council said it would send a team to Myanmar to investigate the allegations of atrocities. Myanmar’s ambassador to the U. N. in Geneva, U Htin Lynn, called the resolution ”not acceptable.” That response and Suu Kyi’s recent denials don’t surprise Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. ”She’s claiming that there is no ethnic cleansing in this area,” says Robertson. ”Our response to her would be that if there wasn’t such a big problem then why not allow the U. N. Human Rights Council   mission into those areas, provide them with unfettered access.” Robertson says it’s time to stop talking. ”It’s time to get the investigators in there and actually do a professional independent investigation and get to the bottom of what happened,” he says. There’s no indication Myanmar’s government will allow the   team into Rakhine state. In the meantime, Myanmar has set up its own commission of inquiry, which is led by Vice President Myint Swe  —   a former army general. With additional reporting by Bangladeshi journalist Muktadir Rashid. "
"President Trump’s budget blueprint is all about ”hard power”  —   increasing the country’s military might by slashing foreign aid. The proposed cuts are in contrast to the dramatic boost to foreign aid under President George W. Bush. Bush dedicated billions to combating   in Africa with a program called PEPFAR that still exists today. So far, it has been spared from cuts. He highlighted the program’s work and that of his   initiative to combat AIDS and cervical cancer during a recent trip to Africa. ”I think the most meaningful moment for me was going to a maternity ward in Namibia,” he told NPR at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. ”Seeing a roomful of ladies, most of whom  —   if not all  —   had the AIDS virus, and every one of their babies was born without AIDS.    transmission efforts of PEPFAR have been unbelievably successful.” Asked what he would say to a mom struggling in the United States and watching money flow to foreign places like Botswana and Namibia, Bush responded: ”Look, we can’t solve every problem. And I would tell the person who’s out of work, hopefully there’s enough aid there to help you transition. But, you know, the idea of turning our back on a pandemic that would’ve wiped out an entire generation of people, I don’t think is in the spirit of the United States.” National security is also at stake, Bush argued. ”When you have an entire generation of people being wiped out and the free world turns its back, it provides a convenient opportunity for people to spread extremism,” he said. He added, ”I believe in this case that it’s in our national security interests as well as in our moral interest to continue funding this program.” Bush also spoke with Morning Edition about immigration and his new compilation of veterans’ portraits. On whether President Trump’s proposed budget cuts to foreign aid are an attack on Bush’s legacy, as former USAID head Andrew Natsios has said, First of all, I’m not real comfortable with ”legacy.” That kind of assumes that I’m doing this in order to protect my own reputation. And that’s the last reason one would take on a humanitarian mission. But I do know that we set priorities in my administration, and one such priority was human life on the continent of Africa. And it surprised people. Of all places, why? And the answer . .. is that, had nothing been done about this pandemic and a whole generation died, which would’ve created enormous instability on the continent of Africa . .. I would’ve been ashamed. On immigration and relations with Mexico, I have been dealing with the immigration issue ever since I was a governor of the state of Texas. I laid out what I thought was a comprehensive plan that would work in an Oval Office address when I was the president. I still think that’s going to be the plan that ends up being adopted at some point in time. . .. There needs to be a way for somebody to be able to get in line to become a citizen so long as they met certain criteria. . .. I think it’s very important for us to recognize the importance of Mexico and the relationship we have with Mexico. We want Mexico to succeed. It’s in our national interest they succeed. On his book, Portraits of Courage, I know these men and women quite well. There is not an ounce of   in their being. They need help. And so the book’s purpose is to call attention to their courage, but also to the need to help them transition from the military life to civilian life. You know, as a matter of fact, getting to know them . .. has been uplifting. And that’s what this book is all about is honoring them."
"Real quick, here’s a list of ingredients you’re unlikely to find in your next Burger King Whopper: Yet for a while Wednesday, those are precisely the ingredients  —   according to Business Insider and The Verge, at least  —   that the   chain’s new commercial accidentally directed viewers to check out. The pitchman in Burger King’s brief advertisement played off that brevity by noting he just didn’t have enough time to list all ”the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich”  —   so instead, he simply pulled the camera near and closed with a question addressed to the viewers’ home devices: ”OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?” The idea was that if the search company’s smart speaker (and possibly future sentient overlord) Google Home happened to be listening nearby, it would then answer the question with a makeshift promo for the burger  —   an explanation of Burger King’s signature item. And there is video proof the stunt indeed worked like a charm . .. . .. for a little while, that is. You see, two problems cropped up pretty quickly. First off, Business Insider notes the ad sent Google Homes directly to Wikipedia, which  —   as high school syllabuses across the country will warn you  —   is not always a reliable source of accurate information. Enterprising trolls all but immediately took to the Whopper page to make some rather clever (if dubious) edits. Hence the toenail clippings. Also, according to Gizmodo, this   description: ”The ’Whopper’ is the worst hamburger product sold by the international   restaurant chain Burger King.” And this one (emphasis ours): ”The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a   patty made with 100%   child with no preservatives or fillers, topped with sliced tomatoes, onions, lettuce, pickles, ketchup, and mayonnaise, served on a   bun.” Soon the company caught wind of the mischief and locked the page with a neutral definition, Gizmodo says. Then there was another problem: The New York Times reports that Burger King didn’t consult Google on the campaign ahead of time. Within hours, the tech company put a stop to the central shtick of the ad, changing its device so that Burger King’s question  —   as it is uttered in the commercial  —   would no longer wake it. The Financial Times explains how the company likely made the tweak: ”What we have learnt about Google Home, at least, is that the internet group does know how to switch off a particular voice trigger when it wants to, probably by checking an audio ’fingerprint’ against a blacklist in the cloud before allowing a response.” This may pose further problems for the commercial, which Business Insider says is running on at least a   channels in several major cities. At any rate, the commercial’s ploy and its deactivation nabbed Burger King some attention and served as a reminder for us all: It might be that eventually the real achievement isn’t the fact our devices talk to one another  —   as they briefly did in this case  —   but rather that we can still get them to shut up at all."
"Syrian President Bashar Assad continues to deny responsibility for a chemical attack in the town of Khan Shaykhun, claiming the attack was ”100 percent . .. fabrication” and video evidence showing choking victims is ”fake.” He told Agence   this week that he wasn’t even confident the dead children shown on video were ”dead at all.” The U. S intelligence community says it is confident that Assad’s forces used the nerve agent sarin against civilians, killing scores of people and numerous children. White House officials say they drew on reports from aid agencies, video evidence, laboratory analysis of samples from victims and classified intelligence to draw that conclusion. Other world powers have also condemned Assad for the April 4 attack  —   although Syrian ally Russia continues to maintain there is insufficient evidence Assad carried out the attack. Syria and Russia have suggested a conventional airstrike by the Syrian army may have hit a depot storing chemical weapons possessed by extremists. Experts tell NPR this explanation does not make sense, based on the nature of the chemicals used. And U. S. analysts say the timeline and strike location suggested by Russia don’t match reports from the ground or satellite imagery. But Assad doubled down on his denials in the interview with AFP, conducted on Wednesday and published on Thursday. He didn’t just point a finger at rebels  —   he suggested it was ”not clear” if the attack happened at all or was entirely manufactured. ”Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is    with the terrorists,” Assad said, according to the wire service. ”They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack.” ”You have a lot of fake videos now,” he said, according to AFP. ”We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhun. Were they dead at all?” In the interview, Assad insisted his regime gave up all its chemical weapons in 2013. You can read the full interview here."
"There’s a passage from Brian Kateman’s   in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month that I’ve been thinking about a lot: ”Just about everyone who reduces consumption of meat, eggs and dairy for ethical reasons wants to see the end of factory farming. Yet we waste time by focusing on things like virtue points and identity shoring, and disputing each other’s visions of the ideal    landscape.” As Kateman notes, vegans, vegetarians, and flexitarians are too often at each other’s throats about how best to reduce animal suffering  —   and increase the health of the planet. One solution, Kateman writes in the   and in the collection The Reducetarian Solution he edited that’s coming out next week, is to adopt a broad identity  —   ”reducetarian”  —   that unites everyone who is choosing to eat less (or no) meat and fewer (or no) animal products. The idea behind the new term, devised in 2014 by Kateman and his friend Tyler Alterman, feels mostly right to me as a strategy for effective collaboration, and for talking with others about the harms of factory farming. (I’ll explain that ”mostly” in a moment.) I’m in the midst of giving public talks in support of my new book Personalities on the Plate, which, as I wrote in Scientific American, lays out evidence for the thinking and feeling capabilities of chickens, pigs, cows, goats, octopus, and fish. Last week, when I traveled to Philadelphia to speak in the Saint Joseph’s University Writing Series, several people in the audience told me that they feel more open to new ideas about eating animals when given the tools to think about the issue, rather than being told there’s one best way to proceed. So my ”on the ground” experience fits well with what Bill McKibben writes in his chapter in The Reducetarian Solution: ”Reducetarianism’s message strikes me as far more effective than moralizing. ...The reducetarian movement meets most people on our planet more or less at their level  —   they enjoy the taste of meat and yet also worry about their planet’s future.” The central ideas of quite a few of the 72 chapters in The Reducetarian Solution  —   each by a different writer and just a few pages long  —   are welcome advertisements for reducetarian thinking. Here are three examples:  —   Graham Hill’s chapter: As in most things, we needn’t think in binaries, as eating meat or eating no meat. If everyone reduced meat consumption by half, that’d be a huge impact. ”Keep your goals realistic, keep moving forward and you will find it just gets easier and easier to eat less meat.”  —   Emma Marris’s chapter: Using the same amount of land, we can feed more people with plants than with animals. In the U. S. for instance, 57 percent of crops go to livestock. And consider this powerful statement: ”Cutting back on meat can be a powerful way of enacting your own belief that other species share a right to continued existence on Earth.”  —   Bee Wilson’s chapter: Let’s stop thinking of ” ” meals, which define our food by what’s absent. ”It is not a case of making do with less but of realizing that, actually, everything doesn’t taste better with bacon”  —   and that ”there is no deprivation” when cooking with delicious plants. On the other hand, as someone who has made a pretty big commitment to eat no meat, only an occasional fish, and to experiment with vegan milks and cheeses, to me some of the chapters seem weirdly watered down for a promotion of ethical eating. In his essay, Dale Peterson calls himself a vegetarian, though he eats fish. Alexa Clay, in hers, writes joyfully about her family’s annual Easter of roasting a lamb on a spit, and says that ”meat consumption is part of the way I connect with people” and is ”part of a sacred occurrence.” At the other end of the spectrum, James McWilliams asks us to probe the legitimacy of eating animals at all. Is it enough to accept slaughter of animals for food if they’re ”from the right kind of farms”? For McWilliams, the answer is no, because ”humane meat” is a myth. McWilliams isn’t alone in this, by the way. Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce make a similar point in their own new book coming out next week, The Animals’ Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age. They write: ”Some of the animals being raised for their flesh may suffer some small percentage less pain and terror and may, in the best of welfarist worlds, even enjoy fleeting moments of joy.” But making animals’ lives somewhat better isn’t remotely the same, Bekoff and Pierce continue on to say, as freeing them from exploitation. The enormous breadth of views gathered in The Reducetarian Solution is clear, even from the few examples I’ve offered here. Via email, I asked Kateman: Doesn’t this broad approach risk alienating everyone  —   people who really are committed to eating little to no meat, and meat products, for whom the bar will definitely be too low? And people who do eat a lot of meat, who won’t take kindly to being told things like there’s no such thing as humane meat? Kateman responded (edited for length): ”It can be challenging to navigate a morally charged topic like meat consumption. At the same time, all of the contributors [to The Reducetarian Solution] agree in some way that reducing societal consumption of animal products  —   no matter the degree or motivation  —   is a step in the right direction. I do want to stress that the tone of the book is intentionally   and   especially where essays explore some of the outcomes that can result from our personal dietary decisions. I also think it’s important that there are many essays that explore why we eat so much meat in the first place and how we can decrease societal consumption of animal products, as this helps readers better understand the complex systems that lie beyond their everyday choices. In other words, this book is really for everyone  —   from committed vegans to curious omnivores.” Here’s where I’m at in my thinking: Far better to reach out, to collaborate about ethical eating, than to try and score virtue points at another’s expense. I want to be part of that approach. At the same time, I want us  —   each of us able to make choices about what we eat  —   to aim as high as we can manage, for the good of our planet and for all the animals on it. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s new book is Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D. C, has many artifacts connected to slavery. For one woman, visiting the museum this week was a literal homecoming. Isabell Meggett Lucas was born and raised in a wooden house in coastal South Carolina. Slaves lived in that house during the 1800s. The Smithsonian bought the structure and moved it plank by plank to the new   museum where it is now on display. NPR’s Ari Shapiro spoke with Meggett Lucas, who is now in her 80s, and her    Emily Meggett, about what it was like to revisit Meggett Lucas’ childhood home. Eleven people lived in the wooden   house that had no running water, no electricity and a   stove. Meggett Lucas says that growing up they didn’t know their house was a slave cabin. ”I guess it was a rough time for [the slaves] because it was rough for us, too,” Meggett Lucas says. ” ’Cause my mother had to work . .. they had nothing to do but farm work, no education. . .. I don’t think that [my parents] ever thought that they lived in a slave cabin. I don’t think that. I think that that was they home, and they felt comfortable there, and they felt happy there.”"
"Throughout the day, New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff jots down ideas that strike him as funny: A door lies on a couch in a psychiatrist’s office, and the psychiatrist says, ”You’re not crazy, you’re just unhinged.” Or, two guys crawling through a desert encounter one of those orange cones that says: ”Caution Wet Floor.” For a man obsessed with humor, Mankoff found the perfect job  —   he’s served for 20 years as the magazine’s cartoon gatekeeper. He’s stepping down from his post in May, but will continue to draw his own cartoons. Mankoff has spent decades thinking about what makes things funny, and has even taught college courses on the subject. Over the years he has edited cartoonists with different styles, but he thinks of his own style as intellectual, drawing heavily on personal experience. ”My targets are either myself, or people like me,” he says. ”I don’t punch down, I don’t punch up, I elbow to the side.” Mankoff’s most famous cartoon shows a man in a suit standing at a desk, with skyscrapers in the window behind him. He’s consulting his calendar and saying into the phone: ”No, Thursday’s out. How about never  —   is never good for you?” On humor being useful, How do we engineer humor so that it is more useful in life? . .. The most important part of it is not entertainment. Jokes are the pornography of humor. The most important part is: It enables us to get along with other people, to cope with difficulties, to diffuse tensions, and just simply to make life in general more enjoyable. And by having a sense of humor, it means we have a perspective on the quotidian, everyday absurdity of it all. . .. Being funny is being awake. On the process of editing a cartoon, It might be something as simple as compressing the words. I will try to suggest other ideas that might be better. For instance, let’s say it’s a hippo and there are two of the little birds on it, and one of the birds is saying: ”We can only see so far because we stand on the shoulders of giants.” That’s a [Isaac] Newton quote. And then I’ll say, you know, that’s just sort of a word gag . .. I think it would be interesting if whatever they’re standing on is very, very small in itself, but they are even smaller. [Or] I’ll say: Oh, that sort of relates to other cartoons we’ve done in which the snail’s on the turtle’s back and one snail is saying: ”Watch out, here we go!” So, it’s partly because I have a background of all these associations. I’m brainstorming a little bit with them and then I’ll edit a word, sometimes I’ll write another caption. On making sure they don’t duplicate cartoons, We check the cartoons against all the New Yorker cartoons that have ever run in the magazine so that we don’t have any duplicates. . .. You can’t drive yourself completely crazy about it. One of the things you realize is pretty much all ideas are variants of similar ideas. And then you have to decide: Is this different enough? On tropes vs. clichés, Life raft survivors, lightbulb ideas, lion and mouse, Little Engine That Could, Little Red Riding Hood, lover hiding in a closet . .. Clichés  —   or, let’s say tropes, that sounds better  —   are the engine in which you make new out of old. I mean, pretty much everything in the culture is something that’s been remixed. . .. Originality is not only overrated, it doesn’t really exist. On what he’d tell young, aspiring cartoonists, STOP. . .. No, no, keep it up! Excuse me, I meant: DON’T stop. You can see more @newyorkercartoons on Facebook and Instagram. Radio producer Sam Gringlas, radio editor Jeffrey Katz and web producer Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"The Trump administration says it will not make public the names of those visiting the White House, reversing the Obama administration’s policy. White House communications director Michael Dubke said in a statement that the decision was due to the ”the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually,” NPR’s Scott Horsley reports. Dubke added that the logs would be disclosed ”as outlined under the Freedom of Information Act.” FOIA does not apply to the president or his immediate staff. Watchdog groups immediately criticized the decision, with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington calling it a ”massive step away from transparency.” ”The only reasonable conclusion is to believe the Trump administration has many things it is trying to hide,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement, also referencing the administration’s relationship with the media. Former President Barack Obama did not pledge to release these records until eight months into his presidency. ”For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis,” Obama stated at the time, calling it a sign of the openness and transparency of his administration. The Washington Post says the Obama White House released the names of ”nearly 6 million lobbyists and other visitors.” At the same time, the Center for Public Integrity has questioned the completeness of the Obama records, as The   reported. And the Post details several exceptions to the policy of releasing names: ”The policy permitted some exceptions to disclosure, including purely private visits to the Obama family, such as friends arriving for sleepovers with the president’s   daughters. The Obama White House also maintained the prerogative not to release records of particularly ’sensitive’ meetings, such as interviews with potential Supreme Court nominees.” It’s worth noting that during Obama’s presidency, Trump questioned his transparency and once wondered whether Obama might be ”hiding something” by not releasing records. CREW said it filed a lawsuit this week against the Trump administration ”to make sure they would continue to release the logs.” It says the National Security Archive and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University are also part of the lawsuit. The White House is not the only meeting location that watchdog groups are concerned about. This week, CREW and other groups also asked a federal court in New York ”to include visitor logs for    and Trump’s Manhattan residence, Trump Tower,” NPR’s Greg Allen reported. CREW also filed lawsuits against the Obama administration before it said it would release the meeting details, as we have reported. The Trump White House said it will shutter a section of the White House website launched by the Obama White House as an effort to streamline transparency for the public, NPR’s Domenico Montanaro reported. The Trump White House calls it ”duplicative.” One recent visitor to White House grounds recently resulted in a scandal: House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, who went there last month to view classified information. ”There was outcry over how he briefed the president and the press but did not share the data with his colleagues on the committee,” The   reported. Nunes later announced that he has temporarily stepped aside from his committee’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election."
"President Trump will be at his    resort in Palm Beach, Fla. for Easter  —   his seventh of 13 weekends there as commander in chief. Although he conducts business at the Trump Organization estate, it’s not always clear with whom. Some government watchdog groups are asking a federal court to compel the Trump administration to release a list of visitors to    as well as to Trump Tower and the White House. Referred to by Trump as the ”Winter White House,” the private club has about 500   members. Over the last few months, in addition to beach and tennis privileges, members have had a   seat to important presidential deliberations. Trump says he ordered last week’s missile strike on Syria while having dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Palm Beach Daily News reports other guests were nearby, including Boston Celtics great John Havlicek, who was celebrating his birthday with friends. Two nights later, Trump was chatting with club members and guests, including billionaire and political activist David Koch, who was there with his brother Bill. The head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) Noah Bookbinder, says although it’s a private club, Americans have a right to know who’s visiting    while the president is there. ”If anything,” he says, ”it’s more important to know who’s there because you don’t have the usual protections and procedures that you have with the White House.” During the Obama administration, the White House posted online logs of the people who visited the White House. It’s a practice that began after a series of lawsuits filed by CREW. So far, the Trump administration hasn’t made any White House visitor logs available. CREW and other groups, including the National Security Archive, have filed Freedom of Information requests for the visitor logs since Trump took office. This week, they took their request to federal court in New York and extended it to include visitor logs for    and Trump’s Manhattan residence, Trump Tower. But, former Secret Service official Jonathan Wackrow says, ”they’re asking for something that does not exist.” Wackrow, now with Risk Assistance Network and Exchange, says the visitor logs for the White House are part of a complex system that includes background checks and personal data. That kind of information, he says, isn’t gathered at other places the president stays, like   . ”It’s a private facility. It’s not a government controlled facility at all. It’s a temporary location where the president goes to,” Wackrow says. ”So even the security posture there is set up on an ad hoc basis.” The Secret Service screens for weapons and other direct threats to the president, Wackrow says, but otherwise is not involved in admitting guests at   . CREW’s Bookbinder says given Trump’s ongoing use of    and the important meetings taking place there, the administration needs to begin maintaining and releasing visitor logs. ”It needs to be essentially treated the same way the White House treats its records,” he says. ”And so, if it’s not already happening, they need to very quickly come up with a policy to make sure it does start happening.” Wackrow says maintaining the visitor access system at the White House costs the Secret Service millions of dollars each year and is not easily replicated at    Trump Tower or other places the president stays."
"New data from the U. S. Census Bureau present the most detailed picture yet of the dramatic rise in the number of people covered by health insurance since the Affordable Care Act went into effect.   data going back to 2010, when the law was signed, show a patchwork of people living without health insurance that ticked down slowly for the first three years under the ACA. But once the online insurance exchanges opened at the end of 2013 and Medicaid expanded, the population living without coverage dropped noticeably. The recently released census report is   data for 2015. Overall, the nationwide uninsured rate dropped 7. 7 percentage points for people under 65 years old between 2010 and 2015, from 18. 2 percent in 2010 to 10. 5 percent in 2015. Although the opening of the online exchanges and Medicaid expansion contributed most noticeably to the increase in the number of people with health insurance, other elements of the health care bill went into effect earlier. For example, since 2010 the law has allowed young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26. A    breakdown of the   uninsured rate shows how the portion of the population with health insurance has risen as the Affordable Care Act has gone into effect. It also shows the persistent differences in insurance coverage by state and county. According to the census data, the U. S. counties with the top five reductions in the number of uninsured people between 2010 and 2015 are large, urban counties:   County, Fla. Los Angeles County, Calif. Orange County, Calif. Cook County, Ill. and Harris County, Texas. In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act but gave states a choice about whether to expand Medicaid to cover more of their citizens. Under the Medicaid expansion, the federal government made money available to state governments to cover the costs of   people who were not previously eligible for Medicaid. Today, 31 states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid. In most of those states, the expansion took effect in 2014, when the online health insurance exchanges also went live. As NPR’s Alison Kodjak has reported, a handful of states that first rejected the expansion have since embraced it, including Louisiana and Montana. And nationwide, a lot more poor people are covered by health insurance than were before the Affordable Care Act. People who do not make much money, and who are less likely to have health insurance, have especially benefited. While the national uninsured rate has dropped by 6. 3 points since 2013, it has dropped by 8. 9 points for those below the federal poverty level and by 12 points for those whose income is between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty level."
"  Carvalho Sow is busy in the annex to her kitchen in Dakar, dishing out giant ladles full of a traditional Senegalese Easter treat. It’s called ngalakh  —   a delectable mix of millet, groundnut (peanut) paste, bouye (the fruit of the baobab tree, which is also known locally as pain de singe or monkey bread) sugar, vanilla essence and orange blossom. She says every year, Catholics make this special food for Good Friday and it’s savored over Easter weekend. Carvalho Sow says she’s been enjoying the sweet porridge since she was a child and preparing ngalakh herself for decades. It’s sweaty work, staying up late, mixing the ingredients together. But the slog doesn’t end there  —   part of this Easter tradition involves pouring the sweet   goodness into containers and delivering them all day Friday to family, friends and neighbors. After the Catholic Stations of the Cross mass on Good Friday, everyone breaks their fast with ngalakh. But this dish isn’t consumed just by Catholics in Senegal. It’s a dish they share with their Muslim friends and family, too. Senegal is a majority Muslim country, with a small Christian minority. And the two communities celebrate their holy days together and share each other’s foods. After the   Ramadan fast, Muslims and Christians celebrate Korite (Eid  ) together with special dishes. And during Tabaski (the feast of Eid  ) Muslims distribute roast lamb to their Christian friends during their annual feast. Carvalho Sow says she has both Catholics and Muslims in her family  —   and that’s the Senegalese way, religious harmony and togetherness, made tastier by the sharing of foods."
"Protests are mounting against embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and the death toll is mounting too. As demonstrators braved a tropical storm on the streets of Caracas on Thursday, a    died elsewhere of wounds he had sustained in other protests days earlier. Opposition lawmaker Alfonso Marquina announced Gruseny Antonio Calderon’s death on Twitter, calling him ”another victim of the dictatorship.” Calderon is the fifth protester to die of injuries sustained in clashes with police since the latest round of protests kicked off roughly two weeks ago. According to authorities, others include a    boy and two   students. Despite the deaths, the recent unrest shows no sign of relenting. The Associated Press reports organizers had planned protests for more than 300 municipalities  —   calling for new elections and the removal of certain judges seen as overly friendly with Maduro’s regime  —   and demonstrations have even swelled to   areas of Venezuela’s capital city, where socialists have typically drawn their staunchest supporters. And the AP notes that as security forces have turned to   devices such as tear gas, protesters have responded by ”coming ready with goggles,   rags and gas masks.” The protests mark a stark contrast with Holy Weeks of years past in Venezuela, where many people use the time  —   and vacation days  —   to celebrate and rest, according to the Miami Herald. The paper even notes that Maduro’s ruling socialist government offered people additional vacation days this year, partly in an attempt to encourage a lull in demonstrations. That didn’t convince demonstrators in Caracas like    Alfonzo Lopez Porras to stay home. ”Those of us who are on our way out of this world have much to protest,” he told the Herald. ”There’s no bread or medicine. In every corner of Venezuela, this socialist project has failed.” As John Otis reported for NPR, dissatisfaction with the ruling Socialist regime has been partly fueled by a scarcity of bread. Citing the Venezuelan Bread Makers Federation, John says that ”due to a cash crunch, the Maduro government is importing only about 25 percent of the wheat that the country needs.” John reports that Maduro asserts that the scarcity is driven by mismanagement of flour by bakers seeking to undermine his government. What’s more, there has been little electoral outlet for protesters to voice displeasure with Maduro. Elections that had been planned for late last year were indefinitely postponed, and John reports a recall referendum  —   which could have removed Maduro  —   was canceled last year, as well. About two weeks ago Venezuela’s Supreme Court, which is filled with Maduro loyalists, backed down from its bid to nullify the   national assembly. The reversal came after overwhelming international criticism of the initial move. Maduro’s popularity has reached such a nadir, in fact, that the president was pelted with debris during a public appearance earlier this week. That bombardment was broadcast on Venezuelan TV. And it’s not likely to get easier for Maduro anytime soon. The Venezuelan president enters his fifth year in power on April 19  —   the same day demonstrators have promised to hold the ”mother of all protests.”"
"Three years ago, Liberia was in the opening act of an unfolding catastrophe. The first cases of Ebola had been confirmed in the country on March 30, 2014. Over the next months, the virus spread, largely undetected at first. By late summer, every day the country awoke to news of dying Liberians being turned away from treatment or of families ripped apart by the virus. Uncertainty and fear swirled in the streets of Monrovia. But on the afternoon of Sept. 11 that year, amid the chaos, there was a quiet pocket of joy. It was at the Ebola Treatment Unit called ”ELWA2,” on the outskirts of the city. The unit, a small concrete building initially intended to be a cafeteria and laundromat, was run by Jerry Brown, a Liberian doctor who would later appear on the cover of Time magazine as an ”Ebola fighter.” During a break in the rains, three small children walked along the gravel path leading away from the unit, draped in   clothing and followed by two young men and a man and woman in their 40s. ”Y’all one family?” asked a member of a burial team, waiting outside with her crew to collect the day’s dead bodies from the unit for cremation. ”One family,” replied the older man, beaming through a weary face as he climbed into the back of a pickup truck. ”We are seven.” The Ebola crisis in Liberia is officially over. But scars remain. Liberia’s economy is only beginning to recover from damage suffered during the outbreak, and across the country survivors of the virus continue to mourn members of their family who died of the disease. According to the World Health Organization, of the 10, 666 people confirmed to have come down with Ebola during the outbreak, only 45 percent survived. For Reuben Shellu and his family, that grim statistic is a reminder of their nearly miraculous good fortune. Reuben, his wife and their five children walked into treatment at ELWA2 in late August 2014. Beating overwhelming odds, less than a month later all seven walked out, healthy and alive. ”With God’s help, we made it,” says Reuben, sitting in the courtyard of the   home where he and his family live at the edge of Monrovia, near the ruins of a luxury hotel destroyed during the country’s civil war. ”So we can overcome anything.” The Shellu family’s ordeal began around the same time that Liberia’s Ebola crisis was spinning out of control. In late July, Reuben’s younger brother fell ill, showing up at the Shellu home with red eyes and stomach cramps. He was a medical technician at a nearby clinic, and his supervisor, a   doctor, had died earlier that week of what would later be confirmed to be Ebola. Reuben and his family took pity on his brother, allowing him to sleep in their bedroom. When he became sicker, Reuben’s wife, Bindu, cleaned his vomit and bathed his forehead with cool water. Reuben had heard rumors about Ebola but didn’t believe they were true, so he brought his brother, now too weak to talk, to their father’s house to receive treatment from a local healer. Hours later, Reuben received a call. His brother was dead. The news scared Reuben, shocking him into giving a second thought to the radio jingles he’d heard about the threat of Ebola. ”I called my wife and explained the situation,” he recalls. ”I said the kids shouldn’t come close to me. We didn’t know that the virus was already in us.” Reuben and Bindu had met years earlier, during the country’s civil war in 1995. Bindu grew up in Gbarnga, a central hub city, but when the war broke out her family returned to their traditional village in a forested part of western Liberia. Reuben spent a few months trying to catch Bindu’s eye in the village, helping her father with the farm work and sending his sister to gauge Bindu’s interest in him. Bindu was skeptical at first, but one day Reuben found her sitting in front of her house. ”I told her this is overdue,” he remembers. ”I don’t want you as a casual girlfriend, I want you to be my wife.” A few months later, Bindu was pregnant with their first son, Hassan. The three stayed in the village with Bindu’s son from a prior relationship, Sekou, until one day he decided he’d had enough of the forest and that it was time to move to the city to find better opportunities. In Monrovia, they settled down in a suburb and had three more children together: Luqman, Ramatu and Kadija. Reuben’s father was Christian, but his mother, aunt, and Bindu were Muslim, so they raised the children to speak Arabic and study the Quran. Reuben wanted to finish his education but found that the demands of raising a family were too much to balance with classes. He began working as a day laborer for construction firms. After Reuben’s brother died, he realized he was in danger. Before going home, he traveled to the Doctors Without Borders treatment unit an hour away for an Ebola test. But the unit was overwhelmed, and the staff told him that unless he was showing symptoms of the illness they couldn’t administer a test. When Reuben arrived home from the clinic, he discovered that he had been right to worry. Bindu was feverish and weak, and the three youngest children were hot to the touch and complaining of headaches. For a few days, Reuben continued to travel to the forest a few hours outside Monrovia to collect coal to sell on the roadside, hoping that his wife and children would recover on their own. He’d also started to feel unwell, borrowing a heavy jacket from a friend to cope with heavy chills he was experiencing. But the family’s condition deteriorated. Eventually it became clear to Reuben that if they weren’t treated they could die. By this point, Reuben suspected he and his family might have contracted Ebola, although he still wasn’t sure. So he asked the friend who’d loaned him the jacket to drive them in his pickup truck to the Doctors Without Borders unit. When they reached the unit, they received bad news: There was no space for any new patients that day. By this point, Bindu couldn’t stand up or talk, and the children were growing sicker. The sun was fierce that day, Reuben recalls, and when he realized they weren’t going to be admitted, his heart sank. ”I felt we were finished,” he says. But one of the Doctors Without Borders staff pointed them to ELWA2, only minutes down the road, saying they should check to see if there was space. As luck would have it, the unit had discharged seven patients that day, and its staff agreed to admit the Shellu family. When Reuben and his family were waiting in the triage area, his son Luqman, only 7 at the time, vomited blood on the asphalt. A local journalist noticed and asked a health worker: ”They’re all from the same family?” When she was told they were, she broke down in tears. Jerry Brown, who had supervised the unit since it opened a few weeks earlier, remembers the day the Shellus were admitted. The unit had been set up to accommodate 50 patients, but by that point in late August 2014, it had more than 80 patients. He says that survival rates had started to tick upward at the unit as the staff found their footing, but that over half of their patients were still dying. ”We had only one room [available] with three beds, and I put the family there,” Brown recalls. ”I told them look, as much as possible, you stay together.” Reuben says that once they were admitted, he collapsed. He’d been saving his strength to care for Bindu and the kids, becoming severely ill once that immediate need was taken care of. ”Maybe God kept me strong to help my family,” he says. For the next few days, he crawled from one side of the room to the next, battling joint pains to check on the intravenous drips inserted in his children’s arms to prevent dehydration and to press them to take their medication and eat. Sekou and Hassan were in their early 20s, but Luqman, Ramatu and Kadija were all under 10. At one point, his youngest daughter Kadija, a playful,      began to experience convulsions. He recalls cradling her in his arms and feeding her   bits of food. Nurses determined that Kadija had malaria as well as Ebola and began giving her drugs to treat that infection. Over the next week, Liberian health workers monitored the Shellu family. As days passed, they began to realize that they might be witness to a miracle. The Shellus were all going to live. ”One thing that motivated our staff and myself to work was every time we saw someone survive,” Brown says. ”It was a kind of jubilation for the team, we felt like we’d achieved some kind of victory.” Brown says he’s not sure how or why all seven of the Shellus survived Ebola. ”We treated them as we would any other patient,” he says. In the preceding weeks, staff at ELWA2 had witnessed a series of heartbreaking events. Just prior to the Shellu’s admittance, another family in treatment hadn’t been as lucky, with the children leaving the unit as orphans. For the exhausted health workers, the Shellu family’s recovery was cause for celebration. ”I mean, it was a day of jubilation for us,” Brown recalls. ”We were very happy that all of them made it.” Reuben, who is deeply religious, says that he always believed they would survive. ”When we entered the ETU, I told people that we were going to come back,” he says. ”I had that positive view that we were going to survive.” When the Shellus came home after 18 days in the unit, packed into the back of the same pickup truck that had carried them to treatment, a celebration erupted. Dozens of neighbors came to congratulate Reuben and Bindu  ” from a safe distance. Women sang and beat drums. Reuben says that in the following months, people in the neighborhood were wary of coming to sit with them, telling their children not to play with the Shellus and grumbling about the fact that they had to share a common well. But over time, the stigma waned as people in the area realized that it was safe to be around them. Still, the family’s recovery has been hard. Reuben says that the children have trouble remembering things at times and occasionally complain of headaches. He experiences mysterious abdominal pains. And he says a rough economy has made it challenging for him to find work. Bindu’s small business selling food items out of a stall next to the house is their primary source of income. But unlike so many other Ebola survivors, the Shellus do not have a hole in their lives where their close family members used to be. While Luqman, Ramatu and Kadija dart in and out of the courtyard, playing and helping Bindu with the chores, Reuben reflects on their good fortune. ”I tell God, thank you we didn’t die at the [Ebola Treatment Unit] where the bodies had to be cremated. I think about my little brother when they are decorating graves, because he doesn’t have one. It just enters my mind, suppose that happened to my family.” ”Seeing us, a whole family, [other survivors] sometimes say, ’Wow. God really made it for you people, we are proud.’ They rejoice with us.” Ashoka Mukpo is a freelance journalist and videographer who covers human rights, politics and culture in West Africa. He is also an Ebola survivor. Find him at @unkyoka."
"It started in December 2013. A    boy in Guinea was running a fever. He was vomiting. There was blood in his stool. He was most likely ”patient zero”  —   the first case in the Ebola outbreak that swept across West Africa. At the time, no one knew what had sickened the child. The disease was not identified until March 22. The next day, the World Health Organization announced this grim news on its website: There was an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea. At that time, there were 49 cases and 29 deaths. The virus raged throughout the year and into 2015, striking thousands in Guinea as well as neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone. From April 2014 through January 2015, NPR sent 19 reporters, producers and photographers to cover the epidemic. Several made repeat trips. A year after the WHO announcement, we asked our correspondents to share a moment from their    coverage: a powerful, poignant or hopeful scene they witnessed. Here are their memories. The first Ebola survivor I met, early in the epidemic, was a Guinean doctor. He was the first to recover from the virus in Conakry  —   Guinea’s capital. I was told that probably makes him the first Ebola survivor in a major city anywhere in the world. Age 30, slight and reserved, the doctor told me that those who cared for him in the isolation unit called him and other Ebola survivors the Lazarus cases  —   risen from the dead, so to speak. He described the hell of isolation and the fear he felt as he realized he was getting better but was still stuck in a tented ward with other sufferers. Then he started helping them. The doctors and nurses called him a hero. What struck me most was what he told me about his wife  —   his eyes welling up with tears. The doctor said what really hurt, after going to hell and back, was the stigma that stuck to him and his family like a painful, ugly rash. Friends, and even some relatives, stayed away and boycotted their home. Neighbors shunned them. People no longer ate his wife’s meals or bought the ginger juice she once sold  —   because he had Ebola. I quite understood why he didn’t want his name used. But he was determined to share his story to help other survivors and their families.  —   Ofeibea   It was an odd feeling, stepping into the family home of someone who had died, someone you felt you knew but had never met. In a lush, green compound, with heavy rain   noisily on the tin roof of the house in Lungi, I was introduced to a frail,    former teacher, the father, the grieving but welcoming mother, big brother   and sisters Mariama and Aissata  —   all members of the   family of    Dr. Sheik Humar Khan, dubbed Sierra Leone’s Ebola doctor.  After caring for about 100 Ebola patients, he himself had succumbed to the virus at the end of July. They were still in shock at their loss. They were hurting. Out came a stack of family photos  —   a young Humar with his siblings, and Humar’s graduation as a doctor. The memories came tumbling out of his brother and sisters, who proudly described how they supported their ”kid brother,” as they called him  —   the ninth of 10 children  —   as a boy and through medical school, watching him blossom and sharing his dreams as he rose to become Sierra Leone’s leading virologist. Now he was gone. Another Ebola casualty. But you still felt his presence in the family home, through his siblings who were determined to keep the spirit and memory of their kid brother alive. They told me they’d just set up a fledgling Dr. Sheik Humar Khan Foundation, to help other young doctors from Sierra Leone.  —   Ofeibea   There was a moment in my reporting on the Ebola outbreak when I realized that everything had changed. During my first trip to eastern Sierra Leone in early July the situation was terrible. There weren’t ambulances or clinics to handle all the patients. Nurses in Kenema were on strike after several colleagues died of the disease. People were terrified. But the terror was confined to the east. In the capital, Freetown, life went on pretty much as normal. A few weeks later, in   I flew back into Freetown. As the plane started to descend, a wave of tension pulsed through the passengers. The flight attendants were pulling on rubber gloves and surgical masks. Many of the passengers around me started to do the same. Rain pounded the tarmac as we walked toward the arrival hall. All of a sudden Ebola felt as if it were everywhere. Health officials yelled at us to wash our hands at buckets of chlorine water before we entered the airport. Passengers stepped away from each other. Men in masks tried to take our temperatures with thermometer guns without getting close to us. The touts who usually attack your luggage at the baggage claim backed away from me. Ebola terror had set in. Everyone was suspect. What would happen if you brushed up against someone’s arm? Could the virus be suspended in the thick tropical air? Was it hiding in the wads of filthy currency that the money changers slapped against their palms? The outbreak had jumped from being medical to mental. That panic would radiate out from West Africa and dominate the world for months. Fear of Ebola was spreading faster and farther than the virus itself.  —   Jason Beaubien, The baby’s cry echoed through the hallway. It was the pathetic,   long cry of an infant in distress, with a catch and a gulp for air at the end, on repeat. I was at Redemption Hospital, a free,   hospital in Liberia’s capital of Monrovia. It was   2014  —   still early in the fight against Ebola. Things would get worse before they got better. A doctor was showing me how the hospital was coping with the virus. He explained that the baby actually wasn’t a baby at all. The child was 4 years old and had a spinal condition that kept him tiny. His mother had left him at the hospital a year ago. He lived here now, in this crib in the hospital hallway. In the room down the hall lay a dead body. All signs pointed to Ebola, but there was no way to confirm it, just as there had been no way to treat it. A team of body collectors moved the man onto a tarp and carried him outside, leaving a pool of liquid on the floor. The tiny child in the crib in the hallway continued to cry, without hope of comfort or protection from the infection all around him, a reminder that this hospital faced enormous challenges before Ebola came calling and would continue to long after it had gone.  —   Nicole Beemsterboer, On Aug. 20, residents of Monrovia’s largest slum, West Point, awoke to find themselves under quarantine. Cut off from friends, families, livelihoods and markets, they reacted with anger. In the rioting that followed,    Shacki Kamara was fatally shot by Liberian security forces. One bullet shattered his shinbone, leaving a gaping hole through his leg. As he lay bleeding on the street, officers tried to persuade me he had cut himself on razor wire. Some took photos on their mobile phones, and none lifted a finger to help him. Shacki died the next day. Shacki’s aunt told us she had just sent him out to buy food for the house  —   he was not even part of the protest. The quarantine was lifted shortly afterward.  —   Tommy Trenchard, We were visiting the office of Dr. Bernice Dahn, Liberia’s chief medical officer, interviewing her on the nationwide fight against Ebola. Dahn gave us a good estimate of the macro: X number of people are sick, Y have survived, etc. But it was Dr. Martha Zarway, who just happened to be waiting for a moment with the officer, who gave us a glimpse into what it meant to be on the front lines. Zarway, who’s 53, runs her own clinics in Monrovia. She lost one of her staff members earlier that month, someone she called a friend. Rumor was, Ebola was to blame. When we asked her if she was still practicing despite this loss, she likened herself to an army general in the fight against the disease. ”I usually tell my staff, it’s scary, but think about a war. [If] all the soldiers run away, what will happen to the civilians? I’m a doctor, so we can’t run away.”  —   Sami Yenigun, The thump of the ambulance door being kicked closed is what sticks with me all these months later. We had followed the emergency vehicle to a rural suburb of Freetown, Sierra Leone, to observe a health team in action. It had been dispatched to pick up a possible Ebola patient. When we arrived we found a    boy in a yellow   slumped into a chair outside a simple house. His parents lived in the interior of the country, and the boy was staying with a guardian so he could attend one of the better schools in the capital. That man had become concerned when the boy complained of a headache and so he called the Ebola hotline. Instead of the evaluation team he expected to arrive to determine if the boy was, in fact, infected, an ambulance showed up. After donning their moon suits the health workers nudged the young teen  —   who was all alone  —   into the back of the ambulance without ever touching him. And they gave that door a kick. Soon the boy was deposited at an Ebola holding facility where he was surrounded by infected patients. A day or two later we realized that the name of the boy did not match the name the dispatchers had given to the health workers. The ambulance had gone to the right place but likely picked up the wrong person. And a boy with what was probably just a headache was now quarantined with highly infectious patients. I can still hear that kick.  —   Peter Breslow, The markets were empty and littered with trash. Dogs slept in the street. Military vehicles patrolled the abandoned roads, and armed guards ran checkpoints at intersections. This was Freetown in September, during the country’s   Ebola lockdown  —   or, as the government called it, a   ”  exercise.” Sierra Leoneans were told to stay home to reflect and discuss Ebola with family members, while teams of health workers combed the countryside to educate people and search for new cases. During the quarantine, I saw a ragtag group of health workers going door to door. They had nothing to give people but bars of soap. I was struck by the stark difference between this poorly organized health campaign and the efficiency of the military in a country where the most well stocked division of government is the one with the   and camouflage trucks. Health organizations criticized the quarantine. They said it would make people feel persecuted and erode their trust in the government. The government disagreed and said it would slow the spread of the disease. In the weeks that followed, Ebola continued to ravage.  —   Anders Kelto, When I first saw    James Kollie, he was talking up the ladies on staff at the Ebola treatment center in Lofa, Liberia. Impeccably dressed in a stylish Polo shirt and a fresh pair of jeans, his hair was buzzed short, and he had a   necklace around his neck. From a distance, Kollie seemed just like boys here in the U. S. who wanted to impress girls. But when he told me his story, I realized he was the strongest teenager I had ever met. Kollie grew up in Monrovia with his mother and sisters. When Ebola swept through the city, his entire family got sick. Eventually, he was left alone in his house with his entire family dead. He didn’t know what to do. The only option was to hop in the back of a pickup truck and ride 12 hours to Lofa, where his estranged father lives. A few days later, Kollie started showing Ebola symptoms. He went into the treatment center. Fought the virus and was discharged. Now Kollie was moving on with his life, he told me. He was trying to get to know his father, learn English from the staff running the Ebola clinic and make friends in his new hometown. Standing next to Kollie felt like standing next to a superhero. The young man was immune to a disease the world feared. But he had a sadness in his heart that I could feel from all Ebola survivors I met. They were all so thankful to be alive. But they had lost so many loved ones.  —   Michaeleen Doucleff, The lifeless fetus was straddling a nurse’s arm at ELWA, a hospital for pregnant women outside Monrovia. We were standing in one of the corridors of the   hospital, interviewing Dr. John Fankhauser. He’s one of the family doctors there. Fankhauser was talking about the high risk that obstetricians and midwives take when delivering babies. ”If a pregnant woman shows up and she’s bleeding,” he said, ”how do they know if she has Ebola or not? And if she does, how do the doctors then protect themselves?” While he was saying all this, dozens of unemotional women sat on benches, waiting their turn for prenatal care. Outside, lots of rain was coming down. Inside, nervous tension filled the air. Then a nurse walked by us with the dead baby covered in a white sheet. The sheet slipped off her arm a bit, exposing the skull and 10 little fingers and toes. Minutes later, ELWA’s midwife boss, Ester Kolleh, explained what had happened. ”Last night we received three ladies,” she said. ”All of them had stillbirth. Now we have three dead babies in the delivery room.” In her story about ”Dangerous Deliveries” in the time of Ebola, NPR’s Michaeleen Doucleff wrote, ”the three women had gone from hospital to hospital in Monrovia. They were turned away at each one. By the time they made it to ELWA, it was too late for their babies.”  —   Rolando Arrieta, It was the week before Thanksgiving when we drove from Monrovia into rural Bong County, past the end of the cell service, to the place where a dirt road turned into a walking path. Down the path was an Ebola hot spot where there had been dozens of cases. We were going there with a handful of epidemiologists and doctors in search of one rumored case. There was a woman who lived somewhere down the path, and local health officials suspected she had Ebola. The walk took hours. At each village we came to, the epidemiologists asked about the woman. Keep walking, we were told. She lives farther down the path. Walking, there was a lot of time to imagine what we’d find when we finally found her. What was the plan? What if she were too sick to walk out to the hospital? What if she had already died? Finally, we arrived in the last village, her village. That, we were told, is her house. That is her room, behind that door. The men from the town stood in a tense circle in front of the house. She’s not here, they insisted. Ebola is not here. No one opened the door. We stood there until the sun began to dip behind the trees. The consensus among the local health officials was that the woman was hiding nearby, but we had run out of time. It would be getting dark soon. It felt like we had come all that way for nothing. Hiking out, one African Union epidemiologist, Mutaawe Lubogo, was unsurprised and undaunted. He pointed out we knew more than we had this morning, and the people of the villages we visited now had more information about Ebola. ”This is true epidemiology,” said Lubogo. ”You walk and walk, and tomorrow you do it again.”  —   Rebecca Hersher and Kelly McEvers, The good news was what we weren’t seeing. Patients. It was October, and we had come to the northeastern corner of Liberia, to the place where Ebola first crossed the border with Guinea and exploded in Lofa County. We had taken a helicopter ride over thick jungle followed by hours in a    vehicle to reach the Ebola care center in Foya District. Three months earlier, this had been a place of fear, exhaustion and death. Many people were afraid that the health care workers here were bringing Ebola or taking sick people away to sell their organs. So an NGO had been run out of town, and Ebola ambulances were still sometimes pelted with rocks as they arrived in a village. Doctors and nurses at the center had battled fatigue and dehydration as they worked long shifts in moon suits that amplified the intense heat. And death had become routine. At the peak of the outbreak, more than 125 people were living in an   complex of   cubicles covered by blue tarps. Most of them died. But that wasn’t the scene that greeted us. We did see an ambulance parked near the compound’s main gate when we arrived, but it was just waiting for a call. Health care workers were sitting in the shade in plastic chairs, talking and laughing. On the other side of the orange plastic fencing that separated patients from visitors, we could see row after row of empty cubicles. In a tent that served as the command center, there was a whiteboard listing the name and status of every person in the care center. On this day, the board had just three names. Soon after, the district would be declared  .  —   Jon Hamilton, We spotted her sitting in the tall grass by the side of a road in Sierra Leone: a tiny woman, all skin and bones  —   except for her belly. She looked about eight months pregnant. Neighbors gathered around to explain. An ambulance had unaccountably dumped her there the day before, in the middle of a rainstorm. No one knew her and they were afraid to get too close. But a man who ran one of the roadside stalls tossed her an umbrella. Someone else bought her a sandwich. We called out from a distance, asking what was wrong. Her gaze was unfocused, her voice barely above a whisper. But she managed to tell us that she’d been feeling sick and had been taken to a hospital to be tested for Ebola. The test came back negative. Instead of trying to figure out what was ailing her, the hospital told her she’d have to go home. Then hospital workers packed her into the ambulance. The driver had pushed her out here  —   miles from her neighborhood. We asked her for a cellphone number, or even just the name, of a family member who could help. She didn’t seem to understand. Instead, she reached into her bag for a piece of paper and unfolded it with trembling hands. It was the certificate from the hospital confirming her negative Ebola test. ”I don’t have Ebola,” she said. We kept our distance because we were nervous. NPR photographer David Gilkey took a photo through his telephoto lens and tried to enlarge it on the screen of his camera. Maybe the piece of paper would tell us her address? But the writing was too blurry to make out. Luckily, we were working with journalist Umaru Fofana, who has to be one of the most   reporters on the planet. In minutes he managed to track down someone from her neighborhood who figured out who she was and alerted her family. Then Umaru shamed the hospital into sending an ambulance to take her home. I hoped it wouldn’t be too late.  —   Nurith Aizenman, Mama Quaye, a gracious elderly widow, has run a restaurant on Ashmun Street in downtown Monrovia for more than 30 years. The   almost empty premises sits opposite a derelict, windowless building  —   a relic of Liberia’s civil war that was a bank. It is still pockmarked with holes from bullets and mortar shells. Mama Quaye lived through 14 years of    civil wars. She, and other Liberians, compare the Ebola epidemic to the war. But they say Ebola was worse. Mama Quaye said the war was the first blow against her thriving restaurant business, but she felt Ebola had finished it off. Few people were popping in at lunchtime for a meal. She showed us an almost full tray of the staple food, fufu, well into the afternoon. Barely any customers. But one diner gave her some hope. Alfred T. Karngar, who worked across the road, said Mama Quaye’s food is tasty, that he ate there before the Ebola crisis and intended to continue eating at her restaurant.  —   Ofeibea   In December, I spent a week with producer Sami Yenigun visiting a remote village in northern Liberia. We wanted to find out what life was like now that that area had officially been declared Ebola free. Though it was free of the virus, what we found was not a happy picture. One of the people I will never forget was a woman named Mamuedeh Kanneh. She is the ”chairwoman” of the village of Barkedu. Like most people in Barkedu, she speaks Mandingo, but not much English, so our communication at first was tricky. When I first started photographing her, she held up some green bananas. I didn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. Only later did I realize what she was trying to say: That’s all she had to eat. She had been married to the village imam. He had four other wives  —   she calls them her mates. His son was the one who brought Ebola to the town, so essentially her family was ground zero for this outbreak. She described, at one point, how she was on the floor crying on one side of the room. She had relatives dying and some dead in the room. No one else in the town would come near. They didn’t know it was Ebola but they knew it was some terrifying disease. So she’s alone in this house with all these little kids, just crying. And she just describes being semiconscious, not knowing what to do. ”Should I care for the living or should I care for the dead?” she asked herself. But she made it through. She survived. And now she takes care of not only the surviving children in the household but kids who were brought to her from other parts of the village, kids who lost their parents to Ebola. I don’t think many people I know would have the resilience to survive and carry on the way Mamuedeh Kanneh has. For me, she came to represent the whole country of Liberia  —   what it went through and the way it was able to survive this terrible disease.  —   John W. Poole, The pastor’s son rolled up both sleeves, revealing fresh scars on his biceps.     James Khanu Jr. had a terrifying story to tell us. He’d joined his father and another Baptist pastor on what they considered an unremarkable trip. The men were headed to Forecariah, where they had worked as missionaries in years past. But as they began inspecting a well they had helped drill, a rumor began to swirl. ”They are poisoning the water with Ebola!” Khanu recalled a man shouting. Villagers swarmed the missionaries and forced them into a house, he said. They beat them with sticks and stones and tied them up with rope. An angry crowd torched their shiny new red vehicle and threatened to burn the pastors alive. One pastor, a Guinean, slipped away. Khanu and his father, from neighboring Sierra Leone, were held all night and forced to drink fetid water from a well the villagers accused them of infecting with Ebola. They were lucky to escape with their lives the next morning. The missionaries’ visit had nothing to do with Ebola. But the virus has stirred fear and suspicion throughout Guinea  —   and perhaps the pastors misjudged just how combustible that combination can be. In this environment, rumors and conspiracy theories can ignite violence where friendships might have flourished before. James Khanu Jr. ’s welts tell that story for me.  —   Kevin Leahy  People wanted to shake my hand. That was a shock in the new year. In 2014, when I was on assignment in Guinea  —   the first country to be hit by Ebola  —   there was no handshaking in a nation where shaking hands is de rigueur. I quickly learned from Guineans other forms of greeting: raising clasped hands or touching my heart. The   rule was scrupulously observed, and buckets of chlorinated water were everywhere to wash hands and boots. But all that had changed this year. I was shocked to see people openly shaking hands in the capital and in the countryside. There were friendly laughs and looks of ”oh yes, we’re not supposed to, are we?” when I didn’t stretch out my hand in return and reverted to the elbow bump to say hello.  Far fewer buckets of diluted bleach water were visible outside buildings of all sorts  —   and there were far fewer people using the water to wash their hands. It looked as if complacency was setting in. But a year after Ebola was first identified in Guinea, there is still cause for concern. In the week ending March 15, there were 95 new cases in Guinea and 21 new infections reported in a single day.  —   Ofeibea  "
"Tucked deep into the Bolivian jungle  —   through swarms of   mosquitoes, a river flush with voracious piranha, and hidden gauntlets of hostile natives  —   the elusive civilization in The Lost City of Z sounds like El Dorado or The Fountain of Youth, one of those mythical paradises that conquistadors slaughtered many to seek. Based on David Grann’s book, the film immediately calls to mind other tales of Western hubris in Amazonia, chiefly Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, which had a deranged Klaus Kinski, in heavy armor, leading an expedition through the lush swelter of the Peruvian rainforest. Yet the explorer in James Gray’s sumptuous early 20th century adventure forges his own path and so does the film, which is poised between the fragrant terrors of Herzog and the rapture of Terrence Malick’s The New World or The Thin Red Line. The epic tussle between society and savagery plays out as much within the soul of its hero as it does in the tension between British elites and indigenous populations whose culture is under threat. And as he and his fellow adventurers keep returning to Bolivia to chase this phantom in the heart of the jungle, a beautiful symbiosis develops between man and nature that envelops the film like a dream. He doesn’t want to leave it  —   and neither do we. Though opening a couple decades earlier and a continent away from his last film, The Immigrant, Gray and his extraordinary cinematographer, Darius Khondji (Se7en) bathe the exteriors and interiors in the same caressing light, evoking the period with a certain Old Hollywood grandeur. At the same time, the physical toll of exploration and combat is rendered in sweat, gangrenous limbs, and what Herzog himself, speaking of jungle sounds in the documentary Burden of Dreams, called ”the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.” In following a man caught between worlds, Gray’s approach isn’t as contradictory as it sounds. As a British army officer who’s served with distinction in   locales, Major Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) should be more decorated than many of his peers, but as one officer dryly puts it, ”He’s been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors.” Given the chance to achieve higher rank, Fawcett accepts the perilous assignment of mapping out the border between Bolivia and Brazil, two countries locked in a dispute over rubber resources. Leaving his wife (Sienna Miller) and young son behind, Fawcett sets out in 1906 on a planned   venture with his army buddy Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson) and a small band of soldiers and local guides. The first trip upriver is a harrowing and mortally costly one for Fawcett and company, but at the farthest point, he stumbles onto an archeological find that convinces him of a great, lost civilization that’s waiting to be discovered. His argument meets skepticism and mockery from some circles back home, but Fawcett changes his approach on a subsequent expedition and develops an appreciation for the achievements of the   ”savages” en route. Then World War I breaks out and Fawcett is thrown headlong into what ”superior” peoples are capable of doing to each other. Since his 1994 debut feature Little Odessa, about an enclave of Soviet Jews in Brighton Beach, Gray has made the intermingling (and clashing) of cultures the dominant theme of his career, revisited in classically constructed dramas like The Yards, Two Lovers, and The Immigrant. In terms of scope, budget, and locale, The Lost City of Z may seems like a major departure, but it’s essentially another immigrant story, detailing the ways in which the British import their arrogance and rigid class structure into worlds that have no place for them. Once Fawcett discards this line of thinking, nature transforms him, dignifying an obsession that puts a strain on his personal and professional life. Fawcett imagines himself as a Rudyard Kipling character, but the realities of his family and the war keep intruding on his adventure and making him rethink his roles as father, husband, patriot, and, finally, man without a country. The Lost City of Z is neither Indiana Jones escapism nor a   reverie about nature, but something in between, a more grounded and troubled vision of human aspirations and imperfections. Gray may be working from an amalgam of literary, filmic, and historical influences, but in following Fawcett off the path, he stakes out his own distinctly bewitching territory."
"Researchers have come up with a new way to extract water from thin air. Literally. This isn’t the first technology that can turn water vapor in the atmosphere into liquid water that people can drink, but researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, say their approach uses less power and works in drier environments. The new approach makes use of a substance called a MOF, a   framework. As the name suggests, these are materials made of metals mixed with organic compounds. Powders made from MOFs are very porous, so researchers have proposed using them to store hydrogen or methane fuels or to capture carbon dioxide. MIT’s Evelyn Wang and her Berkeley colleague Omar Yaghi decided to try using MOFs to capture water. MOF powders can not only suck up liquid water, they can also absorb water vapor. And there’s plenty of water vapor in the atmosphere. Even in the driest place on the planet there are tons of water molecules floating overhead. The researchers built a small prototype water collector that contains a thin layer of MOF powder. The powder absorbs water vapor until it is saturated. ”Once you achieve that maximum amount,” Wang says, ”you apply some type of heat to the system to release that water.” And when the water is released, it collects in the bottom of the prototype. There are other compounds that can suck water from the air, zeolites for example, but Wang says it takes a significant amount of energy to get these materials to release the water. Not so with a MOF device. ”The amount of energy required is very low,” she says. In the prototype, the heat needed to drive the water out of the MOF comes from ambient sunlight  —   no external power supply is needed. As they report in the journal Science, Wang and her colleagues tested the prototype of their   device on the roof of a building at MIT, and it worked great. But it’s just a prototype. It only used a fraction of an ounce of the MOF powder. ”So the amount of water that we’ve shown is also pretty small,” says Wang. According to Wang’s calculations, a   system using about 2 pounds of MOF powder could deliver close to three quarts of water per day. And she expects scaling up the prototype won’t be all that expensive. Although MOFs are a relatively new material, ”there are companies that already make various MOFS at very large bulk scales,” she says. There are many steps before a     water collector becomes a reality. It hasn’t been shown, for example, that the water released by the MOF powder is free of contaminants. But it’s conceivable that someday if you’re visiting Death Valley, one of the driest places in the United States, you’ll be able to wet your whistle with a device based on Wang and Yaghi’s concept."
"Thousands of people are evacuating four besieged Syrian towns on Friday after rebels and the Syrian government reached a population swap agreement. ”In northern Syria, residents of Shia minority villages, long besieged by rebels, are leaving,” NPR’s Alison Meuse reports from Beirut. ”Hundreds of miles away, two towns besieged by Syrian troops and their allies are also evacuating.” According to Reuters, ”the opposition says the deals amount to forced demographic change and deliberate displacement of [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s enemies away from the main cities of western Syria.” Assad denied that claim, Alison adds, calling it temporary. The government siege of Madaya, one of the   towns that was evacuated today, gained international attention early last year after reports that residents were ”eating leaves, grass and pets to survive,” as The   reported. The residents of Madaya had an option to stay there, though Alison reports that ”many say they’ll leave to avoid mandatory service in the Syrian army.” A video posted Friday on Facebook shows an woman weeping and embracing her son as he prepares to get onto a bus to leave Madaya. ”Be careful,” she tells him. Some 2, 200 people from the town, including about 400 fighters, headed toward Idlib province in northern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a   monitoring group. Government forces later entered the area, it added. The nearby town of Zabadani, which had also been under government siege, is ”to be depopulated,” the Associated Press writes. ”Rebel gunmen were expected to leave Zabadani on Saturday,” the wire service said, adding that there are only about 160 and all are ”believed to be fighters or medical workers.” About 5, 000 people from two   towns in Idlib province, Foua and Kefraya, were bused out to an area on the outskirts of Aleppo, according to Syrian state media. ”Those villages were besieged for two years by rebels, often used as a pressure card,” Alison added. During that time, the towns have received sporadic airdrops of aid from the government, as we have reported."
"The politics of respectability, that elusive set of guidelines that dictate how racialized Americans ought to conduct themselves in public, were complicated this week when a      doctor was forcibly dragged off a United Airlines flight. The video of Dr. David Dao’s body being hauled off the plane provoked international outrage, especially from   but some argued that race had nothing to do with the incident  —   that the same level of outrage would have followed regardless of the passenger’s race. Two questions immediately come to my mind. First, would this have happened to Dao if he was white? The politics of respectability would render a senior, white male doctor as worthy of deference and respect. Second, would cries of outrage have been as loud if the man dragged off the plane was  ? The surge in violence against black people in the last decade, and the generalized indifference to it until recently, suggests that that would be unlikely. In Dao,   like me could identify their own elderly fathers, and we shuddered at the thought that our family members could have been victimized in the same horrific manner. But I doubt that    saw their fathers in Dao. Instead, what they may have seen is the personification of an   trope  —   the model minority. As an   doctor, Dao embodies the popular narrative that Asian Americans are highly educated,   committed, successful and deserving. This facile veneer, however, obscures more than it clarifies about  . Comprised of 24 detailed origins,   exhibit more socioeconomic diversity than any other U. S. racial group. Take educational attainment for example. On the high end of the spectrum are Asian Indians, Chinese, and Koreans who exhibit extraordinarily high levels of education, and graduate from college at higher rates than whites. At the other extreme are Asian ethnic groups like Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong, who have higher high school dropout rates than   and Latinos. Forty percent of   do not graduate from high school. In addition, the latter Asian ethnic groups have higher poverty rates and higher levels of welfare receipt than the national average. Moreover, at 35 percent,   have one of the highest rates of ”limited English proficiency” (LEP) among all U. S. groups, and are on par with Latinos. This figure, however, masks the heterogeneity among   53 percent of Vietnamese are LEP, as are 46 percent of Chinese, and 45 percent of Koreans and Thai. By contrast, rates of LEP are as low as 22 percent among Asian Indians and Filipinos. These differences are critical because they affect life outcomes like health, earnings, and civic participation, including voting. The model minority trope, however, masks these differences and erases the ethnic, economic, and social diversity among  . More importantly, the model minority myth creates an unofficial value pyramid with the most educated, affluent and successful   at the very top. So, how, exactly can the politics of respectability and diversity among   help us understand our collective outrage of United’s inexcusable treatment of Dao? In early news reports of this story, there was no mention of Dao’s race or ethnicity. As the video began to circulate, however, one could easily discern that the passenger was   and based on first sight, people assumed that he was  . That Dao is a Vietnamese refugee did not diminish the outcry, nor did it change our view that he is deserving of our outrage, empathy and support. But would it change if Dao was Hmong, whose group position in the unofficial value hierarchy is lower than that of Chinese and Vietnamese? Moreover, would we have been just as outraged and empathetic if Dao were   or a recent immigrant from South America? Imagine the possibility if we were just as vociferous about the recent videotaped deaths of   at the hands of police officers, or the forced deportation of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record who are separated from their U. S.  children. Indeed, there is outrage from certain segments of the population, but nothing that matches the immediate, unwavering, and uniform support for Dao. Even when the media began a smear campaign against him, the public rejected it as irrelevant. Without question, Dao deserves our outrage, empathy, and support, and kudos to the masses that demanded it. But just as deserving are individuals of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, ages, and socioeconomic statuses who lack the protection of visible status markers that deny them the same degree of public respectability. Jennifer Lee is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Follow her @JLeeSoc."
"This weekend marks 10 years since the deadliest campus shooting in U. S. history, at Virginia Tech.   people were killed and many others injured on April 16, 2007, on the campus in Blacksburg, Va. Still others witnessed the shooting and were physically unharmed, but carry psychological wounds that they’ve also spent the last decade recovering from. Lisa Hamp walked out of her computer class alive that day, but she carries memories that will never go away. They begin, as most memories of tragedies do, with mundane details and normal moments in Hamp’s classroom inside Norris Hall in the moments before the shooting. ”[We were] taking notes  —   typical computer science class. They’re putting some code on the board and we’re just writing it down, confused,” she says with a slight laugh. ”And once we heard the sounds, everyone sort of stopped. It was like, ’What’s going on?’ ” Hamp says a classmate and a teaching assistant stepped outside to investigate  —   and were fired upon. The shooter missed, and the two ducked back inside, giving the class just enough time to barricade the door. ”It was literally like table up, desk up, shooter at the door. It was a matter of seconds,” Hamp says. The shooter tried to kick open the door and began shooting through it. Hamp and her classmates huddled on the floor, pushing against the door, as bullets flew above their heads. ”He would kick it and the door would like swing open a foot, and we would push back,” Hamp recalls. Even so, Hamp and her classmates were relatively fortunate that day unlike so many others, they were able to keep the shooter out. In the aftermath, she says she struggled to figure out how to feel. ”At the time, I think I thought that I was undeserving, I was unworthy, that I lucked out, that I just needed to be quiet and make myself small. Because there’s this other population of people who have it so much more worse than you do, so you just sort of need to shut up, hold it in, and keep moving,” she says. ”But that doesn’t really work in terms of recovering and healing.” Hamp spent years struggling with an eating disorder that she says contributed to infertility, before finally seeking help. It worked: at 31, she now lives in northern Virginia with her husband  —   and infant daughter. She’s working as an analyst in the defense industry. Alec Calhoun, now 30 and an engineer living in Raleigh, N. C. was in a solid mechanics class on the day of the shooting. He jumped out of a classroom window, mildly spraining a rib. He went to the emergency room to get checked out, but says he didn’t require treatment. He says he has struggled with survivor’s guilt. ”I have talked to folks that had significantly worse outcomes  —   both injured, and now parents of people who were killed,” Calhoun says. ”I feel guilty at some level that it could have been or should have been me.” Though the university categorizes him as injured because of that hospital visit, Calhoun says his impulse in the aftermath was to minimize what he’d gone through. ”I think in my own head I didn’t want this to define who I became, and so I largely tried to ignore it. And what changes actually did happen to me, I didn’t want to think about and talk about,” he says. Clayton Violand has also struggled with feelings of guilt and uncertainty about how to think about his place in the event and its aftermath. Violand says he was the only student to walk out of his French class in Norris Hall physically unharmed. Some didn’t make it out at all. ”It was very confusing for me to be in that position of not being physically injured. The main question for me was kind of where do I place myself. Am I a victim? Am I not a victim?” Violand says. Immediately after the shooting, he says he felt elated to be alive. He described his experience in an interview with NPR soon afterward. ”If I go back and listen to that interview I did with you, it’s like hearing a different person speak, you know,” he says. Within a few months, Violand says he began experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and   stress. Now 30, he lives with his girlfriend in Berlin, where he works as a data scientist for a solar energy company. He says the question of what it means for him to be a victim has been the central theme of years of therapy since the shooting. ”I’d like to say that the shooter took my lightness away. My lightness of life,” Violand says. ”It’s kind of harder to see the good side of things sometimes.” Colin Goddard was in French class with Violand, and was shot four times. He still has bullet fragments in his body, but says he feels fortunate. ”I have scars, but if you saw me on the street you’d never know. Very lucky,” Goddard says. ”I did nothing different than people next to me.” Now 31, Goddard is married and the father of a baby girl, and working on an MBA in the Washington, D. C. area. He says he received an outpouring of support as he recovered and the chance to reach out to other injured survivors. He worries about Violand and others who didn’t get the same kind of support. ”I just think that if you saw, if you heard, if you were in that building, you know, you were just as victimized and traumatized as everybody else was,” he says. Some survivors, including Lisa Hamp, feel Virginia Tech could have done more to help students who witnessed the events of April 16. ”[I want] to be included and treated as a survivor. It’s really that simple. Sort of the acknowledgement and recognition that what we went through is traumatic,” Hamp says. Virginia Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski says thousands of people were ”deeply affected” by the shootings. He says the university decided, in consultation with victims’  advocates, to focus its highest level of support on the families of the 32 people killed, and 25 other people the university considers physically injured. ”We had to make a decision about where we could focus our resources  —   both financial, human, and otherwise  —   towards those affected most profoundly,” he says. Hamp, meanwhile, has raised several thousand dollars to send other survivors to the   anniversary events. She says she hopes the weekend will be a time of healing for everyone  —   and she looks forward to reconnecting with the classmates she says helped save her life. ”We all probably have had different levels of trauma we’ve all reacted to it differently,” Hamp says. ”But getting together can help us heal, still.”"
"Americans were once again forced to grapple with gun violence in schools when three people were killed in a   in San Bernardino, Calif. on Monday, less than a week before the 10th anniversary of the nation’s worst school shooting. On the morning of April 16, 2007,   Cho, a student at Virginia Tech, killed 32 students and teachers and wounded 17 others. Until last year’s massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, it was the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U. S. history. Jane Vance, an instructor at Virginia Tech, recounts the first day back in the classroom after the tragedy with Lucinda Roy. Roy was head of the university’s English department and had tutored the shooter, who was an English major. ”I came back into my classroom of 35 and expected maybe five students,” Vance says. ”But not one was missing. And they were still, like statues, until a young man named Patrick stood before the class, with his hair nicely combed and his shirt tucked in.” Vance says Patrick told the class that his sister, who was the worst wounded out of the 17 survivors, had a bullet next to her spine, and another in her French braid. Then another student spoke up. Vance says Kristen told the class that her friend Caitlin, one of the victims, had been the only other person at Virginia Tech from her ”little hometown.” And that was when Patrick finished Kristen’s sentence: ”Yes, Caitlin, she sat next to my sister. She died very quickly.” That was the information Kristen said she wanted to know. ”And the class rose spontaneously, hugged, and sat down,” Vance says. After the response of solidarity from the class, Vance says she asked her students, ”Is it time for me to teach?” They nodded, and class began again. ”That kindness in such young people changed me forever,” Vance says. Produced for Morning Edition by Von Diaz. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"The period of anticipation preceding the release of Kendrick Lamar’s fourth album, DAMN. was intense, brief but methodically built. Three weeks ago, Lamar gave us the   track ”The Heart Part 4,” a warning shot to the rest of the game and an announcement of ambition the following Friday saw the release of its single ”HUMBLE.” One week ago he announced the album’s title and its release date. When DAMN. arrived last night, we were ready to dive in. This is an album that will take time to digest, but it’s also one that offers pleasures and themes without delay. Here are our first thoughts. (And if you haven’t listened to the album yet, it’s available for streaming here.) ”Ain’t nobody prayin’ for me,” muses Kendrick Lamar on ”FEEL. ,” the track that jumped out during my first pass through DAMN. He fashions the line into a refrain  —   a cry of isolation that anchors an unfurling scroll of insecurities. This is King Kendrick in Book of Lamentations mode, exhausted and exasperated, stacking intricate rhymes in a way that conveys both lyrical mastery and mounting anxiety. Sounwave is the producer of the track, which features Thundercat on electric bass, extending a sonic tether to Lamar’s masterpiece, To Pimp a Butterfly. There’s also a lyrical tether: ”I feel like this gotta be the feelin’ what ’Pac was   The feelin’ of an apocalypse happenin. ’” Lamar seems to be recalling his    conversation with Tupac on ”Mortal Man,” the closing track of Butterfly  —   specifically a chilling section that augurs ”bloodshed, for real.” Or maybe that’s not precisely what he’s saying here. A quick pass can only get you so far with a new album by Kendrick Lamar, and DAMN. is especially dense with signs and symbols, as if made for our annotative age. What to make of the fact that ”HUMBLE. ,” the album’s first single, comes juxtaposed here with ”PRIDE. ”? What’s the implication of the cover illustration, which frames the word ”DAMN.” like the logo for TIME magazine? (How about the fact that the points of the ”M” form devil’s horns over Lamar’s head, just as they did for a certain   named Person of the Year?) Then there’s the recursive elegance of the album’s two bookends, and the way that the closing track (”DUCKWORTH. ”) loops back to the prelude (”BLOOD. ”). As always, Lamar is obsessed with human consequences  —   systemic and individual, global and hyperlocal. When he puts a name to that new president in ”XXX. ,” and also names his predecessor, Lamar doesn’t let anyone off the hook: ”But is America honest or do we bask in sin?” he asks, setting up one of the crucial dualities on this album. Even when he’s exulting in his own prowess, crowing ”This is what God feel like,” Lamar seems painfully aware that there’s no position more isolating than deity, and that the higher you fly, the harder you fall. Ain’t nobody prayin’ for that.  —  Nate Chinen, WBGO, ”This what God feel like.” Kendrick Lamar may be the greatest rapper alive and the most celebrated male musician on the planet, but  ’s not confusing praise with worship. He’s imagining omnipotence, not claiming it. After three masterpieces (plus a damn fine debut) that humility inside his DNA hasn’t gone anywhere. I may have to eat these words if he rises from his Good Samaritan death in ”BLOOD.” and releases a second album on Easter Sunday, but those internet rumors say more about us than they do about Kendrick. Humans have a checkered history of finding salvation in God complexes. But if DAMN. ’s atavistic tracklist and impeccably crafted wordplay is any sort of indicator, Kendrick will be reflecting on his mortality on Sunday morning, not courting genuflection like another certain rapper we live to analyze. Frankly, it’s hard to listen to Kendrick’s heartfelt   and not think about Kanye West on ”I Am A God” or even ”Ultralight Beam,” where he donned the garbs of gospel with all the subtlety of his friend in the White House. The dilemmas on DAMN. seem less concerned with channeling the Holy Spirit and more with the reasons we invented it in the first place.  —  Otis Hart, NPR Music, It’s certainly no coincidence that Kendrick Lamar dropped DAMN. at 12:00 midnight to kick off Good Friday. (I refuse to entertain the rumors  —   conspiracy theories, really  —   of a potential second LP to be released by K. Dot on Easter Sunday. As if we don’t have enough   scripture from this man to decipher already.) It’s almost what you don’t hear that tells the story here. No desperate attempts at radio hits. Not even Rihanna or U2 sound like themselves. He uses other artists like instruments  —   of his peace? his pain? his purpose? Whatever it is, we can relate. And that’s what matters. When he bares his soul, it’s an invitation to join him on the journey. Somewhere between his exploration of sin and virtue, he’s hitting on something. It’s not as simple or dismissible as a morality tale, thank God. I haven’t been to church in years and I hate gospel music. But a narrative steeped in the ironies of the living gospel, that’s something wholly different. Kendrick’s on one.  —  Rodney Carmichael, NPR Music, Preach Kendrick, preach! Some of the song titles alone  —   ”ELEMENT. ,” ”LUST. ,” ”LOVE. ,” ”GOD.”   evoke a honest spirituality that add a weighty layer to the musical experience. Religious themes weave through all 14 songs including a reference to the bible’s Deuteronomy in ”YAH.” and ”FEAR.” What makes this work so great is not just the meaningful lyricism we’ve come to expect from Kendrick, but also the clean and simplistic arrangements make this album supreme  —   no heavy layered sound, just commanding vocals, intentional bass lines (shout out to Thundercat on ”FEEL. ”) and sparse keyboard effects that perfectly complement the melodic narrative. Power beats anchor every single song. ”LOYALTY.” will actually bust your speakers if you play it too loud. Musicality aside, the verses suggest a nostalgic take on the past. A reminder of the constant struggle and conflict in every stage of life. That life is a journey filled with both reflection and hope, and that God is leading the way. In ”FEEL. ,” Kendrick raps, ”Ain’t nobody prayin’ for me.” Oh, but Kendrick, we are. We appreciate you, and the musical blessings you continue to bestow on us.  —  Suraya Mohamed, NPR Music, That shouted introduction to ”LOVE.”  —   ”Another woooorld premiere!”  —   is funnier every time I hear it. Just when Lamar and his producers are doing all they can to soften the mood, that goofy throwback toast comes screaming across the stereo field, as though Forrest Gump wandered into the studio and tripped over a   MPC at just the right,   moment. ”LOVE.” is a lot of things. Functionally, it’s a   to ”LUST. ,” the neighboring track that plays like Curtis Mayfield reworking ”Tired of Sex.” Contextually, it’s a sensory respite in the final act of a bracing work of art DAMN. may not be as depleting as To Pimp a Butterfly’s   marathon, but it is   in its precision. And referentially, it feels like best Drake song Drake never wrote, with Zacari filling the space normally reserved for The Weeknd or   on a gorgeous, gliding hook. Really, it’s just stunning to hear Lamar sound this earnest and unguarded, his voice this smooth and taut, weaving around synth swells and gated snares that bloom and fade without irony. There’s a lot more to explore (and to interrogate) on this album, but ”LOVE.” is the revelation I keep coming back to. The best   ballads tend to hit their targets at an angle, their message couched in body worship or outlaw fantasy or wry insecurity. Here, a generation’s most uncompromising voice keeps his message simple for once: ”Don’t got you, I got nothing.”  —  Daoud   NPR Music, Like To Pimp A Butterfly and good kid, m. A. A. d. City before it, the first listen is overwhelming. The second too. Like pressing on closed eyelids then snapping them open, a whole begins to slowly fizzle in from the edges. Kendrick has already proven he’s a renaissance cosmonaut, pushing the sound of   out towards the same moon where Sun Ra summered. Now he illustrates that a   banger can do the same. How? Every passage here that furrows the brow in limbic pleasure takes a left turn, as the last minute of   and song of the summer ”DNA” demonstrates. His handwriting is everywhere here. We know that every note of the Butterfly sessions was guided by his hand. That he’s done the same with the modern palette of rap proves his point. ”My resume is real enough for two millenniums.”  —  Andrew Flanagan, NPR Music, Kendrick is an album artist. We know that. But man oh man, the payoff on listening to DAMN. start to finish is colossal. Album opener ”BLOOD.” frames some heavy questions: ”Is it wickedness? Is it weakness? You decide. Are we gonna live or die? ”. Then Kendrick drops us into one small moment  —   ”So I was taking a walk the other day.” Our narrator tries to help a blind woman find something she’s lost. And (spoiler alert) she shoots him. Snap out of that moment and into an existential trip rife with paranoia, pulse and compact cadence. Kendrick questions everything  —   from the patriotic on ”XXX.” (”Is America honest or do we bask in sin? ”) to the profound on ”FEAR.” (”Why God, why God do I gotta suffer? ”) to the profane on ”LUST.” (”I just need you to want me, Am I askin’ too much? Let me put the head in. ”). He grapples with the state of his identity on ”YEAH.” (”I’m a Israelite, don’t call me black no more. That word is only a color it ain’t fact no more. ”) and the trappings of newfound fame and money (”The shock value of my success put bolts in me”). Musically, DAMN. is just as  : There’s the acid jazz and paranoid distortion on ”XXX.” (featuring an appropriately disorienting cameo by U2) the rattlesnake RB of ”FEAR. ,” the Curtis Mayfield falsetto feel of ”LUST.” and the sheer beauty of ”LOVE. ,” featuring Zacari. By the time you’ve reached DAMN. ’s end, Kendrick has packed in so much thought and sound that the deadly encounter from the opening track is nearly knocked out of your memory. And then the last track ”DUCKWORTH.” drops and we meet two more strangers, Ducky and Anthony. No spoilers here, suffice it to say Kendrick echoes the imminent danger he set up on the opening track with the line, ”You take two strangers and put ’em in random predicaments, give ’em a soul so they can make their own decisions and live with it.” When it was over, I found myself going back to the start of ”BLOOD.” to listen to Kendrick ’s opening question again: ”Is it wickedness? Is it weakness? You decide. Are we gonna live or die?” The conclusion? If the result is the same, the intent is irrelevant. Danger is imminent from without and within. But that’s just how I feel after the first couple listens. This is an album so thick, so stacked, that it begs many, many more.  —  Talia Schlanger, World Cafe, When Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. leaked last night and everyone else was busy making GIFS of heads bursting into flames, I was listening to Jermaine Dupri at a Recording   panel discussion in Nashville. Dupri talks with his whole body, even while sitting in an uncomfortable studio chair he moves musically, as if listening back to the myriad hit tracks he made, swaying, raising his arms, leaning into imagined beats. Of course he does. He was made by music  —   a dancer in a Whodini video at twelve, a mogul crafting a new sound in rap at nineteen, an artiste who had the audacity to sing the parts he wanted to Mariah Carey to emulate when he was 23. As he told stories, his energy filled the whole room, as if the unforgettable music he’s made emanated from him even when the handy playlist the moderator had created was off. Coming home, I started streaming DAMN. and a similar sense of the self overflowing its limits overwhelmed me. The album begins with a choir of voices provided by producer Bekon. Kendrick Lamar’s cuts through effortlessly, telling a story that seems to end in his death at the hands of a blind woman he encounters in the street. Overinterpreters could read the rest of DAMN. as the last gasp of Kendrick’s soul as it leaves his body  —   a lyrical take on someone’s life passing before his eyes (or really, our ears). That swirl of memories, boasts and questions presents a version of what bell hooks has called ”radical black subjectivity,” a person confronting his essence, which itself emerges in fragments. Listening to DAMN. is overwhelming because Kendrick allows, needs, listeners to pick up and seriously confront every piece he scatters. DAMN. ripples with stories, of family love and violence, deprivation and excess. But it’s the voice, inseparable from the music, that startles, cajoles, alienates, suprises. Lamar’s elastic tenor becomes Silly Putty, stretching into singsong, wrapping around patois, merging with synths and vocoders and then pulling away from them as if to reassert an essence that came before pop’s mechanisms made him famous. At times he sounds like Andre 3000, his drawl psychedelicized. Elsewhere he spits bullets the way Tupac did. On the track he shares with Rihanna, ”Loyalty,” their voices almost merge. (The same fluidity characterizes the album’s two other featured collaborations, with U2 and the young bedroom auteur Zacari) Always, though, Kendrick returns to his vocal essence,   and limber, an urgency matched with playfulness. The stories he tells also surface at the boundaries of the self. Lamar consistently presents himself as inhabiting contradictions: the violent shooter and the innocent victim the sensation junkie who tells his girl ”just let me put the head in” and the constant lover whose main concern is earning trust the winner who becomes a God when he goes to the bank and the child who had to eat syrup sandwiches, who never leaves the grown man alone. Kendrick injects these tales with fragments penned by other rappers, from ODB to Jay Z to Juvenile. He’s not simply quoting, he’s showing how those other rappers’ sensibilities rest within his DNA. The elemental titles on DAMN.  —   ”BLOOD. ,” ”DNA. ,” ”LOVE.”  —   tell us that, despite the album’s lush feeling of experimentation, this is a kind of stripping away: of the present moment and of the pressure to stand for anything but oneself. Kendrick stands alone in all his complexity here. ”Opposition is not enough,” bell hooks writes of the need for radical black subjectivity. ”In that vacant space after one has resisted there is still the necessity to become  —   to make oneself anew.” DAMN. is Kendrick Lamar showing us how to do that.  —  Ann Powers, NPR Music"
"The wait is over.  Kendrick Lamar unleashed DAMN. his fourth studio album, on streaming services shortly after midnight on the east coast Friday, hours after it leaked online and about an hour after   popped up on his fans’ phones. DAMN. follows To Pimp A Butterfly (2015) and good kid, m. A. A. d. city (2012) both pieces so ambitious and varied, richly envisioned and perfectly executed that Lamar could have retired a legend based on them alone. Expectations are justifiably high. Oh, and. .. U2? (Yes, U2.) The album comes after a relatively minimal promotional campaign consisting of one     social media post on March 23 and the release of ”The Heart Part 4” (part of a sequence stretching back to 2010 that provides an arc to Lamar’s ascent). One week later came a stunning video for a new song, ”HUMBLE.” The album’s title, art and tracklist arrived on April 11. And now, finally: DAMN. ”Drop one classic came right back   Another classic right back,” Lamar rapped three weeks ago on ”The Heart Part 4.” As Rodney Carmichael wrote here, ”When it comes to driving the cultural discourse, Lamar has proven himself to be rap’s main course.” It’s time to eat. Listen below."
"Reporters ask lots of pesky questions during campaigns for a reason: to find out how someone would govern. Most candidates right and left comply with the public interest in what they would do by putting out policy papers and laying out facts and figures, numbers and details. Not Donald Trump. He likes to keep everyone guessing. And the country is now seeing just how much. In the first couple of months of his presidency, he was governing like he campaigned  —   bombastic and trying to follow through on bold promises. Build the wall. Ban certain people. Bring back manufacturing jobs. He ordered that the wall be built (though the U. S. will pay for it and part of it might be a fence) he ordered a travel ban for people from six   countries (though it was seven at first, and it’s still hung up in the courts) and, as for jobs, well, presidents always get too much credit and blame for that, but there’s always the Carrier deal. In just the past few days, however, Trump has reversed himself on a whole host of subjects  —   from NATO, China, Russia and Syria to health care, the   Bank, even Goldman Sachs and Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen. As the   marker of Trump’s presidency approaches, the shifting raises questions about what Trump really intends to do as president with the rest of his time in office. Does he even know? Or is he  —   and now the country  —   simply at the mercy of his instinctual whims and latest conversations? Some of what Trump is doing is being billed as a movement toward the mainstream. For example: But do Trump’s reversals really signal that? Don’t bet on it. Just because something is true today with Trump doesn’t mean it will be so tomorrow. Here’s a look at how Trump has changed on some of the issues in the news and how he’s shifted. (Jump to: NATO, China, Russia, Syria, health care,   Bank, Goldman Sachs and Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen.) Then: ”I think NATO’s obsolete. NATO was done at a time you had the Soviet Union, which was obviously larger, much larger than Russia is today. I’m not saying Russia’s not a threat. But we have other threats.”  —   March 27, 2016, on ABC’s This Week  Now:  ”The Secretary General and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism. I said it was obsolete it’s no longer obsolete. It’s my hope that NATO will take on an increased role in supporting our Iraqi partners in their battle against ISIS.”  —   Thursday in a press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. PolitiFact   Trump’s view that NATO didn’t give him credit in 2016 when it unveiled that it had created a new intelligence chief. But it noted this wasn’t a major change  —   and it wasn’t because of Trump. Member nations had been complaining about how to improve intelligence sharing. This was a step to get better about that. The   site added: ”More to the point, Trump’s comment gives the impression that NATO hadn’t been responsive to terrorism until the new division was created. That’s not true at all. NATO involvement in   issued its first formal declaration on terrorism in 1980, and it became a significant issue for the alliance on Sept. 11, 2001.” NATO has a section of its website explaining how the organization tries to counter terrorism. Its efforts were written about by Philip Gordon in 2002. Gordon wound up on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council. In fairness to Trump, Stoltenberg was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday saying that NATO has ”stepped up” its efforts when it comes to combating terrorism and is hoping that more countries devote more money to their own defenses as well, something Trump has called for. Then: ”On day one of a Trump administration, the U. S. Treasury Department will designate China a currency manipulator.”  —   Nov. 9, 2015, in a Wall Street Journal  . ”I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.”  —   Trump in his ”Contract with the American Voter” as point No. 3 of his ”seven actions to protect American workers.” He called that plan ”my pledge to you.” Now:  ”They’re not currency manipulators.”  —   Trump in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. Trump’s reason? Per the Journal: ”China hasn’t been manipulating its currency for months and because taking the step now could jeopardize his talks with Beijing on confronting the threat of North Korea.” Then:  ”The relationship is great, and it would be great if I had the position I should have.”  —   March 18, 2015, to the Daily Mail. ”I was over in Moscow two years ago and I will tell you  —   you can get along with those people and get along with them well. You can make deals with those people. Obama can’t.”  —   June 16, 2015, to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly. He went on to echo that sentiment on multiple occasions throughout the campaign. (See CNN’s comprehensive timeline here.) ”If he [Putin] says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him. I’ve already said he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, ’Oh, isn’t that a terrible thing’  —   the man has very strong control over a country.”  —   Sept. 7, 2016, in an NBC town hall. ”[Hillary Clinton] doesn’t like Putin, because Putin has outsmarted her at every step of the way. . .. Putin has outsmarted her in Syria, he’s outsmarted her every step of the way.”  —   Oct. 19, 2016, third presidential debate. In December, Trump quoted Putin in a tweet, saying of Clinton: ” ’One must be able to lose with dignity.’ So true!” As   he said this on Jan. 11: ”If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability, because we have a horrible relationship with Russia.” Then as president, on Feb. 6, just two months ago, when asked by O’Reilly about Putin being a ”killer,” Trump said: ”There are a lot of killers. Do you think our country is so innocent?” Now: ”It would be wonderful, as we were discussing just a little while ago, if NATO and our country could get along with Russia. Right now, we’re not getting along with Russia at all. We may be at an   low in terms of a relationship with Russia.”  —   Trump in a press conference with NATO’s secretary general on Wednesday. ”Things will work out fine between the U. S. A. and Russia. At the right time everyone will come to their senses  there will be lasting peace!”  —   Trump in a tweet on Thursday. Then: ”The President must get Congressional approval before attacking   mistake if he does not!”  —   Aug. 30, 2013, in a tweet after Assad used chemical weapons and President Obama was deciding if he would strike unilaterally. Obama wound up going to Congress, did not get approval and did not strike despite, saying use of chemical weapons would be a ”red line.” ”AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA   IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN  FROM THAT FIGHT THE U. S. GETS NOTHING!”  —   Sept. 5, 2013, in a tweet. ”President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your ’powder’ for another (and more important) day!”  —   Sept. 7, 2013, in a tweet. Now: ”Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”  —   April 6, in a speech announcing U. S. military action against Syria. Then: ”I think what will happen is Obamacare, unfortunately, will explode. It’s going to have a very bad year. . .. So what would be really good, with no Democrat support, is if the Democrats, when it explodes  —   which it will soon  —   if they got together with us and got a real healthcare bill. I would be totally up to do it. And I think that’s going to happen. I think the losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, because now they own Obamacare. They own it  —   100 percent own it. . .. And they have Obamacare for a little while longer, until it ceases to exist, which it will at some point in the near future. . .. We’ll be going right now for tax reform, which we could have done earlier.”  —   March 24 from the Oval Office after the GOP health care bill’s failure. Now: ”We have to do health care first to pick up additional money so that we get great tax reform. So we’re going to have a phenomenal tax reform. But I have to do health care first. I want to do it first to really do it right.”  —   Wednesday in an interview with Fox Business. Then: ”I don’t like it because I don’t think it’s necessary. It’s a   street also. It’s sort of a featherbedding for politicians and others, and a few companies. And these are companies that can do very well without it. So I don’t like it. I think it’s a lot of excess baggage. I think it’s unnecessary. And when you think about free enterprise it’s really not free enterprise. I’d be against it.”  —   Aug. 4, 2015, to Bloomberg. Now: ”It turns out that, first of all, lots of small companies are really helped, the vendor companies. . .. But also, maybe more important, other countries give [assistance]. When other countries give it we lose a tremendous amount of business. . .. Instinctively, you would say, ’Isn’t that a ridiculous thing,’ But actually, it’s a very good thing. And it actually makes money, it could make a lot of money.”  —   Wednesday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Then: ”I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton.”  —   Feb. 19, 2016, in a primary debate about rival Ted Cruz. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, was a Goldman employee. ”We’ve seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U. S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.”  —   Oct. 13, 2016, in reference to Clinton receiving $675, 000 for three speeches made to Goldman. Trump touted that he was   his campaign and that he believed that the influence of special interests ”resonates with voters.” Trump even ran this closing ad in the 2016 campaign. Over images of world leaders, Hillary Clinton and Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, there’s this line: ”It’s a global power struggle that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets into a handful of large corporations and political entities.” Now: Trump hired a slew of people with Goldman Sachs on their resumes to key positions in his White House. In addition to chief strategist and former campaign ”CEO” Steve Bannon, who had once worked for the heavy hitting New York investment bank, there’s also Gary Cohn, director of his National Economic Council deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was Trump’s national finance chairman. Cohn, a registered Democrat, is so wealthy, he’s worth more than Mitt Romney. His financial disclosure found he’s one of the richest members of Trump’s Cabinet, worth between $252 million and $611 million. Another Goldman alumnus, Anthony Scaramucci, who was involved in the transition, was set to take on a senior role in the White House running the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. But he wound up not getting the role because of a potential conflict of interest  —   a hedge fund he founded was in the process of being sold to a Chinese company. Bloomberg wrote this back in December of Trump’s Goldman ties: ”After eight years as the face of Wall Street greed and the target of public scorn, the bankers at Goldman Sachs can be cheerful again. Not only has Trump’s election stoked hopes for looser regulatory policies that will make it easier for banks to take bigger risks and book fatter profits, but Goldman also appears to have regained its place at the nexus between Wall Street and Washington. After being largely cut out of the federal government during the Obama years, with few of its alums tapped for big jobs, Goldman is starting to live up to its former nickname, Government Sachs.” Then: ”She’s keeping [rates] artificially low to get Obama retired. Watch what is going to happen afterwards. It is a very serious problem, and I think it is very political. I think she is very political and to a certain extent, I think she should be ashamed of herself because it is not supposed to be that way.”  —   Sept. 12, 2016, on CNBC. ”We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble, and we had better be awfully careful, and we have a Fed that’s doing political things. This Janet Yellen of the Fed. The Fed is doing political . .. by keeping the interest rates at this level.”  —   Sept. 26, 2016, during the first general election presidential debate. Now: ”I do like a   rate policy, I must be honest with you. . .. No, not toast. I like her, I respect her.”  —   Wednesday to the Wall Street Journal. That’s a lot. Despite all of it, White House press secretary Sean Spicer contended it’s not Trump changing, it’s everything else changing in Trump’s direction. ”If you look at what’s happened, it’s those entities or individuals in some cases or issues evolving towards the president’s position,” Spicer said, per NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. ”NATO, in particular, he talked about the need of countries to pay their fair share, to live up to their commitments of 2 percent of GDP. He talked about the need for NATO to focus more on terrorism. NATO has done just that.” (See our   on this very point in point No. 1 above.) Trump is undoubtedly  —   let’s call it  —   ideologically flexible. There were plenty of Trump   from before entering politics to his campaign. He went from ”very ” for example, to floating the idea of jailing women who get abortions. There is potentially some advantage to being malleable. It could help him make deals. Mike McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia, said on MSNBC on Wednesday that Trump’s unpredictability has the Russians worried  —   and it can be one of his biggest assets. This unpredictability was employed by another U. S. president, Richard Nixon. His ”Madman Theory” was employed to keep the Soviet Union and Vietnam, for example, off balance. Barton Swaim, a former aide to Mark Sanford when he was governor of South Carolina, picked up on this in an   in the Washington Post in December and made the case for Trump this way: ”[E]vents have a way of upending presidents’ worldviews  —   George W. Bush, remember, rejected ”nation building” as a presidential candidate  —   and it’s just conceivable that Trump may use his cunning to accomplish worthier goals than his myriad critics think him inclined to pursue. Trump, in other words  —   the madman, not in theory, but in practice  —   may bring off some creditable diplomatic victories precisely because foreign leaders and their emissaries don’t feel it’s in their interest to test the White House.” But the downside can be huge. Dana Milbank wrote about it in December, too: ”[I]n Trump’s application of the Madman Theory there seems to be less theory than madman. There may be advantages to keeping foes and opponents off guard, but Trump is baffling friends and allies, too. In foreign affairs, unpredictability spooks allies and spreads instability. And unpredictable policy at home has long been seen as toxic for business. . .. The widespread chaos suggests Trump isn’t signaling new policies as much as he’s winging it. His unpredictability is not a theory. It’s the absence of one.” So, crazy? Or crazy like a fox? Where you come down on that is probably another dividing line between Trump opponents and supporters. Regardless, both sides should be able to agree that Americans deserve to know where politicians stand, what they intend to do, how they will lead and, if they change, why. When it comes to the Trump presidency, one thing is clear  —   anything can happen."
"President Trump’s economic policy pronouncements have taken some twists and turns this week. From Chinese currency manipulation to his choice to head the Federal Reserve, Trump contradicted statements he’d made during the presidential campaign. In doing so, Trump is departing from some of the radical changes he promised, and moving toward the positions of his predecessors. Until now China was a frequent target. Over and over during the presidential campaign, Trump pilloried China, accusing it of manipulating its currency. ”I’m going to instruct my Treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator! The greatest in the world,” Trump said at a Florida rally last year. In 2015, Trump even penned an   in The Wall Street Journal called ”Ending China’s Currency Manipulation.” But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, Trump did an   saying, ”They’re not currency manipulators.” Trump’s new view of China aligned him with the mainstream conclusion that China stopped manipulating its currency to boost exports several years ago, well before Trump’s statements to the contrary during the campaign. Derek Scissors, a specialist in U. S.  economic relations at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says Trump’s opposing characterizations of China are both justified. ”It’s legitimate as a candidate to run against the history of Chinese action, because that affects the American people,” he says. ”But as president you have to deal with what’s going on now. And with what’s going on now, China is not a currency manipulator right now.” Economist Dean Baker of the   Center for Economic and Policy Research says the timing of Trump’s change of views was likely related to an annual report on trade manipulators that is due from the Treasury this weekend. ”I don’t have any advance knowledge of the report. But I’m assuming it will not be labeling China as a manipulator,” Baker says. ”And [Trump] had to lay the groundwork for that, because during the campaign, he made that his commitment. ’As soon as I get in office, we’re going to label China a manipulator and take action against them.’ ” Baker says he’s a little disappointed that Trump seems to be dropping the currency issue. Baker believes China still manages its currency in a way that perpetuates huge trade imbalances with the U. S. and hurts U. S. manufacturing. ”We can’t reverse history. We can’t get back to where we were 20 years ago and bring back all the jobs that were lost in Michigan, Ohio and these other states,” he says. ”But we could make a difference if we had something closer to balanced trade.” The Obama administration had at times called China’s currency ”significantly undervalued,” but didn’t take the step of labeling the country a manipulator. Also this week, Trump reversed his view of the   Bank, a government agency that provides loan guarantees to finance U. S. exports. During the campaign he complained the bank wasn’t supporting ”free enterprise,” because it was unfairly subsidizing exports from big companies like Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar. It was a position similar to   conservatives like Rep. Jeb Hensarling,   who opposed the bank and called it ”corporate welfare.” But on Wednesday, Trump told the Journal he no longer wants to eliminate it. That’s a similar position to Obama, who had advocated for the bank’s role. Baker says Trump is no doubt getting an earful on this matter from the CEOs he has been inviting to the White House. ”These large firms are all politically powerful and when you’re actually sitting there at the White House, they’re talking to you,” he says. The AEI’s Scissors believes Trump’s top White House economic adviser, Gary Cohn, formerly of Goldman Sachs, has probably helped move Trump to more mainstream business views on the   Bank. ”They want the government involved in certain financial deals,” Scissors says. ”And the free market types  —   which includes me, by the way  —   don’t want the government involved, because the   Bank doesn’t spread the money evenly. It chooses certain companies to support.” Others see Trump’s move to more mainstream policy views as evidence of the waning power of populist Steve Bannon in the White House and the ascendancy of Trump’s    Jared Kushner. Trump also suggested to the Journal that he could still reappoint Janet Yellen to another term as Federal Reserve chair  —   something he said before that he wouldn’t do. And after accusing Yellen of keeping rates low to help President Obama, Trump said he’d like to see interest rates kept low for him, too. NPR’s James Doubek contributed to this report."
"Updated at 4 a. m. ET Saturday, A government spokesman has increased the death toll from Thursday’s bombing using the ”Mother of All Bombs” in Afghanistan to 94, up from 36. Ataullah Khogyani, the spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, said in a tweet Saturday that 94 ISIS members were killed in the attack on an ISIS underground complex, including four top commanders. ”Fortunately there is no report of civilians being killed in the attack,” Khogyani told The Associated Press on Saturday. On Friday, U. S. Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. called it ”the right weapon against the right target.” It was the most powerful   bomb ever used in combat. The bomb was dropped in the Achin district of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. A video of the strike shows it hitting at the lower edge of a mountain, along a narrow valley, producing a huge shock wave and blast plume. The nearly   bomb is believed to have destroyed ”large quantities” of weapons when it struck a network of tunnels, bunkers and other fortifications used by the offshoot group   (for Khorasan province) according to an Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman. The U. S. assessment is still in progress, a Pentagon official told NPR’s Tom Bowman, adding that there’s a chance the death toll might include results from two other smaller operations against   that took place Thursday night. Nicholson said the ”MOAB” ordnance  —   for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or less formally, the ”Mother of All Bombs”  —   was ”designed to destroy caves and tunnels, which   have been using, along with extensive belts of IEDs, to thicken their positions against our offensive.” U. S. special forces and Afghan commandos are now inspecting the site, Nicholson said, adding, ”the weapon achieved its intended purpose.” Nicholson, the commander of the   Resolute Support force, discussed the operation Friday in a news conference in Kabul. When he was asked about the timing of the unprecedented strike, and whether it had been influenced by the White House, Nicholson said, ”In regard to timing, it’s when we encountered this target on the battlefield.” The general said that because the spring offensive against   had been slowed by fighters using caves and tunnels, ”It was the right time to use it tactically, against the right target on the battlefield.” Addressing the Afghan public, Nicholson said all precautions were taken to prevent civilian casualties. ”We had persistent surveillance over the area before, during and after the operation, and now we have Afghan and U. S. forces on the site, and see no evidence of civilian casualties,” Nicholson said. ”Nor have there been any reports of civilian casualties. After providing an update on the operation, Nicholson recounted a litany of offenses committed by   from beheadings and other public executions to suicide bombings. The strike is part of a broader offensive, which Nicholson said is a sign of Afghanistan’s commitment ”to defeat Daesh in Afghanistan this year.” The official designation for the MOAB is the    here’s how NPR’s Phil Ewing explains its origin: ”The    has been in the U. S. arsenal for more than 14 years, deployed to bases in the Middle East where it could be loaded aboard an American aircraft but never used until now. At more than 30 feet long, it’s too big to fit inside the weapons bay of a standard Air Force bomber. Instead, troops load it into the cargo compartment of a specialized transport, the   Combat Talon, which releases it over the target by opening its ramp in the same way it might for paratroopers or   supplies. The bomb is guided by satellite to its target. NPR’s James Doubek contributed to this report."
"Paul Manafort quit as Donald Trump’s campaign manager last summer amid questions about his consulting work for a disgraced Ukrainian leader who now is a wanted man in his own country. While Manafort vanished from Ukraine’s political scene even earlier, his name lives on in Kiev. Ukrainian investigators are seeking to understand his ties, if any, to former President Viktor Yanukovych at the time of the shooting of   protesters on the capital’s central square, known as the Maidan, in February 2014. Manafort is central to questions about the extent of Russian influence in the U. S. presidential election. The FBI is investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia in those efforts, although it has not disclosed which individuals are under scrutiny. Manafort served as Trump’s campaign chairman during the spring and summer of 2016. Manafort himself is not the subject of a Ukrainian investigation. But following the publication in February of allegedly hacked text messages in which Manafort’s daughter Andrea refers to ”blood money” earned in Ukraine  —   presumably a reference to the deaths on the central square  —   prosecutors in Kiev want to know exactly when he cut his ties to Yanukovych. ”Of course, we will check that out in the context of whether Manafort was in Ukraine at the time of the Maidan and specifically what he was doing in relation to the Ukrainian government,” prosecutor Serhiy Gorbatyuk told NPR in an interview. Manafort declined to comment, only saying through his spokesman, Jason Maloni, that he hoped Ukrainian investigators would look into an alleged blackmail attempt against him. Gorbatyuk heads an office charged with investigating the Yanukovych government, especially at the time of the bloodshed on the Maidan. Gorbatyuk says he is still waiting for an FBI response to multiple requests for help in questioning Manafort as a witness in another   corruption case. The 2014 Maidan revolution threw Ukraine into turmoil. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets to protest Yanukovych’s decision to reject an association agreement with the European Union and align Ukraine more closely with Russia. After the protests turned violent, Yanukovych fled to Russia, where he remains. In the ensuing power vacuum, Russia annexed Crimea and supported an armed uprising by   separatists in eastern Ukraine. It’s not clear when Manafort last visited his Kiev office, which used to be in a   brick building on a quiet side street off the Maidan. But his name resurfaced last August, when the New York Times reported that it was included in secret ”black ledgers” that appeared to document Yanukovych’s cash payments to political allies. Shortly afterward, Manafort resigned as manager for Trump’s presidential campaign. The story didn’t end there  —   at least not in Ukraine. In March, Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko released financial documents that he said were found in Manafort’s former office and showed that on one occasion, Yanukovych used an offshore bank account and phony invoice to pay Manafort $750, 000. Manafort denied the allegations, according to the New York Times. Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that the same amount, also listed in a ”black ledger,” had actually been received by Manafort’s consulting firm in the U. S. Last summer, the fledgling National   Bureau of Ukraine published the instances that Manafort’s name is listed in the ”black ledgers.” Ukrainian investigators say they are interested in ascertaining whether such financial transactions were part of corrupt schemes used by government officials. To get to the bottom of their investigations, they rely on cooperation with foreign law enforcement agencies, including from the U. S. ”We need effective legal cooperation. We need a quick response to our requests,” said Dariya Manzhura, a NABU spokeswoman. ”Otherwise we won’t be able to gather enough materials and evidence.” Ukraine, which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has struggled to build independent government institutions. Because of its long historical ties to Moscow, Ukraine is probably the country that has been most affected by Russia politically. In Yanukovych’s first bid for the Ukrainian presidency, in 2004, his most influential advisers were Russian. President Vladimir Putin openly backed his candidacy. Ironically, Yanukovych hired Manafort exactly because his Russian advisers had failed to get him elected that time. Taras Chornovil, a former Yanukovych confidant, says he clashed with Manafort over strategy in the 2006 parliamentary elections. ”I didn’t see any ideology in him,” said Chornovil. But he says he found it ”suspicious” that Manafort pushed a message favoring closer alignment with Russia and opposing Ukraine joining NATO. Andriy Yermolayev, a former Yanukovych adviser who met Manafort regularly over coffee, remembers the American consultant completely differently. ”I absolutely don’t agree with the way Manafort is characterized,” he said, ”because he had his principles and supported a   course for Ukraine.” Manafort was ”disappointed” with Yanukovych’s fateful decision not to sign the EU agreement in November 2013, according to Yermolayev. Manafort’s defenders in Ukraine say he has been caught in a web of political intrigue that stretches to America. Ukrainian investigators insist they’re just doing their job."
"The beautiful beaches of Teknaf, along the Bay of Bengal in southern Bangladesh, are almost completely untouched by humans. Wide, with   brown and gray sand, the shore looks as if it stretches along the sea forever. In fact, the Bangladeshi government bills it as the world’s longest beach. So naturally, developers are lining up to build there and have literally staked out their claims on signs along the road, Marine Drive. When the highway is finished, it will link this place to Cox’s Bazar some 50 miles to the north. ”We look for other tourists from all over the world. We have a goal to attract them,” says Anwar Ul Islam, who heads the Cox’s Bazar Development Authority. One of the first goals is to turn the domestic Cox’s Bazar Airport into an international airport. That work, he says, should be finished in two more years. When it’s done, he is confident foreign tourists will come and that Cox’s Bazar will give Thailand and the Philippines a run for their money  —   bringing badly needed jobs and investment to a country of more than 150 million people that doesn’t have enough of either. But there’s a potential problem with that plan: hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees live in that area. Since the 1970s, an estimated 500, 000 of the Muslim minority group have fled to Bangladesh from neighboring   Myanmar in several waves. In the last six months, some 70, 000 Rohingya have arrived after the Myanmar military’s latest crackdown against them. Refugees fleeing the country describe a brutal military campaign of murder, arson and mass rape against the   minority. Many of these refugees live unofficially in squatter camps near Cox’s Bazar within a few miles of the beach. That’s not a big selling point for a   tourist destination, and Ul Islam knows it. ”It is an issue,” he says. ”The government has decided if we can relocate these Rohingya from Cox’s Bazar . .. to other places, it will be better.” Until then, the Rohingya are stuck they’re not allowed to move or work  —   not legally, at least. At a brick factory a short drive from Cox’s Bazar, the manager says that he hires Rohingya for the nastiest jobs: hauling the coal to bake the bricks. ”We don’t recruit them. If they come looking for work, and we need people, we give them a job,” he says. He has even given one Rohingya employee a permanent job as a mechanic to keep the ovens cooking. Hassan  —   NPR is only using his first name because he is not supposed to be working  —   is 30 years old and fled Myanmar two years ago. This job, he says, is the best he’s had in Bangladesh. ”The last job I had, the boss tried to cheat me and didn’t give me my full salary,” Hassan says. ”He told me if I complained, he’d have someone hurt me. So I left and came here.” Hassan says he sends about half the $100 a month he earns back to his family still living in Myanmar. But many locals think that he, as a refugee, shouldn’t have a job at all. ”We compete for the same jobs,” says Habibur Rahaman, an    Bangladeshi working at a construction site south of Cox’s Bazar. ”The more of them that come, the less opportunities we have to work and to make money.” He says employers can pay Rohingya half what Bangladeshis will accept, since they’re working without authorization and have to take what they can get. Rahaman’s uncle Alauddin says he understands the Rohingya’s problems across the border in Myanmar, but worries more about his own people. ”Our country is already poor. We don’t need any more Rohingya coming here and making it worse,” he says. ”Not all Rohingya are bad, some are good. But they still take our jobs and some are involved in the illegal drugs trade, too.” There are other concerns. Some analysts worry that a new Rohingya insurgent group  —   the one blamed for the October and November attacks that prompted the Myanmar military’s brutal crackdown  —   could start recruiting in the camps in southern Bangladesh and possibly use them as staging areas for attacks against the military in Myanmar. If that happens, it could prompt another furious response from the military and potentially another wave of refugees. Now, the government has a plan to relocate the Rohingya refugees to a remote island call Thengar Char, which lies some three hours away from the mainland. Local officials say parts of the island are underwater much of the year. The plan has been kicking around for a while, but in January, after the latest influx of refugees, the government said it was moving forward with the idea. That decision alarmed the international aid community. It also caused fear among the Rohingya, says Abul Kashem, a Bangladeshi human rights activist who runs the NGO Help Cox’s Bazar. ”Who would want to be sent to an island where the water swells up and people cannot live? None of them want to go to the island of Thengar Char,” Kashem says. Not Mohammad Ismail, a refugee who’s been staying at one of the informal camps since February after fleeing Myanmar just before the new year. ”We feel safe here. We have already been tortured enough,” he says. ”We are already refugees. We don’t want to move again. We will not go to Thengar Char.” Ismail says they would rather go back to Myanmar and face the military than go to the island. Kashem hopes it doesn’t come to that and that the plan is quietly scrapped  —   some humanitarian workers on the ground believe that’s what will happen eventually. But Kashem says he understands his people’s growing unease with the number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. He says he also understands their complaints about competition for scarce resources. But he’s more sympathetic to the plight of the Rohingya. ”They neither get support in their country, nor can they feel at home here in this country,” he says. ”They are really vulnerable. They are deprived of all their rights. Of education, country, religion and language. They are deprived of everything.” The Rohingya have no good options, he says. They can either stay here in squalid camps, barely surviving, or risk returning home to Myanmar and possible retribution from the Myanmar military. Not many have chosen the latter  —   which is why the number of Rohingya in Bangladesh just keeps growing. With additional reporting by Bangladeshi journalist Muktadir Rashid."
"A funding crunch for scientific research is creating incentives for scientists to cut corners and even occasionally to cheat. This is one of the findings in a new report about scientific integrity from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Sometimes scientists adopt sloppy practices that can lead to false conclusions. This can hamper progress in science. And taxpayer dollars are on the line. Consider the story of a genetics lab at the University of Wisconsin. Mary Allen was a graduate student in that lab in 2005. One postdoctoral researcher had been laid off because of a funding shortage, and the professor in charge of the lab was scrambling to keep the laboratory afloat by seeking more grants. But Allen and her five fellow graduate students noticed that a grant document didn’t accurately describe work that had been previously done in the lab. ”We weren’t certain it was falsification,” Allen says. ”It could have been a mistake. The results sounded slightly better than they really were.” Allen and her fellow graduate students faced a difficult decision. ”If it’s really falsification, we may not have the ability to keep going in grad school, or they may ask us to go to another lab and start new projects,” she says. ”Either way, that would be a huge hit to everybody’s career.” The graduate students decided to talk to the department chairman about the issues they’d found. Ultimately the professor quit, and later pleaded guilty to scientific misconduct. This story was first reported by Science magazine in 2010. The students in the lab liked their professor and thought she was doing good work. So why did the professor tinker with the grant report in the first place? ”I think one of the reasons she did it was she was under so much stress about getting funding for the students,” Allen says. So, ”she decided tweaking the data a little to make it look better would allow her to get a grant and therefore fund us.” The former professor did not respond to NPR’s request for comment. Stories of outright misconduct like this are rare in science. But the pressures on scientists manifest in many more subtle ways. If people are working as hard as they can and as smart as they can, they may look for other ways to get a further edge to succeed in their careers, says social scientist Brian Martinson at the HealthPartners Institute in Minneapolis. ”Some proportion of people might find themselves making bad decisions and cutting corners,” he says. Martinson has surveyed university scientists and asked them about behaviors that he calls undesirable. These can include poor data handling, not keeping tight control of patient privacy and bending other rules. ”Almost half of the scientists who responded to our survey said they had engaged in at least one of those activities in the prior three years,” Martinson says. And many said they had violated multiple standards. ”When you get people engaging in that many kinds of consistent, undesirable practices, this can certainly undermine the quality of the work,” he says, ”and therefore the ability to reproduce it.” Many studies that get published in the biomedical literature can’t be reproduced in other labs. This slows progress in medical research, because scientists spend a lot of time chasing down false leads. That hampers the search for understanding disease and seeking treatments. Some of this is unavoidable, simply because scientists are exploring the edges of knowledge. But there’s plenty of room for improvement. ”If you’ve got people who are cutting corners, if you’ve got people who are doing things to undermine the quality of research, you’ve got to ask why,” Martinson says. Sometimes scientists simply don’t know better. Occasionally scientists willingly cheat. But often these behaviors are driven by bad incentives in the system. ”I think what we’re really talking about here is human nature,” says C. K. Gunsalus, director of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics at the University of Illinois. She and Martinson both served on the National Academies’ committee on research integrity. ”If you’re in an environment that has very high stakes and very low chance of success, those are two of the predictors of environments in which people are going to cheat,” Gunsalus says. That’s exactly the environment where many scientists find themselves today. There are strong career incentives to bend the rules, by exaggerating accomplishments in a grant proposal, for example. ”One of the rules in life is if you reward bad conduct you’re going to get a lot more bad conduct,” Gunsalus says, ”because even people with Ph. D. s can figure out what you’re rewarding and say, ’Ooh! If that’s what it takes to get ahead, I can do that.’ ” But if scientists see everyone else playing by the rules, they are more likely to do so as well. That’s why Gunsalus, who swoops into troubled academic departments to fix dysfunction, looks to see whether the leaders are setting a good example. If they are, others are likely to follow. ”People do fundamentally care about the rigor and integrity of research because that’s how progress happens,” she says. ”I mean, you can’t scam the facts or nature, right?” And in addition to scientific progress and tax dollars, careers are at stake here. Mary Allen says only three of the six grad students in her uprooted lab ended up getting Ph. D. s, despite the many years all of them had put in. It took her 8   years to complete hers. Allen recently got a job as a research assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. So now she finds herself in the same position as her former professor  —   on the quest for scarce grant funding. In 2005, when the misconduct took place, ”it was the worst funding NIH had seen,” Allen says, ”and we’ve only seen it go downhill. So it’s even worse than it was before.”"
"GoldLink  —   born D’Anthony Carlos  —   grew up surrounded by the sounds of Washington, D. C. in the 1990s. His father, an employee of the District’s Parks and Recreation department, introduced him to  : a   dance music that originated in D. C. in the ’70s and is one of the influences on his latest album, At What Cost.  ”[  is] all heavy percussion, so it’s more funky, but it’s really heavy drum percussion, right?” GoldLink says. ”The fact that all of these black people would gather together into a venue, no matter what the outcome was, to dance and use this music as an outlet and escape from the everyday community  —   like, problems that we had  —   was just amazing to me. You know, that shows . .. how much unity that we really do have that we don’t think that we have.” The music brought the community together  —   but by the late ’00s, the city had closed several of the most popular   venues because of violent incidents. ”It kind of took the outlet away,” he recalls. ”And if you ask me, it kind of had the city on standstill because it was like, ’What do we do now?’ And then for a minute it was really quiet and then I guess people just started rapping, you know? And I think it started this whole new music renaissance that we’re doing right now.” At 23 years old, GoldLink now feels he’s part of that renaissance. At What Cost is a bittersweet reflection on how far he’s come. ”My father grew up in the crack era,” he says. ”He would sell drugs and his friends would sell drugs . .. in these broken homes. My father is like, one of like seven, eight kids with no father, you know what I’m saying? From that era, all of those dudes went to jail or they got killed  —   and then from that it spawned, they had babies, which was us. I feel like their generational curse or problem, whatever it was, kind of just trickled down on us and it’s in our DNA.” That legacy shows up on ”Crew,” a song on At What Cost that casts GoldLink’s personal and community history in a triumphant light. ”It’s   a    record, knowing you can die any day . .. and then just kind of celebrating the life that you have with the people that you love,” he says. ”I was just happy to be alive growing up. I just didn’t even know if I could make it, ’cause a lot of kids that I knew did not make it . .. I’d get calls like, ’Yo,    got locked up for 55 years,’ like seriously, and then like, ’Oh,    just got shot at the court.    got hurt here.    got into some bull over there. ..’ you know what I’m saying? Everybody just dropping like flies.” That GoldLink has both survived and achieved success is  —   according to him  —   a cause for not only celebration, but also some measure of  . ”You know, I suffer kind of from survivor’s guilt,” he says. ”It’s like you suffer from success because you feel like  —   why me? Why am I so special? What makes me so different from the next man and why am I able to achieve these things that this person can’t? Prayer is the only thing that helps me get through it.” Even if he’s sometimes conflicted about it, GoldLink doesn’t see himself leaving D. C. for the foreseeable future. ”It’s a great place. I’m from here, I know this place, I was born and raised and it keeps you grounded, it does,” he says. ”Just knowing that you’re still very close to the things that I talk about, it shows that there’s still so much work to and I just  —   I need to be here in order for me to help.” Radio editor Monika Evstatieva and web intern Jake Witz contributed to this story."
"What’s the political definition of a moderate? For Republicans like New Jersey Rep. Leonard Lance, it means taking hits from all sides. At his third town hall of the year  —   his 43rd in his congressional career  —   Lance took incoming from his constituents for more than an hour on Wednesday evening. ”Do your jobs! Work together!” yelled Janet Katz, a Chester resident and constituent who was one of a handful of the hundreds in attendance who got to ask a question. (To avoid the appearance of stacking the deck, Lance’s constituents are given ticket numbers that are pulled at random.) Katz, like most constituents here, came to voice opposition to the GOP’s health care bill, efforts to cut funding for Planned Parenthood and general intransigence of Washington. ”If everybody doesn’t get exactly what they want, then there’s a win. Compromise!” Katz ordered. Lance responded, ”I agree with that, and I hope the Democrats will come to the table.” She shot back: ”I hope the Republicans will come to the table!” Katz wants to keep the Affordable Care Act intact and for lawmakers to fix the system, not tear it down. ”I want this repeal crap to stop,” she said, to a cheering audience. Lance is already on her side. He is a ”no” vote on his party’s health care bill. He reiterated his vow to oppose any bill that rolls back protections for people with   health conditions, as well as the other popular provisions of the law that mandate minimum coverage standards. Lance did not win over Katz or the room, however, with his position to redirect Planned Parenthood funds to other health care providers that do not offer abortion services. His health care positions have likewise provoked attacks from the other side of the spectrum. The conservative   activist group Club for Growth is targeting moderates like Lance in a recent wave of attack ads. Conservative activists want the GOP bill to go further to fully repeal the law and start all over. ”Tell Leonard Lance, don’t fall for fake repeal. Vote ’no’ on Ryancare and get rid of Obamacare for good,” the ad states. This is life in the political middle in 2017, and Lance is at the center of it all. After the 2016 elections, his wealthy, suburban northern New Jersey district became the new new media seat in Congress: not too conservative, not too liberal, just right  —   of center. That’s according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report that ranks districts based on their partisan leanings every two years. In the spectrum of 435 House seats, Lance’s is ranked 218th. He is also one of 23 House Republicans who represent a district Hillary Clinton carried last November, by a narrow, 1   margin. Those results means fresh challenges to being a Republican moderate with Donald Trump now in the White House. The president is really unpopular in Lance’s district among Democrats like Barbara Babcock, a retired teacher and Flanders resident who also attended Lance’s town hall. ”The current administration is ruining the Republican brand,” she said. ”And I think anybody who really cares about standard Republicanism as it used to be, really needs to stand up to this administration and I’d like to see my congressman do that.” A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll in late March gave Trump an approval rating of just 28 percent in the Garden State. Which means Lance is often eager to distance himself from the Republican pack. At his town hall, he called on the president to release his tax returns, embraced the need to address   climate change and criticized the president’s early round of executive orders on immigration. For every chit he earns from some constituents for taking more centrist positions than many Republicans in his party, it can leave others feeling disappointed. ”You know I was hoping that once they had the Senate, the Congress, and the White House, they would do a little bit more,” said Roxanne Wallace, another of Lance’s constituents at the town hall. She believes Trump is showing leadership and doing a pretty good job, and she wants to see Republicans work with him to deliver now that they control Washington. She’s not impressed so far. ”They seem to buckle all the time when somebody starts screaming or protesting or using their thumb up signs. They buckle,” she said. Energized Democrats and frustrated Republicans are a political mix that will keep Lance’s district at the very top of the list for competitive races in next year’s midterms. That combination was already on display at last night’s town hall as the congressman faced repeated catcalls and taunts about losing next year. But the congressman didn’t want to go there yet. ”I believe 2018 will take care of itself,” he said. ”I want 2017 to be a year of governance, where we can come together and work in a bipartisan and bicameral capacity.” That’s a pretty moderate message. It’s just not clear yet who’s listening."
"After a series of ”mishaps,” the Navy says it will no longer allow sailors to bring electronic cigarettes onto its ships, submarines, aircraft, boats, craft and heavy equipment. ”The prohibition applies to Sailors, Marines, Military Sealift Command civilians and any personnel working on or visiting those units,” according to a statement obtained by NPR’s Sarah McCammon, issued by the commanders of the U. S. Fleet Forces and the U. S. Pacific Fleet. ”The Fleet commanders implemented this policy to protect the safety and welfare of Sailors and to protect the ships, submarines, aircraft and equipment,” it adds. The ban will go into force on May 14 and will ”remain in effect until a final determination can be made following a thorough analysis,” the Navy says. At the same time, ”sailors on shore will still be allowed to use [Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems] on base, but must do so in designated smoking areas ashore while on military installations.” The problem is     batteries that can explode. Last year, Navy Times reported that the Naval Safety Center called for a full ban of the devices on Navy property, citing their ”significant and unacceptable risk.” In August, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Marycate Walsh told the publication that ”leadership is reviewing the Naval Safety Center’s recommendation regarding   weighing both the safety and   risks.” A Navy memorandum states that 15 ”mishaps” occurred between October 2015 and June 15, 2016, that resulted in either injury to Navy personnel or ”  damage.” ”Eight of these incidents occurred onboard Naval ” the memo reads. ”Nine of 15 reported incidents described the failure mechanism as explosive. . .. Two battery explosions occurred with the electronic cigarette in the service member’s mouth resulting in facial and dental injuries.” The memo says the Navy has no record of any such incidents prior to October 2015. The Navy says there is increased use of   among Navy personnel  —   and the apparent dangers have been highlighted in Navy publications. A   spread in the Navy magazine Sea Compass titled ”Danger: The Hidden Risks of Vaping” tells the story of two sailors who were the victims of an exploding battery. One received   burns, while the other’s car was destroyed by the fire. ”Imagine what would have happened if the batteries had exploded while in their home, the barracks or even onboard their ship,” the article says. ”The loss of property and potential loss of life could have been catastrophic.” As the Navy has noted, the dangers of exploding batteries can be mitigated by properly stowing the devices, using the correct charger, buying equipment from a reputable manufacturer and not modifying it. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration finalized its first regulations for   last year. The U. S. Department of Transportation formally banned   use on commercial flights last year. The ban is meant to protect other passengers from the vapor, due to a lack of information about the ingredients in  . A Navy spokesman says regulations allow personnel to smoke tobacco cigarettes on a ship’s ”smoke deck” at designated times."
"Scientists love patterns. It’s what makes science possible  —   and powerful  —   especially when it comes to infectious diseases. Over the past 30 years, scientists have noticed a distinctive pattern of   diseases in the Western Hemisphere: Three viruses have cropped up, caused small outbreaks and then one day  —   poof!  —   they hit a city and spread like gangbusters. All three viruses are carried by the same mosquito, called Aedes aegypti. All three have caused millions of cases in Latin America and the Caribbean. And all three have gotten a foothold in the U. S. causing small outbreaks. Now there’s a fourth one lurking in the Brazilian rain forest, says Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health. It’s familiar. And it’s deadly: yellow fever. In a recent commentary for the New England Journal of Medicine, Fauci and his colleague Dr. Catherine Paules explain the pattern seen across Latin America and how the historical information could help us intercept the next epidemic. The waves of epidemics from the three other viruses started in the 1990s. First dengue  —   a nasty virus that can cause hemorrhaging  —     in parts of Latin America after it had been eliminated in 18 countries. Next up came chikungunya. The virus first appeared in the Caribbean in 2013. It hopped around the islands for a few months and then finally hit the mainland of Central and South Americas, where it caused debilitating joint pain in thousands of people. Then last year, Zika emerged as the first   virus that can cause birth defects. Still today, the U. S. is seeing about 30 to 40 Zika cases in pregnant women each week. ”Now all of a sudden you start to see this very interesting clustering of yellow fever cases in Brazil,” says Fauci. The outbreak started in December and has swelled to about 600 confirmed cases and more than a thousand suspected cases, the Brazil Ministry of Health reports. Symptoms can include fever, nausea and muscle aches. In about 15 percent of cases, the disease progresses into a toxic phase, which can include jaundice, bleeding and organ failure. There have been about 200 deaths in Brazil. ”That’s a potential threat,” Fauci says. So far, the disease is still isolated to a rural area, Fauci says. And it’s spreading only among mosquitoes that live in the forest and not in mosquitoes that thrive in cities, called Aedes aegypti. But that scenario could change quickly, Fauci says, if Aedes aegypti picks up the virus from infected people. ”If Aedes aegypti mosquitoes start spreading yellow fever in Brazil, there’s a possibility that you might have an outbreak in very populous areas in Brazil, such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo,” Fauci says. ”Whether that’s going to happen, I don’t know. But if it does, we’re going to get a lot of   cases in the U. S.,” he says, ”which means physicians here have to be aware of it.” And that’s why Fauci penned the commentary: To alert public health officials and doctors so they won’t miss cases. ”This is a   call,” Fauci says. ”Be careful. If someone comes in with an illness that’s compatible with the yellow fever, you might want to ask them, ’Have you traveled to this part of Brazil?’ ” But there’s another reason to keep an eye on yellow fever in the Americas. Unlike Zika, chikungunya and dengue, the world actually has an effective way to prepare for an outbreak. We have a vaccine that is 99 percent effective. ”That’s really an amazing asset,” says biologist Erin Mordecai, who studies infectious diseases at Stanford University. ”So this is a great example of a time that we could be proactive,” she says. ”We have a good vaccine, and we need to make sure that there’s enough available in the case of a large outbreak.” And right now, that’s a bit of a problem, Fauci says. The world’s supply of the yellow fever vaccine is low. There aren’t enough doses to protect Brazil’s population of 200 million, not to mention the rest of Latin America. ”We don’t have enough vaccine. Period,” he says. ”We’re going to have to make more vaccine. And that will take time.”  In the meantime, predictions that Brazil’s outbreak would burn out quickly have turned out to be wrong. The outbreak continues to grow while health officials make deep cuts into the vaccine stockpile."
"When I was 4 years old, my parents faced a decision. My birthday is in late November, so should they send me to kindergarten as the youngest kid in my class? Or, wait another year to enroll me?  —   A practice referred to as academic redshirting. Since I was already the oldest sibling, they decided it was time for me to experience something different. So, they sent me to school. For me, the age gap didn’t really matter until my freshman year at college, when I was only 17 and couldn’t vote in the 2012 presidential election with everybody else. Feeling left out, I started to wish my parents had waited to put me in school. But, Diane Schanzenbach, an education professor at Northwestern University, and Stephanie Larson, director of Rose Hall Montessori School, have made me think twice. The two recently published an article on the emotional and economic toll that redshirting can have on students, despite all its praise from writers like Malcolm Gladwell. I spoke to Schanzenbach about why it might not be worth the wait. This interview has been edited for clarity. What about your article contributes to the research on redshirting that’s already out there? I guess what I’ve learned is that it’s really useful to put those things into terms that people can understand. I have found since I started working in this area, every couple of months I would get an email from some random parent somewhere saying, ”I read Malcolm Gladwell and I was doing a Google search of things, so I just thought I’d write to you directly.” And they’ll ask these really intelligent questions. Of course, the goal of this article was to try and present more information so that parents feel equipped to make the decision that they think is best for their kid. Certainly, we don’t think never redshirting is the right idea, but we did think it was going to be useful to provide additional info, especially to the type of parent who wants to understand [what the data shows.] Even though kids won’t start kindergarten until the fall, many parents have to decide now whether to enroll them. What should parents keep in mind before making their decision? Let me answer you with an anecdote. When Stephanie and I were writing  —   this was back in December and January  —   at the time, my daughter is finishing up preschool and going to start kindergarten the next year. We were not thinking about redshirting her, but the thought crossed my mind because she was not talking. It was very upsetting that she wasn’t talking, and we had taken her to speech therapy and that didn’t really go anywhere. She just wouldn’t talk. And between January and today, some switch has flipped in her. Anybody who has kids can relate to that. But of course, it makes you nervous as a parent because you can’t really predict what my kid is going to be like in September. Our advice is: As you’re weighing these pieces, keep in mind the kid in September might be quite different from the kid in April. What seems to be the biggest reason that parents choose to delay their kids’ enrollment into kindergarten? It really does seem to be emotional development. In the data you can see, clearly, that this happens most for boys who are born in the summertime to highly educated parents. They want [their kids] to be able to walk tall into a classroom, advocate for themselves, be an active participant in their learning. I want to tell the story of Julia from our church. She was so bright and so  . And she was just annoyed that the boys weren’t behaving well enough. And for her parents to say, ”Oh, we’re going to redshirt her because she’s short.” You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s nothing you’re gonna do here to make her not short. These kids are going to drive her nuts. That’s the piece that I really worry about. In the article, you write that redshirting can even have a financial effect on students  —   an $80, 000 decrease in earnings. Can you elaborate on that? It is only one additional year in the workforce, but it was fun to do that calculation and see, how much money is that going to be worth? Every year, typically, you get a raise over time. You add up all of that, and [by the time you retire] you’ve just been in the labor force one [less] year. And that does add up. Often times when you see people talk about this issue, they’ll talk about, ”Oh, you should give your child the gift of time.” And as an economist, I want to respond, ”Actually, it’s the cost of time.” You’re imposing an $80, 000 lifetime cost on them by holding them back if it really doesn’t improve their outcomes. In that case. .. Thanks, Mom and Dad. "
"All too often, ”fusion” is a rightfully   term to describe music that tries to occupy several spheres at once, usually unsuccessfully. So let’s not use that label on the brilliant,   music of Ljova and the Kontraband, a group that embraces Western classical, jazz and an array of international styles including tango and Eastern European and Balkan folk music. These   musicians, who hail from Russia, Lithuania, the U. S. and Switzerland, pile all of these sounds atop of each other with great glee, and emerge with creations that alight on totally new and exciting terrain. The band is led by the composer, arranger and viola player Ljova (Lev Zhurbin) who comes by this musical eclecticism naturally: the Moscow native, who comes from a family heavily involved in the arts, has worked with an astonishingly wide and starry group of collaborators, including Jay Z, the Bollywood queen Asha Bhosle and cellist   Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. In this Kontraband setting, he and his bandmates (including Ljova’s wife, the preternaturally     singer Inna Barmash) create performances of deep earthiness, fragile tenderness, ebullient humor and quicksilver shifts in texture. But the heart of their Tiny Desk Concert was the song ”By the Campfire,” whose words have a long, strange history that goes back to the Middle Ages. The words originally come from   Germany Ljova’s grandfather, a noted translator, translated this poem from German to Russian, which Ljova uses in his musical setting. But before she sang ”By the Campfire,” Barmash gave us her own English translation of this unsettling, stunning, and perhaps even prophetic text: ”Lies and spite command the world   Suffocate its consciousness,   Truth is poisoned, dead is law   Honor killed  —   obscene extolled!   . .. And the wisdom of our days   Teaches theft, deceit and hate.” No Refund on Flowers is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Ljova (viola) Inna Barmash (vocals) Patrick Farrell (accordian) Jordan Morton (bass) Mathias Künzli (percussion) Credits, Producers: Anastasia Tsioulcas, Bronson Arcuri Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Marian  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Updated at 1:30 a. m. ET Sunday, Thousands of Americans turned out in cities across the country Saturday  —   April 15, the traditional deadline for filing federal tax returns, even though this year’s deadline is actually Tuesday, April 18  —   calling on President Trump to do something every president has done going back to Gerald Ford: release his individual tax returns. As a candidate, Trump said he wouldn’t release his tax returns because he was being audited by the IRS. When pressed on the issue as president, he’s said he doesn’t think most Americans care. In New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and dozens of other cities, protesters observed the traditional tax filing deadline by marching and calling on the president to release his taxes. In West Palm Beach, Fla. Robert Saplin was one of several hundred protesters who marched along the Intracoastal Waterway to a bridge just a few hundred yards from the president’s private club,   . Reacting to the president’s assertion that Americans don’t care, he said, ”We definitely care. We want to know where that essentially unlimited deduction has been coming from all these years. It seems like he’s getting away with . .. not paying his fair share. And there’s all this talk about Russia and conflict of interest.” Trump may have seen some of the protesters Saturday as he went by car from    to his golf club in West Palm Beach. The president is spending Easter at the resort  —   his seventh visit there since being sworn in. In Berkeley, Calif. KQED’s Bert Johnson reports at least 21 people were arrested when protests in a park spilled out into the city’s streets and led to violent clashes between   and   groups. Berkeley police told NPR there was some property damage and that numerous projectiles had been thrown, including fireworks. Some garbage bins were also set ablaze during the skirmishes. Service by the Bay Area’s BART train was also affected with delays at least temporarily in the system in the East Bay area. Johnson reports that 11 people were injured, according to police. At a rally in Washington, D. C. Democratic members of Congress said they’d keep the pressure on the president to release his tax returns. Rep. Maxine Waters,  . said there’s nothing that prevents the president for releasing his taxes but, ”The simple truth is he’s got a lot to hide.” Sen. Ron Wyden,  . said, Americans have ”a basic right to know whether the president pays his fair share.” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer,  . Y. has said the president’s refusal to release his tax returns could undercut his push for a tax overhaul. Voters, Schumer said, ”are going to say, ’Oh, he’s not doing it because it’s good for me. He’s doing it because it’s good for him.’ So, for his own good, he ought to make them public.” Saturday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit against the IRS for failing to release the president’s tax returns in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. In West Palm Beach, some of those protesting said Trump’s election as president had mobilized them to become much more politically active than ever before. Dan Baker, a retiree from Boynton Beach, Fla. said, ”I’ve always been a passive person. I’ve never been out before. I’ve always said everything will take care of itself. I think that this time we just have someone who doesn’t keep his word. I finally had enough and said I have to do something.” Others at the march said they’d been out protesting almost every weekend since Trump was sworn in. Lisa Saunders and Brittany Patterson said they were active with the local chapter of Indivisible, an   group. But they weren’t optimistic the national protest would spur the president to release his returns. ”No,” Saunders said, ”but maybe it will spur Congress to force something to be done about his taxes,” Patterson said. ”And if they don’t, we’ll be paying attention on the upcoming elections. They’re happening very soon.” NPR’s Brakkton Booker and Eric Westervelt and KQED’s Bert Johnson contributed to this report."
"For someone who speaks with as much conviction as President Trump, he sure has a way of changing positions with an equal level of certitude. We looked into those reversals here and here, and some of them make up a good chunk of some of the list below of   quotes from the week that was. You can vote on which one you think is worthy of quote of the week on the NPR Politics Facebook page. Monday, 1. ”And I got it done in the first 100 days. That’s even nice. You think that’s easy?”  —   Trump on his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court before Gorsuch’s   at the White House. 2. ”I’ve not always made the right choices, I’ve not always said the right things. . .. I can no longer allow my family, my dear friends, my dedicated staff and Cabinet to be subjected to the consequences that my past actions have brought upon them.”  —   Robert Bentley in a short statement announcing he was stepping down as governor of Alabama. After allegedly concealing an affair with an adviser, he pleaded guilty to abusing his office. Tuesday, 3. ”You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”  —   White House press secretary Sean Spicer saying Hitler wasn’t as bad as Syria’s President Bashar Assad. Spicer later apologized. 4. ”I like Steve, but you have to remember, he was not involved in my campaign until very late. . .. I’m my own strategist.”  —   Trump to the New York Post, referring to chief strategist Steve Bannon. It signaled the potentially waning influence of a man who just two months ago was on the cover of Time magazine as ”The Great Manipulator” and described as possibly the ”second most powerful man in the world.” 5. ”The pundits were talking about  —   this wasn’t a seat we were going to win.”  —   Ron Estes, the Republican who won a special election in Kansas in a    race. He won by just 7 points in a district Trump won by 27. It sets up a test of enthusiasm this coming Tuesday in a more centrist district in another special election in the Atlanta suburbs. Wednesday, 6. ”We had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen. And President Xi was enjoying it.”  —   Trump on when he decided to give the   to bomb Syria, during dessert with China’s leader at   . 7. ”I said it was obsolete it’s no longer obsolete.”  —   Trump on NATO while speaking at a press conference with its secretary general. 8. ”Right now, the world is a mess. But I think by the time we finish, I think it’s going to be a lot better place to live. And I can tell you that, speaking for myself, by the time I’m finished, it’s going to be a lot better place to live in  —   because right now it’s nasty.”  —   Trump in the same news conference. 9. ”Otherwise, we’re just going to go it alone. That will be all right, too. But going it alone means going it with lots of other nations.”  —   Trump on what he said to China’s Xi about why his country should help with North Korea. He said in order for China to make a good trade deal, it should help with North Korea.  10. ”After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy.”  —   Trump to the Wall Street Journal on China’s Xi explaining to him the history of the relationship between China and the Korean peninsula and whether China could easily help on North Korea, as Trump had previously asserted. 11. ”I do like a   rate policy, I must be honest with you. . .. No, not toast. I like her, I respect her.”  —   Trump in the same interview with the Journal on Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, reversing himself after during the campaign calling her ”political” and saying that she should be ”ashamed” of herself. Thursday, 12. ”I don’t know if this sends a message. It doesn’t make any difference if it does or not.”  —   Trump on dropping what’s known as the ”Mother of All Bombs” in Afghanistan and whether it sends a message to North Korea. Trump has reportedly given significant leeway to his military. Friday, 13. ”Given the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, the White House Office will disclose Secret Service logs as outlined under the Freedom of Information Act.”  —   White House Communications Director Michael Dubke in a statement announcing the Trump White House would reverse an Obama administration policy of voluntarily releasing White House visitor logs. Dubke noted FOIA, but visits to the White House complex are not subject to FOIA requests. Ironically, in 2012, Trump took a very different tone. He questioned if Obama was ”hiding something” by no releasing certain records that other presidents had."
"Updated at 2:45 p. m. ET April 17, A series of court orders in Arkansas has halted the executions of seven men set to begin Monday night, throwing another wrench into the state’s plans to carry out the executions before its lethal injection drugs expire. U. S. District Judge Kristine Baker ordered a preliminary injunction in federal court early Saturday, according to the Arkansas  . This ruling came less than 24 hours after the state’s supreme court stayed one execution, and a county court indefinitely delayed the rest. There were originally eight inmates scheduled to die over an   period, a pace unprecedented since the death penalty was brought back in the U. S. in the 1970s. One inmate’s execution had already been blocked earlier this month. In the ruling, Baker wrote that ”there is a significant possibility that plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of their Eighth Amendment challenge to Arkansas’s lethal injection protocol.” The inmates’ lawyers expressed concern that Arkansas’ method of execution had a high risk of causing pain, among other things. The   reports: ”Baker issued the ruling after presiding over a   trial on a case filed by the [inmates]. They were set to be executed two at a time between Monday and April 27, with lethal injections scheduled on consecutive Mondays and Thursdays. . .. ”The inmates’ attorneys sought to temporarily block the executions, arguing that the compressed schedule increases the likelihood of potentially harmful mistakes. The quick pace also prevented the men from preparing an adequate defense, which violates their federal   rights, the lawyers argued. ”Arkansas has not executed an inmate since 2005 due to both legal challenges and difficulty in maintaining a drug supply. Gov. Asa Hutchinson set the   schedule as the expiration of one of the drugs in the state’s   lethal cocktail neared. Midazolam, set to expire at the end of April, is an anesthetic given before the injection of fatal drugs.” Later on Saturday, Hutchinson released a statement acknowledging that the timeline for the executions ”would trigger both the individual clemency hearings and separate court reviews” but expressed optimism that the state would prevail in the matter  —   and do so quickly enough to beat the drugs’ expiration date. ”I expect both the Supreme Court of Arkansas and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the decisions quickly, and I have confidence in the Attorney General and her team to expedite the reviews,” Hutchinson’s statement reads. Before Baker’s injunction, Pulaski County Judge Wendell Griffen had issued a temporary restraining order that blocked the executions for an entirely different reason. His order was based on a complaint by a pharmaceutical supplier who alleged that Arkansas had purchased one of the lethal injection drugs under false pretenses. On Thursday night, the medical supplier McKesson issued a statement objecting to the manner in which the state obtained its vecuronium bromide, another of the three drugs in the cocktail. McKesson supplies the drug  —   which is produced by Hospira and its parent company, Pfizer  —   to pharmacies, hospitals and other organizations. ”The Arkansas Department of Correction intentionally sought to circumvent McKesson’s policies to procure Pfizer’s vecuronium bromide under the auspices that it would be used for medical purposes in ADC’s health facility,” McKesson said in its statement. The company says it tried multiple times to get the state to offer assurances the drug wouldn’t be used in lethal injections or simply to get the drug returned, and that McKesson even refunded the cost, but the state did not comply. McKesson’s complaint prompted Griffen to issue a temporary restraining order. His involvement has been controversial, because on Friday he was photographed at a protest against the executions. A spokesman for the state attorney general said Griffen should have recused himself from the case, given his stance on the death penalty. Other companies have complained about the third drug used in the protocol, potassium chloride. (The Associated Press explains that ”under Arkansas’ protocol, midazolam is used to sedate the inmate, vecuronium bromide then stops the inmate’s breathing and potassium chloride stops the heart. ”) Fresenius Kabi USA and   Pharmaceuticals Corp.  —   the presumed makers of the state’s supply of potassium chloride and midazolam, respectively  —   also filed a friend of the court brief in the inmates’ case, ”objecting to their drugs’ use in the executions.” Earlier on Friday, the Arkansas Supreme Court stayed the execution of one of the inmates, Bruce Ward. According to his attorney, Scott Braden, Ward is mentally ill and ”has no rational understanding of the punishment he is slated to suffer or the reason why he is to suffer it.” Braden also states: ”We are grateful that the Arkansas Supreme Court has issued a stay of execution for Bruce Ward so that they may consider the serious questions presented about his sanity. He deserves a day in court for that, but in Arkansas the rules do not permit that. Instead, they give the power to director of the department of corrections to decide whether the department can execute someone or not. That is both unfair and unconstitutional.” The other inmates had argued that the speed with which the executions were to go forward trampled on their rights, stunting clemency proceedings and causing them undue suffering. Last week, U. S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. proved partially receptive to that argument, ruling that the original schedule did not allow enough time for the clemency petition of one of the   inmates, Jason McGehee, to proceed. Since a parole board recently recommended clemency for McGehee, Marshall said the execution schedule prevented the full   comment period on McGehee’s petition. As NPR’s Camila Domonoske noted, the ruling bumps McGehee’s execution past the    expiration date for its supply of midazolam. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has defended the timeline of the executions, citing the expiration date of the state’s supply of midazolam. ”One of the three drugs in the lethal injection protocol expires at the end of April,” Hutchinson said in a statement emailed to NPR last month. ”In order to fulfill my duty as Governor, which is to carry out the lawful sentence imposed by a jury, it is necessary to schedule the executions prior to the expiration of that drug.” He notes that despite the compressed execution schedule, the inmates have in some cases already received ”decades of review.” It is ”important to bring closure to the victims’ families who have lived with the court appeals and uncertainty for a very long time,” Hutchinson says."
"Author’s note, His name has been lost to history, but in the 1970s, prisoners, wardens and prison guards across the U. S. knew of Martin Sostre. He was a fearless prison activist at the dawn of the age of mass incarceration, an inmate willing to risk months in solitary confinement to fight for prisoners’ rights. He was one of the first prisoners to successfully challenge his conditions in court and won his biggest victory when he crossed paths with a pioneering judge. I met Sostre shortly after he was released from prison in 1976. He’d been granted executive clemency by the governor of New York on Christmas Eve in 1975. I was a novice reporter, and he was the subject of my first big story. That year, he had been declared a political prisoner by Amnesty International the conviction that put him behind bars was undercut when the primary witness claimed he had been pressured by police to set up Sostre. Decades later, I’m still writing about solitary confinement and false convictions  —   interests of mine first sparked by Sostre. Several years ago, I started looking for him. I found a few newspaper stories from the 1980s. I found addresses in Florida and New York that may have been his. I wrote him a letter, but didn’t hear back. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. I kept looking because Martin Sostre  —   who did so much to protect the rights of prisoners  —   deserves to be remembered.  ”Street dude, a hustler” Sostre was born in Harlem in 1923. His parents were black and Puerto Rican  —   his father a house painter and mechanic his mother, a seamstress. He dropped out of high school during the Great Depression to help support his family. He wasn’t political yet, but in Harlem in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, Sostre heard the   radicals making speeches about black nationalism and leftist movements that promised delivery from racial oppression. Sometimes, Sostre would walk into the African National Memorial Bookstore on Seventh Avenue, where owner Lewis Michaux let customers with little or no money for books sit in the store for hours and read. Sostre also heard his own father make speeches around the house, ”always referring to the capitalists in Spanish as ’the vandals,’ ” he once told a reporter. ”My father was a talking communist  —   he talked about it but never did anything.” Sostre was drafted into the Army in 1942, then kicked out after getting in a fight. He came back to Harlem in 1946 with no job skills. He was, by his own description, a ”street dude, a hustler.” His first arrest was in 1952 for possession of heroin. He was sentenced to six to 12 years and ended up, first, at Sing Sing, on June 19, 1953, the night convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed there. Sostre remembered the lights flickering throughout the prison when the switch was pulled on the electric chair. Life changed dramatically once he got to prison. On the streets, he once explained, ”You’re hustling, you’re looking over one shoulder to be sure you don’t get busted and over the other to be sure you don’t get ripped off. Living in the streets by your wits makes you alert. In jail I decided to put that sharpened awareness to another purpose. For the first time, I had a chance to think, and began reading everything I could  —   history, philosophy, and law.” He made a distinction between a political prisoner and a ”politicized prisoner,” a label he preferred. ”A politicized prisoner,” he explained, is ”one who has become politically aware while in prison, even though the original crime that he committed was not a political crime.” His political education began with the Nation of Islam, which found harsh prisons were a good place to recruit new members. Just several years earlier, Malcolm X had gone to prison and become a Black Muslim. ”I identified with Malcolm X because he was a street hustler, like me,” Sostre said. In the prison yard at Clinton prison (known as ”Little Siberia” because of its location in cold and isolated Dannemora, N. Y.) Sostre would join the other inmates who gathered to teach themselves about black history and Islam. Teddy Anderson was a popular inmate because he was the only one with a copy of the Quran. Sometimes he’d let Sostre or another prisoner borrow it for short periods. And even though Sostre would later say he was attracted to Black Muslims for their politics, and not for the religion, he insisted on buying his own copy of the Quran  —   which was a political act in prison. Prison officials did not recognize the Nation of Islam as an authorized religion, but Sostre demanded he be allowed visits from Black Muslim ministers, just like other prisoners could get visits from ministers and priests. In response, prison officials branded Sostre a troublemaker and put him in solitary confinement. In solitary, he later told the writer Arthur Dobrin, ”I slept on a concrete floor with no bed and no mattress. All I had was a blanket which they gave me at night and took away early the next morning. The floor was so hard and cold that I could sleep only 10 minutes in one position. . .. There was no light, no running water, no toilet.” He could no longer go to the library, where he’d spent long hours reading law books. But he could write and file lawsuits  —   even though nothing was likely to come of them. Prisoners, courts had ruled, lost their constitutional rights once they had been convicted. Wardens had wide discretion. A prisoner could take a complaint to state court but was not protected by federal civil rights law. Sostre read history and the Constitution carefully and believed his right to practice the religion of his choice was a fundamental freedom. He and two other Black Muslim inmates sued the warden, claiming they had been denied the right to buy the Quran and practice their religion and had been put in solitary confinement as punishment. In 1961, they won. In Pierce v. LaVallee and in Sostre v. LaVallee, federal judges ruled that the men had rights to practice their religion  —   and more broadly that even inmates had rights guaranteed under the U. S. Constitution, including the right to challenge prison conditions. Other Black Muslims around the country would bring similar suits. It would be another Black Muslim prisoner, Thomas Cooper in Illinois, whose similar lawsuit would first reach the Supreme Court. And in 1964, the high court, in Cooper v. Pate, agreed that inmates kept their constitutional rights in prison and could sue in federal court over prison conditions. ”Scholars describe it as sort of the Brown v. Board [of Education] of the prisoners’ rights movement,” says historian Garrett Felber. It was Sostre’s earlier lawsuit  —   and another one he won later  —   that set the precedents that Felber says became ”the building blocks” for the Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision in Cooper. Felber was helping the late Columbia University historian Manning Marable edit the papers of Malcolm X when he first came across Sostre. Felber, who recently finished his dissertation on the Nation of Islam and the politics of black nationalism, is now editing a book of Sostre’s papers. Sostre, he notes, paid a price for his court victories. He served the entire 12 years of his sentence for drug possession  —   four years of it in solitary confinement. Buffalo in flames, Sostre left Attica in October 1964. He was 41 and had never held a standard job. Just months before, Malcolm X had split with Elijah Muhammad and left the Nation of Islam. Sostre followed. Now out of prison, he would have to reinvent himself. He moved to Buffalo, N. Y. where he knew he could find   work at the Bethlehem Steel plant. He began to save to open a bookstore. A year later, he opened the Afro Asian Book Shop and stocked the shelves with leftist literature, from Malcolm to Mao. Those books didn’t draw customers at first. Buffalo didn’t have the charged political atmosphere of Harlem. But things turned around the day Sostre got the idea to buy a $20 record player at a pawn shop and then $50 worth of jazz and rhythm and blues records. He put a loudspeaker outside the store, and the music brought young black men inside. Sostre enjoyed playing the role of mentor. ”I taught continually  —   giving out pamphlets free to those who had no money,” he later wrote. ”I let them sit and read for hours in the store.” There was another group that gravitated toward him  —   white students at the nearby State University of New York at Buffalo. ”A lot of white students went into the ghetto in Buffalo” for the jazz bars and ”to see what was interesting,” recalls Jerry Ross, who was a leader of the campus   War group. Sostre’s bookstore was interesting ”because it was so unusual,” a place dedicated to leftist political literature. ”But what was really interesting was Martin himself,” says Ross. ”He just had this charisma. He always had this broad smile and a glow. He just was an unusual human being he obviously was very intelligent.” Ross says police were suspicious of Sostre. Once, Sostre said, a detective came into the store and asked why he was selling ”commie literature” and left with a warning: ”This kind of stuff can get you in trouble.” When a tavern next to the bookstore burned in the spring of 1967, firefighters deliberately put their hoses into Sostre’s shop, Ross says, destroying his book collection. So Ross and his friends ”just basically took our own bookshelves and all our radical books”  —   the ones they had bought from Sostre  —   ”and took them down there” to restock the store. Racial tensions were high in Buffalo in the summer of 1967. Young black men complained that police harassed or arrested them unfairly. That same summer, there would be riots and disturbances in more than 100 black urban neighborhoods, notably in Newark, N. J. and Detroit, all places with similar conditions of high unemployment, friction with police and racial discrimination. In Buffalo, over several days and nights at the end of June, groups of teens and young black men set fires, turned over cars and clashed with hundreds of police in riot gear. Neighborhood stores closed early. But Sostre’s bookstore stayed open. ”Needless to say, I made political hay in denouncing the police brutality going on outside to large crowds in the store,” he explained in a letter from prison to his supporters. During the uprisings, he took books and pamphlets off the shelves, maybe writings by Malcolm X, and read aloud. ”With interest stimulated, I would make several sales and create several new freedom fighters.” Police suspected that Molotov cocktails were being made in the basement of the store and that Sostre was directing people to loot and burn. On July 14 at 10:30 at night, several police officers rushed into the Afro Asian Book Shop and arrested Sostre and Geraldine Robinson, the woman who worked behind the counter. Sostre was charged with arson, riot and selling heroin. The main witness against Sostre was a drug addict named Arto Williams who had come into his bookstore and, police said, bought $15 worth of heroin. Police found the marked bills in the cash register. Sostre insisted he’d been framed  —   saying Williams had simply asked him to hold on to the money and that he had done similar favors for him before, once holding a suit Williams had brought back from the cleaners. Bail was set high at $50, 000 because, police said, Sostre made thousands of dollars a week selling drugs. The judge curtly told Sostre he could raise bail through his ”connections” with ”Hong Kong and the Viet Cong and Black Power.” Sostre sat in jail. On Aug. 4, Buffalo Commissioner of Police Frank Felicetta went to Washington to testify before a congressional committee investigating riots that summer around the country. Sostre had not been indicted yet, but a grand jury was meeting to consider the charges against him. And although Felicetta did not say the name Martin Sostre, he did tell the members of Congress about a ”Martin X” who ran a school to teach young black men how to make Molotov cocktails and that Martin X had instructed the young black men to break store windows and start fires and that Martin X, himself, had thrown some of the homemade bombs. Felicetta’s testimony was   news in Buffalo. Sostre always insisted he hadn’t sold drugs and had been set up by the police. Ross says the bookstore was known as a place to buy leftist books, not drugs. ”Martin was a very upstanding and moral kind of person and never smoked weed or drank and was not a drug user or pusher,” says Ross. Sostre maintained a healthy diet, a practice he had picked up from his days as a Black Muslim. He exercised regularly and practiced yoga, a discipline that helped him get through his earliest years in solitary confinement. By the time Sostre’s trial started in March 1968, prosecutors had dropped the arson and riot charges and were focused on the alleged drug crime. But the prosecution had already turned into a wild political spectacle. During pretrial procedures, Sostre was brought to court in chains. He denounced the judge as a ”racial bigot in judicial robes.” The judge ordered him bound and gagged. This was two years before a similar scene would famously play out in a Chicago courtroom with Black Panther Bobby Seale. Sostre acted as his own lawyer. On March 4, he thought he was coming to court to argue for a reduction of his bail. The judge denied his request and the trial started immediately. Sostre didn’t query prospective jurors, who very likely had heard the press reports that had depicted him as radical Martin X. He refused to   prosecution witnesses or call defense witnesses of his own. An   jury was selected at 10 a. m. and the jury was deliberating by 12:15. They took lunch at 1 p. m. and returned a guilty verdict by 3:15 that afternoon. Judge Frederick Marshall sentenced Sostre to 30 to 41 years in prison. It seemed disproportionate to the crime. The same judge, a year later, sentenced another black man, convicted of stabbing his wife to death, to a   to   prison term. In a solitary ”cage” In June 1968, Sostre ended up in solitary after dropping an envelope addressed to his attorney in the prison mailbox. Inside was a motion for a change of venue for the woman who had been arrested in the bookstore with him. Sostre had written it out by hand, in tiny print, because paper was hard to come by in prison and expensive in the commissary. When the warden called him to his office, the document was on his desk. ”Do you have a license to practice law?” the warden asked. Then he sent Sostre to solitary confinement, charged with breaking a prison ”rule” about practicing law. Sostre would spend six years in solitary for violating rules like that one. The hardest part of life in solitary, Sostre said, was being removed from contact with other people. He was entitled to an hour a day in a small, enclosed recreation yard. But every time he left his cell, guards made him strip, bend over and submit to a rectal search. They knew they wouldn’t find anything, he argued, since he was allowed few personal items, other than toothpaste and a toothbrush. ”Now they know you don’t have anything in your rectum. They just do this to dehumanize you,” he told filmmakers of  ! The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre, a 1974 documentary by Pacific Street Films. To be naked and searched with ”two or three hacks leering at you,” Sostre said, ”that’s a sign, of not only of submission, but it’s symbolic of being sodomized. And a lot of prisoners submit to that, but I’m not going to submit.” ”Because Martin Sostre refused to submit to the rectal searches, he has been beaten, not once, but 11 times,” his attorney Lynn Walker, of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told me. ”I’ve personally seen him after such a beating. All bruises, cuts and scratches along his body.” After one of those fights, Sostre was charged with assaulting the guards and, after a trial in 1975, more time  —   up to four years  —   was added to his sentence. To Sostre, the prison system was a racist place, where guards, who were almost all white (only 2 percent were black or Puerto Rican, according to later trial testimony) controlled inmates who were mostly  —   and increasingly  —     or Hispanic (70 percent in all New York prisons, according to the testimony). ”It is a   concentration camp for black people,” Sostre said. Sostre had chances to reduce his time in solitary. Once a guard suggested he join a new group therapy session. It was run by guards who had received just a week of training, according to court testimony. Sostre refused to participate. ”How can you help me,” he asked the guard, ”if you are the one who is oppressing me?” Sostre was given more time in solitary for refusing to participate in prison programs. From his prison cell, Sostre kept filing legal motions. He challenged solitary confinement, the rectal searches, the insistence that he shave off his neat goatee and mustache (prison officials said the facial hair let him hide his identity Sostre argued it made him stand out since he was the only one) and the refusal of prison authorities to let him receive political literature. And Sostre tried, but failed, to get a new trial on the drug charges that he said were a  . Three years after his trial, Williams, who had been the main witness against Sostre, was in a drug rehab program in California. He recanted his testimony against Sostre. In an affidavit, he explained he’d been in jail when a detective asked him if Sostre sold drugs. He wanted to get out of jail so he said yes although he wasn’t aware of any   at the bookstore. The next day, police sent him to Sostre’s store, with the $15 in marked bills, to make a drug buy. He said what police then found in his pocket was heroin he had bought earlier in the day, but not from Sostre. A federal judge called Williams’ new version ”unworthy of belief” and denied Sostre a new trial. A visionary judge, The singular prisoner advocate was about to cross paths with an extraordinary judge. U. S. District Court Judge Constance Baker Motley was a symbol of a nation changing. She was the first black female appointed to the federal bench. And she had come directly from the civil rights movement, having been a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. She helped write the original complaint in Brown v. Board of Education and was the first black woman to argue a case before the U. S. Supreme Court. In that one, she won the right for James Meredith to attend the University of Mississippi she went on to win nine of the 10 cases she argued before the high court. On July 2, 1969, Baker Motley ordered Sostre released immediately from solitary confinement at Green Haven prison. She then held a trial and, the next year, issued a scathing ruling, in Sostre v. Rockefeller, about the conditions of Sostre’s solitary confinement. He had been punished, she ruled, ”not because of any serious infraction of the rules of prison discipline, or even for any minor infraction” but for his legal and ”political activities and beliefs.” The ruling set the boundaries for the fight against solitary confinement that continues to this day. In her ruling, Baker Motley called Sostre’s solitary confinement ”physically harsh, destructive of morale, dehumanizing in the sense that it is needlessly degrading, and dangerous to the maintenance of sanity when continued for more than a short period of time which should certainly not exceed 15 days.” Baker Motley’s ruling from 47 years ago is still relevant in the current debate over the use of solitary confinement. Today, human rights groups and others that oppose solitary confinement still push for the   period as a maximum someone can safely stay in solitary. But no state nor the federal system, by law, currently recognizes that as a limit. ”What was really striking,” says Heather Ann Thompson, a University of Michigan historian who won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for the nonfiction book Blood in the Water, about the uprising at Attica prison, ”was how a federal judge would essentially say to a state prison system, ’You are out of line. You can’t treat someone like this.’ ” In addition, Baker Motley awarded Sostre $9, 300 in compensatory damages ($25 for each day in solitary) and $3, 720 in punitive damages ($10 for each day). Bob Brown, who was finishing a sentence for armed robbery and murder when he met Sostre in prison, once told me how frightened prison guards were after Sostre’s victory. One older guard told him: ”The judge gave him everything he wanted. We might as well close up this place. . .. Brownie, it’s all up to you white guys now. You’ve just got to do something.” Brown, who when he told me this story was out of prison and teaching at the City University of New York, said the guard ”was instigating a race riot.” But the white prisoners knew that what Sostre had accomplished helped them, too. And they didn’t trust that guards wouldn’t take it out on them, too, if they fought Sostre and other black prisoners. ”But I guess the significance of the story,” Brown concluded, ”is that here was a guard who . .. had a sense of powerlessness and outrage, that this black mother****** could sue him if he stepped out of line. . .. That was a sense of outrage that they just couldn’t cope with.” Indeed, for prison officials, Baker Motley’s decision felt like the ground was crumbling under their feet. Courts had generally given prison wardens wide discretion to run prisons how they saw fit to keep order and safety. Now a judge was telling the warden at Green Haven that he would have to change the way he used solitary confinement for one of his biggest troublemakers in prison. An appeals court later overturned much of Baker Motley’s ruling and reduced the damages awarded to Sostre. Still, Thompson says Sostre’s victory was so momentous that prisoners and wardens across the country paid attention. It gave prisoners ”the belief that if they take their story to the courts, that someone will listen to them and that human rights can, in fact, be had if you’re heard in the court of law.” But it also frightened prison officials  —   and they would want to crack down on inmates who tried to assert these newfound rights. This would play out a year later, in 1971, when more than 1, 000 inmates at New York’s Attica Correctional Facility took over the prison. The Attica prisoners considered Sostre a hero and demanded the kinds of rights and better prison conditions that Sostre had sought: legal representation at parole hearings, better medical treatment, the right to read political newspapers and to form labor unions (Sostre had led strikes at a prison license plate shop) better food, regular showers and more than one bar of soap and one roll of toilet paper a month. They asked that Baker Motley be sent as an observer. But Gov. Nelson Rockefeller  —   who had sought the Republican presidential nomination and still had ambitions to the White House —   sent in state troopers to retake the prison, with a deadly hail of gunfire. Rockefeller reacted harshly, says Thompson, in part because he feared what Sostre had started: He had inspired prisoners to stand up for rights  —   whether that meant taking over a prison yard or going to court. Litigation by inmates claiming violations of their constitutional rights would grow sharply  —   until 1996, when Congress passed a law making it harder to bring those lawsuits. Clemency with a catch, In 1975, Sostre’s case was still a cause just on the political left, but there were signs that could change. A key moment came in June, when a federal judge ordered Sostre transferred to a new federal prison in Manhattan, because his life seemed to be in danger after beatings by guards in New York state prisons. Sostre’s move to the city ”electrified everything,” Daniel Berrigan, the activist priest told me then, because it made it easier for nearby advocates to visit him. That summer, Berrigan started ”The Committee to Free Martin Sostre,” with his brother Philip Berrigan and other political activists and civil rights leaders, including Angela Davis, Ralph Abernathy, Julian Bond and Ramsey Clark. Their work started gaining attention. Amnesty International named Sostre one of seven political prisoners in the United States. And in early December, Soviet dissident Andre Sakharov, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize that year, called for Sostre’s release. And another case  —   across the river in New Jersey  —   helped Sostre. At the time, the idea that sometimes innocent people end up in jail was not widely understood. But the case of Rubin ”Hurricane” Carter was sparking a new national interest in false convictions. Carter was in prison, convicted of a triple homicide in a Patterson, N. J. bar. But he said he had been mistakenly identified by a witness. Carter, an   was a more romantic figure than Sostre, a political radical. Bob Dylan had just released a popular and stirring ballad about Carter and played a benefit concert. (Eventually, Carter’s conviction would be overturned.) New York Gov. Hugh Carey worried that Sostre’s case could get similar attention. And besides, when his staff looked into it, they realized there was merit to Sostre’s claims. Still, it was a surprise when news leaked out in December that Carey was thinking seriously about freeing Sostre. In Buffalo, law enforcement and city officials reacted with anger. Sostre was still remembered there as an instigator of the 1967 uprisings. The judge who had sentenced Sostre wrote to say Sostre was not a political prisoner but a drug dealer and a dangerous political extremist who ”has expressed, time and again, disregard for our laws, public officials and system of jurisprudence.” On Christmas Eve, Carey granted Sostre executive clemency. He used parole and clemency to free Sostre without saying whether Sostre had been falsely convicted of the drug crime in Buffalo. Sostre had spent all but 2   years of the previous 22 in prison, spread over two prison sentences, the last one for nine years. When I spoke to him by phone while he was imprisoned, he worried about whether he would be able to live freely once he left prison. ”Prison is a closed society with   walls and the public can’t see in,” he explained. That made it easy to violate someone’s human rights. But they could be violated outside prison walls, too. ”I consider the outside only a minimum security and inside prison is sort of a maximum security.” Sostre walked out on Feb. 9, 1976. The next day, he held a press conference at the United Nations. Sostre praised the governor’s ”courage” to release him, but explained: ”I know it’s fashionable to say I’m not bitter. Of course I am. I lost nine years of my life. I’m a human being. I’m bitter this sort of thing goes on in a   humane society.” My search for Sostre, My story on Sostre for my graduate school master’s thesis was due a few weeks after he came home. My adviser told me to rip up what I’d already written and rewrite it to tell the story of Sostre’s readjustment to life outside prison. I resisted. It would mean asking for a lot of his time. I doubted Sostre wanted to spend his first days of freedom with me. ”You’re a journalist,” my professor told me. ”And your job is to get the story, even if that means sleeping on his doorstep.” I countered with ”I’m not a journalist. I’m a journalism student. And he just spent nine years in prison.” My professor insisted. So I found ways to be useful to Sostre. He needed an apartment. I looked through the want ads in the Village Voice and reported back to him. He held his press conference, I went. He made speeches. I went. He went to housing court as part of his new job as a tenant advocate on State Assemblywoman Marie Runyon’s staff. I went. Sostre didn’t complain. I think he liked being able to share his views about prison, justice and the legal system, especially with a student. The last time I saw Sostre was on April 8, 1976, a warm spring day when I walked from Morningside Heights to his office on the ninth floor of the state office building at 125th Street in Harlem. From his window, he pointed out the neighborhood he grew up in. He talked about his new apartment and his surprise at the recent verdict in the Patty Hearst case, and that she had gotten any prison time at all, given that ”she had everything going for her” in money and power. He was striking in the uniform he had adopted for himself: a blue denim jacket and jeans, a blue   and hiking boots. His head was shaved  —   as it was in prison  —   and his   goatee was graying. I walked with him to a print shop where he picked up flyers for a fundraiser for his boss. She had advocated for his release. And just a few days after leaving prison, he had eagerly started a job in her office. The prison revolutionary who had described himself as a ”revolutionary anarchist” was now working within the system. He was accepting invitations to visit college campuses and tell his story and talk about prison. And he focused on the chance to do a new kind of civil rights work on behalf of tenants. ”The battlefield has changed from the dungeon to the streets,” he’d told me. ”But the repression is the same.” It was an adjustment to freedom after all those years in prison. He didn’t trust state officials, who he expected would find a way to send him back to prison. (In fact, a state prison official had told me: ”Martin Sostre is going to have to walk a very careful tightrope because they’ll try to slam him for the slightest infraction. ”) Sostre had shown me the copy of his parole agreement he kept in the breast pocket of his denim jacket. He called it ”a blank check . .. a contract with a gun to your head.” He couldn’t marry, buy a car or quit his job without the permission of his parole officer. And some conditions of his parole were open to interpretation  —   like his promise that his behavior would not be a ”menace . .. to society.” He told me he worried that his criticism of government and the prison system  —   when he gave speeches  —   could be seen that way. More recently, over the past several years as I wrote more about false convictions and solitary confinement, I thought more, too, about Sostre. I’d ask prison reform advocates I interviewed if they knew the name Martin Sostre. They didn’t. He hadn’t left much of a trace once he left prison. I found a story from the 1980s about a community education program he had started with a friend in New Jersey. I tracked down the friend, but he had split bitterly with Sostre in a fight over money. I found addresses for Sostre in Florida and in New York. In 2014, I sent him a letter, but I didn’t hear back and didn’t know if the letter even reached him. But last spring, a Facebook post put me back on Sostre’s trail. I went to a reunion of my Columbia Graduate School of Journalism class and, in the library, I looked up my original master’s thesis on Sostre. I took a picture of the opening paragraph and posted it on Facebook. A short time later, a college friend, someone from a totally different part of my life, responded: ”I would love to see your thesis as I am friends with his wife.” That’s how I ended up at a Sunday brunch on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with Liz Sostre, Martin’s widow. Sostre had died just eight months before after a series of small strokes. Liz Sostre lovingly described her husband as a ”very complicated” man. He was smart, funny and principled. He saw widespread injustice in the world, but he was optimistic that it could be fixed. He was a champion of the poor, but he dismissed people who said ”money is evil” as people who usually had it. Money was a good thing, he said. The problem was that not everyone had enough of it. He even liked to play the stock market,   on the computer. He was gregarious and charming. But he also liked to be alone. His past prison activism became a faded part of his identity. Once, a producer wanted to make a TV movie. James Earl Jones would play Sostre. Martin and Liz ended up poolside at the producer’s Hollywood home. But Liz says the project died when Sostre and Jones worried that the screenwriters were ”watering it down too much.” Sometimes people who knew his role in the prisoners’ rights movement, maybe a journalist or an academic, would send a letter. He’d ignore it, maybe not even open it, and just put it on a pile of mail. That’s probably what happened to the letter I’d sent a few years before. He would only ever get back to other inmates he had known in prison. Liz Sostre had been a member of Prairie Fire, the ”aboveground” support group for the Weather Underground. She had been doing prison reform work when she met the famous prisoners’ rights advocate shortly after he was freed. ”I thought we’d still be doing prison work,” she says, ”and he said, ’Nah. I’m out. I’m not in prison now.’ ” For Sostre, she says, the past was the past. His son Vinny says his father talked all the time about politics and current events, cutting out stories from the New Yorker, the New York Times or the free neighborhood paper for him to read. But he didn’t talk much about his own life growing up, or about prison. It’s moving to hear the taped interviews Vinny made with his father a few years before he died. Vinny knows little about Sostre’s prison history  —   or even his importance to the prisoners’ rights movement. He uses his father’s brief Wikipedia entry to ask me about his father’s history. (”You’re associated with, what is it, like Black Muslims or something like that? ”) In the recordings, Sostre seems at moments eager to fill in his son’s knowledge but then bored  —   and sometimes he simply seems forgetful about things so far in his past. But by the time he came home in 1976, Sostre was already becoming a footnote  —   his prison victories and significance already in the past. Solitary confinement and sentencing were no longer the primary focus of East Coast prison activists. They focused on defending the Attica inmates who were facing trial. There was less of a clear role for Sostre. And partly it was Sostre’s own personality. He was ”very, very much by himself,” Liz says. In some ways, it had been easier for him to work by himself, from his prison cell. He had spent nine years in solitary confinement and liked to have space to himself. ”He called himself a ’revolutionary anarchist.’ So he didn’t like groups, committees, meetings,” she says. ”So he didn’t work with any other groups whatsoever.” There was one exception: the groups he organized himself. He helped organize renters, including those in his own building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Liz still lives and Vinny lives in an apartment on another floor. ”We had a terrible landlord and most of the apartments were vacant,” Liz recalls. ”There were a lot of issues in the building. So he organized the building and formed a tenants’ organization and he ran meetings. Then he began to organize other buildings on the block. We formed a block association. So he was doing that kind of organizing.” And with that friend I found in New Jersey, he had bought abandoned buildings and taught neighborhood teens how to do the construction  —   to give them skills and potential housing. As part of the same project, he started a day care program, with an   program for teens. ”It was a very similar atmosphere to his bookstore,” says Vinny. ”He would educate them as to what is really going on, how they could fight injustice, and how they could help their community.” Sostre liked his new life as a father, husband and tenants’ rights advocate. And then he almost lost it all. In 1984, Sostre shot a man, a tenant he was evicting from a building he was managing. Sostre said the man and a friend threatened him and the friend had a gun. Sostre grabbed the weapon and it went off. The tenant suffered a superficial neck wound, but Sostre was charged with attempted murder. Sostre feared if he were sent to prison  —   where he was still a hated figure  —   he’d die there. So he fled New York. Liz, now, was alone, caring for two young sons. Sostre was hiding in Florida. From time to time, the family would go to see him. Assuming the police were watching her apartment, she and the boys would leave carrying large trash bags that disguised their suitcases inside. On one trip the family  —   with the fugitive father —   went to Disney World. After two years, Sostre was caught when he sneaked back into New York City. Someone spotted him in one of his favorite places  —   a law library —   and called police. At trial in 1987, Sostre argued he had acted in  . He was acquitted. Over the last years of his life, Sostre had a series of strokes. His mind stayed sharp but his physical health failed. He could no longer get up and down the steps to his building. Liz worried that her husband had become like a prisoner in his own apartment. But he disagreed. ”I was in the box for years,” he told her. ”Here I can get up, you bring me good food and all the food I want. I can walk around, watch TV. I’ve got my books. I have a bed and a blanket.” Sostre died at home on Aug. 12, 2015. He was 92. No newspaper, TV show or radio program marked the death of a   pioneer of the prisoners’ rights movement. But historian Felber notes: ”No single figure played a greater role in securing legal rights for prisoners in the history of U. S. prisons than Martin Sostre.”"
"United Airlines crew members will no longer be able to bump a passenger who is already seated in one of the airline’s planes. The policy change was first reported by TMZ. A spokesperson for the airline confirms that United has updated its policy ”to make sure crews traveling on our aircraft are booked at least 60 minutes prior to departure. This ensures situations like Flight 3411 never happen again.” If the crew member is not booked an hour before the flight, then he or she will have to wait for the next available flight. The policy change effectively means that if there is a need to displace a passenger from a flight, the decision is made before boarding begins. ”This is one of our initial steps in a review of our policies in order to deliver the best customer experience,” said the spokesperson. TMZ quoted an internal email that states, ”No must ride crew member can displace a customer who has boarded an aircraft.” The policy change comes as the beleaguered airline is still in recovery mode in the aftermath of the viral video of a passenger being dragged off a    flight Sunday night. David Dao, the   old Kentucky physician yanked off the fully booked flight after refusing to give up his seat for a crew member, sustained injuries and may need surgery, according to his attorney. At least one other airline is rethinking its policy too. Delta is authorizing its supervisors to offer a displaced passenger almost $10, 000 in compensation. The previous incentive had been $1, 350. Gate agents can offer $2, 000. Other airlines have not said whether they will increase their compensation limits to displaced passengers."
"Ordinary folks can fly from the Washington, D. C. area to southeast Florida for $    if they book in advance. For the president, the trip is a little more costly. Exactly how much is not currently public, though. The conservative group Judicial Watch, which has been tracking the cost of presidential travel for several years, estimates that President Trump’s frequent visits to his Palm Beach resort    probably cost the government around $1 million each. Much of the expense stems from Air Force One 747, which costs around $140, 000 per flying hour right now, says Judicial Watch’s president, Tom Fitton. The trips typically incur other expenses as well, such as lodging and travel expenses for the Secret Service, and reimbursements for local police. ”It’s a snapshot cost, in the sense that there are other costs obviously involved that we could get, but the government just doesn’t want to give it to us or they keep secret for some reason,” Fitton says. The Government Accountability Office has agreed to look into the costs and security concerns raised by Democratic lawmakers about the Florida trips. Trump has so far appeared to set a record for weekend travel, regularly shuttling back and forth between Washington and Florida. ”For someone who complained about President Obama traveling a lot, he’s going to supersede President Obama’s travel, all eight years [of it] within a year, which is just absolutely ridiculous,” says Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who recently signed a letter to the Pentagon asking about the costs racked up by the president’s use of Air Force One. Political hay has long been made over personal travel by presidents. Republicans regularly excoriated Obama for the cost of his trips to Hawaii and Africa, for example. Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the cost of a     trip Obama took from Washington to Chicago and then onto Palm Beach in February 2013. The report calculated the cost of the trip at around $3. 6 million. In fact, Judicial Watch began monitoring travel costs during the Obama administration. ”He made a big show of taking his wife up to New York on a date night. And I thought to myself, ’Well, that sounds like a pretty darned expensive date night,’ knowing what it costs to move a president around,” Fitton says. Because the Obamas and their entourage flew on small planes, the cost of that trip was relatively low. Press reports put it at around $25, 000. The Obama administration was reluctant to answer questions about travel costs, forcing Judicial Watch to file Freedom of Information requests to get an answer (Secret Service documents show $11, 648. 17 in security expenses for that trip). So far, the Trump White House hasn’t been much more transparent, Fitton says. ”There has to be an awareness that it costs money to go down there, and they should justify the cost or explain to the American people why it’s necessary,” he says. A million dollars for a weekend trip to Florida is actually chump change for the Pentagon, with its annual budget of $600 billion, but Gallego says that isn’t really the point. ”We’ve had to stop hiring child care specialists in child care day centers on Army bases because the president has done a hiring freeze,” he says. ”If the president wants to ask the country to sacrifice and other government agencies to sacrifice, then he should be doing the same.”"
"In the middle of the Texas Hill Country, where barbecue brisket is king, a dinner crowd is throwing back crabcakes, fried oysters, flounder and stuffed shrimp. Onstage is the establishment’s owner, a      bluesman who’s been performing for half a century. He is Johnny Nicholas and this is his Hilltop Cafe. ”Well, I spent all my money on a real fine automobile,” he croons. ”It’s a custom ride, got a   steering wheel.” The Hilltop opened in 1980 outside Fredericksburg, Texas. about 75 miles north of San Antonio. It used to be a gas station and beer joint. Nicholas’ wife, Brenda, was the genius in the kitchen. He handled the music. Once a month, Nicholas books a dinner concert in the dining room. You’re liable to hear Marcia Ball or Jimmie Vaughan or even Bonnie Raitt or Billy Gibbons. Nicholas plays with his regular group, Hellbent, made up of Austin   like Scrappy Jud Newcomb on guitar and mandolin. The musicians and diners share a   wooden floor, surrounded by old cabaret posters and neon beer signs. While the Hilltop is in the gravitational field of Austin, 90 miles east, it’s a bit far for the     crowd. ”I’ve been coming to the Hilltop since I was a little girl,” says Melany Canfield, a Mason, Texas, high school counselor who is sitting at a table. ”This is the real deal and Johnny is the real deal.” Over against the wall, a solidly built man with a hearty drawl introduces himself as Dick Winters from western central Texas. ”My wife, Susan, and I are both ranchers,” he says. ”Started coming here right after Johnny and Brenda first opened it in the ’80s. And it was a convenient place to stop and have a cold brew on a long drive.” The Hilltop evolved into a   restaurant with rigorous standards for freshness. Brenda Nicholas grew much of the produce in her own gardens. And the couple made   runs to the Gulf Coast to buy snapper, flounder and shrimp right off the docks. Brenda brought her   seafood recipes from her hometown in Southeast Texas and trained the cooks. ”People would come for miles just to have her crawfish etouffee, shrimp and sausage,” says Sammy Favella, who has been chef for three years. Johnny Nicholas takes a seat in the back room next to the big stone fireplace. His gray hair is pulled into a ponytail he has a soul patch under his lower lip. His face bespeaks the years spent on the road. After he met Brenda, they made the decision to start a family and open the Hilltop. ”Our primary motivation is to serve people food and music that we love, that we would like to eat or listen to,” he says, ”and that’s what people get about it. That’s what’s special about Hilltop.” Last year, Brenda died after a long fight against lymphoma and leukemia. To defray medical expenses, Johnny’s friend Eric Clapton donated one of his Stratocasters  —   it brought $45, 000 at auction. With Brenda gone, Nicholas has turned the cafe over to his two sons so he can throw all of his energy back into his music career. Nicholas grew up in Rhode Island, drifted to Ann Arbor, Chicago, Southwest Louisiana and finally Austin. His collaborations in the ’70s and ’80s read like an encyclopedia of American roots music  —   from blues greats Johnny Shines, Big Walter Horton and Roosevelt Sykes to Cajun accordionist Nathan Abshire. Nicholas also played with the Western swing hippie band Asleep at the Wheel. Today, he’s still known as a bluesman, but much of the time he doesn’t sound like one. He puts things in his music  —   unexpected chord changes and a certain tenderness  —   that you don’t hear in the     bands that dominate the genre these days. ”To me, I don’t find it incongruous to have songs with lots of changes, and to do different grooves than your standard blues. That does not exclude them from being blues,” he says. On his critically acclaimed latest album, Fresh Air, most of the songs are his own. Nicholas says he began writing more after the death in 2009 of his friend Stephen Bruton. The revered Austin musician was such a regular, the Hilltop named a dish after him  —   Oysters Bruton. ”I’ve always written songs, but always maybe two or three on an album,” Nicholas says. ”But I never really focused on it and was a little afraid of it, too. So when Stephen passed  —   and he was such a great writer  —   I just said, y’know what, this is a wakeup call.” Even though Nicholas is back on the road singing and playing guitar and piano, he hasn’t forgotten what his late wife told him on her deathbed. ”We sat down and she said, ’I’ve got to talk to you. This is very important.’ And she said, ’You have to promise me that if you can’t keep Hilltop up to my standards, that you’ll lock the doors.’ And I said, ’I promise, absolutely. ’” And so while the chef is in the kitchen with a mallet tenderizing beef cutlets for   steak, Johnny Nicholas is out in the dining room pounding out his special brand of blues."
"For most of his life, Carl Goulden had near perfect health. He and his wife, Wanda, say that changed 10 years ago. Carl remembers feeling, ”a lot of pain in the back, tired, fatigue, yellow eyes  —   a lot of jaundice.” Wanda, chimes in: ”Yellow eyes,   skin.” His liver wasn’t working, she explains. ”It wasn’t filtering.” Carl was diagnosed with hepatitis B. Now 65 and on Medicare, he had a flower shop in Littlestown, Pa. back then, so had been buying health insurance for his family on the market for small businesses and the  . The medications to manage Carl’s hepatitis cost more than $10, 000 a year  —   and if he ever needed a liver transplant, as some people with hepatitis eventually do, the further costs could be formidable. Thank goodness they had health insurance, the couple thought. But then, Carl says, ”the insurance renewals went way up.” After a few years he could no longer afford to buy the coverage  —   more than $1, 000 a month  —   and also maintain his business. So he dropped the health insurance. ”I was devastated,” he says, ”because I didn’t know when my liver might fail.” But that steep increase in his insurance rate was completely legal, says Pennsylvania insurance commissioner, Teresa Miller. And back then, before the Affordable Care Act became law, a patient like Carl Goulden might have had a very hard time buying another policy he likely would have been turned down by other insurers because he now had what’s called a ” ” medical condition. A family like the Gouldens would ”just have been out of luck,” Miller says. Pennsylvania: The wild, wild West  Before the ACA, states had differing approaches to handling   conditions. Pennsylvania was typical. Until the ACA mandated that insurers treat sick and healthy people equally, buying insurance was the wild, wild West. Insurers couldn’t overtly kick people off a plan if they got sick, but they could find ways to charge them a lot more, even those whose chronic condition wasn’t all that serious  —   such as acne. For individuals looking to sign up in the first place, ”an insurance company could simply decline to offer you insurance at all because of your   condition,” Miller says. Insurers who did offer a policy to someone with a   medical condition might have done so with a catch  —   the plan could require a waiting period, or might exclude treatment for that condition. ”So, let’s say you had diabetes, for example,” Miller says. ”You might have been able to get coverage for an unexpected health care need that arose, but you’d still be on your own for any treatment and management of your diabetes.” From the perspective of the insurance company, these practices were intended to prevent the sick from signing up for a health plan only when they needed costly care. Pennsylvania did try to partially solve this problem. It created a more   health plan, called Adult Basic, for those with lower incomes who didn’t have any coverage. Lots of people signed up, but the plans didn’t include coverage for mental health care, prescription drugs or more than two nights in a hospital. Even so, Miller says, the strategy proved too expensive for the state. ”That program was spending $13 million to $14 million a month when it was shut down,” she says.   pools, More than 30 other states dealt with   conditions by setting up what are called ”  pools,” a separate insurance plan for individuals who couldn’t get health coverage in the private market. These plans could be real lifesavers for some people with conditions like cancer  —   which can cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat. The experiences with high risk pools varied, but states faced lots of challenges, says John Bertko, an insurance actuary with the state of California. And the main problem was the high cost. ”The one in California, which I was associated with, limited annual services to no more than $75, 000, and they had a waiting list. There was not enough money,” Bertko says. ”The 20, 000 people who got into it were the lucky ones. At one point in time, there were another 10, 000 people on a waiting list.” The pools also had catches premiums were expensive, as were    costs. And plans often excluded the coverage of   conditions for six months to a year after the patient bought the policy. New Jersey:   conditions were covered, but with a catch, Around that same time, across the Delaware River, the state of New Jersey was trying something different. ”Insurers could not take health status into account,” says Joel Cantor, director of Rutgers University’s Center for State Health Policy who has been analyzing the New Jersey experience. Before the ACA, New Jersey was one of just a handful of states that prohibited insurers from denying coverage to people with   conditions. Insurers also weren’t allowed to charge people a whole lot more for having a health issue, and the plans had to offer robust coverage of services. There was a   waiting period for coverage of a   condition, but a larger issue became cost. The entire individual market in New Jersey became expensive for everyone, regardless of their health status, Cantor says. Because there was no mandate to have health insurance coverage, those who signed up tended to really need it, and healthy people did not enroll. And so, ”the prices went up and up,” he says. And the premiums and enrollment ”went down and down.” The state tried to address this in the early 2000s by introducing a ”skinny” health plan, Cantor says. ”By that I mean very few benefits,” he explains. ”It covered very, very limited services.” The plan was affordable and really popular, especially among young and healthy people and about 100, 000 people signed up. But if something did happen, or if a person had a chronic health need, lots of the costs shifted to the individual. ”It left people with huge financial exposure,” he says. That’s, in part, why the ACA included a rule that insurance plans now have to offer good benefits and be available to everybody. In exchange, insurers have the mandate and subsidies  —   so that everybody will buy in. Cantor says these experiences point to an ongoing dilemma in health care: A small portion of people consume a big chunk of health care costs. It’s hard to predict who among us will cost a lot  —   or when. So, the question becomes, what kind of care should insurance plans cover and who should shoulder that cost? This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WHYY’s health show The Pulse and Kaiser Health News."
"Your federal income taxes are due April 18 this year, and  —   for perhaps several million people  —   a fine for failing to get health insurance is due that day, too. Despite a lengthy debate, Congress has not yet acted on a bill to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act. That means the law and almost all of its regulations remain in force, at least for now. For the majority of tax filers, who had health insurance through an employer for 2016 or through a government program, all they have to do is check the box on the 1040 form that says they were covered for a full year. That’s it. The Obama administration had called for the IRS to begin rejecting tax returns for 2016 that left that box blank. But the IRS under the Trump administration has canceled that policy, citing a Trump executive order that calls on federal agencies to ”minimize the burden” of the health law. Still, those who lacked insurance for more than three consecutive months, or who bought individual insurance and got federal help paying the premiums, need to do a little more work to figure out what, if anything, they owe. Those with no insurance, and those who have had a lengthy gap in coverage, may be required to pay what the federal government calls a ”shared responsibility payment.” It’s a fine for not having coverage, on the theory that even those without insurance will eventually use the health care system at a cost they can’t afford, which means that someone else  —   other patients, hospitals, health care providers and taxpayers  —   will have to pay that bill. Many people who don’t have insurance, however, qualify for one of the several dozen ”exemptions” from the fine. Nearly 13 million tax filers claimed an exemption for 2015 taxes, according to the IRS. Most often those exemptions came from people whose income was so low (less than $10, 350 for an individual) that they are not required to file a tax return, or from Americans who lived abroad for most of the year, or from people for whom the cheapest available insurance was still unaffordable (costing more than 8 percent of their household income). The fine for 2016 taxes is the greater of $695 per adult or 2. 5 percent of household income. Fines for children who lack insurance coverage are half the amount for uninsured adults. Fines are   by the number of months each person was uninsured. The maximum fine is $2, 676 that is the national average cost of a ”bronze” level insurance plan available on the health exchanges. But most people do not pay fines that are anywhere near that high. Last year, according to the IRS, an estimated 6. 5 million tax filers paid a fine that averaged $470. If you bought your own insurance from the federal marketplace or a state health insurance exchange and you got a federal tax credit to help pay for that coverage, you have to take another step before you can file your taxes. People who got those tax credits must fill out a form that ”reconciles” the amount of subsidies they received based on their income estimates with the amount they were entitled to according to their actual income reported to the IRS. In tax filings for 2015, about 5. 3 million taxpayers had to pay the government because they got too much in tax credits, compared to 2. 4 million who got additional money back. But among those who underestimated their incomes and had to pay back some of those tax credits, 62 percent still received a net refund on their taxes. Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Republican worries over congressional special elections haven’t entirely reached South Carolina’s 5th District  —   yet. At a GOP candidate forum Thursday night in Rock Hill, five of the candidates vying to succeed former Rep. Mick Mulvaney, who left to direct the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, were virtually united on most major issues facing their party and in their praise of President Trump. ”If you liked Mick Mulvaney’s votes, you’ll like my votes. If you liked [former Sen.] Jim DeMint’s votes, you’ll love my votes,” said former state Rep. Ralph Norman, seen as one of two frontrunners for the GOP nomination by most observers in the district. In an interview after the forum, Norman was effusive in his praise of the president, giving him a grade of ”A++” for his first almost 100 days in office. Norman stressed repeatedly he would be a congressman much in the mold of Mulvaney and would consider joining the Freedom Caucus if elected. If he’d been in Congress, he would have opposed the GOP health care replacement bill last month, echoing many of the Freedom Caucus’s concerns that the bill didn’t do enough to repeal the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. Norman casts a similar profile as Trump  —   he’s head of a major   company in the area and hails from York County, the largest in the district and where the lion’s share of GOP votes are expected to come from in the May 2 primary. ”I’m not a trial lawyer,” Norman told voters on Thursday night. ”If you need a job, come see Warren Norman Company.” That was a    dig by Norman at his chief rival in the   field, state House Speaker Pro Tempore Tommy Pope. Ideology versus pragmatism, Pope is a former prosecutor in the area who gained fame for leading the 1995 case against Susan Smith, who was sentenced to life in prison after being accused of drowning her two young children in her car. ”I’m the same guy you’ve known all these years that protected you in your community,” Pope told voters in his opening statement. ”That’s the values I’ll take to Washington.” During his comments at the forum, Pope struck a pragmatic conservative tone. He wouldn’t commit to how he would have voted on the health care replacement bill since he hadn’t seen all of it. ”If there’s a better way to remove more [of Obamacare] I’m for it,” Pope told NPR afterward. ”If that’s the best that we can get, and I was there, then I would support it, but I want to make sure that’s the case.” Unlike Norman, he was more hesitant in talking about joining with the Freedom Caucus, saying, ”I don’t want to give up my right or my obligation to the people I represent to think independently on each and every vote.” Norman and Pope cast the largest shadow over the race, and are the favorites to advance to a likely May 16 GOP runoff. There were three other candidates at the Thursday forum  —   attorney Kris Wampler, who espoused several libertarian views on issues education activist Sherri Few, who’s running to the right of the pack and had launched a controversial ad hitting Norman and Pope for voting to take the Confederate flag down from in front of the State House after a   June 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston that killed nine   parishioners and Ray Craig, who arrived late to the forum, and had primaried Mulvaney unsuccessfully last year for being too far to the right. South Carolina state Guard Commander Tom Mullikin didn’t attend, and Republicans in the district note he’s skipped most   forums. He has also been pilloried by his rivals for his past donations to Democrats. Former South Carolina GOP Chairman Chad Connelly missed the Thursday event due to illness. If there is a surprise in who sneaks into the runoff, local observers say it could be Connelly, who hails from the outskirts of the district near Newberry but has built good relationships with the evangelical community in the state after working with the Republican National Committee on outreach to faith groups. He recently netted the endorsement of Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows,  . C. and also has South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan’s backing. But for the most part, the race is shaping up to be a somewhat bitter battle between Pope and Norman, and Republicans in the district say Norman’s gone hard after Pope on some of his spending votes  —   attacks which he revived on Thursday night. They’re both fighting for the same base of voters in York County. An opening for Democrats? There’s some hope among Democrats that whoever emerges from that battle would be bloodied heading into the June 20 runoff election, giving them an opening. Still, even though the district is slightly less Republican than the one in Kansas that gave the GOP late heartburn last week  —   voters here picked Trump by almost 19 points, while voters in Kansas voted for the president by 27 points  —   there isn’t the same combination of a toxic governor and an untested candidate that could make it as ripe for an upset. Glenn McCall is a former York County GOP chairman who now serves as an RNC National Committeeman, and says while Republicans can’t take the race for granted, the same   messaging won’t necessarily work here. ”Folks support Trump, especially in the district and, and are just so happy that Mick Mulvaney is part of the administration,” McCall said. Steve LaCarter of Fort Mill was one of the few people among the about 200 who came out to the Thursday forum who wasn’t wearing a sticker for either Norman or Pope. He said he had some ideas of which was he was leaning in the GOP primary as a whole, but that he would definitely be voting Republican regardless of who the nominee was. For him, the   messaging was a  . ”I think he’s still learning,” LaCarter said of Trump, admitting he wished he would tweet less but gave the president a ”B” so far in the White House. ”I don’t think he came to Washington the way other politicians came to Washington. I think he’s a lot more open minded pragmatic type person than the typical politicians that comes up there.” The Trump factor: ’The Trumpiest of the Trumpsters’ Winthrop University political science professor Scott Huffmon also directs the school’s statewide poll, which just found the president’s approval rating slightly underwater in South Carolina  —   43 percent approve and 47 percent disapprove  —   though that’s slightly better than he is nationally. Trump still remains heavily popular with GOP base voters, though, and those are the ones these candidates need to win over in the primary. ”All these candidates who are running toward Trump to appeal to the base within the base  —   who votes in a special election primary  —   is the right thing to do,” Huffmon said. But, if the president’s approval drops in the state and Republican voters aren’t motivated to turn out, that could turn out to be a problem for candidates aligning themselves so closely with Trump, even in a deeply red district. ”Once you’ve proven to the base that that you’re the Trumpiest of the Trumpsters and that they should elect you, going into the general election, where Trump’s support is clearly lower, that makes it difficult to navigate,” Huffmon added. That’s the hope of Democrat Archie Parnell, the frontrunner in his primary. He’s lined up the support of former Democratic Rep. John Spratt, the former Budget Committee Chairman Mulvaney defeated in the 2010 GOP wave former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges and other major Democrats in the state. A former tax attorney for the Department of Justice and the House Ways and Means Committee, Parnell went on to work in the tax division of Goldman Sachs before returning to his native Sumter, in the southern corner of the district. Bespectacled and   he was wont to dive into intricacies of the complex U. S. tax code during a Thursday morning interview at his hotel before hitting the campaign trail that day. Like many Democrats, he was spurred by Trump’s election into getting off the sidelines, and after attending the Women’s March in D. C. with his wife and daughter the day after the president’s inauguration, he decided to jump into the race. Now, after the close Kansas contest and a possible upset in Georgia looming on Tuesday, Parnell says his campaign has seen an uptick in donations and attention as another possible way to send a message to Trump. ”We can send a sonic   signal, not only to the country, but to the world, that the voters in South Carolina want a change and think that things are going off the rails,” said Parnell. Parnell has to win his own primary first though on May 2, against Army veteran Alexis Frank and Marine veteran Les Murphy. And a background like his is one that has triggered outrage in the past from the more progressive wing of the party aligned with Bernie Sanders, decrying ties to corporate interests and big banks. ”I don’t know how the Bernie people are treating that race,” said Huffmon, the Winthrop political scientist. ”I think that otherwise Parnell would be a    favorite.” Parnell says his experience should be an advantage, not a disadvantage, particularly with Democratic voters, and he’s looking to cast himself in the fiscal model of Spratt, who represented the area for almost 30 years. The 5th district is also home to many Northern retirees like Paula and John Bourgeois, who moved to Rock Hill three years ago from New York. They were at the GOP forum, but were maybe the only independent voters there, and some of the issues they said they were interested in, such as gun control and funding for Planned Parenthood, weren’t exactly atop the GOP candidates’ priority list. They said they came out to learn more about all the candidates and were undecided who they would vote for or for which party. Last November, they were both somewhat reluctant Hillary Clinton voters and now were certainly no fans of Trump. While they said they have plenty of neighbors from other places who have also moved recently from places like New Jersey and Ohio, Paula said she was doubtful that a Democrat could win here just yet. ”Years down the road when you have more Northerners coming down, maybe it will change,” she said. As to whether there could be a similar ”sonic boom,” as Parnell called it, against Trump come June, Paula Bourgeois was highly skeptical. ”I don’t know about here, maybe other parts of the country, maybe.”"
"Greetings and welcome to our weekly roundup of education news from Washington and around the country: DeVos hires, U. S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made her first official staff announcement this week, with 10 names. Among them: Josh Venable, will serve as DeVos’ chief of staff. He worked on the presidential campaign of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and is an advocate of both school choice and the Common Core. Robert Eitel, who was a lawyer in the department under President George W. Bush and also worked for the owner of a   college, will serve as senior counsel to the secretary. Candice Jackson will be Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office for Civil Rights and Acting Assistant Secretary. Her brief at OCR will include prosecuting campuses for violations of Title IX, including sexual assault cases. Jackson is the author of a book focusing on women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and abuse. She has limited experience in civil rights law. Pro Publica reports that Jackson has said she experienced past discrimination because she is white and has denounced   preferences. Ebony Lee, another veteran of the Bush administration who has also worked for the Bill  Melinda Gates Foundation, will be deputy chief of staff for policy. Student loan regulation rollback, In a letter sent on Tuesday, DeVos withdrew several policy memos from the previous administration involving consumer protections for student loan borrowers. Student loan repayment is managed in part by   loan servicers. In her letter, DeVos cited the need to limit the cost to taxpayers of loan servicing. The   guidance had instead emphasized protection for borrowers. This may be good news for Navient, the largest student loan servicer. As we noted last week, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in January sued Navient, alleging that it ”illegally cheated borrowers” out of their rights and their money  —   as much as $4 billion  —   through patterns of deception and misapplying payments. Navient has denied wrongdoing, calling the suit ”unsubstantiated, unjustified and politically driven.” Protecting the Secretary, In case you missed it, DeVos is receiving full,   protective security from the U. S. Marshals Service. Most every White House cabinet official gets some level of protection, of course. But often it’s    and not a    detail, let alone from active duty federal law enforcement agents. ”This is unique,” Marshals Service spokeswoman Nikki   tells us. ”The Attorney General felt that there was a need for her to be provided with a protective detail.”     declined to say how many Marshals are protecting DeVos or the nature of the threat, only that ”the detail is commensurate with the existing threat” and based on the service’s ”requirements, experience and methodology.” The extra money for security comes as President Trump’s proposed budget contains deep cuts to the Education department. The Marshals Service says its contract with the Department of Education will cost taxpayers $7. 78 million, from   through Sept. 30, or about $1 million a month.   says the Marshals Service has not protected a cabinet official since the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, better known as the ”Drug Czar,” held cabinet rank. That ended 8 years ago. Protesters showed up at many appearances by President Trump’s cabinet officials, including DeVos, during the confirmation process. The only known security ”incident” for DeVos since she took office was a February visit to a Washington, D. C. public school where several protesters shouted ”shame, shame!” and temporarily blocked her and an aide from entering. Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has also asked for additional    security. Pruitt is facing criticism for backing a 31 percent slice to the agency’s budget, including research for climate change, among other deep cuts. Free college for New York State  New York’s new budget includes   public college for students from families making up to $125, 000 annually when the program is fully phased in. The plan is part of a national trend, with statewide programs now in place in Rhode Island, Tennessee and Oregon. Here’s a national map. However, some critics argued that the New York program is insufficiently targeted toward the neediest students. For one thing, tuition accounts for only half the cost of attendance. Community college students, in particular, struggle with books, fees, housing, food, and in some cases childcare costs. And free textbooks too, Less widely noted in the New York budget was an $8 million appropriation for what are called ”open educational resources” for the State University of New York system (SUNY) and the City University of New York, or CUNY. Basically, OER are   textbooks and materials, often in electronic formats. Because they don’t have a commercial license, open resources can be reproduced and shared at   cost. Faculty can also modify existing resources to suit their needs and   the results. SUNY has been investing in this kind of open learning resource since 2012. David Wiley, a pioneer of open educational resources, is the founder of Lumen Learning, which is a vendor partner for SUNY in this project. He tells NPR Ed that based on previous research and experience, ”I expect to see New York students save more than twice,” the $8 million, ”in the very first year of the funding and, simultaneously, expect an increase in   rates where OER is adopted.”"
"Turkish voters will decide Sunday whether to replace the Turkish Republic’s parliamentary form of government with a strong presidency. It’s a vote that could alter  —   or, opponents say, endanger  —   the democratic traditions of this key U. S. ally. Turkey is a NATO member helping fight ISIS. If the referendum passes, it will increase the power of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Polls released late in the campaign showed a narrow lead for ”yes,” with a large number still declaring themselves undecided. Erdogan is predicting at least a 55 percent margin for ”yes.” The vote comes at a perilous time. Turkey remains under a state of emergency declared last July, following a failed coup that left nearly 300 people dead. The Erdogan government has used the emergency powers to conduct a sweeping purge of the military, judiciary and civil service. More than 100, 000 people have been fired or arrested, including more than 100 journalists. In this atmosphere, referendum opponents say it’s difficult to run an effective campaign. Government officials dismiss this concern, noting that France is holding elections this spring while under a state of emergency following terrorist attacks in Paris. The pro and con arguments, Supporters say the change will bring stability and efficiency to a government that has often been paralyzed by infighting. They note that Turkey has had 64 governments since the 1920s, rivaling Italy for instability. They say a stronger government will be better at fighting terrorism the country has suffered several recent attacks. Critics and analysts such as the Venice Commission, part of the Council of Europe, a   pact of European countries including Turkey, say it’s ”a dangerous step backwards in the constitutional democratic tradition of Turkey,” warning of ”the dangers of degeneration of the proposed system towards an authoritarian and personal regime.” The current system, Under the existing constitution, Turkey’s chief executive is the prime minister, chosen by the parliament. Until recently, the president was an appointed position serving as head of state, not head of government  —   similar to the queen of England. Erdogan served as prime minister from 2002 until 2014, when he became Turkey’s first president elected by the voters. He immediately announced that he would be a ”different kind of president,” and has taken a much more active role in running the government than his predecessors. What would change, Power would be more concentrated under the presidency. If the referendum is approved by majority vote, the office of prime minister would be abolished after the next elections, scheduled for 2019. Another body, the Council of Ministers, would also go, and all executive and administrative authority would be transferred to the president’s office. The current setup requires the president to be nonpartisan. Under the new system, the president would no longer have that limit. Erdogan could formally rejoin the party he   the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Erdogan resigned from the party when he became president. The change would increase Erdogan’s influence over who runs for Parliament. Cabinet ministers would no longer have to be members of Parliament and the Parliament would not have power over Cabinet appointments  —   ministers would be appointed directly by the president. If the referendum is approved, the Parliament would have reduced oversight powers. There is one change the referendum would bring that is being applauded by   groups: the abolition of military courts. Presidential terms, Under the current constitution, Erdogan can run for a second   term in 2019 and serve until 2024. Under the proposed changes, Erdogan could have his term limit effectively reset and stay in power through 2029. Critics say there’s a loophole that could give him even more years in the job than that. If Parliament calls snap elections during a second term, he has the option of running for a third. What happens after the vote? Assuming the referendum passes, most of the changes it contains won’t take effect until the next set of elections, due in 2019. But two important provisions would kick in shortly after the vote. Erdogan would be able to reclaim his position as head of the ruling party, and he would gain new authority to appoint members to the council that oversees the naming of judges and prosecutors. Opponents of the referendum say this could badly weaken the judiciary’s independence, removing another check on presidential power."
"Michael Treadwell sat at the back of a courtroom in New Hampshire. He wore a windbreaker and khaki pants and leaned over his work boots with his elbows on his knees. At first it looked like he was chewing gum  —   a bold choice in a courtroom. But when he spoke it was clear: He wasn’t chewing gum, he was chewing his own gums. Michael doesn’t have any teeth. Taxpayers in Hillsborough County, N. H. have spent $63, 000 over the last six years keeping Treadwell in jail for little more than trespassing. For years now, his life has looked like this: Trespass in an apartment building, spend 30 days in jail bother restaurant customers, spend 42 days in jail panhandle aggressively, spend 30 days in jail. ”When you live in a town like Nashua, there’s not a lot of homelessness there, and it kinda like focuses, puts you in the spotlight,” Treadwell says. ”Especially if you drink alcohol and stuff.” His charges all come from some combination of being homeless and getting drunk. Still, he says, jail is no worse than the streets. ”People kill homeless people, violence and everything else,” Treadwell says. ”It can be a very dangerous life to live in. I don’t suggest jail as an alternative. Ain’t no kinda life.” At the courthouse, he pleads guilty to public urination. He says he didn’t think life would be like this when he was younger. Treadwell did do time for drug charges in the early ’90s. But for years, his   Sherri Treadwell says his life was on the right track. He traversed the country driving trucks  —   a job he loved. They had two daughters. She says she remembers the man she married. ”He’s the first one to give you the shirt off his back. If you need any help, he’s right there,” Sherri says. ”And he has a really good sense of humor. When he has his teeth he has the biggest, brightest smile. It just covers him, covers his whole face.” To Sherri, the drinking, the homelessness, the stints in jail  —   they’re all symptoms of his schizophrenia. She says it started just a year or two into their marriage when Michael began acting strange. ”He would think there’s people listening in on our conversations,” Sherri says. ”He would whisper to me in the car, ’Shhh the car is bugged!’ No, the car’s not bugged. He wouldn’t talk on the phone.” Sherri says Treadwell turned to alcohol to cope. They divorced in 2007. A year after getting divorced, Michael walked into a church looking for bus money, and met Jarretta Copeland. Nine years later, Copeland knows him better than anyone  —   including how bad he can get when he drinks. ”He gets to yelling and screaming and hollering, and he’s talking and he’s cussing people out, swearing and carrying on and so forth and whatnot,” Copeland says. ”It scares people because they don’t know what his intentions are.” It was Copeland who got Treadwell diagnosed with schizophrenia. Over and over, she’s tried to get him into New Hampshire’s state mental hospital, and failed. Even a judge’s order couldn’t get him from jail to the hospital. Instead, Treadwell continues to cycle from the streets to court, to jail and back again. His story is not uncommon. Half of jail inmates nationwide have a combination of mental health and substance use problems, according to the Department of Justice. Sherri says the system isn’t just failing people like Michael. It’s failing their families as well. Her daughters don’t have a dad around. She works two jobs and is rarely home. They miss him. ”His liver is gone now because of the alcoholism, so we know he’s not going to be around for too much longer. And this hurts the girls and I,” Sherri says. ”And it hurts me more, because I know the system could have done something.” Treadwell last said he wanted to go down to South Carolina, where he grew up, to get his trucking license back in order. Ultimately, he did make it to South Carolina  —   he ended up in a jail there."
"It’s an ad for Vicks, maker of cold and cough remedies, produced for the Indian market. It’s had 9 million views on YouTube so far. And it’s launched a discussion on social media about the rights of transgender people. The 3    commercial, released online on March 31, doesn’t mention any products. Instead, it tells what is labeled as a ”true story.” A girl in her teens, looking out a bus window, says she’s on her way to boarding school because her mother wants her to be a doctor. Then the girl, Gayatri, tells how ”mom” was kicked out of her own home when she was 18. And she took in little Gayatri after her birth mother was taken away in an ambulance and never came back. Earlier in the ad, we see the mother only from the back. She’s wearing a sari. Then we see her face, with a red bindi on her forehead. Gayatri looks over and says, ”This is my mummy. Isn’t she lovely?” The ad does not mention that ”mummy” is Gauri Sawant, who was born a boy and came out as a woman in her teens. But that’s the point of the final scene: ”In our civics text books, we read that everyone is entitled to the same basic rights,” Gayatri says. ”Then why is my mom denied them? This is why I’m not going to be a doctor, but a lawyer. For my mom.” Then the logo of Vicks appears with the words: ”Generations of Care.” The story is indeed true, and the the real Gayatri and Gauri Sawant appear in the ad. But certain details are omitted from their story. The child was 6 when her mother, a sex worker, died of AIDS. Gauri, then 27, was her mother’s friend and stepped in to raise her. Some people think the ad exploits transgender people to sell a product. But on social media, where everyone is always ready to express outrage, the response has been resoundingly positive. On Facebook, where the video has racked up 2 million views and thousands of comments, most are a variation on, ”This made me cry.” Neeraj Ghaywan, the director of the ad, wrote on YouTube: ”Thank you everyone! Just a note: It is actually Gauri Sawant (and not an actor) playing her part. Of course, legally she cannot adopt a child. Just hoping someday the world will be as one. Again, thank you for this overwhelming love from all around.” ”Motherhood has no gender” is a comment that’s been repeated across all social media. The ad has also raised a debate about adoption and other rights for transgender people in India. Gauri Sawant is an activist for transgender people and runs an NGO in Mumbai. She was one of the original petitioners to challenge the government of India for equal rights and recognition for transgender people, resulting in the passage of a law by the Supreme Court of India. As of April 15, 2014, application forms for college or documentation have had male, female and third gender as category options. And ”third gender” people have been added to the quota for ”Other Backward Classes” who are eligible for affirmative action, giving them a chance to apply for jobs in the government or to educational institutions that might not previously have considered them. Other provisions of the law, such as campaigns to diminish social stigma, have not yet materialized. When it comes to adopting a child, the law in India is still murky. While it is clear that same sex couples cannot adopt children, it’s unclear if a transgender person, applying as a male or female, could. The Vicks ad raises questions about what rights ”mummy” does indeed have to raise the little girl. In an email, Nitin Darbari, marketing director for Asia at Procter  Gamble, said the goal of the ad was to start a conversation and ”celebrate” the changing definitions of family. ”We are overwhelmed by the reactions and the willingness to engage in the conversations and the number of people who have evinced   forward,” Darbari wrote. For Harrish Iyer, an equal rights activist in Mumbai, the best thing about the ad is that it, ”does something even our mainstream media hasn’t managed: This ad normalizes [people who are transgender]. So many times if there’s a gay or trans person portrayed, they’re a caricature or a cause.” Chhavi Sachdev is a journalist based in Mumbai. Contact her @chhavi"
"In the spring, a cook’s fancy turns to thoughts of eggs. They’re everywhere at Easter time, in breads and pies and children’s baskets. Holiday chefs looking for   ideas may find inspiration in these offerings from NPR archives. Easter Egg Breads, ”The centuries have bequeathed us an international    of leavened egg breads: Greek tsoureki, Eastern European babka, Russian kulich, English hot cross buns,” wrote T. Susan Chang in 2007. She offered a recipe for Lithuanian yeasted coffee cake, or babka, filled with cinnamon sugar, cocoa powder, butter and other bits of delight. Hot cross buns, made with an eggy dough, have been an Easter treat in England since the 1500s, Tove Danovich explained in The Salt last year. But the tradition is much older: ”As one story goes, a 12th century monk added the crosses to the bun to tie them firmly to the Christian religion.” Tsoureki paschalino, or Greek Easter bread, is dotted with eggs dyed red to symbolize Christ’s blood. The sweet bread ”not only makes a wonderful breakfast bread but also a nice dessert when paired with cheese and fruit,” wrote Kevin D. Weeks in a 2010 piece featuring a recipe to try. Easter Pies, ”During Easter time, bakeries in both Italy and   neighborhoods offer a dazzling array of sweet and savory pies,” Susan Russo wrote in 2008. The recipes for her family’s favorites  —   ricotta pie, rice pie and pizza chena  —   all call for lots of eggs. The pizza chena, or ”full pie” in a Neapolitan dialect, requires a full dozen eggs, eight of which are beaten for the filling, while the other four are  . The sliced   eggs are layered into the pie with plenty of meats and cheeses. Russo’s grandmother’s version ”was the piece de resistance of every Easter Sunday feast at our house,” she recalled. Easter Confections, Those whose favorite part of the holiday is the sugary bounty of the traditional Easter basket might find inspiration not in the egg’s flavor, but in its shape. Famed chef Thomas Keller included a recipe for marshmallow eggs  —   flavored with vanilla, raspberry or lemon  —   in his 2012 cookbook Bouchon Bakery, written with Sebastien Rouxel. ”When you serve them in all kinds of colors, they’re a joy to behold, especially for kids,” they wrote. ”When people first open the carton, they think it’s filled with dyed Easter eggs, not marshmallows.” It’s also permissible, of course, to leave the making of   candies to the pros. Store shelves bear plenty of offerings from the likes of Hershey’s and Cadbury. In Italy, chocolate Easter eggs that hide surprises ranging from trinkets like key chains to expensive goodies like engagement rings are the food gift of choice in the spring, Amy Guttman wrote for The Salt in 2013.   Benedict XVI was once presented with an elaborately decorated chocolate egg weighing more than 500 pounds. And, on a much smaller scale, NPR’s Joanna Kakissis, reporting from France this week, discovered her chocolate Easter egg contained even more treats inside."
"Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim declared victory in the referendum bid to convert Turkey from a parliamentary to a strong president system of government. The historic referendum, which passed by a narrow margin, grants more power to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who promised when he was elected in 2014 to be a ”different kind of president.” But even as Erdogan’s supporters set off fireworks to celebrate their victory, Turkey’s main opposition party said they will challenge many of the votes. Erdogan said he hopes the referendum results would benefit Turkey, and that the nation made a ”historic decision,” in an address after Yildirim’s declaration. The vote has divided Turkey, with supporters claiming the change will bring stability and efficiency to the government, while opponents have said that the move is a dangerous step toward   rule. Under the changes, President Erdogan could stay in power through 2029. As NPR’s Peter Kenyon reported in a preview, ”the vote comes at a perilous time.” ”Turkey remains under a state of emergency declared last July, following a failed coup that left nearly 300 people dead. The Erdogan government has used the emergency powers to conduct a sweeping purge of the military, judiciary and civil service. More than 100, 000 people have been fired or arrested, including more than 100 journalists.” The opposition to the referendum said it’s been difficult to run an effective campaign in this environment of fear and sweeping arrests. The AP reports that supporters of the ”yes” vote have dominated the airwaves, while supporters of the ”no” vote have complained of intimidation. Under the new system, power will be concentrated under the president, who was previously head of state, but not head of government. President Erdogan has taken a more active role than his predecessors, but until the referendum the Prime Minister remained the chief executive. The new system will no longer require the president to be nonpartisan, so Erdogan can rejoin the party he   and have increased influence over who runs for Parliament. Critics say there’s also a loophole in the new laws that could allow Erdogan to run for a third term. The prime minister role will also be done away with after the next election in 2019. NPR’s Peter Kenyon has reported that there is one change   groups are applauding though  —   the end of military courts. But many also fear that the new system will endanger democracy in Turkey  —   a key U. S. ally and NATO member."
"The two people who are garnering much of Saturday Night Live’s recent attention are not cast members. But Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy were again the center of it all on the latest SNL, returning as President Trump and Sean Spicer, respectively. Baldwin appeared in the show’s cold open, sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office, Vice President Mike Pence (cast member Beck Bennett) standing by his side. ”Read to me again from the list of my accomplishments,” Trump says. Pence reads the   list: ”Nominated Neil Gorsuch.” Trump reminisces on memories of the Oval Office, until Pence reminds him that he ordered the Syria airstrikes, met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe all at his    resort in Florida. The real president is spending Easter there it’s his seventh weekend at    since taking office. Baldwin’s Trump calls Steve Bannon in, who happens to be the Grim Reaper. Next he calls in Jared Kushner (Jimmy Fallon, hosting). Recent reports have played up a power struggle between the two in the White House, with Kushner appearing to be on the winning end. Baldwin’s Trump rises  —   in turn making a Russia lapel pin visible  —   and says it’s ”elimination night,” bringing to mind the ”firing” of contestants on Trump’s reality shows. One of the two must lose, to ”join Kellyanne Conway in the basement,” he says. If you’ve noticed, Conway hasn’t been on television much recently. But the show’s highlight was the return of Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer  —   with a special Easter message. Spicer enters in a giant Easter Bunny costume. ”Everybody shut up so I can apologize. Yes, you all got your wish this week didn’t you, huh? Spicey finally made a mistake.” McCarthy’s Spicer was talking about the real Spicer’s comparison involving Hitler and Bashar Assad last week, for which he apologized. The real Spicer has made numerous false claims, starting from his first press conference. ”It would be really great if the nitpickers could try to see the big picture, and didn’t solely focus on every little slur and lie I say,” ’Spicey’ says. McCarthy’s Spicer then goes on to demonstrate a very inaccurate story of Passover (which shares a day with Easter this year) with what appear to be Veggie Tales dolls. The show will take a few weeks off and will return on May 6 with Chris Pine as the host and LCD Soundsystem as the musical guest."
"What will our dinners look like when temperatures and sea levels rise and water floods our coastal towns and cities? Allie Wist, 29, an associate art director at Saveur magazine, attempts to answer that question in her latest art project, ”Flooded.” It’s a fictional photo essay (based on real scientific data) about a dinner party menu at a time when climate change has significantly altered our diets. Wist has been following news about climate change with a growing sense of urgency. Global temperatures have risen in recent decades and extreme weather  —   droughts, floods, hurricanes  —   is more common. Sea levels are rising, causing coastal erosion and flooding and even the disappearance of small islands in the South Pacific. Our oceans are becoming more acidic from dissolved carbon dioxde, hurting marine life. And, in some parts of the world, farmers are struggling with unpredictable growing seasons. Climate change has ”become this future vision that’s right in front of us,” Wist says. But the issue is a politicized one in the United States, she says. Many people don’t believe climate change is real. And many find it difficult to understand, because it’s too abstract. ”I felt this need to subversively convince people,” Wist says. ”I wanted to hook them more emotionally, with something they can relate to.” So she chose food. ”It is so integral to how we see ourselves and how we live every day,” she says. Climate change is already having an effect on food production. In 2011, a study in Science found a small, but measurable decline in the world’s wheat and corn production. As global temperatures rise, some places will become more favorable for agriculture, while many others will become too hot and dry to grow crops. Extreme weather will also influence food prices, as we saw in   when drought in some parts of the world and unusually big cyclones and floods in others led to a spike in wheat prices. Warmer ocean temperatures have and will continue to affect fisheries. All this means we might be forced to change what we eat in the coming decades, says Wist. People ”have to start to realize that their daily activities could change, will change, because of this thing that they consider abstract,” she says. Wist and her team, fellow photographer Heami Lee, food stylist C. C. Buckley and prop stylist Rebecca Bartoshesy, started out by making a list of foods that scientists think ”are either threatened by climate change or would be more available in an era of climate change,” she says. They chose to anchor the essay in New York and New England to think more specifically about the kinds of food and eating habits that would have to change. Rising sea levels put coastal cities like New York, where Wist now lives, at a greater risk of flooding. That means in the    future, residents might have to turn more to the ocean for food, says Wist. So her fictional menu includes an array of foods harvested from the sea. Bivalves, for example, play a key role in protecting the ocean environment, by filtering out pollutants. But they are threatened by climate change  —   the increasing acidity of ocean waters is eroding their shells. If we can save bivalves, they could become a good source of food in the future, Wist suggests. Wist says they chose mustard greens to serve alongside the bivalves on her menu because the hardy plants ”can survive volatility in climate.” And Wist thought about what might be in our glasses as well as on our plates. According to the U. S. Geological Survey, rising sea levels are likely to contaminate ground water. ”I don’t think anyone thinks about it, that we might have to desalinate ocean water in order to have drinking water,” says Wist. Some countries, especially in the Middle East, already desalinate ocean water to provide more fresh water to their citizens, but Wist envisions the use of an   method involving a bowl, a rock and plastic wrap. When it gets too hot or dry to grow crops, we could turn to mushrooms for food, too, suggests Wist. They grow in all sorts of environments and can even detoxify soil. The picture on the right above, depicting a pudding made with carob and an   gelatin called   is one of Wist’s favorites. It forces viewers to ”acknowledge that chocolate’s being replaced,” she says. It’s a reality cocoa farmers in West Africa are already facing. ”West Africa is thought to rise by about two degrees in the next 100 years,” says Wist. ”It will be too hot, too dry for cocoa production.” And carob, which is less vulnerable to climate change, may be a good substitute. Another major ingredient in these recipes is seaweed. A recent study has suggested that seaweed farming could be a good source of nutrition, as well as help mitigate climate change. ”Seaweed can absorb five times as much CO2 as land plants,” says Wist. ”I was really inspired by that research and thought what if someone did that? What if we started farming this more earnestly?” ”Part of this [essay] is dystopic,” says Wist. ”Because we’re losing all these things, and that’s bad.” But part of it is utopic, too, she says, because it shows how human creativity can help us find alternative sources of food. You can see Wist’s entire essay and some creative recipes for the dishes above on her website. Rhitu Chatterjee is an editor with @NPRFood. You can follow her on Twitter."
"North Korea launched an unidentified missile, unsuccessfully, on Sunday morning from its east coast, near Sinpo, say U. S. military officials. ”The missile blew up almost immediately. The type of missile is still being assessed,” the U. S. Pacific Command says in an emailed statement. The failed missile launch comes just a day after North Korea brandished what appeared to be   and   missiles as part of a military parade, celebrating the 105th birthday of its late founder, Kim Il Sung. Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Seoul, South Korea shortly after the failed missile launch. He’s scheduled to be in Asia for a   trip. Pence was briefed on the situation while flying to South Korea, reporter Jihye Lee tells our newscast. South Korea said the missile launch ”threatened the whole world,” Reuters reported. ”This is the same location as Pyongyang’s latest missile launch 11 days ago, when another missile was said to have failed after flying some 60 km into the waters between Korea and Japan,” Lee reports. ”The president and his military team are aware of North Korea’s most recent unsuccessful missile launch. The president has no further comment,” Secretary of Defense James Mattis said in a statement."
"Amid the fanfare and regalia of its founder’s birthday celebrations, North Korea rolled out what appeared to be new missiles  —   a brazen display as the country ratchets up its rhetoric against efforts to curb its weapons programs. The missiles were among one element of a massive, militaristic parade to mark the 1912 birthday of the regime’s founder, Kim Il Sung. Common among the annual holiday are the shows of uniformity and   ideology that were on display during the Saturday parade, including parcels of tanks and ordnance and   processions. Decked in black, Kim Jong Un, silently watched the ceremonies to commemorate his grandfather in the nation’s capital city, Pyongyang. This year, however, the holiday also showcased what appeared to be   and   missiles: weapons the country has long been warned against possessing. As NPR’s Rob Schmitz tells our newscast unit: ”Military analysts paid close attention to two new types of intercontinental ballistic missiles enclosed in canister launchers mounted on the backs of trucks  —   none of which had been displayed before. ”Though analysts questioned what was inside the missile shells, they said the appearance of a   ballistic missile shows North Korea is progressing with its plan to launch missiles from anywhere in the sea.” And on the same day, a top North Korean official offered a warning to the U. S. accusing President Trump of ”creating a war situation.” ”We will respond to an   war with an   war and a nuclear war with our style of a nuclear attack,” said Choe Ryong Hae as translated by the BBC. ”We are ready to hit back with nuclear attacks of our own style against any nuclear attacks,” Choe said Saturday. The North has been increasingly challenging the U. S. in rhetoric following ambiguous language from the Trump administration as well as the recent missile strike against Syrian government forces. The North views the strike as telegraphing what the Trump administration’s plans are for its regime. The Associated Press furthers notes that in a statement Friday, North Korea’s military drew parallels to past U. S. actions against Iraq and Libya. ”It will be the largest of miscalculations if the United States treats us like Iraq and Libya, which are living out miserable fates as victims of aggression, and Syria, which didn’t respond immediately even after it was attacked,” said a Friday statement by the general staff of the North Korean army, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. Moreover, the North has taken the recent deployment of a U. S. naval strike group to the region as grounds for its continued testing of nuclear and missile weapons technologies. As NPR’s Merrit Kennedy reported earlier this week, the regime said it would ”hold the U. S. wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions.” ”We never beg for peace but we will take the toughest counteraction against the provocateurs in order to defend ourselves by powerful force of arms and keep to the road chosen by ourselves,” read a statement quoted by Merrit. Meanwhile, Vice President Pence is traveling to South Korea this weekend. Pence is scheduled to begin a   Asia trip"
"Democrats in Georgia’s 6th District aren’t exactly used to the fact that they might actually win something. ”It’s just so wonderful to have a potential for a progressive Democrat to capture the district, and to send a message that we don’t approve of the Trump agenda and the direction he’s taking the country in,” Bruce Johnson said as he gathered at Jon Ossoff’s campaign office on Saturday morning to begin knocking on doors ahead of Tuesday’s vote. Johnson, 58, is an attorney in Sandy Springs who’s lived in the area for more than 20 years. He lamented that Democrats have never put up anyone other than a sacrificial lamb to run against Republican candidates here, particularly former Rep. Tom Price, whose appointment as President Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services triggered Tuesday’s special election. But the combination of a wild     primary, a rapidly changing district that Trump only barely carried, and an energized Democratic base nationally has raised expectations that Ossoff, a    documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer, could actually pull off the unthinkable on Tuesday  —   winning outright with 50 percent of the vote. ”We are within striking distance,” Ossoff told a room full of volunteers gathered in his Sandy Springs campaign office before they began to head out to canvass. ”Every piece of data we have says this thing is winnable on Tuesday.” Most polling shows Ossoff hovering in the   in polling, with a quartet of Republican candidates  —   Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, Johns Creek City Councilman Bob Gray, state Sen. Judson Hill, and former state Sen. Dan Moody  —   further back. Republicans hope to hold Ossoff under 50 percent, and whichever GOP candidate comes in second would likely have a better shot against him in the June 20 runoff. But Ossoff and his army of volunteers smell blood in the water and want to deliver a   punch on Tuesday  —   something the Democratic candidate said would reverberate well beyond the Northern Atlanta suburbs. ”This is a pretty extraordinary moment for Georgia,” Ossoff continued to his supporters that had come out on the final weekend of the campaign. ”The eyes of the whole nation are on us. The eyes of the world are on us. And it’s a rare chance for us to stand up and make a statement about what we stand for, and to prove that we believe in a country that is decent and kind, compassionate, courageous and tough, that we reject fear and division, that we stand together in all of our diversity, working for a better community here, and a better country.” Outside support, Ossoff never mentioned Trump by name in his remarks, but in just a few short months, his campaign has become one of the primary vehicles for resistance to the president. With the help of progressive blogs like Daily Kos and celebrity endorsements on social media, Ossoff has raised an astounding $8. 3 million. That’s enabled him not just to blanket the airwaves but to also build a massive field operation that has many Republicans rightly worried. He may have gotten much of the party’s liberal wing behind him, but Ossoff’s ads on television tout places where he’d stand up to his party, like reining in spending and working to boost infrastructure. Some of his TV spots talk about how he’d stand up to Trump, but others don’t even mention his party affiliation at all. And Ossoff was right that the race has certainly attracted plenty of national attention, given what an upset might portend for Democrats’ chances at taking back the House in 2018. National Republicans have tried to blunt his financial advantage, pouring more than $4 million of their own money into the race to try to tear Ossoff down, claiming he’s embellished his resume and would vote in   with national Democrats. About 95 percent of Ossoff’s fundraising has come from    and as WABE’s Johnny Kauffman reported, many of the volunteers coming to help in the campaign’s final push are from   . The scene from the neighborhoods, But among the group gathered in Sandy Springs on Saturday morning, it’s a mix of young and old volunteers, most of them from this very district who, like Bruce Johnson, can’t believe that this traditionally red area is even on the map with the potential to flip. Christina Ferguson, 64, is from Sandy Springs and said she hasn’t gotten involved politically since the 1960s and the Vietnam War era. But after Trump’s election, just voting wasn’t enough for her anymore, and she’s about to begin her third time canvassing for Ossoff. ”I was shocked on election night,” Ferguson said. ”I never thought that Trump was a viable candidate. I thought that the country would wake up at some point.” But now, she hopes a win by Ossoff on Tuesday could send a message that reverberates to Washington and sends a message to the president. ”I think that he’s a Democrat who is willing to work with both sides of the aisle,” Ferguson said of Ossoff. Her friend Anna Cay Robertson, 68, was also back to knock on more doors for Ossoff. Frustrated by what happened in November, she said Ossoff was the first political candidate she’d ever donated to. ”I have never been politically active in my life. I’ve voted every year, but I’ve never been prompted to do anything until this last administration was elected, and I was so disheartened,” said Robertson. ”I felt like I had to do something. And Jon, to me, represents fresh, young, moderate blood that we need in Washington, and I’d like to see more young people with fresh ideas get there.” Ferguson and Robertson headed out to a neighborhood a few miles away to knock on doors in a subdivision where several Ossoff signs already dotted the   yards. Many people weren’t home on the beautiful spring day, while some answered the door and vented their frustration over the several visits from various campaigns they’d gotten over the race and complained about the ad nauseum ads. A few told the two women they were voting Republican, including one man whose wife wasn’t home, but he assured them that while he was voting GOP his wife’s support for Ossoff would cancel his vote out. Their knocking at one home awoke a woman who was sleeping because she worked the night shift, but she wasn’t perturbed. Instead she told Ferguson and Robertson how excited she was over Ossoff and asked if they could circle back with a yard sign later. Another man said he’d already voted early and wouldn’t say who he voted for, but when prodded did offer a coy smile, telling the two women they’d be happy with his vote. Along one home toward the end of their route, Megan Tucker bounds out and tells the two women she’s definitely behind Ossoff, and Ferguson and Robertson let out small cheers. Tucker says she usually votes Democratic but considers herself an independent. ”I like that he’s younger and fresh and seems to be focusing on a lot of the issues that are important to us, as a family with younger children,” Tucker said. ”I am seeing an independent thinker.”"
"If Marine Le Pen is elected president of France in May, she says she promises to hold a referendum on leaving the European Union. Her   stance is an unlikely   in France, where the EU is still very popular. That’s especially true in eastern France, near the border with Germany, but even there Le Pen has some supporters. The majestic French city of Metz was built by the French and the Germans, and has a shared history going back more than a thousand years. Metz is in the heart of the Alsace Lorraine region, which changed hands four times since the   war in 1871. In the city’s cathedral square, a group of soldiers for the   Brigade is showing off their tank and military hardware to the public. The group is a   military brigade in which the German and French units work together. Jonathan Naegele is the communications officer for the brigade and part of the French army says this region has   ties with Germany in just about every area. He describes it as a sort of kinship between the two peoples. It’s   friendship week in Metz and French and German flags fly together all over town. It wasn’t always like this, says Metz mayor Dominique Gros. The    says his father, grandfather and   all fought in wars against Germany. ”When I was little I learned that Germany was our enemy, but we’ve managed to overcome this ancestral hatred,” Gros says. ”And we built Europe together. Today we work together, our young people go to university together and we have the same democratic values.” But Gros says people are beginning to look inward again, and he’s worried by the nationalist feelings being stirred up by Marine Le Pen. Despite the deep European sentiment here, a recent poll showed Le Pen has a lot of support in Alsace Lorraine. Franck Bucher is a political reporter for a local paper. He says many French people are frustrated when they see the strength of economies in nearby Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg, where many of them go to work. ”People feel like the French politicians aren’t able to do anything about the economy and social problems in France,” Bucher says. ”So part of Le Pen’s success comes from this despair, and because she has never been in power she is able to position herself as the   candidate.” While Metz is celebrating   friendship, on the other side of town Le Pen is holding a rally. She accuses her opponents of trying to scare people about her opposition to the EU. She says the French people don’t need the EU to go shopping or to work in Germany. ”Putting back borders doesn’t mean closing your country and keeping people and goods from coming and going,” Le Pen says. ”It just means being able to control which people and goods come and go, and to keep certain people from getting into our country and staying.” Jerome and Julien Ferrand are brothers in their 60s. They started voting for Le Pen’s party, the National Front, in 2005 when the French people rejected the enlargement of the EU in a referendum. But the French government pushed the measure through parliament anyway. Jerome Ferrand says the people’s ”no” was turned into a ”yes” to build an EU that nobody wanted. ”We want a Europe of nations in solidarity, but one where every country has control and can do what’s best for its own people,” Jerome says. ”We don’t want to live under German hegemony.” The brothers say they don’t blame Germany, they blame French politicians for taking the EU too far. The men say   relations will be just fine without the EU."
"According to Audrey Shafer, there is something profound in the moment a patient wakes up from surgery. She would know  —   she’s an anesthesiologist. She’s responsible for people when they are at their most vulnerable: unconscious, unable to breathe on their own or even blink their eyes. As a result, Shafer says, a kind of intimate trust forms between her and her patients. It’s this closeness that moves her to write poetry about medicine. Shafer is an anesthesiologist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. She directs a program called Medicine and the Muse, which combines the arts, including poetry, with the practice of medicine. Her poetry has appeared in medical journals and poetry anthologies. Poetry, she says, is a natural means of translating the murkiness of what happens to the brain under anesthesia. ”Anesthesiologists tend to be viewed as more    oriented than ” she says. But, Shafer argues, that couldn’t be further from the truth. When patients finally come out of surgery, she’s one of the first people to welcome them back to their conscious experience of the world. ”They can be quite grateful right at that moment they realize ’I’ve woken up. The surgery is done. I’m OK. I’m back. ’” Shafer says. ”The anesthesiologist gets to witness that moment.” (Based on Robert Schumann’s Third String Quartet, Movement 1) By Audrey Shafer,  We meet in the holding room a paper dress covers your tattoos, At any moment, your craze of fragile vessels, could spill, fill the sea cave cradling your mind, Your wife holds your hand until it is time for us to go, I guide you as you blow through a straw, swimming across your long day of surgery, Five hours, and five more: surgeons untangle, a crevice of your brain, clamp the feeder, reassemble your skull, You   blinking like a newborn, ride in your wide white boat to intensive care, nurses and doctors give and take report, you speak but I do not understand,   you say, and louder  ! Head? I ask Hurt? Hand? Heart? Does your chest hurt? I am wrong and wrong again —   You smile and try once more: Hug,  me, Hug you? I repeat, and the entire team turns, to stare silently: I lean over wires, bandages, the spaghetti of tubes, the upright side rail, and give a most awkward hug, The team resumes its buzz: monitors bleep, pagers bark, phones ring, keyboards clack, bellows wheeze, alarms blurt, the unit dins in unscored discord, But for two notes, harmony presided over all —   in a falling fifth, a   sigh, you told me you know, you know you landed on the warm sands of recovery: Hug,  me. April is National Poetry Month, and Shots is exploring medicine in poetry through the words of doctors, patients and health care workers. The series is a collaboration with Pulse: Voices Through The Heart Of Medicine, a platform that publishes personal stories of illness and healing. "
"Activists took to the streets in Washington, D. C. and several other cities Saturday  —   the traditional Tax Day (which officially falls on April 18 this year)  —   to try to pressure the president to release his tax returns. Liberal protests are fast becoming a fixture of Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump’s first full day in office kicked off with a massive Women’s March. Then there were the Day Without A Woman protests. Next weekend, communities across America plan to hold Earth Day March for Science rallies to highlight climate science and protest proposed EPA cuts, among other issues. But for others, marches are not enough. In San Francisco, Shannon Coulter is looking to expand her national Grab Your Wallet boycott movement into a broader nonprofit aimed at corporate accountability as well as resistance to Trump. The boycott Coulter founded is aimed at Trump family products, properties and companies whose executives and board members actively support the president. Accidental activist, Coulter didn’t spend her college years occupying various administration buildings or her   years publicly taking up progressive causes. She’s a career marketing consultant who owns a small digital marketing, social media and branding business for corporate clients. ”I don’t consider myself an activist. Even now, it’s a strange label to me,” the    says from inside a     office in downtown San Francisco. #GrabYourWallet has no permanent office space. ”I think of myself first and foremost as a businessperson. The newer role of activist is still taking shape for me.” The boycott took shape last October in reaction to Donald Trump’s now infamous vulgar comments about women that were released from a 2005 TV appearance outtake. ”You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful  —   I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump said in an Access Hollywood tape picked up by a hot mic. ”And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything,” Trump said. Outraged that the   nominee was speaking about women in such offensive terms, Coulter tweeted a screenshot of a handful of companies that sell Trump family products. The boycott was soon born. Today, #GrabYourWallet’s simple spreadsheet on a web site of the same name gets more than two million unique views a month and has his hit more than 950 million shares on social media. Not bad for an organization with no budget, no paid employees and no office. A handful of social media volunteers help Coulter manage and promote the site. ”What I hear a lot from #GrabYourWallet participants is: ’This gives me some sense of control over the situation right now,’ ” Coulter says. ”We may have lost at the ballot box, but we can vote at the cash register every day. I’m going to continue to reach out to these companies to let them know I’m not doing business with them until they sever their relationship with the Trump family.” Today, more than 50 companies are on the boycott list. She encourages consumers not to spend their money with them because they sell Trump products or because a member of the company’s board or a senior executive has backed Trump’s campaign. ”If you’re going to give money to the campaign of a guy who makes fun of disabled people, who questions the nationality of our country’s first black president, who likes to grab women by the genitals, you are going to raise the ire of consumers,” Coulter says. ”That’s a part of your brand. And any company that thinks it’s not a part of their brand is being naïve.” Do boycotts really work?  Coulter says she’s weathered hate mail and nasty phone calls and tweets from Trump supporters as well as numerous denial of service attacks on her web site. She’s kept her small marketing business going. But she says moonlighting with #GrabYourWallet has all but taken over. ”The balance is that there is no balance,” she says. ”There are long days of doing both my small business and #GrabYourWallet. Both take a lot of time and attention.” It’s not clear what, if any, economic impact the boycott is having. Some studies show these consumer protests and divestment drives often have a limited effect on a company’s bottom line and rarely alter   corporate policies. But a brand’s reputation can take a serious PR hit. And that’s part of what Coulter is banking on. Her success metric for this isn’t a company’s stock price or quarterly sales. Her benchmark is how many companies have been taken off the boycott list. So far, it’s about two dozen including Nordstrom, Kmart and Neiman Marcus. ”Some of have made public statements and some haven’t. For our purposes, it doesn’t really matter why a company has dropped Trump products, only that they have,” Coulter says. More than 50 companies remain boycott targets including some major players such as Amazon, MillerCoors, Walmart and L. L. Bean, whose board member Linda Bean has donated to a political action committee that backed Trump’s presidential campaign. But the   outdoors retailer company has also won some local praise for hiring Somali refugees. ”It’s great that they do that,” Coulter says. ”But it’s just not good enough. We’re not going to shop at L. L. Bean until our dollars aren’t going into the pockets of somebody who may use that money to donate to extremists.” An L. L. Bean spokeswoman did not respond to NPR’s phone calls or emails requesting comment. Coulter calls Amazon ”the most opaque and nonresponsive company on the list. We haven’t heard a thing from them,” she says. ”Either about the advertising they continue to do on Breitbart or the Trump products that they continue to distribute and sell.” We reached out to more than a dozen companies on the boycott list, including Amazon. All declined to comment  —   except for MillerCoors. Pete Coors  —   a board member of the parent company Molson Coors  —   has actively supported and raised money for Trump. In a statement, the company said, ”Boycotting our brands only harms our   employees and their families.” The company declined to say if the boycott has affected sales, saying only ”We respect the rights of every one of our employees to support whichever candidate they choose. And, we encourage all of our employees to participate in the democratic process and vote.” Ivanka’s brand, One of #GrabYourWallet’s biggest targets is Ivanka Trump and companies that sell her fashion line of clothes, jewelry, shoes and accessories. Ivanka Trump has called the boycott misguided and political. Fortune reports that her clothing line had a great 2016 despite the boycott. It may be too soon to tell, however. #GrabYourWallet got off the ground late in the final quarter of last year. And Ivanka has pushed back in other ways. In her first interview since being made an official White House adviser, Trump recently told CBS This Morning that her lack of ”public denouncement” of any of her dad’s policies does not mean she’s been silent with him. ”I think there are multiple ways to have your voice heard,” she told the network. ”In some case, it’s through protest and it’s through going on the nightly news and talking about or denouncing every issue on which you disagree with. Other times, it is quietly and directly and candidly.” ”So where I disagree with my father, he knows it. And I express myself with total candor. Where I agree, I fully lean in and support the agenda and hope that I can be an asset to him and make a positive impact,” Ivanka said. Some Trump critics have long hoped Ivanka would exert as moderating influence on her father. But Coulter isn’t buying it. She says Ivanka is making a mockery of the    rules by putting her company in a trust run by family members  —   not a blind trust. The White House power and influence of Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are expanding, according to numerous news reports. Coulter sees no evidence Ivanka is having a tempering impact. ”You might as well try to housebreak a hyena,” Coulter says. ”Ivanka is not moderating him.” A broader impact?  Coulter says one sure sign of the boycott’s broader impact is the speed with which dozens of companies quickly stopped advertising on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against the host and settlement payouts. ”When O’Reilly Factor’s advertisers proactively began jumping ship, I saw that as proof positive that consumer movements like #GrabYourWallet and Sleeping Giants are having an effect and helping companies be more thoughtful about their advertising choices and what those advertising choices mean about their own brands,” she says. Angie’s List, the   website that reviews companies, emailed Coulter that it was pulling its ads from The O’Reilly Factor. Coulter says #GrabYourWallet supporters told her they were particularly upset that a ”  business wasn’t taking a stand for women at a critical moment and really rejoiced when they saw they had a positive impact on that decision. ”I think that there’s just a lot of appetite right now to understand how we as consumers can use our spending power to promote inclusivity and respect in our society,” she adds. The boycott Coulter   is just six months old. She says she’s now having ”lots of conversations” with a wide range of people and organizations about how to morph this movement into a wider, perhaps nonprofit vehicle, for taking on Trump and advocating for broader corporate social responsibility. ”#GrabYourWallet has taken on a life of its own, so I’m trying to understand what the right structure is for that going forward,” she says. ”It feels like this movement wants to be something more than it is today. There’s a lot of momentum behind this. There’s a lot of activity around it still, and I want to leverage that into something larger.”"
"When Dr. Thumbi Mwangi was a child growing up in Kenya, his father would send him out to care for the calves. There was a disease  —   East Coast fever  —   infecting cattle. If the cattle were infected with the protozoan, it could be deadly. Mwangi’s job was to rub the young cattle gently behind the ears, to see if he could feel their lymph nodes. If the lymphs were swollen, it could mean that the calf was getting sick. If the illness was treated in time with buparvaquone, the calf could be saved  —   and the animal would be immune for life. ”We would treat the cattle through injections using an   drug that is only effective when treatment is started early,” Mwangi says. ”Palpating the lymph nodes allowed us to catch the disease early  —   before other clinical signs would be manifest.” Later, Mwangi became a veterinarian and a researcher. One day, as a student, he found himself working on a vaccination for this same East Coast fever. To make the vaccine, the scientists would let thousands of ticks feed on an infected cow. The ticks, full of contaminated blood, were then ground up. The resulting solution would contain particles of the parasite. The concoction would be injected into cows, who would then, subsequently, be given the medication for the parasite. And the cows would be immune. As he was grinding up the ticks, Mwangi realized that what he was doing  —   making vaccines for these cows  —   was exactly what his father had made him do. He would wait for the cows to get sick and treat them at the first sign of illness, effectively vaccinating them for life. The only difference was that the veterinarians got the cows sick on purpose. ”That is when I realized that farmers are scientists,” he would later recall. Mwangi, an assistant professor at Washington State University, told this story on the Moth mainstage as part of the Aspen Ideas Festival. Afterward, we sat down with him to talk about what scientists can learn from the communities they serve. Can you expand on what you meant when you said that farmers are scientists? It is important to realize that these farmers have skills and knowledge of these diseases. They know that you can look at the lymph nodes and see if the animal is sick. They know that if you treat it, the animal will stay safe, that it has a natural immunization with a bit of help from the treatment. That is what science is: observation and action  —   and then results. Why did you choose to tell this story on the Moth mainstage? I think that at this moment we’re really experiencing a lot of emerging diseases, particularly zoonotic diseases. They’re what we refer to as neglected tropical diseases. If you wait for them [to show up] at the hospital, you’re going to think that the community is not suffering from them, because the community that is suffering is often rural and impoverished and can’t access health care. So if you see cases at the hospital, you’d think it’s a small problem. But once you go back to the community, you can do contact tracing, and you’ll find that there are lots and lots of people suffering from these diseases that never got into the system. In my life as a scientist, I see a lot of that. I know that for us to be able to do good surveillance, we must be a part of the community. Sometimes, when we go to communities, we ignore the knowledge they already have. Can you give an example of how working with communities improves disease surveillance? One of the diseases I work with is rabies. If you ask the WHO how many rabies cases are reported in southern Africa, they’d say perhaps 10 or 12 a year. It’s not that their data is bad, it’s that the health system does not see those cases. For example: If you get bitten by a dog on your leg today, a month later you have forgotten about the wound while the [rabies] virus has been moving up to your central nervous system, and you start to have issues. But instead, people think that it is cerebral malaria, so they put you on drugs. But you’re not getting well, so then they put you on   drugs, and then the next time they decide maybe it was witchcraft. Once you’ve died, not everyone is interested, and the only way to confirm is to do a  . So all those cases get forgotten. What we try to do is get a case report from a hospital when someone comes in with a bite. And then we want to follow it back to where it came from, and trace it back to see if that dog bit anyone else. Why did you decide to get involved in research and epidemiology? It’s a far cry from veterinary medicine. I decided to do research because I had a friend with a Ph. D. who was teaching us anatomy. The way he talked about research was so enticing. He told me that you never really get bored. It’s not a procedure you do  —   like when a bone is broken, and you repair it. You can do that 50 times and at some point it’s just a procedure for you. But that’s not the way with research. What are you working on today? Part of my work is with the Kenya Center for Disease Control on a surveillance project. We were looking at infections that occurred in humans and asking what animals they kept and killed. For the last four years, I’ve been leading this project that looks at surveillance on the human side of disease and the animal side concurrently: Is it a result of shared pathogens or a shared bad environment? Erin Ross is a former NPR intern and a science writer. Reach her @ErinEARoss"
"When Forbes first listed the 400 richest Americans in 1982, there were 13 billionaires on that list. Today, every single person on the Forbes 400 list is a billionaire. Many have become philanthropists, and they are reshaping public policy, and society, as they see fit. And because of their numbers, they have far more influence than the philanthropists of the past, argues David Callahan, author of a new book on philanthropy, The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age. Many are now household names: the Gates, the Kochs, the Waltons, the Steyers, the Mercers, to name a few. They come in all political stripes. ”We’re seeing just an escalating ideological arms race as more money pours in from wealthy donors across the spectrum,” says Callahan, who founded the news website Inside Philanthropy. In an interview with NPR’s Lulu   Callahan describes a meeting with philanthropist Laura Arnold, who said, ”When you open the newspaper in the morning and you see things that you don’t like, things that upset you, if you have a foundation you can do something about it, you can try to solve the problem and take action.” So what’s wrong with this? Callahan says this philanthropic money comes at a time when most Americans feel disenfranchised. ”More and more public policy debates looks like Greek gods throwing lightning at each other, billionaires on the left and the right, as the rest of us watch from the sidelines,” he says. When wealthy Americans set up a charitable foundation, they can avoid paying taxes, while influencing public policy. ”If I give a donation to a politician, that’s not tax deductible. If I give a donation to a Washington think tank that whispers in the ear of that politician, I can get a tax break for that,” Callahan says. ”The IRS makes few distinctions in what is   giving, and I think that’s a problem.” Callahan says the influence of big donors will become greater as government steps back, through budget cuts to public agencies, and as private philanthropy steps forward. Whether it’s from the left or the right, Callahan says, all of it is troubling. In terms of sheer dollar amounts, it’s unclear who gives more. But Callahan says right wing donors have been more effective when it comes to shaping economic and fiscal policy, bankrolling big think tanks in Washington that advocate for cutting the size of government. Those include The Heritage Foundation, which now plays a big role in the Trump administration. Liberal donors, Callahan says, have been successful in advancing social issues, such as LGBT rights. Callahan cites the role of philanthropist Tim Gill, in advancing marriage equality. Public education is another area where there has been an influx of money from billionaire donors. The Waltons of   fame and Betsy DeVos, now the education secretary, for example, are   supporters of charter schools. The Bill  Melinda Gates Foundation was a powerful force behind ushering in the Common Core educational standards. (The Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation are among NPR’s financial supporters.) ”More than any single actor in U. S. education, [the Gates] really made the Common Core happen,” Callahan says. ”That’s an astonishing achievement for private philanthropy.”"
"Stick the word ”bread” behind my last name on a Google search. Go ahead. Do it. What you’ll find is a Czech food tradition rooted in Easter: a Czech Easter bread. Mazanec is a sweet bread with   raisins and dried fruit and topped with slivered almonds. It’s round with a cross on top, to represent Christ. And it is eaten throughout the Holy Week. My dad remembers making it in the small, hot kitchen of his childhood home in Miami. He and his five siblings would help their mother, and while the dough rose, they pocketed fistfuls of raisins and almonds from the counter. He says they ate mazanec  as breakfast on Easter morning or as a dessert, with butter or raspberry or apricot jam. Pavla Velickinova, the head of the public diplomacy department at the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Washington, D. C. says mazanec is one of the oldest documented Easter foods in Czech history. It comes from the expression, ”mazat,” which means to anoint, she says. This is why it’s baked on White Saturday, the day that reminds Czechs of the last rites of Christ. This tradition of making mazanec as an Easter treat dates back to the 15th century, says Karen Von Kunes, a professor of Slavic language and literature at Yale University. But even before that, she says, people across Europe baked this kind of bread around springtime. ”In Europe, it was a custom to celebrate spring with making this . .. type of pastry,” she says. Some of those traditions are still alive in other European countries. Take England’s hot cross buns for example, as well as Greece’s tsoureki. Von Kunes says back then, most families would bake it during Easter. Poor families, who couldn’t afford the sugar, raisins and almonds, would bake a single mazanec without those ingredients and share it among themselves. Wealthier families would make one for each family member. Growing up in the Czech Republic, Kristyna Montano says she remembers always buying the bread from stores. Every Czech bakery, big and small, sells mazanec during this holiday, she says. And her mother, who lives in the Czech city of Brno, has already been enjoying mazanec she bought earlier this week. But Montano herself now lives in Redding, Calif. where she can’t find it in a store. So, these days, she makes the bread herself. She eats it as a breakfast food all week with butter on top and hot cocoa on the side. Montano recently posted a video of her making mazanec on her personal food blog, where she regularly posts Czech recipes. While she works with her own recipe, which she has finessed over the years, others who make mazanec use recipes passed down to them by their parents. My dad uses a recipe from the cookbook given to him by his father. Nancy Vesecky, the owner of Vesecky’s, a Czech bakery in Berwyn, Ill. uses the same recipe that was brought to Ellis Island by her husband’s grandfather. Vesecky says she doesn’t know of other bakeries that sell the bread. But for the Czechs and Czech descendants who come to her shop, she says it’s something they like to buy. ”A lot of people  —   it’s a tradition for them,” she says. ”A lot of people like it. They put it in their Easter baskets, and they go [to church] and they have them blessed.” Cecilia Rokusek, a Czech descendant who lives in the town of Davie, Fla. remembers coming home from the Good Friday church service as a child and having two rituals: coloring Easter eggs and making mazanec. And then it was a treat she ate for every meal continuing into the next week, sometimes in the form of French toast, if there were leftovers. It’s not a difficult recipe, she says, but you have to dedicate time to it. Rokusek starts the prep for mazanec with soaking the raisins in rum. Then she kneads the dough and covers it with a tea towel and sets it aside. The next is boiling a pot of water on the stove and placing the pot in the lower rack of the oven, without switching the oven on. She then places the bowl of dough in the top rack of the oven, and lets it rise with the heat from the the pot of hot water below. Once the dough rises, she takes it out of the oven, kneads it some more and places it back inside the oven, with a fresh pot of boiling water underneath it. The dough rises again. She kneads it some more, then places it back in the oven, and repeats this two to three times. Making mazanec is clearly not for the lazy or for people running short of time. And that’s a big reason why the tradition is struggling to stay alive in the U. S. says Rokusek. ”I think time is a big, big, big issue right now. Everybody is working and they don’t spend half a day in the kitchen baking.” Still, she says it’s important to share the recipe with future generations of Czech Americans. ”I think it’s important to . .. keep the tradition,” she says, ”so that it doesn’t get lost, even though you may not do it every year.” Even my father, who went to buy ingredients for the bread Friday morning, doesn’t make the bread every Easter. With a busy family, he hasn’t always had the time. And most years, our Easter treats are the ears of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans. But he has made sure I know my last name is more than just a name it’s a celebration of Easter time, which is all the better with good food. And you can bet mazanec will make its way to my stomach this Easter, even if it takes us half a day to bake it. Cecilia Mazanec is a digital news intern at NPR. She is finishing up her undergraduate studies at the University of Florida."
"Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub Jr. is calling on the chairman of House Oversight Committee to become more engaged in overseeing ethics questions in the Trump administration. In an interview with NPR on Monday, Shaub said public inquiries and complaints involving Trump administration conflicts of interest and ethics have been inundating his tiny agency, which has only advisory power. ”We’ve even had a couple days where the volume was so huge it filled up the voicemail box, and we couldn’t clear the calls as fast as they were coming in,” Shaub said. His office is scrambling to keep pace with the workload. But while citizens, journalists and Democratic lawmakers are pushing for investigations, Shaub suggested a similar level of energy is not coming from the House Oversight Committee, which has the power to investigate ethics questions, particularly those being raised now about reported secret ethics waivers for former lobbyists serving in the Trump administration. Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, has ”authority to investigate these things and compel responses, so hopefully we’ll see some action from him,” Shaub said. ”OGE, however, has no investigative authority, so we’re limited as to what we can do if these waivers are not being released publicly,” he said. Chaffetz’ office said he had no comment. The New York Times, in collaboration with ProPublica, published a story on Saturday saying Trump has been filling the White House and federal agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants, and has been generously waiving ethics requirements without even posting the waiver information on the Government Ethics website. But while Chaffetz has generally been quiet on   ethics issues, the public has been hammering OGE with questions and complaints. How big is the jump in public contacts, such as calls, letters and emails? During the six months between October 2008 and March 2009, as the Obama presidency was taking shape, the OGE got 733 contacts. During the October 2016 to March 2017 period, it got 39, 105 contacts from citizens  —   an increase of 5, 235 percent. Comparing those same two time periods, the number of Freedom of Information Act requests  —   typically from journalists and   groups  —   shot up to 280 from 39. That’s an increase of 618 percent. Shaub said that, for example, when a top Trump adviser recommended certain fashion lines on Fox  Friends, the public outcry and media interest rocketed up. ”When Kellyanne Conway had endorsed Ivanka Trump’s product line, our phones rang off the hook, and they practically melted the system,” he said. ”This is a level of attention that we haven’t seen before in terms of public interest.” Shaub said Trump is correct when he says, as he did back in January, that presidents technically are not covered by law from having conflicts of interest. ”I have a   situation because I’m president,” Trump said at the press conference. He added, ”I didn’t know about that until about three months ago, but it’s a nice thing to have.” There are ethics rules that do apply to members of his administration, though. Those are the ones keeping Shaub’s small staff busy, according to the director. ”When you get 39, 000 calls coming into a   agency, the best they can do is log the calls,” he said. The statistical analysis, comparing the Obama and Trump eras, have not previously been released. Shaub says his office is ”understaffed right now,” compared with the massively increased workload involving FOIA requests and the congressional requests, coming mostly from Democrats. ”I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. Still, the office is keeping up with the advisory work  —   trying to guide Trump appointees on ethics laws and suggesting solutions to conflicts of interest they may face. Other routine business, such as doing staff training or writing new guidelines, has been put on hold as the staff focuses on moving along Trump staffers, he said."
"With a nasty and partisan confirmation battle behind him, Justice Neil Gorsuch took his seat on the nation’s highest court on Monday and quickly proved himself to be an active, persistent questioner. As the court buzzer sounded, Gorsuch emerged from behind the red velvet curtains with his eight colleagues and took his seat at the far right of the bench, no pun intended. (That’s where the most junior justice sits, regardless of his or her politics.) Despite his white hair, Gorsuch looked for all the world like a kid on his first day of high school, proud to be with the big guys, and sitting tall, with a tiny grin on his face. Chief Justice John Roberts welcomed Gorsuch to ”our common calling.” Then it was off to the races with three cases interesting only to true legal nerds. Indeed, the justices were the liveliest looking people in the courtroom, though Justice Samuel Alito at one point could be seen eyes closed, rocking gently in his   chair. All three cases involved technical and convoluted points of law that, to say the least, are not made for easy or interesting translation. But the newest justice was not shy. Eleven minutes into the morning session, he asked a string of questions in a case involving which court or courts should hear discrimination and civil service claims brought by government employees. Gorsuch repeatedly suggested it would be ”a lot simpler” or ”a lot easier if we just follow the text of the statute.” But as the lawyers on both sides and other justices pointed out, the statute has multiple provisions that are interdependent, and nothing about them is simple or easy. ”This is unbelievably complicated,” lamented Alito. ”The one thing about this case that seems perfectly clear to me is that nobody who’s not a lawyer  —   and no ordinary lawyer  —   could read these statutes and figure out what they are supposed to do.” ”Who wrote this statute?” he asked plaintively. ”Somebody who takes pleasure out of pulling the wings off flies?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed to agree. ”If we go down your route, and I’m writing the opinion  —   which I hope I’m not,” Sotomayor said while glancing in the direction of Chief Justice Roberts, who generally assigns the opinions. At this point, Gorsuch again suggested the simple solution is to just read the words in the statute, but Gorsuch had a relatively novel idea of what a statute means when it says to apply one provision ”subject to” another provision of the law. Justice Elena Kagan noted that the court has had a contrary interpretation for decades. To adopt a new interpretation, she said, would be ”a kind of revolution . .. to the extent you can have a revolution in this kind of case.” Gorsuch was a less enthusiastic participant in the next two arguments, but he again focused on the ”plain language” of the statutes in his questioning. In the second case, involving who can intervene in a property rights case, Gorsuch asked no questions of the lawyer on one side, Neal Katyal, who had testified for him at his confirmation hearing. Gorsuch did not have much time to prepare for the 13 cases to be argued over the next two weeks. He was sworn in on April 10, leaving him a week to prepare for the current and final round of cases of this Supreme Court term. Such short turnaround time is not uncommon, though hardly desirable. Chief Justice Roberts had six days to prepare after his  . Justice Alito had three weeks. Justice Anthony Kennedy had four days. Justice Clarence Thomas, 10 days. And Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan all took their oaths in August, so they had about two months to prep for their first oral arguments. Though already a justice, Gorsuch did not participate last week in the court’s weekly conference at which the eight not only discuss and vote on previously argued cases but decide which cases to hear in the future. Gorsuch would not have been eligible to vote on cases that were heard before he was sworn in, but he could have voted and will vote on which cases to hear in the future. There are about 10 cases apparently being held, likely awaiting a decisive vote from Gorsuch on whether to grant review. It takes the votes of four justices to agree to hear a case the speculation is that some of the cases still in the queue need one more vote to get the four needed for review. Intern Lauren Russell contributed to this report."
"A year ago this week, the artist Prince was found dead at Paisley Park, his home, studio, and party space in the Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen. Today, a series of search warrants and affidavits from the criminal investigation of Prince’s accidental opioid overdose were made public by the Carver County District Court in Minnesota. Dated between April and September 2016, these documents were part of the investigation into how and where Prince obtained a fatal dosage of fentanyl. They also give some insights into the day on which the legendary musician passed away and the circumstances of the weeks leading up to his death on April 21, 2016. Throughout Prince’s residence, including in the laundry room and in Prince’s bedroom, investigators discovered controlled substances that ”were not contained in typical prescription pill bottles but rather, were stored in various other containers such as vitamin bottles,” according to the documents. Much of the investigation appears to focus on Kirk Johnson, a bodyguard and friend of Prince’s since the ’80s and, according to the investigators, ”one of the few people who had unrestricted access to Paisley Park.” The investigation also delved into Dr. Michael Schulenberg, who had begun treating Prince on April 7, 2016  —   just weeks before his death. (Prince was said to not have a regular doctor according to investigators, ”his managers would set up for him before a show so that Prince could receive a B12 injection’ to ’feel better’ before performing for a show. ”) Johnson had contacted Schulenberg to help treat Prince’s hip pain. One affidavit states that the doctor met with Prince and prescribed him three sedatives: clonidine, hydroxyzine pamoate and diazepam. However, the prescriptions were made in Johnson’s name to protect Prince’s privacy, Johnson told investigators. A day before Prince’s death, on April 20, Johnson picked up the prescriptions under his name he told county investigators that ”this was the first time he had ever done something like that for Prince.” Schulenberg was at Paisley Park, dropping off test results, when police arrived there on the morning Prince’s body was found. Schulenberg also told investigators that on April 15, he had prescribed Prince oxycodone, also in Johnson’s name. That was the same day that Prince’s plane, on a flight to Minnesota following a performance in Atlanta, had made an emergency landing near Chicago. According to The New York Times, Judith Hill and Kirk Johnson were the only other passengers besides Prince on that flight. Prescription medications written to Johnson and dated April 7, 2016 were found in a suitcase with the name tag of ’Peter Bravestrong,’ which singer and friend Judith Hill confirmed to investigators was an alias Prince would use while traveling. The medications included   hydrochloride, an opioid painkiller. Investigators also noted that the ’Peter Bravestrong’ suitcase contained handwritten lyrics for Prince’s song ”U Got the Look.” A computer found near that suitcase in Prince’s bedroom was initially overlooked by investigators, until they learned through interviews that Prince did not use a cell phone. Instead, the artist communicated only through email and a landline telephone after his cell phone had been hacked and its information leaked. Jason Kamerud, chief deputy for the Carver County Sheriff’s Office, told NPR this afternoon that ”no one has been charged, and the investigation is ongoing.”"
"A major interstate in Atlanta buckled dramatically on Monday, injuring a motorcyclist and shutting down a section of the freeway. ”The pavement rose to nearly the height of a   man and split into several pieces,” The Associated Press reports, citing multiple witnesses. The injured motorcyclist was traveling at high speed along the interstate when the pavement began to buckle, the wire service reports. He hit the damaged section of highway and was ”flung through the air” he has been hospitalized in critical condition, the AP writes. Local officials said an underground gas leak caused the buckling, the AP reports. But a spokeswoman for Atlanta Gas Light said while a contractor for the utility was working in the area, no natural gas was released. Member station WABE has more: ”Natalie Dale, a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Transportation, said in a news conference Monday afternoon that the agency is assessing the stability of lanes near the buckling and hopes to have some lanes opened by 5 p. m. Monday. . .. ” ’[However,] motorists should not plan for an   on this section of the road until at least noon tomorrow,’ Dale said. ”Westbound lanes on   between Candler and Gresham roads were closed Monday due to the buckling. ” ’This is not an occurrence that happens every day,’ Dale said. ’This is an extenuating circumstance of some things that happened when some work was being done so this does not indicate that we have widespread crumbling infrastructure.’ ” The incident is the second   highway malfunction in Atlanta within the last month. In late March, a bridge on   collapsed after a major fire, which local authorities believe was arson."
"Every day in this country students come to school without a way to pay for lunch. Right now it’s up to the school to decide what happens next. Since new legislation out of New Mexico on   lunch shaming made headlines, we’ve heard a lot about how schools react. Some provide kids an alternative lunch, like a cold cheese sandwich. Other schools sometimes will provide hot lunch, but require students do chores, have their hand stamped or wear a wristband showing they’re behind in payment. And, some schools will deny students lunch all together. With policies to handle unpaid meals all over the map, the USDA, which administers the federal school meal program, will soon require that all school districts have a policy on what to do when kids can’t pay  —   a growing problem. By July 1, those policies must be in writing and communicated to staff, parents and the community. ”We’re saying feed these children first, and let the grownups sort out the finances,” says Jennifer Ramo, who’s with the   group, New Mexico Appleseed. About nine years ago she says she started hearing stories about kids receiving a tray of food only to have it tossed out by a cafeteria worker when they realized students didn’t have the money to pay. Seeing the need, Ramo worked with New Mexico state Sen. Michael Padilla to write the state law banning schools from shaming children without the ability to pay for meals. ”A lot of people are very disgusted by this practice and they’re reaching out  —   calling their own state senators and state representatives and asking them to get on it immediately,” says Sen. Padilla. Since the bill became law earlier this month, he says lawmakers from around the country have reached out to see how they can address the same issues where they are. Texas and California are already working on similar legislation. California Democratic state Sen. Robert Hertzberg introduced the Child Hunger Prevention and Fair Treatment Act. ”When I presented the bill, the two Republican senators on the committee joined as  . How great is that? It just tells you this is not a partisan issue. It’s a basic fundamental human issue everybody gets,” he says. The School Nutrition Association found about 75 percent of districts had some unpaid student meal debt at the end of the last school year. Part of the challenge is that students who qualify for free or reduced priced meals through the federal school lunch program, aren’t signed up. The law in New Mexico aims to deal with that fact. Jennifer Ramo says her state law is leading the way. Perhaps the timing couldn’t be better. She says she’s confident that because districts must now put their debt policies in writing, they will get much more scrutiny. ”I’m hoping communities really put pressure on their own districts to say, ’We want our children fed,’” she says."
"Updated 10 a. m. ET Tuesday, Justices on the U. S. Supreme Court rejected a request by Arkansas to lift a stay that would have allowed officials to conduct the state’s first execution in nearly a dozen years. But while Monday’s two scheduled executions were blocked, a path has been cleared for the state to carry out other killings scheduled this month the next two are set for Thursday night. The state had initially scheduled eight men to die over the course of 11 days, because its supply of one of the drugs it planned to use in the executions  —   the sedative midazolam  —   expires at the end of April. That pace would have been unprecedented in the modern history of the U. S. death penalty. Don Davis was set to die Monday night. After a legal    in multiple courts, his life was spared by the state Supreme Court on Monday evening. The U. S. Supreme Court later declined to overturn that ruling. It’s the second time that Davis has come within hours of being executed before courts intervened. Bruce Ward was also scheduled to be executed Monday night he, too, had been granted a stay by the state Supreme Court. The state decided not to challenge the stay for Ward, whose lawyers argue in a separate suit that he’s mentally unfit for execution. The state Supreme Court voted   to stay the executions of Davis and Ward. Associate Justice Shawn Womack, writing in dissent, said Davis and Ward ”had their day in court” and that the families are ”entitled to closure and finality of the law.” In a statement, assistant federal defender Scott Braden praised the ruling. ”Mr. Ward and Mr. Davis were denied access to independent mental health experts, even though they clearly demonstrated that mental health issues would be significant factors at their trials,” he said. Braden said Ward is schizophrenic and Davis has organic brain damage and is intellectually disabled. The federal defender had asked for the stays while the U. S. Supreme Court prepares to take up a separate case involving the rights of a defendant to have access to independent mental health experts. That case, McWilliams v. Dunn, is scheduled for oral arguments on April 24. The state appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, which tersely declined to overturn the stay. In a statement, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he was disappointed the U. S. Supreme Court declined to lift the stay. But the Republican governor says he was heartened by other court rulings Monday. All the executions had been blocked twice, in two separate cases: a federal court challenge to the method of execution and a state court conflict over how the drugs were acquired. In Monday’s dizzying legal drama, both rulings were reversed, which could pave the way for Arkansas to execute several more inmates before the end of April. As the lawsuits played out Monday, the state’s execution facility was braced for a rapid reversal of the decisions. Davis was transferred to the unit where the state’s Department of Correction was preparing to carry out executions, met with a spiritual adviser and ate a last meal, local TV station KATV reports, before his life was spared by the new stay from the state Supreme Court. Federal court: Dispute over use of sedative, A federal appeals court late Monday overturned a federal judge’s decision over the weekend to temporarily stay the executions. The issue in that case is about the sedative midazolam and whether its use in executions could violate inmates’ Constitutional rights. The federal judge’s decision on Saturday was in response to a lawsuit on behalf of the inmates that argued an execution with midazolam would violate their rights. Midazolam has been used in a number of   botched executions, including instances where inmates did not appear to be fully sedated when they received the painful second and third drugs in the cocktail. The suit argued there was an unacceptably high risk they would suffer during the executions. The judge determined that their concerns were sufficient to halt the executions for the time being, to allow the issue to be considered by the courts. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled that judge, stating in its opinion that there’s only ”equivocal evidence” that midazolam will raise the risk of a painful execution. State court: Questions over drug’s acquisition, judge’s bias, In another surprising and separate development, the Arkansas Supreme Court also lifted a lower court’s order that prohibited the state from using its supply of vecuronium bromide, one of three drugs used in the lethal cocktail. That order had effectively blocked all eight executions. The state judge’s decision, reached Friday, was based on how Arkansas acquired vecuronium bromide, which is used in anesthesia as well as executions. A pharmaceutical supplier alleges that the state bought the drug deceptively, actively misleading the seller about what it would be used for. That decision ”stirred a wave of consternation and threats on social media from state lawmakers and conservatives,” member station KUAR noted on Saturday  —   because shortly before the decision, the judge was photographed protesting the death penalty at the gates of the Governor’s Mansion. The judge in question, Wendell Griffen, has since been removed from all cases involving the death penalty, under an order from the Arkansas Supreme Court, the Arkansas   reports. On Monday the state Supreme Court also vacated Griffen’s temporary restraining order effectively blocking the eight executions."
"It’s easy enough for people who live in cities to hail a ride, either from a taxi or a service like Uber or Lyft. There’s plenty of demand, and plenty of drivers. A startup is trying to bring a similar service to rural America, but it has required some creative thinking. The town of Van Wert sits on the western edge of Ohio. It’s a stretch of flat farm country punctuated with grain silos and a stone castle that’s listed as the nation’s first county public library. It doesn’t seem like the first place a   service would likely come. But Erica Petrie says maybe that’s a mistake. Petrie is the mobility manager of the   Area Agency on Aging. Her job is to find transportation options in Van Wert, which has no buses, one cab and a lot of needs. ”The quick turnaround needs: ’Can someone help me get to the doctor?’ We see   needs: ’Normally I’m able to drive, but my car’s in the shop,’ ” she says. So Petrie helped recruit Liberty Mobility Now to Van Wert. The startup began in Nebraska about two years ago and has expanded to Texas and Ohio. It’s also on its way to Colorado. Founder Valerie Lefler grew up on a dairy farm and worked on rural transportation issues at the University of Nebraska. She created Liberty as a business, but she talks about it as a mission  —   one requiring drivers to do more than leave customers at the door. ”We really look for folks who are altruistic, that would want to do this anyway because that’s what they would do for their best friend or their own mother,” Lefler says. One of those people is Shelia Mendoza, whose mission in life, she says, is to be a grandma. Mendoza has worked for a dry cleaner and at a  . She’s sold insurance, made RV cabinets and briefly ran Shelia’s Cornucopia Cove. And when Liberty came to Van Wert two months ago, she was one of about a dozen drivers recruited and trained. The grandmother of 17 and   talker was a natural. That’s because while part of Liberty’s model is built on an app designed to work in rural geographies, much more of it is built on relationships. For example, Mendoza developed a relationship with her first customer who’d lost his license but found a job: the midnight shift at a meat processing plant. A county agency was willing to cover transportation costs for a few weeks until he could get his license back. ”I always had him there five to 10 minutes early,” Mendoza says. ”We would stop and get coffee sometimes . .. before he would go to work. Once in a while he paid for mine.” Since he regained his license, things have slowed down for Mendoza. ”I was happy he got his car, I was happy he got his license. He’s a better person for that because I know he hated getting hauled around by an old lady,” she says and laughs. She’s hoping business will pick up, and her hopes rest with a   option Liberty is launching: a call center for those who don’t or can’t use an app. ”I’ve heard a lot of people say, ’Well, I don’t want nothing like that on my phone I don’t have room,’ ” she says. Scott Bogren of the Community Transportation Association of America, which specializes in smaller and rural transportation issues, says the call center shows that Liberty understands its target community. ”The adult children of these seniors who can book rides for mom  —   they’re going to use an online service,” he says. ”And combine that with the ability for mom to call in and talk to somebody that she can get to know  —   there’s the sweet spot.” Because of chronic transportation needs, Liberty is partnering with United Ways, hospitals, health departments and other social service agencies. Rides cost $1. 25 to book and $1 per mile. The fees are a small fraction of what the cabby charges, but Liberty says it will also make referrals if the taxi’s a better fit. Petrie says all of that captures the spirit of the area. ”I like that the drivers are from the communities,” she says. ”People are I think more polite, more neighborly. That’s just what is going to fit here.” Liberty Mobility is hoping to find similar fits all across America. M. L. Schultze is a reporter with NPR member station WKSU. You can follow her @MLSchultze."
"If you just celebrated Easter, you might have some stale marshmallow Peeps lying around the house. And if you want to avoid eating those Peeps, they are the perfect material for a science experiment you can do in your own kitchen. With the help of a ruler and a microwave, you can use leftover Peeps to calculate one of the constants of the universe  —   the speed of light. It might sound crazy, but all will be revealed in this video from NPR’s science YouTube channel, Skunk Bear. As a bonus, you’ll also get to see animated Peeps illustrate the history of the search for the speed of light going back to Galileo."
"Donald Trump’s presidency is less than three months old, but in that time there have been massive turnouts for the Women’s March and for Tax Day protests in cities across the country demanding that Trump release his returns. This coming Saturday, on Earth Day, scores of March for Science protests are expected. Helping to guide these actions are veteran activists with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power  —   better known as ACT UP. Thirty years after the coalition’s founding, some seasoned activists are dusting off their bullhorns and updating their   playbooks to tap into the new wave of activism energized by opposition to Trump’s policies. Founded in 1987, ACT UP never settled for trying to push change quietly or behind the scenes. It was loud, demanding and    with telegenic direct action, a protest that got serious attention and, occasionally, laughs. Like the time members engulfed the suburban Virginia home of their nemesis, the late Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, in a giant canvas condom that read ”Helms Is Deadlier Than A Virus.” Or when ACT UP members posed as news executives and   Dan Rather during a live broadcast of the CBS Evening News at the start of the Gulf War. Then there was the time they stormed the National Institutes of Health, pushing for changes in AIDS research, funding and clinical trials. Over an NIH foyer, activists unfurled a giant banner with their logo and slogan: Silence=Death. I’m ”the snarky, Machiavellian dude behind the Silence=Death image,” New York artist and writer Avram Finkelstein says with a chuckle. That slogan  —   black and white with a pink triangle  —   presaged the formation of the radical AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. The slogan helped change the way the world looked at AIDS. At one point, Silence=Death was the most powerful protest slogan around. It became an iconic backdrop to the group’s chant for ”ACT UP, FIGHT BACK, FIGHT AIDS!” Now, at 65, Finkelstein is one of several ACT UP veterans from the 1980s and ’90s who today are helping shepherd new protesters, training and strategizing, including the   collective Rise and Resist. ”Many people are younger people who work with organizations that were formed by ACT UP. Or were in ACT UP themselves,” he says. He recently led a   on design and imagery for Rise and Resist. ”All of the civil disobedience training is being done by the same exact people who did them at ACT UP,” Finkelstein says. ”So here is this perfect   of this moment. Here is an intergenerational activist organization. And its meetings are in the community center a spitting distance from where the original ACT UP meetings took place.” In January, Rise and Resist took one of its first actions: Scores of members booked brunch reservations at restaurants in several   properties including Trump Tower. Over eggs Benedict in the crowded eateries, protesters began to cough and cough some more. The ” ” protesters held up signs saying ”Trumpcare is making us sick.” ”That’s the kind of mediagenic sort of action that ACT UP used to needle their opponent,” says filmmaker and writer David France, who is behind the book and film How To Survive A Plague. ”And Trump is an easy target for needling, and they’re working on trying to exploit that weakness of his. The more time he spends in the early morning hours fashioning his tweets in response to perceived slights, the less time he has to advance his agenda.” France and others note that the feeling of total powerlessness in the face of Trump and Republican control of Washington echoes the early days of the AIDS crisis. ”Younger generations, the millennials, and even Gen X and Gen Y, have the sense of never having had power, really,” France says. ”And it’s kind of a learning experience for them to realize that there were times in history when others felt the same, and were yet not dispirited by it but found a way to plow through it and find that power.” ACT UP was certainly not immune to internal fissures and strategic stumbles. Some members broke off into subgroups. But ACT UP remained steadfast in its strategy of being bold, persistent and willing to be unpopular to foster change. It’s a template Rise and Resist is trying to emulate, France says. ”I think what they’re doing, especially at Rise and Resist, is taking those tactics and strategies and bringing them to the modern era, and making them appropriate for the particular struggles being faced today,” he says.   anger at Trump’s policies has galvanized protesters on the left, including many new to political action. While ACT UP is   for its   protests, the group’s potency came from a   strategy and its   committees, says Maxine Wolfe  —   another veteran   activist from ACT UP’s earliest days who is now involved in Rise and Resist. ACT UP had committees on health, research, PR, housing and more. They did their homework, Wolfe says, and helped ACT UP create a potent ” ” strategy: demanding a seat of power alongside politicians and Big Pharma while keeping pressure up through creative street protests. The strategy helped turn HIV from a death sentence to a manageable condition. ”We had a women’s committee, a people of color committee, the treatment and data committee,” Wolfe recalls. ”We lobbied peoples, we did civil disobedience. The idea there was that you could use not a huge number of people but a varied playbook,” she says. ”And [you] would keep coming at it until we won. Which we did.” What’s not clear just a few months into Trump’s presidency is which tactics and actions by Trump ”resisters” will actually have an impact on public opinion and policy. There are sharp tactical disagreements within the inchoate   opposition to Trump’s policies over what might prove most effective and sustainable. Go with massive rallies or small, direct actions? Focus on urban population centers or the rural and suburban swing areas that helped elect Trump? There are ongoing Trump boycott efforts such as Grab Your Wallet as well as the    couch group Run For Something. ”It’s the movements that are willing to take risks and willing to do bold action over time that are the most successful,” says writer and activist L. A. Kauffman, author of Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. ”Obviously you can’t stay in crisis mode and at a fever pitch for year after year after year,” she adds, ”but I see a lot of people recognizing that this is the long haul. What the movements are doing together is creating a crisis for the Trump administration, and in so doing, managing to slow down some of the worst of the harm.” While ACT UP’s activism centered on an array of complex issues, the central focus of HIV and AIDS was a unifying and organizing force. But anger at Trump is broad, diffuse and across a range of issues from health care to climate change. ”It’s a different animal  —   there’s not one single thing to organize against,” Wolfe says. ”What we need is how to sustain focus. You can’t just do one action, let’s say, against [senior presidential adviser Steve] Bannon. You have to do many such actions.” ”We know now that nominally democratic governments don’t have to listen to social protests,” says activist and writer Micah White, who helped launch the Occupy Wall Street protests. ”You can get 4 million people into the streets and there is no requirement in our Constitution or in our laws that the president has to listen. He’s able to say, ’Thanks. Now go home.’ And they go home.” White now advocates a rural,   progressive movement where activists get elected to local offices and prove they can govern. ”As social protesters, we need to stop with this naive belief that if we just get more people into the streets, then we’ll get what we want. It’s not true!” White says. Finkelstein notes that he did not come up with the Silence=Death logo quickly on the back of a napkin one night over a beer. It was, he says, a deliberative, iterative process with five friends that took about six months to produce. He’s author of the forthcoming book After Silence: A History of AIDS Through Its Images. Finkelstein is not against big marches like January’s massive Women’s March in cities across America and the world, the recent release your taxes protests, or the upcoming Earth Day March for Science. But his lesson from creating the iconic ACT UP logo: There is tremendous power in smaller actions that can reverberate in unexpected ways. ”If that million people were broken into small groups of four and five, think of the power that could have,” Finkelstein says. ”Pussy Riot was four people with a boombox, and it totally changed the way we thought about Putin’s administration.” Rise and Resist and several other   groups are still groping, in these early days, with which tactics might have a real impact with a famously   mogul turned president, who may be   but knows how to punch back. ”A lot of supersmart people that I know are so distracted by the scorching lava flow of Trump’s campaign, and now his first days in office, that they seem to be unable to think strategically about it,” Finkelstein says. ”That surprises me, frankly. The toolbox for doing so is right in front of us.”"
"Vice President Pence said on a visit to South Korea on Monday that the U. S. ”era of strategic patience is over” regarding North Korea and its nuclear and ballistic missile program. ”Since 1992, the United States and our allies have stood together for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula,” Pence said at a joint news conference with acting South Korean President Hwang   in Seoul. ”We hope to achieve this objective through peaceable means. But all options are on the table.” Pence, whose father is a Korean War veteran, earlier visited the Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas, where he could see North Korean soldiers across the divide. Amid rising tensions with North Korea, Pence pointed to recent   U. S. military actions in Syria and Afghanistan as evidence of the Trump administration’s ”strength and resolve.” ”North Korea would do well not to test his resolve  —   or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region,” the vice president warned. Pence vowed ”unwavering support” for South Korea, adding, ”We are with you 100 percent.” Just ahead of Pence’s arrival in Seoul, the North attempted and failed to launch an unidentified missile in its latest weapons test, further raising international concerns. The day before, it ”brandished what appeared to be   and   missiles as part of a military parade, celebrating the 105th birthday of its late founder, Kim Il Sung,” as we reported. The U. S. moved a Navy strike group toward the Korean Peninsula earlier this month, which elicited threats from Pyongyang of ”tough counteraction” should the U. S. attack, as The   reported. So why the recent escalation of tensions with North Korea? Joel Wit, senior fellow at the U. S.  Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, explains on Morning Edition: ”First, the threat has been growing for a while but it’s reaching a point where it’s a direct threat to the United States. And by that I mean, if they can put a warhead on top of a missile that can reach the United States, that’s obviously a direct threat. ”Secondly, President Trump has a very different approach to North Korea than President Obama, who practiced what was called ’strategic patience.’ Essentially trying to put pressure on North Korea and hoping it would come back to the negotiating table. But President Trump is really ratcheting up the pressure while still keeping open the possibility of negotiations.” Wit, who has recently met with North Korean officials, adds: ”I think we should not underestimate North Korea’s resolve to resist pressure from the United States.” Trump has stated that he wants to see China take a larger role in pressuring the North Korean regime. Monday afternoon, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang called for the resumption of ”  negotiations that ended in stalemate in 2009,” according to The Associated Press. Pence’s comments at the news conference elicited concern from Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. As the news service reports, ”Lavrov told journalists in Moscow that if Pence’s words can be understood as a threat to take unilateral action against North Korea, ’then this is a very risky path.’ ” Pence is on an   tour that will include visits to Japan, Indonesia and Australia. For more on North Korea’s weapons development program, NPR’s Greg Myre has this explainer:"
"Girindra Nath Jha was born and raised in the tiny village of Chanka, a settlement in the state of Bihar in northern India, close to the Nepal border. It’s mostly grassy fields and mud huts with thatched roofs. It gets just seven hours of electricity per day and its first paved road arrived only last year. None of the homes have toilets. And a lot of its 7, 000 residents have gray hair. But not Jha, a    who wears a cotton scarf around his neck and a happy smile on his face. He understands why other young people leave: ”The village doesn’t offer them any kind of employment and they don’t want to work in the fields.” In India, being a farmer is considered to be backward unless you are a landowner, which means you control hundreds of acres and employ people to work in your fields. For poor villagers with very little land, the only discernible route to success is fleeing to somewhere else, either for education or for work. The plan doesn’t always pan out, particularly when they don’t have the skills to land better paying jobs. ”In big cities they end up becoming daily wage laborers,” Jha notes. ”They work in construction, carrying loads of bricks on their heads.” Jha left his village and family after he graduated from high school. He went 500 miles away to New Delhi, where he got a degree in economics from Delhi University  —   one of India’s premier colleges  —   and obtained a master’s degree in journalism from the YMCA Institute of Career Studies. His education helped him land a job as an editor for a newspaper in New Delhi, where he worked for several years. But Chanka never left his mind. So in 2012, Jha quit his job and returned to his village. He has been living there ever since. He has trouble describing why he yearned to work on his family’s farm. ”I have a kind of love affair with Chanka,” he says. ”It soothes my soul. The childhood memories have never left me.” Most young people throughout India dream of having a life like Jha had outside of the village. People in Delhi laughed at him when he shared that he wanted to give up his career and city life so he could go back and work on his farm. But he was determined. He wanted to set an example and inspire other young men not to leave their homes and villages, and most of all, not to give up on farming. India’s economy is largely agricultural despite the large number of people migrating from villages to cities  —   according to the 2011 census, 833 million live in rural areas while 377 million live in urban ones. ”The old men and women are left to toil in the fields. They need young people,” Jha says. Will he return to the city one day? ”Not at all,” he vows. ”It’s not going to happen.” Since returning, he has helped his parents work their land. In addition to the wheat, corn and potato growing in their fields, he has planted 1, 000 Kadamb trees. He says it’s a   plan, because in 15 years he will have a big crop of timber, which can be used to make plywood. In the meantime, Jha hasn’t given up on his journalism career. He continues to write for newspapers and magazines from his village. He writes about village life for city folks. In one recent article, he addressed the government’s push for creating ”smart cities” and questioned when it would do the same for ”smart farmers.” Another favorite topic: his love for writing, or as he calls it, ”ink and pen.” His friends from New Delhi and even ones from abroad are curious to see what kind of life Jha has created for himself in his village. They often visit. So last year, Jha started what he calls the ”Chanka Residency” for writers. Participants live in a mud hut with him and his family  —   it’s rustic and peaceful, but there’s internet. The first guest was Ian Woolford, an American who teaches Hindi language and courses on South Asian culture at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. During his   stay, Woolford says, ”We sat outside and drank tea by the fire each morning and evening. We pulled radishes from the field and ate them along with vegetables and roti. And we read each other our writing as we produced it, encouraging each other along.” It’s an experience Woolford recommends. ”I hope that academics, writers and artists might visit  —   if only out of curiosity  —   and then fall in love with Bihar, as I did when I first visited,” he says. More than 50 other people have come so far. Even more important to Jha is changing the image of village life among his neighbors. He is committed to bringing people back to their roots and in touch with agriculture. Armed with two degrees from the capital’s top institutions, he has been teaching as much as possible. He says most young men in his village have smartphones he has been showing them how to use the devices to download apps that are designed for farmers and keep on top of   news about tools, fertilizers and more. He also organizes daily classes for kids on farming, life in the city and some basic English. Kalpana Devi, the village head, says, ”Girindra Nath’s residency brings people in the village from all over the world, which is good for the villagers because they get to learn and write. But I often hear parents saying their children are distracted and don’t work as hard in the field when the guests from abroad and big cities come to Chanka. They like to hang out with the guests.” This exposure to the outside world may be just what the next generation needs, says Anand Dwivedi, who grew up in Bihar and works at the University of Pennsylvania as a director of the Hindi language and culture program. ”Now is a good time since people are more open to different ideas and occupations, professions of different kinds, careers in creative fields,” he says. Getting this education in Chanka could mean young people have less of an incentive to leave. And maybe, like Jha, they’ll help write a new future for their village. Deepak Singh is the author of How May I Help You? An Immigrant’s Journey From MBA to Minimum Wage. Contact him @deepakwriter."
"When Javier Duarte stepped down from office last October, the former governor of Mexico’s Veracruz state vowed to fight the mounting corruption allegations that unraveled his tenure. ”The circumstances created by false accusations . .. force me to dedicate myself   to clear my name and that of my family,” Duarte said on Oct. 13, according to The Yucatan Times, just one day after he ended his term six weeks early. Then, Duarte disappeared. It would be another   before the he surfaced  —   this time in handcuffs, escorted from his hotel at a lakeside resort in Guatemala on Saturday night. Authorities say he had been squirreled away in a hotel room with his wife, attempting to pass as a tourist. Now he is in a prison cell in Guatemala City, awaiting his widely expected extradition back to Mexico, where Reuters reports he’ll face allegations that he diverted public funds for his personal enrichment. That includes a luxury ranch  —   packed with paintings by masters such as Joan Miro and Leonora Carrington, the BBC reports  —   that authorities say was paid for by siphoned dollars. During his roughly six years in office, Duarte’s Gulf Coast state also earned the inglorious distinction of becoming ”one of the world’s most lethal regions for the press,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The CPJ estimated last year that at least 12 journalists were murdered during Duarte’s tenure other organizations have placed that number even higher. A 2012 dispatch from CPJ correspondent Mike O’Connor explains the atmosphere that took shape under Duarte: ”Veracruz is a beautiful, long, thin state on the Gulf coast of Mexico where many journalists are terrified not only of the rampant organized crime groups that kill and control, but also of the state government. Fear that state officials will order them murdered for what they investigate or write has forced about a dozen journalists to flee the state, claiming that fear also puts a clamp on coverage for those who remain.” And that’s not to mention the mass grave discovered outside Veracruz city last month that contained 252 bodies, many of which are believed to have been buried years ago. Strikingly, Duarte’s   tenure was by no means uncommon. The politician isn’t the only former Mexican governor to draw prosecutors’ attention  —   nor was he the only former leader in his own party, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, to go on the lam for an extended period. Former Tamaulipas Gov. Tomás Yarrington was caught in Florence, Italy, just last week after five years on the run. U. S. prosecutors have alleged he ”accepted millions of dollars in drug cartel bribes and invested it in Texas real estate,” according to The Associated Press. And The Wall Street Journal, citing orders issued by state police, says that Yarrington had been assigned eight law enforcement officers as bodyguards as late as last year. Meanwhile former Chihuahua Gov. Cesar Duarte  —   no relation  —   has still eluded authorities after he stepped down last year. Once a rising star in the PRI like Javier Duarte (who was suspended from the party around the time of his disappearance) and Yarrington, Cesar Duarte is being pursued over embezzlement charges. All of this makes for a rather persistent problem for the party’s leader, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has been battling historically terrible approval ratings. So it’s not too much of a surprise that, as the AP reports, the PRI cheered the capture of the former Veracruz governor, who the party said should ”be punished in an exemplary fashion, as well as anyone who is confirmed to have taken part in his criminal ring.” Still, it will do little to erase the rather unexemplary records of many governors across Mexico  —   and not just those in the PRI. The Duartes have plenty of company. The Los Angeles Times breaks it down: In a country of 31 states and one federal district, nearly a dozen governors recently out of office are on the lam, under investigation or already in prison."
"Back in 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign suffered a blow when a tape was leaked of him grousing that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay federal income tax. It was one of the biggest gaffes of the presidential campaign, but a new poll conducted by Ipsos for NPR suggests that many Americans forgot it. The way Romney characterized those who don’t pay federal income taxes is what got him in trouble, but the figure was roughly true. The new poll, however, shows that a majority think that the share of Americans paying no federal income tax is far lower. The poll gave respondents four options  —   39 percent said that only 11 percent of Americans pay zero or negative income tax, and 31 percent said that only 27 percent pay zero or negative income tax. Only 21 percent got it right  —   right now, around 45 percent pay no federal income tax. The poll, released the day before Americans’ taxes are due, delved into what Americans know and what they believe is wrong with the U. S. tax code  —   and what they know is limited and at times contradictory. But this isn’t just about pointing out what Americans know and don’t know. Rather, there could be important policy implications to Americans’ misperceptions about the tax system. For example, this question dovetails with questions about what people think the   Americans’ tax rate should be. Americans underestimate the share of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes, Given four choices of how many Americans pay zero or negative federal income taxes (11, 27, 45, or 63 percent) fully 70 percent of poll respondents chose the options under the correct answer, which was 45 percent. Some of these people simply have no taxable income, and others get money back as a result of refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. (Of course, these people might pay other taxes, like payroll taxes, as well as whatever sales and property taxes their states impose.)   of Americans believe   people pay too much income tax (with heavy partisan differences  —   around    Democrats,    independents, and half of Republicans agreed with that statement). In addition, 60 percent of Americans believe taxes should be lowered for people making $49, 000 or less (again, with Democrats and independents being somewhat more likely than Republicans to say those taxes should be lowered). Taking these two ideas together  —   that people (mistakenly) think very few of their fellow Americans pay zero federal income tax, and that a majority of Americans think   people pay too much in income tax  —   there are a couple of possible conclusions. One is that if more Americans knew how many others do not end up paying federal income taxes, they would say tax rates should stay the same or even be raised. Then again, it’s possible that Americans nevertheless would think their poorest fellow citizens do need more money, regardless of how the current tax code looks. That might mean they would advocate expanding the EITC or other tax breaks. When it comes to taxes paid by the rich, things get complicated. We posed the following statement to people as a true or false question: ”For the highest earners, the percent of federal income taxes they pay now is significantly higher than it was in 1980.” In retrospect, there are multiple ways to interpret this question. If ”percent” is taken as ”rate” here, the answer is ”false.” In 1980, the top marginal income tax rate was 70 percent. Today, it’s 39. 6 percent (something about half of Americans know, per our poll). But if ”percent” is taken as ”share” here, the answer is ”true.” That is, the share of federal income tax revenue that the richest Americans pay has gone up since 1980. How does that work? As the Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams explained to NPR, the share of income going to the rich has climbed in a big way over the last few decades. So how Americans think about this could affect what they think should happen to the top tax rates on the richest. In 1980, the top 10 percent brought in 32 percent of all adjusted gross income, according to the Tax Foundation. In 2013, it was 46 percent. For example, many Americans also believe taxes should be raised on the richest. The top tax bracket starts at $418, 400 right now. The poll shows that 70 percent of Americans believe taxes should be raised on people making $250, 000 to just under $1 million, and that 75 percent believe they should be raised on people making $1 million or more. That’s already a sizable majority, but depending on whether people knew tax rates on the richest had indeed fallen (or, alternately, that the rich now pay a higher share in taxes) it could change what they think should happen to those marginal rates. (Of course, it’s also possible that historical rates wouldn’t affect their views at all.) Those views differ widely by party Democrats are much more likely to believe that taxes should be raised on the rich than Republicans. Americans also appear to have strong views on how people earn their money. We asked people to what degree they agreed with this statement: ”The tax rate on income from work should be lower than the tax rate on income from wealth.” Across the board, regardless of party, Americans agreed  —   75 percent said they did, including 77 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of independents. This is another result that might make the richest Americans squirm. The rich tend to earn their income in a different way from most other Americans. Besides paychecks, many make money from capital gains  —   income they get from selling investments like stocks. Most of those capital gains are taxed at a rate far below that top income tax rate. (People at any income level of course can have those kinds of investments, but capital gains are overwhelmingly concentrated at the top of the income spectrum.) The top rate that the   Americans will pay on most capital gains is 20 percent, around half the top marginal rate for ordinary income. Americans overestimate how important income taxes are to government revenue, About half of the poll’s respondents (with very little variance by party) said they believe 75 percent of the federal government’s revenue comes from personal income taxes. In reality, it’s just under half. Of all the taxes Americans pay, income tax probably requires the most thought. After all, payroll tax comes automatically out of each paycheck. Sales tax is imposed at the cash register. And so on. So maybe it makes sense that Americans think all that work they put into filling out their forms ends up doing the lion’s share of funding the government. Beyond all this, there were a few more fascinating findings in the poll. Phrasing matters. One thing we learned is that using the phrase ”death tax” instead of ”estate tax” seems to make people more opposed to that tax  —   but, interestingly, that effect appears to be by far largest among Democrats.   percent of all people said the ”estate tax” should be abolished, compared to 76 percent who said the ”death tax” should be. However, among Democrats that swing was far larger: only half said they wanted to abolish the ”estate tax,” but 71 percent said the same of the ”death tax.” The estate tax affects fewer than 1 in 500 estates. Many opponents of the estate tax  —   who have tended to be Republicans  —   use ”death tax” as a euphemism. This shows that to the extent that that phrasing helps them, it could be helping them pick people up across the aisle. On tax policy, views aren’t always all that partisan. Democrats are often seen as the party that wants a more progressive system  —   Hillary Clinton, for example, ran for president in 2016 with a tax plan that would have ramped up taxes for the  . But in our poll, nearly half of Democrats  —   45 percent  —   agreed with the proposition that ”federal income taxes should be cut for all income levels.” Likewise, Republicans  —   the party that has spoken of ”makers” and ”takers”  —   were split roughly evenly on the idea that tax cuts for the wealthy lead to economic growth. (Democrats and independents tended to disagree  —   that is, to say that tax cuts for the wealthy do not lead to that growth.) Incidentally, it’s not at all clear that this is true one recent comparison of tax rates and growth rates across advanced economies found no strong linkage between the two. These are only two examples, but they suggest that partisan messaging in Washington on some specific issues doesn’t necessarily filter down to Americans. Americans agree: Taxes are too complicated (but that’s no reason to cheat). There are a few more areas where Americans tend to agree across party lines: nearly 9 in 10 believe the tax code is too complicated,   say it’s not OK for people to underreport income on their taxes, and 77 percent say their own personal federal income taxes are too high. In addition, 72 percent knew that taxes are due on April 18. For those remaining 28 percent, it might be time to file that extension. The poll was conducted online on April   with a sample of 1, 010 adults age 18 or older. For all respondents, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3. 5 percentage points. The credibility interval is plus or minus 5. 7 percentage points for Democrats, plus or minus 6. 1 percentage points for Republicans, and plus or minus 8. 3 percentage points for independents."
"Millions of taxpayers are rushing to complete their federal and state filings before the April 18 deadline. Among them are several million people in this country illegally, and there are signs that fewer such immigrants are filing than in years past. There is a common belief that immigrants in this country without authorization don’t file or pay taxes. But the IRS says that last year nearly 4. 5 million people across the country who don’t have Social Security numbers filed federal tax returns and many are in this country illegally. At the Unity Council, an East Oakland, Calif.   organization offering free tax preparation for   people, about a dozen clients and   volunteer tax preparers spent a recent afternoon hunched over rows of aging computers. ”We’ll help everyone,” says Clarissa Johnson, who directs the clinic. ”We don’t ask them about their immigration status. That is between them and the tax preparer and that is confidential.” Many of these people use Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs. Many ITIN holders are foreign investors or students. But it’s generally understood that most tax filers using an ITIN are in this country illegally  —   like    Axel, who asked that we not use his last name because of his immigration status. He came to the U. S. from Guatemala several years ago. In his native Spanish, he said he has no hesitation about filing his tax returns. ”First, because it’s my responsibility, I want to do things the correct way,” he says. Axel says a few years ago a shady tax preparer made mistakes on his return and he wound up getting fined several thousand dollars. ”I don’t like to create problems for myself,” he says. There is an obvious incentive to file: a chance to get a refund. Johnson says another reason is that if a person winds up in immigration court, a record of having filed taxes is considered evidence of ”good moral character.” ”And especially if they are working toward their citizenship, it’s something that can show that they’re here for the long haul. They’re here each year paying their taxes,” she says. According to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an office of the IRS, ITIN filers last year paid almost $24 billion in federal taxes. Yet as the Trump administration cracks down on illegal immigration, there’s some anecdotal evidence that fewer immigrants using ITINs are choosing to file their taxes this year. ”Many of our clients are telling us that in years past they felt more hope and more of an ability to have a pathway toward citizenship and lately there’s a lot less hope,” says Max   who runs the tax program at the Mission Economic Development Agency in San Francisco. It’s one of the largest free tax preparation programs in the country.. Overall, tax service providers in the San Francisco Bay Area say there’s about a 20 percent decline in the number of people filing with ITINs. There are similar reports from service providers in other areas of the country, according to Francine Lipman, who teaches tax law at the University of Nevada. ”Sending in a tax return with your current address and information is very unnerving to a population that wants to comply with the law and is actually leaving significant refunds on the table by not filing tax returns,” she says. Still, the IRS is barred from sharing its information with other government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security except under limited circumstances. But Lipman says many ITIN filers have to decide whether to trust that firewall."
"We make dozens of decisions on a daily basis: what to have for breakfast, which task to complete first, which article to read. Most of these decisions are easy. But then there are the hard decisions  —   the ones we agonize over, the ones that lead to sleepless nights. These decisions are hard for two reasons: because no single option clearly dominates the alternatives, and because we expect our choice to have significant consequences. It’s these two elements that explain why hard decisions should be easy  —   but are not. Let’s start with the first reason. Decisions are hard when no single option clearly dominates the alternatives. If no option clearly dominates, then two or more options must be roughly matched in terms of their appeal. This seems intuitive enough, yet it prompts a compelling paradox. If the options are equally appealing (or equally unappealing, as the case may be) does it matter much which one we choose? Why not simply flip a coin and be done with it? This paradox is spelled out in an influential book by Marvin Minsky called Society of Mind, where he attributes it to Edward Fredkin and formulates it like this: ”The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them  —   no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less.” It seems to follow that hard decisions should be easy, because our choice matters so very little  —   the most it can matter is the ”difference” between the value of the best option and the value of the alternative that we find nearly indistinguishable. We might be so bold as to propose ”Fredkin’s formula” for hard decisions: Just flip a coin. The choice doesn’t matter much anyway. And yet, Fredkin’s paradox is unlikely to soothe the sleepless. Fredkin’s formula isn’t a popular approach to making decisions about work or marriage. Hard decisions should be easy, perhaps, but they certainly don’t feel that way. That’s due to the second reason hard decisions are hard: We perceive the choice to be consequential. Consider the choice between two flavors of ice cream: chocolate or vanilla. You find the two options equally appealing (say) so the decision is hard in the sense that one option doesn’t clearly dominate the other. But here the stakes are low getting it wrong isn’t  . Even if you choose vanilla and discover that it’s much worse than you expected, even if your friend who ordered chocolate moans with pleasure, your regret will be short lived. Not so for truly hard decisions. When it’s a matter of life partners or surgical procedures rather than ice cream flavors, the stakes are much higher. Correspondingly, the cost of getting it wrong, and the possibility for regret, loom much larger. Consider the decision to move to Los Angeles versus New York. Consider the decision to pursue medical intervention A versus medical intervention B. These might be equally (un) appealing based on the information you have available right now, such that their expected utilities are roughly the same. And so Fredkin’s paradox applies: the decision will be hard but maybe shouldn’t be the decision ”doesn’t matter” in the sense that it doesn’t affect your expected utility. The trouble is the future, when that expected utility is realized. It’s possible that your life in Los Angeles will be different, but just as good, as your counterfactual life in New York. It’s possible that your health will be the same after medical intervention A or medical intervention B. But it’s also possible that one of these options would in fact be much better for you than the other. Their expected utilities could be the same, and yet their actual utilities could diverge. (Consider a choice between two bets: I’ll give you $5 if my quarter lands heads, or I’ll give you $5 if my dime lands heads. The expected utility for each bet is the same, but in fact, it might be that only one of these bets yields a win.) I think this is why Fredkin’s paradox isn’t soothing why Fredkin’s formula might rub us the wrong way. What’s true of the decision process  —   that our choice ”doesn’t matter”  —   isn’t true of the decision outcome. If we could only tell the future, we might see that the decision does matter  —   that it matters quite a lot. This is the sense in which we perceive the decision to be consequential. What matters for hard decisions, then, isn’t only a decision procedure that will maximize the odds of choosing the (perhaps marginally) better choice, but also one that will minimize future regret. Hard decisions are hard because the process keenly matters, not just the choice or its outcome. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially enter the Boston Marathon, returned to the course 50 years after she made history  —   finishing in 2017 with a time of 4:44:31. When Switzer ran in 1967, she was 20, and entered as ”K. V. Switzer”  —   so none of the race organizers would know she was a woman. When she was discovered, after the marathon had already started, the race director tried to rip her bib numbers off her back. Switzer finished anyway, and came back eight more times. In her later races, no subterfuge was necessary. And in 2017 Switzer, now 70, was cheered, not met with rage. At the point where she was once confronted by that race official, she posted a Facebook Live video  —   smiling as she ran, with her bib number, 261, pinned safely in place. Before the race, Switzer spoke with NPR about the day she made history. She noted that a woman had already run the course once  —   without entering. Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes by the starting line and snuck into the mass of runners as they passed, finishing in 3:21:40. Still, despite proof that women could clearly complete marathons, the athletic world generally assumed that women ”couldn’t run and didn’t want to run” that far, Switzer says. The longest distance women were allowed to run in the Olympics at that time was 800 meters. ”It was feared that anything longer was going to injure women, that they wouldn’t be able to have children or they somehow turned into men,” she told NPR. ” ’You’ll never have children,’ they said. ’You’re going to get big legs. You’re going to grow hair on your chest.’ It was hilarious, the myths. ”And, of course, when people hear myths, they believe them  —   because to try otherwise might mean damaging yourself. So people were afraid and they just went about their lives that way and restricted themselves.” Switzer’s coach in 1967 was a   Boston Marathoner and didn’t think a woman could do it  —   which energized Switzer to try. (She changed his mind as she was training for the race, when she ran 31 miles during one session, SB Nation reports.) So she entered the marathon, following all the proper procedures and just, well, neglecting to mention she was female. Switzer told NPR’s Lulu   what happened when she was discovered: ”At about a mile and a half into the race, the press truck went by us, and they saw that I was a woman in the race wearing numbers and they began taking pictures. And alongside of the photographer’s truck came the officials’ press truck. And the race director [Jock Semple] was on the truck and the guys were teasing him. ”And he got so angry that there was a girl in the race that he stopped the bus and jumped off it and ran after me and attacked me in the race and tried to pull off my bib numbers, screaming at me, ’Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.’ ”And I was just blindsided by this. I was terrified. I was scared. And my boyfriend came along with a full streak and gave the official a   block and sent him out of the race instead. You know, we laugh about it now because it’s so funny when a girl is saved by her burly boyfriend. But . .. I said to my coach immediately after the incident: ’I have to finish this race now because if I drop out of this race, nobody’s going to believe that women are serious.’ ” Switzer finished the race in four hours and twenty minutes. As the years went on she advocated for women to be admitted as full competitors  —   and kept running more and more marathons. She won the New York City marathon in 1974. And she competed in Boston several more times, placing second in the women’s race in 1975 with a time of 2:51, her personal best. Switzer said her return to the race in 2017 was a way to, ”celebrate the fact, first of all, that I can run  —   that I’m capable of doing it, amazingly enough, and I’m very, very grateful for that. ”And I’m also very grateful for the opportunity to thank a city and the streets that changed my life,” she said, ”and help to empower millions of women all around the world and change the face of the sport.”"
"Two Kenyan runners, both of them making their Boston Marathon debut, have won the prestigious race. Edna Kiplagat, a Kenyan policewoman and   world champion marathoner, finished first in the women’s race with a time of 2:21:52. Rose Chelimo, a   Bahraini runner, placed second. Geoffrey Kirui, also of Kenya, won the mens’ race at 2:09:37  —   his   marathon victory. He edged out Portland runner Galen Rupp by 21 seconds. It was a big day for debut runners at Boston, according to Runner’s World. In the women’s race,    Jordan Hasay ran her   marathon in 2:23:00 to place third. It was the   debut by an American woman, Runner’s World says. And in the men’s race,    Suguru Osako of Japan  —   also competing in his first marathon  —   placed third with 2:10:28. Meanwhile, competitors in the wheelchair race finished in   times, The Associated Press reports: ”Manuela Schar of Switzerland finished in 1 hour, 28 minutes, 17 seconds  —   shattering the world best by more than five minutes. Fellow Swiss Marcel Hug took the men’s race in 1:18:04, also the fastest time ever. ”The winners’ times are considered a world best and not a world record. The   Boston course doesn’t qualify for world records because of the possibility of a supportive tailwind like the one on Monday.” The athletes had a tailwind of 13 mph, the AP reports."
"A manhunt is under way for a suspect whom Cleveland police say filmed his fatal shooting of an elderly man, in a video that he posted to Facebook. In a later video, also posted to Facebook on Sunday afternoon, a man purporting to be Steve Stephens, the accused shooter, says he has killed more than a dozen other people. Police have not verified that claim. Cleveland police have identified the homicide victim from the video as    Robert Godwin Sr. Contrary to earlier reports, a Facebook spokesperson now tells NPR via email that ”the murder was not broadcast live on Facebook (it was uploaded) although the suspect did go live at one point during the day.” At a news conference earlier Sunday, however, Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams had said that the suspect ”broadcast the killing on Facebook Live,” and, referring to a separate video, ”claimed to have committed multiple other homicides which are still not verified.” ”There are no more victims that we know are tied to him,” he added. Williams also appealed directly to Stephens, urging him to turn himself in to police and not to ”do anymore harm to anybody.” According to Cleveland. com, ”Stephens has also written several Facebook statuses saying his claims of the additional killings are real and saying he was shooting because of ’Joy Lane.’ ” The incident took place on East 93rd Street just south of the Interstate 90 in the city’s Glenville neighborhood, Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said. The video stayed up on Facebook for almost three hours before it was taken down. Stephens’ page has also been removed. ”This is a horrific crime and we do not allow this kind of content on Facebook,” the Facebook spokesperson told NPR in an email. ”We work hard to keep a safe environment on Facebook, and are in touch with law enforcement in emergencies when there are direct threats to physical safety.” Stephens, described by police as a bald and bearded,     black man at 240 pounds, may be driving a new model of a white Ford Fusion with a temporary license plate. This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported early may turn out to be inaccurate. We’ll move quickly to correct the record and we’ll only point to the best information we have at the time."
"Along the Chari and Logone rivers separating Cameroon from Chad’s capital, four   boats, mounted with machine guns, brimming with Chadian and other special forces, round the curve as they approach the riverbank. Forming an assault force, heavily armed soldiers leap out of the vessels and race up a slope to take up positions while backup forces have their machine guns at the ready. It’s all part of a military exercise that simulates going after a   target  —   a leader from the   Boko Haram insurgency, who’s taken up residence in a huddle of huts on the far side of the riverfront, a terrorist safe haven. The assault force demonstrates crucial military steps before capturing and eliminating him. Three weeks of U. S.  counterterrorism exercises, known as Flintlock 2017, ended last month in Chad, which, along with surrounding countries, has been targeted in deadly violence by Boko Haram. The Flintlock exercises take place each year in a different African country. Boko Haram’s    uprising began in northeastern Nigeria, to the west of Chad, and has spilled over its borders, killing thousands of people and driving almost 3 million from their homes across the region. The war left a humanitarian catastrophe in its wake. The Trump administration’s budget blueprint pledges to boost U. S. military spending by 10 percent  —   but also promises deep cuts in foreign aid. It’s not yet clear what that might mean for U. S. counterterrorism efforts here or elsewhere in Africa, though the White House has boosted the U. S. military’s authority to carry out strikes in Somalia against   militants linked to  . At the same time, the U. S.  —   the biggest donor to the United Nations  —   is making the case for cuts in U. N. funding and wants to see changes in U. N. peacekeeping operations, most of which take place in Africa. ”We need to show results,” U. N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said earlier this month. ”We need to find value.” Support for foreign nations’ counterterrorism efforts, as opposed to big American deployments, were a key tool of the Obama administration. Last year, the U. S. gave $156 million for military support, training and border security in the region straddling Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, known as the Lake Chad Basin. The military officer in charge of Flintlock 2017, Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, has called this region ”Ground Zero” when it comes to fighting extremism in Africa. Bolduc, the Special Operations commander in Africa, says for now, the U. S. military is continuing to pursue its objectives. But the prospect of aid cuts worries many, as the region’s humanitarian situation risks deteriorating. The U. N. warns there is a risk of famine in Nigeria’s northeast, exacerbating a humanitarian disaster that has already seen children, especially those under the age of 5, dying of malnutrition, hunger and starvation. The U. S. has given more than $321 million since last year to help those in the Lake Chad Basin, including more than $175 million in emergency food aid. ”Our assistance to this area is critical for promoting stability,” said Matt Nims of the U. S. Agency for International Development, speaking at a House subcommittee hearing earlier this month. ’The military can’t do it by itself’ U. S. special operations troops don’t typically deploy in large numbers to help African security forces work together and fight Boko Haram, but local officials say they’re useful in serving as the glue that helps everything stick together. For Flintlock 2017, forces from 27 countries took part at seven training sites across west and central Africa. ”Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger  —   unfortunately, the entire region, we are facing the same reality,” said Cameroonian police commander Gilbert Nagassou, in charge of the border post at Kousseri, just across the river separating Chad and Cameroon. ”That’s why we must join forces and together confront terrorism.” When it comes to fighting Boko Haram’s threats to the Lake Chad Basin, ”The military can’t do it by itself,” Bolduc told NPR in Ndjamena, Chad’s capital. ”Regionalize all the efforts, work closely together in an effective military construct . .. and then bring in the police, the civil administration, religious leaders and include anybody working to bring the stability necessary to the local villages.” A U. S. special forces commander involved in Flintlock, who asked that his name be withheld for security reasons, says the challenges shouldn’t be underestimated. ”We have a regional issue of Boko Haram, [which] easily exploits the seams between international boundaries  —   especially when you have something like a river way that separates two nations,” he says. ”And they currently use islands in this pretty broad [Chari and Logone] river to hide out in. It’s an easy area to have ungoverned and hard to police and patrol.” Members of U. S. military and, for the first time, law enforcement agencies are working with African security forces to enhance their techniques, said Billy Alfano, a special agent with the State Department’s law enforcement arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. ”Interoperability”  —   groups and forces working well together  —   is the current buzzword. ”It’s critical for our African partner nations to work together and more and more important for police to collaborate with the military, to conduct joint investigations and to truly counter the terrorism threat in the region, with law enforcement in those communities,” Alfano said. Law enforcement agents are often first responders after an attack, he explained, so training them in forensics and skills like fingerprinting also helps ”attack the terrorist network.” Alfano said this year’s more broadly focused exercises reflected an emphasis on governance and rule of law, ”making a transition from a   area to training the police to more effectively take over when the military has moved on.” And there was what he called ”a mass migration training,” to teach rural communities how to respond to potential terrorists who may cross porous borders where large numbers of people are already traveling.   cooperation, During Flintlock, training scenarios involved agents from across the region simulating the aftermath of a terrorist bombing, as well as chasing and apprehending   terrorist suspects. ”Terrorism knows no boundaries or borders,” warned Nagassou, the Cameroonian police commander. Deadly Boko Haram bomb blasts and suicide bombing raids have targeted all four countries battling the terrorist network, he said. ”Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to Islamic State,” he said, ”so geographic frontiers mean nothing to this group or other terrorist networks and their regional allies. Borders are simply a joke to them  —   they have connections and communications.” Terrorists, he said, easily slip across. ”If there’s intelligence from Nigeria and it’s relayed to Chad, then Cameroon must also be made aware,” said Nagassou. ”And Niger also needs to be informed, so that together we can nip Boko Haram’s nefarious plans in the bud and stop them attacking our people.”   Chadian special forces are already familiar with this problem. For the past few years, they’ve been taking on Boko Haram extremists since violence spread across the border from northeastern Nigeria. They also were a critical force that helped end the occupation of northern Mali by    extremist fighters in 2013. ”Chadian military history has demonstrated our experience and  . It’s not today that the Chadian army is learning how to capture and destroy the enemy. Chadian forces are used to pursuing Boko Haram,” said Lt. Col. Brahim Mahamat Dahab, Chad’s chief of staff for the Flintlock 2017 exercises. He says the river scenario assault force exercise shows that Chad is capable of working with Americans, Italians ”and the military from any given country, as well as our neighbors, reinforcing capacity. That’s what we want to demonstrate. We need to share that knowledge with others who are also fighting Boko Haram,” Brahim told NPR passionately. Back on the banks of the   river in the Chadian capital, the assault force exercise ends and the Boko Haram leader is captured. Amid a hail of protective gunfire, the special operations forces head back down toward the boats and speed off down the river. Mission accomplished. For this raid, a textbook success: the same way they hope a   operation would end. With the exercise over, the group whoops with satisfaction and relief."
"A day after he declared a narrow victory in a referendum vote that radically expands presidential powers, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is criticizing elections observers and their concerns about the fairness of the vote. Decrying a ”crusader mentality,” Erdogan told a crowd of his supporters that the international monitors should ”know their place,” according to Reuters. Erdogan added that Turkey did not ”see, hear or acknowledge” the reports of irregularities from the Organization for Security and   in Europe. Preliminary returns say the presidential proposal passed by just 51 percent of the vote. The European monitor released preliminary findings about Sunday’s poll, saying the vote ”took place on an unlevel playing field and the two sides of the campaign did not have equal opportunities.” Its report states that ”while the technical aspects of the referendum were well administered and referendum day proceeded in an orderly manner, late changes in counting procedures removed an important safeguard and were contested by the opposition.” The OSCE also said the vote did not meet standards set by the Council of Europe. Allegations of vote rigging are uncommon in Turkey, Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy tells NPR. ”We don’t know whether the amount of vote fraud was significant enough to change the outcome  —   or more than 1 percent  —   but definitely something happened.” But in a country that is deeply divided, ”where it’s almost half and half for and against Erdogan, if you even have allegations of voter fraud, whether or not it happened, his legitimacy will be completely and constantly questioned by that half that does not vote for him.” That could present problems for Erdogan in the future, Cagaptay says. Acting State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said U. S. officials have noted the OSCE’s concerns, according to Reuters. ”We look forward to  ’s final report, which we understand will take several weeks.” Considering how tilted critics called the campaign, NPR’s Peter Kenyon in Istanbul says many were surprised at how close the vote was. ”It’s close enough that the opposition says it’s going to challenge alleged irregularities,” he says. ”It might be an uphill fight. It could be days or longer before we know the final results.” The new framework expands Erdogan’s powers and means he could potentially stay in office until 2029. As Peter explains: ”Power would be more concentrated under the presidency. ”If the referendum is approved by majority vote, the office of prime minister would be abolished after the next elections, scheduled for 2019. Another body, the Council of Ministers, would also go, and all executive and administrative authority would be transferred to the president’s office. . .. ”The change would increase Erdogan’s influence over who runs for Parliament. ”Cabinet ministers would no longer have to be members of Parliament, and the Parliament would not have power over Cabinet appointments  —   ministers would be appointed directly by the president.” People who voted ”Yes” say concentrating power in the hands of the presidency will make the country more stable, while critics say it will fundamentally undercut Turkey’s democracy. Cagaptay says Erdogan ”has become the most powerful person in the country’s history in at least a century.”"
"Spoiler alert: DAMN. opens with Kendrick Lamar narrating his own shooting death at the hands of a blind assailant. This seems to be a tradition amongst Los Angeles rappers: Lamar’s most obvious predecessor, Ice Cube, rapped about dying at least three times on his first two albums. The shared message from both artists is that violent ends can arrive unexpectedly, especially if you’re young, black and male. It’s no coincidence that Lamar decided to release DAMN. on Good Friday, a day meant to mark the death of the righteous at the hands of tyrants. Lamar isn’t a Christian rapper in the conventional sense  —   his songs aren’t in explicit exaltation of His glory  —   and though DAMN. is redolent with Biblical references, the temperament is decidedly Old Testament, filled with cold wrath and righteous punishments owing to the wages of sin and the blood of innocents. The tone on DAMN. is a stark contrast to the funky exuberance on Lamar’s   To Pimp a Butterfly from 2015: There, he seemed to revel in a torrent of creative intensity that some found exhilarating, others indulgent. If that album was like billiard balls scattering after the break, then DAMN. wraps its focus inward, tight and layered, like a bundle of rubber bands. Its 14 songs, all titled with brief concepts such as ”FEEL.” ”LOYALTY.” and ”DNA.” explore dualities within both the soul and American society. In some cases, the fractures are made obvious between songs  —   ”LUST.” and ”LOVE.” or ”PRIDE.” and ”HUMBLE. ,” for example  —   but even within a track, Lamar is constantly exploring conflicts and contradictions. On ”DNA. ,” the album’s first fully   song, he raps   : ”I got millions, I got riches, buildin’ in my DNA   I got dark, I got evil, that rot inside my DNA.” Likewise, on the nearly   marathon ”FEAR. ,” he invites us into his anxious mindset, where there’s a thin line between confidence and venality, and any hint of success also carries with it the threat of loss. This introspection is also reflected in the mostly somber production, which departs from the meaty   influences of Butterfly in favor of more minimalist moods. At times, there’s perhaps too little there I’ve had the album on nonstop since the minute it came out and I still can’t remember what ”GOD.” or ”LOYALTY.” sound like. But in other places, especially on ”FEAR.” and ”PRIDE.” the soulful spareness works well with the song’s themes and Lamar’s understated performance. To put it a different way, Butterfly felt very   whereas DAMN. is built out of bars. On the   single ”The Heart Part 4,” he boldly proclaimed himself to be this era’s ”greatest rapper alive,” and DAMN. aims to secure his hold on that title belt. Lamar’s wordplay has always been intricate, but he’s finding new ways to push its limits: The way he   rhyming couplets rivals Eminem in his prime, while his constant modulation of voice and pacing allows him to play different characters within a single song. The stunning closer, ”DUCKWORTH,. ,” also burnishes his reputation as one of  ’s most vivid storytellers, as he tells the supposedly true tale of how his label boss, Anthony ”Top Dawg” Tiffith, once came close to killing Lamar’s own father 20 years ago. Perhaps nothing suggests his position atop  ’s leaderboard more than the fact that, almost as soon as DAMN. came out, there was an   rumor that since he ”died” on Good Friday, it followed that he’d be resurrected on Easter Sunday via a surprise second album. (That’s less outlandish a thought than it would have been a year ago, before Frank Ocean dropped Endless and Blonde on consecutive days and Future went No. 1 with two albums released a week apart  —   but Easter came and went with no   LP.) The collective desire, if not greed, for another   LP right after DAMN. captures how much Lamar has electrified the music community. There’s a real yearning for artists of his stature to speak truth to power, especially at a time when the powerful seem to brazenly revel in untruths. There’s a danger in putting too much weight on any entertainer to serve as a proxy for collective action. Indeed, Lamar’s own fans sometimes feel moved to keep him in check  —   most recently in response to ”HUMBLE. ,” in which he rolls out a lazy cliché about wanting women to be less ”Photoshop.” But though he can be preachy at times, he doesn’t suggest he’s above reproach. Rather, his songs constantly offer him up as a sacrifice to a vengeful God: never an innocent lamb, always a conflicted sinner. That’s the feeling his work asks us to confront within ourselves. He’s not here to provide relief or distraction. His anxieties and unease around his own foibles are meant to mirror our own  —   and likewise, his struggles towards salvation and redemption are    exhortations for us to do the same work, lest we risk perishing in a damnation of our own making."
"Hannah Berkowitz is 20 years old. When she was a senior in high school her life flew off the rails. She was getting high on whatever drugs she could get her hands on. She was suicidal. Berkowitz moved into a therapeutic boarding school to get sober, but could only stay sober while she was on campus during the week. ”I’d come home and try to stay sober really hard  —   really, really hard,” says Berkowitz. ”Sometimes I’d make it through the weekend, and sometimes I just couldn’t make it. It was   it, just holding on.” The transition back home always triggered a relapse for Berkowitz. ”I thought it was just my fault and there was no hope,” she says. No hope  —   but Berkowitz did have luck. She had private health insurance and she lived in Connecticut, where a startup company, Aware Recovery Care, had begun treating clients in the very environment where Hannah was struggling to stay sober: her home. A chronic disease approach, Treating addiction is a growing business, but a lot of the treatment that’s available is expensive and patients often relapse. Fortunately, there is a way to help some people pay less for better results, says Matt Eacott, vice president of Aware Recovery Care. ”  percent of the industry really treats addiction as an acute problem  —   like a rash on your arm that you rub lotion on and you’re done,” says Eacott. Instead, Aware treats addiction as a chronic illness  —   it doesn’t disappear just because symptoms are temporarily under control. The approach is a   way of treating addiction, Eacott says, with better results than most competitors achieve. Aware comes into clients’ homes and connects them with a nurse, a primary care doctor, a therapist, peer support,   meetings and a case manager. Clients hooked on opioids can get   treatment. They can also submit to urine screening and GPS tracking, if that helps them stick with the program. Hannah’s mother, Lois Berkowitz, says the program is intense at first. But as Hannah built coping skills the supports faded into the background. ”It’s not like they’re doing the work for the addict,” says Lois Berkowitz, ”they’re just basically taking them by the hand and saying, ’Here are the places you need to go that will help you. And I’m going to go with you to start, so it doesn’t feel that uncomfortable. And then we’re going to let you fly.’ ” Before they ”fly,” Aware clients have a pretty long runway. The treatment lasts for a full year. Benefits worth the initial cost, insurer says, Aware has now expanded from its base in Connecticut into New Hampshire. The program is expensive. It costs $38, 000 a year. As of now, it’s only available to   clients and people insured through Anthem health insurance in New Hampshire and Connecticut. Anthem became the first insurer to pay Aware, because the treatment is based on hard science that’s yielding solid results for clients, says Dr. Steven Korn, Anthem’s behavioral health medical director. Science and results are rare in addiction treatment, he says. ”There are old, old notions that have hung pretty tough,” says Korn. ”When I was young  —   when I was in training  —   as soon as substance abuse was mentioned, the response of physicians was, ’Well, go to AA. That’s not our problem. We don’t treat that.’ ” For a year of treatment, Anthem says it’s paying Aware about the same as the cost of a month or two of inpatient treatment. Anthem also says 72 percent of Aware clients are either sober at the end of one year or still in active treatment. That’s about twice the sobriety rate of people who check in to a facility for a month and then get no   care, says Dr. Stuart Gitlow, past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Treating addiction at home makes sense because it’s the exact place where people learned all their bad habits, Gitlow says. ”It’s all based on this concept that addiction is not about the substance use,” he says, ”but is about what led to the substance use in the first place. And you can’t really get there without getting to know the patient.” Aware says it’s in negotiations with four more major insurers. The program hopes to have a couple hundred clients in New Hampshire by the end of the year. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with New Hampshire Public Radio and Kaiser Health News."
"A couple flying to Costa Rica for their wedding were removed from a United Airlines flight in Houston on Saturday. The incident happened nearly a week after a video showing a passenger being dragged off a    flight went viral. Michael Hohl and Amber Maxwell are scheduled to get married on Thursday. They talked   in Houston: ”Michael Hohl, the groom, said he and his fiancee, Amber Maxwell, were the last to board the plane. ”According to Hohl, they noticed a man was spread across their row napping when they approached their seats, 24 B and C. ”Not wanting to wake the man, Hohl said they decided to sit three rows up in seats 21 B and C. He said they didn’t think it would matter because the flight was half full with multiple empty rows. ”We thought ’not a big deal, it’s not like we are trying to jump up into a   seat,’” said Hohl. ”We were simply in an economy row a few rows above our economy seat.” ”In a Boeing   like the one the couple was on, United considers Row 21 ”economy plus,” an upgrade. ”After sitting, Hohl said a flight attendant approached and asked if they were in their ticketed seats. The couple explained they weren’t and asked if they could get an upgrade, but instead they were told they needed to return to their assigned seats. ”Hohl said after complying with the flight attendant’s demand, a U. S. marshal came onto the plane and asked them to get off. ”The couple cooperated and got off the plane without incident, but they still don’t understand why.” United Airlines issued a statement on Saturday: ”We’re disappointed anytime a customer has an experience that doesn’t measure up to their expectations. ”These passengers repeatedly attempted to sit in upgraded seating which they did not purchase and they would not follow crew instructions to return to their assigned seats. ”We’ve been in touch with them and have rebooked them on flights tomorrow.” The airline suffered a public relations nightmare last week after a video showed security officers dragging a bloodied passenger off an overbooked United Express flight in Chicago. Attorneys for Dr. David Dao, 69, the   doctor who was dragged off the flight, say he will very likely sue the airline. The video triggered international outrage, and the company bungled its first response to the incident. United Chief Executive Oscar Munoz apologized to Dao, his family and the company’s customers. He also announced the carrier would no longer use law enforcement officers to remove passengers from overbooked flights. The airline also said crew members will no longer be able to bump a passenger who is already seated in one of the airline’s planes. Shares in United’s owner, United Continental Holdings Inc. were hit hard, dropping as much as 4 percent last week. The stock ended down 2 percent on Thursday at $69. Markets were closed on Friday. United Continental Holdings is scheduled to report earnings on Monday after U. S. financial markets close."
"Generations ago, the American Indian Osage tribe was compelled to move. Not for the first time, white settlers pushed them off their land in the 1800s. They made their new home in a rocky, infertile area in northeast Oklahoma in hopes that settlers would finally leave them alone. As it turned out, the land they had chosen was rich in oil, and in the early 20th century, members of the tribe became spectacularly wealthy. They bought cars and built mansions they made so much oil money that the government began appointing white guardians to ”help” them spend it. And then Osage members started turning up dead. In his new book, Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann describes how white people in the area conspired to kill Osage members in order steal their oil wealth, which could only be passed on through inheritance. ”This was a culture of complicity,” he says, ”and it was allowed to go on for so long because so many people were part of the plot. You had lawmen, you had prosecutors, you had the reporters who wouldn’t cover it. You had oilmen who wouldn’t speak out. You had morticians who would cover up the murders when they buried the body. You had doctors who helped give poison to people.” On how the conspiracy worked, What makes these crimes so sinister is that it involved marrying into families. It involved a level of calculation and a level of betraying the very people you pretended to love. And the way these murders would take place is that people would marry into the families and then begin to kill each member of the family. . .. That’s exactly what happened to [Osage woman Mollie Burkhart]. She had married a white man, and his uncle was the most powerful settler in the area. He was known as the King of the Osage Hills . .. and he had orchestrated a very sinister plot played out over years where he directed his nephew, who had married Mollie Burkhart, to marry her so that he could then begin to kill the family members one by one and siphon off all the wealth. On how Mollie Burkhart’s family was killed  One day in 1921, her older sister disappeared and Mollie looked everywhere for her and couldn’t find her. And about a week later, her body was found essentially in a ravine, decomposed. She’d been shot in the back of the head. Then just a few weeks later, Mollie’s mother began to grow increasingly sick. She seemed to be almost disappearing, withering in front of her. And within two months she, too, had died. And evidence later suggested that she had been secretly poisoned. Not long after that, Mollie was sleeping in her bed in her house with her white husband they had a couple children. And she heard a loud explosion. She got up in panic and terror. . .. She had another sister who lived not far away, and in the area where her sister’s house was she could see almost this orange fire ball rising into the sky. It almost looked as if the sun had burst into the night. And her sister’s house had been blown up killing that sister as well as her sister’s husband and a servant who lived in that house. On how far the conspirators went to cover up their crimes, Almost anyone who tried to investigate the killings  —   or at least stop them in the area  —   they, too, were killed. One attorney tried to gather evidence and one day he was thrown off a speeding train and all the evidence that he had gathered had disappeared. Another time, an oilman had traveled to Washington, D. C. to try to get help. . .. He checked into a boarding house in Washington, D. C. . .. He was then found the next day stripped naked. He had been stabbed more than 20 times his head had been beaten in. The Washington Post at the time said what everyone at that point knew, which was there was a conspiracy to kill rich Indians. On how authorities reacted to the deaths, It’s really important to understand back then that there was so much lawlessness. That was one of the things that shocked me when I began researching the story, that even in the 1920s much of America remained a country that was not fully rooted in its laws. Its legal institutions were very fragile there was enormous corruption, particularly in this era and in this area. And the conspirators were able to pay off lawmen, they were able to pay off prosecutors. There was so much prejudice that these crimes were neglected. Mollie Burkhart beseeched the authorities to try to investigate, to get help, but because of prejudice they often ignored the crimes. And she issued money for a reward, she hired private investigators, but the crimes for years remained unsolved, and the body count continued to increase. By 1924 there were at least 24 murders alone. . .. Finally, the Osage, in desperation, they issued a resolution, a tribal resolution, beseeching the federal authorities to help. And finally a   obscure branch of the Justice Department intervened. It was known as the Bureau of Investigation and it was what . .. would later be renamed the FBI. On the FBI’s investigation, J. Edgar Hoover . .. was the new director, and it became one of the FBI’s first major homicide cases that it ever dealt with. . .. The bureau initially badly bungled the case. . .. [Hoover] turned the case over to a frontier lawman at the time who finally put together an undercover team that included . .. probably the only American Indian agent in the bureau at the time. They went undercover. . .. They were able, through some dogged investigation and at great danger, to eventually capture some of the ringleaders. And those ringleaders included not only Mollie Burkhart’s husband, it also included [his] uncle, a man who was seen as this great protector of the community. On what the FBI missed in their investigation, The bureau was so anxious to wrap up the case that they ignored many, many other unsolved crimes and many, many other killers. . .. When you begin to look at the documents and you begin to collect the evidence from the Osage, it becomes abundantly apparent. . .. I pulled some of the guardian papers and there was this little booklet that came out. It had a little fabric cover. All it was was essentially identifying the name of a guardian and which Osage they were in charge of. And when I opened up the book, I could see the name of the guardian and when I began to look at the names of the Osage under them I could see written next to many of them simply the word ”Dead. Dead. Dead.” It was almost like a ledger it was like this forensic, bureaucratic accounting. But when you’re looking at it, you’re beginning to realize you’re looking at hints of a systematic murder campaign, because there’s no way all these people died in a span of just a couple years. It defied any natural death rate. The Osage were wealthy, they had good doctors. . .. And then when you begin to look into each of those individual cases, you start to find trails of evidence suggesting poisonings, a murder. You start to try to trace the money . .. and where the wealth went. And what you begin to discover is something even more horrifying than the bureau ever exposed. Radio producer Taylor Haney, radio editor Shannon Rhoades and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"These guys had me at their name. Ever since I heard the first EP back in 2009 I’ve watched Chicano Batman grow, with a sound that perfectly captures dark lounges, quinceañera dances, car shows and backyard parties. Lots of other folks have heard something in this music  —   since that debut the band has played some of the biggest outdoor music festivals for diverse crowds around the country. The magic of a band like this is in the details, and their performance here allows us to fall into the   groove and passion of a sound that gets better and better with each performance. See for yourself. Freedom is Free is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Bardo Martinez (vocals, keys, guitar) Eduardo Arenas (bass) Carlos Arevalo (guitar) Gabriel Villa (percussion) Nya Parker Brown (vocals) Piya Malik (vocals) Credits, Producers: Felix Contreras, Bronson Arcuri Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Marian  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Note: This piece discusses the plot details from the   premiere of Veep.  When Veep began, Selina Meyer (Julia  ) was a   chafing against the limitations of her office and the indignities of her insignificance. Any whiff of the presidency was intoxicating, with its promise of absolute power and vindication for everything she had endured to get to what was supposed to be the second most powerful position in the government. She found it to be instead a parade of clowns and sycophants, and she held her frustrations at the back of her throat until she could spit them out at her staff. Her dream was the presidency. One emergency later, it was hers. But then, in a humiliating defeat, all was again lost, which brings us to the premiere of the series’ sixth season, which aired on HBO Sunday night. We find Selina and her mostly former staff a year after she was unceremoniously dethroned. She has been out of public view, but now, she’s returning  —   first with an interview on CBS This Morning, where her former staffer Dan (Reid Scott) is a   host still trying to get a media career off the ground. Jonah (Timothy Simons) is still in Congress, where he seems to be miserable, while Amy (Anna Chlumsky) is   again in very different circumstances. Ben (Kevin Dunn) is troubleshooting for Uber, Mike (Matt Walsh) is home with his kids, and only the faithful, apparently   Gary (Tony Hale) is still by Selina’s side, clutching his briefcase. By the end of the season premiere, a surprising thing has happened: Selina has come full circle. It’s as if she overshot her goal. She rose improbably, sat at the top briefly, and then sailed right back down into her old feelings of persecution and futility. Once, she was a   who envied the president. Now, she’s a former president who envies not only the current president, but all the former presidents who command more respect  —   and higher speaking fees  —   than she does. She has to borrow money from her daughter (Sarah Sutherland) who inherited all the family wealth when her mother skipped over Selina entirely. Naturally, all this sends Selina to the only place she can think of: running for president again. The most effective runner in the episode is Gary groaning, squirming, sighing, grunting, and otherwise doing absolutely everything he can think of to avoid telling Selina that running for president again is the worst idea he can think of, not only because he cares about her, but because he clearly cannot bear the thought of going through a presidential campaign with her again. One quality Veep shares with HBO’s Silicon Valley is that both have a tendency to paint themselves into corners in which it appears that some resolution has been reached that will challenge the fundamentals of the premise. Silicon Valley began with a startup seeking success: what happens when they find it? Veep began with a woman writhing in misery because she isn’t president what happens when she is? But both shows have demonstrated again and again a firm commitment to resetting in a way that’s fresh enough to propel a new story but still faithful to the way the characters have been drawn. By making Selina frustrated and small and unappreciated in a different way with a different set of scenarios that could play out  —   lobbying, campaigning, writing her memoir, speaking, or getting another job entirely  —   Veep has played to its strengths without repeating itself. There’s an echo in this episode of the old scenes where she would ask her assistant whether the White House had called now, she asks if there are messages. The answer is still ”no.” Any temptation to make Selina likable is refreshingly dodged  —   if anything, she’s more oblivious and   and particularly   than ever. It’s quite a balancing act to make the underdog journey of an unpleasant and largely amoral person into something worth watching. But the fearlessness with which Veep makes Selina a compelling figure of frustration and futility whether or not her complaints are at all sympathetic has kept it on track for five seasons  —   and now, into a sixth."
"President Trump is preparing to overhaul the nation’s tax code, and at least some of the coming changes could benefit his own bottom line. Critics say voters should be able to see just how much help the president might get from a revised tax code, so they are stepping up efforts to force him to share his tax returns. Seeing the returns would reveal some key facts about the president’s finances, says Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. ”What tax rate is he paying? What deductions and loopholes is he taking advantage of? How are the kinds of tax policies that he’s thinking about acting on as president affecting him personally?” says Bookbinder, whose government watchdog group has sued the president, saying Trump’s foreign business dealings violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. But the president’s returns  —   due on Tuesday  —   might ultimately prove less revealing about Trump’s finances than many of his critics suppose, says Lee Sheppard, columnist at Tax Analysts’ Tax Notes. ”People have an extravagant idea about what might be on these returns,” she says. ”A tax return is not a financial disclosure document.” The returns can reveal how much Trump makes in a given year, but not how much he is worth, something that has been a topic of much debate. Among other things, the returns are likely to shed little light on whom his real estate partnerships owe money to or his alleged financial ties to Russia, Sheppard says. Trump has steadfastly refused to release his tax returns, saying his lawyers won’t allow it because he is under an IRS audit. During the campaign, he promised to release the returns once the audit is finished, but he has since backtracked on that pledge. Several states have now joined the effort to get the returns released, as NPR’s Joel Rose reported: ”Trump is the first president in 40 years not to release any of his tax returns during the campaign. Now lawmakers in dozens of states have introduced bills that would force him to do so. Several of these bills go by the name Tax Returns Uniformly Made Public, or TRUMP Act.” But Sheppard says that as a real estate developer, Trump gets much of his income through partnerships. While he is required to reveal the name of the entity and how much money he receives from it, he doesn’t have to name the other partners, whose identities may be obscured behind shell corporations and offshore subsidiaries. He also may have sizable   debt, loans that are backed not by Trump himself but by the real estate projects his partnership is developing. Trump is required to say how much interest he pays on the debt incurred, but not how much he owes or who lent him the money, Sheppard says. ”The law is very, very, very solicitous to investors of all stripes, and they come into the partnerships through entities, so the rest of the world doesn’t find out who they are,” she says. ”I don’t know why there’s not complaints about that,” she adds. ”I don’t know why somebody doesn’t say to some senator or another, ’Well how come you’re not making better laws for what gets disclosed on these [returns]?’ And the reason should be rather obvious.” But CREW’s Bookbinder says it’s important to release Trump’s returns anyway, as other presidents have been doing for decades. ”I would certainly resist saying that looking at his taxes would be the   and   the full picture of his financial situation,” he says. ”There certainly are ways of hiding money that might not be picked up in tax returns, and there are lots of kind of ties that might not show up there. But there’s a lot that would show up, and so it would tell us a lot more than we know now. ”And it might tell us a lot more about where else we need to look to get the full picture.”"
"Updated at 4:05 p. m. ET, This is what a president can do with the bully pulpit: It’s Tax Day. And that means another reminder of the fact that President Trump has broken with tradition and not released his tax returns. That would be a big focus of the day except that Trump, like other presidents before him, is trying to drive the narrative with something he is more comfortable with  —   he held an event in Wisconsin at a tool company headquarters to discuss his ”Buy American and Hire American” executive order released Monday night. It’s a nice, simple slogan that helps him look like he is delivering on a campaign promise. And it helps deflect from an otherwise negative storyline. Reality, however, is not so neat. ”Buy American”: more complicated than it sounds, The executive order calls for a review of existing laws and strengthening a visa program that some believe is being abused and undercutting American workers in some instances. But heads of technology companies warn that cracking down on the   visa program, for example, could actually have the unintended consequence of more companies shifting jobs overseas. ”The effect would end up being exactly the opposite of what Trump wants,” Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, argued to the New York Times. His group is funded by technology companies. ”Companies would go offshore, like Microsoft did with Vancouver, Canada.” Trump’s ”Buy American” policies would also likely mean more expensive construction projects, as NPR’s David Schaper reported before the president’s address to a joint session of Congress earlier this year: ”[P]reserving American steel industry jobs comes at a cost. ’Economics is always about ’ says Jeff Davis, senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, a nonpartisan policy think tank in Washington, D. C. who has written extensively about ’buy America’ rules. ’  steel usually out of the mill will cost 70, 80 percent more than Chinese steel out of the mill,’ Davis says.” It’s also not clear how far the ”Buy American” policies go. During that address to Congress, Trump said the following: ”We have cleared the way for the construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, thereby creating tens of thousands of jobs. And I’ve issued a new directive that new American pipelines be made with American steel.” That would seem to imply that the Keystone XL pipeline would have to use American steel. But that’s actually not true. Three days after the speech, a White House spokeswoman told CNN that the way the order is written, it is only ”specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired.” And . .. ”Since [Keystone] is already currently under construction . .. it was hard to go back. Everything moving forward would be all under that executive order.” Trump talks in big, simple terms about a lot of things, but the reality is that, as with most things domestic, an American president’s power is limited. ”There’s some things that the Trump administration could do at the margins that might help clean up some of the worst abuses in the [ ] program,” Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, told NPR’s Scott Horsley. But ”legislation is going to be required to really fix the program.” Trump’s bet is this: Simple beats nuance. And from a messaging standpoint, it’s true every time. And that brings us to tax returns . .. ”The president’s view on this has been very clear” White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday said ”nothing has changed,” that ”we’re still under the same audit that existed.” Translation: Trump won’t be releasing those tax returns anytime soon. This has been said repeatedly, but it’s worth repeating: There is nothing preventing the president from releasing his taxes while under audit, and there is certainly no reason not to release prior years. This has been the guise under which Trump has been operating for almost two years  —   under audit, no tax returns audit over, tax returns. But Trump in a 9 a. m. ET Easter Sunday tweet over the weekend perhaps revealed the real reason he won’t release them  —   politics: Releasing tax returns isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about transparency and building trust with the American public. That’s important, and there’s a reason there’s been a   tradition of presidents and presidential candidates releasing them. ”I think the president’s view on this has been very clear from the campaign,” Spicer said, ”and the American people understood it when they elected him in November.” True enough."
"An Iraqi army truck pulls up to an abandoned gas station on the edge of Mosul in northern Iraq.   men and boys climb out of the back  —   civilians evacuated from neighborhoods that Iraqi security forces have just freed. They’ve suffered through six months of fighting between ISIS and Iraqi security forces. Many say that as Iraqi forces close in on the remaining   neighborhoods, ISIS has become increasingly brutal toward the civilians they are using as human shields. Omar, a high school physical education teacher, says he watched from the window of his house on the corner near a girl’s school in the   neighborhood one day last week as ISIS fighters lay in wait for civilians trying to reach the safety of the Iraqi army. He says the families told the fighters they were trying to leave because they had no food left. ”The fighters told them, ’You are dogs  —   you are going to the rawafid’”  —   a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims. ”God strike me down if I’m lying,” Omar says. ”They shot seven people in the head. And then they took the people’s cars and left. ” Most civilians fleeing Mosul, including Omar, asked that their last names not be used. They are not convinced ISIS won’t come back. Omar says female ISIS members gathered the women to search them for gold, money and documents. ISIS beats men  —   but for women trying to escape, there’s a special punishment: ”There was a woman who was searching them and the same woman was biting them  —   I swear to God she was biting them on their arms,” he says. Mosul residents have now lived for three years under ISIS rule. At first, many Sunni residents welcomed the group  —   as repressive as it was, for some the corrupt government and discredited Iraqi security forces were worse. When ISIS declared Mosul the capital of its   caliphate, it set out to provide social services and prove it could run a major city. Three years later, most of that has vanished. Omar says his father was wounded in the leg and the back in a mortar strike last week and died three days later  —   after ISIS doctors refused to try to save him. ”I said, ’Please can you save my father?’ They said, ’It’s his problem  —   he’s not one of us,’” Omar recalls. More than 300, 000 civilians are still trapped in Mosul. ISIS has kept them there to prevent the U. S. and Iraq from launching airstrikes and mortars against their fighters. The Iraqi battle plan coordinated with the U. S. military has involved surrounding the city and leaving no escape route for either ISIS fighters or civilians. In March, a U. S. airstrike in Mosul killed more than 150 civilians, many of them children. The U. S. is investigating whether ISIS explosives also contributed to the death toll. Iraqi military leaders say no one knew there were so many civilians packed into houses. This week, the Iraqi military dropped leaflets over   areas telling civilians to try to stay in their own homes  —   an almost impossible requirement as ISIS herds civilians out of their own houses and deeper into the heart of the city. ”Lately ISIS has killed a lot of people  —   especially as the army got closer,” says Bashar Taha. He and his sons say they saw the bodies of some of those executed by ISIS for trying to leave hung from electricity poles. Even as civilians run out of food they had stockpiled, many say ISIS is confiscating it. ”Every time the army gets nearer, they get worse,” says Jasim, a member of what had been Mosul’s middle class. ”I had seven bags of rice. They took four. I had two bags of sugar, they took one. I had two tanks of water they took one. Their excuse was it was for ’the Muslim brothers.’ They have no relation with Islam.” As well as being victimized by ISIS, civilians are also dying in mortar attacks launched by all sides in the battle and in continuing airstrikes targeting ISIS. Mahmoud, a government engineer, says an airstrike targeted one of the houses on their block a day before they left. He says ISIS fighters had forced some of the families on their street to give them rooms in their houses to set up sniper positions on the roofs and to store weapons. He says the attack killed his   neighbors  —   a couple and their four daughters, the man’s mother and a    niece named Malak. Mahmoud had been teaching the little girl a few words of English every day. He chokes up as he describes seeing her body in the street. ”So was so small,” he says. ”When I saw her body I thought at first it was a doll.” As he and his children ran from the house to get to safer ground, he says an elderly woman from the neighborhood who couldn’t walk pleaded with him not to leave her. ”All my children were alive and I said, ’Thank God  —   I should help her,’ so I carried the old woman on my back,” Mahmoud says. Safely outside Mosul, he shows me a video of a birthday party for his daughter’s ninth birthday earlier this year  —   held in secret because of an ISIS ban on   celebrations. A group of girls sings ”Happy Birthday” in English and Arabic.    Malak, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, gleefully claps along, mesmerized by the candles on the cake. Mahmoud studied in the West in a country he does not want to name because he is afraid ISIS will find him. After three years of living in fear under ISIS, his English is rusty. He struggles to find a word that will sum up the enormity of what they’ve been through. ”It is . .. disaster,” he says finally. ”Really a disaster.”"
"The ”armada” that President Trump said he was sending to deter North Korea still hasn’t arrived  —   and it has thousands more miles to cover if it actually does sail to the Korean Peninsula. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its strike group actually sailed south after U. S. Pacific Command announced April 8 that it was canceling the ships’ planned visit to Australia and instead ordering them to ”sail north and report on station to the Western Pacific Ocean.” The Navy posted an official photograph dated April 15 that showed the Carl Vinson in an Indonesian strait thousands of miles south of North Korea. The carrier and its companions could still make their way back to the Korean Peninsula, which they last visited in March, but U. S. defense officials generally decline to describe the deployments of American military units before the fact. News organizations around the world, including NPR, covered the statements by Trump and other officials in Washington about the Carl Vinson’s deployment as though the ships were bearing down on North Korea. The narrative last week was that the U. S. and its allies in the western Pacific were gearing up for a showdown with strongman Kim Jong Un ahead of the anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. ”We are sending an armada, very powerful,” Trump told Fox Business News, warning that Kim Jong Un ”is doing the wrong thing.” Other nations were said to be joining in. News reports said Japan was planning to deploy its own destroyers to form up with the Carl Vinson and its U. S. escorts, the destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer and Michael Murphy and the cruiser USS Lake Champlain. That could still happen, but the potential flashpoint that many expected over the weekend has passed: North Korea attempted to fire a ballistic missile early Sunday, but it exploded very soon after launch. It did not conduct a nuclear weapons test or attempt an attack on South Korea or Japan, which might have prompted a military crisis. Defense News’   naval correspondent Christopher P. Cavas was first to report Monday about the Navy’s post that revealed the Carl Vinson nowhere near the Korean Peninsula. It isn’t clear yet whether the storyline about the Carl Vinson was the product of deliberate deception by the Navy, defense officials in Washington or the White House, or whether internal miscommunication within the government might have turned the snowball into the avalanche. But as part of its regular updates about the operations of the strike group after it sailed from Singapore, the Navy posted photos of ships and aircraft along with captions describing them as underway in ”the South China Sea.” The South China Sea technically extends south of Singapore and flows among the islands that make up Indonesia before it becomes the Java Sea. So although the Navy’s details might have been accurate, they never specified where in the South China Sea, or in which direction the ships were sailing. NPR National Security Editor Philip Ewing answered questions about this story in a Facebook Live video. Watch it here:"
"When you’re facing a major life change, it helps to talk to someone who’s already been through it. All Things Considered is connecting people on either side of a shared experience, and they’re letting us eavesdrop on their conversations in our series Been There. Tor Des Roches is right in the middle of a long,   process. It started years ago, when, as a teenager, he started to have the feeling that he didn’t identify as female  —   his sex at birth. At the time, he didn’t want to say he was transgender. ”I just always kept assuming that, oh, it’s just a phase, it’s just a phase,” he says. ”It was just one of those things that I was really hoping would go away.” The feeling didn’t go away, and Tor struggled to accept it. He suffered from an eating disorder, partly, he says, because he didn’t want to have a woman’s figure. Eventually, he did come to terms with his gender identity. He came out as trans to close friends and family, wore men’s clothes and started going by Tor instead of the name he was given at birth. But the person Tor saw in the mirror didn’t match the person he felt like. And he decided that this year, at age 24, he would have sex reassignment surgery and start taking testosterone. It’s a big step, and he was nervous, he says. ”Is this gonna make me a different person? Or is my attitude gonna change?” Tor talked about some of those concerns with Julian Harris. His transition from female to male began eight years ago. Julian says he remembers being frustrated that the changes didn’t take effect immediately. ”One day you’re getting sir’d and he’d, and the next day you’re getting she’d and her’d,” he says. On becoming less   after physically transitioning, I stopped trying to overcompensate. And what I mean by that is, before I started my physical transition, I went overboard with my mannerisms. I had to be this kind of    person: the way I walked, trying not to gesture too much. And once those changes took hold and I was being seen by the world as who I really was, I didn’t have to do that anymore. On keeping reasonable expectations, Be mindful of those triggers that can get you in that place of despair or suffering, because the things that you might have some insecurities about now may still be there. And so, you know, [be] able to take care of yourself, to make sure that you’ll be OK regardless. On discrimination he’s faced since transitioning, People see me as a threat, you know, as a black man. I think I’m very  . I’m always smiling. I wear glasses. But sometimes I’ll walk down the street and people will cross, or people will clutch their bags a little tighter, or pull their kids to them. It’s funny, I can be on a packed bus sometimes, and no one will sit next to me. You know, there’s this male privilege, though, that’s been bestowed upon me. So, if I go to the sports bar and I have my little sports analysis, people listen to me. You know, before they didn’t. You know, safety  —   I feel if I’m walking home late at night, I’m not concerned about a sexual assault. So you get a little, and then you lose a little."
"Last November, exit pollsters asked almost 14, 000   voters for the first time, ”Do you think that police departments treat racial and ethnic groups equally?” It was one of four questions the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund was tracking among voters in the   racial group in the U. S. Other topics included gun control, LGBT discrimination and immigration, but the issue of police accountability resulted in the most divisive answers. Overall, half of the   voters who participated said they did not think that racial and ethnic groups are treated equally, according to poll results. That sentiment was strongest among majorities of     and those of Korean or   descent. At 32 percent,   and   however, showed the highest levels of responses saying that police treatment is equal. These groups also had the highest share of voters who said they ”don’t know.” The divisions continued between generations. A strong majority of the youngest   voters, ages 18 to 29, cited unequal treatment by police, while that view dropped to 32 percent among   age 70 and older. Jerry Vattamala, who manages AALDEF’s exit polling, says the generational divide may reflect differences in how police encounters are depicted on ethnic media outlets. ”Things sometimes may be covered differently depending on who’s involved  —   whether it’s somebody from the community, whether it’s the police officer or the person who had the interaction with the police officer,” he says. Before 2016, AALDEF had not asked questions about policing in its exit polls, which started in 1988. But Vattamala says the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and   cases involving Asians and policing  —   such as the cases of former NYPD Officer Peter Liang and Sureshbhai Patel, a grandfather from India who was injured by a Alabama police officer  —   made the topic especially relevant last November. The relationship between   and law enforcement most recently came to the forefront when cell phone video surfaced of security officers dragging David Dao, a   doctor, off a United Airlines flight in Chicago. ”  as they become a growing part of this country, they will inevitably become involved in these interactions,” says Vattamala, who adds that AALDEF may ask more questions about policing in exit polls of   voters this November."
"Updated: 2:19 p. m. ET, By all accounts, President Trump did not win the   vote in 2016. But the size of Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory with voters in the   racial group in the U. S. depends upon which exit poll you rely. The National Exit Poll, funded by the major national media organizations, shows that Clinton won roughly   (65 percent) of   votes, while Trump received just over a quarter (27 percent) according to pollsters at Edison Research.   support for Clinton was even more pronounced, though, in exit polling by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or AALDEF, which provided NPR a preview of its latest report. According to AALDEF’s poll, Clinton’s support was closer to winning      voters (79 percent) with just 18 percent for Trump. The difference in the results lies, in large part, because of how the polling was conducted. AALDEF surveyed close to 14, 000   voters, more than 14 times the number of   participants in Edison Research’s poll. While Edison Research conducted polling in English and Spanish, AALDEF used questionnaires written in English and 11 Asian languages including Chinese, Bengali, Korean, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, plus volunteers who could speak 23 Asian languages and dialects. Similar to a Latino Decisions exit poll of Hispanic voters, the wider sample and the wider variety of languages likely means the AALDEF exit poll is more accurate. At 18 percent, Trump fared slightly worse with the   vote than Mitt Romney, who won 21 percent in 2012, and John McCain, who won 23 percent in 2008, according to previous exit polling by AALDEF. But the   split last year remained fairly similar compared to those of the last two presidential elections, proving once again that   as a whole vote for Democratic candidates in national elections. Clinton received her strongest support from South   voters, including those of Pakistani, Bangladeshi,   and Indian descent. A greater share of   Republican voters (20 percent) did cross party lines to vote for the Democratic candidate compared to 2012 (13 percent) and 2008 (17 percent). Trump also saw a drop in support from   voters, historically a base of Republican support among the   electorate. While 54 percent supported Romney and 67 percent supported McCain, Trump only won 32 percent of the   vote. Jerry Vattamala, who runs AALDEF’s exit polling, attributes these shifts to Trump’s campaign rhetoric targeting immigrants and Muslims. ”There was a big departure from the established party stances on policies that have been in place for decades. Then, there was the specific targeting of Asian countries like China,” said Vattamala, director of AALDEF’s democracy program. Still, while Clinton received the majority of votes among   born in and outside of the U. S. Trump received a greater share of votes from   voters (22 percent) than from those born in the U. S. (8 percent). It’s a sign of the nuances within a diverse and growing voting group that, Vattamala says, saw unprecedented outreach efforts from presidential campaigns last year despite its relatively small size compared to other racial groups. Support from   has been a challenge for the Republican Party and could continue to be so in the coming years. Trump won an Electoral College victory last November, but lost the popular vote.   preferred Clinton by a   margin. Looking ahead, the economy and jobs are the most important issues   voters want the Trump administration and Congress to work on. The exit poll also found that a majority supports stricter   laws an overhaul of immigration laws that includes a path to citizenship and laws protecting LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. (A fissure point among   voters was a question about police accountability, which drew the sharpest divisions between different ethnic and age groups.) ”The parties and candidates will be well served to make sure that the voters are being treated in a fair way and having their needs addressed,” Vattamala says. ”Especially in these swing states and in close races,   can very well be the difference in who wins and who loses.”"
"Pedro Hernandez was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison for killing Etan Patz. The    former store clerk was also given 25 years to life for kidnapping, with both sentences to run concurrently. It was a different time when the    walked alone to catch the school bus in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood on May 25, 1979. His disappearance sparked decades of investigation and helped create a generation of wary parents. Hernandez confessed to the murder in 2012, saying he lured the little boy with the promise of a soda. He said once he got the child into the basement of the neighborhood store where Hernandez worked, he choked him and left his body in a box on the curb. Patz’s body has never been found. Hernandez’s lawyers argued their client is mentally ill and made false confessions under police pressure. A previous trial for Hernandez ended in a mistrial in 2015. In February, he was found guilty of   murder and   kidnapping. Patz became one of the first missing children to be pictured on milk cartons. And his case helped launch a national hotline for missing children. The anniversary of his disappearance, May 25, is designated as National Missing Children’s Day."
"Republicans are trying to prevent a political tremor from happening Tuesday night just north of Atlanta that would be a blow to President Trump and a boon to the rising Democratic opposition to him. Polls have closed in a closely watched Georgia special election that Democrats have tried to turn into a referendum on Trump. If Democrat Jon Ossoff is able to top 50 percent in Tuesday’s   primary featuring 18 candidates, he’ll win outright here. As results trickle in, it’s looking close. Ossoff’s victory was thought impossible months ago. This is a district, after all, that was held for two decades by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and for the past 12 years by Tom Price, an   champion, who vacated the seat when he was appointed as Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary. While an outright Ossoff win Tuesday night still remains improbable, it’s no longer thought to be impossible. Still, given the Republican leanings of this district, and a strong push from GOP outside groups, an outright win Tuesday might be Ossoff’s best chance at winning the seat. ”I’m very concerned,” said Tom Boyle, a    retiree from Roswell, Ga. as he was making calls at a Republican phone bank on Monday afternoon. The stakes are high for both parties. If Republicans lose, it would send a warning signal to the Trump White House ahead of next year’s midterms, as Republicans look to hold onto control of Congress  —   and Trump’s agenda. But if Democrats can’t win, either now or in a June runoff, given all the money and resources poured into the contest, it will raise questions about their ability to compete in the types of districts they’ll need to win back the House, beginning with one like this in Georgia. ”A chance to make a statement” Ossoff, a    documentary filmmaker and former Capitol Hill aide, has raised   amounts of money (much of it from outside the state) and captured national attention. ”The eyes of the whole country are on us right now,” Ossoff told volunteers gathered Saturday evening to canvass at his Chamblee campaign office. ”The eyes of the world are on us right now. We are the first up to bat in the country with a chance to make a statement about what we stand for.” Sensing opportunity, Democrats have poured in resources  —   and the race has drawn celebrity attention. Actor Samuel L. Jackson, for example, cut a radio ad supporting Ossoff, warning, ”Remember what happened the last time people stayed home  —   we got stuck with Trump.” Actress Alyssa Milano helped drive early voters to the polls. The Democratic congressional hopeful didn’t mention the president by name in addressing his supporters, and some of his ads don’t either. In fact, some of them don’t mention his party affiliation at all and tick off some downright   ideas, such as cutting spending, boosting infrastructure and attracting more local tech jobs. Some of his ads do take explicit aim at Trump though, with one trolling him for his rabid tweeting habit and another where he promises to hold the president accountable. In a brief interview with NPR after an afternoon canvass launch Saturday, Ossoff admitted that the race had somewhat taken on a life of its own, but he continued to stress many of the local issues at the core of his economic message. He maintained he can win outright, but if that doesn’t happen, his strategy won’t change. ”A win on Tuesday is certainly within reach, and special elections are always unpredictable,” Ossoff said. ”If we don’t clear 50, we’ll be able to fight and win in a runoff.” Democrats are trying to capitalize on Trump’s unpopularity, and this is one of the first chances for them to take out their frustrations with his presidency. Giving Democrats hope is that even though this is a   district, it isn’t exactly Trump country. While Price was easily   with more than 60 percent of the vote, Trump won the district by less than 2 points. It’s indicative of the kind of place Trump struggled throughout the country  —   rapidly growing, diverse and   suburbs, where Republicans usually do well. The president himself underscored the importance of the race  —   and the possible blowback a loss could have for his own political capital. He recorded a   robocall against Ossoff and poked Democrats with at least four tweets in the last day about the race: The election comes on the heels of a    finish for a Democrat in a special election in a very Republican district in Kansas last week  —   something Democrats hope portends well in this more moderate district. That result may have also helped to wake up Republicans, who hope that late attacks on Ossoff  —   tying him to the national party and pointing out the bulk of the $8. 3 million he has raised has come from out of state  —   have at least stunted his rise in the polls. That may be why even    Republicans here were on message, toeing the party line, in the final hours. Boyle, for example, described Ossoff as ”the man who’s being bankrolled by the West Coast. When people out of state start throwing in $6 million to $8 million, I get worried. I don’t like outsiders dictating what we do in Georgia.” Ossoff is one of five Democrats on the ballot Tuesday, but the national party lined up quickly behind him, in large part due to the strong support he had from the district’s neighboring congressmen, Reps. John Lewis and Hank Johnson. Ossoff himself actually lives just outside the district (though he grew up in it). Republicans have hammered him on that fact and claimed he has tried to inflate his resume and the   work he did as an aide for Johnson. They’ve tried to highlight his age, too. Ossoff and his supporters argue fresh, young blood isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro was on hand to help Ossoff on Saturday, and he was quick to underscore the national implications of the race on Tuesday and beyond, especially in the wake of that Kansas special election last week, where the Democratic candidate outperformed Trump by 20 points in the district. ”For everyone out there who is a little bit uncomfortable with the idea that the Republicans control everything, especially with a president that is so erratic, the best way to make sure that we can have some balance is to make sure that the Democrats take back the House,” Castro said  —   an effort he underscored began on Tuesday. For Democrats shocked by last November’s results, Ossoff’s campaign has become a vehicle for them to try to effect change. Megan   33, was one of the many volunteers who came out on Saturday to campaign for Ossoff on a warm spring day, ready to knock on doors even though she was heavily pregnant and due in three weeks. ”We’re having our first baby, a daughter, and, you know, it’s just been on the back of our minds  —   what kind of world is she going to live in? And I don’t want it to be the world that I think that President Trump is creating,”   said. Can Republicans divided become united? Republicans vying to take on Ossoff here are reflecting the broader national divide among the GOP. They’ve been hampered by splits within their own base, which is choosing among 11 GOP candidates. It’s become something of a circular firing squad among the Republican hopefuls. But many of them aren’t exactly running away from the president, despite the middling results he got here last November. Former Johns Creek City Councilman Bob Gray, one of the leading GOP contenders, has pictures of Trump plastered across his main field office, along with the president’s signs that read ”Make America Great Again” and ”America First.” In an interview Friday night after a canvass kickoff, Gray praised the president for being a ”disrupter” in Washington, and said he wanted to go to D. C. to be his ally. ”He needs willing partners in Congress to be there with him to try and affect that agenda, and I intend to do so,” Gray said. He has been endorsed by the   Club for Growth, which is attacking his chief rival, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, as a career politician  —   the same moniker Trump was able to successfully apply to some of his own GOP primary rivals. In fact, on the GOP side, it’s almost a similar scenario that played out during the 2016 presidential race happening  —   many different Republican candidates occupying different parts of the GOP ideological spectrum fighting among themselves. There have been shots lobbed among the top Republican contenders during the campaign at each other as much as at Ossoff. Nevertheless, Republicans maintain they’ll eventually come together. ”If you don’t have a muddy, bloody fight in a Republican primary, you haven’t had a Republican primary in this state. But we always get back together,” said Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul, a former Georgia GOP chairman who was campaigning Monday morning with Handel at the Egg Harbor Cafe. Still, he said he’ll support whoever ends up against Ossoff. Handel, who has high name ID from several unsuccessful statewide runs, has come in second in most polls and said she feels good about her chances. And while other rivals have attacked her as a career politician, she argued that’s an asset, not a liability. ”Our folks, it just took them a little more time to make their minds up because we believe in competition,” Handel said, hitting Democrats for ”coronating” Ossoff. ”And we’ve had a very spirited, competitive primary on our side.” While Handel said she’s supportive of the president, she’s not exactly wearing it on her sleeve like Gray and other candidates are. ”This race is not about President Trump,” she said. ”This race is about who is the best suited to to be the next congressman.” Dalton State College students Jacob Ledford and Wesley Ross were canvassing on Saturday for former state Sen. Dan Moody, who has been endorsed by Sen. David Perdue. He’s another candidate who could make the runoff, along with state Sen. Judson Hill  —   who has the backing of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who once represented parts of the district, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who won this district in the GOP presidential primary. After knocking on door after door, Ledford and Ross were getting a lot of people not home or who didn’t want to talk about the race  —   a common theme both sides are hearing in the closing days, with voters simply fed up with incessant calls and door knocks. They recalled how Democrats have boasted about turning Georgia blue before and have put up   candidates in recent elections  —   Jason Carter, the grandson of former president Jimmy Carter, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2014, while Michelle Nunn, daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn, lost to Perdue the same year. ”Republicans always get behind their candidate we get out to vote, and that’s something the other side struggles with a lot,” said Ross. But as they were crossing the streets in a neighborhood in Alpharetta, they spied some Ossoff canvassers nearby  —   underscoring the massive presence the Democratic   has been able to build in the district with his army of volunteers and paid staff. Special elections  —   imperfect predictors? In some recent political cycles, special elections have been harbingers of things to come, and that’s what Democrats hope Tuesday ends up being. In January 2010, Republican Scott Brown campaigned against the health care bill and ended up winning the Massachusetts special Senate election to succeed the late Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy  —   foreshadowing major losses for Democrats that fall. But they’re not always perfect predictors, either. Democrat Mark Critz won a special election in Pennsylvania in May 2010, giving his party hope going into the midterms. Democrats, however, would lose 63 House seats that cycle. But what special elections can be are snapshots in time to gauge how an issue is playing with the electorate. And for Democrats, the Georgia race is an important test of whether their months of marches and protests can translate into real votes at the ballot box. If Ossoff does win  —   either on Tuesday or in two months  —   he’ll have a major target on his back from Republicans in 2018. But a victory would still fire up the Democratic grass roots and send a warning shot to already worried Republicans about the midterms, when the president’s party typically loses an average of 29 seats. Democrats need 24 seats to take back the House next fall  —   23 if Ossoff wins. However, if all their money and hype fall short, it may be back to the drawing board for a party already perplexed by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump despite all her money and staff  —   just like Ossoff has managed to corral."
"Updated at 2:15 p. m. ET, A nationwide manhunt for a suspect who allegedly shot an elderly man dead in Cleveland and then uploaded it to Facebook has ended with the man shooting and killing himself in Pennsylvania’s Erie County. ”Steve Stephens was spotted this morning by [Pennsylvania State Police] members in Erie County,” the state police said on its Twitter account. ”After a brief pursuit, Stephens shot and killed himself.” Authorities had been offering up to $50, 000 for information leading to the arrest of the    Stephens, who was wanted over the apparently random killing of    Robert Godwin Sr. Local, state and federal authorities were involved in the hunt for Stephens, who was said to be driving a white Ford Fusion with a temporary tag. Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said the state police got a tip that the vehicle was in a McDonald’s parking lot. Stephens fled when officers arrived and gave chase. Shortly afterward, he took his own life. ”We are grateful that this has ended,” Williams told reporters Tuesday. ”We would like to have brought Steve in peacefully, and really talked to him and find out exactly why this happened. Because there might be other people out there in similar situations that we can help by finding out why he did what he did and what drove him to this.” He said authorities will continue the investigation, which remains in the early stages. During the manhunt, Stephen D. Anthony, special agent in charge of the FBI in Cleveland, said, ”There’s not a federal agency in the United States that is not involved in some way.” Authorities received more than 400 tips from the public related to Stephens. Facebook says the suspect allegedly uploaded a video at 11:09 a. m. local time on Sunday declaring his intent to commit murder. A video uploaded two minutes later appears to show him gunning down Godwin. Eleven minutes after that, according to the social media site, he broadcast a live video of himself confessing to the murder. In a timeline of the events, Facebook says the video of the shooting was visible to the public for more than two hours and was taken down 23 minutes after it was first reported. ”As a result of this terrible series of events, we are reviewing our reporting flows to be sure people can report videos and other material that violates our standards as easily and quickly as possible,” Facebook’s vice president of global operations, Justin Osofsky, said in a statement Monday evening. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that ”our hearts go out to the family and friends of Robert Godwin Sr. and we have a lot of work and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening.” Regarding the chilling video, Williams said Tuesday, ”This is something that should not have been shared around the world. Period. . .. We can’t do this in this country.” As The   reported, police said that Stephens ”claimed to have committed multiple other homicides, which are still not verified.” Authorities said Tuesday that they have not found any additional victims. The Associated Press reported that Stephens’ life ”appeared to be unraveling under the weight of gambling debts and trouble with his girlfriend.” He worked as a ”vocational specialist involved in preparing youth and young adults ages   for employment,” according to the wire service."
"After three years of confusion and chaos, Flint, Mich. residents may go back to the water source they used before lead contamination showed up in their drinking water. In a press conference today, Mayor Karen Weaver recommended the city get its water from Detroit’s system  . Flint was using Detroit water before switching in April 2014 to water from the Flint River as a   measure. Using Flint River water was characterized as a temporary switch until the city’s pipeline connecting to the Karegnondi Water Authority was complete. City officials didn’t immediately treat the river water to ensure it didn’t corrode pipes. Tests in 2015 showed elevated lead levels in the city water supply, and Flint switched back to Detroit water  —   but many pipes had already been corroded, and leached lead, because of the untreated water. The recommendation to stick with Detroit water (now known as the Great Lakes Water Authority) which Flint has been using since switching back in October 2015, is a reversal of the mayor’s previous plan. In November, Weaver told the Environmental Protection Agency that Flint planned to use KWA water, but the EPA insisted on a number of upgrades before it would permit the city to do that. As a condition of the $100 million federal grant the city was awarded last month to fund drinking water infrastructure upgrades, The Associated Press reports that Flint was required to reevaluate the decision to use KWA water: ”Nine options were explored, and Weaver said staying with the Great Lakes Water Authority under a new   contract and using the local county as a backup would be the cheapest, costing $269 million over 20 years. Flint estimates it would save $58 million by not upgrading its own troubled water plant, more when it is closed operationally. The savings could be used to instead update other infrastructure in the aging and deteriorating system, including replacing lead service lines.” In a statement, Weaver said the decision was based on a number of factors, including public health and fiscal responsibility. (Weaver was elected mayor in November 2015, after vowing to fix the city’s water problems.) ”Continuing with GLWA means Flint would not have to switch water sources again,” Weaver said. ”This will help protect residents from any issues that could occur and it would eliminate the fears or anxieties people may have about another major change taking place with our water.” There will be a   comment period before the proposal goes to the city council for approval, according to the AP. As NPR’s Merrit Kennedy reported last month, recent tests showed lead levels in the water to be within federal limits, but ”residents are still advised to use filters. Many still don’t trust water coming from the tap and prefer to drink bottled water.”"
"This Saturday, April 22, people from around the country will gather in Washington, D. C. to join the March for Science (there will also be satellite marches in many cities). After the march was first announced, I wrote on some of the issues it raised about politics and science  —   and why I was planning to attend. (I will be attending the march and will be giving a ” ” with planetary scientists David Grinspoon and Ellen Stofan titled Climate Change and the Cosmic Perspective.) The piece generated a lot of conversations online and in person. One of the people I spoke with was Kathleen Rogers, the president of Earth Day Network, an organization taking a lead role in staging the march. (Earth Day is also April 22 this year.) Rogers is an attorney who has spent 20 years focusing on environmental public policy and law. I thought it would be good to ask Rogers  —   who has held senior positions with the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Law Institute, and two U. S. Olympic organizing committees  —   about the links between Saturday’s event and Earth Day in general, as well as economics and the angry state of U. S. scientists. What follows is an edited version of our conversation. So how is the Science March different from the yearly Earth Day activities? Well, let’s face it. There is no Earth Day without science. But we should really go back to before 1970 and that first Earth Day. If it weren’t for the deep science that was giving us the warnings about our air and our water back then, there wouldn’t have been an Earth Day. I’m a student of the Industrial Revolution. By 1970,   years of industrial society had left a long trail. It was in the decade or so before 1970 that people recognized the links between asthma and air pollution and water quality and disease. So the science started piling on until people couldn’t ignore it. I don’t mean people like you, or me, but the people in Congress. The people in charge of making laws, There wasn’t a big environmental community back then. Before Earth Day there were basically just movements for conservation, which was about preserving species either for hunting or for using as some kind of natural resource. Earth Day marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement, which also had a big focus on public health, and all of it was driven by science. So what does your organization, Earth Day Network, do? Earth Day Network was born out of the first Earth Day. We mainly focus on   programs. One of the centerpieces of our work is environmental education. We’re now in 192 countries and have, for example, three offices in India. We work all year long on things like the green economy, renewable energy and other issues depending on local needs. Where does your funding come from? The usual suspects: individuals foundations sometimes the federal government sometimes corporations give us money to work on different things. We’ve also worked with cities to create environmental curricula. So how is it connected to the March for Science? We’ll, we’re heading toward the 50th anniversary of Earth Day  —   and last year we came up with five themes we wanted to work on as we head to that milestone. One of these was reforestation. We’ll be working with governments around the world to plant 7. 8 billion trees, one for each person on the planet in 2020. But another theme we’re working on is global climate and science literacy. The reason we’re doing this is threefold. There’s information you want people to have about what’s really happening with climate. Then there’s the value people get from understanding this is happening. And finally  —   and I’m a huge fan of this  —   it’s about jobs. So when the idea of the March for Science came up, it just seemed to fit in with our own priorities. The march organizers and we ended up in getting in contact. Your point about jobs is interesting. Environmentalism often gets tagged as being  . Oh my God. We’re not that at all. This harkens back to my obsession with the Industrial Revolution. I had a   who was an inventor. He was a good friend of Alexander Graham Bell. Really? That’s cool. What did he invent? He had a bunch of patents. He invented carbon paper, underground cabling and other things. His name was Lebbeus H. Rogers look him up. Anyway, because of that history in my family, we’re all students of the Industrial Revolution. And you know what happened back then. There were a bunch of people inventing things in their garages  —   just like now. The U. S. ended up owning a lot of the technology back then because we were the ones inventing it. We became a superpower in part because of those inventions. But because I work all over the world, I’m now seeing countries move ahead of us with technology. It’s incredibly frustrating. So when people say the march is political, it sounds like you’re saying no  —   but it is economic. It’s like we’re giving up the Industrial Revolution to China or some other country. The people who own this [green] technology will end up owning the world just like in the Industrial Revolution. And whether anyone likes it or not, the world is heading in that [renewables] direction. So it makes no sense from a business perspective. For solar and wind the market numbers are stunning. So why aren’t we owning it? Earth Day is about that, too. India, Oman, Italy, Morocco and all these other countries that are moving in the direction of [renewable energy systems] are interested in promoting environmental, climate and technology education. Why are they doing this? Because they want investments. They see all of it in terms of jobs for the future. So whether you’re talking about health or jobs or landscape values, mining coal and burning oil is just so 1800s. It’s like refusing to give up the horse and buggy for the car. If you want to create the next generation of Carnegies, Rockefellers and Edisons you have to go this way  —   or you are going to lose. Some people fear the march will politicize science. What do you see going on out there in people’s motivation for the march? Well, for years scientists have worked both behind and in front of the scenes when it comes to policy. What’s happening now is unique and different. Hell has no fury like a scientist whose integrity is questioned. These folks aren’t making hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re not billionaires. They’re working at government rates so to speak. They are giving their lives to their work and have one thing to hang on to  —   the truth and their integrity. And it’s the backbone of American science and technology we’re talking about here. It’s not just lab people, but everyone from computer programmers to people working on cancer. All these people, they’re not happy being called liars. And they’re not my constituency. I mean we have lots of scientists involved in our work, but what’s motivating this march goes way beyond us. The people who are talking about the march go way beyond the usual environmental crowd. So what I see is it’s more than just about shutting down climate satellites. We need to take care of the science in this country  —   or the scientists, especially the young ones, will just go somewhere else to do their work. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"This Tax Day, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer launched a new tool designed to make government spending and revenue more accessible to the average citizen. The website  —   USAFacts. org  —   has been slow and buggy for users on Tuesday, apparently due to the level of traffic. It offers interactive graphics showing data on revenue, spending, demographics and program missions. For example, the site prominently features an infographic created to break down revenue and spending in 2014. Revenue is broken down by origin spending is broken down by what ”mission” of government it serves, based on the functions laid out in the Constitution. It’s a   view of where U. S. tax dollars come from, and how they’re spent. But click on a subcategory and you’re taken to a more detailed, granular view of that spending. Ballmer didn’t create the site because he was an expert on government data. Quite the opposite, according to The New York Times’ Dealbook. The Times says that Ballmer’s wife was pushing her   husband to get more involved in philanthropy. Ballmer said  —   according to his own memory, as he described the conversation to the Times  —   ”But come on, doesn’t the government take care of the poor, the sick, the old?” Ballmer’s wife suggested there was more to the story than he understood. So Ballmer tried to look up exactly how much money the government had, and how it spent it, and how effective those programs were. Surely it was out there somewhere, he thought. He started with a search on Bing (former Microsoft CEO, remember). Then he tried Google. When it turned out no   way of accessing that data existed, Ballmer decided to spend millions of dollars creating it. Wired notes that Ballmer’s site is not the first attempt to bring this kind of data to the people. On the bureaucratic side, Wired writes, ”[The] government launched Data. gov in 2009 to centralize its stats, and President Obama passed the DATA Act in 2014 to get   standards up to snuff.” On the startup side, there’s OpenGov, ”which also tries to organize and parse government data.” But the tech site argues that Ballmer’s project stands out for its use of custom graphics to make abstract, complex numbers quickly comprehensible. The site says it is ”factual and unbiased” and doesn’t ”make judgments or prescribe specific policies.” Ballmer, for his part, ”said he wanted the project to be completely apolitical” and ”has given money to candidates on both sides of the aisle,” the Times reports. But data never exists in a vacuum, and as Wired says, ”infographics are inherently editorialized.” Still, the site avoids taking positions on policy. ”Whether government money is spent wisely or not, whether our quality of life is improving or getting worse  —   that’s for you to decide,” the website says. ”We hope to spur serious, reasoned, and informed debate on the purpose and functions of government.”"
"When President Trump says that if China doesn’t help solve the North Korea problem, ”we will solve the problem without them,” or hints at rewarding Beijing if it makes Pyongyang behave, people understandably focus on what (if anything) that says about U. S. intentions. Meanwhile, Vice President Pence’s comments at the Demilitarized Zone Monday  —   emphasizing the American ”resolve” demonstrated in Syria and Afghanistan, and saying that China needs to apply more pressure on Pyongyang  —   suggest that there’s no real disagreement on goals, just on who will take the hard steps to get there. But we should also ask what it would mean to ”solve” North Korea from China’s perspective and how likely it is that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government could do so. Beijing has no affection for Kim Jong Un the apparent murder of the North Korean leader’s   Kim Jong Nam  —   who spent years in Macao and had good relations with Chinese officials  —   made a tense relationship worse. China would prefer a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, especially if South Korea then gave up on deploying the U. S.  THAAD missile defense system. By contrast, an enlarged North Korean nuclear arsenal, likely to lead to further militarization in South Korea and Japan, conflicts with Chinese goals war on the peninsula would be disastrous. So Beijing is tightening some screws: refusing coal shipments (which earn North Korea scarce foreign exchange) talking about cutting off oil shipments, which would probably be devastating for Pyongyang and arresting some people involved in smuggling. But overall,   Korea trade  —   which accounts for 85 percent of Pyongyang’s total trade  —   is up significantly from last year, despite Kim’s provocations, and components recovered from some Korean missile tests suggest Chinese origins. Not surprisingly, some Americans see this as proving that Beijing must be pressed harder, so it will press harder. It’s not that simple  —   for some little reasons, and a big one. Beijing’s hard choices  Most of China’s giant   enterprises have scant involvement with North Korea they have too many interests elsewhere to risk getting sanctioned in pursuit of limited profits. Smaller firms more often find smuggling worth the risk, and Beijing often cannot control them, because local authorities protect them. This reflects something about China that many Westerners miss: The People’s Republic is much less centralized in practice than it may appear to be. At any given moment, Beijing can set a few top priorities and get very impressive   enforcement of them  —   think, for instance, of compulsory birth control. But the price of energetic local implementation on those issues is that Beijing looks the other way on many others. This arrangement is born of historical contingencies, but by now it is   into the system. Often Beijing even uses it positively, as it allows room for local experiments that can be disavowed if they fail. But it also has much to do with the regime’s endemic corruption, and with its slow response to widespread complaints about pollution, to name just two problems, which both reflect often close ties between local officials and profitable businesses. Hiding even basic data from superiors is common. And once we see Beijing as having to make hard choices about the issues on which it will press hard for full compliance, it is not surprising that North Korean sanctions do not top the list. Perhaps they would, some   suggest, if Beijing saw that Kim threatened its security as much as, say, corruption at home. And the bellicose talk on both sides of the dispute clearly has alarmed China. But that doesn’t mean that weakening Kim is their preferred path forward. North Korea’s weakness as a strength, Here the bigger problem comes into view. Kim has the strength of weakness: that is, he can be uncooperative without worrying too much about being cut off, precisely because China knows his regime is vulnerable and does not want it to collapse. (The country does not face a famine like that of the 1990s, but cutoffs of strategic goods might cause a political meltdown.) If Kim’s government did fold, huge numbers of refugees would go to China. Even if a   transition was fairly orderly, it would very likely lead to a united, U. S.  Korea bordering China: also a very unwelcome prospect for Beijing. And if the transition wasn’t orderly  —   a more likely scenario  —   nightmares galore could follow. There would likely be a scramble among military factions for control of North Korea’s existing nuclear weapons  —   which could easily draw in South Korean, U. S. and Chinese troops without clear lines to separate them,   lead some North Korean group that became desperate either to use the nukes before losing them or unleash the huge conventional arsenal targeted at Seoul. Further escalation might then follow. In the longer run, while Beijing could live with a unified Korea that emerged peacefully and distanced itself from the U. S. it is hard to see how either of those conditions could be guaranteed. Thus preserving North Korea while hoping for some combination of reform, denuclearization and recognition  —   the path that seemed open for a while in the ’90s  —   no doubt still strikes China as more promising than any scenario that involves enforcing truly comprehensive sanctions. Kim knows this, of course, which means he knows that Beijing will probably not risk weakening him too much. It’s a relationship Americans should recognize, since Washington has often helped sustain governments that it could not reform: South Vietnam and the Karzai government in Afghanistan are two particularly painful examples. Patron threatens to cut client’s lifeline client threatens to die patron backs down repeat periodically. For Kim, it’s a risky game of chicken, but not a crazy one  —   apparently less crazy, in his view, than facing American hostility without a nuclear deterrent. The analogy of Beijing’s relationship with Pyongyang and Washington’s relationship with Saigon is, of course, inexact  —   but not in particularly comforting ways. The South Vietnamese behavior that drove Washington did so because it prevented Saigon from ever winning the domestic support to stand on its own. Pyongyang, by contrast, still seems very much in control politically and can apparently survive much worse popular suffering than its people are experiencing right now. However, it poses a far greater threat to others than Saigon ever did. The U. S. then, needs China to do better. But that requires jointly figuring out what mixture of carrots and sticks might work on Pyongyang itself, rather than expecting that Beijing will bring Pyongyang around for us if we just make it worth their while. Kenneth Pomeranz is university professor of history and East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago and a past president of the American Historical Association. His most recent book is The Cambridge World History (2015) for which he   the volumes covering the world since 1750."
"Vice President Pence, visiting Japan on his   tour of Asia, said the U. S. has launched bilateral talks with Tokyo in the hopes of reaching a new trade agreement. It was Pence’s second stop on the trip, which will later take him to Australia and Indonesia. He previously visited South Korea, where he emphasized the Trump administration’s ”resolve” on the North Korean nuclear threat, a theme he revisited in Japan as well. Trade was also a major topic of conversation. The initiation of new talks with Japan is meant, at least in part, to take the place of the   Partnership, The Associated Press reports, President Trump campaigned against the TPP, a   multilateral trade deal that former President Barack Obama supported. Soon after Trump took office, he pulled the U. S. out of the TPP  —   which needed all the signatory nations to ratify the deal. But the TPP isn’t necessarily dead, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports from Tokyo: ”Pence insisted that the U. S. is finished with the   Partnership agreement. ”It will instead seek a bilateral deal with Japan which it hopes will give US companies better access to its market. ”Japan, though, is unwilling to give up on the TPP, and it’s organizing other member nations to move ahead without the U. S.” Pence spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Finance Minister Taro Aso, among others. In talks with Aso, Pence was expected ”to push for greater access to Japan’s markets for U. S. companies, and for more Japanese investment in the U. S.,” Anthony says. But, as the AP notes, the new bilateral conversations aren’t yet diving into details: ”The talks Tuesday did not delve into    issues such as auto exports. With no U. S. trade representative yet in office and other key positions still unfilled, such   discussions will have to come later. ”The loss of U. S. participation in the   Partnership was a blow to Japan following strenuous negotiations, especially over opening its   farm sector to more imports, especially of dairy and meat products. ”For now, both sides seem eager to downplay potential for conflict, with Aso repeatedly saying that trade friction has been vanquished in a ’new era of cooperation.’ ”"
"Ever since election night last November, millions in America and around the world have wondered what happened to Hillary Clinton, who was widely expected to become the first female president of the United States. In fact, nearly everyone in the business of politics thought she would win, including many of Trump’s own people. So how did she lose? Providing that answer is the mission accepted by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign. It is by no means the last word on 2016, but Allen and Parnes must be regarded as early   in the race to make sense of it all. They saw and heard far more than most of us, exploring deep inside ”Clintonworld” in search of the real story. And in these pages, they share enough of what they witnessed to enable us to reach our own conclusions. There is no Big Reveal, no shocking secret answer. Instead we get a   case against the concept and execution of the Clinton campaign, with plenty of fault falling squarely on the candidate herself. Far from a juggernaut, the campaign we see in these pages is plagued with division, unease and anxiety practically from the outset. When things go right, it only means they are soon to go terribly wrong. Win a primary, lose a caucus. Quash a rumor, see three more go viral. Close one wound and find another torn open again. Among those wounds, the first cut is the deepest. The email stories that began in March 2015 never go away. First, it’s Clinton’s own private server, then the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the endless email dump stolen from campaign chairman John Podesta. Email becomes the   the campaign cannot shed. Whether anyone with Trump connections was colluding or complicit in the   caper or not, the continual media focus on email issues could scarcely have been more convenient for the Trump campaign. The authors also see lasting damage inflicted by her   rival Bernie Sanders’ challenge from the left. Sanders’ rather quixotic campaign not only tested Clinton, it played perfectly into Trump’s own critique of ”crooked Hillary” and his tactic of tying her to globalism and Wall Street. ”For both sides, Hillary was the perfect symbol of everything that was wrong with America,” the authors conclude. ”At times, Trump and Sanders would act as the right and left speakers of a stereo blaring a chorus on repeat: Hillary’s a corrupt insider who has helped rig the political and economic systems in favor of the powerful.” But in the end, Allen and Parnes contend, the worst blows Clinton suffered were  . If the controversies and corruption memes came to define her, they write, it was largely because she never managed to define herself. The Clinton we see here seems uniquely qualified for the highest office and yet acutely   to winning it. Something about her nature, at its best and its worst, continually inhibits her. Her struggle to escape her caricature only contributes to it. Clinton kept questioning her staff why she was losing   whites, her most loyal voters in 2008. ”Why aren’t they with me?” she asked during the 2016 primaries. ”Why can’t we bring them on board?’ ” Such uncertainty is a recurring theme. The book begins with Clinton searching for the right notes for her announcement speech, and it ends as she wrestles with a concession speech she never expected to give. In fact, the book often dwells on her problematic speech prep. All major politicians have ghostwriters, but Clinton had panels of them. Writers, consultants, script doctors and kibitzers crawl over every page and paragraph of her scripts  —   sometimes until just minutes before delivery. Where exactly is the candidate herself in all this messaging mélange? Does she have something she really wants to say? Everyone agrees she has plans for every policy problem in the world, but voters want to know what’s inside you. And they also want to know what’s in it for them. The tone of the   narrative is unsparing but not unsympathetic, noting campaign flaws and missteps without rue or recrimination. Having collaborated on a   profile of Clinton in 2014, the authors extended their research and sources for this insider account. We can readily imagine them setting out to write a very different book about the first female president. Instead, the authors often seem to be shaking their heads at the unforced errors, internal squabbles and media scrutiny that did in that dream. ”Hillary distributed power so broadly that none of her aides or advisors had control of the whole apparatus,” they write. We learn that campaign manager Robby Mook, the wunderkind whose heart belongs to data, pushes voter modeling and analytics and models, while pinching pennies on everything else. He clashes with more senior aides who want to invest in more conventional polling, field organizers and yard signs. He also crosses swords with campaign chairman John Podesta, who is twice his age and steeped in official Washington, an intimate adviser to both Clintons and President Barack Obama. We also feel the widely shared exasperation with Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime confidante. Abedin shields her boss from campaign stress, but also reinforces her penchant for privacy. The mystery of Abedin represents what is remote about Clinton herself. To be sure, such infighting has enlivened accounts of past campaigns, especially in the   Game Change, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s    about the political personality wars of 2008. But those personalities were more compelling and telegenic, calling out to turn themselves into the TV movie they became. (We may well see more of that sort of character when we turn to the internal tale of the Trump team.) This volume may not belong on the same shelf with the series of Theodore H. White classics (The Making of the President) from decades ago, or the quadrennial volumes by reporters Jules Witcover and Jack Germond, or the novelistic What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer. But Allen and Parnes offer a first bridge beyond the journalism of the campaign year to the scholarship of the historians and other scholars who will process all this material for generations to come. Clinton could hold on to enough of the contemporary Democratic Party to beat back Sanders and win the popular vote in November. But she had no answer to the populist appeal Trump enjoyed among white males and noncollege working people in general. Her extraordinary career prepared her to be president, but not to understand ordinary Americans. Ultimately, Allen and Parnes get inside the campaign but not inside the mind of Hillary Clinton. Much the same seems to have been true for most of her staff and, ultimately, the voters. Maybe we never really know the person we send to the White House, but we usually think we do. With Clinton, we never quite got there."
"Former Obama staffer Alyssa Mastromonaco is well acquainted with the privilege  —   and sleeplessness  —   of working in the White House: ”I basically ran on adrenaline, almost, for six years,” she says. Mastromonaco began as President Obama’s director of scheduling and advance, then became his deputy chief of staff for operations. Her responsibilities ran the gamut from overseeing the confirmation process for Cabinet secretaries to managing the president’s daily schedule and foreign travel. Mastromonaco remembers boarding Air Force One for the first time as a ”humbling,  ” experience. ”There is nothing like walking off the steps of Air Force One,” she says. ”You always feel so proud. . .. The reception, too, of other people in countries, when they see that beautiful blue and white plane, it always gives you goose bumps.” But, she adds, the presidential plane wasn’t always the most comfortable way to travel  —   especially on overnight flights. ”There aren’t beds for us on Air Force One,” Mastromonaco says. ”We had those Snuggies that you buy on QVC and we would sleep on the floor . .. and then you’d get up and everybody shares two bathrooms.” Though Mastromonaco loved her work for the president, the unrelenting pace took a toll on her. In 2014, she decided to move on. Now an executive at AE Networks, Mastromonaco revisits her White House years in a new memoir, Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? On being available at all hours  You always had to be available. When I became deputy chief of staff, [I] got a secure communications system that was in my bedroom, made it quite warm, because there was an actual server next to your bed and my apartment was not that big, but you could always be reached. Sometimes at 3 o’clock in the morning the red phone rings and it’s the situation room and something’s happened. . .. I could never say I was off, ever. On getting briefed about how to prepare for a national emergency situation, Oddly, it was very reassuring. When you sit down with the folks who again, from administration to administration, keep this process alive and have this information, you sit down and they brief you and you’re like, ”Oh wow, if something happens, actually everybody does know what to do. . .. I can’t believe I’m seeing what would happen if a nuclear missile was launched from X and how long it would take to get here and what happens,” but it is comforting to see that these processes are pretty well socialized. Everybody knows them. On protecting the president from threats, especially with modern technology  A lot of people, of course, compared us to President Clinton and how President Clinton got out more and he did these sort of sweeping, beautiful events like at the Grand Canyon when he would sign bills, and what people didn’t realize is that not only is Barack Obama the first   president, he was a    president, which is a totally different beast, and also it was the first presidency that was completely within the age of social media. . .. When people talk about the uptick of threats that the Secret Service would report, so much of that was because of the advent of Facebook and Twitter. It was easier to make the threats for people to count. So when we were first getting started, none of us wanted to ever put anyone at unnecessary risk. . .. But for us, there were a lot of grand ideas that people had one of them was having him do an event on the Triborough Bridge [in New York] and I knew that there was no way on earth that the Secret Service was going to allow that. . .. It’s just such a different world. Technology is so different. You can detonate a bomb with a cellphone we know that now. On knowing that it was time to leave her job, By about the end of 2012 I was in my office with [political strategist] David Plouffe and I was typing while I was talking to him, because I can do that, and he said, ”Alyssa what are you doing?” I’m like, ”What do you mean?” He’s like, ”None of the words on your computer screen are words.” I looked and it was just gibberish, basically. I realized that I wasn’t quite right, that something was off. . .. It turned out  —   they gave me a gross neurological exam  —   that I was basically functioning sort of on like 50 percent of my capacity and that I was very  . . .. It was a sign that I was probably coming to the end of my time and that I was so lucky to have had such incredible experiences, but maybe it was time for someone with fresh legs to take over and have the same experiences that I did. . .. I prided myself on being creative and being an ”idea machine,” and my ideas just weren’t flowing. I was becoming the person who sat at the table and when someone had an idea, I’d be the one who said, ”We did that, it didn’t work. We did that in 2011.” It was like I had too much memory, I had been there too long, and so I decided it was time for me to go, because I wanted to leave on a high note. . .. I was glad to decide on my own terms it was time to go, and it was a really nice  . Radio producers Sam Briger and Heidi Saman and Web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"A dollar. That’s all Esther Afua Ocloo needed to kickstart Ghana’s first food processing factory in 1942. She was a college student. And she was broke. So she used the money, a gift from her aunt, to buy some oranges, sugar, firewood and jam jars. She produced 12 pots of marmalade. And Nkulenu Industries was born. She sold the jam to her classmates, then the school, then the country, then the world. Ocloo, the star of today’s Google Doodle, was more than a jam star. She also became a pioneer in the field of microfinance  —   lending a small amount of money to women with a dream like she once had. The daily drawing, which sits just above the search bar on Google’s homepage, depicts a group of women in colorful printed dresses selling citrus fruit, blankets and jam. They represent the small business owners Ocloo helped throughout her career. Ocloo, who passed away in 2002, would have celebrated her 98th birthday today. Ocloo wanted women in Ghana to be financially independent, especially women farmers and agricultural workers. Although they produced much of the food in West Africa, they weren’t making enough money. ”Women must know that the strongest power in the world is economic power,” she said in a speech in 1990. ”You cannot go and be begging to your husband for every little thing, but at the moment, that’s what the majority of our women do.” Early on in her career, Ocloo dreamed of starting a ”women’s World Bank.” If she could just help   women access more credit and free themselves of greedy moneylenders, she believed, they could increase their profits. That’s how Women’s World Banking was born. The microlending group, which Ocloo cofounded in 1976, provides small loans, often as little as $50, to women in developing countries. Ocloo also taught women how to properly store food, process it and market it to customers. Her efforts earned her the Africa Prize for Leadership in 1990 and the African Entrepreneurship Award in 2001 for providing    solutions to increasing food production in Africa. Google says its daily doodles are meant to highlight fun and surprising moments in global innovation. But there’s actually a surprising twist to the topic of microfinance. Researchers have found that small loans don’t necessarily have the impact we once thought. Yes, they can be helpful. But in a story about microfinance in November 2016, NPR correspondent Nurith Aizenman spoke to Dean Karlan, a professor of economics at Yale University who   several microfinance studies. He told her that ”the results have just not been as dramatic as was originally hoped for.” But Karlan isn’t too worried about the Google Doodle: ”Getting people more exposed and thinking about poverty issues around the world is a good thing.”"
"On Tuesday British Prime Minister Theresa May announced plans to hold a snap general election on June 8. Following Britain’s decision last summer to exit the European Union she said that, ”Britain needed certainty, stability and strong leadership” ahead Britain of settling its divorce from the EU. This surprise news came as a shock to the political establishment in London. Last year May ruled out holding an election before 2020, but she has now reversed course. May’s about face has caused political and public opinion waves across Britain, especially because her announcement comes mere weeks after the government set in motion the official process to leave the European Union, known as Brexit. May has said this was a historic moment for Britain, one that the country would not be turning back from. A sizable number of black Brits might see the new vote as a second chance to take a stand against a future they did not vote for in the first place. In total, 73 percent of black Brits voted for Britain to remain in the EU, as did 67 percent of Asian voters. Meanwhile, 53 percent of whites voted for Britain to leave the EU. The Brexit referendum has put a spotlight on racial divides in Britain, and has led to a marked rise in racism that is making many black Britons feel like they are no longer welcome at home. The news of this impending election has added more intensity to the Brexit fallout black Britons have been dealing with since the referendum last June. But, Simon Woolley, director of Operation Black Vote (OBV) an organization that campaigns for racial justice in Britain, said the prime minister’s decision ”was probably motivated more by Brexit EU politics more than any immediate domestic political considerations.” He added that over the next several weeks OBV would ”fight for race equality and fight against xenophobia. We’ll engage in a late voter registration drive, hold hustings meetings in marginal seats, write a black political manifesto and hold a national meeting with major party leaders.” Brexit has made many black people question their place in British society, and this pending vote may yet heighten this experience. Rikette, a popular jazz singer from Brixton, says that, ”as a black Briton, Brexit has made me question just how British I am. This is something I have not had to think about before, and, due to the rise in racist abuse, this has made me feel a little more vulnerable in public spaces, especially on public transport.” Indeed, since Brexit was enacted the number of hate crimes recorded on public transit has increased. Zara   24, a writer in London born to Eritrean parents, says ”the message of Brexit is clear, it does not make me feel welcome.” And now with an election looming she says, ”I feel like this was a rushed decision to call an election, I am so confused and uncertain about my future now, and I am worried what this will mean for black people in Britain.” As a young person who, like her age group, voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the EU, she says she fears that the economic effects of Brexit will have a disproportionate impact on black Britons. ”I feel that opportunities are now much slimmer as a Black Brit,” she says. Black and Asian graduates are twice as likely as white graduates to be unemployed. This is something   experienced when she graduated from university and struggled to find a job. Black male graduates in London are twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts there was an unemployment rate 16 percent for black male graduates in London last year. This is shocking considering that 44 percent of London’s 8. 6 million people come from an ethnic minority. Nor is it just young black graduates that face such grim unemployment prospects. Across the board, black workers in Britain earn far less than their white counterparts with the same qualifications  —   at every educational level. According to research from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) a confederation of unions in Britain, there is a 23 percent pay gap between black and white workers. Their research also shows that black graduates earn £14. 33 an hour while white graduates earn £18. 63. Charlene Prempeh, brand director at   Nataal, a media consultancy that promotes African creatives, says ”In London, the key change since Brexit is that the subject of race has become dinner party fodder  —   every white person I know is keen to profess how liberal they are, how much they want the country to stay open, how they are not racist.” Prempeh, whose family migrated from Ghana, also says, ”However, outside of London the atmosphere is openly hostile.” On a recent day trip to Whitstable, a seashore town about an hour and a half south of London, where she says once ”people would have been too embarrassed to stare” at her, Prempeh ”felt uncomfortable enough to avoid eye contact and in the end we left the town early.” Official figures from the British government show that there was a huge rise in racist and religious hate crimes immediately after the Brexit vote. Further, the number of hate crimes recorded by regional police forces in England and Wales rose by a 100 percent in the months following. This spike has led the police to announce extra plans to help protect vulnerable groups. For some British black people, Brexit shattered the illusion of truly belonging in Britain. Chrystal Genesis, a   broadcaster whose family hail from the West Indies, feels that for her the immediate consequence of Brexit has been that people she knows feel that white people have become more openly racist. In some instances black politicians have come under attack. David Lammy, a Member of Parliament from London, called the police after receiving a surge in online abuse and death threats. Genesis says this reminds her ”that no matter how long you have lived here and grown up in Britain and even if you are third generation, you are never truly British. That is a fact.” Brexit has not only reopened racial faultiness in Britain, but it has begun to normalize a new racism in the     age that isn’t all that different from the racism that greeted black immigrants like Genesis’s grandfather who arrived in Britain in the 1950s from Jamaica. ”It felt like the stories my grandfather told me when I was young about the 1950’s when he was invited over to Britain to work by building up Britain after the war, and the racism and awful experiences he encountered. It’s beyond appalling now how the same racist attitudes show themselves the only difference is that it is a different decade,” she says. Prior to the vote, most black lawmakers supported remaining in the EU as most of them belong to the Labour Party. But a few Conservative Party lawmakers of color, such as Kwasi Kwarteng and Adam Afriyie did support leave. Labour Party politician Chuka Umunna, who was once touted as British Obama, is leading a campaign to hold the government to account over their Brexit negotiations with the EU. Other prominent black British public figures came out against Brexit also. Writing in Ebony, Kehinde Andrews, a professor of sociology at Birmingham City University, said Brexit had redrawn racial faultiness in Britain and the results of the referendum reflected ”the nation’s buried racial tension.” Woolley, at OBV, wrote of Brexit, ”Not since the 1970’s have we seen    extreme racial abuse and violence on the streets of Britain.” For many black citizens, Brexit has confirmed that Britain is more than just uncomfortable with change.   sentiment was at the heart of what drove the UK to end its   relationship with the European Union. Fears about immigrants and diversity drove many older voters into the   campaign, with just 39 percent of those over 65 voting to remain in the EU, Since the Brexit vote, Britain has also become less tolerant. According to police in England and Wales, hate and religious crimes rose 41 percent after Britain voted to leave the EU. A national poll in March found that in the seven months following the Brexit vote over a third of black, Asian or minority people in Britain had witnessed or experienced racial abuse. And on the day the government trigged the process for Britain to quit the EU, researchers documented a spike in online hate speech. Moreover, May has disparaged those who did not vote to quit the EU as ”crybabies” and mocked as ”citizens of nowhere” and ”metropolitan liberal elites” anyone who says Brexit is bad for Britain. Dissenters are routinely accused of being disloyal and  . For many black Brits, May’s attacks about ”citizens of the world” were especially galling as many of are connected to an international diaspora that transcends national borders. Ismail Einashe is a journalist and Dart Center Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University Journalism School. Follow him @IsmailEinashe."
"British Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that she is calling for an early election on June 8, describing it as the ”only way to guarantee certainty and stability for the years ahead” as the U. K. prepares to negotiate its exit from the European Union. The decision was immediately welcomed by the head of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. He called it a ”chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first.” Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who opposes Brexit, said May’s Conservative Party is trying to ”move the UK to the right, force through a hard Brexit and impose deeper cuts.” May made the surprise announcement in televised remarks in front of 10 Downing St. In order to hold a vote ahead of the next scheduled general election in 2020, she will need the backing of Parliament, the BBC reports. The Conservative Party currently holds a small majority in the House of Commons, with 330 of its 650 seats. ”At this moment of enormous national significance, there should be unity here in Westminster,” the Conservative leader said. ”But instead, there is division,” May added, accusing other political parties of weakening the government’s leverage with the EU. ”What they are doing jeopardizes the work we must do to prepare for Brexit at home, and it weakens the government’s negotiating position in Europe,” May added. ”If we do not hold a general election now, their political   will continue, and the negotiations with the European Union will reach their most difficult stage in the   to the next scheduled election.” Watch May’s remarks here: Last month, May triggered the process that began the U. K.’s formal departure from the European Union. British voters made the surprise decision to leave the bloc in a referendum last June. She emphasized the urgency to hold an election. ”[W]e have at this moment a   chance to get this done, while the European Union agrees its negotiating position and before the detailed talks begin.” May appeared to challenge her political opponents: ”Tomorrow, let the House of Commons vote for an election. Let everybody put forward their proposals for Brexit and their programs for government, and let us remove the risk of uncertainty and instability and continue to give the country the strong and stable leadership it demands.” She said she came to this conclusion ”only recently, and reluctantly.” She had previously denied that she was considering any election prior to the next one scheduled."
"When Emmanuel Ikubese first saw the show MTV Shuga, he was a university student and an aspiring actor. Like many fans, he was hooked. There’s a lot to like about the show: There’s future Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o in her breakout role, playing a   juggling school, work and multiple lovers. There’s drama, intrigue and, in the first two seasons set in Nairobi, glimpses of a vibrant nightlife: banging beats, fly fashion and sexy dancing. But for Ikubese, there was something else. ”I was watching it and I was like, ’Man, this show is so deep,’” he says. The show portrays several characters coping with the AIDS epidemic. ”I don’t know why, but I had never been tested at that point,” Ikubese says. ”It’s just something nobody talked about.” So he got tested (results were negative) and encouraged his friends to, as well. MTV Shuga  —   the name is   slang for a woman with a cool vibe  —   has launched its fifth season this spring. And Ikubese is one of its stars. He plays   club promoter and reformed bad boy Femi. What he knows now is that Shuga isn’t the average teen drama. It’s also a public health intervention. Folded into each soapy,   episode are messages about how and how often to get tested for HIV, as well as scenes that dispel common misconceptions about the disease. Commercially, it’s doing pretty well. TV channels and radio stations in 42 African countries have signed up to broadcast the latest season of Shuga, and by MTV’s count, the show has reached 719 million people worldwide who’ve either watched or listened to it through local entertainment networks or online on YouTube. In South Africa alone, Shuga seasons 3 and 4 were the number one drama show on the country’s biggest TV channel, SABC1. And there are signs that the health messaging is sinking in as well. A World Bank study published online last month found that six months after watching Shuga, young viewers were twice as likely to get tested for HIV as those who hadn’t seen the show. Those results validate what Georgia Arnold, the founder of MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, the nonprofit that helped create the program, has been working toward her whole career. ”I think once kids recognize themselves and their own behavior on screen, that’s when we get to see them questioning their actions,” she says. ”So that’s why for us, the most important thing always is we start with young people.” For this latest season, ”before we started writing anything, we did a panel session with a group of kids in a township outside of Johannesburg,” Arnold explains. ”Then we took their stories and turned them into a storyline,” she says, with the help of local doctors and counselors to make sure the health messaging was accurate. (U. S. viewers can see the new season on YouTube) Shuga also employs its writers, actors and production company from the city where it’s set. That was Nairobi for two seasons, then Lagos, Nigeria for another two seasons, and now Johannesburg. Each season incorporates the language, music, culture and color of its local setting. ”That’s important,” explains Abhijit Banerjee, an economist at MIT who helped evaluate the public health impact of Shuga for the World Bank. In order to influence young people’s behavior, Shuga had to show them characters they could relate to. To test the effectiveness of the show’s health messaging, Banerjee and his colleagues recruited 5, 000   to    across Nigeria. They screened the show to   of them  —   while the rest saw a different Nigerian TV show. Before and after the screenings, researchers questioned all the participants to gauge their knowledge and understanding of safe sex, HIV and domestic violence. Six months later, they asked everyone to come back, to see if any lessons from Shuga had stuck. Those in the group that had watched Shuga were twice as likely to be tested for HIV than those who didn’t watch. Even though the majority of participants still weren’t getting tested, researchers say that’s a sign that the message is sinking in. The study also found that the number of chlamydia infections was 58 percent lower among women who watched than among those who didn’t watch. And the Shuga viewers were 14 percent less likely to have concurrent sex partners. Not everything about Shuga went over as well as the researchers had expected. The show had the unintended effect of making viewers sympathetic toward a character who committed domestic violence. That may have had to do with the way a subplot about a character who beats his girlfriend was presented, Banerjee says. In Shuga, the character who hurts his girlfriend is, by many accounts, a lovely guy. ”But his boss is not nice to him, and he’s not as successful as he’d like to be,” Banerjee says. He’s not happy, and his partner isn’t as supportive as he’d like her to be. ”So for some viewers, a key moment when he ends up hitting her was hard to interpret,” Banerjee says. Of course, nothing justifies domestic violence, and the show writers will have to think hard about how to make that clear going forward, Banerjee says. Overall, the World Bank study ”makes a really compelling case for the show,” says Suruchi Sood, a public health researcher at Drexel University who wasn’t involved with the study. Sood says she’d love to see more   analysis of Shuga’s public health impact. The results confirm the research on how young people learn: Stories are a safe, accessible way to get information out to adolescents who might otherwise tune out important messages about sexual health. ”And the fact that [Shuga is] doing it at this global scale is quite amazing,” Sood says. ”I can’t think of any other public health intervention that can reach so many people.” Of course, for Emmanuel Ikubese, all this makes perfect sense. After all, the show convinced him to go get tested for HIV and it has also helped him reconsider some of his underlying attitudes toward the disease, he says. When Ikubese found out that the character he plays would contract HIV in season 3, he was initially hesitant. ”I was really worried about it because, you know, people often confuse actors with the characters they play,” he says. And there’s a lot of stigma associated with being HIV positive in Nigeria. And he worried that the character would be no fun to play. Growing up, if he saw someone on TV or in the movies who had HIV, they were usually weak and sickly. ”Then I saw the script,” he says. His character Femi would remain hunky as ever, and he’d find a girlfriend who supports him. ”I realized that this was about passing the message that you can have HIV and you can you can still be looking good, you can be healthy and you can still have relationships,” he says. ”And funny enough, after the show came out, I got more positive responses from fans than negative responses.” Maanvi Singh is a freelance writer based in London. Contact her @maanvisings"
"Updated at 11:15 a. m. ET, A resupply rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Tuesday, and anyone with a computer, smartphone or virtual reality headset can experience it as if they were right on the launch pad. That’s because there was a special   camera installed near the base of the Atlas V rocket en route to the International Space Station. ”The camera will stream video that you can manipulate,” Rick Glasby of member station WFIT reports. ”You can rotate the image, in real time, in a full   panorama. The video will continue through countdown and launch and until the rocket is out of sight.” NASA worked in coordination with Orbital ATK, which makes the Cygnus spacecraft that sits atop the Atlas V, and rocket maker United Launch Alliance to place ”four   cameras on the pad, around 300 feet from the rocket,” the website Engadget explains. ”Nearby, a computer protected by a   box will stitch images together in   time.” What’s in the cargo? More than 7, 600 pounds of science research, crew supplies and hardware for the space laboratory, according to NASA. There are lots of ways to watch the launch  —   ULA has some tips here  —   but if you have a virtual reality headset, you can look around the launch pad as if you were standing on it. We can’t all be rocket scientists, but this might be as close as we’ll get. The resupply mission is a   partnership between NASA and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture owned by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. NASA awarded Orbital ATK and SpaceX commercial resupply services contracts, under which each company is to deliver at least 20 metric tons of cargo to the space station."
"A man accused of killing five people at a Washington state mall last year was found dead in his jail cell Sunday. Arcan Cetin, 20, appeared to have hanged himself at the Snohomish County Jail, Skagit County prosecutor Rosemary Kaholokula told NPR. Cetin allegedly carried a Ruger rifle into a Macy’s in the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Wash. on Sept. 23, 2016, and opened fire. A teenage girl, a man and three women died. Cetin fled and was caught the next day near his apartment. He was charged with five counts of   murder. According to court documents, Cetin confessed to the crimes, telling detectives ”he did bring the rifle into Macy’s and shot all 5 victims,” although he did not say why. Kaholokula told NPR that Cetin had not yet entered a plea in the case and he was awaiting an evaluation on whether he was competent to stand trial. A court hearing was scheduled for next week. Cetin was a   legal U. S. resident. Even before last year’s mall shooting, about 65 miles north of Seattle, he was known to law enforcement. The Seattle Times reports Cetin’s criminal record included three   assault charges and that a judge had told him he was not to possess a firearm. Cetin had recently been transferred to the Snohomish County Jail from Skagit County Corrections at the request of his public defenders. The Times reports that he had talked to fellow inmates about his case, potentially setting them up to be used as witnesses against him during trial. The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office released a tweet confirming the jailhouse death, but did not identify Cetin by name. The family of one of the victims, Chuck Eagan, released a statement through the Skagit County Prosector’s Office expressing shock over Cetin’s death: ”We’re understandably in shock over this development. Our heart goes out to Mr. Cetin’s family. We pray that the man repented to God before his death. While this event puts to rest our fear of his release, we harbor no ill will towards Mr. Cetin or his family and pray for their comfort as we know all too well the pain of grief. The family wishes to extend our continued thanks to those who responded to this tragedy, especially law enforcement and the Skagit County Prosecutor’s office for their steadfast professionalism and compassion. We are also grateful to all of those in the community whose love has helped see us through the past six months as we grieve and remember Chuck. The family requests privacy as we continue to process this turn of events.”"
"It’s not just Hamilton. Musicals have always had a   advantage as cultural products. Individual songs can translate and build interest via cast albums or Tony telecasts in a way that’s very difficult for plays to emulate. A lot of kids grow up on musicals like Grease and Annie  —   and, yes, now Hamilton  —   while early introductions to plays, however great, might make them seem impenetrable or like homework. (I’m looking at you, William Shakespeare, and doing so lovingly.) Last week, all five   Broadway shows were musicals all five ”underdogs” were plays. If you’ve ever been to the TKTS booth in Times Square that sells     tickets to Broadway productions, you know that the line for plays is much, much shorter than the line for musicals. When people who aren’t theater people do take an interest in plays, it’s often because they’re headed by celebrities known from film or television, which isn’t always the ticket to the best possible experience. (For more on the current super crowded Broadway season, please check out this piece from our man on theater, Jeff Lunden.) And in terms of   penetration, it’s hard to remember the last time a   play  —   at least as a point of reference  —   reached as many people as recent Tony winners for Best Musical like Hamilton and Fun Home and The Book Of Mormon and Once. It is my suspicion, though it’s hard to prove, that musicals are part of many New York tourists’ basic New York vacation planning in a way that plays are not  —   even if they’re not toting kids who want to see The Lion King or Aladdin. But here, I step on a limb and say that this is the right moment for people who don’t currently attend plays to rediscover them, whether in New York or at home. Why? Prestige television. For a long time, most people’s    exposure to comedy and drama came largely in the form of television. (Film, too, but not for nearly as many hours.) And even the best television was made for broadcast, with the limitations that brings with it. It was designed to appeal to a large, moderately engaged audience that needed to be able to miss an episode or two without completely losing track of the show. That’s perhaps why the best words we have to describe good and interesting television are borrowed from other forms. We describe it as ”cinematic” or even ”literary,” because those are the words we have often used to connote art that doesn’t need to be for everyone at times when television needed to be. Where there’s truth to the idea of a television ”golden age” (ask me over a cup of coffee or a whiskey ginger someday) it’s in the fact that cable and streaming outlets have allowed shows to flourish when they appeal to more deeply invested but smaller audiences. This is what I have called in the past The Age Of Enthusiasm. It has also encouraged the proliferation of shows that are more idiosyncratic, personal, and experimental than television was before. Now, drama and comedy enthusiasts have daily exposure to stuff that’s weird and complicated and formally experimental. They are a good, prepared audience for interesting plays in a way that I, as a teenager in the late 1980s, was not. Do I sound like someone freshly intoxicated by plays? Guilty as charged. On the recent trip to New York that took me to Groundhog Day, I also managed to squeeze in two plays. The first is Indecent, a Paula Vogel play that’s about (follow me here) the staging of another play called God of Vengeance in the 1920s. God of Vengeance, by Sholem Asch, was written in Yiddish and includes a love scene between two women. It led to the arrest of the entire company of the play for obscenity. Indecent tells the story of how the play was written, put on, and challenged, and it tells deeply personal stories of Asch and the other people who were involved in its creation. The other play I saw was Sweat, by Lynn Nottage, which won the Pulitzer Prize about 24 hours after I saw it. (Dear Broadway plays: I am good luck!) It takes place mostly in a bar in Reading, Penn. in 2000, and it follows several steel mill workers who are coming to grips with automation and other causes of economic insecurity. While there’s nothing new about exploring the stresses on blue collar workers in and of itself, Nottage focuses primarily on three women who work at the mill, one of whom is black and two of whom have sons who are young men also working there. So there is more here than an ode to the noble laborer. There are also questions about race and gender and parenting and friendship  —   and in particular, there is wrangling with the difference between empathizing with anger and absolving people for the ways they act on it. The play argues, it seems to me, that economic and community circumstances are a matter of wider public ethics, but the matter of how the frustrations they create are translated into action still has a personal moral dimension. Both plays raise exactly the kinds of questions about characterization, social dynamics, ethics, and the like that are raised by the best and most respected television shows of the last 15 years or so. If you like the deep dives into cinematography and form that accompanied shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, you’d be absolutely mesmerized by an effect at the very beginning of Indecent that involves the costumes and that, even though I’d already read about it, made me gasp. Similarly, the entire cast of Indecent is seated on the stage when the audience arrives, which flips the entire experience of going to the theater. Normally, you are there, and the cast has an entrance. With this play, it’s the other way around. Why they do this and how it affects the production and resonates against the show’s themes are exactly the kinds of questions that people who have spent the last 10 years talking about The Wire have all the experience necessary to talk about  —   and have learned to love talking about. A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to see Michael Urie in Buyer and Cellar, a comedy in which he played Alex, a young man who goes to work in the shopping mall that Barbra Streisand set up in her basement to display her things. (The mall is real! The story of Alex is not.) It’s a solo performance, funny and strange and absolutely delightful. That one was in D. C. not on Broadway. I also saw Daniel Radcliffe in The Cripple of Inishmaan in New York on a different trip  —   and I wrote about it here. What I said then, I will say again: There is something in live theater that cannot be duplicated in any other setting. You see sweat, you see spit  —   not on film, but in the same room as you. You are in a room having an experience that will only ever be fully shared by the people who are in that room with you. As I said when we saw Hamilton, lots of other people saw Hamilton, but only the people in the theater with me that night saw the same Hamilton that I saw. Television and film that you can share over and over, copy over and over, and experience over and over with new company in precisely the same way has its charm. But so does walking out of a room and knowing that the experience is complete it is ended. You cannot have it back, and you can only wrestle with your imperfect memory of it. At the end of Sweat, which is not a play that overtly appears to be one that would make the actors out of breath, I noticed at the curtain call that one was essentially panting. He had not been during the play. It was tactile and unexpected, like seeing anyone finish a bout of hard work. You don’t have to live in New York to seek out a new play. Yes, geographical advantages are considerable if you happen to be there, or in Chicago, or in another big city. (I just learned  —   hello, Minnesotans!  —   that Indecent will be at the Guthrie in Minneapolis during its   season). But that’s true of musicals, too. When you think of theater, don’t just look for a musical or a play you know or a movie actor. Take a deep breath and see a play you’ve never heard of and know little about, full of people you don’t recognize. If you can turn on HBO or Netflix and engage with something unexpected and challenging, something not for everyone, you can do it in a theater, too. Find a new play. See a new play. Take a friend and go have coffee after. Believe it or not, it’s the next logical step after Netflix."
"Florinda Lorenzo has been in the U. S. illegally for more than a decade but checks in with federal immigration agents in Baltimore several times a year. Until recently, it had become routine, almost like a trip to the dentist. Many immigrants who are here illegally  —   like Lorenzo  —   are not in hiding. Hundreds of thousands of them report to U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a regular basis. They’ve been allowed to stay because past administrations considered them a low priority for deportation. But with the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, that     has become a   experience. In recent weeks, some immigrants say they’ve been detained without warning at their ICE  . ”It creates a lot of chaos for me,” Lorenzo says through an interpreter. ”I know lots of people are getting deported now, and I wouldn’t want to be deported.” Lorenzo came to the U. S. from Guatemala 14 years ago. She has three children, two of them U. S. citizens who were born here. Lorenzo was arrested in 2010 and charged with selling prepaid phone cards without a license. The charges were dropped, but she’s been required to check in with ICE since then. Before her most recent appointment earlier this month, Lorenzo looked nervous. Her eyes were red. ”It’s hard for my family, for me . .. my kids, my husband,” Lorenzo says. ”It’s very painful and stressful for me. . .. I just hope I go back to my children today.” A few dozen friends gathered to pray and show their support  —   both for Lorenzo’s sake, and for ICE officials, in case they were watching. Nick Katz, a lawyer with CASA de Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group, accompanied Lorenzo to provide legal help in case she was detained. ”The environment is so uncertain,” Katz says. ”We’ve heard stories of people being taken into custody. We know of at least one mother who was taken into custody out of a  .” Across the U. S. judges have issued final removal orders for more than 900, 000 people in the country illegally. Many remain as long as they check in regularly with ICE. Under the Obama administration, they were not considered priorities for deportation because they had clean criminal records, or strong ties to their communities. The Trump administration, however, is taking a more aggressive enforcement stance. President Trump signed executive orders that broadly expanded the number of people who are priorities for deportation. That category now includes many immigrants whose only offense may be entering or staying in the country illegally. Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, applauded the move. Von Spakovsky says criminals should be the priority. But, he says, that doesn’t mean everyone else should get a free pass. ”You’re in the United States illegally you broke the law to come here illegally,” von Spakovsky says. ”And the government agency is basically saying, ’That’s OK, we’re not going to do anything about it.’ That just to me is a complete violation of the rule of law.” An ICE spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the  . Several cases of unauthorized immigrants being detained at their ICE appointments have gotten widespread attention. That could have unintended consequences, says Alonzo Pena, who served as deputy director of ICE in the Obama administration. If agents detain large numbers of immigrants at their   he says, other immigrants may decide it’s too risky to report. ”It’s going to send a bad message to others, and it’s going to really backfire,” Pena says. ”They lose faith in the system . .. and you don’t know where they’re at. ”There’s nothing good that will come out of that,” he says. Lorenzo emerges from her appointment in the ICE field office with a smile on her face. ”I feel very happy right now. . .. My heart isn’t as heavy anymore,” Lorenzo says. ”I don’t have the words, but I feel relief.” Lorenzo found out that she can stay, at least for a few more months. She doesn’t have to check in with ICE again until October. But neither Lorenzo nor her lawyers can say what will happen when she does."
"Warning: Spoilers ahead. HBO’s Girls ended as it began  —   as a fitful, contradictory, occasionally irritating, often brilliant little story about a stupendously   Millennial girl who just might be on her way to figuring out what it means to be a woman. That’s not the kind of Big Idea we normally expect from TV shows that have gotten as much attention and acclaim as Girls, but in a way it fits the show’s subversive spirit  —   roping TV fans into caring about the evolution of an entitled, perpetually awkward woman in the same way they parse the latest   mayhem on Breaking Bad or The Wire. That arc of emotions was masterfully summed up in Sunday’s series finale episode, ”Latching”  —   a window into the struggle of Lena Dunham’s Hannah Horvath to handle postpartum depression and the difficulty of breastfeeding her newborn son, Grover. The episode begins by mimicking a shot from an earlier season, when Hannah and her     boyfriend Adam were nestled awkwardly in bed together. In that   scene, the camera panned up from their feet, lingering on their imperfect,   bodies in a knowing parody of   past. On Sunday, it was best friend Marnie (Allison Williams) sharing the bed, slipping next to Hannah in a declaration of support for a friend she treated as a doormat during much of the time we saw them together. ”I win at being your best friend,” Marnie exclaims, after Hannah agrees to accept her help in raising the baby. Yeah, thinks every viewer who will ever watch the scene, this is going to end well. Like many HBO series, Girls offered a final episode on Sunday that felt more like an epilogue  —   mopping up in the aftermath of an emotional explosion. The real finale landed the week before, when Hannah stormed uninvited into an engagement party held by former bestie Shoshanna to discover her   now hated her guts. During that episode we saw the quartet of girls  —   which six seasons ago seemed like a fresh, engaging update to the Sex and the City crew  —   finally admit their friendships had atomized, done in by the parade of childish choices they inflicted on one another. In this final season, Girls has excelled at crafting scenes where characters lob the kinds of criticisms at each other that longtime viewers have been screaming at the screen since the show debuted five years ago. Last week, that moment came when Shoshanna finally unloaded on why she was cutting all of her former friends loose Sunday night, the catharsis was delivered by Hannah’s mother. Loreen, who often seemed a hateful figure in past episodes, redeems herself a bit by showing up as Hannah is coming unglued. Grover won’t latch onto her nipples during breast feeding, Marnie’s    attitude is driving her crazy, and she’s having a tough time ignoring that nagging voice in the back of her head that says she’s going to mess this parenting thing up, too. In other words, Hannah is flailing through the same tortuous period many parents suffer right after they’ve taken a baby home. Loreen interrupts a tirade from Hannah to deliver the kind of tough love fans have yearned to see her daughter face for years: ”You know who else is in emotional pain?” Loreen screams at her. ”Fucking everyone!” Not long after, Hannah storms away from the house and has the epiphany we’ve all been waiting for, encountering a cluelessly   teenager who she then lectures like the kind of   character who would have been mercilessly lampooned in the show’s first season. The final scene features Grover finally latching onto Hannah’s breast, and an expression comes over her face that suggests she might have an inkling of what this   thing is all about. There’s been a lot to love about Girls’ final season, including some sterling performances by its creator. As an earnest, ambitious artist willing to make mistakes in public, Dunham is an easy target for ridicule and insult. But her performance in the scene where Hannah finally realizes, without saying it, that Adam was going to leave her and break his promise to help with the baby, was poignant and effortlessly touching. Indeed, that may be the greatest triumph for Dunham and Girls: For six seasons they have made us care about a woman who is aggressively unlike the airbrushed,         that TV too often gives us. Even when we cracked jokes about Hannah’s weight or implausible career success, Dunham kept us engaged in the character’s journey. That continued right through Sunday’s episode, despite its anticlimatic focus on three characters. Series endings are tricky things: They must embody the spirit of the show’s entire season, while offering new surprises and resolving complex, often   storylines. See Breaking Bad and The Wire for how to do it right endure Seinfeld, Dexter and How I Met Your Mother for examples of how finales can go terribly wrong. Still, even when Girls infuriated me  —   and I won’t waste any space lamenting how it continually marginalized characters of color  —   it always moved me. And in a   media world filled with distraction masquerading as profundity, that may be the greatest compliment any critic can give."
"Gandelina Damião, 78, is permanently hunched, carrying her sorrow. She lost three children to heroin in the 1990s. A quarter century ago, her cobblestone lane, up a grassy hill from Lisbon’s Tagus River, was littered with syringes. She recalls having to search for her teenagers in graffitied stone buildings nearby, where they would shoot up. ”It was a huge blow,” Damião says, pointing to framed photos on her wall of Paulo, Miguel and Liliana. ”I was a good mother. I never gave them money for drugs. But I couldn’t save them.” For much of the 20th century, Portugal was a closed, Catholic society, with a military dictator and no drug education. In the early 1970s, young Portuguese men were drafted to fight wars in the country’s African colonies, where many were exposed to drugs for the first time. Some came home addicted. In 1974, there was a revolution  —   and an explosion of freedom. ”It was a little bit like the Americans in Vietnam. Whiskey was cheaper than water, and cannabis was easy to access. So people came home from war with some [drug] habits,” says João Goulão, Portugal’s drug czar. ”Suddenly everything was different [after the revolution]. Freedom! And drugs were something that came with that freedom. But we were completely naive.” By the 1990s, 1 percent of Portugal’s population was hooked on heroin. It was one of the worst drug epidemics in the world, and it prompted Portugal’s government to take a novel approach: It decriminalized all drugs. Starting in 2001, possession or use of any drug  —   even heroin  —   has been treated as a health issue, not a crime. Goulão, who had worked as a family physician in his 20s, at the height of the crisis, says there was very little opposition to the policy change. ”Every family had its own drug addict. It was so, so present in everyday life, that it turned public opinion,” Goulão says. ”We are dealing with a chronic relapsing disease, and this is a disease like any other. I do not put a diabetic in jail, for instance.” Under the 2001 decriminalization law, authored by Goulão, drug dealers are still sent to prison. But anyone caught with less than a   supply of any drug  —   including heroin  —   gets mandatory medical treatment. No judge, no courtroom, no jail. Instead they end up in a sparsely furnished, discreet, unmarked office in downtown Lisbon, for counseling with government sociologists, who decide whether to refer them to drug treatment centers. ”It’s cheaper to treat people than to incarcerate them,” says sociologist Nuno Capaz. ”If I come across someone who wants my help, I’m in a much better position to provide it than a judge would ever be. Simple as that.” Capaz’s team of 10 counselors handles all of Lisbon’s roughly 2, 500 drug cases a year. It may sound like a lot, but it’s actually a 75 percent drop from the 1990s. Portugal’s   death rate has plummeted to five times lower than the European Union average. Along a row of abandoned buildings in northern Lisbon, field psychologists took NPR to meet some of Portugal’s remaining drug users. The hillside is littered with needles and bursting with wildflowers. The sky rumbles with airliners landing at the international airport nearby. There’s a philosophy book on a concrete stoop next to a   man who’s smoking crack cocaine. He gives his name as Rui and says the stigma against addicts has eased since decriminalization. ”Now, not so much. It’s less, because the methadone is coming, and people are treating this problem,” he says. ”They see the drugs with another perspective.” Every day, a government van pulls up and gives him a dose of methadone, an opioid that helps wean people off of heroin. It’s a step toward  . He still does cocaine, but no longer shoots up.   HIV infections in Portugal have dropped 95 percent. Drug workers hand out packets with clean needles and condoms and listen to another addict, Antonio, describe his anxiety. ”If the drugs hurt too much my body, I escape a little, and then I come back again,” he says. ”But it’s a world I cannot escape! If I turn there, it’s there  —   it’s everywhere. I cannot escape.” For every person in Portugal who cannot escape addiction, there’s daily methadone, counseling and free treatment. A generation ago, these addicts were put in jail. Now they’re on the street. But polls show the Portuguese  —   having lived through the ravages of a heroin epidemic  —   overwhelmingly support this policy."
"Fox News star Bill O’Reilly has been ousted from the network after fresh allegations of sexual harassment surfaced last month, and the TV franchise again faces scrutiny over whether its culture perpetuates such behavior. Fox already ousted its CEO, Roger Ailes, over claims of sexual harassment, and The New York Times reported the network has already paid out $13 million to settle five claims against O’Reilly since 2002. Fox isn’t alone allegations of pervasive sexual harassment also recently surfaced at Uber and at Sterling Jewelers, which owns the Kay, Jared and Zales chains. Uber hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate claims that its culture permitted sexual harassment. Sterling’s parent company says the allegations against it are without merit. Experts say rooting out a culture of sexual harassment is a big challenge but can be done if handled correctly. Jeff Owens, a longtime human resources manager, has dealt with a number of sexual harassment claims over his career and says much depends on how each incident is handled. For example, a health care firm he worked for in Fort Smith, Ark. two decades ago chose to settle a sexual harassment claim against one of its executives. ”The thought was, ’This is been resolved, and we’re covering up and we’re moving on,’ ” Owens says. But that settlement enabled the executive’s bad behavior to continue, says Owens, who now works for Tulsa Community College. Although the settlement wasn’t public, it telegraphed a strong message back to the company and its culture. ”That provided a level of arrogance to that person, because they felt like the organization was protecting them because they held a strong position or had greater value,” Owens says. After a second complaint was filed against the same executive six months later, he was fired. Owens says that had a very different effect on the victim and, in short order, the company’s culture. It validated both the victim’s decision to come forward, and her experience, he says. ”She, in turn, feels empowered that that organization is going to protect her.” Owens says culture flows from the top brass, and without the support of the CEO, there is no hope for change. ”As the CEO goes, so goes the culture,” he says. Making Choate a ”better place” Human resources experts say changing a bad culture also requires education and training of the entire workforce on policies and procedures, and consistent enforcement that sometimes requires firing a powerful or popular employee. In short, it can be a deeply painful and embarrassing experience, as Choate Rosemary Hall is finding out. Last week, the elite boarding school in Wallingford, Conn. released a devastating report detailing nearly five decades of sexual abuse at the hands of a dozen teachers. Cheyenne Montgomery, one of the school’s victims in the 1990s, says she pushed for the report, after The Boston Globe last year published stories about allegations of sexual abuse at the school. ”I think this is going to make Choate a better place,” she says, because it will reverse decades of silence on the matter. (NPR’s policy is not to identify victims of sexual abuse unless they wish to waive that right.) The report backs up Montgomery’s story that two teachers befriended, mentored, then sexually preyed on her, starting when she was 16. It detailed incidents over five decades, involving dozens of students and 12 teachers. For example, it detailed a 1999 rape by a teacher witnessed by other students on an overseas trip as well as, more generally, how teachers lured students into their homes or off campus to take advantage of them. Besides that, Montgomery says, ”there were lots of rumors about teachers having relationships with different students.” In every instance, the offending teachers weren’t reported to law enforcement many were, in fact, given recommendations to teach elsewhere. Montgomery’s French teacher was reported at the time by another faculty member, according to Choate’s investigation, then allowed to teach for another year  —   a pattern Montgomery says the school demonstrated again and again. ”Pushing things under the rug and not talking about it and not acknowledging  it and really taking care of the perpetrators and not the students” was typically how it was dealt with, she says. Montgomery says because it was a boarding school, teachers had almost parental power over students and often entered their living space. But, she says, the administration willfully chose to ignore warning signs, while abusers, she says, used their own reputations as shields. ”It seems like they have this charismatic draw, like a lot of them were really popular teachers,” she says. Changing the culture, Criticizing the dominant culture can make a person feel, conversely, deeply unpopular, as Danna Hewick found out. Hewick had her first job in human resources 15 years ago, working for a construction firm near Washington, D. C. It was a   business, where she says she regularly received comments like, ”Oh, baby, you’re looking good,” or dismissive comments such as, ”Sweetheart, just go sit over there and you don’t need to speak up.” Hewick decided to write a corporate policy, introducing annual harassment training that defined sexual harassment and detailed the consequences of noncompliance. Because victims often are afraid to report a problem out of fear of retaliation, Hewick says it was also critical to include a reporting mechanism to allow confidential reporting. Most executives got on board, she says. Still, she says, ”it took letting go some key people that were the worst offenders that didn’t want to abide by our new policy and thought we were just joking.” She says successfully changing that culture, over time, ushered in other changes, too. ”I think that was the start of, ’OK, well, if this wasn’t the right way for this company to behave, what else do we need to look at?’ ” Hewick says the culture became more open and communicative, and that people were held accountable for their actions."
"Updated at 6:15 p. m. ET, Fox News is parting ways with Bill O’Reilly, who for years stood as one of cable news’ most popular hosts. The network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, announced the move in a statement Wednesday. ”After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the Company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel,” the statement read. O’Reilly released a statement, calling it ”tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims. But that is the unfortunate reality many of us in the public eye must live with today.” The host’s   program, The O’Reilly Factor, had recently suffered an exodus of advertisers amid revelations that O’Reilly, Fox News and 21st Century Fox had quietly paid out roughly $13 million in settlements to five women who had accused him of sexual harassment. Several weeks ago, a woman named Wendy Walsh stepped forward with another complaint against O’Reilly. NPR’s David Folkenflik reports that Walsh went through Fox News’ formal complaint process, alleging O’Reilly made unwelcome advances during what she believed to be a business dinner. ”It was a sad cocktail party story that women tell each other and shrug our shoulders and go, ’Ugh, another one,’ ” Walsh told NPR earlier this month. ”I can’t believe this is still going on.” The New York Times reports that an   woman  —   who remains anonymous  —   came forward this week with allegations of her own, saying O’Reilly would at various times grunt like a ”wild boar” at her desk, leer at her and refer to her as ”hot chocolate.” O’Reilly has largely remained quiet in the face of these accusations, though he has rejected them and said he agreed to the settlements only to protect his family. His lawyer has come out more forcefully, however. ”Bill O’Reilly has been subjected to a brutal campaign of character assassination that is unprecedented in   America,” Marc Kasowitz said in a statement. ”This law firm has uncovered evidence that the smear campaign is being orchestrated by   organizations bent on destroying O’Reilly for political and financial reasons. That evidence will be put forth shortly, and it is irrefutable.” O’Reilly has enjoyed support in the White House, as well. ”I don’t think Bill did anything wrong,” President Trump told the Times in an interview earlier this month. ”Personally, I think he shouldn’t have settled.” Yet the allegations against O’Reilly fit into an uncomfortable narrative for the cable news network. As David notes, the revelations came less than a year after his former boss, Roger Ailes, saw his tenure at the top of Fox News unravel under separate sexual harassment allegations: ”The real subtext to all this is that Roger Ailes, the founding chairman, the creative drive behind the success of Fox, was forced out last summer for sexual harassment. And right now, Fox is under the gun for this and also under a federal inquiry to see if it hid payments to women to try to keep it a secret  —   not only from the public but from shareholders, which could constitute a federal crime.” Up to last week, the effects O’Reilly’s scandal had on his program appeared mixed. As we reported last week, an independent analysis by the   firm iSpot. tv showed O’Reilly’s program had lost about half its advertisers in a span of several weeks due to the allegations. Yet his ratings did not seem to suffer, still easily hovering at the top of the cable news landscape even amid the poor press. O’Reilly  —   who has denied the claims  —   has been off the air since last week, when he announced he would be taking a vacation. At the time, O’Reilly said he planned to return to the program on April 24. It remains unclear whether the network will allow the host to say a farewell of his own  . Tucker Carlson will replace O’Reilly in the 8 p. m. ET time slot."
"A clear majority of justices at the U. S. Supreme Court seemed troubled Wednesday by a Missouri grant program that bars state money from going to religious schools for playground improvement.   states have state constitutional provisions that bar taxpayer funds from going to religious schools  ” provisions that have been a major obstacle for the school choice movement. The Missouri case is an attempt to lower that wall separating church and state. The Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo. owns and operates a preschool learning center. It applied for a state grant to rubberize its playground surface, using old and discarded tires. But because the school’s mission is avowedly religious, the state turned down the application, citing language in the state Constitution that explicitly bars state funds from going directly or indirectly to any religious sect or denomination. The church challenged the denial in court, appealing all the way to the Supreme Court. ”Safety shouldn’t hinge on whether a child is religious, or if they are playing on a playground at a religious school, or a secular, or a public institution,” school Director Annette Kiehne said on the steps of the high court on Wednesday. But James Layton, representing the state of Missouri, countered that the Supreme Court has never required states to provide direct government grants to churches. ”Almost 200 years ago, the people of the state of Missouri, adopting language” used by the Founding Fathers, ”decided that we were not going to tax people in order to give money to churches,” he said. Justices skeptical of Missouri’s case, Inside the courtroom, even some of the court’s liberals signaled that they are concerned by the grant denial. But neither side had an easy time of it. Layton, arguing for the state, clearly had the harder task, struggling as justices pressed him about where to draw the line between those things that a church is clearly entitled to, like public safety protections, versus state aid for facilities and programs at church schools. ”We don’t want to be in a position . .. where we are selecting among churches,” Layton told the justices. ”We don’t want to be in a position where we are making a visible, physical improvement on church property.” Those are legitimate objectives for the state in avoiding an unconstitutional entanglement with religion, Layton argued. Providing police and fire protection is different, he said, because the state is not ”taking money from the state treasury and giving it to the church.” Justice Samuel Alito pressed the point, noting that there are federal programs that give grants to reinforce security at synagogues, mosques and churches that are at risk of terrorist attacks. Justice Stephen Breyer wondered why it is that a religious school is entitled to police and fire protection, but may be denied money to make its playground safer. ”What’s the difference?” he asked. Justice Elena Kagan noted there is a strong constitutional principle that says when we have a program like this one, ”as long as you’re using the money for playground services, you’re not disentitled from that program because you’re a religious institution doing religious things.” Under that theory, replied lawyer Layton, wouldn’t the state have to ”put new paint on the sanctuary if the old one had lead paint?” Or might the state be required ”to reimburse for pews to be upholstered?” In this case, he added, not everyone gets a grant. Only a few schools were selected for the tire scrap program. Trinity Lutheran calls program discriminatory, Arguing on behalf of the church, lawyer David Cortman of the Alliance Defending Freedom had an easier task, mainly because he took the view that as long as the program being funded is secular and open to everyone else, religious schools can’t be excluded. Justice Anthony Kennedy, eyebrows raised, seemed doubtful. Are you saying that ”religious status can never be the basis for a governmental action or governmental . .. statute?” I can’t think of any, Cortman answered. ”Why would someone’s religious status matter in the first place?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg balked at that assertion, noting that the Supreme Court said long ago ”in no uncertain terms that what the Framers didn’t want was tax money . .. to pay for building or maintaining churches or church property.” Pointing to a landmark 1947   case, she asked, ”Doesn’t that fit this case?” When Cortman argued that playgrounds are not religious in nature, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said suppose the playground is used for religious activities. Suppose there is prayer before play, for instance. And what if the school only admitted its own religious followers, asked Justice Ginsburg. Suppose it excluded   or  . Would the school still be entitled to a playground resurfacing grant? Yes, replied Cortman, because the school has ”a free exercise right to religious autonomy, to decide who their members are.” Justice Sotomayor noted that for more than a century most states, like Missouri, have barred money for religious institutions. Aren’t states ”free to say we don’t want to spend money from the public fisc on houses of worship?” she asked. Cortman replied that such provisions amount to ”government coercion when . .. the only way you could receive a public benefit is if you do not exercise your religion.” That, he said, is a violation of the U. S. Constitution’s right to the free exercise of religion. At the end of the day, the quest for the Supreme Court may be how narrowly or broadly it writes its opinion. As Justice Kagan put it, the   divide is a ”fraught issue” in which ”states have their own very   law” and ”nobody is completely sure they have it right.” In view of that, Kagan said, ”I guess there’s something attractive about having some play in the joints where states can make their own choices.” Just how much play is the question."
"An inauguration is an expensive party to throw, and President Trump got plenty of help putting his on. Financial Election Commission disclosures released on Wednesday show that some uberwealthy donors helped Trump defray the cost:   givers included investment firm founder Charles Schwab, mining entrepreneur Christopher Cline and Bank of America. Investor and casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson spent $5 million. Those megadonors contributed to Trump’s monster inauguration haul of nearly $107 million, the FEC forms show. That sum doubles President Barack Obama’s   inauguration donations in 2009, which totaled around $53 million. Though this report shows how much money Trump’s inauguration brought in, it does not detail exactly how that money was spent. Presidential inauguration committees do not have to disclose that to the FEC. Donations to the inauguration may come after a victory, but they can still have the basic message of a campaign donation (”You are a politician I like, and I would like to support you with a few dollars”). But then, sometimes donations can fulfill another purpose. ”It’s also a way for those who stayed away from Trump early on  —   didn’t give to his campaign or superPACs, didn’t help fund the convention, maybe backed another horse  —   to get on board with the incoming administration,” said Viveca Novak, spokesperson at the Center for Responsive Politics, in an email. In addition, big donors to Trump’s inauguration received special   treats: tickets to the   and their names printed on inauguration programs, for example, according to an inauguration brochure first published by the Center for Public Integrity. The money also bought time with the president and vice president  —   those donating more than $500, 000 were treated to dinner with Vice President Pence and his wife, Karen. The highest donors  —   those spending $1 million or more  —   gained access to a ”Leadership Luncheon,” which was ”an exclusive event with select Cabinet appointees and House and Senate leadership.” It’s not exactly new for a presidential inauguration committee to take in corporate money. Though Obama’s 2009 inauguration didn’t accept corporate donations, his 2013 inauguration brought in money from ATT and Microsoft, among others. Some companies are bipartisan in their support: Boeing and Chevron, for example, both donated to Obama’s 2013 inauguration and Trump’s inauguration alike. Those kinds of large donations, as well as the fact that the committee doesn’t have to tell the FEC how it spent the money, are part of what one expert considers a relatively loose system governing how inaugurations are financed. ”Really, there’s very limited rules on how an inaugural committee has to spend the money, much less report how they spend the money,” said Brendan Fischer, director of the federal and FEC legal program at the Campaign Legal Center. There are also few restrictions on where any leftover money might go after an inauguration, Fischer said. As a 501( c)(4)  —   a type of nonprofit  —   an inaugural committee couldn’t, for example, donate the money to a political campaign. However, as Colby College professor and campaign finance expert Anthony Corrado told NPR, it could potentially give the funds to another 501( c)(4)  —   perhaps one that promotes the president’s agenda. Trump’s committee has said that any leftover money from this year’s inauguration will be given to charity, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. For his part, Fischer thinks the Inauguration Day donations should have some of the strictures of campaign donations. ”There’s no reason to think that a   contribution made after Election Day would be any less corrupting or pose any less risk of influence than a   contribution made before Election Day,” he said. While the donors were   taxpayers can end up footing a large part of the inauguration bill. An inauguration can be a massively expensive affair  —   ahead of this year’s, the New York Times estimated the cost at $200 million. The Trump inauguration committee would account for only part of that the Washington Post estimated before the event that the committee would spend somewhere around $70 million. The federal government also pays for specific parts of the festivities. For example, as the Times reported, federal money covers security, which may have cost around $100 million."
"The U. S. Justice Department is sending a message to state and local governments: Failure to comply with federal laws could have big consequences. This year, most of the conversation has focused on whether sanctuary cities that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities will be able to keep grant money for their police departments. But veterans of the Justice Department said that’s only a piece of what could be at stake. A   portion of a memo Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed on March 31 directed his deputies to review local and state compliance with ”all federal laws.” ”I think it’s cause for concern,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor who now works with newly elected district attorneys and state attorneys. ”With federal money moving forward, there could be the potential for federal strings to be attached.” The Justice Department review could have implications for cities and states that extend far beyond immigration. That includes marijuana enforcement, since the drug is legal in many states but remains illegal under federal law. ”This new directive really suggests that local and state prosecutors and law enforcement agencies should proceed with caution,” Krinsky said. ”They need to be careful at this point who they partner with or who they seek technical assistance or funding from.” The Sessions memo drew national attention for its pledge to strengthen relationships with local police  ” and its skepticism toward federal probes of police departments that engage in a ”pattern or practice” of unconstitutional policing. But the document also ordered Justice Department officials to consider a wide array of activity where local law enforcement relies on help from the federal government, including grants, technical assistance and training, and participation in task forces. Those task forces bring local and federal authorities together to crack down on violent crime, human trafficking and terrorism. The partnerships facilitate sharing of information about crime trends and policing strategies. Krinsky worries that those bonds could ”start to crumble,” hurting local communities. Laurie Robinson, who ran the Justice Department’s   unit under President Barack Obama, said there’s a big irony at work these days. ”For an administration that came to office with endorsement from the largest and the most important police union in the country, it would be ironic that the White House is now saying that they would cut back on grants that bring federal money to police departments,” Robinson said. It’s not yet clear how strictly the new team at the Justice Department will interpret their new mandate. The two officials in charge of the review, the deputy attorney general and the associate attorney general, await Senate confirmation. And Jeff Sessions has been noting in speeches and media appearances that restrictions on some grant money because of U. S. immigration law began last year, under the Obama administration. Following pressure from Republicans in Congress, the Obama Justice Department adopted language requiring jurisdictions to certify they followed federal immigration law. But two sources familiar with the issue told NPR they found no evidence that states or cities lost federal funding during the Obama years as a result. The outlook in the Trump Justice Department is unknown for now. But Sessions has taken a hard line in his public statements. ”If you’re not cooperating with the federal government, you’re going to lose grant money,” Sessions recently told a Fox News host. ”We’re going to battle on them every step of the way. We’re going to put pressure on these cities. And it’s just important for America and the people in these cities.” Robinson, who served as an assistant attorney general, said there’s not much private money available to support state and local law enforcement. The alternative, she says, is cutbacks in areas like training and innovation. And that, she said, would be ”tragic.”"
"Racked by food shortages and political unrest, Venezuela swelled with what organizers are calling the ”mother of all protests” on Wednesday. Demonstrators have taken to the streets in the capital, Caracas, and other major cities across the country to rally against the government of President Nicolas Maduro, who assumed office precisely five years ago. Throughout the day, those rallies often devolved into clashes between demonstrators and security forces  —   chaotic, violent scenes rent by tear gas, tossed rocks and even two reported deaths. Citing witnesses in Caracas, Reuters reports that Carlos Moreno, a teenage student who had not planned to join the demonstration, was shot in the head after ”government supporters approached an opposition gathering and fired shots.” The news service says he later died in the hospital. Later in the day a    woman named Paola Ramirez was also shot and killed by   groups, according to The Associated Press. They were not the first to be felled in the course of the   protests that have been mounting since late last month. As of last week, five protesters  —   including a    boy  —   had died of injuries suffered in fights with riot police. But the protesters who showed up Wednesday vowed to keep struggling against Maduro and voicing their displeasure with the state of the country. ”This is exhausting  —   but we won’t give up until we achieve a better country and democracy,” Luiza Mayorca, a lawyer and mother of three, told NPR’s Phil Reeves in Caracas. ”Every time we do something, that’s what we feel: that the worst thing would be to stay home, let fear take over us. This government, this regime, is making life miserable, and we cannot accept it.” ”We want to get out of all this oppression and dictatorship, all the mistreatment we have had  —   the hunger, the kids dying in the countryside, the poverty,” another protester, an unemployed schoolteacher named Libertad Diaz, told Phil. By several media accounts, hundreds of thousands of   demonstrators flooded city streets to protest bread scarcity, ballooning inflation  —   which several estimates peg at triple digits  —   and what they see as an increasingly dictatorial regime. Protesters point to a moment a few weeks ago as proof of Maduro’s   grasp on the levers of power, when a Supreme Court loyal to the president attempted to nullify the   Legislature. The court backpedaled and restored power to the body after the abortive attempt drew anger both in Venezuela and the international community. Maduro’s opposition is also demanding new elections, which were indefinitely postponed last year  —   mere months after Maduro also canceled a recall referendum that could have ousted him from power. ”What will end the phase in which our country currently finds itself? Allowing free and democratic elections and respecting the constitution, to put a stop to this coup d’état that’s being staged and controlled by Maduro together with the Supreme Court,” Henrique Capriles, a leading figure of the opposition, tells the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Capriles, whom Deutsche Welle calls ”the opposition’s most promising candidate for the coming elections in 2018,” was banned last week from holding office for 15 years  —   a move Capriles says he does not recognize. Maduro, for his part, has rejected the unrest as manufactured by forces outside Venezuela’s borders. ”The US government, the state department, have given the green light, the approval for a coup process to intervene in Venezuela,” Maduro said in a televised address Tuesday, according to The Guardian. In response to Wednesday’s massive protests, which had long been in the works,   reports Maduro ordered the Venezuelan military to march in Caracas in ”defense of morality” and ”in repudiation of the traitors of the country.” ”From the first reveille, from the first rooster crow, the Bolivarian National Armed Forces will be in the streets . .. saying, ’Long live the Bolivarian Revolution,’ ” he announced, referring to the populist ”revolution” that brought his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, to power in 1999. The military presence did little to ease the upheaval, however  —   or to dissuade protesters like Diaz. ”We’re going to go on struggling,” she said Wednesday, ”because the one who tires, loses.”"
"Emirates Airline says it is reducing its number of U. S.  flights because security restrictions imposed by the Trump administration have weakened demand in Middle East countries. The   carrier will pare back flights to five of the 12 U. S. cities it serves. Flights to Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles will be reduced from twice to once daily, and in Florida, daily service to Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale will shrink to five flights a week. Overall, it’s a reduction of 25 flights per week for the airline, according to The Associated Press. ”The recent actions taken by the U. S. government relating to the issuance of entry visas, heightened security vetting, and restrictions on electronic devices in aircraft cabins, have had a direct impact on consumer interest and demand for air travel into the U. S,” Emirates said in a statement announcing the decision. Last month, the Trump administration announced that passengers on direct flights to the U. S. from eight   countries  —   Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates  —   must now place electronic devices such as laptops, tablets and cameras in checked baggage. Those restrictions came on the heels of President Trump’s controversial executive orders in January and early March seeking to temporarily halt travel from several other mostly Muslim nations. Both orders were halted by the courts. The Dubai International Airport in the UAE, which is Emirates’ hub, is a major transit point for nationals of countries listed in Trump’s travel bans, The Associated Press reports. The news service says the airline’s decision is ”the strongest sign yet that the new measures imposed on U. S.  travelers from the Mideast are taking a financial toll on   Gulf carriers that have expanded rapidly in the United States.” In its statement, Emirates said it had seen ”significant deterioration” in its U. S. bookings since January but did not offer specific numbers. The carrier’s remarks about reduced demand echo observations in the months following Trump’s initial travel ban. As NPR’s David Schaper reported: ”[Tourism company] NYC  Company is revising its forecasts this year, projecting that 300, 000 fewer international travelers will visit New York. . .. ”And the downturn in international travel to the U. S. is not just affecting New York. Philadelphia’s tourism agency says one international meeting that draws some 3, 000 attendees is now going to Canada or to Mexico. ”ForwardKeys, a company that tracks travel, reports that international travel bookings to the U. S. were down 6. 5 percent in February. And the Global Business Travel Association says in just the first week following the president’s January 27 travel ban, the U. S. lost nearly $200 million in business travel bookings.”"
"Updated at 6:30 p. m. ET, A group of liberal lawyers is suing the Justice Department and FBI over President Trump’s tweeted allegation of wiretapping ordered by   Barack Obama. American Oversight is demanding records that support or disprove Trump’s March 4 tweet, ”Just found out that Obama had my ’wires tapped’ in Trump Tower.” Austin Evers, the group’s director, told NPR, ”We can get a straight, factual answer in the courts, by asking an unspinnable question: Do you have records to support the president’s tweets?” Besides the tweet, Trump has talked about the wiretap claim, while FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee in open session that his agency had ”no information” about such alleged wiretaps. The lawsuit cites those public discussions to argue that the records are no longer classified. American Oversight sued after the Justice Department rejected, and the FBI ignored, its Freedom of Information Act requests. In a second case also filed Wednesday, American Oversight demands records in the evolving story of Russian interference in the presidential campaign. It seeks records on White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’ communications with the FBI regarding Russian contacts with Trump associates and the campaign. And it seeks Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ list of foreign contacts, which he would have filed before his Senate confirmation hearing. That was the hearing where Sessions failed to recall meetings with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. The lawsuit says the list ”would address a significant question regarding the integrity of a senior government official.” Asked for comment about either lawsuit, the White House referred NPR to the Justice Department. Organized this winter, American Oversight is a group that includes former Obama administration lawyers and is using FOIA to monitor the performance and conduct of Trump administration agencies. Wednesday’s lawsuits are the first, but Evers said more than 100 FOIA requests have been submitted."
"In 1995,    Steven Mallory imagined a life completely unlike his own  —   one without gangs, drugs and welfare dependency. He imagined having a solid family and savings. But in Dayton, Ohio, he had a job literally doing the city’s dirty work: cleaning up after the garbage trucks dumped their load at the county incinerator. He had been a   teenage drug dealer, making about $500 or $600 a day. Given to fancy cars and expensive suits, he had been known on the streets of West Dayton as Monte Carlos. But on Dec. 18, 1992, his friend Antoine Gibson died, and he decided enough was enough. ”I went to his funeral and the guy that was sitting in front of me  —   my friend Darnell Cochran  —   said, ’I can’t picture myself being in a box,’ ” Mallory said back in 1994. ”But later on that night, he got killed, and I just said, I just can’t live it no more. I have too much to live for.” So he quit the drug scene, but when the money stopped coming in, he had no money to support his three children with his   Afrika Groves. Groves turned to welfare, and the government went looking for Mallory for failing to make child support payments. Mallory ended up in a counselling project, which was part of a national program called Parents’ Fair Share. In these interviews with NPR from 1994 and 1995, Mallory had just turned his life around and detailed his struggle and perseverance in doing so. Over 20 years later, Mallory, 44, now lives in the Northridge Estates subdivision just north of the Dayton city line. Here, there are single homes with garages and neatly mowed lawns. It’s the very vision of a   suburb. He is Dad to three grown children from his days with Groves and one teenage daughter with Tracey, his wife of 18 years. Tracey is an elementary school principal. Their teenage daughter, Zharia, will be making college visits this summer. He’s also a grandfather of four, with a fifth one on the way. Mallory still works with Montgomery County, but after a couple of promotions, he’s now a scale operator. ”Then, I was out in the trash,” he says. ”Now, I’m at the beginning of the trash I don’t even smell it no more.” He’s also running his own businesses: a lawn care service and a massage clinic. He took an   course and became a   masseur. But the clinic is very much a   venture. Mallory says it pays the rent, but not a lot more. He has another passion he has made four rap videos on YouTube. One video, in which three friends sitting in a car suddenly disappear with an edit, is a reference to his own adolescence. In a   span, he says, he went to 17 funerals. And a lot of his friends went to jail. Although he now has a steady income and lives in a nice house, the payoff isn’t just material. ”People treat Mr. Mallory way better than they treat Steven,” he says. He says when he goes to the doctor now and hands over his insurance card, people help him. ”I remember going to the doctor when I didn’t have any insurance, and they called me Steven, and they would say, ’Well Steven, I can’t  —   this is the best I can do,’ or ’I can’t do nothing for you.’ ” Back then, Mallory imagined a life unlike anything he had ever experienced. Since his interview back in 1994 and 1995, one question has remained: Is Mallory OK? As it turns out, he’s much better than that."
"In 2017 alone,   added more than 1, 000 words to its dictionary. Noah Webster himself might have struggled to define these new English terms  —   such as   humblebrag, photobomb, NSFW, truther,   and listicle. But language is a ”living thing,” says lexicographer Kory Stamper, an associate editor at    —   and it’s constantly shifting in use and meaning. ”A lot of times people assume that English as we speak it is something that was curated maybe by some dudes in frilly shirts back in the 1700s,” Stamper explains. ”But in fact, a language is . .. always influenced by the people who come in and speak it or come in and conquer it.” Stamper’s new book, Word by Word, describes the painstaking process of keeping the dictionary up to date. Five years ago, for instance,   added the term   to its pages  —   an addition that reflected, Stamper says, the term’s widespread, sustained and meaningful use in society. ”People assume that . .. there’s boundaries set around [the English language] and that all the good stuff is on the inside and everything on the outside is bad or not worth using,” she says. ”But it’s all worth using, and all of it is required to make the language flourish.” On the criteria for adding a word to the dictionary, There are three criteria for entry. The first is widespread use, which means a word needs to be used all over the place and in all sorts of different kinds of places. So if a word is used in VIBE magazine and The Wall Street Journal, that’s widespread use. Or if a word is used in California and then it’s used in South Africa, that’s widespread use. . .. [The] second is sustained use. So a word needs to actually have kind of a long shelf life, because most words come into the language and either don’t have much written use for a long time, or they have a lot of written use and then they drop out [of] use for 10 or 20 years. So we like to see some sustained usage, to make sure that it’s sort of settled into the language. Then the third criterion is meaningful use, which means the word has to have a meaning, which sounds patently ridiculous, but there are a handful of words that show up in print that just don’t have a lexical meaning. On how context really helps, Sometimes you need to show a word as it’s used in the wild, and if you can find a really good citation that does that, it’s helpful, because the way that we learn language is through context. Language isn’t in these little discreet boxes like we present it in the dictionary. You don’t have a word that just exists on its own with no context around it. So context is always really important. The more context you can give someone, the better. On tracking down a word’s   written use, It’s kind of a wild lexical goose chase. So one of the things that we do is we will find first dates of written use first by going through our own   citation database, and sometimes we have that citation there. Other times what we have to do is . .. start scouring other kinds of databases for the use, and honestly now that things are online it’s so much easier to do. So you can go to a big database like LexisNexis and do a search for ” ” that’s targeted between certain dates. Sometimes . .. someone has mailed us a citation. . .. ” ” was first used [about] Gary Carter, who was a baseball player who was not known for swearing, but who [said the word ”f***”] once and that made enough news that they needed a way to say what word he used and so they came up with ” .” So finding these citations of first written use is really kind of [a] needle in a haystack. On the careful deliberation that went into entering the racial slur n***** into the dictionary, This is a word that people have written books about this is a word that you could do a   treatment of. . .. It’s not just fraught for lexicographers it’s fraught for everybody. There are debates within the   community about whether the word should be used or not. There are debates among people outside of the   community about whether this should be used or not. . .. This all gets down to intention and being in the middle of some of the most painful interactions that people have lexically. . .. We tend to be very introverted and shy people and we tend not to like being in the middle of any interaction if we can help it. But this interaction in particular . .. wherein a word is used to either dehumanize or rehumanize somebody . .. when you’re tracking the word you also have to take into account everything that goes underneath of that. It’s almost impossible to put that in writing. Radio producers Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner and Web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"China’s Foreign Ministry is defending a decision to grant Ivanka Trump new trademark rights for her line of handbags, jewelry and spa services. The three new trademarks were approved April 6 while the president’s daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, sat next to Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife at dinner at President Trump’s    resort in Florida, according to The Associated Press. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Lu Kang, said the government handles all trademark applications equally. He suggested some media were ”hyping certain gossip to hint at something undisclosed.” Peter Riebling, a trademark lawyer in Washington, D. C. disagrees with that statement. He says normally it takes 18 months to two years to have a trademark registration application issued. Riebling looked into all trademark applications filed in China by Ivanka Trump’s company. He says about a dozen were filed in the   time frame of 2016, before the U. S. presidential election. ”What’s interesting about these applications is they sailed through incredibly quickly compared to what is normal in China, under normal trademark practice,” Riebling says. He notes this time it took only about nine months for the registrations to be granted by the Chinese government. ”When I look at this the first thing I think of is the Chinese government should be given a speeding ticket. . .. I get whiplash looking at how fast these applications went by.” Riebling counted 182 pending or registered trademarks for her company across 23 countries, including China, Canada, Mexico, Russia and Australia. The    Trump was building her own global business empire before her father ran for president. She is now an adviser to the president, has an office in the White House and access to classified information and holds meetings with world leaders. She has taken steps to separate herself from her business by moving back from its    operations and naming her    and    as trustees. Larry Noble, general counsel of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, says that’s not good enough to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest. ”She has put her business into a trust, but it’s a trust being run by her family it’s not a true blind trust. She’s still aware of what’s going on there and I believe she still has the ability to make certain decisions,” Noble says. ”At the end of the day it’s all going to come back to her.” Noble says trademarks granted at record speed send out a bad signal. ”It raises questions whether there was any favoritism, would a country be less likely to challenge a trademark or refuse a trademark knowing that they’re doing this for the daughter of a president who advises the president,” he asks. Abigail Klem, the president of Ivanka Trump, said in a statement to NPR that the trademark applications were defensive, a move to ward off rampant piracy of the Trump brand. ”We have recently seen a surge in trademark filings by unrelated third parties trying to capitalize on the name and it is our responsibility to diligently protect our trademark.” Riebling, the trademark lawyer, says he applauds any company that is proactive in applying for trademarks. He says it’s especially important for an organization, like Ivanka Trump’s, that’s not actually manufacturing a product. ”They’re licensing the brand name to others, so its critical, mission critical, to have the certificate of trademark registration,” he says. Still, Riebling says he questions the speed with which China granted the trademarks, saying the timing is ”very suspect.”"
"If you thought it was odd that a special election in the Atlanta suburbs got so much national attention, you haven’t seen anything yet. So far, much of the focus has been on Democrat Jon Ossoff  —   and with good reason. The Democratic base rallied around him and made the election a referendum on President Trump. In some ways, it worked. Ossoff came within 3, 648 votes of winning the   congressional seat outright in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. He needed 50 percent to do that he got just over 48 percent. That outperformed where he was polling, and was better than the Democrat who ran for Congress in 2016 against   Tom Price, who vacated the seat to become Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary. ”There is no doubt this is already a victory for the ages,” Ossoff claimed Tuesday night. But it is more like just missing a home run in baseball  —   ”It is high! It is deep! It is . .. foul.” It still makes Ossoff dangerous, but now his opponent gets a turn at bat. That opponent, who emerged from a field of 11 Republicans, is Karen Handel, a familiar name in Georgia politics who, not that long ago, was at the center of national controversy. Who is Karen Handel? There’s something of a   rule in politics  —   lose three big races in a row, and you’re out as a top candidate. Handel is now on her third try. The former Georgia secretary of state lost twice in subsequent bids for statewide higher office  —   once for governor and once for the U. S. Senate. Now, because of the conservative bent of the 6th Congressional District, she is likely to be the favorite against Ossoff on June 20. But she is about to get a lot more national attention, and her role in an attempt to strip funding to Planned Parenthood from the Susan G. Komen foundation may just keep the liberal base fired up. Handel is conservative, especially when it comes to abortion rights. After her failed gubernatorial bid in 2010, she joined the Komen foundation. As a vice president, she pushed to eliminate its funding of Planned Parenthood. After an outcry from women who help fund Komen, the money was restored, and Handel resigned in February 2012. She went on to write a scathing book that detailed her experience and blasted Planned Parenthood. It was called Planned Bullyhood. She opens the book by taking the reader back to a pivotal moment  —   an interview with the head of Komen, Nancy Brinker, by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, whom Handel bitterly derides on Page 1 as ”an ardent liberal and breast cancer survivor” who was ”enraged” at Komen’s decision to cut off funding. Handel wrote that the Komen decision was not a ”political” one but an ”economic one” that was ”months even years in the making.” She writes, ”To Planned Parenthood and its opportunistic friends in the [Obama] White House and Congress, daring to walk away would not be tolerated.” She said when Mitchell mentioned her name, then she became ”the focus of the fury of the left.” Five days later, she resigned. In her book, Handel makes it sound as though she was a scapegoat. But that hardly seems to be the case. The New York Times and others reported that Handel, who is against federal funding of Planned Parenthood, was instrumental in the funding cut. Here’s what the New York Times wrote the day after the Brinker interview on MSNBC: ”The controversy that burst into harsh public light this week had been brewing for years as   advocates dogged the Komen foundation, protesting alongside its   events and complaining loudly about the grants to Planned Parenthood, which performs abortions as well as providing a broad range of other health services to women. ” ’We are really afraid, because these people who are opposed to Planned Parenthood were threatening to disrupt our races or sponsors to our races,’ said John Hammarley, a Komen senior communications adviser until late last summer. . .. ”The discussion within Komen about addressing the objections of   advocates intensified last year after Karen Handel was hired as senior vice president for public policy, several former Komen employees said.” The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the same day of the Brinker interview: ”The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization’s new senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly   and who has said that since she is ’  I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.’ . .. ”The decision, made in December, caused an uproar inside Komen. Three sources told me that the organization’s top   official, Mollie Williams, resigned in protest immediately following the Komen board’s decision to cut off Planned Parenthood. . .. ”[Hammarley] called the controversy over Planned Parenthood funding ’a burr in the saddle of Komen, but it withstood the issue for years and years.’ Hammarley said the issue became newly urgent after Handel was brought on last year. ’The internal debate on a senior level rose in the past eight months or so, coinciding with her hiring.’ ” Distancing from Trump . .. and then not, Handel is a pretty traditional conservative. In addition to being   rights, she’s for lower income taxes, cutting regulations and stricter voter ID laws. Those are hardly   in a conservative district that has been in Republican hands since the Carter administration. In fact, the opposite is probably true. But the one area where Handel did seem reticent was about the president. ”I certainly support the president and will work with him where we agree,” Handel said, per AP. ”But my job is not to go to Congress as a rubber stamp for anybody. My job is to be the representative for the people of the 6th District, and that’s what I believe regardless of who is the president.” That was pretty par for the course for Handel during the campaign. There were plenty of others who were trying to   each other. But in the district, packed with suburban,   Republicans, Trump underperformed. He won by fewer than 2 points in 2016, while Price won by 23. But that’s a posture from Handel that might not be sustainable, and she is indicating it won’t be. She got just under 20 percent of the vote in the primary. Given that she was in an   field, it was actually about as impressive a showing as could be expected. On Wednesday morning, asked on CNN if she would want Trump to campaign for her, she said, ”I would hope so. I mean look, all Republicans, it’s all hands on deck for us.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday said the president would do what’s needed. Handel said she recognizes that it’s an important race, indicating she understands the deluge to come. Trump is certainly paying attention. He took a measure of credit after midnight Wednesday in a tweet, claiming victory: And then, eight hours later, he   Handel: Between now and next year’s midterms, Trump may very well be the most important issue in every race  —   whether Republicans want him to be or not."
"Updated at 2:08 a. m.  Republicans escaped a potentially brutal loss on Tuesday night  —   for now  —   by forcing a runoff in a closely watched Georgia special congressional election. Democrat Jon Ossoff would fall just short of the 50 percent needed to win outright in the crowded     primary, the Associated Press projected early Wednesday. Ossoff, a    documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer, instead will face off against Republican and former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel on June 20. The race to replace   and Human Services Secretary Tom Price attracted national attention as Democrats tried to turn it into a referendum on President Trump. ”There is no doubt that this is already a victory for the ages,” Ossoff told a rowdy group of supporters gathered at his election night party just before midnight at the Crowne Plaza in Dunwoody. ”We will be ready to fight on and win in June if necessary,” the Democratic candidate insisted, conceding that the vote tally may not be finalized for some time. ”So bring it on. Because we are courageous, we are humble and we know how to fight.” Progressives from across the country flocked to Ossoff’s aid, helping him raise over $8. 3 million and building an army of volunteers in hopes of delivering a knockout punch in the first round. In recent days, the Democratic candidate said he still believed that was possible. Democrats, however, privately maintained such a feat would be hard, given the crowded field and the history of the district. Even though this is an area that Trump carried by less than 2 points in November  —   after Mitt Romney won it handily in 2012  —   Price won   easily each year. This is also territory once represented by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Republicans have a better chance to win now that the race becomes more of a traditional   contest. Democrats, meanwhile, will have to continue to keep their base motivated and engaged for what’s a decidedly more difficult climb. Still, this is the type of district Democrats need to be competitive in to win back the House in next year’s midterms. The rapidly growing Northern Atlanta suburbs are a diverse, highly educated area that saw a big shift away from Republicans on the presidential level. There are plenty of areas that are more   for the party to win the 24 seats needed to take back the House in 2018, but an outright victory by Ossoff would have been a major boon to their fundraising and recruiting. Keeping Ossoff below 50 percent had been the GOP’s primary goal, and they poured in over $4 million to attack him in the race’s closing weeks, hitting him for allegedly inflating his resume and tying him to national Democrats like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The Republicans’ strategy seemed to work. Ossoff appeared to have built up a big lead early on in the night, but as totals trickled in, his share of the vote kept dropping. ”The myth of Jon Ossoff died tonight. Despite a heavy advertising advantage and a national stream of unlimited resources, Jon Ossoff’s   campaign finished no better than Hillary Clinton’s,” Congressional Leadership Fund Executive Director Corry Bliss said in a statement. The superPAC aligned with House GOP leadership spent about $3 million on a heavy advertising blitz attacking Ossoff. Ossoff will now face off against Handel, who emerged as the second top   ahead of 10 other GOP candidates. She easily bested rivals, like Johns Creek City Councilman Bob Gray, who ran as an explicitly   candidate but was a distant third as the night wore on. State Sen. Judson Hill, endorsed by Gingrich and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, was in fourth place. While Handel has said she thinks Trump is doing a good job, she didn’t exactly wear her support for him on her sleeve. That distance could help her in the runoff if Democrats continue their   message. Handel is familiar to voters in the district. She served as chairwoman of the Fulton County Commission, in the most Republican part of the district, and she ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination for governor in 2010 and for Senate in 2014. But Republicans in the area would have to unite to get voters back out in June after a fractious primary, with many of them attacking Handel as an    politician. Georgia GOP officials have maintained the party will come together, and Handel struck a note of unity when addressing her supporters Tuesday night. ”Tomorrow, we start the campaign anew,” she said, according to the Atlanta  . ”Beating Ossoff and holding this seat is something that rises above any one person.” Democrats, however, argue that Handel must now combat high negatives from her two statewide races. ”After successfully weathering $4. 2 million in television smear attacks from D. C. Republicans, Jon Ossoff can finally draw a contrast between his vision for Atlanta’s   future and Karen Handel’s background as a career politician with a history of wasteful spending,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wrote in a memo. For Ossoff now, the challenge will be keeping up the momentum he has built. Moving forward, the race is likely to break fundraising records and will probably attract even more money from outside the district and state. While Ossoff’s massive haul was impressive, Republicans were quick to point out that 95 percent of that came from outside the state, buoyed by progressive blogs like Daily Kos and fundraising platforms like ActBlue. Celebrities tweeted support for him and donated to his campaign, actress Alyssa Milano drove voters to the polls during early voting and actor Samuel L. Jackson cut a radio ad in support of Ossoff in the closing days. With the Georgia election’s unusual contours  —   an   primary and a GOP field split among 11 candidates  —   Ossoff soon rose to the top of the pack. Even though there were five other Democrats in the race, major local Democratic figures lined up early behind him, including neighboring Reps. Hank Johnson and John Lewis, and the national party apparatus soon followed. With his plush campaign coffers, Ossoff was able to blanket the local airwaves, running ads that both called out Trump and promised to stand up to the president. But others struck a decidedly more centrist tone, talking about how he wanted to cut wasteful spending, boost infrastructure investment and attract new tech jobs to the area. And while it was clear many of his supporters saw his candidacy as a way to send a shockwave to the Trump White House, Ossoff himself rarely mentioned the president directly. Still, the message he delivered to volunteers over the weekend was clear. ”The eyes of the whole nation are on us. The eyes of the world are on us,” he said at a canvass launch in Sandy Springs on Saturday afternoon. ”And it’s a rare chance for us to stand up and make a statement about what we stand for, and to prove that we believe in a country that is decent and kind, compassionate, courageous and tough, that we reject fear and division, that we stand together in all of our diversity, working for a better community here, and a better country.” Democrats had already been aiming to nationalize the race against Trump, campaigning on a slogan of ”Make Trump Furious.” If the president’s Twitter account was any indication these past few days, they’d done just that. ”Democrat Jon Ossoff would be a disaster in Congress. VERY weak on crime and illegal immigration, bad for jobs and wants higher taxes. Say NO,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. He also recorded a robocall hitting Ossoff and to try to boost GOP turnout. ”Just learned that Jon @Ossoff, who is running for Congress in Georgia, doesn’t even live in the district. Republicans, get out and vote!” he continued tweeting. Ossoff grew up in the district but lives just outside of it with his longtime girlfriend who is in medical school at Emory University. After she finishes, he says they will move back into the district. Members of Congress aren’t required to live in the district they represent. In the wee morning hours Wednesday, Trump took to Twitter again to take a victory lap."
"With its spindly legs, distinctive patterning, and absurdly long neck, the giraffe makes a compelling figure on the savanna. But the population of the world’s tallest mammal has dropped sharply in recent decades  —   from about 150, 000 in 1985, to fewer than 100, 000 today. That decline prompted five wildlife groups to petition the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday to classify the giraffe as an endangered species. They say the giraffe is facing increasing threats from habitat loss, illegal hunting for bush meat and an international trade in trophies and bone carvings. Giraffes aren’t native to the U. S. but FWS classifies foreign species, too. There are a few ways the U. S. classification could help the giraffe population rebound in Africa, says Jeffrey Flocken, regional director for International Fund for Animal Welfare, one of the groups behind the petition. He says that from 2006 to 2015, the U. S. was responsible for importing 3, 744 giraffe hunting trophies. That’s almost one per day. ”The biggest reason to petition to list it under the U. S. Endangered Species Act,” Flocken says, ”is while we can’t stop people from killing species in other countries, we can stop them bringing the parts back to the United States. So if this were successful, it would either limit or outright stop import of giraffe parts.” In addition to limiting imports, Flocken notes that species classified as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act get more attention  —   and greater opportunities for funding to monitor and protect the species. ”It’s a bit of a ” says Flocken. ”Until a species is declared imperiled  —   either endangered or threatened  —   there isn’t much recording and monitoring done of what is going on with that species. There could be scientists studying their biology and their life in the wild, but at the same time perhaps no one is monitoring their trade.” FWS would not comment or confirm receipt of the petition, but its website explains its process for petition review. Once a petition is received, the FWS (or the National Marine Fisheries Service for most marine species) makes a determination within 90 days as to whether there is ”substantial information” that the potential listing may be warranted. ”By regulating activities, the United States ensures that people under the jurisdiction of the United States do not contribute to the further decline of listed species,” it says. Perhaps the most recent similar campaign concerned the lion. A petition was filed on its behalf in March 2011, Flocken says, and it took until Dec. 2015 for the lion to be classified as endangered. (Some have speculated that it was the infamous killing of Cecil the Lion earlier that year that spurred the Service to add the species to the endangered list, but Flocken insists the decision was based on science: ”We knew that trophy hunting contributed to the decline of the species. ”) The petition  —   and the giraffe’s prospects  —   may benefit from the popularity the species enjoys among the general public. ”If you ask any random group of folks here in the U. S. what their favorite animal is, ultimately giraffes are going to be in the top five,” Flocken says. ”People love them. And I think the new knowledge that they’re in trouble is going to surprise many individuals, and I think there will be a movement in the conservation community and the general public to help save them.”"
"Almost half a million veterans gained health care coverage during the first two years of the Affordable Care Act, a report finds. In the years leading up to the implementation of the ACA’s major coverage provisions, from 2010 to 2013, nearly 1 million of the nation’s approximately 22 million veterans didn’t have health insurance. Almost half of all veterans are enrolled in the VA health system others get health care through employers or Medicare. But some don’t quality for those options, and others don’t know that they have them. Two years after the ACA’s implementation, 429, 000 veterans under the age of 65 gained coverage, which is a 40 percent drop in vets without insurance from 2013 to 2015. The vets were covered for the most part through Medicaid expansion, privately purchased plans and marketplace coverage, according to the report. The number of insured veterans rose across demographics like age, gender, race and education level. ”The gains in coverage were really broad,” says Jennifer Haley, a research associate at the Urban Institute, a research group based in Washington, D. C. who was an author on the report. Veterans with the lowest incomes saw the greatest increase in coverage, especially in states that adopted Medicaid expansion. Vets with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or $16, 394 a year for an individual, became eligible for Medicaid in expansion states, the report notes. In 2015, just 4. 8 percent of veterans were uninsured in states that participated in Medicaid expansion, compared to 7. 1 percent in states that did not. One in 5 uninsured vets live in states that did not expand Medicaid and would have been eligible for coverage had their state chosen to expand the program, the report found. Haley says these are key data points when considering changes to policy. ”If states would adopt the expansion, more vets would qualify for publicly supported coverage,” she says. Currently, 31 states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid programs, including California, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Another 19 states, including Florida and Texas, have not expanded access to the program. Veterans weren’t the only ones to benefit from expanded insurance access. Their family members had access to more coverage, too, and by a similar margin. The overall rate of uninsurance among relatives sank from 9. 2 percent in 2013 to 4. 5 percent in 2015. For children, the rates fell from 4. 5 to 2. 9 percent. Overall, 730, 000 fewer vets and their family members were lacking health insurance from 2013 to 2015. The report, published by the Urban Institute, used data from the American Community Survey, which is performed annually by the U. S. Census Bureau. It surveys around 100, 000 veterans and 100, 000 family members of veterans. The report also considered data from the National Health Interview Survey which is conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. A repeal of the ACA or a rollback of Medicaid could negate these coverage increases and leave more vets without health insurance coverage, the authors note in their report. The VA health system continues to struggle with delays in delivery of services to veterans. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a law extending the Veterans Choice program, which allows some vets get health care from private providers paid for by the VA and was created to help improve access to timely care. The $10 billion program has been riddled with problems, as Montana Public Radio’s Eric Whitney reports, including long waits, a confusing, complicated system and delayed payments to providers."
"It’s a fix that hasn’t fixed much, but the troubled Veterans Choice program has been extended anyway. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a bill extending the program intended to speed veterans’ access to health care beyond its original August end point. Veterans Choice is a $10 billion response to the 2014 scandal in which Veterans Affairs health facilities altered records to hide   waits for care in Phoenix and elsewhere. The Choice program pays for   health care for veterans and was set to expire in August, but the VA and some of the program’s harshest critics in Congress have agreed to extend it, with a few changes, until January. They said that will give the VA time to propose a more comprehensive package of reforms  —   fixes for the fix. Sen. Jon Tester,  . authored the extension bill, which won bipartisan support in the House and Senate. Veterans Choice is designed to allow veterans who have waited more than 30 days for an appointment at a VA facility, or who live more than 40 miles from one, instead to get care from private providers who then bill the VA. But it has been plagued with problems. Many vets complain that Choice actually makes getting care more difficult and   and some health care providers have dropped out due to slow payments or administrative hassles. The bigger reforms the VA wants to make following this extension bill will be aimed at fixing more than a   other systems the VA has for purchasing care from the private sector. ”The idea of having seven, eight ways of doing the same thing is part of the problem, because it’s confusing to veterans, it’s confusing to the community providers,” VA Deputy Undersecretary Dr. Baligh Yehia said last year. Yehia says the VA has issued a request for proposals to streamline how it buys care from   providers across the board. It expects to receive those proposals this summer. VA leaders have said a big reason Veterans Choice foundered is because Congress provided only 90 days to set it up. The VA invited 57 companies to bid on running Choice, but only two responded, given the short timeline. Those two companies, Health Net Federal Services and TriWest, have struggled to make it work. Tester, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs committee, says he hopes to have draft legislation incorporating   reform proposals ready in the fall. Tester says his goal is to ”cut the red tape and make sure it’s easy to work with for the providers. And I think we’ll get more providers jumping on board, and we’ll get more veterans using it, if the time to set up those appointments is reduced dramatically.” Tester says he’ll defend the VA from those who ”don’t want the government involved in health care at all.” ”I think it’s idealism versus realism,” Tester says. ”We have folks that have borne the wounds of battle, and I think the VA is best suited to take care of those folks. So that VA needs to be there, and then we need to have a private sector that fills in the gaps around that VA.” That’s particularly important in rural states like Tester’s Montana, where VA facilities are an important part of a generally understaffed health care landscape. They provide vital services, but rely on partnerships with   doctors, clinics and hospitals to provide specialty care, or appointments that don’t require hours of driving. This story is part of a reporting partnership with Montana Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News."
"Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos appointed Candice Jackson as the acting assistant secretary of the Office for Civil Rights. Jackson will oversee a staff of hundreds charged with responding to thousands of civil rights complaints every year, including some from students who feel discriminated against based on race, color, national origin, sex, ability, and age. ProPublica reported that while an undergraduate at Stanford University, Jackson, a white woman, wrote an article for a student newspaper complaining about a section of a calculus course designed for ”minority” students. The math class was an example of ”racial discrimination” against white people, she wrote. In another   for the paper, Jackson dismissed the needs of women ”banding together by gender to fight for their rights.” Might Jackson’s words from twenty years ago fuel the idea that her office may not fully enforce Title VI and IX protections for people of color and white women? Do they signal that she may instruct her staff to elevate the complaints of white students or faculty who believe they are victims of racial discrimination? A stronger line of inquiry begins with this question: what if these diversity policies actually improved the social position of white students and faculty? As an Asian American professor who teaches about race, I regularly find myself at the center of campus diversity programs and initiatives. I work at a public Midwestern university where approximately 90 percent of students and faculty are white. Because this lack of racial diversity is so conspicuous, my institution has sought to advance and measure its progress to racial equity for many years. I’ve led several of these efforts, some more effective than others: antiracist professional development, resident assistant training, campus climate surveys, Equity Scorecard, general education reform, etc. Initiatives like these can begin to dismantle institutional racism, or they can further entrench it. In any   effort, the key factor is something called ”interest convergence.” Interest convergence is a theory coined by the late Derrick Bell, law professor and spiritual godfather to the field of study known as critical race theory. Interest convergence stipulates that black people achieve civil rights victories only when white and black interests converge. The signature example is Brown v. Board of Education, which happened because it advanced white interests too, Bell argued. Specifically, desegregation raised the nation’s prestige in world politics during the Cold War. Eventually, when interests diverged, the enforcement of civil rights was curtailed: Brown was undercut by later cases that sanctioned segregation for decades. Bell pointed to later   triumphs as examples of renewed interest convergence. Schools and universities are natural sites to observe interest convergence because inequitable access to quality education ensures white social advantage. However, recent dispatches from around the country might lead some to believe that black interests are not only ascendant on college campuses but are absolutely oppressive. In March, Middlebury College, a small liberal arts school in Vermont, burst onto the national scene with its protest against a lecture by Charles Murray,   of The Bell Curve. A Middlebury professor was assaulted during the protest and later hospitalized for her injury. Earlier this month, students at Claremont McKenna College blocked the entrance to a room where conservative thinker Heather Mac Donald was planning to speak. Her book The War on Cops criticizes the Black Lives Matter movement and pushes the discredited theory of the ”Ferguson Effect.” Every week seems to bring a similar story of speeches interrupted or canceled on college campuses. But speakers come and go, and it would be difficult to claim that a single protest is a systemic effort to discriminate against white people. However, campus diversity policies are sometimes misinterpreted as doing just that. Responding to a wave of antiracist student protests over the past two years, most memorably at the University of Missouri and Yale University, colleges and universities have begun to refashion their identities to make room for the secular trinity of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Some of these are indeed systemic efforts  —   rewriting curriculum, updating tenure and promotion policies, hiring Chief Diversity Officers  —   meant to change how institutions evaluate themselves, students, and faculty. Interest convergence helps to explain diversity policies once we understand that institutions will lose more than prestige if they are perceived as unwelcoming or even hostile to students of color. Any college president can attest to how crucial the tuition of international students is to their institution’s bottom line. A recent survey indicated that almost 40 percent of US colleges report declines in applications from international students, chiefly those from Middle Eastern nations, China, and India. Many students submitted applications before recent spikes in hate crimes and   activity and before the current administration’s efforts to make good on its promise to ban travel from six Muslim nations. Thus, the drop in yield of international students actually enrolling may be steeper than that of applications. Quite simply, it is in an institution’s financial interest not to be seen as racist. Institutions like the University of Oklahoma are hoping that changes they have already put into place will improve campus climate. In response to a 2015 viral video of fraternity members singing a racist song, OU implemented mandatory ”diversity experience trainings” for its   students the following year. This initiative has not been   by all. Complaints arrived from members of OU’s College Republicans, who charged that the trainings made them feel ”uncomfortable” and forced ”them to be ’politically correct. ’” These comments might resemble the kinds of complaints that Candice Jackson’s office will need to make sense of. However, when the ”OU Freshmen Diversity Experience” touts its professional benefits over its potential to reduce discrimination, its origin in interest convergence is evident. Diversity skills can be marketed to employers. ”Businesses want to hire graduates who understand their role in building a truly inclusive culture,” OU explains on the program’s site, and so the Experience ”uses   curriculum to equip students for future employment.” Moreover, the training may even hamstring graduates who aren’t white men. Researchers found that minority executives (white women and people of color) who promote diversity in the workplace are rated worse by their supervisors than are white men doing the same. The business model for diversity teaches students about cultural preferences and how to avoid offense, but it is   to unpack social group power dynamics. This disconnect was painfully brought to life by a recent commercial featuring Kendell Jenner slipping a cold Pepsi into the hand of a white police officer in riot gear  —   to the cheers of a diverse crowd of protesters. Students of color can benefit from diversity trainings and curricula, but the outcomes are not uniform and may even be  . This is because initiatives like OU’s Experience were not designed for them or to reduce the discrimination against them. Next fall, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa will roll out its ”diversity and inclusion” requirement as part of its general education program. Matthew Bruce, a member of the executive board of the school’s Black Student union, bluntly expressed his doubts about the requirement: ”I don’t necessarily see a course designed for people who are culturally incompetent as empowering students of color.” Mandatory courses on ”cultural competency” often further stigmatize and isolate students of color. It’s not only administrators whom student leaders work to hold accountable  —   faculty members have also been called out by students, partly because they are more familiar figures, but also because tenured faculty can seem to be able to get away with anything, including racism. And while student activists and an institution’s governing board might find a lot to agree with over   personnel policies, faculty can struggle to locate their place within this kind of interest convergence. In California, Pomona College entered the spotlight last year because of new diversity and inclusion tenure requirements. Pomona students volunteered examples of practices they would consider  . These included ”Teaching an economics course on poverty using only white scholars” and ”Saying things that are blatantly rude or disrespectful to students based on their background.” Seemingly in response, the Oregon Association of Scholars recently released a report highly critical of what it calls ”ideological litmus tests” for faculty hiring and evaluation. It names four Oregon public universities whose diversity policies allegedly violate academic freedom and unfairly target ”  wing scholars.” Yet many faculty are in favor of personnel policies that reward them for bringing equity, diversity, and inclusion to their profession. Pomona’s policy, however, is remarkable because it regards diversity as not ”just a plus but a requirement” for tenure, according to Eric A. Hurley, a psychology and Africana studies professor who worked on the policy. At other institutions such as Virginia Tech, faculty ”may” account for ”diversity and inclusion” in applications for tenure and promotion, but they are not required to do so  —   a distinction its Provost made sure to emphasize publicly. Weak diversity policies fail to change the status quo today because they trade binding commitment for symbolism and good intentions. Interest convergence provides a lens for keener insight into policies that on the surface seem to offer obvious diversity benefits. For example, the Excelsior Scholarship, New York State’s plan for free college tuition at its public colleges and universities, provides free tuition in exchange for a promise to attend college   graduate on time, and live and work in New York for as many years as their scholarship was awarded. While the Excelsior Scholarship will no doubt boost college enrollments, its conditions assure that it will disproportionately benefit   families and thus probably widen the racial educational gap  —   because Pell grants and other aid already pay tuition for poor students. And if the plan is ever broadly perceived as disproportionately benefiting students of color, calls for cutting or eliminating its funding are highly likely. Might a period be on the horizon when a white student’s discomfort in an ethnic studies class verges on a civil rights violation? An institution might prepare for this day by understanding its diversity policies as naked interest convergence. This will entail making the case that white students and faculty benefit just as much from them as do their peers of color, if not more. But the core argument can no longer be the vague ”compelling interest” of diversity. It must be economic. Instead of measuring qualitative outcomes such as ”cultural competency” or ”cognitive empathy,” institutions might measure ”salary upon graduation” or ”promotions to full professor.” Had affirmative action been consistently measured on similar merits, how much white people benefit from it would be common knowledge. Interest convergence offers the most sobering and viable approach for the contentious issues around diversity and inclusion. If white interests must continually be met so that they might leave behind a whit of racial justice, then the theory can make the future seem cynical or even hopeless. Interest convergence is not without its critics. Justin Driver has challenged it on multiple grounds, pointing out its contradictions and the necessary diminishment of black agency in its insistence upon the permanence of racism. But so much depends on our capacity to be open to the idea. Even if enduring white supremacy is a foregone conclusion, that fact does not preclude the possibility of individual righteous action, which is its own liberation. David Shih is an associate professor of English at the University of   Claire. Follow him @ProfessorShih."
"Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced that he will not run for   in 2018 and will not seek any public office next year. Chaffetz wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday morning, ”I am healthy. I am confident I would continue to be   by large margins. I have the full support of Speaker Ryan to continue as Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. That said, I have made a personal decision to return to the private sector.” As oversight chairman, Chaffetz led investigations into the Secret Service and Planned Parenthood in recent years. He has faced pressure from protesters in his home district and federal watchdogs for not pursuing investigations into the Trump administration more forcefully. Chaffetz told NPR’s Morning Edition in February that his committee was concerned with possible mishandling of classified information when Trump was apparently briefed on a North Korean missile test at his    club in Florida while dining with the Japanese prime minister. But Chaffetz said the idea that Trump may be profiting from his office is ”ridiculous.” Additionally, Chaffetz said, ”The president is exempt from the conflict of interest laws. And a lot of people who for instance wanted to see his tax returns  —   I went on national news multiple times saying I thought Donald Trump as a candidate should have released his tax returns. But it’s not required by law.” Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub Jr. spoke to NPR on Monday and called on Chaffetz to do more. The Utah Republican has ”authority to investigate these things and compel responses, so hopefully we’ll see some action from him,” Shaub said. Chaffetz faced more than 1, 000 protesters at a town hall in February in his Utah district. Most of the ire was about Trump, and Chaffetz said he would not use his post as oversight chairman to go on a ”fishing expedition” against the administration. He did send a letter to the Office of Government Ethics after White House adviser Kellyanne Conway endorsed Ivanka Trump’s retail brand during a cable news interview. ”That is absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong. It is over the top,” Chaffetz said to reporters at the time. Chaffetz has represented Utah in the House of Representatives since 2009, after he defeated incumbent Rep. Chris Cannon for the GOP nomination. Utah Republican candidates are chosen by state delegates, not through a traditional primary vote. Chaffetz proudly refused to use campaign funds to feed state delegates, as is traditional in the process of currying favor. In 2015, he launched a bid for House speaker after Rep. John Boehner resigned from Congress. Paul Ryan was eventually elected to the post after a tumultuous process. Chaffetz had previously served as chief of staff to former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. He played on the football team at Brigham Young University, a school where he converted to both the Mormon faith and the GOP. Chaffetz was raised Jewish and had campaigned for Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign. While Chaffetz left unclear what his future in public life might be, he could run for governor of Utah in 2020. Leaving Washington at the end of 2018 would be seen as a savvy move to spend more time in his home state, though Chaffetz has said simply he is returning to private life when his term expires next year. When he was asked about the 2020 governor’s race in an interview with The Atlantic last month, Chaffetz joked he would ”definitely maybe” run."
"As chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz,   has pushed investigations into the Secret Service following security lapses at the White House, and he aggressively challenged Planned Parenthood. He’s now shaking up Capitol Hill even more as a challenger to Rep. Kevin McCarthy,  . the current House majority leader, in the race for speaker. Chaffetz is a relative unknown outside Washington, but in his district, which stretches from the southern suburbs of Salt Lake City down through most of southeastern Utah, constituents see him as someone who holds fast to his conservative principles and is quick to challenge the status quo. ”I think it’s good that he’s willing to stick his nose in stuff to make things different,” said Wayne Holdsworth of Utah County, who did not vote for Chaffetz. Another constituent, Larry Winn, voted for Chaffetz and said, ”If he believes in something, he’ll go after it like the Secret Service thing we’re talking about, Planned Parenthood. He goes after what he’s passionate about and I admire that.” Here are five things you should know: 1. He was a placekicker at Brigham Young University, A lot of Chaffetz’s passions were formed during his time at Brigham Young University in Provo, where he played on the football team. Chaffetz was recruited by   football coach LaVell Edwards in 1985 to be a placekicker. As the Salt Lake Tribune reports, ”the young athlete relished pulling off his helmet after a successful boot and fanning his curly locks for the cameras.” 2. He used to be Jewish and a Democrat, When he arrived at BYU, Chaffetz was a Jewish Democrat. He even campaigned in 1988 for   Gov. Mike Dukakis in his presidential bid. Chaffetz has family ties to Dukakis. But by the time Chaffetz graduated from college in 1989, he had converted to the Mormon faith and the Republican Party. He credits Ronald Reagan for much of the shift in his ideology. 3. He wouldn’t feed the delegates in Utah, In Utah, delegates are in charge of selecting political candidates in the state, and Republican State Sen. Howard Stephenson said he admired Chaffetz’s refusal to spend money on delegates when he campaigned for Utah’s 3rd Congressional District in 2007. Stephenson said a lot of campaign money is spent on feeding delegates but Chaffetz refused to buy them anything. ”Not even celery sticks. He said it’s not about feeding delegates. It’s about meeting with them and if they’re not willing to meet with me in their homes or in their local library then I just won’t be able to reach them.” And Chaffetz did reach the delegates. In 2008 he ousted incumbent 3rd District Republican Chris Cannon, who failed to get the party’s nomination in the primary. Announcing that run in 2007, Chaffetz described himself as a ”frustrated conservative” who was ”hungry and excited.” 4. He always believed in limited government, ”He has core principles about limited government, individual responsibility, individual rights and freedom and he believes in those things so deeply,” said Stephenson, who met Chaffetz when Chaffetz was chief of staff for former Republican Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. Shirley Johnson, who was an assistant to football coach Edwards at BYU, said she’s not surprised at how far Chaffetz has gone in his career, but rather at how fast. ”He was real bright and clever and he’s articulate. He was more of a loner. Most of them palled around with each other. He just had his own agendas and his own thoughts and he had confidence in himself,” said Johnson. 5. He sparred with Planned Parenthood and the Secret Service, Stephenson believes Chaffetz is making a difference in Washington, holding the federal government accountable. ”Rather than following the wind and just being a wind vane, he stayed his course.” But staying the course means Chaffetz has gained some foes along the way. Chaffetz was recently criticized for going too far during a committee hearing with Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards, repeatedly interrupting and talking over her. He was also criticized for showing a misleading chart during the hearing. The chart, which had no Y axis labeled, appears to show that the overall number of abortions performed is far higher than the number of cancer screenings, when it is in fact far lower according to the organization’s statistics. In March, Chaffetz grilled the director of the Secret Service after a series of security gaffes and misconduct scandals. ”This is what’s so infuriating,” he exclaimed, asking about an   delay before the agency called the police for a suspicious bag. ”You’re the director of the Secret Service. It’s almost three weeks after the incident and you don’t know why it takes 11 minutes to pick up the phone and say, ’Hey, Metro[politan] Police Department, we’ve got a problem down here we need your help.’ ” Chaffetz applied for a job with the Secret Service in 2003 and was not selected. After the March hearing, his application was leaked to a news website, and a recent report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that 45 employees at the agency had accessed ”sensitive personal information” about Chaffetz around the time of the hearing. Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy apologized to Chaffetz for the agency’s ”wholly avoidable and embarrassing misconduct.”"
"If ever a drink were concocted to quench the thirst of social media, this may be it. With its whimsical name, bright pink and blue swirl topped with a pillow of whipped cream and a pixie dusting of sprinkles, Starbucks’ new Unicorn Frappuccino practically pleads to be posted. And a glimpse at Twitter shows the frozen confection is indeed gaining attention. So what’s in it? As Starbucks describes it: ”A sweet dusting of pink powder, blended into a crème Frappuccino with mango syrup and layered with a pleasantly sour blue drizzle. It is finished with vanilla whipped cream and a sprinkle of sweet pink and sour blue powder topping.” A look at the ingredients reveals a list a little less fanciful. The pink powder is actually dextrose (sugar) and ”Fruit and Vegetable Color.” Starbucks touts the drink ”as rare as a unicorn.” But unicorn food is actually a thing. The BBC reports, it’s trendy to post pictures of sparkly and rainbow hued food reminiscent of the fairy tale creature. Rainbow sushi, anyone? As for the Unicorn Frappuccino, Lori Aquino said the beverage caught her eye on social media. Then people at work were talking about it. ”I saw it was coming out today, so I decided to try it,” Aquino said at a Washington, D. C. Starbucks. ”I’ll probably put it on Snapchat or Instagram.” She bought one to share with her two coworkers. And the verdict? ”It’s kinda nasty,” Aquino said. Letitia Winston agreed: ”Nope. That will not be something I come looking for.” But Moriam Animashaun was more forgiving. ”It’s not bad,” she said. ”It’s just really sweet.” A   medium, or a grande in Starbucks speak, comes in at 410 calories, 59 grams of sugar and 16 grams of fat. One thing the women were on board with was the drink’s appearance. ”It’s pretty,” said Animashaun. ”It looks nice,” agreed Winston. And in the age of likes, snaps and tweets, the fantasy image may be all that matters. The Unicorn Frappuccino is available April 19 through April 23 at participating stores in the United States, Canada and Mexico."
"Decades ago, scientists surgically attached pairs of rats to each other and noticed that old rats tended to live longer if they shared a bloodstream with young rats. It was the beginning of a peculiar and ambitious scientific endeavor to understand how certain materials from young bodies, when transplanted into older ones, can sometimes improve or rejuvenate them. From the beginning, the findings were exciting, complex and, sometimes, contradictory. For example, scientists have shown that young blood can restore cell activity in the muscles and livers of aging mice. They’ve also found that linking old mice to young ones helped reverse heart muscle thickening. On the other hand, researchers weren’t able to replicate some of the most   findings and another study concluded that, in mice that swapped blood without being connected surgically, the negative effects of being exposed to old blood outweighed the benefits of getting young blood. What was clear was that, like humans, as mice age their bodies and their behavior change on a fundamental level. For example, older mice stop building nests, and they tend to become forgetful, taking a long time to remember how to escape from a maze. ”We see a pretty dramatic difference between young and aged mice in terms of their performance,” says Joe Castellano, a neuroscientist at Stanford University School of Medicine. Castellano and his colleagues wondered if young human blood might have beneficial effects for aging mice. Now, they report in the journal Nature that they’ve found a protein in human umbilical cord blood that improved learning and memory in aging mice. It’s an exciting find in the field of regenerative medicine. But, scientists caution, it does not mean people should start ordering umbilical cord blood online. There is no indication that it would work in humans. For their study, Castellano and his colleagues collected plasma, which is the watery part of blood, from people of different ages. Some were in their 60s and 70s, others in their 20s. They also collected plasma from human umbilical cords. Then, they injected human plasma from those different age groups and from umbilical cord blood into mice several times over the course of a couple of weeks. The mice were 12 and 14 months old, which is approximately the mouse equivalent of being in your late 50s or 60s. When they dissected the mouse brains and inspected the hippocampi, they found that certain genes linked to making new memories had been turned on in some of the mice. ”So, we had a hint early on that one of these donor groups, specifically the [umbilical] cord plasma, might be having an effect on the brain itself,” he says. Next, they injected more aging mice with human plasma and tested the animals’ ability to remember things. For example, they watched how long it took the mice to escape from a maze the mice had done before, using visual cues to choose an exit that would lead to safety. Castellano says it’s basically like observing a person try to navigate through a crowded garage to locate their parked car. Before being injected with umbilical cord blood, Castellano says, ”their performance wasn’t very impressive.” It took them a long time to learn and remember the location of the escape hole, and some of them didn’t manage at all. ”But after cord plasma treatment, both the time [it took to] find it, the rate at which they’d find it and the fact that they do find it was improved and changing,” he says. Similarly, mice treated with human umbilical cord blood performed better on a second memory test. That test involved introducing mice to a chamber and then delivering a little shock to their feet. Mice that remembered the unpleasant experience would, when reintroduced to the chamber, freeze in anticipation of the shock. A forgetful mouse, on the other hand, would go about its usual business. Castellano says the mice that had received umbilical cord plasma froze more often. ”We were, first of all, surprised and excited that there was something in human plasma, and more specifically there’s something exciting about cord plasma,” he says. After a series of other experiments, Castellano and his colleagues concluded that one protein, called TIMP2, in human umbilical cord blood was likely responsible for the improvement. When they removed TIMP2 from cord plasma and injected the plasma into mice, they didn’t observe any improvement on the memory tests. And when they injected plasma containing TIMP2 into elderly mice, they again observed improvement in memory and learning tasks. ”The really exciting thing about this study, and previous studies that have come before it, is that we’ve sort of tapped into previously unappreciated potential of our blood  —   our plasma  —   and what it can do for reversing the harmful effects of aging on the brain,” says Castellano. It’s an intriguing hint at how potential therapies might someday work to prevent   illness, including Alzheimer’s disease, from developing. ”The desired outcome is overall whole body rejuvenation,” says Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist who founded the SENS Research Foundation. The study by Castellano and colleagues, he says, is an ”excellent” starting point. ”The only thing, of course, is that it’s a mouse experiment and mouse experiments often don’t actually translate faithfully into the human setting,” he says. And Castellano agrees that this finding does not mean that people should start sprinkling TIMP2 protein on their cereal or signing up for umbilical cord transfusions. First off, he says, there’s no evidence that elderly humans would experience the same effects as the mice did in this study. It’s also unclear what would happen to mice if they received the plasma for more than just a few weeks. There’s also the nagging worry that, while proteins like TIMP2 may be beneficial for developing babies, they could be harmful in older humans. ”Maybe there’s a reason that older brains aren’t exposed to certain proteins any longer,” says Castellano. And Irina Conboy, who studies aging and degenerative diseases at the University of California, Berkeley, points out that the TIMP2 protein is actually present in higher levels in people with Alzheimer’s disease. That runs counter to the argument made by Castellano and colleagues that TIMP2 is associated with improved memory and learning, and that TIMP2 levels would drop as people age. ”TIMP2 is a very   protein,” she says. She also notes that one of Castellano’s   Tony   is the board chair for a company called Alkahest, which has separately studied plasma injections as a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s. And, Conboy says, there is no indication that the TIMP2 Castellano and colleagues detected in mouse brains actually came from the injections of human plasma. It’s unclear, she says, whether a protein in plasma could actually make its way from a mouse’s bloodstream into its brain, or that, once there, it could actually impact brain function. Last year, Conboy published a study in which she and colleagues swapped half of the blood in old mice with that of young mice, and vice versa. They saw signs of regeneration in the muscles and liver. But, says Conboy, ”There was zero positive effect on the brain. The mice were not smarter. They did not learn better.” Such conflicting results reflect two fundamentally different ways of thinking about aging. From the point of view of Castellano and colleagues, aging involves a loss of beneficial materials for example, diminishing amounts of proteins that were once present in the plasma. To Conboy, however, ”The problem is not that you run out of positive things, but that you accumulate negative things.” She and others hold that proteins likely accumulate with old age, sometimes inhibiting certain functions, including the growth of new cells. ”We have hundreds of proteins that change with age,” she says, and finding a way to reduce the effects of aging will likely require tinkering with a huge bouquet of them. ”If you are looking for miracles, it will not come from [injecting] bodily fluids,” she says. ”There will not be one silver bullet.”"
"The United Nations’ top human rights official is condemning a chant by a   youth militia in the small East African country of Burundi. The chant is shown in a video recorded and distributed by the human rights groups iBurundi and RCP Burundi. The U. N. says the members of the militia, called Imbonerakure, are encouraging the rape of women from the opposition so ”that they give birth to Imbonerakure.” In a statement, U. N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the video confirmed that this ”organized militia” has been waging a ”campaign of fear and terror.” ”Such blatant and brazen hate speech and incitement to violence must not be tolerated nor encouraged,” Zeid said. ”In a region which has suffered so many massive outbreaks of violence and atrocities, this type of organized incitement rings very loud alarm bells.” The current conflict in Burundi started about two years ago when President Pierre Nkurunziza sought a third term. An attempted coup by rebel military forces followed and since then the government has targeted those suspected of taking part in the coup. Their actions have taken an ethnic dimension and the Imbonerakure  —   which means ”those who can see far” in the principal local language of Kirundi  —   have taken a central role. Last summer, for example, Human Rights Watch issued a report that found the Imbonerakure routinely used rape in attacks against members of opposition parties and their family members. One researcher said at the time that youth militia members ”tied up, brutally beat and   women, often with their children nearby.” The government of Burundi denies that there is widespread conflict in the country. They’ve asked the government of Uganda to repatriate about 50, 000 refugees because they say Burundi is now safe. What’s more, when this video first surfaced earlier this month, the ruling party condemned the chants and said that a preliminary investigation had found the chants were driven by ”influences outside the party.” In his statement today, the U. N.’s Zeid appeared unconvinced. He pointed out that chants have been reported across the country and that days after this video surfaced, Imbonerakure youth chanted the same song during the inauguration of a party office. ”The grotesque rape chants by the young men of the Imbonerakure across several provinces in various parts of Burundi are deeply alarming  —   particularly because they confirm what we have been hearing from those who have fled Burundi about a campaign of fear and terror by this organized militia,” Zeid added. The conflict in Burundi has displaced more than 400, 000 people to neighboring countries. According to the International Federation for Human Rights, more than 1, 000 Burundians have been killed since the beginning of this conflict and some 8, 000 are being held for political reasons."
"As President Trump wages a rhetorical battle with North Korea over its nuclear program, his secretary of state says the nuclear deal with Iran will now be placed under review. In a letter to Congress, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Iran is meeting the terms of the 2015 deal worked out with the Obama administration and five other countries. But Tillerson added that the current administration would evaluate whether the lifting of sanctions that had been placed on Iran ”is vital to the national security interests of the United States.” ”Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods,” Tillerson said in his letter Tuesday. He gave no indication of how long the review would take or what the likely outcome would be. The State Department must provide an update to Congress every 90 days. Trump was a harsh critic of the deal as a candidate, and his administration has taken a tough line with Iran over a number of   issues. Iran has continued to test ballistic missiles  —   which was not part of the nuclear agreement  —   and Iran has kept up its staunch support of Syrian President Bashar Assad. However, Tillerson’s letter was in line with many other assessments that have found Iran has kept its part of the bargain. Iran was required to give up almost all of its enriched uranium, which can be used to make a nuclear weapon, and is subject to ongoing inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In return, many sanctions have been lifted, which has allowed Iran to ramp up its oil exports and earn billions of dollars to help its weak economy. Iran has said many times that if the U. S. imposed additional sanctions, that would violate the nuclear deal and Iran would no longer feel bound by its terms. The other countries that were part of the deal  —   Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, along with the European Union  —   remain supportive of the pact and would likely object to any   of American sanctions. The deal has allowed many Western companies to resume business with Iran, including Boeing, which has signed two major agreements to deliver dozens of planes to Iran. The U. S. still maintains some sanctions against Iran for separate,   issues, with Washington accusing Iran of sponsoring terrorism outside its borders and violating human rights at home. The Trump administration has taken   positions against both North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs, though it’s not yet clear whether this will lead to punitive measures. In the latest sign of U. S.  tensions, U. S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was in Saudi Arabia on a tour of the Middle East, on Wednesday accused Iran of sending missiles to rebel Houthi fighters in Yemen. The U. S. has supported Saudi Arabia in a bombing campaign against the rebels in Yemen’s civil war. In Iran, Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan rejected the allegation and said U. S.  weapons were being used to commit ”crimes” in Iraq and Syria."
"A piece from New York Magazine’s Andrew Sullivan over the weekend ended with an old,   trope:   with their ”solid   family structures,” are a shining example of how to overcome discrimination. An essay that began by imagining why Democrats feel sorry for Hillary Clinton  —   and then detoured to President Trump’s policies  —   drifted to this troubling ending: ”Today,   are among the most prosperous,   and successful ethnic groups in America. What gives? It couldn’t possibly be that they maintained solid   family structures, had social networks that looked after one another, placed enormous emphasis on education and hard work, and thereby turned false, negative stereotypes into true, positive ones, could it? It couldn’t be that all whites are not racists or that the American dream still lives?” Sullivan’s piece, rife with generalizations about a group as vastly diverse as   rightfully raised hackles. Not only inaccurate, his piece spreads the idea that   as a group are monolithic, even though parsing data by ethnicity reveals a host of disparities for example,   have far higher rates of poverty than other Asian populations, like  . And at the root of Sullivan’s pernicious argument is the idea that black failure and Asian success cannot be explained by inequities and racism, and that they are one and the same this allows a segment of white America to avoid any responsibility for addressing racism or the damage it continues to inflict. ”Sullivan’s comments showcase a classic and tenacious conservative strategy,” Janelle Wong, the director of Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, said in an email. This strategy, she said, involves ”1) ignoring the role that selective recruitment of highly educated Asian immigrants has played in Asian American success followed by 2) making a flawed comparison between Asian Americans and other groups, particularly Black Americans, to argue that racism, including more than two centuries of black enslavement, can be overcome by hard work and strong family values.” ”It’s like the Energizer Bunny,” said Ellen D. Wu, an   studies professor at Indiana University and the author of The Color of Success. Much of Wu’s work focuses on dispelling the ”model minority” myth, and she’s been tasked repeatedly with publicly refuting arguments like Sullivan’s, which, she said, are incessant. ”The thing about the Sullivan piece is that it’s such an   rendering. It’s very retro in the kinds of points he made.” Since the end of World War II, many white people have used   and their perceived collective success as a racial wedge. The effect? Minimizing the role racism plays in the persistent struggles of other   minority groups  —   especially black Americans. On Twitter, people took Sullivan’s ”  rendering” to task. ”During World War II, the media created the idea that the Japanese were rising up out of the ashes [after being held in incarceration camps] and proving that they had the right cultural stuff,” said Claire Jean Kim, a professor at the University of California, Irvine. ”And it was immediately a reflection on black people: Now why weren’t black people making it, but Asians were?” These arguments falsely conflate   racism with   racism, according to Kim. ”Racism that   have experienced is not what black people have experienced,” Kim said. ”Sullivan is right that Asians have faced various forms of discrimination, but never the systematic dehumanization that black people have faced during slavery and continue to face today.” Asians have been barred from entering the U. S. and gaining citizenship and have been sent to incarceration camps, Kim pointed out, but all that is different than the segregation, police brutality and discrimination that   have endured. Many scholars have argued that some Asians only started to ”make it” when the discrimination against them lessened  —   and only when it was politically convenient. Amid worries that the Chinese exclusion laws from the late 1800s would hurt an allyship with China in the war against imperial Japan, the Magnuson Act was signed in 1943, allowing 105 Chinese immigrants into the U. S. each year. As Wu wrote in 2014 in the Los Angeles Times, the Citizens Committee to Repeal Chinese Exclusion ”strategically recast Chinese in its promotional materials as ’    courteous people living quietly among us’” instead of the ”’yellow peril’ coolie hordes.” In 1965, the National Immigration Act replaced the   quota system with one that gave preference to immigrants with U. S. family relationships and certain skills. In 1966, William Petersen, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, helped popularize comparisons between   and  . His New York Times story, headlined, ”Success Story,   Style,” is regarded as one of the most influential pieces written about  . It solidified a prevailing stereotype of Asians as industrious and   that would stand in direct contrast to   who were still struggling against bigotry, poverty and a history rooted in slavery. In the opening paragraphs, Petersen quickly puts   and   at odds: ”Asked which of the country’s ethnic minorities has been subjected to the most discrimination and the worst injustices, very few persons would even think of answering: ’The Japanese Americans,’ . .. Yet, if the question refers to persons alive today, that may well be the correct reply. Like the Negroes, the Japanese have been the object of color prejudice . ... When new opportunities, even equal opportunities, are opened up, the minority’s reaction to them is likely to be negative  —   either   apathy or a hatred so   as to be  . For the   programs and countless scholarly studies now focused on the Negro, we barely know how to repair the damage that the slave traders started. The history of Japanese Americans, however, challenges every such generalization about ethnic minorities.” But as history shows,   were afforded better jobs not simply because of educational attainment, but in part because they were treated better. ”More education will help close racial wage gaps somewhat, but it will not resolve problems of denied opportunity,” reporter Jeff Guo wrote last fall in the Washington Post. ”Asian Americans  —   some of them at least  —   have made tremendous progress in the United States. But the greatest thing that ever happened to them wasn’t that they studied hard, or that they benefited from tiger moms or Confucian values. It’s that other Americans started treating them with a little more respect.” At the heart of arguments of racial advancement is the concept of ”racial resentment,” which is different than ”racism,” Slate’s Jamelle Bouie recently wrote in his analysis of the Sullivan article. ”Racial resentment” refers to a ”moral feeling that blacks violate such traditional American values as individualism and self reliance,” as defined by political scientists Donald Kinder and David Sears. And, Bouie points out, ”racial resentment” is simply a tool that people use to absolve themselves from dealing with the complexities of racism: ”In fact, racial resentment reflects a tension between the egalitarian   of most white Americans and that   affect. The ’racist,’ after all, is a figure of stigma. Few people want to be one, even as they’re inclined to believe the measurable disadvantages blacks face are caused by something other than structural racism. Framing blacks as deficient and pathological rather than inferior offers a path out for those caught in that mental maze.” Petersen’s, and now Sullivan’s, arguments have resurfaced regularly throughout the last century. And they’ll likely keep resurfacing, as long as people keep seeking ways to forgo responsibility for racism  —   and to escape that ”mental maze.” As the writer Frank Chin said of   in 1974: ”Whites love us because we’re not black.” Sometimes it’s instructive to look at past rebuttals to tired arguments  —   after all, they hold up much better in the light of history."
"The 1996 Coen Brothers movie Fargo was so good, and so original, that when the FX cable network announced it was making a new version for television, I expected it to be awful  —   especially since the creator of the adaptation was Noah Hawley, a   who hadn’t really done much. But Hawley’s Fargo wasn’t a straight remake  —   it was a sly and fond salute, capturing the mood and spirit of the original movie without borrowing any of its specific plots or characters. Billy Bob Thornton starred as a malevolent hit man and Martin Freeman was the quiet Midwesterner caught in his web. That Fargo miniseries wasn’t just good. It was great. So when Hawley and FX decided to reboot, start from scratch, and do a second season of Fargo with new actors and characters, once again, I wasn’t expecting much. After all, I’d seen season two of HBO’s True Detective, which proved how hard it was to get lightning to strike twice. But season two of Fargo, with Jean Smart and Ted Danson among its many treats, was just as wonderful  —   and just as delightfully unpredictable. Then Hawley went off and made another FX series adaptation, of a Marvel Comics character named Legion, and it, too, was a major creative success. So now, with a third season of Fargo arriving tonight on FX, my expectations are in danger of being too high, rather than too low. But based on the opening hour, Fargo is on track to be three for three. For starters, there’s a death scene worthy of a Road Runner cartoon. Also, there are two instant standout female characters and actors: Carrie Coon, fresh off HBO’s The Leftovers, as   police chief Gloria Burgle, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, fresh off CBS’s BrainDead, as   competitive bridge player Nikki Swango. There are also two breakout male characters: brothers Emmit and Ray Stussy. Both of them are played by Ewan McGregor, and it’s a very impressive acting display. Emmit is   and successful. Ray is gone to seed, and out of money  —   and still resentful of the fact that when their father died and left the brothers an inheritance, Emmit ended up with a valuable stamp collection, while Ray got a little red Corvette. Decades later, as Ray comes to Emmit to ask for money to buy Nikki an engagement ring, the brothers are still fighting about it. The jealousy over the stamps leads, in the opening episode, to a botched theft, which, in turn, leads to murder, and sets another intriguing season of Fargo in motion. The acting here is as good as the writing, and the visuals  —   built, as with season one, around the isolated snow and ice of the Midwest  —   are like paintings that move. And for current or former stamp collectors, this new Fargo even suggests a memorable moral: Philately will get you nowhere. Friday on Netflix, there’s another noteworthy return. This time it’s Bill Nye, whose Disney Channel series Bill Nye the Science Guy made him a geeky rock star of sorts to the millennial generation. Now he’s back, with a new science series called Bill Nye Saves the World. This time Nye’s show is aimed at adults  —   and aimed, specifically, to tackle such   topics as health vaccines and climate change. In his shows, Nye conducts experiments, sends his correspondents across the globe to report on rising water levels in Venice and polio vaccines in India and interviews studio guests. The show works so well because it relies so strongly upon scientific and provable facts. Bill Nye Saves the World, like season three of Fargo, is fun to watch. That’s not a fact  —   but it’s my opinion."
"Workers at a tomato farm in Nogales, Ariz. got a check this month for more than $30, 000. And they expect more money to come. The approximately 130 workers of Wholesum Harvest are still deciding how to spend the money, but they say their initial priorities include subsidizing transportation, recreation areas and medical insurance. Located just north of the Mexican border, the   Wholesum Harvest is the first farm in the United States to receive certification from Fair Trade USA, which means it has demonstrated compliance with a checklist of more than 300 standards detailing working conditions and environmental protection. Every   purchase involves a small financial premium paid by retailers and, ultimately, consumers. As the funds from these premiums accumulate, workers receive distribution checks and organize into committees to decide how best to spend the money. Consumers in the United States have likely seen   labels on coffee beans or cocoa grown by farmers in countries like Ethiopia or Guatemala. But   certification now covers everything from clothing to seafood, and Fair Trade USA wants to expand its labels to cover domestic operations as well. When the organization got started, ”the feeling was that workers and farmers in the States didn’t need it,” says Paul Rice, president of Fair Trade USA. But that sentiment is changing. Officials at Fair Trade USA expect another dozen American farms to become certified in the next year. And over the past few years, other nonprofits, such as the Agricultural Justice Project and the Equitable Food Initiative, have launched their own labeling efforts.  When Fair Trade USA opened its doors in 1998, the nonprofit’s focus was improving pay and working conditions for farmers in countries with the fewest legal protections. By providing a standard label that indicated adherence to a clear set of ethical and environmental standards, the organization aimed to help retailers and consumers decide which products to stock or purchase. (Fair Trade USA split from the umbrella organization Fairtrade International at the end of 2011, citing the desire to certify a broader range of producers and companies as Fair Trade.) But while the United States has stronger labor laws and environmental safeguards than some countries, conditions for many agricultural workers are still far below Fair Trade USA’s standards. Wholesum, which grows organic cucumbers, squash, eggplant and bell peppers in addition to tomatoes, was already   certified at its farm in Sonora, Mexico, so it was a natural step to apply for the label at its U. S. operation. It became certified in October, roughly four months after it began the lengthy process of audits and inspections. ”Fair trade is meant to do what laws have been unable to do,” says Hannah La Luzerne, Wholesum’s sustainability manager. The farm was voluntarily meeting many of the   standards, but she saw the label as a way to communicate the company’s values with greater credibility. ”People have always been central to our mission, but this is a way to show we’re not just talking about it  —   the   audit is a kind of guarantee to our customers,” she says. Still, what exactly the label guarantees is not always clear to consumers. ”There’s still a big lack of understanding of what fair trade is,” says Ricardo Crisantes, a member of the family that has owned and operated Wholesum for three generations. ”Most people associate it with something good, but they couldn’t say exactly what that good is.” Rice groups the standards into three broad categories: better working conditions, better pay and worker empowerment. They cover things like the frequency of worker breaks, wages, safety conditions, working hours, pesticide use and product packaging. The certification process prompted many changes at Wholesum. The staff has established a permanent nondevelopment zone to protect an endangered species of cactus switched to   pallets spent dozens of hours interviewing workers about their needs and educating them about their rights and invested in a   system to document their compliance with   standards. The certification has given the workers additional responsibilities as well. Important decisions are voted on by the entire community of workers, and they have elected a committee to research and analyze projects they might pay for with their   premiums. The workers at Wholesum’s Sonora location, for example, have purchased school buses to help their children get to school built a soccer field and a tortilla factory that sells its tortillas back to the community at cost and subsidized medical vouchers for dental and vision care. After hurricanes devastated parts of central Mexico a few years ago, the workers voted to send a sizable check to the Red Cross to help recovery in the region. Many of the workers on   committees end up learning skills in accounting, project management and community organizing. ”You might have a guy who makes $18, 000 a year managing a budget of $200, 000,” Crisantes says. Hazzany Ibarra has worked as a tomato packer at Wholesum’s Arizona warehouse for five years and is now vice president of its workers’ committee. He spends about five hours a week in meetings, conversations or research related to fair trade. Now that the workers have received their first check, ”I’m excited but also nervous,” he says. ”We know we have to do things, but we don’t always know how to do them yet.” But he says he wants consumers considering whether to buy a   product to understand that ”it really does mean something.” ”It’s not a lie,” he says. ”All of it’s true  —     premiums pay for projects that really matter.” Nick Romeo is a journalist based in Palo Alto, Calif. His work has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Washington Post and National Geographic."
"Earth is welcoming a rather hefty visitor to the neighborhood Wednesday  —   an asteroid that hasn’t swung by these parts in roughly 400 years. About as big as the Rock of Gibraltar, asteroid 2014 JO25 is coming so close that its visit should be visible even to small telescopes. But no need to panic, NASA says. ”Although there is absolutely no chance that the asteroid will collide with our planet, this will be a very close approach for an asteroid of this size,” the space agency says in a statement. At its closest approach, which should occur around midday ET Wednesday, the asteroid will be a little over a million miles away  —   or about 4. 6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. Though NASA says that distance is comfortable enough to ensure there will be no collision, it is nevertheless classified as a ”potentially hazardous asteroid” due to the way its orbit intersects Earth’s. First spotted in 2014 by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey  —   a collaboration between NASA’s   Objects Observation Program and the University of Arizona  —   JO25 looks a bit like a big barbell. ”The asteroid has a contact binary structure  —   two lobes connected by a   region,” explains Shantanu Naidu, a scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The agency says the larger of these lobes is a little more than a third of a mile wide. But astronomers hope the visit will yield more information about its size, shape and surface features. Over the next several days, they will be probing it with deep space radar, a technique the Goldstone Solar System Radar in California’s Mojave Desert has already used to cobble together 30 grainy  —   yet illuminating  —   images of the asteroid from multiple angles. It will be another decade before an asteroid of JO25’s size passes by Earth. As member station KQED notes, 1999 AN10 is expected to buzz by Earth in 2027 at a distance roughly equivalent to the space between Earth and the moon. It’ll be a much longer wait to see JO25 again, though. Astronomers say it won’t return to these parts for another half a millennium. So, amateur   don’t miss your chance to catch it before it goes. Either point your telescopes toward the constellation Coma Berenices, which KQED reports the asteroid will be passing through, or just let Slooh Community Observatory do it for you. The network of telescope feeds will be livestreaming the event starting at 7 p. m. ET Wednesday."
"Why do   producers gravitate toward jazz samples? For a mood, for sonic timbre, for a unique rhythmic component. Swing is a precursor to the  . ”If you’re a   producer that wants a lot of melodic stuff happening,” pianist Robert Glasper says, ”you’re probably going to go to jazz first.” Glasper has lived in an area of overlap between jazz and   for more than two decades  —   and you can hear it in his piano playing, which often drifts into cyclical rhythms akin to a  ’s loops. It’s all one and the same to Glasper: recasting the music of Miles Davis for an RB audience or rocking live shows with   playing acoustic jazz with his trio or streamlined soul with his   Robert Glasper Experiment. In this short doc, Glasper identifies three jazz samples, from tracks by Ahmad Jamal and Herbie Hancock, that have served as source material for famed   producers J Dilla and Pete Rock. CREDITS: Producers: Alex Ariff, Colin Marshall, Nick Michael, Cameron Robert Editors: Nick Michael, Morgan Noelle Smith Animator: CJ Riculan Sound   Engineer: Suraya Mohamed Videographers: Nick Michael, Cameron Robert Interviewer: Alex Ariff Project Manager: Suraya Mohamed Senior Producer, Radio: Katie Simon Executive Producers: Gabrielle Armand, Anya Grundmann, Amy Niles Special Thanks: Robert Glasper, Michael Gonik, Steinway Hall Funded in part by: The Argus Fund, The Wyncote Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Doris Duke Foundation, MUSIC:"
"Updated at 8:05 p. m. ET, One police officer is dead and two seriously wounded after a shooting on Paris’ famous Champs Elysees, in an incident that left one attacker dead. The assailant reportedly targeted a police vehicle. Authorities say a bystander was also wounded. French prosecutor Francois Molins said the authorities have identified the shooter and are assessing whether the attacker had accomplices. Raids and searches were ongoing, Molins said. ISIS very quickly claimed responsibility for the attack, through the group’s   news agency Amaq, reports the SITE intelligence group. French President Francois Hollande had already said that the authorities suspect the attack was ”of a terrorist nature,” according to a French 24 translation of his news conference Thursday night. He says counterterrorism authorities are investigating. The shooting comes just days before   votes are cast Sunday in France’s closely watched presidential election. At the time of the shooting, all 11 presidential candidates were appearing on television. One of the candidates, Francois Fillon, has canceled his campaign events on Friday, Reuters reports. NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports from the Champs Elysees that the avenue has been completely cordoned off. ”People are not allowed on it anymore. Traffic has stopped,” she says. ”We just see police cars and vans with flashing lights, helicopters overhead.” So close to the presidential election, ”the country’s on edge,” Eleanor says, adding that thousands of police officers are on the streets. ”The world’s eyes are on France right now. And so anyone who wants to be noticed would do something in France.” The AP, citing a Paris police spokeswoman, reports that the attacker ”targeted police guarding the area near the Franklin Roosevelt subway station Thursday night at the center of the avenue popular with tourists.” Witness Ogur Yilmaz told Eleanor he was leaving a cafe when he heard ”two or three shots” and saw people fleeing. ”I was in a panic, and I ran too,” he said. Earlier this week, in a separate incident, French authorities arrested two men in Marseille, saying they were suspected of planning an ”imminent” attack ahead of the election and were found in possession of an arsenal of weapons. France has been under a state of emergency since 2015, because of a series of deadly terrorist attacks over the past several years. In July, an attacker in Nice drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day, killing more than 80 people and injuring hundreds before he was fatally shot by police. The Nice attack followed an assault with guns and bombs on several locations in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130 and wounded hundreds, and the shooting at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported early may turn out to be inaccurate. We’ll move quickly to correct the record and we’ll only point to the best information we have at the time."
"Updated at 2 a. m. ET, Arkansas has carried out its first execution since 2005, just minutes before the expiration of the inmate’s death warrant. Ledell Lee was executed by lethal injection minutes before midnight Friday Central time in Grady, Ark. at the Cummins Unit facility, shortly before the warrant was set to expire. Lee was pronounced dead at 11:56 p. m. Thursday, NPR member station KUAR Public Radio reports. About 30 minutes before, the U. S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the state to proceed with Lee’s execution. Lee was sentenced to death for the murder of Debra Reese in 1993. ”I pray this lawful execution helps bring closure for the Reese family,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said in a statement. The execution began at 11:44 p. m. and Lee’s eyes ”began drooping” about a minute later, according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the execution. The AP says he ”showed no apparent signs of suffering” and ”lost consciousness quickly.” The wire service reports that Lee made no final statement. ”The governor knows the right thing was done tonight,” J. R. Davis, a spokesman for Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, told the AP. ”Justice was carried out.” The state’s ”rush” to execute Lee ”denied him the opportunity to conduct DNA testing that could have proven his innocence,” Senior Staff Attorney Nina Morrison of the Innocence Project said in a statement. ”While reasonable people can disagree on whether death is an appropriate form of punishment, no one should be executed when there is a possibility that person is innocent.” Morrison, who represented Lee with the ACLU, added that the    Lee ”proclaimed his innocence” for 24 years, until his execution. Earlier, on Thursday, Arkansas’s highest court lifted one of many obstacles to the state’s original plan to carry out several executions by the end of the month. In a Thursday ruling, the Arkansas Supreme Court lifted an order forbidding the state to use one of three lethal injection drugs. The state Supreme Court reversed a ruling by a lower court in favor of a drug supplier. The company had argued that the drug, vecuronium bromide, had been purchased under false pretenses. McKesson Corp. had ”claimed that the state deliberately circumvented [company restrictions] to use the drugs for executions. [The firm was] told the drug would only be used in prison health clinics for its proper medicinal use, as opposed to putting prisoners to death,” KUAR’s Jacob Kauffman told Morning Edition. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray had sided with the San   company, saying that the execution drug ”was essentially obtained illegally by the state.” Gray’s decision had effectively stayed all scheduled executions. But the decision by Arkansas’ high court allowed for Lee’s execution on Thursday night. Arkansas had initially scheduled eight inmates to die over an   period in April  —   the fastest pace of executions in decades. The state has justified the pace of the scheduled executions, saying its supply of another lethal injection drug, the sedative midazolam, expires at the end of April. Arkansas and other states have found it difficult to persuade drug companies to sell drugs for use in capital punishment. Another execution had been scheduled for Thursday but was stayed by the state Supreme Court on Wednesday. Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he was ”surprised and disappointed” by the decision to stay Stacey Johnson’s execution. ”When I set the dates, I knew there could be delays in one or more of the cases,” Hutchinson said, ”but I expected the courts to allow the juries’ sentences to be carried out since each case has been reviewed multiple times by the Arkansas Supreme Court, which affirmed the guilt of each.” Johnson and Lee had both said they were innocent. ”They both want the use of new DNA technology, new DNA testing, that they haven’t gotten since they were first convicted in the early ’90s,” Kauffman reported. Earlier Thursday, The Arkansas   reported that the state went forward with preparations for the executions despite the previous hold: ”In preparation for their scheduled executions, Johnson and Lee were moved Tuesday to the Cummins Unit, the location of the state’s execution chamber, a prisons spokesman said Wednesday. ”The spokesman, Solomon Graves, said the two are being held in separate cells adjacent to the execution chamber, which is a short drive down the road from the Varner Unit, another prison that houses   inmates. ”Neither inmate had been moved back to the Varner Unit as of Wednesday evening, and Graves said the prison was awaiting guidance from the governor and attorney general.” Kauffman reported that the uncertainty is stressful for the victims’ families. ”But in many ways,” he says, ”it’s emotions they’ve experienced before, since these executions have been going through different legal hurdles for 20 years or so.”"
"As the first American president to be elected with no prior political or military experience, Donald Trump has had to adapt quickly to the responsibilities of public office. ”The magnitude of the job is sinking in for him,” White House correspondent Maggie Haberman says. ”The degree to which whatever he does is going to impact millions of people  —   and the responsibility of that  —   is slowly settling in.” Haberman has been covering Trump since the early 2000s, when she worked for The New York Post and The New York Daily News. In 2015, she joined The New York Times, where she covered the Trump campaign before moving on to the White House. Haberman describes the president as a homebody who hates interpersonal conflict. Looking ahead, she predicts that the reported feud between Trump    Jared Kushner and strategist Steve Bannon will not result in Bannon’s dismissal anytime soon. ”The ’you’re fired’ guy actually . .. really doesn’t like firing people and, generally speaking, will try to leave it to other people,” Haberman says. On what it’s like inside Trump’s Oval Office  We have not seen this leaky a White House in my memory, in forever, just in terms of the back and forth. And he surrounds himself, and always has, with people who are very focused and interested on the personnel issues. . .. His chief of staff, Reince Priebus . .. is in a very unusual role, in terms of what we have seen of a White House chief of staff in the past. We’re used to a White House chief of staff playing something of a traditional gatekeeper role.  Trump doesn’t like gatekeepers. Trump’s office style is much more Grand Central Station than therapist’s couch, like the door is always open people come in and out. When my colleague Glenn Thrush and I did an Oval Office interview about two weeks ago, people were just constantly moving in and out. It was really a cast of thousands, it felt like. On why she thinks Trump hasn’t yet made any trips abroad, He is uncomfortable sleeping outside of his own bed, which I know sounds strange to say about a    leader of the free world, but you’re talking about somebody who during the campaign, most nights  —   not every night and there were times when it was not feasible  —   but he would fly home from pretty far distances. . .. He would fly home to sleep in his own bed. He is a homebody, and he’s incredibly provincial and he is approaching the job in that way. I do think that his preference is never going to be being far from home. The thing that I keep hearing about this president over and over from people close to him is he’s very lonely. He is unused to living alone. He has always had someone living with him. He is on his third marriage. He has a young son. He spent, as I said, almost every night in his own bed it wasn’t just about his own bed  —   it was about the familiarity of his family. On reporting on Trump for The New York Post and The New York Daily News as he became a celebrity in the 2000s, Trump was in frequent contact with Page Six, the gossip page at The New York Post, which I think played a pretty big part in introducing him to the city and then the country at large. He was very used to a type of story approach on Page Six where he maintained good relationships with them, and he recognized that he was sort of a commodity in terms of gossip gold. But in terms of stories that were about him, it was . .. things like . .. him holding a press conference to say that he wanted to rebuild the twin towers. It was usually in the realm of stunt, because that’s really what he was doing. In the 2000s . .. that was really when he moved out of being a real estate developer and into the celebrity realm, so it was a different kind of Donald Trump, but he was omnipresent. On how Trump’s way of talking has changed over the years, His vocabulary was more specific. When he was in an area that he actually knew and understood and had some sort of emotional and intellectual connection to, he was more at ease, and it was reflected in how he would talk. Even now, frankly, when you get him talking about business or you get him talking about real estate, he speaks with much more fluidity than on almost anything else that he’s involved with as president. It’s funny  —   there’s a video of him that’s been kicking around the Internet for a year now, and it’s a video of him in the ’90s, I think it was ’95, doing a review of Citizen Kane  —   and he’s a big movies guy, Trump. He loves Sunset Boulevard  —   and one of the reasons he loves    is it sort of reminds him of that kind of a movie set and there’s a grandeur to it  —   but he gave this very, very long exposition on his views of Citizen Kane and what ”Rosebud” meant and he sounds very different. He sounds much more at ease with the subject matter the timbre of his voice is different. On reporting on Trump at his Florida resort,    He loves   . . .. There is this social greeter aspect of him at    that I had never seen before until I was there, and he loves it. It’s like watching a kid host a party, and he goes from table to table, and he talks to people and he asks if they’re having a good time and ”What are you eating?” and he knows details about their lives. There’s a huge patio, and he sits in a corner of the patio  —   it’s a table for about 10  —   usually his wife, Melania, is there. And then he sort of roams around the patio, and people are spread out and they’re watching him eat. And there’s a bar area a little closer to the inside of the building that people hang out at before dinner is served and then eventually you gravitate out. For him there is a socializing contact element that I think he just loves. But I think . .. you can’t hold national security meetings on the patio of what is essentially a restaurant, and he is adjusting to why that is different and he doesn’t love these adjustments. Radio producers Amy Salit and Mooj Zadie, Web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly   and Dana Farrington contributed to this story."
"House Republicans are mulling over new changes to their health care proposal, hoping to wrangle enough votes to pass a bill that would allow them to keep their campaign pledge to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.  The latest proposal allows states to make changes to the ACA’s rules governing health insurance policies and markets, in an effort to allow some states to offer   policies with lower premiums. The proposal represents a deal between Rep. Tom MacArthur,  . J. who is the head of the moderate Tuesday Group, and Rep. Mark Meadows,  . C. who leads the   Freedom Caucus. The two groups could not agree on details of an earlier health care plan championed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, known as the American Health Care Act. The new proposal, which was reported by Politico and The Huffington Post, is an amendment to that bill. It consists of a summary and bullet points rather than legislative language. Without the full language it’s unclear whether the plan could bring in enough votes to pass, says a senior House Republican aide. The proposal retains many of the popular consumer protections of the Affordable Care Act, including ensuring that people with   medical conditions cannot be refused coverage or charged more. MacArthur, on his Facebook page, said the plan ”will make coverage of   conditions sacrosanct for all Americans.” But the plan also allows states to waive those protections. If states requested waivers, people with   conditions would likely be covered through     pools, which can be expensive for patients and for taxpayers. Many states used   pools before Obamacare with limited success because they weren’t adequately funded, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The plan ”would make coverage unaffordable for many older consumers and would segregate   consumers in coverage that would likely be inadequate,” says Timothy Jost, a professor emeritus at Washington and Lee Law School who writes a health policy blog for Health Affairs. The proposal could also cause premiums to spike for people with medical issues, according to comments posted on Twitter by Topher Spiro, vice president for health policy at the   Center for American Progress. A person with diabetes could see premiums rise by about $5, 600 while someone with metastatic breast cancer could be charged an additional $142, 650, he says. There are some protections against such premium spikes in the proposal, says Rodney Whitlock, vice president of health policy at ML Strategies, who was a Republican Senate staffer when the Affordable Care Act was passed. He says language that forces states to promise their changes would still protect people with   conditions, and result in lower premiums, invites people hurt by the changes to sue the state. The proposal doesn’t mention Medicaid at all, so it may do little to bring in support for the Republican bill. That’s because the American Health Care Act was killed in part because it rolled back Medicaid coverage for millions of   people, something moderate Republicans opposed. ”I have a hard time believing that this will be acceptable to moderates in the House, much less the Senate, and will certainly be opposed by all Democrats,” Jost says."
"Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has declared a state of emergency over the state’s rapidly eroding coastline. It’s an effort to bring nationwide attention to the issue and speed up the federal permitting process for coastal restoration projects. ”Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels have made the Louisiana coast the nation’s most rapidly deteriorating shoreline,” WWNO’s Travis Lux tells our Newscast unit. ”It loses the equivalent of one football field of land every hour.” More than half of the state’s population lives on the coast, the declaration states. It adds that the pace of erosion is getting faster: ”more than 1, 800 square miles of land between 1932 and 2010, including 300 square miles of marshland between 2004 and 2008 alone.” The governor estimates that if no further action is taken, ”2, 250 square miles of coastal Louisiana is expected to be lost” in the next 50 years. He emphasized the importance of the land to industries such as energy, maritime transportation and trade. Lux says the governor hopes this will pave the way to move ahead with coastal projects: ”The state has a plan to implement more than 100 restoration and protection projects  —   like rebuilding marshes and barrier islands  —   but some of those projects are getting slowed down by federal environmental permits.” Those projects are part of a   $50 billion master plan that was unanimously approved by a state panel on Wednesday, according to The  . The newspaper says the plan ”relies largely on money from settlement of the 2010 BP oil spill litigation to speed restoration of coastal land and wetlands and protect them from hurricanes.” Now Edwards is asking President Trump to declare the erosion of Louisiana’s coast a national emergency and ”provide appropriate federal attention and cooperation” to assist the state. The emergency declaration also asks for Congress to ”consider legislation to provide for means by which to expedite all federal permitting and environmental review.” The New Orleans Advocate newspaper points out that Wednesday’s emergency declaration and master plan are designed to work hand in hand: ”The juxtaposition of urgency and   planning is necessary when it comes to the coast, state officials have said. Projects to help stave off land loss will take years to design and build, but an emergency declaration could cut years off the permitting process for those projects.”"
"Louisiana’s coast is disappearing at the rate of about a football field an hour. Since the 1930s, the Gulf of Mexico has swallowed up an area the size of Delaware. You can see the water encroaching in Delacroix in St. Bernard Parish, less than an hour southeast of New Orleans. Here, a narrow crescent of land known locally as the ”end of the world” is where the road abruptly comes to a dead end in the distance, you see the tops of   trees. ”It’s hard to imagine if the coast continues to erode and enormous amounts of money are not invested in protecting it, that New Orleans could survive,” says historian John Barry. Barry is known for his book Rising Tide, about the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Most recently, he was vice president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection   and pushed a lawsuit alleging that oil and gas companies destroyed land that once served as a buffer protecting New Orleans from hurricanes. ”The loss of this land has increased the storm surge on the flood protection authority’s property  —   the levees  —   and made our burden much greater,” he says. ’Sending A Message’ The authority is responsible for maintaining an elaborate new levee system built after Hurricane Katrina, an endeavor expected to cost about $40 million a year. And it’s not the only one looking for energy companies to pay up: Two Louisiana parishes are also suing for coastal restoration. The litigious environment discourages business investment, says Gifford Briggs, vice president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. ”That’s sending a message to the oil and gas industry that if you want to operate in Louisiana, you have to be prepared to be sued,” Briggs says. He rejects claims that companies are to blame for about a third of Louisiana’s land loss because of the canals they cut through wetlands. ”In the ’60s and ’70s, when we were doing exploration in coastal Louisiana, we had to create canals. So from a standpoint of land loss, it’s clear that when you dig a canal or create a canal, that there’s land lost,” he says. ”But being responsible for the coastal erosion side of it, that’s not something we feel like we’re responsible for.” Briggs says the reason Louisiana has a coastal land crisis is not oil and gas activity, but the way the Mississippi River has been controlled by the federal government. Flood protection systems prevent sediment from flowing downstream to replenish the Delta. ”Trying to blame us for something that is really the responsibility of the Army Corps of Engineers is really nothing more than just a money grab,” Briggs says. ’Let’s Have The Court Decide’ Somebody should pay, says Stephen Estopinal, current vice president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection  . He says the courtroom is the logical place to decide who should pay what. ”You bring ’em in the court, and let’s have the court decide. That is the conservative thing to do,” Estopinal says. ”The liberal thing to do would be to have Uncle Sam come in and make it all better.” Estopinal is a surveyor and civil engineer from St. Bernard Parish, and has measured firsthand the disappearing coast. He says he’s not out to cast oil companies as the lone villain. ”I don’t want the oil and gas industry to take the whole bullet, because they’re a very important industry. I like gas in my car. I also like to have a home to go back to,” he says. ”We’re not talking about inconvenience, we’re not talking about the little birdies, or how nice things looked before and how bad they look now. We’re talking about survival.” The prospect of a legal fight has sparked an epic political battle in Baton Rouge. Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and state GOP leaders are pushing bills to retroactively quash the lawsuits. Oil and gas severance taxes make up about 10 percent of the state’s general fund budget. State Senate transportation committee Chairman Robert Adley worked most of his career in the oil and gas business. He says it is bad policy to target a key industry that had permission from the state to develop its natural resources. ”I don’t believe that anyone ought to be sued or exploited for doing what they were told to do,” Adley says. ”Now, it’s easy to argue about the big bad oil companies and that kind of thing, but the truth of the matter is, we as a people, we want what they have.” Proponents of the lawsuits say it’s the other way around. ”Oil companies can’t leave Louisiana. We’ve got what they want,” says Democrat Foster Campbell, a public service commissioner. ”Here we have in Louisiana for years and years and years kowtowed to the oil companies under the threat we will leave Louisiana. They’re not leaving Louisiana. We’re where the oil is. We’re where the gas is. We’re where the delivery system is for America.” And America needs what Louisiana has. The question is just who should pay to keep Louisiana intact."
"Animals, especially mammals, need oxygen to keep their bodies and brains humming along. But leave it to the African naked   to buck that trend. The rodents are bizarre in just about every way. They’re hairless,   and   despite being mammals. Now, scientists report in the journal Science that the animals are capable of surviving oxygen deprivation. ”They have evolved under such a different environment that it’s like studying an animal from another planet,” says Thomas Park, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and his colleagues knew that naked   bodies work differently than those of other mammals. For example, instead of generating their own heat, they regulate body temperature by moving to warmer or cooler tunnels, which lowers the amount of energy they need to survive. They’re also known to have what Park calls ”sticky hemoglobin,” which allows them to draw oxygen out of very thin air. And because they live underground in large social groups, they’re used to breathing air that’s low in oxygen and high in carbon dioxide. Park and his colleagues wondered if they animals had another trick up their (nonexistent) sleeves for handling such extreme conditions. ”We were thinking, ’Gee, if you put all these things to bear on the problem of surviving in low oxygen, just how far can you go?’ ” Park says. ”And the naked   surprised everybody, I think.” To start out, he and his colleagues tested how well the   fared in a chamber with only 5 percent oxygen, which is about a quarter of the oxygen in the air we breathe, and can kill a mouse in less than 15 minutes. They watched closely, ready to pull the   out at the first sign of trouble. ”So we put them in the chamber and after five minutes, nothing. No problems,” Park says. An hour later, there were still no problems. Five hours later, the researchers were tired and hungry and ready to go home, but the   could’ve kept chugging along. ”Oh, I think so,” says Park. ”They had more stamina than the researchers.” The animals had slowed down a bit, he says, but were awake, walking around and even socializing. ”They looked completely fine,” he says. Next, the researchers decided to see how the   dealt with zero percent oxygen. ”And that was a surprise, too,” he says. Such conditions can kill a mouse in 45 seconds. The four   involved in this leg of the study passed out after about 30 seconds, but their hearts kept beating and  —   a full 18 minutes later  —   the   woke up and resumed life as usual when they were   to normal air. (The three   that were exposed for 30 minutes, however, died.) According to Park and colleagues across three continents, the rodents do have a trick up their sleeves. Most mammals, including humans, run on glucose, which is a sugar that the digestive system gets from our food and turns into energy to keep our bodies warm and our brains running. But the process of taking that sugar and turning it into energy requires oxygen. Without oxygen, the body can’t create energy, and without energy, cells die. When the researchers looked at tissue samples taken from the   at various times during the oxygen deprivation, they noticed a spike in levels of another sugar, fructose, about 10 minutes in.  ”We weren’t looking for it, but bang, fructose goes way up in the blood and then it goes way up in the organs and it gets used by heart and brain,” Park says. The naked   appear to have the option of switching fuels from glucose, which requires oxygen to create energy, to fructose, which doesn’t. (It’s the same ”fructose” as the one in ”  corn syrup,” an ingredient implicated in a number of health problems in humans. ”Normally we think of it as a bad thing,” Park says.) Humans are capable of storing and using fructose in the liver and kidney, but as Park explains, we don’t have enough of the correct enzyme to create energy directly from fructose. Nor do we have enough of the proteins necessary to move fructose molecules into the cells of vital organs. Our cells have to convert it into glucose in order to use it. The cells in the brain, heart, liver and lungs of naked   are all outfitted with proteins that moves fructose into the cells, and with the right enzyme to create energy from it. ”They have a social structure like insects, they’re   like reptiles, and now we found that they use fructose like a plant,” Park says. Some fish and turtles manage to manage to survive without oxygen for months, sealed in frozen ponds and lakes. But Jay Storz, an evolutionary physiologist at the University of Nebraska who researches how animals adapt to extreme conditions, says those creatures still use glucose to fuel themselves. They just drastically reduce their energy needs. The naked  ’s ability to switch tracks to a different metabolic fuel is really surprising. ”They’re doing something that really has not been described before for any vertebrate animal,” Storz says. ”They’re basically using an alternative fuel.” One question for future research, he says, is how the animals manage to get rid of lactate, a molecule that builds up during anaerobic metabolism and can alter blood chemistry. Park and Storz hope that the finding about naked   could someday help develop a way to aid patients suffering from oxygen deprivation from something like a heart attack or stroke.  ”It would be great if we could beef up the fructose pathway in those patients and extend the amount of time that they have to get to a health care situation,” Park says. Storz imagines   aren’t the only extreme animals with potential clues to alleviating human medical problems. ”There are probably a lot of other animals out there that are doing equally bizarre things,” Storz says. ”There’s a lot of research and development that evolution has done, and we just have to figure out ways to capitalize on that.” But that, they say, is a job for scientists in another field."
"Marie da Silva is among the 25 percent of voters who are undecided ahead of Sunday’s first round of voting in France’s crucial presidential election. The    building manager and mother has soured on the men in the race, finding them too weak, unrealistic or communist. Though she identifies as conservative, da Silva had never voted for the   party, National Front. But after watching its leader and presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, give a   speech against globalization, the European Union and immigration to a packed auditorium in Paris, da Silva said she found a woman she can believe in. ”Marine has the strength and charisma of a man,” da Silva declared. ”She raised her children. She’s a superwoman, a responsible woman, a woman who charges in.” Le Pen knows the women’s vote is crucial in her quest to become France’s first female president  —   in a   race where tight competition means the winner is really anyone’s guess at this point. But Le Pen and her party have baggage. The National Front wasn’t exactly attractive to women when Le Pen’s controversial father,   ran it. He was an aging, macho former paratrooper who called the Holocaust ”a minor detail” in history and wanted women to stay home and procreate. ”What he said about women was barely acceptable to those who did not belong to his generation,” says   Camus, a political scientist and author of Far Right Politics in Europe. ”Marine Le Pen is a modern woman. I mean, she raised her kids independently. She’s divorced, two times. So it probably gives the possibility of being heard by modern women.” Camus cites various studies showing that the percentage of women voting for the National Front increased from 10 percent in 2010 to 28 percent in 2015. The increase is more pronounced among   women. Camus adds that more men than women support the party, though some studies show that gap narrowing under Le Pen’s leadership.   De Lacoste Lareymonde, a National Front lawmaker from Alsace, claims that Le Pen, a     lawyer in a pantsuit, represents ”every kind of woman in society.” During the presidential campaign, Le Pen has tried to show a soft side. Her logo is a blue rose. Her campaign has distributed copies of a glossy   leaflet reminding voters that she’s a mother of three who’s ”a female politician in a man’s world.” And in a campaign video, she declares that, as a woman, she’s experienced the ”  restrictions in our country through the development of Islamic fundamentalism like an act of violence.” That issue is one reason why Manon Bouquin, a    student, decided to campaign for Le Pen. At the Paris rally, she hands out   with one hand and waves a French flag with the other. ”Marine Le Pen warned years ago that Islamism is segregating men and women in the Paris suburbs,” Bouquin says, claiming ”that there are even cafes where women can’t enter.” Another woman at the rally,    Morgane Fleury, says she stopped by the Le Pen rally out of curiosity and was shocked at Le Pen’s ”violent” rhetoric. Fleury says Le Pen is trying to scare women into supporting her by demonizing Islam. ”She’s just so bad for women, and the way she talks about women and Islam, it’s terrifying, really,” Fleury said. ”There’s a hidden meaning in what she says.” Camus, the political scientist, says his research shows that Le Pen used   rhetoric, especially after the terrorist attacks in Paris and Nice, to attract women who didn’t vote for the National Front before. ”And she tells the same thing to gay people and to the Jews,” he says, ”Telling them ’forget what we did in the past, and that if you want to be protected, the National Front is best for you’.” NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley contributed to this story."
"The French go to the polls Sunday to cast ballots in the first round of a political race like no other in France’s recent history: Entrenched politicians have been swept aside, with fringe candidates and untested newcomers filling the void. After Sunday, the field of 11 presidential candidates will be narrowed down to two contenders, who will face each other in a runoff on May 7. The top four candidates offer starkly opposing visions for the country. Yet they are so close in the polls that the race is impossible to predict. Polls in France are due to close at 1 p. m. ET (7 p. m. Paris time) while some larger cities’ polls will close an hour later. Preliminary results could be known about 3 p. m. ET. Here are the   candidates and their platforms: Emmanuel Macron currently leads the polls, with an estimated 23 percent of the vote. The    former investment banker founded his political movement  —   En Marche, or On The Move  —   last August after stepping down as economy minister to Socialist President Francois Hollande. Macron has never been elected to public office. He says he is neither left nor right, and says the traditional parties don’t have the answers for 21st century problems. The   progressive says he wants to make France innovative and to encourage risk taking. As president, Macron says he would make France more   and train workers for new jobs, rather than trying to save old jobs in dying industries. Corinne Mellul, a professor of political science at the Catholic Institute of Paris, says Macron provides voters hope for change and an escape from the   divide. ”Whether it amounts to something real remains to be seen,” she says. ”But part of his appeal is that no one even knew who he was three years ago.” Macron’s critics say he stands for nothing and has an empty program. There also been a disinformation campaign swirling about him, and his campaign says he has been targeted by Russian hackers. The candidate is   Union and takes a hard line on Putin. Some of the conspiracy theories charge that Macron is an agent of U. S. banks. Others say he has a secret private life or may be gay. Macron married his high school French teacher, who is 24 years his senior. Brigitte, his wife, appears regularly with him in public, and is said to be closely involved with his campaign. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right, trails by just one point behind Macron in polls. The National Front party has never been so strong. In 2011, Le Pen took over leadership of the party founded in 1972 by her father,   Le Pen. She has worked to bring the National Front more into the mainstream and break with the party’s xenophobic,   past. She has succeeded in ” ” the party to a great extent. Today, National Front supporters include many more women and young people. Her rallies are now full of   working professionals, not just angry   workers. And while   Le Pen just wanted to shake up the system, Marine Le Pen wants true power. If elected, Le Pen says France will vote in a referendum to leave the European Union, which she calls a tyrannical, undemocratic institution. France is one of the key founders of the EU, and if it pulls out, analysts say the EU could not survive. Another priority for Le Pen is reinstating France’s borders and severely curbing immigration. Le Pen believes the wind of history is behind her. She says globalization is gutting industry and agriculture in countries across Europe, and people yearn for a return to the strong  . Le Pen promotes ”economic patriotism,” which she says the EU prohibits. In other words, she wants to promote, buy, consume and eat French. Francois Fillon is the only candidate from the mainstream political establishment and the only one with real experience in governing. Fillon served as prime minister to President Nicolas Sarkozy. Though Sarkozy allegedly treated him as an underling, Fillon got his revenge by soundly defeating his former boss (who was hoping to make a political comeback) in the conservative primary last November. Fillon is a polished and seasoned politician and a wholesome family man who was considered a   for the French presidency  —   until January, when allegations surfaced that he may have employed his wife in a fake job as his parliamentary aide. Fillon is now under official investigation. He has also admitted to accepting expensive suits and watches from ”a friend.” (France has discovered that Fillon is a man of luxury tastes.) Despite the cloud hanging over him, Fillon has plugged on, proclaiming his innocence. Hiring family members is not illegal in France, as long as they do real work. And he did give back those suits. Even so, the scandal has tarnished him. Fillon once touted himself as the ”irreproachable” candidate for the party founded by Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Not anymore. ”I’m not asking you to love me, I’m asking you to support me,” Fillon said at a recent rally. ”It’s not about choosing a friend but about choosing a leader for the destiny of France.” If elected, the fiscal conservative says he’ll get the country’s finances back in order by cutting public sector jobs and reducing the deficit. That won’t be easy with his own credibility in question. Still, Fillon cannot be counted out. He’s managed to maintain 19 percent support (just a couple points behind Macron and Le Pen) despite the relentless attacks against him. His supporters can also be counted on to go out and vote. Political analyst Pascal Perrineau says many in Fillon’s historically solid base will have no problem supporting him. ”Many people will say, ’OK, so he got some suits and watches, what’s so grave about that? ’” Perrineau says. ”It’s like the reasoning in Machiavelli’s The Prince. Do we ask a prince to be moral or efficient? And Machiavelli says efficient.”   Melenchon has surged in the polls in recent weeks and is now just half a point behind Fillon. Known by some as ”French Bernie Sanders,” Melenchon is a charismatic speaker and began to soar after his humorous, brilliant performances in both televised debates. (Nevermind that he’s a former Trotskyist.) Many of Melenchon’s ideas are similar to Le Pen’s. Both oppose globalization and want generous social benefits and protection for workers. Neither likes the European Union. ”That there are a lot of similarities should not be a surprise,” says Mellul, the political science professor. ”The far left and the far right appeal to the same electorate. The disgruntled,   working class and the disenfranchised victims of globalization.” Like Sanders in the U. S. Mellul says, Melenchon attracts young voters who think he can really change things. ”Don’t underestimate the constant popularity of Trotskyism and communist ideas,” she says. ”And by communist, I’m not talking about the Soviet experiment, but Karl Marx. The appeal of this has never died in France.” Analyst Perrineau says whoever wins Sunday is unlikely to be able to unite a very divided country. ”We see there are two Frances,” he says. ”One is doing well. It is cosmopolitan, it has many colors and speaks several languages. But go out from the cities, you can find another France. It’s immobile, unemployed and worried about its identity. A president must represent both sides of France and each of these candidates only speaks to one.”"
"The Food and Drug Administration says children under 12 should not be given prescription medicines that contain codeine or another narcotic, tramadol, and that such drugs can also be dangerous to youth between 12 and 18. On Thursday, the FDA said it will require that prescription drugs containing codeine or tramadol carry a warning on the label against using them in children under 12 or in women who are  . The agency cited evidence that the drugs could cause dangerously slowed breathing in some children, which could lead to death. Multiple prescription drugs contain codeine or tramadol. For example, the painkiller Tylenol 3 contains acetaminophen and codeine. Drugs containing codeine already carry a   warning against using it to treat pain in children who have their tonsils removed. ”This is something we’ve been watching for several years,” says Douglas Throckmorton, the deputy director for regulatory programs at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. ”They are powerful, effective medicines when used right [but] they can cause a lot of harm when they’re not.” The agency also warned against using the drugs in young people between 12 and 18 who are obese or have breathing problems such as sleep apnea or lung disease. The new warnings did not further restrict    medicines that contain codeine, such as popular types of cough syrup and medication marketed for cold and flu symptoms. The FDA recommends that parents talk to a doctor before giving their children such drugs and notes that colds and coughs in kids ”are generally mild and go away in a few days, so they may not need to take any medicine.” Thursday’s announcement was a partial acceptance of 2015 recommendations by an independent advisory committee that recommended the agency restrict prescription of   drugs for children and also voted overwhelmingly against    sale of   cough syrup for children. At the time, pharmacist Maria Pruchnicki, an associate professor at the Ohio State University College of Pharmacy, told NPR’s Rob Stein, ”My concern, were I to be prescribing codeine in children, would be that I would, frankly, kill them.” As Stein reported, the FDA is not required to follow the committee’s 2015 advice, although the agency generally acts in line with advisory committee recommendations. In this case, the agency did act on prescription drugs but did not act on the    recommendation. It was unclear why more than a year passed between the committee recommendations and their partial adoption by the agency. In a press briefing, Throckmorton said the agency had received ”additional information.” Diana Zuckerman, president of the consumer group National Center for Health Research, called the move a ”  step to protect our children”: ”The science is clear, so why did it take almost 18 months since the FDA’s public meeting on the exact same issue? FDA needs to do more to warn patients about the known risks of medical products as soon as data are available. A change in the label is important, but unfortunately many doctors and patients don’t read these labels. We need a public education campaign to warn parents and nursing women about these risks.” In 2015, the FDA acknowledged that although tramadol is not approved for use in children, it is used   to treat pain in kids. In that warning, the agency noted that some people are what’s known as   metabolizers of tramadol and codeine. Those people have a variant of a liver enzyme that breaks down the drugs more quickly, leading to a rapid and potentially dangerous spike in the level of active opioids in the bloodstream. The drugs can make their way into breast milk in nursing mothers and potentially harm infants, the FDA warns. The proportion of people with the enzyme variant, which is genetic, is thought to be between 1 and 10 percent. ”Because we can’t easily determine which children or nursing mothers specifically are at greater risk of   metabolism of codeine or tramadol, we are requiring manufacturers . .. to make important labeling changes to protect those children who are at the greatest risk,” explains Throckmorton. As for future action on    medicines that contain codeine, the American Academy of Pediatrics has made its position clear. In a report published last year in the journal Pediatrics, members of the academy’s committee on drugs wrote that although    cough and cold medicines containing codeine were available in 28 states and Washington, D. C. ”neither the value of suppressing cough nor the effectiveness of codeine in children with acute illnesses has been shown.” Regulators in Europe, Canada and Australia have all restricted the use of medicines containing codeine for children. According to the FDA’s public label database, more than 100 medications containing codeine are approved for sale without a prescription in the U. S."
"Massachusetts formally dropped more than 21, 000 tainted drug convictions Thursday that were linked to a disgraced state chemist who in 2013 admitted to faking test results. It’s the largest single dismissal of convictions in U. S. history, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Thursday’s dismissals by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had been expected after several district attorneys on Tuesday submitted lists of 21, 587 cases they said they would be unwilling or unable to prosecute, The Associated Press reports. Over the nine years Annie Dookhan worked at the Hinton State Laboratory Institute outside Boston, she admitted to returning positive results on drug evidence she never tested and to sometimes forging  ’ signatures. As the scandal unfolded, hundreds of people were released from prison and hundreds more had their charges dismissed. Dookhan herself was released from prison last April after serving about two and a half years of her   to   sentence. At her trial, state officials painted a picture of a woman who wanted to be known as the best worker in the lab. Dookhan tested more than 500 samples a month, compared with 150 for a typical chemist, according to CBS News. Her colleagues called her ”superwoman” because of her workload and speed. ”Innocent persons were incarcerated,” Justice Carol S. Ball of Suffolk County Superior Court wrote in her 2013 sentencing decision. ”Guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core.” But the ACLU says it’s not just a single person who is to blame for that chaos. Kade Crockford of the ACLU writes that the scandal stemmed from a system that is set up to facilitate convictions. Crockford continues, ”It was that system that enabled her abuse, covered it up, and then fought to preserve the convictions that stemmed from it.” NPR’s Tovia Smith reports that on top of the 21, 587 convictions tossed Thursday, prosecutors are still seeking to uphold several hundred others, which may also involve tainted evidence."
"The United States spends the most on health care per person  —   $9, 237  —   according to two new papers published in the journal The Lancet. Somalia spends the least  —   just $33 per person. The data covering 184 countries was collected and analyzed by the Global Burden of Disease Health Financing Collaborator Network, a network of investigators from around the world with expertise in various aspects of health care. In between those two extremes, the spending is quite literally all over the map. And the amount of spending doesn’t necessarily translate into better health care. For more insights, we spoke to Dr. Joseph Dieleman, assistant professor at the Institute for Health Metrics Evaluation at the University of Washington. He authored the two papers, one looking at health financing from 1995 to 2014, and the other estimating future health financing to 2040. Obviously, wealthy countries spend more on health than do poor countries. Overall, where does the money come from? There are three different stages as countries develop.   countries spend the least on health, and the sources of that little bit of funding are international donors and people paying out of pocket. In   countries, people still pay out of pocket, but the government has more capacity and is paying for some health care. And in   countries, the money comes mostly from government and private insurance. What’s the impact on health care when people pay out of pocket? When people are paying out of pocket, the poorest people will forgo treatment  —   or they’ll have treatment and be thrown into poverty because of medical costs. That’s mostly a problem for poor countries, though the U. S. stands out among   countries as having catastrophic medical expenditures that put people into poverty. Do measures of health, like high life expectancy, improve as medical spending goes up? Well, yes, but it’s a little hard to prove that higher spending causes better health outcomes. It’s easier to show that higher spending leads to more health services provided and more people covered for health services  —   and that’s what leads to better health. Generally, as health spending goes up, so do health outcomes. But there are so many outliers. What outliers? With development, health outcomes generally improve, but the U. S. is an anomaly. The U. S. and the U. K. are both   highly developed countries. The U. K. spends less per person ($3, 749) on health care than the U. S. ($9, 237). Despite its high spending, the U. S. does not have the best health outcomes. [Life expectancy, for example, is 79. 1 years in the U. S. and 80. 9 years in the U. K. And while the U. S. spends more on health care than any country in the world, it ranks 12th in life expectancy among the 12 wealthiest industrialized countries, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a   organization focusing on health issues.] How bad are things in countries that spend very little, $100 a year or less per person, on health care? Somalia spends the least, only $33 per person per year for health. That’s a really, really small number. And those resources don’t get equitably distributed across the country. If the country averages $33 a year, you know there are many people that get even less, if not zero in health spending. The poorest people won’t get any treatment. We did our forecast through 2040, and what we find is that for the poorest countries, 2040 won’t likely be that different from today. In 2014, the   countries spent an average of $120 per person annually in 2040, it goes up only to $195. Which   and   countries are leading the way with innovative trends?  Globally, the movement toward universal health care has been powerful, especially among   countries. You see a wide variety of reforms taking place. Nigeria, for example, is decentralizing the   system so spending decisions are made locally based on local needs. Thailand and Mexico stand out in making progress in moving toward universal coverage and insuring that the entire population has access to basic health care. Vietnam is also moving toward universal coverage. They spend only about $400 a person, but they’ve identified a manageable set of essential health care services and work to provide it for the whole population. Somalia and others can look to countries like that as examples for how to do more with less. Susan Brink is a freelance writer who covers health and medicine. She is the author of The Fourth Trimester, and   of A Change of Heart."
"The woman leading the Justice Department’s investigation of foreign meddling into the 2016 election and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia has told staff members she will leave the department in May. Mary B. McCord has served at the highest levels in the national security unit, either as its leader or chief deputy, for the past three years. A longtime federal prosecutor based in Washington, McCord easily won the confidence of both career lawyers and her supervisors inside the Justice Department. McCord did not offer a public reason for her departure. In a message to her staff earlier this week, she wrote that she did not make the decision easily, but she concluded ”the time is now right for me to pursue new career opportunities.” Her exit leaves a huge vacancy at one of the Justice Department’s most important divisions, at a time when the Trump administration is struggling to fill the ranks. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the only leader so far in the building to have secured Senate confirmation. His picks for deputy and associate attorney general await votes by the full Senate. The administration has not yet announced political appointees for other top posts. Protecting national security is the top Justice Department priority no matter which political party is in power. The National Security Division, created after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, has filed criminal charges against Chinese and Russian hackers, sent Americans inspired by the Islamic State and   to serve decades in prison and launched counterintelligence probes involving suspected spies. The investigation into Russian election meddling is one of the highest profile matters in the division’s short history. It’s not clear whether the probe will result in criminal charges against anyone. But both the Justice Department and the FBI are taking it seriously. Last month, FBI Director James Comey told Congress his investigators are looking into ”the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.” He added: ”As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.”"
"At 3:33 p. m. ET on Wednesday, SeaWorld welcomed its last orca born in captivity. The birth at the SeaWorld in San Antonio, Texas, wasn’t streamed live  —   unlike with April the giraffe  —   but it will be the final chance for SeaWorld guests to see a baby orca grow up. ”This is an exciting and emotional day for us at SeaWorld and we are all so proud to share this new killer whale calf with the world,” Chris Bellows, SeaWorld’s vice president of zoological operations, said in a statement. The    baby was born to    Takara, the matriarch of the park’s pod. She was pregnant for about a year and a half, according to SeaWorld, and was already carrying the baby when the company announced last March that it would stop breeding orcas in captivity. As NPR’s Greg Allen has reported, SeaWorld’s treatment of its orcas came under scrutiny with the release of the 2013 documentary Blackfish. It told the story of Tilikum, a SeaWorld orca who killed trainer Dawn Brancheau, and was implicated in the deaths of two other people. In the film, former SeaWorld trainers blamed the company, saying the stress of captivity is dangerous for both whales and trainers. SeaWorld currently has 23 orcas among its three centers in San Diego, Calif. Orlando, Fla. and San Antonio, spokesman David Koontz told NPR via email. Last March, SeaWorld President Joel Manby said this would be ”the last generation of orcas in our care.” He went on to say that SeaWorld would not free its orcas because the time spent in captivity meant they would likely die in open waters. Visitors will have the opportunity see Takara and her calf in ”the near future during select times,” the company said in its statement. But at the moment, the calf is learning to nurse and veterinarians are monitoring both orcas ”    to help ensure a successful start.” As for how long fans have to see this calf grow up, SeaWorld says it has several killer whales in their 30s and one around the age of 50. The calf’s gender will be confirmed at a later date. Meantime, let the name guessing begin."
"Updated at 6:00 p. m. ET, General Motors has stopped operations in Venezuela after its only plant there was illegally seized by authorities, the automaker says in a statement. The details are murky: Multiple employees at the plant tell NPR that they believe auto dealers, not government officials, were responsible for the takeover. The seizure happened Wednesday, as the ”mother of all protests” brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets to demonstrate against socialist President Nicolas Maduro. GM announced the plant confiscation Thursday, saying its plant in Valencia ”was unexpectedly taken by the public authorities, preventing normal operations. In addition, other assets of the company, such as vehicles, have been illegally taken from its facilities,” GM said. The company said the ”illegal judicial seizure” would cause ”irreparable damage” to GM, its suppliers, its 79 dealers and nearly 2, 700 employees of the plant. But while GM says the seizure will hurt its dealers, multiple employees at the plant tell NPR that the takeover was actually orchestrated by GM dealers, with the support of a judge and police officers. GM responded says it stands by its original description of events. Venezuela’s government has not commented. Several dozen employees, in baseball hats and blue shirts adorned with the GM and Cadillac logos, gathered by the plant’s main gates in the city of Valencia on Thursday. Hector Riera, 43, a product analyst who has worked with GM Venezuela for 16 years, was among many who appeared convinced the plant been confiscated by dealers connected with GM. He said Venezuela’s Works Ministry has guaranteed that the workers will keep their jobs, but added: ”We don’t feel happy. We will only feel happy when our plant starts operation again. We need to be sure our jobs are safe and we are going to start working again. Given the situation in Venezuela these days, it would be really hard to find another job like the one I am doing here at this plant.” Junior Perdomo, 36, an analyst at GM Venezuela, said he learned of the takeover Monday on a social network, and that on Tuesday a dealership representative came to the plant to explain the situation. He said the takeover was led by the president of a national dealership, describing this individual as ”a representative of the dealerships all over the country of Venezuela.” ”They came here with all the files and documents saying that they have been fighting this since 2000, saying that General Motors has not been fulfilling its contracts,” Perdomo said. ”Of course, I was shocked,” he said. ”We don’t know what is on the horizon.” However, he said, GM workers have been assured company debts will be paid, and told that the new operators want staff to have good pay and benefits. Humberto Valera, another GM employee, said no cars or other assets have been taken from the plant. He said employees had been guarding it. He called GM’s withdrawal from the company ”very worrying.” He too said that the takeover was by dealers  —   and there’s no connection with the Venezuelan government. The plant employees tell NPR they believe dealers took over the plant out of frustration that the facility has not been producing cars recently. The Associated Press reports that the GM plant in Valencia ”hasn’t produced a single car” since 2015. ”Like most carmakers in the   nation, it has seen production grind to a halt as the   government chokes off its access to dollars needed to import parts and repatriate profits,” the wire service writes. ”Nationwide, carmakers assembled just 2, 849 cars last year, from a peak of 172, 218 vehicles in 2007.” GM is the market leader in Venezuela. The company’s suppliers represent more than half the auto parts market there, according to GM. Auto parts are among the many products that have been difficult to acquire in Venezuela  —   food and medicine have also been chronically short in the economically devastated country. After the closure of this plant, auto parts might be even harder to acquire. GM plans to fight the seizure in court, the AP reports. Venezuela’s government has seized   factories before. ”In 2014 the government announced the ’temporary’ takeover of two plants belonging to U. S. cleaning products maker Clorox Co. which had left the country,” Reuters reports. ”Venezuela faces around 20 arbitration cases over nationalizations under late leader Hugo Chavez.” Meanwhile, the street protests on Wednesday were marked by violent conflict, with multiple deaths reported, as NPR’s Colin Dwyer wrote: ”But the protesters who showed up Wednesday vowed to keep struggling against Maduro and voicing their displeasure with the state of the country. ” ’This is exhausting  —   but we won’t give up until we achieve a better country and democracy,’ Luiza Mayorca, a lawyer and mother of three, told NPR. . .. ’Every time we do something, that’s what we feel: that the worst thing would be to stay home, let fear take over us. This government, this regime, is making life miserable, and we cannot accept it.’ . .. ”By several media accounts, hundreds of thousands of   demonstrators flooded city streets to protest bread scarcity, ballooning inflation  —   which several estimates peg at triple digits  —   and what they see as an increasingly dictatorial regime.”"
"It was a trifecta of conservative celebrities in the White House Wednesday night. Ted Nugent, a longtime Trump supporter     Kid Rock, who’s been known to be strongly   but   marijuana and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin all gathered in the Oval Office for a quick photo shoot to go over some paperwork and have a little dinner. All three jumped on the Trump train early in the primary campaign and appeared at numerous rallies on Trump’s behalf in the months leading up to his election victory last November. While the White House has opted not to release visitor logs, it was the three guests themselves who spilled the beans on Twitter and Facebook. Palin posted several photos with the caption, ”A great night at the White House. Thank you to President Trump for the invite!” Nugent’s take is a little harder to follow but, apparently, there was some ”boogie chillin’” going on and some acknowledgment of the 242nd anniversary of the Lexington and Concord battles during the Revolutionary War. ”Well well well looky looky here boogie chillin’ I got your Shot Heard Round The World right here in big ol greazya —   Washington DC where your 1  only MotorCity Madman Whackmaster StrapAssasin1 dined with President Donald J Trump at the WhiteHouse to Make America Great Again! Got that?” In what is likely a dig at Hillary Clinton, the three posed for a picture under a portrait of the former first lady. Nugent’s wife, Shemane, who also attended the dinner along with Rock’s fiancée Audrey Berry, captured the moment. ”Sarah Palin, Kid Rock and Ted Nugent walk into a bar. .... .” Nugent and Rock both hail from Michigan. Their names have been floated as potential candidates in the 2018 U. S. Senate race when Democrat Debbie Stabenow is up for reelection. No word yet on what was on the menu or whether they killed it and grilled it."
"When    Nermeen Ileiwat first began college, she could not wait to get into a relationship  —   maybe even get engaged before graduation. But after one year, the rising sophomore realized she had no idea what she wanted out of life and was in no position to get into a relationship. That decision didn’t last long. Only a few months after, Ileiwat met someone at a party, and their friendship quickly turned into something more. However, dating was not that simple for the now    who are Muslim. They have religious restrictions that limit physical contact in premarital relationships. They chose to focus more on developing their emotional intimacy, with the occasional hug or kiss. Out of respect for their religious beliefs, Ileiwat and her boyfriend decided not to engage in any advanced sexual activity until they’re married. For young couples like them, the idea of dating is common, and it means balancing their religious views with their desire for emotional intimacy. But the term ”dating” still invites an offensive suggestion for many Muslims, especially older ones, irrespective of how innocent the relationship may be. Dating is still linked to its Western origins, which implies underlying expectations of sexual interactions  —   if not an outright premarital sexual relationship  —   which Islamic texts prohibit. But Islam does not forbid love. Ismail Menk, a renowned Islamic scholar, argues in one of his lectures that love, within boundaries and with expectations of marriage, is an accepted fact of life and religion  —   if done the right way. This ”right way,” he says, is by involving the families from an early stage. Before the rise of a Western cultural influence, finding a spouse was a task almost solely assigned to parents or relatives. But young Muslims have now taken it upon themselves to find their partners, relying on their own version of dating to do so. Older Muslims continue to reject dating because they worry that a Western world will also create Western expectations of premarital sex in these relationships. Adam Hodges, a former sociolinguistics professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, argues there is an added layer of culture and context to the term ”dating” that is often overlooked. ”We use language to give meaning to the world around us. So the way that we label events or phenomena, such as dating, is definitely going to provide a certain perspective on what that means for us,” he says. Therefore, taking on the dating vernacular to describe their relationship and labeling their significant other as ”boyfriend” or ”girlfriend” does put some couples at risk of falling into the physical expectations that come with dating, Hodges says. But, he adds, these fears can be allayed because ”the most important connotation that is borrowed is the ability to choose your own mate,” which is also the main precept of dating in the West. One way that some young Muslim couples are rebutting the idea of dating being offensive is by terming it ”halal dating.” Halal refers to something permissible within Islam. By adding the permissibility factor, some young couples argue, they are removing the idea that anything haram, or prohibited, such as premarital sex, is happening in the relationship. On the other hand, some young couples believe there should be no stigma attached to dating and, therefore, reject the idea of calling it halal. ”My justification is that we are dating with the intention of one day being married and, I guess, that’s what makes it OK,” Ileiwat says. Khalil Jessa, founder of Salaam Swipe, a dating app that caters to young Muslims, also believes that the negative associations attached to dating depend on the particular society. ”This conception that dating necessarily implies physical touching is an assumption that people are making. When they take the word dating, they’re adding this connotation to it, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. It’s up to each individual and each couple to choose how they wish to interact with one another,” Jessa argues. Getting to know someone and making the informed decision to marry them is not an alien concept in Islamic societies. Abdullah   a history professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, says that the idea of courtship has been present in Muslim societies for centuries but was subdued in colonial times. When the British and the rest of Europe colonized much of the world, they also placed social restrictions on sexual interactions between unmarried couples, Arian says. These social restrictions also took hold in certain Islamic societies, with religious restrictions on sex leading some to go as far as segregating the genders as much as possible, including in schools, universities and even at social gatherings. These practices began to disintegrate as women started entering the workforce, demanding their rights for universal education and pursuing higher education, Arian says. Segregating because of religious dogma became harder. And so, as the genders mixed, dating relationships also took root in some societies. This, he says, further facilitated the imitation of Western relationships. Changing ideas about modernity, widespread urbanization and the West’s cultural hegemony influenced something as intimate and personal as relationships, Arian says. But the most influential factor is globalization. ”We’ve seen the full impact of globalization . .. in pop culture, in particular. Western cultural productions: music, film, television shows,” he says. These ”shared experiences,” as he calls them, have given birth to   kids. These multicultural generations are growing up with a ”very different moral compass that is rooted in a number of influences and not just the local, but the global as well,” Arian says. Before social media and the prevalence of pop culture, it was a lot easier to enforce whatever ideologies you wanted your child to follow. But as globalization increased, this changed. Young people became increasingly exposed to the rest of the world. Today, their ideologies and values no longer find a basis in what their priest or imam preaches but in what social media and pop culture influencers might be saying and doing. Then there’s the limitless online world. Dating apps and websites that cater to young Muslims looking for meaningful   relationships are easy to find. Muzmatch, a dating app launched two years ago, has 135, 000 people signed up. Other apps, like Salaam Swipe and Minder, report high success rates for young Muslims who previously had a hard time finding a partner. These apps allow people to filter their searches based on level of religiosity, the kind of relationship they’re looking for and other aspects such as whether the woman wears a headscarf and the man sports a beard. While the men behind these apps launched them with the hope of giving young Muslims a positive platform to interact on, they say there are still many in their societies that oppose the idea of young couples interacting. Haroon Mokhtarzada, founder of Minder, says that a lot of this disapproval stems more from the fear of people in their communities gossiping than it does from the actual interaction the couples have. ”There’s this general concern that people are going to talk. So I don’t think it’s the parents who are worried for themselves because they don’t want their daughter talking to a guy or whatever, as much as it’s them worrying about their family name and people talking and becoming part of a gossip mill,” he says. To combat this, Shahzad Younas, founder of Muzmatch, incorporated various privacy settings within the app, allowing people to hide their pictures until the match gets more serious and even allowing a guardian to have access to the chat to ensure it remains halal. But no app setting can stop the gossip mill. Like many Muslim women, Ileiwat has chosen not to wear the hijab, but that has not saved her from glares and stares if she’s out in public with her boyfriend. Because of the prohibition on premarital sex, older Muslims often frown upon any visible interaction between unmarried young people, no matter how innocent. This can sometimes lead to assumptions that two individuals of the opposite sex who are just hanging out have an inappropriate premarital relationship. ”I think a lot of older people are under the assumption that all premarital communication between the opposite gender equates sex. Which is ridiculous, but it makes for a juicy story,” Ileiwat says, adding that even some of her younger married friends are subject to the gossip mill. But the fear of gossip and the older generation’s fear of sexual relations between young men and women have made the concept of dating more intriguing for younger Muslims. Using the word dating to describe relationships has resulted in a schism between older and younger generations.  Hodges says children pick up the popular vernacular from peers, leading to a barrier between what children say and how parents understand it. Because of this miscommunication, many couples instead use words like ”togetherness” and ”an understanding” as synonyms when talking to their parents about their relationships. Hodges refers to this gap as ”that ocean between England and America,” where words might be the same, but the way they are perceived is vastly different. Mia, a      college student who has shied away from having sex with her boyfriend of almost a year, can attest to this. ”The idea of dating, to my mom, is basically haram. I like to use the word ’talking’ or ’getting to know.’ A lot of people in the Muslim community don’t like to use words like ’girlfriend,’ ’boyfriend,’ or ’dating.’ They prefer to use things like ’understanding,’ or ’growing together,’ ” she says. But words, especially those borrowed from other places, soon take on the cultural contexts in which they are used. ”Dating” has only recently seeped into young Muslims’ everyday vernacular, so it may be a while before it takes on the local contexts within which it is used. ”If people realize that dating is simply a normal thing that has been around for centuries everywhere, that you don’t need to learn it from movies, then people start to see it as something independent of physical [acts]. Physical relations are simply a choice,” says Taimur Ali, a senior at Georgetown University’s Qatar campus. The current generation ”really wants to have the [dating] experience without having the full extent of the experience,” Arian says. But perhaps, he suggests, young Muslims need to develop something for themselves that is ”more rooted in our own moral sensibilities.” Neha Rashid is an NPR intern and journalism student at Northwestern University’s Qatar campus. Follow her @neharashid_."
"It used to be that American Muslims who wanted a halal meal had to live in a major city and know a good butcher. Want to find an eligible spouse? Get your parents involved. In the market for halal cosmetics? Good luck. Times are changing though. Across the U. S. the Muslim population is booming. It’s expected to reach six million in 15 years, more than double its current number. That’s good news for Muslim entrepreneurs looking to reach the new generation of   Muslim consumers. Matchmaking apps like Salaam Swipe provide a twist on Tinder for Muslim millennials. Other companies supply everything from vegan halal soaps to gourmet halal meals delivered fresh to your door. At the annual convention for Islamic Society of North America this year, community leaders gather to discuss urgent topics like Syrian refugees and civil rights. The event also serves as a venue for marketers to pitch their products. Alongside old standbys like halal chicken distributors and Islamic finance firms, startups are making a bigger show than they have in past years. Among those startup marketers is Sarah Ahmed. She hands out blue plastic cups that say ”Share a home with friendly Muslims” to promote Umma Spot. Umma means community in Arabic, and Ahmed says the business is ”basically like an Airbnb for Muslims.” It connects Muslim homeowners with travelers who want to book   stays where it’s comfortable to eat halal or wear a hijab. ”It was actually a group of us friends just sitting together after a birthday party one day, and then we were like ’Hey, that would be a good idea! ’” Ahmed recalls. ”And then we took it and ran with it.” Umma Spot CEO Usman Choudhry says the startup, which also plans to help Muslims network, is still in the testing phase and plans to roll out a mobile app later this year.” There’s a familiar immigrant story to these startups, says Sahiba Ansari, a representative from the American Muslim Consumer Consortium (an industry group supporting Muslim entrepreneurs). ”I definitely do see us following us the trend of the Jewish and Hispanic market,” she says: A   generation moving far beyond the old neighborhood and the corner stores their parents and grandparents built and relied on. Ansari’s group hosts a ”Shark Tank” style contest for startups. Last year’s winner was LaunchGood, a company that does online crowdfunding for projects and business ventures with social missions. She estimates the American Muslim market at close to 100 billion dollars. ”It’s the American dream at work,” says Benjamin Jones, a professor of entrepreneurship and emerging markets at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. ”And entrepreneurship of course is an important part of that process.” Back at the Chicago conference, hundreds of people sign up for Umma Spot. And women in bright headscarves crowd around a booth called ”Soap Ethics,” buying beautifully packaged, herbal, vegan, halal soap. A line forms at the booth for Convey, a brand that sells jewelry as well as   featuring artsy photos and sayings from Muhammad and the Sufi poet Rumi. ”I’ve known about this brand for maybe about a year or maybe about a year and a half,” says Jumana Elammori of South Bend, Indiana. ”I’m always checking their social media to see what they have new. I got the rose shirt that says, ’Seek everything from the source to the reflection. ’” She looks a little starstruck as she hands over her credit card. ”It’s awesome to see Muslims doing something cool like this.”"
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. When it comes to Colin Stetson’s music, joy is found in the improbable and seemingly impossible places. It’s often been said that Stetson’s signature sound  —   hallucinogenic rhythmic swells using just a saxophone, a pair of lungs and some   microphones  —   is almost supernatural. It’s made even more incredible by the fact that Stetson prefers single takes, with no looping or overdubbing. As he told Stereogum: ”The addition of unnaturals is what I avoid.” Stetson’s kept busy since his last solo release, 2013’s New History Warfare, Vol. 3: To See More Light. Two years later, he released a stunning album with violinist Sarah Neufeld, Never Were the Way She Was, and he’s been performing lately with his new metal group, Ex Eye (along with Greg Fox, Shahzad Ismaily and Toby Summerfield) which has an album coming later this year. But on All This I Do For Glory (out April 28) Stetson manages to sound bigger than ever, even while stripping back the more maximalist qualities of his previous releases, including the vocals. The restraint pays off, resulting in mesmerizing meditations such as ”Like Wolves In The Fold.” But if you catch your head bobbing (especially to the endlessly groovy title track) that’s intentional. Electronic heavyweights such as Aphex Twin and Autechre were spiritual guardians for Stetson on Glory, and their forays into percussive experimentation are especially evident on the steady gallop of ”The Lure of the Mine.” The   musician demystified his process in two videos leading up to Glory. The fluttering ”Spindrift” and ”In the Clinches” are shot    showing the saxophone’s interior and exactly how his fingers dance across it. What makes Stetson extraordinary isn’t just the circular breathing techniques he uses in ”In the Clinches” (which sounds like the fear that accompanies the feeling of   ). It’s also his keen ear for extracting sound from spaces where one is usually told not to listen. Stetson frequently leaves what might considered to be imperfections, such as the elongated gulps of air he takes in between mighty verses, in his recordings. This time around, he’s experimenting more with a technique called venting, which he learned from Enya. (Yes, Enya.) As Stetson recently told The Quietus, Enya’s album Shepherd Moons ”made me think about how the air is manipulated in my own music.” Specifically, he ”started to pinpoint the breath sounds coming in and out of my nose by having microphones inches away from my face on either side just to pick that up. That allows me to purposefully do something that sax and clarinet players are taught not to do in school: venting. It’s when you open the sides of your mouth very slightly and let the air pass outside to create a sound of airiness.” The discovery serves Stetson well on All This I Do For Glory, an album that bellows loudly and clearly that working within the limitations of what is physically possible for humans is hardly confining. With each new album, Stetson keeps rediscovering that the most remarkable innovations are found within the self."
"It began with a simple idea: provide a safe place in Boston where   and former gang members can work out, find support and maybe even get a job. The result is InnerCity Weightlifting, a nonprofit also known as ICW that connects them with job training, workout clients and a chance at a new life. Just about all of the trainers have done significant time in jail. They’ve shot people and been shot at. Dan Royal grew up in Boston and was 11 the first time he was arrested on a shooting charge. ”I got shot before that. My relative died right in front of my face. Also, I’ve been shot eight times. I’ve been shot once in the middle of my head, between my eyes. I’ve got two brain surgeries,” Royal says. Royal is 36 and has been out of jail for three years. For that, he credits ICW, where he works as a personal trainer. It gives him an income and a network of support. ”Dan is someone who I consider a close friend. I was also told not to work with him, as I’ve been told not to work with a lot of our students,” says Jon Feinman, InnerCity Weightlifting’s CEO. Feinman grew up in leafy western Massachusetts, a world away from the inner city. He ignored warnings that guys like Royal were too dangerous to work with. After college and a stint at AmeriCorps, Feinman founded ICW to help people break free of the cycle of crime and incarceration by teaching them to be personal trainers. It also gives potential clients a chance to connect with people like Royal. The program helps the trainers build what Feinman calls ”social capital.” For example, Jay Buchta, a business development executive who trains with Royal, says he helped Royal at his last court hearing by reaching out to a friend, a former prosecutor, and vouching for him. ”And it turned out that my friend and the prosecutor of Dan’s case had been office mates, so all of a sudden Dan had an association . .. with someone who wasn’t frightening to this attorney,” Buchta says. Royal, who’s off parole now for the first time in his adult life, says making friends with people like Buchta has given him hope  —   and a lot more. ”Allowing me to see that everything isn’t the way I thought it was, you know what I mean? Just thinking that a lot of people didn’t care, or wasn’t going to be anybody attempting to help you,” Royal says. About 500 ICW clients have a chance to connect with these former inmates  —   and I’ve been one of them for more than a year. I work with a trainer named Angel LaCourt, who grew up in Roxbury, one of Boston’s toughest neighborhoods. His mother was a drug addict and his dad was in prison when he started selling drugs at the age of 8. ”All my friends’ mothers was on crack. My friends’ fathers were selling crack,” LaCourt says. ”They either got locked up, went to jail or mainly dead.” Despite all of that, LaCourt became a high school football star and Boston College offered him a full scholarship. But then he shot and wounded a man, ended up in jail and lost the chance to go to college. When he came out, he went back to selling drugs again, was arrested and sent back to prison for 3   more years. LaCourt says he felt trapped in a system that offered no way out. ”The day you get out of jail, you’re coming home with nothing and you have to start from scratch. You can’t get a job at some of these places when they see the criminal background,” he says. ”The only thing you want to do is, I’m going back to selling drugs. And that kinda gets people back into that same cycle: I’m failing, I’m failing, I’m failing. When am I going to succeed?” Four years ago, a friend brought LaCourt to ICW to work out, and he’s been there ever since. ICW works with about 140 guys right now some are certified to work as personal trainers like LaCourt, earning as much as $40, 000 a year. When they arrive at ICW, recidivism rates are close to 90 percent. But for those who stay with the program that figure plummets to a tiny fraction of that. And staff members say they don’t give up on anybody  —   even those who land back in jail. ”Instead, we go and visit them in jail. We write them see what we can do to support their families,” says Mickey Belaineh, who helps run ICW. ICW plans to expand to Philadelphia next year, even though the staff is aware that a program designed in Boston for Boston might not work as well in other cities. But LaCourt says it can work anywhere there are too many drugs and guns and too few   programs like InnerCity Weightlifting, which he says changed his life. ”Yeah, it helped me out a lot. I think everybody needs to understand: All people need is opportunity, and everyone’s willing to change with a little bit of hard work,” LaCourt says."
"Nearly 1. 5 million Americans were treated for addiction to prescription opioids or heroin in 2015, according to federal estimates, and when those people get seriously hurt or need surgery, it’s often not clear, even to many doctors, how to safely manage their pain. For some former addicts, what begins as pain relief ends in tragedy.  Max Baker is one such case. He started using prescription pain pills as a teenager in New England and quickly moved on to heroin. His father, Dr. James Baker, is a physician in the Worcester, Mass. area, and says he saw signs that his son was high on opioids  —   in Max’s pupils and skin tone. He begged Max to stop. ”He would have slurred speech, and be nodding off at the dinner table, and we’d go to a concert together and he would disappear and come back acting differently,” James Baker says. It was a long, painful slog, but Max eventually sought help. When he was 22, he was prescribed an opioid called suboxone, a standard relapse prevention drug that helps wean people off opioids. After a year, he’d worked his way off that medication, too. He earned his high school equivalency degree, and a   associate of arts degree. Things were starting to get back on track, his family and friends thought. ”He called me just a few days before Christmas in 2014,” Max’s father remembers. James Baker still has the voicemail message. ”I just wanted to touch base with you,” Max said in the message. ”And also I wanted to let you know that I got a job.” ”It didn’t matter to him if he was washing dishes or delivering pizza,” James Baker says. ”He was working.” Max signed up at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell to continue his education  —   he’d decided he wanted to be a doctor, like his father. By all accounts, the young man’s recovery was a success story. Then, as he drove home from a class one day in late 2016, a single moment derailed everything. ”A young teenage girl didn’t see him and just pulled out in front of him, and they had a major accident,” says James Baker. Max’s injuries included a broken bone in his hand that required surgery. He told his surgeon  —   Dr. James Shenko  —   right away about his addiction, and that he was scared that medication used for anesthesia and pain might cause a relapse. To minimize that possibility, Shenko turned to the anesthesiologists on the team. ”And it became a big discussion between myself and anesthesia,” Shenko says. ”They were uncomfortable treating this patient differently than other patients because they felt that wasn’t fair to the patient.” There isn’t any definitive guidance for doctors on how to best anesthetize patients like Max during surgery or how to prevent and ease their pain afterward. The anesthesiologists pointed to research showing that   patients who are on relapse prevention drugs (like suboxone) do fine with anesthesia and opioid painkillers afterward. But Max was no longer taking suboxone  —   he’d been off that medication for a year. The anesthesiologist wound up using the normal drug cocktail to sedate Max for the surgery  —   a mix of drugs that included opioids. And the surgery went well. It was afterward, his father says, when Max was hurting, that the young patient confronted his surgeon and asked for opioids. ”I need medicine for this pain,” Max told Shenko. ”I need real medicine.” The surgeon took James Baker aside. ”He had mist in his eyes,” Baker remembers. ”He put his arm around me, said, ’I don’t know what to do, Jim.’ ” ”It was horrible,” Shenko says. ”Because you’re a doctor  —   you don’t want people to be in pain. But my fear is, ’this kid is going to go back to  —   his life is going to be altered because of what we’re doing, in a bad way.’ ” Shenko also feared that if he didn’t give Max the drugs he wanted  —   if he prescribed a   and that didn’t work as well  —   Max would find his own opioid supply. ”I think he would have said, ’I’m going to take matters into my own hands.’ Absolutely,” Shenko says. In the end, the surgeon prescribed Max just a small amount of Vicodin  —   an opioid. Less than a month later, Max died of a heroin overdose. He was 23 years old. There’s no way of knowing what triggered the relapse. Had he come off the subxone treatment for his addiction too soon? Did the opioids give him a taste of the drugs he’d previously managed to kick  —   enough of a taste to relaunch the cravings? Or was he trying to    —   to ease his physical pain from the car accident and surgery  —   and simply took too much? Dr. Shenko, the hand surgeon, has been asking himself those questions. ”What could you have done differently, what do you change, how do you do something differently,” Shenko wonders. ”How do you treat patients like this?” He now thinks hospital surgeons and anesthesiologists need to have ready access to addiction specialists, even before the surgery. ”Let’s bring in somebody, a specialist in dependency and addiction into this equation, and let’s manage it through that,” Shenko says. Dr. Stuart Gitlow, past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, agrees. If a surgeon or anesthesiologist were treating a patient with serious diabetes, they’d consult an endocrinologist. Addiction, he says, is no different. ”Whether he gets the opioids or not is less of the question,” Gitlow says. ”The biggest question is what to do to ensure this patient’s safety going forward during the period for which he’s experiencing pain?” Gitlow says in Max’s case, it’s not that the addiction treatment didn’t work. It’s that it ended. And an addiction specialist might have made sure the surgery was followed by a stay in a sober living environment, a methadone prescription, or some other kind of treatment. But there aren’t enough addiction specialists to meet the need. Nearly 2. 5 million Americans are said to be addicted to prescription opioids or heroin. And there are only about 5, 000 addiction specialists in the country  —   most of whom aren’t affiliated with hospitals. It’s a problem that Max’s father now sees all too clearly. He says when Max was in recovery, he’d ask his son what he could do to help him, and Max replied: ” ’Just be there, Dad. Let me know you’ll always be there.’ ” Now, James Baker says, he wants to be there for others fighting addiction. He’s done what he needs to do to become certified to prescribe suboxone  —   the same drug that got Max off heroin initially  —   in the hopes of preventing more tragedies like the one that devastated his family."
"Beans, beans, the magical fruit, Healthy, tasty, And useful, to boot! Save that canned water, And whip it to foam, It’s an   replacement, Made right at home! OK, so it’s not the playground rhyme you grew up with. But with the avid following that canned bean water  —   more appetizingly known as ”aquafaba”  —   has gained in just a few short years, maybe it’s time that rhyme got rewritten. Aquafaba is commonly made from chickpea water, though some people have used soy or   beans like cannellini as a base. Whipped into a stiff foam, it’s an excellent replacement for egg whites  —   and a cause for rejoicing among vegans. The name aquafaba (loosely, a combination of the Latin words aqua, for water, and faba, for beans) comes courtesy of Goose Wohlt, a software engineer and vegan who stumbled across the magic ingredient in 2015, while looking for a way to make   meringues for his mother’s Seder. To crowdsource the process, Wohlt started working with a vegan Facebook group. Today, that group has more than 68, 000 members, who post recipes and photos of dishes made with aquafaba, and the occasional ”What am I doing wrong?” question. After two years of rallying from the vegan community and others experimenting with ”eggless” egg whites, these DIY recipes are now getting codified into cookbooks devoted solely to the pulse miracle that is aquafaba. In October 2016, vegan cookbook author and blogger Zsu Dever released the first of these books: Aquafaba. This month, vegan blogger Rebecca Coleman’s Aquafabulous will also become available. ”The fact that we can take this liquid from beans and make it into a whole slew of delectable dishes is just incredible,” Dever told NPR. Egg whites are a culinary workhorse that omnivores frequently take for granted. Without them there are no   cocktails, no meringues, no mousses, macarons, or angel food cakes  —   just to name a few. So the discovery of aquafaba has been like ”an explosion in the vegan community,” Dever writes. In Aquafaba, Dever puts the    ingredient through its paces, providing a variety of sweet and savory recipes, including vegan butter, cream cheese, doughnuts, challah and brioche breads and more. Testing these recipes using aquafaba was no small task. Dever says there was a lot of experimentation: In total, she used 100 pounds of sugar and 150 pounds of chickpeas to test all of the recipes in her book. ”This wasn’t something where [the recipes] just needed to taste good and look good,” Dever says. ”They needed to actually work  —   and not just in my kitchen.” While making meringue, Dever discovered, aquafaba would refuse to whip if there was any oil in the bowl. If the mix was too diluted, Dever says, the meringue would deflate. Coleman’s Aquafabulous cookbook puts the ingredient to use in vegan coconut bacon, scrambled ”eggs,” vegan burgers, hummus and other dips. (Coleman says aquafaba makes them ”even creamier. ”) But what is it about bean water that makes it such a multifaceted addition to the kitchen? Though Wohlt crowdfunded some nutritional information on aquafaba, his website devoted to the ingredient is clear about the fact that there’s still very little understanding of its chemistry. ”Aquafaba is unique among egg replacers in that it captures some but not all of the characteristics of both egg white and yolk,” he writes. ”It can be used as a thickener, binder, emulsifier, foaming agent, and more.” Likely because aquafaba is still very much a grassroots product (I have yet to see jars of aquafaba sans beans sold in grocery stores, though surely it’s only a matter of time) there’s been little reason for companies to analyze how it works. So far, only Sir Kensington’s condiments appears to have made a big brand commercial food from aquafaba: a   mayonnaise called Fabanaise that went to market in early 2016. Chefs have been quicker to experiment with aquafaba. Dan Barber’s Blue Hill restaurant in New York City used chickpea water in its 2015 wastED popup, which made dishes out of ingredients that usually go to waste. Bartenders have put a vegan spin on foamy cocktails like gin fizzes or pisco sours by substituting aquafaba for egg whites. In other words, beans are growing up. Rather than being the butt of flatulence jokes, bean water is written about almost reverently on cooking blogs. For vegan cooks, its existence is nothing less than a miracle. Even lexicographers love the rebranding of leftover bean water. In recent months, ”aquafaba” has been added to the Oxford Dictionaries database. ”As language nerds we were quite pleased by that because it is a compound of Latin words and sounds very nice,” Angus Stevenson, Oxford Dictionaries’ head of content development, told The Guardian. Tove Danovich is a writer based in Portland, Ore."
"Tim Wharton bristles at being called a ”foodie,” with its connotation of lush, sumptuous ”food porn.” He prefers ”gastronaut,” a label popularized by late British television chef Keith Floyd, for its evocation of intrepid culinary exploration. Wharton’s provocative new book Ugly Food: Overlooked and Undercooked, written with fellow gourmet Richard Horsey, is a celebration of the gustatory pleasures of octopus and other beasts and plants less eaten. The authors make an impassioned case for why we should prefer the likes of sea robin, a   whiskered fish found along America’s eastern seaboard, to the comelier but   Atlantic cod and its kin. Horsey and Wharton met as grad students at the University of London in the 1990s, bonding over a mutual love of food on a trip to California. They found the academic conference they were attending underwhelming, but accomplished their   mission, says Horsey, ”to blow all (our) money on the best food we could get.”  Ugly Food is a love letter to the dishes Horsey, an international political analyst based in Myanmar, and Wharton, a    at the University of Brighton in southern England, have encountered in their quest to delve ”beyond the [chicken] breast.” But the recipes it serves up  —   Maldivian curried octopus, boiled sheep’s head from Scandinavia, rabbit stifado from Greece, French giblet pie and, of their own devising,   squirrel consommé among other delicacies  —   throw into sharp relief a mainstream   food culture fixated on the sanitized presentation of flawless specimens of a few favored foods. Besides being a cookbook, Ugly Food is equal parts culinary ”manifesto,” earthy polemic and disquisition into why we embrace some ingredients but balk at others no less nourishing and delicious and often considerably cheaper. Actually, ugliness isn’t the half of it. For every homely fish in Ugly Food there are cute critters like rabbit or squirrel that are similarly spurned  —   anything in fact that evokes an ”emotional reaction, positive or negative,” according to Horsey and Wharton. ”The food industry, like the fashion industry, seems driven by the pursuit of impossible perfection,” they write. ”Endless rows of   fruit and vegetables in supermarkets that taste of   .   meats with nary a head or foot or tail in sight. And a steady stream of cookbooks and articles with Photoshopped,   photos of beautiful dishes bathed in summer sunlight.” As a result, we’ve become estranged from the ”messy reality” of the origins of food, says Horsey. Any sign of life  —   blood, guts, feathers, mud  —   is ”suspect.” This is a relatively recent phenomenon, Horsey and Wharton note. Many foods we shun now were once staples in Britain, Ireland and America. In perhaps the most celebrated   novel of the 20th century, set in Dublin on June 16, 1904, James Joyce introduces Ulysses’ everyman lead character with a description of his culinary habits: ”Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.” It’s a menu of items that have long since disappeared from most of our plates. But it isn’t only the impoverishment of diets and loss of culinary heritage that Horsey and Wharton lament. Confining ourselves to a narrow range of foodstuffs promotes unsustainable fishing practices, focused on a few prized species, and intensive factory farming, they write. Then there’s the sheer waste from discarding perfectly edible fish outside the approved canon, not to mention the carbon footprint of shipping produce from afar when it’s unavailable locally. Horsey applauds the movement to rehabilitate ”misshapen” fruit and vegetables and push supermarkets to stock them at markdowns for ”highlighting waste in the supply chain.” But he worries that selling them at a discount stigmatizes them as inferior when they’re no less tasty than their perfectly formed brethren along the aisle. Besides, it reinforces a food production system that extols beauty over flavor, he adds. No supermarket carrots, pristine or otherwise, are going to taste very good, he says, because they’re ”cultivated for appearance rather than taste.” Ugly Food pushes a more radical agenda. ”[We can] get tasty, sustainable, environmentally sound ingredients,” says Horsey, ”if [we] move away from the idea of the food industry as a purveyor of impossibly perfect ideals and start seeing it as a purveyor of grubby things that. .. taste great.” Horsey applauds the efforts of certain food TV personalities to ”demythologize” unfamiliar and, yes, ugly food. Still, this often takes the form of a ”dare me to eat it” approach that ”exceptionalizes” such items, he says. Horsey and Wharton conceive of their mission in more practical terms. Many of the ingredients they spotlight can seem a little exotic and far from  . So Ugly Food offers techniques to cook ingredients like octopus (delicious braised, boiled, blanched or dried) and make them more approachable. ”People [don’t] need to visit an expensive restaurant to experience this,” says Wharton. ”[It’s] something they can do themselves.” For example, buying a whole fish and freezing the head and bones to make soup or stew, he says. Horsey and Wharton are already plotting a sequel to show home cooks how to shop for cheap and flavorful ugly food. Take giblets, says Horsey. ”They’re not expensive and really are quite delicate and approachable.” ”A   chicken heart. .. with plenty of salt and some lemon is my favorite part of a chicken,” adds Wharton. ”It’s just a shame they only have one small heart.” Stephen Phillips is a writer in Portland, OR. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Financial Times, Times Higher Education, the South China Morning Post and on The Atlantic’s website."
"Megan Mullally and Stephanie Hunt have been actors for years. Mullally is best known for playing the tipsy socialite Karen Walker in the sitcom Will  Grace, while Hunt has been in Friday Night Lights, Californication and other shows. Together, they’ve formed a musical duo called Nancy and Beth  —   and their style is hard to pin down. ”We call it punk   because this   element has crept into our very   approach to music,” Mullally says. That’s as close as you can get to characterizing the genre of Mullally and Hunt’s eclectic   album, Nancy And Beth, on which they cover everything from jazz standards to George Jones to Gucci Mane’s ”I Don’t Love Her.” ”To have two women performing it  —   it takes on this whole other timbre,” Mullally explains. Hear the rest of the duo’s conversation with NPR’s Ari Shapiro at the audio link."
"Creative works by and about musicians turned out to be big winners among this year’s Peabody Awards. Among this year’s honorees are Beyoncé and Donald Glover, whose prizes were announced today, and two documentaries announced earlier this week: the films   Evolution and MAVIS! Beyoncé’s ”visual album” Lemonade, released by HBO Entertainment in association with Parkwood Entertainment, was cited for ”the audacity of its reach and fierceness of its vision challenges our cultural imagination, while crafting a stunning and sublime masterpiece about the lives of women of color and the bonds of friendship seldom seen or heard in American popular culture.” Actor and director Donald Glover, whose   persona is Childish Gambino, won for his television show Atlanta on the FX network. The judges called it an ”enchanting series on the struggles of two young black men trying to make it in Atlanta’s rap scene blends vibrant character study and rich   commentary in delivering a detailed and textured exploration of a Southern city.”  Two music documentaries were announced as Peabody winners on Tuesday. One was   Evolution (Banger Films, distributed by Netflix and HBO Canada) which was described by the panel as ”an entertaining, consummate history of   music told in a series of interviews with influential MCs, DJs, and moguls who were there at the beginning of the genre’s birth and through its dynamic evolution.” The other was MAVIS! (Film First and HBO Documentary Films): ”More than just a biopic,” the judges wrote, ”this story celebrates the deep influence of Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers across music genres  —   from gospel to soul and   . MAVIS! illustrates the history of social movements in America and is a powerful reminder of one woman’s impact on popular culture.” The Peabody Awards are given yearly by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The ceremony will be held May 20 in New York City at Cipriani Wall Street."
"Last December The Ottoman Lieutenant, a love story set in Turkey during World War I, came and went in the blink of an eye. The movie was pretty terrible in its own right and, as critics pointed out, its Turkish funding guaranteed a   memory hole about Turkey’s 1915 massacre of over a million of its Armenian citizens, an act generally deemed by historians a genocide that Turkish authorities refuse to acknowledge to this day. Stepping in to fill the breach and then some is The Promise, an epic drama with a   cast of big names, buckets of    scenery, and generous financing by the late     Kirk Kerkorian, the film’s executive producer. The movie enters theaters with concerted pushback on social media from many who can’t have seen it yet. Directed by Terry George and featuring the same romantic hook as The Ottoman Lieutenant, The Promise sweeps us through that infamous chapter of the country’s history by way of a steaming love triangle involving two Armenians and a visiting American news photographer with a radar for global disasters. With the Ottoman Empire collapsing as Turkey enters World War I on the wrong side, Mikael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac) an ethnic Armenian from a village in Southern Turkey, arrives in Constantinople to begin his medical studies. There he falls for Ana (Charlotte Le Bon) a fellow Armenian with excellent hair who comes uneasily paired with Chris (Christian Bale) a boozy bulldog of a photographer from the United States. Romantic rivalry sucks up the air in the room for a bit, which is quite nice given that Isaac is a thing of beauty, as is Le Bon, with her undulating tresses and liquid eyes and Bale can do anything so long as it’s over the top. While Mikael wrings his hands over whether to honor his promise to marry the village sweetheart (Angela Sarafyan) whose dowry is paying for med school, the entwined fogs of war and tribal antagonism engulf all three, scattering them into separate corners of a sweeping action picture that roams all over the   country. Like many of George’s movies  —   among them In the Name of the Father and Hotel Rwanda  —   The Promise paints both the personal and the political with a broad brush. Characters are sketched in rough outline and the screenplay, written by George with Robin Swicord, careens unnervingly between period pomp (”I think I am with child”) and millennialese (”We have something very special”) while dispensing regular pellets of exposition. Periodic stabs at comic and carnal relief come off coy, and like so many of its kind, the movie succumbs to the tendency to confuse victimhood with sainthood. War produces all manner of confusion, yet under pressure Mikael and Ana project unalloyed nobility, which makes Bale’s flawed hothead far and away the movie’s most arresting creation, along with Mikael’s best friend (Marwan Kenzari) a   rich boy who tries to straddle the line between resistance and accommodation. Yet what The Promise lacks in subtlety and sophistication, it makes up for in the visceral potency of its imagery. Not without reason  —  1. 5 million Turkish Armenians were killed or disappeared during the massacre  —   George takes his cue from the conventions of the Holocaust movie. He minces neither words nor images to bring home the barbarism of ethnic cleansing with its unsanctioned, arbitrary executions, its rape and pillage. Desperate hands reach out of cargo trains emaciated men toil in harsh labor camps bodies pile up, among them those of people we’ve been invited to care about. In a coda that finds echoes in the seemingly endless capacity of humans to turn on their   neighbors, we learn at the end of The Promise that survivors of the massacre found refuge in Aleppo. How sad that what’s left of that beautiful Syrian city today may be the least safe place on Earth."
"Residents of the Canadian town of Ferryland, a small fishing village in Newfoundland, recently welcomed a new visitor: a huge iceberg that ran aground just offshore. Watching icebergs is a Newfoundland tradition, and Ferryland    owner Maxine Dunne can see this iceberg outside her window. She tells NPR’s David Greene that she and her husband, Charlie, have seen some pretty large icebergs over the years because they live along what is known as ”iceberg alley,” for the frequency with which icebergs float by after breaking off of glaciers on Greenland or in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. ”But this is I would say certainly the highest iceberg that we’ve ever seen,” she says. It’s considered a ”large” iceberg, which range between 150 feet and 246 feet above water, according to Scott Weese, a senior ice forecaster with the Meteorological Service of Canada. Charlie, a crab fisherman, estimates it’s about a   from their house. In photos, the iceberg dwarfs the houses in town  —   and that’s just what’s visible. (Weese says it’s hard to say just how big this iceberg is under the water because of its irregular shape.) Icebergs can pose a problem for the shipping industry  —   and for crab fisherman like Charlie, who usually goes about 25 miles offshore. ”They have to post lookouts and they have to exhibit a lot of caution when you have a number of icebergs in the area,” Maxine says. Boats don’t want to get too close, she says. ”There’s always the risk it could roll and that’s dangerous or little pieces could break off,” she says. Weese says so far this season, which runs from October to September, there have been about 600 icebergs in the North Atlantic corridor off the Newfoundland coast. Last year there were 687 for the entire season the year before, there were 1, 165. He says it’s not clear whether this season is unusual, but in late March, strong winds pushed icebergs south. Winds could give this ice chunk a nudge and send it on its way, or it could extend its Easter visit through Mother’s Day. Here, an aerial video of the iceberg that may make your knees weak."
"In case you ever find yourself hurtling into space, know this: When the little stuffed dog starts to float, that’s when you’ve reached Earth’s orbit. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin lifted off from Kazakhstan on Thursday, bound for the International Space Station. About nine minutes into their voyage, the stuffed dog leaped into the air, then began to drift at the end of the string around its neck. (The dog is the latest in an adorable tradition of stuffed animals in space.) There was a rare extra seat in the Soyuz capsule Reuters reports that Russia is scaling back its space station staffing as it prepares to prepares to send a laboratory to the ISS next year. It’s the fifth mission to the space station for Yurchikhin, but the first for Fischer, who he says there is one aspect of space station life that you can’t train for on Earth: using a   toilet. ”It’s all about suction, it’s really difficult,” Fischer said in a NASA interview before launch. ”You just can’t train for that on the ground, so I approach my   activities with respect, preparation and a healthy dose of sheer terror.” Just six hours after launch, the pair docked at the space station. They were welcomed by Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy of Russia and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, as well as Expedition 51 Commander Peggy Whitson of NASA, who on Monday will break the record for longest time spent in space by a U. S. astronaut. She’s due to return to Earth in September. On Saturday, NASA will livestream video of the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo spacecraft rendezvous and capture at the International Space Station. The cargo craft took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Tuesday."
"Roger Waters is set to release his first album of   rock songs in nearly 25 years. Is This The Life We Really Want? was produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck, U2) and is due out June 2 on Columbia Records. Water’s previous solo studio release was 1992’s Amused To Death. Waters, known for his scathing political and social commentaries, says the new record reflects an age of uncertainty and unrest. News of Is This The Life We Really Want? comes just ahead of a U. S. tour by Waters, which runs from May 26 through the end of October. Here’s the full track list: ”When We Were Young””’Déjà Vu””’The Last Refugee””’Picture That””’Broken Bones””’Is This The Life We Really Want? ””’Bird In A Gale””’The Most Beautiful Girl””Smell The Roses””Wait For Her””Oceans Apart””Part of Me Died”"
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. If Willie Nelson hadn’t fashioned himself into the artist he is over the course of thousands of performances and some   albums, who could’ve dreamed him up? He’s been the epitome of consistency, each of his shows an easygoing epic, each album loosely held together by a narrative or stylistic thread, each project expanding on country’s troubadour tradition. And yet, he’s also the most capricious of musicians, willing to let himself be guided by his whims, so wily and   in the phrasing of his vocals and guitar figures that trying to match his wavering rhythms is a fool’s errand. On his rich, new album, God’s Problem Child, Nelson likewise attributes an incongruous range of qualities to the passage of time itself. Where some artists embrace somber,   meditations on mortality as a way to make a final case for their depth and burnish their legacies, at age 84, Nelson reflects on this season of his life with a mischievousness and equanimity that already feels familiar coming from him. Bookending the album are songs that convey nostalgia for places and people: the gospelly   romp ”Little House on the Hill”  —   a   cut for songwriter Lyndel Rhodes, the nonagenarian mother of Nelson’s seasoned producer, Buddy Cannon, who’s been on quite the roll this year  —   and ”He Won’t Ever Be Gone,” a twangy, Gary   tribute to Nelson’s late peer and comrade, Merle Haggard. Between those two numbers, Nelson unfurls gentle, but unsparing insights. ”It Gets Easier” might bring to mind the similarly titled string of confessional videos aimed at reassuring troubled LGBTQ tweens and teens that they have plenty to look forward to, but Nelson’s tone is hardly optimistic he’s singing, with elegant empathy, about how easy it is to withdraw from living a fully engaged life as you get older. The classic country waltz ”Your Memory Has a Mind of Its Own”  —   one of seven songs on here that he   with Cannon via text message  —   is haunted by a loved one’s inescapable absence, while the ruminative ballad ”True Love” lifts up a romanticism that endures despite the bruises of experience. ”I’ll leave this world believing, true love, you’re still my friend,” Nelson murmurs. Since there have been so many internet rumors of his impending death over the years, he makes a wry joke of his mortality in ”Still Not Dead,” the album’s most energetic number. He also channels the soulful scoundrel side of his persona into ”God’s Problem Child,” which features the late Leon Russell and whose authors, Jamey Johnson and Tony Joe White, take turns singing lead. A ruminative blues number, it’s a chance for Nelson to play guitar solos in impish spurts. But he’s not interested in maintaining an illusion of invulnerability. During ”Old Timer,” a stately piano ballad laced with his longtime harmonica player Mickey Raphael’s reedy, disconsolate notes, Nelson conveys melancholy awareness of the contradiction between a lively mind and deteriorating body. He still sings with grace, and it’s moving to hear his vocal instrument finally beginning to betray a bit of frailty in his ninth decade. Temperate, fickle and revelatory in turns, his is truly a voice to trust."
"When U. S. intelligence agencies spy on Americans, they’re supposed to get a warrant. But what happens when they’re spying on a foreigner and an American calls up? The way intelligence agencies handle what they call this ”incidental” collection of information  —   and what political leaders eventually do with it  —   will be a big part of the next phase in Congress’ investigations about the Russian interference in last year’s presidential election. The House Intelligence Committee announced Friday that it has invited FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers to a closed hearing on May 2. The two appeared March 20 at an open hearing. The House committee has also invited three former national security officials from the Obama administration  —   former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates  —   for a subsequent open hearing that has not yet been scheduled. Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees want those investigations to focus on the potential connections between President Trump’s aides and Russia’s interference. Republicans have charted a different course: an inquiry into how Americans can be swept up in government surveillance and whether politicians  —   specifically leaders in President Obama’s administration  —   might have abused what they learned. Here’s what happened: In January, the Washington Post reported that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the campaign aide who went on to serve briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, made several telephone calls to Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak. The detail, sourced to ”a senior U. S. government official,” appeared in a column posing questions about Trump’s connections to Russia ahead of his inauguration. It later emerged that Flynn did not tell the truth about the details of his conversations with Kislyak to others in the White House, including Vice President Pence, and he resigned. Flynn also received tens of thousands of dollars in payments from Russian entities and has offered to tell his story to members of Congress only in exchange for immunity from prosecution. But what Trump and his allies in Congress call the big story here is that some senior Obama administration official, per the Post, had leaked the name of an American  —   Flynn  —   in an abuse of power, because that information is highly secret. Americans’ names are supposed to be redacted or ”masked” in the secret intelligence reporting that circulates within top official channels. If two foreign diplomats are overheard talking about a ”U. S. person”  —   a term of art that applies to a number of things (an actual person, or a company, or a ship or an aircraft) it appears as something like ”U. S. Person 1.” So someone in the Obama White House, evidently cleared and authorized to view reports about ongoing surveillance, may have asked for Flynn’s name to be ”unmasked.” That person  —   or someone else who may have had access to or know about the intelligence intercept  —   then spoke to Post columnist David Ignatius and revealed the detail. Later, the Post reported that officials on the National Security Council revealed to the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, that Trump himself, as well as other aides, may also have been swept up in surveillance of foreign targets after the election.   security adviser Susan Rice had viewed reports about the surveillance and asked the intelligence agencies to reveal, or ”unmask” the names of the Americans who had been caught up, the NSC officials revealed. Trump and his aides have hung their lantern on that part of the story. The president told the New York Times that he thought Rice may have committed a crime. Rice has denied leaking any classified information or doing anything wrong. And some members of Congress who have viewed the secret documents at issue say they’ve seen no evidence of anything unlawful. The next chapter in the story will begin when the House and Senate committees announce their next public events. Democrats want to hear from Trump’s former aides, including former campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, foreign policy adviser Carter Page and gadfly Roger Stone. Republicans want testimony from Rice. Raj De, who served as general counsel at the National Security Agency during the Obama administration, says he doesn’t believe the public facts in the case so far are out of bounds. ”It’s not uncommon for an intelligence recipient, in given circumstances, to request for a name to be unredacted, if it’s necessary, one to understand the intelligence  —   [which] is the standard, or two, if there’s potential evidence of a crime,” he said. The number of Americans who have had their identities unmasked is not clear, and privacy advocates also complain that the U. S. intelligence community has stonewalled requests for information about the number of people swept up in ”incidental” collection. Elizabeth Goitein, a privacy advocate at the Brennan Center for Justice, says it’s worrisome that the standard for unmasking Americans’ identities is ”understanding the importance of foreign intelligence.” ”That may not sound like a major loophole, but the definition of foreign intelligence information in the statute is so broad, it would encompass casual conversations about current events,” she told NPR. ”So it’s actually quite a significant loophole.” Sen. Ron Wyden,  . asked Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to promise at his confirmation hearing that he would get the intelligence community to give Congress answers about the number of Americans who have been swept up. Coats said he would do everything he could, but he called it ”an extremely complex process, for a number of reasons.” Goitein said the intelligence community and its supporters in Congress have good reason for not making a public estimate. ”The number’s going to be enormous,” she said. ”If we learned that it was actually tens of millions  —   or more  —   of Americans’ communications, we would understand that the term ’incidental’ here is somewhat meaningless.” All the    storylines are playing out at a time when one of the key provisions in law that authorizes ”incidental collection,” Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is set to expire later this year. De, the former NSA general counsel, told NPR that law is one of the most  —   if not the most, in his words  —   valuable sources of surveillance authority for helping guard U. S. national security right now. Advocates say it gives American spies the ability to move quickly in tracking potential threats without some of the bureaucracy that encumbered them in the past. But the timing of the Russia imbroglio has given new fuel to opponents of that power. Rep. Raul Labrador,   pointed to the Post’s report about Flynn’s phone conversations as an example of the dangers of the political abuse of intelligence. ”For me, it had a chilling effect . .. the thought my political opponents could use my personal information, that they maybe gathered in some private communication, against me in the future. That should be quite terrifying to anybody, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.” Meanwhile, the bosses of the U. S. spy agencies fear that, in the partisan hothouse created by Congress’ parallel investigations, the discussion about the use and potential abuse of surveillance could confuse what they consider separate issues. When the House committee convened its first hearing, for example, Rep. Trey Gowdy,  . C. pointed out that the surveillance of Flynn was most likely done under a statute other than Section 702. ”But in the eyes of people watching, it is the U. S. government officials leaking the name of a U. S. citizen,” he said. ”And if it can happen here, it may happen there. Trust me, you and I both want to see it reauthorized  —   but it is in jeopardy if we don’t get this resolved.”"
"Updated at 7:15 p. m. ET. The U. S. Justice Department has escalated its approach to   sanctuary cities, writing at least eight jurisdictions Friday to put them on notice they could be failing to cooperate with immigration authorities. Alan Hanson, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s   arm, warned the cities that they’re required to submit proof that they comply with federal immigration law. ”Failure to comply with this condition could result in the withholding of grant funds, suspension or termination of the grant, ineligibility for future . .. grants, or other action, as appropriate,” Hanson wrote. The places receiving the letters include Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Miami, Milwaukee, New York and Sacramento, Calif. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has adopted a hard line on immigration, dating to his time in the U. S. Senate. Sessions links immigration to a variety of social problems, including what he calls a rise in crime. In a statement accompanying the letters to sanctuary cities, the Justice Department said ”many of these jurisdictions are also crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime.” While murders and other violence are on the rise in some major cities, most scholars have concluded that crime remains near historic lows and that immigrants commit fewer crimes than U. S.  citizens. The Justice Department statement blasted New York for gang murders there, labeling them ”the predictable consequence of the city’s ’soft on crime’ stance.” New York’s murder tally is one of the lowest in the nation, according to data collected by the FBI. A spokesman for the New York Police Department, J. Peter Donald, responded on Twitter: ”Did DOJ really say the NYPD is soft on crime?” Later, Police Commissioner James O’Neill issued a statement pointing out that last year, New York experienced fewer shootings than since the city had started keeping records. To argue otherwise, as the U. S. Justice Department has done, ”demonstrates a willful disregard of the facts,” O’Neill said. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also weighed in, telling President Trump that if he believes New York is soft on crime, ”then I invite him to come to NYC, look our officers in the eye and tell them.” In response, the Justice Department said the issue was the city’s policies, not law enforcement officers: ”Unfortunately, the Mayor’s policies are hamstringing the brave NYPD officers that protect the city, and only serve to endanger the lives of the hard working men and women of the NYPD who care more about keeping their city and country safe than they do about city hall politics.” In California, Attorney General Xavier Becerra said his state has a ”right to determine how it will provide for the safety and general welfare of its residents and to safeguard their constitutional rights.” Becerra added: ”Fearmongering and falsehoods will not intimidate our state into compromising our values. Federal threats to take away resources from law enforcement or our people in an attempt to bully states and localities into carrying out the new administration’s unsound deportation plan are reckless and jeopardize public safety.” Earlier this week, Justice Department veterans warned that a tough approach to jurisdictions that refuse to follow federal immigration and marijuana laws could hurt community partnerships. ”I think it’s cause for concern,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor who now works with newly elected district attorneys and state attorneys. ”With federal money moving forward, there could be the potential for federal strings to be attached.” Sessions, who is touring the Southwest border this week, told MSNBC that most cities are cooperating. ”We’re pleading with the cities, let’s don’t have a fight over this,” Sessions said earlier Friday. ”So I hope we don’t end into a fight, but we’re perfectly willing to do whatever I can to ensure that we have the kind of unified effort that protects America.”"
"A remark U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions made earlier this week about a judge in Hawaii isn’t sitting well with the Aloha State. In an interview on the The Mark Levin Show, Sessions was asked about the status of President Trump’s executive order on travel. ”I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” Sessions replied. The Justice Department tried to clarify Sessions’ remarks on Thursday, according to CNN. ”Hawaii is, in fact, an island in the Pacific  —   a beautiful one where the Attorney General’s granddaughter was born,” a spokesman told the network. ”The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed opinion by a single judge can block the President’s lawful exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe.” But the hackles had already been raised. The state’s U. S senators, both Democrats, fired back. Mazie Hirono called Sessions’ comments ”ignorant  dangerous.” And Brian Schatz told the attorney general to ”have some respect.” He also quoted a tweet from political scientist Ian Bremmer that said, ”First Trump doesn’t care N Korea can already hit Hawaii now Sessions says it’s just some ’island in the Pacific.’ #Mahalo.” The federal judge in question is Derrick K. Watson, who last month blocked Trump’s revised travel ban just before it was to go into effect, saying that it is likely to be found unconstitutional. Watson’s chambers are in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu. Hawaii became a state in 1959. Watson was nominated to serve as a U. S. district judge for the District of Hawaii by President Obama in November 2012 he was confirmed by the U. S. Senate in April 2013 by a vote of  . Sessions, then a senator, was among those who voted to confirm Watson. Hawaii’s attorney general, Doug Chin, responded to Sessions’ comments Thursday: ”President Trump previously called a federal judge in California a   judge. Now U. S. Attorney General Sessions appears to dismiss a federal judge in Hawaii as just a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific. Our Constitution created a separation of powers in the United States for a reason. Our federal courts, established under article III of the Constitution, are   partners with Congress and the President. It is disappointing AG Sessions does not acknowledge that.” By Thursday afternoon, Sessions’ remarks had inspired passionate testimony on Twitter from others, using the hashtag  —   what else?  —   #islandinthepacific. Sessions addressed the backlash Friday morning on CNN. ”I wasn’t criticizing the judge or the island. I think it’s a fabulous place,” he said. ”But I gotta tell you, it is a point worth making  —   that a single sitting district judge out of 600, 700 district judges can issue an order stopping a presidential executive order that I believe is fully constitutional, designed to protect the United States of America from terrorist attack.”"
"Sometimes, it’s the Internet of stings. Juicero, a startup that sells a pricey juice press, found that out firsthand. The company’s    machine produces   juice out of packets sold exclusively to owners via subscription. Received as both Silicon Valley cautionary tale and commentary on conspicuous consumption, Juicero’s story was chronicled this week in a Bloomberg News piece. The article pointed out how the original pitch  —   specialty juice, at home, by way of the Internet of things  —   excited venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Major investors, including Google’s venture capital arm, poured money into founder Doug Evans’ idea, wagering the subscription model could strike gold like it did with Dollar Shave Club. In all, the company raised some $120 million. But Bloomberg says investors’ confidence waned once it emerged that people didn’t actually need the press to get juice from the packets but could simply squeeze it out by hand. And it says there were other revelations: ”[A]fter the product’s introduction last year, at least two Juicero investors were taken aback after finding the packs could be squeezed by hand. They also said the machine was much bigger than what Evans had proposed. One of the investors said they were frustrated with how the company didn’t deliver on the original pitch and that their venture firm wouldn’t have met with Evans if he were hawking bags of juice that didn’t require   hardware. Juicero didn’t broadly disclose to investors or employees that packs can be hand squeezed, said four people with knowledge of the matter.” A video accompanying the article showed that   the packets produces roughly the same amount of juice as the machine, which initially retailed for $700. The price has since been lowered to $400. Even so, the costly contraption elicited a fair amount of Internet snark. On Thursday, Juicero’s CEO offered a   defense of his company’s product and offered refunds to ”any Juicero customer  —   new or old  —   who feels that we aren’t making it easier, more enjoyable and delicious to form a healthy habit.” Writing on the blog site Medium, Jeff Dunn also highlighted several points he said showed that ”the value of Juicero is more than a glass of   juice. Much more.” Dunn touted the device’s connectivity. He said, for example, that the juice bag’s QR codes allowed the company to remotely intervene in case of a product recall. ”We know hacking consumer products is nothing new. But how can we better demonstrate the incredible value we know our connected system delivers?” Dunn wrote. He also advised against   the company’s juice: ”What you will get with   hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won’t want to repeat once, let alone every day.” For his part, Evans has been silent since the chorus began. The Juicero founder, who admits he isn’t   at one time pushed the Juicero as a  . ”I said, ’I’m going to do what Steve [Jobs] did,’ ” Evans told tech news site Recode last year. ” ’I’m going to take the mainframe computer and create a personal computer. I’m going to take a mainframe juice press and create a personal juice press.’ ” Prior to launching Juicero, Evans had invested in a   juice shop in Brooklyn, N. Y."
"Most creepy, crawly bugs are pretty much harmless when it comes to infectious diseases. But there are two classes of little critters that cause big  —   and we’re talking big  —   problems: ticks and mosquitoes. To learn how climate change could alter the course of   and   diseases, we talked to two scientists who have devoted a major chunk of their careers to answering that question. Let’s start with the bloodsuckers that can stay on your skin for days. Cocktail party chatter: These little guys aren’t insects. They’re arachnids. That’s the same class of animal as spiders. What they cause: Ticks are best known for transmitting Lyme disease. But these arachnids carry more than a dozen diseases in the U. S. including spotted fevers, a   disease and several rare but deadly viruses, such as Heartland virus and Powassan. How climate change will affect the spread of these diseases: Lyme disease is rapidly expanding in the U. S. In the past 30 years, the number of cases has more than tripled. The disease  —   and the ticks that transmit it  —   have spread northward all the way to Maine in New England and Minnesota in the Midwest. Part of the reason? A warming climate, says Rick Ostfeld, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N. Y. ”We know that climate change has contributed to Lyme disease spreading northward and to higher elevations.” Here’s why. Ticks need to feed on the blood of three animals over the course of two years to complete their life cycle, Ostfeld says. That meal could be a mouse, a chipmunk, a human  —   just something with nice, warm blood. Ticks can look for this yummy meal only when the weather is warmer  —   the   insects can’t move when temperatures drop near freezing. ”If they don’t have a long enough season to find a host, they’ll use up their reserves and drop dead,” Ostfeld says. A few decades ago, many places in the U. S. just didn’t have a long enough summer to keep the ticks healthy. And   diseases weren’t a problem in Northern states. But with spring coming earlier in many places, ticks end up having more time to look for their food. So they’re surviving in more places. States in the Northern U. S. such as Maine and Vermont, used to be inhospitable to ticks. Now they have huge outbreaks of Lyme disease each summer. And these earlier springs mean ticks are out on the prowl earlier. Ticks typically become a big problem in  . But Ostfeld and his colleagues have found that warmer springs have bumped up the peak feeding time a few weeks, to early May or even late April. Bottom line: Climate change is likely to make Lyme disease more common in the U. S. The ticks are creeping northward and starting to bite people earlier in the year. Now, there is one big caveat to this: Ticks don’t like dry weather, Ostfeld says. So if climate change brings drier springs, we might actually see a decline in tick activity in some places. Cocktail party chatter: Known as Mozzies in Australia and New Zealand, mosquitoes don’t actually ”bite” people. Instead, they ”saw” into our skin with a set of six needles.  What they transmit: The list of   diseases is long, including chikungunya, dengue, malaria, West Nile virus, yellow fever and Zika. How climate change is likely to affect the spread of these diseases: It’s no secret that mosquitoes like warm weather. Just like ticks, these critters become inactive at low temperatures and stop growing because they’re coldblooded. And winters that drop below freezing can actually wipe out particular mosquito species, including the one that spreads dengue, yellow fever and Zika. But warmer weather doesn’t necessarily mean a greater chance of mosquitoes spreading more dengue, more yellow fever and more Zika, says Erin Mordecai, who studies the ecology of infectious diseases at Stanford University. In fact, hotter weather could mean fewer cases of   diseases in some places. Here’s why. When a mosquito bites a person with a virus or parasite, the insect swallows the pathogen. Eventually, the mosquito can pass that pathogen onto another person. But not right away. ”That pathogen has to basically go through an incubation period within the mosquito  —   anywhere from a couple of days to over a week,” Mordecai says. The amount of time depends on the temperature outside. The warmer the weather, the faster the pathogen will be ready to infect another person. But there’s a major obstacle for the pathogen: Mosquitoes don’t live very long, only about a few weeks to a month. The mosquito’s life span also depends on the outside temperature  —   but in the opposite direction. The warmer the weather, the shorter the mosquito’s life.  So in a way, it’s a race between maturation of the pathogen and the mosquito’s life span. At cooler temperatures, the pathogen will take too long to mature. The mosquito will be dead before it has a chance to infect another person. At high temperatures, the pathogen will mature quickly but the mosquito will also die quickly. But in places where the temperature is currently just slightly too cool for transmission of   diseases, warmer summers could tip the balance and trigger transmission of   diseases in new places. ”That’s why we’re worried about climate change in temperate zones,” Mordecai says. ”Warmer temperatures will speed up the parasite’s development rate and just make the region more suitable for transmission of diseases.” So in the Southern U. S. for example, the transmission season might expand from just summer into spring and fall. ”Or in a place like Miami, that already has warm temperatures, transmission could occur ” she says. Bottom line: The jury is still out on how climate change will alter   diseases. The final outcome is likely to depend on the place, the diseases and the specific mosquito that carries them. But here in the U. S. warmer springs and summers are likely to make transmission worse in the South and possibly cause diseases to creep northward. Thanks to our readers who submitted questions to #CuriousGoat. Want to propose a question for our next callout, on the topic of world hunger and famine? Click here."
"What do you want to know about world hunger? One thing we do know is that more than 20 million people are now at risk of starvation and famine. The United Nations is calling it the biggest humanitarian crisis since the U. N. was founded in 1945. Conflict and drought are blamed for the looming crisis in four countries in Africa and the Middle East: Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and northeast Nigeria. Our blog has been covering the story. We’ve looked at who declares a famine and what that actually means. We’ve reported on a social media star’s ”crazy idea” to help out. (Basically, persuade Turkish Airlines to lend a cargo plane and fill it with food.) And we’ve looked at what goes into a food drop from above. As this crisis continues, we want to ask you: What do you want to know about world hunger and famine? Use the form below to submit your question. Our submission deadline has passed. Thanks for participating! You have until Friday, April 28, to submit a question. We’ll pick one and publish a story that answers that question next month."
"Not all of April’s showers are soggy and  . Late April is also the season of the Lyrids, the second of the year’s established meteor showers. So get thee to the rooftops and wide open fields: The shower peaks tonight. The Lyrid meteors are pieces of the comet Thatcher, discovered and last seen in 1861, the most recent year it reached perihelion, the point in its orbit closest to the sun. (Thatcher takes 415. 5 years to orbit the sun it is expected to return in 2276.) Every April those space scraps hit Earth’s atmosphere at 109, 600 miles per hour, ”vaporizing from friction with the air and leaving behind the streaks of light we call meteors,” Astronomy Magazine explains. Meteor showers are named after the constellation coinciding with the area in the sky from which the meteors seem to emanate. Lyrids are so named because they appear to come from a point in the constellation Lyra. The Lyrids are as much a part of April as Tax Day, but their visibility is variable. According to Sky and Telescope, this could be a banner year for spotting the meteors, with conditions Friday night close to ideal: ”If clear sky prevails Saturday morning (April 22nd) we might expect to see between 10 —  20 meteors per hour under dark, moonless skies. ”The radiant is located in eastern Hercules near the border with Lyra, well up in the eastern sky by local midnight. Best viewing should occur between between 2 a. m. and dawn Saturday when Hercules rides high in the south. Expect little lunar interference  —   the waning crescent won’t rise until shortly before the start of morning twilight.” Space. com also predicts conditions will be ”  ” for North American skywatchers, as ”   waning crescent moon will not rise until after 4 a. m. local time on April 22, thus assuring dark skies most of the night.” Lyrids aren’t generally as numerous as some other annual meteor showers, but they tend to be bright and fast. So wake early or stay up late, celestial searchers, and take NASA’s standing advice: ”Simply find a dark, open sky away from artificial lights. Lie down comfortably on a blanket or lawn chair, and look straight up.”"
"Updated at 2:41 p. m. ET, An   aid worker and her Egyptian husband have returned to the U. S. after being imprisoned for nearly three years in Egypt, over charges of child abuse that were widely regarded as specious. U. S. officials had unsuccessfully advocated for Aya Hijazi’s release for years. When Egyptian President     visited President Trump at the White House earlier this month, officials said Hijazi’s case would be among the topics of discussion between the two governments. (Former President Barack Obama never invited Sissi to Washington, over objections to Sissi’s human rights record.) Wade McMullen, managing attorney at the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights organization, has been advocating on Hijazi’s behalf. He tells NPR that Sissi’s visit came during a short window of time before the final verdict in Hijazi’s case. During the trip, ”senior administration officials were engaging with Egyptian officials on Aya’s case,” he says. White House press secretary Sean Spicer says Trump privately pushed for Hijazi’s release. A few weeks after Sissi visited Washington, a Cairo court dropped the charges against the couple. Hijazi was released Tuesday. Now she and her husband are back in the U. S.: They arrived Thursday night at Joint Base Andrews on a military flight from Cairo, where they met Hijazi’s family and McMullen. They met with the Trump family at the Oval Office of the White House on Friday morning. ”We are very happy to have Aya back,” Trump said after the meeting. A graduate of Virginia’s George Mason University, Hijazi moved to Cairo with her husband, Mohamed Hassanein. In 2013, they launched a nonprofit, Beladi, that cared for and educated street children. They were arrested in 2014 and charged with abusing the children in their care. Prosecutors never proved their case. The trial was repeatedly delayed, extending Hijazi and Hassanein’s time in prison. Hijazi’s mother told NPR the charges were completely unfounded. ”She was very strict about no slapping, no beating, no cursing, no cussing of these kids,” Naglaa Hosny told NPR’s Leila Fadel in 2015. And she did not allow any of the volunteers to call them awlad shawaraa  —   street kids. She told them they are awlad beladi  —   the children of my country.” When Hijazi, Hassanein and five other people were arrested, Hijazi was hit during her interrogation. ”She did not cry,” Hosny said of her daughter. ”She’s a tough one.” But when authorities read the accusations of physical and sexual abuse of the children, ”that’s when she started crying.” Human rights groups said the charges were unfounded, and that the arrests were part of a crackdown on nongovernmental organizations. ”A government forensic report provided by Hijazi’s lawyer concluded there were no signs of sexual abuse when the children would’ve been at the shelter,” Leila reported in 2015. Years passed and the couple remained in jail, without a trial. ”The international human rights group Human Rights Watch says witnesses for the prosecution disappeared or recanted, and [Hijazi] was never even allowed to meet with her lawyers privately,” NPR’s Jane Arraf reported earlier this week. In November, the case finally went to court. The couple’s Egyptian legal team ”completely eviscerated any shred of doubt” about their innocence, McMullen says. The charges against them were dropped on Sunday. The couple are now back with Hijazi’s family in the U. S. ”As you can imagine they’re overjoyed, they’re stunned,” McMullen says. ”These last 72 hours have been understandingly overwhelming but they’re in good spirits . .. You can just tell that their spirit is strong and no matter what come next that they do still feel strongly about contributing to making the world a better place.” Jane reports that Sissi’s government has shut down numerous other nonprofits, especially those that receive funding from abroad, and that many other people are jailed in similar circumstances. Hijazi and Hassanein’s nonprofit, Beladi, was only in operation for a short period of time. ”By all accounts,” Jane says, ”it actually made a difference in a lot of kids’ lives.” ”Hassanein . .. has said he wants to continue the work they’re doing with these kids,” Jane reports. ”They have a real connection to a lot of these kids. But that looks like it’s going to be very difficult, so there’s been a crackdown here that’s been in place for years, ever since the government here took power in a military coup. And there’s a state of emergency that curtails freedom of movement, and it allows police to basically arrest people without charge. ”So it’s become extremely difficult for anyone not working with the government.” In 2015, Hijazi’s mother told NPR that after her daughter was arrested, the children she used to help are ”back on the streets.”"
"The problem was that Prince, a control freak, didn’t leave a will. He didn’t even have a cause of death  —   initial reports suggested an overdose of fentanyl, and recently unsealed affidavits and search warrants revealed painkillers were scattered throughout his Paisley Park home and studio. Dr. Michael Todd Schulenberg, who was treating Prince for hip pain, reportedly prescribed oxycodone intended for the artist to a close friend in the weeks prior to his death. After Prince died a year ago today, found in a Paisley Park elevator, his estate  —   including songs, videos, $25 million in real estate and 67 gold bars, among many other things  —   was said to be worth between $200 and $300 million. Because Prince had no children, was divorced and his closest relatives were his sister, Tyka Nelson, and five   the estate was in shambles from the outset. ”The minute I looked at it, there was nothing appropriately in place,” Charles Koppelman, a longtime record executive who spent much of 2016 as a   advisor to the estate, tells NPR. ”Michael Jackson had no personal life, but his business life was in perfect order  —   he had the right   relationship, the right publishing relationship, and he had a will. Prince, on the other hand, had a great personal life, but none of those other things.” Dozens of claimants to Prince’s fortune came forward immediately following his death, complicating matters for Kevin Eide, the Minnesota judge overseeing the shambolic estate. In what the New York Daily News called a ”wacky lawsuit,” Rodney Dixon called himself the owner of all Prince’s songs and albums after the two supposedly had a discussion in Maryland in 1982. Marsha Henson claimed she and Prince drank wine at a Kansas City, Mo. hotel in July 1976, then had sex at another hotel  —   and nine months later, she gave birth to a son, Carlin Q. Williams, who asked for DNA testing to prove Prince was his father. Even after the judge recognized six heirs  —   Tyka Nelson, Prince’s only sister, and his   Alfred Jackson, Omarr Baker and Sharon, Norrine and John Nelson  —   people around the world continue to try and prove a relation, however tenuous. ”Are there people crawling out of the woodwork constantly? Yeah,” says Jeffrey Scott, a St. Paul estate attorney with no relationship to the estate. ”There was a deadline to step forward and submit a claim  —   and that didn’t seem to have affected people at all. I still have people offering to do DNA tests.” Let’s take a look at how Prince’s estate evolved from chaos to (relative) order in the year since his death. April 2016. Nelson convinces Judge Eide to appoint Bremer Trust, a Minneapolis trust company that occasionally advised Prince over the years, to take over the estate despite its lack of experience with   holdings. One of Bremer’s first moves is to hire a locksmith to drill into Prince’s vault, then reseal it. ”Only a couple of people know the combination,” says Frank Wheaton, an attorney (until recently) for Alfred Jackson. ”The contents of the vault have been examined, catalogued and they remain confidential.” June 2016. Bremer appoints Charles Koppelman and attorney L. Londell McMillan, who has worked with Prince, Michael Jackson and many others, to manage the estate’s entertainment assets. Koppelman contributed what he says today was ”adult supervision.” McMillan described his closeness with Prince in court: ”I not only treasure my personal relationship with him, but I also value the beauty of his personal creations.” August 2016. Because Prince had fantasized about making the    Paisley Park a museum, Tyka Nelson prioritizes the conversion, hiring Graceland Holdings to launch it on October 6. Joel Weinshanker, managing partner of the company that oversees Elvis Presley’s Graceland and a Prince fan, spends two months sorting out and preserving videos, tapes and 7, 000   garments. ”I saw a number of huge issues,” he says. ”There was leaking all over the building  —   and [there were] priceless outfits strewn behind a desk. Even when outfits were on a rack, they were on wire hangers  —   which really gets anybody [involved] in the preservation of anything crazy.” October 2016. Koppelman and McMillan make a deal with Warner Bros. Records, the label that released most of Prince’s classic material (and would be the target of his ”SLAVE” protest in the  ’90s) to put out compilations of his   work. Prince4Ever, released in November, contains 40   songs, plus the unreleased 1982 outtake ”Moonbeam Levels.” A Purple Rain reissue, due in June, will reportedly have two full albums of previously unreleased music and two concert films. Matt Thorne, author of Prince: The Man and His Music, is underwhelmed by the first release but excited about the upcoming one. He also expresses concern that the estate’s lawyers are spending more time and energy posting on social media than properly repackaging Prince’s music. ”I haven’t seen anything so far that made me think this is being handled brilliantly,” he says. October 2016. Eide makes his ruling on Prince’s heirs, yet people continue to appear out of nowhere, including Claire Elisabeth Elliott, a    Georgia woman who claims to have been married to Prince in a secret Las Vegas ceremony performed by a rabbi. Also rejected: two children of the late Duane Nelson Sr. whom Prince’s father considered a son and Prince addressed as brother. ”Eide has been a most profound and proficient judge,” Wheaton says. ”Alfred [Jackson] taught Prince a lot about music when he was very young. From church to home to school, Alfred had an early influence.” January 2017. Koppelman and McMillan make another key deal, selling the rights to Prince’s unreleased music to the world’s biggest record label, Universal Music, for a reported $30 million. But the two administrators begin to attract harsh criticism. The Wall Street Journal reports claims they didn’t properly solicit bids from competing labels (which Koppelman would call ”sour grapes”). Nelson and Baker accuse the pair of botching a   October tribute concert, alleging McMillan and Koppelman kept profits that should have gone to the estate (something McMillan called ”wildly and unethically false”). Attorneys for Nelson and Baker criticize McMillan’s financial instincts and reliability in court, worrying that ”he views himself in a substantially larger role.” Eide calls McMillan a ”lightning rod” for estate squabbling. Steven H. Silton, attorney for Nelson and Baker, told the court: ”We’ve had a lack of disclosure from Mr. McMillan about his ongoing financial interest in the estate’s music deals.” February 2017. Eide appoints Comerica Bank and Trust as permanent administrator, replacing Bremer, which had little experience with major   estates and was ”in over its skis,” says a source close to the estate. Comerica reps wouldn’t comment. Also, Eide rejects McMillan and CNN commentator Van Jones, another longtime Prince friend and associate, from overseeing the estate as personal representatives. February 2017. Warner posts Prince’s catalog  —   which is to say, some of his most beloved work, like Purple Rain and Sign ’O’ the Times, not later, independent releases such as Emancipation  —   on Spotify, Tidal and other streaming services. His songs generate 4. 7 million streams in the first two days. April 2017. Comerica appoints Troy Carter  —   a veteran music manager who has represented Lady Gaga, John Mayer and Meghan Trainor and last year became Spotify’s global head of creator services  —   to serve as the estate’s entertainment advisor. Carter has no estate experience and is not a lawyer, but he’s smart and has a touch for creative deals  —   as a venture capitalist, he invested early on in Uber, Lyft, Dropbox and Warby Parker. Carter wouldn’t comment, but Thorne, the Prince biographer, calls him ”a better choice than the previous representatives” due to his experience with other major stars. The present. Although many questions remain about Prince’s final days  —   mostly dealing with what painkillers he took and who gave them to him  —   the estate has stabilized after a year of family squabbling and legal grandstanding. Warner will handle the classic stuff Universal will handle much of the unreleased material as well as Emancipation and the other albums that came out of Prince’s later, independent period. Paisley Park is no longer in disarray: ”Each item is in   paper and should be in the same condition 125 to 150 years from now,” says Graceland Holdings’ Weinshanker. And the estate has relatively nimble management, give or take a few straggling family critics, with the heirs’ council working with Comerica to make music and business decisions. The future. Aside from Warner’s upcoming Purple Rain reissue and the two dozen tribute concerts and dance parties this weekend in Minneapolis, the Prince tribute event calendar remains vague and mysterious. But just about all the players involved in his estate agree on one thing: It’s Prince himself, not siblings or lawyers, who gets to decide what happens. The Paisley Park museum, for example, plans to open a Lovesexy room based on notes Prince had scrawled out, complete with diagrams, during his life. ”He wrote an amazing amount. It’s not about what we think. It’s all about his wishes,” Weinshanker says. ”All we’re trying to do is articulate exactly what he wanted  —   and he was very specific.”"
"The cars were piled on top of each other and bleeding onto the curb of the highway as they inched west and north towards the Lake Ann Park parking lot, each blasting their favorite from the windows families walked down the trail and under the tunnel beneath the highway they’d just come from, holding the strings of the purple balloons floating just behind them families walking back to their cars had no balloons and little expression. Altars of brown paper lanterns, unlit during the overcast day, peppered the path towards the     compound. I had gone past Paisley Park innumerable times growing up but, even with an aunt living less than two miles away, had never been this close before. The black chain link fence that surrounded Prince’s home was a mecca and an altar. Within two days it was already dense, thick with families’ shiny purple balloons, potted violets laid at its base, signs made of purple construction paper carrying messages of love and grief, all with a subtext of shock. And so much Bisquick. Inside, a memorial was rumored to be taking place. Outside, it was quiet. People paced and observed, took portraits, laughed, shared their sightings  —   at the airport, downtown, at the Fetus  —   and cried. The fence was the focal point, at least in this solar system, of confronting the sudden loss of an artist we’d come to assume would be shrieking and riffing into old age, while those much younger worked on indenting their living room recliners. Fifty or so feet behind the fence a line of media tents, dripping with   reporters and their   lanyards, looked on bored, waiting for something to happen. When a member of Prince’s inner circle came out offering flowers, they descended and edged their way to the front of the crowd for better shots. Imagining what had happened inside Paisley through all the years Prince had lived there was an exercise for another day. The fence was what we had. Below are stories, remembrances and demonstrations of his eccentricity that we think sketch a useful   of an artist the world would never fully understand, even if he had lived 1, 000 years. ”If someone asks you to dance like Prince, what will you do? Spin, possibly, and do the splits, if you’re able. But there won’t appear to be anything especially   about that. It’s mysterious. How can you dance and dance, in front of millions of people, for years, and still seem like a secret only I know? (And isn’t it the case that to be a Prince fan is to feel that Prince was your secret alone? )”  —   Zadie Smith, on the inspiration of dance. ”I think, more than a song, you should remember . .. what he did to break down barriers. There are only a handful of artists that have broken down barriers between all the musical genres, and I think that’s how he should be remembered. I think he just has to be understood for the body of work he’s going to leave us  —   and I’m talking beyond just what we call traditional rock ’n’ roll and funk and everything else. I think he’s got things that are in the vaults at Paisley Park that we will be unpacking for years to come, and we will be amazed.”  —   Owen Husney, Prince’s first manager, who brokered his deal with Warner Bros. Records when the artist was just 18. ”’Eligible bachelor seeks the most beautiful girl in the world to spend the holidays with,’ the ad reads . .. A spokesman said the    performer and songwriter was not holding a competition and his motives would be revealed later. Already this year, Prince has caused some giggles in the recording industry by saying he was changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol and also was retiring.”  —   Reuters story, Dec. 11, 1993, on advertisements Prince placed in newspapers around the world. ”Tipper Gore had it so wrong. Of all the music, all the forms of sexuality that might have been on offer to the youth in 1984, ”Darling Nikki” was  . Female autonomy,   consensual, victimless perversion, and a dirty little Prince who wants to grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind. Did Tipper ever listen to that strange hymn at the end of ”Darling Nikki”? You have to play it backward —  hallmark, in other realms, of the Satanic. My sister and I played it. We knew what it said. Do you know? It says, The Lord’s coming, Prince is coming. And somehow, with his help, we learned how to come, too.”  —   Author and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Maggie Nelson, recalling her own sexual development and how ”Darling Nikki” spurred Tipper Gore to found the Parents Music Resource Center, which resulted in parental warnings being placed on album covers. ”A man in complete control of his work from writer and musician to producer and director. He was such an inspiration. Playful and   gifted. He was the most inventive and extraordinary live act I’ve seen. The world has lost someone truly magical.”  —   Kate Bush, whose song ”Why Should I Love You” featured guest vocals from Prince. ”’Hey, how you doing? My name is Andre.’ ’My name’s Prince.’ We start talking. I was a pretty aggressive kid, so I was like, ’What do you do, what are you into?’ He says, ’I play music.’ ’Wow, so do I.’ He asks, ’What do you play?’ I say, ’I play horns, guitar and bass.’ He says, ’I play piano and guitar.’ We hit it off. He seemed to be really passionate and I was very passionate. I started talking about how I’m going to be this. And he’s yeah, me too. Next thing you know we became best friends.  —   André Cymone remembers meeting Prince, who later lived with him and his mother in Minneapolis. ”Friday will be the first anniversary of his death, of the passing of Prince. I ran in memory of him . .. It’s a tough week for the Purple Army.”  —   Boston Marathon runner Alden Hall, speaking to the Herald earlier this week. ”The time Prince ’evolved’ and wouldn’t sign yo mama’s Dirty Mind album cover cause he said he wasn’t into that no mo and yo mama told him ”’well you shouldn’t have made it then’ and you were embarrassed . .. The time Prince had a ’swear jar’ and you just put a 20 dollar bill in it when you walk in . .. The time you sang ’I Wanna Be Your Lover’ in the 3rd grade talent show wearing a swim top and the teachers cut you short because it was ’inappropriate. ’”  —   Erykah Badu, writing on Facebook the day Prince passed away. ”Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all. Funk. RB. Rock and roll. He was a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer . .. ’A strong spirit transcends rules,’ Prince once said  —   and nobody’s spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, his band, and all who loved him. ‎”  —   Former President Barack Obama. ”Eddie [Murphy] had wanted to play Prince his new album. So during that basketball game, Eddie’s music was playing, via boom box, on a cassette. After that game, Prince goes over and he tosses the cassette out of the boom box and he says, ’Let me ask you a question: Do you see me stop my show to do comedy? ’”  —   Gilbert Davison, former president of Paisley Park, finishing a story made famous by Charlie Murphy on Chapelle’s Show. ”I talk about working with Prince being a catalyst and a turning point in my life. .. forcing you talk differently, think different. But I forgot to mention, he also made us dress differently. [Laughs] One of the caveats, when he shook my hand. .. he says ’If you’re gonna represent Prince, you gotta look the part. I want you to get suited up, I want a tie, I want a handkerchief, I want shined shoes. I want you to look the part. ’”  —   Monte Lipman, chairman and CEO of Republic Records, who worked with Prince to release the record 3121 and helped throw parties in Los Angeles with him. ”We were full of the punk stuff at the time. It sort of put us in perspective, like, ’OK, we’ll go as far as we can with our limited talent, but this is the real deal. This guy is the real shit.’ He would be playing First Avenue when we would be playing the Seventh Street Entry, the little   club that connected, and he was in the big room with 900 people. It was night and day. We had our little thing, but occasionally, when we were playing, and he would come in the room for three seconds, walk out and the entire room would empty, following him. I hope he did it on purpose. I think maybe he did.”  —   Paul Westerberg,   and leader of The Replacements. ”There was this aura around every single inch of Paisley Park. .. this different. .. air. It was him, that building.”  —   Miho Takayama, who moved to Minneapolis from Japan in the ’90s in order to be closer to Prince."
"It is important  —   and always devastating  —   to remember that Prince died alone. He had probably also been in great pain that evening. But there was, as far as we know, nobody around to help him. A few weeks before he died, Prince and I talked on the phone for an hour, because he unexpectedly wanted to discuss a piece I’d just written for NPR Music. He was funny, feisty, charming and kind. He was also eloquent, articulate and highly intelligent. It was a real conversation about music, the industry, social issues and life in general. He even gave me romantic advice. He should not have died alone. He left no will. He either didn’t care what happened after he was gone or simply didn’t trust anyone to handle it. Again, nobody was there to help him out. In his late middle age he had no spouse, no manager and no lawyer. His employees were dedicated and loyal, as far as it goes, but none had the authority to persuade him to make sensible decisions about his legal and business affairs, to say nothing of the apparent addiction that killed him. Warner Bros. was once again his record label, but this was a largely symbolic union. Its executives were no longer telling him what to do. Perhaps we should not be so surprised by the way all of this played out years ago, he’d told us that ”in this life, things are much harder than in the afterworld. In this life, you’re on your own.” His presumed heirs  —   one sibling, five    —   are currently spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each on legal fees to work out how to divide his estate. It is not clear when or how this situation will be resolved, and there is a lot at stake. Aside from nearly $1 millon in gold bars and about $25 million of real estate, the inheritance includes what may be the world’s most extensive, valuable musical archive from a single artist. Prince’s masterpiece, Sign O’ The Times, recently turned 30. It is the greatest album ever made. (I don’t say this lightly and I am well aware of competing claims.) It is not widely known, however, that this exceptional record is actually the result of an uneasy compromise with his record company. Many of its songs were meant for other albums (Dream Factory, Camille, Crystal Ball) that were all shelved  —   too much material for a record company, even one as big as Warner, to handle. That Prince released around 40 albums in his lifetime is extraordinary enough. But there is a huge amount of unheard material in a vault, which has attained   status. While it is probably true that many of these pieces are unfinished or, by his standards (and allowing for his capriciousness) not quite good enough, most of us know there are plenty of diamonds and pearls in there. ”He was capable of going into the studio and being on output for far longer than mere mortals, because ideas kept coming and because the speed with which he could execute those ideas was extraordinary,” his former engineer Susan Rogers, now a professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, told me one morning over coffee. ”Why would you sleep? Why would you leave the studio? He was not a perfectionist: he was just incredibly competent.” A lot of songs from the Sign O’ The Times era, Prince’s most creatively fertile, remain in the vault, but it was never completely airtight: For years, bootlegs have been available to those who know where to look. Most of my old tapes are from trips to London’s Camden Market in the early 1990s. I used to buy them off Skinhead Dave with my mates Asif, Rob and Sidh. Prince was well aware that his most dedicated fans had somehow got hold of copies of songs he had not officially released. Sometimes he even played them on stage, usually in smaller venues after the main concert, in acknowledgement of this especially loving crowd. He understood how much it mattered to us. But he did not want everything he recorded to be constantly accessible  —   and went further than any other musician to protect his artistic legacy and commercial rights, particularly in the digital era. He wanted fair compensation for his hard work and talent, and felt that many internet music platforms were exploitative. We now know that Prince gave a lot of money away, anonymously, to some very important causes. He had his own studio complex, publishing company and record label, whose staff did not work for free. Nobody should have been surprised  —   and certainly not outraged, as some were  —   that a talented,   black man who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s felt it was important to get paid. Black artists rarely got the best deal and often still don’t. Legally, many of his personal policies and business decisions no longer matter. These were generally considered eccentric while he was alive, with some inevitable revisionism after he was gone. But now, his songs might be viewed simply as a collection of   assets that could generate revenue for decades. Under US copyright law they will eventually become part of the public domain, but for many years before then, whoever owns them can make a lot of money. People will always pay to listen to Prince, even as formats and   business models change over time. Prince grew up in Minneapolis and never left the area. He felt comfortable there and didn’t need to move to LA or New York. His studio complex  —   including an apartment where he regularly stayed  —   and his main home are a few miles outside the city, falling under the jurisdiction of Carver County, Minn. The county’s district court quickly appointed a local bank, Bremer Trust, to administer Prince’s estate until the inheritance could be settled. The bank then oversaw a rapid commercialization of his work, including a number of decisions that, for many people, seem contrary to what Prince himself would have wanted. An actual vault sits below Paisley Park it was drilled open just a week after his death. In October 2016, Warner Bros. announced plans for new releases, starting with a   compilation that also included the   bootleg classic ”Moonbeam Levels,” as its only previously unreleased track. A reissue of Purple Rain, along with extra material, is scheduled for June. Far more from the vault will surely follow. Earlier this year, Prince’s music reappeared on all the major streaming services he had removed his songs from Spotify and most other platforms in July 2015, and they had never been available on Apple Music. The unauthorized uploads on sites like YouTube and Soundcloud are no longer being taken down (although a lawsuit has just been filed against a sound engineer for seeking to make personal profit from a few Prince songs he claims to possess). Prince’s music is now just as accessible, legally and otherwise, on digital platforms as anyone else’s. From a financial point of view, this is necessary. There is an enormous tax bill of around $100 million, half the estate’s value by some estimates. Court documents show the millions being spent on legal fees to sort out the mess he left. It is unlikely the six presumed heirs have independent wealth of this scale, so the money has to come from the estate. To that end, Paisley Park has become a museum, where a VIP tour costs $100. Around the first anniversary of his death this weekend, there is a   event called Celebration 2017  —   ”bringing together musicians, creative personnel, special guests and friends who worked closest with Prince and knew him best”  —   for which the $999 VIP passes are sold out. In October I went to the Official Prince Tribute Concert ($140) an exhausting, underwhelming   event, attended by the usual pleasant   crowd in St Paul, Minn. Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan performed a few Prince songs as part of an extensive bill that for some reason also included Nicole Scherzinger of The Pussycat Dolls. I met Bilal beforehand, a few hours before he tore into ”The Beautiful Ones,” one of the show’s few genuinely great moments. ”He really opened doors and made artists think about royalties and things like that,” he said. ”A lot of things he did beyond music were inspiring.” Neither Bremer Trust nor Prince’s siblings had the wherewithal to negotiate deals with a notoriously ruthless music industry, so they hired two experienced insiders and former Prince associates as ’special advisors.’ L. Londell McMillan was Prince’s lawyer for several years, while Charles Koppelman is a former senior EMI executive. McMillan’s Twitter bio reads: ”RIP PRINCE. Nothing Compares 2 U! The Greatest  ! We shared a Great Legacy 2Gether  Changed The World 4 Artists 4Ever! ALSO: RIP ALI #GOAT.” In a joint interview with Billboard published in February, Koppelman said: ”What we needed to do initially was get the deals in place that are going to enhance the estate and make it valuable for the heirs, and those deals needed to be in the hands of the best of class. We must have had 20 different publishing meetings  —   with every multinational, and some that just administer and collect. It’s important to understand that over the last couple of years, Prince’s business life was a bit of a shambles.” In the same interview, McMillan adds: ”I do want to make clear that if Prince were here, we likely would not be making these deals  —   but also, Prince would not be needing half the value of his estate [to pay the estate tax bill] right now. While some people may say, ’Why are you making all these deals? Prince wouldn’t make these deals,’ Prince never wanted to lose ownership and control of his creations, so we place ownership and control over dealmaking [in order to] preserve the assets and stay within Prince’s brand values.” This sounds somewhat reassuring to Prince fans, especially given the difficult financial circumstances  —   but inevitably, nothing is straightforward. Carver County District Court has since appointed a different bank, the   Comerica, to look after the estate, and less than a fortnight ago, Comerica appointed its own ”entertainment advisor”: Troy Carter, a Spotify executive. The new administrators have cast doubt on the durability of the deals made by Koppelman and McMillan. (Compare that tangle of interests to the news this March that Laurie Anderson had donated the complete archives of her husband Lou Reed, who died in 2013, to the New York Public Library, where they will be accessible for free.) Meanwhile, there are many other legal problems with Prince’s estate. This is to be expected given the amount of money involved, the number of claimants and, most importantly, the absence of a will. To their credit, family members have mostly avoided publicity  —   but there are battles over representation, involving McMillan and the CNN commentator Van Jones a complicated dispute with Tidal, which had signed an exclusive streaming deal with Prince before he died, over the extent of its rights and a separate issue, once again involving the omnipresent McMillan, about the organization and proceeds from the tribute concert in October. For anyone of a certain age who cares about Prince  —   the music and the man, not the ephemera around him  —   it is probably wise to accept the sense of uneasiness that will accompany the many posthumous Prince releases for years to come. Sensitive curation, by the right people, could help: Trustworthy, respected collaborators like Susan Rogers and Sheila E. for example, know better than most what a Prince record should sound like. We would accept and appreciate a ”Selected by Wendy  Lisa” note just below the magical ”Produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince.” But this is hope rather than expectation the music business is not such a romantic endeavor. With Prince’s catalog back on major digital platforms, however, there may be a resurgence in interest among younger listeners. Too many have been largely unaware of who he was and what he could do, partly because they couldn’t surf through Spotify playlists or YouTube and discover his work there. When they play Kendrick or Beyonce or D’Angelo, many genuinely don’t know whose influence they’re hearing. They should also know that Prince, the greatest of them all, died alone and in pain, suffering from an addiction for which he should have been treated. But all good things, they say, never last. The new, unusual accessibility of his work may be driven by financial imperatives, but ultimately, it will help protect his legacy. When he called me last year  —   ”Hello sir, this is Prince”  —   I was holding my baby nephew and I had to quickly get rid of the child I think I managed to find my dad somewhere in the house. Eden is now a lively toddler who already loves ”Starfish and Coffee.” He might not know it now, but there is going to be a lot of music for us to discover together."
"At the public library in the rural Morgan County town of Brush, Colo. Marissa Velazquez welcomes her students to class. It’s a sunny Saturday morning, and the day marks the halfway point in Velazquez’s class, a   crash course on American history, civics and English. Nearly all of the students work in either meatpacking or dairying. Everyone in it has the same goal: become an American citizen. In two hours, Velazquez runs through voting rights, the legislative process and some grammar tips. Pop quiz: When do we celebrate the venerable American holiday of Flag Day? Answer: June. Despite the fact that many   Americans probably don’t know the answer, Flag Day is a potential topic on the test for U. S. citizenship. While Velazquez runs through the history of voting rights in the U. S. she asks the students if any of them would have been able to vote in the  . The answer is no. No student would have been able to vote in America’s early years. The class includes   women and young men of Mexican and Central American descent, and men from   African countries. Morgan County has anchored its local economy to agriculture. A meatpacking plant, cheese factory, sugar beet processing plant and large dairy farms provide plentiful yet grueling jobs that require little proficiency in English, just hard manual labor. That has made the rural county a magnet for migrating immigrants and refugees. It now holds sizable Somali, Mexican, Ethiopian, El Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran populations. ”We have students from Mexico, from Guatemala, El Salvador and from Ethiopia,” says Velazquez, who came to Morgan County from Mexico as a child. ”Some are refugees, and some, like me, were brought here by their family.” Like many immigrants in the U. S. those in Morgan County are worried that changes to immigration policy pushed by the Trump administration could impact their families. Panic has swept through communities of immigrants all over the country, in highly visible places like Los Angeles and New York. But in some smaller towns with less visible immigrant communities, that same fear has spurred some to take steps to go from green card holders to fully fledged citizens. The number of people who applied for U. S. citizenship rose across the country in 2016. And while there are no definitive data for the first part of 2017, there are small indications that the same trend could be continuing this year. To become naturalized, applicants are tested with a series of questions about the U. S. They are given a dictation exam and an interview, most often in English. ”That’s why we get to practice listening skills, writing skills, reading, so that they’re ready for when they go in for their interview to become a citizen,” Velazquez says. ”I never thought I would teach the class, because I took this class as a student,” says Velazquez, who became a naturalized citizen in 2016. Citizenship classes are pretty standard in some parts of the country, often offered by nonprofit groups and immigration law firms. What makes this one unique is its size. In 2015, 10 people finished it. In 2016, just five. This year, Velazquez has a class of 21 students. In a rural area like Morgan County, that is huge. Since the 2016 presidential election, a renewed focus on immigration has left more immigrants feeling uncertain, even those with legal, permanent status. That keeps Lisa Pray, the only immigration attorney in Morgan County, busy. Pray says she has noticed more of her clients asking about the citizenship process. Pray says she is hearing from   residents  —   people who’ve been in town for more than a decade. ”There’s a lot of fear in the community,” Pray says. ”Usually people who’d been here a long time, they decided to get their citizenship when they had some relative they wanted to bring over. ”Now, what I’m hearing from people is, ’I just want to make sure I get to stay.’ ” When President Trump began signing executive orders expanding the immigrants eligible for deportation and restricting international travel from some   countries, Pray says, Morgan County’s sizable immigrant population was shaken. But the fear has also acted as a motivator. ”It has spurred a lot of people who are permanent [residents] to apply, or decide to get their citizenship,” she says. The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics holds official records for the number of people who become naturalized citizens each year. It’s too early to put a definitive number on whether this surge of interest turns into an increase in the number of new citizens. Immigrants choose to go through the naturalization process for many reasons, including gaining the right to vote, to freely travel and to rest easy about immigration status. ”This is one of the big benefits associated with becoming a U. S. citizen: You can’t be deported,” says Mark   director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center. The number of people seeking citizenship tends to ebb and flow, often peaking when the application fee is set to rise or during an election year. Roughly 1 million people applied to be naturalized citizens in 2016, the highest number in nearly a decade. A previous record was set in fiscal year 2007 when, ahead of an increase in the application fee, nearly 1. 4 million people applied to be naturalized.   though, says there are still millions of eligible immigrants not seeking citizenship. ”Many of them, when you ask them, will say they want to become one, but they will also cite reasons like the cost and language being potential barriers,” he says. ”They will also say, for example, they’re busy, they’re working, they don’t have the time, they haven’t even thought about it.” As the class wraps up in Brush, the students file out. This week’s homework is to study up on amendments to the Constitution  —   all 27 of them. Student Kibrom Baraki, a refugee from Eritrea, works at the nearby meatpacking plant, hanging cow heads for hours each workday. ”I didn’t have freedom [in Eritrea] and everything is bad. That’s why I escaped from my country,” Baraki says. ”After that, the American government is helping me come here.” In a few months he’ll be eligible to take the test, having been in the U. S. for five years. ”That is why I take a class. I take my citizenship [test],” he says. ”I get a great job, and a good life.” This story is part of the special series United And Divided, which explores the links and rifts between rural and urban America. It comes to us via Harvest Public Media."
"A demographic crisis looms over Maine, the oldest and whitest state in the U. S. with one of the country’s lowest birth rates. Employers are already feeling the effects on Maine’s workforce as they struggle to fill positions with ”old Mainers”  —     residents in a state where many take pride in their deep family roots, especially along the shores of Washington County. Here in the rugged, eastern edges of the U. S. dotted with evergreens and   houses, many make a living from the waters of Down East Maine, including Annie Sokoloski, an office manager in Steuben, Maine, for Lobster Trap, a wholesale lobster dealer. Working in seafood goes back generations in her family. ”My grandmother forced me to go into the fish factory and pack sardines,” says Sokoloski, who recalls working as a sardine packer while on break from school. ”She told me anytime that I thought about not having an education I needed to remember that day.” These days, Sokoloski says she still remembers other lessons: ”You need to get away from here to make anything for yourself” she remembers her grandparents telling her when she was growing up. ”I think to a certain degree I do it with my own daughter,” she says. Her    daughter, Natasha Davis, was also raised in Washington County. She wants to be a veterinary technician and has California in her sights. ”There seems to be more job opportunity out of Maine,” Davis says. It’s young people like her that have been leaving Maine in droves since the 1980s. Local officials say they’re worried about harder times ahead for Washington County, which faces the highest rate of unemployment of any county in Maine at 7 percent, according to the state’s Department of Labor. ”The situation is worse than it appears. We have a lot people who are at their prime earning years, in their 50s and early 60s, and they’re beginning to retire,” says Charles Rudelitch, executive director of the Sunrise County Economic Council, named after Washington County’s nickname. He says he’s worried about who will be around to replace those retiring workers. Nationally, the U. S. workforce is facing similar challenges with the decline of the baby boomer generation, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. It projects that new immigrants will be the main drivers of growth in the U. S. workforce through 2035. Large communities of mainly Somali and Sudanese refugees have formed in Maine’s largest cities, Portland and Lewiston. Rudelitch says Washington County also needs more immigrants and other newcomers to help sustain the local economy. ”We’re making the argument that over time, there will be a much bigger economy for all of us to have a share of if we welcome people who choose to move here,” he says. Newcomers have been moving to the county, specifically to the small town of Milbridge, with a population of just over 1, 300, according to the 2010 Census. While Latinos make up just over 1 percent of Maine’s residents, about 6 percent of Milbridge’s residents are Latino, many of them families drawn by jobs in lobster processing, blueberry picking and wreath making. Maria Paniagua Albor works in the office of a lobster processing plant, where she says most of the workers are Hispanic, either from Puerto Rico or Mexico. The white workers, she says, she can count on one hand. Her father was one of the first workers from Mexico who put their roots down in Milbridge. She says he worked seasonal jobs in the area for years before he decided to move his family after they received their green cards. Now a U. S. citizen, Paniagua Albor lives in her own mobile home in Milbridge with her husband and    son. She often volunteers with a local immigrant advocacy organization, Mano en Mano. Maine, she says, is just like what the welcome signs say along the highways here: ”The Way Life Should Be.” ”I don’t want to be stuck in traffic like in New York,” she says. ”It’s calm, and that’s good to raise kids.” Victor Flores is raising four children in Milbridge with his fiancée. They met when they were working at the same seafood plant. She was the bookkeeper, while he processed sea cucumbers. Flores’ fiancée is white and has lived in the area for almost 30 years. He was born in Mexico and moved here from Florida almost two decades ago. Flores says he’s felt some of the backlash against newcomers in town, including once outside the local supermarket when he parked next to a white man’s car. ”He thought I was too close to him, so he started getting mad. And the first thing, he’s like, ’Go back to Mexico! Go back to where you came from! You don’t belong here!’ ” Flores recalls. About a decade ago, tensions over new immigrants settling in Milbridge spilled over. There was a legal battle over building a small apartment complex for local farmworkers, most of whom are Hispanic, after voters approved a moratorium on   units. The apartments were eventually built. Sokoloski, the office manager from Lobster Trap, sees newcomers to Milbridge as a welcome addition, especially at job fairs and other recruiting events. Still, she says she is concerned about the future of Down East Maine’s economy. ”It’s disheartening,” she says. ”It’s going to be more of a   area. There’s nothing to really sustain a   growth of a younger generation.” She’s not sure how long she’ll live here   once her daughter leaves. After retirement, Sokoloski says, she’ll probably move away."
"The United Kingdom may be in its first full day without coal power in more than a century, its National Grid announced Friday. ”It looks likely that today will be the first ever working day in Britain without #coal since the industrial revolution!” the agency tweeted. Britain has been phasing out coal, relying more on natural gas and wind power, in a plan to close its plants by 2025. The efforts have thus far resulted in yearly reductions in coal burned, the Guardian reports: ”Coal has seen significant declines in recent years, accounting for just 9% of electricity generation in 2016, down from around 23% the year before, as coal plants closed or switched to burning biomass such as wood pellets. ”Britain’s last power station will be forced to close in 2025, as part of a government plan to phase out the fossil fuel to meet its climate change commitments. ”Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace UK, said: ’The first day without coal in Britain since the Industrial Revolution marks a watershed in the energy transition. A decade ago, a day without coal would have been unimaginable, and in 10 years’ time our energy system will have radically transformed again.’ ” Reuters adds that last year, natural gas accounted for 42 percent of the country’s electricity, with renewable and nuclear energy making up 45. The country’s grid managed nearly eight   hours earlier this month. Just a little under a year ago, it went 19 hours without consuming the fossil fuel. Still, a benchmark of 24 hours will mean Britain’s first day without   electricity since London’s Holborn Viaduct fired up in 1882."
"Organizers of Saturday’s nationwide March for Science have some pretty lofty goals: supporting science ”as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity.” Promoting ”  policies in the public interest.” Oh, and don’t forget highlighting ”the very real role that science plays in each of our lives and the need to respect and encourage research that gives us insight into the world.” Whoa, that’s a lot of exalted ground to cover with one cardboard sign! But long after those signs and slogans are put away, educators will continue the fun, hard slog of helping students understand key issues, like global warming, the science behind it and what students can do to help. I reached out to three veteran experts on climate science education  —   Scott Denning, Frank Niepold and Rebecca Anderson  —   who’ll be working on the issue during and after this weekend’s marches. I wanted to hear more about their work and challenges, especially at a time when the head of the EPA has questioned the human role in global warming and President Trump has proposed slashing climate change funding and pulling back many environmental regulations. First up: Scott Denning. By day, Denning teaches atmospheric science at Colorado State University. He’s also the former editor of the Journal of Climate and the founding science chair of the North American Carbon Program. He has produced lots of   scholarly papers on the topic. And, for more than a decade, Denning has helped educate audiences of all ages about the realities of climate change. Why do you think it’s important to teach   students and others about climate change and the science behind it?  Climate change and climate, in general, is a fantastic,   subject that helps kids, students, adults connect between physics and chemistry and biology and economics and social stuff. It’s a wonderful application of almost everything that you teach. Certainly, Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards have lots of opportunity to do applied learning and   issues like that. I think it’s not adding something to your curriculum. It’s actually dead on with your curricular priorities. Secondly, this is something that will grow to be a bigger and bigger problem until we stop making it bigger. Then it won’t go away. Kids will wind up working with this issue as they grow up, and throughout their careers and their lives, in virtually any field that they choose to go into. What do you like about working with younger students,   instead of teaching at the college level and advising grad students?  Sometimes I feel like I kind of have that grandparent’s advantage that people talk about. You go in and you play with the kid and it’s really fun, and then when you’re done they go back to their folks and I don’t have to bring them home. Yeah, it’s been fantastic working with  . Absolutely delightful. I’ve spent almost my entire career working with graduate students and that’s fun, too. Brilliant   who are passionate and dedicated and work really hard  —   there’s nothing wrong with that. But going into their [ ] classrooms, doing   experiments, watching them light up, watching them learn by doing, play with little demos, do their own little experiments  —   it’s a blast. I can see why middle school and high school teachers enjoy their jobs. What are the big challenges in reaching younger students? Teaching science to kids involves more than just content delivery. There’s a whole engagement piece and trying to get kids to learn from doing   science experimental stuff. I keep going back to this metaphor of putting a pot of water on the stove because it’s direct,    experience of how the world works, how the universe works. A lot of the science behind global warming, believe it or not, is just classic thermodynamics. You don’t need relativity, and quantum physics, and all that to understand this. It’s very straightforward. By the time students are in high school, they’re supposed to understand basic stuff about heat and radiation. That is in curricula. Linking climate change to earth science, that’s maybe more challenging and it’s maybe stuff that teachers didn’t get themselves when they were in college, so they’ve got a professional development obligation there to try to pick up some of this material that’s developed since they were in higher ed. The other thing, of course, is that, especially in rural communities, you may find teachers that encounter this political polarization: There may be pushback, there may be resistance to teaching this material, just as there is in biology when you teach evolution. That can be very challenging. Are you going to take part in one of the March for Science events this weekend? I probably will. I’ve been thinking about it. You know, there really aren’t very many climate scientists in the world. We’re one of the smallest minorities. There are only a few thousand of us in the whole world. We don’t have any special right to influence the politics. On the other hand, we don’t have any less right to political opinion or public speech than anybody else. I don’t give up my rights as an American because I’m a scientist. Frank Niepold, climate education coordinator for NOAA.  [The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plays a leading role in helping folks understand and prepare for climate variability and change. Niepold also works extensively in partnerships with other government agencies through the U. S. Global Change Research Program. He also helps support schools districts, museums, aquaria, colleges and universities with programs and curricula about climate science.] Is there an age sweet spot when you’re talking to   schools and museums and other groups in teaching the basics of climate science?  I wouldn’t say there’s one sweet spot, there’s a series of them. I used to teach middle school science and I used to teach high school, and I’ve worked extensively with colleges and universities. I would say middle school is really where you’re starting to get into the richness of the issues and you have enough of the conceptual understanding of these complex systems that you can get into. I mean, one of the best questions I was ever asked was by a   who said, ”If I understand climate change right, are all the jobs then going to change?” They want to know: ’What am I preparing my academic time to focus on? What’s important?’ That’s what’s meaningful to them. There was until recently a sense that core aspects of the science of climate change, including the human role in CO2 proliferation and rising temperatures, was largely a settled issue. Now in the Trump administration, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Doesn’t that make your education outreach work much harder?  I don’t know if it makes my job harder. I don’t think anyone is going to have an outsized role over another, and so one of the things we’re focused on is helping our students be able to navigate information, build knowledge, create stronger critical thinking and reasoning skills and then be able to look at evidence and statements, and look at bias and navigate it all. The new head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has said repeatedly that he doesn’t think   carbon dioxide is a major contributor to global warming. Do comments like that have a chilling effect?  I mean, that’s one claim, right? Students, learners are surrounded by tons of claims every day. News articles, statements, interviews. And I think that what we’re concerned and focused on is really giving them the skills to look at all of that information and draw their own conclusions. We’re not   which conclusions to draw. What do you tell teachers and administrators and others who might say: ’You know, we’re busy with test prep, Common Core and lots of other things we have to cover and there’s only so much time in the day. Why should we commit time to climate science?’ The key thing is that we’re preparing our future leaders and future citizens to be prepared for the opportunities and challenges that are coming, and that resonates with anybody who’s an educator  —   serving young students. That’s why we’re in education, and this is a perfect example of where you can do that, in a very relevant, meaningful way. Rebecca Anderson, director of education, Alliance for Climate Education or ACE.  [Anderson has studied melting ice caps in the Canadian Arctic. She also worked in Antarctica as a member of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core project. She now runs ACE’s teacher network, working mostly with public high schools in five cities: Boston, New York,   San Francisco and Las Vegas. ACE conducts   climate science assemblies and runs a digital program called Our Climate Our Future.] What in your climate science presentations have you found really hits home with students? We really focus on empowering young people within a framework of justice and optimism to really try to shift the national discourse on climate to affect public opinion and policy. We do teach the science and impacts of climate change, but we also really focus on how young people can start taking action right away. Give examples of some of the ways in which high school students can take action in their own teenage lives? That can be small lifestyle changes, or applying to join a fellowship program that can put them on a pathway for a lifetime of leadership on climate. The first thing that we do is ask all students who see our program to pick a ”dot.” And dot stands for Do One Thing to fight climate change. When they pick their dot we ask them to text it to us while we’re right there in person during the assembly. One, they’re making a commitment right then and there to do one small thing, sort of the first step toward more actions down the road. And by texting it into us they’re joining our youth network. How does ACE try to approach the topic so it’s accessible to everyone, not just those who geek out on science? The assembly we bring is animated and we are narrating that animation synced up with what’s happening on the screen. We also bring in a lot of humor and a lot pop culture references that make it fun and entertaining. When it comes down to the science, we are good at explaining straightforward: Here’s the greenhouse effect, how it works and how we as humans by burning fossil fuels and living our daily lives have the unintended consequence of producing CO2. All that extra CO2 is cranking up the dial on the earth’s thermostat. And one way that we frame it is that climate change reduces young people’s choices in terms of what is open to them in the future.  Is the global warming skepticism coming out of the White House having an impact on the ground on how you approach your educational outreach?  If anything I think it’s really galvanized the young people we work with as well as our teacher network. They understand the science and see it as an assault on what they’re teaching in their classrooms. So we’ve actually seen a real uptick in engagement from our network over the last few months as teachers are doubling down on teaching the science that they know is factual. A lot teachers are telling us ’our students know what’s up and my administration is fully behind me when I teach that climate change is caused by people.’ But we are hearing stories of teachers getting pushback from outside the school. Kids in their classroom saying, ”Oh, I saw this on the news or heard this at home,” and they’re having to respond to that."
"Imagine city planning as a contact sport and you have the gist of Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. The film chronicles the struggle between two   century worldviews: that of Robert Moses, who preached a cure for what ailed American cities that amounted to ”bulldoze and replace,” and the less destructive prescriptions of   Jane Jacobs, who challenged the whole notion of urban renewal in her   book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She was the David to his Goliath. As New York’s unelected but powerful parks commissioner, transit czar and head of public works, Moses was intent on creating the city of tomorrow  —   a place of glistening, angular   soaring bridges, and superhighways. And in the 1950s and ’60s, he had the muscle to make them happen. As he talks of cutting out the ”cancer” of slums, the images   are of whole blocks being demolished by wrecking ball and explosives. But it’s a feature of such   approaches to city planning that when you take a view from the clouds, the city’s inhabitants become mere specks on your architectural models. ”Today our greatest single problem is tenant removal,” Moses intones   . ”You have to move people out of the way of a slum clearance project, and a lot of them are not gonna like it.” Grant the man a gift for understatement. While he designed crisp city blocks from on high, Jane Jacobs was looking at New York from street level. To her a city wasn’t about buildings  —   it was about people. Planners like Moses may have seen newsstands and folks sitting on front stoops as clutter, but Jacobs saw a vibrant streetscape. They were natural antagonists, these two. And with archival footage and talking heads, the filmmakers lay out the differences in their outlooks, and then revisit their biggest battles. Over, say, the Moses plan to declare much of Greenwich Village a slum, so he could run traffic  —   think of his   Cross Bronx Expressway  —   through the center of Washington Square. Jacobs had just published her book Death and Life at that point, and she lived in Greenwich Village. Moses, foolishly, termed her just a mother with a baby carriage. He would soon learn not to underestimate mothers. ”There is nothing more inert than a planning office,” Jacobs says in a voiceover. ”It gets going in one direction and it is never going to change of its own accord.” So she made it her business to ”frustrate planners.” The film documents how she mobilized the neighborhood, and then the politicians, and proved that the people of Greenwich Village could fight city hall. But the Moses doctrine of    was making a lot of money for developers, and it was spreading. Cities everywhere followed his lead, ripping out   neighborhoods to construct soulless,     that no one wanted. The film shows the result  —     in St. Louis,   in Chicago  —   huge, sterile towers surrounded by ribbons of concrete and what sketches depicted as parkland but what were, in reality, the equivalent of empty lots. Jacobs predicted correctly that these   green spaces would prove more dangerous than the busy streets they replaced because no one would ever be in them. ”This is not the   of cities” she wrote. ”This is the sacking of cities.” It would be hard to watch Citizen Jane: Battle for the City without making connections to battles raging today: politicians who want to build things  —   walls, infrastructure  —   to clean up clutter and make people conform. Jacobs argued that what looks to officialdom like disorder is actually what makes a crowded human landscape function  —   it’s just a more complex order. This compelling documentary lets you see the beauty she found in that complexity."
"There are no sure things in the volatile world of indie film distribution, but food documentaries have become reliable winners  —   the   of     date nights, the pornography of Netflix. Half of them warn of all the terrible things in food —  genetically modified organisms!   corn syrup! massive amounts of sugar! —  but the other half are sensual delights like Jiro Dreams of Sushi or El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, advancing the culinary whimsy of the world’s most innovative kitchens. In this, the age of the celebrity chef, documentaries have become a form of canonization, even though not all chefs (or   profiles) are on equal footing. The middling documentary Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent makes the case for the reclusive and irascible chef as the chief innovator of California cuisine, a distinctly American answer to the sophistication and depth of its European counterparts. Introduced walking alone through Mexican ruins as his   philosophical musings are piped onto the soundtrack  —   think Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story for food  —   Tower is presented as a mystery the film seeks to solve, though the answers are firmly baked into the proverbial pie. Director Lydia Tenaglia just heats and serves. Still, Tower was and is an extraordinarily complex and fascinating figure, with a sophisticated air that can alternately be seen as supremely arrogant or righteously iconoclastic. Through an awkward blend of interview footage and thinly rendered   Tenaglia starts with memories of Tower’s lonely, privileged childhood, when his rich parents would leave him to eat his way through the First Class service on ships like the Queen Mary. From an early age, he developed a passion for haute cuisine, collecting old menus and ancient cookbooks, and eventually helping out in the kitchen. During his time pursuing a degree in architecture at Harvard, Tower would show off his skills with legendary soirees, but in the early ’70s, there were few avenues for American chefs to make a name for themselves. All that changed when Tower found himself working alongside Alice Waters in her famed Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, where the two innovated California cuisine by elevating local ingredients with sophisticated technique. The two would eventually part company, which allowed Tower to distinguish himself by opening Stars, a San Francisco eatery that evoked the majestic ships of his childhood. Though Stars (and various offshoots) thrived from the  ’80s through much of the ’90s, the restaurant closed suddenly in 1999 and a disillusioned Tower left the business, leaving no breadcrumbs behind for even his closest friends to follow. With its gallery of   talking heads  —   including admirers like Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali, and Martha Stewart, and those who worked in closer proximity to him  —   The Last Magnificent guesses at the loneliness that’s engulfed Tower’s life, sourced to his neglectful parents and a sexuality he had to keep hidden. All this speculation is credible and absorbing, but the film offers a glimpse of what it might have been when Tower resurfaces as executive chef at Tavern on the Green, a New York City institution that’s long been a popular whipping post for food critics. What would lead Tower, a man associated with California cuisine, to take up the quixotic mission of reviving a New York restaurant that may be beyond salvation? Now that’s great drama  —   not to mention the one opportunity to get original footage of Tower in action  —   but The Last Magnificent relegates it to one chapter in a much larger book. Tenaglia is so committed to making an argument for Tower’s place in the culinary firmament that she underserves the part of his life that could have made the documentary unique. As is, it feels like a   induction video for a Hall of Fame that doesn’t exist."
"Editor’s Note: This story contains a quote where a racial slur is used. Calvin Burns has trouble getting his    daughter, Stepheni Bellamy, to talk to him. It’s something many parents of teenagers can relate to. He hoped that doing a StoryCorps interview  —   and sharing stories from his own teenage years  —   might help her open up. Burns tells her when he was growing up, he was usually the only black kid in school and often felt left out. ”It was really tough, but I think it made me stronger being the outsider,” he says. Bellamy says she can relate. ”Going to high school, there’s not people just like me,” she says. ”There’s mostly white people.” It’s not easy, she says. ”Sometimes it’s kind of hard because like in history, when we’re talking about slavery or something, a whole bunch of people will turn and look at me,” she says. ”It makes me like say, ’Yeah, I know, I’m black.’ ” Bellamy asks her dad if he’s ever been called the  . He recalls one time when he was about 12, he was hanging out with friends when ”some guys in a truck drove close to us and I could remember the guy saying, ’Whoop, there it is, niggers.’ And the guys almost ran us over, and we were pretty upset.” Bellamy says she has also been called the   and that other people have said things like ”Go back to Africa.” All of this is a surprise to Burns. ”I didn’t know that kids like that existed at your school,” he says. ”Phoni, I want you to know that you’re not what they’ve been told you’re like. It’s just, it’s kind of heartaching to think about the stuff that I went through, and you’re still going through those same things.” Burns says he wants his daughter to know she doesn’t have to go through incidents like this alone. ”I’m always there for you to talk to me about them,” he says. Bellamy says she doesn’t like talking about herself or the things she’s going through. But she admits that not much will change if she continues to keep these things to herself. Burns says he knows the conversation got his daughter out of her comfort zone. ”I think that you’ve done more talking today than you have in the last 12 months,” he says. ”I hope we can have more conversations like this in the future. I love you.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by John White. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"Like politics and music, the question of whether to eat moldy food can divide families, with relatives’ admonishments reverberating in one’s head for years. ”Every time I throw out moldy bread, I can still hear my dad lecturing me: ’That’s perfectly good! Just cut that part off! It’s penicillin!’ ” says Shawna Iwaniuk, a graphic designer in Alberta, Canada. ”But . .. I just can’t.” So, who’s right? Is the furry green stuff a death knell for a baguette, or just a minor setback? For food safety experts, the answer is clear: Moldy bread is bad news. ”We don’t recommend cutting mold off of bread, because it’s a soft food,” says Marianne Gravely, a senior technical information specialist for the United States Department of Agriculture. ”With soft food, it’s very easy for the roots [of the mold] or the tentacles, or whatever creepy word you want to use, to penetrate” deeper into the food. Molds, which look like   under a microscope, are actually a type of fungi, with visible spores on the surface and a network of microscopic roots that twist deep below that are often invisible to the naked eye. So a mold’s penetration into a piece of bread may be greater than a quick   suggests, says Gravely. You might have slightly more leeway when it comes to sliced bread in a bag: If after careful inspection of the interior and exterior of the bread on a long loaf, you can tell one end is unaffected, keep it, Gravely says. But otherwise, it should be tossed  —   the fact that bread is sliced is no guarantor that mold hasn’t spread. ”I have seen mold spread from one slice to the next,” she says. What’s more, by the time mold has moved in, other harmful kinds of bacteria associated with food spoiling may also have infiltrated the food. Some molds, like those used for Gorgonzola cheese, are safe to eat. But the mold dotting bread isn’t a benign source of extra fiber. Gravely says people who eat moldy food may suffer allergic reactions and respiratory problems. Even inhaling mold can be dangerous. To avoid breathing mold, the USDA recommends putting food in a plastic bag and then in a covered trashcan, out of the reach of children and animals. ”I’m sure some people would really want to press the situation, but bread is cheap,” says Gravely. ”Go buy some more.” Soft fruits, lunch meats and jams also must be tossed once moldy, she adds. But for those who mourn their castaway croissants, there’s some good news: Tougher foods are salvageable even after fungus has invaded. Hard cheeses, salamis and vegetables like carrots, bell peppers and cabbage have tougher surfaces, making it more difficult for a mold’s roots to move through. So you can excise the mold at the surface before it ruins the food’s interior. For such foods, Gravely recommends cutting the mold out with a clean knife, allowing an inch of buffer on each side of a fuzzy patch. Of course, the best way to cut down on funeral dirges for food past its prime is not to let the food get moldy in the first place. Gravely advises inspecting produce sold in plastic containers before buying it at the store. If shoppers discover a couple of moldy strawberries once at home, no need to jettison the entire bunch  —   just wash the other strawberries well and make sure the mold hasn’t spread. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services also has an app that helps consumers know how long different types of food generally last. Refrigerating food keeps it fresh longer, and cleaning the refrigerator every few months helps purge any food beginning to mold. ”They’re pretty clever and adaptable,” Gravely says of mold spores. ”They prefer moist environments and warm temperatures, but they can grow in the refrigerator, and they can grow in sweet things or salty things.” But consumers shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by the puny kitchen invaders, she says. After all, she adds, remember who’s in charge: ”Food in your kitchen is completely within your control.” Gnawing Questions is a   column answering the food mysteries puzzling us and our readers. Got a question you want us to explore? Let us know via our contact form."
"As House Republicans try to find common cause on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, they may be ready to let states make the ultimate decision about whether to keep a key provision in the federal health law that conservatives believe is raising insurance costs. Conservatives from the House Freedom Caucus and members of a more moderate group of House Republicans, the Tuesday Group, are working on changes to the GOP health overhaul bill that was pulled unceremoniously by party leaders last month when they couldn’t get enough votes to pass it. At the heart of those negotiations is the law’s requirement that most insurance plans offer 10 specific categories of ”essential health benefits.” They include hospital care, doctor and outpatient visits and prescription drug coverage, along with things like maternity care, mental health and preventive care services. The Freedom Caucus had been pushing to strip required benefits, arguing that the coverage guarantees were driving up premium prices. ”We ultimately will be judged by only one factor: if insurance premiums come down,” the Freedom Caucus chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows,  . C. told The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal last month. But moderates, bolstered by complaints from patient groups and constituents, fought back. And a brief synopsis of a proposal outlined by Rep. Tom MacArthur,  . J. suggests that the compromise could be letting states decide whether they want a federal waiver to delete essential health benefits. ”The insurance mandates are a primary driver of [premium] spikes,” Meadows and Sen. Ted Cruz,   wrote in March. But health analysts and economists say that eliminating those benefits probably won’t bring premiums down  —   at least not in the way conservatives are hoping. ”I don’t know what they’re thinking they’re going to pull out of this pie,” says Rebekah Bayram, a principal consulting actuary at the benefits consulting firm Milliman. She is the lead author of a recent study on the cost of various health benefits. Opponents of the required benefits point to coverage for maternity care and mental health and substance abuse treatment as things that drive up premiums for people who will never use such services. But eliminating those benefits wouldn’t have much of an impact, Bayram says. Hospital care, doctor visits and prescription drugs ”are the three big ones,” she says. ”Unless they were talking about ditching those, the other ones only have a marginal impact.” John Bertko, an actuary who worked in the Obama administration and served on the board of Massachusetts’ health exchange, agrees: ”You would either have very crappy benefits without drugs or physicians or hospitalization, or you would have roughly the same costs.” Maternity care and mental health and substance abuse, he says, ”are probably less than 5 percent” of premium costs. Of course, requiring specific coverage does push up premiums to some extent. James Bailey, an assistant professor of health economics at Creighton University in Omaha, has studied the issue at the state level. He estimates that the average state health insurance mandate ”raises premiums by about   of 1 percent.” Those who want to get rid of the required benefits point to the fact that premiums in the individual market jumped dramatically from 2013 to 2014, the first year the benefits were required. ”The ACA requires more benefits that every consumer is required to purchase regardless of whether they want them, need them or can afford them,” Ohio Insurance Commissioner Mary Taylor said in 2013, when the state’s rates were announced. But most of that jump was not due to the broader benefits, Bayram says, but to the fact that for the first time sicker patients were allowed to buy coverage. ”The premiums would go down a lot if only very healthy people were covered and people who were higher risk were pulled out of the risk pool,” she says. (Some conservatives want to change that requirement, too, and let insurers charge sick people higher premiums.) Meanwhile, most of the research that has been done on required benefits has looked at plans offered to workers by their employers, not policies available to individuals who buy their own coverage because they don’t get it through work or the government. That individual market is the focus of the current debate. Analysts warn that   dynamics differ greatly from those of the employer insurance market. Bailey says he ”saw this debate coming and wanted to write a paper” about the ACA’s essential health benefits. But ”I very quickly realized there are all these complicated details that are going to make it very hard to figure out,” he says, particularly the way the required benefits work in tandem with other requirements in the law. For example, says Bertko, prescription drugs can represent 20 percent of costs in the individual market. That’s far more than in the employer market. Another big complication is that the required benefits do double duty, Bayram says. They not only ensure that consumers have a comprehensive package of benefits, but enable other parts of the health law to work by ensuring that everyone’s benefits are comparable. For example, the law adjusts payments to insurers to help compensate plans that enroll    patients. But in order to do that risk adjustment, she says, ”all of the plans have to agree on some kind of package. So if you think of essential health benefits as an   benchmark, I don’t know how they can get rid of that and still have risk adjustment.” Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Both the U. S. and Uganda have called off the search for notorious warlord Joseph Kony and his followers, the Lord’s Resistance Army, saying that Kony’s power has dwindled to the point that he’s no longer a threat. The group carried out brutal murders, rapes and mutilations, and was known for kidnapping children and forcing them to become soldiers. Uganda has been battling Kony and his followers for decades, and U. S. Special Operations forces joined the search for the warlord in 2011. A viral video in 2012 brought Kony international infamy. In late March, the U. S. announced that the hunt for the Lord’s Resistance Army was no longer a priority. ”Kony’s not an issue,” Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of U. S. Africa Command, said at a news conference. ”He’s irrelevant. . .. This thing is coming to an end.” The removal of U. S. troops from the search was officially announced on March 29. The U. S. stated that four of the five top leaders of the LRA have been captured, while Kony remains in hiding with a dwindling number of followers. This week, Uganda announced that it, too, would be withdrawing troops from the Central African Republic, or CAR, where forces have been searching for Kony. Uganda said the LRA is now ineffective. But a spokesman for Uganda’s military also told Reuters that his country was discouraged by a lack of international support for the operation. Maj. . Donald Bolduc, commander of U. S. Special Operations in Africa, told NPR’s Ofeibea   that ”this is a success story.” ”With our African regional task force partners, we encountered an LRA there that was 3, 000 strong  —   now down to less than 100,” he said Wednesday. ”We’ve completely disrupted and degraded and defeated his organization. Kony is sick and he’s on the run.” Joseph Kony was relatively   worldwide when a group called Invisible Children made a short film, Kony 2012, that became incredibly popular online. The movie had some factual errors, and people questioned its focus and its framing. But the ”Kony 2012” campaign undeniably raised the profile of the LRA and brought attention to atrocities committed by Kony and his followers. After that viral success, Invisible Children struggled to figure out how to cope with mass attention, as NPR’s Sam Sanders reported in 2014. The group’s founder had a public breakdown, and the group was understaffed for the amount of attention  —   and money  —   the received. In the years since, Invisible Children has reinvented itself. Foreign Policy reported last month that instead of funding social media campaigns, the group is now ”on the front line of a covert war against the LRA.” The organization ”runs a daring program to supply civilians with   radios to track rebel movements across a    expanse of Congo and the Central African Republic,” Foreign Policy reports  —   ”pioneering a controversial approach to humanitarian aid that treats intelligence gathering as a core objective and military force as a legitimate avenue of justice.” You can read the full report at Foreign Policy. The U. S. and the U. N. have both expressed concerns that the withdrawal from CAR might leave a vacuum in the area. In a call with reporters on Thursday, Waldhauser said the U. S. was committed to providing ”training and exercises” to forces in the region. ”We are certainly aware of the fact that we do not want to leave a void there,” he said."
"German federal prosecutors say the bombing of a soccer team’s bus in Dortmund, Germany, was carried out by a man apparently attempting to manipulate the team’s stock for profit. The    man has been arrested and charged with attempted murder, among other things. Three explosions went off near the Borussia Dortmund team bus on April 11, as it was pulling out of the hotel where the players were staying. One player was injured and needed surgery on his wrist. Authorities say letters claiming responsibility for the blasts  —   and identifying the motivation as Islamic or   extremism  —   appear to be specious. Instead they say a man with German and Russian citizenship, identified only as Sergej W. planted the bombs, apparently to make money. On April 11, before the blast, the suspect purchased a ”put option” that allowed him to make a profit if Borussia Dortmund’s stock value fell. Put options are like short selling  —   the more value the stock lost, the more money he would make. The Guardian notes Borussia Dortmund is the only professional soccer team in Germany that’s listed on the stock market. Most pro sports teams worldwide are privately owned. The accused man was staying in the same hotel as the Borussia Dortmund team, the German federal prosecutor’s office said. He’d booked rooms at the hotel for two time periods, both of which spanned match days. When he arrived on April 9, he is said to have switched rooms to choose one with a view of the location of the attack. Prosecutors accused Sergej W. of using an unknown explosive to target the bus. If players had been seriously injured or killed, a ”significant drop” in the team’s stock price would be expected, the prosecutor’s office says. Instead, Bloomberg writes, the stock held steady. The options that the suspect purchased ”give the right to sell Borussia Dortmund shares at 5. 20 euros,” the financial news site writes, and his investment would pay off only if the value fell markedly below that. ”The shares closed at 5. 61 euros that afternoon, shortly before the attack took place, and fell as low as 5. 50 euros the next day,” Bloomberg reports. ”The stock hasn’t traded below 5. 20 euros since February.” Prosecutors say three letters were found at the site of the blast, each claiming responsibility for the attack and citing radical Islamist motivations. Islamic scholars have examined the letters and there is ”considerable doubt” that they’re of radical Islamist origin, prosecutors say. A   extremist letter claiming responsibility for the attacks was sent to the press after the bombing, prosecutors say. They say it was filled with ”contradictions and inconsistencies” and that there’s ”no indication” it was sent by the suspect."
"Actor Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton, 24: Legacy) remembers the moment he knew he wanted to be a performer. At 9 years old, the Washington, D. C. native auditioned for a Kennedy Center production of The Brothers of the Knight, a children’s musical about a preacher who doesn’t approve of his 12 sons’   dancing. ”I was going in for the part of Teeny Tiny Tappin’ Theo,” Hawkins remembers. The only problem was he didn’t know how to tap dance. ”At all,” he says. ”But I wanted to be a part of the show and I just bought these brand new tap shoes  —   like, the stickers were still on [them]. . .. And I just remember, like, just tapping my feet.” Debbie Allen, the show’s director and choreographer, has her own vivid memories of that audition. ”I was looking for who was going to be the very special, the youngest of all the brothers,” she says. After meeting Hawkins, she knew she’d found him. ”He was just so alive. He had confidence. He danced so well,” she says. As Hawkins remembers it, Allen jumped out of her chair halfway through his number. ”She was like, ’You better tap! Oh my God! Oh my goodness!’ And she was just going crazy.” Allen admits that she actually became pretty possessive of Hawkins. ”His mother and I had a big fight,” she remembers with a laugh. But Allen knew Hawkins had something special, and she continued to cast him in shows. When he was a teenager, she tried to convince his mother  —   a single parent raising two kids while working full time as a police officer  —   to let him star in yet another one of her productions. ”I remember the mother saying to me, ’He can’t be in the show, Ms. Allen. I’m not sure about his grades.’ I said, ’You better listen to me: This child is gonna go the distance. No, you cannot take him from me!’ ” That early start helped get Hawkins where he is today, starring as former U. S. Army Ranger Eric Carter in Fox’s 24: Legacy. Since Hawkins’ mother is a real police officer, he persuaded the show to give her a small part in an episode in which his character gets arrested. In it, a handcuffed Hawkins is led through a police station and past an officer, played by his mom, who shoots the young vagrant a look of disgust. Hawkins thinks she’s a natural. ”I’m like, ’I’ve seen that look before,’” he says, laughing. Monicamarie Hawkins has been an officer with the D. C. Metropolitan Police Department for almost 28 years. Her son says that when he was growing up he didn’t really appreciate the sacrifices she made, or how dangerous her job could be. ”There might be a day where she wouldn’t come home and I wouldn’t know what that was,” he says. ”. .. D. C. was a scary place, and in some instances still is.” Watching his mother, Hawkins learned that entertainment and serving people could be connected. She and her colleagues sometimes organized community gatherings in the neighborhood. ”They set up these stages, they raise money and they let the kids perform,” he remembers. ”And it’s a big thing  —   like, the whole neighborhood comes out. They bring their lawn chairs people come out and cook. And it’s all sort of art driven.” At those gatherings, Hawkins says he watched his mother treat young people with respect, including kids who were in trouble. After graduating from D. C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Hawkins got a full scholarship to study drama at Juilliard. At first he was worried the school would turn him into a ”classically trained robot,” but then he read a book by Juilliard President Joseph Polisi called The Artist as Citizen. Polisi argues that artists have a social responsibility to make the world a more livable place. Hawkins found it inspiring. ”It wasn’t just about the sort of fame and the legendary alumni, which can be a little intimidating,” he says, ”but it became about the work and what we’re trying to say with our art.” That’s something Hawkins thought a lot about during his training, and it’s partly what drew him to Paul, the character he plays in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation on Broadway. Paul is a young,   man who cons an   New York couple into believing he’s the son of Sidney Poitier. Hawkins says Paul is desperate to be seen, but he eventually gets caught and arrested. The couple tries to help him, but they can’t because they don’t know his real name. Paul is lost to the criminal justice system. ”That is the world we live in,” Hawkins says, ”where young black men are just numbers in our society. They’re statistics.” Radio editor Rose Friedman and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this report."
"Sen. Bernie Sanders is campaigning for Omaha, Neb. mayoral candidate Heath Mello Thursday night, and he’s not apologizing for it. ”Absolutely, and I want him to win,” Sanders,  . told NPR Thursday, after a rally in Grand Prairie, Texas. The Thursday event with Mello, a Nebraska state senator who’s running as a Democrat in the mayoral race, is one of several rallies Sanders is holding across the country this week. It’s part of a Democratic National   unity tour with DNC Chair Tom Perez. The Omaha event wasn’t that notable  —   just one of several red state visits on the DNC itinerary  —   until Thursday morning. That’s when Ilyse Hogue, the president of abortion rights advocate NARAL   America, issued a statement blasting Sanders and Perez for spending time and resources campaigning alongside a Democrat who opposes abortion rights. ”The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women  —   one of the most critical constituencies for the party  —   of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid,” Hogue said. ”Today’s action makes this   ’fight back tour’ look more like a   tour for women and our rights.” Mello has   several bills in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature that would restrict abortion rights, including a 2009 measure requiring doctors to inform women seeking abortions about the availability of an ultrasound. Sanders pushed back against the criticism. ”The truth is that in some conservative states there will be candidates that are popular candidates who may not agree with me on every issue. I understand it. That’s what politics is about,” Sanders told NPR. ”If we are going to protect a woman’s right to choose, at the end of the day we’re going to need Democratic control over the House and the Senate, and state governments all over this nation,” he said. ”And we have got to appreciate where people come from, and do our best to fight for the   agenda. But I think you just can’t exclude people who disagree with us on one issue.” But that call for pragmatism doesn’t mesh with the main message Sanders has been delivering this week: a call for a more aggressive and progressive Democratic party. In the same interview, he blamed Republican gains at the state and federal level on ”the failure of the Democratic Party to have a progressive agenda, to bring people into this party, to mobilize people.” The DNC is doing its best to distance itself from the Mello endorsement. Party staffers were quick to tell reporters that it was Sanders’ and not the DNC’s, idea to hold a rally for Mello. Perez issued a statement emphasizing the DNC’s strong support for abortion rights, but staying away from the central question of whether or not Mello should be the beneficiary of a DNC rally. ”The Democratic Party’s platform states clearly our support for every woman’s right to make their own choices about their reproductive health and to have access to safe abortion services,” Perez said in the statement. ”As DNC Chair, I stand by that position unequivocally, as I have my entire life.” Perez will not be at the Omaha rally, because he stepped away from the unity tour Thursday to attend fundraising events in Georgia, where Democrat Jon Ossoff is competing in a June 20 runoff to fill the suburban Atlanta House seat vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. He nearly won the seat outright this week. Ossoff will face Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state who also resigned from the Susan G. Komen Foundation amid a controversy over that group’s decision to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood, a decision that was later reversed."
"Attendees from across the country descended on the nation’s capital to speak up for science. The March for Science unfolded on the National Mall in Washington, D. C. on Saturday, and in multiple cities around the world. Coinciding with Earth Day, the event drew researchers, educators and   people. The event kicked off with open teaching sessions on the Mall, followed by a rally near the Washington Monument, and then a march that traveled to the U. S. Capitol building. NPR spoke to some of the participants about why they decided to attend the March for Science. Brad Slocum, a materials engineer from Virginia, said he was worried about funding for research. ”I think it’s important to stand up to the current administration’s threats to cut funding for scientific research no matter what the field. From the EPA to basic research funding, when they make those cuts all of us suffer.” Lelah Marie, a former teacher from Philadelphia, said she has two daughters who are both working scientists. ”I think [people] have to speak up. It’s so important that people get a basic education in this country and that includes a good solid science education.” Marvin Blecher is a professor emeritus in physics at Virginia Tech. He said the march was an opportunity to get out and support other scientists. ”It’s heartening to see people down here today, but there’s a very large crowd of people who aren’t here,” Blecher said. ”Hopefully we reach them in some way to tell them that science is apolitical.” Sally Belcher is a practicing family physician from Rockville, Md. ”Science shouldn’t run a separate path from anything. We all live with science whether we study it or not,” she said. ”If anything it’s even more important that the scientific aspect we brought into the political arena because it affects so many people at once.”"
"Updated at 1:25 p. m. ET, Enthusiasts say their March for Science on Saturday in communities around the world is intended to ”support science for the public good.” The main event is happening in Washington, D. C. but satellite marches are planned in all 50 states, and at least 610 marches have been registered on the March for Science website across the world on all continents except Antarctica. While they may not have registered with the main march, a group from the Neumayer Station III in Antarctica gathered on Saturday to support the international efforts. The idea for the demonstration started after the large Women’s March on Washington that took place in January, one day after President Trump’s inauguration. The Women’s March was, in large part, a response to Trump’s agenda and spurred by statements he made about women. The March for Science organizers have said their own events are nonpartisan, and the overarching mission is to ”[champion] robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity.” ”I think the profession of science is under attack, and why is that happening? Because we’ve really ceded the floor,” says Lucky Tran, a scientist and organizer of the march. ”We haven’t engaged in politics, we’ve left that open for politicians to come in and really hijack and obfuscate science for their own selfish needs.” But despite these nonpartisan announcements, researchers and scientists in the U. S. have debated if they should participate, as NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce reports:  ”Some researchers predict that this March for Science will release much needed energy and enthusiasm at a time when science is under threat others worry it will damage science’s reputation as an unbiased seeker of truth.” Even though the future of science under the Trump administration has been a concern for many, Tran, in at interview with host Mary Louise Kelly on Weekend Edition, says science has been under attack since long before Trump took office. ”Really, what’s happened is scientists are scared to engage with politics,” Tran says. ”They’re worried about looking biased, they’re worried about their funding, but really that’s been a terrible strategy. It’s meant that bad science policy decisions have been made. ”If you look at climate change or public health, they’re under attack from certain groups because they involve regulation or some businesses have an interest in them or there’s some political interest to be gained from them,” he says. In Washington, along with the demonstrations, those participating can go to ” .” These events are meant to engage the public on science topics like ”sustainable food solutions” and ”the physics of superheroes.” The organizers don’t expect the event to end on Saturday. They’ve planned a week of action for April 23 through 29, and Tran said the group will roll out a policy platform after the march."
"Things were going well for the Democrats in Miami. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and Sen. Bernie Sanders,  . hadn’t exactly sold out the downtown theater they were campaigning in, but the audience was solid and energetic. The   catcalls that had plagued early stops on the uneasy allies’ weeklong unity tour hadn’t surfaced. And both Perez and Sanders had delivered fiery speeches that had pumped up the crowd in a key city of a critical swing state. Sanders was shaking hands with supporters as David Bowie’s ”Starman” blared. But when the music faded down, things took a turn. A Sanders fan rushed the stage, grabbed the microphone, and shouted, ”Bernie would have won!” The audience joined in the cheer, loudly repeating an alternate reality rallying cry that didn’t exactly scream, ”Democratic Unity Tour.” The DJ quickly drowned out the chant with a new song  —   Johnny Cash’s ”I’ve Been Everywhere.” It was fitting. Because while Perez and Sanders weren’t visiting Reno, Chicago, Fargo and Minnesota, their itinerary was kind of close: Maine, Kentucky, Florida, Texas, Nebraska, Utah, Arizona and Nevada. ”To talk and listen and learn” Perez said the goal of the joint trip is to begin to chip away at the trust and credibility gap that currently exists between the DNC and progressive Sanders supporters. ”This is exactly why we’re going to every corner of this country,” Perez said. ”To rural America, to urban America, to every corner in between. To talk and listen and learn.” Conversations with the people who showed up at the events show that Perez and Democrats have a lot of work to do. Melissa Bernardo is the exact type of young progressive voter that should be in the Democratic Party’s camp. Waiting for Perez and Sanders in Miami along with a friend, she explained that the two of them are graduate students. ”Karina does research on immigration and detention centers. And I do research on climate change and the impacts on agriculture.” Those are two key issues for Democrats. And yet, while Bernardo loves Bernie Sanders, she’s ambivalent  —   if not hostile  —   toward the Democratic Party. ”You took someone who had corporate backing, and that’s what you got,” she said, addressing party leaders. ”America was primed for something different. And Bernie and Trump were both something different.” The goal of the tour is to convince people like Bernardo that the DNC is on their side. That’s why, despite the fact he isn’t a Democrat and doesn’t plan on ever becoming one, Perez brought Sanders on the tour. Sanders is a rock star with the type of progressives who are wary of the DNC. That was clear after the Miami event, as Sanders tried to make his way through a hotel lobby. He was mobbed by cameras, boom mics and fans. ”You’re the best!” one fan yelled. ”You’re the real man!” said another. ”How in God’s name are they winning elections?” Sanders would offer a lot of credibility if he threw his arms around the DNC. But that didn’t happen over the course of the week. Over and over again, Sanders made headlines for critiquing the Democratic Party. He said several times that Donald Trump didn’t win last year’s election  —   Democrats had lost it. In a backstage dressing room after a speech in Grand Prairie, Texas, Sanders explained what he meant. ”Democrats have not put forward an agenda that speaks to the needs of people who are in pain,” he said. Sanders is convinced the key to success is to push the party to the left. He believes the majority of the country is on board with progressive policies like a $15 minimum wage, and a    health care plan. ”On issue after issue, people are understanding that the views that I and other progressives have been expounding are the views of America.” And yet, Republicans dominate state and federal government. ”How in God’s name are they winning elections?” Sanders asked, exasperated. ”And I think the answer to that is the failure of the Democratic Party  —   to have a progressive agenda, to bring people into the party, to mobilize people. And that’s what I’m running around this country trying to do.” What can the party to do turn this around? Sanders has a few ideas. ”It has to articulate a very progressive agenda. I think it needs rules  —   and there are people are going to be working on that shortly  —   which open up the political party,” he said. ”I think it needs to make clear that it is prepared to take on Wall Street and the billionaire class and the fossil fuel industry in a very unambivalent way.” ”Incredible alignment in what our goals are” So what’s in this for Tom Perez? Why spend time and money flying around the country with someone so eager to criticize the party Perez now heads? The former Labor Department secretary is new to the DNC job, having won it earlier this year in an unusually competitive race for the vacated seat. Perez was one of the most progressive members of the Obama Cabinet, but he exacerbated the party’s problems with Sanders voters by defeating Rep. Keith Ellison,  . who Sanders had endorsed. Backstage in Miami while Sanders was speaking, Perez argued that the best way to win the support of skeptical Sanders progressives is to get in the same room with them. ”When we sit    and talk about what our fears and hopes are, what I’ve been learning is that we have incredible alignment in what our goals are,” Perez said. ”So for me, I think the best way to make sure that we remain united is to talk about the issues that people care the most about. And then you talk about it and you say, wow, we really are in agreement.” And traveling around with Sanders gives him an entry point to have that conversation. This approach seemed to work during Perez’s speech in Miami. At several points, the crowd began to grow impatient for Perez to wrap up and bring out Sanders. But then Perez would talk about progressive causes like health care or climate change, and win big applause. Perez also appears eager to show the base just how angry he is. ”The Republican leadership doesn’t give a sh —   about people who are suffering,” he said at several stops on the trip. Other recurring lines in his stump speech include calling Trump’s spending plan a ”sh —    budget.” It can feel a little forced  —   like it’s an attempt to channel the shock value of the Trump campaign  —   but Perez says he’s genuinely angry. ”That’s Tom Perez speaking from the heart,” he said. ”We are in uncharted territories right now with this president.” Perhaps anger is the best way to unite progressive voters in the Trump era. ”Donald Trump is a disaster. He’s a threat to our democracy,” Perez said. ”And I think everybody in that room that we were in in Miami, and yesterday, and the day before, and tomorrow, and through the weekend, understands that.” That may be the case. But the job in front of Perez is to convince them all that the best way to oppose Trump is through the Democratic Party."
"The foods we choose to put on our plates  —   or toss away  —   could have more of an ecological impact than many of us realize. On Earth Day, here are some ways to consider how our diet impacts the planet. Waste not, want not, You’ve heard the numbers on food waste. More than 30 percent of available food is tossed each year in America. It’s enough to fill Chicago’s    Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower) 44 times over. The U. S. has set an official goal to reduce food waste by 50 percent by the year 2030. Universities have begun to chip away at the food waste issue by promoting ugly fruit and vegetables and shifting away from   buffet style food, instead serving more    options that can cut down on waste. Food service companies are working with farmers and chefs to get more blemished but edible produce into cafeterias across the country. Even religious groups are getting into the act, raising attention to the problem of food waste among the faithful and connecting with restaurants, retailers and food banks to help redirect food to hungry mouths that might otherwise end up in landfills. And there are a host of proposed solutions. Check out this report that highlights which solutions are likely to provide most bang for the buck. Among the most   strategies: educating consumers on food waste  —   including changes you can make in your own kitchen. (Here are some tips to get you started  —   like how to tell if eggs are still good past their expiration date.) Rethink your beef and lamb habit, Everything we eat has an environmental footprint  —   it takes land, water and energy to grow crops and raise livestock. The folks at the World Resources Institute have calculated the greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing a gram of edible protein of various foods. Not surprisingly, they found that foods such as beans, fish, nuts and egg have the lowest impact. Poultry, pork, milk and cheese have   impacts. By far, the biggest impacts, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, were linked to beef, lamb and goat. (As we’ve reported, that’s partly because the need for pastureland drives deforestation in places like the Brazilian Amazon.) Why? According to WRI, beef uses 28 times more land per calorie consumed  —   and two to four times more freshwater  —   than the average of other livestock categories. What’s more, cows are less efficient than other animals, like pigs and poultry, at converting feed into food. Still, telling people to go cold turkey with their red meat isn’t likely to inspire real change. But this message might resonate: Even if you don’t give up on red meat consumption entirely, just cutting back can significantly impact your diet’s carbon footprint. And these days, there are lots of vegan substitutes  —   like plant burgers that sizzle, smell and even bleed like the real thing  —   that can deliver the meaty taste you crave as you try to scale back. Keep an eye out for more ’ ’ dishes on restaurant menus, As interest in   diets booms, new food businesses have taken root  —   from the     chains Beefsteak (from celebrity chef Jose Andres) and Chloe (an   restaurant) to the vegan   company Purple Carrot. Now, a new initiative from the World Resources Institute called the Better Buying Lab is bringing together big companies (including Panera Bread, Sodexo, Google, Unilever and Hilton) to develop and test strategies to nudge consumers towards choosing more sustainable foods. One initiative is to get more   dishes onto menus. ”If you look at menus across the U. S. there tends to be [the same] 25 dishes that are on the majority of menus,” says Daniel Vennard, director of the Better Buying Lab at WRI. Think burgers, chicken dishes, etc. ”Not many [ ] dishes have scaled to become national favorites,” Vennard says. His group is working to change that. It’s teaming up with chefs from its member companies to create new recipes likely to have broad appeal. Promising ideas include the concept of ”superfood salads”  —   containing combinations of nuts, seeds, greens, veggies and avocado. He points to ideas already out there as well, such as burgers that blend meat and mushrooms. As we reported several years ago, some   has found that diners warmed up to the idea of blended burgers, and in fact many tasters preferred them to   patties. And an ongoing competition from the James Beard Foundation has encouraged chefs around the country to give blended burgers a try on their menus. (Not everyone is a fan, though.) ”What we’re trying to do is shift consumers towards eating more sustainable food, but we’re not advocating for a   diet,” explains Vennard. ”We’re saying, ’Let’s moderate.’ ”"
"To say that the U. N.’s peacekeeping mission in Haiti has been controversial is an understatement. The peacekeepers are blamed for bringing cholera to the island nation for the first time. They were accused of sexually abusing locals. Haitians have accused them of being an occupying army. But the peacekeepers also have been credited with bringing a measure of stability to one of the most impoverished, unstable nations in the hemisphere. And now, after 13 years, the end of the mission is in sight. This month, Sandra Honoré, the current head of U. N. mission to Haiti, told the U. N. Security Council that the peacekeeping mission had achieved its goals and should start to wind down. She said MINUSTAH  —   the French acronym for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti  —   had succeeded in bringing ”relative stability” to Haiti and overseen three democratic presidential elections. ”The Secretary General has recommended the closure of MINUSTAH in six months from now and the establishment of a smaller peacekeeping operation with concentrated focus on the rule of law and police development,” she said. The start of the peacekeeping mission came at a tumultuous moment. In early 2004, as Haitian president   Aristide’s grip on power was failing, Haiti descended into chaos. Political opponents of the    were not only calling for Aristide’s ouster but taking up arms against him. Fighting erupted in the northern city of Gonaives. Heavily armed insurgents were threatening to invade the capital. Criminal gangs were vying for control of cities on the south coast. Things got so bad that U. S. President George W. Bush sent in hundreds of Marines to keep the peace. Aristide eventually resigned to avoid, in his words, ”a bloodbath.” Later he said he was ousted by the U. S. in a coup d’etat. Aristide was flown out of Haiti on a U. S. plane to the Central African Republic. It was out of this political upheaval that the current U. N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti was born in 2004. The U. N. actually called it a ”stabilization” operation. It became the   of a    U. N. missions deployed to Haiti since 1993. Francois   who grew up in Haiti during the Duvalier dictatorship and is now an associate professor of political science at Queens College CUNY, says the U. N. should have pulled its troops out a long time ago. ”It [MINUSTAH] will be remembered as a failure,” says  . He says the elections during MINUSTAH’s tenure had serious flaws, including one presidential poll that had to be completely thrown out because of widespread fraud. ”The U. N. won’t be remembered for any schools they built, any hospitals they built,” he says. ”Haitians will remember the U. N. as an organization that brought a disease in Haiti that never existed in the country before  —   cholera.” U. N. peacekeepers inadvertently introduced cholera to the island in 2010 just after a devastating 7. 0 earthquake flattened much of the capital. The bacteria was brought by Nepalese peacekeepers and flowed out of toilets from their base into a local water supply. Cholera went on to sicken hundreds of thousands and kill nearly 10, 000. The disease continues to spread. U. N. troops were also accused of brutal sexual abuse of locals. A group of more than 100 Sri Lankan soldiers allegedly ran a child sex ring involving nine Haitian kids, the youngest age 12. Other troops were implicated in trading food or other goods with desperate Haitians in exchange for sex. Most of the soldiers were simply sent home to their native countries. Only a handful were ever charged with a crime and even fewer found guilty. ”U. N. troops not only raped a young boy but put it on social media,” says   referring to a case of a teenager who says he was   by a group of Uruguayan peacekeepers in 2011. The troops filmed the incident on a cellphone.   says the U. N. mission’s $350 million annual budget is a huge amount of money in Haiti (where the   federal budget was just over $1 billion for the entire country). He says there’s little to show for the billions that flowed into MINUSTAH over the last 13 years and that Haitians will be better off without the troops. ”Once the U. N. is out, we’ll have to figure out what to do,” he says. ”Right now somebody else is figuring it out for us and they’re not doing a good job.” Other Haiti watchers aren’t as harsh as   in their assessment. Robert Maguire, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University who’s been a Haiti expert since the late 1970s, says MINUSTAH has a ”mixed track record.” Maguire says the U. N. peacekeepers did manage to bring stability to Haiti from the    days after the fall of Aristide in 2004. ”There was a time around   when Haiti was almost as crazy as Baghdad in terms of rampant violence,” Maguire says. ”U. S. embassy employees were getting the same danger pay that they were getting in Baghdad except there was no Green Zone in   .” He cites a number of accomplishments. U. N. troops battled the brutal gangs that were operating out of Cite Soleil. They calmed cities where the security forces had collapsed. They helped build up the national police force. They responded to the hurricanes, mudslides and earthquakes that pounded the country. Maguire points out many of the same shortcomings of MINUSTAH that   mentions. But in Maguire’s view, the U. N. forces made Haiti more stable. Now he’s concerned that their departure could be a dangerous moment. ”With the U. N. mission gone will the same thing happen that happened after the first series of U. N. missions [to Haiti] shut down?” he asks. ”Because after they left in the 1990s, Haiti experienced a decade of tremendous political instability and violence.” And more political instability and violence is the last thing that Haiti needs."
"Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers killed more than 100 Afghan Army soldiers Friday at a base in northern Afghanistan, according to the Afghan Ministry of Defense. It is one of the deadliest attacks on an Afghan military base since the war began. The Taliban fighters disguised themselves as fellow soldiers as they launched the attack on those attending Mosque prayer services on a compound of the Afghan National Army’s 209th Corps in Balkh Province, reports The Associated Press. ”Today, there was even a shortage of coffins,” Ibrahim Khairandish, a member of the provincial council in Balkh Province, tells The New York Times. An Afghan army spokesman tells CNN the attack lasted six hours and by the end at least five attackers were killed and one was arrested. A U. S. Navy spokesman tells NPR’s Tom Bowman, while there were more than two dozen Coalition forces at the base at the time of the attack, they sheltered in place and there were no Coalition casualties. By Saturday, the Taliban had claimed responsibility, with a spokesman saying the attack was carried out by ten assailants as retribution for the recent killing of several senior Taliban leaders. President Ashraf Ghani declared Saturday a national day of mourning. As Tom notes, the attack comes shortly after National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster’s visit to Afghanistan, amid calls for the U. S. to send a few thousand additional troops to train Afghans. The U. S. officially withdrew from the war in 2014, but maintains a presence of more than 8, 000 troops in the International Coalition."
"A legendary airplane that helped America win World War II is being reborn at age 75. The   bomber ”Memphis Belle” flew 25 missions against Nazi Germany and then came home to help sell war bonds and raise spirits. In recent years, the Belle has been undergoing a patient and precise restoration at the National Museum of the Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio. I went to see the work in progress and talk with some of the many technicians and volunteers. The restoration hangar is a vast, bright workspace, where the   Flying Fortress has been stripped down to its bare aluminum. After eight years work the plane is still to be painted. This is the actual aircraft that I have watched in a documentary from 1944. William Wyler, the Academy Award winning director, went to an Army Air Force base in England, and he and his team could take their cameras on the bombing runs  —   riding with the pilots, the gunners, the bombardier, navigator. The plane was built in the summer of 1942 by Boeing in Seattle, and flew from Bangor, Maine, by way of Scotland, then on to an Army Force Base in England. A   crew was put together, the youngest was 19. Captain Robert Morgan, the pilot, named the plane after his girl friend. They started flying missions in November 1942, dropping bombs on targets in France, Belgium and across into Germany: aircraft factories, munitions plants and submarine bases. Once, the Belle went out with 27 other planes, and six failed to return. For the men flying mission from England, the Army Air Force had set a goal: ”Fly 25 missions and we’ll send you home.” The Memphis Belle crew accomplished that and then flew back across the Atlantic to celebrate. They landed at 31 American cities, cheered by big crowds at war bond rallies. The plane went on display in Tennessee, honored and protected for many years, neglected for many others. And in 2005 it was sent by truckloads to the Air Force Museum outside Dayton. Restoration has been underway, helped now by extra film from the Wyler wartime documentary. Lead Curator Jeff Duford is able to watch on his computer screen more than 11 hours of Technicolor outtakes. ”I can’t think of any other event or restoration where we have this much color footage,” he says. ”It was as if somebody knew that we would need this. And one of those cameramen, Harold Tannenbaum, was killed flying on a photo mission.” Steve Markman, a retired aerospace engineer, is one of many skilled volunteers donating their time and experience to help the museum’s aircraft mechanics. On his bench one day, a Norden bombsight: ”Top secret during World War II,” he says. ”It’s got about 70 years worth of dust on it.” He’s using some alcohol and scrubbing pads and a toothbrush to very gently remove that grime. The Memphis Belle, fully restored (although not for actual flight) is scheduled to go on display May 17, 2018. That date marks the planes 25th successful mission back in 1943. But there’s still lots of work left. The restoration team estimates they still have 12, 000 hours of work ahead."
"The Republican chairman and the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are taking a look into the slowly brewing controversy of foreign cash flowing into President Trump’s hotel in Washington, D. C. The U. S. Constitution forbids government officers to take emoluments  —   gifts or money  —   from foreign governments and officials. Trump has a plan to avoid the constitutional issue. With their letter Friday, Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz,   and ranking member Elijah Cummings,  . raise questions about how that plan works. Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon unveiled the plan at a Jan. 11 press conference with the   . She said Trump had decided ”that he is going to voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotels to the United States Treasury.” She said the arrangement would apply only to the profits from foreign government payments, not to the overall payments. The Trump Organization has said the first payments will be made ”after the end of the calendar year,” according to USA Today. Chaffetz and Cummings want documents showing how payments from ”foreign government customers” will be identified, the profits calculated and the transfers to the Treasury tracked or disclosed. They also want to know whether Trump, the Trump Organization or any Trump trust plans to claim the payments as   gifts. In a statement to NPR, Larry Noble of the Campaign Legal Center said the committee ”has every reason to question the President’s claim since he has a history of making questionable, misleading or false claims regarding charitable contributions in an effort to deflect criticism.” Trump’s foundation was ordered to stop soliciting contributions in New York because it was not registered to do so. He has also overstated his foundation’s giving. A group of plaintiffs led by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an emoluments lawsuit against Trump in January. Their argument rejects Dillon’s analysis that emoluments are only the profit, not the gross amount, in a payment from a foreign government or official."
"Peter Uribe left Chile at 21 with his wife and    daughter, landing in Baltimore and finding steady work in construction. His social life revolved around futbol, playing ”six or seven nights a week in soccer tournaments,” he says. A couple of years after his arrival, he broke his foot during a game and afraid of the cost, didn’t seek medical care. ”Some of my family warned me that if I went to the hospital and couldn’t pay the bill, I’d get a bad credit record,” says Uribe, 41, who made about $300 a week and had no health insurance. ”I wanted to buy a car or a house someday.” Instead, he hobbled through workdays and stayed off the field for three years the residual pain is sometimes disabling, even two decades later. For reasons both economic and cultural, Hispanic men are loath to interact with the health system. Women across all races are more likely to seek care than men. But the gender gap in the Hispanic community is especially troubling to health care providers. Studies show that Latino men are much less likely than Latinas to get treatment. That is true even though Hispanic men are more likely than   whites to be obese, have diabetes or have high blood pressure. Those who drink tend to do so heavily, contributing to the group’s higher rates of alcoholic cirrhosis and deaths from chronic liver disease. Many take risky jobs such as construction workers and laborers, and are more likely to die from    injuries than other workers, government data show. Hispanics’ share of the population is expected to widen from nearly a fifth now to a quarter by 2045. As that number grows, researchers worry that the nation could face costly consequences as   conditions lead to serious illness and disability.  ”It could literally break the health care system,” says José Arévalo, board chairman of Latino Physicians of California, which represents Hispanic doctors and others who treat Latinos. And now, some medical professionals fear the effects of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants. ”When the community faces this kind of stress, I worry that people will do unhealthy things, like abuse alcohol, to deal with it,” says Kathleen Page,   of Centro SOL, a health center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, and founder of the city’s Latino HIV Outreach Program. ”That means they may not work as much,” she adds. ”They’ll have less money, which means they’re less likely to seek care.”  Welcomed by Baltimore officials, immigrants have driven the city’s Hispanic population, tripling it to 30, 000 since 2000. Here, as elsewhere, evidence suggests that for many Hispanic men, seeking health care is an extraordinary event. Hospital data show they are more likely than Hispanic women, white women and white men to go to the emergency room as their primary source of treatment  —   a sign that they wait until they’ve no choice but to get help. Some care providers say medical institutions haven’t done enough to keep Hispanic men healthy, or to persuade them to get regular exams. ”There’s been an ongoing need for institutions to become more culturally attuned and aware of bias,” says Elena Rios, president of the National Hispanic Medical Association, which represents the nation’s 50, 000 Latino physicians. There are some significant differences in health risk and illness rates among Hispanic subgroups  —   Puerto Ricans are more likely to be smokers, for example. Compared with Hispanics born in the U. S. those born elsewhere have much lower rates of cancer, heart disease and high blood pressure. Overall, Hispanics live longer than whites. But these advantages may be dissipating as Latinos become Americanized and adopt unhealthy habits such as smoking and diets high in fatty, processed foods. ”I tell people we live longer and suffer,” says Jane Delgado, a clinical psychologist and   who serves as president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health. Researchers who investigate gaps in cancer testing have found that all ethnic groups and genders have seen a decrease in   colon cancer diagnoses and deaths in recent years  —   except Hispanic men, who get screened at the lowest rates of any race or ethnic group. Often, health problems arise after immigrants come up against an insurance barrier. A few years after Jose Cedillo came to Baltimore from Honduras, the    cook noticed his legs were often numb or painful. Worried about finances, he eschewed treatment and continued to work, before finally going to a clinic where he was diagnosed with diabetes. In the seven years since, his health has so deteriorated he can’t work, is frequently homeless and spends long stints in the hospital. As an immigrant who came to the U. S. illegally, he is not eligible for   insurance or disability payments. And he can’t afford medicine. Instead, he says, ”I’ll drink alcohol to numb the pain.” Part of the problem is that Spanish speakers are underrepresented among medical professionals. After arriving here, Uribe’s family members frequently brought along an   nephew or niece when they could afford to see doctors. Otherwise, ”we’d travel a long ways to find a doctor who spoke Spanish,” he says. Hospitals frequently lack cultural understanding and bilingual staffing, administrators admit. Though Latinos make up nearly 20 percent of the population, only 5 percent of physicians and 7 percent of registered nurses are Hispanic. That gap has widened as more Hispanics have come to this country during the past three decades, according to a UCLA study released in 2015. ”Too often, people don’t understand what you’re saying, they don’t know what you’re going to charge them, what dietary restrictions you might place upon them,” says James Page, vice president for diversity at Johns Hopkins Medicine. ”It creates a trust issue for Hispanics. We’ve got to get better at serving them.” That is particularly true in mental health. Only 1 percent of psychologists in the U. S. are Hispanic, meaning that   men who do seek therapy will probably struggle to find it. In Baltimore, there is only one   support group for men who suffer from anxiety and depression, local psychologists and Latino advocates say. The city employs one   substance abuse counselor. A small handful of bilingual social workers citywide offer   counseling sessions, and only three psychiatrists offer therapy sessions conducted in Spanish. For Peter Uribe, the key to maintaining his family’s health is getting help paying for care. His wife and brother both suffer from epileptic seizures, and his brother’s despondency caused Uribe to become depressed, he says. In 2015, he obtained insurance for his family through a charity program. With the help of   medicines, his wife’s seizures waned, and he sought help for chronic depression. Since he now speaks English, finding counseling help is easier. In January, after intervention from a Latino advocacy group, the charity renewed the Uribes’ policy for two years. Peter Uribe calls it a godsend: ”I honestly have no idea what we’d do without it.” Michael Anft is a   journalist and writer whose work regularly appears in AARP: The Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications. Daniel Trielli, a data journalist at Capital News Service at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, contributed to this report.  Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The Annie E. Casey Foundation supports KHN’s coverage of health disparities in East Baltimore."
"Greetings and welcome to NPR Ed’s weekly roundup of education news from Washington and around the country. Supreme Court hears a   case, The Supreme Court heard a case this week that could have huge implications for school voucher programs. In the case, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley, a   preschool applied for a state grant to resurface its playground and was turned down. At issue is an 1875 provision of Missouri’s Constitution banning public money from going ”directly or indirectly” to religious groups, which includes religiously founded schools. Similar provisions, called Blaine Amendments, exist in three dozen states. They have been a major barrier to the growth of school voucher programs, because 70 percent of existing private schools in the U. S. have religious ties. Tax credit scholarships have in the last few years become an increasingly popular means of channeling money to private schools while circumventing the amendments. Secretary DeVos visits an Ohio school district with a union leader, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited Van Wert, Ohio, this week with Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers and a frequent critic of both DeVos and President Trump. Alongside local union leaders and school officials, the two met with   and special education teachers and staff, as well as parents, students and community members. They also heard presentations from students in robotics and engineering classes. Van Wert is a rural district in northwest Ohio with 2, 000 students, 92 percent of whom are white. It boasts a 96 percent graduation rate. The Department of Education noted that this was DeVos’ tenth school visit. Dreamer deported, USA Today reported this week that a    community college student, Juan Manuel   was apprehended by immigration authorities in Calexico, Calif. and deported to Mexico in February. He is suing the U. S. government.   is one of an estimated 750, 000 young people known as Dreamers. They came to the United States as children and fall under the protection of a program President Obama created called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. Many are students. Trump has promised that the Dreamers will be protected from his immigration crackdown, but advocates say at least 10 of them are now in federal custody. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday that ”DACA enrollees are not being targeted,” but that anyone in the country illegally is subject to being deported. Ann Coulter will go on at Berkeley, Conservative author and frequent media talking head Ann Coulter promised that she will speak on or near the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, next week. The university had canceled her official event due to safety concerns, then reversed its decision. In February, a planned Berkeley visit by     provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos sparked riots."
"Recovering alcoholics tend to avoid the bar. But when the bar is your office, that’s not so easy. New Orleans bluesman Anders Osborne figured out how to get back to work despite the temptations, and now he’s trying to help others. Drugs and alcohol nearly destroyed Osborne’s career, and his family. The guitarist and   was showing up for tour dates unable to perform. At his worst, he was spending nights on a park bench. He got into recovery and was putting his life back together when he remembers counselors telling him to take a year or two off, try something different until he could get back on his feet. He was facing bankruptcy and foreclosure on his house at the time. ”I mean, I’m in a bad situation. I’m going to take a minimum wage job at McDonald’s?” Osborne says. ”What am I supposed to do? So that frustration led to me thinking well, ’There should be a support system. . .. specifically for this.’ ” He means specifically for people in the music industry who are trying to stay clean. Notorious partyer now sober, Osborne walks through Chickie Wah Wah, a popular New Orleans music venue, where you have to walk past the bar to get the stage. That’s tough for an addict, Osborne says. These days, he comes with a game plan. ”Here’s how long I’m going to spend at the bar. I’m not going to show up an hour and a half before. I’m going to show up 10 minutes before the show and that’s all,” Osborne says. ”And you have to really stick to that. I’ll design the whole situation according to my comfort because I’m here to work. I’m not partying.” The once notorious partyer, now 50, has been sober for about eight years. He’s working with the nonprofit CAN’d Aid Foundation to help musicians navigate that fraught setting. The program is called Send Me a Friend, taken from the title of one of Osborne’s songs. The idea came after some friends came to his first big New Year’s Eve show after he got sober. ”They showed up and they just sat next to the stage,” he says. ”They didn’t do anything. They didn’t talk to me, didn’t do anything. They just sat there. It was such tremendous help and I can’t explain it. It just was accountability. I knew people that knew I was trying to be sober and work, sat there. And I was like, ’Wow, this is really powerful.’ ” It’s not AA, Send Me a Friend pairs volunteers with musicians trying to stay sober on the road. A network of people who have more than a year of continuous sobriety is available  —   to come to a performance and act as a buffer, for instance, when fans want to buy you a drink. Osborne says Send Me A Friend is different from Alcoholics Anonymous or other recovery programs. ”It’s all about going back to work. It’s not about getting anybody sober. That’s not my job,” he says. ”It’s just, if you have chosen to not drink or [do] drug[s] anymore but you want to stay in the music industry  —   you want to go back to work. Well, we’re going to provide one small little service, which is, we’re going to send somebody out to sit there with you.” Musicians who want a friend submit an email with their tour dates, and Send a Friend tries to connect them with someone on every stop. ”It’s pretty awesome,” says a Boston singer who has used the program. ”You just send in your dates and they send you friends.” Program guarantees anonymity, NPR has agreed not to use the singer’s name because the program guarantees anonymity. She says she hasn’t relapsed once when a ”friend” was backstage at her concerts. She says the key is knowing that you’re not alone when you’re in the thick of it. ”You’re right next to a big bar of alcohol. And you’re in the music scene where drugs are just flowing like a waterfall,” she says. ”So having somebody right there with you who knows the temptation, it’s an unbelievable gift.” She says her contact with Send Me a Friend came at a time when she was afraid she was going to have to stop performing. ”And I don’t know what’s worse, to be honest with you. You know, having my life spiral out of control but being able to play music  —   or being steady and stable and not getting to play music,” she says. ”I know that sounds extreme but that’s what music is to me.” Osborne says the program is not just for the rock star who hits rock bottom, but for anyone who’s there for the gig  —   dancers, sound techs and roadies. ”You can just be a piano player down on Bourbon Street,” he says. ”I mean, you have four or five sets. You’re playing small breaks. There’s no backstage there’s no tour manager that keeps people away. There’s just you just sit[ting] there in the bar waiting for the next set and that’s  —   wow. That’s difficult.” Osborne says Send Me a Friend is about treating the music industry as a legitimate business, instead of as hobby you have to give up just because you’re sober."
"In the early days of the 20th century, the United States Radium Corporation had factories in New Jersey and Illinois, where they employed mostly women to paint watch and clock faces with their luminous radium paint. The paint got everywhere  —   hair, hands, clothes, and mouths. They were called the shining girls, because they quite literally glowed in the dark. And they were dying. Kate Moore’s new book The Radium Girls is about the young women who were poisoned by the radium paint  —   and the five who sued United States Radium in a case that led to labor safety standards and workers’ rights advances. Radioactivity wasn’t well understood back then  —   in fact, radium was considered a wonder substance, and it turned up everywhere. ”Radium truly was an international craze,” Moore says. ”It was in everything from cosmetics to food, and it very much had an allure to it.” On the boost to the radium industry during World War I, Soldiers needed watches, and people needed it for the planes and the trucks and so on, and so the dial painters, who were the Radium Girls, they were employed to paint all these dials with luminous radium paint, and they were taught to    —   so, to put their brushes between their lips to make a fine point for the detailed handiwork . .. Mae Cubberley, who’s one of the Radium Girls that I write about in the book, she said ”The first thing we said was, ’Does this stuff hurt you? ’” And their managers said no. On the beginnings of illness among the Radium Girls, When the Radium Girls started to get sick, about five years after they started dial painting, the radium firms were determined that they would not link this insidious disease that was taking so long to show itself  —   and that was one of the problems the girls had. It would start quite innocently, actually  —   it would start perhaps with an aching limb, or a bad tooth . .. but as the sickness developed and set in with the women, it got a lot more gruesome. All of their teeth would fall out, sometimes replaced by ulcers that would then seep pus constantly. And that aching limb would actually start to spontaneously fracture. And it might not be a limb, it might be their spine, it might be a jawbone. On the Radium Girls’ effect on the Manhattan Project, There was a direct link. Glenn Seaborg, who was a leading scientist on the Manhattan Project, literally wrote in his diary that he had a vision of the ghost girls, of the shining girls, the Radium Girls, and he therefore insisted that they had to do research into the materials that they were using on the Manhattan Project. It was found that they were biomedically very similar to radium, and therefore there were nonnegotiable safety guidelines put in place. And after the war, the Atomic Energy Commission officials actually said the Radium Girls were invaluable, because if it hadn’t been for them, countless thousands of other workers would have been killed. On the lives of the surviving Radium Girls, Through their willingness to allow scientists to probe their bodies, they have given us a store of knowledge about internal radiation that we simply would not otherwise have had if they weren’t prepared to do that. And I think for many of the women, it was their gift to humanity, that we’re still benefiting from today."
"Just thinking about the impacts of a shifting climate is making some people feel anxious and overwhelmed. A support group in Utah is helping people cope, and the idea has drawn interest in other states. In a split level outside Salt Lake City, eight people gather for a weekly meeting. The group, called Good Grief, has members ranging from millennials to grandparents. As they sit in a circle in the living room, Dick Meyer talks about why the problem of climate change made him emotional. Just thinking about the impacts of a shifting climate is making some, like Meyer, feel anxious and overwhelmed. This support group, which began meeting last year, is helping people cope. Meyer used to be skeptical. ”And I think I came to the conclusion that it was the loss of the future  —   the future that I had lived knowing was going to be there  —   all of a sudden is gone,” he says. ”And that is really disorienting.” Meyer spends his winters in Utah but has run a landscaping business in Nebraska for decades. That’s where he’s seen a few common tree species dying out  —   something scientists trace to heat and drought. ”At some point, you come to a conclusion if you’re paying attention, I think, where you just say, ’Whoa, this is serious,’ ” he says. ”And then you suffer for a while, you grieve.” Humboldt State University in California also recognizes   ” .” Sarah Jaquette Ray, head of the environmental studies program, says her students find their study of climate change so depressing that she’s added lessons to help them cope with their emotions. ”They need the emotional skills and the emotional tools” to actually address the climate problem, she says. When the idea for this group first came to LaUra Schmidt, she was also struggling. She was an undergraduate student then, studying species extinction and melting ice caps. The human impacts of all that made her feel heartsick and powerless. Then Schmidt remembered the 12 steps that   groups use for problems like drugs and overdrinking. She says she has been an avid participant in an Adult Children of Alcoholics group, ”and I realized that that group could be  .” So she wrote her own nine steps, which are still being solidified and possibly expanded by the group. The first step is the standard, ”Admit there’s a problem.” ”It’s a lot about understanding your power and what you’re capable of but also your limitations as a single human being on this planet,” she says. Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist and climate activist in Washington, D. C. says people have climate anxiety. ”Every single day we are told about what disasters are just around the corner,” she says. ”And this is being processed whether we know it consciously or not.” Van Susteren calls the Utah group’s approach brilliant since it helps people cope with their feelings and makes their community ties stronger. The American Psychological Association suggests both strategies in its new report on climate and mental health. Alli Harbertson says she comes to the Utah meetings to mourn the past and reimagine her kids’ future. It helps, she says, to talk about it with people. ”We don’t do chitchat,” she says. ”We go right to what’s on your heart. And I cry like every week, which is . .. no big thing for me. I’m a huge crier. But still, feeling like I can do that with almost complete strangers is amazing.” People in other states who’ve heard about this program are asking if they can use it too. The Utah group is planning to share it. Judy Fahys is a reporter with NPR member station KUER. You can follow her @judyfutah."
"Ralph Towner first came to the attention of a wide audience nearly 50 years ago as a member of the Paul Winter Consort, for whom he composed the group’s most famous tune, ”Icarus.” The piece was so beloved, the Apollo 15 astronauts took the record to the moon  —   and named a crater after it. Today, Towner is in his 70s and still going strong. He’s best known as an acoustic guitarist, and was born in Washington state. But he grew up a piano prodigy in a town in Oregon. ”Nobody knew what to do with me,” Towner says. ”Had I lived on the East Coast, I think I might have been immediately sent to a music school very early. But as it was, I had a sort of simplistic childhood  —   kind of Norman Rockwell style.” That bucolic young life came with a soundtrack: His father played trumpet and his mother was a piano teacher. ”I would go to this old piano that we had and, in the beginning, I would just hold down the pedal and hit something and let it ring,” he says. ”I remember just being enthralled with hearing this chord sustain and then slowly disappear.” ”He already came into this life with a level of talent that many people don’t have,” Gary Peacock says, and he would know: He’s Keith Jarrett’s bass player, a composer in his own right and a longtime collaborator of Towner’s. He says the latter has a talent few possess. ”Ralph has incredible ears,” Peacock says. ”I remember on a tour one time, I walked into his dressing room just to see if everything’s OK . .. and he’s playing three notes on his guitar, over and over again. And then maybe adding something, over and over and over. Anybody walking by would think, ’What is he doing? !’ What he’s doing is listening. Listening to what is there and, now, what comes next.” Towner began playing piano when he was 3, and took up trumpet two years later. He wound up at the University of Oregon studying art, before eventually switching to music composition. It was there that he first heard a record by a musician who would become one of his biggest influences: pianist Bill Evans and his legendary trio. ”I always wanted to record ’My Foolish Heart,’ ” Towner says. ”It’s one of the first tunes I’d heard that combination of Evans, [Scott] LaFaro and Paul Motian play. So that tune had a lot of meaning for me and was very important for me starting out as a jazz musician.” Towner finally recorded it for his latest album, which is also called My Foolish Heart. It was also at college that Towner first heard a classical guitar. ”I never was really attracted to the guitar until I heard a classical guitar,” he says. ”For me it’s like a small piano in what you can do with it, in terms of moving secondary voices around in your music. You can play all these notes with all the fingers of your right hand.” Towner has developed an instantly recognizable style, one that sounds like he’s playing with all 10 fingers of both hands  —   conjuring melody, harmony and rhythm almost simultaneously. Woodwind player Paul McCandless, who has been collaborating with Towner for nearly half a century, explains it this way: ”You hear the bass, you hear the chords, you hear the melody. The illusion is created that there’s a whole ensemble playing  —   a whole world that he creates just with the guitar.” Towner and McCandless’ partnership began in the Paul Winter Consort and continued in the group that split off from the Consort, Oregon. Towner has been Oregon’s primary composer since the beginning, and the classically trained McCandless says there’s a reason. ”These pieces that Ralph created  —   I always say that if you change one note, it wouldn’t be as good . .. [similar to] the way Mozart and his music are irreducible,” he says. ”I think that Ralph’s gift for melody, and singable melodies, really transport the listener to another world.” Towner just turned 77, and the history behind his new album brings that tune he heard Bill Evans play all those years ago up to the present. ”There’s a little irony in it, since I just had a pacemaker put in about two years ago,” he chuckles. ”We had a concert in Germany and, uh, I fell on my face on the first sound check and had to go to the hospital I’d kind of blacked out. Turns out that my heart was beating so slow. And so I called the whole CD My Foolish Heart. I hope it’s over its foolishness!” So do his fans. Web editor Daoud   contributed to this story."
"Updated at 11:50 p. m. ET, Emmanuel Macron, a centrist politician who’s never held elective office, and Marine Le Pen, the   firebrand who wants to take France out of the European Union, are expected to advance to next month’s runoff for the presidency of the country, according to official results. When the final numbers trickled in, Macron had nearly 24 percent of the vote, followed by Le Pen at around 22 percent. Francois Fillon, the only establishment candidate among the   appeared tied for third place with   politician   Melenchon with around 20 percent of the vote each. If the numbers hold up as expected, it will set up a battle in May between two politicians with not only completely different visions for France but  —   more significantly  —   utterly different views of one of the biggest issues facing many voters in the West today: globalization. Macron is a liberal, former investment banker and an avowed internationalist who worked as economy minister in France’s Socialist government. Le Pen has run a tough,   campaign and has vowed to take France out of the European Union. If she were successful, it would probably sink an institution that has helped bind Europe together for decades. Last night, rival politicians, including Fillon, the nominee of the conservative Republican Party, began to rally around Macron to prevent Le Pen from taking the presidency. ”There is no other choice but to vote against the far right, I will vote for Emmanuel Macron,” Fillon told supporters. Elsewhere in Europe, liberal globalists cheered Macron’s strong showing. A spokesman for Germany’s Angela Merkel said she wished him ”all the best,” and Peter Altmaier, Merkel’s chief of staff tweeted: ”The result for @EmmanuelMacron shows: France AND Europe can win together! The middle is stronger than the populists believe!” European Commission President   Juncker congratulated him as well. In his victory speech, Macron, 39, sounded at times as if he’d already won the election. ”I want to be the president of all the people of France,” he said. ”The challenge is to open a new page in our political life and to take action so that everyone is able to find his or her place in France and in Europe.” By contrast, Le Pen called her   finish a ”historic result” and urged ”all patriots” to back her party in next month’s runoff. ”Now, we have an enormous responsibility to defend the French culture,” she told supporters. ”You will get a France that protects the people, we will not have the free circulation of terrorists.” For France, today’s results mark a political earthquake. French voters appear to have sent a strong rebuke to the country’s traditional political parties. For the first time since the end of World War II, an establishment right or   party will not control the presidency. After many years of high unemployment and a steady drumbeat of political scandals, voters turned their backs on the establishment and instead backed a political newcomer in Macron and a   candidate in Le Pen. Olivier Duhamel, a political scientist at Sciences Po Paris, one of France’s top universities, said the fact that someone with so little experience came out on top today was stunning. ”A man nobody knew, a very young man, this is incredibly American, this is absolutely not French,” he said. ”That proves that France in a way, this evening, is less of a monarchy and more a democracy.” For Americans, Duhamel said it would have been the equivalent of Ross Perot beating   U. S. President George H. W. Bush and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton in the 1992 election. Political analysts say Macron’s apparent win today showed that many French people still believe in a more liberal, open, global society even as populists have won big victories in the last year with the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s election in the United States. ”We should not underestimate the capacity of resistance of other groups within societies, which are supporting more moderate parties,” said Alain Dieckhoff, head of the Center for International Research at Sciences Po. The runoff election will take place May 7, and the country will hold parliamentary elections about a month after that. Polls suggest and many analysts predict that Macron enjoys a steep advantage going into a    race with Le Pen. ”I think that the success  —   even if it’s just the first round now  —   of Macron is also a good indication there are still very powerful forces in French society . .. [that] don’t really want to go in the direction of populist parties and really xenophobic positions,” says Dieckhoff."
"With any new president, there’s a learning curve. But for President Trump, it’s been steeper than others. ”Mount Everest” is how Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, described it ahead of Trump’s 100th day in office, which is coming up Saturday, April 29. ”It’s as steep as they come and   and he didn’t bring very many knowledgeable Sherpas with him.” Trump’s ascension to the presidency is an unlikely story. The flashy New York billionaire and former reality TV star cuts a very different image than any American president before him. He’s the first with no government, military or political experience. In an age of frustration with the political establishment on both sides of the aisle, that background had a certain appeal. But Trump’s unique background has also brought with it some problems. He’s faced setbacks and turnabouts, from immigration executive orders hung up in the courts and a failed health care overhaul attempt to changing his mind on his approach to Syria, Russia, China and NATO. All of it points to    training for Trump, who had a resume before taking office that could be considered, for a president,   experts say. ”This man is without experience, and it’s showing,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian and author of multiple books on presidents, from Roosevelt and Truman to Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan. ”Particularly in his dealings with Congress, he’s been an utter failure in the sense that he’s gotten nothing passed. He’s issuing all sorts of executive orders, like immigration limits they’re failing. The attempt to get health care reform failed. I’d give him failing marks for his 100 days.” Trump’s White House would argue that he has gotten significant things accomplished, including seating a Supreme Court justice, beginning to roll back   regulations, which they believe stifle economic growth, as well as taking a firm hand on the international stage. This president, unlike President Obama, for example, punished Syria’s Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons on his own people. But these first 100 days have been anything but smooth. There have been legislative stops and starts hectic management in the White House, including infighting between family and advisers and the shortest tenure of any national security adviser in history and many, many key positions in his administration remain unfilled. Even getting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court required the outsider president relying on the ultimate insider, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . to blow up the filibuster for court picks. At least, in part, the failures may be the result of Trump’s political inexperience. ”Is this an   president? I think that’s too generous,” Perry argued. ”Unless he would be an intern, he would not have a position in the White House  —   with no educational experience, no military experience, no government, no political experience, most of it was running for president.” And she points out that the kind of life experience Trump has may be   to the presidency, because presidents since FDR have faced five times more foreign policy or military crises than economic ones in their first year. ”That concerned me when looking at someone like Trump,” Perry said, adding, ”This president has no experience in the areas that we’ve always valued in a president, and the experience he does have has not proved helpful in past presidents.” Of course, there have been other presidents without lengthy political experience, like Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, for example. And Trump, who is 70, has had a lifetime of experience in real estate and marketing. But business experience is not something historians say carries much weight when it comes to the presidency. ”The problem with people who say we need a businessman is that the government isn’t a business,” said historian Richard Norton Smith, who has written several political biographies, including on another businessman president, Herbert Hoover. Smith has also run several presidential museums, libraries and foundations dedicated to Lincoln, Reagan, Eisenhower, Ford and Hoover. Hoover, a wealthy mine engineer and consultant before becoming president, had significant business experience around the globe. But he’s looked upon by many today as a president who didn’t meet the greatest challenge of his time, the Great Depression. And Hoover had far more political experience than Trump, having served as Commerce secretary under two presidents, and ran massive relief efforts in Europe during World War I. ”  statements don’t take into account the irrationality of Kim Jong Un,” Smith said of the North Korean leader. ”Corporate budgets don’t have to allow for military defense. All these kinds of perfectly rational expectations that apply in a corporate world are rarely applicable in the    world of politics. . .. If you’ve not been tempered, yourself, in the fires of politics, you’re operating at a real disadvantage.” Despite that lack of experience or results, there has been a lot of boasting from Trump. Since the start of his presidency, it has ranged from as petty as his inauguration crowd size to as grand as his legacy. ”There are those that say I’ve done more than anybody in the first 100 days,” Trump said two months ago. ”There are those that are saying that I’ve done just about more than anybody.” At that point, he’d signed a handful of executive orders, but hadn’t gotten any major legislative accomplishments under his belt  —   and he still hasn’t. ”As usual,” Dallek said, ”he engages in hyperbole when he said that nobody has accomplished more in the first 100 days than he has, which is utter nonsense.” Dallek pointed out that the ”100 days” marker originated with FDR’s presidency, and FDR got 15 major pieces of legislation passed in the midst of the Depression. ”Trump has fed that the country is facing some kind of crisis,” Dallek said. And yet, he’s gotten little accomplished. ”Nobody knew” it ”could be so complicated” Trump has revealed a measure of his own surprise with the difficulty of the job. ”Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” Trump said in February, as GOP leaders were pushing  —   and struggling  —   to get their plan to    the Affordable Care Act through the House. Of course, it took Obama more than a year to pass the ACA, not 17 days, the timeline of start to failure for the GOP House bill. In the Oval Office, after the bill was pulled, Trump conceded that he was still learning. ”We all learned a lot,” Trump said. ”We learned a lot about loyalty. We learned a lot about the   process. We learned a lot about some very arcane rules in, obviously, both the Senate and in the House. So it’s been  —   certainly for me, it’s been a very interesting experience.” But it’s not clear what Trump learned exactly. Just in the last couple of days, the White House was raising stakes for another health care bill with talk of a potential deal between moderates and conservatives. Trump’s team wants another vote this upcoming week (while a government shutdown looms Friday). Meantime, experienced congressional leaders were trying to tamp that kind of talk down.   is a big part of success in politics, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Trump who appears to think the bigger the expectation, the better. He even added this wrinkle Friday: ”We’ll be having a big announcement on Wednesday having to do with tax reform,” Trump said, vowing to release his tax reform plan ahead of the artifice of the   mark. ”The process has begun long ago, but it really formally begins on Wednesday.” And yet, a White House official downplayed whether there would be a plan by the middle of the week. ”Maybe not, no guarantees,” the official told Politico. That is the kind of unnecessary chaos that has marked this 100 days from the start. Remember how botched the rollout was for that first travel ban executive order? It affected real people’s lives, stuck in airports as officials were initially unclear who exactly the order applied to. ”He’s a man of such grandiosity,” Dallek said. ”He has to be the best, the greatest. His use of language is always overstating what he is doing or expects to do. It’s   in part.” Another example of Trump’s learning curve was on China and North Korea. Trump was supposedly preparing to pressure China’s President Xi into doing more on North Korea while at Trump’s private club,    in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump said he learned again, this time about the complexity of the relationship  —   from Xi. ”After listening for 10 minutes,” Trump said, ”I realized it’s not so easy. I felt pretty strongly that [China] had a tremendous power over North Korea. But it’s not what you would think.” That was a remarkable statement. After all, Trump thundered for a year and a half about China and trade on the campaign trail, accusing it of raping and ”killing” America. And after a   conversation, he pulled back? Most presidents with political experience would have known what there was to know about the nuance of the relationship going into the meeting, armed with detail about what current leverage could be used. And that information would have been learned through the myriad of global experts, who now happen to work for Trump at the State Department, CIA, Pentagon or even the National Security Council in his White House. Other presidents have had setbacks in their first 100 days and got over them, Think of Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. Think of the worst event in a president’s first 100 days  —   the country broke apart under the man most rank as the best American president of all time, Abraham Lincoln. But both adjusted  —   even if it wore on them. Kennedy set up an executive committee to gain better information. And he even consulted with his predecessor of a different party, Eisenhower, for advice  —   despite the fact that neither man was much of a fan of the other. Lincoln’s political efforts to bring the country back together were a turning point in American history and now the stuff of too many books and movies to count. But whether a president wants to or is capable of adjusting is a key question, one that centers on humility and temperament. Trump has shown some capacity to learn and adjust. He has shifted on a host of issues that have moved more toward what’s considered the mainstream. On foreign policy, he’s toughened his posture toward Syria and Russia. On economics, he didn’t label China a currency manipulator after vowing to do so during the campaign. He hasn’t torn up NAFTA yet, and he’s now praising Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. During the campaign, he said she should be ”ashamed” for being so ”political” in keeping interest rates low. Now he says he likes the low rates. One man’s inconsistency is another’s flexibility it depends on your lens. ”Smart enough,” but is he humble enough? Obama had very limited experience. He was young, only served two years in the Senate before running for president and had been a state senator before that. But he was studied and intellectually curious. Trump feasts on a diet of cable news, prefers his information in bullet form on one page and listens to family and various loyalists. ”He seems to be a smart enough man,” Perry said, ”but he seems to be intellectually incurious. I think that’s why he sounds so uninformed.” Trump also sows chaos and confusion while lacking a degree of   and humility, which may mean more of the same after 100 days. ”Is he going to learn anything from his failures and his shortcomings?” Dallek asked. ”I don’t know. He doesn’t seem inclined to say, ’I’m wrong’ or ’I made a mistake.’ He’s so resistant. There may not be a significant learning curve he may just keep going this direction because that’s just part of his character.” Politics has changed, and that’s not good, Views of ”politics” among the public have gotten worse. It’s not just trust in Congress or politicians themselves, but in the connotation the word now holds. Politics is no longer seen as ”the art of the possible.” It’s dismissed as something nefarious. And Smith thinks that’s part of what’s created the climate for someone like Trump to be able to win. ”We say idealistically we want someone above politics,” Smith said, ”and if we mean it, we invite disaster.” What does he mean by that? ”Politics is a profession,” Smith said. ”It’s as simple as that. Anyone can call themselves a journalist today who has a camera. That doesn’t make them a journalist it makes them a person with a camera. It’s a discipline to be taught and to be learned. Politics is no different, and it doesn’t mean that political neophytes are doomed to failure it does mean that the higher on the ladder you climb, the greater the risk of failure if you are lacking in political experience and judgment.” Ulysses S. Grant, the renowned Civil War general who became the country’s 18th president, seemed to fall victim to that. In his final message to Congress in 1876, he said (emphasis ours): ”It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of 17 I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a Presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them was I eligible as a voter. Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred. . .. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit. ...” Grant was praised for his military skill, but here, he is admitting that his lack of ”political training” hampered his presidency. Today, it’s en vogue to campaign against politics. ”People get elected to office by denouncing politics,” Smith said. And that is likely not good for democracy. ”We reached a tipping point, where casual, unthinking cynicism was set afire,” Smith said. ”Since John Kennedy, the president has been celebrity in chief. It’s not surprising 50 or 60 years later, the president is basically a celebrity and all that that portends.”"
"Not long ago, both the Economist and the New Yorker magazines featured unflattering cover portraits of President Trump holding a golf club. Both seemed to suggest the president had found himself in a rough patch. While that may be true politically, Trump is very much at home on the golf course  —   which is not surprising, since he owns 17 of them. Whatever historians ultimately write on his presidential scorecard, Trump may be the best golfer ever to occupy the Oval Office.  ”He’s won club championships. Of course, they’ve all been at his clubs,” says Jaime Diaz, a senior writer at Golf Digest and editor in chief at Golf World. Diaz, who’s played with Trump on a couple of occasions, says the president golfs the way he governs: largely by instinct. But his swing is not as reckless as it might appear. ”He has this sort of bombastic image, obviously.  . And you’d expect someone who probably has kind of a sort of a     kind of game. But in fact, it’s a game of control,” Diaz says. At age 70, Trump typically shoots in the 70s or low 80s. Plaques at his golf clubs say Trump has even hit a couple of   . (And that’s not counting his   drive for the White House.) John F. Kennedy was probably the   golfing president, though he didn’t play much in public. Kennedy tried to distance himself from his   predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower. The first time Kennedy walked into the Oval Office, he was surprised to find cleat marks on the battered hardwood floor.  ”President Eisenhower would pace back and forth with his golf spikes on before he went out to the putting green to chip and putt a little bit in the morning,” says historian Mike Trostel of the United States Golf Association. Nowadays, that hardwood floor is covered. And that’s not the only way modern presidents try to sweep their golfing habits under the rug. While Trump spends hours at his own golf courses, aides rarely reveal whom he’s playing with or even confirm that he’s playing at all. Before he was president himself, Trump often criticized President Obama’s time on the links  —   though he recently told a group of lawmakers that’s only because Obama didn’t use the time to cut deals. ”I always said about President Obama, it’s great to play golf. But play with heads of countries,” Trump said. ”Don’t play with your friends that you play with every week.” Trump recently bonded with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over a round of golf. And he tried to sell an Obamcare replacement bill between holes to Sen. Rand Paul,  . ”We had a great day with the president today,” Paul said afterwards. ”We did talk about health care reform. I think the sides are getting closer and closer together. ” Lyndon Johnson also used the golf course as one more venue for   whereas Obama rarely talked politics during a round, except maybe the one time he played with House Speaker John Boehner. Historian Trostel says in the last century, all but three U. S. presidents have spent time on the golf course. (Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter were the holdouts, although Trostel recently discovered that Carter played some in the military.) Different presidents exhibit a wide variety of styles. George H. W. Bush raced around the course in less than two hours. A round with Bill Clinton could drag on half the day. By far the most prolific presidential golfer was Woodrow Wilson, who played nearly every day but Sunday  —   some 1600 rounds  —   including all through World War I. ”In the winter time he had Secret Service agents paint golf balls red so he could practice in the snow,” Trostel says. By comparison, Eisenhower played about 800 rounds during his two terms in office. And Obama played 333, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who keeps an unofficial but authoritative tally of all presidential statistics. Trump is on pace to exceed Obama’s golf total, and he could match Eisenhower’s. It’s doubtful, though, that he’ll come anywhere close to Wilson’s record. For today’s presidents, the golf course is loaded with political sand traps, including accusations that they’re slacking off or isolating themselves in a ritzy country club. But Golf Digest’s Diaz suspects there are real payoffs too: an opportunity to relax and clear one’s head, and for Trump, a chance to hit the pause button on the constant  . ”I didn’t sense he needed to tell you how good he was when he played golf,” Diaz says. ”I think he was confident about it and he let his actions speak for themselves. In some ways, that might be his best self, out on the golf course.”"
"Can all hope be lost? I used to think not. I used to think that no matter how tough life gets for people, they always have hope to cling to  —   to get them through it. Then I met some Rohingya refugees on a trip to Bangladesh last month. Reporter Michael Sullivan and I were there to report on the latest wave of the Muslim minority group to flee over the border from   Myanmar. We spoke with Rohingya living both inside and outside of the refugee camps that have taken root in southern Bangladesh. Working through interpreters, they told us the stories of how they’d fled from their homeland late last year during the latest Myanmar military crackdown against them. How their villages had been sacked and their homes burnt to the ground. How they’d faced a brutal military campaign of torture and mass rape. Tens of thousands of them had been displaced. After hearing these distressing accounts, I wanted to know: Given all that they had been through, what were their hopes for the future? We asked about a dozen refugees. And I was shaken by their answers. I asked one woman, Shajada  —   a name she chose for herself to protect her identity and her family back in Myanmar  —   what she hoped for her future. She responded via the interpreter: ”Do you mean in terms of food?” I tried to clarify and   the question through the interpreter. Shajada, who had suffered an injury to her legs and hips while fleeing the Myanmar army that’s left her almost immobile, finally did answer: ”I don’t hope anything for me. I don’t hope for me because I cannot even move from one place to another because if I move, I fall down.” Another young woman, Roshida  —   also not her real name  —     didn’t comprehend the question at first. ”We do not understand,” Roshida responded, speaking for herself and her cousins. After we asked the question a couple of different ways, Roshida did finally say that if she could eat and Myanmar was peaceful, she would go home and try to get married. That’s an extraordinary hope for the future given what she’d been through. When the Myanmar military came to her village, Roshida was raped by four soldiers. In that part of the world having been raped can ruin a woman’s prospects of finding a husband. We thought perhaps the question of hope was getting lost in translation, so Michael tried asking: ”How do you still go on?” A woman who called herself Zubaida  —   again to protect her identity  —   answered by listing the things she needs to do to survive in the camp: sell rice, find a job, learn to speak Bangla (the Bangladeshi language). These conversations made me wonder: What exactly is hope? ”Hope is what we want to happen,” says neuroscientist Dr. Tali Sharot, who directs the Affective Brain Lab at University College London and does research on optimism, emotion and decision making. Hope  —   and optimism  —   does not come from any particular part of the brain, she says. Instead, a person’s ability to hope and be optimistic is part genetics and part experience. ”So you can be born with a certain way of processing information that makes you more likely to be optimistic and you do learn from things that happen to you, you do learn from the world around you,” says Sharot. In other words: a person’s outlook on life comes from both their genetic predisposition and life experiences. If a person has many negative experiences, they may come to believe that negative things are always going to happen, she says. And that would be a reason for someone to just not feel positive anymore  —   to lose hope. This could explain why the Rohingya refugees we interviewed had difficulty talking about their future. For decades, the Rohingya have been terrorized and persecuted by the Myanmar military simply for being an ethnic and religious minority  —   something the military mostly denies. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes in waves. It is estimated that some 500, 000 Rohingya refugees live in Bangladesh alone. ”I know that for many, many refugee populations like the Rohingya who’ve been living for years in situations of great uncertainty there’s an erosion of hope,” says Pindie Stephen, who works with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to help refugees move out of camps. Stephen, who worked with refugees for 12 years in Kenya, says it’s hard for people to think about the future when they’re concerned about immediate needs  —   identity papers, school for their children and safe housing. ”So I think a question like, ’What are your hopes?’ takes them off guard,” says Stephen. ”A lot of our refugee population lives in this limbo for such a long time that I think they no longer even have the luxury of being able to hope.”  A recent trauma can also have an effect on a person’s ability to hope, says Peter Ventevogel, a psychiatrist with the United Nations Refugee Agency. ”We often see at the beginning very high stress levels and levels of uncertainty,” he says. ”They [newly arrived refugees] don’t know what are their options, they don’t have enough information to make decisions about what they want.” Ventevogel is part of a team that conducted interviews with Rohingya in the two government registered refugee camps in Bangladesh. The team’s forthcoming article, expected to be printed next month in the journal Transcultural Psychiatry, details findings of high levels of mental health concerns, such as PTSD and depression, among the 148 Rohingya interviewed. With those feelings comes a feeling of being trapped, he says. Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are truly trapped. They are stateless. Their home country of Myanmar does not want them, nor does Bangladesh  —   or any other country they flee to. In Bangladesh the Rohingya are not allowed to leave their camps, get a passport in order go to another country or even legally work because they aren’t citizens. They have no good options. ”They had to leave their country because of the troubles they were in and [move] into an environment that they don’t perceive as welcoming and they can’t get out,” Ventevogel says. ”And that’s not good for your mental health. That creates demoralization and loss of hope.” But Ventevogel says in his experience talking to refugees who have been displaced for many years  —   whose shock and trauma is not fresh  —   he’s found they have a lot of hope for the future. ”Often it is framed in indirect ways,” he says. ”People hope their children can get a good education or they can get a resettlement [to another country] and build a new life, to get back to the country they came from,” he says. Ventevogel believes the humanitarian community can help the hopeless find hope again. It starts, he says, with helping refugees regain control of their lives. Then they’re more likely to see prospects for the future. ”Sometimes it’s very simple, it’s just giving people a piece of land and materials to build their own house again because people can recreate something that’s their own,” he says, pointing to refugees in Uganda and Tanzania who are allowed to farm. Near the end of our time in Bangladesh we spoke with a Rohingya who backs up Ventevogel’s claim that refugees who have been displaced for a longer time are better able to think about their future.     Mohammad Nur, a name he chose to protect his identity, has been a refugee his whole life. He was born in a   refugee camp. When we asked if he had any future in Bangladesh, he replied: ”I think not. Not at all.” He said he knew if he didn’t leave, his brain would die. ”I will not die, my body will not die but . .. I will be like a disabled guy,” he says. And so in this hopeless situation, he has one clear hope for the future: ”I must leave.” Ashley Westerman spent a week and a half in Bangladesh in March producing radio stories on the Rohingya with reporter Michael Sullivan."
"One day Ronnie Sidney, from Tappahannock, Va. was goofing off with his classmates in math when one of them threw a paper football at the board  —   and it landed a little too close to the teacher. Sidney says the   teacher, visibly frustrated, turned around and said, ”None of you are going to college.” That was a pivotal moment for Sidney. Not only did he feel stigmatized as a special education student diagnosed with ADHD Sidney says he had also felt discriminated against in school as an  . By the time of the incident with the football, he had already spent seven years in special education, feeling like he was bad at school. But Sidney says that instead of letting the teacher’s outburst get to him personally, it motivated him to graduate from high school, then college and eventually get a master’s degree in social work at Virginia Commonwealth University. But the numbers don’t bode well for students in similar situations. The National Center for Learning Disabilities analyzed data from the U. S. Department of Education and found that students with learning disabilities drop out at nearly three times the rate of students overall. And for black students, dropping out is even more likely. Robert Balfanz, a professor at Johns Hopkins’ School of Education and director of the Everyone Graduates Center, says the double stigma these students face is a key factor in their graduation rates. It’s not only the academic challenges that can affect these students’   and motivation to learn. For black students, there’s also the awareness of racial biases and discrimination. In the   school year, about 37 percent of black students with a disability left high school without a regular diploma, compared with 23 percent of white students with a disability  —   a 14   difference. ”A lot of teachers just don’t know,” Sidney says, referring to that double stigma. ”I had a good relationship with my special education teacher, but when it came to some of my mainstream education teachers, there was a disconnect.” Sidney says one day in   English class, students were reading a book out loud that contained the   one too many times for him. When it was his turn to read, he says he tried to be silly by replacing the racial slur with ”neighbor” and other words starting with N. Even though Sidney says he just wanted to ease the tension, he was reprimanded for not taking the assignment seriously. And across the country, many students report feeling that same disconnect. Nationally, more than 80 percent of teachers are white at the same time, students of color make up more than half of public school students. And often, the demographic disparity between white teachers and their students of color shows up in the data. For example, 1 in 4 black boys with a disability was suspended during the   school year, compared with 1 in 10 white boys with a disability. For black girls, it was 1 in 5, compared with 1 in 20. Balfanz found in his research at   schools that behavior problems are one of the early warning signs of a student’s probability of dropping out. If teachers aren’t aware of the stereotypes minorities and special ed students face, Balfanz says, ”if teachers aren’t cued into that, the cycle continues.” Training teachers in cultural differences, Donna Y. Ford, a professor of education and human development at Vanderbilt University, says training teachers to be aware of their own biases  —   implicit or explicit  —   needs to start earlier.    teachers should be required to take courses to prepare them for the variety of school environments they may work in outside college. ”A cultural difference is not a deficit,” Ford says, explaining that also applies to students with disabilities. When teachers understand how a student’s background can affect his or her behavior in the classroom, they can build better relationships and diminish the effects that double stigma has on their students. Ford lists five areas where cultural competency can be implemented in schools: teaching philosophy, learning environment, curriculum, instruction and gifted education. That last component is vital, she says. Typically, students of color are overrepresented in special education programs and underrepresented in gifted and honors classes. Sidney says he had to fight for those types of opportunities in high school. He knew those were the kinds of classes that would help him get into college. There, he says, students’ behavior ”wasn’t an issue.” ”I had a lot of gifts and talents,” Sidney says, but it took the right teachers to recognize them. Two years ago, Sidney published a children’s book to illustrate his experience in special education, called ”Nelson Beats the Odds.” And he plans to publish more. ”If I was able to overcome and graduate high school,” Sidney says, ”I felt like I could do anything, and that’s the passion and that’s the resilience that I take with me.”"
"Some dogs are doggos, some are puppers, and others may even be pupperinos. There are corgos and clouds, fluffers and floofs, woofers and boofers. The chunky ones are thicc, and the thin ones are long bois. When they stick out their tongues, they’re doing a mlem, a blep, a blop. They bork. They boof. Once in a while they do each other a frighten. And whether they’re   or   they’re all h*ckin’ good boys and girls. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? If not, you’re probably not fluent in DoggoLingo, a language trend that’s been gaining steam on the Internet in the past few years. The language most often accompanies a picture or a video of a dog and has spread to all major forms of social media. It might even change the way we talk out loud to our beloved canines. DoggoLingo, sometimes referred to as   ”seems to be quite lexical, there are a lot of distinctive words that are used,” says Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch. ”It’s cutesier than others, too. Doggo, woofer, pupper, pupperino, fluffer  —   those have all got an extra suffix on the end to make them cuter.” McCulloch also notes DoggoLingo is uniquely heavy on onomatopoeias like bork, blep, mlem and blop. It’s no surprise DoggoLingo is made up of cutesy suffixes and onomatopoeias. ”You’re taking on characteristics of how people would address their animals in the first place,” McCulloch says. What’s more, DoggoLingo is spoken by humans online, as opposed to in memes like LOLcats, doge and snek where the animals themselves do the talking. This makes DoggoLingo much more accessible, McCulloch notes, and perhaps more likely to find its way into spoken human speech. It wouldn’t be surprising if people started to call their Samoyeds fluffers, point out a Labrador’s mlem or call an overweight pug a fat boi, as in this Facebook post. In fact, they’re probably saying these out loud already. ”A new cutesy word for a thing you’re already used to using cutesy words for? That’s such an easy entry to vocabulary,” McCulloch says. A menagerie of   DoggoLingo’s array of words is a hodgepodge of existing Internet language. For example, the phrase ”doing me a frighten,” used to describe startled dogs, comes from an image posted in late 2015 according to KnowYourMeme. com. In it, a tiny Rottweiler puppy shocks its parent with a flurry of borks. The parent replies, ”stop it son, you are doing me a frighten.” The origin of ”bork” itself is less clear, but it’s clearly onomatopoeic. It’s perhaps most   thanks to Gabe the Dog, a tiny floof of a Miniature American   whose borks have been remixed into countless classic tunes. Jurassic Bork, The Bork Files, Doggos of the Borkribbean, Imperial Borks  —   the list goes on and on. Tongue sounds have been floating around the Internet for a few years now, but seem to have finally found a home in DoggoLingo. They even have precise meanings. As Redditor blop_cop points out in a comment, ”A blop is when a dog pokes his tongue out due to   and it often is only a small portion of the tongue. A mlem is basically any time a dog is licking their chops, or sticking their tongue out!” A perfect example of a miniature Australian shepherd doing a ”mlem” was captured on Facebook, as shown here. Not all of DoggoLingo is  . ”Blep” is commonly used for cats sticking out their tongues, too, as demonstrated on the   subreddit   . The constant use of ”heck” in DoggoLingo might come from the snek meme, McCulloch says, where snakes try to act tough but are really just loveable losers. Sometimes heck is censored as h*ck. Matt Nelson, who runs the WeRateDogs Twitter account (@dog_rates) says tweets from WeRate popularized h*ck and its derivatives. ”I’m sure someone else did that before,” he says, ”but it was something original to me and I used it to such an extent that people associate it with [@dog_rates] now.” @dog_rates currently has 1. 77 million followers. Nelson rates submissions to the account with such lighthearted humor that, when combined with the power of a bombastically cute pup, often go viral. Internet circles define DoggoLingo, McCulloch thinks DoggoLingo may have become popularized and perhaps even solidified in this way thanks to accounts like WeRateDogs on Twitter, and also to   groups on Facebook with thousands of members. One such group is called Dogspotting. At more than 500, 000 members  —   and gaining around 10, 000 a week  —   it’s one of the larger   groups on Facebook. The rules are simple. . ..Well, OK, they’re not that simple. Essentially, members around the world post photos and videos of dogs they happen across in their daily lives. The No Known Dogs rule makes sure people don’t spam posts of their own pets, the No Selfies rule keeps the posts   (no humans!) and the Don’t Drive and Spot rule keeps spotters safe. The result: thousands of doggos and puppers flood the Dogspotting group  —   and members’ newsfeeds  —   every single day. Of course, with members constantly posting and writing captions, the group is a breeding ground for DoggoLingo. ”We can’t help but be socially influenced by each other,” McCulloch says. ”The fun part of a meme is participating in something that other people recognize.” So, if one person calls a fat Corgi a loaf (like in the Dogspotting Facebook post shown here) and others find it funny, it’s easy for terms like that to proliferate and eventually become part of a language like DoggoLingo. Dogspotting may even be the birthplace of DoggoLingo’s titular term ”doggo.” Though created in 2008, Dogspotting really took off in the summer of 2014, particularly in Australia. This is significant because, as McCulloch points out, adding ” ” to words is very Australian. For example, where we’d say def to abbreviate the word definitely, Australians would say defo. So were Australians posting in Dogspotting saying ”doggo,” which   around the world picked up on and turned into a viral Internet word? ”That makes a shocking amount of sense,” says John Savoia, who founded Dogspotting and runs the page with Reid Paskiewicz and Jeff Wallen. ”I bet you anything [doggo] was used before Dogspotting and we just made it part of the lexicon,” Paskiewicz says. James Moffatt, a performance artist who grew up in Adelaide and is not a member of Dogspotting, says he remembers doggo being used ”as an affectionate diminutive to refer to dogs throughout my childhood.” All in all, it’s possible that doggo got a boost shortly after more Australians joined Dogspotting. Pages like Ding de la Doggo may have also assisted its slingshot into meme stardom. A canine oasis, Dogs’ wholesomeness could be why groups like Dogspotting and accounts like WeRateDogs have become so popular. They’re an escape from a news cycle that’s become terrifying and depressing for so many. Nelson isn’t sure why exactly dogs are so genuinely heartwarming. ”Maybe they represent this sort of unconditional love that we strive for,” he says, ”or they just embody this innocent perfection that we can’t really find in ourselves or immediately in other animals.” ”Dogs in general are wholesome and uplifting,” says Dogspotting moderator Molly Bloomfield. ”Irrelevant of your political views, your gender, your socioeconomic status everyone loves dogs and dogs love everyone.” To preserve this oasis and prevent conflict among members, Dogspotting doesn’t allow its members to take political stands in their posts. ”We try our hardest to be fair to everyone,” Wallen says. ”We allow spots from rallies, protests and such, but we don’t allow people to project their agendas onto the spotted dogs.” For example, a Dogspotter could say, ”I spotted this pup at the   rally,” but not, ”This dog hates Trump.” This Dogspotter followed the rules perfectly, spotting a ”beautiful doggo” named Oreo at a Planned Parenthood rally in Illinois. Rule breakers are banned, but can appeal to the Dogspotting People’s Court for  . ”We want everybody to get back in,” Paskiewicz says, ”as long as they don’t do it again.” As WeRateDogs followers are constantly reminded, all dogs are good dogs. And just about every dog posted on Dogspotting is accompanied by a tone of wonder, gushiness, or pure elation. ”In this time of politics hijacking our social media, people need dogs to smile and enjoy the good things in life,” Paskiewicz says. ”I feel honored to be a part of this social happening.” ”Dogspotting is relentlessly positive,” says Joey Faulkner, a Dogspotter and Ph. D. student at the University of Edinburgh who’s blogged about the group in the past. As Bloomfield puts it, ”Dogs are here! How can the world be evil when dogs exist?” Even the way Dogspotting is run is wholesome. Other   Facebook groups like Cool Dog Group and Big Hecking Group of Dang Doggos aren’t seen as competition to Dogspotting, Paskiewicz says. ”The more dogs, the better.” And if Dogspotting ever becomes profitable, Paskiewicz says a fixed percentage of profits will go to a respected dog charity. Dogspotting is so positive and complex that Paskiewicz has felt the need to specify during interviews that the group is not a cult. The phrase ”we are not a cult” has even spread to posts and  . It’s one of many Dogspotting mottos, along with ”the dogs must flow,” a reference from the novel Dune, and ”be excellent to each other,” from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The newest slogan? ”Come on in, the dogs are fine,” Paskiewicz says. DoggoLingo in the dictionary, This   positivity has driven the popularity of DoggoLingo to new heights. Even   is aware of terms like doggo and pupper. Though they have a long way to go before they’re eligible for    —   they need to be used in published, edited work over an extended period of time  —   they’re definitely candidates. ”I personally like both,” says Emily Brewster, an associate editor at   Inc. ”I think it’s great when people play with their language, and the new ’doggo’ is way more fun than the unrelated adverb meaning ’in hiding.’ ” McCulloch thinks some DoggoLingo terms have staying power, too: ”I wouldn’t be surprised if we see ’doggo’ around in 50 years and people never realize it came from a meme.” Jessica Boddy is a former NPR science desk intern. You can follow her @JessicaBoddy."
"After years working as a nurse in critical care units, Anne Webster found herself lying in the hospital struggling to get well. She had been given the wrong dose of a chemotherapy medication to treat Crohn’s disease. The mistake had caused her bone marrow to shut down, and she’d developed pneumonia. As she lay in the hospital, she thought, ”If I live, I’m gonna write about this.” After three weeks, she recovered. And the experience led Webster to write Chemo Brain, a poem about how the drug scrambled her thinking. Poetry, she says, has a way of trimming ”away every extraneous word until the essence shines through.” These days, she writes essays and poetry  . Webster’s first collection of poems, A History of Nursing, was nominated for a 2008 National Book Award. She’s currently working on a second anthology and a novel about a nurse involved in a murder mystery. ”I’m a nurse,” she says. ”It’s what I know.” By Anne Webster, Since a doctor gave me poison pills that left, my heart a swollen slug, killed off my bone marrow, set my lungs to clamoring, I can get   without eating a snow cone. When I walk, my neighborhood’s knotted streets, lost drivers, stop to ask directions. After thirty years, I know, the   but when they motor off, I wonder, Did I say left when I meant right? My husband, gets that look when words change lanes, without bothering to signal. Like soap bubbles, they pop from my mouth —  ”bird” for ”tree,” ”cat” for ”dog.” I know I’ve done it again when my grown children, all but pat my head. As if by magic, plastic wrap, detergent appear in the refrigerator. After errands, my car comes home nicked and scratched, as if it’s sneaking nips on the sly. I’m afraid, to drive anywhere new, one wrong turn, I’m lost forever. Just ask me a simple math problem  —   numbers dissolve into my skull’s black hole. Even as I curse that doctor, my brain wakes, a baby from a nap, stretching till its eyes pop open. A tsunami of panic recedes, but, as with an errant lover, it’s a long time before I am able to trust again. April is National Poetry Month, and Shots is exploring medicine in poetry through the words of doctors, patients and health care workers. The series is a collaboration with Pulse: Voices Through The Heart Of Medicine, a platform that publishes personal stories of illness and healing."
"Nasir Abdullahi is sitting in a mall in downtown Abuja, sipping fresh juice and eating plantain chips. Small, distinguished with an embroidered cap, Nasir looks like your typical Northern Nigerian businessman, but he’s also a farmer. A few years ago he got a call from an employee on his millet farm in Jigawa, Nigeria. ”He was even crying when he called me,” Abdullahi says. ”I said, ’Talk!’ He said, ’There is something serious, there is something serious!’ I said, ’Did anybody die? What is it?’ He said, ’No, it’s cattle herdsmen. ’” Abdullahi got in his car and drove a few hours to the farm. He learned the herdsmen and their cows had spent the night, destroying some of his crops. Later, his employees told the herdsmen to leave. That’s when the fight began. ”One of [the employees] was stabbed with a knife and the other one, they beat him up with some sticks,” Abdullahi says. In a clash of herdsmen near his other farm in Nasarawa, central Nigeria, it was worse. That time, more than 50 people died. According to   security consultants SBM Intelligence, last year more than 1, 400 died in these conflicts. Brig. Gen. SK Usman is the spokesman for the Nigerian army. Usman says a lot of the problems come down to land that was originally set aside as a grazing reserve back in the 1960s. ”Areas that actually were supposed to be green land are being taken over by populations,” he says. ”And these were supposed to be grazing routes, so the area is becoming narrow and compressed.” Policy analyst Sani Musa says there’s also another thing going on. ”It’s climate change! Even though some people are living in denial of it, but I think we are seeing it,” Musa says. The Sahara desert is growing, he says. Lake Chad for instance? ”It’s just 10 percent of what it was in 1963,” Musa says. The nomadic herdsmen who live across West Africa now have to travel farther and farther south with their cows to graze. Musa says that’s why many of those implicated in these attacks aren’t Nigerian and, instead, come from Niger, Mali, even Senegal. Some Nigerian states have taken action  —   setting aside grazing reserve for nomads. And the Nigerian senate is talking about a new national grazing reserve bill. But aside from all that  —   there’s an existential discussion going on. In a fancy Abuja neighborhood, on a hill overlooking the city, I find Sani Musa on the phone with a nomadic herdsman who watches his cows. When I ask Musa how many cows he has, he begins to giggle. ”Well, you know, normally a Fulani does not say his cows. Because it’s like talking to you about my account in the bank,” he smiles. ”But I have a lot.” Musa’s cows are nomadic, they move all over northeast Nigeria. But some cattle owners are saying, enough. They now keep their cows in one place to minimize chances for conflict. Another cow owner, Abba Abubakar keeps his cows in two places  —   near Yola in Adamawa state and in Gambu in Tarawa state. But he says his cows always stick to one piece of land. As for Musa, his cows will stay nomadic for now. He says it’s important to remember that being a nomad is a way of life. ”You cannot legislate it out of existence,” he says. ”You have to convince these people, and a lot of them feel it’s the philosophy of their existence.” Still, given the conflicts over land and water, he knows which way the nomadic way of life in Nigeria is headed. ”It will be part of history, I know,” he says. But, someday, the nomads may be able to find videos of their past on YouTube. ”They will teach their grandchildren, ’This is how we used to be,’ ” Musa says."
"With student debt at a staggering $1. 3 trillion, many families are facing a huge financial dilemma: Their final springtime decisions about college enrollment and acceptance. The NPR Ed team teamed up with Weekend Edition to answer some listener questions about debt and degrees. Waiting on the numbers  Marcy, from Union City, N. J. has twin girls going off to college in September. ”My question is: Why is it that universities and colleges wait so long to give the financial aid package? First deposits are due May 1 and we still haven’t received the financial aid packages for half the schools that accepted my girls.” This is a common complaint. Colleges are increasingly practicing what’s called ”enrollment management.” They are trying to assemble an incoming class that is as talented and   as possible, to ensure the college’s prestige, but also the one that will contribute the most revenue. In addition, colleges have to predict how many of the students they accept will actually enroll, which is more difficult these days since many students are applying to more colleges than ever. When it comes to private colleges, nearly 90 percent of incoming freshmen get some kind of discount, hovering over 50 percent of the cost. But this lack of transparency in pricing is especially hard for families who are feeling the pinch economically. Middle class squeeze, Abby Goldfarb of Dallas has a daughter about to enter college this fall. And here’s what she thinks of the financial aid landscape: ”The wealthy in this country are able to write checks and cover the cost of tuition . .. and colleges are very, very generous to people making under $60, 000 a year in this country. And heaven forbid you’re making in that   $100, 000 a year range.” Almost everyone has trouble paying for college. It is true that   families are less likely to qualify for   Pell Grants, and can’t pay out of pocket the way the wealthiest families can. But, a mitigating factor is that   students are more likely to finish their degrees and pay off their loans, compared with   and   college students. New York state’s recently announced   plan has been pitched quite consciously at the middle class. It is designed to cover families earning up to $100, 000, rising to $125, 000 once fully phased in. Don’t know much about philosophy, Heather Feaga wrote to us on Facebook: ”Don’t ever get student loans. Period. And don’t get a degree in art, or philosophy, or history, or something that you will very unlikely get paid real money for.” It’s true that there’s a relationship between college major and your projected earnings after graduation. Engineering grads top the list. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that everyone should rush into technical fields, or choose any college major based on earnings alone. For one thing, economists will tell you that the right ”fit” between a person and a job is a key driver of success and productivity. One example: When people graduate in a recession year it drags down their earnings long term, and one reason is because of job mismatch  —   people are desperate and take the first job they can find. Plus, recent research by the Association of American Colleges  Universities, a trade group, found that humanities and social science majors closed earning gaps with their   classmates by  . More than just four years, Aaron Smith, of Akron, Ohio, teaches English composition at a   college. ”There are a lot of students who seem to feel like they have to be there, and a lot of times I feel like they honestly don’t know why they’re there. And my advice to students is: You do not have to believe the urban myth that you have to go to college. There are other options. There’s lots of need for skilled jobs . .. I have an advanced degree and a lot of people  —   plumbers, mechanics, carpenters  —   they make more money than I do.” Professor Smith has a point. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, some of the   occupations in the whole economy fall into the  ’  category. This includes the single   job in the country right now, wind turbine technicians. They earn over $50, 000 a year, no college degree required. Other fairly   examples are health care trades requiring a   degree, such as occupational therapy assistants and physical therapist assistants. Got questions for us on student loans or the cost of college? Tweet us at @npr_ed or email npred@npr. org."
"When Jewish couple Mikey Franklin and Sonya Shpilyuk hung a ”Black Lives Matter” banner from the window of their condominium, they hoped to voice their solidarity with the social justice movement. Instead, the backlash to their small act of resistance was swift. Two days later, their car was egged and toilet paper was strewn across a tree in front of their property. A handwritten message, carefully spelled out in block letters, admonished Franklin and Shpilyuk for their banner and warned the couple to ”enjoy the mayhem.” At the bottom of the letter was a yellow Star of David and the word ”Jude,” German for Jew. With hate crimes on the rise, old coalitions between blacks and Jews are being rekindled and tested. According to a recent survey by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) 57 percent of Jews support Black Lives Matter, the second highest percentage of any faith group following Muslims. Although blacks and Jews worked closely to advance social justice during the Civil Rights Movement, the strong ties between the two groups have waned since the end of Jim Crow. But the election of President Trump has contributed to a marked increase in hate crimes, while racist and   attacks had already been on the rise for years. The FBI’s 2015 Hate Crimes Statistics report showed that most hate crimes are racially motivated, with over half targeting  . Religiously motivated attacks rose nearly 23 percent compared to 2014, with the majority targeting Jews. Since January 2017,   hate crimes in New York have risen by 94 percent when compared to the same period in 2016. In March, army veteran and white supremacist James Jackson was indicted on terrorism charges after traveling to New York City to allegedly kill black men. During the 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and   League (ADFL) began to work as a united front on issues from segregation to employment discrimination. In 1965, at the height of the Civil Rights Era, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched side by side with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Birmingham. The image of the two faith leaders has been a longtime emblem of   alliance. The story of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, two Jewish civil rights activists who were murdered in Mississippi along with James Chaney, a black activist, in 1964, is similarly notable. Their murder was the basis of the acclaimed 1988 Academy   film Mississippi Burning. But not all Jews view this golden age of   relations as old allies reconnecting. Ma’Nishtana, a     Orthodox Jewish author and educator, believes this common narrative is a ”romanticized and inflated revisionist history of how involved the Jewish community was during the civil rights era.” Cheryl Greenberg, a history professor at Trinity College, also holds the view that Jewish support for civil rights wasn’t entirely noble. ”The meeting of the minds regarding the civil rights agenda emerged from a clear, explicit  . Jews realized that their   rested in making sure that the United States didn’t discriminate against anybody. History showed them that if anybody went first, Jews were sure to come next.” The closeness of the black and Jewish groups was not only a product of common moral and ideological beliefs, but also a function of proximity. Today, the term ”ghetto” is used to refer to a poor, urban black community, but at the turn of the 20th century, ghettos in places like Harlem and the Bronx were also home to immigrant groups and American Jews. As Jews became more upwardly mobile, Greenberg said, ”they benefitted from white privilege even though they didn’t know it, and failed to recognize the structural barriers preventing black people from doing better economically. They began to push a kind of   approach to society.” The growing divide between the two communities was crystallized in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, a controversial affirmative action case that marked the first time black and Jewish groups filed amicus briefs on opposite sides of the same question. Divisions between the two groups became further entrenched as black activists embraced an   message and American Jews embraced loyalty to Israel, according to Marjorie Feld, a history professor at Babson College. ”After 1967, when Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the Third World Movement began to focus too on Palestinians, and so too did some black Americans,” she said. Today, Israel continues to be a flashpoint of conflict between blacks and Jews. In August 2016, the Movement for Black Lives, a national umbrella organization encompassing over 50 organizations, released a policy platform titled ”A Vision for Black Lives.” The document, which touches on issues including criminal justice and education reform, also includes a statement on Israel and Palestine: ”The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. .. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people.” Although this position occupies only a bullet point in a brief section of the document, its inclusion has been the source of significant backlash from conservative and progressive Jewish groups alike. T’ruah, a coalition of rabbis that advocates for human rights, published a statement saying it agreed with many of the policy recommendations of the document, but objected to the characterization of the Israeli occupation as genocide. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston (JCRC) took it a step further by dissociating itself completely from Black Lives Matter by claiming ”JCRC cannot and will not align ourselves with organizations that maliciously assert Israel is committing genocide.” Despite these fissures in   relations, according to Marjorie Feld, a history professor at Babson College, a generational gap is now emerging within the Jewish community on questions of Israel and Black Lives Matter. ”It is older American Jews, some say, who won’t let go of their unquestioning Zionism, while younger Jews are far more critical of Israel.” Feld’s remarks reflect wider trends among American youth today. A recent Pew Research study found that millennials are the only generational cohort in which fewer than half sympathize with Israel. Over a quarter of millennials sympathize with Palestinians  —   the highest of any generation. ”Social change requires discomfort. Sometimes it requires us to work with people we will not agree with on every issue,” said Carin Mrotz, Executive Director of Jewish Community Action (JCA). ”When Jewish organizations quickly issued statements of intent to pull away from work with Black Lives Matter, the cynical part of my brain questioned how deep or authentic those relationships really were.” As a social justice organization, JCA has a strong focus on solidarity work and collaborates with groups including Black Lives Matter Minneapolis on initiatives from stopping private prisons to increasing affordable housing access. While young progressive white Jews like Mrotz have taken a stand in Jewish communities to deepen their commitment to racial justice, Jews of color have played an instrumental role in bringing together the black and Jewish communities in the face of the Black Lives Matter controversy. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JREJ) a New York   advocacy group, has helped organize Jews throughout the city, most of whom identify as white, to engage them in action for racial justice. Leo Ferguson, a community organizer at JREJ, voices frustration at the peripheral involvement of most Jewish institutions in today’s fight for racial justice. ”As a Black person, I don’t have the luxury of walking away from this reality, or of abandoning my Black siblings when they need me to fight alongside them for justice and freedom from fear,” he said. ”That commitment to our movement  —   to Jews of Color and Black people everywhere  —   is what I need from my entire Jewish community, not only when it is easy, but when it is hard.” Ferguson founded JREJ’s Jews of Color Caucus, which developed a relationship with Black Lives Matter NYC in fall 2016. Recently, the two groups collaborated to plan a vigil and march for Ramarley Graham, an unarmed black teenager who was fatally shot in late March. Yavilah McCoy, a black and Jewish teacher and activist, believes heightened visibility of black American Jews will help make black issues Jewish issues. ”The more we incorporate the concerns of Jews of color in what ’the Jewish community’ cares about, the faster we can create a paradigm shift that moves the idea of Jewish identity beyond just white identity,” she said. ”The further we get towards understanding that, the closer we are to comprehending what does racial justice and equity need to look like as an internal issue to the Jewish community.” Akinyi Ochieng is a writer and researcher studying at the London School of Economics. Follow her @kikiochieng."
"Mona Haydar is a   artist from Flint, Mich. She wears a hijab with pride. She’s been a performance poet for 13 years, writing about love, trauma, loss and joy. Earlier this month, she did something different. She released her first rap song, ”Hijabi,” along with an accompanying video. In just a few days, the music video went viral, with more than 1 million views on Facebook. Produced by Tunde Olaniran, it’s reminiscent of Beyoncé’s Lemonade visual album. It has a diverse female cast, vibrant modern choreography and camera work that creates intimacy with the viewer. Then there’s the fact that Haydar is eight months pregnant in the video. About 25 seconds in, the camera zooms out to reveal her full belly. ”It’s actually really powerful that there’s a pregnant woman in the video in a song that’s all about women’s bodies,” she says. ”It was just very important to challenge that narrative and to challenge that story  —   that not all women’s bodies look the same, and women’s bodies should not look the same.” Artists like Beyoncé and MIA have brought pregnant bodies into the mainstream, but Haydar says the negative views of pregnancy are still very apparent. ”The fact that a pregnant woman is in a music video was just shocking for a lot of people,” she says. ”And I found it really disturbing that people were so shocked. Often, people had more to say about me rubbing my belly than about the actual content.” Haydar’s lyrics also comment on the notion held, even by some feminists, that the hijab is an oppressive tradition. She raps: ”What that hair look like? Bet that hair look nice. Don’t that make you sweat? Don’t that feel too tight? Yo what your hair look like? Bet your hair look nice. How long your hair is? You need to get yo life.” Muslim women who wear the hijab have been increasingly targeted in the U. S. as Islamophobia has risen over the past few years. The number of physical assaults against Muslims in the United States reached Sept.   levels last year, according to the Pew Research Center. The FBI reported 257 incidents of   hate crimes in 2015, a 67 percent increase from the previous year. As a Muslim woman, breaking into the music industry has been difficult. Haydar says much of the pushback has come from the Muslim community. Some view music as haram, or ”not permissible,” a term used to describe things that go against religious practice. But Haydar doesn’t see it that way. ”You know, I’m not a young person. I’m not this thoughtless person who’s just jumping into something. Music being forbidden, I’m not interested in this conversation. Because something that promotes love and light is positive and is permissible. And not only permissible but necessary, especially in the world we live in right now,” Haydar says. She calls her music ”resistance music” because it celebrates diversity and calls for women to be ”unapologetic about who they are” with lyrics like: ”Make a feminist planet   Women haters get banished   Covered up or not, don’t ever take us for granted.” Haydar will release an album this year with more songs that focus on love and inclusiveness. NPR’s Noor Wazwaz produced this story for broadcast. Follow her @nfwazwaz."
"Former President Barack Obama on Monday gave his first public address since leaving office, moderating a panel with young people on community engagement while dancing around the turmoil surrounding his White House successor. ”So, uh, what’s been going on while I’ve been gone?” Obama deadpanned at the beginning of his opening remarks at the University of Chicago. The former president’s   on the public scene comes just before President Trump’s   mark on Saturday. Since leaving office, Obama has taken an extended vacation with former first lady Michelle, attended Broadway performances and has begun working on his memoirs. But in moderating the panel of six young civic leaders in the Chicago area, Obama underscored that it’s conversations like these he hopes to facilitate in his next act. ”I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what is the most important thing I can do for my next job,” Obama said, adding: ”The single most important thing I can do is to help in any way I can to prepare the next generation of leadership to take up the baton and to take their own crack at changing the world.” While his return to the public eye wasn’t overtly political in nature or in tone, he did bemoan the divisions in the country. He admitted that his famed comment that there were ”not red states and blue states”  —   made during his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address  —   was ”aspirational” but one he still believes in. He also reflected on the time he spent in Chicago as a community organizer before going to law school, later returning to the University of Chicago to teach constitutional law before he launched his political career. In regards to that work as a community organizer, ”I am the first to acknowledge that I did not set the world on fire,” Obama said, laughing. But, he continued, the experience he had working for change in the community ”taught me that ordinary people, when working together, can do extraordinary things. This community taught me that everybody has a story to tell that is important” and that despite divisions, people have ”common hopes and dreams, common aspirations, common values.”"
"Back in October, before his election,   candidate Donald Trump laid out a   Action Plan. He called it his ”Contract With The American Voter.” Among other things, it called for the full repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, suspension of immigration from certain ”  regions” and the lifting of ”roadblocks” to let ”infrastructure projects like the Keystone Pipeline move forward.” The   mark is not an official milestone, but in roughly the last century it has been a traditional point to take stock of a new administration. Throughout President Trump’s first 100 days, there have been both flurries of action and some setbacks. In many cases, the status of some of these efforts is not    —   often with substantial talk but less action. In other areas, progress is clearer. Saturday, April 29, marks the 100th day of Trump’s term and NPR is revisiting his action plan, through annotations from journalists throughout the newsroom, and taking stock of how the president’s accomplishments compare with the goals he set for himself for the same period. NPR producer Barbara Sprunt contributed to this story."
"Congress returns Tuesday from its spring recess, facing yet another     spate of    —   and a White House anxious to claim its first major legislative win. On Friday night, the funding measure lawmakers approved last year to keep the federal government running will expire. The timing leaves members of the House and Senate just four days to reach a new agreement to fund the government, or risk a partial shutdown of federal agencies on Saturday  —   the 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency. Ever aware of the consequences, House Speaker Paul Ryan says passing a spending bill is his primary goal this week  —   even as the White House is urging the GOP to resuscitate last month’s failed attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and the president is making a fresh push on a tax overhaul. ”Wherever we land will be a product the president can and will support,” Ryan said of the spending bill during a Saturday afternoon conference call with Republican lawmakers, according to a GOP aide. Border wall funding fight, A viable spending deal will require both Democratic support and President Trump’s ultimate approval, setting a potential political landmine. The White House is signaling that it wants the bill to include new funding to build President Trump’s proposed wall on the U. S.  border, though it’s becoming less clear how far they are willing to push the issue. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly says Trump ”will be insistent.” ”I think it goes without saying that the president has been pretty straightforward about his desire and the need for a border wall, so I would suspect that he’ll do the right thing for sure, but I would suspect that he’ll be insistent for funding,” Kelly said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. White House chief of staff Reince Priebus echoed that sentiment, appearing Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. Priebus said he believes the spending bill will include ”something satisfactory” regarding the funding for the border wall. He left some wiggle room for funds to be provided for border security instead of specifically for a wall. Priebus also declined to say that Trump would veto a bill that didn’t include wall funding. Democrats have for weeks warned against such ”poison pill” additions to the spending bill and say they will not support allocating money for Trump’s pet project. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer basically told the president to butt out on Sunday. ”We’d ask him to let us do our work, not throw in some   poison pills that could undo it and we could get this done,” Schumer told reporters. GOP revives health care push, Meanwhile, Ryan says he’s encouraged by the GOP’s efforts toward writing a new health care bill  —   one aimed at bridging the gaps between centrist Republicans and   conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus. The White House pushed for a vote this week to allow Republicans to move ahead with a tax overhaul and other priorities. But Ryan  —   having learned the lesson of last month’s failed attempt  —   told Republican lawmakers on Saturday’s conference call there will be a vote on a new health care bill only when enough support exists to pass it. President Trump is driving a hard bargain in trying to force Democrats to the negotiating table. Posting on Twitter on Sunday, he appeared to renew his threat to withhold payments owed to health insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act. Such a move would force it to collapse. But Trump also said in recent days that it didn’t much matter whether another health care vote took place before or after his first 100 days were up. ”No particular rush. But we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters last week. Adding a tax overhaul to the agenda, Add to the already packed and complicated congressional agenda this  —   overhauling the country’s tax code. Congress is taking steps to get the ball rolling on tax legislation. The chief   committee in the House is set to hold hearings this week on the Republicans’ import tax proposal known as the ”border adjustment tax.” President Trump says he’ll make a ”big” tax announcement on Wednesday. Trump told The Associated Press his plan will cut taxes for both individuals and businesses, but it’s expected to be more of a broad outline than a specific plan. As for the timeline, the administration now says it aims to overhaul the country’s tax code by late 2017. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin initially set a goal of getting tax reform passed by August. That deadline has slipped on account of the delay caused by the GOP’s failed health care bill. Democrats, on the other hand, say tax reform won’t move forward without the president first making his tax returns public  —   to make clear how he might benefit from the proposed legislation."
"Updated at 7:30 p. m. ET, An article on a State Department website about President Trump’s    resort has been removed after criticism that it was an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds. Critics complained that resources were being used to tout the   club, which Trump refers to as the Winter White House. The club, in Palm Beach, Fla. is held in Trump’s trust, of which he is the sole beneficiary. ”The intention of the article was to inform the public about where the President has been hosting world leaders. We regret any misperception and have removed the post,” a State Department official said in a statement that has now replaced the original article. The ShareAmerica website says it ”is part of the Bureau of International Information Programs, which works with U. S. embassies and consulates in more than 140 countries to engage with people around the globe on U. S. foreign policy and American society.” But on the webpage about    there was no discussion of policy. The page showed photos of the   club’s opulent rooms and exterior, and noted that ”When he acquired the house, Trump also bought the decorations and furnishings that [original owner Marjorie Merriweather] Post had collected over the years, preserving   ’s style and taste.” The website generated attention Monday when Sen. Ron Wyden,  . and others started tweeting about it. In one tweet, Wyden said: ”Yes, I am curious @StateDept. Why are taxpayer $$ promoting the President’s private country club?” In another tweet, he steered people to the webpage, saying: ”Here’s the full post in its kleptocratic glory.” American Oversight, a watchdog group that includes some lawyers who worked at agencies in the Obama administration, said earlier Monday it would file a complaint with the State Department’s inspector general and the Office of Government Ethics. The group says that ”promoting    appears to violate Section 2635. 702 of the Standards of Ethical Conduct, which prohibits government employees from using their public office to endorse private enterprise.” American Oversight also had said it would ask congressional oversight committees to conduct an ”investigation into how and why the article promoting Trump properties was written and distributed.”"
"When I ask friends how they’re doing, ”tired” is often part of the response. A 2015 YouGov. com poll found 38 percent of Americans were poorly rested at least four days of the week. Research from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from a few years earlier found that 15 percent of women and 10 percent of men said they were ”very tired or exhausted” most days or every day of the week. ”It’s very, very common,” says Susan Hingle, chair of the board of regents for the American College of Physicians and an internist at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. If you’re tired all the time, should you worry? It can be hard not to, since a Google search will show you that fatigue can be a symptom of a host of diseases, including serious ones. Before you go there, consider the most obvious problem, especially if you’re young and otherwise healthy: Maybe you’re not sleeping enough. The CDC reported last year that   of Americans aren’t getting seven or more hours of sleep per day. Some studies put that percentage even higher. If you are a woman with children, each kid increases the odds of insufficient sleep by 50 percent, according to a study presented at the recent meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. The study did not find the same result for men with kids. It doesn’t mean you should blow off your tiredness, but it does mean it might be helped by what sleep experts call ”sleep hygiene.” That means working backward from the time you need to wake up and setting a bedtime so you get sufficient sleep, then sticking to it. Limit daytime napping if you don’t fall asleep until late at night. Cut out the caffeine and alcohol close to bedtime. Exercise regularly. And keep screens  —   televisions, smartphones and tablets  —   out of the bedroom if possible, and stop using them an hour or two before bedtime. The light they emit and the stimulation they provide may contribute to sleep problems. If it doesn’t seem to just be a matter of getting an hour or so more of sleep, talk to your doctor. There is a wide range of medical conditions associated with feeling tired all the time, some more serious than others. ”We try to get [people] to define what they mean by ’tired,’ ” says Hingle. For example, are you sleepy during the day? Or has your ability to get around and exercise without becoming exhausted or out of breath changed? John Meigs Jr. a family physician in Centreville, Ala. and president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, says he has a patient who reported a decline in his stamina for turkey hunting from last season to this one. ”He couldn’t walk,” he says. ”That’s a pretty big change in a year.” That kind of exhaustion is a common sign of heart disease, he says, so it’s important to get it checked out. Other potentially serious ailments include sleep apnea, which can cause people to feel tired all the time even if they’re getting the recommended number of sleep hours per day, says Hingle. In addition to not feeling rested despite sufficient sleep, symptoms include snoring or gasping for air at night. Sleep apnea can increase the risk of heart disease and needs to be taken seriously, so bring it up with your doctor. According to the American College of Physicians, treatments for sleep apnea can include weight loss, if appropriate, or a CPAP device. One condition many people have heard of is chronic fatigue syndrome, which is a serious disease that leads to more than everyday tiredness. According to the latest definition, it includes profound fatigue that lasts for at least six months, cognitive impairment and total exhaustion after even minor exertion. Those symptoms require medical attention. The Institute of Medicine estimates between 836, 000 and 2. 5 million Americans suffer from the disease. Some people may be tired because they’re anemic from losing blood, says Hingle. That might happen in women who have heavy menstrual periods, which can occur around menopause. A physician may advise you to take iron supplements, but you should be checked out to rule out any other causes of anemia. Colon cancer can also produce blood loss in the stool that leads to anemia, so for some people the resulting tiredness can be an early indication that they need to be tested for the disease. There is no medical evidence supporting a diagnosis of ”adrenal fatigue,” a term that has been used to describe a group of symptoms including tiredness, according to the Endocrine Society. Type 2 diabetes can also produce fatigue, though it would be unusual for that to be the only symptom, says Hingle. (You’d very likely also be peeing a lot and thirsty all the time.) Same with hypothyroidism it may make you tired, but you’d also probably notice changes in your skin and hair, as well as constipation, she says. Fatigue is also linked to depression and anxiety, so if you’re experiencing signs of those, or have noticed your sleepiness comes on the heels of stressful life events, talk to a physician, says Meigs. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson"
"As a   execution schedule plays out in Arkansas this week, the U. S. Supreme Court and Arkansas Supreme Court have stepped in to block two of the eight executions initially scheduled for an   period. Those two cases are on hold pending the outcome of a case from Alabama argued in the Supreme Court on Monday. At issue is whether an indigent defendant whose sanity is a significant factor at his trial is entitled to an expert witness, independent of the prosecution, paid for with money from the state. The case tests the meaning of an    Supreme Court decision in 1985, called Ake v. Oklahoma, which declared that when a defendant’s mental status is an issue, he is entitled to a competent mental health expert to assist in his defense. In the 32 years since that decision, the states, prodded by lower court rulings in state and federal courts, have come around. And as of now all of them, including Alabama, provide such assistance. But some of the inmates who did not have that expert witness assistance at their trials remain on death row. The case before the Supreme Court on Monday was one of those. James Edmund McWilliams Jr. was sentenced to death in 1986  —   a year after the Ake decision  —   for the rape and murder of a convenience store clerk. There was overwhelming evidence of his guilt. The only real question was whether he would be sentenced to death or life in prison. The trial judge ultimately sentenced McWilliams to death, citing testimony at the trial from two   psychiatric experts who said he was faking his mental illness. Under Alabama law, those expert witnesses were considered neutral  —   their evidence and conclusions were available to both sides. But lawyer Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights says there just is no effective way for the prosecution and defense to share an expert witness. ”It’s an adversary system,” Bright said on the steps of the Supreme Court Monday. Prosecution witnesses and experts argue for the prosecutors, and defense experts do the same for their side. ”There’s just not one holy seer who tells us what the mental health of a defendant is,” he said. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall conceded that Alabama now provides for a separate expert witness for the defense, but he contended that shouldn’t affect the sentences of others who were sentenced without that assistance. ”This defendant was given the protection that he was entitled to [under] the law at the time, not what the law requires now,” Marshall asserted. ”You can’t work both sides of the street” Inside the courtroom, the justices appeared closely divided, and as in many death cases, Justice Anthony Kennedy appears likely to cast the deciding vote. He seemed to be wrestling with the rule set out in the court’s 1985 Ake decision. The rule is important because McWilliams has exhausted his other appeals, and he only qualifies for resentencing if the denial of a defense expert witness violated a clearly stated Supreme Court rule. So the question essentially boils down to this: Did the 1985 Ake ruling require the defense to have an independent expert witness of its own, or did it simply require a neutral expert witness available to both sides? ”Couldn’t a single expert witness meet with both sides?” Justice Kennedy asked. No, replied lawyer Bright. ”You can’t work both sides of the street” in a criminal case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only justice to have spent significant time as a trial judge, asserted that what’s at stake here is ”what kind of aid a defendant is entitled to, to mount a viable defense, correct?” ”Correct,” replied Bright, adding, ”and I’d like to point out that the defense lawyers here were really sandbagged.” Two months before the sentencing hearing, the defense had asked for a neuropsychological examination of McWilliams, as well as his prison mental health records. Then, 48 hours before the sentencing hearing, the state produced the results of the exam it showed ”organic brain dysfunction” as a result of a traumatic brain injury. And on the morning of hearing, the defense received 1, 200 pages of prison medical records, which showed, among other things, that the defendant was taking psychotropic drugs. McWilliams’ attorney asked for a continuance he said he needed time to get help in interpreting the records and test results. The judge rejected the request, and later that day sentenced McWilliams to death. Justice Samuel Alito, like the court’s other conservatives, did not seem to buy Bright’s argument. It sounds like you want an expert who would function as a defense witness, Alito said. How, he asked, can a   expert witness ”ever function like an expert retained by the defense?” Replied Bright: in the same way that a   lawyer represents the defendant. ”Where is the stopping point, then?” Justice Neil Gorsuch asked. ”Would we also have to apply the same rule in other kinds of medicine, perhaps forensic science?” Alabama hit from the left, Arguing the other side of the issue was Alabama Solicitor General Andrew Brasher, who quickly found himself under the eagle eye of Justice Elena Kagan. Quoting from the central holding of the 1985 Ake decision, she read what she called the ”money sentence”: ”We hold that when the defendant makes this preliminary showing that mental health is going to be at issue, the State must assure the defendant access to a competent psychiatrist who will assist in evaluation, preparation and presentation of the defense.” And that, she said, ”means somebody on the defendant’s side.” Justice Stephen Breyer chimed in: ”And here it seems to me that the defendant certainly did not get that help.” Added Justice Kennedy: ”You usually meet with your expert and go over the testimony with care. Did that happen here?” Lawyer Brasher avoided answering the question. The court’s newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, interjected, contending that ”one piece of evidence about what a holding means is what the parties ask for.” In the 1985 Ake case, he said, defense counsel asked for ”either a partisan expert or a   expert.” At that, Justice Kagan shot back that such a convoluted and ”narrow” approach ”would be a shocking way to interpret this court’s opinions.” It was the second time in a week that Kagan appeared to put Gorsuch in his place as a newbie on the court. Intern Lauren Russell contributed to this report."
"The U. S. Treasury Department has announced sanctions on 271 individuals it says are scientists working on weapons development for Syrian President Bashar Assad. The new sanctions are a response to the deadly April 4 chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, an attack the U. S. government accuses Assad of carrying out against civilians. ”Employees of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center have been put on a U. S. blacklist,” NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports, ”which means any assets they might have in the U. S. will be frozen and Americans are barred from doing any business with them.” In a statement, the Treasury Department called the spate of sanctions one of the largest the Office of Foreign Assets Control has ever imposed. The department says in a statement that the SSRC is ”responsible for developing and producing   weapons and the means to deliver them.” ”These 271 SSRC employees have expertise in chemistry and related disciplines   have worked in support of SSRC’s chemical weapons program since at least 2012,” the Treasury Department alleges. Earlier this year the OFAC sanctioned eight regime officials, as well as several organizations, over chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015. Reuters has more on the sanctions: ”Those designated were ’highly educated’ individuals likely to be able to travel outside of Syria and use the international financial system even if they may not have assets abroad, administration officials said during a conference call with reporters. . .. ”President George W. Bush first placed sanctions against the SSRC in 2005, accusing it of producing weapons of mass destruction. ”Although the Syrian government promotes the SSRC as a civilian research center, ’its activities focus substantively on the development of biological and chemical weapons,’ U. S. officials said.” Assad has denied responsibility for the attack on Khan Shaykhun and even suggested that the attack  —   documented on video and described by international aid groups who treated victims  —   was entirely a ”fabrication.”"
"Robert M. Pirsig, who inspired generations to road trip across America with his ”novelistic autobigraphy,” Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, died Monday at the age of 88. His publisher William Morrow  Company said in a statement that Pirsig died at his home in South Berwick, Maine, ”after a period of failing health.” Pirsig wrote just two books: Zen (subtitled ”An Inquiry Into Values”) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. Zen was published in 1974, after being rejected by 121 publishing houses. ”The book is brilliant beyond belief,” wrote Morrow editor James Landis before publication. ”It is probably a work of genius and will, I’ll wager, attain classic status.” Indeed, the book quickly became a   and has proved enduring as a work of popular philosophy. A 1968 motorcycle trip across the West with his son Christopher was his inspiration. Christopher   reviewed Zen for The New York Times in 1974. ”[H]owever impressive are the seductive powers with which Mr. Pirsig engages us in his motorcycle trip, they are nothing compared to the skill with which he interests us in his philosophic trip,” he wrote. ”Mr. Pirsig may sometimes appear to be a greener‐America proselytizer, with his beard and his motorcycle tripping and his talk about learning to love technology. But when he comes to grips with the hard philosophical conundrums raised by the 1960’s, he can be electrifying.” Pirsig was born in Minneapolis, the son of a University of Minnesota law professor. He graduated from high school at 15 and enlisted in the Army after World War II. While stationed in South Korea, he encountered the Asian philosophies that would underpin his work. He went on to study Hindu philosophy in India and for a time was enrolled in a philosophy Ph. D. program at the University of Chicago. He was hospitalized for mental illness and returned to Minneapolis, where he worked as a technical writer and began writing his first book. Pirsig also helped found the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, then lived reclusively and worked on Lila for 17 years before its publication in 1991. ”A skilled mechanic, he performed repairs in his home workshop,” writes the publisher. ”He taught himself navigation in the days before GPS, and twice crossed the Atlantic in his small sailboat, Aretê.” The protagonist of Zen attempts to resolve the conflicts between ”classic” values that create machinery like the motorcycle, and ”romantic” values like the beauty of a country road. He discovers all values find their root in what Pirsig called Quality: ”Quality . . . you know what it is, yet you don’t know what it is. But that’s  . But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There’s nothing to talk about. But if you can’t say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn’t exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist.”"
"Malaria transmission in the United States was eliminated in the early 1950s through the use of insecticides, drainage ditches and the incredible power of window screens. But the   disease has staged a comeback in American hospitals as travelers return from parts of the world where malaria runs rampant. In the early 1970s there only a couple hundred malaria cases reported in the entire U. S. but that number has steadily increased in recent years. A new study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene finds that now roughly 1, 500 people are hospitalized each year in the U. S. with malaria. ”We don’t know of any active transmission in the U. S. so we assume that these cases are all travelers or immigrants,” says Diana Khuu, an epidemiologist from the University of California, Los Angeles. Khuu and her colleagues analyzed national hospital admissions data from the years 2000 to 2014 and found far more malaria than they expected. ”Definitely the numbers are so high,” Khuu says, for a disease that should be easily preventable. ”We do have good   medicine that travelers can take but apparently some people are just not using it.” And the consequences of getting malaria can be devastating. Over the 14 years of data that Khuu analyzed there were a total of 22, 029 hospitalizations for malaria nationwide. Nearly 5, 000 of the cases were deemed ”severe.” and 182 were fatal. Most of the malaria admissions ran up hospital charges in excess of $25, 000. ”Malaria is still a health issue in the United States,” says William Moss, a pediatrician and professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ”It is inevitable that we are going to see cases in the United States because [malaria] is such a major global problem and people are constantly moving from endemic areas in to the United States,” he says. The World Health Organization estimates that there are more than 200 million cases of malaria occur globally each year, the vast majority in Africa. The new study found that the majority of those hospitalized were black men age 25 to 44. Moss says he suspects many of these patients are first or second generation immigrants who traveled back to Africa to visit friends and relatives. Part of the reason for resurgence, he says, could be a misunderstanding of immunity. In places where there’s a lot of the disease, Moss explains, kids often develop immunity to severe malaria. So migrants, even if they left their native country years or decades ago, may assume that they don’t have to worry. ”That childhood immunity, however, is lost rather quickly,” Moss says. ”Individuals may think that they have some protection because they had malaria infections during childhood. And then they go back, they don’t take the proper chemoprophylaxis [  pills] and they’re susceptible not only to infection but to the disease.” Malaria is caused when an infected mosquito bites a person and then the malaria parasites start reproducing explosively inside the person’s liver and blood. Symptoms usually take a week or two to appear but can be delayed for up to a month after the fateful mosquito bite. This gives travelers from the U. S. plenty of time to return home before potentially falling ill. ”The big problem is that these cases are occurring all across the United States,” Moss at Hopkins says. He says many doctors, particularly in rural areas, might not consider that a patient who’s come in with a fever has malaria. Even if they suspect malaria in someone who’d recently traveled, ”they might not have access to proper diagnostics to test for it.” And if they do end up diagnosing a patient as having malaria, treatment might be harder to arrange in Arkansas than in Angola. ”Many smaller hospitals, even many larger hospitals, aren’t going to stock   drugs,” Moss says. As long as there are hundreds of millions of cases in other parts of the world each year, Moss says, cases are going to turn up in American emergency rooms."
"A Jewish advocacy organization expects a staggering increase in   incidents by the end of 2017. That projection comes after the   League counted an 86 percent spike in attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions so far this year, according to a report released Monday. In its Annual Audit of   incidents, the civil rights organization found 541 acts of vandalism, violence and harassment against American Jews already reported in 2017. This recent increase follows last year’s total of 1, 266 acts, by the organization’s count, a 34 percent spike over 2015. Moreover, the league reports 369, or nearly a third of these incidents, occurred in the last two months of 2016. It also linked 34 incidents directly to the 2016 election, including an instance of graffiti that read ”Kill the Jews, Vote for Trump” and a Florida confrontation where a man said, ”Trump is going to finish what Hitler started.” ”There’s been a significant, sustained increase in   activity since the start of 2016 and what’s most concerning is the fact that the numbers have accelerated over the past five months,” said   League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt in a statement accompanying the numbers. Among areas to see an increase this year were bomb threats  —   particularly aimed at Jewish centers and schools  —   up by 127 percent this year so far. And vandalism  —   including at Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia and St. Louis  —   was at 155 cases, or up by 36 percent when compared with the same period last year. The report also highlights a downward trend in physical attacks on Jews but a tendency now toward online tools and harassment. Among those tactics were network printer hacks and software to hide the identity of online harassers. ”Extremists and   feel emboldened and are using technology in new ways to spread their hatred and to impact the Jewish community [online] and offline,” said the ADL’s Oren Segal. The   League has been tracking   incidents since 1979, according to the report. Criminal as well as noncriminal acts such as distribution of hateful materials and slurs are included in its tally. The Associated Press adds that it uses broader criteria than those used by the FBI, which has yet to release its 2016 hate crime statistics. The organization says its researchers evaluate reports from individuals, community leaders and law enforcement. The findings in this year’s audit regarding physical attacks are echoed by international   researchers working at Israel’s Tel Aviv University. It should be noted that the   League’s Segal is a listed contributor. That report also noted that globally violent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions were down by 12 percent. But according to the report from the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, it was part of ”contradicting trends” between a decrease in violence and: ”The continuation of the widespread increase, sometimes dramatic, in verbal and visual antisemitism on social media and during demonstrations, in insults, harassments and threats hurled at people, that cannot be quantified: the internet constitutes originally a virtual reality, but has become today’s reality and the main platform for the distribution of bigotry and hate, in abusive unleashed language.” That report also stated U. S. campuses had become a ”hotbed of  ” with a 45 percent increase in   ”of all forms,” noting both harassment and insults: ”In addition to acts of vandalism, some groups, as well as anonymous individuals, have posted racist fliers on campuses across the county promoting white identity and heritage. The fliers try to appeal to white college students by focusing on alleged dangers facing white Americans, including demographic changes and ’white guilt.’ Two white supremacist groups, Identity Evropa and American Vanguard, as well as individuals connected to a white supremacist blog called The Right Stuff (TRS) are behind many of the flier incidents.”"
"In forcing out its   star, Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News Channel sought to contain the damage inflicted by a spreading sexual harassment scandal less than a year after the network’s chairman was ousted in the face of similar accusations. For Rupert Murdoch and his sons, who together control Fox News as part of a larger media empire, getting rid of O’Reilly is part of an effort to shore up its   drive to regain full control of the European broadcasting giant Sky in a $14. 6 billion deal. The broadcaster has a major presence in the U. K. Germany, Italy, Ireland and Austria. And yet, there is a quieter scandal hiding in plain sight  —   rife with allegations of computer hacking, accusations of fraud, questions of political interference and payouts totaling more than $900 million  —   all which centered on a relatively anonymous Murdoch enterprise called News America Marketing. The episode that kicked off that controversy was a small one, involving a rival company that stuck advertising decals on the floor of supermarket aisles. Yet the case stirred members of Congress to demand investigations and cast an unwelcome glare on the actions of rising Republican star Chris Christie while he was a top prosecutor. The case also appears to have influenced former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes’ decision in fall 2011 to hire a Democratic strategist as an   commentator for Fox News. Earlier this month, the commentator, Julie Roginsky, became the latest female employee to sue Ailes and the network itself for sexual harassment. In London, the independent British media regulator Ofcom has delayed until June 20 its deadline to determine whether the Murdochs are ”fit and proper” owners for Sky. The Murdochs’ entertainment and television conglomerate, 21st Century Fox, already owns 39 percent of Sky. The family’s last bid to take over Sky imploded nearly six years ago as outrage built over revelations of widespread bribery and phone hacking by the Murdochs’ London tabloids. Over time, that scandal caused a parliamentary inquiry, the closing of their big Sunday tabloid, more than 100 civil lawsuits and the criminal convictions of several former Murdoch journalists, including an   . This time, several consumer groups and   politicians have pushed British regulators in official submissions to take the Fox scandals into account when gauging whether the Murdochs would be ”fit and proper” owners of Sky. News America Marketing is a division of News Corp. the Murdochs’ newspaper and publishing arm. News Corp. was split apart from their television and entertainment holdings in 2013 as a consequence of the British tabloid scandal. The actions of News America have triggered a far higher cost to the Murdochs’ shareholders than the Fox News sexual harassment scandals: settlements exceeding $900 million to head off a series of lawsuits filed over the past 12 years. That sum includes $280 million in payments announced in early 2016 to cut short an ongoing   lawsuit filed by some of its biggest clients. The fight over decals, As the origins of this tale stretch back two decades, some key figures have died. Others cannot talk owing to legal restrictions. This story is based on interviews with more than 20 people with direct knowledge of relevant events, as well as a review of legal documents, corporate papers and correspondence involving members of Congress and their staff. NPR has also reviewed testimony from News America executives and expert witnesses that gives a flavor of the company’s operations. The story opens with the aspiration of two brothers, George and Richard Rebh. The late George Rebh was a federal disaster preparedness planner and presidential portraitist who became a salesman Richard Rebh is a former management consultant for Bain  Co. In the 1990s, the Rebhs and their partners founded Floorgraphics Inc. based in Princeton, N. J. The idea, basically, was to market products for shoppers on the floor. It was new, a niche carved out among larger players in supermarket advertising who controlled coupons in newspapers and direct mailing, ads on shopping carts, signs on the shelves. Murdoch’s News America Marketing was and is one of the titans of the trade, reaching millions of consumers each day in stores on top of the 60 million households that received its Sunday newspaper inserts. Direct advertising to consumers in retail stores and pharmacies proved a growing area of interest as the newspaper industry started its slide. The marketing division was led by Paul V. Carlucci, a former department store executive and bon vivant who also invested in racehorses and a pair of restaurants near the racetrack in Saratoga Springs, N. Y. and in New York City. Former associates described Carlucci as charismatic, gregarious and   by employees. They also said he often played rough. ”Paul Carlucci is smart, he’s charming, but he’s ruthless,” said Steve Marquis, a former vice president for retail sales development at News America Marketing. ”Paul was       . Rupert loved that,” says Ken Chandler, the former publisher of Murdoch’s New York Post. And Carlucci delivered results at News America Marketing, Chandler said: ”This was like a faucet that was spewing dollar bills.” (Carlucci did not respond to detailed questions submitted through his son, Paul Carlucci Jr. a sales director at Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.) In 1999, the Rebh brothers set up a meeting with Carlucci to discuss the industry, in an account they later set out in a lawsuit against News America Marketing. They maintained that they did not see their business model as in direct competition with News America, but living alongside it. Carlucci picked a   Chinese restaurant in Manhattan for the meeting, wrongly believing the brothers were preparing to sell their company to him, according to George Rebh’s later sworn testimony. The proceeding was first obtained and broadcast by CNN in 2011. ”He said words to the effect: ’You should know I work for a man who wants it all and doesn’t understand anyone telling him he can’t have it all,’ ” George Rebh testified. ” ’And know this: If you ever get into any of our businesses, I  —   we  —   will destroy you.’ ” Rebh testified that he took that to be a reference to Rupert Murdoch and his sons. ”So, after a couple of seconds, I said to Mr. Carlucci, ’So let me see if I understand this. You can get into our business and compete with us. But if we were to get into yours, you would destroy us,’ ” Rebh told the court. ”And he said, ’That’s right.’ ” (In his own testimony, Carlucci denied saying he would destroy Floorgraphics.) Late that year, Marquis told NPR, he witnessed the moment when Floorgraphics graduated to being a   adversary. In December 1999, Marquis attended a meeting with executives from the AP supermarket chain. News America paid AP for the right to put up ads, coupons and signs within grocery carts inside the store for its clients, which manufactured such consumer packaged goods as toothpaste, toilet paper and the like. Marquis had prepared AP for unwelcome news: It would have to accept less money from News America. Instead, the chain’s executives told him they had selected Floorgraphics. AP gave Floorgraphics exclusive rights to mount advertising signage throughout its roughly 600 stores. For the first time, little Floorgraphics had poached News America’s bread and butter. Marquis sped back to New York City with the bad news, hustling to News America’s holiday party held at a restaurant overlooking the ice rink at Rockefeller Center  —   just a block from parent company News Corp. ’s headquarters. ”I made a beeline to Carlucci,” Marquis recalled, ”and said, ’You’ll never believe what happened.’ ” Carlucci and other senior executives proved surprisingly cheery, Marquis said. ”Paul told me, ’Not only are we going to kick their asses and crush these guys, but I can go to the boss and get the money I need to put them out of business.’ ” ”I was getting hugs and   and being told, ’Let’s get a drink!’ ” Marquis recalled. ”They knew they were going to get Murdoch to kick in some dollars to go get these guys.” Marquis left News America for Floorgraphics a few months later.  Floorgraphics in a jam, In early 2005, a salesman for the Rebh brothers was taken aback. Account executives for one of their clients, the Smucker’s jam company, dressed him down, demanding to know, according to documents Floorgraphics later filed in court, how News Corp. knew the terms of the contracts they had. That information was proprietary. Floorgraphics officials searched the gateway to their computer system and their own mainframe. Someone using an IP address associated with News America Marketing in Connecticut had accessed their internal servers and files a dozen times from October 2003 to January 2004, according to information the Rebhs provided to members of Congress and later put into court records. They had been hacked. And whoever hacked them had gained access to the smaller company’s contracts and future deals. Lawyers for News Corp. ultimately acknowledged in court that the hack had come from inside News America Marketing but said they could not determine who had committed or commissioned it. For nearly two years, News America sent press releases of their big announcements, new contracts and recent hires to the homes of Floorgraphics staffers to erode morale. News Corp. hired away a significant swath of the smaller company’s sales force, according to former Floorgraphics employees who spoke to NPR. People at the smaller company wondered if the addresses had been part of what had been hacked. In court proceedings, the Rebhs accused Gary Henderson, a former Floorgraphics executive hired away by News America, of playing the key role. Later they accused Henderson of perjuring himself during his testimony. Lawyers for News Corp. countered that he could have gotten addresses from a holiday card database. Henderson did not respond to four messages by phone and email seeking comment for this story. The brothers complained to anyone they could commandeer on Capitol Hill and in the U. S. Justice Department. Scott Christie, who headed hacking prosecutions in the U. S. attorney’s office for New Jersey, gave the green light for an investigation. When Christie departed the office for a job in the private sector, his replacement, Kevin O’Dowd, took over the case. Then Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine, both New Jersey Democrats, weighed in on behalf of the Rebhs. So did  . Rush Holt,  . J. ”I rarely write to a U. S. attorney,” Holt recently told NPR. ”I listened and looked at what [Floorgraphics] brought and said, ’Yeah, there’s some smoke here.’ ” The U. S. attorney for New Jersey at the time was Chris Christie, a Republican harboring greater political ambitions (and no relation to Scott Christie). O’Dowd soon stopped returning calls, according to an account the Rebhs later shared with congressional staffers. The Rebhs told others an assistant U. S. attorney had informed them the harm done by the hacking did not exceed $5, 000 so there would be no prosecution. The two Rebhs seethed. A spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Christie told NPR that the case was handled ”in the normal course of business,” evaluated by two assistant U. S. attorneys with their supervisors. ”The United States attorney and his   staff played no role in the investigation or the decision to decline prosecution,” said the spokesman, Brian Murray. One lawsuit follows another, The Rebhs and Floorgraphics instead filed a civil lawsuit against News America Marketing. In that suit, the Rebhs alleged that News America account executives undercut Floorgraphics’ prices by paying grocery stores more for contracts than they were worth. They accused the News Corp. marketing division of engaging in   practices such as demanding exclusivity in floor advertising even in stores where they weren’t offering such advertising. A few days into trial, News Corp. settled with the Rebhs and Floorgraphics for $29. 5 million. As part of the settlement Floorgraphics sold its floor advertising   business to News America. Their case was the smallest and just the first in what became a series of cases that had   price tags. Later lawsuits from competitors and clients of News America similarly alleged fraud, tortious interference, false claims and   practices. News Corp. ’s lawyers included some of the best litigators in the country at such firms as Paul, Weiss. They played hardball, according to several lawyers in one case, News America Marketing’s suit against a fired executive, Bob Emmel, caused him to enter into bankruptcy, according to Emmel’s bankruptcy lawyer, Danny Coleman. Emmel would have been unable to pay the damages the company sought. News America contended Emmel had taken records unlawfully that he produced at his deposition for the Floorgraphics suit against the company (a claim he disputed) Emmel also had been acting as a whistleblower to tell congressional investigators about what he believed were illegal actions by the company, though News America had not known that when it fired him. Emmel later served as a witness in several other lawsuits against the Murdoch company as well  —   despite efforts of News Corp. to complicate his ability to participate. (Emmel referred all questions from NPR to his lawyers, as he is under court order not to comment.) In a separate case, according to one of Marquis’ former colleagues, News America’s lawyers briefly threatened to compel Marquis’ young son to testify against his father in an attempt to challenge his story. Marquis confirmed the threat, though he said that nothing came of it. Testimony in the cases offers insights into News America’s reach and successes. The Murdoch company argued that its dominance was overstated, even if it controlled 90 percent of the market by some measures. Yet executives conceded under oath it had developed a strategy to lock in major retail stores for   contracts with staggered expiration dates to make it harder for other companies to get a foothold in the field. In a November 2004 letter that became part of a court record a decade later,   America Executive Vice President Martin Garofalo pleaded with Jeffrey Noddle, the executive chairman of SuperValu, not to drop its agreements with News America. Garofalo promised a 400 percent annual increase in payments to keep the chain out of the embrace of a competitor. In April 2015, a News America executive named Christina Bedell acknowledged under oath that the company lost more than $4. 2 million a year on its deal with Kmart placing ads in its stores. Another executive, Dominic Hansa, testified that the company sought to extend a   contract with Safeway  —   a major grocery retailer  —   simply to avoid a competitive bidding process that could have allowed others to pitch for the contract. Bedell and Hansa are now senior vice presidents Garofalo is now News America’s CEO. Though News America disputed the claim, such payments were alleged to have been   and illegal. The ensuing settlements would make the size of the Floorgraphics case pale in comparison: $500 million for a major competitor called Valassis an additional $125 million for Insignia, based in Minnesota. The latest, $280 million, was incurred just a year ago to cut short a   lawsuit filed by News America’s own clients, such as the soap manufacturer Dial and the ketchup giant H. J. Heinz. Executives at News Corp. and News America declined to respond to a series of specific questions for this story. Jim Kennedy, News Corp. ’s chief communications officer, provided a single sentence in response: ”These cases involve matters going back decades, were settled without any admission of wrongdoing and for a fraction of what was sought by claimants.” London hacking revives interest, The summer of 2011 resurrected the relevance of the Floorgraphics case, as its allegations echoed the mobile phone and computer hacking scandal in Murdoch’s London tabloids. Celebrities, athletes, actors and politicians in the U. K. had been seen as fair game the revelation that a dead girl’s voicemail had been hacked by people on behalf of News Corp. ’s Sunday tabloid News of the World turned what had been written off as sport into outrage. British politicians who had protected the Murdoch papers for years lined up to denounce them. The late David Carr, the New York Times media columnist, refocused attention on the Floorgraphics investigation in a pair of edgy pieces. In the U. S. Chris Christie was by this time no longer a prosecutor but a   governor who had emerged as a favorite figure on Fox News programs. O’Dowd, who led the abortive Floorgraphics inquiry, followed Christie to the governor’s office and became his chief of staff. According to New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman,   News Chairman Roger Ailes twice beseeched Christie to run against Obama in the years leading up to the 2012 race. Sparked by the London hacking scandal, Lautenberg once more sought to turn attention on Christie’s earlier failure to prosecute the News Corp. division. According to   aides, Lautenberg also urged colleagues, including  . Jay Rockefeller,  . Va. to hold investigative hearings. In late August and early September 2011, Ailes stepped up talks with Roginsky, the liberal political pundit. She was something of a Lautenberg protégé, a Democratic strategist in New Jersey who had briefly been a paid CNBC contributor and had appeared on Fox off and on, without pay, since 2004. In November 2011, Ailes hired her. Roginsky told others that Ailes would periodically ask her to stop by his office on the second floor of the company’s corporate headquarters. She described to associates one of her first such meetings with Ailes this way: Ailes called over Murdoch and introduced Roginsky to his boss as a liberal, but added, ”We still love her.” She was struck that in talking to Murdoch, Ailes invoked her links to Lautenberg, as though that gave the network chief sway on Capitol Hill. Roginsky was first introduced to viewers on the air as a Fox News contributor in February 2012, according to a review of transcripts in available databases. She had worked for other New Jersey Democrats too, such as Jon Corzine and Rep. Frank Pallone, among others. Yet transcripts show Roginsky was identified as a former Lautenberg adviser 10 times more frequently than by ties to anyone else. One of Ailes’ former colleagues said Ailes was fixated on Roginsky’s links to Lautenberg. Every so often, Roginsky told others at the time, Ailes would call her over and ask whether News Corp. or he would be called up to testify on Capitol Hill. By her account to others, Ailes’ requests mystified her: Roginsky had no insight to offer. Ailes cited the Floorgraphics hacking case but, according to others, he was also anxious over a New York Times report that he might be indicted over allegations he had directed another Murdoch executive and Fox News host, Judith Regan, to lie under oath about having an affair with former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Concerns over that allegation may have played into Fox’s decision to pay Regan $10. 75 million to leave the network. In addition, Fox News had in June 2011 also secretly arranged to pay another longtime employee more than $3 million. The network sought to keep quiet her allegations that Ailes had coerced sex from her for more than 20 years through promises of career advancement and threats to release sexually provocative videotape that Ailes had made of her. (Ailes denies the allegations of the woman, Laurie Luhn, while other Fox executives said they wrongly did not believe her at the time they arranged the settlement, according to Fox News.) Finally, Sherman, the unauthorized biographer, was poking around his record. Ailes had a lot to be nervous about at the time. Roginsky told associates she felt Ailes was trying to use her to send some sort of a signal, either to Lautenberg or to Murdoch. Roginsky sued Ailes earlier this month, alleging he promised her a role as a host on one of Fox’s more popular panel shows as he sought to take her out for drinks and as he conveyed the intention of a physical relationship. When she rejected his romantic overtures, the promise vanished. Roginsky’s lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, says Roginsky never intervened in any way to aid News Corp. with Lautenberg or other lawmakers two congressional aides who monitored the issue say there’s no evidence she played any role at all. Lautenberg continued trying to investigate the Murdoch company until his death in June 2013. Ailes’ attorney, Susan Estrich, who previously denied Roginsky’s claims of harassment, now denies Ailes had any political interest in her. ”I have never heard him say he was intrigued by her at all,” Estrich wrote in an email. ”Only that her claim is totally false.” Fox News declined to comment for this story. Chris Christie restrained his presidential ambitions until the 2016 cycle. Yet both Christie and O’Dowd saw their greater ambitions knocked off course by the Bridgegate scandal Christie dropped out of the primaries after a   finish in New Hampshire last year, while O’Dowd’s prior nomination to become state attorney general stalled. He is now a top executive at a major medical center and did not return messages seeking comment. George Rebh died in 2015. His brother Richard declined to comment for this story because the deal they struck with News Corp. in 2009 included a nondisclosure clause. Murdochs pay to make problems go away, In 2010, when the Valassis case was settled for $500 million, then News Corp. President Chase Carey said the company had been convinced ”significant risks were developing in presenting this case to a jury.” The agreement included no admission of wrongdoing and a   shared distribution pact. News Corp. points to these elements, common in their settlements, to suggest these were business decisions rather than warnings of bad behavior. Longtime Murdoch watchers and some former colleagues say they discern a pattern at News America that recurred at his other properties: Roguish executives beloved by Rupert Murdoch who are able to deliver desired results get away with otherwise unacceptable behavior until it becomes impossible to tolerate further. The Murdochs pay to make problems go away. And then, at a certain point, they promise to change the culture. Ailes is bought out. O’Reilly is ousted. A new day is heralded. ”There’s a problem somewhere,” said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. ”Commercial disputes happen all the time. But 900 million is a big number,” Elson told NPR. ”At some point, you have to ask yourself, ’Is there something going on in the culture of a place? ’ ” Despite the promise of change, many women inside Fox News tell NPR they question whether the culture has changed at all. At Fox News, three outstanding lawsuits challenge the Murdochs’ contention of change, from Roginsky, suspended Fox host Andrea Tantaros and a group of   employees. A growing number of women are still coming forward with accusations against both Ailes and O’Reilly. Others accuse Fox News executives of ignoring their allegations. Federal prosecutors in New York City are investigating past secret payments to women who lodged complaints privately. People within Fox believe that inquiry may be broadening. The Murdochs pointed to the process they set up since Ailes’ departure, including the involvement of outside lawyers to evaluate complaints from women who allege harassment. Those lawyers work for Paul, Weiss  —   the longtime Murdoch law firm that handled many of the defense proceedings for News America. In London, the executive atop the Murdochs’ British newspaper wing is Rebekah Brooks, the former tabloid editor who had to resign from that same CEO position during the scandal in the summer of 2011. James Murdoch, who resigned as chairman of News Corp. ’s U. K. division and of Sky during the scandal, is back as chairman of Sky. According to two former News Corp. executives, Carlucci offered several times to resign during the height of the News America Marketing lawsuits. Murdoch said no. Carlucci finally departed in June 2014. One footnote: Valassis, awarded a   dollars in its settlement, has more recently returned to court. The new suit alleges that News Corp. violated their agreement by continuing to engage in aggressive,   practices. News America is denying those claims, too. For several years after the hacking and corruption scandal erupted in the U. K. the Murdochs feared the blowback might harm their ability to hold on to their American television licenses. Now, the question arises whether their American controversies  —   including one totaling close to $1 billion  —   might sink their ability to make a huge broadcasting acquisition in the U. K."
"Updated at 5:19 p. m. ET, A new lawsuit filed Monday by a suspended Fox News host accuses the network and senior executives of arranging to have her private communications spied on as part of a campaign of intimidation. The host, Andrea Tantaros, alleged in a previous lawsuit that she had been sexually harassed by former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes and former   Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. That suit has been stayed while her complaints against the network are being heard in binding private arbitration. All defendants, through their own representatives or through Fox’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, vehemently denied Tantaros’ initial allegations. Ailes and O’Reilly were both forced out of Fox News with major payouts. In Monday’s federal lawsuit, Tantaros alleges that Fox News executives including   Bill Shine orchestrated the use of material gathered by electronic eavesdropping that was fed to Twitter accounts acting on the network’s behalf. Ensuing tweets, she says, reflected knowledge of details of intimate conversations and exchanges with family members and friends. Tantaros alleges this was done to try to undermine her resolve in challenging the network on sexual harassment. ”Fox News and its executives flatly deny that they conducted any electronic surveillance of Ms. Tantaros,” according to a statement from the law firm Dechert LLP. ”They have no knowledge of the anonymous or pseudonymous tweets described in her complaint. This lawsuit is a flimsy pretext to keep Ms. Tantaros and her sexual harassment claims in the public eye after the State Supreme Court directed her to bring them in arbitration.” The case appears to build on a recent report by Salon’s Matthew Sheffield. He reported that Fox News under Ailes allegedly paid for ”sock puppet” accounts online to promote his private agendas and also covertly supported the development of blogs that sexualized the network’s female hosts and anchors. Tantaros’ new suit names, among others, the head of a digital media consulting company who had a prominent role in Sheffield’s account. The lawsuit also alleges that Shine used social media consultant Pete Snyder of Disruptor Capital to plant negative reaction about Chris Ruddy, the CEO and chairman of Newsmax, a rival but far smaller conservative media outfit. The suit alleges a rise in offensive material on social media accounts directed toward Tantaros in early 2015, when, she says, she first notified Shine and other Fox News executives that Ailes had harassed her. Then in May 2016, according to the complaint, several Twitter accounts started to post material suggesting direct knowledge of her conversations. For example, a picture of a movie about a black scorpion was posted just after she learned that a friend had been bitten by one. Another tweet invoked the idea of a memorial for Tantaros’ dead brother, just after she and her mother had spoken of it the third anniversary of his death was still a few months away. And at the same time that Tantaros was talking to the children of her other brother while they were at Disneyland, according to the lawsuit, a tweet on one of the accounts posted a photograph of Mickey Mouse hugging two children. ”This is not just cyberstalking,” Tantaros’ lawyer, Judd Burstein, told NPR. ”This is cyberstalking on steroids, because, as alleged in the complaint, they harassed her through   social media accounts which conveyed the illegal fruits of their electronic surveillance of her. It was in essence two crimes committed at the same time.” Fox News and parent company 21st Century Fox have condemned Burstein’s filings in the past and have attacked Tantaros as untrustworthy. They allege she ruptured her standing at the network when she published a book with HarperCollins, a corporate cousin, that had a racy cover and that her allegations of harassment by Ailes, O’Reilly and others is a ruse and a cynical effort to cash in. The phrase ”hacking” carries particular resonance for the Murdoch family, which controls Fox News. In 2011, a bribery and hacking scandal at their London tabloids led to the closing of a newspaper, the criminal conviction of a former    millions of dollars in settlements and the loss of a potential $11 billion takeover of a big British broadcaster called Sky. The Murdochs are now back in front of a British regulator, once again attempting to take over the 60 percent of Sky they do not already control. ”Ms. Tantaros and I hope that this lawsuit will demonstrate that the Murdochs mean what they say about reforming Fox News,” Burstein says. ”If one were cynical, the firing of O’Reilly and Ailes, particularly given the sexual predator bonuses they received, were efforts to cauterize deep wounds. But now that they are presented with misconduct and illegality that goes far beyond anything that has been reported to date, the question that everyone should be asking is, what are they going to do about it?”"
21st Century Fox announced Wednesday that Bill O’Reilly will not return to Fox News after a review of the sexual harassment allegations against him that provoked an advertiser boycott.
"North Korea could reduce a U. S. strike force to a sea wreck if it’s provoked, the country’s propaganda outlets said Monday, adding to tensions on the Korean Peninsula. With the threat of a nuclear test in North Korea looming and another U. S. citizen reportedly detained there, China’s President Xi Jinping is urging President Trump to avoid escalating the situation. The two leaders spoke by phone Monday, according to Chinese state media CCTV, which reports that Xi told Trump he ”hopes all parties remain restrained instead of intensifying the situation.” The phone call comes amid threats from North Korea that it will sink a U. S. Navy strike group that’s led by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier it also follows reports from a North Korean university that one of its lecturers, who holds U. S. and South Korean citizenship, has been detained. ”In a statement, [Pyongyang University of Science and Technology] said that its adjunct professor,    Tony Kim, who also goes by Kim   was detained at the airport in Pyongyang as he was about to leave the country on Saturday local time,” NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports. ”The university said Kim’s detention had nothing to do with his academic work. So far, North Korea has remained silent about Kim’s detention.” There is wide speculation that North Korea could be planning to carry out a nuclear test on Tuesday, timed to coincide with a celebration of its military’s founding anniversary. On Monday, North Korea issued new threats against the U. S. which it accuses of plotting an invasion. From South Korea’s Korea Herald comes this description of the regime’s reaction to American warships sailing closer to the peninsula: ”The world would clearly see how the US’ rash, arrogant aircraft carriers turn into a lump of scrap metal and gets buried at sea, and how the country vanishes from the Earth,”   website Uriminzokkiri said. ”Our    responses include sudden,   strikes involving land, naval, underwater and airmobile assets.” The USS Carl Vinson’s strike group is currently in the Philippine Sea, where it’s taking part in joint exercises with Japan’s Maritime   Force, including two Japanese destroyers. The   aircraft carrier was rerouted toward North Korea earlier this month, after initial confusion over its strike group’s deployment  —   including a statement by President Trump that he was sending ”an armada” to the Korean Peninsula. It’s not yet clear why Kim might have been detained, other than as a possible bargaining tool for North Korea in international negotiations over its nuclear program. The country also faces a dire need to restart its trade in coal and other items with China. ”China is very much the economic lifeline to North Korea,” President Trump said in a tweet Friday, ”so, while nothing is easy, if they want to solve the North Korean problem, they will.” Kim is at least the third U. S. citizen in North Korea’s custody. Most recently, University of Virginia student Otto Frederick Warmbier was arrested in early 2016 and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor over allegations that he tried to steal a propaganda poster at a hotel. Warmbier’s sentence is nearly identical to that of missionary Kenneth Bae, who was released in 2014 along with his fellow American Matthew Todd Miller."
"Nearly 15 years after her first space launch, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson has now spent more time   than any other American, at more than 534 days. Whitson, 57, is a biochemist who has twice commanded the International Space Station. ”It is one of those rides that you hope never ends,” Whitson tweeted last night. ”I am so grateful for all those who helped me on each of my missions!” Her current ride will last for at least five more months, because of an extension of Whitson’s mission that is projected to leave her with more than 650 days in space, NASA says. Early Monday morning, Whitson officially broke the NASA record of 534 days in orbit that was set last year by Jeff Williams. To mark her accomplishment, she received a phone call from President Trump at 10 a. m. ET. ”That’s an incredible record to break,” Trump said, congratulating Whitson as he spoke from his desk in the Oval Office, where he was seated alongside his daughter Ivanka and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins. ”How does it feel to have broken such a big and important record?” the president asked. ”Well, it’s actually a huge honor to break a record like this,” Whitson said. ”It’s an honor for me, basically to be representing all the folks at NASA who make space flight possible and who make me setting this record feasible.” Their talk soon turned to Trump’s plan to send people to Mars, with Whitson saying that at NASA, ”we’re excited about the missions to Mars in the 2030s.” Moments later, Trump asked Whitson, ”What do you see a timing for actually sending humans to Mars? Is there a schedule? And when would you see that happening?” When Whitson repeated her mention of the 2030s  —   citing space flight’s need for ”a lot of time and money”  —   Trump jokingly replied, ”Well, we want to try and do it during my first term or, at worst, during my second term. So we’ll have to speed that up a little bit, OK?” Earlier, when Trump asked Whitson, ”What are we learning by being in space?” the astronaut replied by discussing studies about the human body’s reaction to living in microgravity and how to support life during a multiyear Mars mission. Describing a   system that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen, Whitson said, ”But water is such a precious resource up here that we also are cleaning up our urine and making it drinkable. And it’s really not as bad as it sounds.” ”Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that” Trump said, adding, ”Better you than me.” She had first been inspired to pursue a career in science at NASA, Whitson told Ivanka Trump, by the Apollo program. ”But I don’t really think it became a goal until I graduated from high school, when the first female astronauts were selected,” she added. At the end of their   conversation, Whitson and her fellow astronaut Col. Jack Fisher performed forward flips in the space station. In addition to her new    mark, Whitson has spent more than 53 hours outside an airlock, engaged in spacewalks that added modules to the space station, among other duties. Whitson was 56 when she left for her third   mission aboard the space station last November, making her the oldest U. S. woman in space, as we reported. Literally and figuratively, it’s been a long journey for Whitson since she started work at NASA in the 1980s. Back then, she was a researcher who supported space missions from the ground. She was named project scientist of the   Program in 1992. Four years later, she was selected as an astronaut, and in 2002, she made her first trip to the International Space Station. Whitson is scheduled to return to Earth’s surface in September."
"Updated 11:40 p. m. ET, Arkansas executed two inmates on Monday night, the first double execution in the U. S. since 2000. The second inmate put to death was Marcel Williams. He and the prisoner executed just before him, Jack Jones Jr.  —   both convicted murderers  —   had filed   appeals that were rejected by the U. S. Supreme Court. In addition, Williams’ execution was delayed by a federal district judge. The inmate’s attorneys had argued that Jones had shown signs of suffering after the lethal drugs were injected. The state maintained the claims were baseless and after consideration, the judge lifted the stay. The executions follow a flurry of legal challenges, court rulings and reversals that have interfered with the state’s unprecedented plan to execute eight men by lethal injection in 11 days. Of the four executions scheduled prior to Monday, three were ultimately stayed. One man, Ledell Lee, was killed last week, just four minutes before his death warrant was set to expire it was the first execution Arkansas carried out in 12 years. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said after Jones was executed that the law was upheld. ”The victim’s family has waited patiently for justice during that time. The jury sentenced Jack Jones to death, and his sentence was upheld by judges and reviewed thoroughly in courts of appeal at each level. ”A governor never asks for this responsibility, but I accept it as part of the solemn pledge I made to uphold the law. Jack Jones expressed his willingness to proceed today, and we hope this will help bring closure to the Phillips family.” Another inmate, Kenneth Williams, is set to be executed this Thursday. Inmate Jason McGehee also had been scheduled to die that day, but a parole board has recommended his life be spared and a judge ruled that the state had to allow a   period for public comment before making a final decision. That pushes McGehee’s execution past the end of the month  —   which means, for now, it is effectively stayed. The state’s supply of one of the drugs used in its lethal injection protocol, midazolam, expires at the end of April, which is why officials set such a rapid schedule of executions. The executions were briefly blocked by decisions in both state court and federal court. But then on Monday, the 8th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected concerns over the method and pace of the executions, and the Arkansas Supreme Court overturned objections to how the state acquired one its drugs. Lawyers for both Jones and Williams sought stays, including through appeals based on the inmates’ poor health. The lawyers say the inmates’ current medical issues  —   and drugs used to treat them  —   might interfere with the lethal injection protocol and cause them to feel extreme pain. Jacob Rosenberg, a reporter for the Arkansas Times, told NPR on Sunday that the men also have claims of intellectual disability. ”Marcel Williams has a very compelling case that’s been discussed where he had a pretty horrific childhood growing up of sexual abuse, and that wasn’t brought up at trial,” Rosenberg said. ”The reason that matters is because with the imposition of the death penalty, there’s something called mitigating circumstances. And so those need to be brought up at trial because those mitigating circumstances, like mental health, could stop the death penalty’s imposition.” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has said it’s his duty to carry out the men’s sentences and that the executions will bring closure to victims’ families."
"A lawyer in the Philippines has filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court accusing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte of crimes against humanity. The attorney, Jude Sabio, represents an admitted assassin who has testified against Duterte and accused him of ordering deaths before he became president, back when he was the mayor of Davao City. Human rights groups have reported for years that while he led Davao City, Duterte ran ”death squads” carrying out extrajudicial killings. Duterte himself has alternately embraced the allegations and denied them. The complaint to the ICC begins with those alleged death squads and stretches through to the present, describing Duterte’s ongoing war on drugs. As NPR has reported, the violent crackdown has led to thousands of killings, including numerous extrajudicial or   shootings. Sabio’s   document, titled ”The Situation of Mass Murder in the Philippines,” also notes that Sen. Leila de Lima, one of the most vocal critics of Duterte, has been arrested and jailed. Sabio calls her ”a victim of political persecution.” The complaint contains accusations against Duterte and nearly a dozen politicians and government officials. In a cover letter, Sabio says the intervention of the ICC would ”be the beginning of the end of this dark, obscene, murderous and evil era in the Philippines.” The ICC confirmed to Reuters it has received ”a complaint” and ”will analyze it, as appropriate.” Duterte’s administration said the complaint was designed to embarrass the president and ”create negative news” as the Philippines hosts Asian leaders at a summit, the Filipino news network ABS CBN reports. Since it was established in 2002, the ICC has received thousands of complaints, the vast majority of which do not lead to formal investigations. Many of those ”communications,” as the ICC calls them, are rejected as being outside of the ICC’s jurisdiction  —   the alleged offenses are too old, for instance, or happen in a country that hasn’t agreed to the ICC’s terms, or involve more ordinary crimes than the Court was designed to consider. The ICC has previously stated that, hypothetically, ongoing extrajudicial killings in the Philippines could fall within the purview of the court. ”I am deeply concerned about these alleged killings and the fact that public statements of high officials of the Republic of the Philippines seem to condone such killings,” ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement in October. She noted that the Philippines is a party to the ICC, and that   killings that are part of a ”widespread of systematic attack against a civilian population” would fall under the Court’s jurisdiction. Bensouda said her office would be ”closely following developments in the Philippines.” Duterte’s bloody crackdown on drugs has been sharply criticized by the international community. But it’s exactly what he promised when he campaigned for president: He was known as ”The Punisher” and openly signaled his disdain for human rights law and promised death to criminals. Polls suggest the unapologetically vulgar,   president continues to have the support of the majority of Filipinos."
"Afghanistan’s defense minister and its army chief of staff stepped down in the wake of a   attack Friday in which at least 100 Afghan soldiers died. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan since 2001. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced the   resignations Monday, on the same day that U. S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis arrived in the country on an unannounced visit, as the Trump administration reviews its Afghanistan policy. A spokesman for Ghani told Reuters that Minister of Defense Abdullah Habibi and Army Chief of Staff Qadam Shah Shahim resigned because of Friday’s attack. Ghani’s office released a statement that did not explicitly link the attack and the resignations, saying only that the president accepted the resignations ”in order to promote accountability as a new chapter of ethical behavior in the political system of the country.” The commanders of four army corps were also replaced, according to the presidency’s official Twitter account.  According to Reuters, ”defence officials said as many as eight army personnel had been arrested  —   heightening suspicions the attackers had inside help.” The attack at a military base in the city of    raises more questions about the Afghan military’s ability to defend against such attacks, more than 15 years after the U. S. drove the Taliban from power. As The   reported, the militants entered the base disguised as Afghan army personnel, then attacked troops leaving Friday prayers at a mosque. The fighting reportedly lasted some six hours. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it sent 10 militants to avenge recent killings of senior Taliban leaders. It remains unclear exactly how many people were killed. News reports citing Defense Ministry officials said 100 soldiers had died or been injured, but other outlets put the figure higher. The BBC reports that: ”Other officials have told BBC that at least 136 people died  —   124 coffins had been sent out to different parts of the country and 12 soldiers had not yet been identified, they said. ”But some sources say the toll was even higher. One eyewitness told the BBC he counted 165 bodies.” Speaking to reporters after meeting Ghani, Mattis highlighted that the victims of the attack were gunned down as they were leaving a mosque, saying it ”certainly characterizes this fight for exactly what it is. . .. It shows why we stand with the people of this country against such heinous acts.” Mattis said he and Ghani had a ”focused discussion as we work to align our efforts,” adding that he is in the country for ”ongoing dialogue with Afghanistan’s leadership” as he prepares to assess and advise President Trump on Afghanistan policy going forward. Taliban militants have gained territory this past year, as NPR has reported, and the top U. S. commander in Afghanistan recently described the fight against the Taliban as a ”stalemate.”"
"If confirmed Monday agriculture secretary nominee Sonny Perdue confronts an industry in search of stability. The farm economy is declining, trade with vital global markets is in disarray and immigration policy is in flux. In his initial budget, Trump suggested a 21 percent cut to USDA’s discretionary spending, so Perdue would want to jump into Washington policy discussions quickly. Perdue would find a desk at USDA piled high with priorities and will be one of the last members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet to be seated. In the Corn Belt, however, it is planting season. That means that most farmers are less worried about Washington and more focused on the weather. As    Robbie Maass and his parents Leah and Bob open the sliding doors on their machine shed near Ellsworth, Iowa, light from a heavy, grey day streams in to show off their giant, blue   planter. Bob Maass kicks the tires and taps at the wheels to knock off mud from last year. The Maass family is ready and waiting, Robbie says, for drier weather. Leah Maass says they have also been waiting on Sonny Perdue’s confirmation. But the slow process has not bothered her. She is confident he’s a good man for the job. ”He can envision what’s happening and process it and know solutions,” Leah Maass said, ”unlike some of us who are so easily confused.” Perdue grew up on a farm, trained as a veterinarian, worked for decades in family agribusinesses and served two terms as governor of Georgia. While in office, Perdue was dogged by complaints that he was still involved in the family businesses. Some environmental and consumer groups say he is too cozy with industry. But Maass says Perdue’s farm background and experience as an executive will be good for agriculture. ”I think he would be a tremendous asset and get things moving,” Leah Maass said. ”No theories, actual actions.” Many of the nation’s large and influential agriculture and commodity groups support Perdue’s selection. Questions remain, however, over the ag policies Trump will ask him to pursue. ”He’s not going to be able to start from a running start,” said Iowa State University political scientist Mack Shelley. ”It’s sort of a   right now.” Take the budget, Shelley says. Rural groups, agriculture industry groups and food stamp advocates worry about the president’s proposed cuts to the Agriculture Department’s discretionary spending. By the time the agriculture secretary starts work, budget discussions will be well underway. Does Perdue have any shot at contributing to those conversations? ”Oh, I’d say the hope is about zilch,” Shelley said. The slow action on an agriculture secretary speaks to how farm and rural issues rank in Washington right now, Shelley says, echoing a common refrain. ”I think it is   that this is not the No. 1 objective of the current Republican leadership at either end of Pennsylvania Ave. ,” Shelley said. That, he adds, may not sit well with farm country voters who turned out in large numbers for Republicans last fall. ”That’s basically running the risk of poking your fingers in the eyes of your supporters,” Shelley said. While the Department of Agriculture has been without a secretary, producers have also grown nervous as farm economics was swept up in tough talk over trade. Mexico, for example, the biggest foreign buyer of U. S. corn, is threatening to get its grain instead from South America. Farmer Kurt Hora, who heads the Iowa Corn Growers Association, says that would be a serious blow to U. S. farmers. Hora worries that among the president’s proposed cuts to agriculture is money spent on promoting U. S. products abroad. ”We want to make sure that we don’t lose those markets because it takes a lot more to get a market back than it does to maintain and build one,” Hora said. Leah Maass, for one, is willing to be patient with the Trump administration. ”That’s the great thing about this country: things do take time,” she said. ”If we rushed into them, you know like a dictatorship takes over and this is how it’s going to be, then I would be concerned.”"
"As the Florida summer heats up, President Donald Trump is expected to decamp from his weekend retreat at the    Club in West Palm Beach to spend more time at one of his golf clubs in New Jersey. Now the sleepy town of Bedminster is bracing for the attention  —   and the security bills  —   that may follow. ”Are we going to get crowds that are going to come out, that are going to want to camp out in front of the golf course?” the town’s mayor Steve Parker asked. ”I don’t know yet. I kind of hope not, because I think we’d just like to keep things as quiet as things usually are in Bedminster.” Parker doesn’t know how often President Trump will visit  —   he’s been at    about half the weekends he’s been in office  —   or what kind of reception he’ll get when he does. But the town of Bedminster has already asked the federal government for help. In December, Parker sent a letter to his congressman that estimated the cost of police overtime for the president’s anticipated visits to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster this summer at about $300, 000. ”We haven’t gotten anything concrete,” Parker said. ”We’re still waiting to see how that’s going to work. But it’s not for a lack of asking on our part.” Parker does expect that his own business, running the local Somerset Airport, would take a hit. When Trump is in town, planes would be grounded because there’s a    around any sitting president. Some local merchants are thrilled about having the weekend White House in the area, including Steve Desiderio, who owns Desiderio’s Market and Catering on Main Street. He recalled when the Trump transition team spent a weekend in November interviewing potential Cabinet members at Trump National Golf Club. ”When he was in town it really helped the business, with a lot of the Secret Service and the reporters and people coming in,” Desiderio said. The golf club, which is hosting the U. S. Women’s Open tournament in July, is tucked away in New Jersey horse country, about an hour west of Manhattan. It’s surrounded by open fields and forests. The front gates to the club, the former estate of automaker John DeLorean, are understated. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you could drive right by them. ”Originally people came out here from New York because they used to want to do riding,” said Dorene Longell,   of the Bedminster Florist on the town’s quaint Main Street. ”They wanted to be in the country that reminded them of England, or a quieter place.” Longell said that she voted for Trump, and that a lot of her neighbors in this   area did, too. ”We like having him. I like having him,” she said. ”How many people in the United States can say, ’Oh, the president has a home in my backyard?’ Not that many.” The residents of West Palm Beach, Fla. can say just that  —   and some aren’t as enthusiastic as Dorene Longell. Many there will be relieved when the president’s    club closes for the season next month, bringing an end to traffic and other headaches associated with his frequents visits. During Trump’s November visit, the small Bedminster township police force went into high gear, directing traffic and preparing for big crowds. Some residents worry about what would happen if the president visits Bedminster as often as he went to Florida. At a township meeting in March, Jane Schumann said she has friends in West Palm Beach who complained that their taxes may go up because of the president’s frequent visits. ”I just think it’s extremely unfair if the burden becomes a Bedminster taxpayer burden,” Schumann said. ”And I want to go on record saying that.”"
"Four out of five older Americans with hearing loss just ignore it, in part because a hearing aid is an unwelcome sign of aging. But what if hearing aids looked like stylish fashion accessories and could be bought at your local pharmacy like reading glasses? That’s the vision of Kristen ”KR” Liu, who’s the director of accessibility and advocacy for Doppler Labs, a company marketing one of these devices. She thinks a hearing aid could be ”something that’s hip and cool and people have multiple pairs and it’s fashionable.” Liu, who has severe hearing loss herself, helped design a device designed to let people with hearing loss blend in. One person may be using the technology to stream music or take a phone call, she says. Another may be wearing it to amplify speech and hear the conversation. ”And no one is going to know the difference,” Liu says. ”So you’re wearing technology in your ear, proudly.” The device is a small circular instrument that fits snugly in the ear. It can be adjusted to individual hearing using a smartphone app to control volume, cut out background noise or turn up the sound in a theater. ”It’s pretty much a hearing aid,” says Liu, except the company isn’t allowed to call it that. That’s because the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates medical devices, doesn’t allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter. So devices sold directly to consumers are marketed as ”personal sound amplification products,” or PSAPs. They range in price from about $250 to $350 and are considerably cheaper than hearing aids, which can cost up to $6, 000 and are typically not covered by Medicare or most private insurance companies. Hearing aids are customized by a hearing specialist such as an audiologist, following a hearing test. PSAPs can only be marketed as sound amplifiers for people with normal hearing who want to make things louder, like music or the sounds of birds chirping. Hearing loss advocates believe this means people with mild to moderate hearing loss who could benefit from the devices don’t know about them. There are dozens of the devices on the market, but their quality varies wildly, as an analysis of 11 of them last year for hearing care professionals shows. And there’s no easy way for potential purchasers to figure out which work best. The Hearing Loss Association of America, a consumer group, wants Congress to create a new category of aids for people with mild to moderate hearing loss by passing the    Hearing Aid Act of 2017. (People with severe hearing loss would still need to be seen by a medical professional.) The bill would direct the FDA to come up with safety and effectiveness standards for these new hearing aids. The FDA is already moving in that direction, and in December said it would no longer require adults to be medically evaluated before buying a hearing aid. Proponents of    sales hope congressional action would get the FDA moving faster. A 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences also endorsed allowing    sales. This could be   for people with hearing loss, says Richard Einhorn, a composer of modern classical music who is on the board of the Hearing Loss Association of America. Early one morning in 2010, he woke up with his ears ringing  —   a loud, piercing hiss. ”I hit the panic button,” Einhorn says. ”I jumped out of bed and immediately fell over onto the floor.” An inner ear infection, likely a virus, had caused him to lose his balance. He went deaf in his right ear. He already had some hearing loss in his left ear. His hearing aids cost $5, 000 and were not covered by insurance. ”I’m a composer, for goodness sake,” Einhorn says. ”This is not an easy purchase to scrounge up the money for.” Opening up the hearing aid market would foster competition and drive prices down, says Einhorn. It would also encourage companies to come up with new and better products, says Liu. She envisions a future that solves one of the biggest problems for many people  —   hearing in a noisy environment, like a party or a busy restaurant. She wants a hearing aid that would automatically adjust to different sound environments, so she could hear the person talking to her and not the background distraction. ”Nothing like that exists today,” Liu says. ”But I very much see something like that down the road.” Some audio specialists support rolling back regulations, while others are skeptical. Hearing loss is complex, says Neil DiSarno, chief staff officer for audiology at the American    Association. This makes it difficult for consumers to ”    and ” he says. If people buy their hearing aids directly over the counter, they’ll miss out on all the skills audiologists can teach them, like how to lip read and how to distinguish high frequency sounds, he says. The market for    hearing aids could be huge. More than 35 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss. And for older Americans, not dealing with the problem can have a big impact on   cognitive decline, says Dr. Frank Lin, associate professor of otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Lin has done studies looking at the link between hearing loss and cognitive decline. ”The greater the hearing loss, the greater the risk of loss of thinking and memory abilities over time,” he says, which can lead to feelings of insecurity and social isolation  —   a known risk factor for dementia. Lin says his findings should serve as a ”  call” for policymakers. If people have easier access to more affordable hearing aids, he says, that could lead to benefits that go far beyond hearing."
"As the primary booker of the Tiny Desk Concerts, I have this   rule: No artist can come back for a second visit unless there’s something wholly different about what they’re doing. The first time   played the Tiny Desk, in 2012, they came as a   electric guitar, bass, keyboards and drums. They were a pretty new band, their album had been out a few months and they were playing in clubs for a couple hundred people, not much more. In the five years since the band visited it has found quite a few new fans. When I heard cuts from the newest album Relaxer a few months ago I flipped and tried to think of a way to bring them back. So I wrote them, saying I’d love to have them again but that it would have to be wholly,     different. I told them I’d hire a brass band, an African kora player if need be, a string section. .. They took up the challenge. They told me to find a cellist and two violinists. I wrote to my friend Carol Anne Bosco, a cellist, who turned out to be a huge fan of the band and helped find two violinists for the performance. About four days before the performance the band sent the string parts, written by their friend Will Gardner. On Monday morning, the English band met the American string players and they all gathered behind my desk. As they worked their way through a first pass at ”Three Worn Words,” I noticed them and relieved  —     had actually never heard the string arrangements, this was the first time. They sounded beautiful. By noon, NPR employees and friends gathered around my desk to witness this astonishing concert from   including two new songs and two old favorites. Magic. Relaxer is available for   now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Joe Newman (guitar, vocals) Thom Green (drums) Gus   (keys, vocals) String Arrangements, Will Gardner, Guest Musicians, Carol Anne Bosco (cello) Kristin Bakkegard (violin) Paul Bagley (violin) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Marian  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Last Saturday, tens of thousands of people across the country joined the March for Science, an event that the official website described as ”the first step of a global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health, safety, economies, and governments.” It’s no secret that the event was largely prompted by Donald Trump’s actions and proposed policies, many of which threaten efforts to curtail climate change and ignore the value of scientific research and   policy. But advocates for the march were generally careful to separate science from partisan politics. As one headline declared: ”The March for Science isn’t partisan or    —   it’s  .” Whether or not science is partisan or political, the perception of science often is. Beliefs about many scientific issues, such as human evolution and anthropogenic climate change, correlate with political ideology and party affiliation. There are also associations between political orientation and more general attitudes toward science and scientists. For instance, when it comes to assessing the possible risks and benefits of science and technology, liberals place greater trust in university scientists than conservatives do. A new study, forthcoming in the journal Public Understanding of Science, contributes to a growing body of psychological research uncovering the mechanisms by which politics and ideology influence people’s perceptions of scientists and scientific claims. The key insight is that science isn’t understood in isolation, disconnected from other beliefs, values and emotions. Instead, science is assimilated within a web of existing attitudes and beliefs, a core part of which concerns a person’s social identity. Consider a vegan who encounters a study supporting positive environmental and nutritional consequences from following a   diet. Consider a video game aficionado who reads a news story reporting a link between playing video games and aggressive behavior. In the former case, the scientific findings affirm an identity that our hypothetical vegan holds dear: Veganism is great! In the second case, the finding is disconcerting  —   it potentially threatens our hypothetical reader’s identity as a gamer. The dissonance between a person’s identity and the implications of scientific claims can be uncomfortable, prompting some sort of change to either the person’s identity or their acceptance of the relevant science. If the identity is highly valued and entrenched, it’s the science that’s more likely to go. Indeed, prior work finds that when a scientific result threatens a person’s strongly held identity, they’re more likely to question the science and methods involved and to become more rather than less certain of their views. The forthcoming study, authored by Peter Nauroth and colleagues, goes one step further in testing whether scientific findings that threaten a person’s identity lead not only to greater rejection of the science, but to a shift in the person’s perception of the scientist who conducted the research. And indeed, they find this is so: Participants who read about a scientific study that posed a threat to their identity rated the scientist who conducted the study significantly less competent and reputable than did participants in a control condition. The study also found that a threat to identity influenced participants’ perception of scientific consensus: Participants who read about a scientific claim that threatened their identity were less likely to think that the claim represented the predominant opinion in the scientific community. The new study, which reports data from 138 German university students, departs from most prior research on laypeople’s perceptions of science in using social identities that were experimentally induced in the lab. Participants first completed a task that identified them as having a ”holistic association style” as opposed to a ”detailed association style,” and the scientific research they went on to read suggested that associate style was or was not predictive of prosocial behavior. In the condition designed to threaten social identity, for example, they read that those with a holistic association style were found to be less prosocial than those with a detailed association style. That these novel and somewhat arbitrary identities had consequences for how participants evaluated the subsequently presented science suggests that   identities  —   which are typically more meaningful and entrenched  —   could have even larger effects. For instance, a study concluding that conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals, or that people who follow Democrats on Twitter are more likely than those who follow Republicans to use swear words in their tweets, could be evaluated quite differently by readers on different sides of the political aisle. This could lead them to draw different inferences about the quality of the research, the competence of the researchers and the level of consensus in the scientific community. Fortunately, most of the research that informs policy isn’t about social identity. Studies of energy use and environmental impacts, for example, are unlikely to compare conservatives versus liberals. Studies of educational or health outcomes rarely focus on differences across Democrats and Republicans. Yet scientific claims that become associated with political positions  —   like anthropogenic climate change  —   can also become threats to political identity. And that broadens the scope of cases for which partisan politics can skew the perception of science. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo."
"Brad Paisley is a country megastar: Since his debut in 1999, he’s sold 12 million records and had 23 No. 1 hits. He’s a great singer and a monster guitar player who’s always had a way with lyrics and timing. That’s evident throughout his new album, Love And War, which has its fair share of fun, witty moments. But the title track is dead serious. It’s a collaboration with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty, who wrote one of the most potent protest songs of the Vietnam era. ”He’s a huge influence on me,” Paisley says, ”and, I think, the voice of a generation. And so one time, we sat down and I said, ’Why don’t you come to Tennessee for a couple of days, and we’ll do this right.’ And I have this thing I want to say, and that’s that I think we are really letting our veterans down.” Fogerty, it turns out, was game. ”I said, ’I know you went there back in the Vietnam era  —   do you want to go there again?’ ” Paisley remembers. ”And he said, ’Yeah, I do.’ ” The result, ”Love And War,” is a song about two generations of veterans, both treated unjustly by the country they fought for. ”It’s an interesting dichotomy, in that it’s a protest song,” Paisley says. ”But we’re protesting something I think everyone can agree on.” Throughout his career, Paisley has broached sensitive subjects, often taking atypically progressive stances for mainstream country music. Usually, it goes over pretty well  —   but he got a lot of heat for the 2013 song ”Accidental Racist,” a collaboration with LL Cool J, which tried to reconcile Southern pride with the region’s legacy of racism through a dialogue between the two artists. Many critics found it   if   and Paisley says he learned from the incident. ”I was very naïve in thinking that we could write something that would feel the same way that other topics feel when you discuss them,” he says. ”When you discuss racism, it’s almost a   scenario  —   but I don’t think that means we shouldn’t be discussing it.” Paisley says the backlash to ”Accidental Racist” was fair, in a sense. He likens it to something a   once said to him. ”[He] told me early on, when I would get really mad about a line that he didn’t like, ’Well, you can tell me all you want that I’m wrong, but I’m not. I don’t like it,’ ” Paisley says. In the same way: ”Any true feelings of dislike are warranted, and they need to be explored.” And Paisley has kept pushing boundaries. Two songs on Love And War feature the   producer Timbaland, who’s better known for his work with artists like Justin Timberlake. ”When I sat down with [Timbaland] he said, ’I wanna do something country, but I mean country,’ ” Paisley says. ”He’s like, ’I think where our worlds meet the best  —   in the coolest spot  —   is bluegrass.’ . .. I knew exactly what he meant.” You can hear just what he meant in ”Grey Goose Chase,” which opens with what Paisley describes as a ”    sound.” ”What that is, is Timbaland beating on the banjo base with his hands and hootin’ and hollerin’ in the background,” he says. ”When you see ’produced by Timbaland,’ that’s not what you thought you’d hear  —   and I love that.” Hear Paisley’s conversation with NPR’s David Greene at the audio link. Radio producer Maddalena Richards and web editor Rachel Horn contributed to this story."
"Let’s get this out of the way: health care and   funding are probably not happening this week. There isn’t even a bill written for health care, and while conservatives like the draft language that’s circulating, moderates don’t. It’s the same problem Republicans have had from the beginning  —   appeal to conservatives, lose the moderates appeal to moderates, lose the conservatives. It’s like a water balloon  —   no matter which end you push on, it still pops. ”If it happens, and we have the votes this week, great,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Monday. ”If it’s next week, or the week after —  .” Or. .. On the border wall, President Trump appears to be dropping his funding demands (for now) and punting to this fall. That’s what he told conservative media outlets in a private reception at the White House Monday night  —   despite his tweeting about its importance that morning: Then, he tweeted Tuesday morning that he hasn’t changed his position on the wall and that ”it will get built.” Importantly, he didn’t say when, though. The bottom line is this: Republicans have until Friday midnight to fund the government and keep the lights on. That happens to coincide with Trump’s 100th day in office, which is Saturday. Rational GOP leaders want to avoid a government shutdown at all costs. And make no mistake: if there is one, Republicans will be blamed, no matter the spin. When shutdowns have happened in the recent past, it’s been when there’s divided government. That is not the situation now. Republicans are in charge of the House, the Senate and the White House. They own it. Trump is even hyping that he will unveil a tax plan Wednesday (though early signs indicate there might not be much new from the already unveiled during the campaign). And he’s talking tough on trade again, now with. .. Canada. In that same meeting with conservative media outlets, Trump also floated the idea of a 20 percent tariff on Canadian lumber, a   issue, especially in the Pacific Northwest. And then he picked another fight with Canada Tuesday morning  —   this time about milk. The Canadians weren’t going to the woodshed lying down. OK, ”disagrees strongly” is a pretty polite smackdown, but, hey, it’s Canada. So what is Trump doing with all this drama? In a word: ratings. ”It’s almost like it’s ratings week at the White House,” Rick Tyler, the former Ted Cruz and Newt Gingrich spokesman, said Tuesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Donald Trump is obsessed with ratings. He’s tweeted about ”ratings” 79 times since he launched his presidential run in June 2015. He wants to make sure he has the   100 days ever (or at least since FDR). Even though he’s been downplaying the   artifice recently, he’s also hyped it  —   here, here, on video here, in an infographic here, even boasting two months ago that he’s ”done more than anybody.” The White House even launched a website devoted to it Tuesday. ”[I]t’s interesting, I have, seem to get very high ratings,” Trump told the AP in a   interview late last week. The question was about how he gets along with Democrats and how people vote. He went on. .. ”I definitely  —   you know, [Fox News Sunday host] Chris Wallace had 9. 2 million people, it’s the highest in the history of the show. I have all the ratings for all those morning shows. When I go, they go double, triple. Chris Wallace, look back during the   football game, I did his show that morning. It had 9. 2 million people. It’s the highest they’ve ever had. On any, on air, [CBS ’Face the Nation’ host John] Dickerson had 5. 2 million people. It’s the highest for ’Face the Nation’ or as I call it, ’Deface the Nation. ’” And then he said this: ”It’s the highest for ’Deface the Nation’ since the World Trade Center. Since the World Trade Center came down. It’s a tremendous advantage.” There’s become a rule in politics  —   don’t compare to Nazis. Well, don’t compare to   is probably a good one to add. There have been other examples recently of Trump’s ratings obsession. When someone wondered aloud in Trump’s presence last month if Spicer might be fired, the Washington Post reported his answer was ”swift and unequivocal”: ”I’m not firing Sean Spicer,” he said, ”that guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.” Everyone tunes in. For almost two years, everyone has tuned in. TV ratings and Web traffic were through the roof. Trump got more free media than any candidate during the presidential campaign  —   for good or ill. It’s a lesson he learned in the New York media market  —   the only bad publicity is no publicity at all. That might work in the branding,   and tabloid world Trump comes from, but it’s an odd way to think that’s how governing works. It’s already being tested  —   with limited results, so far, for this president."
"Donald Trump won the presidency back in November, but for many liberal organizations, the battle continues. A loose network of lawyers and watchdogs has dug in to scrutinize issues involving the Trump administration’s ethics and transparency. Key topics include: the conflicts between Trump’s business interests and his presidential duties the constitutional questions raised by his foreign profits and the performance of his appointees, many of whom now run agencies overseeing the industries they themselves came from. The groups feel their work is essential, given that Trump’s Republican Party controls both the House and Senate. So far, Republican lawmakers have made oversight of the executive branch’s ethics a low priority. A central figure in the opposition network is Fred Wertheimer, of the research and strategy group Democracy 21. He says: ”The common understanding in the watchdog community is that we’re going to have to hold the Trump administration responsible, because no one else is going to do it.” Below is a list of some of the most active groups. Filed Freedom of Information Act requests for records on possible conflicts of interest and emoluments (gifts or payments from foreign, state or local governments or officials). Seeking perjury investigation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions after he failed to disclose meetings with a Russian official during confirmation hearing to be attorney general. The ACLU brings legal savvy and   clout to the ethics coalition. But it’s busy battling Trump on other fronts as well, such as the travel and refugee bans and deportation of unauthorized immigrants. Files FOIA requests at federal agencies so it can monitor their activities. The Audit The Wall project intends to examine plans, contracts and construction of the Southern border wall. With the Environmental Working Group, examining FOIA’d records on EPA administrator’s decision to reverse a ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos. A new group of lawyers, including some who worked at agencies in the Obama administration. Analyzes laws and standards that keep a president or appointee from profiting on the presidency. Research expected to lead to FOIAs, possibly litigation. Named for progressive Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. and based at NYU Law School, this legal think tank digs into issues ranging from campaign finance and voter ID to mass incarceration in American prisons and the constitutional rights of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. Petitioned to unseal divorce records of Trump’s first nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, who later withdrew. Filed ethics complaint against Republican congressional aides who worked for the Trump transition team. A small D. C. nonprofit working to ”expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life,” focusing mainly on state governments. Analyzes and challenges administration actions on ethics, conflict of interest issues researches   solutions. Legal and advocacy group specializing in ethics and election laws: ballot access, campaign finance, political advertising, voting rights, redistricting and related issues. President is former Federal Election Commission Chair (and Stephen Colbert lawyer) Trevor Potter. Monitors U. S. enforcement of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which controls overseas conduct of American corporations. Tracks lawmakers’ letters to White House concerning ethics issues, and administration responses. Researches and publishes reports on Trump conflicts of interest. The think tank most closely aligned with the Democratic Party establishment it has expertise in a vast array of issues from governmental to social, plus media,   and social media operations. Litigating to uncover EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s email traffic with energy companies, from his time as Oklahoma attorney general. Examining disclosures of Trump agency appointees for potential ethics concerns. Progressive watchdog group in Madison, Wis. used leaked documents in   investigations of Koch political network and corporate legislative group American Legislative Exchange Council. Called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign over untruthful answers in his confirmation hearing. Urged Senate to delay confirmation of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, saying he withheld documents revealing corporate influence in his decisions as Oklahoma attorney general. ”Good government” lobbying and   group with a record reaching back to 1970. Active on voting rights, gerrymandering, other democracy issues. Was a key force in passage of 2002   law, other campaign finance and ethics laws. Researching U. S. Constitution provisions on foreign and domestic emoluments, to shape legal action by other groups. Primary mission is to promote progressive ”textualist” interpretations of the Constitution, versus conservative ”originalism.” One of several hubs of the network. Sued President Trump on his first full workday, alleging that Trump profited by taking payments from foreign diplomats and others at his hotels and golf courses, violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause. If the Trump ethics network has stars, they are CREW’s Norm Eisen, former ethics counsel for Obama’s White House, and Richard Painter, who did that job under President George W. Bush. Tracking White House activities, including disclosure reports of presidential appointees, nondisclosure of visitor logs, lobbying at Office of Management and Budget. A   group that claims 2 million   supporters. Another hub of the network. Works with CREW on emoluments. Urged New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate the Trump Organization as a possible conduit of foreign emoluments. In letters to administration officials, lays out arguments to comply with ethics laws  —   e. g. why Ivanka Trump couldn’t do her White House job as a volunteer. Headed by Fred Wertheimer, one of the progressive movement’s leading strategists on ethics and campaign finance laws since the 1980s. Uses email, social media to mobilize a large   base to sign petitions, call lawmakers, go to demonstrations on Trump ethics issues and accountability. Advocacy group for tougher campaign finance laws, now has branched out to support challenges on Trump ethics. Also active on state issues. Called on New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to revoke the state’s corporate charter for the Trump Organization, alleging the company has long engaged in illegal conduct. FSFP, based in Amherst, Mass. began as a vehicle to fight the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. Unlike most groups battling the Trump administration, it explicitly calls for Trump’s impeachment. ”Know Your Rights” campaign aims to raise federal employees’ awareness of legal protections against reprisals from superiors, celebrate ”the role of truth and  ” and encourage potential possible whistleblowers. Since 1977, helping governmental and corporate whistleblowers with strategic support and   litigation. Renewed a push for stronger ethics laws, including more power for the Office of Government Ethics, which oversees compliance with disclosure and conflict of interest laws in the executive branch. Would protect OGE director from being dismissed without cause. Issue One’s primary goal is a reform package that includes more transparency of political money, increased political participation, stronger ethics enforcement. Emphasizes bipartisanship. Looks into possible implications of ethics problems and conflicts of interest. Steers its   supporters to activities held by allied groups. Founded in 1981 to counter the emerging religious right has diversified in its mission while maintaining one of the progressive movement’s largest   networks. Another hub. Works with Capitol Hill oversight committees and agency inspectors general and conducts its own investigations. Advises federal employees on legal rights, job protections and whistleblowing. Updating its handbook for federal workers, The Art of Anonymous Activism. Not your usual Washington nonprofit, POGO works down in the gears of governing. Has ties to Republican and Democratic investigators on Capitol Hill, trains Hill staff in how to do oversight of executive branch. Founded in 1981 as a watchdog on Pentagon spending. Also a hub. Has taken action on White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s violation of ethics rules, presidential adviser Carl Icahn’s potential conflicts of interest. Sued Trump over executive order to undo existing regulations. Chronicles corporate influence with website corporatecabinet. org. The network’s most diversified group with its own litigation team,   network, plus staff experts in the   issues: ethics, financial policy, environment, trade, health care. Founded in 1971 by consumer activist Ralph Nader. Monitors government websites to detect and catalog information that is deleted. Tracks   practices and FOIA compliance in Trump administration. Created in 2006 to increase disclosure of governmental and political records and make government more transparent. Pushed for enactment of FOIA Improvement Act, which establishes a presumption of openness for data. Examines constitutional and legal concerns stemming from White House and agency actions  —   e. g. legal justification for Syria missile strikes, political hiring for attorney positions in DOJ civil rights division. New group created by lawyers from the Obama White House."
"Donald Trump promised something new in American politics. His strategists said his brash ”America First” approach would bust up the old party identities and remake the Republican Party as a true populist ”Workers Party.” But it was never perfectly clear exactly how he planned to do that  —   100 days into his administration, here are five thoughts on what we know so far about Trumpism: 1. The early debate about Trumpism (and what that means) Trump was so new and different, there was tremendous interest on the part of historians, conservative intellectuals and political operatives from both parties in figuring out just what ”Trumpism” was  —   or if it existed at all. Is there a consistent doctrine or an ideology that drives him? During the campaign, there were two main theories about that  —   on the one hand, Trumpism was economic populism combined with social conservatism and a dash of isolationism  —   kind of an updated version of Republican Party ideology from the 1920s. The second theory was that trying to define a coherent ideology that could be called Trumpism was a fool’s errand. According to this theory, Trump really did not believe in anything, except endless confidence in himself. He would just show up, make decisions based on his own impulses and instincts and see what happened. A hundred days into his presidency, and it’s fair to say we really don’t know which of those two interpretations is actually his approach to governance. 2. Trumpism is a moving target, On foreign policy, Trump is morphing into a more conventional Republican. His policy choices on China, NATO, Iran, the European Union and Syria have earned him praise from the bipartisan   establishment he used to call ”stupid.” On domestic policy, Trump is also moving away from his populist campaign rhetoric. He stocked his Cabinet with billionaires and CEOs. He’s been tilting toward the Wall Street Wing of his White House staff and signing executive orders helpful to the big banks. He embraced an Obamacare replacement plan that was anything but populist  —   it would have raised the cost of health insurance for older,   voters (his base) and it would have cut entitlements  —   something Candidate Trump promised never to do. 3. There is no Trumpist Caucus in Congress, One of the problems President Trump has had turning his nationalist, populist,   instincts into a coherent governing agenda is that there aren’t a lot of Trumpists in Congress. Trumpism was more an attitude than a movement. Even the House Freedom Caucus, which was swept into office by the same   forces that helped elect Trump broke with him on the Obamacare bill. Trump’s coattails didn’t stretch very far in 2016. His party lost seats in the House and Senate (though not as badly as predicted). Compare that to Ronald Reagan in 1980, who brought 33 new Republicans into the House and 12 new Republicans into the Senate. 4. Trumpism was always more of an attitude than a clearly defined movement, Two issues matter most to Trump voters. There may not be a base of Trumpist congressmen on Capitol Hill, but Trump does have a base. Those white,   voters may not care if Trump abandons his populist promises on the   Bank or Chinese currency manipulation, but they are paying careful attention to what Trump does on trade and immigration. Those two issues were the way he connected with the white,   voters who fueled his rise. Even as he moderates elsewhere, on both trade and immigration, he’s still moving forward very aggressively (in parts  —   he didn’t tear up NAFTA) and very confrontationally, staying focused on the same economic and cultural anxieties he stoked during the campaign. Already, Trump’s message on immigration is being heard loud and clear. Without passing any laws, illegal border crossings have slowed, H1B1 visa applications are down, as are applications from foreign students to American universities. Even tourism to the U. S. is off. 5. What are the next tells for Trumpism? Other issues will soon be putting Trumpism to the test. Next up (maybe) is a tax overhaul. On Wednesday, the president has vowed to announce his plan for massive tax cuts. Every tax bill has winners and losers. And Trump’s tax bill will tell us a lot about what Trumpism is. If at end of the day, the   shoppers feel like they’ve been screwed and that the Goldman Sachs people get more benefits out of the tax overhaul, Trump could lose support from his base. So far, Trump’s base has stayed loyal to him. That’s good news for Trump. Polls show that his base voters are satisfied with his performance. The bad news is that he hasn’t expanded his base at all  —   his approval ratings are at historic lows for a new president, and Trumpism remains a mystery. Is Trumpism just a nativist version of what a Mitt Romney administration would look like? Or is it up for grabs, waiting for the next impulsive decision of a president who prides himself on being transactional, flexible and unpredictable."
"Updated 11:45 p. m. ET, A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration cannot withhold federal funds from jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with immigration authorities, commonly known as sanctuary cities. U. S. District Judge William Orrick issued his temporary ruling as a result of two lawsuits brought against the administration by the city of San Francisco and the county of Santa Clara. The jurisdictions had argued that billions of federal dollars that support vital services were in jeopardy when the administration threatened to cut all federal funds. The White House press secretary released a statement calling the ruling ”one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge.” It said, ”San Francisco, and cities like it, are putting the   of criminal aliens before the safety of our citizens, and those city officials who authored these policies have the blood of dead Americans on their hands.” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said the administration will appeal the ruling. ”The idea that an agency can’t put in some reasonable restrictions on how some of these monies are spent is something that will be overturned eventually,” he said, adding, ”It’s the 9th Circuit going bananas.” Orrick does not sit on the U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But any appeal of his ruling would be heard by that court. Trump had made his threat against sanctuary cities a keystone promise of his presidential campaign. Just last week Attorney General Jeff Sessions underscored that threat by warning eight jurisdictions that they ran the risk of losing federal funds if they didn’t help enforce federal immigration law. But the scope of that threat has been in dispute. In a recent court hearing, attorneys for Santa Clara and San Francisco clashed with a Justice Department lawyer who argued that the lawsuit against the administration was premature because no enforcement action has been taken. Chad Readler, acting assistant attorney general, said the funding cutoff threat pertained only to money granted by the Justice Department and Homeland Security. But Orrick sided with the jurisdictions, which argued that the administration has clearly targeted all federal funding. Orrick wrote, ”Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the president disapproves.” In a statement, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said, ”This is why we have courts  —   to halt the overreach of a president and an attorney general who either don’t understand the Constitution or chose to ignore it.” A spokesman for the Justice Department said the ruling does not prevent the administration from enforcing conditions on some grants related to immigration matters. "
"For the first time in more than a decade, Mexicans no longer make up the majority of immigrants staying in the U. S. illegally, according to new estimates by the Pew Research Center. Their analysis of U. S. Census Bureau data shows that last year, there were 5. 6 million Mexican nationals living in the U. S. without authorization  —   half of the unauthorized immigrant population in 2016. Mexicans have been the majority of that population since 2005, according to the Pew report. Although Mexicans still make up the largest group of unauthorized immigrants, numbers from Mexico have been on the decline since the Great Recession began in late 2007. The number of unauthorized immigrants from other countries has been on the rise since the end of the recession, hitting an estimated 5. 7 million in 2016. Immigrants from Central America and Asia  —   largely from India and China  —   are two of the main drivers of that growth. These demographics shifts within the unauthorized immigrant population mark a transition that began after the recession, according to Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at Pew who   the report. Historically, Passel says, the number of Mexicans entering the U. S. illegally would go up when the U. S. economy was strong. ”That kind of explanation fit very well from 1990 through 2009,” he adds. ”Since 2009, though, the number of Mexicans has continued to fall and the unemployment situation in the U. S. has continued to improve. So it appears . .. that linkage has broken.” Passel says he does not expect migration from Mexico to pick up in the years ahead given the increasing difficulty of crossing the southwest border and Mexico’s shrinking youth population coupled with the country’s declining birth rate. ”A lot of Mexican unauthorized migration was related to family and friendship linkages between people in Mexico and immigrants in the U. S.,” he adds. But those connections may not be as strong as before since fewer immigrants have been crossing the border. The total number of immigrants staying in the U. S. illegally also appears to be not as robust as it once was. The Pew report details the first drop in the total number of unauthorized immigrants below levels from the end of the recession  —   from 11. 3 million in 2009 to just 11 million in 2015."
"When mentally ill inmates in New York City’s Rikers Island jail become too sick, violent, delusional or suicidal for the jail to handle, they’re sent to Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward for treatment. The inmates in Bellevue are awaiting trial for a variety of offenses, ranging from sleeping on the subway to murder. But for Dr. Elizabeth Ford, a psychiatrist who treats them, the charges against her patients are secondary. ”My job is to try to look past that and . .. to care for them, to be curious about them and to be ” she says. ”It is . .. a daily struggle, but one that I have found over the years [to be] incredibly rewarding.” Ford began treating inmates at Bellevue in 2000 during an internship and eventually worked her way up to become director of the hospital’s forensic psychiatric service. She revisits her experiences treating Rikers’ inmates in her new memoir, Sometimes Amazing Things Happen. ”The type of symptoms and pathology that I saw and took care of during my time [at Bellevue] really shocked me,” Ford says. ”Of the patients I took care of, it was almost a universal experience that they have suffered abuse or significant neglect as children. I literally can’t remember a patient for whom that didn’t apply.” Interview Highlights, On hearing difficult and disturbing stories from patients  A patient talked in a group, for the first time really, about how his drinking behavior started when he was 8 years old, because he accidentally learned that if he drank when his father whipped him it didn’t hurt as much. And that’s where his alcohol problem started. So stories like that are really heartbreaking and   and so I struggle with hearing those, but I’ve come to almost expect that every patient I take care of has some real abuse history. . .. I took care of many patients who had been accused of killing somebody. The most difficult ones for me were those who had been accused of killing a child, and that became particularly hard for me after I became pregnant and had my two children. But to listen to them talk  —   not necessarily about the crime, but about the feelings behind what led up to that, how they felt afterwards, and then the whole developmental trajectory that . .. made it seem like it was inevitable it was going to happen  —   was very difficult. On how many of her patients are neurodevelopmentally delayed  Increasingly I am noticing, in ways that I think I didn’t appreciate early in my career, the numbers of people who are incarcerated who are neurodevelopmentally delayed and who don’t have the education, or don’t have the cognitive ability, to really navigate through this system. The first thing I do  —   which is what I try to do for every patient, regardless of what’s going on with them  —   is to sit, and be with them, and listen. And sometimes for patients, particularly who are neurodevelopmentally delayed, literally just being there for them, not running away, is the best thing that I can do. And then, when they settle, we can talk about how best to move forward. On how to handle violent patients  Much of the violence was a result of patients feeling like they weren’t having their needs met they weren’t being heard. Occasionally it had to do with their   case, but there was a wide range of managing it, and we tried as best we could to start with the least forceful intervention. So talking to a patient, trying to understand  —   and if that didn’t work, offering them medication, if that was appropriate. . .. Sometimes patients had to be locked in rooms  —   it’s called seclusion  —   to keep themselves and others safe. And just like any other psychiatric hospital, for patients who were so extraordinarily violent that there was nothing else we could do, they did have to be restrained, which is not something any of us ever wanted to do, but sometimes happened. Over the course of my career I have definitely found that the first approach  —   listening to patients and really having patience with them  —   is by far the best approach. When patients are scared, they become violent. And if you can listen to them, the fear goes away. On group therapy, One of the amazing things . .. is that patients would come in and expect ’show any weakness and you’ll be taken advantage of,’ or ’share anything about your life and something bad will happen,’ and I think what patients found, certainly what I found over the years, is that that was not always the case. In some instances you could find support where you didn’t really expect it. . .. One of the biggest stressors of being in jail is that you are surrounded by people who you have not chosen to live with. You have officers telling you things that you need to be doing that you may not agree with, and you have health staff who sometimes are asking you to do things you don’t want to do. But you’re in an absolutely new community, and group therapy is a perfect petri dish to practice interacting and communicating with people that you don’t know, some of whom you might be afraid of, some of whom you don’t respect. . .. I have found group therapy to be some of the best treatment in this kind of setting. On her new job as chief of psychiatry for correctional health services for New York City, We’ve developed a model where patients are much safer. They take their medication much more frequently. Injury rates are down. And the officers and the health staff work very closely together. There’s a very   approach to these units, and patients do well  —   as well as one can do in a jail setting. But patients do well in these units. We’ve reduced the need for hospitalization, and I think those things are a testament to what can be done, even in a setting that, I think, many people feel is hopeless. I don’t see it that way. . .. There are ways for jails and prisons to be more rehabilitative and I think we can be all starting a conversation about that. The issue of punishment certainly comes up. From my perspective as a doctor I have found that positive reinforcement  —   that means praising someone or helping someone when they do good things, rather than punishing when they do bad things  —   is the best way to change behavior. So, I think the more that we can try to incorporate that into the mission of the work we do in the jails, the better. Radio producers Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie and Web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly   contributed to this story."
"It’s been a tough three years for an already troubled city. When Flint, Mich. switched to using the Flint River for its drinking water as a   measure, then failed to properly treat it, lead pipes corroded and contaminated the water with lead. But Flint residents are fighters, and many are beginning to see signs of hope for a better future. The most visible are changes are in the city’s downtown. There are coffeehouses and restaurants along Saginaw Street where 10 years ago there were almost none. General Manager Ken Laatz says business is thriving at his establishment, the Soggy Bottom Bar, where you’ll find good food and good   beer on tap. ”Almost every night, we have some cool things going on,” he said. ”We have a jazz night that’s really popular trivia night’s always popular.” Laatz says besides the new eateries, philanthropists with ties to the city are restoring the Capitol Theatre to its former glory. The theatre is next to the renovated,   Dryden Building. It used to be a cheap place to rent office space now, says Laatz, you can’t get in. Laatz says Flint residents are happy, but he says the response to the improvements from    on social media posts drives him nuts. ”It’s always the first comment,” said Laatz with a grimace. ” ’Don’t drink the water.’ ” Yeah, it gets old. But if you live in Flint you’re well aware of its problems. Most predated the water crisis. General Motors used to employ 80, 000 people in Genesee County, most of them in the city. Today, GM has only about 5, 000 Flint residents on the payroll. The catastrophic loss of jobs led to high unemployment and rising crime rates. Flint was already notorious for that earlier crisis, made known to the world by a documentary by Michael Moore called Roger and Me. Other problems facing the city include   schools and miles and miles of blighted neighborhoods. But Laatz says improving downtown is a start. Here’s what people outside Flint need to understand, he says: ”Flint has a way of making people fall in love with it.” He adds, ”You know, I love Flint, I love running a business here, I love what it is. And I want all those things to get better, and the education system to be better so that it can be a thriving city again.” People who run the new Cummings Early Childhood Education Center are determined to make the education system better. The center caters to children up to age 5 who lived in the city during the beginnings of the water crisis. Funding from the state and from foundations ensures that, at least for the next three years, the school is free. The school is partnering with the School of Education at the University of Michigan, Flint. ”In order to revitalize a community, you have to revitalize its education system,” says School of Education Dean Bob Barnett. ”If we want to lift these kids out of poverty, we have to lift whole families up. So we have adult education here, where the parents on site are getting their GED and their high school diploma, while their kids are getting   early childhood care.” The school is based on the Reggio Emilia model developed in Italy after World War II to help cities respond to traumatized kids by providing   early childhood care. Kids in Flint have been traumatized, too, say the school’s developers. They figure the model’s emphasis on natural materials, soothing and uncluttered classrooms, and respect for the autonomy and ability of the child is a natural fit for Flint’s children. The university will conduct research at the school and remain involved with the children once they enroll in the public district. The aim is to use the experiences here to try to improve Flint’s entire public school district from the bottom up. There are efforts underway to reduce Flint’s notorious high crime rate, as well. Flint’s police chief, Timothy Johnson, has his officers focus on traffic stops. Those stops can find people driving without a license, he says, and that can lead to finding unregistered guns in the car. ”And believe it not,” said Johnson, ”When you’re taking weapons out of those cars, you’re stopping homicides from happening that might have occurred that night.” Johnson says efforts to improve trust between citizens and police are also helping. Crime tips are way up, he says. ”They [citizens] know who’s breaking into   ’s house,” said Johnson. ”They know who committed that murder. Somebody was there somebody saw it. Without those special tips, we would never be able to solve these crimes.” But as with all city services, he says he doesn’t have enough police officers or resources. Economists says Flint does have some anchor businesses that could help, especially if there are more partnerships like the one between the Cummings Center and the University of Michigan, Flint. Flint has an international airport it has the university and it has major medical facilities. But those assets don’t often help people living in the blighted neighborhoods, who lack transportation to jobs, or the skills necessary for jobs. Even with these problems, though, plenty of people live here not because they have to, but because they want to. That’s the case for Amy Strange, her husband, and her three kids. She says the development downtown shows that Flint has a vision for its future. Even so, her faith was shaken by the bad decisions and subterfuge that led to the water crisis. ”We started   who we could trust,” said Strange. It’s going to take a long time to get that trust back. But she’s still here. She still believes. ”You know, it’s a cliche, from the ashes, we can build something brand new, and we really, truly believe Flint will be a beautiful place one day.” Check back in another few years, she says. She and many others think there will be even more positive changes in Flint as it works hard to transform itself against some very steep odds."
"The Cherokee Nation is suing top drug distributors and pharmacies  —   including    —   alleging they profited greatly by ”flooding” communities in Oklahoma with prescription painkillers, leading to the deaths of hundreds of tribal members. Todd Hembree, attorney general for the Cherokee Nation, says drug companies didn’t do enough to keep painkillers off the black market or to stop the overprescription of these powerful narcotics, which include OxyContin and Vicodin. ”They flooded this market,” Hembree says. ”And they knew  —   or should’ve known  —   that they were doing so.” Walgreens, CVS Health and   are all named in the suit, along with the nation’s three largest pharmaceutical distributors: AmerisourceBergen, McKesson and Cardinal Health. They act as middlemen between pharmacies and drugmakers, distributing 85 to 90 percent of the prescription painkillers that some see as fueling a growing opioid epidemic in the U. S. When reached for comment, one of the defendants, Cardinal Health, sent a statement to NPR saying the suit was a mischaracterization of facts and a misunderstanding of the law. ”We believe these lawsuits do not advance the hard work needed to solve the opioid abuse crisis  —   an epidemic driven by addiction, demand and the diversion of medications for illegitimate use.” But the Cherokee Tribe says these companies regularly filled large, suspicious prescriptions within the Cherokee Nation’s 14 counties in northeastern Oklahoma. It also says the companies turned a blind eye to patients who   and presented multiple prescriptions for the same medication. Oklahoma, where 177, 000 tribal members live, leads the nation in opioid abuse. Almost a third of the prescription painkillers distributed in that state went to the Cherokee Nation. ”There are safeguards that are supposed to be followed  —   federal laws  —   that they turn a blind eye to because their profits are much more important to them,” Hembree says. ”We were being [overrun] by the amount of opioids being pushed into the Cherokee Nation.” A spokesperson for Walgreens told NPR the company declines to comment on pending litigation. CVS Health said in a statement, ”We have stringent policies, procedures and tools to ensure that our pharmacists properly exercise their corresponding responsibility to determine whether a controlled substance prescription was issued for a legitimate medical purpose before filling it.” The other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Nowhere has the country’s opioid crisis hit harder than in Indian Country. Compared with other racial and ethnic groups in the U. S. American Indians have the highest rate of   deaths in the country. The use of OxyContin by American Indian   is double the national average. The lawsuit estimates opioid abuse led to over 350 deaths within the Cherokee Nation between 2003 and 2014. Cherokee babies are often born with an opioid addiction resulting from their mothers’ use of prescription painkillers throughout the pregnancy. Some spend their first moments on earth suffering through withdrawals. ”They will have shakes, they will cry, and a lot of these children go on to have developmental and cognitive issues,” Nikki   executive director of child welfare for the Cherokee Nation, says. ”These children are born and they don’t even have a chance the second they come out of the womb.” Several studies suggest that high rates of addiction in Indian Country stem from the violence and cultural destruction brought down upon Natives over the past 200 years. Because both trauma and resilience are remembered in our DNA, the genocide and forced removal of Cherokee and other tribes from their homelands by the U. S. government during the early 19th century has resulted in generational trauma. Cherokee Nation claims in the suit that drug companies are making money off a vulnerable population and ignoring epidemiological and demographic facts. While this is the first time an Indian Nation has sued top drug distributors and pharmacies, it’s not the first case of its kind in the country. The city of Everett, Wash. recently filed suit against Perdue Pharmaceuticals, the maker of OxyContin, for allowing its drug to saturate the black market. West Virginia, one of the hardest hit places in the nation’s opioid epidemic, settled with Cardinal Health for $20 million last year. Soon after, the federal government slapped Cardinal Health and McKesson with   fines for failing to report suspicious orders of controlled substances to the Drug Enforcement Agency. ”Legal action is one of the only effective measures we have against pharmaceutical companies and distributors,” Adriane   an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at Georgetown University, says.   has served as an expert witness in several cases against pharmaceutical companies. ”Companies don’t like lawsuits,” she says. ”It’s a great way to get information into the public domain.” But the Cherokee Nation’s lawsuit is different from other cases in a fundamental way: It was filed in tribal court. By doing so, lawyers for the Cherokee Nation say they hope to gain quicker access to internal corporate records. However, Hembree says they expect the defendants will file a motion to move the case into federal courts. ”We’re ready for that jurisdictional battle and we look forward to trying this case in Tahlequah, Okla. ,” Hambree says, referring to the Cherokee Nation’s headquarters. The suit seeks billions of dollars in damages, and Hambree hopes it will help change the behavior of drug distributors and pharmacies. ”I can’t put Cardinal Health and McKesson and Amerisource in jail, but I can make them responsible for the damages they’ve incurred,” he says. Even if the tribe is successful,   says a change in behavior isn’t going to cure the opioid crisis in Indian Country and the U. S. in general. ”It’s just one piece in this whole fabric of how to stop the opioid epidemic,” she says. But curing that one piece could really make a big difference in the Cherokee Nation, according to  . She says the tribe has the infrastructure to provide recovery and rehab services. ”Somebody needs to stop letting these opioids be so readily available,” she says. ”We’re a   community. It’s hitting us hard.” Nate Hegyi is a reporter for Montana Public Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @natehegyi"
"”It was in the early morning hours of July 2 that I was kidnapped.” On the opening page of Guy Delisle’s Hostage, those words hang in a   night sky, above a building in a nondescript neighborhood of what we soon learn is a small town west of Chechnya. That same, muted grayscale   will stay with us throughout the book, because the man imparting those words  —   Christophe André, a Doctors Without Borders administrator assigned to the Caucasus region in 1997  —   will spend the bulk of Hostage’s 432 pages in darkness. But first, we see a car pull up to the building, and several dark shapes clamber out. We watch them storm into the room where André is sleeping, forcibly abduct the bewildered and terrified man, and shove him into the backseat of a car. For days that stretch into weeks, and weeks into months, André’s existence shrinks to one of numbing monotony, as he is kept  —   mostly  —   in a small darkened room, handcuffed to a radiator beside a bare mattress. His days pass with metronomic regularity: fitful sleep broken up by the ”click, clack” of the door, which augurs a meal of thin vegetable soup, or a bathroom break. Any deviation from this crushing routine  —   the sound of distant gunfire, a new voice in the hallway, or having his photograph taken by his captors  —   inflames André’s imagination with thoughts of rescue, or sends him spiraling into despair. To keep his sanity, he literally counts the passing days (at one point the notion that he’s temporarily lost track of which day of the week it is induces a panic attack) and challenges himself to recall details of French military history. The account of André’s experience, dictated to Delisle years later by the man himself, would be powerful enough, if depicted in prose alone. But Hostage is a comic, and it’s Delisle’s art  —   his character design, his use of page and panel layout to underscore the   sameness of solitary confinement while controlling the story’s mood and pacing  —   that makes us feel André’s plight so deeply. We come to know every square inch of the room  —   the bare lightbulb never turned on, the stains on the ceiling and walls, the single,   window  —   because Delisle lingers over them longingly, again and again, filtered through André’s consciousness, which is starved for fresh visual input. Hostage is a departure from Delisle’s previous comics work, a series of   travelogues depicting his experiences accompanying his wife  —   a Doctors Without Borders manager  —   to places like China, North Korea, Jerusalem and Myanmar. In those books, Delisle brings a sense of humor and an outsider’s perspective (he’s a    dad who generally comes into only glancing contact with the tense political environment on the ground). He depicts himself, and his kids, in a broad, cartoony style that owes more to Hergé’s Tintin than the intimate expressiveness of, say, Joe Sacco’s graphic nonfiction. There’s a note of that cartoony style here  —   André wears round glasses over his   and when he’s worried about his fate, sweat droplets hover in the air around his temples. But Delisle’s in full control, and uses the growing disconnect between André’s plight and its occasionally whimsical presentation to point up the power of fleeting flashes of hope: the day his captors add a bit of beef to his soup, the moment he gets to cross the room and actually touch the opposite wall he’s been staring at for months. Hostage concludes with a passage of heightened suspense as André finally gains some measure of control over his fate, only to have his feelings of helplessness and paranoia steadily mount. As readers outside the story, holding the hefty tome that is Hostage in our hands, we know something that André doesn’t: that we’ve only got a handful of pages to go, so one way or another, his tale is about to end. It’s a testament to Delisle’s gifts that we remain so deeply invested in André’s situation, seeing and feeling only what he does, that this knowledge never registers we keep turning pages fearfully, hungrily, plowing on along with him, vibrating in the tension between word and image, terror and hope."
"Updated 3:40 p. m. ET, Senior lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee say Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, appears to have violated the law when he took payments from groups associated with foreign governments. Chairman Jason Chaffetz,   and ranking member Elijah Cummings,  . spoke at a news conference Tuesday, after they received a classified briefing. ”I see no data to support the notion that Gen. Flynn complied with the law,” Chaffetz said. Flynn was paid tens of thousands of dollars for appearances he made in Russia, including payments from a   media organization. He was also paid for lobbying efforts that may have benefited the Turkish government.  As a retired lieutenant general, Flynn was required to obtain permission before receiving foreign payments, Chaffetz and Cummings say. But the classified briefing they received suggested Flynn neither asked permission nor reported the funds he received for a trip to Moscow. ”It does not appear to us that [permission] was ever sought,” Chaffetz said. He noted it will be up to the Department of the Army to make a final determination on whether Flynn broke the law. Flynn’s lawyer said in a statement that the former general discussed his trip with the Defense Intelligence Agency, both before and after his travel, and ”answered any questions that were posed.” The lawyer did not address whether Flynn specifically informed the Pentagon about payments. ”As a former military officer you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else, and it appears as if he did take that money,” Chaffetz said. ”It was inappropriate and there are repercussions for the violation of law.” Cummings said they could not discuss the contents of the classified documents they saw. ”But we can say this: They are extremely troubling,” he said. ”I believe these documents should be declassified to the fullest extent possible.” Cummings also said the White House has refused to release information about Flynn’s foreign contacts and connections. The House Oversight Committee had requested Flynn’s security clearance paperwork, references to foreign contacts, receipts for payments from abroad and requests for permission to receive foreign payments. Each request was denied. The administration had a range of reasons. In a letter on Wednesday, the White House referred some requests to the Department of Defense, claimed to not have ”possession, custody or control” of other documents, said some files are ”likely” to contain classified information, and questioned the relevance of other documents. ”The White House has refused to provide this committee with a single piece of paper,” Cummings said, ”and that is simply unacceptable.” At a news conference Tuesday, White House press secretary said some documents had already been handed over by the Department of Defense. He also suggested that it would be ”outlandish” to provide the committee with information about every call Flynn made as national security adviser. Asked whether Flynn had broken the law, Spicer said, ”that’s a question for him.”"
"Two Obama administration officials will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The U. S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia attempted to help Donald Trump win the election. The Senate Judiciary Committee is one of multiple bodies  —   including the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the FBI  —   examining what exactly Russia did and whether the Trump campaign was involved, among other questions. Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 8. Yates and Clapper, along with former CIA Director John Brennan, were previously scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee  —   the most prominent and public investigation to date  —   in late March. But those plans were scuttled amid a simmering soap opera of distrust and missteps within the House committee. Yates, specifically, was at the center of one portion of the drama: Multiple sources accused the White House of attempting to block her from testifying. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House committee, told NPR that the Trump administration worked behind the scenes to stop Yates’ testimony. He said White House officials were worried about what she would reveal about the administration’s response when Yates told them about the investigation into Michael Flynn. (Flynn briefly served as national security adviser, resigning after it was revealed he had concealed his contacts with the Russian ambassador.) The Washington Post also reported that the White House tried to block Yates from testifying. The newspaper published letters exchanged by the Justice Department and Yates’ lawyer, in which the Justice Department says Yates’ communications are ”likely” covered by executive privilege, which would mean it is up to the president whether they are disclosed. The Trump administration has denied putting pressure on the House investigation and called the Post story ”entirely false.” The House Intelligence Committee is also continuing its investigation into Russian meddling. FBI Director James Comey and national security adviser Michael Rogers  —   who already testified at an open hearing last month  —   will also appear before that committee in a closed hearing on May 2. Yates, Clapper and Brennan are also set to appear before the committee in an open hearing later in May. A number of Trump campaign members, including Roger Stone, Carter Page and Paul Manafort, have volunteered to give testimony to the various investigations. Flynn has suggested he will testify if he is given immunity from prosecution. All those men have been under scrutiny over ties to Russia. As part of the investigation into Russian meddling, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are also extremely interested in a different set of issues: who leaked classified information about ties between the Trump team and Russia, who requested that names of Trump associates be ”unmasked” and whether intelligence was abused for political purposes. Meanwhile, there are reports, citing anonymous sources, that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling efforts is stagnating. The Senate investigation, unlike the House investigation, is taking place almost entirely behind closed doors. Tim Mak of The Daily Beast reports that there are no   staff members working on the Senate inquiry and that ”no interviews have been conducted with key individuals.” And Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News reports that the committee ”has yet to issue a single subpoena for documents,” in addition to failing to interview any central witnesses."
"”I also protect myself by being flexible. I never get too attached to one deal or one approach.” Those words from Donald Trump’s The Art of The Deal may be giving congressional Republicans some hope this week. That’s because Congress is facing a midnight Friday deadline to pass legislation to keep the federal government fully open  —   or face a partial government shutdown precisely on President Trump’s 100th day in office. Government shutdowns are not unheard of, but those in recent memory came when power was divided, not when one party controled both chambers of Congress and the White House. Republicans are aware that their party generally gets blamed for government shutdowns, even if it doesn’t necessarily pay the price at the ballot box. Republicans held the House and won control of the Senate in 2014  —   a year after the public put much of the blame on their party for the shutdown in late 2013. But on the heels of the failed GOP health care effort, Republicans are hoping to avoid an embarrassing episode as they try to prove they are a party that can govern effectively. ”The president is working hard to keep the government open and addressing various issues,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Monday. Trump has several demands that could complicate hopes on Capitol Hill for a ”clean bill”  —   one without controversial provisions. House Speaker Paul Ryan has vowed to avoid a shutdown, and told lawmakers on a conference call over the weekend, ”Wherever we land will be a product the president can and will support.” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said over the weekend that a deal could get done, if the president stays out of it and lets Congress negotiate among itself. He called Trump’s demands ”the only fly in the ointment.” Trump has made several of his demands known on Twitter. So what does he want? 1. Wall funding, Congressional leaders have been saying for months that they know they will have to put up money for Trump’s request to build a wall on the border with Mexico. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked whether Mexico would pay and had a simple answer: ”Uh, no.” But they’ve also maintained it would be a separate issue from keeping the government open. ”Once the government is up and running, and stays open and running, then we have to fight this out over the next year,” Rep. Peter King,  . Y. told Fox News Sunday. Trump’s team has been sending mixed messages. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on CNN, ”I would expect he’ll be insistent on the funding.” But in an appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press, Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus refused to say whether the president would veto a bill without border funding. The Associated Press reported Monday evening that Trump told a group of conservative reporters he’d be willing to let the wall funding slide to September. Democrats have been saying that wall funding is a   with public opinion on their side. A Washington   News poll released over the weekend showed the following: ”Sixty percent of adults oppose building a wall along the U. S.  border, while 37 percent support it. Of these respondents, 47 percent are strongly against it.” 2. Increased military spending, For all the goals Trump won’t accomplish by his 100th day in office, he may feel more bullish about getting a boost in military spending included in the spending bill. It’s seen as one of the controversial sticking points that can hold things up, but Trump has cover from some critics. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said it was the primary goal in spending negotiations on Monday. Sen. John McCain,  . said in March that he would not vote for a bill that didn’t increase military spending above current levels. He told CNN that doing so ”destroys the ability of the military to defend this nation, and it puts the lives of the men and women in the military at risk.” Trump had dinner Monday night with McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. another Trump critic in the GOP, who is in lock step with McCain on defense issues. Defense spending also lacks the the quality of being a hallmark Trump issue like the wall, so Democrats may not be as energized in opposing such an increase. Blocking wall funding would be a bigger win for them. 3. Health care  Trump is pushing a revival of GOP efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which imploded last month. He has been noncommittal as to whether a vote would need to happen this week and possibly tangle up passing a bill to keep the government open. But with the Affordable Care Act in place, the president has been hinting at using the healthcare program as a bargaining chip with Democrats. The administration could drop subsidies to help reduce    costs for   Americans, which could destabilize the   market. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told Bloomberg that the administration had made an offer to Democrats to maintain a dollar in subsidies for every dollar of wall funding they are willing to provide. Trump has said Democrats will take the heat if Obamacare collapses, but blaming the opposition for the consequences of such public threats from the president himself might prove challenging. Democrats have already been turning it back on Trump. ”The White House gambit to hold hostage health care for millions of Americans, in order to force American taxpayers to foot the bill for a wall that the president said would be paid for by Mexico is a complete nonstarter,” Schumer spokesman Matt House said. Trump may be fixated on the bigger goal here, though. On Monday, he warned that Obamacare is already failing, something that the Congressional Budget Office says isn’t true, and promised that the GOP will fix it with its own plan. Trump has emphasized his flexibility, but on the health care bill he demonstrated a willingness to walk away from the table in the midst of a negotiation. With the prospect of another legislative defeat on the eve of his 100th day as president, Trump might be keeping in mind another passage from The Art of The Deal: ”You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”"
"President Trump pledged to ”confront  ” at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony on Tuesday. His remarks at the U. S. Capitol follow a number of controversies relating to   and his administration. ”I will always stand with the Jewish people, and I will always stand with our great friend and partner, the state of Israel,” the president said at the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Days of Remembrance ceremony. The gathering included Holocaust survivors and veterans. The week of remembrance has been observed in the U. S. since 1979, according to the museum. It notes that presidents have participated in the annual commemorations since the museum opened in 1993.   incidents are on the rise in the U. S. according to the   League. The Jewish advocacy organization has recorded an 86 percent spike in attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions so far in 2017, as NPR reported on Monday. Globally, a Tel Aviv University report finds, such attacks fell 12 percent in 2016. Allegations of   and insensitivity have plagued the Trump team, going back to the campaign: In his remarks on Tuesday, Trump said, ”Those who deny the Holocaust are an accomplice to this horrible evil. And we’ll never be silent  —   we just won’t  —   we will never, ever be silent in the face of evil again.” He condemned   attacks and pledged: ”We will confront  . We will stamp out prejudice. We will condemn hatred. We will bear witness. And we will act.”"
"People around the world use more than a trillion plastic bags every year. They’re made of a notoriously resilient kind of plastic called polyethylene that can take decades to break down. But the humble wax worm may hold the key to biodegrading them. It was an accidental discovery. Scientist and beekeeper Federica Bertocchini was frustrated to find that her beehives were infested with the caterpillar larvae of Galleria mellonella, commonly known as a wax worm. Bertocchini, who works at the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria in Spain, tells NPR that she was cleaning out the hive and put the   parts in a plastic bag. But shortly afterward, she noticed that ”they were all crawling around my place and the plastic bag was riddled with holes.” This got her thinking about whether the creatures were simply chewing up the plastic or actually breaking it down chemically. Bertocchini and a team of researchers decided to test it, so they ground some wax worms into a pulp and spread it on the polyethylene plastic. The plastic still degraded. ”So it had to be something chemical that was going on and not a physical breakdown,” one of the scientists, Christopher Howe of the University of Cambridge, tells NPR. The scientists also found that what the worms did transformed the plastic into ethylene glycol, which is commonly used in antifreeze. ”It’s not itself a very exciting product, from our point of view, but what matters is that we’re able to turn the plastic into something else,” Howe says. So why would the wax worm have this ability? Bertocchini says it might be because the critter commonly lives in beehives. ”It eats wax and honey,” she said. ”So because of the similarities between wax and the polyethylene, to a certain extent clearly, maybe that’s the reason why these insects developed this capability.” The process of biodegrading both beeswax and polyethylene involves breaking strong carbon bonds, the scientists wrote in their recent paper in Current Biology. It’s worth noting that the scientists haven’t yet pinpointed how the worm chemically breaks down plastic. In fact, they said it may not be the worm itself doing the work, but a bacteria in its gut that starts the process. Either way, identifying the enzyme responsible could have big ramifications for breaking down plastic waste. The idea isn’t to release millions of worms for a feeding frenzy at a dump. As Bertocchini explains, researchers are hoping to find biotechnological solutions to the problem of plastic waste. The best scenario, she says, would be to isolate the molecule responsible and ”produce it in large scale in a lab in vitro, and then distribute the molecule in large scale.” The wax worm isn’t the only organism that can break down plastics. For example, gut bacteria in the larvae of the Indian mealmoth Plodia interpunctella can break down polyethylene, but at a slower rate. And the wax worm discovery is still far from a solution to the world’s piles of waste, says Susan Selke, director of the Michigan State University School of Packaging. ”It’s a long way from discovering something that can biodegrade polyethylene to creating a system where that biodegradation serves a useful purpose,” she says."
"Ella Fitzgerald, who would have turned 100 Tuesday, was one of the most beloved and versatile singers of the 20th century. In a career that spanned six decades, Fitzgerald recorded hundreds of songs, including definitive versions of many standards. Along the way, she influenced generations of singers. But the first thing that strikes you about Fitzgerald is that voice. Cécile McLorin Salvant, who won a Grammy last year for Best Jazz Vocal Album, says a combination of qualities made Fitzgerald’s voice unique. ”When you hear the tone of her voice  —   which has kind of a brightness, kind of a breathiness, but it also has this really great depth, and kind of a   really clear quality to it  —   it hits you,” she says. Salvant, 27, says she learned to sing jazz standards by listening to Fitzgerald’s versions. ”I remember being 17 and living in France and feeling really homesick and wanting to go back to Miami, and listening to Ella Fitzgerald singing ’I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,’ ” Salvant says. ”And I would listen to that all day. All day. For, like, weeks. And it felt  —   it created a home for me.” Fitzgerald had perfect pitch, impeccable diction and a remarkable sense of rhythm. And it all came naturally to her, as she told the CBC in 1974. ”What I sing is only what I feel,” she said. ”I had some lady ask me the other day about music lessons and I never  —   except for what I had to learn for my   in school  —   I’ve never given it a thought. I’ve never taken breathing lessons. I had to go for myself, and I guess that’s how I got a style.” That style was an immediate hit. Fitzgerald was discovered at an amateur contest and began her professional career when she was only 16, singing with the Chick Webb Orchestra at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. When she was 21, she became internationally famous with a hit record based on a nursery rhyme, ”   .” Tony Bennett says that when he was starting out as a young singer, Ella Fitzgerald was his idol. ”She was a complete swinger,” he says. ”She just understood the whole art of jazz phrasing.” Bennett is now 90 years old, and Fitzgerald is still his idol. (A portrait he painted of her is even in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s collections.) He says she was the quintessential performer. ”She loved performing. She loved it. And the audience knew it right away,” Bennett says. ”The minute she walked out on that stage, they knew she was ready to give them the best she could ever imagine for them. She couldn’t wait to get on that stage and hit the back of the house, and have them react to her right away.” In the 1940s, Fitzgerald took part in   Harlem jam sessions with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Those sessions would give rise to bebop  —   and Fitzgerald embraced bebop scat singing, using her voice like a horn. ”She knew how to improvise better than anybody I ever listened to,” Bennett says. ”Just like an instrumentalist would take a jazz solo, she would do that vocally, and it would be perfection.” Fitzgerald toured and recorded constantly, producing one hit record after another. Music publishers wanted her to be the first to record their new songs, and she became known as ”The First Lady of Song.” In the 1950s, she embarked on an ambitious recording project: eight albums of standards written by prominent American composers  —   including Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern and George and Ira Gershwin. Many of Fitzgerald’s recordings of the musical canon known as the Great American Songbook are considered definitive versions. Ira Gershwin once said, ”I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.” Dan Morgenstern, Director Emeritus of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, says this is what she’ll be remembered for. ”She could take a great song and make it even greater,” Morgenstern says. ”She had a wonderful sense of melody. She had that beautiful voice. She had that perfect intonation. And she always knew what the right tempo should be. And she put so much feeling into what she did.” Fitzgerald lived for her career  —   and her personal life suffered. She fell in love with   younger men who turned out to be scam artists. Her marriage to bebop bassist Ray Brown lasted only six years. She was insecure, got nervous before performances and cried if she got a bad review. And she was overweight for much of her life. ”She was not a sex symbol,” Salvant says. ”And yet she was very successful. It’s a testament to both the audience and  —   of course, most of all  —   her artistry. And we’re not even talking about racism. That a black woman could be so popular across the board with both black and white audiences  —   that’s a beautiful thing.” Ella Fitzgerald sold 40 million records in her lifetime. She died in 1996 from complications caused by diabetes. She was 79 years old. For Ella Fitzgerald’s centennial, the Verve Label Group is reissuing much of her music, including a compilation called ’100 Songs For A Centennial.’ The label has also curated this playlist of some of Fitzgerald’s best work."
"Explosions, a running gun battle,   and an attack on a police station took place along Paraguay’s border with Brazil on Monday, as a gang of bandits assaulted a private security company and reportedly made off with millions of dollars in what’s being called the biggest heist in Paraguayan history. Estimates of the amount of money taken have ranged from $8 million to $40 million, but none of those figures have been confirmed by authorities. At least one police officer and three suspects have been killed, and at least nine arrests have been made, according to local officials and Brazilian media. All of those arrested are Brazilian. Details about the raid are still emerging, but police believe some 50 heavily armed thieves took part in an early morning assault on the Prosegur security group’s local headquarters in Ciudad del Este, a city that’s across the Parana River from Brazil. They reportedly used explosives to blow the front off the security firm’s building and take the cash, before firing on police and setting more than a dozen cars on fire to cover their escape. ”This type of crime is not for amateurs,” said local Federal Police Delegate Fabiano Bordignón, according to the newspaper Folha De Sao Paulo. Headlines are calling it the crime of the century, or simply, a ” .” The criminals then used Prosegur’s armored trucks to transport their haul  —   at least some of which then went across the river to the Brazilian town of Foz de Yguazú, officials say. That’s where a mansion was found later Monday that federal police say the criminals may have used as a staging area. Search and forensics teams are working on evidence from that house, according to Brazil’s G1 news network. The bandits also stole a police car, reports Brazil’s O Globo, which adds that early Tuesday morning, the gang members released ”11 people, mostly rural workers, who had been taken hostage.” Hundreds of military and civilian police have been deployed to find the thieves, who are believed to have scattered in smaller groups after the robbery. Bags of cash were recovered in Foz de Yguazú, Paraguay’s Minister of the Interior Lorenzo Lezcano Sánchez said Tuesday, along with five machine guns, a .  rifle, seven cars and vans, two boats, and 7 kilograms of explosives, according to an official statement. Ammunition and bulletproof vests were also seized. Paraguay’s Interior Ministry and officials in Brazil have said they suspect a Brazilian gang called the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital, or First Command of the Capital) could be behind the operation. If that connection holds true, the mastermind could be a    man named Luciano Castro de Oliveira  —   more widely known as Zequinha  —   who remains at large, as the newspaper Clarin reports."
"One of NASCAR’s most popular drivers  —   and one of its most famous names  —   is leaving the racetrack. Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced Tuesday that he’s retiring at the end of the season. Earnhardt recently took a long break to recover from a series of concussions. Just a few weeks ago, he told NPR he wasn’t sure when he’d be leaving the sport. ”I’m 42, and I look online at statistics of other drivers and not many of them had a ton of success beyond 45,” Earnhardt told NPR’s Lulu  . ”There are a few. But I haven’t really decided when I’m going to hang it up.” But The Associated Press reports that Earnhardt told his employer, Hendrick Motorsports, about his plans to retire on March 29, more than a week before Earnhardt’s interview with NPR. The   NASCAR superstar has long been a fan favorite. His departure from the sport comes on the heels of Jeff Gordon’s retirement at the end of the 2015 season, and Tony Stewart’s retirement in 2016. (Gordon filled in temporarily last year when Earnhardt was unable to race.) The AP writes that the   departures leave ”a major void in NASCAR star power.” Recently, Earnhardt has been a major advocate for concussion awareness. ”We’ve learned a lot of things in the past 20 years,” he told NPR, explaining that technology has improved to keep drivers safer  —   and NASCAR culture has shifted, too. ”I would get concussions in my early 20s racing, and it was a bit of a badge of honor,” he said. ”You almost bragged about being dizzy. And it was something you looked at as much like a bruise. ”I’m excited about what I’m seeing out of NASCAR being more proactive to keep drivers safe and err on the side of safety,” he said. ”The first concussion can be bad enough, but if you don’t get it treated and don’t get it diagnosed, if you get another one in a very short period of time, that’s when you get in serious   damage and danger.” The AP has more on Earnhardt’s career: ”Born and raised in North Carolina, Earnhardt has deep roots in NASCAR. His late Hall of Fame father, Dale, won seven titles and, known as ”The Intimidator,” was one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history. Earnhardt’s grandfather, Ralph, ran 51 races at NASCAR’s highest level. ”Earnhardt has won NASCAR’s most popular driver award a record 14 times. He has 26 career Cup victories and is a   champion of NASCAR’s   Xfinity series, where he plans to race twice next year. But the son of the late champion has never won a Cup title. Now in his 18th   season at the Cup level, he made his 600th career series start earlier this year. ”Earnhardt has driven for Hendrick since 2008 after a nasty split with DaleEarnhardt Inc. the team founded by his father but run by his stepmother. He was unhappy with the direction of DEI since his father’s 2001 death in a   accident at the Daytona 500, and a frosty relationship with his stepmother led him to bolt to NASCAR’s most powerful team.”"
"Scientists have created an ”artificial womb” in the hopes of someday using the device to save babies born extremely prematurely. So far the device has only been tested on fetal lambs. A study published Tuesday involving eight animals found the device appears effective at enabling very premature fetuses to develop normally for about a month. ”We’ve been extremely successful in replacing the conditions in the womb in our lamb model,” says Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications. ”They’ve had normal growth. They’ve had normal lung maturation. They’ve had normal brain maturation. They’ve had normal development in every way that we can measure it,” Flake says. Flake says the group hopes to test the device on very premature human babies within three to five years. ”What we tried to do is develop a system that mimics the environment of the womb as closely as possible,” Flake says. ”It’s basically an artificial womb.” The device consists of a clear plastic bag filled with synthetic amniotic fluid. A machine outside the bag is attached to the umbilical cord to function like a placenta, providing nutrition and oxygen to the blood and removing carbon dioxide. ”The whole idea is to support normal development to   everything that the mother does in every way that we can to support normal fetal development and maturation,” Flake says. Other researchers praised the advance, saying it could help thousands of babies born very prematurely each year, if tests in humans were to prove successful. Jay Greenspan, a pediatrician at Thomas Jefferson University, called the device a ”technological miracle” that marks ”a huge step to try to do something that we’ve been trying to do for many years.” The device could also help scientists learn more about normal fetal development, says Thomas Shaffer a professor of physiology and pediatrics at Temple University. ”I think this is a major breakthrough,” Shaffer says. The device in the fetal lamb experiment is kept in a dark, warm room where researchers can play the sounds of the mother’s heart for the lamb fetus and monitor the fetus with ultrasounds. Previous research has shown that lamb fetuses are good models for human fetal development. ”If you can just use this device as a bridge for the fetus then you can have a dramatic impact on the outcomes of extremely premature infants,” Flake says. ”This would be a huge deal.” But others say the device raises ethical issues, including many questions about whether it would ever be acceptable to test it on humans. ”There are all kinds of possibilities for stress and pain with not, at the beginning, a whole lot of likelihood for success,” says Dena Davis, a bioethicist at Lehigh University. Flake says ethical concerns need to be balanced against the risk of death and severe disabilities babies often suffer when they are born very prematurely. A normal pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks. A human device would be designed for those born 23 or 24 weeks into pregnancy. Only about half of such babies survive and, of those that do, about 90 percent suffer severe complications, such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, seizures, paralysis, blindness and deafness, Flake says. About 30, 000 babies are born earlier than 26 weeks into pregnancy each year in the United States, according to the researchers. Davis worries that the device is not necessarily a good solution for human fetuses. ”If it’s a difference between a baby dying rather peacefully and a baby dying under conditions of great stress and discomfort then, no, I don’t think it’s better,” Davis says. ”If it’s a question of a baby dying versus a baby being born who then needs to live its entire life in an institution, then I don’t think that’s better. Some parents might think that’s better, but many would not,” she says.  And even if it works, Davis also worries about whether this could blur the line between a fetus and a baby. ”Up to now, we’ve been either born or not born. This would be halfway born, or something like that. Think about that in terms of our abortion politics,” she says. Some worry that others could take this technology further. Other scientists are already keeping embryos alive in their labs longer then ever before, and trying to create human sperm, eggs and even   entities out of stem cells. One group recently created an artificial version of the female reproductive system in the lab. ”I could imagine a time, you know sort of [a] ’Brave New World,’ where we’re growing embryos from the beginning to the end outside of our bodies. It would be a very   world,” says Davis, referring to the 1997   film. There’s also a danger such devices might be used coercively. States could theoretically require women getting abortions to put their fetuses into artificial wombs, says Scott Gelfand, a bioethicist at Oklahoma State University. Employers could also require female employees to use artificial wombs to avoid maternity leave, he says. Insurers could require use of the device to avoid costly complicated pregnancies and deliveries. ”The ethical implications are just so ” Gelfand says.   Barbara Katz Rothman, a sociologist at the City University of New York, says more should be done to prevent premature births. She worries about the technological transformation of pregnancy. ”The problem is a baby raised in a machine is denied a human connection,” Rothman says. ”I think that’s a scary, tragic thing.” Flake says his team has no interest in trying to gestate a fetus any earlier than about 23 weeks into pregnancy. ”I want to make this very clear: We have no intention and we’ve never had any intention with this technology of extending the limits of viability further back,” Flake says. ”I think when you do that you open a whole new can of worms. Flake doubts anything like that would ever be possible. ”That’s a pipe dream at this point,” Flake says."
"At least five documentaries will air this week to mark the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots. After watching them all, I wondered what I had learned, with a   of distance since the events, that I didn’t already know. One word that keeps popping up is dehumanization. Several of the films, in different ways, highlight the long history of a mostly white Los Angeles Police Department treating black and brown people like congenital troublemakers to be contained in poor neighborhoods. That   tension helped spark days of violence and looting on April 29, 1992, that resulted in an estimated $1 billion in damages and 55 people dead. A few of the films feel like distant cousins to ESPN’s   documentary series O. J.: Made in America. In the same way that film traced Los Angeles’   racial discord to help explain how O. J. Simpson was acquitted of murder charges, some documentaries suggest the 1992 events were part of a cycle of oppression, tension and explosive resistance that repeats whenever incidents of police brutality against people of color gain visibility. National Geographic’s LA 92 actually begins with a different riot, the 1965 unrest that rocked the Watts district of Los Angeles. Riots began after Highway Patrol officers’ rough arrest of two young black men on drunken driving charges. News footage features TV anchors talking about ”Negro leaders” and ”Negro rioters” in a way that makes black people sound like undesirable ”others.”   Chief William Parker describes the rioters as ”monkeys in a zoo.” Parker’s   successor, Chief Daryl Gates, displays his trademark insensitivity to complaints about police brutality and racism in the Smithsonian Channel’s The Lost Tapes: LA Riots. He jokes about enjoying ”home movies” while discussing the   video of Rodney King’s beating by several officers. Along with news footage and archival photos, The Lost Tapes includes   footage of the riots captured by LA police and broadcasts from local stations like Radio Korea and KJLH, the Los Angeles station owned by Stevie Wonder. The result is a film that often pulls you inside the riot through anguished testimony in the moment. ”I can smell the fires,” says one caller to KJLH as the unrest intensifies on the first night. ”I’m really angry and I’m really very scared. I just spent the last 10 years of my life in college. But it doesn’t really matter because even with a briefcase in my hand and suit on my back, I’m still just another nigger to the cops out there.” Like The Lost Tapes, National Geographic’s LA 92 forgoes ”talking head” interviews, preferring to create a more immersive experience. But without fresh context from new voices, there’s not a lot that connects the events of the riots to the present day, outside of the inferences viewers might make on their own. Showtime’s Burn Motherf*cker Burn taps into   and pop culture to provide context, wedging interviews with Los   performers like Fishbone’s Norwood Fisher and rapper   with the words of authors, experts and current LAPD Chief Charlie Beck. Director Sacha Jenkins kicks off the film with footage of an   white plantation owner admitting he once viewed ”nigras” as ”a very superior pet,” before detailing how LAPD discouraged white and black people from mixing in the early 1960s by rousting patrons from nightclubs and record stores where interracial groups met. Jenkins uses deft touches to connect the film with today’s times, flashing hashtags like #preach or #alternativefacts under some archival footage to raise pointed questions and underscore perspectives he supports. One powerful moment comes when the film’s story turns to    Latasha Harlins, a black girl killed by Korean convenience store clerk Soon Ja Du after a fight in the store. Du received five years’ probation for the shooting months after the King beating. The film shows increased tensions between black residents and Korean store owners by playing a clip from Ice Cube’s incendiary hit complaining about  —   and insulting  —   store owners, ”Black Korea,” then introducing author Jeff Chang to explain how the song impacted him. ”A lot of my friends were like ’We’re boycotting Ice Cube . .. f*** that guy,’ ” says Chang, who wrote about the song in his 2005 book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation. ”But what gave Soon Ja Du the right to take Latasha Harlin’s life? And who are we defending here?” It’s easy to reduce stories about the racial dynamics of the riots to   issues. But several of the documentaries present a clearer picture, noting that looters included white people and Hispanics along with black folks, while depicting the pain of Korean business owners who saw their stores targeted by rioters. Director John Singleton was in the courthouse in Simi Valley 25 years ago when the officers charged with beating King were acquitted news clips of him predicting riots back then pop up in several documentaries. Now he is executive producer of AE’s L. A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later, which kicks off with a roll call of the black people whose deaths in recent years have sparked protests about policing, including Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner and Michael Brown. ”Who will protect us from our protectors?” intones the Rev. Cecil ”Chip” Murray, former pastor of the First AME Church of Los Angeles, which was located near the center of the riots, in Singleton’s film. ”That is the question of America.” That’s also the question burning through this searing film, which features Singleton as an   narrator guiding the story through a detailed, savvy chronicle of what he called ”the uprising.” The creator of ABC’s ambitious multicultural drama American Crime, John Ridley, offers Let It Fall: Los Angeles   a documentary with a similar narrative approach as his dramatic series: using a multitude of different perspectives to present one take on an issue, only to flip the script sometime later. Ridley tells us the story of the LAPD’s historic friction with the city’s black community by describing the history of the chokehold. Officers in the early 1980s used chokeholds to subdue suspects who were under the influence of drugs. But the tactic could lead to deaths, predominantly those of black arrestees. Ridley tells the poignant story of    James Mincey Jr. whose death in 1982 led to pressure to abolish chokeholds and instead use metal batons to subdue suspects. Which was the same tactic used on King. In another scene from Let It Fall, Ridley tells the story of   officer Lisa Phillips. She was on duty during the riots and rushed with her partner to answer a call, violating orders to stay out of the area. Afraid she might not make it back home that night, Phillips made a heartfelt revelation to her fellow officer as they headed to the scene. ”I said, ’Partner, look, I’m gay. You probably figured it out, but I’m coming out to you,’ ” she says in the film. ”’I’ve got a lover. Will you call her if something happens to me?’ And he said, ’Don’t worry, partner. I got your back.’ ” That moment, presented after many scenes documenting the LAPD’s racial insensitivity, humanized the officers’ perspective in an unexpected way. Aside from the issue of dehumanization, each documentary also tackles the idea of rioting as resistance. And no film hits that note harder than Singleton’s L. A. Burning, which shows several South Central Los Angeles residents lionizing the men who nearly beat motorist Reginald Denny to death. Denny was a truck driver who was pulled from his vehicle, beaten and robbed while trying to drive through the riot. But while some were horrified by the attack, L. A. Burning presented a different view from South Central residents, who called the four men prosecuted for beating Denny neighborhood heroes. ”If you ask anybody around here . .. they would say what they done to that man was wrong,” said one resident. ”But I think it was time for that. . .. The people will only be suppressed for so long until they lash out.” Most curiously, King isn’t fleshed out much as a character in many of these films. King, who died in 2012, appears in news footage and snippets of past interviews Singleton’s film provides more background through interviews with his brother and his fiancee (who, curiously, served as a juror in his civil suit against the officers who beat him). But the man whose assault by a crowd of cops after a   car chase made him a historic example of police brutality almost seems a secondary player in the larger story. The themes at hand in these films include the larger sweep of history, combined with the gritty details of how the riots affected a wide swath of Angelenos. In most of these stories, King is the catalyst and a bystander the footage of his beating that swept across the world to become the first viral video of police brutality was recorded and distributed by someone else. When the riots began to reach across parts of Los Angeles, King’s plea for peace during a press conference  —   including the line ”Can’t we all just get along?”  —   became a symbol of plaintive powerlessness. Across the five films, King’s assault triggers a response from locals that forces the rest of the city  —   and the country  —   to pay attention. Within that narrative, he emerges as another struggling brother caught up in the teeth of a supremely flawed, often racist, system of law enforcement. What I learned from these films today that I couldn’t have known just after the riots in 1992 is that 25 years’ time hasn’t been long enough to break the cycle. Even as advances in technology allow viral videos of black people gunned down by police to fill up social media, the same pattern of anger over police brutality translating into violent unrest has continued."
"North Korea marked Tuesday’s anniversary of the founding of its military with artillery drills, celebrations that took place as a U. S. guided missile submarine docked in South Korea and U. S. Navy ships conducted exercises with South Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, envoys from the U. S. South Korea and Japan met in Tokyo to discuss the rising tensions with the rogue nation and ”map out further punishment if the North goes ahead with more nuclear or missile tests,” NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports. ”All three countries say they’re counting on China to keep North Korea in check, but Beijing has said little except to call on everyone to exercise restraint,” he adds. Ahead of Tuesday’s 85th anniversary of the Korean People’s Army, there was concern that the North would mark the occasion with a nuclear or ballistic missile test, as it has in the past. But the day passed in North Korea without reports of a test. Instead, ”signs are detected that North Korea’s military is conducting a   drill around the eastern port city of Wonsan,” according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, citing a government source. North Korean Defense Minister Pak Yong Sik said Monday that ”the situation prevailing on the Korean Peninsula is so tense that a nuclear war may break out due to the frantic war drills of the U. S. imperialists and their vassal forces for aggression,” according to The Associated Press. The destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer is conducting exercises with a South Korean destroyer near the Korean Peninsula, while the USS Fitzgerald is doing drills with a Japanese destroyer west of Japan. The U. S. Navy’s 7th Fleet says these joint exercises ”demonstrate a shared commitment to security and stability in Northeast Asia as well as the U. S. Navy’s inherent flexibility to combine with allied naval forces in response to a broad range of situations.” According to the 7th Fleet, the submarine USS Michigan’s visit to South Korea is ”routine” and part of a ”regularly scheduled deployment to the Western Pacific.” The vessel is ”one of the largest submarines in the world,” it says, and is armed with tactical missiles. Anthony reports that the USS Michigan is ”not expected to participate in any exercises.” North Korean news outlets have also said that the country is prepared to attack the USS Carl Vinson’s strike group if provoked. As The   reported Monday, ”the   aircraft carrier was rerouted toward North Korea earlier this month, after initial confusion over its strike group’s deployment  —   including remarks by President Trump that he was sending ’an armada’ to the Korean Peninsula.” ”We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier,” Trump told Fox Business earlier this month."
"Read a version of this story in Spanish. As the White House pushes Congress to fund President Trump’s U. S.  border wall, a new wrinkle has emerged that could stymie parts of the massive project. Mexican engineers believe construction of the border barrier may violate a    treaty governing the shared waters of the Rio Grande. If Mexico protests, the fate of the wall could end up in an international court. Antonio Rascón, chief Mexican engineer on the International Boundary and Water Commission, said in an interview with NPR that some border wall proposals he has seen would violate the treaty, and that Mexico would not stand for that. ”A concrete wall that blocks   water movement is a total obstruction. If they plan that type of project, we will oppose it,” he said in his first public comments on the border wall. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security has not finalized what the new wall would look like, or precisely where it would go. But some of the initial schematics show it could be as high as 30 feet and made of solid concrete. Mexico is watching with growing alarm as Homeland Security moves ahead with its plan to dramatically extend a border barrier that already has caused serious flooding. While Congress debates whether to include funding in a stopgap spending plan, the department has solicited bids for prototypes. Trump also said he would continue to ask Mexico to pay for the wall, but Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has said repeatedly that he has no plans to foot the bill. The 1970 Boundary Treaty lays out the precise border between the U. S. and Mexico and sets rules for the riverside regions. The treaty states both U. S. and Mexican officials on the International Boundary and Water Commission, or IBWC, must agree if one side wants to build any structure that would affect the flow of the Rio Grande or its floodwaters. The U. S. already has built nearly 700 miles of security fence, and Mexico has consistently opposed it. After Mexico protested the earlier fence construction, the U. S. made some design modifications, but the project went ahead over Mexico’s objections.  ”For us, we are not in agreement with construction of a wall in the floodplain that affects the   flow of water,” Rascón said. ”In general, we have been complaining about the fence since 1992. We’re talking 25 years. That’s when they installed the first fence in San Diego, and it’s been advancing and advancing.” The International Boundary and Water Commission, located in Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, has tried to resolve differences quietly with professionalism and diplomacy in its 128 years of existence. But the bold plan for Trump’s wall is straining that   collegiality. Stephen Mumme, a political science professor at Colorado State University who has studied U. S.  water diplomacy for nearly 40 years, predicts a showdown is coming. ”This is supposed to go forward on a binational, cooperative basis, and that is not happening,” Mumme said. ”Mexico asserting a treaty right under the 1970 Boundary Treaty is more likely than ever because of the heightened nationalism and the indignation about the United States   project.” To protest the border wall, Mexican officials on the Boundary and Water Commission would first lodge a formal complaint with their counterpart across the river in El Paso. If they don’t resolve the dispute, the matter goes to the State Department and its Mexican equivalent, and finally, to arbitration before a world court. Mumme says concerns over floods on the border are  . He and other river hydraulics experts point out that a wall built in a floodplain acts like a dam. During torrential rains, these obstructions deflect water and worsen flooding. ”It can occur, and probably will occur, if you create, in effect, a series of little dams along one side of the river,” Mumme said. ”We have a history. We know they occur.” Over the past nine years, steel fencing has clogged with debris along the Arizona border during the summer rainy season. Floodwaters damaged Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in 2008 and coursed through the Lukeville, Ariz. port of entry. In the twin cities of Nogales in the U. S. and Mexico, raging floodwaters killed two people, washed cars away, collapsed a section of the fence, and caused millions in damages in separate events in 2008 and 2014. ”It just walled up the water,” Mumme said, ”dammed up the water.” Even worse flooding is expected if the wall is built in the floodplain of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Homeland Security has long wanted to put a fence along the river in Starr County, Texas  —   a favorite crossing spot for smugglers of drugs and people. ”I know from my experience that was a place where we thought a barrier made sense,” Border Patrol Chief Ron Vitiello said recently in a speech in San Antonio. He was station chief of the Border Patrol in Rio Grande City when the first fence project was considered. Two things blocked completion of the border fence in Starr County: Congressional funding ran out, and the Mexican side of the Boundary and Water Commission resisted a fence in the floodplain. Today, Starr County is one of the first places on the   border where Trump’s wall is expected to resume. Everything is ready to go: The government has been seizing land along the river by eminent domain, and there are already blueprints for where to build about 10 miles of fence. Vitiello insists the U. S. will not   its Mexican neighbors. ”If we go forward inside of the floodplain, then it will comply with our responsibility under the treaty,” he said. Locals are not comforted by the government’s assurances. Rio Grande City  —   the county seat of Starr County  —   is one of three planned sites for the border wall. Two city officials said the earlier planned fence would have been located within 100 yards of the sluggish Rio Grande. They’re afraid a wall would prevent the city from properly draining during a hurricane blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, less than a hundred miles away. ”The drainage system would obviously be impacted due to the dragging of debris from water coming back to the riverbanks,” Planning Director Gilbert Millan said. City Manager Alberto Perez added: ”Or it might end up knocking down the wall because the water’s gotta get out of here somehow. And there’s nowhere for that water to go when we have those floods.” At one point, the U. S. section of the Boundary and Water Commission sided with worried city officials. Back in 2007, when the Starr County border fence was first proposed, U. S. river engineers joined their Mexican counterparts in vigorously opposing it. Then the U. S. officials flipped 180 degrees. ”And in early 2012, the U. S. section of IBWC said we respectfully disagree with our Mexican counterparts and we approve these walls going up,” says Scott Nicol,   of the Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club. Nicol obtained, through open records requests, thousands of federal documents that he shared with NPR. What they show is that the U. S. section of the commission changed its position after being presented with a new plan for the Starr County barrier commissioned by Homeland Security. In an email to NPR, U. S. Commissioner Edward Drusina wrote: ”After careful consideration of the     hydraulic model . .. I concluded there was no significant reason to object to Homeland Security proceeding with the construction of the fence.” Others, including Mexico’s chief river engineer Rascón, still aren’t convinced. ”We’ve seen lots of pressure by Homeland Security so that this project moves forward,” Rascón said. ”But the kind of wall they’re planning would have drastic effects on   water flows.”"
"Read and listen to   versions of this story. Mientras en el Congreso se debate si se financiará el gran muro del presidente Trump en la frontera suroccidental, es posible que haya surgido un nuevo obstáculo. Ahora, ingenieros mexicanos piensan que la construcción de una masiva barrera en la frontera podría violar un tratado de 47 años sobre las aguas compartidas del Río Bravo. Si como se espera, México protesta, el destino de la pared podría terminar en un tribunal internacional. México está observando con creciente alarma cómo el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional de Estados Unidos avanza en sus planes de extender drásticamente la barrera fronteriza que ya ha causado inundaciones catastróficas. El Tratado de Límites de 1970 dispone los límites territoriales entre Estados Unidos y México, y establece reglas sobre las regiones de la ribera. El Tratado estipula que tanto los funcionarios estadounidenses como los funcionarios mexicanos de la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA, o International Boundary and Water Commission, IBWC en inglés) deben estar de acuerdo si un lado quiere construir cualquier estructura que afecte el flujo del Río Bravo o de sus aguas de inundación. EE, UU. ya construyó casi 1127 kilómetros de una cerca de seguridad, y México se ha opuesto a ella constantemente, dice Antonio Rascón, ingeniero jefe del lado mexicano de la comisión. ”Nosotros no estamos de acuerdo con la construcción de un muro en la llanura aluvial que afecte el flujo transfronterizo de agua. En general, nos hemos quejado de la cerca desde 1992. Estamos hablando de 25 años. Esto es cuando instalaron la primera cerca en San Diego, y sigue avanzando y avanzando. En sus 128 años de existencia, la CILA, cuyas secciones se encuentran en Juárez, México y El Paso, Texas, ha tratado de resolver tranquilamente las diferencias, con profesionalismo y diplomacia. Pero el atrevido plan del muro de Trump está causando tensión en esa colaboración transfronteriza. México protestó por la construcción anterior de la cerca, EE. UU. hizo algunas modificaciones en el diseño, y el proyecto continuó a pesar de las objeciones de México. El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional aún no revela el aspecto del muro nuevo, ni su ubicación, pero algunos de los planos iniciales, como una altura de 9 metros y su construcción de concreto sólido, han impulsado a la sección mexicana de la comisión internacional de las aguas del río a hablar, por primera vez, con la Radio Nacional Pública (NPR). Rascón dice que México no tolerará una violación del tratado. ”Una pared de concreto que bloquee el movimiento transfronterizo del agua es una obstrucción total. Una pared sólida será algo mucho más grave. Si planean este tipo de proyecto, nos opondremos” dice. Las personas familiarizadas con la hidráulica del río dicen que hay otra manera de entender una pared construida en una llanura aluvial, actúa como una presa. Durante lluvias torrenciales, estas obstrucciones desvían el agua y empeoran las inundaciones. ”Puede ocurrir, y probablemente ocurrirá, si en efecto se crea una serie de pequeñas presas a lo largo de un lado del río” dice Stephen Mumme. Mumme es un profesor de ciencias políticas en la Universidad del Estado de Colorado que ha estudiado la diplomacia entre EE. UU. y México relacionada con el agua. Él dice que las inquietudes sobre las inundaciones en la frontera están bien fundamentadas. ”Tenemos antecedentes” dice, ”Sabemos que ocurren”. En los últimos nueve años, durante la temporada de lluvias del verano, la cerca de acero de la frontera de Arizona se ha tapado con residuos. Las aguas de la inundación dañaron el Monumento Nacional Organ Pipe Cactus, y atravesaron el control fronterizo de Lukeville, Arizona. En las ciudades gemelas de Nogales, en eventos separados, las embravecidas aguas de inundación mataron a dos personas, arrastraron autos, ocasionaron el colapso de una sección de la barda, y causaron daños con un costo de millones de dólares. ”Simplemente amuralló el agua, reteniéndola como una presa” dice Mumme. Se esperan inundaciones aún peores si se construye el muro en Texas en la llanura aluvial de Rio Grande Valley. Desde hace mucho tiempo el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional ha querido instalar una cerca a lo largo del río en Starr County, Texas, un punto de cruce preferido por los contrabandistas de drogas y de personas. ”Sé por experiencia, que es un lugar en donde pensamos que tendría sentido construir una barrera” dijo Ron Vitiello, jefe de la Patrulla Fronteriza, en un discurso reciente en San Antonio. De hecho, él era jefe de estación de la Patrulla Fronteriza en Rio Grande City cuando se consideró el primer proyecto de la cerca. Hubo dos obstáculos que impidieron la conclusión de la cerca fronteriza en Starr County: el financiamiento del Congreso se agotó, y la CILA mexicana se resistió a la construcción de una cerca en la llanura aluvial. En la actualidad, Starr County es uno de los primeros lugares de la frontera de 3145 kilómetros en donde se espera que se reanude el muro de Trump. Todo está listo: el gobierno ha estado confiscando tierras a lo largo del río por causa de utilidad pública, y ya se prepararon los planos del lugar en el que se van a construir aproximadamente 16 kilómetros de cerca. Vitiello insiste que EE. UU. no impondrá su autoridad a sus vecinos mexicanos. ”Si procedemos dentro de la llanura aluvial, cumpliremos con nuestra responsabilidad bajo el tratado” indica. La gente del lugar no está convencida con las promesas del gobierno. Rio Grande City, la capital de Starr County, es uno de los tres sitios planeados para el muro fronterizo. Dos oficiales municipales vinieron a las riberas a mostrar a un reportero la poca distancia a la que la cerca anteriormente planeada se construiría junto al agua lenta del color de las espinacas. Lo que temen es una pared que evitaría que la ciudad drenara adecuadamente si llega un huracán del Golfo de México, que está a una distancia de menos de 160 kilómetros. ”El sistema de drenaje obviamente sería afectado debido al arrastre de residuos del agua que regresa a las riberas” dice el director de planificación Gilbert Millan. Alberto Perez, el administrador municipal comenta, ”O podría terminar derribando el muro, porque el agua debe de salir de alguna manera. Y no hay adónde vaya el agua cuando tenemos esas inundaciones.” En cierto momento, la sección de la IBWC de EE. UU. se puso del lado de los preocupados funcionarios municipales. De hecho, en 2007, cuando se propuso por primera vez la barda fronteriza de Starr County, los ingenieros fluviales de EE. UU. se unieron a sus colegas mexicanos oponiéndose vigorosamente a ella. Luego, los funcionarios de la IBWC de EE. UU. dieron un giro de 180 grados. ”Y a principios de 2012, la sección de la IBWC de EE. UU. dijo que se encontraba respetuosamente en desacuerdo con sus colegas mexicanos y aprobó la erección del muro” dice Scott Nicol, copresidente de Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club. Nicol obtuvo, a través de solicitudes de registros públicos, miles de documentos federales que compartió con NPR. Lo que muestran es que la IBWC cambió su posición después de que se les presentó un plano nuevo del muro de Starr County encargado por el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional. En un mensaje electrónico a NPR, el comisionado estadounidense Edward Drusina escribe, ”Después de una minuciosa consideración del avanzado modelo hidráulico. .. concluyo que no hay una razón significativa para objetar que Seguridad Nacional proceda con la construcción de la cerca fronteriza.” Otros, incluido el jefe de ingenieros fluviales de México, Antonio Rascón, aún no están convencidos. ”Hemos visto mucha presión de Seguridad Nacional para que avance este proyecto. Pero la clase de muro que están planeando tendría efectos drásticos en el flujo transfronterizo del agua,” dice Rascón. El experto en diplomacia respecto al agua, Stephen Mumme, prevé que se acerca un momento decisivo. ”Esto debe avanzar de manera binacional y cooperativa, y no está sucediendo.” ”Que México defienda su derecho en virtud del Tratado de Límites de 1970 es más probable que nunca, debido a la intensificación del nacionalismo y a la indignación sobre el proyecto de cercas y muros de Estados Unidos” dice Mumme. La oficina mexicana de CILA primero presentaría una reclamación a la sección homóloga del otro lado del río en El Paso. Si no se resuelve, la disputa va al Departamento de Estado y a su equivalente mexicano, y finalmente, a arbitraje ante un tribunal internacional. Si se llega tan lejos podría depender de qué tanto Estados Unidos desea construir el muro de Trump en Starr County."
"In the 1950s, when America was hopeful and reckless conjecture was encouraged, prognosticators had some wild ideas about 21st century technology. A few came true, like robot companions. Most didn’t, like lunar shuttles. But one concept in particular has endured without quite being realized  —   the flying car. Check those special ”future” editions of old magazines and you’ll find plenty of stalwart citizens commuting to work in hovering sedans, with tail fins. So where did the dream go wrong? Well, you may have noticed that flying cars have been buzzing the headlines this week, with new prototype footage making the rounds and Uber’s flying car tech summit in Texas. The timing seems right for a reappraisal of our   dreams. The good news is that flying cars are no longer science fiction  —   in fact, several designs are already in the air. The bad news is that you won’t be flying one anytime soon. First, the good news. Depending on how you define your terms, flying cars have been around for several years now. Straightforward hybrids like the Terrafugia Transition are basically cars with folding wings  —   keep ’em folded up when you’re driving around drop ’em down when you hit the runway. Of course, these vehicles are essentially private planes  —   you’ll need a pilot’s license. Then there are the   aerial vehicles that function like miniaturized helicopters or maximized drones. Click around online and you can find several projects in this area, from   specimens like the newly unveiled Kitty Hawk (backed by Google’s Larry Page) to   da     ornithopters. Depending on where you’re flying, many of these personal aircraft are classified as recreational ultralight vehicles and don’t require a pilot’s license at all. But they’re not strictly flying cars of The Jetsons flavor we’ve been promised. For the real   stuff, you want vehicles with enclosed cabins that can launch and land in crowded urban environments. That means expanding on existing Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) technology, employed by military vehicles like the Harrier Jump Jet. For a good example of this approach, check out the Lilium jet from Germany, backed by the European Space Agency. Still, that pesky pilot’s license issue remains. If we’re already worried about too many drones in the air, do we really want to consider a sky full of personal aerial vehicles? To address this concern, the biggest players in the flying car game are banking on one more critical innovation: flying cars that can pilot themselves. That’s what Uber is aiming for with its new Elevate initiative, which imagines a future of   flying vehicles that can be hailed from designated rooftops and helipads around the city. Jeff Holden, Uber chief product officer, described a future service, tentatively called Uber Air. ”You literally push a button and you get a flight,” he said at the company’s Elevate Summit in Dallas on Tuesday. A car trip between San Francisco and San Jose can take up to 2   hours, depending on traffic and ”this is like a   flight,” he said. ”This is giving you freedom, radically reducing time from point A to point B,” Holden said. Uber hopes to launch working prototypes by 2020 and to eventually reduce the cost so that it’s comparable to an UberX ride, he said. Uber’s ”taxi planes” would initially use a combination of human pilots and automation, and could eventually move to a fully artificial   flight network. If that seems crazy, consider that the city of Dubai has already announced it will deploy a fleet of air taxis this summer, using the Chinese EHang 184 passenger drone. Uber is not the only heavy hitter moving into this area. European aviation behemoth Airbus has been gradually unveiling elements of its ambitious autonomous vehicle project, which it hopes to start testing as early as next year. Airbus’ proposed Pop. Up system would employ modular passenger cabins that can be affixed to a set of wheels on the bottom or an array of rotors on the top, depending on whether you’re driving or flying. Both the Uber and Airbus projects also incorporate that other major auto innovation of recent years  —   electric vehicles. Both systems envision a future of fully electric flying taxis and buses, to cut down on weight, noise and pollution. In fact, almost all of the recent flying car proposals are banking on batteries, with the exception of those   contraptions. In a recent issue of Airbus’ corporate magazine, CEO Tom Enders said he fully expects to have a sky full of flying coaches and cabs over major cities: ”In a    future, we’ll use our smartphones to book a fully automated flying taxi that will land outside our front door  —   without any pilot.” A different point of view, It all seems very exciting and imminent, but obviously some enormous obstacles remain  —   true autonomous vehicle technology and air traffic control, to name two. Adding millions of flying cars and taxis to the existing airspace would require a colossal reboot of air traffic control systems, most likely managed by some kind of future artificial intelligence. The more you think it through, the more daunting it all becomes. If you’d rather keep the 1950s dream alive in your mind, stop reading now. Aviation consultant Richard Aboulafia is squarely among the skeptics. As a veteran industry analyst, Aboulafia makes his living assessing    realities, not concept drawings. When it comes to hybrid vehicles that can drive on roads and fly in the air, there’s a core design dilemma, he says. ”You know, I’d like to have a good product that combines shampoo and conditioner in one bottle, but you can’t do it,” he says. ”And it’s the same here with flying cars  —   you have a perfectly inadequate plane crossed with a perfectly inadequate car. You’ve got two very different animals here.” As for those fleets of ski taxis and autonomous flying vehicles being proposed by Uber, Airbus and others, Aboulafia sees another mountain of practical problems: ”More issues than I can count, really.” Aboulafia says the first thing that jumped out at him in Uber’s Elevate white paper is an old industry dilemma: Electric vehicles have a fundamental battery problem. ”The biggest issue with the Elevate manifesto is that it assumes the existence of a truly amazing battery with a phenomenal energy density,” he says. ”We’ve been striving for this for the last century. You’d need the kind of reliability that puts you in the air and keeps you there safely. This isn’t a Tesla  —   you can’t just pull over to the side of the road.” The   aspect has him worried as well. With flying cars, after all, we’re adding an entire extra dimension to problems we have yet to solve in  . ”When we have a safe   car, we’ll be part of the way there,” Aboulafia says. ”But we’ll need some dramatic improvements in    technology, to be able to track everything in all directions.” Then there are the maintenance issues. ”Aircraft have a lot of moving parts, you know,” Aboulafia says. ”And aircraft maintenance is a lot more expensive than car maintenance  —   ask any pilot. If nothing else, we’d need a total maintenance revolution.” So is there any hope? Is our cherished 1950s vision of flying cars just an impossible   dream? Well, Aboulafia doesn’t want to be a total bummer. ”It could be that one day we have this amazing confluence of unlimited and safe battery power, combined with truly autonomous capabilities, where the machine is truly flying itself,” Aboulafia said. ”All of that may trigger some kind of   mobility revolution. ”But that’s many, many decades away  —   if ever.” Glenn McDonald is a freelance writer, editor and game designer based in Chapel Hill, N. C. You can follow him @glennmcdonald1."
"Vending machines are selling increasingly novel items: cupcakes, live crabs and fresh baguettes. In China, you can now add HIV testing kits to that list. China is piloting the use of vending machines that sell HIV testing kits on university campuses. The goal is to reach students who may be reluctant to go to a clinic for a test because of the stigma of contracting HIV. The experimental program began last year on five college campuses in the city of Beijing as well as Harbin, Guangxi and Heilongjiang provinces. Local media just recently publicized it. Users pay the equivalent of a little over $4 for a kit with a container for a urine sample that can be dropped off anonymously at a receptacle in the machine that dispenses the test. Users can check their results online in 10 to 15 days.   activists in China have lauded the vending machines as a positive step for encouraging more people to get tested. ”Helping people to run a test for themselves like a   pregnancy test would be very helpful,” says Martin Yang, a program manager at the Beijing Gender Health Education Institute, one of the first Chinese nongovernmental groups to focus on issues related to gender, sexuality and sexual health. In China, homosexuality is still a taboo  —   listed as a mental illness until 2001, forbidden from film scenes. Because of its association with homosexuality,   is effectively a taboo subject as well. Official data show around 654, 000 people in the country live with HIV or AIDS, though researchers believe the actual number is likely higher. Patients with HIV or AIDS say they are routinely turned away from hospitals and clinics when they seek care, despite regulations that explicitly forbid that kind of discrimination. Last July, phone scammers blackmailed hundreds of people with HIV or AIDS after obtaining their personal information through a data leak and threatening to reveal their identities if they didn’t pay up. That societal stigma has made promoting   awareness and testing extremely difficult. ”The most common psychological barriers given for not having HIV testing were perceived low risk of HIV infection and fears of being stigmatized for homosexuality,” wrote the researchers for a paper on   testing among ”MSM”  —   men who have sex with men  —   who were migrants to Beijing from other parts of China. So now Chinese health authorities are trying this vending machine tack to reach populations under 30, which experience higher rates of transmission than older age groups. Such   HIV tests are also available online. A search on Taobao, the Chinese   platform, turned up dozens of test brands costing around $ $45 per kit. It was unclear how many had been approved by Chinese health authorities.   kits operate in a gray area in China: The law states that the tests should be opened and used only in the presence of a medical professional. The vending machine program is overseen by the National Center for   Control and Prevention (NCAIDS) which, according to Chinese media reports, is subsidizing the cost to keep it at about $4. NCAIDS did not respond to a request for comment, citing a lengthy approval process before it could talk to foreign media. Whether the vending machine tests will be used is still uncertain. Local media reports say fewer than 10 kits have been sold at the Harbin Institute of Engineering, one of the campuses chosen for the pilot, since the vending machines came into use last November. ”I think these kinds of method will yield some results but to what extent is still unclear. Right now, these vending machine test kits are not a significant channel for testing,” says Liu Shi, program manager of the China AIDS Walk initiative. Another challenge would be the time lapse between when a person contracts HIV and when they take a test, says Martin Yang of the Beijing Gender Health Education Institute. It can take up to several weeks for HIV to develop to a stage where it is detectable through a urine test. But Dr. Chris Beyrer, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, sees potential benefits. Beyrer, who is not involved in this vending machine program, notes in an email that ”there is always some window [of time]” before a test will react to an infection. But he adds: ”The issue is that   may reach people who are less likely to come into a clinic, so it may get to some people sooner in infection course and hopefully reduce onward transmission. So you have to look at this as . .. the public health goal of getting people at risk to know their status, and for people at significant risk to regularize testing.” Emily Feng is a freelance journalist based in Beijing."
"President Trump may not talk much about electric vehicles, but there’s another American  —   with better name recognition in China  —   who does. The voice of actor Leonardo DiCaprio, popular in China for his role in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, graces the showroom of Auto Shanghai, the city’s biennial automotive expo, accompanied by images beamed on a circular wall showing Beijing covered in smog and children wearing pollution masks. ”Let us reconnect with nature, fill our lungs with clean air instead of pollution, let us see beauty more clearly,” says DiCaprio in a commercial that’s part of a display for an electric vehicle made by Chinese automaker BYD. ”With new energy, we can see this future. Now let’s make it ours.” The message is repeated by automakers throughout the showroom at this year’s exhibition. ”China’s been pushing very aggressively to move to a greater mix of electrified vehicles,” says Trevor Worthington, vice president of product development at Ford Motor Co. in Shanghai. The U. S. automaker, which sold 1. 3 million cars in China last year, has announced it will electrify 70 percent of its vehicles in China by 2025. This comes as Beijing is calling on auto manufacturers to sell more electric vehicles to reduce vehicle emissions, as well as China’s dependence on foreign oil. By early next year, Beijing will require automakers in China to ensure that at least 8 percent of all vehicles they manufacture are electric. The country had more than 1 million electric vehicles in 2016  —   an 87 percent increase over the previous year. Vehicles range in price from $6, 000 to $200, 000 (for the most expensive Tesla model). ”It’s the largest automotive market in the world and will continue to be in the foreseeable future,” says Worthington. ”And you look at the number of   that there are in China, the density of their populations, so finding alternative solutions is not an unreasonable thing to expect the Chinese government to be doing.” The government has subsidized charging stations for electric vehicles  —   China had 300, 000 stations as of December 2016  —   and it has also paid people who purchase electric and   hybrids thousands of dollars’ worth of subsidies. But according to Tong Xiuying of Chinese automaker Chang’an, consumer demand is high regardless of incentives. ”In cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, traffic is very heavy and gas prices are high, so people prefer driving electric cars,” she says. ”But it certainly helps that these cities are offering big incentives if you purchase these vehicles.” Shanghai offers the biggest incentive, says auto show attendee Lu Chengzhong. ”In Shanghai, you normally have to pay around 15, 000 U. S. dollars for a license plate, and that’s after you win one in a lottery!” says Lu, laughing. ”If you buy a   hybrid, the city will give you a free license plate, just like that. That makes it pretty alluring.” But more alluring still is the big American truck. Lu and his friend join others posing for selfies in front of a Chevy Silverado, a     that’s bigger than anything they’ve seen before on China’s roads  —   and not a vehicle you can plug in. The two joke that they could fit a machine gun on the back of it. ”I’m not sure China’s ready for this,” says Lu. ”But Chinese cities are expanding, and people are starting to move to quieter suburbs to live. One day when richer people move to the countryside, I guess they’ll buy trucks like this. It’s a matter of time.” And when that day comes, says Lu, maybe big trucks like these will all be electric, too. Yuhan Xu contributed research to this story."
"First daughter Ivanka Trump discussed female entrepreneurship, her father and feminism at the W20 Summit in Berlin on Tuesday, joining a panel that included German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Netherlands’ Queen Maxima. Merkel invited Trump to the   event during her visit with President Trump last month in Washington, D. C. Feminism was a central topic on the panel, as the moderator, who cited a ”reluctance” to use the term, asked the panel to raise their hands if they consider themselves a feminist. Trump held up her hand, as did nearly everyone else on the stage. ”I do label myself a feminist, and I do think of that in broad terms,” she said later. Discussing her father, Trump said the president agrees with her about the need to empower women, saying that he had encouraged her ”to fully lean into this opportunity and come into the White House and be by his side”  —   and to take part in discussions like the Women20 Summit. But Trump’s earlier description of President Trump as a ”tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive” was met with groans and hisses from the audience. Ivanka Trump’s   visit caused a minor sensation in Germany, where her name was trending far higher than Merkel’s on Twitter Tuesday. Both the Frankfurter Allgemeine and Suddeutsche Zeitung newspapers called the first daughter her father’s ”ambassador” to Germany. Some of the reactions were also complex: An Allgemeine article deemed the younger Trump ”Darth Vader’s successor,” with journalist Lorenz Hemicker saying Trump had replaced Steve Bannon as her father’s most influential adviser. Politician Lars Klingbeil, whose Social Democratic Party is in a coalition with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, questioned the visit by asking, ”Am I the only one who finds it completely absurd that the Chancellor now makes foreign policy with the daughter of Donald Trump?” The summit panel’s discussion had started with something of a jolt, as the moderator, journalist Miriam Meckel, asked Trump to clarify what her role was at the summit  —   and whether she was representing the U. S. her father, or her business interests. ”Certainly not the latter,” said Trump, who has an office in the West Wing and has access to classified information. She added that she was still defining her role but was intent on furthering women’s issues. Seeming to acknowledge those reactions, Trump took a moment in her closing remarks to acknowledge differences of opinion at the summit, saying it’s important to engage with people who have views that are different from one’s own. Earlier, Trump stressed the need for women to have access to credit and mentors, ”to encourage this next generation” of female business owners. She also spoke about the importance of having affordable and safe child care to support women in the workplace, saying it’s hard to find anywhere, including in the United States  —   and that her father is determined to tackle the issue. In addition to Merkel, Trump and Queen Maxima, the panel included International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, as well as Nicola   the president and chairwoman of German tool and electronics company Trumpf GmbH. ”The first daughter’s visit comes at a time when the Trump administration has not yet appointed a new ambassador to Germany,” NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Berlin. ”The American president spoke with Merkel by phone on the eve of his daughter’s visit, his fourth call since their March meeting.” On Monday, Trump also published an opinion piece in The Financial Times about women’s economic role, writing with her   Jim Yong Kim, ”Only 55 per cent of women participate in the paid labor force globally and they continue to be an untapped source of growth.” Before attending the Women20 summit, Trump visited the U. S. Embassy in Berlin. She’s also scheduled to visit the Holocaust Memorial and a vocational training program at the Siemens company."
"This story was updated on April 26 at 3:00 PM. Beyoncé’s ”visual album” Lemonade was released a year ago this week, but its impact continues to unfold. Just last week, the project won a Peabody Award. But the singer is also focusing on making its resonance felt through a very different vehicle: a group of scholarships called the ”Formation Scholars” awards. Announcing the program this morning on her website, she says that the scholarships are meant ”to encourage and support young women who are unafraid to think outside the box and are bold, creative, conscious and confident.” The awards specifically are geared to students studying either ”creative arts,” music, literature or   studies. There will be one recipient  —   either an incoming or current undergraduate or graduate student  —   at each of the four participating institutions: the Berklee College of Music, with campuses in Boston and Valencia, Spain Howard University in Washington, D. C. Parsons School of Design in New York City and Atlanta’s Spelman College. Two of the schools, Howard and Spelman, are historically black institutions the other two are geared towards students pursuing creative careers. What was not mentioned in the singer’s announcement is how much money is tied to each award  —   i. e. whether or not it is a full scholarship, or if it will simply offset some of the costs of attendance. A spokesperson from Berklee told NPR on Wednesday, April 26 that the scholarship is for $25, 000 per school per year. By each of the four schools’ own data and reporting, the costs of annual tuition, board, supplies and other fees for undergraduates range from approximately $40, 000 to $70, 000."
"Robert Siegel, whose career with NPR has spanned more than four decades, will be stepping down as   of NPR’s All Things Considered next year. One of the most distinctive voices on NPR’s airwaves, Siegel will be leaving the host’s chair in January 2018. He has hosted the show for 30 years. ”This is a decision long in the making and not an easy one,” Siegel said. ”I’ve had the greatest job I can think of, working with the finest colleagues anyone could ask for, for as long a stretch as I could imagine. But, looking ahead to my 70s (which start all too soon) I feel that it is time for me to begin a new phase of life. Over the next few months, I hope to figure out what that will be.” Siegel started at NPR as a newscaster in 1976. He was a senior editor in NPR’s London bureau and the director of the news and information department before he became host of All Things Considered in 1987. Siegel ”reported from every corner of the country and around the world,” NPR executives said in a statement. He even reported from Springfield  —   on The Simpsons. ”He is the consummate student, a person whose quest for the answers has benefited millions upon millions of listeners over the years,” NPR’s statement says. ”He is for all of us, a model of how to be fully engaged in the world, our work, and with his colleagues.” NPR will be conducting a national search for the next host of All Things Considered. In addition to Siegel, the show is   by Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish and Kelly McEvers."
"Editor’s note: This post is about chefs and they can be quite coarse when they talk. Don’t be surprised by a little foul language. In these acrimonious times, many restaurants are treading the fine line between hospitality and politics.   though it might be, restaurants have found themselves in this awkward position before. Just ask Jeremiah Tower, one of America’s most influential chefs, who faced a similarly sticky situation four decades ago. In 1974, when Tower was head chef at Alice Waters’ Berkeley, Calif. restaurant, Chez Panisse, in walked H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon’s former chief of staff and a key player in the Watergate  . Today, Haldeman’s name might not ring too many bells, but at the time, the man known as ”Nixon’s son of a bitch” was nationally notorious. The Chez Panisse staff  —   very Berkeley and    —   refused to serve him. It was a classic ’70s moment. The country’s sleaziest political scandal intersecting with a counterculture restaurant that would become the founding church of modern American cuisine. What happened next? In order to truly savor the Haldeman story, one must first conjure Tower’s exuberant personality. His name probably rings fewer bells today than Haldeman’s, but in his prime, first at Chez Panisse and then at his swanky San Francisco restaurant Stars, Tower reportedly rivaled Meryl Streep for column inches. After ducking the spotlight for nearly two decades by hiding out in Mexico, Tower is currently basking in its amber glow. His elegant and acerbic 2003 memoir has been reissued as Start the Fire: How I Began a Food Revolution in America  —   the superb bibliography alone makes it worth the price, and arouses a deep admiration for this erudite if arrogant epicurean. But more significant is the launch of Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent, a documentary on his    career. Produced by Anthony Bourdain, who feels that Tower has been denied his due in the American culinary pantheon, the film is   but marred by an arch lyricism and interminable footage of Tower wandering among the Mayan ruins like an ageing hermit. Bourdain, ever ready with a vulgar bon mot, delights in calling the handsome and gay Tower ”the first f***able American chef.”   Tower was shaped by a wealthy and lonely childhood. He went to an English boarding school, where he learned about bad food and good manners, and later studied architecture at Harvard during the turbulent Vietnam era. Fleetingly moved to revolution, he filled a Dom Pérignon bottle with gasoline, stuffed it with an old Hermès scarf, carried it in a Tiffany bag to campus, and flung it ineptly against a wall. Posturing over, he fled back to his stove. Ever since he fixed himself a nasturtium sandwich as a solitary    he has spent his whole life as an apostle of good food. In 1973, Tower joined Chez Panisse as head chef. Fortified by heroic amounts of cocaine, champagne, oysters and the soaring operas of Verdi and Puccini, he, along with the ”diminutive, bandannaed” Alice Waters, unleashed the California cuisine food revolution. It celebrated fresh, local ingredients classically prepared, with Tower providing the sensuous loft to Waters’ mesclun asceticism. One fateful summer evening in 1974, Watergate collided with Chez Panisse. The man who recalls it vividly is Jerry Budrick, then a partner at Panisse. ”Haldeman came in with a large party, about six or eight, including his daughter,” says Budrick, on the phone from his home in California. ”I was waiting tables that day and I didn’t recognize him, but the sous chef, Willy Bishop, did. Willy was a Beatnik who was known for erotic art. He got very upset. I remember him saying, ’There’s a presence of evil in the dining room.’ ” In the meantime, Tower, closeted in his tiny,   kitchen, was unaware of ”the waitstaff’s powwows about the politically undesirable ’sh**head’ in the dining room.” Until a waiter came up and announced, ”I am not serving that prick!” ”I recoiled in shock,” writes Tower. ”It would take something very rare indeed for a waiter to talk like that to a chef.” Haldeman was that ”very rare” something. Socially, the tanned, cultured and patrician Californian was a perfect fit at Panisse. Politically, he was a pariah. But he had someone in his corner. Tower turned on the waiter. ”He’s paying, isn’t he? Take the food out now.” The waiter refused. As did the ”mutinous staff” who had Waters’ backing. The food was getting cold, but, writes Tower, ”I was adamant that the man would be served and served well. As somewhat of an outcast myself, I sympathized. Throw Molotov cocktails as a political gesture I did, but intentionally serving bad food was not in my repertoire.” Fortunately, Jerry Budrick, whom Tower remembers warmly as ”a steady presence,” offered to take the dishes to the Haldeman table. Tower noticed the phone lines blinking  —   ”most of the customers and half the staff were trying to call out  —   to reporters or for reinforcements, I was not sure.” Regardless, he was getting on with his cooking when he heard his bearded beatnik sous chef snarl, ”motherf***me.” Tower turned around to see ”Haldeman advancing on me with a smile and an outstretched hand.” He describes what transpired: ”The best thing about English public school training is that, when all else fails, your manners take over. Mine did. So I watched my hand as it rose slowly to clasp Haldeman’s.  ”Thank you,” he said. And for not shaming him in front of his daughter. ”Thank you for that.” He was nice.  ”This is the perfect time to write about the Haldeman story,” says Tower on the phone. ”What chefs should know is, it’s not about you. It’s about the customer. You don’t get to judge who can partake of that hospitality. If customers are being obnoxious you can ask them to leave. But not because of who they are or what their politics is. Everyone has the same right to live in this country. If they’re just sitting there and enjoying their dinner, hallelujah.” If he had a restaurant today, would someone whose politics he disagreed with, say President Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, be welcome? ”Of course,” says Tower. ”I can’t stand the idiot, but that’s not the point. He probably can’t stand me, either, probably thinks I’m a dangerous liberal. He can refuse to come to the restaurant. But once he’s there, and being nice and normal, hallelujah.” The Haldeman dinner is part of Chez Panisse mythology. Competing versions abound, including the pernicious one that Haldeman was not charged because ”this restaurant does not accept tainted money.” ”Rubbish,” says Budrick. ”It was my job to wait his table, and I did. But then, Willy and Jeremiah, whom I love, but who is a royalist and loves the grand gesture, came up with the scheme that we wouldn’t take his money. So, very politely I conveyed to Haldeman that the restaurant wasn’t going to charge him. There was no talk of tainted money. We treated everyone politely. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, lived in Berkeley and was the object of local derision and hatred  —   but he came often to Chez Panisse and was welcome. That   story was written by Herb Caen”  —   a Pulitzer   who wrote a   gossip column for the San Francisco Chronicle. ”Somewhat blessedly,” writes Tower about the fallout of the Haldeman visit, ”Alice and the staff did not speak to me for a week.” A whole week? ”Okay, maybe it was two days,” he laughs. ”But, you know, a week has a bit of a ring to it.” Nina Martyris is a journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"With just two days left to stop a partial shutdown of the federal government, the Trump administration on Wednesday removed another major sticking point in the spending bill negotiations. The White House told lawmakers it will not cut off federal subsidies that help   Americans pay for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, at least for now, an administration official and congressional sources confirm to NPR. Democrats sought to have the federal payment  —   known as a   reduction, or CSR  —   included in the spending package. This second spending bill concession by the White House makes the specter of a shutdown unlikely. Earlier this week, President Trump backed off his demand that any funding bill Congress passes provide a down payment for his   wall along the U. S.  border. Democrats had for weeks signaled a lack of support for any spending bill that included money for Trump’s pet project. Pelosi: ”We’ve now made progress” Democratic leaders in the House and Senate welcomed the new developments. ”Our major concerns in these negotiations have been about funding for the wall and uncertainty about the CSR payments crucial to the stability of the marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act. We’ve now made progress on both of these fronts,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. An aide to Pelosi says she spoke twice Wednesday with White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus as negotiations over a spending bill continued. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a statement, said of President Trump dropping his health care threat, ”Like the withdrawal of money for the wall, this decision brings us closer to a bipartisan agreement to fund the government and is good news for the American people.” Negotiators in the House and Senate are working ahead of a Friday deadline to reach a spending deal to avoid a government shutdown and fully fund federal departments and agencies through the end of the current fiscal year in September. They could seek a   or   extension, which would allow lawmakers time to reach a more solid deal. GOP renews health care push, Meanwhile, the House Freedom Caucus is injecting the GOP’s health care push with a shot of momentum. The bloc of roughly 36   conservatives  —   which sidelined the previous Republican attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act  —   on Wednesday threw its support behind the party’s revised plan. The updated measure includes an amendment authored by Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows,  . C, and Tuesday Group leader Rep. Tom MacArthur,  . J. The Tuesday Group is an informal caucus of roughly 50 moderate House Republicans. The revised plan would allow states to get waivers for many of the Affordable Care Act’s mandates. States could opt out of setting requirements for the benefits health insurers must cover in their policies and the ban on allowing insurance companies to charge more based on a person’s age and health status. ”Due to improvements to the AHCA and the addition of Rep. Tom MacArthur’s proposed amendment, the House Freedom Caucus has taken an official position in support of the current proposal,” the group said in a statement. ”While the revised version still does not fully repeal Obamacare, we are prepared to support it to keep our promise to the American people to lower healthcare costs.” An official Freedom Caucus endorsement requires support from 80 percent of its members. But at least one member  —   Rep. Mo Brooks,  .  —   said early Wednesday he wouldn’t support it. Moderate Republicans slow to embrace new plan, Still, the overwhelming backing from Freedom Caucus conservatives means the future of the GOP’s efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act now rests with moderate House Republicans. But many of them seem slow to embrace it. ”The concerns that I’ve had have not been addressed by the current proposals,” Rep. Dan Donovan,  . Y. said Wednesday. Donovan is a member of the Tuesday Group. ”We have to help those people who were harmed by the Affordable Care Act, but at the same time not harm the people who were helped by it.” For his part, House Speaker Paul Ryan  —   who last month pulled the GOP health care bill from the floor after it failed to secure enough votes  —   reacted favorably to the MacArthur amendment, calling it ”very constructive.” ”I think it helps us get to consensus,” Ryan told reporters during a Wednesday press conference on Capitol Hill. Republican Rep. Chris Collins,  . Y. summed it up more succinctly, speaking to reporters off the House floor. ”If this is what it takes to get the bill passed,” Collins said, ”God bless Donald Trump.”"
"Updated at 4:12 p. m. ET, The Trump administration Wednesday put forth a proposal that it labeled a ”massive” tax overhaul, which would give big tax cuts to individuals and corporations and reduce the number of tax brackets and deductions. Outlined at a White House press briefing by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, director of the president’s National Economic Council, it would reduce the number of individual tax brackets to three, as well as eliminate most tax deductions other than for home mortgages, charitable contributions and retirement savings. It would double the standard deduction individuals can take and proposes cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. The plan would exempt the first $24, 000 of income from taxation. It would also repeal the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, which could benefit wealthy taxpayers, including President Trump himself. The plan would also eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes, a step that could hurt taxpayers in places with high state taxes such as California and New York. Administration officials acknowledge the plan is a broad brush outline, with specific details yet to be determined. Among the details that remain to be revealed, or worked out, is the overall cost of the plan and whether it would be   or add to the deficit. Mnuchin said the plan ”will pay for itself with growth” and with the reduction of deductions and loopholes. It’s also unclear at what income levels the new proposed tax rates would kick in. The plan was released as the Trump administration scrambles to show its accomplishments as it nears the   mark on April 29, but the plan is far from complete  —   and far from becoming law. Republicans responded favorably to the proposal. A statement from House Speaker Paul Ryan, along with the chairmen of the House and Senate   committees, said, ”The principles outlined by the Trump Administration today will serve as critical guideposts for Congress and the Administration as we work together to overhaul the American tax system and ensure   families and job creators are better positioned for the 21st century economy.” Democrats see it differently. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called the outline ”short on details and long on giveaways to big corporations and billionaires.” And top Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee labeled it ”a rerun of the same failed tax policy that led to the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, which cost us trillions of dollars, did nothing to help working families, and, in part, contributed to the Great Recession.” Speaking Wednesday, Mnuchin also addressed the issue of the president’s personal tax returns. The Treasury secretary said Trump ”has no intention” of releasing his own tax returns and asserted that the president has ”given more financial disclosure than anyone else.” Democrats have said they want to see how any tax overhaul would affect the president’s taxes before agreeing to sign on to any tax cuts. It is unclear how serious a demand that is, but at the very least, cutting taxes and overhauling the system to the extent the Trump administration wants is going to require lengthy negotiations and compromise, and the final outcome is far from assured."
"Researchers in Southern California say they’ve uncovered evidence that humans lived there 130, 000 years ago. If it’s true, it would be the oldest sign of humans in the Americas ever  —   predating the best evidence up to now by about 115, 000 years. And the claim has scientists wondering whether to believe it. In 1992, archaeologists working a highway construction site in San Diego County found the partial skeleton of a mastodon, an   animal now extinct. Mastodon skeletons aren’t so unusual, but there was other strange stuff with it. ”The remains were in association with a number of sharply broken rocks and broken bones,” says Tom Deméré, a paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum. He says the rocks showed clear marks of having been used as hammers and an anvil. And some of the mastodon bones as well as a tooth showed fractures characteristic of being whacked, apparently with those stones. It looked like the work of humans. Yet there were no cut marks on the bones showing that the animal was butchered for meat. Deméré thinks these people were after something else. ”The suggestion is that this site is strictly for breaking bone,” Deméré says, ”to produce blank material, raw material to make bone tools or to extract marrow.” Marrow is a rich source of fatty calories. The scientists knew they’d uncovered something rare. But they didn’t realize just how rare for years, until they got a reliable date on how old the bones were by using a   dating technology that didn’t exist in the 1990s. The bones were 130, 000 years old. That’s a   date, as other evidence shows that the earliest humans got to the Americas about 15, 000 to 20, 000 years ago. ”That is an order of magnitude difference. Wow,” says John Shea, an archaeologist at New York’s Stony Brook University who specializes in studying ancient toolmaking. ”If it’s correct, then there’s an extraordinarily ancient dispersal to the New World that has a very different archaeological signature from anything left behind by recent humans.” Shea says it’s different because Stone Age toolmakers usually leave behind stone flakes  —   sharp pieces broken or ”knapped” from certain kinds of rock that serve as cutting implements. There were none at the California site. Another odd thing: no signs that the mastodon was butchered for the meat. ”This is weird,” Shea says. ”It’s an outlier in terms of what archaeological sites from that time range look like everywhere else on the planet.” He suggests these bones might have been broken up by natural causes  —   by a mudflow, perhaps, or by the trampling of animals sometime after the mastodon died. Another skeptic is John McNabb, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton in England. His question: How did those people get to California? Twenty thousand years ago, archaeologists agree, people did cross over to Alaska from Siberia, perhaps more than once. Sea levels were lower then and there was a land bridge connecting the continents. In an interview with the journal Nature, which published the California research, McNabb says that land bridge wasn’t there 130, 000 years ago. ”The sea lane in between the two continents [was] wider [then],” he says, ”so that’s one problem with this: How do we get humans across?” McNabb says what’s needed to really prove that this is truly an archaeological site are bones from the people who got there. The California team counters that it has spent over 20 years examining the evidence. ”I know people will be skeptical with this because it is so surprising,” says team member and archaeologist Steve Holen, ”and I was skeptical when I first looked at the material myself. But it’s definitely an archaeological site.” Holen, with the Center for American Paleolithic Research, says these early people could have come across in boats. As for the broken bones, he says the type of fracture isn’t accidental. And the way the hammerstones and bones were distributed in the ground doesn’t look natural. One question the team can’t answer is who these people were. A genetic technique that uses mutations in a population’s genome as a sort of ”clock” says the first common ancestor of Native Americans lived about 20, 000 years ago. So if there were indeed earlier settlers, it could be they made an arduous migration from Siberia, only to die out without leaving any descendants."
"  years ago this week, four Los Angeles policemen  —   three of them white  —   were acquitted of the savage beating of Rodney King, an   man. Caught on camera by a bystander, graphic video of the attack was broadcast into homes across the nation and worldwide. Fury over the acquittal  —   stoked by years of racial and economic inequality in the city  —   spilled over into the streets, resulting in five days of rioting in Los Angeles. It ignited a national conversation about racial and economic disparity and police use of force that continues today. ”When the verdict came out, it was a stunner for people coast to coast. My jaw dropped,” says Jody David Armour, a criminal justice and law professor at the University of Southern California. ”There was ocular proof of what happened. It seemed compelling,” he says of the videotape. ”And yet, we saw a verdict that told us we couldn’t trust our lying eyes. That what we thought was open and shut was really ’a reasonable expression of police control’ toward a black motorist.” A year earlier, in March 1991, King  —   who was on parole for robbery  —   had led police on a   chase through Los Angeles later, he was charged with driving under the influence. When police finally stopped him, King was ordered out of the car. Los Angeles Police Department officers then kicked him repeatedly and beat him with batons for a reported 15 minutes. The video showed that more than a dozen cops stood by, watching and commenting on the beating. King’s injuries resulted in skull fractures, broken bones and teeth, and permanent brain damage. Ultimately, four officers were charged with excessive use of force. A year later, on April 29, 1992, a jury consisting of 12 residents from the distant suburbs of Ventura County  —   nine white, one Latino, one biracial, one Asian  —   found the four officers not guilty. The acquittals were announced around 3 p. m. less than three hours later, the unrest began. Residents set fires, looted and destroyed liquor stores, grocery stores, retail shops and fast food restaurants.   motorists  —   both white and Latino  —   were targeted some were pulled out of their cars and beaten. The reaction to the acquittal in South Central Los Angeles  —   now known just as South Los Angeles  —   was particularly violent. At the time, more than half of the population there was black. Tension had already been mounting in the neighborhood in the years leading up to the riots: the unemployment rate was about 50 percent, a drug epidemic was ravaging the area, and gang activity and violent crime were high. Another contributing factor: The same month as Rodney King’s beating, a Korean store owner in South Los Angeles shot and killed a      girl named Latasha Harlins, who was accused of trying to steal orange juice. It was later discovered Harlins was clutching money to pay for the juice when she was killed. The store owner received probation and a $500 fine. The incident heightened tensions between Koreans and   and intensified the black community’s frustration with the criminal justice system. At the same time, the community’s anger was also deepening against Los Angeles police.   said they did not feel protected during times of need, but instead reported being harassed without cause. The LAPD at the time was almost an occupying force, particularly biased against people of color, says lawyer and civil rights activist Connie Rice. ”What we had was aggressive paramilitary policing with a culture that was mean and cruel, racist and abusive of force in communities of color, particularly poor communities of color,” Rice says in an interview with NPR’s Grigsby Bates. ”It was an open campaign to suppress and contain the black community,” she says. ”LAPD didn’t even feel it was necessary to distinguish between pruning out a suspected criminal where they had probable cause to stop and just stopping   judges and senators and prominent athletes and celebrities simply because they were driving nice cars.” The riots first began at an intersection in South Los Angeles  —   Florence and Normandie  —   according to news reports and firsthand accounts in the last 25 years. Bystander Terri Barnett was at Florence and Normandie that first night and remembers watching the cops drive right by rioters without stopping. She and her boyfriend  —   along with two other strangers, all    —   helped rescue a white truck driver named Reginald Denny, who was beaten viciously by gang members who were rioting and had pulled Denny out of his truck at about 6:45 p. m. Barnett, her boyfriend and the two strangers shoved Denny back into his truck and drove him to the hospital, which saved his life. ”There were four cops in each car that passed by,” Barnett told NPR in 1992. ”They saw us. They looked right through us.”   When 911 calls about the violence started coming in, police were not deployed immediately. Though LAPD Chief Darryl Gates announced early in the afternoon of April 29 that his officers had the situation under control, it would later be reported that the city was not adequately prepared for the riots. In fact, there was no anticipation of  —   or official plan at the department for  —   major social unrest on this scale. ”One of the most astounding things about the 1992 Los Angeles riots was the response of the LAPD, which is to say no response at all,” says author Joe Domanick, who has studied and written about the riots, in an interview with Grigsby Bates. That night, Gates went to speak at a fundraiser in West Los Angeles and reportedly ordered cops to retreat. Police did not respond to incidents of looting and violence around the city until almost three hours after the original rioting broke out. For the rest of the night, the scene at Florence and Normandie repeated itself with rioters across the city. Just before 9 p. m. that night, Mayor Tom Bradley called for a state of emergency, and California Gov. Pete Wilson ordered 2, 000 National Guard troops to report to the city. On May 1, the third day of the riots, Rodney King himself attempted to publicly appeal to Los Angeles residents to stop fighting. He stood outside a Beverly Hills courthouse with his lawyer and asked ”People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?” During the five days of unrest, there were more than 50   deaths  —   including 10 people who were shot and killed by LAPD officers and National Guardsmen. More than 2, 000 people were injured, and nearly 6, 000 alleged looters and arsonists were arrested. Of those arrested during the riots, 36 percent were   and 51 percent were Latinos, according to the Rand Corp. The riots also disrupted daily life: A city curfew from sunset to sunrise was announced, mail delivery stopped, and most residents couldn’t go to work and school. More than 1, 000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, and approximately 2, 000   businesses were also damaged or destroyed. In all, approximately $1 billion worth of property was destroyed. The city curfew was ultimately lifted on the morning of May 4. Most schools, banks and businesses were allowed to reopen. Slowly, residents returned to their everyday routines. But the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots exploded out of social issues that still have not been resolved. That shocking, grainy video of his beating would be just the first of a long line of police brutality videos to go viral. That and issues such as racial profiling are as evident now  —   in places such as Baltimore, Ferguson and other inner cities  —   as they were in 1992 Los Angeles, says Armour, the USC professor and author of a book about what he calls the 1992 ”uprising.” ”Ain’t nothing changed but the year it is,” he says. Editor Melissa Gray contributed to this report. After the civil trial, Rodney King was awarded a settlement. He bought a modest house for his mother and one for himself in the LA suburb of Rialto, and occasionally spoke with   kids at the request of local police. King, the son of an alcoholic father, continued to struggle with his own alcohol use after his beating. He told NPR in April 2012 that his sobriety was a work in progress. He was engaged to be married when he died that June. A skilled swimmer and surfer, King was found unconscious at the bottom of his swimming pool. His autopsy reported drugs and alcohol were in his system at his time of death. He was 47. In 1993, Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell, two of the four officers in the King case, were found guilty of violating King’s civil rights. They both served 30 months in prison and did not return to the police force. They no longer live in California. The other two officers, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno, were both fired by the LAPD and also no longer live in California. Tom Bradley  —   the first   mayor of Los Angeles  —   died in 1998 at age 80. He served 20 years as the city’s leader. After 14 years as chief of LA police, Daryl Gates was forced to resign in June 1992. He died in 2010 at age 83. After extensive surgery and therapy, Reginald Denny  —   whose skull was fractured on April 29 when a rioter threw a brick at his head, among other injuries  —   regained his ability to walk and talk. He now lives in Arizona.  —   Maureen Pao and Karen Grisby Bates"
"Back in the 1960s, a female doctor in Japan created a powerful drug to help mothers who hemorrhage after childbirth. The medicine is inexpensive to make. It’s safe to use. And it stops bleeding quickly by helping keep naturally forming blood clots intact. The drug’s inventor, Utako Okamoto, hoped that the drug called tranexamic acid would be used to help save moms’ lives. Every year about 100, 000 women around the world die of blood loss soon after a baby is born. It’s the biggest cause of maternal death worldwide. ”It was Okamoto’s dream to save women,” says Haleema Shakur, who directs clinical trials at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. ”But she couldn’t convince doctors to test the drug on postpartum hemorrhaging.” And so tranexamic acid has gone largely unused in maternity wards for decades. Until now. In a massive international trial, Shakur and her collaborators have shown that tranexamic acid decreased the risk of death from blood loss associated with childbirth by about a third. (Previous studies have looked at the drug’s use in reducing bleeding deaths after traumatic injuries.) In the study, women who were diagnosed with heavy bleeding, or postpartum hemorrhage, after a vaginal birth or cesarean section received either the drug or a placebo. About 1. 2 percent of women who got tranexamic acid within three hours of a hemorrhage died, compared with 1. 7 percent of the women who got the placebo. Side effects weren’t a serious problem. The medicine didn’t increase the risk of dying of other causes during the procedure, Shakur and her colleagues report in The Lancet journal. The study included 20, 000 women, in nearly 200 hospitals, across 21 countries, including rich ones, like the U. K. and poorer ones, like Pakistan and Nigeria. The medicine is inexpensive. It cost about $3 in the U. K. and a quarter of that in Pakistan, for instance. ”If you can save a life for approximately $3, then I believe that’s worth doing,” Shakur says. It’s rare to have a new tool for helping women during childbirth, says Felicia Lester, an   at the University of California, San Francisco, who also works in Uganda and Kenya. ”I think the study is exciting,” she says. ”I’m usually cautious in saying that. But it looks like tranexamic acid has the potential to save lives.” The drug even helped women when doctors used it along with other common medications, such as oxytocin, says Margaret Kruk, a global health researcher at Harvard University. ”Tranexamic acid offers an additional benefit above and beyond what is being done for women already,” she says. Now, though, the big question is how to make sure this drug is available for women who need it the most  —   women in the poor, remote areas of the world, where maternal mortality is the highest. ”That’s, I think, the million dollar question,” Kruk says. ”We in global health have a number of tools that seem very effective in large clinical trials. But then when it comes time to use them for all women, we see very large gaps in implementation.”"
"The annual TED conference is known for featuring impressive speakers. Attendees at this year’s event in Vancouver have seen Serena Williams and Jorge Ramos, futurists and artificial intelligence experts, health activists and the ACLU’s executive director. But on Tuesday evening, one unannounced speaker took the audience by surprise: Pope Francis. The pope was on a big screen rather than onstage, and his address had been recorded and edited earlier in April, but still: even for   the bishop of Rome has a certain gravitas. ”Buonasera,” he began, speaking in Italian throughout his   address from his desk at the Vatican. ”Or good morning, I am not sure what time it is there.” At first, the pope’s subject matter seemed familiar: ”As I meet, or lend an ear to those who are sick, to the migrants who face terrible hardships in search of a brighter future, to prison inmates who carry a hell of pain inside their hearts, and to those, many of them young, who cannot find a job, I often find myself wondering: ’Why them and not me?’ ” But his message quickly moved to the conference’s core subject matter (technology and innovation) and seemed to be directed at the audience in the room: the founders of some of the world’s biggest tech companies, as well as politicians, artists, entertainers, venture capitalists and leaders of major cultural institutions and foundations. ”How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion,” Francis said. ”How wonderful would it be, while we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us. How wonderful would it be if solidarity  —   this beautiful and, at times, inconvenient word  —   were not simply reduced to social work and became, instead, the default attitude in political, economic and scientific choices, as well as in the relationships among individuals, peoples and countries.” The pope spoke during the session in which the 2017 TED Prize winner announced what he’ll do with his $1 million prize. The audience watched in silence, says NPR’s Nina Gregory, who watched from a simulcast viewing area near the packed theater. ”There were people around me who cried, others who watched, rapt, and still others who watched while writing email,” she says. ”He got a standing ovation in the theater.” Nearly 400, 000 people around the world have already watched the pope’s video and seen him tell the tale of the Good Samaritan, which he called ”the story of today’s humanity.” ”People’s paths are riddled with suffering, as everything is centered around money and things, instead of people,” he said. ”And often there is this habit, by people who call themselves ’respectable,’ of not taking care of the others, thus leaving behind thousands of human beings, or entire populations, on the side of the road.” The pontiff is no stranger to the tools of the digital age his Twitter account has more than 10 million followers. Nonetheless, getting Francis to address the international conference took many discussions and several trips to Rome, TED’s international curator, Bruno Giussani, said in a blog post. Since not many at the Vatican knew of TED, Giussani said, ”there was a lot of explaining to do.” TED famously coaches its speakers on how to give an effective performance. Giussani said Francis ”decided by himself what he wanted to say in the talk,” adding that the pope’s collaborators ”were very receptive to ideas and suggestions” in order to ”  the message.” And that message called for a ”revolution of tenderness.” ”Tenderness is not weakness it is fortitude,” Francis said. ”It is the path of solidarity, the path of humility. Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other.”"
"President Trump has been tweeting about a federal court ruling that temporarily blocked his plan to suspend funding for ”sanctuary cities.” These are cities  —   among them New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and San Francisco  —   that have limited their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. For example, they may refuse to detain people who are in the U. S. illegally on behalf of the federal agents. Now, the Trump tweets: Here are five key points to keep in mind about the court ruling and Trump’s reaction. 1. The court, It wasn’t the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled against the administration on ”sanctuary cities.” It was a single district court judge in San Francisco who issued the court ruling, which applies nationwide. There is in fact no appeal yet, though if the case is appealed, it almost certainly will go to the 9th Circuit, and probably the Supreme Court. 2. The numbers, It is true that the 9th Circuit is known as the most liberal circuit among the 13 federal appeals courts. The 9th, which covers nine states, including California, is the biggest in the country in terms of area and population, and it was indeed reversed by the Supreme Court in eight of 10 cases that the Supreme Court reviewed and decided last term. But that is not far off the average circuit reversal rate. It is not true, as Trump has previously claimed, that the 9th is the circuit most reversed by the Supreme Court. In the last Supreme Court term, the 9th Circuit came in second on that score. It came in third in the   term, and tied for fifth in the   term. 3. The ”judge shopping” On the   question  —   it is natural that many immigration cases come out of California. The state has the largest number of unauthorized immigrants in the country, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which crunched some U. S. Census Bureau numbers. 4. In law as in life, what goes around comes around  Conservatives during the Obama administration advanced and perfected a strategy of challenging Obama’s executive actions in court. They brought cases in Texas, for example, a conservative state with conservative judges. A single   federal judge in Texas, for instance, blocked Obama’s attempt to temporarily grant legal status to some immigrants living in the U. S. illegally. That judge, like the judge in San Francisco, said the president had exceeded the authority granted him by Congress and the Constitution. In the San Francisco case on sanctuary cities, Judge William Orrick III, an Obama appointee, linked his decision to the Constitution’s provision giving Congress control over the federal purse. Congress, he said, did not authorize putting such conditions on federal grants. To buttress the point, he cited an array of Supreme Court decisions that are stars in the current conservative firmament. Among them: the court’s 1997 opinion striking down a key provision of the Brady gun control law, and the court’s 2012 opinion striking down a provision of the Affordable Care Act that cut off Medicaid money to states that refused to cooperate with the federal health insurance program. In both opinions  —   one written by Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon, and the other written by Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative George W. Bush appointee  —   the legal underpinning was that the federal government cannot commandeer the state’s apparatus to enforce a federal mandate. 5. The    rhetoric, A rare pattern is emerging in the Trump administration’s most highly visible court challenges. The president’s own words, and those of his advisers, are being used against them. In the travel ban case, the Justice Department’s claim that this was a carefully crafted and narrow ban of Muslims in seven countries was contradicted by the president’s repeated pledge during his campaign to ban all Muslims. Indeed, Trump adviser and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that Trump’s intent was to come up with a ”Muslim ban” and make it legal. Similarly, in the sanctuary city case, Justice Department lawyers argued that the executive order would affect only a few grants. But that is not how President Trump or Attorney General Jeff Sessions has talked about it. Both have portrayed the cutoff of federal funds as a club to force these cities to aid federal authorities in carrying out Trump administration immigration policies. Intern Lauren Russell contributed to this report."
"The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is one of a handful of dystopian novels that have seen a boost in sales since the 2016 election. The book tells the story of what happens when a theocratic dictatorship takes over the government and gets rid of women’s rights. In 2016, Atwood told us that the idea started as a question: ”If you want women to go back into the home, how do you make them do that? And the method I proposed in 1985 was, now that we have credit cards, it’s very easy to just cut off people’s access to credit. And that’s what happens in the book.” That’s also the premise of the TV adaptation of the book, now streaming on Hulu. In the imaginary Republic of Gilead, women are not allowed to own property or have bank accounts, and because of widespread infertility, those who have successfully had children are assigned to be Handmaids  —   bearing children for the rich and powerful. ”It was very important to us from the very beginning to make sure that people understood that this is present in a ’this could happen here’ idea,” says Elisabeth Moss, who stars as Offred. Samira Wiley plays Moira, Offred’s best friend from ”before Gilead.” She describes her character as a feminist in ”every way, shape or form.” On Moira’s reaction to her husband reassuring her that he will take care of her, after her bank account has been taken away, Samira Wiley: It’s not supposed to be an insult. . .. It comes from a place of love, it comes from a place of wanting his wife to feel safe, but Moira is very, very sensitive to that language. . .. She feels like she is standing up 100 percent for what she believes in and where women should be in the present. And if anyone comes even close to jeopardizing that, it is her responsibility to nip that in the bud. Elisabeth Moss: That scene, it’s directly from the book and it really sets up this complexity of what is my husband supposed to say? The women now don’t have access to any of their money and of course my husband loves me and just says what comes naturally which is: I’m going to take care of you. And of course that brings up the sensitive issue of, oh great, now I have to be taken care of. On women becoming a part of systems that hurt other women  —   for example, Aunt Lydia’s character, who tells the Handmaids they are ”so lucky” to serve powerful men and their barren wives, Moss: It’s another interesting thing raised by Margaret and by the show, which is: A really good way to control women is by using other women. And we also play the opposite, which is women, when they stand together, can be incredibly powerful. Ann Dowd plays Aunt Lydia and when she speaks about the character, from her perspective, she loves these girls. She believes she’s actually doing a good deed and good service by protecting these women. And that’s one of the things about the show is, we provide these different points of view and make these characters complex and not black and white. On the costumes  —   rich, married women wear green barren aunt servants wear gray Handmaids who are reproductive surrogates wear scarlet red and white bonnets, Wiley: It highlights the differences between who I am and who the other is. It shows immediately how I am supposed to relate to someone. If I see a Handmaid who is of the same caste as I am, I know that we are equal. But . .. if I see immediately that you are a wife, then I know how I am supposed to react. And that is just another way to have the oppression right on top of these women. On whether it feels weird to have   protesters donning Handmaid’s Tale robes, Moss: Not weird. Awesome. So, so, cool. This costume, this color, the bonnets  —   they’re so iconic. And they stand immediately for feminism and women’s rights. You take one look at that costume and you know what that girl is doing. You know why she’s wearing it. And so, for me, seeing something like that is so incredibly moving. On the show underscoring the idea that there are different kinds of resistance, Moss: I think that’s one of the great things about it. There are many different ways of resistance, and all of them should be used. Marching, talking, conversation. Margaret has a quote that I love, which is: ”A word after a word after a word is power.” And she also says: ”You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands.” Wiley: I think that they are all valid. . .. A television show, at the end of the day, can be art, and it can elicit real change. . .. I just feel so blessed to be able to be a part of something that can elicit real change. Radio producer Christina Cala, radio editor Mallory Yu and Web producer Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"Be warned: This story talks about characters who are forced into sexual slavery. Hulu’s excellent adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is a horror show unveiled in slow motion. As the first episode begins, Mad Men alumna Elisabeth Moss is running, fleeing security forces with her daughter, minutes before they are both captured. Then, time jumps to the near future. We learn Moss’ character is now a Handmaid, a woman forced to have babies. In one scene, we see her sitting in a simple room in a vast house, clad in a white bonnet, blood red dress and a shroud of melancholy as thick as a suffocating blanket. ”I had a window with white curtains and the glass is shatterproof,” she says in a weary monotone. ”But it isn’t running away they’re afraid of. It’s those other escapes the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge. My name is Offred. I had another name, but it’s forbidden now.” Moss is compelling and relatable as Offred, a woman who seems both bewildered and numbed by the hideous world she’s living in. The series debuts on Hulu today. Fans of Atwood’s 1985 novel know the setup: A brutal, totalitarian theocracy has replaced the U. S. government, sterility is rising due to environmental contamination and fewer women can have babies. Fertile women are captured and forced to serve as Handmaids to society’s elite leaders. Offred’s name denotes the commander she serves, Fred Waterford, played by Joseph Fiennes. One searing scene features Offred’s memory of Aunt Lydia, the abusive headmistress who trains new Handmaids, quoting scripture and shocking the women with cattle prods. Eventually, she explains their duties as breeders. ”You girls will serve the leaders of the faithful and their barren wives,” says Aunt Lydia, who cites Tinder as one source of the moral turpitude that has caused God to create the infertility crisis. ”You will bear children for them. Oh! You are so lucky!” (Atwood, who also served as a consulting producer on Hulu’s series, pops up in one scene from the first episode, where she slaps Offred for being slow to respond during an indoctrination session.) This is a world of   paranoia and doublespeak. On the surface, it’s a placid, polite community that just happens to have   guards with machine guns on every corner. But beneath that veneer is a world of grim desperation, fear and oppression. Women are stripped of husbands, children, jobs, their own money and control over their sexuality. The scene depicting the ”ceremony” in which Handmaids copulate with commanders is emotionally brutal without being overly explicit. Commanders’ wives cradle the Handmaids’ heads in their laps during the act, creating a nightmarish scenario. Both prisoner and oppressor are forced into a brutal, dehumanizing ritual that pretends to be edifying. As the fight over abortion rights intensifies in America and authoritarianism rises across the world, it’s tough to imagine a better time for Atwood’s story to come to television. It is a cautionary tale on how quickly liberties can vanish. And it’s a meditation on how much of a woman’s freedom can be connected to control of her reproductive rights. We have seen this kind of sexual slavery visited on other TV characters, like the African women taken from their homes in the groundbreaking historical miniseries Roots. Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale is jarring because it visits those gruesome indignities on contemporary American women, in a setting that feels troublingly familiar. Moss made headlines last week when she told an audience at the Tribeca Film Festival that, to her, Handmaid’s Tale is ”not a feminist story.” But I wonder if that answer was more about avoiding a political discussion, because the series does an excellent job of depicting women struggling to survive and resist a system that defines females as   citizens  —   which kinda sounds like the definition of feminism. Ultimately, what makes Hulu’s adaptation all the more chilling is the way it makes so much of Offred’s new reality seem absolutely normal. ”I know this must feel very strange,” Aunt Lydia tells her   . ”But ordinary is just what you’re used to. This may not seem ordinary to you right now. But after a time it will.” In a country where sexual harassment scandals regularly land on the front page, the patriarchy of The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t feel so   which is the most horrific thing about it."
"Net neutrality regulations are getting yet another remake. The new head of the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday launched his   campaign to undo the regulations adopted in 2015 under former President Barack Obama. Specifically, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wants to loosen the legal structure that placed Internet service providers under the   oversight of the agency, in favor of a ”  regulator framework.” ”Going forward, we cannot stick with regulations from the Great Depression that were meant to micromanage Ma Bell,” Pai said in a speech at the Newseum in Washington, D. C. ”Nothing about the Internet was broken in 2015.” Pai’s plan so far lacks many specifics, but it marks the start of what’s expected to be a new   debate. The FCC is expected to vote to formally begin the repeal process on May 18. After that, the agency would collect comments from the public and the stakeholders before crafting a detailed approach and scheduling another agency vote to adopt it. All this means the FCC is beginning a new phase of one of its hottest,   debates: How should the government regulate Internet service providers to ensure that they don’t act as gatekeepers to Americans’ equal and fair access to websites and Web services? Over time, the FCC established   net neutrality principles that state that Internet providers shouldn’t block or slow down any websites or apps (no blocking or discrimination) and shouldn’t charge extra for faster loading (no paid prioritization). As this blogger once wrote, the term net neutrality ”was so nerdy that it’s been ’ ’ as Open Internet.” Over the years, the FCC has attempted several legal mechanisms to enforce these net neutrality principles. Three times, the attempts ended up challenged in court. The last attempt  —   after months of heated public debate  —   did gain full support from a U. S. appeals court in June 2016. That approach is known as Title II reclassification. Adopted by the majority of Democrats who ran the FCC at the time, the regulations reclassified how the FCC treats Internet service providers  —   both wired and mobile  —   to put them in a similar bucket to traditional telephone companies, like utilities. This dramatically expanded the FCC’s authority over the Internet, which was praised by consumer advocacy groups. But cable and telecom companies such as ATT and Comcast argue that this regulatory regime weighs on the industry, an outdated approach that dampens investment and innovation. The FCC ”decided to put the federal government at the center of the Internet,” says Pai, who at the time was a dissenting Republican FCC commissioner. He was elevated to chair the agency by President Trump in January. Pai says the net neutrality rulemaking was political and, in fact, has harmed smaller broadband providers. Pai’s plan broadly is to undo the Title II back to a   Title I classification. (For the wonky: from   ”telecommunications services” to ”information services. ”) ATT, Comcast and other telecom and cable companies welcomed this effort, while adding that they do support ”a free and open Internet” as well as the fundamental principles of net neutrality. The Internet Association, which represents Web companies including Google and Netflix, said it will keep working to defend the existing rules from repeal. The group said they protect ”consumers from ISPs looking to play gatekeeper or prioritize their own content at the expense of competition online.” The previous FCC effort to write net neutrality rules had drawn a record outpouring of more than 4 million public comments."
" .  .  . And for the finishing touch, a ”  muddy coating.” For just $425, these PRPS jeans can be yours. But you can make fun of them free. And that’s a bargain the Internet couldn’t pass up.   reviews on Nordstrom’s site celebrated the way the jeans mimicked the fruits of hard labor, ”without ever having to leave my BMW.” ”Perfectly match my stick on calluses,” one user wrote. On social media, countless people made the same joke: Heck, I’ll sell you pants like that . .. The pants, according to their description on the Nordstrom site, ”embody rugged, Americana workwear that’s seen some   action” and show ”you’re not afraid to get down and dirty.” Except, of course, the pants have never seen action and the wearer only looks dirty. (The look is pretty convincing, though there’s even some shine on that mud.) Mike Rowe, the former host of Dirty Jobs and a longtime advocate for the value of skilled trades, had one of the most popular, and most thoughtful, responses. He noted that the   jeans seem to value the idea of work. ”What they don’t value  —   obviously  —   is authenticity,” he wrote on Facebook: ”But forget the jeans themselves for a moment, and their price, and look again at the actual description. ’Rugged Americana’ is now synonymous with a ’  muddy coating.’ Not real mud. Fake mud. Something to foster the illusion of work. The illusion of effort. Or perhaps, for those who actually buy them, the illusion of sanity. ”The Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans aren’t pants. They’re not even fashion. They’re a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic  —   not iconic.” The jeans aren’t alone. PRPS, a premium denim brand known for its ”heavily distressed” styles, offers other besmirched denim options, including a pair of pants ”prominently defined” by dirt smudges and a ”mud denim jacket” with ”  and   muddy smears.” There are pants destroyed to the point of being ”abstract art.” Speaking of which, if you’d rather imitate a different kind of work, you can purchase ”slouchy joggers” with paint splatters that look ”as though they stepped straight out of the art studio.” And if your first thought was, ”just $425? Do they have anything pricier?” . .. well, yes. It’s not available on Nordstrom’s site, but PRPS does sell $900 selvedge jeans with distinctly dirtlike stains. The    PRPS jeans aren’t new the look was featured in PRPS’s fall 2016 lineup, though they didn’t hit the spotlight until this week. ”In all honesty, PRPS have been making jeans like this, with mud, oil, dirt, paint, distressing on mammoth scales for many years, and nobody has really spoken out about it,” says Lorna Burford, founder and editor of The Jeans Blog. And the price tag, while high for premium denim, is pretty average for PRPS, she says. Burford thinks Nordstrom’s description of the jeans  —   actually invoking hard labor in the ad copy  —   might have been the reason these particular pants have taken so much flak. Pricey dirty clothes aren’t just a   issue. In a 2010 thesis on ”dressing poor,” Australian curator and editor Kate Louise Rhodes described the political implications of dirt ”worn as a deliberate accessory” in high fashion. She traced a brief history, from the intentional stains of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren in the ’70s to literally moldy couture presented by Martin Margiela in the late ’90s  —   and countless examples of   or   garments. Rhodes argued that such looks can generate an ”aura of authenticity” while raising philosophical and moral questions about what it means to be mimicking stereotypes of poverty in the expensive world of high fashion. Nordstrom has not responded to NPR’s inquiries. A spokesman for PRPS said the brand is not available for comment. But the denim line provides a hint at its philosophy on its website  —   where the idea of craft, precision and meticulous detail is applied to tears and smears. ”Each loving stitch and rip suggests a job well done,” PRPS writes at one point. At another, it says garments ”stitch the soul of ancestral American jeans . .. onto modern silhouettes that bear the old stains proudly.” And then there’s that pesky word: authenticity. The word pops up again and again as PRPS founder Donwan Harrell describes his values. The brand uses denim woven on vintage looms. Harrell started it in response to what he saw as a lack of ”authentic” jeans on the market. Even the name  —   PRPS, as in Purpose  —   is a callback to a time when jeans were designed as workwear, with a real function. In an interview last year, Harrell invoked authenticity  —   or the emulation thereof  —   as a core design principle."
"Reporters and   personalities are among the roughly 100 ESPN employees who are expected to lose their jobs this week, in a   move at the network that has lost millions of subscribers in recent years. The cuts have already hit some   names, including veteran NFL reporter Ed Werder, college football analyst Danny Kanell, and college basketball reporter C. L. Brown, along with NHL columnist Pierre LeBrun. As of midday Wednesday, at least three media outlets published pages to track the exits from ESPN, including ones from The Sporting News, Deadspin and The Washington Post. ”We will implement changes in our talent lineup this week,” ESPN President John Skipper wrote in a note to employees Wednesday morning. Skipper said those laid off will include ”anchors, analysts, reporters, writers and those who handle   .” ESPN has been facing a slump in revenue that’s most easily traced to   by former cable subscribers, in an era of sharply shifting habits both for sports fans and for television viewers in general. Some of ESPN’s financial problems center on the roughly 2 million subscribers it lost in fiscal year 2016 falling advertising revenue and rising costs of broadcast rights have also contributed. ”It’s not only the subscriber loss, which is huge  —   and it’s really affecting all cable channels,” John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal tells NPR’s Audie Cornish on All Things Considered. ”ESPN used to be in close to 100 million houses, and now it’s in less than 87 million homes, according to Nielsen,” Ourand says. ”And ESPN gets about $7 per subscriber per month, so that loss ends up being a lot of money.” Announcing its most recent quarterly results in February, ESPN’s corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co. blamed the network for an 11 percent drop in operating income in its cable TV division during the final quarter of 2016. Those results were reported during a football season in which ESPN’s Monday Night Football struggled to retain viewers, despite the network being in the midst of a contract that requires it to pay the NFL some $1. 9 billion annually. ESPN also pays well over $1 billion to the NBA every year, as part of a reported $2. 66 billion yearly contract that it shares with the TNT network. As for its future strategy, the company says it will continue to roll out new content on digital and social media platforms. It will also relaunch two popular properties, Outside the Lines and E:60, in May."
"In her first running of the Boston Marathon, Edna Kiplagat powered across the finish line of the Boston Marathon this month nearly a minute ahead of her closest rival. Kiplagat made the 26. 2 mile outing look like a spirited jog in the park. She even clocked a blazingly fast 5:02 minute mile at the   mark of Boston’s storied road race. And now, as she does after every major race, she’s taking two weeks off. ”I’m in my second week of that right now relaxing at home with my husband,” she says when reached by phone at her farm outside Eldoret, Kenya, in the western highlands. ”In the afternoon, we take our children to play. My son likes golf. And my daughter likes swimming. We take them to the Eldoret Club for two hours, then come home.” Two years ago, Kiplagat and her   Gilbert Koech, bought a farm in an area where many of Kenya’s top distance runners train. ”We got it from a white guy from South Africa. We bought the land from him and inside there were all these deer,” the running champion says. ”So we have deer. We also plant wheat and we keep cows and sheep.” Edna Ngeringwony Kiplagat was born not far from her current farm but in much different circumstances. She was the fourth of 6 children. Her parents were peasant farmers. Last week she took home $150, 000 in prize money for winning the Boston Marathon. Kiplagat crossed the finish line at Boston in a time of 2 hours, 21 minutes and 52 seconds. The    Kiplagat started running road races in secondary school and dedicated herself   to running when she was 16. ”Yeah, I was still a young girl,” she says, adding that running is the only job she’s ever had. After the Boston Marathon several news outlets reported that she’s a ”Kenyan policewoman” but this was inaccurate. In Kenya, the police along with the military and other institutions sponsor athletes. When she’s home she competes for the Kenyan police. Over the course of a   career, Kiplagat has become one of Kenya’s best distance runners. She’s won the women’s marathon at two IAAF World Championships (2011 and 2013). In addition to Boston, she’s come in first at marathons in London, New York and Los Angeles. Last year she placed 2nd in Chicago. She’s done this while raising not just her two biological kids but also the two children of her sister, Alice, who died of breast cancer in 2003. She also has adopted another child whose parents passed away. ”It’s not hard,” she says of balancing being a mother of five and a   athlete. ”It’s about organizing yourself and making sure that everything is done at the right time.” She says training for a marathon is all about planning. Having a husband who’s also a runner and her coach allows her family life to merge smoothly with her training. ”The moment we get accepted to a race, we start planning right away,” she says. ”We have to sit down and draw up the program  —   when are we going to start, what do we have to do from day 1 to prepare. ”We put down everything that will be needed and we follow it.” On days that she needs to put in 25 miles she runs on a road from the nearby town of Iten  —   a popular route for Kenyan distance runners who are in training. ”When we are doing long runs we do that route every Saturday,” she says. ”It’s a dirt road. It can be busy with cars, bicycles, motorcycles, people walking.” Winning the Boston marathon, she describes as ”special” because of its iconic stature. Her    son, Carlos, and her daughter, Wendy, who’s 9, embraced her just after she crossed the finish line. Her husband and coach, Gilbert Koech, however, wasn’t there. He couldn’t get a visa to enter the U. S. This was odd on several fronts. First he’s the coach of a top athlete for one of the most celebrated sporting events in America. Secondly, Koech had been to the U. S. numerous times before. He spent much of the 2000s flirting with the top tiers of the running world and also toiling in second tier road races to scrape together an income. Koech’s last big win was at the 2009 Rock ’n’ Roll San Antonio Marathon where he clocked a blistering time of 2 hours 14 minutes and 39 seconds. But this year he couldn’t even get the U. S. embassy in Nairobi to grant him a visa. ”He was told that he’s not going to get his visa because he’s not allowed to go to America,” Kiplagat says. Despite having a letter from officials at John Hancock which sponsors the Boston Marathon, embassy officials told him they had no assurance that he wasn’t going to stay in the United States. ”It was a big disappointment for him not to go to Boston,” she says. In her Twitter profile Kiplagat sums herself up as ”Mother. Wife. Christian. Nike athlete.   marathon world champion.” Her religion is very important to her and she says running is a blessing. It’s become a central part of her life and given her a lucrative income. But she’s quick to add that the Kenyan runners who train near her farm don’t view running as a way to escape from poverty. They run, she says, because they love the sport. ”We do not run because we are poor,” she says. ”We run because it’s our passion.”"
"Every other weekend, I pack a suitcase: a sketchbook, laptop, homework, clothes and my navy blue U. S. passport. That’s my ticket to see my dad, who has been living alone in Tijuana, Mexico, for the past six years. Apá, as I call him, was deported when I was 11 years old and my family’s life has never been the same. Separation defines our routine  —   the stress, the traffic, the hellos and the goodbyes. Every time I see my dad, I get emocionada  —   like excited but emotional at the same time. Apá is 46 years old. He’s not very tall, but he didn’t seem so short six years ago. That’s when my childhood ended. I was 10, asleep in bed, when the sound of police sirens outside my home woke me up. A friend started a fight while visiting my aunt at the house. The ”compadre” got rowdy and threatened my mom. That’s when my dad grabbed a gun to protect us and got in trouble. It’s hard to talk about this night with my family. My dad was arrested and charged with assault with a firearm and possession of an unregistered weapon. He was married to my mother, an American citizen born in New York, but Apá says he never applied for citizenship, which he now regrets. ”You think you are established [in the country] and that nothing can happen,” he says. ”I never thought.” My dad was tried and found guilty in June of 2010 of being in possession of and brandishing an unlawful weapon. It was the day of my   graduation. Within a year, Apá was deported to Tijuana. Back then, U. S. deportations were on the rise and peaked in 2012 when more than 400, 000 people were deported. Apá doesn’t have family in Tijuana, but he chooses to live there to be as close as he can to us in Los Angeles. He worries about us a lot. ”It’s just living in a constant fear . .. not being able to do anything in case anything happens,” he says. It’s also really hard for my mom, Misty. All of her family lives on the East Coast, so when Apá was deported, her life changed dramatically. ”I would talk to him about everyday things, like the house needs fixed, problems that would arise with the car,” she says. ”He was part of my backbone to rely on, and now I became like the head of the household.” And I became the person she leans on. When she comes home, she tells me about her day at work. My mom works two jobs. Some nights she gets home after 11 p. m. which means I babysit my    brother after school. I have had to take on more responsibility in the household and have had to be strong for both my mom and my brother. I grew up with both parents at home, but our dad living across the border is all my brother, Tines, knows. It doesn’t seem to bother him. ”It’s not a bad or good feeling,” he says. Tines says he doesn’t feel any different from other kids. ”No, because I feel the same,” he says. A lot of kids travel back and forth to Mexico, he says, and that’s true, but not as often as we do. My parents have talked about moving to Spain, so we can be together again, but with school and money, that’s still up in the air. So we keep on living life between borders using daily morning phone calls, text messages and weekend visits to hold us together. This is our normal. The daily calls are nice, but I don’t get hugs. We can’t stop for breakfast together before school anymore. Living without us these past six years has also taken its toll on my dad. Yet as soon as we greet each other, it’s like we were never apart. Apá calls us mis enanos, or ”my shorties.” He always asks about school. My dad wants to know about my future and the letters from colleges. With college ahead and a career, I don’t know if I will ever live with my father again. And on June 9, Apá won’t get to see me walk onstage at my high school graduation. But I’m going to pack my cap and gown that weekend, so we can celebrate together in Mexico when I see him again. Zola Cervantes lives in Los Angeles. Her story was produced by Youth Radio in collaboration with Boyle Heights Beat."
"Turkish authorities have launched a massive detention operation, arresting more than 1, 000 people nationwide on Wednesday. The Turkish government says the arrests are aimed at supporters of the U.  cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames for last year’s failed coup attempt. And these arrests are by no means the end of the operation. Anadolu Agency, a   news service, says the government aims to arrest another 2, 000 people. Germany’s Deutsche Welle newspaper reports roughly 8, 500 police officers undertook raids in all 81 provinces in Turkey. As NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu says the government is pursuing what they call ”secret imams”  —   a movement that allegedly transmits information and instructions through individuals known as ”imams,” who in this context are not necessarily Islamic clerics. Soylu and others in the government say this   network has infiltrated the Turkish security forces. The arrests Wednesday merely add to the heaping number of people who have been arrested since the July 15 coup attempt. More than 100, 000 people have been fired or arrested since then, and Turkish media reports that more than 47, 000 have been charged with crimes related to the failed coup. This week’s purges also come shortly after Erdogan narrowly won a countrywide referendum that significantly consolidated his power, shifting Turkey from a parliamentary political system to one centered on a strong president. Critics outside the country’s borders have taken issue with how that vote panned out, saying that voting irregularities undermined the process. ”We don’t know whether the amount of vote fraud was significant enough to change the outcome  —   or more than 1 percent  —   but definitely something happened,” Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told NPR earlier this month. NPR’s Merrit Kennedy noted that Erdogan, who can now stay in office until 2029, decried these international criticisms as part of a ”crusader mentality.” Erdogan has positioned himself as a strong protector of Turkey’s interests  —   not only against the alleged machinations of Gulen, but also the violence of militants from the Islamic State and the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK."
"If all goes to plan, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will beam new images of Saturn and its rings to Earth early Thursday, sharing data collected Wednesday from its first dive through the gap between the planet and its striped belt of ice and rock particles. Today’s dive also marks the start of the final phase in the craft’s   visit to Saturn. Days ago, it used the gravity of Saturn’s moon Titan to bend its path toward its eventual destruction on the planet. Cassini descended below the ring plane around 5 a. m. ET Wednesday, but the antenna it would normally use to send images is instead being used to deflect potentially harmful objects away from its instruments. As it performed the move, the craft’s Twitter feed announced, ”Shields Up!” ”Because that gap is a region no spacecraft has ever explored, Cassini will use its     antenna (13 feet or 4 meters across) as a protective shield while passing through the ring plane,” NASA says. ”No particles larger than smoke particles are expected, but the precautionary measure is being taken on the first dive.” For today’s maneuver, the craft crossed the ring plane as it moved from north to south across Saturn. The gap between Saturn and its rings is about 1, 500 miles wide. Cassini is expected to get back in touch with the Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. by around 3 a. m. ET Thursday the first images should be available shortly afterward, NASA says. The move is the first in what NASA is calling Cassini’s Grand Finale, as it weaves its way between Saturn and its rings in a series of 22 dives that will culminate in what the agency describes as ”a   plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15.” Cassini was launched in 1997 its mission is slated to end one month before the   mark. Among the photos sent back by Cassini is a unique view of Earth as seen from Saturn, in what was hailed as a new perspective of our ”pale blue dot” in space. When that image was released in 2013, the   wrote, ”Earth and all its trillions of creatures are seen as a speck of light  —   lower right  —   in the vastness of space. What’s more, Cassini captures Earth while also capturing Saturn’s rings.”"
"Take a good, long look at his   eyes. That craggy snout. Those horns that whisper such subtle dignity. Before you swoon, just answer us this one question: Wouldn’t you swipe right? The Ol Pejeta Conservancy certainly hopes so. That’s why the wildlife conservancy in Kenya has done something a little unusual for the rhino called Sudan: They’ve posted his dating profile on Tinder. The    northern white rhino is the last male of his subspecies  —   though he’s not alone. Beside him at Ol Pejeta are two females, who are also the last of their kind. Together, they represent a chance for the survival of northern white rhinos, which have been hunted nearly to extinction by poachers. Trouble is, matchmaking between the three has been even more strenuous than your typical singles mixer. ”In human terms, [Sudan is] probably about 95 years old,” Ol Pejeta CEO Richard Vigne tells NPR’s All Things Considered, ”so he’s incapable of normal breeding.” They’ve tried just about everything to get the geezer going, but no dice. ”When he first tried to mount the girl, the rangers guided him . .. but it is difficult with a rhino,” the conservancy’s marketing manager told Reuters. ”We removed them from a zoo environment, which was not conducive to natural instincts, and put them in a   environment. There were a couple of matings, but it never resulted in a pregnancy.” So they’re turning to extraordinary measures: in vitro fertility treatments. ”It’s common in humans, it’s common in other domestic livestock such as cattle, but it’s never been done in rhinos,” Vigne tells NPR. ”We estimate we need something like $9 million to $10 million.” Thus the partnership with Tinder. Beginning Tuesday, when users swipe right on his profile  —   which appears on the app in 190 countries  —   they head to Ol Pejeta’s donation page. Reuters reports the page received so many hits it crashed within hours of Sudan’s profile going live. And that’s a good thing for Sudan, who is in the market for more than just a   romance. With his advanced age, and his life so threatened by poachers he’s kept under armed guard, Sudan doesn’t have long to find himself a suitable hookup. So, when this   suitor makes some extraordinary claims  —   ”I don’t mean to be too forward, but the fate of my species literally depends on me”  —   for once, you can feel comfortable trusting him."
"Tiny,   clusters of human brain cells grown in a petri dish are providing hints about the origins of disorders like autism and epilepsy. An experiment using these cell clusters  —   which are only about the size of the head of a pin  —   found that a genetic mutation associated with both autism and epilepsy kept developing cells from migrating normally from one cluster of brain cells to another, researchers report in the journal Nature. ”They were sort of left behind,” says Dr. Sergiu Pasca, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford. And that type of delay could be enough to disrupt the precise timing required for an actual brain to develop normally, he says. The clusters  —   often called minibrains, organoids or spheroids  —   are created by transforming skin cells from a person into neural stem cells. These stem cells can then grow into structures like those found in the brain and even form networks of communicating cells. Brain organoids cannot grow beyond a few millimeters in size or perform the functions of a complete brain. But they give scientists a way to study how parts of the brain develop during pregnancy. ”One can really understand both a process of normal human brain development, which we frankly don’t understand very well, [and] also what goes wrong in the brain of patients affected by diseases,” says Paola Arlotta, a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard who was not involved in the cell migration study. Arlotta is an author of a second paper in Nature about creating a wide variety of brain cells in brain organoids. Pasca’s team began experimenting with organoids in an effort to learn more about brain disorders that begin long before birth. Animal brains are of limited use in this regard because they don’t develop the way human brains do. And traditional brain cell cultures, which grow as a   layer in a dish, don’t develop the sort of networks and connections that are thought to go awry in disorders like autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia. ”So the question was really, can we capture in a dish more of these elaborate processes that are underlying brain development and brain function,” Pasca says. He was especially interested in a critical process that occurs when cells from deep in the brain migrate to areas nearer the surface. This usually happens during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. So Pasca’s team set out to replicate this migration in a petri dish. They grew two types of clusters, representing both deep and surface areas of the forebrain. Then they placed deep clusters next to surface clusters to see whether cells would start migrating. Pasca says the cells did migrate, in a surprising way. ”They don’t just simply crawl, but they actually jump,” he says. ”So they look for a few hours in the direction in which they want to move, they sort of decide on what they want to do, and then suddenly they make a jump.” Pasca suspected this migration process might be disrupted by a genetic disorder called Timothy syndrome, which can cause a form of autism and epilepsy. So he repeated the experiment, using stem cells derived from the skin cells of a person who had Timothy syndrome. And sure enough, the cells carrying the genetic mutation didn’t jump as far as healthy cells did. ”They moved inefficiently,” Pasca says. Next Pasca wondered if there might be some way to fix the migration problem. He thought there might be, because Timothy syndrome causes cells to let in too much calcium. And he knew that several existing blood pressure drugs work by blocking calcium from entering cells. So the team tried adding one of these calcium blockers to the petri dish containing clusters of brain cells that weren’t migrating normally. And it worked. ”If you do treat the cultures with this calcium blocker, you can actually restore the migration of cells in a dish,” Pasca says. Fixing the problem in a developing baby wouldn’t be that simple, he says. But the experiment offers a powerful example of how brain organoids offer a way to not only see what’s going wrong, but try drugs that might fix the problem. Still, to realize their full potential, brain organoids need to get better, Arlotta says. This means finding ways to keep the cell clusters alive longer and allowing them to form more of the types of brain cells that are found in a mature brain. Arlotta’s team has developed techniques that allow brain cell clusters to continue growing and developing in a dish for many months. And what’s remarkable, she says, is that over time the clusters automatically begin creating structures and networks like those in a developing brain. ”Using their own information from their genome, the cells can   and they can decide to become a variety of different cell types than you normally find,” she says. In one experiment, a brain organoid produced nearly all the cell types found in the mature retina, Arlotta says. And tests showed that some of these retinal cells even responded to light."
"Mexico has long argued that U. S. labeling rules for   tuna unfairly restrict its access to the U. S. market. And in a decision Tuesday, the World Trade Organization agreed, saying Mexico may seek $163 million annually from the U. S. in retaliatory measures. The controversial labeling rules, aimed at protecting dolphins from getting ensnared in fishing nets and killed, date back to 1990. ”The U. S. has long criticized Mexico’s fishing practices in Pacific waters, saying its use of nets and chasing dolphins to find large schools of lucrative yellow fin tuna greatly harms the mammals,” NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports from Mexico City. ”The U. S. allows the   label on tuna cans that meet its   standards,” Carrie adds. ”Mexico says it has brought down dolphin deaths to international standards but has long been refused the label.” Mexico had claimed that its annual losses amounted to $472. 3 million, far exceeding the U. S. claim of $8. 5 million to $21. 9 million. But the WTO put the figure at $163 million a year. Following the decision, The Associated Press reported, Mexico’s government said in a statement that it would ” ’immediately ask the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body for authorization to suspend benefits’ and also begin an internal process of targeting imports from the United States.” The Office of the U. S. Trade Representative said in a statement that the decision was disappointing, saying it ”dramatically overstates the actual level of trade effects on sales of Mexican tuna caught by intentionally chasing and capturing dolphins in nets.” The statement added that the trade body did not consider the latest version of the labeling rules. In Tuesday’s decision, the WTO arbitrator stated that the labeling rules restricted the supply of tuna imported from Mexico, but did not agree with Mexico’s claim that it was ”tantamount to an import ban.” The U. S. had argued that its consumer demand for tuna has declined. But the arbitrator said that while it’s not clear why U. S. citizens are buying less tuna, a sharp drop occurred around the same time the labeling rules were introduced in 1990  —   which the arbitrator said would be an unusual coincidence. And counter to the U. S. argument that some of its canneries prefer   fish, the arbitrator said it’s plausible that there would be demand for Mexican tuna at U. S. canneries without the restrictions. Mexico has said for years that its fishermen are ”judged more harshly than other fishermen in the world,” as Carrie reported back in 2013. She noted that: ”As many as 100, 000 dolphins a year were dying due to Mexico’s large net fishing tactics that encircles the dolphin pods to get to the huge schools of tuna swimming below. But over the years, those numbers have dropped significantly. Fishermen now use techniques so the mammals can escape. They’ve banned night fishing. And all boats in Mexico’s tuna fleet have independent observers onboard.” But environmental groups such as Earth Island Institute remain unconvinced by Mexico’s practices, saying the country’s tuna is ”stained by the blood of dolphins.” Tuesday’s decision isn’t the first time the WTO has sided with Mexico in the tuna dispute. In 2013, in response to a separate WTO decision, the U. S. changed its labeling rules in response to claims by Mexico that it was being unfairly singled out, as Reuters reported. But the news service added that ”the WTO said the rule change was not enough.” Tuesday’s decision considered the 2013 version of the rule, even though the U. S. changed it again in 2016 ”by expanding the tougher rules to all countries,” according to Reuters. It adds that because the WTO didn’t consider the latest rules, the   dispute will run a little longer, with another decision on the matter expected by the trade body in July."
"Under pressure from worker advocates and growing consumer awareness, Tyson Foods on Wednesday promised better conditions for employees at its   plants. Tyson, in a rare move for an industry heavily criticized for lack of worker safeguards, announced it would provide regularly scheduled bathroom breaks, give more attention to line speeds at plants, offer training on workers’ rights and establish safety councils that include employees. The initiatives are an expansion of a workplace safety pilot program launched in 2015 and social compliance audits begun in 2012, says Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesman. They are also part of new CEO Tom Hayes’ deeper focus on sustainability, Mickelson says. The announcement was made in conjunction with Oxfam America, an   group that has long pushed for such concessions, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the primary union for 70, 000 U. S. poultry workers. A Harvest Public Media investigation found that the more than 500, 000 men and women who work in slaughterhouses and   plants have some of the most dangerous factory jobs in America. Government fines for abuses are low and lines speeds are so fast that workers are often crippled for life with repetitive motion problems, the investigation found. In a report issued last year called ”No Relief,” Oxfam charged that workers at the four largest U. S. poultry companies  —   Tyson Foods, Sanderson Farms, Perdue Farms and Pilgrim’s Pride  —   are routinely denied bathroom breaks, forcing some to wear adult diapers to work and others to urinate on themselves in order to avoid retribution from supervisors. Oxfam and other worker advocates want to use consumers as a lever to push companies to make changes. Without pressure from    —   much like buyers’ growing concerns about animal welfare issues and antibiotic use  —   food companies have been slow to respond, says Oliver Gottfried, a senior campaign strategist for Oxfam America. ”Consumers are becoming more aware of that and we feel like once they learned what was happening to the hands that were feeding them, the hands that were processing the chicken, that they’d want to speak out about it,” Gottfried says. ”And they have.” Gottfried points to an Oxfam petition, signed by 150, 000 people, demanding that Tyson Foods, Sanderson Farms, Perdue Farms and Pilgrim’s Pride offer fair and safe working conditions. Tyson, based in Springdale, Ark. employs 114, 000 people, including roughly 95, 000 in the company’s U. S. chicken, beef, pork and prepared foods facilities. Wednesday’s announcement was among the first for incoming Chief Operating Officer Noel White, who was named to the spot in February following a shakeup of Tyson’s leadership team. ”We’ve always been committed to supporting our employees and have sound workplace practices in place, but also want to do better,” White said in a prepared announcement. ”That’s why we’re taking steps that include expanding training, improving workplace safety and compensation, increasing transparency and helping workers with life skills.” Other initiatives announced Wednesday include hiking wages, publicly sharing results of a   audit on worker conditions, increasing benefits to include more vacation and holidays, and expanding existing safety programs. Gottfried says Tyson is the first company to respond to Oxfam’s call to action. Next up is Perdue, which Oxfam will visit this week to share customers’ petitions calling for better working conditions. The meatpacking industry has had a culture of secrecy and a lack of transparency in the past, Gottfried says, adding that the more consumers know about that, the more that culture will change. ”The lack of response from these companies to requests from consumers, to requests from advocates like Oxfam, to requests from the media, is to pretend that simply the problem doesn’t exist and ignore it,” Gottfried says. ”We believe they can’t do that anymore.” This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration focused on food and agriculture. "
"On the worst day of Greta Horner’s life, she was dressed in a burlap robe, waiting by the window for her husband to come home from work. Ralph Horner, or Ed as his family calls him, should’ve been pulling in the driveway any minute that morning in June 2014, home from his overnight shift as a maintenance employee at the beef plant in Greeley, Colorado. It’s owned by JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, with its North American headquarters a short drive from the Horners’ home. Instead, three cars  —   one from the coroner’s office, one from the sheriff’s office, one from JBS  —   turned down the long, dirt driveway. ”They seemed to be going so slowly, and I thought this isn’t good,” she says. She met the cars at the gate, already filled with dread. ”They introduced themselves and I just said, ’Don’t tell me. I don’t even want to know. Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me.’ Because I just knew.” Ed had died a few hours earlier. He was working alone deep in the bowels of the plant on a piece of equipment. It caught his hair and the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him in. His clothing bunched up around his neck and mouth. There, trapped under a conveyor belt, he suffocated. He was 54, and left behind his wife, three sons and a grandchild. For the hundreds of thousands of people who prepare beef, pork and poultry in this country, the workplace is a hazardous place. Meat and poultry processing plants are safer than they were a decade ago, government statistics show. But in today’s slaughterhouses, some workers pay a steep price to produce our meat, sometimes with their lives. The (Modern) Jungle, Today’s beef, pork, and poultry plants function though a sort of organized chaos. Workers use a mix of hydraulic saws, industrial blenders, marinade pumps, steel hooks, metal chains and conveyor belts to disassemble cattle, chickens and hogs, turning whole animals into cuts of meat. Line employees don smocks and chainmail to keep from cutting themselves or their coworkers. Mats line the floors to avoid slips on blood or water. The Greeley facility, which JBS took over in 2007 with its purchase of Swift Foods, is a behemoth in the beef processing industry. Originally built in 1958, the facility’s employees are able to slaughter and process upward of 5, 600 head of cattle each day. It takes more 3, 000 people to keep it up and running. ”You’re trying to manage a small city,” says Doug Schult, a JBS USA human resources executive. ”When you take machinery and all those people, and those knives, you’ve got an environment that is risky. So you’ve got to accept that the risk is there. You don’t have to accept that people get hurt along with it though.” The industry has changed drastically since the 1906 publication of The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel that revealed poor food safety and workplace conditions in the Chicago stockyards. But people still get hurt or get killed. Some 151 meat and poultry workers suffered fatal injuries from 2004 to 2013, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report  which also focused on the underreporting of injuries in this industry. Compare that to the 3, 737 manufacturing facility workers  who died on the job during that same period, according to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meat and poultry plants consistently report higher injury rates than the manufacturing industry overall, with beef and pork workers sustaining a higher rate of injuries and illnesses than poultry workers, according to U. S. Department of Labor data. Government safety regulators recognize the risk inherent in meatpacking. The Greeley plant is under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Denver office, and a subject for the team of inspectors there who check workplaces for violations of federal safety standards.  ’Embarrassingly Low’ Fines, Ed Horner’s death triggered a flurry of activity for those government regulators. The law required the conveyor belt he was working on to be covered with a guard, meant to prevent such accidents. If OSHA catches it on an inspection, an absent guard brings a fine. A missing machine guard remains a highly cited violation from OSHA, especially in heavy industries like manufacturing, construction, and meatpacking. Both OSHA officials and industry representatives agree, they’re easy to miss. In Horner’s case, OSHA scolded JBS in a press release after the incident, saying the company should have known better. His death could’ve been prevented, the release said. Even with the strong language, the final fine for the violations that led to Ed Horner’s death totaled $38, 500. ”Yes, it’s embarrassingly low,” says Debbie Berkowitz, a fellow with the National Employment Law Project, and a former senior OSHA official. ”And because of that it’s unclear what kind of deterrent effect it really has.” Compare that to other federal agencies that levy fines, Berkowitz says. If that same plant was found to be polluting a nearby river, the fines from the Environmental Protection Agency could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Greeley plant had a history of missing or lacking machine guards. During an inspection in 2008, the facility racked up serious violations for lacking machine guards, among other citations. Fines for those violations totaled $22, 000, settled down from an original fine of $32, 100. Inspectors recorded machine guard violations in 2012 as well, earning the company $83, 414 in penalties. After contesting the violations, JBS ended up paying $64, 668. In 2014, JBS S. A. the Brazilian parent company for its North American arm, reported about $38 billion in net revenue, and earned about $650 million in profit. OSHA decided to make the company’s problems with machine guarding even more public in 2016. As a part of the settlement related to Ed Horner’s death, OSHA placed the company on a   list of companies that have ”demonstrated indifference” to federal safety standards, called the Severe Violator Enforcement Program. JBS will remain on it for three years and be subject to more inspections and more OSHA oversight. The $38, 500 fine JBS paid for the violations that led to Ed Horner’s death was higher than most, says Herb Gibson, OSHA area director for its Denver office. The agency assesses fines based on violations to the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, not based on injuries or fatalities, Gibson says. For the first time in 25 years, OSHA fines are set to increase in August 2016. In 1990 other federal agencies were given permission to raise penalty amounts tied to the rate of inflation. OSHA wasn’t given that permission, and Berkowitz says that’s left the agency unable to financially punish bad actors. Any increase to OSHA penalties must go through Congress. As for acting as a watchdog to the country’s hundreds of meat and poultry plants, large and small, OSHA officials, current and past, say they’re limited by the agency’s tight resources. About 2, 000 inspectors are tasked with keeping the country’s millions of workplaces safe and  . ”Unfortunately, it would take OSHA a hundred years to get to every workplace, just once to inspect,” Debbie Berkowitz says. ”So really a lot is up to the company.”     Four Deaths  Early in 2014, JBS executives in Greeley were looking over their injury rates and feeling optimistic. Over the last several years they’d been able to limit certain problems, measured using a rate based on how many serious injuries workers sustained and caused them to miss work. Since JBS took over the Greeley plant in 2007, the rate had been declining. It was good news. Then came the summer of 2014, when JBS and its affiliated companies in North America had four worker deaths in a   span, stretching from the summer into early fall. ”The summer of 2014 told us that while the figures said one thing, something more systemic, more foundational broke,” says Chris Gaddis, a JBS human resources executive. Two months after Ed Horner’s death in Colorado, tragedy struck again at the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Nacogdoches, Texas, when employee Bobby Beall was electrocuted. JBS USA owns a controlling interest in the poultry processor with plants scattered across the southern U. S. Beall’s obituary notes he enjoyed hunting and fishing, and was known around the poultry facility for sharing candy with his coworkers. One month later in September, a JBS employee in Alberta, Canada, Christopher Harper, succumbed to severe burns he sustained from a burst steam pipe while working at the company’s beef plant in the small town of Brooks. Being a devout hockey fan, Harper’s obituary requests donations in his memory be sent to the local junior league, the Brooks Bandits. In October, Pablo Lopez Romero of Mount Pleasant, Texas died while working at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant there. A large piece of ice fell on Romero’s neck and chest, killing him. Lopez Romero’s obituary says he left behind a wife of 35 years and two grandchildren. It was a string of tragic events, each one exposing hazards and safety lapses at the plants involved, and a problem that would take much longer to address than simply adding new guards to machinery or rolling out a new training regimen. JBS had a cultural problem, and executives agreed it would take more than additional OSHA visits to fix it. ”No fine could’ve created as much change and momentum towards improvement as losing a team member,” Gaddis says. ”We don’t need OSHA to come in and find this stuff, we need to find it ourselves,” Schult adds.  Blind Spots In The Plant, Ed Horner died in a secluded maintenance room, tucked away in a portion of the plant few employees move through. He had climbed underneath a moving conveyor belt. JBS supervisors and executives simply hadn’t identified it as a hazard. ”It involved guarding of a piece of equipment that we had not, frankly, focused on in the past,” Schult says. Not only was JBS losing workers in that fivemonth span in 2014, but safety blind spots were staying hidden until tragedy struck. Realizing that a certain amount of complacency and comfort in their own safety protocols may have led to a situation that put a worker at risk, Chris Gaddis, the HR exec, says the company reacted, calling in a   risk assessment team to find additional hazards, and looked at changing internal policies to encourage reporting safety problems, rather than stifle them. For years JBS had functioned under a ”cardinal rule” policy, where a list of rules guided employees on what to do to stay safe on the job. Break a rule, and you’re fired. Zero tolerance. But employees were understandably hesitant to come forward if they saw or participated in unsafe activities, knowing their report could get themselves, or their coworkers terminated. That led to a situation where injuries and unsafe actions were covered up and underreported. ”[The cardinal rule policy] was intended to create an environment that upheld safety, but it had this unintended consequence of undermining safety,” Gaddis says. Now employees are given a strike when breaking one of the rules, and instead of being fired they’re given the ability to learn from a mistake, even act as a safety ambassador for other employees. The company also realized that to find unseen, lurking hazards it needed to be less insular, more welcoming of new sets of eyes. The Greeley plant has often been a tour stop for Colorado business groups. In June 2015 it was opened for the first time to a sizable group of journalists. More eyes, more inspections, more points of view should mean a safer plant, Schult says. ”To me that was the biggest learning that came out of this. We’re still missing some of these things that we should be seeing, how can we not be seeing them?” More Than A Statistic, All it took was one unseen trap for Ed Horner to lose his life. One piece of wire mesh over that spinning conveyor belt could’ve saved his life. The Horners’ lives were intimately connected to meatpacking. The couple met in a beef plant back in the early 1980s, both working on the floor of a small plant in Sterling, Colorado. Greta took the job because it paid better than waiting tables or clerking at a gas station. Yes, it had added dangers, but it paid the bills, and gave her a living wage, the same calculation the hundreds of thousands of meatpacking workers make today. After years of working as an electrician outside the beef industry, that’s inevitably what took Ed back to the business shortly before he died. Ultimately what surprised her the most was just how preventable her husband’s death actually was. She hopes leaders at JBS learn a lesson. ”They need to realize that everybody that works there is a human being with a life and it’s not just a statistic, it’s a person,” she says. ”Their employees aren’t cattle that go through the chutes. They’re people with families.” Luke Runyon reports for Harvest Public Media and is based at member station KUNC in Greeley, Colo."
"Forget the fava beans. The main reason Jonathan Demme’s   1991 film The Silence of the Lambs gets its hooks in you  —   and leaves you feeling vaguely distracted and discomfited long after it’s over  —   isn’t anything Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter says. It’s how he says it. And to whom. In the reality of the film, of course, he’s directing his consummate, artisanal brand of creepiness at Jodie Foster’s FBI agent, Clarice Starling. But Demme, who died this morning, was a filmmaker fascinated by the simple, unadorned power of the tight shot. And he trusted his actors so thoroughly that he took it one step further: Instead of having them pitch their performances slightly to camera left or camera right  —   a shot so ubiquitous to basic cinematic infrastructure that it barely registers with viewers  —   he has Hopkins stare down the barrel of the lens. Straight at us. Into us. It turns us into Lecter’s subjects, butterflies pinned to his specimen board. We want to turn away from his steady wet unblinking gaze, but we can’t. It fills the screen. And it’s not just Lecter. Throughout the film, Demme treats us to   of his actors faces, staring directly at us. In many of the film’s more mundane moments  —   Clarice discussing the case with her friend, back at the FBI  —   the conversation takes place with alternating   of the actors’ faces, gazing out at us flatly, like a challenge. It’s a deliberate choice that implicates us, and thus implicitly demands more of us, than Hollywood thrillers generally do. We might not register that it’s happening the first time we see the film, but we sense that something is different, more intimate, more insistent. Throughout his long career, Demme let his actors’ facial expressions do the heavy lifting. His first film, 1974’s Caged Heat, directed under the auspices (well, ”auspices”) of   shlockmeister Roger Corman, is all about bodies, not faces: women’s bodies, in prison, to be specific. But it lives in the worried,     expression of Erica Gavin’s Jacqueline, just as 1980’s Melvin and Howard is powered by the crinkly smile of Jason Robards’ Howard Hughes (and the   squint of Paul Le Mat’s Melvin). In 1984, with Swing Shift, set in and around a WWII munitions factory, he was finally gifted two bonafide movie stars in Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell  —   and their giant,    melons. His camera found every angle of their impossibly symmetrical faces and coated them with   glamour. Something Wild, in 1986, found its edgy energy in Melanie Griffith’s eyes darting out from under that manic pixie blunt bob, and in the many ways Jeff Daniels kept finding new ways to look flustered by them. Demme’s adaptation of Spalding Gray’s staged monologue (1987’s Swimming to Cambodia) packs a lot more punch than other filmed adaptations of Gray’s work, largely because Demme wasn’t distracted by the storyteller’s vigorous   kinetics, as were other directors. Demme knew that it was Gray’s protean facial expressions  —   his sly shifts between, say the character of the worried Gray and his South African,   tempter  —   that would provide that theatrical work a new and singularly cinematic power. The dawning realization of Michelle Pfeiffer’s mafia wife in Married to the Mob (1988). The swooning, deeply emotive and literally operatic breakdown of Tom Hanks’ Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia (1993) and the level, inscrutable but somehow dangerous gaze of Thandie Newtown’s malevolent presence in Beloved (1998). I’m less familiar with Demme’s more recent feature work, or many of his music documentaries, but the film of his I love most, and have seen most often, is his 1984 Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense. It’s a slow build: one by one, various members of the band  —   led by a gawky David Byrne, captured at Peak Gawk  —   come out on stage, building from something with a nearly Calvinist austerity to the   sweaty, heedless joy of a  . Given the demands of the form, Demme doesn’t indulge his fondness for    —   this is a concert film, after all, and he is tasked with capturing the interplay between performers, and their gyrating, propulsive, athletic exertions. And when his camera does linger on Byrne’s face, well: It’s David Byrne. His gaze is distant, fixed,   downright Warholian in its eccentricity. It doesn’t grab you and pull you in, it doesn’t implicate or involve you. It pushes you gently but firmly away. Stand over there, please, thank you. Which is maybe why, a bit into the film’s final number, Demme does something he’s rigorously refused to do up to that point. He points his camera at the audience. And it’s a revelation: we see, for the first time, the real power of this music. Oh, we’ve felt it all the way through, but now we see it having its effect: the audience is on its feet. They are dancing. But it’s Demme. We know what comes next. His camera cuts to a woman in the aisle, not quite in true   but close enough to see her face. She is rapt, smiling  —   no. Beaming. We feel a pure, uncomplicated, visceral connection, not to the band, or even to the music, but to her. We are with that woman, in that aisle, in that moment. Because that’s what Demme is showing us. It’s why he’s waited so long to turn his camera to the crowd. He knows something about us, about what we need to see. She turns to us. She looks at us. Into us."
"For more than four decades, Jonathan Demme threaded a diverse path through the film industry  —   beginning as a publicist, filming everything from documentaries to comedic sendups, and finally earning the status of   elder statesman. He was 73. The director died Wednesday in Manhattan from complications of esophageal cancer. His publicist, 42 West, confirmed Demme’s death to NPR. Demme made films such as The Silence of the Lambs and Stop Making Sense that have helped define their respective genres. Despite his lengthy list of works  —   which also includes Philadelphia  —   Demme never set out to become a director. Far from it, in fact: He wanted to be a veterinarian. But, as he told NPR in 2007, that goal ran into trouble when he flunked out of college chemistry pretty much immediately. After a semester of writing movie reviews for his campus newspaper, he left college for a publicity job with   master Roger Corman. ”I met Roger Corman, who said, ’Well, you can write press releases? I’m starting a new company. I need movies. Can you write a screenplay?’ ” Demme recalled in the interview. ”I was about 25 years old at the time and I said, I would love to try that. I had had no aspirations to be a filmmaker or a writer. Until then, I was thrilled to be working in the movie business as a publicist. I would have been perfectly happy to do that forever.” But Corman loved Demme’s screenplays and eventually recommended that he get behind the camera, too. As a director getting his start in the early 1970s, Demme infused his first films with Corman’s    sensibilities, but as he set out on his own later in the decade, he began to find a more distinctive eye  —   hewing closer to intimate character study. In the 1980s, Demme dabbled in a variety of forms, making a mark in documentary filmmaking  —   particularly with Stop Making Sense, a seminal 1984 concert film for the Talking Heads  —   and in comedy with films such as Something Wild and the gangster spoof Married to the Mob. ”I’ve always followed my enthusiasm,” Demme said of the variety in his career. ”Whether the pictures have turned out good or not is one thing  —   but I’ve always had a lot of enthusiasm for the project at hand.” It was a pair of prestige dramas that brought Demme his greatest recognition  —   starting with The Silence of the Lambs, a horror film that swept the 1992 Academy Awards and earned Demme the Oscars for best director and best picture. The movie was also a hit at the box office, which, as Demme told Rolling Stone in 1994, came as a significant relief. ”At certain points, I was afraid there was something  —   a missing chink of skill  —   that was going to prevent me from having a movie that was financially successful. That frightened me,” Demme said at the time. ”So when Silence of the Lambs became an unqualified success, I took a huge sigh of relief. I mean, I can’t tell you how wonderful that felt.” He followed up that film’s success with Philadelphia, which starred Tom Hanks as a gay lawyer suffering from AIDS and fighting for his legal rights. The drama also earned a raft of Academy Award nominations, including a best actor win for Hanks. Still, as Demme told NPR in 2007, there was one form that continued to draw him back to the camera: documentaries. He said it was the form’s endless capacity to surprise that best characterized what he loved about film in general. ”The excitement of wading into ’reality’ and just finding out what happens  —   and then the challenge of selecting those things that happened and shaping them in the editing into a narrative that will have appeal and be engaging  —   is a great, great thrill.”"
"Baby humpback whales seem to whisper to their mothers, according to scientists who have captured the infant whales’ quiet grunts and squeaks. The recordings, described in the journal Functional Ecology, are the first ever made with devices attached directly to the calves. ”When they’re born, these whales are around 5 meters long,” says Simone Videsen at Aarhus University in Denmark, who notes that this is ”pretty big considering it’s a baby.” Calves must travel with their mothers for thousands of miles during an annual migration to the   waters of the Antarctic. Exactly what happens during that period is a mystery. ”These early life stages of wild whales are so elusive because they’re an aquatic animal,” Videsen explains. ”We can’t follow them around all the time to see what they’re doing.” However, she and some colleagues recently were able to track eight baby whales, using special sound and movement recorders. These recorders had suction cups that let the researchers just stick them onto the babies’ skin. ”It can stay there for about a day and then it falls off,” Videsen says. The researchers weren’t sure exactly what they’d hear when they retrieved the devices and played the audio. It turns out that the babbling of baby whales is very different than the haunting, eerie songs sung by adult male humpbacks. ”It’s like a squeaky sound, and some of them are really like grunting sounds,” Videsen says. What’s more, the sounds are very quiet  —   like the baby humpback is whispering so that it won’t get overheard by something dangerous lurking nearby. ”There are lots of killer whales in the area which are predating on these calves,” says Videsen, ”and they can use these sounds between mother and calf as like homing cues.” So why do the calves say anything at all? The researchers found that baby whales mostly whisper when they’re swimming, rather than when they’re resting or nursing, so it may be that these intimate sounds help mothers keep track of their young in murky waters."
"President Trump still calls the North American Free Trade Agreement ”a horrible deal” for the United States. But in opting to renegotiate  —   rather than cancel  —   the agreement, Trump acknowledged that backing out of NAFTA would be ”a pretty big shock to the system.” After more than two decades, NAFTA is tightly woven into the economies of the U. S. Canada and Mexico. Trade among the three countries is much more robust and supply chains more tightly integrated than was the case in 1994 when NAFTA went into effect. Last year, Canada and Mexico were the United States’   and   trading partners, respectively. With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, it’s little wonder those countries’ leaders pressed Trump not to abandon the trade agreement. ”They called me and they said, rather than terminating NAFTA, could you please renegotiate?” Trump told reporters on Thursday. He agreed. ”I think we’ll be successful in the renegotiation, which, frankly, would be good because it would be simpler” than canceling the deal, Trump said. ”Reckless, not wise” Indeed, some of the president’s fellow Republicans warned Trump that an abrupt withdrawal from NAFTA would be dangerous. ”Scrapping NAFTA would be a disastrously bad idea,” Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said in a statement. ”It would hurt American families at the   and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office.” Sasse acknowledged that there are ways in which NAFTA could be improved, but he cautioned against canceling the deal. ”Trade lowers prices for American consumers, and it expands markets for American goods,” Sasse said. ”Risking trade wars is reckless, not wise.” Nebraska farmers are among the leading corn producers in the country. Corn growers could lose a significant export market if Mexico decided to go shopping elsewhere. Sen. John McCain of Arizona had a similar warning for Trump. ”Withdrawing from #NAFTA would be a disaster for #Arizona jobs  economy,” the Republican tweeted. Trump ”shouldn’t abandon this vital trade agreement.” The jump in imports and exports under NAFTA, In 1993  —   the last full year before NAFTA  —   the U. S. had a $1. 6 billion trade surplus with Mexico. Last year, as the president likes to point out, the U. S. ran a trade deficit with Mexico of $63 billion. In between, both imports and exports grew sharply. Imports from Mexico jumped   from $39. 9 billion to $294 billion. Exports grew     times, from $41. 5 billion to $230 billion. (These figures from the Commerce Department are not adjusted for inflation. In real terms, imports have jumped about 4   times while exports are up about 3   times.) U. S. trade with Canada has seen a similar explosion since passage of CUSFTA, a precursor to NAFTA that was signed in 1988. The year before that agreement took effect, the U. S. had an $11 billion trade deficit with Canada. The deficit last year was almost exactly the same. But imports and exports had both jumped about   (or about 2   times, adjusting for inflation.) Even before NAFTA and its predecessor deal took effect, the United States had lower trade barriers than either Canada or Mexico, with tariffs on imported goods averaging just 4 or 5 percent. Canada’s average tariff on U. S. imports was 9. 65 percent, and Mexico’s average was 12. 36 percent. In essence, by signing NAFTA and agreeing to eliminate tariffs, Canada and Mexico did more to open their doors to trade than the U. S. did. Potential targets for negotiation, Tariffs are not the only barrier to trade, though. And attacking   barriers could be one goal of the new negotiations. Trump has complained in recent days about U. S. dairy farmers who have been locked out of Canada’s milk market. The U. S. has also ordered new tariffs on Canadian lumber, which the Trump administration argues has been unfairly subsidized by the Canadian government. ”This is not our idea of a properly functioning Free Trade Agreement,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. A White House spokesman says the goal of the new negotiations is to modernize NAFTA, to consider industries and issues that might have grown up since the agreement was signed. ”Obviously the issue of dairy came up, so that’s an area we would want to look at,” said White House spokesman Sean Spicer. The administration could also seek changes allowing the federal government to give preferential treatment to domestic suppliers when making purchasing decisions as part of the president’s ”Buy American” initiative. Other possible changes include stronger protections in the trade deal for workers, the environment and intellectual property. Those were all components of the   Partnership, which covered a dozen countries including Mexico and Canada. Trump formally withdrew from that trade agreement on his fourth day in office."
"The president went on a tweetstorm Thursday hyping the idea of a potential shutdown and blaming Democrats on a variety of issues: But Congress isn’t likely headed for a shutdown. It is likely to vote on a spending measure Thursday or Friday that would keep the government open for another week. And negotiators are working on a plan to fund the government for the rest of the year. So what’s going on? At the same time as Trump’s tweets, Democrats were plastered on cable news in a press conference talking about the trouble that Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn could be in. First, about the shutdown accusations: This is some hard spin from the president, especially since the likelihood of a shutdown is virtually nil now that a   stopgap funding bill was unveiled Wednesday night. If anyone made a shutdown more likely this week, it was Trump. He leveled demands earlier in the past few days  —   ahead of a Friday midnight deadline  —   for border wall funding (!) and the potential removal of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (!) to be included in the next wave of funding for the government authorized by Congress. Neither made the cut. Republican and Democratic negotiators are back to where they were  —   making progress toward funding the government for the rest of the year. And if there were a shutdown, let’s remember this: Republicans control all levels of power in Washington, the House, Senate and White House. They would likely be blamed. Past shutdowns have happened when there was divided government. That’s not the case now. But let’s realize what’s going on here: At the same exact time Trump began his tweetstorm, these were the banners on cable news (at least the ones he has accused of being against him): CNN: ”Cummings: ’No evidence, zilch’ Flynn reported payments.” MSNBC: ”Rep. Cummings: ’Unacceptable’ that White House is saying take a hike to Oversight Committee.” This president is a   junkie, something that was profiled here and here. That was happening while the cables were taking Rep. Elijah Cummings,  . the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, live railing against the White House for not being more forthcoming about former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. The committee wants to interview Flynn, because the committee revealed Tuesday that there was no evidence he complied with the law when he took thousands of dollars in payments from Russia Today, a   TV outlet. He was supposed to clear and report them, and it appears he didn’t. Reporters asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and White House press secretary Sean Spicer about Flynn on Wednesday. ”Do you think softwood lumber might get Michael Flynn’s name off the front pages?” one reporter asked. Ross responded: ”Is Michael Flynn now a trade issue? I wasn’t aware that he was.” Spicer jumped in. ”Thank you, Mr. Secretary.” But then Spicer was the one put on the defensive. He was asked if the transition team could have done more. ”Everything that the White House has been asked to do we have,” he said. ”The only documents that were made available to them that they asked for were the ones that the Department of Defense had.” Should the Trump administration release Flynn’s contacts? ”To ask for every call or contact that the a national security adviser made is pretty outlandish.” What’s more. .. ”We started this administration on Jan. 20th. All the information that they are talking about occurred prior to him being at the White House.” That, of course, was when Flynn was working for the transition, and he was a close adviser during the campaign. ”Not at the White House,” Spicer said. ”Everything that is being questioned occurred prior to January 20th.” But do the White House and the president consider what Flynn did taking money from a foreign government? ”I don’t know. That was  —   again, all of that occurred prior to his service. .. for us to determine someone else’s thing as a consultant  —   . ...” Maybe was there a problem with the vetting? Spicer: ”I’m not saying it’s a problem with the vetting. I’m saying that every single person who comes to work in here at a certain level is required to fill out the same form. . .. And that background check is adjudicated. You rely on that person when they sign their name, and then investigators pick it up. But there’s always going to be, in the case of people who had a prior clearance, that between the time that they filled it out and had it adjudicated they could have engaged in something. And whether or not they updated that or not is always the onus is on the individual.” Translation: Not really our problem. But there are four investigations related to this. It will continue to be something that nags at the White House. And when those questions come up, and the narrative turns toward it, you can expect something else  —   Trump tweets."
"The Pentagon is investigating whether Michael Flynn broke the law by receiving money from a foreign source after retiring from the service, according to a letter written by the Department of Defense’s acting inspector general to House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz. News of the letter, which was released by House Oversight ranking member Elijah Cummings Thursday, comes as Chaffetz is asking the Pentagon to consider making Flynn forfeit hundreds of thousands of dollars to make up for payments from entities linked to the governments of Russia and Turkey. ”When a retired member of the military does not obtain advance approval for a foreign payment,” House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz wrote to Acting Army Secretary Robert Speer Thursday, ”the Department of Defense treats the payments as ’erroneous,’ creating a debt in favor of the federal government.” The standard way to settle that debt, he added, is by withholding pension or retirement payments. Detailing the money Flynn was paid, Chaffetz cited $35, 000 from the Russian news agency RT and $530, 000 from a Dutch company Chaffetz said is owned by ”a Turkish businessman with links to the Turkish government.” The Department of Defense’s acting inspector informed the House committee that it had started its own investigation into Flynn’s activities earlier this month, Cummings said today. The developments come one day after Chaffetz,   and Cummings,  . said at a joint news conference that from the evidence they’ve seen, ”Flynn neither asked permission nor reported the funds” he was paid by foreign entities, as the   reported. Today, Cummings cited an Oct. 8, 2014, letter to Flynn from the general counsel of the Defense Intelligence Agency that the ranking member described as ”explicitly warning Flynn, as he entered retirement, that he was prohibited by the Constitution from receiving payments from foreign sources without advance permission.” In the letter, the agency said it was responding to Flynn’s ”request for a written opinion regarding the ethics restrictions” after his retirement. Cummings also says that the DIA’s account of its discussions with Flynn about his Russia trip contradicts what the former general said through his lawyer earlier this week, Cummings said, when the retired general’s attorney alleged that Flynn had ”followed appropriate procedures for accepting foreign funds for his trip to Moscow in December 2015 when he dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Flynn was fired by President Trump from his job as national security adviser for giving statements to administration officials that obscured his contacts with Russia’s U. S. ambassador. ”Flynn later offered to testify to the congressional committees investigating the potential connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s interference in last year’s election if he could secure immunity from prosecution,” NPR’s Phil Ewing reports. ”So far, neither the House nor Senate Intelligence Committee has agreed to make such an arrangement.” Cummings said that after getting documents related to Flynn from the Department of Defense, ”Our next step is to get the documents we are seeking from the White House so we can complete our investigation.” In his letter to Acting Secretary Speer, Chaffetz also asked to be informed about ”any other emoluments clause violations” that might have been taken up since Jan. 1, 2010."
"Updated at 12:30 p. m. ET  The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations committees have endorsed the idea of a   spending bill to keep the government open while budget negotiations continue. The   spending measure, introduced by House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, would put off the deadline to May 5. ”I am optimistic that a final funding package will be completed soon,” Frelinghuysen said. ”It is time that this essential work is completed so that critical programs and activities  —   including national defense  —   are properly and adequately funded for the year.” Republican Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran of Mississippi said, ”We’ve made substantial progress on an agreement to complete the 2017 appropriations process. Let’s pass this new continuing resolution, and make good use of this extra time to enact overdue legislation to provide for national defense and meet our country’s needs.” Democrats in the House are sending up warning flares, telling Republicans that if they use a   extension to make time for a vote on their health care bill, then Democrats will not vote to avoid a shutdown. Typically, members of the House minority have little say, but given that members of the House Freedom Caucus often oppose any spending measure, Democrats may be needed to pass a funding bill. ”Our position had been, if we’re ready, we’ll give it another week to implement,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said to reporters on Thursday. ”But if it’s just more time, kicking the can down the road to have these same    and unknowns injected into the debate, we’re not there.” On the prospect of a revived health care vote, Pelosi added, ”They’re mixing apples and oranges here.” House Speaker Paul Ryan said, ”The reason we need an extension in the first place is because Democrats have been dragging their feet. Even if we get an agreement, let’s just say, in 10 minutes, we simply can’t process the paperwork that long. And we have a   rule  —   people need to be able to read the bill. So, it inevitably  —   under any scenario or circumstance  —   requires a   extension, and I’m confident we’ll be able to pass a   extension.” A final spending bill or an extension has to pass both chambers by midnight on Friday night to avoid a government shutdown. Earlier this week, the president tweeted some   demands, including border wall funding and cutting off subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Progress came after Trump dropped those threats. In reality, border funding and Obamacare subsidies would be big fights on their own  —   let alone jammed into a spending bill to keep the lights on in the government  —   because Congress has been unable to pass a budget. The Trump White House floated trying to swap,    border funding for Obamacare subsidies. That was a nonstarter with Democrats, especially given what little leverage in public opinion they see for Republicans. Both the GOP health care proposal and the border wall have been unpopular. There are also complications within the GOP. Plenty of   Republicans are against a wall, and moderates are in favor of administering Obamacare in a   way. But it appears the White House decided to try to avoid blame for a government shutdown on Trump’s 100th day in office."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. What makes a song personal? Obviously, songwriters are often confessional, but only some go deep enough to expose bone. They’re as likely to mine details from distant sources: fiction, overheard conversations, someone else’s memories. A listener can make anything personal, anyway, so maybe the question’s moot. If a soda commercial is playing while you fall in love, it’s your song. A few musical souls, however, do seem exceptionally bonded to the personal. These are the singers who somehow perfectly balance openness with   the writers who turn mundane details into epiphanies. Brandi Carlile is that kind of artist. Since 2005, with her longtime collaborators Phil and Tim Hanseroth, Carlile has written music redolent of the moments after someone leaves a room, of walks alone, of the preoccupations that jolt you awake. Her bare, beautiful alto has an arresting immediacy though she’s   in country’s modulations, rock’s punch and pop’s shine, Carlile stands as wholly herself within her music, one woman seeking love and its complement, freedom. People relate. On her 2007 album, The Story, Carlile teamed with the producer   Burnett to burnish a particularly resonant group of songs, expressions of longing, loneliness and hope that gained Carlile a new audience and remain favorites today. The Story hit like that moment in the movie Breathless where Jean Seberg looks directly at the camera  —   this was a level of revelation, of risk, that few   take. Cover Stories: Brandi Carlile Celebrates 10 Years Of The Story returns to that breakthrough and surrenders the spotlight to 14 Carlile fans who happen to be some of contemporary music’s most revered stars. Most tracks were recorded specifically for this project, though its inspiration, Adele’s recording of ”Hiding My Heart,” was originally released in 2011. The superstar’s pristine rendition sets the album’s tone, honoring Carlile as a peer and a role model. Pearl Jam takes ”Again Today” to the garage Kris Kristofferson, his genius   makes ”Turpentine” a   squint at heartbreak. (Chris Stapleton and Kristofferson’s daughter Kelly lend him tender assistance.) Margo Price’s ”Downpour” finds the homespun, emotional center of country, while Dolly Parton’s climb to the heights of her vocal range on the title track reminds listeners that Carlile can write a blockbuster. Recorded in studios from North Carolina to Carlile’s native Pacific Northwest, with a long stop in Nashville for sessions with producer Dave Cobb, Cover Stories forms a circle of people connected by Carlile’s songs, but finding their own paths through them. Ruby Amanfu’s 2015 version of ”Shadow On The Wall” is as icy hot as a James Bond theme, while Torres turns down the flame on the earnest ”Until I Die” to an existential glimmer. The Indigo Girls, who played on the original version of ”Cannonball,” return to it like a favorite memory. Anderson East, with help from Miranda Lambert, finds the sacred thread in the hymnlike ”Josephine.” Each take  —   from Old Crow Medicine Show, Jim James, Shovels  Rope, The Avett Brothers and The Secret Sisters  —   feels like an original, with all the quirks and key elements that makes these artists special. Delving into this material enriches them. The musicians on Cover Stories joined the project, in part, because they believe in the cause Cover Stories benefits  —   all proceeds go to War Child UK, a   organization supporting children affected by conflict  —   but they inhabit it because Carlile’s music feels right in their hands. She sets the standard for so many listeners. One notable fan even provided a foreword that appears in the album’s liner notes: Barack Obama, who extols Carlile’s passion for War Child and refugee relief, but who might also have a future as a music critic. ”Brandi Carlile tells stories that encourage us to see ourselves in one another,” he writes. In other words, she inhabits a sense of the personal that is political, expansive, and profound. Cover Stories, benefitting a cause that Carlile believes is crucial, beautifully serves this young old soul’s legacy, too."
"Looking back at the 1992 Los Angeles riots, people often remember tensions between   white law enforcement officers and Korean small business owners. That story gets even more complicated when you step into    —   a neighborhood that was, and still is, predominantly Latino. In the wake of the Rodney King verdict, riots broke out around the city. The first day, they erupted in South Central by the second, they had spread north to  . And while people all over the city had to deal with looting, fires, and general chaos, many residents of Pico Union had to deal with an additional fear  —   the threat of deportation. Mike Hernandez was the neighborhood’s city councilman in 1992. He said that in the 25 years since the riots,   hasn’t changed that much. The area is still more than 80 percent Latino, with lots of immigrant families from Mexico and Central America. And, in 1992, a majority of   constituents were living below the poverty line in crowded conditions. Hernandez said he knew long before the riots started that   was just as combustible as South Central LA. ”We had twice the density here of Manhattan,” Hernandez said. ”And our fire station here, Fire Station 11, was the busiest fire station in the nation.” But in the midst of the burning and looting, Hernandez said the few law enforcement officers who made it to   were not protecting and serving. He partially blamed it on the fact that in the early 1990s, ”Latino” was often synonymous with ”illegal” in California. In a 1992 interview, he told NPR that his request for reinforcement during the unrest didn’t get him the results he wanted. ”The response to me when I said I needed the National Guard to protect the people of the area and I needed to protect the businesses and protect the homes, they gave me the Border Patrol. It was totally an insult,” he said. Hernandez doesn’t deny that people in   were among the looters, but he said he saw people taking basics, like food and diapers. The vast majority of his constituents were scared out of their minds and hiding in their homes. The rioting and chaos, he said, triggered past trauma for many of the Central American immigrants who had fled civil war. And the presence of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which included the Border Patrol back then, seemed to be fueling that fear  —   with good reason. Documents gathered during the Webster Commission, the FBI’s months’ long investigation into the Los Angeles Police Department’s response to the riots, included declarations from   residents. Many of them were arrested by the LAPD for illegally residing in the U. S. and turned over to the INS. During the LA riots, Madeline Janis ran a   based   called CARECEN (Central American Resource Center) which is still in the neighborhood and provides multiple services to immigrants. In the aftermath of the unrest, Janis, an attorney, helped a couple dozen people facing deportation  —   people like Martha Campos, a Salvadoran woman arrested by the LAPD at three in the afternoon on April 30, 1992 while drinking a fruit juice in front of a convenience store. At the time, Campos was eighteen years old. ”An officer demanded to know my name, if I had any immigration papers and what country I was from,” Campos said in her declaration, taken after two weeks in immigration detention at Terminal Island in San Pedro. She added that the LAPD questioned her about her immigration status. ”I responded that I had no papers and I told him what country I was from. ..I was then taken to a police station with many other people. Immigration arrived in several vans and took me and many other people away.” Campos said that in detention she slept on narrow concrete benches, was fed dry meat and old bread, and not allowed to bathe. She was seven months pregnant. Campos said that she was afraid that the treatment she endured while in INS custody could cause serious harm to her or her baby. Madeline Janis said she’s almost positive she was able to get Campos a hearing in immigration court, even though the   old signed a voluntary departure document the day of her arrest. (NPR tried to find Campos and other detainees who gave declarations, but was unable to locate anyone 25 years after the incident.) Janis said the entire ordeal was so upsetting that it was hard for her to recall the events after our initial interview request. ”This was so awful, I think I blocked it out of my memory. I think it’s because people suffered so much that I really . .. just blocked it.” What happened to Martha Campos shouldn’t have. According to a rule called Special Order 40, which has been around since the late 70s, the Los Angeles Police Department wasn’t, and still isn’t, allowed to ”initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person.” They can only involve immigration enforcement when an unauthorized person has been arrested for serious misdemeanors or a felony. Among the Webster Commission papers archived in 40 cardboard boxes at the USC library, there were Immigration and Naturalization Service documents that show 86 percent of more than 1, 200 undocumented ”riot aliens” they received from the LA County Jail, the LAPD and other law enforcement were deported. Those documents only cover May 1 to May 4, 1992 (the unrest began on April 29th) and they do not specify what crimes those detained and deported were charged with. Robert Moschorak was the district director of the INS in Los Angeles during the unrest. He remembers the riots differently than people like Hernandez and Janis. Moschorak, who has been retired for 23 years, said the riots were an     situation, and he sent in agents to help as requested, sometimes to just interpret for LAPD officers. As for Special Order 40, he told me he wasn’t aware of it then, and doesn’t agree with the policy now. ”I think that’s ridiculous,” Moschorak said. ”You know, many people don’t realize that illegal entry into the United States is a misdemeanor in and of itself, a violation of 8USC1325 and   is a felony. How long are we going to accept that in our society?” Not everyone shares Moschorak’s contempt for the order. Charlie Beck, the current LAPD chief, said he has accepted that there are a couple hundred thousand immigrants living in Los Angeles who don’t have legal status. ”And I got to be their police chief, too,” Beck said. ”I’m not just a police chief to property owners. I’m not just a police chief to business owners. We’re in charge of everybody’s safety.” Chief Beck has been at the LAPD as long as Special Order 40 has been around, and said he can’t recall a time it wasn’t followed, even after learning about the Webster Commission documents that show otherwise. Regardless, Beck said it has long been crucial that the LAPD isn’t thought of as immigration enforcement, because it erodes trust and immigrants stop reporting crime. Just last month, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti expanded Special Order 40 to include fire fighters, port and airport police. At the event where Garcetti signed the executive directive, Beck told the audience that crime reporting has dropped significantly in Latino communities this year over fear that interacting with local law enforcement may lead to deportation. Immigrant rights activists in 1992, and a new generation of activists today, don’t think the order goes far enough to protect LA’s immigrants  —   no matter how it’s implemented. Many in California’s immigrant rights movement are calling for zero cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement. (And a bill under consideration in the state legislature may decide that issue  .) Garcetti said he’s trying to quell fears stoked in LA’s immigrant communities by President Trump’s calls for more cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. ”So to make our city safer we’re focused on keeping those bridges from being burned down right now,” Garcetti said. But 25 years ago, when Los Angeles was burning, Special Order 40 appears to have been an afterthought amidst the chaos. Garcetti said that this new generation of police officers understand the need for Special Order 40 from both moral and practical terms. Garcetti said that it’s one thing to have a policy on the books, ”But it’s another thing to make sure that it’s enforced, and enforced by everybody.” The mayor added that we continue to learn lessons from the LA riots 25 years later. ”We’re not perfect, but in this imperfect paradise that we call Los Angeles, I think we’re better and more resilient because of what we went through in 1992.” Parker Yesko, an NPR intern on the National Desk, and NPR digital producer Leah Donnella contributed to this report. NPR’s Anjuli Sastry produced and Melissa Gray edited All Things Considered’s series of reports on the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots."
"Be honest: You’re looking at this story thinking what else is there to add to reports on the 1992 riots that rocked LA, right? NPR has done anniversary retrospectives before, including a huge   on the 20th. But in the past five years, the issue of policing  —   how it’s done, whether it’s equitable, what happens when deadly confrontations occur  —   has become more urgent than ever. And what happened in Los Angeles that April night 25 years ago is a critical part of the current national conversation on policing and race. For the LAPD, there have been huge changes. ”I can honestly say the LAPD of 2017 is not your grandfather’s LAPD, and it’s not the LAPD of Daryl Gates, that 25 years ago, plunged this city into the biggest riot in (modern) American history,” says civil rights lawyer Connie Rice. Rice spent a lot of time from the late 1980s through the   challenging police aggression in the city’s communities of color, especially people in poor parts of the city where policing was designed less to protect and serve, more to contain and suppress. The police department in 1992 was largely white and overwhelmingly male. It was led by Chief Daryl Gates, an authoritarian who ruled from the top down, and brooked no opposition from those lower on the organizational chart. Gates was career LAPD, and he’d learned policing from Chief William Parker, the man who’d taken the department from a notoriously corrupt, racist machine to a sleek, paramilitary network of officers. Parker ran the LAPD before there were term limits, and was the   chief in department history ( ). Gates served as his driver and protégé before eventually ascending to the top spot himself in 1978. Like Parker’s LAPD, the organization under Daryl Gates was especially hard on communities of color. For years before the ’92 riots, Rice says, cops felt comfortable denigrating black and brown people over their radios. When the transcripts of those conversations were introduced in court cases, Rice says, ”they raised the veil on the subterranean culture that LAPD exposed to the black community and the poor Latino community and any community that they decided wasn’t on the right side of the thin blue line.” Being brown or black automatically made one suspect to beat officers, says writer Joe Domanick, who has spent much of his career reporting on the LAPD, as well as chronicling its evolution in his book Blue. ”The LAPD was doing stop and frisk long before it was ever labeled stop and frisk,” Domanick insists. This meant the department’s infamous arbitrary stops  —   where police would roll up on a subject, jump out and make him ”assume the position” (on their knees, hands behind the head, or ”proned out” on the ground, face down)  —   often targeted   black and brown citizens. Workers. Teachers. Ministers. Anyone they felt merited a closer look. Several decades of these stops, and the brutality that often accompanied them if the person stopped asked why he was being stopped, contributed to a deep well of resentment in many of the city’s black and brown neighborhoods. So when the verdict from a mostly white jury came back, the fury wasn’t just at the apparent miscarriage of justice. There was plenty of that  —   the videotape of King’s beating had circulated globally many felt a conviction was a  . The rage was in opposition to decades of police mistreatment suffered by people who weren’t named Rodney King. In June, after the ashes cooled and Gates was forced to resign, the city got a new chief. An   one. Willie Williams arrived from Philadelphia and served one term. Most of the rank and file didn’t want a black chief, and were offended that an outsider had been chosen to lead them. Williams did get some of his cops out of their cars and on the streets, and introduced the idea of community policing. But it wasn’t enough. He was seen as a weak, ineffective leader and was gone in one term. The next chief was harder to dismiss. Bernard Parks was, like Gates, an LAPD lifer. Like Williams, he was also  . Unlike Williams, Parks was tall and trim and looked every inch the LAPD cop. (He was even named one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful in 1998.) And like Gates, Parks was an authoritarian. His handling of the worst police scandal in modern LAPD history eventually cost him his job. Jody David Armour, who teaches and writes about the nexus of race and the criminal justice system at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, says it’s hard to conceive exactly how devastating the Rampart scandal was to the LAPD. ”Try to imagine taking LA Confidential, Serpico and Training Day and rolling them all into one,” Armour says, ”and you still don’t have the magnitude of the Rampart scandal.” In the Rampart scandal, several cops from an elite,   unit were supposed to infiltrate the criminal element that was preying on the   communities Rampart served. Instead of tracking the bad guys though, some of the Rampart cops became the bad guys: They tortured suspects and sold cocaine they’d stolen from police evidence rooms. Parks oversaw an investigation into the scandal, and some police were prosecuted. But despite those convictions, many felt the investigation didn’t go far enough. The LAPD was forced to accept federal oversight while it overhauled itself and Parks was denied a second term. It was time for another outsider. Enter Chief William Bratton, who’d policed New York City until his good press got under the thin skin of   Rudy Giuliani. ”Broadway Bill”  —   a cheeky reference to the chief’s love of publicity  —   had lowered crime using   policing, which analyzed information about where crimes occurred, and then dispatched adequate numbers of police to those areas to suppress it. Quality of life issues improved: a lot of homeless were hustled off the streets, the ”squeegee men” who accosted drivers near tunnels and bridges demanding to clean their windshields, disappeared, the subways were safer. But vast numbers of minority New Yorkers, especially blacks and Latinos, were unfairly targeted by Bratton’s    tactics. Bratton brought his   policing to Los Angeles, but LA wasn’t New York  —   for one thing, there was way more real estate to cover by a relatively small police force. Armour says Bratton had to adjust his methods to his new city: ”He had to develop a more   policing model, and found that actually improving those   relationships was consistent with good law enforcement practices, cause crime went down.” Bratton also engaged the LAPD’s nemesis, Connie Rice, to help him change the department’s culture. At Bratton’s behest, Rice got carte blanche to interview hundreds of working police officers, who told her what the challenges and potential rewards could be to changing how the LAPD operates. There was an active effort to recruit beyond the previous white male standard. ”And as more cops of color came in, you had more progressive ideas,” Rice believes. ”They also stopped simply taking military people. They looked for teachers, they looked for social workers, they looked for artists. So it was a different mix of recruitment.” Bratton stayed for seven years, and left, having pointed to a   successor, Charlie Beck. Beck is the son of an LAPD officer and husband of another. Two of his children and a    are also LAPD. Beck, who oversaw and rebuilt Rampart   wanted his officers to have the flexibility to handle things out in the field as each situation demanded. No more calling back to HQ for permission to deviate. He wanted them policing in ways that they didn’t themselves become the news. (Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t.) He also approved of several pilot projects in the city’s sprawling housing projects, engaging lead residents with police officers to form community police partnerships to fight crime and reduce conflict both within and between different projects. ”They serve the poor community instead of terrorizing it,” Rice says. Beck doesn’t do this from Parker Center. No shrine to any past chief, the new LAPD is run from a new building with a   name: The Police Administration Building. And because crime is significantly lower than it was in the 90s, Beck says, his people have more latitude to try different ways to police. ”Rather than just chase the symptoms that are crime all day long, we can work on the root causes. So I think that’s why you see us being able to emphasize trust at a greater rate than our predecessors did.” Some of that trust has been dented in the past few years, because of a number of police shootings of unarmed people of color. ”There are relatively fewer than there used to be,” says Joe Domanick, ”but there are still questionable shootings.” Even after police training and shooting policy were changed. It may not change fully for another few years. If Charlie Beck stays till the end of his second term that, combined with Bill Bratton’s previous tenure will have given LA 17 years of reform. Maybe still not enough time  —   but far different from the LA that blew up under Daryl Gates. LA’s black and brown communities, says Rice, ”have had a hundred years of abuse. They don’t get erased because you’ve been decent for five years.” Even with the setbacks, Domanick sees overall progress. ”How do I know?” he asks. ”You don’t have an instinctive dislike or reaction to LAPD officers.” Not at the 1992 levels, anyway. NPR’s Anjuli Sastry produced and Melissa Gray edited All Things Considered’s series of reports on the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots."
"Updated on   at 1:15 p. m. ET, United Airlines and lawyers for the passenger seen on video being dragged from a United airliner in Chicago say the man has reached ”an amicable settlement” with the airline. The terms of the agreement were not announced. A statement released by the Chicago law firm of Corboy and Demetrio said ”Dr. David Dao has reached an amicable settlement with United Airlines for the injuries he received in his April 9th ordeal, which was captured on video and viewed worldwide.” United’s statement refers to ”the unfortunate incident,” and promises in the future it will ”put our customers at the center of everything we do.” In his statement, lawyer Thomas A. Demetrio praised United CEO Oscar Munoz: ”Mr. Munoz said he was going to do the right thing, and he has. In addition, United has taken full responsibility for what happened on Flight 3411, without attempting to blame others, including the City of Chicago. For this acceptance of corporate accountability, United is to be applauded.” The settlement came just hours after the airline announced a series of policy changes, promising to cut down on overbooking and raise the maximum incentive for passengers to skip a flight to $10, 000. On the flight that became a public relations nightmare for the company, compensation for being voluntarily bumped had topped out at $1, 000. United will ”empower its personnel to make decisions and find solutions that make sense for both customers and employees,” Munoz said in a letter to senators Wednesday that was sent in response to inquiries about the unusual removal. In all, United announced 10 policy changes in response to sharp criticism it received over a debacle that unfolded on a United Express Flight on April 9, after passenger David Dao refused to give up his seat on a flight he’d already boarded, so the crew could make room for airline staff. He was eventually dragged out by security officers, suffering injuries in the process. From now on, United says, it won’t ”require customers seated on the plane to give up their seat involuntarily unless safety or security is at risk.” The airline also says it will limit its use of law enforcement officers. The increased compensation puts United in line with rival airline Delta, which announced days after the forced removal in Chicago that it was increasing its maximum compensation for passengers giving up seats to nearly $10, 000, up from $1, 350. United’s other changes include making sure airline crews are booked onto flights at least an hour before the scheduled departure time. United also says it will create an automated system to solicit volunteers to change their travel plans when flights are overcrowded, and give more training to its employees. The incident on a flight from Chicago to Louisville triggered a firestorm of outrage against United, fueled by videos of the confrontation and what was seen as a   response from the airline, whose initial explanations ignored the violence on one of its planes and stated simply that one customer had ”refused to leave.” Soon after, United’s CEO Munoz stated, ”I apologize for having to   these customers.” On Friday, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure said that Munoz would testify on May 2nd about ”airline customer service issues.” Representatives from American Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines are also slated to speak. Munoz sent the Senate Commerce Committee a letter Wednesday in response to senators’ questions, in which he said the airline crew had been designated ” ” on the oversold   flight because they were scheduled to operate a flight out of Louisville the next morning, and their original flight had been delayed. The ” ” decision was made, Munoz said, so the crew could get the mandatory amount of rest required by the FAA and to avoid further delays for ”many other customers down line.” Replying to the Senate panel’s question about compelling a passenger to get off a plane, Munoz said, ”It is rare that a passenger is denied boarding after already having been seated.”"
"United Airlines is increasing the amount it will pay passengers who get bumped from overbooked flights to as much as $10, 000. That announcement comes after its CEO, Oscar Munoz, called a   video showing police violently dragging a seated passenger off a full flight earlier this month ”horrifying.” ”When we read that story, our reaction was, ’Dang, I wish we’d been on that flight,’ ” says Fay Fishman, a veteran traveler with a love of getting bumped off overbooked flights. Fishman is among a select group of travelers who spend considerable effort trying to get bumped from overbooked flights they are, in fact, overjoyed to give up their seats in exchange for travel vouchers or cash the airlines give out as compensation. Fishman is what I would call a serious player of The Bump Game. She and her husband are law partners who split their life and work between Phoenix and Minneapolis, flying at least once a week, not including leisure travel. ”We seem to live on airplanes and we love it,” Fishman says. They even love hanging out for hours, getting work done at the airport lounge or having a drink at a restaurant. But gunning for bumps is also a serious effort. Fishman sets their schedule six months to a year in advance, aiming to travel at the busiest times. ”On a Monday school holiday, a Thursday or Friday before that is a great bump possibility,” she says. ”You know, it also helps when you don’t have young kids [her husband has two grown children] you don’t have pets and you don’t have green plants, so you have nothing that needs your care and attention.” Fishman says they arrive at the airport at least an hour before their flights, and aim to be the first to speak to the gate agents  —   some of whom already know her  —   to enthusiastically volunteer. She even keeps Starbucks gift cards to give to the gate agents as ”thank you” gifts if they do get bumped. Fishman says she and her husband once scored $3, 200 on a single trip. Using these rewards, the couple has traveled to the Middle East, Asia and all around Europe. The winnings can depend on the timing of the alternate flight, or the airline’s own policy. Regulations allow up to $1, 350 for bumping a passenger from a domestic flight Delta recently authorized supervisors to offer up to $9, 950, and now United has followed suit.  Brian Karimzad, who sometimes plays the game himself, says   airline backups from bad weather can add up to big money. ”You get bumped off one flight, and then that flight ends up getting overbooked and you get on another one that’s overbooked, and you could end up with thousands of dollars in compensation,” he says. Karimzad is director of MileCards. com, a travel rewards site that recently ranked Delta as the carrier likeliest to pay to bump passengers. Other pro tips? Airlines prefer volunteers without checked baggage. Also, smaller regional planes are 50 percent likelier to bump. The game favors students or people who can work remotely  —   not those scheduled for big meetings, weddings or funerals. ”The most important thing is you have to have a lot of time,” says Brian Sumers, airline reporter for travel website Skift. And, he says, if you play, know you’re up against some seasoned competition. ”There’s a small but vocal minority that tries to come up with ways to beat airlines at their own game,” Sumers says. Anthropology professor Montana Miller commutes weekly to Bowling Green State University in Ohio from her home in Long Island, N. Y. Her annual airline bill tops $20, 000, so she loves vouchers. ”Free money!” she says. ”It’s like a jackpot it’s like winning the lottery a little bit. . .. It’s unexpected money that just helps me out with my financial stress.” To her, waiting another several hours at the gate is bliss: ”I’m an anthropologist, so I really enjoy the airport environment I enjoy the human drama that takes place there.” The downside, she says, is the fact that she wins a voucher about 5 percent of the time. ”Most of the time I get my heart broken.” In fact, airlines bump passengers about 40 percent less frequently than they did about two decades ago, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Because her odds are low, Miller says she has never asked for more than the typical $400 voucher. That, too, is part of her strategy. ”The problem with saying, ’I’m going to hold out,’ is that there’s going to be someone else who’s happy to take less money.” Then there are Bump Game champions like Todd Gladfelter, a San Francisco meteorologist. ”From around the year 2000 to about 2006, I didn’t pay for a single airline ticket out of pocket,” he says. That’s an achievement, when you consider he travels, on average, every week. He says it pays to do research before talking to the gate agent. ”When you come up and say, ’Hey, here’s an alternative flight that I have,’ they’ll be very appreciative of that, and might even choose you over another passenger because you came up prepared,” he explains. Breaking the news that he’s won a voucher, once again, to his waiting parents can be another matter. ”Oh, I’m going to be on a later flight,” Gladfelter tells them. Initially, they were disappointed, but now they’re used to it, and they know he’ll use the funds to come visit again."
"It was a standard post on Instagram back in May 2016: Eight women, all smiling in their Marine Corps uniforms. Then someone copied it and posted it to a Facebook group. ”And I watched in real time as hundreds of people commented on this photo and said things like they wanted to rape us,” Maj. Janine Garner told Host Ari Shapiro on NPR’s All Things Considered. Garner asked permission from each of her fellow Marines to post the picture to her personal Instagram account. They all agreed. What they didn’t agree to was the harassment that came later. ”They immediately reduced us to our sexuality,” Garner said. ”Whether we were ’doable,’ not ’doable,’ every amount of vitriol. We were called the worst names  —   and these were leaders in the Marine Corps.” The Marine Corps is still trying to cope with the scandal involving nude photos of women, including Marines and other active duty service members, which were shared in a closed Facebook group without their consent. Other images were more everyday  —   in some cases, basic   photos  —   but still subjected to the same kind of comments. Hundreds of Marines are being investigated in the case, and Congress has convened hearings to look into how it happened. ”For myself, I was less upset because I’ve dealt with stuff like this before,” Garner says. ”But these seven other women who I highly respect and admire, who have deployed multiple times [and] gone to combat . .. were being demeaned in this way. The problem is the treatment of one Marine to another, and that is completely unacceptable and goes against our core ethos and values.” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller and the chiefs of the other military services have condemned the practice and said the responsibility is on all troops to protect one another whenever they encounter these kinds of posts. Garner wants to hold them to that, and she spoke up along with nearly 100 Marine Corps women. Earlier this month, they signed a public letter arguing that Marine Corps leaders need to address a culture of sexism on the ground. ”We have allowed to thrive and, in some instances, even encouraged a culture where women are devalued, demeaned and their contributions diminished,” the letter says. ”We understand why. In a culture that prizes masculinity, it is easy to mistake barbarism for strength, brutality for power, savagery for ferocity.” Garner says one way to put an end to this kind of culture is to increase the number of women in the Marine Corps. Today women make up about 7 percent of the force. Neller praised the letter, and the support she has received gave Garner hope that Marines can work together to tackle the problem. She says she plans to continue to serve and try to do so. ”I don’t want to leave a Marine Corps that is less than what it could be,” she says. ”It’s an amazing institution and, in my opinion, should be setting the example for every other military service out there, for every other organization out there. My job as a leader in the Marine Corps is to continue to make [it] better. That’s why I stay. I stay for the generations behind me.”"
"Even though President Trump calls the   measure ”ridiculous,” the White House is still touting what one press release called the president’s ”historic accomplishments”  —   including 28 laws he has signed since taking office. But when it comes to legislation, political scientists say it is better to measure significance than to simply add up the number of bills. It is better, they argue, to ask whether a law changes the status quo or introduces a new policy idea. By that measure, there is not as much to show   for Trump’s first 100 days. Of the 28 new laws signed by Trump, two name Veterans Affairs clinics in honor of people, one adds National Vietnam War Veterans Day to the list of days people and businesses are encouraged to fly American flags, five are related to personnel matters (including the waiver allowing James Mattis to become secretary of defense) and one extends an   policy allowing veterans in some circumstances to get health care outside of the VA system. ”Congress passes laws all the time, naming post offices after people, doing minor things that they can get through,” said Leon Panetta, who served as defense secretary in the Obama administration and as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. Panetta doesn’t see any major legislation in this administration’s first 100 days. ”Presidents throughout history are acknowledged as a success when they get legislation passed through the Congress  —   major legislation that affects the lives of people. And that ultimately will be the test for this president,” Panetta said. During the campaign, Trump signed a ”Contract With the American Voter,” in which he promised to work with Congress to introduce 10 bills ”and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration.” Of those 10, only one  —   the American Health Care Act  —   has made it into legislative form, and it has not yet gotten a vote. The Trump administration did announce broad outlines of a tax system overhaul this week, but it isn’t expected to be written into legislation until later this year. In a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, Trump’s legislative affairs director Marc Short was asked to name the new president’s most significant legislative accomplishment  —   to name one major new law  —   but he took issue with the question. ”I would say that confirming a Supreme Court justice of the United States who will probably be there for 30 years is a big legislative achievement,” said Short. ”I would say the regulatory impact we’ve had on the economy is a big legislative achievement. And we look forward in the coming days to hopefully continue to make progress on the appropriations process and on health care.” When he talks about ”regulatory impact,” Short is referring to the 13 laws passed under the Congressional Review Act. Before Trump, the 1996 law had been used only once before, by George W Bush. But with GOP in control of both the House and the Senate, the Trump White House had a rare chance to significantly roll back rules written by the previous administration. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to reverse rules within 60 legislative days of their submission, requiring only a simple majority in the Senate. In the current Congress, that means Democrats are not able to block the rollbacks. House Speaker Paul Ryan touted the 13 laws as ”measures to take excessive regulations off the book so we can grow this economy.” They included a rule meant to protect streams from pollution, which opponents argued hurt the coal industry and a rule requiring financial advisers to put consumers’ best interests ahead of their own, which critics said would hurt retirees. Rounding out the 28 laws, three modify existing programs and two encourage agencies to try something new. But in the realm of legislation, 100 days is a short period of time. Significant bills take a long time to complete, often measured in years rather than days. President George W. Bush’s first tax cut and No Child Left Behind initiative didn’t pass in the first 100 days. The Affordable Care Act and   financial industry regulations didn’t become law in President Barack Obama’s first 100 days either, though he and Congress did pass a nearly $800 billion stimulus bill. Other than that, Obama signed several program   the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (that had been in the works in the previous Congress) and a bill naming a post office. Time frame aside, Trump learned with the health care bill he hoped to pass and sign weeks ago that having the president’s party control both the House and the Senate doesn’t guarantee the numbers needed for priorities to breeze through. ”President Obama faced a lot of the same problems,” Panetta noted. Panetta said Trump will be judged on whether he can put together a working coalition, which will most likely require reaching across the aisle. Thus far Trump has tried to do everything with   rule  —   not even attempting to win Democratic votes (not that they would have been forthcoming). If this year ends and Trump hasn’t found a way to work with Congress and pass significant legislation like the health care bill or his tax plan, he won’t be judged kindly. Presidents succeed or fail based on their ability to work with Congress. Extending   Policy, Modifying Existing Programs, Repealing   Rules And Regulations, Naming   A   Flag Flying, Encouraging An Agency To Try Something New,   Legislative links and text via GovTrack."
"Nearly 100 days into his administration, President Trump has drastically reduced the flow of immigration, both legal and illegal, to the U. S. He’s been able to accomplish that without any new legislation  ” and without many of his signature ideas solidly in place, including executive orders that have been put on hold by the courts and a proposed wall on the Mexican border. In a matter of months, the Trump administration has made it harder to get into the U. S for all kinds of people. From refugees and visa holders, to asylum seekers and illegal   arriving at the southern border, the numbers have plummeted. And this may be just the beginning. A leaked draft of a progress report shows that the Department of Homeland Security has begun laying the groundwork to do more. The agency has identified more detention beds for immigrants in the country illegally, set aside money to start designing the border wall and sped up the hiring of thousands of federal immigration agents. ”There’s an effort now to deter, to terrify,” says Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies, a think tank in New York devoted to protecting the rights of migrants. Kerwin says even Trump’s own rhetoric is aimed at deterring immigrants. ”What they’re trying to do are very splashy, draconian enforcement efforts that are really meant to tell people: nobody is safe, and nobody should come that’s not documented,” Kerwin says. That message may be getting through. Apprehensions at the southern border fell dramatically from more than 40, 000 per month late last year to 18, 754 in February, and just 12, 193 in March. The administration is going out of its way to highlight those numbers. ”Last month was the lowest month for immigration illegally into our country in 17 years,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a news conference in El Paso, Texas, last week. ”That is a remarkable thing to accomplish.” Away from the border, arrests by immigration agents were up by about a third during the first three months of the year, to 21, 362, compared with 16, 104 during the same period in 2016, according to data provided by U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The data also show that federal agents are arresting more unauthorized immigrants who don’t have criminal records: 5, 441 during the first few months of the year, compared with 2, 278 last year. A senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells NPR that the agency has been able to ”open the aperture” on the types of immigrants it can target. Reactions across the country reflect a divided America. ”We’re seeing mothers and fathers torn away from their families, many with no criminal histories at all, or with just minor past convictions,” says Tom Jawetz, a vice president at the Center for American Progress, a   think tank in Washington. Robin Hvidston sees it differently. She’s the director of We the People Rising, an organization in California that advocates tougher enforcement. ”I have not heard a presidential candidate in my lifetime address this topic,” Hvidston says. ”And I think he does want to take action against more criminal activity.” Courts have twice blocked Trump’s effort to suspend the U. S. refugee program. In the meantime, the administration has simply stopped accepting as many refugees. The numbers have dropped significantly: from nearly 10, 000 a month last fall to just 2, 070 in March, according to the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. ”We still have families who are separated, who we want to see rejoined,” said Rebecca Liberato, a case manager in the Jersey City, N. J. office of Church World Service, a refugee resettlement agency. ”They’re scared for their loved ones across seas as well.” Just this week, a court in San Francisco blocked another Trump executive order, this one punishing   sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with federal authorities. But that’s not stopping the administration’s agenda. In fact, it’s signing up other cities to help enforce immigration law."
"President Trump has said over and over that creating jobs is at the top of his agenda. It may seem unfair to judge his progress on this goal in his first 100 days, but Trump has opened the door to scrutiny by making his own assertions on job creation. During a White House meeting with CEOs on April 11, Trump claimed his administration had already created over 600, 000 jobs. ”You see what’s going on. You see the numbers,” he said. ”We’ve created over 600, 000 jobs already in a very short period of time, and it’s going to really start catching on now because some of the things that we’ve done are big league and they are catching on.” Since the beginning of the year, the Labor Department says, the U. S. has created 533, 000 jobs. Of course, Trump only took office on Jan. 20, and the January numbers are generally attributed to the outgoing president, because the new president hasn’t had a chance to put his policies in place. So, at most Trump could take credit for 219, 000 jobs in February and 98, 000 in March. That’s a total of about 317, 000  —   about half his original claim. (The White House website now touts ”over 500, 000 new jobs. ”) And there’s a good argument to be made that presidents shouldn’t take credit for a role in job creation until well into their first term, after they’ve had a chance to influence the course of events with policies or leadership. Trump has announced a number of executive actions that he says will help create U. S. jobs, but so far the effect of those actions has been minimal. Economist Douglas   a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and top economic adviser to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, points out that Trump inherited an economy near full employment. ”That’s a very different world than his predecessor Barack Obama entered,” says  . Obama faced ”hundreds of thousands of jobs lost every month,” and so ”a lot of job creation needed to be done.” Obama managed to get a big stimulus package through Congress, along with taking additional action to rescue automakers during his first 100 days. But,   says, ”the task is different now.” Trump’s job is not faster job creation, but switching the focus to boosting the productivity of workers, which could support higher wages and make incomes grow more rapidly,   says. That will require passing complex plans like business tax reform and health care legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.   says it remains to be seen whether Trump and the Congress can achieve those goals. What about Trump’s flurry of activity during the presidential transition  —   after he was elected but before he took office? Trump has made a big deal of twisting corporate arms to save U. S. jobs at automakers and companies like Carrier. In the case of Carrier, about 800 jobs were preserved in one factory. Trump was especially vocal, taking credit for car company announcements that they were expanding factories and adding thousands of workers. However, most of the companies said the expansions were in the works before Trump was elected.   says the ”direct impacts [of Trump’s  ] were modest.” But   does believe Trump’s election may have boosted confidence enough at some businesses that they added jobs anticipating a stronger economy and stronger demand for their goods and services. He says the quick rollback of a number of   regulations also likely boosted the spirits in the business community and led to more hiring. But,   says, there’s still no hard evidence to back that up. And, he says, a   report card on job creation really tells us very little about what   impact a president will have."
"Don’t be distracted by the title of Netflix’s latest,   TV series, Dear White People. Because, one look at this insightful, irreverent examination of race and society at an Ivy League college reveals it really doesn’t focus much on white folks at all. Indeed, the title Dear White People is a bit of a head fake. This slyly assembled series is really about how a wide range of black and brown students at the fictional, predominantly white Winchester University deal with race, sexual orientation and other identity stuff in the modern age. The show begins with a focus on the   Samantha White, head of the Black Student Union at Winchester. She’s also host of a provocative,   campus radio show called Dear White People, which often speaks out on how students of color feel marginalized at the school. ”Dear white people,” Samantha says in one broadcast, ”here’s a little tip. When you ask someone who looks ethnically different, ’What are you? ,’ the answer is usually, ’A person about to slap the s —  t out of you. ’” If you think these young people have a better handle on racial issues because they live in a more multicultural world, think again. One example: Samantha’s struggle in a conversation with her best friend Joelle, who is black, when word spreads on social media that Samantha is seeing a white man. As someone murmurs caustically about ”Miss Black Power with those white boys,” Samantha tries a   explanation: ”You know I’m biracial, so technically. ..” ”Don’t,” says Joelle, who isn’t hearing it. ”You’re not Rashida Jones biracial, you’re Tracee Ellis Ross biracial. People think of you as black.” The show, which debuts Friday, is based on the   2014 indie film of the same name. It’s one of those rare    translations where the series might be better than the movie  —   which was awfully good to begin with. The film’s director, Justin Simien, also crafted the TV show, and it is a triumph, with one storyline telling the events of a single, scandalous party from different points of view over several episodes. As wry narrator Giancarlo Esposito explains, it was a ”racially insensitive party”  —   an event where white students dressed in blackface. But Dear White People doesn’t just satirize white cluelessness. Shy student journalist Lionel, who is black and gay, encounters a succession of black people who use homophobic slurs around him, unaware of his sexual orientation. Then his editor at the student newspaper, who is also gay, asks Lionel if he is attracted to men. ”Let me guess. ..you’re in the crush on your straight roommate phase?” the editor asks. ”How can you hope to arrive at a truth when you can’t find your own? Trust me. ..find your label.” But for students  —   especially students of color  —   college can be a perfect time to question those labels. It’s a moment to challenge all those things friends, parents or society dictate about what it means to be black. Or gay. Or anything else. Dear White People is a pop   sometimes explicit, always entertaining look at that process. It’s the perfect series for young people negotiating a world where struggles over identity grow more complex every day."
"As Republicans in Congress debate changes to the Affordable Care Act, insurance executives across the country are trying to make plans for next year. Companies that sell policies on the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, face   deadlines to inform states about what plans they want to sell, and what they intend to charge. ”Insurance companies need to file rates in 2   months,” says Tom Policelli, CEO of Minuteman Health, which sells Obamacare policies in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. ”So basically we’ve got four to six weeks to figure out some basic things that will help all of us in the industry to have more surety and stability, so we can price our premiums lower,” he says. To make those decisions, companies want to know whether the law is going to change altogether, something Republicans in the House have tried, failed to do and are trying again this week. At minimum, insurers would like to know whether the Trump administration intends to continue making crucial payments to insurers that are required under the law. On Wednesday the president seemed to agree to continue those payments, known as   subsidies, but Thursday he tweeted that he would not ”give billions to insurance companies.” ”The current debate is largely not helpful, and is heading things in a direction that will make things even worse,” Policelli says. The payments reimburse insurance companies for discounts they are required to give to   customers to offset deductibles and  . Without the subsidies, a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows, premiums could go up 19 percent. And ending the the subsidies could also cost the government as much as $2. 3 billion in 2018, according to Kaiser, because the government would need to offset those premium increases.  Policelli says the markets have lots of other problems too. It’s technical stuff, he says, such as medical loss ratios and risk adjustment schemes. ”This sounds very boring. It is very boring. I’m an insurance guy, I’m very boring,” he concedes. ”But this stuff is killing the industry and driving out competition and driving prices up.” He says lawmakers could fix the problems if they want to. And if they don’t, Trump could do a lot on his own, through regulation.  It’s not clear that the president, who has repeatedly threatened to let Obamacare ”explode,” wants to make the current system work better. And Congress continues to debate changes in the law that would go into effect before next year. So Policelli is preparing for 2018 without knowing what rules he’ll have to play by. ”At times it feels like you’re building a boat, while at sea, in a storm, at night. But that’s what we’re here to do,” he says. In Tennessee, Julie Mix McPeak, the state’s insurance commissioner, is trying to recruit new companies to sell ACA insurance in the Knoxville area after Humana announced it was pulling out of Obamacare exchanges in that part of the state.  ”Unfortunately we haven’t had a tremendous amount of success in some of those discussions,” McPeak says. ”What we’re hearing from insurers is there’s a tremendous amount of regulatory uncertainty.” She says a promise from Congress or the Trump administration to pay for the   reductions, commonly called CSRs, would help.  ”What I’m hearing from insurers in my state, and from colleagues nationally, is that the CSR funding is critical in some of these participation decisions that the insurers are contemplating for 2018,” she says. Without that money, its going to be very difficult to offer affordable policies next year, says Dave Anderson, CEO of   HealthNow New York Inc. which operates Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in New York state. Those payments account for as much as 20 percent of the premiums for his subsidized customers, he says.  ”If the funding is not adequate, then we have to make a decision of whether we want other policy holders to subsidize these, or do we have to leave that segment,” Anderson says. ”Both of those are real considerations.”  Right now his company is losing money on its Obamacare exchange customers, spending $1. 08 in claims for every dollar it takes in in premiums. Continuing the cost sharing payments isn’t the only fix Anderson wants, but it will help make his Obamacare plans viable. ”We’re not intending, frankly, to make them profitable,” he says. ”We’d be satisfied with just breaking even. We’d stay in the market if we could just break even.”"
"Not my avocados! President Trump’s tough talk on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada has raised many questions  —   including how such a move might negatively affect the flow of beloved produce to the U. S. Like the avocado. Americans ate 2 billion pounds of avocados last year,   of which were imported  —   mostly from Mexico. That’s because avocados grow   in Mexico’s climate  —   but not in California’s. But researchers in the Golden State  —   America’s biggest producer of the green fruit  —   are working to change that. Currently, most California avocados are grown in the southern part of the state and on a narrow strip along the coast. But if avocados could grow in the Central Valley, the state’s agricultural powerhouse, farmers there could reap the benefits of our avocado addiction, as well as stand out among foreign imports. For more than 20 years, researcher Mary Lu Arpaia has been on a mission to find an avocado tree that can withstand the Central Valley’s frosty winters and hot summers. At a test field east of the Central Valley city of Visalia, Arpaia thinks she’s found three varieties that can do just that. ”There’s a void of California fruit on the market in the months of November, December and early January,” Arpaia says. ”So if we can find different selections that maybe are unique that fit into that window, then we help the entire California avocado industry.”   percent of all the avocados Americans eat are Hass, a variety discovered in California in the 1920s. But the climate of the Central Valley does not allow Hass avocados to grow as well as they do in the milder climates of coastal and Southern California. Even in these locations, Hass only grow at certain times of the year  —   and not enough to compete with the large amount coming in from foreign markets. The goal is to breed varieties that aren’t super tall, can be planted close to each other and have a high yield. One type Arpaia and her colleague, Eric Focht, are recommending to growers has all these traits. It’s called GEM, the great granddaughter of the Hass avocado, and is already sold at nurseries. Arpaia didn’t breed it, but she and Focht recommended that the University of California system patent and release the variety. Focht says that GEM avocados are ”a little more oval or   than Hass. It has the speckling on the skin. As it ripens, it will turn dark, and a lot of times the speckled lenticels [pores through which gases are exchanged] will get a . .. golden color to it.” In taste tests conducted by Westfalia Fruit Estates, a South African company marketing GEM worldwide, the avocado variety scored better than Hass in terms of eating quality. The second type is nicknamed ”lunchbox” for its small size. The third has no name yet, but Arpaia and Focht think it holds promise. ”Lunchbox, that one peels nice, but I mean [the third, nameless variety] just falls out of the skin,” Focht says. Arpaia adds that the unnamed variety ”makes wonderful guacamole, and I found with a   test in my refrigerator the fruit doesn’t brown.” Arpaia say ”lunchbox” and the nameless variety should be on the market within a year or two. That’s good news for California avocado growers who want options. ”I want our avocado varieties to be in season for more than one week,” Arpaia says, adding that she’d like different times of the year to be associated with certain varieties of avocados. ”I want it where you can say it’s July  —   it’s time to pick this variety.” The avocado industry is also interested in Arpaia’s research. Tim Spann, the research program director at the California Avocado Commission, says new varieties producing at different times of the year could widen the California avocado market. ”We have those premium supermarket chains that want California fruit,” says Spann. ”So if we can develop other varieties that will expand our season to a   or nearly   position, that would be fantastic.” The industry once funded the UC avocado research but pulled most of its funding a few years ago to focus on pests harming avocado trees. Now, Spann says the commission is thinking of reversing course. ”Within the last six months there’s been a lot of talk about new varieties and how some of those varieties could help us expand our market,” Spann says. Jon Stearns is one of the few avocado farmers in the Central Valley. He grows 25 acres of mainly Hass avocados on a hill outside of Visalia and says the incline actually helps keep the trees warmer in winter. ”In the summertime we do some cooling techniques with our emitters and some foggers when it gets really hot  —   you know, over 105 degrees,” Stearns says. He says he’d love to get his hands on avocado varieties that grow well in the Central Valley. ”If they could come up with a variety that’s similar to the Hass that we could plant down at ground level instead of having it on the hills, I’m sure a lot of people would plant them,” Stearns says. And it’s not just avocado farmers that are interested in the new varieties. Arpaia’s avocado test plot is based at a UC citrus research center in part because she wants to see if avocados will grow well where citrus grows in California’s Central Valley. Valley citrus growers are considering alternative crops because of a looming threat to their business. A disease called Huanglongbing, which is carried by tiny bugs called psyllids, has already decimated the citrus industry in Florida and has made its way to Southern California. Bob Blakely, of the trade organization California Citrus Mutual, says he hopes the disease does not make it to the Central Valley. ”I hope that we’re able to come up with resistant citrus varieties before we have to think about going to another crop. I’m just hopeful that the science is able to move quickly enough.” Blakely says if the disease does reach the Central Valley, citrus farmers will eventually need something else to grow. Maybe that could be avocados. A version of this story first aired on Valley Public Radio, where Ezra David Romero is a reporter. He’s on Twitter @ezraromero."
"Arkansas is scheduled to execute convicted murderer Kenneth William tonight, who has been on death row since 2000. Williams is set to be the fourth and final inmate executed there this month, after the state initially scheduled eight condemned inmates to die over 11 days  —   the fastest pace of executions in decades. The state justifies its aggressive schedule by saying that one of the drugs used in lethal injections, midazolam, expires at the end of April. It says it will have trouble finding a new supply. But critics have characterized the packed schedule as reckless and  . And hours before Williams’ scheduled execution, lawyers for   inmate continue to try to stop it in court. A filing this morning at the Circuit Court of Pulaski County said Williams had medical conditions such as ”sickle cell trait, Lupus, and organic brain damage” that make complications more likely during an execution by lethal injection. Previous legal challenges to Williams’ execution, including one that alleged he was intellectually disabled, have not succeeded in other courts, The Associated Press reported. The news service added that ”it will take a court order to prevent his execution at 7 p. m.” Williams, 38, was ”serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of a college student when he escaped from prison and killed a local farmer, for which he was sentenced to death,” member station KUAR’s Chris Hickey tells our Newscast unit. ”All of his crimes were described as random with money as the motive,” according to local broadcaster Fox 16. The station added that he was moved to the Cummins unit Wednesday in preparation for the execution. On Monday night, Arkansas put to death two inmates  —   Marcel Williams and Jack Jones Jr. It was the first double execution in the U. S. in 17 years. As The   previously reported: ”Of the four executions scheduled prior to Monday, three were ultimately stayed. One man, Ledell Lee, was killed last week, just four minutes before his death warrant was set to expire it was the first execution Arkansas carried out in 12 years.” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has pressed for the fast pace of executions and said that they are a way to bring justice for the families of the victims."
"Arkansas, which has been in a race to execute   inmates before a key lethal drug expires, plans to hold its final execution in the series Thursday night. Attorneys for the condemned men have put forth arguments about their innocence, intellectual abilities, mental states and about the execution procedure. But what happens to those debates after an execution? Ledell Lee was the first inmate executed this month in Arkansas. There was scant physical evidence tying him to the murder he was convicted of, and he was never given a DNA test before his execution. Nina Morrison is an attorney who was brought into Lee’s case only weeks before he was executed. ”If Arkansas had not been rushing to kill Mr. Lee before their supply of lethal injection drugs ran out, there’s no question we would have gotten a DNA test ordered,” Morrison says. That’s just one of the concerns highlighted by Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. ”What Arkansas has been doing over the last two weeks is doing   damage to the death penalty as an institution,” Dunham says. He points to what he calls an ”unprecedented assembly line of executions.” Attorneys for the inmates have complained about that too. They’ve also argued against the process itself, and what they call the Department of Correction staff’s lack of preparation. Attorneys have made filings about their clients’ mental and physical health, and their difficult childhoods. Stephen Bright, a death penalty attorney and a Yale Law School Professor, says generally when an inmate is put to death, the legal case dies too. ”Once an execution takes place, that’s the end of it. The courts don’t look at it anymore, because it can’t be litigated in the courts. Because it’s not a live controversy,” Bright says. But that hasn’t stopped some attorneys from considering future legal action to do DNA testing that the courts refused to allow beforehand. Attorney Julie Gianni, who represents some of the inmates, says after Monday’s execution, she saw Marcel Williams’ eyes open minutes before he was pronounced dead. She says that raises questions about whether one of the lethal injection drugs, midazolam, rendered him unconscious. ”The best evidence as to the effects of this kind of procedure are other executions,” Gianni says. ”What actually happens in the real world? And so I think that these accounts are important in that regard.” Midazolam has been the subject of several   legal arguments this month. The courts have allowed it, but a federal trial will examine whether the drug should be used in future executions."
"Ohio Gov. John Kasich says the discourse that came out during the 2016 presidential campaign was beyond what he could have imagined, and he still doesn’t understand how politicians got away with it. He was shocked by ”the kind of rhetoric and the negativity and the   and the kind of acid that was being spilled out there in the public dialogue,” Kasich tells NPR’s David Greene. ”In my job, you make one of those statements and you’re dead, you know? But it seemed like none of this ever mattered. And I just couldn’t believe that people could survive it.” Kasich, who has a new memoir about his presidential bid and the state of political discourse called Two Paths: America Divided or United, sees a tendency toward ” ” as he looks out into the country. ”I think you can judge a country by how often people rise above only   to being concerned about somebody else. I think we all need to live a life a little bigger than ourselves,” he says. Making that change needs to ”come from where we live to the top,” he says, ”because I don’t think politicians are going to get this right.” Kasich says he has ”no interest” in thinking about the next presidential election and that ”it is very unlikely that I will ever seek public office again.” But, he adds, ”I’m not going to quiet my voice. My voice is going to be out there as long as the public will listen to me and as long as I have a platform to speak.” Interview Highlights, On leadership and ” ” A leader needs to show you how they’re going to take you to a better place. And once they create that, then the followers are critical. If the leader gets off track, then I think followers have a responsibility to speak out on that. . .. When people become unsettled in their economic circumstances, when they worry about their families . .. if somebody starts telling them, ”Well, the reason you’re in this situation is cause somebody else ripped you off or took advantage of you,” you just make people more depressed. And what I believe . .. is that you have to recognize the serious problems. I mean, I lived in a community where people struggled, but you can give them a sense of hope. On paying attention to ”people who are hurting” People who are hurting sometimes in our society  —   they’re not the ones that we focus our attention on enough. I mean, I’m going through this whole business of health care reform, Medicaid expansion. This is not a cavalier prospect that when people who have mental illness or drug addiction or [are] chronically ill that somehow, you know, we give them some flimsy little health care plan and they can’t get the help they need. We have to pay attention to people who live in the shadows, we have to pay attention to people who have been displaced, and we have to pay attention to people who find themselves in difficult situations. On why he became a Republican, I’ve always felt that Republicans did not represent rules and bureaucracy that would tangle me up. So I really believe that government as a last resort but sometimes very necessary. Now, I want to continue to push that brand of conservatism that I believe in and hopefully be able to influence where, not only my party is going, but also where the country is going. . .. Well I’m, I’m not happy with some of the things [coming from my party]. I’m a  . I am concerned about the environment. I do believe in renewables. I’m very concerned about the rising level of debt . .. immigration. I’m  . The idea that we would send ICE agents around the country to, you know, interview people and maybe yank them out of their homes  —   I’m totally opposed to that. So I think, you know, the party is trying to figure out where it’s going, and the Democratic Party to me is equally lost or even more lost. And I also happen to think that the political parties are becoming less and less relevant to young people. NPR producer Danny Hajek contributed to this report."
"NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is giving earthlings their   views of Saturn’s swirled atmosphere and its massive hurricane, beaming a trove of images and data back to Earth after the craft made its first dive between Saturn and its rings Wednesday. Cassini is ”showing us new wonders and demonstrating where our curiosity can take us if we dare,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. The raw images are being fed into a photo stream on NASA’s website, and while they lack detailed captions and annotations, they provide entrancing views of the planet’s complex atmosphere. In the maneuver that sent Cassini between Saturn and its rings, the craft went over the planet’s north pole, where it captured the first   image of the mammoth storm back in 2013. The eye of the storm was measured at more than 1, 000 miles wide. The vortex is swirling inside ”a large, mysterious,   weather pattern known as the hexagon,” NASA has said. As of Thursday morning, more than 100 images had arrived from Saturn. Some show what look to be ethereal blips and blotches against the planet’s swirling clouds. Other images tantalize with patterns of striated clouds and whorls of disturbance. Cassini captured the images over the past 24 hours, but it couldn’t send them back to Earth until early Thursday because the craft was using its    antenna as a deflector shield to protect it from ice and rock particles. Right on schedule, the craft made contact with NASA’s Deep Space Network at the Goldstone Complex in California’s Mojave Desert just before 3 a. m. ET Thursday. ”No spacecraft has ever been this close to Saturn before. We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn’s other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like,” said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. All went according to the plan, Maize said, adding that after its dive, the craft that has now been in space for nearly 20 years ”has come out the other side in excellent shape.” As we reported Wednesday, Cassini has now begun what NASA calls its Grand Finale, as it weaves its way between Saturn and its rings in a series of 22 dives that will culminate in what the agency describes as ”a   plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15.”"
"Accessing the Internet in Cuba isn’t easy. Home Internet connections are rare, and public access   hotspots costs $1. 50 an hour  —   very expensive for most Cubans. But in the nation that has been called ”one of the most restrictive media environments in the world,” watching YouTube got faster this week. Google says that its servers just went live on the island  —   meaning that for the first time, its services like YouTube videos are cached locally, instead of in a neighboring country. This milestone comes four months after the company signed an agreement with Cuba’s national telecom provider, ETECSA, to use its technology to make   activities faster. This marks the first time a foreign Internet company has hosted anything inside Cuba, according to Doug Madory, Director of Internet Analysis at Dyn, an Internet performance company. Madory spent time in Havana last year for a conference and talked to Google about their plans for Cuba. After Google made the deal with ETECSA, Madory set up a system that would notify him when the Google’s servers in Cuba were live, and yesterday morning, he got pinged. Google’s servers in Cuba will cache its own content, allowing for quicker delivery to users. Caching speeds up the Internet by storing frequently used content locally. So the first time someone in Cuba watches a specific video on YouTube, it may take a while to load. But if their neighbor then decides to watch that same video, it should load much faster, because it has been stored on a nearby server and doesn’t need to travel as far. While caching makes the Internet speedier in any country, it’s particularly vital in Cuba, where connectivity is slow. Cuba connects to the Internet primarily through the   submarine cable, which runs from Venezuela. Google said that Cubans ”who already have access to the internet and want to use our services can expect to see an improvement in terms of quality of service” and speed for cached content. That qualifier  —   ”who already have access to the internet”  —   is significant, since access to the Internet in Cuba is so limited. (As few as 5 percent of Cubans may have access to the open Internet.) Google’s servers make it speedier to use its services in Cuba today, but they don’t provide Internet access where it wasn’t before. For the most part Cubans don’t have access to Google’s products. ”Many users are still relegated to a tightly controlled government network and related email service,” says Freedom House, a nonprofit group that conducts research on democracy and human rights. In its 2016 report on Internet freedom, Freedom House wrote that ”Cuba remains one of the world’s most repressive environments for information and communication technologies.” It added that Cuba’s lack of modern Internet infrastructure is one way the government limits access to outside media and information. ”Rather than relying on the technically sophisticated filtering and blocking used by other repressive regimes, the Cuban government continues to limit users’ access to information primarily via lack of technology and prohibitive costs,” it says. But Google’s servers join other signs of progress for Internet in the country. The BBC reported last month that ETECSA had installed Internet connections in around 2, 000 homes in Old Havana as part of a   pilot. Those connections weren’t fast enough to stream video, though. With Google’s new servers, the dream of watching videos on the Internet  —   without endless buffering  —   gets a little closer."
"New York City is set to begin giving body cameras to its police officers on Thursday. Under the police department’s pilot program, 1, 200 officers in 20 precincts will receive the cameras. The officers will also be studied by scientists to see what effect the cameras have on policing. As police don body cameras across the country, scientists are increasingly working with departments to figure out how the cameras change behavior  —   of officers and the public. ”Is the camera having an impact on the way officers use force? Is it reducing the number of citizens’ complaints? Is it having a negative impact? All of those types of things I would like to know about these cameras,” says Peter Newsham, the chief of police in Washington, D. C. where a similar study is just weeks from providing its first answers. When officials in D. C. decided to deploy cameras a few years ago, the city happened to have a bunch of researchers who were just waiting to do a big,   study. The researchers designed a field experiment to systematically compare cops wearing cameras to officers without cameras in one police force, in a major American city. ”We are a newer scientific team,” says David Yokum, who works in the D. C. mayor’s office. ”We’ve got about 15 folks right now  —   Ph. D. s in psychology, economics, statistics, and so forth.” Yokum directs the The Lab @ DC, which is an effort to bring the scientific method to government. Studying   cameras is one of the lab’s first projects. ”It’s a massively important social issue,” Yokum says. ”Cameras are spreading across the country at a very rapid rate.” A recent nationwide survey found that 95 percent of police departments either have a   camera program or plan to implement one. All of this is happening despite a real dearth of data on how those cameras will change policing. ”Technologies tend to always have intended and unintended effects and consequences,” says Cynthia Lum, a criminologist at George Mason University. She’s reviewed studies of   cameras and found about 40, but says that research offered no definitive answers. ”We’re just scratching at the surface to understand what the impacts of   cameras are, either on the police or the people that they serve,” Lum says. For example, one widely cited study done in Rialto, Calif. suggested that cameras dramatically reduced police officers’ use of force. But a different study, published last May, found the story is much more complicated. ”When officers had more discretion as to whether they turn on and off their cameras,” Lum explains, ”this could potentially lead to increases in use of force.” In Washington, D. C. police officials let the researchers tell them exactly how to hand out the cameras to do the most rigorous study possible as a result, not every officer got a camera right away. ”At any given period of time, people were randomly assigned to be either receiving the cameras or not,” Yokum says. What makes the D. C. study especially powerful is that it’s one of the biggest police departments in the country. ”There’s a lot of officers involved,” Yokum says. ”We’re collecting a lot of data with 1, 100 different cameras out on the street, and then 1, 100 officers that don’t have cameras. And so, just the numbers here are very large.” Previous studies have generally been done with smaller police departments, says Anita Ravishankar, one of the researchers on the science team. What’s more, she adds, the D. C. police department allowed researchers to gather data over seven months  —   a long timeline. Gradually, more officers got the cameras and now almost the entire force is wearing them. ”This was a big thing for the department to be willing to do and a huge deal for us to be able to do the study well and correctly,” Ravishankar says. Their group will be analyzing their data to look at the cameras’ potential impact on a slew of things including use of force, citizen complaints, assaults against officers, and rates of convictions and plea bargains. They hope to have findings that they can make public in the coming weeks. The New York Police Department will take the next year to compare the cops in its pilot program to officers without cameras. In D. C. some officers say the cameras have an overall positive effect. ”I was hesitant in wearing it in the beginning,” says Charles Monk, an officer in the Metropolitan Police Department’s First District. But as he interacted with the public, his attitude changed. ”It changes people’s personalities when they see you wearing it,” he says. ”I have to be very professional. And in return, the citizen  —   they’re very professional.” And no matter what this study ultimately shows about the cameras, one thing seems already clear, Monk says: ”They’re here to stay.”"
"In 1888, the match girls of London went on strike. Their reason was a particularly horrifying working condition: ingesting phosphorus. A girl with ”phossy jaw” would literally glow in the dark as her jawbone slowly disintegrated. This strike was a fight for their lives. Against expectations, they won  —   a watershed for Victorian industrial workers. Later strikers invoked the match girls as inspiration girls who’d come together so something so dangerous couldn’t happen again. But no one told Mollie Maggia about the match girls before she went to the United States Radium Corporation in New Jersey, just after World War I. She painted glowing numbers on dials with their radium paint, licking her paintbrush for accuracy as she’d been taught, and it killed her. Maggia was the first of the girls at USRC to die in agony from radium poisoning, but far from the last. And the horror at the heart of Kate Moore’s Radium Girls lies in the way doctors, the company, and the law failed these women as they sought justice for the lives they were losing. The book, infuriating for necessary reasons, traces the women at two   factories  —   the USRC in New Jersey, and Radiant Dial in Illinois. And Radium Girls spares us nothing of their suffering though at times the foreshadowing reads more like a   story, Moore is intent on making the reader viscerally understand the pain in which these young women were living, and through which they had to fight in order to get their problems recognized. And honestly, the   parallels might be warranted. The fact that the radium girls faced the same battles as their Victorian predecessors is less surprising when you consider how many of those battles are still happening: Adequate health care, adequate compensation, and  —   crucially  —   effective worker protections through a legal system designed to favor corporations. Radium killed these young women, but Moore leaves no room for misunderstanding: The companies murdered them. The history of business is a history of violence. The worst descriptions of disease (and I’ll be surprised if you don’t run your tongue across your teeth at least once) can’t match the fatal callousness of the companies that knew the dangers of radium long before they ever admitted them. There’s a reason Moore repeatedly notes the girls’ phosphorescence as ghostly the companies knew they were doomed. (Radiant Dial tested its girls and never gave them their results, even as internal correspondence was sorting them by radiation levels to see who’d be first to die.) The outrages don’t stop there, of course this book’s awash in crooked doctors, shameless lawyers, and company men. But though Moore’s carefully sketches the lives and friendships of the women affected, the companies emerge as the most vivid characters  —   villains that would seem cartoonishly evil, except for how familiar it all sounds. (A New Jersey dentist who treated several afflicted women went to USRC looking for a payout for his silence, since it was ”customary for experts to testify for the people who pa[y] them. ”) At moments, Moore’s narrative style and passion for the radium girls’ story can tip over into an odd hard sell she writes of one of the women, ”She is still remembered now  —   you are still remembering her now,” as if afraid we won’t put this story in a wider context otherwise. But Radium Girls is frighteningly easily to set in a wider context. The story of real women at the mercy of businesses who see them only as a potential risk to the bottom line is haunting precisely because of how little has changed the glowing ghosts of the radium girls haunt us still. Genevieve Valentine’s latest novel is Icon."
"Unlike my fellow Americans, the news of a Detroit doctor being arrested for performing female genital   ( ) did not shock me. I grew up in the same religious sect (Dawoodi Bohra) as the doctor, and   years earlier, in 1990, before U. S. federal legislation criminalizing   existed, I too was cut. I only recall small bits of what happened to me. My family was in India visiting relatives. My mother and aunt took me to a stranger’s apartment. The door opened. In front of us stood elderly women in sarees. They laughed, the atmosphere felt relaxed. I was the only little girl in the room. The next moment, I was on the ground. My dress lifted, my underwear pulled down. Something sharp cut me down there in a spot I thought was private. I cried. Soon, my mother gathered me in her lap and held me tight, soothing me, telling me it would be okay. The older women brought me a soda. I drank it eagerly. In 2016, I finally found the courage to go in front of a news camera and share my story. The decision was not made lightly, and it took me nearly eight years to step forward. I was nervous about being labeled a victim when I wasn’t one. I dreaded the idea of my parents, whom I love dearly, being cast in a negative light. I worried that their fellow Dawoodi Bohras would become upset that their daughter aired the community’s secrets in public. In the end, I recognized that my fears were the same fears thousands of other Dawoodi Bohra women felt while sharing their story. I wanted to break the sense of powerlessness that persists generation after generation. So part of my life’s work for the last decade has been advocating against  . No matter how many times I speak on the issue, I sense that most Americans are afraid to shatter their illusions of what   is and where it occurs. Often, it is misperceived as taking place only in small villages in Africa. People in general tend to distance the problem, othering it away, feeling safer in the belief that this form of violence doesn’t happen in the U. S. But,   has occurred in our country for centuries. Up until the 1950s, clitoridectomy, a form of   was considered acceptable by health professionals to treat a wide range of conditions including ”hysteria” and mental illness. In December 2016, Renee Bergstrom, a white, Midwestern woman revealed that at the age of three, she too underwent the cut, performed by a Christian doctor who wanted her to stop touching her genitals to prevent masturbation. The misperception is not unique to the United States. Only in the last few years has the United Nations recognized   as occurring globally. In 2015, the UN implemented the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Goal #5  —   intended to help achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls  —   for the first time called on all countries to collect information on the prevalence of  . Prior to the SDG’s implementation, only ”relevant countries” were asked to track this type of data. That meant   was only measured in the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where UNICEF collected data. Other countries where   was reported, including in the U. S. had no obligation to track this information. For decades, millions of women and girls suffered from this ordeal because they lived in places not viewed as ”relevant countries.” Today, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 513, 000 women and girls are at risk for it in the U. S. The UN reports that 200 million women have undergone   globally, based on UNICEF data collected in 2012 in 27 countries, restricted largely to   Africa. The report does not include women from other regions of the world. It does not include women like Renee Bergstrom, the two little girls found to have undergone FGC in the Detroit case, or myself. In 2016, a UNICEF report finally included Indonesia as a country where   is practiced. The release of national data from Indonesia raised the total of girls who have undergone   from 130 million in 29 countries  —   as estimated in 2014  —   to 200 million in 30 countries. Only 10 million of that increase was due to population growth worldwide. This gap in data underscores how important it is for    advocates like me to highlight that it occurs in our communities. So we share our stories. We go against the traditions of our cultures that for centuries have told us to remain silent, and we speak up, hoping that someone will listen. However, after my story’s release, when I should have felt pride at speaking up, I felt devastated instead. I searched for my story online and came across a tagline in an article that read, ”The gruesome practice of female genital mutilation is at record highs in America due to the influx of Muslim immigrants.” Some news sources had taken my story of hope and courage and twisted it into a story that ”proved” why immigrants should be kept out of the United States. They ignored the part in my story where I said I was born in the U. S. and somehow, even without me mentioning the religion I was raised in, they assumed it was Islam. I immediately doubted my decision. In sharing my story, I’d unwittingly contributed to the misconceptions about millions of immigrants and Muslims who on a daily basis feel the effect of islamophobia in our country. I thought of my bearded father, who I often describe as a jolly Indian Santa Clause, and my devout,   mother who fed me way too much food when I visited. Had coming out as a survivor helped fuel islamophobia in a way that put my parents, my family, and my friends in danger? After the Michigan Doctor’s arrest, I witnessed the same links to islamaphobia. On the day the doctor was arrested, Sahiyo, the organization I cofounded to advocate against   issued a statement: We call on the entire Bohra community to make a concerted effort to bring an end to this unnecessary and potentially harmful tradition. We believe it is also imperative for the community leadership to call for a clear, unambiguous, worldwide end to female genital cutting. Hours later, this comment appeared on our website: You people are sick and need to leave the country. Although I’m a very socially liberal person in regard to races, cultures, sexuality and religions (even toward those idiots in Westboro) your religion’s endorsement of child abuse anywhere in the world is the exception. Your opposition to FGC sounds completely insincere when couched within a matter of national law and not as a recognition of a flaw in your beliefs. The Council on   Relations issued a statement condemning   and those arrested in the Detroit case. The Detroit case has put the Dawoodi Bohra community on alert. Someone writing for Sahiyo’s blog described it this way: I quietly discuss this case among close friends and relatives who share my sentiments, frightened to openly voice my happiness that there is yet another breakthrough in ending this practice. I feel the heavy hand of the community leaders bear down upon me, and feel stifled to openly express my feelings. This is the fear that prevents others to come forward. It is real and it is suffocating. Now when I speak publicly I must plea with the media, legislators, and society at large not to use   to target vulnerable and already marginalized people. I make sure I frame my comments in a manner that acknowledges that white girls, Christian girls and U. S.  girls undergo   hoping no one makes the false assumption that it only happens among Muslims or Africans in places far away. The Detroit case has highlighted for many Americans that   does occur in our country, but the revelation also demonstrates how misunderstood this form of gender violence is. This case shows just how powerful the secret of   really is to have been hidden in the United States for so long. But like any broken secret, people are now trying to understand how it was kept hidden for so long. They blame Islam. They blame immigrants. The debate on   has become politicized fodder for islamophobia, but that’s the wrong place to focus. Look to the women and the girls. Look to the community leaders and the tradition keepers who enforce these harmful practices. Look to them to decide to put an end to this, and be prepared to support them. Mariya Taher is a social activist and writer who   Sahiyo, an advocacy organization. Follow her on @mariyataher83"
"From the front door of the   gift shop at the Alnwick Garden in the far northeast of England, the scene looks innocent enough. A sapphire green English lawn slopes gently downward, toward traditional, ornamental gardens of rose and bamboo. Across the small valley, water cascades down a terraced fountain. But a hundred or so plantings kept behind bars in this castle’s garden are more menacing  —   and have much to tell visitors about poison and the evolutionary roots of medicine. ”These Plants Can Kill” warn two signs on a locked, iron gate that’s also marked with a skull and crossbones. The Duchess of Northumberland (aka Jane Percy) started the Poison Garden in 2005 as part of the   elaborate garden on the grounds of her family’s home, Alnwick Castle. Many of England’s cities and towns have apothecary gardens  —   historical plots containing plants turned into treatments centuries ago by doctors, herbalists, religious folks and shamans. Most such gardens exist today to teach visitors about the history of medicine. Plants evolved poisonous properties to keep from being eaten, explains Dr. Henry Oakeley, who has studied the medicinal effects of plants as a Garden Fellow at the Royal College of Physicians. Some of those same chemicals that began as plant protection, he says, are now used to help people  —   by killing cancer cells, say, or quieting an overactive muscle or a painful nerve cell. Still, Percy’s goal wasn’t to explore the medical benefits of plants. ”The line between kill and cure is what I’m interested in,” she says. ”The story of how plants can cure, I find pretty boring, really. Much better to know how a plant kills.” Visitors to the Poison Garden are allowed to look but not touch, says head gardener Trevor Jones. ”They’re not allowed to stand too close to the plants. They’re not allowed to smell them or touch them or taste any of them, because they do all have the ability to kill you. We only take 20 people in at a time so that the guide can see everybody, and see exactly what they’re up to and can take control.” Some of the plants in the Poison Garden might surprise you. Percy has many times watched backyard gardeners walk through the grounds and spot plants that they recognize from their yards back home. Those can’t be poisonous, the visitors figure. The Duchess of Northumberland knows better. ”Well, I’ve got that in my garden,” she says, ”and I could tell you how to kill with it.” She doesn’t actually offer up poisonous recipes. But she does confide that a powerful poison can be made from Helleborus species  —   very much like the ones growing in my garden in Seattle. Extracts from Helleborus were once used in low doses as a purgative to help children expel intestinal worms, Percy explains. Overdoses killed. And it doesn’t take many berries from Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade) to kill either  —   the plant is common in England and growing happily in the Poison Garden. The duchess also warns that that merely brushing up against the bushy green Ruta graveolens (commonly called Rue) or touching the sap from Euphorbia (the Dr.   plants sometimes called spurge) can give a person a nasty rash. The duchess is particularly interested in telling children about the killing power of plants. ”If you’re a child, who cares that aspirin comes from the bark of a tree?” she asks. It’s far more interesting, she says, that in Victorian times, children had something called killing jars. The jars held laurel leaves, which killed spiders or butterflies but left them intact  —   great for collectors. The garden has a special permit to grow coca plants and marijuana plants (both are enclosed in metal cages, with   TV cameras pointed at them). Thousands of schoolchildren have learned from the guides here about the power of these and other plants to affect their own biology. Percy doesn’t have any research on whether the   message she intends gets across, but several tour guides say the kids listen carefully  —   after poking each other and giggling. Through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, plants were a popular source of poisons used in palace intrigues. Members of the Medici family in Florence were said to be extremely adept, and the poisoning didn’t stop there. In 1978 a member of the Bulgarian secret police used an umbrella tip to inject ricin  —   a powerful poison extracted from the beans of a castor plant  —   into the leg of a political dissident, as he walked down a London street. (And yes, a castor plant grows in Alnwick’s poison garden.) Jones, the head gardener, says he enjoys the poison aspect of this unusual place, but he also has a soft spot for the   medicinal uses of the plants he tends. He has a favorite plant  —   a   vine with periwinkle flowers. It’s a Madagascar periwinkle, sometimes known as Vinca rosea, and, in a sense, the plant saved his life. Years ago, Jones had leukemia, and the drug used to cure his illness was originally derived from Madagascar periwinkle. He makes sure that this particular pretty little vine is weeded all around, and gets a bit of extra plant food. Joanne Silberner, a former health policy correspondent for NPR, is an artist in residence at the University of Washington’s department of communication. "
"Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn each spent time in bands that never made it big. But when the two of them joined up to create Sylvan Esso, everything changed. They started filling up   music venues, became famous internationally and almost immediately started to feel pressure to make magic a second time. Now, three years after the band’s debut, Sylvan Esso has a sophomore album, out Friday. The name of the record, What Now, offers some insight into how Meath and Sanborn felt making it. ”We realized we had just grown up a lot since the last record had happened,” Sanborn says. ”And I think the biggest lesson we kept coming back to, the biggest ’growing up’ lesson, was this realization that nothing is ever over, and that no great success is going to save you, no love is going to make you a better person . .. and on the flip side, that no defeat is ever the end.” Meath and Sanborn spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about what was on their minds as they worked on What Now, including the burdens that can come with success. Hear their conversation at the audio link and read highlights below. On the single ”Radio” and navigating creative pressure, Amelia Meath: I wrote this song mostly because I was so personally frustrated with my  —   the stress that I was feeling on myself about writing new songs. We were a year into our record cycle, and I already felt immense pressure to work on our sophomore record. . .. It’s wonderful being in a band that doesn’t make it big. Then you’re just excited if like 50 people come to a show  —   you’re like ”Oh my gosh! We did it!” On walking the line between success and   Nick Sanborn: There’s this wondrous feeling of, on one side, everything you’ve ever wanted is working out. People understand what you’re saying and you feel like you’re heard, and they feel that way too, and this glorious thing is happening. And then, the other evil, terrible,   monster within you comes out and says, ”You don’t deserve this. ”And ”It won’t last,” and ”What are you gonna do now, you faker?” And I think everybody knows how that feels. I think that happens to everyone, in every line of work. On the sacrifice that goes into partnership, Meath: When you find someone that you really, really like and want to hang out with for  —   forever, or for the foreseeable future  —   you lose a part of yourself when you agree to be with somebody. . .. We’re OK, though, we’re good. We laugh at each other’s jokes still."
"Peter Ssali makes his living on Lake Victoria. Most days he fishes on Africa’s largest lake. Sometimes he ferries cargo to the lake’s islands or gives tours to sightseers on the small boat he leases for around $5 a day. The    Ugandan with a scruffy beard and shaved head has been on the lake pretty much every day for the last 12 years. But he can’t swim. He’s also distrustful of the life jacket in the corner of his small wooden boat. He calls it ”fake” and ”cheap” and says it wouldn’t help if he capsized. Better models exist, he says, but at more than $100 each they’re far too expensive for him to afford. Many people in and around the East and Central Africa’s Great Lakes region can’t swim, even those who make their living on the water. Their wooden vessels are often shoddy and overloaded with sacks of produce or other goods. And few of them can afford life jackets or other flotation devices. Among those who can, some say the life jackets are uncomfortable so they don’t wear them. They’re part of what the World Health Organization calls ”a public health challenge” with an ”intolerable death toll.” WHO lists Africa as the region with the highest rate of drowning in the world, with about 8 drownings for every 100, 000 people. By comparison, just 1. 5 people drown to death for every 100, 000 Americans. In Germany it’s 0. 6. One of the most dangerous spots is Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest body of fresh water with a shoreline stretching across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. There’s a lack of good data, but the regional Lake Victoria Basin Commission estimates that 5, 000 people perish below its waters every year. In an article published earlier this year, a team of regional academics claimed that Victoria is ”arguably the most dangerous stretch of water in the world in terms of fatalities per square kilometer.” When the weather is bad, from roughly June to August, Uganda’s marine police get reports of drowning at least once a week, says Julius Ceasar Eumu, a water safety trainer for the Ugandan police. That doesn’t include the people who are unable to call for help or who distrust the police so much that they won’t call even in an emergency or to search for a missing loved one. Many fishermen work off the books and don’t pay taxes on their income. They worry police will harass them and demand a bribe. ”Most of the drowning cases are not reported or communicated even,” Eumu said. Sometimes even the police who patrol the lake don’t know how to swim. Compared to poverty, war and disease, preventing people from drowning seems like it should be relatively easy to fix. Shouldn’t it? Part of the problem is cultural. East Africans have long viewed lakes and rivers as dangerous areas that flood during heavy seasonal rains and are home to crocodiles,   mosquitoes and other dangers. Few people grow up learning to swim, and children don’t learn basic water safety. ”We really can’t stand the water” said Olive Kobusingye, an epidemiologist at Makerere University in Uganda who has studied the impact of drowning on fishing communities around Lake Victoria. ”Even when you live close to the water you don’t teach your child how to survive the water you teach your child how to stay away from the water, aware that the child might now need to be on the water, but as long as you can help it the child is going to stay away from the water. That means they’re going to not swim.” Elite private schools offer swimming lessons to their students, but the few pools in large towns charge at least a couple of dollars for entry, making them out of reach for many poor Ugandans. On the lake, fishermen rarely get updated weather forecasts and usually aren’t prepared when the winds turn and waters get choppy. For some lakeside communities, a sort of fatalism has taken hold that deceases the odds they will take safety precautions. Between the risks of drowning and malaria, early death can seem inevitable. ”You have a very deadly mixture of things that will kill you eventually, so why use a condom? Why bother with mosquito nets? Why bother with lifejackets?” said Mattias Wengelin, managing director of the Safe Waters Foundation and a guest professor at the World Maritime University in Malmo, Sweden, who has worked in East Africa. ”If it’s not the one it’s the other.” That attitude is one of several factors leading to a high prevalence of HIV among fishing communities along Lake Victoria, according to public health experts. In Uganda, rates of HIV around the lake are three or four times higher than the rest of the country. But when it comes to concerns about drowning, a life preserver may finally be on the way. Last October, the African Development Bank approved a $25 million loan for the three countries bordering Lake Victoria. The money will go to provide regular weather reports and alerts to people on the lake (via text message and radio broadcasts) expand cellphone coverage and build a network of 22 rescue centers along the shore. There are also plans to create a   number to report emergencies. ”You can call that number, the signal will go straight to the main rescue coordination center, the signal will identify where you are and then send it to the nearest search and rescue center,” said Telly Eugene Muramira, a deputy executive secretary at the Lake Victoria Basin Commission. ”Then they can come to rescue you.” The loan has been in the works for more than a decade, and is part of a   $36 million project that the Lake Victoria Basin Commission predicts will double mobile phone coverage and reduce the number of deaths on the lake by 80 percent by 2020. Improving safety, the thinking goes, will encourage more and bigger companies to use the lake for transportation and shipping cargo. The goal is to put 2, 000 more licensed vessels on the lake, the African Development Bank predicts, and boost economic development. And that would be good news for Ssali and the other fishermen, who worry that   fishing is a   job  —   and a dangerous one as well. Julian Hattem is a freelance journalist based in Uganda. Reach him @jmhattem. "
"A few weeks ago, my husband brought home a bottle of chilled beverage that wasn’t on the grocery list I had sent him out with. It was a bottle of   sugarcane juice  —   a novelty in a market flooded with bottled soda and mango drinks. But one sip of the drink and I was transported back to my childhood summers. I grew up in the southern city of Chennai, where summers are scorching. And sugarcane juice was a popular seasonal cooler. I would stop for a tall glass of freshly pressed juice from a street vendor on hot afternoons. The sunburned man would pass the plump cane stalks through his machine and turn its big wheels with his hands. A pale green juice would flow out on to a steel container on the other side. This was a cool, refreshing and rare treat, long before the idea of   juice came into vogue. As I grew up and moved away from home, the sugarcane juice vendor continued to tempt me across cities, but the siren song of his machine was drowned by warnings about   diseases that echoed in my head. Vendors often added ice made from unfiltered water, a common cause for stomach infections. So, finding sugarcane juice after all these years, in modern and hygienic packaging, felt like a  . And that’s when I began to notice that the market is starting to get flooded with such beverages from my childhood. They are traditional, seasonal drinks, once sold by street vendors or made at home by mothers and grandmothers. Be it aam panna, a drink made of the sweetened pulp of green mango, considered cooling in summer, or golgappa ka pani, the spicy, sour and sweet mix of water served with a popular street dish, or common juices like sugarcane, consumers can now buy these uniquely Indian,   tastes at shops and supermarkets. The beverage companies selling these drinks are new and homegrown, like Paper Boat, Milk Mantra and Raw Pressery. In a market dominated by big multinationals like   and PepsiCo, they are luring customers by playing to Indians’ soft spot for local products and flavors (the most popular cola in the country is the local Thums Up, now owned by  ). They are offering customers something fresh, yet familiar  —   a combination of traditional tastes with authentic Indian ingredients. Paper Boat is offering a strong pinch of nostalgia in their drinks. The beverages they sell are otherwise mostly forgotten, ranging from the uniquely regional panakam, a festival drink of jaggery with a hint of ginger and cardamom, and kokum, a berry that is a traditional souring agent used in western India, to seasonal drinks like thandai, a slightly spiced milk drink served during the spring festival of Holi. The company’s name itself harks back to childhood holidays  —   long, leisurely afternoons spent making paper boats to sail in ponds and puddles after heavy monsoon downpours. On its website, the company spells out its motto: ”If you could make people taste memories, you should.” Their marketing seems to be working for many. ”I love it that Paper Boat is promoting Indian drinks,” says Priya Pathiyan, a journalist in Mumbai. ”We have a wealth of ingredients and flavors that are also suitable for our weather.” And the company’s ”ads take me back to my childhood,” she adds.   A company like Raw Pressery on the other hand, is marketing good health, with promises of fresh ingredients, with no additives or artificial flavors. The company started off by offering   mixed fruit and vegetable juices with a ”detox” theme (Trim, Flush and Glow were some of the initial flavors). More recently, it has introduced more conventional fruit juices like orange and apple, in clean, contemporary bottles and indeed without any additives. ”We wish to establish that our juices are comprised of fruit in their raw, untainted, natural and [the] most glorious form,” founder Anuj Rakyan tells us via  . Health conscious parents seem to be happy to give their children these new drinks (especially Paper Boat) without the guilt that typically accompanies a serving of fizzy drinks. Sathya Saran is a writer and   from Mumbai who enjoys these juices because they ”suggest health without tasting ugh.” She also prefers that her granddaughter drinks them instead of colas and other aerated beverages. Not everyone is convinced by the health claims. ”I don’t believe that any packaged food can be entirely ”pure” or free from sugar and preservatives as they claim,” says Malathi Srinivasan, a working mother of three, based in the southern city of Bengaluru. But like many urban parents, she views these drinks as the ”lesser of the two evils.” She would rather give her kids an anar (pomegranate) or aamras (mango juice) from such brands, than even conventional fruit juice brands like Tropicana or Real. Whatever the reasons behind Indians buying these drinks, it is clear that this fledgling industry is growing. According to Indian newspapers, the homegrown beverage market is now almost as big as the cola market in India. As for me, I’m still hooked by the rekindling of   tastes. And I can see myself spending my summers drowning in these flavors. Charukesi Ramadurai is a freelance journalist based in Bengaluru, India."
"As the 50th anniversary of the greatest rock album of all time rapidly nears, Capitol Records is sharing a previously unreleased outtake from the Sgt. Pepper’s recording sessions. The clip, premiered at The Guardian, is a   version of the album’s opening title cut and includes some fantastic chatter between John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. It’s an unadorned and intimate version of the song that offers a glimpse into how The Beatles first imagined the track. It’s also disorienting to hear it without any of the horns or sound effects (there’s no cheering crowd or laughter). And a number of guitar licks are noticeably missing. The Sgt. Pepper’s outtake is just one of many, many bonus tracks coming out on a   50th anniversary edition of the album. The full record has also been remixed by Giles Martin, son of the late Beatles producer George Martin. It’s due out May 26. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was originally released on June 1, 1967."
"The Defense Department says it is looking into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of two U. S. service members killed in a raid on ISIS leaders in eastern Afghanistan this week. According to a statement released by the headquarters of United States Forces —  Afghanistan, ”  is investigating the possibility that the two Rangers were accidentally killed by friendly fire during the more than   fight. We have informed both of their families of this possibility and we have appointed a team to investigate the Soldiers’ deaths.” Preliminary details of the raid against   were reported in the   yesterday. The statement added, ”We investigate all combat deaths of U. S. service members, and because we believe that there is a possibility of friendly fire in this case, it is appropriate to notify the families. Once the investigation is complete,   will provide the results to our chain of command.” The slain soldiers were identified in a subsequent statement issued by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. ”The families and fellow Rangers of Sgt. Joshua ”Josh” Rodgers and Sgt. Cameron Thomas have my respect and sympathies. Fighting alongside their Afghan partners, Josh and Cameron proved themselves willing to go into danger and impose a brutal cost on enemies in their path. They carried out their operation against   in Afghanistan before making the ultimate sacrifice to defend our nation and our freedoms. Our nation owes them an irredeemable debt, and we give our deepest condolences to their families.” The Mattis statement makes no mention of the friendly fire investigation. The raid targeted an   leader named Emir, Abdul Hasib. The   statement said two Army Ranger platoons and an equivalent number of Afghan Special Security Forces were dropped by helicopter into the Mohamand Valley in Nangahar Province. They killed several     leaders and more than 35 fighters. But the statement says the death of Emir has not yet been confirmed."
"The Circle, the film based on the novel by Dave Eggers, presents a dystopian view of the direction Silicon Valley is taking the world. And, as a longtime Silicon Valley correspondent, I have to say there is a lot that this comic and spooky film gets right. Let’s start with the main character, Mae, a recent college grad played by Emma Watson. Mae is eager, idealistic and versed in the kind of marketing verbiage that rolls off the tongues of way too many young people in Silicon Valley. When she goes for a job interview at the Circle  —   the world’s biggest tech company  —   she impresses her interviewer with a comically perfect description of the company’s main service. Sounding like a commercial   she says: ”Before TrueYou, it was like you needed a different vehicle for every single one of your errands. And no one should have to own 87 different cars. It doesn’t make sense. It’s the chaos of the Web made elegant and simple.” Mae rises up the corporate ladder quickly. She is taken with the company’s charismatic CEO, Eamon Bailey, played by Tom Hanks. Hanks’ physicality and manic focus bring to mind Steve Jobs his zealous belief that his company will make the world better evokes Mark Zuckerberg. Bailey convinces Mae to take part in an experiment. She will be the first person to wear one of The Circle’s small livestreaming consumer cameras all the time. ”I’m going fully transparent,” she announces at one of the frequent company meetings, where the staff applaud with cultlike enthusiasm. Mae’s authenticity and good looks turn her into an Internet star. But life in the spotlight turns out to have its dark side. Her best friend is having a breakdown and they have to hide in the bathroom to talk privately with a time limit of 3 minutes. Mae tries to promote her friend Mercer’s business  —   he makes chandeliers from deer antlers. Mercer, played by Ellar Coltrane, ends up the target of an online mob of animal rights activists. Meanwhile the Circle tightens it grip on the U. S. government  —   it takes down a senator who is investigating the Circle by leaking his personal information. It tries to take over the voting process so that all Americans must cast ballots using the Circle’s technology. It all feels creepily plausible. The story nails Silicon Valley’s failure to acknowledge the downside of its creations. For example, take Facebook’s recent reluctance to admit it might play a role in spreading fake news. Dave Eggers, who wrote the novel the film is based on, says the idea for the book developed after years of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. ”I’ve never met some villainous person that works at all of these companies,” he says. But, ”every so often you hear something come out of their mouths that you think ’that sounds really, really wrong . .. really wrong.’ ” For example, it sounds like a great idea to make searching the Web and photo sharing free. But it means collecting personal data and selling it. Eggers refers to ”surveillance capitalism,” a term coined by Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff. ”And with all of this has come an acceptance of a base level of surveillance that I would maintain that 30 years ago we would not have accepted,” he says. The Circle’s director, James Ponsoldt, a   technology addict, says he took on the project in part because he recognized himself in Mae’s character. ”Maybe not in her best aspects but in the worst parts of her personality,” he says. ”The parts of me that are probably too easily available, that will give things away too easily. By things I mean, a level of connection with people when sometimes it’s OK to just not reply to your email that day.” Visually the film does a good job of showing the manicured lawns and bright, clean campuses typical of Silicon Valley companies and their seductive  : You never have to leave work  —   there’s food, health care, sometimes even housing. There are even clubs and social activities and you can play volleyball at lunch. At the Circle, the pressure is on to spend every waking moment with colleagues. The film also captures the tech industry’s consolidation trend. The company in the film has outsmarted all other tech companies or it’s acquired them. And the idea of all that power in the hands of a single company makes Eggers worry about what will happen to our personal data. ”You put it in the hands of a sinister,   person, then what would happen?” he says. Eggers says he wrote the book to see where his darkest fantasies would take him. He wants us to think about what we’re giving away in the name of convenience. The film misses some of the salient details of the book that had me regularly nodding and laughing at how right Eggers had gotten it. It’s not a perfect piece of cinema. But most technology isn’t perfect either."
"The National Security Agency is scaling back the way it spies on some communications over the Internet.  The NSA says it discovered what it called ”lapses” in compliance with U. S. law. They’re called ”about” communications: The NSA not only watches messages traveling to and from a foreign target, but those that mention one. That can mean the NSA sometimes sweeps up data from Americans without a warrant. In the past, officials said the spy agency was still mindful of citizens’ privacy. But now NSA says it has discovered ”several inadvertent compliance lapses,” which it reported to Congress and a secret court that oversees intelligence gathering. There aren’t many more details, but the NSA now says it will, quote, ”stop the practice to reduce the chance that it would acquire communications of U. S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with a foreign intelligence target.” Here’s the full statement from the NSA: NSA Stops Certain Foreign Intelligence Collection Activities Under Section 702, The National Security Agency is instituting several changes in the way it collects information under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Section 702, set to expire at the end of this year, allows the Intelligence Community to conduct surveillance on only specific foreign targets located outside the United States to collect foreign intelligence, including intelligence needed in the fight against international terrorism and cyber threats. NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target. This information is referred to in the Intelligence Community as ”about” communications in Section 702 ”upstream” internet surveillance. Instead, NSA will limit such collection to internet communications that are sent directly to or from a foreign target. Even though NSA does not have the ability at this time to stop collecting ”about” information without losing some other important data, the Agency will stop the practice to reduce the chance that it would acquire communications of U. S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with a foreign intelligence target. Finally, even though the Agency was legally allowed to retain such ”about” information previously collected under Section 702, the NSA will delete the vast majority of its upstream internet data to further protect the privacy of U. S. person communications. The changes in policy followed an   review of Section 702 activities in which NSA discovered several inadvertent compliance lapses. NSA   the incidents to both Congress and the FISC, as it is required to do. Following these reports, the FISC issued two extensions as NSA worked to fix the problems before the government submitted a new application for continued Section 702 certification. The FISC recently approved the changes after an extensive review. The Agency’s efforts are part of its commitment to continuous improvement as we work to keep the nation safe. NSA has a solemn responsibility and duty to do our work exactly right while carrying out our critical mission."
"Perhaps you’re a person who buys festival wear but finds Coachella too plebian. Perhaps you find other music festivals   because you can’t bring your own yacht. Or maybe you just think it sounds awesome to hang out on an island in the Bahamas and you have a few thousand dollars to blow. In that case the Fyre Festival was supposed to be the event  —   nay, cultural moment!  —   for you. (And yes, that’s FYRE, not fire, because it was going to be LIT. And also because Fyre Media Inc. is the name of rapper Ja Rule’s   company, which organized the luxstravaganza, or #dumpsterfyre, as you’ll soon see.) In a promo video posted in January full of frolicking models, the Fyre Festival promised (in seemingly random order) ”the best in food, art, music and adventure   once owned by Pablo Escobar   on the boundaries of the impossible   Fyre is an experience and festival   A quest   to push beyond those boundaries.” Thursday was to be the first day of the   event. ”You’ll be flown roundtrip on a custom, VIP configured Boeing 737 aircraft between Miami International Airport and Exuma International Airport on Great Exuma,” said the festival’s website. ”Guests will be staying in modern,   geodesic domes. . .. Unplug from the everyday and ignite your flame in the Exumas.” The acts scheduled to perform included Major Lazer and   as well as a DJ ”who specializes in producing ’70s and ’80s rock remixes for clients that include Middle Eastern and European royalty,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. The organizers built buzz by having celebrities tweet and Instagram about the festival. In a   tweet from March 27, Ja Rule wrote, ”This is where the cool kids will be April   May  ! !! #fyrefestival #fyre.” Ticket prices were steep  —   but of course they were, since it was going to be ”the cultural event of the decade.” The Los Angeles Times reported in January that passes, which included accommodations and chartered flights from Miami, started at $1, 595 and stretched to $399, 995, which included dinner with a performer. (Though prices varied widely according to accommodation, and attendees interviewed by NPR said tickets could be had for as little has $900.) But there were signs of trouble in paradise. According to Journal’s article from April 2, the organizers missed a series of payments to performers, though it had begun making progress in paying them. The newspaper noted that festivals typically lose money in their early years, and face high upfront costs. No matter. Just days before the festival was to begin, @fyrefestival was shaking the sand out of its hair and Instagramming without concern. But there was to be no dancing on the beach. Yesterday, ticketholders began arriving at the festival, and found the site in disarray. Instead of the promised (and paid for) villas and lodges, festivalgoers found instead row after row of the same white tents. ”You just get dropped off on this island, and you’re just standing there,” said Seth Crossno, who had flown to the Bahamas with three other friends from Raleigh. ”It looked like a disaster relief area.” He said that cars and trucks were driving around, and that shipping containers littered the area. Crossno said a man stood on a table shouting out directives. ”They had no way to communicate with anybody,” said Crossno. ”I don’t know why no one went on the main stage and got on the microphone to get the crowd’s attention and tell people what was going on. Just total incompetence.” He added that house music blared in the background. He estimated that a thousand people were there, and more kept arriving. Crossno arrived at the festival around 5:30 p. m. Thursday night, and within a couple of hours, he and his friends were trying to get off the island. ”It was a huge mess from the start,” he said. Together, Crossno said he and his friends paid about $12, 000 to attend. Janan Buisier, who traveled from Dallas, said she spent more than $1, 300 to go to the event. At first, she and her friends wanted to make the best of a bad situation, she said, ”but then we saw how it started getting dangerous.” She said the site didn’t have enough security, lights, or food. ”You were promised chargers for your phone  —   did not get that,” Busier said. ”You were promised food  —   we were like starving. And you were promised safety, you were promised to be taken care of, you were promised an experience of a lifetime. And yes, it was quite the experience, but not in a positive way.” The festival started arranging flights to get people back to Miami, including ones that Crossno and Buisier were able to get on. The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism tweeted out a statement Friday morning, saying it was ”extremely disappointed in the way the events unfolded yesterday” and said that although it was not an official sponsor of the festival, it had lent its support when asked. ”The event organizers assured is that all measures were taken to ensure a safe and successful event but clearly they did not have the capacity to execute an event of this scale.” It added that it hopes festival visitors would consider returning to the Bahamas in the future ”to truly experience all of our beauty.” Not long after, the Fyre Festival website posted its own statement: Fyre Festival set out to provide a     musical experience on the Islands of the Exumas. Due to circumstances out of our control, the physical infrastructure was not in place on time and we are unable to fulfill on that vision safely and enjoyably for our guests. At this time, we are working tirelessly to get flights scheduled and get everyone off of Great Exuma and home safely as quickly as we can. We ask that guests currently   do not make their own arrangements to get to the airport as we are coordinating those plans. We are working to place everyone on complimentary charters back to Miami today this process has commenced and the safety and comfort of our guests is our top priority. The festival is being postponed until we can further assess if and when we are able to create the   quality experience we envisioned. We ask for everyone’s patience and cooperation during this difficult time as we work as quickly and safely as we can to remedy this unforeseeable situation. We will continue to provide regular updates via email to our guests and via our official social media channels as they become available.   Fyre Festival Team, Whether the circumstances were truly out of the Fyre Festival’s control will probably be a matter for the lawyers. Crossno, who on Friday morning was back in Miami after a very strange trip, said that if he doesn’t get his money back, he will sue. But first, he has a warning for those who bought tickets for next weekend: ”Do not go to this festival,” he said. ”It’s a scam. It’s not real.” All Things Considered producer Greg Dixon contributed to this report."
"President Trump has ordered the Department of the Interior to review all designations of national monuments greater than 100, 000 acres created since 1996. That executive order, which he signed Wednesday, places at least 20  —   and as many as 40  —   monuments in the government’s sights. The areas now under review span a vast range of landscapes  —   from arid deserts to frozen mountain peaks, from striking craggy vistas to teeming underwater playgrounds. And, though these monuments were all established roughly in the past two decades, they all have a history more than a century long. That’s because all of them owe their existence to the 1906 Antiquities Act, a law signed by President Theodore Roosevelt that makes it a federal crime to destroy or alter ancient artifacts and ruins on federal land. The act also gives the president the authority to designate national monuments. More recently, with most large public lands protection bills stalled in Congress, presidents from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush and Barack Obama have used the act as a tool to protect sweeping amounts of federal land mostly in the West. President Obama’s late hour designation of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, for instance, protects more than a million acres  —   even though the Antiquities Act specifies that monuments designated by a president ”in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible.” It’s this perceived overreach that partly spurred Trump to sign his executive order. But if, after the review, Trump also decides to bypass Congress and act by executive order to shrink or even nullify any of the monuments, a court challenge is all but guaranteed. ”The Antiquities Act expressly authorizes the President to create a national monument, but it does not authorize a later President to revoke or modify a national monument,” says Prof. Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law. So, what are the landscapes that have drawn Trump’s scrutiny? Click on the links below  —   or simply scroll down  —   for a visual introduction to many of the national monuments now under review: President Clinton: Grand   Grand   Giant Sequoia, Canyons of the Ancients, Hanford Reach, Ironwood Forest, Vermillion Cliffs, Carrizo Plain, Sonoran Desert, Upper Missouri River Breaks, President George W. Bush: Papahānaumokuākea (expanded by 300, 000 acres under President Obama) Pacific Remote Islands (expanded by 300, 000 acres under Obama) President Barack Obama: Rio Grande del Norte, Organ   Peaks, San Gabriel Mountains, Berryessa Snow Mountain, Basin and Range, Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow, Bears Ears, Gold Butte, This vast expanse of canyons  —   stretching across roughly 1. 7 million acres of southern Utah  —   is likely the earliest designated national monument now under review. Established by presidential order in 1996, the   Grand   National Monument earns its name from a series of plateaus so starkly separated by cliff faces they resemble an   staircase  —   or, as the monument’s website quips, a ”starecase.” Nearly as large as the Grand Staircase is its neighbor to the southwest, Arizona’s Grand   National Monument. The first monument to be designated in Clinton’s final year in office, Parashant packs just over a million acres in its expanses. According to the National Park Service, nearly 20 bat species have been identified in the area, and scientists have used the monument for nearly two decades as a fertile ground for research. Here be giants. In the Giant Sequoia National Monument, which exceeds 320, 000 acres in Northern California, some of the world’s largest trees tower above the forest floor. Perhaps the most famous of these are the 100 Giants, a misleadingly named grove of more than 700 giant sequoias where Clinton proclaimed the creation of the monument in April 2000. Where the monuments above celebrate natural splendor, the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument instead sets aside the works of humans. A landscape that contains the ”highest known density of archaeological sites in the United States,” according to Mesa Verde Country, the monument’s 176, 000 acres in southwest Colorado contain thousands of ancient Native American sites  —   including the ruins set against the starry night sky above. The massive bluffs of Hanford Reach line a stretch of the Columbia River in southern Washington state. Signed into existence by President Clinton in 2000, the Hanford Reach National Monument sets aside nearly 200, 000 acres of land reminding visitors not simply of the region’s natural features. On this land also stand the remnants of defunct American plutonium reactors, which the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service says were used in the production of nuclear weapons in World War II and the Cold War. Deep in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona stand the roughly 125, 000 acres of Ironwood Forest National Monument. Established on the same date as the Hanford Reach and the Canyons of the Ancients, Ironwood Forest also bears traces of the human hand, with hundreds of archaeological sites scattered across the arid landscape. Amid the cacti and crags rest ruins that date from ancient   societies up to the 19th century. Just south of the Utah border, Arizona’s Vermillion Cliffs National Monument protects nearly 300, 000 acres of the kinds of sights that make nature photographers drool. But the monument, which was proclaimed just days after Election Day in 2000, has also proved to be an important draw for another visitor to the region: the endangered California condor, which has been introduced in the remote landscape to try to grow its anemic population. Speaking of attractions for nature photographers, the Carrizo Plain National Monument has been getting its fair share of attention lately, as well. That’s because, after years of drought, a recent spate of rain has set this Central Californian grassland plain ablaze with a bloom of wildflowers. In fact, Carrizo’s 200, 000 acres have made for such a spectacular sight, they’ve earned a rather fitting moniker: super bloom. President Clinton designated this area as a national monument in the waning days of his administration in 2001, along with the next two regions on this list. Nearly half a million acres have been set aside for the Sonoran Desert National Monument, a region that promises visitors a whole lot of   browns and greens. Proclaimed in 2001 on the same date as the Carrizo Plain and the Upper Missouri River Breaks, the Sonoran Desert generally bears fewer breathtaking sights than its counterparts, its designation aimed primarily at protection  —   for the area’s ancient relics and wildlife. A member of the last crop of Clinton’s designations, the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument contains about 375, 000 acres of land. ”Glaciers, volcanic activity, and erosion have since folded, faulted, uplifted, and sculpted the landscape to the majestic form it takes today,” the Bureau of Land Management says, noting the vast abundance of wildlife that continue to make the river region their home. Established first by President George W. Bush as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument in 2006, then given its Hawaiian name Papahānaumokuākea in 2007, this monument received a massive expansion under President Obama before he left office. Now it stands at around 400, 000 acres of islands, atolls and coral reefs  —   home to more than 7, 000 marine species 14 million seabirds. It’s also home to the Midway Atoll, where the pivotal Battle of Midway unfolded between the U. S. and Japan in 1942. Resting as it does smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Midway offered the U. S. a crucial victory early in the war  —   and for that reason, the monument stands large in the American imagination for more than its wildlife. Southwest of Hawaii stands the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, a cluster of territories proclaimed just before Bush left office in 2009. Obama expanded on Bush’s proclamation in 2014, adding more than 300, 000 acres to its expanse and making the Pacific Remote Islands the largest marine reserve in the world, according to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Proclaimed a national monument in 2013, Rio Grande del Norte in northern New Mexico is littered with volcanic cones and canyons. Its 240, 000 acres are a tale of great heights and depths, with its peaks reaching as high as 10, 000 feet and carved deeply by a gorge that winds its way through. Almost half a million acres make up the Organ   Peaks National Monument in southern New Mexico, where spires lean over the Chihuahuan Desert. ”Despite [an] abundance of wildlands, wildlife, and natural beauty, these lands are under constant threat from a wide range of   activities,” according to the monument’s website. ”From urban sprawl to potential mining for rare earth minerals from proposals for energy development to an explosion of   vehicles, these lands are under siege and need the protections that only a National Monument can provide.” The San Gabriel Mountains National Monument covers about 345, 000 acres of forests near Los Angeles, spanning part of the San Andreas Fault and a hefty chunk of the Angeles National Forest. It was established in 2014 under Obama. This   monument in Northern California sits just north of Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay. Dense with wildlife and   artifacts of Native American civilization, Berryessa Snow Mountain is also ”home to some of the rarest plants on Earth  —   particularly delicate serpentine plants clinging to otherwise barren and rocky mountainsides,” according to the U. S. Forest Service. In remote southeastern Nevada, the Basin and Range National Monument’s ”vast, rugged landscape redefines our notions of distance and space and brings into sharp focus the will and resolve of the people who have lived here,” according to the Bureau of Land Management, which administers the area. More than 700, 000 acres are contained within its borders, which were delimited by Obama’s proclamation in July 2015. One of the largest monuments now in Trump’s   Mojave Trails in the California desert spans about 1. 6 million acres near the state’s southeast border. ”The Mojave Trails area includes sand dunes, ancient lava flows, 550    fossil beds and the Sleeping Beauty Valley, a remarkably intact West Mojave Desert ecosystem,” the local Desert Sun newspaper reported in February last year, when the region was proclaimed a national monument. ”The monument will protect irreplaceable historic resources including ancient Native American trading routes, World War   training camps, and the longest remaining undeveloped stretch of Route 66,” the Obama administration said at the time. As its name suggests, the Sand to Snow National Monument stretches 154, 000 acres from the desert floor to the frosty heights of Mount San Gorgionio east of LA. Also proclaimed in February last year, the monument is administered partly by the U. S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The only national monument to be named specifically in Trump’s executive order, Bears Ears has been a point of significant controversy since it was created in December last year. Republicans point to its establishment as an example of severe executive overreach, saying its 1.   expanse is gratuitous and unfairly encroaches on the rights of Utah residents, who cannot develop oil and gas drilling or expand cattle grazing on the land. But for the region’s Native American tribes, who see the site as sacred, the national monument designation was a massive victory they are prepared to defend. ”I’m standing for what my people are wanting,” Davis Filfred, Navajo Nation Council Delegate in Utah, tells NPR, ”and I’ll continue to stand and fight for what’s right.” Similar to Bears Ears, Nevada’s recently established Gold Butte National Monument has also drawn controversy of its own. Standing at about 300, 000 acres, the monument in southwest Nevada rests not far from where Cliven Bundy and fellow local ranchers engaged in an armed standoff with federal law enforcement in 2014. Together with Bears Ears, Gold Butte protects ”some of our country’s most important cultural treasures, including abundant rock art, archeological sites, and lands considered sacred by Native American tribes,” Obama said in a statement last December. But as resentment against perceived federal encroachment has risen in the area, so too had fears for the safety of law enforcement officers in the area."
"A week after Sen. Mike Enzi told high school students that a man who wears a tutu to a bar ”kind of asks for” a fight, his constituents in Wyoming are wearing tutus to school and work  —   and, yes, to bars  —   on Friday. Enzi has apologized for his ”poor choice of words.” Protest parties are also scheduled through the weekend, and on Friday, people have been using the #LiveandLetTutu hashtag to share images of themselves wearing tutus. One image posted today showed University of Wyoming student Tyler Wolfgang wearing a suit and a tutu, posing at a campus building that bears Enzi’s name. ”Our hope with the   [efforts] is that even in small communities we’ll get a handful of people to share a photo of themselves in the bar wearing a tutu,” one organizer, Patrick Harrington of Laramie, tells member station Wyoming Public Media, ”so we can show Senator Enzi that he really is representing a large group of people and a really diverse group of people in Wyoming.” Those efforts include a ”tutu family game night” at a church in Cheyenne. Pub crawls are planned in Laramie, Pinedale, and Sheridan bars are offering discounts to anyone in a tutu, and at least one establishment is also contributing part of its proceeds to gay pride events. Enzi has apologized for the remarks he made at Greybull High School, in which he told an unusual anecdote in response to a question about how he sees the LGBTQ community in Wyoming. As recounted by the Greybull Standard newspaper, Enzi said: ”I know a guy who wears a tutu and goes to bars on Friday night and is always surprised that he gets in fights. Well, he kind of asks for it. That’s the way that he winds up with that kind of problem.” At the time, Enzi said his anecdote illustrated the need for civility and mutual respect, citing Wyoming’s ”live and let live mantra,” as WPM reported. But he was quickly criticized for not succeeding in making that point  —   and for doing so in an inappropriate setting. Wyoming Democrats Chairman Joe M. Barbuto said Enzi’s comment ”was ugly and indicative of a kind of backwards thinking that has no place in today’s society.” On Tuesday, Enzi, 73, issued an apology, saying, ”I regret a poor choice of words during part of my presentation.” He added, ”None of us is infallible and I apologize to anyone who has taken offense. No offense was intended. Quite the opposite in fact, and so I ask for your understanding as well.” The plan for a tutu protest was met with enthusiasm in Wyoming, even prompting a tutorial on making one’s own tutu in Laramie Thursday night. Demonstrators were also urged to keep the issues of bullying and civil rights in mind, with Ezra Hanson urging their fellow protesters, ”Wear your tutu’s this weekend but please take it seriously. Some of us ’wear tutus’ on a daily basis and I would really appreciate it if you didn’t try and make a joke out of yourself while wearing one.” Hanson continued, ”Respect the cause, respect the oppressed. Stand up for something, but be aware of yourself, and be aware of the image you will be branding us all as having. Most importantly, be safe. Much love to everyone.”"
"President Trump says that while he would like to resolve the issue of North Korea’s nuclear program diplomatically, it will be hard  —   and there is a potential for a major clash with the Asian nation, Trump said in an interview with Reuters. ”There’s a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea, absolutely,” the president told the news agency. ”We’d love to solve things diplomatically but it’s very difficult.” Asked whether he sees Kim Jong Un’s regime as his biggest international concern, Trump replied, ”Yes, I would say that’s true, yes. . .. North Korea would be certainly that.” The president’s warning comes as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tells NPR that the U. S. does not ”seek a collapse of the regime” in North Korea  —   and that the Trump administration is open to holding direct talks with North Korea, as long as the subject is the   of the renegade country’s nuclear weapons program. North Korea attempted another test of a ballistic missile, a U. S. official confirmed late Friday, but the Associated Press reports it failed shortly after launch  —   the country’s second such failure in recent weeks. Providing insights into how he sees the Korean Peninsula, Trump told Reuters that he wants South Korea to pay for the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system the U. S. recently sent to the country, and he said that he thinks China’s President Xi Jinping wants to help resolve the ongoing Korean crisis. ”I believe he is trying very hard. He certainly doesn’t want to see turmoil and death. He doesn’t want to see it,” Trump said. ”He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well.” He added, ”With that being said, he loves China and he loves the people of China. I know he would like to be able to do something, perhaps it’s possible that he can’t.” Following the failed test, Trump tweeted Friday that the Kim regime was acting in direct defiance of China. During the Reuters interview, Trump ”suggested that he wants to stay on China’s good side, in order to get its help with North Korea,” NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing. ”He’s just the latest U. S. president to bash China on the campaign trail, only to change his tune once in office.” On the subject of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, Trump said: ”He’s 27 years old, his father dies, took over a regime, so say what you want but that’s not easy, especially at that age. You know you have plenty of generals in there and plenty of other people that would like to do what he’s doing. So I’ve said this before and I’ve, I’m just telling you, and I’m not giving him credit or not giving him credit. I’m just saying that’s a very hard thing to do.” ”As to whether or not he’s rational, I have no opinion on it. I hope he’s rational.” The topic of Trump’s own arrival in office also came up in his talk with Reuters, ahead of the president marking his first 100 days in office. ”I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” Trump said. ”This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”"
"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the Trump administration is open to direct talks with North Korea as long as the agenda is right  —   that is, denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. As he prepared to chair a U. N. Security Council meeting on the subject, Tillerson sat down with NPR’s Steve Inskeep to explain his approach. The secretary says North Korea has to come to the table willing to talk about giving up its nuclear weapons. ”You know if you listen to the North Korea, their reason for having nuclear weapons is they believe it is their only pathway to secure the ongoing existence of their regime,” Tillerson explained. ”We hope to convince them is that: you do not need these weapons to secure the existence of your regime. . .. We do not seek a collapse of the regime. We do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula. We seek a denuclearized Korean peninsula,” he stressed, adding he believes that China shares this goal and is beginning to question whether North Korea is a ”liability.” The Trump administration called the U. N. Security Council meeting not to pass a new resolution, but rather to highlight the need for members, including China, to do more to enforce the sanctions already on the books. Tillerson is to meet his Chinese counterpart in New York Friday. In the interview, Inskeep asked the former ExxonMobil CEO turned secretary of state whether he has a mission statement now for the State Department. Tillerson said it is ”to provide the national security needs of the American people and to advance America’s economic interests around the world.” He admitted it has been slow going to fill top jobs at the State Department, but Tillerson said he’s relying on career officials and launching a survey of 75, 000 employees across the globe, as he tries to reorganize. Asked if his past business dealings and relationships with Russian officials are helpful, Tillerson said they at least ”don’t have to figure out who this guy Rex Tillerson is because they’ve dealt with me for so many years. Perhaps that’s helpful in that my ability to communicate is very straightforward very candid. It’s not nuanced because I have found in dealing with the Russian leadership in the past that is what they respect.” When he was in Moscow earlier this month, he said U. S.  relations are at the lowest point since the Cold War. The Russians, he told NPR, agreed with that assessment. ”We didn’t solve anything in that meeting,” Tillerson said, adding that Russia has to decide whether it wants to be ”a positive part of the global world order not a disruptive part.”"
"In 1966 Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane gave filmmaker Frederick Wiseman unprecedented access. Wiseman documented staff at the Massachusetts hospital herding patients, often heavily drugged and naked, through bare rooms and corridors. The resulting documentary, Titicut Follies, shook up the medium and launched Wiseman’s innovative,   career. A ballet adaptation of the film premieres in New York Friday night. The ballet and the film it’s based on are both deeply unsettling. ”The inmates at Bridgewater were treated very badly, by and large,” Wiseman says. ”But many of them had committed the most outrageous crimes imaginable.” Some patients had abused children others committed murder, and even cannibalism. The state of Massachusetts sued to have Titicut Follies banned, arguing the film invaded inmates’ privacy. Wiseman countered that he had permission from the hospital and from the patients’ families. Eventually a judge ruled Titicut Follies could only be shown for educational purposes, and that restriction remained in effect for more than 20 years. So how did this grim story become a ballet? Wiseman saw something in particular when he was filming more than 50 years ago. ”One can’t help but notice some of the gestures and physical movements of people who are psychotic,” he says. The filmmaker is also a ballet fan he’s made two movies about the form. But he says it worried him that all of the productions he’s seen on stage were basically about relationships. ” .  .  . And I realized that I wasn’t seeing ballets that dealt with all the other things that were going on in the world,” he says. So when the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University asked him to create a dance based on one of his films, he immediately chose Titicut Follies. The challenge, he says, was to ”present something ugly within the framework of a form that’s inherently beautiful.” For help, he turned to choreographer James Sewell. For the past three years Wiseman, now 87, has made regular trips to Minneapolis to work with Sewell. The two have grappled with how to turn the tics and gestures of these people experiencing psychosis  —   as well as their brutal treatment at the hands of the guards  —   into the movements of classical ballet. ”It has to tread to some place that gets us to the place where we are cringing a little bit,” Sewell says. ”But I have to find a way to do that also with the beauty of movement. That’s kind of the sugar that helps the medicine go down.” So he drew on such classical ballets such as Giselle and La Bayadère and he had his dancers watch the documentary. In one unforgettable scene a naked inmate called Jim is taunted by guards. The dancer who portrays the patient is Myron Johnson. He founded Ballet of the Dolls, a Minneapolis company that created edgy, classical productions for 18 years. But three years ago, Johnson suffered a mental breakdown and spent months in a psychiatric hospital, he says. ”So I know what a taboo subject mental health can be,” Johnson says. ”So I was like: Awesome, make a ballet about it and get people talking!” Raising questions about how society deals with mental illnesses is important for Sewell, the choreographer, but Wiseman sees it differently. ”The impetus for the ballet is not to affect social change,” Wiseman says. ”But to make as good a ballet as one can with the material  —   as I try to make as good a movie as I can with the material. Then, the use or the consequences of the work is out of your hands.” Intentional or not, Wiseman has affected social change through his films. Now, the ballet version of Titicut Follies will give audiences a different way of seeing the people Wiseman depicted in his documentary 50 years ago."
"Updated at 5:05 p. m. ET. With the clock ticking, Congress on Friday managed to fulfill its basic function  —   keeping the federal government running. The House and Senate approved a   measure that funds the government for another week. Lawmakers voted hours ahead of a midnight deadline to avoid a partial shutdown of federal agencies. Friday’s extension gives members of Congress more time  —   until midnight on May 5  —   to try to reach a deal on a spending bill that will last through the rest of fiscal year 2017, which ends Sept. 30. ”We’re willing to extend things for a little bit more time in hopes that the same sort of progress can be made,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Democrats out of power, but flexing political muscle, The vote caps a dramatic week of   on Capitol Hill, particularly in the House. Although Republicans control all the levers of power in Washington, Democrats had significant leverage in the spending talks and used it to win concessions from the White House. Monday night, President Trump dropped his demand that the spending bill include a   for his   wall along the U. S.  border. Democrats said they would not support any bill that included wall funding. The White House later retreated from its threat to stop paying federal subsidies to health insurers that help cover   Americans under the Affordable Care Act. The calendar also proved to be a motivating factor. If Congress hadn’t approved the spending bill, the government shutdown would have taken effect on Saturday  —   President Trump’s 100th day in office. ”I think the president is learning that the   position of the presidency is not the ” said Rep. Joe Crowley, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. ”There is an equal   of government called the legislature, and when it’s properly exercised, it gives an [opportunity] for the minority from time to time to play a role.” Health care victory eludes Trump in his first 100 days, Members of Congress left Washington on Friday without voting on the GOP’s revised health care bill. The updated legislation would allow states to opt out of some of the Affordable Care Act’s mandates  —   including the benefits health insurers must cover in their policies and the ban on allowing insurance companies to charge more based on a person’s age and health status. ”It gives states more flexibility and tools to decrease premiums and increases choices,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters during his weekly briefing. ”And it does this while maintaining and preserving protections for people with preexisting conditions.” House GOP leaders faced pressure from the Trump administration to schedule a vote on the bill this week. The White House was eager to claim it as a legislative victory within Trump’s   marker. But the GOP’s   team struggled to find the support needed to pass the measure, especially among centrist Republicans. The House Freedom Caucus’ endorsement of the bill made the divide all the more pronounced. That bloc of roughly     conservative Republicans helped sideline the party’s previous attempt. House Democrats had threatened to block the spending bill this week if Republicans attempted to vote on the health care legislation. The ”hot potato” has moved to moderate Republicans, Still, support from the Freedom Caucus injected the GOP effort with a shot of momentum and put political pressure on moderate House Republicans to fall in line. The dynamic fueled tension within the party. ”There’s frustration that we are here where we are because of the Freedom Caucus stand three weeks ago,” said Rep. Chris Collins,  . Y. ”And now the hot potato has moved to those of us that are typically the ones that cast the tough votes all the time  —   whether it’s [voting to raise] the debt ceiling or it’s keeping the government open.” House Speaker Ryan says he’ll bring the new health care bill up for a vote only when it has enough support to pass. It’s not clear when or if that will happen with the legislation in its current form. The renewed rift over health care will likely color next week’s negotiations over the longer spending bill, as lawmakers face yet another precarious bout of brinkmanship."
"Come July, the yellow fever vaccine could be tough to find. So, if you’re traveling this summer to a place with the disease, you probably want to schedule a trip to a clinic sooner rather than later, the Centers for Diseases for Control and Prevention tells NPR. ”Take heed of our warning: Plan ahead,” says CDC spokesperson Tom Skinner. ”It may be difficult to get this vaccine. And if you can’t get it, then you should postpone your trip.” The U. S. supply of the yellow fever vaccine will run out by about midsummer, the CDC reported Friday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Officials are working on an emergency importation of an alternative vaccine, which is already licensed Europe, but is not currently licensed in the U. S. Even then, there will be a limited number of doses, available at only a small number of clinics, Skinner says. ”We’re going from the yellow fever vaccine being available in 4, 000 clinics across the country to only 250 clinics,” he says. Yellow fever is surging around the world. Last year, a large outbreak in Angola and Democratic Republic of the Congo triggered a massive immunization campaign, in which 30 million people received the vaccine. That outbreak depleted the global supply of the yellow fever vaccine several times and forced the World Health Organization to give fractional doses of the shot. Now, a growing outbreak in Brazil has health officials stretching the global supply once again. Health officials are concerned that outbreak could spread across South America and even into the U. S. ”Right now, we don’t have enough vaccine for everyone in Brazil,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health. ”We’re going to have to make more vaccine. And that will take time.” There is currently only one yellow fever vaccine licensed in the U. S. The pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur manufactures it. It’s called  . Back in 2015, Sanofi Pasteur began updating its manufacturing facility for  . And it stopped production of the vaccine. The company planned to have enough doses to cover U. S. demand until the new facility opens in 2018, but ”manufacturing complications resulted in the loss of a large number of doses,” the company writes in the MMWR. The supply will run out in a few months, so the FDA has given Sanofi Pasteur emergency approval to import a second vaccine, called Stamaril. It has a similar safety profile and effectiveness as  . It’s already approved in 70 countries. It’s rare for the FDA to grant emergency approval to import an unlicensed vaccine. The last time that occurred was in 2013 when a meningitis B outbreak hit Princeton University. ”The yellow fever vaccine is really important,” Skinner says. ”We’re doing everything we can to make sure people who need it can still get it.” If you’re taking an international trip soon, check to see if the CDC recommends a yellow fever vaccine for your destination. And, if it does, go get it now, Skinner says."
"This Sunday is International Jazz Day. It’s a tradition that began in 2011, when UNESCO  —   the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization  —   designated April 30 as a day for celebrating jazz around the world. This year’s primary International Jazz Day festivities will be held in Cuba, a place that, according to bassist and Jazz Night In America host Christian McBride, has played ”a vital role in American music over the last five decades.” In a conversation with NPR’s Audie Cornish, McBride discussed how Cuban musicians have helped to redefine jazz in the last   and shared some impressions from his latest trip to Cuba, where he performed at the Havana Jazz Festival. Hear their conversation at the audio link and read highlights below. On the pioneering collaboration between American trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, We think of fusion as some sort of a label that was created in the ’70s, when young jazz musicians started to incorporate rock sounds into the music. But if you take fusion in its literal sense, that happened at least 30 years before that happened in the ’70s, and it started with Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo. ”Manteca” was very groundbreaking in that the bass didn’t play on the first beat. [In] all American music up until that point, the bass always played on the first beat, just to establish the beginning of the bar. . .. It’s just required, you know, particularly for dance music. So you had a groove that had no bass on the first beat. That was pretty radical at that time, but then you add those drums and all the rhythm that the horns threw in. And Dizzy decided, hey, this was a great groove, but it needs something else. So then Dizzy composed the bridge, and now you have one of the first examples of Cuba and America coming together to create a gorgeous baby. On playing with legendary Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés at the Havana Jazz Festival, There were people sitting in the aisles, there were people lined up against the side of the walls, people sitting in the pit. And it was just a scene that I’ve never experienced. You talk about a hometown hero’s welcome  —   never saw anything like that in my life. . .. To see a   have that much worship in his hometown . .. that was really   to see."
"Putting together a march on the National Mall is a demanding task, to put it mildly. And the organizers of the Women’s March only had two months to put together an event that quickly grew from a Facebook post to a worldwide phenomenon. ”I think what’s really interesting is we didn’t necessarily have a lot of time to think about next steps,” said activist Carmen Perez. Perez helped organize the march that brought together more than 400, 000 protesters in Washington, D. C. (and sparked more than 600 sister marches worldwide) the day after President Trump’s inauguration. The intense planning involved not only logistics, like securing permits, but thinking about how to be inclusive in a march that refused to focus on any single issue. ”Our focus was to make sure that we were intentional, intersectional and making sure that people feel heard,” she said. As a group, the Women’s March participants were most definitely heard two political scientists writing for the Washington Post estimated that it was ”likely the largest   demonstration in recorded U. S. history.” But then came the question about what should come next. One hundred days after those demonstrations mobilized tens of thousands of people, what effects can we see? It’s clear that the march energized people on a range of issues. The question now is how sustained that energy can be over the long term. Lots of energy now, but policy achievements (might) come later, So what, exactly, did the Women’s March accomplish? It doesn’t make sense to expect major political change just yet, says one political scientist. ”I think you always have to measure accomplishments in a particular context. And we are in a context where Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the presidency,” said Lee Ann Banaszak, head of the Penn State political science department and an expert on political movements. And because many of the Women’s March participants embraced liberal ideas, she said, their policy agenda isn’t likely to go far in Washington. What the march did achieve, Banaszak said, is help people to feel less alone and more unified. According to one attendee, seeing so many fellow marchers spurred her to get more politically engaged. ”I went from a sense of feeling very alone and isolated  —   especially since a majority of my family did support Trump and has very different political views from [mine]  —   to going to the march and having all those people there,” said Dawn Ressel, a    software designer from San Diego. She called the march ”inspiring and uplifting.” She said it ”definitely changed my attitude. It also changed my action.” The organizers of the Women’s March helped prompt action for many of the participants after the event, the organizers set up a plan called 10 Actions   100 Days. Those ”10 actions” are a series of calls for political participation, like writing postcards to lawmakers and participating in the ”day without a woman” demonstration that took place on March 8, International Women’s Day. Ressel said the march did push her to do more. She has been reaching out to members of Congress by mail, phone and even fax. She also been meeting with other women to talk about how else to stay involved, like attending other marches. Another participant said the march helped her get more politically active than she has been in years. ”I have called Congress people more since Trump’s election than I had in the couple of decades before,” said Julie Wittes Schlack, a    writer from Cambridge, Mass. ”I was an activist way back when, in the ’60s and ’70s. And then fairly dormant for a couple of decades.” The march likewise could translate into more names on the ballot in the coming years. Some women have said the march helped them decide to run for office. It’s impossible to know exactly how many were energized by the march itself, but it appears there is an explosion in Democratic women interested in running for office. Emily’s List, an organization that helps elect   rights, Democratic women, last week said that it has heard from more than 11, 000 women this year interested in running for office, up from 900 in 2016. Energy from the march may have already played a part in a couple of elections. Political scientist Banaczak said she believes the Women’s March boosted Democrats in recent special elections in   congressional districts. ”I see Kansas and Georgia, those elections, as really being a sign that that mobilization is continuing,” she said. ”I know there’s not a direct connection necessarily,” she added. ”But I suspect a lot of that connection was from individuals inspired by either seeing the march or participating in it.” By virtue of its massive scope and the fact that it took place immediately after inauguration, the Women’s March also set the stage for further demonstrations, including the April 22 March for Science. ”Seeing that many passionate people mobilized by a common cause sparked many in our community to think: why can’t we do that for science?” said Lucky Tran, one of the science march organizers. Can the enthusiasm last? Many of the Women’s March participants were electrified in the days and weeks after the action. Emboldened by the new sense of community, people like Ressel and Schlack made calls and sent emails and organized meetings about how to oppose Trump’s policies. But it’s six months until the next Election Day, a year and a half until midterms, and almost four years until the next presidential election. If the movement sparked by the Women’s March  —   and the broader ”resistance movement”  —   wants to change policy, that’s a long fight. And some activists, like Schlack, say they only have enough energy to fight for the issues they care about. ”There’s so much terrible stuff happening on so many fronts,” said Schlack. ”It’s like   . You kind of have to choose. At least for myself, I had to choose: ’Where am I going to concentrate my efforts?’ ” And it’s safe to say that most of the people marching on Jan. 21 are not   activists. Ressel said that her action happens ”in waves, depending on what is going on in my life.” As the memories of all those   mobs recedes into the past, the challenge is keeping lots of people motivated to do less glamorous work, like organizing. ”Yes, one important question is whether activists will maintain this level of mobilization in the future,” Banaszak said, adding that translating energy into ”   work” will be an ongoing challenge. But she also added that the existing political establishment should be thinking about how to combine forces with all these new voices. ”How the Democratic Party adapts to the influx of new activists will be important as well,” Banaszak said. In a party that was split  —   to a damaging effect  —   in the 2016 presidential election, making sure everyone feels integrated will be a unique challenge. After its own fissures in 2010, the Republican Party brought in a crowd of Tea Party members. But even today, those splits within the party continue to make legislating difficult. ”I am always concerned about our ability to sustain our activist energy, but also old enough to know that even when movements appear to be dead (e. g. the Occupy movement) they’re often just dormant and once again erupt when conditions are right,” Schlack said in an email, pointing to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ popularity in the 2016 Democratic primaries as proof. Then again, even electing one major symbol of a ”movement”  —   like Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren  —   would not necessarily be a success to some former Occupy Wall Street supporters. ”I think that one of the things that’s happened is we’ve changed basically our metric of success, so we have started calling things that are failures a success,” said activist Micah White,   of Occupy. ”If you were an activist in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, success meant revolution in your lifetime. That’s what it meant.” While people have cited the Fight for $15 campaign for a higher minimum wage and the increased dialogue about inequality as progress, White believes those are far too small of wins to consider the movement a ”success.” To him, resistors like Women’s March attendees should aim to get to a place where the movement, standing alone, can establish itself and win a political office  —   he points to Iceland’s Pirate Party or Italy’s Five Star Movement as examples. And he thinks American women have the capacity to do that. ”For me, I absolutely believe that women will become the major force of the next great social movement.”"
"President Trump is in a peculiar position: He runs the country, advised by his daughter and     —   while also profiting from his own worldwide Trump Organization, run by his sons. This arrangement has spurred a number of ethics and    concerns, numerous lawsuits and a consistent stream of headlines. Though President Trump has stepped down from managing his 500+ businesses and put them in a trust, he continues to own them. The top government ethics official has decried Trump’s arrangement as insufficient. Meanwhile, the specifics of Trump’s financial ties  —   including his debts and actual sources of wealth  —   remain unclear. As the president often uses his own   properties to host foreign dignitaries, and his Trump Organization continues to operate overseas and do business with foreigners, an archaic word emoluments has entered the daily lexicon of ethics watchdogs. It refers to an obscure but newly relevant constitutional clause. Check out the video at the top of the page for a brief   of what all this means, how it happened and why it matters."
"On Inauguration Day, Donald Trump placed his hand on a Bible and promised to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. At the time, many ethics experts waited to see if Trump would divest himself of his   dollar business interests. ”And he didn’t do it,” says Zephyr Teachout, an associate law professor at Fordham University. ”So immediately upon becoming president we filed a lawsuit to get him to stop violating the Constitution.” The lawsuit was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) a Washington, D. C.  government watchdog group. The lawsuit says the president is violating the Emoluments Clause  —   a provision in the Constitution which prevents government officials from accepting gifts, benefits and the like from foreign leaders or foreign states. Teachout says Trump’s businesses are generating profits from foreign governments  —   especially his hotels and resorts. ”Diplomats from foreign governments and their agents are staying in Trump hotels, like the Trump hotel in D. C.,” says Teachout, who is part of the lawsuit. ”That’s money from foreign governments going into our president’s pocket while he is making decisions that affect those countries.” Trump promised any profits from foreign governments will be donated to the U. S. Treasury  —   so far, that hasn’t happened. The Trump Organization says the donation will be made on an annual basis after the end of each calendar year. Trump also placed ownership of his business in a revokable trust, despite calls for him to divest from his business interests. But these moves won’t stop more Trump hotels from springing up. Eric Danziger, the CEO of Trump Hotels, recently revealed the company is planning a major expansion in the U. S. of both its luxury properties, as well as some of its new   Scion hotels. Meanwhile, Trump’s eldest sons  —   Eric and Donald Jr.  —   have also been traveling regularly overseas to open hotels and golf courses, and check out dormant and current resort projects. Eric Trump was recently in Doonbeg, Ireland, where the Trump Organization is trying to build a wall around parts of the links at its   golf resort. Ellie Donnolly, a reporter with the Irish Independent newspaper, says it’s a beautiful location. ”But the sea is eroding the cliff area, and the area where the golf course is. And what the Trump resort is arguing is if we don’t build this wall. ..to protect the golf course it will become destroyed,” she says. Environmentalists are against building the wall. A county council will make the final decision. A   visit by the U. S. president’s son could be seen as helping sway any decision. This blending of business and the presidency worries many ethics experts because it could include trade policies and security issues. Take China, for example. Trump fought a   legal battle there to register a trademark in connection with construction services. It was finally granted about one month after Trump’s inauguration. Peter Riebling, a trademark lawyer in Washington, D. C. says soon after, 38 other trademarks for everything from hotels to spas, were also granted. ”Those applications just sailed through,” he said, ”And, oddly, they were all granted at the same time, all at once.” Riebling says that’s very unusual. ”Not just in China but anywhere really,” he says. Riebling says getting trademark approvals in a market like China is huge. ”Let me be very clear. ..if a foreign government is granting that to the Trump Organization. ..that would certainly be an economic benefit to the organization,” he says. At the same time, Riebling says Trump is caught in a   situation. He fought to get the trademarks in an effort to build and protect his brand. Even if the timing is suspicious, Riebling says Trump can hardly ask China to reverse its decision to grant the trademarks."
"To legally justify its military actions against the Islamic State, the U. S. has relied on a piece of 2001 legislation, written years before the extremist group came into existence. Now 46 representatives from both parties say in a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan that it’s time for Congress to ”immediately begin a serious debate” on authorization for the use military force against the Islamic State. ”The U. S. has steadily escalated its role and military presence against the Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq, including additional deployments over the past two months,” the lawmakers write. ”It is past time for the House to debate and vote on an [Authorization for Use of Military Force] that defines the purpose, nature and limits of U. S. military engagement against the Islamic State.” The debate over the role of Congress in authorizing military action reemerged earlier this month, after the Trump administration authorized missile strikes against a Syrian military airfield. ”The U. S. has now carried out its first direct military action against the Syrian regime since the country’s civil war began six years ago, again without any authorization by Congress,” the letter states. Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern and Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole lead the effort. The majority of signatories are Democrats, though six Republicans are also included. The discussion itself is not a new one. As The   has noted, the Obama administration authorized strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq ”relying on an Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, passed in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, and another one passed in 2002, which began the war against Iraq.” The 2001 AUMF authorized the U. S. to use force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Some critics see its applicability against ISIS as a stretch, because the group did not exist at the time of the attacks, played no role in them, and its leadership is at odds with that of   which actually carried them out. The Obama administration argued ”that its position [was] legitimate because the Islamic State used to be a Qaeda affiliate in Iraq during the Iraq war,” The New York Times has reported. The Trump administration’s strikes this month prompted new calls in Congress for a clear Syria strategy, as NPR’s Susan Davis and Geoff Bennett reported, adding that ”lawmakers are split over whether [the 2001 AUMF] covers attacks against the Assad government.” Ryan did not immediately respond to today’s letter. He has previously called the recent strikes against the Syrian military ”appropriate and just,” as NPR reported, but he added: ”I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort.”"
"Halfway into a   worker strike, Brazil’s biggest cities have partially shut down  —   with many major thoroughfares clogged and businesses shuttered for the day. The nationwide strike mounted by unions aims to unravel a set of measures supported by President Michel Temer, legislation that would loosen labor laws and roll back pension regulations. NPR’s Philip Reeves reports, ”As darkness fell, clashes broke out between protestors and riot police in Rio de Janeiro and also Sao Paulo, where a crowd tried to march on Temer’s residence.” ”It is going to be the biggest strike in the history of Brazil,” Paulo Pereira da Silva, the president of trade union group Forca Sindical, told Reuters at the outset of the work stoppage. And while it’s unclear whether that claim has come true, Philip tells us that the strikers’ efforts did have an obvious effect in Brazil’s streets: ”Public transport’s badly disrupted, especially in Brazil’s largest city São Paulo. Many schools, banks and businesses are closed around the country. And in Rio de Janeiro, there have been skirmishes between protesters, who are blocking roads, and the riot police trying to clear them.” Roadblocks of burning tires and other improvised barricades have shut down popular routes not simply in Sao Paulo and Rio, but in Belo Horizonte and the capital Brasilia, too. There are so few people on the streets of Sao Paulo, the BBC’s Daniel Gallas reports the empty urban areas have taken on the atmosphere of a holiday. But it is not a celebration that inspired the strike. Rather, unions are protesting legislation now working its way through Congress, one bill that would weaken labor laws and the other that would overhaul the pension system, bumping back the eligibility age to 65 for men and 62 for women. Temer  —   who came to power after his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached on corruption charges  —   remains deeply unpopular in Brazil, but he still enjoys significant support from lawmakers. Both measures have had little difficulty progressing in the Legislature. The president argues these changes are necessary to save an economy that has been flailing recently, suffering what the BBC calls the country’s worst recession in more than a century. The New York Times breaks down some of the issues at hand: ”Indeed, some problems are glaring. The pension system allows many Brazilians to retire in their 50s, causing deficits to balloon and depleting resources for basic services like education and health care. And some economists contend that byzantine labor laws stymie competitiveness and prevent companies from hiring more workers.” Yet Brazil’s unions are less than inclined to trust Temer, who is facing massive bribery allegations of his own. ”Temer hates working people,” Marco Basaglia, a bank employee in São Paulo, told the Times. ”This is the worst government Brazil has ever had.” Still, Temer remains undeterred by the unrest that unraveled many of the major cities’ services Friday, asserting that Brazil’s plight is a product of the administration that came before him. ”The inheritance of that was 13 million unemployed,” Temer’s spokesperson Marcio de Freitas said, according to Al Jazeera. ”The government is carrying out reforms to change this situation, to create jobs and economic growth.”"
"The U. S. economy grew at just a 0. 7 percent annual rate in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest report on the gross domestic product from the Commerce Department. That’s below market expectations and indicates the economy grew at the slowest pace in three years. Weak auto sales and lower   bills dragged down consumer spending, offsetting a pickup in investment led by housing and oil drilling. Employment costs rose 0. 8 percent in the first quarter. This ”advance” estimate showed the U. S. economy with its slowest growth since the first quarter of 2014. The GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2016 was 2. 1 percent. The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures the prices paid for goods and services purchased by consumers, increased 2. 6 percent in the first quarter. That’s compared with an increase of 2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016."
"President Trump signed an executive order Friday that aims to expand offshore drilling for oil and gas, in a move welcomed by the oil and gas industry and greeted with alarm by environmental groups. ”Renewed offshore energy production will reduce the cost of energy, create countless new jobs, and make America more secure and far more energy independent,” Trump said before signing the document. He said previous restrictions on exploration and production deprive the U. S. of ”potentially thousands and thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in wealth.” The order directs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review a   plan in which President Obama banned drilling in parts of the Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic Oceans. Zinke told reporters Thursday night that will be a long process, and a complex one, acknowledging that not all areas have oil or gas, and not all coastal communities want offshore drilling. But Zinke said revenue from offshore leasing had dropped by $15 billion during the Obama administration, with some of that due to the dropping price of oil, ”but not all of it.” He added that 94 percent of the nation’s outer continental shelf is currently off limits for development of any kind. The oil and gas industry is enthusiastic about today’s executive order. In a statement, Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute said expanding drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico in particular ”could create thousands of jobs and provide billions of dollars in government revenue.” Along the Atlantic coast, though, more than 100 cities and towns have passed resolutions against offshore drilling. In Kure Beach, N. C. Mayor Emilie Swearingen said tourism is the second largest industry in the state. ”We don’t want the devastation from an oil spill,” she said. ”It’s not whether it would happen, but when it would happen.” George Edwardson, president of the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, said his council may consider filing suit at some point to challenge an expansion of offshore drilling. ”Most of our food comes from the ocean,” he said. Zinke told reporters the administration will not remove the ”stringent environmental safeguards already in place.” He also said he was optimistic about the development of offshore wind energy. The Obama administration’s drilling bans will remain in place for now. But even if they are eventually rolled back, there are questions about how effective the executive order will be in spurring new drilling. The price of oil is relatively low, hovering at about $50 a barrel, and offshore drilling is an expensive endeavor, especially in places like the Arctic. When asked whether the administration had been approached by any companies interested in drilling in the Arctic, Zinke said, ”No.” During Trump’s remarks, he stressed that the executive order ”reverses the previous administration’s Arctic leasing ban.” But it’s not clear whether the Trump administration can actually reverse this separate offshore drilling ban, which Obama announced a month before leaving office. He used an obscure provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to issue what he called a permanent ban on offshore drilling in large parts of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. Obama administration officials said at the time that the law had no provision to reverse such a ban. The Trump executive order says he is modifying the text of the Obama memorandum to revert back to earlier designations. But lawyers say it’s unclear whether he has the power to do so, because the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act does not explicitly allow a president to get rid of a designation. ”It’s uncharted territory for a president to attempt to completely lift a moratorium like the one President Obama instituted,” says Jayni Hein, policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. Past presidents have tweaked the size of previously designated protected areas, she says, but a   repeal is unprecedented and would likely end up in the courts.  The environmental group Oceana described expanding offshore drilling as a ”huge, bad stupid mistake.” In a statement, the group’s Senior Vice President for U. S. Oceans Jacqueline Savitz said Trump was siding ”with his oil industry allies, in a move disguised as a job creator.” The executive order also imposes a halt on designating or expanding any National Marine Sanctuary, unless the action ”includes a timely, full accounting from the Department of the Interior of any energy or mineral resource potential in the designated area.” Zinke says the administration will have 180 days to review all such designations and expansions over the past decade. He likened this to another executive order this week that directs a review of national monuments on public lands. Last year Obama made headlines when he quadrupled the size of a marine sanctuary in Hawaii. He also created the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine monument, preserving roughly 130 miles of sea canyons and underwater mountains off New England."
"In 19th century Georgia, Princess Barbare Jorjadze grew up to be the country’s first feminist. But until recently she’s been best remembered for another accomplishment  —   her cookbook. Jorjadze’s book, Georgian Cuisine and Tried Housekeeping Notes, has long been a prized household possession. While its more elaborate recipes have been forgotten, the book’s simpler dishes have retained currency through nearly 150 years of cataclysmic changes. Two centuries, two world wars, and two empires (Tsarist and Soviet) later, Georgians still make a holiday dish of satsivi, with turkey in a walnut   gravy, pretty much the way Jorjadze instructed in 1874. ”Put half a pound of crushed walnuts in the stock. Add two diced onions and two cloves of finely chopped garlic, coriander and other herbs, and bring to boil.” Jorjadze suggested boiling and then broiling the turkey to soften the meat. Scrawny and petite compared to their giant American cousins, Georgian turkeys don’t tend to respond well to direct roasting. Georgian chefs now increasingly consult Jorjadze’s book for forgotten flavors, many of them obliterated by the Soviet Union’s homogenizing influence. ”Diversity and extravagance were frowned upon in the Soviet [Union],” says Tekuna Gachechiladze, a prominent Georgian chef and restaurateur. ”Daily cooking was reduced to humdrum things like fried, minced meat patties and mashed potatoes, while proper Georgian meals like satsivi were served only on holidays.” Today, Georgia is having something of a gastronomic renaissance, with restaurateurs improvising beyond staples like walnut   veggies and shashlik. The trend is largely toward fusion and innovation, but it is also about putting history on the menu. Gachechiladze is at the forefront of this phenomenon. Known as the queen of Georgian fusion cuisine, Gachechiladze considers Jorjadze the founding mother of this style of cooking. In her book, Jorjadze offers recipes not for just Georgian, but also European, Middle Eastern and Russian specialties. She shares tips for making béchamel and tkemali, classic French and Georgian sauces, respectively. A recipe for blancmange, a sweet French milk pudding, comes a few pages after its Georgian counterpart, pelamushi, made with boiled grape juice. ”She wanted Georgians to keep an open mind about what’s going on   around the world, to preserve the tradition, but also to be receptive to new ideas,” says Gachechiladze. A soup made with the Asian fruit quince, inspired by Jorjdaze’s cookbook, is on the menu of Gachechildze’s Littera, a handsome restaurant ensconced in an atmospheric garden of a 1900s mansion in Tbilisi. Barbarestan, another gourmet restaurant in the city, offers a cuisine based almost entirely on Jorjadze’s recipes, served in a setting evocative of her era of elites and their dinner parties. Jorjadze was born in 1833, when Georgia was part of the Russian Empire and recovering from centuries of wars.   was the best bet for education for women then, even for the  . Jorjadze was taught to read and write by her peasant nanny  —   a fact that she would later emphasize in her writings about women’s role in the Georgian society: ”Women had been the custodians of knowledge and champions of literacy when men held to their weapons and fought to defend the homeland.” A daughter of Prince Davit Eristavi, Jorjadze was married off at the age of 12, an experience she would recall with bitterness. ”I was so young at my wedding that I thought it was some sort of game,” she later told a younger writer, Mariam Demuria, who recalled it in a letter published in a local newspaper. When a bat flew into the church, Jorjadze nearly went chasing after it, interrupting the ceremony. In her writings, she barely mentions her husband, Zakaria Jorjadze, an obscure military officer and spendthrift. But as evidenced by her correspondence with her friends, she was very close to her brother Rapiel Eristavi, a poet, historian and prominent member of Georgian literati circle. Jorjadze became the first woman to force her way into this snobbish circle of men, by publishing her writings in the popular literary magazine Tsiskari, and asserting a place for herself as poet, playwright and essayist. Jorjadze used both prose and verse to call for respect and equality for women. In a letter published in Kvali magazine in 1893, ”A Few Words to the Attention of Young Men,” she offered a caustic response to men criticizing women for their supposed preoccupation with soiree and gossip. ”From a very young age, we are told, ’since god made you a woman, you must sit silently, look at nobody, go nowhere, shut your ears and your eyes, and just sit there. Education and learning of languages is none of your concern. ’... Now you tell me, if this creature, kept uneducated and confined, ends up being less than perfect, who is to blame?” Jorjadze wrote in her j’accuse, now regarded by gender historians as the nation’s first feminist manifesto. She went on to call on men to ”abandon pride and envy, and let your sisters have an equal access to education and tutoring . .. and the new generation of women will spare no labor and energy to contribute their share to progress.” Her experience as a   intellectual is believed to have driven Jorjadze to push for universal education. She even put together a Georgian language children’s primer. Lasha Bakradze, the director of the Georgian Literature Museum, is convinced that Jorjadze’s cookbook was a patriotic endeavor, a product of her zeal to enlighten. ”Cookery and household management books were then fashionable in England, and the trend was picked up in Russia,” says Bakradze. ”Jorjadze must have believed that Georgia, just as any   nation, should have its own guidebook on cooking and running the household.” Researchers believe that Jorjadze’s cookbook was influenced by two  : the English writer Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management and her Russian counterpart Elena Molokhovets’ Gift to Young Housewives. Jorjadze’s book was also snapped up by the thousands. In what was then de rigueur for the genre, Jorjardze offered not just cooking advice, but also tips on dining etiquette, duly  . ”The man of the house offers wine to the guests, the lady of the house offers fruit, coffee and tea,” she wrote. She also provided some housekeeping   tips for exterminating flies, ants and mice, and removing stain from cloth. A doting mother of three, Jorjadze saw motherhood and family as ultimately the responsibility of women  —   a view shared by most Georgians to this day. Perhaps it’s no surprise that her   oeuvre was left to gather dust in libraries. And so, a writer who pushed hard for women to have a life beyond the kitchen came to be remembered only for her prowess in the kitchen. Gender researcher Tamta Melashvili blames this on sexism in history studies. ”At the end of the day, men made decisions on what bits of history should be highlighted and what is best left sitting on the library shelves,” she says. In recent years, however, gender researchers have promoted Jorjadze as an unsung hero. She took to the pen not just to advise on the perfect khachapuri, a Georgian cheese pie, but also to call for a greater public role for women. This year, the Georgian National Library, which has original copies of her cookbook, opened a reading room named after Jorjadze. The room has become the gathering place for discussing Georgian women who made history. ”We call this the first feminist reading room in Georgia,” says Melashvili. The room’s murals depict Jorjadze and a generation of female writers, activists and politicians whom she paved the way for. She is portrayed as a grand dame draped in traditional Georgian attire. Words pour out of a pitcher in her hands, as she looks on at activists and researchers gathered in the room. Jorjadze’s ability to effectively combine work, activism and domesticity offers important lessons for   Georgian women, who also grapple with the same issues, says Lela Gaprindashvili, a professor of philosophy at Tbilisi State University and the chair of a nonprofit called Women’s Initiative for Equality. ”We . .. need to be informed by our own history of emancipation,” she says. ”There are no simple, quick solutions to the issues women face today. But it is important for us to study and remember the women, who, like Jorjadze, were the first to make a difference, to propose a recipe.” Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, Georgia. "
"Nearly 60 percent of Americans admit knowing nothing at all about Sikhs. That lack of knowledge comes at a deadly cost. In the wake of recent incidents from the 2012 Oak Creek Massacre to a shooting of a Sikh man in Washington this March, the Sikh community is taking a more vocal stand against hate. This month, the National Sikh Campaign, an advocacy group led by former political strategists, launched a $1. 3 million awareness campaign, ”We are Sikhs.” Funded entirely by   donations, the campaign’s ads will air nationally on CNN and Fox News as well as on TV channels in central California  —   home to nearly 50 percent of the Sikh American population  —   and online. The ad, which aims to tackle misperceptions of Sikhism, shows Sikh men and women speaking about how values of their faith  —   tolerance, religious freedom and gender equality  —   align with American values. According to Gurwin Singh Ahuja, the executive director of the National Sikh Campaign, ”These are core values of the United States, yet we’re often perceived as   or as religious extremists. Our community is hurt by bigotry and ignorance, which is, in many ways, compounded by our own silence. To change these perceptions, I felt we had an obligation to share our stories with our neighbors.” Some young Sikhs like Sabrina Rangi, a medical student at Michigan State, are optimistic about the potential impact of the campaign. ”I think after years of struggling to find the right words, this campaign is getting it right,” says Rangi. ”This initiative embodies everything that Sikhism represents, especially its emphasis on shared values and equality. I see this practiced in the gurdwara, where all of the participants sit together on the floor, beneath our holy book, to symbolize that regardless of gender, race or social standing, we are all one.” Founded over 500 years ago, Sikhism is a monotheistic religion centered on the teachings of 10 spiritual gurus. Guru Nanak, the founder of the faith, rejected India’s caste system and declared all human beings equal. During Guru Nanak’s time, Indian women were considered property with little social standing. Nanak denounced the sexism of the day by proclaiming women equal and encouraging them to participate in all aspects of the gurdwara, or Sikh temple. The 10th Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, also promoted the principle of equality. During his time, family names signified social status and caste. To break this tradition, Guru Gobind Singh gave all men the last name ”Singh,” meaning lion, and women the name ”Kaur,” meaning princess. Sikh turbans, the most visible symbol of the faith, are also a rejection of hierarchy of the caste system. Worn historically by South Asian royalty, the Sikh Gurus adopted the practice of wearing the turban to demonstrate a public commitment to maintaining the values and ethics of the tradition, including service, compassion and honesty. But the turban’s symbolism is lost on most Americans. According to Ahuja, ”Our turbans, which are often perceived as symbols of extremism, are actually representations of equality.” Following Sept. 11, images of Osama bin Laden and   associates wearing turbans circulated frequently in the media. Heightened national fear in combination with poor awareness of America’s Sikh community has often made Sikhs the victims of   hate crimes. Valarie Kaur, a Sikh civil rights activist and lawyer, warns that violence against Sikhs is not only cases of mistaken identity. Attacks against Sikhs in the United States   the Sept. 11 attacks. In 1907, a group of Sikh immigrants were driven out of town by xenophobic mobs during the height of the American nativist moment. Whether 1907 or today, according to Kaur, ”it appears to matter little to perpetrators of hate crimes whether the person they are attacking is Sikh and not Muslim. They see turbans, beards and brown skin and it is enough for them to see us as foreign, suspect and potentially terrorist. It’s time to retire the term ’mistaken identity.’ It’s a dangerous term, because it implies that there is a correct target for hate.” During a recent segment from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, correspondent Hasan Minhaj spoke to a group of Sikhs about ways in which they could distance themselves from hate crimes. When Minhaj questioned why more Sikhs don’t simply proclaim, ”hey, I’m not Muslim,” a member of the group, responded saying, ”It’s not just an option for us to throw another community under the bus.” Muslim American leaders commend the Sikh on their emphasis on tolerance and solidarity. ”It’s very impressive that whenever a Sikh person or place of worship is attacked, the community is always quick to condemn Islamophobia and   attacks, and send a message of unity,” says Arsalan Bukhari, the executive director of the Washington State chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). ”That’s been helpful because it tells the average person that Sikhs consider all Americans, including Muslim Americans, as their neighbors.” Rajdeep Singh Jolly, of the Sikh Coalition, however, warns that public relations efforts alone won’t eliminate hate crimes. ”Preventing hate crimes requires sustained   engagement in every aspect of life over the course of generations. It requires eternal vigilance.” He says acting on beliefs can be a transformative way to live out the message of tolerance and acceptance. ”In the context of schools, for example, Sikh parents need to be participating in their local PTAs and be at the table when schools make decisions that affect their kids. Sikh children need to be participating fully in school activities from sports to community service. In the context of employment discrimination, Sikhs need to be visible in all aspects of our workforce.” The Sikh Coalition, the nation’s largest Sikh civil rights and advocacy group, has played a pivotal role in advocating for legislation and policy to recognize and prosecute hate crimes. In 2011, the group wrote to   General Eric Holder to request the inclusion of Sikhs and other minority religious groups in FBI Hate Crimes Statistics. Although the federal government didn’t immediately accede to the Coalition’s demands, the 2012 Oak Creek massacre shifted the tide. In 2013, shortly before the anniversary of the tragedy, Holder announced that the FBI would begin tracking hate crimes against Sikhs. Singh Jolly warns that data alone will not solve hate crimes, but stresses its important role in underscoring the active threats many Sikh Americans face. ”Law enforcement agencies across the country now must receive training about who Sikhs are and what makes us susceptible to hate crimes,” says Singh. ”Over time, both directly and indirectly, this training will lead hopefully to better prevention efforts among law enforcement agencies and policymakers.” The recent uptick in hate crimes has galvanized Sikh advocacy groups to make hate crime prevention a national priority. In March, Sikh activists worked with Sen. Maria Cantwell,  . to circulate a letter in Congress calling on the White House to create a task force to prevent hate violence. Less than a month later, the Justice Department announced it would update its new crime reduction task force by announcing a new subcommittee to address hate crimes. Despite the creation of a new subcommittee, activists are cautious in their optimism because of the larger rhetoric of the Trump administration. According to Valarie Kaur, ”The establishment of the task force is necessary but not enough to prevent future hate crimes. The only way for this administration to prevent future hate crimes is to stop the onslaught of executive orders, policies, and rhetoric that fuel a climate of hate against our communities.” For over a century, the Sikh community has suffered in silence from hate violence. But from ”We are Sikhs” to recent advocacy efforts, more Sikhs are standing up to demand their fellow Americans not look away while they lose their loved ones to hate. In the eyes of Manpreet Kaur, a Sikh student at California State   ”People could think we’re being too forward and just making propaganda, but whatever they think, they’ll definitely learn more about us.” Akinyi Ochieng is a writer and researcher studying at the London School of Economics. Follow her @kikiochieng."
"Millennials are a tough group to pin down  —   with their lack of landlines, refusal to answer cellphones and reluctance to respond to online surveys. But one study has managed to capture what   to    are thinking about in the current political moment, including their assessment of President Trump’s first 100 days in office. Short version: They think he’s doing a lousy job. Trump’s approval rating among this group is an abysmal 32 percent, and 41 percent say he deserves an F for his performance thus far, according to a poll published on Tuesday by the Harvard Institute of Politics and the 33rd edition of the Public Opinion Project. The age group that Harvard surveyed fits into the millennial generation, though often ”millennials” refers to people up to 35 years old. This generation is ”not like their parents,” says polling director John Della Volpe. For starters, the Pew Research Center found that millennials  —   about 83 million strong  —   is more ethnically and racially diverse than any other in American history. Paul Taylor, author of The Next America, argues that unlike their Gen X or Baby Boomer (grand) parents, these young Americans have relationships with a much broader group of people. That’s especially true among college students. The Harvard poll reveals some interesting connections between the kinds of people millennials know and their political leanings. For instance, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to have a close relationship with a police officer, drug addict or someone in recovery, a truck driver, veteran and a millionaire. Similarly, Democrats are more likely to be close to a Muslim person, an Ivy League graduate, or an undocumented immigrant. Regardless of party affiliation, nearly half of this behemoth group believes politics is relevant to their lives. Yet they’re distrustful of government bodies, including the president and Congress. Chances they’ll run for elected office before they’re 50? They say 9 percent. In order to be coaxed out of their regular routine to head into a voting booth, they expect to be wooed. Students in a recent focus group at The Ohio State University in Columbus embody a few more of Volpe’s findings: Clinton Supporter, Not A Democrat, Like 55 percent of her peers,    Mikayla Bodey voted for Hillary Clinton. And when asked to grade Trump, she gives him a ”D.” But even now, she is disinclined to call herself a Democrat, which is pretty typical for a millennial  —   half identify as political independents, Pew has reported. She said she understands the why the two leading parties can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that millennials aren’t swayed by identity politics. Bodey is a senior, just months away from graduation. She has yet to line up a   job, so there’s a genuine sense of urgency when she adds, ”We care about social issues a lot, but we also care about the fact that we’re going have jobs when we leave school. We also care about how our parents are going to retire.” Volpe’s research over the 18 years he’s conducted the poll highlights a new kind of willingness among millennials to take a sort of ”a la carte” approach to politics. Young voters are more willing than ever to ignore conventional party lines and make decisions based on their own experience. That explains how 60 percent of voters like Bodey agree that Trump’s plans to crack down on countries that engage in illegal or unfair trade practices that hurt American workers would make America better, while 45 percent say the administration’s plans to ”repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act would make America worse. Looking For Personalization, Marcus Devies’ email inbox drove him crazy. In the months leading up to the November election, Devies, another Clinton supporter, said he was subject to a daily deluge of emails from the campaign. ”They were very broad, nonspecific recruiting tools,” he said. Much to his frustration they contained ”nothing suited to The Ohio State or Columbus.” It was annoying, but not enough to deter him from voting for Clinton. Still he shares the millennial view that political outreach efforts should be honed and tailored to the specific recipient. Essentially: To win hearts and minds, you have to learn names. This shouldn’t be too surprising when one considers this is the first   generation, and it has a voracious appetite for technology to match. But only a small number a millennials actually worked or volunteered for any of the campaigns. So when those emails arrived, asking for donations or some other form of help, Devies ignored and then deleted them. When asked what would have made him feel more engaged, Devies replied, ”Personalization definitely would have helped. . .. I could tell it was sent with a click of button to thousands of kids.” This ties into Volpe’s broader analysis of attitudes toward trust in elected officials and the political system in general. More than half of this generation  —   53 percent  —   say elected officials don’t seem to share the same priorities. They trust the president to ”do the right thing” 24 percent of the time. (That’s plummeted from 41 percent of the time in 2012, under Obama.)     News, Republican Zach McIntyre, a freshman from a small rural town in Ohio, is one of the millennials who turned out for and continues to back Trump. A good chunk of McIntyre’s high school buddies entered the military after graduation. ”There are no jobs,” he said by way of explanation. Although, his friends are too young to be veterans, the anecdote dovetails with Volpe’s research on young Republicans who are far more likely than a Democrat to know someone who’s served in Iraq or Afghanistan  —   43 percent versus 26 percent, respectively. McIntyre also makes concerted effort to stay away from news on social media. While nearly half of millennials believes their Facebook feed is ”fake news,” conservatives are a more inclined to hold this view. ”The constant battering of both sides is discrediting all [news outlets] in my opinion,” he said. Drawing A Line, Kyle Whitlatch, 19, is an outlier when it comes to party loyalty. Whitlatch, whose parents are both women, is reluctant to call himself a   voter, but he admits he is ”as close as you can get.” ”For me, LGBTQ rights are the end issue,” he said. ”If you are even kind of questionable on that issue, there is no chance you’ll ever win a vote of mine.” Whitlatch’s conviction on this topic and other social issue is representative of widespread millennial attitudes.   percent of millennials support   marriage, a 2015 Pew study found, including a majority of Republican and   millennials. On other social issues, according to the Harvard poll, more millennials agree than disagree that the government should do more to curb climate change, ”even at the expense of economic growth” that the government should spend more money to reduce poverty and that recent immigration has ”done more harm than good.” And there is even more support in those areas now than there was five years ago. The numbers on affirmative action remain low  —   only 19 percent approve of practices that give qualified minorities special preference in hiring and education, but that’s up from only 14 percent in 2012."
"  Jalkh has stepped down as the leader of France’s   National Front party, after controversy over his remarks about Nazi Germany’s use of Zyklon B gas to kill Jews during World War II. Jalkh had taken over from presidential candidate Marine Le Pen just three days ago. With Le Pen in a tight race against centrist Emmanuel Macron ahead of the May 7 election, accusations of Holocaust denial in her party’s leadership have stirred memories of its founder, her father   Le Pen, whose xenophobic and   outbursts led her to oust him from the party in 2015. Jalkh ”feels that there isn’t the necessary serenity for him to to perform this interim role,” National Front vice president Louis Aliot told TV station BFM on Friday. Aliot, who is also Le Pen’s longtime partner, said Jalkh plans to defend himself from allegations that he denied the reality of the Holocaust  —   an act that’s illegal in France. Jalkh’s resignation came days after a 2000 interview was resurfaced by journalist Laurent de Boissieu, who said on Twitter that he found it in an academic paper that was later republished. In that interview, Jalkh was quoted discussing skepticism over the feasibility of using Zyklon B gas to carry out mass exterminations he also cited Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. Questions about Jalkh’s views this week prompted Le Monde to note that in 1991, he attended a commemoration of the anniversary of the death of Marshal Petain, who was branded as a Nazi collaborator and convicted of treason after heading   France’s government during World War II. The National Front will now be led by interim President Steeve Briois, a mayor of the northern city of  ."
"”Marcus Gavius Apicius purchased me on a day hot enough to fry sausage on the market stones.” So begins the tale of Thrasius, the fictional narrator of Feast of Sorrow. Released this week, the novel is based on the real life of ancient Roman noble Marcus Gavius Apicius, who is thought to have inspired and contributed to the world’s oldest surviving cookbook, a   collection titled Apicius. But it is Crystal King’s Feast of Sorrow that brings readers into the kitchens of ancient Rome, where nobles and slaves jockeyed for position by using food as bargaining chips for personal and professional advancement  —   whether it’s the radishes that Thrasius carves into roses for his lady love and fellow slave, Passia, or the   pastries stuffed with ham that he makes to delight the dinner guests of his gluttonous master. For Thrasius, relocating from the countryside to the metropolis also means the coveted opportunity to cook, and serve, the exotic animals killed by Roman gladiators: bears, tigers, rhinoceros. During Apicius’ time, in the 1st century AD, the Roman Empire stretched from northern Europe to Africa, with a total population estimated up to 100 million people. It was an empire filled with ingredients and food traditions that made their way to the capital city with traders and slaves. At the same time, Romans were extremely influential throughout the empire, bringing the original versions of everything from haggis to French toast to Roman settlements. ”As conquerors, Romans brought their food and lifestyle with them,” King says. ”Excavations in Britain have turned up many food artifacts that originated in Rome, like garlic, asparagus and turnips.” History tells us that Apicius had a voracious appetite for the finest foods. The Roman naturalist Pliny, a contemporary of the gourmand, reported that Apicius referred to flamingo tongues as being ”of the most exquisite flavor.” Apicius is also credited with inventing what is considered to be the world’s first version of foie gras, made from pigs rather than geese. ”We think of foie gras as a French delicacy,” says King, ”but it was   that Apicius was known for feeding his pigs with dried figs and then overdosing them with honeyed wine to produce fatty livers.” But at the center of Feast of Sorrow is the view of the ancient Roman world, by turns exciting and cruel, through the eyes of slave Thrasius, a talented cook who is purchased by Apicius for the unimaginable sum of 20, 000 denarii, about 10 times the yearly wages of a common soldier. ”Apicius would have gone out of his way to pay for the best cook,” asserts King. ”He was a lover of luxury who traveled the world in search of the best ingredients, at great expense. He would want to have his kitchen led by someone who could do justice to those ingredients.” Indeed, his renown as an epicure inspired the eponymous cookbook Apicius, published three centuries after his death. Thrasius soon learns that Apicius seeks to elevate his political power by serving elaborate meals to the Roman elite, dishes made with the most   ingredients of the time, from oysters to silphium, an herb native to   Libya that was already going extinct during the time of Apicius, despite desperate attempts at cultivation. ”Silphium was their most precious flavoring,” says King. ”In fact, it was so prized that you’ll find its image on coins.” Indeed, in Feast of Sorrow, Thrasius is flattered to be given an amulet by Apicius emblazoned with the silphium leaf, a symbol of how prized he is by his master. With romance, intrigue and tragedy supplied in abundance throughout the story, it’s the book’s title which provides clues as to the downfall that must inevitably come from Apicius’ insatiable hunger. ”The characters’ lives are consumed by sorrow, even as they are consuming these feasts,” King says. ”Apicius has everything, yet at the same time, he has nothing.” Using food as a central theme for the story was a logical concept in King’s view, because food was such a precious commodity. ”Even the word ’salary’ comes from the Latin word ’salarium’,” she says, referring to a Roman soldier’s allowance for purchasing salt. During the process of writing elaborate descriptions of roasted hyacinth bulbs and morels cooked in wine, King felt the need to delve into Roman cookery, consulting with historians. The result is a companion digital cookbook called A Taste of Feast of Sorrow. What King found was that ancient Roman cuisine was far different from   Italian recipes, as lemons, tomatoes and pasta were not yet part of the culinary landscape. Instead, she found herself trying to learn how to stomach the flavor of garum, a potent fish sauce made from fish entrails that was found in nearly every dish of the time. ”I grew up in a landlocked area,” King says, ”and I’m not really that fond of fish. Garum was the hardest for me to figure out, but when you use it sparingly  —   sometimes just a couple of drops  —   it isn’t really fishy, but adds salt and umami.” King and her husband now make Parthian chicken regularly, a roasted chicken flavored with sweet white wine and asfoetida powder  —   a substitute for the   silphium. Still, she laments that she’ll never know what certain ancient delicacies, like peacock, taste like. On the other hand, some delicacies are perhaps better left to the imagination. ”Dormice were fried and eaten whole,” she notes with a bit of a shudder. ”Romans would eat all the pieces of the animal, and I mean all the pieces. We talk about ’tail to hoof’ eating today, but they took it to a whole other level. I’ll stick to the Parthian chicken.” By Crystal King, The Apicius cookbook has a simple fried dough recipe that calls for the cook to combine coarse wheat flour (or semolina) with water or milk over heat until it’s a thick porridge. That mixture is spread out on a sheet, cut into pieces then fried in oil, drenched in honey then sprinkled with pepper. However, the ancient Roman Cato, in his treatise On Agriculture, has a tastier recipe. Mix the cheese and spelt in the same way, sufficient to make the number desired. Pour lard into a hot copper vessel, and fry one or two at a time, turning them frequently with two rods, and remove when done. Spread with honey, sprinkle with   and serve. Simply put, take equal parts ricotta or other soft cheese and flour (you can use any type of flour that is to your liking) form it into dough balls, then fry in oil. Let cool, roll in honey and sprinkle in poppy seeds. These are extra good if sprinkled with pepper and if you substitute poppy seeds for toasted sesame seeds. To get a sense of proportion, a half cup of ricotta and a half cup of flour will make approximately six   fritters."
"Here is a proposition that may seem   to many people: As societies become more modern, religion loses its grip. People separate their religion from their institutions and from parts of their lives. Sociologists have a name for this idea. They call it the ”secularization thesis.” Now, research suggests the story is more complicated. In 1822, Thomas Jefferson suggested an early version of it, predicting that Unitarianism ”will, ere long, be the religion of the majority from north to south.” Some data from modern countries support the thesis. Fifty years ago, about 4 of 10 children in England attended Sunday school. Today, it’s only about 10 percent. In the United States, just 5 percent of the population in 1972 reported no religious affiliation. By 2016, 1 out of 4 said they were unaffiliated. Recent research, however, has suggested that religion is more durable than was previously thought. While church attendance has declined sharply in western Europe, secularization has been less evident in the United States. The number of Americans who list their church affiliation as ”none” has certainly increased, but more than 70 percent still identify generally as Christian. The new consensus of sociologists and demographers is that modernization and secularization are indeed related, but in complex ways. A study released this week by the Pew Research Center on the relation in the United States between religiosity and educational attainment (one component of modernization, along with technological change and others) at first glance appears to support the secularization thesis: The more education people have, the less religious they are. ”College graduates are less likely to say they believe in God with absolute certainty,” noted the lead Pew researcher, Gregory Smith. ”They are less likely to say that religion is very important in their lives. They are less likely to say they pray regularly, and college graduates are more likely than others to identify themselves as atheists and agnostics.” A closer look at the data, however, offers a more nuanced picture. While highly educated Jews tend to be less observant than less educated Jews, the relation between education and religiosity is weaker among those Americans with a strong Christian identity. ”Highly educated [Christian] adherents are just as religious, in some cases more religious, than their fellow members who have might have less education,” Smith said. Among mainline Protestants, for example, college graduates were actually found to be more likely than noncollege graduates to report weekly church attendance. Regardless of their educational attainment, these Christians find meaning in their church experience. The sharp rise in the number of Americans who report no religious affiliation may also have an explanation that is unrelated to secularization. Research by Philip Schwadel at the University of Nebraska suggests it may simply be that it was less acceptable 50 years ago to identify as religiously unaffiliated than it is today. Schwadel and others also argue there are significant differences between the United States and Europe when it comes to the process of secularization. In Europe, organized religion has generally been associated with governments to a far greater degree than in the United States. As a result,   sentiment may have been more likely in Europe to produce antagonism toward the church. Government support for religion in many western European countries may also have weakened the vitality of those church communities. ”When a state creates a relationship with a religion, religious leaders no longer have the same impetus to go out and get people excited,” said Schwadel. ”They get money from the state through taxes, so they don’t have to collect money from their congregants.” In the United States, by contrast, religious leaders have to ”hustle” more, Schwadel said. ”They need to get more congregants if their church is going to survive.” Perhaps as a result, Americans are more committed than Europeans to their church congregations. The notion that religious belief and practice have evolved with modernization does remain broadly accepted. As literacy has increased and scientific knowledge has advanced, supernatural explanations for developments in the natural world have become less important. Religion has nevertheless survived, Schwadel argues, because it plays a variety of roles. ”Religion provides people with a lot more than just explanations for the natural world,” Schwadel said. ”It provides community. It provides them with friends. It provides them with psychological support and economic support. It provides a lot more than simply an understanding of where they are in the world in relation to the afterlife.” A 2016 Pew study found that more Americans reported growing feelings of ”spirituality,” even while saying they were less attached to organized religion. To the extent that churches respond to that need, they will presumably have better prospects for survival. The question that religious leaders and sociologists of religion face is whether modernization will eventually lead to secularization in the United States and other countries, just as it has in western Europe. Some argue that a diminished emphasis on traditional doctrine about the meaning of salvation, for example, or the existence of heaven and hell, is merely an early sign of growing secularism. Among the pessimists about the future of religion is the writer Rod Dreher, whose new book The Benedict Option outlines a survival strategy for Christians ”in a   nation.” ”I’ve been going around to different colleges, Catholic and evangelical, giving speeches, and at every single one of these colleges, the professors tell me the same thing,” Dreher said. ”The kids are good kids, but they’re coming out of families [and] local churches and youth ministries knowing almost nothing about the historic Christian faith.” Dreher is now convinced that the United States ”is on the same downward path in terms of religious observance that Europe has been on for a long time.” ”It’s all about emotion,” he said."
"The idea of measuring an American president by the accomplishments of his first 100 days in office goes back to 1933 and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dash to staunch a banking crisis and pull America out of the Great Depression. In a July 24, 1933, fireside chat, he assessed the early months of his administration. ”I think that we all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal,” Roosevelt said. He had signed a record 15 major pieces of legislation in those first 100 days. But it’s not as simple as the legend would make it seem. ”Presidents since Roosevelt have been held up to a standard that not even Roosevelt achieved,” said historian Patrick Maney, a professor at Boston College who has written books about Presidents Clinton and FDR. So Maney is on something of a quixotic mission to set the record straight. The idea of Roosevelt coming into office with a big agenda and a compliant Congress is a myth, he says. ”Only two or, at most, three of those measures actually originated in the White House,” Maney said of the 15 major pieces of legislation signed by Roosevelt. ”Almost all the rest had originated in Congress and many  —   including federal relief for the unemployed, the Tennessee Valley Authority  —   had been up for debate for years.” Roosevelt, initially at least, opposed the creation of the FDIC. Now it is one of the enduring legacies of his first 100 days. So in Maney’s view it wasn’t just about the president it was about Congress too. And that’s a lesson many presidents have learned over time  —   that their greatest domestic achievements come not from the White House but from their ability to work with the 535 people down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. And often it takes a long time. Social Security was created two years after Roosevelt took office. The major immigration and tax legislation during President Reagan’s administration didn’t come until nearly 6 years in. Welfare reform happened in President Clinton’s second term. Put another way, the presidency is a long game. That’s what President Kennedy argued in his inaugural address after laying out an ambitious agenda. ”All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days,” Kennedy said. ”Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.” During his first 100 days, Kennedy authorized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Reagan was nearly killed in an assassination attempt after little more than two months in office. Clinton’s first 100 days were almost universally seen as a disaster. There were withdrawn nominations, an economic stimulus plan that died before it got off the ground and a debate over gays in the military that distracted from the rest of his agenda. Yet, when Clinton left office eight years later, he had a 66 percent approval rating. For President George W. Bush the first 100 days ended as a work in progress, with his education and tax legislation still awaiting congressional approval. ”We’ve had some good debates, we’ve made some good progress, and it looks like we’re going to pass some good law,” he said at a luncheon for lawmakers to mark the   marker  —   though he had mightily resisted what he considered the arbitrary milestone. At that point, the late journalist Daniel Schorr summed up Bush this way on NPR’s Talk of the Nation: ”If you say, what has he done in 100 days, not much.” Of course, Bush’s time in office isn’t defined by laws or taxes, but by events no one could have predicted at the end of his first 100 days. Like Bush, Trump has resisted the   mark. But that tweet belied a frantic effort by the president and his administration to prove they’ve had a successful first 100 days (complete with a press release describing his accomplishments as ”historic”). The problem for Trump is not that he’s come up short of Roosevelt, but that he’s come up short of his own promises made during the campaign, with a specific reference to achieving those things within the first 100 days."
"President Trump starts the second hundred days of his administration Sunday with a perhaps unwelcome benchmark: fewer appointees in place than any of his recent predecessors. Only a fraction of the hundreds of key jobs the Trump administration needs to fill have been nominated and confirmed by the Senate.  The nonpartisan Partnership For Public Service lists 556 ”key” positions, including Cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries and ambassadors, and of those positions, just 25 have been confirmed by the Senate. Terry Sullivan, executive director of the White House Transition Project, calls it a ”really, really slow performance,” with many contributing factors. One of the biggest problems was the Trump transition’s very slow start. You might remember that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was put in charge of the transition when Trump won the GOP nomination. But just three days after the election, he was ousted from the job. Clay Johnson III, who helped President George W. Bush staff up his administration, says that put the Trump team in an immediate hole. ”Everything they had done was just thrown out,” Johnson said. ”So they started from scratch the first day of the transition, and that’s a very steep hill to climb.” The Trump administration blames Democrats in Congress for blocking and holding up the president’s nominations. On NBC’s Meet the Press last week, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus pointed the finger at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, saying Senate Democrats ”have done something that even many Democrats and even   pundits have said is inexcusable, which is to hold up one nominee after the next.” But that argument doesn’t hold up. Not only do Republicans control the Senate calendar, but, going back to the Partnership for Public Service’s numbers, the administration hasn’t even submitted nominations for more than 400 of those 556 key positions. The White House, perhaps with an eye on the   benchmark, submitted a flurry of nominations late last week, including several deputy secretaries and undersecretaries. And the Senate on Thursday confirmed Alexander Acosta as secretary of the Labor Department. Acosta’s confirmation leaves only one vacant seat in the president’s Cabinet  ” the nomination of Robert Lighthizer as U. S. trade representative who was voted out of committee this week. Trump political adviser Stephen Bannon has talked of doing away with the   ”administrative state.” But Terry Sullivan at the White House Transition Project says there no evidence that Trump is filing jobs at agencies he cares about, such as the Departments of Defense or Homeland Security, while purposefully neglecting agencies he doesn’t, like the EPA. ”You don’t see that,” he says. ”You see just this vast, common low performance across all agencies, regardless of their agenda.” Sullivan believes another reason for the slow pace of hiring by Trump is that many of his nominees have been wealthy, with complex financial backgrounds that make vetting more difficult. In fact, vetting problems led at least two of the new administration’s   nominees to back out. Squabbling among the well known factions within the White House is another likely cause of delays, as is the reported insistence of the president that only loyalists who supported his campaign be named to top positions in his administration. Former U. S. Ambassador Chase Untermeyer, who served as personnel director in the George H. W. Bush administration, says it’s difficult for any new White House to fill its ranks. He advises the Trump administration to take its time. ”My suggestion is not to feel pressured. Yes, there will be people watching the number of nominations sent to the Hill and the number of empty desks in the various departments and agencies.” But, Untermeyer says, ”it definitely pays off to do the job carefully rather than fast.”  Still, the longer it takes for the president to put his team in place, the longer it will take that team to put in place his policies."
"Updated at 4:30 p. m. ET, Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets Saturday in Washington, D. C. and cities across the globe, for the People’s Climate March, demanding action on protecting the environment. On a sweltering hot day in the nation’s capital, protesters made their way down Pennsylvania Avenue chanting, singing and banging drums. Once they reached the White House, some staged a   while others marched past carrying signs and shouting, ”Shame, shame, shame.” Dennis Creech came to Washington, D. C. from Atlanta. He told NPR’s Jim Kane that saving the climate should not be a partisan issue. ”Who doesn’t want clean air? Who doesn’t want clean water? Who does not want abundant,   energy?” Some common signs read, ”Save the EPA,” and ”Save the Climate, Change the President.” Saturday’s event was inspired by another rally nearly three years ago, when several hundred thousand marchers filled the streets of New York City in what organizers called the largest climate rally ever. They were demanding action at a United Nations Climate Summit. Since then, it’s been a roller coaster ride for activists worried about global warming. In December 2015, the U. S. joined nearly 200 other countries to sign the Paris climate deal, aimed at keeping temperature rise within a somewhat safe level. It was considered one of the major achievements of Barack Obama’s presidency, and the capstone of a series of policy shifts aimed at reducing carbon emissions and avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. The march comes on the symbolic 100th day in office for President Trump, who denies climate change and has called it a Chinese ”hoax.” Trump has vowed to revive the coal industry, one of the nation’s main sources of greenhouse gases, and issued a series of actions ordering his administration to undo every climate regulation it can. ”I don’t think, truthfully, that there’s any big hope that we’re going to get significant climate action out of the Trump administration,” says Bill McKibben, the founder of 350. org and a key organizer of both the New York march and those today. Instead, he hopes to drive home the message to others that Trump’s moves are deeply unpopular. A recent poll by Quinnipiac University finds that   of U. S. voters are concerned about climate change, and nearly as many say the president should not roll back regulations to address it. ”People are outraged by that,” McKibben says. ”And if we make that outrage loud and clear, it will at the very least dampen the enthusiasm of the Congress of going along with this kind of nonsense.” Those taking part in Saturday’s march include labor unions, faith groups, indigenous peoples, and environmental justice advocates. For Emily Verna, of Washington, D. C. the size of the march was encouraging. ”It’s a nice way to recharge and just remember that there is this coalition that’s big, and that we’re going to move forward together, and there’s a lot of us in the fight,” she says. Organizer McKibben wants to broaden protesters’ message to include support for clean energy. A couple of days before the march, he joined U. S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley as they introduced legislation with a goal of putting the U. S. on 100 percent renewable power by 2050. McKibben admits it has no chance of passing in the current Congress. But he says even Trump can’t stop a steady shift to solar and wind as record low prices make them more competitive than ever. Still, McKibben says that shift will happen more slowly under Trump, and every increase in carbon emissions will cause permanent damage. ”No one’s got a method for refreezing the Arctic, or for bringing coral reefs back to life,” he says. ”What Donald Trump is costing us is time, and time is the thing we have the least of in the middle of this emergency.”"
"Updated 10:30 p. m. ET, President Donald Trump passed Saturday on one of the biggest events on Washington’s annual social calendar and, instead, opted to spend his 100th day in office focused on trade and holding a   rally in Harrisburg, Pa. Breaking with tradition, Trump was a   at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner Saturday night in D. C. It was the first time in 36 years that the president has not attended the event. Back in 1981, President Ronald Reagan did not attend because he was recovering from an assassination attempt. President Jimmy Carter did not attend in 1978 and in 1980. President Richard Nixon did not attend the dinner in 1974 and 1972. Rather than attending the annual dinner  —   where the president traditionally is the opening act for a   Hollywood comedian and is also the butt of many of the event’s jokes  —   Trump opted to take a short trip from Washington to Pennsylvania where he visited a tool manufacturing company in Harrisburg and signed two executive orders focused on trade. One of the orders directed the Commerce Department and the U. S. trade representative to conduct a review of existing U. S. international trade and investment agreements and another created a new White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing to be led by Trump adviser Peter Navarro. Then Trump held a rally in in the Pennsylvania city and gave a nearly hourlong stump speech. The move  —   to hold a rally in a battleground state and miss the annual dinner known for glitzy   between Washington journalists and Hollywood celebrities  —   seemed designed to thumb the presidential nose at the Washington press corps, with whom Trump continues to have a tense relationship, while also highlighting Trump’s accomplishments on his 100th day in the Oval Office. Predictably, Trump spent roughly the first 10 minutes of his remarks bashing the media. ”A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation’s capital right now,” the president told the enthusiastic crowd of supporters. He added that back in D. C. they are ”gathered together for the White House correspondents’ dinner  —   without the president.” Trump then told the crowd he was thrilled to be with them instead, many miles away from Washington. Reprising familiar themes from his campaign and his tweets, Trump declared that CNN and MSNBC were both ”fake news.” He also once again referred to the New York Times as ”failing.” Turning one of the traditions of the   milestone on its head, Trump suggested to the crowd that they ”rate the media’s 100 days,” adding, ”because, you know, they are a disgrace.” After rattling through a litany of what he saw as the Times’ bad business decisions over the years, the real estate mogul and former reality TV star declared that the national newspaper of record was ”incompetent and dishonest people.” Before turning his attention to what his administration has done since his inauguration, Trump rendered his verdict media critic in chief. The ”media deserves a big fat failing grade,” the president said. The remainder of the rally was ripped from Trump’s familiar political playbook and was like traveling back in time to his best moments on the 2016 campaign trail. He faulted his predecessor, former President Barack Obama: ”the previous administration gave us a mess.” Then, on the same day that marches had been held worldwide protesting his skeptical views on climate change and seeking great investments in protecting the climate, Trump informed that crowd that he would be making a big decision about the Paris Climate Agreement in the next two weeks. The new president also sought to explain his decision in the past 100 days not to label China a currency manipulator by pointing to the tense situation on the Korean Peninsula and China’s critical role in dealing with the North Korean regime. Trump called Chinese President Xi Jinping ”a good man,” adding ”let’s see what happens.” ”I think it’s not exactly the right time to call China a currency manipulator right now,” the president told the crowd. Trump spent the remainder of his remarks focused on what he referred to as his administration’s ”100 days of action” and all the things he and his team of aides have done since inauguration: And echoing some of the rhetoric of his inaugural address, Trump told the crowd that regardless of race, ”we all bleed the same red blood of patriots,” that ”we are all made by the same Almighty God,” and that ”we are Americans and the future belongs to us.” The rally was the capstone of a past week the White House spent holding events, putting out press releases and otherwise seeking headlines intended to highlight what it views as the new administration’s successes in the last 100 days. Even before his rally Saturday night, the president himself seemed keenly aware that the day is historically a symbolic moment for the media, pundits, the country and perhaps even much of the world to assess his young presidency. ”Mainstream (FAKE) media refuses to state our long list of achievements, including 28 legislative signings, strong borders  great optimism! ,” Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon. Trump also used his annual weekly address to amplify his 100th day message. ”My fellow Americans, I truly believe that the first 100 days of my administration has been just about the most successful in our country’s history,” he said in a video posted on YouTube Saturday. The president spent the remaining four minutes of the weekly address laying out his actions and accomplishments since taking office. Despite Trump’s efforts to focus on his successes, he did not make it through his 100th day in office without another major protest. The People’s Climate March occurred in Washington and other cities across the globe in an effort to bring attention to the new administration’s skeptical views on climate change, planned cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and generally more solicitous approach to business interests that might adversely impact the climate and the environment in various ways. In Washington, thousands of demonstrators braved sweltering heat approaching 90 degrees and marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from near the U. S. Capitol to Trump’s new home, the White House. Asked shortly before the Pennsylvania rally what his message was for the climate protesters back in D. C. the president responded, ”Enjoy the day. And the weather.”"
"When Wanuri Kahiu took to the TED Fellows stage this week in Vancouver, the    had on green shoes and a beaded necklace worn like a crown  —   a hint to her offbeat worldview. ”My mother’s a pediatrician, and when I was young, she’d tell the craziest stories,” Kahiu began. ”One of the stories she told was that if you eat a lot of salt, all the blood rushes up to your legs through your body . .. to the top of your head, killing you instantly! She called it high blood pressure. ”This was my first experience with science fiction.” She’s gone on to make   movies. And that’s what brought her to TED. ”The hook that caught our attention was science fiction filmmaking in Africa,” says Tom Rielly, director of the Fellows program. ”We hadn’t heard about that before.” And Rielly liked her point of view. Kahiu’s voice is unique on a continent where many of the stories told in film tend to reflect familiar themes of war, poverty and AIDS and that are often funded by aid, grants and foundations, becoming part of an organization’s agenda. Her response is to make films that emphasize fun. She’s made films about ”Nairobi pop bands that want to go to space or   robots that fall in love.” Her films have been seen in more than a hundred film festivals around the world and they live online as well. She has her serious side, too, as chair of the SAFE Foundation based in Kenya, which produces films and plays that try and change risky behavior and that connect to issues like HIV, radicalization and female genital mutilation. But at TED, she focused on the idea that these types of stories limit the view of what Africa is and who Africans are: ”We have to tell more stories that are vibrant.” And she has given her style of filmmaking a name: Afro bubble gum art. What is Afro bubble gum art? It’s fun, fierce and frivolous African art. First, it’s for Africans so that we can see ourselves in a different way because I’m genuinely concerned about how we see ourselves and that we don’t think we’re worthy of happiness and we postpone joy as if it’s a destination. But I feel like we can be happy now. Have you ever sat in a theater and watched an audience watching one of your films? What was that like? Awful. It’s always awful. I’m always anxious. You never know if it’s being read right, if they’re going to laugh in the right places, if I offend them or if they understand what I’m trying to say. You got your MFA in film from UCLA, a school that has a reputation for producing independent filmmakers, as opposed to working within a studio system. What’s the film industry like in Kenya and how did the emphasis on being indie shape your work? The film industry is growing. It’s still very young but vibrant. I think it needs more access to funding and distribution, but there’s definitely a growth of filmmakers in Kenya that is exciting to watch. I don’t know yet of an African filmmaker who is not an independent filmmaker because we’re still fighting to create in a way that people will accept and for it to be commercially viable. There are very few people who have broken out in African cinema  —   Neill Blomkamp, [director of] District 9 is one. You’ve put together a list of questions  —   your own sort of Bechdel Test, to assess African cinema and literature. What’s your test?  The test asks three questions. The first question: Are two or more Africans in this piece healthy? The second question is: Are those Africans, the same healthy Africans, are they financially stable and not in need of saving? And the third question: Are they having fun? We need to show images of Africans who are not dying, not in need of saving and living a joyous, thriving African life. For those unfamiliar with African cinema, do you have some recommendations of movies we should see? Stories of our Lives by Jim Chuchu  —   important because it’s about the LGBT community in Kenya and it’s based on real stories. And it’s banned in Kenya. Kati Kati by Mbithi Masya. It’s a different look on Africa that’s not expected. It’s about the afterlife! And what about one of yours? Pumzi."
"People are prank calling President Trump’s new office to report illegal ”criminal aliens”  —   just not the type of ”aliens” President Trump had in mind when he created the office. Ever since the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office opened earlier this week, people have taken to Twitter to encourage calling and reporting extraterrestrials to the office’s hotline. President Trump called for the establishment of VOICE in a speech to a joint session of Congress in February, ”to serve American victims.” Trump said the effort was to provide ”a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests.” The VOICE office was created as a part of U. S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which itself is part of the Department of Homeland Security. ”All crime is terrible, but these victims are unique  —   and too often ignored,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in a statement. The office says it’s not a hotline to report crimes, only for victims to gather information on things like ”immigration custody status of illegal alien perpetrators of crime” and ”the immigration enforcement and removal process.” Critics and Trump opponents view it as an attempt to demonize all immigrants and say it’s racist. ICE isn’t happy about the prank phone calls. An ICE official emailed a statement to Fusion: ”I hope you won’t dignify this group with the attention they are seeking. But if you choose to do so. ..this group’s cheap publicity stunt is beyond the pale of legitimate public discourse. Their actions seek to obstruct and do harm to crime victims that’s objectively despicable regardless of one’s views on immigration policy. The VOICE Office provides information to citizens and   alike regardless of status, race, etc. whose loved ones have been killed or injured by removable aliens. VOICE provides access to the same information you and other reporters are already able to obtain. Yet this group claims it’s somehow racist to give the same to victims of all races and nationalities? That is absurd. Further, openly obstructing and mocking victims crosses the line of legitimate public discourse. VOICE is a line for victims to obtain information. This group’s stunt is designed to harm victims. That is shameful.” Despite the Trump administration’s drawing attention to crimes committed by people in the country illegally, there isn’t much evidence to suggest a prevalence of criminal activity among immigrants. NPR’s John Burnett noted earlier this month that social research ”dating back [about a century] has consistently found there is no link between immigrants and criminality.” A study published online in 2013 said antisocial behavior  —   including committing crimes  —   ”among   Americans was greater than that of immigrants.” Researchers found that ”immigrants were significantly less likely to take part in violent antisocial behaviors as compared to   Americans.” But modern research on arrest rates and immigrants is still limited, Burnett notes. ”So far, the research is not finding that the undocumented is offending or being rearrested at rates that are any different from the U. S.  population,” Bianca Bersani, a criminologist at the University of   told him."
"Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. Today the Sugars tackle two separate problems related to how we use the Internet in modern relationships. First, a woman is having an ”emotional affair” with a former college friend through messages on Facebook. The problem is, both her and the college friend are married. Should she leave her husband for this man, or is she just ”living a lie online”? In the second letter, a woman is endlessly comparing herself to her boyfriend’s    ” which is made easily possible through Instagram and Facebook. How do you stop when it’s so easy to do? Dear Sugars, In January, an old college friend reached out to me out of the blue. I had not spoken to him or seen him for over 20 years. Back in college, we were nothing more than acquaintances with mutual friends. So when he reached out to me via Facebook message, I was kind of shocked. Since January, we have spoken almost every day while at work. We are both married, him for five years, me for 17. He has no children, I have two. The bulk of our conversations have been very sexual in context, sometimes downright hot and heavy. We have exchanged a few explicit photos as well. During our conversations, I suddenly became alive again. I felt energized that someone I have not seen or spoken to for over 20 years is telling me he wants me. He said his biggest regret from college was not pursuing a relationship with me. What    woman wouldn’t like that little spring in her step from something like this? There was even one message where he told me he loved me and he had real feelings for me. I said the same to him.   One of our last messages this week was unbelievable. He told me I was so cute and funny and how he cared for me. I felt like I was on cloud nine. The following day we had a very short exchange, and I reached out to him that night to ask him a question. Turns out that was a bad thing, as he and his wife were looking at something on Facebook at that moment. He said he told her I was an old college friend, which isn’t a lie. But she doesn’t know the extent of our relationship.  One thing I need to mention is that, this time last year, my husband and I were on the verge of divorce. I found out he had cheated on me. We went through therapy, and are in a much better place now. I love my husband with all my heart, and he is the father of our kids. But am I in love with him is the bigger question. I am not confident I can have the same hot and heavy conversations and fantasies with my husband as I do with my college friend. My college friend today told me that he cannot have ”issues” with his wife and needs to tone things down with me. I feel distraught. I have strong feelings for him. I feel like a teenager who just broke up with her boyfriend, even though I know I shouldn’t. My parting words to my friend today were, ”I guess I’ll talk to you whenever.” His response back was, ”We’ll talk.” I just don’t know what to do. I am living in this fantasy world that isn’t reality, but it has turned my world upside down. I have had visions of us leaving our spouses and being together. I am now left dealing with the   ramifications of this   Facebook message love affair. How dumb, I think to myself.   Dear Sugars, what do you think of this mess I have gotten into? Signed, Torn, Steve: The Internet is just a tool, but the reason we seek attention from others is because there’s some underlying sense of deprivation. Torn, what you’re telling us is you felt dead in your marriage, and this online flirtation made you alive again. Having kids and complicated lives wears you out. But this is a fantasy world, and it is extraordinarily destructive to your life, to the relationship you have with your husband, and to the family that you have built. You need to address the real issue in your relationship, which is that you need to feel alive again.  Cheryl: Part of being in a   monogamous relationship is, you don’t have the thrill of checking Facebook and having some guy you knew 20 years ago telling you that you’re awesome. It feels like a high. The digital world makes possible instances where someone from your past resurfaces, and you believe yourself to be in love with somebody who you don’t have to contend with in any   way. It is a fantasy that’s destructive, but it can be instructive. Maybe your needs can’t be met anymore by your marriage. But the best thing is to find out if that is the case, to forget about this online relationship, and to deal with your life. Subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio:RSSiTunesStitcher, Steve: Where relationships go wrong is when couples do not talk to one another about what’s going on in their lives. That is your job now, Torn. You need to let your husband know, ”I have been engaged in this emotional affair, and it hasn’t gone anywhere physical, but here’s how it makes me feel.”  Cheryl: Torn, there’s no way around the fact that you are living a lie online, damaging not just your marriage and your life, but also his. Deceit, fantasy, and betraying the people closest to us never leads us to where we want to be in our lives. Dear Sugars, I have been with my sexy, funny, creative and wonderfully ambitious partner for five years. After a few years of some extreme ups and downs in the beginning, I can say that we are very happy and have both loved building our life together. Despite my contentment and hope for the future, I find myself chasing after the woman he was with before me via the Web. I look at her Facebook and Instagram profiles multiple times per day. I find myself wanting to emulate her looks and lifestyle (as much as anyone can perceive online) and the resulting jealousy and discomfort sometimes influences my behavior in terms of how I craft my appearance.  The funny thing about this habit is that I do not know this woman, and I never did. We had seen each other on brief occasions while my partner and I were just friends. No matter how many times I have told myself that what she, like everyone else, posts online is often a teeny, tiny fraction of an individual’s happiest times in life, I still cannot help checking up on this woman and finding myself envious of her in a variety of ways.  My partner was with this woman when we began seeing each other covertly. They soon broke up, and we have been together ever since. Does my continual chasing after this woman online mean that I still have something left to resolve about his betrayal of her? Or is she simply an easy target for my own insecurity? My heart is broken because I have compared myself so much to this woman over time that I fear I am losing my true sense of self in the process. How can I let go of these feelings of inadequacy and these impulses to find out what she is up to?  Yours, Struggling to Find Self, Cheryl: I think that this woman is an easy target for these feelings of inadequacy and jealousy, and I also think it’s no small coincidence that Struggling to Find Self was the other woman. Steve: The psychological equation is, ”I took away this man from this woman. I know that wasn’t the right thing to do, and I feel guilty about it. So as punishment for that guilt, I will actually figure out what it is like to be in her shoes.” You are obsessed with this woman, and that is going to drive you crazy.  That means you have to stop, but you will only stop once you start to answer the questions of why you’re doing this. What do the fantasies of this woman’s life represent to you? People have the tendency to say, social media is meaningless and just a distraction. That’s not true. Anything we become obsessed with has deep meaning. Cheryl:  It’s connected to the fact that girls and women in this culture are taught to measure themselves against each other. There’s no question that a piece of this is about that competition. And of course, there is no healthy equation you can make when you compare yourself to the people your lover used to love. Sometimes the answer is just as simple as saying, ”I’m not going to do this today.” You need to say no to yourself, and you’ll be the better for it. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear from more people struggling with relationships and the Internet. Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail. com and it may be answered on a future episode. You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app."
"Phil Lyman cared so much about what he sees as his right to drive   vehicles into Recapture Canyon, he went to jail for it. ”Going into this, you know, I’ve said a number of times, I’m a foot soldier,” the San Juan County, Utah, commissioner says. ”I’m not a captain. I’m not a general. I’m willing to die on a battlefield for a good cause.” Lyman’s battlefield is an old jeep trail near his home in Blanding, Utah, that’s become a flash point in the struggle by rural counties that want control of federal public land. The Bureau of Land Management temporarily closed the trail more than a decade ago. Recapture Canyon is prized for its sensitive Native American cultural sites, and ancient artifacts were being damaged and looted. Three years ago, with the closure still enforced, a frustrated Lyman led an   vehicle brigade deep into the canyon. Then, protesters kicked up dust as their tires traveled across land considered sensitive to indigenous people while they waved American flags. This caused a stir on reservations and in cities, while Lyman became a darling of the far right movement in the rural West. Today, Lyman is still on probation. A federal judge sentenced Lyman to 10 days in jail for that protest ride, but today, he’s feeling vindicated. This month the BLM partially lifted the ban on   in Recapture Canyon. Some of the canyon floor itself where the protest happened is still closed. But BLM is promising to build a new network of ATV trails on the rim and partway down the canyon. ”I don’t know if I won I hope ultimately that we win,” Lyman says. He says he’s encouraged by the timing of this announcement under the new administration, which he thinks will give a friendlier ear to his cause. ”After an   wait, to me, that signals, ’Hey, we hear you,’ ” he says. The new Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke is using the Recapture Canyon plan as a model for how to increase access to U. S. public lands for all users, motorized or not. But in the canyon, BLM’s Lisa Bryant is hesitant to describe this plan as a big policy shift. The decision to temporarily ban   in the canyon happened during the George W. Bush administration. The impacts to cultural sites had become a big issue, she says, and it took time to come up with the right balance. ”In the canyon bottom itself, we haven’t authorized motorized access but prefer people to visit on horseback or on foot, much the way their ancestors did,” Bryant says. But hiking down toward one of the Anasazi cliff dwellings  —   the canyon is dense with them  —   you can still see illegal motorcycle tire tracks in the mud. Environmentalists say one of the biggest unknowns of this plan is whether there will actually be funding to enforce the closure, let alone rehabilitate some of the damaged cultural sites. Yet they too are declaring a partial victory here. Neal Clark of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance says Lyman’s protest ride went nowhere because ATVs are still banned from the most sensitive areas. ”It’s sending a clear signal that illegal activity as a means to forward your agenda for public land uses is not going to be tolerated by the federal agencies,” Clark says. So it’s one of those rare moments in the fiery debate over federal public lands in which both sides seem willing to stand down  —   for now."
"As I stood up to end our visit, Frank indicated he had one more question. ”You know those commercials for Cialis?” he asked. ”Would that be all right for me to try?” Here we go with the bathtubs again, I think to myself. Toned   in    bathtubs on a deck somewhere looking out at the sunset. Give me a break. It’s not always drugs for erectile dysfunction. I’ve been asked about TV spots hawking pharmaceuticals for nail fungus, depression, acid reflux, cholesterol and irritable bowels, just to name a few. Two decades ago the Food and Drug Administration loosened restrictions on advertising prescription drugs on television. Prior to that, the only ads we saw for   drugs were targeted directly at us doctors, the keepers of prescription pads, and placed in the medical journals we read and in the detailed handouts given to us by pharmaceutical reps. So for 20 years now, we have borne witness to an   number of drug ads that are targeted directly at consumers. If you’re among the 99 percent of Americans who watch television, you’ve seen scores of them by now. No time slot of television is immune: Drug ads are rampant on daytime TV, unavoidable during the evening news, all over sports programming, and have even crept steadily into prime time. Lately the trend has been toward advertising more expensive drugs for less common conditions, such as costly new immunotherapy drugs that could help only a tiny fraction of cancer patients. When I see one of these types of commercials I usually think, ”How many people even have this condition?” Sometimes, I must admit, I’ve never heard of the condition or the drug, and have to look them up. That’s one goal of these commercials  —   health professionals watch TV, too. Pharmaceutical firms can hawk their products to both sides of the prescribing relationship. But as a general internist, I’m never likely to prescribe most of the newer medications I now see advertised. Those drugs are going to be recommended by a subspecialist like an oncologist or rheumatologist. Yet many of those conversations still start with primary care doctors like me. Advertisers count on it. It’s all in the math. Whether a pharmaceutical firm sells a niche drug for a rare condition at a high price or a blockbuster drug for a common condition at a more reasonable price, it behooves us to remember that drug companies advertise for a reason: profits. Like many doctors, my problem with    ads is that the game never really feels like a fair fight. Sure, there are purported benefits: Patients get better information about what’s available out there. The ubiquitous phrase ”Talk to your doctor” has led to more and better conversations about topics that may have been hard for patients to bring up or doctors to ask about. Probably the best example is patients willing to consider an antidepressant when previously they might not have even wanted to discuss their mood. Other suggested benefits include adherence to a treatment regimen and a lessening of stigma for certain diagnostic categories. Particularly for mental health conditions, this has moved the national conversation forward as sufferers may be more likely to come out of the shadows. But all too often, commercials give us the idea that something might be wrong with us. Big budget ads have driven the promotion of new disease entities. When pharmaceutical firms get FDA approval for a new indication, they can relentlessly market the product and create a torrent of demand where none previously existed. And those helpful conversations I mentioned aren’t always so helpful if they wind up hijacking time in our brief encounter. I’d like to discuss what’s most relevant and beneficial to your health. If I have to spend my time fending off marketing for a condition you don’t have or a drug that’s of no possible benefit to you, our time hasn’t been used productively. Further, the advertising of newer products means that they’re generally more expensive than older,   drugs that might now be available as an equally effective generic. And good luck figuring out how much such a drug will cost you. If I do wind up prescribing it, more often than not it won’t be ”preferred” by your insurance. Then it’s down the   rabbit hole, which can require multiple calls from the doctor’s office to the insurer, begging for coverage. If you want to see smoke come out of a doctor’s ears, just ask about THAT process. Finally, newer drugs don’t have the track record of drugs that have been on the market longer, which means we don’t always know if they are as safe as we would like. Remember the Vioxx story? Vioxx was a     pain medicine that was supposed to spare the lining of your stomach when used regularly, unlike its older, cheaper cousins like ibuprofen. Problem was, Vioxx turned out to increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The drug had annual sales of $2. 5 billion before it was pulled off the market. Perhaps the saving grace of these drug commercials is that the FDA still requires advertisers to list potential side effects of their products. This has created an entire comedy genre, as the sotto voce reading of the lengthy list usually makes any of us that can hear it think: ”Why would I take a drug that will give me a side effect that I took it to alleviate in the first place?” Those lists always make me think of my favorite parodic side effect, which afflicted Saturday Night Live’s Kristin Wiig in a spoof ad for the   drug Chantix: ”jazz hands.” John Henning Schumann is an internal medicine doctor and serves as president of the University of Oklahoma’s Tulsa campus. He also hosts Studio Tulsa: Medical Monday on KWGS Public Radio Tulsa. You can follow him on Twitter: @GlassHospital."
"Talk to voters across the country about President Trump’s first 100 days in office and a few things become abundantly clear: His supporters  —   those who turned out in force and voted for him  —   still overwhelmingly love him. His detractors  —   and they are many, given that Trump failed to win the popular vote  —   are still shocked by his election and appalled by his behavior. He has lost support, particularly among moderates and independent voters. That’s a big reason that polls give him the lowest approval rating of any modern president this soon after taking office. And, at times, Trump angered even his staunchest supporters, particularly the Tea Party, because of what they see as a tendency to rely on advice from top advisers they view as not conservative enough. Still firmly in Trump’s camp is    Garry Frederick, who is about to turn ownership of the Top Notch Diner in Cortland, Ohio, over to his children. He dismissed the idea that the first 100 days is an important milestone for a presidency. Frederick says, ”He’s got four years,” and he’ll judge Trump when he seeks  . Still, Frederick says Trump is doing a great job. ”I give him an A+.” Most days, Frederick joins a group of regulars for breakfast at the diner. Around the table, they see Trump’s biggest enemies as the media and Congress, including Democrats and Republicans. During the campaign, Frederick liked Trump’s promise to immediately repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as his tough talk on trade. But the repeal effort failed, the law known as Obamacare survives, and Trump has softened some positions on trade, including a decision not to label China a currency manipulator. Frederick says he’s not worried, ”I think he’s working some back channels there.”     retired truck driver Dave Cover chimes in with, ”There’s several things in my judgment that play into that.” First, Cover says, is that Trump needs China’s help to deal with a   North Korea. ”He’s come to the conclusion that he has to deal with China because that’s the only effective ally that’s got any control over basically an uncontrollable entity over there.” As for the Trump opposition, it has not softened even an inch. They’ll tell you his presidency has been exactly what they expected. ”Chaos” is a word that’s used a lot. Democrats found some hope when efforts to kill Obamacare fizzled. They’ve also been energized to march  —   in support of women’s rights, to protest Trump’s executive orders seeking to limit immigration from some   countries, and in support of science and protecting the climate. But there’s also the recognition that every day  —   sometimes with Congress and sometimes through presidential decrees  —   the president is rolling back regulations covering schools, businesses, fuel economy, clean air and protection of federal lands  —   just to list a few. Barbara Babcock, a retired school teacher, attended a recent town hall in Flanders, N. J. She has her own short and    description of Trump’s first 100 days: ”The man is a disaster.” Her complaints about Trump include what she sees as a refusal to deal with global warming or to take it seriously. She adds that ”He has ties to Russia. He won’t show us his tax returns. Every time I hear anything that comes out of his mouth I’m horrified. It’s horrifying.” And her feelings extend to those advising the president. ”What concerns me is how he listens to the radical right,” she says, referring specifically to former Breitbart News editor and now presidential strategist Steve Bannon. She’s also got problems with Cabinet secretaries  —   like charter schools champion Betsy DeVos who is now atop the Education Department and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who as Oklahoma attorney general was famous for suing the EPA and rejecting scientific claims about humans’ role in climate change. ”He has put in place people who will dismantle the very agencies they are supposed to be supporting,” Babcock says of Trump. Another   voice, computer consultant Mark Zucker, was at that same New Jersey town hall meeting. He says it goes beyond his disagreements with the president over policy. ”I have a real problem with a leader that outwardly lies, that does not concede the facts. Whether it’s good or bad, we’re adults in this country and we just want the truth, and I don’t think we’re hearing the truth.” Polls show a deep partisan divide in how the public views Trump. In Amherst, N. Y. a suburb of Buffalo, Brett Sommer voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson for president. Sommer, who teaches   history at the local high school, is an   moderate Republican. He says he actually likes that Trump does not seem to have a    ideology when it comes to the issues. And even though he didn’t vote for the president, Sommer says he got on board after the election and was ready to give Trump a chance. That didn’t last. First, there was Trump’s habit of picking fights, and obsessing over the size of the crowds that attended his inauguration. Then, the personal attacks on opponents via Twitter continued after Trump moved into the White House. After that, Trump continued to hold big   rallies, where crowds would reprise a favorite campaign chant about Hillary Clinton  —   ”Lock her up! !! Lock her up! !!” Sommer said the rallies are clearly something Trump enjoys, but ”I think he should focus on the governance of this country.” As for Trump’s tone and unapologetic    manner, Sommer says there are boundaries involving simple decorum and human decency that Trump flouts. ”I’m a teacher. I can’t show up at my job in shorts and swear at the kids. I have to respect the position of authority I have,” he says. That’s how you earn respect, he adds, even if you’re president. ”If you can’t discipline what comes out of your mouth or, in that case, what comes out of your thumbs, to me that’s a very strong indication of how disciplined your mind is,” Sommer says. Then there’s the Tea Party, another category of Trump supporter. They are loyal. They are committed. But they are also watching the president’s actions closely. Tom Zawistowski heads a Tea Party group in northeast Ohio, an important corner of an important battleground state. Trump carried Ohio, in large part because he did well in some counties where Democrats typically dominate. Zawistowski lives on a small inland lake in a house that has an actual lighthouse built into the roof. He is a classic Tea Party conservative, but says he actually loves that Trump is not a conservative ideologue. ”We know he’s a businessman. We know he’s a pragmatist,” the    small business owner says. ”That’s actually refreshing to us.” But voters like Zawistowski also have expectations  —   that Trump will pursue an agenda to the Tea Party’s liking. That requires vigilance, Zawistowski says. It also means reminding Trump who helped him win. ”We knew he wasn’t a conservative,” says Zawistowski, ”so we knew that once he got to Washington we kind of had to be the guardrails on the highway. He’s going to be all over the road. We just need to make sure he doesn’t drive off the road.” Zawistowski does express some dismay at the way the president attacked the congressional Freedom Caucus on Twitter after that group  —   unofficially known as the Tea Party caucus  —   derailed the Obamacare replacement bill backed by House Republican leadership and the White House. Zawistowski says it was a bad bill that was almost as bad as what it was replacing. He and other Ohio activists released an open letter to the president urging that Trump support  —   not fight  —   the Tea Party. ”We elected Donald Trump. When I say ’we,’ I mean the   core Tea Party, you know,   people. We carried the flag. And we believe that earns us a certain amount of import.” That goes for White House staff as well. When Zawistowski hears that presidential adviser Steve Bannon may be losing out to more moderate voices in the White House  —   including presidential    Jared Kushner and top economic adviser Gary Cohn, a Democrat who worked on Wall Street  —   he says that would be a problem. Tea Party support for the president is strong, he says, but not unconditional."
"Every month, we at NPR Music convene a panel of hosts and music directors from the   family across the country. Their objective: to share the new songs they simply can’t get enough of. Some of our panelists delight in the surprise of a   band’s latest offering others shine a spotlight on a younger, local artist on the verge of breaking out nationally. Either way, it’s a singular opportunity to discover something new. This month’s mix includes a standout song from country veteran Marty Stuart’s most recent album, former Gossip singer Beth Ditto’s rock ’n’ roll solo single, a   track by Chicago rapper Ric Wilson and more. Hear The Current’s Bill DeVille, KXT’s Amy Miller and WFPK’s Sean Cannon share their selections at the audio link, and read on for the full list."
"As we head into the 100th day of the Trump presidency, NPR Ed has our regular weekly education roundup to keep you in the loop. Attorneys General speak out on behalf of student borrowers, Twenty state attorneys general and the District of Columbia this week sent a letter criticizing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for revoking federal protections for student borrowers. As we reported earlier this month, DeVos revoked three   memos governing new contracts for    companies that collect payments for the Education Department. The state officials said the memos provided necessary guidance to help borrowers get accurate information about their loans and repayment options and to increase accountability for the servicers. The memos had also called for targeted outreach to those at greatest risk of default. ”My Student Loan Assistance Unit works everyday with student borrowers who are struggling to repay their loans,” Massachusetts AG Maury Healey wrote. ”With loan defaults on the rise, this rollback of student protections comes at the worst possible time. We are urging the Secretary to change course immediately.” A coalition of labor and community groups weighed in, calling on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to help ”clean up the mess” it said was left by DeVos in scaling back the borrower protections. When DeVos withdrew the memos she said the loan servicing contract process had been plagued by, ”moving deadlines, changing requirements and a lack of consistent objectives.” DeVos’ office did not return requests for comment on the protest letter. Student loan servicer tops complaints list, Speaking of student loan servicing, guess what financial services company drew the most consumer complaints of any in the country in the last three months? Not a bank. Not a credit reporting agency. It’s Navient, the largest student loan servicer. That’s according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week. The federal agency is currently suing Navient for what it says are patterns of misinforming borrowers and delaying services in ways that cost them money. Navient’s leadership has responded that the company feels it is being unfairly ”singled out.” The executive order  President Trump this week ordered Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to look into whether the federal government has usurped state and local control of education. The executive order, which gives DeVos’ office 10 months to conduct a review of laws and procedures, is short on details. The first question from a reporter to a White House official was, ”Can you remind me exactly how this executive order would, I guess, change anything?” It says that DeVos can change or cut any regulations to ”ensure strict compliance with statutes that prohibit Federal interference with State and local control over education.” This power was already inherent in her office. But the rhetoric may resonate with many conservatives who’ve long complained about federal education overreach. ”Previous administrations have wrongly forced states and schools to comply with federal whims and dictates for what our kids are taught,” President Trump said at a White House signing ceremony on Wednesday. Federal spending consistently represents less than 10 percent of   school funding. Critics have often singled out the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the 2009 Race To The Top effort as examples of D. C. overreach. But as Margaret Spellings, who served as education secretary under President George W. Bush, put it to us earlier this year: ”Frankly, in NCLB’s case, the federal intervention was oversold. There was a ton of local control in funding and policymaking.” And, as we’ve reported often, the new federal law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, puts even more power in the hands of states.   students cut off from grant program by a   margin, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported this week that the Department of Education denied grant applications from at least 40 colleges and universities, totaling $10 million, because of formatting errors. The grant program, Upward Bound, is over half a century old. It assists tens of thousands of   and   students in the transition to college. And it’s one of many programs targeted for cuts in the President’s budget proposal. These rejections over the past few weeks came for issues like   that was too narrow, or use of the wrong font. Members of Congress are reaching out to the Department of Education to ask them to reconsider, and there is a citizen   campaign as well."
"From the car seat, the toddler, almost three years old, asked his parents what we were doing. ”We’re here to learn our history, your family’s history,” his father said from the driver’s seat. We were in the parking lot at Manzanar National Historic Site. An American flag fluttered vigorously in front of the pale green visitor center. Beyond it, a few buildings, long and low, dotted the landscape. Once, 10, 046 people had been imprisoned here. Known as the Manzanar War Relocation Center during World War II, it was one of 10 sites where Japanese Americans were incarcerated for nearly four years. I sat next to the toddler in the back of the car. His grandparents and   on his father’s side had been sent to other concentration camps: Poston in Arizona and Tule Lake in California, close to the Oregon border. I am a good friend of the boy’s mother, erin Khuê Ninh, a professor of Asian American literature. We met when we both worked at Hyphen, a magazine for and about Asian Americans that I helped start. The fledging magazine was an unpaid labor of love, and the devotion of its volunteers ¾ intent that a national magazine for our community should exist ¾ made many of us into friends. Fifteen years have passed since the magazine’s founding. Many of us were now married and parents of young children. One of us, Christopher Fan, also an Asian American literature professor, emailed a few weeks after the presidential election to say that he had been thinking of making an annual,   social   trip. The results of the election only intensified this thought. So in early April, 75 years after Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, clearing the way for the creation of the camps, we converged in Manzanar. Our group was made up of Americans of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean descent. All together, we were eight adults and six children, all boys. The oldest boy is in kindergarten. The youngest is just 7 months old. The   camps were intentionally located in remote areas. Manzanar is about four hours north of Los Angeles by car and 3, 800 to 4, 200 feet above sea level. It is on U. S. Route 395, east of the Sierra Nevada and west of Death Valley. The nearest populated area is a tiny village six miles north named Independence. Before the trip, I debated whether I should go. The drive from Northern California is long, and my car is old. But I decided that I wanted to see Manzanar with my own eyes, so that my understanding of history might feel deeper through the experience of place. What we saw was a flat desert with vegetation scrappy and close to the ground, stubborn trees here and there, tumbleweed bounding across the landscape, propelled by the wind. In the distance, Mount Williamson, majestic and   looked like a painting. ”I hadn’t pictured it this beautiful,” I said. ”I imagine it must have felt ironic for the people living here,” erin replied. Manzanar opened on March 21, 1942, so the weather would have been similar to what we were experiencing on this sunny April day. I was wearing a sweatshirt and a vest. But here spring gives way to summers of up to 110 degrees and winters below freezing. In all seasons, the wind covers surfaces with sand and dust. Like the force of history, it is a constant that cannot be ignored. Our guide for the day was park ranger Mark Hachtmann. He dressed the way I imagined a park ranger would: a uniform of green pants, a matching green jacket with a U. S. National Park Service patch on the arm, and a brimmed hat. He led us through the few buildings in Block 14, which now serve as exhibits. After the war, most of the buildings at Manzanar were dismantled. After Manzanar became a historic site in 1992, buildings were recreated according to historical photographs. The two barracks in Block 14 were built in 2010. From what had been rebuilt, we were to imagine the entirety of the camp. There were 36 blocks in all for Japanese Americans. Each block contained 20 buildings: 14 barracks, a mess hall, a recreation hall, a laundry facility, an ironing room, a women’s latrine, and a men’s latrine. Between 250 and 400 people lived in each block, the blocks separated by open areas to prevent fires from spreading, a real threat in this land of wind. The whole camp was just under one square mile. The residents were resigned to being in the camp  —   Shikata ga nai (nothing can be done)  —   and tried to make life a little more normal and comfortable. They created sports teams, published a newspaper, and started a   store. I was impressed by their   and resilience, but also felt a lingering sadness, especially for the older adults who had built their businesses and professions in the face of discrimination, only to have almost everything taken away. Did they ever recover? As we walked from building to building, the boys picked up sticks and dug at the dirt. I wondered how much they understood and if they would remember any of this. They played, I imagined, as kids their ages had done when the camp was full of families. While in use, the camp included a   hospital, a fire station, an orphanage for 101 children, and baseball fields. More than 10, 000 people  —   6, 000 adults and 4, 000 children  —   had lived here in a hastily built, temporary city of concrete blocks, wood, and tarpaper. The War Relocation Authority staff  —   the camp director, police chief, fire chief, social workers, and others who were mostly white and often referred to as the ”Caucasian staff”  —   lived in other blocks with their families, in buildings with their own bathrooms, kitchens, and lawns. The most striking building when we visited was the women’s latrine, rebuilt this year on the original concrete floor. A row of five toilets was installed back to back with another row of five toilets. While there was a wall between the backs of the toilets, there were no partitions between each toilet. In a room next to the toilets, shower heads jutted from the walls, also without any partitions. Hachtmann told us that former camp residents felt it was important to rebuild the latrine and a guard tower (there had been eight in all). It was what they remembered most: the humiliation and the lack of privacy. ”It’s indicative of how they lived the rest of their lives in public,” erin said later. ”They had to share sleeping areas and dressing areas. Everything was like being in a public restroom all the time.” As an introvert who values my alone time, to be so exposed all the time sounded terrible. You couldn’t have an argument with your spouse without being overheard. You couldn’t take care of basic bodily functions alone. In the hotel room that night, I took special notice of the bathroom I shared only with my partner, and of its door. After touring Block 14, we piled into our cars to see other parts of the camp. We headed to what was once a garden. As many as 100 gardens had been built by residents. We had planned to eat our lunch there, but the wind was too strong. The boys scampered on large slabs of stone and pathways, and on a wooden bridge. From what was left behind, you could see it had been beautiful once. Christopher shared a batch of Spam musubi he had made, a fitting Japanese American snack. We ate, sitting on a low wooden fence. ”I never realized what a civil rights service the National Parks provided,” said Amy Chen, Christopher’s wife and an attorney at a health nonprofit. A record 105, 000 people visited Manzanar last year. After lunch, we had one more stop: the Manzanar cemetery where a white obelisk monument points up towards the sky. It sits in the midst of a wide clearing, making it feel lonely. Most people who died in camp were cremated, but behind the monument, six bodies remained buried: three older men and three babies. Rings of rocks marked their graves. Families in the camp contributed money to purchase the concrete used to build the monument. Most people worked in camp, receiving low wages from the government. Farmers were paid $12 a month. Teachers: $16 a month. Doctors and engineers got $19 a month. A private in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an   American infantry regiment, earned $21 a month while his family was behind barbed wire. On April 29th, an annual pilgrimage will take place to the monument. Organized by the Manzanar Committee, a volunteer group, the pilgrimage has taken place every year since 1969. About 2, 000 people are expected to attend this year to mark the 25th anniversary of Manzanar’s dedication as a National Historic Site. But for a moment in early April, our group was the only one at the monument. Here the wind was fiercest, pushing against us, making it difficult to walk in a straight line. Offerings had been left on the monument by visitors before us, neatly lined up one after another: a seashell, a Powerpuff Girl toy, a beaded bracelet, a Ganesh figurine, a rock, a rubber ball, an enameled pin, sticks of incense bound together. Strands of origami cranes were draped along the fencing surrounding the monument, symbols of hope and healing. The boys brought a few cranes they had folded and added them to the collection. We turned back towards our cars. Every so often, the wind loosened a crane. It flew across the desert landscape, a tiny dot of color carried away like a seed. Melissa Hung is journalist covering arts and culture, communities of color, immigration, and criminal justice. Follow her @fluffysharp."
"According to the Boy Scout Law, ”a Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” But does a Boy Scout have to be a boy? Sydney Ireland has been involved with scouting since she was four years old, when she began tagging along with her older brother to Cub Scout meetings. Since then, she has been an unofficial, but enthusiastic, member of Troop 414 in Manhattan. Now she is 16, and she’s pushing Boy Scouts of America to allow girls like her to become official members. Over the years, Sydney’s activities with the troop have included camping trips, hiking, archery, ice climbing and, yes,  . As a city kid, she has learned to cherish a connection to the outdoors and she credits the Boy Scouts for helping to foster it. But although the local troop has welcomed Sydney’s participation, she is not able to officially earn merit badges and advance in rank along with the boys around her, because she is a girl. According to national policy, the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts only enroll boys  —   including transgender boys, as of earlier this year. But Sydney is a girl. And, to her, the policy doesn’t feel fair. For the last few years, she has been asking the Boy Scouts of America to let girls officially join through letters to national leadership, public   and a Change. org petition. ”I just want to see a change,” she said. ”Right now they’re discriminating against girls, and I’m just calling it as it is.” The Boy Scouts of America declined an interview and would not comment on whether the organization plans to review their policy. However, Director of Communications Effie Delimarkos did say that the organization ”continually works with Scout Executives to evaluate and improve programs to better serve youth participants.” Delimarkos also wrote: ”We understand the values and lessons of Scouting are attractive to the entire family. The Boy Scouts of America serves boys and young men through the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, which are   programs specifically for boys in the first grade through age 18.” Delimarkos noted that the Boy Scouts of America does offer   programs, such as an outdoor adventure initiative called Venturing. But Venturing starts only at age 14, and it does not offer the same opportunities to earn merit badges as the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts do. Sydney specifically wants a shot at becoming an Eagle Scout, like her older brother, Bryan. Sydney has earned ample support for her endeavor, including from fellow scouts and the National Organization for Women. But her critics inevitably ask the same question: Why don’t you just join the Girl Scouts? ”I know that almost everything that the Boy Scouts do, I want to do,” Sydney said. ”And if they’re identical programs, then why are they separate?” The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts are two distinct, private organizations. While there may be some overlap in activities or their core missions of fostering leadership skills, they offer different programs. Even the Girl Scouts say as much. ”No, we’re not meant to be the girl equivalent of the Boy Scouts,” said Andrea Bastiani Archibald, who serves as the ”Chief Girl Expert,” at Girl Scouts of the USA. Archibald does tout the Girl Scouts as a group that is welcoming to all girls and their interests, be it art or the outdoors. ”But if it doesn’t feel right for them,” Archibald said, ”I really laud their parents and those girls for finding space that is.” Sydney takes scouting and the skills involved so seriously that she has sought membership in troops outside the U. S. She is a full,   member of a troop in Ontario, Canada  —   one of dozens of countries with   scouting. In fact, Sydney recently earned the Chief Scout’s Award, Canada’s highest honor in scouting, and has the badge and a letter of congratulations from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to show for it. But she is determined to become an Eagle Scout as a full member of Troop 414, reaching the top achievement of an organization she has been part of nearly her entire life."
"When we got up Sunday, we could hope our long national nightmare is over. Meaning, of course, that we should finally be free of the obsessive chatter over Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. After all, who cares about Day 101? Especially when, just last night, we witnessed such a marvelous metaphor for the Trump era, so far. While official Washington was busy with the White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner  —   sometimes called ”the nerd prom”  —   Trump was on a different stage in a different city with a very different crowd. ”I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from the Washington swamp,” Trump said, ”spending my evening with all of you, and with a much much larger crowd and much better people.” For the record, there were rows that were visibly empty in the hall in Harrisburg, while the WHCA dinner was sold out as usual. But it didn’t matter to Trump, who had his lines down without regard to what he saw before him. He called out the dinner’s ”Hollywood people,” of whom there were far fewer than in years past. But the jibe highlighted the contrast between the WHCA’s recent glamour fixation and Trump’s own evening with the salt of the earth. It was a visible contrast to be beamed to the nation on   TV. On one side you could see the capital’s elite in black ties and ball gowns. On the other: the people’s president before a throng of thrilled Pennsylvanians  —   ”the forgotten man and forgotten woman” of the heartland. There could have been no better way for the president to say and to show: ”I’m not with them, I’m with you.” The president had constructed a stage for himself far from the confines and dictates of the capital city he has occupied but not conquered. From that stage he spoke to the Americans who respond to his mix of nostalgia, alienation and recaptured confidence. So it is with the Trump presidency to date. He speaks from platforms of his own choosing that stand apart from the usual venues and avenues of power. Be they virtual or digital, they enable him to inhabit and speak to a separate reality. All presidents now must govern largely via the media, but Trump is perhaps the first to be quite so governed by it  —   so defined by a media vision of the world. He lives in that conception more than inside the governmental structure he heads, and that suits both him and his support base just fine. In Harrisburg, it was possible for the president to mock the obsessions of the media, such as the 100 days milestone he has previously called ”ridiculous.” He could say his first months in office had seen more achieved than any similar period in history. He could say he had done more than any previous president. He could talk once again of repealing and replacing Obamacare with something that will be ”wonderful.” He could promise again a great wall between the U. S. and Mexico. He could speak of bringing back millions of manufacturing jobs lost to global competition (if not the millions more lost to automation). He could promise a tax cut for everyone. And he could put the world on notice that the U. S. will insist on serving its own interests in every dispute and conflict, be it economic or military. For an hour on the Harrisburg stage, there was no investigation of Mike Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor. There was no power struggle with the leaders of Congress, no war within the West Wing inner circle, no unease with leaders of foreign allies and adversaries alike. In short, on his own stage, Trump was still the star of the campaign trail, untroubled by the realities of the office he won or the complicated nature of the   system in which he now serves. The crowd, not quite so large or as boisterous as a year ago, still embraced the man who calls himself their ”true hero in the White House.” This master stroke of   typifies the strengths of the Trump style in office. If critics pounce on a controversy or a failure of some kind, the president can convey his side of the story via selective interviews and predawn  . These means of messaging circumvent the usual carriers of information and commentary that we know as the media. This allows the White House to communicate without the usual interference. And if that means the mainstream media have to fume and stew in their juice, so much the better. In a similar strategy, the president has made extraordinary use of executive orders. These instruments allow the president to dial up a change in national policy without actually passing or amending any laws. All presidents have used such orders, although usually for relatively small matters or after first trying to change the law. Trump can claim to have issued more executive orders than any president since Harry Truman (a rather populist ”man of the people” in his own right). The new president says he has also signed 28 bills into law, although it is difficult to find anyone who knows what any of them were about. Far larger issues have been addressed by Trump’s executive actions. Among the biggest: immigration (banning entry for those from seven predominantly Muslim countries) energy (the Dakota Access oil pipeline, regulations on coal and other fossil fuels) and   ”sanctuary cities” that resist federal policy on deportation. Executive orders can be overruled by Congress, although it seems unlikely this Congress would do so. They can also be suspended by rulings from the federal courts, and this has already happened with regard to the immigration ban and sanctuary cities. The big emphasis on executive orders and bill signings was pushed by the White House in late April after an effort to downplay the 100 days milestone failed to break the media fever over it. As the number of days reached the 90’s, the president’s team swung into action, urging Congress to do the same. In the final week, the president’s team tried to tackle the repeal of Obamacare (despite Congress’ resounding failure on this front in March) to get money for the border wall and to introduce the president’s overhaul of the tax code. The only real business that had to be done before April ended was an extension of spending authority so the federal government could keep operating. But that little housekeeping item was actually held hostage for a time as the White House insisted on another health care vote and money for the wall. Congressional Democrats came back with   of their own, tensions rose  —   and the White House backed off. Now the president says his wall can be worked out in the fall. Obamacare will be around to be repealed when the votes are there. The tax code, well, details are in development. As the week ended, the government was still open. Trump signed an extension for another week. None of the bigger issues had been resolved, and all will be back next week. And the week after that. ”I thought it would be easier,” the president famously confessed to Reuters on Thursday. We can all doff our caps to that. This might have ended as a week of frustration epitomizing the first three months of the 115th Congress and the Trump regime. The polls have not been kind to the new president, with most showing his approval rating several points below his share of the vote last November and some showing it below 40% (a traditional danger zone for presidents at any stage of their term). While few would have expected Trump to deliver a wall overnight, or tame North Korea’s nuclear ambitions with a tweet, there had been expectations for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. Was President Trump invited to the dinner back in his adopted ”home” town? Of course he was. The dinner, which has been around for a century, has always been designed to honor the president. But this president chose not to attend, scoffing at one more Washington taboo.  Some have read this as revenge for the merciless jokes made at his expense at previous WHCA dinners. One in particular, in 2011, featured a long putdown of Trump’s   show The Celebrity Apprentice, delivered by none other than President Obama himself. That year’s   comic, Seth Meyers, said he was amazed to hear Trump might run for president as a Republican. ”I always thought he was running as a joke,” said Meyers. Cameras caught Trump at the NBC table with a tight little smile and, no doubt, thoughts of his own.  Some thought this, the first nerd prom since own electoral triumph, would be irresistible for Trump  —   the payback opportunity of a lifetime. But the president seems once again to be his own best producer, as well as the star of his own show. He said ”I’m with you” from the stage at the Republican convention in Cleveland last July. It had to be sweeter yet to say it in Harrisburg after 100 days, leaving all with that   image to preserve and ponder."
"”Is anyone going to come through here?” That’s what a Hilton hotel employee asked one of a dozen photographers along the red carpet at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner a couple of hours before the event officially started Saturday evening. But, like a   mosquito on a sweltering night, it was the nagging, persistent thought that seemed to plague attendees throughout the event. The reason: the vacuum left by the absence of President Donald Trump, who had decided to spend his 100th day in office rallying with supporters in Pennsylvania. In person, the man takes up a lot of physical space  —   he’s 6 feet 2 inches tall and is in the vicinity of 230 pounds if you believe Dr. Oz  —   but in absentia the space he takes up seems even larger. And the president’s absence seemed to cast an air of   on what is typically a   night for Washington’s White House press corps. By the way, not only is it the first time in 36 years that a sitting president has opted out of the shindig, but when considering that the only reason Ronald Reagan skipped it was due to an assassination attempt, Trump’s snub is an even harder blow. Even Bill Clinton, in the depths of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and subsequent impeachment, attended each year he was in office. It also didn’t help that Trump took gleeful delight in making fun of the dinner at his ”Make America Great Again”   victory lap rally that took place Saturday evening in Harrisburg, Pa. ”A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation’s capital right now,” the president told a roaring crowd. That seemed to spur him on: ”They are gathered together for the White House correspondents’ dinner  —   without the president.” Perhaps in response to that taunt, Jeff Mason, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and a Reuters journalist, opened the annual event by saying, ”We are here to celebrate the press, not the presidency. And I am happy to report that this dinner is sold out.” In the end, Trump was right about the media but wrong about the ”large group of Hollywood actors.” Few such celebrities showed up  —   on the red carpet at least. There was one: Matthew Modine. At one point two young women, who seemed to be there with their parents, asked if they could linger on the red carpet a little longer in case ”someone” showed up. Sadly, unless they meant former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, longtime civil rights activist Al Sharpton or legendary journalist Bob Woodward, they were almost certainly disappointed. Even among the journalists there to cover the journalistic gathering, the pros couldn’t help but lament the good ole days of the Obama administration  —   when the dinner was as much a Hollywood affair as a Washington one. In years past, photographers had elbowed one another for the perfect shot of Kerry Washington, Morgan Freeman, Reese Witherspoon and the reigning queen of   Kim Kardashian. But some in attendance claimed to be relieved by the more lax,   atmosphere. ”It got too big,” Lisa Cole, a Hilton publicist said. This was her sixth year at the event. ”Over the years it became this star thing, and that’s not what it was supposed to be about,” she added. As the trickle of guests at the Hilton dwindled, one cameraman put it this way: ”If last year was an 11, this year was a five.” Meanwhile, the vibe just a few miles away at Samantha Bee’s alternative gathering, aptly monikered ”Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” was exactly the opposite. The young crowd was atwitter, happily snacking on free popcorn hors d’oeuvres and booze. And there were famous people, too. Peaches sang the opening song. Alysia Reiner of Orange Is the New Black was swarmed by fans and she patiently smiled for picture after picture with women who professed to loving her on the show. ”I could not be more excited to be here,” she told NPR. ”I’ve always wanted to go to the White House correspondents’ dinner and I was invited and I would rather be here.” Attending the Bee event instead was a ”super easy” decision, she said. While the official WHCA dinner was hosted by The Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj and included a very brief taped cameo by Alec Baldwin in full Saturday Night Live Donald Trump costume, Bee’s show topped that with Will Ferrell reprising his impression of George W. Bush onstage. ”For a long time I was considered the worst president of all time,” Ferrell’s faux former president snickered. ”That has changed, and it only took 100 days.”"
"When Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, he started forcefully laying out a plan for his first 100 days that included full repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, suspension of immigration from specific   countries and the lifting of ”roadblocks” to let ”infrastructure projects like the Keystone Pipeline move forward.” ”I’ve asked my transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on Day 1 to restore our laws and bring back our jobs,” Trump said in November. ”It’s about time.” The administration touted higher numbers of laws signed into effect and executive orders than previous administrations, and it successfully appointed a Supreme Court justice to fill Antonin Scalia’s vacant seat. However, Trump struggled through challenges to several of his cabinet appointees, questions about his personal conflicts of interest, several stumbles from his press secretary, and an ongoing investigation into Russia’s potential interference in the November election. Republicans hoped he would bring unity to the party, but even with a majority in Congress, they narrowly managed to delay a government shutdown on Friday, and only until May 5. ”I think the president is learning that the   position of the presidency is not the ” said Rep. Joe Crowley, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. As the 100 day marker passes this weekend, here is a look at some of the major events that have transpired in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Gabriella Demczuk is a freelance photojournalist based in Washington, D. C. She covers politics for the New York Times, CNN and NPR."
"I awoke to the sound of a mosquito buzzing near my ear. It was still dark out, and I could see the stars from my window, a rare sight in India when you are in the city. I, however, was at least a few hours from the nearest one. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure where I was as I was never given the address or directions, having been transported by a private car from Hyderabad, one of India’s bustling tech hubs. I was spending a few days at the Prajwala facilities, a compound of several acres hidden away in the outskirts of a small town in rural Andhra Pradesh. Prajwala (meaning ”bright” in Sanskrit) a nonprofit headed by Dr. Sunitha Krishnan, is home to hundreds of women and girls rescued from brothels around India to aid in treatment for rehabilitation and reintegration.  Several months later, I would find myself thousands of miles away, walking through the small alleyways inhabited by the women of the Perna community, a tribe that practices sex work as tradition in many states and territories throughout north India, including Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan. Unlike the women at Prajwala, these women live at home with their own families but are prostituted by their    and husbands. Their husbands or other men in the community drive a group of women to   prostitution areas in the town between 12 a. m. and 6 a. m. where they meet customers. The    collects the money at night’s end. It is unknown how many Pernas are sex workers today, but there are at least several hundred whom I met through my research. While they may face sexual violence, emotional abuse, and physical assaults from clients, just like women who practice prostitution in brothels, there are distinct differences in their attitude toward the work. Global estimates suggest that upward of 4. 5 million people are exploited in sex trafficking, with India one of the largest hubs. As a researcher studying the psychological and medical effects of sex trafficking and exploitation, I had the opportunity to speak to women who had a variety of experiences. I learned quickly that India’s sex trade is a complex world filled with stories of struggle, independence, tragedy and empowerment. At the center of it, I found the voices of individual women fighting for their rights  —   and the fundamental desire to be heard and respected. Walking into the several acre, rural compound of Prajwala, I could feel the severity of what was at stake. The facility, funded by several international donors, is surrounded by   high walls with barbed wire atop its address is not publicly listed. Dr. Krishnan explained that this level of security was needed for the safety of the women who had been rescued. On many days, traffickers would arrive unannounced, likely having found the compound by following Prajwala’s workers from the city. They’d try to lure the women to escape. What is surprising is that a number of women wanted to go back to their previous life as a prostitute.  One woman who had been rescued in a brothel raid in Bombay shared her rationale: ”I have problems at home  —   my husband left me. That’s why I am in this profession. I did it only for my two children . .. I was caught.” For this woman, and many others, their financial earnings allowed them to support her children back in the village. While many women in India’s sex industry are kidnapped and trafficked when they are still children, a number are sex workers who choose to go into the profession because of financial hardship. They may work according to their own hours and dates, essentially renting space in a brothel. Unlike those in child trafficking, many of them are in their   when they become sex workers. For these women, being held at an NGO for their ”own protection” was not particularly appreciated. But most of them would not have the option to leave until their court hearing to determine if they were trafficked or being held against their will. Nonetheless, while the women themselves saw the economic benefit of their work, Dr. Krishnan and many in the   community are concerned with the exploitative nature of the profession. The goal at Prajwala is to help all women in the sex trade regain economic and psychological independence. But doing so is undeniably complicated. For many women, the rehabilitation efforts are immensely useful, but there are a few for whom returning to the sex trade is the preferred option. My experience with the Perna, a tribal group spread out throughout Northern India in which wives practice as sex workers, was almost entirely different. The Perna were migrants affected by the British Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which forced tribes to abandon their work in trades like   and street acrobatics. This was largely because these types of professions did not conform to the British idea of ”civility.” With little way to make money, the women began working in the sex trade, a practice that continues openly today. ”This is our traditional work. We have always done this work,” explained one elderly Perna woman. In my research with the Perna, I found that these women believed that sex work was their duty and tradition. But some younger Perna women have come to question the fairness of this idea, given that most men in the community did not work and squandered money on alcohol and gambling, I came away from these two research visits with a new understanding of the complexity of sex work, of how there is a thin line between empowerment and oppression. There were sex workers who found their profession to be a valid way to make their way in the world. And there are some who argued that keeping women in NGO facilities for rehabilitation against their will is exploitation. Women in the Perna community told me that to criticize what they were doing was unfair when other women in the community were sexually unfaithful to their spouse. Members of the public agreed: ”This happens in regular people’s homes too. A woman sleeping with a neighbor’s husband” reasoned one man who lived near the Perna community. We must be conscious of how we judge women who are in the sex trade, because each story is complicated and nuanced. And they all need immense courage to get through every day. As a doctor, I felt that the women in both NGO facilities and those in the Perna community were in true need of health care services  —   sexual health interventions, family planning support, mental health support and primary care. And I learned how we are failing these women by focusing too much on the sexual nature of their work rather than seeing them as people with basic needs for survival. When one Perna woman was asked if she knew about HIV or using condoms, she responded, ”No one has told us about this at all.” Abraar Karan is a physician and public health researcher at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He has worked on global health endeavors with marginalized populations in Asia, Latin America, and   Africa. Contact him @AbraarKaran"
"This month marks 350 years since John Milton sold his publisher the copyright of Paradise Lost for the sum of five pounds.  His great work dramatizes the oldest story in the Bible, whose principal characters we know only too well: God, Adam, Eve, Satan in the form of a talking snake  —   and an apple. Except, of course, that Genesis never names the apple but simply refers to ”the fruit.” To quote from the King James Bible: And the woman said to the serpent, ”We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ’You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. ’” ”Fruit” is also the word Milton employs in the poem’s sonorous opening lines: Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit, Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste, Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, But in the course of his    poem, Milton names the fruit twice, explicitly calling it an apple. So how did the apple become the guilty fruit that brought death into this world and all our woe? The short and unexpected answer is: a Latin pun. In order to explain, we have to go all the way back to the fourth century A. D. when Pope Damasus ordered his leading scholar of scripture, Jerome, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Latin. Jerome’s     project, which resulted in the canonical Vulgate, used the Latin spoken by the common man. As it turned out, the Latin words for evil and apple are the same: malus. In the Hebrew Bible, a generic term, peri, is used for the fruit hanging from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, explains Robert Appelbaum, who discusses the biblical provenance of the apple in his book Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections.  ”Peri could be absolutely any fruit,” he says. ”Rabbinic commentators variously characterized it as a fig, a pomegranate, a grape, an apricot, a citron, or even wheat. Some commentators even thought of the forbidden fruit as a kind of wine, intoxicating to drink.” When Jerome was translating the ”Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” the word malus snaked in. A brilliant but controversial theologian, Jerome was known for his hot temper, but he obviously also had a rather cool sense of humor. ”Jerome had several options,” says Appelbaum, a professor of English literature at Sweden’s Uppsala University. ”But he hit upon the idea of translating peri as malus, which in Latin has two very different meanings. As an adjective, malus means bad or evil. As a noun it seems to mean an apple, in our own sense of the word, coming from the very common tree now known officially as the Malus pumila. So Jerome came up with a very good pun.” The story doesn’t end there. ”To complicate things even more,” says Appelbaum, ”the word malus in Jerome’s time, and for a long time after, could refer to any fleshy   fruit. A pear was a kind of malus. So was the fig, the peach, and so forth.” Which explains why Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco features a serpent coiled around a fig tree. But the apple began to dominate Fall artworks in Europe after the German artist Albrecht Dürer’s famous 1504 engraving depicted the First Couple counterpoised beside an apple tree. It became a template for future artists such as Lucas Cranach the Elder, whose luminous Adam and Eve painting is hung with apples that glow like rubies. Milton, then, was only following cultural tradition. But he was a renowned Cambridge intellectual fluent in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, who served as secretary for foreign tongues to Oliver Cromwell during the Commonwealth. If anyone was aware of the malus pun, it would be him. And yet he chose to run it with it. Why? Appelbaum says that Milton’s use of the term ”apple” was ambiguous. ”Even in Milton’s time the word had two meanings: either what was our common apple, or, again, any fleshy   fruit. Milton probably had in mind an ambiguously named object with a variety of connotations as well as denotations, most but not all of them associating the idea of the apple with a kind of innocence, though also with a kind of intoxication, since hard apple cider was a common English drink.” It was only later readers of Milton, says Appelbaum, who thought of ”apple” as ”apple” and not any   fruit. For them, the forbidden fruit became synonymous with the malus pumila. As a widely read canonical work, Paradise Lost was influential in cementing the role of apple in the Fall story. But whether the forbidden fruit was an apple, fig, peach, pomegranate or something completely different, it is worth revisiting the temptation scene in Book 9 of Paradise Lost, both as an homage to Milton (who composed his masterpiece when he was blind, impoverished and in the doghouse for his regicidal politics) and simply to savor the sublime beauty of the language. Thomas Jefferson loved this poem. With its superfood dietary advice, celebration of the ’  is the best help’ ideal, and presence of a   salesman, Paradise Lost is a quintessentially American story, although composed more than a century before the United States was founded. What makes the temptation scene so absorbing and enjoyable is that, although written in archaic English, it is speckled with mundane details that make the reader stop in surprise. Take, for instance, the serpent’s impeccably timed gustatory seduction. It takes place not at any old time of the day but at lunchtime: ”Mean while the hour of Noon drew on, and wak’  An eager appetite.”  What a canny and charmingly human detail. Milton builds on it by lingeringly conjuring the aroma of apples, knowing full well that an ”ambrosial smell” can madden an empty stomach to action. The fruit’s ”savorie odour,” rhapsodizes the snake, is more pleasing to the senses than the scent of the teats of an ewe or goat dropping with unsuckled milk at evening. Today’s Food Network impresarios, with their overblown praise and frantic similes, couldn’t dream up anything close to that peculiarly sensuous comparison. It is easy to imagine the scene. Eve, curious, credulous and peckish, gazes longingly at the contraband ”Ruddie and Gold” fruit while the unctuous   salesman murmurs his encouragement. Initially, she hangs back, suspicious of his ”overpraising.” But soon she begins to cave: How can a fruit so ”Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste,” be evil? Surely it is the opposite, its ”sciental sap” must be the source of divine knowledge. The serpent must speak true. So saying, her rash hand in evil hour  Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck’d, she eat: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, That all was lost.  But Eve is insensible to the cosmic disappointment her lunch has caused. Sated and intoxicated as if with wine, she bows low before ”O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees,” and hurries forth with ”a bough of fairest fruit” to her beloved Adam, that he too might eat and aspire to godhead. Their shared meal, foreshadowed as it is by expulsion and doom, is a moving and poignant tableau of marital bliss. Meanwhile, the serpent, its mission accomplished, slinks into the gloom. Satan heads eagerly toward a gathering of fellow devils, where he boasts that the Fall of Man has been wrought by something as ridiculous as ”an apple.” Except that it was a fig or a peach or a pear. An ancient Roman punned  —   and the apple myth was born. Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"On April 24, 2013, the   Rana Plaza building outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing more than 1, 100 people and injuring thousands of others. At the time, the building housed five garment factories that manufactured goods for major retail companies in Europe and North America. It is considered the deadliest disaster in the garment industry. The causes included shoddy construction, a building with too many floors and too much heavy equipment for the structure to withstand. The incident shook Bangladesh’s $28 billion garment industry, the second largest in the world behind China. It drew attention to horrific conditions for factory employees, and raised questions about transparency in the global garment industry in which they work. But four years later, a report on supply chain transparency released by Human Rights Watch finds only 17 of 72 apparel and footwear companies contacted by a coalition of labor and human rights groups and global unions have agreed to implement a transparency pledge by the end of this year. The Apparel and Footwear Supply Chain Transparency Pledge sets a minimum   standard for supply chain disclosure, says Aruna Kashyap, senior counsel in the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and   of the report. The pledge was drafted and endorsed last year by a   coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch, the International Labor Rights Forum and International Trade Union Confederation, and requires companies to disclose twice a year all the sites that manufacture their products, including details such as addresses, types of products made and number of workers at each site. Limited progress  In the aftermath of the Rana Plaza tragedy, the Bangladeshi government rushed to improve safety measures, and human rights and labor advocates called for greater accountability and transparency in the industry. Last year, 38 people were charged with murder in the building collapse. Government labor reforms regarding workers’ rights and pay and factory compliance have been put in place. But ”in terms of effectiveness, there remains a gap,” Khondaker Golam Moazzem, research director with the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka, recently told The Daily Star, a   newspaper. Two major agreements between global retailers and brands and trade unions  —   the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety  —   were also signed after the tragedy. The organizations in charge of these initiatives released statements this month indicating they had made progress, but there was still more work to be done. Kashyap says that even though global apparel companies don’t directly employ workers in Bangladesh, they do own and sell brands that have business relationships with the factories that employ those workers. And it’s transparency about those relationships  —   knowing which factories are producing for which brands being sold by which parent company  —   that is important, she says. Companies such as Nike, Patagonia and HM Group are among the 17 committing to adhere to the transparency pledge by the end of 2017. Others, such as Columbia Sportswear and the Walt Disney Co. which publish names and addresses of supplier factories, are acknowledged in the report as moving ”in the right direction.” Companies listed in the ”No Commitment to Publish Supplier Factory Information” category include Hugo Boss, Mango and Walmart. ”The labor movement, over decades, has been demanding that parent companies have to publish their supplier information,” says Kashyap. While many international retailers have been reporting that information in some capacity over the years, she says, it’s been inconsistent. Kashyap says the Rana Plaza tragedy was a   call because no one knew immediately which companies were sourcing clothing from the building at the time of its collapse. ”And so [investigators] had to actually go through the ruins to collect labels or interview surviving workers . .. to hold these brands accountable,” says Kashyap. In the end, major apparel companies from the U. S. and Europe, including Children’s Place, Mango and Premier Clothing, were found to have had recent orders in factories at Rana Plaza. ’It does matter to consumers’ After Rana Plaza, which came on the heels of two other deadly factory fires  —   one in Pakistan and the other also in Bangladesh  —   Kashyap says no parent company in the garment industry should still be resisting transparency, but many are. There are many reasons a company might not want to sign the transparency pledge, Kashyap says, including fears of competitive disadvantage and   concerns. Some companies, such as Walmart, won’t sign the transparency pledge because they already have their own transparency mechanisms in place. ”Walmart is working to improve transparency around our supply chain through a number of initiatives,” Marilee McInnis, a spokeswoman for Walmart, told NPR via email. But Kashyap says even when companies implement their own measures, it may not be enough. ”We’re not saying that those systems should not be in place,” says Kashyap. ”What we’re saying is that there are clear limitations to those systems and what transparency does complements everything else you have.” Another reason that so few companies have signed the pledge so far could be because, historically, factory lists have been viewed as proprietary information, says Sharon Waxman, president of the Fair Labor Association, a Washington, D. C.  nonprofit that brings together brand suppliers and labor rights groups with the goal of improving workers’ rights. But agreements like the transparency pledge are still very important and they matter to consumers, says Waxman. She notes that many of the companies that have signed the pledge are members of her organization. ”I think consumers, if they have a choice to buy from a brand or supplier that has a very high level of labor standard compared to another one, the price being the same  —   I think it does matter to consumers,” she says. ”And if you step back and look at the spread of laws and regulations that are demanding and requiring more transparency in supply chains. I think that really speaks to the level of interest of consumers.” While the transparency pledge has no real enforcement mechanism, Waxman says once a company is on the record saying it’s going to disclose more information about its supply chain, this will lead to greater accountability. ’They didn’t know who to reach out to’ More transparency would also send a strong message to workers in the industry, says Kashyap of Human Rights Watch. Bangladesh’s garment industry is huge: According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, an alliance of   organizations and trade unions in the garment industry, it employs between 3. 5 million to 4 million people and accounts for about 12 percent of Bangladesh’s GDP. Since the Rana Plaza collapse, Bangladeshis have become increasingly vocal in demanding better wages and working conditions. The country’s minimum wage is just 32 cents an hour. When tens of thousands of workers walked off the job to protest low wages at the end of last year, it resulted in a   shutdown of more than 50 factories outside Dhaka. But after Rana Plaza, some refused to go back to work in the industry. Kashyap has been in touch with some of them, and wrote this month about one Rana Plaza survivor’s ongoing struggle with depression and trauma. ”One of the things that she said was that she didn’t know  —   a lot of workers didn’t know  —   who they were producing for,” Kashyap says. After the collapse, ”They didn’t know who to reach out to.”"
"”Why am I doing this, again?” I’ve asked myself that question several mornings over the past few months as my stomach begins growling, usually after I smell popcorn in my coworker’s office. He’s on a strict 10 a. m. popcorn schedule that coincides with my strict 10 a. m. hunger pang schedule. I am following an intermittent fasting program as part of a clinical trial for people with multiple sclerosis. For the past five months, I have tried to eat only between noon and 8 p. m. and am allowed only water, tea or coffee during the remaining 16 hours. It’s part of a study at Johns Hopkins Medicine in which researchers are looking at bacteria in the guts of patients with multiple sclerosis to determine whether intermittent fasting changes the number, the types, or the functions of our bacteria. They’re also looking to see if any of those changes affect inflammation and the symptoms we experience. Scientists know that fasting can affect the microbiome, according to Dr. Ellen Mowry, associate professor of neurology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University and lead researcher for the study. But they don’t yet know now. Right now, researchers are simply trying to determine which dietary changes affect the microbiome and what the effects are. It’s a complicated interplay of microbes, the human body, the environment and genetics. The science is hard, yes, but so is the intermittent fasting! Mowry said in an email that when she tries to fast along with participants, she has found it difficult to maintain. ”But often for me,” she says, ”this is related more to my mental stamina rather than physical.” I agree. Over five months, it’s been the same nearly every day  —   I do get a little hungry in the mornings, but I’m thinking about eating more often. I have only eaten any earlier than noon once or twice during the study, like the infamous O’Hare Airport incident when I just couldn’t resist that bagel. I still have no regrets. My   tend to be when I’m running late and eat after 8 p. m. I don’t think I’ve screwed up enough to affect the tests, and I’ve been honest when it comes to food logging. I promise. In a previous fasting study looking at calorie restriction, researchers had more to rely on than participants’ word that they were following the diet. ”We can predict the amount of weight people should lose in a given time period, so if they aren’t doing it,” Mowry says, ”we can guess adherence isn’t accurate.” But for this study, it’s not so easy. The biggest challenge is sample size  —   54 people are enrolled in the study I’m doing. Some are fasting, some are on a restricted calorie diet and some are in the control group, doing nothing different. ”The studies are too small to be certain that any change in symptoms is related to the intervention,” Mowry says. She wants to do larger studies, but finding funding for dietary studies is difficult. Also,   isn’t always the most accurate way to get data. Mowry says ideally participants would log meals during food recalls every 24 hours with trained professionals. In other words, I would go in on a Tuesday and tell someone what I ate and drank on Monday. I would explain how food was prepared, how much I ate and drank, and so on. This isn’t easy to do because, again, money. There’s just not enough to hire the professionals needed. Instead of food recalls, we intermittent fasters text pictures twice a week of what we ate and drank that day. As I entered the final few months of the study, I found myself forgetting more and more to take the pictures before I eat. I have sent more than one photo of a   plate with the note, ”Sorry! I forgot to snap a picture.” I was entering a period of fasting fatigue. Obviously, I needed to get pumped again. So I set up a Google Alert for ”microbiome.” I cozied up with Ed Yong’s book I Contain Multitudes, about the human microbiome, before bed every night  —   I highly recommend it. I got sucked into thousands of journal articles, skimming everything from ”Role of the Gut Microbiome in Obesity and Diabetes Mellitus” in Nutrition in Clinical Practice to ”HOW RESEARCH INTO THE MICROBIOME CAN BE USED TO SOLVE CRIMES” in the Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal. (I have no idea why the title was in all caps, but I took that as a sign I should read it.) If I decide to continue with intermittent fasting once the study is over, new motivation may come in the form of results from a previous study that Mowry will present this fall. The results should show if calorie restriction or a more extreme form of intermittent fasting called 5:2 fasting affect metabolism and how they affect the microbiome. The thing is, I’m not sure if I want to continue. In the beginning, my boyfriend, who is particularly observant and good at catching subtle changes that I may not notice, said I seemed to have a bit more energy and was not complaining (my word, not his!) about pain as often. And fasting has been a good way to maintain my weight. But a few months ago, my MS symptoms seemed to be worsening. This could be for a couple of reasons, but the big one is likely stress. Finishing my thesis, working, freelancing, gymming . .. things reached a frenzied pace, and my pain levels skyrocketed. So did intermittent fasting help? A little, maybe? Not at all? The jury is still out, and it will likely end in deadlock. There are too many factors for me to consider. In about a month I’ll return to the doctor with a stool sample and leave with permission to eat breakfast again. If I decide to keep up the fasting, at least I won’t have the pressure of worrying that my   might compromise the work that Dr. Mowry, Research Study Coordinator Sam Roman and others have put into trying to help me and the estimated 2. 5 million worldwide who have multiple sclerosis. And if I feel a pang of guilt if I want cream in my morning coffee  —   or heck, maybe I want breakfast!  —    I’ll just remember what Mowry told me: ”It can’t be a totally inflexible diet plan otherwise, it definitely won’t be sustainable.” Brandie Michelle Jefferson is a communications manager and freelance reporter who loves a good science story. She’s on Twitter, too: @b_m_jefferson."
"On the week marking President Trump’s 100 days in office, his mood on Twitter was much less positive than it had been in the previous few weeks. A sentiment analysis shows these last few months have been a roller coaster of emotion. Trump’s most negative week by far was his second week in office  —   just after he signed his controversial ban on travelers to the U. S. from seven   countries, and protests broke out nationwide. His most positive weeks included the confirmation and   of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. How the analysis works, A program called VADER determines the positivity or negativity of the words used in each tweet. It then assigns the tweets a score ranging from   to 1 (with 1 being the most positive). This week (not including Saturday’s tweets) Trump landed almost exactly on an average of zero. Any given week’s score might be a balance of extremely positive and extremely negative tweets. For example, this week, happier messages like ”A great great honor to welcome  recognize the National Teacher of the Year, as well as the Teacher of the Year from each State  territory!” (scoring a 0. 9477) were balanced out by negative tweets like, ”Democrats are trying to bail out insurance companies from disastrous #ObamaCare, and Puerto Rico with your tax dollars. Sad!” (scoring a  . 81). Trump took aim at Democrats on a range of issues. He reiterated his promise to build a wall on the U. S.  border, though he had backed off of funding demands in order to avoid a government shutdown. Trump also shared a series of videos of himself announcing executive orders, and he continued his push to replace the Affordable Care Act, an effort that has been unsuccessful so far. Much of this is seen as part of the president trying to score a big accomplishment or two before the end of his first 100 days. So what? At times, Trump appears to tweet based on what has grabbed his attention (including what happens to be on cable news) at any given moment. Calculating the emotions in Trump’s tweets is by no means a reflection of his psyche, but it might tell us something about what sorts of things please him most (getting a Supreme Court justice confirmed) and what sorts of things draw his anger (Democrats in Congress fighting his agenda). At the very least, it’s a fascinating exercise. But what’s perhaps most remarkable about it is that we can do it at all. ”The president is normally encased in a layer of aides and protected, and we know him . .. at some remove,” said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute. ”And in some ways . .. it’s comforting,” Rosenstiel added, ”because you don’t see them as actual people that much, except when they want you to.” It’s true that President Barack Obama was on Twitter, too, but he engaged at the presidential arm’s length that Rosenstiel describes. Obama’s feed was a sanitized view of the office, full of official photos and health care pitches  —   rarely with a truly memorable tweet. Trump’s account, meanwhile, offers up one notable tweet after another. Social media may have allowed Obama to innovate the president’s mode of communicating with the public, but Trump has changed the kinds of things the president communicates. With his tweets, he appears to reveal even things that can be unflattering: his fixations, his frustrations  —   and the occasional spelling error. That may seem like a liability, but then again, it also highlights Trump’s authenticity  —   the part of him that so many voters found irresistible. ”I mean, people have obviously talked to him about [his Twitter usage]. And he’s done this for years,” Rosenstiel said. ”He thinks it’s good for us to see him before he counts to 10.”"
"Sometimes, even professionally compassionate people get tired. Kristin Laurel, a flight nurse from Waconia, Minn. has worked in trauma units for over two decades. The daily exposure to distressing situations can sometimes result in compassion fatigue. ”Some calls get to you, no matter who you are,” she says. That burnout is what Laurel says she was trying to understand when she wrote her   poem, Afflicted. The poem delves into the night shift of an emergency room nurse in Minneapolis, weaving together stories of patients who are homeless, addicted to drugs or victims of homicide. Ten years ago, Laurel took a writing workshop in Minneapolis and earned a   fellowship that introduced her to the world of contemporary poetry. She found that, unlike other forms of writing, poetry had an efficiency and raw honesty that made it a fitting outlet for her observations as a trauma nurse. Laurel published her first collection of poems, Giving Them All Away, after winning the Sinclair Prize for poetry in 2011. She says that writing allowed her to acknowledge her darker experiences in the ER while also taking care of herself. ”It’s a way of letting go,” she says, especially of patients who die. ”I acknowledge their life as well as let go of my grief. There’s definitely power and healing in that.” Kristin Laurel, It is the night shift, and most of Minneapolis does not know, that tonight a drunk man rolled onto the broken ice, and fell through the Mississippi. He lies sheltered and warm in the morgue, unidentified. Behind a dumpster by the Metrodome, a mother blows smoke up to the stars, she flicks sparks with a lighter, and inside her pipe, a rock of crack glows, before it crumbles into ash, and is taken by the wind. Another mother waits up for her son, he was shot in the chest, then pushed out of a fleeing car. He bleeds on black pavement, exhaust fumes hover over him. Through the back doors of the ER, medics dump off the indigent, and   cops track in salt and sand. We are all misplaced. An Indian brave, is just plain drunk, the white paint on his cheeks and nose, is from huffing paint. He is snoring off his stupor, from drinking bottles of Listerine, (the poor man’s liquor). It’s so easy to judge, but we are all broken, in one way or another, The officer was just trying to clean up the streets, keep his back seat sanitary, when he picked up another filthy drunk, and shoved him into the trunk of his squad car. The young nurse was conned, into being callous, It only took being spit at, being called a bitch, and one punch to the face, to learn to be gruff, and keep them all cuffed to the bed: She takes off soiled jeans, uncovers scraps of a shredded newspaper, the homeless man’s underpants (  words). A grimy, tattered shirt is stuck to his chest, she peels it off, holding her breath, while, flakes of dead skin detach into the air. In one more hour it will be daybreak. She will go home to her clean house, her white down comforter on a   bed. But, she knows, there is an affliction in the air. Even the snowflakes fall like ash. She washes her hands. April is National Poetry Month, and Shots is exploring medicine in poetry through the words of doctors, patients and health care workers. The series is a collaboration with Pulse: Voices Through The Heart Of Medicine, a platform that publishes personal stories of illness and healing."
"A male boss brushes up against his female employee. Off the record, a male politician makes suggestive remarks to a female reporter. These are just a couple of examples of sexual harassment that may be all too familiar to some career women. Producers Sigal Avin, David Schwimmer and Mazdack Rassi have just released a series of short films about the issue, called #ThatsHarassment. Each film begins with the headline ”based on a real incident”  —   like the episode ”The ” which takes place at a bar, as a man gropes his female colleague while acting out an infamous comment made on tape by Donald Trump. ”I created this in Israel before it came here to the States,” Avin says. ”I was reading about a lot of sexual harassment in Israel as in the States. And I started asking myself, what is sexual harassment? And I thought, we hear about it all the time, and we read about it all the time, but we never actually see what it is.” On personal experiences with harassment, Avin: I was a young playwright, and I went to speak to an actor who was a pretty big star back then, and I had known him  —   we’d worked, and he was always kind of a really cool guy, always funny, and we were at his place talking about the play, I went to the restroom, and when I came back . .. he exposed himself. The dialogue that he used is the same dialogue that the actor uses. . .. It took me a couple of years to realize that was sexual harassment  —   I mean, I thought, this is a weird guy, I just want to get out of here, that was kind of humiliating. It took me a while to understand that he was using his power, and everything behind that. On the goal of the films, Schwimmer: Everyone is so used to violent sex crime being portrayed in the media, in television and film  —   you know, the guy hiding behind the bushes, jumping out at you, grabbing and attacking. But this kind of crime happens with such frequency, on a daily basis, to most women if not all women  —   where there’s any kind of imbalance of power, and often at work. I think one of the goals for us was to really show it. There’s something about the power of actually seeing it, for victims  —   it’s by seeing it happen that they realize, oh, that was sexual harassment. It wasn’t just me. On what the filmmakers want men to understand, Schwimmer: We really don’t feel this is a   women’s issue. This is a human issue, and as a man, every woman in my life, with the exception of my almost    daughter  —   thank god  —   has been subjected to sexual harassment. My mother, my sister, my wife, my colleagues, my friends. So I think for men, some of the films which are less overt than, say, the one I’m acting in, where I actually grab and kiss an employee as her boss . .. we’re hoping that by showing these and having a conversation, that men will become more aware, and they will work to protect their colleagues, and their wives, and their daughters."
"Updated at 9:45 p. m.  Former first lady Michelle Obama might find some of the latest actions by the Trump administration pretty difficult to stomach. On Monday newly minted Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced a rollback of school lunch standards championed by the former first lady, declaring at a Virginia school that the administration would ”Make School Meals Great Again.” The school nutrition standards have long been a source of controversy, making them a more likely target of the current administration. Earlier Monday, CNN initially reported a more surprising cut  —   that the Trump White House would not continue the Let Girls Learn program in its current form. The initiative aims to provide educational opportunities for young women in developing countries. However, administration officials later clarified that the program was not being axed. ”There have been no changes to the Let Girls Learn program. The Administration supports policies and programs to empower adolescent girls, including efforts to educate them through the completion of secondary school,” a State Department official told NPR. ”We are committed to empowering women and girls around the world and are continuing to examine the best ways to do so.” The former first lady launched the Let Girls Learn initiative in 2015, saying that it would tailor an approach to the problem girls face in many developing countries, including being forced into child marriages and not having appropriate bathrooms for girls who may seek to attend schools. ”You have told me that whatever obstacles these girls face  —   whether it’s school fees, or violence or cultural beliefs that girls simply aren’t worthy of an education  —   you’ve said that these problems will not be fixed from on high,” Obama told activists who pushed for the approach. ”That these are community challenges that call for community solutions.” The first lady made the initiative a priority of her husband’s final years in office, traveling in 2016 to Liberia and Morocco with her daughters, Malia and Sasha, and actresses Meryl Streep and Freida Pinto. Promoting healthy eating and combating childhood obesity were also top priorities for Michelle Obama. Curbing the requirements that Obama pushed for, Agriculture Secretary Perdue argued on Monday that the standards led to children simply not eating the lunches. ”This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals,” Perdue said in a statement. ”If kids aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition  —   thus undermining the intent of the program.” NPR’s Allison Aubrey reports that the School Nutrition Association, which represents school food administrators, has been pushing for the changes. The affected standards involve whole grain requirements, sodium content and milk options. The USDA will now let states grant exemptions regarding whole grain standards for the   school year if they’re having trouble meeting the requirements, and the agency said it will ”take all necessary regulatory actions to implement a   solution.” Sodium reductions set in place by the Obama administration will be postponed for at least three years to ”provide schools and the school nutrition industry with the certainty and predictability they need to make appropriate plans for creating foods with the appropriate amount of sodium.” Milk requirements would also loosen, allowing schools to serve 1 percent flavored milk. The fight over school lunches has lasted years. Even after the Healthy,   Kids Act of 2010 took effect, Michelle Obama continued to have to defend its importance, as NPR’s Tamara Keith reported in 2014. In 2016 the Senate settled on a compromise that would keep most of the new standards in place, including requiring to schools to serve more fruits and vegetables along with the planned reductions in sodium and increase in whole grains. A spokeswoman for first lady Melania Trump confirmed that Mrs. Trump does plan to keep up the vegetable garden that Michelle Obama planted at the White House."
"When you talk about the unrest that broke out in Los Angeles 25 years ago after the Rodney King verdict, one thing people usually remember is the looting. People went into stores and just walked out with stuff. Some people stole vital things such as food and baby formula because they didn’t know how long the riots would last. Others stole booze and cigarettes. Still others dared to carry mattresses and giant TVs home on their backs  —   and they weren’t stopped by anyone. Gilbert Monterrosa was one of those looters. But, he says he was a reluctant participant. Monterrosa was 15 at the time  —   a sophomore at James A. Foshay Junior High, now known as James A. Foshay Learning Center. He lived with his mom and two younger sisters in what was then known as South Central Los Angeles, and he and his mom had immigrated from El Salvador. Monterrosa says he and his siblings weren’t allowed to watch TV after 5 p. m. so when the riots started on April 29, they didn’t know anything had happened. They just went to bed like they always did. It wasn’t until the next day when Monterrosa was walking to school and bumped into his friend Luce and her mom that he first realized something was going on. Luce’s mom insisted Monterrosa turn around and go back home. She said she would call his mom and explain the whole thing. As they walked back, Luce explained. ”I was completely oblivious as to what was going on,” Monterrosa says. ”Luce goes, ’You didn’t watch did you?’ And I go, ’No what happened?’ She goes, ’S*** is gonna go down. Last night people were burning cars and flipping them over and things were going on on television. It might happen again today.’ And I said, ’What? C’mon man!’ ” But when Monterrosa got home and turned on the TV  —   as thousands of others would do around the country  —   he saw exactly that. As he watched TV for the next four hours, he saw breaking news video of his neighborhood on fire, and people breaking into stores across town and stealing things. It wasn’t long before two of Monterrosa’s friends came over and insisted they go out and steal too. At first, he did not want to go. That was, until a neighbor played on Monterrosa’s major weakness. ”It was known across my neighborhood that I was a mama’s boy,” he says. ”That I listened to everything she had to say. And because my dad wasn’t around, my stepdad wasn’t also around, I had to play the machismo card and show them that I was the man.” So when the neighbor, Eduardo, questioned him, Monterrosa caved. ”Eduardo, I remember, said, ’And this little b**** is going?’ and it just burned me up inside,” he says. ”And I said to him, ’Yeah I’m going!’ ” Monterrosa and his friends piled into the car and drove to the nearest Fedco department store on the corner of La Cienega and Rodeo streets. The Fedco no longer stands on this intersection  —   it has now been replaced by a Target  —   but back then, Fedco was similar to a Costco. It was a major wholesale warehouse with groceries and all kinds of goods. When Monterrosa and his friends arrived, they discovered items all over the floor. ”It was as if somebody had opened up the doors to Fedco, and they were just giving stuff away,” Monterrosa recalls. ”People that I knew that were in opposing gangs were helping each other out, and there’s stuff everywhere on the floor  —   clothing, food  —   everything is just chaos. Absolute chaos.” Monterrosa remembers being pretty nervous, but then he started to think that there was one thing he might really want, something his mom could never afford  —   a boombox. That’s because Monterrosa was really into music. ”LL Cool J, Ice Cube, NWA, a lot of RB, a lot of   that was my life,” Monterrosa says. ”Because that’s all you listen to, growing up in South Central.” So Monterrosa went inside the Fedco, grabbed a boombox and noticed something else among the slew of items on the floor. ”I looked down on the floor, and there was this album cover with a baby swimming, and a dollar bill on a hook,” he says. ”And I saw that and I said, ’What the f*** is that? What is that, right?” The album was Nevermind by Nirvana. Monterossa snuck back home with the album and boombox. He waited for his mom to go to bed, put on headphones, hit play  —   and heard Nirvana for the first time. ”It was unreal. It was like opening an entire world of music to me,” Monterrosa says. ”It was sonically aggressive yet sublime at the same time. There were these breaks in the music where everything was just really hard, and then it just came down and built up again. And in my mind’s eye I could picture the riots as I was listening to ’Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ And it just became the soundtrack of that day.” That CD got Monterrosa into a bunch of other music  —   things he’d never heard before. ”It led me back to The Clash, and The Clash led me back to The [Rolling] Stones, and The Stones led me back to The Beatles,” Monterrosa says, ”and then I listened to Bohemian Rhapsody, and then from there I went on to La Traviata.” It was right around this time that Monterrosa’s mom decided to move to a new neighborhood  —   Silver Lake, which is on the east side of LA  —   and he started going to a new school. And because he was into grunge  —   Nirvana, Pearl Jam, flannel shirts  —   he started hanging out with the other grunge dudes  —   dudes who were into editing videos and doing graphic design. ”These guys were like, friends with the jocks, the cheerleaders, the burnouts, the cholos,” Monterrosa says. ”I talked to everybody because I was part of that group of guys that listened to alternative music.” Monterrosa says if he hadn’t changed his music and his clothes, at the same time he changed his neighborhood, he probably would have ended up getting in trouble, like his other friends back in the old neighborhood. ”If I would’ve stayed in South Central, I know for a fact that I would either be dead or in jail,” he says. ”My ego wouldn’t have allowed me to be a punk. Just like I was taught to go into the LA riots by Eduardo, these guys were able to push my buttons, and if you have that much machismo, growing inside of you, and you come from a broken home, where you have to be the man, I probably would’ve been part of this group of guys that would have ended up getting arrested or getting killed by another gang of people.” It wasn’t all easy in the new school. Monterrosa eventually dropped out. But then he got his GED, and now he works in IT for a security company that allows you to monitor your home through your smart phone. He’s married and has a little boy. His mom is retired, and he and his sisters take care of her. Twenty five years ago, Monterrossa stole some stuff during the LA riots. He did a bad thing that day, but in a way, it turned out to be a good thing. Driving around LA, he says he still thinks about how that album changed his life. He still has the CD. ”I still listen to that album,” he says. ”And instead of seeing a Fedco on La Cienega and Rodeo, I see a Target there now. And I’m listening to this, and I go, ’Man, this is where I heard you for the first time.’ It’s like a really bad relationship, yet a really good relationship, that you can’t forget about.” NPR’s Anjuli Sastry produced and Melissa Gray edited All Things Considered’s series of reports on the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots."
"Jordan Edwards, a high school freshman, was leaving a house party in a Dallas suburb late Saturday night with several friends when police officers arrived outside. The officers were investigating a complaint about noisy teenagers in the neighborhood, and they had heard gunshots in the area as they approached. Within minutes, the black    passenger had been killed  —   shot in the head by an officer through the front passenger window and pronounced dead at the hospital shortly afterward. The next day, Balch Springs police Chief Jonathan Haber apologized to Edwards’ family at a news conference, explaining the situation by saying the vehicle was backing toward officers ”in an aggressive manner.” By Monday afternoon, however, Haber had retracted that account. NPR’s Wade Goodwyn explains the discrepancies as Haber laid them out: ”In fact, the car with five teenagers inside was moving forward, not backward, and away from the officers, not toward them. There was no altercation, known or otherwise. ”Nevertheless one of officers fired a rifle multiple times into the passenger window, killing young Jordan Edwards. None of the teens were carrying weapons, nor were they drunk. ”Chief Haber said his review of the officer’s body camera video indicated the shooting may not meet his department’s standards.” The officer, who remains unnamed, has been placed on administrative leave. Both the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department and the Dallas County district attorney’s public integrity unit are investigating the shooting. ”We offer our sincere condolences to Jordan’s family and will continue to keep them in our thoughts and prayers as we move forward expeditiously, with a commitment to justice and transparency,” District Attorney Faith Johnson’s office said in a statement Monday. The attorney for Edwards’ family, Lee Merritt, said at a news conference Monday that the teen’s parents will continue to push for the officer to be arrested and charged. ”We are declaring war on bad policing. This has happened far too often,” Merritt said, while flanked by Edwards’ family. ”America must find a way to police its citizens without killing them.”"
"In an interview on SiriusXM Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump wondered aloud about why the Civil War wasn’t ”worked out” and whether Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the war started, could’ve prevented the bloodiest war in U. S. history. Trump visited Jackson’s estate last month in Tennessee, and many have drawn comparisons between the two. Trump obviously likes the parallel, even going so far as to have a portrait of Jackson hung in the Oval Office. Trump also pondered why more people don’t ask ”why was there the Civil War?” NPR Morning Edition Host Steve Inskeep wrote a book about Andrew Jackson in 2015, called Jacksonland, so I reached out to him via email today for some context. This interview has been edited lightly for clarity. Q: I think we need to unpack the main quote here: ”People don’t realize, ya know, you think about it  —   why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?” I guess the obvious question is, do you think people don’t ask that question? What do you make of this? Inskeep: People have asked this question regularly since 1861. Even President Trump has asked the question before. Nevertheless, it’s a good question to ask, which is why so many people do ask. We’d hate to have another Civil War, so it’s good to learn about it. Why wasn’t the Civil War worked out? The story of Andrew Jackson actually helps to explain this. The President said that he thinks if Jackson had ”been a little bit later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War.” Give some context here, do you think that’s true? This much is true: Andrew Jackson, who was president from   helped to avert a plausible civil war, generations before the actual one. In the 1830’s, South Carolina insisted on its right to nullify, or ignore, federal law. The South Carolinians objected to taxes  —   federal tariffs on the imported goods they were buying from Europe. Jackson insisted that federal law reigned supreme. Through a carefully calibrated mixture of threats (a warship actually appeared in the harbor at Charleston, ready to open fire if need be) and compromises (Congress cut the tariff a little) he persuaded the nullifiers to back down. But this is also true: Jackson never questioned the underlying, fundamental difference between North and South, which was on slavery. He didn’t actually disagree with his fellow Southern leaders about that issue. It was much, much harder to compromise as the Civil War broke out in 1861, because the nation was more squarely confronting that issue. Northern votes had just elected Abraham Lincoln, a president from an allegedly radical new party that insisted that slavery was wrong and must be contained to the South. Southerners saw this as a threat to their property, and tried to secede from the Union. From the very beginning the South tried to obscure what the conflict was truly about, citing state rights, Southern theories of liberty, or the economic oppression of the North but the Confederate vice president, Alexander H. Stephens, made it plain in a speech: the United States was in ”error” to believe in ”the equality of the races,” and the Confederacy aimed to build on a different foundation. People did try, desperately, to ”work out” that problem before the shooting started in 1861, but it was in the end an irreconcilable difference. Andrew Jackson owned slaves that worked on his plantation in Tennessee. What were his views on slavery and how do those views square with Trump’s characterization of him as someone with ”a big heart?” He bought his first slave, a young woman, when he was barely an adult. He also traded in slaves. From his late forties onward, he actually owned slaves who worked multiple plantations as he built a little empire of cotton land in Tennessee and Alabama. Sometimes slaves escaped, and he advertised for their return. At least once he went hunting for escaped slaves himself. It is said, correctly I think, that he was not a   ideologue he just accepted slavery as the custom of his time. But as president, his governing coalition, which became the Democratic Party, included Southern slave interests, and Jackson never messed with them. He even allowed Southerners to censor the U. S. mail to keep ”dangerous” antislavery publications from reaching slave states. So did he have a ”big heart”? Some of his biographers think so. He was said to be a gentle master there were scenes of slaves crying when he died and one writer even called him ”an ideal slave owner.” However, he was never so kind to his slaves as to free them. Jackson behaved similarly toward Indians: making friends with them, but never stopping his efforts to obtain their land for the United States. Maybe it’s best to say that Jackson had a ”big heart,” except where his economic or political interests were at stake. Andrew Jackson died 16 years before the war started in 1861, but how did his legacy play into the fact that conflict started? Jackson lived on, in a way, into the Civil War. He was famous for preserving the Union in the 1830s. As Abraham Lincoln led the Union to ultimate victory and the abolition of slavery 30 years later, he apparently liked Jackson’s powerful example. He, like Trump, kept a portrait of Andrew Jackson on his wall. Of course Jackson, however, never favored abolition. But history is complicated, and it is all our legacy, even the parts we dislike. Trump mentions in this interview that his Presidential campaign and subsequent November win were most like Andrew Jackson’s in 1828. Would you say that’s a fair comparison? What parallels and differences do you see between Jackson and Trump? 2016 was actually more like 1824. In that year, the political world was divided and nobody knew which way it would go. Andrew Jackson was one of four candidates who divided the popular and electoral votes. Jackson got the most popular votes   but when the election was thrown to the House of Representatives, the House chose the popular vote loser, John Quincy Adams. It was a perfectly legal result, but one that Jackson branded as unfair and undemocratic. Jackson then went on to win a landslide in 1828. Obviously, Trump would much rather be like Jackson in 1828, proclaiming a new democratic era. But his vote results position him more like the John Quincy Adams of 1824, who won the presidency legally, but in a way that his critics called unfair."
"As Trump appointees take their new positions in the federal bureaucracy, a legal battle is escalating over alleged intimidation of the civil servants who make the government function. The nonprofit United to Protect Democracy is suing the Departments of Energy and of Health and Human Services for records that would document or disprove such allegations. One of the group’s lawyers, Ben Berwick, wrote in an online post that the goal is ”protecting the civil service from purges, intimidation or politicization.” The DOE suit seeks documents concerning an attempt by the Trump transition team to get the names of civil servants and contractors who worked on climate change programs. The HHS case seeks similar documents that would have targeted employees who worked or expressed views on the Affordable Care Act or abortion rights. United to Protect Democracy, which includes some lawyers from the Obama White House, earlier filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the documents. The law allows a FOIA requester to sue if an agency fails to act promptly the group alleges that has happened. The nonprofit wrote in the complaints that its mission ”is to protect our democracy from descending into a more autocratic form of government.” DOE’s press office declined to comment on pending litigation. The HHS press office has not responded to requests for comment. But the hottest battle over political influence in the bureaucracy may be in the Justice Department  ” specifically its civil rights division, which handles voter ID, redistricting, allegations of police misconduct against minorities and several other   political issues. United to Protect Democracy wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month, urging him to ensure that hiring and other personnel matters at the civil rights division ”are based on merit, rather than improper considerations such as actual or perceived political affiliation, as required by law.” The letter was   by 23 other progressive groups. They were responding to a letter written in March by the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation and joined by 24 other conservative leaders. It offers Sessions ideas on how to overhaul the civil rights division, which it says ”served purely ideological ends with rigidity unmatched in other federal offices.” Trump’s appointees aren’t the first newcomers to pressure the bureaucracy. Typically, Republicans want civil servants to stop carrying out statutory mandates, while incoming Democrats push them to stretch those mandates. The civil service system is designed to apply brakes to these sudden changes. ”It has happened in the past,” said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University, ”but not to the extent that it has happened here” with the Trump appointees. Still, Light predicted, ”[The appointees] will lose on these they will absolutely lose.”"
"The new Starz series American Gods is based on Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel of the same name, and it’s many things: a road novel, a collection of mythologies, and a reflection of the immigrant experience. The story follows an   named Shadow Moon, newly released from prison when he meets a mysterious man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday and offers Shadow a job as a bodyguard and chauffeur. After some initial hesitation, Shadow accepts the job, and he and Mr. Wednesday head out on the open road, where much of American Gods takes place. ”It’s a glorious American tradition,” says Neil Gaiman. ”If you take some people, you put them on the road, you see what happens to them, and you find out who they meet on the way.” The ”who” that Shadow and Mr. Wednesday meet are far from ordinary, though. They’re gods from different mythologies around the world. These gods are living as humans all over the United States, brought here when their believers first came to this country  —   as explorers, slaves, or immigrants. There’s Anansi, the African trickster spirit, who also takes the form of a spider Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god of the dead Bilquis, also known as the Queen of Sheba, and many others. Gaiman says he was inspired by his own immigrant experience, when he moved to the United States in 1992. ”I wanted to understand the country I was in and the culture that I was in, so I wrote what is an immigrant novel about immigration,” he says. ”It’s about the fact that this is a huge and wonderful country that is filled with people who came here from somewhere else  —   but that, when I wrote it seemed probably the least contentious thing that I could possibly put in a novel.” Now, he says, we live in a world where immigrants are villified and immigration is seen as a suspicious thing. And he’s somewhat baffled that the concept he wanted to celebrate is now considered fairly controversial. ”There is a madness in the world right now,” he says, ”and if American Gods is a political show, it has become a political show only because the world has changed.” Showrunners Michael Green and Bryan Fuller say they didn’t set out to make a political show either, though it does touch on topics like religion and police brutality. One historical flashback depicts the god Anansi  —   played by Orlando Jones  —   telling his believers, on a slave ship bound for America, what they can expect. ”You arrive in America,” Anansi says, ”land of opportunity, milk and honey, and guess what  —   you all get to be slaves, split up and sold off and worked to death. A hundred years after you get free, you’re still getting . .. shot at by police.” ”It wasn’t so much a political agenda as much as it was telling an American experience story,” Fuller says. Both showrunners are comfortable with the fact that their show touches on some hot button issues, ones that might not be welcome at the dinner table. ”You’re not supposed to talk about politics at the dinner table,” says Michael Green, ”but television isn’t the dinner table. Television the thing you want people to be yelling about at the dinner table.” And the show hopes it will give audiences plenty to yell about. Gaiman says that’s where the show has an advantage over the book. ”The show gets to do what I would have done if I’d had unlimited pages. I was always very aware that there were places I couldn’t go, stories I couldn’t tell because I didn’t have an infinite amount of space.” So far, the hardest part for the showrunners has been representing these different myths and cultures in a fantasy setting without turning them into caricatures, and much of that lay in the casting. ”It was a foregone conclusion that we were going to cast authentically to the characters and their respective cultural and ethnic backgrounds,” Fuller says. The casting of these gods was ”the line in the sand,” Gaiman adds. ”We aren’t whitewashing, we aren’t changing things. We are being true to the characters.” Both Fuller and Green admit this was a learning process. As they’ve started the casting process, they consulted with Neil Gaiman, who sometimes had to correct them. ”He’d go, ’no, you haven’t done your reading about that,’” Green remembers, ”and so we had to do our reading! That isn’t that hard, you just have to take an interest in it.” ”We were both fans of the book,” Fuller adds, ”so really our vision was to get the audience the images that we conjured when reading it.” Images like a goddess having sex with a man and devouring him through her vagina, improbable bank heists, and fantastical fight scenes. And old gods, struggling to find their place in a country that’s become indifferent  —   even hostile  —   to them. ”It’s very relatable to be lost and searching,” Fuller says. ”There can’t be a human being brought into this world that isn’t lost and searching at some point in their character arc.” Adds Green: ”It’s fundamental to American Gods. People came here, whether you’re first, second, third generation. You’re still defining yourself as American in the mirror of where you came from, where your families came from. That’s all part of the process of finding yourself in America.”"
"In many of today’s newsrooms, women and journalists of color remain a sliver of those producing and reporting stories. According to studies from the American Society of News Editors, the Women’s Media Center and the advocacy group VIDA, gender and ethnic diversity in newsrooms have hardly improved in the last decade despite increasing demand for more inclusive journalism in the current    news cycle. Nationally, Hispanic, black and Asian women make up less than 5 percent of newsroom personnel at traditional print and online news publications, according to 2016 data from the American Society of News Editors. The organization stopped requiring that news outlets reveal their identities in an attempt to increase participation in the yearly census. Numbers from 433 news organizations that participated in 2015 and 2016 show a 5. 6 percent increase in the minority workforce, now at 17 percent at print and online news sites. But the numbers lag far behind demographic shifts in a country where nearly 40 percent of Americans are part of a minority group. Around the country, local newsrooms remain largely white by most measures. (In the spirit of full disclosure, NPR’s latest diversity figures can be found here.) In March, the Women’s Media Center released its annual report on gender representation in the media (print bylines, internet, broadcast and other outlets). The latest numbers show a tiny change  —   37. 7 percent of the news was credited to female journalists, according to an analysis of over 24, 000 pieces of news content. Major national outlets continue to be dominated by men, and women actually lost representation in broadcast news television.  In a 2015 survey by the group VIDA: Women of the Literary Arts, magazines with a focus on news and culture, such as The New Yorker, The New Republic and Harper’s, don’t fare any better. VIDA’s numbers show that women of color (and minorities in general) are virtually absent from the political commentary and investigative journalism these magazines provide. Though nearly 20 percent of the country’s population is Hispanic, very few of these publications had a single VIDA respondent   as Hispanic. The implications of this generalized absence are manifold, and begin at the storytelling level. A September 2016 piece by Lonnae O’Neal in The Undefeated, a site that covers how sports, race and culture intersect, described how NFL Network reporter Steve Wyche  —   one of the country’s leading African American national sports reporters  —   covered the story of Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem as an act of protest. His refusal, Wyche learned, formed part of a larger outcry over police violence against black men and women. Initial reports by other outlets focused on Kaepernick as divisive and a potential distraction in the locker room. For O’Neal, who analyzed the coverage with a racial lens, the Kaepernick story raised questions ”about why the country is more brown than ever but mainstream journalism is so white.”  O’Neal herself rose through the ranks as a Washington Post reporter and columnist for 24 years before joining The Undefeated. She sees her race as providing an added edge in stadiums filled with mostly black players. ”Because I’m experienced, because I’m a woman, and because I’m African American, I can go right up to people and find an entry, a portal, a way to talk without layers and layers of translation,” she said. Her common background with her sources, the ”cultural resonance” between them, won’t always carry the day, ”but it goes a long way.” For O’Neal, hiring women, minorities and generally journalists of diverse backgrounds is not a luxury or a matter of ”different optics,” or political expedience, as recruiters typically approach the matter, but essential to the profession’s mission and longevity. A typical white,   newsroom, means critical stories will continue to go unreported and news analysis will remain unbalanced. ”We need new and different lenses, people of different backgrounds thinking at the table. We’ll only be richer for having that. Why is it so hard to set as an intention? Because many folks are going to be uncomfortable with what that looks like,” O’Neal said. In the meantime, old narratives about race and identity don’t change. Latinos are mostly U. S.  and consist of dozens of  . But, says Dana Mastro, a professor in the department of communication at the University of California in Santa Barbara, they’re seen only in one frame  —   immigration. ”The idea that there are other narratives just doesn’t pan out,” said Mastro, who researches racial and ethnic stereotyping in the media with a particular interest in Latinos. ”It’s immigration and almost entirely ” she said. ”You just don’t see other themes emerge, and Latinos are almost exclusively portrayed as undocumented Mexicans,” she added. But without fundamental shifts in the news industry’s modus operandi, simply hiring minorities won’t change that, says Alex T. Williams, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, who studies media trends. ”The norms of journalism, and the routines of news organizations, are deeply ingrained,” he wrote in an email. ”Expecting a handful (or often less) of   employees to improve news coverage places a lot of pressure on them  —   when it likely requires a larger commitment from the entire newsroom or organization. If we hope to see more widespread change, the commitment needs to be a lot deeper than ’diversity hiring. ’” Williams’ research, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, also challenges the old view that persists in some places in the industry that a lack of qualified minority candidates is the problem. Using data from Grady College’s Annual Surveys of Journalism and Mass Communication, Williams found a hiring disparity between white and   journalism graduates. Women of color, Williams added, referencing data from the American Society of News Editors, have been hit harder by recent layoffs in the news industry than any other group. The result for many journalists of color even at the top of their game is a fraught isolation and blatant stereotyping. Between 2009 and 2015, the number of black women in newsrooms dropped from 1, 181 to 730 the number of Latinas in newsrooms dropped from 840 to 584 and the number of Asian American women dropped from 758 to 466. Indira S. Somani, a former television news producer who teaches in the department of media, journalism and film at Howard University, recently   an unpublished study currently in the   phase at an academic journal that looked at the professional challenges faced by   journalists working at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX. She conducted   interviews with 23 news producers, correspondents, anchors and assignment editors, both men and women, to whom she granted anonymity in order to get answers that were as candid and open as possible. Somani offered insights from her interviews without drawing any specific conclusions prior to completing the   process. ”One of the people I talked to, a national correspondent, says she tried to make people she works with forget that she’s black,” Somani said. The subject described suppressing ”certain things” in order to be seen ”as a human being,” Somani said, quoting the subject. ”I know there’s a barrier there,” Somani quoted the woman as saying, ”But I don’t want to draw attention to the barrier.” Subjects often described receiving unwanted comments about their hairstyle and choice of clothes. They also described ambivalence about being confined to covering ”the black story.” ”There’s a frustration and appreciation in that,” said Somani, who tries to prepare her mostly   students for an evolving profession. ”People are frustrated because they don’t want to be assigned a story just because they’re black. At the same time they realize they’ll do justice to it.” Without a wider range of reporters and a more layered approach to big stories, O’Neal says, the public’s understanding is impoverished. Just one example she cites  —   the disproportionate impact of deep cuts in retail jobs on   women, particularly women of color, is not addressed much in major news outlets. ”When we talk job loss, the rust belt gets elegiacs,” O’Neal wrote in an email after a phone interview. But the layoffs of thousands of retail workers is described as ”’creative destruction at its best,’” with little probing. Somani and O’Neal emphasize that a diverse, institutionally supported corps of journalists takes time and vision to build. That includes the sort of advocacy and mentoring  —   old fashioned talent nurturing  —   that often eludes young minority journalists even before they get their degrees. As a news producer at a major network, Somani remembers being ”one of six people of color in the entire building, including the custodial staff.” She loved the work, but had no mentors and tried to keep a steady focus as white, male executives promoted white producers. ”It was not a supportive environment at all for women and minorities at all,” she remembers. O’Neal is grateful to her mentors during her career, editors who were all women or people of color. ”There’s real power in somebody having a greater imagination for you than you do, who can make things happen,” said O’Neal. ”The thinking goes that people will just bubble up and navigate their way to where they need to be,” she said, disputing classical liberal notions of a meritocracy that prizes talent and perseverance. ”That’s not enough in any field of human endeavor. You have to be seen, mentored nurtured. The patriarchal message is that with enough luck and individual pluck, things will happen. But it takes real intention. Do we want to leave coverage of the United States to luck?” Tal Abbady’s writing has appeared in several national publications."
"At a  . S. rally in central Seoul over the weekend, supporters of impeached South Korean President Park   chanted for the destruction of their enemy, North Korea. They’ve formed an encampment outside City Hall, where they express support for Park and the U. S. and criticize   politicians. Park was removed from office in March, a first in South Korea’s history. She goes on trial Tuesday for corruption, and faces life in prison if convicted. On May 9, there’s a presidential election to replace her. At the polls, South Koreans are expected to punish Park’s fellow conservatives, and elect a liberal instead. The vote also has become a referendum on U. S. relations  —   about how close South Koreans want to be with the United States. Park is an icon of South Korea’s conservative establishment. Her backers tend to be older, Christian, conservative and  . S.  —   people who lived through the  ’53 Korean War as children. ”The communist threat is still high. We need the U. S. to defend us,” said Lee   74, who wore Army fatigues and buttons with a Christian cross and U. S. and South Korean flags. ”Younger generations don’t realize it, but if we replace Park with a liberal, we’re risking our future.” A liberal, however, is leading in the polls: Moon   a human rights lawyer who wants dialogue with North Korea, and possibly cooler relations with Washington. Protesters clashed with riot police last week in Seongju, a rural southeastern region of South Korea, where the U. S. military is installing a defense system designed to shoot down North Korean missiles. An increasing number of South Koreans are opposed to it. The presidential   Moon vows to renegotiate the deal. Moon’s rallies tend to draw support from younger South Koreans who’ve grown up in a prosperous, peaceful country. They worry less about war, and more about youth unemployment and corruption. Aside from   Park, the head of Samsung, the country’s biggest company, is also on trial for corruption. ”I support Mr. Moon. First of all, I believe he will not be like Ms. Park, taking money from the companies,” says Choi Jihye, 23, a student. ”I believe he is clean.” Park is accused of conspiring with a childhood friend to collect tens of millions of dollars in bribes from big companies. Charged with bribery, coercion and abuse of power, she faces life in prison if convicted. Her fall from power has many South Koreans rethinking Park’s policies, including the traditional, steadfast alliance with the U. S. which began in the Korean War and its aftermath, when South Korea was a much poorer nation. Choi says she always considered herself  . S. but she’s worried about relations under President Trump. In recent days, Trump has said he may scrap a free trade agreement with South Korea, and has threatened to make Seoul pay for the missile defense system the U. S. military is installing. Trump also has said he’s thinking about preemptive military action against Pyongyang. ”I don’t know what he wants to do. Fight with North Korea? Take something from South Korea?” Choi asks. ”I cannot understand what he is doing now.” North Korea may not understand either, and that may explain why it has not conducted a sixth nuclear test, as has been expected. It has previously set off five underground nuclear explosions, including two last year. ”North Korea knows Trump is no Barack Obama. It knows he could attack any day now,” says Jeon   a professor of North Korean studies at Konkuk University in Seoul. ”So I think that’s why North Korea is holding back on major provocations.” On Monday, North Korea said it’s bolstering its nuclear program at ”maximum” speed  —   and that only its ”Supreme Leader,” Kim Jong Un, will decide when the next step will come. Jihye Lee contributed to this story."
"In proclaiming May 1 as Loyalty Day, President Trump described it as a day meant ”to express our country’s loyalty to individual liberties, to limited government, and to the inherent dignity of every human being.” The proclamation further describes the American values and ”unique heritage” the president intends the day to honor: ”As one Nation, we will always stand strong against the threats of terrorism and lawlessness. The loyalty of our citizenry sends a clear signal to our allies and enemies that the United States will never yield from our way of life. Through the Department of Defense and other national security agencies, we are working to destroy ISIS, and to secure for all Americans the liberty terrorists seek to extinguish. We humbly thank our brave service members and veterans who have worn our Nation’s uniform  —   from the American Revolution to the present day.” Trump’s mention of ISIS may seem unusual in a proclamation for a day meant to highlight national pride and American values, but it is part of a long tradition of presidents (or their staff who write the proclamations) tying this   holiday to the threats of the time and bringing their own views to the idea of loyalty. Despite some initial alarm on Twitter, Loyalty Day is not unique to President Trump. In fact, it’s been around for decades. In 1955 Congress passed a resolution designating May 1 of that year as Loyalty Day. It was the height of McCarthyism and an   red scare in America. A Christian Science Monitor article from the time said the congressional resolution was ”aimed at   Communist May Day rallies around the world.” Three years later, Congress weighed in again to make it an annual affair, ”set aside as a special day for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States of American and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.” It called for president to sign a proclamation each year calling for the display of the American flag and inviting observances at schools and ”other suitable places.” And since then each president has issued proclamations to mark Loyalty Day on May 1 each year, and those proclamations have been vastly different, reflecting each president’s own definition of loyalty and what should be emphasized. Reflecting Challenges Of The Day, In his first Loyalty Day proclamation, President Dwight Eisenhower referred to an ”unswerving devotion” to the liberties enshrined in the Constitution. ”Whereas the prime requisite for retaining our freedom is unswerving devotion to the liberties embodied in our Constitution and, ”Whereas it is fitting that a special day be set aside for solemn   of those priceless gifts of freedom which are our heritage, to the end that we may stimulate and renew that high sense of patriotism which has signalized our glorious history as a Nation” Four days before the botched invasion of Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, President Kennedy’s Loyalty Day proclamation emphasized standing up to totalitarianism. ”Whereas we as a people enjoy the blessings of a free democratic society in a world threatened by the forces of totalitarianism and, ”Whereas steadfast devotion to our country and our Constitution is indispensable to the preservation of our freedom and liberty” Kennedy’s 1963 Loyalty Day proclamation was further colored by the Cold War footing of the nation. ”Understandably, our people avoid ostentatious displays of patriotic fervor. Nevertheless, in these trying times, when international forces are attempting to undermine and destroy our form of free government and our way of life, it is entirely fitting and proper and in the national interest to set aside a special day each year on which to express our unceasing devotion and loyalty to this Nation,” the proclamation read. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson began his Loyalty Day proclamation, describing the   history of the day. ”May 1st, in some parts of the world, is marked by demonstrations in support of totalitarian party dictatorships. Since 1959, we in the United States have celebrated it as ’Loyalty Day,’ a time when we are asked to recall the ideals which have nourished our free society. ”The contrast between these two types of celebration is striking. We are not demanding unthinking fealty to a party or a doctrine. On the contrary, allegiance to American ideals demands commitment to a ceaseless search for new routes to freedom, justice and equality.” Johnson’s proclamation that year goes on to point out America is a nation ”where the rights of minorities are respected as fully as the rights of the majority.” ”To an American, then, loyalty is not automatic acceptance of authority but consecration to the principles of a free society. ”It imposes restraints on the majority and on minorities alike. The majority must have the right to act, but its actions must follow the course of due process. ”Minorities must retain the right to dissent, but should never confuse the right to be heard with the right to determine policy, should never assert the undemocratic and arrogant claim to speak for the society as a whole.” At the time, American service members were dying in increasing numbers in the Vietnam War and the   movement in the U. S. was intensifying. Dissent was on full display, as was the sacrifice of those serving the nation. An Emphasis On The Individual, In his first Loyalty Day proclamation, President Richard Nixon talks about ”individual freedom.” ”Loyalty to our country and its flag must rest on understanding of our great national values which they have represented  —   individual freedom under the law, equality of opportunity in all walks of life, justice and protection of the law for all. Each of us has an obligation to fulfill these ideals and to preserve them for our children and for succeeding generations.” There are slight echoes of Nixon in President Trump’s proclamation this year, with his reference to individual liberty. But the greatest similarities are between Trump’s proclamation and President Ronald Reagan’s from 1988, where he declared: ”Loyalty Day, May 1, is a day we set aside to promise allegiance to our country to revere our heritage of individual freedom, limited government, and respect for every man’s divinely bestowed dignity and to reaffirm our sacred trust to preserve, for our children and for all generations to come, this blessed land of liberty we call America.” Accentuating Diversity, But in Reagan’s first Loyalty Day proclamation, back in 1981, he emphasized the diversity of the country. ”One of the great treasures of America is the unity of its people. No nation is composed of citizens with such diverse cultural, racial and religious backgrounds as is the United States of America. And while the unique contributions of each segment of our population are important, the significant fact remains that each of us, whatever background, remains loyal to the Nation and to the ideals of freedom for which it stands.”   years later in his final Loyalty Day proclamation, President Barack Obama similarly emphasized the nation’s diversity. ”While ours has always been a large and complicated democracy, full of differing views and boisterous debates, our history also makes clear that we are strongest when we find in our diversity a deeper, richer unity, stemming from an overarching belief in the possibilities our shared future holds. This Loyalty Day, let us remember that what defines us as one American people is our dedication to common ideals  —   rather than similarities of origin or creed  —   and let us reaffirm that embracing this truth lies at the heart of what it means to be a citizen. As long as we stay true to that mission and uphold our responsibility to deliver a freer, fairer Nation to the next generation, a future of ever greater progress will remain within our reach.” NPR Librarian Katie Daugert contributed to this report."
"May Day protests and rallies around the world and across the U. S. are celebrating labor, calling for greater protections and benefits for workers and highlighting the contributions of immigrants. At least one protest has turned violent: In Paris, protesters threw ”gasoline bombs and other objects” at police, while officers threw tear gas at the crowd and clubbed some demonstrators with truncheons, Reuters reports. Three police officers were injured, including one who was seriously burned, the wire service says. In Turkey, police used tear gas against protesters attempting to march to Istanbul’s Taksim Square, where demonstrations were prohibited, AFP reports. At least one protester was arrested for defying the ban. Thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh gathered to demand wage increases, according to The Associated Press. Unions in Greece marched and critiqued austerity measures.   parties in Poland protested the conservative party in power, calling for protections not just for workers but for civic rights. In Moscow, two marches drew from ”nostalgia for Soviet times,” the AP writes. In Venezuela, there are competing marches, both for and against the government, Al Jazeera reports. The first day in May has been a holiday for labor groups and leftist organizations for more than a century. May Day is a national holiday in many countries, but not in the U. S. But as NPR’s Kirk Siegler has reported, protests in the U. S. are expected to be larger this year than usual, driven by opposition to President Trump’s policies. Many U. S. protests are focusing on immigration. In 2006, May Day in the U. S. was marked by major immigration protests across the country, including a boycott of school and work. Organizers are calling for another nationwide strike by immigrants and their allies this May Day. It will be the second such strike since Trump took office Feb. 16 was also a ”day without immigrants,” organized in response to Trump’s immigration policies and travel ban. In Kennett Square, Pa. about an hour west of Philadelphia, a few dozen people gathered at a march. Most of the immigrants who showed were farmworkers, reports NPR’s Joel Rose. ”They gathered at a park and then marched through the center of town chanting and holding up banners,” Joel says. He reports that there were recently immigration raids at a nearby mushroom producer  —   mushrooms are a major industry in the area. The immigration officials were reportedly looking for information about four men. ”They didn’t find them, but they did arrest at least a dozen others and put them in deportation proceedings,” Joel says. ”Organizers say that likely drove down turnout for the march today because people are scared.” Rallies and marches are happening nationwide. In Seattle, previous May Day marches have turned violent, with police using pepper spray against   protesters. But this year, authorities are worried about a different kind of violence  —   ”   conflict,” as Seattle Police Capt. Chris Fowler puts it. ”A group of Trump supporters is expected to ” explains Simone Alicea of member station KNKX, in addition to the ”  and   groups who are likely to demonstrate.” Thousands are expected in Milwaukee, reports Chuck Quirmbach of Wisconsin Public Radio, where protesters are expected to target not just federal policy, but local Sheriff David Clarke. ”Last week, he again defended Trump administration immigration efforts, as media reports indicate Clarke may get a job with the Department of Homeland Security,” Quirmbach says. Several NPR member stations are covering other local events, including Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, KPCC in Los Angeles and Oregon Public Radio."
"Marches in support of worker rights and labor unions are taking place around the world Monday, dubbed ”May Day.” Here in the U. S. they’re expected to draw larger than usual crowds due to President Trump’s efforts to crack down on immigration. In heavily Latino Los Angeles, where labor unions also hold big sway, community organizers spent much of the last weekend doing last minute planning and logistics, as well as peacekeeping training. In 2006, massive immigrant rights marches in Los Angeles and in other major cities on May Day were often credited with killing a sweeping   immigration bill in Congress. Community organizer Tony Bernabe remembers those protests fondly. But 11 years on, Congress is no closer to striking a deal on immigration, and he thinks things are getting worse. ”There is fear in the community,” Bernabe said. ”This administration is scaring them.” Despite predictions of large crowds, organizers say some   marchers could be afraid to come out. Many people in the country unlawfully have kept a low profile since the inauguration of Trump, who’s pledged to tighten U. S. immigration and build a wall along the Mexican border. ”If the Trump administration has done something very well, it has united lots of communities who otherwise would not be marching together,” said   Cabrera, spokesperson for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. In cities from Washington, D. C. to Los Angeles to Seattle, the more traditional May Day labor marches are expected to swell with women’s groups, police reformers  ” basically anyone who wants to protest the president. Smaller crowds of     are also likely. With the country deeply divided, authorities are worried about possible violence. In liberal Seattle, where May Day protests last year turned violent, Police Captain Chris Fowler pledged his officers will do all they can to ensure that free speech rights are protected. ”But whether it’s attacks on the police, attacks on the business community or attacks on each other in the crowd, we’ll take an appropriate response,” he warned. The concern is less over violence at the dozens of planned daytime protests around the country today, but rather the more unplanned acts of civil disobedience that police say could last through the night."
"Fox News   Bill Shine has resigned and will leave the network within a few weeks, Fox News announced Monday afternoon. Shine’s departure is part of the aftershocks of the sexual harassment scandal that has gripped the network since last summer, leading to the departure of former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes last July and of star host Bill O’Reilly last month. Shine will be replaced by his longtime deputy, Suzanne Scott, who becomes president of programming, and Jay Wallace, the executive vice president for news who now becomes president of news. Both have been with the network since 1996, its year of inception. While Shine has never been accused of harassment himself, a growing number of women at Fox News have alleged, some of them in court documents, that he was aware of deeply inappropriate behavior against them and deflected, ignored or sought to suppress their concerns rather than take actions to address them constructively. The recent lawsuits of Fox News commentator Julie Roginsky and suspended Fox News host Andrea Tantaros allege that Shine’s dismissive behavior regarding such accusations continued after Ailes’ departure. Shine’s resignation comes on a day that a Fox News personality sued the network, accusing it of bias. Diana Falzone said she was banned from its shows in late January after she wrote an online column about suffering from endometriosis, a reproductive health disease that she said would likely leave her infertile. In court papers filed Monday, Falzone’s attorneys wrote that the revelation ”detracted from her sex appeal and made her less desirable” in the eyes of the ”  senior management of Fox News.” The    Rupert Murdoch has actively led the network as acting CEO since Ailes’ departure. While he remains a figure who generates great affection within the workforce, Shine’s resignation shows the elder Murdoch has failed to get the sense of scandal and uncertainty at the network under control. And questions are unlikely to die down. The new president for programming, Suzanne Scott, has also been accused by some Fox News women in court of trying to intimidate them or minimize their complaints, as has the network’s chief lawyer, Dianne Brandi."
"Updated at 9:45 a. m. ET Monday, Congressional leaders have struck a deal to keep the federal government funded through September. The budget negotiations provided Democrats with a rare opportunity for leverage and clout, since Democratic votes will be needed to advance the spending plan through the Senate  —   and possibly the House if enough members of the conservative Freedom Caucus vote against it. Democratic leaders took advantage of that, and as a result the final plan does not include any money for one of President Trump’s top priorities: a wall along the U. S.  border. ”Early on in this debate, Democrats clearly laid out our principles,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Sunday night statement. ”At the end of the day, this is an agreement that reflects those principles.” That’s not to say the spending agreement doesn’t include any Republican priorities. It provides an additional $1. 5 billion in funding for border security, money that is designated for technological expenditures and maintenance of existing infrastructure, and not for wall construction. The bill also increases spending for the military by about $15 billion, half of what Trump has been seeking. The final spending package includes a nearly $70 million reimbursement to law enforcement agencies for costs incurred helping to protect President Trump and the first family. It also includes funding for   Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program, and a $2 billion boost for the National Institutes of Health, which Trump had proposed reducing funding for. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi singled out those two provisions in a statement applauding the agreement. The spending bill also provides additional funding to combat opioid abuse and for Pell Grants for summer school. On top of that it delivers Republicans the political win of avoiding a shutdown  —   or even the threat of a shutdown  —   at a time when the party controls the House, Senate and White House. House and Senate votes are expected later this week. Lawmakers have until midnight Friday to pass the deal to keep the federal government funded. The federal government was initially set to run out of money at the end of last week, but last Friday, Congress bought a week’s time to finalize the bipartisan agreement. The   spending bill that the House and Senate approved averted a shutdown that would have taken place Saturday  —   President Trump’s 100th day in office. The new agreement follows a stretch of   on Capitol Hill that led the Trump administration to concede on two sticking points. Last Monday, Trump dropped his demand that the spending bill include a down payment for his wall along the U. S.  border. Democrats, who flexed their leverage in spending negotiations, refused to support any bill that included wall funding. Then on Wednesday, the White House said it would not stop paying federal subsidies to health insurers that help cover   Americans under the Affordable Care Act. Democrats were pushing to have those payments included in the spending bill, but the White House promise to keep the payments going, at least for a short while, was enough to bring them along."
"If the Fyre Festival had played out according to the immaculate hype of its marketing materials, attendees would be flying home from the Bahamas right about now, sunburned and hungover from the greatest weekend of their young lives, cellphones full of models’ phone numbers, #latergramming their way to legend status. Instead, at least one of those once   festivalgoers has filed a lawsuit and ticket buyers are receiving apologies from event organizers, who now admit that the Fyre Festival ”fell dramatically short of even the most modest expectations.” On Sunday, Fyre Fest attendee Daniel Jung filed a lawsuit against the organizers. His attorney Ben Meiselas, of celebrity law firm Geragos  Geragos, tweeted the first few pages of the suit, adding, ”Refunding ticket price is not enough!” The suit, filed in U. S. District Court, names festival   Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, along with Fyre Media, as defendants. It seeks to be a class action, with the plaintiff estimating that more than 1, 000 people ”purchased tickets for,   attended, Defendants’ Fyre Festival.” Jung says he paid $2, 000 for a ticket package and airfare to the event that started on Thursday and promised ”a     musical experience on the Islands of the Exumas.” The suit seeks damages in excess of $100 million on behalf of himself and ”  persons.” If you read only one lawsuit today, make it this one. The suit offers a fine retelling of the ”cultural moment” formerly known as the Fyre Festival. A few highlights: It must be noted that despite the detailed account, the doomsday tone of the lawsuit doesn’t always line up with the   social media postings cited as evidence. The suit states, for example, ”In addition to the substandard accommodations, wild animals were seen in and around the festival grounds.” That’s accompanied by an Instagram photo of two festivalgoers wading in crystal blue waters, captioned ”#fyre is a huge shitshow but it hasn’t been a total loss. I got to meet this swimming pig yesterday.” Following the schadenfreude jubilee online, Ja Rule tweeted on Sunday afternoon, ”Relieved to share that all guest are safe, and have been sent the form to apply for a refund. Our deepest apologies.” His   Billy McFarland, was more reflective, or at least more voluble. In a Rolling Stone interview posted as the fracas was unfolding Friday, McFarland told the tale of how he and Rule took flying lessons together, ran out of gas and landed in the Exumas (ostensibly inspiring the Fyre Festival). As with so many entrepreneurs’ failed dreams, the vision extended just about as far as a marketing plan: ”We started this website and launched this festival marketing campaign. Our festival became a real thing and took [on] a life of its own. Our next step was to book the talent and actually make the music festival. We went out excited, and that’s when a lot of reality and roadblocks hit. . .. We were a little naïve in thinking for the first time we could do this ourselves. Next year, we will definitely start earlier.” Yes, next year. Despite everything going wrong with a music festival that offered neither music nor festival and instead is being sued for allegedly creating ”a situation tantamount to false imprisonment,” Fyre says it is going to have a festival next year, on a    American beach. The festival organizers emailed apologies to attendees on Sunday morning. ”The Fyre Festival is a dream and vision that we poured our hearts and souls into creating, and it fell dramatically short of even the most modest expectations,” they said. ”We’re heartbroken that we let down all the guests who put their faith in us and we fully recognize and own our shortcomings. We should have done better and we want to make it right.” The email included a link to a form that attendees can use to apply for a refund. And that refund form makes a truly astounding offer: You can opt to not receive a refund, and instead get extra VIP passes to next year’s event.  That’s right  —   to the people who already paid thousands of dollars to get either marooned on an island or not marooned on an island, with swimming pigs that were either adorable or dangerous, the Fyre Festival would like to offer the ”adventure” of having their money funneled toward a  ’   Fest 2. 0 next year. And Fyre just might be able to get some ticket buyers to take that offer. A festivalgoer named Brett Linkletter described his experience on ABC’s Good Morning America. ”What we thought was cool got really bad really fast,” he said. ”The drinks were room temperature, there was absolutely no food. . .. It was literally like The Hunger Games.” But, Linkletter said, ”things could have gotten a lot worse than they did. End of the day, it was kind of a crazy, fun experience, you know, I mean, whatever. And I’m planning on going next year if it happens.” A cultural moment, indeed."
Attendees to the Fyre Festival in the Bahamas were promised a luxury music festival experience. Instead they found themselves in a vacation nightmare.
"After nearly two years of missed payments and delayed actions, Puerto Rico is bumping up against another deadline as it tries to grapple with tens of billions of dollars of debt. One proposal for partial repayment of the debt was rejected over the weekend. Another option is for the island to essentially declare bankruptcy, through a process created specifically for Puerto Rico. After midnight on Monday, if some sort of deal has not been struck, the U. S. territory will be fair game for lawsuits by its creditors. Meanwhile, thousands of protesters marched in San Juan on Monday, in May Day protests fueled by anger over the     and resulting cuts in services. The island is preparing to ”cut public employee benefits, increase tax revenue, hike water rates and privatize government operations, among other things,” The Associated Press reports. The unpopular steps are driven by the same oversight board that has been negotiating the future of Puerto Rico’s debt payments. The debt was born out of a   economic disaster that left the territory running a deficit year after year, taking out loans just to keep the lights on. Economic woes drove residents off the island and to the mainland, which worsened the   problem. In 2015, the island’s governor declared the debt, more than $70 billion, ”unpayable.” Puerto Rico couldn’t afford to make its loan payments and also pay for basic services like police, schools and hospitals. The two years that followed were marked by defaults on loan payments, budget cuts and tax hikes. Austerity measures meant residents of Puerto Rico  —   who are U. S. citizens  —   experienced slashes in government services. If Puerto Rico were a municipality in the U. S. it would be able to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy  —   that’s what cities like Detroit have done when their debts became unmanageable. But as a territory, it doesn’t have that option. In June 2016, Congress passed a law, PROMESA, that created a special oversight board to tackle Puerto Rico’s debt problem. The board took some control away from local government, which has prompted protests from Puerto Ricans, who say the board  —   which has been facilitating negotiations between Puerto Rico and its creditors  —   is valuing investors’ interests over those of the islanders. But the oversight board also gave Puerto Rico a new option for handling its debt: If voluntary talks fail, the board has the ability to initiate a mandatory,   debt restructuring process. PROMESA doesn’t call this ”bankruptcy,” and it’s not identical to Chapter 9. But the underlying principles are the same. ”It mirrors conventional bankruptcy processes that are ordered and arbitrated through a court system,” says Eric LeCompte, the executive director of Jubilee USA Networks, a religious development organization that supports debt relief and debt forgiveness. The ”Title III” process, as it’s called in PROMESA, allows Puerto Rico to address all of its debts at once, in a comprehensive process  —   which even Chapter 9 doesn’t allow, LeCompte says. It’s essentially a bankruptcy process   for Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. The other option has always been to strike a deal without involving the courts. Late on Friday, Puerto Rico’s governor made an offer to the island’s creditors that would have done just that. Bloomberg reports that the proposal would have paid as much as 77 cents on the dollar to some creditors, and as little as 39 cents on the dollar. That was a worse deal than the previous governor had suggested to creditors, the Wall Street Journal reports. Bondholders rejected the idea, sending the debt back to the negotiating table over the weekend. These negotiations have been dragging on for years, but a new deadline loomed over the latest talks. Puerto Rico has been protected from litigation through a temporary stay, designed to buy time for talks, that expires at midnight on Monday. That stay has been extended before, but Congress has made no move to offer a reprieve this time. President Trump, for his part, has recently criticized efforts to help Puerto Rico with its financial crisis. He tweeted that a Democratic push to send funding to the island’s Medicaid program amounted to a ”bailout” of the U. S. territory. (An omnibus bill, passed over the weekend, ultimately included nearly $300 million for the healthcare program.)"
"Hollywood has solved another cliffhanger. A massive writers’ strike was narrowly averted Tuesday, as a tentative agreement was reached between the members of the Writers Guild of America and the group representing the studios they work for, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Details of the deal are expected to be provided to members on Thursday. Around 13, 000 film and TV writers were ready to strike starting at midnight, but they managed to reach an agreement over pensions and health plans and how much writers get paid.   This was critical for those of us glorying in what’s getting called ”peak TV.” In movies, it’s the director whose vision is executed, who controls the tone and pace. But in television, plots, characters, themes, even the vibe, all get established in the writers room. Back in 2015, Shonda Rhimes, arguably the most powerful woman in television, described herself as first a writer in an interview on WHYY’s Fresh Air.  ”On Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, I am the writer, executive producer, creator. On How To Get Away With Murder, I am just the executive producer.” ”Just?” responded host Terry Gross in some disbelief. Rhimes replied that her executive producer tasks on How To Get Away With Murder involved far less creative control. ”It’s more like being the grandmother,” she said. ”You hold the baby but then you get to give the baby back. With the other shows, I’m responsible for everything.” ”Writers literally run TV shows,” agrees James Poniewozik, chief TV critic for The New York Times. He says ”peak TV”  —   an era where more than 450 scripted series were produced this season alone  —   would be impossible without hundreds of writers rooms filled with people bouncing ideas off each other, polishing each others’ work  —   and serving the creator’s singular voice. ”Mad Men was a particular example of that,” he says. ”It was a show really that was TV, but it was very literary. It sort of modeled itself on the kind of voice that you would have in short fiction.” The collective voice of the writers room is especially crucial with a network comedy like ABC’s   that might produce as many as 25 episodes a season. But shorter series are increasingly common on streaming, cable and even network shows. Stranger Things, on Netflix, had only eight episodes. That translates to less money for writers, who are paid per episode. According to the Writers Guild of America, writers’ median salaries have actually dropped over the past two years. Poniewozik was hopeful this strike would be averted. As happy as he is that the writers and studios have found common ground, he could not help but think about a strike’s potential personal upside. ”I might at least get caught up on a lot of my backlog,” he said wryly. While Los Angeles is breathing a sigh of relief  —   the city lost more than a billion dollars during the last writer’s strike in 2007  —   viewers like Poniewozik will have to figure out how stay on top of all the TV shows its writers dream up for us."
"On a sunny Friday morning in San Pablo Huitzo, a town in the Valles Centrales region of Oaxaca, Mexico, a   women are gathered for a workshop on making alegrías, a healthy, granola   snack made with popped amaranth seeds. Their ingredient list is short: water, honey, raisins, a form of raw cane sugar known as piloncillo, and lime juice. ”The trick,” explains the event’s gracious host, Maria Lopez, ”is to get the syrup to the right temperature” before adding the tiny orbs of amaranth, each barely bigger than a grain of coarse sand. This could be any chatty gathering of neighborhood cooks in any kitchen in the world, except that in Oaxaca, amaranth is not just a fad ingredient. The ancient indigenous plant is part of a movement to revive native crops and cuisines, and a means of restoring the physical health and economy of their state, one of the poorest in Mexico. The alegría gathering is one of six weekly microenterprise workshops that the nonprofit Puente a la Salud Comunitaria (Bridge to Community Health) holds with 25 different groups in Oaxaca. Founded in 2003 by two American volunteers in Oaxaca seeking a solution to the high rate of birth defects and childhood malnutrition in rural areas, Puente quickly hit on the idea of reintroducing amaranth into the local diet, explains Pete Noll, the organization’s executive director. High in protein and other nutrients, amaranth is also   and profitable, netting local farmers three to five times the profit of other locally grown grain crops. Puente soon began working with small farmers to strengthen local economies through the sustainable cultivation of amaranth, known as amaranto in Spanish. As national obesity rates rose precipitously  —   Mexico has surpassed the U. S. in the number of overweight adults  —   Puente took on fighting both malnutrition and obesity. To date, the organization has worked with 6, 000 families in over 80 communities to help incorporate amaranth and other healthy foods into their diet. In ancient Mesoamerica amaranth was known as huautli, meaning ”the smallest giver of life,” and was grown in large quantities similar to that of maize. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, amaranth all but disappeared from the native diet. No one knows for sure why. One theory holds that the edible sculptures of Aztec deities made of amaranth, corn and honey  —   and perhaps laced with human blood  —   were a pagan threat to Spanish Catholicism. Back at the Lopez household, after the alegría ingredients have been mixed, the women spread the mixture on a sheet of buttered paper held in a wooden frame, cut it into squares and taste the final product. The verdict: universal thumbs up. The next steps, explains Hope   Puente’s director of development and sustainability, will be for the group to figure out costs, pricing and profit margins. Once they’ve developed their packaging and logo, they can sell their alegrías at local markets and restaurants, or at the two amaranth specialty shops that Puente operates. Not far from where Lopez lives, in the town of Suchilquitongo, tender young amaranth leaves sprout between rows of corn on Minerva Cruz’s farm. One of close to 250 farmers that Puente works with, Cruz is in her third year of cultivating amaranth. ”It’s a very noble plant and it has a lot of traditional value. That’s what caught my attention,” she explains. Cruz has lent her farm to Puente for five years to serve as an amaranth processing center. Thanks to a federal grant, the farm recently got prototype machines that thresh and clean the plant’s seeds, which has vastly increased efficiency. It ”is a really big step [forward] for Puente,” Noll says. In the brick warehouse adjacent to the machines, Gerardo Lopez, head of Puente’s agricultural extension program, shows how each bag of amaranth seeds is carefully labeled to indicate the varietal it contains and how it was grown. Most of Puente’s farmer partners practice what’s known as agroecological farming  —   which prizes maintaining biodiversity  —   or are ”in transition” to these methods. Farmers like Cruz who grow amaranth have also developed a repertoire of recipes for the plant. Although the seed, flour and leaves of the bushy plant can all be consumed, cereal (the popped seeds) is the most commonly used form in Mexico. Cruz’s mother likes to add the leaves to water and blend them with lime peel to make an agua fresca. Last summer, to promote the use of amaranth in cooking, Puente partnered with   Oaxaca City chefs to create new dishes featuring amaranth. Pilar Cabrera of La Olla created an amaranth leaf and grain salad, amaranth sweet bread, breaded amaranth chicken and an amaranth smoothie. Rodolfo Castellanos of Origen created a hamburger on an amaranth bun and a chocolate cake topped with amaranth cereal and red plum ice cream. Puente’s farmer network has so far exported to only one source outside the country, Toronto’s ChocoSol Traders. There, founder Michael Sacco and chef Chrystal Porter are perfecting a recipe for a ”  tortilla,” made with amaranth, chia seeds and maize. At Las Quinces Letras in Oaxaca City,   Celia Florián has hosted amaranth cooking demonstrations by women farmers. She also likes to highlight amaranth and other traditional ingredients prepared in healthy and delicious ways, like her sublimely refreshing agua fresca, filled with strands of the chilacayote squash and its seeds, pilonicillo, bits of lime peel and popped amaranth seeds. Another favorite dish involves blanching amaranth leaves in hot water, squeezing them dry, coating them with beaten egg, breading and frying them. The dish is served with a salsa of pumpkin seeds, or in soup. ”We encourage water over soda at the restaurant,” says Florián. ”Gradually people’s mindsets are changing” to healthier behaviors. Susana Trilling runs a cooking school in Oaxaca. ”I work with a lot of women from the mountains, and they use amaranth to make fritters and soups,” she says. ”They boil the leaves in a clay pot with onion and garlic, and it’s always served with   egg and Mexican rice.” Trilling has taught some of these recipes at her school, and incorporates fresh amaranth in the summer months as part of her staff breakfast with   eggs. ”Especially during the amaranth appreciation campaign,” she adds, ”people got excited” about the idea of using amaranth as an alternative to granola, in crepes, and in wafers Trilling makes with her students with amaranth flour and coconut. If all these delicious uses are not enough to convince Oaxacans to consume more amaranth, Puente has another enticement up its sleeve. Every October, on ”Amaranth Day,” it sponsors the making of a giant tlayuda, a popular street food made by topping a corn tortilla with beans, cheese and chopped cabbage. In 2016 Puente made a    tlayuda, incorporating amaranth flour, cereal, seeds or leaves in every layer  —   from the tortilla dough to the topping of toasted grasshopper, avocado, radish and salsa. ”We thought it would last longer than it did!” recalls  . ”It probably took all of 25 minutes for the crowd to finish eating it . .. a new take on an old favorite.”"
"Updated at 1 p. m. ET, People are taking stock of the damage after severe weather over the weekend killed at least 14 people in five Southern states. Flooding, lightning and tornadoes caused at least five deaths in Arkansas, four in Texas, two each in Mississippi and Missouri and one in Tennessee. The American Red Cross is calling it the deadliest start to tornado season in nine years. Satellite images give a sense of the storm’s size and power. They were posted on Twitter by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: The National Weather Service says the severe weather is now moving northeast. Meteorologist Jared Guyer tells The Associated Press that ”the greatest risk for severe weather today will be in parts of the Carolinas northward into Virginia, West Virginia, parts of Pennsylvania and even New York.” Southeastern states from Florida to North Carolina could also see flooding on Monday, according to the NWS. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters on Sunday that more than 5, 000 homes and businesses there sustained damage from four confirmed tornadoes in the eastern part of the state. All four deaths there were   as member station KERA reports. ”I’ve seen the rubble of what used to be homes,” he said. ”Where people lived, where their lives have been a part of for a long, long time.” Texas’ Van Zandt County sustained the worst damage, as Stella Chavez of member station KERA reported, and officials said one of the tornadoes may have been tracking on the ground for 50 miles. In the town of Canton, about 60 miles east of Dallas, at least 49 people were taken to hospitals with   injuries, Mayor Lou Ann Everett said. Damage there ”is heartbreaking and upsetting to say the least,” she added. ”Crews began searching for survivors Saturday night, but downed power lines, gas leaks, heavy rain and additional reports of tornadoes hampered their efforts,” KERA reported. ”   searches were being done Sunday.” A dramatic rescue in Van Zandt County was captured on cellphone video and posted by local ABC station WFAA. It shows rescuers pulling a limp infant from an overturned, partially submerged vehicle and carrying her to a nearby truck bed, where one performs CPR. For several tense minutes, it’s unclear whether the baby is breathing, as bystanders around her pray. By the end, she is gasping for breath. The baby’s father later said that she was stable, according to the news station. The governors of Arkansas and Missouri have declared states of emergency over the storms and flooding. In Arkansas, the five people killed included a    who was swept away in floodwaters, and a woman who was ”riding an inner tube in a creek,” according to member station KUAR. In addition, a volunteer fire chief was killed ”when he was struck by a vehicle shortly before 4 a. m. while checking water levels” on a highway in the north of the state. The Cleburne County Sheriff’s Office posted a tribute to the fire chief, Doug Deckard, saying he served as a firefighter for more than 40 years. It stated: ”He was a wonderful member of our community, and his kindness, work ethic, and enthusiasm will be sorely missed.” Some 71, 000 customers in the state were without power on Sunday morning, according to Entergy Arkansas, though service to all but 15, 000 had been restored by Monday morning. In Missouri, where two people died, Gov. Eric Greitens told reporters that the floodwaters reached record heights. ”There are several places that have seen water levels several feet higher than anytime in Missouri’s recorded history,” he said. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said it has confirmed two deaths in the state, including a child killed by ”an electric shock in floodwater.” In Tennessee, a   old was killed ”after being struck by a heavy metal soccer goal that blew over in high winds,” according to the Metro Nashville Police Department."
"A new study suggests that skipping meals is difficult. Obviously, right? The study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine did not set out to investigate the hardships of abstaining from food. The main question was: Is   fasting more effective for weight loss and weight maintenance compared with daily calorie restriction? The answer to that question appears to be ”No.” The study of 100 people over the course of one year suggests that fasting every other day is no better than restricting calorie intake every day for people trying to lose weight or keep it off. But the researchers also found that people do not change their eating habits easily. About a third of the study participants who were asked to fast didn’t follow the study requirements and ended up dropping out. The primary finding is in line with other studies of intermittent fasting. As we have reported, previous studies have found potential benefits from fasting for 16 hours each day, or reducing the amount you eat on some days each week, which is the basis for the trendy   diets. A 2014 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argued that modern     eating patterns are ”abnormal from an evolutionary perspective,” but nonetheless noted that many people may not want to change their eating habits. The authors wrote it was ”critical” for researchers to study the ”  adherence of different subject populations” to different fasting schedules. The paper published Monday is the latest study to, somewhat inadvertently, do just that. Of the 100 participants, most of whom were metabolically healthy, obese women, 69 of them completed the study.   percent of those who were supposed to fast every other day dropped out because they didn’t adhere to the diet.   percent of those who were supposed to restrict their calories every day dropped out for the same reason. That left them with just 33 people in the two fasting groups, which isn’t a large enough sample size to lend much weight to the findings. And they’re not alone. Other studies have run into similar issues with participants who struggle to stick with the eating protocols. Take, for example, Brandie Jefferson, who is a science writer and, currently, a participant in an intermittent fasting program as part of a clinical trial for people with multiple sclerosis. Just last week, Jefferson wrote for Shots about how difficult it has been to stick with the fasting protocol, which requires that she eat only between noon and 8 p. m. For the remaining 16 hours, she can drink only water, tea or black coffee. Jefferson writes: ”Over five months, it’s been the same nearly every day  —   I do get a little hungry in the mornings, but I’m thinking about eating more often. I have only eaten any earlier than noon once or twice during the study, like the infamous O’Hare Airport incident when I just couldn’t resist that bagel. I still have no regrets. ”My   tend to be when I’m running late and eat after 8 p. m. I don’t think I’ve screwed up enough to affect the tests, and I’ve been honest when it comes to food logging.” And it’s not just study participants. Jefferson talked to the person running her study, Dr. Ellen Mowry, an associate professor of neurology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. Mowry explained that when she tries to fast along with participants, she also finds it difficult to stick with the rules. ”But often for me,” she says, ”this is related more to my mental stamina rather than physical.” And as a paper on intermittent fasting published in March notes, ”Adherence to diets within trials is notoriously difficult to assess due to missing dietary records and well documented   [among] overweight subjects.” The authors of that study pointed out earlier work that suggests that allowing people to eat a wider range of foods, even if they are restricting their total calorie intake, could help people stick with a fasting program, but lamented an overall lack of   data for comparing intermittent fasting patterns. That’s because fasting studies generally don’t include a large number of participants. For example, the clinical trial that Jefferson is part of has 54 participants, which Mowry says is too small to get particularly useful results. ”The studies are too small to be certain that any change in symptoms is related to the intervention,” Mowry says. Some studies of fasting diets have had more success helping participants adhere to eating plans. A 2015 study of   adults between 19 and 30 years old, for example, found that most of them stuck with the   protocol. But it also was too small to be broadly applicable, since just 24 people participated."
"The city of Miami can sue Wells Fargo and Bank of America for damages under the Fair Housing Act, the Supreme Court says, allowing a lawsuit to continue that accuses the big banks of causing economic harm with discriminatory and predatory lending practices. The   vote saw Chief Justice John Roberts form a majority with the court’s more liberal justices. Justice Anthony Kennedy, widely seen as the court’s ”swing” justice, sided with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The court’s newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, wasn’t involved in the case. After lower courts had issued    opinions on whether Miami’s lawsuit should continue, the Supreme Court says the city should be allowed to make its case. ”But the justices said that to win damages, the city must prove a direct link to the revenue loss and increased costs,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg tells our Newscast unit, ”and that is an extremely high bar to clear.” The ruling comes nearly two years after the Supreme Court sided with civil rights groups who argued that, as we reported, ”claims of racial discrimination in housing cases shouldn’t be limited by questions of intent.” Miami accuses the banks of targeting   and Latino customers with predatory lending practices from 2004 to 2012 that led to foreclosures and vacancies in minority neighborhoods. In addition to frustrating the city’s efforts toward racial integration, Miami says, the foreclosures prompted a number of negative effects, from crippling property values and tax revenues to putting a burden on the city to service blighted and unsafe properties. ”We hold that the City’s claimed injuries fall within the zone of interests that the FHA arguably protects,” the majority opinion states. ”Hence, the City is an ’aggrieved person’ able to bring suit under the statute.” The Eleventh Circuit court had ruled that Miami’s damages were foreseeable, citing that as the standard to establish a direct    line between the banks and the damages. But the Supreme Court said the lower court had ”erred in holding that foreseeability is sufficient to establish proximate cause under the FHA.” Touching on a point that the dissenting justices would later cite as a key reason for their votes against Miami’s lawsuit, the majority opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer states: ”The housing market is interconnected with economic and social life. A violation of the FHA may, therefore, ’ ”be expected to cause ripples of harm to flow” ’ far beyond the defendant’s misconduct. Nothing in the statute suggests that Congress intended to provide a remedy wherever those ripples travel. And entertaining suits to recover damages for any foreseeable result of an FHA violation would risk ’massive and complex damages litigation.’ ” The Supreme Court ruling declined to determine the ”precise boundaries of proximate cause” under the FHA  —   something the parties in the lawsuit had requested  —   calling instead for the lower courts to do so. In the dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas wrote that Miami had drawn a thin line connecting the alleged FHA violations to the injuries the city had suffered, saying that other events might have played a role. Thomas wrote: ”Under Miami’s own theory of causation, its injuries are one step further removed from the allegedly discriminatory lending practices than the injuries suffered by the neighboring homeowners whose houses declined in value. No one suggests that those homeowners could sue under the FHA, and I think it is clear that they cannot.”"
"This week and next is a national rite of passage for   overachievers everywhere. Nearly 3 million high school students at 22, 000 high schools will be sitting down to take their Advanced Placement exams. Created by the nonprofit College Board in the 1950s, AP is to other high school courses what Whole Foods is to other supermarkets: a mark of the aspirational, a promise of higher standards and, occasionally, a more expensive alternative. AP courses promise to be the most rigorous a school has to offer. They can lift your GPA even higher than a perfect 4. 0, thanks to the magic of transcript ”weighting.” And if you spend $93 to take the exam, plus often hundreds of dollars for textbooks and lab fees, they may be exchangeable for college credit. Recently the AP has boomed. Participation doubled in the last 10 years, and also doubled in the decade before that. The U. S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights even collects data on who has access to, and enrolls in, AP courses, using it as a measure of educational equity. But (and you knew there was a ’but’ coming) ”remarkably little independent research has been conducted on the academic benefits of AP.” That’s according to Russell T. Warne, an assistant professor of psychology at Utah Valley University, who has done some of that limited research. Part of the problem, he tells NPR Ed, is that, ”it’s really hard to do causal research because we can’t force people to do AP or force them out of it.” Here are just a few important questions experts don’t know the answer to: But, the study design also suggests a solution. Gonzalez surveyed a smaller group of about 400   students    about their expectations of enrolling in an AP course. The survey may have drawn their attention to the message and the fact that they were likely to succeed in an AP course. These students enrolled in, and passed, an average of one more AP course compared to their equally   peers. But could this work the other way? If your school doesn’t offer as many AP courses, will you be less likely to identify as a strong math or science student and less likely to major in STEM in college? ”That’s a very good question,” says Professor Fan, ”but I don’t have the answer for it.”"
"Comic W. Kamau Bell has spent much of his life feeling awkward. A   ”tall, rangy black dude,” Bell was often mistaken for a basketball player growing up  —   except that serious asthma and allergies meant he spent the bulk of his childhood indoors watching TV. He says, ”There was this weird sense of guilt about the fact that I wasn’t using the physical shell that God had given me, and that I wasn’t taking advantage of my physical gifts.” As an adult, he gravitated towards comedy, but he felt conflicted about the fact that he often didn’t fit in in black comedy clubs. ”When white audiences didn’t think I was funny, I was like, Well they didn’t think I was funny but when black audiences didn’t think I was funny, it hurt my soul,” Bell says. On his CNN series United Shades of America, now in its second season, Bell celebrates his status as an outsider. It’s a travel show in which the comic visits places that make him feel uncomfortable, such as a Ku Klux Klan gathering. Bell’s new memoir is The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell.  On how audiences reacted to him interviewing white nationalist Richard Spencer on United Shades of America  The No. 1 pushback that I’ve gotten on social media is, like, ”Why are you giving him a platform?” And it was very similar to the pushback I got last year from people with the Klan episode. . .. For me, it’s like, platforms aren’t always positive things. . .. I’m afraid of the impact of his ideas, but I think if you put my ideas next to his ideas, which is what we do on the show, . .. it’s very clear that the America he’s envisioning is not the America most of America wants. I think many people still in the wake of Trump’s election aren’t really ready to embrace the fact that the seed of the base of President Trump is white supremacy. . .. We have a false notion that people get changed in one conversation. I always blame it on that movie American History X, where Ed Norton’s character hangs out with the black guy in the laundry and over the course of a few   sessions they end up going, ”Man, black people are pretty cool!” I feel like we should know by now that it doesn’t happen that quickly. On how racism in the South compares to racism in the North  I don’t know where the phrase comes from  —   it’s just one of those things you hear and it feels like a truism to me: That in the North they don’t care how high you get as long as you don’t get too close in the South they don’t care about how close you get as long as you don’t get too high. The idea being that [in the North] you . .. could be a black doctor but in the South they don’t want you to be a doctor, but you can live across the street. I really do feel like there is a way in which there’s a sense of honesty in the South  —   whether they like you or they don’t like you  —   that is very clear, that I somehow appreciate, that in the North sometimes  —   and this is true of the West Coast too  —   you’re like, ”I don’t know if you like me or not. You’re being polite, but it doesn’t feel that nice.” So I do feel like the one thing I’ve learned is that the South  —   because of its history of racism, the history of slavery coming from the South  —   it’s a much better place than most Americans want to give it credit for. On performing in front of mostly white audiences when he was starting out  I started doing comedy on the North Side of Chicago, which is the whiter side of town. . .. In America we don’t say ”white,” we just sort of say regular. So they’re white rooms, but they’re not broadcast as that. It’s just a coffee shop where mostly white people are at, or a bar where mostly white people hang out. So I find myself in these situations where I go onstage in these white open mics and talk about racism. First of all, I wasn’t funny, let’s be clear about that. . .. So the audience is sort of like, Do I believe his experience? Is this true what he’s saying? Is he making this up? So I’m having to fight for the premise, and not fight for the punchline. You have to fight for like, ”Can we all agree that these are the facts of the situation?” And that’s what a premise of a joke is: You have to get the audience to buy into the facts as you’re laying them out. Even if the facts are ridiculous, you have to get them to buy in. But if they don’t buy into the premise, the punchline doesn’t matter. On struggling in black comedy rooms, I started   in 1994, so we’re talking about the height of Def [Comedy Jam]. . .. So black comedy, which had been an underground phenomenon, becomes mainstream on HBO. . .. Before that, you’ve got Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby, who were very different, [who] are both considered to be black comedians, but now there’s a thing called ”black comedy.” So a lot of black comedy rooms open up  —   rooms that are catering to black audiences, which is great because those audiences didn’t have those rooms before. . .. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the black comedy clubs, because even walking in there it felt like public school but grown up. It’s like, these are the same kids when I was a kid where I felt like I was being made fun of because I wasn’t listening to the right music or I wasn’t being a black man in the right way. And now they’re all adults and they’re drinking and they want the show they’ve seen on HBO. They want the Def Jam show. . .. Anytime I would find myself going onstage in these places it was very clear to me and the audience that you’re not doing this the way we want it. . .. So I got my feelings hurt quite often. . .. Worse than bombing in a comedy club, Terry, people don’t realize, is actually just doing mediocre. There’s something beautiful about bombing. Mediocre is horrible. Radio producers Ann Marie Baldonado and Therese Madden and Web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly   contributed to this story."
"In July 2012, a science reporter for The Washington Post, Brian Vastag, was in Wisconsin visiting his family when a high fever hit. He became instantly bedridden with   symptoms that never went away. ”It didn’t feel like anything I’d ever had before. . .. The things that distinguished it were the dizziness and the feeling of unreality in the head,” Vastag says. Now, nearly five years later, the    can no longer concentrate or read even a few sentences without becoming exhausted. A short walk to the mailbox means lying down for the rest of the day. In September, he’ll qualify for Medicare owing to his disability. That level of severity isn’t the picture most people  —   including physicians  —   think of when they hear the term ”chronic fatigue syndrome.” But that was the diagnosis Vastag finally received after 18 months of visiting numerous doctors, submitting countless vials of blood and initially being misdiagnosed with West Nile virus. Actually, Vastag’s condition is now termed ”myalgic   fatigue syndrome,” or   for short, and is estimated to affect at least 1 million people in the U. S. alone. Many with the condition dislike the name ”chronic fatigue syndrome” because they feel it’s trivializing and misleading, giving the impression that they’re simply tired or depressed when in fact many are quite ill. Nailing down the cause  —   or, more likely, causes  —   of the illness has proved exceptionally difficult, since patients’ symptoms vary tremendously. Routine laboratory tests are often negative, but even when they detect abnormalities, those are usually not specific enough to be helpful. Vastag had even seen a neurologist who performed MRI, which many patients don’t receive. That test showed lesions in his brain and inflammation in his spine that the neurologist labeled ”myelitis,” but the neurologist couldn’t make the   diagnosis based on just that. Further complicating the picture, some people who have been labeled with chronic fatigue syndrome actually have other conditions causing their symptoms, which can include muscle pain, dizziness, ”brain fog” and gastrointestinal problems in addition to the   symptoms. NIH seeks answers, Now, Vastag is participating in an   study at the National Institutes of Health, where researchers are using     equipment to conduct sophisticated testing they hope will explain the mysterious illness. The study’s lead investigator is neuroimmunologist Dr. Avindra Nath, chief of the Section of Infections of the Nervous System and clinical director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Prior to joining NIH in 2011, Nath ran a multiple sclerosis clinic, where he evaluated many   patients to rule out MS, which can cause similar symptoms. That’s where his interest in   began, he says. ”I became comfortable that, ’Yes, they do have a real story that’s very convincing’ . .. but [when you run the usual tests] you don’t find anything. That made me feel that it’s probably worth pursuing further,” he says. ”NIH is probably the best place to be able to do that because we have a lot of tools available to study a small population in great depth.” The first phase of the study includes 40 people with   as well as 20 who previously had Lyme disease and another 20 healthy controls. The participants are undergoing a huge battery of tests, including sleep studies, different types of MRI scans and very detailed metabolomics and proteomics, which are studies aimed at identifying the functions of genes. Subjects will also receive immunological testing on all biological fluids and extensive testing following an exercise challenge, when   symptoms become most pronounced. The current hypothesis, Nath says, is that, in contrast to people with normal immune systems that act to quell an infection and then subside, there is ”a subset of individuals whose immune systems overreact and do a lot of collateral damage.” Who has the illness? One of the study’s biggest challenges came at the very beginning: identifying the subjects. The investigators decided to start by selecting only people whose illness began like Vastag’s, with a sudden, severe infection confirmed by a doctor. The exact type of infection need not be known, though. Vastag’s wasn’t, even though he had seen an infectious disease specialist who confirmed his illness. Indeed, Nath says the current thinking is that there are probably many possible triggers as opposed to one single virus or other infectious cause. ”We think it’s unlikely there’s persistent infection going. Our hypothesis is that there’s an infectious process that triggers it, and after that the infection is gone but the symptoms persist.” Another study requirement is that patients have been sick less than five years, since those who have been sick longer tend to develop other health problems due to inactivity. And, importantly, those enrolled had to meet strict criteria for   with the key symptom being the hallmark ”crash,” like the ones Vastag routinely experiences after even mild activity. The scientific term for that, ”  malaise,” is a central part of recent   definitions, including one devised for clinical use by the Institute of Medicine in early 2015. For this study, Nath and colleagues are using an older research definition that also requires patients to have PEM along with several other physical symptoms. ”The problem is, if you can’t really have objective evidence [of the illness] it becomes very hard to identify the population. . .. So, we decided to have very rigorous criteria,” Nath says. The first study phase, which will last about three to five years, is aimed at finding biological ”markers” for the illness. Then, in a planned second phase, Nath and his team would use that information to identify a larger population and repeat the studies for confirmation. Finally, in a third phase, they would try interventions to see if patients’ symptoms improve. ”That would bring everything full circle,” Nath says. This isn’t the first study with those aims, and progress has been made by others in identifying biological markers for  . Preliminary studies have also found some success with certain treatments, including   when used early in the disease course and very potent immune system drugs used to treat cancer. But Nath points out that most of the previous studies have been small and haven’t been repeated by other research groups. ”We want to keep an open mind, and not bias ourselves,” he says. ”We’re looking at a very broad panel.” ”It was a dream job” In July 2015, three years after he first fell ill, Vastag wrote an open letter published in The Washington Post and addressed to NIH Director Francis Collins, asking for more funding for   research. At that point, just $5 million to $6 million had been allotted. In October 2015, Collins announced the   study as well as other funding initiatives. Now, Collins says in a statement provided to NPR: ”We are making significant progress toward increasing our focus on   research. Funding for this disease in 2017 could reach $12 million, a major increase from last year, but a lot depends on the overall budget situation and the number of meritorious proposals we receive. I am delighted that our intensive study of individuals with     is now underway at the NIH Clinical Center.” Vastag believes the study may well find at least a mechanism for his symptoms, if not the underlying cause. ”You have to start by understanding what’s gone wrong and the study is designed in a really good way to do that,” he says. But the findings won’t immediately resolve his current situation, which includes a lawsuit against the insurance company Prudential for denying his disability claims. Although Vastag pushed on at The Washington Post for a couple of years after he became ill, he finally had to leave in 2013. During his tenure there, he had covered all kinds of science subjects, from the 2011 Japanese earthquake to U. S. hurricanes to parrot conservation in Qatar. ”It was a dream job,” he says, tearing up. ”I didn’t give up that job until I was almost paralyzed, until I couldn’t move. It was a job I’d spent 15 years working toward and I loved every minute of it.” He now lives in Hawaii, in part because of his intolerance to Washington’s cold winters and also because his girlfriend, who also has   was living there when he met her online. And, he says, ”Hawaii is a very calm, beautiful environment. One thing I can still do is sit in my backyard and enjoy nature.” Miriam E. Tucker is a freelance journalist specializing in medicine and health. You can follow her on Twitter: @MiriamETucker"
"Remember Precious? The 2009 film earned six Oscar nominations, including a best actress nod for newcomer Gabourey Sidibe. Precious was Sidibe’s first acting job, and audiences ached for her character, a teen who is physically and sexually abused by her family. Before Precious, Sidibe had been in two school plays  —   in the chorus. Since then, she has gone on to make a career for herself in movies and TV shows, like Fox’s Empire. Now the    has written a book of essays about her rise to fame, body image and what it’s like to be her. The book is called This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare. She tells NPR about how fame changed her life and how she responds when people comment on her weight. On anticipating the fame Precious might bring after she finished filming, The film was coming out and I’d shot it and everyone was telling me that I was about to be a star. But, like, I still lived in a   apartment with, you know, my mom sleeping in the living room on a day bed, and my brother. And I would go from, you know, really, really, really excited moments to depression. . .. There was a lot of like, ”Yeah, maybe.” . .. [The film] could have been not as big a deal as they all thought it was going to be. It could have gone straight to video. But also I didn’t want to be famous, like that wasn’t my goal. My goal was just to live a good life that I was happy with. And I wasn’t exactly sure that that meant being the star of a movie. On not having anything to wear when she started attending film festivals for Precious  I didn’t have any money. I had to compete with, you know, the Mariah Careys, all the fancy people that were in the film that had, you know, whole teams behind them  —   makeup artists, stylists, everything  —   and I had none of it. . .. We’re at Cannes we’re in the south of France. I’m wearing this dress that I bought from Torrid or something, and I’m also wearing jeans underneath. . .. I also was wearing a headband because there was a very real point in my career where I thought, Oh, headbands will be my thing. Like, I really thought that. I was like, Ya gotta have a gimmick. . .. And like these brown wedges that I truly bought from Payless. My whole outfit cost maybe $37, but I still had to stand in between Paula Patton  —   as gorgeous as she is, as stylish as she is  —   and Mariah Carey. I don’t think I need to tell you how gorgeous and stylish and fancy Mariah is. That is real pressure. On what it was like to have fans confuse her for her character in Precious, Having people call me Precious and having people confuse me for this character was both really scary, frustrating, but also really endearing and powerful. . .. People would see the film and then come up to me and say, you know, ”I was Precious and I was abused by my parents,” and ”I was abused by this family member,” or, you know, ”I’ve dealt with these issues.” And these people were    white men and [Asian teenagers] just like so many different people from all over the scope of the world. So many different people connected to this struggle because it’s not about race, it’s not about gender, it’s not about sexuality, it’s not about age  —   it’s not about any of that. It’s about humanity. . .. And people would say, even when they couldn’t see me as a different person from this character, they would say, ”This happened to me the same way it happened to you.” And I didn’t feel like I could say, ”This didn’t happen to me. This is a character.” All I could do was give sympathy and push forth strength, in a way. Say, ”She made it and you can make it too.” On the chapter in her book titled ”MYOB”  MYOB: Mind your own body. It’s important because I don’t happen to have the kind of body that we usually see on television and in films. I am   I have dark skin and I am 100 percent beautiful, but I get a lot of flak. ”Oh, you should lose weight.” And now that I have lost weight  —   I lost weight for health reasons  —   I get, ”You look good, but don’t lose too much weight because your face is starting to sink in.” . .. Literally someone said, ”Congratulations, I see you lost weight. Congratulations.” And I say, ”That’s a weird thing to congratulate me on because this is my body.” And it’s not just the male gaze, it’s like the human gaze. People do this to me. . .. People staring at me. But also, this has been my body since I was 5ish, you know? It’s been a   thing of other people putting their own stuff on my body. But it’s mine, so I will police it, thank you. On overhearing a conversation between Precious director Lee Daniels and   editor André Leon Talley in which they called her a ”fat bitch” while planning to get her on the cover of Vogue, I know that Lee himself has struggled with his weight throughout his entire life. Lee is always on my side. But he also is very much a part of Hollywood, and Hollywood in general is not on my body’s side, you know. And he’s a part of that. Everyone I work with is a part of that. . .. I was listening in on the phone call where André Leon Talley was saying that he was going to get my fat black ass on the cover of the magazine, and Lee was excited about it. You know André Leon Talley is fat and black, and Lee was at that time, too, and I think that they saw me as this thing that was closer to them than I was to Hollywood, and they were celebrating that. And it hurt my feelings. It hurt my feelings. But it also was a lesson in this is what they think and this is what they will always think, and there’s no way of being too talented or too pretty or too confident around it. People will still have their opinions. ... I never got that cover. . .. I’m not sure I want it. Shannon Rhoades, Maddalena Richards and Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"The world is still mourning Prince’s death last April, and fans paying tribute often return to one monumental work: Purple Rain. The album and the film won three Grammys and an Oscar, influenced countless musicians and made Prince a superstar. A critical ingredient in that success was his band at the time: The Revolution. Known for its big sound, tight discipline and incredible chemistry, The Revolution made three albums with Prince  —   Purple Rain, Around The World In A Day and Parade  —   before breaking up to pursue a range of projects. But earlier this year, the members of The Revolution announced that they’d reunite for a tour to celebrate Prince’s life and the groundbreaking music they made together. Guitarist Wendy Melvoin, drummer Bobby Z. and keyboard player Matt ”Doctor Fink” Fink joined NPR’s Michel Martin during The Revolution’s stop in Washington, D. C. to talk about the band’s history, working through their grief with tour audiences and the unreleased music that remains in Prince’s vault at Paisley Park. Hear their conversation at the audio link, and read an edited transcript below. Michel Martin: Thank you all so much for coming in, especially when you’re on this demanding tour. So I want to go back to when you all got together. You were either all in your teens or just out of your teens, including Prince. What got you into it? And did you sense at the time that this was going to be something that would change your lives? Wendy Melvoin: I was the last to join the fold and, I think, the final stitch in what he was trying to accomplish in terms of creating the perfect quilt. I knew at a very young age. I was 13 years old, I was in a club in Los Angeles as an underage delinquent. And I heard on the dance floor, I heard a song and I ran up to the DJ and said, ”Who’s that girl?” And he looked at me and he went, ”What girl?” I said, ”The song you’re playing right now!” and he said, ”That’s a guy, his name is Prince, the song is ’Soft and Wet.’ ” And I, from that moment on, was completely taken by him. I joined properly when he asked me in ’82. Lisa Coleman, the keyboard player in the band  —   her and I were a couple, and Prince asked me to play ”Controversy” with the band at a sound check. Cut to: He called everybody in the band and said, ”How do you feel about Wendy joining the band?” And then I got a call. Bobby, how did it start for you? Bobby Z.: Well, it started with walking by Studio A at Chris Moon’s studio and hearing this glorious vocal sound, of his stacked harmonies, and seeing the Afro. And you don’t get a head turn with Prince, you get the eyes. So I got the  . And then I was just like, ”Hey, what’s going on?” And then Chris Moon walked in and went, ’You can’t talk to Prince!” It’s like, ”what do you mean I can’t talk to Prince?” We were very unfamous together. I was 19, he was 17, and he was just working on his demo. Melvoin: I think to speak to your initial question  —   did we know that there was something special going on? Yeah. For sure. Z.: For me, the world was late. I saw it immediately, I had a lot of struggles hanging on, but I drank gallons of the  . I couldn’t get enough of it, and [I’m] still drinking it to this day. I’m a proud Prince   drinker. You’re not the only one. I wanted to ask you: He was famously demanding as a taskmaster. Does that carry over in your work today? Doctor Fink: It does, but he was so dedicated to his craft that he really did make it fun. The enthusiasm was so infectious that we wanted to bring creativity to the table every day as well. So we would jam for several hours at rehearsals before even starting to work on a song, to play something from a new album. And that would get recorded and those kinds of ideas would get laid down, and he would take from some of it  —   not always, ’cause he had his own vision  —   but it was that creative process [that] was always happening for him. Wendy, as a guitarist yourself, how do you handle his parts? Do you take his parts, or what do you do? Melvoin: I play his parts. But, you know, he hired me because I could. I was a musician before, as a young kid  —   I come from a musical family and I grew up in Los Angeles, my father was part of The Wrecking Crew, I had already been around all of it. And my gift as a musician was being able to play rhythm very, very well. And over the years, turning into a film composer and TV composer, I’ve honed my craft on many different instruments, and my guitar playing has just gotten better. So I’m not foolish enough to try and do certain things I know I’m not capable of doing  —   I’m not even gonna try. But there are certain ones that I take that are iconic to him, but they’re my nod to him. You know, there’s a certain muscle memory to the audience when they hear a certain line that he did, and I do my best to nod to that. But it’s not going to be him. It’s going to be me, and I’m asking the audience to take the position of Prince, not me. What’s the vibe been like on the tour so far? I’m assuming people come because they love the music, they love the band, they love the spirit. But is there any haterade happening? Melvoin: Oh, for sure. Z.: I had a guy come up to me and his girlfriend said, ”He was really skeptical, but you got him.” And that made me feel really good. There’s gonna be people that are gonna come in an   kind of way, but we’re gonna try to win those people over, too. And Prince’s music does that every time, turns everybody into a smile. And there’s some moments in the show, without giving it away, that are pretty heartbreaking, too. Fink: Yeah, I also had the ”it went beyond my expectations” comment. Are your hearts still broken? Melvoin: Oh god, yeah. Navigating through that kind of loss has been really difficult for anyone who’s known him or been involved with him, but we were the first people that we contacted after he died, and we didn’t know what to do. We were close to getting back together before he died  —   and when someone dies and the hope of a future X, Y, Z meets a brick wall, it becomes unnavigatable. And so we decided that we would try and take it as a band, to try and just find a way to heal it with the audience and . .. have our broken hearts sort of swimming in a pool together and see if we could find a common thread of healing. But people are still writing about him, they’re still —   Z.: They’re just starting to write about him. Melvoin: And Bobby was the one that said, ”They’re playing Mozart’s music, they’re going to be playing Prince music in a hundred years from now.” Z.: Yeah, we’re still arguing about what Mozart meant, and when we’re gone, then people will have to argue about what the notes were played. But while we’re alive, you’re getting a real unique representation of authenticity, of stuff we worked on directly with him. Melvoin: And what it meant to him, too. Earlier this month we heard there would be a posthumous album of some unreleased Prince recordings that had been locked up at Paisley Park, and we understand that it’s quite a large amount of material. One single was released and then taken down, and now apparently there’s some legal arguments about it. What are your thoughts about this? Do you think he would’ve wanted these tracks released? Melvoin: We can extrapolate until the cows come home. My personal feeling  —   it is such a storm of complexity and nuance with his estate that everything and anything is contested. And we, as a band, have been trying desperately to distance ourself from any of the complications that are arising in that estate. We do know for a fact there’s at least, he could release two records a year for the next 25 years of unreleased material. That is a fact. Our era  —   we have at least four records in that vault that could be released. But we don’t really know where it’s gonna go, because every other day we find out there’s another huge entity that’s getting a claw in and saying ”stop” or ”wait” or ”no” or ”it’s not that” and ”we have to” and ”they didn’t,” so it’s like  —   we don’t know. Z.: The fact is there’s oceans of material, and I do think he made a comment that ”I won’t put it out, but somebody else will.” I think he knew that people were rabid about him and his music, so I’m pretty sure he knew that all of this stuff would see the light of day. But, as Wendy said, how it sees the light of day will be interesting in the years ahead. Melvoin: It will indeed, because there’s a lot of sharks. Fink: And there was leakage from the vault, too, over the years, people somehow were pilfering out of there and getting things released —   Z.: But to make things whole is gonna be a real process. I’m sure every day is different kind of on the tour, but can I ask each of you: What’s your favorite moment? What’s your favorite part of it? Melvoin: It’s at the very end of the show, when I say thank you to the audience. And they say thank you back. It’s really healing. Fink: I agree, that’s the best thing about it. Z.: Just the smile on people’s faces. I don’t think they’ve smiled since last April   when they heard the word Prince, and now they’re getting a chance to celebrate with us and mourn with us. And it’s a beautiful thing."
"The son of Protestant farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rodrigue Katembo dreamed of one day becoming a pastor. But at 14, he was forced into an armed group. Now 41, he is one of his country’s fiercest defenders of wildlife. Katembo has faced illegal charcoal harvesters, armed poachers and multiple militias as a warden within the 3, 000 square miles of Virunga National Park, Africa’s oldest national park and a UNESCO World Heritage site. One of his most daunting challenges began in 2010 when British oil company SOCO International was granted an oil exploration permit by the Congolese government in part of the protected area. SOCO’s operations threatened the livelihoods of locals and the survival of one of the last populations of critically endangered mountain gorillas, who live in the southern region of the park  —   estimated at about 480 of the world’s remaining 800. Katembo strapped hidden cameras to his body. Going undercover to meetings, he documented dealings between SOCO agents and Congolese officers (who in one scene offered him a bribe if he would share information with the oil company about the park director’s views). The footage, featured in Orlando von Einsiedel’s 2014 documentary Virunga, put pressure on SOCO to abandon its oil exploration there. Katembo’s conservation efforts also made him a target of death threats by Congolese authorities, miners and rebels, causing him to transfer to Upemba National Park in southeastern DRC, where he is now director. This spring, he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work  —   one of six honorees. ”Rodrigue Katembo put his life on the line to expose corruption that would have destroyed Virunga National Park,” says Goldman program officer Myriah Cornwell. Katembo sat down with NPR at the Willard InterContinental in Washington, D. C. after the prize ceremony and talked about pivotal moments in his life. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity, with interpreting by Tina Lain for Katembo, who spoke French.  Was nature important to you in your younger years? From a very young age, I felt linked to nature. Our farm was very close to   National Park. You had a lot of elephants that sometimes came to destroy our agriculture and eat everything. But I was the one from my family that said, ”Please don’t hurt these creatures, please protect them. They are bigger than us, and they are also a creation of the world.” How did you become a child soldier? We were going on holidays to Goma [a city in eastern DRC] and one friend who has passed away since then was used to bring us into the armed group. They told us we were going to study in Europe at very good universities, and they took us and put us into an armed group. We witnessed many things that happened, and we also had to participate in many things in the life of an armed group. I don’t like to come back to this period of my life. Did the experience ultimately give you skills that helped you to defend Virunga National Park? Yes, certainly. I had a basic military training I had some officers’ training. I also had intelligence training. So all these skills did help me to have a quick understanding of the situation around protected areas and combating armed groups within protected areas. And it also helped me to train my rangers against the threats within these protected areas. So conservation has helped me to reshape my past. How do threats inside Virunga National Park  —   poachers, rebels and oil developers  —   affect flora, fauna and humans? When the oil company started with seismic activities [surveys using sound waves to locate oil reserves] it had an impact on all the life in Lake Edward. Hippos were affected fish and also birds died during these activities. If that had been pursued, it could have had a huge economic impact on the three legal fisheries of this lake and the people depending on them. It also could have impacted the tourism potential of the park, and the revenues that communities can get. The same goes for poaching. It is only going to benefit a few. Tell me about a special moment you had with wildlife in Virunga National Park.  We had a special relationship with one elephant that was living between the forest and the ranger station. Every time we came back from the forest, he was there greeting us. That elephant helped us control some of the vehicles coming from the north of the park. He would take the packages from the trucks and throw them on the ground and then look for the bush meat. But elephants don’t eat meat, right? Right. Many times this bush meat was hidden in bags of manioc [starchy tubers] so he would call other elephants and they would all come to eat [the tubers]. This helped us to combat bush meat trafficking. In 2013, you were arrested by Congolese soldiers and intelligence officials for your efforts to defend Virunga and tortured for 17 days. What got you through that time? When I was arrested, they said that I was betraying my country. They said many things to me. But I knew I was not betraying my country because from my heart and my conscience, I knew I was respecting the law. I was not doing it only for myself and the Congolese people, but for humanity. So that gave me a lot of confidence to continue. What does it feel like to receive death threats from poachers, rebels and officials supporting oil development? Do you fear for your safety? I’m scared for my security and I know that the enemy that we are fighting against is very strong and has a lot of money. With this money, they can do many things. If I look at it in terms of a human being, yes I am scared for my security, but I hope my God will keep protecting me. It is quite a long journey from dreaming of being a pastor. When you look at my dream of becoming a pastor and a man of church, I think I am not so far away from it because the pastor will be praying for the human spirits, but I will be praying for the animal spirits and protecting them. Sasha Ingber is a multimedia journalist who covers science, culture and foreign affairs for such publications as National Geographic and Smithsonian. Contact her @SashaIngber"
"When you’re facing a major life change, it helps to talk to someone who has already been through it. All Things Considered is connecting people on either side of a shared experience, and they’re letting us eavesdrop on their conversations in our series Been There. K. T. Nicolaides still knows the exact minute her life changed forever. At 10:17 p. m. on Oct. 7, 2016, two days before their fifth wedding anniversary, her husband, Aaron Nicolaides, died. Last fall, it seemed as though they had everything to look forward to. They had just welcomed their second daughter into the world and bought a house for their growing family. Then one day in September, Aaron went to the doctor with breathing problems and found out he had cancer. A couple of weeks later, he was placed in a medically induced coma, and he never came out. At just 31, K. T. became a widow and a single mother of two young girls. ”I can feel around me that he’s not here, and I know he’s not coming back,” she says, ”but it’s not quite real yet.” Since then she has struggled through each day, each week, each month  —   grieving and figuring out what comes next. She is looking for advice, but most people aren’t really able to relate to a tragedy like hers. ”I’m getting a lot of the, ’Oh I know what you’re going through, I lost my brother.’ Or, ’Oh yeah, my divorce was so hard. I know exactly what you’re going through,’ ” she says. ”And I just want to shake them and be like, ’No you don’t! You have no idea,’ but instead I just nod and smile.” To answer some of her questions, K. T. sat down with someone who does understand what she’s going through: Larry Treadwell. He had only been married a couple of years when his wife, Amanda, died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism. That left him alone to raise their    son, Samuel. ”I was convinced it was just a bad dream, and I argued with people,” Larry says. ”I was like, there’s no way this is real. I’m gonna wake up here in a minute.” On the best advice he heard, [My dad’s cousin] said, ”All I know to say to you is, when something like this happens, all you can do is make the best of it.” And then he looks down, and he pats Samuel on the back, and he says, ”This little fella right here, he’s the best of it.” And I kind of made that my golden rule. I kind of made that my law. He’s the best of it. He deserves for me to find a way to be happy, you know, to have a dad who loves him and is trying to give him the best he can. On how his wife’s death changed him, For good or bad, I am a totally different person than I was before. The way I viewed the world, the way I viewed faith, the way I viewed my responsibilities, the way I viewed my health  —   everything changed. And for me, it eventually, it became good. I’m not saying it was better, but I did find happiness, I did find peace. On how grief changes over time, It never hurts less it just hurts less often. Because when you think of him it’s there, ’cause you love him and you’re always gonna love him. And then you’re gonna have days where maybe you didn’t think about him as much. And then you’re gonna fight guilt. It’s like, ”Why didn’t I think about him? What’s wrong with me?” And there’s nothing wrong with that. It just means you’re picking up, and you’re doing what you gotta do. Freelance producer Julia Botero contributed to this report. You can follow her on Twitter @jbott661."
"Updated at 11:30 p. m. ET  Jim DeMint has been ousted as president of the Heritage Foundation, amid growing concerns over the direction of the influential conservative think tank. While several news organizations had reported in recent days that his departure was imminent, Heritage’s board of trustees did not mince words in a statement Tuesday confirming that the former South Carolina senator’s exit came after a unanimous vote for his removal. ”After a comprehensive and independent review of the entire Heritage organization, the Board determined there were significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation. While the organization has seen many successes, Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems,” board Chairman Thomas A. Saunders III said in the statement. With DeMint’s departure, his predecessor and the organization’s founder, Ed Feulner, will step in as president and CEO in the interim as they search for DeMint’s successor. ”There is no one better to guide the ship while we seek our new leader and continue to push for conservative ideas and policies in Washington and around the nation,” Saunders said. Politico first reported last week that DeMint was set to be removed just over four years after he shockingly announced he was stepping down from the Senate to take the reins at Heritage. In December 2012, NPR’s Peter Overby wrote that ”as the barriers crumble between policy research and partisan advocacy, the building blocks are there for DeMint and the conservative Heritage Foundation to build a powerful operation with political clout.” Instead, many within the organization felt that DeMint had ”made the think tank too bombastic and political  —   to the detriment of its research and scholarly aims,” Politico wrote, along with the ”sense that he’s made the institution too much about himself.” The Atlantic reported that the driving force behind DeMint’s ouster was Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham, who oversees the group’s 501( c)(4) political advocacy arm. At the heart of some of the disagreements over DeMint was President Trump, though The Atlantic reported that Needham was trying to play to both the organization’s backers who had supported the president and those who were wary of the former reality star’s conservative orthodoxy: ”To the   elements on the board, Needham has pointed to DeMint’s growing coziness with the new administration as evidence that the think tank, a beacon of movement conservatism, needs a new steward. At the same time, Needham has been telling   board members like Rebekah Mercer that Heritage needs a leader who will follow the president’s lead —  even going so far as to float White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, a key Mercer ally, as a potential future president, according to one source.” On Tuesday Politico also noted that the seeds of DeMint’s ouster were also emblematic of the deep divides within conservative circles that permeated the bitter presidential primary: ”Disputes over the organization’s mission stretch back a year. In many ways, they reflect the larger intellectual and organizational disarray among conservatives exposed by the rise of Trump, and exacerbated by his victory. Many of the institutions that have sustained the conservative movement are grappling with their role at a time when conservatism is on the wane  —   and with how to work constructively with a populist in the White House.” In a statement later Tuesday evening to the Weekly Standard, DeMint defended his record at Heritage: ”The public statement released earlier is puzzling given that the board of trustees has praised our work for four years and approved performance bonuses for the entire management team each year for a job well done. It also stands in stark contrast to the independent review by the University of Pennsylvania which publicly recognized advances in Heritage’s scholarship, management and integrity over the last 4 years, and improved Heritage’s rankings in virtually every category. In fact, Heritage was recognized as the 13th Best Managed Think Tank in the world in 2016.”"
"Last fall, at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, the rapper Ja Rule addressed a small audience seated in front of the event’s music stage: ”I’ll let my    here Billy McFarland give you all an introduction of what Fyre is.” At the time, Ja Rule and McFarland were promoting an app that would, we now know, share its name with one of the   music events in recent memory, currently the subject of a $100 million lawsuit. The Fyre app, like McFarland’s other venture Magnesis (a rarefied ”concierge” for the young, beautiful and hip) is directed at ”young urban professionals” and ”influencers” (brace yourself to see that word a lot). The app allowed promoters, venues or just whomever to book artists for small, lucrative shows for small,   audiences  —   much like the concept that underpinned the event with which it now indelibly shares a name. In the social   present, these influencers are   marketing vehicles for all types of products, capitalizing on conventionally attractive faces and the enviable lifestyles they portray on their profiles. They were, as we see from the marketing deck for Fyre and the Fyre Festival obtained by Vanity Fair, the ostensible key to success for McFarland’s and Ja Rule’s disastrous music event. The first 10 pages of the   presentation focuses on the app, touting a roster of artists including Iggy Azalea, Queen Latifah, Lil Wayne, DJ Khaled and ”hundreds of other notable artists, athletes and influencers.” It operates by allowing those looking to book artists on its roster to negotiate offers and payments and that talent to accept it, with Fyre taking a 10 percent commission from bookers. The remaining 33 pages focus on the first edition of the Fyre Festival  —   yes, first. The deck explains Fyre Festival’s   vision: new event spaces, built from scratch  —   with the Trumpian phrase ”through the purchase of significant land”  —   each year for the next five years, ”referencing the five elements of the earth.” Its inaugural element? Water. (Irony alert: This despite there reportedly being precious little of it on hand for last week’s attendees). ”Come, seek, for searching is the foundation of fortune,” goes the   tagline. ”What if we reimagined what it means to attend a music festival,” one slide wonders. The next: ”The actual experience exceeds all expectations and is something that’s hard to put into words,” a statement that, if you replace the word ’exceeds,’ is woefully accurate in retrospect. The plan was to build awareness and attendance by recruiting  —   you guessed it  —   influencers, who would promote it on their social media accounts. Dubbed ”the Fyre Tribe,” each was given free tickets and flights to the festival in exchange for taking part in a coordinated marketing effort that had each  —   over 30 are listed, with links, in the deck  —   post an ”ambiguous” orange slide on their Instagram with the hashtag #FyreFestival. In the aftermath of last week’s debacle, most scrubbed their accounts of the promotion, though at least eighteen remained live as of this writing (see here, here and here for examples). Kendall Jenner, she of the lamentably   Pepsi ad debacle, was central to the Fyre Festival promotional campaign too, announcing the festival’s first headliner, G. O. O. D. Music. That each post we reviewed seemed to run afoul of Federal Trade Commission rules around paid promotion may come to haunt the Fyre Tribe, however. Last month the FTC sent out ”more than 90 letters reminding influencers and marketers that influencers should clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationships to brands when promoting or endorsing products through social media.” The letters ”were sent in response to a sample of Instagram posts making endorsements or referencing brands.” (It also issued a template letter that begins ”Dear  . ”) As mentioned, a suit against the festival’s organizers was filed just two days after the situation on the ground became public. The FTC tells NPR that, so far, all cases brought over paid (but undisclosed) social media marketing campaigns have been against companies, not individuals, though a class action suit brought by individuals outside the FTC remains an open question. The deck concludes with a quote from the ancient poet Rumi: ”Seek those who light your flames.” After a search for the originating poem, it seems that  —   in keeping with the general timbre of Fyre  —   Rumi’s quote actually reads: ”Seek those who fan your flames.” Mission accomplished. Updated May 2, 4:15 p. m.: This article has been clarified to reflect new information provided by the Federal Trade Commission on the legality of compensated social media promotions."
"The Archdiocese of Kansas City says it is severing its   relationship with Girl Scouts in nearly two dozen Kansas counties because the organization promotes materials ”reflective of many of the troubling trends in our secular culture.” ”The decision to end our relationship with Girl Scouting was not an easy one,” Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann said in a statement released Monday. He asked pastors to ”begin the process of transitioning away from the hosting of parish Girl Scout troops.” Instead, he calls for chartering American Heritage Girls troops, which he describes as ”based on Christian values.” According to its website, the organization was formed in 1995 by a former Girl Scouts volunteer who was ”uneasy with the way her troop was asked to handle matters of faith.” Now, local pastors will choose whether to end Girl Scout programs immediately or ”over the next several years, ’graduate’ the Scouts currently in the program.” Girl Scouts of the USA identifies as a secular organization with ties to faith, and the national organization and the Catholic Church have had a relationship that dates back a century. ”A few within the Church, instead of aligning with the Church Hierarchy’s positive position on Girl Scouts, have chosen to propagate misinformation that the Catholic Church has acknowledged to be false,” the Girl Scouts national organization said in a statement following the archdiocese’s announcement. ”Girl Scouts is always willing to work with any and every person or organization in order to fulfill our mission of building girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place.” Naumann said he is troubled by materials that highlight the roles of women such as birth control activist Margaret Sanger and feminist writers and activists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. A local representative of the Girl Scouts told NPR that these women and many others have been celebrated because of their leadership qualities. The archbishop’s letter also states that Girl Scouts of the USA ”contributes more than a million dollars each year to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGS) an organization tied to International Planned Parenthood.” However, on its national website, the Girl Scouts says it ”does not have a relationship or partnership with Planned Parenthood.” The organization says it pays membership dues to WAGGS and compares the relationship to the one between the U. S. and the U. N.: ”The United States may not agree with every position the UN takes, but values having a seat at the table.” It wasn’t immediately clear how many troops and individual girls might be affected by the church’s decision. Some members of the Kansas City Archdiocese expressed frustration at the decision. ”I feel we should all be together as one in the community. This does nothing but divide us,” Maria Walters, who has led Girl Scouts in the archdiocese and has two daughters involved, told the Kansas City Star. ”I don’t know why you would take an organization out of a school when it provides an option for girls to feel like they’re part of a group.” The relationship between the Catholic Church and the Girl Scouts has come into question in recent years. At a national level, the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops held a dialogue with the Girl Scouts in   that covered issues such as abortion and contraception. These are issues that the national organization ”does not take a position or develop materials on,” according to its website. Ultimately, that dialogue recognized ”a local bishop’s authority over Catholic scouting locally” and did not endorse or condemn it. In February 2016, the Archdiocese of St. Louis issued a statement distancing itself from the Girl Scouts. Archbishop Robert Carlson called for pastors who host troops to meet with Scout leaders about their concerns and to look into ”alternative options for the formation of our girls.”"
"Updated at 11:20 p. m. ET, In her most frank remarks to date after her loss to President Trump, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said that if not for a controversial letter from FBI Director James Comey and Russian meddling in the election, she would be sitting in the Oval Office right now. Clinton told CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour during an interview at a Women for Women International luncheon Tuesday that she did take personal responsibility for her loss, because, ultimately, it was her name on the ballot. But she pointed to those key events that she said changed the trajectory of the race. ”I’ve been in a lot of campaigns and I’m very proud of the campaign I ran,” the former secretary of state said. ”It wasn’t a perfect campaign  —   there’s no such thing  —   but I was on the way to winning until a few things happened.” ”If the election was on Oct. 27, I’d be your president,” Clinton continued, pointing to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver showing that Comey’s Oct. 28 announcement that the FBI was reopening the investigation into her private email server impacted her chances. She also noted that within hours of the release of a damaging 2005 Access Hollywood tape of Trump making vulgar remarks about women, WikiLeaks had released emails from her campaign chief, John Podesta, intended to damage her and turn the focus off her opponent. ”[Russian President Vladimir Putin] certainly interfered in our election, and it was designed to hurt me and help my opponent,” Clinton said. ”And the opposing campaign took advantage of that as well.” ”Did we make mistakes? Yes,” Clinton said, teasing that she’d have much more to say about that in her upcoming memoir this fall. ”The reason I believe we lost was because of events of the last 10 days.” And multiple times throughout the interview, she twisted the knife a bit more, noting that, ”I did win 3 million more votes than my opponent” in the popular vote. It was needling that seemed destined to eventually draw a pointed response from the president on Twitter, Amanpour noted, and Clinton said she was fine with that. ”Better that than interfering in foreign affairs” with his   missives, she quipped. Hours later, Trump would take that bait and responded on Twitter. Clinton also acknowledged that misogyny did play a role in her loss and that she would elaborate on that in her book as well. ”I think it would have been a really big deal” to elect the first female president, Clinton said. She criticized the media for not pushing Trump more for specifics on how he would keep his sweeping list of promises, including creating jobs. But she wouldn’t apologize for her wonkiness and love of policy detail, even if that made it hard for her to connect with some voters. ”I can’t be anything other than who I am,” Clinton said. She wasn’t entirely dismissive of President Trump, though, revealing that she did support his decision last month to launch a missile strike in Syria after the country’s president, Bashar Assad, used chemical weapons against his own people. However, Clinton said she was ”not convinced [the strike] really made much of a difference” and was concerned about possible backroom deals the Trump administration may have made with Russia, notifying Moscow beforehand of the strikes against their ally. The former secretary of state also criticized cuts that Trump proposed for the State Department and foreign aid, noting that even his secretary of defense, James Mattis, said that strategy was unwise. While Clinton didn’t talk much about what she might do next  —   other than focusing on her memoirs  —   she did hint she wasn’t through yet speaking out against the man who beat her last year. ”I’m back to being a private citizen  —   and part of the resistance,” Clinton said."
"Nashville has no shortage of country acts gunning for their breakthrough hits, and Charlie Worsham is one of them. But the singer, songwriter and guitarist is hardly your typical country hopeful. The few who heard the album he released four years ago understand that he’s the sort of artist who can do it all. As he returns with his second album, Beginning Of Things, he’s got everybody in the know in Nashville rooting for him. In the living room of the cottage he rents in East Nashville, Worsham is preparing to head out on tour and introduce live audiences to his new album as a   band. The    grabs a guitar and starts tapping out a rhythm on its body. He presses a looping pedal, adds a couple of guitar parts and finally lays his vocal on top. Surrounding Worsham are music gear, records and mementos. Hanging proudly on the wall in the hallway: the key to his hometown of Grenada, Miss. ”They gave it to me and I just kept thinking, ’Good lord, y’all,’ ” he says with a chuckle. ”We’ve got army veterans and teachers who’ve changed lives and nurses who’ve saved lives and here I am still trying to be a permanent part of the music business.” Still, Worsham is one of Grenada’s biggest claims to fame. He left home to study at Berklee College of Music, then got recruited by a band in Nashville, where he became the consummate student: showing up for gigs and sessions, watching, listening and learning from some of the city’s most accomplished musicians. One of those he admired most was country star Vince Gill  —   who’s now a Worsham fan himself. ”He can play anything, and he can play it well,” Gill says. ”He’s got great ears, and he’ll find an audience that’ll wanna go with him. . .. It may take him a while, but people are gonna keep betting on him. He’s pretty undeniable once you hear him, once you get the opportunity.” Worsham eventually got the opportunity to launch a solo career on a major label. But his 2013 debut album, Rubberband, just wasn’t delivering the   revelry that country radio favored four years ago. ”I really know now I couldn’t blame myself for trying to be me, but it sure felt like that’s where the problem was,” Worsham says. So he bought himself a pack of notebooks while he was on tour. ”I went back to my hotel room and I scrawled ’Tell the truth’ and the Roman numeral I on the cover,” he says. ”I promised myself I would fill up a page every day, and it wouldn’t matter how terrible the writing was or how crazy it was. The only rule was it had to come from a place of truth.” Back in Nashville, Worsham booked a series of shows at small clubs to escape the pressure of expectations and experiment with whimsical ideas, and he handed his new stuff over to producers Frank Liddell and Eric Masse. After recording what Worsham thought were scratch tracks with a rhythm section, he showed up at the studio ready to perform for real. ”They said, ’Well, wait a second.’ And they hit play,” Worsham remembers. ”And the more I listened the more I thought, ’Golly, I’ll never beat that.’ That was me not thinking about it. That was me getting out of my own way. I would not have been able to consciously do that had they not fooled me into doing it.” Liddell says he thought the sneakiness was justified by the results. ”He had transformed from a person desperate to make everybody happy  —   from us, his record label, his parents, his fans  —   to all of the sudden just adamant that this was his record and it was gonna turn out the way he wanted it and he would start here,” Lidell says. The finished album veers from hot picking to pop crooning, serious storytelling and silliness. The way Worsham sees it, he’s given people options. ”People are gonna connect with my music for whatever reason they might connect with it,” he says. ”And if it’s how I play instruments, awesome. If it isn’t, awesome. They’re still here. . .. And I understand that being a commercial country music artist, that’s a different itch to scratch.” Basically, Charlie Worsham is trying to figure out how to please big crowds just by being himself."
"President Trump just seems to have a thing for strongmen. He invited the brutal Philippine leader, Rodrigo Duterte, to the White House during a ”very friendly” phone call Sunday. On Tuesday, Trump has another call  —   this one with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s invitation came despite Duterte’s violent crackdown on drugs, that has left more than 7, 000 of his countrymen dead since he took power less than a year ago. The White House defended Trump’s decision, saying the Philippines is a key partner in dealing with North Korea, but experts say that’s a stretch. The United States and Western allies have long turned a blind eye to totalitarian regimes guilty of a long list of   violations. Often, it was in the name of stability and at the expense of people suffering in those countries. But American leaders have mostly been mindful to choose their words carefully to maintain some semblance of a moral higher ground. What Trump is doing is different  —   past American leaders would almost never express admiration for bad actors. Trump, in many cases, has been doing exactly that. Duterte is hardly the only autocrat Trump has had kind words for. From Saddam Hussein’s efficient killing of terrorists to the ”smart cookie” in North Korea, Trump has praised strongmen around the world when others wouldn’t. The following list reads like a who’s who of totalitarian leaders with dicey   records. And in all of the countries, the American president and   magnate has a raft of potential conflicts of interest, too: Nickname: ”The Punisher” a. k. a. ”Duterte Harry” What he’s accused of: More than 7, 000 Filipinos killed under his rule in his   crusade. In a warped comparison, he praised Hitler this way: ”Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there is three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” He added that he wants to ”finish the problem of my country and save the next generation.” (Fact check: it was six million European Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.) . .. He has undermined the judiciary . .. Called experts ”stupid” . .. Threatened to ”whack” mayors who stood in the way of his tactics . .. Upset about traffic, he called the Pope a ”son of a whore” . .. ”Joked” about a woman who was raped. . .. Justified the killing of journalists. ”Just because you’re a journalist,” he said, ”you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch.” The Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to work  —   78 journalists have been killed there since 1992, the third most of any country behind Iraq and Syria. (Somalia is behind the Philippines at No. 4.) Though Duterte’s praised Trump, he’s also said: ”He is a bigot and I am not.” Quotable: ”Forget the laws on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers,   men and   you better go out. Because I’d kill you. I’ll dump all of you into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there.” What Trump has said about him (emphasis ours): The White House issued a readout of their phone call from April 29: ”It was a very friendly conversation, in which the two leaders discussed the concerns of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regarding regional security, including the threat posed by North Korea. They also discussed the fact that the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs, a scourge that affects many countries throughout the world. President Trump enjoyed the conversation and said that he is looking forward to visiting the Philippines in November to participate in the East Asia Summit and the U. S.  Summit. President Trump also invited President Duterte to the White House to discuss the importance of the United   alliance, which is now heading in a very positive direction.” Duterte now might not even come. ”I am tied up,” Duterte said Monday. ”I cannot make any definite promise. I am supposed to go to Russia, I am supposed to go to Israel.” Potential Trump conflict: His name is on a   $150 million building in Manila. Duterte named the head of the corporation that developed it as an envoy to the United States. Nickname: ”Pale Mouth” a. k. a. ”Botox” a. k. a. ” ” What he’s accused of: Invaded a sovereign country (Ukraine) and annexed part of it (Crimea). . .. Aiding Syrian President Bashar Assad militarily. Assad is accused by the West of using chemical weapons against his own people. . .. Meddled in elections, including in the U. S. . .. Allowed hackings of Western bank accounts without prosecution . .. Some 100 men suspected of being gay have been swept up in Chechnya, including three who were killed last month. . .. People with disabilities face discrimination, including not studying in mainstream schools . .. Cracked down on freedom of information, including shutting down websites . .. Persecuted critics, political opponents and journalists who have been jailed and killed. (It’s the   dangerous country for journalists to work in.) . .. Some   NGOs have been labeled ”foreign agents” and ”undesirable foreign organizations.” They’ve been banned and a new law means they could face up to six years in prison. . .. Russian Olympians have been accused of doping through a government program. . .. Russia won the rights to host the 2018 soccer World Cup, but there are questions as to how. Former FIFA head Sepp Blatter was ousted in 2015 and banned for eight years after soccer’s world governing body was found to be rife with corruption and kickbacks. Still, Putin said Blatter ”deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.” Quotable: ”Hitler also failed when, with his hateful ideas, he was going to destroy Russia, throw us back behind the Urals. Everyone should remember how it ended.” What Trump has said about him: ”If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him. I’ve already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, oh, isn’t that a terrible thing  —   the man has very strong control over a country. Now, it’s a very different system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader. . .. he does have an 82 percent approval rating, according to the different pollsters. ...” (Sept. 7, 2016, NBC    Forum) Potential Trump conflict: Trump put on the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and has tried for a long time to gain a foothold in the Russian market. In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said: ”Russians make up a pretty disproportionate   of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” (The Washington Post and Time have more on Trump’s Russia connections.)  Nickname: ”Xi Dada” a. k. a. ”Xi Big Big” a. k. a ”Big Daddy Xi” What he’s accused of:   detention, where detainees are tortured and mistreated, including as a tactic against political opponents and activists . .. Leading the world in executions . .. ”Enforced disappearance of critics” . .. Using   tactics to maintain Communist Party power. For example, launching an ”  campaign” against political opponents and shutting down groups seen as a threat  —   even ones as seemingly benign as advocating for women’s legal counsel against domestic abuse. . .. Identified as ”the world’s worst jailer of journalists” in 2014 and 2015. China was holding 49 journalists in 2015 that number was down to 38 last year and eclipsed only by Turkey (81) as Erdogan moved to consolidate power and repress opposition. China is ranked near the bottom (176 out of 180) in the World Press Freedom Index, beat out only by Syria, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and North Korea. . .. Clamping down on access to the Internet and censoring it. Google left the country last year despite the huge potential market because of it . .. Lack of religious freedom. Uighur Muslims, for example, are labeled extremists and terrorists families of Tibetan   have been punished 1, 500 crosses have been torn down from church steeples a small Chinese Jewish community has been harassed and prevented from worshiping together. China only has five ”licensed” religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism and Taoism. Quotable: ”There are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country. China does not export revolution, hunger, poverty nor does China cause you any headaches. Just what else do you want?” What Trump has said about him: ”He certainly doesn’t want to see turmoil and death. He doesn’t want to see it. He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well.” (April 28, Reuters interview) Potential Trump conflict: Trump has strong business ties to China. He has tried to get into the Chinese market since 2008. He signed onto two    deals that fell apart, including one with State Grid, the   power company. In October, the Trump Organization announced new plans for 20 to 30 new hotels in cities all over China. Industrial  Commercial Bank of China Ltd. is a tenant in Trump Tower. Bank of China, also   is a debt holder for at least part of a $950 million loan for a building in New York in which Trump is  . Trump and his daughter Ivanka were granted     trademarks in China earlier this year. Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, a key (maybe top) adviser to the president owns a skyscraper in New York and was set to get a $400 million investment from a Chinese firm in the tower. But that deal was killed because of    concerns.  Nickname: ”The Young General” a. k. a. ”Fatty Kim the Third” a. k. a. ”Kim Fatty III” a. k. a. ”Kim the Fat” What he’s accused of: Human Rights Watch notes: ”A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry found that abuses in North Korea were without parallel in the contemporary world. They include extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual violence. North Korea operates secretive prison camps where perceived opponents of the government are sent to face torture and abuse, starvation rations, and forced labor. Fear of collective punishment is used to silence dissent. There is no independent media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom.” . .. It is ranked at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index. . .. Kim has worked with China to crack down on border crossings to prevent escapees. In some cases, North Korea has tracked down citizens and returned them to the country. China is complicit as well, labeling those who escape as illegal and returning them. People returned to the country are sent to   prison camps, known as ”kwanliso,” which literally means management centers. . .. Kim does not allow unauthorized outside movies, news, etc. into the country. . .. There is no religious freedom or allowed political opposition. . .. The country has a ”songbun” class system in which people are grouped into three categories ranking their loyalty  —   1. Loyal, 2. Wavering, 3. Hostile. Quotable: ”If the American imperialists provoke us a bit, we will not hesitate to slap them with a   nuclear strike. The United States must choose! It’s up to you whether the nation called the United States exists on this planet or not.” What Trump has said about him: ”At a very young age, he was able to assume power. A lot of people, I’m sure, tried to take that power away, whether it was his uncle or anybody else. And he was able to do it. So obviously, he’s a pretty smart cookie.” (April 30, CBS) ”If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it. If it’s under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that. . .. Most political people would never say that, but I’m telling you under the right circumstances I would meet with him. We have breaking news.” (May 1, Bloomberg) Potential Trump conflict: See China.  Nickname: ”The Quiet General” a. k. a. ”The Pimp” What he’s accused of: A   general in the country’s military, he rose to power in a bloody coup. Some 800 protesters were killed in a single day . .. Public criticism of the government is squashed . ..   protests are banned . .. Scores of people have been arrested . .. Privacy rights are routinely violated . .. Some independent   organizations have been banned NGO workers could face up to 25 years in prison if they are believed to be working against Egypt’s national interest . .. Charges were brought against the country’s top   official . .. Forced disappearances . .. Detainees tortured . .. Thousands of trials with flimsy evidence . .. Overcrowding in prisons that have seen forced feedings and isolation . .. Freedom of speech is repressed  —   the head of the Press Syndicate was charged with ”publishing false news, which threatens public peace.” . .. Religious freedom is almost nonexistent  —   Christians are routinely discriminated against churches are limited and speaking out against Islam, even ISIS, can land you in prison. Four Christian children, in fact, were sentenced to five years in prison for putting up a video that mocked ISIS. . .. The government has undertaken some perfunctory steps to curb violence against women, but Human Rights Watch says, ”Sexual harassment and violence against women remained endemic.” The new Interior Minister, a woman, has put the onus on women, telling them to avoid speaking loudly and to be cautious about how they dress. Women are also routinely discriminated against in family law cases. . .. Sexually repressive society that criminalizes sex outside marriage . .. Tracks down and prosecutes alleged gays, who are often sodomized by police. . .. Egypt is one of the worst countries for journalists, ranked 161 of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. Ten journalists have been killed since 2011 some have faced years in detention without charges, others have seen long prison terms, as the Sissi government undergoes a ”Sisification” of the media. Quotable: ”Please, don’t listen to anyone but me. I am dead serious. Be careful, no one should abuse my patience and good manners to bring down the state. I swear by God that anyone who comes near it, I will remove him from the face of the Earth. I am telling you this as the whole of Egypt is listening. What do you think you’re doing? Who are you?” What Trump has said about him (emphasis ours): ”I will tell you, President   has been somebody that’s been very close to me from the first time I met him. I met during the campaign, and at that point there were two of us, and we both met. And hopefully you like me a lot more. But it was very long. It was supposed to be just a quick brief meeting, and we were with each other for a long period of time. We agreed on so many things. I just want to let everybody know, in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind President  . He’s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt. And the United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong backing. . .. And I just want to say to you, Mr. President, that you have a great friend and ally in the United States and in me.” (Bilateral meeting with Egypt’s president, April 3) Potential Trump conflict: Trump lists two companies in Egpyt on his financial disclosure  —   Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC. There is not a lot of information about the companies. They do not appear in the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt’s database. Both are, however, registered in Delaware. They are both registered with ”National Registered Agents, Inc.” out of Dover, Del. and were formed in 2007. (Many companies incorporate in Delaware, because there is no state income tax.)  Nickname: ”Sultan” a. k. a. ”Modern Yazid” What he’s accused of: Attempting to consolidate power in the face of political opposition. A referendum last month ”gives him the green light to create a muscular presidency, with powers to personally appoint or dismiss ministers, select judges and rule by decree if he deems it necessary,” BBC notes. . .. He has jailed opponents and critics, including a    who insulted him and a Miss Turkey who shared a poem criticizing him. . .. More than 50, 000 people have been detained since a thwarted coup. . .. Accused protesters of being ”arm in arm” with terrorists . .. Turkey has the most jailed journalists of any country in the world. Fourteen were imprisoned in 2015, but that number jumped to 81 in 2016, more than double the number of journalists behind bars in China (No. 2 on the list). . .. Some 120, 000 public servants have been fired. . .. Repressing religious freedom and women’s rights. . .. Attempted to criminalize adultery and create ”  zones.” Quotable: ”You cannot put women and men on an equal footing. It is against nature. They were created differently. Their nature is different. . .. Our religion has defined a position for women: motherhood. . .. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists, because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood.” What Trump has said about him (emphasis ours): The White House issued a readout of Trump calling Erdogan after he won a referendum that expanded his power: ”President Donald J. Trump spoke today with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to congratulate him on his recent referendum victory and to discuss the United States’ action in response to the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons on April 4th. President Trump thanked President Erdogan for supporting this action by the United States, and the leaders agreed on the importance of holding Syrian President Bashar   accountable. President Trump and President Erdogan also discussed the   campaign and the need to cooperate against all groups that use terrorism to achieve their ends.” Potential Trump conflict: Trump licenses his name to two buildings in Istanbul. He got $5 million from the licenses in 2016, according to his financial disclosure. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn worked as a foreign agent for Turkey in the fall, while a campaign adviser to Trump, pulling in $500, 000. It was something he only reported in March. He resigned his White House post three weeks earlier."
"Updated at 4:15 p. m. ET, A former police officer in North Charleston, S. C. accused in the shooting death of an unarmed black man in 2015 has pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge, according to his lawyer. Michael Slager, who shot Walter Scott in the back following a traffic stop, pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating Scott’s civil rights by using excessive force during an attempted arrest. A bystander captured cellphone video of the killing, spurring widespread outrage. ”We hope that Michael’s acceptance of responsibility will help the Scott family as they continue to grieve their loss,” said Andrew Savage, Slager’s defense attorney. As part of the plea deal, the state of South Carolina will drop a murder charge against Slager, according to Alexandra Olgin of South Carolina Public Radio. State prosecutors had been set to retry Slager, 35, in August after his murder trial ended in a hung jury in December. ”It’s not over,” Scott’s mother, Judy, said outside the courthouse at the time. ”Y’all hear me? It’s not over till God says it’s over.” Slager’s federal trial had been expected to start next week. ”The Department of Justice will hold accountable any law enforcement officer who violates the civil rights of our citizens by using excessive force,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement following Slager’s guilty plea. ”Such failures of duty not only harm the individual victims of these crimes they harm our country, by eroding trust in law enforcement and undermining the good work of the vast majority of honorable and honest police officers.” On April 4, 2015, Slager, who is white, pulled over    Walter Scott, a black man, for a broken brake light. Scott fled from his car, and Slager chased him on foot. After a brief struggle, Scott broke away and Slager began firing at his back, striking him with five of the eight bullets he fired. During his murder trial, as The   reported, ”Slager emphasized that he had acted according to his training as a police officer and that he had been afraid of Scott. He contended, as he has previously, that Scott had taken his Taser stun gun.” The AP reports that Slager faces a possible sentence of life in prison and $250, 000 in fines but that prosecutors ”are proposing a sentence based on federal guidelines for a   murder conviction, which recommend more than 20 years.”"
"This car race involved years of training, feats of engineering,   sponsorships, competitors from around the world and a racetrack made of gold. But the   competition, described as a cross between physics and   is invisible to the naked eye. In fact, the track itself is only a fraction of the width of a human hair, and the cars themselves are each comprised of a single molecule. The Nanocar Race, which happened over the weekend at Le centre national de la recherché scientific in Toulouse, France, was billed as the ”  race of  .” It’s meant to generate excitement about molecular machines. Research on the tiny structures won last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and they have been lauded as the ”first steps into a new world,” as The   reported. Racers had 36 hours to complete the tiny course. The  . S. team, driving the Dipolar Racer, finished hours before any of its competitors. However, the   car raced on its home track in Austria, on a silver track rather than a gold one. The team controlled it remotely. Rice University, where some of the scientists hail from, say silver was a handicap because it’s a slower surface. Race scientific director Christian Joachim tells The   that ”they were unable to compete on gold because on gold the molecule was not stable enough.” The next finisher, the Swiss Nano Dragster, was declared a    —   because it was the first team to finish on gold. Unsurprisingly, a molecular car is not easy to drive, and pushing them was against the rules. Two teams  —   France’s Green Buggy and Japan’s   Car  —   had trouble moving at all. Joachim says these were both larger molecules. The two others went around only a portion of the track before time expired. Have a look at all the molecular cars competing: Teams were positioned several floors above their vehicles and the equipment, controlling it on computer screens. They moved their cars by jolting them with pulses using a scanning tunneling microscope that has separate tips. ”First you make an image to look where is your molecule,” says Joachim. ”And after that you bring your tip on one point you map on the molecule and you pulse. Or, you increase the voltage.” This could sent the little car forward by 0. 3 nanometers  —   so it would take hundreds of pulses to send it around the full course. The molecular cars respond in several different ways to the incoming electrons, writes Nature: ”Some teams have designed their molecules so that the incoming electrons raise their energy states, causing vibrations or changes to molecular structures that jolt the racers along. Others expect electrostatic repulsion from the electrons to be the main driving force.” Here’s a video of the Dipolar Racer completing the course: ”This is the beginning of our ability to demonstrate nanoscale manipulation with control around obstacles and speed and will pave the way for much faster paces and eventually for carrying cargo and doing   assembly,” said Rice University chemist and Dipolar Racer team leader James Tour. ”It’s a great day for nanotechnology.”"
"In today’s political climate, it’s hard sometimes to remember that science, at its root, is about the fun of discovery. It’s a kind of  . What animates the joy and the excitement and the inspiration so many folks feel in their encounters with science is a very pure sense of: ”Wow, that is sooooooo cool.” I found this myself the other day when I stumbled across a scientific study of ”dirt” on another world. Back in 2004, the Cassini space probe eased its way into orbit around Saturn. Its mission was to study the beautiful ringed planet and its 53 moons. Of particular interest was Titan, the largest of Saturn’s satellites. Titan is actually the 2nd largest moon in the whole solar system  —   and is larger than the planet Mercury. It’s also the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere (mostly nitrogen with some methane). About six months after Cassini arrived, it released a small lander called Huygens that dropped down to Titan’s surface leaving a legacy of amazing data in the form of images, spectra and other measurements. As Cassini prepares for its final orbits of Saturn, it’s remarkable to see how that data legacy continues to be mined. Even a decade after Huygens made its descent into Titan’s frigid warrens (surface temperatures on the hazy moon are   C) we are still learning new stuff. This reality hit me hard reading a paper published in February  —   by a group led by Stefan Schroder of the Max Planck Institute in Germany  —   focused on Huygens’s probe’s landing. The title of the paper lays out the basic idea: Bouncing on Titan: Motion of the Huygens Probe in the Seconds After Landing. Using a bunch of instruments on Huygens  —   like the ”accelerometer” to tell how the probe’s motion was changing, and its descent   radiometer (DISR) to tell its orientation  —   the researchers mapped out exactly what happened as the parachuting probe hit the ground. Here’s the scientists’ story: ”The most likely scenario is the following. Upon impact, Huygens created a 12 cm deep hole in the surface of Titan. It bounced back, out of the hole onto the flat surface, after which it commenced a   cm long slide in the southward direction. The slide ended with the probe out of balance, tilted in the direction of DISR by around 10 degrees. The probe then wobbled back and forth five times in the   direction, during which it probably encountered a   cm sized pebble.” So that’s it. Using data that had never been analyzed in this way before, the team could ”see” the descending Huygens drive a fist’s distance into the ground, bounce back up and slide almost half a yard before coming to a tilted, wobbling stop. Now I know what you may be thinking: ”OK. Fine. That is quite an amazing little piece of scientific detective work Schroder and his collaborators pulled off. But really, so what? Why spend all that time working out the explicit,   story of a space probe hitting the ground and coming to rest?” Well, the answer to that question comes when you ask yourself this seemly simple and innocuous question: What do we mean by ground? See, Titan is an amazing place. It’s the only other world besides ours in the solar system with liquid sloshing around on its surface. There are lakes on Titan and we’ve even seen it rain there. That’s cool enough on its own  —   but here’s the real kicker: Given the cold on Titan, the lakes and the rain aren’t made of water but of liquid methane (  ethane!) So in a world of   hydrocarbon lakes and rain, what exactly is ”the ground” like? It’s not going to be like we have on Earth. Titan itself is a kind of    with ice volcanoes and who knows what else. So answering the question ”What is the ground like?” was the point of the Schroder study. They weren’t unpacking all those details of the Huygens landing just for fun, but to use those details to extract the properties of the surface Huygens landed in and skidded across. Telling that bounce plus skid story was just the appetizer. Using the story to learn something new about Titan’s ”dirt” was the main course. So what did they find? Here is the   summary: ”. .. the dynamics appear to be consistent with a surface consistency of damp sand.” So there you have it. Take a minute to let it sink in and give your imagination a moment to work its own path on this. See, we do live in a universe of wonders. And science is the window that lets us thrill before the view. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"When some members of Congress look at the practices of U. S. airlines, they aren’t just lawmakers eyeing an industry. They’re customers. And they aren’t happy. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing on Tuesday to address concerns over airline customer service. It was prompted by several   incidents, including the violent removal of a passenger from a United Express flight. But the hearing with executives from four major carriers was  . And it was quickly apparent that members of Congress  —   traveling back and forth between Washington, D. C. and their home districts  —   are frequent flyers, with very personal feelings on the subject. Rep. Duncan Hunter,  . whose home district is in San Diego, said he had considered, and rejected, two opening questions: ”Why do you hate the American people?” and ”How much do you hate the American people?” Committee members complained about seat sizes, about   fees, about   websites, about overbooking and bumping, and rude gate attendants. ”Every time you want to do something, you gotta pay extra,” said Rep. Albio Sires,  . J. ”If you want a window, an aisle, you’re going to pay extra. If you want a little extra seat in the front, you pay extra. Pretty soon you’re going to charge to use the restrooms.” ”Sir, we’re never going to do that,” United Airlines President Scott Kirby said. Rep. Jason Lewis,  . said he didn’t want to tell the executives how to run their businesses. ”I do want to come to you, though, as a consumer,” he said  —   ”a consumer who just spent, two weekends ago, 30 hours getting from Washington, D. C. to Minneapolis, Minn.” He said he was stranded at Reagan National Airport for a day and a half. Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen spoke directly to Kerry Philipovitch, a senior vice president from American Airlines, about a recent flight he took on the airline’s partner Air Wisconsin. He called the airline’s planes ”buses with propellers” with ”teeny, tiny awful seats.” ”I apologize that you had an uncomfortable flight,” Philipovitch said. And Michael Capuano,  . delivered what can only be described as a rant: ”We all know it’s a terrible experience, starting from the minute I go on the computer to try to figure out which flight I want to take. ”I have to go to several different websites, and even when I do that I have to go into the depths of the websites to get truly comparable prices, because some do charge fees, some don’t charge fees, some charge fees for baggage, some charge fees for oxygen, who knows. I can’t get comparable prices. So before I buy a ticket I’m frustrated. I personally have shut that computer down repeatedly. . .. You gotta go back and you gotta dig your way through it, from the very start. But we all expect it to be a miserable experience. ”And then when I get to the airport I have to go through the TSA lines. Being a regular flier I go through the express lines. . .. Now the express lines are full of people who don’t know to take their keys out of their pocket. Frustrating. ”Then I get to the gate, plane’s late, plane’s not late, never explain why. . .. ”I get the airlines coming [to the committee] complaining about the facilities we have and yet I see that in 2015  —   the latest year we have  —   $3. 8 billion in fees, which don’t pay the ticket price. Which means almost $300 million that could have been put into improving those facilities didn’t, because you don’t want to tell us what your tickets cost. . .. ”We’re kind of sick of it, as the consuming Americans. We gotta fly. You’ve got us. You’ve got us. And if you want to keep treating us this way, fine. I guess we can only do so much. But there will come a day when Congress won’t accept it anymore on behalf of the American people. ”I don’t really have any questions . .. but if you walk out of here thinking that the immediate situation is the only problem the American public has with the flying experience, you’ve missed the point. We have a problem. It shouldn’t be as bad and unpleasant as it is. ”Nobody is against you making money. I don’t want to yell at you. I just want to be able to go to the airport and get from Point A to Point B with a more pleasant experience.” ”I apologize for not having a question,” he told the committee chairman, Rep. Bill Shuster,  . ”My only response to that is ’Well said, thank you,’ ” Shuster said.  A few committee members piped up to defend the companies, but the vast majority were critical and clearly frustrated. At multiple points during the hearing, representatives pointed to Southwest  —   with its free checked bags, no change fees and recently announced decision not to intentionally overbook flights  —   and asked why the other airlines couldn’t be more like them. ”Southwest, are you going to go broke or something?” asked ranking member Peter DeFazio,  . Blake Farenthold,   turned to the president of United. ”Mr. Kirby, you said you overbooked to keep fares low,” he said. ”I can’t remember the last time the United fare was lower than the Southwest fare. Southwest, how do you do it?” Several of the members of Congress  —   including Republicans  —   raised the specter of at least partial   of the airlines, which have not had federal oversight of fares or routes in decades. ”I’m a conservative Republican,” Texas Rep. Brian Babin said in remarks echoed by multiple colleagues. ”I don’t like regulation if we can get away with it. ”But something has got to be done in terms of customer service with some of your airlines,” he said."
"Updated at 11:20 a. m. ET, The CEO of United Airlines is in the hot seat on Capitol Hill this morning, answering pointed questions from members of Congress about last month’s incident in which a United passenger was dragged off a plane. ”It was a mistake of epic proportions,” United CEO Oscar Munoz told representatives, as he explained how United has changed its rules moving forward. ”In hindsight, clearly our policies broke down.” Executives from other airlines are there, too, as Congress examines customer service problems across the commercial aviation industry and considers legislation to better protect airline passengers. ”It’s shameful that an event like the one that we had at United needs to drive this conversation,” Munoz said. Munoz is appearing before the House Transportation Committee, along with the airline’s president, Scott Kirby, to try to explain why the airline needed to bump passengers from a flight heading to Louisville, Ky. from Chicago after they’d already been seated, and why United called on O’Hare airport security officers to remove the passenger who refused to give up his seat. Cellphone video shows the officers violently pulling    Dr. David Dao of Kentucky out of his seat and then dragging him up the aisle and off the plane. Dao suffered a concussion and a broken nose and lost two teeth. His attorney says he may need surgery because of his injuries. Dao reached a settlement with United last week for an undisclosed amount. Munoz has apologized repeatedly for the incident and for his own initial response, which was criticized as tone deaf when he apologized for having to ” ” the passenger. Last week, the airline announced several policy changes to prevent such incidents from happening again. One change is that United will reduce   of flights in order to limit the need to ”bump” passengers to a later flight. When it does overbook, United will now offer up to $10, 000 to passengers who volunteer to be bumped. The intention is to limit the need to involuntarily bump passengers, as happened in the April 9 dragging incident. United also says that the airline will no longer call on airport police or other law enforcement personnel to handle these kinds of matters, unless safety and security are at risk. Others scheduled to testify at the hearing, which began at 9:30 a. m. ET, include Joseph Sprague, senior vice president of external relations for Alaska Airlines Bob Jordan, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Southwest Airlines Kerry Philipovitch, senior vice president of customer experience at American Airlines and William McGee, an aviation consultant with Consumers Union, Philipovitch apologized for a recent incident on American Airlines on April 21 in which a flight attendant and a passenger clashed over a stroller. ”It’s important for American to take responsibility when we don’t handle things well,” she said. ”There’s no question that we can do better.” Congress is considering legislation to better protect airline passengers. Among the bills recently introduced in the wake of the United Airlines incident: Senators will have a chance to grill the airline executives in another hearing scheduled for Thursday. In addition to United executives, Chicago Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans, who oversees O’Hare and Midway airports, will appear to testify to explain the actions of her department’s security officers, who dragged Dao off the plane."
"When Matthew Bryce paddled out into the cold surf off the west coast of Scotland, he was clad in a thick, neoprene wetsuit  —   gear that would stand him in good stead for a solid surf session Sunday. But at less than an inch thick, that material may not have seemed the most important bit of equipment the    surfer brought with him. As it turns out, that wetsuit helped save his life. Bryce’s   surf spiraled into a   ordeal that lasted a day and a half in cold, choppy surf. By midday Monday, local coast guard teams had learned of his disappearance, and it was only after an   search  —   involving a helicopter and roughly a   local coast guard teams  —   that Bryce was finally spotted and plucked from the sea. ”Hope was fading of finding the surfer safe and well after such a long period in the water and with nightfall approaching we were gravely concerned,” Dawn Petrie of the Belfast Coastguard Operations Centre said in a statement, ”but at 7. 30pm [Monday] the crew on the Coastguard rescue helicopter were delighted when they located the man still with his surf board and 13 miles off the coast.” Rescue workers say they found Bryce when the surfer, who had miraculously remained conscious, slipped into the water and began waving the tip of his white board in the air. It was that movement and contrast of colors that caught the helicopter crew’s eyes  —   but at first they feared it was simply debris. ”We went around, dropped down the height a bit, came in and then that moment, when you go, ’Oh! it is actually a surfboard and there is actually someone on it waving,’ ” Capt. Andy Pilliner, who had been piloting the helicopter, told NBC News. ”It’s just a great feeling, it’s just what you’re hoping for, but daren’t.” The team recorded the moment of the rescue as it happened. You can watch that footage from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at the top of this page. Even better news awaited when they found that after about 32 hours alone in the Irish Sea, Bryce was suffering from hypothermia but appeared no worse. Now hospitalized in stable condition, he celebrated his rescuers in a brief statement. ”I am so grateful that I am now receiving treatment in hospital. I can’t thank those enough who rescued and cared for me  —   they are all heroes,” Bryce said. ”For now, I am not facilitating any interviews as I am exhausted. Please respect the privacy of myself and my family at this time as I recover.” ”The past 48 hours have been an absolute rollercoaster of emotions for our family and we are so grateful that Matthew has been found safe and well,” his father, John, told The Guardian. Bryce’s family had been the first to report him missing. John Bryce added: ”To get that call from the police last night to say that he was alive was unbelievable. It was better than a lottery win  —   you just can’t describe it. Matthew means the world to us he is such a strong character both mentally and physically, and we are looking forward to being reunited with him.” What’s one other thing Bryce owes a debt of thanks? Why, that wetsuit, Petrie says. ”He was kitted out with all the right clothing including a thick neoprene suit and this must have helped him to survive for so long at sea.”"
"With unemployment low and economic growth expected to bounce back from a slow first quarter, consumers are not in bad shape. But it has been an especially terrible year so far for retailers. Nine U. S. chains have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Store closures are accelerating, and almost 90, 000 retail workers have lost their jobs since October. Experts say the industry’s troubles are just beginning. ”The disruption is just unfolding,” says Mark Cohen, a former CEO of Sears Canada who now directs retail studies at Columbia Business School. ”I think the number of store closings will continue at an accelerated pace right through this year into next year.” It’s not that consumers are being more cautious. Spending is up, but most of that growth is online. Traditional    stores are grappling with intense transformation of their business to be more   and trying to reconcile their old business model with one in which profit margins are thinner. Cohen says retailers typically reassess their businesses after the holiday shopping numbers come in and adjust by closing or reallocating resources. For some big national chains this year, that process is resulting in a bloodbath. The Limited, BCBG Max Azria and Radio Shack filed for bankruptcy. Retailers have announced plans to close 3, 100 stores so far in 2017  —   more than all of last year combined. J. C. Penney said it would close an additional 138 stores this year, Sears and its Kmart brand intend to close 150 stores, and Macy’s will shut down 100 stores. There are 1, 200 malls in the U. S.  —   the most ever, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Experts agree there is simply too much real estate devoted to retail. Cohen says all but the   malls  —   which make up roughly a third of those enclosed malls  —   will have to close or find a new identity. In fact, many are being redeveloped to include office space, apartments, gyms or smaller retail space. ”It’s not clear what we’re going to look like on the other side when this is all over, if it in fact is ever all over,” Cohen says. Matthew Shay, CEO of the National Retail Federation, says historically, changes in retail have happened slowly. Not so today. ”The velocity of change is unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” he says. ”Before, things happened over a generation now they’re happening overnight.” Shay says retail’s workforce needs are shifting, which is why the trade group launched a program offering certification to   workers in January, hoping to retrain them with   skills that are in demand. ”They’ll be in operations they’ll be in warehousing they’ll be in store management they’ll be in digital,” he says. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 89, 000 general merchandising workers have been laid off since October, a number that excludes gas, grocery and online sales.) Marshal Cohen (no relation to Mark Cohen) chief retail analyst for The NPD Group, says    stores aren’t just competing with rivals their sales are being cannibalized by their own online operations, where profit margins are thinner. Some retailers, like Bonobos and Warby Parker, that started online are opening stores as showrooms, places where consumers can test their products and then order online. Marshal Cohen says those types of showrooms require a lot less space than a conventional store. Another big change, he says, is that social media have usurped the mall as the gathering place of choice. Malls are trying to counteract that by building more restaurants and movie theaters, to create places where people want to come to interact. ”We are entering an interesting phase of consumption,” Marshal Cohen says. ”We’re not interested in buying products. What we are doing is building memories.” Some analysts believe some of those who lose their jobs at retail will be absorbed by a growing service sector, like restaurants. But one of the unions that represent some workers says that is not happening. ”That has not been our experience. That’s not what we’ve seen,” says Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The retail jobs of the future might be in a distribution center, but he says those jobs are typically far away from metropolitan areas where more stores are located and require different types of skills than those of, say, a cashier. ”There is a lot of stress in being a retail worker today,” Appelbaum says. ”You worry about   you worry about automation, you worry about what’s happening with all the retail jobs that are being lost as stores close.” Politicians speak about how to manage job dislocation in coal mining and manufacturing. Now, Appelbaum says, it’s time to do the same for retail."
"For decades, black Americans have been dying at a higher rate than white Americans. That’s still true overall. But now there’s some good news about this long, disturbing trend: The overall death rate for black Americans fell 25 percent between 1999 and 2015, according to a report released Tuesday by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The overall death rate dropped for white people as well, but the decrease among black Americans was far greater, narrowing the gap in the death rate between white and black Americans from 33 percent in 1999 to 16 percent in 2015, the report shows. ”This report is definitely good news,” says Joseph Betancourt, who runs the Disparities Solutions Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Ma. ”Efforts over the last 15 to 17 years that have focused on addressing and eliminating disparities have definitely provided some significant results.” Between 1999 and 2015, the death rate among black Americans fell from 1, 135. 7 to 851. 9 per 100, 000. For white Americans, the rate fell from 854. 6 to 735 per 100, 000 in the same time period. ”Prior to this, there was very little progress in the decline in the gap between   and whites in United States,” says Timothy Cunningham, a CDC epidemiologist who led the report. It was published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The report did not examine the reason the gap narrowed, but Cunningham says it’s probably due to black people benefiting more from decreases in the number of deaths from a variety of diseases, including AIDS and   illnesses. ”The major drivers of this are decreases in many of the leading causes of death, such as heart disease, cancer and stroke,” Cunningham says. The drop in the death rate was most striking among those 65 and older. In that group, the death rate for black people fell 27 percent, compared to 17 percent for white people. As a result, by 2010 the death rate for black Americans in this age group fell slightly below the rate for white Americans, according to the report. ”We’re talking about   who were pretty young during in the 1960s and 1970s,” Cunningham says. ”And one thing we have to consider is that there have been significant improvements in socioeconomic status that are associated with civil rights policies.” Cunningham stresses that the overall death rate among black people remains higher than for white people. As a group, black Americans have an overall life expectancy that’s still four years less than white Americans. And the picture is especially troubling for younger black people, who are still developing, and dying from, major health problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and stroke at younger ages than their white counterparts. ”Many younger   in their 20s, 30s and 40s are living and dying with chronic conditions that we more typically see in the older population,” Cunningham says. ”There’s still work to do.” That finding is consistent with previous reports that indicate some black Americans experience a phenomenon known as ”weathering.” That’s when a person develops signs of premature aging and an earlier deterioration in health, the report notes. Weathering can be caused by a variety of factors, including living in poverty, living in violent neighborhoods and encountering racism on a regular basis, Betancourt says. ”Racism and experiencing racism  —   thinking about your race every day  —   contributes to this weathering effect,” he says. ”You’re in    mode. That has a real significant biological effect that contributes to premature aging.”"
"While this year’s annual State of Black America report from the National Urban League focuses as usual on areas of progress (education, healthcare and economic  ) and regress (criminal justice) over the past year, the report took the unusual step of warning that the organization now has a new priority: protecting areas of progress from retrenchment during the Trump years. ”During the Obama era, the economy added 15 million new jobs, the black unemployment rate dropped and the high school graduation rate for African Americans soared,” Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, said in the report. ”Now that progress, and much more, is threatened. ..The National Urban League is resolute we will protect our progress.” In the report, called ”Protect Our Progress,” the Urban League suggested that the nation should invest in a ”Main Street Marshall Plan” that would ensure that the gains made by black Americans during the Obama administration aren’t lost. The plan includes expanding   increasing the number of college students receiving Pell grants, increasing the minimum wage and summer youth employment programs, and incentivizing more doctors to accept Medicaid. But amidst a climate where the current administration is looking to make cuts in many of these areas  —   as the Urban League acknowledges in the report  —   it would be daunting to initiate a national movement to mobilize the Urban League’s Main Street Marshall Plan. As it has for more than a decade, the Urban League used its Equality Index to track how close black America has gotten to white America in five major areas: education, health, social justice, economics and civic engagement. For the 8th year, the report also tracks the progress of Hispanic Americans compared to whites. In addition, the report ranks the nation’s 70 largest metropolitan areas on the measures of   and   unemployment and income equality. There wasn’t much change between 2015 and 2016 in the five areas the Urban League measures. For this reason, the overall 2017 Equality Index of Black America was 72. 3 percent, compared to 72. 2 percent the year before. An index of 100 percent would mean full equality in the particular measure between blacks and whites. The biggest increase came in the area of education, which rose from 77. 4 percent in 2015 to 78. 2 percent in 2016. The report attributed the rise to three areas of progress: a large decline in the share of   students who have teachers with less than three years of experience a higher percentage of African Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 earning associate’s degrees and increased home literacy activities for  . ”The education index also received a positive boost from a notable decline in high school dropout rates among all students, including African Americans,” the report noted. In economics, black Americans went from an equality index rate of 56. 2 percent in 2015 to 56. 5 percent in 2016  —   largely due to an improvement in the black unemployment rate, an increase in black women’s wages, an increase in   businesses and a decline in   loans for black consumers. In healthcare, the equality index between black and white Americans went from 79. 4 to 80 percent between 2015 and 2016, partly due to greater access to healthcare because of the Affordable Care Act and a decrease in the number of overweight children. The only decrease came in social justice, from 60. 9 to 57. 4 percent. While part of the drop was due to a change in how the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports data on traffic stops, the report said there was also an increase in the incarceration of African Americans following an arrest. In the category of civic engagement, African Americans actually surpass whites, according to the Urban League, with the number between 2015 and 2016 remaining at 100. 6 percent. As for Hispanics, there was a bigger increase in the overall Equality Index, from 77. 9 percent in 2015 to 78. 4 percent in 2016. According to the Urban League, this was largely due to a major improvement in the health index (from 105. 5 percent to 108. 8 percent, meaning Hispanics are healthier than whites) and smaller gains in the education (from 74. 2 percent to 75. 3 percent) and economics indexes (from 61. 9 percent to 62. 1 percent). Those improvements helped offset regressions in social justice (from 75. 9 percent to 69. 7 percent) and civic engagement (from 67. 6 percent to 67. 3 percent). Location Matters, For the report, the Urban League also ranked the 70 metropolitan areas from the smallest gap in unemployment between blacks and whites (and Hispanics and whites) to the largest gap. For blacks, the area with the smallest   unemployment gap was San   Braunfels, TX, where the black unemployment rate was 6. 4 percent (down 1. 9 percentage points from the previous year) and the white rate was 4. 5 percent (down 0. 4 percentage points). The area with the largest gap was    Allis, WI, where the unemployment rate for blacks was 13. 8 percent, while just 2. 7 percent for whites. This area also ranked last in last year’s report. In income inequality,     CA for the third consecutive year had the smallest difference between black median household income and white median household income  —   even though the median black household income in Riverside fell from 76 cents for every dollar of median white household income in 2015 to 72 cents in 2016. The city with the biggest income gap was  .     where the chasm was 41 cents for blacks for every dollar earned by a white person. In Minneapolis, the median household income for blacks was $31, 672 (up 12. 4 percent from last year’s Index) compared to $76, 581 for whites. For Hispanics, there were four areas where Hispanics actually had a higher employment rate than whites, with North    FL, as the most advantageous for Hispanics with a percentage of 114. 5. The metro area with the largest disparity between the Hispanic and white unemployment rate was Rochester, NY, at 35. 7 percent. As for income inequality, the area with the least inequality was Modesto, CA, where the median Hispanic household had 88 cents for every dollar of median white household income. Springfield, MA, had the biggest gap between Hispanic and white incomes at 40 cents on the dollar. For both blacks and Hispanics, the area with the highest median household income was        at $68, 054 for blacks and $69, 481 for Hispanics. It also had the highest white household income at $112, 177. As the Urban League focuses on protecting advancements, Valerie Rawlston Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, said the 2017 Equality Index provides a ”line in the sand” to measure what happens from now on. Nick Chiles is a Pulitzer   journalist and   New York Times bestselling author. Follow him @nickwrite."
"When teaching hospitals put pharmaceutical sales representatives on a shorter leash, their doctors tended to order fewer promoted   drugs and used more generic versions instead, a study published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, shows. The results were significant compared to doctors who worked at hospitals that did not limit sales reps from freely walking their halls or providing meals or gifts, according to research by Ian Larkin, an assistant professor of strategy at the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management, and colleagues. This issue of JAMA is devoted to conflicts of interest in medicine and includes a viewpoint on what ProPublica has learned by publishing Dollars for Docs, a tool that lets users look up their physicians’ payments from drug and medical device companies. Conflicts of interest in medicine have been ubiquitous for years, but a string of lawsuits, coupled with a crackdown by academic medical centers and public disclosure of industry payments, have brought renewed focus on how these relationships affect prescribing. For the past 6   years, ProPublica has tracked payments to doctors. We’ve found that some practitioners earn hundreds of thousands of dollars or more each year working with drug and device companies. We’ve reported how the drugs most aggressively promoted to doctors typically aren’t cures or even big medical breakthroughs. And last year we found an association between payments and higher rates of   prescribing, on average. The teaching hospital study focused on 19 centers in five states that restricted visits by drug reps in one or more ways: limiting access, limiting gifts or punishing those who broke the rules. Larkin’s team compared prescriptions by 2, 126 doctors at those hospitals with 24, 593 peers with similar characteristics who were not subject to the marketing limits. It examined more than 16 million prescriptions in total, using data from CVS Caremark, a large pharmacy benefit manager. The researchers found significant changes in six of the eight drug classes studied and at nine of the 19 hospitals reviewed. The policies were put in place at different times from 2006 to 2011, but changes in prescribing started immediately and lasted for 12 to 36 months afterward. Having a policy governing pharmaceutical marketing, known as ”detailing,” was associated with a 1. 67 percentage point decrease in market share for the average promoted drug. Before the policies, the average promoted drug had a market share of 19. 3 percent. Those with tougher policies, including an enforcement component, appeared to have more significant results. ”These weren’t terribly onerous restrictions, yet at the same time, they changed prescribing in a way that has really significant cost implications,” Larkin said. Among the centers that did not have statistically significant changes was Stanford University, one of the earliest adopters of restrictive policies. In 2010, ProPublica reported how Stanford was not enforcing its rules limiting the relationships between doctors and drug companies. It has tightened its oversight since. Stanford doctors prescribed fewer promoted drugs but not enough for the result to be significant. Larkin says he was surprised that the policies at some teaching hospitals didn’t have as much impact as the researchers expected. ”You can’t just put in a policy,” he says. ”You have to think about it carefully, think about the efforts that really matter and involve the [medical] community.” The study has several limitations. First, it did not find that the policies caused the change in prescribing, only that there was an association between the two. Also, the study was observational, meaning that doctors were not randomly assigned to hospitals with and without policies. And the study took policies at their word, not looking at their implementation or follow through. Dr. Howard Bauchner, JAMA’s editor in chief, said the study helps to crystalize the need to limit pharmaceutical company marketing in teaching hospitals ”as a way of ensuring that there’s no influence, no inappropriate influence over prescribing.” Bauchner says he isn’t bothered that the researchers found significant results in fewer than half of the teaching hospitals studied. ”Nothing is ever 100 percent effective,” he says. ”To me that’s no different than a clinical trial. Not everyone benefits.” An editorial that accompanies the research suggests that alternative approaches to educating doctors about drugs besides relying on drug company promotion need to be tested. ”It has never been more important for physicians to come together to consider these alternatives, generate evidence about their effectiveness, and move the health care system toward solutions that lower costs for patients and minimize” conflicts of interest, write Colette DeJong and Dr. R. Adams Dudley of the University of California, San Francisco."
"The Trump administration has said it wants to remove burdensome regulation, and on Monday it served up a taste of what that looks like when it comes to two aspects of food policy: school lunch and calorie labels on menus. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced a plan to delay a mandate that would require schools to further reduce sodium levels in the meals they serve. In addition, Perdue wants to give the green light to schools that want to serve some grains that aren’t   rich. ”We all know that kids are pretty outspoken about what they want to eat and what they don’t,” Perdue said, adding, ”We’ve got to balance the nutritional aspect with the palatability.” He told a crowd gathered at a school cafeteria in Leesburg, Va. that he’s listened to kids, parents and school administrators, many of whom have been pushing for more flexibility in implementing nutrition standards that were enacted during the Obama administration. The news brought the ire of many nutrition and   advocates who view these changes as a   of the reforms championed by former first lady Michelle Obama. ”Just because children would rather eat heavily salted, processed foods at school doesn’t mean they should,” Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement. ”The president’s fondness for Big Macs and KFC is well known, but we shouldn’t let Colonel Sanders and McDonald’s run the school cafeteria.” Howell Wechsler, CEO of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which has worked with more than 35, 000 schools to implement healthier meal standards, said in a statement, ”We would not lower standards for reading, writing and arithmetic just because students found them challenging subjects, and we should not do it for school nutrition either.” But Perdue’s decision was cheered by the School Nutrition Association  —   which represents school cafeteria administrators (or meal program operators). The group had lobbied Congress for more flexibility in applying federal nutrition standards. In a statement, SNA CEO Patricia Montague said the group was ”appreciative of Secretary Perdue’s support of school meal programs in providing flexibility to prepare and serve healthy meals that are appealing to students. ” Meanwhile, the Trump administration put a halt to another   regulation. A federal rule that would have required chain restaurants and other food retailers to post calorie information was supposed to take effect May 5. But late Monday afternoon, the Food and Drug Administration announced it will delay implementing the rule until May of next year. The mandate to post calorie counts was written into the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Several years ago, some chains  —   including McDonald’s and Panera Bread  —   began to display calories on their menus. Calories are often posted on pastry shelves at coffee shops as well. Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest is an advocate of calorie labeling because she says it makes people more aware of what’s in their food. ”[There are] 740 calories in this pecan roll,” she says, pointing to a pastry at a local café. ”It’s more than the calories in a Big Mac!” Wootan says studies show that labeling calories can affect people’s choices  —   and the food industry has taken notice. ”A lot of time, even the restaurants didn’t realize how many calories were in many of their items,” she says. And some chains have added more   options. For example, ”looking at    menu labeling, we’ve seen a significant decrease in the pastries at Starbucks,” Wootan says. Cosi and Maggiano’s are also chains that have   menu items  —   from salads to entrees  —   to lighten them up, but not all food retailers have come on board. Attorney Douglas Kantor last month petitioned the FDA on behalf of the National Association of Convenience Stores and the National grocers Association to ask the agency to reconsider the   rule. He says the ”regulations have been overly prescriptive and very hard to comply with.” Convenience and grocery store chains sell a lot of prepared foods  —   from deli sandwiches and pizza to prepared entrees and a la carte food bars. Unlike restaurants that serve a set menu, Kantor says, it’s a big challenge to nail down calorie counts in in these   venues, where portions and offerings vary. He says the regulations don’t give these chains a way to comply: ”They can’t tell us how to deal with normal variation in food sizes and calorie amounts.” In a statement, Tom Price, Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said the FDA will also ask for feedback about how to make the   rule more flexible and less burdensome, while still providing useful information to consumers. ”Under President Trump, our department will focus on promoting public health in ways that work for American consumers,” Price said."
"”I have a story to tell about something that happened to our family last week.” That’s how Jimmy Kimmel began an unusually heartfelt monologue on his   show Monday. ”You know I try not to get emotional, but it was a scary story,” he said, already tearing up. ”And before I go into it, I want you to know it has a happy ending. OK? So when I’m telling this, don’t get too upset. Leave that to me.” In an emotional,   recounting of events on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kimmel said that last week, his wife gave birth to a son, William ”Billy” Kimmel, the couple’s second child. It was an easy delivery, but a few hours after the birth, a nurse noticed a murmur in the baby’s heart. Kimmel describes how they started doing some tests to see whether it might just be fluid in the lungs, ”potentially a minor thing.” But the baby’s lungs were fine, Kimmel said, which meant his heart wasn’t. ”So now more doctors and nurses and equipment come in. It’s  —   it’s a terrifying thing. You know, my wife is back in the recovery room, she has no idea what’s going on. And I’m standing in the middle of a lot of very   people  —   kind of like right now  —   who are trying to figure out what the problem is.” Doctors did an echocardiogram and found that Billy was born with a heart defect called tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia. ”It’s hard to explain,” said Kimmel, ”but basically the pulmonary valve was completely blocked, and he has a hole in the wall between the left and right sides of his heart.” Last Monday, Kimmel said, a surgeon ”opened [Billy’s] chest and fixed one of the two defects in his heart. He went in there with a scalpel and did some kind of magic that I couldn’t even begin to explain. He opened the valve, and the operation was a success. It was the longest three hours of my life.” The baby will need to have another heart surgery in three to six months, and another procedure when he’s a teenager to replace the valve he has now. He thanked a long list of people, including Sylvia, the mother of his bandleader and childhood friend Cleto Escobedo III, who he said was like a second mother to him. ”Never has any human being ever texted more praying hands emojis to another human being than Cleto’s mom did to me. I had to upgrade my phone just to handle them all,” he joked. But in late night, as elsewhere, the personal is political. Kimmel continued the story of his son’s health crisis by discussing the broader context of health care in America. ”President Trump last month proposed a $6 billion cut in funding to the National Institute[s] of Health,” he said. ”And thank God our congressmen made a deal last night not to go along with that. They actually increased funding by $2 billion, and I applaud them for doing that.” He went on to praise the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, for bringing access to health care to people who couldn’t afford it. ”We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, but until a few years ago millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all,” he said. ”You know, before 2014 if you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was, there was a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance because you had a   condition. You were born with a   condition and if your parents didn’t have medical insurance you might not live long enough to even get denied because of a   condition. If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make.” He finished with a plea for Americans to get past party lines and think of the greater good. ”Whatever your party, whatever you believe, whoever you support, we need to make sure that the people who are supposed to represent us, people who are meeting about this right now in Washington, understand that very clearly,” Kimmel said. ”Let’s stop with the nonsense. This isn’t football. There are no teams. We are the team. It’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants. We need to take care of each other.”"
"Your child is diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disease and conventional treatments aren’t proving to be effective. Doctors prescribe powerful medications that don’t seem to work. Not only is your child not responding as hoped, he’s withering from the side effects. What do you do? Journalist Susannah Meadows found herself having to answer this question when her son, Shepherd, was diagnosed at age 3 with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, joint inflammation that can last a lifetime. When the drugs didn’t work, Meadows was persuaded to look at his condition through a different prism and to consider the possibility that medications might not be the only answer. Meadows began speaking to parents who had sleuthed out alternative theories and tried things like radically changing their kids’ diets and giving them Chinese herbal medicines. Like many parents of sick children, Meadows grew increasingly willing to venture outside of the standard treatments. Her experiences spurred her to seek other stories of people with illnesses ranging from multiple sclerosis to epilepsy to ADHD who pursued unproven methods of treating their diseases. Their stories, as well as an account of her son’s case, are compiled in The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up, published Tuesday by Random House. Shots sat down with Meadows to discuss her book. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. When Shepherd was diagnosed with a case of juvenile idiopathic arthritis, were you initially uncomfortable with him taking the standard drugs for the disease? I was very comfortable when the first thing he was prescribed was naproxen, because that was familiar as a relative of ibuprofen. But when that didn’t work and he was prescribed an immunosuppressant [methotrexate] I was troubled by the risks. It’s a serious drug and it comes with an increased risk of lymphoma and liver disease and for sure, I was very uncomfortable with that. And then in the immediate sense, taking the drug made him sick and he spent days on the couch, nauseous every week, and to me, that was an unacceptable life. I could not accept that that was going to be his life. I think the thing that really pushed me to explore other options was desperation. In addition to keeping him on the methotrexate, we took gluten, dairy and sugar out of his diet. We gave him high doses of   in fish oil and a probiotic. His arthritis started to get better six weeks to the day after we started the new diet, and we weaned him off the methotrexate. He’s now totally healthy, completely without pain, and has been off all arthritis medications for four years. It’s impossible to know what made him better, but there’s some science that suggests it could have been the diet. Your book is a call to arms to think about diet and what we put in our bodies, whether you have serious illness or not. How did food play in the recovery of the people you wrote about? Terry Wahls [had] multiple sclerosis and went from using a wheelchair to riding a bike again after she radically changed her diet to eat only nutritionally dense food. You can’t come away without thinking, if that can do that for her, what could it do for me? The pioneers in your book weren’t the trained scientists or the doctors. They were the patients. What can you say about that? Certainly doctors know more about disease than I ever will, but that doesn’t mean that their expertise is universal. Our own doctor was a good partner in our weighing things to try. We were able to have good conversations about risk, and what I liked about him was his openness  —   he made it clear to us that he didn’t have to understand it if it worked, which to me is a great quality in a doctor. The best doctors recognize that they don’t know everything. Some key themes emerge in the book about the personality traits of those who seek different avenues of treatment. What are they? One of the things that struck me about everybody in the book was extraordinary   almost a stubbornness that they would find an answer. These people exhausted medicine’s answers and kept looking. Another thing was hope. I used to think of hope as being about the known possibility. You could have hope if even 1 out of 100 people got better. But what was amazing about these people was that they had hope even without an example of one. There was nothing to point to. A woman with multiple sclerosis who’s using a wheelchair, it’s unheard of to come back from that. And yet she believed she could find a solution for herself. And to me that’s extraordinary. It seemed like many of the subjects of your book were financially comfortable, which gave them advantages such as moving across the country to be near a practitioner. How can people access experimental diets, supplements or interventions not covered by insurance? To be sure, having resources helps, but one of the things that’s so exciting about food being a potential solution for some diseases is that it’s a lot cheaper than medication. Some medications for multiple sclerosis, for example, can be $80, 000 a year. We have strong anecdotal evidence and in some cases, clinical evidence that food can improve symptoms for some chronic disease. The other virtue of food is that it’s open to all of us to experiment with. Until we have the data to say this diet will benefit this disease, we are free to see as individuals what might help us. Finally, how has the experience of dealing with your son’s illness as well as meeting these other   people changed you as a parent and as a person? The biggest thing that I have learned is that when it seems as if there are no options, you can still look for them and maybe find them. That you have a choice to keep going when others say that you can’t. I don’t think I had that feeling when Shepherd was diagnosed, but I think his unlikely recovery taught me that. Heather Won Tesoriero is a writer living in New York City. She’s currently working on a narrative nonfiction book. The Class will be published in 2018 by Ballantine Books."
"My timing has always been a little off with Elizabeth Strout. I’ve read and pretty much admired everything she’s written, but, for whatever reason, the books of hers I’ve picked to review have been the good ones, like her debut Amy and Isabelle and The Burgess Boys, rather than the extraordinary ones, like Olive Kitteridge, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. At last, though, I think I’m in sync with Strout’s peak performance cycle. Anything Is Possible is Strout’s latest book and it’s gorgeous. Like Olive Kitteridge, Anything Is Possible reads like a novel constructed out of linked stories. In fact, it’s hard to know exactly what to call this  —   a novel or a short story collection. In any case, these stories are animated by Strout’s signature themes: class humiliation, loneliness, spiritual and sexual deprivation and, sometimes, reawakening. When Strout is really on her game, as she is here, you feel like you’ve been carefully lowered into the unquiet depths of quiet lives. Strout began working on Anything Is Possible at the same time she was writing her novel My Name Is Lucy Barton, which was published last year. Lucy, a   child who grows up to become a celebrated writer, floats in and out of these interlocking stories. Some characters catch a glimpse of her being interviewed on TV one travels to see her at a bookstore. An older Lucy even appears ”in the flesh” in one story when she returns home to the small town in rural Illinois where most of these tales are set to visit her troubled brother but Anything Is Possible also stands on its own. Indeed, a few of the so called ”hoity toity” characters here would be ticked off if they thought their stories depended in any way on that Barton girl, who was long ago mocked in school for having ”cooties.” Strout’s writerly eye works like a 360 degree camera, so that a character or place that’s on the margins of one tale takes center stage in a later one. This technique sounds contrived, but Strout carries it off lightly. One of the most powerful stories here is called ”Dottie’s Bed  Breakfast,” which is an establishment we readers glimpse earlier in the book. Dottie aspired to be   and she harbors a grudge against life because she’s had to rent out rooms to make a living. Dottie also possesses a sensitive nose for sniffing out the lingering   origins of some of her guests. Indeed almost all of Strout’s characters have sharp eyes and even sharper observations to make when it comes to that great American subject: class. ”Shoes always gave you away,” comments a woman in a story called ”Cracked” about a houseguest’s   cork wedges. And, in the final story here, called ”Gift,” a   man made good says, ”The sense of apology did not go away, it was a tiring thing to carry.” But, back to Dottie. When an elderly doctor and his wife come to stay at her guesthouse, Dottie bonds over tea with the wife, Shelley, who shares a story about a   social humiliation. At breakfast the next morning, however, Shelley obviously regrets that confidence and becomes the Doctor’s wife again. She freezes Dottie out and puts her back in her place as the  . There’s comic satisfaction in seeing prim Dottie retaliate by secretly lobbing spit into the breakfast jam, but the more profound rewards of this story have to do with its recognition of the many varieties of human insecurity  —   or, as Lucy Barton herself more bluntly puts it, the many ways ”people are always looking to feel superior to someone else.” Other stories have to do with sexual shame, or with the tragic ways close neighbors or family members misread each other but I’m making Anything Is Possible sound too grim when, in fact, so many of these stories end in a understated gesture of forgiveness. Strout is in that special company of writers like Richard Ford, Stewart O’Nan and Richard Russo, who write simply about ordinary lives and, in so doing, make us readers see the beauty of both their worn and rough surfaces and what lies beneath."
"In Japan, it costs nearly $3, 000 for one person to ride on a new luxury train that launched this week, and the highest price is nearly $10, 000, for what resembles a cruise ship experience traveling through Japan’s scenic eastern countryside. If you want to ride, plan ahead: the train is sold out through March of 2018. Officially launched Monday, the Train Suite   from the East Japan Railway Co. can carry a maximum of 34 passengers. There are 17 suites on the train some have lofts and a traditional wooden bath. Luxury touches range from a piano bar to specially designed staff uniforms. For paying a steep price, travelers will get premium services that include the offer of a limousine ride and complimentary luggage service between their homes and their room on the train. Before the trip, the train’s staff meets with passengers to ensure the trip is customized to their needs. The train departs from an exclusive Platform 13   in Tokyo’s at Ueno Station, which also includes a private lounge. ”We hope we can contribute to establishing a railway of a new era,” JR East sales director Atsushi Takahashi, tells The Japan Times. At either end of the   train, passengers can take in panoramic views of the countryside in   observation cars. The eight cars between include six private suite cars, a lounge car and a dining car. As the train moves around Japan, the menu in its dining car will shift to reflect the ingredients and cooking style of the regions it’s passing through. To accomplish that, noted chefs who work in towns and resorts along the train’s route will either serve their food aboard the train or host passengers for meals at their restaurants. On this train, passengers don’t book a ticket they fill out an application  —   and, because of intense interest, they’re also chosen by lottery, Japan East says. The company tells NHK News that ”only one out of 76 applicants was able to get tickets for the first trip” this week. Itineraries range from   to   trips most of them are timed to highlight seasonal shifts in the landscape, and many also coincide with traditional festivals or new year’s celebrations. Rather than the standard rectangular window frames, the  ’s windows evoke a ”quiet forest,” the train company says. The train also has its own theme song, ”Train Suite,” by composer Naoki Sato."
"Max, age 13, is agender  —   neither male nor female. When referring to Max, you don’t use ”he” or ”she” you use ”they.” Once strictly a pronoun of the plural variety, ”they” is now doing double duty as singular, too  —   referring to individuals, like Max, who do not see gender as an   option. (NPR agreed not to use Max’s last name, because the family feared the sort of online threats that have been made to other transgender families.) If the whole   pronoun thing feels awkward to you, Max is sympathetic  —   and patient. ”I can’t expect anyone to use the right pronouns for me because it’s not a thing that people know,” Max tells me. ”It’s been great being myself, but it’s also been really hard for people to get it, and for even family to get pronouns and stuff.” We’re talking in Max’s room at home, where posters on the wall showcase the teen’s love of theater: Peter Pan, Tarzan, The Pirates of Penzance. Max is old enough now to enjoy using    —   blush, foundation, lipstick  —   but still young enough to enjoy going with their mom to see ”Willy Wonka  The Chocolate Factory.” (The review from Max: Gene Wilder’s great!) From these surroundings, you wouldn’t think the room’s occupant is someone who has already poked and prodded at the most fundamental sense of who they are. Really, this is just a kid’s room. So, what does ”agender” mean to Max? ”What it means is I’m neither a guy or girl,” Max explains. ”And that’s how I feel, which is different than terms like ’gender fluid’  —   which means you feel like a guy or girl at different times  —   because I don’t feel like I’m both guy and girl. I’m neither.” Max sounds a bit didactic here, as if teaching Nonbinary Gender 101: a crash course for someone who never considered that gender didn’t simply mean male and female. But outside Max’s room, out in the world, being nonbinary has meant having to do a lot of explaining. When did you first feel different? I ask. ”I’ve been feeling different than just a boy for all my life, really.” Max frames the transition from who they (that is, Max) were to who they are now as a journey of  . In elementary school, there was hanging out with girls and dressing in pink boas. That, Max says, was ”awesome.” But two years ago, someone at school called Max a ” .” Later, Max walked upstairs to the third floor of the house and stepped out onto the balcony, weighing whether or not to jump. More than 40 percent of transgender or ”gender  ” people have attempted suicide, according to national surveys, with school bullying playing a significant role. Why, I ask, did that particular insult hit so deeply that you would think about ending your life? Max answers in spare,   summation. ”I felt like no one loved me.”  Transcending the gender boundary, That day on the balcony, Max found the strength to call a transgender hotline for help. A counselor there talked Max back into the house. If   marriage was yesterday’s battle to redefine gender roles and privileges, and transgender rights is today’s fight, American society may now be on the cusp of the most transformational shift yet  —   the end of categorizing people as either male or female. Some people who are redefining gender identify as both male and female others as neither male nor female, or as sometimes male and sometimes female. ”They” is often the pronoun of choice. These individuals may use any number of terms to describe their gender identity: genderqueer,      . While definitions fluctuate, ”nonbinary gender” has emerged as an umbrella description. ”I think we’re seeing a new gender revolution,” says clinical psychologist Diane Ehrensaft. ”It’s erased boxes and created gender infinity instead.” Ehrensaft is a child psychologist and   of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, a community collaboration with the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. At 70, she has been talking with young people for decades. ”We are seeing more and more kids saying, ’You know what? What’s with this   business? What’s with this   and you have to fit in one box or the other?’ ” How widespread is the nonbinary phenomenon? The results of the most recent survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality attest to how many transgender people are opting to identify this way. Out of almost 28, 000 respondents, more than a third chose ” ” when given a choice of terms to best describe themselves. While the number of transgender clients seeking counseling and support has significantly climbed, Ehrensaft says, the number who want to transition from male to female or female to male has been steadily dropping. A much greater percentage, she says, tell Ehrensaft they are ” ’kind of the person that matches the sex on my birth certificate, but kind of not, as well. I’m going to use ”they” instead of ”he” or ”she,” because those are not choices that fit me at all.’ ” And there is growing evidence that even those outside the transgender community, especially young people, are accepting this new understanding of gender. A January 2015 general population survey of 1, 000 people age   conducted for Fusion media, found that just 46 percent agreed that ”there are only two genders, male and female.” Fifty percent, meanwhile, said ”gender is a spectrum, and some people fall outside conventional categories.” And another recent survey suggests the same trend. Hanging out in ’the  ’ At 13, Max has already shed not only a gender identity of origin  —   male  —   but also one that turned out to be temporary  —   transgender female. Max lives with their mother, father and brother in a roomy home across the bay from San Francisco. Two years ago, after first coming out as someone who identified as a girl, Max learned on Tumblr about terms like ”nonbinary,” ”gender neutral,” and ”agender.” ”I was like, you know what? This describes me a little better than ’girl,’ ” Max says. ”I’ve been rolling with that for over a year.” Max’s mother, Margaret, acknowledges she was clueless about gender issues when Max came out. ”Sexuality  —   no big deal,” she says, explaining the commitment she and Max’s father have always made to gay and lesbian rights. ”We’re superlefties.” But Max’s nonbinary identity took her ”very much by surprise,” she says. ”It came from left field, I knew nothing. I was scared.” Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region that rarely meets an iconoclastic idea it won’t embrace, Max has felt painfully isolated. ”I think it’s a lot harder as nonbinary than trans,” Max says. ”I’m not saying it’s not hard as trans, but you can’t really say ’Oh I’m not a boy, I’m a girl.’ If you say ’I’m not a boy, I’m not a girl’  —   so what’s left? It’s hard to define what that means.” It’s an existential quandary with   implications. ”I think we were at a mall somewhere,” Margaret says, ”and there was the men’s room to the right and the women’s room to the left, and Max walked right into the wall, in the middle, to make a point. Because where do you go to the bathroom? Where do you feel comfortable?” While the question of who can go to which bathroom may sound prosaic, about a third of transgender people have reported abstaining from eating or drinking in order to avoid using one, because of frequent harassment and confrontations. At school, Max would use the boy’s room only during class, when it was less crowded, and only when desperate. The girls’ room was not an option. ”It would just feel like ’I’m in the wrong place, I’m not supposed to be here,” Max says. ”Something in your stomach  —   this just doesn’t feel right.” The family lobbied Max’s school for a   bathroom. It took a while, but the school converted a faculty restroom, which can now be used by anyone. The other issue that comes up daily is being referred to in the wrong way  —   as he or she. Max says it hurts to be misgendered. ”It means I’m not passing,” Max says with some passion. ”Especially when people use   it really makes me feel like I’m not doing enough, and I’m never going to look the right way.” Max’s father says pronouns have been difficult for him, too. ”It has taken a while to get those right,” he admits. ”Max was born male. I’ve had 11 years of ’he.’ ” Dealing with other people is only part of Max’s struggle as a nonbinary youth. Max must also wrestle with the decision of whether to go through male or female puberty. ”Max is on this exploration, but it’s harder [than] like, ’I’m absolutely a girl, I’m absolutely a boy,” Margaret says. ”Being in the middle, what does that mean about your body?” Right now, taking medication that prevent the emergence of secondary sex characteristics, such as breasts or facial hair, has bought Max more time to grapple with the choice. Ehrensaft’s clinic now sees a growing number of people, mostly teenagers, who want to transform their bodies in ways that don’t fit a binary model. One client, Ehrensaft says, doesn’t want testosterone or a lower voice or facial hair, but doesn’t want a woman’s breasts either. Legal protections are increasing, too, As more people redefine their gender identity in nonbinary terms, many schools, governments, workplaces and parents are beginning to adapt to the change. In California, the California Healthy Youth Act, signed into law in 2015, requires comprehensive sex education for grades   to ”teach pupils about gender, gender expression, gender identity, and explore the harm of negative gender stereotypes.” A checklist from the California County of Superintendents, designed for school systems to evaluate their compliance with the law, includes this definition of gender identity: ”One’s internal,   sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, or other gender( s). All people have a gender identity.” (The italics are ours.) Phyllida Burlingame, the director of reproductive policy justice at the ACLU of Northern California, says the state’s law is the first of its kind in the U. S. and school districts are still working to come into compliance with it. Elsewhere, in what transgender advocates believed was also a national first, a county circuit court judge in Oregon last June affirmed the legal change of    Jamie Shupe’s gender from female to ”nonbinary.” And in September, a judge in Santa Cruz, Calif. issued an order recognizing ”nonbinary” as the legal gender of    Sara Kelly Keenan. Since then, California courts have granted nonbinary status to at least 11 more people, according to the Gendersex and Queer Recognition project. Meanwhile, Senate Bill 179, which would make California the first state to routinely recognize ”nonbinary” as a legal gender on official documents, is making its way through the state’s legislature. If passed, California would join a growing number of national and   jurisdictions around the world that recognize genders other than male or female. Schools on the vanguard, At the Oakland School for the Arts, I talk about gender with principal Mike Oz and creative writing teacher Jordan Karnes, who also runs the school’s Gender and Sexuality Club. Karnes says she has one or two transgender or nonbinary students in each of her classes. But many more have begun to reject the dichotomy of male and female, Oz says, simply to support their fellow students. That’s not something he saw coming. ”That’s the most beautiful piece of this,” he says. In addition to having a   bathroom, the school accommodates both nonbinary and binary transgender students by changing their email addresses to reflect the new names they have chosen. Parents are not always on board. Karnes has been at school events, she says, in which students and teachers call transgender students by their new name and pronoun, while parents do not. Some people have suggested all this talk about nonbinary identity is just another trend  —   a passing fad. ”I really don’t feel like it’s a trend,” Karnes says. ”I feel like it’s the future.” ’Happier as a being and not hiding myself’ Charlotte Tate, a psychology professor and gender researcher at San Francisco State University, expects some degree of backlash against the acknowledgement of a nonbinary identity. Her research has shown   (cisgender, in the parlance) heterosexual people are more negative toward nonbinary people than they are toward transgender males and females. ”Looking at cisgender heterosexual respondents, they seem to exist in a world that has two suppositions,” Tate says. ”The first is that everyone is static in their gender category. The other supposition is that there are only two of those gender categories.” While transgender men and women conflict with the first notion, nonbinary individuals shatter both. In the course of reporting this story, I interviewed a number of teens and young adults, and asked how their lives have changed since they came out as   or nonbinary. ”Sometimes I feel like I don’t exist because I have to fight my way through the world,” one    told me. ”But I certainly feel happier as a being and not hiding myself.” Max puts it this way: ”It’s a journey and it’s fun. It’s rewarding but it’s also difficult. But it’s worth it. This story was produced by KQED’s Future of You blog. Jon Brooks is a longtime KQED reporter and editor, and the blog’s host."
"The European Commission will not reinstate visa requirements for Americans who want to visit Europe, despite the European Parliament’s recent vote to end the preferential treatment over a lack of full visa reciprocity between the U. S. and all members of the European Union. The question was spurred by the U. S. refusal to waive visa requirements for citizens of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania, as we reported when the Parliament called for reinstating visas for Americans in March. Explaining its decision, the European Commission said Tuesday that in recent months, ”contacts with U. S. interlocutors at the political and technical level were intensified,” and the American government has committed to changing its policies once the five countries meet legal requirements. Work on an agreement will continue at the  . S. Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial Meeting that’s set for June of this year, the commission says. The European Union ”will always choose engagement, commitment and patient diplomacy over unilateral retaliation,” the body’s commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos said via Twitter today. The U. S. wasn’t alone in being targeted for potential retribution over its visa policies, being warned to extend full reciprocity along with Canada, Australia, Brunei and Japan. But those other countries have either already resolved the disputes or, in the case of Canada, have set a deadline of December to do so."
"Protesters thronged outside a Seoul courtroom Tuesday, marking the start to Park  ’s corruption trial with demonstrations both for and against the ousted South Korean president. In fact, the scene was so packed, one absence stood out all the more starkly: that of Park herself. She wasn’t required to show up to the opening hearings instead, her lawyers stood before the court on her behalf, denying the allegations that led to her official removal from power in March. Park faces 18 criminal charges  —   which include bribery, abuse of power and leaking of state secrets  —   and the possibility of life in prison. Tuesday’s hearing officially opens the trial, though Agence   reports that full proceedings are expected to get underway in two weeks. In the meantime, the defense has plenty of reading ahead of it: Prosecutors have handed over 120, 000 pages of investigation records, according to the news service. As we’ve reported, the scandal that brought down Park has ensnared a number of   business figures  —   including the de facto chief of the country’s largest conglomerate, Samsung. Park is accused of helping extort about $70 million from Samsung and other big South Korean companies for the private slush fund of her friend and confidante Choi  . Samsung executive Jay Y. Lee is accused of having approved more than $38 million in bribes for Choi. It’s partly because of this network of connections that Park’s detractors fear for the integrity of her trial, as reporter Lauren Frayer tells Morning Edition. ”The protesters there are worried that she won’t get a fair trial because she’s too cozy, they say, with judges and the legal establishment. ”And the reason why is Park’s history. Her father was a military dictator during the Cold War, she grew up in the South Korean version of the White House, so she’s part of this big dynasty. She’s even nicknamed ’the princess.’ ” This fame aided Park’s rise to power, as she won election in a landslide in 2012. Now that she is out of office, South Korean voters face a   decision about how to replace her. They go to the polls next Tuesday to elect their next president, and with just days to go, it appears voters are inclined to   her policies. While the conservative Park was staunchly  . S. the current presidential favorite, liberal human rights lawyer Moon   has vowed to renegotiate a highly controversial missile defense system the U. S. military just installed on the peninsula. Moon has also said he wants more talks with the North Korean regime  —   a prospect that, as Lauren points out, has angered many older South Koreans and attracted significant support from younger voters. Yet Park promises to remain a centerpiece of campaign rhetoric in the days to come, as well. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports that even Park’s sister has announced her preferred candidate: Hong   the conservative contender currently running in third."
"An American THAAD missile defense system is now operational in South Korea, less than two months after its components arrived there, the U. S. military says. The system is meant to protect South Korea from ballistic missiles fired by North Korea, the Pentagon says. But China and other critics of the move say it will only increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The decision to install the missile shield was made by the U. S. and South Korea last July. The THAAD deployment has caused wide ripples on the peninsula, with North Korea saying the U. S. is antagonizing it and local residents protesting the installation. Other concerns center on timing and politics. ”There’s a presidential election here next week,” NPR’s Lauren Frayer reports from Seoul, ”and the   vows to renegotiate the U. S. missile defense deal. President Trump has also angered many South Koreans by saying Seoul should pay for it.” In another development, CIA Director Mike Pompeo arrived in South Korea for three days of meetings Tuesday, becoming the fourth   official from the Trump administration to visit (following Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis). Pompeo began his visit by touring Yeonpyeong Island, which endured a deadly artillery and rocket attack by North Korea during a skirmish between the two countries in late 2010. On Friday, President Trump said, ”We could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea, absolutely”  —   although he also said the U. S. would prefer to handle the crisis around North Korea’s nuclear program by diplomatic means, and with China’s help."
"Colonel Bruce Hampton, guitarist and respected elder statesman of the   community, died Monday night after collapsing on stage during the encore of his own birthday celebration. He was 70 years old. Hampton was close to wrapping up Hampton 70  —   a birthday concert featuring members of Phish, Widespread Panic and Leftover Salmon, among others  —   when he collapsed on stage at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. Hampton’s death was confirmed in a statement from his family, shared by the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Former bandmate Jeff Mosier wrote on Facebook that he could ”could have never imagined a more joyful departure.” Hampton, born Gustav Berglund III, began his music career in the late ’60s with the Hampton Grease Band, which toured with The Grateful Dead. In the early ’90s, while leading the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Hampton was widely credited with helping inspire and foster a new wave of improvisational ”jam band” artists  —   including Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, Dave Matthews and Phish. Most recently, Hampton was leading a weekly residency at the Vista Room in Atlanta. ”A Col. Bruce show brings a lot of joy and excitement,” Vista Room   Mike Rizzi told the Atlanta   ”especially in the world we live in right now. You forget about things when you walk through the door.” In Basically Frightened: The Musical Madness of Colonel Bruce Hampton, a 2012 documentary on Hampton, actor Billy Bob Thornton referred to Hampton as ”the eighth wonder of the world.”"
"Updated at 7:15 p. m. ET, House Republicans are bringing their health care bill back for a vote on Thursday. The American Health Care Act was pulled from the House floor just minutes before an expected vote in March, which was seen as a stark failure of Republicans on a key campaign promise. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday evening that they are confident in having enough votes to pass the bill in its latest form early Thursday afternoon. As they have tried to gather enough support to get their health care bill passed, Republican lawmakers keep adding pots of money to the proposal to pay the costs of people with high medical costs. The cash would very likely go to ”  pools,” which pay the expenses of the very sick so that insurance companies don’t have to. The AHCA is the latest in a long line of attempts to transform the health care system. Those that have passed include Medicare, then Medicaid, and then Obamacare. Now we move to Trumpcare, or whatever it eventually is labeled, which seems to be turning into another big federal program to pay the bills for people with expensive illnesses. House Speaker Paul Ryan made the case for   pools on the Charlie Rose television show in January. ”By having taxpayers, I think, step up and focus on, through risk pools subsidizing care for people with catastrophic illnesses, those losses don’t have to be covered by everybody else [buying insurance] and we stabilize their plans,” Ryan said. The original version of the House bill, called the American Health Care Act, includes a ”Patient and State Stability Fund” with $100 billion over 10 years that would allow states to help defray their citizens’ health costs or lower their premiums. Later amendments added an additional $30 billion to create a federal  ”invisible”   pool, with money to reimburse insurers who cover patients with expensive illnesses and to pay for prenatal and childbirth care. And on Tuesday night, Rep. Fred Upton,  . proposed adding an additional $8 billion over five years to ensure that sick people get adequate coverage through   pools. ”It’s our understanding that the $8 billion over the five years will more than cover those that might be impacted,” Upton said Wednesday after a meeting at the White House. ”And as a consequence, [it] keeps to our pledge for those that in fact would be otherwise denied because of   illnesses.” Ryan says the goal of the Republican bill is to offer more and cheaper health insurance choices. By separating out those who have expensive medical conditions, the remaining customers for individual insurance could buy   policies with fewer benefits at a lower price. Several states have tried   pools in the past, but they were typically underfunded, leaving millions of people with no access to adequate health care. Lawmakers hope that by putting the heft and money of the federal government behind them, they may work better. The federal government is already in the business. It pays for the health care of more than 40 percent of the population, through Medicare, Medicaid, the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to the Census Bureau. Medicare is essentially a giant   pool. The program, which pays for health care for people over 65, was created in 1965 because that population couldn’t get affordable private health insurance precisely because their health costs were too high. Last year the federal government spent about $591 billion on Medicare, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Medicaid, which covers the poor or disabled, is essentially another   pool, paid for with about $550 billion in tax money in 2016. And then there’s the Veterans Health Administration, which pays for the care of many people who have served in the military. Covering the people that commercial insurance left behind was also the goal of the Affordable Care Act. The law was designed to ensure that people in the individual insurance market who have   medical conditions, who were often shut out of traditional insurance plans, could get coverage. Obamacare tries to achieve that goal by requiring everyone, sick and healthy, to buy insurance so that the cost is spread among a broad population. That led to higher premiums for many people who are young and healthy because they subsidize those who are sicker and older, and also because they have to buy insurance with a generous menu of benefits mandated by the government. The Republican plan aims to cut those premiums by getting rid of Obamacare rules requiring that policies offer a broad menu of benefits, including prescription coverage and maternity care limit how much more companies can charge older people and require insurers to charge the same price for people with existing medical conditions. But many Republican members of Congress, including Upton, aren’t willing to see those with more medical needs shut out of the system once again. ”We’re talking about some way to finance a social goal that was established by the Affordable Care Act,” says Joe Antos, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. ”I don’t think Republicans want to go back on that. They agree that we’ve turned that corner.” Antos says the big difference between what’s being contemplated by the House Republicans this week and Medicare or other government health programs is that   pools or subsidies would very likely still be run through private health insurers, which have incentives to save money and be efficient. Zack Cooper, a professor of health policy and economics at Yale, agrees. ”Once you’ve decided to cover everybody, you’re sort of arguing over where the money comes from,” he says. ”The ACA makes me subsidize you. The   pools are simply doing that through taxation.” So far the House GOP bill doesn’t require states to create   pools, but some of the money is allocated specifically to that purpose. Such pools could be separate   insurance programs similar to traditional Medicare or Medicaid, or ”invisible” systems where individuals buy their insurance on the regular market but the government pays the expenses of the people deemed high risk. Maine has an invisible risk pool where insurance companies have to turn over to the state 90 percent of the premium paid by anyone the company deems high risk. That prevents companies from abusing the   status, Antos says, because insurers would be forgoing income from patients who don’t have high medical costs. After Maine established its   pool, premiums for people in their 20s fell an average $5, 000 a year, and people in their 60s saw their costs decline by about $7, 000. At the same time, enrollment in private insurance rose, according to a study in Health Affairs. The Republican bill doesn’t mandate a   system. And the flexibility in the bill, combined with limits on the money available, could be a problem, says Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow at the   Urban Institute. Especially since the pot of money is limited. ”We’re going to provide X dollars, then we’ll let the states figure out what benefits they can get for these people for the money that we’re providing,” Blumberg says. Emily Gee, a health economist at the   Center for American Progress, says the Republican proposal needs about $20 billion more per year to adequately pay the costs of   patients. And that’s a real risk, says Yale’s Cooper. Government has a track record of creating programs to help the needy but not funding them adequately to ensure that they offer quality services, he says. It’s a common complaint about Medicaid, where lawmakers frequently point out that it doesn’t pay doctors enough. ”This is trying to get people off the books,” Cooper says. ”The fear is once you get them off the books, you forget about them.”"
"Puerto Rico has asked for a form of bankruptcy protection to help it grapple with more than $70 billion in   debt. The unprecedented maneuver, requested by the governor and filed shortly afterward by a federal oversight board, sets in motion what would likely be the largest municipal debt restructuring in U. S. history. By comparison, Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy, which sought relief from some $18. 5 billion in debt and liabilities, made it the largest such filing in the country’s history at the time. ”After extensive discussions in good faith and the opening of the financial books of the Government of Puerto Rico to the creditors, there has not been sufficient progress in the negotiations,” the U. S. territory’s governor, Ricardo Rossello, said in a statement. The situation now heads to federal court, where the struggle between Puerto Rico and its disgruntled creditors will be decided. The territory also has more than $49 billion in pension liabilities. But don’t call it a ”bankruptcy,” exactly, since the territory isn’t technically eligible for the same Chapter 9 protection as states. Rather, Congress passed a law last year specifically to deal with Puerto Rico’s debt problem, which has been simmering for years. Among other things, the law, called PROMESA, set up a federal oversight board to handle the territory’s debt negotiations and imposed a stay on financial obligations it owed. It set up a   process   for Puerto Rico. NPR’s Camila Domonoske recently broke down the procedure: ”PROMESA doesn’t call this ’bankruptcy,’ and it’s not identical to Chapter 9. But the underlying principles are the same. ” ’It mirrors conventional bankruptcy processes that are ordered and arbitrated through a court system,’ says Eric LeCompte, the executive director of Jubilee USA Networks, a religious development organization that supports debt relief and debt forgiveness. ”The ’Title III’ process, as it’s called in PROMESA, allows Puerto Rico to address all of its debts at once, in a comprehensive process  —   which even Chapter 9 doesn’t allow, LeCompte says. It’s essentially a bankruptcy process   for Puerto Rico’s debt crisis.” The island has been grappling with runaway debts for years, though the situation finally reached a crisis in 2015, when the island’s governor at the time announced that its debts were unpayable as long as it hoped to provide basic services to residents. Camila notes that since then, Puerto Rico has been buffeted by ”defaults on loan payments, budget cuts and tax hikes”  —   including significant austerity measures for Puerto Ricans. And those economic woes have taken their toll. In a court filing Wednesday, the federal oversight board laid out some grim numbers: The stay imposed by PROMESA expired overnight Monday, and The New York Times reports that right on cue, ”bondholder groups and at least one bond insurer sued” on Tuesday. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Puerto Rico will now ”face off against angry hedge funds, mutual funds and bond insurers in the   proceeding known as Title III, a legal mechanism created by Congress to restructure debts by force if negotiations broke down.” In its filing, Puerto Rico’s federal oversight board expressed optimism about the legal wrangling to come. In other words, the board remains ”hopeful that continued negotiations (including through mediation) will lead to consensual resolutions such that Puerto Rico will once again be able to experience economic and social prosperity after this difficult process is resolved.”"
"In the hills of southern New Hampshire, there’s a stately old bell atop the Academy Building at Phillips Exeter. With each toll, it signals passing periods between classes. The sound of the bell  —   much like the rest of the sprawling prep school’s campus  —   evokes centuries of tradition. But next year, the school is trying something new. It’s all happening in an inconspicuous   building: Kirtland House. Right now, Kirtland House is a girls’ dorm, but a sign on the   bathroom hints at the future. It reads: ”  restroom.” Starting in the fall, this building will become one of Exeter’s new   dorms. Schools across the country are figuring out how best to accommodate transgender students. And now two of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious private boarding schools  —   Phillips Exeter Academy and Phillips Academy Andover  —   are taking on the issue of student housing. The schools will convert some boys’ dorms and girls’ dorms into   housing, breaking a   practice of offering their   students only   dorms. Alex Myers, an English teacher at Exeter, says the discussion began almost two years ago when he started talking with a group of about a dozen transgender and    students, asking questions like: ”What’s been great? And what needs work?” ”Consistently, what came up as ’what needs work’ was housing,” says Myers. ”If you don’t understand yourself to be a girl or a boy, living in a space that’s designated just for boys or just for girls feels really uncomfortable.” Myers says the students had a clear vision: They wanted a dorm that didn’t have a gender designation. Now, both Exeter and Andover, in neighboring Massachusetts, have committed to doing just that. In Exeter’s   dorms, each of the    students will get their own room. The bathrooms will still be communal, but there will be a bit more privacy  —   including changing areas off each shower. Myers says everyone’s first question is: Do you really want to take hormonal teenagers and mix them all together? But, he says, as in the other dorms, there will be a teacher living in the house to keep an eye on everything and, here, they’ll lead discussions about gender norms. Myers says he wishes he could have lived in a dorm like that when he was a student at Exeter more than 20 years ago. He arrived on campus as a young girl from Maine, but by 12th grade, Alice had become Alex. Yet, he lived in his same girls’ dorm. And while he found the school supportive, ”there were people in the dorm who were rude, for want of a better term.” Myers was the first openly transgender student at Exeter and, for the past 21 years, the school has addressed housing issues on a    basis. The   dorms are the first time the school has developed a housing policy to accommodate students who are transgender. There is an application process for any student who is interested and a channel for parental input. While   dorms may be appreciated by LGBT students and the straight students who have expressed interest, Myers acknowledges students in traditional dorms might miss out on getting to know those classmates. ”That was something we talked about intensively: Are we kind of skimming off a population and taking diversity away from our dorms?” Myers says the school decided that the very existence of   dorms with carefully designed curriculum would serve as a model of how to openly address these issues. John Palfrey is the head of school at Phillips Academy Andover. He says the dorms are consistent with the school’s values. ”Our idea is to bring young people from all over the world, from all walks of life, from all backgrounds  —   and, frankly, from all gender and sexuality backgrounds. So I see this as entirely in keeping with our long tradition.” And, he says, there hasn’t been any pushback. ”The reaction to this announcement has been 100 percent positive.” Neither Andover nor Exeter would let students be interviewed about this topic. But Exeter did a survey, and Myers says nearly 90 percent of students who responded said they supported the new dorms. For those who didn’t, the reasons varied. Some said they liked the current system and didn’t want it to change. Others said they don’t think small groups should get special treatment. And what about the alumni? By and large, they’re excited. ”I am really glad the school is doing it,” says John Foley, who graduated from Exeter in the 1960s. ”I’ve found that sexuality is still not discussed very much. I think we just need to keep knocking those barriers down.” Liza Brecher, a more recent Exeter graduate, agrees. ”I knew kids who got relentlessly hazed and bullied in their dorms. If they had had a safe place to go home to, that would have made all the difference.” ”This is a very significant and positive step,” says Exeter alum Chuck Goldberg. He remembers when  —   back in the ’60s  —   gay students didn’t feel comfortable coming out. Now, he hopes the new dorms will make all students feel welcome."
"This story is part of a series of conversations on Morning Edition with politicians, writers, scientists, theologians, tech innovators and others. From globalization to religious tolerance, identity to climate change, our conversations seek to capture this moment and how we’re shaped by it  —   as individuals, nations and as a global civilization.  In 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that ”the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” To borrow King’s imagery in 2017: Which way is the arc of our history bending? That’s a big question we’re posing at NPR. We can’t easily report on the future, but we can ask smart people how they think we got to this point in history, and where they think we’re going. It’s a vital conversation at this transformative moment in our political and social order, here and around the world. Depending on where you stand, we’re experiencing either a   course correction or a feeling that the world has lost its way. Whatever your view, the rate of change has been dizzying. So what is really going on? We’re asking a diverse group of thinkers to help chart what amounts to the history of our time. These conversations began with the social scientist Francis Fukuyama, who famously proclaimed ”the end of history” just as the Cold War was coming to an end. What Fukuyama meant was that a single form of government  —   liberal democracy  —   was on its way to triumph over competing models like communism. A quarter century later, the forms of democracy remain in place around the world. But many are becoming less liberal. Russia has an elected president and parliament but has cracked down on dissent and the press. Turkey has also cracked down on the press, and in a recent democratic vote chose to concentrate power in the hands of one man. In another conversation, Ireland’s former president, Mary Robinson, warned of a ”strange moment” in history. Much of the world had committed itself to ”very strong” multilateral institutions, but she says, ”we seem to be now going into identity nationalism in a narrow sense.” Identity nationalism, concludes Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid, is almost hopeless  —   and it boils down to fear of change. ”Technological change is intensifying. We’re becoming terrified by social media, by information, and in this state of high anxiety, we’re looking to attach that anxiety to something,” he says. ”And cultural change, demographic change, is what we’re attaching it to.” Recently we heard from an adviser in the Trump administration. Michael Anton’s official title is deputy assistant to the president for strategic communications at the National Security Council. He says he’s been so consumed by the    he’s had little chance to focus on the long term  —   despite that he came to prominence as a man who was trying to think long term. In 2016, while working at an investment firm, Anton anonymously published essays that sought to make sense of the Trump phenomenon. The most famous was ”The Flight 93 Election.” Anton compared Trump voters to passengers on the plane hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, who were choosing to rush the cockpit. They might still die but it was their only hope. In his conversation with NPR, Anton was a bit more gentle in his description of the world situation. His new boss, he says, views Britain’s exit from the European Union as both ”a hopeful sign” and as ”a reassertion of nationalist sentiment.” ”We want to put the brakes on globalization a little bit and reassert control over our country, our borders, our economic policy, our tax policy, with the recognition that the distinction of citizenship means something and citizens are in it together fundamentally in a way that the world community is not,” Anton says. Anton spoke just as Trump was nearing his first 100 days in office  —   and as the president was discovering some of the limits on what he could achieve. Trump recently mused in an interview on Sirius XM that ”had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War.” The president was returning to one the most studied eras of American history: the Antebellum Period, the decades leading up to the Civil War. The causes of the conflict can be traced back to the beginnings of the country. It is poignant and instructive to read the accounts of people who lived in the 80 years before the calamity. Many knew that something was going grievously wrong, that the political system was beginning to seize up, caught in its own contradictions. Some desperately warned against disaster. Yet no one truly foresaw what history had in store for them. In the early 21st century we, too, are headed toward some destination we cannot know, but we can at least get a handle on the direction we are moving. Will we know by the end of these conversations which way the arc of history is bending? Maybe not, but it’s worth trying. Web producer Heidi Glenn and Morning Edition editor Jacob Conrad contributed to this report. "
"Health officials in Minnesota have been scrambling to contain a measles outbreak that has sickened primarily   children in the state. So far health officials have identified 34 cases, still mostly in Hennepin County, and they’re worried there will be more. In Minnesota, the vast majority of kids under two get vaccinated against measles. But state health officials say most      have not had the vaccine  —   about six out of ten. As the outbreak spreads, that statistic worries health officials, including Michael Osterholm, who directs the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. ”It is a highly concentrated number of unvaccinated people,” he says. ”It is a potential kind of    situation.” Measles is a highly contagious respiratory disease that causes a rash and fever. It can be deadly, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says two doses of vaccination are about 97 percent effective in heading off the disease. The Minnesota Department of Health says the outbreak began in Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis and the heart of the nation’s   community.   leaders here are in firm agreement with the Minnesota health department in trying to knock down the pseudoscience behind the unfounded claims that getting vaccinated can lead to autism. But   groups have been quick to fan fears, even as the outbreak spreads. A social and commercial hub of the community is the   neighborhood, adjacent to downtown Minneapolis. Inside a building called the Riverside mall, more than a dozen stalls are tightly clustered,   style. Sprawling from stall to stall are   clothes and other textiles along with small home furnishings. Most of the   shopping here want nothing to do with a reporter’s questions. But Khadra Abdulle offers her thoughts about the measles outbreak. ”I heard [about] it,” she says, ”but I haven’t seen it. I don’t know anybody who has that problem right now.” She’s quick to name the fear that’s working against the measles vaccine among  . ”They believe it causes autism.” A weekend meeting in Minneapolis, organized by   groups (the Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota, the Minnesota Natural Health Coalition, the National Health Freedom Action and Minnesota Vaccine Freedom Coalition and The Organic Consumers Association) attracted dozens of  . Some members of the audience shouted down physicians  —   including pediatrician Dr. Stacene Maroushek  —   who showed up to try to convince them vaccination is crucial. ”We know If there’s less than a certain rate of vaccination, the virus is much more likely to spread,” she told the gathering. ”That’s a scientific fact.” Kris Ehresmann, the infectious disease division director at the Minnesota Department of Health, describes the Minnesota measles outbreak as a ”public health nightmare”  —   a lot of unvaccinated people, living in densely populated neighborhoods and a tremendously contagious disease. Ehresmann says she’s beyond frustrated with the   campaign by   advocates, who have been working against efforts to contain the outbreak. ”I’ll be honest. It makes me very angry,” she says. But Ehresmann says the desire to get the truth out is mobilizing public health officials. ”We’ve had people on Somali TV, Somali radio. We’ve participated in chat rooms. The commissioner met with imams to talk to them about how we can work with the faith community to do outreach,” she says. In 2000, U. S. public health officials declared that measles had been eliminated in the U. S. thanks to a strong vaccination program. That means measles is no longer native to the U. S. but as vaccination rates have eroded in some areas, it can spread quickly if a sick traveler brings it in. In 2014, there were 667 cases in the U. S. including a large outbreak among Amish communities in Ohio. In 2015, there were 188 cases, including some linked to an outbreak that started at the Disneyland amusement park. Prior vaccination is critical to keeping people from contracting the virus if they are exposed to it. Almost 30 years ago measles sickened 460 people in Minnesota and three children died in that outbreak. Osterholm served as the state epidemiologist at the time, and says those deaths still haunt him. He’s worried it could happen again. ”I think we could surely see a major increase in the number of cases beyond what we have now,” he says. ”With that comes the increasing likelihood someone will die.” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Minnesota Public Radio and Kaiser Health News."
"All four of Anab Gulaid’s children have received their vaccinations on the recommended schedule. As   residents of Minneapolis, that puts them in the minority. Fewer than half of Minnesota children of Somali descent have received the MMR shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Health, which is now working to combat a growing measles outbreak in the Twin Cities. As of Wednesday, the case count was up to 34  —   all but two unvaccinated, almost all   and mostly children ages 5 and under. Even in the midst of the outbreak, Somali resistance to vaccination remains strong in Minneapolis. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the United States. It’s a relatively recent attitude that emerged alongside escalating fears about links between MMR and autism among the immigrant group. Understanding the history behind those fears  —   and the culture that reinforces them, contrary to abundant scientific evidence  —   is an important step toward overcoming them, research suggests, and not just in Minnesota. ”There is a context this didn’t just come out of nowhere,” says Gulaid, who studies autism as a public health researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration in Minneapolis. Her own children range in age from 8 to 17. ”In my public health opinion, you can have a message, but if you come across as not listening, you can also lose that message.” Roots of Resistance, Vaccine resistance has been an issue since the technology was widely introduced in the early 1800s, says Eve Dubé, a medical anthropologist and public health researcher at Laval University in Quebec City. Since then, people have cited concerns about vaccine safety, sterilization conspiracies, and government control over their bodies and rights. Today, Dubé estimates, about one third of North American parents are hesitant to get their children vaccinated. Some but not all of those end up delaying or refusing shots. Reasons for that wariness vary, and concerns often cluster within regional subcultures, and not just among immigrants. In France, for example, worries persist about an unsubstantiated link between the Hepatitis B vaccine and multiple sclerosis. Various religious groups oppose vaccines, as do certain groups who favor organic and natural lifestyles. In developed countries, some experts argue, support for vaccines has also declined alongside a fading memory of the diseases they were created to prevent. And while multiple studies have shown spikes in   diseases (including pertussis, polio, mumps and measles) in schools and regions around the world with low vaccination rates, such as affluent neighborhoods in Northern California and an Amish community in Ohio, it is extremely challenging to change people’s opinions about vaccines, Dubé says. Attitudes are often deeply ingrained. She once interviewed a mother whose baby was in the hospital, extremely sick with pertussis, but the mom still believed that not vaccinating was the right choice. Dubé has also interviewed people who had bad reactions to vaccines but have no regrets. And even when vaccination campaigns win over people in one place, the same strategy can fail elsewhere. ”It’s like there’s a predisposition to be mistrusting of these types of interventions,” she says. ”There’s not much strong evidence in the literature or magic bullet ideas that can solve this issue.”   and autism concerns, Complexities are widespread among the Somali community in Minneapolis, where concerns about autism emerged around 2008, after Somali parents expressed concerns about disproportionately high numbers of Somali preschoolers in special education classes who were receiving services for autism spectrum disorder, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Parents had lots of questions, particularly about what was causing the disorder, says Asli Ashkir, a senior RN consultant with the Minnesota Department of Health in St. Paul. ”We don’t have a word in our language that translates to autism,” Ashkir says. ”So when this started, we were like, ’What is this?’ ” Around the same time, Andrew Wakefield, a British scientist who used fraudulent research to argue that the MMR vaccine causes autism, visited Minneapolis. He also teamed up with   groups to raise concerns about the shots, Ashkir says, fueling fear within an immigrant community that was already up against language barriers in a country that was new to them. Concerns quickly influenced behavior. In 2004, according to the Minnesota Department of Health, 92 percent of   children were vaccinated with MMR. After 2008, Ashkir says, rates of vaccination with the   ”  vaccine” dropped by 5 to 7 percent each year. As of 2013, just 45 percent of   children in Minnesota had been vaccinated. ”We communicate orally,” Ashkir says. ”The words fly.” Alleviating those concerns happens more slowly, she says. In collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Health, she is using a variety of strategies to educate the local Somali community about both vaccines and autism, including advocacy for early intervention therapies for children with autism. She is also working with health clinics to give patients more time with doctors so they can get their questions answered with help from an interpreter. ”When a Somali person sees that a doctor is in a hurry, they don’t want to ask questions anymore,” she says. ”In a clinic visit with three people, 15 minutes is not enough.” Eventually, Ashkir would like to involve influential community members and religious leaders in public health efforts. It’s a strategy that has worked elsewhere, including a region in Western Australia where vaccine coverage was among the lowest in the country, in part because of a locally popular alternative lifestyle that valued home births, breastfeeding, cloth diapers and not vaccinating. In 2014, a campaign there called ”I Immunise” enlisted help from six locals who were featured on posters, billboards, signs and online about how vaccination fit into their alternative lifestyles. Among about 300 people who were surveyed about the campaign, researchers reported in 2015, more than 75 percent said it made them think more positively about vaccination. Still, nearly 70 percent people who had refused vaccines in the past gave negative reviews, illustrating how polarizing the issue remains. Ultimately, researchers say, compassion may be one of the most powerful tools for spreading public health messages in hesitant communities. It’s not fair to characterize people who question vaccines as ”selfish or dumb,” says Dubé, who has studied MMR resistance among Somali immigrants in Sweden, among other groups. ”These are well informed people that want to do what’s best for their families, with questions and concerns that have not been resolved.” ”The idea is to listen to the community’s specific concerns,” she adds. ”It’s something that seems obvious but that public health is really bad at doing.” Empathy can go a long way, Gulaid agrees. Her    twin daughters were born around the time that fears of autism emerged among   in Minneapolis. And while she decided to move ahead with the recommended vaccination schedule, many of her friends have delayed their children’s shots. She doesn’t fault them for it. ”The Somali community is resilient and strong, and they’ve gone through a lot of hardships,” she says. ”They just want healthy children. I understand their concerns.”"
"Updated at 12:54 p. m. ET, For President Trump, one thing is important: winning, or at least the appearance of it. So when the media narrative started to become that he didn’t get what he wanted out of a new spending bill that will keep the government open through September, Trump got upset. (That compromise bill is supposed to get a vote and is expected to pass the House on Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday.) Trump’s irritation manifested in hot  —   and somewhat contradictory  —   ways Tuesday. In the morning, Trump was so annoyed, he encouraged changing the rules of the Senate to get rid of the   threshold to advance legislation and advocated for a government shutdown this fall. ”Our country needs a good ’shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” he said. It is odd to have a president encourage a shutdown of the very government he is in charge of, especially since less than two weeks ago, Trump said he didn’t want one. ”As far as keeping the government open,” he said then, ”I think we want to keep the government open, don’t you agree?” Trump made those comments as he was advocating for passage of the GOP health care bill. A vote on that bill hasn’t happened yet despite White House promises it would be any day now. What also didn’t happen was the inclusion of some of the president’s funding priorities he thundered about in the week leading up to last Friday’s initial deadline for funding the government. Despite Budget Director Mick Mulvaney’s taking to the White House briefing room Tuesday with photos of portions of a border wall and fencing, the spending bill does not provide the funding for a wall. And the Trump administration’s gambit to tie Affordable Care Act subsidies to the wall didn’t work, either. To be clear, there are some things that the White House and Republicans should be happy about: They got increased military spending (not as much as they wanted, but still, it’s more) more   money that can go toward fixing existing fencing and increasing technology and sensors funding for 10 more immigration judges more money for Customs and Border Patrol even more loosened campaign finance disclosure requirements slashing of food stamps (because of lower enrollment, Republicans say) freezing IRS funding and cutting Department of Education funds. But there are also things in the spending bill Democrats like (and Republicans don’t): Planned Parenthood will not face cuts science, arts, Pell Grants and Amtrak get increases the Environmental Protection Agency is largely left intact (although Republicans like that it has the fewest employees since Reagan) the Justice Department is prevented from devoting extra money to stopping states from implementing their own marijuana laws and   will be subjected to review by the Food and Drug Administration. Mulvaney boasted that Trump, The Art of the Deal author, ”outnegotiated” Democrats. And Mulvaney claimed of Democrats: ”They wanted a shutdown. We know that. They were desperate to make this administration look like we couldn’t function, like we couldn’t govern.” Neither is true. Congressional Republicans and Democrats had been laying the groundwork, fairly collegially, for a funding bill for some time  —   before Trump decided to weigh in. And no congressional leaders were talking about a shutdown  —   not Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, not Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The only leader talking about and hyping one was Trump. Still, Mulvaney lamented Democrats’ behavior. ”I don’t anticipate a shutdown in September, but if the Democrats aren’t going to behave any better than they have in the last couple of days, it may be inevitable,” he threatened. Something happened Tuesday morning that set Trump off. Mulvaney said the president was ”frustrated” that Democrats ”went out there to spike the football and make him look bad.” The narrative had become that Democrats got a win and Trump took a loss. And for someone like Trump, who seems to view politics as a   game, that was a problem. Still smarting from the emerging narrative Tuesday, Trump even used a celebratory event, the   ’s Trophy presentation to the Air Force Academy  —   a bunch of winners  —   as a platform to air his grievances. After bragging that the bill increases military spending, Trump said, ”And we didn’t do any touting like the Democrats did, by the way.” That wasn’t enough for Trump. He then veered into border funding and Obamacare subsidies. ”To top that, we achieved the single largest increase in   funding in 10 years,” the president said. ”So we have more money now for the border than we’ve gotten in 10 years. The Democrats didn’t tell you that. They forgot. In their notes, they forgot to tell you that.” He claimed it was enough money to make a ”down payment” on the border wall (which is not what the money is for). ”I think they will go back and check their papers,” Trump reiterated of Democrats. And he wanted to be clear: ”Make no mistake, we are beginning to build the wall.” He then threw out this   apparently blaming Democrats’ desire to continue Obamacare subsidies on . .. donors. ”Do you know what a donor is, fellas?” he told the gathered cadets. ”You’ll learn when you get a little older. You’ll learn about donors. I used to be a donor. Used to get everything I wanted. This is what winning looks like.” And now he doesn’t get everything he wants. That’s what compromise looks like. It’s not entirely clear what or who Trump’s trigger was Tuesday. A spending bill is a negotiation. No one gets everything he wants, but everyone tries to claim victory. That’s politics. Some of Trump’s sensitivity might be a tacit acknowledgment that if there was a shutdown, Republicans would very likely be blamed, given they control Congress and the White House. Taking blame and getting over losses isn’t something Trump does well. He is always trying to spin his way out. Just a few months into office, Trump has done a lot of complaining about rules and results. After the GOP health care bill failed, he called rules in the House and Senate ”archaic.” And that was after Republicans changed the rules of the Senate to get Trump’s Supreme Court nominee through, his biggest accomplishment in his first 100 days. Republicans say the rule change was in response to Democrats’ changing the rules for lower court nominees, but the   to that was years (not months) in the making following record obstruction by Republicans. Trump also claimed falsely  —   as president  —   that he really won the popular vote, despite losing it by approximately 3 million. He blamed it on ”illegal” votes, something for which there is absolutely no evidence and has even been disputed by Republican secretaries of state. All presidents want more unilateral power. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both lamented the Washington grind and alluded to dictatorships being easier. But Trump seems OK with changing the rules when convenient, if not itching to do so, instead of playing by them. The best presidents have figured out how to play the game, how to work within the system of the republic  —   one that was deliberately set up to check the powers of a presidency created on the heels of monarchical colonial rule."
"President Trump has a flair  —   perhaps a genius  —   for   which can be described as the art of upstaging your rivals just when they think they’re about to have their spotlight moment. He did it countless times as a candidate, eclipsing all the other Republican contenders and the Democrats as well. He demonstrated his prowess again on the 100th day of his presidency, rallying a   crowd in Pennsylvania and shunning the annual   White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. On the basis of visuals alone, Trump was the man of the people at war with the elite of the capital. It was the   reality show par excellence. But the president has since spent three days and nights in a frenzy of mixed messaging that has   not only his rivals but his own administration, his own party and even himself. The result is a new level of confusion and disarray at a moment when many had expected the White House team to find its groove and go forward. The disruptions began Sunday, on the morning of Trump’s 101st day in office, as   items from Trump’s various interviews spread out on all platforms. We learned the White House welcome mat would be out for Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte, a man said to have ordered thousands of   killings in his war on drugs. Trump’s chief of staff explained that the U. S. needed Duterte as part of a campaign to isolate Kim Jong Un, but then we also heard the president say the North Korean dictator was ”a smart cookie” and that Trump would be ”honored” to meet with him. So, just as the ”dancing with dictators” storyline got going, the White House doors were opened to the morning hosts of CBS News, who talked with a gaggle of top Trump advisers  —   the ones from Manhattan who reassure Wall Street and the GOP mainstream. Even Ivanka Trump ”dropped in” to chat and to charm. In his flurry of interviews, the president said, ”We’ll take a look at” breaking up the biggest banks. But his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had already told a meeting of investors they should thank him ”for how your bank stocks are doing.” Indeed, the financial sector has led the   rally and bank shares recovered and climbed, brushing off Trump’s own   threat. Making the rounds of the TV networks, the president made various claims about the latest version of the House bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. He said he had ordered that the bill ”take care of sick people” and protect those with   conditions. Never mind that the latest version would allow states to opt out of key provisions affecting just those kinds of people. Monday, the debate over   conditions was hopelessly confused, yet White House officials were boldly predicting passage this week. We have also seen endless TV replays of the Oval Office confrontation with CBS’ John Dickerson, with whom Trump doubled down yet again on his accusations that former President Obama had him wiretapped at Trump Tower last fall  —   an often debunked charge for which Trump once again offered no evidence. One theory about the president’s most recent static storm sees it as strategic, designed to distract from the spending deal reached by House and Senate negotiators from both parties over the weekend  —   a package they will vote through this week to keep the government operating. Why distract from news of a bipartisan, bicameral agreement? Was it not good news that there would not be a shutdown? Well, perhaps, but the price for that news turned out to be heavy indeed. The administration had to give in on spending for the border wall (which was specifically ruled out) got only half the increase Trump wanted on defense spending and failed to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood or subsidies for health care insurance under Obamacare. Deep cuts proposed to the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health and public broadcasting went away. Spending for domestic programs, a category the president had previously vowed to freeze, rose. It is not hard to understand why the White House wanted everybody talking about Duterte, health care and phone calls to Vladimir Putin instead of the details of that spending deal. Moreover, we need to remember that Trump’s messaging uses different media to reach different audiences. While official Washington might have been glad to have the government keep running another five months, Trump was mindful of those who see things differently. The president took to Twitter to blame the spending deal on the Senate and its   threshold for major legislation. ”Either elect more Republican senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%,” said the president in a tweet. Current GOP senators quickly disassociated themselves from that notion, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flatly ruled it out. No chance. Zero. Still, the president was not done. He added: ”Our country needs a good ’shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” Never mind that this same man had just signed a stopgap bill last Friday to avoid just such a shutdown. And never mind that he would be signing the larger spending deal this week to fund the government through September. And so we wonder: when the cameras are shut off and he puts down the smartphone, is there a long game, a larger vision? Does all the   recede and a presidential program emerge? He can only spend so much time going to Pennsylvania in his mind."
"President Trump emphasized his commitment to end the     conflict, saying there’s a ”very good chance” for a peace deal and vowing to do ”whatever is necessary to facilitate the agreement.” Trump’s remarks came in a joint statement following a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on Wednesday. ”We’ll start a process which hopefully will lead to peace,” Trump said, standing alongside the Palestinian leader. ”Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve always heard that perhaps the toughest deal to make is the deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he added. ”Let’s see if we can prove them wrong.” The Mideast peace progress has been stalled for years. ”Now Mr. President, with you we have hope,” Abbas told Trump. Abbas said he believed their partnership could bring about a historic peace deal, emphasizing that he wants to see a Palestinian state with borders that existed prior to the region’s war in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Abbas is unpopular and has led the Palestinian Authority for the past 12 years, long past the conclusion of his   term. And ”for many Palestinians, after all these years, Abbas has not delivered the goods,” as NPR’s Daniel Estrin reported. Here’s more: ”He has not managed to get serious concessions from Israel. Israel continues settlement construction in the West Bank. Palestinians are losing hope in getting an independent country and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. So Abbas here wants to be able to come home to the West Bank at least showing that he’s got Trump’s ear.” This isn’t the first time Trump has signaled willingness to have a hand in peace negotiations, though he emphasized that any agreement must come from the Israelis and Palestinians themselves, and ”cannot be imposed by the United States or by any other nation.” It won’t be easy. ”Trust between Israelis and Palestinians right now really is rock bottom,” Daniel added. ”There is such little belief on both sides that there’s a way forward. And so this is Trump’s challenge. You know, he wants to broker a peace deal, but there is a danger to orchestrating yet another peace process.” That danger was spelled out by veteran U. S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross recently: ”What we can’t afford is another big initiative that fails because that’ll just feed the cynicism and disbelief. And it reduces even more any hope that anything can ever be done.” A number of Trump administration officials have strong ties to Israeli leaders, and the White House has appeared to break from longstanding U. S. support of a   solution. So far, it has not endorsed a specific plan to push for peace. At a February press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said, ”So I’m looking at   and    —   and I like the one that both parties like,” he said."
"Get ready for a new kind of apple. It’s called Cosmic Crisp, and farmers in Washington state, who grow 70 percent of the country’s apples, are planting these trees by the millions. The apples themselves, dark red in color with tiny yellow freckles, will start showing up in stores in the fall of 2019. Scott McDougall is one of the farmers who’s making a big bet on Cosmic Crisp. ”It goes back to believing in the apple,” he says. ”You believe?” I ask. ”I believe!” he says, and chuckles. Planting has begun at one of his company’s orchards near the city of Wenatchee. It’s a spectacular site  —   a giant natural amphitheater in the hills above the Columbia River. As we watch, a   tractor slices open the bare earth, and two men carefully lower delicate tree roots into the opening, one tree every three feet. These are among the first of about 400, 000 Cosmic Crisp trees that McDougall and Sons expects to plant over the next few years. Across the state, 12 million of the trees have been ordered. That first wave of plantings will deliver about 5 million   boxes of Cosmic Crisp apples to grocery stores. ”Hitting 5 million boxes right away, that’s never happened with any other variety that we’ve ever planted in Washington state,” McDougall says. For comparison, it took the popular variety Honeycrisp 20 years after it was introduced to reach that level of production. Why this phenomenal success? First of all, the apple tastes great, even after months in storage, McDougall says. But that’s not the only reason. A lot of apple farmers in Washington have been looking to switch from the varieties that they’ve grown for decades  —   in particular, Red Delicious. That variety is still the single most widely grown apple in the state, but it’s fallen out of favor with American consumers. Prices have sometimes fallen so low that growers simply discarded part of their harvest. Many potential alternatives, though, have problems of their own. Honeycrisp is loved by consumers but is difficult to grow. Many other hot new apples, like Opal or Jazz, are only available to small clubs of growers. Cosmic Crisp, though, is open to every farmer in Washington state. The tree is vigorous and produces lots of fruit. Also, it’s ready for harvest at that same time as Red Delicious, which is a crucial consideration for   apple growers who are trying to coordinate the harvest of several different varieties. ”You’ve kind of got the best of all worlds,” McDougall says. The man who’s listed on a patent as the inventor of Cosmic Crisp, Bruce Barritt, drove five hours from Canada to see these trees go into the ground. Barritt is 74 years old now. He takes pictures of the newly planted trees like a proud parent. ”They are my children,” he says. ”Just like your kids who are 18 years old, we don’t know a lot about them yet. Four years from now, we’ll know whether they’re the real thing.” Two decades ago, when Barritt was working for Washington State University, he persuaded the university and the state’s apple industry to pay for an effort to create new and tastier apple varieties. ”We knew that it would be about 20 years before we had anything of significance  —   if we were lucky!” he says. He started the work of apple breeding  —   first taking pollen from blossoms of some trees and fertilizing the blossoms of others, creating thousands of new genetic combinations. Then he collected the apples that resulted from this   and grew new little trees from their seeds. He watched those trees produce their own apples, all different from one another. ”Some green ones, some yellow ones, some red ones. Some little ones, some big ones,” Barritt recalls. Barritt says he’d spend days walking those rows, searching for a superior apple. Hundreds of times each day, he’d take a bite. ”Your taste sensors, sugar and acid, kick in, and you’ll either enjoy it or you won’t. And then you spit it out,” he says. He doesn’t remember the day in 1997 when he took a bite of an apple from the tree that was labeled WA 38. But it must have made a good impression because he and his colleagues kept it around. It’s still there, in a research orchard near Wenatchee. Most of the orchard is filled with rows of young seedlings, the latest products of Washington state’s breeding program. At the far end of the orchard, though, stands the original WA 38 ”mother tree.” Every one of the millions of Cosmic Crisp trees now growing in orchards and nurseries is a clone of this tree. Barritt and his colleagues duplicated it the   way, cutting buds from its branches and splicing, or grafting, those buds onto existing apple tree roots. The buds grew into new WA 38 trees. For almost two decades, people in the apple industry studied those trees, tasting the apples. The more they learned, the more they liked it. Tom Auvil, who worked for the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, says that when they took boxes of different varieties to events with apple growers, it was the box of WA 38 that got cleaned out. ”This happened every year,” he says. ”We never bring any WA 38 home.” Auvil says the apple has that   crisp, cracking sensation when you bite into it. It has sweetness and acid almost a sensory overload for your tongue. Washington state hired a private company to handle the commercial launch of the new apple. They named it Cosmic Crisp because the apple’s flecks of yellow reminded someone of stars in the sky. Farmers finally got a chance to plant these trees in their own orchards this spring. For now, it’s only available to farmers in Washington, since they helped support the breeding program that created it. The flood of orders has astonished almost everybody in the industry. In fact, it’s provoking some anxiety. After all, consumers haven’t even seen Cosmic Crisp yet. Nobody really knows if they’ll like it. Tom Auvil, who’s been a Cosmic Crisp booster, calls the wave of orders ”just an amazing level of investment. I just hope somebody doesn’t drive up my driveway and say, ’You got me into this, now get me out of it!’ ” A few years from now, when stores are full of Cosmic Crisp apples, those farmers will find out whether this was a smart bet."
"Racist hate speech on campus has become the de facto litmus test for free speech protections today. But racist hate speech may not be doing what progressive free speech defenders think it is doing. Last week in Wisconsin, Republican legislators sought support for ”The Campus Free Speech Act,” a bill that would punish University of Wisconsin System students and employees who disrupt or otherwise inhibit the free expression of invited speakers. The bill was introduced in response to a series of student protests across the country that interrupted scheduled talks by conservative speakers, including one given by   editor Ben Shapiro at the University of   last November. The bill requires the UW System to discipline those who engage in ”violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, obscene, unreasonably loud, or other disorderly conduct” deemed to violate a speaker’s right to free speech. Students could face suspension or even expulsion for repeat offenses, penalties Larry Dupuis, legal director for   calls ”unnecessarily draconian.” Although this bill takes objection to disruptive student protesters to the extreme, public support for students who would shout down the speech of others has been noticeably thin. This is true even if the speech is overtly racist, like that of white supremacist Richard Spencer, who visited Auburn University last month. Ulrich Baer, a vice provost at New York University, came out forcefully in support of student protesters, but his opinion occupies a distinctly minority position. Even voices expressly opposed to the messages of those like Spencer have advocated locating racist hate speech at the outer bounds of free speech protections  —   a necessary but repugnant fact of democratic life. In a recent blog entitled ”We All Need to Defend Speech We Hate,” ACLU attorney Lee Rowland argues that preempting or shouting over racist hate speech amounts to nothing less than censorship: Our Constitution protects hateful speech, yes  —   but on the theory that truly free speech means the best ideas will win out. We need students trained to really listen to ideas they hate  —   and respond with better ones. . .. When you choose censorship as your substantive argument, you lose the debate. Because none of us are the wiser about the better world those protesting students want to see  —   instead of telling us, they silenced others. In curricular terms: They didn’t do the assignment. Rowland’s rhetoric borrows from a familiar metaphor used to frame free speech debates  —   the   ”marketplace of ideas.” Censorship is not the answer, the story goes, but more speech  —   better speech  —   is the proper response to racist hate speech. Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison have both cosigned this approach as have prominent national opinion writers. The logic of this metaphor is that the public, as objective consumers, will reliably reject a shoddy product  —   here, the snake oil of racist expression. Critiques of the metaphor as it applies to free speech debates are almost as old as the metaphor itself, and a recent one contextualizes it in light of recent campus speech clashes. To these, I add the question of whether we are so sure that the rhetoric of common humanity and rights for all races will prevail. What if it doesn’t, at least not anytime soon? It might mean that racist hate speech is not a ”necessary evil” that jumpstarts racial justice within a liberal marketplace but is  —   for the foreseeable future  —   nothing more than   injury of people of color. Critical race theorists Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic addressed this possibility in a 1992 Cornell Law Review article entitled ”Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture: Can Free Expression Remedy Systemic Social Ills.” They coin a term for the erroneous belief that ”good” antiracist speech is the best remedy for ”bad” racist speech: the ”empathic fallacy.” The empathic fallacy is the conviction ”that we can somehow control our consciousness despite limitations of time and positionality . .. and that we can enlarge our sympathies through linguistic means alone.” In other words, the empathic fallacy leads us to believe that ”good” speech begets racial justice and that we will be able to tell the difference between it and racist hate speech because we are distanced, objective arbiters. The romantic aura of transformative antiracist speech captivates us. It is comforting to think that the message of love in Martin Luther King’s 1963 ”I Have a Dream” speech vanquished the hate behind Alabama governor George Wallace’s ”Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” address delivered earlier that year. In hindsight, it was a total mismatch. It is almost as if King’s words disappeared firehoses and attack dogs by their very utterance. Yet last week in Alabama, a US district judge granted the request of a   suburb to secede from a   county  —   despite acknowledging that the community’s rationale is racist. ”Bad” speech prevailed in the judge’s marketplace. The ”marketplace of ideas” fails when we cannot make objective choices about racism. ”Racism is woven into the warp and woof of the way we see and organize the world  —   it is one of the many preconceptions we bring to experience and use to construct and make sense of our social world,” write Delgado and Stefancic. ”Racism forms part of the dominant narrative, the group of received understandings and basic principles that form the baseline from which we reason.” They argue that this lack of objectivity explains how overtly racist caricatures from the 19th century were not received as negatively as they are now: ”Uncle Tom” and ”mammy” figures, for instance, connoted family loyalty more than racial oppression. Today, school segregation is never about racism but about ”local control” and wanting the best for your child. Once symbolic depictions depart from the obviously grotesque, the question of whether they are racist is up for debate and not likely to be settled anytime soon. It can take centuries for a society to reach consensus that an image or narrative is demonstrably racist. The     affair between Southern states and the Confederate battle flag reveals just how slowly racial justice moves in this regard. Despite evidence that its revival as a symbol of white supremacy coincided with the Civil Rights Movement, the flag means only ”tradition” and ”heritage” to its supporters. In 2016, discussion of a problematic poll revealed that attitudes toward the Washington professional football team’s mascot are wildly inconsistent. Until we critically examine how our opinion of the mascot is a function of our own social conditioning  —   like celebrating Columbus Day, being a lifelong sports fan, having no American Indian friends  —   we can never be objective consumers of ideas about it. In the meantime, racist hate speech flows unabated because of our faith in a flawed metaphor. The marketplace is further gamed by ”dog whistles”  —   code word replacements for overtly racist speech that still aim to stoke white resentment over the social mobility of people of color. When the sitting attorney general dismisses the ruling of a court because it resides on ”an island in the Pacific,” he invents yet another way to signal which groups count in America and which ones don’t. And if a racist idea like this one ever flops in the marketplace, its author simply recalls it by saying he was joking. Beyond the fact that there is little agreement over what is racist, the potential of speech to ennoble is undermined by the marketplace as postmodern spectacle. In a recent article, author Rich Benjamin recounts his experiences as the   ”  pundit” on Fox’s   O’Reilly Factor. Benjamin explains that he took this role for the chance of convincing just a fraction of O’Reilly’s immense audience of the worthiness of his ideas. However, he reveals just how strategic he needed to be to avoid being bullied and misrepresented by O’Reilly. ”In the   ethos of O’Reilly’s   universe,” Benjamin writes, ”the more you battered its poster boy with   punches, the more ferocious the vitriol directed at you.” In the marketplace of cable news and social media, torrents of racist emails and tweets reward you for your bright ideas. A   ago when Delgado and Stefancic published their theory of the empathic fallacy, they speculated that the infamous Willie Horton ad tipped a presidential election because voters could not view the ad objectively. We now know that racism was the primary motivation for voters who put Donald Trump in the White House. We know that the best ideas of Gold Star father Khizr Khan at the Democratic National Convention were no match for fearmongering rumors about refugees from Syria and immigrants from Mexico. We know that after almost 100 days of Trump’s presidency, only two percent of those who voted for him regret it. This might mean they don’t see his speech as racist or don’t care if it is. If we argue that racist hate speech must be protected, we have to account for the empathic fallacy. We can start by admitting that this position is based on the troubling belief that it is one’s right to be hateful  —   and not on the comforting belief that hate is a catalyst for racial justice in a ”marketplace of ideas.” Better than ever, we know how specious that logic is. We can understand that student protesters may not, in fact, long for their First Amendment rights should the tables turn on them. Law professor Charles Lawrence has argued that civil rights activists in the sixties achieved substantive gains only when they exceeded the acceptable bounds of the First Amendment, only when they disrupted ”business as usual.” Racist hate speech has come to emblemize free speech protections because the parties it injures lack social power. Students of color are expected to endure insults to their identities at the same time that celebrities win   dollar defamation settlements and media companies scrupulously guard their intellectual property against plagiarism. The belief that more speech is the remedy for ”bad” speech can be a principled stance. But for the stance to be principled, it must account for why the target of racist hate speech is less deserving of exemption than, say, the millionaire with a reputation to protect from libel, or the community flooded with   material, or the deep state with a dark secret. Some exemptions make good sense. But does an obscene photograph of an adult that ”lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” (as defined in Miller v. California, the current law of the land regarding obscenity) really do more harm than a lecture promoting white supremacy? American society fixates on antiracist protest when debating the First Amendment for the same reason it fixates on race when debating affirmative action: because of the perception that people of color are somehow undeserving of special privileges. Yet it was supporting the rights of people of color that got Desiree Fairooz arrested in January for laughing during the Senate confirmation hearing of   general nominee Jeff Sessions. This week, the Department of Justice moved forward with her prosecution, along with those of two men who had mocked Sessions with fake Ku Klux Klan robes. In March, the Human Rights Council of the UN published a letter expressing alarm at the number of legislative efforts criminalizing peaceful assembly and expression in the US. Powerful interests will find their way around the First Amendment to protect the status quo against antiracist protest. Asking student protesters to tolerate racist hate speech is to ask them to trust in free speech laws that have historically exempted the powerful and punished the vulnerable. When it comes to racism, the ”marketplace of ideas” is not   and never was. David Shih is an associate professor of English at the University of   Claire. Follow him @ProfessorShih."
"Of all the wild places along the U. S.  border, Big Bend National Park, named for the great curve of the Rio Grande, is the gem. In Santa Elena Canyon in west Texas, the international river flows between    sheer walls of limestone  —   a study in light, shadow, water and time. The Big Bend region  —   where the ghostly Chisos Mountains rise out of the prickly Chihuahuan Desert  —   is sacred ground. As writer Marion Winik described, it’s ”what I imagine the mind of God looks like.” President Trump’s executive order calls for an impregnable wall along the border, which includes 118 miles of river shared by the national park and Mexico. But in a rare show of unity, Democrats and Republicans and city and rural officeholders in Texas don’t want the wall built through here. Critics say it would be unsightly and prohibitively expensive, it would harm wildlife and that it’s superfluous considering how the unforgiving terrain is a natural barrier. Trump has vowed to forge ahead with his border wall despite opposition. His administration plans to select a prototype this summer and hopes to convince Congress to fund it next fiscal year. The administration also acknowledges the wall won’t cross all 2, 000 miles, though specific plans haven’t been released yet. ”I would like to invite President Trump or any of his cabinet to come down here. I’ll give ’em a free trip on the river, and they can see how unnecessary a wall would be here and the construction and everything involved to create it would just be the worst thing you could ever do,” says Charlie Angell, a local outfitter who runs river trips up the canyon. ”You might as well take away the park if that happens.” Whiskered and   he stands under a rock ledge, his red canoe beached a short distance away. ”I’ve got the boats, I’ve got the paddles and life jackets. We’ll give [the president] a free lunch. Get out here and see. That way you can cross this area of the border off the list,” he says. Even Border Patrol agents are against a wall out here. ”For us, we’re not pressing the actual     wall here. That’s not our objective,” says Lee Smith, a career agent and local union president. ”We’ve told everyone from the [Trump] transition team to the current administration, for us here locally in Big Bend, what we need is [more] manpower.” While Smith is interviewed in the breakfast room of a motel on Highway 90, a retired electrician from Cleveland eavesdrops from another table. Dave Wickam is just passing through on his Harley  —   but everybody has an opinion on Trump’s border barrier. Wickam believes an ugly wall, installed as a quick political fix, would scar the land in perpetuity. ”People will build stuff but . .. they never tear it down and restore it,” he says. ”It’ll be like Hadrian’s Wall in England going across there, but it won’t be pretty.” ’Something . .. even greater than the wall’ Customs and Border Protection has identified sectors in San Diego, Calif. Tucson, Ariz. El Paso, Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley as places where a new wall is needed, but not this lonesome corner of Texas. Along the entire border, the Big Bend sector has had the fewest apprehensions of illegal crossers every year for the past 44 years. Albert and Bill Miller run black angus cattle on ranches that cover an area more than twice the size of Manhattan. Albert Miller knows how hard it is for an immigrant to even reach his land. ”They’re already crossing 10 miles of inhospitable country and climbing a   cliff,” he says, his pickup parked in a pasture of bluestem grass about 10 miles from the Rio Grande. He thinks Trump’s ”big, beautiful wall” is pointless out here. ”I can’t see that it’s going to add anything to the barrier already in place with just the land and the mountains,” Miller says. ”These guys that are comin’ they’re crossin’ something . .. even greater than the wall.” The National Park Service declined to comment on the wall. Big Bend’s wildlife biologist, Raymond Skiles, only agrees to talk about some of the park’s   residents: mountain lion, black bear, bighorn sheep and a rare,   creature called the   coati. These mammals range back and forth across the Rio Grande to forage and keep their gene pools healthy. Moreover, Skiles says, in this arid environment they need to be able to get to the river. ”The Rio Grande is also the park’s most important water source for animals,” he says. ”It’s as simple as that.” In February, the Commissioners Court of Brewster County, which encompasses the national park, passed a resolution deeming the wall is unnecessary. This county that voted for Trump concluded it wouldn’t make them any safer. ”I’m a Brewster County native,” says commissioner Betse Esparza. ”To imagine a wall in the midst of that landscape, which is beautiful. This is God’s country. It’s really unimaginable. I don’t want to think about it.” These naysayers may get a reprieve. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told Bloomberg TV, ”There are places we probably won’t build a wall,” and one of them is Big Bend."
"There’s a decent chance you  —   or someone you know  —   just got an odd email inviting you to edit a document in Google Docs. The email could be from a stranger, a colleague or a friend, but it’s addressed to a contact that boasts a whole string of H’s in its name. In other words, it looks a little something like this: Or, if you’re looking at the invite in Gmail, it likely looks more like this: Either of these look familiar to you? Here’s a handy tip: Don’t open the link. Those invitations aren’t what they seem. They are in fact malicious files intended to hijack recipients’ accounts  —   and Google advises its users not to open them. ”We have taken action to protect users against an email impersonating Google Docs, and have disabled offending accounts,” a Google spokesperson says in a statement emailed to NPR. ”We’ve removed the fake pages, pushed updates through Safe Browsing,” the statement continues, ”and our abuse team is working to prevent this kind of spoofing from happening again. We encourage users to report phishing emails in Gmail.” If this public service announcement has reached you too late and you’re now staring in despair at an already opened link, Vice’s Motherboard explains what to do next: ”If you have clicked on the link, go to your Google account’s page (https:  . google. ) where you can manage the permissions you’ve granted to apps (or go through the whole Google Security Checkup). Then locate the ’Google Doc’ app. This looks totally legitimate, but it’s actually not. If that’s the malicious app that’s gotten access to your account after you clicked on the link it should have a recent ’Authorization Time.’ Now, click on that Google Docs app and click ’Remove.’ ” And, in case it helps, know at least that you’re not alone. Many people  —   especially journalists  —   reported receiving these invites Wednesday afternoon. Enough people, in fact, that the hashtag #PhishingScam began trending on Twitter and email inboxes clogged with nearly as many warnings about the scam as instances of the scam itself. So, once you successfully delete that phishy email  —   or take steps to remove its gnarled claws from your hapless inbox  —   you can take comfort in the fact that, no matter what ails you, Twitter has some snark to cure it."
"In the midst of the current debate about fabricated facts, the former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer launched a new website, USAFacts. org, where people can go to check the numbers for themselves. The site is mainly devoted to government spending and revenue, offering a wealth of data on many fronts, including analysis on the effectiveness of different programs. The initiative is definitely welcome, given the widespread suspicion of what the government does and where the money goes. Many people get weary of paying taxes not knowing why, exactly. Of course, even if the website promises ”factual and unbiased” data, without making ”judgments or prescrib[ing] specific policies,” any data display involves choices, a point made by Wired. As Ballmer says in his TEDx talk, ”numbers are a tool to tell a story.” More importantly, it is how people interpret the numbers that makes the story, not the numbers by themselves. For example, searching for ”Crime and Police” you find the number of arrests from 1980 (10, 458, 260) to 2013 (11, 303, 198) while ”violent crime rate per 100, 000 persons” goes from 596. 6 (1980) to 372. 6 (2015). The numbers tell a story. Violent crime rates are definitely lower. Why? Here’s where the interpretations would come in. A   narrative cannot be separated from who’s telling it. Even the choice of topics, what makes the ”headlines,” reflects editorializing and consumer trends. Meanwhile, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is   his new venture, Wikitribune. com, deemed ”  journalism” in a new kind of   news platform that brings journalists and a community of supporters together. ”The news is broken and we can fix it,” says Wales in his intro video. Wales contends quite convincingly that the whole   social media structure is ”designed to keep people clicking at all costs, confirming biases, showing what people want to see.” The idea is that a community of volunteers will reliably protect the integrity of information, a concept based on the enormous success of Wikipedia. In this model, anyone can upload an article, that will then be   by professionals and by readers. Wales contends that Wikitribune. com will be the gatekeeper of the Internet. As with Wikipedia entries, every story will be a permanent ongoing project, open to editing. I imagine Wales and his team are aware of potential pitfalls. For example, a perverse entry with distorted facts and biased opinions may take a while to be detected. Unless the gatekeepers act fast, countless readers may be sold on believing what they read before the text is fixed. By then, social media may be exploding with distorted news that is supposed to be trustworthy. Trolls need to be banned. I’m curious to see how articles on climate change, for example, will be controlled. As in philosophy, there is no ”view from nowhere” in journalism. Journalists are people with personal views and they must work to ensure those don’t invade their work. But how one journalist reports and writes a story may surely differ from another. What angle one takes or what information one focuses on could diverge. And, of course, readers come with their own baggage of social values and prejudices. The same news will impact people in different ways. We must, indeed, fight against the trivialization and distortion of the news and the rampant downgrading of expertise we see on the Internet, and USAFacts. com and Wikitribune. com are absolutely worthy initiatives. But we must not forget that every story is told by an individual in her own way, and that it is heard by another individual in her own way, as well. Even a   narrative cannot be separated from who’s telling it  —   and from who’s hearing it. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"Updated 2:10 p. m. ET, The Senate approved the bipartisan $1. 1 trillion spending bill that funnels money to nearly every corner of the federal government and keeps it running through the end of the current fiscal year in September. The House approved the measure on Wednesday, and it now goes to President Trump for his signature. The vote caps weeks of tense negotiations between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. Democrats  —   whose votes are needed to pass the   spending legislation  —   wielded their political leverage to elevate their interests while scuttling some of the Trump administration’s priorities. For instance, the spending bill includes no money for President Trump’s   Southern border wall, although it provides $1. 5 billion for increased border security and work on existing border infrastructure. While the bill meets Trump’s request to boost defense spending  —   $15 billion will be added to funding for the military  —   it also keeps intact money for   ”sanctuary cities” that do not comply with federal immigration laws. The spending legislation also secures funding for Planned Parenthood. Abortion opponents have long targeted that group for federal funding cuts. What’s more, Democratic and Republican lawmakers rejected the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate money for federal arts programs in the measure. The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities each get $150 million in funding. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is also spared from cuts. (Public radio stations receive annual grants directly from the CPB.) Democrats claim a legislative win, Democrats on Capitol Hill hailed the spending bill as a legislative victory. ”I think we had a strategy and it worked,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told The Washington Post Monday. ”Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate were closer to one another than Republicans were to Donald Trump.” Trump pushed back Tuesday as the Democrats celebrated. He characterized the legislation as an ”under the radar” win for Republicans during a Rose Garden speech honoring the U. S. Air Force Academy football team. Trump cited, in part, the increases in defense spending and border security included in the bill. ”And we didn’t do any touting like the Democrats did, by the way,” he added. Trump pushes for a change in Senate rules, Earlier Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter to do a bit of damage control. He criticized Senate rules that elevated Democrats’ bargaining position during the negotiations. For his part, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday dismissed Trump’s suggestion to do scrap the Senate’s filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation. ”We are not going to do that,” he told reporters. Senate Republicans did scrap it for Supreme Court nominations to approve Justice Neil Gorsuch last month. Democrats had done away with it for other executive and judicial branch appointments in 2013. The Senate is expected to vote on the spending bill Thursday, quickly sending it to the president’s desk for a signature. While Trump is expected to sign this bill, the White House has vowed that a much bigger battle is coming ahead of the effort to fund the federal government for 2018, and funding for a border wall will be a flash point."
"The design for the Obama Presidential Center was unveiled Wednesday at an event attended by former President Obama and Michelle Obama. The Center, slated to be completed in 2021, will be located in the Jackson Park neighborhood of Chicago’s South side and it will include three buildings  —   a museum, forum and library that surround a public plaza. The buildings will be made up of variegated stone with glass openings to allow for natural light and be certified at LEED v4 Platinum for resource efficiency and sustainability. The Obamas are in Chicago Wednesday to unveil the library and host a roundtable discussion on the future of the Center. By planning more than one building, the Obama Foundation says it hopes the Center will be a ”living, working center for engagement  —   an ongoing project for the community and world to shape what it means to be an active citizen in the 21st century.” ”The Obamas want to create a safe, warm, inviting place that brings people in, teaches them something new, and inspires them to create change in their own communities,” said Obama Foundation Chair Marty Nesbitt. ”The Center will be a place for doing, not just looking or listening, ” The Foundation also says the Center will ”strengthen the economic climate of the community by bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to the South Side every year, creating new jobs and opportunities on the South Side, and revitalizing historic Jackson Park,” according to a release. Obama reportedly called early versions of the design ”too quiet.” ”He said it was too unflashy,” one of the Center’s architects Billie Tsien told ArchDaily. ”He looked at what we did and he said, ’I said you could be sort of quiet, but I think you’re a little too quiet. ’”"
"You really have to go out of your way to get to the 14th Factory, a new   art space in the industrial area of Lincoln Heights, east of downtown Los Angeles. It’s housed in an enormous building the size of a Costco warehouse and it sits across the street from an old, abandoned city jail.  The first of many gallery spaces you enter is almost pitch black. When your eyes adjust, you see giant metal shards that look like an asteroid has imploded. At the center, you step inside an almost blindingly bright white room and find yourself in the bedroom from the final scene of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Light floods in from the floorboards. There are knickknacks, pieces of neoclassical furniture and paintings on the wall. And there’s the bed where, in the movie, astronaut Dave Bowman lies down as an old man and transforms into a star baby. ”It’s such a perfect symbol and metaphor for the entire project,” says artist Simon Birch, the man responsible for the unusual, immersive experience that is the 14th Factory. Birch is a tall, lanky Brit and a big   fan. He says he always wanted to recreate that Kubrick set, but it took a stroke of luck to make it happen. All the models and props from 2001 had been destroyed under Kubrick’s orders, so Birch asked his architect friend Paul Kember to rebuild the set for him. ”Paul got up from the table with a smile on his face,” Birch recalls. ”He says, ’I don’t need to watch the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey to work out the dimensions of that room. I just need to call my uncle Tony.’ He says, ’Well, my uncle Tony just happened to be Stanley Kubrick’s chief   set designer and built that original room.’ ” Not Your Traditional Museum Experience, The 2001 room and other 14th Factory installations have captivated visitors. ”It’s wild,” says John Di Maina. His wife, Susan Di Maina, adds, ”The white room was sort of disorienting.” Visitor Scott Meisse describes the experience as ”otherworldly.” His    daughter Scarlett Meisse says, ”It felt like it came out of a dream. . .. It was very surreal.” Other installations by Birch and his collaborators (architects, filmmakers and multimedia artists) include a room of pitchforks hanging down overhead, giant screens with slow motion images of acrobats, and footage of a horde of Chinese men punching each other. In one room, you’re surrounded by videos of Hong Kong apartments the camera tracks up and down the towers, making you it feel as though you’re floating. ”It’s not like a traditional museum, that’s for sure,” Birch says. ”It’s the exhibition I’d want to go to.” Each room is a distinct experience. At the center of the factory, there’s a green lawn with a crater and swings hanging from the ceiling. Another video space projects multiple angles of Birch’s red Ferrari getting into a car crash, with parts of the wreckage on display. One room contains a ceremonially arranged series of crowns and meteoroids. And finally, an outdoor courtyard holds 40 salvaged airplane tails that have been planted in a pool, like an aircraft boneyard. An Unknown, Guerrilla Pirate Renegade, Birch came out of obscurity to create the 14th Factory. ”Nobody’s ever heard of me or the project, so it’s a weird paradigm from the ground up,” he says. ”And I suppose I’m a weird artist. I’m not trained I didn’t go to art school. I actually come from a very rough background.” Birch grew up in a violent neighborhood in the English Midlands, where he was a club bouncer and DJ known for throwing raves. He eventually made his way to Hong Kong to work in construction. In his spare time, he picked up a paintbrush.  ”I used to paint my mates I worked with [who were] Chinese gangsters covered in tattoos, so quite realist, figurative work,” Birch recalls. ”And that led to sort of wealthy people commissioning me to paint them in my style. So I started sort of doing portraits for heads of the big banks.” Birch was getting solo and group shows when, eight years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live. He survived, and began working on the 14th Factory. Red tape and logistics were too difficult in Hong Kong and New York, so when he found a 150, 000 square foot space in LA, he sunk everything he had into it. ”As an unknown group of guerrilla pirate renegades doing this massive project, we have no money. I have no money,” he says. ”I started selling everything I owned, sold everything. So I now have one suitcase of clothes. That’s my life.” Birch says the 14th Factory will stay open as long as people keep coming and donating money  —   right now, at least until the end of May."
"A deadline is fast approaching for Republican lawmakers who want to undo an   regulation that aims to limit the emissions of methane  —   a powerful greenhouse gas  —   from energy production sites on public lands. The oil and gas industry is lobbying lawmakers to permanently repeal the rule, as it has other recent environmental regulations, using the Congressional Review Act  —   a legislative tool that not only undoes a regulation, but prevents the federal government from ever implementing a similar rule. There’s a catch, though: Lawmakers only have a set amount of time to use the act. And the deadline to repeal the Bureau of Land Management’s methane rule is widely believed to be next week. New Mexico rancher Don Schreiber is counting down the days. Schreiber is an insurance    but these days he spends most of his time as an advocate for the BLM methane rule, trying to convince lawmakers of its importance. He and his wife live in the San Juan Basin, a   depression in the plains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado that’s at the heart of the methane debate. There are more than 23, 000 active oil and gas wells in the San Juan Basin. Schreiber’s ranch is surrounded by 122 of them. ”We’re never out of sight of a well,” Schreiber says, outside of his home. ”We can often hear a well. And sadly, we can often smell a well.” The smell, he says, is like the paint section of a hardware store  —   gases that are venting or leaking off of well sites near his house. He calls it the smell of ”wasted money.” The Interior Department says that between 2009 and 2015, enough natural gas was lost on public lands to supply about 6. 2 million households with energy for a year. In money terms, the Government Accountability Office says as much as $23 million of potential royalty revenue is lost annually. Some of that is excess or dirty natural gas, hydrocarbons that oil and gas companies can’t sell or don’t have the means to transport. The issue of slow pipeline permitting comes up a lot when talking to oil and gas producers in New Mexico. They say they’d like to transport the natural gas, but can’t because the infrastructure isn’t there. Natural gas that can’t be sold or transported is vented or burnt off in a process called flaring other natural gas leaks from the pipes, storage tanks and other infrastructure that dot the landscape. The Obama administration sought to address the emissions with the BLM’s methane rule. It requires oil and gas companies on federal or tribal lands to look for leaks and fix them. It limits allowable venting and flaring and directs producers to capture the natural gas. And it requires that oil and gas producers gradually update well sites with modern technology. The administration’s reasons were twofold: For one, the rule would reduce waste of a natural resource being pulled from public lands. The second: Methane, the chief component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. It can warm the atmosphere at nearly 30 times the rate of carbon dioxide. And scientists say the amount of it in Earth’s atmosphere is increasing. When she announced the rule in late 2016,   Secretary Sally Jewell said that federal efforts to limit methane emissions, ”is good government, plain and simple.” The oil and gas industry felt differently. Western Energy Alliance has called the rule an executive overreach and redundant, because some states already had methane rules in effect. The American Petroleum Institute has made a repeal of the rule a top priority. Tom Mullins, the president of the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico and the owner of a small   oil and gas company, says the rule is unnecessary and unfairly targets operators like himself, who rely primarily on public lands. Nearly 70 percent of the active wells in the San Juan Basin are on public lands, according to the Bureau of Land Management’s Farmington District Office. In states like Texas and North Dakota, Mullins says, much of the oil and gas production happens on private lands, where the BLM rule would have no effect. Mullins also believes that the rule is unnecessary because, he says, oil and gas producers already have an economic incentive to capture and sell ”every molecule of methane we can. That’s how we make our money.” Waste makes no more sense from a producer’s side than it does a regulator’s, Mullins says. That’s why they fix leaks when they find them, he says, and replace older equipment with newer, more efficient pieces when it’s time  —   not before. The new equipment, Mullins says, is expensive. The Interior Department estimated that it would cost industry $279 million, at most, to implement the BLM methane rule. But with the price of oil hovering at about $50 a barrel, Mullins says, the math just doesn’t add up. He points to a pair of valve controllers in the training room of the San Juan School of Energy, a facility where new oil and gas workers can get   experience with the equipment they’ll see in the field. One of the valve controllers is older  —   the type you’d see on many of the wells in the San Juan Basin. The other is newer and would bleed less methane in the field. ”If it made economic sense for me to swap this out with the new one versus the old, I would do it because it would pay for itself, right? That would be the logical answer,” he says. ”But I’m telling you that it doesn’t make economic sense for that to be done on these older wells.” Mullins is one of the many oil and gas producers lobbying Congress to repeal the BLM methane rule. He believes that regulation is best left to the states. That doesn’t sit well with some of his neighbors, though. ”Colorado already has a strong rule,” says Gwen Lachelt, a commissioner of nearby La Plata County, Colo. ”And we have a methane cloud the size of Delaware over our region.” Lachelt is referring to satellite image released in 2014 that shows a bright red methane hot spot over the Four Corners region, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah intersect. The photo is often brought up in the methane debate in the area. Supporters of the BLM methane rule use it as proof that the gas needs to be regulated. Detractors of the rule question the photo’s accuracy or attribute high methane levels to natural seepage. Either way, Lachelt says, the photo is a black eye on the region and she believes that methane emissions need to be dealt with. In her view, federal regulation is the most effective way to do it because Colorado’s rule can only go so far. It doesn’t apply to the Southern Ute Tribe, where many of southern Colorado’s oil and gas wells are located. And it doesn’t apply to New Mexico, where Gov. Susana Martinez has been urging federal lawmakers to undo the BLM methane rule. ”In the oil and gas industry, we call that pissing in the pool,” says Wayne Warmack, another Coloradoan who worked in the oil and gas industry for 27 years. ”For them to piss in the pool over there in New Mexico and make us swim in it here is not a good situation and does not make for good neighbors.” Warmack says he understands why the oil and gas industry is hesitant to support regulation. They’ve been burned before, finding out that a problem was bigger than expected. But, he says, requiring industry to capture methane makes sense. Warmack is making his case to the public and his senator, Republican Cory Gardner. Gardner is one of a handful of senators who are still undecided on whether to vote for a repeal of the BLM methane rule using the Congressional Review Act, stalling the repeal process. The Trump administration is preparing a backup plan, directing the Interior Department to review the rule, but that process is expected to take years."
"In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase  —   and segregate  —   America’s housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a ”  system of segregation.” The government’s efforts were ”primarily designed to provide housing to white,      families,” he says.   and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities  —   and pushed instead into urban housing projects. Rothstein’s new book, The Color of Law, examines the local, state and federal housing policies that mandated segregation. He notes that the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near   neighborhoods  —   a policy known as ”redlining.” At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were   entire subdivisions for whites  —   with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to  . Rothstein says these   housing policies have had a lasting effect on American society. ”The segregation of our metropolitan areas today leads . .. to stagnant inequality, because families are much less able to be upwardly mobile when they’re living in segregated neighborhoods where opportunity is absent,” he says. ”If we want greater equality in this society, if we want a lowering of the hostility between police and young   men, we need to take steps to desegregate.” On how the Federal Housing Administration justified discrimination, The Federal Housing Administration’s justification was that if   bought homes in these suburbs, or even if they bought homes near these suburbs, the property values of the homes they were insuring, the white homes they were insuring, would decline. And therefore their loans would be at risk. There was no basis for this claim on the part of the Federal Housing Administration. In fact, when   tried to buy homes in   neighborhoods or in mostly white neighborhoods, property values rose because   were more willing to pay more for properties than whites were, simply because their housing supply was so restricted and they had so many fewer choices. So the rationale that the Federal Housing Administration used was never based on any kind of study. It was never based on any reality. On how federal agencies used redlining to segregate    The term ”redlining” . .. comes from the development by the New Deal, by the federal government of maps of every metropolitan area in the country. And those maps were   by first the Home Owners Loan Corp. and then the Federal Housing Administration and then adopted by the Veterans Administration, and these color codes were designed to indicate where it was safe to insure mortgages. And anywhere where   lived, anywhere where   lived nearby were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages. On the FHA manual that explicitly laid out segregationist policies, It was in something called the Underwriting Manual of the Federal Housing Administration, which said that ”incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities.” Meaning that loans to   could not be insured. In one development . .. in Detroit . .. the FHA would not go ahead, during World War II, with this development unless the developer built a    wall, cement wall, separating his development from a nearby   neighborhood to make sure that no   could even walk into that neighborhood. The Underwriting Manual of the Federal Housing Administration recommended that highways be a good way to separate   from white neighborhoods. So this was not a matter of law, it was a matter of government regulation, but it also wasn’t hidden, so it can’t be claimed that this was some kind of ”de facto” situation. Regulations that are written in law and published . .. in the Underwriting Manual are as much a de jure unconstitutional expression of government policy as something written in law. On the   effects of   being prohibited from buying homes in suburbs and building equity  Today   incomes on average are about 60 percent of average white incomes. But   wealth is about 5 percent of white wealth. Most   families in this country gain their wealth from the equity they have in their homes. So this enormous difference between a 60 percent income ratio and a 5 percent wealth ratio is almost entirely attributable to federal housing policy implemented through the 20th century.   families that were prohibited from buying homes in the suburbs in the 1940s and ’50s and even into the ’60s, by the Federal Housing Administration, gained none of the equity appreciation that whites gained. So . .. the Daly City development south of San Francisco or Levittown or any of the others in between across the country, those homes in the late 1940s and 1950s sold for about twice national median income. They were affordable to   families with an FHA or VA mortgage.   were equally able to afford those homes as whites but were prohibited from buying them. Today those homes sell for $300, 000 [or] $400, 000 at the minimum, six, eight times national median income. . .. So in 1968 we passed the Fair Housing Act that said, in effect, ”OK,   you’re now free to buy homes in Daly City or Levittown” . .. but it’s an empty promise because those homes are no longer affordable to the families that could’ve afforded them when whites were buying into those suburbs and gaining the equity and the wealth that followed from that. The white families sent their children to college with their home equities they were able to take care of their parents in old age and not depend on their children. They’re able to bequeath wealth to their children. None of those advantages accrued to   who for the most part were prohibited from buying homes in those suburbs. On how housing projects went from being for white   and    families to being predominantly black and poor  Public housing began in this country for civilians during the New Deal and it was an attempt to address a housing shortage it wasn’t a welfare program for poor people. During the Depression, no housing construction was going on.   families,   families were losing their homes during the Depression when they became unemployed and so there were many unemployed     white families and this was the constituency that the federal government was most interested in. And so the federal government began a program of building public housing for whites only in cities across the country. The liberal instinct of some Roosevelt administration officials led them to build some projects for   as well, but they were always separate projects they were not integrated. . .. The white projects had large numbers of vacancies black projects had long waiting lists. Eventually it became so conspicuous that the public housing authorities in the federal government opened up the   projects to   and they filled with  . At the same time, industry was leaving the cities,   were becoming poorer in those areas, the projects became projects for poor people, not for   people. They became subsidized, they hadn’t been subsidized before. . .. And so they became vertical slums that we came to associate with public housing. . .. The vacancies in the white projects were created primarily by the Federal Housing Administration program to suburbanize America, and the Federal Housing Administration subsidized mass production builders to create subdivisions that were ” ” and they subsidized the families who were living in the white housing projects as well as whites who were living elsewhere in the central city to move out of the central cities and into these   suburbs. So it was the Federal Housing Administration that depopulated public housing of white families, while the public housing authorities were charged with the responsibility of housing   who were increasingly too poor to pay the full cost of their rent. Radio producers Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner and Web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly   contributed to this story."
"Updated at 3:15 p. m. ET. FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday defended his decision to tell Congress in October that he was revisiting the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey said he believed revisiting the investigation just before the election  —   knowing it could affect the outcome  —   would be really bad, but that not to do so would be catastrophic for the agency’s independence. In retrospect, he said, he still believes he made the right choice. ”Look, this was terrible. It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election. But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision,” he said. Comey’s remarks were his first public comment on his decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation, which came after FBI agents discovered new communications connected to the former secretary of state’s private server. Comey’s letter to congressional leaders informing them of the action was immediately leaked, and Clinton says it contributed to her loss on Election Day. Wednesday’s testimony by Comey came during what was intended to be a routine oversight hearing of the FBI, but was instead dominated by questions relating to investigations surrounding the 2016 campaign. Senators also asked Comey about Russia. He said Russia represents ”the greatest threat of any nation on Earth, given their intention and capability.” He insisted that the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and the possible links between Trump campaign and Russian officials are being treated ”consistently under the same principles” as the Clinton email probe. He said the bureau ”didn’t say a word” about the   probe ”until months into it,” and that he expects ”we’re not gonna say another peep about it until we’re done.” He insisted that was the way the bureau handled the Clinton investigation as well. The repercussions from Comey’s action continue to reverberate across the political spectrum. At a forum in New York on Tuesday, Clinton said Comey’s letter to Congress on Oct. 28 was a factor in her loss to President Trump. ”If the election had been on Oct. 27, I would be your president,” she said, while also putting responsibility for her loss on her own actions. Trump tweeted later Tuesday night that Comey ”was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds.” Comey said being in the middle of  —   if not creating  —   a political firestorm has taken a toll. ”Lordy, has this been painful,” he told committee members. ”I’ve gotten all kinds of rocks thrown at me, and this has been really hard, but I think I’ve done the right thing at each turn.” Comey also disclosed that he has been interviewed by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Office, which is conducing its own investigation into how the FBI handled the Clinton email probe. Comey said he welcomed the review. Comey was asked if he was looking into whether FBI agents may have leaked information about the Clinton investigation. Trump adviser and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said former agents had told him in advance of the reopening of the Clinton email investigation. Comey said if he finds out people leaked information about FBI investigations, ”there will be severe consequences.” He was also asked the difference between journalism, protected under the first amendment, and WikiLeaks. Comey said that to his mind, ”it crosses a line when it moves from being about trying to educate a public and instead just becomes about intelligence porn, frankly, just pushing out information about sources and methods without regard to interests.”"
"A second lawsuit against the Fyre Festival could be a warning for the growing industry of ”grassroots” social media marketing. A putative class action suit filed yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of three festival attendees names the organizers of the festival as well as 100 unknown (Jane) ”Does,” the ”influencers” that made up Fyre’s marketing keystone. As NPR reported yesterday, the   festival’s marketing campaign centered around leveraging the social media profiles of those influencers, an increasingly common form of digital advertising that utilizes models and the   who endlessly document their   lifestyles on Instagram. However, as we noted, the practice has come under increased scrutiny by the FTC, as these profiles promote products without disclosing whether they are profiting or benefitting from doing so (here’s an example from the Fyre Festival promotion that does not make any transaction plain). Yesterday’s suit targets exactly this practice, among other aspects of the festival’s organizational dereliction. The suit seeks to form a class action made up of any and all ticket holders, whether or not they traveled to the dystopian scene on Exuma Island in the Bahamas. It accuses Fyre Media, festival   Billy McFarland,   and rapper Ja Rule and those 100 Does with negligent misrepresentation, fraud, breach of contract for failing to ”provide the festival experience as promised” and for ”misrepresentations” that caused people to purchase tickets. ”Without the widespread and uniform dissemination of the false promise,” people would not have purchased tickets, the complaint reads. It also covers much of the same territory as the first lawsuit brought against the fest: ”Despite knowing for at least a month that there was no viable solution to hosting the Fyre Festival as planned Defendants offered no warning to Plaintiffs that the location they were headed to, or arrived at, would not be able to host an actual music festival.” The FTC has previously brought cases against Warner Bros. Sony and the fashion brand Lord  Taylor over   marketing campaigns, but never against individuals. The FTC declined to comment on the new suit."
"A Bay Area covers band has pulled off the kind of comical mashup that Internet was made for. The duo known as   Ninja found a way to tell the story of Star Wars with the music of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  They’re calling it Princess Leia’s Stolen Death Star Plans. Imagine the opening title cut to the album with these words, ”It was many years ago today, in a galaxy so far away,” and you’ll get the idea. In announcing the project on their website, singer Dan Amrich and keyboardist Jude Kelley say they’ve done lots of parodies before, but nothing this ambitious. ”This whole project comes from a place of deep love and respect, so we had to take the time to do it justice. The final album needed to be high quality, accurate, and entertaining on repeat listenings. Once we settled on merging A New Hope with Sgt. Pepper’s, we completely committed ourselves to turning these two sacred cows into the ultimate double cheeseburger.” The parody mashup comes as Sgt. Pepper’s celebrates its 50th anniversary and Star Wars celebrates its 40th. The Beatles’ album was released June 1, 1967, while Star Wars premiered on May 25, 1977. Watch the entire visual album below."
"They were left on bridges in Paris as tokens of affection. Now thousands of padlocks  —   many with lovers’ names and messages scrawled on them  —   are heading to the auction block. The city of Paris says it’s selling the famous ”love locks” to benefit three charities that aid refugees. The locks are being sold in nearly 200 lots, ranging from small clusters to complete fence grids from the Pont des Arts that weigh more than 1, 000 pounds. To prepare them for sale, they’ve been mounted onto either cobblestone or wooden displays, along with a plaque that identifies their origin. The auction’s appraiser estimates that prices will range from   euros ($ ) for a cluster of padlocks to 000 euros ($5, 450 to $10, 900) for a full portion of a fence. The auction is slated to begin on Saturday, May 13, after three days of being on display at the gallery of the Crédit Municipal de Paris, the city entity that’s handling the sale. Bids can also be made online, although it seems the auction page for the cadenas d’amour is not yet active. The three beneficiaries of the auction are listed as Emmaus Solidarity, the Salvation Army (or, in French, the Fondation de l’Armée du Salut) and Solipam. The auction comes nearly two years after the city of Paris announced a campaign to remove the padlocks from problem areas, saying that the tons of added metal were hurting the integrity of several historic bridges  —   a point that was underlined when a section of one fence fell. Addressing the tourists who were seen as the main ”lockers,” the online No Love Locks campaign urged amorous visitors to say no to vandalism. In place of the fence grids that were once entwined with metallic love tokens, the city has been installing Plexiglas panels. But those have now become a target for graffiti."
"Nigeria’s president hasn’t been seen in public for more than a week and he’s missed his third straight cabinet meeting. That’s got Nigerians wondering what’s going on with his health. Muhammadu Buhari is under increasing pressure to ”disclose the nature of his illness to the nation,” NPR’s Ofeibea   reports. She says some prominent Nigerians are demanding that he take medical leave amid questions about his fitness to govern. The president’s wife, Aisha Buhari, took to Twitter to try to calm the growing health concerns. ”I wish to inform everyone that his health is not as bad as it’s being perceived,” she wrote, adding that her husband ”continues to carry out his responsibilities.” As Ofeibea reported: ”This follows a call by 13 influential civil society leaders for President Buhari to take the time he needs to recover, after seven weeks medical leave in Britain earlier this year. They note an apparent deterioration in his health after Buhari failed to attend the last two cabinet meetings and Friday’s prayers and did not deliver Monday’s annual worker’s day speech.” He missed his third straight cabinet meeting this morning. A tweet from the presidency’s verified Twitter account indicated that the vice president led the meeting. After Buhari returned from medical leave in March, he told reporters that he had never been so sick, according to the BBC. And while he hasn’t revealed his condition, he mentioned receiving blood transfusions, The Associated Press reports. ”The    returned to work in   but often works from home, according to aides,” according to the AP. ”The uncertainty over Buhari’s health has raised fears of instability in Africa’s most populous nation and one of its top oil producers.”"
"It’s been more than a month since Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, traveled to London on what was billed as two weeks’ vacation  —   with routine medical  . He hasn’t been back home since. His government says the    is in good health. But many Nigerians are not convinced and wonder whether their president is gravely ill  —   or worse. Buhari’s long absence comes amid Nigeria’s worst economic crisis in years and other pressing national problems, including a famine in the northeast, the region badly hit by extremist Boko Haram violence. So reports this week that Buhari called the governor of northern Kano State, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, during a Muslim prayer meeting, and that their conversation was shared on speaker phone with worshipers, caused a stir. It’s hard to identify Buhari’s voice during the brief conversation in Hausa, the northern Nigerian lingua franca, that was posted online. No matter, say his supporters and subordinates. The president is alive and well, they insist. There was applause at the prayer session when the Kano governor reportedly told the president everyone was praying for him. Buhari expressed his gratitude.  Yet concerns remain. All that’s been officially said about Buhari’s health is that he has had a persistent ear infection, for which he sought treatment in Britain last year  —   and was away for a while. Speculation is rife that Buhari may be suffering from prostate cancer, memory loss, kidney illness or a plethora of other possible ailments. ”Hale and hearty” is the very British expression Nigerian officials have been repeating about the president’s health. Information Minister Lai Mohammed was on message when he told NPR this week, ”In his own words, there’s no cause for alarm, he’s well. He’s hale and hearty. He just has to do more tests.” But Nigerians just want Buhari back home  —   to govern. For now, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is serving as acting president in Africa’s biggest economy, a major crude oil exporter and the continent’s most populous nation. Buhari had what Nigeria’s officials described as a cordial telephone conversation with President Donald Trump earlier this month, so he must be able to work, Nigerians say. If not, some social media posts say, the president must declare whether he is still fit to govern the country  —   and resign if he’s incapacitated. Meanwhile, Nigerian officials have been posting photographs of Buhari looking gaunt as he receives visitors in London. Questioned about the president’s current health status, and his Feb. 5 request from London to Nigeria’s parliament for extended medical leave, presidential spokesman Femi Adesina told a news conference this week: ”The president wants Nigerians to know that he appreciates their prayers, he appreciates their concerns, he appreciates their goodwill. And he has added that there is really no cause to worry.” Buhari wrote to lawmakers that he would remain in Britain ”until doctors are satisfied that certain factors are ruled out.” Adesina added that Buhari said his doctors had prescribed additional rest. Nigerians needs to trust the president, Adesina said. ”Let us learn to believe our leaders,” he said. ”This was a man we elected into office and he says no cause to worry. Let’s believe him.” Prominent Nigerian lawyer and scholar Chidi Anselm Odinkalu is among those voicing doubts. He says it’s the government who should trust the people enough to tell them what’s going on with their president. ”Subterfuge has been used to manage this situation,” Odinkalu says. ”The inability to trust the people who, by the way, trusted you enough to give you a vote to rule over them, is beyond squalid.” Odinkalu says Buhari’s absence alarms Nigerians because the country is in economic stasis, the naira currency in   and Nigeria is grappling with a famine. The famine threatens the lives of hundreds of children in the northeast, the home of the deadly,   Boko Haram insurgency. There are also militant rumblings in the restive,   Niger Delta. Influential global newspapers have published critical editorials about Buhari’s prolonged absence. Nigeria’s leader is ”missing in action,” wrote a commentator in Britain’s Financial Times. ”The tragedy of Nigeria is that   has been so ponderous . .. since Mr. Buhari took office that, dead or alive, it is not always easy to tell the difference.” Odinkalu, the lawyer, says it seems as if Buhari is abandoning Nigeria, but ”Would a president who is responsible take off from his country and go and live in another country just to take a break?” So why, chides Odinkalu, is Buhari’s team not being frank with Nigerians about the state of his health? ”It is either you’re suggesting that Nigerians are terribly stupid or that President Buhari is irresponsible,” he says. ”I don’t think President Buhari is irresponsible and I don’t think Nigerians are stupid. So the people around him should simply square with Nigerians and say our president is unwell and needs time to manage his health. Now why is that so difficult?” Nigerians have been here before. Ailing former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua stayed abroad on sick leave for months before returning home to die in office in 2010. Nigerians ask whether this is déjà vu or if there might be a timeline for Buhari’s return to Nigeria. ”When it is time for him to come,” responds presidential spokesman Femi Adesina, ”he will communicate the date and the time.” Many Nigerians  —   who have to make do with their country’s dilapidated health service while wealthy compatriots seek medical care overseas  —   are not satisfied with that answer."
"”Let’s show the world what it looks like to be a woman who works,” says Ivanka Trump,   and chic, looking into the camera. She looks good, this woman who works. It’s 2014. She gives a little smile, and a shake of her gently waved blond hair, and the screen fades to the serifed logo of her brand. Trump’s new book shares a name and a mission with her company’s marketing campaign: Women Who Work. Organized into sections with titles like ”Dream Big” and ”Make Your Mark,” Women Who Work is a sea of blandities, an extension of that 2014 commercial seeded with ideas lifted (”curated,” she calls it) from various     authors. Reading it feels like eating scented cotton balls. ”My company was not just meeting the lifestyle needs of today’s modern professional woman with versatile,   products,” Trump writes, undermining the care she has taken in interviews to avoid appearing as if she’s using her position to promote her brand. ”It was celebrating those needs, at a price point she could afford.” Ostensibly a business guide for women, Women Who Work is a long simper of a book, full of advice so anodyne (”I believe that we each get one life and it’s up to us to live it to the fullest”) you could almost scramble the sentences and come out with something just as coherent. In spite of this formlessness, there are distinct, revealing moments here. ”Gather wisdom from others” is one of Trump’s cornerstones, and that is truly the rock on which she has built her church  —   at one point she calls writing ”wordsmithing pieces of content,” a precious phrase that elides the distinctions between writing, editing, and borrowing. ”I’ve curated my best thinking, as well as that of so many others, in the pages of this book,” she writes (wordsmiths?) and what she means is that she rehashes her previous writings and borrows heavily from lifestyle gurus and corporate feminist authors like Sheryl Sandberg, while simultaneously claiming Women Who Work offers something radically new, ”a hopeful, more authentic alternative to the way work has worked previously.” Though there is an extensive bibliography, she’s often vague about exactly how much she has taken. But almost any idea, upon investigation, has someone else’s work behind it. So it is for obvious reasons that the criticism leveled at Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In  —   that it was written for rich white women only  —   applies to this book as well. Invisible hands  —   nannies, drivers, security, and other paid help  —   make Trump’s lifestyle possible, but barely get a mention. In one of the rare references to her household staff, she writes, ”Some of my best photos of the kids were taken by my nanny during the day (I’m sure in ten years I’ll convince myself I took them! ).” ”[P]assion,” she writes elsewhere, ”combined with perseverance, is a great equalizer, more important than education or experience in achieving your version of success.” If only the poor were more passionate. Trump’s lack of awareness, plus a habit of skimming from her sources, often results in spectacularly misapplied quotations  —   like one from Toni Morrison’s Beloved about the brutal psychological scars of slavery. ”Freeing yourself was one thing claiming ownership of that freed self was another,” is positioned in cute   capitals (and tagged #itwisewords) before a chapter on ”working smarter.” In it, she asks: ”Are you a slave to your time or the master of it? Despite your best intentions, it’s easy to be reactive and get caught up in returning calls, attending meetings, answering   . ..” In a section called ”Staking Your Claim,” she writes, ”Simply put, staking your claim means declaring something your own. Early in our country’s history, as new territories were acquired or opened  —   particularly during the gold rush  —   a citizen could literally put a stake in the ground and call the land theirs. The land itself, and everything on it, legally became that person’s property.” Over and over again, Trump’s message is: Take whatever you can get, and then print your name on it. Many of the inspiring quotations Trump stakes a claim to here seem to have been culled from apocryphal inspiration memes. For instance, on the subject of asking for a raise, she quotes another black women writing on racism, Maya Angelou: ”Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.” But the real, very different line is from Angelou’s memoir The Heart of a Woman, and it is a piece of advice about living in a racist world. ”Ask for what you want,” Angelou’s mother tells her, ”and be prepared to pay for what you get.” At least she doesn’t tag that one #itwisewords, too,  —   I. T. standing, of course, for Ivanka Trump."
"Ivanka Trump’s Women Who Work is the latest entry in the crowded ”  ” genre  —   the ocean of books aimed at helping women navigate their careers. The book, an outgrowth of a marketing campaign she launched at her company (as the New York Times reported) is a quick read at 217 pages. Readers scanning those pages for new details about the Trump family and Ivanka Trump’s role in her father’s political career will be disappointed Trump touches upon those topics rarely and glancingly. Rather, she bills her book as a map for  . Trump lays out steps for women to attain their dream professional lives  —   lives that meld optimally with family, friends and  . If you don’t have time to read it (perhaps because you could use some   balance yourself) here’s an overview of what is and isn’t in the book, as well as how helpful it really could be as a career manual. Little that’s controversial or new, Ivanka Trump may be her father’s most trusted adviser, but there are no particularly juicy details in the book about President Trump. Political opponents won’t find much to argue with, either. There’s virtually no policy in the book until the final pages (more on that later). There is the occasional   anecdote: her fears about giving a speech at the Republican National Convention, for example, as well as how the family negotiated the deal to purchase the Old Post Office and turn it into a Trump hotel (a deal that raised serious ethics questions after President Trump took office). But none of the controversy surrounding the hotel comes up, nor does the substance of that RNC speech. Nor are there career lessons from her new job in the White House Trump writes in the preface that she completed the manuscript ”before we knew the results of the election,” and that the preface itself was written ”days away” from her father’s inauguration. A ”manual” for fulfillment, Trump describes her book as a ”manual for architecting the life you want to live.” It’s more overtly   oriented than, say, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In  —   perhaps the   book about women and work of the past decade. There is at least one major similarity between the two: Both books are clearly geared more toward   women than   or  . But the aims are also starkly different. In Lean In, Sandberg carefully made the case for why the book needed to exist: by amassing anecdotes, studies and polls, her book told a story of a society that discriminates against women, training them to be less ambitious than men. For her part, Trump writes that she hopes her book ”will help our generation change the narrative around women and work.” But rather than laying out the specifics of that narrative, she moves straight on to the advice about ”architecting” that dream life. In doing so, she focuses on internal struggles: seeking fulfillment, rather than seeking out a seat at the conference table. So, rather than including autobiographical details and social critiques, as Sandberg did, Trump’s book is more straightforwardly about what she considers the do’s and don’ts of working while female. Platitudes aplenty, Many of the basic ideas in Trump’s book seem useful: centering your work around Your Passion does sound pretty great. Writing a Personal Mission Statement could probably help plenty of people distill their professional goals. Meetings really are often way too long and unproductive. Then again, one could have figured most of this out from any number of motivational speeches or career coaches. Often, the melange of quotes and   lists give the book more the aesthetic of a Pinterest board than a career guide. When Trump does get into the specifics of her job, her writing often takes on more personality, revealing someone who is passionate and particular about her career. At one point, she advises managers to ask applicants for references from all past jobs and then actually call all of those references. It’s not necessarily a groundbreaking strategy, but it does give a rare, clear sense of what, specifically, Ivanka Trump is like as a manager: To her, slowing down and paying intense attention to detail are key ingredients to success. This kind of detail stands out compared to her plentiful, more banal advice: Hire hard workers who have a ”unique perspective,” for example. Speaking of saying something new . ..  Trump says in her introduction how she put the book together: ”I’ve curated my best thinking, as well as that of so many others, in the pages of this book.” And curate she does. Often, Trump’s book reads as a conglomeration of loosely   advice from other career resources. Many lists of tips on negotiation and   come directly from outside experts, like Wharton School professor Adam Grant and leadership coach Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin  —   both of whom Trump frequently cites. Trump is both young and has had much of her work experience in the family business, so it makes sense she would do outside research. But compiling so many sources together in a relatively short manual means that Trump scratches the surface of topics that could merit a deeper treatment: Entire books have been written on hiring ”a   team” or the challenges of simultaneously planning out family and career. Indeed, Trump’s book ends with a list of recommended books, websites and TED Talks (Trump appears to be a TED aficionado, listing at least two per chapter) pointing readers to places where they could presumably find more depth on any of the topics she touched upon. Very little policy  Trump does get to deeper policy matters in her final pages  —   but only a little. She denounces current family leave practices, pointing out that federal policies ”have not undergone fundamental change for 65 years and don’t address modern realities.” She also criticizes the U. S. system for not requiring that firms provide paid parental leave. It’s not new for Ivanka Trump to advocate for   workplace policies it was   on the campaign trail that she helped design her father’s leave proposals. But in her book, Trump offers no additional detail, instead concluding, ”It’s imperative to advocate for new and better solutions for working men and women.”"
"Updated at 8:23 p. m. ET, The Justice Department says it is closing its   investigation into two Baton Rouge, La. police officers involved in the shooting death of Alton Sterling last summer. The investigation found ”insufficient evidence” for federal criminal charges against the police. Video footage of the killing showed the officers, who are white, holding Sterling, who is black, on the ground, where he was shot multiple times. The incident prompted protests and a federal inquiry. The department announced its decision not to prosecute Baton Rouge Police Department officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake at a news conference in Baton Rouge Wednesday afternoon, a day after the decision leaked to national news outlets. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry could still file state charges, but he hasn’t disclosed his plans. The federal investigators said at a press conference today that there ”will be a state investigation to follow.” Justice Department officials said they met with Sterling’s family before the official announcement. Family members had earlier expressed frustration at the decision, and about how they first found out about it initially through media reports. Veda   one of Sterling’s aunts, said ”the lawyers called and said they have not made a decision,”   said at last night’s rally, according to The  . ”Ain’t that something? But the Washington Post called us here at [Baton Rouge area code] 225.” She added, ”We need closure, we need a conviction. We need justice.” Sandra Sterling, the aunt who raised Alton Sterling after his mother died, told local TV station WBRZ that the Justice Department decision stings  —   particularly after she and her relatives had been assured it would be worth the wait to ensure justice was achieved. ”No, it’s not worth the wait, it’s not worth the wait,” Sterling told the station. ”All of this was for nothing, but it just hurts so bad.” News that no federal charges would be filed was first reported by The Washington Post Tuesday afternoon ABC News later said it had also received word about the decision from federal sources. In anticipation of the Justice Department making its decision public, more than 100 people gathered Tuesday night for a vigil at the Triple S Food Mart where Sterling was shot last July. People on different sides of the issue had not been expecting the DOJ to file charges, Bryn Stole of local newspaper The Advocate tells NPR. ”But,” he adds, ”there were a lot of people who were really upset over the way it was handled, and the way it was leaked to the [Post].” The way this process has unfolded has also riled local officials. Both Louisiana’s governor and Baton Rouge’s mayor said that they hadn’t been told of a decision. ”You can imagine how Alton Sterling’s family felt reading that and getting a media alert on their phones about it. And so that was very disheartening and unsettling for this entire community and of course for me as well,” Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome told NPR’s Kelly McEvers. Sterling, 37, was shot to death after police were called to a convenience store for a disturbance and a man who had reportedly made a threat with a gun. The intense scene that followed was captured on video from at least two vantage points, showing one of the officers who were holding Sterling down on the asphalt yelling, ”He’s got a gun! Gun!” seconds before the shooting. The owner of the Triple S store, Abdullah Muflahi, told The Advocate that the officers retrieved a gun from Sterling’s pocket  —   but, Muflahi said, he didn’t see Sterling’s hands go near his pockets during the struggle. Muflahi also said Sterling had been selling CDs outside his store for several years. Salamoni, a   veteran of the force, and Howie Lake II, a   veteran, were placed on administrative leave after the shooting. Much of the focus of the investigation surrounded whether Sterling was actually reaching for a gun when Salamoni said he was ”going for the gun” and fired shots into his chest. In a press release, the federal prosecutors said Sterling’s right hand is not visible in video footage, and the investigators conclude that the evidence ”simply cannot establish beyond a reasonable doubt the position of Sterling’s right hand at the exact time of the shooting, a   later.” Prosecutors emphasized the high bar for federal charges of this kind: ”In light of the officers’ explanations of the shooting, the government, in order to prove a Fourth Amendment violation, would be required to (1) disprove the officers’ accounts, (2) prove an alternative account that demonstrates that the officers’ actions were objectively unreasonable and (3) prove that the officers knew that their actions were unreasonable and took them anyway.” With that bar in mind, the prosecutors said: ”In order to prosecute this matter, the government would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt not only that Sterling was not reaching for his gun but also that, despite Officer Salamoni’s contemporaneous statements to the contrary, he did not believe that Sterling was reaching for his gun after being warned not to move. The Department lacks the evidence to prove either of those propositions beyond a reasonable doubt.” Unlike in other police shootings, local, state and federal authorities did not make parallel inquiries into Sterling’s killing. After Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie’s department carried out an initial investigation, he turned the entire case over to the FBI and U. S. attorneys. The local district attorney also left the case up to the Justice Department. At last night’s vigil, Baton Rouge resident Kayla Washington told reporter Travis Lux of member station WWNO that she was there to support the family. Lux says she also told him the Sterling case has hung like a cloud over Baton Rouge. Mayor Broome said residents are very concerned about justice and she anticipated peaceful protests. ”But I will also say that folks want to believe that justice is attainable as well, and so we all have to be focused on justice and equity being a standard here in our community   and not only here in our community but throughout this nation as well,” she said."
"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages! I always wanted to use that in a commentary, that wonderful circus introduction ballyhooed by the splendid ringmaster, but I could just never find the ideal spot. Of course, had I, there would’ve been some people who’d say that a circus doesn’t belong in with sports. But, hey, just because there’s clowns around doesn’t disqualify certain daredevils from being certified athletes    —   equestrians, tightrope walkers and those who fly through the air with the greatest of ease. That’s why I was so upset to learn that the grandest big top ever  —   Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey  —   was going out of business later this month. The Greatest Show on Earth  —   and it probably was exactly that once upon a time. Well, by coincidence, this particular tiny show on earth that consists entirely of me talking about sports on NPR is also folding its tent flaps this May of 2017. Yes, this is my swansong, my farewell, my last hurrah. Adieu, adios, arrivederci, auf wiedersehen. I’ve been delivering these little homilies since 1980  —   that’s 37 years  —   and altogether, NPR statisticians tell me, my bloviation total is 1, 656 commentaries  —   and I trust you’ve hung onto every word. I have survived so long because I’ve been blessed with talented and gracious colleagues, and with a top brass who let me choose my topics every week and then allowed me to express opinions that were not always popular. Well, someone had to stand up to the   soccer cult. And perhaps just as important, I’ve been blessed with you, with a broad and intelligent audience  —   even if large portions thereof haven’t necessarily given a hoot about sports. Nothing has pleased me so much as when someone  —   usually a woman  —   writes me or tells me that she’s appreciated sports more because NPR allowed me to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture. Thank you for listening. Thank you for abiding me. And now, Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I bid you goodbye, and take my leave."
"The health care bill passed by the House on Thursday is a win for the wealthy, in terms of taxes. While the Affordable Care Act raised taxes on the rich to subsidize health insurance for the poor, the    bill passed by House Republicans would redistribute hundreds of billions of dollars in the opposite direction. It would deliver a sizable tax cut to the rich, while reducing government subsidies for Medicaid recipients and those buying coverage on the individual market. Tax hikes reversed, The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is funded in part through higher taxes on the rich, including a 3. 8 percent tax on investment income and a 0. 9 percent payroll tax. Both of these taxes apply only to people earning more than $200, 000 (or couples making more than $250, 000). The GOP replacement bill would eliminate these taxes, although the latest version leaves the payroll tax in place through 2023. The House bill would also repeal the tax penalty for those who fail to buy insurance as well as various taxes on insurance companies, drug companies and medical device makers. The GOP bill also delays the   ”Cadillac tax” on   insurance policies from 2020 to 2025. All told, the bill would cut taxes by about $765 billion over the next decade. The lion’s share of the tax savings would go to the wealthy and very wealthy. According to the Tax Policy Center, the top 20 percent of earners would receive 64 percent of the savings and the top 1 percent of earners (those making more than $772, 000 in 2022) would receive 40 percent of the savings.  Help for the poor reduced, Over time, the GOP bill would limit the federal contribution to Medicaid, while shifting control of the program to states. Depending on what happens to costs, states may be forced to provide skimpier coverage, reduce their Medicaid rolls, or both. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that an earlier version of the bill would leave about 14 million fewer people covered by Medicaid by 2026. (The House voted on the current bill without an updated CBO report.) CBO also anticipated fewer people would buy insurance through the individual market. With no tax penalty for going without coverage, some people would voluntarily stop buying insurance. Others would find coverage prohibitively expensive, as a result of changing rules governing insurance pricing and subsidies. The GOP bill would allow insurance companies to charge older customers up to five times more than younger customers  —   up from a maximum    ratio under the current health law. The maximum subsidy for older customers in the GOP plan, however, is only twice what is offered to the young. The bill also allows insurance companies to offer more   policies. As a result, young, healthy people could find more affordable coverage options. But older, sicker people would likely have to pay more. In addition, because the subsidies offered in the Republican plan don’t vary with local insurance prices the way subsidies do in Obamacare, residents of   rural areas would also suffer. That could include a large number of Trump voters."
"Updated at 5:37 p. m. ET, The House voted Thursday to narrowly approve a   measure that would eliminate many of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act  —   the first step toward keeping one of President Trump’s campaign pledges and a victory for GOP lawmakers who have long railed against Obamacare, as the ACA is commonly known. The vote was  . The measure moves to the Senate, where its fate is far from certain  —   and where top lawmakers in both parties are already signaling that there is a long legislative process ahead. After passing the measure, House Republicans jumped on buses for a quick trip to an unusual victory lap event in the White House Rose Garden  —   given that the measure has a long way before it actually becomes law. President Trump promised that premiums and deductibles will be coming down under the GOP plan and said that he feels ”confident” the measure will make it through the Senate. ”It’s going to be an unbelievable victory when we get it through the Senate,” he added. And Trump praised House Speaker Paul Ryan as ”a genius,” for engineering Thursday’s legislative win. Speaking after Trump in the Rose Garden, Ryan asserted the GOP bill was ”the beginning of the end of Obamacare.” While Republicans praised the measure, Democrats had accused the GOP of ramming the bill through the House without fully understanding its provisions or its implications. The bill included   amendments designed to draw votes from the most conservative House Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus as well as from their more moderate counterparts. The changes were necessary after the original bill was pulled from the floor in March when it became apparent it would not pass. And last week, GOP leaders considered bringing it back, but then decided not to risk another vote. Republican members had their arms twisted by President Trump in phone calls and attended a   pep rally Thursday morning, in which GOP House leaders reportedly told them it was ”time to live or die by this day.” The measure, known as the American Health Care Act, was called ”a monstrosity” by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who said centrist Republicans who voted for the bill will have ”walked the plank from moderate to radical,” adding, ”you will glow in the dark” after voting for the bill. The House voted on the bill without any knowledge of how many Americans will be affected, or the measure’s price tag. That’s because the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper, hasn’t had a chance to analyze the amended bill. But the CBO estimated an earlier version of the measure would mean 24 million people could lose their insurance. But we do know the bill would cut taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act and slash funding for Medicaid, which was expanded under the ACA, by more than $800 billion. It would also allow states to seek waivers for many of the patient protections in Obamacare, including those provisions intended to help people with   conditions. The measure does provide $8 billion for states to set up   pools to cover those with   conditions who are unable to find affordable coverage on the open market. That   addition was key to winning support from some House Republicans who were especially concerned about coverage for   conditions. But critics say it is woefully short of the amount of money actually necessary to guarantee affordable coverage. An array of medical groups, led by the American Medical Association, had opposed the measure. In a statement Wednesday, AMA President Andrew Gurman said, ”None of the legislative tweaks under consideration changes the serious harm to patients and the health care delivery system if AHCA passes. Proposed changes to the bill tinker at the edges without remedying the fundamental failing of the bill  —   that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance as a direct result of this proposal.” The retirees’ group AARP also had opposed the GOP bill. Speaking after the House vote Thursday, a representative for hospitals across the country expressed concern about the prospect that millions could lose their insurance coverage. ”The real impact . .. it’s on the people we take care of and the communities we serve,” Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, said on NPR’s All Things Considered. ”And when tens of millions of additional people will be uninsured and lack coverage, that’s a real concern to us. When those individuals don’t have access to preventative care, to prevent them from ending up in emergency departments, that’s a concern to us.” But Republicans have pointed to the number of insurance companies who have pulled out of   exchanges, leaving consumers with few choices and rising prices for health insurance in many states. ”This is a crisis,” Ryan said as the bill was debated on the House floor prior to passage, ”that is happening right now.” ”A lot of us have waited seven years to cast this vote,” Ryan added. ”A lot of us are here because we promised this vote.” Whether the Senate will go along with the House measure is another story. The White House claims of victory notwithstanding, the Senate is taking a much different approach to the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the chamber will first await the CBO analysis before proceeding. There is also some skepticism among Senate Republicans over the   bill. South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham tweeted before the House vote ”a bill  —   finalized yesterday, has not been scored, amendments no allowed, and 3 hours final debate  —   should be viewed with caution.” Senate Republicans, in fact, are working on their own health care overhaul. Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said while he congratulates the House on passage of its bill, the Senate ”will take the time to get it right.” In a statement, he said goals for the Senate legislation included ”gradually giving states more flexibility on the Medicaid program, but doing this in a way that does not pull the rug out from under people who rely on Medicaid,” and ”making sure those with   conditions have access to insurance.” As in the House, Senate Republicans will be walking a narrow and   path. They’re hoping to write a bill that complies with the requirements of the reconciliation process, which allows for passage with a simple majority. Senate Republicans hold 52 seats so they can afford few defections. Using reconciliation also means the bill’s provisions must be limited to tax and spending changes. If the Senate parliamentarian rules any of the bill’s provisions out of order, it may allow Democrats to require a   threshold for passage. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said in a statement that the House bill ”is going nowhere fast” in the Senate, and warned Senate Republicans not to follow their House colleagues ”over a cliff.” Instead, Schumer called on Republicans to ”work with Democrats to improve our healthcare system in a bipartisan way.” Still, the House vote may provide some momentum behind Senate Republicans, although their version may look starkly different than what came out of the House."
"House Republicans have passed a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act. If it is signed into law, the American Health Care Act will affect access to health care for millions of people in the U. S. The AHCA would shrink Medicaid coverage, undercut some protections for people with preexisting conditions and eliminate billions of dollars in taxes that currently help pay for the ACA. We’ve broken down how its provisions would change health coverage for nine key groups of people."
"House Republicans approved their plan to replace the Affordable Care Act on Thursday. Here’s a rundown of key provisions in the American Health Care Act and what would happen if the Senate approves them and the bill becomes law. Buying insurance, The bill would no longer require people to buy insurance through the marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, if they want to use federal tax credits to buy coverage. It also would eliminate the tax penalty for failing to have health insurance coverage, effectively doing away with that requirement altogether.  In place of that mandate, the bill encourages people to maintain coverage by prohibiting insurance companies from cutting them off or charging more for   conditions as long as their insurance doesn’t lapse. If coverage is interrupted for more than 63 days, however, insurers can charge people a 30 percent penalty over their premium for one year. Tax credits, The House Republican plan would eliminate the   tax credits and subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act, replacing them with   tax credits ranging from $2, 000 a year for people in their 20s to $4, 000 a year for those older than 60. That means some people will see their costs go up while others would pay less, depending on your age and where you live. This Kaiser Family Foundation interactive map shows how the change would play out across the country. The map shows that a    who makes $30, 000 a year would see costs rise about $2, 000 in Nebraska but fall by about the same amount in Washington state. A    however, would see costs rise almost everywhere, with increases of almost $20, 000 a year in Nebraska. Both Kaiser and the Congressional Budget Office found that, on average, older people with lower incomes would be worse off under the Republican plan than under the Affordable Care Act. Tax cuts, The bill eliminates nearly all the taxes that were included in the Affordable Care Act to pay for the subsidies that help people buy insurance. Those cuts, which add up to about $592 billion, include a tax on incomes over $200, 000 (or $250, 000 for a married couple) a tax on health insurers and a limit on how much insurance companies can deduct for executive pay and a tax on   manufacturers. Medicaid, The AHCA would make dramatic changes to Medicaid, the   health program for the poor and disabled. The Affordable Care Act allows states to expand eligibility for Medicaid to single, nondisabled adults with incomes slightly above the poverty line, with the federal government picking up most of the cost. That meant single adults who earn up to $15, 800 a year could qualify in the 31 states, plus the District of Columbia, that expanded Medicaid. About 10 million people enrolled under that expansion. The Republican plan would gradually roll back that expansion starting in 2019 by cutting the federal reimbursement to states for anyone who leaves the Medicaid rolls. People often cycle in and out of the program as their income fluctuates, so the result would likely be an   number of people covered. The House bill also converts Medicaid from an entitlement program, in which the government pays all the   costs for those who qualify, to a grant program. The federal government would give states either a set amount of money for each Medicaid enrollee or let them choose to receive a   block grant. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in March that the bill would cut Medicaid spending by $880 billion.   conditions, The AHCA maintains protections for people with   conditions, with some important exceptions (see waivers, below). That means that someone with high medical expenses pays the same premium for the same policy as anyone else his age in his area. State waivers  This section of the bill essentially amounts to an optional,   full repeal of Obamacare. It would give states the ability to apply for a waiver that lets them opt out of most of the regulations and consumer protections that were included in the Affordable Care Act. States could apply for waivers that would allow insurance companies in their states to do three things: 1. Charge older people more than five times what they charge young people for the same policy 2. Eliminate required coverage, called essential health benefits, including maternity care, mental health and prescription drugs, that were required under the Affordable Care Act and 3. Charge more for or deny coverage to people who have   health conditions, such as cancer, diabetes or arthritis. The waivers could also impact people with   insurance, because insurers could offer policies that have annual and lifetime benefit limits, which are banned under the Affordable Care Act, and some companies may choose those policies for their workers to lower premiums. States that get waivers would very likely see insurance companies offer many more policy options, some with fewer benefits and lower premiums. Those states would be required under the law to create some other way to ensure that people with expensive illnesses are able to get health care, and the law provides up to $138 billion over 10 years for such programs, typically called   pools. However, an analysis released Thursday by consulting firm Avalere Health concludes that that amount would be inadequate for providing full health coverage for the number of people who now buy insurance in the individual market and have medical problems. Overall impact, The House approved the bill Thursday without a full Congressional Budget Office analysis of its costs and how many people would be covered. The CBO report from March concluded that over 10 years, 24 million fewer people would be covered under the bill who otherwise would have had insurance under current law. That analysis also predicted that the House bill would cut federal deficits by $337 billion over those same 10 years. However, changes to the bill since then would allow states to accept block grants for Medicaid add about $38 billion for   pools and maternity and childbirth care and offer states waivers from regulations created by the Affordable Care Act. It’s unclear how much these changes would affect the original CBO score."
"Jasson Garcia’s daily travels look maddening. The sidewalks of Mexico City are broken and cars block pedestrian crossings. In the subway station, there’s no elevator, so he has to labor down the stairs. Busy commuters push to get past him. But you don’t see this in Jasson’s demeanor. The skinny    seems totally unfazed. ”It just feels normal now,” he says. ”I can go basically anywhere I want without a problem.” Jasson makes his way through the hectic city of 22 million in a wheelchair. He was born with a myelomeningocele, the most serious forms of spina bifida, so he only has very limited use of his legs. ”It’s frustrating the city isn’t accessible,” he says, ”but whatever. You just have to adapt.” Jasson rolls through the crowded streets effortlessly, hopping up curbs and squeezing through tight spaces. His dad, Jonathan, walks by his side but never once reaches out to help. Jasson’s wheelchair independence in this city even took him viral. Once a week, on the way to an extracurricular school activity, he had to cross a pedestrian overpass above a highway  —   30 steps up, 30 steps down. He insisted on doing it alone and got his dad to film one day last year. They uploaded the video to YouTube and local media went crazy for him. (A more recent video shows Jasson doing the same). But even there, the stereotypes of disabilities lashed back. ”People wrote angry messages to my dad, telling him he was horrible for not helping me,” Jasson says. ”But I wanted to do it on my own.” This brash independence didn’t come out of nowhere. It took years of training in a wheelchair course with a privately funded organization called Vida Independiente, Spanish for Independent Life. On a hot spring morning, Jasson is one of about 30 people in wheelchairs circled together, warming up, stretching their arms, backs and necks. Most sit in   lightweight, ergonomic wheelchairs donated by Vida Independiente. One student is just seven years old. Another is in his 60s. Some are built like quad rugby players. Others have cerebral palsy. But the goal is the same. ”We want people to demand their rights, but we also want them to reach the limit of their capabilities,” says Ruben Navarro, 33, the Mexico City director of Vida Independiente. Navarro became paraplegic seven years ago, after breaking his back in a car accident. He says his first eight months after the injury were hell. ”I didn’t leave my house,” he says. ”I used to be athletic, active Ruben  —   and I thought it was all over.” He slipped into the predominant feeling about disabilities in most of the world, epitomized in Mexico by the word pobrecito: poor thing. He couldn’t do anything and relied on goodwill to get by. But Navarro began to reclaim his independence six years ago, when he showed up at this same course. Scattered around the courtyard of the city government’s disability services office, called Indepedi, there are structures replicating street obstacles  —   stairs with a hand railing, metal platforms simulating curbs, potholes, metal grating. This class of more than 30 students of all ages is a nearly even split between men and women with all types of disabilities. The majority acquired disabilities after an accident. But many others, like Jasson, were born with a disability. Just a few minutes into class, nearly everyone is sweating. Navarro and the other coaches often sound like boot camp officers, barking orders, tolerating no complaints. When students say they’re tired, the coaches tell them to try an obstacle again. ”Our philosophy is to teach people how to fish, not give them a fish,” he says. ”Look around: Everyone here is working hard, they’re all fighting to become independent and live a totally normal life.” This boot camp attitude is most clear when someone falls over. As wheelchair user Alberto Paz tries to hop onto a simulated curb, he hits it wrong, loses his balance and tips sideways. Coaches sit around him, telling him how to position himself to get back up. He struggles as sweat drips down his face and veins in his forehead pulse. But he makes it. ”This happens a lot here, it’s part of the learning process,” Paz says, panting every few words. ”But better here than in the street, no?” More than half a million people in Mexico City have a disability, and getting around is certainly a challenge for them. But the city government has made huge advances in supporting people with disabilities, especially in the past five years or so since Fidel Perez de Leon, the current director of Indepedi  —   who is paraplegic  —   was appointed. You can see it: New sidewalk construction must include wheelchair ramps.   percent of the city’s   public buses are accessible. All public transportation is free if you have a disability. A new law will force all future construction in the city to be accessible. But Vida Independiente wants people in wheelchairs to be able to get around regardless of what the government does. Having mastered the streets, Jasson is now a coach at the workshop. Today he is sitting next to a   simulated curb. Nayeli Frias, 34, rolls up to it hesitantly and slams into the front, her torso jerking forward. ”You’re afraid of falling   but you’re strapped in,” says Jasson. ”What the worst that could happen?” ”But I have fallen!” Frias pleads back. ”I fell over in the street. I fell over at Walmart. I fell over in the elevator at the hospital.” Frias has been coming to these courses for four months now. She hopes the training will allow her to start a new job, which would mean commuting across the city every day. ”Here they push us until we lose our fear,” she says. ”Especially in my case, fear is what really holds me back.” But she knows quitting isn’t an option here. She turns around and prepares to hop the curb again. She aggressively rolls up to it and her rubber wheels screech as they land on the platform. Jasson gives her light praise and sends her over to try the higher curb. As Jasson leaves the workshop, the sidewalk ramp is blocked by a truck, so he goes around, through the street. Another truck blows by, just inches from his chair. He barely seems to notice, and continues on his way."
"The owner of the Pulse Nightclub, the site of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U. S. history, has announced plans to turn it into a memorial and museum to commemorate the tragic event. ”This must and will be a healing initiative, one that I believe will inspire supporters who share our vision and understand the sacred responsibility to which we have been entrusted,” Barbara Poma told reporters on Thursday at the Pulse nightclub site. On June 12, 2016, gunman Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS in a 911 call then opened fire at the gay nightclub in Orlando.   people were killed and dozens more injured before police stormed the building and shot Mateen dead. Poma said she sought advice from the groups who established memorials after the Sept. 11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing. ”Historically if you look into the research of the other memorials that were done, they were not done by their governments,” she said, as member station WMFE reported. ”They were done by foundations and task forces. So I am following the model that has sadly gone before us.” She said they hope to open the memorial in 2020. It’s not yet clear how much the site will cost, or what it will look like, though Poma emphasized that it is a ”  effort” and the museum will showcase ”historic artifacts and stories from the event.” The owners have set up a   fund, the onePULSE Foundation, to handle construction and maintenance of the memorial, as well a community grants to care for the survivors and victims’ families and endowed scholarships for each of the people killed. The foundation says it will start the process ”with a   initiative to collect information about what the victims’ families and survivors envision” through an online survey. Its board members include prominent members of the LGBT community, including entertainer Lance Bass and retired NBA Player Jason Collins. ”I know once it’s unveiled and we have it here, that we’ll find a place of comfort, but I know in 100 years it should be a place of education, and a place of change and remembrance,” Poma said in a video about the plans. The Orlando Sentinel described what has been happening at the site since the deadly shooting: ”The entire area around Pulse, 1912 S. Orange Ave. was a crime scene for a week after the attack. But when the street reopened, the vacant black building quickly became a magnet for grief, vigils, flowers, artwork and impromptu memorials. Even now, more than 10 months later, people still visit daily.” The newspaper added that it’s unclear whether the original nightclub building will be incorporated into the memorial, or will be demolished and reconstructed."
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday ”promoting free speech and religious liberty.” The order relaxes political restrictions on religious groups of all denominations. NPR reporters annotated the order below adding context and analysis.
"Updated at 6:40 p. m. ET, President Trump signed an executive order Thursday that directs the executive branch to ”honor and enforce” existing protections for religious liberty and asks agencies to ”consider issuing amended regulations” for organizations that don’t want to cover contraception in employer health insurance plans. Trump signed the order in the Rose Garden after a ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer. He said he was fulfilling a campaign pledge to ”take action” on religious liberty. But the order he signed was less substantive than he signaled. The American Civil Liberties Union, which was planning to sue over the order, changed course after reading the text, declaring the event ”an elaborate   with no discernible policy outcome.” Trump did open the door to future policy shifts. He directed the attorney general to ”as appropriate, issue guidance interpreting religious liberty protections in Federal law.” But the White House had previously said Trump would urge the IRS to use ”maximum discretion” in enforcing laws regarding religious organizations and offer ”regulatory relief” to religious objectors to contraception coverage. Neither of those policy changes was directly brought into effect by the order. Greg Baylor, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, told NPR he supported Trump’s stated goals but that the actual text ”doesn’t fully accomplish the promise” that Trump made in the Rose Garden. Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of the evangelical Liberty Counsel, said he was ”pleased” with the order, telling NPR that Trump ”set forth the general policy” of protecting religious freedom. He emphasized the possibility of future action by individual agencies. In the meantime, here’s a look at what Trump’s executive order does  —   and doesn’t  —   do. The Johnson Amendment, The White House originally said Trump would urge the IRS to use ”maximum enforcement discretion” regarding the Johnson Amendment, which was passed in 1954 and prohibits 501( c)(3) nonprofits from endorsing specific political candidates. But the order itself, while calling on all agencies to protect religious liberty, instructs the Department of Treasury to enforce the law exactly as it is written. In the Rose Garden on Thursday, Trump said the rule threatens the   status of a church if a leader ”speaks about issues of public or political importance.” That is false: The amendment applies only to advocating for or against a specific candidate. Taking positions on issues is permitted. Trump’s executive order writes that speech on ”moral or political issues from a religious perspective” should not be penalized, which is in line with existing IRS policies. It suggests an exception for speech that has ”ordinarily been treated” as an endorsement  —   in other words, the order tells the IRS to enforce the law as it has in the past, and treat churches the same as other nonprofits. Baylor called that ”sort of ” rather than the kind of shift in policy his organization is advocating. Alex Luchenitser  —   the associate legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which opposes Baylor’s group on this issue  —   similarly said the order had ”more bark than bite.” ”With respect to the Johnson Amendment, at least technically, the legal effect of the order appears to be minimal,” he said. The amendment in question covers all   charities, but its effect on   churches, specifically, has been fiercely protested  —   albeit rarely enforced. In fact, there’s only one known instance of a church losing its   status over electioneering: The Church at Pierce Creek in New York, after it took out a   newspaper ad opposing Bill Clinton in 1992. After losing its   status, the church continued operating and still benefited from tax breaks on its property, Reuters reports. Opponents of the Johnson Amendment say such punishment is rarely seen because pastors are intimidated into silence. But in recent years, some churches have participated in ”Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” when they blatantly violate the Johnson Amendment and all but dare the IRS to take action. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which organizes the event, said that after eight years of public violations, no church had been punished by the IRS for participating. Meanwhile, as NPR’s Jessica Taylor reported Wednesday, many religious leaders  —   including an overwhelming majority of evangelical pastors  —   don’t believe preachers should make endorsements from the pulpit. A change to the tax law to actually eradicate the Johnson Amendment would require action by Congress. That could have a dramatic effect on campaign fundraising, if churches and nonprofits were allowed to funnel   money into political campaigns. But Trump doesn’t have the authority to eliminate the law  . He could tell the IRS to make the amendment a low enforcement priority, which the agency appears to have been doing for years. According to a Pew survey last year, 14 percent of recent churchgoers heard a presidential candidate being directly supported or opposed from the pulpit. Black Protestants were most likely to have heard such a message  —   largely in favor of Hillary Clinton or opposition to Trump. At the Rose Garden, Trump celebrated the long history of political activism within black churches, particularly, for ”spurring our nation to greater justice and equality.” Religious groups and contraception  The Trump administration says the president would offer ”regulatory relief” to organizations that because of religious objections don’t want to cover contraception in their employer health plans. The executive order itself, however, instructs the secretaries of the Treasury, labor, and health and human services to ”consider issuing amended regulations, consistent with applicable law, to address   objections” to the contraception mandate. The Affordable Care Act requires that health insurance plans cover contraception as part of preventive care for women, at no cost to the employee. The law had ”an automatic exemption for houses of worship, like churches  —   but not for nonprofits like religious schools and hospitals,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg explained last year. ”Those nonprofits were given a workaround to accommodate their objections, but some say that accommodation still burdens their free exercise of religion.” The workaround involved the organization opting out of the mandate and sending a letter to the government informing them of that decision. At that point, the federal government would step in to cover the contraception instead. (Some religious groups have claimed the law requires coverage of   drugs called abortifacients as well as contraception. But as NPR has reported, the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus is that none of the mandated contraceptive methods cause abortions.) As Julie Rovner wrote last year, dozens of religious nonprofits claimed ”that even the act of notifying the government of their objections (which would, in turn, trigger a requirement for the government to arrange coverage) made them ’complicit’ in providing a service they see as sinful.” The issue has been the subject of multiple   lawsuits. Baylor of the Alliance Defending Freedom said ”regulatory relief,” if provided, would still be inadequate. ”The answer to this problem has been quite obvious all along,” Baylor said. ”What the administration needs to do is to craft an exemption that prohibits everyone who objects on moral grounds from violating their convictions through the content of their health plan.” Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the ACLU, says that there’s a ”potential future battle” over the exemptions. But for now, the group has retracted its plans to sue, given the lack of concrete change in policy."
"It’s been an awfully long time since a wolf pack has called Denmark home  —   roughly two centuries, in fact. ”Wolves were exterminated in Denmark because of intense persecution,” Peter Sunde, a senior researcher at Aarhus University, tells Newsweek. He says that before a male wolf was spotted wandering the Jutland peninsula north of Germany in 2012, the last verified wild wolf sighting in the country took place in 1813. While the 2012 discovery was cause for celebration, another question remained: This male can’t simply be a lone wolf, right? Now, Sunde and Kent Olsen of Natural History Museum Aarhus say they’ve confirmed the presence of not just other wolves in Denmark, but a   wolf pack  —   meaning the group has a   in its midst, as well. They point to CCTV footage and DNA tests of stool samples recovered by volunteers in the past   which together show four males and a female have been moving through the region. The researchers believe the female, which bears the elegant code name GW675f, crossed the border into Jutland from Germany across a distance of roughly 340 miles last summer. Now, footage of a pair of wolves suggests she has also found a mate in her new home. ”We expect that they will have cubs this year or the next,” Sunde told national broadcaster DR, according to a translation by the BBC. To Newsweek, Sunde added: ”They may also postpone until next year since they probably have not been established for more than eight months by now. If we observe two wolves together in   they are most likely not mating as the female will stay with the cubs in or near the den while the male is foraging on his own.” Now that the wolves have arrived, though, concerns have already turned to the reason why they disappeared in the first place  —   specifically, that ”intense persecution.” But Sunde tells The Guardian he harbors optimism for the pair, which are among more than 12, 000 wild wolves in continental Europe, according to the British paper. ”Technically, we can relatively easily manage the wolf population but the challenge is the psychology of humans,” he says. ”There are so many feelings and opinions about wolves in Denmark, as everywhere. The wolf debate is very much   rather than related to concrete problems.”"
"A court in Ontario, Canada, has cleared an animal rights activist charged with criminal mischief for giving water to pigs en route to the slaughterhouse. The case against Anita Krajnc, who founded the animal rights group Toronto Pig Save, has garnered international attention. She faced the possibility of jail time and thousands of dollars in fines. The trial at the Ontario Court of Justice was centered on an incident in June 2015, when Krajnc walked up to a truck full of pigs belonging to Van Boekel Hog Farms as it was nearing the slaughterhouse. The exchange was caught on video, as The   previously reported: ”First, it shows Krajnc approaching a truck full of pigs and asking the driver to give one of the pigs some water. ”He replies: ’Don’t give him anything. Do not put water in there!’ She says, ’Jesus said if they are thirsty, give them water.’ ”His response: ’No, you know what, these are not humans, you dumb frickin’ broad!’ He threatens to call the cops as she repeatedly says, ’Have some compassion.’ When she attempts to insert the water bottle through a slot in the trailer for the pigs to drink, he threatens to slap it out of her hands.” As Justice D. A. Harris wrote in his judgment, prosecutors argued that Krajnc gave one or more pigs an ”unknown liquid” which ”created the foreseeable risk that the slaughterhouse would refuse to accept the pigs.” But Harris says he found no evidence that Krajnc gave the pigs anything other than water, and doing so had no impact on whether the slaughterhouse accepted them. To his knowledge, the animals were slaughtered and processed ”in the usual fashion.” He concludes: ”I find that the Crown has failed to prove that Ms. Krajnc obstructed, interrupted or interfered with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property.” The justice was not convinced, however, by the defense’s argument that pigs are not property, but people. He said that under Canadian law, this is not the case. ”Ms. Krajnc and   individuals may believe otherwise and they are fully entitled to that belief,” Harris stated. ”That does not however make it so.” Speaking after the case, Krajnc celebrated the judgment but called for further action. ”The law needs to recognize pigs and all animals as persons, not property,” she said. Justice Harris also dismissed the defense’s comparisons during the trial to the cases of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Susan B. Anthony: ”I fear that these three examples were in fact cited because, although they serve no purpose in my deciding this case, it will look good in the social media posts.” Following the decision, Krajnc declared that comparisons to the famed civil rights figures are justified because ”all animals are equal.” As CBC reports, farm groups maintain that ”Krajnc was messing with the food supply.” Clarence Nywening, president of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, tells the broadcaster: ”What was at stake was our family farms and producing safe quality food. . .. This is putting a big jeopardy on our livelihood now.” Animal rights groups are celebrating the verdict, after rallying behind Krajnc during the trial using the hashtags #PigTrial and #StandWithAnita. ”The judge recognized compassion as a virtue in this case, and common sense prevailed in the finding that Anita Krajnc was not guilty for showing mercy to terrified, thirsty pigs on their way to slaughter,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement."
"Not since the glory days of   has the world so eagerly awaited the release of a mixtape. For this is the identity Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy series has chosen for itself: It begins as an ”Awesome Mix” of rock music from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, and then grafts a space adventure onto them. The original Guardians, in 2014, used that music to announce itself as a different species from the rest of the thoroughbred Marvel stable, a bit shaggier, more playful. It had been a long time since the   movie genre produced anything as fun as Chris Pratt boogying on an alien planet to Redbone’s ”Come And Get Your Love.” Casual fans remember the specifics of those pop songs, but likely little else,  . The elusive Infinity Stone, the MacGuffin linking the entire vision board of the Marvel Cinematic Universe together, was involved somehow. But damned if its purpose didn’t slither away as   James Gunn thrilled in chasing one bit of irreverence after another, correctly sensing that the only way not to get lost in so much cosmic mythology was to thumb his nose at the whole universe. The characters, though  —   well, they stuck out, mostly because of how odd they were. Besides Pratt’s goofy, ne’   rogue Peter Quill, there was Zoe Saldana doused in body paint as tough green warrior Gamora former professional wrestler Dave Bautista in a charm offensive as sweet purple lunkhead Drax and the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel as, respectively, sarcastic   raccoon Rocket and lovable tree Groot, who only speaks with three words, one of them his name. With a crew like this, it was fitting the first film included a lineup scene. Quill’s thing is that he was plucked from Earth at a young age by a   bandit named Yondu (Michael Rooker) and trained in the art of thieving before he absconded with the ragtag crew who would become the Guardians. The most distinctive part of his Earth backstory was that his mother left him with a Sony Walkman and a mixtape, which became his most prized possessions as he flew through space. At the end of the last film he discovered she’d made him a second mixtape, and honestly, that would have been enough,  . But Vol. 2, which is mildly enjoyable while instantly forgettable, makes a gamble that we want to learn even more about Quill’s Earth past. It introduces his father, the ”  god” unimaginatively named Ego (Kurt Russell) who fell for a lovely Earth woman while traveling the cosmos and left behind certain superpower traits in his offspring. Ego brings the gang to the   planet that holds his lifeforce and is adorned with his face, a planet he designed from scratch in order to approximate what a perfect world might look like (thereby providing an easy justification for its existence as a giant CGI effect  —   it’s only simulating a real place, after all). There he attempts to sway Quill to do possibly sinister,    things, which have little to do with whatever overarching story the Marvel Universe is currently trying to tell. ”Remember, folks, Thanos is still out there. But first. .. this!” There are other plots. The Guardians clash with a race of gold people, an amusing species of rigid,   oligarchs who must lay out the red carpet for their empress (Elizabeth Debicki) no matter how gross of a planet she happens to be on. The Ravagers, the band of   outlaws Yondu travels with, have exiled him for his sympathy toward Quill their leader is played by Sylvester Stallone, growling his way through a   role. Gamora’s psychotic sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan, also blue) continues to march on the fratricide warpath, hissing and snarling once she gets captured and is forced to listened to the Guardians’ bickering. And Groot, who died at the end of the last film with only a seed of himself to survive into a sapling, is now a baby and, in the words of a Ravager, ”too adorable to kill.” Like its predecessor, the film’s best scene is the opening credits, which foreground Baby Groot dancing to Electric Light Orchestra’s ”Mr. Blue Sky” while the rest of the Guardians fight a space worm just out of frame. Swapping out yet another giant, ponderous battle for a cute creature and Oldies radio is exactly the sort of action movie   the genre needs right now, so it’s a shame the rest of the film doesn’t follow that same spirit of  . Instead, we get   morals about families that feel like   Fast and Furious wisdom. The deviousness of the first Guardians gets delegated to Rocket, whose attempts at crude humor quickly turn irritating it’s as though, nervous that the presence of a talking raccoon would keep adults away, Gunn needed to make sure the cuddly critter got the filthiest lines. (Rocket does get called a ”trash panda” at one point, which is a pretty great insult.) A graduate of the Troma school of   aesthetics, Gunn continues to give his series the most unnerving visual palette in Marvel. Greens, browns, pinks, and blues clash like polyester plaid suits in the same scene, sometimes the same shot. His tableaus can work their   charms: a Ravagers mutiny, where dissenters are ejected into space, is harrowing. But there are other times when the grotesque is just grotesque, as in the climactic battle sequence inside Ego’s planet where every corner of the frame is stuffed with murky   and we plead for the warm, pleasing color coordination of those totally square Avengers. ”Awesome Mix: Vol. 2” isn’t really coordinated, either  —   it bounces from defiling George Harrison’s ”My Sweet Lord” to making great use of Fleetwood Mac’s ”The Chain”  —   but mixtapes don’t require coordination. They’re a function of a person’s headspace, a way of using tastes in music to forge human bonds. That individuality is why the Guardians soundtrack works while, say, Suicide Squad’s upteenth spin of ”Bohemian Rhapsody” is so. .. sigh. Basic. When we feel that we are drowning in a sea of body paint, the tunes can be our signposts, our means of earthly communication with a movie brand that, like Ego, is powerful enough to build its own planet. As Marvel spreads its seed to more corners of the universe, its offspring no longer has to come with a personality. The Guardians are due to appear in next year’s Avengers: Infinity War alongside five jillion other heroes, just more foot soldiers in the onslaught, and their lifeforce is starting to be neutered accordingly. The question will be if we can still hear the music among all the noise."
"Cashmere Cat is one of the most   pop producers in the world. His beats have made hit songs for artists like Kanye West, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez and Charli XCX. His solo shows sell out. For the longest time, however, he did everything in his power to stay out of the spotlight. So who is Cashmere Cat? His name is Magnus August Høiberg. Høiberg, 29, grew up in the city of Halden, Norway (population: around 30, 000). When you watch him perform as Cashmere Cat, it is a spectacle. He does not speak during his shows, he wears oversized jumper jackets in bright colors and his long, blond hair covers his face. But in person, Høiberg is just the opposite: talkative, honest, friendly and even silly  —   singing, imitating sounds and cracking jokes. Høiberg sat down with NPR to talk about his debut album, 9. Hear him discuss the album and his collaborations with West and The Weeknd at the audio link, and read on for longer excerpts of the conversation. Monika Evstatieva: You are almost 30. What made you decide you were ready for your debut album now? Cashmere Cat: I put out my first EP in 2012 and I stumbled upon a new sound, because for so long I [had] been trying to copy everyone. I was trying to be a fake Madlib or a fake J Dilla, and then I got really into Justice and I started trying to be fake Justice. And then I was a fake disco producer, like the Norwegian disco producer Lindstrøm. Eventually I got so bored and I felt stupid and I called myself out a little bit for trying to imitate people so much, so I made this project that was called Katten, which in Norwegian means ”the cat.” The point of this was to make parody music. I would make a song that was a parody Swedish House Mafia song. It was just the most ridiculous thing you could ever think off  —   huge   a ridiculous big drop. Then, I was like, ”All right, I’m going to make a fake dubstep song, and then I’m going to make a fake Jeremih song or I’m going to make a fake R. Kelly song. It’s going to have harps and it’s going to have water drops, then it’s going to have like a huge   but then it goes nowhere, and then it’s going to have bed squeaks from Jersey club. And it is going to be, like, the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever listened to.” Just by doing that  —   and kind of letting go of any requirements of it being anything that would be taken seriously by anyone  —   I kind of stumbled upon something that really felt like my own. And I was just so excited by that, so the first two records I made were pretty much based around that sound. When it came time to do my album, I really wanted to take some time and find that feeling again, where it feels like I’m stumbling upon something new. In this case it had a lot to do with me learning to work with artists  —   because up until this point it was pretty much me and my computer, and now it’s more of the relationship between me and other people and that spectrum of infinite things to deal with, when it comes to other people’s emotions and musical desires. You’ve said that you feel like the music you did with Kanye West set the standard for what you want to do with your own music. Can you tell me a little bit about your collaboration on ”Wolves”?  I’m pretty sure he’s one of my favorite artists ever. He has been a hero of mine for so long, and then I was able to make this song with him. I kind of jokingly made this goal, when I set out to be Cashmere Cat, to produce a song for this guy called Jackie Chain  —   this rapper from Miami, Florida  —   and I wanted to do a song with Kanye West. Those were the two goals, and then eventually just by me talking about it, it came around, and I did that song for Kanye. I don’t know if this is because I produced it or because I really love it, but it’s one of my favorite Kanye songs I’ve ever heard, and it just blew my mind that this song that I loved so much  —   I had a hand in it. It really inspired my new work a lot and I understood that I can make something that’s not necessarily for the club or for the radio or for anything in particular  —   [but it] can still be the most exciting, beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. I applied that feeling of being able to do those types of records on this new music.  How did you come up with the beat for ”Wolves”? Me and my friend Sinjin Hawke were working in London in this room that’s maybe the size of a bathroom stall  —   two people can barely even stand up, like the smallest room ever. And we made this song and it’s just the most simple thing ever  —   a distorted 808 and this weird crazy     thing that Sinjin Hawke has been pioneering for a while. And we just put it together and then we played this melody together and we made a beat that goes for a lot longer, goes for like four minutes, and has all these different parts. And then it ended up being the first 15 seconds of the song that turned into the main part of ”Wolves.” The song changed multiple times, even after it was released  —   were you part of the changes? I was not a part of making those changes at all, but I paid very close attention to when it happened. The way he changed his album after it came out . .. it definitely messed with my head a little bit when it comes to finishing music. Because it is already stressful enough to commit to a song and release it and finish it, but now that he sort of started changing records after they are already released  —   just giving you in your mind that option  —   it’s a really wild thing to do, and I have never seen an artist do something like this before. Tell me about working on the song ”Wild Love” with The Weeknd. It’s a song I did with The Weeknd and Francis and the Lights, and it came about in a really confusing way. I was working with Francis and he uses this   instrument, a thing called a harmonizer. It’s basically this thing you put audio into and it comes out as this weird chord  —   kind of   but not really, still a sound. It’s one of the most futuristic,   instruments I can possibly ever imagine. Francis was using this instrument on his album, which I worked a lot on, and I was so fascinated by the sound. It kind of blew my mind  —   the different stuff you can do with it and also how fully unpredictable it was. It’s a computer program, so it should technically be the same outcome every time, but it’s completely different every time, even when you give it the same input. He just showed it to me how to use it and I was [like] ”Oh, that’s cool,” and then I went to this other room and I bought the   and started messing around with it, and the first thing I made was the demo for ”Wild Love.” I made it in maybe three minutes, having absolutely no idea what I was doing. I had zero idea how to use the software. And I played it to Francis, and he said, ”Yes, that’s interesting.” And a few weeks later, I was in a session with The Weeknd and I was trying to get him on the song from my album and I decided this was the one I was going to play  —   this horribly   demo. It was the most terrifying moment on Earth. It’s like playing someone the first thing you’ve ever played on the guitar, or like, ”Hey, I just discovered a piano, you want to listen to a thing I just recorded on the piano?” And I played him this thing and it sounds so weird and so distorted, it’s the most confusing thing to listen to. On top of that it has a thing in the middle of the song that happens every two seconds  —   these beeps  —   the most obnoxious thing you ever listened to in your life. And I played it for him and then I didn’t really look back, because I was a little scared to see his reaction. Then I just heard him singing . .. he really liked it and started singing along to it. It kind of felt like when I was doing my first record, when I just stumbled upon something and did not really know what I was doing. But this time I stumbled, and while I was falling awkwardly to the floor I kind of just   threw it to one of the greatest artists I’ve ever worked with. And it worked out."
"Lots of people pay traffic fines, but not everyone is affected the same way. According to a new report from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, traffic fines in California have an outsize effect on   drivers and people of color. And those consequences are not just monetary. Unpaid tickets can result in additional fines. Failure to pay those fines can lead to suspension or loss of license, and even jail time for some if they continue to drive without a license. Elisa   the legal director for the LCCR, said the organization, which provides civil legal aid for   residents and people of color, started digging into these data after clients said they had lost their licenses because they couldn’t pay a ticket. Since almost 80 percent of Californians drive to work, the inability to pay a traffic fine is a threat to many people’s livelihoods. ”And there was no pathway in California to get that license back unless people could pay the full fine amount,”   said. ”So we started working for statewide change.” California uses traffic fines as a revenue source, and those fines are the steepest in the country, according to the report. The base fine for running a red light is $100, but late fees and other   can make that single ticket eventually cost more than $800. And people are not issued tickets for driving violations only. They can also be ticketed and have their licenses suspended for things like jaywalking or loitering. As a result, over 4 million California drivers were without a license in 2015. Because of disparities in policing, the money issues wind up affecting minorities disproportionately. In cities like Fresno, San Diego and Sacramento, studies indicate that black and Latino drivers are more likely to get pulled over than white drivers. And in nine counties in the Bay Area, data have shown that black and Latino drivers are far more likely than the general population to end up in county jail as the result of a driving or other traffic offense.   sees parallels between what’s going on in California and the policing situation in Ferguson, Mo. ”That’s a city that was making its money by fining its primarily black residents,”   said. ”We like to think in California that we’re doing things differently, but our report shows that in nine Bay Area counties, black people are four to 16 times more likely to be booked into county jails, to be the ones arrested, for a charge that’s related to failure to pay. . .. I think we have to acknowledge that racial bias in policing is a problem everywhere.” Until April of this year, California had a traffic amnesty program that allowed   people to pay fines that were proportional to their salaries. The state found that when fines were lower, more revenue was generated because people were able to pay incrementally, rather than in one giant lump sum. Now that the program has expired, the state will have to decide how to move forward. ”There will still be racial disparities in initial traffic stops that are really significant,”   said. ”But if we take away the second part where people lose their licenses, where people get arrested, then we will at least have stopped the compounding of the racial disparity problem.”"
"Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious Afghan warlord known as the ”Butcher of Kabul,” returned to the city he so often attacked with rockets and was welcomed Thursday by President Ashraf Ghani, who thanked him for ”heeding the peace call.” Hekmatyar, 69, is among the most prominent surviving figures from the early days of war that began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and grinds on to this day. ”Let’s end the war, live together as brothers and then ask foreigners to leave our country,” Hekmatyar said in his appearance with Ghani at the Presidential Palace. On the one hand, Hekmatyar’s peaceful return to the Afghan capital  —   made possible by his agreeing to abide by the country’s constitution and renounce violence  —   cautiously raises hopes that Ghani’s government can persuade rivals and enemies to stop fighting and bring an end to nearly four decades of conflict. Yet Hekmatyar is despised by many Afghans. There’s also the possibility that he and his followers in the hardline    party will only increase tensions as the government struggles with political, economic and military challenges. Hekmatyar has been involved in every stage of the Afghan war. As seven main Afghan factions fought the Soviets in the 1980s, Hekmatyar’s group was considered to have the best fighters. The U. S. and its allies funded the rebel effort, with Pakistan serving as the conduit. The Pakistanis were also partial to Hekmatyar and his fighters, and are believed to have given more weapons to    than any other group. President Reagan and other U. S. officials called the mujahideen rebels ”freedom fighters” and there were no worries at the time about the radical Islamist positions that    and others espoused. The larger aim was driving out Soviet forces, and Hekmatyar’s group was very effective. But after the Soviets pulled out in 1989, U. S. interest in Afghanistan declined dramatically, and the Afghan mujahideen factions waged a bitter civil war during much of the 1990s. Once again, Hekmatyar was a central figure. His group controlled the hills on the edge of the capital and fired rockets indiscriminately on the city, destroying entire neighborhoods that dated back centuries. An estimated 50, 000 were killed and many more injured, almost all civilians, from 1992 to 1996. This was an extremely nasty period in the war, and Hekmatyar, accused of atrocities and human rights violations, became known as the ”Butcher of Kabul”  —   the most ruthless warlord in a country dominated by warlords. Afghanistan’s President Burhanuddin Rabbani was so desperate, he named Hekmatyar the prime minister in 1993 in an attempt to end the fighting. Yet Hekmatyar remained at his base just to the southeast of the city, and his forces pressed ahead with their rocket barrage on most days. When a cabinet meeting was planned, the rockets would cease and Hekmatyar’s heavily armed convoy would roll into the center of Kabul so he could preside over the talks. There was no need to parse   statements afterward. If the meeting went poorly, Hekmatyar and his convoy simply drove out of the city and resumed bombardment. His government did not last long. I met with Hekmatyar under tense circumstances in 1993. His forces seized an Associated Press reporter, John Jennings, who was covering a skirmish outside Kabul. I was an AP correspondent at the time, and traveled from Pakistan to Afghanistan to seek Jennings’ release. It was possible to drive across the front line when the shooting died down during the Muslim prayer times. I drove to Hekmatyar’s base, where he said he was unaware that his faction was holding Jennings  —   though he was being detained a short distance away. After several long days of waiting in Kabul, I was summoned by Hekmatyar’s men and returned to the base, where Jennings and another journalist were released unharmed. Hekmatyar was forced away from the capital in 1995 by the advancing Taliban, who captured Kabul the following year. He disappeared from public view after that, taking refuge first in Iran. Later, he was believed to be in the   border region. His forces remained active in the Afghan fighting, battling the Taliban until the group was ousted in 2001 by the U. S.  coalition. Then Hekmatyar fought against the U. S.  government in Kabul, and called for the Americans  —   his supporters in the 1980s  —   to leave Afghanistan. The U. S. formally declared Hekmatyar a ”global terrorist” in 2003. The U. N. also designated him as a terrorist. His group steadily declined in power over the years, and last September, the   Hekmatyar agreed to renounce violence and make peace with the Afghan government. The U. N. took him off its terrorist list in February. But he did not return to Kabul until Thursday. For Ghani’s government, this is a rare positive note  —   assuming Hekmatyar and his supporters abide by the deal and don’t create new political problems. In remarks last week, Hekmatyar called on the Taliban to ”join the peace caravan and stop this pointless holy war.” His return suggests how the Afghan war could end someday: not on the battlefield, but in agreements with groups  —   like the Taliban  —   that have committed terrible violence. Still, his presence in the capital will be a bitter pill to swallow for Kabul residents who remember the pain he inflicted in the 1990s. There’s been no indication that he will have a role in the government. U. S. forces in Afghanistan still number more than 8, 000 and the U. S. commander, Lt. Gen. John Nicholson, is seeking more for a war that he says is a ”stalemate.” But the U. S. role now is limited, consisting mostly of air strikes and training the Afghan military, and few analyst see the prospect of a decisive military victory. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre, who first reported from Afghanistan in 1993. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"At the same baseball game that saw Boston Red Sox fans make amends with a player targeted by racial slurs at Fenway Park, one fan reportedly used a slur to comment on a singer  —   and that fan has now been banned from the stadium. ”Yes, it was a racial comment,” Red Sox club President Sam Kennedy said, according to the team. ”It was a racial comment used to describe the national anthem that was taking place, the performance of the national anthem. It was sickening to hear.” The fan was ejected and told not to come back to Fenway after he used a slur in speaking to another fan about the Kenyan woman who had just sung the anthem before Tuesday’s game. Both of the men who were speaking are white. But the man to whom the remark was addressed is Calvin Hennick, the father of a      son who was sitting with him in the stands. ”Took my son to his first baseball game tonight,” Hennick wrote on Twitter, adding that he had ”spent the day mentally defending my city” after Monday night’s game in which Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones was subjected to racial taunts and a bag of peanuts was thrown at him. Describing the encounter with a man he described as a ”  white fan,” Hennick said the fan had criticized the woman who sang the anthem by saying, ”It was too long, and she n******* it up.” ”I thought that surely I’d misheard him,” Hennick wrote, saying he asked the man to repeat himself. ”Just to be clear,” Hennick said he then responded to the man, repeating his words back to him once again. ”That’s right,” the man replied, according to Hennick. ”And I stand by it.” Hennick said he ”immediately found an usher and told him what transpired.” ”To the Sox’s credit, they took the incident seriously,” Hennick wrote, adding that when he was brought to identify the fan, the man denied using the slur. Hennick, his son and his    were given better seats, and the man was eventually kicked out. While he initially thought the other fan had spoken in the belief that they shared the same views on race, Hennick tells The Associated Press, ”The more I think about it, the more I think it was a deliberate thumb in the eye.” The ousted fan hasn’t been publicly identified the Red Sox say the Boston police were also involved in the case. ”When we see this sort of thing, we must fight back,” Hennick wrote on Twitter. ”Our opponent lacks a spine. There is no way for us not to win.” Hennick has spoken out about racism before  —   most notably in 2014, when the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. prompted him to write an essay for Ebony titled, I Hope My Son Stays White, in which he admitted to fears about how his son is perceived. The Red Soxes’ Kennedy said he couldn’t recall another incident in which a fan was permanently banned from Fenway Park. He thanked Hennick for reporting the issue and said he was proud of how the park’s staff had reacted. The interaction came on the same night Red Sox fans had been urged to show they welcome all races, after Monday’s ugly incident that targeted Adam Jones. And thousands of Boston fans did that, giving a loud and hearty round of applause for the Baltimore player. As NPR reported, ”At Tuesday’s game, many fans applauded and stood up as Jones went to bat in the first inning. Boston pitcher Chris Sale stepped off the mound to let Jones relish the moment and some Red Sox players also applauded.” After Monday’s game, the Red Sox issued a statement reading, ”The Red Sox have zero tolerance for such inexcusable behavior, and our entire organization and our fans are sickened by the conduct of an ignorant few.”"
"On Monday night’s Late Show, host Stephen Colbert had some choice words for the president. Some words he would choose differently, Colbert said Wednesday, if he were to do it again. Which, he said, he would. In case you haven’t yet watched the clip on YouTube (which contains an obscenity) or been actively tweeting on the #FireColbert hashtag, here’s what happened: Colbert’s monologue on Monday began in typical fashion for the host, who has used his criticisms of Trump to make his show the most viewed in late night. ”It is Day 102 of the Trump presidency 1, 358 to go. But who’s counting?” he asked, raising his hand. The host showed clips of a Trump interview conducted by Colbert’s CBS colleague John Dickerson, which ended with Trump cutting the conversation short after Dickerson asked whether he stood by his claim that President Obama had wiretapped him. Colbert then played another clip in which Trump called Dickerson and others in the mainstream media the ”fake media” and told Dickerson, ”I love your show. I call it ’Deface the Nation.’ ” Colbert used those slights as an occasion to defend Dickerson’s honor by insulting Trump. ”Donald Trump: John Dickerson is a   journalist, and one of the most competent people who will ever walk into your office,” Colbert began. ”And you treat him like that? Now, John Dickerson has way too much dignity to trade insults with the president of the United States to his face. But I, sir, am no John Dickerson.” ”When you insult one member of the CBS family, you insult us all,” he said. ”Here we go.” And so he went. Colbert unleashed what was less a series of jokes than a   barrage of insults: ”Mr. Trump, your presidency, I love your presidency. I call it Disgrace The Nation. You are not the POTUS, you are the Blotus, the glutton with the button.” Of particular note was a bleeped obscenity about Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The backlash was immediate, and the #FireColbert hashtag began trending, along with calls to boycott advertisers on Colbert’s show. The   joke about Trump and Putin was branded ”homophobic” by journalist Glenn Greenwald and others. Which in turn brought a backlash to the backlash. In his opening monologue on Wednesday, Colbert addressed the controversy. ”Welcome to The Late Show I’m your host, Stephen Colbert,” he said. ”Still? Am I still the host? ”I’m still the host!” he said, arms held high in victory. ”Now, folks, if you saw my monologue Monday, you know that I was a little upset with Donald Trump for insulting a friend of mine,” he said. ”So, at the end of that monologue, I had a few choice insults for the president in return. I don’t regret that. ”I believe he can take care of himself. I have jokes he has the launch codes. So it’s a fair fight. So while I would do it again, I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be.” Apparently addressing the accusations of homophobia, Colbert added, ”Life is short. Anyone who expresses their love for another person in their own way is to me an American hero. And I think we can all agree on that. I hope even the president and I can agree on that. Nothing else, but that.” Colbert has been winning the   ratings war for the past 13 weeks, a hot streak that began two weeks into Trump’s presidency. But last week was his narrowest victory yet over NBC’s Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. It could be that the attention was just what Colbert and his writers had in mind all along. Monday’s monologue has racked up more than 4 million YouTube views as of Thursday afternoon."
"There are thousands of parks, refuges and wilderness areas in the U. S. that are kept in something close to their natural state. But one form of pollution isn’t respecting those boundaries:   noise. New research based on recordings from 492 protected natural areas reveals that they’re awash in noise pollution. Researchers from Colorado State University spent years making the recordings by setting out microphones in natural areas across the country. They caught all sorts of wildlife sounds, such as rutting elk and howling wolves. But they were also after ”background” sound  —   wind, rain, birdsong, flowing streams and rivers, even bubbling mudpots in Yellowstone National Park. They compared the decibel level of this natural background with the intrusive noisiness from human activity. And they have discovered that in   of the places they studied, the median decibel level of   sound was double the normal background sound. These were sounds that came from within the area, such as road traffic, as well from as outside, such as passing jets or mining and logging equipment. And in more than 20 percent of the areas studied, the unnatural sounds were 10 times as loud as the natural background. The result is ”fairly shockingly high levels of noise pollution within protected areas,” says Rachel Buxton, lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Science. Buxton, an ornithologist, points out that adding just a few decibels of artificial background sound, like that of a jet plane, makes it harder to hear what’s around you: a stream, wind through the trees or wildlife. Even with an increase in unnatural sound of 3 decibels, ”if you could hear a sound before at 100 feet, now you can only hear it from 50 feet,” she explains. The National Park Service is well aware of the problem. It has a scientist dedicated to studying noise in parks: biologist Kurt Fristrup. He says people who are used to urban soundscapes might not know what they’re missing. ”It can make for an immersive experience when you listen carefully enough,” he says, ”to hear all those sounds that the animals around you are also attending to.” For people, listening to natural sound may be optional. But animals have to listen  —   for danger from predators, for example. Or conversely, predators such as owls need to hear their prey, like the rustling of a mouse in the leaf litter. Hearing well means surviving, Fristrup says. ”For these animals, it’s literally a matter of life and death if they miss these subtle sounds of nature: the sound of a footfall or the sound of another animal breathing,” he says. The researchers found some good news: Most national parks and larger wilderness areas are quieter than U. S. Forest Service or other federally protected lands or state parks. That’s because those parks are generally larger and more remote. And not surprisingly, the protected areas farthest from urban centers are the quietest. The team says there are solutions: keeping roads and road traffic to a minimum, for example, or controlling where and when overflights take place."
"Updated at 10:34 a. m. ET Friday with Amazon’s statement, The European Commission announced Thursday that it is concluding its antitrust investigation of Amazon over   citing key changes to the contracts that inspired the probe in the first place. The executive arm of the European Union had been wary of clauses that required publishers to alert Amazon about terms offered by the company’s competitors  —   clauses that Amazon has now promised to modify. ”Today’s decision will open the way for publishers and competitors to develop innovative services for   increasing choice and competition to the benefit of European consumers,” Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, said in a statement. Amazon celebrated the decision, as well. ”We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the European Commission,” the company said in a statement emailed to NPR. ”We will continue working to help authors and publishers reach more readers, improve the digital reading experience, and bring our customers the best possible prices and selection.” The commission launched the investigation in June 2015, concerned that the largest   distributor in Europe was using its heft to ensure it obtained terms at least as favorable as those of its competitors. Here’s what had the commission skeptical, in its own words: ”These clauses, sometimes referred to as ’  ’ clauses, required publishers to offer Amazon similar (or better) terms and conditions as those offered to its competitors   to inform Amazon about more favourable or alternative terms given to Amazon’s competitors. The clauses covered not only price but many aspects that a competitor can use to differentiate itself from Amazon, such as an alternative business (distribution) model, an innovative   or a promotion.” As we reported at the time, Vestager opened the investigation ”to make sure that Amazon’s arrangements with publishers are not harmful to consumers, by preventing other   distributors from innovating and competing effectively with Amazon.” In January, though, Amazon offered to change its contracts to comply with the commission’s concerns by stripping the clauses in question. As part of its offer, Amazon committed to maintaining these changes for a period of five years. The commission agreed to these conditions Thursday, accepting the company’s commitments and formally closing its probe  —   though it says regulators will remain vigilant enforcing the agreement: ”If Amazon were to breach the commitments, the Commission could impose a fine of up to 10% of Amazon’s total annual turnover, without having to find a violation of the EU competition rules.”"
"You’ve probably heard the phrase ”it takes a village” to get things done. Many clinics across the U. S. are finding that’s true for effectively controlling their patients’ high blood pressure. ”It’s not just medications that are required to treat hypertension,” explains Kirk Evoy, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and pharmacist at University Family Health Center Southeast. ”It’s also things like lifestyle changes,” he says. ”What do you eat? Do you exercise? Do you smoke?” A quick prescription and an annual lecture from a doctor aren’t always enough to get ahead of this quiet killer, specialists say. Some patients need extra coaching  —   and from different kinds of coaches. Take Ann Mazuca, for example. She’s 63, has diabetes, is developing glaucoma and really struggles to keep her blood pressure down. ”I know that I have to try to help myself,” Mazuca says, but weekly   with the staff at University Family Health Center Southeast help keep her on track in juggling her various conditions. ”The fact that they care makes me care,” Mazuca says. ”People want me to live. And that gives me a lot of hope.” Health care navigator Edlyn Estevez finds she often acts as a health cheerleader at the clinic  —   providing patients the outside motivation some need. ”I want to help them help themselves,” Estevez stresses. ”I’ve gotten good feedback, so I feel pretty positive about it.” Pharmacists on the team adjust medications and help people kick their nicotine habit. Physicians help with diet and weight loss. In some similar programs around the country, dietitians help patients choose healthy food options and fitness coaches help with exercise regimens. In San Antonio, free home blood pressure cuffs, bought with a grant from the American Heart Association, have armed patients with a tool for  . Just a couple of years ago, before the team approach was put in place in this San Antonio clinic and its affiliates, more than half the patients had uncontrolled hypertension, according to Dr. Patrick Pierre, a family physician at the clinic. High blood pressure put those patients at risk for kidney damage, heart problems, blindness and stroke. Today, Pierre says, about 70 percent of his patients have their blood pressure under control. ”To me that was an ” he says. He credits his team  —   fellow doctors, nurses medical assistants, even front desk personnel and administrators, as well as patient navigators, pharmacists and the patients  —   for working together to make it happen. The investment has also saved money, Pierre says, in terms of inpatient and outpatient medical costs that are linked to high blood pressure. From August to October 2016, for example, 160 new patients were able to control their blood pressure, resulting in a total savings of more than $2 million in inpatient and emergency room visits, according to University Health System. As part of a national push to embrace this model, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services   a program called Million Hearts in 2012, aimed at preventing heart attacks and strokes. The program helps physicians around the U. S. share evidence, best practices and educational materials as research discovers new ways to manage hypertension. Encouraging a multidisciplinary team approach is a major goal. ”This is not an easy thing to tackle,” says Dr. Janet Wright, a cardiologist and the executive director of Million Hearts. ”The first and most important aspect of controlling hypertension is that everyone in the practice or the practice’s network makes this a priority.” Million Hearts offers special recognition to doctors and practices with a 70 percent or higher level of control of their patients’ high blood pressure. ”Almost universally, everyone who is a high performer uses a team approach,” Wright says. The team needn’t be big to be effective, she adds. Small practices or solo doctors might train a receptionist to be a motivational interviewer or have medical assistants keep in touch with patients between appointments. Often, referral to community resources like walking groups is part of the plan. About 2, 000 patients in three San Antonio clinics have been part of this team approach to treating hypertension, Pierre says. According to the National Institutes of Health, the collaborative approach is also achieving success in managing other complex illnesses  —   including diabetes, dementia and lung disease."
"Next to a river flowing from lush green hills, Lim   64, tills her land  —   onions, garlic, potatoes and peppers. She’s lived in rural Seongju county, about 130 miles from Seoul in the southeastern region of the Korean Peninsula, all her life. It’s a quiet, conservative, agricultural place, famous for growing melons. But this past winter, Lim started hearing U. S. helicopters overhead. ”They fly low, and it’s scary,” she says. ”No one asked us if we want to host this U. S. base. I’m worried about contamination of this river  —   our livelihood.” In the hills behind Lim’s village, helicopters are airlifting equipment to a repurposed golf course where the U. S. military has been installing THAAD  —   the acronym for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, a new U. S. missile defense system. Declared operational this week, it’s designed to shoot down North Korean missiles. But locals say: Not in my backyard. In recent months, a protest camp formed in Lim’s village. On a recent morning when NPR visited, local children were performing what was billed as an   dance in the village square  —   to a song about resisting imperialist forces. ”Go away, THAAD,” they sang. ”Come, peace.” Thousands have traveled to Seongju from all over South Korea to voice their opposition to THAAD. Many are in favor of dialogue with North Korea, and believe the presence of U. S. troops and weapons could put South Koreans in danger. Buddhist monks have set up a shrine and hold vigil right next to an access road to the golf course, alongside a squadron of policemen on guard. Citizens are not permitted to get closer. ”It’s not only a regional issue,” says Choi   a former art teacher who traveled to Seongju to camp out and protest. ”It’s about peace, and how we Koreans can stop war and future weapons together.” South Korea’s former president, Park   who was ousted in March, agreed in 2012 to host THAAD after a nuclear test by North Korea. But now Park is on trial for corruption, and there’s an election next week to replace her. In TV debates, the liberal   Moon   has said he wants to rethink THAAD and objects to how the U. S. appears to have rushed its installation before the election. China objects to more U. S. weaponry in the   region, and has called for a boycott of South Korea and its products. That’s a worry for businesses catering to the lucrative Chinese market. In a touristy shopping district of Seoul, cosmetics vendors yell out what’s on sale  —   in Mandarin. Chinese tourists are their biggest clients. ”But THAAD is hurting our sales, here and in China,” says store manager Cho  . ”There’s a boycott of Korean cosmetics, and Chinese tourists have stopped coming.” Tourist arrivals from China dropped by nearly half this past March compared to the previous year. Banks in Seoul have started to offer special loans to businesses hurt by the Chinese boycott. A recent report by a Korean think tank estimates the Chinese boycott will cost South Korea some $7. 5 billion this year  —   amounting to half a point of GDP. In rural Seongju, THAAD is already operational. But as Chinese pressure on South Korea continues, whoever is elected president next week may find THAAD at the top of his or her agenda. Jihye Lee contributed to this story."
"When Ruthanna Emrys first read H. P. Lovecraft’s classic story ”The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” she already knew the basics: It’s about a creepy New England harbor town populated by strange,   people who turn out to be monstrous, sacrificing humans to their dark gods under the sea. ”But I was shocked when the story started with a government raid that sends the   people to concentration camps,” Emrys tells me in an email conversation. ”It wasn’t that Lovecraft himself could write this as [much as] that for almost 80 years, people had read this story and sympathized with the protagonist who calls down that raid. My own sympathy was squarely with the interned ” she adds. That shock and sympathy formed the seed of a short story called ”The Litany of Earth,” featuring Aphra Marsh, an Innsmouth survivor, still recovering from her losses and making a life for herself in   San Francisco. In her new novel, Winter Tide, Emrys continues Aphra’s story as she grapples with working for the same government that killed her family. ”All literature is in conversation, but playing in someone else’s sandbox puts you in a much more intense conversation. There’s a responsibility, both to speak meaningfully about things that people have been talking about for decades, and to speak beyond those things,” Emrys says. ”In Winter Tide, I wanted to talk about how we rebuild community after genocide, and how rebuilt community is always changed from what we had before. And I wanted to talk about all those readers over the years who didn’t question the Deep One concentration camps. The flip side of these darker inspirations is that Lovecraft’s Mythos is a big sandbox, with stars for grains of sand. It’s full of incomprehensibly strange life, and civilizations that rise and fall over aeons. I wanted to write someone who wasn’t terrified of that strangeness, who found the vast existential gulfs between stars comforting” How did you think about making your story accessible to   readers? I tried to treat the Mythos as I would a world of my own devising, and help readers pick things up from context. It’s not fundamentally different from a wholly original world  —   or from historical fiction or any other genre where you start writing in a furnished room. It’s not fundamentally easier either, and I went through a lot of iterations. I always have at least one first reader who reads no Lovecraft at all, along with someone who hates his work, and someone who loves it and knows all the trivia. One advantage was that Lovecraft seems to trickle into the popular consciousness the same way that Star Trek or Pride and Prejudice do. People know the basics even if they’d never be caught dead   that thing. During the election a major paper had an editorial from the point of view of Cthulhu, expressing His opinion of the candidates, and I thought, well, I guess I’ll be okay. What do you say to people who don’t want anything to do with the Mythos, because of Lovecraft’s documented racism and sexism? I think that’s perfectly reasonable, honestly. Those prejudices are part of the Mythos’s bones, and I would never argue with someone who found that too painful or unpleasant to be worth reading. That said, a lot of modern writers deal   with Lovecraft’s bigotry. If you think you might enjoy things that would make [Lovecraft] spin in his grave, Victor LaValle’s Ballad of Black Tom, Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, and Kij Johnson’s Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe are highly enjoyable both as posthumous gyroscope production and as stories in their own rights. Alternatively, if you want foundational mindbending horror but never want to think about Cthulhu, I can’t do better than to recommend Robert Chambers’s King in Yellow cycle. He basically invented the forbidden tome that messes with your mind and morality. He also appears to have had about the same politics as H. G. Wells, and his stories are full of   social satire. You’ve said the Yith are your favorite Lovecraft creations  —   why? Tell us a little about them and their role in this story. The Yith are from Lovecraft’s ”The Shadow Out of Time.” A professor wakes from a   fugue to discover that during those lost years, he suffered a drastic personality change and drove away his entire family. He starts to recover memories of living in a very alien body in the distant past, conversing with other ”captive minds” and writing memoirs for his alien captors. The Yith forcibly exchange minds over vast spans of space and time, and through this means document every species that lives and thrives and goes extinct in the history of the solar system. So they’re basically cosmic librarians who will ruin your life  —   in exchange for preserving the intimate details of your existence for aeons to come. As far as deals with the devil go, that’s pretty damn tempting! For Lovecraft, I think the Yith embodied the vertigo of cultural relativism: Your species will be remembered after they’re dust, but you have to admit that they’ll eventually fall to dust  —   and that their accomplishments are trivial on a cosmic scale. For me, the core fascination is this paradoxical conflict of cultural respect and destruction. The Yith preserve the legacy of species that would otherwise be forgotten, culture and language and precious hidden truths. They’re Humboldt’s Parrot on a grand scale. But the cost is huge. Whole species never get to have histories, because when the Yith hit an extinction event, they pull a mass mental exchange, take over the bodies of the next species up that looks good, and send the displaced minds back to face extinction in their place. Lovecraft tries frequently for ideas that are simultaneously attractive and repulsive. He frequently fails, because he was repulsed by so many things. But with the Yith, he nails it. I loved the image of the Innsmouth matriarchs with their bowls of salt water, running the household and keeping everything ritually correct. How much of the worldbuilding is ol’ H. P. and how much is you? For Lovecraft, the Deep Ones stood for the scariness of interracial breeding, or of having mental illness run in your family, or of people who don’t speak English, or all of the above. He didn’t really bother to give them family traditions. So the cultural worldbuilding is all me. ”Shadow Over Innsmouth” does contain a   (if not very  ) depiction of blood libel. Suspicious outsiders declaim, with great confidence, about how the Innsmouth natives sacrifice children and have concourse with devilish monsters. Sound familiar? Partly through deconstructing backwards from these    lies, and partly just because of my own background, their culture ended up with similarities to Judaism. The   spiritual practice that compliments the   one, that’s very much a funhouse reflection of my own experience. Little everyday customs, like saving tears in a jar of salt water to bring back to the ocean, color how Aphra sees the world. What do you want people to take away from your story? I never know quite how to answer that question  —   whatever I want people to take away, I don’t want them to go in thinking, oh, Ruthanna wants me to see X. My editor Carl   said, ”Winter Tide provides me with both hope and grim determination to survive and prosper in the face of hatred.” I could do worse than to want that for my readers. You’re currently running the Lovecraft Reread on Tor. com  —   can you recommend a good place to start for newbies? From Lovecraft’s own oeuvre, ”Pickman’s Model,” gives a good feel for his strengths without falling too deeply into his failings. Jumping to the modern stuff, Elizabeth Bear’s ”Shoggoths in Bloom” and Sarah Monette’s The Bone Key tell tight, psychologically intense stories that engage with issues Lovecraft shied away from. I also asked my   Anne Pillsworth for recommendations. She writes in the small but delightful subgenre of Lovecraftian YA  —   I recommend her Redemption’s Heir series if you like kids scrambling to control magic, deals with gods who are Dangerous to Know, and parents who aren’t complete idiots. Anne says: ”Call of Cthulhu” could be good for people already conversant in science fiction and fantasy, since they’re used to entering strange new worlds, and accept not understanding everything at once. For an easier gateway to the central canon, ”The Dunwich Horror” has the   Armitage at its heart, plus that wonderful excerpt from the Necronomicon, which pretty much lays out the Mythosian credo of OTHERS WHO WANT TO COME BACK. Since Anne thoughtfully considers which stories ease you into the pool, I’ll close by heading for the deep end and recommend one of Lovecraft’s collaborations with Hazel Heald. ”Out of the Aeons” is a wild ride with lots of chewy cosmic ideas, secret   history, extraterrestrial document forgery, a genuinely creepy central conceit, and internecine museum politics. It uses the word ”cyclopean” eleven times. It’s fun. It reminds me why I still read Lovecraft  —   even aside from his ability to irritate me,   into producing stories of my own."
"One week ago around this time, thousands of people seeking a luxurious island reprieve were preparing for a trip to Exuma Island in the Bahamas to attend the Fyre Festival. In the time since, two lawsuits seeking class action certification against the organizers of the disastrous event  —   and the models that promoted it  —   have been filed. Until today, when a third joined them. The suit, filed by two Fyre festival goers in New York’s federal Southern District Court yesterday, covers much of the same ground as the first, citing social media posts of poor conditions and a Wall Street Journal report on its failure to pay performers. Filed this past Sunday, the new suit also names Grant Margolin, the event’s marketing director, as a defendant and alleges negligence, fraud and misrepresentation and violation of the consumer protection laws of all 50 states (included in order to cover anyone who would join the suit if it is certified as a class action). A section titled ”Plaintiff’s Experience” should be familiar at this point to anyone who has paid attention thus far. Matthew Herlihy and Anthony Lauriello each paid $1, 027 for their tickets, meant to cover travel and luxury lodging at the event. Herlihy and Lauriello also deposited $900 and $1, 000 respectively onto electronic wristbands for purchases they would make at the festival, money neither has yet received. As well, Lauriello’s headphones, jeans and sneakers were stolen due to the lack of security at the event. Now that three putative class actions have been filed, two in California and now one in New York, it remains to be seen which, if any, will be certified as such, or whether the thousands of people who purchased tickets will have to bring individual actions. As well, the defendants targeted more specifically in a suit brought this past Tuesday also leaves open the possibility that the social media ”influencers” who promoted the festival  —   Kendall Jenner, for example, was paid $250, 000 while payments to others began at $10, 000 according to a report from Billboard today  —   could also be on the hook. The whole thing was such a debacle that it spurred the writer Jordan VanDina to pen a spoof comedy script (that is extensively explicit and lewd  —   and funny) starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, the magician David Blaine and the actor Kevin Connolly, best known for playing ”E” on the HBO series Entourage. The script, a   buddy romp, brings in Donald Trump, Pitbull, the band Eiffel 65 (responsible for the 1999 earworm ”Blue (Da Ba Dee)”) Kendall Jenner and the poor customer service department of United Airlines. While fiction, it’s also not such a huge stretch  —   especially the part where festival goers,   desperately seek phone chargers."
"Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip, will ”no longer carry out public engagements” starting in the fall, Buckingham Palace says, announcing what amounts to a retirement at age 95. The change will come at the end of August, according to the Royal Communications office. Until then, Philip will continue to venture out either on his own or with the queen, who is 91. ”Her Majesty will continue to carry out a full program of official engagements with the support of members of the royal family,” a statement from Buckingham Palace reads. Ahead of the announcement, word of an emergency gathering of royal staff and aides at the palace Thursday morning sparked speculation and media attention, along with a Twitter hashtag, #BuckinghamPalace. ”Following overnight reports of an emergency meeting at Buckingham Palace, many in Britain feared far worse news,” Willem Marx reports for NPR from London. ”But despite some occasional bouts of illness in recent years, the royal husband apparently remains in good health.” Philip, who is involved with more than 780 organizations, will continue to be associated with them, the palace says. He has spent seven decades in the public spotlight, and he and the queen will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary in November. Prime Minister Theresa May issued a statement thanking the prince and wishing him well. ”From his steadfast support for Her Majesty the Queen to his inspirational Duke of Edinburgh Awards and his patronage of hundreds of charities and good causes,” May said, ”his contribution to our United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and the wider world will be of huge benefit to us all for years to come.”"
"The Justice Department decided not to charge the officers involved last July in the fatal shooting of a black man, Alton Sterling. The decision is being met with anger by activists who say prosecutors are too deferential toward cops  —   and are too quick to let them off. That notion has been front and center since the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo. that followed the death of Michael Brown. Here are four questions and answers you should know about whether that complaint is true: 1. Is the Justice Department’s explanation not to prosecute the Baton Rouge, La. officers surprising?  It’s not surprising. Federal prosecutors aren’t in the business of bringing normal murder or manslaughter charges  —   that’s the state’s responsibility. The feds bring charges only if they see evidence of constitutional violation, a willful deprivation of someone’s civil rights. In a case like this, they’d have to show the cops meant to kill Sterling, and that’s hard to prove. 2. Federal prosecutors did bring charges against an officer in another shooting incident  —   Michael Slager, who killed Walter Scott in North Charleston, S. C. two years ago. Why did the feds pursue that case? It’s tempting to compare these cases. Both incidents were caught on video, both victims were black men, both generated a lot of community anger. The key difference was Walter Scott was shot as he was running from the officer. Alton Sterling was shot in the middle of a struggle, and it appears officers thought he was going for a gun. That’s the key in most of these cases of officers who shoot  —   what was the danger they reasonably perceived at the moment? That’s the constitutional standard in this country: Courts aren’t supposed to judge cops on whether they were actually in danger  —   they judge them on whether the cops reasonably believed they were in danger at that moment. The public often sees these cases in which, say, a cop shoots someone for reaching for his waistband. There’s no gun, but prosecutors don’t charge because they know it’s enough if a cop can convincingly say he thought there was a gun. Informally, these cases are sometimes called ”lawful but awful”  —   at least, awful from the point of view of many in the public. 3. Have prosecutors become more willing to charge officers in this   era? There’s an academic at Bowling Green State University, Phil Stinson, who follows this. He’s also a former cop himself. He keeps track of the number of officers charged with murder or manslaughter  —   federal or state charges. He says in 2015, there were 18 cops charged. That’s the highest he’s seen in 13 years of collecting this information. He thought that showed a   increase in prosecutions. But then the next year, 2016, it was down to 13 officers charged. The truth is, these variations are not very meaningful, statistically, because the numbers of prosecutions are so small. But he thinks it might be a sign of waning interest in charging cops. And he also points out that since Ferguson, we’ve been getting a more accurate count of the total number of people killed by police every year  —   about 1, 000. So the question becomes, are 13 prosecutions out of 1, 000 too low? Or should we accept that 987 out of 1, 000 are justifiable? 4. Has the election of President Trump and the appointment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has expressed his doubts about federal intervention on local police departments, affected the likelihood of prosecution? It’s too soon to say. Generally speaking, this is really a state matter, but the feds also play a role. When they come in and do an investigation, and explore federal charges, it puts pressure on local prosecutors. It gives the community the assurance that there’s another set of eyes on the case. Also, it’s not clear Attorney General Sessions is against prosecuting individual officers, when warranted. He objects to the Justice Department intervening with whole departments, but the fact that federal prosecutors kept up the heat in the Michael Slager case in South Carolina may indicate individual civil rights prosecutions may still happen."
"North Korea now has its own version of Spam in grocery stores. In the capital, Pyongyang, at least, everyone has a smartphone  —   or two. These are some of the things journalist Jean Lee didn’t see five years ago when she opened the Associated Press bureau in the capital of the impoverished and isolated country. Now a global fellow at the Wilson Center, Lee was invited to travel to North Korea this week to attend a medical conference in Pyongyang and follow a team of   surgeons. With the backdrop of tense relations between North Korea and the U. S. Lee spoke with All Things Considered from Pyongyang about what life is like in the North Korean capital these days. On North Koreans’ reactions to political tensions with the U. S. It’s amazingly calm. You would be surprised at how calm things are here, and I have to say that like most North Koreans, I’ve been largely cut off from the screaming headlines that we’ve been seeing. I didn’t have Internet access for several days. And, as you probably know, most North Koreans don’t have Internet access. They get their news from their own state media, so unless they read about it in their own state media, or see it on the evening news, they’re not very aware of it. To be honest, it’s remarkable, we are not seeing people who are preparing for war. They’ve had a month, really, of some big anniversaries. They celebrated May Day. I did go to a May Day celebration in the park, where they were singing and dancing and drinking. But they’re getting ready now for a busy season of rice planting in May, so they’re gearing up for that. They are completely unfazed, it seems, by all the rhetoric that we’re hearing overseas. On what has changed since Lee’s last trip to North Korea, I have to point out that I’ve only been in Pyongyang, which is the showcase capital. This is a city of elites, and so I’m only getting that side of the picture. It’s like only going to Manhattan, rather than seeing the rest of the United States. That said, it’s surprising given what we hear about the sanctions how things have progressed. Everybody has a smartphone  —   sometimes two. Everybody is on their phones. They’re all playing video games. They’re doing what we do with our cellphones as well, they’re checking the news, messaging their friends. There’s quite a bit more English, which is interesting. English is the main language that children learn here. There’s certainly a lot more cars, which is surprising given the concern about fuel shortages. I did some shopping today . .. and it’s just amazing the kinds of products that they have on the shelves. [That] certainly wasn’t the case when I started coming to North Korea. So, in some ways, life has improved for the people of Pyongyang. That said, I think that things are still incredibly difficult in the countryside. They have a chronic food shortage, and that’s only going to get worse, of course, with the tightened sanctions. On the wide variety of products available in local stores, I saw so many varieties of potato chips, varieties of canned goods, what would be their equivalent of Spam, for example, but all kinds of things  —   computers, tablets, PCs  —   all kinds of things that you might not expect to see in a country that is still very poor. On the recent detention of a   professor, I’m certainly familiar with [the case of Tony Kim]. As a   this is something that anyone who comes here on a regular basis would be paying attention to. But the North Koreans didn’t hear about it until earlier this week when it was reported in their state media. So it certainly was something that we discussed as a group with our North Korean guides, was the first that they had heard about it. And we don’t really have a lot of details, and so we’ll certainly be waiting and watching to see what he is being accused of. They have a very, very exhaustive penal code, and it is very easy to break those laws, and that’s what makes being here dangerous for anyone. All Things Considered producer Matt Ozug and digital producer Maureen Pao contributed to this report."
"In the summer of 2011, American journalist Suki Kim got a job teaching English at the elite,   Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in the North Korean capital. Kim, who was born in South Korea and immigrated with her family to the U. S. at age 13, is a fluent Korean speaker and secretly took notes during her six months at the university in Pyongyang. This formed the basis for her new book, Without You, There Is No Us. Though the university is geared for the privileged few, the students, like all North Koreans, are tightly controlled. The young men were closely monitored by female guards, they were not allowed off campus except for group outings, and they were discouraged from asking about the wider world. On the day before Kim left the country in December 2011, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, died, sending the nation into mourning. The next morning, the students ”looked as though they’d been crying all night, as though their souls had been sucked out of them, as though they’d just lost a parent,” said Kim. She spoke with Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep about her rare insider’s glimpse of the reclusive country. On speaking about the country’s leader  You don’t talk about Great Leader [Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder] by name. You certainly never, ever bring up anything about the outside world. The fact that I travel outside, really, is not something that I was supposed to talk about. But then, you live together for months and months and share three meals a day together. Then, suddenly, things start happening where you ask things. On what the students asked  One time, a student did ask me about a national assembly. I think it was a word he picked up somewhere. There was no way you could discuss that without bringing democracy into a conversation. And once I began talking about it, I got very nervous because the students were all watching each other and reporting on each other. After we discussed democracy at the table, later, another student, who’s a roommate of that student, told me that he’s with me. Meaning, he thinks like me. And that really scared me because I thought, then, some of them are questioning the system. On how   the students were from the wider world, Some were more sheltered than others. Whatever the reason was, on [the] surface, because it is a system so based, built on fear, they’re not supposed to admit it, even if they knew. They were never supposed to admit to knowing what’s going on outside. So, for example, we talked about the way they celebrate birthdays. Usually, they go back to their dormitory after dinner and they start singing songs, one by one. And they all always claimed the Great Leader’s songs, or songs about friendship. One time, one student said, ”Rock ’n’ roll.” The minute he said that, the whole table went quiet. The student just looked out instantly, as if some horrible thing was just admitted. And then someone changed the topic, and I realized: This is the fear. It was a kind of reality that is so impossible to imagine for us Americans, and I thought it was important to humanize North Koreans. On how the elite fear they could be purged, I’ve covered North Korea for over a decade, interviewed so many defectors, and this was the other extreme of the society, and they had no freedom. I don’t know how they absolutely keep that control. But we just saw, you know, [current leader] Kim Jung Un getting his uncle executed, Jang Song Thaek, at the end of 2013. And that is [the] No. 2 man in North Korea for decades, who is a relative of the Great Leader. I think it’s just a different system. I had assumed, also, that maybe the elite  —   you know, maybe the images that those people control  —   that they have so much freedom, but that just simply was not true. On the ubiquitous female guards at the university, It is so controlled. The guards were only women  —   young women in their early 20s  —   and they never mixed words with the staff. I tried, but they wouldn’t talk back to me. And they were minders, minders living in the faculty dormitory on the ground floor, and all they ever did was just guard us. It was very, very systematically controlled. . .. I did ask about that several times to the foreign teachers, ”Why is this the case?” The answer that I got was that in the beginning of the school, they had put men there  —   soldiers  —   but they realized that maybe it just looks too threatening, so they changed the soldiers to women soldiers. On whether the students and the guards ever fell in love, That would make a really good Hollywood movie. And I did imagine that because these were just, you know,      beautiful boys. But then I realized also, at some point, I learned that they come from a completely different social strata that it just wasn’t possible, supposedly. On what she took away from her six months at the university, This was my fifth visit in North Korea, and I felt the incredible sorrow in my last time more so than ever because I spent so much time, and I got to observe so many things firsthand at the school. And because they were so young  —   19 and 20  —   and I think from that, really loving them, to a degree, and understanding their world, it made me really think what a claustrophobic and inhuman place North Korea is. You know, it’s kind of like thinking my kids are trapped there. It was heartbreaking on a daily basis. And also to leave, and also knowing that’s the world that they will possibly be the leaders  —   they’re the future leaders of North Korea."
"On college campuses, outrage over provocative speakers sometimes turns violent. It’s becoming a pattern on campuses around the country. A speaker is invited, often by a conservative student group. Other students oppose the speaker, and maybe they protest. If the speech happens, the speaker is heckled. Sometimes there’s violence. In other cases  —   as with conservative commentator Ann Coulter at the University of California, Berkeley last week  —   the event is called off. Now, a handful of states, including Illinois, Tennessee, Colorado and Arizona, have passed or introduced legislation designed to prevent these incidents from happening. The bills differ from state to state, but they’re generally based on a model written by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Arizona. The model bill would require public universities to remain neutral on political issues, prevent them from disinviting speakers, and impose penalties for students and others who interfere with these speakers. Attorney Jim Manley, who   the bill, says the institutional neutrality provision serves as a reminder to public universities that they are funded by taxpayers, who shouldn’t be forced to subsidize speech that they disagree with. He says the other provisions are important because the students who have engaged in these protests have not been adequately disciplined by universities. ”We think those are incredibly important because what we’ve seen is that universities haven’t really taken this seriously and discipline students who engage in these sorts of belligerent protests that are designed not to present an alternative viewpoint, but to shut down the speaker,” Manley says. In a Wall Street Journal column, Stanford University professor Peter Berkowitz echoes this point by arguing universities are slow to shut down these protests because they often want to protect minority groups who may be offended by a provocative speaker. ”The yawning gap between universities’ role as citadels of free inquiry and the ugly reality of campus censorship is often the fault of administrators who share the progressive belief that universities must restrict speech to protect the sensitivities of minorities and women,” Berkowitz writes. ”They often capitulate to the loudest and angriest demonstrators just to get controversies off the front page.” The goal of this model bill is to protect free speech on campus broadly, Manley says, so it provides protections for both invited speakers and students who want to protest. He says the discipline provisions work by shutting down those activities that are designed to prevent an exchange of ideas. ”If I started yelling every time you asked a question, that wouldn’t be a very good way to have a conversation,” Manley says. ”And that’s basically what’s happening with these   and violent protests on campus, and those are the sorts of things that our bill goes after and tries to prevent.” North Carolina is one of the states considering a campus free speech bill, but state Rep. Verla Insko, a Democrat, criticized the legislation as an unnecessary ”regulation of a constitutional right.” Manley says the legislature’s job is to protect constitutional rights, which is what this bill is designed to do. He argues collaboration between legislatures and universities is needed to protect free speech on campus. ”Even if the university is a doing a fine job today, that doesn’t mean that there’s no role for the legislature to play here,” he says. ”And if the university is truly committed to protecting free expression, then it should be a collaborative exercise between the legislature and the university to create a piece of legislation that works for everybody.” Critics say this kind of legislation could hinder a university’s ability to regulate hate speech on campus, and Manley says this is possible because hate speech is not   in the law. ”The point of having free speech protection in the Constitution is to protect unpopular ideas,” Manley says. ”We don’t need the First Amendment for ideas that everybody agrees with. We need to protect minority views, even if those views are repugnant to most people, and maybe especially if those views are repugnant.”"
"The second person nominated by President Trump to serve as secretary of the Army announced today he was withdrawing from the process. Tennessee state Sen. Mark Green, a former Army special operations officer, cited ”false and misleading attacks against me” in a statement that said his nomination had become a ”distraction” and so he felt he should not take it forward. ”Tragically, my life of public service and my Christian beliefs have been mischaracterized and attacked by a few on the other side of the aisle for political gain,” he said. Opposition was building against Green among Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which would need to confirm him, over statements that critics called insensitive toward Muslims. One example involved a political meeting in which Green called for limiting the teaching of history of Islam in schools. Opponents also cited Green’s support for Tennessee state legislation viewed as discriminatory against LGBT people. ”At a time when our military and our nation face growing threats from foreign enemies, our armed forces cannot afford to turn away any capable and qualified service member,” said Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth. At the same time, support among Republican leaders on the committee appeared mild and, critically, a Defense Department spokesman declined on Friday to say whether Defense Secretary James Mattis was behind Green. He is the second nominee to withdraw. Trump’s first choice, Florida billionaire Vincent Viola, withdrew in February because he said he felt it would be too difficult to disentangle himself from his many business interests. Trump’s choice to become Navy secretary, financier Philip Bilden, also took himself out of the running because of his business relationships. Both jobs remain vacant along with many other politically appointed Pentagon leadership positions. Trump’s nominee to become Air Force secretary, Heather Wilson, has been cleared by the Armed Services Committee and her nomination could come before the full Senate for a vote next week. The civilian service secretaries run the three military departments  —   of the Army, Air Force and Navy, which includes the Marine Corps  —   that fall under Mattis’ leadership within the Department of Defense."
"Updated at 8:15 p. m. ET, In an   email to employees in the Office of National Drug Control Policy, acting Director Richard Baum shared some news he described as ”very discouraging for our Nation’s effort to address drug abuse.” A draft document from the White House budget office, obtained by NPR, proposes nearly zeroing out funding for the ONDCP and fully eliminating several programs involved in fighting the opioid crisis. Leaked documents indicate about a 94 percent overall cut. ”These drastic proposed cuts are frankly heartbreaking,” wrote Baum, whose position is also referred to as ”drug czar.” His email explained that the document was ” ” and could change. He asked that the information not be shared outside of the agency. But it quickly leaked out, causing alarm in the tightknit addiction help community and among lawmakers. ”We have a heroin and prescription drug crisis in this country, and we should be supporting efforts to reverse this tide, not proposing drastic cuts to those who serve on the front lines of this epidemic,” Sen. Rob Portman,   said in a statement. The leaked document is what’s known in budget lingo as a ”passback,” the proposal from the Office of Management and Budget for what should be included in the president’s budget. Agencies can appeal, and Baum wrote in his email that he and others have been trying. ”I want you to know that senior ONDCP staff have engaged, and continue to engage, with senior leadership in the White House Office of American Innovation and in OMB to address our agency’s budget concerns,” Baum wrote in the email to staffers. ”These conversations are ongoing. We hope to turn this around.” The document calls for reducing funding for ONDCP from $388 million in 2017 to $24 million in 2018, eliminating the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas grant program and the   Communities Support Program. These are popular programs in states hit hard by the opioid crisis. The budget states these cuts would ”reflect a smaller, more streamlined organization that can more effectively address drug control issues.” Asked about the proposed cuts in Friday’s White House press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, ”When it comes to the opioid epidemic, I think the president’s been extremely clear this is a top priority for him. I certainly wouldn’t get ahead of conversations about the budget. We haven’t had a final document, and I think it would be ridiculous to comment on a draft version of something at this point.” A White House spokesman wouldn’t say when a final budget document would be released. A budget outline released earlier this year made no mention of ONDCP, but it called for a $500 million increase in spending on opioid treatment and recovery. The government funding bill signed by Trump on Friday also included a boost in funds to deal with the crisis. The head of the Addiction Policy Forum said the administration ”has taken several positive steps to support recovery and treatment efforts,” but that the cuts ”would undermine the good already accomplished.” ”I would urge the Administration to reconsider these cuts, and continue to build a comprehensive plan to help Americans suffering with substance use disorders and their families,” the statement from President and CEO Jessica Nickel added. President Trump made combating the epidemic of   overdose deaths a central theme of his campaign, delivering a speech in   2016 outlining a detailed policy prescription. But since Trump took office, advocates and lawmakers have expressed concern over a lack of action. In March, Trump signed an executive order creating the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. The order directed the commission to present a report within 90 days. However, the president has not yet appointed anyone to serve on the commission (though New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is supposed to chair it, has been holding meetings). A White House spokesman, whom NPR has been asking about the commission, has responded for weeks with the same reply: ”We don’t have any announcements at this time on that.” Baum is the second acting drug czar in the Trump administration. Trump has yet to name his choice for director. For comparison, President Barack Obama’s first drug czar was confirmed by the Senate on May 7, 2009. The ONDCP website, which was packed with information and resources during the Obama administration, was replaced when Trump took office with a message that says, ”Check back soon for more information.” It hasn’t been updated since."
"Warning: This post contains graphic photographs and video. While President Nicolas Maduro has set the gears in motion for a new Venezuelan constitution, the confusion and violence that has engulfed city streets for more than a month only appears to be deepening. The tumult continued apace this week, opening Monday with Maduro’s call for a new law of the land and culminating with a women’s march  —   a   gathering in the capital Saturday to protest the president’s proposed changes. The   clashes between protesters and riot police have pushed the death toll even higher over the past month, to at least 36 by Reuters’ count. The latest victim appears to be a student shot dead Thursday in the northern state of Anzoátegui, where his shooter managed to escape on a motorcycle. In all, the news service reports that more than 1, 700 people have been arrested  —   597 of whom were still jailed as of Thursday  —   since activists first took to the streets in early April to protest an attempt to nullify the National Assembly, a legislative body packed with lawmakers who oppose Maduro’s policies. That attempt was quickly walked back  —   but not before it catalyzed an opposition that had already been simmering over rampant food shortages and indefinitely postponed elections. Now, Maduro hopes a revised constitution will spell an end to the unrest, which he sees as a plot hatched by enemies both domestic and abroad to undermine his government. ”I see congress shaking in its boots before a constitutional convention,” he declared Wednesday outside the National Electoral Council, delivering a decree that opened the process to create a new constituent assembly. NPR’s Philip Reeves reports that such an assembly  —   which won’t be elected by a popular vote  —   ”will have the power to rewrite the constitution, including election rules.” That would be convenient for Maduro, who has repeatedly delayed or canceled elections since a 2015 vote catapulted the opposition to a strong majority in the National Assembly. Beyond these few details, however, The Associated Press notes that Maduro has been vague about what he plans for his revisions, which would cut up a founding document of his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez’s regime. Still, one thing has been clear: Opposition activists are deeply opposed to the move, viewing it as, at best, an attempt to distract from the upheaval that’s seized the streets of Caracas and other major cities  —   or at worst, a   maneuver to shore up dictatorial powers for himself. And that displeasure has been evident in confrontations between protesters, dressed in gas masks and bearing makeshift medieval shields, and riot police with armored vehicles and shields of their own. As some demonstrators lobbed rocks and molotov cocktails, law enforcement has countered with increasingly violent tactics  —   including one videotaped incident in which a flaming police vehicle plowed into a crowd of protesters on their way to the National Assembly. That wasn’t the only image to go viral this week. On Wednesday, a protester suffered serious and extensive burns after catching fire when a motorcycle exploded nearby. The violence in the streets has drawn criticism from beyond Venezuela’s borders, as eight Latin American countries signed on to a letter condemning the actions of Maduro’s government. ”We condemn the excessive use of force by Venezuelan authorities against civilians who are protesting government measures that affect democratic stability and cause the loss of human life,” the countries said, according to a statement from the Mexican government reported by Reuters. As NPR’s Anastasia Tsioulcas reported Thursday,   Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel also issued an open letter to Maduro, calling on the president ”to rectify and listen to the voice of the Venezuelan people. Times cannot be defined by the blood of our people.” Within Venezuela’s borders, fears among opposition activists are running high  —   high enough, in fact, for a report that one prominent jailed activist had been hospitalized to set off   protests in its own right. Leopoldo López, who was jailed on a   sentence after the last major spate of protests, felt compelled to release a ”  ” video from his cell Wednesday, assuring ”my family and my children that I am well.” His family, however, were not satisfied. His wife, Lilian Tintori, as well as his mother have sought to maintain their pressure on authorities, maintaining a vigil outside his prison and actively recording the protest on social media. Tintori is also helping spearhead a women’s march against Maduro on Saturday, setting up what threatens to be another confrontation between demonstrators and security forces  —   prologue, perhaps, to yet another week of tumult."
"Delta is the latest airline to face fallout from an   dispute, after a family that was forced off an overnight flight from Maui to California posted video that saw the crew say agents would put the parents in jail and place their children in foster care. The airline is offering compensation and an apology to Brian Schear and his family after Schear posted the   video on YouTube Wednesday. In it, Schear and crew members argue over whether the seat he bought for his    son could instead be used by his   . The airline wanted to put another passenger in the seat. ”I’m not trying to cause a problem,” Schear is heard saying on the plane as it sat on the tarmac in late April. ”I believe in standing up for what’s right, and I paid for the seat.” The video was posted days after United Airlines reached a settlement with a man who was dragged off an overbooked plane in April, an incident that prompted outrage and congressional hearings. In its statement about the incident, Delta says: ”We are sorry for the unfortunate experience our customers had with Delta, and we’ve reached out to them to refund their travel and provide additional compensation. Delta’s goal is to always work with customers in an attempt to find solutions to their travel issues. That did not happen in this case and we apologize.” Early in the Maui video, Schear is seen being told that if he doesn’t abide by the crew’s order to give up a seat occupied by his toddler (in a car seat) he and his family would be kicked off the plane. With armed security personnel standing in the aisle of the plane, Schear says the airline would need to remove them. ”Then it’s going to be a federal offense,” a crew member tells him. ”I mean, you and your wife will be in jail and your kids will be put in foster care.” ”Wait,” Schear says. ”So we’re gonna be in jail, and my kids are gonna be what?” ”It’s a federal offense if you don’t abide . ..” the crew member answers  —   as Schear cuts her off to say, ”I bought that seat.” In his posting of the video that was filmed by his wife, Brittany, Schear wrote, ”The end result was we were all kicked off the flight. They then filled our four seats with four customers that had tickets but no seats. They oversold the flight. When will this all stop?” The incident has brought up several questions about aviation rules, from Delta’s widely shared airline policy that children who are at least 2 years old must have their own paid seats to the Federal Aviation Administration’s recommendation of car seats for kids who weigh between 22 and 44 pounds  —   a range that includes most   . It also touched on the requirement that a person occupying a seat on a plane must be named on the ticket for it. But clarity was hard to find on the tarmac where Flight 2222 sat in Maui late on the night of April 23, and the two sides could not find a compromise. ”According to the rules we’re pulling up right now, he technically cannot be in a car seat,” a crew member says of the    apparently referring to the child having an ”infant in arms” ticket. ”It’s out of my hands now,” the airline employee later tells Schear. ”I’m just letting you know from this point on, this plane will not go anywhere until you guys choose to go. Now, you can just sit here, and we can all just chill here. I’m just trying to help you, this is all I can do.” ”Trying to help us,” Schear answers, ”would’ve been not overselling the flight, and not trying to force us to get him out of that seat that I paid for, and holding this whole plane up.” He then describes how he and his family had gotten onto the plane after passing through multiple checkpoints in the airport and at the gate, where the airline could have stopped them before they took their seats and set up their two toddlers in car seats. Later in the recording, Schear offers to hold the child in his lap for the flight, and is rejected. Instead, he’s told, the only options that remain are for either the family to get off the plane or have everyone on the flight leave the plane. ”What are we supposed to do when we get off this plane?” Schear asks in the video. ”That’s not up to me,” replies a crew member, who later adds, ”At this point, you guys are on your own.” In the end, the family stayed in a hotel for the night, and got on another flight the next day. ”Unbelievable. You guys are unbelievable,” Schear says near the end of the video. ”Great customer service. Awesome. Great job.” After flashing a   Schear then rises, saying, ”We need someone to help with our car seats, to carry them off.” ”How’d you guys get on the aircraft?” the crew member asks, in a question that speaks volumes."
"A Chinese man stands on a pedestal surrounded by a harbor as a cartoon imitation of the Statue of Liberty. His clothes are tattered, his hair is in a long, thin tail, his eyes squint. The words ”diseases,” ”filth,” ”immorality,” and ”ruin to white labor” float around his head. This man is the center of an iconic image from 1881 called ”A Statue for Our Harbor,” made by the cartoonist George Frederick Keller. The image reflects the widespread   and   sentiment of the time, and was used to drum up support for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which turns 135 on Saturday. The law limited Chinese immigration and barred them from becoming naturalized U. S. citizens. Experts point to the parallels between the political climate of the exclusion era and today: a close and contentious presidential election that stirred   sentiment the growing economic anxiety of white Americans and policies that would drastically shape the country’s immigration laws. On Saturday, a group of Asian American activists are organizing a rally in San Francisco to acknowledge the anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act and to ”learn from our past and prevent it from repeating,” according to Cynthia Choi, who works with Chinese For Affirmative Action, one of the groups organizing the event. ”This is important for the Chinese American and broader Asian American community, to stand up against the new targets to this new form of exclusion, for us to say it was wrong 135 years ago and it’s wrong today,” Choi said. ”We’re in a unique period where. .. accurate information is not as easily attained, so there are a number of people who are on the fence, who are confused about the policies, who  —   more dangerously  —   feel as though this doesn’t affect them.” Then And Now: Race And Class, ”Beginning in 1882, the United States stopped being a nation of immigrants that welcomed foreigners without restrictions, borders or gates. Instead, it became a . .. gatekeeping nation,” Erika Lee, a professor at the University of Minnesota, wrote in her book At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During The Exclusion Era,  . ”In the process, the very definition of what it meant to be an ’American’ became even more exclusionary.” The Chinese exclusion law was the very first time in American history that immigrants were barred because of their race and class. In 1882, when Congress passed the law, there were 39, 600 men and women from China who arrived in the U. S. Just three years later, there were only 22, according to early records that Lee came across in her research. The 1876 presidential race between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden was a major turning point in the country’s stance on immigration. Leading up to the election, the race was so close and electoral votes were so coveted, it brought California’s ongoing fight to push out Chinese immigrants to the national stage, Lee said. Many Californians worried that Chinese laborers would take their jobs, and that they were sexually lecherous threats to society. Lee said that   measures in the 1880s  —   and today  —   were driven by both working class people and elites, as well as those who had a ”vested economic interest in border walls and detention centers.” The Chinese Exclusion Act set the groundwork for immigrant detention centers and the country’s first   deportation of a single immigrant group. Specifically, the exclusion era brought an expansion of the federal government in terms of hiring more immigrant inspectors, whose responsibilities included working as interpreters and at the detention facilities. As for today’s parallel? Lee points to companies that are vying to build a U. S.  border wall, and the question of whether there will be more   immigrant detention centers under President Trump. Lee says that today’s equivalent is the proposed   ”Muslim ban,” because it singles out specific groups of people for discrimination. ”The fact that we don’t explicitly name Muslims [in the executive order] is more of a reflection of how our racial sensibilities have changed over the past 135 years, in terms of being more polite in our racism.” And, Lee says, like the proposed ban  —   which Trump says will be in place until vetting procedures are strengthened  —   the Chinese Exclusion Act was also originally proposed as a temporary law. The exclusion act was meant to be law for a decade but lasted 61 years. It was repealed in 1943 with the Magnuson Act, when the U. S. wanted to foster an alliance with China in the war against Japan. In 2012, Congress passed a resolution formally expressing regret to Chinese Americans for the exclusion law and other discriminatory measures. But while there are many links between the exclusion era and today, there are also important differences. Trump’s immigration orders have created ”one of the most divisive eras around immigration” in history, Lee told NPR. And his policies have had   consequences for immigrants that have been met with protests across the country. ”I cannot think of another time or a set of laws that has the promise to transform immigration so dramatically at every level,” Lee said. Trump’s policies have included banning refugees, increasing border security and interior enforcement, expanding deportation and expedited removal, reforming the   visa program and attempting to enact a travel ban. Still, Lee said, what’s different is the nationwide grassroots efforts and legal challenges that have sprung up against Trump’s immigration policies. ”There were no protests in support of Chinese immigrants [during the exclusion era in the U. S.],” Lee said. But it’s unclear if some immigrants today draw a link between the historical exclusions and Trump’s various immigration restrictions, according to Janelle Wong, the director of the Asian American studies program at the University of Maryland, College Park. ”On the one hand, more than 60 percent of   registered voters oppose a ’Muslim Ban.’ This is pretty consistent across groups,” Wong wrote in an email, citing her work on the National Asian American Survey. ”On the other hand, the survey also shows that about 20 percent of Chinese Americans, and   registered voters as a whole, support such a ban. This, despite the fact that Chinese were the first in U. S. history to be excluded according to these kinds of ascriptive characteristics.” Choi, the rally organizer, said she feels that while the Chinese Americans who support the ban are a minority, ”they’re a vocal one.” Choi said that many of the rally’s speeches will be translated into Cantonese and Mandarin, which she hopes will draw in people who might only speak Chinese. In 1885, a student named Saum Song Bo wrote a scathing open letter in a New York newspaper. He was struck by the irony that the U. S. was erecting the Statue Of Liberty three years after passing the Chinese Exclusion Act: ”That statue represents Liberty holding a torch which lights the passage of those of all nations who come into this country. But are the Chinese allowed to come? As for the Chinese who are here, are they allowed to enjoy liberty as men of all other nationalities enjoy it? Are they allowed to go about everywhere free from the insults, abuse, assaults, wrongs and injuries from which men of other nationalities are free?” Liberty, for Bo and many other immigrants in that era, felt out of reach."
"Back in 2014, Laura Poitras brought out Citizenfour, her   documentary about Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s illegal surveillance program. Unfolding like a thriller, the film knew exactly what it was about  —   Snowden’s heroism, the evils of clandestine government snooping and the virtues of making such hidden programs known. Poitras clearly expected to make a similar kind of movie when she started shooting Risk, her new film about Julian Assange, the    Australian founder of WikiLeaks whose way of   classified documents radically changed journalism. Yet over the years the film began morphing into a messier, more ambiguous kind of doc. While this makes Risk less shapely and dramatic than Citizenfour, it’s more interesting for that very reason. Poitras began filming Assange back in 2011 after his group released classified files from Private Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley. She follows Assange as he lies low in the English countryside, gets accused of sexual assault in Sweden, and winds up taking asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where’s he’s been living for nearly five years. Poitras interrupted shooting him to make Citizenfour, and most of Risk’s footage comes from that earlier period, although she works to include his and WikiLeak’s vexed role in America’s 2016 presidential election. Risk takes us closer than we’ve ever gotten to the enigmatic rebel. We watch him plan strategy with sidekick Sarah Harrison, grow paranoid about being overheard during a woodsy chat, do his daily   inside the embassy, ponder the nature of political risk and, in a scene that defies satire, get interviewed by Lady Gaga who asks inane questions while filming him. Of course, it’s part of today’s culture that Assange, and even Poitras, should have become pop figures, with Benedict Cumberbatch playing him in a Hollywood movie and Homeland doing an unflattering riff on her. Yet, the Assange we meet in Risk is no caricature. He’s brainy, thoughtful, unafraid and elusive, with unsettling white hair and an air of righteous certainty, although he comes off softer and less stentorian than you expect  —   more Paul Dano than Cumberbatch. The Assange we meet in Risk is not especially sympathetic. Take those sexual assault charges. You’d don’t need to be a cynic to think it quite possible that the accusations against him could have a political motive  —   to discredit him and WikiLeaks. Yet when Poitras shows him talking to his female lawyer about the case, Assange says such creepy things about radical feminist conspiracies that you believe he could be guilty. Things are equally murky when it comes to knowing precisely what Assange believes in. He insists that his feelings don’t matter  —   that what counts are his actions  —   but his underlying politics are a subject I wish Poitras had pushed him on. Assange clearly believes that the world’s power elite maintains control by doing things the public never gets to see. By leaking documents, he thinks, WikiLeaks is revealing how the world actually works  —   for instance, how Democratic National Committee big shots actually were conspiring to help Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders. Yet here’s the problem. Just as most of us don’t want our government secretly hoarding people’s private information, we also don’t want the release of sensitive documents to be controlled by a handful of leakers who answer to no one. In last year’s election, WikiLeaks didn’t just leak things to damage Clinton  —   whom Assange considered a personal threat. The leaks failed to redact personal info about Clinton donors, like   numbers, a violation of privacy called out by Snowden himself, though ignored by Poitras. I don’t trust Assange or any other unvetted source  —   and there will be more  —   to decide which documents from Russian hackers or NSA leakers get put on the web. At one point in Risk, Poitras tells us she’s surprised that Assange trusts her with so much access because he doesn’t seem to like her. I suspect the truth is she doesn’t much like him, which helps explain why Risk lacks the rousing neatness of Citizenfour. She defends him, but can’t quite make him a hero. Like Assange, Poitras believes in making secrets public and abhors this country’s draconian treatment of   and its increasing threats against journalists. They’re on the same team, and they share the same grand ideal of transparency. But whether or not it was Poitras’ intention, Risk reminds us that grand ideals are finally no grander than the flawed human beings who bring them to life."
"Soccer star Sulley Muntari finally got fed up. He’s a midfielder from Ghana who plays for the Italian team Pescara. Last Sunday in a match against Cagliari in Sardinia, a bunch of spectators taunted him with racist chants. He reportedly shouted, ”This is my color” and went to the referee to ask that the game be halted. Instead, he got a yellow card. The card means he was booked for dissent, a punishment doled out to players who touch or verbally abuse officials. Muntari then walked off the field to protest, earning him a   suspension, which was just overturned Friday night. As for the racist fans? The disciplinary committee decided that because there were ”only 10” people involved, no further action was required. (That’s a contrast to what happened Monday night at a Boston Red Sox game, where several fans were ejected for racially taunting Baltimore Orioles player Adam Jones.) The Italian incident has provoked an international outcry. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called Muntari ”an inspiration.” And everybody’s talking about the incident in Ghana, where the    Muntari was born and launched his soccer career, says sports radio host Daniel Kwaku Yeboah, who’s also managing editor of Ghana Sports Online. Many people in Ghana think the referee was out of line in punishing Muntari, but others think, ”there’s no use” in hoping for change, says Yeboah, who can recite a long list of African soccer players who have been subjected to racist slurs in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Most of the time, this racism doesn’t make headlines. Yeboah says Ghanaian player Augustine Ahinful told him about hearing racially charged chants during an Italian match. When Ahinful asked a referee to address the chants, the referee just insulted him in Italian. Ahinful knew exactly what had been said  —   and realized that the referee probably assumed he didn’t understand Italian. So Ahinful just concentrated on playing, Yeboah says. Other players have told Yeboah they’ve been taunted by their own teammates. What makes Muntari special is that his case is getting attention, Yeboah says. But he doubts it will last long. ”Normally we don’t talk about [racism] until something crops up. Then it goes to sleep,” he says. Established stars get used to it, Yeboah says, ”but for up and coming ones, it’s difficult to handle.” Many young players are reluctant to play abroad, he says, but go anyway for economic reasons. ”Most Italians will tell you it’s not real racism, they’re just supporting their team,” says Francesco Ricatti, a senior lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast who studies football, migration and politics. Another factor is the recent surge of refugees and migrants. Add in an economic crisis and the rise of   politics, and it’s Ricatti’s impression that Italian racism is getting worse. His view is that institutions need to recognize and address the problem directly. (One law he’d like to see changed: Children born in Italy to migrant parents can’t get citizenship until they turn 18.) Meanwhile, Muntari came up with a way to reach out to his taunters. During that game in Sardinia, he gave his shirt to a kid he saw participating in the racist chanting. ”I needed to set an example so he grows up to be nice,” Muntari told reporters."
"A lot of the anger over federal public land in rural Utah today can be traced back to a windy, gray day in Arizona in September 1996. At the Grand Canyon, President Bill Clinton formally designated the Grand   National Monument in Utah, more than 100 miles away. ”On this remarkable site, God’s handiwork is everywhere in the natural beauty of the Escalante Canyons,” he said. But Clinton didn’t set foot in Utah. The planning for the monument was largely done in secret, and state leaders had little warning it was coming. Now, nearly 21 years later, mistrust toward the federal government persists, in the tightknit, mostly Mormon town of Blanding, Utah. Folks can’t help but draw a parallel to how President Barack Obama’s sweeping Bears Ears National Monument ended up in their backyard. ”I don’t understand how it would protect the land when you’re inviting thousands of footprints in,” says Laura O’Donnell. O’Donnell, who works at Blanding’s modest visitor center, says she is uncomfortable with her town suddenly being the flashpoint in the heated debate over the future of federal public lands. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is keeping a promise to travel into rural Utah beginning this weekend to hear from locals who live around the new 1. 35   Bears Ears monument and the established 1. 8   Grand Staircase monument to the west. The Trump administration has launched a   review over whether large national monuments like these that protect federal land should be rescinded or shrunk. In Blanding, Zinke’s visit is highly anticipated. Here, opposition to the monument runs deeper than the usual anxieties in sagebrush country about adding more protections to public land that would restrict future mining and other development. ”Monuments should be an honor to an area, and we feel like this one is nothing but a punishment,” says Jami Bayles, who founded a group called the Stewards of San Juan County. From her office at a small college, you can see the twin Bears Ears buttes framing the distant horizon out on the vast Cedar Mesa west of town. While not as visually dramatic as the famous national parks nearby, the area is dense with cliff dwellings and ancient artifacts. Bayles and many of her neighbors felt offended when the federal government announced additional protections under a new monument because they felt it sent a message that the land was being threatened. ”We keep that place pristine, we keep it clean, we check on it all the time,” Bayles says. ”I guess my argument is, ’OK, yeah, it belongs to everybody, but not everybody has been taking care of it.’ ” Bayles says that the monument is being pushed by extreme,    environmentalists and that her side has struggled to be heard. There are deep pockets behind the campaign to protect Bears Ears. San Juan County is about 50 percent Native American. A short drive down the road, on the Navajo Nation Reservation, tribal leaders say it’s a lie for people in Blanding to argue that the monument is being pushed on them from the outside. ”For them to be here for 130 years, they should at least understand the Native Americans now,” says Kenneth Maryboy, a chapter president. Native Americans from around the Four Corners region, where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet, who back the new monument are open about the fact that they’re getting outside help and money because they didn’t have a voice before, according to interviews with tribal leaders. Many tribes in the region have officially come out in support of the monument, though not all. Maryboy was involved with the first talks with Utah’s congressional delegation almost a decade ago about protecting Bears Ears as a National Conservation Area. They broke down last year, then came Obama’s executive order. ”Our gripe and our fight is to preserve what’s there, the Native American artifacts, the antiquities and all the shrines and the ruins,” Maryboy says. The sacred burial grounds of the famous Navajo leader Manuelito are included in the new monument. Maryboy sees the monument as crucial to protecting these antiquities from vandalism and looting, a historical problem in San Juan County. ”The San Juan County good ol’ boys don’t want to see this happen,” says Maryboy. ”They adamantly, openly said, ’This is our land. The damn Navajos need to go back to the reservation.’ ” It’s not an overstatement to say that Zinke will see deep tension and polarization when he arrives at Bears Ears late this weekend for a   tour. Tribes here point to a history of broken promises with the U. S. government. If the Trump administration moves to abolish Bears Ears, it’s not hard to imagine a Standing   protest here. On the other hand, if the monument stays intact, some wonder whether the militias that support rancher Cliven Bundy and his sons would arrive in San Juan County. Back in Blanding, some locals like Ferd Johnson are floating a compromise. Why not just shrink the monument and protect the cliff dwellings and other antiquities themselves, they say. ”All these environmentalists, these Navajos, Hopis and the other Indians didn’t even know where the Bears Ears was,” Johnson says. ”Why is it so sacred if they don’t even know where it is?” The tribes dispute this. Some have already signaled they’ll sue if, after Zinke’s Utah trip, the Trump administration moves to rescind Bears Ears."
"If you were feeling blue after Crayola’s March announcement that the company would be retiring the bright yellow hue, Dandelion, you’ll soon have a new blue crayon to color in your tears with. The company announced in March that a member of the blue family would take Dandelion’s spot, but the specifics were lacking, until now. On Friday, Crayola announced that the new blue is inspired by the YInMn blue pigment. Not familiar with YInMn? Don’t worry, it’s pretty new to the color scene. The pigment was discovered by accident in 2009 at Oregon State University in a chemistry lab run by Mas Subramanian, a professor in materials science, and his graduate students. Accident or not, Crayola liked the new hue. ”When we knew that we would be retiring one of our colors from our broad color palette we also wanted to insure that the new color that we brought into our color spectrum was fresh, inspiring and most important innovative,” says Karen Waters, Crayola’s director of content, PR and social marketing. ”With all of the attention drawn to the pigment that Mas and his team discovered, there was no better team to reach out to.” As NPR reported in 2016, the group of chemists had been mixing and heating different chemicals while they worked to find a new material to be used in electronics. One particular sample, after being heated to 2, 000 degrees Fahrenheit, came out a bright blue color. The name YInMn comes from yttrium, indium and manganese oxides, the different elements that compose the pigment. It’s important to note that Crayola’s color is only inspired by YInMn because the pigment can’t be added to paints and materials just yet. ”Because this is such an innovative and recently discovered pigment it is in the process of regulatory approval, so once the approvals are complete, we’ll experiment all the different possibilities,” Waters says. Subramanian is also hoping the new blue crayon will show children how creative science experimentation can be and what it can lead to. This crayon  —   which doesn’t have a name yet  —   will join four other blues in the   box. Crayola decided to dump Dandelion and add a new hue of blue, after polls showed that’s what people wanted. ”Fans in North America have told us through previous polls and surveys that blue is their favorite color,” says Melanie Boulden, a senior vice president. Now if you just love blue and are still tickled pink about this new hue you could have a chance to help name it. Crayola is taking submissions about what the new blue should be named until June 2. On July 1, the top five names will be announced and then voting will begin. Fans won’t know the new name until September and the lovely hue of blue won’t be available until late 2017. As for Dandelion, the bright yella fella continues his retirement tour. Immediately after the retirement announcement Crayola started selling   where all the crayons are Dandelion. Still, this retirement leaves only one yellow crayon  —   literally the yellow one  —   in the group of 24. Crayola has said that it’s always possible new colors will be added, but did not say they had any immediate plans to introduce another yellow. If they do, can we all agree that Green Yellow should be the next crayon to go?"
"For the second time in less than two weeks, the State Department has hit the ”delete” button after complaints that it was promoting Trump family business endeavors. This time, the State Department deleted a retweet of a post by President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. The Office of Global Women’s Issues, a small   at the State Department, used its official Twitter account to retweet an Ivanka Trump tweet touting her new book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success. The office has a mandate to ”promote the rights and empowerment of women and girls through U. S. foreign policy.” Trump’s initial tweet from her personal account said: ”Thank you to my beautiful sisters for the support of my #WomenWhoWorkBook!” It showed pictures of sister Tiffany Trump and    Lara Trump reading the book. The State Department declined to comment in response to an NPR request. The latest deletion comes not long after the State Department removed an online article featuring    President Trump’s   golf course in Florida. That erasure happened on April 24, following widespread complaints about the use of   resources to talk up one of Trump’s businesses. Ivanka Trump is a White House adviser to her father. Although she is unpaid, she is subject to the rules governing federal employees, who must tread carefully when it comes to endorsing any product for personal gain. Trump has canceled her book tour to avoid breaching ethics rules surrounding   saying in a statement: ”Out of an abundance of caution and to avoid the appearance of using my official role to promote the book, I will not publicize the book through a promotional tour or media appearances.” She also has said she will keep the portion of the advance already paid to her, but the unpaid portion will go to the Ivanka M. Trump Charitable Fund, and future royalties will also be donated."
"The U. K. held its local elections Thursday, and a   political party won its first seat. This party is comprised of just one woman, named Sally Cogley. And it has just one issue: rubbish. In Thursday’s vote to fill three Irvine Valley places on East Ayrshire Council, Cogley came in second after the Scottish National Party candidate, enough to win a seat. Or as The Telegraph had it, ”People chose the   party over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in East Ayrshire, Scotland.” According to Rubbish Party’s website, Cogley founded the party in March ”to rid the local community of all types of ’rubbish’ from wasted resources to littering and dog fouling. Households are facing council tax increases alongside cuts to services, it is therefore imperative that wastage is removed and that money is spent wisely.” Cogley formerly worked in human resources, the website says, and she has been a community councilor for over 10 years. It says Cogley has organized the annual litter pickup and initiated a river cleanup in her town of Galston, where she has lived for more than 20 years. Her platform was indeed focused on literal rubbish, with her party’s Facebook page showing Cogley standing in front of vanquished piles of the stuff. ”Do you despair at the amount of litter, fly tipping [illegal dumping] dog poo, cigarette ends and chewing gum that blight our roads, paths, parks, town centres and countryside?” her fliers ask. But Cogley also argued for the value of local representation, unaffiliated with the U. K.’s major political parties. ”The Valley needs Councillors who are prepared to put The Valley first, candidates who have guts, candidates who will stand up and be counted, candidates who are not compromised by their party,” according to the Rubbish Party website. ”Sally is this candidate.” Cogley’s   work has been well documented by Scotland’s Daily Record. A 2015 article about her efforts has the headline, ”Fed up Galston woman says litter louts and   should be hammered with fines of over £1000.” Last year, she was part of a campaign to pressure dog owners to pick up their pets’ poop. ”I think that dog fouling is lazy, dirty and potentially dangerous. It is simply disgusting to bag it and not dispose of it in the bins provided. Discarding the bags of dog faeces on paths   in parks is revolting,” she told the newspaper. ”And sadly, as with all acts of littering vandalism, it has a magnetic effect. Once one bag is discarded more will follow.” But not everyone agreed that rubbish was the area’s most pressing issue. In an exchange on her Facebook page two months ago, an apparent resident of the Irvine Valley asked Cogley, ”Where are the rest of your policies.” ”Like you I agree there is a lot to be done,” Cogley replied. ”PENSION POLICY  —   this is determined at national level, not local level and any candidate who tells you to the contrary is telling you what they think you want to hear, not what they can deliver. . .. I categorically will not be asking for more money for the positive changes I seek to deliver.” British publications were keen to point out that the Rubbish Party won as many seats  —   one  —   in Thursday’s council and mayoral elections across England, Scotland and Wales as the   UK Independence Party. The Guardian reported that UKIP lost 140 seats in the elections, wiping out the huge gains it made in 2013. Despite her success, Cogley claimed to have no wider political ambitions. ”Sally is not trying to change the world,” her website stated, ”but will change the Valley.”"
"Fans throwing back whiskey while listening to Chris Stapleton, or hollering in delight at his thrilling shows, might be surprised to learn that country’s woolly     is actually kind of a nerd. He spends time online bidding on old guitar pedals so he can replicate the sounds on his favorite Staple Singers albums, and thinks a great date with his wife, Morgane, is a trip to a record store to scour the dollar bins. Morgane is a nerd too, but the organizational sort: For years, she’s kept track of Stapleton’s vast array of songs by burning them on CDs and cataloging them. Their habits combined in an interesting way to shape the new Chris Stapleton album, From A Room: Vol. 1. The   to Stapleton’s   solo debut Traveller presents fresh recordings of songs culled from the songwriter’s many years as one of Nashville’s   weapons. Stapleton obsessives will recognize crowd favorites like the soulful ”I Was Wrong” and the stomper ”Second One To Know.” That latter track was   by Mike Henderson, who was in the bluegrass band The SteelDrivers with Stapleton From A Room: Vol. 1 also highlights the writing relationships that helped the   Kentuckian form the sensibility that makes his recordings so special. That sensibility is well grounded and  . From A Room: Vol. 1 demonstrates Stapleton’s fluency in classic country,   rock and raw Southern soul, with the   ”Broken Halos” setting off an arc that eventually lands in the deep blues of ”Death Row.” As is their modus operandi, Morgane worked with Chris to select the songs, and producer Dave Cobb weighed in too. They brought the material into the historic RCA Studio A on Music Row  —   the Chet   space that’s Cobb’s main base of operation these days  —   where vintage equipment, high ceilings and history stained into the walls inspired performances that ring with emotion. On a sunny May Tuesday, Chris and Morgane sat on the   leather couch in Studio A’s control room to talk with me about the making of this album and the journey that’s swept them up since Traveller became one of the great critical and commercial successes of 2015. Grounded and gracious, they embodied the openness and grace that is the best of Nashville right now. Hear our conversation at the audio link, and read on for highlights. On the difference between playing smaller clubs and larger venues, Morgane Stapleton: This has been a topic of conversation a lot these days, just with us and the guys in the band, with [bassist] J. T. [Cure] and [drummer] Derek [Mixon]  —   trying to find that same sort of feeling of connection in such a bigger room with more people, feeling that much farther away from ’em. You’re overwhelmed by the fact that 13, 000 people would show up, and they’re all in one place, and the way the rooms sound differently. So to me there’s a lot of pluses and minuses in that way, where I miss the intimate thing. But in the rooms that we’re playing now, a whole different feeling is sort of conjured up by the space and just the sheer number of folks willing to show up. It’s  —   hard to believe. Chris Stapleton: To expand on that, I always want to try to create that for that many people. I want the dude in the top row to feel like he’s down there on the front row in a club. Now, are we achieving that yet? I don’t know. We’re working on it. But that’s what I would want out of a show, if I came to a big show. And I’ve been to shows that do that fairly well  —   Paul McCartney’s really good at doing that. Like, you can see him in a baseball stadium and you feel like  —   there he is. Of course, he has enormous screens  —   we have screens, but not Paul McCartney screens. [Laughs.] Morgane Stapleton: Well, we haven’t changed the way we set up, either. We still use wedges [instead of   monitors] and we all stand as close together as we would on any small stage, you know. It’s the same setup if the stage is five times that size. So we still very much operate like we would in a club. On whether Chris consults with Morgane every step of the way, Morgane Stapleton: I don’t know about every step, but  —   yeah, he definitely, I think, leans on me for songs. And then there’s some, too, that he’s just determined to do. ”Traveller,” actually, was one of those, where  —   not that it wasn’t on my list, but I had songs ahead of it. And I was wrong about that one, so  —   maybe not every step of the way, but definitely a lot of the steps. Chris Stapleton: I’ll plant a flag on things, and she’ll plant a flag on things, too. ”No, don’t do that,” or ”you really need to do this.” So it’s —   Morgane Stapleton: Teamwork. Ann Powers: Have you ever had a serious disagreement where you just couldn’t get him to do the song you wanted him to do, or —   Morgane Stapleton:  ? Or, like, in general? [Laughs.] Chris Stapleton: We are married, so yes. Morgane Stapleton: I don’t know about songs. . .. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah: ”Higher.” Chris Stapleton: Well, I didn’t refuse to do it. We just didn’t get to it. Morgane Stapleton: How convenient. So maybe one day, OK. Leave that door open. I like it. On finding a balance between innovation and staying true to oneself, Chris Stapleton: I think at some point, all of us  —   I’m gonna speak personally, not for everybody else  —   you’re gonna feel like a   pony, and you might even be a   pony. But at some point, if it’s a really good trick, everybody’s still gonna appreciate it. From A Room: Vol. 1 is out now."
"As a songwriter in Nashville, Chris Stapleton has written hits for Kenny Chesney, George Strait and Darius Rucker. As a singer, he once led the bluegrass band The SteelDrivers, and more recently stepped into the solo spotlight with Traveller, his debut album. It’s the kind of country record that gets better the more you wear it in: When NPR Music named it one of our favorite albums of the first half of 2015, critic Ann Powers compared it to a ”soft denim jacket . .. pulled out time after time, lending comfort, suiting every occasion, with treasure stuffed in every pocket.” It’s easy to understand why other singers took to his songs  —   Stapleton writes lyrics that sound classic but never dated  —   but his softly creaking voice gives them the home they deserve. And even though those songs stand plenty well on their own, it’s nice to have a little support. When Stapleton stepped behind the Tiny Desk to play selections from Traveller, he was joined by his wife Morgane on harmony vocals. Between patient, detailed songs of devotion to love, Los Angeles and liquor, they paused for banter about the summer heat in D. C. and the large number of guitars Chris owns (”Not supposed to tell that part,” he said to Morgane). Watch him hide behind a large hat, a beard and a battered vintage guitar watch her smile at him during ”More Of You” with a combination of admiration and affection. Like the songs themselves, their performance is full of private moments worth sharing widely. Traveller is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Jacob Ganz, Morgan Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Morgan Walker, Lani Milton Assistant Producer: Mina Tavakoli photo by Lani   For more Tiny Desk Concerts subscribe to our podcast."
"  years ago, the 27th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution was ratified  —   nearly two centuries after it was written. The improbable story of how that happened starts with the Founding Fathers themselves and winds up at the University of Texas. And it’s a heartening reminder of the power of individuals to make real change. Let’s back up to 1982. A    college sophomore named Gregory Watson was taking a government class at UT Austin. For the class, he had to write a paper about a governmental process. So he went to the library and started poring over books about the U. S. Constitution  —   one of his favorite topics. ”I’ll never forget this as long as I live,” Watson says. ”I pull out a book that has within it a chapter of amendments that Congress has sent to the state legislatures, but which not enough state legislatures approved in order to become part of the Constitution. And this one just jumped right out at me.” The unratified amendment read as follows: ”No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of representatives shall have intervened.” In other words, any raise Congress votes to give itself can’t take effect until after the next election, so constituents can decide whether they deserve it. The amendment had been proposed almost 200 years earlier, in 1789. It was written by James Madison and was intended to be one of the very first constitutional amendments, right along with the Bill of Rights. But it didn’t get passed by enough states at the time. To ratify an amendment,   of state legislatures need to approve it. And it turned out that the    proposed amendment didn’t have a deadline. Watson was intrigued. He decided to write his paper about the amendment and argue that it was still alive and could be ratified. He turned it in to the teaching assistant for his class  —   and got it back with a C. Watson was baffled. He was sure the paper was better than a C. He appealed the grade to the professor, Sharon Waite. ”I kind of glanced at it, but I didn’t see anything that was particularly outstanding about it and I thought the C was probably fine,” she recalls. Most people would have just taken the grade and left it at that. Gregory Watson is not most people. ”So I thought right then and there, ’I’m going to get that thing ratified.’ ” Lobbying lawmakers, He needed 38 state legislatures to approve the amendment. Nine states had already approved it, mostly back in the 1790s, so that meant Watson needed 29 more states to ratify it. He wrote letters to members of Congress to see whether they knew of anyone in their home states who might be willing to push the amendment in the state legislature. When he did get a response, it was generally negative. Some said the amendment was too old some said they just didn’t know anyone who’d be willing to help. Mostly, he got no response at all. But then, a senator from Maine named William Cohen did get back to him. Cohen, who later served as secretary of defense under President Clinton, passed the amendment on to someone back home, who passed it on to someone else, who introduced it in the Maine Legislature. In 1983, state lawmakers passed it. ”So I’m thinking, ’my first success story this can actually be done’,” Watson says. Feeling emboldened, he started writing to every state lawmaker he thought might be willing to help. He wrote dozens of letters. After a while, it started to work. Colorado passed the amendment in 1984. And then it picked up momentum. Five states in 1985. Three each in 1986, 1987 and 1988. Seven states in 1989 alone. By 1992, 35 states had passed the amendment. Only three more to go. After 10 years of     and shaming, Watson was within reach of his goal. On May 5, 1992, both Alabama and Missouri passed the amendment. And on May 7, as Watson listened on the phone, the Michigan House of Representatives put it over the top. His quest was finally over: More than 200 years after it was written, the 27th Amendment was finally ratified. ”I did treat myself to a nice dinner at an expensive restaurant,” Watson recalls. What’s so striking about this story is the sheer degree of difficulty of what Gregory Watson did. Amending the Constitution is  —   by design  —   incredibly hard to do. In fact, the 27th Amendment is still the most recent amendment to the Constitution. It turns out that one person really can make a difference. ”I wanted to demonstrate that one extremely dedicated, extremely vocal energetic person could push this through,” Watson says. ”I think I demonstrated that.” He has kept pursuing these kinds of quests since then. In 1995, he realized Mississippi had never ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. So he pushed that state’s Legislature to do it  —   and it worked. It was symbolic, but it meant something. (Due to a filing error, the ratification was not officially recorded until 2013 . .. but that’s another story.) Making the grade, Back in 1992, as Watson celebrated his achievement with the 27th Amendment, things weren’t going as well for his former professor, Sharon Waite. She had moved from Austin back to South Texas in the 10 years since Watson was her student. She tried to get a teaching job down there, with no luck. ”I was feeling sorry I’d spent all those years studying and you know . .. nothing!” Waite says. She would look at all the papers and books and stuff she’d collected over the years getting her master’s degree and her doctorate and wondered, ”What was it all for?” Until one day, she got a phone call from someone writing a book about constitutional amendments. ”They said, ’Well did you teach at UT Austin in the early ’80s?’ and I said, ’Yes I did,’ ” Waite says. ”And then they asked, ’Did you know that one of your students, Gregory Watson, pursued getting this constitutional amendment passed because you gave him a bad grade?’ ” Waite was blown away. And in that moment, she felt redeemed. ”Many people have said you never know what kind of effect you’re going to have on other people and on the world. And now I’m in my 70s, I’ve come to believe that’s very, very true. And this is when it really hit me because I thought to myself, ’You have, just by making this fellow a grade he didn’t like, affected the U. S. Constitution more than any of your fellow professors ever thought about it, and how ironic is that? ’” And with the benefit of hindsight, Waite says, Watson clearly doesn’t deserve that C she gave him. ”Goodness, he certainly proved he knew how to work the Constitution and what it meant and how to be politically active,” she says. ”So, yes, I think he deserves an A after that effort  —    !” And that’s exactly what happened. On March 1, Waite signed a form to officially change Watson’s grade.   years after Gregory Watson wrote his paper, he finally got his C changed to an A. This story was originally produced for   Magazine."
"It was in a school in the South Bronx a few weeks ago that I first heard about the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. The TV show, released at the end of March and based on a   young adult novel, depicts a teenager who kills herself. She experiences sexual assault, cyberbullying and inadequate responses from adults, and she leaves messages for the classmates and others whom she holds responsible for her suicide. Educators, parents and school counselors are raising the alarm that the show glamorizes risky behaviors and could even lead to copycat deaths. The National Association of School Psychologists released a warning statement, reading in part: ”We do not recommend that vulnerable youth, especially those who have any degree of suicidal ideation, watch this series. Its powerful storytelling may lead impressionable viewers to romanticize the choices made by the characters   develop revenge fantasies.” Following some of the criticism, Netflix has said it is adding an additional ”viewer warning card” as a kind of trigger warning before the episode. Netflix representatives did not respond to NPR Ed’s request for comment, but they told Variety: ”While many of our members find the show to be a valuable driver for starting important conversation with their families, we have also heard concern from those who feel the series should carry additional advisories.” Can television shows really pose a danger to youth? And how realistic is the depiction of mental health issues in the show? Ron Avi Astor at the University of Southern California has spent decades studying bullying, mental health and risky behaviors among youth. He just presented new research at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association alongside his close collaborator Rami Benbenishty from   University in Israel. It gets directly at some of the issues raised by this TV show. Since their presentation, Avi Astor says, ”I must have had 20 people come up to me and ask me about 13 Reasons Why.” For their research, Avi Astor and Benbenishty analyzed responses to the California Healthy Kids survey, given at middle schools and high schools across the entire state of California. Some of the questions this paper gets at are: Is suicide really such a big problem among teens? (Yes.) Is it really contagious? (It can be.) Can bullying really influence someone to commit suicide? (Absolutely.) And what can be done on the school level to lower risks? (Quite a lot.) Here were their key takeaways: This understanding may affect how, whether and with whom adults choose to respond to these issues, whether raised by a TV show or an actual incident. If you do an   assembly after a student suicide, says Avi Astor, it could ”glorify” and ”normalize” the behavior. This could actually be dangerous to the kids who are already thinking about these things. ”A kid who’s not suicidal may see that and go, ’That’s messed up.’ The group that has tried it, they say, ’Yeah, that’s how I want to make my statement.’ ” His research also underlines the need for schools to energetically combat problems like bullying,   or homophobic harassment and gang activity. ”If someone is victimized, even something like pushing and shoving, they are more likely to have suicidal ideation,” says Avi Astor. That has been proven to translate into suicide attempts. So improving school climate can actually save lives. Katherine Cowan, the director of communications at the National Association of School Psychologists, agrees that looking at schoolwide factors is important in addressing student mental health. ”Kids spend an enormous amount of time in school and that environment needs to be welcoming, nurturing, safe,” she says. ”If schools aren’t addressing factors like bullying and cyberbullying, that’s a problem. And if students don’t feel like there’s at least one adult in the building that they can trust, that’s a problem.”"
"If you’re reading this from Australia, kudos! You’ve already had the two new LCD Soundsystem tracks, announced Thursday, since midnight down under. Everyone else, now is your time. With a bass line that hits your stomach, ”Call The Police” finds James Murphy in a motorik mood by way of The Cure and New Order. ”American Dream” is a wobbly ballad the clops along in waltz time. Now go dance and sob accordingly."
"Sometimes the toughest interview questions come from the most surprising places.    Isaiah Fredericks and his    brother, Josiah, put their dad, Kevin, in the interview hot seat during a visit to StoryCorps. They started out with the basics: when and where Kevin was born. ”I was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1983 on my grandmother Ruthie’s bed,” Kevin said. Isaiah didn’t know this but admitted it was an interesting piece of information. But then his brother, Josiah, asked their dad, ”How do you describe yourself as a child? Were you happy?” ”I was a very happy, curious child,” Kevin told them. ”There was a lot of playing outside in the hot sun and drinking water from hoses.” Isaiah paused. ”You drank water out of hoses?” he asked. ”Man, I am learning so much new stuff about you.” Now that the ice was broken Josiah moved on to tougher questions: ”What’s the hardest thing about being a dad?” ”The hardest thing about being a dad is having a drink that you want to drink, and small people put their nasty mouth all over it,” Kevin explained. ”And then whatever they were eating is now in the drink, and then you don’t want it anymore. Or buying them food and they don’t want their food, but they want your food. You’re just never satisfied.” At this point you might think the boys were pondering the heavy burden adults bear, but Josiah asked, ”Why can’t I be in charge?” His brother jumped in before Kevin could respond. ”Because then everything would be a nightmare,” Isaiah said. Kevin cited a different reason and added some requirements for being ”in charge.” ”[You can’t be in charge] because you are missing four teeth and no one’s going to listen to somebody who doesn’t have teeth in their mouth,” Kevin said. After that the two boys pelted their dad with   questions. Josiah: Why can’t I be an animal? Kevin: You have to take that up with your creator. Josiah: Why can’t we own a roller coaster? Kevin: We can own a roller coaster, we just don’t. Josiah: OK, then let’s do. Josiah: Why do things rhyme? Isaiah: How’s he supposed to know that? Josiah: Why can’t we have a van? Kevin: Why can’t we have a van? Why are you asking these questions? Why do you want a van? Josiah: Why can’t I be more like you? Kevin: What do you mean? Josiah: I know I look like you, but more like you. Kevin: Because you’ve got to be yourself, man. Follow your own path and enjoy being a kid. Being an adult is not as fun as it looks. Enjoy having nothing in your pockets, and no keys, and somebody else being responsible for buying all your food. Because one day you’re going to look up and say, ’Man, I had it so easy.’ Who cut the peanut butter sandwiches in your life? I did! I cut hundreds and hundreds of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But, Josiah had one more important question: ”Are you proud of me?” ”I am very proud of you,” Kevin said. ”You’re both fantastic children and I am happy and proud to be your dad.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jasmyn Belcher Morris. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"After weeks of    ’  tensions, the House managed to pass its GOP replacement for the Affordable Care Act on Thursday by a   margin. The vote was  . Democrats who lost the battle are still convinced they may win the political war. As the Republicans reached a majority for the bill, Democrats on the House floor began chanting, ”Na, na, na, na . .. hey, hey, hey . .. goodbye.” They say Republicans could lose their seats for supporting a bill that could cause so much disruption in voters’ health care. Now the bill  —   and the multitude of questions surrounding it  —   moves across the Capitol to the Senate. And the job doesn’t get any easier. With only a   Republican majority and likely no Democratic support, it would take only three GOP ”no” votes to sink the bill. Democrats have made clear they will unanimously oppose the bill. ”Trumpcare is just a breathtakingly irresponsible piece of legislation that would endanger the health of tens of millions of Americans and break the bank for millions more,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,  . Y. And Republicans in the Senate have their own internal disagreements, too. Here are five of the biggest flashpoints that could make trouble for the bill in the Senate. Medicaid, House leaders correctly point out that their bill represents the biggest changes to the   health program for the poor since its inception in 1965  —   a point that appeared to be drowned out during the most recent House debate that focused on coverage for people with   health conditions. For the first time, federal funding for   people on Medicaid would be limited, resulting in what House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . described at an event sponsored by the conservative National Review as ”sending it back to the states, capping its growth rates.” It’s a longtime goal for many conservatives. ”We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around,” Ryan said. But it is not a consensus position in the party. Some moderates support the current program, especially for children and people with disabilities. In addition, many GOP governors took the federal government’s offer in the ACA of   federal funding to expand Medicaid to nondisabled,   adults, and they are worried about the impact on their residents and their budgets if the expansion goes away and the program’s funding is restricted. The House bill, wrote the Republican governors of Ohio, Michigan, Arkansas and Nevada in a letter to House and Senate leaders, ”provides almost no new flexibility for states, does not ensure the resources necessary to make sure no one is left out, and shifts significant new costs to states.” That pushback has also created doubts in the minds of some GOP senators. Rob Portman,   Bill Cassidy,  . and Shelley Moore Capito,  . Va. are among those who have expressed concerns about the House bill, as has Dean Heller,  . It’s not clear whether any of the House changes have satisfied those senators. Increase in number of uninsured people, The Congressional Budget Office’s initial estimate that the bill could lead to 24 million more Americans without health insurance within a decade spooked many Senate lawmakers. ”You can’t sugarcoat it,” Cassidy told Fox News when explaining that ”it’s an awful score.” The final House bill passed without the score being updated, although most outside analysts said the changes were likely to increase the number who would lose insurance. And Democrats have been using those initial numbers to score rhetorical points, even if they lack the votes in either the House or the Senate to stop the bill or change it. ”The CBO’s estimate makes clear that Trumpcare will cause serious harm to millions of American families,” said Schumer. ”Tens of millions will lose their coverage, and millions more, particularly seniors, will have to pay more for health care.” Tax credits, On one hand, even with the additional $85 billion added by House leaders to help older people pay for their insurance premiums, many moderates feel the   tax credits in the bill replacing those in the Affordable Care Act are too small, particularly for people in their 50s and early 60s. The CBO estimated that under the original version of the House bill, premiums for a    with an income of $26, 000 a year could rise from $1, 700 currently to more than $14, 000. That brought a strong rebuke from the powerful AARP, which was an outspoken ACA supporter. ”Although no one believes the current health care system is perfect, this harmful legislation would make health care less secure and less affordable,” said a statement from the group. Sen. Susan Collins,   has said she could not support the House bill in its original form because of concerns about the effects on older constituents. On the other hand, some conservatives in the Senate are ideologically opposed to offering any tax credits. Ted Cruz,   Mike Lee,   and Rand Paul,  . have all expressed concerns about the bill being too much like the ACA, with Paul referring to it as ”Obamacare Lite.” They worry that the tax credits amount to a new entitlement. ”For me, it’s a big stumbling block still that there’s taxpayer money that’s being given to insurance companies,” Paul told reporters in late April. ”And I’m just not in favor of taxpayer money going to insurance companies.” Planned Parenthood, As Republicans have been vowing for years, the   bill would defund Planned Parenthood, although only for a year. That’s likely because a permanent defunding would actually cost the federal government more money, according to the CBO, as some women who lose access to birth control would become pregnant, have babies and qualify for Medicaid. Birth control is vastly cheaper than health care for mothers and babies. But while cutting funding for Planned Parenthood is overwhelmingly popular in the House, there are a handful of GOP senators, including Collins and Lisa Murkowski,   who have said they are likely to oppose a bill carrying this provision. Procedural problems, The budget process Republicans are using to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate, called reconciliation, has very strict rules that require every piece of the bill to be directly related to the federal budget. It will be up to the Senate parliamentarian, a Republican appointee, to make those determinations. That’s why the bill does not wipe away all the ACA’s private insurance regulations, including the requirement that insurers not discriminate against customers who have   health conditions. Some analysts have suggested that the House amendment sought by conservatives to allow states to waive some of the health law’s regulations might run afoul of the Senate’s ”Byrd Rule,” which limits what can be included in a budget reconciliation measure. ”It could be argued that any budgetary effects of the waiver are ’merely incidental,’ ” said the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in a blog post. Even Rep. Mark Meadows,  . C. who negotiated that amendment that won the backing of conservatives, conceded that it could prove problematic in the Senate. ”There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done before we can celebrate and all go home,” he said in an interview outside the House chamber. Democrats say it is one of several provisions in the House bill that might not pass parliamentary muster in the Senate. For example, analysts have suggested that the GOP replacement for the much disliked ”individual mandate” requiring most people to have insurance or pay a fine might not pass Byrd Rule scrutiny either. That’s because the 30 percent premium penalty that people with a lapse in insurance would have to pay under the bill would go to the insurance company, not the federal government, so it would have no budget impact. A third potentially problematic element of the original House bill would allow insurers to charge older adults five times more in premiums than younger adults  —   up from a ratio of 3 to 1 under the Affordable Care Act. That provision could be viewed as not directly affecting federal spending, some analysts predict. Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"As soon as the House approved the GOP health care bill on Thursday, Democrats were working on using it against Republicans in next year’s midterm elections. ”They have this vote tattooed on them. This is a scar they carry,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declared just after the American Health Care Act passed the House. Just to rub it in, many Democrats on the House floor began singing ”Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” to their colleagues across the aisle after the vote, a moment of schadenfreude as they hope for the same fate many of their own suffered after the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was passed in 2010. Democrats need to flip 24 seats to win back the House in 2018, and the congressional vote to repeal and replace Obamacare may well have made that a much easier task. Some of the most vulnerable House Republicans voted in favor of the GOP health care plan on Thursday. No Democrats voted for it, while 20 Republicans opposed it, and it only eked by with 217 yay votes  —   one more than it needed to pass. Even members who bit the bullet and voted yes, on what they admitted was an imperfect bill, sounded anything but certain about the vote they had just cast. Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo  —   who represents a Miami district Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by 16 points  —   made a ”  decision” to vote for the legislation, his spokeswoman told the Miami Herald, and now will be looking to the Senate to smooth out some issues with the bill. ”Today’s vote is just a step in the legislative process for this bill  —   not the end of it,” Curbelo said in a taped statement. ”We have worked hard to improve the legislation, but we have a long way to go.” The bill has yet to be scored by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to determine how much the bill will cost or how many people could lose coverage. A CBO report in March on an earlier iteration of the bill predicted that 24 million fewer people would be covered. Atop Democratic target lists for 2018 are the 23 Republicans who sit in districts that were won by Hillary Clinton last November. Of those members, 14 ended up voting for the bill, with just nine opposing it. One of those no votes, Florida Rep. Ileana   announced earlier this week she wasn’t seeking   so that’s one open race Democrats are feeling hopeful about. Many of the Republicans who voted against the bill cited concerns that the legislation didn’t do enough to protect people with   conditions  —   echoing a major attack line that Democrats are already using and will surely stick with over the next 18 months. Moderate New Jersey Republican Tom MacArthur worked with members of the conservative Freedom Caucus to come up with an amendment to the GOP’s American Health Care Act that allows states to seek waivers from Obamacare requirements, including on coverage for people with   conditions. Further changes put more money toward   ”  pools” to help defray costs for people with   conditions. But NPR’s Alison Kodjak reported that ”an analysis released Thursday by consulting firm Avalere Health concludes that that amount would be inadequate for providing full health coverage for the number of people who now buy insurance in the individual market and have medical problems.” ”At this time, I cannot support the AHCA with the MacArthur amendment because I’m concerned that a small percentage of those with   conditions may still not be protected,” Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman, who sits in a district Clinton won, said in a statement explaining his decision. For Democrats, it’s a pronounced turn of events since Obamacare passed in 2010. With Republicans riding high on the public opposition to the law, the Democrats’ majority in the House was decimated that year, with 63 seats and control of the House lost. But sentiment has changed on Obamacare, with Gallup Poll finding this month that 55 percent now approve of the ACA. The AHCA faces a much tougher road in the Senate, and if it dies there, some of those vulnerable GOP members may have made what ends up being a futile vote. But there’s another side to consider, too. For Republicans who have made the refrain ”repeal and replace Obamacare” their mantra for seven years now, not acting on their signature campaign promise could risk depleting enthusiasm among their core voters, who they also need to turn out in November 2018 to combat a Democratic base that is energized against President Trump. And after the first attempt at repeal failed in an embarrassing fashion, House Republicans and Trump badly needed a win. That’s why they took a victory lap in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday afternoon, even though the bill is far from becoming law. ”The American people expected us to deliver on the promises we’ve made and that’s what House Republicans have just done,” National Republican Congressional Committee communications director Matt Gorman wrote in a memo after the vote. Republicans have pointed out that more insurance companies are pulling out of   exchanges, and the GOP bill will cut about $765 billion in taxes over the next decade, NPR’s Scott Horsley reported, though mostly for wealthy Americans. Some Democratic operatives were already gloating on social media that the Rose Garden event provided great footage for attack ads against House Republicans next year. Ultimately, for the most vulnerable House Republicans, this may be a vote they won’t be able to escape over the next year and a half  —   even if it never becomes law."
"The first time I laid eyes on Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, I let out a sob. I don’t know why. I was surrounded by a dense crowd of tourists the sculpture was set back behind a thick Plexiglas panel. Whatever view I was able to enjoy was punctuated by the lights of   cameras reflected in the intervening panel. Despite the noise and distraction, or maybe because of it, I felt the power of the figure  —   the frail, boyish body of the dead Jesus limp across the lap of his powerful (indeed, disproportionately large)   mother. I didn’t have that sort of emotional reaction when I got to see the the Pietà again a few days ago in London, where it is on display as part of the excellent Michelangelo  Sebastiano exhibition at the National Gallery. This time, I could get right up to the work and examine it in all its striking detail for as long as I wanted, undisturbed by the throngs I had encountered at St. Peter’s. I was not surprised to discover that the Pietà on display in London was not Michelangelo’s original, but an exact replica manufactured in 1975. Might this explain my different response? It turns out that this was not the only copy of a work of art among those displayed together at the National Gallery for this show. There is a Giulio Clovio copy of a study for a painting by Michelangelo that is now lost. And there is a    cast of Michelangelo’s The Risen Christ ( ) the original of which can be found in Santa Maria sopra Minerva basilica, in Rome. (There is also an earlier, defective version of the same theme on display this one finished by an unknown artist sometime in the 17th century.) Indeed, the show’s high point is a remarkable new reproduction of the Borgherini Chapel, which is in Rome’s Church of San Pietro in Montorio. The wall text does little to emphasize the remarkable imitation of the chapel on display: ”This masterpiece [the chapel itself] is reproduced here at slightly reduced scale, using digital recording and printing technology.” You need to go to the website of Adam Lowe’s Faktum Arte group to get a sense of what an extraordinary technological achievement this is. The Faktum Arte team documented, digitally recorded, and then rebuilt the whole chapel, using a combination of contemporary materials and technologies as well as old styles of plaster work and construction. What results is a reproduction not of the original chapel as it was intended, but of the original as it is today in Rome. Everything from chipped pain and   plaster to the existence of a   Italian wall outlet embedded in the Renaissance plaster work are recreated. The result is breathtaking. I overheard the woman standing next to me in the museum exclaim: ”It’s incredible. I feel like I’ve been transported to Italy.” Admittedly, there’s something vaguely Westworld, or Walt Disney, about it. But in an era, such as our own, when most of us learn about the world’s great works of art from reproductions in books, or even lower quality pictures on the Internet, it’s hard to deny the value of this sort of superb reproduction. And, certainly, copies can be very useful. I haven’t seen the original chapel in Rome, but I can describe it to you. I have seen the original of The Risen Christ. I recall it being partially covered, presumably out of consideration to Christ’s physical modesty, or our own. It is in the copy that I was afforded an unobstructed view of the original, as it were. But there are other, subtler reasons why this show’s reliance on copies and reproductions is strikingly appropriate. Nowadays, as the NYU art historian Alexander Nagel has argued, we as a culture tend to adhere to something like a ”relic” conception of the work of art. We value the painting not just for what it is in itself but, rather, like a relic, for its presumed provenance. We, as a culture, participate in the cult of the originally produced work. For this reason, a mere copy, however informative as to the quality of its original, can never be a thing of commensurable value in its own right. But it was not always so. In the ”copy cultures” of the past, works of art lived in and through their copies. Nagel gives many examples. In ancient Rome, copies of Greek statues were viewed as legitimate substitutes for their originals. And the tradition of the Byzantine icon was based on the idea that an icon was an adequate image of God or saint just in so far as it was an adequate copy of another sound icon. Nagel recounts that when Renaissance art collector Isabella d’Este ”is asked by an aristocratic friend for her painting of Mary Magdalene, she replies that she would be happy to send it, but only asks for time to have a good copy made.” The transition from a copy culture to a cult of original production is one that seems to have taken place in Michelangelo’s day. According to painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari, as a young man Michelangelo endeavored not only to imitate his elders, but to make something more like forgeries of their works, even going so far as to age and ”distress” these to make them appear older than they really were. And as Nagel explains: ”Michelangelo not only copied drawings by older masters, a common enough practice, but took the practice to a new level by copying not just the drawing’s content (figures in certain poses, say) but everything about the older drawings, even the quality of the paper, which he smoked and stained to make it look old. The talk of smoking and tingeing suggests that Michelangelo also had to reproduce historically remote techniques and linear styles. He then returned his concoctions to the owners in place of the originals, presumably in order to see if they would pass and so gain him renown if and when the story got out, as seems to have happened.” So it is somehow fitting that the curators of this exhibition have made free use of copies. In doing so  —   and in doing so with such a light touch  —   they cast a light on the fact that in the age of Michelangelo and Sebastiano, the status of a copy would have been uncertain and problematic. (An aside: I bought an exhibition postcard with a detail of the Pietà. Although it was a postcard for this exhibition, I was surprised to discover it shows a picture of the original St. Peter’s Pietà. It’s as if the copy in the show functions solely as a   for the original and has no relevant qualities of its own. A documentation of the show needn’t concern itself with the copy. For all intents and purposes, it’s as if the original was transported to London. Or maybe the point goes the other way around. For the purposes of documenting the fake in London, a photo of the original is just as good.) Actually, there’s an even more interesting way in which this show engages with the problem of relics and copies. At the heart of the relic conception of the artwork is the idea that artworks carry powers bestowed on them by their authors or creators. Great artworks flow from the creative powers of great artists. And what makes an artwork special is that it can be traced directly to its creative source. But it is just this picture of the artist as a solitary font of creativity that is called into question by this show, with its focus on the remarkable    friendship between Michelangelo and Sebastiano and, crucially, their collaboration. Typically, exhibitions built on the pairing of artists start from the curator’s thought that one artist’s work sheds light on the other’s. This is the case, for example, with the SFMOMA   show discussed here last week and with the Rubens and Rembrandt show also up now at the National Gallery in London. But the situation is altogether different when it comes to Michelangelo and Sebastiano. The Borgherini Chapel was painted by Sebastiano using ”designs” of Michelangelo. The same is true of other paintings in the show. Working at the dawn of the cult of the artist and the original reproduction, these two artists display an almost   inventiveness when it comes to process, method, authorship, and result. I took a trip to Oxford, as well, and while there I paid a visit to the Christ Church Picture Gallery. I asked if I might be permitted to take a photograph. No, I was told, but pencils could be provided if I wished to make my own reproductions. This reminded me that the very idea of what it is to make one’s own reproduction is now, as it was in Michelangelo’s day, a moving target. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"This year, Free Comic Book Day turns sixteen years old. The good news: It can drive itself to swim practice now! The bad news: When you ask it to drive its younger siblings Record Store Day and Independent Bookstore Day to Gymboree it’ll give you THAT LOOK IT GETS and spend the rest of the day sulking. Here’s the gist: Walk into a comic shop this Saturday, May 6, and you’ll get some free comic books. You can find your closest shop by typing your ZIP code into the Comics Shop Locator on the www. freecomicbookday. com page. And here’s the caveats: Most publishers offer books that provide brief excerpts from several of their titles  —   let’s call these samplers. Others present a   story, or different stories about the same characters  —   let’s call these singles. Singles offer a more satisfying reading experience, of course, but samplers are a good way to acquaint yourself with a   of different writers, artists, characters and storylines. The books are rated by   but of course there’s always wiggle room with that. As a general rule:  : Akin to a  . Little Bobby or Susie will read it with delight. TEEN: Akin to PG. Little Bobby or Susie might need help with some words or concepts. MATURE: Hard R. ”Daddy? Mummy? What’s ’disembowel’ mean? And why are those two people’s hips kissing?” Title: BOOM! Studios Summer Blast, Genre: Fantasy, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Another year, another BOOM! FCBD book, another Mouse Guard short story from David Petersen. That’s not a complaint. This one’s about an adventurous mouse who stumbles into danger, and it’s gorgeous. Also features an excerpt from Brave Chef Brianna, about a cook who tests her mettle by opening a restaurant in a city of monsters. And there’s a bit from Coady and the Creepies, about a traveling punk band that gets into some supernatural scrapes. Anything Else? Brave Chef Brianna is a lot of fun  —   and includes a recipe! For Brazilian Cheese Waffle Breakfast Sandwiches! Coady’s dealing with some dark themes that, in this brief excerpt at least, don’t yet break the surface. Verdict? A nice, diverse sampler. Pick it up. Title: Buffy: The High School   vs. Zombies, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? It’s pretty much all right there in the title.   stories from Dark Horse’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer graphic novels, as well as their series of graphic novels that pit the armies of the undead against sentient, weaponized plant life. Based on the cellphone app. Much like Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Anything Else? Honestly? Nope. Verdict? I mean . .. sure? I guess? If you’re a fan of Buffy, or zombies, or chlorophyll? Title: Colorful Monsters  Genre:    Cuteness, Anything I Need to Know Going In? This. This right here. This is the stuff. Four lengthy excerpts from Drawn  Quarterly’s cute monster books: The venerable Moomin, by Finland’s Tove Jansson, offers a wonderfully elliptical tale of a    hippo and one of his shadier friends. The excerpt from If Found . .. Please Return to Elise Gravel features what are presented as pages from the Canadian cartoonist’s notebook it’s a bright, colorful and quirky paean to drawing, imagination, and creativity. French cartoonist Anouk Ricard’s Anna  Froga looks like a lot of other powerfully cute,    comics, but it carries a slyly acerbic tinge that keeps things grounded and funny. Finally, an excerpt from Shigeru Mizuki’s Kitaro has one of that manga’s more unsavory characters attempting to peform a good deed. Doesn’t go well. Anything Else? This is the thickest of this year’s FCBD books, and thus the best ”value” for your . .. um . ..  ? And none of it is filler  —   just quality cartooning, from international   that provides an excellent primer to their work. Verdict? If you get no other FCBD book, get this one. If the store runs out of copies, rip one out of some little kid’s hands, if you have to. (Don’t do that.) (I’m just saying though: Them little tykes got lousy upper body strength.) (Kidding ha ha ha.) (. .. Also their little hands’ll probably be slick with like snot or ice cream or what have you, so.) Title: Help the CBLDF Defend Comics, Genre: Educational, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Every year, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund  —   an NGO dedicated to protecting comics from bans and other First Amendment infringements  —   puts together an FCBD book with stories that explore the intersection of comics and free speech. This year’s crop of seven stories is diverse and engaging, and comes at the notion of free speech in oblique and clever ways. Anything Else? One story invites readers to write their own dialogue in blank  . So not so much a story about free speech, and more a story that’s . ..  . No one is forcing you to read this post. Verdict? Yep. Title: Hilda’s Back!  Night, Genre:   Anything I Need to Know Going In? British cartoonist Luke Pearon’s Hilda series, about a headstrong little girl’s adventures through a Nordic mythscape, takes a very odd, and very welcome, turn. Features a wordless passage that’s suspenseful and funny. Also included: Jen Lee’s Garbage Night, a surprisingly melancholy tale of a dog, raccoon and a deer left behind to scavenge food after a human apocalypse. Anything Else? If you like Hilda  —   and if you’ve got two eyes and a heart, you will  —   there are plenty of graphic novels available. But Garbage Night won’t be available until June. I’m eager to see more: Lee’s creating a nice tension by setting her    against the bleakly beautiful backdrop of an empty,   suburbia. Verdict? Definitely. Title: Kid   Genre: Science   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Kid Savage follows the adventures of a mysterious feral boy fending for himself in a hostile world, who’s rescued by human space explorers. Pix is a much sunnier tale of a young teen superhero. Anything Else? Joe Kelly (of I Kill Giants, among several other books) writes Kid Savage, which is why you should trust that the strained lyricism of its opening pages will ground itself eventually. Ilya’s art is visceral  —   literally, there’s a lot of   for an   book  —   and kinetic. Pix feels markedly different, more straightforward, for younger readers. Verdict? Yes. Title:     Genre:     Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Miraculous is based on a French   series about two teenage superheroes. Kid Sherlock is . .. exactly what the name suggests. And Toyetica is a surprisingly dense  —   and, it must be said, densely worded  —   comic about fairies, civil rights and . .. toy manufacturing. Anything Else? These brief excerpts don’t provide a particularly clear sense of each title, though Kid Sherlock is crammed with fun background details that fill out its world. The Toyetica excerpt has a lot of   to do, and its thus crammed . .. with exposition. Verdict? Not one of this year’s standouts. Title: The Overstreet Guide to Collecting, Genre: Educational, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Overstreet produces price guides to collecting comics, comics art, posters, and more. This year, as every year, they’re offering an FCBD book that provides a   tour of the basics of comics collection (how to collect, what’s available, what the various comics Ages and grades mean). Not for nothing, the book also hawks Overstreet’s various guides. Anything Else? Friendly advice, offered  —   literally  —   freely. Verdict? Perfect for those just getting their feet wet. Less so for those already treading the turbid waters of nerdery. Title: Animal Jam, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Based on ”the world’s largest online playground where kids can learn about nature,” this tale introduces us to the   world of Jamaa, where talking animals live and play together. Anything Else? This one’s a bit of a puzzle. The simple characterizations and achingly sweet sunniness of the book feel aimed at very young kids, but the panels are weighed down by dense word balloons filled with concepts that might leave those very young kids mystified (”The portal! It’s becoming a vortex! ”). Plus, it’s loaded with filler  —   nearly half the book’s nothing but ads hyping various other titles. Can’t begrudge them that, of course, but it leaves the book feeling thin. Verdict? If your kids (or, for that matter, you) are familiar with the online world the book’s based on, maybe. Otherwise, skippable. Title: Bad Machinery, Genre: Mystery, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Run, don’t walk. This is just great. Excerpts the opening pages of the latest graphic novel (available this month) in British cartoonist John Allison’s series about a group of friends who investigate mysteries in an around an English grammar school. Allison’s design work is friendly and approachable, and his dialogue exudes a unique energy that feels authentically teen without seeming archly quippy. Anything Else? Allison’s particularly good at capturing the shifting dynamics of school friendships  —   the ephemeral emotions that flare up and cool, the rivalries that turn into friendships, and vice versa. Verdict? Absolutely, yes. Title: Barbie, Genre: Crass Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? At last, the gritty Barbie reboot for which millions have clamored! Everyone’s favorite        chunk of extruded plastic crawls through a ravaged,   hellscape, sustained only by her thirst for revenge and the irradiated flesh of rabid scavenging nah just kidding it’s about fashion. Anything Else? In an excerpt from Barbie: Fashion Superstar, Barbie struggles to create a garment that reflects her unique vision. In Barbie: Star Light Adventures, she’s a planetary princess aided by her friends   ”a hoverboard racing legend” and Sheena and Kareena ”who are gravity geniuses.” Like that’s a thing. Verdict? Star Light Adventures is pretty disposable, but there’s a nice message about trusting yourself in Fashion Superstar. So maybe. Depends on your kid. Title: BONGO Comics   ! Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Yeah, it’s a bunch of different stories, but they’re all squarely in the Springfield of The Simpsons. Anything Else? Standout stories include one in which Homer and Bart try to pull an   and a     spotlight. Verdict? As ever, yes. Title: DC Superhero Girls, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? DC’s ” ” toyline  —   which features Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Supergirl, Bumblebee and others, who attend Super Hero High  —   gets a comic. You are perhaps by now picking up a recurring leitmotif in many of these FCBD books. Like those others, this is determinedly earnest, if a bit blandly corporate. You know how you can read something and know in your gut that at some point, the guys in marketing signed off on it? Anything Else? This issue  —   an excerpt from (sing along, you know the words) one of the DC Superhero Girls graphic novels  —   is Wonder Woman focused, timely enough. Zeus, her estranged father, asks her to spend summer vacation with him on Mount Olympus. Verdict? If you’re looking to have the DC heroes get their hooks into your kid, this’ll probably work. Title: Doctor Who, Genre: Science   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? A satisfying tale that cleverly integrates all four   Doctors. Gets a little needlessly convoluted, but that’s Who for you. Anything Else? Opens with a very basic primer on the Whoniverse, which is helpful if you’re trying to indoctrinate a Normal. Verdict? At one point The Doctor introduces himself as ”your    space uncle.” So, duh, yes. Title: Fresh Off the Boat, Genre:    Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Characters on ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat wrote a comic in the Season 3 episode ”Pie vs. Cake,” and here it is. Synergy doesn’t get more . ..  . Plot: the Huang family gains super powers, and proceeds to fight crime  —   the crime of bad restaurant tippers. Anything Else? Fun book, great pedigree. Written by Gene Luen Yang, with art by the versatile Jorge Corona, who’s working in a Gabriel   Guillory vein here, if that means anything to you. Verdict? Yes. Title: The Loud House, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? The Nickelodeon animated series about a family of 11 squabbling kids gets a   comic. Anything Else? Solid,   gags does a lot with a big cast. Verdict? Sure. Title: Monster High, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Mattel’s   ”  franchise”  —   starring the ”clawesome” ”ghoulfriends” Draculaura, Frankie Stein, Clawdeen Wolf and yeah you get the general idea  —   gets a comic in which the characters  —   imagine if the Bratz dolls worked at Hot Topic  —   prepare for the science fair. Anything Else? Um. Frankie Stein is a         corpse who owns a adorable   corpse puppy named Watzit? Does that . .. does that factor into your decision at all? Verdict? If you or your kid is into 1) Universal Monsters, 2) accessorizing, and 3) the art and science of    then go for it. Otherwise eminently skippable. Title: SpongeBob Freestyle Funnies, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? . .. Seriously? Look, you know SpongeBob, right? That. Pretty much, that. Anything Else? On page one, SpongeBob is asked what ”  Funnybook Day” is, and he answers, ”Why, it’s the day all the graphic literature shops provide gratis samples of their wares in a pathetic effort to bolster an industry which has spent the last two decades in a death spiral brought on by the lethal interaction between the lack of variety and a monopolistic distribution system!” SpongeBob got hard, yo. Turns out it gets awful shaaaaady on the bottom of the ocean. Verdict? Yes. Title: The Tick, Genre:   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Everyone’s favorite bombastic blue blockhead throws himself a birthday party, and attends a presidential debate. Anything Else? Tick comics are a dependably good FCBD staple, though you wont won’t find much in the jokes about the election campaign that seems bracingly fresh. Verdict? Maybe. Title: Time Shifters, Genre: Science Fiction, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Excerpt from Chris Grine’s graphic novel about a kid who stumbles across a   device that sends him careering into an adventure involving a   a vampiric Napoleon, and much more. Anything Else? Breezy, funny, with an invitingly open design that crams a lot of material onto the page without feeling cramped or weighed down with text. A quick read that’ll leave you wanting more. Verdict? Yes. Title: Underdog, Genre:   Anything I Need to Know Going In? New and vintage   yarns about Jay Ward’s classic doggy   Underdog. It’s all here, everything you’re looking for (if you’re old enough to remember the Nixon administration): Shoeshine Boy, Polly Purebred, rhyming couplets, phone booths (you may need to explain that last one to your kids). Anything Else? Delivers on its promise. Verdict? Yes.   DON’ : Title: 2000 AD, Genre: Science Fiction, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Year in and year out, Britain’s     comics anthology series contributes some of FCBD’s grittier fare. Anything Else? If you’re not familiar with Judge Dredd or other 2000 AD titles, don’t skip the brief intros to each found inside the front cover. They’re a big help. Verdict? Even with doing that homework, some of these vignettes prove less comprehensible than others. So maybe. Title:   Land, Genre: Science    Anything I Need to Know Going In? James Cameron’s 2009   epic gets a comics adaptation with an excerpt that, if nothing else, serves as a   refresher course for those of us who can’t remember a minute of the damn thing. Brian Wood’s Briggs Land is about a family of secessionists, and despite the fact that it’s a   story, you find that puzzling out what, precisely, is at stake proves an uphill battle. Anything Else? Despite the impassiveness of the Briggs Land story, there’s always something dependably tough and grounded in Woods’ terse dialogue, supported by the way artist Werther Dell’Edera’s   emphasizes the vast and open sky above the character’s heads. It’s oppressive, that emptiness, and it tells you that something bad is bearing down them. Verdict? Yep. Title: Captain   Kitty Die, Genre:   Anything I Need to Know Going In? The Great White North’s own   gets a Year One backstory, and a teenage witch (NO NOT THAT ONE) gets up to some mighty meta hijinks at a beach party. Anything Else? The Canuck excerpt,   by Canadian actor Jay Baruchel, is a dense,         bit of business set in the Pashtun region, soon after the Captain came into his powers. The Kitty story is filled with   and   for classic comics characters, but it holds up on its own. Verdict? Sure. Title: Dragon Ball   Genre: Fantasy   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Goku is a saiyan, see, who really wants to fight Lord Beerus, God of Destruction, but to do so he’ll of course need to transform into the Super Sayan God, duh, but he’s only achieved Super Sayan 3 and you know what ask your kids. In another excerpt, Naruto’s son Boruto seeks to learn the rasengan, a new jutsu and you know what ask your kids. Anything Else? The Boruto story includes a fun extended swordfight full of Shhk! Klak! Thoom! Tmp! Spin! Swishtak! Zlash! and Klang! And the Dragon Ball Super story is written by Akira Toriyama, who created the international phenomenon back in 1984. Verdict? If this is your thing? Sure. Title: Guardians of the   Defenders, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? The     synergy is strong with this one. Writer Gerry Duggan and artist Aaron Kuder have been tasked with producing a book that looks (and sounds and smells and feels and tastes) like the blockbuster film franchise, and they’ve delivered. It’s fun, it’s fast and its characterizations are  . Do you like the film’s interpretation of the Guardians? Because this is the film’s interpretations of the Guardians. The preview of the Brian Michael   Marquez comic about The Defenders  —   the Netflix   (Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil  Iron Fist) coming soon to a streaming device near you  —   looks and feels like those shows, too. Anything Else? Duggan and Kuder have a difficult needle to thread: They need to capture the feel of the Guardians films without producing something that reads like a rote,         . Bendis wrote a stellar Daredevil run, and he essentially created Jessica Jones. He knows these characters intimately. So this Defenders preview, which busts out some of the hoariest ”The rules have changed!” cliches in the   genre  —   which is, to be clear, saying something  —   is so disappointing. Verdict? Guardians is fun, if unsurprising, which is . .. kind of the point. Marvel    won’t be able to read the Defenders preview without playing a game of ”Count The Things You’ve Seen Done Before,” but Free Comic Book Day isn’t for them. So . .. maybe. Title:   of Iraq, Genre: Nonfiction (Memoir) Anything I Need to Know Going In? Last month Drawn and Quarterly published Guy Delisle’s Hostage, which  —   trust me  —   is very, very, very good. The excerpt from the forthcoming Poppies of Iraq, written by Brigitte Findakly and illustrated by the great Lewis Trondheim, recounts Findakly’s experiences growing up in Iraq during the ’60s, a time of political turbulence and several bloody coups. Anything Else? Both excerpts depict grim events  —   a grueling experience as a hostage and brutal political violence, respectively  —   in an open, cartoony style: Delisle’s hostage sweats bullets from his temples when worried in Poppies, hanged soldiers get Xs where they eyes should be. It’s not a distancing device, but a choice that forces us to see the violence of their worlds  —   which is, of course, our world  —   in a chilling new context. Verdict? Definitely. Title: Keyser   Rift, Genre:   Commercial    Fiction, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Yeah, it’s that Keyser Soze. (As if ”Keyser Soze” were a common name like Jess, or Dave, of Jen.) (I’d so read a comic about Jen Soze, Queen of Crime, BTW.) The mysterious underworld figure from the Bryan Singer film The Usual Suspects comes to comic book life, to the relief of all those who’ve spent the last 22 years clamoring. Turns out it’s not bad  —   he shows up to a drug deal things go south. In The Rift, a boy and his mother go for a drive things go south. Anything Else? Some nice characterization and action in The Rift the Keyser Soze story is atmospheric, even if the notion of following the exploits of an infallible,       villain seems . .. less than compelling. Verdict? Maybe. Title: Secret   Parker: The Spectacular   Genre: Superhero, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Maybe you’ve heard about the controversy over Marvel’s latest event? In which it’s revealed that Captain America, Scion of All That Is Good And You Know American I Mean Come On It’s Right There In The Dude’s Name, is secretly the head of HYDRA, Marvel’s resident    ? This preview is all   but it’s your chance to see what’s getting so many noses out of joint for yourself. The   preview is a return to Spidey in quippy, classic,     mode. Anything Else? Secret Empire artist Andrea Sorrentino serves up some striking page layouts, and Paulo Siqueira’s Spidey art is big and bold. Verdict? Depends on your personal tolerance for turning heroes into Nazis for fun and profit. Title:     Shot: Salvation, Genre:   Fiction, Anything I Need to Know Going In? This is how you do FCBD. Three tiny(!) but packed vignettes that give a clear sense of the titles in question, introducing a central tension without resolving it. Anything Else? In   Manowar, a   warrior fights for right. In Secret Weapons, we glimpse a world of enhanced humans  —   and the agency that seeks to control them. In Bloodshot: Salvation, another   warrior goes searching for secrets from his past. Granted, there’s not much that’s particularly novel in those premises. But what matters  —   in genre comics, as in anything else  —   is the execution, and these three   have each got a distinct style, reminding you that genre doesn’t have to be generic. Verdict? Definitely. Title: Attack on Titan, Genre: Fantasy, Anything I Need to Know Going In? The hugely successful manga series (and concomitant anime series) from Hajime Isayama  —   about a city of many walls, constantly attacked by grotesque giants  —   is an international phenomenon. This new story by Jody Houser and Emi Lenox, set in Isayama’s world, looks at    life inside the city, far from the front lines. Anything Else? A quieter, sweeter, and sadder tale than the original series, which leans more in an    direction, generally serves up. Verdict? Yes. Title: The Ballad of Franklin Bonisteel, Genre: Crime, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Fun, atmospheric,    tale set in and around an LA motor   in the 70s. Nice character beats, and the    art captures the story’s mood so well you can almost feel the   shag carpeting. Anything Else? Technically, this one’s a sampler, as it includes a (very) brief excerpt from Murder Ballads, though it’s not mentioned in the cover, and is so short it doesn’t give you much to go on. There’s a website listed on the back where you can hear that book’s soundtrack, if that’s a thing that interests you. Verdict? Yes. Title: Betty  Veronica, Genre: Humor, Anything I Need to Know Going In? There’s a spate of     Archie titles and this book reprints the first issue of one of the best: a Betty and Veronica title written and drawn by Adam Hughes. Also features a introduction to the WB’s Riverdale, because fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and intellectual properties gotta  . Anything Else? Don’t be misled by the cover, which features the two young women at familiar loggerheads. True, the story’s about a fight between the two of them, but it’s not over Archie. So that’s good, at least, right? And yes, Hughes is known for cheesecake   art, and the cover sidles up to that, but on the interior he dials back the pulchritude and dials up the dialogue. Like, a lot. Too much, arguably. Fortunately, the dialogue in question is inventive and funny  —   much of it supplied by our narrator Jughead’s faithful pet pooch Hot Dog. Also: this series has been so beset by delays that if you pick up this freebie, you’ll be nearly caught up. Verdict? Yup. Title: Catalyst Prime, Genre: Superhero, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Introduction to a new superhero universe with a familiar premise: we’re dropped in the middle of a superhero melee, then flash back to meet five astronauts sent on a desperate mission to save Earth. You perhaps see where this is going. Anything Else? Nicely distinct characterizations, and an intriguing villain. Verdict? Yes. Title: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? A manga tale that takes place before the events of the 2006 videogame of the same name. Anything Else? Also includes an excerpt from the adaptation of the 1998 Zelda game Ocarina of Time, starring Toon Link, who is much cuter. And whose combos are better than Yoshi’s, but worse than Kirby’s. Verdict? If you ever played a Zelda game and wished it wasn’t so distractingly colorful and not so dang noisy and you didn’t have to push so many  —   well, any  —   dumb buttons . .. then yes. Title: The Looking Glass Wars: Crossfire, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Another comics spinoff of Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars trilogy, this one focusing on a spy named Ovid Grey hired by the Red Queen to something something something. Anything Else? You don’t need to know much about the dense mythology of Beddor’s ”Wondertropolis” to make sense of this  —   it’s a     caper with entertaining touches of dark magic. Magic eyeballs, missing crystal shards  —   the whole dark fantasy schmear, really. As always, Sami Makkonen’s deliberatley   art will appeal to some (hi!) and not to others. Verdict? Worth checking out, because if you like this, there’s lots more. Title: Grimm Fairy Tales, Genre: Fantasy, Anything I Need to Know Going In? The ”  ” genre? Pfft. Forget it. Yesterday’s papers. So five minutes ago. Here’s four brief excerpts from a publisher who’s proudly staked a claim on the highly specialized, and wildly impractical, ”    ” genre. Anything Else? ”The universe is made up of four realms of power: Wonderland, Oz, Neverland, and Myst.” . .. See now for that last one I was really pulling for Zork. Oh well. Can’t have everything I guess. Verdict? For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. Title: Lady Mechanika, Genre: Steampunk Cheesecake, Anything I Need to Know Going In? A   sexy cyborg private investigator who wields hilariously overwrought weaponry  —   and cleavage  —   to fight demons and oh by the way FYI that’s a real sentence I just wrote I’m not just playing nerd bingo with you. But if I were: automatons, gears, alchemy, dirigibles. Which this also includes. Anything Else? ”Steampunk Cheesecake” is not a terrible name for this genre, but it needs something zippier, alliterative. Clockworks and Corsets? Dirigibles and Decolletage? No wait I got it Blunderbusses and Boobies okay cut print. Verdict? For those who like this sort of thing etc. Title: Malika: Warrior Queen, Genre: Adventure, Anything I Need to Know Going In? The first chapter of the forthcoming graphic novel from YouNeek Studios about the brilliant, and formidably kickass, queen of a mythical African nation. Anything Else? Interesting layouts, exciting battle scenes, and a    feminist vibe make this one of this year’s most intriguing FCBD offerings. Verdict? Yes. Title: Rick and Morty, Genre:     Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? A comics adaptation of Cartoon Network’s gleefully reprobate animated riff on Back to the Future, featuring a drunk and wildly irresponsible mad scientist and his preternaturally fearful teen companion. Perfectly captures the show’s look, feel and  —   especially, crucially  —   humor. Anything Else? ”Juice is just an idiot stopping point between fruit and alcohol.” Verdict? Oh, definitely. Title: Riverdale, Genre: Teen Melodrama, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Features two vignettes that serve as prequels to the events of the CW series. We see how both Archie and Veronica spent their summers. Anything Else?    Riverdale’s showrunner, has written many comics over the years, and gets a ”stories by” credit here. (The two tales in question were actually written by Brian E. Paterson and James Dewille, respectively.) The result is solidly soapy, but feels like the dutiful   adaptation it is. Verdict? Unless you’re a watcher of the CW series  —   or have a feeling you might easily become one  —   this one’s skippable. Title: Star Trek: The Next Generation: Mirror Broken, Genre: Science   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Four samples from different new or ongoing Star Trek titles, led by a nifty little intro to the forthcoming Mirror Broken series, set in that mythos’ alternate reality, the Mirror Universe. It’s like the main universe, but more violent. And with a penchant for goatees. And for cinching the waist with kicky gold sashes that add a tres sportif visual pop, for trekking after 6:00. Another thing the Mirror Universe is all about, if J. K. Woodward’s art in this vignette is anything to go by: dumbbell curls. Lots and lots of dumbbell curls. Because this Picard? Is a sleeveless and seriously jacked Picard. Anything Else? Much shorter samples from: Boldly Go, the series set after the events of last year’s Star Trek: Beyond, the second Star   Lantern mashup miniseries, and Waypoint, which riffs on the series’ long history in many different ways. Verdict? I’m sorry . .. did you miss the word ”sleeveless” and ”jacked” and ”Picard” above? Because yes. Very, very yes. Title: Spill Night, Genre: Science Fiction, Anything I Need to Know Going In? A prequel story to Scott Westerfield’s recently published graphic novel Spill Zone, about a mysterious event that destroys a small city in upstate New York. Like that book, this comic’s art is provided by Alex Puvilland. And also like that book, it’s pretty great. Anything Else? Westerfield’s story is moody, creepy, and wryly funny, but Puvilland’s art really shines here, especially when depicting the bizarre and unsettling ways the city is wholly changed by ”The Spill.” Verdict? A big yes. And I dare you not to pick up Spill Zone after reading this. Title: Steam Wars: Strike Leader, Genre:   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, here’s all you need to know: ”Steampunk Star Wars.” There. Done. Because you either just made an involuntary   or you found yourself rolling your eyes. It’s instinctual. It’s your body, telling you whether or not to pick this one up. Anything Else? Also: British lady  . Verdict? Listen to your body. Title: Street Fighter V Wrestling Special, Genre: Crass Commercial      Anything I Need to Know Going In? Based on last year’s iteration of the venerable fighting game, this issue pits Dan Hibiki  —   sorry, that should read DAN HIBIKI!!  —   against most of the game’s female wrestling roster, including YOKO HARMAGEDDON! and A MAPLE STORM! (Canadian, attacks opponents with poutine) (seriously) and RAINBOW MIKAAAA! Also includes a brief story about a Haggar vs. Zangrief bout. Anything Else? The dialogue of that first story is just . .. sincerely fun. ”You filthy  ! Eat poo and die, Belger!” ”My eyes! They burn! The poutine buurns!” ”It’s game day,  !” ”RAGING DAN!” Verdict? Lookit, honest to god, no one’s more surprised than me, but . .. yes. Sorry, that should read . .. YYYYYESSSSS! Title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  Genre: Science   Commercial   Anything I Need to Know Going In? After the Turtles spend a few pages helpfully reminding you of their long laundry list of foes  —   which reads like the comics equivalent of a sitcom clip show  —   their underground lair is attacked by a mysterious presence. Which, you have to admit, is cool, but rude. Anything Else? Nope that’s . .. that’s pretty much it. Verdict? Not essential, but if you’re curious about the current      lay of the land, pick it up. Title: Tex: Patagonia, Genre: (Spaghetti) Western, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Tex is a Western comic strip created in 1948, and it’s been published continuously ever since. So why haven’t you heard of it? Because it’s produced in Italy. Anything Else? This issue excerpts the forthcoming graphic novel, Tex: Patagonia. The storytelling, and the Hal   art, might feel a little   and there’s no getting away from its whole ”       ” premise, but it’s solidly constructed and gorgeously rendered. Verdict? Usually, FCBD selections include one or two issues of reprints of classic strips. Not this year, though. This isn’t that, but it’s close, so yeah, probably. Title: Wonder Woman, Genre: Superhero, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Greg Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman in the early 2000s is one of my favorites. She’s a character of contradictions  —   a Warrior for Peace  —   who’s tough to get right, and he did. He’s recently returned to the character, with art from Nicola Scott. This, DC’s FCBD selection, reprints the first issue of their current run. Anything Else? Yes, it’s another origin story, but there are some nice   as Rucka and Scott cut back and forth between Diana’s life on Themyscira and Steve Trevor’s in America. It’s as good a way as any to prep for the movie. Verdict? Sure. TEEN DON’  Title: I Hate Image, Genre: Humor, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Skottie Young’s I Hate Fairyland follows the adventures of young,   moppet Gert as she attempts to escape the magical realm she’s been trapped in for decades  —   by slaughtering its inhabitants. Adorably. The violence is cartoonish, but real  —   and Young is master of comic timing, character acting, and making the act of disemboweling seem . .. unsettlingly cute. In this issue, Gert makes her way to Image Land, where she cuts a bloody swath through the various characters from Image Comics titles like . .. well, that would spoil it. Anything Else? Free Comic Book Day isn’t meant for comics nerds. It’s pitched at   to give them their first taste of the medium. Consequently,     comics readers have historically had to content themselves with things like Fantagraphics’ FCBD reprints of   classic series to find something new and satisfying for themselves. Not this year. I Hate Image is aimed squarely at the comics cognoscenti. It’s packed with   and asides that will zip past readers who don’t know Image’s books  —   but, crucially, it won’t alienate those noobs. Young’s writing  —   and, especially, his art  —   are so danged appealing that even readers who don’t know a Wic from a Div will happily go along for the ride. Verdict? Yes, in a big way. Title: The Incal, Genre: Science Fiction, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Back in the 1980s, after Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky and French artist Jean ”Moebius” Giraud tried and failed to produce a film of Frank Herbert’s Dune (have you seen the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune yet? Go do that now) they collaborated on a series of science fiction graphic novels. This FCBD selection reprints the first 26 pages of the first book in that series. Anything Else? Not for kids. Not for kids. Not for kids. Brilliant, bold, stunningly gorgeous, funny, and hugely imaginative. But not for kids. Verdict? Not for kids. But very much for pretty much everyone else. Title: World’s Greatest Cartoonists, Genre: Various, Anything I Need to Know Going In? Ok, no, this is how you do FCBD. Publisher Fantagraphics asked 16 of their cartoonists who have new or recent books coming out to produce original work, just for this issue, that is somehow related to those books. There’s an index in the back where those cartoonists get a chance to talk about their books. It’s so smart, and useful, and it represents a fascinating assortment of styles and subjects. Anything Else? Cathy Malkasian. Richard Sala. Noah Van Scriver. Anya Davidson. Dash Shaw. Jason. Ed Piskor. Ed Luce. And 8 more of . .. well. It’s right there in the title. Verdict? Yes. MATURE DON’  . .. All three of ’em."
"The skies cleared just in time for Derby fans to trade out their ponchos for flamboyant hats when the jockeys assumed their posts. But intermittent rains posed a muddy challenge for the   field at Churchill Downs racetrack on Saturday. In the end though, Always Dreaming, ridden by jockey John Velazquez, was able to pull ahead of Lookin at Lee in the slop, to win the 143rd Kentucky Derby. The Battle of Midway finished third. The win lands the thoroughbred’s owners a $1, 635, 800   prize from a $2 million total purse. It’s the second Derby victory for both trainer Todd Pletcher, who won with Super Saver in 2010, and for Velazquez, who won atop Animal Kingdom in 2011. Starting from the No. 5 post position and favored at   odds, Always Dreaming broke from the pack near the far turn. The    colt finished by a clean two and   lengths ahead of long shot Lookin At Lee, who drew the unlucky post No. 1. In 2010, his sire, Lookin at Lucky, hadn’t been so fortunate, and was pinned to the rail, finishing sixth that day. Always Dreaming will have to defeat enormous odds in the next couple of races to snatch the coveted Triple Crown. Next stop is the Preakness Stakes, on May 20, before the final Belmont Stakes run on June 10. In the long history of horse racing  —   the Derby is America’s ”oldest continuously held sporting event”  —   only 12 horses have been able to pull off the feat. Just in 2015, American Pharoah became the most recent Triple Crown champion."
"Updated at 5:27 p. m. ET Saturday, Less than two days before the high stakes French presidential election Sunday, the campaign of Emmanuel Macron said it had been the target of a massive hack. Current President Francois Hollande has promised that the hack will not go without a response. Speaking with AFP, Hollande said, ”We knew that there were these risks during the presidential campaign because it happened elsewhere. Nothing will go without a response.” Nine gigabytes of Macron’s campaign data have been posted online. Fingers are being pointed at Russia, though the Kremlin denies involvement. The eyes of the world have been on the French election, in part because Macron is a political novice. He and his opponent,   candidate Marine Le Pen, pushed out more established candidates in the first round of the election. Le Pen wants to pull France out of the European Union, a move that Vladimir Putin would applaud. She traveled to Moscow a few weeks ago and was photographed with Putin. As NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley has reported, Le Pen has called the sanctions on Russia ”silly” and has promised to lift them. France has an official blackout period the day before an election, which is intended to give voters time to reflect. The media and the campaigns are forbidden from talking about the election at all beginning Friday night at midnight, and going until the polls close in the evening on Sunday, May 7. The massive data dump came just moments before that blackout began, giving Macron’s campaign little time to respond. Macron’s political movement En Marche! (Onwards!) confirmed the hack in a statement: ”The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive and coordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information.” Nicolas Tenzer, a specialist in cyber attacks and disinformation, told Eleanor Beardsley, ”It seems that all this hacking was directed on Macron by Russia’s propaganda teams, and we all know that WikiLeaks actively is working for Russia.” This isn’t the first time Macron’s campaign has said it was the target of hacks. When the centrist candidate began to emerge as a frontrunner, his campaign began reporting that they were being targeted by the Kremlin with disinformation and hacking campaigns. At the time, the French government warned Russia against meddling in their election. According to Reuters, the French presidential election commission is investigating the most recent data dump, saying in a statement they would meet Saturday to discuss it. But thanks in part to the media blackout, many voters that NPR reporters spoke to on Saturday said they hadn’t heard about the leak. NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports, ”the leaks didn’t seem to get any traction” in central Paris. ”I don’t think people are going to be influenced by it,” Juliette Raffort, a physician and Macron supporter, told Frank Langfitt. ”I think they are going to vote with their political opinion rather than taking into account these documents.” Around the world however, the hashtag #MacronLeaks began trending today according to The New York Times. The Times attributes this in part to ”  activists in the United States who have been trying to sway the French vote in favor of Ms. Le Pen.” Polls open at 8 a. m. Sunday, in an election that has garnered international attention for what its outcome could mean for the EU and the role of Russia in geopolitics."
"There are way too many signs that the 2020 election is already beginning.  ’s a crazy stat: 129 people have already filed to run for president in 2020, as of Friday afternoon. In fairness, in 2016, more than 1, 700 filed. But. ..   of them is President Trump. He’s not only already set up a reelection committee earlier maybe than anyone in history, but his campaign released the first ad of the 2020 cycle. Remarkably, it’s touting what he’s accomplished  —   in his first 100 days (! ).There’s already been a flap about stations not running it because of a falsehood in it. Trump’s election may have been a threshold moment in presidential politics, opening the door for anyone to run or at least think about it, who might not have before. Becoming president is no longer about the ascendancy of current officerholders or lifelong public servants. That experience is no longer a prerequisite. Now, wealth, power and celebrity not only have a door open for access, but for the possibility of themselves being in charge. It’s atypical for Washington and more like what’s seen in Hollywood or major financial centers, like New York or London. It’s, in part, the evolution of decades of disengagement from the American public, more interested in celebrity than the   world of Washington. Presidential elections have become treated like reality shows, giving presidential candidates outsize attention compared to the actual power they have, while      elections and civic engagement get far less attention from voters and the media. The consequences of that are not yet known, but already what’s emerged is activists dominating. For 2020, people are already taking steps to be part of the conversation. And the list below reflects the new reality. It’s a who’s who of politics, business and, yes, even one outright Hollywood actor with no political experience.  ’s Mark Zuckerberg was on a tractor, feeding baby cows, eating cheese curds, holding kittens, talking to cops, firemen and military leaders. He even ditched the hoodie for a suit in a black church. He posted it all to his Facebook page. Seriously. There’s been plenty of speculation about Zuckerberg and   writings he’s done recently. Asked by Buzzfeed if he has plans to run, he said, ”No.” But when pressed if he’d explicitly rule it out, ”Zuckerberg did not immediately respond,” Buzzfeed wrote.  ’s not the only CEO being talked about  —   Disney’s Bob Iger is reportedly being ”pelted with entreaties to run.” His contract with Disney happens to expire in July 2019. Perfect timing. And. ..   Howard Schultz stepped down as CEO of Starbucks in December, there was all kinds of speculation that he’d run for president (see: here, here, and here). In his farewell to his employees and investors, he talked of ”rising nationalism,” ”shared values” and the need to build ”a great and enduring America.” He said: ”We’re living in a fragile world. There’s a need for more passionate government.” In 2016, he told CNN, ”never say never” to a run.   Vice President Joe Biden was in New Hampshire this week. ”Guys, I’m not running,” he insisted. Maybe he just likes the spring foliage? Still, Biden’s making lots of stops that are raising eyebrows  —   he’s speaking at a Florida Democratic fundraiser, making several commencement speeches and said at a conference in San Diego: ”I don’t plan on running, but everybody says because I won’t commit that I will not run under any circumstances, that means I’m running.” And remember, Biden teased    in December: ”I’m going to run in 2020  —   for president. What the hell, man, anyway.”   Warren has been on a book tour. She not only trash talked Republicans but Democrats, too. As for 2020, she told NPR’s Audie Cornish, ”I don’t have any plan to do that.” No plans. .. OK. When Matt Lauer told her on NBC’s Today Show that people are printing, ”She persisted” bumper stickers, she just smiled and remained silent.   Sanders was also on tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez. He was mobbed by adoring fans, which he seemed to like, but there were some awkward moments that show he’s still not quite willing to get in line with the establishment.   Gillibrand, who replaced Hillary Clinton in the Senate, ruled out running in 2020. But is that ironclad? Asked about 2020 in Upstate New York, the New York senator said, ”Well, I’m dedicated to serving our state as our senator, and I’m running for   so I can continue to be their senator.” Asked if she’s ruling it out, she said: ”I’m focused entirely on running for Senate, so yes, I’m ruling it out.” What happens when or if that focus changes? Here’s the thing: she needs to win reelection in 2018 before she could even think about going public with plans to run for president. She was rumored shortly after the 2016 election to be reaching out to Clinton donors.   Gov. John Kasich is also selling books. Asked on CNN if he’s running for president again, Kasich said, ”No, no, no.” Buuuut. .. ”You don’t close the door on anything,” he added.  . Al Franken of Minnesota is also part of the book club. He has a book coming out at the end of the month, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate. Him running ”isn’t as crazy as you might think” and ”isn’t a joke,” others have written. There’s already a ”Draft Franken 2020” site. But he told a Minnesota radio show, ”First of all, I’m not running for president. I think that normally what senators do is to enter the presidential race, then lose very quickly and run for the Senate. That seems to be how it works.” He bluntly said, ”No,” he isn’t running. Yet. .. his forceful questioning in hearings has raised his profile. ”It’s very clear now that he is trying to raise his profile and position himself as a leading critic of Donald Trump,” Jim Manley, a former top aide to former Majority Leader Harry Reid,  . told The Hill.   Rock, yes, The Rock, is on the cover of National Review as ”The Celebrity We Need,” written by someone else who almost ran for president in 2016. And before you dismiss a celebrity actor formerly involved with wrestling, look at the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.   Gov. John Hickenlooper told NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me game show that he might be open to a run. ”Two years from now, if everyone else is running, then we’ll see,” he said.   Booker wants it.   Clinton is setting up a PAC and writing a book. But no one expects she’d run. This week, though, she noted how close she was to winning.   Obama is super popular. But she says no chance she’s running. ”No, No. No,” she told Oprah. ”Look, that’s one thing I don’t do, I don’t make stuff up, I’m not coy. I haven’t proven that. I’m pretty direct  —   if I were interested in it, I’d say it. I don’t believe in playing games. . .. People don’t really understand how hard this is. And it’s not something you cavalierly ask a family to do again.” OK, that sounds pretty definitive.   Clinton seems a little closer to it. Her Twitter feed has been pretty political since Trump was sworn in, including this week with the passage of the House GOP health care bill. But, she said, ”If someone steps down or something changes, I’ll answer those questions at that time. But right now, no, I’m not running for public office . .. Period.” Right now. ..   Cotton, the fiery Arkansas Republican, has already been to Iowa. ”Iowa, there’s nothing normal about   Christians being tarred as bigots because they simply want to live their faith in their    life,” he said. Although that was three weeks before the 2016 presidential election. With Trump winning, he’s probably more thinking 2024 at this point.  . Jason Chaffetz,   might be running in 2020  —   for governor. He isn’t running for reelection in 2018. But forget 2020 for president, he’s already thinking longer term. He’s already bought up Jason2028. com. American elections are already too long, so why wouldn’t it become the case that they bleed all the way into the first few months of a new presidency? TV news ratings and Web traffic spike in presidential years and fall off in   and midterm elections. Presidential turnout rates are far higher in presidential years than in midterms. On average, since 1980, the U. S. has seen a 29 percent drop from presidential elections to midterm elections, and it’s been on the rise. As it is, the U. S. lags far behind other Western democracies in voter participation  —   even in presidential years. But there’s a danger in this. The American presidency is limited  —   by design. And yet, presidential elections are given outsize prominence to the detriment of policies that could affect real people’s lives and important   elections. Americans just aren’t as interested in civic participation as they are celebrity. That means that when policies are pushed only a moneyed few with access can have quiet influence in Washington. And it means that activists can control the levers of power locally, which trickle up to power nationally in forms like gerrymandering in redistricting. Politics is hard, and it can be annoying, but being disconnected from it has consequences. And the kinds of people who could become president is one of them."
"Standing at the kitchen counter in his spotless town house near the Baltimore airport, Reddy Annappareddy heated up some water to make his lawyer a coffee and contemplated his hard fall from grace. Annappareddy once presided over a pharmacy delivery business that stretched across six states  —   until one day in July 2013, when the FBI raided his operation and prompted him to attempt suicide. Alone in a hotel room in Las Vegas, as his employees frantically called him to report the bad news, Annappareddy downed some scotch and Benadryl pills, went to the bathtub and slashed both his wrists. Hours later, he awoke, alive but weak, and headed for the hospital. Thus began a dark legal odyssey that would last more than three years. ”It’s a constant,” Annappareddy said. ”It’s like a knife on my throat. You don’t know what’s tomorrow going to bring.” Annappareddy lost his ability to sleep through the night. He lost his house on     acres. He lost his Bentley and a garage full of other luxury vehicles. But he refused to give up faith in his own innocence. Instead, he hired a new team of lawyers who uncovered a series of problems with witnesses and evidence. Getting a case dismissed because of government misconduct is rare, representing only a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of prosecutions the Justice Department pursues every year. By that measure, Annappareddy beat the odds. His encounter with the justice system represented a startling turnaround for a man featured in a public radio podcast for his unlikely career arc, from working nights at a Rite Aid to being named entrepreneur of the year for the state of Maryland. Annappareddy said he came to the attention of prosecutors, the FBI and Maryland Medicaid fraud investigators after a disgruntled employee tried to blow the whistle on him. But he does know that the feds took the case seriously  —   eventually charging four people who worked for him, and hoping to win their cooperation against him at trial. That trial didn’t go well for Annappareddy. The lead prosecutor, Assistant U. S. Attorney Sandra Wilkinson, told the jury he presided over a sham, billing government health insurance programs for expensive prescription pills to treat HIV and cancer that customers never received. The prosecutor said he fleeced the government out of several million dollars. And in December 2014, he was convicted. The judge told him to go home, on house arrest, and prepare to spend the next 12 years in federal prison. Annappareddy took a different approach. ”The government is saying fraud, and I’m not fraud,” he said. ”I’m going to fight it. I told my wife, ’I’m going to fight this again.’ ” He found new lawyers. And what they uncovered would upend his life, all over again. Josh Greenberg joined the defense only after Annappareddy’s conviction. Greenberg spent hours sifting through evidence. Before long, he had found a pattern of problems with the Justice Department’s theory. And he demanded a new trial. ”Let me tell you, this was a colossal screw up,” said Sol Wisenberg, a former prosecutor who closely follows allegations of government misconduct. He wasn’t involved in the case, but said it’s one for the books. ”The thing about this case is you had an accumulation of outrageous conduct.” The first thing to add up, Wisenberg said, was false evidence, presented at trial, which the government later acknowledged was incorrect. The evidence related to how much money government health insurance programs lost to Annappareddy’s pharmacies. At trial, federal prosecutors claimed millions of dollars in losses. But after Annappareddy’s lawyers started digging, they found the opposite: rather than losses, they said, there was a surplus. Government experts had double counted and made other basic mistakes. In court filings, prosecutors said it was a simple human error in a complex case. And, they argued, there was still plenty of evidence to prove Annappareddy’s guilt. Lawyer Josh Greenberg has a different take. ”The false evidence went to the core of the case,” Greenberg said. ”And I believe the prosecutors and agents were at least reckless, if not knowing, in presenting that false evidence.” The defense team kept digging and found more. During the trial, the government highlighted an email Annappareddy got from a pharmacy technician. The message mentioned expensive medications, the kind prosecutors said the pharmacy chain was billing but never delivering. The lead FBI agent, Maura Lating, testified during the trial that she had checked phone records and found that Annappareddy never responded to the email message. Prosecutors emphasized the point, winning a special jury instruction signaling it was an admission of his intent to defraud the government. Turns out, the new defense team figured out investigators failed to obtain correct phone records. Authorities had subpoenaed records from the wrong telecommunications provider. And the defense went on to prove that far from whitewashing the problem, Annappareddy called the pharmacy tech right away, five times. There were now two strikes against the prosecution. The third would be the most important, from the point of view of the judge. Defense lawyer Greenberg recalled the day the whole case changed. ”Friday, August 19, 2016, in the evening,” he said. ”I was eating dinner with my family. It happens to be my birthday and this email comes across from the lead prosecutor with a whole bunch of attachments. I was like, ’What is this?’ ” Greenberg sneaked a peek at his phone underneath the dining room table. After months of badgering, the government had been forced to disclose a half page memo about destroying documents. In the memo, an FBI agent was describing an order from the lead prosecutor, Sandra Wilkinson, to get rid of four boxes, out of hundreds the authorities had gathered. ”Those documents went to the heart of the case,” Greenberg said later. ”They were delivery signature logs that showed that patients had received prescriptions. And one of the main issues in the case was, ’Were those prescriptions actually delivered?’ And the documents Ms. Wilkinson ordered destroyed would have shown the prescriptions were, in fact, delivered.” The document destruction tipped the balance in the case. Only days later, inside a Baltimore courtroom, Judge George Russell found the government team had violated Annappareddy’s right to due process. He said the conduct by federal prosecutors and agents ”does shock the conscience of this court.” And he dismissed the prosecution with prejudice, meaning the Justice Department could not bring the case again. Sol Wisenberg, who closely followed the case, said the judge had had enough. ”Almost every motion this new defense team made after the conviction to come in and get new evidence, the government opposed,” Wisenberg said. ”Every piece of exculpatory evidence that came out, the government had opposed coming out. And I think the judge was very troubled by that.” Sitting in the courtroom that day, wearing his blue cotton shirt with the Pharmacare logo, Annappareddy said his life changed again. ”I got hurt, you know, I got destroyed,” he said. ”But I still consider myself lucky. Imagine if I didn’t fight after the conviction.” Months later, in his town house, where a former employee and his wife live in a downstairs apartment to help cover the rent, Annappareddy considered what’s next for him. ”What else can I do?” he said. ”My license is gone now, I’m in the process of reinstating my license. Can I do a pharmacy business again? Probably not, because this nightmare will be in the back of my mind.” The case is still reverberating. Weeks ago, the court threw out the convictions of some of Annappareddy’s   possibly saving them all from deportation. Defense lawyer Greenberg said he isn’t done fighting. ”This is a situation that really cries out for an independent investigation,” he said. ”A private citizen would be prosecuted if she intentionally destroyed evidence that is material to a pending case. I find it shocking that the U. S. Attorney’s Office has allowed Sandra Wilkinson to remain the head of the major crimes section after Judge Russell made these findings.” A spokeswoman for the U. S. attorney at the time, Rod Rosenstein, declined comment. Rosenstein recently became the deputy attorney general, the second in command at the Justice Department. In court last year, prosecutor Sandra Wilkinson told the judge she did not destroy the boxes of evidence in bad faith. Wilkinson said she thought she had consent to get rid of them. And, in any event, she said, the documents had not been produced or mentioned in the course of Annappareddy’s trial. Wilkinson said the problem with the phone records was a mistake. And she said Annappareddy’s defense team had been ”ruthless” in exploiting every mistake by the prosecution. The Justice Department wouldn’t characterize its investigation into the matter. But a spokesman there said any judicial finding of misconduct must be reported to authorities in Washington headquarters. After that, the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility typically launches an investigation, in secret. Between 2014 and 2016, the spokesman said OPR closed 71 cases. Fifty of them resulted in findings of intentional misconduct or bad judgment."
"Nearly   of private sector workers receive paid sick days from their employers, though there is no federal mandate requiring it. In recent years, dozens of states, cities and counties have passed their own ordinances, which typically require employers to provide between three and seven paid sick days a year. The business community is fighting against the proliferation of these laws, saying that the landscape for   regulation is getting way too complex. It’s a large administrative headache, says Lisa Horn, director of congressional affairs for the Society for Human Resource Management. ”Mainly because of this hodgepodge, or patchwork, of a growing number of states and localities implementing . ..    mandates,” she says. So Horn says her group, along with other business groups, is helping draft a Republican proposal in the House of Representatives. The terms aren’t finalized, but Horn says the basic idea would be to set a floor for the amount of paid sick leave employers could voluntarily offer. If that minimum threshold is met, she says, the employer would then be exempt from state or local regulations. The concept is known as   such laws are increasingly common, and not just for paid leave. Some states have laws that   city and county regulations governing minimum wage,   policies, or  . So far, 19 states have legislation that   local governments from passing their own laws on paid sick leave. (Oregon has a    law that went into effect last year requiring paid sick time for all but the smallest employers. That law establishes paid sick leave statewide, but it also   local laws.) Proponents like Horn argue that federal and state   laws alleviate big administrative burdens for employers. But opponents argue such efforts undercut states’ and cities’ authority. Since many of the local measures were passed by ballot measures, their opponents say   nullifies the will of local voters who want more generous benefits for workers. ”We are concerned that we could start to see more    measures where both the federal government as well as the state government is impinging on city rights,” says Brooks Rainwater, a senior executive for the National League of Cities. He says statehouses tend to be more dominated by rural conservative interests, who see themselves opposed to some progressive policies backed by urban voters. Paid leave  —   whether it’s sick days or time off to care for a new child  —   is politically popular on both sides of the aisle. Democratic proposals include the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, which would create a fund to provide up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. Another, called the Healthy Families Act, would allow workers to earn up to seven days of annual paid sick leave. Republicans, meanwhile, last week passed a controversial proposal, known as the Working Families Flexibility Act, that would allow employers to offer paid leave as compensation for overtime work. Another, called the Strong Families Act, would offer tax credits for businesses voluntarily offering leave. Vicki Shabo, vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, says her group’s   poll showed 82 percent support for paid sick leave. She says support is nonpartisan. ”That includes   of Republicans,   of independents and virtually all Democrats,” she says. That study underscores a recent poll from the Pew Research Center, showing support for paid leave ranging from 67 to 85 percent, depending on the specific policy. President Trump has endorsed parental leave and has not repealed his predecessor’s executive order granting paid sick leave to federal contractors. Shabo says some companies in recent years have also announced generous leave policies, but she says   workers still have less access than their   professional counterparts. ”Where we’ve seen progress has been in places regionally in the West, where Oregon and California have adopted    laws,” she says. Though the debate over paid sick leave is national, most analysts agree Congress is less likely to act on it and that the fight will remain mostly at the state and local levels."
"When Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens was merely Candidate Eric Greitens, the Republican didn’t have a subtle opinion about secret money in his state’s politics. During an appearance on St. Louis Public Radio’s Politically Speaking in 2016, the former Navy SEAL emphasized how proud he was that the state’s voters could see every single donation coming into his campaign. In fact, he even accused his Republican adversaries of using secretive groups to attack him  —   and other Missouri politicians. ”We’ve already seen other candidates set up these secretive super PACs where they don’t take any responsibility for what they’re funding,” Greitens said during the January 2016 interview. ”And there will probably be more, because that’s how the game has always been played.” Somewhere along the way, Greitens’ outrage subsided. His successful campaign got the support of several ”secretive super PACs” with mysterious funding sources. More recently, some of his campaign staff joined A New Missouri, a nonprofit group organized under 501( c)(4) of the tax code that doesn’t have to reveal its donors or say how its spending money. ”The organization that you’re referring to is one that I have no    responsibilities with,” Greitens said when asked about the group during a bill signing ceremony in April. ”It does represent the interests of thousands of people around the state who care about our priorities getting passed.” Optics aside, Greitens isn’t the only governor connected to supportive nonprofit organizations. Groups in Arizona, Illinois and Georgia have sprung up to help the states’ governors, while avoiding traditional donation requirements. Robert Maguire of the Center for Responsive Politics said the groups are the ”unlimited, undisclosed arm of the administration that basically . .. bolsters the agenda of the governor.” Many 501( c)(4) s were created over the years to help push specific issue or ideological causes. But more recently, the   nonprofits came to life to help individual candidates. Since most states don’t require 501( c)(4) to reveal much about what they’re doing, they’ve become increasingly popular fundraising mechanisms to help governors. ”It’s not just that it’s unlimited, but it’s also undisclosed,” said Robert Maguire, a political nonprofit investigator for the Center for Responsive Politics. ”I doubt they want the public to know who’s funding them  —   particularly if they’re actual corporations that have any sort of business before the administration.” But A New Missouri did more than produce glossy advertisements pumping up Greitens’ agenda. After a particularly tense week in the Missouri legislature, the group started running web ads attacking Republican state senator Rob Schaaf, who is sponsoring legislation that would require   nonprofits to reveal their donors. Not only did the ads say disparaging things about the veteran lawmaker, but they also gave out his personal cell phone number. Schaaf’s voicemail quickly got clogged with people calling from around the country. The group’s hardball tactics have made Schaaf more of an outspoken critic against the governor and his political staff. He said Greitens is coming off as a hypocrite, especially since he promised to clean up Missouri’s ethical culture. ”He could say ’I’m going to the White House and not use dark money  —   and prove it can be done.’ And he will go farther and faster doing that than if he clings to using this dark money,” said Schaaf, alluding to how many Missouri political observers assume Greitens has his eyes on the presidency. ”I think it’s critical he do this. If he doesn’t do this, they’re just going to eventually label him as just another corrupt politician.” But that idea is running into opposition from conservative groups, and Republican activists like Gregg Keller. Keller worked for one of Greitens’ opponents last year and runs a 501( c)(4) called the Missouri Century Foundation. He argues that political donors should be able to give to the groups of their choice without revealing their identity. ”The left is becoming very expert at targeting companies and individuals. Look at the Kochs,” Keller said, referring to prolific conservative political donors Charles and David Koch. ”Koch has become a bad name. Because the left has become very adept at attacking people who stand up for what they believe. And I think that people shouldn’t be subject to that.” That argument may win the day in the   Missouri General Assembly. But Republicans aren’t the only ones to using nonprofit groups to advance their agenda. Earlier this year, a group called Campaign for Accountability formally asked a U. S. Attorney to investigate whether Missouri Senate President Ron Richard filed a bill in exchange for campaign donations. But that group declined to disclose its contributors or who suggested that they file the complaint. (Campaign for Accountability is a 501( c)(3) which is a different type of nonprofit group than A New Missouri. Richard has strongly denied he did anything illegal.) A push but Missouri to get money out of politics by putting donation limits on candidates for state office may also funnel more money into politically active nonprofit groups, said Democratic fundraiser Angela Bingaman. ”It has definitely become more of a conversation with candidates and groups about how to import more money into the political process now that we have limitations on what we can and cannot do,” Bingaman said. St. Louis Public Radio reporter Jo Mannies contributed to this story. "
"Elmo and Big Bird have lots of experience teaching children everything from the ABCs to autism. Soon, they could be bringing smiles  —   and education  —   to millions of refugee children forced from their homes in Syria, Iraq and other   countries. But first, Sesame Workshop is doing its homework. In partnership with the International Rescue Committee, Sesame producers and   experts are soliciting guidance and feedback from relief organizations, trauma experts, academics and others who have worked with refugees. They’ll also be making research visits to refugee camps in Jordan. According to the IRC, of the 65 million people displaced from their homes worldwide, more than half are children. ”And certainly I think it’s fair to say there are no more vulnerable people in the world than these refugee families and kids,” Jeff Dunn, the CEO of Sesame Workshop, told a small crowd at the nonprofit company’s New York headquarters recently. Sesame’s goal is to develop new content  —   adapted for a variety of platforms  —   that will ”bolster children’s resiliency” as well as improve their language, math and early reading skills. The target age group is children ages 3 to 6 and their caregivers. You can already see Sesame Street in more than 150 countries. Locally adapted versions are broadcast around the world, including in the Middle East. Sesame Workshop plans to draw on its foreign production partners for support in developing content for refugees. And so to inform that content, Sesame gathered representatives from a range of organizations including UNICEF, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, the Arab Network for Early Childhood Development, World Vision, the World Bank, Harvard University and Columbia University. It was a day of sharing knowledge, raising questions and, of course, watching Sesame Street videos. Abby Bucuvalas, Sesame’s director of international education, showed video clips from existing content that addressed different social and emotional themes. In a video about coping, for example, the adult human Gordon shows the Muppet Telly how to take deep breaths to help him calm down when he’s feeling angry. ”Some of the things that we’re really trying to influence are children understanding that they have big feelings and that there are things they can do to manage those feelings or emotions,” Bucuvalas explained. Another clip  —   about inclusivity  —   came from Sesame Street in Brazil. In it, Big Bird feels left out because he’s too tall to play limbo with the other Muppets. So his friends adapt the game so that he can play, too. This video raised a red flag for some of those who work in the Middle East. Cairo Arafat, who oversees production of the Arabic language Sesame Street from Abu Dhabi, urged her colleagues not to make assumptions that refugees will share their values such as inclusivity. ”In many of these populations,” she said, ”children are still taught, ’No. Be wary of the people who don’t talk like you, don’t look like you or come from a different sect.’ ” With the special conditions facing refugees  —   including security issues  —   Arafat advised careful thinking about what they would like to teach. For Sesame Workshop, it was a full day of lessons like this. Another topic of discussion was how to help children understand the stress their caregivers are under. ”It’s very important to explain to children how parents feel about displacement, about losing their homes, about moving to a new country,” said Rabih El Chammay, a psychiatrist and head of the National Mental Health Program of Lebanon (where there are more than 1 million Syrian refugees). ”Children notice what their parents go through but they don’t understand it. They get puzzled: ’Why is Daddy shouting at me now? I didn’t do anything wrong.’ ” Absorbing different perspectives will only make whatever content they decide to create stronger, says Sherrie Westin, Sesame Workshop’s executive vice president for global impact and philanthropy. She notes that this is how Sesame Workshop approaches any new project. ”Before we really can begin anything in earnest, we bring together advisers from the outside and we try to learn as much as we can,” she says. Shari Rosenfeld, Sesame’s senior vice president for social impact, adds that the New York gathering was important, but ”insufficient, until we go back to the region, back to Jordan, back to Lebanon, back to Iraq and bring some of the working hypotheses to say, ’OK, we’re going to test these with you. What makes sense? Help us figure out where to focus.’ ” Sesame’s pilot refugee project is being funded with support from the Bernard Van Leer and Open Society foundations (Open Society also provides support for NPR). A team from Sesame Workshop is traveling to Amman, Jordan, next week. It has organized a kind of focus group for Syrian refugees. Children and families will view existing Sesame content and give feedback. The Arabic version of Grover, named Gargur, will be there, too."
"For the first time in the U. S. two physicians and a medical office manager were indicted on charges stemming from the alleged female genital mutilation of two young girls, about six to eight years old, according to a Michigan U. S. Attorney’s Office. Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, Dr. Fakhruddin Attar and Attar’s wife, Farida, were indicted on April 26 for FGM, which has been illegal in the U. S. since 1996. The AP reported that Nagarwala’s attorney, Shannon Smith, has denied the allegation, saying the doctor was performing a religious custom that didn’t involve cutting. Lawyers representing the Attars have declined to comment, according to the AP. FGM is practiced throughout the world, with an estimated 200 million women and girls having undergone genital cutting as a    ritual, typically under age 15. To learn more, NPR talked with Christina Pallitto, scientist at the World Health Organization’s Department of Reproductive Health and Research. She has studied FGM trends in dozens of countries where it is culturally accepted. Note: Given the subject this story explores, the discussion includes some explicit language. This procedure is sometimes called female genital mutilation, and other times it’s called female genital cutting. Why the difference? I think female genital mutilation is the accepted term, and it’s the term WHO uses. Mutilation shows the gravity of the practice. You’re damaging healthy tissue and altering it in ways that may be permanent, for no medical reason. But some people, when working within communities, use the word cutting instead of mutilation. In some places, the word mutilation comes across as meaning the women who have had the procedure are damaged. Those women can be offended. Sometimes a term used at the policy level may be appropriate, but at the community level it might be better in some instances to use the term cutting.  Are there any health benefits? There are no health benefits, only health risks. It’s a way of controlling female sexuality. Once the damage of female genital mutilation is done, can it be medically undone? It depends on the type of mutilation. Some women have partial or total removal of the clitoris [a small, highly sensitive part of the genitalia] some have the folds of flesh around the vagina removed some have both those areas removed some have the vaginal opening narrowed, often by stitching, and some women have some form of piercing, scraping, cauterizing to genitalia. For women who have undergone what’s called infibulation, or narrowing of the vaginal opening leaving only a very narrow opening for menstrual flow and intercourse, WHO recommends reopening of the vaginal orifice. That can reduce a lot of complications, and it has to be done for childbirth. But sometimes after childbirth, providers  —   nurses, midwives or doctors  —   close it up again, often without asking the woman. What else can be done to help women who have undergone FGM? There’s a procedure that can be done, but we don’t have enough evidence to recommend it at this point. It’s called clitoral reconstruction. A lot of surgeons are doing it. You pull out the clitoral gland so that it becomes exposed again. But we don’t have enough information about complications. It’s a procedure that has some potential, and some women have experienced good outcomes and better sexual function. But it might cause other harms. We don’t know enough yet. We’re also trying to develop ways to assess sexual health issues in women: Is it sexual pain? Or lack of arousal? Or they can’t reach orgasm? We don’t have great evidence yet on the best type of sexual counseling. What’s available now are treatments for the initial complications, like for infections or cysts or scarring from the procedure. Also important is treatment for the mental health issues that can result, like depression, anxiety and   stress. The clitoris is seen as the center of sexual pleasure for women. Why would a culture want to deny women the pleasure of sex? I think some people believe it keeps women faithful to men. They won’t want to stray. And it reinforces gender norms about what is a proper woman, what is a clean woman. The narrowing of the vaginal opening was thought to increase pleasure for men, even in Western cultures, where an extra suture in surgical repair after childbirth was once referred to as the ”husband’s stitch.” Does that thinking, that tighter is better for the man, play a role in FGM?  I think there’s that aspect of it. But some men say that it can be painful for them. For some couples it’s actually really difficult. The woman has to gradually be opened with first intercourse, and it can be seen as a sign of virility in the man if she can be opened successfully. How do the women who have had FGM feel about it? It’s really varied. In the high prevalence countries, some people feel that this makes them a woman. They don’t want to change that. In terms of their sexual function, some women say with the right partner they can still have a full sexual life. Other women say they feel that they’ve really suffered, and they’re having a lot of sexual health issues. You see some communities that have abandoned the practice. But then you look at the prevalence numbers, and they just don’t budge. Susan Brink is a freelance writer who covers health and medicine. She is the author of The Fourth Trimester, and   of A Change of Heart.        "
"A swarm of potential stingers were unleashed on Washington, D. C. this week. This is not a political statement. A swarm of bees from one of the two hives atop NPR headquarters buzzed over the streets as they followed their queen out of their hive to some new location, which is unknown at this time. Queen bees apparently get restless and strike out on their own, like teenagers, followed by a swarm. Jonathan Durant, the building’s director of facilities management, alerted NPR staff not to leave the building on the side of the street where the bees flapped and droned. So of course, a small swarm of reporters, editors and producers rushed out into that street to look for the bees. People don’t get into the news business to avoid getting stung. No bee stings were reported. This will no doubt discourage some of NPR’s critics, and even some people in the building. The hives were installed when NPR moved into our rehabbed headquarters building in 2013, as part of a ”green roof” that is home to a large variety of plants. The foliage helps cool the building and protect the roof. The bees help nurture plants and trees all over this downtown neighborhood by pollinating. The hives are officially named the   Bee Hives, to honor the parents of two NPR supporters. But the hives are more colloquially called Swarming Edition and All Stings Considered. The bees produce a small amount of honey every year, which the beekeepers get to keep as part of their inspection and maintenance service. There have been plans to eventually sell a little of the honey in the NPR gift shop. If this plan ever develops, I propose they call the NPR honey Sweetened Edition. Beekeeper Sean inspected the   Hives this week and, to quote from his report: ”The bees are bringing in pollen. . .. On a scale from one to ten, ten being very strong the overall strength of the colony is 5. On a scale of one to ten, one being very gentle the hive temperament is 5.” Let me interject here: how fitting that NPR bees are so moderate and centrist. Beekeeper Sean says that although the queen has departed, a new one awaits. ”There are queen cells with egg, larva or pupa in the hive,” he reports. ”One of the hives swarmed, however, the colony looks like it will recover quickly. Eggs are not present in the hive but there is brood. The brood pattern is beautiful (solid  uniform).” In a city that can swell with   at least a few citizens fly above it all."
"Craig Williams is still mining coal despite tough times for the business. ”We’re one of the last industries around and hope to keep it that way,” he says in a breakroom at Consol Energy’s Harvey mine, south of Pittsburgh. The father of two  —   speaking in his dusty work jacket and a hard hat with headlamp  —   says coal is the best way he’s able to support his family. He declines to give his salary, but nationally, coal miners average about $80, 000 a year. ”If you had to take another job, in this area especially,” Williams says, ”you’re going to take anywhere from a 50 to 70 percent pay cut to what the next best thing is that’s out there.” That’s a reality more miners face, as coal jobs have shrunk by 40 percent since 2011. What is growing is the number of jobs in renewables. Solar power accounts for just under 1. 5 percent of electricity in the U. S. and yet, according to the Department of Energy, there are more than twice as many jobs in solar as in coal. It’s tempting to ask: Can’t   miners just switch to solar? ”Well, certainly it’s a possibility, but there are a couple major challenges,” says Rob Godby, an energy economist at the University of Wyoming. One of those is simple: location. ”When you are thinking about coal mining in Appalachia,” he says, ”often times there are generations of families in those regions, and it’s just very difficult to pick up and move.” The other big hurdle is pay. If coal miners average about $35 an hour, for renewables it’s more like $20 or $25. ”That doesn’t mean you couldn’t raise a family on that,” Godby says. ”But you’re a lot closer to the average income in a lot of states in the solar industry than you are in mining industries.” Believing in the mission of solar, On a rooftop at a community center near Pittsburgh, Brian Krenzelak and six other workers in neon green   bolt down solar panels. Krenzelak was a roofer before joining this company, Energy Independent Solutions, 7   years ago. In addition to installation, he also helps train workers. Krenzelak says he believes in the mission of solar, and it’s a good living. His wife also works, and the couple have three kids, one in college, with another about to enter. ”I do well with this company  —   very well. It covers what we need to cover,” Krenzelak says. ”I’m not becoming a millionaire overnight, but steadily have been building the nest egg, for sure.” Energy experts say solar’s surge is being helped by incentives that are scheduled to run out in a few years, and they don’t know how long the boom will last. Still, economist Godby says solar is here to stay, ”and it will be hard to automate the construction jobs and many other tasks involved in solar power provision.” For now, Krenzelak’s company is so busy it’s looking to roughly double its workforce of 22. ”We had to slow the salesmen down at a certain point,” says Krenzelak, so the installers could catch up. He says it feels good to be in an industry with a future. Reid Frazier is a reporter for The Allegheny Front, a public radio program based in Pittsburgh that covers the environment. You can follow him @reidfrazier."
"It’s Friday. There’s been plenty of news this week. So here’s something . .. else. A video, which will probably be a meme by tomorrow morning, shows 15 inflated, dancing Pikachu, a species of Pokémon. The occasion is the Pokemon World Festival 2017, and the setting is Triple Street in Songdo, a new    city near Seoul’s Incheon airport. The Pikachu wrap up one dance number to the song ”Uptown Funk” and begin another to ”You Can’t Stop The Beat,” from the musical Hairspray. But amidst the   shuffling and bopping, something goes wrong, and the ringleader’s costume starts to deflate. Even as the costume slowly closes in around it, the Pikachu bravely dances on, until it is accosted and yanked offstage by at least seven men in suits, looking rather like villains. Do you have questions about this? I do. Let’s look at this from another, cuter angle. This second video explains (in Korean) that the first man who runs up to the Deflating Pikachu is part of the event staff. Then a security guard runs up, because he doesn’t realize the first man is staff. The second security guard runs up to tell the first security guard that the original man is staff. I still have unanswered questions. But I have a deeper respect for those 14 Pikachu who keep dancing like no one is watching."
"Lea Michele was 8 years old when she was cast as the young Cosette in Les Misérables. Then came more Broadway roles  —   in Ragtime, Fiddler On The Roof and Spring Awakening  —   before she became Rachel Berry on Glee. Now, Michele has a new album that plays off her stage history. The title, Places, calls to mind the announcement that actors hear backstage just before the curtain goes up, and Michele tells NPR’s Scott Simon that’s not an accident. ”This is my second record I had the privilege of recording my first album, Louder, in 2014,” she says. ”The sound of that record was a little   and it was important for me, with recording this second record, that I really connect with my true sound. . .. I wanted a title that was sort of a call to all of that, and a call back to my roots.” Michele says one of the songs on Places, ”Hey You,” is in some ways the sequel to a song she wrote for Louder about the loss of her boyfriend and Glee costar, Cory Monteith. ”With writing the first song, it definitely had its darker tones to it,” she says. ”This song in particular  —   it comes from a much more healed place. It’s just about thinking to yourself, if you had five minutes with someone that you lost, what would you say? And I realized it would be a much more simple conversation than you would imagine.” Michele spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon about her journey to Broadway as a child, learning more than 800 songs for Glee and the   process of developing her own style. Hear the interview at the audio link."
"Country music icon Loretta Lynn suffered a stroke Thursday night and is recovering in a Nashville hospital. A post on Lynn’s Facebook page said that she fell ill at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tenn. but that she expects to make a full recovery. Lynn, who still performs live in concert at the age of 85, announced that she has postponed all tour dates. The tour was intended to support her forthcoming album, Wouldn’t It Be Great, which is scheduled to be released August 18."
"After the   House passed a   health care bill Thursday without waiting for an analysis of the bill’s costs and impacts by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the White House is signaling that Washington’s official legislative scorekeeper could be its next political foil. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a spokeswoman for President Trump, told reporters Friday the White House feels ”very confident in where the plan is, and moving it forward.” ”I think I know the Gospel pretty well,” she also said, ”and I’d say the CBO is not the Gospel.” Sanders’ comments came a day after Doug Elmendorf, who ran the CBO from   during the Obama administration, told Politico that the House’s decision to vote on the GOP health care bill before the CBO could score the latest version of the legislation was ”a terrible mistake.” ”The members will have to explain why they supported something with a range of effects that people aren’t gonna like,” Elmendorf said. ”At least if they waited for the estimate, they could make further changes to the bill that might respond to concerns. To go ahead with a vote before you know the effects of what you’re voting for is a terrible mistake.” But Douglas   another former CBO head who ran the agency from   in the George W. Bush administration, suggested that the changes to the bill weren’t substantial enough to change the CBO’s original analysis. ”I don’t view this as a particularly unusual event,”   told Politico. ”They scored the base bill, and everyone knows what that looked like.” The CBO’s analysis of the original GOP bill concluded that version of the legislation could leave as many as 24 million additional people without health insurance in the next decade while reducing the deficit by $337 billion during the same period. After that original score, House Republicans changed the bill in an effort to win enough votes from both their most conservative and their moderate members in order to pass the bill without any support from House Democrats. On Thursday, they narrowly passed their amended bill and Elmendorf argued that the changes were enough to justify waiting for another CBO analysis. ”For the House leadership to proceed to a vote without an estimate, they are essentially arguing that the bill is so much like the previous one they don’t need an estimate, and yet, it is so much different that many more people should vote for it,” Elmendorf also told Politico. ”I don’t see how you can argue that combination of things at the same time with a straight face.” But Sanders seemed to question the validity of any score the CBO might provide. ”They’ve been wrong before and they can certainly be wrong again,” she also said during Friday’s White House press briefing. The decision by House Republicans to move forward to a vote without an updated analysis has placed that issue  —   along with the GOP’s push to overhaul health care legislation more generally  —   in the Senate’s hands. And Congress’ other chamber is making it clear it’s not in nearly the same rush the House was. Among other things, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday the chamber will first await the CBO analysis before proceeding. Indeed, the agency’s score of the bill passed in the House  —   especially its analysis of the bill’s costs and potential impact on the deficit  —   would seem to be necessary before the Senate parliamentarian can determine whether Senate Republicans can use reconciliation procedures and potentially pass health care legislation with just 51 votes."
"Updated at 10 a. m. ET Monday, Emmanuel Macron  —   an independent centrist who has never held elected office  —   has won a resounding victory over   nationalist Marine Le Pen in the most important French presidential race in decades. According to the French Interior Ministry and multiple news outlets, Macron won with near 66 percent of the vote over Le Pen’s just over 34 percent. In his victory speech outside Paris’ Louvre Museum, where thousands of Macron supporters gathered, the    vowed to bring ”hope and renewed confidence” to France amid widened social rifts exposed by the election campaign. ”I know the divisions in our nation that led some to extreme votes. I respect them,” he declared, solemnly. ”I know the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that a large number of you also expressed. It is my responsibility to hear them.” Sunday’s results mark a big defeat for Le Pen, a   populist who had hoped to repeat the surprise victories of Donald Trump and the Brexit camp, which won last summer’s referendum to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union. Le Pen called to congratulate Macron and conceded defeat to a gathering of supporters of her National Front party in Paris. But she vowed to continue her fight. ”We are now the second party in the country,” she told supporters. ”It is up to us to confront the globalist agenda of Macron.” While Macron supporters waved the French tricolor flag in Paris, to the north in ”Le Pen country,” her supporters were disappointed and pessimistic. Noemie Willay, a day care worker, stood with her arms folded as she heard the election results while strolling through the main square in the northern French city of Lille. Willay, 20, insisted that Macron would do nothing to address big issues, including immigration and keeping France safe. She predicted terrorist attacks would continue. ”They want to kill as many as possible,” she said, as French security personnel walked around the square in body armor and carrying automatic weapons. ”They could attack anywhere at any time.” Willay said many French were unwilling to confront issues that touched on sensitive areas, such as religion and ethnicity. ”The French are afraid to say what they think,” she said. ”That’s why Macron wins.” Macron, who has never held elective office, is set to become the youngest president in modern French history. His improbable path to victory has been extraordinary in that it included dispatching France’s two major political parties, the Socialists and the Republicans. Macron does not have a lot of time to savor his victory. His movement, En Marche! (Onwards!) which he created last year, does not hold a single seat in France’s   of parliament. If Macron hopes to govern effectively, his party needs to win as many seats as it can in legislative elections scheduled for next month. Despite Macron’s inexperience, Charles Lichfield, an analyst with the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy, predicts Macron will get an electoral bump based on French political tradition and the goodwill of voters. ”The French electorate has tended to provide presidents with a majority when the legislative election has been shortly after the presidential election,” Lichfield said. ”There’s a feeling that if you’ve elected a president, you might as well allow them to govern.” But Lichfield doesn’t think Macron will win a clear legislative majority, meaning he’ll have to form a coalition with moderates in France’s   Republican Party. Macron has pledged to push reforms to the country’s rigid labor market that will encourage business and investors, but could provoke union strikes. As economy minister, Macron proposed reforms that triggered months of street protests. An Ipsos survey of nearly 5, 000 people found Macron beat Le Pen across many demographic categories. He won in all age groups, all levels in the workforce and from high school dropouts to people with graduate degrees. Like Donald Trump in the U. S. election and the Brexit camp in last year’s U. K. referendum, Le Pen was expected to perform well in rural areas. But the Ipsos poll, which was conducted online between May 4 and 6, found Macron garnered 57 percent of support in rural areas. Le Pen, who cast herself as the champion of those who felt they’d suffered from economic globalization, won nearly 70 percent of support among those people who are the least financially secure. Corinne Mellul, who teaches political science at Catholic University of Lille, noted that although Le Pen lost, she did far better that her father,   Le Pen.   Le Pen founded the National Front in 1972. For much of its existence, the party was treated as a political pariah. When   advanced to the   in the 2002 presidential race, his candidacy provoked protests and the other political parties called on their voters to reject him. As a consequence,   President Jacques Chirac won a second term in a landslide with   Le Pen receiving less than 18 percent of the vote. By getting a little more than a third of the vote, Le Pen shows ”there is a lot of anger, there’s a lot of frustration, many grievances on the part of the voters,” Mellul said. ”I think Macron in the next five years will ignore these grievances and this anger at his own peril.” The French presidential race  —   which has been closely watched around the world  —   was to some extent the latest referendum in the West on globalization and its benefits and societal costs. The race here also focused on the deeper question of what it means to be French. As Sunday began, French voters faced a stark choice. Macron, 39, is an avowed internationalist who speaks fluent English and envisions a France deeply integrated with Europe and open to the world. The France Le Pen described to supporters in her National Front party could not be more different. Le Pen, 48, had called for a temporary ban on immigration, a referendum to leave the European Union and replacing the Euro with the Franc, the old French currency. Among those cheering Macron’s victory are officials in Brussels who work with the European Union. The E. U. is in the early stages of negotiating the exit of the United Kingdom, which is seen as damaging to the   trading block, but not fatal. Le Pen had promised as president to call a referendum to pull France out of the E. U. which would have threatened to destroy the institution. The White House released a statement Sunday congratulating Macron: ”We look forward to working with the new President and continuing our close cooperation with the French government.” The final week of the race was marked by dramatic twists and turns. On Wednesday, the candidates faced off in a gripping televised debate that ran two and a half hours without any commercial breaks. Le Pen, who is a fiery speaker with a   message, was expected to clobber Macron, who has little political experience. Le Pen spent most of the evening on the attack, but provided few detailed solutions to France’s myriad problems, which include a 23 percent youth unemployment rate and a spate of horrifying, terrorist attacks in recent two years. Both the news media and public opinion suggested Macron was the clear winner. On Friday, hackers dumped a trove of emails from Macron’s campaign on the internet in an apparent attempt to damage his candidacy just ahead of Sunday’s vote. But the French government warned both the media and citizens not to spread the hacked documents and abide by a traditional blackout ahead of the vote. The hacked documents did not appear to gain much traction and were not seen to have an effect on the results. Reporter Jake Cigainero contributed to this story."
"French voters cast their ballots Sunday, in a historic presidential election that’s reverberating around the globe and pitting two unconventional candidates against each other.   candidate Marine Le Pen faces centrist Emmanuel Macron after voters bucked France’s traditional   system in April’s first round of the election. Le Pen  —   a    —   heads the National Front, a party once associated with racism and xenophobia. The   and   Macron has never held elected office and ran as an independent. The outcome of the election could have a profound effect on the future of the European Union and globalization amid a wave of populism and protectionism. Voting takes place two days after Macron’s campaign was hacked  and thousands of his emails released. The move reminded observers of the hack on the Clinton campaign in the American election, which U. S. intelligence agencies concluded was orchestrated by Russia to benefit now President Trump. Trump has expressed support for Le Pen, telling the Associated Press, ”She’s the strongest on borders.” Former President Obama endorsed Macron in a video released Friday, saying Macron ”has stood up for liberal values.” France has a blackout on all campaigning and media coverage that began Friday. Most polls close at 7 p. m. local time Sunday (1 p. m. ET) but remain open an hour later in Paris and other big cities. Polling companies release winner projections immediately afterward."
"The sister of President Trump’s    Jared Kushner, highlighted her powerful brother as she pitched financing the family firm’s real estate project in New Jersey to Chinese investors. That’s according to reporters from The Washington Post and The New York Times, who were attending the publicly advertised event at the   Hotel in Beijing on Saturday before press was removed from the room. ”Speaking in a ballroom, [Nicole] Meyer said the project ’means a lot to me and my entire family,’” according to the Times. ”She mentioned her brother’s service as chief executive of Kushner Companies, the family business from which he resigned in January, saying he had left to serve in the Trump administration.” This is the latest in a series of    questions surrounding the vast business interests of top Trump administration officials. ”It’s highly problematic,” Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, tells NPR. ”It appears that Jared Kushner’s family business is using his name and his official position to bring in investment.” Kushner Companies ”apologizes if that mention of [Meyer’s] brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors,” it said in a statement emailed to NPR, adding that it was not her intention. It said the One Journal Square project would provide millions in tax revenue and bring in thousands of construction jobs to New Jersey. The event was organized by QWOS, a firm that helps Chinese citizens access U. S. green cards through investments. Its advertising highlights the controversial   visa program, which provides a path to a green card to foreign nationals who invest at least half a million dollars and create 10   jobs. ”Invest $500, 000 and immigrate to the United States,” said one pamphlet for the event to raise money for the project, according to the Post. The program is popular with some commercial real estate developers, who use it to raise funds for their projects, as NPR’s Greg Allen has reported. But it has also been linked to fraud schemes and critics are uneasy about the idea of ”essentially selling visas to wealthy foreigners with no proven skills, paving the way for money laundering and compromising national security, as Bloomberg reported. Before Kushner joined the Trump administration as a senior adviser, the news agency added, his family firm raised some $50 million through the   program for a   luxury apartment building in New Jersey. Kushner’s lawyer, Blake Roberts of WilmerHale law firm, said in an emailed statement that Kushner ”will recuse from particular matters concerning the   visa program.” Bookbinder, from the watchdog group CREW, says that ”at this point, it might make sense for him to consider   recusals on China issues as well, as more and more business ties keep on coming up.” Roberts also stressed that Kushner has distanced himself from the firm he used to run: ”Mr. Kushner has no involvement in the operation of Kushner Companies and divested his interests in the One Journal Square project by selling them to a family trust that he, his wife, and his children are not beneficiaries of, a mechanism suggested by the Office of Government Ethics.” Kushner’s mother and siblings are beneficiaries of that family trust, a White House official confirmed. Ethics watchdogs had wanted to see Kushner’s assets sold to independent third parties, rather than to a family trust."
"In the Rose Garden last week President Trump and the House Republican leadership celebrated their vote to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act as though it had actually repealed and replaced the 2010 law colloquially known as Obamacare. It had not, of course. Several more giant steps remain in the process. And more than a few of these same Republicans may well be grateful. The House, its leaders and    alike know that what they have done so far is not yet law. It may not even qualify as a rough draft. In reality, the House has shoveled a mammoth pile of problems off its porch and onto that of the U. S. Senate. That chamber has announced it is writing its own bill. That is common knowledge, and more than a few House votes were cajoled with assurances that ”the Senate will fix” this problem or that. For those concerned about the policy itself, the prospect of the Senate taking over was a mixed bag. Would they make it better in fact? Such debates aside, most of the House members were asking: Would the Senate make it less explosive politically? Most seemed to believe the Senate would take the pressure off the House in the short run. And just maybe, with luck, it might take the onus off the House in the long run as well. Here’s how it works: If both House and Senate pass their own separate bills, there will be a conference committee that strives to ”compose their differences.” (This might take weeks.) The report on this hybrid must then pass a revote in both chambers in identical form, as the Constitution demands. So whatever happens now, the House folks figure the spotlight is shifting to the Senate. And it ought to stay there. Option One: The Senate can fail to pass anything at all. Then the whole enterprise dies on their doorstep, just as it seemed likely to do on the House’s doorstep last week. Option Two: The Senate can also pass something that is so wildly different from the House bill that the conference cannot produce a hybrid of the two. That too could be blamed on the Senate. Like, hey, everything was fine when we did it in the House back in May didn’t you see that celebration in the Rose Garden? Option Three: The Senate can pass something and the conference committee can do its thing and then the Senate can refuse to approve the conference report. Senate at fault again. Option Four: If the conference report does pass the Senate, well maybe then the House can approve it and point a finger at the changes the Senate insisted on. Option Five: The Senate approves the conference compromise and it fails in the House.  . But, think again, this can be sold as the House playing Horatius at the Bridge  —   the valiant tribune of the people. Wouldn’t it be the Senate in this scenario that was guilty of ruining a perfectly good House product? (See reference to Rose Garden celebration above.) Any way you look at it, the House is better off with the ball in someone else’s court. In a way, this reliance on the Senate to save the day dovetails with the confidence in the Senate shown by Obamacare’s defenders. They have a litany of reasons to believe the Senate will not gut the Affordable Care Act (the law’s formal name and preferred by many). It begins with the close partisan division of the Senate, where Republicans have just 52 seats and so just two votes to spare. (Vice President Pence would be expected to break any tie in favor of the GOP.) If three or more Republicans turn against any version of the    bill in the Senate, the bill falls. Moreover, it is possible the Senate parliamentarian will limit how much of the legislation can be passed by simple majority. Matters in the bill that are not strictly    issues are not eligible for   votes, which are reserved for budgets and fiscal matters that the chamber needs to keep moving (without filibusters). Democrats in 2010 finished passing the ACA using these same   procedures for part of it  —   but not all. If Republicans need to move some elements of    by the usual procedure, they will need not 50 votes but 60. That would require perfect unity among the Republicans and at least eight Democratic crossovers. Right now that is extremely hard to imagine. Considering all this, and adding in the evident distaste of senators in both parties for what the House did, what chance does    have in the Senate? It might seem to be slim to none. But not so fast. All these difficulties are real, but none is insurmountable. The Senate is not the end of the line for    it’s just the graveyard for the House version just passed. The right kind of leadership, wily and shrewd and steeped in Senate   might just find a way to bring a few Democrats on board. And if you are looking for that kind of leadership, untrammeled by ideological purity or other forms of fuzzy thinking, you need look no further. I give you Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. It would require negotiating with those Democrats of course, it would require giving them something. And anything of value and substance might cost you some Republican votes. The calculus will need to be fine indeed. But, in the end, there will be enormous pressure from the history of the last eight years, from the expectations of the broader ranks of Republicans, from the donors and the volunteers and the true believers. They do not want to be told that Obamacare cannot be repealed. And do not underestimate the power of momentum, which is what the House just snatched back from the vanishing point. Do not underestimate what President Trump may be able to do in rallying support for whatever emerges as the party’s legislative product in the end. It may not matter at all what is in the actual bill. Trump on Thursday embraced the House’s       approach in the afternoon. In the evening, he told the Australian prime minister his country had a better health care system than the U. S.  —   and Australia has     health care for all. Given all these realities, it is possible the Senate could surprise us all with something that becomes The Bill, and that will then be The Only Way. And with the combined energy and will of the present Republican moment, that bill may be irresistible in conference and in the consideration of that conference’s report."
"Organic milk is widely available these days, but what does that label really mean? A new investigation from The Washington Post found that there are considerable differences between the organic milk you can buy in a grocery store and the kind you can buy straight from farmers. Peter Whoriskey investigated the Aurora Organic Dairy, which supplies   organic milk to many large retailers and other large dairy operations. He joined NPR’s Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday to talk about what he found out from his investigation. Interview highlights have been edited for clarity and length. On the difference between   organic milk and organic milk from small farms  We tested them chemically, and you can see from the results how much time a cow has been eating pasture, which is what organic cows are supposed to be doing. And you could see, you know, conventional milk was very low in the   department. And some of the organic milk, especially ones from very small farms, was quite high. The larger corporate organic milks were sort of in the middle. And there was one large organic producer that was actually almost identical to conventional milk. On what some of the corporate dairy farms look like, In some ways, they don’t look too much different than a conventional dairy. You have most of the cows that when we visited were in the feedlots and not out on pasture, which is where you would expect under organic regulations you’d see most of the cows. On what the differences mean, Under organic rules, you’re supposed to graze the cows through the grazing season, and there are specific amounts of grass that they’re supposed to be eating during that time. But they’re supposed to be on grass throughout the grazing season. If   and we would go out to these places that had thousands and thousands of cows. And you might see 100, 200, 300 of them out, but the rest were not there. On how violations happen and regulations aren’t enforced  Well, the USDA has a very interesting enforcement system. Rather than sending USDA organic inspectors, each organic dairy or any organic farm hires their own inspection agency. They call them certifiers. And you hire your inspection agency. They come out once a year, and they’ll check paperwork. They might do some other tests. But generally speaking, there’s obviously a conflict of interest there because they’re your employee, and they’re testing you and going to tell you whether or not your milk’s organic. On how farmers of smaller dairy operations feel  I’ve never met a farmer who thought business was great, and everything was going really well. These guys are obviously under a lot of pressure, and they’re very upset that they’re competing against people who are not playing by the rules. They look at a very large farm, and for certain practical reasons, it’s hard to do a 15, 000 cow facility because you have to have enough land . .. and even if you get enough land, it takes a long time to get the cows out to pasture and then back to milk. So there’s a reason why there’s a lot of small farms. It’s a little bit easier. So they’re frustrated, a lot of them. On being able to taste or see the difference  I can’t taste it. I don’t know that anybody can. What you can sort of see if you buy a house brand of milk, you can look at the code on the milk. It’s usually four or five numbers. It’s the milk processing code. For example, Aurora Organic Dairy is  . And if you see that on the milk, then you know   at least know where it’s coming from. There are some ways to judge whether or not the milk is coming from a place that means to really produce organic milk. Cornucopia Institute is a group that issues a dairy scorecard. It’s an activist group based in Wisconsin that has a lot of small farmers as members, and they became concerned about this and have really been banging on the drum for 10 years on this issue. NPR’s Wynne Davis produced this story for The Salt. "
"Billionaire investor Warren Buffett fielded questions at the annual shareholders meeting for his company Berkshire Hathaway. He offered thoughts and insights on everything from Republicans voting to repeal Obamacare, to the Wells Fargo scandal, to how artificial intelligence and technology might reshape America. Here are some highlights: Repealing Obamacare is ”a huge tax cut for guys like me” When asked about the bill Republicans in Congress just voted to pass to repeal and replace Obamacare, Buffett signaled his distaste for a tax cut provision. Obamacare pays for health care for Americans in part by taxing wealthier people. The Republican bill scraps that tax on the wealthy. And Buffett has apparently done the math here. If the Republican bill had been law last year, he said, ”my federal taxes would have gone down 17 percent last year, so it’s a huge tax cut for guys like me.” ”That is in the law that was passed a couple days ago,” he added. ”Anybody with $250, 000 a year of adjusted gross income and a lot of investment income is going to have a huge tax cut.” In the past, Buffett has bristled at tax policy that he sees as favoring the wealthy  —   famously saying it’s not fair that he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary. The medical cost ”tapeworm” Buffett said at the meeting that health care costs have become a bigger issue for American businesses than taxes. He said if you go back to about 1960, corporate taxes were about 4 percent of GDP and now they’re about 2 percent of GDP. At that time, healthcare was 5 percent of GDP and now it’s 17 percent of GDP. ”So when American business talks about taxes strangling our competitiveness,” he said, ”they’re talking about something that as a percentage of GDP has gone down from 4 to 2.” Meanwhile, medical costs have exploded. ”So medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness,” he said. He argued against the tax system crippling competitiveness ”or anything of the sort.” He also noted that other developed countries appear to have found better ways to contain medical costs. Wells Fargo’s ”big mistake” in its banking scandal, Wells Fargo had a sales structure that clearly led employees to do bad things, according to Buffet. ”But the main problem was that they didn’t act when they learned about it,” he said. ”It’s bad enough having a bad system, but they didn’t act.” Former Wells Fargo workers have told NPR that they called the bank’s ethics line and the bank did nothing. Buffett’s company ethics line is actively used by workers, he says, so he’s sure that Wells Fargo got reports of wrongdoing. He said it’s true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but ”a pound of cure promptly applied is worth a ton of cure that’s delayed. Problems don’t go away.” Wells Fargo responded to Buffett’s remarks before the end of the day’s meeting, saying in a statement that the bank has taken ”decisive action to fix the problems.” Wells Fargo also said it’s created a new ”Office of Ethics, Oversight and Integrity to centralize the handling of internal investigations, complaints oversight, and sales practices oversight.” Why geckos don’t like driverless cars, In response to a question about the impact of driverless cars, trucks and trains, Buffett said they’d not only be a threat to trucking and railroad businesses, but the insurance industry too. ”If driverless cars became pervasive, it would only be because they were safer and that would mean that the overall economic cost of   losses had gone down and that would drive down the premium income of Geico,” Buffet said referring to the auto insurance company owned by Berkshire. ”Autonomous vehicles widespread would hurt us.” But, he added, ”I think they may be a long way off.” Life lessons, When asked about reflections and lessons learned in his long life, Warren Buffett referenced Charlie Munger, the    vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who says, ”All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.” But on a more serious note, Buffett says he’s gotten a lot of joy in life out of teaching other people things. So, he said, if people remembered him as being a good teacher, he would be OK with that."
"Ximena Lopez wanted a bigger behind. She was 21 and lived in Medellín, Colombia, a hot spot for cosmetic work. More than 357, 000 surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures are performed in Colombia a year, making it the world’s No. 8 country for body rehabbing. A friend named Hanna Valencia told her, ”Look, I’ve done the butt job.” She recommended the ”spa” she went to in a mall in a posh Medellín neighborhood. ”Before we started,” she told Ximena, ”[the owner’s son] said a prayer. It gave me confidence.” Then Rafael Nieto injected what Hanna described as a mix of gel and liquids in each buttock with a large needle. Hanna loved the result. So on March 17, 2016, Ximena went in for the procedure. She didn’t tell her parents, who were on vacation. She did tell Hanna, who got a call from the spa to come and get her friend after the procedure. ”When I got there, she was lying on the stretcher. She was breathing like she was tired,” says Hanna. When Hanna got Ximena home, she fainted in the elevator. That was a Thursday. Ximena sent a series of messages to Nieto via Whatsapp, the phone app, which her family has shared. ”Doctor, I want to ask, is it normal I suffocate when I get up? If I do anything, at once I feel suffocated. I can’t breathe normally. What should I do?” Nieto’s WhatsApp message says, ”Remember what I told you: The symptoms you have are due to the procedure we made . ... You need to get rest and stay still . ... I’ll call back tomorrow to see how you awake.” On Sunday, Ximena went to the hospital. Her aunt, Teresa Villa, visited and recalls: ”Her face was completely disfigured. She had an eye almost protruding.” On Wednesday, Ximena died, six days after the injections. In Colombia, cosmetic procedures are not just limited to the wealthy. The lure of an improved body draws clients from many different levels of society. While the wealthiest can pay good money for renowned surgeons in private clinics, cheaper versions have been marketed for   clients, like Ximena, whose father is a janitor and whose mother is a    wife. In Bogotá, a nonprofit hospital offers plastic surgeries at half the price of private clinics. In Medellín, medical students studying cosmetic surgery, supervised by their teachers, operate at a reduced rate in lower income areas. ”So we have two roads to plastic surgery in Medellín,” says city councilman Bernardo Guerra, a doctor who entered politics. There’s the   ”white road” where licensed doctors operate in authorized medical clinics. And there’s the ”black road”  —   people who aren’t doctors performing procedures, doctors who aren’t cosmetic surgeons doing cosmetic surgery, facilities located in private homes or apartments that have not been authorized for cosmetic work by health authorities and that may use improper substances. Guerra receives a lot of complaints about cosmetic procedures from the ”black road.” (It should be noted that there are complaints and bad outcomes from cosmetic procedures around the world, including in the U. S.) Unauthorized clinics  —   like the one that Ximena visited  —   began spreading in Medellín around 2005 or 2006, Guerra says. ”The whole business is very ” he explains. Guerra estimates that 20 percent to 30 percent of plastic surgeries performed in Medellín are performed by doctors without cosmetic surgery training or performed in unauthorized clinics by   personnel. Hanna and Ximena believed that Rafael Nieto was a doctor. They called him ”doctor.” In a WhatsApp message, Ximena wrote, ”What title do you have? Are you a doctor?” He did not answer that question. He is not registered in the Colombian government’s database of doctors. The local health authorities in Medellín checked the chamber of commerce records to see how Nieto’s business was listed. It was registered as a hair salon. Ximena’s family says the hospital told them, after her death, that the product injected into her bottom was a ”greasy substance.” It’s common practice in these unauthorized places to use cheap liquids, like cooking oil or silicone to inject into the buttocks or into breasts to fill them out. ”What does it cost, a liter of oil?” says Guerra. ”One dollar! And they get paid almost a thousand dollars by the girls.” Ximena paid $850 for her procedure. The official cause of death was respiratory cardiac arrest. Doctors at the hospital told the family that Ximena died because during the injection a vein was pinched. Since veins take the blood to the lungs, the product she was injected with ended up in her lungs too. Colombian women are not the only victims. There’s a large demand for plastic surgery in Latin America, and Colombia has developed a reputation for providing quality cosmetic surgery, drawing medical tourists as well as locals. Total spending for both general and cosmetic procedures by these visitors hit $216 million in 2014, up 41 percent from the year before, according to the Oxford Business Group, a company that does business research in 39 countries. Medellin’s specialty is cosmetic work. Dr. Liana Triana, president of the Colombian Society for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, says the prices can be half that of the same procedure in the U. S. and that the country offers ”high standards, experienced surgeons and modern facilities.” That is, if you stay on the white road  —   the   facilities in the official listing known as Medellín’s Health Cluster. But medical tourists also end up on the black road. In July of 2014, Nancy Santana, from Puerto Rico, traveled to Medellín for an abdominoplasty  —   a tummy tuck  —   and breast implants. She paid $5, 000 for procedures that could cost twice as much if performed by a reputable cosmetic surgeon. Santana died after the surgery. The story of her death was widely reported in the local press. ”According to the forensic office, she was injected with oil and industrial silicone,” says city councilman Guerra. A year after Ximena’s death, the district attorney’s office is still investigating her case. The spa closed for good but no charges have been pressed against the spa or Nieto by the DA. It is hard to know how many patients die from botched procedures each year in Colombia. Newspaper reports documented 9 deaths from cosmetic procedures in 2016 in Medellín. From 2006 to 2017, the district attorney’s office has recorded 60 cases of manslaughter related to unauthorized plastic procedures in Medellín. But many patients are embarrassed to come forward and most cases do not go to trial, often because of a lack of evidence, Guerra says. In fact, the first trial in Colombia over a cosmetic procedure just took place. In March a doctor was found guilty of manslaughter after a liposuction in 2006 resulted in infection and peritonitis. The court sentenced him to 34 months in jail and ruled to suspend his medical license for 10 months. He is appealing the sentence, as is the family of the deceased the family believes it is too lenient. The law also encourages the parties to negotiate a settlement. That’s what is happening with Ximena’s case. The family has filed a complaint. Nieto’s attorney offered them $14, 000 to drop it. Her family rejected the offer. The district attorney’s office is investigating and will determine if there is enough proof to press charges. If Rafael Nieto is charged, brought to trial and found guilty, he would face 2 to 6 years in jail. Charlotte de Beauvoir is a French journalist who moved to Colombia ten years ago. She is a radio producer and a journalism professor at the Universidad de Los Andes, in Bogotá. You can listen to Ximena Lopez’s story on Radio Ambulante, a   podcast, distributed by NPR, that tells stories from Latin America."
"Leslie Feist’s new album is her first in six years  —   and it sounds nothing like the polished alternative pop that got her nominated for Best New Artist at the 2008 Grammys, nor the big ensemble sound that won her a Polaris Prize for Metals in 2012. This one is gritty, spare. The album’s title, Pleasure, is a little misleading Feist, 41, says it came out of a time when she wasn’t feeling much enjoyment or happiness. She chose that title, she says, in an effort to be deliberate about the use and power of language. ”I think it was a little bit of a game of wielding words in a way that I thought would manifest something,” she says. ”And so, having a tough few years, I was at one end of a pole, and I was experiencing . .. the opposite of pleasure. So in writing this record, I started to feel, ’Well, wait a second. I can make the opposite be true. I think I can will it to literally become true.’ ” Feist spoke with NPR’s Lulu   about the perspective that comes with adulthood, why Pleasure’s starker sound was so important to her and how she delivers messages to older versions of herself. Hear their conversation at the audio link and read on for an edited transcript. Lulu  : What was going on in your life that made it so difficult that you felt the need to do something like this, entitle it Pleasure? Feist: There wasn’t a particular thing. I was in a    —   just confusion. Or maybe it was like, what direction to go next? Like your compass stops working. It might have been from repetition of touring from having been an adult for long enough to have observed what I was doing as an adult [and] how adulthood was looking on me. So I think it was just a confluence of a bunch of different factors. For those of us who are older, we call it a   crisis. You have these crises of confidence  —   but I don’t think that’s what was going through you. Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think maybe it manifests in Lamborghinis or, like, affairs or whatever. Not for me. Nor for me. It manifests in a whole bunch of songs or something. Maybe that’s true, in a way  —   time starts to factor in, in a way it didn’t before. You see what a decade is because you’ve just felt it as an adult. It’s not like a childhood decade, where every day is a   day, every day is a reinvention of all that you’ve ever known, the world can turn on its heel in a second. But when you’re an adult, there’s a fossilization of habits . .. I started to feel like I had to crack off this armor that had culminated without me noticing. One of the things that people notice about this album is its spareness. The albums you’ve made before have been very lush, but a lot of the tracks on this one are just you and a guitar. Why did you want to have it so prominently on the album? Well, it was the tool that I wrote with. And also, I guess it was probably because I began playing solo years ago, long before even Let It Die . .. And then when Let It Die came out and I started to tour North America with it and couldn’t bring a band with me, I was playing Let It Die songs  —   interpreting them solo again. And they sounded nothing like each other, the record and the way I played that record live. So I started to realize that it was sort of my translator, interpreter  —   the way I could hold up a song, hold up a minute, hold up an hour, was with me and this thing. So in 2014, after I finished touring Metals, which was a bigger record  —   there were big arrangements, there were horns and strings and bombast. And after touring that with a   band, I just felt I needed to go do a solo tour, just to remember I could hold it up for my own sake. And then that is what informed writing this record. You achieved huge success in 2007 with your album The Reminder, but you’ve said your goal since then was to ”descend the ladder with dignity and go back to the altitude that [you] can breathe at.” Does that mean that you’d leave music altogether  —   or at least the way you’ve been doing it, the tours and the limelight? No, I think it meant  —   before The Reminder sort of took on a life of its own, I had been playing for so long where I felt that any of my own effort would be  —   I could feel the response. Like, if I worked hard, then A, B or C there would be a response that I could sense had come from me. And it made me feel like my hands were on the steering wheel. ”1234,” off [The Reminder] kind of took on a life of its own. It sort of pulled me along with it. But I actually enjoy playing smaller venues, and I enjoy that rarefied air of a smaller group of people being in a room together and passing those two hours together. There’s a synergy that can happen that can’t happen at the Hollywood Bowl, for instance  —   or at least it can’t happen for me, because I really enjoy and feel invested in the quieter side of things. So yeah, I basically just meant going back to a place that would be sustainable, that I can imagine enjoying when I’m 90. The very last song on the album is called ”Young Up,” and it feels like one of the tracks on the album where you’re speaking most directly to yourself. What is the message to your younger self?  It’s funny because I’m kind of giving a message to my    self, in a way, more than the past, which is: You will age as quickly as you think you are. You will be that        or you’re gonna be a   resentful    and that’s a choice. I’ve learned, having sung the same songs for 15 years, that some of them do carry little embedded, codified messages. And I appreciate the perspective that    Leslie’s shed on my life, and I kind of want to echo that forward and intend for something  —   I don’t know  —   richer. Keep the sparkle in your eye."
"Until now, debut author Dana Schwartz has made a compelling asset out of brevity. She’s the humorist behind the popular Twitter accounts Guy In Your MFA and Dystopian YA Novel, twin platforms for perfectly crafted satire about literary pretention. The former sends up   David Foster   writing students who gaze deep into their navels and see only literary symbolism and tortured, unappreciated genius. The latter parodies the tropes of derivative   fiction, complete with a female protagonist caught between competing male admirers as she tries to navigate her oppressive society. To readers who’ve dealt with either of these archetypes, the accounts are funny because the voices are so recognizable, and Schwartz’s jokes at their expense are so incisive, even at a   limit. But where concision strengthens Schwartz’s humor, it limits her debut novel, And We’re Off. Her   story about a teenage artist’s growing pains covers a lot of physical and emotional ground, but at such breakneck speed that the landscape rarely comes into focus. It’s a quick, compelling read, with vividly described emotions and an intense inner landscape. (And, for longtime Schwartz fans, some Dystopian YA Novel  .) But it also feels like it’s a couple of expansions short of a fully realized story, one that would fill in the space between the characters’ impassioned peaks and valleys. Schwartz’s protagonist in And We’re Off is    Nora   a      senior headed for a weeklong jaunt across Europe, followed by a summer stint at Ireland’s Donegal Colony for Young Artists. Like her grandfather Robert, who became a famous,   painter late in life, Nora is an artist. But she’s afraid she lacks talent, and that others are humoring her because of her grandfather. Her mother Alice, on the other hand, doesn’t humor her at all. She thinks Nora’s art is a distracting, impractical hobby. Even though every blunt, hateful thing she says about Nora’s art leads to a fight, she’s still as unsubtle as a Disney animated villain when it comes to conversations with her daughter. So the stage is set for drama when Alice suddenly regrets their fractured relationship, and invites herself along on Nora’s European trip. Robbed of her   taste of freedom and adulthood, Nora is understandably sullen, but oddly unresisting. There’s a bitter sort of comedy in the ways Alice finds to ruin Nora’s trip, but there’s a deeply dysfunctional relationship there too, built around Alice’s pushiness and Nora’s limitations in fighting back. Schwartz takes an unusual approach to writing Nora, who isn’t always sympathetic. Her pouts and loud, performative   sighs seem designed to be judged by older readers. She’s impulsive and erratic,   and  . In other words, she’s a teenager, written from a    perspective. Alice, for her part, is a bratty,   tyrant one minute, and a hurting woman struggling with divorce and disappointment the next. It’s possible to mentally connect these traits into fully formed personalities, but And We’re Off rarely takes the time as it whisks briskly from one screaming crisis to the next. The same approach holds for the book’s many other subplots. Nora’s summer romance with an Irish boy hits the familiar marks  —   party, infatuation, painful discovery  —   without developing any unique flavor. Her time at Donegal boils down to a few brief lessons and a fit of jealousy over a more effortlessly talented schoolmate. And her feelings of inadequacy emerge abruptly, then become a preoccupation for a book that could more profitably spend the space on deepening its relationships. And We’re Off opens with a promising specificity that the rest of the book lacks. Within the first few pages, Schwartz references Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, and Buzzfeed. The first chapter reveals that Nora makes side cash drawing commissioned erotic fan art of Harry Potter and Sherlock characters. It’s a funny detail, but it also places her firmly in an    world where online social communities shape young artists, and where Nora would presumably get the support her mother doesn’t give her. But past that opening chapter, Schwartz entirely drops the notion of Nora having fun with art, interacting with fans, or having social links beyond the ex she’s pining for, and the best friend who’s dating him. It’s just one of the many ways And We’re Off feels like it could have been twice the length without wearing out its welcome. Expanded and slowed down, it might have been a richer book like Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, a deeper dive into how an immature artist develops her own voice and confidence, and navigates the barriers blocking her. On Twitter, brevity is necessary. But it isn’t always the best tactic for a novel. Tasha Robinson is a culture writer at Vox Media’s technology and entertainment site The Verge."
"It was a matter of urgency, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates says, when she called White House lawyers back in late January. She needed to tell them that Gen. Michael Flynn,   security adviser, appeared to be lying to the White House, making him vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow. ”We believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians,” Yates told a Senate subcommittee on Monday. ”To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians.” Four days later, Yates was fired, for refusing to defend President Trump’s travel ban. Two weeks after that, Flynn was out  —   for lying to the White House about contacts with Russia, as Yates had alerted White House lawyers. The story Yates had warned about had reached the press. Yates, along with James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s crime and terrorism subcommittee to testify on Russian attempts to interfere in the U. S. presidential election. Both witnesses had served under Obama. Yates remained in her role for 10 days after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 and then was fired. During that brief tenure she warned the White House that Flynn had made contact with Russians, which he was denying. Vice President Pence was publicly backing Flynn’s false statements. Yates told the senators she informed the administration about Flynn’s apparent lie for two reasons: one, because Flynn’s behavior was ”problematic in and of itself,” and two, because she believed Pence had ”the right to know” the truth. She said she was sharing the information  —   over a series of two meetings and a phone call  —   so that the White House ”could act.” In response, she says, one lawyer asked what it mattered to the Department of Justice if one White House official was lying to another. The senators in Monday’s hearing asked about issues beyond just Flynn. But many of the   questions in the hearing ran up against a brick wall marked ”classified.” Clapper said he could not comment on whether he was concerned about Trump’s business interests in Russia. And as to whether there’s evidence that members of the Trump campaign cooperated in Russian meddling, they were split: Clapper said he didn’t know of any, while Yates said she couldn’t comment. At the hearing on Monday  —   as at previous public hearings on the Russian investigation  —   there was a sharp partisan split in how senators approached the issue. Democrats focused extensively on Russian attempts to alter the outcome of the U. S. presidential election in Trump’s favor, while most Republicans focused on leaks and the question of how Flynn’s calls reached the press. (Both Yates and Clapper flatly denied having any involvement with the leaks.) Some Republican senators even turned their attention to Hillary Clinton’s emails and Yates’ refusal to defend Trump’s executive order on travel. The president tweeted after the hearing, calling congressional investigations into the possibility that his campaign colluded with Russia a ”taxpayer funded charade.” He said the ”biggest story,” which he accused the media of underreporting, is ”on surveillance.” Questions about what kind of surveillance it is legal for U. S. intelligence agencies to do, and whether intelligence from such surveillance has been mishandled, did come up during the hearing and have been reported on extensively for the past few months. You can read about the hearing, as it happened, below. 5:30 p. m. ET: Both witnesses call for defensive action against future meddling, Asked about what needs to be done to defend against future Russian actions, Yates said, ”I think they’re coming back . .. and I think we have to do a whole lot more  —   to harden our election systems, to ensure that folks out there know when they’re looking at news feeds that it may not be real news that they’re reading. ”I think that we have to do more to deter the Russians, and it wouldn’t hurt to prosecute a few folks, but I don’t think we can fool ourselves that we can prosecute our way out of this problem,” she said. ”I think the most important thing we need to do here is to educate the electorate . .. about Russian tactics and procedures, that they have employed and I predict will continue to employ,” Clapper said. He also said U. S. election systems should be considered critical infrastructure and called for more sanctions and improved countermessaging against Russia. 5:15 p. m. ET: Clapper declines to comment on Trump’s business interests in Russia, Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham,  . C. asked Clapper if he had, in the course of investigations, come across business ties Trump had to Russia that caused concern. There was a pause, then this exchange: Clapper: Not in the course of the preparation of the intelligence community assessment. Graham: Since? . .. At all? Anytime? Clapper: Sen. Graham, I can’t comment on that, because that impacts an investigation. Graham: It wasn’t enough to put into the report? Clapper: That’s correct. 5:10 p. m. ET: Questions about Flynn’s security clearance, At a news conference earlier Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that Flynn received a security clearance during his time with the Obama administration and that it was never withdrawn. He had the ”same clearance” as national security adviser, Spicer said. ”Everyone in the government goes through the same process,” Spicer said. As for vetting Flynn, Spicer said, ”That was something that was adjudicated by the Obama administration.” Sen. Mazie Hirono,   asked Clapper whether that was true. Clapper said he couldn’t comment on Flynn specifically  —   but that there are very different levels of vetting for different roles. ”I know what I went through as a political appointee, twice, in a Republican and Democratic administration, and the vetting process for either a political appointee or someone working with the White House is far more invasive and far, far more thorough than a standard   clearance process,” Clapper said. ”But I don’t know what process was used in Gen. Flynn’s case.” He reiterated later that serving in a   role in the White House has, in previous administrations, required vetting above and beyond a standard security clearance. NBC has reported that Flynn was required to get a new security clearance to serve as national security adviser, but the process was never completed he was pushed out of the job before he received that higher clearance, NBC reported, citing one anonymous source. 5:05 p. m. ET: Yates won’t confirm whether Flynn lied to the FBI, Yates said she couldn’t comment on whether Flynn lied during his interview with the FBI, citing an ongoing investigation. She did confirm that if Flynn did lie, he could potentially face criminal prosecution. 5:00 p. m. ET: Al Franken poses a lengthy hypothetical, Sen. Al Franken,  . used one of his questions to, well, not really ask a question. He was talking to Yates about the   delay between when she alerted the White House to Flynn’s apparent lie, and when Flynn was forced to resign: ”Is it possible that the reason he didn’t fire him then is that [he thought] ’Well, if I fire him for talking to the Russians about sanctions . .. what about all the other people on my team who coordinated?’ ”You ask yourself, why wouldn’t you fire a guy who did this. And all I can think of is that he would say, ’Well, we’ve got all these other people in the administration who have had contacts we’ve had all these other people in the administration who coordinated.’ . .. ”We’re trying to put a puzzle together here, everybody, and maybe, just maybe, he didn’t get rid of a guy who lied to the vice president, who got paid by the Russians, who went on Russia Today, because there are other people in his administration who met secretly with the Russians and didn’t reveal it until later, until they were caught. That may be why it took him 18 days  —   until it became public  —   to get rid of Mike Flynn, who was a danger to this republic.” ”Care to comment?” Franken asked Yates. ”I don’t think I’m going to touch that, senator,” she said. 4:25 p. m. ET: Russian hacking is cheap does WikiLeaks do journalism?  Sen. Ben Sasse,  . asked Clapper about the threat from Russia  —   among other things, whether congressional IT systems could be a target of hacking, which Clapper said was certainly possible. He also asked about how much money Russia spends on hacking and propaganda efforts. ”I can’t give you a figure,” Clapper said. ”I will say in comparison to classical military expenditures it’s a bargain for them.” Then Sasse raised the question of WikiLeaks, as he did with FBI Director James Comey last week. He asked whether the group is a ”known propaganda effort for Russia,” as U. S intelligence officials have called it. He asked Clapper, ”You’re saying that Julian Assange is not a journalist?” ”You’re asking the wrong guy,” Clapper said, laughing. ”He certainly is not.” ”When a journalist does harm to the country, harm to our national security, compromises sensitive sources . .. and deliberately puts the country in jeopardy, I think that’s a red line,” Clapper said. 4:15 p. m. ET: Yates repeats her goal was to allow White House to ”take action” regarding Flynn, In her answers to the senators, Yates has repeatedly emphasized that she was briefing White House lawyers on Flynn’s behavior so that the administration ”could take action.” She says the Department of Justice was ”very concerned” and that in conversations with the White House, she emphasized ”repeatedly” that they were sharing the information to enable the administration to act. 3:55 p. m. ET: Conversation pivots to Trump’s travel ban, Clinton’s emails, In a diversion from the topic at hand, Sen. John Cornyn,   challenged Yates over her decision not to defend Trump’s travel ban. That prompted Sen. Dick Durbin,  . to defend Yates  —   and then express frustration with the Senate subcommittee’s lack of resources dedicated to the question at the heart of the hearing, that is, Russian meddling in the election. Sen. Ted Cruz,   then asked ”hypothetical” questions about Hillary Clinton’s emails, as well as further questions about Trump’s executive order on travel. As the conversations about the travel ban continued, Yates confirmed that she met with White House counsel  —   to discuss Flynn  —   on the same afternoon that the White House was preparing to issue the executive order on immigration. They did not tell her of the plans, she said: As acting attorney general she learned about the order after it was issued, from media coverage. 3:45 p. m. ET: Yates says it ”certainly appeared” that Flynn lied, Yates told the senators the Department of Justice had two concerns over Flynn’s actions. One was that he could be vulnerable to blackmail by Russia. ”Compromise was certainly the No. 1 concern,” she said. ”The Russians can use compromised material in a variety of ways, sometimes overtly, sometime subtly, and again our concern was that you have a very sensitive position  —   like the national security adviser  —   and you don’t want that person to be in a position where the Russians have leverage.” But they also felt that Pence had the ”right to know” that evidence contradicted the statements he was making, as he defended Flynn in public. Asked if Flynn lied to Pence, Yates said, ”That’s certainly how it appeared, yes  —   because the vice president went out and made statements that he said were based on what Gen. Flynn had told him,” and which the DOJ knew ”flatly” weren’t true, Yates said. 3:15 p. m. ET: Yates says she told the White House multiple times that Flynn’s conduct was ”problematic” Yates says she spoke with White House counsel twice in person, and once over the phone, about Flynn’s ”conduct.” She wouldn’t detail what the conduct was, saying that was classified, but identified it as ”problematic in and of itself.” The first meeting was on Jan. 26, when Yates told the White House that there was evidence of Flynn’s conduct that contradicted public statements by Vice President Pence. Yates says she was not accusing Pence of ”providing false information” but wanted to make sure the White House was aware of the disparity. Yates also says she informed the White House that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI, but without specifying what happened in that interview. It was a matter of urgency, Yates said. ”We believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians,” Yates said. ”. .. To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians.” But she says the Department of Justice, despite feeling this sense of urgency, was also trying not to interfere in an active FBI investigation. Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser 18 days after Yates met with White House lawyers. 3:10 p. m. ET: Clapper, Yates both say they don’t know how Flynn’s conversations reached the press, Graham asked Yates and Clapper how the White House learned that Flynn had conversations with the Russian ambassador. That’s a question that President Trump had called for the senators to ask  —   in line with Republican allegations that an Obama official leaked classified information about Flynn. Both witnesses said they did not know the answer. Later, both denied serving as an anonymous source, or authorizing anyone else to serve as an anonymous source, in connection with the story. 3:10 p. m. ET: Yates says she can’t comment on possibility of Trump campaign collusion, Yates refused to say whether intelligence exists that shows a member of the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. ”My answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information,” Yates said. But she urged the senators not to take that nonanswer as confirmation that evidence does exist, saying she was taking the same approach as FBI Director James Comey to a question that centers on a classified investigation. Clapper had a different answer to the question, saying flatly that he did not know of any evidence. Further pressing by the senators raised the point that it was at least possible for individuals with the Department of Justice to have access to information that Clapper, as director of national intelligence, did not  —   because of the high level of secrecy around counterintelligence investigations. 2:55 p. m. ET: Clapper pushes back on concerns over unmasking, Graham, in his opening remarks, raised unmasking as a major area of concern. ”Unmasking” is how American officials can learn the names of Americans caught up in ”incidental collection”  —   that is, people overheard or mentioned as the U. S. is surveilling a foreign target. (You can read more about both concepts in our background material above.) Some Republicans have expressed concern that Flynn may have been ”unmasked,” and then his identity leaked to the press, for political purposes instead of for legitimate intelligence reasons. ”I’ve learned a bit about unmasking and what I’ve learned is disturbing,” Graham said. ”I’d like to know more and I want to make sure that that unmasking can never be used as a political weapon in our democracy.” Clapper explained that an official asking for unmasking has to justify why the name is needed and that the name is shared only with the person requesting it. Clapper said he had personally requested unmasking several times. ”At no time did I ever submit a request for personal or political purposes, or to voyeuristically look at raw intelligence, nor am I aware of any instance of such abuse by anyone else,” Clapper wrote. 2:45 p. m. ET: Witnesses warn that their testimony is constrained, As he opened the hearing, Graham noted that the U. S. intelligence community has been ”unanimous” in concluding that Russia was meddling in the U. S. election. While Russian hacking and propaganda was designed to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton, Graham said, such foreign interference is a bipartisan issue. ”It could be our campaigns next,” he told his fellow senators. ”When one party is attacked, all of us should feel an attack.” The subcommittee’s ranking member, Sheldon Whitehouse,  . I. went into much greater detail about what Russia is known or believed to have done to influence the U. S. election. ”We need a more thorough accounting of the facts,” Whitehouse said. Meanwhile, Yates and Clapper both warned the subcommittee that they won’t be able to answer pressing questions as fully as the senators might like. ”Many of the topics of interest today concern classified information that I cannot address in this public setting, either directly or indirectly,” Yates wrote in her statement, published on Graham’s website. She also said she is ”not authorized” to discuss deliberations within the Department of Justice or the executive branch, ”particularly on matters that may be the subject of ongoing investigations.” Clapper, for his part, said the White House cited executive privilege and ”requested” additional limits to what he can discuss in the hearing. 2:30 p. m. ET: NPR’s Phil Ewing provides a preview of what’s expected to be discussed: ”Democrats want Yates to describe what she told White House officials shortly after President Trump’s inauguration about the FBI’s investigation into   security adviser Michael Flynn. Yates’ Jan. 26 meeting in the executive mansion reportedly was to notify the administration that the FBI believed Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. He resigned weeks later. . .. ”Graham and Republicans, however, want to ask the witnesses about how details of Flynn’s conversations, and other classified information, found their way into The Washington Post and other newspapers ahead of Trump’s inauguration.” Trump had been cautioned about Flynn even before the   from Yates on Jan. 26, according to a former Obama official. The official tells NPR that the president himself warned Trump, then incoming president, about Flynn’s job performance. Flynn was formerly the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency but was fired during the Obama administration. White House press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed on Monday that ”President Obama made it clear that he was not a fan of Gen. Flynn’s.” But Spicer suggested that wasn’t surprising  —   given Flynn’s criticisms of Obama  —   and could have been interpreted as ”bad blood” instead of a substantive warning. ”If President Obama was truly concerned, why didn’t he suspend Gen. Flynn’s security clearance?” Spicer asked."
"Members of the Senate are hosting the next matinee Monday in the   saga over Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election  —   but even after hours of hearings, there’s still much the public doesn’t know. Many agencies and lawmakers are looking into attempted Russian influence. One of the most visible investigations has been plagued by conflict and controversy, and one of the most important investigations remains almost entirely classified. So perhaps it’s no surprise that central elements of the inquiries are still shrouded in mystery. We know the U. S. intelligence community has concluded that Moscow attempted to influence the election in Donald Trump’s favor. Much of the evidence it used to reach that decision, however, is classified. We know about a number of financial and personal ties between members of the Trump campaign and Russian businesses and individuals, but we don’t know whether or how those relationships might have been exploited. And we know the FBI and committees in Congress are investigating the nature of the Russian meddling, but we know very little about what new information they’ve uncovered so far. Two former Obama administration officials are set to testify at an open Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Monday afternoon, which may help fill some of the gaps. Here are a few of the big questions that remain open: Did the Trump campaign know about the Russian efforts? Did they cooperate or gain any advantage? The publicly available information so far amounts to smoke, but no fire. Members of Trump’s team were communicating with Russians at the same time that U. S. officials say the Russian government was attempting to sway the election in Trump’s favor  —   which doesn’t prove the Trump aides were aware of what Russian intelligence agencies were doing, let alone were complicit or more. Could that mean members of the Trump campaign were manipulated by Russia? The options for the Trump campaign’s involvement aren’t as straightforward as innocent versus involved. There are any number of ways people might have been used unwittingly. Consider a New York Times report that erstwhile Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort was in repeated contact with Russian intelligence officers, as allegedly revealed by intercepted communications. Manafort told the Times that he ”never knowingly” spoke to intelligence officers. But as he himself noted, ”It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ’I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’ ” Given the lack of ”badges,” it seems possible that pressure or coercion might have gone undetected not only by authorities, but also by the people involved. At the same time, following decades of work on behalf of Russian and Eastern European oligarchs, the 2016 campaign wasn’t Manafort’s first rodeo or the first time he might have been dealing with people who played roles beyond those listed on their business cards. Did the Trump campaign and Russia have connections that aren’t currently public knowledge? Some of the ties between Trump’s team and Russia are a matter of public record: speeches given, sales made, dinners attended. Others, such as those of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, weren’t open at the time but have since become public. Are there other contacts that are known to investigators but not yet announced? Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly last month that his investigators were looking at individuals, ”many of them public  —   some who are not public yet  —   who have ties to Russia.” What information might the Kremlin have? Hackers accessed emails from within the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and published them online. U. S. intelligence officials have tied those operations to Russia. They also say Russia ”collected on some   targets”  —   but did not release whatever they took. What classified information does the U. S. intelligence community already have on these topics? The FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies have information on Russia’s actions, at least some of which has been shared with certain lawmakers and officials. But we don’t know what was discussed behind those closed doors. It’s kept secret because the information itself is regarded as sensitive or because agencies worry they can’t release the data without compromising ”sources and methods.” Some classified intelligence might eventually be released or, more likely, leaked, such as the news about Flynn’s phone calls. Other information might be used behind the scenes, such as to persuade a suspect to testify against a bigger fish. Or it might result in prosecution  —   for a different crime, while government secrets stay secret. In the meantime, listen for ”no comment.” In public hearings and interviews on issues of national security, what’s not said can be as interesting as what’s said. Who leaked the information that has come to light so far, and why? This is a question that looms large for Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, who have returned repeatedly to the possibility that the Obama administration was abusing classified intelligence for political purposes. Leaders of that committee, however, have also been accused of mishandling classified information. Both Chairman Devin Nunes,  . now recused from the Russia investigation, and ranking member Adam Schiff,  . have made public statements about their conclusions based on classified briefings. NPR national security editor Philip Ewing contributed to this report."
"Updated at 1:30 p. m. ET, A former Obama official confirms that   Barack Obama warned incoming President Donald Trump about Michael Flynn related to his job performance as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Obama and Trump met in the Oval Office shortly after the election in November. Flynn was fired as head of the DIA during Obama’s administration. It has been widely reported that it was over management issues. Trump named Flynn his national security adviser, but Flynn was forced to resign in February after reports that he spoke with a Russian official about U. S. sanctions and then misled Vice   Mike Pence about the conversations. News of Obama’s warning comes ahead of former Obama Justice official Sally Yates’ testimony before a Senate subcommittee at 2:30 p. m. ET on Monday. Yates is a key voice when it comes to questions about what  —   and when  —   the White House knew about Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials. Trump has already been on defense, tweeting Monday morning that Flynn was granted security clearances during the Obama administration, when Flynn headed the DIA. In Monday’s briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, ”It’s true that . .. President Obama made it known that he wasn’t exactly a fan of Gen. Flynn’s.” He said that should not be surprising, ”given that Gen. Flynn had worked for President Obama, was an outspoken critic of President Obama’s shortcomings, specifically as it related to his lack of strategy confronting ISIS and other threats around that were facing America.” Spicer further questioned why, if the Obama administration had concerns about Flynn, it did not revoke Flynn’s security clearance. NPR’s Scott Detrow contributed to this report."
"Networking, connecting, pitching  —   it’s all routine in the business world. But a connection pitched in China over the weekend  —   involving ties between President Trump’s    Jared Kushner and a   project  —   has prompted ethics experts to raise objections, and some lawmakers to call for change. There are concerns about potential conflicts of interests, but also about a visa program for investors. At the White House press briefing on Monday, spokesman Sean Spicer said Kushner has taken necessary steps to prevent conflicts of interest. ”Jared has done everything to comply with the ethics rules to make sure and that had nothing to do with him per se, he wasn’t involved,” Spicer said. But Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, says, ”The strong feeling is that they  —   the Trump family, the Kushner family  —   see the White House and being in the government as a marketing opportunity.” The controversy began when reporters from The Washington Post and The New York Times sat in on a publicly advertised event at the   Hotel in Beijing on Saturday. Before being asked to leave, reporters heard Jared Kushner’s sister Nicole Meyer tell Chinese investors that they could participate in a New Jersey real estate project that ”means a lot to me and my entire family.” Meyer noted that if investors put at least $500, 000 into the   backed project, they could qualify for an   visa. Those are the visas, created in 1990, that provide eligible immigrant investors with a path that can lead to permanent residence. Their investments just have to create at least 10   jobs for U. S. workers. And the pitch came with a sweetener: Meyer talked about the Kushner family, including her brother who holds a powerful position in the White House as senior adviser to President Trump. Noble said the type of pitch offered in China ”is not unheard of in other countries where you get to the leader by . .. financially supporting the family.” Investors are receptive to such pitches because they believe ”you’re getting a chance . .. to basically do business with the government or the family of people high up in the government. And it’s a very valuable thing in a lot of other countries,” he said. Richard Painter, who was the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, tweeted his objections on Monday. ”Abuse of power pure and simple. Congress should cancel   visa program if Kushner properties not disqualified,” he tweeted. Sen. Dianne Feinstein,  . the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, says the Kushner situation shows Congress should change the   rules. The visa program is ”rife with fraud and abuse,” she said in a statement. ”In addition to numerous cases of securities fraud, the program is frequently exploited by real estate developers to finance projects in the wealthiest parts of this country. This is a far cry from the program’s original intent to spur economic development in depressed communities.” Attorney Blake Roberts at WilmerHale, which is Kushner’s personal counsel, says his firm’s client has no involvement in the project being pitched by his sister. And Kushner Companies spokesperson James Yolles said Meyer apologizes if the mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. Kushner had been running the family business until he went to the White House in January as a senior adviser to the president. At that time, he resigned from the daily operations, and sold assets in some projects to family members. Noble says the overlap between the White House and family business  —   whether the Trumps or the Kushners  —   has become a persistent problem. ”We’re seeing this over and over again,” he said. ”If called on it, they may apologize . .. or say that’s not what they did.”"
"Ryan Lennon Fines seems like a typical   . He and his parents, Scott Fines and Brianna Lennon, flip through a picture book of emergency vehicles. Ryan is looking for the motorcycle, but a photo of an airplane catches his dad’s eye. ”That’s an air ambulance,” Fines tells him. ”You’ve been on one of those.” When Ryan was born in 2014, his mouth wasn’t connected to his stomach. It’s a condition known as esophageal atresia. After three months in a hospital in St. Louis, the family flew to Boston, where Ryan had surgery. The surgery worked. Ryan is active and can eat normally  —   he had two big pieces of fruit leather and some crackers in the 45 minutes I was there. But all that time in the hospital was expensive. In the first six months of his life, Ryan’s insurance plan was billed $750, 000. The family had to pay only $5, 000 of that  —   Ryan’s maximum    expenses, under his insurance plan, for 2014 and 2015. ”We were lucky we had a really good,   [health insurance] plan,” Lennon says. Now, the family is worried about Ryan’s future. He’ll still need between $20, 000 and $30, 000 of medical care every year. They have insurance through Fines’ work, but the health care bill that Republicans passed in the House last week could affect Ryan’s care. All six Republicans from Missouri  —   including Rep. Vicky Hartzler, from the district where Scott, Brianna and Ryan live  —   voted for the bill, which unwinds many of the provisions and protections of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. In a video posted to Twitter, Hartzler says passing the bill was an important first step to replacing the ACA. ”It covers   conditions,” she says, ”still retains the ability for young people to stay on their parents’ policies, and makes sure that there are no lifetime caps.” That’s true, but the bill also gives states the authority to allow insurers a number of exemptions from the federal law. For example, while the GOP bill retains the ACA provision that people, like Ryan, who have   conditions cannot be denied coverage, there’s a potential loophole. In a   amendment proposed by Rep. Tom MacArthur,  . J. a state could seek permission to allow insurance companies to charge patients more (based on their health history) if their coverage lapses for more than 63 days. That provision in the GOP bill would tremendously weaken the ACA protections, says Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. ”This would guarantee access to insurance for people with   conditions in theory, but not really in practice  —   because they could be charged astronomically high premiums,” says Levitt. Before the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, he says, it was common for people with   conditions to be charged much higher premiums or to be denied coverage altogether. If a state decides to waive the federal law’s protections, this could happen again. The amendment would require that states seeking a waiver must also help people who have high health care costs.   pools are the most commonly cited type of program to do this, but they were often underfunded and expensive for consumers and states. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, supported the GOP health plan in March. His office didn’t respond to NPR’s questions about whether he supports the current version of this bill or whether he’d want Missouri to seek permission to opt out of some of the provisions. Levitt says it would likely be conservative states, like Missouri and the 18 other states that did not expand Medicaid, that may try to opt out. Those states, Levitt says, ”made a decision to not go along with the Affordable Care Act, and I think that those states are facing a similar kind of decision here.” Fines and Lennon say they face tough decisions if this bill becomes law. ”We would have to either move to a state that didn’t waive community protections or out of the country entirely if we could,” Fines says. ”I’m not going to risk my son’s health on the political whims of Jefferson City.” But before any decisions are made in Missouri’s state capital, the GOP bill is in the hands of the U. S. Senate, where it could change before becoming federal law. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with KBIA, Side Effects Public Media and Kaiser Health News."
"  years ago Tuesday, a   single was born  —   and with it, endless sitcom jokes and rap homages. It was referenced in Sing, the 2016 animated children’s movie, and in Shrek years before that. But when it debuted in 1992, there were those who took it to heart as an anthem of body positivity. ”Baby Got Back” begins kind of a heartbreaking scene: a white woman talking to her friend Becky, straight up mocking a black woman. The man behind the song, Anthony Ray  —   better known as Sir     —   says he didn’t make that up. ”It was like a   glorified version of what was actually being said at that time,” he says. ”Basically, pop culture was   heroin addict, big hair, fake boobs  —   you know, that was what they thought beautiful was. And because of the way it was discussed publicly, it made women who had naturally curvy bodies . .. run around with sweaters wrapped around their waist.” ”When I heard it, I just felt so  —   it was so affirming,” says Erin Aubry Kaplan. In the  ’90s, Kaplan was staff writer at LA Weekly. She and wrote a big feature article about the paradoxical way black women’s butts were seen  —   using ”Baby Got Back” as an epigraph. ”Every day, my butt wears me tolerably well, I’d like to think,” her piece went, ”and has ever since I came full up on puberty about 20 years ago and had to wrestle it back into the Levi’s 501s it had barely put up with anyway.” Kaplan says she admired the way the ”Baby Got Back” cut through the timidity people had talking about that part of the body: ”It was saying to me and other black women, you know what, you have a great shape and white people think that too. ’Even white boys got to shout. ’” The song was pretty clear about who    thought was to blame, calling out magazines like Cosmopolitan and Playboy for pushing a very specific worldview of what women should look like. Have things changed in the past  ? A little, says Ashley Weatherford, a beauty editor at New York magazine’s fashion site, The Cut. ”It’s been a long time coming, but I think there’s certainly an element, especially within the magazine space, of embracing a diversity of body sizes,” Weatherford says, though she thinks sites like hers might be ahead of the curve on that. She adds that black women didn’t really need Sir    to take up this particular fight  —   ”but that doesn’t mean it’s not nice.” As for    himself, he says he hasn’t put the song behind him yet, and still plays it when he gets a chance. ”Do I do bar mitzvahs? No,” he says, laughing. ”You know, you’ve gotta draw a line somewhere. But when you’re in front of a big crowd  —   I know what they’re there to see.”"
"Julia    —   who plays U. S. Vice President Selina Meyer on the HBO comedy Veep  —   says that growing up in Washington, D. C. and later living in Los Angeles helped her prepare for the role: ”I think I understand the insular nature of Washington . .. ” she says. ”There’s an    mentality, not dissimilar from Hollywood  —   it feels like the only thing that matters. I think you’re selling a brand of yourself.”   also did plenty of research for the show, now in its sixth season. She talked with lobbyists, senators and even former vice presidents. ”I really tried to ask questions that would get at: What is the human experience of this position?” she says. ”Nothing about policy or anything like that, but just about: What it’s like day to day? . .. It was also interesting to watch them not answer or read between the lines.” After a couple of seasons as the vice president, Selina Meyer actually does become president briefly, but doesn’t get   in a runoff election. In this new season she and her posse of staffers and former staffers are struggling to figure out what to do next. There have been no shortage of comparisons of the character to Hillary Clinton, but   says the show was written before the 2016 election. ”There is   life, you don’t just fall from the face of the Earth.”   says. ”Selina Mayer is very, very ambitious and she has a huge chip on her shoulder, so there’s a lot of mileage there.” On how people on both sides of the aisle appreciate the show, On the show we have never identified party  —   we have just reaped so much benefit from that. Because everybody is invited . .. both sides of the aisle think we are making fun of the other party. . .. They identify with it which is super fun. I love that. On the way characters on the show sometimes treat each other terribly, We all sort of wince. Very often there are lines that a multitude of characters might say that are so foul and nasty and   that we all sort of die a little bit. . .. But you need to know that the group itself of actors and writers are incredibly kind and nice. They are the absolute opposite of the characters that they play. On the relationship between Selina and her personal aide, Gary, played by Tony Hale, We do have a chemistry, we’re very good friends and we rehearse a lot. . .. It’s all of those things. . .. Tony Hale is notorious for breaking in a scene and so that’s often why we also have to rehearse a lot is for him to sort of get that out of his system. On her character’s vulnerability  I think she’s very vulnerable. She’s incredibly brittle and just covers it up like crazy. . .. It’s like a toothpaste tube and you put holes in it and then you squeeze . .. and toothpaste goes out in lots of different directions and you didn’t expect it. I feel like that’s what she’s like with her emotional life. Radio producer Anjuli Sastry, radio editor Mallory Yu and web producer Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"His death was initially ruled an accident. But a grand jury that looked into the case of Timothy Piazza, a Penn State University student who died after a night of excessive drinking in February, is now calling it ”the direct result of encouraged reckless conduct.” Eight Beta Theta Pi fraternity members face charges of involuntary manslaughter an additional 10 face lesser charges. The charges include multiple counts of hazing, reckless endangerment of another person, and furnishing alcohol to minors. Piazza’s injuries included a fracture at the base of his skull and a ruptured spleen. It wasn’t until 10:48 a. m. the morning after a Feb. 2 party that an ambulance was called. The circumstances around the final hours of Piazza’s life are detailed in a grand jury document that was released Friday. The evidence includes an account of hours of surveillance camera footage from inside the Beta Theta Pi house, where prosecutors say Piazza died after hazing on ”bid acceptance night” for new pledges. As the charges were announced Friday, Timothy Piazza’s father, Jim, told a room of journalists: ”In August, we dropped off our two sons here at Penn State University to further their collegiate experience. Today, we’re only going to be bringing one of them home, due to a senseless and very preventable tragedy that . .. caused us to bury our son three months ago.” Piazza thanked the district attorney ”for swiftly moving to bring those who caused Tim’s death to justice.” In the hours of footage, the grand jury says, Piazza is seen suffering from the severe effects of consuming large amounts of alcohol and from a fall down a flight of stairs around 11 p. m. And around 5 a. m. the court document says, he fell and hit his head on a metal railing. By using a blood sample from Piazza after he was taken to the hospital as a reference, pathologist Dr. Harry Kamerow provided an estimate of the young man’s blood alcohol content at different portions of the surveillance video. The criminal charges were announced Friday, just before the university held spring graduation ceremonies. The charges include 50 counts of hazing and reckless endangerment, stemming from hazing activities that date to spring 2016. Weeks after the hazing incident was reported, Penn State permanently banned Beta Theta Pi fraternity and put new restrictions on fraternities and sororities aimed at reducing hazing and forced drinking. Many of the activities that led up to Piazza’s death are explicitly forbidden in the fraternity’s ”pledge manual,” a guide for new members. Citing the spring 2017 edition of that manual, the grand jury said it bans possessing, consuming and abusing alcohol during a   event and forbids ”drinking games,” providing alcohol to minors and allowing alcohol at initiation ceremonies. The manual also prohibits hazing, stating, ”Permission or approval by a person being hazed is not a defense.” That prohibition is broad, ranging from activities such as paddling and ”morally degrading” activities to scavenger hunts, the grand jury says in its presentation. Many of those bans are included in the fraternity’s ”risk management” policy, but as one of the fraternity chapter’s officers told the grand jury, the risk manager also heads the social committee and ”historically shoulders the responsibility of obtaining alcohol for Beta events,” according to the court document. Months before Piazza’s death, the fraternity had dealt with another head injury sustained by a new recruit. The grand jury says a former pledge, Kordel Davis, told police that after drinking excessively on his bid acceptance night in the fall of 2016, he fell and hit his head, causing profuse bleeding. Davis said fraternity members had picked him up and taken him to an urgent care facility, but no one ever called 911. No one called 911 on the night Piazza was hurt, either. After he was clearly suffering, Davis urged an emergency call but was overruled by his fellow members. Citing the testimony of one of the   pledge class that included Piazza, the grand jury says the activities on the night of Feb. 2 centered on ”the gantlet,” in which pledges formed a line and were told to drink from a bottle of vodka and pass it down until it was empty. They then ran to and from drinking stations where they drank wine from a bag or shotgunned beer. The fraternity then hosted a party, during which pledges were encouraged to drink more. ”The gantlet” was designed to make pledges consume roughly four to five alcoholic drinks in a   span, police say. Police told the grand jury that before the pledge bid acceptance night, one of the fraternity’s members spent $1, 179 over the course of eight days to purchase ”a mass quantity of alcohol” that ranged from cases of vodka and beer to 15 cases of Four Loko. In addition to involuntary manslaughter and other charges, chapter President Brendan Young and Vice President Daniel Casey now face 50 counts of hazing and reckless endangerment, stemming from hazing activities that date to spring 2016. Weeks before the fraternity hosted the fateful bid acceptance ritual, Young and Casey had a text conversation about the risks posed by their plans. Here’s what Young wrote, according to the grand jury’s transcript: ”I know you know this. If anything goes wrong with the pledges this semester then both of us are f*****.” Many of the members are also accused of tampering with evidence, in what was seen as an attempt to sanitize both the scene at the house and their phones’ data to limit the potential fallout from the hazing incident. ”This didn’t have to happen,” Jim Piazza said Friday. ”This is the result of a feeling of entitlement, flagrant disobedience of the law and disregard for moral values, that was then exacerbated by egregious acts of  . Again, this did not have to happen. No parent should have to deal with this.” The grand jury said it had learned many of the members were both aware of the risks of excessive drinking and certain that Piazza’s injuries would be seen as the result of hazing at the fraternity. ”Therefore, over 40 minutes elapsed before they even summoned an ambulance when they discovered Timothy looking deathly ill the following morning,” the grand jury said. ”And a campaign ensued in the following days to destroy any evidence that would reveal exactly what had been happening behind the doors of Beta Theta Pi.” The details in the grand jury documents are ”  and incomprehensible,” Penn State President Eric Barron said Friday, saying Piazza had endured ”inhumane treatment” at the fraternity’s hands. ”It is numbing how an atmosphere that endangers the   and safety of another person could occur within an organization that prided itself on commitment to each other and to its community,” Barron said."
"In a decision that could have global consequences, an Austrian court ruled on Friday that Facebook must delete postings deemed to be hate speech. ”[T]he Viennese appeals court ruled on Friday that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim repostings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient,” Reuters reports, adding that Facebook’s lawyers in Vienna declined to comment on the ruling, but that a court spokesman confirmed it. The case was brought by Austria’s Green party after its leader, Eva Glawischnig, was insulted on Facebook by posts from someone who didn’t use their real name. According to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, the posts called Glawischnig ”miese Volksverräterin” and ”korrupten Trampel,” which translate roughly as ”lousy traitor” and ”corrupt bumpkin.” Facebook has argued that it is governed by the laws of California (site of its headquarters) or Ireland, the base of its European operations, Die Presse reported. But the court ruled that simply blocking the hate posts in Austria was not enough  —   they must be deleted across the platform. The court said it was easy for Facebook to automate the process of deleting verbatim repetitions of the hate posts, according to Reuters. ”It said, however, that Facebook could not be expected to trawl through content to find posts that are similar, rather than identical, to ones already identified as hate speech.” ”Facebook must put up with the accusation that it is the world’s biggest platform for hate and that it is doing nothing against this,” said Green spokesman Dieter Brosz, Reuters reports.  The Washington Post reported in December: ”The insults directed at Glawischnig appeared to have been spread via the same fake profile that was used to circulate false rumors during the   to Austria’s presidential vote this month, including that Alexander van der Bellen  —   who eventually won the election  —   was suffering from cancer and dementia. In what seemed like an echo of the U. S. presidential race, Van der Bellen, who is close to the Green Party, was forced to publish his health records to dispel the rumors.” Facebook is facing increased pressure in Europe to respond more quickly to fake news. Last month, Germany moved forward with legislation that would fine social networks as much as $53 million ”if they fail to give users the option to complain about hate speech and fake news or refuse to remove illegal content,” Bloomberg reported. ”Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet on Wednesday backed a bill that would also force the companies to purge content flagged as child pornography or inciting terrorism  —   two categories added to the original draft. Corporate officials responsible would risk separate fines of as much as 5 million euros. If passed by parliament, the measures would be the toughest regulation Facebook faces in any country where it operates. . .. ”Facebook . .. expressed concern that the measure ’would force private companies instead of courts to decide which content is illegal in Germany.’ ” Last week, after a number of violent incidents appeared in videos on its network, Facebook announced that it would hire 3, 000 employees worldwide to review violent or hateful content. Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams that run on the site."
"There’s more grim news about inequality in America. New research documents significant disparities in the life spans of Americans depending on where they live. And those gaps appear to be widening, according to the research. Data is by county, includes both sexes, and is by birth. ”It’s dramatic,” says Christopher Murray, who heads the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. He helped conduct the analysis, published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Health experts have long known that Americans living in different parts of the country tend to have different life spans. But Murray’s team decided to take a closer look, analyzing records from every U. S. county between 1980 and 2014.  ”What we found is that the gap is enormous,” Murray says. In 2014, there was a spread of 20. 1 years between the counties with the longest and shortest typical life spans based on life expectancy at birth. In counties with the longest life spans, people tended to live about 87 years, while people in places with the shortest life spans typically made it to only about 67, the researchers found.  The discrepancy is equivalent to the difference between the   parts of the developing world and countries with high incomes, Murray notes. For example, it’s about the same gap as the difference between people living in Japan, which is among countries with the longest life spans, and India, which has one of the shortest, Murray says.  The U. S. counties with the longest life expectancy are places like Marin County, Calif. and Summit County, Colo.  —   communities that are   and more highly educated. Counties with the shortest life expectancy tend to have communities that are poorer and less educated. The lowest is in Oglala Lakota County, S. D. which includes the Pine Ridge Native American reservation. Many of the other counties with the lowest life expectancy are clustered along the lower Mississippi River Valley as well as in parts of West Virginia and Kentucky, according to the analysis. There’s no sign of the gap closing. In fact, it appears to be widening. Between 1980 and 2014, the gap between the highest and lowest life spans increased by about two years. ”With every passing year, inequality  —   however you measure it  —   has been widening over the last 34 years,” Murray says. ”And so next year, we can reliably expect it’ll be even more than 20.” ”That is probably the most alarming part of the analysis,” he adds. The reasons for the gap are complicated. But it looks as if the counties with the lowest life spans haven’t made much progress fighting significant health problems such as smoking and obesity. ”It’s this steady process where many parts of the country have been steadily getting better, and then there’s a segment of America where things have not progressed in a generation and a half,” Murray says. Counties in central Colorado, Alaska and along both coasts experienced much larger increases in life expectancy, according to the researchers, while some southern counties in states stretching from Oklahoma to West Virginia saw little, if any, improvement between 1980 and 2014. Researcher Ellen Meara, who studies health policy at the Dartmouth Institute, speculates that the findings could be another manifestation of the economic inequality plaguing areas of the country. She was not involved with the study. ”One of the things we’ve seen in this country is that for some groups, their possibilities look worse than those of their parents, and that’s after generations of always doing better than the previous generation,” Meara says. ”And in a situation like that, smoking  —   relative to not smoking  —   looks more appealing [and] having a diet and a lifestyle that leads you to be obese looks more appealing than giving up things,” she says. The study comes on the heels of other research that found death rates rising dramatically among   white Americans, a trend researchers Anne Case and Angus Deaton call ”deaths of despair.”"
", A man named Eddie threads through the   crowd in Cambridge, Mass. He’s headed for a sandwich shop, the first stop on a tour of public bathrooms. ”I know all the bathrooms that I can and can’t get high in,” says Eddie, 39, pausing in front of the shop’s plate glass windows, through which we can see a bathroom door. Eddie, whose last name we’re not including because he uses illegal drugs, knows which restrooms along busy Massachusetts Avenue he can enter, at what hours and for how long. Several restaurants, offices and a social service agency in this neighborhood have closed their restrooms in recent months, but not this sandwich shop. ”With these bathrooms here, you don’t need a key. If it’s vacant you go in. And then the staff just leaves you alone,” Eddie says. ”I know so many people who get high here.” At the fast food place right across the street, it’s much harder to get in and out. ”You don’t need a key, but they have a security guard that sits at the little table by the door, directly in front of the bathroom,” Eddie says. Some guards require a receipt for admission to the bathroom, he says, but you can always grab one from the trash. A chain restaurant a few stores down has installed bathroom door locks opened by a code that you get at the counter. But Eddie and his friends just wait by the door until a customer enters the restroom, then grab the door and enter as the customer leaves. ”For every 10 steps they use to safeguard against us doing something, we’re going to find 15 more to get over on their 10. That’s just how it is. I’m not saying that’s right, that’s just how it is,” Eddie says. Eddie is homeless and works at a restaurant. Public bathrooms are one of the few places where he can find privacy to inject heroin. He says he doesn’t use the drug often these days. Eddie is on methadone, which curbs his craving for heroin, so he only uses the drug occasionally to be social with friends. He understands why restaurant owners are unnerved. ”These businesses, primarily, are like family businesses middle class people coming in to grab a burger or a cup of coffee. They don’t expect to find somebody dead,” Eddie says. ”I get it.” Managing public bathrooms is ”a tricky thing” Many businesses don’t know what to do. Some have installed low lighting  —   blue light, in particular  —   to make it difficult for people who use injected drugs to find a vein. The bathrooms at 1369 Coffee House in the Central Square neighborhood of Cambridge, Mass. are open for customers who request the key code from staff at the counter. The owner, Joshua Gerber, has done some remodeling to make the bathrooms safer. There’s a metal box in the wall next to his toilet for needles and other things that clog pipes. And Gerber removed the dropped ceilings in his bathrooms after noticing things tucked above the tiles. ”We’d find needles or people’s drugs,” Gerber says. ”It’s a tricky thing, managing a public restroom in a big, busy square like Central Square where there’s a lot of drug use.” Gerber and his staff have found several people on the bathroom floor in recent years, not breathing. ”It’s very scary,” Gerber says. His eyes drop briefly. ”In an ideal world, users would have safe places to go [where] it didn’t become the job of a business to manage that and to look after them and make sure that they were OK.” There are such public   places in Canada and some European countries, but not in the U. S. at least not yet. So Gerber is taking the unusual step of training his baristas to use naloxone, the drug that reverses most opioid overdoses. He sent a training invitation email to all employees last week. Within 10 minutes he had about 25 replies. ”Mostly capital ’Yes’ exclamation point, exclamation point, ’I’ll be there for sure!’ ’Count me in!’ ” Gerber recalls with a grin. ”You know, [they were] just thrilled to figure out how they might be able to save a life.” Safe spaces and hospital bathrooms,  Last fall, a woman overdosed in a bathroom in the main lobby of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Luckily, naloxone has become standard equipment for security guards at many hospitals in the Boston area, including that one. ”I carry it on me every day, it’s right here in a little pouch,” says Ryan Curran, a police and security operations manager at Massachusetts General Hospital, pulling a small black bag out of his suit jacket pocket. The woman who overdosed survived, as have seven or eight people who overdosed in the bathrooms since Curran’s team started carrying naloxone in the last 12 to 18 months. ”It’s definitely relieving when you see someone breathing again when two, three minutes beforehand they looked lifeless,” Curran says. ”A couple of pumps of the nasal spray and they’re doing better. It’s pretty incredible.” Massachusetts General Hospital began training security guards after emergency room physician Dr. Ali Raja realized that the hospital’s bathrooms had become a safe haven for some of his overdose patients. ”There’s an understanding that if you overdose in and around a hospital that you’re much more likely to be able to be treated,” Raja says, ”and so we’re finding patients in our restrooms, we’re finding patients in our lobbies who are shooting up or taking their prescription pain medications.” Many businesses, including hospitals and clinics, don’t want to talk about overdoses within their buildings. Curran wants to be sure the hospital’s message about drug use is clear. ”We don’t want to promote, obviously, people coming here and using it, but if it’s going to happen, then we’d like to be prepared to help them and save them and get them to the [Emergency Department] as fast as possible,” Curran says. Speed is critical, especially now, when heroin is routinely mixed with fentanyl. Some clinics and restaurants check on bathroom users by having staff knock on the door after 10 or 15 minutes, but fentanyl can deprive the brain of oxygen and cause death within that window. One clinic has installed an intercom and requires people to respond. Another has designed a reverse motion detector that sets off an alarm if there’s no movement in the bathroom. Limited public discussion,  There’s very little discussion of the problem in public, says Dr. Alex Walley, director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program at Boston Medical Center. ”It’s against federal and state law to provide a space where people can use [illegal drugs] knowingly, so that is a big deterrent from people talking about this problem,” he says. Without some guidance, more libraries, town halls and businesses are closing their bathrooms to the public. That means more drug use, injuries and discarded needles in parks and on city streets. In the area around Boston Medical Center, wholesalers, gas station owners and industrial facilities are looking into renting portable bathrooms. ”They’re very concerned for their businesses,” says Sue Sullivan, director of the Newmarket Business Association, which represents 235 companies and 28, 000 employees in Boston. ”But they don’t want to just move the problem. They want to solve the problem.” Walley and other physicians who work with addiction patients say there are lots of ways to make bathrooms safer for the public and for drug users. A model restroom would be clean and   with stainless steel surfaces, and few cracks and crevices for hiding drug paraphernalia. It would have a biohazard box for needles and bloodied swabs. It would be stocked with naloxone and perhaps sterile water. The door would open out so that a collapsed body would not block entry. It would be easy to unlock from the outside. And it would be monitored, preferably by a nurse or EMT. There are very few bathrooms that fit this model in the U. S. Some doctors, nurses and public health workers who help addiction patients argue any solution to the opioid crisis will need to include safe injection sites, where drug users can get high with medical supervision. ”There are limits to better bathroom management,” says Daniel Raymond, deputy director for policy and planning at the New   Harm Reduction Coalition. If communities like Boston start to reach a breaking point with bathrooms, ”having dedicated facilities like safer drug consumption spaces is the best bet for a   structural solution that I think a lot of business owners could buy into.” Maybe. No business groups in Massachusetts have come out in support of such spaces yet. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WBUR and Kaiser Health News."
"Updated at 7 p. m. ET, A   panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit heard arguments on Monday over President Trump’s revised travel ban, with judges repeatedly questioning the government’s lawyer in the case about Trump’s campaign call ”for a complete and total shutdown” of Muslims entering the country. The president’s first executive order restricting visitors from a handful of   countries provoked chaos at airports across the country in January. Federal judges stepped in to block the order, partly because it included legal permanent residents, who have rights under the U. S. Constitution. Weeks later, the White House issued a new order, dropping Iraq from the list of countries whose travelers faced restrictions and making clear   holders would not be covered. Judges on the court based in Richmond, Va. on Monday returned over and over to remarks made by Trump during the campaign. Judge Henry Floyd questioned Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall about whether the court shouldn’t take those remarks into account when considering the constitutionality of the President’s executive order. He asked, ”Is there anything other than willful blindness that would prevent us” from considering those statements? Wall responded that the judges should consider only the text of the order itself, and not other statements by Trump. ”This is not a Muslim ban,” Wall asserted. ”Its text doesn’t have anything to do with religion. Its operation doesn’t have anything to do with religion.” But refugee groups and individuals separated from family members overseas said they are taking the president at his own word: trying to use public statements by Trump and his aides during the campaign and after to prove the order is motivated by religious animus. Judges also noted the presence on the Trump campaign website of the ”Muslim ban” promise, which was only taken down Monday afternoon after it was brought up in the daily White House briefing. Omar C. Jadwat, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the plantiff’s case. He said the new executive order violates the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which requires the government to adopt a neutral approach to religion, and a 1965 federal immigration law that bars discrimination on the basis of national origin. The Justice Department countered that the president enjoys sweeping authority at the border  —   an outgrowth of his responsibility to protect and defend national security. A court filing by the Trump administration described the revised order as a ”temporary suspension of entry,” or a chance to pause and come up with better vetting procedures. But 42 former national security officials filed their own court brief to disagree. They said there’s no legitimate basis for restricting visitors from the six countries: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Actually, their filing said, not a single American has died in a terrorist attack on U. S. soil at the hands of someone from those six nations in the past 40 years. On the other hand, several states including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Texas have weighed in on behalf of the Trump administration. No court ruling was expected Monday from the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. But that case does not signal the end of the road. In fact, in one week, on May 15, a different federal appeals court, the 9th Circuit, will hear arguments in a similar case brought by the state of Hawaii. The U. S. Supreme Court could be the ultimate decider. NPR’s Brian Naylor contributed to this report."
"South Africa was filled with drama in 1993. Violence raged as the white president, F. W. de Klerk, negotiated with black leader Nelson Mandela to end apartheid. Amid this uncertainty, de Klerk appeared on TV one night and made a startling announcement: South Africa secretly built six nuclear weapons, but had dismantled them and shut down the program, he said. ”Let us convince the world we are not playing games, that we have broken those bombs down, that we can account for every    of material in it  —   and that is exactly what we did,” de Klerk said at a 2012 event in Washington, recalling his decision two decades earlier. To this day, South Africa is the only country that’s built its own nuclear weapons and then relinquished them. Three former Soviet republics  —   Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan  —   inherited nukes when the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, and then gave them up. President Trump is now calling for North Korea to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, a step it says it will never take. History shows that countries are unlikely to give up their weapons unless there’s a dramatic change in circumstances, as was the case in South Africa. Visiting a nuclear plant A week after de Klerk’s 1993 announcement, his government invited a few reporters, including me, to a nuclear research center where the bombs were built in Pelindaba, outside the capital, Pretoria. We put on protective clothing from head to toe and received a guided tour of the mostly deserted plant, though it still had sealed drums of waste along the walls. One worker said he and his colleagues constantly speculated on the nature of their work, but were never told the details. De Klerk said the weapons were a deterrent never intended for actual use. The white rulers feared the Soviet Union was plotting with local black and communist groups to gain control of South Africa, with an eye on the country’s vast gold and mineral wealth. But when the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, the Cold War was over and the Soviet threat was gone. The following year, de Klerk released Mandela from prison and opened negotiations with his African National Congress. At around the same time, de Klerk decided to scrap the nuclear weapons program. South Africa signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1991, but did not announce the dismantling of its weapons until two years later. The nuclear weapons became ”a millstone around the neck,” he said. South Africa’s case was unique. With North Korea, neither threats nor diplomacy has worked. But does the South African example hold any lessons? ”Absolutely. No country has been compelled to give up its nuclear weapons. But countries have been convinced to do so. South Africa is the classic example,” said Joe Cirincione, the head of the Ploughshares Fund, which works to eliminate nuclear weapons. The group has provided financial support to NPR in the past. Few choices, There are no great options when it comes to North Korea, but Cirincione says the U. S. should push for negotiations.  ”Coercion has failed. Everything we’ve tried, sanctions, military threats, etc. has only increased North Korea’s desire to get the bomb,” said Cirincione. South Africa gave up its weapons when the threat went away. Dealing with such fears is sure to be part of the equation no matter how the U. S. addresses North Korea. Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association, said North Korea fears a U. S. attack that would topple its ruler, Kim Jong Un, and that’s what’s driving its push for a   missile that could threaten the United States. ”I think the first order of business for the Trump administration is to find a way to halt further   ballistic missile testing and nuclear testing,” Kimball said. Many demands, In any talks, the North would make many demands that could include an end to U. S.  Korean military exercises, the withdrawal of nearly 30, 000 U. S. troops in the South and a formal peace treaty between the two Koreas. (The   Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, so the two sides have technically remained at war all this time.) But even those deals might not be enough for North Korea to give up its nukes, which it sees as an invaluable deterrent in the face of its larger and more powerful rivals. And South Africa may never be the nuclear example that resonates with North Korea, Kimball said. Ukraine relinquished its arsenal for a promise of security that didn’t hold up. Russia seized and annexed Crimea in 2014 and has supported Ukrainian separatists in the eastern part of the country, near the border with Russia.  ”Ukraine has not felt as though that bargain has been respected by Russia,” Kimball said.  There’s also the cautionary tale of a pair of dictators  —   Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi  —   who gave up their nuclear programs before acquiring a bomb. As Cirincione notes, that didn’t save them. ”This is exactly, unfortunately, the lesson that Kim Jong Un has learned  —   that if you give up your weapons, America will kill you,” Cirincione said. Saddam was executed by Iraq after the U. S. invaded in 2003, toppling his regime and seizing him. Gadhafi was killed by rebels in 2011, after U. S. air strikes helped the opposition forces oust him. Observers say North Korea’s Kim wants a nuclear arsenal so badly because he believes it’ll protect him from suffering the same fate. Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Sinclair Broadcast Group, based outside Baltimore, announced Monday it had struck a $3. 9 billion deal to obtain dozens of local television stations by acquiring Tribune Media. The move, seen as likely to win approval of federal regulators with only modest concessions, would further propel consolidation in the industry. It would also offer a greater reach for one of the nation’s most conservative media companies. Though little known in major media centers, Sinclair’s holdings are vast. It owns or operates more than 170 local television stations Tribune Media owns 42 television stations in 33 markets, including the nation’s top three: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. With its new holdings, Sinclair would hold stations in seven of the biggest 10 markets. The acquisition, which also requires Sinclair to assume $2. 7 billion in debt, would give the company even greater leverage in negotiating deals with the major TV networks whose programming it carries. 21st Century Fox, Rupert Murdoch’s television and entertainment company, explored making a run at Tribune Media with the Blackstone investment group, but ultimately decided against making a bid, according to an executive there. (Tribune’s newspaper holdings were spun off in 2014 into a company ultimately renamed tronc.) If history is any guide, the Smith brothers who together control Sinclair Broadcast will also pull news coverage on those stations in a more conservative direction and explore giving full rein to those beliefs on a national platform. In the days after the September 2001 terror attacks, Sinclair required the news and sports anchors and even weather forecasters to read editorial messages explicitly conveying full support for the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism. After some staffers raised objections at its flagship station in Baltimore, Sinclair officials allowed anchors there to say the message was from ”station management.” In early 2004, Sinclair sent a reporting crew to Iraq, including its chief editorialist whose conservative commentaries are carried on dozens of Sinclair stations, in search of ”overlooked” stories with a more positive bent. That summer, Sinclair declined to broadcast a special from Nightline on its seven ABC stations, because it ascribed   motivations to anchor Ted Koppel’s plan to read the names of all U. S. service members who had been killed in Iraq. Former Sinclair Washington producer Lisa Modarelli later told me that decision hurt her ability to report on politics in the nation’s capital. ”Our sources didn’t trust us anymore, even though we didn’t make that decision,” Modarelli said after she left the company. ”They didn’t want to work with us anymore because whatever we did, the story would turn out biased.” Later that year, then Sinclair Washington bureau chief Jon Leiberman openly opposed plans to air an   program in the height of election season attacking Democratic nominee John Kerry for his service record in Vietnam and his   stances afterward. Leiberman, who said in an interview that he had voted for George W. Bush in 2000, told me the show was ”biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election.” The company fired Leiberman the day after his interview, saying he was a disgruntled employee. Similar patterns emerged in more recent years. In 2012, the company paid for robocalls taped by one of Sinclair’s Baltimore anchors to be placed to households around Maryland  —   with questions loaded against the positions of then Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley. Last fall, according to the Washington Post, Sinclair directed stations to carry certain ” ” stories that reflected poorly on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Stories on Republican nominee Donald Trump were largely sympathetic or neutral, according to the newspaper. In December, Politico reported that Jared Kushner had boasted to business executives that the Trump campaign had struck a deal giving access to Sinclair in exchange for more favorable coverage, a claim the chain denied. There are what could be the stirrings of plans for a national platform  —   such as a cable television station. Sinclair President and CEO Chris Ripley called the planned acquisition ”transformational,” in a statement, adding: ”The Tribune stations are highly complementary to Sinclair’s existing footprint and will create a leading nationwide media platform that includes our country’s largest markets.” Sinclair recently signed former Trump campaign aide Boris Epshteyn as its chief political analyst. To lead its Sunday public affairs show, Sinclair hired former CBS correspondent Sharyl Atkisson, an investigative reporter whose scrutiny of the Obama administration won her the admiration of many conservatives. Speculation has centered on possible conversion of Tribune’s WGN America as a possible conservative news and opinion channel, or one of Sinclair’s existing properties, though that could prove costly. Sinclair’s plans for acquisition, however, appear likely to sail through. Under its new chairman, Ajit Pai, the Federal Communications Commission has approved new rules relaxing restrictions on how many stations a single company can own."
"In 1995, NPR’s All Things Considered invited tech writer Walt Mossberg on to the show to report on an increasingly popular phenomenon: the World Wide Web. Mossberg shared a tool that helped to make sense of a disorganized and chaotic Internet, a website called Yahoo. At the time, Yahoo was a directory service for searching online, he explained. In the early 1990s, he covered the Pentagon for The Wall Street Journal. After taking an interest in the complicated computers of the time, Mossberg realized that soon these devices would become commonplace, and that many people had no idea what this new technology might bring. ”I thought, well there’s a journalistic opportunity here,” Mossberg says, ”for somebody to do two things: to represent the voice of the average person who wasn’t interested in the inside of the computer but was smart and shouldn’t be talked down to, and to criticize the computer industry for ignoring that person.” Now, Mossberg plans to retire in June and he spoke with NPR’s Robert Siegel about his career in tech and how things have changed since he first logged online. On getting his start in tech writing, before computers were popularized in personal use, What I did was, I took what had been my passion and my hobby privately, which was early computers and . .. two things occurred to me: one was it was very hard to learn how to get the most out of these early computers, and secondly, it was about to explode. . .. There were a lot of computer columns. They were almost all written by geeks for geeks. I went to the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal . .. and I said I had this idea of a column, but I want to turn the formula on its head, I want to champion the nontechies. On the complicated first models of personal computers, The first line of my first column was ”personal computers are too hard to use and it’s not your fault.” And that was primarily Microsoft. I generally favored the Mac because Steve Jobs had the same idea that I did, not to compare myself to him, but I mean the idea was let’s make this accessible and easy for the average person. But, of course, he also was the BMW guy of the industry who was charging a fortune for these computers so he had a very tiny market share, and it was Bill Gates and Microsoft that did the actually awesome thing of getting it out there to a broad number of people. The problem was . .. it was like a kit. Things went wrong with it all the time. There were a lot of viruses and all kind of stuff. I had a lot of healthy arguing with Bill Gates over the years. On how computers and technology has evolved since he began writing, Everyone in tech was always constantly being surprised and still is today. Things that were developed and invented for one purpose often had many other purposes. . .. The idea that the big bulky PCs that we had would be really thin little laptops would be . .. I mean, what is the personal computer today? It’s your phone and nobody had that notion in the late ’70s, early ’80s when this started."
"Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has headed to London for ”  medical consultation with his doctors”  —   though his administration has not elaborated on what, precisely, his doctors will be addressing. The visit comes as concerns simmer over the president’s health, which has attracted speculation as he misses cabinet meetings and makes infrequent public appearances. ”The length of the President’s stay in London will be determined by the doctors,” Femi Adesina, the president’s special adviser on media and publicity, announced on Facebook on Sunday. ”Government will continue to function normally under the able leadership of the Vice President.” Adesina noted that Buhari had delayed a trip originally scheduled for earlier in the day, in order to welcome the 82 Chibok schoolgirls released by Boko Haram militants after years of captivity. Adesina also pointedly told the Nigerian people ”that there is no cause for worry,” yet he left unmentioned the nature of the illness Buhari’s doctors are examining. As NPR’s Merrit Kennedy reported last week, he has missed several recent cabinet meetings, ceding a leadership role in many    matters to his vice president. Earlier in the year, Buhari spent seven weeks of medical leave in the U. K.  —   again, for undisclosed reasons. The absences have stirred enough worry among onlookers that Adesina felt compelled to post a  . Just hours after announcing Buari’s trip, he took to Facebook again with a statement by the National League of Veteran Journalists, which denounced ”SCARE MONGERING” by ”agents of destabilization using the   ill health of President Muhammadu Buhari as their ploy.” ”This scare mongering is being fanned by those who want the old order to subsist so that they could feast on the national till unchallenged. The President did not hide his case when he took ill and sought medical assistance in Britain,” read the statement, signed   Ben Lawrence and past President Ajibade  . ”There is no medical evidence that Buhari has lost his faculties and as such is unable to discharge the oath he swore to uphold,” the statement added. ”There is no provision in our constitution for the President to obtain sick leave. Why then the present hu ha?”"
"For 51 years, a small federal program has been paying scientists to keep American waterways healthy. It’s called Sea Grant  —   part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  —   and President Donald Trump”s proposed budget for next year would eliminate it.   Sea Grant funds support more than 800 projects around the country. To find out what would be lost if it’s defunded, let’s start in a yard next to the Severn River in Maryland. It’s my yard. There’s a white tube sticking up from the ground. The ubiquitous icon of suburbia  —   the septic tank  —   lies underneath.   A lot of septic tanks break down, often invisibly, and what’s inside pollutes waterways. Even properly functioning tanks leak a little. When they do, some of the sewage inside seeps invisibly downhill to, in my case, the Severn River. Once pollutants are in the river, it’s really hard to tell where they came from. Is it from fertilizer? Livestock waste? From burning coal or gasoline? Sewage treatment plants? Or from the ubiquitous septic fields in suburban America?   There are some people who think they can track down the   portion of what are referred to as nonpoint sources of pollution  —   the pollution that comes from diffuse sources via snowmelt or rain runoff, say, rather than from, factories or sewage treatment plants. You might think of these trackers as ”septic detectives.”   ”Septic detectives?” asks Lora Harris. ”I haven’t heard that one.” She prefers to call herself a coastal ecologist she’s an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science. But the day I meet her in southern Maryland, she is, in fact, chasing septic waste along a wooded gully behind a housing development. She’s looking for a particular kind of pollution  —   nitrogen.   ”A lot of it comes out of toilets,” she says, ”a lot of it comes out of farms, and a lot of it comes falling out of the sky from the U. S. combustion of fossil fuels. This particular project is focused on what’s coming out of the toilets.”   We bushwhack through underbrush to find a small stream, just a few inches deep, trickling through the gully. Empty beer cans and candy wrappers suggest it might be a neighborhood hangout. Harris and colleague Andrew Heyes start filling bottles with stream water, being careful not to stir up the muck at the bottom.   Harris explains that nitrogen in a river or bay is fine in the right amount. But it’s a nutrient for algae, and too much nitrogen leads to algal blooms. When these big blooms of algae die, their decomposition sucks oxygen out of the water in a chemical reaction, creating   conditions that harm or kill marine life  —   a dead zone. In fact, excess nitrogen is the single largest pollution problem in coastal waters, from the Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. And everyone blames someone else for it. ”[Officials] are keenly interested to know if the water quality problems are because of the septic systems, the farms, or if they’re because of problems happening all the way up in Pennsylvania,” Harris says.  So her team is developing a chemical fingerprint that could pinpoint nitrogen pollution from septic tanks. That would help local officials determine at least one of the sources, and work with communities to stop it. Harris spends a lot of time in waders, hopscotching all over the Chesapeake Bay area to sample water, mostly near housing developments. Her research colleague Andrew Heyes explains that the septic fingerprint they’re working on targets more than just nitrogen compounds. It’s a cocktail of chemicals from homes  —   and the human body. ”Things like caffeine,” Heyes says. ”Some of the compounds you use in your soap, pharmaceuticals  —   all the things that you flush down the toilet or pass through your body end up going through the septic system.”   With a boxful of water samples in the back of a jeep, Harris and Heyes head back to the UMCES lab, which sits on a peninsula overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. Chemist Michael Gonsior oversees this part of the work. Gonsior studies what’s in water, right down to the molecular level. ”The complexity in the water, even in natural systems, is absolutely   extremely diverse,” Gonsior says. ”And I love complex mixtures  —   it’s my thing.” Not surprising, then, that he spends his spare time brewing beer.   Gonsior has identified some 15, 000 compounds in septic water. He shows me a paper plot generated by a mass spectrometer. It displays different concentrations of compounds as peaks and valleys. The plot looks completely different from a plot of bay water or of treated sewage. That’s the fingerprint, and Gonsior says it’s good enough to pick septic waste out of the lineup. ”Because you really want to say, ’OK, this stream here is surely impacted by septics.”   The team still has to prove their technique is  . Whether they’ll get a chance to do that depends on continued funding through Sea Grant. The Trump administration plans to   funding by the start of 2018. So far, Congress is keeping Sea Grant running for at least the rest of this fiscal year."
"Another day, another study undercutting the myth surrounding the   Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari. Since the early 20th century, musicians and instrument experts have been trying to figure out what, if anything, makes the violins he made sound better. Dedicated NPR listeners and violin enthusiasts may remember a few years ago when a team led by the French acoustics researcher Claudia Fritz published a study showing that blindfolded professional violinists could not tell the difference between a   Old Italian violin (they tested instruments made by both Stradivari and Guarneri) and a new violin. At the time, it was a bombshell. Of the 17 players, seven said they couldn’t tell which were which and seven got it wrong. Only three got it right. ”In terms of physics, we haven’t found any differences, basically, between new and old Italian violins,” she explains. On Monday, Fritz and a team published a   study. This time, they focused on how audience members experience the differences between old and new instruments. In particular, they were looking into the widely held belief that violins made by Stradivari have a paradoxical ability to project their sound while still seeming relatively quiet to the ear of the person playing them. In one experiment, they had 55 people listen to six violins  —   three by Stradivari and three by new makers  —   in a small concert hall outside Paris and fill out a questionnaire about which they felt projected better. Fritz, an associate professor at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, described the Paris audience as ”people with an expert ear,” including professional musicians, instrument makers and others. They listened to the violins with and without an orchestra accompanying. ”Everybody knows about this claimed superiority, so everybody was quite enthusiastic about taking part,” she says. In a second experiment in New York City, 82 people listened to the same six violins playing unaccompanied. That audience was made up of a mix of experts and  . Fritz and her team made recordings of the experiments. Here are four clips: two each on a Stradivarius violin and a new violin. In both the Paris and the New York experiments, the study found that people thought the new violins projected their sound better. That was true when the violin was played alone or when it was accompanied by an orchestra. They also found that the sounds of the new violins were generally preferred overall. What’s more, when they asked the musicians playing the instruments how loud they sounded, the musicians reported that the instruments that projected best also sounded the loudest to the performer. ”We haven’t found any evidence that a quiet violin can be projecting in the hall,” says Fritz, although she cautions that the study only included six instruments, and can’t necessarily be extrapolated to all violins. She also says that how an instrument projects may have something to do with the person playing it, but this study doesn’t fully test that possibility (the effect of the player is entangled with the choice of which music excerpts are being played). Plus, such an experiment would have required each listener to listen to nine pairs of violins twice, explains Fritz. Comparing 36 repetitions of the same piece, they decided, would be too difficult. Here are two violins playing the same excerpt with an orchestra. Can you tell which is the new violin? The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Full disclosure, one of Fritz’s   Joseph Curtin, owns a company that builds violins and violas. Fritz says she doubts her work will depress the market value of violins built by Stradivari, which can sell at auction for millions of dollars. In 2006, an instrument nicknamed ”The Hammer” sold for $3. 54 million. But Fritz thinks there’s more to their value than their sound. ”It’s a piece of art. I mean, they are beautiful. We can’t deny that,” she says. For example, she says, ”famous people want to pay full price for a Picasso rather than the copy, even if nobody will make the difference by eye. [It’s] the same for instruments.” Fritz says the modern violin makers she has spoken to about her past work have told her they find it liberating to learn that Stradivari’s instruments are not objectively better by every measure. ”In general, [violin] makers  —   especially young makers  —   are delighted,” says Fritz. ”And old makers as well, because old [violin] makers, they feel like they are liberated, that’s what they told me . .. because they feel less pressure to copy Strad.” She hopes her work will help young musicians decide how to choose what instrument to seek out for performances and competitions. ”As long as people are aware that they don’t need to pay that amount to have something that works well, then it’s fine.” And, finally, the identities of the mystery violins in the clips above. Violin 1 is the Stradivarius. Editor’s Note: This story was updated on May 10 to include additional information provided by Dr. Claudia Fritz about the experimental setup."
"Updated at 5:10 p. m. ET, Syria’s foreign minister said Monday that the government supports a new   deal to create ”  zones,” though it does not support the presence of international forces to enforce them. But it remains to be seen whether this latest international effort will be any different than numerous other attempts that have thus far failed to end the   conflict. Later Monday, U. N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said he is convening a new round of talks in Geneva between the Syrian government and opposition on May 16. This track is separate from the   deal signed last week in Astana, Kazakhstan, though de Mistura said in a statement that he hopes the Astana agreement ”will be implemented in full  —   thus bringing about a significant   in violence, and helping shape an environment conducive to the political   talks in Geneva.” The Astana agreement ”foresees four   zones between rebels and   forces,” NPR’s Alison Meuse reports from Beirut. ”Regional heavyweights Iran and Turkey, which back rival sides, have also backed the deal.” It gives Russia, Iran and Turkey until June 4 to map out the boundaries of the   zones. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid   ”asserted that there will not be international forces under the supervision of the UN, and the Russian guarantor clarified that military police forces will be deployed, according to Syrian state media. While his comments were not explicit, they seemed to suggest that the Syria government expects its allied Russian forces to enforce the   zones, which would initially be set up for six months. The agreement also calls on the parties to continue fighting ISIS and groups linked to  . ”The   zones are intended to shore up a partial cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and Turkey at the end of last year, which both sides have accused each other of violating repeatedly,” the BBC reports. ”The agreement to halt air strikes on the designated rebel areas is already in forces and strikes have dropped off, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,” Alison reports. But she adds that government forces continue to consolidate their gains near the capital. The current deal has some similarities with previous attempts that fell apart, as Alison explains: ”More than a year ago, Russia partnered with the U. S. to broker a similar truce. Dubbed a ’cessation of hostilities,’ the deal was meant to end clashes between government troops and opposition factions and focus the fight on extremist groups like Islamic State and  . It also set out to allow greater humanitarian access. ”Like the current truce attempt, that deal initially saw a   in airstrikes. But with   present throughout many   areas, the airstrikes slowly ramped up again. Ground offensives persisted. And aid access remained subject to Syrian government permissions. She adds that there are many unanswered questions about how the deal would work in practice: ”The current deal aims to create buffer zones between government and opposition forces, but there is little detail on who would man the checkpoints or approve who comes and goes. Damascus has vowed to continue its fight against   so   areas will remain vulnerable to bombing. On the other hand, localized factions could still play spoiler. It is unclear how humanitarians will find it any easier to navigate   territory, namely large lawless areas in the north.” Compared with U. N.  efforts in Geneva, Alison says this is a ”depoliticized truce attempt”: ”Perhaps the most notable part of the deal is its bare bones focus on dampening hostilities. This is a far cry from   Geneva talks, which aimed for eventual political transition. The Astana track represents a depoliticized truce attempt  —   further acknowledgement that Assad’s fate may be off the table.” The U. S. did not directly participate in the Astana negotiations last week, but sent a representative. According to The Associated Press, U. S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis ”said the U. S. owes it to the people of Syria to take a close look at the proposal for ’safe zones’ in Syria. But Mattis also said the plan poses many unanswered questions, including whether it would be effective.” It’s also worth noting that neither the Syrian government nor rebel forces are signatories to the agreement."
"James Patterson has a long history of collaboration. Of his dozens of books, the blockbuster thriller writer has written at least 50  —   yes,    —   with the name of a   emblazoned on the cover. Still, it’s fair to say none of them has the resume of the fiction novice he’s teaming up with now: former President Bill Clinton. ”Working with President Clinton has been the highlight of my career, and having access to his   experience has uniquely informed the writing of this novel,” Patterson said in a statement released by publisher Penguin Random House. ”I’m a ” Patterson continued, ”and President Clinton’s insight has allowed us to tell a really interesting one. It’s a rare combination  —   readers will be drawn to the suspense, of course, but they’ll also be given an inside look into what it’s really like to be President.” The former president, for his part, said he drew on his experiences in office for the book, called The President Is Missing, naturally. ”Working on a book about a sitting President  —   drawing on what I know about the job, life in the White House, and the way Washington works  —   has been a lot of fun,” Clinton said. ”And working with Jim has been terrific. I’ve been a fan of his for a very long time.” Publishers Weekly reports that the book, which will be released in June 2018, came together after Washington, D. C.   Robert Barnett  —   who has represented both men  —   suggested they collaborate on a project. Clinton and Patterson had already met about a decade ago during a round of golf, according to the news service. Despite Clinton’s relative inexperience in fiction, his   memoir My Life sold over a million copies. It’s partly the sales success of both men that their publishers have decided on a rather unusual arrangement. The rivals Alfred A. Knopf, which is Clinton’s publisher, and Little, Brown and Co. Patterson’s publisher, have agreed to make the forthcoming novel a joint release. That said, the arrangement is not unprecedented  —   as The Associated Press explains: ”A political release from the 1990s had a similar arrangement: Random House and Simon  Schuster jointly published the nonfiction All’s Fair by    campaign consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin.” Publishers have not released details yet on either the upcoming book’s plot or financial arrangements."
"Luxury brand Coach says it has reached a deal to acquire smaller rival Kate Spade in a cash deal worth $2. 4 billion. The announcement confirms months of rumors that the two New   brands were in talks to join forces and comes as Coach is trying to attract millennial customers. Both boards unanimously approved the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2017. ”Kate Spade has a truly unique and differentiated brand positioning with a broad lifestyle assortment and strong awareness among consumers, especially millennials,” Victor Luis, the CEO of Coach, said in a press release. ”Through this acquisition, we will create the first New   house of modern luxury lifestyle brands, defined by authentic, distinctive products and fashion innovation.” Kate Spade stock sold at $18. 50 per share. As the statement notes, that’s a 27. 5 percent premium to the closing price on Dec. 27, ”the last trading day prior to media speculation of a transaction.” However, it’s worth noting that the ”stock rose much higher in the interim,” as Bloomberg reports. ”As deal speculation raged in February, the shares climbed above $24, a sign investors expected to get a much richer price than they ultimately received.” Both brands saw gains after the deal was announced. Kate Spade’s stock rose more than 8 percent as of midafternoon trading Monday, while Coach’s rose just less than 5 percent. Bloomberg suggests that the deal speaks to the ”handbag industry’s broader woes”: ”Companies have struggled to get customers to pay full price, and a reliance on the beleaguered   channel has hurt sales.” Coach CFO Kevin Wills says that because the businesses are complementary, he believes they’ll be able to save $50 million in the three years after the deal closed, through ”operational efficiencies, improved scale and inventor management, and the optimization of Kate Spade’s supply chain network.” At the same time, he says they plan to slash Kate Spade’s ”wholesale disposition and online flash sale channels.” It’s an effort to ”regain its brand cachet,” according to Reuters."
"This is part of a series of conversations on Morning Edition with politicians, writers, scientists, theologians, tech innovators and others. We’re asking, ”How did we get here  —   and where are we headed?” Out of those answers, we’ll help capture this moment and how we’re shaped by it, as individuals, nations and as a global civilization. Condoleezza Rice’s new book, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, is a   endorsement of overseas engagement and democracy building. It comes at a time of widespread distrust of government and institutions. Rice’s ”through line” is that institutions provide the bedrock for any successful democracy. Though institutions are built by people, she tells NPR’s Rachel Martin, no country can rely on a single personality to carry it forward. The Founding Fathers knew this, she says, so they constrained the executive by embedding it in a balance with other institutions. ”What the American Founding Fathers understood was that institutions were built for human imperfection, not human perfection,” she says. Rice, former national security adviser and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, also addresses the     sentiments that have surged across the U. S. and Europe. She’s worried about current widespread feelings of populism, nativism, protectionism and isolationism  —   which she calls the ”four horsemen of the apocalypse.” ”I’m concerned that the current moment might take us back to those four horsemen of the apocalypse and it didn’t work out so well the last time around,” she says. On her concerns about populism, nativism, protectionism and isolationism, We have to recognize that the reason that the global order that we’ve enjoyed and almost take for granted over the last several years exists is that after World War II, the United States and its allies tried to build an antidote to what they had seen between World War I and World War II. There they’d seen protectionism,    trading policies. So they said we’ll build an open international economy. And they did that. They had seen fear of the other, a willingness to be harsh on people just because they were different, and they had seen that authoritarian states were violent states. And so they thought  —   we’ll support democratic peoples. And so this system, built on free markets, free trade and free peoples, and American protection, that’s what got us from the end of World War II to the extraordinary events of the end of the Cold War and a system that was one of prosperity and peace for a lot of people including for the United States. On Iraq today, a country she calls a ” ” It has a legislature that tries to function. It has a prime minister who is accountable. They’ve decided to get rid of a couple of them. But they stepped down. Arab strongmen don’t normally step down. They have a very free and functioning press. But it’s got a long way to go to be a consolidated democracy where the institutions fully function and can carry out what they are intended to do. But it’s not an authoritarian state any longer, and it’s not a totalitarian state in the way that it was under Saddam Hussein. It’s very different to be Iraqi today than to be Syrian. If I can get one point across, it’s that Iraq and Afghanistan are not the primary examples of democracy promotion. We went to Iraq because we had a security problem with Saddam Hussein. Turns out it wasn’t a security problem that was as imminent as we thought because of the weapons of mass destruction. With Afghanistan, we needed to get rid of the safe haven for   after  . Once we had overthrown their dictators, we had to have a view about what came after, and we believed that we would be better off to help launch them on the road to democracy. But I would never have said to President Bush ”overthrow Saddam Hussein to bring democracy to Iraq,” because democratic openings that come about in that way  —   the overthrow of a totalitarian government by external powers  —   it makes it really hard to make those first steps toward democracy. On whether she’s concerned that President Trump has had glowing things to say about leaders of Russia, Turkey and Egypt  —   countries she writes ”discourage us” with respect to democracies’ global trajectory, Well, with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin I think we’re starting to see that whatever was said in the campaign about Vladimir Putin, we’re very clearly coming up against what American interests are in dealing with Russia. I thought [Secretary of State] Rex Tillerson had a great line when he said in regards to the [Syrian] chemical weapons deal that the Russians had sponsored that they were either incompetent or they weren’t telling the truth. I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to say that but it was exactly [the] right thing to say to them. So the U. S.  relationship is exactly where it should be. It recognizes all the difficulties and it recognizes who Vladimir Putin is. When it comes to Turkey or to Egypt, this is hard because they are allies. And so for an American president or secretary of state, the challenge is always to find a way to continue those relationships and promote those relationships recognizing the flaws and the foibles of those allies. I would hope this  —   and it goes to whether it’s [Egyptian President    ]Sissi or [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan or [Philippine President Rodrigo] Duterte, if he indeed comes  —   it’s fine you have to talk to these people. But you can also say to them what you’re doing is unacceptable and it’s unacceptable for moral reasons, but I’m going to tell you it’s also unacceptable because eventually it is going to bring you down. On how Rex Tillerson’s mission for the State Department  —   to advance America’s national security and economic interests with no mention of spreading democracy  —   is very different from   George W. Bush’s, Exact formulations matter here. So American national security and American economic interests, of course. Every president, every secretary of state, that is the primary goal. As you are in this job and in the work, you begin to see though that in the long run, both American economic interests and American national security are better served when there are other decent countries in the world who are both your allies and even when your adversaries are acting more decently. Because ultimately we didn’t go to Germany to create a democracy. We went to overthrow Adolf Hitler. But once a democracy was there, Germany was a much bigger supporter of and helped to our national interest  —   both economic and security  —   than ever had ever been before. On whether she craves from the Trump administration a more overt endorsement of values like democracy, freedom and liberty, I am going to answer that question for you at a later date, because it’s early. I have heard expressions of why NATO matters that I didn’t hear in the campaign. And NATO is, by the way, built on security, but it’s also built on values. I’ve heard expressions about why the United States of America cannot stand by and let Syrian children be gassed by their leaders. That wouldn’t have been the language of the campaign. So I’m hearing echoes of many of these values. And I believe you’re going to hear more. I hope we hear more. I think we’re still a bright, shining city on the hill, not because we’re perfect but because we struggle in our imperfections every day. When I was standing in the Ben Franklin Room about to be sworn in as secretary of state  —   by the way by a Jewish woman justice, Justice Ginsburg  —   with Ben Franklin looking over us, I couldn’t help but think that this was a Constitution to which I was about to take an oath of allegiance that it once counted my ancestors   of a man, a Constitution that had to be referred to by Martin Luther King to say that America shouldn’t be something else, just had to be what it said it was. That’s a pretty powerful story of evolution. Human beings are not perfect. Their institutions are not perfect, but they have to keep trying. And America has to help people keep trying. Morning Edition editor Martha Wexler and Web producer Heidi Glenn contributed to this report. It was produced for broadcast by radio producer Noor Wazwaz."
"Growing up in Brooklyn with a mother from the South and father from Senegal, Gabourey Sidibe spent much of her youth feeling anxious. She was mocked for being   and for being overweight, and she worried she would never find her true calling. As a young woman, Sidibe struggled to find work and ultimately took a job as a phone sex operator where the rule of business was to sound ”100 percent white.” Then, when she was 24, she auditioned for the role that would change her life. The film was Precious, director Lee Daniels’ movie about an overweight, illiterate teenager who has been sexually abused by her father and physically abused by her mother. Sidibe remembers getting a callback for the role. ”I was just praying that my life would begin,” she says. And in many ways it did: The actress landed the title role and earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance.  Sidibe has since played roles in a number of TV series, including Empire, American Horror Story and The Big C. She says she finally feels she’s doing the work she was meant to do: ”This is my path, and I’m really grateful that I’m on it.” Sidibe’s new memoir is This is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare. On why she thinks she got cast as Precious, I think a lot of why I got the role is because I wasn’t this girl. [Daniels] really did think that he would be exploiting someone who was a lot like her, because it’s not about being that exact character, it’s not about living that exact life it’s about understanding it and being able to mirror it. On her mother’s decision to quit teaching and become a busker, She was a teacher at my school up until the fourth grade. She went on sabbatical and starting singing in the subway and found that she made more money singing in the subway than she did working for the Board of Education. . .. My mom would take my brother and I down to the subway while she sang. She’d sing [for] five hours or so and I would sit on the bench, either somewhere in eyesight or definitely in earshot or something, and I would do my homework or I would read books. On her parents’ marriage, which her mother initially entered into to help her father get a green card, I think she mostly married him because they were friends and she cared for him and she thought she was doing him a favor. A year after they were married, he took her home to Senegal to meet his family and to ”meet” Africa. . .. And she fell in love with him and he fell in love with her and they decided to have a family. . .. It must’ve been really, really hard for this African man with his African values and his African [upbringing] to work as a cab driver for 12 to 14 hours a day and come home to American children. We were children and we were a family that he did not understand. We were a different country. I think it took us a long time to see each other. On her parents getting divorced after her mother learned her father had a secret family in Senegal, where polygamy is widely practiced, I was pretty surprised, but also not at all surprised. My grandfather had several wives and several families. . .. It was probably dumb of my family to think my dad, who was raised to do this, would not do this, that he would somehow swim against the current. Yeah, it was a surprise, but I think my dad, like a lot of men, wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to have his first wife and his second wife also. It might’ve worked if my mother was also Senegalese, but she was not, and we were not. . .. We were the foreigners in my dad’s life . .. so we had to go. On how people dismissed her childhood anxiety and depression as her being too sensitive, I didn’t know then that I was having panic attacks. . .. I started praying to be less sensitive around fourth grade . .. with the dissolving of my parents’ marriage. I was like a live nerve. I was unhinged and I realized that when someone would say something mean to me, which was often, I would cry for hours. My chest would close up and I would really feel like I was dying. . .. That’s when I started to pray: You cried from history, through math, into gym. You cried for three hours today. We can’t do this anymore. We can’t cry for three hours, and you know that tomorrow they’re just going to call you a fatso again and you know it’s going to make you cry, so please don’t cry. Don’t cry. . .. I just thought I was being sensitive because that’s what people told me. ”You’re just a baby. You’re being too sensitive. You’re taking things to heart too much.” I thought that that’s what it was. Nobody noticed that I was actually having a medical condition, that I was dealing with a mental disorder. I was dealing with depression and anxiety and nobody noticed. On what it was like to work for a phone sex hotline, It was good practice for this interview right now! . .. You think that phone sex is about getting the caller off, but it’s about keeping the caller on. It’s about leading with your personality and making sure that they’re still listening and they’re still interested in you, because you cannot make money when they hang up. . .. They pay by the minute, and I get paid by the minute. . .. [The company wouldn’t] hire you if you had no ability to make your voice white, because that’s who the men on the phone wanted to talk to. . .. The company was [run] by 95 percent   black women. It’s so interesting that . .. we were all plus size and these men would not normally be into us, and if they were it’s a fetish or whatever. . .. So it’s very strange to go from undesirable, into the office, you clock in, and [they say,] ”I love you so much. I’ll call you every day.” . .. You think you’re talking to Megan Fox, but you’re talking to Precious. Look how dope and fierce and amazing and smart and genius we are to fool you into thinking that we’re the opposite. Radio producers Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie and web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"The Air Force’s experimental   space plane announced the end of its nearly   mission by creating a sonic boom on Sunday that surprised residents along Florida’s Space Coast. Officials have provided only vague details about the unmanned craft’s more than   mission. ”Not much is known about the    robotic spacecraft or what it took to space,” as member station WMFE reports. The   is an ”orbital test vehicle” that looks like a miniature space shuttle  —   it even used the old shuttle runway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center when it landed Sunday. To reach orbit, it rides on an Atlas V rocket. This was the fourth mission for the reusable vehicle, and the first time it has landed in Florida. Earlier trips have ended at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Sunday’s landing sparked a flurry of tweets and questions about the sonic boom, with The Orlando Sentinel reporting that before the landing, officials had refused to confirm rumors of a pending return to Florida. The Air Force announced the landing in a tweet  —   after it had occurred. By then, windows had been rattled and residents had been startled. ”But it wasn’t just Central Floridians who heard the spacecraft,” the paper says. ”Reports came from as far away as Tampa and Fort Myers.” Confirmation of the landing was met with relief in at least one household, as a resident tweeted, ”CENTRAL FLORIDA HAD A SONIC BOOM IM NOT CRAZY.” The space plane has been the object of frequent speculation about its potential military uses, particularly in either surveillance or some type of combat application, as NPR’s Scott Neuman reported in a roundup of theories about the craft in 2014. The Air Force says that the program includes the testing of many technologies, from guidance and control (Sunday’s landing was autonomous) to thermal protection and advanced propulsion systems. The craft is powered by gallium arsenide solar cells with   batteries. As WMFE’s Brendan Byrne writes: ”The space plane’s development began in 1999. NASA wanted to use the vehicle to repair satellites in orbit. When that proved to be too costly, the Department of Defense picked up the project as a part of its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 2006, the Air Force announced it would develop what is now the   and launched the experimental space plane for the first time in 2010.” The craft is managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, which describes its mission as developing ”combat support and weapon systems by leveraging   technology development efforts and existing operational capabilities.” The Air Force’s public information about the craft focuses on its role in researching reusable space vehicles and establishing a ”space test platform for the United States Air Force.” Military space programs ”are as big as NASA,” astrophysicist and astronomer Jonathan McDowell told NPR’s Here and Now in 2015, when the   left for its most recent mission. At the time, McDowell said there are around 20 to 25 ”  spy satellites or other really secret vehicles” that orbit Earth. The concept of militarizing space is one that’s still developing, McDowell said, noting the distinction between the use of satellites solely to support   operations and their use to snoop on, and even interfere with, other satellites. Civilian satellite spotters are able to track the more than     as it orbits Earth. Fueling theories that it aids surveillance programs, trackers found that at least one earlier mission followed an orbit that took it over countries that included Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan."
"”This song is called ’You Never Loved Me’  —   it’s another cheery, optimistic number,” says Aimee Mann, introducing the second of four songs in this Tiny Desk Concert. She has been writing songs on the human condition  —   more often than not with a strong sense of humor to underpin the inevitable melancholy  —   as far back as the ’80s, when she was the singer and bassist in Boston’s The Young Snakes. Mann’s newest solo record, the first in five years, is baldly called Mental Illness  —   clearly, there’s a deep honesty within these songs. (Also: This is Aimee Mann’s Tiny return, so if you’re loving this, take a look at her performance with Ted Leo in their duo called The Both.) Mental Illness is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Aimee Mann (vocals, guitar) Jonathan Coulton (guitar, vocals) Paul Bryan (bass, vocals) Jamie Edwards (piano, vocals) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Marian  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Updated at 9:22 p. m. ET, The president has fired FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and possible ties to the Trump campaign and top aides. The White House pointed to Comey’s handling of the probe into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server while secretary of state as the reason for his dismissal. But Democrats were quick to call the move ”Nixonian,” saying that the decision by Trump was part of an effort to impede the Justice Department’s Russia investigation which, in the view of many leading Capitol Hill Democrats, could now only be managed by a special prosecutor going forward. ”Today, President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office. President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement. ”The FBI is one of our Nation’s most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement,” the president said in the statement. Russia probe looms over surprise dismissal, The abrupt decision by the White House brings to an end a tumultuous tenure for the career prosecutor who found himself at the center of controversy about the 2016 election, taking heat from both sides. But it also raised questions about the ongoing Russia probe, with Democrats saying the firing was an effort by the White House to derail the investigation. ”The first question the administration has to answer is, why now?” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer,  . Y. ”If the administration had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they had those objections the minute the president got into office. But they didn’t fire him then. Why did it happen today?” ”If Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein does not appoint an independent special prosecutor, every American will rightly suspect that the decision to fire Director Comey was part of a ” Schumer continued. FBI director became a flashpoint in 2016 election, Comey first made waves in July 2016 when he announced that the FBI was not recommending any charges against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her handling of her controversial private email server while she was secretary of state during the Obama administration. But even though there would be no prosecution, Comey’s press conference in and of itself was damning, as he declared that Clinton and her staff had been ”extremely careless” in handling classified data  —   fodder that Trump and Republicans would use throughout the campaign. But Rosenstein, Trump’s deputy attorney general, said in his memorandum to Sessions that those actions were in part what motivated his dismissal: ”The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors.” On Twitter last week, Trump claimed that Comey ”was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!” Comey again found himself at the center of a political firestorm when less than two weeks before Election Day last year he notified Congress he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s emails. Clinton said last week she believed that controversial decision contributed to her loss. During the campaign, Trump said that Comey’s decision to reopen the Clinton investigation ”took a lot of guts.” ”It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election,” Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week in defending his decision. ”But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision.” During that same testimony, Comey said that Clinton aide Huma Abedin had forwarded ”hundreds and thousands” of Clinton’s emails, ”some of which contained classified information,” to her husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, to print out. The discovery of those emails while Weiner was being investigated for possible lewd contact with a minor online is what triggered the reopening of the Clinton investigation just before Election Day. However, after ProPublica reported Comey’s testimony had been inaccurate and that there had been only a ”small number” of emails forwarded, Comey had to clarify those comments in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee released Tuesday at nearly the same time news of his firing began to break in the media. Comey confirmed earlier this year that the FBI was investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian attempts to influence the U. S. presidential election. The president has repeatedly downplayed any investigation, dismissing it as a ”total hoax.” In his letter to Comey relieving him of his duties effective immediately, Trump alluded to the ongoing Russia investigation but also stressed that he had not personally been implicated: ”While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.” But the ongoing Russia investigation badly complicates Trump’s decision to fire Comey. Sessions, who recommended Comey’s dismissal, had already recused himself from any investigation into Russian meddling in the election, leaving any inquiry to be led by Rosenstein. The decision by Sessions, who was a top Trump surrogate, came in March after he first testified he had no contact with Russian officials during the campaign but then later clarified that he had twice met with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak. ”Given that the Attorney General supposedly recused himself from the Russia investigation, he should not have played any role in removing the lead investigator from his duties,” Sen. Patrick Leahy,  . a senior Judiciary Committee member, said in a statement. ”Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein now has no choice but to appoint a Special Counsel. His integrity, and the integrity of the entire Justice Department, are at stake.” Republicans raise concerns over firing  It isn’t just Democrats questioning the rapid turn of events. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said in a statement that he was ”troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey’s termination.” ”Director Comey has been more forthcoming with information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intelligence committees,” the North Carolina Republican said. ”His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation.” Rep. Justin Amash,  . who has been critical of Trump in the past, tweeted that he and his staff were ”reviewing legislation to establish an independent commission on Russia,” calling Trump’s comments in his letter to Comey underscoring that he himself wasn’t under investigation ”bizarre.” Comey was just four years into a   term after being nominated by President Obama in 2013. His pick drew bipartisan praise and he was confirmed by the Senate overwhelmingly by a vote of  . A former Republican, Comey served as the deputy attorney general for nearly two years under President George W. Bush. Comey had repeatedly reiterated he planned to remain at the FBI, saying in March, ”You’re stuck with me for about 6   years.” Trump does have the authority to fire the FBI director, even without a reason, as Newsweek noted just last week. But a president has taken such action only once before. In 1993 President Bill Clinton dismissed FBI Director William Sessions amid ethics concerns after Sessions refused to resign. But that was after the culmination of a long investigation that found that Sessions had abused his office."
"Updated at 11:00 p. m. ET, For months, Democrats in Congress have criticized and questioned FBI Director James Comey about his handling of last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Still, they’ve met President Trump’s surprising Tuesday evening decision to fire Comey with   outrage. The White House and the Justice Department cited Comey’s ineffective leadership, but the general gist of Democratic reaction: Trump’s decision should be viewed not in light of Comey’s past missteps but instead in the context of the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the U. S. election and the Trump transition team’s possible ties to Russia. ”The first question the administration has to answer is, why now?” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer at a hastily arranged Capitol press conference. ”If the administration had objections to the way Director Comey handled the Clinton investigation, they had those objections the minute the president got into office. But they didn’t fire him then. Why did it happen today?” Late on Tuesday, Trump replied on Twitter, noting that Schumer himself had questioned Comey’s fitness for the job in comments just prior to the election. Pointing to the ongoing House and Senate Intelligence committees’ Russia investigations, as well as the FBI’s probe, Schumer asked, ”Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?” In   Democrats are calling for a special prosecutor to take charge of the FBI’s investigation, which Comey made public earlier this year when testifying in front of the House Intelligence Committee. ”If Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein does not appoint an independent special prosecutor, every American will rightly suspect that the decision to fire Director Comey was part of a ” said Schumer. (Rosenstein is in charge of the Department of Justice’s Russia probe, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation.) ”This is nothing less than Nixonian,” said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a longtime senior Judiciary Committee member, in a statement. ”The president’s action, and the way it has been handled, is shocking. No one should accept President Trump’s absurd justification that he is now concerned that FBI Director Comey treated Secretary Clinton unfairly. ”Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein now has no choice but to appoint a Special Counsel. His integrity, and the integrity of the entire Justice Department, are at stake,” said Leahy. ”There simply is no avoiding the compelling fact that this cascading situation demands the prompt appointment of an independent Special Counsel to pick up the pieces of these investigations.” One key Republican is voicing concerns as well. North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement, ”I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey’s termination. I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee. ”Director Comey has been more forthcoming with information than any FBI Director I can recall in my tenure on the congressional intelligence committees,” Burr added. Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who chairs the Judiciary Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee, also said in a statement that ”the timing of this firing is very troubling” and that ”the loss of an honorable public servant is a loss for the nation.” But other   Republicans are backing Trump. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, says Comey’s actions ”have prompted concern from across the political spectrum and from career law enforcement experts.” ”The handling of the Clinton email investigation is a clear example of how Comey’s decisions have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI,” Grassley said in a statement. ”In my efforts to get answers, the FBI, under Comey’s leadership, has been slow or failed to provide information that Comey himself pledged to provide.” Earlier Tuesday, Comey sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee correcting testimony he gave last week, in which he misstated key details about the emails discovered on former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s personal computer, which prompted Comey to send his October letter. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who blasted Comey during that hearing, was notably much more muted than her fellow Democrats Tuesday night. ”President Trump called me at 5:30 p. m. and indicated he would be removing Director Comey, saying the FBI needed a change,” Feinstein said in a statement. ”The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee.”"
"On the south side of Dallas, Nena Eldridge lives in a sparse but spotless bungalow on a dusty lot. At $550 each month, her rent is just about the cheapest she could find in the city. After an injury left her unable to work, the only income she receives is a $780 monthly disability check. So she has to make tough financial choices, like living without running water. Every day, she fills bottles with water from a neighbor’s house and takes them home. She washes her hands with water heated in an electric slow cooker. She uses a bucket to flush the toilet. ”I’m tired, but I don’t have nowhere to go and I don’t have enough money to do it,” she says, fighting back tears. But she adds, ”I’m not living on the streets. I’m not homeless.” Eldridge is among the 11 million people nationwide making these kinds of choices every day. The government calls them ”severely rent burdened”  —   people paying more than half their income in rent. Thirty years ago, Eldridge was the type of person Congress sought to help when it created the   housing tax credit program, which is now the government’s primary program to build housing for the poor. But the   building that’s only a little more than 2 miles from Eldridge’s house, where she might pay as little as $200 or $300 in rent based on her income, has a waiting list up to four years long. In Dallas and nationwide, many of these buildings don’t have any vacancies. In a joint investigation, NPR  —   together with the PBS series Frontline  —   found that with little federal oversight, LIHTC has produced fewer units than it did 20 years ago, even though it’s costing taxpayers 66 percent more in tax credits. In 1997, the program produced more than 70, 000 housing units. But in 2014, fewer than 59, 000 units were built, according to data provided by the National Council of State Housing Agencies. Industry representatives don’t dispute the numbers they say these trends are the result of rising construction costs, decreasing federal dollars that funded other housing subsidy programs, and stricter state requirements to build homes for the   households. They also say the business is less profitable than it used to be. But NPR and Frontline also found that little public accounting of the costs exists, even among government officials and regulators charged with monitoring the program. Some key lawmakers say that needs to change. ”My suspicion is, there’s a lot of things wrong with the program,” says Sen. Chuck Grassley,  . ”If you aren’t following the money, how do you know if the   housing tax credit is working?” How the   tax credit housing program works, The federal government used to build its own public housing, which still houses more than 2 million people today. The model was simple: The government built the apartment and became the landlord. Some of the big, concrete   became infamous for high rates of crime and their concentration of poverty. The government banned public housing construction in 1968 and began demolishing many of the buildings in the 1990s. But while direct federal construction went away, the need for new buildings did not. So, in 1986, Congress developed a strategy to entice private businesses to build better affordable housing. That incentive came in the form of a tax credit. Since then, an $8 billion industry has evolved to help the government house the poor. There are two types of tax credits, the smaller of which is financed by   state and local bonds. NPR and Frontline focused our investigation on the largest part of the LIHTC program. Here’s how that tax credit works: Every year, the IRS distributes a pool of tax credits to state and local housing agencies. Those agencies pass them on to developers. The developers then sell the credits to banks and investors for cash. Often, to find investors, developers will use middlemen called syndicators. The banks and investors get to take tax deductions, while the developers now have cash to build the apartments. Because taxpayers essentially paid for the construction, the buildings can have much lower rent than   developments. ”A very enduring   partnership” The program is often described as a  .   people receive   affordable places to live, and private industry players  —   developers, syndicators and investors  —   make a profit for their involvement. Years later, the private industry continues to profit, but it’s no longer clear whether the poor benefit as much as they could. Betsy Julian and Mike Daniel, civil rights lawyers who have been investigating the program for years, say the thriving private industry is a sign that the scales may have tilted away from the tenants. ”It’s a frightfully expensive way to provide   housing and it’s got layers of profit built into it that we think we have to provide in order to get people to do something for poor people,” Daniel says. Julian says 30 years ago, attending affordable housing conferences was different than it is today. ”I have the feeling that I’m in the room with nothing but a bunch of rich guys and gals,” she says. ”That’s an impression that has to do with the ambience and the sense that there’s a lot of money to be made around affordable housing.” Some attendees at a conference for the LIHTC industry last fall told NPR and Frontline that business is booming. ”We’ve had so much capital pouring into the market,” says Stacie Nekus, senior vice president of investor relations at Alliant Capital, a top syndicator. But she adds that the thriving industry has not benefited at the expense of the people for whom the affordable housing is built. ”It gets the most amount of units built,” she says. ”We house millions of people.” Advocates of the program say that providing an attractive incentive to businesses is crucial. ”Without private capital we would not be modernizing public housing. We wouldn’t be building affordable housing,” says former New York Republican Rep. Rick Lazio, who leads the housing finance team at the law firm Jones Walker. ”We’ve got to be realistic about the fact that investors need some return.” That return comes partly in the form of the fee that developers and syndicators earn for their work. The association of state agencies recommends developers receive no more than a 15 percent fee from the total development cost, but the actual percentage varies by state. So if a building costs $20 million, a developer would receive $3 million. Industry representatives told NPR and Frontline that syndicators earned more than $300 million in fees last year. Financial institutions see these investments as low risk. Because of the high demand for affordable housing, the chance of foreclosure is low: Buildings fill with tenants and stay full, often with   waiting lists. Banks also use the investment in LIHTC buildings toward the requirement mandated by the Community Reinvestment Act, which says they must help meet the needs of borrowers in the poorer communities in which they do business. These incentives are purposefully designed to encourage investment in a public good. Mary Tingerthal, a board member of the NCSHA, the group representing the state agencies that run the program, says it has been working well for people who need affordable housing since it began. ”It has housed more than 6   million households and it’s been a very enduring public private partnership that has produced good housing that’s very well run,” she says. Higher costs, fewer units, So why are LIHTC costs higher if fewer units are being produced? The IRS, which oversees the program, declined a request from NPR and Frontline for an interview. We also reached out to more than 20 industry officials, including the leadership of the Housing Advisory Group and the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition, which represent investors and syndicators such as Boston Capital, PNC Real Estate and CohnReznick LLP. They did not agree to an interview but answered questions by email through lawyers representing the industry. They say several factors have led to higher costs and fewer housing units primarily, increased construction costs. Indeed, NPR and Frontline found in an analysis of government and NCSHA data that the inflation rate associated with rising construction costs accounts for about half of the overall increase during the last 20 years. The representatives also noted the decline in grants from two other federal subsidies developers used to help pay for these buildings  —   the Community Development Block Grant and the HOME Investment Partnership program. Still, fewer than   of tax credit units have received grants from these programs historically, according to data from the NCSHA. Many states also are requiring tax credit buildings to target even poorer renters, which means less rent to cover any debt. But data from the NCSHA show that the proportion of LIHTC tenants in the lowest income category rose from just 4 to 9 percent of new units from 2000 to 2014 across the country. ”Millions . .. almost overnight” On a downtown street in Miami, one tax credit property’s dark history offered another reason for increased costs. Labre Place, named after the patron saint for the homeless, is a $25 million development shaded with towering trees. The lobby is painted lime green and the building includes a fitness center, computer lounge and library. It is home to 90   people, about half formerly homeless, and there’s a   to   waiting list to live there. In the leasing office, the apartment manager proudly displays the many state inspections the building has passed. But there’s one thing that wasn’t inspected: how much money the developers were making off the deal. For developer Michael Cox, it was a dream job. A longtime advocate for the poor, Cox worked at a string of nonprofits until 2006. That was when he and his own company, Biscayne Housing, partnered with one of the country’s top affordable housing developers, the Carlisle Development Group. Between 2006 and 2009, Cox says the two companies had more than $250 million under development. ”I went from working with this very small nonprofit to an equal partnership with the state’s largest affordable housing developer. So it became millions of dollars . .. almost overnight,” Cox says. That was before Cox discovered his partners Lloyd Boggio and Matt Greer were stealing money from their developments, and he eventually joined them. Together, according to court records, $34 million was stolen from 14 tax credit projects, including almost $2 million from Labre Place. ”It was a construction kickback scheme,” Cox recalls. ”The scam was to submit grossly inflated construction numbers to the state in order to get more money than the project required and then have an agreement with the contractor to get it back during construction.” ”I convinced myself that this was OK and that I was doing such good works and I was building amazing projects in the community,” he adds. Last year, Boggio, Greer and another partner, Gonzalo DeRamon, pleaded guilty to crimes related to the kickback scheme and were sentenced to prison. Cox was sentenced to home confinement and probation. He cooperated with prosecutors, never spent his portion of the money and returned all of it. But the impact of his theft is lasting. ”At Labre, if the costs had been stated in a correct way, we could have built 10 more housing units. So, that’s 10 more people every year that that project could have served,” Cox says. ”That’s 10 lives. So it’s those people that really take it on the chin when costs are inflated.” ”A program of trust” In a government office building just a few blocks from Labre Place, Assistant U. S. Attorney Michael Sherwin has spent five years investigating the tax credit program in Florida. He also unraveled the   theft. ”This program has been described as a subterranean ATM, and only the developers know the PIN,” Sherwin says. The IRS relies on the housing agencies to identify corruption. But Sherwin says he doesn’t believe the Florida agency, the Florida Housing Finance Corp. was equipped to spot the theft. ”It’s really a program of trust,” Sherwin says. ”These housing agencies don’t have a lot of funding. Looking at Florida housing, they have good people that work there, but there are limited resources. It’s a small office with a limited staff that is in charge of managing hundreds of millions in state, local and federal money.” Steve Auger, the man who ran Florida’s housing agency, says the Miami case was one bad apple. ”This kind of fraud has not been rampant in the tax credit program both here in Florida or nationally,” Auger says, adding that Florida has added additional audits to make sure developer theft won’t happen again. ”It’s probably the most efficient tax housing program that has ever existed,” Auger says. ”That’s why you’ve got this asset class that has performed so well with such few scandalous incidents.” After the interview with NPR and Frontline in late 2016, Auger was forced to resign from the agency after an audit revealed he spent more than $50, 000 on a steak and lobster dinner for affordable housing lenders and gave his own staff almost half a million dollars in bonuses. A few months later, Sherwin charged a   shell company called DAXC LLC belonging to the owners of Pinnacle Housing Group, another one of the largest developers in the country, with the theft of $4 million from four tax credit developments. In an agreement with prosecutors, a DAXC representative acknowledged that the company ”inflated costs” for its own ”personal benefit.” The company returned the money and paid a $1 million fine. In early 2017, the Florida Housing Finance Corp. went to court to ban Pinnacle from affordable housing projects for two years. Pinnacle declined our request for an interview but told us it didn’t violate any state rules and would contest the ban. Sherwin says he is not done investigating the LIHTC program. He says he is turning his investigation to more developers with projects in other states and also to the banks, lenders and syndicators. ”I know that this fraud doesn’t just reside in South Florida,” he says. ”There’s too much money involved, and based upon other information that we’ve looked at, this fraud exists in other jurisdictions.” Following the money, There are   attractively designed   buildings all around the country where developer fraud has not played a role. Industry representatives say it’s unfair to draw wider conclusions about the program from what happened in South Florida. They say they support more stringent auditing and do not tolerate any fraud. But without strong oversight of the billions flowing through LIHTC’s private sector, there is no way to say for certain just how rare fraud is: The vast majority of housing agencies have never been audited. There have been only seven audits of the 58 state and local housing agencies that the IRS relies on to watch the program since it began in 1986. And when you trace the tax credits of LIHTC properties upward to syndicators and investors, the profit structure becomes even more obscure. Grassley, the Iowa senator, is one of the few lawmakers looking into the program. He recently asked the GAO to find out how much money syndicators are making and whether that is influencing developments. ”The lack of data shows that maybe the IRS isn’t doing a proper job of oversight,” Grassley says. Despite the lack of data, Tingerthal of the NCSHA says the investors’ willingness to participate in the program and compete against each other is a sound indicator of the program’s overall efficiency. ”This is a   program. And our barometer is really that rate of return: How much is the investor willing to pay for those tax credits and for those units of housing?” Tingerthal says. ”We’re working all the time to drive towards more  .” ”It’s all we got” Daniel, the civil rights lawyer who has been focusing on the program, says the industry’s focus on rates of return can lead to blind spots in other areas. He discovered that 90 percent of projects in Dallas were built in   areas. He filed a lawsuit against Texas that in 2015 went all the way to the Supreme Court and helped set standards for fair housing nationwide. Daniel says getting deals done matters more to the developers, syndicators and banks than how many units a project has or where it’s located. Building   apartments in   areas doesn’t get met with as much opposition. ”They don’t make these deals in good places. They make these deals in the same places they won’t lend,” he says. ”They were being put there because it’s easier to do.” Nationally, only an estimated 17 percent of projects are built in   areas  —   places without a lot of crime and with access to jobs and   schools  —   according to forthcoming research by Kirk McClure, a professor of urban planning at the University of Kansas who has studied LIHTC for more than a decade. And that matters: Studies show that moving to these types of areas helps children rise out of poverty so that when they’re adults, they may not need any government housing help. The balance of power in the LIHTC program, Daniel says, tips heavily in favor of the banks, brokers and developers. ”They’re the ones that have a lot more influence than the poor people who need the housing. Nobody else involved in it has got any reason to come in and criticize it,” Daniel says. Even housing advocates independent of the industry are not likely to publicly criticize the program, he says. ”If they take it away, what do you have? Not only do you take it away from poor people, but you also take it away from all the intermediaries who lose the money,” Daniel says. ”It’s difficult to get anybody to look at it from the taxpayers’ point of view. Or even the families that should be benefiting from it. It’s all we got.” Frontline’s Emma Schwartz, Rick Young and Fritz Kramer contributed to this story."
"Do black and white children who live in assisted or subsidized housing experience different life outcomes? That question was at the center of a new study by Sandra Newman and C. Scott Holupka, two researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. They combed through federal data on households in public housing or those that received housing vouchers from the 1970s through the first decade of the 2000s. What the pair found was neither straightforward nor surprising. When it came to life outcomes, living in assisted housing didn’t predict significant differences in how children turned out because of their race, a big change from decades past. They also found that black and white people living in subsidized housing in the first decade of the aughts were living in homes of comparable quality, which was not true in the past. But while they found parity in the housing conditions in which black and white households lived, there were still wide disparities in the neighborhoods in which their homes were located. ”Despite achieving equality and access to quality public housing, because of historical and structural forces, black families are more likely to live in central cities,” Newman said  —   that is, places with more concentrated poverty and the problems that come with it. By contrast, white families in assisted housing were more likely to live on the edges of those cities, or in the   suburbs  —   which often meant access to better schools and public services. ”Living in a better place can have a very good influence on these outcomes,” Newman said. The researchers said that the study’s findings were concerning given the number of children involved: In 2011, there were about 1. 9 million households with children living in assisted housing across the country, and nearly half of children who lived in assisted housing in the United States were black. The researchers found that black families in assisted housing were likely to have been on welfare longer than white families in similar situations they also had lower household incomes, and were more likely to have a head of household with a disability. ”We really need to understand the neighborhood, because it’s the key to unlocking these [more advantageous] family backgrounds,” Newman said. The data they analyzed bore out this neighborhood effect: black kids who lived in assisted housing in neighborhoods with better services and resources had better outcomes than those in public housing in more economically distressed areas. But there are challenges to keeping affordable housing from being concentrated in poorer inner cities. One is social: families with fewer resources rely on their close ties for things like childcare and transportation. ”Even if people were given a [housing] voucher where they can choose where they live, people tend to pick places with which they’re already familiar,” Holupka said. The other is local politics. Holupka pointed to Johns Hopkins’ own backyard, which is dealing with an ongoing affordable housing crisis. ”Look at Baltimore City,” he said. ”It would need to work with other housing authorities”  —   the local   agencies that oversee assisted housing  —   ”to give assistance to families looking to move for housing elsewhere.” About 150, 000 people in the city  —   around a third of its renting households  —   live below the poverty line at a time when rental costs have sharply increased. ”It’s not like some suburban jurisdiction is going to say, all these people from the inner city need housing so let’s make more available,” he said. The study comes at a time when Republicans in Washington seem to be considering dismantling a fair housing provision put in place under the Obama administration to address such concerns. Under the rule, known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, local housing agencies that receive federal money for housing must keep data on the racial demographics of the people who live in affordable or subsidized housing  —   and take steps to remove barriers to housing for   earners. As Slate reported in March, that rule has already made a dent in residential segregation in some cities by nudging local agencies into changing how they distribute their affordable housing resources: HUD ordered 22 jurisdictions to comply in the first year of the AFFH rule, including three major cities: Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Kansas City. [. ..] The Kansas City area agreed to try distributing Section 8 vouchers more evenly across the region, with the goal of breaking up concentrations of poverty in central cities, helping residents to access areas with better schools and more job opportunities. During the presidential campaign last year, Donald Trump pledged to do away with the rule. Ben Carson, President Trump’s housing secretary, was on the record as opposing it years ago. For now, though, it seems Republicans have turned their attention elsewhere. ”[The rule] is being ignored,” Newman said. ”It hasn’t been overturned yet  —   but it’s not being enforced.”"
"In an effort to retake ISIS’ last major stronghold, President Trump has approved arming Kurdish forces in Syria despite opposition from Turkey. The U. S. will supply the Kurdish elements of the   Syrian Democratic Forces ”as necessary,” Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement Tuesday. Turkey views those Kurdish fighters in Syria as terrorists, or as allied with terrorists, because of their connection to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or the PKK militant group, which wants to carve out its own independent state within Turkey. The U. S. however, views the Kurdish forces in Syria as some of the country’s best fighters and necessary to the upcoming offensive to retake Raqqa, the northeast Syrian city that ISIS considers its capital. ”We’re keenly aware of the security concerns of our coalition partners in Turkey,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday. ”We want to reassure the people and government of Turkey that the U. S. is committed to preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally.” There are more than 1, 000 American service members in Syria, after the Pentagon sent about 400 additional Marines in March to prepare for the Raqqa offensive. A defense official told NPR’s Tom Bowman that the U. S. plans to provide the Kurdish forces with small arms, including rifles and machine guns, as well as other military equipment. At the same time, U. S. leaders on Tuesday sought to stress that they plan to continue to involve Turkey in the fight against ISIS. ”Our intent is to work with the Turks, alongside one another, to take Raqqa down, and we’re going to sort it out and we’ll figure out how we’re going to do it,” Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters traveling with him on a stop in Denmark. Turkey has yet to respond to the news, but it couldn’t have come as a surprise. U. S. defense officials have been mulling the move for months but waited to announce it until after a referendum that enabled President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to consolidate his power in April. Trump called Erdogan at the time to congratulate him on his victory, and he’s offered no objection to the Turkish leader’s often controversial authoritarian practices. Pentagon officials decided to wait until after the referendum, when Erdogan felt more secure in his power, to announce the expansion in support for the Kurds. Previously, Turkey has shown a prickly reaction to the U. S. backing Kurds in Syria. As NPR’s Tom Bowman, Alice Fordham, and Alison Meuse reported in March: ”After U. S.  Kurdish forces captured the Syrian town of Manbij from ISIS last August and then began moving farther north, Turkey launched what it called Operation Euphrates Shield, which pitted   forces against these   forces, as well as against ISIS. ”The resulting clashes required U. S. Army Rangers to intervene  —   including by openly flying American flags from their armored vehicles  —   to separate the forces. Pentagon officials denied these were ’peacekeeping forces’  —   and struggled to define their mission.” Turkey allows the U. S.  coalition that is fighting ISIS to use one of its air bases for warplanes involved in the fight, but one risk for the Americans is that Erdogan could withdraw that permission over his objections about the Kurds."
"The bones of a humanlike creature have puzzled scientists ever since they were found in a South African cave in 2013. Homo naledi is primitive in some ways, with a small brain and other physical features reminiscent of our early ancestors. But it also walked upright, and had hands that may have been capable of making tools. This perplexing combination of features raised questions about when the animal walked the Earth. But in new research published Tuesday in eLife, scientists have come to the conclusion that it lived between 335, 000 and 236, 000 years ago. That’s only about a tenth of the age some experts previously predicted. It suggests that this humanlike creature may have lived alongside early humans, or Homo sapiens. ”It’s a much more complex picture of human evolution that is rising,” lead author Paul Dirks of James Cook University and the University of Witwatersrand tells The  . Dirks says that the research team wanted to be absolutely certain about the surprising finding before releasing it. ”So we took our time, I must say,” he says. ”We did six different techniques side by side to make sure that things were consistent. For the most important techniques, we did   dating, so we had independent labs dating the same materials twice, sometimes three times to make sure the things could be reproduced and corroborated between different labs.” Richard Potts, the director of Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, who was not involved in the research, tells NPR that he finds the dating methodology to be sound and describes the conclusion as ”reasonable and cautious.” The research team also announced today that it has discovered a new chamber containing additional Homo naledi fossils in the Rising Star cave system, where the first specimens were found four years ago. Homo naledi’s age and other recent discoveries complicate previous ideas of how humans evolved. ”Traditionally, not all that long ago, human evolution was pretty much viewed as a linear sort of progression towards   animals,” Dirks says. But the finding that this creature is young enough to have lived alongside early humans means ”the whole evolutionary process may have happened slightly differently than a simply linear process,” he says. ”There may have been a number of different species evolving side by side.” This raises interesting questions about how the two species may have interacted, and whether tools previously attributed to early humans may have actually been created by Homo naledi, Dirks says: ”On the African landscape, there’s lots of stone tools and stone tool industries. And the time period that we’ve now dated the Homo naledi fossils at coincides more or less with the start of the Middle Stone Age, which is a more advanced stone tool industry. Now traditionally, Middle Stone age tools have all been attributed to . .. the immediate ancestors of Homo sapiens.” That conclusion is ”less clear and less certain now,” he says. It’s a controversial suggestion. Potts calls it a ”nonstarter,” pointing out that no evidence of tools has been found with the Homo naledi remains. ”There’s nothing about naledi that implies it was the originator of that novel way of life.” He says that he thinks a likely explanation for the creature is that it actually ”evolved and persisted isolated” from other relatives of humans. And yet another mystery: How did the bones end up in these caves at all, and why? One extremely controversial suggestion is that it was part of a burial ritual. ”There are other possibilities as well,” says Dirks, and he says sorting out the history of these caves will be a ”formidable task.”"
"On Tuesday, paleoanthropologists led by Paul Dirks at James Cook University revealed in the journal eLife that Homo naledi, a   hominin found in South Africa, lived  —   and may have cared for their dead in careful, intentional ways  —   as recently as 236, 000 years ago. This was, to put it mildly, a surprise. Homo naledi shows an intriguing mix of characteristics  —   a small brain, curved fingers (apparently an adaptation related to  ) and certain   joints but more   teeth, hands (except for the finger curvature) legs, and feet. The suspicion, since the fossils were first discovered by Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand and his team at Rising Star cave in 2013 (described here in 2015) was that they were perhaps as old as two million years. As described in the new paper, the far more recent date  —   somewhere in the range between 335, 000 and 236, 000 years old  —   was derived by a combination of six different techniques, including dating of flowstone residues on the   walls and ESR, or electronic spin resonance, dating of tooth enamel from Homo naledi. Published on Tuesday in conjunction with the journal article, Berger’s new book Almost Human tells the story of Homo naledi’s discovery in a deep and inaccessible chamber of the Rising Star cave. The excavation gained fame worldwide for several reasons: 15 hominin individuals were found, the single largest cache of ancient humans ever uncovered in Africa. Plus, the expedition was filmed as it happened  —   not to mention tweeted and    —   resulting in a joint   Geographic documentary that coincided with the first journal publication. Berger’s final chapter focuses on the new information coming out of Rising Star  —   the excavation of a second chamber with more Homo naledi individuals, the process of coming up with the recent date  —   and on making a case for intentional ”depositing” of bodies as the reason the fossils ended up in the two cave chambers. Berger could tell early on that the hominin individuals had not been dragged by carnivores or washed by moving waters to their final resting place in the original cave chamber. The excavation of the second chamber has now led him to even more certainty about as to the explanation. Berger writes: ”One thing was certain. No accident, no cave collapse, no death trap. .. could account for these two chambers, far from one another within one cave system, both full of remains of the same ancient hominins. Granted, it is hard to be definitive as you make the leap between the scientific evidence and your best guess about ancient behavior. But. .. the best hypothesis to account for these fossils is that Homo naledi used their chambers intentionally as places to deposit their dead.” The upshot, then, as Berger sees it, is that Homo naledi may have carried out quite complex behaviors, despite a small brain and during a relatively recent time period that might have overlapped with our immediate ancestors. (Our own species Homo sapiens is first known from Africa only at 200, 000 years ago, so we are ”younger” than Homo naledi.) My own work about response to death is in the area of expressed grief in a variety of animals  —   not in   of bodies after death. Still, based on what I have learned, I don’t think it’s out of the question at all that a   species with a small brain might have curated its dead in the way Berger describes. Sarah Wild, writing at Nature underscores, though, that these claims aren’t accepted by everyone. Paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London told her: ”Although no other satisfactory explanation for the deposition of the remains has yet been proposed, many experts, including myself, consider such complex behavior [burial of the dead] unlikely for a creature with a brain size close to that of a gorilla, particularly when a requirement for the controlled use of fire (for lighting) probably has to be added in.” I truly love this kind of debate and discussion about our past  —   about the evolutionary trajectory that resulted in this ability to debate and discuss our origins, in a way that no other species does. Certainly, the new date forces us to think hard in new ways. As Sarah Zhang writes in The Atlantic on Tuesday: ”The discovery that another hominin, so different from us, lived as recently as 236, 000 years ago adds more mystery to the question of why humans are the only surviving members of this once diverse family. ...It’s still too soon to know exactly how we’re related to Homo naledi and why we survived but they didn’t. Whatever the answer, it will force us to consider what it means to be human.” Three weeks before the Homo naledi announcement, a team of paleontologists and archaeologists led by Steven Holen of the San Diego Natural History Museum presented evidence from a mastodon site in coastal California to suggest that North America was first colonized by people  —   perhaps Neanderthals or another ancient species  —   130, 000 years ago. This, too, was a major surprise the accepted wisdom had been that people arrived on this continent only about 14, 500 years ago. The heart of the argument in this case rests on dating techniques  —   and on the way the thick mastodon bones had been processed with hammerstones and anvils. In that case, too, intense debates and discussions resulted. Hannah Hoag, writing in Sapiens magazine, notes: ”Many experts remain unconvinced. [David] Meltzer [of Southern Methodist University] and others say it doesn’t show that people were the only force that could have fractured the bones and modified the stones. [John] McNabb [at the University of Southampton] points to the lack of corroborating tools, such as   stone tools like flakes or scrapers, which are typically found at butchery sites of the same age or older. In both cases  —   with Homo naledi and with the California mastodon site  —   that fierce scrutiny both during and after   publication is exactly how it should be. If both studies hold up, they represent dizzying changes to our understanding of our own evolutionary trajectory. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s new book is Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"Town hall meetings got loud for some Republican members of Congress this week, as they defended the passage of the American Health Care Act by the House of Representatives. Constituents have been asking a lot of questions, and we’ve been   the answers given by some leading GOP lawmakers. Tom Reed,  . Y. at a town hall meeting in his district, ”The   reform is not repealed by this legislation.” Fact check: That’s not the whole truth, Reed was responding to a constituent who was concerned about a child with severe allergies: ”His   and deductibles will be through the roof,” the parent told Reed, ”because he’s going to be in a   pool  —   because he has a   condition.” ”No, no, no,” Reed told the parent. The bill does have language that says insurers cannot deny people coverage or charge them more just because they have a   condition. However, the GOP bill also has an enormous loophole in that regard. The plan allows states to apply for waivers from the federal government that get them out of many of the regulations put in place under the Affordable Care Act  —   including one that bans insurance companies from charging people with   conditions more for a health plan. A waiver would allow insurance companies to consider a person’s health status when determining what to charge for coverage. And that means that although someone with a   condition who lives in a state that got a waiver would have to be offered a policy, it could be very expensive. Steve Scalise,  . on Fox News this week, ”No matter what kind of plan you have today,” Scalise told Fox News, ”if you have a   condition, under our bill, you cannot be denied coverage and you cannot be charged more than anybody else.” Fact check: Not exactly true, Scalise, like Reed, is pointing to the language in the bill that retains the Obamacare rules that prohibit insurers from charging people with expensive medical conditions more than their neighbors of the same age for an insurance policy. But the state waivers allow insurers a way around that guarantee. Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies denied coverage or charged more if the person who wanted insurance had any of a long list of conditions  —   including arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, muscular dystrophy, obesity and sleep apnea, according to a list compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation from insurers’ underwriting guidelines. Insurers also could refuse to cover many medications, including drugs that treat cancer, diabetes, AIDS or arthritis, according to Kaiser. If you have cancer and buy insurance that doesn’t pay for your cancer treatment, your   condition is effectively excluded. Rod Blum,   at a town hall in Dubuque  ”If you’re getting your insurance through the group health care marketplace  —   your employer  —   nothing changes,” Blum told constituents this week. ”If you’re getting your health insurance through Medicare, nothing’s going to change. If you’re currently getting your health insurance through Medicaid, nothing’s going to change.” Fact check: Partly false, Blum’s statement refers to a couple of big things  —   employer coverage and Medicaid. As to employer coverage, whether your insurance would change under the GOP bill depends on whether your company is based  —   and buys its insurance  —   in a state that gets a waiver. In ”waiver states,” employers’ insurance policies might  no longer be subject to Obamacare regulations around   essential health benefits  —   the minimal benefits that must be included in a policy. They also might no longer be subject to restrictions on annual and lifetime spending caps. That means, in those states, your   health insurance policy could deny coverage for some categories of care, such as mental health care or maternity coverage. And the health plan could impose annual or lifetime limits on insurance benefits. So workers with very expensive conditions, or their family members with such conditions, could see their costs pile up  —   even if they have health coverage through work. Before Obamacare, about 60 percent of employers had lifetime limits on their health plans. Blum’s second statement  —   the one in regard to Medicaid  —   is false. The GOP health bill makes major changes to Medicaid, first by rolling back the expansion of the program over time. The bill allows people to keep their expanded Medicaid as long as they remain eligible. But people at or near the poverty level often see their incomes fluctuate, making them temporarily ineligible for the health care program. Under the GOP bill, once they leave the Medicaid rolls, they likely would not be able to return, even if their income declines. That’s because the federal government would pay a lower share of their costs and most analysts  —  including those at the Congressional Budget Office  —   believe that most states are unlikely to continue the expanded coverage at the higher cost. In addition, the bill fundamentally changes how the U. S. government finances Medicaid. States would receive a fixed amount of money from the federal government for each beneficiary, rather than an amount that varies according to the numbers of Medicaid beneficiaries and their health care needs. Most analysts say that, over time, the level of services Medicaid could provide would decline if the GOP health bill becomes law, and the states would have to cut back on services. That forecast is borne out by the Congressional Budget Office, which said the changes to Medicaid would cut the costs of the program by $880 billion over 10 years. Many services provided by Medicaid today, including home health care and services for people with disabilities, are considered ”optional” under the GOP health bill. Those are also the services that help keep people out of hospitals and nursing homes."
"Lawmakers in the House of Representatives are back in their home districts for a recess this week. After seeing the reception some of their colleagues got in previous town   meetings following the election of Donald Trump, most House Republicans are skipping them. But a handful are diving in headfirst. On Monday night, a few days after voting in favor of the House bill to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act, Rep. Elise Stefanik, 32, from Northern New York, held a town hall at a public television station. Stefanik is a moderate Republican in her second term. She’s also the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. After refusing for weeks to say how she planned to vote, she was one of a handful of   ”yes” votes for the GOP health care bill. Also on Monday, the Washington Post reported that the crowd at Republican Rep. Rod Blum’s town hall in Iowa drowned the representative out as he tried to reassure them that ”if you’re getting your insurance through the group health insurance, nothing changes.” ”That’s not true, that’s not true!” the crowd shouted, at one point drowning him out, according to the Post. He also received boos and the audience held up red sheets of paper to signal they disagreed with him. Back in Plattsburgh, N. Y. Stefanik got an earful about her ”yes” vote from her constituents. Because of limits on space, 100 people chosen by lottery were allowed in for the taping. Many of those who weren’t selected  —   about 250 of Stefanik’s critics  —   protested outside. ”Shame. Shame. Shame,” they chanted. A few protesters were dressed as the angel of death, and they carried a fake coffin with a list of   conditions scrawled on it. The protesters got there early to greet Stefanik, but the congresswoman arrived even earlier. Stefanik welcomed the audience in the studio, saying she looked forward to ”a respectful give and take.” ”I know there’s a lot of questions on people’s minds and many people particularly want to hear about health care. So I’m looking forward to answering those questions,” she said. The room felt icy and tense. The event remained orderly  —   it was taped and livestreamed, which seemed to help keep a lid on things. Still, outrage kept rumbling to the surface. When Stefanik answered one question about ”why the rich are getting tax breaks” under the House Republicans’ health care bill, some in the crowd detected a dodge and they started heckling. ”It is true  —   Obamacare increased taxes on Americans across the board on cost of health care,” Stefanik said before the crowd interrupted. Moderator Thom Hallock asked them to quiet down. ”Our legislation repeals the Obamacare taxes, whether it’s the medical device tax, the tax on high quality health care plans. We repeal the tax, the health insurance tax. That will help lower costs,” she said. ”You didn’t answer the question,” someone called out. No one other than Stefanik had anything good to say about the bill. Nina Matteau, a breast cancer survivor, said the GOP plan includes loopholes that threaten people with   conditions. ”Can you explain how this constitutes better health care at lower premiums as promised?” Matteau asked. ”There is language in the American Health Care Act that explicitly prohibits insurers from not accepting patients that have   conditions,” Stefanik said, pointing people to a House GOP website for the bill. ”That was an important provision.” The Republican plan does give insurance companies more flexibility when dealing with customers with   conditions. It also rolls back federal support for the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, something that also prompted jeers from the crowd. The audience wasn’t completely critical  —   some applauded Stefanik for taking climate change seriously  —   but she didn’t win over the room. Several people on their way out said Stefanik wasn’t really listening, and her answers seemed canned. Stefanik said she heard the frustration. She also said repealing Obamacare was one of her earliest campaign promises. ”I know there are certain areas where we’re going to disagree, but it’s my job to listen,” she said. ”And I think I did that tonight.”"
"Companies that provide cell phone service are constantly racing to provide the most reliable signal. In Wisconsin, one of the providers has turned to a surprising option to get the job done: draft horses. The horses are helping U. S. Cellular upgrade equipment on about 200 cell towers in Wisconsin, some of which are served by    access roads. ”We call them roads. They’re more of a path,” says Brandi Vandenberg, the company’s regional planning manager for engineering. ”So when you don’t have a firm structure to travel on, any type of inclement weather can make it a challenge.” Wisconsin’s deep snow and heavy rains can make the access roads all but impassable for trucks. Vandenberg says with construction planned at so many tower sites, the company has a tight timetable for delivering equipment and scheduling technicians to install it. Jason Agathen, a driver for CH Coakley, the logistics company hired to coordinate the tower upgrades, knows how tricky the access roads can be. Agathen has delivered thousands of pounds of electronics gear to the cell tower sites. One trip, he says, involved snow so deep it blew the transmission on an ATV. So the company hired farmer Jason Julian of Medford, Wisc. and his draft horses to keep the tower upgrades on track. Julian uses draft horses to do much of the work on his organic dairy farm and for a horse logging business during the winter. His Belgian Brabant are the type of working horses that were common on Wisconsin farms before motor vehicles took over much of their work. ”They’re   heavily muscled. They’re easy keepers, very   very easy horses to be around. Very easy horses to train,” he says. Julian raises and trains the horses. For the last few months, he’s been loading two or three of them into a horse trailer a couple times each week, and hauling it with his pickup truck to remote cell phone towers. On a recent morning, he took along Hannah, a bay roan, and Billings, a blue roan. As he approaches the cell tower, he surveys the surrounding fields. ”Look at the end of the field. Do you see the water shining in the dead furrows in the end of the field? That tells you how muddy everything is. There’s just water sitting,” he says. Julian pulls over on the highway’s shoulder, followed by his wife, Katrina, who’s in a second pickup hauling a wooden wagon with a flat bottom and low sides. The two attach the horses to each other as Julian prepares to get to work. ”I’m getting ready to hook them to the wagon and get ready for the truck to arrive, so when the truck arrives we have a minimal, minimal amount of downtime time to deliver the freight,” Julian says. Soon after, the delivery truck drives up. Julian hops into the wagon and instructs his horses to back up to the truck. The workers transfer their cargo to the wagon, unloading a   boxes, each holding an   antenna. Julian then leads his team to the base of the cell tower. It’s only about 300 yards away, but out of reach for the big delivery truck, which would have become mired in the muck. ”This is a cakewalk for them,” Julian says. ”They’re used to being in the woods with me in   snow and mud, and have a 1, 500 pound log hooked behind them. So this is pretty easy stuff for them.” Julian says each load for the cell tower upgrades is usually about 2, 000 pounds. Although that’s heavier than a log, he says it’s not a challenge for the horses because most of the sites are on relatively flat terrain. Yet he says one recent delivery was tougher than the others. It was in a hilly area called West Salem. Julian says it took his team about 90 minutes to make the steep climb to the tower. ”It had constant switchbacks, super steep, just unbelievable terrain, and we made it,” he says. ”[W]e had to use a piece of firewood actually to block the [wagon’s] tires. About every 40 or 50 yards towards the top we’d block the tires and give the horses a breather.” One of the horses working that job was pregnant, and when she later gave birth, Julian named the foal Salem in recognition of the tough cell tower job. Agathen says he gets a kick out of the fact that horses have proven essential to the U. S. Cellular project. ”I’m from the city, so I don’t get to see a lot of horses to begin with. And seeing what he can do with them, it’s amazing to begin with. The control he has  —   and they’ve been using horses since the beginning of time from way back then to now. It’s pretty neat,” Agathen says. CH Coakley says it won’t hesitate to use horses again, the next time modern vehicles fail to get the job done."
"On April 28, the magazine LensCulture posted a photo of what appeared to be a man raping a girl who looks like a young teenager. The magazine  —   which has nearly a million Facebook followers  —   was using the photo to promote a competition in partnership with Magnum Photos, which cost $60 to enter 10 photos. ”Don’t miss out!” the post said, a few sentences above the photo. The caption said the girl is 16 and is being forced to have sexual interactions with a ”client” in the   district of Kolkata, called Sonagachi. The girl is on her back, looking up at the camera, with a naked man on top of her. Her face is in full view. Her identity is not concealed. Based on the content of the photo and its caption, the photo violated UNICEF’s ethical guidelines on reporting on children by showing her face, which makes her identifiable, according to human rights activists. The agency writes: ”Always change the name and obscure the visual identity of any child who is identified as a victim of sexual abuse or exploitation.” The photo infuriated human rights activists and photojournalists. ”I’ve seen some moral bankruptcy in photojournalism, but this is the most extreme,” says Benjamin Chesterton at Duckrabbit, a film production and training company, who first wrote about the photo. ”This is a photo of a child sex slave being used to promote a   competition by Magnum  —   the most prestigious photo agency in the world.” The incident also brings attention to a broader issue in photojournalism, Chesterton says: How the Western media depicts  —   and often demeans  —   young women and girls in poor countries. ”This is the elephant in the room: how we view the suffering of distant others,” says human rights activist Robert Godden of Rights Exposure, which helps nonprofits and governments create effective and ethical campaigns. ”What if this photo series was taken in the U. S. or the U. K.  —   would the girl have been presented this way?” He adds, ”Another good question to ask is: If this was a family member of mine, would I want them portrayed like this?” Amid a barrage of protests from readers, photojournalists and human rights activists, LensCulture took down the photo hours after it was posted. ”But at this point, the magazine said nothing,” Chesterton says. ”There was no statement, no acknowledgment of the absolute human rights abuse of that young woman, of that child.” Two days after the image first went up, LensCulture issued an apology on Facebook for making a ”serious mistake in judgment” in presenting the photo ”out of context.” But the magazine defended the photo and its photographer, Souvid Datta: We’d like to emphasize that we believe the work of the photographer was carried out with great ethical care and in close collaboration with the subject portrayed by contrast, our own posting was hasty and presented the situation without proper context. Datta did not respond to NPR’s email request for an interview. Within a few days of the controversy’s start, the validity and ethics of some of Datta’s other work came under fire. Datta has been a highly regarded photojournalist since starting his career in 2013. He has won several prestigious awards, including ones from Getty Images and Magnum Photos. And his work has appeared in The New York Times and National Geographic. On Thursday, Datta admitted to Time to doctoring images. The photo of the girl led to a closer look at Datta’s other work, which led to accusations of plagiarism. He admitted to taking a portion of a photo from influential photographer Mary Ellen Mark and inserting it into his own work without attributing it to her. He also admitted to taking other people’s photographs and submitting them in photo competitions. At that point, LensCulture changed its view. On Thursday, May 4, the magazine’s CEO Kamran Mohsenin told NPR that they no longer believed the photo was ”taken with great ethical care.” ”Clearly that picture, in particular, is not appropriate in any context,” Kamran says. Shortly after LensCulture spoke with NPR, the magazine issued a new apology on Facebook: ”We condemn the lack of ethical standards used to create the photograph in question, and we apologize for publishing the photograph (which should never be published anywhere).” Renowned photojournalist Donna Ferrato agrees that the photo is not appropriate in any context. ”There’s no editorial value at all to this image. It’s sensational, and it’s incredibly damaging to the victim,” says Ferrato, who did groundbreaking work documenting domestic violence in the U. S. ”When I first saw the photo used in the ad by LensCulture, I was really devastated,” she says. ”It disgusted me that there are two men in the room with this young girl. There’s the ’client,’ paying to have sex with her. And behind the client, stands the photographer, who has been paid, through grant money, to take photographs of the girl being used. ”All this photo says is, ’We men are in power, and we can do anything we want. The photographer can do anything he wants,’ ” Ferrato adds. Last week, Datta, the photographer, posted a comment about the photo and the controversy to his Facebook page, which has been taken down. In the statement, he said he was ”horrified” that the photo was used to promote a competition. And the girl in the photo ”is now an adult and has given her consent to use her photo.” Datta also defended the image of the girl: She asked me to photograph this interaction  —   fully aware of my intention to publish this story widely in an attempt to create constructive awareness . .. Where some see the image and point to the anonymity of the client and apparently undignified exposure of an underage girl, I see the astounding resilience of a young woman who takes ownership of her reality  —   unlawful, deplorable and bleak though it is  —   and determines to be more than what her circumstances have forced upon her. I see a woman who wants to speak directly to viewers, saying if you actually want to understand my perspective ”then look into my eyes and see what I feel.” Human rights activist Godden doesn’t agree with Datta’s choice of showing the girl’s face in the photo. He says that shocking photos such as this one aren’t helping girls in Sonagachi, trapped as child sex slaves. ”Protection of children is always top priority,” Godden says. ”If this photo was exposing a practice that was unknown or hidden, then you could possibly justify exposing a child’s identity to document what’s happening.” Such an exception was made recently with child and adult slavery issues in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia and construction in the Middle East, Godden says. Another example is Nick Ut’s iconic war photo, showing a    girl, naked, running away from a napalm attack in Vietnam. Historians credit that photo with changing the public’s opinion about the war. In the case of child slaves in Sonagachi, Godden says, the problem has been well known to activists and governmental officials for years. ”Human rights activists have been working on this issue for decades,” he says. ”Awareness is not the problem, in my opinion. Now it’s about technical support to these girls and countering corruption in those country. It’s not about shocking photos.”"
"It was like two different hearings in one. Democrats quizzed former Obama administration officials on Russia, how former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn had been ”compromised” and how the White House officials conducted themselves when confronted with the information. Republicans wanted to know how the information got out in the first place. It was striking watching the two distinct focuses on a topic  —   national security  —   that shouldn’t be so hotly partisan. And the data bear out the different approaches. Democrats asked 3   times more questions than Republicans on Russia, Flynn and the White House’s conduct (142 versus 40). Republicans, meanwhile, were focused on leaks and the practice known as ”unmasking,” when an intelligence official asks for an American’s name to be   after being swept up in incidental surveillance of a foreign target. For example, when an incoming national security adviser is speaking on the phone with an ambassador from Russia. Republicans asked 65 questions on leaks and unmasking Democrats  —   zero. Democrats used the words ”Russia( ns)” or ”Flynn” 170 times Republicans just 56. (They only said Flynn’s name eight time total, when Democrats did so 75.) No Republican contradicted the veracity of the information brought forth by Sally Yates, who served as acting attorney general in Trump’s first month. She said she warned the White House that Flynn lied to the vice president about his conversation with the Russian ambassador that came the same day former President Obama leveled sanctions against Russian officials for Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Flynn was left in the job, with all of his clearances, for 18 days after Yates met with White House counsel Don McGahn. He was only let go after the information became public through news reports. California Democrat Dianne Feinstein handed out a timeline of Flynn’s involvement with Trump as the hearing began. (NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben also did one back in February after Flynn left the White House.) Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin pointed out some of the things Flynn was involved with in those 18 days when he was seen as compromised and able to be blackmailed, as Yates put it. ”Flynn continued to hire key senior staff on the National Security Council,” Durbin said, ”announced new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe along with President Trump at    and participated in discussions about responding to a North Korean missile launch and spoke repeatedly to the press about his communications with Russian Ambassador Kislyak.” Below are some questions that highlight the different approaches by Republicans and Democrats at Monday’s hearing: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island:  Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California: Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois: Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware: And on. .. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina: Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa: Sen. John Cornyn of Texas: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas: Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana:"
"The Federal Communications Commission’s public commenting system experienced delays Sunday night. That was the same night comedian John Oliver did a segment about net neutrality on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight and encouraged viewers to file comments on the FCC’s website. On Monday, the FCC said in a statement that the delay of service was not related to an overwhelming number of people filing comments. The agency blamed high traffic generated by cyber attackers who made ”deliberate attempts . .. to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic” which ”made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file.” On Tuesday, Sen. Ron Wyden,  . and Brian Schatz,   penned a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai asking for clarification on the attacks. ”A    attack against the FCC’s website can prevent the public from being able to contribute to this process and have their voices heard,” the letter read. ”Any potentially hostile cyber activities that prevent Americans from being able to participate in a fair and transparent process must be treated as a serious issue.” The letter focuses on the source and nature of the attacks. The senators ask the FCC chair to address the duration of the attacks, evidence of who the responsible parties may be and if the FCC has sought out assistance from other federal agencies in investigating these attacks. The senators ask that the chairman provide a response to their questions by June 8, and brief Congress on their investigation into the attacks."
"Meet Beibeilong sinensis, the most recently identified dinosaur species. The name means ”baby dragon from China.” The dinosaur had massive feathered wings and a birdlike skull. It probably looked most like a cassowary, flightless birds slightly smaller than an ostrich. But the Beibeilong was much bigger than any currently living bird, according to a study published in Nature Communications. Based on comparisons with close relatives, the birdlike dinosaur probably weighed about 3 tons and could grow up to 26 feet long. In 1993, farmers in China found a Beibeilong embryo and eggs in Henan province. The fossils were sold to an American fossil company called The Stone Co. and brought to the United States. A model of an embryo curled inside an egg was famously featured on the May 1996 cover of National Geographic and was nicknamed ”Baby Louie.” But nobody knew what kind of dinosaur Baby Louie was. The eggs weighed about 11 pounds, making them some of the largest dinosaur eggs ever uncovered. Some people thought they might have come from a tyrannosaur. ”The eggs looked very much like eggs that were known to belong to oviraptorosaurs,” said Darla Zelenitsky, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary who studied the eggs firsthand in the 1990s. ”But these eggs with the specimen were eight to 10 times the volume of other known eggs [of oviraptorosaurs].” In the 1990s, all of the known species of oviraptorosaur were small creatures. ”There’s no way they were laying a   to   egg,” Zelenitsky says. Then, in 2007, scientists in China discovered the first species of giant oviraptorosaur. ”So finally, after 12 years, there is a species of oviraptorosaur that could have laid these giant oviraptorosaurlike eggs,” Zelenitsky says. If Beibeilong nested like its smaller oviraptorosaur cousins did, it would be the largest known dinosaur to have sat protectively on its eggs. Studying these dinosaurs is difficult because there are only three known sets of skeletal remains of giant oviraptorosaurs. So there’s a lot more to learn about Beibeilong, but at least we know what ”Baby Louie” really was."
"Old rocks found in the Australian Outback have some weighty implications, scientists say: They hint at the environment in which life on Earth originated and suggest a location to search for life on Mars. Scientists in Australia say they have found biological signatures of life in rocks that also show the presence of a hot spring, lending weight to a theory that the earliest life on Earth might have originated in freshwater hot springs on land rather than in   hydrothermal vents. The fossil finding predates the previous oldest evidence for life on land by almost 600 million years, the scientists say. They described their findings in the journal Nature Communications. For decades, the rock formation known as the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia has provided scientists with early evidence of life, NPR contributor Marcelo Gleiser recently explained: ”The dates there can be pushed to 3. 48 billion years ago. How do scientists date such old rocks? Using   radioactive decay techniques based on unstable isotopes found on the site. (In other words, they look for radioactive minerals near the old life sites and date them together.) Interestingly, chemical fingerprints from the mineralization process show that those living creatures had already a complex metabolism, indicating that earlier, simpler life existed.” Scientists initially thought the area had been filled with shallow water later evidence suggested it may have been volcanic. But samples collected by University of New South Wales scientist Tara Djokic provided what she called a ”smoking gun” that the area  —   now a barren wilderness  —   was once home to a volcanic hot springs system. She says the rocks there contain deposits of geyserite, a material found only in a hot springs environment. In those same rocks, researchers found what they call ”a suite of microbial biosignatures indicative of the earliest life on land.” Those include multiple ”textures” associated with life, such as stromatolites  —   described as ”layered rock structures created by communities of ancient microbes.” There are also preserved bubbles in the rock. And while it’s not entirely clear how they were formed, Djokic says the fact that they were preserved for billions of years suggests the bubbles were once trapped within a sticky substance associated with microbial activity, rather than simply gas. Scientists have long debated whether early life it was fueled by chemicals in   hydrothermal vents or, alternatively, in a hot   environment, as Charles Darwin once suggested in a 1871 letter to a friend: ”But if (and oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity etcetera present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes.” This recent finding, Djokic says, is ”a geological perspective saying actually, really early on we’re already seeing life on land. So it just lends weight potentially to an argument suggesting that the origin of life on land might be something to consider.” It could also suggest where to look in the search for life on Mars. NASA is currently considering where to land the rover on its 2020 Mars Exploration Mission, and one of the sites is a ”hot   setting,” about the same age as the early Earth, Djokic says. ”If you’re going to look for life on Mars, we know it was preserved on hot springs here on the ancient earth,” she says. ”So there’s a good chance if it ever developed on Mars, then it would probably be preserved in hot springs there, too.” Djokic and her colleagues participated in a February NASA workshop that narrowed down the   candidates to three from eight, including the hot   site. Studies on ancient fossils are often controversial, and this one is no exception. MIT’s Tanja Bosak, who specializes in signatures of microbial processes in ancient sedimentary rocks, tells NPR that she is thinks more evidence is needed to prove the bubbles were formed through biological stabilization. She says relating the results to Mars ”is taking this a step too far.” But Djokic says the rocks are so   that the scientists were able to observe multiple clear signs of life in an ancient, volcanic hot springs setting. These patterns are ”exactly what we see in modern hot springs. So it fits the bigger picture of these converging lines of evidence, and that’s what makes the argument in the case so strong.”"
"When you’re facing a major life change, it helps to talk to someone who has already been through it. All Things Considered is connecting people on either side of a shared experience, and they’re letting us eavesdrop on their conversations in our series Been There. Life as a farmer isn’t easy. There’s the financial risk, the unforgiving schedule, the sheer volume of physical labor it demands. Those were the kind of things on Carmen Black’s mind one summer a couple of years ago. She was picking melons on her neighbor’s farm in Iowa, where she’d been working as a farmhand for a few years. Carmen says her neighbor told her, ”I just want to let you know that I’m going to retire in like less than two years, and I know you said you’re not ready to farm and you’re not sure how you’re going to make it happen, so I’m just letting you know I’m retiring.” Carmen’s reaction: ”Oh no!” Eventually her neighbor won her over. Carmen took over the farm last year  —   and the risk that comes along with owning it. She says she spends a lot of time thinking about threats like an extreme weather event that devastates her crops or a dog attack that kills her sheep  —   ”things that could just wipe me out in an instant.” Don Bustos has experience dealing with problems like these. He’s been farming for nearly four decades and still runs Santa Cruz Farm in northern New Mexico. One year, he tells Carmen, he even had to sell his tractor. ”I got to the spring and I didn’t have enough money to buy seeds or to pay my laborers,” he says. So he got his fields ready with the tractor and then sold it. He says it took him five years to save enough to buy another one. Don says those challenges are what make the work fulfilling. ”I went through these struggles, and look, I’m still successful,” he says. On coping with the financial risk, The people that I come from left Europe and Spain during the Inquisition. So there’s this whole thing about escaping and coming to a new land and struggling to survive. But to do that, you have to have a certain faith. And my dad told me, when he told me to sell my truck, and I go, ”Well, what am I gonna do,” and he goes, ”Tenga fe. Have a little faith.” Have a little faith, and then having good friends and family, and then the other part was, work hard. On balancing farming and family, I would get up with one of those head lamps, and I would go pick sweet corn at 1 o’clock in the morning, so that I would have fresh sweet corn at 6 for the farmer’s market. And I’m not the only one that’s done insane things like that. But then, at some time, you gotta say ”No, I gotta give that up, man. That ain’t gonna work. No, I gotta figure out a better lifestyle and a balance.” On his hopes for the future, One thing I really look forward to is having people take over. So now that I’m getting older I’m thinking about my son and my nephew and my daughter and my nieces. And, when I pass away, I’m hoping that that’s like one of the last things I think about is that, man, I’m leaving something that other people want to do and they’re gonna follow through with  —   something that’s healthy, something that’s beautiful. Because it’s meaningful when you grow food and you see that beautiful cabbage turning green from the water you gave it, and those tomatoes taste better because you sweated right on that tomato plant to make it that much sweeter. Those are the types of rewards that I look forward to. Freelance producers Emily Forman (@emilylforman) and Julia Botero (@jbott661) contributed to this report."
"Drug resistant tuberculosis is expected to increase globally over the next two decades. New research predicts a steady rise in TB cases that can’t be cured with conventional,   antibiotics in four countries. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forecast that these complicated  —   and potentially deadly  —   cases of TB will become far more common in Russia, India, the Philippines and South Africa by the year 2040. ”  resistant TB is going to increase to about 30 percent of cases in Russia,” says Peter Cegielski with the CDC’s Global TB Branch and the senior author of the new report. ”It [drug resistant TB] will get to about 10 percent in India and the Philippines and probably about 5 percent in South Africa.” These four countries already have the bulk of the world’s drug resistant tuberculosis. Because the disease is highly contagious, things look like they’re going to get worse before they get better, even with major efforts to curtail the spread. Last year according to the World Health Organization, there were more than 10 million new cases of TB (both   and regular) globally and nearly 2 million   deaths. Even the simplest cases are difficult to treat. ”Plain TB is curable with six to nine months of treatment,” says Cegielski at the CDC. ”Treatment rates for multidrug resistant TB and extensively drug resistant TB are far worse. Mortality rates for MDR are around 30 percent and as high as 80 percent for XDR. That’s worse than most cancers.” Treatment for drug resistant TB can take up to two years, involve daily injections of highly toxic drugs and can come with severe side effects including psychosis and hearing loss. Some new strains have emerged that aren’t treatable at all. These cases are labeled ”totally drug resistant” because the infections don’t respond to any available antibiotics. The fatality rate is 100 percent. Part of what’s terrifying about tuberculosis  —   and particularly   TB  —   is that the bacteria spread through the air. Someone with TB can cough in a room and potentially infect many other people. ”It’s airborne [and] bacilli can remain suspended in the room for hours depending on the ventilation,” says Cegielski. ”So anybody in the room can be exposed and infected. And it doesn’t have to be a room, it can be any enclosed environment  —   a store, a bus, any place like that.” Because treatment is so complicated Cegielski says there needs to a lot more attention to preventing new infections in the first place. ”Airborne infection control in most countries, particularly in hospitals and clinics, is rudimentary at best or even ” he says. ”It’s really only practiced in affluent countries.”"
"Updated at 5:45 p. m. ET, The Department of Energy has declared an emergency at a   site in Washington state, after soil caved in over a portion of a tunnel containing rail cars contaminated with nuclear waste. ”All personnel in the immediate area have been accounted for  —   they are safe  —   and there is no evidence of a radiological release,” Destry Henderson, spokesperson for the Hanford site’s emergency operations center, said in a brief statement on Facebook. Some employees were evacuated and others were told to move indoors as a ”precaution,” officials say. Anna King of the Northwest News Network, a public radio station collaboration, reports that approximately 3, 000 other workers in the area were originally taking cover indoors. Nonessential employees have since been sent home, and essential employees were instructed to avoid the site of the tunnel. There are no reports of injuries. The Hanford Site, about 150 miles southeast of Seattle, is a former nuclear production complex and home to a   challenging and sometimes troubled cleanup operation. It’s generally regarded as the most contaminated nuclear site in America. The Department of Energy says it’s the most challenging of the government’s nuclear cleanup projects, with millions of tons and hundreds of billions of gallons of nuclear waste. The Department of Energy says a      section of soil caved in where two underground tunnels meet next to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, known as the PUREX plant. The   was discovered during routine surveillance. The tunnels in question were storing rail cars that once carried radioactive nuclear fuel from reactors to production facilities, back when the site was still used to manufacture nuclear weapons. Each tunnel is hundreds of feet long, the Hanford Site says, made of wood and concrete and covered with about 8 feet of soil. A    section appears to have collapsed. ”There is no indication of a release of contamination at this point,” the Department of Energy says. ”Officials continue to monitor the air and are working on how they will fix the hole in the tunnel roof,” the Hanford Emergency Information site announced. ”They are looking at options that would provide a barrier between the contaminated equipment in the tunnel and the outside air that would not cause the hole in the tunnel’s roof to widen.” The site of the collapse had been previously identified as a potential hazard, the Northwest News Network writes: ”In 2015, a preliminary report identified the tunnels and the PUREX facility as a major risk area on the Hanford site. The report concluded if the tunnels collapsed, from an earthquake or another natural cause, it could pose a risk to workers because of the highly contaminated railcars stored inside. ”Between 1960 and 1965, eight rail cars were pushed inside one tunnel, full of radioactive waste. Another tunnel was constructed in 1964 to hold 40 additional railcars.” The governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, says there are ”many questions” about how the collapse happened, reports member station Oregon Public Broadcasting. ”We’ll have to get to the bottom of that,” he said. ”At the moment we’re focusing on the safety of workers and making sure there’s no release beyond [the] immediate site.” OPB described the Hanford site, and the challenges of cleaning up nuclear waste, late last year, as part of a project about the environmental impact of the U. S. military in the Northwest: ”Hanford is the nation’s largest nuclear cleanup site, with 56 million gallons of radioactive waste sitting in old, leaky underground tanks just a few hours upriver from Portland. After more than 20 years and $19 billion[,] not a drop of waste has been treated. ”Hanford sits next to the Columbia River. It was one of the original Manhattan Project sites. Its nine nuclear reactors irradiated uranium fuel rods. That created plutonium, which was extracted with chemicals, processed and shipped to weapons factories. Each step produced radioactive waste. . .. ”The stored waste has to be treated in special rooms called black cells, which are too radioactive for humans to enter. The machinery in these black cells is supposed to operate for 40 years with no direct human intervention. If something goes wrong, the cells could be damaged.” The treatment plant was originally supposed to be finished in 2007, but the deadline has been extended several times, OPB reports."
"Cuba is not an easy place to buy things. Food is rationed, wages are low, and the black market is a way of life. But now, Cubans can buy shirts with those little alligators on them at Lacoste. Or at L’Occitane en Provence, face cream for $162. 40 an ounce. Or watches in the $10, 000s. Cuba’s first luxury mall, Manzana de Gomez, opened up a few weeks ago. And while those items are for sale, the prices are in a different sphere from what most Cubans can afford. Indeed, the stores’ envisioned clientele seems to be tourists from abroad, rather than locals, and the new mall puts their differing means in high relief. ”A few blocks away,   Cubans live in decaying apartments on streets clogged by uncollected trash,” reports the AP: ”This hurts because I can’t buy anything,” said Rodolfo Hernandez Torres, a    retired electrical mechanic who lives on a salary of $12. 50 a month. ”There are people who can come here to buy things but it’s maybe one in 10. Most of the country doesn’t have the money.” Gaviota, the Cuban military’s tourism company, is the dealmaker behind the mall  —   and above it, the country’s first   hotel, opening in June. European luxury hotel brand Kempinski will operate the hotel, in a management deal with Gaviota. (American companies aren’t allowed to build in Cuba.) ”Gaviota is among the   companies under the umbrella of GAESA, a sprawling conglomerate run by the Cuban military,” the Miami Herald explained in February. ”As a Cuban tourism enterprise, Gaviota’s portfolio includes 64 hotels and villas with more than 27, 000 rooms in the 3, 4 and 5 star categories, marinas, a tour company and Transgaviota, a transportation services company.” Despite the company’s state ownership, a press release about the forthcoming hotel doesn’t sound like a socialist tract. ”With its impeccable   history,   luxury and extraordinary quality, Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group Kempinski is a perfect fit with the Manzana de Gómez,” says Carlos M. Latuff, executive president of Grupo de Turismo Gaviota, according to the statement. ”Constructed at the beginning of the 20th century, as Cuba’s first   shopping arcade, it is an iconic building in an important historical area. Together with Kempinski we will make this jewel the city’s leading luxury hotel.” Last summer, well before the luxury watches and face creams were for sale, the project’s construction brought its own controversy. In July, Reuters reported that Bouygues, the French construction group building the hotel, had hired 100 Indian laborers to work on the project, ”breaking a taboo in the   country on hiring foreign labor.” The wire service reported that it was the first time a firm had hired foreign workers en masse, seemingly to finish the hotel faster in order to meet increased tourism demands: ”[F]oreign firms are required to partner with   construction companies that have strict limits on how much they can pay Cubans. They can pay foreign workers more, however. ’The Cuban workers are not paid well so there is little motivation,’ a western diplomat familiar with the pay differential said, requesting anonymity due to diplomatic protocol. ’The Indian workers are being paid around 1, 500 Euros a month, more than 10 times what their Cuban counterparts receive.’ ” The Cuban government bars foreign firms from hiring local workers directly, the Herald explained in August, and instead forces them to hire through state labor agencies. The newspaper says that Cubans hired for construction work through a labor agency receive $25 to $30 a month. As Cuba tries to grow its tourism industry, the AP reports that it’s ”under pressure to change its   hotels’ reputation for charging exorbitant prices for rooms and food far below international standards.” Airlines jockeyed for routes from the U. S. to Havana after President Obama began opening up relations with the country in December 2014. But as Bloomberg reported in February, U. S. demand hasn’t been as strong as many expected, and some airlines have started cutting flights. In Old Havana, Cubans have been exploring the new mall, taking photos amidst goods that would perhaps take a lifetime to buy. Just 90 miles away in America, nine U. S. retail chains have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year, in a country with 23 square feet of shopping center space for each person, the highest of anywhere in the world."
", A small group of   citizens from around New England celebrated their dual German citizenship at an understated ceremony last week at the German consulate office in Boston. One of those in attendance was    Larry Klein, of Newton, whose parents were German refugees from Nazi Germany. His mother and father fled to the U. S. in 1939 and 1940, respectively. His grandparents on his father’s side were killed in Germany during the Holocaust and he says his family’s relationship with its German heritage has always been complicated. Reports of   incidents in the U. S. are up 86 percent so far this year, according to data released by the   League. With that increase comes a new wave of interest in a   German law reinstating German citizenship to Holocaust refugees and their descendants. ”It’s kind of actually ironic and surprising to be doing this only because I grew up in a family where going to Germany was anathema,” Klein said. ”There’s no way would we ever visit Germany. My grandmother wanted to teach us German as children and my parents told her, ’No, no don’t do that. ’” But Klein says he will be going to Germany  —   and he’ll be doing so as a dual German citizen. The process he just completed is a constitutionally enshrined right established in   War II Germany allowing for the restoration of citizenship that was illegally deprived to German Jews under Nazi rule. For many in the room, there’s both a practical and symbolic motivation for restoring their families’ German citizenship. For Klein and his wife, it means easier travel around Europe. And also, a sort of plan B  —   something to keep in his back pocket amid what he calls an increase in the acceptance of hate speech here in the U. S. ”The tone of this country at this point in time is disturbing. A country like Germany which, you know, has this history that obviously my family’s well aware of, espouses the beliefs and philosophy that actually is the way I’d like a country to behave,” said Klein. ”So, things come around in very interesting ways.” Klein’s been thinking about starting the process for some time, but he says it wasn’t until the November presidential election that he picked up the phone. ”And so I called the consulate and she said, ’Yes, we have a program for that, and here’s how you do it, and oh, by the way, you might imagine we’ve been very busy this week,’ ” Klein explained. The increased interest has persisted. ’I Needed Someplace Else To Go’ Ralf Horlemann, the consul general of Germany in Boston, says in the first quarter of 2016, 13 people of Jewish origin reclaimed their German citizenship through the Boston consulate. That number nearly quadrupled  —   to 49  —   in the first quarter of 2017. ”Although we don’t have any firm statistical data on the reasons behind the application for naturalization,” he said, ”we have seen a considerable increase in applications since, well the autumn, or the end of last year.” The numbers have increased so much at the Boston consulate that Horlemann decided instead of individuals coming into the office and simply picking up their paperwork, there will now be regular naturalization ceremonies. And so it is, that in a meeting room at the German consulate office in Boston, nine   citizens gathered around a conference table. Miniature flags representing Germany, the European Union and the U. S. decorated the room, and champagne chilled in the corner. Horlemann addressed the group from a podium: ”You have made a choice and a decision to apply for the restoration of German citizenship. For some of you, it may not have been an easy decision given the reason why your families lost it in the first place and also the legacy of the Holocaust.” The decision to reclaim German citizenship was years in the making for Linda Heuman of Providence, R. I. Heuman’s   died in concentration camps and her grandparents, dad and aunt were all Holocaust refugees. Sensing a shift in the American political climate since the election of President Trump, she says the decision for her suddenly became clear. ”I just instantly felt like I needed someplace else to go. I have that somewhere in my history, like that visceral knowledge,” Heuman said. ”With racism on the rise and anything might happen so, so that was my motivation for finally getting around to filling out the paperwork.” And filling out the paperwork brought her on a journey she may not have otherwise experienced, learning about the orphanage her father and aunt lived in for a time and becoming closer to ancestors she never had the chance to meet. ”I brought a picture with me today of my   and I thought, you know, he lost, the family lost, everything when they left. . .. I feel like today a tiny piece of everything they lost is being restored,” she said. Heuman says she plans to go back to Germany for a few months and visit the place her family called home for generations."
"Well, he did it  —   sort of. In April, Carter Wilkerson set out on a mission to get free chicken nuggets for a year. What he may not have known was that his inquiry would become the most retweeted tweet of all time. It was his fondness for nuggets that inspired Wilkerson to ask Wendy’s how many retweets he needed to get free chicken nuggets for a year. Wendy’s, playing along, set the bar high: 18 million. Challenge accepted. Shortly after Wendy’s response, the    from Reno, Nev. took a screenshot of the conversation and asked fellow nugget lovers to help him because, as he tweeted, ”a man needs his nuggs.” On Tuesday, Wilkerson’s plea for free nuggets broke the retweet record, according to Guinness World Records. His tweet was shared more than 3, 470, 000 times. Previously, the most shared tweet was Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscars selfie, which Guinness said had 3, 430, 249 retweets as of Tuesday. In light of his newfound social stardom, Wilkerson started a website, #NuggsforCarter, which sells   for all chicken nugget aficionados. According to the website, all proceeds from the merchandise sales will be donated to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. And even though Wilkerson didn’t quite hit the 18 million mark, Wendy’s decided to go ahead and give him the free nuggets for a year. Wendy’s also pledged to give $100, 000 to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption."
"The White House and Congress reached a deal last week to keep the government open  —   at least until this fall. But in reality, the compromise may well have just kicked the can down the road until September, when both sides may be spoiling for a fight amid the specter of a government shutdown. The spending bill didn’t give President Trump or congressional Republicans and Democrats everything they wanted. The GOP got more defense spending, while some agencies whose funding the White House had wanted to cut, such as the National Institutes of Health, actually got a boost. But the absence of some of the president’s major priorities  —   namely his highly touted border wall  —   led Trump to take to Twitter to hint that in five months, he may not be in such a conciliatory mood. ”Our country needs a good ’shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” he tweeted. On Sunday, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney didn’t knock down that threat on CBS’s Face the Nation:  ”What we just did this week was fine and passable but not ideal. The appropriations, the spending process, Congress using the power of the purse has been broken here in Washington for more than 10 years. And I think a good shutdown would be one that could help fix that. It’s part of that overall    mentality about Washington, D. C. This president is willing to think outside the box and do things differently around here in order to change Washington. And if that comes to a shutdown in September, so be it.” A ”good” shutdown? That    threat from the president and his staff is likely to give many Republicans the beginnings of heartburn. The last time the government shuttered, in October 2013, polls showed that it was the GOP that shouldered the brunt of the public’s blame after a   fiscal standoff over funding for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. An   Street Journal survey during the shutdown showed that voters blamed Republicans over   Barack Obama by a   margin  —   a worse outcome for the GOP than during the 1995 and 1996 shutdowns. After the government reopened, an ABC   Post poll found that Americans blamed Republicans instead of Obama by 24 points. And the GOP’s approval rating took a bruising hit, too. According to Gallup, the party’s rating hit record lows in the wake of the shutdown, dropping to a 28 percent favorable rating. ”The government shutdown in October 2013 gave the Republican Party a huge hit from which it took more than a year to recover,” said veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres. ”The drop in the Republican Party’s favorable rating was dramatic. We were fortunate that we had a year to repair the damage.” Looking back, it may seem as if there were few electoral consequences for Republicans as they went on to win victories in the 2014 midterms, including winning back the Senate. But the shutdown also happened at the same time as the disastrous rollout of the HealthCare. gov website. While that got overshadowed temporarily amid the shutdown, the midterms eventually returned to being a referendum on Obama and his policies  —   an electoral savior for the GOP. If a shutdown happens again, it’s Republicans who are in sole control of both the White House and Congress. And now they have a president whose approval ratings are at historic lows after his first 100 days in office and who energizes the Democratic base in a way that could prove incredibly problematic for the GOP in 2018. A president’s first midterm elections is usually a referendum on his tenure so far, and historically, a president’s party has almost always lost seats  —   an average of 29, as NPR’s Domenico Montanaro pointed out last month. Coupled with backlash the GOP is already feeling against its health care bill and the historical trends against the party, adding a shutdown on top of that could be catastrophic. ”Most of the wisdom of pollsters comes from looking at history of past actions, and all the history of the last government shutdown suggests that it was very bad news for Republicans,” said Ayres. ”There’s no reason to think that the result will be any different in the future, especially since we control the entire government.” What’s on the table?  Even without the threat of a stalemate looming over the talks, the list of things Congress and the White House have to agree on is substantial. As Politico noted, the Sept. 30 deadline is likely to coincide with a needed vote to raise the debt ceiling, in addition to reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration law, the children’s health insurance program and federal flood insurance. The White House will release its full budget later this month, which is sure to include more of the priorities Trump formally laid out in March in his initial fiscal year 2018 blueprint. In the recent spending bill, the president got an increase in defense spending  —   though only about half of what he wanted  —   but the domestic spending cuts he had sought didn’t happen this time around. In five months, it’s unclear how much political capital the White House will have to try to engage in those fights and how the health care bill  —   if it passes the Senate  —   might factor into that. But the president will be wanting a win on his spending priorities, looking to fulfill his campaign promises not just to build the border wall but also to ”drain the swamp.” While a shutdown may be cheered by his base as a way to ”stick it” to Washington, the implications could be   and imperil the rest of Trump’s first term if it causes significant backlash in the 2018 midterms."
"Updated at 3:40 p. m. ET, Canceled flights, kerfuffles at the ticket counter, clashes with local law enforcement  —   it’s fair to say that neither customers nor Spirit Airlines staff members intended their night to unfold this way at Florida’s Fort   International Airport. Yet that’s precisely the scene that hit social media Monday, as cellphone footage depicting the fallout found eyeballs around the world. Naturally, widespread media coverage followed soon afterward. Before long, images of customers irate over the cancellation of nine flights (according to CBS News) had spattered across Twitter and Instagram. So how did we get here? It’s just the latest incident in a series of black eyes for the airline industry  —   including so many recorded confrontations that even Congress got involved last week. But the skirmishes that broke out between passengers, employees and Broward County deputies Monday night called attention to a different set of circumstances: a deepening dispute between the airline and many of its pilots. ”We are shocked and saddened to see the videos of what took place at Ft.   International Airport this evening,” Spirit Airlines spokesman Paul Berry said in a statement emailed to NPR. Berry continued: ”This is a result of unlawful labor activity by some Spirit pilots designed to disrupt Spirit operations for our customers, by canceling multiple flights across our network. These pilots have put their quest for a new contract ahead of getting customers to their destinations and the safety of their fellow Spirit Team Members. It is for this reason, Spirit has filed suit in Federal Court to protect our customers’ future travel.” Spirit filed that lawsuit earlier Monday in U. S. district court against the Air Line Pilots Association, International, alleging in its complaint that the labor union was ”engaged in a pervasive illegal work slowdown that has caused approximately 300 flight cancellations and has disrupted the travel plans of over 20, 000 customers, while causing Spirit to incur approximately $8. 5 million in lost revenue and irreparable harm to its goodwill with its customers.” The airline says that by allegedly making concerted efforts to refuse   shifts and ”junior assignments,” members of the union are violating the Railway Labor Act, which set up a series of procedures designed to prevent work stoppages from disrupting the U. S. transportation system. ALPA objects to this characterization of the dispute, telling NPR in a statement that the union and its unit of Spirit pilots ”are not engaged in a job action”: ”Rather, ALPA and the Spirit pilots are continuing to do everything possible to help restore the company’s operations, which have experienced significant problems over the past several days. While we will continue these efforts, we will actively defend the association, its officers and its member pilots against the unwarranted and counterproductive legal action brought by Spirit Airlines.” And, as CNN points out, union leaders appeared to anticipate that legal action, telling members in a public letter Friday that they ”are not sending any ’coded’ or hidden messages” that pilots should refuse shifts. ”Simply put,” the letter reads, ”pilots who want to pick up open time should do so and not be questioned because, under the present circumstances, performing such flying is in all of our interest and supports our   objective of substantially improving pay and working conditions for the members.” A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order in the case Tuesday, preventing the union from any ”concerted refusal to perform normal pilot operations consistent with the status quo” until further hearing. ALPA promised to comply with the order, ”which is completely in line with our overriding goal: the resumption of normal operations.” In the meantime, observers on Twitter appear disinclined to comment on the legal matters afoot  —   but they’ve shown no stinginess in heaping scorn on both the raucous customers and the airline, which already had drawn no lack of heated criticism (and some defenders) over the years."
"In the wake of recent high profile incidents of customer mistreatment, most notably, the viral video of airport security officers dragging a passenger off a United Airlines plane last month, commercial airlines are scrambling to regain the trust of air travelers. But some industry observers say rebuilding that consumer trust will be difficult because the airlines’ harsh conduct in the last couple of weeks may have inadvertently pushed passengers just too far. Let’s face it, even before these recent incidents on American Airlines and Delta, in addition to United, air travel had already become a dreadful experience for many of us. ”I think it’s terrible,” said Paul DePaulis of Houston, as he prepares to board a United Airlines flight home at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. ”We’re a bunch of tuna crammed into a can and it’s miserable,” he said. ”I hate it.” Still, DePaulis says he has to fly almost every week. ”No choice,” he said, ”business.” DePaulis says it’s not just United. Most airlines are squeezing more people into smaller seats, restricting   and making passengers cramped, cranky and craving comfort. On his way back to Philadelphia, business traveler Tim Nelson tried to take it all in stride. ”I look at from the standpoint of, I’m gonna get on the plane, I’m gonna get off the plane and don’t expect much. Because that way, you aren’t disappointed,” said Nelson. But Nelson says United’s   employees do seem nicer since the incident in which a passenger was violently dragged off a plane. Peggy Garrett just arrived from Denver and noticed the same thing. ”They tried today they were very accommodating today,” said Garrett. ”They seemed to say a couple of things, like ’let us know what we can do to make you more comfortable’ and I don’t think I’ve heard that in a while.” ”I think this is a turning point, I think it is,” said Nelly Munoz of Pembroke Pines, Fla. After seeing how quickly United employees responded to her complaints  —   she and her husband had purchased two seats together but were   several rows apart  —   Munoz thinks that better customer service is here to stay. ”I mean, I noticed it right away that they came in to accommodate us after I made those comments,” she said, ”so I think they are trying to improve customer service.” United and other airlines took a verbal beating in two congressional hearings last week, with lawmakers threatening to mandate significant   policy changes if the airlines don’t improve themselves. ”This has to be a turning point for the 87, 000 people and professionals here at United,” said United CEO Oscar Munoz, as he apologized before the House Transportation Committee last week, ”and it is my mission to make sure that we make the changes needed to provide our customers the highest levels of service, of course, but also, a deeper sense of respect and trust and dignity.” That may be easier said than done, and not just for United. ”It appears that   trust in the airlines, that’s the kind of trust people have in the industry as a whole, has suffered a big shock over the past month,” said Kent Grayson, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who studies the psychology of consumer trust. He says while recent incidents of passenger mistreatment have gone viral, the more gradual erosion of consumer trust in airlines isn’t new. ”As a result of airline activities and decision making over really the past maybe even 10 years, customers have slowly but surely started to feel as if airlines don’t always have their back,” he said. He adds that whether it’s true or not, the common perception appears to be that airlines put profit over passenger comfort, and it is that perception that matters most. But Grayson thinks that airline executives now get it and are trying to change that perception. After another viral incident in which Delta removed a family from a flight, the airline canceled a media day that was scheduled for this week after, writing on its website that ”the timing is not right to showcase Delta’s product innovations and global strategy.” Veteran aviation industry journalist Benét Wilson, who blogs about air travel at AviationQueen. com, notes that airlines had already begun to invest in service improvements even before this latest round of airline shaming. ”What this incident did was kind of serve as a catalyst and a wake up call to the airlines saying you need to continue to swing the pendulum in the direction of just an overall better passenger experience.” Wilson says a big test for the airlines is coming up soon with the busy summer travel season. You can be sure that many of those being packed onto planes will have their cell phones out and ready to record any stumble the airlines make in their effort to increase passenger comfort while still protecting profits."
"Composer Jerry Goldsmith was honored Tuesday with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was a force at the movies for more than 50 years, until his death in 2004 at the age of 75. But unlike many of the honorees on the Walk of Fame, Goldsmith isn’t much of a household name. The best way to get a Goldsmith introduction is by sampling a few of his more than 200 film scores. In the 1970s, Goldsmith scored three American classics. He gave the 1970 biopic Patton ghostly trumpets and a contagious march. Then Goldsmith wrote a noir score for four pianos, four harps and solo trumpet for 1974’s Chinatown  —   in only 10 days, after the original composer’s work was thrown out. Robert Towne, who wrote the   screenplay for Chinatown, says Goldsmith’s score was essential. ”That score made that movie. Really,” Towne says. ”I think it was a movie waiting for that score.” The American Film Institute would likely agree it ranks Goldsmith’s Chinatown score among the 10 best scores of all time. Two years later, Goldsmith wrote a satanic mass for The Omen. The film’s director, Richard Donner, remembers the first musical cue they recorded: a scene with a dog walking along a balcony. ”Jerry was conducting these people, and they started with these wonderful voices going ’Antichristo, anti —  ’ every step the dog took,” Donner says. ”And I got these shivers down my back. It made that scene, and my buddy, that dog  —   a Rottweiler which I used to hang around with  —   it made him the most ferocious, dangerous animal that ever happened.” The Omen won Goldsmith his only Oscar, out of 18 nominations. But he set the bar high for his peers, as Breakfast At Tiffany’s composer Henry Mancini said at a dinner for Goldsmith in 1993. ”He has instilled two things in his colleagues in this town,” Mancini said. ”One thing he does, he keeps us honest. And the second one is he scares the hell out of us.” In the ’80s and ’90s, one of Goldsmith’s   directors was Joe Dante, who helmed such offbeat films as The ’Burbs and Gremlins. ”The one thing that we used to say to ourselves on the set when things were going badly, we’d say, ’Don’t worry  —   Jerry will save it,’ ” Dante says. ”And more often than not, he did.” Goldsmith’s own favorite scores were for two sports movies: Hoosiers and Rudy. For Hoosiers, he wrote a poignant main theme, as well as game music that used samples of real bouncing basketballs. Director David Anspaugh wasn’t sure the combination of electronics and orchestra would work for a film set in the Midwest in the 1950s. ”It made us nervous as hell, quite honestly,” Anspaugh says. But when the music was laid against the picture, he was more than reassured. ”I was blown away,” he says. ”I couldn’t believe that I actually had my name on it. Because he made us all look so good.” Goldsmith got his start in the early days of television, scoring episodes of The Man From U. N. C. L. E. and The Twilight Zone, among others. And he grew up in Los Angeles, in the shadow of the movie business. But his widow, Carol Goldsmith, says he was primed for a different career. ”Jerry was being trained, since he was a young boy, to be a concert pianist,” she says. ”And it wasn’t until he was 13, when he went to the movie Spellbound, that he fell in love with film and dramatic scoring.” One of Goldsmith’s   themes was for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It was reused for the subsequent TV series. And while his career ran parallel to that of Star Wars composer John Williams, he never had that kind of popular name recognition. Still, he had a big effect on those who followed him  —   like Austin Wintory, a   composer for film and video games. Wintory says he decided he wanted to write music for movies when he was 10, after hearing a Goldsmith soundtrack. ”I know that virtually every composer, seemingly, worships him,” Wintory says. ”I mean, I’ve often heard Williams is like the composer of the people  —   Goldsmith is the composer’s composer.” Goldsmith did score a number of popular hits: Alien, the Rambo films, Basic Instinct, Poltergeist. But his résumé is also littered with titles like    and Mr. Baseball. Carol Goldsmith says he scored every film like it was the next Chinatown. ”He approached each project as the best assignment he might be given,” she says, ”and gave it his all.”"
"Most car buyers don’t do more than the most perfunctory test drive of new or used cars. But with so much new technology and features in today’s cars and trucks, a thorough test drive is more important than ever. According to a survey by Cox Automotive only 32 percent of consumers know the exact vehicle they want when they start car shopping. But 55 percent test drive only one vehicle  —   the one they end up purchasing. You’re likely to try on more than one pair of shoes or hat, even when they have your size and you know what it is. Ron Montoya with Edmunds. com, the car buying website, says a lot of people think, ” ’Hey, this car’s new. I’m driving an old car. I don’t really need to drive this new car. Anything is going to be better than what I’m currently driving.’ So they don’t   it.” But they should. The average car on the road is over 10 years old. Technology has changed significantly in the last decade, so many of the features on that new vehicle may be unfamiliar. Things such as drive assist, lane keeping, and turn assist weren’t around just a few years ago. ”If you want a certain package, if you want a certain engine, make sure you drive that one and don’t drive something else just because it’s closer to the lot or it can be a quicker test drive,” Montoya says. ”You want to make sure that it’s the car you want, because that’s the car you’re going to buy. You’re going to be spending a lot of money on it.” While driving the car, pay attention to things like how the steering feels in your hands, how the vehicle feels as it’s turning and how the brakes respond, says Jean Jennings with Jean Knows Cars. ”Your hands, your feet and your butt  —   those are the things that are most important,” she says. Jennings, who was the longtime editor of Automobile magazine, says most importantly, you should enjoy the experience: ”The first person who knocks your joy down one tiny bit, walk out! How dare they! It’s your money and your joy. If you’re going to spend that kind of money, why would you deal with anyone who gives you any pain at all? Am I right?” Jennings is right. Driving a car should not be painful. Here’s some ways to ease the pain."
"The United States spends a lot of money taking care of the health needs of old people. In 2010, for example, each person 65 and older received $18, 424 in health care services. That’s five times more than the $3, 628 in spending per child under 18, and three times more than the $6, 125 per   adult, according to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. ”In the developed world, people live longer with very intense disease  —   and costly treatment,” says Vegard Skirbekk, professor at Columbia University’s Aging Center. In the developing world, some countries are making great strides in life expectancy. People in poor countries lived an average of nine years longer in 2014 than in 1990, according to WHO statistics. And while illness can strike at any age, the longer people live, the greater their risk of getting one of the big three diseases of aging  —   cancer, heart disease and diabetes. But in poor countries, the money for their treatment may not be there. A new study in the journal Health Affairs broke down the $36. 4 billion spent on health assistance from development agencies and nonprofit donors to   and   countries. Ninety percent is spent on people under the age of 60. ”The lion’s share of assistance is going to children,” says Joseph Dieleman, professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Seattle, and an author of the study. ”There has always been a preference in funding for younger age groups in the developing world,” says Skirbekk, lead author of the study. ”In 2013, assistance benefited people younger than five the most, with spending over three times more than any other age group.” The money goes for maternal and newborn health, for childhood immunizations and to fight malaria and TB in children, among other things, the report says. That effort has paid off. Deaths of children and adolescents have been cut nearly in half, from 14. 2 million in 1990 to 7. 3 million in 2015. The preference for   funding for children and young people makes intuitive sense. Children are the future, and it’s natural to want to protect them, says Dieleman: ”The social norm is to want to prevent illness in young children.” In addition to wanting to protect children, wealthy nations have a   in preventing the communicable diseases children and young adults in poor countries often get. Those diseases, like TB and malaria and new emerging infectious diseases, can spread in a country’s population  —   and from one country to another. Authors of the report suggested other reasons that health funding focuses on the young. ”Children are seen as innocent. Whereas there’s a perception that diseases of older age are an outcome of lifestyle choices,” says Skirbekk. ”Those kinds of attitudes are quite common.” Whether it’s age discrimination or the attitude that diseases of the old are their own fault, the result is a gap in care of older people in the developing world. ”Older adults are the ones that increasingly need support,” Skirbekk says. And it’s not just physical health. Some mental health conditions are increasingly common as people age  —   Alzheimer’s, dementia, depression and anxiety, the report says. Yet, those mental health conditions receive only 0. 3 percent of the development money the world provides to treat disease, according to the report. The paper and its authors take no stand on the issue of age and disease. They don’t conclude that it’s right for donors and poor countries to continue to spend more health care money on children and working age adults  —   or that more money should be allocated for the diseases of old age. But global citizens are weighing in. Since publication of the paper this month, the authors have heard from people with strong opinions. ”We’ve gotten emails complaining that this is horrible, it’s age discrimination,” says Dieleman. ”We’ve also gotten emails saying this is as it should be, it’s important to take care of children.” ”The question of what should the global community fund is a complicated one and not one we addressed in this paper,” says Dieleman. Skirbekk adds, ”I hope our report will stimulate discussions on just that issue.” Children get the largest share of any age group. Is that fair when people are living longer and facing diseases of aging? Tell us what you think. Submit your perspective in the tool below. Try to keep under 100 words. We’ll feature some of the comments on Goats and Soda in a special #CuriousGoat post next week.  Our submission deadline has passed. Thanks for participating! Read some of the responses we received here.  "
"A liberal human rights lawyer born to North Korean refugees has won South Korea’s presidential election with a promise to improve the economy and hold talks with the   North. Moon   64, of the Democratic Party, is a former student protester, special forces soldier and presidential aide. He has promised to add public sector jobs, engage Pyongyang in dialogue and rethink South Korea’s close relations with the United States. Moon had a strong lead of more than 41 percent of the vote among a field of 13 candidates, according to unofficial exit polls conducted by South Korean media. His closest contenders  —   a   conservative and a centrist  —   have conceded defeat. Election officials confirmed Moon’s victory early Wednesday morning local time (Tuesday afternoon ET). Moon is most closely associated with the   politics of another South Korean president, Roh   who served from 2003 to 2008 and committed suicide in 2009 amid a family corruption scandal. Moon was Roh’s chief of staff, law partner and best friend and is expected to revive his   Sunshine Policy of dialogue and economic aid to North Korea. But while North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear program grabs headlines abroad, many South Koreans said the election issues most important to them are domestic: sluggish economic growth, soaring youth unemployment, corruption and air pollution. Moon’s victory was in a special   to replace former President Park   who was impeached late last year and removed from office in March. Last week, she went on trial in Seoul for corruption if convicted, she could spend life in prison. The head of the country’s largest conglomerate, Samsung, has also been indicted. ”I want the next president to make sure Park faces punishment,” said accountant Kim   26, outside a polling station Tuesday in Seoul. ”Politicians, even if they’re convicted, sometimes get pardoned easily and are punished much less severely than average citizens.” Once official results confirm his win, Moon is expected to make a victory speech in a central district of Seoul that has been the makeshift base for protesters calling for Park’s ouster. Throughout his campaign, Moon has spoken figuratively of moving the base of power out of South Korea’s version of the White House and into those squares where protesters gathered. While campaigning, several presidential candidates said they would consider pardoning Park, but Moon has said he refuses to do so. He lost the 2012 presidential election to Park but got support in this election from her critics, many of them younger voters. Under Moon, South Korea is expected to reach out to North Korea, but analysts warn not to expect immediate talks. ”He will push for an   summit meeting, but this will only come after a meeting with President Trump,” says political scientist Kim   a professor at South Korea’s Kyonggi University. ”At this point, communication between the two Koreas is completely cut off, which is why he would focus on improving the situation and gathering momentum, such as discussing ways to reopen the Kaesong industrial complex.” That’s a joint industrial facility where tens of thousands of North and South Koreans work together just north of the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries. It has been closed for more than a year. Moon has proposed reopening it. North Korea, for its part, called on the eve of the South Korean election for an ”end to conflict” between the two Koreas and the start of ”a new era of reunification.”"
"The Food and Drug Administration is under pressure from the Trump administration to approve drugs faster, but researchers at the Yale School of Medicine found that nearly a third of those approved from 2001 through 2010 had major safety issues years after the medications were made widely available to patients.   of the 222 drugs approved in the first decade of the millennium were withdrawn, required a ”black box” warning on side effects or warranted a safety announcement about new risks, Dr. Joseph Ross, an associate professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, and colleagues reported in JAMA on Tuesday. The study included safety actions through Feb. 28. ”While the administration pushes for less regulation and faster approvals, those decisions have consequences,” Ross says. The Yale researchers’ previous studies concluded that the FDA approves drugs faster than its counterpart agency in Europe does and that the majority of pivotal trials in drug approvals involved fewer than 1, 000 patients and lasted six months or less. It took a median of 4. 2 years after the drugs were approved for these safety concerns to come to light, the study found, and issues were more common among psychiatric drugs, biologic drugs, drugs that were granted ”accelerated approval” and drugs that were approved near the regulatory deadline for approval. Drugs ushered through the FDA’s accelerated approval process were among those that had higher rates of safety interventions. These approvals typically rely on surrogate endpoints, meaning that researchers measured something other than survival, such as tumor size, to determine whether the drugs worked. ”This [finding on surrogate endpoints] has the greatest relationship to policy today,” Ross says. ”In the 21st Century Cures Act, there’s a push to have the FDA move to further support the use of surrogate markers . .. [but] they’re more likely to have concerns in the   setting.” President Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act into law on Dec. 13. It offers ways to speed drug approval by pushing the FDA to consider evidence beyond the three phases of traditional clinical trials. The new process has made some researchers worry that it will open the door for approvals of drugs that haven’t been adequately tested. ”I’m actually sympathetic to the idea that there are ways in which the FDA can be more streamlined and do a quicker job,” says Dr. Vinay Prasad, a   and professor at Oregon Health and Sciences University who did not work on the study. ”The one place you don’t want to cut a corner is safety and efficacy prior to coming to market.” The FDA’s system for reporting   and   health problems is voluntary. The reports are not verified, and critics say this system is underutilized and filled with incomplete and late information. The FDA also monitors other available studies and reports to determine whether it needs to take action on a particular drug. FDA spokeswoman Angela Hoague said the agency is reviewing Ross’ findings. ”In general, the FDA does not comment on specific studies but evaluates them as part of the body of evidence to further our understanding about a particular issue and assist in our mission to protect public health,” she said. Surprisingly, drugs approved in under 200 days were less likely to have safety issues, which the authors speculate could be because ”some approval packages provide clearer evidence of safety, allowing for more rapid regulatory approval.” The study included market withdrawals of three drugs: the   drug Bextra Zelnorm, which was used to treat irritable bowel syndrome and the psoriasis drug Raptiva. Bextra and Zelnorm were withdrawn because of cardiovascular risk, and Raptiva was withdrawn because of increased risk of a rare and fatal infection that causes brain damage. Still, it’s important to keep in mind that the   safety issues cover the spectrum from relatively minor to serious, says Dr. Caleb Alexander,   of the Johns Hopkins Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness who did not work on the study. Good next steps would be to dig into the most serious safety problems, determine whether the FDA could have flagged them sooner and examine how they might have been missed, he says. Alexander commended the researchers, saying their study ”underscores the importance of surveillance” after a drug has been launched. He says this helps researchers find new problems  —   and new benefits  —   associated with a drug. ”All too often, patients and clinicians mistakenly view FDA approval as [an] indication that a product is fully safe and effective,” he says. ”Nothing could be further from the truth. We learn tremendous amounts about a product only once it’s on the market and only after use among a broad population.” Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN’s coverage of prescription drug development, costs and pricing is supported in part by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.  "
"President Trump is moving quickly to put his personal stamp on the federal courts. On Monday the president nominated 10 people for federal judgeships. Thanks to an unusually large number of vacancies on the bench, there could be many more to come. ”This is just a down payment,” said John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation. He noted there are more than 100 open seats on the federal district courts and appeals courts. ”Starting with a Supreme Court vacancy, which has now been filed, President Trump certainly has a very good opportunity early on to have an impact on the federal bench,” Malcolm said. Indeed, Trump came into office with a chance to fill more than twice as many court vacancies as President Barack Obama had. That’s partly because for the last two years, the   Senate dragged its feet in confirming judges. The Senate confirmed only 20 of Obama’s judicial nominees during 2015 and 2016, less than a third the number that were confirmed in the last two years of the Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. ”Just as they held the Merrick Garland seat open on the Supreme Court, they also held open an awful lot of vacancies on the district courts and the courts of appeals,” said Russell Wheeler, who tracks judicial nominations at the Brookings Institution. At last month’s   ceremony for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump acknowledged that Senate stonewalling had given him a rare opportunity. ”I especially want to express our gratitude to [Senate Republican Leader] Mitch McConnell for all that he did to make this achievement possible,” Trump said. ”So thank you, Mitch.” The Heritage Foundation’s Malcolm cautions it wasn’t a   strategy. Had Hillary Clinton won the election, she might now be packing the courts with a slate of more liberal judges. ”So it took some guts and some daring on behalf of Sen. McConnell, and it paid off,” Malcolm said. Trump campaigned on the promise that he would appoint conservative judges to the bench  —   a key selling point for many Republican voters. He even released a list of potential candidates for the Supreme Court, which Malcolm and the Heritage Foundation had a hand in crafting. Two of the nominees announced Monday  —   Joan Larsen of the Michigan Supreme Court and David Stras of the Minnesota Supreme Court  —   are drawn from that list. Larsen was nominated to a seat on the federal appeals court in Cincinnati while Stras was tapped for the appellate court in St. Louis. All of the nominees appear to be cut from similar judicial cloth. ”They are all highly regarded in conservative legal circles and by practitioners in the states where they reside,” Malcolm said. All presidents leave a mark on the courts, especially if they serve for two terms. But with so many early vacancies, Trump has a chance to accelerate his impact, quickly chipping away at the narrow Democratic advantage that Obama left on the federal bench. Wheeler says 51 percent of the current judges were appointed by Democrats, up from 36 percent on the appellate courts and 40 percent on the district courts when Obama took office. Partisan pedigree is not always predictive of how judges will rule. The Seattle judge who blocked Trump’s original travel ban, for example, is a George W. Bush appointee. But Trump has made no secret of the kind of judicial philosophy he’s looking for. ”We can assume the Trump administration is going to continue to nominate judges, especially for courts of appeals, who have fairly strong conservative credentials,” Wheeler said. ”A big variable is whether or not Democratic senators can put a brake on it.” Senate Democrats gave up the right to filibuster nominees for the lower courts. But there is still a tradition that nominees should not be confirmed over the objection of their   senator. Democratic senators from Michigan and Minnesota have promised to give close scrutiny to the nominations of Larsen and Stras, assuming that genteel tradition survives in today’s more    Senate."
"Saudi Arabia’s King Salman recently ordered a review of his country’s rules on male guardianship, which keep women from making many basic decisions on their own. And now Human Rights Watch is urging the king to abolish the system that enforces a condition of legal dependence for women. ”We have seen Saudi Arabia’s baby steps on women’s rights reform obstructed or nullified as a result of the male guardianship system,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East director. ”King Salman’s order will also have a limited impact unless the authorities finally act boldly and end this discriminatory system once and for all.” It’s   that women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia. But the kingdom also requires all women to have a male guardian to handle basic legal transactions. In many cases, the role passes down from a woman’s father to her husband or brother, but the guardian can sometimes be a woman’s own son. The push to end the system comes after Salman recently gave government agencies three months to list any procedures that require guardians’ approval. That order, which Human Rights Watch says it reviewed, effectively compelled agencies to provide services to women without a guardian’s consent. It came as Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights is returning to the spotlight. ”Saudi Arabia was controversially elected to the U. N. women’s rights commission last month,” NPR’s Alison Meuse reports from Beirut. ”The new order comes ahead of a visit to Saudi Arabia by President Trump.” Some of the requirements for male approval are written into law, for things such as getting a passport or going to college. But many are enforced by tradition, such as when businesses require a woman to get a man’s approval to work or when a doctor says a man must say it is OK for a woman to get medical services. ”The king should also require state agencies to actively prevent discrimination by private individuals and businesses,” Whitson said in a statement released by Human Rights Watch. In recent years, women have played a more visible role in Saudi politics  —   most especially in late 2015, when for the first time, women voted and were elected to office. Those gains came as an increasing number of Saudi women also entered the workforce."
"Apple growers in Washington state, who dominate American apple production, are starting to plant a new kind of apple. It’s the fastest launch of a new variety in history. These farmers have been looking for a new variety to grow. Older types of apples, like Red Delicious, have fallen out of favor among American consumers. So growers are ripping out old fruit trees  —   in this case, apricot trees  —   to make way for an apple variety called Cosmic Crisp. It’s the most successful result so far of an apple breeding effort that Bruce Barritt began at Washington State University more than 20 years ago. Barritt selected the tree called WA 38  —   now branded as Cosmic Crisp  —   from among thousands of seedings that he created by   the blossoms of parent trees. Cosmic Crisp, he says, preserves its taste better than any other variety during months of storage. ”Crispness, juiciness, acidity, sugar all that combined just doesn’t exist in any other variety,” he says. Cosmic Crisp was just released for commercial planting, and this spring, apple growers are planting all the trees that they can get their hands on. They’ve reportedly ordered 12 million Cosmic Crisp trees for planting over the next few years. Replanting can cost more than $50, 000 per acre. Farmers say that they’ll need premium prices for these apples in order to recoup that investment. If Cosmic Crisp apples sell only for the same price as, say, Gala apples, ”it’ll be a wreck,” says farmer Jan Luebber. So these new plantings are a big gamble for apple growers. Every Cosmic Crisp tree is derived from this original ”mother tree,” which still stands where it was planted 20 years ago, in a research orchard managed by Washington State University. It’s been reproduced through   cloning techniques, grafting buds from one tree onto existing apple tree roots. Those buds grow into copies of the original tree. Tree nurseries like Willow Drive Nursery, in the town of Ephrata, Wash. play a key role in the Cosmic Crisp launch. They reproduce these trees on a massive scale, growing new trees from each bud that forms on existing trees in their ”mother orchard.” Each fall, nurseries dig up these small trees and move them into cold storage, ready for planting in orchards the following spring. The first Cosmic Crisp apples will be available for sale in the fall of 2019. Within a few years, Washington’s apple growers may know whether the bet they’ve placed on this new variety will pay off."
"The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena for President Trump’s former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn. In a joint announcement, Sen. Richard Burr,  . C. chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sen. Mark Warner,  . vice chairman of the panel, said, ”The subpoena requests documents relevant to the Committee’s investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 elections.” The senators said the documents are the same as those first requested from Flynn on April 28. But through his legal counsel, Flynn declined to cooperate with the committee’s request. Politico reports that Flynn’s attorneys told the committee that the former general would not cooperate with the investigation unless he was granted immunity. Flynn was fired by Trump in February after published reports that the national security adviser had misled Vice President Pence about his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Flynn’s contacts with the Russian government are also being examined by the FBI’s investigation of possible links between Trump campaign officials and Russian meddling in the elections. The status of that probe is unclear in the wake of Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey on Tuesday."
"Updated at 4:46 p. m. ET, President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey has reignited calls for some form of independent investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election and possible ties to the Trump campaign. Comey confirmed in March that the FBI was looking into the matter (as are congressional committees). But these calls come in various flavors. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer wants a ”special prosecutor.” He warns via Twitter, ”If we don’t get a special prosecutor, every American will rightfully suspect that the decision to fire #Comey was part of a  .” Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is calling for an ”independent prosecutor.” Feinstein says in a statement that she also supports the appointment of a ”special counsel” by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona wants to see a ”special congressional committee.” That’s not a new request from McCain, but he argues Comey’s firing ”only confirms the need and urgency of such a committee.” Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan says he’s leaning toward an ”independent commission” to investigate Russian meddling. Meanwhile, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is   all of these suggestions. On the Senate floor Wednesday morning, McConnell warned that a new investigation ”could only serve to impede the current work being done” by the FBI and the Senate Intelligence Committee. A little history, The first ”special prosecutor” was Archibald Cox, who was appointed by President Richard Nixon’s attorney general in 1973 to investigate the Watergate scandal. Cox was later fired in October of that year, along with Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus. This was the notorious ”Saturday Night Massacre” to which Comey’s dismissal was immediately compared. In the   period, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act, which formalized the procedures for appointing special prosecutors and also rebranded them as ”independent counsels.” Independent counsels were appointed by a   panel at the request of the attorney general. Congress could also petition the attorney general to seek such an appointment, although the attorney general was not required to do so. The most famous independent counsel was Kenneth Starr, whose investigation ultimately led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The Ethics in Government Act expired in 1999 and was not renewed. Since 1999, the attorney general has occasionally appointed ”special counsels” to investigate suspected criminal activity when an investigation by the Justice Department itself might pose a conflict of interest. Because these counsels are appointed by  —   and answer to  —   the attorney general, they have less formal independence than independent counsels. One famous special counsel was Patrick Fitzgerald, who investigated and prosecuted Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, for his role in the public identification of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer. (Libby was convicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. His prison sentence was later commuted by President George W. Bush.) The attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, had recused himself from the matter so Fitzgerald was appointed by Ashcroft’s deputy . .. James Comey. Next steps, A special prosecutor or independent counsel could be appointed by Rosenstein (since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from all matters involving Russian ties to the 2016 elections) although such an investigator would probably go by the title ”special counsel.” Schumer said last month that he received assurances from Rosenstein that the deputy attorney general would appoint a special counsel ”if one is required.” Alternatively, Congress could reauthorize something like the Ethics in Government Act, creating a new role for independent counsels. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is drafting legislation in that mold as a backup, in case the deputy attorney general fails to act. Congress could also establish its own select committee of lawmakers to investigate, as McCain proposed. Finally, lawmakers could appoint a special commission of outsiders to investigate, along the lines of the   Commission. This approach is favored by Amash."
"Updated at 3:15 p. m. ET, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were interviewing four candidates Wednesday to serve as interim FBI director, following the firing of James Comey. Through the normal line of succession, Comey’s deputy Andrew McCabe became acting director after President Trump fired Comey, but now, according to a Justice Department official, the attorney general is considering other people to do that job until Trump names and the Senate confirms a new FBI director. According to the official, Sessions spoke with McCabe Tuesday night and he is ”also under consideration.” But statute allows the president to choose an interim FBI director outside of the standard order of succession, and that process is underway. Trump was hotly critical of McCabe during the 2016 presidential campaign. On Oct. 23, Trump tweeted out an article in the Wall Street Journal about McCabe’s wife, Jill, who in 2015 ran for state Senate in Virginia. She received a large campaign contribution from the political action committee overseen by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton supporter. Trump falsely asserted that McCabe was ”in charge” of the investigation. The fact that Sessions is conducting the interviews also raises an ethical question regarding his pledge to recuse himself from investigations dealing with the Trump campaign. The FBI, which the attorney general oversees, is conducting an investigation into Trump associates’ ties to Russia. ”I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States,” Sessions said March 2. That decision came following discussions with staff, according to Sessions, after he falsely said during his confirmation hearing that he had no contact with Russian officials during the campaign. The former senator had met twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States during that time. Sessions was the earliest  —   and for a time, the only  —   senator to endorse Trump. At Wednesday’s press briefing, White House principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sessions should ”absolutely have a role” in choosing the next FBI director. Huckabee Sanders argued that the FBI director’s responsibility would be much broader than the Russia investigation. The immediate steps also come as questions are being raised about Trump’s reasoning for firing Comey. Trump on Wednesday said he fired the FBI director because he ”was not doing a good job.” A White House statement Tuesday said it had to do with Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. During the campaign, Trump implied that McCabe and the FBI couldn’t fairly investigate Clinton’s private email server. ”It was just learned a little while ago,” Trump said at a campaign rally in October, ”that one of the closest people to Hillary Clinton, with   ties to her and her husband, gave more than $675, 000 to the campaign of the spouse of a top FBI official, his wife, who helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s illegal email server.” As Domenico Montanaro writes: ”He added the next day: ’The man who was in charge of the investigation of Hillary Clinton accepted essentially from Hillary Clinton $675, 000 that went to his wife.’ ”Trump went on to connect the dots in a misleading way and accused Clinton of being a crook. ”The truth is that McCabe’s wife was approached by Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Virginia Democrats to run for the state Senate. She did, and McAuliffe’s political action committee as well as the state party unsurprisingly donated to her campaign. McAuliffe was a longtime fundraiser for the Clintons before becoming governor. ”Jill McCabe lost. Andrew McCabe did not have any involvement in the Clinton email investigation at the time. Three months later, in February 2016, Andrew McCabe became deputy director of the FBI, the first time he had any oversight of the investigation, as Politifact noted.” The candidates being interviewed Wednesday are: The announcement of an interim FBI director is expected in the next couple of days, the official said. Comey was supposed to testify Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the presidential election and possible collusion by Trump associates. The hearing’s focus is not on the Russia investigation, but rather it is an annual hearing on worldwide threats. The committee says McCabe is now slated to appear in Comey’s place. It isn’t clear how long it will take Trump to nominate his pick for FBI director. And it’s even less clear how long it will take the Senate to consider the nomination. The confirmation process will likely be contentious because of the way Comey was ousted, well before the end of his   term and with a justification dating back to 2016. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro contributed to this report."
"Updated at 9 p. m. ET, Questions about the abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James Comey swirled on Wednesday, but Comey himself reportedly told staff he would not ”spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. I hope you won’t either.” In a farewell letter, Comey said, according to CNN, ”It is done, and I will be fine, although I will miss you and the mission deeply.” He added: ”It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing. My hope is that you will continue to live our values and the mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution. If you do that, you too will be sad when you leave, and the American people will be safer.” The White House continued to defend the firing, arguing that President Trump had ”been considering letting Director Comey go since the day he was elected.” But there are new concerns about how Comey’s role in overseeing the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign affected the president’s decision. Days before he was fired, Comey asked for added resources for the FBI’s Russia investigation, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly and Geoff Bennett report. According to two Senate aides with knowledge of the investigation, Comey met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last week to ask for significant added resources for the Russia investigation. On Monday, Comey briefed key senators about the request. That was the same day that Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with Trump to voice concerns about Comey’s performance and waning confidence within the FBI. Trump asked the two ”to put that recommendation in writing,” White House principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday, but she denied that Trump had asked Rosenstein for a reason to fire Comey. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told NPR’s Tamara Keith earlier on Wednesday that the reports that Comey had ”requested additional resources” were ”totally false.” In Rosenstein’s memo to Sessions released Tuesday night, the deputy attorney general concluded that Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server justified his dismissal because Comey had refused to acknowledge what many viewed as mistakes in how and why Comey made public disclosures about the investigation at key moments in the presidential campaign. ”The FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department,” Rosenstein wrote in the memorandum, which was forwarded by Sessions to the president. Trump on Wednesday continued to defend his decision to fire Comey amid the growing firestorm, telling reporters in the Oval Office that ”he wasn’t doing a good job.” At the White House briefing later that afternoon, Huckabee Sanders said that Trump had lost confidence in Comey ”over the last several months” and that ”he’d been considering letting Director Comey go since the day he was elected.” The White House did little to tamp down concerns about possible Russian influence though, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meeting with Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday while Lavrov was in Washington for a previously scheduled trip. And after Trump’s swift firing of Comey drew comparisons to President Richard Nixon’s infamous ”Saturday Night Massacre,” the president then had another surprise visitor beside him as he spoke to reporters  —   former Nixon Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The administration’s position remains that Trump took action against Comey after recommendations from Rosenstein and Sessions, even though Sessions had to recuse himself from the Russia investigation being conducted by the FBI. Lavrov’s visit to the White House to meet with the president also included Russian Ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak  —   who spoke with Michael Flynn, Trump’s   national security adviser, during the transition late last year and also had contacts with  . Sessions during the campaign. Those contacts with Kislyak played a role in Flynn’s ultimate resignation from his job at the White House and in Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from overseeing the FBI’s Russia investigation. On Capitol Hill, Vice President Mike Pence denied that Russia was a motivating factor in Trump’s decision. ”The president took strong and decisive leadership here to put the safety and security of the American people first,” Pence said. However, the vice president skirted questions about whether Trump had asked Rosenstein to conduct the review of Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. The White House has struggled to square Trump’s past praise for Comey with the sudden termination. During the campaign, Trump praised Comey and said his decision to reopen the investigation less than two weeks before Election Day took ”guts.” Huckabee Sanders argued Wednesday that what Trump said as a candidate and now as president ”are two very different things.” ”Having a letter like the one that he received and having that conversation that outlined the basic atrocities in circumventing the chain of command” in the Clinton investigation is what led to his dismissal, she maintained, and she compared Comey’s actions to ”throwing a stick of dynamite” into the Justice Department. NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported last November that Trump’s advisers were considering whether to keep Comey as FBI director. Huckabee Sanders stressed that the White House wants the Justice Department to continue its investigation into Russia and the election so that it can move on from the issue. ”Whatever investigation was happening on Monday is happening today,” she said. Clinton and other Democrats have said they believe that Comey’s controversial decision to reopen the investigation helped tip the election to Trump  —   and it was those statements Republicans began to seize upon on Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended the termination, noting how harshly Democrats criticized Comey’s handling of the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s private email server. ”Last year, the current Democratic leader said it appeared to be an appalling act,” McConnell said from the Senate floor. ”One that he said goes against the tradition of prosecutors at every level.” House Speaker Paul Ryan  —   who waited more than 24 hours after Comey’s firing to weigh in  —   went on Fox News Wednesday evening to defend the president’s actions. ”It is entirely within the president’s role and authority to relieve him, and that’s what he did,” Ryan told Fox News’ Bret Baier. Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, however, tried to shift the focus away from the Clinton email investigation and onto the current FBI investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election as well as possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. ”There is little reason to think that Mr. Rosenstein’s reason is the true reason that President Trump fired Director Comey,” Schumer said Wednesday, responding to McConnell in the Senate chamber. ”Why? Because if the administration truly had objections to the way Director Comey handled the investigation, they would have had them the minute the president got into office. But he didn’t fire Director Comey then. ”The question is: Why did it happen last night?” Schumer continued a   call from Democrats for a special prosecutor to take over the FBI’s Russia investigation, but McConnell called the suggestion unnecessary and said a new investigation would ”impede the current work being done” by the FBI and by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday the White House didn’t believe a special prosecutor was necessary. Before he met with Trump, Lavrov appeared to mock the kerfuffle over Comey’s firing. During a   with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a reporter yelled out a question about whether Comey’s firing ”casts a shadow” on Lavrov’s visit. Lavrov scoffed and walked away dismissively. ”Was he fired?” Lavrov said. ”You’re kidding!” And prior to McConnell’s and Schumer’s remarks on the Senate floor, the president was predictably on Twitter sounding off about his decision to get rid of the FBI director. ”Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike.” Trump tweeted, ”When things calm down, they will be thanking me!”"
"The White House says President Trump fired James Comey because of how he handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Let that sink in for a moment. The president, who campaigned before crowds that chanted, ”Lock her up,” is telling the American people that he summarily fired the FBI director, by letter, because he went outside Department of Justice protocols in speaking out about the Clinton investigation months ago. Trump’s conclusion, the White House says, was based on a 2   page memo penned by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. It’s dated Tuesday. The recommendation was affirmed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The president was asked by reporters at the White House on Wednesday why he fired Comey, and he said: ”Because he wasn’t doing a good job, simply. He was not doing a good job.” As soon as news of the termination broke, some political observers began to sound off that something doesn’t add up. The timing is suspicious, and the reasoning is convenient. It raises all kinds of questions about what happened and what happens next, especially as the FBI is reportedly ramping up its investigation of Trump associates’ connections to Russia. Trump went on a tweetstorm about it Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning: During the presidential campaign, though, Trump had varying reactions to Comey. Back then, he criticized Comey for not recommending that Clinton be criminally prosecuted. Then he later praised the FBI director for having the ”guts” to speak out just days before the election to say he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s emails. Trump said Comey should ”hang tough.” Clinton believes that move essentially elected Trump. Comey, just days ago, said it made him ”mildly nauseous” to think he might have swung the election. Never did Trump hint back then that Comey may have broken protocol or handled things inappropriately. Now that Trump is president  —   and some of his associates apparently happen to be the focus of an FBI investigation  —   he believes Comey has to go. On Tuesday evening, Trump’s White House issued a   statement. It said Comey had been ”terminated.” It said Trump ”acted based on the clear recommendation of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.” In a letter from Trump to Comey, also released by the White House, Trump mentions that Comey told him on three separate occasions that he was not the subject of the FBI’s investigation before stating, ”I nevertheless concur with the judgment of Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.” Trump closed the letter by wishing Comey luck in his ”future endeavors.” Comey was surprised by the firing. He reportedly first saw it on TV  —   perfect for the kind of reality TV drama that has played out already in this young Trump presidency. A letter, informing Comey that he had been let go, was delivered to the FBI’s Washington headquarters, but Comey wasn’t there. He was at an FBI recruitment event in Los Angeles. He thought what he saw on TV was a prank, a joke. It was no joke. So Comey’s out. But is there more to the story? And where does the FBI’s investigation of Trump and Russia go from here? Here are some possible explanations  —   and questions moving forward: 1. The FBI’s   investigation: The timing of Comey’s firing is suspicious because the FBI’s Russia investigation was apparently heating up. CNN reported that Comey was fired shortly before federal prosecutors were about to break the news that new grand jury subpoenas were being issued related to the investigation. ”The subpoenas represent the first sign of a significant escalation of activity in the FBI’s broader investigation begun last July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia,” CNN writes. 2. Michael Flynn  —   and Trump’s judgment  —   had once again become top of the news: Trump’s former national security adviser was a major focus of a congressional hearing Monday. Sally Yates, whom Trump fired as acting attorney general because she refused to defend Trump’s travel ban, testified that she believed Flynn had been compromised with regard to the Russians. She said she warned White House counsel Don McGahn twice, showing him evidence that Flynn lied to the vice president about his conversations with the Russian ambassador  —   and, importantly, that could make him subject to blackmail. The president did nothing. Flynn served for 18 more days and was let go only after the Justice Department’s warnings became public in the news media. Trump continued to defend Flynn, calling questions about him a ”witch hunt,” despite the fact that he is apparently at the center of the FBI’s investigation. It’s also notable that Yates was fired days after speaking with McGahn, as was former U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who as Axios notes, was also investigating issues related to Trump and Russia. ”What they have in common: They all were investigating Trump when they got fired, and there’s a Russia thread in each of their cases,” Axios’ Shannon Vavra writes. 3. Comey disputing Trump: Comey just testified before Congress for the second time in two months. The first time, March 20, didn’t go so well for Trump. That’s when (1) Comey first publicly acknowledged an FBI investigation into Russia and Trump associates and (2) disputed Trump’s tweeted allegation that President Barack Obama had wiretapped him. Comey said it didn’t happen. If there’s one thing you don’t do if you’re hoping to curry favor with this president, it’s disagree with him. Currying favor with the president, of course, is not the FBI director’s job, but it’s a delicate line. He serves at the pleasure of the president. 4. ”Mildly nauseous”: Comey just days ago said before Congress that it made him ”mildly nauseous” to think he might have swung the election by coming out less than two weeks before Election Day to say he’d reopened the Clinton email investigation. That statement may have made this president mildly nauseous. No one has been more sensitive about the size of his victory than Trump, who has repeatedly  —   and sometimes falsely  —   touted his Electoral College totals. On Tuesday, Comey may have given the president an opening to fire him. He admitted being mistaken when he testified before Congress when he said that Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of emails to   husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Comey corrected himself in a letter to Congress, saying he meant that they had been backed up not forwarded. That, the White House may have believed, gave Trump cause to ax Comey, especially with the Rosenstein memo in hand. But who believes that? Who believes that this president fired someone for being inartful with his language? 5. Comey got too big: The real reason may be that Comey got too ubiquitous, too visible, too big for Trump’s liking. And no one can get too big in Trump’s world. Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold alluded to that on NPR’s Morning Edition on Wednesday. ”The real issue is Comey had become the focus of everything,” Farenthold said. ”It wasn’t about the FBI. His face was on TV way too much. How many former FBI directors beyond J. Edgar Hoover can you name? They work quietly and methodically in the background, doing their investigations. They’re not on the front page of the newspaper, and they’re not involved in elections.” Look at what happened with Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. Trump upbraided her, joking about the job she’s doing and that he could fire her if he wanted to. Immediately preceding that, Haley was winning plaudits for her aggressiveness and being talked about as a potential 2024 presidential candidate. She has scarcely been heard from since. Trump creates warring power factions all around him. That means no one gets too big  —   and if they do, they are taken down a notch or ousted (see Bannon, Steve, as well). It means, in his world, no one amasses enough power to speak independently without fear of reprisal from Trump. Comey’s firing is arguably a power play, sending a signal once again of who truly is the boss. What happens now is the key  —   unanswerable  —   question. But let’s explore some others that could inform this: 1. Who does Trump nominate? Trump had the authority to terminate Comey and the power to nominate another person to run the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency. What kind of person does he appoint? Names like Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie are being floated  —   or he could appoint someone less   someone who can’t get too big and who will do the job quietly. 2. Will that person have ties to Trump’s world in one way or another? Remember, there is a faction out of the New York area within FBI current and former circles who were suspected of leaking to Giuliani during the campaign. 3. What happens to the FBI’s Russia investigation? Temporarily, presumably, the deputy director, Andrew McCabe, will run it. He is a   veteran of the FBI. He joined as a special agent out of New York in 1996, focusing on organized crime. But Trump went after him during the campaign. As NBC reminds, Trump falsely accused McCabe of the following in October: ”It was just learned a little while ago that one of the closest people to Hillary Clinton, with   ties to her and her husband, gave more than $675, 000 to the campaign of the spouse of a top FBI official, his wife, who helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s illegal email server.” He added the next day: ”The man who was in charge of the investigation of Hillary Clinton accepted essentially from Hillary Clinton $675, 000 that went to his wife.” Trump went on to connect the dots in a misleading way and accused Clinton of being a crook. The truth is that McCabe’s wife was approached by Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Virginia Democrats to run for the state Senate. She did, and McAuliffe’s political action committee as well as the state party unsurprisingly donated to her campaign. McAuliffe was a longtime fundraiser for the Clintons before becoming governor. Jill McCabe lost. Andrew McCabe did not have any involvement in the Clinton email investigation at the time. Three months later, in February 2016, Andrew McCabe became deputy director of the FBI, the first time he had any oversight of the investigation, as PolitiFact noted. 4. How do congressional Republicans respond? The unintended consequence for Trump very well may be that calls for independent oversight, an independent investigation, grow. Republicans are questioning the decision. Richard Burr, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman leading the Senate’s Russia investigation, said he was ”troubled” by the timing of the decision. (And Burr was an adviser to the Trump campaign.) John McCain of Arizona said he was ”disappointed” and added, ”I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The president’s decision to remove the FBI director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.” Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Comey’s ”removal at this particular time will raise questions. It is essential that ongoing investigations are fulsome and free of political interference until their completion.” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, said he was against an independent prosecutor or investigation. On the Senate floor Wednesday, he said a ”new investigation would impede the current work” of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee’s ongoing Russia investigation. 5. How do Democrats respond? Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse’s statement Tuesday night might be instructive as to the questions Democrats have. ”America needs to have confidence that the Department of Justice will fill its traditional role of following the facts fearlessly, and prosecuting whomever has violated the law no matter the office they hold,” he said. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday night that he told the president by phone, ”You are making a big mistake” and that he wondered whether the investigation was ”getting too close for the president.” On the Senate floor Wednesday, Schumer again called for Rosenstein to appoint an independent prosecutor. Were the FBI’s questions ”getting too close to home for the president?” Schumer asked. He added, ”If there was ever a time when circumstances warranted a special prosecutor, it was right now.” He said the investigation needs to be ”far away from the heavy hand of this administration.” Schumer told Democratic senators to be in their seats in the Senate chamber at 9:30 a. m. ET Wednesday to listen to what McConnell had to say. McConnell whacked Democrats for ”complaining about the removal of an FBI director they repeatedly criticized.” Democrats were to huddle at 10:30 a. m. ET  —   the same time President Trump met at the White House with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister."
"The family business of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s    and senior advisor, wants to build a pair of skyscrapers in a gritty New Jersey neighborhood. But the Jersey City project faces a number of hurdles. This week, it ran headlong into a new one  —   an ethics flap, after Kushner’s sister highlighted her family ties to the White House while pitching the development to wealthy Chinese investors. That’s prompting closer scrutiny of the project, and the controversial immigrant investor visa program that could help finance it. The   visa program gives immigrants a visa and a shot at a green card, if they invest in a project that creates jobs in the U. S. It was meant to support    projects, particularly in rural areas and distressed urban neighborhoods. But some question if that incentive is really needed to build luxury residential towers. ”It’s an example of a project which probably could attract capital without the benefit of ” said Gary Friedland, a   residence at the NYU Stern School of Business. Friedland and his wife Jeanne Calderon, a professor at NYU, have been studying the   program for years. They found that developers across the country have raised at least $10 billion dollars for more than 50 major projects this way. They say immigrants are willing to lend money for the promise of almost no financial return, because what they really want is a visa. So the   program helps developers pad their profits. ”It could save the developers tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in financing costs,” said Calderon. The Kushner Companies is looking to raise $150 million from investors overseas for the project known as One Journal Square. When it’s finished, the developers say it will include two towers and hundreds of luxury apartments with commanding views of lower Manhattan. But for now, it’s an empty lot surrounded by a   fence. ”I have watched Journal Square go up, and go down,” said Don Smartt, who runs the Journal Square Special Improvement District. While Jersey City neighborhoods across the river from Manhattan have been booming for a decade or more, Journal Square has fallen behind. It’s a mix of crumbling movie theaters, office buildings and chain stores that feels a long way from the city’s downtown renaissance. That’s why Smartt is excited about One Journal Square. ”We hope that the current developer finds the support necessary through all legal means to make this project a reality,” Smartt said. The Kushners have used   financing before. For example, raising $50 million for Trump Bay Street, a luxury apartment building on the Jersey City waterfront. ”Nothing about what they’ve been doing is out of the ordinary in what many real estate developers in NYC have been doing over the last few years,” said Jason Barr, the author of the book Building the Skyline, and a professor of economics at Rutgers University, Newark. But the Kushners are out of the ordinary, because Jared Kushner is President Trump’s    and senior advisor. Ethics watchdogs howled when the Kushner Companies pointed out its connection to the White House in a presentation to investors in China last weekend. The company has apologized, and says Kushner has stepped away from his role at the company. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the administration is evaluating all visa programs, including   ”and whether or not they are serving the purpose that they were intended to, whether or not we’re making sure that we do what’s in the best interest of the American worker.” The controversy over   is just one of the problems facing the Kushner Companies’ project in Jersey City. Under pressure from constituents, Jersey City’s mayor announced that he’s no longer supporting a big tax break for One Journal Square. And the project’s anchor tenant, the office space provider WeWork, decided not to sign a lease. Don Smartt with the Journal Square Special Improvement District says he doesn’t care how the financing for One Journal Square comes together. As long as it does. ”Journal Square’s future and the city’s future requires something better than an empty lot,” Smartt said. The last time somebody tried to a build a skyscraper on this site, Smartt added, the developer spent nearly a decade trying to put the financing together. And then finally gave up."
"Plastic surgery, private jets, toddlers in designer clothes, magnums of champagne  —   Lauren Greenfield’s   photo collection, Generation Wealth, shows all of that. But this book isn’t just about people who are wealthy, it’s about people who want to be wealthy. I met up with Greenfield at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, where there’s an exhibit to accompany the new book. She says some of her early work was photographing kids here in LA, where she grew up. This project, about wealth and striving for wealth, developed from there, even though she didn’t know it was about that at the time. ”I started it as a kind of looking back at the culture I grew up in,” she says. ”And then I went on to do other things, about gender, about fashion, about consumerism, about how our values have been exported. It wasn’t until the 2008 financial crash I realized that the stories that I’d been doing for a couple of decades were all connected, and kind of formed a morality tale.” So Greenfield went back through her old work to see ”how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.” She also identified what was missing, and began filling in the holes to see ”what it all added up to.” It added up to a massive collection of images. It’s organized into sections with titles like: ”I Shop Therefore I Am” and ”The Princess Brand.” It’s in chronological order, and at the exhibit we start in the early 1990s, with images of private school kids, seventh graders, each flashing a $100 bill. If you’re doing a story about growing up in LA, the kids told Greenfield, you have to show money. Then there’s the photo of high school kids who’ve skipped school to cruise the beach in their convertibles. But, she says, these kids actually aren’t rich. ”The thing about this project is: It’s not about the rich, it’s really about our aspiration to wealth, and our needing to show it off whether we have it or not,” she explains. ”So, with the rich kids, I was looking at how they were growing up quickly, and how they were influenced by the values of Hollywood. But they were really influenced by the media, and MTV and . ..   culture for inspiration. So then I also photographed kids from East LA and South LA who, on the other side, were emulating the trappings of wealth.” It’s like a feedback loop, she says. The rich kids want to look like the poor kids, and the poor kids want to look like the rich kids. We look at another picture of a kid in a   suit and rose boutonniere, paying for a limo outside his prom date’s house. ”Enrique was living in South Central, his mother was a seamstress, and he spent two years saving the $600 that he spent on prom,” Greenfield says. ”His mother thought money could go to better use, but she knew how important it was to him, and he said it was completely worth it. They had a limo, it picked them up in South Central, everybody was looking, and he said he ’felt like the king that day.’ I think it’s really important to understand that these values go beyond the rich, they go beyond the poor. They cross class and race and even border.” There’s a section in the exhibit called ”The Queen of Versailles,” about a wealthy couple that builds a huge mansion, and another section called ”Cult of Celebrity,” with early images of the Kardashians. Greenfield has captured famous people learning how to be famous. ”Fame has been an important driver in the work . ..” Greenfield explains. ”With the rise of reality TV and social media, everybody can be a celebrity and fame has currency. And so, in a lot of my interviews, when you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up they say: rich and famous.” People will also pay to have the trappings of wealth  —   there’s a ”fake it ’till you make it” mentality. In the images  —   of lavish pool parties and the like  —   it looks like people are having fun . .. but are they happy? To answer that question, Greenfield quotes David Siegel, from the Queen of Versailles, who said, ”Money doesn’t make you happy. It just makes you unhappy in a better section of town.” ”There’s a striving that kind of continues among rich,” Greenfield says. ”The Queen of Versailles was a perfect example  —   they lived in a    house and then built a    house. . .. There’s kind of a theme of addiction and the addiction of consumerism. And so with addiction, you never have enough and there’s no satisfaction and eventually you hit rock bottom.” Which brings us to a section called ”The Fall,” in which Greenfield captures the damage done by the 2008 economic crash. The pictures are different here: There are no pool parties this is wealth pursued and taken away  —   people who reached up and discovered they reached too far. Her images depict a GM worker who lost his job and ended up in foreclosure a real estate agent who became a phone sex operator an empty home where a child’s trophies were all left in the garage. Finally, there’s a section called ”Make it Rain”  —   where dollar bills float down as naked women crawl on the floor to pick them up at a famous strip club in Atlanta. In another image, a   simply states: ”Being broke is not an option.” Greenfield says, now, decades after she started taking these pictures, projecting wealth is more important than ever. ”I think the backdrop of these 25 years is that we’ve never had more inequality and we’ve never had less social mobility,” she says. ”So, in a way, fictitious social mobility  —   bling and presentation  —   has replaced real social mobility . .. because it’s all you can get.” Greenfield believes there’s been a shift in values  —   from ”hard work, and thrift, and frugality and modesty” to ”bling and showing off and narcissism.” Materialism, she says, is the new spirituality."
"If, like many of us, you are reading this article on the toilet  —   then we’ve caught you at the perfect time. When you’re done with your business, perhaps you’ll do a thorough hand washing. Or maybe just a quick rinse. Or maybe you’ll skip it altogether. Failure to wash is a problem for ordinary folks. Germs on your unwashed hands can get into your body when you touch, say, your eyes or mouth. And into your food, too. It’s a problem for health workers as well. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that medical staff only remember to do so about half the times they’re supposed to. The CDC states: ”This contributes to the spread of   infections that affect 1 in 25 hospital patients on any given day.” Worldwide, one in 10 patients acquires an infection while receiving health care. So this month, the Centers for Disease Control is ramping up its campaign to get doctors, nurses and other medical staff to wash up. But the question for medical workers (and really, for everyone) is: Do you do a good job? CDC offers straightforward instructions: soap up, scrub and rinse. The process should take 35 seconds  —   about the time it takes to sing the alphabet song twice. The World Health Organization has its own instructions. The process takes a tiny bit longer  —   42. 5 seconds. And there are six very specific steps. WHO’s technique is a deliberate process to get rid of germs in all the nooks and crannies of the hands. First, rub your palms against each other, then rub the back of each hand against your palms. Rub your palms together with your fingers interlaced, rub your palms against each other while your fingers are interlocked, rub your fingers around each of your thumbs, and finally, rub each palm with the tips your fingers. Both the CDC and WHO methods, which have been around for decades, are also taught at elementary schools (to germy kiddos) and restaurants (to staff who handle your food). Recently, researchers wanted to compare them to see which was the best way to minimize bacteria. In a small study recently published in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, researchers at the Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland watched carefully as 42 doctors and 78 nurses cleaned their hands using either the CDC or WHO routine. They found that the WHO technique reduced the average bacterial count on the medical workers’ hands slightly more than the CDC’s method. In any case, both organizations’ work really, really well, says study author says Jacqui Reilly, a professor of infection prevention and control at Scotland’s Glasgow Caledonian University who led the study. The real issue is that health care workers aren’t cleaning their hands as often and as thoroughly as they should  —   basically every time they touch their faces or touch anything that isn’t sterile. And when it comes to doing a good job, even having a set of directions doesn’t guarantee good results. In Reilly’s study, only 65 percent of the 120 participants completed the two techniques properly, despite having instructions right in front of them. Reilly herself says she’s been using the   method since she was first taught it at medical school. ”I don’t think about it consciously anymore,” she says. She highly recommends you try it out after using the toilet. And if you don’t, at the very least, she says, remember that ”any time you wash your hands, it should take at least 15 seconds.” And avoid the making the rookie mistake of rubbing soap onto dry hands and then rinsing it off. If you wet your hands, first, Reilly says, the water works to dislodge any microorganisms clinging onto your skin, so that the soap can scrub them off: ”So always wet your hands first.”"
"Firearms safety is key for people who use weapons at work or for recreational shooting. But one risk has been little acknowledged: Lead dust exposure. In a standard bullet, a solid lead core wrapped in a copper jacket sits atop a stack of gunpowder and lead primer. When the gun fires, the primer ignites, the gunpowder lights, and some of the lead on the bullet boils. When the casing snaps out of the ejection port, lead particles trail behind it. As the bullet hurtles down the barrel of the gun, a shower of lead particles follows. If a gun range isn’t ventilated well, lead dust collects on shooters’ clothing and hands and lingers in the air, where it can be inhaled. The more people shoot, the greater the risk of being exposed to dangerous amounts of lead. It becomes an occupational hazard for weapons instructors, police and defense personnel. It can also put family members at risk. A    boy in Connecticut was found to have high blood lead levels at a routine doctor’s visit. There were no lead paint or pipes in the child’s home. The exposure was traced to his father’s job as a maintenance worker at an indoor shooting range the father cared for his son after work in   clothing, according to a 2015 report from the state public health department. In order to reduce risk, the Department of Defense has lowered its blood lead standard to 20 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, three times more restrictive than its previous standard, which relied on Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines. These OSHA guidelines apply to workers inside the United States, including employees of private firing ranges, but not to customers of those ranges. The DoD’s new blood lead policy, in effect as of April, comes after a National Academy of Sciences report published in 2012 showing that defense personnel face significant health risks from lead from firing ranges, defense department spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel James Brindle told NPR. ”DoD’s subject matter experts in toxicology and occupational medicine used the Committee’s report to propose the lower allowable blood lead level.” The study also showed that people should expect negative health consequences at the blood lead standard set by OSHA. The OSHA standards for blood lead and exposure to lead have long been criticized as inadequate and dangerously outdated. ”The current [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] standard hasn’t been updated since the 1970s,” says Dr. Elena Page, an occupational and environmental hazards physician at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. ”It’s widely acknowledged that the OSHA standard is not protective. They’re clearly aware of that, and there’s been a lot of pressure to change it.” OSHA did not provide comments or interviews requested for this story. About 1 million law enforcement officers train on indoor ranges, according to the CDC, and there are 16, 000 to 18, 000 private indoor ranges in the U. S. Currently, the OSHA standards for lead exposure decree that employees must stop working if they have a blood lead level of 60 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, and workers can return to the job if their blood lead level drops below 40 for two consecutive tests. But adverse effects on cardiovascular health, brain function and kidney function have been connected to blood lead levels as low as 5. ”There’s no amount of lead in your blood that’s safe,” Page says. The issue of lead exposure and firearms is divisive, even the question of whether higher lead levels are unsafe. ”Well, that’s their opinion,” says Larry Keane, the vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. ”We believe there are efforts by others that want to diminish people’s participation in shooting sports or exercise their second amendment rights. They put out or advocate positions that are unsupported by the evidence.” The need for a stricter lead standard is obvious, says Adam Finkel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a former OSHA official. ”OSHA is really letting people down,” he says. ”We’re learning more about the neurologic effects of lead, and for whatever reason this substance has the capability of causing a whole spectrum of health effects at the OSHA standard that people don’t appreciate.” Many effects from lead can be subtle or nonspecific, says Mark Laidlaw, an environmental health scientist at RMIT University in Australia. ”Memory and concentration problems, headache, abdominal pain, mood disorders  —   they can be attributed to a number of things unrelated to lead,” he says. ”You can have one of these health effects, but the shooters might not realize these are associated with their shooting. They just don’t know they’re being lead poisoned.” At levels slightly higher than 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, people may begin suffering spontaneous abortions or kidney dysfunction, according to the CDC. As the volume of lead in the body increases, the effects become more severe. ”At levels of 10 or less, there’s definitely evidence of increased incidence of tremor. Some are more cognitive effects,” says Catherine Beaucham, an industrial hygienist at NIOSH and author of a 2014 report that found that most people with elevated blood levels were exposed from working at recreational firing ranges. ”With acute lead poisoning, you can get wrist drop, nerve problems, abdominal pain. If it gets high enough, you can get a coma and death.” Firing ranges can be particularly hazardous environments. Defense department ranges, private recreational firing ranges and law enforcement facilities have been found to be contaminated with high levels of lead, according to investigations by The Oregonian and Seattle Times in 2016 and 2014. Often, neglected or failing ventilation equipment was to blame. A review of lead exposure at shooting ranges that Laidlaw published last month found that nearly all participants in the 36 studies had blood lead levels above the 5 microgram ceiling recommended by the CDC some had levels higher than 40. ”You got to understand, the more bullets you shoot, the higher your blood lead level. The more visits you take to the range, then the higher your blood lead level.” And when OSHA has inspected firing ranges in the last few decades, the agency has commonly found lead contamination violations. ”It’s about 30 years of sampling. They haven’t done very many, but just a quick look shows about 350 air samples,” Finkel says. About half of samples exceed the 50 microgram per cubic meter air level standard for workplaces, Finkel says, and some gun ranges had contamination levels]up to 24, 100 micrograms per cubic meter of air. ”So, it’s terribly, terribly common, and [OSHA] finds overexposures even to their    inadequate standard.” The defense department’s new blood lead limit of 20 does not go far enough, Laidlaw says. He thinks a better standard would be a maximum of 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. ”It is a step in the right direction, however the best way to deal with the problem is to eliminate lead from bullets and primers,” he says. ”I worry about the health of the young men and women in the military who are exposed to lead regularly while using firearms.” The Defense department has a   goal of reducing employees’ blood lead levels to below 10, Brindle says. ”The DoD policy requires mandatory removal of the worker from workplace exposures when their blood lead level exceeds 20, and effectively will achieve the   average blood lead level to stay below 10,” he writes to NPR in an email. But some within the industry say it’s not necessary to abandon lead ammunition. ”[Lead] is only a problem if [gun ranges] are not designed maintained properly,” says Bill Provencher, the   of Carey’s Small Arms Range Ventilation in Tinley Park, Ill. ”Even if OSHA standards are somewhat risky, a properly ventilated range has hardly detectible lead levels at 0. 6 [micrograms per cubic meter of air. ]” The most important thing aside from range ventilation, Provencher says, is to make sure that people are using safe practices like carefully washing their hands and clothes after shooting. ”I would say [awareness] is going from not very good to good,” he says. ”The people I’ve met with really high lead levels, most of them did seriously silly things like working in the environment while drinking coffee. Ranges can be an unsafe place, but they can be perfectly safe places. There are people out there who are just hard headed and do silly things.”"
"A grain of rice, like a grain of sand, sifts through your hands with a mysterious and lovely sameness. Mostly white or tan, hundreds or thousands of grains pour smoothly out of buckets, out of burlap, into bowls, with a sound like small waterfalls. Rice seems so simple, really. And yet, because it plays a central role in world cuisines, these modest grains can carry the weight of history. Sometimes that history is deeply surprising. Trinidadian ethnobotanist Francis Morean is living that surprise. The    grew up in Trinidad’s Palo Seco hamlet, helping his mother and grandmother plant ”hill rice” in the garden once the   rainy season had begun. They would punch   holes in the ground with stakes fashioned from tree branches, and drop the rice seeds in. After harvesting, they would dry the rice plants on large cloths sewn together and laid in the sun. The dried rice plants were shredded by dancing and stomping on them barefoot, the hulls removed in homemade mortars and pestles. The rice stored well for years and was, says Morean, a cherished dish at the dinner table. ”In Sierra Leone and many West African nations, rice was an essential part of every meal,” Morean says. ”So being able to produce one’s rice was a major plus for persons of the African diaspora.” And this particular rice, in the words of David Shields, author of Southern Provisions: The Creation and Revival of a Cuisine, was ”the most historically significant African diaspora grain in the Western Hemisphere.” Last month, Morean joined Shields and assorted rice geneticists, scholars, growers and chefs in Charleston, S. C. to attend a   tasting and presentation on the history of this unusual African rice that is, nowadays, causing a bit of a stir. It’s a rice that traveled from Africa to low country  —   the sea islands and coastal plains of the American Southeast  —   and was grown widely in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky. While it was not a major commercial crop on plantations, for the enslaved Africans who worked them, it was a vital, edible link to the homes they and their ancestors had been wrenched from. It was then brought to Trinidad by formerly enslaved people called Merikins  —   a variant of ”Americans”  —   where it thrived even as it vanished from U. S. fields. It is a seed that followed the slave trade, and its repatriation now may help fill in a critical missing link in Southern, African and Trinidadian foodways. The rice belongs to the African genus called Oryza glaberrima, of which there may be 10, 000 known varieties, according to molecular biologist Isaac Bimpong Kofi of AfricaRice Center. In contrast, there are more than 40, 000 varieties of the Asian Oryza sativa, which most of the world knows and eats. Originally called ”red bearded upland rice”  —   and now dubbed Merikin Moruga Hill Rice  —   this strain gets its name from a reddish husk festooned with a ”beard” of spiky plant hairs that protect it from pests and birds. What makes this rice so special is how and where it grows. Rice loves water and thrives in coastal plains and marshes. But this strain can happily thrive upland, on higher, drier land  —   requiring, as the Pennsylvania Mercury put it in 1786, ”no other watering but what they receive from the clouds.” Upland varieties of rice piqued the interest of many Americans in the late 1700s because it was thought they might compete with ”swamp” rice and counter the   malaria infections that swelled in the coastal plains and swamps there every summer. The red bearded variety came to America on a ship from West Africa. One of its biggest champions was President Thomas Jefferson, who sent the seeds to Charleston and Georgia. Shields unearthed a letter Jefferson wrote in 1808 in which he expressed hope that, if the upland rice ”answered as well as the swamp Rice, it might rid them of that source of their summer disease.” In South Carolina, plantation owners who had already made fortunes growing Asian rice were indifferent to the new strain, according to Shields, who is a professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. But for enslaved Africans, it was a different story. It ”is probable that Africans recognized the seed, familiar from the markets of Guinea and Sierra Leone,” Shields writes. On plantations of the Southeast, enslaved Africans grew the rice in their own backyard gardens, where they raised crops to supplement their   provisions. In exchange for their freedom, some enslaved Africans on the sea islands of Georgia volunteered to fight for the British and against their owners during the War of 1812. In 1816 the British settled these newly freed people in southern Trinidad, where they brought their favorite cultivars and called themselves Merikins. In the Caribbean, the Merikins went on growing the rice, and it was adopted into the local cuisine. In the United States, however, the red bearded rice was displaced by more prolific Asian varieties and slowly went extinct  —   so thoroughly extinct that excavation and surveying over the last 40 years has not turned up a single seed or grain. ”An entire canon of lost Southern foodways vanished for 200 years,” muses Glenn Roberts, founder of the heirloom grain purveyor Anson Mills, and president of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, which is aggressively pursuing research on upland strains of glaberrima. ”And I don’t understand why it vanished. The best of the glaberrimas practically grow themselves.” He says they grow well upland, like wheat, they’re slightly drought tolerant but also comfortable growing in flood culture. They even do well ”floating where roots do not contact soil.” In 2015, Morean decided to take a trip to American libraries to research hill rice. ”Articles in our archives on the island mention the connection of our rice to the Carolinas,” he says. But the libraries of Charleston, Atlanta and New Orleans, where he conducted research, contained no mention of the hill rice at all. ”Nobody knew it was there,” Morean says. ”Nobody was writing about it, not even Judith Carney or Edda  .” Carney is widely known for a luminous masterwork called Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in The Americas that explores the critical role Africans played in the rice production that led to such enormous wealth in antebellum South Carolina.   in turn, wrote Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. ”I decided to hold a rice symposium on Trinidad, and invite everybody I could think of,” says Morean, who was concerned that production was steadily declining on the islands. ”I’d say there are only about 40 people still planting it, and most of them are over the age of 50. It’s hard labor. The young people don’t want to do it.” The symposium took place in December 2016 and drew, among many others, David Shields and members of the   community  —   the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans in rural low country, who keep many linguistic and cultural ties to Africa to this day. That included Marquetta L. Goodwine, who is chieftess of the   Nation (she’s also known as Queen Quet) and renowned Gullah chef Benjamin ”B. J.” Dennis of Charleston. ”It was fascinating to see the rice cooked ” says Chef Dennis, ”in coconut milk, very starchy, almost murky. In contrast, Gullah cuisine prepares rice so that every grain is separate, like individual blossoms.” Dennis says it’s an   garden rice that he is certain will come back to the   community in the next few years. ”Southern food in the U. S. is so similar to   cuisine.” Roberts is determined to bring the rice back, and says that once it makes it through quarantine into the U. S. it will be genotyped to be certain that it is indeed the bearded upland rice of the late 1700s and 1800s. The Carolina Gold Rice Foundation and Clemson University are now collaborating, spearheaded by Shields’ research and documentation, as well as the skills of horticultural scientist Brian Ward of Clemson University Extension in Charleston. Last year they obtained and   13 varieties of upland glaberrima obtained from the USDA’s National Small Grains Collection in Aberdeen, Idaho. One of the upland bearded varieties is now growing in experimental plots in Texas, South Carolina and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. ”We intend to donate seed free of charge to communities across the South and Northeast,” says Roberts of Anson Mills and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. Interest in Orzya glaberrima is growing. In Africa, several organizations, including AfricaRice, are crossing upland varieties of African rice with Asian rice to produce hardier strains. Roberts and Shields envision a time when red bearded rice and perhaps other upland strains can be grown by any gardener in their backyard, or even in a planter. That will be welcome news to   descendants and farmers, who might then grow their own ancestral rice once again. Michael Twitty, a chef and culinary historian who explores   foodways and is the author of the forthcoming book The Cooking Gene, says there’s always a risk that rediscovered cultivars will be subject to ”cultural gentrification, where others repurpose the shell of our heritage. We have to know the value of our own African heritage. For us, these ingredients are part of a mosaic that comes with the blood.” Dennis agrees, and says, ”It’s up to us to tell our own story correctly. I feel our ancestors actually guide us and ask us to tell the story. And it makes my heart happy, chasing my ancestral roots through food.”"
"Problems continue to mount for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. To high unemployment, a lagging economy and billions in public debt, add unsafe drinking water to the island’s list of woes. A new study by the Natural Resources Defense Council says nearly all of the tap water available on the island violates federal safety standards. The report says many municipal waters systems in Puerto Rico aren’t tested regularly. Among those that are tested, the NRDC says it found the nation’s highest rate of drinking water violations. More than 2. 4 million people in the U. S. territory draw their water from systems which contain harmful bacteria or other contaminants. And almost none of the municipal water systems on the island test for lead contamination. The environmental group is calling on federal, commonwealth and local authorities to make a major investment in the island’s water infrastructure and to upgrade testing for contaminants. Puerto Rico’s Aqueduct and Sewer Authority is one of the many public agencies on the island struggling to provide services. It holds some $5 billion of the commonwealth’s $73 billion public debt. Next week in San Juan, a federal judge will begin overseeing a hearing to restructure that debt under a special law passed by Congress. As part of the proceedings, similar to bankruptcy, U. S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain will decide how Puerto Rico’s assets will be distributed among its various classes of bondholders. A fiscal oversight board set up by Congress has approved a spending plan submitted by Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello that imposes severe spending cuts. As part of that plan, the island last week announced its closing 179 public schools, a move expected to save more than $7 million. Rossello’s administration also wants to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the University of Puerto Rico, a proposal that’s been met by protests, faculty resignations and a student strike."
"Café Tacvba is huge in Latin America. The Mexican rock band has won Latin Grammys and played major U. S. festivals, like South by Southwest and Coachella. Its music has always had a political edge  —   but its members have never seen a moment quite like this one. The band is currently preparing to launch an international tour behind its new album, Jei Beibi. One of the new songs, ” ” has a poppy sound that’s deceptively simple. It alludes to a chant that dominates protests in Mexico City, calling for answers about 43 students who disappeared at the hands of police in 2014. The band’s keyboardist, Emmanuel del Real, says Café Tacvba doesn’t look away from the political situation in Mexico  —   or the U. S. ”If you live in a country like this or with a neighbor like the one we have, you can’t be not taking care of what’s happening,” del Real says. ”You can’t not say something about it.” Even as the band has gained popularity abroad, Café Tacvba still insists on singing only in Spanish. It mixes rock and electronic music with traditional Mexican styles like ranchera the first single from the new album, ”Futuro,” is built on cumbia beats. Bassist and singer Quique Rangel wrote ”Futuro.” His   whine conveys his obsessive worry about what’s going to happen in the future and his inability to control it. ”It’s about here and now is what you have to think and be aware,” Rangel says. ”Everything else doesn’t matter. The future is today.” All four members of the band wrote songs for this album, which is Café Tacvba’s first in five years. They take their time to think about what they want to say and how they want to say it. And Rangel knows that expectations are high. ”We are aware of the pressure people want to put in our work,” he says. ”But we try not to think too much in that. We have to be the first and last listeners that have to be satisfied, and our goal’s accomplished.” The members of Café Tacvba began playing together in 1989, when they were all in their 20s and they gravitated towards angsty love songs. Now, they’re older  —   starting families and having kids. You can hear that in ”El Mundo En Que Nací,” a lullaby that del Real wrote for his two young children. ”Everybody keeps telling you, ’You haven’t experienced nothing until you are a father,’ and you say, ’Yeah, whatever,’ ” del Real says. ”And then when you have your child, you say ’Oh, Jesus’. .. I realized that you’re gonna learn a new way [to] love somebody, a new form of loving.” Café Tacvba will be playing these songs on its tour, which includes more than 30 dates in the U. S. Rangel says he’s well aware of the significance of a Mexican rock band playing in President Trump’s America. ”The four of us are not ’bad hombres,’ ” Rangel says with a laugh. ”I think we want to give to the people from Mexico and from other countries in Latin America  —   to bring them comfort and hope.” The musicians are all worried about the state of the world, but Jei Beibi opens and closes on high notes. The final track, ”Celebración,” tells listeners, ”Let’s get ready.” Is it a call to political action or a call to party? Café Tacvba is happy to leave listeners wondering."
"This was not exactly the decision VG Media had hoped for. The collective of German publishers had sued Google, arguing that the tech giant has infringed on copyright protections by offering snippets of the publishers’ articles in search results. Those snippets, according to VG Media, hurt the publishers’ bottom line by sating potential readers’ curiosity and violated a 2013 German law that requires compensation for those snippets of text. Yet on Tuesday a Berlin court raised some concerns with the law itself often known in English as the Ancillary Copyright for Press Publishers. The judge questioned whether Germany had properly notified the European Commission  —   the executive arm of the European Union  —   before enacting the regulation, suspending the case until the Court of Justice of the European Union could weigh in on whether the law is even valid. The issue hinges on an EU directive that requires member countries such as Germany to alert the organization about ”any draft technical regulation prior to its adoption.” Handelsblatt Global, a German business publication, explains why Germany decided not to notify the EU about the draft of this law: ”While typically a formality, notification reviews of national laws by Brussels can take up to two years or more. In 2013, Germany did not submit the copyright law for notification, citing a Justice Ministry argument that the law’s scope was so limited, it didn’t fall under the E. U.’s notification requirement.” The court proved skeptical about this reasoning, though its ruling did note that the publishers complaint is at least partially justified  —   without offering further explanation on this point. At any rate, Google applauded the decision, saying that it demonstrated the failings of the law. ”Today’s decision in Berlin highlights that there are still many contradictions and unanswered questions in the law of ancillary copyright for publishers,” Google said in a statement quoted by PCWorld. ”We’ve said many times that we don’t want to fight legal battles with publishers,” the statement continues. ”We’d much rather work with them to drive traffic to their websites and apps, promote their brands, and support online journalism  —   and that’s what we’ll continue to do.” Nieman Lab reported in 2014 that the law has had something of a rocky life in practice: ”The law went into effect last August and, while some details still need to be ironed out in court, the controversial heart of it  —   whether search engines will pay money to publishers  —   has an uncertain future. Google has refused to pay fees to publish snippets from news sites, and instead asked German publishers last year to opt in if they want to be included in Google News search results, waiving their right to cash in on the use of their content according to the new law. To avoid paying the collection agency, VG Media, which represents the publishers that chose not to opt in, Google stopped showing snippets from their news articles on Oct. 23 [2014]. Shortly after that, the publishers in VG Media gave Google a license to restore snippets to their search results  —   for free.   Axel Springer, one of Europe’s largest publishers, announced on Nov. 5 [2014] that it had caved to Google’s pressure after traffic to its websites from Google dropped by 40 percent and from Google News by 80 percent when snippets were left out of search results.” If the law should be invalidated, a prospect that now looms over the case as it heads to the European court, the decision would not only represent a blow to the publishers who brought the case in the first place. It might also raise doubts about a proposed   directive that has some similar stipulations to the German copyright rule."
"Updated at 1:45 p. m. ET, Betsy DeVos spoke through waves of boos and shouted protests during her commencement speech at   University on Wednesday, delivering a celebratory address with what seemed at times to be   resolve. In the week and a half since the historically black university announced DeVos would be delivering the address, protest petitions drew thousands of signatures and calls for the school president’s resignation have cropped up  —   as NPR’s Anya Kamenetz laid out here. The reaction to the speech itself  —   which you can watch below  —   was often no different. As the   secretary of education stepped behind the lectern, she was greeted with immediate boos from the students  —   a deepening roar that had begun in smatters minutes earlier when she received her honorary doctorate from school President Edison O. Jackson. Yet it was also clear DeVos had anticipated this response, opening her speech with a call for understanding. ”One of the hallmarks of higher education and of democracy is the ability to converse with people with whom we disagree,” DeVos told the crowd, her voice raised slightly to be heard above the boos. ”We can focus on differences that divide us, or we can choose to listen and learn from each other’s experiences.” As Anya explained, much of that anger among students and alumni was inspired by comments DeVos had made earlier this year: ”DeVos called HBCUs ”real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” a remark she was forced to walk back after protests in fact, these colleges were founded as the only option for students, when other colleges were still legally segregated. Just this week, DeVos found herself clarifying comments by President Trump that seemed to suggest that a key form of funding for HBCUs might be unconstitutional.” Within hours of the announcement at the start of this month, the school in Daytona Beach, Fla. began actively defending its decision to invite DeVos. ”One of the lasting hallmarks of higher education is its willingness to engage, explore, and experience that which we deem as ’other,’ ” Jackson said in an open letter to the school community the same day as the announcement. ”When we seek to shelter our students and campus communities from views that are diametrically opposed to their own,” he continued, ”we actually leave our students far less capable of combating those ideas. . .. We cannot, and we will not, ever accomplish this if we continue to exist in ideological, social, and racial silos.” At the ceremony Wednesday, Jackson interrupted DeVos shortly into her address in order to quiet graduates in the crowd, some of whom had risen to their feet to turn their backs on DeVos in protest. ”If this behavior continues, your degrees will be mailed to you,” Jackson threatened. ”Choose which way you want to go.” The faculty and staff on stage stood several minutes in silence before the jeers from the crowd had ebbed enough to proceed. Still, some of the graduates made their choice known  —   loudly. Perhaps no louder than when DeVos promised to go to the grave site of Mary McLeod Bethune later in the day to pay her respects, a promise nearly drowned out by the sounds of shouting. In the end, though, the boos gradually subsided and DeVos concluded her prepared remarks  —   though not before she delivered a few more pointed comments on difference and understanding. ”We must first listen, then speak, with humility to understand the perspectives of those with whom we disagree.”"
"Fifty thousand signatures on protest petitions. Calls on the president of the university to resign. People on Twitter saying they’re mailing back their degrees. It’s probably not what the leadership of   University was expecting when they announced their speaker for today’s commencement ceremony. But Education Secretary Betsy DeVos seems to bring a unique level of controversy almost everywhere she goes. And that’s especially true when it comes to historically black colleges like  . Earlier this year, DeVos called HBCUs ”real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” a remark she was forced to walk back after protests in fact, these colleges were founded as the only option for students, when other colleges were still legally segregated. Just this week, DeVos found herself clarifying comments by President Trump that seemed to suggest that a key form of funding for HBCUs might be unconstitutional. In announcing the invitation last week,  ’s president, Edison O. Jackson, said DeVos’ ”mission to empower parents and students resonates with the history and legacy” of Mary McLeod Bethune, the college’s founder. Trinice McNally holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from BCU. She said that she and many other alumni ”were outraged” both by the invitation and by the allusion to Bethune’s legacy. ”It’s a complete insult. There is no comparison.” Rachel Gilmer is with the Dream Defenders, a     youth organization that is among the many groups on and off campus organizing against DeVos. ”This is a person who’s planning to privatize our schools. They’re planning to gut many of the steps taken to protect student borrowers by Obama . .. she has made it clear in her words and her actions that she doesn’t care about the futures of black people.” BCU did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NPR. The school has been active on social media, posting a picture of empty cardboard boxes on Twitter with the hashtag ”#Deception?”  —   presumably referring to the petition drive  —   and posting a video on Facebook Live. On the same day that it announced DeVos, May 1, the university released a second announcement in response to the widespread blowback. This time, President Jackson invoked academic freedom. ”I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with, or to limit students to only those perspectives that are broadly sanctioned by a specific community.” Protests of speakers, particularly conservative speakers, have raged lately on campuses from the University of California, Berkeley to Middlebury College in Vermont. They have sometimes turned violent, and sparked a heated debate about free speech and modes of dissent. DeVos, meanwhile, often encounters protesters and is the first education secretary to receive security protection from the U. S. Marshals Service. Commencement speakers, though, are more commonly chosen for celebration and uplift than for provocative messages. (See NPR Ed’s Commencement Speeches app for some examples.) ”Graduation is a really big deal for our kids and for their families,” as the grandmother of one   graduate commented to the website Politic365. ”That spotlight should be on them and not on the controversy of the speaker that has been invited.” Her name? Evelyn Bethune. She’s the granddaughter of the college’s founder. Organizers would not say whether any disruption of the speech is planned Wednesday. Dream Defenders and other groups are using the hashtag #BackstoBetsy online. ”I hope they take a stand,” McNally said of the new graduates."
"In a rare victory for environmentalists under President Trump, the Senate rejected efforts to roll back an   rule limiting methane emissions from energy production sites on federal land. The vote over the greenhouse gas was close  —      —   with Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins coming down against the resolution, which would have repealed the Bureau of Land Management’s Methane Waste and Prevention Rule. In a statement, McCain said he voted against the repeal because the effort made use of a legislative tool called the Congressional Review Act, which would have blocked similar regulations in the future. ”While I am concerned that the BLM rule may be onerous, passage of the resolution would have prevented the federal government, under any administration, from issuing a rule that is ’similar,’ according to the plain reading of the Congressional Review Act,” the Arizona senator said. Graham previously told The Hill that he thought deploying the Congressional Review Act would be ”too blunt an instrument in this case.” The methane measure passed the House,   in February. Rhea Suh, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the Senate resolution an effort to ”put polluters first and the rest of us at risk.” The fact that it failed, she said in a statement, shows ”a majority of the   Senate at last has come to its collective senses.” The Western Energy Alliance, a major oil and gas industry group, has described the methane regulation as an overreach of executive authority in a matter that is better left to the states and the Environmental Protection Agency. The alliance vowed to continue pursuing legal action and working with the Department of the Interior to review and rescind the rule, a process initiated by the Trump administration but could take years. The White House is also taking aim at a slew of other   environmental regulations. The greenhouse gas rule is intended to curb a practice called flaring, during which energy producers burn off natural gas that they can’t process or sell. That process releases methane into the atmosphere. NPR’s Nathan Rott explained the rationale behind the regulation: ”The Obama administration sought to address the emissions with the BLM’s methane rule. It requires oil and gas companies on federal or tribal lands to look for leaks and fix them. It limits allowable venting and flaring and directs producers to capture the natural gas. And it requires that oil and gas producers gradually update well sites with modern technology. ”The administration’s reasons were twofold: For one, the rule would reduce waste of a natural resource being pulled from public lands. ”The second: Methane, the chief component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. It can warm the atmosphere at nearly 30 times the rate of carbon dioxide.” As Rott reported, oil and gas producers argue that the regulation is redundant and unnecessary because there are state laws that address the practice and because they say it’s in their business interest not to burn off their own gas. But critics say the notion of industry adequately limiting emissions without regulations doesn’t bear out. They say it doesn’t always make immediate economic sense for energy producers to swap out old, leaky equipment with newer, more environmentally friendly models, even if the lost gas costs them money. That cost is significant, Rott notes: ”The Interior Department says that between 2009 and 2015, enough natural gas was lost on public lands to supply about 6. 2 million households with energy for a year. In money terms, the Government Accountability Office says as much as $23 million of potential royalty revenue is lost annually.”"
"The idea of   development isn’t new. But today Amazon announced that a new building it plans to construct in Seattle will feature a decidedly uncommon mix: its own   offices, and a homeless shelter with space for 65 families. The company said it will donate more than 47, 000 square feet of space, or about half of the new   building, to Mary’s Place, which operates several family shelters. Last year, Amazon invited Mary’s Place to set up a shelter inside a former Travelodge it owns. That building will be torn down, but its replacement will include a permanent shelter space with room for about 200 homeless women, children, and families. Homelessness is a huge problem in Seattle, where tent cities have sprung up under the interstates. King County and Seattle had the   population of homeless people last year. A report from the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted 10, 730 homeless people in Seattle and King County in 2016. Washington state had the   total increase in homeless people (1, 408) between 2015 and 2016, according to the report. Seattle’s leaders declared a homelessness state of emergency in 2015. The Seattle Times reported that the city’s mayor called homelessness a human tragedy ”seldom seen in the history of our city.” And many point to companies like Amazon for exacerbating the problem: The company is hiring thousands of people, and its   employees drive up housing prices. Census data released in September showed that median incomes jumped $10, 000 in a single year. Over the years, Amazon has been criticized for trailing the city’s other major companies philanthropically. In 2012, The Seattle Times did the numbers on corporate giving to United Way of King County. ”Microsoft made a corporate donation of $4 million,” it reported. ”Boeing gave $3. 1 million. Nordstrom, nearly $320, 000. And Amazon. com? Zero.” The newspaper said Amazon ”cuts an astoundingly low profile in the civic life of its hometown.” Building a homeless shelter within one of its new buildings appears to be an effort to change that narrative. ”Doing things like [the homeless shelter] may be in its enlightened   right on site for the world to see,” Alan Durning, executive director of Sightline Institute, a nonprofit public policy research organization focused on the Pacific Northwest, told The New York Times. A video accompanying Amazon’s press release struck some observers as a little too crafted. Tech site VentureBeat called it ”heartbreaking. .. and weird:” ”[T]he company chose to surprise [Mary’s Place executive director Marty] Hartman in a highly staged setting, surrounded by camera equipment and a microphone designed to capture the emotional moment and then package it later as part of the press release. . .. What makes it uncomfortable for me is the   surprise that seems obviously designed to create a viral video moment.” Amazon’s announcement comes just two weeks after Seattle’s mayor trumpeted that Microsoft   Paul Allen’s foundation was promising $30 million toward building a new facility to house the city’s homeless families and children. The city of Seattle committed an additional $5 million in capital and funds to support the center’s operations and maintenance. Amazon’s   approach will house some of the city’s homeless families under the same roof as tech workers who are driving the city’s   expensive housing market. The company says its employees are ”frequent visitors and volunteers” at the existing shelter. By sharing a space, Amazon says, its employees will have more opportunities to volunteer and support Mary’s Place."
"The city of Milwaukee and the family of a black man with schizophrenia who was shot dead by a police officer have reached a tentative $2. 3 million settlement agreement, three years after his death. ”Officer Christopher Manney never faced criminal charges, but was fired from the police department for failing to follow protocol,” LaToya Dennis of member station WUWM tells our Newscast unit. She adds that the settlement still requires the approval of the Milwaukee Common Council. Dontre Hamilton was sleeping in a public park in April 2014 when a Starbucks employee reported him to the police. The   previously described how the events enfolded: ”Officer Christopher Manney, who is white, was trying to frisk Dontre Hamilton when the altercation happened. The two exchanged punches. Manney fired his gun 14 times after Hamilton grabbed the officer’s baton, striking him with it.” It took an estimated three to four seconds for Manney to discharge 14 rounds, according to a report from the Milwaukee County District Attorney. Before the altercation, two other officers had interacted with Hamilton and had not attempted to pat him down. A Hamilton family attorney said Tuesday that ”the parties have been in negotiations and have reached a tentative agreement at that amount, but we will not be making further comments until after the proposed settlement is approved,” according to the   Journal Sentinel. In December 2014, the district attorney announced that he would not seek charges against the officer, saying that he acted in  . Hamilton’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Manney and the city of Milwaukee in April 2016, seeking damages for the ”serious personal injuries and resulting death of Dontre Hamilton, who was unlawfully detained, unreasonably searched and then subjected to excessive force.” The lawsuit alleged the officer’s conduct ”occurred as a direct result of the unconstitutional policies of the City of Milwaukee.” Last month, the judge ruled in favor of Hamilton’s family that the   violated his civil rights. The city has appealed."
"President Trump hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday, one day after firing the man whose agency is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election that brought Trump to power. Trump fired   FBI Director James Comey, who told Congress earlier this year that his agency has been investigating Russia’s actions  —   and possible ties to anyone associated with the Trump campaign  —   since July. As NPR’s Domenico Montanaro reports, the firing of Comey with more than six years left on his term in office has prompted a flurry of questions about the president’s motives  —   and about what’s next. Lavrov’s meeting with the president was scheduled for 10:30 a. m. ET, and it was declared closed to the press. Russian agencies tweeted photos from the Oval Office showing that in addition to Lavrov, Trump shook hands with Russia’s ambassador to America, Sergey Kislyak  —   a key figure in the investigation into Trump’s ousted national security adviser, Michael Flynn. After the Lavrov session had concluded, members of the U. S. media were allowed into the Oval Office, where they found the president sitting with Henry Kissinger, who served as President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state. The meeting hadn’t been listed on the president’s official schedule. Trump said he and Kissinger had met to talk ”about Russia and various other matters,” according to the pool report. To a question about Comey, Trump reportedly replied, ”He wasn’t doing a good job. Very simply. He was not doing a good job.” The president also said the issue had not affected his meeting with Lavrov. Lavrov arrived in Washington on Tuesday. He met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the White House early Wednesday, ahead of his visit to the Oval Office. Tillerson and Lavrov made a brief appearance Wednesday morning for a   and as Tillerson began to lead his guest back behind closed doors, Lavrov responded to a question about Comey’s firing. When a reporter asked whether the dismissal has ”cast a shadow” over their talks, Lavrov stopped and seemed to look genuinely quizzical when he responded, ”Was he fired?”  —   but then adopted a deadpan tone as he told the reporter, ”You are kidding, you are kidding.” With a theatrical twitch of his head, the Russian diplomat then followed his American counterpart away from the media. The exchange was not included in the State Department’s brief video snippet from the   that it posted to Twitter. Tillerson’s office said his talks with Lavrov would focus on ”Ukraine, Syria, and bilateral issues.” But the Russians’ visit to the White House also came as the Kremlin made its first public comments on Comey’s removal. When Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked how the firing might affect U. S.  relations, Peskov replied, ”We hope that it will not affect them at all. That’s the United States’ internal affair. That’s the U. S. president’s independent decision, which has nothing to do and should have nothing to do with Russia.” Comey’s dismissal has sparked new calls for an independent probe into Russia’s attempts to influence last year’s U. S. presidential election  —   despite the Trump administration’s assertion that Comey was removed over his handling of the investigation into Clinton’s private email server. ”This is nothing less than Nixonian,” said Patrick Leahy,  . a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Announcing Comey’s abrupt firing Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the president ”acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”"
"Mexico’s government is contesting a new international report that says the country had 23, 000 homicides in 2016  —   a level surpassed only by Syria. The International Institute for Strategic Studies says that intense violence fueled by Mexico’s drug cartels has reached the level of an armed conflict. ”The annual survey’s lead investigator says Mexico’s   ranking was surprising, considering the deaths are nearly all attributable to small arms,” NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports, ”and not tanks or aircraft fire as in the political wars of Syria or Iraq.” News of the report has made headlines in Mexico, a country that can boast the world’s   gross domestic product, according to the most recent World Bank tally. On Wednesday, the government questioned the methods of the U. K.  IISS and its decision to include Mexico in its annual Armed Conflict Survey. In a joint statement, Mexico’s secretaries of governance and foreign relations said the report irresponsibly points to the existence of an armed conflict within the country. ”This is incorrect,” the statement continues. ”The existence of criminal groups is not a sufficient criterion to speak of a   armed conflict. Neither is the use of the Armed Forces to maintain order in the country’s interior.” The Mexican agencies also questioned the accuracy of the report’s figures and methods, saying the country’s homicide rate per capita is far below those of other Latin American countries such as Honduras and Venezuela. ”Its conclusions have no basis in the case of Mexico,” the agencies said of the report. The government said violence from organized crime extends well beyond Mexico, into its neighbors the U. S. Guatemala and Belize. And it said the armed conflict report had attributed all of Mexico’s killings last year to drug cartel violence. In a blog post about its findings in Mexico, IISS cited the use of government forces as one factor in its conclusions it also blamed the problems on ”institutional weakness and pervasive corruption” as well as the complex dynamic in Central America’s Northern Triangle, made up of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The armed conflict report also describes the militarization of Mexico’s criminal gangs, which it says has both helped them grow and fueled a recent spike in killings. As Kahn reports, ”Mexico’s murder rate rose dramatically last year, and 2017 doesn’t look much better. The homicide rate for the first three months of this year is the deadliest since the height of the drug war in 2011.”"
"Rakesh Satyal’s new novel checks off a lot of boxes, but its charm lies in the fact that it wears all of it various identities so lightly. This is an immigration story, a   story and something of an   feminist story about a timid woman learning to roar. Yet, there’s nothing preachy or predictable about Satyal’s novel rather, the most cumbersome thing about it is its title, which I’ve delayed saying for as long as possible. It’s called No One Can Pronounce My Name, which sounds aggrieved when, instead, this is novel that invites readers to be amused. Satyal wants us all to laugh, together, about the comedy of errors that often typifies everyday life. No One Can Pronounce My Name is set in an   community in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. Ranjana is a   wife and mother whose son has just departed for college  —   Princeton, no less. Ranjana’s husband is an    academic who sports what she thinks of as the ”common Indian male physique: second trimester with a possible sail into the third.” For years, Ranjana has lived a secret life: She writes erotic supernatural fiction, modeled on the work of Anne Rice. Ranjana first read Interview With A Vampire when she and her husband emigrated to America we’re told it was her way of trying to ”permeate the wall that separated her Indian life from the omnipresent glitz of American pop culture.” Now, though, with her son off at college Ranjana’s days are too solitary in her empty house. So, she takes a job as a receptionist in an Indian proctologist’s office. This job, along with her participation in what turns out to be a vicious writer’s group, are Ranjana’s tentative ways of trying to enter a wider world. The other main character here, also a   Indian immigrant, is even more adrift. Harit lives with his mother, who’s deranged by grief for his older sister, the victim of a stupid, deadly accident. To comfort his mother, whose eyesight is conveniently dimmed by cataracts, Harit dresses up every night in his dead sister’s saris and pretends to be her. In ways Harit dare not name even silently to himself, this   game has become consoling to him, too. Clothes also become the conduit for leading Harit out of his isolation. He lands a job in the Men’s Accessories Department (called ”Men’s Furnishings”) at the quaint Harriman’s Department Store. There, an older gay man named Teddy takes Harit under his wing and introduces him to the cheering ritual of happy hour at T. G. I. Friday’s in a nearby mall. But not everyone at Harriman’s is so welcoming. Here’s Satyal’s description of the daily dynamics in the employee break room: By   the fifteen or so salespeople of the morning shift would gather and loiter with their coffees, bagels, stinky   breakfasts, and gossip. . .. It wasn’t that they were mean to Harit, but except for a smile in passing or an odd question about his ethnicity (. .. ”In India, do you drink eight glasses of tea a day instead of water? ”) they rarely engaged him directly in conversation. . .. For the most part, they left the socializing to Teddy. His status as Harit’s companion in Men’s Furnishings made him the obvious   for a conversational partner, and there was an unspoken relief that no one else had to handle Harit. Both Ranjana and Harit pine for some kind of deep connection to other human beings, but they’re clueless as to how to make that happen. Their shared situation may sound glum, but because No One Can Pronounce My Name is essentially  —   and delightfully  —   a comic novel, the intertwined plots here are buoyant rather than blue. It says something about both the reach of Satyal’s story and his wry skill as a storyteller, that, while I was reading, I kept thinking of Barbara Pym, who wrote mostly about the lives of tweedy English spinsters with similar warmth and humor. No One Can Pronounce My Name explores the politics of sexual identity, as well as the immigrant and   American experience, but, unfashionable as it may sound, the novel’s greater achievement lies in the compassionate, comic way it explores the universal human experience of loneliness."
"Growing up, Jill Soloway had a hard time relating to women as they were portrayed on TV. Soloway would watch The Love Boat or Fantasy Island and feel uncomfortable with the version of femininity the shows put forth. ”In fact, all the way up through watching Sex and the City, I would feel incredibly upset by what I thought was an expectation of me,” Soloway says. ”[It] was, ’You should really love cute shoes,’ and, ’Because you’re a woman, you’re going to go crazy for a particular dress.’ ” Soloway  —   who identifies as genderqueer and prefers the gender neutral pronouns    —   created the Amazon series Transparent based on their own experience as the child of a transgender woman. Now they have a new Amazon series called I Love Dick. Soloway describes the show as a ”story about finding my voice.” It’s told from the point of view of a married independent filmmaker (played by Kathryn Hahn) who can’t quite explain her attraction to Dick, a macho,   artist (played by Kevin Bacon) who is dismissive of her and of her work. I Love Dick tackles serious themes of gender, sexual obsession and artistic insecurity  —   all through a humorous lens. ”That’s something I’ve always really wanted to be great at, which is taking really serious, important things . .. [and] addressing them in a way that’s really comedic and silly and doesn’t take itself too seriously,” Soloway says. ”I think I have to be   to keep moving the conversation forward and to keep it flowing.” On how Transparent and I Love Dick are connected, I think Transparent gave birth to this [I Love Dick] in a lot of ways. Transparent was my origin story. . .. Transparent is a classic American television show about a family. It pays homage to All In the Family, to Eight Is Enough, to Family, to Thirtysomething. I Love Dick seeks to completely explode and upend what we use our television for. On creating a playful atmosphere on the sets of Transparent and I Love Dick, I think a little bit of my growth over the past few years involved watching some of my comedic heroes  —   people like Judd Apatow or Seth Rogen or Adam Sandler and Zach Galifianakis  —   and really saying, ”How are they doing what they’re doing?” Because it’s so loose and it’s so casual, yet it’s so funny. And then at some point you realize, ”Oh, they’re just working with their friends and they’re playing and they’re recording it.” So that’s what I started doing by just hiring people who really tickled me, who I really wanted to hang out with, who really delighted me. On how the success of Transparent led to Soloway rethinking their gender identity, You go, ”OK, I have success. I have a TV show. I won an award. I have everything I thought I wanted. Why am I still not happy?” And then you start to look into these little things, and for me it was I hate it when someone comes over to do my makeup. I hate dressing up. Why am I doing it? I’m going to stop doing it. And for me, having met so many   people, [having] met so many genderqueer people and realizing another way you can move through the world is to be neither male nor female has been so inspiring. On coming out as genderqueer and   I think since we last spoke I’ve become more queer and more gender   and basically [I’ve] gotten rid of everything that one would consider   in my life. . .. I realized at the tender age of 50 that I had a life yet to live that I didn’t even realize was mine. I dated women and started to find myself in a queer community and around lesbians, and I think my evolution became not just about being queer, not just about being a lesbian, but really [about] being willing to look at my own gender. . .. Something for me about a   identity and identifying as queer is allowing me to be more at home with my ideas and my mind. Radio producers Ann Marie Baldonado and Heidi Saman and web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"A reporter in West Virginia was arrested and charged with a crime Tuesday after he repeatedly attempted to question Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Price was walking through a hallway in the state Capitol, which he was visiting with Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway as part of a ”listening tour” on the opioid crisis. Several protesters were gathered in the hallway, as was Dan Heyman, a reporter for the Public News Service. Heyman says he asked the HHS secretary whether domestic violence would qualify as a   condition under the Republican health care bill. When Price didn’t answer, Heyman repeated the question. The reporter says he was recording on his phone, which he was holding out toward Price officials say he was ”trying aggressively” to breach Secret Service security. ”I was yelling out questions, and that was it,” Heyman said at a news conference shared online by the West Virginia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. Heyman was handcuffed, arrested and charged with ”willful disruption of governmental processes,” a misdemeanor. Heyman has been released on a $5, 000 bond. The criminal complaint accuses Heyman of ”aggressively breaching the Secret Service agents to the point where the agents were forced to remove him a couple of times from the area” and ”causing a disturbance by yelling questions.” It cites a law against interrupting or molesting ”the orderly and peaceful process” of state government, although it does not clarify which government process was interrupted. Lawrence Messina, director of communications for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, says that he didn’t witness the event but that Capitol police described Heyman ”physically trying to push past the Secret Service agents.” Heyman says he was holding his phone out to record Price but was not getting physical, ”unless poking a phone at someone is considered an act of violence.” As for yelling out questions  —   well, yes. ”This is what I’m supposed to do,” Heyman said. ”I am supposed to go and find out if somebody is going to be affected by this health care law.” He said that before the Affordable Care Act was passed, a woman who experienced domestic violence could be denied insurance over it. (As of 2013, that was only legal in a handful of states it was officially banned under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.) Heyman was asking how the Republican proposal, which would allow some people with   conditions to be charged more, would treat domestic violence. ”I think it’s my job to ask questions, and I think it’s my job to get answers,” he says. ”I was just doing my job.” Messina told NPR that Price and Conway’s visit included a news conference, and suggested Heyman ”could have attended that.” (West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported on that press conference see its coverage here.) Heyman is a veteran journalist who has previously worked for West Virginia Public Broadcasting and has filed reports for NPR. At the time of his arrest, Heyman says, he identified himself as a journalist by wearing his press pass and a ”Public News Service” shirt."
"On a back street in Osaka, the sound of schoolchildren floats out of Tsukamoto Kindergarten. A cuckoo clock and a stand of bamboo sit in front of the school building’s orange facade  —   and Astro Boy, a cartoon figure, looks down from a window. From its exterior, there’s no visible sign that the school is at the center of a scandal on which the leader of Japan has staked his political future. The school’s owner is accused of using his relationship with Japan’s first family to secure a plot of land for a new,   primary school at a massive discount. Despite the scandal, Tsukamoto Kindergarten’s traditional teachings have been an attraction to some parents. ”I decided to send my son there because they teach shogi [Japanese chess] and kendo [Japanese swordsmanship],” says parent Mrs. Sakamoto. ”And they serve nice lunches.” Mrs. Sakamoto asked that we not use her full name in order to protect her    son, who was forced to leave the school after she got into a dispute with the school’s management. Sakamoto says discipline at the school was strict. Kids were only allowed to use the bathrooms at certain times. After attending the school, she adds, ”My son became   and  . And his posture straightened up.” One thing that made Sakamoto uncomfortable was that the kindergarten made kids memorize and recite an imperial decree, issued in the name of the Meiji Emperor in the year 1890. Called the Imperial Rescript on Education, it teaches the kids Confucian virtues: respect your parents work for the public good. ”I think it’s dangerous,” she says. ”There may be some good things in it, but in the end, it says you should die for the sake of the emperor.” Sakamoto explains that the decree is in classical Japanese, and most students and parents didn’t understand its meaning. So, although she didn’t like her child reciting it, she let it go. ”Should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State,” the document reads, ”and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth.” The U. S. occupied Japan after World War II. It drafted a new constitution, reducing the emperor to a figurehead. And it banned the decree’s recitation. The decree is controversial because it laid the ideological basis for half a century of Japanese militarism that cost millions of lives. It instructs students to behave as the emperor’s obedient subjects without individual rights. Last month, Japan’s cabinet reversed its position and allowed the use of the edict as a teaching material. Japanese conservatives have welcomed the decision. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed support for the kindergarten. His wife, Akie, served for more than a year as its honorary principal. The kindergarten’s founder, Yasunori Kagoike, testified before parliament that Abe donated $9, 000 through his wife, although Abe denies this. Kagoike, Abe and most of Japan’s cabinet ministers are all members of the   Japan Conference, or Nippon Kaigi, which shares Abe’s conservative agenda. Abe’s government has played down school textbook references to the Imperial Army’s use of sex slaves during World War II and the   Nanking Massacre, in which Japanese soldiers slaughtered as many as 300, 000 civilians and Chinese troops who had surrendered, and raped tens of thousands of women. The Abe government promotes patriotic education, defined as strengthening national identity, promoting the government’s ”positive” view of history and promoting use of the national flag and anthem, among other priorities. It has loosened postwar constitutional restrictions on deploying Japan’s military overseas. And Abe wants to replace the current constitution with one that puts public security before individual rights. ”It seems if you’re ideologically close to the prime minister, and have a good personal relationship with the spouse of the prime minister, then doors open mysteriously,” says Sophia University political scientist Koichi Nakano. He’s referring to the allegations of corruption that are at the heart of this scandal. Last year, when Yasunori Kagoike acquired   land to build his new elementary school, he got a nearly 90 percent discount. The government explained that it was because the land was polluted. Kagoike told opposition party lawmakers that the government saw his as a ”special case.” ”I told the person in charge of our case at the finance ministry that I was reporting back to Mrs. Abe about the process,” he said. ”I figured this is what resulted in our ’special case. ’” As the scandal began to hurt the government, nationalist politicians who once supported Kagoike dropped him ”like a hot potato,” says political scientist Nakano. Nippon Kaigi officials began to distance themselves from Kagoike after the scandal broke in early February. The Abes distanced themselves in February, too.   freelance journalist Tamotsu Sugano argues that politicians’ support for Kagoike was an alliance of convenience. ”They just wanted to avoid being labeled as liberals,” he asserts. For now, there’s no hard proof that either of the Abes influenced the decision. The finance ministry says it destroyed government records of the land sale. By law, the government is entitled to destroy some records after one year. ”The explanation of the ministry of finance is not so stable,” argues Yukiko Miki, the head of   Clearinghouse Japan, a civic group that has requested government documents related to the land sale. ”Sometimes they change the explanation slightly,” she adds, ”so we need to challenge the ministry of finance.” She plans to do just that in court. She admits, though, that if political influence played a role in the land sale, it might not have been recorded in government documents. So far, Abe remains mostly unscathed. ”He’s got a Teflon coating,” says Nihon University political scientist Tomoaki Iwai. He says that Abe’s ambition is to stay on and preside over the opening of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Abe’s ratings remain high, Iwai says. And he faces no challengers from within the ruling or opposition parties. ”Since the start of Abe’s term, people supported him for his leadership and his policies,” he says. ”But in the last two years, polls show people support him mainly because there’s no alternative.” The only problem, Iwai says, is that Abe has promised to resign if he’s found to have had any involvement with the land deal. And if a smoking gun is ever found, he might have to do just that."
"Chelsea Manning, the former Army private who leaked a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks, will be released from prison on May 17, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Manning’s   prison sentence was commuted in January by   Barack Obama. Most recently, Manning has been held in a prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. After her release, her attorney says, she’ll live in Maryland. Manning, 29, was arrested in May of 2010. At the time, she was serving in Iraq and was known as Bradley Manning. She announced her transgender identity in August of 2013, at nearly the same time she was sentenced to prison. In a pair of firsts for a person held in a military prison, she underwent hormone therapy and, last fall, the Army agreed to allow her to have gender transition surgery. Manning is responsible for what’s seen as the largest leak of classified data in U. S. history. Among the records she admitted to leaking was a video showing a 2007 U. S. Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 11 men, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. Also included were hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. For months during her detention, Manning was held in solitary confinement. In 2012, the U. N.’s expert on torture said that while she had not yet been found guilty of a crime, Manning’s treatment by the U. S. government was ”cruel and inhuman.” In court, Manning pleaded guilty to leaking secret information  —   but she was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, in July of 2013. After Obama granted Manning’s request for a commuted sentence, the president said she had ”served a tough prison sentence,” arguing against those who said the move would show leaking classified information could go unpunished. On Tuesday, Chelsea Manning released a statement saying: ”For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea. I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world. Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine. Now, freedom is something that I will again experience with friends and loved ones after nearly seven years of bars and cement, of periods of solitary confinement, and of my health care and autonomy restricted, including through routinely forced haircuts. I am forever grateful to the people who kept me alive, President Obama, my legal team and countless supporters. ”I watched the world change from inside prison walls and through the letters that I have received from veterans, trans young people, parents, politicians and artists. My spirits were lifted in dark times, reading of their support, sharing in their triumphs, and helping them through challenges of their own. I hope to take the lessons that I have learned, the love that I have been given, and the hope that I have to work toward making life better for others.”"
"If you are going to watch The Lost City of Z expecting some sort of Indiana Jones sequel, don’t bother. Based on the   nonfiction book by David Grann, the movie moves at a stately pace, with very few   scenes. Perhaps the most animated scene happens during a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, when the protagonist, the British explorer Percy Fawcett, is trying to convince his loud and skeptical peers that there is indeed an advanced civilization lost in the middle of the Amazon jungle, somewhere between Bolivia and Brazil. Fawcett, in a masterful performance by Charlie Hunnam, is after a patron to fund his return to the forest, after a first visit gives him a glimpse of the hidden wonders of a lost people. Society calls them ”savages,” while Fawcett is convinced of their sophistication. They are the models of a civilized world, not the Europeans with their prejudices and pompous attitude. Beautifully shot, the movie brings forth some of the dominant themes of a rapidly changing world at the brink of World War I. Fawcett’s wife, Nina, determined and devoted, represents women fighting for their independence. Sienna Miller dominates the screen whenever she appears, at once stoic and fierce. The noble grandiosity of the Amazon vastness is contrasted with harrowing scenes when Fawcett serves as a commander during WWI, when all we see is the grey and destitute devastation the   civilized Europeans perpetrate on their land and each other. Trees are burned to stumps, the land is barren, sunken in deep,   mud. Death is everywhere, grimy, poisonous, relentless. Lives are wasted for a few yards of advance, while poison gas reigns from the skies, killing and blinding. But the central theme of the movie is Fawcett’s heroic passion, his absolute conviction that he must find the lost city. ”Z,” he claims, will put an end to the debates about how advanced the people of the Amazon could be, erasing the notion that they are ”savages.” The movie pays tribute to the explorer spirit that drove  —   and still drives  —   so many to push the boundaries of the possible and, in doing so, to open doors for the rest of us. In this, the explorer represents the open scientific spirit, driven almost to the verge of madness by the faith of a conviction. Fawcett returns again and again to the jungle, flanked by his    Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson) facing nature’s ruthlessness in its many forms  —   from black panthers and snakes to tropical illnesses to piranhas to apocalyptic downpours to natives defending their lands. At the time, rubber is black gold, driving the exploration and colonization of these parts. Fawcett understands this but his focus is elsewhere: It’s the quest that matters, the search for convincing clues, the unshakable conviction of imminent discovery, the potential for a   scientific find. In this, every scientist has a bit of Percy Fawcett, going after the thrill of the new, the surprise of what lies beneath the veil of the known. There is an element of greed and personal glory, of course. But those are secondary to the genuine need to know, to make a difference, to leave an imprint in the vast history of knowledge. Coincidentally, Wednesday night NOVA will be   The Arctic Ghost Ship, about the   expedition to find the elusive Northwest Passage led by British explorer Sir John Franklin. We owe a major debt of gratitude to these passionate spirits who risked their lives to expand the boundaries of the known. However, we must also be wary of sensationalist hype surrounding Fawcett and his exploits. Canadian explorer John Hemming wrote a scathing review of The Lost City of Z and of Fawcett’s career, arguing with credible authority that the whole thing was a major Hollywood fabrication that amplified the already exaggerated account in Grann’s book. Hemming makes it quite clear that Fawcett was no hero or brilliant explorer. What’s disturbing here is that the movie claims to be telling a story based on true events, while blurring the boundaries of the credible. The best thing to do in this case, I think, is to take the movie as a metaphor for the explorer’s spirit  —   and enjoy the ride. Don’t take the biographical details as serious history, but be inspired by the passionate drive that propels a courageous few (including Hemming, a serious explorer with many books and findings to his credit) out there into the wild to discover the new for all of us. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"At a town hall meeting in Willingboro, N. J. on Wednesday, U. S. Rep. Tom MacArthur was confronted by angry constituents who demanded to know how the Republican health care bill that he helped write would affect rape victims. A young man named Joseph said he understood that the bill would allow insurance companies to deem rape a   condition and deny coverage to people who have been raped. He demanded that MacArthur defend his support of the bill, which, he said, would ”force women to choose between justice and silence to protect their affordable health care.” MacArthur tried to assure the crowd that rape victims would be protected under the bill. He said the notion that rape could be treated as a   condition had been debunked. ”You cannot be denied or charged more because of having been raped,” MacArthur told the booing crowd. But that didn’t satisfy the crowd, which was worked up by the idea that a rape victim could be denied health care. It’s a notion that has caught fire nationwide through social media. Later at the town hall meeting, a young woman asked the congressman a similar question. ”Is rape considered a   condition under your amendment? Yes or no?” demanded a    named Daisy, drawing cheers from the crowd. ”Yes or no, yes or no? One word, please!” But, as with most things in health care, the reality is too complex to reduce to    questions, or simple statements. Before the Affordable Care Act, Before the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, insurance companies didn’t specifically include rape as a   condition that would allow them to deny victims coverage or charge them more. But a handful of conditions and interventions that can follow a sexual assault could have led people who were raped to be excluded from buying policies. ”What could happen, and we don’t know for sure, is that the ways people access the health care system after an assault could be flagged by some insurance companies as high risk,” says Dr. Diane   an   who is the reproductive health advocacy fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health.   says some rape victims are given medications after the assault to prevent them from contracting HIV or other sexually transmitted infections. And some people who are sexually assaulted seek mental health counseling for   stress disorder or other conditions.  Before the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, people could be denied coverage or charged more for insurance if they took medications to treat   or had existing mental health conditions. For example, seeking treatment for depression was listed as a ”permanent decline” in a   underwriting guide for the insurance company Humana. Underwriting guides from before the ACA for four insurance companies all show AIDS as a ”declinable” condition. An investigation published by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund in 2010 showed that many victims of rape were denied coverage because they contracted a sexually transmitted disease or took medications to prevent one, or they were denied coverage of mental health care to treat the psychological effects of the assault. That all changed with the Affordable Care Act. Under the ACA, insurance companies must provide comprehensive coverage, as defined by a list of ”essential health benefits,” including mental health care, prescription drug coverage and maternity care. And insurers are required to charge everyone of the same age and living in the same community the same price. What’s in the House GOP bill  The bill passed by House Republicans last week, called the American Health Care Act, retains the ”essential health benefit” language in federal law, as Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said in an interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin scheduled to air Friday on Morning Edition. ”There’s a specific statement within the proposed legislation itself, that went through the House and is now in the Senate, that says that no insurance company can decrease the access to coverage for anybody based upon a   condition,” Price said. However, the bill includes a huge loophole. States are allowed to apply for waivers to exempt them from many of those federal rules. States could redefine the essential benefits to allow insurers to offer less comprehensive policies and could allow insurance companies to charge people more money for   conditions. ”By dismantling all those consumer protections, essentially you leave people in the market and insurance companies could return back to those discriminatory practices of the past,” says Janel George, director of federal reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center. The loophole in the Republican bill could lead women to routinely pay more for health insurance, as they did before the Affordable Care Act. Some of the conditions women may seek care for, such as pregnancy and mental health disorders, were among those that cost more or were not covered before the ACA."
"If the giant inflatable Trump chicken outside New Jersey Rep. Tom MacArthur’s town hall didn’t make it clear  —   or the group of people singing health   protest songs or the Affordable Care Act cemetery or even the plane circling overhead trailing an   message  —   an early moment in the Republican’s constituent town hall provided a sign this was going to be a long, contentious night. That’s when several people in the Willingboro, N. J. crowd started to boo and jeer when MacArthur talked about his daughter, Grace, who died at age 11. ”Shame!” yelled one person. ”We’ve heard this before,” complained another. Their complaint: that MacArthur was somehow exploiting the story of his daughter’s illness as he leads the Republican push to repeal key aspects of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. ”I will say, shame on you right now, actually,” MacArthur responded. ”Don’t tell me what I’m using. I’m going to tell you because this affects my perspective. It affects my perspective on this issue of health care.” The tense moment set the tone in a marathon town hall that lasted well past the length of time it takes many people to run actual marathons. For nearly five hours, MacArthur faced hostile question after hostile question from a crowd eager to show its displeasure with Republicans’ Obamacare repeal attempts, the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the lack of an independent commission investigating potential ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russia. ”I must say, I have a great deal of admiration for your tolerance for masochism,” constituent Ruth Gage noted somewhere around the   mark. (Gage went on to needle MacArthur about the need for   health insurance.) Defending the Republican health care bill, The room was tense, especially on the topic of health care, because MacArthur authored the key amendment to the American Health Care Act that won enough support from House Republicans for the measure to pass on a   margin. ”This is your health care bill. It was dead in the water. It could have stayed dead in the water and now it’s the MacArthur Amendment that brought this thing forward,” said Derek Reichenbecher. ”What I’m worried about is, if I lose my job, I suddenly am no longer in the market, I’m no longer covered, my governor who is not a friend of people like me right now decides to opt out. What happens?” MacArthur said repeatedly throughout the night that the House bill won’t deny coverage or increase costs for people with   conditions, and that the changes that could steer people into   pools only applied to a small segment of the population: buyers on the individual market who let their coverage lapse for two months or more. ”Look I hear the fear. I know it’s real,” he said, after one of many detailed, personal stories about health care battles and insurance woes. In this case, it was from a woman who relies on Medicaid, the   program that helps pay for health care. ”And as I said, I think it’s tremendous courage for you to come out and share that,” MacArthur continued. ”I am trying to save a system so it continues to help you. That’s all I can tell you. I’m trying to make sure that Medicaid is strong enough to continue to help you.” But the crowd wasn’t in the mood to hear MacArthur’s arguments about how tort reform and other cost controls were needed to make health insurance more affordable. They viewed the House health care repeal as something that could take their coverage away. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated some 24 million people would lose coverage over the coming decade if an earlier version of the measure were to become law. From health care to Russia, The second topic to dominate the evening: Russia. No one asked about anything other than those two issues for more than two hours. Kimberly Stewart was one of the first people to ask about the FBI’s probe into whether anyone on Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian operatives. ”We seem to be having a pattern that most people that are investigating it seem to be getting fired. Do you support an independent group investigating Russia’s ties into the 2016 election?” ”No, not yet,” MacArthur said, to more boos. He wants to see how the House, Senate and FBI investigations play out, and repeatedly argued that a special prosecutor would not be a ”silver bullet” guaranteeing an independent probe. ”Folks, I didn’t come here to defend our president tonight,” MacArthur said at one point. ”I came to answer your questions and tell you what I think and what I am doing.” At points MacArthur rolled with the hostility  —   he gave no visible reaction when one constituent stood within a few feet of him and yelled for nearly 10 minutes. At other times, MacArthur was clearly frustrated. ”Is this what you want in your country? You don’t like what somebody says and they’re an idiot and they’re dishonest and they’re a fraud?” he asked. Increasingly, in all political quarters, it appears like that’s the case. NPR’s Barbara Sprunt contributed to this report."
"Updated at 7:45 p. m. ET, Undermining the prior rationale laid out by the White House, President Trump said he decided to fire James Comey as FBI director without regard to the Justice Department’s recommendation. ”It was set up a while ago,” Trump admitted to NBC’s Lester Holt in his   remarks about his firing of Comey. ”And frankly, I could have waited, but what difference does it make?” He added, ”Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.” So why did he make the decision? ”He’s a showboat. He’s a grandstander,” the president said of Comey. ”The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that I know that everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago  —   it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago. It hasn’t recovered from that.” Trump blamed Democrats for the Russia storyline. ”When I decided to just do it [fire Comey],” Trump said, ”I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a   story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.” But he said he never asked Comey to shut down the investigation and wants it seen through to the end, but by someone ”competent” at the FBI. ”I am a big fan of the FBI,” Trump said. ”I love the FBI.” Trump abruptly relieved Comey of his duties Tuesday. The reasoning the White House officially gave then  —   in writing  —   was Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation, based on a review by the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Vice President Pence also asserted multiple times on Wednesday that Trump’s dismissal of Comey was predicated on the recommendations of Rosenstein. But both Democrats and Republicans are raising questions about the timing of Comey’s firing. It comes just as the FBI appeared to be ramping up its investigation of Trump associates’ ties to Russia. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that the president has been thinking about firing Comey since November. At Thursday’s White House press briefing, Huckabee Sanders said she had a chance to speak with the president before she went out to the podium and said the ”last straw that pushed” him was Comey’s testimony before Congress on May 3. In that testimony, Comey said he was ”mildly nauseous” to think that he may have swung the election after coming forward days before the election to say that he was reopening the Clinton email investigation. Raising more ethical questions, Trump also admitted that he called Comey to find out whether he was under FBI investigation. ”If it’s possible, will you let me know, am I under investigation?” Trump told Holt he asked Comey. That’s a remarkable admission, given the delineation most presidents and FBI directors are careful to try to draw. They don’t want even the appearance of collusion or interference in what are supposed to be independent investigations, especially ones that might be related to themselves. Comey was so careful, for example, to avoid the appearance of impropriety that during the Obama years, the     Comey was sure to never play basketball with the  . Trump also said Comey told him two other times that he was not under investigation, once on the phone and once during a dinner that had been ”arranged.” Trump initially claimed in the interview that Comey asked for the dinner to ask to stay on as FBI director. But Comey did not need to do that. He was appointed to a   term in 2013. Trump also told Holt that just because he fired Comey doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to get to the bottom of Russian meddling in the election. ”I want to find out if there was a problem in the election having to do with Russia,” Trump said, adding, ”If Russia did anything, I want to know that.” He insisted, though, that his campaign and Russia did not collude. ”I have nothing to do —   this was set up by the Democrats,” Trump said. ”There’s no collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians. The other thing is the Russians did not affect the vote. And everybody seems to think that.” Seventeen U. S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia meddled in the election  —   by hacking and leaking Democratic campaign emails, for example. The intelligence community has also concluded that Russia was trying with its efforts to get Trump elected. ”I want that thing to be absolutely done properly,” Trump said of the investigation, though  —   despite the intelligence community’s conclusions  —   three times he qualified Russia’s involvement with ”if”. ”If Russia hacked,” Trump said, ”if Russia did anything having to do with our election I want to know about it.” Holt pointed out that the evidence already exists that Russia did meddle. ”I’ll tell you this,” Trump said, repeating, ”if Russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections I think it’s a horrible thing and I want to get to the bottom of it and I want to make sure it will never ever happen.” He said he thought the investigation ”should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago. ’Cause all it is, is an excuse but I said to myself, I might even lengthen out the investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people. He’s [Comey] the wrong man for that position.” The White House claimed Wednesday that morale was low at the FBI and was also a reason behind Comey’s dismissal. That, however, was disputed by acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who said at a congressional hearing Thursday that Comey had the full confidence of the bureau. On Wednesday, in brief remarks in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that he fired Comey ”because he wasn’t doing a good job, simply. He was not doing a good job.” Since the election, Comey has publicly confirmed that there was an ongoing FBI investigation into Trump associates and collusion with Russia, and he disputed under oath the president’s baseless claim that President Barack Obama ordered his team to be wiretapped. Comey also requested significantly more resources for the Russia investigation from Rosenstein and briefed key senators on that request Monday, the same day another congressional hearing on the Russia investigation took place at which former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s and the White House’s conduct was the central focus. Comey was fired the next day, which was dominated by bad headlines for Trump on why Flynn was kept on for 18 days after Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general, told White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had been compromised. NPR’s Jessica Taylor contributed."
"Updated at 1:26 p. m. ET, The absence of former FBI Director James Comey loomed large over the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing with top U. S. intelligence leaders, but his temporary replacement, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, assured lawmakers he would not bend to pressure from the White House. ”You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution,” McCabe said. McCabe directly contradicted White House assertions that one of the reasons Comey was fired by President Trump on Tuesday was because he had lost the respect and support of the FBI rank and file. ”Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day,” McCabe said, saying he holds Comey in the ”absolute highest regard.” McCabe also said the FBI’s ongoing probe into Russian involvement in the 2016 elections and possible collusion with the Trump campaign was ”highly significant,” disputing a White House characterization that the investigation ”was one of the smallest things that they’ve got going on their plate.” ”It is my opinion and belief that the FBI will continue to pursue this investigation vigorously and completely,” McCabe said. Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner,  . noted that Comey’s absence was atop his mind and that he had plenty of questions for McCabe and the other intelligence leaders about the Russia probe. ”It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the president’s decision to remove Director Comey was related to the Russia investigation,” Warner said, ”and that is truly unacceptable.” McCabe assured Warner that he would alert the committee if anyone tried to influence the FBI probe into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. He later said he would not update the White House on the ongoing Russia investigation. Committee Chairman Richard Burr,  . C. made it clear in his opening statement that he wanted the hearing to be about more than just Russia and reiterated that the hearing at large was supposed to be about worldwide threats. But questions about Russia, the ongoing FBI investigation and Comey’s dismissal dominated the hearing. In his own first question to McCabe, Burr asked the acting FBI director about one of the more puzzling and surprising statements in Trump’s termination letter to Comey  —   that the law enforcement chief told the president on three separate occasions that he was not under investigation in regards to Russia. ”Sir, I can’t comment on any conversations the director may have had with the president,” McCabe responded. He later told Sen. Susan Collins,   that it was not standard FBI practice to notify someone if they are not under investigation. McCabe also told Collins he wasn’t familiar with any meeting Comey had with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to request more resources for the Russia investigation. Senate aides have told NPR that Comey met with key members just before he was fired. ”I strongly believe the Russia investigation is adequately resourced,” McCabe told the lawmakers. Midway through the hearing, both Burr and Warner excused themselves for a private meeting with Rosenstein. After the meeting, the two committee leaders explained the meeting had been requested prior to Comey’s dismissal and that it was to ”set up a process for deconfliction” between the FBI investigation into Russia and the intelligence committee’s own independent probe. ”Regardless of what happens by the Justice Department or by the FBI, the investigation that is done by the Senate Intelligence Committee will continue on its current course as aggressively as we’re able to,” Burr said. Warner, who noted that he had voted for Rosenstein’s confirmation, said he relayed concerns to the deputy attorney general about the timing of Comey’s firing and the memo that Rosenstein wrote for the president justifying the termination. While Trump has continued to cast doubt on the intelligence community’s findings that Russia sought to influence the U. S. elections to benefit his campaign, the intelligence leaders were unanimous in their assessment that Russia had indeed interfered with the election. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was unequivocal in his conclusion that there was meddling in his written testimony submitted to the committee: ”Moscow has a highly advanced offensive cyber program, and in recent years, the Kremlin has assumed a more aggressive cyber posture. This aggressiveness was evident in Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 US election, and we assess that only Russia’s   officials could have authorized the 2016 US   data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets.” Also joining McCabe and Coats on the panel were: CIA Director Michael Pompeo, National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers and the heads of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National   Agency."
"In response to President Trump’s surprising firing Tuesday night of FBI Director James Comey, congressional Republicans largely maintained a united front and resisted calls for a special prosecutor to helm the ongoing investigation into Russia and the election. However, cracks in that unity began to emerge in the day that followed, with key senators and some vulnerable House members voicing concern over how the White House handled Comey’s dismissal. ”I’ve spent the last several hours trying to find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comey’s firing. I just can’t do it,” Sen. Jeff Flake,  . tweeted late Tuesday night. Flake is up for   in 2018 and is one of the few Senate targets Democrats have in a map where they’re largely playing defense. Several of the most endangered House Republicans  —   including Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, New York Rep. John Katko and Texas Rep. Will Hurd  —   also expressed concern about the timing of Trump’s decision. All sit in districts that the president lost last November and are atop Democratic target lists in next year’s midterm elections. These are just a handful of vulnerable members who will be among the most critical lawmakers to watch in the coming days for how they react to the   saga around Comey’s firing. ”Both Democrats and Republicans attacked the FBI Director at various times for various reasons and called for his ouster,” Comstock, who formerly worked with Comey at the Justice Department, said in a statement. ”However, I can’t defend or explain [Tuesday’s] actions or timing of the firing of FBI Director James Comey. The FBI investigation into the Russian impact on the 2016 election must continue. There must be an independent investigation that the American people can trust.” Curbelo called the move an ”extraordinary decision” that ”raises many questions all of which must be answered. ”Congress and the American people need a transparent explanation as to how this decision was reached and why it was executed at this time. It is critical that the FBI can continue all of its pending work with independence and integrity  —   especially the investigation into the Russian government’s efforts to influence our last election and undermine American democracy. Today I reiterate the need for Congress to establish a Select Committee with full investigatory powers to thoroughly examine this matter.” Katko reiterated the call for a ”clear explanation.” He added: ”I expect to learn more in the coming days. Moving forward, it is imperative that a qualified, independent, and respected individual be nominated in a timely manner to lead the FBI. No matter who leads the Bureau, it is of utmost importance that the men and women of the FBI are able to continue their high quality and independent work, including the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.” Hurd, a former CIA officer, called the timing ”troubling, especially since the Justice Department Inspector General was conducting an independent investigation into Comey’s handling of the Clinton email case.” Still, none of their calls quite reached the pitched level of Democrats, who were virtually united in their calls for a special prosecutor to take over the FBI’s investigation. Members who aren’t on the ballot in 2018, but had been critics of Trump in the past, also said they wanted more answers about how  —   and why  —   Comey’s dismissal went down. ”Regardless of how you think Director Comey handled the unprecedented complexities of the 2016 election cycle, the timing of this firing is very troubling,” said Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. He added, ”As the chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee, I have reached out to the Deputy Attorney General for clarity on his rationale for recommending this action.”"
"When the Senate was preparing to confirm President Trump’s Cabinet and other top officials, the nominees negotiated ethics agreements, promising to rearrange their financial lives to avoid conflicts of interest. Now the Office of Government Ethics wants to know if they kept their word. OGE is requiring the Cabinet secretaries and other   officials to fill out a new Certification of Ethics Agreement Compliance. NPR obtained a copy of the form before its release Thursday. The form asks whether appointees followed through on pledges to resign from   positions that posed conflicts of interest, divest financial holdings they had promised to sell and recuse themselves from any issues where they have had conflicts. OGE plans to post the completed forms online, each one paired with the ethics agreement that the appointee signed during the Senate confirmation process. As with other federal documents, false statements run the risk of criminal penalties. This is the latest round in a battle between OGE, which oversees but cannot enforce federal ethics law, and the Trump administration, which has shown little concern for it. Before Trump was inaugurated last January, OGE Director Walter Shaub Jr. sharply criticized his decision to keep ownership of his corporate empire. Shaub said, ”The   must show those in government  —   and those coming into government after his inauguration  —   that ethics matters.” Since then, the White House has delayed the release of appointees’ financial disclosures. And as the New York Times reported, it hasn’t disclosed ethics waivers that allow newly appointed agency officials to make decisions affecting companies for which they formerly lobbied. Both financial disclosures and ethics waivers were routinely disclosed in the past. Last month, OGE went after the missing ethics waivers. In a ”data call,” it directed the ethics officers in federal agencies to send it copies of all recently issued ethics waivers by the end of May."
"The tar baby story in which Bre’r Rabbit outwits Bre’r Fox is a classic trickster folk tale. But like all fables, it is a   affair, with entertainment firing in tandem with a serious message. The question the story addresses is a fundamental one: Who controls access to food and water? Or, more crucially, who controls access to food and water when the rules have been turned upside down by giant forces like colonialism, slavery, global trade and the loss of the commons to enclosures? Far from being a simple folk tale, the tar baby story is ”a collective work in political philosophy,” says Berkeley professor Bryan Wagner in his fascinating new book The Tar Baby, A Global History. Wagner explores how hundreds of variants of this tale, passed on through the oral tradition, are present throughout the world in regions as   as the Philippines, India, Africa, Corsica, Colombia and Brazil, as well as among several American Indian tribes. No one can say for certain when or where it first originated, but in the U. S. the most popular version comes from Joel Chandler Harris’ 1880 collection, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings.  Harris, a white journalist who worked as a teenage newspaper apprentice on a Georgia plantation during the Civil War, heard these stories from   while spending many hours in conversation with the inhabitants of the soon    slave quarters. Entranced by this folklore, he created a genial but stern character named Uncle Remus  —   the stereotype of the   ”venerable old darkey”  —   who tells these stories to a   child referred to as ”Miss Sally’s little boy.” The   setting of the storytelling is a romanticized snapshot of plantation life. Ensconced in his small cabin, Uncle Remus holds forth while he’s either cooking his dinner (such as a   yam baked in ashes) drinking coffee from a tin mug, using a hog’s bristle as a needle to mend his shoes, or weaving   from strips of tree bark, as his audience of one listens enrapt. The book was a sensational  . It was praised by everyone from Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling to President Theodore Roosevelt, who invited the inordinately shy Harris to the White House, declaring, ”Presidents may come and presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays put.” But Wagner warns that the ”disproportionate attention” given to the Uncle Remus version ”has obscured the story’s actual range.” An archetypal trickster tale, the tar baby story describes how a fox entraps a rabbit by using a tar figure. The rabbit gets stuck to it in five places  —   front and hind feet and head  —   after mistaking it for a real person and pummeling it for not replying to his polite greetings. Trapped but tactical as always, the rabbit begs the fox to roast, hang, skin or drown him but please not to throw him into the briar patch. Of course, the fox does precisely that, hoping to inflict maximum pain on his enemy, without knowing that rabbits are born and bred in thickets. The rabbit skips out as ”lively ez a cricket in de embers” to live another day. The allegorical symbolism, rooted in slavery and its inequalities, is not hard to decipher: The rabbit is the underdog who constantly has to outwit his more powerful (but dim) master in order to steal his food to survive. Legally, the food belongs to the ”master,” but morally, the enslaved have a right to it, too. ”The briar patch,” says Wagner, ”is a symbol of the commons, the unenclosed, unowned land that provides refuge and resources that sustain the life of the community.” Today, the term ”tar baby” is interpreted by many as a racial slur, and politicians have gotten in trouble for using it. But in its original context, it was a metaphor for a sticky situation that got worse the more one tangled with it. Wagner says this story is ”central to our understanding of cultural traditions that slaves brought from Africa to America.” It shows that ”slaves were neither deracinated nor submissive” but learned survival strategies. The story also sheds light on what Wagner calls ”the impact of science on the conflict over natural resources.” The crude    figure which Brer Fox rigs up and calls ”a contrapshun,” is a piece of technology that gets the better of the rabbit’s ”thinkin’ masheen.” There is also an unmistakable parallel between this contrapshun and a tar fence described in Frederick Douglass’s autobiography. Douglass recalls how his plantation owner in Eastern Maryland built a tar fence to keep ”hungry swarms of boys as well as the older slaves” out of his fruit garden abounding ”in fruits of almost every description, from the hardy apple of the north to the delicate orange of the south.” Given the chronic hunger they endured, hardly any enslaved person, writes Douglass in a marvelously ambiguous line, ”had the virtue or the vice to resist it.” But the tar fence worked. Those found with tar on their body were deemed guilty and brutally whipped. ”The slaves became as fearful of tar as of the lash,” writes Douglass. ”They seemed to realize the impossibility of touching tar without being defiled.” It’s almost like the tar baby tale come to life, and raises the question of whether the American version is a compound tale that originated in Africa but was partly constructed in America as a response to slavery. ”The fact that tar was used as a police technology under slavery undoubtedly has some relevance to the story,” says Wagner. ”The fox uses the tar baby to trap the rabbit, and this sticky, black material would have held special meaning for slaves who had experienced tar as a police technology. But, of course, there are many, many other ways in which tar takes on a special symbolic resonance in the story.” In the various global versions, the food the rabbit is out to snag changes, depending on the produce of the region. ”For instance, there is a story from South Carolina in which the battle is over a field of   peas,” says Wagner. ”In Oaxaca, the dispute is over chile. A story from what is now Tanzania concerns a ripened field of dhurra (or sorghum). A version common across West Africa concerns maize, yams and beans. But often, the resource in question is not location specific. Water, for example, is probably the most common resource in dispute.” The   figure changes, too. In some stories, it holds a cake, a bottle of whiskey or a deck of cards to tempt the hedonist rabbit, while in a West African version, the tar baby is a gum doll with a plate of yams in its lap. The most perplexing aspect of this folk tale is that in many variants the rabbit is portrayed as a  . Asked to help dig a community well, he says he prefers to live off the dew on the grass  —   and then proceeds to steal water from the well. Asked to till the soil, he refuses, but then proceeds to steal a cabbage here and a turnip there. If the rabbit represents the underdog, how is he also, to use Wagner’s phrase, ”a selfish hustler”? Even more curiously, why is he so likeable? ”There is no question that we are meant to identify with the rabbit,” says Wagner. ”This is something that is confirmed again and again by the people who are telling and hearing the story. It’s therefore puzzling that the opening scene of the story is structured in a way that makes it impossible to identify with the rabbit. The rabbit makes an agreement with others to share a resource in common, and then he breaks the agreement, taking everything for himself, leaving his honest neighbors with nothing. In other cases, the rabbit refuses to work, and then steals from his hardworking neighbors, leaving them to go hungry. One might assume that slaves telling the story, for example, would have strong reasons to identify with the fox, who works hard and has the fruit of his labors stolen from him. Yet over the course of the story, the line of identification with the rabbit becomes increasingly clear, as we cheer his escape at the story’s conclusion. One thing I try to do in the book is to explain the mystery of our identification with the rabbit, which is not, I argue, as simple as it has often seemed.” It is, indeed, a subversive trick: We learn to identify not with the fox, whom the system would deem virtuous, but the rabbit who ultimately has the moral high ground. Ambiguous, layered, and rich in meaning, Uncle Remus was right when he admonished his young listener that there is much more to these fables than ”fun, fun, fun, en giggle, giggle, giggle.” Nina Martyris is a journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"Rolling Stone magazine turns 50 this year, and   Jann Wenner has written the foreword to a new book celebrating the anniversary. Wenner started Rolling Stone in San Francisco in 1967 with $7, 500 of borrowed money, donated office space and some used typewriters. He was a    Berkeley dropout who was into all the great music coming out in the year of the ”Summer of Love”  —   and he wanted to create a magazine that took rock and roll seriously. ”You couldn’t read about it in Time magazine, you don’t read about it in newspapers, it wasn’t on TV, there were no movies  —   it just was considered somewhat rude and very much a   phenomenon,” Wenner tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. In other words, rock and roll wasn’t getting the respect Wenner felt it deserved, given the place it occupied in the nation’s culture. Baby boomers were just starting to enter college, to become the best educated and most affluent generation the U. S. had ever seen  —   and music was an inextricable part of the lives of that generation. ”As it came of age, it had rock and roll as the glue that held that all together,” Wenner says. ”[Rock and roll] was kind of the tribal telegraph, [through] which ideas about the world were being shared, and ideas about the American experience were being informally passed around. Dylan and The Beatles and the Stones were shaping a worldview that we were part of.” Hear the full conversation at the audio link, and read on for highlights. On assigning Hunter S. Thompson’s first Rolling Stone story, I’d asked him to write a small piece for us, and he wrote me back saying, ”I can’t do that  —   but I’m loving Rolling Stone, I’m reading it, and you’re just doing a   thing . .. and I’d love to write for you, but right now I’m too busy running for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado.” So I wrote him back and said, ”Why don’t you write about that?” And that became his first piece. It’s called ”Freak Power in the Rockies: The Battle of Aspen.” And we started becoming great friends, and he kind of became a   Rolling Stone person. I think that part of what has made this very successful is giving the right idea to the right writers, kind of understanding what they will really be good at and what will really inspire them to do great work. On the aftermath of the magazine’s discredited 2014 article that recounted a gang rape at the University of Virginia, We commissioned the Columbia School of Journalism to do an investigation of it, of what happened and what we did wrong, and we published that openly. And I think that we never really lost any readers’ trust because of it. I think we’ve got an outstanding record of 50 years of great journalism, and in the course of 50 years, sometimes you make a mistake, sometimes you screw up. And we screwed up. We are not alone that just happens when you’re doing this kind of thing, when you’re in journalism  —   whether you’re the New York Times or anything. [Kelly McEvers: Do you feel like you were too slow to admit that you screwed up?] I think we  —   no, I don’t. We wanted to understand it first. On criticism that Rolling Stone cozies up to celebrities at the expense of journalistic rigor, The people we cover who are in the world of arts  —   we don’t view as adversaries. We view artists as people who should be celebrated, critiqued if necessary, supported  —   we view ourselves as advocates for people like Bob Dylan and Nirvana and Britney Spears and whomever. They’re not politicians, they’re not people who are making faulty cars. On the other hand, when we’re talking about, you know, politics and journalism, we are fiercely independent and rigorous in what we do. On the magazine’s continuing cultural relevance after 50 years, Of course it’s a piece of history, and we’ve covered the history very, very well. But it’s ongoing. I mean, just pick it up  —   it’s just as on the news and on the current culture as ever. And ahead of it. Web editor Rachel Horn contributed to this story."
"Former U. S. Rep. Corrine Brown has been found guilty of siphoning hundreds of thousands of dollars from a charity that she and her chief of staff had passed off as a scholarship service for students. The Florida Democrat had faced 22 counts ranging from conspiracy to tax fraud she was convicted of 18. Of the more than $800, 000 she and Elias ”Ronnie” Simmons raised for One Door for Education, member station WJCT reports that just $1, 200 actually went where they told donors it would: students’ education. In roughly five years, prosecutors say, the charity distributed just two scholarships. Prosecutors alleged  —   and on Thursday, the jury agreed  —   that Brown and Simmons pocketed the rest of the funds, using them for lavish events such as a golf tournament and luxury boxes for an NFL game and a Beyonce concert. WJCT has more from the courtroom: ”Assistant U. S. Attorneys Tysen Duva and Eric Olshan painted Brown as an egotistical politician who lived beyond her means. Using bank records, checks, letters, emails and hundreds of other documents, prosecutors made the case Brown directed the deposit of $37, 000 of One Door cash into her account. They also claimed she was instrumental in planning nine events that cost the sham charity $330, 000.” Brown had argued that the fraud was entirely the doing of Simmons, who earlier pleaded guilty and testified against her. Brown didn’t speak after the verdict was rendered, but her attorney James Smith told reporters, ”I still have a lot of work to do on this case,” referring to the sentencing phase and the motion he plans to file for a new trial. WJCT’s Ryan Michael Benk reports the sentencing phase could take 90 days or longer for Brown, who left office earlier this year after losing her   bid in the district she had represented for nearly a  ."
"”The death of the MP3 was announced in a conference room in Erlangen, Germany, in the spring of 1995.” So opens Stephen Witt’s How Music Got Free, an investigation into the forced digitization and subsequent decimation of the music business, from which it has only very recently started to recover. That ironic conference room eulogy actually took place just before the compression algorithm caught on (don’t worry, we’ll explain in a bit). Soon, the MP3 not only upended the recording industry but, thanks to the iPod, also contributed to Apple’s  ’90s transformation into one of the most successful companies in history. (On Tuesday, the tech giant passed $800 billion in market capitalization, the first U. S. company to do so.) But now, 22 years later, the MP3 truly is dead, according to the people who invented it. The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, a division of the   German research institution that bankrolled the MP3’s development in the late ’80s, recently announced that its ”licensing program for certain MP3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated.” Bernhard Grill, director of that Fraunhofer division and one of the principals in the development of the MP3, told NPR over email that another audio format, AAC  —   or ”Advanced Audio Coding,” which his organization also helped create  —   is now the ”de facto standard for music download and videos on mobile phones.” He said AAC is ”more efficient than MP3 and offers a lot more functionality.” As Witt illustrates throughout his excellent opening chapters, the MP3, before upending the musical world as we knew it, almost died in the research lab. The team of engineers that invented the format was attempting to make it possible to send audio over telephone lines, which could only transmit small amounts of data. Fraunhofer  —   in competing for the legitimacy it needed to persuade tech companies to actually use MP3s, and so actually make money  —   hit numerous speed bumps. It was repeatedly beleaguered by clever corporate sabotage and later by piracy. Other failures hinged on the need for the world to catch up with the technology’s possibilities: Along the way, one computer engineer on the team had a patent for a music streaming service denied by the German government because it was technologically absurd at the time. Another innovation the team failed to leverage? The portable MP3 player. In early 1995, the format was on life support, with one licensing deal being the use of the technology by hockey arenas across the U. S. (That spring meeting in which the MP3 was declared dead came months later, after another failed pitch that denied it being standardized and widely adopted.) A little later, Fraunhofer began giving away the software that consumers needed to turn compact discs into MP3s at home. The rest is recent history. So is it the end of an era? We may still use MP3s, but when the people who spent the better part of a decade creating it say the jig is up, we should probably start paying attention. AAC is indeed much better  —   it’s the default setting for bringing CDs into iTunes now  —   and other formats are even better than it, though they also take up mountains of space on our hard drives. And it’s not just that more efficient and complete ways of storing music have been developed. There was a deeper problem. The engineers who developed the MP3 were working with incomplete information about how our brains process sonic information, and so the MP3 itself was working on false assumptions about how holistically we hear. As psychoacoustic research has evolved, so has the technology that we use to listen. New audio formats and products, with richer information and that better address mobile music streaming, are arriving. Deezer, a music streaming company relatively popular in its native France, launched in the U. S. offering ” ” streaming, for double the price of a Spotify account. Tidal did the same. Neil Young tried his hand with the hotly tipped Pono. While all three are not exactly taking over the world  —   Pono, in fact, is officially dead, rebranded ”Xstream”  —   the record business has put its stamp of approval on the idea, at least. ”Master Quality Authenticated” is a promising new technology that uses a type of audio origami to spare cellular data when necessary and to ”bloom” in quality when it’s not  —   though it has drawn pointed criticism for being a closed loop that allows for recording industry  . It wouldn’t be the first time. The formats that convey art and media to us also delineate that media vinyl records require a   flip, which The Beatles brilliantly exploited by creating an infinite loop of gibberish at the end of Sgt. Pepper’s second side. The VHS tape in both image and sound was as soft and fuzzy as a worn teddy bear, while new   televisions render images perhaps too robotically, tracking movement like  . The MP3, as mentioned, enabled millions or billions of song listens, just with incorrect biological assumptions. The lesson seems to be, simply, that our media will always be as exactly imperfect as we are."
"A few blocks east of the Brandenburg Gate, Cityhostel Berlin offers cheap rooms and spotty   in a large, gated 1970s building. But it turns out the hostel is more interesting than its exterior suggests: The building is owned and leased out by North Korea. Located in what was once Communist East Berlin, the hostel is next door to North Korea’s   embassy, and was formerly its diplomatic quarters. ”Parts of the embassy were vacated as relations between Germany and North Korea soured following Germany’s reunification in 1990,” according to The Washington Post. In the early 2000s, the hostel and a conference center were opened in the building. The building’s ownership came under increased scrutiny after the adoption of  U. N. Security Council Resolution 2321 in November, after North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test. The resolution says ”all Member States shall prohibit the DPRK from using real property that it owns or leases in their territory for any purpose other than diplomatic or consular activities.” And that’s just what North Korea seems to have been doing in Berlin. Public broadcaster ARD reports that the tenants apparently pay 38, 000 Euros (about $41, 000) a month in rent to North Korea. ”Any kind of commercial activity on the site of the embassy or in relation to the embassy is prohibited,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer, according to German news site The Local: ” ’Cityhostel in Berlin constitutes neither a diplomatic nor consular activity of a North Korean foreign representation,” he continued, adding that the government will move to ”shut down the financial source to the North Korean regime as quickly as possible’.” The hostel is on the same property as the embassy next door, over which the flag of North Korea flies. Despite the fresh moves by the German government to shut down the hostel, its ownership was likely not a total surprise. Philipp Lengsfeld, a member of parliament from the Christian Democratic party, called it ”an open secret  —   every cabdriver knew that,” according to The New York Times. And the Post reports that in 2014, the German newspaper Die Welt attempted to verify rumors that the hostel was still connected via tunnel to the embassy, but found no evidence: ”Despite the media coverage at the time, the hostel’s rental agreement sparked little outrage, even as other North Korean business practices in Europe came under growing scrutiny.” One group that does seem largely unaware of the North Korean connection is the backpackers who stay at Cityhostel, which TripAdvisor rates as   accommodations. Of 541 reviews on the site, only a handful mention the hostel’s owner. ”All in all it’s an OK place to stay, if you don’t mind the North Korea connection, but it’s not our cup of tea,” wrote one visitor. ”Those of you who oppose N. Korea policies may not want to stay here,” warned another. The hostel and conference center are thought to be North Korea’s last official revenue source in the country, reports the Post. And with the German government moving to shut it down, backpackers in Berlin will need to find a different place to lay their heads. Perhaps with better  ."
"In the Israeli romantic comedy, The Wedding Plan, Michal (Noa Koler) a youngish woman who’s been trying to get hitched for years sits opposite a prospective mate, trying to make small talk. This is her umpteenth date in umpteen years all relevant clocks are ticking she’s fed up and close to despair. Mary Richards may spring to mind, also Bridget Jones, and just about every Jane Austen adaptation extant. The twist here is that, like the movie’s   Rama Burshtein, Michal is an Orthodox Jew by choice. In Burshtein’s beautiful and beguiling 2013 first feature, Fill the Void  —   about a young   woman in Tel Aviv who must decide whether or not to marry her dead sister’s husband  —   the director is more interested in conveying the feel of her milieu from within than in making a case for it to the   world. In The Wedding Plan, too, it’s taken casually for granted that Michal’s dates come brokered by a matchmaker. Which may make her marriage prospects look like a cakewalk to most secular women who are on their own when it comes to finding Mr. Right. Not so. Michal’s love life plays out as a kind of swipeless Tinder experience, with results at least as confusing, frustrating, absurd and sometimes sad as in any   today, except that the men wear side curls and big hats, the women long dresses buttoned to the neck, and sex won’t be on the table for a long while yet. Yet our heroine is anything but subservient or meek. Actually, she’s a pistol. Michal may be chaste, but she’s no pushover, and she won’t marry just to be married. A groom has been chosen, but he’s acting shifty and evasive, and Michal, a stickler for honesty, pushes the immature lad to admit he doesn’t love her. Down but not out, the jilted bride decides to go ahead with her wedding plans and trust that God will provide a groom. This sets off alarm bells with her intensely protective family, friends and the wedding hall’s owner (Amos Tamam) who, however baffled, agrees to help with the wedding arrangements. He’s a quiet fellow but do tuck him away  —   he’ll be back later to ruffle feathers. Between her first and second features Burshtein, an advocate for opportunities for Orthodox women filmmakers, has acquired a nimble mastery of   structure and pacing. The Wedding Plan fizzes with zany energy as Michal tumbles her way through a parade of unsuitable suitors, among them a guy with an outlandish rationale for refusing to look at prospective brides, and an Israeli pop idol (Oz Zehavi) whom she bumps into on a quick trip to Ukraine to pray at the grave of a famous rabbi. ”You have a nutty energy,” one bemused prospect tells Michal, and that is generally true of this brightly colored, often zany crowdpleaser with sharply written dialogue and a pop soundtrack. Michal runs a mobile petting zoo and gets support from a girl posse that includes her neurotic sister and a sweetly supportive friend in dreadlocks who believes in her all the way to a ceremony that as yet has no groom. Yet Burshtein also unfolds a darker, more introspective undertow to Michal’s growing despair of ever finding her beshert. The versatile Koler, who won an Israeli Academy Award for her performance, does full justice to Michal’s inner conflicts and  . She’s wry and ironic and an astute judge of character, but she’s also generous and forgiving to a roommate who betrays her. Honest to a fault, unwilling to play games and brave enough to face disappointment rather than make do, Koler’s Michal seems to model herself on Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet in all her incarnations. Burshtein creates a productive tension, by turns riotous and sad, between Michal’s impatience with the banal rituals of courtship and her longing for true love and companionship. For Burshtein faith is paramount, and she’s not messing around  —   she means religious faith. For much of The Wedding Plan we can choose to get on board for that part or not, because Michal’s God helps those who help themselves. Near the end of The Wedding Plan, as suspense builds over whether a groom will appear at the eleventh hour, the    makes a decision that leaves no room for doubt about who she believes holds sway over her life. It’s a tribute to this   humane film that you can follow along and enjoy while reserving judgment on that score."
"Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is marking his release from federal custody with an appeal for vindication by the U. S. Supreme Court. Blankenship served a   federal prison sentence after being convicted of conspiracy to violate federal mine safety laws. The charges stemmed from the disaster at a Massey Energy mine in West Virginia in 2010 that left 29 coal miners dead. ”We never give up,” says Blankenship attorney William Taylor, who notified the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday that Blankenship will petition the U. S. Supreme Court to review the case. In his first two days of freedom, Blankenship has posted a blizzard of tweets declaring his innocence and blaming the Upper Big Branch mine disaster on federal regulators and what he says was a natural inundation of natural gas. Multiple investigations blamed the explosion that ripped through the mine on inadequate safety protections, including excessive explosive coal dust, inadequate ventilation and worn out equipment. Federal prosecutors cited Blankenship’s micromanagement and obsessive focus on coal production in the conspiracy trial that resulted in his conviction and imprisonment. The charges were based on safety practices at Massey Energy and Upper Big Branch but were not directly related to the deadly explosion. Blankenship’s conviction was upheld by the federal appeals court. Taylor argued that the jury instructions during Blankenship’s trial were unfair, pinning conviction on ”reckless disregard” of mine safety laws rather than intent to violate the law. As Ken Ward, Jr. reported in the Charleston   the defense argued on appeal that ”the government fully exploited these novel willfulness instructions to obtain a conviction for not doing enough concerning safety rather than for intending to violate the law.” Taylor is confident the Supreme Court will take the case. ”It’s a pretty clear issue,” he says. ”We’re either right or wrong about that.” Taylor also insists that the timing of the Supreme Court petition notice ”has nothing to do with [Blankenship’s] incarceration status,” even though it was filed the day after Blankenship’s release, and as Blankenship took to Twitter with a spirited defense."
"About 450 million years, animals made one of the most important decisions in Earth’s history: They left the wet, nourishing seas and started living on the dry, desolate land. At that moment, humanity’s problems with superbugs probably began. Scientists at the Broad Institute have found evidence that an important group of   bacteria are as old as terrestrial animals themselves. ”These bugs likely lived in the very first creatures that sort of crawled out of the sea and came onto land,” says Ashlee Earl, a geneticist at the Broad Institute, who   the study. During that time, these   seem to have picked up an arsenal of traits that helped them thrive in hospitals and even thwart some of the most common antibiotics, like penicillin, Earl and her colleagues report Thursday in the journal Cell. ”These bugs became part of these creatures’ gut microbes, just like they are part of our gut microbes today,” Earl adds. And they were probably part of the microbiome of all the animals that have ever inhabited land over the past 450 million years or so, even the dinosaurs. ”It’s cool to think of Tyrannosaurus rex traipsing across the planet, carrying these bugs in its gut,” Earl says. ”But we think that’s very likely.” The superbug we’re talking is a little guy called Enterococci. And it’s the godfather of superbugs. Because back in the ’80s, Enterococci bacteria were one of the first pathogens to become resistant to almost all the antibiotics available. ”That was really the dawn of the superbug era,” says the Broad Institute’s Michael Gilmore, who also   the study. Today Enterococci bacteria have become a major source of hospital infections in the U. S. The microbes sicken nearly 70, 000 Americans and kill more than 1, 000 each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. And Gilmore wondered why? ”Why, out of the thousand or so species of bacteria that live in our guts, have Enterococci become a superbug? What makes Enterococci special?” Gilmore wondered. To figure it out, he and Earl sequenced the genomes of 24 species of Enterococci found in the guts of all sorts of animals, from bees and pigeons to humans and fish. Then they sifted through the bacteria’s genes and figured out which ones were unique to Enterococci  —   and not found in close relatives. ”We whittled it down to about 126 genes unique to Enteroccoci,” Gilmore says. When they looked at what those genes do, Gilmore and Earl quickly realized Enterococci’s secret weapon: ”Basically, it’s like the bacteria put on a hazmat suit,” Gilmore says. Many of these special genes are involved in hardening and fortifying the bacteria’s cell wall. ”They help make the bacteria rugged and able to withstand drying out and exposure to disinfectants,” Gilmore says. And the data suggest the superbug picked up this ”hazmat suit” 450 million years ago when animals were just beginning to colonize land  —   probably to help them survive the transition from living in marine animals to leaving in land animals. Gilmore says he came up with hypothesis while remembering his pet goldfish. ”I was thinking about that little string of poop that would come out of the fish,” he says. ”Remember, these are bacteria that live in the guts of animals, but sometimes they are excreted out in feces.” When the excretion happens in the ocean, the bacteria end up in an environment that’s not too different than an animals’ gut  —   at the bottom of the ocean floor  —   where it’s moist and filled with nutrients. But when bacteria are excreted out onto land, they find themselves in a much harsher environment. ”They are exposed to U. V. light, baked in sun and often end up starving and drying up,” Gilmore says. So to survive, they needed to develop a hazmat suit. And today, that same suit  —   which helped Enterococci conquer land  —   is helping them conquer another frontier: hospitals. Their ability to withstand drying out, starvation and harsh chemicals helps them to survive on a hospital table or curtain  —   and even resist disinfectants and detergents. ”This ability has predisposed them to becoming superbugs,” Gilmore says. Now that we have the blueprints to their hazmat suit, we can start finding ways to compromise it."
"Cholera can kill a person in a matter of hours. It’s a severe gastrointestinal disease that can trigger so much diarrhea and vomiting that patients can rapidly become dehydrated. They lose so much fluid that their internal organs shut down. The waterborne disease has been around for centuries, and it remains a global health risk. According to the World Health Organization, there are roughly 3 million cases a year and 90, 000 deaths. The worst outbreak right now is in Haiti, linked to cholera brought by U. N. peacekeepers in 2010. Outbreaks are also flaring in South Sudan and Somalia. In countries that have long been grappling with cholera, such as Bangladesh, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo, tens of thousands of people are sickened every year. And now there’s concern that cholera could sweep through   Yemen. Doctors Without Borders has reported at least 570 cholera cases in Yemen in the past three weeks. ”(This) is extremely alarming. We are facing a reactivation of the cholera epidemic,” Nevio Zagaria, the WHO representative in Yemen, told Reuters. ”The cause is that there is two years of war . ... The water pumping stations are not functioning regularly, and this has an impact on the quality of water.” Historically spread by ships, ”It’s been in the Ganges Delta from time immemorial,” says Dr. David Sack, a professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. ”It began spreading to the Western world in the early 1800s. With travel and transport ships going back and forth to India, it spread through Russia, through Western Europe. It came to Baltimore. It came to New York, Philadelphia in the  . It was a disease that affected large parts of the world.” In the 1800s, cholera killed millions of people as it spread around the globe. ”At that time, we didn’t know what caused it,” says Sack, who has spent much of his career studying the disease. ”We didn’t know how to treat it. A case of cholera that is untreated has a fatality rate of about 50 percent and that’s what was happening in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore.” Theories about the cause of this horrendous illness were plentiful. Foul air rising from sewers and piles of rotting trash was a leading suspect. Some church leaders said it was retribution by God for sinful behavior. Poison in the soil was suggested as a possible culprit. There appeared to be a link between cholera and filthy, overcrowded urban slums. Blaming the pump, In the 1850s, an English doctor named John Snow became a legend of public health for figuring out that an outbreak in the Soho neighborhood of London was linked to a single drinking water source. Snow is credited with stopping the raging outbreak, which claimed 10, 000 lives across London, by taking the handle off of the Broad Street pump. Snow argued correctly that water contaminated with sewage was spreading the illness from one resident to another. But he still didn’t know exactly what the water was contaminated with. He theorized that it might be tiny parasites or germs or some ”poison” that was able to reproduce in the environment. Around the same time an Italian scientist, Filippo Pacini, identified the bacteria that causes cholera. But his discovery wouldn’t be widely accepted until decades and millions of deaths later. Sack at Johns Hopkins says cholera is now a treatable disease so long as the patient gets medical attention quickly. ”A patient with cholera should never die,” Sack says. ”If they get to a treatment center in time, if they still have a breath, we can save their life.” There is no cure or antidote or magic pill. Treatment consists of simply keeping the person hydrated. In severe cases, patients may need to be given fluids intravenously. If they are capable of drinking, they can also be treated with oral rehydration fluids, basically   sugar water. Historic outbreak in Haiti, The current outbreak on the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, began in 2010. Sack says it is of historic proportions. ”It’s huge,” he says. ”We haven’t ever seen something quite like this [in modern times].” So far the Haiti outbreak has sickened roughly 800, 000 people and killed more than 9, 000. Cholera spread rapidly on Hispaniola because of two factors. First, the population had no immunity to the disease because it had never been seen there before. And second, Haiti’s drinking water and sewage infrastructure is in a dreadful state. For many Haitians, infrastructure to deliver clean drinking water and adequately treat human sewage simply doesn’t exist. To put this outbreak in perspective: In 2016 in all of the Americas, roughly 30, 000 cholera cases had been reported to the Pan American Health Organization, the regional office of WHO, from four countries. One case was in Mexico, one case was in Ecuador, and the rest were in Haiti or neighboring Dominican Republic. Is an end even in sight? There is an oral vaccine, but   Poncelet, PAHO’s representative in Haiti, says the bigger issue is clean water. ”Vaccine is not the solution. It is one tool that we have to add to the ones we already have,” he says. Poncelet says Haiti unfortunately is a long way off from eliminating cholera. ”Until Haiti does have access to clean water and sanitation,” Poncelet says, ”eradication will be extremely difficult if not impossible.” Worldwide, the idea of eradicating cholera is so far off that it isn’t even on the agenda of global health officials. The final chapter on cholera’s long history will only come about when living conditions improve to the point that almost everyone has reliable access to clean water."
"The battle over alcohol stores in tiny Whiteclay, Neb. has been going on for decades. Home to roughly about a dozen people, the town has been called a ”rural skid row.” Images of Lakota people openly drinking in town or staggering drunk on its streets are commonplace. But now, that easy access to alcohol is gone. The state liquor board has shut down Whiteclay’s four controversial liquor stores. Together, the stores sold 4 million cans of beer every year  —   mostly to residents of the adjacent Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which bans alcohol. The store owners are appealing the action by the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, but that could take months. Andrew Iron Shell sees the closures as a huge step forward for residents of the bordering reservation, where it’s estimated that 50 percent of the adult population struggles with alcohol abuse. ”It’s a victory for the community,” says Iron Shell, who has several years of sobriety under his belt. He works for a Lakota   focusing on reconnecting tribal members with their culture. ”It’s been a   battle on many fronts,” he says. ”But, I also think it’s an opportunity to bring communities together. To bring people with the same value system about life and about wellness and creating economic opportunity that benefits the region as a whole.” The bulk of this town’s revenue came from liquor store sales. What’s left here now is a thrift shop, a small grocery store, an auto parts business and lots of vacant buildings. That’s why members of the Whiteclay Task Force will gather here next week to discuss economic development. But Loren Paul, a county commissioner here, labels them ” ” who he says are missing two key points:   owners’ rights to operate their establishments and personal responsibility. ”No one wants to say that alcoholism is the problem and the addict is the problem and we need to start there,” Paul says. ”And it doesn’t matter where we move the supply to. If you’re an addict, you’re going to access that. So in my opinion, what we had before was a problem that no one liked, but it has to be addressed form the addict’s side. But we had a controlled environment  —   we knew where the problem was.” Now, Paul argues that the alcohol problem has been spread to the four winds and those in need will travel south to Rushville, Neb. north to Rapid City, S. D. or wherever they need to in order to get alcohol. He says that puts more people at risk. Two miles north of Whiteclay, Talea Merrival is gassing up at Big Bat’s Service Station in the village of Pine Ridge. She thinks closing the liquor stores is good for the reservation but calls it a   solution. ”I honestly don’t think closing the town of Whiteclay, as far as alcohol, is going to change on the reservation. There’s going to be probably more bootleggers on the reservation. It made it more convenient when it was in Whiteclay, but it won’t stop them from getting the alcohol itself.” Merrival says Whiteclay has served as a convenient target for those concerned about the reservation’s high rate of alcoholism. But if real change is expected, she says the Oglala Sioux tribe will have to not only try to shut down local bootleggers, but also work harder to set up rehab programs."
"Tesla is now accepting deposits for its new solar roof system, offering an ”infinity” warranty for tiles that integrate solar power into roof coverings. Installations will begin in June, the company says. Resembling normal roofing shingles, the solar tiles will be offered in a variety of styles, from slate and terra cotta to smooth or textured dark gray. On its website, Tesla is taking $1, 000 deposits toward work that includes removing a house’s existing roof, installing the solar tiles and equipping the home with a battery to store power. Potential customers can use the company’s online tool to estimate the solar roof’s costs and savings, based on their roof’s square footage. The results, which draw on Google’s Project Sunroof, vary according to energy costs and other factors. The solar roof tiles are made of quartz glass. But not all tiles on a house with the system will be actively gathering the sun’s energy. Tesla’s plan calls for mixing solar and nonsolar tiles. From the street, the company says, the two look identical. For a   house in Raleigh, N. C. with 2, 467 square feet  —   the median size of a new,   home in the U. S. according to recent Census Bureau data  —   the upfront cost of replacing a roof with the solar tile system comes to $46, 400, according to Tesla’s online tool. A federal tax credit drops that amount by nearly $14, 000, but Tesla’s Powerwall battery adds a $7, 000 expense. With 60 percent solar coverage on the roof, the system would generate $38, 100 worth of energy over 30 years, according to the estimate, leaving the homeowner with a net cost of $1, 400. Depending on the local energy market, a similar home in another area could generate a profit. The ”infinity” warranty covers the glass in the tiles, Tesla says. The company offers a   warranty for other aspects of the system, such as the tiles’ power output and the system’s ability to prevent leaks. The price per square foot varies with the proportion of solar and nonsolar tiles. Tesla says active tiles will cost $42 per square foot, while inert tiles will be around $11 per square foot. The active tiles have three main layers, with a base solar cell beneath a colored louver film that’s covered by tempered glass. A standard solar panel setup could cost about 30 percent less than the Tesla system, Bloomberg reports. But the news outlet also says Tesla is bringing its aesthetically appealing tiles to market at a price that’s well beneath earlier expectations. Tesla says its SolarCity subsidiary will begin installing the first systems in California in June and will then spread to other areas. For 2017, the solar tiles will be installed only in the U. S. the company says."
"The glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park are rapidly disappearing. Some have been reduced by as much as 85 percent over the past 50 years, while the average loss is 39 percent, according to a new study from the U. S. Geological Survey and Portland State University. The researchers looked at historic trends for 39 glaciers, 37 of which are found in the park. The other two are on U. S. Forest Service land. The stark data actually calls into question whether all of these formations are still glaciers. In fact, the scientists found that only 26 of them are still larger than 25 acres  —   a common benchmark for determining whether a mass of ice is classified as a glacier. Early last century, the park had about 150 glaciers that passed that benchmark. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting all over the world due to climate change. But as Montana Public Radio explains, ”that warming is happening faster in western Montana, where temperatures have increased at a rate almost double the global average.” USGS research ecologist Dan Fagre tells the station: ”We are kind of a bellwether, we’re an early indicator of the kinds of changes that are going to occur elsewhere.” The researchers compared maps from aerial photographs and satellites with historic data from 1966, 1998, 2005 and  . It’s part of a larger project to track changes in glaciers in Montana, Alaska and Washington state. The park says its glaciers are thousands of years old: ”The current glaciers in the park are estimated to be at least 7, 000 years old and peaked in size in the   during the Little Ice Age. Millions of years before that, during a major glacial period known as the Pleistocene Epoch, enough ice covered the Northern Hemisphere to lower sea levels 300 feet. In places near the park, ice was a mile deep. The Pleistocene Epoch ended around 12, 000 years ago.” If the current trends continue, according to glacier recession models, the park says it will no longer have active glaciers in 2030. The melting glaciers also could impact the park’s wildlife, Fagre said in a statement. ”The   loss of ice can have ecological effects on aquatic species by changing stream water volume, water temperature and   timing in the higher elevations of the park,” he said. Naturally, the glaciers themselves are a significant draw to Glacier National Park, and park staff are wondering how the melting will impact tourism. Last year, the park welcomed 2. 9 million visitors."
"The creator of one of the most popular   web comics  —   yes, that’s a thing  —   does not even know how to ice skate. Ngozi Ukazu created ”Check Please,” about a   Southern hockey player who’s short, loves baking pies and is completely crushed out on his hunky team captain. The success of ”Check Please” shows how a new generation of storytellers are refining the 21st century tools that help them attract and retain fans and earn a living with their work. ”I would say my estimated readership is at least 120K,” Ukazu tells me in an email conversation. ”10k people check out [my] updates whenever they’re posted. And it might be more interesting to talk about the 5000 fanfictions that have been posted on the fanfiction site AO3.” Plus, a recent Kickstarter for ”Check Please” raised about $100, 000 in an hour. (It eventually cleared about a quarter of million.) Ukazu grew up in Atlanta, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants and the kind of kid who got into both Harvard and Yale. While attending the latter, she became fascinated by hockey culture, fraternity culture  —   in general, by bros. ”Maybe it’s my need to see these things [where] I could be seen as the enemy,” she says,  . ”To see it and then learn about it, infiltrate it and then subvert it. ”I don’t want to other them too much,” she adds. ”Which is like, as a black woman, who am I to say I’m othering a bunch of white guys who play this sport. But it was like I was doing this anthropological study.” And Ukazu has also come up with a brilliant strategy for keeping fans on the hook, something that’s made her comic an internet sensation, says Gary Tyrrell, who writes about the world of web comics on his blog Fleen. ”’Check Please’ has absolutely exploded,” he says. Even he, not normally the type to go for a gay college hockey romance, is a fan. Partly because he finds it adorable, and partly because he admires how Ukazu keeps the story going across multiple social media platforms even during the weeks when she’s working on the comic and isn’t putting new panels online. For example, the characters have their own Twitter and Tumblr accounts that drop hints about upcoming plotlines. And Tyrrell says Ukazu lets her fans listen in, so to speak, on what’s happening backstage. ”There’s almost daily process updates,” he says. ”Here are some sketches, here’s a little piece of story that didn’t make it in. Here’s what these other characters were doing while the story was happening on panel.” Ukazu has been writing and drawing ”Check Please” for more than three years. The print version of Year Two officially debuts this week at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and she says at the end of Year Four, when the characters graduate, she’ll be done. In the meantime, she views ”Check Please” as something close to a playful exercise in collegiate   cultural appropriation. ”I’m not so much appropriating this culture as saying, like, ’Here’s a culture and this is how it could be in an ideal world where someone like Bitty could thrive,” she said. Someone like a talented outsider, who figures out the rules, who breaks them knowingly, and with nerve. And who makes things more interesting for everyone. Like creator, like creation."
"With barely an Internet whimper, Pepe the Frog, the anthropomorphic cartoon character turned symbol of hate, was put down by his creator, Matt Furie, over the weekend, in a   comic strip. The final images were of Pepe dead in a casket, with three former roommates paying tribute by pouring some liquor on Pepe’s face and drinking the rest. The demise of Pepe  —   who had become a symbol of the     and white nationalists  —   was as sad as it was unlikely. Pepe, from the start, was supposed to be a good guy. But in the story of his rise and fall, some universal truths about the nature of modern Internet can be found. But first, let’s look back at just how Pepe came to be. When Furie created the character in 2005 and later featured him in the comic Boy’s Club, he was just trying to make a chill bro who happened to be an animal. ”He’s a     roommate,” Furie told NPR. ”He’s an anthropomorphic frog that lives with a party wolf, a   creature, and then kind of a muppety,   creature . .. in a   apartment. And [they] kinda just party together and pull pranks on one another and hug each other and that kind of thing.” Furie said the characters were loosely based on his life, ”living with a bunch of guys,” and that ”Pepe the Frog’s more of just the Everyman. He likes to take naps and smoke weed, play video games.” Pepe really took off with one particular comic strip, depicting the frog pulling his pants down all the way to his ankles to urinate. After one of his roommates called him out, Pepe replied, ”Feels good man.” A star was born. Denouncement as endorsement, And then, that same star was coopted, stolen by a 4chan fringe. In an effort described to the Daily Beast as a push to ”reclaim Pepe from normies,” a dedicated group of 4chan users began to tie Pepe to white nationalism beginning around 2015. ”We basically mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, etc. We built that association,” one user told Daily Beast reporter Olivia Nuzzi. And during the 2016 election, that fringe ended up successfully tying Pepe to Donald Trump. ”Eventually, a popular meme of the smug frog with Donald Trump’s hair started circulating online and then eventually got retweeted by the Donald Trump campaign,” said Matthew Schimkowitz, an editor at Know Your Meme. ”When that happened, the meaning of Pepe as kind of a white nationalist or   symbol kind of exploded. It was considered by many to be a tactic of   from the Trump campaign to that sect of white nationalists online, and it became a new symbol for white nationalists maybe not online. It essentially amplified that specific meaning of Pepe.” But what happened next was telling. Donald Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, publicly denounced Pepe, and that only strengthened Pepe’s connection to white nationalists, proving that a lot of times online, denouncing something can function as an amplifier. ”I didn’t notice anything until there was a Hillary [Clinton] explainer,” Furie said. Schimkowitz added: ”Because such   people  —   perhaps the two most famous people on the planet  —   were saying in so much that Pepe is a symbol of the   that became the kind of meaning for the meme entirely. It’s what we call here the Pepe effect. When everyone starts using a meme to mean one specific thing, that essentially becomes the meaning of it.” Furie fought hard to change it. He wrote an essay in Time magazine, to reclaim Pepe. There was a Save Pepe campaign, complete with links to a Save Pepe online shop on Furie’s Tumblr. Furie even partnered with the   League to get Pepe back from white nationalists. Clearly, none of this worked. ”These trolls, or whatever you wanna call them, they’re kinda like the loudest voice on the Internet,” Furie told NPR, a few days before he killed off Pepe. Strangely enough, Furie said he made the comic that killed Pepe off just a few weeks after the election, even though it just published online this past weekend. Furie said he had thought about killing Pepe long before the   stole him. ”Honestly, I thought about killing off Pepe just simply when he became a meme, before it was even associated with hate speech,” Furie told NPR. ”When an artist loses control of their creation, it’s never that great.” But he said he’s not sad about the trajectory of Pepe’s life. Kermit vs. Pepe, The demise of Pepe the frog is particularly sad when compared to the fate of the Internet’s other famous amphibian: Kermit. That Muppet character has blossomed over the last year as a      voice of humor and reason, with a good heart. Perhaps part of why Kermit lived while Pepe died is that Kermit was defined in the culture long before the Internet. From the start, Jim Henson made him lovable. Not so with Pepe. This frog wasn’t etched in the public consciousness before the   got a hold of him. ”It basically says that things without very specific meaning can be changed pretty much in an instant,” Schimkowitz said. ”If a word isn’t clearly defined, it can then kind of morph. Memes kind of work the same way.” Schimkowitz compares Kermit the Frog to Superman, in that both characters have definitions that existed long before the Internet, personas that will likely never change, and might face backlash if anyone tried. ”In the last couple of Superman movies, there’s been a lot of outcry about how dark they made the character,” he said. ”He wasn’t necessarily saving anybody, which is pretty much the opposite of what everybody knows about Superman. ”Superman wasn’t doing Superman,” Schimkowitz said. ”Kermit has that, too. People are so familiar with these characters, that they’re not just going to suddenly forget their entire lifetime with them and accept something new.” And that’s where Pepe failed, if his takeover by the   could be considered his fault. The frog white nationalists wanted him to be was a stronger character than the one Furie did. And if that’s the case, the worst version probably always wins. Even now, the   seems to be having its way with another symbol: the ”OK” hand gesture, though the jury’s still out on whether it’s becoming a hate sign, or just being used to troll mainstream news outlets. Either way, chances are, given enough time, it too will morph into something bad, not something better. The moral arc of the Internet is long, but it usually bends towards awful."
"A few years ago, my son, who was 11, showed me a little captioned photo that he had found online he referred to it as a meme. I explained that he was misusing the word ”meme.” The concept of a meme was introduced by Richard Dawkins and then developed by Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. A meme, according to these scholars, is the cultural analog of a gene like genes, memes spread and, in their spreading, they take on a life of their own. Genes make up organisms and memes make up cultural agglomerations of organisms. Cultural evolution moves faster than biological evolution and, in some respects, defies it. For example, cultural evolution can be Lamarkian but culture, so necessary to human life, is subject, like biology itself, to evolutionary forces, to design without a designer, and to the emergence of novelty and diversification. Well, it turns out  —   of course  —   that my son was correct in his use of ”meme.” He was doubly correct, actually. He was aware, as I was not, the term had acquired a new meaning and was also used to refer precisely to just the sort of ironic    image or word   that he’d shown me (Dawkins knows this, too.) But on top of that, memes, in the newer,    sense, are also memes in the sense of Dawkins et al. Not exactly the most profound,   ones, to be sure, but, nevertheless, contagious, lively and evolving through iterations and reiterations not subject to anyone’s control. Actually, ”memes” are memes not so much in the ways that technologies are  —   think the wheel, fire, cars, toasters or email. Rather, memes are the stuff of jokes, satire, wit and, most generally, art. As Elizabeth Cantalamessa, a scholar working on memes at the University of Miami, put it to me in an email: ”Memes work with ideas, including complex   ideas. They can be subversive and can even react against dominant meme culture. Memes can be a way of orienting oneself in the world. Memes can frame problems or experiences in a way that allows us to share our experiences, including difficult or traumatic experiences.” In this connection, she mentions ”the rise of   meme communities” (see here and here). The very application of the scholarly and theoretical term ”meme” to refer to such silly, humble,   bits of ephemera is the sort of ironic appropriation characteristic of good jokes and inventive ”memestreams.” Memes really are a lot like jokes, as one    I know helped me appreciate. It’s not the meme that’s funny, as it were, all by itself it’s the meme viewed against the background of a whole series of thematic variations. It’s like this with   jokes, too, or lightbulb jokes. Part of what makes the joke funny is the appreciation that it is a variation on a theme. The joke is at once a move inside a genre and a comment on it, and understanding the joke is really a sensitivity to a whole swatch of shared life, background assumptions, images,   and so on. So, for example, consider memes as various as this Joe Biden series is or this one (Editor warning: Link contains explicit language). These memes exhibit just the same sort of ironic   that you see everywhere you look in the history of art, in pop music, in pop culture (like television sitcoms). Here’s an example where art, in the form of the trademark style of Barbara Kruger meets the popular Harambe   (Editor warning: Link contains explicit language). Memes, really, are always about appropriation. Memes work with theft over honest toil or rather, they toil to sample, copy, rip off and, in doing so, to be funny and smart. This is one reason why those who are part of ”the memery” the world over bridle at the adding of Pepe the Frog to the   League hate symbols list this fall. The idea that Pepe is a symbol of a new racist right wing is about as silly, to them, as the idea that Queen Elizabeth, whose disfigured image appeared so prominently in the sights and sounds of early punk rock, was a symbol of punk. The punks used her, commented on her, dissed her, and, in doing so, they managed in a weird way to brand her as a punk grapheme. But even the least bit of fluency or cultural literacy would prevent anyone from thinking the queen was a punk rock icon in the relevant sense. And so with Pepe. The fact that some on the extreme right use this image in their Internet social space doesn’t make it theirs. Which is not to say that tides can’t turn, fashions shift and trends lead to one particular reading of the Pepe gaining traction. It also doesn’t mean that some uses of the image may not be straightforwardly   or hurtful, or at the very least politically charged. It has been noted, for example by the Hillary Clinton campaign, that Donald Trump’s campaign made use of Pepe in the presidential candidate’s own Twitter feed. Did they do so because of the currency of Pepe in extreme   Internet circles, or were they, perhaps, playfully indifferent to  —   or even ignorant of  —   such uses? The point remains, so kids everywhere would argue, if pressed, that it is of the very nature of the distinctive style of irony characteristic of appropriation that the dirt doesn’t stick. So Pepe, according to the Memesters, is no swastika. The fact that a swastika is a backwards Indian religious symbol does nothing to prevent its being the case that it is also, and forever more, a symbol of  . Pepe isn’t a symbol, or an icon he’s a prop in a joke  —   and just as it is the joke that is offensive, and not the words themselves, so Pepe is not culpable. The ”new” memes aren’t really new, not more so than jokes or irony. But the manner of transmission and the way in which whole collectives of people who’ve never met each other can organize and reorganize themselves into ”in groups” and audiences is new (relative to the ”  meaning”)  —   and splendid. And so it isn’t surprising that there are now   philosophers like Simon Evnine at the University of Miami doing philosophy with, in and about memes  —   and also young scholars, like Cantalamessa, who sees in memestreams new possibilities for political investigation and what we might call   and   creativity. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Et tu, Pepe? Pepe the Frog  —   a multivalent green cartoon used in Internet culture as a vehicle for a wide range of emotions and ideas  —   has over recent months become particularly associated with racism,   and the  . And on Tuesday, the   League added Pepe to its ”Hate on Display” database of symbols used to spread hateful messages. The anthropomorphic frog, which is based on a 2004 comic by Matt Furie, is frequently shown as smug, sad, angry or rather gross. Like most memes, he’s frequently used in variations and remixes. Know Your Meme, a guide to image macros like Pepe, has collected some examples and a short historical summary. By late 2014, the meme had spread from a handful of Internet communities into mainstream culture, much to the displeasure of groups that were originally using the image. Later, observers began noticing an increase in white supremacist themes in Pepe images  —   or a rise in Pepe usage by white supremacist accounts. Either way, an association was building. This May, an ”anonymous white nationalist” told The Daily Beast that the shift was intentional: a dedicated campaign to ”reclaim Pepe from normies,” or members of the mainstream, by making Pepe so culturally unacceptable that only the fringe Internet would dare to use him. Donald Trump had earlier tweeted an image of    and then his son posted an image on Instagram that included Pepe. This month Hillary Clinton’s campaign released a widely mocked ”explainer” that featured both those posts and called Pepe the Frog ”a symbol associated with white supremacy.” Now, the ADL has stepped up to label the frog a hate symbol. ADL’s inclusion of Pepe in its database does not, as some online have suggested, mean that using Pepe memes is a hate crime. It’s a designation that carries no legal weight, and the ADL is quick to note that the mere use of Pepe the Frog doesn’t, by itself, indicate extremism or hatred. Furie, the artist who drew the original frog, told The Atlantic he thinks the association with   ideology is ”just a phase.” ”In terms of meme culture, it’s people reappropriating things for their own agenda. That’s just a product of the internet,” he said. With that, let’s pause here to note a few things. First, if the entire concept of the Pepe the Frog meme makes no sense to you, don’t try too hard to crack open the enigma. Life is short, much of Internet communication is more   than denotative, and mastering dank memes has an    ratio that really, truly is not worth it. Suffice to say he’s a character used to express things online, through endless variations on a simple image. Second, Pepe the frog is not usually racist. There’s nothing inherently hateful about the original image. ”He’s just a chill frog,” as Furie told The Atlantic. And as ADL acknowledges in its hate symbol database, ”the majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be,  .” But Pepe is certainly a meme that’s popular among racists. Its inclusion in the ADL database isn’t meant to make Pepe an amphibia non grata. Identifying whether Pepe is being used in a hateful way requires looking at the context, the ADL says. In that, it’s no different from the many other symbols in the database that appear in innocent forms as well as offensive ones. Take, for instance, the numbers that have been associated with white supremacist movements  —   such as 88 or 14. They can be covert signals of white supremacy or, you know, just numbers, depending on their context. Similarly, the Celtic cross is ”one of the most important and commonly used” white supremacist symbols, according to the ADL, but the ”overwhelming” use is not extremist. Third, let’s just acknowledge that it’s been a long, strange trip for Pepe from the Internet’s imageboards to NPR’s home page. We have no plans to write explainers on Harambe or Dat Boi anytime soon. But the intersection of politics and the Internet is more fascinating in this election than ever before. Now that the presidential candidates from both major parties have invoked or criticized Pepe and a major civil rights organization has denounced him, there’s no denying that he’s news. And if there is indeed a vast   conspiracy to make Pepe the exclusive property of the Internet fringe, this piece might either be the ultimate case of normies killing the joke  —   or a reinforcement of Pepe’s odd status as subversive cultural icon that will actually keep him alive. Feels bad, man."
"Smell, the thinking goes, is not our strongest sense. Our lowly noses are eclipsed by our ability to see the world around us, hear the sound of music and feel the touch of a caress. Even animals, we’re taught, have a far more acute sense of smell than we do. But one scientist argues the idea of an inferior sense of smell stems from a   myth. When neuroscientist John McGann at Rutgers started comparing the sense of smell in rodents to what was known about the human sense of smell, he had an epiphany. ”Actually we have a really excellent sense of smell,” he says. ”There are quite a lot of experiments showing that the human sense of smell is pretty similar to what you can find with a rat or a mouse or a dog.” He published a paper about his findings Thursday in the journal Science. McGann wondered why our noses got such a bad rap. He traced the idea back to the   and the work of a scientist named Paul Broca. ”He was interested in free will and he had this idea that smell was this very animalistic sense and that it compelled animals to have sex and feed,” McGann says. ”And humans, having free will, could choose how we responded to smells and presumably had a less strong or less special sense of smell than other animals.” Sigmund Freud picked up this idea, too, arguing that smell invoked instinctual sexual behavior in animals. In humans, however, Freud believed ”the putative loss of smell caused sexual repression and enabled mental disorders, particularly if one ’took pleasure in smell,’ ” McGann writes in his paper. As scientists in the 20th century started to explore the sense of smell, they interpreted their findings in a way that reinforced the idea that smell has been diminished in humans, as we stood upright and our noses came up off the ground. One example is that humans have about 400 distinct smell receptors in our noses, compared with more like 1, 000 receptors in rats. ”But, in fact, 400 is an awful lot,” argues McGann, ”and, quite honestly, there are very few odors that are volatile enough to get into the air that humans can’t smell.” In theory, we can distinguish tens of millions of unique smells, and maybe a lot more. There have been a few    comparisons between humans and other mammals in the lab, but there’s no consistent winner. ”Humans are best at some, and dogs are best at some and mice are best at some,” McGann says. ”It just depends on what the chemical is.” Case closed? Not by a long shot. ”If the argument is, ’We are better smellers than we think,’ I assent,” says Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor at Barnard College. ”We are better smellers than we think.” But, Horowitz says, if the argument is that we are just as good as dogs at using the sense of smell, she doesn’t buy it. She even wrote a book on the subject, titled Inside Of A Dog. She says there is no serious comparison between the performance of a   dog and a person. ”It’s one thing to talk about the capacity” to smell, she says. Clearly we have the capacity to distinguish between a large number of smells. But, she says, ”Do we behaviorally do anything that’s anywhere similar to these olfactory animals? No, we generally don’t.” Horowitz says the one place where humans do excel is when we use our sense of smell to savor food. Subtle and pleasing aromas come into our nose from the back of our mouth. ”Without smell you can’t taste, and that’s a real loss,” she says. ”I will acknowledge that’s something we’re great at, maybe even better than dogs.” Horowitz says give credit where credit is due there’s no rule that says humans always have to come out ahead. You can contact Richard Harris at rharris@npr. org."
"The Brooklyn Youth Chorus is not your typical kids’ choir, singing   arrangements and show tunes. It’s made up of over 600 kids, from second grade to the end of high school, from struggling neighborhoods to New York’s elite. Part of its mission is to give the kids a sense of purpose at a difficult time in life. The group has just released its first album, Black Mountain Songs, and is giving two   concerts Friday and Saturday. Dianne Berkun Menaker founded the Brooklyn Youth Chorus 25 years ago, and she wants the kids to connect to the music they sing. So, she’s commissioned music from such rock musicians as Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry and The National’s Bryce Dessner. For its debut album, the chorus recorded songs inspired by a legendary incubator of   arts, Black Mountain College in North Carolina. But for the concerts this weekend, Burkun Menaker wanted to give voice to her teenagers and their concerns. ”This is a time in life for girls where they’re very vulnerable, and it’s very easy to kind of go off track,” she says. ”One of the things that I have seen over the years with the choristers that I teach is often, students who have remarkable talent have very poor  . So I work with the choristers individually to really help them own what it means to take up space in a room and put their voice out there.” She asked her young singers what kinds of things they wanted to tackle musically in Silent Voices, the program they’re presenting this weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music  —   the topics that mattered to them as a racially, economically and culturally diverse group that comes from all over the city. Izzi Stevenson, 17. has been with the chorus since grade school. She says that this program presented an opportunity. ”We’re under 18, so even in the political landscape, our representatives don’t represent us because we’re not voting for them,” Stevenson says. ”Our interests are not heard and our concerns are not heard.” Berkun Menaker says the young singers were very clear about the concerns they wanted composers to address. ”The things that came up that everybody felt mattered were addressing issues around race, gender, sexuality, ageism,” she says. One of the artists the group turned to was composer Shara Nova, who also performs as My Brightest Diamond. She wrote a piece for the chorus called Blind To The Illness. Nova says her piece was very much a reflection of the times. ”I wrote Blind To The Illness in the summer of 2016, [when] Philando Castile and Alton Sterling had been killed,” Nova says. ”I was really looking at myself and wanting to address my own privileges. And so the text for this song begins with a list of privileges, the first one being power to ignore the subject of racism. And in this original version of the text, the narrative was of an adult  —   me  —   admitting that I have racist beliefs, having grown up in this social institution.” At first, Nova’s text read ”I see no color.” But Stevenson says she and the other choristers pushed back and asked Nova to reconsider those lyrics. ”What does that mean, that you see no color  —   like, of course you see color,” Stevenson says. ”How do we make sure that she understands the different viewpoints of our chorus?” The composer took their concerns to heart and wound up rewriting the lyrics. The chorus now sings the words ”I see in color.” Interacting with working composers has also inspired some of these young singers to start writing their own music. One of them is    Sarah Maria Sotomayor. ”I can go on and on about growing up as as a mixed Latina woman,” Sotomayor says. ”The composers I heard of were Mozart and Bach and Beethoven  —   those are the ones who made it and who are always talked about in music classes, and that’s all I was exposed to.” ”It wasn’t until I spoke with some of the composers we worked with at BYC,” she continues, ”and they were like, ’You should just try your hand at it,’ like, ’We have a feeling you can do this.’ And I said, ’Composing?’ and I was like, ’Wow. That’s all it takes. You just sit down and start writing music  —   anyone could do it!’ But it was a lot for someone like me  —   who didn’t have anyone in their life who did music  —   to be told by someone who is successful in music, ’You can do this, too.’ ” And for these singers in the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, finding value in their own voices is something priceless."
"Two things, first: One, Delphine de Vigan’s Based on a True Story is a powerful novel of suspense. Two, Based on a True Story may or may not be based on truth. You’ll read many reviews this season about de Vigan’s book that mention those things and discuss one or both at length. Critics (and readers) are always eager for the story behind the story, and in this case the author presents the tease immediately, titularly. She continues in this vein by naming her narrator Delphine, and making her a middle aged Parisian writer who has recently found great success with a   memoir about her family  —   as the   de Vigan did with the 2012 Nothing Holds Back the Night, in which she attempted to reconstruct her mother’s mental illness. Unfortunately for both de Vigan and her Delphine, the memoir also received a great deal of opposition from family members, and as Based on a True Story begins, Delphine is haunted by whether or not she should have written her last novel. She’s exhausted and unable to write so much as a sentence. When an acquaintance, professional ghostwriter L. (we never learn more of her name) pushes their friendship to the point where she’s moved into Delphine’s apartment and is not only signing her name on checks but also acting as her body double at literary events, it seems only one end is in sight. Section epigraphs from Stephen King’s Misery, that paragon of novels about tortured writers, only add to the slow, viscous suspense. L. wants Delphine to get back to writing, and right quickly L. believes that readers expect novelists to ”lay their guts on the table.” When readers aren’t worried about whether or not L. will wind up laying Delphine’s guts on the table, they may consider de Vigan’s metafictional purpose in crafting this book. Certainly, she’s playing with the idea of who tells a story, and how  —   especially in the scenes where Delphine receives unsigned nastygrams from a relative about why she should not have written her previous book. However, the story she tells that fascinates me is the one of female friendship gone wrong, of a woman taken emotional hostage by another. Not since Samantha Harvey’s masterful Dear Thief has there been such a painful evisceration of connection. As L. takes control, Delphine relinquishes it, true, but that doesn’t mean she wants to disappear. She tells us early on that as a child she hated her birthday celebration because she disliked all the eyes ”focusing on me, the collective emotion.” L. takes advantage of Delphine’s wish to evade the public eye, and for a long while it works. ”I couldn’t wait to go into purdah,” Delphine says, primed for the elegant, organized, strength of L. a woman who seems to exist in a vacuum. Where does she live? How does she choose her beautiful clothes? What does she really want from Delphine? Yes, all of these and more point us to the elements of suspense in Based on a True Story. But they also point us to how and why Delphine becomes entangled in L. ’s web. When women meet and create friendships, there is a certain suspense in figuring out their respective roles. Who teaches, who learns? Will a new friend help you become smarter, more stylish, more connected? Will that friend be someone you see or speak to on a daily basis, or perhaps just a few times a year? ”I must say that with her I was never bored,” Delphine tells us towards the book’s midpoint, and that’s because between the friends nothing is forbidden, especially those topics that society eschews  —   how to be a woman at midlife, how age affects status, what women can write about that men can’t. ”The power of attraction L. exerted on me was probably all of this: I admired her for her   about the world and about herself, but also for her ability to bluff, to play the game.” Delphine hates the game and doesn’t want to play it, but that willful blindness leads to real trouble as L. takes over more and more of her life. The red alert, Delphine knows now, was when she came to believe L. was the only person who could understand her. She knows why, too. Many writers, at midlife, have children grown and flown, partners busy with their own careers, and friends scattered to the four winds. It’s easy to believe that a person who ”fits” you is the answer to your isolation. In the novel’s (memoir’s?) second half, we’ll see that belief unravel rapidly. However, readers should never forget Delphine invited L. into her life  —   this is a story of vampirism, but the emotional kind. Bethanne Patrick is a freelance writer and critic who tweets @TheBookMaven."
"Rhiannon Giddens’ new solo album, Freedom Highway, is an exploration of   experiences, accompanied by an instrument with its own uniquely   story: the banjo. Giddens notes that the modern banjo draws from the African instrument known as the akonting, which is made from a gourd. ”In the first 100 years of its existence, the [American] banjo was known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument,” she says. Giddens says the banjo seemed like the perfect fit for her album, which includes songs based on slave narratives, as well as a song she wrote in response to police shootings of young black men. ”Getting into the banjo and discovering that it was an   instrument, it totally turned on its head my idea of American music  —   and then, through that, American history,” Giddens says. Hear the full Fresh Air interview at the audio link, and read on for highlights. On the deep sound of the ”minstrel” banjo that she plays, When I first heard the minstrel banjo  —   I played a gourd first  —   I almost lost my mind. I was like, Oh, my god. And then I went to Africa, to the Gambia, and studied the akonting, which is an ancestor of the banjo, and just that connection to me was just immense . .. the connection of that to the minstrel banjo, minstrelsy being the first American cultural export to the world. So this sound, that deepness, that quality is what people associated with American music. This is the sound that I wanted to be associated with these songs, because this is what you would’ve heard. Whenever I play it, people are like, ”What is that?” I’m like, ”This is America, dude.” This instrument right here, born in Africa, but then made in America and then altered by white America, that’s the story of so much of our music. And it starts here  —   it’s the first thing that people heard. On her song ”Better Get It Right The First Time,” which addresses the issue of police violence against black men, I visited Sing Sing penitentiary in upstate New York as part of this Carnegie program where artists go in to work with prisoners, and it hit me like a blow. I’ve read all the books, I know the population of prisons, but to walk in there and to see so many black faces  —   the visceralness of that, the result of centuries of institutionalized discrimination, all of that. So all of that was kind of swirling in the air, and I had gone down to Louisiana to start working on this record with my   Dirk Powell, at his studio . .. and we were sitting there talking about this and how intense everything is and we just started writing this song, which turned out to be ”Better Get It Right.” . .. We both agreed that it really needed a voice that was of now, and in a way that ours is and it isn’t. So we knew we wanted my nephew Justin [Harrington] to be a part of it, because he’s a rapper, and he’s very, very opinionated in a beautiful way and just very angry about what’s going on  —   and [we] wanted him to be a part of this statement, because it’s his life. On performing ”Better Get It Right The First Time” in Dallas, Texas, days after    Jordan Edwards was shot and killed by police, We were recently in Dallas with this show and it was just the most unbelievable thing. The exact thing that he raps about happened in Dallas like three or four days before we got there. This young man,   student, went to this party with some of his friends and somebody called in underage drinking, so the cops were coming. So he and his friends leave in this car, he’s in the passenger side, and this police officer takes a rifle and shoots after the car and kills this young man, shoots him in the head, and he dies. It’s like, doing that in that city in Dallas, three or four days after that happened and hearing the eeriness of my nephew rapping these words, it just  —   I don’t even know. I couldn’t even hardly get through the song, I just started crying. On her white father and black mother getting together in the 1970s in the South  My parents came together in Greensboro [N. C.] they went to college and found each other in Greensboro, the big city. [Laughs.] But it it was the big city for all those surrounding towns and they met there and created these two [kids] me and my sister, and got married and these two families had to deal with that. My dad’s mom  —   my sister was her first grandchild, and she had a choice. She was like, ”I can treat this child differently, or I can just treat this child like I love them because they’re my grandchild,” and that’s what she did. She set this tone that was like, ”These are my grandchildren.” You know what I mean? And it was just this love. She was just made of love. And I really feel like one person can make a huge difference, if they just believe what their heart tells them. My mom’s parents loving my dad and bringing him in. There was a lot of that going on. This is the middle of North Carolina in the ’70s. They couldn’t even get married in Greensboro. That’s what I was told. They had to go to Winston to get married. This is three years after the Loving decision [which legalized interracial marriage] you know. On how her parents’ marriage interfered with her father’s singing ambitions, He was a voice major. He still has a beautiful voice. But, you know, [he] had an   baritone and ended up going into music education, and you know, when he married my mother I think that caused some problems for him with his teacher. It wasn’t easy back then, it just wasn’t. It caused him troubles with his teacher, with jobs, it was tough. It was tough for both of them. Just because it was legal didn’t mean it was accepted, culturally or anywhere else. They definitely had hard times in the early years because of that. It just kind of blows me away, thinking about that. Radio producers Amy Salit and Therese Madden and web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Lars Gotrich contributed to this story."
"The Church of Jesus Christ of   Saints has announced that as of next year, it will no longer participate in the Boy Scouts’ programs for older teenagers. The church, which has at times expressed dissatisfaction with the Scouts’ growing acceptance of LGBT leaders as well as transgender boys, will be withdrawing from formal involvement in programs geared toward youths ages 14 and older. ”We express sincere appreciation and gratitude to all adult leaders who have supported young men in these programs and are grateful for our   and continuing partnership with the Boy Scouts of America and Scouts Canada,” the First Presidency, the church’s highest governing body, told church leaders in an open letter Thursday. Yet, as the church explains in an accompanying FAQ, ”young men ages 14 to 18 are not being served well by the Varsity or Venturing programs, which have historically been difficult to implement within the Church.” Those programs specifically promise ”adventure” and activities designed to appeal to older teens. Members of the Mormon Church, which has had a formal relationship with the Boy Scouts of America for more than a century, have evinced some displeasure with the organization’s admittance of openly gay leaders and transgender boys in recent years, In its announcement materials, the church addressed these changes but specifically did not attribute its decision to them: ”The BSA has always allowed the Church to operate its programs in ways that are consistent with our standards and beliefs, and they have been very supportive. This change is to address the needs of young men ages 14 to 18. The Church is always evaluating what is best for our youth and families, and will continue to do so.” In a statement emailed to NPR, the Boy Scouts expressed appreciation for its   relationship with the church, which was ”the first partner to sponsor Scouting in the U. S.” and  —   as NPR’s Howard Berkes notes  —   remains the country’s single largest sponsor of Boy Scout troops. ”Although thousands of youth and leaders who participate in Venturing crews nationwide embrace and support the program, we recognize that not all programs are a perfect fit for all partners,” the Boy Scouts’ statement reads. ”We anticipate that many youth from the LDS Church will continue to participate in Scouting beyond the age of 14 as young men work to earn the Eagle Scout rank,” it continues. ”The BSA values our ongoing partnership with the LDS Church in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts programming and look forward to our continued efforts to extend the benefits of Scouting to as many youth and families as possible.” More than 300, 000 Mormon boys participate in the Scouts, and many older teenagers may continue to do so. The church’s decision to end its formal involvement is not by any stretch a ban, and the church will continue to charter Scouting programs for younger boys. Still, the move marks a significant shift for a church that has long been interwoven with the youth institution  —   so interwoven that The Associated Press reports the decision could mean that between 130, 000 and 180, 000 teenagers will leave the organization. ”Basically,” Brigham Young University associate professor Quin Monson, a Mormon himself, told NPR’s Rachel Martin in 2015, ”if you are a young Mormon male, you join the Boy Scouts.”"
"The New Hampshire state Legislature is deciding whether to discipline one of its members for his role in setting up a misogynistic online forum.   Republican Rep. Robert Fisher, 31, was identified last month by The Daily Beast as the creator of the Reddit community The Red Pill, which champions   ”pickup artists” and blames feminism for societal woes. (The forum takes its name from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix in which Keanu Reeves’ character, Neo, is offered a choice between a red pill, which represents reality, and a blue pill, which represents illusion.) Testifying before a state House committee Tuesday, Fisher argued that his online statements revealed by the Daily Beast investigation  —   including comments deriding women’s intelligence, detailing ways for men to dodge rape accusations and questioning whether rape itself was wholly bad  —   have been misreported and misconstrued. He has never ”hated women,” Fisher assured the Legislative Administration Committee and criticized the journalism that brought his comments to light. ”A lot of convenient reporting, to play into partisan politics, and I’m disappointed that’s where it’s gone,” he said. ”But I’m more than happy to get back to work and concentrate on what matters, not wasting everyone’s time on this.” Citing a work obligation, Fisher left about halfway through the   public hearing. But he was in the room to witness plenty of testimony from his fellow lawmakers and private citizens, all of it negative and some of it sweeping. Democratic state Rep. Debra Altschiller, who works with an organization that supports survivors of domestic and sexual violence, cast Fisher as a particularly glaring example of the misogyny she says is too common in the state Capitol. ”I am here today to not only assert that Rep. Fisher not only contributes to that rape culture that we experience here in the House but he is a purveyor of rape culture in our state and in our nation,” Altschiller said. ”It is our responsibility to work with vigilance in this body to eradicate this vile scourge from our ranks and from our state.” Most of the lawmakers and citizens who testified against Fisher were women. But Concord, N. H. resident Brian Harlow told the committee what struck him about Fisher was a certain coldness. ”I didn’t see or hear any contrition,” he said. ”I saw no empathy. I saw no compassion.” The Legislative Administration Committee must now choose among four disciplinary options: no action, reprimand, censure and expulsion  —   and make a recommendation to the full House. Fisher has rejected calls for his resignation, including from Gov. Chris Sununu. As he left Tuesday’s hearing, Fisher told reporters he was confident, saying, ”I believe that this hearing has been fair, and I believe the truth will be decided, found.” The committee has until next week to make a recommendation. The state House will vote on the committee’s decision June 1."
"When discussions about science and religion turn into debates about science versus religion, Buddhism mostly gets a pass. Thanks to the work of the Dalai Lama and others, Buddhism can seem far friendlier to modern, scientifically minded sensibilities than the Abrahamic religions. This alignment with science is strengthened by the widespread adoption of mindfulness techniques  —   often derived from Buddhist and other contemplative practices  —   in domains like medicine and psychology. So with its supposed empirical emphasis on internal investigation, one might wonder if Buddhism is really a religion at all or, at least, in the same sense as Western monotheistic traditions. Maybe it’s better described as a kind of ”science of happiness?” Robert Sharf is a scholar of Buddhist studies at UC Berkeley and he has, apparently, heard this kind of question before. I was recently introduced to Sharf’s insightful writings via discussions about Buddhism and cognitive science with philosopher Evan Thompson, who has been doing his own work in these domains. For Sharf, the easy identification of Buddhism as a kind of   science of the mind represents a particular reading of its long and diverse traditions. Most importantly, what we get in the West is, for Sharf, a kind of ”Buddhist Modernism.” In particular, the affinity Buddhism is supposed to have with science is, for Sharf, a very specific consequence of Buddhism’s historical encounter with the West  —   and to miss that history would be to miss the richer veins of meaning in Buddhism as a religion. In a 2007 interview with Tricycle magazine, Sharf pointed to the response of Buddhists in countries like Japan and Sri Lanka during their encounters with Western culture in late 1800s. These nations were already being rocked by modernization   colonization. At the same time, the West was undergoing its own religious transformations. According to Sharf, Protestants during this period were confronting a ”crisis of faith” due to the rise of science. This led to new ways of thinking that tried to mesh Christianity more smoothly with science and its rational worldview. In this way, a confluence of Asian and Western interests began that would help shape a new vision of Buddhism. As Sharf puts it: ”. ..the critiques of religion that originated in the West resonated with [Buddhist’s] own needs as they struggled with cultural upheavals in their homelands. [While] for Westerners, Buddhism seemed to provide an attractive spiritual alternative to their own seemingly moribund religious traditions. The irony, of course, is that the Buddhism to which these Westerners were drawn was one already transformed by its contact with the West.” It is this transformed tradition with its affinity with science that modern Americans are encountering. Sharf is not the only one to make this point. In his book The Scientific Buddha Donald S. Lopez, Jr. a professor in the department of Asian languages at the University of Michigan, also sees a lot of selection in what comprises Western Buddhism. In his words: ”For the Buddha to be identified as an ancient sage fully attuned to the findings of modern science, it was necessary that he first be transformed into a figure who differed in many ways from the Buddha who has been revered by Buddhists across Asia over the course of many centuries.” Of course, by its very nature, religion, all religions, are changed by their encounters with new cultures. This is particularly true of Buddhism and its steady march eastward from its birth in India 2, 500 years ago. Religions always have a way of outgrowing their own scriptural and ritual basis, while simultaneously holding on to them. As author Karen Armstrong has shown, practitioners in any age are always selecting out those parts of their religions that are meaningful to them while ignoring the parts that seem dated. She called the process ”creative misreading.” Sharf has no problem with the creative misreading that allows Buddhist Modernism to share space with scientific worldviews. ”My concern,” he told Tricycle, ”is not with the selectivity of those who read Buddhism as a rationalist and scientific religion  —   it is perfectly understandable given the world in which we live. It is really not a question of misreading. It is a question of what gets lost in the process.” Part of the problem for Sharf and others is that by focusing only on the domains of inner experience (i. e. mindfulness via contemplative practice) Buddhist Modernism loses aspects of its function that were central to its history. ”Look at how suspicious many Western Buddhists are of religious ritual,” he says in the Tricycle interview, ”. .. when we downplay ritual, we risk weakening our bonds to community and tradition. That’s a pretty major loss.” But just as important for both Sharf and Lopez are the tensions that they think should exist between the Buddhist and Western worldviews. As Lopez puts it: ”If an ancient religion like Buddhism has anything to offer science, it is not in the facile confirmation of [science’s] findings . .. the Buddha, the old Buddha, not the Scientific Buddha, presented a radical challenge to the way we see the world, both the world that was seen two millennia ago, and the world that is seen today.” Sharf is specific in terms of the challenge he thinks Buddhism presents the sciences’ presumed philosophical basis. ”In order to make Buddhism compatible with science,” Sharf says, ”Buddhist Modernism . .. accepts a Cartesian dualistic understanding of the world.” This Cartesian separation would, he claims, be pretty weird to most Buddhist teachers throughout its history. As he puts it: ”Traditional Buddhist epistemology, for example, simply does not accept the Cartesian notion of an insurmountable gap between mind and matter. Most Buddhist philosophies hold that mind and object arise interdependently, so there is no easy way to separate one’s understanding of the world from the world itself.” Keeping these differences at the forefront is important for Sharf because, he claims, they offer possibilities of generating something more truly original. ”In discarding everything that doesn’t fit with our modern view,” he says, ”we compromise the tradition’s capacity to critique this modern view.” I’m someone interested in how philosophical traditions from India and Asia might add new dimensions to some key debates in science. In that sense, I have always been sympathetic to Buddhist Modernism and am interested in the Scientific Buddha. But I also believe scholars like Sharf, Lopez and Thompson all have a lot to teach us with their close reading of Buddhism’s philosophy and history. As Sharf himself points out, we don’t have to ”argue for a naive acceptance of Buddhist epistemology and cosmology” to be informed about the best ways to realistically engage with its philosophical insights. ”But,” as Sharf says, ”we won’t see what Buddhism has to offer if, at the outset, we twist it out of shape to make it conform to contemporary norms.” Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"As a neonatal intensive care nurse, Lauren Bloomstein had been taking care of other people’s babies for years. Finally, at 33, she was expecting one of her own. The prospect of becoming a mother made her giddy, her husband, Larry, recalled recently —   ”the happiest and most alive I’d ever seen her.” When Lauren was 13, her own mother had died of a massive heart attack. Lauren had lived with her older brother for a while, then with a neighbor in Hazlet, N. J. who was like a surrogate mom, but in important ways she’d grown up mostly alone. The chance to create her own family, to be the mother she didn’t have, touched a place deep inside her. ”All she wanted to do was be loved,” said Frankie Hedges, who took Lauren in as a teenager and thought of her as her daughter. ”I think everybody loved her, but nobody loved her the way she wanted to be loved.” Other than some nausea in her first trimester, the pregnancy went smoothly. Lauren was ”tired in the beginning, achy in the end,” said Jackie Ennis, her best friend since high school, who talked to her at least once a day. ”She gained what she’s supposed to. She looked great, she felt good, she worked as much as she could”  —   at least three,   shifts a week until late into her ninth month. Larry, a doctor, helped monitor her blood pressure at home, and all was normal. On her days off she got organized, picking out strollers and car seats, stocking up on diapers and onesies. After one last   vacation to the Caribbean, she and Larry went hunting for their forever home, settling on a brick colonial with black shutters and a big yard in Moorestown, N. J. not far from his new job as an orthopedic trauma surgeon in Camden. Lauren wanted the baby’s gender to be a surprise, so when she set up the nursery she left the walls unpainted  —   she figured she’d have plenty of time to choose colors later. Despite all she knew about what could go wrong, she seemed untroubled by the normal   anxieties. Her only real worry was going into labor prematurely. ”You have to stay in there at least until 32 weeks,” she would tell her belly. ”I see how the babies do before 32. Just don’t come out too soon.” When she reached 39 weeks and six days  —   Friday, Sept. 30, 2011  —   Larry and Lauren drove to Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, the hospital where the two of them had met in 2004 and where she’d spent virtually her entire career. If anyone would watch out for her and her baby, Lauren figured, it would be the doctors and nurses she worked with on a daily basis. She was especially fond of her   who had trained as a resident at Monmouth at the same time as Larry. Lauren wasn’t having contractions, but she and the   agreed to schedule an induction of labor  —   he was on call that weekend and would be sure to handle the delivery himself. Inductions often go slowly, and Lauren’s labor stretched well into the next day. Ennis talked to her on the phone several times: ”She said she was feeling OK, she was just really uncomfortable.” At one point, Lauren was overcome by a sudden, sharp pain in her back near her kidneys or liver, but the nurses bumped up her epidural and the stabbing stopped. Inductions have been associated with higher   rates, but Lauren progressed well enough to deliver vaginally. On Saturday, Oct. 1, at 6:49 p. m. 23 hours after she checked into the hospital, Hailey Anne Bloomstein was born, weighing 5 pounds, 12 ounces. Larry and Lauren’s family had been camped out in the waiting room now they swarmed into the delivery area to ooh and aah, marveling at how Lauren seemed to glow. Larry floated around on his own cloud of euphoria, phone camera in hand. In one   video, Lauren holds their daughter on her chest, stroking her cheek with a practiced touch. Hailey is bundled in   pastels and flannel, unusually alert for a newborn she studies her mother’s face as if trying to make sense of a mystery that will never be solved. The delivery room staff bustles in the background in the   way of people who believe everything has gone exactly as it’s supposed to. Then Lauren looks directly at the camera, her eyes brimming. Twenty hours later, she was dead. ”We don’t pay enough attention”  The ability to protect the health of mothers and babies in childbirth is a basic measure of a society’s development. Yet every year in the U. S. 700 to 900 women die from pregnancy or   causes, and some 65, 000 nearly die  —   by many measures, the worst record in the developed world. American women are more than three times as likely as Canadian women to die in the maternal period (defined by the Centers for Disease Control as the start of pregnancy to one year after delivery or termination) six times as likely to die as Scandinavians. In every other wealthy country, and many less affluent ones, maternal mortality rates have been falling in Great Britain, the journal Lancet recently noted, the rate has declined so dramatically that ”a man is more likely to die while his partner is pregnant than she is.” But in the U. S. maternal deaths increased from 2000 to 2014. In a recent analysis by the CDC Foundation, nearly 60 percent of such deaths are preventable. While maternal mortality is significantly more common among     women and in rural areas, pregnancy and childbirth complications kill women of every race and ethnicity, education and income level, in every part of the U. S. ProPublica and NPR spent the last several months scouring social media and other sources, ultimately identifying more than 450 expectant and new mothers who have died since 2011. The list includes teachers, insurance brokers, homeless women, journalists, a spokeswoman for Yellowstone National Park, a   of the YouTube channel WhatsUpMoms, and more than a dozen doctors and nurses like Lauren Bloomstein. They died from cardiomyopathy and other heart problems, massive hemorrhage, blood clots, infections and   hypertension (preeclampsia) as well as rarer causes. Many died days or weeks after leaving the hospital. Maternal mortality is commonplace enough that three new mothers who died, including Lauren, were cared for by the same  . The reasons for higher maternal mortality in the U. S. are manifold. New mothers are older than they used to be, with more complex medical histories. Half of pregnancies in the U. S. are unplanned, so many women don’t address chronic health issues beforehand. Greater prevalence of   leads to more   complications. The fragmented health system makes it harder for new mothers, especially those without good insurance, to get the care they need. Confusion about how to recognize worrisome symptoms and treat obstetric emergencies makes caregivers more prone to error. Yet the worsening U. S. maternal mortality numbers contrast sharply with the impressive progress in saving babies’ lives. Infant mortality has fallen to its lowest point in history, the CDC reports, reflecting 50 years of efforts by the public health community to prevent birth defects, reduce preterm birth, and improve outcomes for very premature infants. The number of babies who die annually in the U. S.  —   about 23, 000 in 2014  —   still greatly exceeds the number of expectant and new mothers who die, but the ratio is narrowing. The divergent trends for mothers and babies highlight a theme that has emerged repeatedly in ProPublica’s and NPR’s reporting. In recent decades, under the assumption that it had conquered maternal mortality, the American medical system has focused more on fetal and infant safety and survival than on the mother’s health and  . ”We worry a lot about vulnerable little babies,” said Barbara Levy, vice president for health   at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and a member of the Council on Patient Safety in Women’s Health Care. Meanwhile, ”we don’t pay enough attention to those things that can be catastrophic for women.” At the federally funded   Medicine Units Network, the preeminent obstetric research collaborative in the U. S. only four of the 34 initiatives listed in its online database primarily target mothers, versus 24 aimed at improving outcomes for infants (the remainder address both). Under the Title V   program supporting maternal and child health, states devoted about 6 percent of block grants in 2016 to programs for mothers, compared to 78 percent for infants and   children. The notion that babies deserve more care than mothers is similarly enshrined in the Medicaid program, which pays for about 45 percent of births. In many states, the program covers moms for 60 days postpartum, their infants for a full year. The bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, adopted by the U. S. House of Representatives earlier this month, could gut Medicaid for mothers and babies alike. At the provider level, advances in technology have widened the gap between maternal and fetal and infant care. ”People became really enchanted with the ability to do ultrasound, and then   ultrasound, to do invasive procedures, to stick needles in the amniotic cavity,” said William Callaghan chief of the CDC’s Maternal and Infant Health Branch. The growing specialty of   medicine drifted so far toward care of the fetus that as recently as 2012, young doctors who wanted to work in the field didn’t have to spend time learning to care for birthing mothers. ”The training was quite variable across the U. S.,” said Mary D’Alton, chair of   at Columbia University Medical Center and author of papers on disparities in care for mothers and infants. ”There were some fellows that could finish their   medicine training without ever being in a labor and delivery unit.” In the last decade or so, at least 20 hospitals have established multidisciplinary fetal care centers for babies at high risk for a variety of problems. So far, only one hospital in the U. S.  —       —   has a similar program for     . In regular maternity wards, too, babies are monitored more closely than mothers during and after birth, maternal health advocates told ProPublica and NPR. Newborns in the slightest danger are whisked off to neonatal intensive care units like the one Lauren Bloomstein worked at, staffed by highly trained specialists ready for the worst, while their mothers are tended by nurses and doctors who expect things to be fine and are often unprepared when they aren’t. When women are discharged, they routinely receive information about how to   and what to do if their newborn is sick but not necessarily how to tell if they need medical attention themselves. ”It was only when I had my own child that I realized, ’Oh my goodness. That was completely insufficient information,’” said Elizabeth Howell, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. ”The way that we’ve been trained, we do not give women enough information for them to manage their health postpartum. The focus had always been on babies and not on mothers.” In 2009, the Joint Commission, which accredits 21, 000 health care facilities in the U. S. adopted a series of perinatal ”core measures”  —   national standards that have been shown to reduce complications and improve patient outcomes. Four of the measures are aimed at making sure the baby is healthy. One  —   bringing down the   rate  —   addresses maternal health. Meanwhile,   practices that have become widely accepted in other affluent countries  —   and in a few states, notably California  —   have yet to take hold in many American hospitals. Take the example of preeclampsia, a type of high blood pressure that occurs only in pregnancy or the postpartum period, and can lead to seizures and strokes. Around the world, it kills an estimated five women an hour. But in developed countries, it is highly treatable. The key is to act quickly. By standardizing its approach, Britain has reduced preeclampsia deaths to one in a million  —   a total of two deaths from 2012 to 2014. In the U. S. on the other hand, preeclampsia still accounts for about 8 percent of maternal deaths —   50 to 70 women a year. Including Lauren Bloomstein. ”I cannot remember too many health care employees that I respect as much as Lauren” When Lauren McCarthy Bloomstein was a teenager in the 1990s, a neighbor who worked for a New York publishing firm approached her about modeling for a series of books based on Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women. Since her mother’s death, Lauren had become solitary and shy she loved to read, but she decided she wasn’t interested. ”Are you kidding? Go do it!” Frankie Hedges insisted. ”That would be fabulous!” Lauren relented, and the publisher cast her as the eldest March sister, Meg. She appeared on the covers of four books, looking very much the proper   young lady with her long brown hair parted neatly down the middle and a string of pearls around her neck. The determined expression on her face, though, was pure Lauren. ”She didn’t want sympathy, she didn’t want pity,” Jackie Ennis said. ”She wasn’t one to talk much about her feelings [about] her mom. She looked at it as this is what she was dealt and she’s gonna do everything in her power to become a productive person.” In high school, Lauren decided her path lay in nursing, and she chose a   program at Brookdale Community College. She worked at a doctor’s office to earn money for tuition and lived in the garage apartment that Hedges and her husband had converted especially for her, often helping out with their young twin sons. Lauren ”wasn’t a real mushy person,” Hedges said. ”She wasn’t the type to say things like ’I love you. ’” But she clearly relished being part of a family again. ”You can’t believe how happy she is,” Ennis once told Hedges. ”We’ll be out and she’ll say, ’Oh, I have to go home for dinner! ’” After graduating in 2002, Lauren landed at Monmouth Medical Center, a sprawling   complex a few minutes from the ocean that is part of the RWJBarnabas Health system and a teaching affiliate of Philadelphia’s Drexel University College of Medicine. Her first job was in the medical surgical unit, where her clinical skills and work ethic soon won accolades. ”I cannot remember too many health care employees that I respect as much as Lauren,” Diane Stanaway, then Monmouth’s clinical director of nursing, wrote in a 2005 commendation. ”What a dynamite young lady and nurse!” When a top hospital executive needed surgery, Larry recalled, he paid Lauren the ultimate compliment, picking her as one of two   nurses to help oversee his care. Larry Bloomstein, who joined the unit as an orthopedic surgical resident in 2004, was dazzled, too. He liked her independent streak  —   ”she didn’t feel the need to rely on anyone else for anything”  —   and her  . Even performing CPR on a dying patient, Lauren ”had a calmness about her,” Larry said. He thought her tough upbringing ”gave her a sense of confidence. She didn’t seem to worry about small things.” Lauren, meanwhile, told Ennis, ”I met this guy. He’s a doctor, and he’s very kind.” Their first date was a Bruce Springsteen concert five years later they married on Long Beach Island, on the Jersey shore. One of Lauren’s favorite books was Catcher in the Rye  —   ”she related to the Holden Caulfield character rescuing kids,” Larry said. When a spot opened at Monmouth’s elite neonatal intensive care unit in 2006, she jumped at it. The hospital has the   maternity department in the state, delivering 5, 449 babies in 2016. Monmouth earned an ”A” grade from Leapfrog, a nonprofit that promotes safety in health care, and met full safety standards in critical areas of maternity care, such as rates of   and early elective deliveries, a hospital spokeswoman said. Its NICU, a Level III facility for   newborns, is the oldest in New Jersey. ”With NICU nursing, it’s one of those things either you get it or you don’t,” said Katy DiBernardo, a   veteran of the unit. ”The babies are little, and a lot of people aren’t used to seeing a teeny tiny baby.” The NICU staff included nurses, neonatologists, a respiratory therapist, and residents. Lauren, DiBernardo said, ”just clicked.” One of the things Lauren liked best about her work was the bonds she formed with babies’ families. Nurses followed the same newborns throughout their stay, sometimes for weeks or months. She was a touchstone for parents  —   very good at ”calming people down who have a lot of anxiety,” Larry said  —   and often stayed in contact long after the babies went home, meeting the moms for coffee and even babysitting on occasion. She also cherished the deep friendships that a place like the NICU forged. The neonatal floor was like a world unto itself, Lauren Byron, another   nurse there, explained: ”There’s a lot of stress and pressure, and you are in    situations. You develop a very close relationship with some people.” The environment tended to attract very strong personalities. Lauren’s nickname in the Bloomstein family football pool was ”The Feisty One,” so she fit right in. But she could stand her ground without alienating anyone. ”She was one of those people that everyone liked,” Byron said. ”We save more than we lose” Another person everyone liked was   John Vaclavik. He had come to Monmouth as a resident in 2004, around the same time as Larry, after earning his bachelor’s from Loyola College in Baltimore and his medical degree at St. George’s University on the island of Grenada. Medicine was the family profession: two uncles and two brothers also became doctors and his wife was a perinatal social worker at the hospital. Lauren and her colleagues thought he was ”very personable” and ”a great guy,” Larry said. ”She was good friends with my wife and she felt comfortable with me,” Vaclavik would recall in a 2015 court deposition. After his residency, Vaclavik joined Ocean Obstetric  Gynecologic Associates, a thriving practice that counted numerous medical professionals among its clients. Vaclavik was a ”laborist”  —   part of a movement that aimed to reduce the number of   which tend to have more difficult recoveries and more complications than vaginal births. In a state with a   rate of 37 percent, Monmouth’s rate in 2016 was just 21 percent. The neonatal nurses had plenty of opportunity to observe Vaclavik and other   in action  —   someone from NICU was called to attend every delivery that showed signs of being complicated or unusual as well as every  . ”We always laughed, ’They’ll call us for a hangnail,’” DiBernardo said. Lauren was so impressed by Vaclavik that she not only chose him as her own doctor, she recommended him to her best friend. ”She kept saying, ’You have to go to this guy. He’s a good doctor. Good doctor,’” Ennis said. In other ways, though, the NICU staff and the labor and delivery staff were very separate. The neonatal nurses were focused on their own fragile patients  —   the satisfaction that came from helping them grow strong enough to go home, the grief when that didn’t happen. Once Ennis asked Lauren, ”How do you deal with babies that don’t make it? That’s got to be so bad.” Lauren replied, ”Yeah, but we save more than we lose.” Loss was less common in labor and delivery, and when a new mother suffered   complications, the news did not always reach the NICU floor. Thus, when a    special education teacher named Tara Hansen contracted a grisly infection a few days after giving birth to her first child in March 2011, the tragedy didn’t register with Lauren, who was then three months pregnant herself. Hansen lived in nearby Freehold, N. J. with her husband, Ryan, her high school sweetheart. Her pregnancy, like Lauren’s, had been textbook perfect and she delivered a healthy   son. But Hansen suffered tearing near her vagina during childbirth. She developed signs of infection but was discharged anyway, a lawsuit by her husband later alleged. Hansen was soon readmitted to Monmouth with what the lawsuit called ”excruciating, severe pain beyond the capacity of a human being to endure.” The diagnosis was necrotizing fasciitis, commonly known as   bacteria two days later Hansen was dead. One of Vaclavik’s colleagues delivered Hansen’s baby Vaclavik himself authorized her discharge. According to court documents, he said nurses failed to inform him about Hansen’s symptoms and that if he’d known her vital signs weren’t stable, he wouldn’t have released her. The hospital and nurses eventually settled for $1. 5 million. The suit against Vaclavik and his colleagues is pending.   Vaclavik did not respond to several interview requests from ProPublica and NPR, including an emailed list of questions. ”Due to the fact this matter is in litigation,” his attorney responded, ”Dr. Vaclavik respectfully declines to comment.”   Citing patient privacy, Monmouth spokeswoman Elizabeth Brennan also declined to discuss specific cases. ”We are saddened by the grief these families have experienced from their loss,” she said in a statement. ”I don’t feel good” Larry Bloomstein’s first inkling that something was seriously wrong with Lauren came about 90 minutes after she gave birth. He had accompanied Hailey up to the nursery to be weighed and measured and given the usual barrage of tests for newborns. Lauren hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but he returned to find her dinner tray untouched. ”I don’t feel good,” she told him. She pointed to a spot above her abdomen and just below her sternum, close to where she’d felt the stabbing sensation during labor. ”I’ve got pain that’s coming back.” Larry had been at Lauren’s side much of the previous 24 hours. Conscious that his role was husband rather than doctor, he had tried not to overstep. Now, though, he pressed Vaclavik: What was the matter with his wife? ”He was like, ’I see this a lot. We do a lot of belly surgery. This is definitely reflux,’” Larry recalled. According to Lauren’s records, the   ordered an antacid called Bicitra and an opioid painkiller called Dilaudid. Lauren vomited them up. Lauren’s pain was soon 10 on a scale of 10, she told Larry and the nurses so excruciating, the nurses noted, ”Patient [is] unable to stay still.” Just as ominously, her blood pressure was spiking. An hour after Hailey’s birth, the reading was   an hour after that,  . At her final prenatal appointment, her reading had been just  . Obstetrics wasn’t Larry’s specialty, but he knew enough to ask the nurse: Could this be preeclampsia? Preeclampsia, or   hypertension, is a   condition that affects 3 percent to 5 percent of expectant or new mothers in the U. S. up to 200, 000 women a year. It can strike anyone out of the blue, though the risk is higher for   women with   conditions such as obesity, diabetes or kidney disease, and mothers over the age of 40. It is most common during the second half of pregnancy, but can develop in the days or weeks after childbirth, and can become very dangerous very quickly. Because a traditional treatment for preeclampsia is to deliver as soon as possible, the babies are often premature and end up in NICUs like the one where Lauren worked. As Larry suspected, Lauren’s blood pressure readings were well past the danger point. What he didn’t know was that they’d been abnormally high since she entered the hospital  —     according to her admissions paperwork. During labor, she had 21 systolic readings at or above 140 and 13 diastolic readings at or above 90, her records indicated for a stretch of almost eight hours, her blood pressure wasn’t monitored at all, the New Jersey Department of Health later found. Over that same period, her baby’s vital signs were being constantly watched, Larry said. In his court deposition, Vaclavik described the   reading as ”elevated” compared to her usual readings, but not abnormal. He ”would use 180 over 110 as a cutoff” to suspect preeclampsia, he said. Still, he acknowledged, Lauren’s blood pressure ”might have been recommended to be monitored more closely, in retrospect.” Leading medical organizations in the U. S. and the U. K. take a different view. They advise that increases to   for pregnant women with no previous history of high blood pressure signify preeclampsia. When systolic readings hit 160, treatment with   drugs and magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures ”should be initiated ASAP,” according to guidelines from the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health. When other symptoms, such as upper abdominal (epigastric) pain, are present, the situation is considered even more urgent.  This basic approach isn’t new: ”Core Curriculum for   Nursing,” a widely used textbook, outlined it in 1997. Yet failure to diagnose preeclampsia, or to differentiate it from chronic high blood pressure, is all too common. California researchers who studied preeclampsia deaths over several years found one striking theme: ”Despite triggers that clearly indicated a serious deterioration in the patient’s condition, health care providers failed to recognize and respond to these signs in a timely manner, leading to delays in diagnosis and treatment.” Preeclampsia symptoms  —   swelling and rapid weight gain, gastric discomfort and vomiting, headache and anxiety  —   are often mistaken for the normal irritations that crop up during pregnancy or after giving birth. ”We don’t have a   test for it,” said Eleni Tsigas, executive director of the Preeclampsia Foundation. ”A lot of physicians don’t necessarily see a lot of it.” Outdated notions  —   for example, that delivering the baby cures the condition  —   unfamiliarity with best practices and lack of crisis preparation can further hinder the response. The fact that Lauren gave birth over the weekend may also have worked against her. Hospitals may be staffed differently on weekends, adding to the challenges of managing a crisis. A new Baylor College of Medicine analysis of 45 million pregnancies in the U. S. from 2004 to 2014 found mothers who deliver on Saturday or Sunday have nearly 50 percent higher mortality rates as well as more blood transfusions and more perineal tearing. The ”weekend effect” has also been associated with higher fatality rates from heart attacks, strokes and head trauma. According to Lauren’s records, Vaclavik did order a preeclampsia lab test around 8:40 p. m. but a nurse noted a   later: ”No abnormal labs present.” (According to Larry, the results were borderline.) Larry began pushing to call in a specialist. Vaclavik attributed Lauren’s pain to esophagitis, or inflammation of the esophagus, which had afflicted her before, he said in his deposition. Around 10 p. m. according to Lauren’s medical records, he phoned the   gastroenterologist, who ordered an   and additional tests, more Dilaudid and different antacids  —   Maalox and Protonix. Nothing helped. Meanwhile, Larry decided to reach out to his own colleagues in the trauma unit at Cooper University Hospital in Camden. In his training, perhaps the most important lesson he’d learned was to ask for help: ”If there’s a problem, I will immediately get another physician involved.” By chance, the doctor on call happened to be a fairly new mother. As Larry described Lauren’s symptoms, she interrupted him. ”You can stop talking. I know what this is.” She said Lauren had HELLP syndrome, an acronym for the most severe variation of preeclampsia, characterized by hemolysis, or the breakdown of red blood cells elevated liver enzymes and low platelet count, a clotting deficiency that can lead to excessive bleeding and hemorrhagic stroke. Larry’s colleague urged him to stop wasting time, he recalled. Lauren’s very high blood pressure, the vomiting, and the terrible pain radiating from her kidneys and liver were symptoms of rapid deterioration. ”Your wife’s in a lot of danger,” the trauma doctor said. (She didn’t respond to ProPublica’s and NPR’s requests for comment.) ”It’s never just one thing” Earlier this year, an analysis by the CDC Foundation of maternal mortality data from four states identified more than 20 ”critical factors” that contributed to   deaths. Among the ones involving providers: lack of standardized policies, inadequate clinical skills, failure to consult specialists and poor coordination of care. The average maternal death had 3. 7 critical factors. ”It’s never just one thing,” said Roberta Gold, a member of the Council on Patient Safety in Women’s Health Care, whose daughter and unborn grandson died from a   blood clot in 2010. ”It’s always a cascading combination of things. It’s a   train wreck.” The last 16 hours of Lauren’s life were consistent with that grim pattern. Distressed by what the trauma doctor had told him, Larry immediately went to Lauren’s caregivers. But they insisted the tests didn’t show preeclampsia, he said. Not long after, Larry’s colleague called back to check on Lauren’s condition. ”I don’t believe those labs,” he recalls her telling him. ”They can’t be right. I’m positive of my diagnosis. Do them again. ’” Meanwhile, Lauren’s agony had become almost unendurable. The blood pressure cuff on her arm was adding to her discomfort, so around 10:30 p. m. her nurse decided to remove it  —   on the theory, Larry said, ”We know her blood pressure is high. There’s no point to retaking it.” According to Lauren’s records, her blood pressure went unmonitored for another hour and 44 minutes. Larry had given up on getting a specialist to come to the hospital so late on a Saturday night, but he persuaded Vaclavik to call in a general surgical resident. Around 11:55 p. m. according to the nurses’ notes, Lauren begged, ”Do anything to stop this pain.” Vaclavik prescribed morphine, to little effect. Just after midnight, her blood pressure about to peak at   Lauren began complaining of a headache. As Larry studied his wife’s face, he realized something had changed. ”She suddenly looks really calm and comfortable, like she’s trying to go to sleep.” She gave Larry a little smile, but only the right side of her mouth moved. In an instant, Larry’s alarm turned to panic. He ordered Lauren, ”Lift your hands for me.” Only her right arm fluttered. He peeled off her blankets and scraped the soles of her feet with his fingernail, testing her   Babinski reflex in an adult whose brain is working normally, the big toe automatically jerks downward. Lauren’s right toe curled as it was supposed to. But her left toe stuck straight out, unmoving. As Larry was examining her, Lauren suddenly seemed to realize what was happening to her. ”She looked at me and said, ’I’m afraid,’ and, ’I love you.’ And I’m pretty sure in that moment she put the pieces together. That she had a conscious awareness of . .. that she was not going to make it.” A CT scan soon confirmed the worst: The escalating blood pressure had triggered bleeding in her brain.   hemorrhagic strokes tend to be deadlier than those caused by blood clots. Surgery can sometimes save the patient’s life, but only if it is performed quickly.  Larry was a realist he knew that even the   scenario was devastating. Chances were that Lauren would be paralyzed or partially paralyzed. She’d never be the mother she had dreamed of being. She’d never be a nurse again. But at least there was a chance she would live. When the neurologist arrived, Larry asked, ”Is there hope here?” As he recalls it, the neurologist responded, ”That’s why I’m here. There’s hope.” Larry began gathering Lauren’s loved ones  —   his parents, her brother, Frankie Hedges and her husband Billy, Jackie Ennis. On the phone, he tried to play down the gravity of the situation, but everyone understood. When Larry’s mother arrived, the hospital entrance was locked, and Larry and Vaclavik came to meet her. ”The obstetrician just said, ’She’s going to be all right,’” Linda Bloomstein said. ”And Larry was standing behind him, and I saw the tears coming down, and he was shaking his head, ’No. ’” Around 2 a. m. the neurosurgeon finally confirmed what the trauma doctor had said four hours before: Lauren had HELLP syndrome. Then he delivered more bad news: Her blood platelets  —   essential to stopping the hemorrhage  —   were dangerously low. But, according to Larry, the hospital didn’t have sufficient platelets on site, so her surgery would have to be delayed. Larry was dumbfounded. How could a regional medical center that delivered babies and performed all types of surgery not have platelets on hand for an emergency? Vaclavik called the Red Cross and other facilities, pleading with them to send any they had. ”In my understanding, there was a complete shortage of platelets in the state of New Jersey,” he said in the deposition. Hours passed before the needed platelets arrived. The neuro team did another CT scan around 6 a. m. Larry couldn’t bring himself to look at it, ”but from what they’ve told me, it was horrifically worse.” While Lauren was in surgery, friends began dropping by, hoping to see her and the baby, not realizing what had happened since her cheerful texts the night before. Around 12:30 p. m. the neurosurgeon emerged and confirmed that brain activity had stopped. Lauren was on life support, with no chance of recovery. All this time, Hailey had been in the newborn nursery, being tended by Lauren’s stunned colleagues. They brought her down to Lauren’s room and Larry placed her gently into her mother’s arms. After a few minutes, the nurses whisked the baby back up to the third floor to protect her from germs. A respiratory therapist carefully removed the breathing tube from Lauren’s mouth. At 3:08 p. m. surrounded by her loved ones, she died. A private tragedy, In the U. S. unlike some other developed countries, maternal deaths are treated as a private tragedy rather than as a public health catastrophe. A death in childbirth may be mourned on Facebook or memorialized on GoFundMe, but it is rarely reported in the news. Most obituaries, Lauren’s included, don’t mention how a mother died. Lauren’s passing was more public than most, eliciting an outpouring of grief. Hundreds of people attended her wake and funeral  —   doctors and nurses from the hospital, friends from around the country, families Lauren had taken care of. Vaclavik was there, utterly devastated, Larry’s family said. The head of Monmouth’s   department paid his respects and, according to Larry, promised in a private conversation at the wake to conduct a full investigation. In the days after Lauren’s death, Larry couldn’t dwell on the implications of what had happened. He had to find a burial plot, choose a casket, write a eulogy. He was too shattered to return to the Mooresville house, so he took Hailey to his parents’ place, a   apartment they were renting while they renovated their home, and slept with the baby in the living room for the first month. After the funeral, he turned all his attention to his daughter. He knew nothing about newborns, always imagining Lauren would teach him  —   ”What could be better than having your own NICU nurse to take care of your baby?” he had thought. He relied on his mother and sister and Lauren’s friends to guide him. He took time off from his job at Cooper, figuring three months would be enough. But as his return date approached, he knew he wasn’t ready. ”I don’t think I can see a patient that’s on a ventilator right now,” he realized. ”Or even just a hospital bed.” He didn’t want to leave Hailey. So he quit. He sold the house, though he couldn’t bring himself to attend the closing  —   ”I couldn’t stand handing those keys over to someone else.” He took Hailey a couple of times to stay with his sister and her family in Texas, where he didn’t have to answer the constant questions. But traveling with his baby daughter was painful in its own way. People didn’t know what to make of him. ”It’s strange for people to see a father alone,” he said. Wherever he went, he felt disconnected from almost everything around him: ”You’re walking around this world and all these people are around you, and they’re going on with their lives and I just felt very, very isolated and very alone with that.” Back in New Jersey, Larry found a job closer to his parents’ place, performed one operation and tried to quit. His new employers, though, persuaded him to stay. To avoid reliving the funeral, he returned to Texas for the first anniversary of Hailey’s birth and Lauren’s death in late September 2012. In one of his suitcases, he packed a giant cupcake mold Lauren had bought when they first married  —   she thought it would make a perfect   cake for the kids she yearned for. He baked the cake himself  —   chocolate, Lauren’s favorite, covered with sprinkles. ”With our technology, every single time a woman dies, it’s a medical error” Other people in Lauren’s and Larry’s circle had been asking questions about her care since the night she died. ”That was the first thing I literally said when I walked [into the hospital]  —   I said, ’How did this happen? ’” Jackie Ennis recalled. In the next week or two, she probed Larry again: ”’Did they do everything they could for her? ’” He said, ’No, there were warning signs for hours before. ’” Ennis was too upset to dig any deeper. As Larry’s numbness wore off, his orthopedist friends began pushing him as well. Larry was hesitant despite the missteps he had witnessed, part of him wanted to believe that Lauren’s death had been unavoidable. ”And my friends were like, ’We can’t accept that . .. With our technology, every single time a woman dies [in childbirth] it’s a medical error. ’” Lauren’s death, Larry finally admitted to himself, could not be dismissed as either inevitable or a fluke. He had seen how Lauren’s   and nurses had failed to recognize a textbook case of one of the most common complications of pregnancy  —   not once, but repeatedly over two days. To Larry, the fact that someone with Lauren’s advantages could die so needlessly was symptomatic of a bigger problem. By some measures, New Jersey had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the U. S. He wanted authorities to get to the root of it  —   to push the people and institutions that were at fault to change. That’s the approach in the United Kingdom, where maternal deaths are regarded as systems failures. A national committee of experts scrutinizes every death of a woman from pregnancy or childbirth complications, collecting medical records and assessments from caregivers, conducting rigorous analyses of the data, and publishing reports that help set policy for hospitals throughout the country. Coroners also sometimes hold public inquests, forcing hospitals and their staffs to answer for their mistakes. The U. K. process is largely responsible for the stunning reduction in preeclampsia deaths in Britain, the committee noted its 2016 report  —   ”a clear success story” that it hoped to repeat ”across other medical and mental health causes of maternal death.” The U. S. has no comparable federal effort. Instead, maternal mortality reviews are left up to states. As of this spring, 26 states (and one city, Philadelphia) had a   process in place another five states had committees that were less than a year old. In almost every case, resources are tight, the reviews take years, and the findings get little attention. A bipartisan bill in Congress, the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act of 2017, would authorize funding for states to establish review panels or improve their processes. New Jersey’s review team, the   in the U. S. includes   nurses, mental health specialists, medical examiners, even a nutritionist. Using vital records and other reports, they identify every woman in New Jersey who died within a year of pregnancy or childbirth, from any cause, then review medical and other records to determine whether the death was ” ” or not. Every few years, the committee publishes a report, focusing on things like the race and age of the mothers who died, the causes of death, and other demographic and health data. In the past, the findings have been used to promote policies to reduce postpartum depression. But the New Jersey committee doesn’t interview the relatives of the deceased, nor does it assess whether a death was preventable. Moreover, like every other state that conducts such reviews, New Jersey ” ” the records  —   strips them of any information that might point to an individual hospital or a particular woman. Otherwise, the medical community and lawmakers would refuse to go along. The goal is to ”improve care for patients in general,” said Joseph Apuzzio, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at   Jersey Medical School who heads the committee. This requires a process that is ”nonjudgmental” and ”not punitive,” he said. ”That’s the best way to get a free discussion of all of the health care providers who are in the room.” Yet the result of   as Larry soon realized, is that the review is of little use in assigning responsibility for individual deaths, or evaluating whether some hospitals, doctors or nurses are more prone to error than others. To Larry, this seemed like a critical oversight  —   or perhaps, willful denial. In a preventable death or other medical error, he said, sometimes the who and the where are as important as the why. ”Unless someone points the finger specifically,” he said, ”I think the actual cause [of the problem] is lost.” ”The facility is not in compliance” Someone eventually steered Larry toward the New Jersey Department of Health’s licensing and inspection division, which oversees hospital and   safety. He filed a complaint against Monmouth Medical Center in 2012. The DOH examined Lauren’s records, interviewed her caregivers and scrutinized Monmouth’s policies and practices. In December 2012 it issued a report that backed up everything Larry had seen  . ”There is no record in the medical record that the Registered Nurse notified [the  ] of the elevated blood pressures of patient prior to delivery,” investigators found. And: ”There is no evidence in the medical record of further evaluation and surveillance of patient from [the  ] prior to delivery.” And: ”There was no evidence in the medical record that the elevated blood pressures were addressed by [the  ] until after the Code Stroke was called.” The report faulted the hospital. ”The facility is not in compliance” with New Jersey hospital licensing standards, it concluded. ”The facility failed to ensure that recommended obstetrics guidelines are adhered to by staff.” To address these criticisms, Monmouth Medical Center had implemented a plan of correction, also contained in the report. The plan called for a mandatory educational program for all labor and delivery nurses about preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome staff training in Advance Life Support Obstetrics and Critical Care Obstetrics and more training on the use of   methods to assess patients and improve communications between caregivers. Some of the changes were strikingly basic: ”Staff nurses were educated regarding the necessity of reviewing, when available, or obtaining the patients [sic] prenatal records. Education identified that they must make a comparison of the prenatal blood pressure against the initial admission blood pressure.” And: ”Repeat vital signs will be obtained every 4 hours at a minimum.” An important part of the plan of correction involved Vaclavik, though neither he nor the nurses were identified by name. The head of Monmouth’s   department provided ”professional remediation for the identified physician,” the Department of Health report said. In addition, there was ”monitoring of 100% of records for physician of record per month x 3 months.” The monitoring focused on ”compliance of timely physician intervention for elevated blood   assessment and management.” The department chairman, Robert Graebe, found Vaclavik’s charts to be 100 percent compliant, Vaclavik said in the deposition. Graebe was asked in a March 2017 deposition if Vaclavik was in good standing at the hospital at the time of Lauren’s treatment. ”Was and is,” Graebe replied. In a separate note, the Department of Health told Larry that it forwarded his complaint to the Board of Medical Examiners and the New Jersey Board of Nursing. Neither agency has taken disciplinary action, according to their websites. Larry’s copy of the DOH report arrived in the mail. He was gratified by the findings but dismayed that they weren’t publicly posted. That meant hardly anyone would see them. A few months after the DOH weighed in, he sued Monmouth, Vaclavik and five nurses in Monmouth County Superior Court in Freehold, N. J. For a medical malpractice lawsuit to go forward in New Jersey, an expert must certify that it has merit. Larry’s passed muster with an  . But beyond the taking of depositions, there’s been little action in the case. Creating ”toolkits” As the maternal death rate has mounted around the U. S. a small cadre of reformers has mobilized. Some of the earliest and most important work has come in California, where more babies are born than in any other state  —  500, 000 a year,   of the U. S. total. Modeled on the U. K. process, the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative is informed by the experiences of founder Elliott Main, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford and the University of   Francisco, who for many years ran the   department at a San Francisco hospital. ”One of my saddest moments as an obstetrician was a woman with severe preeclampsia that we thought we had done everything correct, who still had a major stroke and we could not save her,” he said recently. That loss has weighed on him for 20 years. ”When you’ve had a maternal death, you remember it for the rest of your life. All the details.” Launched a decade ago, CMQCC aims to reduce not only mortality, but also   complications and racial disparities in obstetric care. It began by analyzing maternal deaths in the state over several years in almost every case, it discovered, there was ”at least some chance to alter the outcome.” The most preventable deaths were from hemorrhage (70 percent) and preeclampsia (60 percent). Main and his colleagues then began creating a series of ”toolkits” to help doctors and nurses improve their handling of emergencies. The first one, targeting obstetric bleeding, recommended things like ”hemorrhage carts” for storing medications and supplies, crisis protocols for massive transfusions, and regular training and drills. Instead of the common practice of ” ” blood loss, which often leads to underestimating the seriousness of a hemorrhage and delaying treatment, nurses learned to collect and weigh postpartum blood to get precise measurements. Hospitals that adopted the toolkit saw a 21 percent decrease in near deaths from maternal bleeding in the first year hospitals that didn’t use the protocol had a 1. 2 percent reduction. By 2013, according to Main, maternal deaths in California fell to around 7 per 100, 000 births, similar to the numbers in Canada, France and the Netherlands  —   a dramatic counter to the trends in other parts of the U. S. ”Prevention isn’t a magic pill,” Main said. ”It’s actually teamwork [and having] a structured, organized, standardized approach” to care. CMQCC’s preeclampsia toolkit, launched in 2014, emphasized the kind of practices that might have saved Lauren Bloomstein: careful monitoring of blood pressure and early and aggressive treatment with magnesium sulfate and   medications. Data on its effectiveness hasn’t been published. The collaborative’s work has inspired ACOG and advocates in a few states to create their own initiatives. Much of the funding has come from a   $500 million maternal health initiative by Merck, the pharmaceutical giant. Originally intended to focus on less developed countries, Merck for Mothers decided it couldn’t ignore the growing problem in the U. S. The U. S. maternal mortality rate is ”unacceptable,” said executive director   Etiebet. Making pregnancy and childbirth safer ”will not only save women’s lives but will improve and strengthen our health systems . .. for all.” But the really hard work is only beginning. According to the Institute of Medicine, it takes an average of 17 years for a new medical protocol to be widely adopted. Even in California, half of the 250 hospitals that deliver babies still aren’t using the toolkits, said Main, who largely blames inertia. In New York State, some hospitals have questioned the need for what they call ”cookbook medicine,” said Columbia’s D’Alton. Her response: ”Variability is the enemy of safety. Rather than have 10 different approaches to obstetric hemorrhage or treatment of hypertension, choose one or two and make it consistent . .. When we do things in a standardized way, we have better outcomes.” One big hurdle: training. Another: money. Smaller providers, in particular, may not see the point. ”It’s very hard to get a hospital to provide resources to change something that they don’t see as a problem,” ACOG’s Barbara Levy said. ”If they haven’t had a maternal death because they only deliver 500 babies a year, how many years is it going to be before they see a severe problem? It may be 10 years.” In New Jersey, providers don’t need as much convincing, thanks to a recent project to reduce postpartum blood loss led by the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses. A number of hospitals saw improvements at one, the average length of a   ICU stay plunged from 8 days to 1. 5 days. But only 31 of the state’s 52 birthing hospitals participated in the effort, in part  —   perhaps  —   because nurses led it, said Robyn D’Oria, executive director of the Central Jersey Family Health Consortium and member of the state’s maternal mortality committee. ”I remember having a conversation with [someone from] a hospital that I would describe as progressive and she said to me, ’I cannot get past some of the physicians not wanting to buy into this. ’” So New Jersey hospitals are about to try again, this time adopting   created by the   Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health for hemorrhage and preeclampsia. ”We’re at the very beginning” of a   that is likely to take at least two years, D’Oria said. Among those helping create momentum has been Ryan Hansen, the husband of the teacher who died at Monmouth Medical Center a few months before Lauren Bloomstein. Still, as hospitals begin to revamp, mothers in the state continue to perish. One was Ashley Heaney Butler. A Rutgers University graduate, she lived in Bayville, where she decorated the walls of her house with anchors, reflecting her passion for the ocean. She worked for the state Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services as a counselor, and served as president of the New Jersey Rehabilitation Association. Her husband Joseph was a firefighter. She gave birth at Monmouth last September to a healthy boy and died a couple of weeks later at the age of 31, never leaving the hospital. It turned out that she had developed an infection late in her pregnancy, possibly related to a prior gastric bypass surgery. She was under the care of several doctors, including Vaclavik. ”She didn’t get what she deserved” The sudden death of a new mother is tragic to everyone around her. ”When you take that one death and what that does, not only to the husband, but to the family and to the community, the impact that it has in the hospital, on the staff, on everybody that’s cared for her, on all the people who knew them, it has ripple effects for generations to come,” Robyn D’Oria said. Jackie Ennis felt Lauren’s loss as an absence of phone calls. She and Lauren had been closer than many sisters, talking several times a day. Sometimes Lauren called just to say she was really tired and would talk later she’d even called Ennis from Hawaii on her honeymoon. The night Lauren died, Ennis knew something was wrong because she hadn’t heard from her best friend. ”It took me a really long time not to get the phone calls,” she said. ”I still have trouble with that.” During Lauren’s pregnancy, Frankie Hedges had thought of herself as Hailey’s other grandmother. She and Lauren had made a lot of plans. Lauren’s death meant the loss of their shared dreams for an entire extended family. ”I just feel she didn’t get what she deserved,” Hedges said. Vaclavik’s obstetric practice is ”larger” than in 2011, and he continues to have admitting privileges at Monmouth and two other hospitals, he said in his deposition. ”I will never forget” Lauren’s death, he said. ”. .. I probably suffer some post traumatic stress from this.” Hailey is 5 years old, with Lauren’s brown hair and clear green eyes. She feels her mother’s presence everywhere, thanks to Larry and his new wife Carolyn, whom he married in 2014. They met when she was a surgical tech at one of the hospitals he worked at after Lauren died. Photos and drawings of Lauren occupy the mantle of their home in Holmdel, the bookcase in the dining room, and the walls of the upstairs hallway. Larry and Carolyn and their other family members talk about Lauren freely, and even Larry’s younger daughter,    Aria, calls her ”Mommy Lauren.” On birthdays and holidays, Larry takes the girls to the cemetery. He designed the gravestone  —   his handprint and Lauren’s reaching away from each other, newborn Hailey’s linking them forever. Larry has done his best to keep Lauren’s extended family together  —   Ennis and Hedges and their families are included in every important celebration. Larry still has the video of Lauren and Hailey on his phone. ”By far the hardest thing for me to accept is [what happened] from Lauren’s perspective,” he said one recent evening, hitting the play button and seeing her alive once more. ”I can’t, I literally can’t accept it. The amount of pain she must have experienced in that exact moment when she finally had this little girl . .. I can accept the amount of pain I have been dealt,” he went on, watching Lauren stroke Hailey’s cheek. ”But [her pain] is the one thing I just can’t accept. I can’t understand, I can’t fathom it.”  NPR’s Bo Erickson, and ProPublica’s research editor Derek Kravitz and engagement reporter Adriana Gallardo contributed to this report."
"This week’s spectacle over the leadership of the FBI got all the headlines, but there’s always a lot more taking place beneath the surface in the shadowy world of the intelligence community, or ”IC.” Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe was only one of a full slate of witnesses who appeared Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the range of worldwide threats arrayed against the United States. The bad news is: There’s a lot of them. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats listed item after item in page after page of his opening statement, ranging from the threat of artificially intelligent technologies being compromised by cyberattacks to the danger from   weapons launched against American satellites to the risks involved with the spread of Zika. ”The complexity of the threat environment is ever expanding,” Coats said. ”This has challenged the IC to stay ahead of the adversary and it has not been an easy task.” And there’s more going on in America’s spy agencies beyond the tracking of ”threats” or their other tasks overseas. There are important storylines about the way they work inside Washington and even inside the Capitol itself. Here’s a look at some of the biggest. In terms of foreign dangers to the United States, Coats and his fellow spymasters were clear that North Korea tops the list. ”This is a very significant, potentially existential threat to the United States that has to be addressed,” Coats said. Scientists loyal to North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un are making progress in miniaturizing nuclear warheads that could fit atop potential new ballistic missiles with enough range to hit the United States, the intelligence bosses warned  —   although under questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein,  . they stopped short of revealing precisely when they believe that could happen. ”What we’ve not seen them do is do a complete    test of an [intercontinental ballistic missile] with a nuclear device,” said Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, head of the   Defense Intelligence Agency. Even so, he said, ”they’re going to put those two together at some point . .. they’re on that path and they’re committed to doing that.” CIA Director Mike Pompeo told senators that his agency was working more closely with South Korea, a treaty ally that hosts some 30, 000 American troops and their families, to try to step up the work to slow down or put pressure on the North. But Robert Cardillo, director of the spy satellite and   National   Agency, suggested that the competition with the North might wind up close to a photo finish. ”They are in a race,” he said. ”[Kim] is pushing very hard on the accelerator here. This whole panel is well aware of that and we are doing everything in our power to make sure that we give you and our customers the advantage to win that race.” Washington’s intelligence bosses weren’t just reporting in on Thursday. They also were on Capitol Hill to do a bit of lobbying for a favorite bill  —   known in the IC as Section 702  —   that authorizes them to monitor some Americans’ communications without a warrant. Traditionally it took permission from a judge before American spies could surveil a ”U. S. Person,” but since 2008, Congress has permitted such monitoring to continue if an American communicates with a foreigner overseas who is already a target of lawful  . The spy agencies are supposed to ”minimize” details about people swept up in what they call such ”incidental collection,” and they say their practices are regularly vetted by Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This year’s imbroglio over the firing of former national security adviser Michael Flynn has brought a spotlight back on these practices, even if conversations between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak might not have been intercepted under this provision in the law. So as elements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act are due to sunset this year, critics in both parties want to use the threat of holding it up to get concessions. Republicans say the leaking of details about Flynn and Kislyak show how easy it is for national security officials to abuse their powers  —     security adviser Susan Rice, it has emerged, asked for the names of President Trump’s associates to be ”unmasked” as she reviewed intelligence collected before the inauguration. At about the same time, someone gave The Washington Post details about Flynn’s conversation even though his identity and those details are supposed to be a closely guarded secret. Rice has denied that she did anything wrong or that she leaked classified information. Meanwhile key civil libertarians, including both Republicans and Democrats, argue there’s nothing ”incidental” about incidental collection  —   that the U. S. government is probably snooping on millions of innocent Americans talking lawfully with people overseas. Sen. Ron Wyden,  . on Thursday renewed a demand that Coats provide a public estimate of the people involved with this ”incidental collection”  —   one he said the intelligence community has been stonewalling for years. ”We have to have that number,” Wyden said. ”Are we going to get it? Are we going to get it in time so we can have a debate that shows that those of us who understand there are threats coming from overseas, and we support the effort to deal with those threats as part of 702? That we are not going to have American’s privacy rights indiscriminately swept up?” Coats promised he would respond but said the issue is technically complicated and investigating it might involve an active breach of Americans’ privacy. He and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers insisted that no matter how the debate in Congress goes, they must continue to have Section 702. ”If we were to lose 702’s authorities, we would be significantly degraded in our ability to provide timely warning and insight as to what terrorist actors, nation states, criminal elements are doing that is of concern to our nation as well as our friends and allies,” he said. What’s more, Rogers added, much of what the intelligence community learned about last year’s Russian meddling in the presidential election ”was informed by knowledge we gained through” that power. The   of members of Congress and their witnesses are a frequent feature of Intelligence and Armed Services Committee hearings and other national security hearings on the Hill. They seldom, however, get more specific than broad statements and almost never involve the name of a specific problem or company. On Thursday, however, two senators mentioned one in particular: Kaspersky Labs. The Russian company  —   which supports NPR and is a provider of security services for its IT systems  —   has been linked to work for Russia’s intelligence agencies. The leaders of the House Oversight Committee released documents showing payments by Kaspersky to Flynn. Even so, millions of Americans use Kaspersky software, as Sen. Marco Rubio,  . pointed out to the witnesses  —   but, he asked, would they run it on their systems? Here’s how they answered: McCabe, of the FBI: ”A resounding no from me.” Pompeo, of the CIA: ”No.” Coats, the director of national intelligence: ”No, senator.” Rogers, of the NSA: ”No, sir.” Stewart, of the Pentagon’s DIA: ”No, senator.” Cardillo, of the National   Agency: ”No, sir.” Later, Sen. Joe Manchin,  . Va. asked the intelligence bosses about Kaspersky again. They repeated their own government systems were safe from any danger, but the DIA’s Stewart said he couldn’t be sure about all of his contractors. Intelligence and defense contractors have been the sources for huge leaks of secrets from the NSA, CIA and other agencies. Intelligence officers often lament that their greatest exploits may never be known but their worst failures are often   headlines. The CIA, FBI and NSA especially have been in a constant state of reinvention since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, then the botched case for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the exposure of many secrets by former contractor Edward Snowden. Congress and the intelligence agencies have tried after each of these and other big defeats to remake themselves one result was the creation of Coats’ job trying to herd the cats of the 16 other entities that make up what insiders call ”the IC.” There’s been tension between the community and President Trump since before his inauguration, when he has both accepted and rejected its conclusion that Russia meddled in the election that put him into office. And Trump later infuriated many CIA officers by using the agency’s memorial wall as the backdrop for an early   stump speech. So between the   work of remaking and reshaping the IC and Trump’s personal animus after the election, it appeared he might set to work early with a wrecking ball: The New York Times reported in February that Trump planned to bring in billionaire Stephen Feinberg to do an outside review of the intelligence agencies, something that chilled insiders and irked Coats, who had not yet been confirmed. Since then, however, the situation has gotten better, Coats told senators. He and his agency leaders are frequent guests for long meetings at the White House with Trump, he said. And although there will still be another big review of the IC at the   mark since the big   reforms, Coats said he will be driving the train. The inquiry, he said, will look into ”how we can make our process even more streamlined, more efficient and more effective. My office is proud to lead this review.” "
"In a letter released Friday, President Trump’s lawyers said a decade’s worth of his tax returns show that he doesn’t owe money to Russian lenders and that he has received no income from Russian sources, ”with a few exceptions.” The exceptions include this: ”In 2008, Trump Properties LLC sold an estate in Florida, that it had acquired in 2005 for approximately $41 million, to a Russian billionaire for $95 million.” That buyer was Dmitry Rybolovlev, who never moved into the    mansion before tearing it down. Another exception was the $12. 2 million made from holding the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013, according to the letter signed by attorneys Sheri A. Dillon and William F. Nelson. The lawyers also noted that Trump very likely has received undisclosed payments from Russians for hotel rooms, rounds of golf and   products, such as wine, ties and mattresses. The March 8 letter was addressed to Trump, who passed it along to Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. Trump mentioned it during his Thursday NBC News interview with Lester Holt, saying he had ”nothing to do with Russia. I have no investments in Russia. None whatsoever.” Without copies of Trump’s tax returns, the claims by his lawyers cannot be verified. The lawyers did not define ”Russians.” Many companies based in Russia use subsidiaries in other places, such as Cyprus or the British Virgin Islands, to conduct transactions overseas. In an interview with The Economist this week, Trump dismissed calls for his tax returns. Asked whether he would release them, he replied: ”I doubt it. I doubt it. Because they’re not going to . .. nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters. Oh, at some point I’ll release them. Maybe I’ll release them after I’m finished because I’m very proud of them actually.” In recent days, the Trump administration has been caught up in an intensifying swirl of questions about potential financial ties involving Russians, Trump and his associates. The lawyers who wrote the letter about his finances are with the firm Morgan Lewis  Bockius, which was named ”Russia Law Firm of the Year” for 2016 by Chambers  Partners, which ranks lawyers."
"Updated at 9:25 p. m. ET, President Trump suggested on Twitter Friday morning there might be recordings of his private conversations with former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired earlier this week, in an apparent attempt to caution Comey against ”leaking to the press.” At the White House briefing in the afternoon, press secretary Sean Spicer refused multiple times to confirm or deny whether there is a secret recording device in the Oval Office. ”I’ve talked to the president, and the president has nothing further to add on that,” Spicer said, adding his   statement that ”the tweet speaks for itself.” Asked whether the White House has a recording of Comey’s conversations with the president, Spicer said, ”I am not aware of that.” He also denied the tweet was a ”threat,” saying instead that the president had ”simply stated a fact.” Officials to interview candidates for FBI director, A source familiar with the process tells NPR, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will interview four candidates for the FBI director job Saturday. NPR has been told these interviews are not exhaustive and are just the start of the process. The source says those being interviewed Saturday are: A week of contradictions from the White House, Friday’s suggestion from the president caps a chaotic week for the White House, which has struggled to control the fallout after Comey’s abrupt termination. The presidential tweet appeared to be a response to news stories since the Tuesday firing, which have contradicted the White House’s initial version of the events surrounding Comey’s dismissal. But in an NBC News interview on Thursday, it was Trump himself who said he was going to fire Comey regardless of the Justice Department’s recommendation  —   even though White House staff and even Vice President Pence had pointed to the recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions earlier in the week as the impetus for Trump’s decision. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,  . Y. announced Friday afternoon that Rosenstein has agreed to brief the full Senate next week in a   session about Comey’s dismissal and the FBI’s Russia investigation. Multiple outlets have reported that Trump asked Comey for his loyalty at a private dinner in January but that the   director ”declined to make that pledge,” The New York Times reported. Spicer denied that Trump had asked Comey to pledge his loyalty during that dinner. In an interview set to air Saturday night with Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, Trump said he didn’t ask Comey for his loyalty but he didn’t think it ”would be a bad question to ask” and wasn’t an inappropriate inquiry to the head of the FBI. On MSNBC Friday afternoon, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Andrea Mitchell that Comey had told him he was having dinner at the White House that evening in January and that he was ”uneasy” over the invitation from Trump. Congressional Democrats want ”tapes”  —   and answers, The Senate Intelligence Committee had asked Comey to testify before it next Tuesday, but ranking member Mark Warner,  . told MSNBC Friday that the former FBI director declined, although ”it is our hope in the not too distant future that we can find a time for him to come in and talk to our committee.” ”I believe at the appropriate time and place [Comey] is going to tell his side of the story, and my hope is that that place at least will be in front of our committee,” Warner said. It’s unclear whether the ”tapes” Trump alluded to in his tweet would be audio or video recordings, or whether they exist at all. As The Washington Post pointed out, the president used a similar construction in his unsubstantiated wiretapping accusations against former President Barack Obama. Soon after Trump’s tweets, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi,  . requested that White House Counsel Donald McGahn turn over any recordings of the president’s conversations with Comey to the House Oversight Committee. Krishnamoorthi also asked for any recording of Trump’s Wednesday meeting with Russian officials and ”any conversations regarding the hiring or firing” of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. ”These White House tapes could accelerate current investigations as previous tapes have aided past inquiries,” Krishnamoorthi said in a statement. House Oversight Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings,  . and House Judiciary Committee ranking member John Conyers,  . also sent McGahn a letter requesting any tapes or communications between Trump and Comey. The two also said they believed Trump may have intimidated a potential witness with his tweet, which is a federal crime. ”The President’s actions this morning —  as well as his admission yesterday on national television that he fired Director Comey because he was investigating Trump campaign officials and their connections to the Russian government —  raise the specter of possible intimidation and obstruction of justice,” Cummings and Conyers wrote in the letter. ”The President’s actions also risk undermining the ongoing criminal and   investigations and the independence of federal law enforcement agencies.” House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff,  . also issued a blistering statement on Trump’s tweets, calling on the president to ”immediately provide any such recordings to Congress or admit, once again, to have made a deliberately misleading  —   and in this case threatening  —   statement.” Clapper pushes back against Trump’s claims on Russia investigation, Trump also tweeted Friday morning that Clapper had testified there was no evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia  —   which the president deemed a ”witch hunt.” On Monday, Clapper testified in a hearing on Russian election interference held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism that he wasn’t aware of any evidence of collusion and hadn’t even been aware of the ongoing FBI investigation until Comey revealed it during a House hearing in March. But Clapper later clarified to MSNBC that as DNI during the Obama administration he let FBI investigations operate independently and that such knowledge would be outside his scope. ”It is not surprising or . .. abnormal that I would not have known about the investigation, or even more importantly, the content of that investigation,” Clapper said. ”So I don’t know if there was collusion or not. I don’t know if there was evidence of collusion or not. Nor should I have in this particular context.” Trump threatens to ax White House press briefings, In his Friday morning tweetstorm, the president also suggested that his administration could do away with briefings for the press and instead give out written statements. Trump added that ”as a very active president with lots of things happening,” it’s impossible for him to stay in such close communication with his staff that the briefings would be completely accurate. Schiff took issue with that as well. ”Finally, and with respect to the President’s suggestion that as a very busy person, he doesn’t have time to ensure that his spokespeople are accurately portraying his actions  —   it is difficult to know how to respond  —   except to say, being truthful with the American people is a core responsibility of the job,” Schiff said. ”If he did not want to willingly undertake even the minimal requirements of the Presidency, it would have been far better for him to have considered that before he chose to run for the highest office in the land.” Spicer also didn’t knock down the idea that press briefings in the future may be curtailed, saying that the president was dismayed over the press’s attempts to ”parse every little word and make it more of a game of ’gotcha.’ ” Trump reiterated in his interview with Fox News’ Pirro that he believes ending the briefings would be a good idea. ”Unless I have them every two weeks and do it myself, we won’t have them. I think it’s a good idea,” the president said. White House Correspondents’ Association President Jeff Mason, a Reuters journalist, reiterated in a statement that canceling briefings would be an affront to the ”  principles” of a free press. ”White House briefings and press conferences provide substantive and symbolic opportunities for journalists to pose questions to officials at the highest levels of the U. S. government. That exercise, conducted in full view of our republic’s citizens, is clearly in line with the spirit of the First Amendment,” Mason said. ”Doing away with briefings would reduce accountability, transparency, and the opportunity for Americans to see that, in the U. S. system, no political figure is above being questioned.” NPR’s Geoff Bennett and Susan Davis contributed to this report."
"When President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was one of several Republicans in Washington voicing concern. As details unfolded throughout the week, Sasse, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, continued to call the timing of the firing ”troubling,” though he maintains there is not yet a need for an independent investigation or special prosecutor to look into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Of utmost importance, he tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep, is shoring up the public’s waning trust in American institutions. ”The timing of this firing I think is very troubling because there’s obviously an active investigation into the president’s campaign and organization and associates,” he says. ”And I just wish the president would spend much more time tending to this crisis of public trust.” On what troubles him about the firing of Comey, We have a crisis of public trust in this country that is much deeper than just the last four months or the last 18 months. We have an erosion of a shared narrative about what America is about. And we have the huge unpopularity of almost all of our governing institutions. That should trouble everybody. The FBI is a really important institution in American life. We believe in three separate but equal branches. But our founders distinguished between legislative functions and executive functions and judicial functions. And so investigative and prosecutorial functions are in the second branch and so ultimately they report up to the president, but the FBI director has a   term for a reason. He or she is not supposed to be thought of as a Republican or a Democratic actor but as an impartial investigator who doesn’t really report through a chain of command that is ultimately political. On future election meddling and the further erosion of trust  We need to know a lot more about 2016, but the thing that keeps me up at night is 2018 and 2020. We know what the Russians are trying to do. We know that technology around [information operations] is getting better and better. Here’s what I think comes next: I think you’re going to start seeing data leaks in the 2018 and 2020 cycle that’ll be Steve Inskeep’s [as a fictional example of a candidate for office] credit card records. . .. And it’ll be 93 percent real stuff and 7 percent fabrications. And so it’ll all be very plausible because you were in the city at that time and then you were away from work for this travel and you did X, Y and Z but then 7 percent of the credit card records will be ”Why are you buying so much clothes at a women’s clothing store in Chattanooga? That’s weird, Steve. Your wife isn’t in Chattanooga.” And I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to have a    erosion of trust in almost every public official and almost every public institution. We should be losing sleep about that now before it starts happening, because Russia is doing this stuff to their near neighbors now. And the technology is going to get better and better. On why there is not yet a need for an independent investigation  I’m not calling for that at this time. I’m open to that deliberation as we go forward because I think that would be a vote of no confidence in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation, and I think what the American people need is to have a restoration of their trust that some of our institutions can work. Morning Edition editor Miranda Kennedy and producer Phil Harrell and Web producer Heidi Glenn contributed to this story. "
"Updated Sat. May 13 at 10:10 a. m. ET, Cyber security experts are still scrambling to contain a global ransomware attack that has infected tens of thousands of computers in nearly 100 countries, including the U. S. U. K. Russia, China, Ukraine, and India. First, there were reports of Spain’s largest telecom being hit with   windows demanding a $300 ransom, paid in the cryptocurrency bitcoin, to access files. Then, at least 16 hospitals in England’s National Health Service were affected, locking doctors and nurses out of patients’ records unless they paid up. Then came word that networks around the world were under attack Friday. The attacks are being blamed on a piece of malware called WCry, WannaCry or Wana Decryptor, alleged to have been stolen from the National Security Agency, as the Bleeping Computer site reports. It was reportedly distributed by the Shadow Brokers, which claimed to have hacked an   team of hackers last August. The Shadow Brokers group, which is suspected of having ties to Russia, posted Windows hacking tools last month. ”The problem is, once you break in, you make digital keys, you can’t really control who gets them,” tech reporter Aarti Shahani told Weekend Edition Saturday. ”So this attack is raising one of these fundamental issues that we talk about in the security world, about whether NSA surveillance protects people or creates unexpected damage that does more harm than good.” Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked evidence of the agency’s data collection program in 2013, has spoken out on Twitter to criticize the NSA for building this ”dangerous attack tool.” Yesterday he posted a New York Times article detailing the attack on the NHS in the UK, writing, ”Today we see the cost.” Victims of the attack are confronted with a   window that tells them their files are now encrypted and that they need to send $300 in bitcoin to unlock them. ”You can decrypt some of your files for free,” reads the message, which we’re seeing in a variety of languages. ”But if you want to decrypt all your files, you need to pay. You only have 3 days to submit the payment. After that the price will be doubled.” The window includes a countdown clock that threatens the files will be lost permanently in seven days. Wana Decryptor exploits a Windows flaw that was patched in Microsoft’s Security Bulletin   in March. But on machines that haven’t been updated or patched, the malicious code encrypts all of an infected machine’s files  —   and then spreads itself. ”The fact that so many organizations were vulnerable to this was quite a surprise,” cyber expert and CEO of Capital Alpha Security in the U. K. Matt Tait told NPR. ”This patch came out three months ago,” he adds. ”Infection of a single computer can end up compromising the entire corporate network,” Spain’s National Cryptologic Center says. The malware is both powerful and insidious, computer security expert Craig Williams of CISCO Talos tells Aarti: ”You could just walk up to your computer and it’s infected, even if you didn’t even touch it. You don’t have to be there. All that has to happen is your computer is on and on the network.” ”Activity from this ransomware family was almost inexistent prior to today’s sudden explosion when the number of victims skyrocketed in a few hours,” Bleeping Computer’s Catalin Cimpanu writes. Worldwide reaction, In the U. S. the Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or CERT, says it has ”received multiple reports of ransomware infections in several countries around the world.” The agency did not identify those countries. The Department of Homeland Security says it’s coordinating with ”international cyber partners” in the wake of the widespread attacks. When asked to confirm that Wana Decryptor has struck in the U. S. and at what scale, Acting Deputy Press Secretary Scott McConnell did not provide specifics. ”We routinely provide cybersecurity assistance upon request, including technical analysis and support,” McConnell says. ”Information shared with DHS as part of these efforts, including whether a request has been made, is confidential.” Commenting on Friday’s attack, Sen. Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says: ”This is big: around the world, doctors and nurses are scrambling to treat patients without their digital records or prescription dosages, ambulances are being rerouted, and millions of people’s data is potentially exposed. Cybersecurity isn’t a hypothetical problem  —   today shows it can be life or death. We’ll likely look back at this as a watershed moment.” England’s NHS says at least 16 of its organizations were hit by the ransomware. In a statement released around 11:30 a. m. ET, Friday, the system’s digital office said, ”This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organizations from across a range of sectors.” The attack also hit facilities in Scotland, where Health Secretary Shona Robison says officials are ”taking immediate steps to minimize the impact of the attack across NHS Scotland and restrict any disruption.” ”The investigation is at an early stage, but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor,” the NHS says, referring to software that is being blamed for a number of ransom attacks in Europe Friday. ”At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed,” the system says. An IT worker at the public health care system tells The Guardian newspaper that it’s the biggest problem they’ve seen in their six years working for the service. The problem erupted around 12:30 p. m. local time, the IT worker says, with a number of email servers crashing. Other services soon went down, and then, the unidentified NHS worker says, a ”bitcoin virus   message” started taking over computer screens. The U. K.’s National Cyber Security Center says it’s working with both the digital office of the NHS and law enforcement. Images that were posted online of the NHS   look nearly identical to   ransomware windows that hit Spain’s Telefonica, a powerful attack that forced the large telecom to order employees to disconnect their computers from its network and to resort to an intercom system to relay messages, according to Bleeping Computer. In an update after midnight local time, Russia’s Interior Ministry acknowledged to   Tass media that its computers had also been hit. ”As of now the virus has been localized,” ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk told TASS. ”There have been no inside information leaks from the Russian Interior Ministry’s information resources.”"
"Updated at 12:10 p. m. ET, In a memo to staff, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors to ”charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense”  —   a move that marks a significant reversal of   policies on   drug crimes. The   memo, which was publicly released Friday, lays out a policy of strict enforcement that rolls back the comparatively lenient stance established by Eric Holder, one of Sessions’ predecessors under President Barack Obama. ”This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency. This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us,” Sessions told thousands of assistant U. S. attorneys in the memo. ”By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.” He elaborated on the memo in a brief speech to the Sergeants Benevolent Association of New York City, which honored him with an award Friday in Washington, D. C. ”Charging and sentencing recommendations are bedrock responsibilities of any prosecutor. And I trust our prosecutors in the field to make good judgments,” Sessions said. ”They deserve to be unhandcuffed and not micromanaged from Washington.” Holder had asked prosecutors to avoid slapping nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carried mandatory minimum sentences, practices that, as NPR’s Tamara Keith explains, ”give judges and prosecutors little discretion over the length of a prison term if a suspect is convicted.” Holder’s recommendation had been aimed partly at helping reduce burgeoning prison populations in the U. S. Now, if prosecutors wish to pursue lesser charges for these   crimes, they will need to obtain approval for the exception from a U. S. attorney, assistant attorney general or another supervisor. But in his speech Friday, Sessions asserted that the policy change is aimed not at   drug users, but rather drug dealers and traffickers. ”If you are a drug trafficker,” he said, ”we will not look the other way. We will not be willfully blind to your misconduct.” Keith notes this marks a return to the ”   philosophy” of the 1980s and ’90s  —   a return that advocacy groups have feared for some time. ”This is a disastrous move that will increase the prison population, exacerbate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and do nothing to reduce drug use or increase public safety,” Michael Collins, deputy director at the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement emailed to NPR. ”Sessions is taking the country back to the 1980s by escalating the failed policies of the drug war.” The memo also drew a long, scathing rebuke from Holder himself. ”The policy announced today is not tough on crime. It is dumb on crime,” he said in a statement. ”It is an ideologically motivated,   approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences that are often applied indiscriminately and do little to achieve   public safety.” But Sessions argues the shift in policy is a means of fulfilling the Justice Department’s ”role in a way that accords with the law, advances public safety and promotes respect for our legal system. It is of the utmost importance to enforce the law fairly and consistently.” And Sessions made it clear that he wants this shift in policy to be immediate. ”Any inconsistent previous policy of the Department of Justice relating to these matters is rescinded, effective today,” he wrote. You can read the full text of Sessions’ memo to prosecutors at this link or by scrolling below."
"President Trump now says he made the decision to fire FBI Director James Comey on his own. That’s a shift from the original White House statement, which said the president acted on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions’ role in Comey’s firing has raised eyebrows, since the attorney general promised months ago that he would steer clear of any investigation related to the presidential campaign. ”Attorney General Sessions should not have had any involvement in this decision at all,” said Sen. Al Franken,  . ”He recused himself. And yet he inserted himself in this firing.” Sessions’s recusal came back in March, after it was revealed that he’d misled senators, including Franken, about his contacts with Russian Ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak. Sessions insisted those contacts were innocent. But with the FBI investigating Russian meddling in last year’s election and possible ties to the Trump campaign, Sessions promised to keep his distance. ”I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States,” Sessions said. Legal experts say that recusal was appropriate, given Justice Department rules against taking part in an investigation involving close associates. ”Because he was an early supporter of President Trump, obviously he was nominated to the office he holds by President Trump, he has the kind of personal and political relationship that the recusal regulation does pertain to,” said John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University. A Justice Department spokesman argues that recusal did not bar Sessions from weighing in on the decision to fire Comey. ”The recommendation to remove Director Comey was a personnel decision based on concerns about the effectiveness of his leadership,” spokesman Ian Prior wrote in an email. ”The recommendation had nothing to do with the substance of any investigation.” That argument doesn’t sway Barrett, a former Justice Department lawyer who served as associate counsel in the Iran Contra investigation. ”The problem is you can’t sort of say, ’I’m changing the Director of the FBI for B through Z’ and pretend there’s no A involved here. A is this investigation,” Barrett said. He argues Sessions should not be involved in choosing a new director for the FBI, and suggests the safest course might be to leave Acting Director Andrew McCabe in place until the campaign probe is completed. Other legal experts disagree. ”The question of Mr. Comey’s ability to lead the FBI going forward and to maintain public confidence is not the same as the question of how the existing and future investigations of the presidential campaigns should be conducted,” wrote Bruce Green of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham University Law School. ”The [attorney general’s] recusal did not explicitly cover this and, in any event, it was up to the AG to interpret the scope of his own recusal.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders made a similar case. ”Look, the FBI is doing a whole lot more than the Russia investigation,” Sanders said. ”That’s probably one of the smallest things that they’ve got going on their plate.”"
"#fakenews isn’t just a U. S. thing. And it isn’t just about politics. In India people are putting their health at risk by following spurious advice dispensed on forwards on Whatsapp, the   messaging app. Here’s one popular hoax making the rounds: an image of a blister pack of pills, warning recipients to avoid certain brands of the pain reliever acetaminophen because ”doctors advise that it contains ’Machupo’ virus, one of the most dangerous viruses in the world, with a high mortality rate.” The Whatsapp forward ends: ”I’ve done my part, now it’s your turn . .. remember that God helps those who help others and themselves!” Dr. Ranjit Mankeshwar, a professor of preventative medicine in one of Mumbai’s leading medical colleges, says he gets asked about information sourced from Whatsapp frequently. ”I see cures for arthritis, diabetes, supplements to avoid angioplasty being passed around.” All of it, he says, is ”absolutely rubbish. Someone will tell you to make juice out of papaya leaves [to cure dengue fever] or stop diabetes medication and eat basil  —   and people actually want to try it!” To address this insidious tide of misinformation, two software engineers have set up Check4Spam, the Snopes of India. The site, founded by Shammas Oliyath and Bal Krishn Birla in Bangalore, publishes rebuttals and research for the medical misinformation being forwarded on Whatsapp. ”We receive   messages a day” asking if information in a Whasapp message is correct, says Oliyath, who handles the   and general  . Birla handles the technology and traffic promotion. People forward the forwards they want verified to a Check4Spam Whatsapp account. Oliyath, a   employee at IBM, says he scans them during his lunch break. His first stop is an online search. If the hoax is a version of something already on Snopes or   he can quickly post a brief description and share the links that explain why it’s bogus. ”Or if I see a post we previously debunked, I reply with a link already saved I answer those queries during lunch time. The ones we have to debunk  —   do research and figure out  —   I put off until I finish my work and get home,” he says. Launched a little more than a year ago, Check4Spam has seen its traffic triple in the past month  —   aided by local publicity. Now Check4spam gets 250, 000 unique visitors monthly. Along with Check4Spam, a couple other services to combat fake news have sprung up in India in the past few months. BoomLive has a fake news section, and SMHoax posts the latest Whatsapp forwards with a thumbs up or thumbs down. Why do Indians love forwarding these messages? First of all, it’s easy to do. India has more than 2 million smartphones  —   and for less than 50 cents a month, customers can buy a data bundle with the Whatsapp messaging app. So Whatsapp has become a primary mode of communication for a large part of the country. Oliyath notes that India doesn’t have a culture of questioning and verifying shared information. And the messages might seem legit because alternative medicine is part of Indian culture, says Mankeshwar. ”In the West, you’re either a physician or surgeon or you’re not. Here we’ve got homeopathy, naturopathy, Ayurveda, Yunani medicine, besides modern   healthcare,” he says. ”Then there is this idea in India that homespun therapies or advice handed down over generations is more valuable: a sacred truth is contained, it will restore our health,” he says. C. H. Asrani, a family medicine practitioner, says he, too, spends a lot of time counseling patients who have ”alternate information” gleaned from Whatsapp forwards. ”The forwards are clever. They use a mix of jargon, fact and fiction, so it sounds authoritative,” he says. The Check4Spam site is really good, Asrani continues. ”They’ve done a good job backing up their takedowns with evidence and research. People who are skeptical about the forwards can see the facts, not look at yet another opinion.” ”This effort is really great,” says Mankeshwar, but he sounds a cautionary note: ”What is their reach compared to mom, dad, apartment groups and family groups and alumni groups on Whatsapp forwarding this junk all day? We need to aggressively counteract it, because it’s harmful.” As for who’s behind the barrage of medical hoaxes, that’s hard to figure out. ”Certain posts drive you to [a] website or YouTube videos, like the one that claims tomato ketchup is made out of urine and blood,” Oliyath says. ”These videos drive revenue, with the play they get monetized. But [suggesting salt water baths to prevent] Ebola and stuff, I can’t understand.” Check4Spam is funded by personal funds and revenue earned via ads on the site. But the crush of visitors is challenging. ”It’s nice to see, but it’s hard to keep pace,” Oliyath says. ”We don’t want to discourage people coming to us but the only worry is, I can’t handle the traffic. The site has six volunteers and we’re working on an app to automate some stuff,” like checking if a query already exists in the database. For the future, they’re thinking about crowdsourcing to bring in funding and getting other debunkers to contribute their findings, in multiple languages, Chhavi Sachdev is a journalist based in Mumbai. Contact her @chhavi"
"Actor and Holocaust survivor Curt Lowens died in Los Angeles on Monday at the age of 91. The cause was complications from a fall. If you recognize Lowens’ face, it’s likely from one the many times he played German officers on film, television and the stage. He portrayed a Nazi colonel in the Arthur Hiller film Tobruk, a Volkspolizei officer in Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain and a Gestapo captain in Hogan’s Heroes. He was even an SS guard in the original Broadway cast of Stalag 17.  The fact that his successful career included such roles is striking, because Lowens was a Jewish Holocaust survivor. In a post on its Facebook page, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust shared a little of Lowens’ life story: ”Curt was born in Allenstein, Germany (now Olsztyn, Poland) and was preparing for his bar mitzvah when his local synagogue was burned down during Kristallnacht in 1938. Curt’s family escaped to Holland, and Curt joined the Dutch resistance. He saved many Jewish children during the war, as well as two downed American airmen.” In a documentary about his life called Curt Lowens: A Life of Changes, produced in collaboration between the museum and local high school students, Lowens told the story of what happened to him after the war was over. ”Unforgettable,” he said. ”Oct. 17, 1944, I was liberated by the British army. I became an information person and the commanding officer said, ’Would you like to put on the British uniform and go back to Germany?’ I was, I think, 19 years old. I could have conquered Germany by myself, but it really was better to have the Allied army behind me.” Lowens then returned to Germany as an interpreter for the British, rounding up Nazis hiding on German farms. He described the turn of events in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter: ”When the Gestapo was knocking on doors and we were fearful, I now knocked on doors and picked people up.” Lowens immigrated to the U. S. and became a successful character actor. He made appearances on ER and General Hospital, and he played a Roman Catholic cardinal in the 2009 Tom Hanks film Angels  Demons. But he continued to be active in education efforts about the Holocaust. As he said in the film about his life, ”I had lucky breaks. Many people did not survive. And we need to remember them. ”"
"Wendy Robinson wants to make one thing very clear. As the   superintendent of Fort Wayne public schools, Indiana’s largest district, she is not afraid of competition from private schools. ”We’ve been talking choice in this community and in this school system for almost 40 years,” Robinson says. Her downtown office sits in the shadow of the city’s grand, Civil   Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. In Fort Wayne, a parking lot is the only thing that separates the beating heart of Catholic life from the brains of the city’s public schools. In fact, steeples dominate the skyline of the   City of Churches. Fort Wayne has long been a vibrant religious hub, home to more than 350 churches, many of which also run their own schools. While the city’s public and private schools managed, for decades, to   amicably, that changed in 2011, Robinson says. That’s when state lawmakers began the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program, a plan to allow   students to use vouchers, paid for with public school dollars, to attend private, generally religious schools. Six years later, Indiana’s statewide voucher program is now the largest of its kind in the country and, with President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos openly encouraging states to embrace private school choice, the story of the Choice Scholarship  —   how it came to be, how it works and whom it serves  —   has become a national story of freedom, faith, poverty and politics. Our story begins in Fort Wayne, where the state now spends $20 million a year on voucher students, more than in any other district. This year, $1. 1 million of that $20 million went to one private,   school: St. Jude Catholic School. The story of St. Jude, St. Jude opened its school doors in March of 1929. By 2011, when the state unveiled its voucher program, the school enrolled 479 students. That first year, a small number received vouchers: just 28. Then something happened to the program that began a remarkable shift, not only at St. Jude but across the state. Father Jake Runyon saw it happening and told his parishioners. ”We’ve been seeing some financial troubles here at St. Jude Parish,” Runyon said in a formal presentation that was recorded in 2014 and posted on the church’s website. The parish was in its third straight year of financial losses. One big reason for the losses: The church was pouring money from its offertory into the school and neglecting repairs to its steeple and cooling system. Then, Runyon shared the good news: After an attempt by the state teachers union to kill the young voucher program, Indiana’s Supreme Court had found it constitutional, allowing families to spend public school dollars in private, religious schools. Not long after, the program was expanded dramatically to include children who had never attended a public school. Suddenly, many St. Jude students qualified. All they had to do was apply. ”The effect on that this year,” Runyon told parishioners in 2014, ”it would have been $118, 000 of money we just left there, that the state of Indiana wanted to give me, and we weren’t able to take advantage of it.” Runyon’s presentation  —   since taken down from the church’s website  —   was a pitch for a new way of distributing financial aid to St. Jude students, one that would maximize the money coming in through vouchers and allow the parish to use more of its offertory elsewhere. When word of the plan reached beyond St. Jude, though, it appeared to confirm the greatest fears of public school advocates: that vouchers were a giveaway to the state’s   religious schools at the expense of struggling public schools. This year, according to state data, nearly   of St. Jude’s students now receive public dollars to help pay for their private school tuition. Runyon, who is still Pastor at St. Jude, declined repeated interview requests. In the beginning, ”Social justice has come to Indiana education,” Gov. Mitch Daniels said in 2011 after the state made several big changes to its education system. Among those changes was the new voucher program, capped at 7, 500 children, to allow   students to use state education dollars to attend private schools. ”The ability to choose a school that a parent believes is best for their child’s future is no longer limited to the wealthy.” Of the children in that first voucher class,   most had two things in common: They were   and had attended public school. ”Public schools will get first shot at every child,” Daniels said back then in a speech to the   American Enterprise Institute. ”If the public school delivers and succeeds, no one will seek to exercise this choice.” Daniels, who is now the president of Purdue University, predicted that the voucher program was ”not likely to be a very large phenomenon in Indiana.” He was wrong. In 2013, Mike Pence succeeded Daniels as Indiana’s governor, and, within months, the   president oversaw a dramatic expansion of the program. Lawmakers added new pathways for students to qualify, making the voucher more accessible to children who had never attended a public school. They also expanded the program’s reach to include some   families. Voucher enrollment doubled in one year. ”It’s actually grown almost exponentially as you look at the numbers,” says the law’s proud architect, state Rep. Robert Behning, a Republican. It’s also popular, according to a 2016 survey conducted by EdChoice, a group that advocates for vouchers and other forms of school choice. Today, more than 34, 000 students are enrolled in Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Program  —   3 percent of students statewide. To qualify, parents have to meet certain income limits. For a full voucher, worth 90 percent of what a state would spend in a public school, a family of four can earn no more than $45, 000 annually, but students whose parents earn up to $67, 000 can still qualify for a  . And for children already in the program, their family income can rise to nearly $90, 000 annually. The biggest headline from the program’s growth is this: Today, more than half of all voucher students in the state have no record of attending a public school. Exhibit A: Fort Wayne. ”We’re not losing kids from our schools [to vouchers],” says Superintendent Wendy Robinson. ”We’re now just having the state pay for kids who were never going to come here anyway.” In fact, Father Jake Runyon alluded to this in his 2014 presentation: ”The vast majority of the people who qualify for the Choice Scholarships were already here,” he assured his Fort Wayne parishioners after the voucher program expanded. ”So it’s not necessarily the case that we’re getting tons of new students. But it’s that a lot of the students are here.” Fort Wayne is a microcosm of what’s happening statewide, with tens of millions of state taxpayer dollars paying for children to attend private schools without, as  . Daniels had suggested, giving public schools ”first shot.” Behning, the law’s tireless defender, argues that all parents deserve to choose their child’s school, even those who have traditionally opted out of the public system. ”The intent of the program was to give parents choice,” says Behning. The parents of children in private schools, he says, ”are taxpayers just like the parents in a traditional public school.” This shift in the program’s rules, begun by Pence in 2013, has led to a shift in student demographics as well. White voucher students are up from 46 percent that first year to 60 percent today, and the share of black students has dropped from 24 percent to 12 percent. Recipients are also increasingly suburban and middle class. A third of students do not qualify for free or   meals. While the program was once premised on giving   public school families access to better schools, this year fewer than 1 percent of voucher students used a pathway, written into the law, that’s meant specifically for students leaving failing schools. ”When you look at that trend data, it is alarming,” says Jennifer McCormick, the state’s new Republican superintendent of public instruction, and a former public school teacher. She says of the old narrative that vouchers were largely meant to help   students escape underperforming public schools: ”That’s not necessarily the case” today. Social justice, Kayla   fits the old narrative. And she believes that the voucher she has been using for three years has provided a bridge to new possibilities. Kayla lives with her mother, Pauline Massy, in an apartment on the outskirts of Indianapolis. She attended public elementary and middle schools and wanted to stay in the system for high school, where she could join her neighborhood friends in show choir and color guard. They live near a public high school, but it received a C rating from the state and serves more than 2, 300 students. That was a problem for Kayla’s mother. ”Me being from the Caribbean, I really have a hard time with big,” Pauline says, sitting next to her daughter on their couch. She leans into the last word. ”You know, everything big.” Pauline, who now works in nursing, attended a crowded public high school herself in Brooklyn, and she worried that Kayla, despite being a good student, would get lost in the crowd. So she attended an open house at a small, Catholic school nearly an hour away. For a decade, Providence Cristo Rey has been housed in an old, public elementary school building near downtown Indianapolis. The wood floors creak, and the old water fountains hang at a  ’s height. It’s part of the national Cristo Rey Network, a chain of 32 private, Catholic high schools that serve   minority students. In the case of Providence Cristo Rey,   of those students are not Catholic. Pauline was impressed by the school’s intimacy it’s   the size of Kayla’s   public high school. It also has a better rating from the state, a B. She loved its emphasis on service and college completion and the fact that the school forges partnerships with local businesses and nonprofits to give students   work experience. Annual tuition in excess of $13, 000 made the school seem out of reach, but, with a state voucher and much of the rest of the cost covered by the school’s unique   program, Pauline was told she could enroll Kayla for just $20 a month. She was convinced. Kayla was not. She fought her mother over the move, calling other family members and begging them to change Pauline’s mind. It didn’t work. Because the school is an   bus ride away, Kayla needs to wake up early each morning. And that, she says, requires seven alarms: 5:30, 5:40, 5:45, 5:50, 5:55, 6. ”And then 6:10 is my mom’s phone call,” she says through braces and a broad, infectious smile. Pauline calls from the other bedroom, just across the hall. ”We don’t even talk,” Kayla says. ”I see her picture pop up on my phone, and I’m like, ’Man, it’s 6:10 already?’ But I do wake up.” By 6:30, the    is at the bus stop, ready for the long ride to a school her mother could not afford without the state’s voucher. ”You could have dreamed of this opportunity but just never have it,” Pauline says. After three years of this, Kayla says she’s happy and grateful for the move to private school. As proof, she points out that she is now a student ambassador for Providence Cristo Rey and knows just what to say to prospective students who seem as wary as she once was. ”I didn’t think I would like a small school, but I like how everyone knows everybody,” says Kayla, now a junior. ”You’re more open. You’re more able to relate to somebody and have a    connection with them than if you went to a bigger school.” Kayla is studying business and ultimately hopes to start her own hair salon. If either mother or daughter has regrets now, it’s Pauline. She says she was a passionate booster of Kayla’s public schools and hated to withdraw her. ”I believe in the public school system,” says Pauline. ”But now I have to worry about my child. And that might be selfish. It feels selfish on some days when I think about it. But I have to do what will get her to where she needs to be.” The money question, It should come as no surprise that vouchers have become a cornerstone of Providence Cristo Rey’s finances. Unlike many   private schools, it focuses on   minority students with college ambitions. Nearly every student there receives a voucher. As a result, 31 percent of the school’s total receipts last year came from vouchers, according to its annual report. This year it received $1. 4 million from the Choice Scholarship program. But vouchers have also had an important effect on more traditional private schools  —   and more affluent ones. Roncalli High School, on the opposite side of Indianapolis, is named for Pope John XXIII (born Angelo Roncalli) and receives close to $1 million a year from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. Its manicured campus includes a fine arts building and a gleaming stadium for its football team, the Rebels. Roncalli, which received an A rating from the state, currently enrolls roughly 1, 200 students. One in five qualifies for free or   meals. ”The overwhelming majority [of students] are middle class, suburban  —   I call ’em good, suburban rats,” says Chuck Weisenbach, who has been Roncalli’s principal for 22 years. He repeats the line with a smile, making clear he means it affectionately. ”You know, they’re just middle class, suburban rats.” Weisenbach says he fully supports the voucher program. Echoing Daniels, he believes giving   families access to   schools like his is ”one of the greatest social justice issues our country’s facing  —   because we know education is also proven to be the most consistent avenue out of poverty.” While nearly every student at Providence Cristo Rey receives a voucher, a far smaller share of Roncalli students qualify: 30 percent. Still, given the larger size of Roncalli’s student body, that adds up to about $1. 5 million this year. And that money has allowed the school to scale back the financial aid it offers. According to the school’s vice president of finance, Dave Gervasio, the year before vouchers came along, Roncalli provided students with roughly $870, 000 in financial assistance. For next year, it’s budgeted to provide $420, 000. As a result of that $450, 000 savings, Gervasio says, they’ve been able to put more money into teacher salaries, classroom technology and a special emergency fund in case the voucher program ends someday. Today, roughly 40 percent of all private school students in Indiana receive a state voucher. The program has allowed many financially stable schools, like Roncalli, to save and invest elsewhere. For schools that were financially strapped  —   and, with Catholic school enrollment plunging in recent years, there are many of those  —   vouchers have been a lifeline, not just in Indiana but also in Milwaukee, home to the nation’s oldest voucher program. In a recent study of Milwaukee’s program, researchers found ”vouchers are now a dominant source of funding for many churches” and that parishes ”running   schools get more revenue from vouchers than from worshipers.” Also, it’s important to consider not just where the money is going in Indiana’s voucher program but where it’s coming from: a state education budget that, because of its unusual dependence on sales tax, has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. According to Indiana University’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, Indiana spends less per pupil, after adjusting for inflation, than it did in 2009. Meanwhile, it’s spending $146 million on private school vouchers this school year  —   compared to a projected $6. 8 billion in its public schools. Rep. Behning points out that the state spends less on a voucher student than it would if that student were in a public school. What’s left, he says, particularly the money a district raises locally through property taxes, ”stays in the public school system.” But, in Indiana, most of a school’s    classroom funding comes from the state. Local money is generally limited to covering things like building maintenance, debt and transportation. Those are not incidental costs, but when a public school loses a student to the voucher program, it loses thousands of dollars that help pay for teachers and classroom costs. The state has also created so much new demand for limited resources that, last summer, its Department of Education, then under Democratic control, released a report that Republican lawmakers dispute. It suggested that in subsidizing so many students who had never attended public school, the voucher program had actually created a $53 million deficit. In the early years of the program ”there was a small savings” to the state, says Molly Stewart, a researcher at CEEP. ”But the last two or three years, since they expanded the pathways, it’s been in the negative $50 million range  —   more state money going to education costs.” The state requires little financial transparency from private schools that benefit from vouchers, and, in rare cases, the lack of oversight has allowed them to mismanage state funds. In   a small, private Indianapolis school was approved to continue receiving voucher payments despite an investigation by the state attorney general’s office and multiple lawsuits alleging it had not paid teachers and defaulted on loans. And in 2014, 80 Catholic schools returned $3. 9 million to the state after a financial review by the Indiana dioceses found errors in calculating the cost of voucher scholarships. They cited ”misinterpreted complex guidelines” for the errors that were not uncovered by the state. Lawmakers also scuttled a recent effort to require   private schools to submit annual financial reports, in part because of Behning’s opposition. ”I look at voucher schools, when it comes to financial issues, in a very similar way that I think the state should look at any vendor we do business with,” Behning told the IndyStar. ”If we receive services, we should give them a payment. How they handle that payment, as long as they’re not doing something illegal, is not in the state’s jurisdiction.” Robert Enlow believes there’s a double standard at the bottom of this transparency debate. ”I will argue that   schools are far more transparent [than public schools],” says Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice, a school choice advocacy group. He calls the Choice Scholarship program ”rigorously accountable” and complains that ”just getting a   statement from a traditional public school district is impossible.” Enlow also points out that, when it comes to academic accountability, Indiana stands out among voucher states. Its   private schools are accredited and required to administer the state test. They must also submit to the state’s   system, which grades schools based on various benchmarks, including test scores and graduation rates. Private schools can even be prevented from accepting new voucher students if they receive a D or F rating for two consecutive years, though lawmakers recently agreed to let these struggling schools apply for a waiver that would allow them to continue. Turning kids away, Unlike voucher programs in some other states, participating private schools in Indiana have the freedom to do what they’ve always done: admit or reject students based on their own guidelines, even if those students are using   vouchers. Behning defends that decision, saying it was important that schools retain their ability to be selective. ”The one reason we let schools have some admissions criteria is we did not want to change the very fiber of those schools.” What qualifies as fiber? A spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Education, Adam Baker, says ”a private school can deny a student based on past academic performance or prior disciplinary action,” among other criteria. Some schools post GPA requirements on their websites. Struggling students need not apply. Ditto students with a suspension. This has raised fears among the state’s public school leaders that private schools are  . ”Anecdotally, yes, we hear that schools can ” Baker says, but he insists that the state has ”never received a formal complaint from a parent.” Behning’s ”fiber” isn’t limited to academic performance or behavior. Some private schools also require parents to certify that they are members of the church that manages the school or to sign a statement of faith. In its online admissions packet, Lighthouse Christian Academy in Bloomington lays out its expectations of students. It lists ”behaviors prohibited in the Bible” to include ”homosexual or bisexual activity or any form of sexual immorality” and ”practicing alternate gender identity or any other identity or behavior that violates God’s ordained distinctions between the two sexes, male and female.” The school then makes clear that, ”in situations in which the home life violates these standards, LCA reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant or to discontinue enrollment of a student.” Lighthouse received $665, 400 in state voucher dollars this year. The 2011 voucher law prohibited the state from regulating ”curriculum content, religious instruction or activities, classroom teaching, teacher and staff hiring requirements, and other activities carried out by the eligible school.” When it comes to selectivity, private schools in Indiana enjoy considerable freedom  —   so much, in fact, that it might be more instructive to ask: For what reasons can they not deny a student admission? Baker, the Department of Education spokesman, says private schools ”cannot deny children based on race, color, national origin or disability” in accordance with state civil rights law. Yet there is evidence that these protections are limited and open to interpretation. ”They do not have the resources to support the child” Just outside the Indianapolis city limits, Carol Crawn sits at her breakfast table scrolling through Facebook. Behind her, in the living room, the Today show plays quietly on a television over the fireplace. Her    daughter, who is on the autism spectrum, sleeps quietly on the sofa, her hair an explosion of ringlets. Crawn is a special education teacher by training and an advocate for people just like her  —   parents of children with disabilities who are trying to navigate a state education system that doesn’t always have their child’s interests in mind. Case in point: Crawn points out a recent Facebook thread among a community of Indianapolis parents. It begins: ”How do school vouchers work?” ”I’m not clear on the details,” says one commenter, ”but I do know that private schools do not have to provide accommodations for students with special needs.” This, says Crawn, is a common concern among parents of students with disabilities. They’re not sure why the system isn’t working for their children, but they’re sure it isn’t working. A   advocate with Family Voices Indiana, Crawn tries to connect these parents with resources. When she first noticed the Facebook thread, she posted, in part: ”What happens in private schools frequently [is that they] will not accept a child with a disability into their school because they do not have the resources to support the child.” Crawn knows firsthand, even though her family does not qualify for a voucher. ”I had asked for an   meeting to discuss options, and they refused,” Crawn says of one private school where she had tried to enroll her daughter. The school rebuffed her after seeing her daughter’s Individualized Education Program, or IEP, a public school document that outlines a student’s special needs. ”They said, ’Send us her IEP via email,’” Crawn remembers. ”And then they said, ’No, we’re not equipped to handle her. ’” Some schools, like Roncalli High, the Catholic school in Indianapolis, do have the resources and are more inclusive. Among its offerings for   students is what Principal Chuck Weisenbach calls its Life Academy. The program includes academics, work study and time spent in a mock apartment where students cook for themselves, budget and do their own laundry. But it’s a very different story at Kayla  ’ private school, Providence Cristo Rey. ”Public schools can work with a special ed. kid and provide wraparound services because they receive [extra] dollars from the state,” says Emil Ekiyor, a school spokesman. ”Well, we don’t receive that so, if we take that student, we’d be doing an injustice to that family because we just can’t provide all the services they need.” According to state data, Providence Cristo Rey did not enroll a single student this year who requires special education services. Liberty Christian School’s two campuses, in Anderson, received more than $1. 5 million this year in state vouchers but include this caveat in their admissions policy: ”Liberty Christian School may not possess the resources to provide for students who have . .. a physical handicap, which would impair the learning process under normal educational conditions” or ”a learning disability for which our program is not staffed.” This year, 8 percent of Liberty Christian’s 521   students receive special education services. That’s higher than many   private schools but well below the state average, 14. 5 percent. This is key to understanding Indiana’s voucher program. Public schools are required to accept all students, regardless of disability. Voucher schools are not. In many cases, it’s not the students who choose the schools but the schools that choose the students. ”That is discrimination,” says Robinson, the Fort Wayne superintendent. What does the law say? Most students are protected from school discrimination by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. But private, religious schools are exempt from the ADA, and most voucher schools in Indiana are religious. Voucher schools argue that they’re not discriminating they’re simply being honest. And the state appears to agree with them. The Indiana Department of Education says it encourages these schools to be upfront with families about their limitations. If they don’t believe they can serve a student with special needs, they should say that. The parent doesn’t have to choose that school. When NPR pointed out that some private schools are, indeed, discouraging and even turning away special education students, the department said it has never received a formal parent complaint of discrimination. Baker, the Department of Education spokesman, wants to be clear, though: The state’s new, Republican superintendent, Jennifer McCormick, would like to see change. Her administration believes any school ”that receives public dollars should be held to the same standard. We’ve made that known,” Baker says. ”Unfortunately, that’s not in our hands to make that change. That’s a legislative decision.” In other words, lawmakers created the program. Only they can change it. In the meantime, Robinson, the Fort Wayne superintendent, says state data prove that special education students are being turned away: ”Just look at the records. The gen. ed student is in a private, parochial school. The special ed student’s [in public school].” NPR did look at the records. Here’s what we found: In Fort Wayne, Robinson is right: Students who receive special education services are much more likely to attend public schools, where federal law guarantees they will get a free, appropriate education. More than 15 percent of the city’s public school students are considered special education. But the average special education rate at private schools now being used by Fort Wayne voucher students is less than half that, 6. 5 percent. And Fort Wayne is the rule, not the exception. Seventeen percent of public school students in Indianapolis receive special education. In private, voucher schools used by Indianapolis students, the rate is 7 percent. It’s the same story in Evansville (16 percent in public schools vs. 7. 5 percent in voucher schools) and Gary (14. 5 percent vs. 3. 5 percent) and, in fact, most other school districts across the state. It’s easy to forget that these data are built of human stories, like Ashley’s. She’s a mother in the Indianapolis area who used vouchers to enroll her two daughters in a local, private school affiliated with their church. ”Without the voucher,” Ashley says sitting at her kitchen table, ”we wouldn’t have been able to do that. And we’re really grateful that we had that choice.” Her    son, Isaac, who is on the autism spectrum, giggles in the other room. He loves being tickled by a visiting therapist who specializes in what’s known as applied behavior analysis. Out of concern for her children’s privacy  —   and because Ashley wants to maintain a cordial relationship with her church and daughters’ school  —   we are using her first name only. Ashley hoped that Isaac could attend private school alongside his sisters, and she reached out to the principal of her daughters’ school. ”But [the principal] didn’t feel that she could offer Isaac what he needed, and so that was kind of, uh, where that stopped,” she says, clearly hurt but also not wanting to hurt the school her daughters love. ”I think every   parent goes through periods of grieving, sometimes when your expectations don’t meet reality. Or you don’t have the opportunities that you had hoped to have for your child. And I think, in my mind, I had a very optimistic view of him being alongside his sisters.” ”I don’t think there’s any question that private school choice programs are not set up to take students with disabilities,” says Julie Wright Halbert, legislative counsel for the Council of the Great City Schools. ”And I think it’s extremely concerning.” This phenomenon even came up earlier this year, in a heated Senate hearing: ”Many of us see this as the potential for turning our public schools into warehouses for the most challenging kids with disabilities or other kinds of particular issues,” said Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, whose son has cerebral palsy. Enlow, of EdChoice, argues that the way Indiana funds its voucher program, giving private schools less money per student than it gives to public schools, makes it difficult for voucher schools to serve   students. ”If we’re really talking about equity here,” Enlow says, ”we’re actually saying that you should fund a kid based on what they need, not worry about what school it is.” He also questions the expectation that every school be able to serve every child. ”One size fits all doesn’t actually fit anyone,” Enlow says. ”We need to have a fairly honest conversation about how do we serve all kids at the school that serves them best  —   not, how does every single school serve all kids.” Choice desert, To understand school choice in Indiana, it’s also important to look where choice isn’t available. In central Indiana sits the small, rural town of Eminence. It’s home to a gas station and convenience store where farmers gather each morning for coffee and conversation, a post office, bank and Indiana’s   school district. Here, life revolves around the district’s only school. ”Everything starts at the school,” says Sarah Finney, Eminence Community Schools’ PTO president. ”We have community events there. People who can’t afford to have funerals, have funerals there.” Memorials to former students ornament the school’s walls. A cabinet packed with basketball trophies sits across from class photos dating back to 1901. Finney always planned for her sons, ages 5 and 8, to attend the   district with about 375 students, from   through 12th grade. Her husband’s family has for generations. ”Our kids know everybody,” Finney says. ”The parents know everybody.” While much of the state focuses on private school choice, this tiny district fights its own battles. Chief among them? Enrollment. About 1 in 6 students has left in the past five years. When an Eminence student leaves, so does roughly $6, 870 in state funding. Officials say a recent property tax hike, grants and a new     program have kept them from going in the red. Yet dropping enrollment can’t be chalked up to private school choice, like elsewhere in the state. There are no private schools nearby. ”I’ve never come across one family looking for a voucher for private,” says Corey Scott, Eminence principal. ”Most of them are in this community just trying to stay afloat.” It’s a common sentiment across rural Indiana. Small populations mean few private schools  —   and little incentive for new ones to open. The closest private schools that accept vouchers are a   drive from Eminence. Pushes from state and national politicians for private school choice aren’t relevant to the area, Scott says. ”To be completely honest, I just ignore everything they say and do,” she says. ”They’re going to make decisions regardless of anything that we have to say.” Indiana lets students hop borders to attend other public schools. That has created some problems for Eminence, a   district, though students aren’t leaving because of academics. According to several school officials, the main reason parents cite for leaving is sports. Eminence is too small to field a football team. Still, Scott worries that decisions made on the national stage could trickle down to her district. As the Trump administration’s education priority centers on school choice, she has one question: ”What do you do with the rest of us?” What the research says, While it’s clear that many children have been left out of Indiana’s voucher program  —   because of geography, grades or special needs  —   34, 000 students are now enrolled. For them, it’s important to ask: Are they better off academically? Researchers Mark Berends of Notre Dame and R. Joseph Waddington of the University of Kentucky have spent years studying Indiana’s voucher program and its impact. While they’ve not yet released their statewide results, they have published a narrower view  —   of Indianapolis kids in grades  . The numbers aren’t promising. Students in Indianapolis who left public schools to attend private Catholic schools, for example, experienced no benefit in reading but ”moderate and statistically significant average annual losses in mathematics compared with the gains they experienced while attending traditional public schools,” the report says. Berends adds that’s ”roughly like students moving from the 50th percentile down to about the 44th percentile” in math. And, he says, that’s the effect over the course of one year. ”So, if this continues over multiple years,” Berends warns, ”you can see that that’s a pretty dramatic drop in achievement. By analyzing additional years, we’ll be able to see if further losses occur or not.” While it’s not yet clear whether students performed similarly statewide, Berends says his Indianapolis results are consistent with studies of voucher programs in Louisiana and Ohio. A new review of the only federally funded voucher program in the country, in Washington, D. C. also found academic declines among students who used a voucher to attend a private school. In 2015, Dennis Epple, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, helped lead a bird’s eye survey of voucher research. Of the ”tightest” studies he reviewed, ”the evidence from those studies with respect to achievement is something of a disappointment for people who are strong proponents of vouchers,” Epple says. ”Overall, the achievement effects . .. were limited. There is some evidence that   students benefit from vouchers, but that evidence is quite limited and not robust.” As a result, Epple and his fellow researchers wrote that, while vouchers appeared to improve outcomes for some students in some settings, ”the empirical research on small scale programs does not suggest that awarding students a voucher is a systematically reliable way to improve educational outcomes.” A 2017 review from the   Economic Policy Institute came to a similar conclusion. Martin Carnoy of Stanford University writes, ”extensive research on educational vouchers in the United States over the past 25 years shows that gains in student achievement are at best small.” One small, potential benefit from vouchers has shown up in multiple studies: a bump in public schools’ performance as they compete with private schools. ”That is one of the more robust effects,” says Epple. ”Competition improves the performance of the public schools that are most closely threatened, for want of a better word, by the voucher program.” Epple points to public school improvement in Florida and Milwaukee. Researchers found similar evidence of a bump in Ohio. Ironically, this suggests that one of the most consistent benefits of vouchers is enjoyed by students who choose not to use them. What’s next? ”I think Indiana is in an interesting situation right now,” says Jennifer McCormick, the state superintendent. ”Because we have six years that we’ve had the program. Our charge right now is, what is that next step?” Her answer: Review the program and whether it’s a wise use of taxpayer dollars. ”You know, we’re spending roughly $146 million on a program and not really reviewing it,” McCormick says. ”That is irresponsible.” Superintendent Wendy Robinson, in Fort Wayne, doesn’t need a review. She is emphatic that vouchers are ”an assault on public education.” The program’s architect, Rep. Behning, pleads patience. Six years, he argues, is still not enough time to judge the state’s school choice experiment. What’s more, student performance is just one measure of vouchers’ success or failure, Behning says. ”Parents choose for a variety of reasons. It’s not always academics . .. I think the best judgment is parental choice.” In other words, for the program’s defenders, choice isn’t just the vehicle, it’s the destination. An EdChoice survey of voucher parents, conducted last summer, is instructive. Among the   reasons parents cited for enrolling their child in a private school, ”better academics” ranked second, not first. At the top of the list was ”religious  .” ”It is not the government’s responsibility to tell me where to educate my children,” says Weisenbach, principal of the private Roncalli High in Indianapolis. ”That’s not only my right, it’s my duty. And I shouldn’t have the government telling me based on some random, geographic location that I have to go to this public high school.” And Behning argues that the program can be judged a failure  —   or unnecessary  —   when parents stop choosing to use vouchers to leave the state’s public schools. The problem with that standard is that more than half of this year’s voucher class didn’t leave a public school  —   because they’ve never attended one. What Gov. Mitch Daniels said in 2011, that ”public schools will get first shot at every child,” is simply not true anymore. And this gets to the question at the heart of the debate over school choice in Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Eminence and nationwide. What is the purpose? If it’s to give parents more options, then Indiana can check that box. After all, 34, 000 students are now using the voucher program. If the purpose is to help   children find schools where they’re more likely to learn, grow and succeed, that’s happening for some of those 34, 000, to be sure. Just ask Kayla  . But research suggests that vouchers may also be doing more harm than good for many students  —   and are not opening doors for children with expensive special needs or low grades or who don’t have parents like Pauline Massy to make sure they catch the bus every morning and finish their homework every night. As the nation looks to Indiana as one model for private school choice, one thing is clear: Choice is in the eye of the beholder. Peter   covers education for Indiana Public Broadcasting. Eric Weddle reports for WFYI Public Media in Indianapolis."
"Cooked chicken from birds grown and raised in China soon will be headed to America  —   in a trade deal that’s really about beef. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced Thursday night that the U. S. was greenlighting Chinese chicken imports and getting U. S. beef producers access to China’s nearly 1. 4 billion consumers. But the deal is raising concerns among critics who point to China’s long history of   scandals. The Chinese appetite for beef is huge and growing, but American beef producers have been locked out of that market since a case of mad cow disease cropped up in the U. S. in 2003. In response, many countries, including South Korea, Japan, Mexico and China, banned imports of U. S. beef. China was the only one of those nations to not eventually lift its ban  —   and that’s a big deal. ”It’s a very big market it’s at least a $2. 5 billion market that’s being opened up for U. S. beef,” Ross said in announcing the trade deal. Many people long had seen China’s refusal to lift its ban on U. S. beef imports as a negotiating tactic, a tit for tat aimed at allowing Chinese chicken imports into the United States. The negotiations that led to the new trade deal have been going back and forth for more than a decade, stalled at one point by worries in Congress over China’s   practices. American beef producers are rejoicing that the process has finally resulted in allowing them to send beef to China. ”After being locked out of the world’s largest market for 13 years, we strongly welcome the announcement that an agreement has been made to restore U. S. beef exports to China,” Craig Uden, president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said in a statement. ”It’s impossible to overstate how beneficial this will be for America’s cattle producers, and the Trump administration deserves a lot of credit for getting this achieved.” The U. S. should be cleared to export beef to China by  . That’s also the deadline for the U. S. to finalize rules for the importation of cooked chicken products from China. Why cooked chicken instead of raw? ”For a country to be able to ship meat and poultry products into the U. S. they have to demonstrate that their   inspection system is equivalent to the system here in the U. S.,” explains Brian Ronholm, who served as deputy undersecretary for food safety at the U. S. Department of Agriculture under the Obama administration. ”The equivalency determination process for China as it relates to processed [cooked] chicken products had been underway, and this deal expedites this process,” he says. ”China also is seeking equivalency for their inspection system for slaughter facilities, but that will be a longer process.” Given the many outbreaks of avian flu China has experienced, there are also worries that if raw Chinese poultry were processed in the U. S. it could potentially contaminate American plants or somehow spread to birds here in the States. Tony Corbo, a senior lobbyist for the food campaign at Food  Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group, has been raising concerns about efforts to open the U. S. market to Chinese chicken imports for years. He questions the Chinese government’s ability to enforce   standards, given its poor track record. That record includes rat meat being sold as lamb, oil recovered from drainage ditches in gutters being sold as cooking oil, and baby formula contaminated with melamine that sickened hundreds of thousands of babies and killed six. In 2014, a Shanghai   factory that supplied international restaurant brands including McDonald’s and KFC was caught selling stale meat, repackaged with new expiration dates. Corbo points out that last December, China’s own Food and Drug Administration reported it had uncovered as many as a   cases of   violations just in the first three quarters of 2016. That said, the USDA has gone to China to inspect plants that would process the chicken to be shipped to America. But Corbo finds little comfort in that. ”You don’t know from moment to moment how China is enforcing   standards,” Corbo says. In recent months, a team from the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has traveled to China to train Chinese officials in meat safety. One thing Thursday’s trade deal did not address: U. S. poultry exports to China. The U. S. used to send a lot of chicken feet over to China, where they are a delicacy. But China banned U. S. chicken imports in 2015, after an outbreak of avian flu in the Midwest. China ”was a $750 million market just a few years ago, and now it’s essentially zero. It was one of our most important markets,” says Jim Sumner, president of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council. But Sumner isn’t worried about the new competition from Chinese chicken in the U. S. In fact, he welcomes it as an important step in reopening the Chinese market to U. S. poultry producers. ”Trade is a   street,” he says. It’s not clear how soon after   we can expect to see cooked chicken products from China in U. S. supermarkets. Sumner says he doesn’t expect the product to overwhelm store shelves, because the economics of raising chickens in China and then shipping them to America still favors U. S. producers. Maria Godoy is a senior editor with NPR News and host of The Salt. She’s on Twitter: @mgodoyh"
"A shooting at a nursing home in Ohio left four people dead on Friday morning. The deceased were the Kirkersville police chief, two employees of the nursing home and the suspected shooter. The Columbus Dispatch reports: ”The chief responded to a report of a man with a gun at the Pine Kirk nursing home at 7:50 a. m. in downtown Kirkersville in western Licking County. ”He was shot after he entered the nursing home. When authorities entered the nursing home, they found three other people dead. Two victims were employees of the nursing home, and authorities believe the [other] person was the shooter, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said. . .. ”In the last communication authorities received from the chief, he said he had the shooter in sight. Thorp said he assumes [Chief] Disario had engaged the suspect.” Chief Steven Eric Disario, 36, had been on the job for only three weeks, member station WOSU reports. He was a father of six, with another child on the way. WOSU spoke with Kathy Rogers, who owns a thrift shop in downtown Kirkersville. Rogers said she heard multiple shots: ” ’I heard the first shot. I thought it was a tire blown out,’ Rogers said. ’I went back in the house, and I heard another one, and that’s all I know. Then I heard sirens. It got crazy.’ ”Rogers says she heard several other gun shots, then a man ’yelling and screaming.’ ” Kirkersville Elementary was placed on lockdown and its students transported to the town’s middle school. Pine Kirk Care Center is a   facility in a converted residence, the Dispatch reports. ”They cater to the forgotten members of society  —   folks that have, in addition to physical health care needs, behavioral health issues,” Peter Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care Association, a nursing home industry group, told the newspaper. He noted that nursing homes are required to be open to the public so that people can visit their loved ones. Ohio Gov. John Kasich tweeted that he was ”shocked  pained by the horrific shooting in Kirkersville, ask for prayers for those injured. Grateful for law enforcement’s quick response.” Kirkersville is a small town of 590 people about 25 miles east of Columbus."
"On Friday, two different streaming services present the first seasons of new drama series. Both are based on novels written by women, both have female characters squarely at their center  —   and both come to TV with accomplished women producers overseeing their adaptations. One of them, on Amazon, is a fairly modern story, with Jill Soloway, the creator of Amazon’s groundbreaking Transparent, adapting Chris Kraus’ provocatively titled 1997 novel, I Love Dick. The other, a Netflix   with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is a new, somewhat less glossy version of a children’s classic. Moira   an     from the Breaking Bad team, adapts the   1908 Lucy Maud Montgomery novel, Anne of Green Gables. Set a century apart, these two different stories, and two different TV series, actually have a lot in common. Both are adapted in creative and exciting ways. Both are exceptionally good at getting into the heads of their main characters. And both of the protagonists in these stories are fighting, almost with every breath and every word, to free themselves from the confining norms and rules and expectations of their surroundings  —   especially the ones aimed at suffocating or limiting their gender. Anne of Green Gables was made into an outstanding miniseries shown by PBS in 1985. I adored it, and so did my young daughter. This new version, called Anne with a E, can also be shown to, and enjoyed with, young children. But it’s a few shades darker and deeper, injecting occasional flashbacks showing the young orphan Anne’s traumatic experiences before being sent to live with an elderly brother and sister at Green Gables. These brief but disturbing scenes  —   the equivalent of Cinderella being abused by her family  —   explain why Anne escapes into books and has a vocabulary and imagination as large as her heart. Matthew Cuthbert, the   elderly brother, escorts Anne home by   cart after meeting her for the first time. He barely gets a word in edgewise. But by the time that trip is over, Matthew is charmed by her completely  —   and so are we. R. H. Thomson plays Matthew, and Amybeth McNulty, in a perfectly nuanced   turn, is Anne.     and freckled, Anne is so eager to love and be loved that she even sees trees as friends. The orphanage, though, had sent Anne to Green Gables by mistake. Matthew and his flinty sister, Marilla, played beautifully by Geraldine James, had requested a boy. When Anne arrives at the farmhouse, Marilla tells the girl they must return her tomorrow  —   but Anne, and her feminism, won’t give in without a fight. Why, she asks, can’t she do what a boy can do? What if, suddenly, there were no boys? Over at Amazon, on Soloway’s I Love Dick, a wannabe filmmaker named Chris fights a similar fight. Played with admirable rawness and perfectly timed humor by Kathryn Hahn, the rabbi from Transparent, Chris’ fight is against one man  —   the successful and charismatic artist named Dick, who runs a residency artist program in Marfa, Texas, to which her husband has just been accepted. And her fight is complicated, because, paradoxically, she’s extremely attracted to him  —   immediately, and almost to the point of obsession. That mixture of infuriation and infatuation is easy to understand when Dick is played, playfully and perfectly, by Kevin Bacon. When Dick, Chris and her husband, played by Griffin Dunne, have an introductory dinner together, Dick starts talking to the husband  —   but pivots, almost immediately, to confront Chris. Dick plays with Chris by pushing her buttons  —   and it works. He tells her that maybe she hasn’t made a film because she doesn’t have the passion to  —   and besides, that women just don’t seem to make very good films. She responds by spurting out names of female filmmakers she respects  —   and leaving the table. But his fiery combativeness stays with her. Chris begins to take out her frustrations and explore her fantasies by writing letters to Dick that she doesn’t send. That’s her verbose way of coping, at first. And back at Green Gables, Anne talks herself into, and out of, every situation that comes her way. By the end, Anne’s won her way into the hearts of everyone around her. Chris, on I Love Dick, not so much. But both of these new series are as strong, and as dynamic and entertaining, as the female characters at their center."
"Today marks the launch of something both old and new in Detroit: a streetcar down Woodward Avenue. The streetcar opened to the public on Friday morning, after 10 years of planning and political wrangling. The six streetcars make a 6. 6 mile loop  —   3. 3 miles each way  —   connecting downtown Detroit with the New Center neighborhood, which was home to General Motors until it decamped downtown two decades ago. Along the way, passengers can stop at Comerica Park and Ford Field (home to the Tigers and Lions, respectively) Wayne State University, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Fox Theatre and the Detroit Opera House. In the fall, Little Caesars Arena will open along the line, which will house the Red Wings and the Pistons, marking the first time since 1974 that Detroit’s four major professional sports teams will all play in Detroit. The streetcar is called the QLine Quicken Loans paid $5 million for the naming rights. The line is owned and operated by a nonprofit organization called   Rail. Quicken’s founder and chairman Dan Gilbert was one of a number of Detroit’s   businessmen and philanthropists who funded the $182 million project, alongside Penske Corp. ’s Roger Penske, the Kresge Foundation’s Rip Rapson, and the late Mike Ilitch, founder of Little Caesars Pizza. An additional $37. 2 million comes from the federal government, according to the Detroit Free Press. Transit projects in America are often   but this one had its own particular woes. ”The city was a financial mess, and tried to absorb   Rail as part of a larger public rail project,” writes Bill Shea at Crain’s Detroit Business: ”Then Detroit ran out of money, fell under state control, and declared bankruptcy. One financial backer, General Motors, also went bankrupt and had to reorganize. One mayor went to prison, and three others eventually came and went. The nation fell into recession. Eventually, the federal government, state, and city tried to kill   in favor of bus rapid transit. ”The project’s backers persevered. Eventually, they pulled it off. No matter what you think of the QLine, it’s been a survivor. It just took a decade.” Portland, Ore. ’s ”modern streetcar” has been a model for similar projects in other cities at least 15 U. S. cities have launched streetcar systems since 2000. Streetcars have often been criticized as expensive alternatives to buses. But their backers say that streetcars aren’t really about transit, they’re about development. ”Streetcar systems are held to a pretty high standard in terms of being . .. successful right out of the gate. I think what you see in most cities is that it takes a while for people to understand where it goes and how it fits into their life and how to use it,” Portland Streetcar Executive Director Dan Bower told the Free Press. ”Don’t rush to judgment. This is a   investment. You don’t build rail for today, you build it for tomorrow.”   Rail echoes that sentiment in its economic impact report. It claims $7 billion in new investments on either side of the streetcar’s path since 2013. ”What the QLINE has done is take the entire length of Woodward from the river to Grand Boulevard and provide an attractive reason to develop and redevelop,” Eric Larson, president of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, said in the report. ”So a lot more of the infill opportunities that were not quite ready are now sitting in a very good position.” The organization is careful to manage expectations. ”The QLINE does not ensure the success of Detroit’s revival after six decades of population loss and disinvestment,” says the report. ”Rather, it’s an important first step toward bringing efficient mass transit to a region that has repeatedly failed to agree on a plan.” That failure to agree persists. In November, voters in the Detroit metro area narrowly defeated a proposed $4. 6 billion millage proposal to expand regional transit. The millage was intended to create bus rapid transit, a rail line between Ann Arbor and Detroit, and other services. Indeed, a primary criticism of the QLine is that it only serves the parts of Detroit that are already bouncing back, and that Woodward Avenue is already well served by bus lines. A dozen or so members of the Motor City Freedom Riders, an organization that advocates for bus riders, protested Friday’s grand opening. ”I’m excited about the QLine, which is some public transit that’s desperately needed,” Candace Cooper told The Detroit News. ”But I’m looking forward to when we have public transit for the region.” Streetcar lines can also make biking dangerous, as bicycle tires can easily be caught in the tracks. In Detroit, cyclists are being encouraged to pedal on Cass Avenue, a parallel street. And there could be other issues. In January, according to Portland Streetcar’s Bower, snow in Portland made it hard for drivers to find the curb, and they ended up repeatedly blocking the streetcar dozens of times. D. C.’s streetcar was involved in at least eight fender benders before it even launched to the public. And in Cincinnati, cars parked on the rails in front of a popular brewery have been ticketed more than a hundred times. So if there’s one lesson to be gleaned from other cities, it’s that a major obstacle to Detroit’s streetcar system will likely be its most famous export: the automobile."
"The Marine Corps has released a recruiting ad that, for the first time, focuses on a female Marine in combat. The commercial comes as the Corps faces intense scrutiny over sexism within its ranks, including a scandal over male Marines sharing nude photos of female Marines without the women’s consent. The commercial  —   called ”Battle Up”  —   shows a young girl standing up to bullies, playing rugby in the rain and growing up to be a Marine. In the ad, she powers through an obstacle course and engages in a firefight as a   describes the ”fighting spirit.” In the final scene, she helps with outreach to the homeless. The woman in the ad is played by a Marine who served in Afghanistan, Capt. Erin Demchko. The Associated Press spoke with her about the experience. Here’s the wire service on the goal of the ad: ”For a Corps that has struggled with the perception that it is the least welcoming of women among the military services, the new ad is part of a campaign to appeal to a new generation of Marines. It is also a bid for more female recruits for ’the few, the proud,’ particularly athletes capable of meeting the tough physical standards required. ” ’The water was 27 degrees and coated with a layer of thick ice,’ said Marine Capt. Erin Demchko, describing the great difficulty of the [gantlet] all while being surrounded by camera crews. ’Giving the film production staff what they wanted, while maintaining my bearing as a Marine officer and trying not to look cold, was a challenge.’ ”Demchko, a deputy commander at Camp Courtney in Okinawa, Japan, is part of the Marine Corps’ expanding effort to recruit women. The smallest military service has the lowest percentage of women and wants at least 10 percent representation by 2019. While female Marines occasionally have appeared in ads and been featured in online videos, this is the first time a woman is the focus of a national television commercial for the Corps.” Maj. Gen. Paul Kennedy, the head of Marine Corps Recruiting Command, told the AP that the goal of the commercial is to show recruits that the Marines aren’t ”only looking for a few good men.” ”We’re actually using all of our recurring efforts to find good women as well,” he told the wire service. The ad was released online Friday. It will be airing on TV later this month, reports Task  Purpose, a news site for veterans. As NPR reported earlier this year, hundreds of Marines are under investigation for reportedly distributing nude photos of female service members and veterans to a Facebook group with thousands of members. Bill Chappell wrote about the scandal in March: ”When the photos were shared via Marines United  —   a Facebook group that’s intended for male Marines and Marine veterans only  —   they drew bawdy and obscene comments, according to two nonprofit news sites, the War Horse and the Center for Investigative Reporting. ”According to War Horse founder Thomas James Brennan, many of the photos on the Marines United page included personal information about the female service members, from their name, rank and duty station to the names of their social media accounts. ”The Facebook page also included links to a Google Drive with even more images  —   and an invitation to any members to contribute photos. The images were obtained in a variety of ways, Brennan reports, from sharing by former partners to stalking and, potentially, the hacking of service members’ personal accounts.” Last month, Maj. Janine Garner spoke to NPR about the harassment she has received from other Marines online after an innocuous photo  —   of her and seven other female Marines smiling in uniform  —   was shared on a Facebook group. ”I watched in real time as hundreds of people commented on this photo and said things like they wanted to rape us,” she told All Things Considered. ”And these were leaders in the Marine Corps. . .. The problem is the treatment of one Marine to another, and that is completely unacceptable and goes against our core ethos and values.” Garner suggested that increasing the number of women in the Marine Corps  —   currently about 7 percent of the force  —   would be one way to combat the culture of sexism."
"At least one person has died of the Ebola virus in Democratic Republic of the Congo in recent weeks, according to the World Health Organization. WHO says tests reflected the disease’s presence in the body of the victim  —   one of nine people in the remote northern corner of the country to contract hemorrhagic fever since April 22. Three of them have died, though at this point, only one case has been confirmed by the country’s National Institute of Biomedical Research as the Zaire strain of Ebola.   province, the area of the outbreak, rests in a remote northern stretch of DRC, on the border with the Central African Republic. WHO’s Congo spokesman, Eugene Kabambi, says that is reason for reassurance. ”It is in a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky,” Kabambi said, as quoted by Reuters. ”We always take this very seriously.” It’s clear why: The Ebola epidemic that hit West Africa in 2014 killed more than 11, 300 people before WHO finally declared the region   last year. But since that epidemic, the world has also gained a new weapon against the disease, holstered in anticipation of another outbreak: a vaccine called  . ”We were able to estimate the efficacy of the vaccine as being 100 percent in a trial,” Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, told NPR’s Michaeleen Doucleff last December. ”It’s very unusual to have a vaccine that protects people perfectly.” But Doucleff is careful to offer a caveat: ”No vaccine  —   or drug for that matter  —   is perfect. The efficacy of the vaccine is clearly high but not ’100 percent.’ That value reflects the fact that they just haven’t tested the vaccine on enough people yet. So it is likely to decrease as the vaccine is used over time. In the end, the efficacy is likely to sit somewhere between about 70 percent and 100 percent, Longini says.” Even at 70 percent, it would outpace the effectiveness of the flu vaccine, which hovered around 50 percent in 2015. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization says it has 300, 000 doses of the vaccine available in case of a widespread emergency."
"Inflatable beds can be cheap, which is good news for consumers who want an alternative to pricey traditional mattresses. But their uneven, soft, impermeable surfaces are dangerous for babies, and can increase the risk of sudden infant death. The dangers may be particularly acute for   families, a recent essay in the American Journal of Public Health argues. Without knowing the dangers of putting babies to sleep on an inflatable surface, ”people without a lot of disposable income may seek out an air mattress as a permanent alternative,” says Jennifer Doering, a public health researcher and nurse at the College of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and one of the authors of the paper. And, she notes, ”infant death tends to affect racial and ethnic minorities more often than Caucasian populations.” Doering specializes in research about product safety and infant sleep environments, and says she sees a multiple troubling trends around infants and air beds. Bedbug infestations in American cities have required people to dispose of traditional mattresses, and decreased the willingness of some charitable organizations to accept mattress donations, she writes. Simultaneously, the inflatable bed industry has expanded. ”We’re starting to see people using them more full time as a sleep solution, rather than the    just comes over,” says Matthew Whalen, the director of risk management for the company Intex, which he describes as the largest distributor of air mattresses in the world. In an Amazon. com search, eight of the top 10 results for ”air mattress” were manufactured by Intex. And, Whalen says, there is anecdotal evidence that suggests people with less income may be turning to inflatable beds more. ”Air mattresses have gotten less expensive,” he explains. The cheapest inflatable mattresses on Amazon are around $20. It all adds up, Doering says, to a potentially risky situation for young children. Doering and a   report that 108 infants died in connection with sleeping on an air mattress between 2004 and 2015, according to data from 24 states, collected in the National Child Death Review Case Reporting System. That number is relatively small compared to the total number of infants who die of accidental suffocation or strangulation in bed. In 2015, that number was about 900, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the issue of air   infant death is enough of a concern that regulators looked into it. In 2014, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced it had worked with the industry and child safety advocates on new safety labeling. ”We recommend that infants under the age of 15 months should not be put to sleep on an inflatable air mattress,” says CPSC Acting Chairman Ann Marie Buerkle. Whalen and a colleague at Intex helped develop the safety labels, which are printed on the package and on the side of the air mattress. Doering says the labels are a good start, but that protecting infants from inflatable beds requires more than safety labels. ”You know, you buy it, you might look at it once, but are the rest of your family members going to look at it every time you blow it up? No, not necessarily,” she says. She notes that many pediatricians don’t know to warn parents about the dangers of putting an infant to sleep on an air mattress, and that safe sleeping materials from the American Academy of Pediatrics do not warn parents specifically about the dangers of inflatable beds. Similarly, there appears to be no prominent mention of inflatable mattresses in the website for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s federal ”Safe To Sleep” public education campaign, although the CPSC’s landing page for the campaign does include a link to a warning poster. ”It has to be multiple strategies,” says Doering. That includes health care professionals, position statements from organizations and sleep education brochures, she says, to get the message out in multiple ways."
"In the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s victory in November, numerous liberal mayors and police chiefs across the country affirmed their commitment to making their cities sanctuaries for unauthorized immigrants. In Seattle, the day after the election, for example, Mayor Ed Murray said, ”These are our neighbors, and we will continue to support our neighbors. We can’t allow ourselves to be divided and sorted out. That’s not America.” But while Murray’s police department promises not to inquire about residents’ immigration status in most cases, is it still a ”sanctuary” city if the police department allows federal immigration authorities direct access to information about residents? Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents show that for years, law enforcement in hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide, including major sanctuary cities like Seattle, Washington, D. C. and Los Angeles, are feeding information into regional databases that can be combed through by ICE. When ICE needs information on residents for raids or criminal investigations, these regional databases can give ICE crucial information, like phone numbers, addresses, and comments about individuals’ scars, marks and tattoos that may have not made it into federal records. Such   information can be helpful for ICE agents, especially in sanctuary cities where ICE often conducts immigrant raids in lieu of formal cooperation with local authorities. Local and federal law enforcement leaders argue that such data is crucial in carrying out criminal investigations that pose national security or   threats. But while this access to local data is generally supposed to be used for law enforcement purposes, immigrants’ rights activists worry such data sharing channels could harm immigrant communities, especially as the president casts a wider net in his illegal immigration crackdown. For instance, he has prioritized for deportation those who are accused but not charged with a crime. Where ICE can mine local law enforcement databases, Since at least 2011, ICE officials have been able to search for information from nearly a thousand law enforcement agencies across the country, authorized by formal agreements struck between ICE and regional law enforcement groups. In an email, ICE spokesperson Matthew Bourke confirmed the agency can still directly ”ping” for information in all of these local law enforcement databases, noting that none of these past   agreements have been invalidated since the first ones were signed in 2008. Below is a 2011 ICE map visualizing the law enforcement databases which ICE can still access. Bourke says no new agreements have been signed since a privacy impact assessment in October 2011. (A Freedom of Information Act request for the text of these agreements has been filed.) While other DHS agencies can also access these local law enforcement databases, past reports suggest that ICE is the primary department accessing this information. According to a 2011 DHS report, for example, between August 2010 and February 2011, ICE conducted 77 percent of all DHS agency searches of local law enforcement databases. Most of these searches pulled from state databases, such as those of Arizona and Texas, and metropolitan regional databases, such as those of the greater Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, and Washington D. C. areas. Past estimates have found that these states and metropolitan regions feature some of the deepest concentrations of unauthorized immigrants nationwide. Currently ICE has access to local law enforcement databases, organized by states, such as Arizona and Texas, and metropolitan regions, such as the greater Seattle, Los Angeles, and Washington D. C. areas. In Arizona, AZLink, the database that experienced the most DHS searches during this period, pools together information from numerous law enforcement agencies across the state. In the months following the election, most   sanctuary jurisdictions involved in these agreements have not indicated that they plan to cut off these   channels with ICE. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, says that it is not taking any steps to prevent ICE from accessing the information it feeds into a larger countywide law enforcement database. ”This is a crime fighting tool that enhances the Los Angeles Department’s ability to conduct thorough investigations as criminals are not isolated solely to Los Angeles, but commit crimes nationally,” said LAPD spokesperson Patricia Sandoval in an email. Kevin Harris, a spokesperson for D. C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, stated that D. C. also plans to continue sharing data with a regional database accessible to ICE, though noted that such data does not include residents’ immigration status and is restricted for ”law enforcement purposes only.” Seattle Police Department spokesperson Sean Whitcomb did not directly respond to inquiries about the city’s data sharing channel with ICE, stating in an email, ”Seattle is a welcoming city and we support the rights of undocumented residents.” Immigration rights advocates argue such data sharing, even if restricted to   purposes, as in D. C. still undermines these cities’ status as sanctuaries. Neema Singh Guliani, a legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office, said that many unauthorized immigrants have committed   criminal offenses that ICE could target for ”  purposes. ”Things that stem purely from immigration status, such as driving without a license or using a different Social Security number for work, are treated as crimes,” says Guliani. ”So just because they’re saying it’s a   purpose, doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt most immigrants and further the Trump administration’s agenda.” How local police data is used by federal immigration authorities, Local law enforcement data can be used in ICE investigations against a wide variety of targets, from suspected terrorists and drug smuggling organizations to unauthorized residents who have failed to comply with removal orders, according to Claude Arnold, a former ICE Homeland Security Investigations special agent. Arnold said that information from local criminal databases drives   ICE investigations, helping agents connect the dots among networks of human traffickers, money launderers, and other criminal organizations. ”We do a lot of intelligence sharing with locals, like the LAPD’s child porn investigation unit,” says Arnold. ”The purpose of that data sharing is for criminal investigations, and it is used to keep the country safe.” But Arnold also acknowledges that local law enforcement information, funneled through ICE’s intelligence unit, can contribute to immigration enforcement, such as home raids against those who have not shown up to court to receive final orders of removal. ”So, for example, if ERO [ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wing] is doing an operation against fugitives with orders of removals, the intelligence people will give them their data,” says Arnold. Government estimates over the last three years have found that the majority of unauthorized immigrants do not show up to court hearings in which their final removal orders are issued. When trying to find unauthorized immigrants at large, agents often rely on both private and public sources of data, like utility records and law enforcement databases, says John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE in 2013 and 2014. ”They have target lists of known undocumented immigrants, and then they tap into local law enforcement and drivers’ license databases,” says Sandweg. ”The main thing is to get the addresses, but 50 percent of these addresses aren’t good, so sometimes they follow leads and end up at churches or workplaces.” Sandweg stresses, however, that ICE already has its hands full just trying to deploy agents to pick up unauthorized immigrants from jails that do honor ICE’s detainer requests. Local   experts say their information may be particularly useful to ICE, given that federal databases often lack information captured during arrest, booking, and jail encounters. ”ICE doesn’t itself collect the granular information we get from our jail, where we have emergency points of contact, phone numbers, and addresses,” says Joel Rivera, a Division Chief of the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office, whose department feeds into a Texas state database accessible to ICE. ”The database will also show case file numbers, so they can call us to get access to the full case files with even more information, like who has visited and called them in jail.” This trove of granular data can then be linked to ICE’s sophisticated data visualization tools. Aristides ”Harry” Jimenez, a former ICE Homeland Security Investigations deputy special agent, notes that ICE agents deploy   software from the   firm Palantir to discover connections between individuals, their addresses, and their property. ”When you have large volumes of transactions, you can start to see patterns and associations,” says Jimenez, who notes that Palantir’s software allows authorities to see network connections in what he calls ”a   format.” Guliani, with the ACLU, claims bulk data sharing practices between law enforcement and federal authorities could unfairly net unauthorized immigrants in ICE criminal investigations for   immigration related offenses or simply for ties to others under investigation. ”These databases may include information on people who have been arrested but not charged or arrested for protests,” says Guliani, ”And there’s a concern that this is providing a wealth of data to ICE to implement new policy lots of states or localities are trying to resist.” The looming battle over immigrant data, ICE access to law enforcement data could be particularly important for ICE actions in   sanctuary jurisdictions, where immigration authorities say they must carry out more ” ” arrests in light of local authorities’ refusal to hold unauthorized immigrants who have been deemed deportable by ICE beyond their release dates. Information culled from local police databases, such as addresses, could be more important for these more logistically intensive operations, which sometimes target homes and public spaces. ”Sanctuary policies make it hard,” says Arnold, ”You are going to have to put more people on research and have more people waiting at the back door, so it is becoming more labor intensive.” Liberal politicians like New York City mayor Bill De Blasio have promised to fight potential efforts by immigration authorities to access to local databases, referring specifically to New York City’s municipal identification database. But law enforcement officials doubt any localities will actually move to cut off data from immigration authorities, especially when it comes to law enforcement information. ”Politicians do a lot of talking, but even if they tried to cut off databases, I’m sure ICE would find a back door,” says Jimenez, who points out that information sharing also occurs between ICE and other federal   agencies, who also utilize local   data. ”Are they really going to cut off access to the FBI, the Marshalls and everyone else, just to cut off ERO? It will be impossible to do that unless they want to become an island.” Guliani notes that the task of cutting of data flows to immigration authorities would not be easy, but that localities and states can take action by recrafting the agreements they’ve entered into with federal authorities. ”It’s very clear that DHS is trying to implement its policies by exploiting data and trying to get its hand on as much as possible,” says Guliani. ”So states and localities need to map out their flows of information to ICE and other components of the federal government who share with ICE, and create provisions about how this data will be used and protected so it is not used to harm undocumented communities.” How such efforts would affect local enforcement is still up for debate. Bill Kalaf, a former director of   policing at the Mesa Police Department, who designed the state’s law enforcement database, AZLink, says such attempts would harm law enforcement’s ability to conduct investigations. ”Criminals don’t respect law enforcement boundaries, so why should information?” says Kalaf, who points out that this data is crucial to investigations into gang and other criminal activity. ”I think it’d be a problem for law enforcement if people pull out their information.” Guliani, for her part, asserts that continued local data sharing with federal immigration authorities could deter residents in immigrant communities from sharing information crucial to law enforcement. ”I don’t think there is a simple solution, but for law enforcement, you don’t want undocumented individuals to be afraid of calling or interacting, thinking information they give could be used for deportations,” says Guliani. George Joseph is a writer and Demos Emerging Voices Journalism Fellow based in New York whose work appears in The Guardian, The Verge and CityLab. Follow him @georgejoseph94 "
"Oh people: it’s been one of those weeks again. The focus on immigration continues, as the government promises to punish sanctuary cities and cities that have chosen not to do ICE’s work for it by detaining undocumented immigrants until that agency can collect them for deportation. A number of police departments, including the LAPD, have indicated widespread fear of deportation in immigrant communities has had deleterious effects on how the police do their jobs. Stories like this one just increase the anxiety. In LA, reports from victims of sexual assaults are down 25 percent from this time last year. The prevailing theory is that victims, many undocumented (or from   families) are afraid that if they come forward, they’ll expose themselves to deportation, which will separate them from their loved ones. And while much of the focus has been on deportations of Latinx, other groups have been under increased scrutiny. The Atlanta Black Star notes black African immigrants  —   especially ones from countries with large Muslim populations  —   are also on the end of ICE’s  . The acceleration ignores the fact that many Africans waiting to immigrate to the States, or who are here already, have been approved for refugee status. With a new stay on refugee resettlement, though, many are now in limbo. Noting that there are about 50, 000 undocumented Irish in the US, immigration activist Tia Oso says, ”If this was about immigration, then the undocumented Irish and European folks would be a part of the roundups. The people being deported are from Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. So this is about keeping America white, not making America great.” Standing up for Meals on Wheels: Free agent Colin Kaepernick opened his wallet and donated $50, 000 to Meals on Wheels after it was announced that the program would be severely hurt by proposed federal budget cuts. The former San Francisco 49er has pledged one million dollars to organizations that work to help   and   communities. He’s also trying to raise $2 million in drought relief for Somalia. Kaepernick is only the latest in an elite club of activist athletes. In The New Yorker, Hua Hsu takes a look at how recent athletes have used their fame, fortune and knowledge of social media to take political stands   tell us what’s on their minds. Calling all blerds: Google maybe has a l’il something for you: The San Francisco Chronicle reports Google is creating a     for students from HBCUs who are interested in Tech. Launched in partnership with Howard University, the   summer program, which is being called Howard West, begins this year, with   rising Howard juniors and seniors. Next year it will expand to include students from other HBCUs. You needed this and you didn’t even know it: writer Jeff Yang and blogger Phil Yu are now on a podcast! They Call Us Bruce gives us a    look at what’s going on in Asian America. Episode 1 takes on Iron Fist, the new Netflix show based on a Marvel comic about a white guy who is taken in as an orphan by a group of Asian monks. A white guy who is taught by and then   his Asian mentors? It is, as Phil and Jeff point out, ”problematic.” (And do not get Gene Demby started on this  —   but listen out for him to talk about it him on a couple of weeks. ..) Finally, take a listen to the Code Switch podcast, where Shereen gets into the Iranian side of her Persiarican heritage. It’s for Persian New Year, which started this week. Listening will make you hungry. Also this week: National Puppy Day (Thurs.) Go hug a baby dog, or rescue one from a shelter. You’ll both feel better. See you next week."
"In 1624, as Portuguese colonists were making their way through the east coast of Africa, a woman named Nzinga ascended to the throne of Ndongo (now Angola). She spent decades fighting off invaders, both from Portugal and neighboring African kingdoms, and became a legend among her people and around the world. Nzinga is one of the first people that Mikael Owunna, a     photographer, thinks of when people tell him that queerness is  . ”The thing about Nzinga is her title was Ngola, and Ngola means king,” Owunna said. ”Nzinga ruled dressed in full male clothing as a king, and she had a harem of young men dressed as women who were her wives. So in the 1600s, you basically had a butch queen with a bunch of drag queens for wives leading a fight against European colonization.” Finding historical representations of queerness in Africa is important to Owunna because growing up he was flooded with messages that his sexuality and cultural heritage were at odds. ”When I read that history, I understood really kind of fundamentally that Africans, we have been here. We’ve been at the forefront. And even when you read about the way gender and sexuality are talked about, it’s not just one way. Every different community has a different way to understand gender and sexuality.” When Owunna was unwillingly outed to his family at 15, the solution to what some family members perceived as a problem was to send him from his hometown of Pittsburgh to his parents’ native Nigeria to reconnect with his roots. ”Because the idea was if I get   to my culture, there’s no way that I would be this way,” Owunna said. ”This is an American thing. This is because I grew up in America.” For several years, Owunna traveled to his family’s hometown in Nigeria twice a year. But when he was eighteen, he said through laughter, ”They found out that I was still gay.” The winter after he started college, Owunna was sent to Nigeria again. This time, he was put through what he described as a series of exorcisms to try and change his sexuality. A healer poured hot oil all over his body in an attempt to drive out whatever was making Owunna gay. ”In that context, I felt like I couldn’t be Nigerian and queer, because I was put through so much trauma and abuse,” Owunna said. ”I ran away from everything Nigerian, everything African for years.” But eventually, Owunna started to question the idea that he couldn’t be both queer and African. His current project, Limit( less) pushes back against the belief that being queer is at odds with being African by interviewing and photographing people who embody both identities. Most of his subjects so far live in the United States and Canada, with origins from Somalia to Morocco to Cameroon. Owunna said that working on this project has been a way to link his experience to a larger community. Almost everyone he has interviewed processed similar messages growing up. ”They’d heard that [being queer] is  . That it is not of our culture. It’s a Western thing, it’s a disease from white people. All of these kind of really crazy things that have been taught to us through colonization over centuries.” The perception that queerness is   has been reinforced legally in some countries. According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA)   sexual acts are illegal in 33 African countries, and punishable by death in Sudan and parts of Nigeria. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has been quoted as saying that homosexuality could potentially ”disturb the African moral fabric.”   discrimination against LGBTQ individuals became widespread with British colonialism. A Washington Post investigation revealed: ”The idea that the   tolerance towards homosexuality somehow sprang from a western source doesn’t hold. ..Looking at a variety of data on 185 countries, we found that former British colonies are much more likely to have laws that criminalize homosexual conduct than former colonies of other European powers, or than other states in general. For example, 57 percent of states with such a law have a British colonial origin. Almost 70 percent of states with a British colonial origin continue to criminalize homosexual conduct.” Working in the United States and Canada, Owunna and the people he photographs have had the ability to be fairly open about their sexuality and identities. In several of their    the same wouldn’t be true. Nigeria, for example, is one of seven African countries with a law on the books that ”target[s] freedom of expression related to sexual orientation.” Owunna said during interviews with his subjects many described experiencing trauma, hurt or alienation. The lives of the people he works with are complicated, he said. But he has a different vision when he photographs them. ”Despite all of these circumstances, we still are whole individuals and can live full and free lives,” he said. ”What I really specifically try to do with my work is envision what a free world for black, queer, and trans people can look like. So with every click of my camera, I’m trying to capture this sort of emancipatory vision.” His subjects style themselves, and he likes to shoot them in or near their homes. Some of the people Owunna shoots are comfortable in front of the camera. Others are shy. To help get a sense of who they are and what they want to convey, he often spends a full day with each person before taking a single shot. After one memorable shoot, Owunna passed his camera to a woman he was profiling so she could take a look. She was silent for a long time, and then explained to Owunna what she saw in his work. ”She’d been telling herself that her goal was to be a certain type of person in five or seven years,” he said. ”But looking at the photos, she could see that she was already that person that she was envisioning and dreaming to be. She was that person today. That’s when I realized I was capturing something special and magical.” In June, Owunna will bring Limit( less) to Europe, where there are about four times as many African immigrants as in the United States. He wants to explore issues that LGBT African refugees are facing. And he wants to continue to push the boundaries of what it means, and what it looks like to be queer and African today. ”Because Africa has like a billion people,” Owunna said. ”It’s ridiculous that we try to homogenize it. But it comes from colonialism, where the West, Europeans, saw the black body as this mass, this homogenous mass. .. And so we’ve internalized that to be like, ’Oh this is not African. This is not us.’ Whereas being African has always been about abundance and about richness. It’s been about possibility.”"
"The first season of Master Of None, the thoughtful Netflix comedy starring Aziz Ansari and created by Ansari and Alan Yang, was one of the best pieces of   to come out in 2015. Now, about a year and a half later, they’re back with a second season that is even better, more ambitious, more creative and more moving than the first run was. Ansari plays Dev, an actor who left New York at the end of the first season to get away from a breakup with his girlfriend Rachel (Noel Wells). When Season 2 begins, Dev has been in Italy for some time, looking at new scenery and learning to make pasta. He’s been making friends, too. I would say more about the first of the 10 new episodes that dropped on Friday morning, but one of the sublime pleasures of the series in its second season is that the episodes are formally surprising, experimenting with style and structure in ways that never seem like quirkiness for its own sake, but like decisions made in order to underline what’s happening thematically. For instance, one midseason episode focuses on characters you wouldn’t expect to spend so much time with, not merely because it brings something fresh (though that’s true) but because it acknowledges and thus reduces the solipsism that can come through in a series that does nothing but examine in closer and closer detail one man’s journeys through the city with his pals. By the very act of making that episode, the show contextualizes Dev differently, as a man who is engaging and entertaining, but who is surrounded by people in New York who are just as interesting and significant as he is. It makes the focus on him explicitly arbitrary, at some level. It makes him seem smaller, more fragile, and more at the mercy of a much bigger world. But perhaps the best thing about this second season is its steady reliance on the episode as the unit of television. As television has started to involve itself more deeply in serialized storytelling, one of its constant tensions is between people who value the integrity of an individual episode and people who don’t  —   people who want you to think of a   series as ”an   movie,” or whatever the case may be, interrupted for reasons of convenience, but really just one big chunk, structured thusly. What Master Of None is doing so well in its second season is having the best of both worlds: It’s a story that deepens and intensifies throughout the season, but it builds individual episodes to make them creatively distinct. For instance, one episode focuses on a single supporting character over a period of many years. One is styled like an old movie. One is nearly an hour long  —   the others are all not much over a    —   for reasons that make perfect sense and are fully justified by the context of the story. What the show looks and sounds like, and how it’s put together, can change from episode to episode, but it remains faithful to who Dev is and what his struggles are. Guest stars abound: Bobby Cannavale as a   TV host, Ansari’s parents as Dev’s parents (they were in the first season, too) several wonderful actresses and comics (Aparna Nancherla and Condola Rashad among them) in a ragtag tour through Dev’s dating app adventures, and a guest I just don’t want to spoil, because if you haven’t heard about   I want you to be as surprised as I was. Every now and then, a show puts together a run of episodes in which it seems like all the pieces are perfectly fit together: the style, the writing, the acting, the things that make it familiar, the things that make it new and the ideas around which it’s revolving. In particular, although Dev’s dating life provides a lot of fodder for jokes in both seasons, Season 2 engages with real and false ideas about love in a way that seems to flow naturally from the   that led to Ansari’s thoughtful book, Modern Romance, a couple of years ago. Ansari and Yang demonstrate a real understanding of how entwined love is with imagery, and how real love is so intoxicating that staying prepared to make the rational choices it requires can be brutally difficult. It’s a season that’s somehow both   and modern, particularly when it explores both the serious and funny sides of how text relationships work  —   the way simple exchanges stand not only for themselves but for all the things it means that you’ve chosen to have them. To text an old girlfriend ”hello,” for instance, is not just ”hello”  —   it is ”Hello, now you can try to figure out why I decided to text you.” These 10 episodes are rewarding, wise, moving and suffused with an experimental energy that not every ”here’s a single person bumming around with friends” comedy can offer. Gobbled up in a bunch or spaced out over a few viewings, they have a whole lot to offer."
"A new Texas law banning sanctuary cities has outraged Democrats, immigrant advocates and police chiefs. Joining the opposition is a tiny, defiant city on the Mexican border. El Cenizo is a city that fought for its very existence. It’s all of half a square mile, located on the twisting Rio Grande just east of Laredo. It has fewer than 4, 000 residents and only eight city employees. Many of El Cenizo’s original residents came over from Mexico, some illegally. Mindful of its citizens, the fledgling city passed a ”safe haven ordinance” 18 years ago that the city’s mayor, Raul Reyes, says prohibits city officials from inquiring and disclosing the legal status of the people who live there. ”That’s it. Simple as that,” Reyes said. But all these years later, it’s not that simple. In January, President Trump issued an executive order threatening to withhold federal funds from   sanctuary cities. It’s now tied up in the courts. On Sunday, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a controversial law that forbids local officials from following policies like the one in El Cenizo. Under the law, every peace officer in Texas must have the option of checking the immigration status of anyone they legally detain.  The law also punishes local officials for failing to hold jailed immigrants for federal immigration agents looking to deport them. Abbott says the law  —   which goes into effect Sept. 1  —   will get dangerous criminal immigrants off the streets. ”Citizens expect law enforcement officers to enforce the law, and citizens deserve lawbreakers to face legal consequences,” Abbott said in a YouTube video released Sunday night. ”Texans expect us to keep them safe and that is exactly what we are going to do by me signing this law.” El Cenizo, along with Maverick County, are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Texas law filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens. It argues that the state of Texas ”may not commandeer” local officials to enforce federal law. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund expects to file a second lawsuit, arguing that the ”show me your papers” law in Texas is unconstitutional. Mayor Reyes vows his city will not rescind its safe haven ordinance. ”If they want to throw me in jail, go ahead,” he said. ”I strongly believe in what we’re doing.” El Cenizo has been on the hotseat before. In 1999, when the city passed the safe haven ordinance, it approved another rule declaring that all city business would be conducted in Spanish, the lingua franca of the southern border.   advocates from across the country howled, but the ordinance still stands. Reyes was in high school then. The popular    mayor  —   who’s about to get his Master’s degree in public administration  —   is now in his seventh term. He insists that El Cenizo is not protecting unauthorized immigrants. ”The true reasoning behind this is because nobody should have to live in fear of the people who they expect to protect them and work for them,” he said. That would be the El Cenizo Police Department, five volunteer officers who don their uniforms after work and on weekends. The mayor says the little city is all for law and order. In fact, he supports construction of a border wall along El Cenizo’s riverside, a favorite crossing point for human and drug smuggling."
"A muggle mystery is afoot in the U. K. Sometime over a span of a week and a half in   a burglar (or several) broke into a property in a Birmingham suburb, stealing jewelry and one item that’s even more valuable  —   certainly to Harry Potter fans, at least: an   handwritten prequel to the series, scrawled on a postcard by J. K. Rowling herself. ”The only people who will buy this unique piece are true Harry Potter fans,” West Midlands Police announced in a statement Friday. ”We are appealing to anyone who sees, or is offered this item for sale, to contact police.” The rarity sold for roughly $32, 000 at a 2008 auction to benefit Dyslexia Action and English PEN, an advocacy group for free speech and human rights. The postcard is signed by Rowling and, according to CNN, graced with this postscript: ”From the prequel I am not working on  —   but that was fun!” The New York Times sums up the story contained within the card’s modest dimensions: ”The prequel, set shortly before the birth of Harry Potter, centers on his father, James, and his mentor, Sirius Black. The men have a dustup with a pair of police officers, from whom they escape on broomsticks, according to reports in the British news media.” Now, both law enforcement and Rowling are asking not only for information on its whereabouts, but also for   among any superfans who happen to be offered the card. ”PLEASE DON’T BUY THIS IF YOU’RE OFFERED IT,” Rowling tweeted Friday."
"After four chords, the notes start to fly  —   Danilo Brito and his four collaborators, three Brazilians and one American, are off like jackrabbits in front of a hound, having hustled their instruments to the Tiny Desk at the end of a North American tour. Brito a    mandolin player, made his first record when he was a teenager, plays a type of music called choro (pronounced ” ”). It’s said that choro started in the streets and back yards and made its way to the concert hall. Brazilian musicians of all genres have drawn on choro, from popular composer Antonio Carlos Jobim to Heitor Villa Lobos, one of the giants of Latin American classical music. Its literal translation from the Portuguese is ”to cry,” but in Brito’s dextrous hands a better translation may be ”crying out to be heard.” You can hear Brito and his colleagues play their arrangement of Villa Lobos’ ”Melodia Sentimental,” originally written for voice and orchestra, behind the Tiny Desk, but what you’re actually hearing is a kind of formal Rodas de Choro, the circles of players who developed this music more than a century ago and have carried it on to the present. Only  —   in the backyards, they don’t wear suits and ties. Danilo Brito is available now. (iTunes) Set List, Musicians, Danilo Brito (mandolin) Carlos Moura (  guitar) Guilherme Girardi (guitar) Lucas Arantes (cavaquinho) Brian Rice (pandeiro) Credits, Producers: Tom Cole, Bronson Arcuri Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Director: Colin Marshall Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri, Colin Marshall Production Assistant: A Noah Harrison Photo: Ariel  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"When Yomi Wrong was born in 1972, doctors told her mother, Sarah Churchill, the newborn may die during the night. Yomi was born with a rare genetic disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta, which causes bones to break under the slightest pressure. ”Your skull was fractured your arms, your ribs,” Sarah explained to her daughter at StoryCorps in San Francisco, Calif. Doctors told Sarah the best thing to do was to leave Yomi in the hospital because she probably wouldn’t survive. ”There was no way that I was going to leave you there.” In the days following her birth, Sarah would spend the night with her newborn, mother and child together as one, sitting in a hospital rocking chair. ”I remember our hearts touched each other.” Growing up with a rare genetic condition was tough for Yomi. She kept track of her bone fractures, but it got out of control. ”I would fall or, I remember one time, one of my sisters dropped an orange on me, and that broke something,” Yomi remembers. ”You could look at me too hard and I would break.” It was her mother’s love that kept Yomi strong. A love that she wishes she could have passed on to someone. ”You know one of my regrets is that I didn’t have my own children,” Yomi tells her mom. ”I think one of the biggest desires for wanting to mother is to be able to carry on this legacy of love that you started with me.” Though Yomi will turn 45 this month, she often thinks about what happened the day she was born. It was the day doctors told her mother that Yomi would be a burden if her family took her home. The day, Yomi says, her mother picked her. ”You tell me often that you believe I picked you . .. but I also feel like you picked me. If you had walked away and left me there when I was born, nobody would have looked askance.” ”I felt that you were a part of me,” Sarah says. ”I knew that I made the right decision.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jud  . StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"In March, President Trump called opioid abuse in the U. S. ”a total epidemic,” and issued an executive order creating a commission focused on combating the opioid crisis. On Wednesday, the White House announced it would appoint Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Harvard Medical School researcher Bertha Madras to the commission, which is headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Now, the secretary of health and human services, Tom Price, is touring communities that have been hit especially hard by painkiller and heroin overdoses. Price spoke to NPR’s Rachel Martin shortly after visiting West Virginia. He talked about his agency’s role in combating drug addiction, as well as the potential impact of the health care bill recently passed by House Republicans. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. On the administration’s approach to opioid abuse in the U. S. The purpose of this tour is to punctuate the president’s commitment to solving the opioid crisis. The numbers, as you know, were absolutely astounding: 52, 000 overdose deaths in 2015, [and] 33, 000 of those by opioid overdose. So what we’re trying to do is to learn from folks on the ground. What are their best practices? What kinds of things are they doing that are working to solve this crisis? On the resources being promised to state governments, Well, this administration’s commitment to this is unparalleled. There are hundreds of millions of dollars that are coming forth to fight the opioid crisis. Just two or three weeks ago we let, from the federal government, over about $485 million of grants to states. So resources are important but they’re not everything, because we’re still losing as a nation in this arena. On President Trump’s budget proposal to reduce funding for the Office of National Drug Control Policy by 95 percent, Yeah, this is an office within the White House  ” not within the Department of Health and Human Services, but within the White House. I think if you step back and look at the entire federal spending on the opioid crisis, folks will see that, in fact, hundreds of millions of dollars more [in] spending is occurring on the opioid crisis. . .. The budget’s a work in progress, so I don’t know that any final decisions have been made [about funding] but the president’s commitment to this challenge is unquestioned. On the health care bill recently passed by House Republicans, Well, the health care proposal itself is an effort to try to save the health care system from the challenges that it currently has. Premiums are going up deductibles are going up. So, it’s failing the very people that it’s supposed to help. The goal of the of the new health care legislation is to improve that system so that every single American has access to the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their families. On the current loophole in the Republican health bill that would allow states to stop requiring insurers to cover essential benefits, including substance abuse treatment, No, what [the bill] does is stipulate where those decisions should be made. Should those decisions be made at the federal level or should they be made at the state level? And there’s a mountain of evidence that demonstrates that, when those decisions are made at the state level, they’re more responsive to the . .. constituents."
"Updated at 7:33 p. m. ET, Aboard a short flight on Air Force One Saturday, President Donald Trump told reporters he could find a new leader to fill the vacancy left by sacked FBI Director James Comey by this Friday, when he leaves on his first foreign trip since taking office. After comments that the administration intends to move ”very quickly” on the process, a reporter in the White House press pool asked the president if that could mean finding a permanent replacement to spearhead the agency by the end of the week. His response: ”Even that is possible.” At least eight candidates met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Saturday, including Andrew McCabe, the acting FBI director. McCabe testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week. In his testimony he defended his former boss, contradicting assertions by administration officials and Trump that Comey had lost the confidence of the FBI’s   . When asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich,  . M. if it is ”accurate that the    no longer supported Director Comey?” McCabe answered, ”I can tell you that I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. ..I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does until this day.” The committee is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and any potential connections between Russia, the Trump campaign and some of the campaign’s top aides. In addition to McCabe, Alice Fisher, a partner at the law firm Latham and Watkins, is also up for the job at the helm of the federal investigatory agency. Fisher previously served as assistant attorney general during the George W. Bush administration where she was in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. A profile of Fisher on the firm’s website says her expertise lies in ”international criminal matters relating to alleged bribery under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other   laws, economic and export sanctions, and other cross border investigations.” Judge Michael Garcia, an associate judge on New York’s highest state court, also met with Sessions and Rosenstein. Garcia was the U. S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from  . Before that, he was the assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appointed by President George W. Bush. Sen. John Cornyn,   the current Senate majority whip and former attorney general of Texas, is another contender who was interviewed Saturday to replace Comey. Cornyn was elected to the Senate in 2002 and also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Former Rep. Mike Rogers,  . who chaired the House Intelligence Committee while in Congress, also met with Sessions and Rosenstein. Rogers is also a former FBI special agent and he was endorsed by the FBI Agents Association in a statement released Saturday. The group urged Trump to nominate Rogers as the next FBI director, saying it is ”essential” that the next leader of the agency ”understands the details of how Agents do their important work.” ”During his time in Congress,” the group added, Rogers ”showed a commitment to confronting threats to our country in a nonpartisan and collaborative manner.” In addition, Sessions and Rosenstein met with Fran Townsend, former White House homeland security adviser during the George W. Bush administration Adam Lee, the FBI special agent in charge of the bureau’s Richmond, Va. field office and U. S. District Judge Henry Hudson, a federal trial court judge in Richmond, Va. If either Fisher or Townsend was confirmed by the Senate, it would be the first time the FBI would be led by a woman. These eight interviews are not exhaustive and are just the start of the process. Trump also told reporters Saturday that all of the candidates under consideration are ”outstanding,” ”very  ” and at the ”highest level.” The search continues for an interim director of the FBI who will lead the agency until Comey’s permanent replacement is confirmed by the Senate. That search is proceeding on a separate track with another pool of candidates that includes Special Agent Lee. NPR’s Carrie Johnson contributed to this report."
"Donald Trump wasn’t the first president to think the mainstream media was ”fake news”  —   and determined to do something about it. In 1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was irritated with reporting on a leaked conversation between himself and senators that portrayed his position toward the emerging threat of Germany as ”the American frontier is on the Rhine.” In other words, FDR appeared to be pledging  —   in private  —   not to allow Germany to get far beyond its borders, thereby making it likely he would commit America to war. ”Some boob got that off,” an obviously annoyed Roosevelt told reporters in a press conference in February 1939 about the incorrect reporting that led to that phrase being attached to FDR. That misquote was the seed for FDR to devise a way to secretly record his press conferences a year later. Running in a nasty campaign for an unprecedented third term, he didn’t want to take any chances. And so began a      stretch of American presidents (that we know of) surreptitiously taping in the White House. The efforts grew more sophisticated, from a large recorder with a microphone hidden in a lamp on FDR’s desk to   mobile transponders in the Nixon White House. Nixon’s recordings, of course, ultimately led to his resignation, as they revealed his role in the Watergate break in. After Watergate, it was believed that secret White House recordings had stopped. After all, why would another president want to subject themselves to the possibility of the tapes being used against them? But the issue has been thrown back into the spotlight this week after Trump’s firing of James Comey as FBI director. Trump claimed Comey told him on three different occasions, twice on the phone and once over dinner, that he was not the subject of an FBI investigation for alleged collusion with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. Comey associates, though, told various news outlets that Trump asked Comey at that dinner to make a loyalty pledge, and he refused. Trump then took to Twitter Friday morning and made a veiled threat to Comey and implied that he might have ”tapes” of their conversations. Presidential recordings are all subject to eventual release and archiving under the Presidential Records Act, meaning if there are Trump recordings of Comey, eventually, Americans will likely hear them. What’s more, if the tapes become the subject of a congressional subpoena, they would have to be turned over. The U. S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision in 1974 that a president has to release recordings unless they are military or diplomatic secrets. A long history  —   and a   issue, FDR got the recording equipment from broadcast giant David Sarnoff, who headed RCA and NBC. Sarnoff gave the large,   device to Roosevelt as a gift in June 1940. It was one of only seven made of its kind. The microphone would be hidden in a lamp on the president’s desk in the Oval Office. ”Almost as soon as we had the technology to allow recorded conversations, FDR signed on in 1940,” Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, told NPR’s All Things Considered Friday. The Miller Center houses the recordings of six different presidents. The recordings can be heard in the Miller Center’s feature, ”The Secret White House Tapes.” FDR only used the recording equipment for 11 weeks from August 1940 through his reelection. He intended to use it to record his press conferences as a back up to his stenographer. He wound up recording 14 press conferences, but he also recorded several Oval Office conversations. ”The FDR recordings reveal an intimate inside view of his patrician, gossipy, and supremely confident executive style, as he uses charm, vagueness, gossip, and occasional deviousness as tools for managing his presidency,” author William Doyle wrote in his 1999 book, Inside the Oval Office: The White House Tapes from FDR to Clinton. Roosevelt is also recorded talking about the possibility of spreading a rumor that his Republican opponent Wendell Willkie is having an   affair, compares Willkie to Hitler (yes, that bad comparison was even happening then) and referred to a Japanese official he disagreed with as a ”damn Jap.” Roosevelt pioneered attempts to get around the press using mass broadcast media. His radio ”fireside chats” were, in a way, a precursor Trump’s tweeting  —   an effort to communicate directly with the American people past the critical filter of the news media. Roosevelt, like Trump (and almost every previous president) was also highly critical of the news media. ”I have in front of me, oh, about eight or 10 different newspapers,” FDR said in that February 1939 press conference. ”There isn’t one story or one headline in all of those papers that does not give, to put it politely, an erroneous   one. It is a rather interesting fact. These things have been manufactured by deliberate misrepresentation of facts, existing facts.” Fake news! He went on: ”The public understands pretty well when it is said that such and such a thing is learned on good authority, or it has been suggested by White House sources, or things like that. They understand that that is not news, it is only a rumor of news. So perhaps it’s not surprising he would have been the first to use the latest technology and equipment to secretly tape in the White House. But he would not be the last. From Truman to Nixon, FDR’s recordings weren’t discovered until 1978, four years after Nixon resigned because of his tapes, by a historian who visited the FDR Library in Hyde Park, N. Y. Roosevelt abandoned the use of the recording after his reelection. The reason is unclear. There are very few recordings from the Truman era, and only about 75 from Eisenhower. The technology wasn’t great, but Eisenhower did have a system installed in which ”a button in the president’s desk turned on a microphone hidden inside a fake telephone on the desk,” according to Alexander B. Magoun, a historian at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, who dug into the technology used by presidents in secret recordings. But Truman and Eisenhower were from a different generation as Kennedy. He began recordings in earnest after he felt he received bad advice in the run up to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy was savvy about what was available to him and ”so careful about how his image was portrayed,” Perry said. Kennedy kept his recordings secret, appearing not to want even advisers or those on the phone to know. That has made for some rather notable recordings. Kennedy also wanted to keep the tapes to help with his memoirs once he was out of office. Johnson ratcheted up the use of secret tapes and made it a staple of his White House. He added more technology the technology got better and he wanted to record as many meetings and phone calls as possible. ”He wanted to use this material immediately, so he had his secretaries transcribe them every day,” Perry said. It’s believed that Johnson and Nixon talked about the system, Perry added. Ironically, Nixon and his aides were skeptical of its use initially because they were concerned Nixon was too technologically inept to use the recording equipment, Perry said. So they came up with a complex and   way for the president to use the taping system  —   wearing a transponder that was  . So whenever he would start speaking, it would turn on. The recording ability was all over the White House  —   from the Oval Office and Cabinet room to Nixon’s private office and Eisenhower Executive Office Building. That system was dismantled voluntarily after it became public when White House aide Alexander Butterfield revealed the tapes’ existence in the Watergate congressional hearings. ”It was an amazing annoucement,” Perry said. ”People knew the smoking gun could be found.” Allegations and rumors after Nixon, After Nixon’s resignation, most thought that was that. ”Prudentially why would anyone do this?” Perry noted. But that hasn’t stopped the imaginations of authors and conspiracy theorists. And there is evidence to support that presidents continued to roll the tape  —   albeit in a more limited way. There is no law preventing secret White House recordings, and some kept it up  —   most notably Reagan. ”Reagan was presented with the option of continuing or not continuing the phone tapings in the Oval Office for national security purposes,” Politifact quotes Doyle referencing Michael Deaver, Reagan’s chief of staff. ”And obviously tapings were a very controversial subject ever since the Nixon days. But Reagan could see the value of it, not so much for history but for accuracy . .. and readily agreed to continue the tapings.” Reagan recorded Situation Room calls with foreign dignitaries, and Doyle writes that there are also some 800 hours of video tapings from closed meetings with Reagan, an actor who was comfortable on camera. Reagan biographer Craig Shirley told Politifact that Reagan would never use the material to blackmail anyone. ”Nixon, yes, Trump, yes,” he said. ”Reagan? Morally impossible.” Ford, Carter and George H. W. Bush reportedly had   rules, and there’s no evidence that Bill Clinton taped anything secretly in the White House. But Ronald Rotunda, a Watergate investigator and adviser to Clinton special prosecutor Ken Starr, told Politifact that there was some ”subpoenaed material that was not turned over” to Starr from Clinton’s White House. Therefore, ”I don’t know whether Bill Clinton or one of his aides ever secretly tape recorded anyone.” There’s some evidence that George W. Bush recorded at least some video conferences. Perry noted that when she visited former Centcom Commander Tommy Franks’ museum in Oklahoma, it included a recorded video conference with the former president speaking to commanders in the field. As for Obama, Mark Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down, told a story to a rapt audience at the Pritzker Military Library in 2012 that raised eyebrows. He talked about interviewing President Obama for The Finish, a book he was writing about the killing of Osama bin Laden. For the first time ever, in 40 years as a journalist, his recorder died during an interview  —   and it was with the president of the United States. ”As I was walking out of the Oval Office with Ben Rhodes [a foreign policy adviser to Obama],” Bowden said, ”I said, Ben, you’re not going to believe this, but my recorder died in the middle of that somewhere. ” ’Ah, don’t worry about it,’ he says, ’we record everything in here. We’ll get you a transcript before you leave.’ And he did.” (That was about 35 minutes into this video.) But Rhodes told NPR that while it was true the Obama White House recorded interviews with the media  —   a common practice among campaigns, too  —   it was out in the open. ”He was referring to the fact that the White House press office had a stenographer in meetings with journalists,” Rhodes told NPR’s Arnie Seipel by email Friday of Bowden’s remarks. ”None of that was hidden  —   the stenographer sat in interviews with a tape recorder and sometimes even a boom mic. . .. This was just so we had a transcript of interviews Obama did and, again, would have been known to any journalist who interviewed Obama. ”We obviously didn’t record private meetings.” Obviously."
"Farryn Giles and her    son Isaiah have been living in a crumbling apartment building with her   who’s letting her stay for a couple months. Pigeons have infested the walls of the courtyard. Before she lived here, she was sleeping on and off in her car. But Giles, 26, says she recently felt like she hit the jackpot. She was awarded a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher, which will pay the difference between her rent and what she can afford. But there’s a catch: She has to find a landlord willing to take it before it expires in 90 days. Nationally, most voucher holders are able to use them, but in hot rental markets like Dallas, it’s not always easy. ”It took me six years to get my voucher but I got it,” she says. ”You can best believe I’m going to utilize it.” More than 2 million families now use vouchers to keep from becoming homeless. It’s the government’s largest program to help   families pay their rent. Usually, the tenant pays up to 30 percent of their income in rent and a local public housing agency makes up the difference. But Congress had bigger plans when it created the nearly $20 billion program in the 1970s. The voucher was designed to be a ticket out of poverty —   allowing families to use it wherever they want. With a portable voucher, families can move to places with jobs, good schools and low crime. So far, however, the program has not always lived up to that promise, especially when it comes to women with children. Among voucher holders, a 2016 government study found fewer than 13 percent of   households with children were able to move to areas with higher opportunity. Giles is trying to beat those odds. She found a new online customer service job paying $11. 50 an hour. It’s a big break for her. But it’s an hour and a half bus ride away. She says she hoped the voucher would help her and her son find a place near the job in one of Dallas’ northern and wealthier suburbs. ”Hello, goals, ambition,” she says, excited about the idea of finding a quiet place to raise her son. C’Artis Harris, 34, another voucher holder searching for a place in Dallas, also sees her voucher as a chance to make a new life. ”I can get a house or an apartment and it will be affordable for me and my children,” she says. ”I don’t have to depend on people. I don’t have to go into abusive relationships. I don’t have to sleep in my van. I don’t have to have my kids going from school to school. They can know this is ours. We don’t have to keep moving.” A few months into her search, Giles had called hundreds of apartment complexes, many of them near her new job in the northern suburbs. ”I’ve been to Oak Cliff, I’ve been to south Dallas, I’ve been to Pleasant Grove,” she says. ”I’ve been way down south. Nobody wants my voucher.” Giles and Harris are not alone in their struggle. In Dallas, about 60 percent of people who get vouchers are unable to use them, according to MaryAnn Russ, the former CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority. While Dallas’ rate is worse than most, the challenge is similar in other cities where rents are high and the market is tight: Sometimes vouchers don’t cover the rent or landlords prefer tenants without them. Nationwide, upscale suburbs  —   like McKinney and Frisco, just north of Dallas  —   have not always welcomed voucher holders. Developer Terri Anderson says she ran into problems in McKinney and Frisco when trying to build an apartment complex, with 13 units set aside specifically for voucher holders, on the line between McKinney and Frisco. ”The city actually called a public hearing for our property and about 250 angry residents showed up,” she says. ”Our superintendent has been threatened, issued a criminal trespass warning. Police officers blocked our entrance.” Anderson says she believes she knows why: ”It’s a concerted effort to shut down development of a property they do not want in their neighborhood.” Frisco city officials say they support affordable housing and her project. They also say Anderson has not followed the city’s building requirements. The U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is now investigating whether McKinney and Frisco violated the federal fair housing law. Nicole Humphrey, who lives a couple miles away from Anderson’s development, says she’s opposed to the project. She and other neighbors have said they worry about traffic and school overcrowding. But Humphrey says she has other concerns. ”In this neighborhood, most of us are    moms with young kids,” she says. ”The lifestyle that goes with Section 8 is usually working, single moms or people who are struggling to keep their heads above water.” ”I feel so bad saying that,” she adds. ”It’s just not people who are the same class as us.” When asked if others who did not have the same opportunities as her could live in her neighborhood, she says: ”The problem with that is I hear a lot of the unfair of: ’Oh we haven’t been given this or that, or we haven’t been afforded things you have been afforded.’ I don’t look at   and think, ’Why don’t I have a yacht? ’” Humphrey says the issue for her is not about race. She says her neighborhood  —   with rows of tidy new houses and with   lawns  —   is diverse. The real concern, she says, is that the voucher holders won’t fit in or they won’t understand her life. ”People see that I’m upper middle class, that I’m a woman who stays at home, who is kept by her husband, and instantly there’s no clout. My opinion doesn’t matter,” she says. ”They look at me and think, ’She has never experienced a problem we’re having. ’” Humphrey acknowledges that as much as she fears voucher holders will stereotype her, she says she knows she is also stereotyping them. ”I don’t know that we will ever come to a solution as a culture in America in general,” she says. ”There’s always going to be someone with less, because the fair world doesn’t exist and where does that line lie?” Giles knows exactly where the line lies. It’s between north and south Dallas. Sitting on a bench on a   break from her customer service job, Giles says she thinks she knows how some people up north see her. ”I think that they think we are lazy, and worthless and getting over,” she says. ”Even though we’re financially less capable, we still love our children the same. We still work just as hard, if not harder.” Giles says after three months of trying, she was unable to get anyone to take her voucher. She turned it back in and recently moved with her son out of the apartment where she was staying with her   and into a public housing complex in Dallas. She has since left her job in the northern suburb. ”Section 8 is not any type of simplification for our lives,” she says, crying. ”It’s not easier. Society hasn’t really grown the way people think that it has. And that’s how I feel about that. It can’t all have a happy ending I suppose.” Harris, who is still looking for a place to use her voucher, has been staying with a friend. ”Maybe it’s meant for me to live in the ’hood,” Harris says. ”But I don’t want to.” Frontline’s Emma Schwartz, Rick Young and Fritz Kramer contributed to this story."
"For 15 years, documentary photographer Stephanie Sinclair has focused her camera on what she calls ”everyday brutality”  —   the violence, genital mutilation and forced marriage endured by girls and young women around the world, including in Afghanistan, India and Nigeria. Now she has won the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award, granted by the International Women’s Media Foundation and named in memory of the Pulitzer   German war photographer killed in Afghanistan in 2014. We spoke to Sinclair, who was born in Miami and lives in upstate New York, about her award, her photos and videos of the travails of child brides around the world, and about recently becoming a mother herself. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. The awards jury cited the ”intellectual and emotional courage required to continue to bear witness to scenes of despair.” How would you define courage in the context of photography?  Courage is relative. I don’t profess to have Anja’s courage in relentlessly documenting the horrors on the front lines throughout the world. She passed away in the process of trying to tell the stories of some of the most vulnerable people in the world. I was more interested in the intimate stories near the front lines. I kept seeing girls who were marrying so young and struggling in very immediate ways  —   from domestic violence, cyclical poverty, being more prone to HIV, having higher [medical] risks in childbirth  —   and I thought that deserves as much attention as any conflict zone. The real courage belongs to the girls for enduring such trauma and sharing their stories, which they do because they don’t want to see these things happen to others. When did you begin your series of photos and videos exploring child marriage, ”Too Young to Wed”? Though I did not realize it at the time, it was when I was in Afghanistan in 2003 and I [had an assignment] about girls   setting themselves on fire. I met Marzia when she was 15. She had set herself on fire because, she told me, she had broken her husband’s television set. Now you don’t do something as extreme as this very painful suicide attempt except out of fear [of her husband]. When I met her she was still in the hospital, in a lot of pain from her burns, and I learned that she was married when she was nine. I had heard about child marriage but had not realized it was still being practiced, even with   children. Since then, I have covered child marriage in more than ten countries. One of those countries is Nepal, where you made a film featured at the Through a Woman’s Eyes Film Festival in April. Can you tell us about that? It was made in 2016 and is called ”Nepal: A Fragile State,” about a couple in Nepal, a child bride and groom, Durga and Niruta, whose wedding I attended and photographed on a previous trip to Nepal about ten years ago. At that time, she was 14 and he was 16. I had learned that after the earthquake in 2015 Durga and Niruta’s village had been decimated, and I wanted to  . They now have three kids. Durga does not want his daughters to marry young. Does that suggest attitudes toward child marriage are changing? I would say that many families have told me that they don’t want their children to marry young. But when you don’t have enough food to feed your children, when an emergency [like an earthquake] happens, families have to weigh what’s worse, possible starvation or a child marriage so the daughter has a home and food? When that happens, then poverty becomes cyclical. Because they married so young Durga and Niruta did not have the education to make different decisions about their future. They are then not able to withstand the [aftermath of the] earthquake. There are no other opportunities for income other than agriculture. Statistics show that child marriage usually increases in emergency settings. The challenges these families face are very layered and nuanced. It’s not just the immediate consequences but lifelong consequences that the next generation has to face, particularly the girls. As part of your ”Too Young to Wed” series, you’ve made six videos.  Films are definitely a lot more work.   work is very   to go through it all in a nuanced way. But actually hearing the voices of the girls and young women is special, and I think the films provide a bit more depth because you can see them moving, see their body language —  more so than in a still. Each medium has its strengths and they work in a complementary way. For the videos I am the director, and sometimes I   with someone else and I am the executive producer. But I don’t do the camera work because I’m doing the interviews and the stills. Congratulations on your family news! When did you become a parent?  My husband and I adopted two children from China     months ago. They are 3 and 7, and they have albinism and are both legally blind. But they are healthy and wonderful and are giving us the very common exasperating but very loving experience of being new parents. What’s next for you?  I have an exhibition in June in Paris that I have been preparing. It will include a selection from all of the portfolios and all of the videos. But no travels until then. Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Jewish Week, and is book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is dianejcole. com."
"Hello and welcome to another edition of NPR Ed’s weekly national education news roundup! DeVos heckled at   University, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ first commencement address since taking office was interrupted by persistent boos when she addressed graduates at a private, Christian, historically black university in Florida. About half the graduates turned their backs on the secretary in protest. At one point the school’s president, Edison O. Jackson, warned students he’d mail them their diplomas if the jeering continued. That led to only a brief pause. DeVos has made missteps when it comes to historically black colleges, as we reported: ”Earlier this year, DeVos called HBCUs ’real pioneers when it comes to school choice,’ a remark she was forced to walk back after protests in fact, these colleges were founded as the only option for students when other colleges were still legally segregated. Just this week, DeVos found herself clarifying comments by President Trump that seemed to suggest that a key form of funding for HBCUs might be unconstitutional.” The protests also included a large petition drive, open letters and calls on President Jackson to resign. Some of the loudest jeers during the speech came when DeVos said she’d be visiting the gravesite of the university’s founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, a daughter of former slaves and a civil rights leader. ”It’s a complete insult,” alumna Trinice McNally told NPR Ed. ”There is no comparison to my founder.” Paul Ryan visits a charter school, House Speaker Paul Ryan also faced protesters this week when visiting a charter school in Harlem for National Teacher Appreciation Day. The school is part of a charter network, Success Academy, in New York City known for its high test scores and   leader, Eva Moskowitz. She was once rumored to be under consideration for President Trump’s education secretary. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, also met briefly with a special education class in a public school that shares the building, Newsday reported. A few dozen protesters, including one wearing a Trump costume per this video, greeted Ryan. Their chants primarily referred to the Affordable Care Act repeal that passed the House last week. The Medicaid cuts in that bill would directly affect services for special education students. State education plans ready for review, Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have submitted complete state education plans, the Education Department announced. You can see the list here. The plans outline how states will comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, including establishing student growth targets, helping underperforming schools and consulting with stakeholders to finalize plans. The plans are headed for peer review there is a second deadline for more states to submit in September. Update on   students denied grants for formatting errors, As we covered a few weeks ago, the Department of Education in March denied grant applications from dozens of colleges and universities, totaling $10 million, because of small formatting errors like neglecting to  . The money, from a federal program called Upward Bound, helps   students prepare for college. In a memo released this week, Secretary DeVos declared that going forward, page limits and formatting standards could no longer be used to reject such applications. However, the Associated Press reported that the rejected applications will not be revisited. It’s five years until the next round, meaning some of these programs may have to shut down in the interim. A tax tool to make college aid applications easier is down until the fall  The IRS Data Retrieval Tool won’t be usable until October, an Education Department official has testified.  The tool was designed to allow college aid applicants filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, to add their family tax information with the push of a button. It was taken down because of security concerns just prior to many state deadlines, in March. Accurate info is crucial for determining how much college help students qualify for. Without it, applicants have to fill in their tax return data manually, which takes longer and is prone to error. At the beginning of this month, most   applicants to traditional colleges had to lock down their decisions, including FAFSA applications. Returning students and those at colleges with rolling admissions may still be filling out the form. On Oct. 1, it becomes available for the   school year, hopefully with the Data Retrieval Tool restored. DeVos won’t speak at education writers’ conference, Betsy DeVos will not be addressing the upcoming   national meeting of the Education Writers Association, as is traditional for education secretaries. The largest annual gathering of journalists who cover education takes place in Washington, D. C. at the end of this month. A spokesman for DeVos told NPR Ed, ”unfortunately, her schedule is full and she’s unavailable this year.”"
"There’s been an unprecedented spike in white supremacist activity on campuses across the U. S. since the election and college students and administrators are struggling to figure out how to respond. Posters at the University of Texas at Arlington last month implored students to ”report any and all illegal aliens. America is a white nation.” Also last month, at the University of Pennsylvania flyers blared ”Imagine a   America.” Hate watch groups have tracked 150 incidents of white supremacist propaganda on campuses since the fall. Even just a year ago, it was such a rarity no one was even counting. ”Our time has come,” roared white supremacist Richard Spencer to students at Auburn University last month. It was one of a growing number of campus visits made by white nationalist leaders looking to connect with students personally. ”This is a new phenomenon that’s very dangerous,” said Oren Segal, head of the   League’s Center on Extremism. He says white supremacists, making a push for the mainstream, often try to lure students with more opaque slogans, like ”Serve your people,” and ”Our destiny is ours.” ”They don’t necessarily shave their heads and wear swastika armbands where hatred is easily seen,” said Segal. ”And what they’re hoping is that people will maybe be interested because it’s not so   .” ’Publicity is great’ One of those groups, Identity Evropa, describes itself on its website as a ”fraternity,” though one limited to people of ”European   descent.” Applicants whose heritage is uncertain have been directed to undergo DNA testing. Founder Nathan Damigo says his current recruitment effort, #ProjectSiege, will get even more aggressive next semester. ”We’re going to be setting up tables, and handing out thumb drives with videos,” he said. ”We’re going to have booklets and stickers and so on.” Damigo, a    student and Iraq war vet, became   in   circles last month, when he punched a female protester in Berkeley. He says it was  . He got into white nationalism by reading books by the likes of former Klan leader David Duke while serving a   prison sentence for armed robbery. Damigo says he needs to ”change hearts and minds” of the next generation to realize his ultimate goal of a   space for whites in the U. S. ”Forced diversity and multiculturalism” he said, is ”unnatural” and whites need territory ”that is ours . .. where we can be ourselves.” Damigo dismisses those who call him a racist, saying it’s a ”cheap strategy to undermine legitimate European interests.” But he concedes the controversy has been good for him. ”I mean sure, publicity is great,” he said. ”We found last year that all you had to do is put up some flyers and you’d get millions of dollars of coverage. So this is amazing.” His flyers have been posted at campuses from the University of California, Berkeley to the University of Massachusetts Boston, a heavily minority campus. ”I looked at these images, and I was incensed because it was such an attack on our students,” said Joseph Brown, a UMass political science professor. ”They were trying to be provocative in Internet terms, they troll. They’re trying to make themselves seem a lot bigger than they are.” Tony McAleer knows the strategy all too well, having spent 15 years in a white supremacist skinhead group before having a change of heart in the late 1990s. ”Groups like this thrive on conflict,” he said. ”I became an attention whore,” said McAleer, who eventually left the movement and founded a group called Life After Hate to try to combat white supremacists groups. ”Every effort that was done to stymie what I was doing [gave me more] publicity and more recruits,” he said. ”It becomes this dance. You have to be careful not to feed the beast, and not to give them exactly what they seek.” Assessing the right response, The increased presence of these groups has left schools and students trying to walk an almost impossibly fine line as they struggle to determine the right response to white supremacists. When white supremacist leaflets showed up at Purdue University, administrators said they didn’t want to take the bait from ”a minuscule fringe group [seeking] attention it does not deserve.” Instead, they issued a short general statement about the white supremacists’ views being ”obviously inconsistent with the values and principles we believe in here at Purdue.” But students were offended they didn’t offer a more explicit condemnation and launched a  . At a recent meeting of campus activists at UMass Boston, students were split on the right response. Student Katharine O’Donnell didn’t even want to talk about white supremacists. Not only does it give them what they want, she says, but it also serves to normalize them. And ultimately, she says, it would only distract students from their efforts to fight institutional racism. ”Responding to a poster is in my opinion very damaging rather than these greater issues that are causing problems every day,” she said. But other students pushed back, equally reluctant to let such hateful messages go unanswered. ”We have to let people know that this is not OK,” said Gabriella Cartagena. ”We have to do something about this. We can’t just pretend they don’t exist and continue to push them under the rug.” UMass Boston Chief Diversity Officer Georgianna Melendez says it’s ”a hard hair to split,” especially for a university that tries to balance its commitment to free speech and open academic debate with its responsibility to make all students feel welcome and safe. She says the white supremacist posters were ultimately removed from campus because they lacked required permission, but not because of their content. ”Everyone has a right to their own beliefs,” she says. ”We didn’t take a position on their message except to say that we understand it’s harmful to some members of our community, and we can’t just let that go.” Like many schools, Melendez says UMass now has a kind of hate incident SWAT team ready to counter hateful messages and counsel hurt students. It includes an early alert system, a counter messaging response team and counselors on call. So far, hate watch groups say white supremacists’ efforts on campuses don’t seem to be paying off. They say there is no evidence that the groups are gaining traction or members, despite their claims to the contrary. But Mcaleer, the former white supremacist, cautions it’s not an easy thing to measure since most activity is online, not on the streets. ”It’s all virtual,” McAleer said. ”It’s like an iceberg. You see a bit of it at the top, and I don’t think anybody has really measured how deep and how pervasive this group of disaffected kids is, and what exactly they’re doing online.”"
"When it comes to feeding kids a healthy diet, ”it’s not politics, it’s parenting,” Michelle Obama said Friday. And then she got a little fired up. Without ever naming President Trump, the former first lady took aim at changes the administration announced last week that weaken some of the school nutrition standards she championed. ”Think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap,” she told the crowd at the Partnership for a Healthier America conference. ”We gotta make sure we don’t let anybody take us back,” she said as the crowd cheered. ”Every elected official on this planet should understand: Don’t play with our children. Don’t do it,” Obama implored. Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, announced changes to the school lunch program during a visit to a school cafeteria in Leesburg, Va. He said he had listened to the complaints of students and school food administrators. ”We all know that kids are pretty outspoken about what they want to eat and what they don’t,” Perdue said. The new rules delay a mandate for further sodium reductions in school meals. Perdue’s plan also eases rules on whole grains. ”[School] meals can’t be nutritious if they’re . .. put in the trash. We’ve got to balance the nutritional aspect   the sodium content, the whole grain content   with the palatability,” Perdue said at the time. But changes to school nutrition rules  —   and delays on calorie labeling (also announced by the Trump administration last week)  —   aren’t likely to hold back the momentum of the movement for healthier eating habits. This is the conclusion of attendees gathered on Friday at the Partnership for a Healthier America conference in Washington, D. C. where Obama spoke. The nonprofit group works with   companies and partners to nudge them to make commitments to promote healthier products and practices. For instance, this week, the PHA announced new commitments from global chocolate and candy companies, including Mars Chocolate and Nestle USA, to limit portion sizes and label calories on the front of packages. Another commitment came from the National Association of Convenience Stores, which pledged to an   effort to promote healthier choices to consumers. The PHA got its start with the help of Michelle Obama’s leadership. And she still serves as the group’s honorary chair. ”The PHA was probably the smartest thing that we [did] out of the White House  —   helping to build an outside nonprofit organization that . .. can work    with the private sector and public sector and build partnerships in a positive way,” Obama said at the event. And she added that, though she’s taking time to breathe after eight years in the White House, she’s still very much committed to working towards a healthier America. ”You’ve got me as a partner as long as I can continue to be of use,” she said."
"Brockmire is back! Jim Brockmire, the beloved old voice of the Kansas City Royals baseball team, who became one of the first Internet sensations 10 years ago when he shared the shock of walking in on his wife in the middle of an orgy without dropping a moment in his play by play.   actor Hank Azaria plays Brockmire on the IFC series of the same name that premiered this spring  —   it’s the story of a man coming back to life in minor league baseball, now the voice of the Morristown Frackers. He tells me  —   in character  —   that Brockmire has been with him for a while. ”He’s been with me since I was a teenager. By the way, you did a wonderful job of cleaning up for your audience what Brockmire really expressed there. If you tune in to the show, you’ll catch some blue language, some more graphic detail, as we like to say!” On sending the show to Bob Costas, I couldn’t believe it  —   he absolutely accurately defined the character’s voice. He called it ”the generic baseball announcer’s voice of the 1970s,” which it absolutely is. It’s no one distinct. People ask me, who’d you base it on? Is it a conglomeration? And I grew up a Mets guy, so that was Bob Murphy, Ralph Kiner, Lindsey Nelson. It’s none of those men. It’s closer to the TV pitchmen who sold you the Ginsu knife, or told you about Popeil’s Pocket Fishermen. And the comic premise . .. became, do these guys always sound like this, even when they’re at home, if he’s drunk on the air having a completely explicit inappropriate meltdown about his wife’s infidelities, does he still sound like this? And does he still give you the count afterwards? On whether Brockmire is his   My stock in trade is voices, so there literally are so many, I don’t consider any  —   the closest to an   I have is [in character voice] Moe from the Simpsons, because I’ve been doing Moe for so long, and I actually was a bartender myself, that I like to think of it as, if I didn’t get my Simpsons job, instead of Moe the bartender, I’d probably be Hank the bartender. Moe is a New York guy, he’s from Queens  —   to me, he often feels like a sort of a dark, shadow, New York version of myself? But Brockmire, no, but he was a   voice that I would entertain myself with a lot in lonely moments as a youth. I would just kind of narrate my day sometimes as Brockmire. On Brockmire’s alcoholism, We made this as a short for Funny or Die, which was pretty sophomoric and funny. And frankly, the only reason he drank was to allow him to melt down on the air and be so explicit like that, it’s just a believable excuse to be that   on the air. But what the writer saw in it was a portrait of a pretty lonely alcoholic. And then the director really took that ball and ran with it  —   he didn’t let me get away with anything less than honoring the dark night of the soul that Jim Brockmire was experiencing. Which was funny to me, because to me it was really just a jumping off point for comedy, but as I was acting it, and working on it as an actor, not as a producer or developing it, I realized that ths was quite emotional stuff. And it’s not sentimental, but it’s highly emotional."
"Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has brought criminal charges against the engineer who was operating Amtrak 188 when it derailed, killing eight people and injuring over 200 two years ago. Brandon Bostian faces eight counts of involuntary manslaughter and other crimes including causing a catastrophe and reckless endangerment. Federal investigators determined that Bostian allowed the train to speed up to 106 mph in a curve suitable for only half of that speed. The National Transportation Board determined that the derailment was caused by human error and that Bostian was distracted and had lost situational awareness. The charges come after a dramatic turn of legal events. Earlier this week, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced that he would not press charges against Bostian because there was no evidence of criminal intent or responsibility. But Philadelphia Municipal Court President Judge Marsha Neifield ordered the district attorney to charge Bostian at the urging of attorneys representing dozens of the victims. The DA’s office issued a statement saying since it had already decided not to charge Bostian it wanted to avoid ”any apparent conflict of interest.” So the DA referred the case to the state attorney general who filed charges. Amtrak 188, originating in Washington, D. C. was bound for New York. Bostian was an experienced engineer. The investigation found no evidence that alcohol or drugs were involved. The engineer told investigators that he recalled very little about the crash. The charges against him were filed just a few hours before the statute of limitations was set to expire."
"When it comes to exploring music from other cultures, our ears are open wider now than ever before, thanks in part to YouTube and streaming services. But there’s someone else to thank: composer Lou Harrison, who was born 100 years ago on May 14, 1917. Often called an ”American maverick,” Harrison blended Eastern and Western traditions in his music, practicing a kind of ” ” long before it was fashionable. Harrison was born in Portland, Ore. and the Asian decor his mother chose for their home was his first window into the East. Later, when the family moved to San Francisco, Harrison the teenager spent his nights at the opera. Not Puccini or Verdi  ” the Chinese opera. Eventually, you could hear Asia bubbling up in his music. Brett Campbell,   of a new biography called Lou Harrison: American Musical Maverick, says the composer is considered the godfather of world music. Although Harrison died in 2003, Campbell says his influence is keenly felt today. ”I think we should care about Lou Harrison and his music because are all living in Lou Harrison’s world now,” Campbell says. ”Because you turn on the radio or your stream on Spotify or Apple Music and you’re going to be hearing influences and music from all over the world.” The part of the world that Harrison especially loved was Java, home to the large percussion orchestras called gamelans. Harrison almost   brought gamelan music to America: He built his own American version of a gamelan and, later, mixed western instruments with the Indonesian originals in pieces like Concerto in Slendro and Threnody for Carlos Chavez. Although he never earned a college degree, Harrison was thoroughly grounded in the Western classics. He came to regard Bach and Beethoven as just more ”world” music, as he explained to NPR in 1999. ”We’re all human beings,” he said. ”We have the same ears and we have the same feelings. There’s no ’they’ there anymore. We’re all ’we. ’” We all may be alike, but Harrison was one in a million to conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who championed Harrison’s music. ”He so courageously always was himself,” Tilson Thomas explains. ”When I think of Lou Harrison, I immediately think about him smiling. That was the expression nearly always on his face. He had such delight in the diversity of things.” The composer’s motto was ”Cherish, Conserve, Consider, Create.” He was a published poet, a painter and a calligrapher, and was openly gay back in the 1930s. In 1995, Tilson Thomas opened his first concert as music director of the San Francisco Symphony with a piece by Harrison. It’s called A Parade for MTT and inside it, the conductor says, is a little bit of everything. ”It’s a very   encouraging piece, with a melody that sounds vaguely Irish to me,” Tilson Thomas says. ”But it’s accompanied by all manner of tone clusters and unusual percussion noises, and it’s somewhere between a kind of   march as played by a gamelan ensemble, perhaps.” Harrison, however, didn’t always write such joyful music. As atonality emerged as the progressive force in music in the 1940s, Harrison fell under its spell and studied with Arnold Schoenberg. ”All young composers [at the time] were beguiled by Schoenberg,” Campbell says. ”So some of Lou’s music, like the Prelude for GrandPiano (to Henry Cowell) and others like that, [was] very much in that Schoenberg tradition of what we now call   music. And Lou pursued that pretty assiduously through the  .” Harrison moved to New York in 1943. The big city bewildered him, but he found success when, in 1946, at Carnegie Hall, he conducted the world premiere of the Third Symphony by Charles Ives, a work that had languished for 40 years. Although his performance earned a Pulitzer Prize for Ives, New York triggered a nervous breakdown for Harrison. He   it back to California, where he could focus on his fusion of East and West. ”My Fourth Symphony,” he explained to NPR in 1999, ”contains actual Javanese procedures with Western orchestra. . .. The compositional procedures used by Javanese musicians actually work if you write them for Western orchestra. They sound beautiful.” Harrison was fond of saying, ”Enjoy hybrid music, because that’s all there is.” ”He knew that all music actually comes from other musics and combinations,” Campbell says. ”There’s no such thing as a pure music.” But if there was one pure   in Harrison’s music, Tilson Thomas says it’s melody. ”Nearly all of his pieces have tunes that you remember and that really can become part of your life,” Tilson Thomas says. One of his favorites is from the Suite for American Gamelan and Violin. ”When I’m on a hike and there’s still one big ridge that I have to get at the end of a long day of walking,” he says, ”I just think of this tune and hum it and as it comes into my thoughts, somehow I find the energy to make it up that last hill.” Centennial celebrations for Harrison have spread out across the country over the past few months. His music will be performed at Southern Oregon University and in Santa Cruz, Calif. near where the composer used to live. And, at his final home, the magnificent   Harrison House in Joshua Tree, Calif. events are running around the clock on May 14. Lou Harrison may be gone, but the spirit of his wide open ears remains strong. Thanks to the Lou Harrison Archive at UC Santa Cruz for the historic recording of the Ives Third Symphony heard in the radio version of this story."
"The ransomware attack unleashed on Friday has affected more than 100, 000 organizations in 150 countries, according to Europe’s law enforcement agency Europol on Sunday. The malware, which locks files and asks for payment to unlock them, hit businesses and institutions across the world, including shipper FedEx, train systems in Germany, a Spanish telecommunications company, universities in Asia, Russia’s interior ministry and forced hospitals in Britain to turn away patients. More than 200, 000 people around the world have been affected by the malware, Jake Cigainero reports for NPR’s Newscast. ”The recent attack is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits,” Europol said in a statement. As employees return to work on Monday and turn on their computers, the number of infections could rise, the agency said. The malware, which has been called multiple names including WannaCry, Wanna Decryptor or WannaCrypt, creates a   window informing users that their files are encrypted and are no longer accessible  —   without a payment. Screenshots of the malware show an initial request for $300 to be paid in bitcoin, with a timer that says the ransom amount will rise if it’s not paid within a certain time frame, and files will be lost after that. The hacker’s total take from the global outbreak, however, appears to be much smaller than anticipated. Security researcher Brian Krebs wrote that as of Saturday, evidence showed about $26, 000 in payments to the bitcoin accounts associated with the malware. ”One of the nice things about Bitcoin is that anyone can view all of the historic transactions tied a given Bitcoin payment address. As a result, it’s possible to tell how much the criminals at the helm of this crimeware spree have made so far and how many victims have paid the ransom,” Krebs writes. ”A review of the three payment addresses hardcoded into the Wana ransomware strain indicates that these accounts to date have received 100 payments totaling slightly more than 15 Bitcoins  —   or approximately $26, 148 at the current    exchange rate.” A ”sinkhole” that saves, A young security researcher in the U. K. identified only as MalwareTech has claimed credit for stemming the initial outbreak. The researcher wrote a blog post detailing the creation of a new domain as a ”sinkhole” for the ransomware. The malware attempts ”to connect to the domain we registered and if the connection is not successful it ransoms the system, if it is successful the malware exits,” MalwareTech wrote. The researcher added: ”[B]ecause WannaCrypt used a single hardcoded domain, my registartion [sic] of it caused all infections globally to believe they were inside a sandbox and exit. ..thus we initially unintentionally prevented the spread and and further ransoming of computers infected with this malware. Of course now that we are aware of this, we will continue to host the domain to prevent any further infections from this sample. ”One thing that is very important to note is our sinkholing only stops this sample and there is nothing stopping them removing the domain check and trying again, so it’s incredibly importiant [sic] that any unpatched systems are patched as quickly as possible.” The ransomware exploited a security flaw in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Microsoft released a patch back in March, but many users and organizations had not updated their systems with the the fix. That prediction seemed to be borne out Sunday. Cybersecurity researcher Darien Huss, whom MalwareTech credited with assisting in stopping the first outbreak, tweeted Sunday morning that a new outbreak could be oncoming, as likely copycats released an updated version of the ransomware, without the previously used ”kill switch.” Worldwide lockout, Any halting of the initial spread, however, does not help with computers already infected. Students at universities in China were locked out of their work, including dissertations and thesis papers, according to Chinese media and reported by The Associated Press. In Germany, train operator Deutsche Bahn wrote on Twitter that signboards in stations were affected, though no train operations were affected. French automaker Renault had to temporarily shut down manufacturing at plants in northern France and Romania, Reuters reported. Among others affected, according to Reuters, include: U. K. politicians are harnessing the attacks to criticize the U. K.’s Conservative Party of Prime Minister Theresa May, which made cuts to the NHS system, Willem Marx reports for NPR’s Newscast unit. The cuts made NHS computer systems ”outdated and vulnerable” to attack, critics say. ”Defence Minister Michael Fallon told the BBC that British authorities are spending more than $60 million on safeguarding computer systems,” at the NHS, Marx adds. ”Mr. Fallon said the government had already identified cyberattacks as one of the three greatest threats to Britain’s security, and had pledged almost 2 and a half billion dollars to protect IT infrastructure.” Ransomware is big business, Ransomware works by hijacking a person’s files and threatening to delete them without payment. The latest outbreak seems to be the biggest by far, though security experts have been warning about the risks of ransomware, especially to businesses, for some time. A report by IBM in December found 40 percent of spam emails contained ransomware attachments last year, up from less than 1 percent the previous year. The technology has been ”increasingly rampant since 2014,” the study says, though the concept goes back to 1989, ”when   malcode was   to victims on floppy disks.” The average ransom request is $500, IBM found. The FBI said victims incurred costs of $209 million in the first three months of 2016, Reuters reported. The U. S. government says more than 4, 000 ransomware attacks happen every day. The government recommends reporting ransomware immediately to the FBI or the U. S. Secret Service, and advises against paying ransoms, saying that payment is no guarantee of recovering data, and that it only encourages further attacks. The IBM study found, however, that seven in 10 victims end up paying to get their data back. The FBI says the typical ransom runs between $200 and $10, 000. Of the victims surveyed by IBM, more than half paid more than $10, 000 in ransom. The government recommends strong prevention measures as the best defense against ransomware attacks, including: strong spam filters, making sure software is patched and up to date, using   software, and regularly backing up data."
"Sean Spicer is back. And so, too, is Melissa McCarthy’s impression of him as the bullying,   obfuscating ”Spicey.” Chances are, SNL was going to center on the the   character whether or not the real Spicer returned to the lectern this week. But the fact that the press secretary made some comical headlines upon his return left no doubt about it  —   which only heightened hype for Saturday’s show. In the end, perhaps, the bar was set too high for the sketch comedy staple, which was to follow an already bizarre series of news events. ”I know we think this every week, but this week was crazy,” quips Colin Jost, to kick off Weekend Update. You could say the show began even before it went live on Saturday. On Friday, social media captured Melissa McCarthy’s Spicey  —   who often lifts up his lectern and uses it to intimidate reporters  —   rolling through Manhattan traffic via motorized lectern, yelling at cars to get out of the way. The scene was later broadcast in a   sketch Saturday night. In the cold open, Alec Baldwin returned as President Trump in a take on a NBC Nightly News interview with Michael Che as host Lester Holt. But to Baldwin’s character, he was ”jazz man,” ”OJ” and ”Tupac.” The two sat down to talk about the week’s biggest news story, President Trump’s dismissal of now former FBI Director James Comey. ”Your staff has been saying all week that you didn’t fire him because of his Russian investigation?” asks Holt, to which Trump admits he fired Comey ”because of Russia.” ”Wait so, did I get him? Is this all over?” asks a baffled Holt. But the host then echoes a voice on the other end of his earpiece, ”Oh no I didn’t? Nothing matters? Absolutely nothing matters anymore?” Holt then implores, ”Are you trolling us?” Either way, it was SNL’s turn to troll the Trump administration. In a White House press briefing spoof, an unsmiling Aidy Bryant plays Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who stood in for Spicer as press secretary last week. Recent reports have questioned Spicer’s job security. ”Can you just do this full time?” the press pool reporters plead. ”You are articulate and charming, whereas Sean is bullish,” a reporter adds. That comment sets off ”Spicey,” who emerges from his hiding spot in the bushes, in a   of this week’s   narrative. The Washington Post captured the bizarre Tuesday night scene, in which ”Spicer spent several minutes hidden in the darkness and among the bushes” before he emerged and agreed to take questions from reporters, so long as the cameras were off. President Trump’s surprise dismissal of Comey left the White House staff scrambling for hours to explain why. Spicer was not prepared to brief reporters. He refuted the way the Post ”falsely described the situation,” according to Politico. As a result, the newspaper ran an editor’s note, to clarify he was not in fact ”in” but ”among” the shrubbery. But in this sketch, McCarthy’s character is back to torment White House reporters, taking a fire extinguisher to the ”liar liar pants on fire” reporter’s nether regions and hurls a pillar at another reporter. An impatient Spicey ousts Bryant’s Sanders at the lectern to reluctantly take questions, mostly batting down inquiries about Russian collusion. When words aren’t enough, McCarthy turns to a Russian nesting doll to explain the White House’s rank and file. ”The only Russian thing is my dolly,” Spicey says, holding the biggest doll, President Trump. That’s followed by ”James Comey” as Jake the Dog from Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time. The next doll up is Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, presented as ”Hillary Clinton.” Inside Putin (”Oops,” McCarthy says, swiftly tossing that doll aside) follows ”Steve Bannon,” or Slimer from Ghostbusters. Ultimately, Comey’s firing is traced to ”Trump’s good friend” Jeff Sessions who’s symbolized by Pikachu. When pressed on whether Trump is lying to him, Spicer insists ”he wouldn’t do that, he’s my friend.” Driven to ease his insecurity, the press secretary leaves the briefing in search of his boss. He rolls through Manhattan traffic via motorized lectern, promising to ”talk better.” His journey ends at a New Jersey golf course, where he asks   : ”Have you ever told me to say things that aren’t true?” ”Only since you started working here,” Trump replies. The two share a passionate embrace before Trump says, ”Sean, kiss me. .. I’m famous, it’s OK.” ”No! Is this like The Godfather where you kiss me and no one ever sees me again?” Spicer asks. ”Yes,” Trump says. Comedians and Trump critics who’ve used the president as the subject of a   joke have drawn accusations of homophobia  —   most recently, Late Show host Stephen Colbert, who alluded to the common   ’  criticism with a joke painting a close sexual relationship between the two world leaders. Next week is the show’s season finale, with Baldwin already locked down to play Trump. And if Sean Spicer’s future as press secretary is in jeopardy, SNL fans may also see less of McCarthy."
"My    daughter is a   perfectionist. In my family, the trait is matrilineal, so I know from firsthand experience that it has a few advantages. My daughter is likely to pay her bills on time and use semicolons correctly. She will not be intimidated by details. She will have a certain baseline competence that will make her life, in some ways, a great deal easier. She’s also likely to run into the dark side of perfectionism: a recurring fear of failure, an associated aversion to risk, and a stubborn, sometimes poisonous dissatisfaction with oneself. (For better or worse, my perfectionism is very contained —  as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing wonderfully and always have been. Only my flaws are deep enough to require correction by perfection, so there.) One of the unexpectedly rich rewards of motherhood, and of parenting of any kind, is the chance to show your child how to navigate your shared traits. Whether this makes up for bequeathing or teaching the traits in the first place I’m not sure, but it’s redemptive to hand down the survival skills you’ve acquired through experience. So when I see my daughter agonizing over tiny errors, I’m quick to intervene, reminding her, as my mother reminded me, that mistakes are part of learning. Recently, when one of her teachers described her with sympathy and affection as a ”cerebral little perfectionist,” I thought it was time for a more direct approach. ”Do you know what a perfectionist is?” I asked my daughter one evening. We talked about how wanting to be perfect can sometimes be useful, but often is not  —   impossible goal and all that. ”It sometimes makes me slow,” she said. ”Yeah,” I said. ”Me too.” ”It’s kind of like I have a guy in my head.” ”A guy in your head who tells you you’re supposed to be perfect? Me too,” I said. ”What do you think his name is?” I wasn’t really expecting an answer, but she had one right away. ”Mr. P. ,” she said. We decided that Mr. P. was sometimes really helpful, but tended to turn mean when you needed him most. Cheerful Mr. P. was great grumpy Mr. P. look out. Maybe the trick was to get to know Mr. P. a little better. Since then, the two of us have been comparing notes on our Misters P. My daughter’s is turning out to be a pretty interesting fellow, while mine is mellowing with age. He still yells at me about his unfulfilled expectations, but at long last he’s starting to understand that imperfection is inevitable. Sometimes, he’ll even laugh with me about one of my    pratfalls. I don’t know if the two Mr. Ps will ever meet in person, but I’m sure both of them are happier for having learned about one another. Because there’s nothing quite like being entirely understood. Michelle Nijhuis (@nijhuism) lives in rural Washington state, where she writes about science, the environment, and occasionally, parenting. This essay first appeared in The Last Word On Nothing, a blog on science, art and ephemera."
"North Korea has launched a ballistic missile, the first launch since newly elected South Korean president Moon   has taken office. Both Moon and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe immediately condemned the launch, with Moon expressing ”deep regret” that it occurred shortly after the new government was sworn in. President Trump has been briefed on the latest missile test by North Korea. A White House statement from press secretary Sean Spicer reads: ”With the missile impacting so close to Russian soil  —   in fact, closer to Russia than to Japan  —   the President cannot imagine that Russia is pleased.  ”North Korea has been a flagrant menace for far too long. South Korea and Japan have been watching this situation closely with us. The United States maintains our ironclad commitment to stand with our allies in the face of the serious threat posed by North Korea. Let this latest provocation serve as a call for all nations to implement far stronger sanctions against North Korea. NPR’s Lauren Frayer reports the exact type of missile is not yet known: ”The U. S. Pacific Command detected and tracked this missile  —   and says flight data indicate that it was not an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. Those are the missiles the U. S. is most worried about, with the ability to reach the U. S. West Coast. ”U. S. and South Korean military officials are still assessing what type of   missile this one was.” The missile traveled for about 30 minutes from Kusong, landing in the Sea of Japan. Japanese officials said it reached an unusually high altitude of 1, 240 miles, which could indicate a new type of missile. Abe said, ”Japan is closely cooperating with the U. S. and South Korea and analyzing the situation as we firmly respond to the development.” The Associated Press reports: ”The launch also comes as troops from the U. S. Japan and two European nations gather near Guam for drills that are partly a message to North Korea. The USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft supercarrier, is also engaging with South Korean navy ships in waters off the Korean Peninsula, according to Seoul’s Defense Ministry.”"
"Until now, all the controversy over President Trump, his associates and their various connections with various Russians has been billows of smoke without a visible fire. Even last week’s dismissal of FBI Director James Comey must be seen, strictly speaking, as more smoke. It is ”troubling,” as several uneasy Republican senators have said, but, in itself, not real proof of anything. To be sure, Comey’s FBI was conducting an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. And that probe has been underway for some time, putting it presumably far ahead of whatever the Senate and House Intelligence Committees are doing. (Last week, Comey’s    who is temporarily in charge of the agency now, told senators the investigation has continued with all the assigned agents still in place and that it is adequately resourced, in his view.) But we do not know what the FBI probe is finding  —   if anything. And we assume the president does not know either. So for now, at least, Comey’s firing, in itself, is not the fire. The closest thing we’ve found to an actual blaze is the escalating temperature within the Oval Office. It is President Trump, with his actions and his communications on TV and on Twitter, who has brought the heat and made inevitable the comparisons to the Watergate crisis of the early 1970s. Most egregious in this regard was the president’s now infamous tweet telling Comey to consider whether ”tapes” existed before starting to leak any of the conversations the two had. This tweet came Friday in response to newspaper stories saying Trump had asked Comey for a pledge of loyalty during a dinner in January, and that Comey had demurred. Bringing up the idea of recorded conversations in the White House is the surest way to conjure what were once called ”the Watergate horrors.” In that era, President Nixon, like every other president back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, made secret recordings of presidential meetings. In Nixon’s case, some of those recordings would become proof he had participated in covering up criminal acts and obstructing justice. The tapes helped lead to his resignation. But the comparisons to Watergate were already in the air, because the shock of Comey’s Tuesday night firing had recalled the ”Saturday Night Massacre” of October 1973, the moment when Nixon, fearful of what the tapes would reveal, tried to close down the investigation that was coming after him. Nixon sent his attorney general and deputy attorney general packing that night, along with the special prosecutor they had hired. Watergate happened before many Americans alive today were born. But Trump was in his later 20s at the time and surely recalls the traumatic events that ruined a president who had been reelected in a   landslide. That makes it all the stranger that he would speak of tapes and take so little care in removing Comey. The lack of preparation left Trump’s surrogates to skip from one flimsy pretext to another to explain what their boss had done. At week’s end, the president was still fuming over that, and a   of the entire communications team was under consideration by Trump, according to reports by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Why did Trump fire Comey? We know that Trump reacted angrily last summer when Comey completed his FBI probe of the private email server Hillary Clinton used while secretary of state without recommending criminal charges. Comey was unsparing in criticizing Clinton for   but saw no chance of a criminal case. That view was widely shared in the legal community, but Trump was outraged and has reportedly held onto that view. Yet he waited well into his fourth month as president before moving against Comey, a Republican appointed by President Obama for a   term that still had more than five years to run. All FBI directors serve at the pleasure of the president, but tradition and custom have erected a firewall between them. (The only other FBI director to be fired was let go by President Clinton in 1993 following allegations of tax evasion and other offenses.) Comey has been   about the FBI’s probe of Russian interference, which has included a search for evidence that hackers or Russian collaborators may have colluded with the Trump campaign or other Trump associates. Democrats, in fact, had attacked him for criticizing Clinton at a critical time in the presidential campaign last year but deciding not to disclose publicly before Election Day the Russian meddling investigation and possible Trump campaign connections. Among the problems here is the welter of different connections in question. We have, for example, a lot of smoke being blown about the possible business connections between various Russian business people (sometimes referred to darkly as ”oligarchs” or ”black market operators”) and the several enterprises of Trump and his Trump Organization. Some of this smoke, too, comes from Trump himself. On Friday he released a letter from two of his lawyers saying his tax returns, which are still undisclosed, would show he has no business ties to Russia  —   ”with a few exceptions.” The exceptions, it turned out, included a mansion he had sold for $95 million to a wealthy Russian who was willing to give Trump a profit of well over 100 percent on the property, which the Russian never occupied. But the focus for most Americans has been on the connection  —   if there is one  —   between Trump’s campaign and the Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. All we know now is that the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman was done by operatives linked to Russian intelligence agencies. That much has been confirmed by U. S.  intelligence agencies. The open question is the link between that Russian activity and Trump or some in his campaign’s inner circle. That dangling nexus is making a lot of people impatient, but not Bob Woodward, who with Carl Bernstein took the lid off of Watergate for The Washington Post. When asked about the FBI’s looking into the Trump campaign’s possible links to what Russia did last year, Woodward kept it cool. ”It’s clearly a legitimate investigation, and Trump doesn’t like it,” Woodward told a reporter for the Post. ”We’ll see. Some people think it’s a   already. Others think there’s no evidence, and let’s see.” It should be noted that Woodward and Bernstein got key elements of their Watergate scoop in 1973 from ”Deep Throat,” a source who remained unnamed until 2005. That source’s real name was Mark Felt, and in the early 1970s he was a   official at the FBI."
"Marianne Karth and Lois Durso are two mothers on a mission to prevent truck underride collisions. Underride crashes  —   when a car collides with a truck and gets lodged underneath  —   are among the most fatal types of accidents on the road. A vehicle’s passenger compartment is often crushed or ripped off. In 2004, Durso’s daughter  —   Roya Sadigh  —   was driving in a blizzard the night before Thanksgiving, when her car skidded out of control and slid under the side of a truck trailer. Roya died instantly. ”Roya, she was beautiful. She had a heart to match,” says Durso. ”She [was] 26 years old. Just starting her life. My very best friend.” Karth lost two of her nine children in a truck underride collision:    AnnaLeah and    Mary. Four years ago, the Karths were driving from their home in North Carolina to a family wedding in Texas when an   sideswiped their car, spinning it around and then hitting it again, and hurling the back of the car  —   where the girls were sitting  —   under another truck. The truck’s underride guard failed. ”It’s like they were here just yesterday, and they were so full of life,” Karth says. She describes AnnaLeah as the creative one Mary, as the life of the party. Karth says Mary  —   in her 13 years  —   never once cut her hair. ”Actually she had her first haircut when the emergency room nurse cut her braids off to take care of her because her face was smashed. They saved them for me,” Karth said. ”I’m so thankful they saved the braids.” Underride guards  —   the metal barriers hanging from the backs of most large trucks  —   are supposed to keep smaller vehicles from sliding underneath in a collision, but the current federal safety standard was issued nearly two decades ago. Many are weak and can crumble upon impact. The federal government currently does not require side guards on large trucks. A common bond and partnership, Karth and Durso are partnering in a campaign aimed at urging Congress and the Department of Transportation to improve federal guidelines for rear underride guards and to create a new safety mandate requiring guards on the sides of semitrailers. The two moms met for the first time at a trucking conference in March. Their bond was immediate. ”She asked me all kinds of questions about my daughters. Man, I was crying,” Karth says. ”It was the shared comfort and grief and getting to know each other really quickly. That was just two months ago, and now we’re like sisters.” ”Buddies here, you know,” adds Durso. Later that same month, the two attended a congressional hearing on truck safety. After the session ended, Karth says, ”It was at that point that we said, ’Let’s write a bill. ’” Their legislation  —   named ”The Roya, AnnaLeah  Mary Comprehensive Underride Protection Act of 2017”  —   calls for side and   protection on all trucks. For Karth, it’s partly the culmination of a yearslong effort involving petitions, social media campaigns and safety roundtables. New crash test results released May 10 by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety serve as validation. Those results show underride guards mounted to the side of a truck provide similar safety benefits as   ones. Karth and Durso’s lobbying effort has included six   trips to Washington in just the last three weeks. They’ve met with staffers for lawmakers from both parties. Durso describes the reception as positive. But they are up against a   trucking industry  —   represented by the American Trucking Associations (ATA)  —   which takes a different view of underride guards. ”ATA believes the best way to prevent underride deaths is to prevent crashes in the first place, which is why our industry invests more than $9 billion in safety initiatives. Wider deployment of advanced vehicle safety technologies like automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems can help prevent all kinds of crashes, including those into the sides of trucks,” says American Trucking Associations spokesperson Sean McNally. Still, some trucking companies have already added extra underride protection on their own. Joan Claybrook with the Truck Safety Coalition  —   an organization which provides support to truck crash victims and their families  —   says the trucking industry is a powerful force in Congress since it’s represented in all 50 states. ”They are just every place. They are powerful in their home districts. Members of Congress pay attention,” says Claybrook, who was an administrator at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration during the Carter administration. ”The truck safety victims have never been organized until we started the Truck Safety Coalition. They do live all over the country, but they don’t have the economic clout the trucking industry does.” ”Sick and tired of waiting” The two moms say they are prepared for the long fight. ”It’s very frustrating to watch how slow it moves especially when you see solutions,” Karth says. ”And it makes it hard to resolve the grief. But it’s all of that which fuels us to keep pushing.” Adds Durso, ”One day, Marianne called and she said, ’Why are we doing this?’ And I said, ’Because we are two moms who are sick and tired of waiting. ’” Karth and Durso say they are   about the political realities facing their legislation  —   but are no less determined."
"On Adriene McNally’s 49th birthday in January, she heard a knock on the door of her modest   in Northeast Philadelphia. She was being served. ”They actually paid someone to come out and serve me papers on a Saturday afternoon,” she says. The papers were from a government lawsuit that represents something more than just an unwelcome birthday gift  —   it’s an example of a program the federal government has brought to 19 cities around the country including Brooklyn, Detroit, Miami and Philadelphia: suing to recover unpaid student loans, like the ones McNally owes. Every day, 3, 000 people default on their federal student loans  —   and those lack of payments amount to an unpaid bill of $137 billion for the federal government. For decades, the government has tried to get borrowers to pay up by hiring debt collection agencies to call and send letters. But now the government is trying this new lawsuit strategy. McNally filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and cleared out all her creditors  —   except for student loans, which are nearly impossible to get rid of in bankruptcy. As she and many others have found out, it’s not easy escaping federal student loan debt. ”Your whole body heats up with frustration,” McNally says. ”I’m so frustrated over all this. It’s been so many years that they’ve been sending me mail and threatening me on the phone.” In the last two years, more than 3, 300 student loan borrowers have been sued after defaulting, according to the Department of Justice. In nearly every one of those suits, the borrower loses and the government wins. What does the government win? A lien on the borrower’s assets  —   meaning that the debt is now attached to his or her most valuable belongings, like a home. Jennifer Schultz, an attorney with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, says that a lien traps a person, like  . ”I describe a lien as a kind of marker on the house,” Schultz says. ”Any time a person tries to do a transaction involving their house  —   a new mortgage, a refinance, or if they try to sell it  —   they’re going to be expected to clear up any debt that’s attached to that house.” The government has long been able to garnish wages, take income tax returns and divert Social Security and disability benefits. But targeting property is a way of applying even more pressure to get former students to pay up. ”It’s to try to awaken the avoider from their slumber,” says Drew Salaman, a   attorney in Philadelphia. Salaman doesn’t work with student loans, but he’s familiar with debt avoidance. He says some of the borrowers are playing ”catch me if you can.” These lawsuits ensure that people take responsibility for their debts. ”After all,” he says, ”if we don’t have systems in place to recover debts, how can credit be extended?” The end result of these suits  —   the liens  —   can be seriously threatening to borrowers. For many it’s a matter of housing preservation, says Joanna Darcus, an attorney on the student loan team at the National Consumer Law Center. ”For folks already living on the margins financially, the fear of losing that house can be palatable,” Darcus says. Once a lien is in place, the government can force the sale of a former student’s home. That’s ”exceedingly rare,” officials say, but it does sometimes happen. The federal lawsuit program is expected to keep expanding, and with more than 8 million people currently behind on their federal student loans, it doesn’t look like the private firms will run out of work any time soon. You can read more on this story here."
"Fidget spinners  —   the trendy toy of the moment  —   are causing a commotion. A lot of kids love them, just as many teachers hate them and some people think they’re more than just toys. The basic fidget spinner has three prongs centered around a circle with bearings in the middle. Take one prong, give it a spin and watch as the triangle shape becomes a blur, sort of like a ceiling fan. The toys are manufactured by several different companies, and sold all over the place  —   airports, gas stations, train stations, toy stores. In many places where fidget spinners are sold, they’re touted as miracle toys that help people focus as well as aid people dealing with   stress and other disorders, but one expert says those claims aren’t backed up by science. And some teachers have complained that the toys are causing disturbances in the classroom. ’It just adds to the chaos’ While fidget spinners may seem simple and harmless, music teacher Elizabeth Maughan is not a fan. ”They do make a noise,” she says. ”When you have 10 or 15 in a room, it’s just this whirring and it’s an irresistible siren call for everyone else to turn around and look at whoever has it out, and [it’s] completely distracting.” Maughan teaches fifth and sixth graders in a school just outside Oklahoma City. She says the toys appeared there in the middle of April. ”It seemed like one day there was a few, and the next day there was a few, and the next day everyone had them. They just appeared really fast,” she says. ”Of course, they drop them, and they clatter and pieces of them fall out and then they’re chasing ball bearings around the room. It just adds to the chaos.” Fidget spinners got to be so much of a problem that Maughan’s school banned them. And, her school isn’t the only one putting a stop to the spin, many others are prohibiting the toys in the classroom. But some people are convinced fidget spinners are more than a just a distraction. Don’t believe the spin, In fact, many retailers market the devices as a tool to help people focus, and help with controlling things such as PTSD, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But according to Scott Kollins, a clinical psychologist and professor at Duke University, ”there’s no evidence to support that claim.” Kollins says that there’s been no research shown that proves fidget spinners are effective at addressing those issues. ”I know there’s lots of similar toys, just like there’s lots of other games and products marketed toward individuals who have ADHD, and there’s basically no scientific evidence that those things work across the board,” Kollins says. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of 2011 as many as 6. 4 million children between the ages of four and 17 had been diagnosed with ADHD. Kollins says that because there is such a large number of children with ADHD, a lot of parents are searching for help, making them vulnerable to targeted  —   and potentially false  —   marketing. ”If their description says specifically that this can help for ADHD, they’re basically making false claims because these have not been evaluated in proper research,” he says. Kollins says he hasn’t had parents or patients ask him about fidget spinners, yet, but he would rather they focus on some of the tried and true treatments. ”It’s important for parents and teachers who work with kids who have ADHD to know that there are very well studied and documented treatments that work, and that they’re out there, so there’s not really quick and easy fixes like buying a toy,” he says. ”It’s important that people don’t get into trying these fads when we do have treatments that can help these kids.”"
"”I want you to study hard so that you can rescue our family from poverty. Your father and I are poor and the only gift we can give you is an education. You are intelligent. Rise up and make your lives meaningful. I gave birth to you and I know you have what it takes to make it in life. Work hard my children.” When I was a little girl in Kenya, hardly a day would pass without my mother repeating those words to my four siblings and me. Because I was a child all I wanted to do was play hide and seek and netball. So her words fell on deaf ears. When she told us to work hard, we played harder. But my mother meant what she said. Anytime we were caught playing and not working hard at homework or chores like washing clothes and fetching firewood, she would punish us. I wish she did it differently. I still remember one day, when I was about 10, going to the river crying and wishing that she would get sick and lack the strength to punish me. I was very mad at her. As we children grew up, we slowly grasped the wisdom in her words mostly because she led by example and lived by her words every day. Bertha Ngumbi, my dear mother, is one of the most hardworking women I can think of. She and my dad, Harrison, were both teachers and managed to raise us on their combined salary of $200 a month. And because her teacher’s salary was not enough we had to farm. So before going to school, my mother would wake up all of us at 5 a. m. to do farm chores. Come evening, we’d help my mother by going to the river about 15 minutes away to fetch water for drinking and bathing and by cooking dinner. After dinner, she would do her teaching preparation while we did our homework and reviewed our school notes. My mother wasn’t just tough. She was selfless. She sacrificed life’s little pleasures so we could go to school and get an education. I still remember vividly how she and my dad would go to collect their paychecks but eat nothing before coming back in the evening, hungry and tired. I wondered at her ability to be in town, in the midst of all the best foods but choosing not to buy anything so she had enough money for our school fees. That determination and selflessness had a powerful effect on my siblings and me. Even though we grumbled, it inspired us to work hard and pursue our life’s goal no matter the challenges, hurdles and circumstances. Now that I am grown, I appreciate the values and standards my mother instilled in her children.. If it were not for her words and tough stance, I would never have graduated from Auburn University with a Ph. D. in entomology. I would never have become the first girl from our community of Mabafweni in Kwale County to get a doctoral degree. When I think back to my childhood, I can understand why she was so hard on us. But I’ve always wondered how she felt? Did she know we were mad at her for being so tough? Mama, why did you set the bar for us up so high? Why did you punish us so much? Why were you so insistent on us working hard in our early years? Why did you never give up on us? So I had a conversation with her this week. Here’s what I asked  —   and here’s what she said. Why were you so hard on us? My children thought I was mad when I told them what I wanted them to become. They could not believe they possessed the capacity to achieve the standards I had set. But because I was their mother, I could see their potential. I pushed them hard so that they would make it in life. I watched them closely and monitored their performances in school and had the time to discuss their progress with their teachers. As they grew up and started to understand, I became their friend and this helped because they were free to discuss their problems with me. Did you know your children were mad at you for setting high standards? No, I did not know they were mad. Deep down I knew everything I was doing was best for them in the long run. Were you ever tempted to give in and be a ”fun” mom? I stuck to my standards because I saw the potential in each of my children and I had to exploit that. What was the biggest sacrifice you made? I sacrificed my social life, money and time. But I would do it all over again. What advice do you have for moms today who are in the position you were in  —   facing poverty, trying to make sure their kids have enough to eat and can get an education and have a better life? Let their children be there biggest priority. Young mothers should focus on their children. How could you collect a paycheck and come home, tired and hungry, without stopping to get something to eat? Did you ever just want to go crazy and buy some food you loved and sneak eat it? No. I did not want to sneak eat because I had a mission to accomplish. Was there any role model or any wise advice or saying that helped you? My mother was my role model. I had seen my mother struggle. I therefore wanted to set the bar up high for my children. I wanted them to accomplish their life goals. What’s the toughest thing about being a mom?  The toughest thing was make my children understand that whatever I was doing was for them and was out of a mother’s wish for her children to succeed in life. I didn’t have to ask my mother if she is happy with how all her children turned out. I know she is very happy. Her eldest son, Kennedy, is a businessman, farmer and entrepreneur. I’m her second born and I’m a scientist. Her third born, Faith, is a counselor. Her fourth born, Kalekye, is a manager and consultant in a   NGO. And her last born, Kavuu, is a nurse. All her efforts, sacrifices and selflessness paid off. Today, my mother and I continue to share a beautiful relationship. Week after week, in our phone conversations, she urges me to work hard. Just as she did when I was a child, she constantly urges me to rise up and make the most out of the opportunities that I have. She jokingly always reminds me of how far we have come, the sacrifices she made for my siblings and me  —   and how happy she is that we all succeeded. Ending on a happy note, she always urges me to reach for the stars. I am forever grateful to my mother and I love her from the bottom of my heart. Esther Ngumbi is a   researcher at Auburn University in Alabama. She serves as a 2017 Clinton Global Initiative University Mentor for Agriculture, and is a 2015 Food Security New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Reach her @EstherNgumbi"
"There’s a famous story about how Lana Turner was discovered: sitting in a Hollywood drugstore, sipping a soda. Next thing you know, she’s one of the most sought after ”It” girls of the 1940s. There may be some key details left out of that account, but one can assume, at least in theory, that it makes sense. What doesn’t necessarily make sense? The recent fever pitch over    Rep. Maxine Waters,  . who has been adopted by a new generation as ”Auntie Maxine.” Waters has spent more than four decades in public service but it’s only now that she’s become the political crush for young progressives. That’s due to her fierce attacks of President Donald Trump and his new administration. While other politicians practice staid soundbites, Waters is extemporaneous and unpredictable. But usually her message is along the lines of ”Impeach 45!” That has made her deep raspy voice and withering facial expressions almost inescapable recently. Although she’s been a staple of cable news shows on CNN and MSNBC, Waters’ popularity and reach have surpassed the traditional political audience and grabbed ahold of young   hearts and minds. In the past month alone, she’s appeared at the MTV Music Awards where she basked and curtsied in the roaring applause of a standing ovation that went on and on. She’s been featured in the Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, Ebony and The Washington Post’s ”Cape Up” podcast. But it was probably a January article by humor columnist R. Eric Thomas on Elle. com that catapulted the septuagenarian to stardom with the   set and led to her new, familial nickname. Apparently, Thomas, who has a Lana Turner story of his own  —   he was hired by the magazine after being discovered on Twitter  —   was home watching   when Waters serendipitously appeared on the screen. Thomas had found a new muse. If you haven’t seen the performance that launched hundreds of thousands of tweets, take 30 seconds to watch the whole thing. But if you don’t have the time, here’s what you need to know: Waters had left an intelligence briefing with   Director James Comey. She was not pleased with what she had heard. ”Yes, can I help you? What do you want?” is how she addressed reporters. Thomas can’t help laughing as he recalls watching it unfold in real time. ”I was like, ’Who is this person? ’” he said, ”She walks into a press conference like they’re already on her last nerve.” He was delighted, flabbergasted and inspired and that led to this unforgettable paragraph: ”I have never seen anything like this outside of a family reunion. Rep. Waters is definitely that auntie who got rich selling Avon and doesn’t really like your father. Or any of these   people. But you sit by her so that she can   critiques with a mouth full of potato salad.” So, technically, the words ”Auntie Maxine” may never have been strung together by Thomas, but he takes full credit anyway. ”It’s on my business card!” he bragged. Asheya Warren is among Waters’ legion of fans and says the congresswoman’s frank style and ”shade”  skills are what appeal to her. ”It’s the way she says what she says,” Warren said. Older women like Waters get a pass to freely speak their minds, added the   . Once a woman is over 60, she said, ”You’re able to say whatever you want to, whenever you want to. My mom does it, her two sisters do it, my grandmother did it, and again, that’s why that ’Auntie’ moniker is so well received.” Waters is thrilled by it all. ”I am surprised and honored to be so enthusiastically supported by millennials,” she said by phone from her office in Los Angeles. She says millennials  —   though she may be a little generous with that designation  —   stop her on the street, at the mall and in restaurants, with the same cry. ”Auntie Maxine! Oh my God, can I take a picture?” they squeal in excitement. Waters recognizes she’s filling a void left by today’s professional politicians, who are sometimes afraid to state their genuine opinions fearing a backlash from constituents or the potential loss of their seat. ”But I’m not afraid that,” she said defiantly. ”I will speak my mind.” And if that makes you want to call her ”Auntie,” be ready. She likes giving hugs."
"You don’t need me to tell you how much more television there is than there used to be, or how many more places you can find it. You don’t need me to tell you that its population of creatively ambitious and idiosyncratic shows has grown enormously, as has its population of cheaply made UCSs  —   Undiscovered Channel Shows, where you learn that a show is entering its third season and only then do you realize that (1) it exists and (2) your byzantine cable menu actually does get that channel (although perhaps not in HD). The TV boom has been great for certain populations, as far as having their stories told: young urbanites having unsatisfying sex that they talk about a lot   men who do evil things but are just really sad on the inside kings (real and fictional) extremely violent people involved in politics, government, or espionage people being chased by evil conspirators and people who had adventures during historical periods when everyone was especially stylishly dressed. But the bounty has not been equally distributed. Many ensemble ”prestigious” dramas prominently feature women, but fewer have women at their true centers. Few have revolved around people of color. The comedy side has been, and continues to be, considerably more varied, with Veep and Broad City and Atlanta and Insecure and more all holding down the fort for a wider collection of people. But it’s Mother’s Day, so let’s take a moment and consider the current state of the TV mom. For a lot of people the most traditional idea of the ”TV mom” conjures up a couple of images  —   and this is true even for people too young to have seen these TV moms when their shows originally aired. Perhaps it makes you think of June Cleaver going about her household chores all dressed up. Perhaps it makes you think of Carol Brady, standing with her hands on her hips while giving life advice to her six kids, or of Marion Cunningham, fondly mothering her son’s friend Fonzie. Perhaps, more recently, it makes you think of the Exasperated Patricias of the ’90s: Patricia Richardson of Home Improvement and Patricia Heaton of Everybody Loves Raymond. Certainly, there were more moms than these: Florida Evans on Good Times and Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls (and, in fact, all of The Golden Girls) and Ann Romano on One Day At A Time. And dramas like Family and The Waltons and Little House On The Prairie had their own ideas of the ways that moms fit into families. Let’s look at a few of the ways TV moms have changed in the Age Of All This TV. When family shows on the whole diversify, so do moms.  When ABC premiered Modern Family in 2009, it was meant  —   as its title implies  —   to show a different kind of family than was prominent on most of television. It featured a gay couple with a daughter, an interracial couple with a large age difference, and grown siblings who still meddled in each other’s business. But now, Modern Family is an aging comedy that feels much more conventional than it did then, and what does feel new is, in particular, three comedies that sprung from the ”  family comedy” brand that it and The Middle helped the network develop.   Fresh Off The Boat, and Speechless all address populations that have been woefully underrepresented in the   world: black families,   families, and families with   kids, respectively. And one of the things that ties those shows together is that on all of them, the mom is not only a fully formed character with her own stories, but a key contributor to the comedy in ways that are not purely relational  —   not purely about   the husband and the kids about their antics. Roseanne was the same way, and that show’s realistic orientation around   economics is one that we could use a lot more of. (The Middle, to its credit, carries that tradition forward as well.) The new version of One Day At A Time that premiered on Netflix a few months ago presented a vibrant, multigenerational matriarchal   family. There’s still lots of room for progress, but the more outlets there are, the more families there are, and the more families there are, the more ways we get to see mothers. It extends to family structure: TV has at least some single moms who aren’t widowed like early single moms often were  —   Diahann Carroll’s character on Julia, for example. The Fosters is a show about a family with two moms, and Transparent is about a transgender mom. Again, the more different kinds of families you have, the more different kinds of moms you have. Although it stands to reason that this would be the case, it’s still encouraging.  Moms can be in lots of kinds of stories.  Prestige drama moms are often quite different from other   moms. After all, Livia and Carmela Soprano were both moms. Skyler White on Breaking Bad was a mom who did much of what she did because of her complex feelings about motherhood and family. Elizabeth Jennings on The Americans is a mom, and she’s one who fits few of television’s comfortable ideas about selfless moms to whom prioritizing kids’ feelings and bandaging cuts come naturally. Some of the women on Orange Is The New Black are mothers. The character played by Winona Ryder on Stranger Things is partly an exploration of how difficult it can be for mothers who believe that something is terribly wrong with their children to be believed. Changes to our portrayals of motherhood do not only come in traditionally structured family shows, whether dramas or comedies. They can come in any show, because nearly any show can have women in it, and many different kinds of women are mothers. Whether they’re cops, detectives, students, or spies, they may also be mothers, and the fact that they’re mothers may or may not significantly affect the way they do other things. So even when a female character in her capacity as a mother is not what’s unusual or conceptually complicated about a show, it may push on the edges of how we see mothers.  One of the last frontiers is still ambivalence.  One of the fascinating things about the series finale of Girls  —   and you’re welcome to skip this paragraph if you’re still waiting  —   was that it allowed Hannah to be ambivalent about motherhood at some level, even though she loved her son. Her difficulties with breastfeeding were valuable as literal storytelling, but they also stood for her broader fear of failure, and for the physical toll that pregnancy and childbirth had taken on her and the toll that having an infant was continuing to take. Television still very rarely allows pregnant characters or characters with children to express very much in the way of true ambivalence: moments in which they’re not certain they’ve done the right thing by becoming parents, or in which they admit with more than a     that they do not always enjoy parenthood  —   or their own kids. Sure, as a joke  —   a very early Cosby Show found Clair asking Cliff, ”Why did we have four children?” and him answering, ”Because we didn’t want five.” (This was before the show decided they had five  —   hello, Sondra!  —   but the point holds.) But while it’s not unheard of, it’s still uncommon for TV moms not to always want to be moms, or express the kind of uncertainty about retaining their identities and friendships that is common in real life. And it’s a shame, because when a work of fiction can admit that parenting is not only difficult, but often lonely and unsatisfying for significant periods of time  —   that there is not always a giggle from a baby at the end of the day that makes everything okay  —   it can dig more deeply into what bonds in parenthood really mean to people. Good parents give up a lot. That’s one of the reasons why a lot of them get cards."
"Two years ago, when my children were 1 and 4, I ”found” the following poem with the help of Google’s autocomplete search function: Today, with children now ages 3 and 6, I decided to repeat the experiment: What I take away: First, motherhood is hard. That’s just what the data suggest. Second, the experience of motherhood isn’t constant. An individual mother’s experiences change as her children grow, as her circumstances are altered, and as her own life evolves. Alongside the changing trajectories of individual mothers are changing norms for parenting and women. If I repeat this experiment in another two years, I expect to find a new poem once again. Third, amid the difficulty and flux of motherhood there’s some element of enchantment. Call it magic or a muse, there are times of wonder and awe, rapture and joy, dazzling moments of inspiration amid the inevitable moments of perspiration. Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers and their children! Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Most of the news from Puerto Rico lately has been terrible. The island’s government just declared that it cannot repay its bondholders and will carry out drastic cuts in education and social services. On Wednesday, thousands of students at the University of Puerto Rico voted to continue a protest strike. Food, though, is delivering a modest ray of hope. That hope will be on display most prominently this weekend, at a conference called Agrohack, which celebrates the island’s growing band of young food entrepreneurs, from chefs to coffee farmers. Last year, Agrohack drew 650 people. This year, organizers expect 1, 500. Across Puerto Rico, in fact, there’s a new wave of interest in food and farming. People are thronging to new farmers markets. Chefs are making a point of finding local sources of food. According to Ricardo Fernandez, who is CEO of Puerto Rico Farm Credit, the largest agricultural lender on the island, it’s a dramatic break from Puerto Rico’s past. ”Historically, agriculture has had a stigma in Puerto Rico,” he says. ”It was for   workers, people who didn’t get an education. We’re making it more modern, more hip.” It’s astonishing, in fact, just how far farming in Puerto Rico has fallen over the past  . According to USDA statistics, total sales from Puerto Rico’s farms have declined by   in constant dollars, since 1964. Prime agricultural land, much of it previously used to grow sugar cane, sits idle. Despite its tropical climate, which allows farmers to grow food   Puerto Rico imports 80 percent of its food. During a recent trip to Puerto Rico, I heard many different reasons for Puerto Rico’s dependence on imported food. Javier Rivera Aquino, a former secretary of agriculture for Puerto Rico, traced it back to the island’s long history as a Spanish colony, when native farming traditions gave way to large plantations of sugar and coffee that were shipped back to Europe. Food, meanwhile, was imported. ”They were taught to produce what they don’t consume, and they were taught not to produce what they consume,” he says. ”That’s the kind of dependence that was created under that colonial system.” In 1964, sugar accounted for almost half of all agricultural sales on the island, and sugar manufacturing accounted for 23 percent of all wages that Puerto Ricans earned. Then, within just a few years, the industry collapsed. According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Puerto Rico’s sugar cane industry was crippled by government policies that prevented sugar producers from getting bigger and more efficient. It couldn’t compete with sugar producers in places like Louisiana. Puerto Rico’s government now owns the land where sugar once grew. The land is available for investors to lease. Yet much of it still sits idle. Fernandez sees both economic and cultural reasons for this lack of investment. Economically, Puerto Rican producers had difficulty competing with   food producers in the rest of the United States. Egg producers in Puerto Rico, for instance, were wiped out by cheap imports from the mainland. ”We didn’t protect ourselves,” Fernandez says. ”You can see it in sector after sector.” Also, Puerto Rican consumers didn’t place any extra value on   food. But Fernandez also points to something else, the lack of ”an entrepreneurial mindset among farmers.” Or, as Rivera Aquino puts it, ”we have been taught to work for somebody else. We have not been trained to deal with risk and become entrepreneurs.” Both of them say that the situation is now changing rapidly. Many consumers now are willing to pay extra for food grown on the island. University students are flocking to classes on agriculture. And Fernandez says the economic crisis is forcing people to try new things. ”There’s a resurgence now, because we have to   ourselves,” he says. Some entrepreneurs even see new chances to reverse the historical pattern, and export Puerto Rican food to the mainland U. S. and to Europe. An Israeli company is doing this with mangoes. Others see an opportunity in the growing U. S. demand for   beef. ”There aren’t too many places under the U. S. flag where you have 365 days a year when you can truly ” says Mike McCloskey, who owns a large dairy operation in Indiana but is currently launching a livestock grazing operation in Puerto Rico. ”Every acre is, at least theoretically, three times as productive as most acres in our northern hemisphere,” says McCloskey, who grew up on the island. ”I don’t see any reason why Puerto Rico can’t get from 85 percent imported food down to 50 percent.” Many of the new entrepreneurial ventures are small, or not yet in full production. Ricardo Fernandez says they haven’t yet translated into a significant increase in food production on the island. ”From what we know, overall agricultural production is flat,” he says. But he expects that to change within a few years. ”It’s at a turning point, but we need to do more,” he says."
"Chicano art never really went out of style in California it was born during the political foment of the 1960s and ’70s, and it’s bubbled along since then for decades. Now there’s a new wave of the genre, one that’s taken on a fiercer political edge since November. In LA, for example, there’s a group show opening called ”Art As Resistance: Paintings in Protest to a Trump Presidency.” It’s the brainchild of Eric Almanza, a figurative painter and high school art teacher. Almanza’s contribution to the show is the latest in a series of oil paintings he’s produced depicting the border wall with Mexico. It shows the wall on fire and graffitied with the words ”f       your wall” next to a curious symbol: a circular dream catcher with a triangle in the center that looks a bit like the ”Triforce” from the Japanese video game series Legend of Zelda. ”Because every great resistance needs some kind of logo,” Almanza says. He calls the painting With This Fire, a Rebellion Will Rise. Almanza is one of a growing number of Chicano artists responding to Trump administration efforts to peel back civil rights enforcement and crack down on illegal immigration, with a heavy emphasis on Latino immigration. ”About four years ago, I started working on this narrative of this   21st century society,” Almanza says. ”I always imagined it would take place 50 years from now, but it almost seems like time has  .” Chicano art has tackled political topics from the beginning, starting with the grape boycott of the 1960s and ’70s and the Vietnam War. ”It is an art that was made alongside of a movement for civil rights,” says Judith Baca, a visual artist and Chicano studies professor at UCLA. ”So some of the most powerful images came about . ..   conditions in the Central Valley in California artworks that spoke about   struggle with the police artworks that articulated stories and histories that had been forgotten and not spoken about, or taught in the schools.” That art came in the form of oil paintings and sculpture, but also music, theater and agitprop posters for use at protest marches  ” posters that are also enjoying a renaissance of sorts. At any number of protests around the world, you’ll see people carrying posters designed or distributed by Dignidad Rebelde, the Oakland graphic arts collective Melanie Cervantes runs with her partner. ”We have to have it everywhere,” Cervantes says, ”and we need more people doing it, because that is its power.” Dignidad Rebelde follows in a long line of Chicano graphic art collectives that also teach people how to do it themselves. When Cervantes gets invited to teach screen printing workshops at universities and community centers around the country, she makes a point of mixing in Chicano history and art history with her discussion of technique. ”Sometimes it’s just connecting the dots a little bit better for folks to see that our struggles have many fronts,” she says. For Judith Baca, Almanza and Cervantes’ work marks a welcome return to the political roots of Chicano art after decades of trying to win recognition from art critics and museums. ”Chicano is about resistance and affirmation of a culture,” she says. ”And I think it’s giving many young artists purpose again and a kind of focus for their work.” Old and new Chicano artwork is being shown at museums and galleries across California this year, but the biggest exhibition of all will be ”Pacific Standard Time: ” a massive,   blowout organized by the Getty."
"The performance by Salvador Sobral, this year’s winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, was different than the others. Most of the performances are noted for a lot of glitz and being pretty cheesy.   competitors carried on that tradition this year  —   performing on a wide stage backed by flashing lights, bursts of flames and other effects. Sobral took a different take in his performance on Saturday  —   singing from a small elevated circle in the middle of the crowd. His song ”Amar Pelos Dois”  —   ”Love For Both”  —   struck an intimate chord with the audience. While accepting the award, Sobral said, ”Music is not fireworks, music is feeling.” Kristian Kostov of Bulgaria was   and Moldova’s Sunstroke Project finished third. The early favorite, Francesco Gabbani of Italy, finished sixth. This is the 62nd year for Eurovision which was started to bring recently warring European countries together. This year’s contest was hosted by Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and it was not without controversy. The Associated Press reports: ”Russia’s participation was scuttled by host Ukraine over the two nations’ diplomatic and military conflict. ”Russia is one of Eurovision’s heavy hitters, tied with Sweden for the most   finishes this century. But this year’s Russian entrant, Yuliya Samoylova, was blocked from competing by Ukraine because she had toured in Crimea after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula. ”In response, Russia’s   Channel 1 television is refusing to broadcast the contest, replacing Saturday’s final with a screening of the film ”Alien.” ”The   split is a headache for Eurovision’s producer, the European Broadcasting Union, which strives mightily to keep pop and politics separate. Overtly political flags and banners are banned, and lyrics are monitored for provocative content. ”In 2009, the EBU nixed the Georgian entry ”We Don’t Wanna Put In,” a dig at Russian President Vladimir Putin. The union, however, has been criticized for not barring ”1944” last year, allowing   tensions to fester.” Eurovision has a major following, and it has helped to boost the careers of many performers  —   including Sweden’s ABBA which won in 1974 with the song ”Waterloo.”"
"Canadian   Simone Schmidt, who performs under the name Fiver, undertook an ambitious project with her latest album. Audible Songs From Rockwood is Schmidt’s way of telling the stories of real people committed to Rockwood Asylum, a   institution near what’s now Kingston, Ontario. ”The Rockwood Asylum was built between 1856 and 1868 on the north shore of Lake Ontario,” Schmidt says. ”It was built as a way to deal with a class of criminals and persons designated insane that the Kingston Penitentiary and the Toronto psychiatric institution couldn’t handle.” In a conversation with NPR’s Lulu   Schmidt explains how she researched the women who became the characters in her songs and provides context for a few of those songs. Hear the interview at the audio link, and find highlights below. On the process of researching the inmates at Rockwood Asylum, The case files of anyone who was incarcerated in a public institution over 100 years ago are available to any member of the public. So these ones were in the archives of Ontario . .. They’re handwritten, and so you really get a sense of the script of the superintendent who would have been filling them out. And they have all kinds of information  —   although very little, when you think of these case files being the only thing left of a lot of the people. On the story of the narrator of ”House Of Lost Words” I got everything from a series of letters between a superintendent and one of the inmates’ husbands. The husband writes to the superintendent to check on his wife, and he’s writing from Temple, Texas. And the superintendent writes back to tell him, ”Your wife’s fine, you should come pick her up,” and what happens over the course of these letters is you realize that the husband never comes. Then there’s another letter that was dated 30 years later, from the inmate’s daughter, who wonders where her mother was and if she was still alive. And the superintendent, of course, writes back and says ”Yeah, your mom’s totally fine, you should come pick her up. She’s in sound body and sound mind.” And then you look at the case file and it also says that the same woman died a year after that letter was sent. So you know that she lived 33 years in the asylum. On taking refuge in the characters in her songs, It’s that feeling of displacing oneself into the consciousness of another. And so, if I were to tell you more about my life, then I would be describing what it is that I’d be taking refuge from. . .. It’s that joy of obsession, I find. And even when it’s somber material, or when it’s difficult material, I don’t necessarily find it that much [more] difficult than what it is to live in this world. Web editor Rachel Horn contributed to this story."
"The hikers pile out of minivans on the side of a serpentine highway, climb a dusty hill, pass a Bedouin woman preparing morning bread in a tent, then turn the corner and find themselves embraced by the desert hills  —   a world apart. There are about 20 of them, nearly all Palestinians, ranging in age from their late 20s to 60s, wearing backpacks and hats, some carrying trekking poles and large cameras. Among them is an alternative medicine practitioner, an occupational therapist, a retired United Nations worker and a   customer service professional. Outdoor exploration is a weekly Friday morning ritual for the group, which calls itself Shat’ha, or ”Picnic” in Arabic  —   one of scores of informal Palestinian hiking groups that have sprung up in recent years. Their home, the West Bank, is a hikers’ paradise: mountains shimmering with olive trees, exquisite views, natural springs, vineyards, desert expanses and historic ruins at nearly every turn. The Palestinian hiking groups aim to enjoy that nature, but also to escape the tensions of life under Israeli military occupation and display ownership over the land they walk. ”To walk for three or four hours without checkpoints, without seeing soldiers, something like this, it makes you feel, somehow, you can feel some free,” says Ammar Jawdat, 28, a lawyer. He walked through a dry riverbed with his wife and warned fellow hikers of snakes. The West Bank is a   land, conquered by many peoples throughout the centuries. In 1967, Israel captured the territory, and today, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have planted roots in Jewish settlements, many of which are near Palestinian cities and villages or on land Palestinian families claim as their own property. Palestinians want them out, and want the land to create an independent country of their own  —   a country named Palestine. Life in the West Bank is tense. That is why four Palestinians started the Shat’ha club about 11 years ago. They wanted to get some fresh air after the violence of the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israel that brought scores of attacks on Israelis and military incursions into Palestinian cities. ”Nature . .. gives me a lot of power. I found it a very important thing in my life,” says Juwana Rafidi, the hiking organizer for the day, wearing a tan sunhat. For Israelis, hiking has long been a popular pastime. It stretches back to the 1920s, before Israel became a state, when Zionist youth movements organized group hiking trips as a way to get to know the land of the Bible and stake claim to their spiritual homeland. Palestinian hiking clubs embrace a similar nationalistic ethos. One Palestinian hiking group even makes a point of carrying a Palestinian flag when hiking in the West Bank. The Shat’ha group has a strict rule for its Palestinian hikers: No Israeli food products  —   whether they be   packs of crackers or   apples  —   are allowed on the trek. Today, there may be as many as 70 grassroots Palestinian hiking clubs, says Shay Rabineau, an assistant professor at Binghamton University and expert in Israeli and Palestinian hiking. The groups have names like ”Wild Palestine,” ”Palestinian Women Hikers Club” and ”Walk and Get to Know Your Country.” Wandering the outdoors has always been a part of local culture, whether to shepherd flocks or to gather wild sage and thyme. Writer Raja Shehadeh began taking walks in the West Bank hills in the late 1970s, as he recounts in his 2008 book, Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape. But organized Palestinian recreational hiking groups  —   for those with the means to afford the leisure time  —   have sprung up largely in the last decade, following the Second Intifada, when people felt it was safer to wander the West Bank. The recent boom in Palestinian hiking has been led by local Palestinians, Rabineau says. ”It’s not a copy or an import it’s taking on a character all its own,” he says. In today’s tug of war over the West Bank, nature trails act as territorial markings. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel has forged more than 400 miles of nature trails in the West Bank. Jewish settlers have also set up unauthorized nature trails as a way to stake out territory. Meanwhile, a Palestinian nonprofit organization, Masar Ibrahim    —   with help from the international Abraham Path initiative  which is spearheading a project to create one long walking trail across the Middle East  —   has completed marking the first Palestinian   trail across the West Bank, including in Area C, where the Israeli military has full control. The Masar Ibrahim   organization also runs weekend hikes catered to international tourists, led by Palestinian tour guides and with lunch served in Palestinian family homes. Throughout the Middle East, there are efforts to create hiking trails to attract tourism, from the Lebanon Mountain Trail to the Jordan Trail to Egypt’s new Sinai Trail. About three years ago, Shai Yagel, then the   coordinator for Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, was creating a new trail in the West Bank when he came across what he called ”pirate markings”  —   a trail marked by amateurs without permission. He thought it was created by settlers. Settler organizations, he says, tended to pressure him to blaze new trails in areas he felt were too close to Palestinian cities and posed a security risk for Israeli hikers. He erased the trail, and called a settler group to complain. ”I was annoyed,” he says. A few days later, he was contacted by a representative of Abraham Path, who said his Palestinian counterparts had forged that trail  —   and were certain Israeli authorities had destroyed it to spite the Palestinians. ”In the West Bank, no matter what you do, people are sure it was political. You move a rock . .. and someone thinks it’s because you are for or against someone,” Yagel says. For this day’s outing, the Shat’ha hiking group chose a path from the Ein Fara spring to the Ein Fawwar spring, west of the city of Jericho. The hikers amble down steep desert hills that give way to streams with fish and crabs and frogs. They spot a badger dashing across the rocks somebody coos at it. Rafidi hums a song set to a poem by the late Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish. Every so often, an Israeli settlement perched atop a hill comes into view. So do Israeli hikers. ”Cousins,” one of the Palestinian hikers says, using a euphemism Palestinians and Israelis often use to refer to each other. Thafer Jarrar, 50, an occupational therapy professor who lived in Colorado for nearly two decades, says he frequently sees Israelis on West Bank trails. ”We see them sometimes, but we don’t interact with them. We don’t talk to them, they don’t talk to us,” he says. At a spring, two young Israeli hikers appear. ”Be careful, he’s armed,” one of the Palestinian hikers says. The armed man is a young Israeli, originally from Boca Raton, Florida. He’s a soldier, and soldiers are required to carry their weapons even when off duty. He says he feels safer armed when he’s hiking in this part of the West Bank. ”It’s not like I expect anything to happen. It’s more like a safety. But yeah, I definitely feel safer,” he says, giving his name as Avishai before he sets off with his friend, who’s from an Israeli settlement nearby. The Palestinian group spreads a tablecloth on the ground for a picnic of grape molasses mixed with tahini, tomatoes with garlic and spicy shanklish cheese. After the picnic, they hit the trail again and pass another Israeli trekker. ”Where are you from?” the Israeli asks. Jawdat, the lawyer, answers, ”Palestine.”"
"In rural Alaska, providing health care means overcoming a lot of hurdles. Fickle weather that can leave patients stranded, for one. Also: complicated geography. Many Alaskan villages have no roads connecting them with hospitals or specialists, so people depend on local clinics and a cadre of devoted primary care doctors. I followed one young family physician, Dr. Adam McMahan, on his regular weekly visit to the clinic in the village of Klukwan. It’s a speck of a town alongside the Chilkat River in Southeast Alaska, framed by snowy mountains that loom in the distance. The clinic staff drives up to Klukwan twice a week from the bigger town of Haines, 22 miles to the south. On our drive, McMahan points out the clouds of dust blowing off sandbars along the river: ”Likely today we’ll see somebody with a lung issue because of the sand coming off the river.” Klukwan is populated mostly by Alaska Natives of the Tlingit tribe, fewer than 100 people in all, with a few hundred more people in the surrounding area. Over the three years that he’s been practicing medicine in Klukwan, McMahan has come to know his patients well, and that becomes clear as he begins the day’s consultations. With patient Lani Hotch, along with reviewing her cholesterol and blood sugar levels, McMahan remembers that she has a new dog. ”What type of puppy did you get?” he asks her. (A yellow Lab.) With fisherman Henry Chatoney, he wonders, ”Hey, did you find a deckhand?” And knowing that Everett Simons grows great potatoes and has been put on a   diet for his diabetes, the doctor joshes, ”How often are you sneaking a potato?” This is the kind of intimate,   family medicine the    doctor loves. ”I know that Everett, he’s an amazing potato farmer,” he says. ”I know that Henry is full of adventures and has fished Bristol Bay for longer than I’ve been alive. You get to know your patients as human.” McMahan can trace his inspiration to become a physician back to a striking series of    photographs he saw in a magazine when he was a teenager. His grandfather was a pediatrician and had a 1948 issue of Life magazine on a shelf in his office. The photo essay by W. Eugene Smith, ”Country Doctor,” shows a dedicated general practitioner tending to his patients in rural Colorado: making house calls, taping up broken ribs, stitching wounds. ”Those stills were really captivating,” McMahan says. ”I was looking at those the other day and they’re not that different than what we do now here in Alaska.” The Klukwan clinic is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s part of the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, or SEARHC. The clinic has two exam rooms, a dental suite and a small lab for basic diagnostics. ”A lot of it is doing the best we can in the moment with limited resources,” McMahan says. ”I can’t send you down the street to go see a cardiologist. I can’t get a CT [scan] done in 10 minutes.” On the day we visit, McMahan is seeing mostly elderly patients, including one, a Tlingit elder named Evelyn Hotch, who is confined to her bed after a stroke. So with stethoscope looped around his neck, McMahan walks down the road to pay her a house call. Once we’re inside her home, the first thing Evelyn Hotch does is offer all of us a snack: dried red seaweed. ”You came to an Indian house,” she says, ”and this is what Indians like to eat!” It’s only after McMahan has shared her seaweed and inquired about the grandchildren whose photos cover just about every inch of her walls that he turns to her medical issues, asking about pain and what supplies she needs. ”We’ll see you next week, OK?” he says as he heads out. The goal with regular primary care like this is to keep people out of the emergency room. But in such a small, remote town, what happens in an emergency? There’s a volunteer ambulance squad that will drive up from Haines, about a half hour away. Haines doesn’t have a hospital, though, so critically ill or injured patients might need to be medevacked by Coast Guard helicopter from Haines to Juneau. ”The vibratory effect of that, when your heart rate’s beating fast and you’ve got a really sick patient, hearing the helicopter, hearing the blades, is such a relief,” McMahan says. Once a patient makes it to Juneau, he or she might still need to be flown by air ambulance to bigger hospitals in Anchorage or Seattle, hundreds of miles away. ”The Rubik’s Cube of resource coordination and transport is probably one of our biggest challenges,” McMahan says. In part because of these complicated logistics, Alaska has some of the highest health care costs in the country. For people who don’t have health insurance, ”it’s often cause for catastrophe, financially,” McMahan says. But, he adds, since Alaska expanded its Medicaid program in September 2015 under the Affordable Care Act, he is able to treat patients now who had gone for years without access to primary care. More than 32, 000 Alaskans have gained health coverage through Medicaid expansion. McMahan worries about what might happen to his patients if the ACA is repealed and replaced by Congress: ”I think if the Medicaid expansion is undercut, people will go without care,” he tells me. ”They’re not going to be able to afford it.” Even though the current health care debate is taking place thousands of miles away from his clinic, it hits home. ”It’s amazing how politics impact my    life when it comes to just getting somebody basic, basic care,” he says. For now, though, Dr. McMahan turns to his immediate concerns: He has more patients to see, and more stories to hear. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"U. S. diplomats staged a rare intervention to rescue the family of a human rights lawyer held in China. The attorney was released last week, after having been swept up in a    crackdown that has put most of the country’s rights lawyers and legal activists out of business. Human rights groups have been watching to see whether the Trump administration will take a more or less muscular approach to human rights in China than their predecessors, and this case highlights some of the issues at stake. The target of the rescue was Chen Guiqiu, a professor of environmental science, and the wife of human rights lawyer Xie Yang. Chen had fled China with the couple’s two daughters in February, fearing for their safety. They snuck into Thailand, but local authorities raided their safe house and detained them. On March 2, Chen was locked up in a Bangkok immigration jail. ”I couldn’t communicate with the outside world,” Chen recalls. ”I was worried, almost in despair, and in my heart, I was praying to God.” A group of Chinese government agents milled outside the front gate of the jail, waiting for Chen to be deported so they could take her back to China. This is according to Bob Fu, president and founder of China Aid, a Midland,   organization that describes itself as a ”Christian human rights group.” But action by Fu’s group and U. S. officials caught the Chinese agents off guard, and now Chen and her daughters are in the U. S. The unusual tale of Chen’s rescue offers clues  —   and raises questions  —   about the Trump administration’s approach to the issue of human rights in China. ”I pinpointed the exact prison cell that Professor Chen and the two daughters were staying in,” Fu explains, before he urged the State Department and other agencies to rescue her. Within hours, U. S. officials were headed for the jail. ”The decision was already made by, I was told, the highest authorities in the Trump administration,” Fu says. Chen’s youngest daughter is a U. S. citizen. This was apparently the main consideration behind the U. S. government’s intervention. It is unclear whether Chen Guiqiu’s Christian faith was a factor in the decision to intervene. With the Chinese agents waiting in front of the jail, American diplomats persuaded Thai authorities to let them escort the three out a back door. They headed to the airport, where, Fu says, Chinese agents showed up. They pressured Thai authorities not to let the trio depart the country. ”It was a major standoff, I was told,” says Bob Fu, ”almost a physical clash.” In the end, some kind of diplomatic deal was reached, and Chen and her two daughters flew to Texas. Chen and Fu declined to reveal the details of the deal, citing diplomatic sensitivities and the need to protect people involved in the rescue operation. ”The Department of State takes its obligations to assist U. S. citizens abroad seriously,” said Mary Beth Polley, the U. S. embassy spokesperson in Beijing. ”Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.” China’s Foreign Ministry said it had no knowledge of the case. Chen had fled China because she came under intense pressure from authorities after publicizing the plight of her husband. Xie Yang was swept up along with other rights lawyers in a July 2015 crackdown. The government charged him with incitement to subvert China’s government. In January, Xie alleged in a written statement that police beat him and tortured him in custody. He also wrote that that if he ever admitted his guilt or denied that he had been tortured, it was probably because he was forced to. During Xie’s trial this week, he pleaded guilty to the charges against him. A judge asked him if he had been tortured  —   and he replied no. ”For these words to come out of his mouth, he had to have faced some sort of coercion that he couldn’t bear,” Chen says. In other words, she believes that her husband was threatened or tortured into saying he wasn’t tortured. Xie has not yet been sentenced. He is out of prison on bail, but his wife says he’s still not free. Many of the other Chinese human rights lawyers swept up in the    crackdown are in a similar situation, under police surveillance and unlikely to resume their work as rights lawyers any time soon. Chen thanks her rescuers, saying, ”I felt that God had sent a messenger to help my family.” She hopes she and her husband can be reunited soon in the United States. Fu and his group have been helping people like Chen for years, but he says he’s never seen anything like this. ”I really want to give credit to the Trump administration,” he says. ”I think it was a very daring and decisive action, reflecting really the Americans’ commitment to fundamental values.” Human rights groups have applauded the U. S. intervention. ”That’s what the U. S. government and other governments are supposed to do on behalf of their citizens,” says Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. But rights groups were concerned when, in February, 11 foreign governments wrote to China to express concern about reports that it was torturing lawyers, including Xie Yang, and the U. S. did not sign that letter. Richardson says it’s too early to say whether the Bangkok rescue is representative of a broader U. S. human rights policy. ”It’s really about whether the U. S. will be comparably muscular in cases that don’t involve U. S. citizens,” she says."
"Updated at 9:45 p. m. ET, President Trump revealed ”highly classified information” to two top Russian officials during a controversial Oval Office meeting last week, according to a report from The Washington Post. The Post, citing current and former U. S. officials, reported Monday evening that the information relayed by the president to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak ”jeopardized a critical source of intelligence” on ISIS: ”The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency. ” ’This is   information,’ said a U. S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump ’revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.’ ” Trump also reportedly boasted to the Russians about the intelligence he was receiving, telling the two men, ”I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day”: ”Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States learned only through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific   method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U. S. intelligence partner detected the threat. ”The Washington Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.” Greg Miller, one of The Post reporters who broke the story, told NPR’s Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered that by sharing the information from another country, it could damage future intelligence gathering and U. S. relations with other partners. ”This is not intelligence that the United States gathered or owned. It wasn’t up to the United States to share, and so doing so really jeopardizes that relationship. It potentially damages trust that’s critical in these kinds of arrangements. And I think that’s one of the really big worries here,” Miller told NPR. ”And in this case it’s important, because this is apparently an ongoing stream of intelligence into Islamic State plotting. I mean, what could be more important?” BuzzFeed also confirmed The Post’s report, with one U. S. official saying that the disclosures from the president to the Russians were ”far worse than what has already been reported.” The New York Times also noted that ”Trump’s disclosure does not appear to have been illegal  —   the president has the power to declassify almost anything. But sharing the information without the express permission of the ally who provided it represented a major breach of espionage etiquette and could jeopardize a crucial   relationship.” Trump’s meeting with the Russians came last Wednesday, the day after he fired FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into Russian meddling in the U. S. elections and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The visit was fraught with bad optics, and Kislyak’s attendance  —   only confirmed by photos from Russian state media  —   was especially notable because he has been at the center of many of the Trump administration’s controversies involving Russia. Only a Russian Foreign Ministry photographer was allowed in to document the meeting no U. S. media were allowed. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign after just over three weeks on the job after it was revealed he had discussed Russian sanctions with Kislyak and then subsequently misled Vice President Pence about those conversations. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from any involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Russia after it was revealed that he twice met with Kislyak, despite testifying during his confirmation hearing that he had had no contact with Russian officials. Monday’s reports of Trump revealing classified information to the Russians come just ahead of his first foreign trip as president. He’s set to depart on Friday, traveling to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican, then attending a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium, and a G7 meeting in Italy. National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster told reporters outside the White House that the ”story that came out tonight, as reported, is false.” ”At no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed, and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known,” McMaster said. However, The Post story and other subsequent reports didn’t say that it was sources, methods or military operations discussed, but simply classified information. ”I was in the room, and it didn’t happen,” McMaster said at the end of his abrupt statement. He departed without taking questions. ”During President Trump’s meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov, a broad range of subjects were discussed among which were common efforts and threats regarding ” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement. ”During that exchange the nature of specific threats were discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods or military operations.” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker,  . said in a statement that, ”I want to learn more about what occurred and what was shared, but if true, this report is troubling.” Corker told Bloomberg News that the White House was ”in a downward spiral right now and they’ve got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening.” Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner,  . said that if The Washington Post’s report was true, it was ”inexcusable.” Eliot Cohen, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under President George W. Bush, said on Twitter that if Trump had given the classified material to the Russians deliberately, ”it would be treason.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,  . said in a statement that Congress ”must be given a full briefing on the extent of the damage President Trump has done in compromising highly classified   intelligence to the Russians.” ”Even if President Trump unwittingly blew a highly classified   source to the Russians, that would be dangerous enough,” Pelosi said. ”If the President outed a highly classified   source intentionally, that would be even more dangerous.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,  . Y. echoed those sentiments and called on the president to provide a ”full explanation” to Congress, the intelligence community and the public. ”If the report is true, it is very disturbing,” Schumer said. ”Revealing classified information at this level is extremely dangerous and puts at risk the lives of Americans and those who gather intelligence for our country.” Throughout the campaign, Trump repeatedly criticized his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, over her mishandling of classified information on her private email server. At his rallies, the crowd frequently chanted ”Lock her up!” House Speaker Paul Ryan said back in July, with regard to Clinton’s emails, that people who are ”extremely careless” with classified information no longer should have access to it. On Monday, Ryan spokesman Doug Andres said that, ”We have no way to know what was said, but protecting our nation’s secrets is paramount. The speaker hopes for a full explanation of the facts from the administration.”"
"Updated at 11:20 a. m. ET Tuesday, The U. S. State Department laid out a new case against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime on Monday: Not only has the Syrian government committed mass atrocities at its military prison complex outside Damascus, but for years, it has also added to the structure in order to burn and secretly dispose of thousands of its victims’ remains. ”Beginning in 2013, the Syrian regime modified a building within the Saydnaya complex to support what we believe is a crematorium,” Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary for Near East affairs, told reporters at a special media briefing, circulating satellite photographs that he says depict that crematorium. ”Although the regime’s many atrocities are ” Jones continued, ”we believe that the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass murders taking place in Saydnaya prison.” Citing ”credible sources” and data gathered by nongovernmental organizations, Jones stated that between 2011 and 2015, the Assad regime abducted and detained as many as 117, 000 people and killed as many as 50 detainees a day at Saydnaya. An Amnesty International report, titled ”Human Slaughterhouse,” detailed the conditions behind these numbers, describing a setting where many detainees ”have been killed after being repeatedly tortured and systematically deprived of food, water, medicine and medical care.” Omar   who says he spent 10 months at Saydnaya, told NPR’s Robert Siegel that this physical torture was compounded by unimaginable psychological torture: ”We were requested by jailers to kill each other. Sometimes the wardens came with a knife or a rope, and they asked prisoners whether they had relatives or friends in prison. ”And once they identified their friends and relatives, they gave them one of two options: either killing their relatives or being killed themselves. And in many cases, being killed themselves included also being tortured before being killed.” The Syrian regime dismissed the accounts included in Amnesty International’s report as ”not based on correct evidence but on personal emotions that aim to achieve   political goals.” On Tuesday, after this post published, Syria’s   news agency SANA quoted an unnamed source at the country’s Foreign Ministry who pushed back against Jones’ account. U. S. allegations of a crematorium are ”a new Hollywood story” that is ”fundamentally untrue,” the source said, accusing U. S. intelligence of having fabricated other claims against Syria in the past. In his briefing, Jones said the alleged crematorium ”could dispose of detainees’ remains with little evidence” once they had been hanged or otherwise killed. Though Jones spoke to U. S. media about the Syrian government, his message Monday did not appear directed at either party so much as at a pair of other countries: Syrian allies Russia and Iran. ”The United States is on record, has stated many times, that we are appalled by the atrocities that have been carried out by the Syrian regime,” Jones said. ”And these atrocities have been carried out seemingly with the unconditional support from Russia and Iran.” The Trump administration hit a Syrian air base with a missile strike last month in retaliation for the regime’s deadly chemical attack in Idlib province  —   a unilateral strike that prompted a skirmish of words between U. S. and Russian officials. ”My assessment is the U. S.  relationship is at an   low, the lowest point it has been since the end of the Cold War,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told NPR several weeks after the strike. ”And I would tell you that [Russian officials’] response was they didn’t disagree with that.” ”Russia has either aided in or passively looked away as the regime has conducted an airstrike against a U. N. convoy, destroyed east Aleppo and used chemical weapons, including sarin, against civilians in Idlib province on April 4,” Jones elaborated Monday. He also expressed doubts about a recent   deal to ” ” the    Syrian civil war, which bore Russia, Iran and Turkey as guarantors. ”In light of the failures of the past   agreements, we have reason to be skeptical,” he said. Still, Jones said the State Department has not presented its evidence of the alleged crematorium directly to Russia  —   and he said it is not prepared to signal much else publicly. ”At this point, we are talking about this evidence and bringing it forward to the international community, which we hope will put pressure on the [Syrian] regime to change its behavior.”"
"Investigators looking into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia will be able to pursue leads by tapping into a huge database of suspicious financial transactions maintained by the federal government. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial institutions operating in the U. S. are supposed to inform the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, when they see transactions that indicate possible money laundering, such as   purchases of expensive real estate. Senate investigators indicated last week that they would be using the database to begin tracking the financial activities of some of President Trump’s associates. ”Congress has kind of shifted the focus here to the money, and they’re trying to see if there’s a money trail that could link and identify different participants,” says Jimmy Gurulé, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and a former Treasury Department official. ”It goes to the old adage of ’follow the money.’ If there was collusion between the Russians and members of the Trump campaign, was it for free or was there some exchange of moneys or payments from foreign governments?” he adds. Trump made much of his fortune in real estate and gaming, two industries that have been notorious venues for money laundering. The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which opened in 1990 and closed in 2016, was repeatedly cited for having inadequate   controls, not an unusual charge in the gaming business. FinCEN fined the casino $10 million in 2015, although Trump had long before declared bankruptcy and had little real involvement in the property. In more recent years, FinCEN has focused on the real estate business, looking for unusual purchases of properties that indicate money laundering is taking place. For drug dealers and corrupt government officials, there’s often no better way to conceal their funds from regulators and tax collectors than by buying   properties in places such as New York, Miami and San Francisco, says Mark Hays, who heads the    campaign at the nonprofit Global Witness. ”These make for attractive landing pads, if, say, you’re a suspicious person wanted for criminal activity in your home country and you actually need a place to cool your jets,” Hays says. Such purchases can be easily hidden by using shell corporations and secret bank accounts, making it harder for regulators to track them, he notes. ”You make the purchase [and the] real estate person says, ’Who owns this company?’ It’s    LLC. ’Well, who owns that?’ That’s not on the record. No one knows that,” Hays says. That makes connecting the dots in   investigations more difficult. Still, FinCEN’s records of suspicious activities could provide Senate investigators with real investigative leads, Gurulé says. ”If I was involved with some criminal wrongdoing related to this investigation, this would make me very nervous,” he says."
"The White House continues to refuse to address questions raised by a tweet from President Trump last week implying he has a taping system in the Oval Office. On Friday morning, Trump said former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump fired last Tuesday, ”had better hope that there are no ”tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Questioned repeatedly during Monday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer responded with variations of ”the president has nothing further on that,” or that ”that president has made it clear what his position is.” Spicer was asked was asked how the White House will respond to questions from members of Congress about a possible recording system. ”I think I was very clear the president will have nothing further on that last week,” was his response. Spicer was also asked how a senior official could feel comfortable having a private conversation with the president, knowing any discussion might be recorded. Spicer simply reiterated that Trump had made his position clear. But Trump has said nothing at all on the topic beyond his tweet, leaving it anything but clear as to whether such a recording system is in use. In a weekend interview with Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro, the president also declined to elaborate. ”Well, that I can’t talk about,” he told Pirro. ”I won’t talk about that. All I want is for Comey to be honest and I hope he will be, and I’m sure he will be, I hope.” Of course, keeping people guessing may well be the way the president wants to play it. Trump faces calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle saying that any tapes, if they exist, should be turned over to Congress. On Friday, top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to White House Counsel Donald McGahn requesting any tapes or communications between Trump and Comey. Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. told NBC’s ”Meet The Press” on Sunday that ”you can’t be cute about tapes. If there are any tapes of this conversation, they need to be turned over.” But they’d almost certainly have to subpoena Trump to get them, and Republicans, who control both chambers, seem unlikely to go that far just yet."
"Updated at 4:20 p. m. ET on June 20, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ appearance June 13 before the Senate Intelligence Committee was the latest chapter in a saga that began long before President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on May 9. It began even before the announcement Comey made in late October 2016 that Hillary Clinton partly blames him for her 2016 electoral loss to Trump. In fact, it’s a story that has now continued past his termination, with a winding narrative that has seen the president make veiled threats and contradict his own staff as well as the vice president. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee June 8, Comey upped the ante when he said the president had lied about him and the FBI. Wednesday, both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees hold hearings about Russian election meddling in 2016  —   specifically about Russian efforts to intrude into state election systems. And, Comey’s temporary replacement, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, also testifies on Capitol Hill about the agency’s budget, but lawmakers will be free to ask McCabe about other matters. Here’s a timeline of key   events: Oct. 1, 2015: Comey tells reporters that FBI investigators looking into possible compromise of information on Clinton’s private email server would be fiercely independent, because they ”don’t give a rip about politics.” ”Part of doing our work well is to make sure we don’t talk about it,” he said, approximately a year and 27 days before talking about the FBI’s work in a pretty public way. July 2, 2016: Trump tweets that it ”is impossible for the FBI not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton,” setting up a major conflict when Comey goes public with his investigation announcement just a few days later. Trump’s theme continues throughout July, as the Republican National Convention is peppered with ”Lock her up!” chants. July 5, 2016: Comey announces that the FBI is recommending the Justice Department not bring charges against Clinton for her handling of classified data. Still, Comey says Clinton and her staff were ”extremely careless” in using a private email server and adds that he thinks it’s possible classified information on the server could have been hacked by ”a hostile actor.” The appearance at the FBI headquarters in Washington gives ammunition to the Trump campaign and sets Comey up to serve as Trump’s latest political foil. Aug. 22, 2016: Trump makes news at a rally in Akron, Ohio, when he argues a special prosecutor is needed for the Justice Department to ”investigate Hillary Clinton’s crimes.” ”The Justice Department is required to appoint an independent special prosecutor because it has proven itself to be really, sadly, a political arm of the White House,” Trump says. Ken Gormley, president of Duquesne University and author of two books on special prosecutors, spoke to NPR’s Carrie Johnson at the time. ”If you look at the chronology, pretty much the political party that does not control the White House tends to want special prosecutors and independent counsel laws,” he said. ”As soon as the party is in the White House, they don’t want it anymore.” The message would become relevant again when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats began calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s meddling in the U. S. election after news broke that Comey had been fired by Trump. Oct. 28, 2016: In a letter to the leaders of congressional oversight committees, Comey notifies Congress that the FBI is reopening the investigation into the handling of classified information in connection with Democratic presidential candidate Clinton. ”The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote. ”I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Republicans quickly jumped on the opportunity to bash Clinton. At a rally in New Hampshire, Trump said, ”Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before.” And the Republican National Committee added that the FBI’s decision to reopen the investigation ahead of the election ”shows how serious this discovery must be.” No information was revealed about the content of the newly uncovered emails, but by the end of the day, sources had confirmed to NPR the emails were found through an unrelated criminal investigation of Anthony Weiner. Oct.   2016: The FBI obtains the search warrant necessary to examine the newly found emails. At this point, there’s still no confirmation of whether the emails contained any new information or even whether they were sent or received by Clinton. During this time, the assistant attorney general wrote a letter to Democratic senators assuring them that the Justice Department was dedicating ”all necessary resources” to go through the emails as quickly as possible. These stories illustrate the vague daily news dribble, spurred by Comey’s announcement, that helped get the words ”Clinton” and ”email” back into headlines, just a week before voters went to the polls. Nov. 6, 2016: Comey announces that the new trove of emails doesn’t change the FBI’s recommendation that the Justice Department not charge Clinton for her handling of classified information. ”Since my letter, the FBI investigative team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation,” Comey wrote to 16 chairmen and ranking members of relevant House and Senate committees. ”Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.” Sources told NPR that almost every email the FBI reviewed in the new batch was a duplicate of an email the bureau had already seen. Trump uses the news to call the FBI, and Comey by extension, ”rigged.” ”Right now, [Clinton’s] being protected by a rigged system,” Trump told a crowd in Michigan. ”You can’t review 650, 000 new emails in eight days  —   you just can’t do it, folks. Hillary Clinton is guilty.” Nov. 8, 2016: Trump defeats Clinton in the presidential election, with an Electoral College victory of 306 to 232. Clinton wins the popular vote by almost 3 million votes. Trump will become the next president of the United States. Neither Clinton nor Trump mentions Comey or the Oct. 28 letter in election night speeches. Jan. 22, 2017: Two days after Donald Trump becomes President Trump, Comey and the president meet at a reception for law enforcement and security officials in the White House Blue Room. Trump calls Comey over and they hug. ”He’s become more famous than me,” Trump said with a chuckle, according to Reuters. March 8, 2017: At a cyber conference in Boston, Comey reiterates that he intends to serve the entirety of his   term. ”You’re stuck with me for about 6   years,” he says. The comments follow Comey’s urging the Justice Department for days to issue a public denial of Trump’s accusations of wiretapping against President Obama. NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported at the time that Comey ”has demonstrated a nearly unique ability to draw critics from both ends of the political spectrum.” March 20, 2017: Comey confirms that the FBI is investigating ”whether there was any coordination between the [Trump] campaign and Russia’s efforts” to interfere in the 2016 election. He made the statement during the first open hearing on Russian meddling, held by the House Intelligence Committee. May 2, 2017: Clinton says that if it weren’t for Comey’s Oct. 28, 2016, letter, she would be president. ”It wasn’t a perfect campaign  —   there’s no such thing  —   but I was on the way to winning until a few things happened,” Clinton tells CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour at a women’s leadership luncheon. ”If the election was on Oct. 27, I’d be your president,” Clinton added. Trump fired back later that night, tweeting ”FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!” May 3, 2017: The FBI director testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and tells Congress that it makes him ”mildly nauseous” to think his late October decision could have swung the election. Still, he defends himself. ”Lordy, has this been painful,” he told committee members. ”I’ve gotten all kinds of rocks thrown at me, and this has been really hard, but I think I’ve done the right thing at each turn.” He also has an exchange with Sen. Mazie Hirono,   about whether senior Justice Department officials can ”halt” an FBI investigation if they oppose it. ”In theory, yes,” it can happen, Comey says. ”Has it happened?” Hirono asks. ”Not in my experience,” Comey responds. May 9, 2017: Trump suddenly fires Comey on a Tuesday afternoon. May 11, 2017: Trump contradicts his White House staff as well as the vice president over the reasoning. At first, staffers said Trump acted on the assessment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, but in an interview with NBC News, Trump says he was going to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein’s advice. ”It was set up a while ago,” Trump told Lester Holt on May 11. ”And frankly, I could have waited, but what difference does it make?” Just before the firing, the FBI sent a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley correcting aspects of Comey’s May 3 testimony. The letter came after ProPublica first reported inaccuracies in Comey’s statements to Congress. From ProPublica’s Peter Elkind: ”In (the letter) the FBI acknowledged that only a ’small number’ of more than 49, 000 ’potentially relevant’ emails found on Weiner’s laptop had been forwarded from Clinton deputy Huma Abedin to Weiner, her husband, not hundreds or thousands as Comey had stated. The FBI said just two of those messages contained classified information.” May 12, 2017: Trump tweets on Friday, ”James Comey better hope that there are no ’tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” The following Monday, journalists in the White House briefing continued to ask press secretary Sean Spicer to comment on the implication of a taping system in the Oval Office. Spicer did not clarify. May 16, 2017: Two sources close to Comey say that Trump asked him to close down the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn a day after Flynn was fired. Comey, who was still FBI director at the time, wrote a memo about the exchange immediately after the Oval Office conversation in February, an associate of Comey’s told NPR. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz,   sends a request to acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe for ”memoranda, notes, summaries, and recordings referring or relating” to communications between Comey and Trump, setting a deadline of May 24. The White House has denied that the president ever asked for the investigation to end. The FBI would not comment, but McCabe testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 11 that ”there has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.” May 17, 2017: The Senate Intelligence Committee invites Comey to testify in open and closed sessions. It also sends a request to McCabe ”seeking any notes or memorandum prepared by the former Director regarding any communications he may have had with senior White House and Department of Justice officials related to investigations into Russia’s efforts.” The Senate Judiciary Committee is also seeking the alleged memos and related documentation. Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller to lead the Russia investigation as a special counsel. May 18, 2017: Trump denies asking Comey to shut down the Flynn investigation during a joint press conference with the president of Colombia, responding curtly to a reporter with: ”No. No. Next question.” He also changes his rationale for firing Comey again, saying he based his decision on Rosenstein’s recommendation. Rosenstein briefs senators the same day, saying he knew that Comey would be fired before he wrote the memo. May 19, 2017: Rosenstein talks to members of the House, later releasing his opening remarks to lawmakers, in which he says he stands by the memo he wrote about Comey and that he ”thought it was appropriate to seek a new leader.” The Senate Intelligence Committee says Comey will testify in an open hearing, to be scheduled after Memorial Day (the committee later announced it would take place on June 8). Comey turned down the Senate Judiciary Committee’s request. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Trump told Russian officials during a May 10 meeting that he fired ”nut job” Comey to ease the pressure of the mounting investigation into the election and his team’s potential ties to Russia. White House press secretary Sean Spicer does not dispute the account. May 22, 2017: In addition to reportedly pushing Comey on the Russia investigation, Trump asks top U. S. intelligence chiefs to push back against the FBI’s investigation, The Washington Post reports. A White House spokesman said in a statement, ”The White House does not confirm or deny unsubstantiated claims based on illegal leaks from anonymous individuals.” Asked about the report in later testimony, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said that he did not ”feel it’s appropriate to characterize discussions with the president.” May 25, 2017: House Oversight Committee Chairman Chaffetz says the FBI declined to release documents his panel had requested regarding communications between Comey and the president. Reuters reports: ”The FBI said it was still evaluating the request . .. in light of the appointment of a special prosecutor” to lead the Russia probe. June 7, 2017: Trump announces he is nominating Christopher Wray to be FBI director. Wray is a former Justice Department official who currently works in the private sector. Ahead of its hearing the next day, the Senate Intelligence Committee releases Comey’s opening statement. In it, Comey corroborates much of what has been reported in The Washington Post and New York Times, saying the president asked him for ”loyalty” and to let the Flynn investigation ”go.” Comey also says he had an awkward dinner with Trump on Jan. 27 at which the president asked whether he wanted to stay on as FBI director. Read NPR’s analysis of the comments. June 8, 2017: Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee, in his first public comments since his dismissal. The hearing is one of the most closely watched testimonies in recent memory, even prompting bars in D. C. and beyond to open early and host watch parties. Comey says the Trump administration ”chose to defame” him by saying the FBI was ”poorly led” under him. He adds that the White House lied in arguing he was let go for any reason other than the ongoing Russia investigation, and that he documented his conversations with President Trump because he ”was honestly concerned [Trump] might lie” about their meetings. He says plainly that he told his friend to release his memos to the New York Times, specifically hoping they would lead to the appointment of a special counsel. And that’s just the hearing that was open to the public. Comey continues to speak to senators in a closed afternoon session. White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells reporters after the testimony that she ”can definitely say the president is not a liar.” And Trump sends out his personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, to make a statement on his behalf. ”[Comey] also admitted that there is no evidence that a single vote changed as a result of any Russian interference,” he says. He also claims Trump never told Comey he needed loyalty from him ”in any form or substance,” even though the president ”is entitled to expect loyalty from those who are serving in an administration.” June 9, 2017: In a joint press conference with the president of Romania, Trump says he would be willing to testify under oath about his interactions with Comey. ”Frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said  —   and some of the things that he said just weren’t true,” Trump says in his first   remarks following Comey’s testimony. He doubles down on Kasowitz’s claim that he never asked Comey for a loyalty pledge or urged him to do away with an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. When asked whether he would be willing to speak with special counsel Robert Mueller under oath about his conversations with Comey, Trumps responds: ”100 percent.” June 13, 2017: Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee. It’s his first public appearance before Congress since Jan. 10, when he said he ”did not have communications with the Russians.” It was later reported that Sessions had in fact met twice with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. in 2016, though Sessions insists those were part of his role as a senator at the time and were not about the Trump campaign. Sessions recused himself in March from any investigations into Russia’s actions in the 2016 election. At the time, Sessions said he was recusing himself because he was an adviser for the campaign. Comey’s testimony on June 8 cast doubt on that reasoning, when the former FBI director said he had thought Sessions would recuse himself weeks before he did because of reasons that were classified. Testifying before his former colleagues in the Senate, Sessions denies any suggestion that he was involved in any collusion with the Russians. The attorney general called such allegations ”an appalling and detestable lie.” With regard to Comey’s firing, Sessions said he agreed with the assessment provided by Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein. Furthermore, Sessions explained, ”It is absurd, frankly, to suggest that a recusal from a single specific investigation would render the attorney general unable to manage the leadership of the various department of justice law enforcement components that conduct thousands of investigations.” June 14, 2017: Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating President Trump for possible obstruction of justice, the Washington Post reports. Comey’s firing is a ”central moment that’s being looked at” in Mueller’s investigation, the Post’s Devlin Barrett told NPR’s Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered, ”but it’s not the only thing.” Investigators are also considering the conversations Comey and the president had leading up to the firing. June 15, 2017: President Trump takes to Twitter in the wake of the Post’s report and calls the Russia inquiry ”the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history . ...” ”They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story,” Trump also says on Twitter, ”found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice” June 16, 2017: Trump tweets, ”I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt.” Within hours, people close to the president seek to clarify the tweet. A person close to the president’s legal team told NPR’s Scott Horsley that the tweet referred to the Wednesday Washington Post report regarding possible obstruction of justice. The tweet was not confirmation that the president or his attorney has been informed by the Department of Justice or Mueller that Trump is the subject of an investigation."
"A ransomware attack that began in Europe on Friday is lingering  —   and hitting new targets in Japan and China. The WannaCry software has locked thousands of computers in more than 150 countries. Users are confronted with a screen demanding a $300 payment to restore their files. The cyberattack has hit more than 300, 000 computers, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said at Monday’s midday White House briefing. He added that the rate of infection has slowed over the weekend. Because of its success infiltrating systems, the software  —   also known as WannaCrypt, Wana Decryptor or WCry  —   is already inspiring imitators. Here’s a rundown of what we know on Monday: U. S. In the U. S. ”the list of victims is very small,” a Department of Homeland Security official tells NPR, noting that it’s still relatively early in the WannaCry attack. The victims, the official says, range widely in scope, from a few computers at companies and organizations to networks of many more. ”The U. S. is still in a relatively good place  —   I don’t want to jinx it,” the department official says. ”We don’t have a large number of victims right now, and we, for the most part, are not seeing significant operational impacts for those who have been victimized. They’ve been able to manage through it.” The agency and its partners in the global security community are now in a ”sort of   ” competition with hackers, as variants of the software that foil previous solutions emerge, the official says. Asia, Businesses and networks across Asia are coping with the first wave of WannaCry during their workweek. The initial attack had started after many offices had closed Friday. In China, many users can’t access Microsoft’s software patch to fix the vulnerability ”because many Chinese computers run on pirated Microsoft operating systems,” NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports from Shanghai. He says Chinese security companies have been offering their help. ”More than 40, 000 businesses and institutions in China have been struck by the malware, according to state media,” Schmitz says. ”One of the country’s largest oil companies, PetroChina, reported the attack had disrupted its electronic payment systems at its gas stations over the weekend. On China’s most prestigious college campuses, students reported being locked out of their final papers.” In Japan, several large manufacturers have been hit, reporter John Matthews tells NPR: ”Companies including Hitachi have reported several of their systems going down, including computers at a hospital in eastern Japan. However, Hitachi and others have mostly only reported loss of email and other secondary functionalities.” In India, more than ”more than 100 systems of the Andhra Pradesh police department” were affected over the weekend, NDTV reports. Power utilities also reported problems. Europe    maps show WannaCry has remained active in Europe over the past 24 hours. In the U. K. where the initial attack threw parts of the health care system into chaos Friday, the government scheduled an emergency meeting Monday afternoon to discuss the attack. French automaker Renault and its partner, Nissan, say their plants were hit by the attack, NBC reports. ”The recent attack is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits,” Europol’s European Cybercrime Center says. While ransom payments for users’ stolen data had been notably low, the Security Response blog notes that a bitcoin address linked to the hackers showed a ”spike in payments” to the account that began at 8 a. m. Greenwich Mean Time on Monday. WannaCry’s Origins, The identity of whoever deployed the software remains unknown. ”The WannaCrypt exploits used in the attack were drawn from the exploits stolen from the National Security Agency,” Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith says. He says that when the NSA lost control of the software behind the cyberattack, it was like ”the U. S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen.” Theft of the software was reported in April, when it was published by the Shadow Brokers, a group that has been linked to Russia. One month earlier, Microsoft had released a patch targeting the vulnerability. But the success of the attack shows that not enough people took advantage of the patch. ”This was not a tool developed by the NSA to hold ransom data,” homeland security adviser Bossert said at Monday’s White House briefing. He said the software attacking a vulnerability had been incorporated with other software and delivered in a way to cause ”infection, encryption and locking.” Fighting The Malware, A security expert in England has been hailed as an ”accidental hero” for quashing the spread of the initial version of the ransomware late Friday. But we note that it’s no accident that the expert, who prefers to remain anonymous and uses the name Malware Tech, registered a domain name that was called out in the code and used it to stop the worm from spreading. The use of that domain is being called a ”kill switch” in the malware. Researchers say new variants of the software have a similar kill switch, but they refer to different domains. ”Thankfully some researchers are already registering the new domains as they identify them,” AlienVault researcher Chris Doman says. ”The    will likely continue until [someone] makes a larger change to the malware, removing the   functionality completely. At that point, it will be harder to stop new variants.” The Fix, Windows users should update their software to avoid the ransomware, security experts say. In addition to Microsoft’s Security Bulletin   that patched the vulnerability in March, the company also issued a separate patch on Friday for users of older and unsupported operating systems such as Windows XP. Other advice includes these six tips from the No More Ransom site, edited here for length:"
"When the National Security Agency lost control of the software behind the WannaCry cyberattack, it was like ”the U. S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen,” Microsoft President Brad Smith says, in a message about the malicious software that has created havoc on computer networks in more than 150 countries since Friday. ”This is an emerging pattern in 2017,” Smith, who is also chief legal officer, says in a Microsoft company blog post. ”We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage.” On affected computers, the WannaCry software encrypts files and displays a ransom message demanding $300 in bitcoin. It has attacked hundreds of thousands of computers, security experts say, from hospital systems in the U. K. and a telecom company in Spain to universities and large companies in Asia. And the software is already inspiring imitators, as the Bleeping Computer site reports. The malware behind WannaCry (also called WannaCrypt, Wana Decryptor or WCry) was reported to have been stolen from the NSA in April. And while Microsoft said it had already released a security update to patch the vulnerability one month earlier, the sequence of events fed speculation that the NSA hadn’t told the U. S. tech giant about the security risk until after it had been stolen. With his new statement, Smith seems to be confirming that version of events. Two months after Microsoft issued its security patch, thousands of computers remained vulnerable to the WannaCry attack. That prompted the company to issue another patch on Friday for older and unsupported operating systems such as Windows XP, allowing users to secure their systems without requiring an upgrade to the latest operating software. Urging businesses and computer users to keep their systems current and updated, Smith says the WannaCry attack shows the importance of collective action to fight cybercrime. But he aimed his sharpest criticisms at the U. S. and other nations. The attack, Smith says, ”represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today  —     action and organized criminal action.” International standards should compel countries not to stockpile or exploit software vulnerabilities, Smith says. He adds that governments should report vulnerabilities like the one at the center of the WannaCry attack. Governments ”need to take a different approach and adhere in cyberspace to the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world,” Smith says, urging agencies to ”consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.” Smith’s blog post did not address another factor in the ransomware’s spread, one that hints at the difficulty of uniting against a hacking attack: Users of pirated Microsoft software are unable to download the security patch, forcing them to fend for themselves or rely on a   source for a solution."
"A few weeks ago Julia Chapman’s daughter was heading to a playdate across the street in their recently built suburb in Firestone, Colo. Suddenly, the friend’s house exploded, killing two of the friend’s relatives who were in the basement. ”It shook our home,” Chapman says. ”We came out and we saw that it was essentially just collapsed on itself. The insulation was still floating in the air, down the street.” It turned out a pipe from a nearby oil and gas well had been abandoned, but not properly sealed. The April 17 tragedy just north of Denver is prompting a lot of questions about how wells are regulated, something Chapman says she never thought about when she bought her house. ”We just sort of trusted that the city and the oil and gas knew what they were doing,” she says. Colorado’s chief oil and gas regulator, Matt Lepore, called the explosion ”highly unusual,” but the state is now reviewing its oil and gas operations. The destroyed home was built 178 feet from an existing, dormant well. Anadarko Petroleum switched it back on in January. Unrefined gas started flowing into an old,   plastic pipe, called a flow line. It was supposed to be sealed  —   but it wasn’t. The unscented gas seeped into the soil near the foundation of the home, filling the house through a drain in the basement. Lepore says a new state directive orders inspections of these flow lines if they’re within 1, 000 feet of an occupied building, ”to seek to absolutely minimize any possibility of this happening again.” In Colorado and many other places, suburbs are expanding into areas that used to be oil and gas fields. ”They’re everywhere,” says Shane Davis, an   and gas activist who runs a blog called fractivist. org. On a recent tour of Firestone, he points out just how close some of these houses are to wells and   oil and gas tanks. ”All of this should be banned in residential areas,” Davis says. ”There’s no reason for this in residential areas other than profit.” Inside Energy finds that over the past several years, 50, 000 more people in Colorado now live in areas where there is at least one well per square kilometer. Colorado and California are the only two states that regulate the flow lines coming out of these wells. Still, in Colorado a comprehensive state map showing where these lines are does not exist. And while new oil wells must be drilled at least 500 feet from homes, there is no state regulation for how far new homes must be built from existing oil wells. ”That dramatic of a setback, is really, really hard to stomach,” says Gregory Miedema, who heads the Northern Colorado Home Builders Association. He says contractors are willing to consider new regulations on this, but he warns it could drive up prices. ”What they want to make sure is that they don’t price the public out of a new home.” And there is still a lot of demand for new homes here. In fact, right behind the site of the home explosion, workers are busy with the construction of a new apartment complex, with nearly 300 units. Dan Boyce is a   reporter with Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focusing on America’s energy issues. You can follow him @BoyceDan."
"On Monday, authorities in Yemen declared a state of emergency due to a sharp rise in cholera deaths. Yemen has been at war for more than two years  —   a   coalition has been battling Shiite Houthi rebels aligned with Iran  —   leaving a reported 10, 000 dead. The fighting has decimated much of the country’s infrastructure, including its medical facilities. The World Health Organization said in April that fewer than half of Yemen’s medical centers were functioning to capacity. From Aden, Yemen, Dominik Stillhart, director of global operations at the International Committee for the Red Cross, talked with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about the cholera outbreak and the dire state of health care in Yemen. How bad is this latest outbreak? Well, I have just spent the past four days here. The latest figures in the cholera outbreak show that there have been more than 11, 000 cases, 187 people have died and the disease seems to be spreading like wildfire. It is spread through water. Do people have access clean water and to medical care? This is precisely one of the problems here after two years of brutal conflict that has brought this country to its knees. Not only were 8, 000 people killed in the conflict and 44, 000 wounded, in addition there is all the vital infrastructure like public services  —   health, water, sewage, sanitation, garbage collection  —   that are running dangerously low and creating conditions for the spread of the disease. What do you see in the hospitals? I visited two hospitals, actually, and both have received hundreds of new cases of people affected by watery diarrhea and suspected cholera. The scenes were heartbreaking. We saw up to four people in one single hospital bed. Patients waiting in the garden outside. I even saw one man was sitting in his car with an IV drip attached to his window because there was no place in the hospital. What are groups like the Red Cross doing to address the cholera crisis? We have immediately diverted all the material in our warehouses to help health centers and hospitals address the current epidemic. We are particularly concerned in places of detention, the central prison in Sanaa, which has seen the first cases. They’re very crowded places and perfect situations for the spread of cholera. So we are there with our teams to ensure that cholera doesn’t spread. What’s the impact of the fighting on efforts to fight cholera? The conflict has seriously affected health here. Our estimation is that the health system is running at 45 percent of its capacity. In many ways, the conflict has made matters worse. Now what is needed is a collective effort from international organizations supporting health authorities here to address the crisis. Do you expect things will get worse before they get better? It’s always difficult to say. It depends not only on the response, it also depends, for instance, on . .. garbage collection. There is also urgent need to address the question of clean drinking water. Yemeni authorities are asking aid organizations for help. What kind of help can they reasonably provide in a situation as chaotic as this one? It’s really a question of supplying health centers and hospitals with the necessary medical supplies such as IV fluids, rehydration salts and chloride tablets. It’s a question of accelerating garbage collection in some of the towns where garbage has been piling up for weeks. And we need to ensure that in places of detention, which are very crowded, that cholera doesn’t spread."
"Anna Sazonkina never used to go to rallies. The    viola teacher and her husband, an oboist, were too busy raising their four boys. But on Sunday, the couple went out to protest for the first time in their lives, joining thousands rallying in downtown Moscow to save their homes from the wrecking ball. Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his blessing to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to knock down thousands of   apartment blocks and resettle as many as 1 million residents in modern high rises. One of the most enduring legacies of communist rule in Russia has been a housing stock that was often hastily built, long neglected and now is falling into various stages of disrepair. Yet not all Muscovites have welcomed Sobyanin’s urban renewal plan, which the city is calling a ”renovation program.” When Sazonkina and her husband, Vladislav Komissarchuk, bought their modest   apartment in north Moscow last August, they thought they’d finally found the perfect home. The  . .   is on the third floor of a   brick building constructed in the 1960s. ”We were so happy, and this flat was in very good condition,” said Sazonkina, cradling their    son in the   kitchen. ”It looked like it was built especially for our family.” Sazonkina loves her leafy courtyard, the nearby school and the fact that her mother lives a   walk away. But the building is now on a list of 4, 500 mostly   apartment blocks that the city wants to tear down. This week the the city began polling residents of buildings slated for demolition according to the mayor, if   of a building vote against it, their homes will be spared. Many homeowners are skeptical of the voting procedure, especially as not a single ”no” vote was registered in more than 60 districts on Monday, the first day of voting. Sazonkina figures that most of her neighbors will vote for resettlement in the poll. But she’s opposed she says her   property rights are being violated, since she’s not being given a real choice. ”They’ll make our life hell, and sooner or later they’ll squeeze us out,” Sazonkina said. ”But my civic conscience won’t allow me to vote for it.” As Sazonkina found out at the protest she joined on Sunday, she isn’t alone. Homeowners are also venting their anger in online groups and holding grassroots seminars on how to defend their property rights. Opponents of the plan don’t believe the mayor’s promise that they’ll receive an apartment of equal size in the same district. They also doubt the quality of the new buildings and fear that Moscow will become a concrete jungle of   high rises. Most of all, they don’t like being treated like ”sheep led to slaughter,” as Sazonkina puts it. Yuliya Galyamina, a linguist turned civic activist who organized Sunday’s rally, believes the real reason for the mass resettlement program is to revive the Moscow real estate market, which has been battered by Russia’s economic downturn. ”The government treats the people like Soviet people, but there are no Soviet people anymore,” said Galyamina. ”People are different now. They’ve become property owners and have a sense of  .” Galyamina claims ”Putin’s friends” came up with the demolition plan because they view their fellow citizens as nothing more than a source of income. Sergei Zverev, the head of the construction committee in Moscow’s city council and a member of Putin’s party, smiles when he hears such accusations. ”Of course we can blame everything bad on our president, but we should recognize that he supports our idea,” he said. ”Name just about any issue and you’ll find someone who’s against it and says, ’You’re violating my rights. ’” Zverev argues that most Muscovites affected by the resettlement program would prefer new housing: Many of the old buildings contain wooden beams and have ancient plumbing and tiny kitchens and bathrooms. ”Moscow will become more beautiful and more convenient  —   and most importantly, more comfortable to live in,” he said. The city insists nobody will be resettled to another district, and those who don’t want new apartments will get financial compensation. Homeowners like Sazonkina don’t believe the mayor’s guarantees. Just by being on the list of condemned buildings, the value of her property has already dropped. Sazonkina’s downstairs neighbor, Roman Gorsky, says he will vote for their building’s demolition, even though he shares her outrage. ”I don’t have any illusions about how constitutional this is, but the problem is that it’s very difficult to fight with our government,” said Gorsky, 43, the father of three. ”My children could end up without a roof over their heads. The choice is between having some kind of home or being homeless.” Their building will be demolished whatever happens, Gorksy says, so it’s better to get it over with quickly to avoid getting stuck at the end of the line for a new apartment. The polling of residents is due to be completed next month. In July, the Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, is set to pass a bill enshrining Moscow’s renovation program into law."
"The U. S. Supreme Court has once again declined to reinstate North Carolina’s strict voter ID law, which was struck down last year after a court ruled it was intentionally designed to stop   from voting. The nation’s highest court refused to consider an appeal by North Carolina Republicans, NPR’s Pam Fessler reports. ”Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the court’s refusal to consider an appeal did not signify an opinion on the merits of the case,” Fessler says. It’s not the first time the Supreme Court has considered an appeal over the voter ID law, which was one of the country’s strictest. It was put in place after the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, clearing the way for states with a history of discrimination to craft new voting laws without federal oversight. Michael Tomsic of member station WFAE wrote last fall about the lengthy battle over North Carolina’s law, which was ostensibly meant to combat voter fraud: ”That fight began in 2013, when the state made cuts to early voting, created a photo ID requirement and eliminated   registration,    voting and preregistration of high school students. ”More than half of all voters there use early voting, and   do so at higher rates than whites.   also tend to overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.” Those provisions of the law were struck down in July 2016 by the 4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In its ruling, the appeals court said the law was intentionally designed to discriminate against black people. North Carolina legislators had requested data on voting patterns by race and, with that data in hand, drafted a law that would ”target   with almost surgical precision,” the court said. The state appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused to reinstate the law in time for elections. The legal drama continued, as David Boraks of WFAE reports: ”The state and  . Pat McCrory appealed the 4th Circuit decision to the Supreme Court. As the Supreme Court discussed whether to hear the case, the state under a new Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, asked to withdraw the appeal.” That is the appeal the high court will not be hearing, it announced Monday. Voting rights have been making headlines again this month, after President Trump announced the creation of a presidential commission to investigate voter fraud. ”Numerous independent investigations have concluded that voter fraud exists but is extremely limited in scope,” Fessler reported last week. Critics said the commission would justify voter suppression efforts, while state election officials are worried it could ”divert attention from other serious concerns, such as aging equipment and the threat of hacking,” she wrote."
"The Senate is negotiating its own legislation to repeal and replace much of the Affordable Care Act in secret talks with senators   by party leaders and with no plans for committee hearings to publicly vet the bill. ”I am encouraged by what we are seeing in the Senate. We’re seeing senators leading,” said Sen. Ted Cruz,   one of the 13 Republicans involved in the private talks. ”We’re seeing senators working together in good faith. We’re not seeing senators throwing rocks at each other, either in private or in the press.” Senate Democrats have a different take. ”Your morning reminder that under the cloud cover of the FBI story, 13 GOP Senators are still secretly writing a bill to destroy the ACA,” Sen. Chris Murphy,  . tweeted Monday morning. Senate Republicans have shrugged away criticism about their decision to avoid action in committees in favor of closely guarded meetings in the U. S. Capitol to craft legislation to repeal and replace key pillars of President Barack Obama’s health care law and reshape Medicaid. The working group has met four times, and it plans to continue to meet every Tuesday and Thursday. So far, its strategy appears to be selectively suggesting potential provisions of the legislation to the media. For instance, Sen. John Thune,  . D. has floated pegging tax credits to help Americans buy health insurance to their income instead of their age like it does in the House version of the bill. While the fallout over President Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey consumes the news cycle, it has not had an impact on Republicans’ health care talks. A GOP aide for a senator involved in the talks said it has even given the Senate some breathing room to negotiate with so much attention focused elsewhere. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell formed the negotiating team to take the lead on crafting health care legislation that can ultimately win the support of at least 50 of the chamber’s 52 Republicans. No Democrats are expected to support any potential GOP health care bill. The legislation is moving under special budget rules known as reconciliation, which means it is not subject to usual filibuster rules and cannot be blocked by the minority party. Republicans ditched the   bill in pursuit of their own legislation, although the two chambers share the broad goals of repealing the ACA’s individual mandates and taxes, restricting access to abortion services and overhauling the Medicaid system from an   federal guarantee that covers costs to a system that gives states more flexibility to spend an allotted amount of money. Conservatives like Cruz are also laying down what they say is a key marker for whether a bill can pass the Senate: ”Do premiums go up, or do they go down?” Cruz said. Sen. Ron Johnson,  . told reporters last week that Republicans are still in the early planning phase of crafting a bill. ”We still need to agree on those goals and find out what’s achievable,” he said. Like Cruz, Johnson said for him lowering premiums is a top goal and he wants to repeal as much of the ACA as possible under the Senate’s more strict budget rules. Early talks suggest Republicans are optimistic they can ultimately pass a bill by the August recess. ”We’ve got a group of 52 Republican senators, all of us want to get to ’yes,’” Johnson said. Sens. Susan Collins,   and Bill Cassidy,  . have introduced their own health care plan, and they have been prominent voices in the debate, but they were excluded from the health care working group. Republicans were roundly criticized for not including any women in their core group, but the Republican women in the Senate who were asked about the omission said they didn’t mind. ”It doesn’t bother me, the leaders have the right to choose whoever they wish,” said Collins. ”It doesn’t mean that I’m not going to work on health care.” Cassidy and Collins have been moderating voices in the health care debate, and their support or opposition could be critical to Republicans’ success. The   proposal would let states keep the ACA, also known as Obamacare, in place if they wanted to, and it leaves in place the ACA’s taxes and fees to have revenue streams to pay for their health care overhaul. However, their plan doesn’t enjoy support among conservatives who don’t believe it goes far enough to repeal and replace Obamacare  —   the party’s signature campaign pledge. The duo has been reaching out to Democrats, but Cassidy said his efforts have been rejected. Democrats see no policy or political upside to working with Republicans to dismantle the ACA. ”Let me phrase this carefully. I’ve had seven or eight meetings with Democrats either in their office, maybe once my office or on the floor, and that was the consistent message I got,” Cassidy said. Most Republicans see no political advantage to attempting to craft bipartisan legislation that could aid vulnerable Red State Senate Democrats heading in to the midterm elections. In other words, there is mutual disinterest in bipartisanship when it comes to the fundamentals of Obamacare. The GOP health care talks are expected to roll through the summer months in the Senate. The   strategy  —   according to senior GOP aides in both the House and Senate  —   is to pass a Senate bill and send it back to the House for an    vote. While House passage of their bill was hailed by the president in an unusual Rose Garden ceremony earlier this month, Republicans are still a long way away from fulfilling their campaign promises on health care."
"Grocery stores in America have changed from neighborhood corner markets to   chains that sell convenience  —   along with thousands of products  —   to satisfy the demand of the country’s hungry consumers. What caused this transformation? And what will our grocery stores be like in the future?   food writer Michael Ruhlman, author of more than 20 books  —   including the   The Soul of the Chef and   of The French Laundry Cookbook with chef Thomas Keller  —   examines this phenomenon through the story of the Midwestern grocery chain Heinen’s. His new book, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, not only offers insights on how we produce, distribute and buy food, but seeks ways of understanding our changing relationship with what we eat and how we get it. To talk about some of these issues, NPR’s Ari Shapiro of All Things Considered met with Ruhlman at a Harris Teeter grocery store in Washington, D. C. We’re going to dig into the store and wander around its various sections. But just standing here at the entrance, you can see a bit of produce, a bit of prepared food, a magazine rack, charcoal. Is there something you didn’t know before you started researching the book that you now see in a different way? The sheer quantity of stuff that we buy and that’s available to us. It represents the extraordinary luxury that Americans have at our fingertips, seven days a week. We are in the first section that most people usually walk into in a grocery store: produce. It was so interesting to read about the time that you spent with the produce buyers behind Heinen’s  —   the chain in Cleveland  —   and the debates they had about whether the cantaloupes were sweet enough, whether there were enough plums, whether anybody would buy the stone fruit after    in September . .. the things that we as customers never see. We don’t. We just expect it to be here: ”I want peapods for my   tonight. Where are they, I expect them to be here.” And [the store] wants you to have them. If you come there and they don’t have peapods, they’re going to lose a customer. The business is run at such a narrow margin that they really want to keep their customers, which is why you’re almost always asked at good grocery stores, ”Did you find everything you need?” Because that’s one reason why people don’t come back. Let’s work our way to the packaged stuff in the center. In a typical grocery store, how many different products are you going to find? There are about 40, 000. In the past couple of decades it’s gone up from about 7, 000. Food manufacturers have found that they can increase demand and sell more products if they give you more variety. For instance, barbecue sauces: Caribbean jerk, sesame ginger, Hawaiian, teriyaki . .. when’s it going to end? There’s got to be a limit as to how much we can actually absorb and choose from. I get the sense that you feel a little conflicted. On one hand, the grocery store is the embodiment of the greatest pinnacle of human achievement, and on the other hand, it’s row after row of depressing, processed,   junk. Yes. It’s the best of America and the worst of America right here in one bright   landscape. My father died shortly before I started [researching the book]. He loved grocery stores, and that’s part of why I [did this.] I think the grocery store is sort of a nostalgic place. We want to think the people who care about our food care about us. It goes back to that corner grocery store. But I don’t think they do anymore. So far, it doesn’t seem like grocery delivery has really taken off. Do you see that changing? I do believe more people will get their commodity groceries  —   the Cheerios, the cranberry juice, all the stuff in the middle of the grocery store they will get it delivered, because it’s all the same no matter where it comes from. The whole center of the store is going to go away or it’s going to be filled with specialty goods. That’s my hope. Grocery stores are going to shrink and become more specialty stores, and they’re going to sell better food. Is that, in some sense, a return to what it was like in the early days of the grocery store? That’s exactly what it’s returning to  —   when a small grocery would sell a variety of very special   goods. This interview has been edited for length and clarity."
"Since the February death of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, the first bias fatality of the Trump era, one question has been coursing through South   circles: was this   killing in Olathe, Kansas their ”Vincent Chin moment”? Chin was a   in Detroit who was beaten to death by two white men in 1982. His death is credited with sparking a    activist movement. In ”The Making of Asian America: A History,” author Erika Lee quotes activist Helen Zia as saying, ”Suddenly people who had endured a lifetime of degrading treatment were wondering if their capacity to suffer in silence might no longer be a virtue.” Like Chin, Kuchibhotla was an immigrant, and had moved to the country from India. Both men were victims of ethnic  : Chin’s killers thought he was Japanese, and that he was somehow to blame for U. S. auto manufacturing jobs being lost. In Kuchibhotla’s case, the alleged shooter told a bartender that he’d killed two Iranians, including Kuchibhotla’s friend Alok Madasani, who survived. But for all the similarities, there is one important difference: Chin was working class, while Kuchibhotla was an engineer who was, in the words of his widow, able to buy their ”dream home” in suburban Kansas City. This fact, however, may help explain why Kuchibhotla’s death has generated an unusual degree of alarm in the Indian community, including segments that have not otherwise been politicized. Unlike many of the Sikh and Muslim victims of past hate crimes, including those which occurred after   Kuchibhotla was Hindu. He was, in other words, an everyman figure in the eyes of many in India, and just as importantly, his death comes against a backdrop of rising white nationalism and disaffection. For Bay Area activist Anirvan Chatterjee, the shootings in Kansas served as ”a huge   call” for Hindu Americans. ”They thought they were safe,” he said. ”They thought their bindis would protect them, they thought their last names would protect them, they thought their advanced degrees would protect them, and something changed.” Another factor is wealth. Indian Americans have the highest median income of any ethnic group, and this attribute may have helped inoculate the community against a sense of threat. ”I think there was a sense of ’Look at the tremendous success’ and there was perhaps a complacency that we didn’t have to do the basic building blocks” of organizing, said Raj Goyle, a former state legislator from Kansas who now runs a tech firm in New York. ”Indians, We are the white people of brown people,” said Indian comedian Vir Das on a recent episode of Conan. Das waited for the laughter to die down before adding, ”Because when we get shot there’s an investigation, ladies and gentlemen.” In other words, we’re dark enough to be the targets of hate crimes, but connected enough that the powers that be actually pay attention. That paradox explains why even the wealthiest Indian Americans are now mobilizing: Goyle is   of the Indian American Impact Project, an organization that is encouraging Wall Street executives, venture capitalists and others to invest in progressive political candidates and civil rights groups, and to align with other communities of color. ”There are people who have very significant net worths who I think are willing to now write   checks, perhaps even   checks,” said Goyle. ”The resources in the community are there.” Suman Raghunathan, executive director of the civil rights group South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) thinks this is a significant change because, unlike in the    era, the fear is now reaching into every corner of the   community. ”There’s a blanket sense and understanding among folks that we are all in the crossfire.” Arun Venugopal is a race reporter with WNYC and a contributor to ”The United States of Anxiety” podcast. Find him on Twitter @arunNYC."
"President Trump has proposed big tax cuts for businesses and individuals  ” breaks that could reduce federal revenue by trillions of dollars. Economists and tax specialists say that unless they’re paid for, the tax cuts could explode budget deficits and the national debt. The prospect has prominent Republicans and Republican members of Congress worried. When he unveiled an outline of the President’s tax proposal in April, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin minced no words: ”We will have a massive tax cut for business and massive tax reform and simplification.” Mnuchin said the tax cut will largely pay for itself by boosting U. S. economic growth, ”back to 3 percent or higher.” That’s about double the growth rate in the economy last year. David Stockman, the budget director in the Reagan White House in the 1980s, is highly skeptical. ”The idea that some combination of loophole closing plus added growth would pay for this 7     revenue loss that they’re talking about, I think is just completely fanciful and irresponsible,” he says. But, Stockman says, the argument does have a familiar ring: ”It’s the same story they told back in 1980s when I was there and I never believed it.” Stockman said he believed tax cuts would produce ”some additional economic growth.” But, he told colleagues in the Reagan administration, ”most of the revenue loss has to be paid for with spending cuts. You have to earn it. You can’t, you know, wave a magic wand.” The Trump administration says one other place it will get revenue for its big tax cut is by closing tax loopholes. But Stockman is skeptical Congress will go along. Take the $180 billion a year companies deduct for providing health benefits. ”Not a chance that would be tampered with,” he says. How about the $200 billion a year companies and individuals deduct for contributions to pensions and retirement plans? ”I can’t believe there’s a remote possibility they would tamper with that,” says the former budget director. And, Stockman points out, the administration itself has taken popular deductions like the ones for mortgage interest and charitable giving off the table. Selling tax cuts that aren’t paid for will be even more difficult because the nation’s debt is already projected to move dramatically higher. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says by 2035 it will return to the record levels experienced just after World War II. That’s without the potential trillions in debt that could be added by the Trump tax cuts. Stockman worries that to finance the debt the government will soak up funds in the economy that would otherwise be invested in businesses ”and therefore slow down the growth of productivity.” That could hurt U. S. living standards. Many Republicans in Congress have made deficit and debt reduction a huge issue. Members of the conservative Freedom Caucus have been vehement about it. And moderate Republicans like Rep. Tom Reed of New York are also concerned. ”Until you see the entire picture, I’m going to keep my powder dry,” he says. But, ”that type of debt increase is something I would be gravely concerned about.” Reed, who spoke to NPR while making the rounds back in his district in western New York, says he hopes Trump and the Congress can find a way to pay for the tax cuts. ”Hopefully there’s a way we can bridge this difference and make sure that we get to revenue neutrality,” he says. For Reed, that could include supporting a modified form of the border adjustment tax, the tax on imports being pushed by Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders in the House."
"At 5:30 a. m. on April 9, Salako Hunsa awoke to the sound of gunfire. He left his wife and five children inside the house, and ran out to a shocking scene: A squad of police officers shooting indiscriminately and setting fire to his neighbors’ homes. ”I had to run for my life,” Hunsa says. By the time the sun rose, the neighborhood was leveled, thousands of people were homeless and one young man was dead. The attack was a dramatic turning point in an ordeal that for Hunsa and thousands of his neighbors is far from over. Hunsa was a lifelong resident of Otodo Gbame (pronounced  ) an informal waterfront settlement in Lagos, Nigeria, that is the front line of an ongoing conflict over the rights of some of the city’s poorest residents. Africa’s most populous city is situated between a large lagoon and the open Atlantic. At dozens of locations across the city’s coastlines, at the boundaries where frantic markets, office towers and   apartments meet the water, more than 300, 000 people inhabit slums like Otodo Gbame (which translates roughly from the local Egun language to ”community in the bush,” a nod to its origin as a swamp). Most residents eke out a living by fishing from   canoes. They live in makeshift homes made of wood and scraps and elevated on stilts as a precaution against flooding. Access to clean water, electricity, schools and other vital services is scarce or nonexistent. These communities are perhaps the most visible manifestation of the profound income inequality in Lagos. While the oil and finance industries have buoyed a few thousand Lagosians into stratospheric wealth (marked by gleaming black Escalades and boutique markets selling French oysters)   of the city’s 21 million residents are either living in or at risk of poverty, according to a 2016 Oxford University study. Residents of the waterfront settlements represent the city’s lowest socioeconomic tier. But they also happen to occupy prime real estate in the city with Africa’s   population, where waterfront property increasingly rivals the prices of New York or Miami. Now they’re the target of a government eviction campaign that city officials say is motivated by health and security concerns, and because the settlements are ”illegal, without any title or appropriate government approval.” But residents and watchdog groups say the evictions are no more than a blatant, and sometimes violent, grab for land that’s been occupied by the same families for generations. ”This is the problem, they are surrounded by wealth,” says Morayo Adebayo, a researcher at Amnesty International Nigeria. That makes the land an attractive acquisition for ”the posh places” nearby, she says. Residents of waterfront settlements have experienced harassment from the police and wealthy neighbors for years. Trouble escalated in October, when Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode issued a warning that he planned to order the ”demolition of all the shanties around the creeks in Lagos State and also around our waterways.” His concern was that some communities may have been sheltering suspected kidnappers (a major crime problem in Nigeria). That accusation was vigorously denied by the Justice and Empowerment Initiative (JEI) a local legal nonprofit representing community residents in court. On November 9, a large fire ripped through the settlement and left 30, 000 people homeless. The cause of the fire is disputed, but JEI   Megan Chapman believes that ”the police prevented residents’ firefighting efforts and actually spread the fire.” The government denied any responsibility for the blaze but didn’t seem to mind its outcome in a statement on the fire it said that Otodo Gbame ”clearly fell within the prime waterfront areas where Lagos State Government would prefer to have better development, befitting of a prime area in a megacity.” The statement added that the government ”was mindful of the fundamental rights of the various residents living in the area.” In January, the Lagos State High Court spelled out those rights in an injunction that found the government’s practice of forced evictions amounted to ”inhuman, cruel and degrading” treatment incompatible with Nigerian and international human rights law. The court put a stay on future evictions and initiated a process to mediate some kind of agreement between residents and the government. Nevertheless, in March the police returned with a crew of demolition workers and bulldozers, this time with a mission to ”clear” structures ”to ensure that the waterfront area is free from environmentally injurious and unsanitary habitation.” Another 4, 700 residents lost their homes, according to JEI. ”So you create a humanitarian crisis to avert an environmental crisis?” Adebayo says. ”You see the reasons keep shifting.” The final blow came April 9, when the remaining few thousand residents were chased out and what was still left of the community razed. In the melee, a    resident named Daniel Aya was shot in the neck and killed. Residents blame the police or thugs working for them, but the government denied responsibility. An investigation is pending while Aya’s body waits in a morgue, his father, Hungbo Aya, says. By the time Salako Hunsa realized what was happening that day and rushed back inside to collect his wife and children, they had already fled. Because police had blockaded the shore, there was nowhere to go but the water. Hunsa jumped in and swam for 30 minutes until he was picked up in a friend’s canoe. All of the family’s possessions were left behind and destroyed in the fire, along with virtually every structure in the settlement. Drone footage captured by activists after the eviction reveals the extent of devastation. Hunsa found himself paddling to the city’s largest waterfront settlement, Makoko, along with most of his neighbors. When they arrived a few hours later, they parked the canoe in one of the countless narrow canals that wind through the neighborhood. He found his family, and they’ve been living there since  —   inside their canoes. Makoko is already overcrowded, and the more than 1, 000 displaced Otodo Gbame residents who are now living there have no choice but to sleep in the vessels that brought them. Hunsa’s canoe is big enough to accommodate several people they sleep on mats on the floor underneath mosquito nets hung from a makeshift roof of metal sheeting. A steel oil drum with a discarded satellite dish for a lid serves as a cabinet. The canal inches below where they sleep serves as a public toilet and waste dump. Getting food is a daily struggle that involves some combination of borrowing it from others, food aid from local NGOs or buying it with cash from the occasional odd job. Hunsa was a rare exception to the prevailing fisherman profession he washed clothes at a laundromat in a nearby neighborhood and was fired when he didn’t show up after the eviction. But even the fishermen are unable to find work. Most of their equipment was lost during the eviction. The waters around Makoko are unfamiliar, so they don’t know where to look for fish. And the Makoko fishermen are territorial, so the newcomers aren’t welcome. There’s a cruel irony to the plight of the displaced peoples: Castigated as squatters in one place, they have been chased to a place where they truly are squatters and admit as much. ”[Otodo Gbame] is our fathers’ land, it is where we were born,” says Pascal Tosinhun, a displaced fisherman now living in Makoko. ”Here we are squatters. We can’t do anything here.” Tosinhun said he knows it’s only a matter of time before they wear out their welcome in Makoko, but that most people don’t know where they will go next. The situation reveals a fundamental flaw in the government’s approach, JEI’s Chapman says. ”Demolitions aren’t a solution to slums. They just push people deeper into poverty, and they move to a different slum,” she says. The primary legal objective of the residents’ case against the government, she says, is to regain access to their land, although she acknowledges it’s an ”uphill battle” given that the land is adjacent to an estate owned by one of Lagos’ wealthiest families, is still blockaded by police and is already being bulldozed to make way for future construction projects. A hearing in late April got stalled on a technicality and rescheduled, so any resolution would take some time. At a minimum, Chapman says, the government should provide ”compensation for lives lost and injuries, and prosecution of people involved in demolition.” With the governor’s original ominous warning (”demolition of all the shanties”) still lingering, residents of Makoko fear that their waterfront settlement could be next. Chapman’s legal strategy is to think big. ”We want to make this as painful as possible for the government as a deterrent to future evictions,” she says. For Otodo Gbame’s former residents, there’s little more to do than to stand by and hope for the best. ”We have total commitment to that community,” Tosinhun says. ”If it was announced today, we would all go back today.” Tim McDonnell is a multimedia environmental journalist from New York. Currently he is a   Geographic Storytelling Fellow covering climate change in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. Follow him @timmcdonnell. "
"More than 37 million pieces of plastic debris have accumulated on a remote island in the South Pacific, thousands of miles from the nearest city, according to estimates from researchers who documented the accumulating trash. Turtles get tangled in fishing line, and hermit crabs make their homes in plastic containers. The   line is demarcated by litter. Small scraps of plastic are buried inches deep into the sandy beaches. It’s the highest density of debris reported anywhere in the world, scientists say. Their research on trash accumulated at Henderson Island, largest of the the Pitcairn Islands, was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The island is uninhabited and visited by scientists only once or twice a decade, according to the University of Tasmania. But ocean currents bring a steady stream of plastic trash from around the world, from litter swept into storm drains to debris dropped off fishing boats. ”What’s happened on Henderson Island shows there’s no escaping plastic pollution even in the most distant parts of our oceans,” lead author Jennifer Lavers said in a statement released by the university. ”Far from being the pristine ’deserted island’ that people might imagine of such a remote place, Henderson Island is a shocking but typical example of how plastic debris is affecting the environment on a global scale.” There are no major factories or towns within 3, 100 miles of the island, the scientists say. So all that trash  —   more than 17 tons of it, with thousands of new individual pieces arriving each day  —   travels long distances through the ocean before arriving on the   beaches. The researchers call the pace of accumulation ”exceptional.” And it has consequences: The trash interferes with sea turtle nests and poses a threat to seabirds that can get caught in the debris. But the scale of the problem extends far beyond this isolated island, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. In their paper, the researchers note that the masses of trash on Henderson Island ”account for only 1. 98 seconds’ worth of the annual global production of plastic.” It’s hard to keep track of where exactly all that plastic goes much of it is ”lost,” vanishing into the ocean for parts unknown. Based on their research, Lavers and   Alexander Bond suggest that some of the trash winds up in remote, uninhabited, otherwise pristine islands  —   ”which have become reservoirs for the world’s waste,” they write."
"It wasn’t a serious political gaffe, but it was awkward. On Feb. 12, the Republican National Committee tweeted a picture of the Lincoln Memorial along with the quote, ”’And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count it’s the life in your years’  —   Abraham Lincoln.” You’d have figured the party of Lincoln would have come up with something a little more consequential than an adage about staying sprightly in your declining years. It didn’t sound very Lincolnesque, and people quickly pointed out that he never said anything of the sort. Some took that tweet as another occasion to deplore the plague of bogus quotations on the Internet. That’s fair enough. But quotations can be bogus in different ways. Some are purely fraudulent, as when people ascribe a modern political sentiment to some historical figure to give it a phony pedigree. It’s like slapping a thick coat of varnish on a recent painting and trying to pass it off on eBay as a Rembrandt. The Thomas Jefferson website at Monticello has a whole section reserved for the anachronistic quotations that people have put in his mouth to make him sound like an   populist or a modern conservative. Over the years, people have used spurious quotations to create apocryphal Lincolns of every stripe: the Lincoln who opposed Prohibition, the Lincoln who championed the rights of labor, the Lincoln who warned against inciting class hatred. But most of the misattributed quotations you run into weren’t contrived to deceive anyone. In a new book called Hemingway Didn’t Say That, Garson O’Toole traces the checkered histories of a number of familiar quotations, as they’re passed along from one speaker to another, filched and appropriated, and often streamlined along the way. Leo Durocher’s remark ”The nice guys are all in seventh place” gets polished into ”Nice guys finish last.” Sooner or later the quotations invariably drift into the orbit of some certified luminary like Winston Churchill or Mark Twain. You could think of those as brand names that provide a guarantee  —   if Nietzsche said it, it must be deep if Oscar Wilde said it, it’s terribly clever. The origins of these sayings are usually murky  —   with quotations, even the originals aren’t original. On his website, O’Toole traced the adage that the RNC tweeted back to an ad for a 1947 book on aging gracefully by a gerontologist named Edward Stieglitz. But there’s similar wording in a 1910 advertisement for a laxative called DeWitt’s Little Early Risers that promised to add years to your life and life to your years. It wasn’t until around 2000 that the remark attached itself to Lincoln. This is really a new way of getting a quotation wrong. The RNC quotation isn’t about enlisting the historical Lincoln as an ally in some modern political debate. This Lincoln isn’t a political figure, or even a historical one. He’s more like a Disneyland animatronic Lincoln, dispensing upbeat   philosophy. He’s the Lincoln who’s often quoted as saying, ”People are as happy as they make up their minds to be,” which, as it happens, was attached to him in Disney’s 1960 film Pollyanna. These implausible attributions have flourished in the age of the Internet. Visit the    websites and you’ll find figures from George Bernard Shaw to Nelson Mandela credited with inspirational bromides that they couldn’t possibly have uttered. Sometimes it takes only a slight change in an actual quotation to completely alter its meaning. In his Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell recalls how Johnson once upbraided him for repeating some fashionable platitudes: ”My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.” In recent years that remark has been reinvented as a motivational slogan simply by inserting an apostrophe before the ’t’ of ”can’t” to turn it into a contraction. That’s all it took to transform it into exactly the kind of fatuous cliché that Johnson urged Boswell to clear his mind of and to transform the most caustic wit in all of English literature into an apostle of positive thinking. We do quotation differently now. Time was when it was chiefly a literary device, a way of weaving an essay or speech into an ongoing conversation with the past. Writers might pull familiar quotations from the pages of Bartlett’s or novel ones from the literary scrapbooks called commonplace books that they kept, like   Tumblrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the next best thing to inventing a good sentence was being the first person to quote it. You might have seen an isolated epigram under a yearbook photo or on the lintel of a library door or as a filler in a snippet magazine like the Reader’s Digest. But it wouldn’t have made sense to broadcast a single quotation all by itself. It took the Internet to democratize erudition and set quotations free. Now they’re   atoms of wisdom that make their own way in the world  —   passed along in chain emails, tweeted, posted on Instagram and Pinterest boards, inscribed on bracelets and household items. It’s true that the websites of inspirational quotes often make a hash of history. But you’d have to be an awful pedant to spend your time railing at the sloppy scholarship on motivational posters and coffee mugs. As long as they inspire and they console, most people couldn’t care less who actually said them. In the words of the Chinese proverb, or possibly the novelist Rosamond Lehmann, or perhaps Gustave Flaubert: ”It’s the thought that counts.”"
"The White House announced today that President Trump’s youngest son,    Barron, will attend the private St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Md. this fall. Barron and his mother, Melania Trump, have been living at Trump Tower in New York throughout Trump’s presidency. The announcement ends speculation that they would remain in New York during the entire presidency Barron will be the first presidential son to live at the White House since John F. Kennedy, Jr. St. Andrew’s is a coed,   Episcopal school founded in 1978. The school enrolls 580 students from preschool through 12th grade, with all but the youngest grades on a   campus about 15 miles northwest of the White House. ”We are very excited for our son to attend St. Andrew’s Episcopal School,” the first lady said in a statement. ”It is known for its diverse community and commitment to academic excellence. The mission of St. Andrew’s is ’to know and inspire each child in an inclusive community dedicated to exceptional teaching, learning, and service,’ all of which appealed to our family. We look forward to the coming school years at St. Andrew’s.” The Washington Post reports that Barron will start at the school as a sixth grader   tuition for the coming year is $38, 590. The move to D. C. for the president’s family could reduce costs and burdens on law enforcement agencies. The New York Times reports that New York City police have spent ”an estimated $127, 000 to $145, 000 a day” protecting Melania and Barron since Trump took office. Having the Trumps reunited at the White House will also simplify demands on the Secret Service the Times reports ”the unusually high number of New   Trumps in need of protection has required agents from across the country to set aside criminal investigations to fly to the city for   protection stints.” In a letter sent to St. Andrew’s families today and published by the Post, the school’s administrators emphasized the school’s ”inclusive” mission and values. ”As we came to know Barron through the admission process, it became clear that he, like all of our newly enrolled students, will be a great addition to St. Andrew’s,” the letter said. The school a president’s children will attend  —   especially the question of whether it is public or private  —   is a choice often scrutinized. Many presidential kids have gone to the private Sidwell Friends, a Quaker school in Northwest Washington, D. C. and Bethesda, Md. In addition to Chelsea Clinton and Malia and Sasha Obama, President Nixon’s daughter Tricia and Vice President Al Gore’s son Albert Gore III went there. Three of former Vice President Joe Biden’s granddaughters were classmates of the Obama girls. When President Jimmy Carter moved to the White House in 1977, he and his wife Rosalynn did something rare: They sent    Amy to a predominantly black D. C. public school. Amy was the first child of a president to attend a public school since 1906, when one of President Teddy Roosevelt’s sons went to a school in the district. Sending Amy to public school was ”a statement of principle,” according to Carter’s press director. In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination the previous year, Carter had criticized ”a political economic elite who have shaped decisions and never had to account for mistakes or to suffer from injustice.” ”When the public schools are inferior or torn by strife,” said Carter, ”their children go to exclusive private schools.”"
"A video of Russian President Vladimir Putin taking a turn at the ivories in Beijing is currently making the Internet rounds. On Sunday, while awaiting a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a state residence during the ”Belt and Road” trade initiative, Putin was filmed sitting down to a piano to plunk out a couple of 1950s Soviet standards: ”Evening Song,” by Vasily   and ”Moscow Windows,” by Tikhon Khrennikov. The first is considered an unofficial anthem for the city of St. Petersburg, with lyrics like ”Listen, Leningrad, I’ll sing to you my sincere song.” (During the Soviet era, the city of St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad.) After playing just a few notes, the Russian president visibly recoils, presumably because the piano sounds quite out of tune. But he decides to plunge ahead regardless. At his conclusion, Putin whispers something and then decisively shuts the piano’s fallboard (the keyboard lid) and walks away, smiling. Was the episode a challenge to the pianistically inclined Emmanuel Macron? A jab at a possible lack of attention to detail at China’s state properties? Or just Putin passing some time by indulging in a little   musical nostalgia? The video was posted to YouTube by Sputnik, a digital news agency that is a   sibling of RT and, like RT, is aimed at international audiences. This isn’t the first time Putin has put himself out in public, musically speaking. In 2014, he plunked out the same ”Moscow Windows” at a meeting with students at the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute. And in 2010, he played piano and sang a version of ”Blueberry Hill” at a charity fundraiser  —   on which, it can be noted, he was just as rhythmically hesitant as in this latest musical foray. Putin addressed the episode at a press briefing Monday in Beijing. Reuters quoted him as saying, ”It’s a pity that the piano was out of tune. It was quite hard to play, even for me, someone who plays with two fingers. I cannot say I played, I was just pressing the keys with two or three fingers.” He also said that the decision to tape his pianistic interlude  —   and then release the video  —   belonged to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the news service. ”I thought that if Mr. Peskov is filming, it’s probably for personal use, for the archive,” Putin is quoted as saying. ”But they decided to post it. But never mind. I think I didn’t let you down.”"
"How do you know you are not now dreaming? Any test you might perform, you might be merely dreaming that you are performing. How can you get outside experience to verify that things are, at least once and for all, the way they seem to be? This is philosophical skepticism in the potent and daring form that comes down to us from René Descartes. But there are other equally challenging styles of skeptical argument. Take the whole question of other minds. Each of us knows his or her own mind. We experience. We judge. We perceive. We want. But the minds of others? How can we ever know how things are, internally, with another. Her experience? His feelings? His intentions? These are cut off from us, hidden, as they are, behind a veil of mere behavior, or mere words (which is just a fancy variety of behavior). That skepticism is not alone the concern of academic philosophy is demonstrated by the steady stream of skeptical storylines in our most popular movies. In Blade Runner, for example, we are asked to take seriously the thought that   replicants lack thought and feeling, lack personality and worth, and for the simple reason that they are artificial. But what the movie drives home is the fact that the basis of our belief that replicants think and feel is no better and, crucially, no worse, than our confidence that any of our friends or loved ones really think and feel and experience. And The Matrix simply plays a variation on one of Descartes’ skeptical themes  —   that we are induced to hallucinate a false reality by an evil manipulator bent on deceiving us. Skeptical worries are not confined to science fiction. In Angel Heart, we experience the world through the eyes of a fundamentally unreliable   guide and in Gaslight it is the person we think we know and trust the most that, it eventually turns out, is bent on our brutal exploitation and injury. Despite the vibrancy of skeptical ideas and themes in popular culture, as well as philosophy, it is almost universally acknowledged that the practical implications of skepticism are utterly negligible. We may not have sufficient reason to believe in the minds of others. But you’d have to be mad to seriously entertain the possibility that your loved ones are not, like you, really conscious beings. And if you really thought that the existence of a world outside your head, altogether, were, at least for all we know, a mere figment, it is hard to see how you could ever carry on. And anyway, as Scottish philosopher David Hume said, even the skeptical philosopher leaves his or her skepticism behind when he or she leaves the study. Skepticism is a live rational possibility, but not a real practical one. I thought of this relation in connection with the predicament facing this country. It’s news from nowhere to be reminded that there is a deep political divide in America today. Many people I know are anxious. We watch lips move. We hear the words. But it doesn’t add up. It is hard to really even comprehend the thoughts or feelings of people on the other side. It is as if our political culture has gone the way of skepticism. Our alienation from each other is so great that we stand to each other in something like the ways that skeptical philosophers have always supposed: We are confined to the outward marks, the mere behavior  —   and that’s just not enough to know another, to really understand him or her, or to trust. Real skepticism is a dangerous proposition. If we lack the common ground even to know each other, then what are the prospects of peaceful resolution of our conflicts? Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Updated at 9:10 p. m. ET, President Trump asked   Director James Comey to close down the agency’s investigation into his former national security adviser Michael Flynn just one day after Flynn was let go, according to two sources close to Comey. An associate of Comey’s who is familiar with the matter confirms that the former FBI director memorialized the conversation with Trump in a memo he wrote immediately after their Oval Office conversation on February 14. The news was first reported by the New York Times. Comey  —   who was fired one week ago by Trump amid the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia  —   wrote in the February memo that Trump asked for the investigation of Flynn to go away  —   to which Comey gave a   response. Then he left and wrote detailed notes, according to the source. ”It was an ask” not a command, the source said. A small number of FBI agents were made aware of the memo and the conversation, and agents kept working on the investigation. A second Comey associate told NPR that Comey wrote notes for his files after several conversations with Trump. ”He was concerned,” the second source said. ”’I hope you can let this go,’” Trump told Comey of the Flynn investigation, the same source said. Flynn was fired on February 13 after it was revealed he had misled Vice President Pence about his conversations with Russian Ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak about U. S. sanctions recently imposed on Russia Flynn had been speaking with Kislyak during the transition period between Election Day and Trump’s inauguration. Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was also fired by Trump after she refused to defend his travel ban, testified last week before Congress that she had told the White House more than two weeks before Flynn was asked to resign that he had been ”compromised with respect to the Russians” because he had misled Pence. Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena for Flynn’s ”documents relevant to the Committee’s investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 elections.” Flynn has sought immunity from the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, with his lawyer saying in a statement in March that, ”General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.” Comey’s bombshell account of the February conversation is the latest headache for a White House increasingly in turmoil. On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Trump had revealed ”highly classified information” to two top Russian diplomats  —   Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov  —   whom he met with in the Oval Office last Wednesday, the day after firing Comey, in a shocking display of puzzling optics. And amid the bubbling crises, Trump is set to depart at the end of the week on his first foreign trip as president, traveling to a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium a G7 meeting in Italy Saudi Arabia the Vatican and Israel  —   the country whose intelligence about an ISIS plot to use laptops on airplanes Trump reportedly breached protocol by sharing with the Russians. A White House official denied The Times’ report about Trump’s conversation with Comey in a statement: While the President has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the President has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn. The President has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr. Comey. The FBI said they have no comment on the Times story. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who took over last week after Comey was fired, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that, ”There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.” Comey has a history of memorializing controversial conversations and issues  —   he did so during the George W. Bush administration, where he served as deputy attorney general, with respect to those controversial ”enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA on terror detainees in the wake of  . He sent memos to his chief of staff that surfaced years later in The Times. Trump fired Comey last week, with the White House initially claiming it was because of a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that concluded Comey had mishandled the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server. But Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt days later that he was going to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein’s memo, and that is was, indeed, in part, because of the ongoing Russia investigation, which Trump has dismissed as a ”hoax.” ”When I decided to just do it [fire Comey],” Trump told Holt. ”I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a   story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.” Trump also claimed in his letter firing Comey that the FBI director had told him on three separate occasions that he was not under investigation. He also tweeted on Friday suggesting he has secret recordings of his conversations with Comey, though the White House has since repeatedly refused to confirm or deny whether any such tapes actually exist. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz,   sent a letter Tuesday evening to McCabe requesting all ”memoranda, notes, summaries, and recordings referring or relating” to communications between Comey and Trump. Chaffetz set a deadline of no later than May 24 for the FBI to provide the materials to the committee. ”We need to have all the facts, and it is appropriate for the House Oversight Committee to request this memo,” House Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman AshLee Strong also said in a statement. Democrats immediately pounced on The Times’ report and called on their GOP colleagues to push for the truth from the White House. ”Concerns about our national security, the rule of law, the independence of our nation’s highest law enforcement agencies are mounting,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,  . Y. said on the Senate floor shortly after the Times story broke. ”The country is being tested in unprecedented ways. I say to all of my colleagues in the Senate, history is watching.” ”If these reports are true, the President’s brazen attempt to shut down the FBI’s investigation of Michael Flynn is an assault on the rule of law that is fundamental to our democracy. At best, President Trump has committed a grave abuse of executive power. At worst, he has obstructed justice,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,  . in a statement. In response to the news of Comey’s memo, more House Republicans on Tuesday evening called for a combination of White House briefings and public testimony from the former FBI director to assess the scope of the situation. ”I think Director Comey should testify before Congress as soon as possible,” Rep. Leonard Lance,  . J. a moderate lawmaker from a swing district said Tuesday evening. When asked if he was concerned that Trump could hurt his reelection prospects, Lance replied: ”I’m confident that I represent the views of the overwhelming majority of my constituents.” ”Obviously, we want a briefing from the White House,” said House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows,  . C. ”I don’t know that it’s important to have Comey testify, but it is important to get to the bottom of it. We’ve got one standard and we need to make sure that applies to everybody.” Meadows also told reporters that if memos exist, Congress should have access to them. ”I just want to understand it better. It’s one thing to have to have the New York Times report it, it’s another to be able to look at what it is,” he said. The president’s loyalists on Capitol Hill echoed the White House’s attacks on the media to question the latest revelation. ”What seems overwhelmingly clear to me is that the White House is besieged by a spectrum of the media dedicated to the far left that is relentlessly committed to doing everything they can to delegitimize this president. So that alone sometimes calls into question almost all of these discussions,” said Rep. Trent Franks,  . However, Franks also said he would like Comey to testify. ”I think it would be great,” he said, ”I’m someone who has always believed in sunlight, and that clarity is our friend, and truth is the best ally.” As reporters huddled off the House floor questioning GOP lawmakers about the Comey memos, another staunch Trump loyalist, Rep. Louis Gohmert,   walked by and entered the elevator as he quipped: ”Almost sounds like fake news.” Overlooked in The Times report: Trump also reportedly told Comey that he ”should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information.” Geoff Bennett contributed to this report."
"More than six weeks into   demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro’s government, Venezuelans have found themselves staring down some stark numbers: Still, few statistics stand out more than the number of people killed or injured in the protests since they began in earnest at the end of March: more than three dozen killed and more than 750 injured, according to the AP. Other news agencies, such as Reuters, report that more than 40 people have died from injuries related to the demonstrations and the police response. That includes at least four people who died from wounds they sustained Monday in the states of Tachira, Barinas and Miranda  —   including    Diego Arellano, whose death was announced by opposition leader Henrique Capriles. The protesters, which for weeks have called for the release of political prisoners and the resumption of indefinitely delayed elections, clogged the streets of several cities Monday morning with a   directed against Maduro. These demonstrations opened peacefully, the AP reports, but eventually descended into the chaotic clashes between activists and riot police that have characterized the recent weeks of unrest. By day’s end, several members of the security forces had been injured, and the BBC notes that the offices of the   power company, Corpoelec, had been set aflame in Carabobo state. The British news agency reports that Maduro blamed activists for the destruction and accused opposition lawmaker Julio Borges of inciting further violence. Others, such as the European Union, have been less inclined to blame the violence on the opposition. Rather, in a statement released Monday, the international organization declared that ”fundamental rights of the Venezuelan people must be respected, including the right to peacefully demonstrate. It is crucial that all parties refrain from violent acts.” ”The release of jailed political opponents and the respect of the constitutional rights of all political actors to vote and to participate in elections are also crucial steps to building trust and helping the country to regain political stability,” the EU added. Still, Maduro has shown no indication he will back down to external pressure. In fact, after the Organization of American States criticized his response to the unrest late last month, his government initiated steps to withdraw from the   group  —   which, if Venezuela follows through, would mark the first time a country has left the OAS. He maintains that the unrest  —   and the economic troubles that helped inspire it  —   has arisen at the prompting of foreign powers like the U. S. Maduro’s fate ultimately might not be decided by forces beyond Venezuela’s borders or by demonstrations within them, so much as by another party: the military. As NPR’s Philip Reeves reports, Maduro has long sought to build up loyalty in the ranks by naming new generals and meting out business interests. But if that loyalty falters  —   as it has appeared to have lately among the poor, his party’s longtime base of support  —   some believe the situation could change in a hurry. ”Right now, I’d say this very weak government is utterly dependent on the military,” Phil Gunson, a Venezuela specialist with the International Crisis Group, tells Reeves. ”If the army stops obeying orders, then the government I think would fall quite fast.”"
"Updated at 5:51 p. m. ET, President Trump is responding to the backlash against the allegations that he shared ”highly classified” information with the Russians by saying he had ”the absolute right to do” so. He tweeted Tuesday morning: And he went a step further, again taking aim at fired former FBI Director James Comey and ”leakers”: The irony seemed to be lost on Trump that he himself is being accused of being a ”leaker”  —   and that he criticized Hillary Clinton’s ”extremely careless” handling of classified information during the campaign, calling her ”not fit”: The Washington Post broke the news Monday night, and others confirmed and added to the reporting, that Trump revealed to Russian officials in a meeting in the Oval Office details of an ISIS plot to use laptops on airplanes. The information was classified and reportedly came from an ally in the Middle East. The New York Times, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal reported later Tuesday that the classified intelligence in question was provided by Israel  —   an important U. S. ally and one of the countries Trump will travel to later this week on his first foreign trip as president. Passing along the intelligence from Israel, The Times noted, raises the possibility that the Russians could give it to Iran, their close ally but Israel’s main antagonist. NPR has not confirmed the details of the reports. White House press secretary Sean Spicer wouldn’t comment Tuesday on whether or not Israel was the source of the intelligence. Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the U. S. said in a statement, reported by The New York Times, that ”Israel has full confidence in our   relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump.” Trump national security adviser H. R. McMaster said Monday night that the story in The Post, ”as reported, is false.” But he also noted that the president talked about ”common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time, at no time, were intelligence sources or methods discussed, and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.” McMaster took to the lectern in the White House Briefing Room on Tuesday and told reporters that he stood by his statement. ”The premise of that article is false,” McMaster said, though he did not say the entirety of the article is false and would not confirm nor deny that Trump revealed classified information to the Russians. ”What the president shared was wholly appropriate,” McMaster said. He added that there was ”no lapse in national security.” Instead, he focused on leaks. ”I think national security is put at risk by this leak and leaks like this,” he said. McMaster also did not say whether the president decided in the moment to share the information, but the adviser revealed a key detail that is going to raise more questions. ”The president wasn’t even aware where this information came from,” McMaster said. ”He wasn’t briefed.” Reporters were not able to follow up because McMaster then walked off. But where the information came from is a key piece of information, given that it could put operatives from a key ally at risk. None of that explains why the White House was reaching out to the CIA and National Security Agency to let them know what the president had revealed. McMaster said that was done merely out of an ”overabundance of caution.” Michael Anton, spokesman for the National Security Council, tells NPR’s Tamara Keith, ”My conscience is clear saying there is no contradiction between McMaster’s statement and the president’s tweet.” Becca Glover Watkins, a spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr,  . C. tells NPR’s Geoff Bennett that the committee ”has reached out to the White House to request additional information on recent reports about alleged dissemination of intelligence information.” By almost 5 p. m. Burr told reporters he still hadn’t heard back from the White House. It’s been ”a very busy day,” Burr said, ”but we hope to talk with them before we leave.” ”I’d prefer to have a conversation with an individual who was in the room about what actually was said, and then we can legitimately comment on whether we have concerns about what was said,” Burr also told reporters Tuesday evening. And an aide to a member of the House Intelligence Committee confirmed to NPR’s Susan Davis that CIA Director Mike Pompeo will brief the committee Tuesday evening. Pompeo’s appearance was previously scheduled, but obviously all subjects are on the table, the aide said. To be totally clear: If Trump revealed classified information, it is not illegal. The president can declassify anything he wants  —   just by saying it. There’s no formal process he needs to go through. But this kind of information was so ”highly classified” that disclosing it could subject any other person to jail time. Lawfare blog weighed in on that on Monday: ”The reason is that the very purpose of the classification system is to protect information the President, usually through his subordinates, thinks sensitive. So the President determines the system of designating classified information through Executive Order, and he is entitled to depart from it at will. Currently, Executive Order 13526 governs national security information. ”The Supreme Court has stated in Department of the Navy v. Egan that ’[the President’s] authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security . .. flows primarily from this Constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.’ Because of his broad constitutional authority in this realm, the president can, at any time, either declassify information or decide whom to share it with.” Lawfare got into more of the potential problems, like the possibility of this disclosure violating the president’s oath of office and of it raising the stakes over whether Trump records conversations in the Oval Office and for his FBI director pick. Still, the issue of criminality is not the whole of the discussion. NPR’s Mara Liasson said on NPR podcast Up First that what Trump is accused of doing is ”lawful but awful.” But there are also potential national security consequences. There is the potential that: 1) The Middle East ally that gave this information to the U. S. will be less likely to share in the future, 2) Other   U. S. allies may be less likely to share intelligence, and, 3) If the first two happen, Americans would be put at risk, as the U. S. tries to prevent terrorist attacks and threats like the one Trump allegedly told the Russians about. Trump also continues to have problems with the intelligence community. It’s never a good thing for a president to be at odds with some of the very people who are tasked with keeping the country safe. If the focus of either or both is getting back at the other, who’s watching the gate? Of course, the U. S. has had problematic intelligence situations with the rest of the world in the past. Some in China are upset that the NSA, for example, was reportedly behind the origination of the virus that was used in the recent ransomware attack before losing control of it. The NSA was also at the heart of the Edward Snowden drama, which revealed that the U. S. spied on world leaders, including close allies. And, of course, there was the intelligence failures over the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the rationale that led to the 2003 invasion of the country. U. S. alliances survived those and more, but they all occurred under presidents who were far more careful with their language, not to mention their tweets."
"Republicans in Congress are calling for briefings and pleading for ”less drama” at the White House following revelations that President Trump shared classified intelligence with Russia  —   but most are muted in their criticism of him. For the leader of Senate Republicans, the biggest concern is that the controversy over Trump’s sharing of secrets  —   with the successor to what Republican President Ronald Reagan once labeled the ”evil empire”  —   is that it’s distracting lawmakers from their legislative program. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . said Tuesday morning in an interview with Bloomberg News that ”we could do with a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things.” McConnell added that drama was interfering with the ability of Republican senators to ”focus on our agenda, which is deregulation, tax reform, repealing and replacing Obamacare.” In a statement, Sen. John McCain,  . said the intelligence sharing was ”deeply disturbing.” McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, added, ”Reports that this information was provided by a U. S. ally and shared without its knowledge sends a troubling signal to America’s allies and partners around the world and may impair their willingness to share intelligence with us in the future.” Sen. Susan Collins,   said it would ”be very troubling” if Trump shared sensitive information with the Russians and said the Senate Intelligence Committee ”should be briefed on this important issue immediately.” Collins is a member of that committee. Another lawmaker calling for briefings is Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia. Comstock is one of the more vulnerable House Republicans, facing a tough   campaign in a district that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump last fall by 10 points. Comstock issued a blistering statement, saying lawmakers ”need to have immediate classified briefings on what occurred at this meeting so that Congress can at least know as much as Russian leaders.” The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker of Tennessee, said the White House is ”in a downward spiral right now.” He added that the Trump administration has ”got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening.” Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican in his first term, tweeted: ”For the purpose of transparency, the White House should share a transcript of the meeting with the House and Senate intelligence committees.” He said that as ”an intelligence officer by training, I know firsthand the life and death implications of safeguarding classified information.” But as with the abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey last week, most GOP lawmakers have been restrained in their criticism of Trump. So far no one in the GOP’s leadership on Capitol Hill is calling for an independent investigation or a special committee to investigate any Trump ties to Russia. And while some GOP lawmakers privately express frustration with the president’s distractions and   administration, there’s been little public condemnation of Trump, who remains popular with the GOP base."
"Journalist Alex Tizon carried a secret his whole life. ”She lived with my family for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings, and cooked and cleaned from dawn to dark  —   always without pay,” Tizon writes in an upcoming cover story in The Atlantic. ”I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized she was my family’s slave.” Lola was a domestic servant who had been with Tizon’s family going back a whole generation. His family brought her with them when they immigrated to the U. S. in 1964 from the Philippines. From the outside she looked like part of the family. The reality was that Lola was forced to sleep in hallways or storage spaces. She was not allowed to go back to the Philippines to see her family, and she was isolated from the world. She worked from dawn until dark, and she took verbal abuse from both parents. Tizon struggled with this dark part of his family’s past his entire life and was finally able to put Lola’s experience into his own words. But the author died unexpectedly of natural causes at the age of 57 on March 23. Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg tells NPR’s Rachel Martin that Lola came to live with the Tizons after Alex’s grandfather gave her to Alex’s mother as a gift. ”This is all back in the Philippines. Lola came with them to America, stayed with them as in essence the family slave and then Alex essentially  —   and I use this word advisedly  —   but Alex inherited her from his dying mother,” Goldberg says. On Lola’s relationship with the Tizons, One of the interesting things here to me is that she wasn’t a captive, per se  —   she wasn’t in chains, she wasn’t locked away. She could have [left] but she couldn’t have, and that’s sort of the point of the story. From a very early age, she worked for this family without pay, she lived with this family. When the family moved to America, it was only natural that she would go with them  —   but she was a slave until the day she died. On Lola’s feelings toward the Tizons  I think Lola loved the family  —   certainly loved the children of the family. The feelings toward the parents are probably more complicated. I think Alex and his siblings were overwhelmed by some combination of love, guilt  —   a very, very complicated emotional package here. On the reach of Lola’s story in Tizon’s family, One of the reasons it’s so hard to get this story out was he had to confront the true nature of his mother and the true nature of his father and this terrible and terrifying arrangement that they had acquiesced to  —   that they benefited from for decades. And so imagine you’re the writer and you want to tell this story of the woman who essentially raised you and you realize that in telling this story, you’re telling another story about his mother and her acute moral failings. Morning Edition editor Jacob Conrad and Web producer Heidi Glenn contributed to this story."
"When you’re facing a major life change, it helps to talk to someone who has already been through it. All Things Considered is connecting people on either side of a shared experience, and they’re letting us eavesdrop on their conversations in our series Been There. Cameron Cook signed up for the U. S. Army in 1994, three days after his high school graduation, and that’s been his life ever since. The job took him to Germany, Macedonia and Albania. He did combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cameron says it came with a sense of purpose, camaraderie and excitement. ”It’s just been something new every day, every month, every year,” he says. ”Whether it was a new job skill, go get a new piece of equipment. It’s like Christmas every week in the Army.” That’s all about to change. Cameron is retiring. That means adjusting to a civilian life without the   brotherhood and mission of the service. It also means giving up the routines that have structured his days for more than two decades. Jarrad Turner knows those challenges well. He was an Army medic for nearly a decade, and saw combat in Iraq. He left the military in 2010. He remembers, on his first day as a veteran, waking up, putting on his military physical training gear without even realizing it and walking out of his house  —   only to find out that he was the only person out on his block. ”For me it was a rude awakening,” he tells Cameron, ”because I kind of had the mentality of, OK, slackers, get up! I was like, you’re wasting time! We’ve got stuff to execute upon.” On learning to slow down, When I got out, my son  —   so he was 4. You know, being 4, he was still in dad’s arms, you know. And kind of just falling asleep on the couch with him is one of the things that started to break some of those old patterns. You know I’m looking at my kids, and I’m like, I’m looking at my family, I don’t want to lose this precious time. So, it’s like just chill out. On dealing with civilians   but unwelcome questions, I don’t think that they do it intentionally. You know, a lot of times they’re just trying to help out. But, when you start telling them, because you’re trying to help them get a better understanding, and you say, ”Well, when you’re in boots, you know, you’re in that big dust bowl and you lose people, unfortunately that body goes somewhere else and you still got a mission on,” a lot of them just don’t get that. And it can frustrate you, but I just kind of take it from a place that look, they just don’t understand. They’re trying to get a better understanding of it. So, when I can talk about it I talk about it, and when I can’t I just can’t. On building a support system, Having a support system that you can trust  —   family, your bros, veterans’ organizations  —   that is truly the reason that I’m still here. I buried my tenth soldier to suicide, Dec. 24, we buried him. I mean, to this day it still hurts. But, I would say, there’s gonna come times in your life now that you just need to be brutally honest with people. Whether it’s pain, whether it’s memories, whether it’s life, there’s a time when this stuff can come back on you. And, if you’re willing to just talk about it, and understanding that it doesn’t necessarily have a rhyme or reason to it, you’ll be good. Freelance producers Emily Forman (@emilylforman) and Julia Botero (@jbott661) contributed to this report."
"Judging by public statements, U. S.  relations are going to be just fine. President Trump hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday afternoon, and both men had warm messages to share even after the two countries clashed last week over a decision by the United States to arm Kurdish fighters in Syria. Trump spent much of his statement complimenting the Turkish military. ”Turkish courage in war is legendary,” said Trump, mentioning Turkish contributions in the Korean War. ”Today we face a new enemy in the fight against terrorism, and again, we seek to face this threat together.” Still, the Turkish president made it clear that the Trump administration’s decision to arm one group of Syrian Kurds fighting the Islamic State will ”never be accepted.” U. S. military officials have long argued in favor of supporting the Kurds in Syria against ISIS because they are such competent soldiers. The decision to arm them came last week, amid preparation for an offensive to retake what is effectively the capital of ISIS, the city of Raqqa in northern Syria. Military officials say the Syrian Kurds are key to that mission. Erdogan’s administration, however, considers the Syrian Kurds terrorists because of their ties to Turkish Kurds who have been waging an insurgency to create an independent state for the past three decades. The U. S. and the European Union agree with Turkey that the group of Kurds in Turkey known as the PKK are indeed terrorists, and the Trump administration has sought to ease Turkish worries that the weapons provided to Kurds in Syria would not end up in the hands of the Turkish Kurds. Trump said Tuesday that the U. S. would ensure the PKK has ”no safe quarter.” Neither leader broached human rights in their statements, which will likely frustrate those worried about Trump getting too close to a leader who is inching toward autocratic rule. Erdogan called Trump his ”dear friend” and made a point to congratulate the U. S. president on his ”legendary triumph” over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Trump said it was a ”great honor” to host Erdogan. Back home, however, not all of Erdogan’s countrymen were pleased. ”Turkey is under a state of emergency since (the failed coup) during which human rights have been trampled on,” Sezgin Tanrikulu, a legislator from Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, told the AP before the meeting. ”The media and press freedoms have been placed under government control. Torture and   have increased.” ”Human rights and democracy are not part of Trump’s agenda, but we hope that he abandons this stance,” Tanrikulu said. Trump made news last month by phoning Erdogan to congratulate him on a referendum in Turkey that furthered Erdogan’s power. The call continued a trend of Trump’s supporting strongmen. Erdogan has been criticized for jailing the most journalists of any leader in the world, as well as tens of thousands of political dissidents. Restrictions on information are also tightening. Just a few weeks ago, Turkish Web users found that they no longer had access to Wikipedia. The two presidents’ statements also didn’t touch on another key   issue: the extradition of cleric Fethullah Gulen. Erdogan blames last year’s failed coup attempt on Gulen, a religious leader who now lives in Pennsylvania, and has repeatedly called for Gulen to stand trial in Turkey. The White House has not responded to a request for comment from NPR about Trump’s stance on Gulen. And for all the talk of their great relationship, Trump mispronounced Erdogan’s name multiple times in his statement. The Turkish leader’s name is pronounced ” ” but Trump repeatedly said ”  .”"
"By latest counts, more than 200, 000 computers in some 150 countries have been hit by a cyberattack using ransomware called WannaCry or WannaCrypt, which locked the data and demanded payment in bitcoin. The malware was stopped by a young U. K. researcher’s lucky discovery of a kill switch, but not before it caused hospitals to divert patients and factories to shut operations. The origins of the malicious software  —   which feeds on a Microsoft vulnerability  —   trace back to the National Security Agency: cybertools stolen from the government and posted publicly in April. Microsoft had issued a patch in March. (And here are good tips to generally secure yourself.) ”The governments of the world should treat this attack as a   call. . .. We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in a   blog post. ”We need the tech sector, customers, and governments to work together to protect against cybersecurity attacks. . .. In this sense, the WannaCrypt attack is a   call for all of us.” This one, it’s a   call. Haven’t we heard that somewhere before? In fact, archival searches show the use of the cliché stretching back decades  —   as far back as the early viruses and worms of the 1980s. ”I think people use ’  call’ in different ways, but it’s generally used to mean to treat cybersecurity like a bona fide national security problem, which we still for the most part don’t do,” says Philip Reitinger, head of the nonprofit Global Cyber Alliance. ”In general, it’s ’Gosh, now people will understand, governments and private sector will understand how serious it is  —   and do something. When the history has shown, no, they won’t.” Reitinger and numerous others veterans in the field have been making many of the same calls through the years: Commit proper funding, like to any other national security threat write new laws that would tangibly incentivize and enforce good behavior by companies large and small put proper priority on creating a system that can defend itself. ”I’m tired of people writing reports and recommendations,” Reitinger says. ”We’re not treating this like the moonshot we just get the words.” Well, in the spirit of the focus on words, let’s follow it through history. Below is a select taste of some of the major hacks and attacks that were declared to be a ”  call” by government officials and security experts. The AP reported on Feb. 26: ”The Pentagon’s unclassified computer networks were hit this month by the ’most organized and systematic’ attack yet.” It was later attributed to two California teenagers, guided by an Israeli teen. The AP cited Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre saying that the government and the private sector had not done enough to protect sensitive networks from attacks. In a story on NPR’s All Things Considered, Hamre said: ”It was certainly a   call. It certainly is indicative of a future we could be facing that’s much more serious. And we need to learn the lessons from this experience and take advantage of it.” In a highly publicized    attack, a    known online as Mafiaboy, brought down Amazon, CNN, Dell, E*Trade, eBay and Yahoo! which was then the largest search engine. On Feb. 15,   House Chief of Staff John Podesta appeared on CNN, saying: ”I think these latest attacks have been a   call for Americans that more needs to be done, that we need to get together and do what we did to deal with the Y2K crisis, which is to come together to share ideas, to do more research and development on security measures that can be taken to enhance the network security, and to build a really strong foundation of security and privacy for the information infrastructure as we create this great promise of the digital economy.” In March, the tech panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on cyberterrorism, where subcommittee chairman Sen. Jon Kyl said the attacks ”raised public awareness and hopefully will serve as a   call about the need to protect our critical computer networks.” SQL Slammer became known as ”the worm that crashed the Internet in 15 minutes.” In prepared testimony at the House of Representatives, Vincent Gullotto of   Emergency Response Team at Network Associates said: ”During the Slammer virus outbreak, major U. S. banks experienced widespread ATM outages, a major airline canceled or delayed flights, and a large U. S. metropolitan area lost its 911 emergency services. . .. Attacks such as those that occurred over the last several weeks provide an important   call to governments, industries, and consumers. We must not be complacent we must act.” Google disclosed ”a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property.” It was later dubbed ”Operation Aurora,” said to have targeted dozens of companies. After Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair appeared before the Senate intelligence committee, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly reported on All Things Considered on Feb. 2: Blair ”used much stronger language than I’ve heard him use before, talked about malicious cyberactivity, and I’ll quote him, ’is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication.’ He talked about things like the recent hacking attack on Google, said that should be a   call, said that the U. S. information infrastructure overall [is] severely threatened.” Stuxnet is a massive computer worm that attacked Iran’s industrial equipment, including at a   facility. On Nov. 17, Symantec executive Dean Turner testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee: ”Stuxnet demonstrates the vulnerability of critical national infrastructure industrial control systems to attack through widely used computer programs and technology. Stuxnet is a   call to critical infrastructure systems around the world. This is the first publicly known threat to target industrial control systems and grants hackers vital control of critical infrastructures such as power plants, dams and chemical facilities.” In August, a virus called Shamoon wiped out files from 30, 000 corporate computers of the world’s largest oil exporter. In a Dec. 7 speech,   Secretary Chuck Hagel called the attacks on Saudi Aramco and a subsequent attack targeting the Qatari natural gas company RasGas, ”a serious   call to everyone.” Hagel added: ”The United States will continue to help build the capacity of partners and allies to defend their critical infrastructure from cyberattack, especially major energy, infrastructure, and telecommunications facilities.” In the massive OPM data breach, hackers stole personal information of more than 20 million current and former federal employees, contractors, family members and others who had undergone federal background checks. In a Time   titled ”U. S. Cybersecurity Is Too Weak,” Sens. Chris Coons and Cory Gardner of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote: ”The OPM hack remains the largest data breach ever suffered by the federal government and should have served as a   call to Congress. . .. The United States must develop a robust prevention and recovery policy response that can adapt to current and future technological advancements.” In his own   for Federal News Radio, House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz wrote: ”This should serve as a   call to all in government on how to best secure federal IT and data. A shift toward zero trust is one way to improve federal IT security.” Hackers attacked a major Internet infrastructure company called Dyn, disrupting websites and services such as Twitter, Amazon, Spotify and Airbnb. The disruptions lasted most of the day, a result of a massive distributed    attack delivered through millions of hijacked   things such as baby monitors, DVRs and CCTV cameras, infected with Mirai malware. ”It’s important for [Internet of Things] vendors who haven’t prioritized security to take this escalating series of attacks as a   call,” The Washington Post quoted Casey Ellis of cybersecurity firm Bugcrowd as saying. ”We’re entering a period where this is very real, calculable, and painful impact to having insecure products.” A House Energy and Commerce panel convened to discuss the security of   devices. Rep. Bob Latta,   weighed in: ”The recent DDoS attack should serve as a   call that our systems are susceptible to attempts to use IoT devices to wreak havoc.”"
"Cops have a decent shot at catching     online scammers  —   say, the guy selling a car that’s just too good to be true on Craigslist. But catching ransomware attackers is generally much more difficult  —   unless they slip up. The criminals behind the ”WannaCry” ransomware attack may have done just that. Experts are now seeing some amateur flaws emerging including an    kill switch and the unsophisticated way the attackers are demanding bitcoin from their victims. Ransomware ”tends to be a crime that is born on the Internet, born through kits sold on the dark web that already   in anonymity of the perpetrators,” said police detective Nick Selby, who specializes in cybercrime. Those ”kits” Selby describes are what experts think they’re seeing with WannaCry. Somebody’s using software tools created by somebody else. ”The ransomware itself, we have seen that before in the wild and it’s not that sophisticated,” said Paul Burbage, malware researcher for  . He says the most obvious   is the fact that the malware contained an    ”kill switch”  —   basically, a URL address included in the code, which was used to stop the malware’s spread. ”The kill switch allowed people to prevent the infection chain fairly quickly,” Burbage explained. ”It was kind of a noob mistake, if you ask me.” And WannaCry has other deficiencies. Sophisticated ransomware usually has an automated way to accept payments from victims who want to unlock their computers. But Burbage says WannaCry’s system seems to be manual  —   the scammers have to send each victim a code. Not very practical for an infection involving thousands and thousands of computers. ”It leads me to think they did not think it would spread as far as it is,” he said. ”You know I really think these guys are running scared and they’re probably laying low at this point.” And then there’s this: So far, the scammers have collected payments from fewer than 200 victims. We know this, because they’re demanding bitcoin  —   and bitcoin transactions are public. We don’t know the scammers’ names, but we know the bitcoin addresses they’re using to receive payment  —   just three addresses. Again, more sophisticated ransomware would have the ability to generate a unique bitcoin address for each victim. So far, the attackers have collected about $60, 000 worth of bitcoins which are just sitting there untouched, according to Jonathan Levin,   of Chainalysis, a company that analyzes bitcoin usage to identify  . He’s been watching the bitcoins accumulating at WannaCry’s three addresses. ”It might be that they don’t have a good idea yet about how to launder the bitcoin,” he said. ”Perhaps they’re not really set up to take advantage of the success of their campaign so far.” Levin says one way to turn dirty bitcoin into   money is to do the conversion in a jurisdiction where financial authorities will turn a blind eye. So scammers sometimes have    —   usually their home country  —   where their malware doesn’t do any damage. He gives the example of a very successful ransomware called ”locky,” which favors Russia. ”So if it detects Russian language on the machine, it actually does not execute and deletes itself,” he said. WannaCry, in contrast, doesn’t seem to be playing geographic favorites that way. Two cybersecurity firms now say they’ve found some technical similarities between the WannaCry ransomware and earlier attacks from hackers in North Korea, though they’re not calling the clues proof that North Korea is behind the worldwide attacks. Burbage says his company,   does not see a link between WannaCry and North Korea at this point.  Levin says if the perpetrators actually live in one of the countries hit hard by this attack  —   say, Russia  —   that would be, as he puts it, ”an incredibly bad life choice.”"
"The world loses about 3, 000 adolescents each day. That adds up to 1. 2 million deaths a year. And with a bit more investment, the majority of those deaths can be prevented, according to a global study released on Tuesday by the World Health Organization. That’s far fewer than the 16, 000 babies and children under 5 who die each day. But the WHO report points out that while many programs around the world are dedicated to improving infant mortality, very few programs address for the needs of vulnerable tweens and teens. We interviewed WHO epidemiologist Kate Strong  —   one of the study authors  —   to learn more about those needs, and what it will take to meet them. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Tell us why WHO has released this report now? Adolescent health has really been overlooked. We’ve had a big focus on newborn and child health, but it’s only within the last decade that we’ve begun to focus on this particular age group. Maybe it’s not a conscious thought, but the thought [in the global health world] was once you make it past five, you’re pretty much going to have a healthy and long life. Adolescence is actually a time period when a lot of physiological and mental changes happen, and many of these changes make adolescents particularly vulnerable. Teen girls in many parts of the world, for example, are especially vulnerable to complications during pregnancy because their bodies are still developing. Adolescents also seem especially vulnerable to mental health issues compared to other age groups.   is a leading cause of death. And the report also found that this age group has high rates of depression and anxiety disorders.  Shifting hormones, as well as adolescents’ shifting roles and responsibilities in society, can cause a lot of stress, strain and anxiety. That’s why the more information we have about mental health for adolescents, parents and teachers, the better. They need to know that help is available and where they can get that help. There have been a lot of countries that have made very specific interventions in terms of adolescent mental health that we’ve included as case studies in the report. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s school mental health promotion project is aimed at improving students’   and reducing fear of exams. That program started on a small level in one community and was scaled up to a national level. New Zealand has also taken steps with a program to reduce suicide among Maori youth. Can you break down some of the stats in this report for us? For example, I was surprised to learn that drowning was a leading issue among adolescent boys.  While I can’t comment on the specifics of why certain illnesses and injuries affect certain groups more, the report does suggest that in many communities kids just aren’t taught how to swim. And that can be easily fixed. Were you surprised by any of the figures in this report? I will say, I was really struck by the rates of HIV and infectious diseases, which account for about a quarter of adolescent deaths in Africa. The same goes for pneumonia, a leading cause of death for younger adolescent girls in that region. These deaths are entirely preventable. To encourage young teens to think about risks to their health, WHO created a comic book starring two youngsters called Akilah and Carlos and their imaginary friend (a parrot called Miss P). They help their friend hurts himself while climbing a tree, get to the local health clinic. And they help a classmate who’s depressed find a counselor. And you consulted with kids about the comic book. Why? With adults when we do interventions we always ask them what they think and what they would be comfortable with. We need to have those same conversations with adolescents. They can be and they should be part of the solution. Maanvi Singh is a freelance writer based in London. Contact her @maanvisings"
"Many Democrats are hoping the GOP health care bill that narrowly passed the U. S. House of Representatives is going to push political momentum their way, and result in big gains in the 2018 midterm elections. A special election next week in Montana may be an early test for this theory. President Trump won Montana by 20 points in the November 2016 election, and the May 25 special election is being held to replace the state’s only congressman, Rep. Ryan Zinke, whom Trump nominated to be interior secretary. Montana resident Jim Lynch plans to vote for the Republican candidate, Greg Gianforte. Lynch is a member of the Glacier Country Pachyderm Club and members get together once a month in Kalispell, Mont. to talk about advancing Republican values. Lynch says health care is a top issue for him. He hates the Affordable Care Act. He’s 63 and says he maintained good health insurance coverage throughout the Obama administration. But, he says, ”There’s a lot of people in my shoes who aren’t that lucky. I do know, personally, that they’ve seen huge increases in health care costs, to the point that they don’t even have it anymore.” Indeed, people who are 55 to 64 can be charged as much as three times what a younger person can be charged for health insurance. Subsidies are available based on income, but older people may earn more than young people just starting their careers. Under the GOP bill that’s now before the Senate, however, older people can be charged five times as much as younger people, and the subsidies are decreasing in aggregate. Lynch says he doesn’t think the House health care bill is perfect, but he’s confident that, as President Trump shepherds it through Congress, it will be modified into something much better than the Affordable Care Act. About a hundred miles south in Missoula, Mont. restaurant owner Molly Galusha dreads the idea of Obamacare being repealed. She says the current health care law’s subsidies have made it possible for her employees to afford health coverage on the wages she can afford to pay them. Galusha is 62 and gets her health coverage through her husband’s job. She says she doesn’t know what they’d do if their insurance went away. ”We’re old and broken,” she laughs. The Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with   conditions are also likely to affect older people, because the likelihood of having a   condition increases with age. ”We are uninsurable as a couple, so we’re very grateful,” Galusha says. Republican candidate Gianforte says he won’t vote for a health care bill that doesn’t work for Montana. ”I need to know that, in fact, it’ll bring premiums down, preserve rural access and protect people with   conditions,” he says. He also says he would have voted against the House health care bill, because there wasn’t enough time to read and understand it before the House voted. Democrats, however, accuse Gianforte of being disingenuous. They point to a recording of a phone call he had with lobbyists on the day the House bill passed, which was leaked to The New York Times. On the tape he can be heard saying, ”Sounds like we just passed a health care thing, which I’m thankful for, that we’re starting to repeal and replace.” Democratic candidate Rob Quist pounced on those words. Quist needs Republican votes to win, so he’s trying to convince Republicans that their candidate will sell out the state’s interests on health care. ”Montanans want a Congressman who’ll shoot straight, not a dishonest politician who says one thing to Montanans and another to the millionaires behind closed doors,” he says. Quist says he wants to build on the ACA and thinks the country should eventually move to a   health insurance system. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Montana Public Radio and Kaiser Health News."
"   announcer Beth Mowins is set to become the   female broadcaster to call an NFL game televised nationally. A commentator for ESPN since 1994, she’ll call the Los Angeles Chargers vs. Denver Broncos game in ESPN’s opening Monday Night Football doubleheader on Sept. 11. Former Buffalo Bills and New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan will join her. ”Beth has been an important voice in our college sports coverage and she has experience calling NFL preseason games. She deserves this opportunity,” Stephanie Druley, ESPN events and studio production senior vice president, said in a statement. ”ESPN is committed to putting talented women in   positions and we look forward to Beth and Rex’s call of this game on our MNF opening night.” Mowins ”typically does    at the college level for women’s sports, but has plenty of experience calling college football games,” writes SBNation. She has also called Oakland Raiders preseason games since 2015, and recently signed a multiyear extension with ESPN. ”This is an amazing opportunity and I look forward to working with Rex and our entire ESPN team. As lifelong fans of the NFL Monday Night Football franchise, we want to bring the same passion to the broadcast as our predecessors have all done,” Mowins said in a statement. She is not the first woman to call an NFL regular season game. That was Gayle Sierens, who in 1987 called a regional NBC broadcast of a   game. Sierens received ”generally good reviews” and was offered a   contract for the following season, according to The New York Times. But she told the newspaper that ”the management at her local NBC station did not want her to call more games the next season. They made it clear that she had a choice: work for NBC, essentially part time, or continue as a   news anchor.” Sierens chose the latter, and had a long and successful career as a news anchor at   in Tampa. Thirty years then passed before ESPN announced Mowins’ assignment. Why did it take three decades? As Sports Illustrated wrote last year: ”Between all of the NFL rightsholders —  CBS, ESPN, Fox, NBC, and the NFL Network —  there are around 20 spots for    broadcasters every year. Given a woman has never ascended to even one of the   teams on the networks with multiple broadcast teams (such as CBS and Fox) the implicit message to women who want to enter sports broadcasting is that this job is not for you.” 49ers radio announcer Kate Scott told the magazine that there’s ”no pipeline” for women who want to be    announcers, because there have been so few examples, despite a larger number of women working as sideline reporters. Sierens called Mowins the ”perfect person to carry the torch” in an interview with the New York Daily News. Here’s more: ”This is a woman who is as prepared as anyone, so much more prepared than I was to wear that crown as the first. She is the real deal. There’s no publicity stunt, this is not something somebody’s doing for ratings. They’re doing this because she knows her stuff inside out, and she will be fabulous when she does this game.”"
"She was the alpha female of a wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park, sought after for photographs because of her unusual white coat. Hikers found her suffering from severe wounds last month. The animal was euthanized by park staff shortly after. The park now says the recognizable wolf suffered a gunshot wound, based on preliminary results of a necropsy by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The animal likely was shot sometime between April 10 at 1 a. m. and April 11 at 2 p. m. on the north side of the park, near Gardiner, Mont. ”Due to the serious nature of this incident, a reward of up to $5, 000. 00 is offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual( s) responsible for this criminal act,” Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Dan Wenk said in a statement. She was said to be one of only three known white wolves in the park and, at 12 years old, was about twice the age of the average wolf there. ”As the alpha female for over nine years with the same alpha male, she had at least 20 pups, 14 of which lived to be yearlings,” the park said. A local wolf advocacy group called Wolves of the Rockies subsequently doubled the reward, offering an additional $5, 000 that later grew to $5, 200 after additional donations. Marc Cooke, who leads the group, ”suspects opponents of wolves in Yellowstone were responsible,” according to The Associated Press. ”Many hunting outfitters and ranchers have been unhappy about wolves since their reintroduction to the park more than 20 years ago,” the wire service adds. ”The wolves prey on   animals and sometimes cattle.” This isn’t the first   Yellowstone wolf to die from a gunshot wound  —   the park’s most popular wolf was shot dead in 2012, as NPR reported. ”People in this world today crave something real, and our society is lacking that, and they could come to Yellowstone and see real nature unfolding in front of their eyes with this very unique personality of a wolf, and they loved her,” biologist Douglas Smith told NPR about that deceased wolf, known as 832F."
"Addiction experts are up in arms over remarks by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in which he referred to   treatment for addiction as ”substituting one opioid for another.” Nearly 700 researchers and practitioners sent a letter Monday communicating their criticisms to Price and urging him to ”set the record straight.” The medicines Price referred to are methadone and buprenorphine, both of which are opioids. The letter notes that there is a ”substantial body of research” showing the drugs’ effectiveness and that they have been the standard of care for addiction treatment for years. The drugs tamp down cravings and prevent withdrawals, helping people suffering from addiction to stop misusing prescription or illicit opioids and to get back to living productive lives. Experts say Price’s remarks, made last week to the Charleston   ignore the primary benefits of such medications and go against scientific evidence. ”I was just totally gobsmacked,” says Brendan Saloner, an addiction researcher and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Saloner says that Price’s own Department of Health and Human Services displays information online that contradicts his comments. The HHS website includes a link to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s information page about   treatment, which explains: ”A common misconception associated with [  treatment] is that it substitutes one drug for another. Instead, these medications relieve the withdrawal symptoms and psychological cravings that cause chemical imbalances in the body.” ”I couldn’t believe we were having to reopen this conversation. It totally flies in the face of all the evidence,” Saloner says. ”These drugs are highly effective in restoring a sense of normalcy in people’s lives.” Price instead touted treatment with a third addiction medicine, Vivitrol, a brand name formulation of naltrexone, which is an opioid blocker. All three drugs  —   methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone  —   have been shown to help reduce relapse and keep people in treatment. ”Instead of talking about getting the right medication to the right patient at the right time, [Price] actually maligned the use of buprenorphine and methadone,” says Dr. Corey Waller, an addiction psychiatrist who heads legislative advocacy at the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Addiction experts say that Price’s remarks are consistent with widespread but inaccurate views on the use of buprenorphine and methadone, also known as opioid maintenance therapy. They worry that the secretary’s comments perpetuate those views. ”It’s not replacing one drug for another, because we define addiction based on behavior, not on the absence or presence of a drug,” says Waller. An HHS spokesperson, Alleigh Marre, wrote in an email that Price’s remarks did not signal a shift in the department’s policies regarding the drugs. ”One of the five pillars of the secretary’s strategy to combat the opioid epidemic is expanding access to treatment and recovery services, including   treatment,” she wrote. This story was produced by Side Effects Public Media, a news collaborative covering public health."
"The famous Renaissance painting of the goddess Venus, standing nude on a giant shell, has been appropriated, satirized and riffed on so many times  —   by everyone from Andy Warhol, to Lady Gaga, to The Simpsons  —   that it’s easy to lose track of its origins. Now, a major traveling exhibition tells the story of Italian painter Sandro Botticelli, who painted the Venus 500 years ago. ”Botticelli and the Search for the Divine” features a different Venus  —   and many other works  —   visiting the U. S. for the first time. The show is a partnership between the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg, Va. and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. David Mirkin produced ”The Last Temptation of Homer” episode of The Simpsons. As Homer fantasizes about his ideal woman, his imagination goes to Botticelli’s Venus. ”Her hair’s blowing in the wind, it’s exactly the way you would set up a film shot of a gorgeous woman,” Mirkin says. Mirkin pokes fun at the iconic image  —   but says he truly loves it. ”I think it’s incredibly effective in terms of what it’s actually trying to do,” he explains. ”Its sensuality is amazing. I don’t know where he came up with the idea of her riding on a clam  —   I mean, that’s the funniest part.” (Actually, if you want to get technical about it, it was a scallop shell, not a clamshell. But just to be sure, we asked a mollusk expert.) The curators of the exhibition say few people know much about Botticelli, but they’re trying to change that with help from another Venus that’s a focal point of the show. The artist painted this solitary Venus in the 1480s, after The Birth of Venus. The   painting shows her in a similar in pose, but her torso’s strong contours and pale skin are covered with a sheer top. Her red hair is tightly braided, not blown by the breath of angels, making her more earthly than godlike. ”She’s the poster for the exhibition  —   it sums up so much about Botticelli’s attitude, his yearning to express ideals of beauty and human form,” says Frederick Ilchman, chair of the MFA’s Art of Europe department. ”It’s not just he’s a doing a new subject matter  —   the   human nude,” he adds. ”But that he’s painting it with a new level of subtlety.” Ilchman says this Venus helps us understand Botticelli’s quest for divine beauty. He walks to another of the two dozen paintings in the exhibition, one that shows the influence of the Renaissance and its search for knowledge: a portrait of the Virgin Mary and Christ child reading a book. ”In the second half of the 15th century in Florence there was a new appreciation of ancient art . .. Greek and Roman statues,” Ilchman says. ”What I think is so remarkable is just how consistent his ideal of female beauty is. This Virgin Mary has the same delicacy of flesh, the beautiful features.” Boticelli’s pursuit of   divine beauty came to a halt after France invaded Florence. A zealot, Dominican friar named Savonarola took over the city, preaching fire and brimstone. Muscarelle Museum of Art chief curator John Spike, who conceived of this exhibition, says Savonarola’s followers collected and burned books and paintings deemed indecent in the 1497 Bonfires of the Vanities. ”Botticelli was considered the best painter of beautiful nude women in the city of Florence,” Spike says, ”so everyone supposes that his works were burned in this way.” Somehow the Venus survived, but the deeply pious Botticelli believed Savonarola’s teachings  —   and the artist was traumatized when the fanatic himself was burned on a pyre. Botticelli became reclusive, inward and devout. Spike says the works in the last section of the show reveal how his painting changed. ”His last works become   flat, no details, no attempt to represent a human figure under the drapery,” Spike says. The mood becomes somber, the warmer colors disappear and the eyes of the figures don’t make contact with the eyes of the viewer. ”The sort of ’come hither’ or the welcome you see with the Venus, these later paintings by Botticelli seem to be more hermetically sealed,” Ilchman says. ”They’re kind of isolated, and not as expressive in the same way, but full of powerful emotion.” When the exhibition debuted in Virginia, Spike says two people fainted. ”Great works yearn to be understood,” Spike says. ”There’s a wonderful word for yearning in Italian, it’s bramare  —   [great works] yearn to be understood, and we, the spectators, yearn to understand.” And if visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston yearn to understand more, they can buy one of the exhibition’s thick catalogs in the gift shop  —   or, perhaps, a pair of Venus socks."
"In the day room at St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction, which runs a needle exchange program in the Bronx, a group of guys are playing dominoes and listening to salsa music while they wait for lunch. And Van Asher, one of the staffers in charge of ”transactions”  —   that means he gives out needles  —   is talking up his latest idea for how to keep the users here safe. He wants to tell them what’s really in their stash. ”If you’re doing dope,” he says to one client, ”we’ll give you a test strip so you can test and see if there’s fentanyl.” Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is ”similar to morphine but can be 50 to 100 times more potent,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Increasingly, drug dealers have been using fentanyl to cut their heroin supply  —   which can be lethal for users. By using the same simple test a doctor would use to check for fentanyl in a patient’s urine, Asher is now giving drug users in the Bronx a way to quickly find out what’s in their syringe before they inject. ”I know what I’m getting is the raw,” one client tells Asher, implying he knows his drugs are pure. ”That’s what you think!” Asher tells him. ”But how do you know? Are you buying it from, like, the FDA?” The client laughs. Asher is the data manager here: He makes sure the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health departments get the information they need about the drugs taken by the people who come here. But he started this project more out of his own feeling of desperation about the community he serves than out of a desire for official data collection. He says the number of overdose deaths in the last year has been so overwhelming, he’s tried to stop counting them. But the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene says drugs killed more than 1, 300 people in 2016  —   the highest number on record. And public health officials say that rise has been driven, in large part, by fentanyl. As Asher says, ”You see someone, you go: ’I’ll see you tomorrow.’ And you never see them again.” Which is why he and St. Ann’s Corner recently ordered a bunch of fentanyl test strips from Canada and started handing them out. The idea is that giving users information about what they’re using could empower them make a better choice. If they know there’s fentanyl in the mix, maybe they’ll inject the drug more slowly. Maybe they’ll use in a safer place. Maybe they won’t use at all. Now, Asher is working with needle exchanges around the country who are trying the same sort of thing. Dr. Alexander Walley, the director of the addiction medicine fellowship program at Boston Medical Center, has been tracking the use of these test strips since the idea first got started last year, at a needle exchange in Vancouver, called Insite. ”From what I’ve heard . .. even when they know they’re going to be positive for fentanyl, the experience of somebody testing their drugs and seeing that it’s fentanyl has an impact,” Walley says. ”It really encourages them to use more safely.” Insite, which is funded by the Canadian government, is also the only ”safe injection” site in North America. That means there’s a key difference between what’s happening there, and what’s happening at needle exchanges in the U. S. In Canada, whether or not a user’s drugs test positive for fentanyl, he or she can stay at Insite and inject under a nurse’s supervision, which increases the chances that an otherwise lethal overdose could be reversed. Walley thinks about these test strips the same way he thinks about a fire extinguisher or a seat belt: as a precaution. He’s interviewed heroin users, and says while some users tell him they like fentanyl, and some don’t, ”the majority of people are agnostic. Because the people we interview, they have a daily opioid use disorder  —   and what they really care about is not being in withdrawal.” ”At the end of the day,” he continues, ”I think giving people knowledge about what they’re putting in their body is probably a good thing more than a bad thing.” But will these test strips help users in the Bronx avoid an overdose? Asher says the only way to know is to give them out and study what happens next. His project is still very much a work in progress. Asher says that he’s been giving out about   test strips a day, and is starting to run low. Each strip costs about a dollar, and the budget at St. Ann’s, which is funded primarily by the city and state departments of health, is tight. Asher has tried handing out surveys with the strips, to figure out which brands might be more dangerous, or what a tainted batch might look like. But it’s hard to get users to report back. One thing he’s already learned: Fentanyl has become a big part of the local drug supply in the Bronx. One user, Vincente Estepa, says all but one of the bags of heroin he tested came up positive for fentanyl. When asked whether that will change the way he uses, though, he says no. ”At the end of the day an addict is an addict, Estepa says. ”It’s stronger! If it makes me feel the euphoria, I’m going to go for it.” Estepa says dependence on the drug means constantly looking to avoid ”E.” That stands for ”empty,” he explains  —   when the physical symptoms of opioid withdrawal kick in. And avoiding withdrawal can mean taking risks. Using heroin has already taken a lot from him. Estepa has lost his job. He’s homeless. But he’s still alive. The people running this project want to keep it that way."
"Some schoolkids might be happy if their school were knocked down. Not in Nairobi. On May 15, a group of primary school students sat at desks in the center of a main road to block traffic. Along with their parents, they were protesting the demolition of their school, the Kenyatta Golf Course Academy, over the weekend. According to a BBC article, the schoolchildren chanted: ”We want our school, we need to study in school.” The reason for the demolition was a bit hard to pin down. Foreign Policy writes: ”It appears the school was destroyed without any prior warning to parents  —   who had already paid their children’s tuition for the year. The school was on land that belonged to a church, and the school was destroyed without warning on Saturday over a land dispute, though exact details of the dispute weren’t made immediately clear.” ”The demonstration ended peacefully,” the BBC notes  —   a marked contrast to a demonstration by schoolchildren in Nairobi in 2015. Those youngsters were protesting the fact that their playground had been sold to a developer. At that time, says the BBC, ”police fired teargas to disperse protesting schoolchildren.”"
"Updated at 2:44 p. m. ET, Neither Merrick Garland nor Sen. John Cornyn of Texas will be the new FBI director. Two friends of Judge Merrick Garland who asked not to be named say he loves being a judge, and he intends to remain on the bench. This comes after word that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell recommended Garland to President Trump as a candidate for FBI director. Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Barack Obama after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, but never received even a hearing from the GOP Senate that McConnell runs. Cornyn pulled himself out of the running Tuesday, saying he believes the best way to serve the country is as a senator. ”Now more than ever the country needs a   independent FBI Director,” Cornyn said. I’ve informed the administration that I’m committed to helping them find such an individual, and that the best way I can serve is continuing to fight for a conservative agenda in the U. S. Senate.” NPR’s Domenico Montanaro contributed to this report."
"Ever since the election of Donald Trump, Republican moderates in Congress have been under pressure from new activist groups to oppose the president. For U. S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, the pressure is starting to show. He complained to the employer of one of the activists about her political participation  —   with some troublesome consequences. Last month, Saily Avelenda, a senior vice president and lawyer for Lakeland Bank, was called into her boss’s office and handed a fundraising letter that Frelinghuysen sent to a member of the bank’s board of directors. It asked for donations to help him fight organized opposition to the Republican agenda. At the bottom of the letter, scrawled in pen next to his signature, there was a note: ”P. S. one of the ringleaders works for your bank!” Avelenda was not fired, but she says she had a lot of explaining to do. For that, and other reasons, she says she decided to resign. ”I had to write a statement to my CEO,” she said. ”It was not something that I expected, and I thought that my congressman put them in a situation and put me in a really bad situation as the constituent, and used his name, used his position and used his stationery to try to . .. punish me.” Avelenda was criticized for her involvement in NJ 11th for Change, a group that formed after the election of Trump and has been pressuring Frelinghuysen to meet with constituents in his district and oppose the Trump agenda. The group began with one Facebook post after the election and quickly grew to more than 7, 000 residents of Frelinghuysen’s district. He has been in Congress for 22 years and is the heir to a political dynasty that dates back to the Revolutionary War. But he’s experiencing a new level of political opposition, which he complained about during a telephone town hall last week. ”For people who have jammed our lines and made it difficult for us to meet our constituent needs,” he said, ”it would be nice for you to back off.” ”I’m not suggesting people don’t have a right to speak and let their views be known, but some of this is highly orchestrated and it’s unfortunate.” The letter is unusual and noteworthy, says Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, because members of Congress don’t usually turn to businesses in their district to do damage to their political opponents. ”It’s certainly troubling,” Libowitz said. ”Whether or not it breaks a criminal statute is one issue, but the very clear issue is that it appears that a member of Congress might be using his power to threaten someone’s employment because of their political activities.” CREW is calling for an ethics investigation. In an email, Frelinghuysen’s campaign spokesman called the letter ”innocuous” and said the congressman was unaware of any of the particulars about Avelenda’s status with the bank. Lakeland Bank, which has 53 branches in New Jersey, responded to WNYC’s original report on its Facebook page writing that it’s the bank’s philosophy to ”promote our employees’ full awareness and interest in civic and political responsibility such that each employee has the opportunity to support community activities or the political process in the manner that she or he desires.”"
"Volunteers at an overdose prevention site in Vancouver, Canada, say they saved the life of a rat named Snuggles after the little rodent overdosed on heroin. Sarah Blyth, who   the organization behind the prevention site, wrote about the rescue on Twitter. While Snuggles was initially described as a mouse, Blyth tells NPR that the pet is actually a rat. She posted photos of Snuggles before and after volunteers administered nalaxone, also known as Narcan, a drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. Blyth also said Snuggles now ”has a new home.” The CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, had some questions. They spoke with the woman who saved Snuggles’ life, Melissa Patton. She said the pet was brought in on Sunday night by a woman who said it had eaten heroin off a table, the CBC reports: ” ’It had pretty much passed out and wasn’t really breathing. We weren’t sure what to do, so I gave it some Narcan orally. Because it was so tiny, I didn’t want to puncture anything by giving it an injection.’ ” ’I just put drops on its nose. I know with animals, if you put it on their nose, they brush it off with their paws and lick their paws to clean themselves, so we did that a few times.’ . .. ”Patton, who is a year away from earning a degree in pharmaceutical sciences, also gave the [rat] oxygen and continued to monitor it through the night.” Patton fed Snuggles with a syringe and kept the animal warm against her neck, the broadcaster reports. Then the woman who brought Snuggles in  —   who is now seeking treatment for addiction  —   asked Patton to take care of Snuggles. ”How could I not?” Patton told the CBC. Blythe, who originally tweeted about the story, told the Vancouver Sun that Snuggles is ”very, very cuddly.” She said the staff at the overdose prevention site are ”willing to help anybody.” Pets that consume drugs can overdose, just like humans police officers and veterinarians in the U. S. have saved the lives of multiple pet dogs and cats that accidentally consumed heroin. Narcan is being made available for use in a growing number of places that are struggling with the opioid epidemic. It’s not a   for the crisis, but it saves lives. In 2014, NPR’s Shots blog described how the drug works, and challenges to its implementation: ”Naloxone is a drug that reverses the effects of an overdose of heroin, OxyContin, Vicodin and other opioids. The drug blocks the physical effects of opioids  —   ending the high, and stopping the depression of the respiratory system that can be their deadly side effect. . .. ”It’s a prescription drug, but one you don’t take yourself. And you don’t know ahead of time which person  —   friend, family or stranger  —   you might need to give it to. To allow people other than doctors and paramedics access to the Narcan kits, states need to pass specific laws. ”Some states voted down bills that would broaden access to naloxone this year. But others passed new laws. Police in at least 20 states are now equipped with overdose reversal kits. Thousands more cops across New York started carrying Narcan in 2014, and a state law that was passed this summer made it easier to distribute Narcan to laypeople who believe someone close to them is at risk of overdose.”"
"When’s the last time you had a glass of cow’s milk? Americans are drinking a lot less milk than they used to. According to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the average person drinks 18 gallons a year. Back in the 1970s it was more like 30 gallons a year. We once hoisted a glass with dinner, soaked our breakfast cereal or dipped into the occasional milkshake. This habitual milk drinking was no accident. It started in the 1800s, when Americans moved from farms to cities. ”First, you had to have the rise of milk trains that would bring milk from the countryside. That milk was refrigerated with ice,” says Melanie DuPuis, a professor at Pace University and author of Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink. Before that, she says, milk was not a reliable source of nutrition for city dwellers. Nor was it all that safe. In the 1850s there was a major scandal in New York after thousands of babies died from drinking swill milk  —   the stuff that came from sickly cows, animals fed from the waste of city   distilleries. This led to reformers calling for safe milk. At the same time, rural and upstate dairy farmers wanted customers. A political bargain was born. ”We are going to make this deal, where we’re going to feed those children and enable them to get enough nutrition through this thing that the nutritionists were calling a protective food,” says DuPuis. ”That will enable your farmers and your farm regions to have a vibrant economy.” DuPuis says   century nutritionists mounted studies to better understand the health benefits of milk. For instance, they’d feed dairy products or vegetable oil to rats or dogs, and then they’d measure the results. ”These rats that had dairy products would be sleek and   and larger, and the other animals would look scrawny and unhealthy,” adds DuPuis. Groups that represented milk interests embraced the research and infused their advertisements with glowing claims about milk’s health benefits. By the   century, Americans were told to drink two to three glasses of milk a day. And for generations, we did. Dairy companies like Borden boomed. Dairy industry marketing? That was the stuff of legend. But by the time the famous ’  ”Got Milk” advertising campaign hit the airwaves and pages of magazines, liquid milk sales were already on the decline. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and author of Food Politics, points to the 1970s as a time when new research raised questions about milk’s effectiveness in preventing osteoporosis. ”Milk is the perfect food  —   for calves,” Nestle says. ”There is no question about that. But for humans, it may not be. And it may not be necessary, and there is plenty of evidence that it isn’t necessary.” The key word there is necessary. Nestle says if you want to drink cow’s milk, go ahead  —   it’s still a healthy and nutritious option. The problem for the dairy industry is that it’s no longer the only beverage option with a health halo. Juice makers offer calcium and Vitamin   drinks.   diets are widespread. The lactose intolerant no longer believe they need milk to have a complete diet. Meanwhile, the political debate over how dairy cows were raised also became a factor. The genetically modified growth hormone that was fed to cows to increase dairy production became a major consumer turnoff, says Nestle. ”That’s why it’s not being used that much anymore.” Nestle says the animal rights movement that led many people to become vegetarians or vegans also contributed to the   decline in cow’s milk consumption. But the biggest hit to milk drinking in the U. S. may have come from teens and the youngest dairy consumers, kids ages 2 to 8. That’s what keeps Julia Kadison up at night. Kadison is the chief executive officer at MilkPep  —   The Milk Processor Education Program. ”What’s going on with that decline in the young kids really has a lot to do with their gatekeeper moms, ”she explains. Kadison says her group believes moms are still the key decision makers when it comes to what kids are drinking. With moms choosing alternative milks  —   soy, almond, coconut and the like  —   kids are embracing those options as well. ”Now there’s so much choice in the marketplace,” Kadison says. ”You have all kinds of different waters and sports beverages and energy drinks, so there’s just a lot of choice out there. It’s a culture of choice.” Kadison points to the fact that sales for dairy in other forms are still doing well  —   a fact she attributes to simple innovations like changes in packaging. ”When you go to the yogurt aisle, you will see, probably, depending on the store, half or 40 percent of that is dedicated to kid’s products,” Kadison explains. ”There are all kinds of flavors, there are all kinds of packages, and I am sorry to say but in the milk category that has not been the case. It’s like carton or jug, basically. ” What’s more,   milks have been steadily gaining ground. According to Nielsen’s, almond milk, for instance, has seen sales grow 250 percent over the past five years. Milk drinking has always been in part about habit and marketing, and milk alternatives capitalize on both. Even using the word ”milk” has become a source of controversy. ”What would you call it? Almond slurry?” asks Nestle. ”They are deliberately marketing them as a substitute for cow’s milk, and it’s very successful: More and more people are using those products.” As a result, lawmakers from dairy states earlier this year called on the Food and Drug Administration to better enforce rules on what is labeled ”milk.” Despite the   decline, the dairy industry thinks it can boost milk consumption. The industry still managed to ring up more than $14 billion in North American sales in 2013. Alternative milks sell a fraction of that. There are also some positive trends for the industry  —   foodies embracing organic whole milk again athletes taking to chocolate milk as a recovery drink. But Marion Nestle still has her doubts. ”The dairy industry has a lot of public relations that it is going to need to do to convince the public that it is producing a product that is healthy, good for animals, good for people and good for the planet.”"
"Over the last two years, a gender divide has opened up in the U. S. Suddenly, men are far more optimistic about the nation’s future than women. Around half of American men now have ”quite a lot” of confidence in the U. S.’s future, according to numbers highlighted by the Pew Research Center this week. Only 29 percent of American women say the same. That divide has widened considerably in just two years. As of 2015, men and women were almost identical in having that amount of confidence. (The data come from surveys performed from April 7 to 11, meaning there could have been some further shifting by now.) This kind of confidence in the nation’s future can be tied to many factors. It’s hard to see this trend outside the lens of the Trump presidency, the biggest U. S. news story of the last two years  —   and most definitely a story with heavy weight on the future of the country. (And economic indicators don’t suggest that life has grown worse for American women as a group over that period  —   women’s unemployment, like men’s, has fallen in the last two years, and wages have risen for both women and men  —   though, of course, women still earn less than men.) It’s easy to see why some women, and Democratic women in particular, might be more worried about the nation than two years ago. Many women were outraged that the U. S. elected someone who once bragged  —   while microphoned, it turned out  —   about groping women. Some Clinton supporters were also devastated to see the first woman   candidate for president lose. And Trump’s approval rating among women, as Pew pointed out, is far lower than it is among men. But then, if that is indeed what brought Democratic women down (and, to be clear, that’s an if) that raises a question about Democratic men. It would mean that those things left Democratic men significantly less troubled than their women peers. Indeed, it’s not enough to focus on women  —   as if somehow, something strange happened to their opinions in particular. Republican and   men in particular might be the most interesting group here. Out of these four groups, GOP men are the only ones among whom a majority (and a large majority, at that) are confident about the nation’s future. Yes, Republican women’s confidence may have increased since 2015, but only modestly, to 44 percent. And for comparison: even in 2015, when Obama was in office, Democratic men and women weren’t nearly as optimistic about the future as Republican men are now. So what has made them so excited? Yes, their party’s candidate won, but once again, Republican women didn’t get nearly as excited as GOP men. To the extent that any of these trends have to do with President Trump, this particular trend may have at least something to do with the macho persona that Trump created for himself. Trump was the candidate of masculinity. By lambasting ”political correctness”  —   ”All of the men, we’re petrified to speak to women anymore, we may raise our voice, you know what, the women get it better than we do, folks, they get it better than we do,” he told one crowd  —   Trump appealed to men who felt that they had somehow been left out of the national conversation. And in the end, the 2016 election featured the largest gender gap since at least the 1950s. Now that a candidate who appealed to many aggrieved men has won, that may feel like a vindication for those men who supported him."
"Susan Burton knows just how hard it is to get back on track after being released from prison. It’s an experience she lived through six times, once for each of the prison terms she served. ”One of the things about incarceration is that you’re deprived. You lose all of your identity and then its given back one day and you’re   to actually embrace it and work it,” Burton says. ”Each time I left prison I left with the resolve to get my life together, to get a job, to get back on track. And each time the task became more and more and more daunting.” Burton’s prison sentences were all drug related. After her sixth release, she finally received the addiction treatment and counseling she so desperately needed. Slowly, she began to rebuild her own life  —   then she turned her attention to others in Watts, the Los Angeles neighborhood she had grown up in. Knowing what it was like to get out of prison with no money and no safe place to live, Burton started a home for women in the same position. Gradually Burton’s organization, A New Way of Life, expanded from one home to five. In addition to housing, it offers   programs, counseling and other help to women coming out of prison. Burton acknowledges that her work  —   which brings her back to prison regularly  —   can be draining. ”So many nights after I’ve gone into a prison and lay my head on the pillow, it’s a heavy head that I lay on the pillow,” she says. But, she adds, ”It’s not hard for me to go back, because I’m going in with the purpose of freeing people up.” Burton traces her journey from prison to recovery  —   and her efforts to help others  —   in the memoir Becoming Ms. Burton. On being sexually abused by her aunt’s boyfriend when she was 4, I have two really strong memories, and one memory is sitting in the back seat of the car as my mother drove my auntie to Camarillo State Hospital where she would pick up the boyfriend who would sit across from me, who I knew was going to harm me. I can remember counting the trees as a    little girl and I would be ”one, two, three” and when I got tree 22 danger would get in the car with me. And all while counting, I can remember trying to just fade into the upholstery of the car because he was going to harm me, and I didn’t know how to talk about the harm that he was going to do. Also, my auntie, when she realized what was happening one day, she gave all the responsibility to me and called me a ”dirty little girl” and swore me to secrecy. So I didn’t know what to do with that, and I carried it with me. And I carried instances of abuse and trauma with me until I was 46 years old, walking through the hall of a prison. On the death of her    son and how she started drinking and using drugs, I went to pick my son up from school and walked him back and was in the house preparing dinner and he came in the house and gave me this flower of chrysanthemum that was full of ants. And he went back out to play and ran out into the street and got hit by a car. The car happened to be driven by a LAPD detective. So he hit my son, killed him, and never even got out of the car. All of a sudden there are just seemed like hundreds of police all around, and at the hospital hundreds of police walking back and forth. And the doctor comes out and tells me that my son is deceased and I ask, ”Can I see him?” And I go in and my son is laying there with a little blood kind of dripping out of his nostril, and he’s dead. I fall into a depression and an anger and a rage and I begin to drink. I drink for the loss of my son, but I also drink because this police department never even acknowledged  —   never even said ”Ms. Burton, I’m sorry that you’ve lost your son.” I mean, never. Between the sadness, the rage, the anger, the loss, I began to drink heavily, and that escalates into drug use. The war on drugs [was] about to take hold of all of the communities across the country and South L. A. Watts, is one of those communities that was   where crack became so plentiful. I began to smoke it, and that sent me to prison. And I went to prison over and over and over again until I found help. On needing therapy but not having access to it, Long before I ever got incarcerated, I should’ve been able to access services that help me deal with the grief and the loss of my son, that help me deal with the trauma, the abuse that I experienced as a child. That should’ve happened long before I ever got incarcerated. Those things just weren’t accessible in a community like South L. A. in the community of Watts. We as community members experience violence, trauma, loss almost on a daily basis, and there are no places that we can actually go to begin to address the trauma, address the violence to find solutions to the violence and resolve the trauma that can make our community safe. So, we’re   and  . On how she finally got treatment  I had reached a place that I could no longer contain the sorrow, the grief, the pain of all of those years of my life, and I was seeking some relief and help. And over a cheap can of beer a friend of mine, Joe, told me about a place in Santa Monica that could help me. So he gave me the name of the agency  —   it was called CLARE Foundation  —   and I called it the next morning. I finally made it out to CLARE Foundation and I began the road to recovery. What I saw and experienced in Santa Monica was a community that was really  . I also began to realize that people in Santa Monica didn’t go to jail for possession of drugs like we did in South L. A. And as I got stronger and I became healthier and more mentally clear, I began to inspect and analyze what was going on  —   the difference in Santa Monica and South L. A. And I began to heal and get stronger, and after 100 days of treatment I returned to South L. A. continued my recovery. I’m actually, this year, 20 years sober. On setting up the house that became A New Way of Life, As I began to take women into A New Way of Life, I began to recognize the barriers, the discrimination, the way our children were being taken . .. from them. It wasn’t because they couldn’t be a good parent, because they didn’t want to be a good parent it was financial. They couldn’t earn enough money to get a house to bring the children back to. . .. When I got the house, me and my    started out together. I had worked a   job and I had saved $13, 000. Part of it went to the down payment of the house. And we pulled our money together and [we] went to IKEA and [bought] bunk beds and I would go down to the bus station where women were getting off the bus, where I had gotten off the bus so many times before, and I would offer them a bed, offer them a place that was safe, that was drug and alcohol free, a place that they could rebuild their lives and be in community. . .. There was some structure in place. Eight o’clock in the morning we would read from the morning meditation book, sit in circle and set goals for ourselves. I had goals, they had goals. For some of us it was the first time in our life we had even ever set goals. And the goals, as humble as they were, they were goals that we could achieve, and from achieving those goals build confidence and  . . .. It wasn’t a matter of me having faith in anyone, it was a matter of extending the opportunity to someone that could change their lives. . .. It was just something beautiful. And when you’ve had all this pain and suffering and then all of a sudden this beauty of life comes through you and through your efforts, this beautiful community, this vibrant community begins to rise. It was so rewarding for me, and it continues to be rewarding. Radio producers Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie and web producers Bridget Bentz, and Molly   contributed to this story."
"A federal court in Mississippi handed down a   prison sentence on Monday to Joshua Brandon Vallum, the first person prosecuted under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act for targeting a victim because of gender identity. Vallum had pleaded guilty last year to the 2015 assault and murder of Mercedes Williamson, a    transgender girl whom he says he once dated. ”Crimes motivated by hate have devastating effects on the victims, their families and community but also leave a blemish on our society as a whole,” Christopher Freeze, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Jackson Division, said in a statement. The Justice Department says it’s the first case ”involving a victim targeted because of gender identity” prosecuted under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act  —   a law that was expanded in 2009 to cover victims attacked because of their gender identity, sexual orientation or disability. The federal case itself moved quickly. Charged on Dec. 14, 2016, Vallum pleaded guilty just one week later. He faced a sentence of up to life in prison, though U. S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. ”heeded a lesser sentence suggested in a plea agreement between defense attorneys and prosecutors, citing Vallum’s neglected childhood and other issues,” according to The Associated Press. Vallum is already serving a life sentence for the same incident, having pleaded guilty to murder last July in a case brought by the state of Mississippi. BuzzFeed News reports the state does not have its own hate crimes law on the books. Here is how the Justice Department lays out Vallum’s crime: ”During his plea hearing, Vallum admitted that he had a consensual sexual relationship with Williamson and that he knew Williamson was transgender. During his romantic relationship with Williamson, Vallum kept the sexual nature of the relationship, as well as that Williamson was transgender, secret from his family, friends, and other members of the Latin Kings and Queens Nation gang to which he belonged. After Vallum terminated his romantic and sexual relationship with Williamson, he had no contact with her until May 2015. ”Vallum admitted, as part of his guilty plea, that on May 28, 2015, he decided to kill Williamson after learning that a friend had discovered Williamson was transgender. Vallum believed he would be in danger if other Latin Kings members found out that he had engaged in a consensual sexual relationship with a transgender woman. On May 29, 2015, Vallum located Williamson at her residence in Alabama and used false pretenses to lure Williamson into his car so he could drive her to Mississippi. Vallum drove Williamson to his father’s residence in Lucedale, Mississippi. Vallum admitted that he then used a stun gun to electrically shock Williamson in the chest, repeatedly stabbed Williamson, and struck Williamson with a hammer until she died.” That summary contradicts an account initially offered and retracted by Vallum, who claimed at first to have ”killed Williamson in a panic after discovering Williamson was transgender,” the Justice Department says. In a statement, U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions applauded the result of the case, which was brought just weeks before his tenure began. ”Today’s sentencing reflects the importance of holding individuals accountable when they commit violent acts against transgender individuals,” he said. ”The Justice Department will continue its efforts to vindicate the rights of those individuals who are affected by bias motivated crimes.”"
"A    man has set a world record for oldest skydiver, according to the British company Skydive Buzz. Bryson William Verdun Hayes, known as Verdun, made a tandem jump at the age of 101 years and 38 days, the company says. Guinness World Records says the record for the oldest man to make a tandem parachute jump was set by Armand Gendreau in 2014, at the age of 101 years and 3 days. Guinness has not yet confirmed that Hayes set a record. ”We are aware of the attempt and we are awaiting evidence,” a spokeswoman for the company told NPR. Hayes is a   veteran who was raising money for the Royal British Legion with his jump, according to The Guardian. Four generations of the Hayes family took part in the skydiving expedition at an airfield in England  —   from Hayes down to his   the British newspaper reports. Skydive Buzz posted a video of the adventure, showing Hayes taking to the sky, floating to the ground and lying down, jubilant, after the jump. ”Hooray!” he said, arms up high in celebration. How was he feeling? ”Oh, absolutely over the moon,” he said."
"Updated at 9:15 p. m. ET, The Justice Department is appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the growing probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to associates of President Trump. ”In my capacity as acting Attorney General, I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a Special Counsel to assume responsibility for this matter,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement. ”My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination,” Rosenstein continued. ”What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command.” ”I accept this responsibility and will discharge it to the best of my ability,” Mueller said Wednesday evening. Trump reiterated in a statement after Mueller’s appointment that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia, which ”a thorough investigation” would confirm. ”I look forward to this matter concluding quickly,” the president said. ”In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country.” Comey firing is backdrop for Mueller appointment, The appointment of Mueller  —   who is widely respected on both sides of the aisle  —   comes after growing outcry, mostly from Democrats, amid fallout of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey last week. While the White House initially insisted the dismissal was precipitated by Comey’s mishandling of the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s emails  —   outlined by Rosenstein in a memo  —   Trump later told NBC’s Lester Holt that the Russia investigation factored into his decision. That memo from Rosenstein came under scrutiny following Comey’s ouster. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in April that Rosenstein had assured him he would appoint a special counsel ”if required.” Last week, Schumer said if Rosenstein didn’t follow through on that, ”every American will rightly suspect that the decision to fire Director Comey was part of a  .” Two sources close to Comey told NPR that Trump asked Comey to scuttle an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn the day after Flynn resigned. Flynn stepped down after reports he had misled Vice President Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. The White House denies that Trump made the request to shut down the probe. A Comey associate says Comey wrote a memo after his encounter with the president, and congressional committees investigating the Russia ties have asked to see the memo and other related documentation. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has also asked Comey to testify next week. Rosenstein has the authority to appoint a special counsel since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from any part in the investigation. Sessions said in March he would step back, after reports he had met twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign  —   contacts he insisted were innocent. As special counsel, Mueller will have full authorization to direct the Russia investigation, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with Trump’s campaign and any other matters. He can only be fired by Rosenstein, only with cause, and with notice to Congress. He is authorized to prosecute federal crimes that may arise from the probe. As NPR’s Scott Horsley noted last week, the Justice Department has typically appointed special counsels instead of special prosecutors ”to investigate suspected criminal activity when an investigation by the Justice Department itself might pose a conflict of interest. Because these counsels are appointed by  —   and answer to  —   the attorney general, they have less formal independence than independent counsels.” Sen. Patrick Leahy,  . argued that Mueller’s investigation should extend to the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing. ”I have been pressing the Justice Department to take this step for months. But this must only be a first step,” Leahy, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. ”No doubt this investigation should extend to the circumstances that led to the President’s abrupt dismissal of James Comey, and to other critical matters that arise. This is important and urgent work.” Mueller praised as honest broker, ”not directed by politics”  Mueller, who preceded Comey at the FBI, had a   stint at the agency after being unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2001  —   just the week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. His tenure leading the bureau was defined by what he did to adapt to the new threats posed to America by terrorism, and he was asked by   Barack Obama to stay on beyond the typical   term for two additional years, which Congress approved. ”I had been a prosecutor before, so I anticipated spending time on public corruption cases and narcotics cases and bank robberies and the like, and Sept. 11 changed all of that,” he told NPR in 2013 as he was stepping down. Mueller moved 2, 000 agents from criminal investigations into counterterrorism and national security in his time leading the FBI.   terrorism was a theme for Mueller throughout his career even before that, however as a prosecutor he spent years working on an investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Since retiring from the FBI in 2013, he has been working as a partner for the law firm WilmerHale, which confirmed Wednesday night that Mueller had resigned from the firm immediately upon his appointment to the new post. The firm said Aaron Zebley, who worked for Mueller at the FBI, and James Quarles, who was previously an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, also resigned from WilmerHale and are expected to join Mueller’s investigation. Former George W. Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft, who served with Mueller, told NPR’s Ari Shapiro, ”I don’t know a person more dedicated to the concept and ideal of justice” than Mueller. ”He’s not directed by politics,” Ashcroft said. ”Bob is the kind of guy who knows how to call balls and strikes.” Many Democrats were quick to offer praise for Mueller, too. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she was ”pleased” that the Justice Department had decided to appoint a special counsel and called Mueller ”a respected public servant of the highest integrity.” Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein,  . called Mueller ”a fine U. S. attorney, a great FBI director and there’s no better person who could be asked to perform this function. He is respected, he is talented and he has the knowledge and ability to do the right thing.” Maryland Rep. C. A. ”Dutch” Ruppersberger said the move ”brings back credibility to the system to conduct an investigation.” Ruppersberger, a former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, worked with Mueller for years. He added, ”It says to me that Rosenstein  —   he’s an ethical, honest person  —   made the right decision, and what’s right for America, not right for one person.” GOP congressional leaders reiterated that their chamber’s own investigation, led by the House Intelligence Committee, would continue alongside Mueller’s new responsibilities. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Mueller’s appointment was ”consistent” with the House’s own independent investigation into Russia, ”and I welcome his role at the Department of Justice. The important ongoing bipartisan investigation in the House will also continue.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell simply said that Mueller’s appointment ”confirms that the investigation into Russian intervention into our election will continue, as stated last week by Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will also continue its investigation into this matter.” ”I hear he’s a   guy,” said Rep. Mark Walker,  . C. a conservative leader in the House who welcomed the decision. ”It seems pretty positive at this point.” Like many Republicans, Rep. Lamar Smith,   did not believe a special counsel was necessary, but he praised Mueller as the right choice if there is going to be one. ”I think former Director Mueller is a great choice,” Smith said. ”He has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, he has a reputation for integrity, and I think he’ll be  .” White House press secretary Sean Spicer had said on Monday there was ”no need for a special prosecutor. And I think if you even look at what Acting Director McCabe said last week [in a Senate Intelligence hearing] he made it very clear that they had the resources that they need and that the work continues.” Meanwhile, the president is interviewing candidates to replace Comey as FBI director, and a nominee could be named by Friday. Trump was to meet with four candidates at the White House on Wednesday, including former Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat turned independent and former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a Republican. McCabe was also set for a White House interview, along with Richard McFeely, a former FBI official. Two other political candidates for the job  —   Texas Sen. John Cornyn and South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy  —   took themselves out of the running. Susan Davis, Scott Horsley and Miles Parks contributed to this report."
"Hours after a news report that President Trump had asked the FBI director to back away from an investigation, Democrats seized on the information to accuse the White House of a serious crime. ”We are witnessing an obstruction of justice case unfolding in real time,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal,  . a former state attorney general. ”On its face, this is a textbook prima facie case of an attempt to obstruct justice,” concluded Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,  . I. a former U. S. attorney. He added: ”Whether there are mitigating circumstances remains to be seen.” It’s far too soon to make a definitive judgment about whether any laws have been broken in connection with the president’s contacts with James Comey, the FBI director he fired a week ago. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has demanded memos, recordings and other materials that Comey may have prepared, with a deadline of next week. Lawmakers from both political parties said they want to hear Comey testify in public, an idea that Comey associates have said he favors. And then, there’s the question of recent demands by ranking Democrats on the House oversight, judiciary and intelligence committees for any possible White House recordings, transcripts or notes memorializing Trump’s side of the story. There are multiple obstruction of justice statutes on the books. Central to them is the idea of intent or bad purpose, or what Trump may have been thinking when he allegedly told Comey in February that ”I hope you can let this go.” Comey associates said the president was referring to an ongoing investigation of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who resigned a day before the conversation. For the record, the White House has denied the president asked Comey or anyone else ”to end any investigation. . .. The President has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations.” And in a tweet Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. defended his father. Longtime Washington defense lawyer Robert Luskin agreed. ”I don’t know why people are getting spun up about obstruction here,” Luskin said. ”I call prosecutors every day and ask them to stop [messing] with my clients and that’s not obstruction of justice. The act has to be done corruptly. In the absence of other indicia where you can infer corrupt intent, you could never prove that case.” On their own, the words ”I hope you can let this go” are likely not enough to trigger a criminal charge for obstructing justice. But other legal experts said investigators would consider a series of interactions among the president, the FBI and the Justice Department about the Flynn investigation and a broader counterintelligence probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. ”My view is that there are a lot of pieces coming together,” said Peter Zeidenberg, a former public corruption prosecutor. ”Any one of these facts in isolation may be problematic but may not be sufficient. But when you add them all up, you have a very plausible obstruction of justice case, I think.” Any investigation would pay close attention to the timeline. In January, only days after the inauguration,   Attorney General Sally Yates had informed Trump’s White House counsel that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI as part of an active investigation. Yates was fired soon after because, the White House said, she refused to defend the president’s travel ban in court. Flynn left his post in February after media reports that he misled the vice president about his contacts with Russia. The following day, The New York Times reported, Trump asked Vice President Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to leave a national security meeting so Trump could speak with Comey alone. That’s when, Comey later wrote, the president had asked him to ease off Flynn. NPR asked a Comey associate this week why the FBI director felt the need to take ”very detailed” notes memorializing the conversation. ”He was concerned,” said the associate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Not long after Comey put that exchange with Trump in writing and after the FBI director told lawmakers the investigation of Russian interference and possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign was active, Comey was fired. The vice president and two spokesmen for the White House said Comey was removed from office on recommendations from Justice Department leaders, who were unhappy with his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2016. But the president himself later told NBC News: ”And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ’You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a   story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’ ” Trump himself is helping investigators put all of those pieces together, through interviews, tweets and offhand comments to reporters, said Zeidenberg. ”It’s falling out of the trees, the evidence,” he said. Defenders of Trump have been signaling they may attempt to turn the spotlight back on Comey, asking why the former FBI director didn’t blow the whistle or quit after the February conversation with Trump. They’re also asking whether Comey memorialized any other conversations during the Obama presidency or whether he only decided to take notes about Trump. Two Comey associates told NPR that the former FBI leader is confident in his assessments and willing to tell lawmakers and the public why he conducted himself the way he did. Those associates said despite Trump’s tweet suggesting he had ”tapes” of his conversations with Comey, the White House has produced no such evidence. And even if it did, they said, Comey would come out for the better. To lawyer Luskin, the talk of criminal charges misses the point. ”You can have a grotesque abuse of authority that renders somebody unfit to serve, but it’s not a crime,” he said. Framing political crises as law enforcement matters ”has the effect at the end of the day of leaving people with less respect for the legal process than before.”"
"The elephant in the room whenever talking about President Trump and the Russia investigation is the big    —   impeachment. The word had been in the    reaches of liberal conspiracy talk since Trump was elected. There is a website with more than 976, 000 signatures on a petition encouraging Congress to impeach Trump. There is even an ”Impeach Donald Trump” Twitter handle. It is highly unlikely  —   there’s almost zero chance  —   Trump would be impeached by a Republican Congress. But with the revelation that James Comey, who was fired as FBI director last week, penned a memo after a Valentine’s Day meeting with Trump in which Comey associates say Trump asked him to end the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the   is creeping its way into the mainstream. Asked on CNN by Wolf Blitzer after the news broke Tuesday evening whether Trump could face impeachment, Sen. Angus King,   said, ”Reluctantly, Wolf, I have to say ’yes’ simply because obstruction of justice is such a serious offense.” He later walked back that statement during a conference call with Maine reporters. ”You’re jumping way forward,” King said of the possibility of impeachment. ”What we really need to do is get the facts of this situation.” He added, ”Before we start talking about obstruction of justice or impeachment, we need to get to the underlying facts.” The number of Democrats starting to use the   is growing. After Comey was fired, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal said, ”It may well produce impeachment proceedings.” ”We’re actually pretty close to considering impeachment,” said Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth. ”He has committed an impeachable act and must be charged,” said Rep. Al Green of Texas. ”We don’t have to be afraid to use the word impeachment,” Rep. Maxine Waters of California said Tuesday at a conference of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress in Washington. ”We don’t have to think impeachment is out of our reach.” Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod tweeted an hour after The New York Times broke the story of the Comey memo that he had been ”resistant to impeachment talk until now.” The White House understands the gravity of what The Times reported and NPR has confirmed  —   that in a   meeting, the president allegedly told Comey he thinks Flynn is a good guy and said, ”I hope you can let this go.” The White House is flatly denying that Trump did this. ”While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that Gen. Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving Gen. Flynn,” according to a White House statement. ”The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.” The statement also noted, accurately, that acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe ”said in his testimony last week that the WH had not interfered with any investigation.” This White House has tried to spin its way out of a lot  —   from the president’s inauguration crowd size to whether the president leaked classified information to the Russians. But this flat denial is drawing a bright line in the sand. The White House understands that this is very serious and, if true, could have huge consequences for the Trump presidency. So there are still a ton of questions to be asked. The White House press briefing has already become   TV and will continue to be, but the questions with teeth need to come from Congress. And a lot has to happen  —   and a lot of facts gathered  —   before anyone starts down the road to impeachment: 1. The memo has to be produced. Right now, many Republicans are doubting the veracity of the story. Sen. Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican in charge of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday shortly after The Times story came out that ”the burden is on The New York Times” to produce the memo. Will he still feel that way in the light of day, especially given that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz issued a subpoena to the FBI to turn over any Comey memos related to the investigation in one week? 2. Comey has to testify on the record and in public about the memo and the meeting. Even if the memo is produced, Comey will likely be brought before Congress to testify about the encounter. He should be expected to talk about it with the same vivid detail he did 10 years ago Tuesday  —   interestingly  —   about the night in March 2004 when he, as deputy attorney general, went to the hospital bed of   General John Ashcroft to prevent White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card from pressuring Ashcroft to reauthorize the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program. 3. There have to be many Republicans willing to go along. Even if Comey testified, he would have to produce damning evidence that would convince Republicans that Trump had obstructed justice and should no longer serve. Grounds for impeachment are ambiguous. Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution reads: ”The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Impeaching a president takes a majority in the House and   of the Senate, and Republicans currently control both chambers. 4. Is this obstruction of justice? The first article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, who resigned before he could be impeached, reads (emphasis ours): ”In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice.” But there is a question, even if the Comey memo is proved to be true, of whether Trump’s alleged actions meet the legal definition of obstruction of justice. Some legal analysts and professors say yes  —   ”When someone at the White House is telling someone at DOJ or the FBI to   or abandon an investigation, that’s when people start talking about obstruction,” University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck told Politico. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says maybe not. ”If it was a polite request saying, ’Oh, you know, he’s a good guy, Flynn, I wish you’d back off this thing,’ that’s not an obstruction of justice,” Dershowitz contended on MSNBC on Tuesday. ”If it was a command, it would raise stronger problems.” He continued, ”I just think it’s a very, very high bar to get over obstruction of justice for a president who, in fact, is the head of the unitary executive branch that includes the FBI and the Justice Department.” Impeachment as political weapon, To be clear, ”impeachment” has been used as a political weapon by angry opponents  —   some with better cases than others  —   for a long time. As Frank James wrote for NPR in 2013: ”[N]ame a modern,   president and someone probably imagined him being impeached. ”A Republican congressman from Michigan wanted Franklin Roosevelt impeached, and he wasn’t alone. Perhaps more fancifully, the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem titled ’Tentative Description of a Dinner Given To Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower.’ Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, especially, all inspired more or less serious calls for their impeachment.” Since President Bill Clinton’s impeachment by the House (not confirmed by the Senate) and the advent of the Internet, the political rhetoric using the   has seemed to ramp up. Plenty on the left were calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush as the Iraq War was spiraling out of control and over the revelation that that country had no weapons of mass destruction, despite claims of evidence by the U. S. There were ”Impeach Bush” bumper stickers in lots of different forms. (You can still buy some for $4. 99 on Cafe Press.) The calls even came from a New York businessman, who flirted with his own runs for president. ”I was surprised that [  Speaker Nancy Pelosi] didn’t do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush. It was almost  —   it just seemed like she was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing.” That happened to be Donald J. Trump on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer followed up, ”Impeaching him?” ”Absolutely, for the war, for the war,” Trump responded. ”Because of the conduct of the war,” Blitzer said. ”Well, he lied,” Trump responded. ”He got us into the war with lies. And, I mean, look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant. And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. And, yet, Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.” That was 2008. Times and opinions change. The calls on the right for Obama’s impeachment were loud as well. There was an Impeach Obama website that had more than double the petition signers than the Trump one. It urged people to call Congress, gave the Capitol switchboard number and instructed them to ”in plain  —   but polite  —   language, demand impeachment and give a reason or two why.” Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes even admitted to Michael Crowley in Politico magazine in January that part of why Obama didn’t act on Syria unilaterally  —   without Congress’ approval  —   was fear of impeachment. ”[W]e had no domestic legal basis. We actually had Congress warning us against taking action without congressional authorization, which we interpreted as the president could face impeachment,” Rhodes said, adding, ”That was a factor. Go back and read the letters from [  Speaker John] Boehner, letters from the Republican members of Congress. They laid down markers that this would not be constitutional. If we got drawn into a conflict in Syria without congressional authorization, without international authorization, without international support, you can see very clearly how that could have completely derailed this entire presidency.” To reiterate, Trump is unlikely to be impeached by a Republican Congress. But if things keep up at this pace  —   if the Comey memo comes out and he delivers damning testimony  —   and the GOP still does nothing, not even setting up an independent investigation, you can guarantee that the   would hang all over next year’s midterm elections. And, as much as in any election, Trump’s presidency would be top of mind for voters."
"A wooden puzzle in the silhouette of a human head might look fun if the stakes weren’t so high. Historians at Smithsonian Magazine say this simple puzzle containing facial features broken into pieces was administered to immigrants at Ellis Island in the early 1900s. The goal was to weed out the ” ” and ensure that a ”better class” of   people was ushered into U. S. citizenship. The puzzle is currently housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The Feature Profile Test  —   the formal name for this puzzle  —   sprang out of an idealistic policy that was supposed to be fair, writes historian Adam Cohen. A doctor named Howard Knox invented it after officials struggled to administer IQ tests to immigrants because of issues with language and literacy. ”This was in some ways a progressive reform,” Cohen says. ”The idea that this would be a puzzle that no matter where you were born in the world, where you came from, people generally had the idea of what a face looked like, so it had a kind of democratic impulse behind it.” At the same time, the eugenics movement was informing U. S. immigration policy. Cohen says the eugenicists were worried the wrong types of people were coming into the country. ”They believed that in various ways we had to test and weed out the people who would bring the wrong genes,” Cohen says. ”That included trying to have fewer people from countries that were deemed to have worse genes, and then also using tests like this to at the individual level weed out people who were unintelligent,   unfit.” Use the audio link above to hear the full story."
"What happens to a town when a key industry collapses? Sometimes it dies. But sometimes it finds a way to reinvent itself. Case in point: Ketchikan, Alaska, where the demise of the timber industry has led to a radical transformation. Many people who used to earn their livelihoods through timber have now turned to jobs in tourism. It’s an identity shift that makes the city far different from what it was in the logging heyday. ”It was this boomtown!” says longtime Ketchikan resident Eric Collins. ”It was just a crazy, wild frontier place.” Now, it’s a tourism magnet. Ketchikan is expecting 1 million visitors this summer. They’ll flow into town off as many as six giant cruise ships a day. To give a sense of scale, figure that the borough of Ketchikan is home to about 13, 000 people. In just one day, Ketchikan may see 13, 000 cruise ship visitors. ”We’ll double in population for eight hours,” says Harbormaster Dave Dixon as he waits dockside for the morning’s first arrival. Each season, he braces for the tourists’ questions that might come his way: ”Can we see polar bears here?” (Um, no, that would be more than 1, 000 miles away, in the Arctic.) And this humdinger: ”Is Alaska part of the United States?” (Well, yes, since it became a state in 1959.) ”Kind of unexpected that someone would ask me that,” Dixon says with a chuckle, noting that he’s pretty sure the question came from an American. ”Maybe geography class was not their high point.” Ketchikan sits on an island at the southernmost end of southeast Alaska, a prime spot for cruise ships navigating Alaska’s Inside Passage. The landscape is spectacular:   mountains, glaciers descending into narrow fjords, and all around, the dense Tongass National Forest. At 17 million acres (bigger than West Virginia) the Tongass is the largest national forest in the U. S. For many decades, the spruce, hemlock and cedar trees of the Tongass have also been a source of timber for the logging industry. At its peak, logging camps dotted the islands of southeast Alaska, and pulp mills were robust economic drivers of the region. One by one, those pulp mills shut down, faced with global competition, new environmental regulations, lawsuits and fines for pollution violations. Ketchikan’s pulp mill was the last one still operating in Alaska when it shut down in 1997. Hundreds of   jobs and the businesses that supported them went with it. For some, it’s been an uncomfortable transition. ”We don’t know who we are anymore,” Collins says. ”We had shoe stores in Ketchikan. We had work clothes stores in Ketchikan. We had a Chevy dealer and a Ford dealer. They’re all gone.” What’s replaced them? Lots of jewelry and watch stores, some of them owned by the cruise ship companies themselves. Also, souvenir and gift shops, as well as local tour operations. The newer businesses provide seasonal retail work, but it’s nowhere near as well paid as the old jobs: Those were   ”  jobs,” Collins explains. Now, he says, at the end of September, ”within a few day period, the town will be boarded up downtown. Literally, most of the businesses will be closed. And then the people will leave town.” The workers will head on to their winter seasonal work, maybe in Colorado or the Caribbean. Collins has a long view of the logging industry, and of Ketchikan. Some of his earliest memories are of the nearby logging camp where he lived with his family in the late 1960s. They moved to Ketchikan when he was 9. It was the heyday of timber, and Collins knew that a good job in the industry would be waiting for him after high school. It was. He started working on tugboats, bringing supplies to the logging camps and the Ketchikan pulp mill, and eventually he worked his way up to captain, When the pulp mill shut down in ’97, ”it was crazy,” Collins says. ”People were leaving town as fast as they could. Property values plummeted. I remember foreclosures, auctions at the courthouse, people losing everything, not being able to get a job, and selling their houses and leaving town.” The company Collins worked for was in charge of cleaning out the logging camps and the pulp mill, and shutting them down. ”I ended up being the last employee, and I shut the lights out, ” he says. ”Left the office, turned out the lights and went home, started my new job.” Collins is now a cruise ship pilot, steering those giant tour vessels into Ketchikan. He loves his work, but still, he says, ”I miss tugboats. Tugboater at heart.” Back on the Ketchikan dock, Harbormaster Dave Dixon spies the morning’s first arrival hoving into port. ”Yep! There they are,” he says, as he watches Holland America’s Nieuw Amsterdam cruise ship sidle to the dock, with some 2, 000 passengers aboard. The ship looks like a floating skyscraper, the length of three football fields. When the gangplank is lowered, the tourists march ashore and find a gaggle of tour operators waiting to entice them with local offerings: ”The world’s largest totem poles!” ”An     Dungeness crab feast!” ”Active eagle nests, seals, a chance for killer whales and humpbacks!” And if the tourists want a theatrical taste of the industry that used to fuel Ketchikan, they can go watch timber sports at the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, where burly competitors in flannel shirts and suspenders chop stumps, saw logs, and heave axes at a bullseye. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"President Trump’s latest    lesson in being commander in chief is a vital one: Intelligence is a team sport. For all of America’s immense military power, global reach and technical capabilities, we still rely on our allies for    knowledge. Bottom line: We need friends to fight terrorism, and Trump’s actions are making it harder for the intelligence community to do its job. In the wake of this week’s reports that President Trump appears to have provided classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak  —   intelligence the U. S. has yet to share with our allies on combating the Islamic State  —   it’s fair to ask what impact this will have on U. S.  . If you give away too much information about how or where you got it, that can cause problems. But if you talk too much about what you know  —   even if you don’t reveal how  —   that can still give too much detail to people who know what they’re doing. The White House denies Trump gave away ”sources and methods.” No one said he did. The danger is he talked so much about what he knew to two of the wiliest and most senior diplomats in the Russian Foreign Ministry. Since the New York Times and other news outlets have identified Israel as the classified material’s source,   U. S. officials will now need to try to smooth things over with our close ally. Some anonymous Israeli intelligence officials are reportedly ”boiling mad and demanding answers.” Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom said, ”We will think twice before conveying very sensitive information.” Another former Mossad chief,  How will the U. S. intelligence community’s    employees view the latest disclosure about Trump giving information to the Russians? There’s already lingering concern that Trump continues to disrespect the intelligence community’s work and its personnel. His first and only speech at CIA headquarters went dismally, and not only because he brought his own claque to cheer and applaud his commentary about his inauguration crowd size in front of the agency’s Memorial Wall. The president’s firing of James Comey as FBI director has left many alarmed. And, of course, the smoke billowing from his and his team’s reported relationship with Moscow would have felled any other person with a security clearance. Will intelligence officers now try to hide information from the president? That rumor has certainly dogged this administration since its beginning. CIA Director Mike Pompeo strenuously pushed back against these whispers in February: ”The CIA does not, has not, and will never hide intelligence from the president, period. We are not aware of any instance when that has occurred.” Nonetheless, one possible pernicious effect of these lingering doubts, spurred by the administration’s     national security crises, could result in an effort to play down or elide truly sensitive material regarding sources and methods. If that occurs, it would set a terrible precedent for the intelligence community, as it would begin to consider the policy implications of its intelligence as never before. That change in attitude would then chip away at the high wall that separates the intelligence world from the policymaking one. To riff on Fox News’ motto: The intelligence community reports the policymakers decide. With a few exceptions, this is the way the    system has been designed in the   War II era. Foreigners may also begin to become warier about committing espionage on America’s behalf. As retired FBI agent David Gomez told me, ”When a friendly foreign intelligence service shares their source with the U. S. it is incumbent on the president to protect that source at all costs. Otherwise, you risk the sharing of that future source of information.” If something terrible were to happen to the human being( s) helping the Israelis, as a result of Trump’s disclosures to the Russians, it would have a chilling effect across the board. Not only would our allies by infuriated  —   remember, intelligence collection is a team sport  —   but our officers around the world would also have more difficulty recruiting new people to assist us. And this is just in the counterterrorism realm, where the U. S. has overlapping common interests with Russia. How difficult would it suddenly become for America’s intelligence agencies to recruit willing participants in regions where Washington and Moscow are at odds  —   say, in Eastern Europe or Syria? Assets read the papers, too, and should be rightly suspicious about Trump’s stance regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s their lives on the line, after all. The photos from Trump’s meeting last week with Lavrov and Kislyak in the Oval Office  —   courtesy of Russia’s   media after the U. S. media were shut out  —   merely heighten these suspicions and concerns, both at home and abroad. Finally, Trump’s behavior has also resulted in numerous leaks to the media. The intelligence community as an institution dislikes seeing classified material show up in the press: Secrets are secret for good reason. Yes, some argue the leaks help keep this president in check. But what happens when Trump and his clique leave office? Will the leakers stop? As former CIA case officer Doug Patteson notes, the slipshod way intelligence is used at the highest levels is creating a ”culture of leaking and disrespect for authority just because they do not like the nature of [Trump’s] decisions.” Still, life goes on. Intelligence officials will continue to go to work and do their important business. Secrets will continue to be stolen. Papers will continue to be written. Briefings will continue to be briefed. But intelligence community personnel are also highly educated Americans who read the papers, watch television and listen to the radio. They cannot help but be negatively affected by questions about the people in charge. From their offices and cubicles throughout the country and across the globe, these personnel are now watching with unease the   national security churn that keeps percolating into the public sphere. One currently serving official tells me that many people within the system are trying to keep their heads down  —   and keep their integrity intact. This worry is not just confined to American officers. I asked a former British counterterrorism official what he thought about the latest   revelations. In return, he texted me a Bitmoji avatar of himself descending into an orange vortex with the words: ”This Is Not Happening.” But it is. Aki Peritz is a former CIA analyst and   of Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda.  Follow him on Twitter @AkiPeritz"
"Can you rely on what White House officials say on behalf of the U. S. government to be true? The answer, even by the account of President Trump himself, is no. Of all the crises and controversies consuming this White House, perhaps none is more fundamental than the collapse of its credibility. And a close look at some of the administration’s policies, statements and controversies suggests chief responsibility of that collapse can be laid at the feet of the man who works in the Oval Office. Take one of the latest dramas to play out in Washington, D. C.: whether Trump revealed highly classified secrets in a White House meeting with senior Russian diplomats, as alleged by The Washington Post on Monday. Monday night, Trump dispatched National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, who is held in high regard by leaders of both parties and by journalists, to knock down the story. McMaster called it false even as he confirmed much of the rough outline of the story. And yet the questions intensified on Tuesday  —   not least because Trump himself tweeted that he had shared sensitive information with the Russians. Trump even noted that he is legally entitled to do so  —   which legal analysts largely say he is, because he is president. So Trump directly undercut his own national security adviser’s statements on a controversy reaching a fever pitch in the nation’s capital. ”The president has gladly used up [White House press secretary] Sean Spicer’s credibility,” says Nicolle Wallace, the former communications director for President George W. Bush, a Republican. ”He has trampled the credibility of [adviser] Kellyanne Conway. He has used up and sort of walked to the line of his vice president’s credibility. And now it is H. R. McMaster’s turn to expend his personal credibility in service of this president.” Wallace’s assessment was echoed by a Democratic counterpart, Jennifer Palmieri, who was the communications director for President Barack Obama and held a similar role for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. ”It is incredibly damaging,” Palmieri tells NPR. ”It’s not just about spokespeople  —   he’s hurting the credibility of the vice president and the national security adviser.” Both former White House aides say that Trump began shredding his administration’s credibility from his first full day in office, when Wallace says Trump sent Spicer out to lie about the size of the crowds for his inauguration. Spicer claimed the crowds for the ceremony broke all the records  —   a laughable assertion, driven by Trump himself, and easily disproved by pictures from the National Park Service. ”That would have been it for me,” Wallace says. ”I would have said, ’ . This isn’t going to work out’.” ”I like Sean Spicer,” says Wallace, now host of a new afternoon show on MSNBC called Deadline: White House. ”I don’t believe anything he says from the podium. I just think he’s no longer a credible messenger.” You know who else says you can’t believe what White House officials say? The man whose Twitter handle is @realDonaldTrump, who tweeted last week: ”As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” The kindest interpretation is that he’s saying everyone is human and therefore fallible. Assuredly, press aides of both parties have been sent out to spin mightily, putting the best light on uncomfortable moments. This crisis of credibility falls in neither category. The Trump administration’s inability to convey information accurately or honestly exceeds anything seen in Washington in more than four decades. Vice President Mike Pence twice has been shown to make false statements publicly on behalf of the president. On CBS’s Face the Nation in January, then vice   Pence vouched for Trump’s first National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, saying the aide had not spoken of sanctions with Russian officials on the day that the Obama administration put them in place: ”I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.” Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned White House officials that wasn’t true  —   and that Flynn had been compromised by lying to Pence. But Trump kept him on for weeks. Flynn resigned in   conceding that he ”inadvertently briefed the Vice   and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador.” Trump tweeted that ”the real story is leaks”  —   suggesting that he might not have required Flynn’s departure had the story of his contacts with the Russians not surfaced publicly. Last week, Pence joined Spicer and Kellyanne Conway in asserting that Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey because of a highly critical memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. ”President Trump made the right decision at the right time to accept the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general to ask for the termination of the director of the FBI,” Pence told reporters on Wednesday. (Rosenstein hadn’t in fact called for Comey’s dismissal, but his critique was profound.) Pressed by a reporter, Pence also said Comey’s firing had nothing to do with the FBI investigation of the ties between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government  —   which includes Flynn and other Trump associates. ”That’s not what this is about,” Pence said. Yet on the very next day, Trump contradicted just about everything that Pence had said, starting with the vice president’s claim of the central role the Rosenstein memo had played in deciding Comey’s professional fate. ”Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey,” Trump said last Thursday in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. Then Trump contradicted Pence by invoking the Russia investigation in explaining his   process. ”When I decided to just do it, I said to myself  —   I said, ’You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a   story’,” Trump told Holt. ”It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.” According to stories in The New York Times and elsewhere, Trump has blamed much of the current outrage seizing Washington on his press shop. Fox News’ Kimberly Guilfoyle,   of the   show The Five, told the San Jose Mercury News that she has entered into talks with the White House about taking over Spicer’s job as press secretary. Fox News later sent coordinated statements with Guilfoyle noting she was under   contract she said her job was ”tough to beat.” The network’s publicity office would not comment on whether Guilfoyle’s talks were dead, fictional or ongoing, which would mean she was auditioning for a job at the White House while being paid by a cable news channel. She appeared on Tuesday night’s episode of The Five, largely downplaying the administration’s troubles and questioning its critics. ”It’s just ridiculous to talk about a staff shakeup or change in the communications team,” Palmieri says. ”The stakes are too high. The pressure is too much. The scrutiny is too much. Eventually the truth is revealed  —   the true core of your president comes to light.” Palmieri spoke of addressing challenges such armed conflicts, natural disasters or epidemics. ”This is not just a game of who’s got the best message,” Palmieri says. ”You’re speaking for the United States of America. It’s incredibly important  —   not just within our country but abroad  —   that we can rely on what is said by the White House press secretary, the vice president, and the national security adviser.” Asked today whether he was concerned about the White House’s eroding credibility, Spicer sidestepped, telling reporters no one would ever want that. Credibility is of course an elusive and intangible quality, but it’s crucial for governing nonetheless. Late Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times reported that Jim Comey had written a memo he shared with a small circle of colleagues saying that Trump had asked him to cut short the part of the Russia inquiry involving then national security adviser Mike Flynn. It has since been reported separately by myriad other news outlets, including NPR. The Trump administration issued a statement saying that Comey’s account wasn’t true. Yet during a credibility crisis, who will be willing to give this White House  —   or this president  —   the benefit of the doubt?"
"A new federal lawsuit against Baylor University accuses football players of drugging and   young women as part of a hazing or bonding ritual  —   and the university of failing to investigate the pervasive sexual assault. The players often took photographs and videos as they carried out the gang rapes, the suit alleges. It was filed by ”Jane Doe,” who says she was raped by four to eight Baylor players in February 2012. Her Title IX suit says the school’s ”deliberately indifferent response” effectively denied her educational opportunities. The suit also describes dogfighting at football parties and burglaries carried out by football players, without consequence. The alleged assaults and other criminal activities took place during former head football coach Art Briles’ tenure at the school in Waco, Texas. Briles and former university President Ken Starr were both removed from their posts last year after a wave of sexual assault allegations against Baylor players. The school’s regents said last May they were ”horrified,” ”shocked” and ”outraged” to learn about the sexual violence that was happening on campus  —   and the ”mishandling of reports” by the university. The regents later described the football program under Briles as ”a black hole into which reports of misconduct such as drug use, physical assault, domestic violence, brandishing of guns, indecent exposure and academic fraud disappeared.” Earlier this year, a lawsuit by ”Elizabeth Doe” alleged that she had been   by Baylor players in 2014. She said at least 52 rapes and at least five gang rapes were carried out by more than 30 Baylor players. The new lawsuit references many of the already public allegations and includes nine pages describing reports, arrests and convictions related to Baylor athletes. Sex was part of Baylor recruiting efforts, the suit alleges: Players escorted underage recruits to strip clubs, and coaching staff ”arranged for women to have sex with recruits on their official campus visits.” A ”hostess” program was unofficially used to promise sex to new recruits. The suit also describes a culture of sexual assault woven into hazing rituals: ”Upon information and belief, prior to Plaintiff’s arrival at Baylor, members of the Baylor football team had already developed a system of hazing their freshman recruits by having them bring or invite freshman females to house parties hosted by members of the football team. At these parties, the girls would be drugged and gang raped, or in the words of the football players, ’trains’ would be run on the girls. ”The gang rapes were considered a ’bonding’ experience for the football players. ”Photographs and videotapes of the   girls would be taken during the gang rapes and circulated amongst the football players. Based upon investigation, Plaintiff has confirmed that at least one,   videotape of two female Baylor students being gang raped by several Baylor football players was circulated amongst football players. ”Baylor football parties would also feature dog fighting. In at least one of the matches, a dog was seriously injured and almost died. ”Simply put, Baylor football under Briles had run wild, in more ways than one, and Baylor was doing nothing to stop it.” The lawsuit alleges that Jane Doe was carried into an apartment, raped by a series of men while she was unable to move and then subjected to ”verbal abuse and public humiliation” by players. ”One football player told Plaintiff that it was consensual and that she ’wanted it,’ ” the suit states. ”That same football player also taunted Plaintiff with claims that a Baylor football player had taken nude photographs of Plaintiff and other Baylor football players during the gang rape.” Jane Doe’s mother gave an assistant football coach a list of names of people allegedly involved in the assault and asked what Baylor could do about it. According to the suit, after the players said they were ”fooling around” with Jane Doe and called it ”a little bit of playtime,” the assistant football coach decided it was a ”gray area.” The suit says Baylor officials misled Doe’s family and manipulated it into not reporting the assault beyond the athletics department. Baylor said in a statement that it ”maintains its ability to present facts” in response to the allegations. ”The University’s response in no way changes Baylor’s position that any assault involving members of our campus community is reprehensible and inexcusable,” the school said."
"The Trump administration said Wednesday that it will continue to waive some sanctions against Iran, a key aspect of the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration and five other world powers. Under the terms of the deal, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. But those sanctions waivers need to be periodically renewed, and today was the first deadline to fall during President Trump’s term. During his campaign, Trump referred to the landmark agreement as the worst deal ever negotiated, as NPR has reported. Proponents of the deal have been nervous about its fate, NPR’s Michele Kelemen told Morning Edition. She added that its supporters say ”that if the U. S. is blamed for the collapse of this deal it will be difficult for the U. S. to get partners back on board. You know, Washington didn’t negotiate this alone. There were the Europeans, the Russians, and the Chinese. And they were also at the table and they still support the deal.” The Trump administration is currently in the process of reviewing U. S. policy toward Iran. ”This ongoing review does not diminish the United States’ resolve to continue countering Iran’s destabilizing activity in the region, whether it be supporting the Assad regime, backing terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, or supporting violent militias that undermine governments in Iraq and Yemen,” Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones said in a statement. ”And above all, the United States will never allow the regime in Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.” While the U. S. says it will continue waiving these sanctions, it is ratcheting up other sanctions related to human rights abuses and the country’s ballistic missile program. This may be intended to ”undercut the impression that Trump is softening on Iran,” The Associated Press wrote. The Department of the Treasury announced that it had designated seven entities in connection with the missile program, including two top Iranian defense officials. It also designated   companies that it says are supplying Iran with ”  items” and an   company that allegedly supports the country’s ballistic missile program. Iranians are set to vote Friday in the country’s presidential election. The result has the potential to impact this deal, Michele reported: ”If the current president wins, most experts say they expect the status quo. But if a hardliner wins, it could make it easier for the Trump administration to get other countries on board for a tougher approach.”"
"It had been a timeless love story. A garden snail with a rare genetic condition can’t mate with normal snails scientists launch an international search for a mate the snail becomes a media sensation and miraculously not one but two possible mates are found. That’s where we left the tale of Jeremy, the rare   snail, last November. But since then, what had been a snail fairy tale has turned into something of a tragedy for Jeremy  —   its two possible mates proceeded to mate with each other instead. They’ve been feverishly reproducing, with three batches of eggs between them. And Jeremy remains alone. He’s left ”” as the University of Nottingham charmingly put it. Finding a mate is particularly hard because Jeremy  —   and the other two  —   all have shells that curl counterclockwise, the opposite direction of typical snails. Their sex organs are also on the left side of their heads, meaning that they can’t procreate with most other snails because they can’t align their organs. Scientists aren’t sure exactly how rare this condition is. It could be as uncommon as one in a million, though evolutionary geneticist Angus Davison of the University of Nottingham told us back in November that it’s more likely to be about one out of every 100, 000 snails. That rarity made it particularly surprising to find two potential suitors for Jeremy after the scientists launched the international search. First, a snail enthusiast near Ipswich, U. K. came forward with her pet snail Lefty. Then, a snail farmer and restaurateur in Majorca, Spain, found another   snail that had been on its way to becoming a meal. It was later named Tomeu. Davison said that the three initially did not mate. They were put into a fridge for a few months to simulate normal snail hibernation during the winter. Come spring, Lefty and Tomeu were immediately ”keen, moving around,” said Davison, but Jeremy ”didn’t seem to have much energy. . .. He has since become much more lively so we continue to hope that we can do the experiment and understand the genetics of all three snails, but for the moment only two of them have reproduced.” Now Lefty has returned to Ipswich, and they are hoping Jeremy and Tomeu will mate. Luckily, for research purposes, it makes no difference which   snails are mating. Davison and his colleagues are trying to understand the genetics behind a   shell. Their initial question: do two   snails produce   offspring? Based on the at least 170 baby snails that have hatched, the answer is no. There are two other batches of eggs that are just beginning to hatch (because snails are simultaneous hermaphrodites, both Lefty and Tomeu have been able to produce eggs). But Davison says that’s not surprising. Because of the way they think the   gene is passed to the offspring, it may only appear in future generations. They’re planning to continue breeding the snails to continue examining the genetics, and are hoping to eventually ”get a whole family of   snails.” As we reported, Davison’s team recently ”published research in Current Biology that suggested the gene that causes a snail’s shell to twist   could also ’offer clues to how the same gene affects body asymmetry in other animals including humans. ’”"
"The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced on Tuesday that it had confiscated 7, 000 birds in the   seizure of fowl used for illegal cockfighting. Capt. Jeff Perry described a raid that sounded like a scene from a movie  —   100 personnel from the sheriff’s office, along with animal control, served a search warrant on an   property in unincorporated northern Los Angeles County. Officers on horseback patrolled the canyon as suspects ran into the hills. Perry said approximately 10 people were detained. ”Most of the detainees were more the lower level, the caretakers, the people that were entrusted with the feeding and caring for the animals at the scene,” he said. ”We have identified the property owner and he is the primary suspect in the case. The investigation is ongoing and we anticipate making several arrests.” In addition to the birds, officers recovered a range of evidence indicative of illegal cockfighting: several mobile fighting rings, hundreds of gaffs (razor hook implements that attach to roosters’ claws) syringes and steroids. They also found several dead roosters with wounds ”consistent with cockfighting,” said Perry. Video of the raid screened during the press conference shows a large, remote area with countless roosters and many dogs. Roosters are hitched individually to blue barrels their crows ring out across the canyon. Law enforcement officers open fridges that appear to be full of medication. A bag is shown to contain a number of dead roosters. Unfortunately, the thousands of seized birds will not be adopted instead, they will be killed humanely. ”There is no sanctuary for fighting birds,” Don Barré, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, told the Santa Clarita Valley Signal. ”This is because they are very aggressive and cannot be housed with any other chickens. Even the hens would attack other hens. These are not pets.” The Signal reported that 50 guard dogs were also seized. Eric Sakach, senior law enforcement specialist with Humane Society of the U. S. said that that site raided on Monday had also been raided in 2007, when approximately 2, 700 birds were seized. ”It appears that shortly after that initial one was shut down, they started back up and it’s grown even bigger,” he said. While it has pits for fighting, he said the site looked to be primarily used for breeding and selling the birds, a business that Sakach called ”extremely lucrative.” At the low end, he said, a single game cock will sell for $75 to $100. More often, birds will sell for $250 to $1000   birds from a cockfighters with a reputation for winning will fetch well into four figures. And these sales are often  . ”Those are federal felonies,” he said, ”to move any animal in interstate or foreign commerce for fighting purposes.” Assessing the scale of the operation that was raided, Sakach estimated that in the period of a year, ”with birds that would be sold out of there, you’d be looking at millions of dollars.” While the LA County Sheriff’s Office and Animal Care and Control emphasized the illegality of cockfighting and dogfighting, Sakach explained why animal blood sports are so enduring and so hard for authorities to eliminate. ”This is an extremely bloodthirsty type of activity it dates back thousands of years,” he said. ”It’s not unique to any particular culture, contrary to public belief.” ”The problem here is that statistically, cockfighting is among the safer crimes that people can commit,” he said. ”You know, raids are rare. . .. and these guys are gamblers. They bank on the idea that they’re not going to get caught.” And, he added, there’s a lot of opportunity for money to be made  . ”Most of the money that’s made is pillow money or mattress money, so it’s a very difficult kind of crime to go after,” he said."
"The morning that the space shuttle Columbia was supposed to return home, Wayne Hale was at the landing site. At age 48, Hale was an    manager with NASA. He’d just taken a job overseeing shuttle launches. But since this was a landing day, he didn’t have much to do. It was Feb. 1, 2003. He and other managers were hanging out in a grassy viewing area near the landing strip at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Families of the astronauts were there, too. Loudspeakers were playing communications between Columbia and mission control. ”Really it was a kind of party atmosphere,” he recalls. Hale was chatting to his friends, feeling relaxed. The astronauts were scheduled to land any minute. ”And finally somebody, I can’t remember who, said: ’Isn’t it unusual for them to be out of contact for so long?” he says. The shuttle sometimes passed through a brief communications blackout during  . But it never lasted more than a few minutes. Hale looked over at the large countdown clock near the landing strip. ”And I said to myself, I thought, ’No, this is really unusual. Not to have communication with the crew at this point is not good. There is something seriously wrong.’ ” Hale and the others rushed back to the main buildings at the space center. By the time they made it, the television was already showing footage of the shuttle streaking across the sky, breaking apart, with seven crew members inside. Hale had spent his entire adult life in the space business. He knew it was dangerous. But he thought NASA had the smartest engineers, the best rockets. ”I mean, I thought our organization was great. I thought we could handle anything,” he says. Hale and everyone at NASA that day felt an incredible sense of loss and also of failure. ”Our job was to keep the crew safe, and they weren’t safe. That’s an immediate failure. Now you’re just asking, ’In what way did we fail?’ ” Trying to answer that question changed Hale’s life forever. The first step in the chain of events that led to Columbia’s loss came more than two weeks earlier. On Jan. 17, the day after the launch, an engineer named Bob Page walked into Hale’s office. Page was in charge of the video cameras watching the shuttle as it shot upward. Those cameras had seen something, he said. He popped a CD in Hale’s computer and pulled up the clip. It showed something fuzzy coming off the shuttle’s big orange external fuel tank. The object smacked into Columbia’s side and went ”poof” somewhere around the left wing. Pretty much right away, Hale knew what had happened. The big tank is covered in foam insulation. Some of that foam had fallen off and hit the shuttle during liftoff. Hale and the other managers had daily meetings to look at the incident. In the end, they decided it wouldn’t be a problem. ”The bottom line was, we all felt pretty good. This was not going to be a safety issue. We’d have to do some maintenance work, but it’s not a safety issue. And that’s what we told the crew,” he says. Foam had been striking shuttles every now and then for years. It had done some damage in the past, but not too much. This time was different, though. On this fateful flight, the foam punched a small hole in the left wing. When the shuttle   the atmosphere, hot gases seeped into the hole. The aluminum frame melted. The wing buckled, and the Columbia broke apart. So the wing failed because the foam failed, but for Hale and NASA, that was not the real failure. ”All real problems are people problems. It’s not, ’Did the foam come off the tank?’ It’s ’Why did people let the foam come off the tank? Why did we think it was OK to let foam come off the tank? ’” He’d known about the foam problem for years. He’d been in meetings where he could have said something. ”I was senior enough. So yeah, I feel like this was probably the worst failure of my life,” he says. After the accident, an official investigation found there were some smart people at NASA who were worried. Engineers lower down in the shuttle organization had discussed problems with the foam many times before. But their concerns weren’t clearly understood by people at the top like Hale. Managers had a lot to worry about. They needed to keep the shuttle program on schedule and on budget. And there were always problems that needed to be fixed. So if an engineer couldn’t explain an issue clearly, it got ignored. ”If somebody brought a concern to you, and it just didn’t sound logical, you were very dismissive and told them to get a life,” he says. After the accident, the heads of the shuttle program were removed. Hale was promoted to    of the entire fleet. ”You talk about feeling guilty, now there is something to feel guilty about,” he says. Part of Hale’s new job was to change the cultural problems at NASA, and he resolved to start right away. ”I said the first thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to put the arrogance aside,” he says. Hale became a listener. When an engineer came to him with an issue after the accident, even if he didn’t understand it, he tried. Hale oversaw many of the shuttle flights after the accident. It did not fail again. He says they made plenty of changes to checklists. But he thinks the biggest change was that everyone who worked at NASA became better at talking  ” and listening. This story is the first in a   series on the experience of failure and how people deal with it. It was developed in NPR’s Story Lab. Nicholas DePrey created original music for the series."
"Last week, the mother of a Chibok schoolgirl abducted in 2014 by Boko Haram militants got the call she had long been waiting for: A representative of the town of Chibok said her daughter was among the 82 girls just released by Boko Haram militants to the Nigerian government. But the mother’s joy was tempered by anxiety. ”She said, ’Until I actually set eyes on my daughter I will not know she has been returned,’” says R. Evon Idahosa, a spokeswoman for Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) who was present when the call arrived. The uncertainty should be resolved on Friday at the scheduled reunion of family members and the girls in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. When she does see her daughter, the mother told Idahosa that she ”will carry her [daughter] on her back like a baby.” But what lies ahead for the girls after the reunion remains unclear, especially if one looks for clues amid conflicting reports about the status of the 21 Chibok girls who were released by Boko Haram last October and three others who regained their freedom last year. The one thing agreed upon by all parties is that those 24 girls are still in custody of the government, not the care of their families. Pernille Ironside, UNICEF’s deputy representative in Nigeria, told NPR in an email that these girls are still under government care, are receiving counseling, health care and vocational training, and that their families have been able to visit them. The Nigerian government maintains that these are security precautions to protect the girls from the stigma, ostracism and discrimination commonly faced by those returning from Boko Haram captivity. But no one knows exactly where those girls are. They are reportedly in Abuja, but their exact whereabouts have been kept secret. The government says the secrecy is for the   and safety of the girls. ”Are they being held as prisoners or is this protective custody?” asks Mausi Segun, senior Nigeria researcher for Human Rights Watch. She wonders why ”the families who have been longing for them” have had so few opportunities to see them. Some parents say they have not had visiting rights and do not know where their girls are. In addition, during a highly publicized visit last Christmas by the girls to Chibok, the girls were not allowed to go to church with their parents or to stay over at their family homes, remaining instead at a politician’s house. Idahosa, who is also the executive director of the   trafficking NGO PathFinders Justice Initiative, says that some of the families have told BBOG that their phone calls are limited to two to three minutes and they’re not allowed to ask their daughters about their time in captivity. Last week the government announced that both groups of girls will be returning to school or to their families in September, though exact details are not yet available. Little has been made public about the specific strategies provided these girls for helping them rejoin and reintegrate with their Nigerian communities. In time, Idahosa believes, the Chibok girls ”will be able to resume some sort of normalcy.” She takes hope from the fact that Nigeria President Muhammadu Buharai, who often says that ”the girls have suffered the worst and it is time for them to enjoy the best,” has suggested that that the government intends to assist them for the  . ”What we’re trying to do is implore the government to bring the girls back home to their families,” says Idahosa. Meanwhile, there are still 113 Chibok girls who have not been rescued or freed. In addition, thousands of other women have been abducted or subjected to sexual violence by Boko Haram. Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Jewish Week, and is book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is dianejcole. com."
"Wild Chinook salmon, probably the most prized seafood item on the West Coast, could all but vanish from California within a hundred years, according to a report released Tuesday. The authors, with the University of California, Davis, and the conservation group California Trout, name climate change, dams and agriculture as the major threats to the prized and iconic fish, which is still the core of the state’s robust fishing industry. Chinook salmon are just one species at risk of disappearing. All told, California is home to 31 genetically distinct kinds of salmon and trout  —   23 of which are at risk of going extinct sometime in the next century, according to the report. The report, titled State of the Salmonids II: Fish in Hot Water, comes as an update to a 2008 assessment that made similar conclusions  —   except that nine years ago, the outlook wasn’t nearly so bad. At the time, the authors  —   among them UC Davis fisheries biologist Peter Moyle, who works at the university’s Center for Watershed Sciences and also contributed to the new report  —   concluded that five genetically distinct types of California salmon might vanish in the next five decades. Now, the   outlook is three times as bad, with 14 species and subspecies deemed likely to disappear if current trends continue. Though some factors affecting fish, like degraded river habitat and excessive diversions for irrigation, can be reversed, the report says climate change, already underway, could devastate California’s salmon and trout populations. ”As we began drafting the 2017 report, we realized that the new information and increasingly obvious impacts of climate change required us to rethink the metrics used in the 2008 report to evaluate status [of each species],” says Moyle, who wrote the new report with UC Davis colleague Robert Lusardi and California Trout’s conservation program coordinator, Patrick J. Samuel. Salmon and trout depend on clean  —   and, especially  —   cold water. But as the Earth warms, there will be less snow and cold water in the mountains where rivers, like the once   Sacramento and the Klamath, begin. Many waterways will become too warm for the fish to tolerate, or even dry up completely, in the summer months, the authors predict. Agriculture can have similar impacts on watersheds, and in their   report, the authors repeatedly cite production of food, marijuana, wine and other crops as a major threat to California’s salmon and trout. Farming and grazing can foul waterways with eroded sediments and chemicals. Irrigating crops also means pumping large amounts of water out of rivers, which can disrupt salmon migration patterns or strand them in warm, shallow water. On California’s North Coast, in a region known as the ”emerald triangle” for its marijuana production, Coho salmon  —   once thick in nearly every small coastal creek as far south as Santa Cruz  —   are critically threatened, according to the report. The authors estimate that, as recently as 75 years ago, 100, 000 to 300, 000 Coho spawned each year in northern California’s and southern Oregon’s coastal streams. Today, less than 5, 000 still swim upstream to lay and fertilize their eggs. Northern California marijuana growers  —   whose crop was legalized late last year  —   are known to suck dry creeks where Coho salmon spawn, especially in the summer, when virtually no rain falls in most of the state and growers become especially reliant on irrigation. The juveniles of Chinook salmon, by contrast, spend just a few months in freshwater before migrating to the sea, which makes them somewhat less vulnerable to inland habitat loss. Still, Chinook salmon  —   the only salmon species that is commercially fished and marketed in California  —   are not doing well, either. The report says six of California’s eight genetically distinct Chinook populations are likely to disappear. While hundreds of thousands of Chinook still spawn in California in a productive year, these prized fish are mostly the products of hatcheries that fertilize salmon eggs in tanks and release babies into the wild at several months of age. According to the authors, this   system, though good for fishermen in the short term, is bad for wild,   runs of salmon and steelhead. That’s because the hatchery fish often spawn with wild fish, weakening gene lines and blurring the genetic distinctions between different populations. California’s salmon are not necessarily all goners. The authors suggest restoring riverside floodplains and coastal marshes, where young fish find abundant food. They also recommend focusing conservation efforts on streams that arise from mountain springs. Such   creeks will likely remain cold even as the planet warms, and they might be the only places for salmon to spawn in the future. Removing dams also could allow salmon access to   tributaries, the authors say. During a media teleconference call on Tuesday, California Trout’s executive director Curtis Knight said native salmon might still be a part of California’s culture, economy and diet in the future. ”We do still have time, and we are optimistic that with some effort, we can have a future that involves these fish,” he said."
"When it comes to   orangutans are the champs. Past studies of orangutans in the wild have found that mothers nurse their offspring for up to seven years, longer than any other primate. But a new study of orangutan teeth suggests even that estimate is low, a team reports Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. The study found evidence that during periods when fruit and other food became scarce, young orangutans would supplement their diet with breast milk. ”And this pattern could last up until 8 or 9 years of age, which is very long,” says Christine Austin, an author of the paper and a researcher in the department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. This late weaning is probably a survival strategy, says Tanya Smith, the study’s lead author, who works at the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University. ”Having a long period of nursing may be a way for juveniles to learn the ins and outs of living in a challenging environment with limited and unpredictable food resources,” she says. Researchers have been uncertain about nursing behavior among wild orangutans because the animals are notoriously hard to study. They live solitary lives in the treetops of rainforests in Borneo and Sumatra. So Austin and a team of researchers wondered whether they could obtain more detailed information by analyzing teeth from orangutans that had died. ”Teeth are like a biological hard drive that’s recording what’s happening in your body each day,” Austin says. Teeth have growth rings like a tree, which provide a timeline of an animal’s life. And the researchers had shown that levels of barium in each ring indicate when an orangutan was consuming milk. The team was able to obtain teeth from four orangutans that were shot decades ago. The teeth came from museums. Barium levels showed that for the first 12 to 18 months, the young orangutans consumed only breast milk. Then they started adding other foods, primarily fruit. But the animals appeared to resume nursing when other foods weren’t plentiful. And that cyclical nursing pattern continued until the orangutans were approaching puberty.   years of nursing are much more than other primates get. Chimp mothers wean their young at about age 5. Gorilla moms stop nursing when their offspring are about 4. And human babies rarely   after age 3, says Shara Bailey, a paleoanthropologist at New York University. ”That’s what makes humans weird,” she says. ”And it’s certainly one of the reasons why our population is so successful as a species.” Switching babies to other food early in life allowed early human females to produce more offspring than other species, Bailey says. But it’s not clear when early weaning became common. It could have been nearly a million years ago, when humans are thought to have learned to control fire. Or it could have been just 10, 000 years ago, when farming came along. Scientists are hoping that by analyzing teeth, it may be possible to find out how long our human ancestors nursed. ”The potential is there to look now at Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, [and] Australopithicenes,” Bailey says. And maybe, she says, ”we can actually get an idea of when this very weird thing that characterizes humans occurred.” There’s a catch, though. In order to analyze a tooth, researchers need to slice it up. And museums are reluctant to damage some of their most prized fossils."
"Updated on May 23 at 6:40 p. m. ET, When Seth Rich was killed in July 2016, police suspected it was a botched robbery. This week, sparked by a report from a TV station in Washington, D. C. that crime took over conservative media. The reason: Seth Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer, and some have theorized that his work was connected to his murder. There is no hard evidence that is true. In fact, further reporting has blown large holes in Fox 5 DC’s Monday report. As with many other conspiracy theories, like the assertion that a Washington pizza restaurant was at the center of a child sex ring tied to top Democrats, this kind of assertion in part functions by trying to shift the burden of proof. Rather than proving with hard evidence that there was a conspiracy surrounding Rich’s murder (or that the owners of Comet Ping Pong, the pizza restaurant, were harming children) the people making the unproved claims end up pushing the other side to try to disprove it. With that disclaimer in mind, here’s a roundup of the news surrounding Rich and why reports about the circumstances of his death suddenly resurfaced again this week. Who is Seth Rich? Seth Rich was a    DNC staffer when he was shot to death while walking home from a bar in the early hours of the morning in July 2016. In an initial report from The Washington Post, D. C. police and Rich’s father said they believed that he had been the victim of a robbery attempt. The neighborhood suffered a rash of robberies around the same time. However, it appeared that the killer (or killers) took nothing from Rich he still had his credit cards, wallet and watch, the Post reported. Rich’s father later reported that his son had been on the phone with his girlfriend when the murder took place. The father told an Omaha CBS affiliate that she ”asked [Seth] if he was home yet and he said just about, and then she heard some noise, he said he had to call her back.” The incident became fodder for conspiracy theories that alleged Rich’s death was related to his DNC work  —   the general idea being that he had leaked emails to WikiLeaks or had been ready to talk to the FBI, and that the DNC   Hillary Clinton herself had arranged for his killing to keep him quiet. Less than a month after Rich’s death, WikiLeaks offered $20, 000 for information about the murder. Founder Julian Assange also implied in an interview that Rich had supplied the emails to WikiLeaks. But the day after offering that reward, WikiLeaks released another statement clarifying that it was not saying that Rich was its source. ”As a matter of policy we do not confirm or deny whether any person has ever been a source for WikiLeaks,” the organization wrote. It later added, ”This should not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a source to WikiLeaks or to imply that . .. his murder is connected to our publications.” That wasn’t the only reward offered in September, a GOP lobbyist offered $100, 000 for information on the murder. Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, meanwhile, maintained that the DNC did not appear to be involved in the murder. ”At this time, there is no indication that Seth Rich’s death is connected to his employment at the DNC,” an MPD spokeswoman told Business Insider in August 2016. The murder happened last summer. Why is this coming up now? On Monday, Washington, D. C.’s Fox 5 reported that Rod Wheeler, a former D. C. homicide detective who acted as a private investigator in this case, believed Rich had communicated with WikiLeaks before he died. The Fox 5 piece caused the Rich story to explode on social media, particularly among conservatives  —   Michael Flynn Jr. son of President Trump’s fired national security adviser, was among those sharing it. Flynn had previously also tweeted credulously about #Pizzagate, as that false news story came to be called. Within a day of the Fox 5 report, Google searches for Rich had overtaken searches for James Comey, even amid continuous news about the former FBI director’s conversations with Trump. What did Fox 5 report? The key quotes, as reported by Fox 5’s Marina Marraco: ” ’The police department nor the FBI have been forthcoming,’ said Wheeler. ’They haven’t been cooperating at all. I believe that the answer to solving his death lies on that computer, which I believe is either at the police department or either at the FBI. I have been told both.’ ”When we asked Wheeler if his sources have told him there is information that links Rich to WikiLeaks, he said, ’Absolutely. Yeah. That’s confirmed.’ ”Wheeler also told us, ’I have a source inside the police department that has looked at me straight in the eye and said, ”Rod, we were told to stand down on this case and I can’t share any information with you.” Now, that is highly unusual for a murder investigation, especially from a police department. Again, I don’t think it comes from the chief’s office, but I do believe there is a correlation between the mayor’s office and the DNC and that is the information that will come out [Tuesday].’ ” Wheeler also told Fox’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday that he had never personally seen the emails but that there was a federal investigator who was ”very credible” who had said he had seen Rich’s computer and the investigation’s ”case file.” He also said he found FBI involvement in the case to be suspicious. A Rich family spokesman later confirmed to Fox 5 that financial adviser and Fox News contributor Ed Butowsky was the person who had paid for Wheeler’s investigation services. (Wheeler has also contributed to Fox News for years. The Fox News website has clips of Wheeler dating to 2008, and a LinkedIn page appearing to be Wheeler’s says he has been a contributor there since 2002. The Southern Poverty Law Center flagged Wheeler in a 2007 blog post for a Fox News report on ”violent lesbian gangs,” which Wheeler said were victimizing children.) Fox News on Tuesday quoted an anonymous federal investigator who said an FBI investigation found that Rich had been in contact with Gavin MacFadyen, whom Fox identified as a ”director of WikiLeaks.” That Fox News report also noted that Rich’s family had said Wheeler was ”not authorized to speak for the family.” [Update on May 23: Fox News has retracted this story, and posted a statement saying it was not subjected to ”the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. ”] Weaknesses emerge in the latest news reports, Several large holes have developed in these reports since Fox 5’s story. In a CNN interview on Tuesday, Wheeler indicated that Fox 5 had presented his quotes misleadingly and that some of that information had come from the Fox 5 reporter herself. ”Wheeler told CNN he had no evidence to suggest Rich had contacted WikiLeaks before his death. ”Wheeler instead said he only learned about the possible existence of such evidence through the reporter he spoke to for the FoxNews. com story. He explained that the comments he made to   were intended to simply preview Fox News’ Tuesday story. The   news director did not respond to multiple requests for comment. ” ’I only got that [information] from the reporter at Fox News,’ Wheeler told CNN. ”Asked about a quote attributed to him in the Fox News story in which he said his ’investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,’ Wheeler said he was referring to information that had already been reported in the media.” Newsweek further reported on Wednesday that Wheeler now says he had never spoken to the federal investigator directly. Moreover, the publication reported that the FBI is not involved in the investigation. That doesn’t square with the federal investigator’s claim that an FBI analysis of Rich’s computer revealed he had been in contact with WikiLeaks. Wheeler also told Newsweek that he had ”been told that a couple of times, that [the FBI is] not involved.” And NBC News reported this week that a current FBI official said that D. C. police never gave Rich’s computer to the FBI. WikiLeaks, of course, did get its hands on thousands of DNC emails. However, 17 U. S. intelligence agencies reported in October that they believed Russia had been behind the hacking of the DNC. What does Rich’s family say? Ever since last summer, Rich’s family members have spoken out against people politicizing his death. This is the statement they provided to Fox 5 this week: ”As we’ve seen through the past year of unsubstantiated claims, we see no facts, we have seen no evidence, we have been approached with no emails and only learned about this when contacted by the press. Even if tomorrow, an email was found, it is not a high enough bar of evidence to prove any interactions as emails can be altered and we’ve seen that those interested in pushing conspiracies will stop at nothing to do so. We are a family who is committed to facts, not fake evidence that surfaces every few months to fill the void and distract law enforcement and the general public from finding Seth’s murderers. The services of the private investigator who spoke to press was offered to the Rich family and paid for by a third party, and contractually was barred from speaking to press or anyone outside of law enforcement or the family unless explicitly authorized by the family.”"
"In his first foreign trip as president, Donald Trump will be traveling to a Muslim country on Friday. Not just any Muslim state, but the one with the holiest shrines in Islam. Saudi Arabia is a place that candidate Trump loved to bash during his campaign. ”Until the oil went down, Saudi Arabia was making a billion dollars a day. We protect them. We protect them. And we protect them for peanuts. So all of that stuff is going to change folks,” Trump said last year. As president, Trump may well find there’s a lot he likes about the kingdom. In promoting the trip earlier this month, he said his visit to the capital, Riyadh, is where ”we will begin to construct a new foundation of cooperation and support with our Muslim allies to combat extremism, terrorism and violence.” Trump and the Saudis both have compelling reasons to make this relationship work. The president wants to show he can get along with leading Muslim countries after his frequent attacks that have earned him critics across the Islamic world. And he can expect a warm welcome in the kingdom, with perhaps a brief reprieve from political troubles at home. The Saudis, meanwhile, felt they were downgraded under President Obama, who reached out to their main rival, Iran. They now see a golden opportunity to rebuild ties with their most important ally. ”The Saudis are rolling out the red carpet for President Trump,” said Saudi analyst Gregory Gause, a professor at Texas A  M University, where he’s head of the international affairs department at the Bush School of Government. He notes that the Saudis have also invited dozens of leaders from other Islamic countries, giving the president the chance to reset relations. ”They are certainly not deterred by some of the   rhetoric that we heard on the campaign trail,” Gause said. ”They want this to be, I think, an occasion to move the president away from some of those thoughts, not by criticism, but by kind of embracing him.” The president’s   trip includes a strong religious theme, where he will have to deal with many sensitive political and cultural issues. After the visit to Saudi Arabia, he travels to Israel, where he plans to go to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest site for prayer in Judaism. Then he’ll go on to Italy, where he’ll have an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican. Trump will also stop at NATO headquarters in Brussels and attend a G7 summit in Italy. Trump and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman agree on many fundamental issues. Both see Iran as the main cause of trouble in the Middle East. Both support an aggressive war against the Islamic State and  . They may even raise a few uncomfortable truths with one another. ”I think the Saudis can have a hard talk with the administration about the need to avoid gratuitously insulting and alienating the Muslim world,” said Gause. The Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah   said Trump’s decision to make his first foreign visit in the kingdom is significant. ”The areas of understanding and the areas of agreement are far greater than any potential areas of disagreement,” he said recently in Washington. ”We share with the president a vision that Iranian subversive activities in the region should be stopped. We share with the president a vision for the need for Muslim countries to address the issue of counter terrorism more effectively.” To top it off, the Saudis appear on the verge of a massive spending spree in the U. S. Analysts expect deals in the tens of billions of dollars. This is in addition to nearly $100 billion of U. S. military hardware that the Saudis have already agreed to buy. Ford Fraker, a former U. S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, helped arrange two presidential visits to the kingdom by George W. Bush. He says it’s hard to overstate the importance of chemistry  —   or the lack of it  —   between a U. S. president and a Saudi king. ”It’s a terrific opportunity to forge personal relationships with senior members of the royal family, which, in many ways, is almost more important than trying to deal with specific policy issues,” Fraker said. He said Obama never got on track after a rocky start with the Saudis. ”By all reports, that first visit was not as warm and as friendly as it might have been, and it tended to set the tone for the rest of the administration,” Fraker said. No matter how well Trump and King Salman hit it off, they can’t fix everything in a weekend. The Saudis, with American backing, are waging a war in Yemen that’s going poorly. Trump and the monarch may blame Iran for regional problems, but they don’t have a clear plan to counter that. Still, Trump should be able to count on a new experience as president  —   a friendly welcome in a Muslim land."
"One of President Obama’s last acts in office was to grant clemency to dozens of people, including Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar López Rivera. On Wednesday, López Rivera was released from house arrest in Puerto Rico. The    had been in custody for seditious conspiracy since 1981. The clemency decision was controversial. ”To his supporters, he is a freedom fighter for the cause of Puerto Rican independence. To others, he’s a terrorist,” NPR’s Kelly McEvers noted at the time. López Rivera was part of a militant group that fought for Puerto Rican independence, called the FALN. ”Between 1974 and 1983, the FALN claimed responsibility for more than 70 bombings in New York, Chicago and Washington, D. C.,” Marlon Bishop and Maria Hinojosa of NPR’s Latino USA have reported. ”The bombings caused millions in property damage, dozens of injuries and five deaths.” López Rivera wasn’t charged in connection with the bombings, but for his role in the FALN. Hinojosa explains: ”The FBI had no physical evidence to prove that López Rivera set any bombs himself. So instead, he was tried for a seditious conspiracy to overthrow the power of the United States in connection with 28 FALN bombings in Chicago. ”So his supporters essentially say that seditious conspiracy is, quote, ’a political crime for simply opposing the United States government.’ And they say that his   sentence was essentially unfair. But his opponents say that he is essentially an unrepentant terrorist.” On Wednesday, López Rivera emerged from his daughter’s home in San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to The Associated Press. He had been transferred there from a prison in Terre Haute, Ind. weeks after Obama commuted his sentence. ”Roughly 50 people congregated in the streets outside the apartment building in San Juan’s Santurce district holding flowers and Puerto Rican flags, some chanting: ’Free at last! ,’” the news service added. ”A group of singers from University of Puerto Rico’s choir harmonized as Oscar drove past.” The AP says López Rivera is expected to be honored in Chicago later this week, and as well as ”at the June 11 Puerto Rican Day parade along New York’s Fifth Avenue.” As NPR has reported, a number of   figures had called for Obama to grant him clemency, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Hamilton creator   Miranda and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Chelsea Manning, the Army private who leaked a huge trove of military secrets to WikiLeaks, was part of the same group of 209 people whose sentences were commuted in January. Manning also walked free today. NPR’s Latino USA released an   podcast on Oscar López Rivera earlier this year. You can listen to it here."
"Last week, it was your editors at Goats and Soda who were the curious goats. We published a story on the huge gap in health care dollars for young and old in the developing world. A study looked at the $36. 4 billion allocated by development agencies and nonprofit donors and found that a major share goes to children under 5. The authors of the study didn’t take a position on whether this is an appropriate allocation. But they’ve heard opinions from lots of people. We wanted to know what our audience thinks. Is it right that children get most of the health aid in poor countries? Or should more money be spent on diseases of old age? Using our comment tool at the bottom of the story, they shared their perspective. Over the past week, we received dozens of responses from our readers. Here’s a sampling, edited for length and clarity. Children first  ”As a mother, I would use my last dollar to pay a dentist to pull my son’s painful tooth even if it meant not being able to pay for my cancer medicine. If you have to choose between saving your mother or your daughter, with tears in your eyes and a torn heart, you choose your child. And your parent would forgive you.”   Spend it on the workforce  ”Rationally, the highest attention should be directed to adults 20 to 50 years old, who are the most productive members of society.”   Eckerle  Don’t forget the moms  ”If you don’t take care of the mother’s health and keep her alive, you lose the most vital component of the family, the village, the community  —   and her children will suffer. Children without a mother may be subject to malnutrition, stunting, sexual abuse, child labor, child trafficking, etc.”   LaPorte, More resources to older adults  ”As aging populations grow, the incidence of chronic disease rises and so do health care costs. Unless more resources are devoted to taking care of older adults, countries will face massive financial and societal challenges in the years ahead.”   Peschin, ’Spread some extra wonderful on us’  ”I love children. I’ve worked in the health field for over 22 years and have seen first hand the good work on them, which is wonderful, But spread some extra wonderful on us. We’re your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors.”  . A. Woods  Invest in the future  ”Children are the true goal of development. Treating a geriatric woman with Alzheimer’s or diabetes will do very little for the future trajectory of the country.”   Joshi, Make it proportional to health needs  ”I think it’s fair that children get a large share of the pie. But that pie should be divided more evenly among other age groups. The funding pool should drop to its lowest [for adults] between 20 to 40 [years old] while increasing around age 50 to deal with chronic health issues for aging patients.”   Alden Smith, Thank you to everyone who participated in this month’s #CuriousGoat. "
"Texas is seeking permission from the federal government for the return of federal family planning money it lost four years ago. It lost those Medicaid funds after it excluded Planned Parenthood and other clinics affiliated with abortion providers from the state’s women’s health program. If President Trump’s administration agrees, Texas could serve as an example to other states wishing to defund Planned Parenthood clinics. In 2011, the   Texas legislature signaled its intention to end Planned Parenthood’s participation in what was then known as the Medicaid waiver program serving the state’s   women. Ninety percent of the program’s funding came from the federal government. But the Obama administration opposed Texas’ plan because Federal law requires states to fund ”any willing provider.” This is to keep states from discriminating against health care providers for ideological, racial or religious reasons. Texas decided to forgo federal funding so it could exclude Planned Parenthood from the list of providers from which women could choose to get health care. Texas then created a state program, now known as Healthy Texas Women, and Planned Parenthood is not allowed to participate. The tens of millions of dollars in federal Medicaid funding that it lost each year was the price Texas had to pay for sticking to its guns. But now that Trump is calling the shots, Texas wants that federal money back  —   while still being allowed to bar Planned Parenthood. And Texas may well have a good chance. The president recently appointed   proponents to oversee the nation’s family planning programs. If Texas is successful, abortion rights advocates worry that the state will pave the way for other Republican dominated states to set up similar exclusions, and not have to suffer the financial penalties Texas endured to boot. Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission told The New York Times, ”This is a new administration and we’re looking at what funding opportunities may exist for us.” The prospect has health care advocates worried. Dr. Georges Benjamin is the executive director of the American Public Health Association. He says it’s already forbidden to use federal dollars to fund abortions, but if Texas gets its waiver, abortion rights proponents across the country would be supporting Texas’ program through their tax dollars. ”I don’t want my federal dollars used for discriminatory practices,” Benjamin says. ”You’re now forcing other states, and other people who may have a different view on this issue to pay for the discriminatory practices that the state of Texas is trying to have, which will ultimately result in poorer health outcome for women.” Benjamin says one of the main arguments for the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited federal funding for abortions in 1977, was that forcing   proponents to fund abortion providers was an undemocratic violation of their deeply held religious beliefs. Providing Texas a waiver to receive federal Medicaid funds while excluding Planned Parenthood turns that argument on its head, he says. Abortion proponents across the country would have to see their tax dollars used to fund a Texas program that discriminates against abortion providers. In its waiver application, Texas made the case for increased federal funding by pointing out it has the highest rate of pregnancy in the nation, one of the highest teen pregnancy rates and that fully a third of the women who get pregnant in the state do so unintentionally."
"Updated at 2:30 p. m. ET, For years, Puerto Rico has grappled with an   debt crisis, watching as its   bills have grown to more than $70 billion. Including what the U. S. territory owes to pension funds, that debt exceeds $120 billion. Now, Puerto Rico’s struggle with its creditors has stepped into U. S. federal court, where an unprecedented   case opened with a hearing Wednesday. Puerto Rico filed to restructure its debt two weeks ago. That kicked off the   use of a federal law tailored specifically for the   island  —   which, because it is a territory, is not eligible for the Chapter 9 bankruptcy protections that cities such as Detroit have filed for in the past. That   law, passed last year under the name PROMESA, set up a process similar  —   though not identical  —   to bankruptcy, called Title III. It is under that provision that Puerto Rico filed for protection. As observed by Laura Taylor Swain, the U. S. district judge hearing the case, the process promises to be difficult. The way forward for Puerto Rico ”will certainly involve pain,” she said in court Wednesday. But ”failure is not an option.” Swain, of the Southern District of New York, has combined two major Title III filings made earlier this month by Puerto Rican authorities  —   one for its general obligation (or GO) debt, and one for debt that’s backed by the commonwealth’s sales tax revenues (or COFINA). Together, these two pools make for a sizable chunk of Puerto Rico’s overall   debt, as Reuters explains: ”The island’s initial bankruptcy filing on [May 3] included only its central government, which owes some $18 billion in general obligation, or GO debt, backed by its constitution. ”The COFINA filing [on May 5] will pull in another $17 billion or so in debt under the Title III umbrella. Overall the island’s government and various agencies have a debt load of $70 billion that they cannot repay.” Bloomberg reports that this distinction has already created a sizable rift between GO and COFINA bondholders, both of whom feel they should be given priority in Puerto Rico’s debt payments. Swain’s decision to merge the two filings for administrative purposes marks a small victory for the federal oversight board set up by PROMESA to handle the territory’s negotiations. Brown noted Wednesday that ”some COFINA stakeholders had objected to the motion, arguing that COFINA is a separate entity whose assets  —   in the form of sales tax revenue  —   are earmarked only for creditors.” So begins part of the ”pain” Swain mentioned. The board said Wednesday there’s just $900 million a year to service its debt  —   in other words, as Reuters points out, less than a quarter of what it needs for that purpose each year. And of course, the island’s fiscal difficulties affect not only its creditors, but its residents, too. NPR’s Greg Allen lays out what else lies in store: ”You’ve got these retirees that are owed pensions the governor said they’re going to get at least a 10 percent cut, some of them will. . .. ”They’ve just closed 180 public schools on the island which left parents and students very upset. There’s $500 million in cuts proposed for the university here, and there’s a student strike. ”So lots of pain to come here  —   and the governor is going to be releasing a budget later this month, which will show a lot more pain coming. Among the things that are going to happen is, I think, big cuts in health care benefits.” Greg says some expect the case to take as long as four to five years to reach its conclusion."
"Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning has left a military prison in Kansas and returned to civilian life Wednesday, seven years after being taken into custody for what is seen as the largest leak of classified data in U. S. history. ”After another anxious four months of waiting, the day has finally arrived,” Manning said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union. ”I am looking forward to so much! Whatever is ahead of me is far more important than the past. I’m figuring things out right now  —   which is exciting, awkward, fun, and all new for me.” Manning tweeted a photo of her   feet, taking her ”first steps of freedom” Wednesday morning. The   prison term Manning received as punishment for leaking thousands of military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 was described as unprecedented when it was handed down. Before he left office, President Barack Obama shortened the sentence to about seven years. After Manning’s release, her lawyer at the ACLU, Chase Strangio, said, ”Through extended periods of solitary confinement and up against the government’s insistence on denying her medical care and existence as a woman, Chelsea has emerged with grace, resilience, and an inspiring amount of love for others.” In court, Manning pleaded guilty to leaking secret information  —   but she was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, in July 2013. On the morning of Manning’s release, a fundraising campaign for her   expenses met its goal of raising $150, 000. In a related campaign, musicians Thurston Moore and Talib Kweli are among more than 30 acts on a benefit album that was released this week, with the proceeds going to Manning. Military personnel at the prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. where Manning was held had not provided many details about her release that was scheduled for Wednesday. Members of Manning’s support team also provided little information, citing her need for privacy and time to adjust. They’ve said she plans to live in Maryland, where she has family. Manning’s   conviction is under appeal her current status is classified as a special type of active duty, The Associated Press reports, meaning that ”she will be unpaid but will be legally entitled to military medical care,” the wire service says, citing an Army spokeswoman. Among the records Manning has admitted to passing on to WikiLeaks were a video showing a 2007 U. S. Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 11 men and 750, 000 classified documents that contained military and diplomatic dispatches. Rights groups have sharply criticized the way the government handled Manning’s case they also faulted the official response to what Amnesty International USA calls ”possible war crimes committed by the military” that are depicted in the records she released. ”Chelsea’s treatment is especially galling given that nobody has been held accountable for the alleged crimes that she brought to light,” says Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA. ”While we celebrate her freedom, we will continue to call for an independent investigation into the potential human rights violations she exposed, and for protections to be put in place to ensure whistleblowers like Chelsea are never again subjected to such appalling treatment.” Arrested in 2010, Manning had been serving in Iraq and was known as Bradley Manning. After the conviction, Manning announced she was a transgender woman and changed her name to Chelsea. A day after commuting Manning’s sentence, Obama said at his final press conference that he felt justice had been served: ”It has been my view that given she went to trial, that due process was carried out, that she took responsibility for her crime, that the sentence that she received was very disproportional  —   disproportionate relative to what other leakers had received, and that she had served a significant amount of time, that it made it sense to commute  —   and not pardon  —   her sentence.” Steven Nelson of U. S. News and World Report talked to NPR’s All Things Considered on Sunday: ”Part of the reason that the White House justified granting her clemency was because it was so much longer than other recent leak sentences. In a lot of the cases, people plead guilty and get maybe a year in prison. But 35 years really shocked people. And the seven years that had already been served was seen as enough by the Obama White House.” Nelson also told host Mary Louise Kelly that there’s a difference between Manning’s case and that of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor, who leaked information. ”Manning as a    wanted to spark a broad worldwide discussion of various injustices she perceived in scandals, whereas Snowden who had access to more highly classified documents had a very specific policy debate he wanted to start about surveillance. And he left the country, rather than be arrested. ”When the Obama administration was preparing to grant Manning clemency, they drew the distinction that Manning had faced trial, that Manning had expressed some degree of contrition. Snowden, of course, is totally unrepentant, feels he did the right thing. So that’s a real distinction. He hasn’t been tried, he’s not sorry, and Manning was both.” While in prison, Manning had to transition as a woman in a male military facility. She has tried to commit suicide twice. But since her impending release was announced, Manning’s outlook has brightened. Last week, she released a statement saying: ”For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea. I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world. Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine. Now, freedom is something that I will again experience with friends and loved ones after nearly seven years of bars and cement, of periods of solitary confinement, and of my health care and autonomy restricted, including through routinely forced haircuts. I am forever grateful to the people who kept me alive, President Obama, my legal team and countless supporters. ”I watched the world change from inside prison walls and through the letters that I have received from veterans, trans young people, parents, politicians and artists. My spirits were lifted in dark times, reading of their support, sharing in their triumphs, and helping them through challenges of their own. I hope to take the lessons that I have learned, the love that I have been given, and the hope that I have to work toward making life better for others.”"
"Common blood tests for lead can give   results in certain cases, according to a new warning from the Food and Drug Administration. The tests, manufactured by Magellan Diagnostics, are commonly used in doctors’ offices and clinics, and on its website the company calls itself ”the most trusted name in lead testing.” But the FDA now says that its tests can give inaccurate results when used to test blood drawn from a vein. The majority of lead tests are not conducted with that kind of blood sample, but rather blood from a heel or finger prick, says Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. ”We have no evidence that Magellan’s tests, when used with blood obtained from a finger or heel stick, are impacted,” says Shuren. ”We believe most people will not be affected by this issue.” For example, in 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all children under the age 6 years in Flint, Mich. get   as part of the response to the crisis there. Patrick Breysse, director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental health, says they have a lot of information about that testing, and have determined that ”less than one percent, perhaps, might be at risk for being   because they were a venous draw that were tested on the Magellan system.” Officials are recommending retesting for certain children, pregnant women and nursing mothers who did get tested using blood from a vein. And the FDA says it’s aggressively investigating why these tests can give inaccurate results. Officials say the company first became aware of a potential problem through complaints received in the fall of 2014, and developed a mitigation plan, which was to basically just delay processing of the sample for 24 hours. ”And that completely resolved the problem. They communicated with their customers, their customers acknowledged receipt, and that was it,” says Shuren. But earlier this year, when FDA officials became aware of the problem, Shuren says the agency believed that the company had underestimated the risk to the public, and that the data supporting the mitigation plan wasn’t sufficient. Between the beginning of 2014 to today, officials say, an estimated 8 million blood lead tests have been run using the Magellan systems, and the majority of those were for capillary blood from finger or heel sticks. ”From a coverage perspective, particularly for those kids on Medicaid, we would expect that the Medicaid programs in those states would be covering and paying for the retesting,” says Timothy Hill, the Acting Director for the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, which is part of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. ”For those who are covered privately, we would encourage folks to consult with their health plan.” Asked why taxpayers or insurance companies should have to pay for retesting, Hill said the first priority is to get kids retested if they need retesting, and officials do not want reimbursement to hold that up. ”It’s my understanding that the, sort of, conversations with Magellan are ongoing,” says Hill. ”Speaking as to whether or not Magellan has liability or not is not something I can speak to.” In response to NPR’s inquiries, a spokesperson with Magellan pointed to a letter to its customers that the company published this morning."
"Amid several swirling crises engulfing his administration, President Trump used part of his speech Wednesday to graduates at the United States Coast Guard Academy to complain about how unfairly he was being treated by the media. ”Over the course of your life, you will find that things are not always fair. You will find that things happen to you that you do not deserve and that are not always warranted,” the president told graduates of the military service academy in New London, Conn. ”But you have to put your head down and fight, fight, fight.” ”Never ever, ever give up. Things will work out just fine,” Trump continued, in what sounded like a pep talk to himself as much as to the graduates. ”Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media,” the president said as some in the crowd chuckled. ”No politician in history  —   and I say this with great surety  —   has been treated worse or more unfairly,” Trump claimed. ”You can’t let them get you down. You can’t let the critics and the naysayers get in the way of your dreams.” The commencement speech marked Trump’s first public comments after a bombshell report Tuesday evening that the president had asked   Director James Comey to shut down an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. That’s according to a memo Comey wrote about the encounter, first reported by The New York Times and later confirmed to NPR by two sources close to Comey. The president was unusually quiet on Twitter on Wednesday morning, his preferred social media method to weigh in on the controversy du jour. Trump fired Comey last week, and questions continue to swirl about how much that decision was motivated by the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. Trump met last week with Russian officials just one day after he fired Comey, and on Monday, The Washington Post and other news organizations reported that the president had revealed ”highly classified information” to them reportedly from Israel, a key U. S. ally. Trump defended himself on Twitter Tuesday morning, saying that he had the ”absolute right” to share information involving ISIS and possible plots to plant bombs in laptops on airlines. But intelligence experts have warned that such a reveal to the Russians could damage other U. S. relationships in gathering information and that the Russians could have even passed on the information to their ally Iran, which is a major threat to Israel in the Middle East. The comments to Coast Guard graduates echo ones Trump made at his first commencement address as president this past weekend at Liberty University. ”No one has ever achieved anything significant without a chorus of critics standing on the sidelines explaining why it can’t be done,” Trump told graduates at the evangelical school in Lynchburg, Va. ”Nothing is easier or more pathetic than being a critic, because they’re people that can’t get the job done.”"
"For his first commencement speech as president, Donald Trump went back to a place that was once key to his efforts as a candidate to shore up support among the Republican base. Standing before tens of thousands of members of the Class of 2017 and their families at Liberty University’s   stadium in Lynchburg, Va. Trump thanked the crowd for helping him achieve the presidency. ”I wanna thank you because, boy, did you come out and vote  —   those of you that are old enough in other words, your parents,” Trump said. ”Boy, oh boy, you voted. You voted!” A strong majority of evangelicals voted for Trump in November despite some predictions to the contrary. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. was one of the first leading white evangelical figures to endorse Trump during the Republican primary season, though that decision wasn’t universally supported at his university. In his speech, Trump jokingly nodded to the difficult odds he’d once faced. ”Right here, the Class of 2017, dressed in cap and gown, graduating to a totally brilliant future and here I am, standing before you as president of the United States. So I’m guessing there are some people here today who thought that either one of those things  —   either one  —   would really require major help from God,” Trump said, drawing laughter and applause from the crowd. Trump bypassed more traditional options for a first presidential commencement speech, like the University of Notre Dame, instead sending Vice President Mike Pence. As graduation speeches go, Trump struck familiar themes: he urged students to be persistent, follow their passions and chart their own paths in life. He occasionally sounded   as he imparted wisdom to the graduates. ”I’ve seen so many people, they’re forced through lots of reasons  —   sometimes including family  —   to go down a path that they don’t want to go down, to go down a path that leads then to something that they don’t love, that they don’t enjoy,” Trump said. ”You have to do what you love, or you most likely won’t be very successful at it.” Trump also seemed to allude several times to the 2016 campaign  —   advising students to claim the label of ”outsider” and not be discouraged by naysayers. ”The more that a broken system tells you that you’re wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead, you must keep pushing forward,” Trump said. ”And always have the courage to be yourself.” The president’s speech included plenty of language tailored to the conservative Christian audience. He alluded to his recent executive order billed as protecting religious freedom, though some critics said the language actually changes very little. ”America is better when people put their faith into action,” Trump said. ”As long as I am president, no one is ever going to stop you from practicing your faith or from preaching what’s in your heart.” Trump’s visit to this bastion of support came after a tumultuous week in which he fired FBI Director James Comey and faced questions about whether the timing of the firing could be related to an ongoing investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Russian officials  —   after a determination by the U. S. intelligence community that Russia had meddled in the election to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. He steered clear of that subject, making only sidelong swipes at his critics. ”No one has ever achieved anything significant without a chorus of critics standing on the sidelines explaining why it can’t be done,” Trump said. ”Nothing is easier or more pathetic than being a critic, because they’re people that can’t get the job done.” He found few critics at Liberty University. Falwell, Jr. praised Trump’s first few months in office, pointing to Trump’s selection of U. S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, his decision to stack his Cabinet with religious conservatives and what Falwell described as bombing ”those in the Middle East who are persecuting and killing Christians.” Falwell said he’s pleased with Trump’s performance so far. ”I do not believe that any president in our lifetimes has done so much that has benefited the Christian community in such a short time span than Donald Trump,” he said. Several Liberty graduates and their families said they felt much the same. Lanora Hale came from Millville, N. J. to watch her son graduate with a master’s degree. Hale said she’s solidly behind Trump. ”I really think he’s doing great. He’s trying  —   if people give him a chance, you know. People gotta give him a chance,” Hale said. Hale said she wants to see a tighter connection between religion and government  —   perhaps prayer in public schools  —   and she sees Trump as friendly toward that goal. ”I really am glad that he’s putting God back into everything,” she said.   elementary education graduate Rachel Kreisel of Boca Raton, Fla. agrees. ”[I want] to bring Christ back into our nation and into our schools, since we don’t have him in schools rights now it’s just silent prayers,” she said, ”I would love to see the prayers back into schools because it makes a big difference.” For Josh Kirkland of Pensacola, Fla. graduating with a bachelor’s degree in cinema, it was an ”honor” to have the president speak at commencement. But he said it’s ”early to say” what to make of Trump’s unconventional presidency. ”He’s certainly been busy,” Kirkland said, ”both in the office and on Twitter.”"
"President Trump gave a eulogy on Thursday for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. ”Obamacare is collapsing. It’s dead. It’s gone,” Trump said in a news conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. ”There’s nothing to compare it to because we don’t have health care in this country,” he went on. That left some Obamacare customers scratching their heads  —   figuratively  —   on Twitter. Doktor Zoom, for example, wondered why he’s still paying a premium. In fact, we do have health care in this country  —   quite a lot of it. The U. S. spent about $3. 2 trillion on health care in 2015, or nearly $10, 000 per person. It accounts for 17. 8 percent of GDP. But the president wasn’t talking about health care per se. He was talking about Obamacare, which Republicans are trying to replace with legislation currently in the hands of the Senate. Even the picture of the current health law isn’t as bad as Trump tried to paint it, though. In the years since the Affordable Care Act went into effect, the uninsured rate fell to about 10 percent, the lowest level in U. S. history. About 10 million people have bought insurance through the exchanges created by the health care law. Another 10 million got coverage through the expansion of Medicaid. That’s not to say the Obamacare marketplaces aren’t struggling. In some states insurers are pulling out of the markets because they’re losing money, as Trump pointed out. ”Aetna just pulled out. Other insurance companies are pulling out,” he said. That’s true. Aetna pulled out of all the Obamacare exchanges. In some states  —   Tennessee and Iowa, for example  —   there are areas that risk having no insurer at all. And premiums have been rising across the country. Still, the overall Obamacare picture isn’t so stark. Standard  Poors, for example, said last month that insurance companies that offer health plans on the exchanges are losing less money than ever, and the markets are becoming more stable. The Kaiser Family Foundation says more than half the population has the choice of three or more insurers if it wants to buy a policy on the exchanges. And most people who get insurance through the Affordable Care Act receive subsidies to offset the rate increases. Several insurance companies, however, have said the uncertainty caused by Republican efforts to repeal the law have led them to either pull out of the markets or raise their rates for next year. So when Trump says, as he did today, ”Obamacare is a fallacy. It’s dead,” that’s not exactly true. But he hopes to help make it so."
"Robert Mueller, who has been appointed to handle the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, took the reins as FBI director a week before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. That day would influence his entire   run leading the agency. Mueller oversaw arguably the most significant changes the   FBI had gone through, and he received praise from lawmakers from both parties on Wednesday for his commitment to justice. ”I had been a prosecutor before, so I anticipated spending time on public corruption cases and narcotics cases and bank robberies and the like,” he told NPR in 2013. ”And Sept. 11 changed all of that.” Mueller overhauled the agency to prioritize, first, the threat of terrorism from groups like   and the Taliban and then, later, the threat from individuals not affiliated with any particular group, like the Tsarnaev brothers, who were behind the Boston Marathon bombing. He moved thousands of agents from criminal investigations into counterterrorism and national security. He detailed the changes in 2003, at an American Civil Liberties Union conference: ”The Sept. 11 attacks against New York and Washington changed the course of history. ”They changed the meaning of national security for the United States and dramatically shifted FBI priorities so that the prevention of terrorist attacks became the FBI’s top priority and overriding focus. ”While we remain committed to our other important national security and law enforcement responsibilities, the prevention of terrorism takes precedence in our thinking and planning in our hiring and staffing in our training and technologies and, most importantly, in our investigations.” As his   run as director was coming to a close, Mueller also began prioritizing cyberthreats. John Pistole, Mueller’s former deputy director at the FBI, told NPR near the end of Mueller’s term that it was hard to overstate the director’s footprint on the agency. ”He directed and implemented what is arguably the most significant change in the FBI’s [entire] history,” Pistole said. Still, despite enjoying broad support from both sides of the aisle, his tenure with the FBI wasn’t without its issues. In the   there were calls to break up the FBI, and in 2007, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General blasted the agency for its   practices. In a glowing editorial in 2011, The Washington Post editorial board praised Mueller’s response to those critiques, saying he moved ”assertively to fix the problems.” ”It was not the first time Mr. Mueller showed character under fire,” the board wrote. ”In 2002, after learning of other agencies’ possible interrogation abuses at the U. S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Mueller ordered FBI agents to stay clear of such techniques. And in 2004, he joined other   law enforcement officials in threatening to resign if the administration failed to address legal problems with the terrorist surveillance program.” Among the other officials threatening to resign from the Justice Department at that time was James Comey. Comey did in fact resign as deputy attorney general in 2005, and eight years later, he was confirmed as director of the FBI. His firing from that position on May 9 led legislators, mostly Democrats, to ratchet up calls for the special investigator role Mueller is taking on. Comey’s dismissal cut short the traditional   term. Mueller ultimately served 12 years, after President Barack Obama asked Congress to extend his term for two extra years in 2011. The president argued that the country’s national security agencies needed consistency, as the Pentagon and CIA were also getting new leaders at the time. In a vote that showed Mueller’s broad appeal to Republicans and Democrats, Congress voted unanimously at the time to approve the request. ”The fact that some are playing politics does not mean that he’ll cease being law enforcement,” said former Attorney General John Ashcroft on Wednesday. ”Frankly, the barking dogs or the clamor of politics won’t affect what he does.” Ashcroft, who worked closely with Mueller, added that he used to call Mueller ”  McGraw” because of his evenhandedness. Within the FBI, Mueller became known for his gruff taciturnity. Earlier in life, Mueller served as a U. S. Marine officer and was a federal prosecutor in three U. S. attorneys’ offices. He graduated from Princeton University in 1966 and received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1973. Former Justice Department prosecutor David Margolis once joked that Mueller could have been perfect for a different,   job. ”A job he was born for, and has spent his whole life preparing for, drill instructor at Parris Island,” Margolis said at an awards ceremony near the time Mueller left the FBI. Even the normally stoic Mueller broke into a laugh at that one."
"Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein knew President Trump planned to fire FBI Director Jim Comey before he sat down to write a memo criticizing Comey’s conduct. That’s according to several United States senators who met with Rosenstein Thursday afternoon in a secure room in the Capitol basement. ”He knew that Comey was going to be removed prior to writing his memo,” Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill told reporters after the briefing. Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin echoed McCaskill, saying Rosenstein told lawmakers that he knew of Trump’s intent the day before he wrote a document that the White House initially said was the main reason Comey was dismissed. Trump undercut that timeline in an interview last week, but in a news conference on Thursday, he said he relied on Rosenstein’s recommendation to make his decision. Rosenstein fielded questions in the closed session for more than an hour, but many senators left the briefing unsatisfied. ”He answered a lot of questions but declined to answer a lot, as well,” Durbin said. ”And many of the questions he declined to answer came down to his concern of whether he might interfere with the investigation by Robert Mueller.” Mueller is the man Rosenstein tapped Wednesday to head the U. S. Justice Department’s investigation into whether anyone on Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian operatives who sought to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The appointment won Rosenstein wide praise from Republicans and Democrats. ”The general consensus is it was a good decision to pick a special counsel,” said South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, saying most lawmakers have ”a lot of confidence in Mr. Mueller,” who ran the FBI for 12 years. But Graham said that Mueller’s appointment now shifts the FBI probe into a higher gear, and is likely to hamper the House and Senate intelligence committees’ investigations into Russian electoral interference. ”You’re pretty well knocked out of the game,” he said about the ongoing   congressional probes, ”and that’s probably the way it should be.” ”Congress has been pretty much sidelined. Not completely, but pretty much,” Graham said. His argument: Congressional interviews and hearings could inadvertently harm or complicate the criminal investigation. ”If I were Mr. Mueller I would jealously guard the witness pool,” Graham said. ”So one of the big losers in this decision is the public,” because fewer people would be likely to testify in open congressional hearings. The winners of such a shift could be congressional Republicans. That’s something that, perhaps inadvertently, Graham nodded to. ”We can go back to dealing with legislative matters that affect the American people.” ”We don’t want to do anything to get in the way,” said Texas Republican John Cornyn, who serves as majority whip. ”That is a train wreck waiting to happen.” Democrats disagree. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he is determined to press forward with public hearings. ”I would be very discouraged if somehow this new special prosecutor would preclude Jim Comey from testifying in public before our committee,” he said. ”Nothing really has changed. The scope of the investigation is still the same.” Democrats  —   and many Republicans  —   had been eager to hear from Comey after reports emerged this week that Trump may have urged the   director to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. ”I hope you can let this go,” Trump said, according to multiple Comey associates. Trump has denied the conversation took place. ”The Intelligence Committee in the Senate has to continue its work, and it should continue full throttle ahead,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the briefing. ”And the need for former Director Comey to come testify in public soon is as great as ever.”"
"Updated at 5:57 p. m. ET, In his first   remarks amid burgeoning scandals engulfing his White House, President Trump denied he asked   Director James Comey to scuttle an investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. ”No. No. Next question,” Trump responded curtly to a reporter during a news conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Thursday afternoon. The press conference was also one of Trump’s last opportunities to speak on the record to the American media before his first trip overseas as president later this week. Comey  —   whom Trump fired May 9  —   wrote a memo memorializing a discussion with the president about Flynn and the FBI’s investigation, two sources close to the former FBI director who had seen the memo confirmed to NPR. And on Tuesday, with that latest report fanning the flames on the growing fallout from Trump’s decision to terminate Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced he was appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller to oversee the Department of Justice investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump blasted that decision, echoing his Thursday morning tweets and comments he made over lunch with network news anchors that the Russia investigation is a ”witch hunt” that ”divides the country.” ”There is no collusion between, certainly myself and my campaign, but I can only speak for myself and the Russians. Zero,” Trump said during the press conference. ”Believe me, there’s no collusion,” the president continued. ”Russia is fine, but whether it’s Russia or anybody else, my total priority, believe me, is the United States of America.” ”Everybody, even my enemies, have said there was no collusion,” Trump added, even though some Democrats have voiced concerns about possible collusion and suggested a thorough investigation was necessary. Trump also changed his story once again about the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing, returning again to the White House’s original rationale that he based his decision on Rosenstein’s recommendation. That was the White House’s position initially after the deputy attorney general argued in a memo that Comey had erred in handling the FBI’s investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server, even though Trump had praised Comey on the campaign trail last year. Trump later said in an interview with NBC News he was going to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein’s recommendation. Sen. Claire McCaskill,  . however, told reporters, after Rosenstein briefed the full Senate Thursday afternoon, that the deputy attorney general said he knew Comey would be dismissed by Trump before writing the memo that the White House released when it announced the firing. Trump also said he would announce his pick to succeed Comey soon and told reporters in the Oval Office with Santos just before their joint news conference that 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee and former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman was among the finalists."
"At a Senate hearing Thursday, Sen. Sherrod Brown,   accused Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin of failing to answer his questions about President Trump’s business ties to people who might be violating money laundering and other U. S. laws. Mnuchin responded by suggesting Brown ”just send me a note on what you are looking for.” Brown pointed out that he had already sent a   letter. The Senate Banking Committee hearing provided the kind of sharp exchange that underscores the gap between what Democrats in Congress want to know about Trump’s business dealings, and what Trump administration officials appear ready to provide. Here’s the    between Brown and Mnuchin: ”I haven’t received an answer that I asked for  —   about potential conflicts of interest and ownership in the [Trump] administration,” Brown said, referring to a March 2 letter he wrote to Treasury. The letter requested a ”comprehensive list” of the Trump family’s ”investors, business partners, politically exposed persons and related actors.” Such a list is needed to reveal whether Trump’s associates and investors have been in compliance with laws related to bank secrecy, sanctions, money laundering and other regulations, Brown said. ”Would you commit to us to get a complete list of Trump business associates and financial ties?” Brown demanded. ”People want to know about those entanglements.” Mnuchin replied by saying he had checked to make sure ”my staff had fully responded to all the inquiries from you and the committee, and I believe we have.” He pointed to a March 31 letter that Treasury had sent to Brown. That brief letter contained no list of Trump associates. Instead, the   response said only that Treasury officials would ”work with agency personnel to address and mitigate potential conflicts if and when they arise.” Mnuchin then suggested Brown send a note about what he wants, and ”we will review internally whether it’s appropriate to come from us or somewhere else.” Brown again said that he already had asked his question and, ”it was not answered.” He added that he would write to Treasury again requesting a ”complete list” of Trump associates because ”people in this country are troubled by the president’s business connections” who might be involved in crimes. Mnuchin replied by saying, ”I can assure you that if there were any cases that involved the president or any members of his family, that they would be treated very seriously.”"
"As the   child of parents who emigrated from India, comic Hasan Minhaj often feels a little out of place. ”I exist in this hyphen,” he says. ”I’m an    kid, but am I more Indian or am I more American? What part of my identity am I?” Those are the kinds of questions Minhaj deliberately sidestepped when was getting his start in comedy. ”It was almost like I was on the playground all over again,” he says of his early career. ”I just was afraid if I get real . .. people aren’t going to like it they’re going to think I’m a freak.” After years doing   Minhaj became a correspondent with The Daily Show in 2014. The following year, he starred in Homecoming King, a     show in which he began to open up on stage about his experiences as a ”third culture kid” who doesn’t fully share in either the culture of his parents or that of his hometown of Davis, Calif. ”It wasn’t until I started exploring the personal stuff, the    stuff, that I kind of got a chance to be more open to the audience and to my family,” he says. Minhaj’s new   special, which is also called Homecoming King, is available on Netflix starting Tuesday. On his father’s strict rules growing up, One of the biggest things immigrant kids oftentimes feel is . .. this big disparity between our parents and us. And our parents are staunch pragmatists and I consider myself to be an optimist. . .. His rules with me growing up were very simple: no fun, no friends, no girlfriends. You can have fun in med school, which is, like, a huge lie. Terry, that’s just a blatant lie. All my Indian friends and   friends that are in medicine or pharmacy, they will tell you: It doesn’t get poppin’ in dental school. It doesn’t all of a sudden get fun where you go to a club and see a bunch of dudes going crazy, like, ”What’s going on fellas?” ”What’s going on? Residency! I’m having the time of my life.” It doesn’t work like that! Again, I felt like for my dad . .. I have to deliver the dream. I am aware of that. I go back to Aligarh and I go back to Delhi often, where my cousins live now, and I’m very aware of the opportunity that I have when I go meet them. That’s where I understand and I empathize with what my dad feels. On his mother taking his newborn younger sister to live in India while she finished her residency there, My younger sister, Ayesha, was born in the States and then, at 2 months after her birth, she went to go live with my grandparents and be raised [in India]. So I didn’t officially, officially get a chance to really meet her until I was 8 [and Ayesha was 5]. The tough thing was, again, a lot of immigrant households, when you come to the States, you don’t have the bandwidth and set up to accommodate a lot of things. My dad is working full time I’m at school and then I’m going to . .. an after school daycare program and now we have a newborn, my little sister. My mom is doing residency and rotations, so she’s at a hospital all day. There just wasn’t that infrastructure to care for this newborn baby, and financially that wasn’t there. My grandparents were in India and it was set up in such a way that she could be raised and she was around cousins and it was an amazing way for her to grow up. Our narratives are very different. She grew up in India. Like, literally, it took a village. She was around people that loved her and were there for her, and I was this brown kid who was alone in America with his dad. So when she came back, I was just like, I hate this person. Who are you? I just wanted a mom, and now I got you. On how doing speech and debate in high school led him to comedy  In high school I didn’t know what comedy was, but I was involved in speech and debate and public speaking. . .. Believe it or not, they are very similar. . .. My favorite comedians are just presenting an argument and they’re doing it in a funny way. And whenever I would do speech and debate, . .. if you can make the judges laugh or if you could ridicule your opponent’s position and make the judges laugh, I always would do better on the scorecard. . .. That’s when I really wanted to get into political comedy and talk about a lot of these topics that sometimes would be too taboo to talk about in other settings. On how getting a job at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart marked a turning point in how his parents viewed his career, They finally could believe that I would be OK because . .. Jon, to my dad, was somebody that you could trust and he was somebody that had figured things out. . .. He was like, ”If Jon Stewart says you’re alright, then I think you’ll be OK.” Just having that    —   more than having steady income and getting to have your dream job  —   having that   with your parents was just a huge deal. On election night and trying to get his mom home from a visit to India once it became clear Trump was going to win  We were doing a live show that night it was our election night special. We had a script written that followed what we thought was going to happen, that Hillary Clinton would be president. [But] as . .. the results were coming in, we’re literally tearing apart our script. We’re rewriting a   live show in real time, and I’m on WhatsApp audio with my mom. My mom [is] being like, ”We’re watching the news. I’m with your grandma. What’s going on?” So I’m trying to write jokes about Trump winning the election while I’m on Kayak. com looking up tickets for her to come back. . .. It was a horrible 48 hours. . .. And not knowing that everything will be OK was just really awful. . .. We managed to get her home. . .. I didn’t want to risk anything. On hosting the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Dinner and being asked not to roast President Trump, The irony to me was the theme of the night was about honoring the First Amendment, and you want me to censor myself? That to me  —   I couldn’t do it. . .. Especially given the fact that the person that I’m roasting, the president, is someone who has so exploited that incredible privilege of free speech. The man who tweets whatever enters his head doesn’t even want to honor the amendment that allows him to do it. That to me just blows my mind. So I wanted to make the conscious choice of, Hey, I will roast his merit and I will roast the decisions he’s made. I will try to be as tasteful as possible, but I have to talk about this. Radio producers Ann Marie Baldonado and Mooj Zadie and Web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Nicole Cohen contributed to this story. "
"For a young Donald Trump in the 1970s, the Grand Hyatt hotel on East 42nd Street was his first major development project, a chance to make a splash in the   world of New York City real estate. Yet the glitzy   hotel never would have been possible without an almost unprecedented   tax abatement from the city, which was then recovering from a painful fiscal crisis. ”Essentially, what they did was, they said, ’We’ll give you a massive cut in the property taxes you have to pay,” said Timothy O’Brien, author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. ”The tax abatement was crucial. It was crucial to the finances of the deal making sense at the time it was struck. It was crucial to the banks who loaned him money to get it done,” O’Brien adds. ”So in tandem all of those things were very important. It couldn’t have been done without them.” Over the years, Trump has eagerly sought out federal, state and local tax breaks whenever possible, and they have added significantly to his bottom line. When he built Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in the 1980s, he successfully sued the city to get a tax abatement on the property. When he wasn’t seeking tax breaks, Trump was lobbying local governments to lower the appraised value of his hotels and casinos in order to reduce his property tax bill. Although Trump has never released his tax returns, The New York Times estimated last year that he has gotten at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants and other subsidies for his properties in the city. That doesn’t include the many breaks he got for his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Nevada. ”He’s had massive tax disputes in Palm Beach around   . He’s used various forms of tax arguments on his golf courses, looking for environmental easements and different definitions of how he was going to use the property in order to lower the cost,” O’Brien says. Many cities see tax abatements as a way of encouraging development and fending off blight, although critics say they are sometimes handed out for properties that don’t really need them. Getting a tax abatement isn’t illegal, and in fact they are part of the negotiations in real estate development deals all over the country. But in New York, at least, few developers have succeeded the way Trump has. ”Long before Trump ran for president, he was known in New York City as a developer who was consummate at finding and obtaining these tax breaks, even when these tax breaks weren’t specifically designed for his types of projects,” says Nicole Gelinas, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. ”If you look at what other developers have done over that same time period, what Trump did was unusual in scale but not unusual in type,” she adds. Trump was able to take advantage of these breaks because local politicians allowed it, Gelinas notes. ”These were sophisticated city and state politicians who designed these programs much better. They could have designed them much better. They could have cracked down on the loopholes that Trump drove his bulldozers right through,” she says. Still, Trump has often advocated a simpler tax code, free of the many loopholes and exemptions that make tax payments such a pain. His own frequent use of tax breaks in his business dealings suggest he’s not above taking advantage of those breaks. ”For a candidate who has espoused the many virtues of the free market,” O’Brien says, ”Donald Trump’s business wouldn’t be possible but for major government subsidies.”"
"Updated at 7:20 p. m. ET, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz says he will resign his congressional seat effective June 30. He first made the announcement in a statement on his website, ending weeks of speculation about his plans. Chaffetz talked to reporters about his decision from his home in Alpine, Utah, later Thursday. Sitting next to his wife, Julie, and their dog, Ruby, Chaffetz said after nearly eight in years in Congress, he wanted a change. ”I think I’ll actually miss the chaos I kind of thrive in that,” he said. ”But when you like what you do and you enjoy your job, but you love your family, at some point you have to make a choice, and I just choose my family much more than I do my life in Congress.” The congressman is recovering from foot surgery, which has kept him mostly homebound for the past few weeks. He said the experience has allowed him to reconnect with his wife and youngest daughter, who is finishing her sophomore year in high school. Chaffetz would not discuss his next career move, which some have speculated might include a cable news gig, but he said he planned to keep his residence in Utah. ”I want to still have a voice,” he said of whether he would stay involved in politics. ”In large part, I’m still putting that together. You can’t really finalize things until you actually leave.” Chaffetz previously has not ruled out another run for public office at some point in the future. His campaign registered the Web domains JasonChaffetz2028. com and Jason2028. com in early April. The    Republican announced last month he would not seek a sixth term in 2018, surprising many in Congress and even his inner circle. Chaffetz was first elected to represent Utah’s 3rd Congressional District in 2008 and quickly rose through the ranks to chair the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. During his tenure, the   congressman launched   and frequently controversial investigations into the Obama administration and other Democratic targets, notably Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. Earlier this week, Chaffetz said he had asked former FBI Director James Comey to testify in front of the committee and subpoenaed memos detailing communications between Comey and President Trump. Since Trump’s election, Chaffetz has faced increasing pressure from constituents to more aggressively scrutinize President Trump’s business dealings and his campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. At a town hall in February, Chaffetz faced angry voters who booed and shouted ”Do your job!” in videos that quickly went viral. Chaffetz later said that the negative reception was the result of ”paid protesters.” Other Republicans have also faced heat from constituents, but Chaffetz’s prominent role and frequent media appearances have made him a lightning rod for critics who say he has not pursued oversight of the Trump administration with the same fervor he did President Barack Obama’s. Asked Thursday whether he had any regrets about his time in Congress, Chaffetz said he would like to have completed more investigations. ”I think the Clinton email investigation is still not complete, and it is such importance to the nation,” he said. ”I’ve been disappointed in the Trump administration because they have not loosened up the documents in the State Department and Justice Department.” With several investigations still ongoing, Chaffetz said he was not worried about other Republican members of the committee continuing his work. ”I loved being in the driver’s seat, but . .. there are lots of good people who care about these issues and are   to carry out these investigations,” he said. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert on Thursday said his office is making plans to hold a special election to fill Chaffetz’s seat  ” only the second time in state history a congressional vacancy has occurred. Herbert said he believes a primary and general election could be conducted fairly quickly, leaving Chaffetz’s seat empty for two to four months."
"Of course it’s a story about death and Seattle music. I woke up this morning after bad dreams last night, only to find the real nightmare  —   that Chris Cornell of Soundgarden was dead. As with all these losses it seems surreal, untrue, unimaginable. But there it is. If there was one Seattle band of the ”grunge” era that seemed more ”Seattle” than any other, it was Soundgarden. Nirvana was actually from Aberdeen, and not a single member lived in Seattle until 1992 Pearl Jam didn’t become a band until Eddie Vedder arrived from San Diego. But Soundgarden was truly Seattle. Chris Cornell went to high school ten blocks from my house, though for accuracy, that’s just outside the Seattle city limits (and, for accuracy, he dropped out of that high school). Soundgarden also started before all those bands. The Screaming Life EP, which came out on Sub Pop on October 1, 1987, beat all those other bands to the punch. I was editor of the Seattle music magazine The Rocket in those days, and we were the first place to publish on Soundgarden, putting them on our cover when they were playing to just twenty people. That was probably appropriate, in that our magazine was located in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle (now dominated by Amazon) which was   and filled with taverns. Soundgarden made one of these, the Ditto Tavern, one of their homes. Seeing them there early on, you had the sense they truly had something, but there honestly would be only a dozen people in the audience. Cornell, however, had a singing voice that sounded like stardom. We once put him on the cover of the The Rocket and headlined it ”Golden Throats.” During a photo shoot for another cover story we had the members of Soundgarden stand in Green Lake covered with mud, an homage to Mudhoney (another Seattle band in that era still trying to find an audience). Soundgarden was a slow burn, and nowhere near an overnight success. The band was on three record labels before it broke, and its biggest year was 1994, after Kurt Cobain died and when many saw the Seattle scene ebbing. But Superunknown was a record that could not be denied, and ”Fell on Black Days” may be my favorite vocal of that entire era. When they finally got through, Soundgarden’s members had already done their   hours  —   they’d been a band for almost a decade by the time they topped the charts. ”We didn’t make four records that all sounded the same and the fourth one sold a lot,” Cornell told me in 1995. ”If anyone looks back at our history, our fans who have been around know we’re not going to pull the rug out from under anybody. ”It could be that it’s taken us so long to reach this level of success that our own perceptions haven’t really caught up with it yet,” he told me. Soundgarden had a few more good years after that, but temporarily broke up in 1997. Cornell joined Audioslave, then did some solo records. There were gems in his   songs. A few miscues. I wrote a negative review of his attempt to cover Michael Jackson’s ”Billie Jean,” and he was unhappy about the review. That didn’t really change our relationship. I was the hometown writer, the guy he knew had been at the Ditto Tavern. I interviewed him a bunch after that still, and wrote bio material for Audioslave, and the Temple of the Dog reissue last year. It was no secret that he had always struggled with depression, but drugs were also something he admitted to the press he’d battled with. That story for Chris  —   for Seattle, for anyone who has battled with addiction  —   is so complicated it can’t be easily distilled. We don’t know the full story yet, and words almost can’t capture the level of the loss. Sometimes that feels like it is a story unique to Seattle music  —   darkness equals Seattle  —   but it is not a linkage of just one city and loss. It’s a human story. Often it was loss that Chris and I talked about, either in official interviews, or when the tape recorder wasn’t running. Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone had been Chris’s roommate when Andrew overdosed, and that loss forever shaped Chris as a musician and as a person. Sometimes you thought that Chris’s entire career  —   and not just the Temple of the Dog album  —   was a tribute to Andy. In one of those conversations, Chris told of me Andy, ”I don’t know that we understood the full power of his aura and what he meant to all of us. ”It wasn’t just like that I lost a friend,” he said. ”It was bigger than that.” Later in that same talk, in 2011, Chris looked up and seemed to be grabbing his thoughts, having a hard time keeping it together. ”There are a lot of fallen soldiers out there,” he said. Today, my bad dream from last night tells me there is one more. Charles R. Cross is the author of nine books, including three New York Times’ bestsellers. His 2001 biography of Kurt Cobain, Heavier Than Heaven, won the ASCAP Timothy White Award, and has been published in dozens of countries. Cross was Editor of The Rocket, the Seattle music magazine, from 1986 through 2000, which helped launch and break the grunge movement. As a journalist he was written for hundreds of newspapers and magazines including Rolling Stone, Esquire, Spin, Spy, Entertainment Weekly, Guitar World, Us, Salon, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Playboy, Q, Mojo and many more."
"Dozens of scientists recently glued fake green caterpillars onto plants around the world in an unusual study to see how the caterpillars’ risk of getting eaten varied from pole to pole. Any ant, slug, lizard, bird or beetle that attacked the soft clay caterpillars left telltale bite marks that were later analyzed by a lab in Finland. It turns out the risk of being eaten was eight times higher at the equator than close to the poles, according to a newly published report in the journal Science. ”I mean, it sounds kind of like child’s play, I realize,” says researcher Liz Nichols of Swarthmore College. ”But this kind of massive, simple, standardized technique is really powerful when you can implement it at a global scale in a really   way.” The idea for the study came when researcher Tomas Roslin at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences was trying to use fake caterpillars to study predation risk in Greenland. He says it’s an old technique that’s been around for a long time. But he wasn’t having any luck  —   predators just weren’t attacking the dummy caterpillars. When he talked about his problem with his colleague Eleanor Slade at the University of Oxford, she told him she’d had a lot of success using them in rain forests in Borneo. The pair realized that a caterpillar’s risk of being eaten might vary around the globe. And they figured they could find out by asking scientific friends, and friends of friends, to help with a little bit of fieldwork. ”We’ve known for a really long time that there are more species in the tropics than there are in polar regions,” says Will Petry, a biologist with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology who was on the research team. ”But we don’t have as good of an idea of the geography of interactions between species.” That’s why Petry was eager to be a part of the study. He was doing research in California when the fake caterpillars arrived in the mail. He glued them onto plants, including cacti, then waited a few days. Then he carefully placed them into individual tubes, to preserve any bite marks in the plasticine clay, and mailed them back to the lab in Helsinki, Finland. Nichols also got a box full of the fake critters, and colleagues helped her glue them on leaves at her research sites in Brazil. All in all, nearly 3, 000 dummy caterpillars were deployed in 31 sites from the Arctic Circle to southern Australia. It turned out that not only was the risk of predation less at the poles, but also the risk decreased at higher elevations. ”If you go up a mountain slope at the equator, you would find the same type of gradient  —   a decrease in the risk of getting eaten,” Roslin says. The pattern was driven by small predators like ants rather than by birds or mammals. ”It’s actually reinforced the idea that insects are far more important,” says Yves Basset, at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He notes that in addition to predators that might eat them, caterpillars are plagued by parasitizing wasps that wouldn’t be detected by this study, and he thought that might muddy the predation pattern. ”I was expecting this kind of result. I wasn’t thinking it would be so clear,” Basset says. ”So this was a welcome surprise.” Phyllis Coley, a biologist at the University of Utah who was not part of the research team, told NPR that she’d seen the study: ”I think it is great.” She says this global and controlled study strongly supports higher predation on caterpillars at lower latitudes and elevation. Petry notes that ”there are some migratory butterfly species, like the monarch. And one reason that they might migrate could be to avoid predators.” What’s more, scientists can now look to see whether caterpillars tend to focus their defenses on insects, rather than on mammals or birds."
"President Trump is expected to face pressure from European Union leaders at the   summit in Italy next week to keep the U. S. in the Paris Climate Treaty. Trump recently signed an executive order aiming to roll back President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan but did not address the Paris agreement. European Union leaders aren’t the only ones who are imploring Trump to keep the U. S. as part of the largest climate agreement in history. Ben van Beurden is the CEO of Shell, the giant energy company. Even though he’s in the business of selling fossil fuels, van Beurden tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro the U. S. should stay in the climate agreement. ”We believe climate change is real,” van Beurden says. ”We believe that the world needs to go through an energy transition to prevent a very significant rise in global temperatures. And we need to be part of that solution in making it happen.” Opponents of the Paris climate agreement argue that governments should not require companies to limit their oil and gas exploration projects. But van Beurden says the industry wants governments around the world to develop a consistent policy. ”One of the biggest concerns that I have around climate change is the unpredictability in which governments will go about it,” van Beurden says. ”If we have a very clear understanding that governments, successive governments, will continue to act consistently with a certain policy set that we believe in, I have no issue with it.” Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BP have also pledged their support for the Paris climate pact. Exxon CEO Darren Woods wrote in a blog post the Paris accord creates ”an effective framework for all countries to address rising emissions.” But while energy CEOs often advocate for policies to fight climate change, trade organizations representing the industry do the opposite. Van Beurden argues CEOs have a responsibility to speak out against industry organizations that support politicians who deny the existence of climate change. He says the Paris treaty is not a ”regressive agreement,” and U. S. involvement will help ensure its success. ”It cannot be in the interest of the United States to put itself offside for such an important, societal debate,” van Beurden says. ”. .. we all want in that respect the United States to have a strong, meaningful and impactful voice at all tables around the world. Pulling out of Paris, in that sense, is incompatible with that goal.” Use the audio link above to hear the full story."
"This is a story about conflicting medical advice. One group of doctors, represented by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, recommends yearly pelvic exams for all women 21 years of age and older, whether they have symptoms of disease or not. But the American College of Physicians, representing doctors of internal medicine, says that potential harms of the exam outweigh benefits and recommends against performing pelvic examinations unless a woman is pregnant or has symptoms of disease such as bleeding, pain or signs of infection. In March, the influential U. S. Preventive Services Task Force concluded there just wasn’t adequate evidence to recommend for or against annual exams. A study published Thursday says that when women were told that one prominent medical association strongly recommends against yearly exams, the number of women opting to have the exam dropped from 82 percent to 39 percent. ”This is a dramatic, enormous effect for a   education intervention,” says Dr. George F. Sawaya, an   at the University of California, San Francisco one of the study authors. Saway and his colleagues wanted to know whether a woman’s decision to have a pelvic exam might be influenced by knowledge about a particular medical society’s recommendations. They showed 190 women visiting health clinics at UCSF and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center illustrations of a pelvic examination. Then they were randomly assigned to review the summary of one of the two medical groups’ recommendations. The summary by the ACP noted there are no known benefits of the exam, and included information about the potential for   test results which could lead to unnecessary   surgery. Sawaya says this typically means discovery of an enlarged ovary and possible removal of the ovary. The summary by ACOG noted no known benefits of the exam, but did not mention the possibility of false alarms and unnecessary surgery. The study was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics  Gynecology. The pelvic exam is typically performed by an   or other primary care provider and is done to manually check the overall health of a woman’s reproductive organs, including the vagina, cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries. Sawaya says the reason most physicians give for the yearly exam is to detect ovarian cancer. But the ACP says there’s no good evidence the exam actually picks up ovarian cancer. ACOG, however, stands by its recommendation that yearly pelvic exams are warranted for all women 21 years of age and older. Every year, millions of women have pelvic exams. ”Given the potential public health impact of our findings, we think there is a pressing need for improving patient counseling concerning this exam,” says senior study author Miriam Kuppermann, a UCSF professor in the departments of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, and epidemiology and biostatistics. The vast majority of women in the study, more than 90 percent, said that potential benefits and harms should routinely be discussed with patients prior to the examination. But most doctors ”probably don’t discuss pros and cons of the exam with their patients,” says Sawaya, adding that will likely change as debate about the value of the exams becomes more public. ”I think this whole thing is going to go the way of extinction,” he says. ”We’re just going to stop talking about it and stop doing it.” However, there is one recommendation both medical groups and federal health officials agree on: Every woman age 21 to 65 who has a cervix should get a Pap smear every three to five years. Sawaya says there is good evidence that the periodic Pap test (which is often done in conjunction with a pelvic exam) can be a highly effective screening test for cervical cancer."
"From the pages of sober financial journals to Hollywood’s   adaptation of The Big Short, commentators often note that no American banks were indicted in the wake of the 2008 financial  . Hoop Dreams director Steve James is here to say that’s not true. In May 2012, New York’s district attorney brought charges against Abacus Federal Savings Bank and 19 of its employees. The case was little covered at the time, and while its outcome is a matter of public record, James prefers that reviewers not reveal whether the verdict was guilty, innocent, or mixed. That’s because his Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is a compelling   thriller. It should engross most viewers, even those who’ve resisted learning what a subprime mortgage is. As it happens, Abacus didn’t deal in subprime. The   bank also didn’t package its mortgages into the sort of financial instruments that made The Big Short’s machinations so arcane. In fact, the bank had one of the lowest default rates in the country. The problem was a loan officer, Ken Yu, who asked borrowers for bribes and falsified income statements for mortgage applications. His activities were hard to track, because, as the film explains, Chinatown residents are more likely to make cash transactions than the average American consumer. Also, Yu spoke a dialect that even most of his fellow Abacus employees didn’t understand. That includes Jill Sung and Vera Sung, the     sisters who had inherited    operations from their father, one of the bank’s founders.   but   Thomas Sung is a devotee of It’s a Wonderful Life, an affection James could hardly help but exploit. Thomas Sung even once halted a bank run with the aplomb of James Stewart’s George Bailey. Abacus’ managers did eventually learn of Yu’s activities, and fired him and two others. They reported their suspicions to banking regulators, and were rewarded with the indictments. Yu became the chief witness for the prosecution, and the trial process lasted five years. James was introduced to the story by a friend of the Sungs, and spent most of his time with the family. Yet he’s careful to present the government’s case, and to include interviews with the DA, Cyrus Vance Jr. and the lead prosecutor, Polly Greenberg. If they’re not quite so sympathetic as the Sungs, that begins with an astounding miscalculation: After indicting the Abacus employees, authorities chained them together and paraded them for a   that even Vance calls ”very unfortunate.” Unable to cover the trial with cameras or recording equipment, the director sent a courtroom illustrator to capture some of the action. He paired that with audio reenactments based on the trial transcript. Cinematically, the most important piece of the legal story is a juror who was inclined to vote guilty. Her recollections keep the narrative taut until what, in Frank Capra’s day, was termed the final reel. Much of the movie, however, is concerned less with the trial than the Sung family. After the indictment, two other sisters rallied to the cause. James captures revealing and intimate conversations with the four siblings and their parents  —   including the mother who didn’t want her husband to go into banking. As the Sungs discuss strategy, food, and favorite movies, the film makes a compelling argument that no matter how the trial ends, targeting Abacus was an absurdly inappropriate substitute for prosecuting the behemoths who caused the 2008 debacle. This family was no more likely than George Bailey to peddle synthetic collateralized debt obligations."
"There’s a whiff of John   unease in Wakefield, a quietly unsettling drama about a man who disappears from his suburban home, only to spy on his family’s response from a house across the street. In fact, the movie is based on a 2008 New Yorker short story by E. L. Doctorow, which in turn was inspired by a Nathaniel Hawthorne tale with the same premise, written in 1837. That is a big chunk of male gaze down the years, but here comes a woman,   Robin Swicord, who both respects the material and neatly corrals it for her own purposes. She gets splendidly creepy help from Bryan Cranston, an actor of great versatility whose rictus grin and   glare predict he may never outrun typecasting. Cranston plays Howard Wakefield, a   cranky Manhattan litigator who, at the end of an evening commute home, hurls his briefcase at a foraging raccoon on his quiet suburban street. Pursuing the animal into the cluttered attic of an abandoned (foreclosed, presumably  —   the setting is contemporary) house opposite his own, he discovers that he can spy on his wife, Diana (Jennifer Garner) and their teenaged twin daughters from an upstairs window. Howard settles in for some   espionage, and what began as a moment of perverse whimsy soon devolves into what may be a permanent absence from a marriage that Howard  —   who guides us through his family history in jaundiced voiceover  —   believes has grown dull and hostile through long familiarity and sexual boredom. Fifteen years earlier, we learn from copious flashbacks, Howard had seduced Diana, an intelligent, honest former dancer, away from a gullible junior colleague. Snickering, he watches his wife grow distraught as his absence lengthens into weeks and then months, calling in help from friends and colleagues whom Howard despises. Wakefield is Swicord’s second tour as director, and a much stronger work than her pleasant,   The Jane Austen Book Club back in 2007. A longtime screenwriter, she has turned Doctorow’s tale into a pleasingly   noir sprinkled with bleak black comedy. Cranston is queasy fun to watch as, increasingly undone in straggly, unwashed hair, Howard does his own   foraging in trashcans, armed with something that looks like a squash racket. Soon, his facetious glee curdles into a mounting unease that comes with watching the life he thought he had left move on without him. It quickly grows clear that the cunning operator is also a spectacularly unreliable narrator who’s overdue for a major correction. Swicord’s adaptation is tactful and elegant, but in trying to explore what might drive a man like Howard Wakefield  —   about which Doctorow is properly reticent  —   she draws connections that are more than a touch glib. Broad hints are dropped that Howard’s Darwinian lust for mastery, his misogyny (Beverly D’Angelo holds up nicely as Diana’s busily supportive friend) his paranoid take on human relations, are a product of   corporate culture. Suburbia becomes, yet again, the locus for a discussion of how quickly the thin veneer of civilization breaks down under duress, or cracks to reveal the animal within. All true perhaps, yet the argument fails to answer to all the suburbanites who live decent, honorable lives without putting their families through the mill of their own escape fantasies. Toward the end of Wakefield we see Howard moving toward his own front door, running his head through alternate scenes of delight and rejection from his loved ones. Has his   ordeal made him a new man, the kind of man who willingly shares space with raccoons and exchanges playful kindness with the disabled children next door? Or was this just a weird interlude from which he’s learned nothing and remains the same old animal? For the answer to that and his fate, happily, the filmmaker keeps perfect faith with the author."
"There’s no shortage of stories in the genre of Westerners experiencing a personal disaster and then globetrotting in search of answers about themselves. There’s always potential for these narratives to go awry in subtle and damning ways  —   to seem unthinkingly privileged and   and selfish  —   and so the endeavor of writing one is both a sure thing in terms of finding an audience, and risky as a   artistic endeavor. Enter Florence in Ecstasy, a novel in which an ailing and adrift woman named Hannah loses her job at a Boston art museum, and goes against the advice of her sister and her doctor and rents a room in Florence, Italy. There, she tries to look   at her accompanying demon  —   a severe eating disorder that has bulldozed every aspect of her life. The season changes, and the days grow short. She drinks wine, gets a job, engages in a romantic affair, learns Italian, joins a rowing club, wanders the city, and all the while remains at a measured distance from everyone and everything around her  —   including herself. On a Sunday visit to a neighboring city, Hannah learns of St. Catherine, a local martyr whose piousness included starving herself toward transcendence. (”[She] died at age   of a stroke, at which point she was eating almost nothing, subsisting on only water and Eucharist. ”) She soon discovers that many Italian women of the past  —   saints, mystics  —   wrote euphorically of their asceticism. Thus begins Hannah’s   fight with an old, powerful metaphor  —   is denial of the self rapturous or  ? In a world that punishes women for being women, can you forge a place for yourself in the world without it? ”There is something alluring about their behavior,” she observes. ”Margaret cutting down to the bone when flagellating herself, Angela drinking from the sores of lepers, Maria Maddalena licking the wounds of her ailing Carmelite sisters and punishing her own body with burning and icy water . .. the single, consuming desire of these women is to lose themselves in ecstasy.” And Hannah’s presence in Florence as a city is not, as is the genre’s cliché, incidental. Its living population is not an unthinking, inanimate space into which she projects her psychology or imposes her wisdom she does not fetishize its citizens. Instead, she lets herself be batted around by its history, fills with it and fights against it and draws no easy answers. She is selfish, yes, but in the way that a drowning person is selfish  —   she doesn’t know how, but she wants to live. Like the appealing anguish of those women’s lives, Florence in Ecstasy is a beautiful but exhausting novel. Hannah is perpetually precarious every accomplishment feels   and every loss feels inevitable. Her hunger  —   for food, for happiness, for meaning  —   rises off the page, sharpens to a high pitch, balloons into elation, and then dissolves her. (”The world was foggy but I was clear. Centered. I could feel each of my vertebrae, buttons against the stone column, shallow ditches dug around the bone. My ring was loose, my pants were loose, my joints were loose, unbound. I was changing form. ”) Throughout, Hannah hints at a search for the source of her pain  —   what caused her illness, really?  —   but this question is not the center of her inquiry. Instead she explores the morality of her own suffering, and struggles to separate bliss from misery, masochism from accomplishment: ”I envy her ecstasies,” she says of St. Catherine, ”Emptied of everything. Is that love? All that emptiness and the trance that follows?” As you might expect, this is not a light beach read it is something that must be taken in small doses and savored page by page. But if you can ride out the unyielding waves of pain, there is a classic but reimagined narrative at work here: a person’s existential reckoning on unfamiliar soil. In this case, a woman on the edge, in a liminal city that sits between the past and the present, searching for her missing body  —   which is to say, herself. Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, will be released in 2017. She has written for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta and elsewhere. "
"The five richest men in Nigeria could bring nearly all Nigerians out of extreme poverty for one year, according to a new Oxfam report on inequality in the country. It’s one of many stark conclusions drawn by the charity. Oxfam Nigeria’s Good Governance Programme Coordinator Celestine Okwudili Odo describes the level of inequality as ”obscene”: ”Extreme inequality is exacerbating poverty, undermining the economy, and fermenting social unrest. Nigerian leaders must be more determined in tackling this terrible problem.” Nigerian government officials such as Minister of State for Budget and National Planning Zainab Ahmed criticized the ”language, tone and style” of the document, according to the BBC. She also questioned the goals and methodology of the report. Inequality is growing in the populous West African nation, with more than half of its people living in extreme poverty, according to the report. The number living below the poverty line has grown from 69 million in 2004 to 112 million in 2010. Here are a few figures from the report: This issue is not due to a lack of resources but ”to the   misallocation and misappropriation of such resources,” the report argues. ”At the root there is a culture of corruption and   combined with a political elite out of touch with the daily struggles of average Nigerians.” It points to a regressive tax system as one source of the growing inequality, as ”the burden of taxation mostly falls on poorer companies and individuals.” At the same time, the report states, ”big multinationals receive questionable tax waivers and tax holidays, and utilize loopholes in tax laws to shift huge profits generated in the country to low tax jurisdictions.” And then, those resources that the government ”manages to collect are often spent in an unfair and inefficient way,” the report states. It describes the country’s governance costs as ”astronomical and indefensible.” One memorable scandal happened in 2015, when allegations surfaced that the nation’s 469 lawmakers had been given a combined sum of $43 million as a ”wardrobe allowance.” Responding to the Oxfam report, Tola Odukoya, the Managing Director of FSL Asset Management, told Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper that he believes it is the government’s responsibility, not that of the five wealthiest people, to alleviate poverty in the country: ”The report is not too far from the truth. There is no doubt that there is so much poverty in the country, but I don’t think it’s fair to the people mentioned in the report because they are private businessmen, who have built their wealth through hard work. The level of poverty is something that should be addressed to the government.”"
"As Iranian voters prepare to head to the polls Friday, there’s one thing the   presidential election certainly will not decide: the country’s commander in chief. That post, at least, is already filled by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader for nearly three decades. As long as he maintains control over the highest seat in the land, Khamenei enjoys   authority over the security forces and effective veto power over matters both diplomatic and domestic  —   including the council that vets and approves presidential candidates. Still, the presidency offers significant power of its own. Whichever candidate emerges with the electoral victory will be handed a   term and the helm of an economy at a crossroads. The approaching election presents a stark choice for Iranians:   the moderate incumbent, President Hassan Rouhani, or reject his relatively   policies and turn to the conservative   hoping to replace him, such as his biggest challenger, Ibrahim Raisi. Here is what’s at stake in Iran on Friday  —   from the big names to the way they’ll be selected  —   and what it means for the rest of the world. Who are the candidates? How will Iran decide? What does this mean for the West? President Hassan Rouhani has been in power since 2013, when he surprised many observers with a commanding electoral victory. Described at the time as ”the lone voice of moderation” among the candidates, Rouhani largely confirmed that reputation during his tenure  —   supporting freer Internet access and holding   regular    talks with the U. S. about Iran’s nuclear program. Those talks resulted in a landmark 2015 agreement that allowed inspectors into Iran’s nuclear facilities and promised to limit its nuclear program to peaceful purposes. In return, Iran saw some of the sanctions it had been slapped with lifted. The deal has become the signature achievement of Rouhani’s term in office and the centerpiece of his current presidential campaign  —   for better and for worse. (For more on what the election could spell for the nuclear deal in the U. S. click here or scroll below.) Yet the agreement has delivered mixed results for the Iranian economy. Although the country has attracted big international deals  —   such as a purchase of Boeing airplanes  —   the benefits have been slow to trickle down to average Iranians. ”A lot of   people here are struggling to make ends meet,” NPR’s Steve Inskeep reports from the capital, Tehran. ”And many of them are frustrated.” Rouhani blames   for trying to sabotage the agreement and its benefits, but many of those frustrated voters aren’t convinced. They’re turning instead to Rouhani’s   challengers, most notably Ebrahim Raisi. A conservative cleric, Raisi hews closely to Khamenei’s policy line  —   so much so, in fact, he’s occasionally mentioned as the supreme leader’s possible successor. Currently, he helms the charitable foundation for the Imam Reza shrine, one of the focal points of the Shiite world. But many of his detractors look to Raisi’s past for perhaps his single most disqualifying factor: his alleged involvement in a committee that decided the fate of thousands of political prisoners who disappeared in the late 1980s. ”They executed more than 3, 000 political prisoners,” Iranian journalist Behdad Bordbar tells NPR’s Peter Kenyon. Members of that committee have never faced charges for their role in the presumed killings  —   but human rights activists aren’t prepared to forget. ”A man who should be on trial for the most heinous crime in contemporary Iranian history, is instead seeking the presidency,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, said in a statement last month. ”Allowing him to run for president is yet another grievous wound for the families who unjustly lost their loved ones in 1988.” Yet Raisi’s electoral position was buttressed this week, as one of his rivals  —   Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, another    —   dropped out of the race and endorsed him. The pair, who accuse Rouhani of anemic economic progress and weakness in negotiations with the West, even campaigned together on Tuesday. Rouhani, for his part, recently received the backing of another dropout, reformist candidate Eshaq Jahangiri. Mostafa Hashemitaba, also a reformer, and conservative Mostafa Mirsalim round out the list of six presidential candidates approved by the Guardian Council, a   appointed panel dominated by conservative, religious members. Hashemitaba and Mirsalim qualified for the group of finalists  —   beating out more than 1, 600 others who put their names forward, according to NBC  —   but neither has appeared to approach the same level of popularity as the two main contenders. In fact, Hashemitaba has been openly calling for his supporters to vote for Rouhani, and Mirsalim has endorsed Raisi. Then again, Iran’s elections are often unpredictable (as the section directly below demonstrates) and unofficial polls reflect a race this year that’s likely to be no different. Voters head to the polls Friday, though if past elections are any indication, it’s unlikely we’ll know the results before Saturday. Even then, those results might be less than decisive: By Iran’s electoral rules, a candidate must earn more than 50 percent of the vote to seal a win in the first round. Otherwise, the top two candidates from the first vote will take part in a runoff one week later, set for May 26. Iran’s leaders are bullish about prospective turnout, with the country’s interior minister predicting that more than 70 percent  —   or some 56. 4 million people  —   will vote, according to The Associated Press. ”Historically,” the news service notes, ”the more Iranians who cast ballots, the greater the chance a reformist or a moderate like Rouhani will be elected.” But Iranian elections are famous for their surprising results. Not only did Rouhani’s victory come as a shock to some, the 1997 election of reformer Mohammad Khatami defied many predictions, as well. But by 2005, voters had grown so dissatisfied with Khatami’s perceived failure to deliver on his promises that they surprised observers again  —   electing a   unknown in   conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 2009, even the final official results didn’t spell an end to that year’s election, which turned into a   crisis and crackdown after Ahmadinejad won again. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians marched and protested, claiming the vote was rigged  —   but security forces eventually crushed the demonstrations, known as the Green Movement, with waves of arrests of protesters and prominent political figures. With the Middle East in turmoil and traditional alliances in question, the decision Iranians make on Friday could have an impact well beyond their country’s borders. Iran’s current theocracy, which was born in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, often backs militants around the Middle East  —   from the   Shiite group Hezbollah to Yemeni rebels. Its clerical leadership has threatened Israel’s existence and demonized the U. S. And Iran’s supreme leader is well aware that his country’s election has captured the world’s attention. ”From the U. S. state apparatuses to European powers and regional countries aligned with America, to the pathetic prime minister of the Zionist regime, all are closely watching [the vote] and how and in what spirit” the Iranians will vote, Khamenei said in a televised speech Wednesday, according to the AP. While Khamenei controls Iran’s foreign policy, the president can help sculpt broader global opinion about the country’s actions on the world stage. That includes the U. S. where    —   including members of Congress  —   are sharply split over how to deal with the country. Although Rouhani won the backing of the ayatollah on the deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program,   in the U. S. tend to distrust Rouhani as the deceptively friendly face of a rogue nation. Others have been won over by Rouhani’s willingness to talk to the West, believing Iran might slowly become more moderate if the U. S. and European powers engage with the country economically. For now, President Trump’s administration has said it will continue to uphold its end of the nuclear bargain, announcing Wednesday that it would continue to waive some sanctions on Iran despite having referred to the deal on the campaign trail as the ”worst deal ever.” Should Raisi win, however, hawks in the West are likely to increase their calls for tighter sanctions until Iran ends its support for militant groups and its longtime enmity toward Israel. Ultimately though, the Trump administration and Congress appear eager to revise former President Barack Obama’s policies toward Iran. That might spell tighter U. S. sanctions either way  —   in which case, the other signatories on the nuclear, which range from Russia to the U. K. would soon face a decision of their own: Follow the U. S. or continue to work with the man Iranians choose Friday."
"Updated at 12:45 a. m. ET, At least one person was killed Thursday when a vehicle hit a crowd of pedestrians in Times Square, according to fire officials in New York City.   other people were injured in the incident. At a news conference Thursday afternoon, NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill described the scene: A maroon Honda Accord leaped the curb at Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street, plowing onto the sidewalk for several blocks ”at a high rate of speed” before finally crashing into a stanchion at 45th Street. After the car came to a halt, the driver tried to flee before officers took him into custody. ”People were being hit and rolling off the car,” one witness told Reuters. O’Neill identified the suspect as    Richard Rojas, describing him as a U. S. citizen and former service member with multiple previous DWI arrests. He has been charged with second degree murder, 20 counts of attempted second degree murder, and five counts of aggravated vehicular homicide. The commissioner said there is no indication that the incident was related to terrorism. One woman was killed at the scene. Police identified her as 18 year old Alyssa Elsman of Portage, Michigan. Four other people remain in critical condition, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said at the news conference. A total of 22 people have been hospitalized. ”This is a tough day for New York City, but I want to thank our first responders who got here so quickly,” Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter. ”We feel deeply for those injured and particularly for the family of the young woman who was lost. Our prayers are with all of them.” In a statement, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the day’s events ”nothing short of horrific.” ”As facts continue to emerge, my heart goes out to the victims of this terrible tragedy, as well as their families.”"
"Close to 50 years after interracial marriages became legal across the U. S. the share of newlyweds married to a spouse of a different race or ethnicity has increased more than five times  —   from 3 percent in 1967, to 17 percent in 2015, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center. The Pew report comes about a month before the 50th anniversary of the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia. Mildred Loving, a   American,   woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, landed in a Virginia county jail for getting married. Today, one in six newlyweds marry someone outside their race, which appears to allude to a more accepting society. Among adults who are not black, there’s a shrinking share of those who say they would be opposed to having a close relative marrying someone who is black  —   from 63 percent in 1990, to 14 percent in 2016. The share of people who oppose marriages with Asian or Hispanic people has also dropped from about one in five to around one in ten adults not in those groups. Among those who are not white, the share opposed to a relative marrying a white person has dropped from 7 percent to 4 percent. Here are some of the other interesting findings from Pew about interracial and interethnic marriages: More than a quarter of Asian newlyweds (29 percent) and Latino newlyweds (27 percent) are married to a spouse of a different race or ethnicity. Those rates go up even higher for those born in the U. S.  —   to 46 percent for Asian newlyweds and 39 percent for Hispanic newlyweds. Despite lagging behind Asian and Hispanic newlyweds, black and white newlyweds experienced the most dramatic growth in the rate of interracial and interethnic marriages. The rate for black newlyweds has more than tripled since 1980  —   from 5 percent to 18 percent. For white newlyweds, the rate has almost tripped from 4 percent to 11 percent over the same period. While educational level is not a major factor for white newlyweds, black and Latino newlyweds with at least a bachelor’s degree are more likely to have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity than those with some college experience or less education. That educational gap is starkest among Latino newlyweds. As the authors of the Pew report, Gretchen Livingston and Anna Brown, write: ”While almost half (46 percent) of Hispanic newlyweds with a bachelor’s degree were intermarried in 2015, this share drops to (16 percent) for those with a high school diploma or less  —   a pattern driven partially, but not entirely, by the higher share of immigrants among the less educated.” But among Asian newlyweds, those with some college experience (39 percent) are more likely to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity than those with a bachelor’s degree or higher (29 percent) or with a high school diploma or less (26 percent). ”Asian newlyweds with some college are somewhat less likely to be immigrants, and this may contribute to the higher rates of intermarriage for this group,” the Pew report suggests. But it also notes that this trend also holds true for Asian newlyweds who were not born in the U. S. There is a stark political split in how people feel about interracial marriage. About half (49 percent) of Democrats and   independents say that growing numbers of people marrying others of different races is good for society, compared to more than a quarter (28 percent) of Republicans and   independents. Most Republicans (60 percent) say the rise of interracial marriages doesn’t make much of a difference."
"Former Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes has died, the network says, citing a statement from the late executive’s family. Ailes resigned from his post leading Fox News last July, amid allegations of sexual harassment. He was 77. Ailes helped found Fox News in 1996. On Thursday, the network initially announced his death by citing the Drudge Report, which had published a statement from Ailes’ wife, Elizabeth. According to Fox News, that statement reads: ”I am profoundly sad and heartbroken to report that my husband, Roger Ailes, passed away this morning. Roger was a loving husband to me, to his son Zachary, and a loyal friend to many. He was also a patriot, profoundly grateful to live in a country that gave him so much opportunity to work hard, to rise  —   and to give back.” Anchors of the channel’s morning show Fox  Friends were noticeably emotional in announcing Ailes’ death. ”Beth, you are in our thoughts and prayers,”   Ainsley Earhardt said, ”and so is Zachary, their beautiful son. Roger, rest in peace.” Ailes was famous for his shrewd leadership of Fox, including his focus on airing conservative opinions and hiring anchors and reporters with big personalities. But he left Fox with a tarnished legacy, facing legal actions over allegations of sexual harassment. Ailes denied accusations that he built a culture at Fox that encouraged harassment, after a lawsuit by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson prompted other women at the network, including   anchor Megyn Kelly, to step forward with similar claims. He abruptly resigned last July. In the decades before he created a ratings juggernaut in Fox News, Ailes worked in politics, serving as a media adviser and consultant  —   most famously for Richard Nixon, whom Ailes helped to win the presidency in 1968. He later worked for other Republican leaders, from Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Ailes was a producer of the variety and talk program The Mike Douglas Show when he met Nixon. In the years that followed, as NPR’s David Folkenflik has reported, Ailes ”kept toggling between producing television specials and serving as a political consultant, sometimes doing both at once.” The architect of Fox News was also close to President Trump, to whom he gave a weekly slot on Fox  Friends  —   a show that the president has regularly touted in his tweets from the White House. Trump ”sort of represents Roger Ailes’ legacy of 50 years of using television to advance a style  —   a populist style of conservative politics,” journalist and author Gabriel Sherman told NPR’s Terry Gross last summer. Sherman, who wrote a biography of Ailes titled The Loudest Voice In The Room, also spoke to Terry back in 2014, when his book was first published. Discussing Ailes’ impact on politics and culture in the U. S. Sherman said, ”One of Ailes’ lasting legacies will be that for millions of Americans, news is now no longer viewed as a way to be informed about the world it’s a way of gathering information that advances your side.”"
"The news that sexual harassment allegations have cost Roger Ailes his job threatens to obscure Ailes’ singular career and his almost unrivaled influence in the public sphere. But no contemporary figure has done more to shape the intersection of American media and politics than Ailes, who, until Thursday, had been the Fox News chief since its very first day on the air in 1996. In his long career, Ailes advised a succession of Republican presidents on how to gain power and maintain it  —   both on their payrolls and off the books. He showed how to bring flair and flash to financial coverage as president of CNBC. Then Ailes gave a turbo boost to the Republican movement in the   just in time to fuel opposition to the Clinton White House, with the creation of Fox News. It was a partnership and mind meld between Ailes and his new patron, media magnate Rupert Murdoch. Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard and a familiar figure on Fox News, told me the new network gave conservatives hope. ”They were so used to thinking that the media was completely barren as far as they were concerned,” Barnes said. ”There was nothing there for them. It was all for liberals. And then Fox comes along  —   and they really glommed on it.” Fox served as the home of debate within the conservative movement. At its default setting, Fox blended pugilistic,    populism, resentment of changing demographics and sexual mores, and a strong nationalistic tone. Fox News’ success also drove television news as a whole more toward conflict, given its emphasis on assertion over reporting. From Entertainment To Politics, Fred Barnes spoke to me outside the arena for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. It was perhaps fitting that the end game for Ailes played out as Republicans gathered there. Ailes, an Ohio native, enjoyed his first big professional success in Cleveland, as a producer of a local variety and talk program called The Mike Douglas Show. In time, the show went national. So did Ailes. After Richard Nixon appeared on the show during the 1968 campaign, Ailes gave the candidate some advice: use televised appearances to go around the press and interact with voters. More to the point, be seen interacting with voters. In one such encounter, former college football coach Bud Wilkinson, a Nixon fan and friend, served as moderator. ”No one has any idea what questions will be asked,” Wilkinson told viewers. ”Mr. Nixon cannot possibly know. His answers must be immediate and direct  —   and our panel is representative.” In reality, the panelists were pretty carefully screened. Ailes ended up advising the Nixon White House. He also rose to be executive producer of The Mike Douglas Show, which lasted for thousands of episodes. Ailes dabbled in Broadway, producing two shows, including The Hot l Baltimore. He advised President Reagan’s   campaign in 1984, helping Reagan revive his fortunes following a disastrous first debate against Walter Mondale. Reagan dominated the second debate with remarks that became political legend. Pressed on his age, for example, Reagan said, ”I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan never looked back. Ailes kept toggling between producing television specials and serving as a political consultant, sometimes doing both at once. In 1988, Ailes played a key role in George H. W. Bush’s White House bid. A climactic moment arrived early that year. Ailes warned Bush that CBS News anchor Dan Rather was primed to go after him on the   scandal during a live interview. The conversation turned testy. Bush ordinarily displayed a patrician reserve. Ailes goaded Bush to rumble. When pressed by Rather, the vice president roared back, ”It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Bush was jabbing Rather over a 1987 incident in which the network delayed the start of CBS Evening News to carry the end of a U. S. Open tennis match. Rather, infuriated, walked off the set (on location in Miami, not New York). When the match ended, the network went black for more than six minutes before Rather returned. That year, Ailes published the book, You Are the Message, a primer on how candidates and corporate executives should communicate with the public. He proceeded to manage several unsuccessful Republican campaigns, starting with Rudy Giuliani’s first mayoral bid in New York City in 1989. Ailes left politics once more, though hardly definitively. He produced Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and then joined CNBC to build it up into a recognizable version of what the channel is today. The Era Of Fox News, He later jumped at the chance to run Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News  —   defined as an alternative to the liberal media at its launch in fall 1996. Fox built up momentum during the impeachment process of President Bill Clinton and then surged after the disputed 2000 presidential election and the September 2001 terrorist attacks. The channel draped itself in patriotism  —   a constant Ailes refrain. Fox would become the   cable news channel and has remained so ever since. Before Thursday evening, many with ties to the network said there is no way to disentangle what they felt about Fox from what they felt about Ailes. ”At Fox, everything is due to Roger,” Fred Barnes said. ”It was entirely his vision. And what he created  —   one guy creating that. I’m still amazed.” News reports were often straight ahead. But common themes cropped up on the opinion shows, including some racial undercurrents. In a 2009 appearance on Fox  Friends, Glenn Beck, who at the time hosted his own show on Fox, said of President Obama, ”This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a   hatred for white people or the white culture.” Ultimately Beck’s   rhetoric and his belief that his star shined brighter than the network’s was too much for even Ailes, who did not renew Beck’s contract. Ailes never fully shed his partisan activities. He counseled President George W. Bush’s chief adviser, Karl Rove, during the invasion of Iraq. In 2012, he personally encouraged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to run against Obama and sent an emissary to Afghanistan to try to coax Gen. David Petraeus into the race. (That secret mission, carried out by a Fox News national security analyst, was taped.) Ailes had put many of the candidates in the past few cycles on the Fox payroll John Kasich and Mike Huckabee used to be Fox News hosts, while Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ben Carson had all been paid Fox News commentators. Above all, Ailes wanted Fox News to referee Republican Party politics. That backfired, in a sense, last August, when Fox News host Megyn Kelly confronted Donald Trump in the first Republican debate. Kelly said, ”You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” Trump interjected, ”Only Rosie O’Donnell.” ”No, it wasn’t,” Kelly said. After the debate, Trump attacked Kelly and Fox News and appeared repeatedly on rival networks, driving up their ratings. Ailes effectively sued for peace with Trump, alienating Kelly. The Obsessions Of Roger Ailes, One of Ailes’ former executives once told me you just had to watch Fox to understand his obsessions. The channel was drenched in stories about sex. Female presenters on Fox were often overtly sexualized. They were steered to wear revealing outfits, while cameras lingered over their legs. The morning show Fox  Friends, a peppy mix of fraternity humor, gossip and conservative chat, was a particular source of charged banter. Gretchen Carlson had been a   on the show for years. She filed suit earlier this month alleging that Ailes had demoted her to an early afternoon show several years ago, cutting her pay, as a result of her complaints of sexism on the set. He then proceeded to make increasingly plain sexual advances, according to her suit. Some anchors and hosts defended Ailes, including some women, in what appeared to be a coordinated effort. Megyn Kelly, by contrast, held back from public comment and cooperated with an inquiry set up by parent company 21st Century Fox. She reportedly told the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison  —   which was conducting the inquiry  —   that Ailes had harassed her, too, when she was a young reporter in the network’s Washington bureau. Others have also come forward. Ailes’ management style knit together fierce loyalty and paranoia. Many Fox News journalists have told me of their deep fears of offending Ailes, including one who, like Carlson, says she was sexually harassed by him in recent years. One way such loyalty can be enforced: Ailes’ PR department has peddled negative stories about colleagues who fell out of favor. In one instance, a publicist successfully planted a story in the Washington Post depicting   Laurie Dhue as drunk at a   affair after leaving the network, she acknowledged she was an alcoholic. Her lawyer said Thursday she, too, is writing a book about her interactions with Ailes and others at Fox. Ailes is receiving a severance package in the tens of millions of dollars, though he will remain an adviser to Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch will oversee the network in the short term. Carlson’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, tells me the payment of such an astonishing sum to get Ailes to resign falls short given all the accusations against him. Until Carlson’s lawsuit, Ailes’ charisma, his accomplishments and his stature held sway. No longer."
"Brazilian President Michel Temer says he won’t be resigning over allegations that he endorsed hush money payments to a former ally, denying the charges in an address on TV. A major newspaper in Brazil, O Globo, is reporting that Temer was caught on tape discussing bribery payments. Temer has been in office for just over a year. He came to power as interim president after embattled former President Dilma Rousseff was suspended and impeached on charges of financial mismanagement. At the same time, a massive corruption scandal involving the state oil company Petrobras was unfolding. Rousseff was not directly implicated Temer, however, was accused of participating in the graft. The new allegations of bribery are tied to that larger political crisis. There were reports that Temer was planning to resign over the accusations, but instead, he gave a defiant speech, NPR’s Philip Reeves reports: ”Temer has weathered many crises during his short term in office, but this is by far the most serious. A leading newspaper says Temer was caught on tape endorsing payments to buy the silence of a former ally caught up in Brazil’s massive ’Car Wash’ corruption investigation. ”The news sent stocks into a tailspin, amid investor fears that Temer will now be unable to carry through his long plans to overhaul pension and labor laws  —   and pull Brazil’s economy out of deep recession. ”Temer denies wrongdoing, but his political support is ebbing, and his ratings are in single figures. The latest scandal is being met with a chorus of voices calling on him to stand down, or face impeachment.” Instead, Temer said he plans to fight the charges. ”I will not resign. I know what I have done,” he said, according to a BBC translation. ”I never authorized any payments for someone to be silent. I did not buy anyone’s silence. I fear no accusations.” The Guardian describes the accusations published in O Globo in more detail. They center on tapes that came to light through a plea bargain by brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista, businessmen in the meatpacking industry, the newspaper writes: ”Temer is alleged to have talked with Joesley about cash payments to Eduardo Cunha, the former speaker of the House who has been jailed for his role in the sprawling Petrobras corruption scandal. . .. ”In covert recordings made during two conversations in March, Joesley tells Temer he is paying Cunha to keep him quiet, to which the president allegedly replies: ’You have to keep it going, OK?’ ” ”According to Globo, police also have audio and video evidence that Temer’s aide Rocha Loures negotiated bribes worth 500, 000 [reals] (US$160, 000) a week for 20 years in return for helping JBS overcome a problem with the fair trade office.”"
"The Trump administration has set into motion the process to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, following through on the president’s earlier promise. U. S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer formally notified congressional leaders in a letter Thursday that the president intends to launch negotiations with Canada and Mexico ”as soon as practicable.” ”The United States seeks to support   jobs in the United States and to grow the U. S. economy by improving U. S. opportunities under NAFTA,” the letter reads. ”In particular, we note that NAFTA was negotiated 25 years ago, and while our economy and businesses have changed over that period, NAFTA has not.” Trump has called NAFTA a ”horrible deal” for the U. S. He discussed ”tweaking” parts of the deal in February, and in April, he threatened to scrap it. But the president ultimately said he planned to renegotiate the agreement. ”I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate,” he told reporters in April, as NPR reported. ”Now, if I’m unable to make a fair deal, if I’m unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But we’re going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot.” It’s not clear exactly what the U. S. is seeking to change in the deal, though in his letter, Lighthizer said the Trump administration wants to see new provisions ”to address intellectual property rights, regulatory practices,   enterprises, services, customs procedures, sanity and phytosanitary measures, labor, environment, and small and medium enterprises.” Earlier Thursday, Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray told reporters that his government ”welcomes this development  —   we are prepared. We are ready . .. to work together with both the governments of the U. S. and Canada to make our trade agreement better. Better for the people of Mexico, the U. S. and the people of Canada.” Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland described NAFTA’s record as ”one of economic growth and job creation” across the continent. ”We are steadfastly committed to free trade in the North American region and to ensuring that the benefits of trade are enjoyed by all Canadians.” The agreement, which has been in place since 1994, lifted many of the tariffs on trade between the U. S. Canada and Mexico. Lighthizer told reporters that ”NAFTA has been successful for U. S. agriculture, investment services and the energy sector, but not for manufacturing,” as Reuters reported. He said he hopes negotiations will be completed by the end of the year. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service described NAFTA’s overall impact on the U. S. economy as ”relatively modest,” (as NPR’s Marilyn Geewax pointed out): ”The political debate surrounding the agreement was divisive with proponents arguing that the agreement would help generate thousands of jobs and reduce income disparity in the region, while opponents warned that the agreement would cause huge job losses in the United States as companies moved production to Mexico to lower costs. ”In reality, NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters. The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U. S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U. S. GDP. However, there were worker and firm adjustment costs as the three countries adjusted to more open trade and investment.”"
"Ask some actors about their dream role, and they’re likely to offer range of answers: a character from Shakespeare, a superhero, the lead in Phantom of the Opera. As for Daniel Dae Kim, a   actor who has had roles in Lost, Crash and most recently Hawaii   his dream is to play a romantic lead. Any romantic lead. But Kim said that there’s a reluctance on the part of many studio heads to cast   actors in romantic roles. He said he has asked people in every level of the film industry for data to show that casting white actors is more profitable, and they can’t provide any. ”It’s just this institutionalized thinking,” he said. ”[They] have it in their minds that it cannot be that way.” Kim joined Arden Cho, Sang H. Cho and John C. Yang on Wednesday night for a panel discussion hosted by Mnet America and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus on   in entertainment. The discussion was led by Traci G. Lee, the digital editorial manager for NBC Asian America. She asked the group about the challenges and opportunities that come with being   in Hollywood today and how those obstacles connect to broader dynamics that impact  . The panelists touched on familiar frustrations  —   lack of representation and mentoring whitewashing of Asian characters ossified power structures. Arden Cho, of Teen Wolf and YouTube fame, talked about how limited opportunities for   actors affect  . ”I can remember one of the first times I saw an   on TV,” Cho said. It was Whitney, a minor character in the 2000 movie Bring It On. Still, the moment was meaningful for Cho. ”I was like, oh my God. I could be a cheerleader.” But Cho said that the landscape for   actors hasn’t changed that much in the past 17 years. She gets frustrated by being repeatedly asked to read for secondary characters but never for the leads. She said she asks her agent, ”Can I read for A? And he goes, ’No. They’re gonna go white on the lead.’ ” Cho is looking forward to the day that changes  —   she said her dream is to play James Bond. ”I want to be badass,” she said. ”I want to be the one that’s saving the day. I want to be the hero.” In the meantime, she said, she’ll continue to make her own opportunities on platforms like YouTube. Kim, who is currently producing his own show, The Good Doctor, was also excited about carving out space for a more diverse group of actors and stories. He started working on The Good Doctor, he said, because   ”were waiting for a space that never came.” Now that he is producing his own material, Kim said he can ”create worlds from the ground up. How I envision them. How I would populate them.” But, he said, that also means the shape of the obstacles he faces has changed. He said that when you’re a young actor, ”you see systemic racism as being out there in the ether.” These days, he said, he is looking at it face to face when he works directly with people to produce, write and cast the work he’s involved with. Kim added that despite the obstacles, he thinks   actors need to be prepared to blow casting directors away. ”We like to talk about the ways in which we’re overlooked,” Kim said. ”Our responsibility is to be good at what we do. . .. It’s important for us not to ask for charity.”"
"Austria became the latest European country to ban the   veil on Tuesday, with the legislation supported by both of the country’s ruling parties. ”Starting in October, police will be charging fines from people who wear clothes that obstruct their facial features,” Deutsche Welle reports. ”The   ($166) fine would also apply to women wearing burqas and niqabs at universities, courts, or in public transport.” France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Bulgaria have already banned or partially banned wearing a burqa or niqab. Germany and Norway are also working on bans. ”The ban on the   veil is seen above all as a symbolic measure designed to avert pressure from the   Freedom party,” reports the Guardian. ”Only between 100 and 150 women are estimated to wear the   veil in Austria.” The ban is part of a larger ”integration law” that was assembled by Austria’s two major parties, the Social Democratic party and the   Austrian People’s Party. The policies are seen as an effort to avoid a collapse of the coalition government, which would trigger snap elections. The government is under pressure from the   Freedom Party, which said that the law did not go far enough. The new package of laws is intended to create ”better framework conditions for this long and difficult road to integration,” said Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in a March press release. It creates a number of rules and regulations for people who want to settle in Austria, including a   ”integration school” with lessons in German language and Austrian values. Asylum seekers will also be expected to do unpaid public work to prepare them for the job market, Deutche Welle reports. ”This is meant to ensure   integration into the labour market,” said the foreign ministry’s press release. Migrants who refuse to take part in the courses would see their social welfare benefits cut, reports Deutsche Welle. In February, thousands of people marched in Vienna in a rally organized by Muslim groups, protesting the proposed legislation. In a press release that month, Kurz referred to   veils and Salafist literature distribution as ”symbols of a  .” Germany’s lower house, the Bundestag, approved a similar draft law last month that would prohibit wearing the   veil at work for civil servants, judges and soldiers. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a ban on   veils ”wherever legally possible.” She faces an election in September, and her party has been losing some support to the   Alternative for Germany party, reports Deutsche Welle. In March, the EU’s highest court ruled that a Muslim woman who was fired in Belgium over wanting to wear an Islamic headscarf at her job did not suffer from direct discrimination, because her employer had a general rule against religious or political displays. The veil bans join a long history of regulating and legislating women’s clothing. France became the first European country to ban the   veil in 2011. Last summer the country introduced a ban on the ”burkini” the ban was enforced by mayors on the French Riviera until it was overturned by France’s top administrative court."
"The numbers are out  —   and they confirm what we’ve been hearing from farmers and immigration lawyers. More and more farmers are turning to foreign ”guest workers” to plant and harvest the country’s crops. Farmers have to get permission from the U. S. Department of Labor to bring in foreign workers using a category of visa called  . During the first three months of 2017, the Department of Labor approved applications to fill 69, 272 farm jobs with workers on   visas. That’s up from 50, 887 positions approved during same period a year ago, an increase of 36 percent. The   visa program has been growing steadily in recent years, mostly because farmers have had increasing difficulty recruiting enough workers here in the U. S. Previous increases, though, ranged from 10 to 20 percent per year, far short of the big jump so far in 2017. The guest worker program has been controversial, for several reasons. Some farm worker advocates argue that employers have used the program to avoid having to attract workers the   way, through higher wages. Temporary workers also have limited rights they cannot leave their jobs or switch employers, and critics say it leaves them vulnerable to abuse or mistreatment. They’re also separated from their families for much of the year. On the other hand, employers are required to provide free housing to   workers and to pay them a fair wage, as determined by the Department of Labor. These workers also are here legally they don’t have to hide from law enforcement. Dan Fazio is executive director of WAFLA, which helps arrange foreign temporary workers for tree fruit growers in Washington state. He tells The Salt in an email that on April 21, his organization stopped taking requests for workers needed in 2017 because he just didn’t have enough staff. WAFLA recruits foreign workers and transports them to the state. Employers say that the big jump in   applications is partly because the worker shortage is getting worse. But it’s also because farmers who hire lots of workers  —   and the workers themselves  —   are worried about the Trump administration’s tougher enforcement of immigration laws. Many farm workers who live in the United States are citizens of Mexico or Central American countries and don’t have legal authorization to be in this country. The government’s statistics also show a shift in the places that depend on   workers. For many years, North Carolina’s sweet potato and tobacco farms were the top destination for temporary foreign workers. In fiscal year 2017, though, which started in October 2016, North Carolina has fallen well behind both Florida and Georgia. California, meanwhile, has jumped up to fourth place. Foreign temporary workers still account for a small portion  —   perhaps 10 percent  —   of the workers who tend the country’s crops. But their importance is increasing rapidly and could reach 20 percent in the near future, according to some experts, such as Philip Martin, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Davis."
"It’s a question the broadcast TV industry asks itself around this time every year: How long can we keep this going? The occasion is TV’s upfront season, when all the big programmers announce their plans for the next season in glitzy presentations for big advertisers in New York, selling commercial space in the new schedules early. These days, the moneymaking heart of the TV business  —   broadcast television  —   is fighting harder than ever to stay competitive with the innovation at streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. Broadcasters have to please two masters: the advertisers who buy commercials and the viewers who watch shows with ads in them. And as viewership dips each year for network TV shows, upfronts are when the broadcast establishment argues that it still reaches important audiences and isn’t just sitting around waiting for online streaming companies to put them out of business. At CBS’ upfront event Wednesday in Carnegie Hall, for instance, executives touted their broadcast network as the strongest arm of a media company that includes three streaming platforms and reaches a bigger audience in total than the company did in the year 2000. It’s a point many networks would make during the upfronts. For the second year in a row, all the new fall shows on CBS broadcast network star male characters. In fact, following the recent cancellation of the show 2 Broke Girls, CBS has just two series with female characters as primary stars: Tea Leoni in Madam Secretary and Anna Faris and Allison Janney in Mom. (Other CBS series, such as Elementary and Code Black, do feature women as   or members of an ensemble. And the two original scripted series on its streaming service All Access, The Good Fight and Star Trek: Discovery, both star women.) During a press breakfast Wednesday, I asked CBS CEO Les Moonves if this seemed a little old fashioned and   given that TV outlets like FX have tried hard to build gender parity behind the camera in directors’ jobs. And some of this year’s most innovative shows  —   Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, HBO’s Big Little Lies and FX’s Feud  —   star female characters. ”More women watch CBS   than any other network,” Moonves replied. ”Our shows have a lot of female appeal . .. When I look at the totality of who CBS is, I look at news, I look at daytime, I look at sports, I look at Showtime, I look at the CW. They’re all part of our family. When you look at the totality of that, I think we’re fine.” Perhaps. But given the prestige and visibility of primetime network television, this exclusion seems odd and a bit contradictory. And CBS isn’t alone. Here’s a look at a few other oddly contradictory trends to emerge from the upfronts. At a time when media is often about the next new thing, nostalgia emerges big. Everything old is new again at the broadcast networks. ABC is reviving American Idol and Roseanne, CBS has a new version of S. W. A. T. Fox will air 10 new episodes of The   and NBC is bringing back sitcom Will  Grace and the   TV marketing slogan that was used to promote it, along with shows like Seinfeld and Friends in the 1990’s. Simple as it is to believe that Hollywood has run out of ideas, what’s really happening is more complex. Advertisers want to put their money into what they see as sure bets. And, in the case of shows like S. W. A. T. and The   networks want to wring a little more profit out of programs they own —  programs produced by their studios. But it’s an odd strategy, given what often produces big hits in TV. It’s summed up in an old saying I think is often true in TV: ”stars don’t make TV, TV makes stars.” People like Ted Danson and Jerry Seinfeld didn’t become household names until America got to know them through their hit TV shows. One of this TV season’s most successful new shows, NBC’s This Is Us, featured actors who weren’t big celebrities before the show took off. So I’m skeptical of these reboots or revivals, beyond their appeal to advertisers and headline writers now. Surprise cancellations reveal where the money in network TV really is. When ABC cancelled the Tim Allen comedy Last Man Standing, some conservatives tried to organize a boycott of the network. They wondered if the conservative politics of the show’s star or his character Mike Baxter might have inspired ABC to dump the series, which was drawing a solid viewership of about 8 million viewers each week. Allen himself said he was ”stunned and blindsided” by the cancellation on Twitter. But the likely truth is that Allen’s show was a victim of how the TV business works these days. Again, some network TV shows aren’t owned by the broadcaster which airs them. For example, This Is Us airs on NBC, but’ it’s owned by Fox’s TV production studio. Networks make money by selling ads, but outside of that, large portions of a TV show’s profits go to the show’s owner. The same with revenue from syndicated reruns in America and overseas. CBS’ Moonves told reporters Wednesday that less than 50 percent of their revenue now comes from advertising, with more coming from these ”back end” profits. So networks have a greater incentive to support shows owned by TV studios inside their corporate family. ABC moved from comedy to dramas on Fridays, scheduling two shows which   owns, Once Upon a Time and Marvel’s Inhumans. There wasn’t room for shows they didn’t fully own, like Last Man Standing. Sometimes, fans can make a difference. NBC had also decided to cancel a TV show it didn’t fully own, the time travel adventure drama series Timeless. But fans erupted online and helped convince the bigwigs at the Peacock Network to reconsider and uncancel the show days later. Sometimes, in the fragmented media universe, the average viewer can have an impact after all."
"Updated at 8:19 p. m. ET, Former FBI Director James Comey has agreed to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in an open session. ”The Committee looks forward to receiving testimony from the former Director on his role in the development of the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, and I am hopeful that he will clarify for the American people recent events that have been broadly reported in the media,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr,  . C. said in a statement released Friday evening. ”I hope that former Director Comey’s testimony will help answer some of the questions that have arisen since Director Comey was so suddenly dismissed by the President. I also expect that Director Comey will be able to shed light on issues critical to this Committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election,” said Vice Chairman Mark Warner,  . ”Director Comey served his country with honor for many years, and he deserves an opportunity to tell his story. Moreover, the American people deserve an opportunity to hear it.” Comey’s highly anticipated testimony, which will be slated after the Memorial Day congressional recess, comes after he was fired by Trump May 9 amid a mounting investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election and possible ties between Trump campaign associates and that country. Comey, however, turned down an invitation to testify publicly before the Senate Judiciary Committee as well, which left chairman Chuck Grassley,   and Dianne Feinstein,  . ”extremely disappointed,” the lawmakers said in a statement Friday evening. ”There is no reason he can’t testify before both the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, particularly given that the Judiciary Committee is the FBI’s primary oversight committee with broad jurisdiction over federal law enforcement, FISA and the nomination of the next FBI director,” the two senators also said. ”Given his commitment to the people and the mission of the FBI, we expected him to be responsive to the senators responsible for vetting its next proposed leader. He should reconsider his decision.” While the White House initially pointed to a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, outlining Comey’s mismanagement of the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as the impetus for his termination, Trump later admitted that the Russia investigation  —   which he has called a ”hoax”  —   played a role. Earlier on Friday, the New York Times reported that Trump told Russian officials the day after he fired Comey that the former FBI director was a ”nut job” and he had let him go to take off the ”great pressure” around the mounting investigation. Earlier this week, NPR confirmed that Trump had asked Comey to scuttle the investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, according to a memo of the account written by Comey. Trump has denied that ever happened. On Wednesday, Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to take over and continue the Justice Department investigation into Russian election interference and possible links with Trump campaign aides."
"President Trump told Russian officials last week that he had fired the ”nut job” FBI Director James Comey to ease the pressure of the mounting investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, according to a report from The New York Times. ”I just fired the head of the F. B. I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump told the Russian foreign minister and U. S. ambassador on May 10 during an Oval Office meeting, according to a transcript of the meeting read to The Times by a U. S. official. ”I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not dispute the account of the conversation to The Times and, in a statement to NPR, argued that the Russia investigation was harming U. S. foreign policy. ”The President has always emphasized the importance of making deals with Russia as it relates to Syria, Ukraine, defeating ISIS and other key issues for the benefit and safety of the American people. By grandstanding and politicizing the investigation into Russia’s actions, James Comey created unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia,” Spicer said. ”The investigation would have always continued, and obviously, the termination of Comey would not have ended it. Once again, the real story is that our national security has been undermined by the leaking of private and highly classified conversations.” The May 10 meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak came one day after Trump abruptly fired Comey, which the White House argued at first was because of a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein pointing to Comey’s mismanagement of the investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Trump later said he had already decided to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein’s memo, which the deputy attorney general confirmed to Congress this week. At the same meeting, The Washington Post reported earlier this week, Trump had given the Russians ”highly classified information” that ”jeopardized a critical source of intelligence” on ISIS that came from a key ally, which, according to later reports, was Israel. No American reporters were allowed in to document the meeting, only a Russian Foreign Ministry photographer. The Times report on Friday afternoon is just the latest bombshell story over the past week and adds to mounting headaches for the White House just as Trump has departed for his first foreign trip as president. Amid growing pressure, Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the Department of Justice’s Russia investigation. Mueller was tapped for that post the day after another report from The Times, subsequently confirmed to NPR by two sources, that Trump had asked Comey to scuttle the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn was let go after less than a month on the job after it was revealed he had misled Vice President Pence over his conversation during the transition with Kislyak about U. S. sanctions. Trump has denied he asked Comey to do that, though Comey wrote a memo after their encounter memorializing Trump’s words to that effect (”I hope you can let this go”) according to sources close to the former FBI director. ”There is no collusion between, certainly myself and my campaign, but I can only speak for myself and the Russians. Zero,” Trump said Thursday during a news conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos."
"Updated at 4:10 p. m. ET, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told members of Congress that he knew President Trump planned to fire FBI Director James Comey before he wrote a memo that the White House has cited to justify the termination. ”On May 8, I learned that President Trump intended to remove Director Comey and sought my advice and input. Notwithstanding my personal affection for Director Comey, I thought it was appropriate to seek a new leader,” Rosenstein said in his opening comments in private briefings with both the House and Senate this week, according to a statement he released. (The next day, May 9, the president fired Comey, and the White House cited Rosenstein’s memo to justify that decision.) ”In one of my first meetings with  . Jeff Sessions last winter, we discussed the need for new leadership at the FBI,” Rosenstein continued. ”Among the concerns that I recall were to restore the credibility of the FBI, respect the established authority of the Department of Justice, limit public statements and eliminate leaks.” In that memo  —   which the White House initially used as the justification for Comey’s firing, before Trump admitted he had made up his mind well before that  —   Rosenstein outlined why Comey should be terminated, namely his handling of the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server almost a year ago. ”I thought the July 5 press conference was profoundly wrong and unfair both to the Department of Justice and Secretary Clinton. It explicitly usurped the role of the attorney general, the deputy attorney general and the entire Department of Justice it violated deeply ingrained rules and traditions and it guaranteed that some people would accuse the FBI of interfering in the election,” Rosenstein said. Comey would later reopen the Clinton investigation less than two weeks before Election Day after additional emails surfaced, a controversial decision that many Democrats  —   including Clinton herself  —   believe helped tip the election Trump’s way. Trump praised that decision at the time, though, saying it ”took a lot of guts.” Trump also later admitted that the ongoing Russia investigation and possible ties between his campaign associates played a role in his decision to fire Comey. On Wednesday, Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to take over the Justice Department’s Russia probe. Rosenstein underscored that the memo he wrote was ”not a legal brief” and was ”not a statement of reasons to justify a   termination. ..[and] not a survey of FBI morale or performance” but instead ”a candid internal memorandum about the FBI director’s public statements concerning a   criminal investigation.” ”I wrote it. I believe it. I stand by it,” Rosenstein underscored. Rosenstein also told senators that he was ”not aware” of a request Comey made for additional resources for the Russia investigation shortly before his firing. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe has also testified he wasn’t aware of any such request. A source with direct knowledge confirmed that Comey had indeed requested additional resources for the FBI investigation, which NPR has previously reported. Read Rosenstein’s opening statements: Good afternoon. I welcome the opportunity to discuss my role in the removal of FBI Director James Comey, although I know you understand that I will not discuss the special counsel’s ongoing investigation. Most importantly, I want to emphasize my unshakeable commitment to protecting the integrity of every federal criminal investigation. There never has been, and never will be, any political interference in any matter under my supervision in the United States Department of Justice. * * * Before I discuss the events of the past two weeks, I want to provide some background about my previous relationship with former Director Comey. I have known Jim Comey since approximately 2002. In 2005, when Mr. Comey was Deputy Attorney General, he participated in selecting me to serve as a U. S. Attorney. As a federal prosecutor, he was a role model. His speeches about leadership and public service inspired me. On July 5, 2016, Director Comey held his press conference concerning the federal grand jury investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails. At the start of the press conference, the Director stated that he had ”not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice. ... They do not know what I am about to say.” Director Comey went on to declare that he would publicly disclose ”what we did what we found and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.” He proceeded to disclose details about the evidence assert that the American people ”deserve” to know details declare that no ”reasonable” prosecutor would file charges and criticize Secretary Clinton. I thought the July 5 press conference was profoundly wrong and unfair both to the Department of Justice and Secretary Clinton. It explicitly usurped the role of the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General and the entire Department of Justice it violated deeply engrained rules and traditions and it guaranteed that some people would accuse the FBI of interfering in the election. There are lawful and appropriate mechanisms to deal with unusual circumstances in which public confidence in the rule of law may be jeopardized. Such mechanisms preserve the traditional balance of power between investigators and prosecutors, and protect the rights of citizens. Director Comey attended the Maryland U. S. Attorney’s Office training seminar on October 27, 2016, and gave a detailed explanation of his reasons for making public statements about the conclusion of the Secretary Clinton email investigation. I strongly disagreed with his analysis, but I believe that he made his decisions in good faith. The next day, October 28, Mr. Comey sent his letter to the Congress announcing that the FBI was reopening the Clinton email investigation. He subsequently has said that he believed he was obligated to send the letter. I completely disagree. He again usurped the authority of the Department of Justice, by sending the letter over the objection of the Department of Justice flouted rules and deeply engrained traditions and guaranteed that some people would accuse the FBI of interfering in the election. Before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2017, Director Comey testified under oath about his public statements concerning the Secretary Clinton email investigation. I strongly disagreed with his explanations, particularly his assertion that maintaining confidentiality about criminal investigations constitutes concealment. Nonetheless, I respected him personally. Former Department of Justice officials from both political parties have criticized Director Comey’s decisions. It was not just an isolated mistake the series of public statements about the email investigation, in my opinion, departed from the proper role of the FBI Director and damaged public confidence in the Bureau and the Department. In one of my first meetings with   Jeff Sessions last winter, we discussed the need for new leadership at the FBI. Among the concerns that I recall were to restore the credibility of the FBI, respect the established authority of the Department of Justice, limit public statements and eliminate leaks. On May 8, I learned that President Trump intended to remove Director Comey and sought my advice and input. Notwithstanding my personal affection for Director Comey, I thought it was appropriate to seek a new leader. I wrote a brief memorandum to the Attorney General summarizing my longstanding concerns about Director Comey’s public statements concerning the Secretary Clinton email investigation. I chose the issues to include in my memorandum. Before finalizing the memorandum on May 9, I asked a senior career attorney on my staff to review it. That attorney is an ethics expert who has worked in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General during multiple administrations. He was familiar with the issues. I informed the senior attorney that the President was going to remove Director Comey, that I was writing a memorandum to the Attorney General summarizing my own concerns, and that I wanted to confirm that everything in my memorandum was accurate. He concurred with the points raised in my memorandum. I also asked several other career Department attorneys to review the memorandum and provide edits. My memorandum is not a legal brief these are not issues of law. My memorandum is not a finding of official misconduct the Inspector General will render his judgment about that issue in due course. My memorandum is not a statement of reasons to justify a   termination. My memorandum is not a survey of FBI morale or performance. My memorandum is not a press release. It is a candid internal memorandum about the FBI Director’s public statements concerning a   criminal investigation. I sent my signed memorandum to the Attorney General after noon on Tuesday, May 9. I wrote it. I believe it. I stand by it. * * * Finally, I want to address the media claims that the FBI asked for additional resources for the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. I am not aware of any such request. Moreover, I consulted my staff and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and none of them recalls such a request. Geoff Bennett contributed to this report. "
"What does Michael Flynn, President Trump’s erstwhile national security adviser, think about Russia? His statements and actions are so contradictory, they could induce whiplash. In his book, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, published last July, here is what Flynn thought about working with Russian President Vladimir Putin: ”There’s no reason to believe Putin would welcome cooperation with us. Quite the contrary, in fact.” Seems clear enough: Russia is an adversary. Be wary of Putin. A standard position in the national security community. Yet Flynn was also busy making contacts with Russia. In December 2015, Flynn sat next to Putin in Moscow at a celebration for RT, the   TV network. Documents show that Flynn was paid $33, 000 for a speech he delivered at the event. As a retired Army lieutenant general, he was required to get permission from the military to receive payments from a foreign government, and according to media reports, it’s not clear whether he requested it. The Pentagon’s inspector general is looking into the matter, which is just one aspect of Flynn’s legal troubles. In early 2016, Flynn began advising Trump. They seemed to be on the same page, both willing to explore the possibility of better relations with Moscow. But Flynn the Trump supporter seemed at odds with Flynn the strategist. In his book, he was sharply critical of recent Russian military moves, including plans for new military bases near the country’s western border and an upgrade for their nuclear forces. ”These are not the actions of a country seeking detente with the West,” he said. ”They are, rather, indications that Putin fully intends to do the same thing, as, and in tandem with, the Iranians. Pursue the war against us.”  In Flynn’s view, Russia, Iran and several other countries are part of a ”global alliance” that seeks to undermine the U. S. In an interview with NPR last August, he said: ”When we think about countries like Russia, countries like Cuba, countries like Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, I mean, these are  —   in many cases, these are criminal enterprises that  —   that have dictatorships and certainly tyrants.” However, he also said the U. S. and Russia could work together at times, citing the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. He told the German magazine Der Spiegel: ”We have to work constructively with Russia. . .. You can’t say Russia is bad, they have to go home. It’s not going to happen. Get real.” Compare that with what he wrote in his book about Russia’s role in Syria, where it supports President Bashar Assad: ”They are certainly not fighting terrorists in the Middle East. Theirs is a battle to rescue an embattled ally in Damascus.” So what’s behind these contradictions? Are they just confusing but perfectly legal? Flynn hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing, but investigators are looking closely at Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials. Here’s a quick recap: Reuters reported Thursday that Flynn was in touch with Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential campaign. These contacts picked up after the election, when Flynn was named national security adviser. The two met in New York at Trump Tower in early December. They reportedly spoke by phone on Dec. 19. They texted on Christmas and spoke again on Dec. 28 and 29. Flynn told Vice President Pence they didn’t discuss sanctions against Russia  —   but it turned out they did. Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, warned the White House. ”I think this was a serious compromise situation that the Russians had real leverage. He [Flynn] also had lied to the vice president of the United States,” she said in an interview this week with CNN. Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 13, and Flynn has been keeping a low profile since then. But he is still in the headlines. As reported by NPR and others,   Director James Comey wrote notes about a meeting with Trump on Feb. 14, saying the president asked if he could ”let go” of the Flynn investigation. The White House disputes this. The investigation continues. Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1"
"These days,   meal service often consists of a packet of pretzels and a can of soda. It’s a far cry from the days of the Hindenburg, where the sumptuous dining options included   meals served in an opulent dining room. Before it became a byword for disaster 80 years ago this month, the Hindenburg was the     in   flight: a giant passenger airship composed of durable aluminum alloy filled with highly flammable hydrogen. (That would prove its downfall.) It was conceived as a swank transatlantic travel option for the   that was faster than the deluxe cruise liners of its day, making the journey in two and a half days  —   twice as fast as the Queen Mary, the star of the Cunard line. The   Hindenburg  —   a point of pride and propaganda for the Nazi regime  —   came with its own   kitchen (run by a head chef, with several assistants) grand dining room and printed menus. Passengers were treated to lavish meals served on fine china, like Beef Broth with Marrow Dumplings and Rhine Salmon a la Graf Zeppelin. Indeed, these were so rich that some American passengers, unused to the heavy German cuisine, were known to complain about the buttery sauces, creams and gravies that pervaded every dish. The complaints were common enough that a representative of the company that manufactured the Hindenburg suggested staff start providing ”a printed card in the morning detailing the day’s menu, along with a line stating, ’we would be happy to prepare an omelette for you if there’s nothing on the menu that appeals to you’,” says Dan Grossman, who writes Airships. net, a website dedicated to the history of the Hindenburg and other dirigibles. At the bar, guests were treated to cocktails like Sloe Gin Fizzes, Manhattans, martinis and sidecars, but also crafted signature drinks, such as the   Frosted Cocktail, a combination of orange juice and gin, named after the airship’s official moniker, the   Hindenburg. Also available was a vast selection of more than 250 bottles of the finest German wines. And after drinks? Head to the smoking lounge (many passengers lit up in those days). The pressurized,   lounge was the perfect place to relax with a Lucky Strike  —    though you had to hand over your electric (no gas!) lighter to the attendant guarding the heavy door, as one former passenger recalled. Other aspects of the Hindenburg’s accommodations were decidedly less lavish. Grossman says American guests were horrified to find that there was only one small shared towel in the rest room. And perhaps even stranger to Hindenburg’s elite clientele: Upon boarding the ship, passengers were given a sturdy envelope containing a single napkin to last them the entire journey. Odd as this seems, it was an attempt to conserve weight on a ship that needed to be lighter than air. The Hindenburg was in commercial service for just one year. Its final flight ended on a stormy afternoon on May 6, 1937. The airship approached its destination, Lakehurst, N. J. with 36 passengers and 61 crew aboard. As the ship dropped down its mooring ropes in front of spectators, an explosion occurred off the tail, engulfing the entire ship in flames.   people died (including one crew member on the ground)  —   but amazingly, 62 people survived. ”The window of opportunity to escape was about   seconds,” says Grossman. ”It’s amazing that   of the people survived. I think this is a testament to the fierce human desire to stay alive.” In the years immediately after Hindenburg, luxury   would triumph as Lufthansa, and later, Pan Am staked their own claims to commercial transatlantic passenger flight. But the explosion of the Hindenburg still echoes loudly as a death of the era of the silver airship and   innocence."
"Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet approved legislation Friday allowing Japan’s emperor to abdicate the throne. If the bill passes parliament and if Emperor Akihito steps down, the event will mark Japan’s first abdication in 200 years. Akihito heads the oldest hereditary monarchy in the world. In a rare televised address last year, the    expressed a desire to retire and give his son time to rule: ”When I consider that my fitness level is gradually declining, I am worried that it may become difficult for me to carry out my duties as the symbol of the state with my whole being as I have done until now.’ The bill is a   provision for the emperor step down while he is still alive. Next in line for succession is Crown Prince Naruhito, who is 57. As The New York Times explains, ”Any decision regarding the emperor is freighted in Japan, where until World War II, he was seen as a god. The postwar Constitution, written by American occupiers, stripped the emperor of his status as a deity and set him up instead as a symbol of Japanese unity.” Imperial law is strict: Succession to the Chrysanthemum Throne must be posthumous and only males are eligible, as Kyodo News reports. The Japanese public overwhelmingly supports allowing emperors to retire, according to Kyodo, but conservative supporters of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party want to avoid making permanent changes to the laws that govern succession. One factor in their aversion is a fear is that changes in the Imperial Household Law would lead to women becoming rightful heirs to the throne. The bill in its current form does no such thing, but the opposition Democratic Party has been advocating for debate on allowing princesses to remain in the royal family after they marry commoners. That issue is especially timely: News broke this week that the emperor’s eldest granddaughter, Princess Mako, will soon be engaged. If and when she marries, she will no longer be royalty. There are few male descendants eligible to succeed. As the Times notes, ”Under current law, Naruhito’s successor would be his younger brother, Prince Akishino, 51. Akishino’s son, Prince Hisahito, 10, is the only boy of his generation in the imperial family. If Akihito abdicates, it may happen when he turns 85 in December 2018, according to Kyodo News. A series of rituals will take place over the course of a year, based on ceremonial practices from Japan’s history. Abdication used to be a common practice according to Kyodo, about half of Japan’s 124 former emperors did so. But a law created in 1889 (and a 1947 update to it) made abdication impossible, as it sought to eliminate threats of   former emperors. The last emperor to abdicated did so in 1817, The Asahi Shimbun reports. ”It is urgent that the system should be reformed so that female members can remain in the imperial family,” Isao Tokoro, professor emeritus of legal history at Kyoto Sangyo University, told the Times. ”Otherwise, we will lose more and more members from the imperial family.” Tokoro noted that before the current law was put in place in 1947, Japan had eight female emperors  —   who ”did wonderful jobs.”"
"Looking for a rescued cat to take home? There’s ”Sunny Puss, friendly ginger cat.” ”Tom Tom, loving tuxedo kitten.” Then there’s ”Mr. Biggles, utter bastard of a cat.” The Cat People of Melbourne wrote an adoption listing for Mr. Biggles (aka Lord Bigglesworth) that reads less like an ad and more like a cautionary tale. Mr. Biggles ”is an utter utter bastard,” Gina Brett wrote in the listing, which went viral. He is ”a despot and a dictator.” He’s a gorgeous cat, but beware, she writes: ”If he doesn’t like what you’re doing he will give you a nip! Sometimes he likes to swipe at your feet too. It just depends on what he can reach at the time. ”Mr Biggles does not like to be thwarted. He throws a catty tantrum if he can’t go outside when he wants to be let out (and he wasn’t allowed outside for the first couple of weeks at his carers house so there was a few tantrums! ). Not being fed on time . .. is also a tantrum inducing exercise. . .. ”He will let you know [when] he is not happy, which is often because things are often just not up to his high standards. . .. Mr Biggles likes his cuddles on his terms, and will sit in your lap when he decides it’s time. If the stroking is not up to his standards, he will nip you.” In a video posted with the listing, Mr. Biggles declined to offer a statement on why he was such a bastard, and whether he did it intentionally. It’s not all irascibility and violence. Mr. Biggles ”permits kisses on his shiny black head if he’s feeling mellow,” the listing notes. He has a cute little snore. And he is capable of playing with a dog without drawing blood. He also ”loves to be involved with what you’re doing,” which is a rather ambiguous form of praise for a cat. And he’s healthy. ”Stupidly healthy,” the listing says. ”Mr Biggles is not a cat for the inexperienced or faint hearted. He is a full blooded tomcat with very firm boundaries,” the listing concludes. ”Are you that one special person for Mr Biggles?” As of Friday afternoon, Lord Bigglesworth was still available for adoption  —   but the, er, lucky person to take him home will have to live in Victoria, Australia."
"The Ringling Bros. and Barnum  Bailey Circus has been entertaining audiences for a long time. Its history goes back 146 years  —   to about the time when professional baseball emerged and before   was invented. But this substantial chapter in American history comes to a close on Sunday. After years of declining ticket sales and seemingly endless conflicts with animal rights groups, Ringling Bros. will stage its final show in Uniondale, N. Y. Ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson is one of hundreds of Ringling performers and crew members with extraordinary talents who will be out of a job come Monday. Recruited fresh out of college, where he’d been studying voice performance and training to be a professional opera singer, he became Ringling’s first   ringmaster in 1998. ”Ironically enough, I will be the very last voice in the   history of this show, so I will be the last person you hear to speak of ’The Greatest Show on Earth’  —   which is a wild little paradox, to be a first and a last at the same time. I don’t know too many people who can say that, in any industry,” he says. In his nearly   career with the circus, Iverson married a fellow performer  —   a Brazilian dancer turned production manager  —   and raised two children while traveling from city to city on the circus train. Now 8 and 12 years old, his children also perform with Ringling. During the circus’ recent slate of shows in Virginia, Iverson let NPR into his world. Between performances, he navigates what comes next. On a trip to FedEx to ship out professional portfolios to prospective agents, he reflects on the absurdity of   for circus folks  —   recalling the time consultants came to help them with their resumes. ”How do you do that with circus people? How do you help them write that out? How do you write a resume for superman?” Iverson asks. ”It’s like, he flies, you know?”"
"More than half of people say they’ve suffered lower back pain in the past year, according to the latest   Health Analytics Health Poll. That’s not a surprise low back pain is very common, and one of the biggest reasons that people seek medical care. But people told us that they’re making very different choices in how they treat that pain, with some stark differences among age groups and income levels. And doctors often aren’t giving people advice based on the best medical evidence, instead prescribing treatments that don’t relieve back pain and can expose people to serious risk, including addiction.   percent of people polled said they treated the back pain themselves without going to a doctor. That makes sense most back pain gets better on its own, and the   remedy that people say they reach for more often,    medications like ibuprofen, can offer some relief without significant risk. Still, the current advice is stay active and try   remedies such as a heating pad first, before even Advil or Aleve, according to clinical guidelines published in April by the American College of Physicians. Those guidelines also said there’s evidence of benefits from massage, acupuncture or chiropractic. When people do go to a doctor, the treatment most commonly recommended to survey participants was prescription painkillers, at 40 percent. That includes opioids, which are overprescribed and have fueled the nation’s epidemic of opioid dependence, addiction and overdose deaths. In March 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that opioids not be the first choice for chronic pain, saying that patients should try things like exercise and   pain pills first. ”Many more patients are getting opioids than you would expect,” says Dr. Anil Jain, vice president and chief health informatics officer for Truven Health Analytics and IBM Watson Health. Survey participants said doctors also recommended injections 20 percent of the time and surgery 12 percent of the time. Add that up and it means that someone going to a doctor for back pain has a good chance of getting a treatment that probably won’t help, and comes with risks like addiction or surgical complications, according to Dr. Anna Lembke. She’s a Stanford University psychiatrist and author of Drug Dealer M. D. which chronicles how opioid pain pills have been promoted to physicians. ”We have a serious problem with our   delivery system where physicians are highly incentivized to prescribe pills and perform procedures because that’s what pays,” Lembke says. ”They’re also motivated to please patients, but don’t have much time to manage complex medical conditions.” The survey finding show a disconnect between what medical organizations recommend and what doctors and patients are doing, says Dr. Steven Atlas, a low back pain specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital who wrote an editorial accompanying the April guidelines. ”The simplest thing to do is to take a medicine for pain,” Atlas says. ”But these guidelines are more focused on the fact that back pain is often a reflection of our physical  .” We’re overweight, we don’t exercise and we’re sedentary in our work, Atlas says. That makes us more prone to low back pain. ”Even if medication does well, it’s not treating the underlying problem and it can come back.” Millennials were least likely to go to a doctor for back pain, the survey found, with 64 percent saying they treated it themselves. They were also much more likely to use   treatments like exercise and massage. That could be because that generation is more   and likely to research treatments themselves, Jain says, or it could be because their back pain is caused by recreational activities like sports and they don’t see it as needing a doctor’s care. Overall, 70 percent of those surveyed said their back pain got better or went away completely just 4. 7 percent said it got worse. But there were startling differences in who benefited. People with incomes over $50, 000 a year were much more likely to say the pain went away completely, with 24. 7 percent of those with incomes between $50, 000 and $99, 999 saying they were pain free, and 45. 4 percent of those making over $100, 000 a year. Recovery also correlated with education level: People who hadn’t graduated from college were more likely to say they were still dealing with pain. That could reflect differences in access to care the survey found that   people were more likely to seek medical care, and also more likely to use massage or exercise, treatments that typically aren’t covered by insurance and take time. It will take time to change the perceptions of patients and doctors that the   treatment for low back pain is pills, Atlas says. ”Still, the emphasis on patients taking control and understanding what counts for back pain is important.” That’s a challenge in his own practice, Atlas says. ”I saw a patient today who really wanted medicine that was their conceptual model. Being a good doctor, I gave them medicine. But I also said, ’You’ve had back pain in the past, it would be really good to focus on physical activity. Walking is good for it, even if it makes it a little more sore.’ ” You can find the questions and full results of the latest poll here. For previous polls, click here. Survey Methodology, The Truven Health   Health Poll is powered by the Truven Health Analytics PULSE® Healthcare Survey, an independently funded multimodal (landline, cellphone, Internet) survey that collects information from approximately 80, 000 U. S. households annually. The results depicted here represent responses from 3, 002 survey participants interviewed from March 1 —  16, 2017. The margin of error is plus or minus 1. 8 percentage points."
"Milwaukee has the nation’s   publicly funded voucher program. For 27 years it has targeted   kids from   families, children who otherwise could not afford the tuition at a private or religious school. The vouchers are issued by what’s known as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Some people see them as a beacon of hope in a public school district where student achievement lags far behind the state average and where only 20 percent of students are proficient in English language arts and fewer than 15 percent in math. Others say the program is a failed experiment that has siphoned away money desperately needed by the city’s struggling schools. As part of our reporting on vouchers around the country, and to get a look at the program as it stands today, we visited several schools in the voucher program. Texas Bufkin Christian Academy has operated for 16 years. It occupies an old building that once housed a nursing home. The school’s founder, Texas Bufkin, is wary of visitors, especially reporters. ”We don’t let people from the media in our building,” says Bufkin. Why? I ask. ”Because I just don’t feel like I need to talk to reporters.” Eventually, I’m allowed inside but, Bufkin says, just for a few minutes. Of the 121 private and religious schools in Milwaukee’s voucher program, this is the   according to state education officials. All of the 94 students enrolled from   to 12th grade are   Bufkin says. All have a voucher worth up to $7, 900, depending on the grade they’re in. The school’s latest scores on state tests show that not a single student is at grade level: not in math, not in reading, science or social studies, according to state education officials. Bufkin’s daughter, Nicole, who helps run the school, says there’s a reason for the students’ poor performance: Most of the children that the school takes in arrive four to six years behind. ”The child who’s not a great student, the child that’s just falling through the cracks  —   they may not be going to Harvard, they may not be going to Yale,” she says. ”But we’re the people who are the net, and we’re catching them.” Howard Fuller, who helped write the voucher law back in 1990, agrees that some voucher schools are doing no better than the city’s public schools. He should know. Fuller is a former superintendent of Milwaukee’s school district. But he insists that for most of the 28, 000 students in the program, vouchers are a lifeline. ”There are thousands of children whose lives are much better today because they were able to access better schools than they would have had if the voucher program had not existed,” says Fuller. His support for vouchers is pretty straightforward. ”I don’t believe that we should have an America where only those of us with money have the ability to choose.” While vouchers in Milwaukee have definitely given poor families more choices, have they given children a better education? Critics and supporters can both find, in the thick stacks of research on the program over the years, support for their arguments. That debate has long been muddied by ideologicial, and methodological, differences. Over the years much of the research found test scores flat, lower in some cases or slightly improved in others. Some more recent studies have shown students in the program making modest gains compared with children in the city’s public schools, especially in terms of college attendance and high school graduation. But it has not over the years produced the large benefits in achievement that some had predicted. There’s been no miracle here, says Wendell Harris, a member of the Milwaukee school board. He says one group that has benefited from vouchers is private and religious schools. ”If you set up a Christian academy and your main interest is to get a few hundred children to improve your [school finances],” he argues, ”and you use Christianity as the draw, these schools have exploited persons’ beliefs for their own private gain.” The rates of joblessness, crime and poverty in Milwaukee are among the highest in the nation. Vouchers don’t address any of that, says Harris. Fuller and other voucher proponents agree that the program needs to weed out the   schools and build support for the best ones. Schools like St. Marcus Lutheran School, just north of downtown Milwaukee. Almost all the students at St. Marcus are  . Nine out of 10 are low income, so they qualify for a voucher that helps cover the $8, 500 tuition. More than 26 percent of this school’s students are proficient in English language arts and more than 30 percent in math  —   well above the averages for the city’s public schools, The school doesn’t offer transportation, so Henry Tyson, the man who runs St. Marcus, is known to shuttle kids to and from school whenever their parents can’t. This morning, he is on his way to pick up a little boy named Jeremiah. Tyson says Jeremiah is a talented child who lives in a rough neighborhood where kids often get lost. ”It’s one of the great tragedies in a city like this,” says Tyson. ”How do you give kids a vision for their future especially when they’re growing up in these tough, tough neighborhoods.” Margaret Katherine has a grandson at St. Marcus. The voucher that he uses was an opportunity she says she couldn’t pass up. ”You better grab it while you can,” she says, ”because once it’s gone, you’re gonna be like me.” Katherine says not a day goes by that she doesn’t regret dropping out of school, not learning how to read or write properly. ”I don’t want my child to be lost.” For her, all this back and forth about vouchers is not about pitting private schools against Milwaukee Public Schools. ”I don’t want to see MPS fail, but I don’t want my child to fail either,” she says."
"The day Ayden came home from school with bruises, his mother started looking for a new school. Ayden’s a bright    with a blond crew cut, glasses and an eager smile showing new teeth coming in. He also has autism, ADHD and a seizure disorder. (We’re not using his last name to protect his privacy.) He loves karate, chapter books and very soft blankets: ”I love the fuzziness, I just cocoon myself into my own burrito.” ”He’s so smart but lacks so much socially,” says his mother, Lynn. She says Ayden was suspended repeatedly from his school in St. Lucie County, Fla. starting in first grade, for outbursts like throwing a chair. And during ”meltdowns,” he was physically restrained by being held in a bear hug from behind or penned in with   mats for up to 45 minutes. ”Not just sometimes, it was every single day!” Ayden says. ”That kind of stress gets me all worked up and it makes my tics go crazy!” One day, Lynn says, Ayden came home with marks all over his body from being restrained. ”That was my final straw.” She started looking for another school. A spokeswoman for the St. Lucie Public Schools would not comment, citing privacy. Helping kids like Ayden find a better fit is exactly why vouchers for   students were created. There are 20 of these programs around the country, but the McKay Scholarship program in Florida is the largest, and one of the oldest. Given his diagnoses, Ayden is eligible for about $11, 000 a year to attend a private school. But there’s a catch. For the past eight months, Ayden’s mother has not been able to find a school within driving distance that will accept him. ”They talk about McKay like it’s this great thing, but talk to these private schools and as soon as I say ’behavioral issues,’ they’ll tell you that they can’t accommodate him,” Lynn says. Repeated visits by President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have suggested that Florida is intended to be a national model for the expansion of school choice. ”I would point to Florida as being one that has had a variety of options for the longest period of time,” DeVos said recently in a radio interview. She also mentioned the McKay program approvingly during her confirmation hearing. Compared with public schools, private schools may offer special education students smaller classes and more personalized attention. On one 2003 survey, families who found a placement using McKay were more satisfied and reported less bullying. In cases like Ayden’s, leaving can also be a more attractive alternative to pursuing costly legal action against school districts. Examinations of court records show families usually lose these cases. Jay Phillip Greene at the University of Arkansas, a   researcher, argues, ”By giving special needs students additional options, traditional public schools can no longer take those students and the additional revenue they generate for granted.” A study he published in 2011 showed that   students did modestly better at public schools that faced more McKay competition. The same study also showed that with the introduction of the McKay program, public schools were less likely to identify students as having mild special needs in the first place. But, when it comes to vouchers for special ed, the problem, say legal experts, is twofold: not enough rights and not enough money. Lynn and six other Florida families interviewed for this story have transferred again and again, among public, private, home school, virtual and charter schools, following a road of hope and disappointment. ”When we hear that Florida is a role model, we cringe a little bit because we see so many problems with the system,” says Stephanie Langer, a Florida attorney who specializes in special education rights. The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, guarantees children with disabilities a ”Free Appropriate Public Education,” known as FAPE. And a major Supreme Court decision this spring, Endrew F. v. Douglas, affirmed that what is ”appropriate” for these students must be ”ambitious” and not ”barely more than de minimus.” The boy in that case, like Ayden, was capable of progressing meaningfully academically given the right supports, something true of many children with autism spectrum disorder. But outside of public and charter schools, there is no right to FAPE. This includes things like due process, the right to an evaluation, regular meetings between parents and school officials, and, crucially, having an individualized education plan, or IEP, written and followed. And the F in FAPE includes free therapies and other services, sometimes funded by Medicaid, that private schools may charge extra for. ”A lot of parents don’t necessarily understand that they’re giving up their IDEA rights” when they leave public schools, says Annie Acosta, director of fiscal and family support policy at The Arc, a national advocacy organization for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. ”If the IEP isn’t being followed, there’s no recourse.” In fact, says her colleague Shawn Ullman, religiously based schools, which make up a majority of private schools in Florida and around the country, don’t even have to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act, the federal law that guarantees basic accommodations like wheelchair access. Kimberley   who is Lynn and Ayden’s attorney, has a   son of her own. She says that since private schools are not subjected to the same legal oversight as public schools, ”a lot of taxpayer money is being wasted.” There is no public data collection on how well private schools in Florida are serving McKay students with special needs. These schools can refuse entry to any child they wish. Or, accept them, take their tuition and later ask them to leave. Lynn says that most of the private schools she reached out to rejected them without even meeting Ayden. ”I appreciate the fact that they’re upfront with me,” she says, ”but it’s very frustrating on my part.” Ayden has been diagnosed with   stress from the injuries he sustained at school. He spent most of this past school year in what’s called ”homebound.” This means a few hours a week of    teaching from a public school teacher. The rest of the time, Ayden must go to work with his mother or spend time with his father. ”They’re just keeping me at home for now, but I’m going to go back to school eventually,” Ayden says with hope in his voice. Part of the reason that schools might not accept students like Ayden is the expense. ”In general . .. special education costs approximately two times as much as regular education,” says Perry Zirkel, a national expert on special education law at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. ”That’s what’s ’special’ about special education.” The McKay scholarship can exceed $22, 000 for students with profound and severe disabilities, such as those who need help feeding themselves. But the average amount is $8, 000. That’s just $1, 000 more than the average per pupil spending for all public school students in Florida, which spends less than most other states. That also means that the state of Florida may save money when special education students ”go out on McKay.” Private schools that cater to students with significant special needs, like Woodland Hall Academy in Tallahassee, can charge $20, 000 and up. McKay scholarship families must supplement out of pocket or hope for financial aid. Schools that are more affordable may lack the services these students need. In addition, the state doesn’t pay for transportation, which limits choice. Clearly, for 31, 000 McKay students, private schools are working, at least for a time the average usage is 3. 6 school years. NPR Ed asked the Florida Department of Education about how the vouchers serve families with special needs. Audrey Walden, the press secretary for the department, sent a statement that read in part, ”school choice is an essential component of our state’s   public school system. . .. When our state’s students succeed, all Floridians benefit.” She confirmed that private schools are expected to   information about which disabilities they can accommodate and whether they accept McKay. An hour south of St. Lucie County, where Ayden lives, we met Reed, a slender    with a polo shirt neatly tucked into jeans. He was diagnosed with autism in preschool. ”He was the kind of classic kid, pushing the firetruck around and around, not engaging with other children,” says his mother, Lauren. At the time, he was attending Good Shepherd Episcopal School in Tequesta, Fla. Lauren says at first, Good Shepherd’s staff members were unsure about their ability to accommodate Reed, but eventually the school embraced him. ”Reed ended up being one of their star students, I think. One of the favorite students of the school,” says his mother. Good Shepherd’s head of school, John Hoye, confirms that the family had a good experience ”because there are so many caring hearts in the building.” The family brought in Reed’s therapist at its own expense to help the teachers learn how to work with him. He thrived there, showing a talent for music. ”I call those the good old days,” says Reed. But the small school, with about a dozen children per grade, only goes up to fifth grade. And like Lynn, Lauren and her husband, Rolf, had trouble finding another place for Reed. Money was no object. Lauren estimates that they have spent at least $100, 000 a year out of pocket on speech and occupational therapy and on applied behavior analysis, an intensive form of coaching for autism. One school where they applied was the Pine School, north of West Palm Beach. ”We don’t have children with anything too involved because we just don’t have the resources,” says the admissions director, Beth Lettengarver, explaining that the school no longer accepts the McKay Scholarship. For sixth grade, Reed enrolled at a charter school, Franklin Academy. A formal state complaint from the family says Reed’s IEP was not followed there, in part because there was no psychologist on staff, and that Reed was severely bullied. The school’s reply says Reed retaliated by stabbing his bully with a pencil and was suspended. The family withdrew Reed after three weeks. Scott E. Sznitken, the executive director of the Florida Charter Foundation, which operates the six Franklin Academies, would not discuss Reed, citing privacy. He confirmed that the schools do not have a psychologist on staff. So, after searching high and low, Reed’s family ended up at the one school that had to take him in. Reed is now in his second year, seventh grade, at Jupiter Middle School of Technology. ”We’re a regular old comprehensive public school,” says the principal, Lisa Hastey. ”We’re ethnically diverse,   diverse.” More than 10 percent of students are in special ed, and one of the teachers is an autism specialist. She offers dog therapy, yoga therapy and art therapy and hosts a ”lunch bunch” so the school’s 20 or so students with autism have a safe social space. Reed is making A’s and B’s in mainstream classes. His therapist comes to class with him for a few hours a day. He is one of several students at the school to make   chorus, and he also plays keyboard. ”I prefer singing,” he says with a shy smile. ”It’s my portable instrument.” And Reed is making friends. Caleb Petranchuk, a typically developing   sings in boys’ chorus with Reed. ”He’s a great guy! Once you get to know him,” Caleb says. ”He’s always cracking jokes and making everyone laugh.”"
"Updated at 7:30 p. m. ET, A towering statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee no longer stands over the city of New Orleans. The   process of removing the statue of the Confederate general who symbolized Southern resistance in the Civil War ended late Friday afternoon as a crane lifted the statue from its perch. Below, a largely jubilant crowd shouted ”Take him down, take him down!” and ”Hey, hey,  !” Lee’s statue had been a fixture there since 1884. It is the last of four   monuments that New Orleans had pledged to remove amid a swirl of controversy. Lee’s was the most prominent of the four  —   a bronze statue atop a roughly    column in Lee Circle. Mayor Mitch Landrieu began pushing for the monuments’ removal in 2015 after Dylann Roof massacred nine black Charleston churchgoers. The New Orleans City Council approved the move later that year. On April 24, a monument to a deadly 1874 white supremacist uprising was the first to come down. A couple of weeks later, a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was taken away. And on Wednesday, a statue of Confederate Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard was removed. In what the   reported as ”a passionate defense” of the removal of the Confederate statues, Landrieu said the Confederacy was ”on the wrong side of humanity.” ”These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for,” he said. But clearing out the monuments has been highly controversial. Contractors have received death threats, and Landrieu told The Washington Post that nearly every   company in southern Louisiana was also threatened. The first three removals took place in the dark of night workers wore flak jackets as protesters both for and against the process picketed nearby. The statue of Lee  —   who surrendered the Confederate Army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, effectively ending the Civil War  —   was the first to be taken down in the light of day. In his remarks, Landrieu said the monuments were put up in what he termed ”the cult of lost cause.” ”This cult had one goal and one goal only: through monuments and other means to rewrite history, to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity,” Landrieu said. ”So now is a time to come together to heal and to focus on a larger task,” he added, ”making this city a beautiful manifestation of what is possible and what we as a people can become.” As for what will happen to the statues, The Associated Press reports the city is soliciting proposals from nonprofit and government entities and has so far gotten offers from various public and private institutions. Certain conditions apply, however the statues cannot be displayed outdoors on public property in New Orleans. And where the monuments once stood, public art and an American flag are among the pieces that will replace them."
"What difference does it make who’s president of Iran? It’s fair to ask the question on this weekend of Iran’s presidential election. After all, the president’s title makes him sound like the top official, but he is not. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, holds far more power. Still, the election of Hassan Rouhani to Iran’s presidency in 2013 made a difference. Iranian voters decisively declared that they wanted more openness to the world. And while the people don’t have the last word in Iran  —   Khamenei gets that  —   Iran’s Shiite Muslim clerical establishment had to listen in order to preserve its own legitimacy. Rouhani made a nuclear deal with the West. And now Iranians decide if they want to keep moving in his direction. Technology, communications show signs of change, During five days in Iran, we looked for signs of how Rouhani changed the country in his first term. They were subtle. Despite the drama of the nuclear deal abroad, it’s commonly said that Rouhani failed to bring greater freedom at home. Our reporting found a more complex picture: In the absence of big steps, resisted by the clerical establishment, Rouhani took small ones. Some writers and journalists feel more free. There is still no such thing as an   guarantee of a free press, but   newspapers, many of which were closed in recent years, have restarted. Journalists who were once jailed are out. We chatted with one of them, Maryam Majd, a photojournalist arrested for several weeks in 2011. She’s now making a documentary film about an Iranian female film director. There is also freer communication. Rouhani’s government actively supported a dramatic expansion of 3G and 4G cellphone service across much of the country. The improved data service has altered daily life, according to Alireza Sadeghian, a CEO who oversees half a dozen Internet businesses. ”Once 3G comes, the culture changes,” he says. ”The fact that you have Internet on the street makes you much more addicted to your phone, makes you download much apps, use much more apps, makes you use technology much more . .. I don’t like it!” Sadeghian added with a laugh  —   even though it’s good for business. It’s also, by the way, good for the Internet political conversation  —   much of which tends to favor Rouhani and reform, and finds its way online even though some social media platforms are blocked. A more tangible result of this tech upgrade is visible in Tehran kitchens, like that in the apartment of Maral Mohamedzadeh. She’s a housewife who cooks two dozen lunches per day  —   and sells them to customers via the Internet. She’s part of a business called Mamanpaz, which works with dozens of housewives to deliver actual   meals to businesses. People place orders online the cooks are connected to them through a mobile phone app. The business is the creation of Tabassom Latifi, who’s 31, and started the business early in Rouhani’s term. And then there’s Kourosh Qadiri, who works for another Internet business: He’s a driver with an Iranian equivalent of   services like Uber. In Tehran one such business is called Snapp, and Qadiri, a college student, makes extra money driving. Indirectly, then, he benefits from Rouhani’s   government, although he told us he is not a fan of the president: He opposes Rouhani’s nuclear deal. The more things stay the same, There is also a lot that did not change in Rouhani’s first term, as we heard when we left Tehran for the much smaller city of Qazvin. Ringed by factories, it’s both an industrial town and a historic site, home of a    mosque that had once been a Zoroastrian temple. It’s also home of a   caravanserai, a kind of hotel and stable where camel caravans would stop to rest centuries ago. Today the caravanserai has become a kind of upscale bazaar. In its arched brick passageways, we met Ashran, a    college student who was deeply cynical about Iran’s government, which he felt was just out to control him. A nearby shopkeeper summed up his own skepticism: ”The people live for themselves, and the government lives for itself.” Rouhani’s nuclear deal has affected the economy: the lifting of sanctions dramatically increased oil production, and made possible new business deals like Iran’s acquisition of Boeing airplanes. Yet he hasn’t brought down unemployment. The rough economy was evident in a Qazvin real estate office, where the brokers told us that a few years ago they were selling 15 or 20 houses per month, but now just two or three. In fairness, this may also be a sign of progress: A few years ago, Iranians were desperately putting their money into real estate, hoping to jump before inflation made their money worthless. Now President Rouhani has brought down inflation, but he slowed the economy while doing so. His record is mixed enough that his critics had no trouble bringing out a crowd for a rally in a Qazvin suburb on Wednesday, the last official night of campaigning. Some at the rally feared Rouhani has changed too much. One was Mehdi Mohammad Khani, a clerical student, who wants to reinforce the rule of Iran’s supreme leader. Nearby, a    said he feared Rouhani would encourage boys and girls to have sex. In reality, the moral and social codes of the Islamic Republic remain essentially as they were. Not only do some women chafe at the requirement that they cover their hair  —   many hope for equal treatment in the workplace, and changes to divorce laws that currently favor men. In Tehran, we met Maryam Abdi and Sagedeh Kianooshrad. They were working in a campaign office supporting Rouhani even though he has not delivered on their issues. They feel he is their best hope. In the end, four years of drama came down to a single choice for millions of Iranians: either stay the course with Rouhani, or try a new direction with a more conservative challenger, Ebrahim Raisi. On Friday, they marked their paper ballots and dropped them in plastic boxes. They will choose the leader who will face President Trump’s administration as it works to pressure Iran  —   and that same leader will face pressure from both sides of Iran’s cultural divide at home. NPR’s Kevin Leahy, Arezou Rezvani and Ayda Pourasad contributed to this report."
"The   details of the Trump administration’s version of the ”Mexico City policy” are raising many questions about its impact not only on abortion but also on preventing HIV and infectious diseases like malaria. The policy is named for the place where it was introduced by President Ronald Reagan, at a U. N. conference, in 1984. The aim was to cut off U. S. funding to nongovernmental organizations that ”perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.” President Barack Obama had revoked the rule (as did President Bill Clinton). But President Trump has reinstated and renamed it (the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance plan). And on Monday, he gave details on its newly expanded scope. Previously, only federally funded family planning organizations were affected. Now the restrictions apply to any nongovernmental group receiving funds provided by the State Department, the U. S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Defense. So the plan would apply to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which funds HIV prevention and treatment in nearly 60 countries, and the President’s Malaria Initiative. The amount of U. S. funds now covered are nearly $9 billion compared with $600 million in earlier iterations. ”It has a bigger reach than it’s ever had before, and many of the organizations that could now be affected have never confronted it before,” says Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The impact will be felt in communities where one   clinic addresses a wide span of health needs. The local reproductive health clinic could receive PEPFAR funding for a program to prevent HIV transmission or U. S. funding to provide bed nets to ward off   mosquitoes. If that clinic provides or promotes abortion, then all of those U. S. funds would now be cut. There are strong reactions to the policy from   groups and from supporters of abortion rights. ”This is going to result in an increase in the number of unintended pregnancies, in the number of unsafe abortions, in the number of mothers dying, whether from   causes or HIV causes, and also in the number of infant and child deaths,” says Geeta Rao Gupta, executive director for the United Nations Foundation’s 3D Program for Girls  Women, which addresses the needs and rights of women. Some research has shown that when the Mexico City policy is in force, abortion rates can rise. One study by Stanford University researchers, published by the Bulletin of the World Health Organization in 2011, found that abortions in   African countries held steady at about 10 per 100, 000 women every year from 1994 to 2000 during the Clinton administration, which did not enforce the policy. President George W. Bush reinstated the Mexico City policy in 2001, and from 2001 to 2008, there were 14. 5 abortions per 100, 000 women every year. The study authors note that it’s not possible to be completely certain about the reason for the rise. But they theorize that when women lose access to modern contraceptives like birth control pills because the clinics that provided them had shut down because of a loss of funds, some of the women may turn to unsafe abortions. In 2008, 47, 000 women died from complications after unsafe abortions, according the World Health Organization. The Trump version of the rule does allow referrals for abortions in some limited cases, such as pregnancies resulting from rape or incest and when the mother’s physical health is at risk. But many NGOs that want to comply with the new policy will likely avoid all discussion of abortion lest funding be jeopardized, predicts Brian Dixon, vice president for media and government relations at Population Connection Action Fund. That is what happened during the previous iteration of the rule, Dixon says: ”One of the problems with this policy is the chill it imposes” on any discussion of abortion. Health specialists who are opposed to abortion rights are in favor of the change. ”We’re making a clear statement here that we do not want any [U. S. taxpayer dollars] going for abortions overseas and that the global health assistance fund should go to actual health [care] not abortion,” says Arina Grossu, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council. ”Children shouldn’t have to pay with their lives for the poverty of their parents,” says Deirdre McQuade, a spokeswoman for the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. ”Abortion’s not the answer, addressing basic needs is.” She believes funding for proper nutrition and sanitation should be priorities to help mothers in   countries take care of their children. The new rule went into effect earlier this week. Any new U. S. government grant for an NGO health program will need to comply with the rules on abortion restrictions. Groups operating with an existing grant from U. S. government sources won’t need to comply until their contract is up for renewal or if they apply for additional funding. It’s difficult to assess the full impact of the expanded Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance plan, partly because it’s unclear whether other donors like the Bill  Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a funder of NPR) will fill any gaps that occur because of the new policy. It’s also not clear how many NGOs will comply with the new policy and how many will refuse to do so. But a Kaiser Family Health Foundation report looking at countries that got U. S. federal funding in 2016 notes that 37 countries allowed abortions in at least one circumstance that would violate the Mexico City policy. Dixon knows one agency in Kenya that won’t comply. Family Health Options Kenya runs more than a dozen reproductive health clinics that provide family planning and HIV prevention services. Some of the clinics serve the poorest neighborhoods in Nairobi. Family Health Options Kenya expects to lose about 60 percent of its total funding and is planning to close about half of its clinics to absorb the cuts, according to a fact sheet that the nonprofit prepared this year. The State Department plans to track the impact of the policy over the first six months of its rollout. For a program like PEPFAR, the goal is to determine whether the new restrictions disrupt HIV prevention and treatment. The State Department is prepared to offer waivers to NGOs in regions with no other providers of HIV services. ”It would have to be a   discussion to really make that case,” says a senior State Department official familiar with PEPFAR who requested anonymity. ”I think that [the waiver is] an attempt to placate those who are very concerned about this policy,” says Scott Evertz, former director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy during the Bush administration. He expressed concerns about what metrics would be used to track whether a waiver was necessary and which staffers within the State Department would carry out this evaluation. ”I know there are a lot of smart people in the federal government, but I don’t think that’s been thought through at all.” ”I’m proudly ” Evertz states. ”I don’t like the idea of abortion and terminating pregnancy to be the solution to an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. However, all that said, I have no doubt that this policy will result in the unnecessary deaths [from HIV] of individuals that were living as a result of the assistance that we were providing.” Rina   is a science journalist who writes about medicine, global health and the life sciences. She can be reached @rinawrites"
"Whether he likes it or not, a morbidly obese wild monkey in Thailand is now swapping an   diet of junk food and soda for a strict regimen of fruits, vegetables and lean proteins. Dubbed ”Uncle Fat” by social media followers who began circulating photos of him last month, it was tourists, apparently finding his folds irresistible, who plied him with sweets. But the primate’s predicament is a good example of why people should not be feeding wild animals. Today he weighs 60 pounds, three times the amount of an average adult, reports the Associated Press and is facing serious health issues. He is in the care of Supakarn Kaewchot who says all of that fat formed a mass that became a type of benign tumor. ”He is now in critical condition where there is a high risk of heart disease and diabetes,” she says. Wildlife official Kacha Phukem captured the macaque on April 27 from a Bangkok suburb and tells the Associated Press, ”He was the leader of his pack, and when I tried to go in, I had to fight off a flock of them with sticks.” In addition to providing muscle, the pack would ensure that the leader needn’t lift a finger for his meals. ”He had minions and other monkeys bringing food for him,” said veterinarian Supakarn. But the hope is that without all the bad influences, Uncle Fat will soon be returning to fighting weight. He is being fed just 14 ounces of lean protein and produce twice a day. Officials hope to release him within the next few months. But whether Uncle Fat can keep off the weight once he gets back to the wild and back to temptation is another story."
"President Trump will try to leave his troubles behind as he departs on the first foreign trip of his presidency. It’s an ambitious itinerary with stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican and two meetings with European leaders. Here are five objectives to watch for as Trump goes overseas. 1. Will the cloud of controversy follow? There has been one ”bad news” headline after another involving the Trump administration breaking every day this week. But if the president is looking for a reprieve, recent history indicates he might be disappointed. The White House press corps is going on the trip and will no doubt try to press him on why he really fired FBI Director James Comey, whether he leaked classified information to the Russians in an Oval Office meeting, and why he hired former national security adviser Mike Flynn even after Flynn notified the transition team that he was under investigation by the FBI. And there are likely to be more developments back in Washington even as he’s abroad. There’s precedent for this: In 2016 when President Barack Obama traveled overseas, he was asked repeatedly  —   almost exclusively it seemed  —   about the presidential campaign and   Donald Trump. Obama’s agenda and announcements on those trips were completely overshadowed by the campaign. When President Bill Clinton went on trips, questions followed about the various investigations surrounding him and his administration. There’s essentially no escape from domestic politics for presidents no matter where they are. That said, the leaders in Saudi Arabia are not obsessed with the American FBI director and possible Russian meddling in the campaign in the way that the media and many Americans may be. Thus, the first leg of his trip, at least, Trump is less likely to hear about these things from his hosts. 2. Getting out of his comfort zone, Every president going back to Ronald Reagan has started smaller, with their first international journeys taking them to America’s neighbors, either Canada or Mexico. Trump’s first trip is much farther from home. Trump is known to be a homebody, someone who greatly prefers sleeping in his own bed, golfing at his own courses and dining at his own properties. During the campaign, he returned to Trump Tower in New York most nights, even if he had been campaigning on the other end of the country. This trip will take the president out of his comfort zone. How will he adapt? We’ll all know soon. One thing that might help put Trump at ease is that his wife, Melania, is traveling with him for the entire trip. Also, The Associated Press reports that caterers in Saudi Arabia will have the option of steak with ketchup (the president’s preferred meal) in addition to local cuisine. 3. A message for the three Abrahamic religions, Trump is visiting Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican, and it isn’t a coincidence. His advisers say he wanted to visit these three major religious centers to deliver a message of unity in the fight against terrorism. Trump is ”bringing people the world over to understand we are in this together,” said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at a press conference. ”This is not a battle about religions. This is not a battle about cultures. This is a battle about good and evil. And their  —   the goodness of people of all faiths will prevail over this evil.” In Saudi Arabia, Trump is scheduled to give a speech to the leaders of some 50   countries. National security adviser H. R. McMaster said Trump will call on the Muslim leaders to ”promote a peaceful vision of Islam.” And yes, this message will come from the same person who proposed a ”Muslim ban” during the campaign and has said things that have been widely perceived as being opposed to the Islamic religion. Trump faces a delicate task. 4. Meeting with Europeans, While Middle East experts expect Trump to be warmly welcomed in Saudi Arabia and Israel, he may be received in Europe with some trepidation. Trump, during the campaign, said the NATO alliance was obsolete. Now that he’s president, he says it isn’t obsolete. But he still wants its members to pay their fair share, as he puts it, meaning that they should spend a larger share of gross domestic product on their own national defense, as the NATO charter calls for. Given Trump’s shifting positions, Europe watchers say, leaders of countries in the alliance are concerned he could shift his position again in a way that is at cross purposes with their interests. European leaders will make a big push to convince Trump that they are not getting credit for all the things they are doing to contribute to the alliance. One symbolic way they’ll do that is by unveiling an ”Article 5” memorial. Article 5 says an attack against one ally is considered an attack against all allies. The memorial marks how the NATO countries responded to the Sept. 11 attack on America. Trump will also meet the new French president, Emmanuel Macron. Although Trump didn’t explicitly endorse Macron’s opponent, Marine Le Pen, he clearly had an affinity for her nationalist ideas and she an affinity for his. 5. America First? One thing we’re going to see is the first road test of what ”American First” means on the international stage. So far, in his interactions with world leaders, Trump has softened from more absolutist positions he had coming in: the shift on NATO, not tearing up NAFTA, deciding China isn’t a currency manipulator after all, to name a few. What sorts of ”deliverables” will Trump come away with from this trip and will he defer to the leaders he’s meeting with or be persuaded by their arguments? We’ll find out soon. Though, the biggest goal of the trip may simply be to build bonds with the dozens of leaders he will cross paths with over the next nine days. ”President Trump understands that America First does not mean America alone, to the contrary,” McMaster said. ”Prioritizing American interests means strengthening alliances and partnerships that help us extend our influence and improve the security of the American people.”"
"Donald Trump’s first overseas trip as president begins Friday with a pilgrimage of sorts. With stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican, Trump will be visiting the centers of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, the three major monotheistic religions. But he’s wading into deep waters with potential for missteps and disagreement. He’ll meet with Muslim leaders despite declaring that ”Islam hates us” during the campaign he’ll meet with Pope Francis, who advocates for countries to be welcoming to refugees. ”His message is going to be about unity,” said U. N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Religious differences have produced conflict around the world and especially in the Middle East. Some argue that religion can be part of the solution, if leaders like Trump make stronger   appeals. ”The way we’ve engaged the world has been strictly in material terms,” said Robert Nicholson, founder of the Philos Project, which promotes greater religious engagement in the Middle East. ”We think people do things only because of economics or because of some sort of political grievance, but in actuality religion drives huge numbers of people on this planet.” One cited reason for the failure of the 1993 Oslo Accords to settle the   conflict was that it neglected the importance of religion. A few years later, Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders mounted a peace effort on their own and agreed on a plan. It, too, failed, in part because political leaders failed to lend support to the religious leaders. ”These are huge achievements, but politicians don’t seem to want to run with them,” said Jonathan Sacks, who supported a   peace approach as the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom. ”It’s never been connected to a political process. It’s been a  .” Sacks’ book Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence outlined his case that the Abrahamic scriptures support compassion and tolerance rather than hatred and cruelty. He believes that President Trump, by meeting first with Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders, has an opportunity to make progress where others have failed. ”The president of the United States, through his personal standing, might be able to say, ’Let’s make religion part of the peace process,’ ” Sacks said, ”because it’s the only thing that’s been left out of it until now.” The obstacles in Trump’s way are nevertheless daunting. In Saudi Arabia and Israel, Trump will primarily be meeting with political, not religious, leaders. ”Just because you stand in a sacred place doesn’t mean you hear sacred truths,” said Serene Jones, president of the Union Theological Seminary in New York. ”He is obviously picking and choosing [from whom] he is going to hear about these religious traditions. Clearly this is more of a political trip than one of seeking deep religious understanding.” Another potential problem is that the recent controversies surrounding Trump have so distracted him that he has not been able to prepare adequately for the trip. ”You’re wading into deep waters here,” said Nicholson. ”There are definitely ways Trump can make missteps, either in relating with people from these communities in his private conversations or making public mistakes in terms of what he says.” Pope Francis is an outspoken advocate of welcoming immigrants and refugees. Given Trump’s contrary views, disagreement in those areas could get in the way of a friendly chat in Rome. In Israel, Trump faces a potential controversy with the question of whether he allows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accompany him on a visit to the Western Wall in Old Jerusalem, claimed by both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Trump’s biggest challenge is likely to come in Saudi Arabia, where he is scheduled to give a speech urging Muslim leaders to promote ”a peaceful vision of Islam.” Much may depend on how that speech is received, especially given his suggestion during the presidential campaign that ”Islam hates us.” ”He needs to show that he respects Islam [and] that Muslims have dignity,” said Nicholson. ”For a long time, much of the conversation in the U. S. has been that anything Muslim is bad. I think one of the most important things for him to do is to show that he understands that Muslims have a long and ancient and distinguished past, and that he respects it. I think one of the driving factors in the Islamic world is a feeling that they are not respected.” The challenges notwithstanding, Nicholson and others are willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on this trip. ”He understands what drives people on the street,” Nicholson said. ”It’s part of his populist genius.”"
"Margarita Garcia has two problems: Too much water  —   and not enough water. And often at the same time. On a hot summer day in March, she headed home from her cleaning job and found that her street was flooded with water. The clouds had broken with more rain than her neighborhood  —   a slum on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires  —   could handle. The water rose to her knees by the time she got to her home, the bottom floor in a   slapdash brick building. That morning, she’d set up a blockade using a big wooden board, but it hadn’t kept the water from seeping in. There were about six inches of water covering the floor. Most of her furniture was wet, the walls would be damp for days. There was water everywhere. But in an ironic twist, she also needed water she couldn’t get. Her faucets and shower ran dry that night, a chronic problem that sometimes lingers only a few hours but can stretch across two or three days. With most pipes having been installed by residents  —   and city officials not regulating whether water pressure is strong enough to reach them  —   Margarita frequently finds herself unable to shower, drink or boil food. Last year, city officials announced they would be addressing the water problems in four of the worst slum neighborhoods  —   a plan far more ambitious than residents there had seen in years. But execution has proven problematic and slow. ”This is the population that has its rights broken more than anyone in the city,” says Pablo Vitale, coordinator of Argentina’s Civil Association for Equality and Justice. ”In Buenos Aires slums, we’re seeing a violation of lots of rights, especially access to water.” The residents of the slums, now at around 275, 000, have a long history of suffering. The neighborhoods were originally impromptu settlements built by European immigrants arriving in the 1930s and ’40s. For decades, the government treated them as squatters, periodically leveling their brick and mortar homes. During Argentina’s military dictatorship in the late 1970s, an estimated 90 percent of residents in these slums, mostly from rural areas, were removed. In the 1990s, city officials passed laws requiring that ”intervention” in the slums  —   efforts to improve living conditions  —   take the place of attempts to remove them entirely. Though those laws are   Vitale says, they have rarely been followed. Streets zigzagging through the slums weren’t constructed according to public code, so they’re often too small for workers to enter and install improved sewage or drinking pipes. And some officials believe the area is too dangerous to work in. Fire engines also have trouble with the narrow streets  —   and can’t tap into enough water to put out house fires. Community representatives say there were ten fires in one of the slums, Villa 31, in 2016, most due to the use of candles during summer blackouts. They say it’s become a neighborhood responsibility to extinguish fires. ”I can’t manage all of this much longer,” Garcia, 38, says of the complications that come with life in destitute conditions. She says she feels frustrated that neither she nor the community have the resources to help themselves. After the flood, Garcia’s three young kids needed a bath, a drink and a bathroom they could use. Like many of her neighbors, she’d placed large plastic containers on the roof to collect rainwater, which she then boiled for drinking and cooking. One bucket went into the toilet tank, leaving another bucket for the bath. She waits three, sometimes four days between her own showers, which is especially difficult after flood clean up. Human waste seeps onto the street even on the sunniest of days, but during a storm it mixes with the other uncollected trash from the neighborhood and flows right into her home with the floodwaters. Waste can linger for days on the street with nowhere to drain, causing blood disorders and skin infections. Official reports have also warned of mercury, cholera, typhoid and Hepatitis A. Last year, standing water attracted mosquitoes to one southern slum neighborhood that resulted in widespread dengue fever, community representative Marcos Antonio Chinchilla says. Chinchilla and other residents in the slums are organizing events this year that raise awareness about diseases lingering in unclean water and by encouraging residents to purchase bottled water if they can afford to. But they say there’s only so much they can do without the government assistance they were promised last year. But significant work has not yet begun. ”The government has always said it is working hard for the slums,” Chinchilla says. ”Then nothing happens. They spend money on posters, campaigns and promises. But we never see much of a difference.” Yet he also expresses his belief in the power of slum residents to continue organizing and encouraging Buenos Aires’s government to fulfill its pledge to clear out the dirty water and bring in the clean. ”In a future that isn’t so far off, hopefully everyone in the slums will have the same services enjoyed by everyone else in the city,” he says. ”That’s my hope, that things will really change.” Max Radwin is a freelance journalist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him @Max. Radwin."
"Each year, the United States sends billions of dollars to poor countries. Does it really help them grow? The question isn’t new. But it’s taken on renewed urgency in the Trump administration. Last month, NPR’s David Greene asked Stephen Moore, who advised Trump’s campaign on economic policy, whether he supports the idea of cutting the U. S. foreign aid budget. His response: ”100 percent.” ”There’s zero evidence that any of these foreign aid programs have had any effect on development, whether it’s in the Middle East or Africa or South America,” said Moore, who is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. ”And there’s just zero evidence that any of that development aid has had any effect on raising the living standards.” Is Moore right? ”It’s an extremely difficult question to answer,” says Rachel Glennerster, executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her group uses scientific research to test and improve programs that address the needs of the poor. ”If you can break it down, you can start answering it.” So let’s break it down. Does Moore have a point? The first challenge is to defining ”development.” In a broad sense, it means economic growth  —   increasing the size of a country’s economy over time. For Moore, it’s clear what leads to economic growth  —   and it’s not foreign aid. ”All these countries have to do is cut taxes, provide private property rights and get involved in global markets,” he told NPR in a   interview. He cites as evidence the Heritage Foundation’s Freedom Index, which asserts that the less control a government exerts over its economy, the higher its citizens’ incomes are. It’s a bit more complicated than that, suggests Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank that focuses on poverty and inequality around the world. ”The short answer is, we don’t know what causes economic growth,” he says. ”Development economists have gone through loads of different theories.” Where does foreign aid go? It gets invested in roads and factories. It funds improvements in health and education, with the goal of creating a strong workforce, and ultimately toward growing a country’s economy. But still, Kenny says, ”we don’t know. And if we don’t know what causes growth, what the role is for aid is hard to answer.” In any case, foreign aid accounts for just a tiny percentage of   and   countries’ income  —   about 0. 6 percent, according to the World Bank. ”Aid just isn’t that big anymore in terms of its size in recipient economies,” says Kenny. ”So you wouldn’t expect it to have a big impact on economic growth.” Nonetheless, researchers have tried for decades to connect the dots between aid and growth, says Glennerster of the poverty lab at MIT. But results have been mixed. ”I can show you 40 papers that have appeared in economic journals in the last 10 to 15 years saying that there’s been no relationship,” says Kenny. ”Twice the number that say there is. Some say it’s a mix. All those stories are plausible.” One 2007 paper, for example, titled ”The Aid Effectiveness Literature: The Sad Results of 40 Years of Research” looked at 100 studies and found that aid has not boosted economic growth. In some cases, countries receiving aid did show positive growth, but it was ”small and of dubious significance,” found the researchers, Hristos Doucouliagos and Martin Paldam. When they reanalyzed the literature in 2014, they reached the same conclusion. Other studies have a rosier view. A 2015 paper published in the World Bank Economic Review looked at countries that receive foreign aid equivalent to 10 percent of their gross domestic product  —   the goods and services produced over a specific period of time. The paper found a bump in economic growth by one percentage point. That might sound trivial, but it’s not  —   especially for developing countries that grow about 3 to 4 percent a year, according to Steve Radelet, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Opening the black box of aid, Then there’s the question of what aid is supposed to do. Not all foreign aid is intended to boost income and GDP. ”When people look at aid they just mash everything together,” says Krishna Dipankar Rao, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. There are many types of aid. Take the U. S. for example. Last year, we spent $33 billion on foreign aid, money that we gave to 100 countries around the world for a variety of projects. Sometimes the aim is to spur development, like offering   tractors to boost agricultural productivity in Nepal. Sometimes it’s to promote peace, like encouraging young people in Kyrgyzstan to vote. Sometimes it’s to save lives: providing humanitarian relief in   Haiti. Once you break open the black box of aid, it’s easier to find out whether a project has made a difference in a country’s  . ”What is it that you’re trying to measure?” says Neil Boothby, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a former special adviser on children’s issues at USAID. ”Are you looking to reduce poverty? Mortality? Develop robust health systems?” For a long time, those kinds of questions were left unanswered. The folks who allocate development aid did what made sense to them and didn’t conduct studies to back it up, reported NPR’s Nurith Aizenman in January 2017. That’s no longer the case, Aizenman found. Since the early 2000s, social science researchers have been pushing policymakers to evaluate the impact of their programs. Many groups have begun using randomized controlled trials, a rigorous evaluation method often used in the fields of science and medicine, to design health and development programs. They compare one group of people that got aid with another group that didn’t and see whether the aid helped. Even the U. S. government has hopped on the train. In 2011, USAID established an evaluation policy to make   decisions about future aid programming. USAID has commissioned more than 1, 000 evaluations since the policy was enforced. Can health lead to wealth? So now let’s go back to Moore’s statement. Can we really say that there’s ”zero evidence” that U. S. foreign aid has had an impact on development? ”That’s false,” says Amanda Glassman, chief operating officer at the Center for Global Development. If we interpret ”development” to mean an improvement in overall   then ”there’s plenty of evidence that shows aid has worked”  —   including aid from the U. S. she says. The only problem is that the evidence is often in the realm of education and health. The President’s Malaria Initiative, for example, has protected 6 million from the   disease since 2000. A vitamin A program in Nepal halved the mortality rate for children under 5 in just five years. And two education projects in Burkina Faso and Niger helped boost school enrollment and test scores, especially for girls. Asked about these successes in a   interview with NPR, Moore had this to say: ”Global health programs can increase life expectancy or decrease child mortality, but ultimately, people want a higher standard of living.” Aid researchers often argue that health is wealth. ”In the end, I don’t think you can separate one from the other,” says Boothby from Columbia. Glassman, who   a book called Millions Saved that evaluates the effectiveness of global health initiatives, shares a case study. About two decades ago, Botswana was going through an   crisis. In 2001, nearly 20 percent of the population  —   about 320, 000 people  —   were living with HIV. ”We are threatened with extinction,” said President Festus Mogae to the U. N. General Assembly that year. The health emergency also threatened to derail the economic progress that the country had enjoyed since discovering diamonds in the 1960s. The disease decimated the workforce, from farmers to teachers to civic leaders. Health care costs were racking up, according to the World Health Organization. Mogae declared his battle cry: ”Ntwa e bolotse.” (”The war has started. ”) To fight the epidemic, the U. S. joined forces with Mogae and funded 75 percent of Botswana’s $374 million   response, which made   antiretroviral drugs free for 223, 974 people. As a result,   deaths dropped from 21, 000 in 2003 to 5, 800 in 2013. By 2010, the annual death rate from AIDS was under 1 percent. In 2012, NPR’s Jason Beaubien met some of the people who benefited from the program, including a farmer named Johane Setlhare, who started taking antiretroviral drugs in 2007. ”I would have been dead nowadays if I hadn’t taken the treatment,” he told Beaubien. Just two years after Selthare began taking his daily medication, he had built himself a new house with his own hands. Working on the roof and making the bricks for the walls, he was surprised at his strength. Researchers are split on the issue. Where do you stand? Submit your perspective in the tool below. Try to keep it under 100 words. We’ll feature some of the comments on Goats and Soda in a special #CuriousGoat post next week. If you select ”anonymous” we will not publish your comment in our roundup. Our submission deadline has passed. Thanks for participating! Read a selection of our reader responses here. "
"On Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department selected Robert Mueller III as special counsel to investigate any links or coordination the Trump campaign had with Russia as part of that country’s effort to interfere in last year’s presidential election.  ”Special Counsel Mueller has agreed to resign from his private law firm in order to avoid any conflicts of interest with firm clients or attorneys,” a Justice Department statement noted. It so happens that Mueller had been working at WilmerHale, which represents former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Trump    Jared Kushner  ” people who might be witnesses, or more, in the course of Mueller’s   investigation. That turn of events has got people asking whether Mueller’s previous role poses conflicts for his current one. So NPR consulted with ethics experts to get their take. First, the legal ethics. A spokesman at WilmerHale told NPR that Mueller ”had no role whatsoever in the representation of any client in connection with the Russia inquiry, and he has no confidential information with respect to such matters.” Same goes for Aaron Zebley, who was one of Mueller’s top aides, and James Quarles, another WilmerHale partner joining Mueller’s special counsel team, the law firm spokesman said. To Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law, the inquiry ends there. ”If he was not involved in the representation at all, then there’s no problem,” Gillers said. ”Once he leaves the firm, he’s purged from any conflicts the firm had.” Next, there are government ethics rules. Under those rules, a government employee needs to consider whether a reasonable person could question his or her impartiality because of a ”covered relationship” with an organization, where that organization represents a party in a case or an investigation. ”Then,” the rules say, according to Washington University School of Law Professor Kathleen Clark, ”don’t participate unless a designee in an agency makes an independent determination” that it passes muster. Reached Thursday, the Justice Department had no immediate comment on who, if anyone, conducted that analysis: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Assistant Attorney General Lee Lofthus, who runs the unit that handles administration of the Justice Department or someone else. Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice spokeswoman, said according to her read of the special counsel regulations, counsels undergo ”appropriate” background and    checks after an appointment is made. That review did not appear to be complete as of late this week. As long as someone inside the department makes that determination, Professor Clark said, she foresaw few problems with the new assignment for Mueller. ”The impartiality regulation has within it, flexibility,” Clark said. ”It would be a shame if someone of Mr. Mueller’s independence were prevented from taking the job because of a rigid interpretation of a rule. The government’s need for his services is rather extreme at this point.”"
"  Basquiat joined ”joined the pantheon of great, great artists” Thursday night, when the late painter’s 1982 work Untitled sold for a   $110. 5 million at auction  —   the highest sum ever paid at auction for a U. S.  artwork. That breathless assessment was offered after the sale by Oliver Barker, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe. So you can imagine just how thrilled the buyer must have been. ”I am happy to announce that I just won this masterpiece,” Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said in an Instagram post revealing his identity as the buyer. ”When I first encountered this painting, I was struck with so much excitement and gratitude for my love of art. I want to share that experience with as many people as possible.” The purchase price elicited gasps in the room as it sailed past expectations during the   bidding war at the Sotheby’s auction, according to ARTNews magazine. In fact, the publication notes, the painting nearly doubled the previous sales record for a Basquiat work, which was set last year  —   also with Maezawa as buyer. The    tech tycoon, rock musician, fashion entrepreneur  —   and, well, we can let CNN take it from here  —   says he intends to place both Basquiat paintings for a museum he’s planning in his hometown, Chiba. ”But before then, I wish to loan this piece  —   which has been unseen by the public for more than 30 years  —   to institutions and exhibitions around the world,” he said in a statement quoted by The New York Times. ”I hope it brings as much joy to others as it does to me and that this masterpiece by the    Basquiat inspires our future generations.” Basquiat died several years after creating the work that sold Thursday, overdosing on heroin in 1988 at age 27. The New York native, son of a Puerto Rican mother and   father, began in street art and assumed mythic stature after his death  —   influencing a generation of artists with his visceral, politically inclined works. With Thursday’s sale, ARTNews reports that Untitled broke the American record held by Basquiat’s friend Andy Warhol and became the   expensive work ever auctioned in the world. Here’s a closer look at Basquiat’s Untitled:"
"Updated at 12:30 p. m. ET, Swedish prosecutors have announced they are dropping the country’s rape investigation of Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder, who has long denied the allegation, has been holed up at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012 to avoid Sweden’s extradition request. A statement released online declared Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny’s intention to ”discontinue the investigation regarding suspected rape (lesser degree) by Julian Assange.” ”At this point, all possibilities to conduct the investigation are exhausted. In order to proceed with the case, Julian Assange would have to be formally notified of the criminal suspicions against him,” the statement reads in part. ”We cannot expect to receive assistance from Ecuador regarding this. Therefore the investigation is discontinued.” As NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports, Assange has remained at the Ecuadorean Embassy for years out of fear that an extradition to Sweden would spell another extradition, in turn, to the U. S. ”where he could face trial for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic and military documents.” In Assange’s first response, posted to Twitter, his reaction was simple: a broad smile. The    Australian national elaborated later in the day, speaking to reporters from the balcony of the embassy. He spoke of Friday’s announcement as a ”vindication” and an ”important victory,” thanking the Ecuadorean people but also warning that ”the proper war is just commencing.” That’s because despite the news from Sweden, he remains far from legally cleared. The U. S. has not dropped its interest in Assange, and London Metropolitan Police were quick to say they will continue to enforce an outstanding arrest warrant for him. ”Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Julian Assange following him failing to surrender to the court on the 29 June 2012,” the department said in a statement. ”The Metropolitan Police Service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the Embassy.” Though this is a much lesser offense, it remains a possibility that if Assange were to leave the premises of that embassy, he might yet be arrested by British police. Even in the case of Sweden, Ny clarified that ”if he, at a later date, makes himself available, I will be able to decide to resume the investigation immediately.” Although Sweden has withdrawn its request for a European arrest warrant, The Guardian reports that Ny maintained the probe could be reopened if he returns to Sweden before 2020, a date set by statute of limitations. At a news conference in Quito, Ecuador, the country’s foreign minister, Guillaume Long, lambasted Swedish authorities for delays in resolving the probe, according to The Associated Press. The news service reports he also called on the U. K. to allow Assange safe passage back to Ecuador. ”This has gone on long enough,” Long said. ”No more delays.” The lawyer for Assange’s accuser also expressed outrage Friday  —   though for a very different reason. ”It is a scandal that a suspected rapist can avoid the judicial system and thus avoid a trial in court,” attorney Elisabeth Massi Fritz said in a statement quoted by The Telegraph. ”My client is shocked and no decision to (end the case) can make her change that Assange exposed her to rape.”"
"Two Chinese fighter jets conducted an ”unprofessional” intercept of a U. S. aircraft in international airspace over the East China Sea on Wednesday, according to the U. S. Air Force. The American aircraft was conducting a routine mission in accordance with international law when the two Chinese   jets made the move, Pacific Air Forces spokeswoman Lt. Col. Lori Hodge told NPR. One of the   flew upside down directly above the U. S. plane and both of the Chinese jets came within 150 feet of it, CNN reports. Hodge said the crew aboard the American plane described the move as unprofessional due to its speeds and proximity. The U. S. aircraft, a   Constant Phoenix, is used by the Air Force to detect atmospheric traces of nuclear explosions. The   have been used in the past to collect evidence of North Korean nuclear tests, according to CNN. ”In 2013, China declared an air defense identification zone over much of the East China Sea and it requires foreign aircraft in the area to follow its orders,” NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports. ”The U. S. refuses to recognize the zone, and it is unclear whether the incident took place in it.” Hodge said the U. S. aircraft was ”conducting a routine mission in international airspace over the East China Sea. The   was operating in accordance with international law.” The incident comes at a time when China and the Trump administration have apparently agreed to cooperate on the North Korean nuclear issue. Wednesday’s encounter isn’t the first close call this year. In February, CNN reported on an ”unsafe” encounter over the South China Sea when a U. S. Navy   Orion reportedly had to change course to avoid colliding with a Chinese surveillance plane  —   and that a U. S. official said the aircraft came within 1, 000 feet of each other. As for Wednesday’s intercept, Hodge said ”we are not providing more specifics as we would rather discuss it privately with China through our Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meeting and through diplomatic channels. This will allow us to continue building confidence with our Chinese counterparts on expected maneuvering to avoid mishaps.”"
"Remember when President Trump allegedly leaking classified information to the Russians was dominating news coverage? You’d be forgiven if you only vaguely remembered that, because it was so long ago  —   Monday, a lifetime in   news terms. Monday”Reports: Trump Gave Classified Info To Russians During White House Visit” Tuesday:”Sources: Trump Asked Comey To Shut Down Flynn Investigation””Israel Said to Be Source of Secret Intelligence Trump Gave to Russians””McMaster says Trump didn’t know where intel he shared came from””Trump Says He Has ’Absolute Right’ To Share Intelligence With Russia” Wednesday”Trump: No Politician ’Has Been Treated Worse Or More Unfairly’ Than Me””Former FBI Director Mueller Appointed As Special Counsel To Oversee Russia Probe””House majority leader to colleagues in 2016: ’I think Putin pays’ Trump””Trump Team Knew Flynn Was Under Investigation Before He Came to White House” Thursday”Flynn stopped military plan Turkey opposed  —   after being paid as its agent””Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians: sources””President Trump Denies Asking Comey To Scuttle Flynn Investigation””Deputy Attorney General Knew Comey Was Out Before Writing Critical Memo, Senators Say””Fact Check: ’We Don’t Have Health Care In This Country,’ Trump Says” The seemingly nonstop avalanche since Trump was inaugurated has threatened to hobble his presidency. It has overshadowed Republicans’ domestic agenda, and now, the president embarks Friday on his first overseas trip. It carries potentially high stakes, given the Russia investigation and Trump’s reported sharing of highly classified intelligence with the Russians, especially considering the source of that information. Trump is delivering an address on Islam on Sunday in Saudi Arabia. It is supposed to be ”inspiring but direct” on ”radical ideology,” according to national security adviser H. R. McMaster. The speech  —   by a man, who called for a ban on Muslims coming into the United States as a candidate  —   ”is intended to unite the broader Muslim world against common enemies,” McMaster added. Trump is also heading to Israel, the country that multiple outlets have reported supplied the classified information about an ISIS plot that Trump shared with the Russians. And the president is also meeting at the Vatican with the pope, someone who said last year that Trump is ”not Christian” if he’s talking about building walls. As he does, Trump responded, calling Francis’ comment ”disgraceful” and accusing him of being used as a ”pawn” of Mexico. ”If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’ ultimate trophy,” Trump said, ”the pope can have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened.” So, who knows what could happen on this trip? What we do know is that, ahead of the trip, Trump is in a defensive posture  —   and he has resorted to grievance politics. ”Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media. No politician in history  —   and I say this with great surety  —   has been treated worse or more unfairly,” Trump said in a commencement address Wednesday at the U. S. Coast Guard Academy, his one military academy commencement speech of the year. (It wasn’t the first time he used an event with a service academy for his own political purposes. When he presented the U. S. Air Force Academy with the   ’s Trophy earlier this month in the Rose Garden of the White House, he was still smarting from the narrative that he came out on the losing end of the spending bill and railed against Democrats.) He took to Twitter the morning after former FBI Director Robert Mueller was named special counsel to head up the Justice Department’s investigation of the Trump team’s ties to Russia in the presidential election. He called ”this” the ”greatest witch hunt of a politician in American political history.” Later Thursday, he told NBC News that a special counsel ”hurts our country terribly, because it shows we’re a divided,     country.” And then he went back again to electoral politics, accusing Democrats of sour grapes. ”It also happens to be a pure excuse for the Democrats having lost an election that they should have easily won, because of the Electoral College being slanted so much in their way,” he said. ”That’s all this is.” The logic here doesn’t quite follow, given the special counsel wasn’t appointed by Democrats the post was named by his deputy attorney general. That’s the same deputy attorney general that Trump’s White House initially hung its rationale for firing Comey on. This news fire hose, a result of errors forced and unforced for Trump, can have consequences  —   for the president, for his party and the country. ”It’s clear that his governing agenda is being sidelined because of the unremitting chaos, the unrelenting chaos that is a fundamental part of Donald Trump and, therefore, a fundamental part of the Trump presidency,” said former George W. Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner. ”So that agenda is now being sidelined and they’re stuck with him.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called a couple times this week for ”a little less drama from the White House, so that we can focus on our agenda.” When it comes to foreign affairs, the stakes are even higher. ”I think there is, first of all, concern about the damage that was specifically done to Israeli assets as a result of this leak,” Chemi Shalev, a columnist for the Israeli paper Haaretz, said in NPR’s Up First podcast Wednesday, ”secondly, concern about the safety of information that is moved to the United States and anger, even, at the fact that this relationship would be put in such jeopardy.” If allies can’t trust the American president, what political capital does he have to tackle thorny international issues, like trade, Mideast peace or relations with the Islamic world? ”If the president gives his word to the American people or to legislatures or to a foreign power, then everyone on every level has to know that he means what he says and he says what he means,” said Rick Tyler, former adviser to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and former spokesman for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. ”And this president is demonstrating none of that.” John Feehery, a Republican consultant and former congressional spokesman, said most of Trump’s voters probably won’t care. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t potential problems for the GOP. ”You know the biggest problem for Republicans is not the firing of James Comey,” Feehery said. ”The biggest problem for Republicans is the fact that they now own health care and have to do something on it. And the other biggest problem is there haven’t been many successes on the legislative level for the Congress. And if they want to get   they’ve got to worry about delivering for their constituents.”"
"As part of President Trump’s executive order to review ”  regulations,” the Environmental Protection Agency last month asked for the public’s input on what to streamline or cut. It held a series of   meetings and set up a website that has received more than 28, 000 comments, many of which urge the agency not to roll back environmental protections. ”The EPA saves lives,” wrote Benjamin Kraushaar, who described himself as a hydrologist, hunter and fly fisherman. He wrote that environmental regulations ”ensure safe air and water for our future generations. This should not be even up for debate.” ”The problem isn’t regulation,” wrote Marcia Nichols in another comment. ”It’s with greedy corporate leaders who are more concerned about the bottom line.” Like many others, she credited the EPA with improving air and water that were visibly polluted in the 1970s. ”I remember orange skies over cities, acid rain eroding statues in parks, frequent boil orders for water,” she wrote. A military veteran and entrepreneur wrote, ”I’m well aware that excessive regulation can impose an undue burden.” However, continued Jeff Baker, ”what is less discussed these days are the economic and societal costs already avoided and prevented by current rules.” Others criticized EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt for questioning climate science, talked about the importance of keeping curbs on carbon emissions from   power plants and said that regulations, too, can create jobs. One commenter simply filled an entire page with ”no no no no no no.” Scrolling through the comments, it’s hard to find any that advocate rolling back regulations. But there are some who took the agency’s request to heart. Richard Doherty wrote that he oversees the cleanup of contaminated sites and has a problem with regulation ”40 CFR Part 261 Subpart D.” Often, he wrote, material that’s not actually hazardous has to be treated as such, which wastes money and ends up doing ”more environmental harm than good.” WorkBoat. com also reported on comments from the American Waterways Operators association, which applauded Trump for recognizing that ”burdensome rules stifle business.” The site for commercial marine professionals said it needs more consistent regulations governing interstate commerce by water. It also asked the administration to review one regulation on sewage discharge and another on emissions standards for certain diesel engines. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman says the agency ”appreciates all of the public comments” and will consider them in ”identifying potential opportunities to reduce regulatory burdens,” as directed by the president. She says an EPA task force expects to submit a progress report on that effort by Thursday. During a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy this week, Trump said, ”I’ve loosened up the strangling environmental chains wrapped around our country and our economy.” The White House budget proposal would shrink EPA funding by nearly a third, the biggest cut of any agency. But EPA isn’t the only part of government that the administration wants to potentially downsize. In another executive order, Trump has mandated that federal agencies repeal two regulations for every new one they create. Environmental groups allege that’s unlawful and have sued to stop the directive. In the Senate this week, lawmakers took up the Regulatory Accountability Act, which would require all agencies to consider the cost of a regulation when creating it. Oil and gas and other industry groups laud the bill as promoting ”good governance” and ”accountability,” while environmental groups complain that it would ”emphasize costs to industry over benefits to Americans.”"
"Oh, Code Switch fam: Has there ever been such a week? Because of the virtual smorgasbord of unfortunate news, you may have skipped putting these on your plate. Dig in. Keep a chaser of Pepto handy. In policing, it’s feeling like a lethal version of Groundhog Day. This time, a Tulsa, Okla. police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man with his hands raised was acquitted of   manslaughter. Officer Betty Shelby says when she came upon Terrence Crutcher outside his SUV, she thought he was going for a gun when he reached into his car. Crutcher was unarmed. ”I did everything I could to stop this,” Shelby said. ”Crutcher’s death is his fault.” Gov. Mary Fallon asked for calm, even as she recognized people have the right to disagree with the verdict. In other policing news: Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a man who compared Black Lives Matter to the KKK, is now going to be an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security. He’ll be liaising, to use government lingo, with law enforcement at the state and local levels who are responsible for tribal law enforcement. Really. Clarke hasn’t moved into his new office, but already critics are coming for him. Who’s Asian? A new poll by NBC says many respondents see a division between East and South Asians. Perceiving only some Asians as ”real” Asians often means that South Asians  —   Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and others  —   are much more likely to be profiled and stopped, while East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans among others) are seen as far less threatening and suspicious. The exception might be Indians who are Sikhs, and whose turbans and beards (both religious mandates) are often mistaken for Islamic. (We wrote recently about a publicity campaign mounted by American Sikhs to explain who they are.) Last week we talked about the U. S. Mint releasing a new gold piece with a new Lady Liberty on it. The new Liberty is   and some people are not happy about that. The mint says sales of this new coin have lagged while a gold coin released his week, which features a Native American,”was met with brisk sales and enthusiasm.” Apparently some people consider the Native American an icon, whereas a black Liberty makes no sense to them  —   or worse, offends them. A museum director of the American Numismatic Association (a society devoted to educating and encouraging people to study and collect coins) said, ”If our money is going to represent people it should represent the people of this nation.” And if some people are upset now, will they be any happier with the mint’s future coin plans, which include Liberty as   and  ? Think: If you were a college student, how effectively could you study for finals if you were constantly wondering whether your family would be home after school was over? Would worrying about the possibility of your parents and other family members being deported put a dent in your concentration? New America Media says in California, children of immigrants who are here without the proper authorization are so worried about being separated from their families that it is taking a toll on their studies and making them scale back plans for college. Newsflash: Apparently living in segregated neighborhoods, especially those with fewer green spaces, higher crime rates and fewer city services, can be bad for one’s health. And might be a significant factor in the high blood pressure that plagues many  . A study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute found that when blacks move to less segregated neighborhoods, their systolic blood pressure numbers go down. (The top number in standard blood pressure measurements is the systolic number, which is considered a more significant predictor of cardiovascular disease.) Lowered blood pressure numbers mean less chance of a heart attack or stroke. Although, as NPR’s Shots column points out, ”moving to less segregated neighborhoods could increase stress in at least one way  —  by potentially exposing   to more racism.” It’s the medical version of the conundrum Lorraine Hansberry made famous in A Raisin In The Sun. Women of color, and black women in particular, make up a big chunk of romance novel readers. Harlequin made a smart move in 2005 when it created Kimani, a line of romances specifically written by black women featuring ”sophisticated, soulful and sensual   and multicultural heroes and heroines who develop fulfilling relationships as they lead lives full of drama, glamour and passion.” But Kimani and four other Harlequin series are closing down. The last Kimani romance will be published in December 2018. Pass the smelling salts we feel faint. In other romance news, Aziz Ansari’s   Netflix series Master of None returned for its second season, and yes, it’s about the pursuit of romance, and it’s more diverse than ever, on multiple levels. You can hear Gene and guest   Lenika Cruz talk with MON   Alan Yang about Asian men as romantic leads and being creatively fearless on our latest podcast. It’s a wonderful listen. Oh, Dave. You’ll remember that Chappelle famously suggested in an SNL cold open earlier this year that America should give its new president a chance. Well apparently, he has thought it over. When he hosted the gala for the Robin Hood Foundation in New York on Monday evening, Chappelle reminded the audience of his earlier suggestion, and then admitted this: ”I bleeped up.” (Only there was no bleep in the tape.) Yes, Mr. Chappelle, lots of people exercising their ”    muscles” right about now . .. It’s Friday. Try not to bleep up this weekend. We’ll see you next week."
"As President Trump begins his first overseas trip, Americans have widely differing views of his approach to foreign policy. But a majority of both Republicans and Democrats want the U. S. to continue its robust engagement with the rest of the world. More than half the people surveyed in a new   poll said America’s foreign policy should focus on maintaining the current global order  —   with the U. S. at the center. Less than a quarter said the country’s foreign policy should look out for Americans, even if it harms people in other countries. ”Overall, Americans believe the U. S. should be and is a force for good in the world,” said pollster Clifford Young, president of Ipsos Public Affairs. But there are partisan differences in how the country should exercise that leadership.” Most Americans (70 percent) believe the U. S. should be the moral leader of the world. But there’s a   drop when people are asked if the U. S. is that moral leader. The change is due to Democrats and independents. With Trump as president, Democrats drop off 14 points, independents 17. ”Democrats see the role of the U. S. in the world in more aspirational terms,” Young said. ”Republicans see it much more in transactional terms.” As a result, Democrats are more likely to say foreign policy should focus on promoting democracy and human rights in other countries, while Republicans tend to prefer policies that focus on enriching America and Americans. Survey respondents were mixed about the   implications of Trump’s campaign slogan, ”America First.” When asked to describe the phrase in their own words, some said it simply means taking ”care of business at home before taking care of others,” and ”putting the welfare and focus on our people.” But others were more hotly critical of the slogan, calling it ” ” or ”xenophobic.” While the phrase ”America First” was used in the 1940s by isolationists and   Trump’s national security adviser says it shouldn’t have that connotation today. ”President Trump understands that ’America First’ does not mean America alone,” H. R. McMaster told reporters last week. ”To the contrary, prioritizing American interests means strengthening alliances and partnerships that help us extend our influence and improve the security of the American people.” Majorities in both parties say America should provide humanitarian aid to foreign countries. But large numbers of Republicans and Democrats are wary of intervening in foreign conflicts to bring peace. ”It’s the word intervention,” Young said. ”We want to help countries, but we don’t want to be stuck in their conflicts forever.” Republicans in the survey were much more hawkish about using military power, with 69 percent saying the U. S. should not hesitate to do so. Only 40 percent of Democrats felt that way. ”Republicans are much more in favor of using hard power over soft power,” Young said. Americans view the U. S. and China as by far the world’s leading economic powers with the U. S. narrowly edging out China. Despite the president’s frequent criticism of international trade deals, the survey found large and bipartisan support for using trade as a tool of American diplomacy. Nearly     Democrats and Republicans agreed with that policy. Support was only slightly lower among   independents. Trump’s trip includes meetings with both NATO allies and leaders of the other G7 countries. ”I will strengthen old friendships and will seek new partners,” the president said. ”But partners who also help us  —   not partners who take and take and take.” Trump has complained that only a handful of NATO countries are making the necessary investments in their own defense, forcing the U. S. to spend more. In the survey, more than a third of respondents overestimated what the U. S. spends on international institutions like the United Nations. Only 15 percent answered correctly that the U. S. contributes about a fifth of the UN’s regular budget. Many people also mistakenly believed that American defense aid to Israel declined during the Obama administration. In fact, it increased. Pollster Young was not surprised that many survey respondents were mistaken about such details. ”These are not necessarily bread and butter issues,” Young said. ”They’re not living and breathing it every day.” Survey Methodology, Survey results come from a Ipsos online survey of 1, 009 U. S. adults conducted May  . The poll has a credibility interval of +   3. 5 percentage points for all respondents +   5. 9 percentage points for Democrats and Republicans and +   8. 4 percentage points for Independents."
"After more than three years in captivity, 82 of the Chibok schoolgirls have been reunited with their families amid tears, laughter, music and dancing. On an emotional day in the Nigerian capital city, Abuja, the young women and their parents wept as they embraced. Some groups sank to their knees, giving praise and praying. ”Today I thank God, my daughter is alive,” Yahi Bulata told NPR’s Ofeibea   as he hugged his now    daughter, Comfort Bulus Bulata. He said he hoped she would now be able to continue her education. Mothers sang a song of thanks. Jumping for joy, dancing and singing with delight, Godiya Joshua described it as ”Christmas Day and New Year” rolled in one, before being reunited with her eldest child, Esther. The 276 Chibok schoolgirls were abducted in the dead of night from their dorms by Boko Haram militants in April 2014, prompting international outrage and the Bring Back Our Girls campaign  —   backed by former first lady Michelle Obama. The girls who were reunited with their families Saturday were part of a recent exchange brokered by the Nigerian government with the help of the government of Switzerland, the Red Cross and other NGOs. Three young women who’ve escaped are also included in the group. One girl escaped last May and two more escaped or were found last year. An initial group of 21 was released in October and was reunited with their schoolmates Saturday. The young women sang and danced separately and together. Despite the celebratory atmosphere, 113 of the Chibok girls are still being held by the terrorist group. According to Nigerian psychologist Fatima Akilu, head of the Neem Foundation helping survivors of Boko Haram’s extremist violence, the girls symbolize a much greater problem in troubled northeastern Nigeria. She specializes in deradicalization and reintegration and says her NGO is helping hundreds of people  —   girls, boys, men and women  —   who’ve survived captivity, like the Chibok girls, but are not in the public eye. ”A lot of people are not aware of the scale of the problem,” Akilu told  . ”Resources should be scaled up to include the voiceless victims that don’t really have this big megaphone that has highlighted their plight.” According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of other children are still missing in Northeast Nigeria, though the Chibok girls have gotten the most attention. There are also lingering questions about the status of the girls who have been freed. Though the 82 girls released two weeks ago are seeing their families today, they will not go home with them to remote, rural Chibok. They are to remain in the care of the government, for medical and psychological evaluation, as well as military debriefings, followed by a rehabilitation and reintegration program. As NPR has reported previously, 21 other girls who were released last year are still in government care as well. ”The Nigerian government maintains that these are security precautions to protect the girls from the stigma, ostracism and discrimination commonly faced by those returning from Boko Haram captivity.” Nigeria’s Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Jummai Alhassan, dismissed criticisms that the freed young women were being kept from their families. She said their parents can visit them at any time, and that the young women are there by choice. ”It is easier for them to get over the trauma while outside Chibok,” Alhassan told journalists last week. NPR’s Ofeibea   contributed to this report from Abuja."
"President Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia on Saturday carrying baggage  —   namely, a swirl of controversy stemming from his firing of FBI Director James Comey and the ongoing Russia investigations. But his hosts in Riyadh aren’t likely to be bothered by it all. Trumpeters played and jets flew overhead with red white and blue smoke trails decorating the sky as Trump emerged from Air Force One in Riyadh. He was greeted by Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and children bearing flowers. A long red carpet led from Air Force One to the airport terminal. Middle East expert Ilan Goldenberg is just back from a trip to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which included meetings with   government officials. ”I think they were very optimistic about President Trump,” says Goldenberg, who runs the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. That might be surprising considering some of the ways Trump disparaged Saudi Arabia as a presidential candidate. A check of his Twitter feed shows multiple tweets accusing Saudi Arabia of ”freeloading,” including this one from June of 2015. That was a familiar refrain on the campaign trail. At a rally in Green Bay, Wis. in August, Trump said, ”We have military bases that we rent  —   we pay rent to Saudi Arabia to protect them. No, no  —   think of it. . .. Think of the stupidity.” And in a general election debate last year, Trump blasted Hillary Clinton because the Clinton Foundation had taken money from Saudi Arabia. But his remarks were as much a criticism of the country’s human rights record as of her. ”I’d like to ask you right now why don’t you give back the money that you’ve taken from certain countries that treat certain groups of people so horribly?” he said. There’s also the matter of the executive orders President Trump signed aimed at halting travel  —   at least temporarily  —   from several   countries in the name of security. Critics see them as ”Muslim bans.” But none of that, experts said, was likely to dampen the enthusiasm for Trump in the Persian Gulf region. Why? Part of it has to do with the contrast between the new U. S. president and his predecessor, President Obama. ”For the Saudis, anyone is better than Barack Obama,” Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution said. ”That was a really low point from their perspective.” Obama never really developed a rapport with Arab leaders, Hamid said. And they were particularly put off by Obama’s willingness to negotiate with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s main rival in the region. ”Even if they have some concerns about Trump and his unpredictability, they still see him (Trump) as an improvement. And they’re enthusiastic in part because of Trump’s strong rhetoric against Iran.” There are other reasons leaders in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have an affinity for Trump. ”Trump has a strongman persona. And that endears him to autocratic leaders in the Middle East,” Hamid said. ”They never liked that Obama would bring up human rights concerns in their meetings. They don’t have to worry about that as much with President Trump, who is not prioritizing human rights or democracy.” Jerry Feierstein, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, agreed that Trump’s persona has helped endear him to these leaders. Trump’s tendency to run the government like a family business, with a close circle of advisers like his daughter and    isn’t seen as a negative in a part of the world run by extended families and monarchies, he said. ”For them, Donald Trump is a very understandable and relatable individual,” Feierstein said. ”He’s a sympathetic character. He behaves the same way they behave.” This isn’t to say Trump is universally popular among the citizens of the Gulf countries. However, he is unlikely to face protests while in Saudi Arabia  —   because that sort of public show of dissent isn’t allowed."
"On an overcast   afternoon, a group of bird lovers from the Earth Conservation Corps are in a boat on Washington, D. C.’s Anacostia River, and point out an osprey circling overhead. ”This is like their summer vacation spot and where they have their young,” says Bob Nixon, in the boat. ”Then they spend most of their lives in the Amazon.” It wasn’t so long ago that the ospreys  —   and other large birds of prey known as raptors  —   avoided this place. The Anacostia, often called Washington’s forgotten river, was too polluted to support wildlife. Nearly nine miles long, the river flows from Maryland into the Potomac, but became infamous in the second half of the 20th century as one of the most neglected,   waterways in the United States  —   a blighted river amid blighted neighborhoods. But in recent years, the Anacostia has seen a rebirth. Thanks to the efforts of the Earth Conservation Corps  —   which Nixon, a filmmaker and conservationist, started 25 years ago  —   there are now four osprey nests on the river’s Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. ”We’ve turned this into a raptor hotel,” says Nixon. There’s shad and bullhead catfish in the river for the ospreys to hunt. And from time to time, a bald eagle may even swoop in. ”What the eagles do, they watch the osprey hunt and once the osprey catch a fish, the eagles take it from them,” says ECC staffer Twan Woods. The eagles’ presence is due to the corps’ efforts as well: The group helped reintroduce the bird to Washington after decades of absence. It all started with a   promise Nixon made to Dian Fossey, the American primatologist who worked to protect endangered mountain gorillas and was murdered in Rwanda in 1985. Fossey had offered Nixon the rights to her life story in exchange for a year of his life  —   he had to devote it to a conservation project. After Fossey’s death, Nixon, who’d already made a documentary about her,   the 1988   film Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver. ”When we finished that movie,” he recalls, ”I kept thinking I should pay Dian that debt.” At home in Malibu, a New York Times story about a polluted Anacostia tributary caught Nixon’s eye. ”That sounds good!” he thought. And in 1992, he flew to Washington to get started on what he thought would be a year of work. ’I’m America’s nightmare’ ”Those were some serious times, rough times,” recalls Burrell Duncan, who was among the first volunteers Nixon recruited from Southeast D. C.’s Valley Green housing project. The choices facing kids in Valley Green in the early 1990s were stark. ”You could be three things,” Duncan says  —   ”a drug dealer, a killer or you could play sports.” When Nixon, who grew up on Philadelphia’s Main Line, landed in D. C. seeking volunteers to haul garbage out of the water, ”I thought it was a joke someone was playing on us,” Duncan says. ”What is this Caucasian doing? Don’t he know where he is?” He worried that Nixon might be killed. ”He drove a blue Jetta,” he says. ”He stuck out like a sore thumb.” Rodney Stotts, then 22, was another of the early volunteers. ”I was a drug dealer,” he says. ”Typical D. C. youth, drug dealing, everything that went along with it, hustling.” He didn’t sign on for the money  —   he was already making plenty. ”When I was selling an   of cocaine, it would cost you $125”  —   more than the $100 he’d make in an entire week slogging through the trash and muck of the Lower Beaverdam Creek, the Anacostia tributary Nixon wanted to clean up. But Stotts joined because he needed a check stub to rent an apartment. In the first three months, a team of seven young men and two women waded into the creek and dragged out everything from car engines to sofas, bikes  —   and 5, 000 tires. ”They cleaned every scrap out of that creek,” Nixon says. It was hard work with no prestige, and their friends in Valley Green gave them a hard time. But ”we started feeling a sense of accomplishment and pride,” says Anthony Satterthwaite, another of the original volunteers. That sense of accomplishment was key. One thing Nixon quickly realized was that the polluted waterway was only part of the picture. The obstacles his team faced in their daily lives were formidable. ”I’m America’s nightmare,” one of them told Nixon. ”No one ever thinks anything good could come out of a place like this.” In those early days, it wasn’t unusual for the volunteers to arrive to work armed, Duncan says. ”It was guns on the river, and it was attitudes,” he says. ”People were uncomfortable with the fact of being in a creek. You don’t know what you’re gonna run into  —   who you’re gonna run into.” Few of them had known each other before starting with the Earth Conservation Corps, but little by little, their sense of camaraderie grew along with their sense of achievement. Meanwhile, the outside world wasn’t changing: ”You could come to a safe haven and be as positive as you want,” Satterthwaite says. ”But we still gotta go home.” Violence and tragedy intruded. Monique Johnson, one of the first corps members, was murdered four months after they started cleaning up the creek. Other lives were cut short. Of the first nine volunteers, only four survive today. ”We buried 26 corps members in 25 years,” Nixon says. One was beaten to death ”because he sat on a bench someone didn’t want him to be sitting on.” Others succumbed to illness. All, Nixon says, died in one way or another due to the circumstances of extreme poverty. He and the surviving and new corps members kept working. They wanted to keep making a difference and make sure their friends would not be forgotten. ’We was just as endangered’ In 1994, two years into the Earth Conservation Corps’ work, Washington was in the midst of a crack epidemic, with a murder rate topping 400 a year. At that low point in the city’s recent history, Nixon had the idea to bring the bald eagle back to the nation’s capital. It had disappeared decades earlier. Between 1994 and 1998, members of the corps raised and released 16 bald eagles. Anthony Satterthwaite and Burrell Duncan fed the very first eaglets  —   hatched in Wisconsin and delivered to Washington to start the reintroduction program  —   by hiding in the woods and sending fish via a clothesline pulley system into the boxes where the baby birds were kept high up in a poplar tree. They couldn’t let the young birds see them, for fear that they’d imprint on humans. When the birds were old enough, the boxes were opened. ”To see these birds fly away from this box they were in for three months  —   just joy, man,” says Satterthwaite. ”Just joy.” They named the eagles in memory of their fallen friends  —   Monique Johnson and the other corps members they’d lost over the years. ”We wasn’t supposed to live to see the age of 21,” says Satterthwaite. ”We was just as endangered as this majestic bird. So it became very powerful and we connected the two, and that’s why we started our raptor education program with Rodney Stotts.” This year, there are three eagle’s nests in Washington. A naming contest was held for one of the eaglets, which hatched March 15 in southwest Washington. The winning name: Spirit. Its parents are Liberty and Justice. ”We no longer have to name them after dead colleagues,” says Nixon. ’Get out your own way’ ”Me and Rodney had a confrontation back in the day,” says D. C. police officer James Thomas, better known as ”Hammer.” ”That’s how we became friends. He’s dealing drugs and I’m the police. .. put that together. We had an impact on each other.” He’s standing on a deck outside the Matthew Henson Earth Conservation Center, a facility on the Anacostia named for the first   explorer to reach the North Pole, which Henson   with Robert Peary. Inside, 30 inner city teenagers have just met a raptor for the first time  —   a   hawk named Sky, wearing bells, attached to a short line and handled by Rodney Stotts. ”If you’re afraid and you put this bird on your hand,” Stotts tells the kids, ”you’ve just done one of the biggest things you can, which is overcome your fear.” There are gasps and screams, and some laughs, as giddy volunteers step forward to hold the bird on their arms. The former cocaine dealer who found his way to the Earth Conservation Corps more than two decades ago as a means of obtaining a check stub is now a licensed falconer  —   one of only 30   falconers in the entire U. S. he tells the kids. ”You’re the only one that gets in your own way,” he says. ”Get out your own way, that’s what I had to do.” The kids are here as part of a D. C. police program called Youth Creating Change, which Thomas says encourages them to ”face their fears, help them get a job, earn community service hours.” Not only are they meeting Stotts and learning about his hawks today, they’re also helping build the bones of a new osprey nest  —   welded out of decommissioned firearms seized by the D. C. police. ”Rodney can connect with the kids,” Thomas says. ”He’s been in poverty, he’s been a part of all that. His story has an impact on the youth.” Stotts  —   by his own admission ”not much of a people person”  —   says educating the kids is gratifying. ”You realize who you used to be and all you used to cause is pain and tears,” he says, ”and now you’re causing laughter and joy.” But he’d always rather be outside. Working with the birds and other animals is what’s saved his life, he says. ”I’d have been dead,” he says. ”When I’m outside, I can go off and this great blue heron took off over my head and put my mind somewhere else. These fish swimming up the stream over here, the beaver with her babies going out now from stuff that, when you first got here, was just trash  —   all trash, you ain’t seen no signs of life  —   so how can you sit here mad and want to fight, when all you see is beauty come back? That makes no sense to me. So I couldn’t do an inside type of job. If I didn’t get into animals, I’d have died in the street.” Bob Nixon encouraged Stotts to become a falconer he happens to be one himself. His own upbringing included a stint at a falconry center in England, where he learned as a teenager about birds of prey. But even with Nixon’s support, Stotts’ path to falconry wasn’t  . ”I was told, ’Black people don’t fly birds, y’all eat ’em,’” he recalls. ” ’These are hawks, owls and falcons  —   not chickens. ’” Stotts ignored the resistance and the racism  —   ”OK, fine, no problem,” he says now  —   and remained focused on what was important to him. ”I always loved animals,” he says. He’s living in Maryland now, where he keeps horses, birds and other creatures, some of which he’s named after loved ones who’ve died. And he’s started his own program, though he keeps working with the Earth Conservation Corps. He’s also poised to become a master falconer, and says he’s expecting his license next year. ”Now,” says Nixon, ”I’m Rodney’s apprentice.”"
"Updated at 10:21 a. m. ET, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has won   by a large margin. According to Iran’s Interior Ministry as reported by Press TV, Rouhani won about 57% of the vote with more than 23. 5 million votes against his main challenger Ebrahim Raisi’s 15. 7 million. Rouhani appeared to have benefited from a large turnout that forced polls to stay open until midnight, NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports. More than 40 million out of 56 million eligible voters cast their ballots. In a live speech carried by State TV, Rouhani said Saturday that the vote showed Iran’s willingness to work with the international community, and a rejection of hardliners, according to the AP. First elected in 2013, Rouhani is seen as a reformer in Iran’s largely conservative society. He is best known abroad as the president who made a nuclear deal with the West in 2015, in which the country agreed to certain limits on nuclear development in return for the lifting of some sanctions. His conservative opponent Raisi attacked the weak state of the economy under Rouhani. Raisi ”lambasted Rouhani for seeking foreign investment and appealed to religious conservatives,” The Guardian noted. Massoud Asheri, a    engineer for a mining company, told Peter that he was always confident Rouhani would prevail, and believes it’s a sign that popular pressure for change is mounting. ”It’s about 10 or 20 years that people in Iran want to change the condition in Iran,” Asheri said. ”The people now are growing, and the new generation wants new things.” But Asheri also says Iranians urgently need economic improvements. ”So I think in the next four years, Mr. Rouhani [. ..] must respond to the people who voted for him for the second time.” Rouhani voter Narges Sha’eri, 30, agrees that the economy tops the   list for Rouhani, but adds that a steady hand in dealing with the international community is also needed. She says a good deal of Rouhani’s support was motivated by fear of what might happen if the hard liners regained control of the executive branch. ”Precisely that,” she told Peter. ”We also knew very well that should Raisi win, he would bring the same people that were of the (hard line) principalist camp, which would drive the country backward.” The lifting of sanctions did benefit the economy by increasing oil production. Iran is one of the top   countries in the world the CIA ranked it at No. 7 in 2015. Rouhani had promised during the campaign to further undo international sanctions in a second term, Kenyon says. But the economy is still sluggish. In   unemployment stood at 12. 7 percent, a ”  high,” according to the World Bank. NPR’s Steve Inskeep reports that Rouhani ”brought down inflation, but he slowed the economy while doing so.” Rouhani’s reforms have been modest and gradual, as Inskeep notes. Reformist newspapers have begun publishing again and imprisoned journalists have been freed. Rouhani presided over an expansion of the country’s 3G and 4G networks, used by smartphones. But ultimate power in the country rests with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has held the title since 1989. Khamenei controls the country’s security forces and can veto any presidential policies. Meanwhile, U. S. President Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia Saturday morning, for a visit with the country’s royal leaders. The Saudis are a strong U. S. ally and   of Iran the largely Sunni Saudis strongly opposed President Obama’s outreach and nuclear deal with the Persian Shia power. Despite President Trump’s pledges to ”rip up” the Iran deal, the Trump administration’s State Department allowed the deal to continue this past week by continuing to waive sanctions on Iran. Relations between the U. S. and Iran are likely to be remain hostile, according to Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He told NPR’s Morning Edition that leaders in the U. S.  countries of Israel and Saudi Arabia are likely to advocate ”a policy which goes back to status quo ante on Iran which is pushing Iran back in the Middle East.” NPR’s Peter Kenyon contributed to this report."
"On the steps above the makeshift stables, the circus priest is getting nostalgic. ”I did a baptism once in Fort Worth, Texas. . .. I came in on an elephant carrying the baby, which was four weeks old,” the Rev. Jerry Hogan says. ”Now that baby is 15. I’ve married a lot of these kids and I’ve baptized their kids, and watched them grow.” It’s late April at Baltimore’s Royal Farms Arena, in the closing weeks of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum  Bailey’s ”Out of This World” tour. The   show is Sunday night in Uniondale, N. Y. The circus isn’t profitable any more, according to the company that runs it. And especially once the elephants were gone  —   after public battles with animal rights activists  —   ticket sales just couldn’t keep it afloat. That means the end of the famous traveling circus show, with a ringmaster and big cats and clowns and trapeze acts . .. the stuff of nostalgia for generations. But it’s the end of much more than just a show, Hogan says. ”The performance is 2   hours,” he says, as horses are saddled and kids carried past us to the nursery. ”The circus is the whole experience.” It’s baptisms on elephants, pies in the face on birthdays, raising a family on the circus train as the American landscape rolls by. And it’s spectacular acts of skill in the rings and outside them  —   a logistical feat polished over 146 years and preparing for the final curtain call. ’A city that folds itself up like an umbrella’ ”The Greatest Show on Earth” started in 1871 as a traveling museum and menagerie under the imprimatur of P. T. Barnum. In 1895, the magazine McClure’s wrote that ”man’s intelligence has devised nothing more compact, more orderly, more admirably adapted to its purpose, than the train of a great modern circus”: ”It is a kingdom on wheels, a city that folds itself up like an umbrella. Quickly and swiftly every night it does the work of Aladdin’s lamp, picking up in its magician’s arms theatre, hotel, schoolroom, barracks, home, whisking them all miles away and setting them down before sunrise in a new place.” More than a century later, little has changed. The circus still rolls across the country carrying hundreds of performers, stagehands and children in a   train. These days, they call it a ”town without a ZIP code.” ”It’s the largest theater performance in human history on the longest passenger train in human history,” says Rhett Coates, a backstage crew member, as he stands in a vestibule of the train. He’s worked off and on for Ringling Brothers since the 1980s and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the circus trains. Coates says his mother was a singer and his stepfather worked on the Atlantic Coastline railway. He thought he’d have to choose between trains and the performing arts. ”But God had another way,” he says. He points toward his window  —   on car 72. The quarters aren’t roomy, but ”it’s comfortable,” he says. ”It’s quiet. It’s astonishing.” The train includes the ”pie car,” the restaurant to feed the crew and performers. There’s a mobile repair shop and scores of huge wagons full of supplies, props and gear. There’s a nursery and a school. There’s nothing quite like living on a train, says sound technician Greg Hartfield. ”You open up the blinds, drinking your coffee, and you’re just seeing cities go by you. You’re seeing lakes, you’re seeing ponds, you’re seeing mountains . .. from your bedroom window, as you drink your coffee,” he says. And America watches back. When the train crossed roads, Coates says, you could see frustration melt into awe as stopped motorists recognized the logo on the side of the train. ”Their faces light up,” he says. ”It’s a total change in attitude.” The modern menagerie, The back hallways and loading docks of the arena in Baltimore are packed with piles of carrots, mounds of hay and rows of holding pens. Kanat Tchalabaev and Tatiana Tchalabaeva, who lead the Cossack Riders, have squeezed their 21 horses into one of those hallways, across from offices and meeting rooms. They’ve been performing with Ringling for years. Tchalabaeva was a gymnast, and then an acrobat with the Moscow State circus, before she met Kanat, a horse trainer.  ”I was so scared of horses,” she said. She never dreamed she’d perform with them. But then her    retired. ”My husband just said, ’OK, let’s go, time to learn!’ ” she says with a laugh. Now there’s no fear. She pats one of her stallions on the neck and explains that they, too, are fearless  —   trained over many years, until they’re totally comfortable with a rider dropping between their legs or flipping on their backs. In corners and spare spaces, the crew also have to find room for four goats, three llamas, four alpacas, two donkeys, two kangaroos, a dozen lions and tigers, more than two dozen dogs . .. and two   pigs. Trainer Hans Klose coaxes one out into the open with some help from an apple, and explains that with a pig that big, it’s a question of persuasion. There’s no chance of a leash. ”Roscoe was 30 pounds when I went to the farm and discovered his talent,” Klose says. ”He was destined for bacon, and we saved him.” Klose, who only recently added pigs to his dog show, is a   circus performer. ”My dad always told me once you learn the skills of the circus, no one can ever take it away from you,” he says. ”You can always make a living and you’ll have it your whole life.” Countdown to opening night, Meanwhile, crew members are racing against the clock to transform the arena floor into a circus stage. The days of the big top are long gone, but the   choreography remains. ”I’d say 60 percent of what we do is moving the show, setting it up and tearing it down,” says Assistant General Manager Peter Gold. He points out the masses of black trusses on rubber mats over the arena’s ice floor. Over the course of the next 10 hours, the trusses will be bolted together into a massive structure that holds all of the lights, trapezes, projectors and props  —   not to mention the tiger cage. It will be all but invisible when the show is happening, but Gold says it’s the heart of the performance. The grid, as it’s known, takes some 30 hours to fully set up and weighs 59, 000 pounds. The finer points of its assembly are, literally, a matter of life and death. And getting it right the first time is essential: If anything goes wrong once it’s lifted, someone has to climb 40 feet into the air to fix it. There are other big circuses out there, but Gold says they don’t travel as often or as intensely. And there are other traveling spectacles, but they don’t face all the technical challenges of a circus. One crew member compares his job to the grueling seafaring work on The Deadliest Catch, with better weather. ”That’s what defines the circus, if you think about it,” says Roman Garcia, the general manager of the show. ”People come to see the circus because they know they’re going to see something like, ’Oh my god, how did they do that? That’s an impossible feat!’ ”Not only in performance, but behind the scenes,” he says, ”we do things that are like  —   ’Oh my god, how did we do this?’ ” ’This is my family’ Walking through the center of the arena, Gold points out the trapeze artist doing safety checks on his equipment. Gold used to swing on the trapeze himself, as a performer. He got hooked on trapeze on vacation in Club Med while he was in college. ”One thing led to another,” he says. His wife, Undarmaa Gold, is a Mongolian contortionist. She choreographed a routine in this show  —   ”giving the golden stage to the next generation,” as she says with a laugh. She’s also teaching their young son and the other circus kids some of her tricks. Lots of the crew used to perform, and stayed with the circus long after they left the spotlight. Gerardo Medina is beneath the grid assembling the swaypole, a bendy vertical bar that holds a performer dangling in the sky. He used to do acrobatic tricks inside a giant spinning steel wheel. His wife used to be a trapeze artist and now works with the llamas, the goats and the kangaroo. Lorelei Owens, the head of pyro, was once a   glass walker and silk aerialist. She finished her college degree on the road with a small circus, then came to Ringling, instead of leaving the circus world. ”These are my neighbors,” she says. ”These are my friends, this is my family.” Some 300 people travel with the circus at any given time. Many fall in love, get married, have children. In some ways, it’s a transient world  —   contracts end, the circus lineup rotates, and troupes are swapped out. But stick with the circus long enough, the Ringling crew say, and you’ll see the same faces again and again, either on the train or at Ringling’s winter home in Sarasota, Fla. It’s an   community, but for a century and a half, it’s always been there. After the lights go down, So what happens after the last show in Uniondale? Jerley Gutierrez says the end of the circus is shocking. Devastating. He’s been with Ringling for decades, as a trapeze artist and now with concessions, where he runs the   stand. ”It’s a good place and a safe environment to raise your kids,” he says, his    son sleeping in his arms. ”I don’t know where else on earth you can do something like this and still be with your family and have a job.” ”It’s not the end of the world. But in a kind of way, it is. For us.” He doesn’t know what his family will do next. Some people, like Owens, are joining other traveling shows. Some, like Klose the   and   will look for new venues for their performances, from fairs to   shows. Others are heading home  —   to Las Vegas or Sarasota, mostly  —   to regroup. And some still don’t know. ”We’ll see,” Tchalabaeva says, asked about her dozens of horses and her Cossack Riders and grooms. ”Life will show us. . .. We’re just looking to see what’s best out there, for all of us.” The circus priest is mournful. ”We always have an expression, you know, we never say goodbye  —   we say, ’see you down the road, because we usually pick up where we left off,” Hogan says. ”Well, that’s going to be changing pretty soon.” But Undarmaa Gold is confident that even as the performers go their separate ways, this community will live on  —   one way or another. ”Always, forever, together.”"
"In May, when flowers bloom all over France, strawberries overtake outdoor markets and fill me with bittersweet memories. Here in Paris, flashy red strawberries abound on fruit stands everywhere and occupy them for weeks on end. They come in many varieties, with lovely names like Charlotte, Anaïs, Cléry, Gariguette or the intriguing Mara des bois (Mara of the woods). I have a soft spot for the Gariguette, a longish berry that is as fragrant as wild strawberries. I admit I like it because it was my older brother’s favorite. My brother Bertrand died five years ago this month, at the height of strawberry season. Now, every time I rinse strawberries before eating them, I hear his voice telling me, ”Use lukewarm water. It’ll clean them better.” Bertrand was an artist, a craftsman, a dreamer and a foodie, the kind who would walk deep into Paris’ Chinatown to get the right fish and the right fruit, all at bargain prices. He was a     cook. He would toil away in the kitchen for hours, meticulously creating wholesome meals for friends and family waiting impatiently with growling stomachs. Meat would be sliced just so  —   deboned, deveined and defatted vegetables would be coated with crushed garlic, herbs, coriander or thyme and fruit salads would be dressed with some flavor he had concocted. He was the master of our family’s feasts. In Bertrand’s kitchen, strawberries would be halved lengthwise and macerated in sugar and orange blossom water, a simple and delicate dessert everyone in my family remembers fondly. I prepare them the same way, too. In the spring of 2012, I flew from Boston, where I lived then, to visit Bertrand in Paris. At the age of 59, he was losing his battle with stomach cancer. He knew he was dying. He told me so, calmly. But at a time when he could no longer ingest any solid food, he still found the strength and willpower to make chicken stew with vegetables for me and for his     son, Arthur. He carved ripe mangoes and tossed sliced strawberries in his special sweet dressing. He watched me eat his meal  —   as if my enjoyment could feed him vicariously.  During his last days, in a Paris hospital, I asked him what he’d like me to bring him. He was being kept alive by IV fluids. ”Nothing,” he said, ”though I wouldn’t mind tasting a couple of Gariguettes.” It felt good that he had requested something to taste, especially his beloved strawberries. It was as if he had hope, and I could have some, too. I returned the next day with a box of the fruit, but Bertrand was in a fog by then  —   mentally absent and in a lot of pain. He thanked me for the strawberries and said he would try them later, but he never did. He died later that evening. Arthur and close relatives came to the hospital. At dawn, after an impromptu wake, my sister Bénédicte and I left the hospital with some of Bertrand’s things the nursing staff had handed to us. In the taxi taking me home, I found the box of Gariguettes in a bag. They were bruised, but I ate them as tears ran down my cheeks. Bertrand’s funeral a few days later mirrored his personality: eccentric, funny, sad and completely irreverent. It also reflected his love for cooking. At one point in the ceremony, nieces and nephews read out loud  —   through giggles and tears  —   his signature recipes, including his roast leg of lamb, his chicken breasts grilled in butter sauce with macaroni, and his strawberry dessert. The tribute continued at a nearby theater lounge where our family and a large gathering of friends shared stories about Bertrand over good wines, bread and rillettes (a charcuterie spread, previously defatted of course) and large bowls of Gariguettes. Bertrand would have approved. To me, May will forever be the month of my brother’s passing. It’s also the most vibrant time of spring, when brightly colored flowers and fruit pop up everywhere. And so, I take solace in the fact that each May, the perky Gariguettes return as a vivid celebration of my brother’s endless love for food and life. Adeline Sire is a   journalist who splits her time between Boston and Paris. She’s on Twitter @AdelineSire"
"In the mayor’s office on the second floor of Baltimore City Hall, Catalina   has been uneasy lately.   runs a city office whose mission is to attract new immigrants to Baltimore  —   a strategy for reversing decades of population decline. But President Donald Trump’s plans to ramp up deportations of immigrants in the U. S. illegally have cast a pall over her efforts. ”We have been working to develop economic tools for immigrants to open businesses, to buy homes, to be employed,” she said. ”Our efforts are being threatened because there is that constant reminder in the back of their heads that they could be deported.” As President Trump’s widening deportation dragnet has heightened anxieties in immigrant households across the country, local officials have spoken about the moral responsibility they have to protect these families through steps like limiting the role police officers play in immigration enforcement. But in cities like Baltimore, which see growing their immigrant populations as a way to revive a shrinking tax base, there’s also a strong financial imperative to act. Six decades of white, and more recently black, flight have driven Baltimore’s population to a   low. In recent years, only a couple of bright spots have emerged in this otherwise worrisome demographic picture. The city’s Latino population has more than doubled in the last decade, while its Asian population has grown by 60 percent. Immigrants,   said, account for much of that growth, and now make up about 8 percent of Baltimore’s 615, 000 residents. ”And we know that immigrants attract other immigrants,”   said. ”Friends and family tell other people that they were able to have a home here. So that’s why it’s so important to be able to retain those networks, because they themselves become a tool to attract additional immigrants.” Unlike the mayors of major cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Baltimore’s new mayor has not openly condemned President Trump’s deportation efforts or publicly vowed to resist them. But the city has put some resources into efforts that protect its immigrant residents. Last month, the city announced a $500, 000 private fund to provide lawyers for immigrants facing deportation. Though Baltimore has not committed public money to the fund the way other cities have in announcing similar efforts, city officials are fundraising on behalf of the Open Society Institute of Baltimore, the private nonprofit managing the fund. ”We know that in immigration court proceedings, the outcomes are better if people do have representation,” said Diana Morris, the institute’s director. ”We want to make sure that people do have legal defense.”   of the mayor’s office, said the fund’s creation is as much about protecting families from deportation as it is about protecting a population that officials see as an important and growing economic engine for the city’s future. For a glimpse of this future, and of how it stands to be shaped by the fate of Baltimore’s immigrants,   pointed to Highlandtown, a historically   neighborhood in the southeastern section of the city. Eastern Avenue, which runs through it, is a canvas of freshly erected signs over   storefronts that now house Mexican and Salvadoran restaurants,   hair salons, and a   laundromat lined with jumbo washers. Rosa Martinez, an Ecuadorean immigrant, has lived in this neighborhood for more than a decade, but said its immigrant character started taking off in the last several years as more immigrants arrived and, feeling a measure of stability and belonging, began opening businesses. But things here started feeling different after the election. In early February, shortly after President Trump signed an executive order prioritizing a much broader pool of unauthorized immigrants for deportation, federal immigration agents picked up two men outside the neighborhood Walgreens. Though both were in the country illegally, advocates said neither had so much as a parking ticket on his record. News of the arrests rippled through the neighborhood’s large undocumented population. ”I tried not to really leave home,” Martinez said, speaking in Spanish. ”Many of the mothers at my son’s school, too. There was that fear of being picked up by immigration.” News of immigration arrests often sends a chill through the neighborhoods in which they occur, affecting stress levels but also school attendance and business at local stores. During the early years of the Obama administration, Highlandtown residents were occasionally targeted, though by the end of his second term, Martinez and other immigrants here said, they felt more at ease. The prospect of a renewed and sustained period of enforcement is now front of mind, for both immigrants like Martinez, who fear for their safety, and for City Hall officials like Catalina   who fear also that the economic progress neighborhoods like Highlandtown have made in recent years could be reversed. ”That is a loss to the city,” she said.   is working to develop the legal defense fund and other ways to protect the city’s immigrants. Martinez has started squirreling away money for an immigration attorney, just in case she gets picked up by immigration authorities. ”I’ve been saving, saving, saving,” she said, ”because you never know what will happen.” She stuffs the cash under her mattress, where her family will know where to find it."
"Boredom is a going concern, particularly in a Western culture   with things designed to make every moment count. Freelance researcher Mary Mann began writing Yawn: Adventures in Boredom because she was concerned with her own restlessness was she succumbing to the depression that ran in her family? Was modern malaise taking hold? Was she fundamentally ungrateful for life, as her parents had always suggested about bored people? If she was broken, was there a cure? (And if you’re already rolling your eyes at Mann, this is not going to be an easy read for you.) Last question first: We’re all inherently broken, and there’s no cure. People have always been bored. And the moral component of boredom isn’t a modern guilt trip. Mann’s research traces several fascinating ways boredom has shaped social development and habits (and, sometimes, the other way around). In the fourth century, a monk named Cassian visited the Desert Fathers in Egypt in recording their quiet habits and seemingly endless contemplation, he also noted ”tedium or perturbation of the heart . .. one is forever in and out of one’s cell, gazing at the sun as though it were tarrying to its setting.” Several centuries of literary history shove blame back and forth about whether boredom is a male or female failing. In the 1840s, Thomas Cook invented modern tourism as a way to give bored   Brits something to do besides drink. Now, every day brings a new article about how to stop the demon of lassitude, or a new invention designed to keep us from ever being at loose ends again. Using the   in her own life, Mann tries to connect the old with the new: Egyptian monks and cubicle farms (Mann hates them) the literary history of lassitude and the modern sex life (Mann takes her boyfriend to a    trivia night) tourism and . .. well, tourism (Mann was a kayak tour guide for a while). Mann can be a thoughtful writer the chapter on tourism touches on how it functioned as a colonizing force, as Europeans sought out new places and then demanded the comforts of home. But Yawn splits the difference between autobiography and scholarship, and Mann’s need to tie things back to her own experience has mixed results. Sometimes she provides a thread to draw you though the meandering moments  —   glimpses of her family life are poignant  —   or offers herself as a fidgety proxy for our own   about boredom. Sometimes it’s just baffling Mann uses an eyepatched library patron as inspiration for a running joke about Stack Pirates that she must think is funny, given how often she returns to it. And sometimes it backfires utterly in talking about boredom’s relationship to crime, she quotes from an inmate’s account of   solitary confinement, then breezes away from it to the wider idea of boredom as motive for crime, noting briefly that she got a fine for public consumption while researching the book ”I can relate,” she says dryly, landing somewhere between   and grotesque. But Mann also manages to avoid the biggest potential pitfall of a book on boredom  —   she doesn’t solve it. Though she finds some answers (boredom isn’t depression, because motivation to do something else still remains) this is more an exploration of the inevitable than a mystery with a big reveal. Yawn is deeply interested in connecting the history, psychology, and cultural narratives around boredom if the authorial presence gets a little draining, well, maybe that’s part of the point. Genevieve Valentine’s latest novel is Icon."
"The New Orleans City Council had declared the city’s four Confederate monuments a public nuisance. On Friday police cars circled the last one standing, the imposing statue of General Robert E. Lee, a    bronze figure mounted on a   pedestal in the center of Lee Circle near downtown. Live news trucks were parked on side streets, and cameramen watched from the windows of nearby hotel rooms. The air was muggy and tense. Three monuments already had come down in what represented a sharp cultural changing of the guard: First it was the Liberty Place monument, an obelisk tucked on a back street near the French Quarter that commemorated a Reconstruction Era white supremacist attack on the city’s integrated police force next, Confederate Jefferson Davis  —   a bronze statue of the only president of the Confederacy, mounted on a pedestal in the     area of town then, Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard, mounted high on a horse in a roundabout at the entrance to City Park. Statue supporters say they represent an important part of the state’s identity and culture  —   but in a city where 60 percent of the residents are   many see the monuments as an offensive celebration of the Confederacy and the system of slavery it sought to preserve. Over the past month, these venues became gathering places for people who support the statue removal, and those who opposed them. The first three came down in the middle of the night the official reason was for the protection and safety of the workers engaged in this rewriting of the historical record. The contractors who signed up for the removal received multiple death threats, and one had his car firebombed last year. The showdown bore all the acrimony and divisiveness typical of   American politics, but also carried deep historical echoes: Those opposed to the removal lit candles at the base of the monuments and carried Confederate flags, pistols and automatic rifles. Some came from as far away as Oklahoma to join in the protest.   groups flew banners saying ”Take ’em down” and even held a barbecue at the Jefferson Davis statue. At times, the gatherings became heated and resulted in arrests. The nation watched, perhaps in surprise, to see such devotion to the Confederacy alive and thriving in New Orleans, but to those of us who live here, the standoff did not come a surprise. Mayor Mitch Landrieu first broached the idea of removing the monuments to the city council in 2015, after the   shooting of parishioners at a black church in Charleston, S. C. In the wake of that mass shooting, South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its place of prominence at the state Capitol. Since Landrieu’s pitch, multiple court battles have ensued as monument supporters tried every legal channel they could to halt the removals. The most recent came last week, as the Monumental Task Committee attempted to stop the removal of Beauregard with the rationale that it was on private property. A judge quickly dismissed the suit. Meantime, in the statehouse in Baton Rouge, members of the Louisiana House’s Black Caucus literally walked off of the House floor after the lower chamber voted to protect the monuments. This all comes at a time when racial tensions are running high. The police shooting of Alton Sterling, an black man, in Baton Rouge triggered heated protests last summer, and then there was the shooting of Joe McKnight, a former NFL football player, by a white man who wasn’t immediately charged. Stagnating wages and gentrification have compounded income disparity here, the   in the nation. The city still feels largely segregated. At many grocery stores, most of the customers are white while all of the clerks are black. At many day cares, pharmacies and restaurants, the majority of the service workers are of color. So it comes as no surprise to those of us who live here that many are attached to what Mayor Landrieu calls the ”Cult of the Lost Cause,” a white movement over the past hundred years to push back against reconciliation and demonstrate that there was no sense of guilt for the cause in which the South fought the Civil War. That said, some supporters also have personal, largely nonpolitical attachments to the monuments  —   considering them neighborhood markers that they saw on the way to school as children. Some told me their parents talked about the Civil War around the dinner table, and had relatives who fought in it. Many feel the city should have held a referendum on their removal rather than just approving it in city council. They speculate that the mayor  —   member of a powerful political family  —   has aspirations of running for higher office. Whether or not these monuments really represent inequality in America today is cause for debate. They were put up more than a hundred years ago by people who are long dead. But New Orleanians who found them offensive celebrated on Friday as workers wrapped heavy straps under the arms of General Robert E. Lee and dangled him carefully from a crane before whisking him away to a warehouse. The statue will wait there with the other three, until the city finds suitable nonprofits or governments to take them  —   with the expectation that they not be displayed anywhere outdoors in Orleans Parish. The mayor plans to have fountains built and an American flag flown in their place."
"With the help of   cameras, CT scanners and some   supplies, scientists in Japan have managed to catch a glimpse of the elaborate way that ladybugs fold their wings to tuck them away. The research could have implications for everything from aeronautics to umbrellas. The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explored how ladybugs can have wings strong enough to fly with, but quickly collapsible so they can be tucked out of the way. The wings, after all, are much larger than the   wing cases they fold down to fit inside  —   as is immediately obvious easy to see if you just watch a video of the wings unfolding. But the researchers at the University of Tokyo explain that no one knew how the ladybugs put the wings away, since they actually shut the wing cases first  —   then pull the wings inside. The interesting action is tucked out of sight. So they replaced those distinctive red and black cases with transparent ones  —   built out of a kind of   resin that’s often used in nail art, according to a press release from the university. The artificial wing case, called an elytron, allowed the researchers to watch how the wing folded. ”I wasn’t sure if the ladybug could fold its wings with an artificial elytron made of   resin,” says Kazuya Saito, a professor at the University of Tokyo and the lead author on the study. ”So I was surprised when I found out it could.” The scientists used   cameras to record the process, and CT scans of folded and unfolded wings to help figure out the precise pattern of folds. The process by which the wings collapse is akin to origami  —   in fact, the scientists used origami paper to recreate portions of the wing folds. And the wings remain stable when expanded partly because of veins that use ”tape springs”  —   the kind of curve that allows carpenter tape to hold itself straight. ”The ladybugs’ technique for achieving complex folding is quite fascinating and novel, particularly for researchers in the fields of robotics, mechanics, aerospace and mechanical engineering,” Saito said, according to the university’s press release. In the study, the scientists suggest some immediate applications for the research  —   including aircraft wings, space technology like folding antennas and solar arrays, and far more prosaic items like umbrellas and fans."
"On February 28, 1967, The Beatles were in Abbey Road Studios in London working on a new song, ”Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Today we’re premiering ”take one,” the first attempt The Beatles made at recording it. For me, a teen back then, the dreamy sound of this song was like nothing I’d ever heard. With the ”Summer of Love,” the hippie movement and   art and culture exploding, it didn’t take much imagination (induced or not) to hear the words ”picture yourself on a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies” as referencing the drug experience. And then, of course, the acronym easily spotted within the song’s title  —   ”Lucy, Sky Diamonds”  —   though it wasn’t about that. The song contained more innocence than the revelations of an   dream might. The lyrics of ”Lucy,” written by John Lennon, were inspired, the   story goes, by a painting his    son Julian had made of one of his classmates, Lucy O’Donnell. When John asked about the drawing, Julian said it was ”Lucy in the sky with diamonds.” Lennon had already begun shifting his lyrical approach, from the ”I love her and you love me” sorts of songs of the early Beatles to the type of writing he’d been putting into his books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works. The turn was at least partially inspired by the way Bob Dylan played with words, coupled with Lennon’s desire to be Lewis Carroll, with his love for Jabberwocky and Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. That evolution started with The Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul, but clearly took on a new dimension with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band  —   and particularly ”Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” They worked on the song over four days rehearsing it, laying down instrumental backing, adding a piano at one point from producer George Martin. What you hear on this first attempt is a version lacking the vocals from that famous chorus John is singing lead and Paul McCartney is at a Lowrey organ, combining numerous presets, including harpsichord, vibraharp and music box, to make that infamous opening sound. You hear, in the bits of backgrounded conversation, a true collaboration, a bit of magic unfolding. It’s thrilling to hear. (There’s a lot more of that in the 50th Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper.) Next Tuesday (May 23) I’ll be sharing a conversation I had with Giles Martin, son of George. He’s just remixed the album, which may seem to be a project that falls somewhere between the questions ’why do that?’ and ’how dare you?’ But, as Giles will explain and demonstrate to us by comparing the hastily done stereo mix we have come to know, from 1967, and the mono mixes George Martin and The Beatles spent weeks on (which nearly no one seems to listens to) there was good reason to undertake this project. You can subscribe to the All Songs Considered podcast to hear the interview  —   a splendid time is guaranteed for all."
"It’s graduation season. That means commencement addresses lead off our weekly education news roundup. Last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos faced boos at   University. This week, President Trump received a warmer welcome when he addressed cadets at the U. S. Coast Guard Academy. Far from a conventional graduation speech, Trump talked about his rough week in Washington and how he keeps going in spite of his critics. ”Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media. No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly. You can’t let them get you down. You can’t let the critics and the naysayers get in the way of your dreams,” he told the graduates. Leaked education budget has big cuts, The Washington Post made education headlines this week by offering early details of President Trump’s first proposed education budget. According to documents obtained by The Post, the   proposal ”calls for a net $9. 2 billion cut to the department, or 13. 6 percent of the spending level Congress approved last month.” Many proposals resemble those in the budget blueprint released earlier this year, such as adding money for charter schools and vouchers. A $1. 2 billion   program would be cut along with $2. 1 billion for teacher training and   reduction. A billion dollars in Title I funding for   schools would be dedicated to a new program for states that allow students to leave neighborhood schools for other public schools. This is a controversial concept known as ”portability.” Finally, while simplifying student loan repayment plans, an idea that has bipartisan support, the new budget would also eliminate a popular program called Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The program is supposed to forgive student loans for people who spend a decade working in the government or nonprofit sector. It’s worth the reminder: While this document has more details than the blueprint released earlier, it’s still a request. Official appropriations are up to Congress. Push for better student data, In a move that could launch a thousand dissertations and policy proposals, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for more data on college students. This week, Sens. Orrin Hatch ( ) Elizabeth Warren ( .) Bill Cassidy ( .) and Sheldon Whitehouse ( . I.) all members of the Senate committee on education, unveiled the College Transparency Act of 2017. The bill directs the National Center For Education Statistics to create a   postsecondary data system to track students no matter where they enroll. Researchers argue that such a system would provide insight into the life outcomes of the many college students who transfer, drop out and   later, or who don’t take federal student aid. It could also make it easier to compare the performance of different colleges. Over the last decade, states have already created similar systems that allow them to track younger students, in some cases through the workforce  —   as long as the student stays in the state. This data has helped spur improvements in the high school graduation rate and allowed for better research on the   impact of preschool. But, since 2008, a ban has prohibited this kind of   tracking at the federal level. Private nonprofit colleges pushed for that ban, citing student privacy concerns. That’s according to a 2014 report by the   New America Foundation.   program is a tax shelter for the wealthy, says new report, As we’ve reported,   scholarships are an increasingly popular alternative to private school vouchers. They allow people and businesses to donate money that is set aside to pay for students to attend private schools. In nine of the 17 states where they exist, not only can the wealthiest donors claim a state tax credit of 70 to 100 cents per dollar donated, they can also claim a federal charitable deduction, resulting in an outright profit on their contribution. A bill now in Congress would expand   scholarships nationwide, creating a    federal tax credit for individuals and corporations. That could ”undermine public education,” according to a new report by The School Superintendents Association and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It says that, as a result of   scholarships, more than a billion dollars a year are currently being diverted from state coffers to private schools. ”When some taxpayers are allowed to profit, at the public’s expense, by donating to support private schools, the entire concept of philanthropy is thrown out the window,” the report’s   Carl Davis, tells NPR Ed."
"In the northwest Indian village of Ajrakhpur,    Sufiyan  Khatri stirs several stinky vats: one of bubbling indigo, another simmering pomegranate skins and a third containing a black, gummy brew of rusty bicycle parts fermenting with sugar cane. The mixtures are used to dye textiles with a traditional   method called ajrakh. Khatri, who learned the craft from his grandfather, shares his last name with many Muslim textile artisans in the region who brought their craft to India from Sindh in Pakistan. Khatri means ”one who fills with color.” He is one of more than 50 artisans in the village producing the textiles as a main source of income. And he’s been pleased to have welcomed some new assistants: earthworms. Their job is to deal with toxic materials in the dyes that are not only bad for the environment but also make it impossible to reuse the wastewater for the next round of dyeing. Thousands of the wiggly creatures live inside a water filter  —   called a ”vermifilter.” That’s the term for a treatment system that cleans   water. It was installed last May with support from the nongovernmental organization KHAMIR  —   Kutch Heritage, Art, Music, Information and Resources. The group connects the artisans of the Kutch district with outside resources and markets. The filter is a few feet from Khatri’s studio. It is constructed out of dozens of bright blue plastic crates packed with organic materials including cotton roots, dirt and all of those earthworms. Sprinklers spray murky blue water from attached tanks into the crates. The water trickles through the dirt. The worms feed on toxic dyes in the wastewater and excrete ”wormcasts” that are not toxic. The water is filtered through the worm poop, the cotton roots and other materials and comes out a pale yellow  —   and clean enough to reuse in the textile process. The ability to reuse water is critical for the village, which consumes over 52, 000 gallons of water every day to maintain an annual output of over almost 460, 000 square feet of   cloth. Each piece is washed at least three times in community water tanks. And the artisans say they create colors by ”playing with water”  —   adding varying amounts of ingredients like pomegranate skins and then bringing the mixture to a boil. Hundreds of years ago, Ajrakh artisans had plenty of water to play with. But ground water in northwest India is increasingly depleted due to overuse, Ajrakhpur’s artisans are concerned about the future of their craft. ”If we don’t get water,” Khatri says, ”We stop our work.” Signs that something is amiss are already visible on Khatri’s textiles. As water levels decrease, minerals in it like iron become more concentrated, which can leave dark spots on prints after the artisans wash them. And there are more serious problems: The release of dyes into the environment is a main source of water pollution. Khatri prides himself on using natural dyes, but many artisans use water tainted by synthetic dyes  —   and dispose of it in open drains. Khatri says artisans appreciate that the worms have already cut their water costs. But the output of the filter  —   about 13, 500 gallons per day —   is far from what they need to meet a growing demand for their textiles. The Indian government has approved a grant funded by India’s Ministry of Textiles to build a vermifilter in Ajrakhpur three times the size of the current one. It will be completed in the next two years. And it may pave the way for more worms in India and around the world. Vermifiltration technology was first made available in Chile in the 1990s. The largest systems are in South America, where they are predominantly used for treating industrial wastewater, according to Kevin Jeffery, managing director of Wastewater Wizard Limited. He calls vermifiltration ”a revolutionary approach to wastewater treatment.” There are limitations, says professor Ralf Otterpohl, director of the Institute of Wastewater Management and Water Protection at Hamburg University of Technology. One of the biggest challenges is that the worms need warm soil temperatures to thrive. Plus, he adds, this type of technology is most suitable for   production. That still leaves plenty of opportunity for Transchem Agritech, the enterprising Indian company that installed the vermifilter in Ajrakhpur. The company has vermifilters across India’s dairy, sugar and chemical industries. The one in Ajrakhpur is the first in the handicraft industry, so developing the right environment for the worms  —   with the right mix of materials so they could help minimize the dyes in the water  —   required some tinkering. This innovation seems fitting given Khatri’s latest work. Traditionally, ajrakh textiles functioned as men’s shoulder cloths and doubled as spice sacks and prayer mats. In keeping with Islamic tradition, the designs never depict human or animal figures. But Khatri wants to keep his craft relevant for a contemporary market. In a recent show at Lakme Fashion Week, supermodels wore his bold, geometric prints on short skirts and dresses. As Khatri says: ”We have to be creative to continue.” Shaina Shealy is an American journalist living in Jerusalem. Her work focuses on religion, community development and women’s health. Find her on Twitter @shainashealy."
"The list of things that can be created with   printers keeps getting longer: jewelry, art, guns, food, medical devices and, now, mouse ovaries. Scientists have used a   printer to create a mouse ovary capable of producing healthy offspring. And researchers hope to create replacement human ovaries the same way someday. ”It’s really the holy grail of bioengineering for regenerative medicine,” says Teresa Woodruff, who led the new research published this week in the journal Nature Communications. The ultimate goal is to create replacement ovaries to restore fertility in women who became sterile after medical treatment, such as cancer chemotherapy, Woodruff says. She hopes to test a human ovary within a few years. For some time now, doctors have been able to restore the fertility of certain cancer patients by removing and freezing some of their ovarian tissue before they undergo chemotherapy and transplanting it back into them later. Some doctors have even tried doing the same thing with entire ovaries. But those approaches have shortcomings. The tissue may harbor cancer cells, Woodruff says, and the transplants usually only function for a limited time, depriving the women of the other benefits of a functioning reproductive system, like keeping bones healthy. That’s especially challenging for women who lose their fertility as children or young adults, Woodruff says. So Woodruff and her colleagues developed a technique using   printing to reproduce the   structures of ovaries that could be used to create ”bioprosthetic” versions of the organ. ”It’s just like the   printers people even have in their homes, but the ink in this case is a biological ink,” she says. ”It’s called gelatin.” Gelatin is a naturally occurring substance that helps form the structure of organs. A   printer squirts out gelatin ink in extremely precise patterns, one layer on top of another, to build complex   structures modeled on the natural ovary. ”We were able to use   printing to actually lay down a scaffold that was copying what we knew the scaffold looked like of the normal ovary,” Woodruff says. In the mice, the result was a structure about the size of a pea that contains complex formations, including tiny pores, that   the environment inside natural ovaries. Next, the researchers placed real tissue from mouse ovaries, known as follicles, into the    ovary scaffolds. Follicles contain immature eggs and cells that secrete hormones needed for reproduction and other bodily functions. The researchers then transplanted the devices into sterilized mice. Blood vessels attached themselves to the partially artificial ovaries and began functioning. When the researchers mated seven of the mice, three of them produced two healthy pups each. To use the technology in humans in the future, doctors could remove follicles from a woman before she starts chemotherapy. They would put that tissue into a larger,    ovary scaffold, then transplant the device into the patient when she finishes treatment. ”I find this paper very exciting,” says Kutluk Oktay, who specializes in fertility restoration at New York Medical College and was not involved in the work. Oktay cautions that much more research is needed to see whether this approach would work in humans. However, he is optimistic. ”I think it does open a new avenue in the area of reproductive biology and fertility preservation,” Oktay says."
"If you’re a regular NPR listener, you know BJ Leiderman’s music. Leiderman is the John Williams of public radio: He’s written the theme music for programs like Morning Edition, Marketplace and, yes, Weekend Edition. Now, the composer has released his first album, BJ, a collection of songs he’s written over the past several decades. The Randall Bramblett Band acts as Leiderman’s backing band, and banjo master Béla Fleck is featured on three tracks. ”I’m the luckiest composer on the planet,” Leiderman says. ”It’s the perfect storm of being in the right place at the right time, with the right bunch of chords and a good melody . .. It all just came together.” Hear Leiderman’s full conversation with NPR’s Scott Simon  —   including a pretty convincing John Lennon impression and a comic tale about a fire alarm at NPR headquarters  —   at the audio link."
"Google offered a glimpse of how it sees the future at its annual developer’s conference this week. And it involves a lot of blending between the virtual and the real worlds using augmented and virtual reality. Google is calling that blend immersive computing. Clay Bavor, who heads up Google’s AR and VR division, says it’s all part of a future where the virtual and real worlds blur. ”Virtual reality can make you really feel transported somewhere else,” Bavor says. ”Augmented reality can bring kind of digital information into your environment and make it really seem as if it’s there in the real world.” When it comes to virtual reality other companies like Facebook’s Oculus Rift, Sony VR, and HTC Vive have aimed for the expensive high end. But Google has actually reached more people with its $15 Cardboard viewer that attaches to smartphones. This week it announced plans for a more advanced VR headset. Google will be the first major company to release   VR goggles. ”Unlike systems that you have to connect to a PC or where you take your smartphone and insert it into a VR headset, everything you need for VR is contained right in the headset itself,” Bavor says. Google is partnering with HTC and Lenovo to make the headset. Google is also beefing up its augmented reality technology. First, there’s Google Lens. The technology pulls together Google’s search technology and lays it over photos from the real world. You can point your camera at a flower and the search engine will identify it for you. Point the camera at a book and it will give you reviews and information about the author. Google Lens will initially be available through Google Assistant and Google Photos. Google also announced what it’s calling Visual Positioning Service or VPS. Bavor says imagine going to a large store. ”You go to Lowe’s and you need to find this very specific bolt. You can pull up the Lowe’s app  —   do a search for it and then your phone will walk you step by step to the exact aisle and shelf where that bolt is,” he says. Bavor says this technology may also be especially useful to the blind. But, it won’t initially be widely available. It will be incorporated into a new ASUS smartphone. There’s a lot of competition among the big tech companies to advance these immersive technologies  —   Facebook, Microsoft and Sony are competitors and analysts say Apple is likely to jump into the fray. But Google has some advantages, says Greg Sterling, a contributing editor at Search Engine Land. ”Because it’s got hardware, it’s got a massive consumer audience and brand and it’s got all this data and software expertise. And really none of the other players have all those pieces,” he says. Google is adding both AR and VR capabilities to its Chrome browser. You’ll be able to switch between VR experiences quickly and of course use Google’s database to identify items in the real world. For example, you could point your augmented   phone at a restaurant and review would pop up on the screen from Google search. But not all of Google’s efforts may be destined to succeed. Take that   VR headset. Google’s new VR goggles might not appeal to either   VR fans or the   Google Cardboard fans. Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner, says the   users will spend money for the power of an Oculus Rift and the   market may not want to spend much at all. Google says its headset might cost the same as an Oculus Rift, but will be cheaper because you don’t have to buy a   computer too. That could be too much, Blau says. ”Because you really have to want to be an extended VR user, if you will, if you’re going to invest more than $500 into one of these systems,” he says. And Google has had previous failures with augmented reality. Google Glass was a flop with consumers because the company didn’t think through the privacy implications. Google’s VR headset will be out the end of this year and so will new augmented   smartphones. There’s still no word on price."
"The fight against terrorism is a ”battle between good and evil,” not a fight between ”different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations,” President Trump said Sunday in a   speech in Saudi Arabia. This is Trump’s first foreign trip as president, and he delivered the address to leaders of dozens of Arab and   nations. The Saudis said at least 37 leaders are present, NPR’s Jane Arraf reported from Riyadh. The speech focused on pushing the leaders to do their ”fair share” and fulfill ”their part of the burden” in the fight against extremists. It did not emphasize human rights. Trump told the leaders that the U. S. is prepared to ”stand by you,” but ”the nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this enemy for them.” ”Drive them out,” he told them. ”Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy land. And drive them out of this Earth.” Trump noted that Middle Eastern nations have sustained the highest number of casualties from terrorist attacks, describing it as a ”tragedy of epic proportions.” The region’s ”untapped potential . .. is held at bay by bloodshed and terror,” he said. ”There can be no tolerating it.” Trump said that his administration is adopting a policy of ”principled realism.” Here’s more: ”We will make decisions based on   outcomes  —   not inflexible ideology. We will be guided by the lessons of experience, not the confines of rigid thinking. And, wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms  —   not sudden intervention.” This speech is closely watched in the region, especially in light of Trump’s attempt earlier this year to halt travel from seven   countries. It appeared to be a sharp pivot from a president who declared ”I think Islam hates us” while on the campaign trail, as NPR has reported. ”I am reassured that there wasn’t anything extremely offensive said about Islam,” Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Weekend Edition Sunday. ”It’s a low bar I guess, but Islam here is included as part of a common civilizational front.” The speech did not focus on the religion, but Trump praised the Middle East’s ancient history and modern achievements. ”We welcome President Trump’s recognition of Islam as ’one of the world’s great faiths,’ but that recognition does not wipe out years of     animus,” Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on   Relations, said in a statement. NPR’s Mara Liasson told the show that ”most of this speech could have been given by George W. Bush or Barack Obama in terms of the way he described the Muslim world.” Here’s more from Mara: ”So I think that once again, you’ve seen the nationalist   in the White House lose out. . .. And I think he’s back in the mainstream, certainly rhetorically, in the way he’s approaching the Muslim religion. Now, what will his base think about that? It’s very possible that we’re so tribal in our politics now they won’t care, anything he does is fine with them. On the other hand, it is a pretty glaring change from what he’s been saying for years and years.” Trump heaped praise on efforts of several Arab countries to combat militant groups and terrorism. He said the United Arab Emirates was helping U. S. efforts in Afghanistan. He called the tiny rich country of Qatar a ”crucial strategic partner.” Trump lauded Saudi Arabia for, among other things, joining the U. S. with sanctions on a Hezbollah leader and taking ”strong action against Houthi militants” in Yemen. Trump praised Bahrain and Kuwait for   efforts. But later in his speech, Trump turned to harsh criticism of Iran. He said the country offers ”safe harbor” and ”financial backing” of terrorist groups. ”It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder,” Trump said. ”Iran funds, arms and trains terrorists,” militias and other extremist groups. Until Iran is willing to change, he said, all nations ”must work together to isolate it.” Pledges to isolate Iran are essentially returning to a ”status quo” in relations between the U. S. and the Arab world, Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told NPR’s Morning Edition in March. After President Obama presided over the lifting of some international sanctions on Iran, President Trump’s stance echoes historical relations between the U. S. and Iran between the 1979 Islamic Revolution through the presidency of George W. Bush, ”a policy which goes back to . .. pushing Iran back in the Middle East,” Sadjadpour said. The   rhetoric is welcome to the Saudi royalty. Saudi Arabia is largely Sunni Muslim, and is a strong rival of Iran, the region’s Shia Muslim power. The Saudis were vehemently opposed to President Obama’s communications with Iran and his backing of the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw many sanctions lifted against the country. Trump refrained from criticizing human rights in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, long a source of international concern. ”We are not here to lecture,” he said. ”We are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship.” Saudi Arabia’s military is leading a campaign against Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, and have routinely been accused of indiscriminate targeting by human rights organizations. Thousands of civilians have been killed during the conflict. The U. S. has provided support to the effort by refueling planes and providing intelligence. President Obama had at times raised human rights issues in his trips to Saudi Arabia and meetings with Saudi officials, though not always. The nonprofit Freedom House, which tracks human rights worldwide, classified Saudi Arabia as one of the 11 ”worst of the worst” countries in ”political rights and civil liberties.” The speech came after a   day Saturday, beginning as soon as Trump departed Air Force One. Upon arrival in the country Saturday, Trump was greeted ”by Saudi King Salman, a red carpet, royal guards, trumpeters and a jet flyover with red white and blue contrails,” as NPR’s Tamara Keith reported. He later signed an arms deal with Saudi Arabia worth $110 billion, among several other agreements. Trump says the deal will create jobs. It’s worth noting one group that was not mentioned in the speech  —   American Muslims. As Adnan Zulfiqar, a Truman National Security project fellow, told Buzzfeed: ”He easily engages with Islam as a foreign ’other,’ as opposed to Islam and Muslims as part of the American fabric.”"
"President Trump’s first day in Saudi Arabia began with a lavish reception and ended with an ostentatious ceremony, but not before Trump and the Saudi king signed several agreements spanning diplomatic, governmental and commercial ventures, including an arms deal worth $110 billion. In an effort cement political ties between the two allies, Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud also formalized the ”Joint Strategic Vision Declaration.” Details of the agreement stipulate the nations form a ”consultative group” that will collaborate to ”counter violent extremism, disrupt the financing of terrorism, and advance defense cooperation,” the White House said in a statement Saturday. The U. S. president and the Saudi king, or their designees, will meet at least once a year to discuss new strategies, alternating between the two countries, the White House also said. Building on a munitions deal begun during the Obama administration, the weapons package was officially finalized in a signing ceremony just hours after Air Force One touched down in Riyadh  —   where the president was greeted with a thundering display of flying jets, blasting cannons and trumpets. The arms deal includes the sale of cybersecurity technology, tanks, artillery, ships, helicopters and radar   systems. The New York Times reported the latter was a   addition to the shopping list, after Trump’s    and adviser, Jared Kushner, intervened. During a meeting with Saudi officials at the White House earlier this month, Kushner called the head of Lockheed Martin, which develops the   missile system, to negotiate a cost reduction. Apparently, the savings were enough to sway the Saudis. The White House is touting the deal as a blow against Islamic extremist groups including ISIS, claiming it will boost security in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf against Iranian aggression and contribute to counterterrorism operations. ”That was a tremendous day,” Trump said, according to a White House pool report, shortly after the signing but long before his day was actually over. He added that the agreements signed Saturday would generate ”hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs!” U. S. delegation members travelling with Trump, including Kushner, were in high spirits leading up to the signing ceremony. Upon entering the room where the bilateral meeting between Trump and Salman was held, Kushner and national security adviser H. R. McMaster exchanged a   according to a White House pool report. But lawmakers critical of Saudi Arabia’s role in the bloody civil war in Yemen  —   the kingdom’s neighbor to the south  —   maintain the sale of arms that could be used in Saudi air strikes will add to the instability of the region. Sen. Chris Murphy,  . denounced the latest deal in a HuffPost blog post. ”Saudi Arabia is an important friend and partner for the United States,” Murphy wrote, adding, ”But they are still a deeply imperfect friend. $110 billion in weapons will exacerbate, not ameliorate, those imperfections.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson addressed the issue at a press briefing following a meeting with his counterpart and   friend Saudi Foreign Minister Adel   saying the continued arms negotiations were intended to help Saudi military actions in Yemen. Tillerson said the arms would help the Saudis be more ”precise and targeted” in their military strikes, while still keeping pressure on the rebels in Yemen. He was also pleased with the   economic implications of the arms deal and other agreements for American interests. ”Today truly is a historic moment in U. S.  relations,” Tillerson said at a briefing Saturday. ”They will bring hundreds of thousands of jobs,” he also said. Looking ahead to the    summit Sunday, where Trump will be speaking, Jubeir used some familiar rhetoric from the Trump playbook. ”If we can change the conversation in the U. S. and in the West from enmity toward the Islamic world to one of partnership we will have truly changed our world,” he said. ”And we will have truly drowned the voices of extremism and we will have drained the swamp from which extremism and terrorism emanates.” In a separate transaction, American companies signed deals with Saudi leaders, a step the White House said will help with Saudi Arabia’s economic reform plans. The total value of those deals is estimated to be between $300 billion and $380 billion over 10 years. ”They’re going to hire U. S. companies,” Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn told reporters, according to a White House pool report. Though Cohn did not divulge details about the deals, he did disclose they were related to ”a bunch of infrastructure  . . .. A lot of money. Big dollars. Big dollars.” The U. S. is the largest oil investor in Saudi Arabia, Jubier said in his remarks at the briefing with Tillerson. ExxonMobil, the company formerly led by Tillerson, is the largest single investor in the country, the foreign minister also said. Throughout Riyadh, Trump and his delegation were greeted with great fanfare. The   Hotel, renowned for its glitzy gold interior and where the first family is staying, projected   images of Trump and Salman across the building’s exterior prior to the president’s arrival. And billboards along the motorcade route Saturday displayed pictures of the two leaders with one sentence, ”Together we prevail,” according to a White House pool report. Trump is set to deliver a speech Sunday in Riyadh about Islam to leaders from dozens of Arab and   nations."
"It took an explosion and 13 pounds of iron to usher in the modern era of neuroscience. In 1848, a    railroad worker named Phineas Gage was blowing up rocks to clear the way for a new rail line in Cavendish, Vt. He would drill a hole, place an explosive charge, then pack in sand using a   metal bar known as a tamping iron. But in this instance, the metal bar created a spark that touched off the charge. That, in turn, ”drove this tamping iron up and out of the hole, through his left cheek, behind his eye socket, and out of the top of his head,” says Jack Van Horn, an associate professor of neurology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Gage didn’t die. But the tamping iron destroyed much of his brain’s left frontal lobe, and Gage’s once   personality changed dramatically. ”He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity, which was not previously his custom,” wrote John Martyn Harlow, the physician who treated Gage after the accident. This sudden personality transformation is why Gage shows up in so many medical textbooks, says Malcolm Macmillan, an honorary professor at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences and the author of An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage. ”He was the first case where you could say fairly definitely that injury to the brain produced some kind of change in personality,” Macmillan says. And that was a big deal in the   when the brain’s purpose and inner workings were largely a mystery. At the time, phrenologists were still assessing people’s personalities by measuring bumps on their skull. Gage’s famous case would help establish brain science as a field, says Allan Ropper, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. John Harlow, who treated Gage following the accident, noted his personality change in an 1851 edition of the American Phrenological Journal and Repository of Science. ”If you talk about hard core neurology and the relationship between structural damage to the brain and particular changes in behavior, this is ground zero,” Ropper says. It was an ideal case because ”it’s one region [of the brain] it’s really obvious, and the changes in personality were stunning.” So, perhaps it’s not surprising that every generation of brain scientists seems compelled to revisit Gage’s case. For example: And, in 2012, Van Horn led a team that combined CT scans of Gage’s skull with MRI scans of typical brains to show how the wiring of Gage’s brain could have been affected. ”Neuroscientists like to always go back and say, ’we’re relating our work in the present day to these older famous cases which really defined the field,’ ” Van Horn says. And it’s not just researchers who keep coming back to Gage. Medical and psychology students still learn his story. And neurosurgeons and neurologists still sometimes reference Gage when assessing certain patients, Van Horn says. ”Every six months or so you’ll see something like that, where somebody has been shot in the head with an arrow, or falls off a ladder and lands on a piece of rebar,” Van Horn says. ”So you do have these modern kind of Phineas   cases.” There is something about Gage that most people don’t know, Macmillan says. ”That personality change, which undoubtedly occurred, did not last much longer than about two to three years.” Gage went on to work as a   stagecoach driver in Chile, a job that required considerable planning skills and focus, Macmillan says. This chapter of Gage’s life offers a powerful message for present day patients, he says. ”Even in cases of massive brain damage and massive incapacity, rehabilitation is always possible.” Gage lived for a dozen years after his accident. But ultimately, the brain damage he’d sustained probably led to his death. He died on May 21, 1860, of an epileptic seizure that was almost certainly related to his brain injury. Gage’s skull, and the tamping iron that passed through it, are on display at the Warren Anatomical Museum in Boston, Mass."
"Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will donate a combined $100 million to a World Bank fund for women entrepreneurs that was the brainchild of Ivanka Trump. The announcement by World Bank President Jim Young Kim came during a visit to Saudi Arabia by President Trump, who was accompanied by his wife, Melania, daughter Ivanka and    Jared Kushner. ”We thought it was a fantastic idea,” Kim said. ”But we had no idea how quickly this would build. This is really a stunning achievement. I’ve never seen anything come together so quickly, and I really have to say that Ivanka’s leadership has been tremendous.” The money will help kick off a $1 billion women’s empowerment fund that the World Bank will announce in July, he said. The UAE’s U. S. ambassador, Yousef Al Otaiba, said in a statement that the promised donation reflects ”our commitment to empowering women in our region and builds on the progress we have made in our country, where women play a role in every segment of society.” Trump often excoriated the Clinton Foundation  The donation raised some eyebrows, since candidate Trump regularly excoriated the Clinton Foundation for accepting donations from repressive Middle East regimes such as Saudi Arabia. USA Today quoted a June 2016 Facebook posting in which Trump said, ”Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays. Hillary must return all money from such countries!” During an October debate, Trump also told Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, ”Saudi Arabia giving $25 million, Qatar, all of these countries. You talk about women and women’s rights? So these are people that push gays off business   off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money.” The World Bank fund, which provides technical help and investment funding for women business owners, differs from the Clinton Foundation in some significant ways. While Ivanka Trump proposed the idea along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, she is not involved with its operation. Donations need to be strictly vetted  Norm Eisen, former ethics official for the Obama Administration and a regular critic of the Trump family’s conflicts of interest, noted in an email to NPR, ”In my view foreign government donations to a fund run by a reputable international organization like the World Bank for a good cause are generally acceptable.” But Eisen said the donations need to be strictly vetted and must be transparent. ”Based on what we know, there’s no reason to believe that those two things did not happen. That said, the hypocrisy is concerning, and the general miasma of corruption that surrounds all things Trump suggests some extra scrutiny here,” he added. ”I don’t see this fund as a big problem if she does not solicit [donations] and it is entirely World Bank run,” said Richard Painter, former ethics adviser to the George W. Bush administration. ”But the Saudis could try letting women drive cars too. That would be good for entrepreneurship,” he said. Earlier in the day, Ivanka Trump met with a group of elite Saudi women at Tuwaiq Palace in Riyadh, where she largely avoided sharp criticism of the country’s treatment of women. ”There’s still a lot of work to be done” to empower women in both Saudi Arabia and the United States, she said."
"Dr. Dilantha Ellegala, a brain surgeon, trained someone who isn’t a doctor to do brain surgery. That is the story featured in the new book A Surgeon in the Village by journalist Tony Bartelme. This unlikely turn of events had its origins in 2006, when Ellegala was volunteering for a short stint at Haydom Hospital in northern Tanzania. When he became aware of the nation’s dire doctor shortage, he came up with a plan: He’d offer a Tanzanian a    crash course in neurosurgery  —   how to diagnose a tumor, drill through a skull and perform some basic techniques  —   no medical school degree required. Ellegala didn’t go to Tanzania to teach. The Sri   had just wrapped up a demanding fellowship at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and needed a break from his stressful American career. He had to hunt pretty hard to find a place in Africa interested in his skills and prestigious background. Several NGOs turned him down. ”People laughed and said, ’We don’t need neurosurgeons.’ At the time, it was all focused on infectious disease,” Ellegala explains. ”When you looked on the television and at the news, that’s all anyone was talking about in Africa.” When Ellegala arrived at Haydom, which had been established by Norwegian missionaries in the 1950s, he witnessed just how poor conditions were. A long drought had left many people severely malnourished. ”There were rooms with children with tuberculosis, rooms with children with burns,” he says. ”There were two or three patients to a bed.” The only doctors around were visitors from abroad, like Ellegala. Locals were mostly clinical officers their education was, as Bartleme explains, ”roughly equivalent to an American paramedic or nurse practitioner, minus a college degree.” This created a divide that made Ellegala uncomfortable  —   and angry. ”At meetings, all the Westerners were sitting in chairs in the front, while Tanzanians were standing in the back,” he says. ”I saw this pattern. We come in to do the work and then we leave. Local personnel is put in the background. As doctors, we learn we can help somebody, so we do. But I could see the unintended consequences of that.” It had created a mindset of dependency. The Tanzanian staff could not help. The outsiders could. Through a donation, the hospital had just acquired a CT scanner. ”They had CT scans of tumors and hydrocephalus, and nobody knew what to do about it,” Ellegala says. Of course, he knew. The tumors could be removed, and the patients with hydrocephalus  —   a buildup of excess cerebrospinal fluid  —   needed shunts inserted. But Ellegala couldn’t fix all of these problems on his own. ”I knew I could work dusk to dawn every day and not make a dent. I’m only there for six months. There has to be a way to make it better,” Ellegala says. That’s when he had his big idea: ”We had to teach our local partners.” Instead of tackling the caseload himself, he decided to enlist a Tanzanian. He’d spotted Emmanuel Mayegga, who was an assistant medical officer, which meant he’d had a bit more training than most of his colleagues at Haydom. Plus, he had the swagger and demeanor of a surgeon. ”If there hadn’t been anybody like that, I wouldn’t have done it,” Ellegala says, although he never doubted the validity of his mission. He could save a few dozen patients during his time in Tanzania, but when he left the hospital, so would any hope of treatment: ”I knew it would be controversial, but not to anyone in Tanzania. The locals said, ’Yes, please do it. Otherwise, they’re going to die. ’” With the approval of the top Tanzanian supervisor at Haydom, Ellegala got to work. Two weeks in, Mayegga touched the tip of his moistened surgical glove to a patient’s brain for the first time. A month later, he was performing surgeries. By three months, he was able to do them alone in the room. ”In six months, he could do all basic cranial neurosurgery, remove tumors near the surface, put in shunts. He even started to teach a U. S. medical student,” Ellegala says. As remarkable as that sounds, it’s not much of a surprise to Adam Kushner, an associate in the International Health department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He’s the founding director of Surgeons OverSeas, which focuses on bringing up the level of surgical care in developing countries. Although Kushner has never crossed paths with Ellegala, he’s seen similar tactics employed with success. While working as a general surgeon in Malawi in the early 2000s, Kushner knew a clinical officer who’d been trained to treat hydrocephalus. Even with all of Kushner’s American education, that’s something he had never learned to do. And through a program in Ethiopia, Kushner has helped train clinical officers in essential surgeries, including   and appendectomies. ”There’s an expectation that for certain functions you need certain people with certain training,” Kushner says. ”And that’s not wrong.” What happens, he says, if there’s a complication and the person doing surgery doesn’t have training beyond this specific procedure? But there’s also reality to contend with. People need surgery to survive, and there isn’t always a surgeon around. Kushner highlighted the issue last month at the Global Surgery Conference at Montreal General Hospital. He presented his research indicating that there are 288 million people who need surgery right now  —   but don’t have access to it  —   in 48 countries identified as   meaning they have a per capita health expenditure of $100 or less annually. There simply aren’t enough surgeons around to do that much work. Kushner has personally experienced the effects of this shortage: During part of his time in Malawi, he was the only surgeon for a population of about five million. And it’s not just a problem abroad, he adds, noting that getting timely surgery can be a challenge even in remote parts of the U. S. But training    —   and    —   only makes sense, Kushner cautions, if it’s what the local population wants. That’s what happened at Haydom, says Ellegala, whose philosophy was to let Mayegga do the talking and explain the situation to patients. Ellegala’s job was just to serve as a guide. ”To do this, you have to put your hands behind your back and take two steps back,” he says. For Ellegala, that was not such an easy thing to do, especially because he knew   mistakes could be made. Ellegala had years of training. Mayegga was a quick study but still a novice. But, he adds, it was the only way to prepare Mayegga for his impending departure. Indeed, Ellegala went back to the States and a new job as director of neurotrauma at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Mayegga, and how this model could be replicated. ”My goal at that time wasn’t to create neurosurgical care in Tanzania,” Ellegala says. ”It was to show they could train their own. Neurosurgery has a certain aura to it. This was to prove a point: If you can do this in one of the most remote hospitals in the world, in one of the most advanced specialties in medicine, you can do it anywhere.” He landed a grant to study how Mayegga’s patients were faring. And soon, he was back in Tanzania. The review showed that Mayegga’s results were promising  —   many patients he treated solo were staying alive. But news of this experiment had gotten out, and not everyone was pleased about it, including Kenyan neurosurgeon Moody Qureshi, who was developing a curriculum to teach neurosurgery in East Africa. Kenya’s medical education system was much different than Tanzania’s, Ellegala explains, so teaching a   was unthinkable in that country. Qureshi was even considering suing to put a stop to the program. To defuse the situation, Ellegala invited Qureshi  —   as well as one of Tanzania’s three neurosurgeons  —   to Haydom. Upon seeing Mayegga in action and the need for care firsthand, plus getting reassurance from Ellegala that he wouldn’t be training any Kenyans without a medical degree, they all agreed to collaborate in the future. So Haydom’s unconventional brain surgery training continued. Ellegala dove into teaching Mayegga more advanced techniques, and Mayegga began doing some instruction of his own. His first student was Emanuel Nuwas, a local Tanzanian who had just completed medical school. (And with Nuwas doing brain surgery at Haydom, Mayegga was eventually able to leave to attend medical school. Now, he’s both a doctor and a brain surgeon.) Flash forward to today and Ellegala’s NGO, Madaktari Africa, is using the ”train forward” model to bring foreign medical personnel to Africa to teach rather than practice and introduce more skills to all kinds of health workers, including cleaning staff and data analysts. The current focus, according to director Maarten Hoek, is on cardiology at Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute in Dar es Salaam. But when they’re introducing brain surgery, Ellegala notes, the process is much the same one he used with Mayegga. They begin by examining CT scans. ”The first thing is I talk about what we’re looking at,” says Ellegala, who points out the anatomy visible in the image. After studying a scan, then come the questions: ”Is this one normal or abnormal? If it’s abnormal, is it emergent?” (Meaning it’s an emergency that requires immediate action.) ”We make it very simple. It’s very gentle teaching,” Ellegala says. ”If they get it wrong, I say, ’That could be.’ I don’t want to make somebody feel bad like in Western culture in medicine. If I said something wrong in my residency, I’d be screamed at. If you go in with that mindset, you lose them.” Another critical step, he says, is giving them access to patients. ”Just looking at pictures didn’t work at all. It has to be hands on,” Ellegala adds. When it comes to instructors, Madaktari Africa has tested several different models. They’ve tried sending neurosurgeons for just a few weeks at a time, but lining their visits up    for continuous training. That doesn’t work as well as one surgeon coming for six months or more, Ellegala says. ”It’s not just somebody coming in and telling you what to do,” he explains. An effective teacher becomes a part of the community and learns the nuances of the culture. As for Nuwas, the man trained by Mayegga? He’s now the   Tanzanian medical director at Haydom. (Norwegian doctors had always filled the role before.) That’s a big shift, says Ellegala, whose current practice near Lynchburg, Virginia, is helping fund Madaktari Africa. Last year, when Ellegala took his most recent trip to Tanzania, he felt that the place had transformed. ”There’s a sense of pride and joy that wasn’t there before,” he says. ”If I had to say what is it that I feel best about, it’s not training someone in neurosurgery. It’s that someone is doing what they thought couldn’t be done. A local village boy [Nuwas] who became a doctor can be the head of the hospital.” Vicky Hallett is a freelance writer in Florence, Italy. She was previously a reporter and fitness columnist for The Washington Post. "
"On a recent Sunday afternoon, dozens of volunteers crammed into a small Jon Ossoff for Congress field office in Chamblee, Ga. They were there to canvass for the    political newcomer, but they also got a treat: a speech from Ossoff himself. He only spoke for about four minutes, but he devoted almost a minute of it to women in particular. ”It’s got nothing to do with me,” he said. ”I keep saying it’s got everything to do with this community and what we can achieve when we work together and so much of it as you know is being led by strong and determined women in this community who have been organizing and active who recognize that we can’t  —   we can’t go back in time.” In several ways, this closely watched special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District is a microcosm of national gender politics right now. Many liberal women see themselves as fueling what they call the ”resistance” to President Trump and the Republican agenda, and they paint the GOP as a political force with a decidedly   agenda. The Republican side fights against that ”war on women” messaging, and many women furthermore resent the idea that they’d ever let gender be a factor in their political lives. And on both sides, abortion and Planned Parenthood loom large. Ossoff knows women have played an important role in his success thus far. After garnering the most votes in the April primary, Ossoff thanked women in particular for ”stepping up and organizing.” He told NPR that he believes women are leading a ”renaissance of civic engagement and activism,” both in Georgia and nationwide. Those women are now trying to push him to a win in the June runoff vote  —   polls show that he’s running    with Republican Karen Handel in a district that has had Republican representatives since 1979. ”I think he recognized that the army behind him were women activists and he’s been incredibly grateful for that activism and energy, and I think he is the real deal,” said Jen Cox,   of Pave it Blue, a   organization of women who want to elect   politicians. She said her organization gives women who might be new to political activism the opportunity to ease into it  —   marching up to someone with a clipboard and asking about their voting patterns can be intimidating. So she tells people to use whatever skills they have  —   to make food for fellow volunteers or research candidates’ positions, for example. But it’s not just about hard skills. Pave it Blue member Jenny Peterson uses her role as mother to reach out to potential Ossoff supporters. While canvassing on a blistering afternoon, Peterson met a woman home with a son with strep throat. ”We were thinking for our precinct we might try to organize a playdate for East Cobb Park,” Peterson offered. ”Just kind of a day that we invite our voters in the precinct to bring your kids.” Making these local connections is a big part of this kind of organizing, Peterson explained, as she climbed a hill to a large suburban house with her fellow canvasser, Elizabeth Murphy, 35.  ”We’re getting people to know our names and faces, because we’ll be the people sitting in the camp chairs at their voting place at that park, that’s where they vote,” Peterson said, explaining that they did that during the April primary vote. ”Liz and I set up there. ..with camp chairs and signs, and we just waved to people as they came by.” Gender, of course, is only one of many powerful forces driving this election. The simple fact that this race is one of the few to watch right now  —   in a time when liberals are itching for meaningful ways to show their opposition to Trump’s GOP  —   plus the prospect of winning in a   district, has helped this race attract celebrity endorsements, outside money and national attention. But women like Peterson, Murphy and Pave it Blue   Cox have taken their roles to heart as being a part of that ”army” that Cox described. And while Cox is quick to say that her group doesn’t want to discount men’s contributions, she explains that for many women, a   forum is the best place to have conversations about things like reproductive rights. ”We’re having pretty intimate discussions about what matters to us and what we’re comfortable doing,” Cox explained. ”And we have a common thread of, ’Our rights are at stake.’ And when you invite men into a conversation that we feel should be protected, that dynamic can change.” One more benefit that these women see in   political groups is a sense of community. In between blocks, Murphy and Peterson climbed into Peterson’s minivan, which bore a bumper sticker for a local group called the Liberal Moms of Roswell and Cobb. The sticker’s slogan: You are not alone. ”When I first moved here I was like, oh, my god, I am the only one, you know?” Murphy said, explaining the sticker. ”And it makes you want to be quiet. And it, like, gives you this false sense that you should hide, and you should be closeted.” That’s because conservatism is deeply embedded in this district. And attitudes toward gender and politics can be starkly different between women in either party. On the Republican side, some women resent the idea that gender would have anything to do with voting for Handel. Johsira Ezammudeen, for example, responded to the way that Ossoff calls out women as the driving force behind his campaign. ”You know, so, he can talk a lot about women. You know what? I’m not here as a woman. I am here as a citizen  —   American citizen,” she said. ”When you start dividing the citizens by group like woman and then this group and then this group, you are dividing the whole nation. We are not here to divide. We’re here to unify and elect somebody who’s going to do what we citizens want.” Ezammudeen was at the grand opening of Handel’s Cobb County field office, where Handel smiled for photos with constituents while volunteers passed cake around. Even connecting gender to politics is anathema to Ezammudeen’s friend, Rommys Beltran. She scoffs at the kind of identity politics she believes Democrats practice. ”We have to make a smart decision, and that’s the problem that we have with the Democrats,” Beltran said. ”They don’t make smart decisions and make decisions based on hair color or stupid things like that. No, we really think about what they’re saying.” Karen Handel’s gender has come into play in her political career. Her own reproductive health came into her 2010 campaign for governor. Georgia Right to Life refused to endorse Handel  —   part of that was because of her approval of abortion in cases of rape and incest, but part was also about fertility treatments. Handel and her husband had tried various options, unsuccessfully, in attempting to have a child. Georgia Right to Life’s Steve Becker commented on those types of treatments: ”Someone’s desperate right to parenthood  —   because they’re infertile, they’re barren, whatever term you want to use  —   is an emotionally fraught subject that has our highest sympathy,” he said in 2010. ”But it should never be attempted to be addressed where a life is taken in the process.” Handel has said she was stung by his usage of the words ”desperate” and ”barren,” and she called on Becker to resign, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution later reported. That was her first   tangle over abortion, but Handel is far   for her brief time at the Komen Foundation, a national   prevention organization. She landed in the middle of a national controversy in 2012 as a vice president at Komen. She pushed to end the group’s funding to Planned Parenthood, which provides breast exams. That effort sparked an outcry, and Handel resigned. At the time, some predicted that Komen’s brand would suffer   damage, and donations to Komen fell afterward. It’s not something she talks about much in this campaign. And when NPR made multiple requests for an interview, her campaign said she was unavailable. But her history of opposing abortion has made her a hero to Republicans like Elaine Watson, president of the Floyd County Republican Women. ”Women can get health issues taken care of other places than Planned Parenthood,” Watson said. ”Planned Parenthood is an abortion mill.” Handel’s latest ad touches on this topic, but it’s the lightest of touches. In it, a friend of Handel’s  —   a cancer patient named Anne  —   tells the camera, ”When I see ads attacking Karen Handel they make me sick. Karen is one of the strongest advocates for women’s health I know.” She goes on to tell people to ”ignore the attacks” on Handel. It’s an ad that will bring the Komen controversy to mind for many voters, even if it’s not trying to change anybody’s mind about it. But to those voters who don’t know about the   connection, it signals that Ossoff is unfairly attacking Handel on the amorphous, broad topic of women’s health. Perhaps the stronghold of this district’s conservatism is the northern part, farther from Atlanta. This is where Handel had the strongest support in the April primary. In Mugs on Milton, a picturesque coffee shop in that northern area, moms filter in around 9:30 a. m. on weekdays after dropping off kids at local schools. One of those moms is Joy Derrer, who   her six kids. (Derrer told NPR a local school caters to   families by bringing the kids in one day a week, allowing her to spend some time at the coffee shop.) Derrer said that she’s ”” but that that’s not the only thing she likes about Handel. ”I like that she’s conservative and that she upholds the standards that are, to me, true to what has made America great,” Derrer said. Ansley Schoen, a    student at nearby Florida State University, likewise appreciates Handel’s conservative politics, but she is one Republican woman for whom Handel’s gender matters. ”I’m personally a woman trying to go into politics,” she said, in between calls at a Georgia GOP phone bank. ”You know, there aren’t as many women Republicans up in Congress, and so it’d be great to have Karen Handel for that.”"
"A special congressional election in the Atlanta suburbs won’t be decided until June 20, but there’s already a clear winner: local TV stations. Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff face each other in a runoff that’s become a referendum on President Trump, and with a month to go, the House race is already the most expensive in U. S. history. So far, the candidates and outside groups are on track to spend at least $30 million just on TV ads. For context, that’s more than a third of the roughly $75 million President Trump’s campaign spent on ads during the nationwide general election. In the congressional race, the spending is focused on Atlanta TV, and it has caught local stations by surprise. ”We did not do a good job of forecasting and seeing that coming,” said Tim McVay, general manager of WSB, Atlanta’s ABC affiliate. Georgia’s 6th Congressional District hasn’t been competitive for decades. Republicans have controlled it for nearly 40 years. Most recently, Tom Price held the seat, but he left to take over as secretary of Health and Human Services. In battleground states like New Hampshire or Florida, TV stations are used to extra money during campaign season, and sometimes they may increase their political coverage. That’s not the case in Atlanta, where until now,   spending on political ads has been consistently absent. McVay says the station wants to save up the money for a rainy day. ”It goes to the bank,” he said, ”Sometimes business can get hot, and sometimes you can go through tough patches.” The local NBC affiliate, WXIA, is taking advantage of the unusually hot political season. They’ve added an extra newscast on a sister station, creating more time for ads. Going negative, Local TV stations aren’t the only ones surprised by the amount of money going to political ads. ”Can you quote me as being, like my mouth wide open,” said Ken Goldstein, a professor at the University of San Francisco, when asked about the figures. ”That’s just manna from heaven for [TV stations].” But it’s far from a godsend to many voters in the 6th District, or TV watchers in all of metro Atlanta who are also hit by the ads. ”Oh, God!” Beverly Cohen groaned, when the topic came up. ”I will tell you the ads that super PACs do, those are horrible  —   no matter which side they’re on.” The content of the negative ads is increasingly an issue in the race. Donors in other states are sending lots of cash to Democrat Ossoff’s campaign, and a sarcastic ad from the   Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) features actors in San Francisco mockingly thanking Ossoff, ”their congressman.” The ad includes a fake Ossoff banner superimposed on a San Francisco streetcar. But the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said they hadn’t approved for the CLF to use the image of the streetcar, and would send a    request to the super PAC. ”The cable car is an iconic landmark that attracts people and attention from all over the world,” a spokesman for the transportation agency told the San Francisco Chronicle, ”And I think we can all agree that it is best left  .” CLF ultimately pulled the ad, and posted a new version including a banner on the Golden Gate Bridge, instead of the streetcar. On the Democratic side, an ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee knocking Republican Handel was labeled ”mostly false” by PolitiFact. The national Democratic group has spent about $2 million on ads since the runoff between Handel and Ossoff began last month. Outside GOP groups, CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee, are set to spend $11 million on ads, about the same as the Ossoff campaign so far. Since the runoff, Handel’s campaign has reserved only $1. 5 million in ad time. All these numbers are likely to rise as the June 20 vote nears. It’s only going to make it harder for people like 6th District voter Ted Poulos who try to avoid the ads. Poulos said they often catch up to him while he’s watching baseball. ”Then I’ve got the mute button,” he said. ”Thank goodness.”"
"Dwayne ”The Rock” Johnson hosted Saturday Night Live for the fifth time, joining the   Club and receiving the traditional jacket. He also ended speculation about his future project, Johnson announced that he would be running for president of the United States. Alec Baldwin, who plays Donald Trump during the show’s political sketches, came on stage to welcome Johnson to the club, and then tried to get Johnson to pick him as a running mate. Johnson, who has been publicly toying with the idea of running for president, then recruited Tom Hanks, who also came on stage to congratulate the new   to be his vice president. Hanks, who needed little arm twisting, said, ”America really needs us.” Johnson said in the past he would never have considered running for president. But then getting a dig in at President Trump, he said, ”Now, I’m actually worried that I’m too qualified” for the job.” Johnson added, ”When it comes to politics, we need more poise and less noise. Americans deserve strong capable leaders. Leaders who care about this country and care about it’s people.” When they were done with the monologue, a banner unfurled reading: Johnson and Hanks 2020. Weekend Update, The week’s news involving the Trump administration was a gift to Weekend Update writers. The current news cycle is the gift that keeps on giving. Weekend Update anchor Colin Jost said, ”I know I said this last week, but this week was crazy!” Weekend Update went on to do a story about Johnson’s chances if he really ran for president. A recent poll by Public Policy Polling said that if Johnson ran as a Democrat, he would lead with 42 percent of the vote to Trump’s 37 percent of the vote. It wasn’t mentioned in the Weekend Update story, but the poll went on to say that Johnson would fall behind some other potential candidates in the hypothetical contest: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Before the show, it was reported that cast members Vanessa Bayer and Bobby Moynihan would not be back for Season 43. Moynihan is leaving after nine seasons. CBS reportedly has picked up the pilot for Me, Myself  I, a sitcom starring Moynihan and John Larroquette. One of his   recurring character is Drunk Uncle, who shows up to tell stories during the Weekend Update segment. And Drunk Uncle got one more chance Saturday night. Bayer has been on the show for seven seasons, and confirmed her departure on her Instagram page. When will Saturday Night Live return? NBC hasn’t officially announced when Season 43 will start. Season 42 made its debut last October. While on hiatus there is a good chance that the writers and cast members will wince anytime a good political story makes the news  —   knowing the show is on summer break and they can’t take advantage of it."
"When Feld Entertainment, owners of Ringling Bros. announced it’s canceling the circus after nearly 150 years, it was one of the biggest victories yet for animal welfare activists. How the circus treats it animals  —   especially elephants and big cats  —   has long been a focus for groups like the Humane Society of the U. S and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They see it as part of a larger change going on in this country  —   about how Americans view animals and the way we treat them. If you’ve gone to the circus in recent years, you probably saw them. At one protest outside the Ringling Brothers circus in Phoenix earlier this year, people shouted ”Boycott the circus.” PETA was founded in 1980 and ”Ringling Brothers was a target of ours from the very beginning,” said Lisa Lange, senior vice president of communications. She believes the protests played a key role in changing public attitudes about the circus. In announcing the end, Feld Entertainment chairman Kenneth Feld acknowledged the decades of conflict with animal welfare groups. But he said the decision was made because of declining attendance and a change in public taste. ”Yes, people no longer have a taste for that kind of entertainment,” Lange said. ”But we believe it’s because they now know what that kind of entertainment costs those animals.” The demise of the Ringling Brothers circus comes just months after SeaWorld agreed to stop breeding its captive orcas and to move away from its signature theatrical shows. Around the same time, the National Aquarium in Baltimore announced it was closing its dolphin exhibit and would move its dolphins to an ocean sanctuary. ”It’s happening across the economy. It’s happening across our culture,” said Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society. He believes a major change is going on in how Americans view animal welfare issues. ”We’re really seeing a rising tide of consciousness when it comes to the treatment of animals.” Animal welfare groups have seen success in many other areas as well. In the last few years, major pork producers have eliminated confinement pens for pregnant sows. Egg producers have also begun getting rid of cages for their chickens. Pacelle says some of this has been accomplished through legislation. In other cases, change has been pushed by retailers like McDonald’s and  . ”In most cases, companies are now adapting,” he said. ”They’re simply changing the way they do business to reflect a growing consciousness about animals and wringing the animal cruelty out of the business model.” Lisa Lange of PETA says after decades of working on animal rights, she believes the movement has finally hit the mainstream. She believes a major factor is the power of social media. We have the ability to show people a video of elephants for example being beaten behind the scenes at a Ringling Brothers performance. And we put that up on our Facebook page, Instagram, we tweet it out. And millions of people see that video within hours. Pacelle cites a powerful example  —   the death of Cecil the lion. For years, the Humane Society worked to stop trophy hunting of lions, elephants and other big game with limited success. But two years ago, when a Minnesota dentist killed a lion in Zimbabwe named Cecil, the story went viral. One Zimbabwean activist got a hold of the image of the grinning hunters over the slain lion and, within 24 hours, more than a billion people had seen it. Soon, all the major air carriers had agreed to ban shipment of lion, elephant, rhino and other large animal trophies worldwide. Pacelle believes concern about animal welfare is now a value shared by all Americans. The question is what that will mean next for agriculture, entertainment, research and other fields in which animals play a role."
"A new social network has grown quietly in recent months. It’s called Gab, and its users are invited to #SpeakFreely  —   an appeal attractive to many members of the far right and others who feel their views are stifled by mainstream sites like Twitter and Facebook. Gab. ai was born not long before the election, a brainchild of a young CEO in a ”Make America Great Again” hat, taking on what he calls ”the Big Social” with a motto ”Free Speech For Everyone.” While Facebook and Twitter are attempting to clean up offensive content and misinformation, Gab CEO Andrew Torba argues the efforts result in censorship. ”For whatever reason, we’re shying away from individual liberty, individual responsibility to this      forum or model of the Internet, which is really scary to me,” Torba said in a recent conversation with a commentator on YouTube. Instead, Gab makes the case for people to be able to post whatever they want, as long as it’s legal. That means the site’s user guidelines prohibit very few types of posts: illegal pornography, threats of violence or terrorism, confidential information of users without their consent. Shortly after Gab launched, a Wired article described the site as ”an artifact from a dystopian universe where the   completely took over Twitter.” The   has been associated with racism,   and misogyny. Richard Spencer, the white nationalist and a major ” ” figure, was suspended from Twitter in November along with several other   figures. ”To be honest, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Spencer said in a   YouTube video. ”There’s obviously Gab, which is an interesting medium. . .. I think that will be the place where we go next.” A wave of news stories followed. The New York Times described Gab as ”a digital safe space for the far right.” A Salon reporter asked Torba about Gab’s logo  —   a green frog dubbed Gabby: ”I suspected it was a reference to Pepe the frog,” the reporter wrote, referring to the Internet cartoon character that’s been associated with the     and white nationalists. Torba says the Gab frog is a religious reference, a symbol of exodus and rebirth. At the time, in the fall, Gab was  . Thousands of people were said to be on the  . ”Gab is less than a month old, so it may well flame out like Peach or Ello,” Wired’s Emma Grey Ellis wrote in that September feature. Earlier this month, Gab. ai opened to the public. It is funded with users’ contributions. In a post on Medium on May 8, Gab leaders shared the latest statistics: ”In under nine months, 170, 000 Gabbers have 7. 6 million posts and raised $145, 000 to help us expand our team and cover operational expenses.” ”I want a buffet” Visually, Gab sort of combines some of the features of Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. You can follow people and repost or comment on anything anywhere. Posts are restricted to 300 characters and can be upvoted by the community. Gab has developed an Android app, but Apple has so far rejected the social network from its app store. There are permanent categories like ”Cuisine” or ”Sports” and sort of trending ones, called ”Live Topics,” like ”Julian Assange” or ”Seth Rich” (both reflecting the latest news cycles). Before Gab got rid of trending hashtags, #MAGA, #gabfam and #Trump were the virtually permanent mainstays. There are no bans on hate speech or harassment (and language does fly freely). The users have the option to ”mute” whatever people or terms they want. In the wild, without muting or following particular people, a random scroll through categories on Gab is a   of posts: Some benign ones (a chicken recipe, a prayer in support of President Trump, some links to music clips) then a startling one (a photo of a group of Klansmen, the Leo Frank lynching) then back to regular Internet lore (a dog video, a Saturday Night Live skit). Throughout it all, there’s a tremendous amount of debate over news, with a heavy dose of conspiracy theories. ”Even when you have a bunch of people that are   correct and, you know, ’things were better in the 50s’ or whatever the case . .. people you might call   there’s a much bigger group of people that aren’t that,” says Ryan Donker. I originally saw him posting in the science topics on Gab and later followed him on Twitter. His online handle is @TruckDrivinRyan  —   he drives   for a living. ”As a local driver doing port work, I have a lot of down time. Most of my day is sitting at the port waiting for a box to be taken off or put on,” Donker says. ”It’s times like that when I’ll go on the Internet, goof off with people, read up on interesting things, get into arguments  —   whatever I can do to pass the time.” Donker describes himself as libertarian. He says Trump is better than Hillary Clinton but he does not always agree with the president. Donker is also openly gay. His partner is an immigrant. On Gab, he says he’s faced off with a few haters  —   but that’s what he likes about it: He says here, people are laid bare. ”You know, this social media starts as a place to be free and open and share a bunch of thoughts and ideas all   is the way it should be,” Donker says. ”I don’t want you to feed me  —   I want a buffet, where I can pick what I want. I don’t want an algorithm to control my news feed, I want to decide for myself.” ”Conservative exodus from Twitter” As told by CEO Torba, Gab’s birth dates to the controversy over Facebook’s sidelining of   topics from the ”Trending” display. ”That’s when I saw the opportunity to . .. step up and defend free speech, defend individual liberty, defend the free flow of information that I saw under attack,” Torba says in the recent YouTube video, in which he also describes feeling ”like a minority” in Silicon Valley ”as a conservative, as a Christian, as a straight white male” in a place that’s ”very   very progressive and very  .” (He now lives in Austin.) Craig Combs, a poet and writer from Michigan, says he felt Facebook was dominated by the liberal left. He says his posts there would regularly get removed, which he attributes to censorship. ”It was almost like being thrown into a timeout corner as a child,” he says. ”I’m 48 I don’t need to be treated this way.” Combs says he first heard about Gab from David Seaman and other YouTubers as he followed the ”pizzagate” conspiracy. (Combs does not believe mainstream   and news sites that have debunked the rumors, and in an email said the story ”has the potential to get very, very huge indeed. ”) He quickly shifted to the new platform, and describes himself as an ”avid poster.” ”At first, I will be frank, it was a little culture shock for me,” he says. ”Going from the liberalism of Facebook and having to adjust to that culture, then going to Gab  —   which frankly, even four months ago was very different than it is now. . .. It was like a conservative exodus from Twitter.” Combs says he is not conservative  —   he has conservative values, but he describes himself as a libertarian, an ”independent thinker,” and he is also gay. ”I was at odds quite a bit over that,” Combs says. ”I have encountered several people on Gab when I first started, I will be very frank, there is a very conservative thread that runs through that platform. And I think they’re starting to get it that they’re not there to control the conversation.” Combs and Donker both say Gab’s decision to ”open the floodgates” is already helping to add diversity of views to what they both assume was the original crowd of   conservative Republicans. But are there any liberals? Donker laughs. ”There are a few,” he says, later adding: ”I’ve never heard anybody say they support Hillary. But then again, Gab is a big place.” Editor’s note: One change has been made to the Web version of this story. Earlier, we wrote that Craig Combs maintains his belief in the debunked ”pizzagate” stories. It now simply quotes what Combs said in an email to NPR, that the ”pizzagate” story ”has the potential to get very, very huge, indeed.”"
"Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been a passionate proponent of expanding school choice, including private school vouchers and charter schools, and she has the clear backing of President Trump. But does the research justify her enthusiasm? Experts say one single, overarching issue bedevils their efforts to study the impact of school choice programs. That is: It’s hard to disentangle the performance of a school from the selection of its students. Students are never randomly assigned to a school. A school’s population is always affected by local demographics. With schools of choice, by definition, parents and students are making a decision to attend that school, so their enrollment is even less random. Even when researchers carefully match students at different schools based on demographics, it’s possible that families that are more organized and more invested in education are also more likely to seek out charters and voucher programs. Or, selection bias can also work the other way: The students who struggle in traditional public schools may be more likely to seek alternatives. Further complicating matters is this: By law, most charter schools must have open enrollment, using a lottery if they have more applicants than spots. However, charters, and private schools, have sometimes been accused of using strict discipline rules or other measures to filter out underperforming or otherwise undesirable students. The admissions policies of   private schools can also vary widely, depending on school policy and state law. Some must have open enrollment. Others retain the right to select students based on religion, academic achievement, artistic talent, conduct, or other factors. And, no matter where you look, both private schools and charters tend to enroll fewer students with disabilities compared with public schools, a practice known as ”creaming.” So, with the huge caveat that it’s difficult to do an    comparison, where do researchers agree on the impact of choice? Choice programs seem to push nearby public schools to improve. ”The results are consistent, and I don’t think there’s any debate,” says Douglas Harris of the Education Research Alliance at Tulane University. ”Charters, vouchers and tax credits create competition and positive spillovers.” When school choices expand, public schools stand to lose students, and thus money, and they seem to respond by stepping up their game. Martin Carnoy, a professor at Stanford University who has been studying the issue for decades, terms this response to competition ”an accountability effect.” In other words, ”When you announce that there’s a new sheriff in town, all of a sudden everybody perks up.” Carnoy’s studies of cities including Milwaukee argue that this effect fades over time. There’s far less agreement among researchers on the effects of choice for the students who choose to leave their traditional public school. First, charter schools. Charter students in city centers tend to do better than their   peers, according to the most recent research by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford. But charter students elsewhere tend to do the same or worse. And the learning progress of nearly 200, 000 students enrolled in   online ”virtual charter schools” is generally so bad that representatives of the charter sector recently called for states to close many of them. Second, private schools. Whether students are using vouchers or   scholarships, their academic outcomes are a similarly mixed bag. ”Most studies find modestly positive or neutral impact on student scores, and that’s generally limited to   students in large urban centers,” says Micah Ann Wixom, a policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States. Martin Carnoy wrote for the   Economic Policy institute in February: ”Extensive research on educational vouchers in the United States over the past 25 years shows that gains in student achievement are at best small.” ”Do voucher students perform better than they would have in their neighborhood school?” asks Josh Cunningham, a senior education policy specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures. ”At the most I can say, ’Maybe, a little bit.’ But there’s not a lot of evidence that they’ll have any substantial academic gains.” Or, as the Center on Education Policy underscored in its 2011 survey of voucher research: ”Achievement gains for voucher students are similar to those of their public school peers.” But more recent research has found that private schools, like charter schools, can actually hurt the academic progress of the students who choose them. Studies of programs in Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D. C. found students who left for private schools did worse, not better, compared with their peers. Scholarship   programs, like voucher programs, send students to private schools. Their impact is hard to determine, says Harris of the Education Research Alliance. ”The   scenario seems to be a slight positive effect, but most people would interpret it as no effect,” he says. Finally, when it comes to voucher and   programs, many states don’t even require private schools to administer the state’s test. In Florida, it can be any nationally normed test. So these programs are a bit of a black box. Going forward, if private school options expand, we may know less and less about the schools that more and more students are attending. Oh, and there’s another challenge: Most of these analyses rely on test scores alone. Test scores provide an imperfect and incomplete picture of student performance, as the most recent reauthorization of the federal education law acknowledges."
"When Vince Staples releases his sophomore album Big Fish Theory next month, he won’t be the only lanky rapper from Long Beach, Calif. with new music in the marketplace. Big Uncle Snoop Dogg, whose solo debut Doggystyle dropped the same year Staples was born, released his 15th studio album this week. And like the title Neva Left    suggests, his ubiquitous industry presence over the last quarter century is unprecedented in  . Snoop’s ancillary hustle is nothing to bark at. The chronic smoking upstart is a cannabis startup funder now, with a Hollywood resumé full of starring roles and cameos. He’s even cooked up a surprise hit with Martha Stewart. But unlike so many of his  ’90s contemporaries, who made the leap to film and TV or executive suites only to record with decreasing frequency, Snoop is that rare bird who still gets a buzz from his first love. That much was apparent one month ago when he hosted a bunch of music writers at Jimi Hendrix’s famed Electric Lady Studios to preview his album. At their worst, press listening sessions can be an awkward dance. The artist bobs his head to the beat, trying to convince the writers present that his new album is his best. The writers bob their heads to the beat, eager to show appreciation for receiving such an exclusive industry invite. Snoop, however, was under no such pretense. While a    served complimentary drinks in the corner, he casually strode into Studio A carrying a laptop and plugged it in before introducing the concept behind his new LP. ”Whatever it is that I’m doing, I never left the rap game. So what I wanted to do [is make] a record to engulf every phase of Snoop Dogg that you’ve heard over the last 25 years,” he said, ”from hearing me on ’Deep Cover’ to hearing me with The Chronic, with my first album [Doggystyle] to Pharrell, to No Limit, to the reggae album, to the funk album, to all the different evolutions of Snoop Dogg.” He then preceded to fire up a blunt and let the music play, while dancing to the beat of his own groove as if no one was watching. Soon he was shrouded in a cloud of smoke that followed him around the room like   from Peanuts. Snoop was cleaner, of course. The Louis Vuitton scarf draped around his neck flowed, like the length of his dreads, down his long limbs. Eyes closed most of the time, he mouthed his lyrics, losing himself in an impromptu performance like the ones he used to give for his mom’s friends as a kid when she’d asked him to entertain her company back in Long Beach. Even my mom is fond of Snoop Dogg. He’s been her favorite rapper for years, and it’s been a running joke between us for just as long. Thing is, she’s not even a     fan. (Luther Vandross’ Never Too Much was the last album I remember her wearing out.) But whenever Snoop makes an appearance on   or daytime TV, I get a   text. So when I shot her a selfie of me and the Dogg after his Electric Lady studio session, she texted back: ”Tell him how much I love him.” I didn’t relay the message. The last thing on Earth I need is to have Snoop Dogg putting my momma in one of his lascivious rhymes. Her infatuation is as unlikely as America’s   love affair with the Dogg. Never forget, Snoop has risen above things most black men in this country never get the opportunity to live down  —   including a real live murder rap, a bicoastal    feud, and so many threats against his own life that he was forced to escape Death Row. His friend Tupac, whom he inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just hours after his listening session, wasn’t so fortunate. Snoop’s success in spite of his past is a reminder that his gangster pedigree falls right in line with the principles on which this nation was founded. He learned how to reinvent himself as a result and he hasn’t stopped since. He’s been Snoop the Pimp (Snoop Dogg’s Hustlaz was the   porn film of 2003) Snoop the Resurrector (2003’s ”Beautiful,” his third top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit and his first since 1994’s ”Gin and Juice,” became a huge shot in the arm for featured funk legend Charlie Wilson of the Gap Band) Snoop the          (he helped Katy Perry land her second No. 1 Billboard hit with ”California Gurls”) and Snoop the Agitpropist (President Donald Trump’s Twitter response to being parodied in the video for ”Lavender” [Nightfall Remix] returned him to a political relevance he hadn’t enjoyed since C. Delores Tucker was trying to ban gangsta rap). On Neva Left, Snoop takes listeners down memory lane with retooled remakes of   classics ”Big Mouth” (Whodini) and ”Vapors” (Biz Markie) paying homage to their creators the same way he gave virtual dap to Slick Rick by redoing ”La Di Da Di” on Doggystyle. The legendary   makes a standout appearance on ”Let Us Begin,” while Snoop partners with fellow weed heads Devin the Dude and Wiz Khalifa for the chill ”420 (Blaze Up),” and Redman, Method Man and   for the anthemic ”Mount Kushmore.” ”I just felt like I wanted to put out some music to represent the generation that I come from,” Snoop said. ”Just to let people know that I’m still here and I still do what I do.” The album, like his career, is a bit of a   but it’s also a feat of nature. Snoop is the elder statesman who has never needed to mount a comeback. He crowned Kendrick Lamar the new West Coast king years before the artist was bold enough to   it. He put Long Beach on the map by repping his hood so a   artist like Vince Staples could present a much more introspective point of view. Yet Snoop’s biggest asset is also his Achilles. He’s so cool that he makes it look effortless. And in some ways, it must be. His lyrics have never been the crux of his gift. Rather, it’s how he says them. In an era where a rapper’s mainstream success often hinges on his ability to create inventive melodies, it’s too easy to forget Snoop was the first to deliver rhymes with such   appeal. His flow remains the same, even if everything else about   has changed. It may not always amount to a guaranteed hit. But his consistent relevance makes him among the most reliable in a game full of liabilities. Word to your mother."
"Is our hunger for the intrigues of the English Tudors never to be sated? A cursory search for books on Henry VIII yields over 9, 000 titles. The cottage industry has outgrown its cottage and is on its way to filling up a castle. What’s a determined author to do? Alison Weir’s answer is to forge new approaches to   situations by focusing on the women of the period. Her new historical novel, Anne Boleyn: A King’s Obsession, represents a persuasive attempt to restore the humanity of a tragic, misrepresented figure, one of history’s original nasty women. We all know how the story ends, so it’s a neat trick to draw drama out of such a familiar material. Anne Boleyn ruled England alongside her husband Henry VIII for only three years, from 1533 to 1536. But the couple had a famously bumpy   courtship before that, an extended, aphrodisiacal game of   . Weir reconstructs Anne’s youth as a child in the wealthy household of Sir Thomas Boleyn, who was dubbed ”Esquire of the Body of the Monarch,” and her mother, the great beauty Elizabeth Howard. But this quite ordinary, not very pretty girl from a rich household is educated at the courts of a series of outstanding women. In the household of Madame Marguerite, the king of France’s sister, Boleyn discovers brilliant, progressive minds  —   not only Erasmus, the leading intellectual of the day, but also the work of pioneering feminist Christine de Pizan. Anne’s epiphany? Women ”are not born just to be subordinate to men.” She learns to lean forward. Weir’s fictional Anne is ferociously smart and guilty of nothing but craving the power that’s rightfully hers to claim. She disdains the dalliances of court life. Her trial and conviction for fornicating with five men  —   including her brother  —   amounts to a spurious campaign of lies, a particularly lethal instance of slut shaming. Embedded in a court rife with romantic intrigue, Anne asks herself ”why becoming queen mattered so much, when the chance of true love was hers for the seizing. And she always came back to the argument that the crown was hers for the seizing too.” That is the crux of her ongoing dilemma, and she solves it, according to Weir, by talking herself into having feelings for her husband Henry. They conceive a child, Elizabeth, as well as three boys who don’t survive. Her girl baby only serves as a reminder only of Anne’s inability to produce an heir, and she relates to the future queen primarily through bequests of fabulous clothing. ”It seemed that she was always fighting her demons,” Weir writes. People hate her. She can’t leave the confines of her Greenwich palace without hearing shouts on the street of ”burn the whore” and ”kill the whore.” Yet she chooses ”The Most Happy” for her motto as queen. She is that strong, that impervious. Weir, the author of fiction and nonfiction books on the English royals that come out at nearly an annual pace, ends her tale by describing the already decapitated queen’s last moments. She has leaned forward for one last time, and the specially imported French swordsman has performed his bloody task. But Anne doesn’t die, not right away. She ”felt her head, horribly light now, hit the scaffold with a painful thud and the blindfold fall away,” revealing her own ”crumpled” body beside her. (Experts Weir consulted claimed it would be physically possible for a person to remain fully conscious for   seconds even after being decollated.) In literature on the Tudors, no detail is too small. The tiny extra nail on the little finger of Anne’s right hand has often been extrapolated into a whole extra digit. Weir treats it as a source of private shame for the queen throughout her life, and a reason for her preference for long flowing sleeves. Was it finally a mark of Cain that helped get her killed? There are more than a few of them, les reines sans tête: Anne Boleyn, Marie Antoinette, Catherine Howard, Mary Queen of Scots. Weir leads us to believe that beheading might be the price to pay for having a mind of one’s own. Jean Zimmerman’s latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin."
"They’re seemingly unavoidable on Instagram these days: photos of bright yellow egg yolks nestled in a fluffy bed of egg whites, like the sun framed by billowy clouds. They’re called cloud eggs, and they’re pretty enough to look like a taste of heaven . .. which is probably why people are obsessively whipping them up and sharing their pictures on social media. Yet the latest food fad du jour is actually a modern spin on a nearly    recipe. ”They are basically a very, very old dish. It’s essentially something called Eggs in Snow, which the French have been making for centuries. And it’s suddenly taking off on Instagram,” says Daniel Gritzer, the culinary director at Serious Eats. He points to a recipe for Oeufs à la Neige (eggs in snow) in Le Cuisinier François, a seminal cookbook published in 1651, just as France was beginning a revolution in cookery that would make it the culinary leader of the world for centuries. Modern cloud eggs are simple to make, but look sophisticated. Recipes vary, but basically, you take an egg, separate the whites and yolk, beat the whites into a stiff foam and season to taste. Then you scoop the foam into a   form on a baking sheet covered with parchment, leaving a hollow in the middle for the yolk, and pop it into the oven at 450 degrees Fahrenheit. In some versions, the yolk goes into the oven at the same time as the whites in others, the whites bake first for a few minutes, then the yolk is added and the whole thing is baked for a couple of minutes longer. Baking times vary, but recipes generally call for around 5 to 6 minutes total. The 17th century version was cooked a bit differently: Instead of   or whisks, chefs used bundles of finely split sticks. The egg foam and yolk were placed on a buttered dish and baked atop of coals instead of in an oven. The whole thing was heated from above with a cooking tool called a salamander  —   basically, a hot fire shovel held over the dish. (Think of it as a 1600s version of a butane kitchen torch or a form of controlled broiling.) It was served with a sprinkle of sugar. These days, the name ”eggs in snow” (or ”snow eggs”) denotes a different dish: a dessert made of meringue poached in sweetened milk and served with a custard. (It’s a French classic, and was a favorite of famed food writer Craig Claiborne.) But the snow eggs described in that 1651 recipe were essentially the same thing as cloud eggs, agrees Paula Marcoux, a food historian who specializes in   recipes using period cooking techniques. Like today’s cloud eggs, Marcoux says, the 17th century recipe was likely a novelty dish meant to impress. ”It’s just one of those things rich people did for amusement . .. kind of like today.” And chefs of the era were also beginning to unravel the mysteries of cooking science. ”Seventeenth century people are figuring out how proteins work  —   it’s the very earliest phases of what becomes fine French cooking,” says Marcoux. Nowadays, chefs know that when you beat an egg white, you’re actually participating in a cool bit of biochemistry. Egg whites are mostly liquid, but they’re full of proteins. When beaten, those proteins unfold and bind with each other, creating a structure. ”They start to arrange themselves into a network, like a net, as they bond to each other and stretch out,” explains Gritzer. That structure traps the air introduced through beating, and also holds the water in egg whites in place. The result is foam. It’s a touch of kitchen magic that has fascinated cooks for centuries. ”Even in   America, people were excited,” says Marcoux. And later, ”in the 1950s, people were crazy about making meringue pies. It’s almost something home cooks tap into as a   kind of thing. We see that happening in generation after generation of home cooks.” In my home kitchen, I gave cloud eggs a whirl. On their own, they’re pretty but bland. But a dash of salt and pepper, a dusting of Sunny Paris spice blend (purple shallots, chives, dill weed, basil and peppercorn, among other things) and a generous sprinkling of grated sharp cheddar, all folded into the foam before baking, fixed things nicely. As for cloud eggs’ 17th century counterpart? That was surprisingly scrumptious, says Marcoux. My queries had piqued her curiosity, so she tackled the 1651 recipe using historically accurate tools  —   hot fire shovel and all. She’d been skeptical beforehand, but ”it was as delicious as it was silly!” she reported back. So if you should encounter cloud eggs in the wilds of the Internet, instead of asking yourself, as The Washington Post did recently, ”Uh, why is this a thing?” just know the answer is: Because we are human and there is little new under the sun  —   not even cloud eggs. Maria Godoy is a senior editor with NPR and host of The Salt. She’s on Twitter: @mgodoyh."
"Updated at 4:30 a. m. ET, Police in Manchester, England, confirm 22 people dead at Manchester Arena following an explosion after a concert by Ariana Grande. Nearly 60 people have been injured. Authorities say they believe one man detonated an improvised explosive device, and was killed in the explosion. Chief Constable Ian Hopkins of the Greater Manchester Police said in a news conference, ”We have been treating this as a terrorist incident and we believe, at this stage, the attack last night was conducted by one man. The priority is to establish whether he was acting alone or as part of a network. ”The attacker, I can confirm, died at the arena. We believe the attacker was carrying an improvised explosive device which he detonated causing this atrocity.” Hopkins said police are working with national counterterrorism experts to investigate the attack. Prime Minister Theresa May will convene an emergency Cabinet meeting Tuesday. She released a statement saying, ”We are working to establish the full details of what is being treated by the police as an appalling terrorist attack. All our thoughts are with the victims and the families of those who have been affected.” President Donald Trump, speaking after a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, offered prayers for the people of Manchester, and said ”we stand in absolute solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom.” The President lamented, ”so many young beautiful innocent people living and enjoying their live, murdered by evil losers in life.” Ariana Grande tweeted: ”broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words.” Friends and relatives of the audience members who hadn’t been heard from have posted messages on social media asking for word of their loved ones. Police have publicized a hotline number for families to call if they can’t reach someone who was there. Earlier, the police said they conducted a ”precautionary controlled explosion,” and the item they had been concerned about turned out to be abandoned clothing and not a suspicious item. The management of the Manchester Arena issued a statement, saying the incident happened outside the facility. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer tweeted that the President is being briefed on the incident. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it is closely monitoring the situation in Manchester and that it has ”no information to indicate a specific credible threat involving music venues in the United States.” ”However, the public may experience increased security in and around public places and events as officials take additional precautions,” the statement said.  The BBC reports witnesses heard an explosion, which was followed by a chaotic scene with audience members running for the exits. One tweet captured the sound of the blast: Reuters reports that emergency services are responding to the reports of ”a serious incident.” Greater Manchester Police are advising people to ”avoid the area.” One witness, Josh Elliott, told the BBC Radio 5 Live that ”A bang went off and everyone stopped and screamed. . .. We basically hit the deck,” he said. ”It was bedlam . .. it was horrific. We got up when we thought it was safe and got out as quickly as possible. People were just crying and in tears. . .. Police cars were everywhere.” This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"Updated at 10:08 p. m. ET. The Office of Government Ethics has rejected a White House attempt to block the agency’s compilation of federal ethics rules waivers granted to officials hired into the Trump administration from corporations and lobbying firms. The White House action, a letter to OGE Director Walter M. Shaub Jr. from Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, was first reported by The New York Times. The newspaper had earlier published a detailed account of lobbyists turned appointees who were granted waivers and now oversee regulations they previously had lobbied against. With an ethics waiver, a federal official is free to act on matters that normally would trigger concerns about conflicts of interest or other ethical problems. Federal regulations say the waivers generally should be made public on request. The Obama administration routinely posted waivers online. The Trump administration has issued an unknown number and released none. Shaub notified the White House and federal agencies in April that OGE wanted to see all ethics waivers issued by President Trump’s administration. He set June 1 as the deadline. The broad request is known as a data call. Mulvaney notified Shaub in a letter last week that the data call ”appears to raise legal questions regarding the scope of OGE’s authorities.” He said he wanted the data call put on hold until it is reviewed by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the executive branch on constitutional questions and limits of executive power. The move could block the request for waivers indefinitely. Shaub told the White House late Monday that his agency would continue collecting the ethics waivers. In a   response, Shaub said that the OGE ”declines your request to suspend its ethics authority,” adding that ”public confidence in the integrity of government decisionmaking demands no less.” Under federal regulations, OGE is supposed to oversee all waiver decisions throughout the government. ”OGE has a right to review any waiver,” said former OGE Assistant Director Stuart Gilman. Referring to the data call, he said, ”It’s not like somehow or other this is a special case.” The ethics waivers are supposed to be public documents, but the administration so far has not released them. An   legal group, American Oversight, sued eight federal departments and agencies on Monday, arguing that ethics waivers should be released under the Freedom of Information Act. American Oversight had previously filed FOIA requests. The Trump administration and OGE are fighting on other fronts, as well:  —   OGE earlier this month announced a new certification document for Cabinet secretaries and other   appointees to show they are fulfilling the ethics agreements they signed before being confirmed by the Senate. Ethics agreements typically commit a nominee to avoid ethics violations through a blind trust, divestiture, recusal or similar action. The document must be signed by the official. As with tax returns and other federal documents, false statements run the risk of penalties. There was no previous oversight of compliance.  —   The White House has raised a    question to challenge newly appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, who will oversee the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The issue is that other lawyers at Mueller’s former law firm represent presidential daughter Ivanka Trump her husband, Jared Kushner and onetime Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mueller never worked for those clients, but under ethics law he still could require a waiver for his new job. It’s worth noting that while the White House suggests conflicts for Mueller, it obtained an ethics agreement for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. He needed it because, in his previous job as Oklahoma attorney general, he was a plaintiff in several lawsuits challenging EPA regulations.  —   Last winter, Shaub used Twitter to exhort Trump into putting his hundreds of corporations into a blind trust. Trump instead put them into a revocable trust, where he can draw money from his businesses whenever he wants."
"Picture a kaleidoscope of color and a medley of vivid African print cloth surging forward amid screams and weeping  —   for joy. That was the magnificent and moving scene, Saturday, in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, as 82 former Chibok schoolgirls  —   now young women  —   were reunited with their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and other family members, after three years in Boko Haram captivity. Tears were streaming down their faces and gave way to broad smiles of happiness and relief after years of torment and trauma and missing their families. The Chibok girls, as they’re called, were released on May 7 in the northeast, after negotiations between the Nigerian government and the homegrown,   extremist group. But they only got to see their families two weeks later in Abuja. Bonding was immediate, emotional and powerful. Weeping fathers hugged their daughters. Schoolgirls back in 2014, now transformed into young women, the Chibok girls threw their arms lovingly, almost desperately, around their mothers’ necks and held them there. One of the freed students, Awa Yirma, sobbed hysterically, convinced that her parents had died during her three years as a Boko Haram captive but the authorities didn’t want to tell her. Her schoolmates and other mothers rushed to comfort her, as an official assured Yirma that her mother and father were indeed on their way and that their vehicle had broken down. Heading toward the entrance to meet the latecomers, Awa Yirma let out a primordial cry and leapt forward, knocking this journalist’s smartphone, poised to capture the moment, right out of her hands. A desolate face etched with desperation was soon transformed into jubilation as the three hugged and wept. Later Awa Yirma who, barely an hour earlier had been despondent, was smiling with her mother, Minari, and father, Yirma Lalai, gently stroking her mother’s arm and whispering into her ear. Then Awa Yirma rose to dance gracefully and sing with dozens of her freed Chibok schoolmates. In another corner, under one of the giant marquees erected by the government for the reunion, groundnut and maize farmer Bulama Jona’s eyes welled up with tears. He cried as he observed his    daughter, Amina, who sat serenely  —   as if deep in thought  —   in a wheelchair, with her left arm in a sling. Journalists were not allowed to interview the released students, so it was not possible to establish when and how Amina Bulama was wounded. Her father tells NPR he knelt down before his daughter, shed tears and prayed, thanking God she survived captivity and was released from the ”wilderness.” ”I never thought that I would see her in my life again, I never expected to see Amina again, but God has done wonders, I thank God, despite the injury that she has,” he says. ”I want her quick recovery so that she can continue with her education and learn.” Bulama Jona says he forgives Boko Haram, the group that kidnapped 276 girls in the middle of the night from their boarding school beds in the remote, rural town of Chibok in the restive northeast in April 2014. Most of the girls were Christians and were forced to marry extremist fighters and convert to Islam. Some of the young women have given birth to children who’ve been branded by some as rebel offspring. Many captive girls and women previously rescued from Boko Haram have been marginalized and shunned, finding it difficult to reintegrate into society. Some of the Chibok girls have reportedly been radicalized and are refusing to return. There are fears some may have been used in Boko Haram’s deadly campaign of suicide attacks, a tactic the group adopted after losing territory it once held to the Nigerian military during its   insurgency. Despite Boko Haram’s abusive record and history of human rights violations, Bulama Jona says forgiveness is the best way for families to overcome their trauma. ”Three years [in captivity] is not three days  —   how she thinks and how she talks is different,” he notes about his daughter. ”I thank Boko Haram for releasing our Chibok girls. We forgive them for what they have done to us. To err is human, to forgive is divine,” he says of the terrorist network. ”These people [the captives] have never done wrong to them. We are pleading with Boko Haram, let them release those people who are still with them.” Sitting with her eldest child, Esther  —   another of those released  —   Godiya Joshua could not utter a peep. Earlier, the jolly and gregarious mother, who said she’d been suffering from hypertension for the three years since her daughter’s forced absence, had jumped for joy, danced and delivered a heartfelt rendition of a praise song before being reunited with Esther. Joshua says her blood pressure is now way down. This is ”Christmas and New Year” rolled in one, Joshua tells NPR. ”I am really happy today. I am Christmas and New Year. I am very happy and I thank God.” Side by side with her daughter and husband, Andrew, Joshua was lost for words. She just kept looking at Esther. Earlier she’d said, ”Yes, my daughter will likely have changed but I take it like that.” Psychologists say families will have to adapt and give space and support to their children after their   ordeal. The young women won’t be heading straight home. Their parents boarded buses this morning for the long drive back to Chibok. The Nigerian government is keeping the freed students under its care, in Abuja, as it has done for 21 Chibok girls released in October and three others who have escaped in the past year. The young women will remain in the capital for medical   psychological assessment and military debriefing as well as remedial classes to try to catch up on three years of lost education and to pursue vocational skills such as dressmaking. Some parents, like Bulama Jona, father of Amina, welcome the government’s initiative, even though he says her siblings are desperate to have her home and keep phoning and texting. Other families, rights’ groups and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign have been more critical, saying the young women should immediately be fully reintegrated into their communities and not kept at arm’s length in effective government custody. From their perspective, the Chibok girls are simply trading one prison for another. Yahi Bwata captured the pervasive mood of happiness tinged with sadness at the reunion. Grasping the shoulder of his daughter, Comfort Bulus Bwata, her father told journalists: ”Our joy is never complete until we see the 113”  —   the remaining schoolgirls who, along with possibly hundreds of others abducted by Boko Haram, are still captives. ”One Chibok girl matters to all Chibok people,” he says. Another father, Bulama Jona, asks Nigeria’s federal government to rescue the missing Chibok girls still in the bush: ”Our joy cannot be full while they are still in the wilderness. Please use dialogue to bring back those girls.”"
"This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the man who invented recorded sound  —     Scott de Martinville. He beat the more   inventor Thomas Edison by 20 years, though his accomplishments were only recognized over the last decade. While the uses of recorded sound seem obvious now  —   music, news, voice messages  —   none of it was obvious to Scott or Edison when they made the first recordings. It’s a story that has some lessons for today’s aspiring inventors. In 1857, Scott patented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph  —   a device with a big funnel for catching sound and a needle attached to parchment that caught the vibrations and tracked them on   glass. Scott attempted several recordings of instruments, speech and of himself singing the song, Clair de Lune. But Scott never heard that recording. We can only hear the scratchy, haunting, but recognizably human sounds of those recordings now because almost a decade ago some audio archaeologists created a computer program to play them. As strange as it seems, all the French inventor cared about was seeing what sound looked like. ”The idea of playback just didn’t occur to him” says Emily Thompson, a professor at Princeton who teaches the history of sound technology. ”He wanted to understand how sounds worked. He’s part of a tradition of finding ways to render sound visible so that you could look at it and learn about it.” Scott proved that vibrations are truly how sounds came to our ears. But Thompson says the scientific community had trouble accepting his breakthrough. ”A sound separated from a sounding body was just sort of a conceptual leap,” she says. ”I’m not sure people had the cultural context to invent this stuff.” Photography had been around for decades, so the idea of recording a moment in time visually made some sense. ”Scott and others were thinking about we’re going to have to find a way to daguerreotype the voice,” says David Giovannoni, who was part of the team that recovered the audio from Scott’s recordings. ”[Scott’s] basically saying, ’I want to photograph the voice.’ ” There is no evidence that shows Edison knew about Scott’s breakthrough when he stumbled onto sound recording. Initially, he was just trying to improve Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. Years later, an Edison assistant wrote: ”We were sitting around. We’d been working on the telephone  —   yelling into diaphragms. And Edison turned to me, and he said, ’If we put a needle or a pin on this diaphragm, it’ll vibrate, and if we pull a strip of wax paper underneath it, it should leave marks. And then if we pull that piece of paper back, we should hear the talking.’ ” Yet, no one knew what to do with this invention. It took 20 years to figure out that music was the killer app. Both Edison and Scott were recently honored at an event at Edison labs in West Orange, N. J. The event featured a remarkable moment where the   of both men met and shook hands. It was an acknowledgment that would have meant a great deal to Scott. He had long given up on his sound etchings when he read that Edison’s new invention, the phonograph, was being shown at the French Academy of Sciences. He wrote the academy in protest saying that his work had been used by that ”New York electrician.” The Academy ignored Scott’s letter. He died shortly after and did not live to see recorded sound become popular. But his story and the history of recorded sound reveals that even a breakthrough invention can seem insignificant if there isn’t a clear market for its use. That’s a lesson today’s inventors should keep in mind."
"Updated at 6 p. m. ET, Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn is invoking his Fifth Amendment right against   on Monday, refusing to hand over documents subpoenaed by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The panel wants to see documents relating to Flynn’s interactions with Russian officials as part of its probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, says documents in the committee’s possession suggest Flynn ”may have lied to security clearance investigators conducting Flynn’s background check in 2016.” Cummings says a report dated March 16 shows Flynn told security clearance investigators he was paid by ”U. S. companies” when he traveled in December 2015 to Moscow, where he dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin. ”The actual source of the funds for Flynn’s trip,” Cummings said in a statement, ”was not a U. S. company, but the Russian media propaganda arm, RT.” Regarding the Senate Intelligence Committee’s document request, Flynn’s attorney Robert Kelner said, ”Producing documents that fall within the subpoena’s broad scope would be a testimonial act, insofar as it would confirm or deny the existence of such documents.” The letter to committee chairmen also states that Flynn is ”the target on nearly a daily basis of outrageous allegations, often attributed to anonymous sources in Congress or elsewhere in the United States Government, which, however fanciful on their face and unsubstantiated by evidence, feed the escalating public frenzy against him.” Flynn was asked to resign from his post in February after it was revealed that he lied to Vice President Pence about his communication with Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. The intelligence committee is one of multiple congressional panels that are looking into Flynn’s conduct as well as possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Flynn has previously sought immunity from what he termed ”unfair prosecution” so he could cooperate with the committee. In a statement, the Senate committee chairmen, Republican Richard Burr of North Carolina and Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia, said they were ”disappointed” that Flynn chose to disregard the committee’s subpoena request. They said they will ”vigorously pursue General Flynn’s testimony and his production of any and all pertinent materials pursuant to the Committee’s authorities.” The panel could hold him in contempt of Congress, but there are other options. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says both the intelligence and judiciary committees ”should continue to seek other ways to gain access to this information.” She says she and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa have sent requests to the White House, FBI and Defense Department ”for memos, recordings, notes and other documents.” ”The investigation,” she vowed in a statement, ”will go on.”"
"If you have ever noticed an itchy or tingly sensation in your mouth after biting into a raw apple, carrot, banana or any of the fruits and veggies listed here, read on. People who are allergic to pollen are accustomed to runny eyes and sniffles this time of year. But some seasonal allergy sufferers have it worse: They can develop allergic reactions to common fruits and vegetables. The allergic reactions  —   which are usually mild  —   can come on suddenly. And people can react to foods they had been eating with no problem for most of their lives. The condition is called oral allergy syndrome. ”I do think that this is one of the most underreported and underrecognized conditions, ” says Dr. Carah Santos, an allergist at National Jewish Health in Denver. People who have OAS are allergic to plant pollens. Many fruits and vegetables contain proteins that are similar to these pollens. So the immune system can mistake the fruit and vegetable proteins for the plant pollens that caused the allergy. ”We call it ” explains Santos. ”Your immune system sees something as looking very similar to something it already reacts to.” Bananas were the trigger for Jessica Slattery, who lives in the suburbs of Denver. She began to notice a reaction every time she ate one. ”The first thing I’d feel is a little itch on my tongue,” Slattery says. ”I’d feel it down my throat . .. it’s just a little tingle.” Sometimes, her lips would swell, too. When Slattery described the reaction to her friends, they were skeptical. ”They were, like, ’How could you possibly be allergic to a banana?’ ” Slattery recalls. Fruits are not on the list of top allergenic foods most people have only heard of the top culprits such as eggs, fish and nuts. But Slattery knew it wasn’t in her head. Over time, she started reacting to other foods, including kiwi, pineapple and avocado. She noticed she was most reactive to these foods during the spring and fall, when her pollen allergies kicked in. The standard tests to detect food allergies often come back negative for people with OAS. This happened to Slattery. ”I had testing . .. for everything I thought I was allergic to, and everything came back negative.” This was frustrating, she says, because several doctors could not explain what she had. Ultimately, an allergist diagnosed her with oral allergy syndrome simply by taking a detailed history of her symptoms. She says it was a relief to get the diagnosis. ”It was like, ’OK, this is not in my head! It’s a real thing,’ ” Slattery says. People with oral allergy syndrome are typically advised to avoid the raw foods they react to. But there is a workaround: Peeling or cooking the fruits and vegetables before eating them can be helpful. For instance, if apples cause a reaction, applesauce may be OK. Or if bananas are a problem, try banana bread instead. ”Oftentimes [people with OAS] can eat these foods because the cooking process can degrade the proteins that look like the pollen,” says Santos. The prevalence of oral allergy syndrome is unknown, but researchers who evaluated   food allergies in 2015 concluded: ”Although epidemiologic data are scarce, there is no doubt that the increase in pollen allergies is going to be followed by an increase in the     food allergies.” Here are other tips on managing oral allergy syndrome from National Jewish Health: The experts at National Jewish Health advise that people call an allergist when OAS symptoms get worse or occur when eating nuts."
"A Mississippi lawmaker apologized Monday for saying the Louisiana leaders who supported the recent removal of four Confederate monuments ”should be LYNCHED!” Karl Oliver, a GOP state representative, had made the comment in a Facebook post this weekend. Here is the original statement: ”The destruction of these monuments, erected in the loving memory of our family and fellow Southern Americans, is both heinous and horrific. If the, and I use this term extremely loosely, ’leadership’ of Louisiana wishes to, in a   fashion, burn books or destroy historical monuments of OUR HISTORY, they should be LYNCHED! Let it be known, I will do all in my power to prevent this from happening in our State.” The post was later removed, but not before two other state lawmakers liked it, according to Mississippi Today. By Monday, however, Oliver had second thoughts. ”In an effort to express my passion for preserving all historical monuments, the word ’lynched’ was wrong. I am very sorry,” the   lawmaker said  —   also in a post on Facebook. ”It is in no way, ever, an appropriate term. I deeply regret that I chose this word, and I do not condone the actions I referenced, nor do I believe them in my heart. I freely admit my choice of words was horribly wrong, and I humbly ask your forgiveness.” Republican state officials condemned the original post, according to the Associated Press: ”Gov. Phil Bryant and House Speaker Philip Gunn . .. condemned Oliver’s post. ” ’Rep. Oliver’s language is unacceptable and has no place in civil discourse,’ Bryant said in a statement. . .. ”Gunn said Oliver’s remarks ’do not reflect the views of the Republican party, the leadership of the House of Representatives or the House as a whole.’ ” Oliver defeated a   incumbent in 2015. His district includes the community of Money, where    Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. Oliver is also president and director of Oliver Funeral Home in Winona, Miss. about 90 miles north of Jackson, The Guardian notes. The Facebook post came one day after officials removed a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in New Orleans. It was the fourth taken down after the city council voted in 2015 to remove the monuments many in the   city called offensive. The push to remove tributes to the Confederacy gained momentum in 2015 after white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black parishioners in a church in Charleston, S. C. After the killing, state lawmakers in South Carolina voted to stop flying the Confederate flag on the grounds of the statehouse. And Alabama’s governor also ordered them removed from the state Capitol. But Mississippi has resisted such calls: It is the last in the nation to bear a Confederate emblem in its state flag."
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions is narrowing the scope of an executive order on   sanctuary cities. A federal judge in California last month blocked a key part of that order, reasoning that the Trump administration had overstepped by threatening to yank federal money from those places. In the new memo, the attorney general defines the cities narrowly  ” as places that ”willfully refuse to comply” with federal law. Sessions also made clear the threats apply only to a modest pool of grants administered by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, not the entire stream of U. S. funding for states and localities. That point figured prominently in the recent ruling by federal Judge William Orrick, who wrote: ”Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an   strategy of which the president disapproves.” Sessions recently notified several jurisdictions that their funding was at risk, insisting they provide proof they are complying with federal immigration law. The AG did not rule out naming and shaming more places that he says undermine the lawful system of immigration. His new memo also signals that for future grants, federal authorities may prioritize places that honor requests to detain people in local law enforcement custody to give federal officials time to arrive."
"Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has extended for six months a program that has allowed tens of thousands of Haitians to remain in the U. S. following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. But Trump administration officials say they believe conditions are improving on the Caribbean island and that Haitians should make plans to return to their home country. Some 58, 000 Haitians are in the U. S. under a program known as Temporary Protected Status. The designation was extended to Haitians in the U. S. after the earthquake, which killed more than 200, 000 people, and was set to expire in July. Kelly is extending the TPS designation until January 2018, but he says conditions are improving in Haiti. Seven years after the earthquake, he says, the economy is growing and only a small number of Haitians are still in camps for displaced persons. And Kelly cites are other signs of improvement: The government has announced plans to rebuild the presidential palace, and conditions have stabilized enough that U. N. forces are preparing to leave the country. But Rep. Frederica Wilson,  . says Haiti is still struggling. ”The reality is that in six months Haiti will still be in no position to absorb and aid 58, 000 unemployed people,” she said in a statement. ”It will still be recovering from the 2010 earthquake and the subsequent cholera epidemic imported by U. N. peacekeepers that has killed 10, 000. And it will still be struggling to rebuild the extensive damage its infrastructure incurred after Hurricane Matthew struck the   last October. ”During this   reprieve, I invite DHS officials to join me on a trip to Haiti.” Kelly is expected to decide before January whether to renew the program once again or end it. A report prepared by the acting director of U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, James McCament, in April recommended the secretary terminate the program, but delay the effective date until January to allow ”a period of orderly transition.” In a statement Monday, Kelly said, ”I believe there are indications that Haiti  —   if its recovery from the 2010 earthquake continues at pace  —   may not warrant further TPS extension past January 2018. TPS as enacted in law is inherently temporary in nature, and beneficiaries should plan accordingly that this status may finally end after the extension announced today.”"
"One in eight Americans  —   42 million people  —   still struggles to get enough to eat. And while that number has been going down recently, hunger appears to be getting worse in some economically distressed areas, especially in rural communities. Food banks that serve these areas are also feeling the squeeze, as surplus food supplies dwindle but the lines of people seeking help remain long. As a result, food banks such as Feeding America Southwest Virginia are trying to shorten those lines by doing more to address the root causes of hunger, such as poverty, unemployment and bad health. ”Why? Because we can’t afford to continue to feed individuals on this ongoing basis, the resources that it takes to do that. We’d much rather have less individuals come into our programs,” says Pamela Irvine, the food bank’s president and CEO. Right now, the Southwest Virginia food bank distributes close to 15 million meals a year in some of the poorest areas of the state, including Buchanan County in the Appalachian Mountains. The poverty rate there is 29 percent, twice the national average. Feeding America reports that a growing number of county residents  —   about 16 percent  —   have trouble getting enough to eat. ”Finding food is a real challenge these days” On a recent Wednesday morning, about a hundred people lined up in a park in Hurley, a small   town in the northern part of the county. They were waiting to collect food from the mobile pantry that comes there once a month. Many of those waiting are elderly. Just about everyone carried a plastic laundry basket to collect their groceries. There was a warm, friendly atmosphere as volunteers handed out canned foods, fresh produce and baked goods. Everyone seemed to understand that their neighbors are going through tough times. Coal mining jobs have been leaving the area for years, and no one expects conditions to improve much any time soon. Bernice Wolford says the free food is a big help for her family. Her    son had a heart transplant, ”and he’s got a   old baby and he can’t find a job or nothing,” she says. Many of those waiting on line are unemployed, have serious health problems or can’t make ends meet living on Social Security or disability. And the economic distress felt in the region has also made it harder for Feeding America Southwest Virginia, which used to operate 13 mobile pantries in the area. Now, it runs nine. ”Finding food is a real challenge these days,” says Irvine. Shelves at the food bank’s main warehouse in Roanoke, Va. about three hours away from Hurley, are mostly bare. The food goes out as quickly as it comes in. Irvine says food manufacturers are much better these days at controlling inventory, so they have less surplus food to give to food banks like hers. She also gets fewer rejects, like dented or mislabeled cans. ”They’re not making near the mistakes they used to,” says Irvine. Healthy food? They’ll take whatever donations they can get, Another challenge is that coal companies used to be among the food bank’s biggest donors. But many have gone out of business. Donor fatigue is also a problem. Irvine says people are starting to get tired being asked for more money now that the recession is over. ”They think everybody’s recovered. Things look pretty good, right? The unemployment [rate] nationally is down. The statewide average is down. You would think Virginia is doing really good,” says Irvine. ”I heard the governor say last week it’s the lowest it’s been in years. And then I think, hmmmm, not in southwest Virginia, though.” Feeding America  —   a network of food banks across the country  —   reports that private donations nationally are also going up at a much slower rate than just a few years ago. The impact is felt on the front lines, in places like Hurley and nearby Clintwood, where about 150 needy families come to the pantry each Tuesday to pick up a box or two of food. Bernard Fleming, who runs the Clintwood pantry, says it’s increasingly difficult for him to stock up. He gets most of his supplies from Feeding America. So when they have less food, so does he. Donations from the local grocery store are also down. Fleming says one of his volunteers used to pick up two truckloads of food from the store at a time, but ”he went over there this morning and got three boxes.” Fleming doesn’t have a refrigerator for fresh produce, so he has to take what he can get, which isn’t always the best food for his clients. Many of them, like Judy Rice, are ill. Rice has to struggle to get up to the pantry counter to pick up her food. She leans on a table to catch her breath before asking  —   in almost a whisper  —   if they have any food for diabetics. A volunteer reluctantly says no. Rice gets the same as everyone else: a box of canned food and pasta, but also cookies, candy and a big bag of marshmallows. She says she’ll give the marshmallows to her grandson, but is thankful for everything else. ”It helps because it gives you something to eat for two or three days when you don’t have anything,” she says. Irvine says the problem is that the healthiest foods are the most expensive and hardest to come by. ”I’ve always struggled with, ’Is any food better than no food, because you can’t find the right food?’ ” she says. She’s concluded that some food is better than none, although she’s always looking for healthier options. Irvine says food banks are increasingly eager to find more permanent solutions to hunger, because they can’t keep feeding more and more people with limited supplies. Getting more fresh produce  —   and health care  —   to pantry clients, Her food bank has just joined a coop of Feeding America food banks in the Northeast to get more fresh produce. They’re also working with local health care providers to deliver more   foods to those who need them, and to distribute produce in remote areas, such as Appalachia. A representative of one health group was also checking with those waiting on the food line in Hurley to see if anyone needed help signing up for medical insurance. The idea is that healthy people are more likely to have lower medical bills and to be employed, and less likely to need help getting food. Right now, more than half of the households Feeding America serves nationally have a member with high blood pressure. A third have someone with diabetes. Irvine’s food bank is also doing other things to try to lessen demand. It recently joined forces with the Roanoke Police Department, community activists and others to turn a former   nightclub in the city, called Ms. Choc’s Lounge, into what’s being called a Community Solutions Center. The plan is to create a community hub where residents can hold meetings and the food bank can operate a kitchen  —   which Goodwill Industries will use to train those who need jobs how to be food handlers. The meals they prepare will be loaded onto a Feeding America food truck and delivered to needy children in the neighborhood. Irvine said she also hopes to have a small farmer’s market to teach children about nutrition and healthy eating. The project came about when Roanoke Police Captain Rick Morrison approached the food bank about trying to help turn around one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, an area the economic recovery has missed. ”A lot of people just feel abandoned,” says Morrison, who works closely with the community. ”They feel, what’s the point? There’s no hope. There’s no jobs.” Irvine was interested in the proposal but didn’t have the $850, 000 needed to buy and renovate the building. Then the city kicked in a   dollars in federal community development block grants and one of the food bank’s corporate donors, Food Lion, contributed the rest. They hope the project will lead to more jobs and a revitalized community. Irvine thinks that’s the kind of partnership food banks will be increasingly forming, as they try to address hunger in more ways than supplying food."
"In November 1969, Richard Oakes and dozens of his fellow Native American activists came ashore at Alcatraz. The little island in San Francisco Bay had lain dormant since 1963, when its infamous federal prison had been shut down, and the group Oakes led set out to claim the land as its own. The Indians of All Tribes had a   legal basis: the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty between the U. S. and the Sioux and Lakota, which they said returned defunct federal lands to native people. They announced that, by the terms of this treaty, Alcatraz could be legally claimed as theirs. And so Oakes and his compatriots stayed. That day commenced a   occupation of the island that attracted national attention to native rights and catapulted Oakes into wider notoriety and acclaim  —   such acclaim, in fact, that nearly five decades later, Google is celebrating his birthday with a doodle in his honor. ”The aim was not only to set up a community, complete with a university, museum and cultural center, but also for the government to acknowledge the rights of American Indians to claim the    federal land as their own,” the tech giant writes in a blog post. ”Although Richard didn’t succeed in gaining the deeds to Alcatraz for his people, he brought their issues into the media spotlight and made a substantial impact on the treatment of American Indians in the US.” ”There’s just a dual sense of justice in this country,” Oakes said in an interview just days after the occupation began. ”We’d like an end to this. And I think this  —   manning the island of Alcatraz  —   is a positive step in that direction. If they’re going to treat us separately, then we’ll remain separately.” Within half a year, though, the occupation began to splinter and weaken as many of the original occupiers returned to their daily lives and were replaced with others, some of whom rejected the Mohawk activist’s leadership and pursued different aims. ”The final blow to the organized leadership occurred on January 5, 1970, when Oakes’s 13 year old stepdaughter fell three floors down a stairwell to her death,” the National Park Service writes. ”Following Yvonne’s death, Oakes left the island and the two competing groups maneuvered back and forth for leadership on the island.” It would be another year and a half before federal law enforcement stormed Alcatraz and removed the few remaining occupiers. And while the overt aims of the occupation were never realized, the Park Service explains that something else was achieved with Oakes’ efforts: ”The success or failure of the occupation should not be judged by whether the demands of the occupiers were realized. The underlying goals of the Indians on Alcatraz were to awaken the American public to the reality of the plight of the first Americans and to assert the need for Indian  . As a result of the occupation, either directly or indirectly, the official government policy of termination of Indian tribes was ended and a policy of Indian   became the official US government policy.” Before that occupation even ended, Oakes was on to his next fight, taking part in the Pit River Indians’ attempts to reclaim tribal land in Northern California. And once more he had little difficulty grabbing national headlines, joining the tribe in resisting not only Pacific Gas  Electric  —   the company that had laid claim to the land  —   but U. S. law enforcement, too. He was killed in 1972 under murky circumstances, after a confrontation with a white man turned violent. Though Oakes was unarmed, the man who shot him dead was acquitted of manslaughter on grounds of  ."
"Refugees make headlines. Internally displaced people don’t. Maybe their plight eludes the limelight because, unlike refugees, they don’t cross international borders . .. or seek to enter the United States or Western Europe, where people debate how many of them to let in . .. or undertake harrowing voyages across the Mediterranean. And maybe it’s because of their official label. ”Internally displaced persons” (also known as IDPs) sounds vague and a bit confusing, as if they were lost inside themselves. And ”internally displaced person” doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic as ”refugee.” I asked Elizabeth Rushing, who works with IDP issues for the Norwegian Refugee Council, if it’s silly to ask if the very term might be part of the problem. ”No, it’s not silly,” she said. On Monday, the Council issued a report tallying 6. 9 million people internally displaced by conflict and violence in 2016. The total number of IDPs displaced by violence or conflict is 40. 3 million, double the number from the year 2000. By contrast, there were 16. 5 million refugees as of   according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. We spoke to Rushing, the Council’s senior strategic adviser on conflict, about IDPs. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Do you believe IDPs do not get attention from the media as refugees? We were seeing IDPs really sidelined as an issue in 2016. It lost momentum throughout the year and by the time September rolled around, with the U. N. summit for refugees and migrants, it had really fallen off the radar. Any theories as to why? Refugees are literally knocking at your doorstep while IDPs are happening millions of miles away. We want to bring internal displacement back on the radar and show that this is ground zero for the movement of migrants and refugees across borders. If we’re not putting the correct protection and assistance mechanisms into place [for internally displaced people] they’re tomorrow’s refugees. Is there data that shows that IDPs are likely to become refugees?  We were surprised at how little hard data there is on how many refugees were previously IDPs. But in some cases there’s a clear correlation. In a survey of several thousand Syrians arriving to the islands in Greece, 85 percent said they were internally displaced [due to the violence] several times inside of Syria before making the trek further afield. We have anecdotal evidence that people internally displace many times before saying, ”You know what, we’re not finding safety and dignity for our family” and then undertake the risks and dangers of a journey abroad. The U. N. has an agency dedicated to the needs of refugees. Who looks out for IDPs? They’re very much under the protection or assistance or whims of their own national government, which in many cases is unwilling or unable to help them and in many cases caused them to flee in the first place. What are some of the factors contributing to the rising number of IDPs? We have more and more borders closing. Borders are closed in the name of state security  —   to keep terrorists from flowing through  —   as well as economic and political reasons. According to the report, the Democratic Republic of Congo had the most new displacements by conflict and violence in 2016: 922, 000. Why such big numbers? One of the surprises that came out of the report for us, that garnered very little international attention during 2016, was the massive scale of internally displaced people in DRC. There’s ongoing conflict in the north and new violence in the south central in the Kasai provinces, which started last July with the murder of a tribal leader that set off a new level of intercommunal violence. The number of IDPs just skyrocketed. And from January to May of this year, there have been 1. 5 million more. Do IDPs in the Democratic Republic of Congo typically get the protection they need? Some do, some don’t. Some are very  . Displacement is a survival strategy for many people. But in DRC people have been displaced multiple times, and their resilience and   erodes each time they flee. If they’re lucky, they are receiving assistance, but often very  . You need food? Here’s food? You need shelter? Here’s shelter. We have to tackle the political solutions to internal displacement and regular migration, like conflict, weak governments, underdevelopment, massive corruption, environmental degradation. We have to change our thinking to prevent new displacements and find a durable solution. The report notes that of people displaced by conflict and violence, about 1 in 10 flee ”generalized violence”  —   which can include gang violence or   violence. That type of displacement is largely invisible because it’s not large massive movements. In Central America, it’s called a ”drip phenomenon.” People flee from rural areas taken over by drug lords, people flee inner city gang violence. In one case in El Salvador, 70 people fled the   violence in their farming community and [were settled in a camp] on a basketball court in a nearby town. What happened to them? I don’t know. With such dire situations, it must be pretty depressing to come to work. Pretty much. We start the day off with yoga and meditation and end with a glass of wine. Is there any good news you run across? There are many stories of inspiration. Tell me one. I met this    girl who had to flee northern Mali after the Islamist groups took control. She left by herself and came to Bamako, the capital, in the south. She crocheted blankets and sold them in the market and used the money to go to school. Where did she live? In the tiny house of a friend of a friend’s relative, with like 20 other internally displaced people from the north. And of course she’s very vulnerable to the underbelly of mankind in that situation. It’s the faces behind the figures that we focus on and that keep us going."
"A South African professional hunter died Friday after being crushed by an elephant after the animal was fatally shot on a game reserve in Zimbabwe. Theunis Botha, 51, was leading a hunting group when they stumbled upon a breeding herd of elephants at the Good Luck Farm near Hwange National Park, Zimparks spokesman Simukai Nyasha tells The Telegraph. Botha focused on three female elephants charging the group but was caught unaware by a fourth coming at him from the side, according to the South African news site News24. That elephant was lifting him with her trunk when a member of his group shot the animal. The elephant then collapsed on Botha, crushing him. Botha ran Theunis Botha Game Hounds Safaris specializing in leopard and lion safaris in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. He claims to have pioneered a   of hunting in the region using hounds to help flush out the prey. Botha would often travel to the United States to find wealthy customers to take part in the trips, according to the Telegraph. His bio on the company’s website says Botha was a native of South Africa, ”raised in the ways of the bush and its people.” It goes on to say ”Theunis embraced his heart’s passion and engaged in fulltime big game hound safaris in and around South Africa.” Last year, Zimbabwean tourist Stephen Coetzee was trampled to death by an elephant in Hwange National Park while taking pictures. Like Botha, Coetzee was caught unaware by the approaching female elephant, this one with her calf, reports Zimbabwe’s Radio VOP. Hwange National Park is also where an American big game hunter tracked and shot dead the beloved Cecil the lion in 2015, sparking an international outcry. Botha leaves behind a wife and five children reports the BBC."
"Building a better battery is the holy grail for people who want better technology. Now researchers at the University of Texas, Austin say they may have found that battery  —   or something close. But their claims have sparked controversy. At the center of this debate is a towering figure in the world of science  —   John Goodenough, who teaches material science at the university. In 1980, his work led to the invention of the   battery  —   now crucial to powering everything from cellphones and laptops to electric cars. For a lot of people, that would probably be enough. But at 94 years old, he’s still at it. ”All the young people that I had as postdocs are getting ready to retire,” he says, laughing. Now, Goodenough and his team say they’ve created a new battery that may store up to five times more power than current ones. And, even better, such a battery would charge and recharge in a matter of minutes  —   all without exploding. The implications are huge. ”If we can really lower the price of these batteries, there’s so much you can do with it,” Goodenough says. Such batteries could store renewable energy to power homes, boats, drones  —   and be used to make cheaper electric cars with a longer range. ”You can name it,” he says. ”I mean there’s just so many things, so it should make a big revolution.” But how does it work? Helena Braga, the lead author in the research journal that announced the new technology, shows me around the lab. There are beakers lined up, wires connected to experiments going on in the wall and big cabinets that are sealed off so that nothing gets contaminated. ”Here we should always control the oxygen and the amount of water that we have inside,” Braga explains. That’s important because batteries work by storing chemicals that react to create an electric charge. Now, I’m oversimplifying this research. But where most batteries use a liquid to allow a charge to flow between the positive and negative sides, Goodenough’s team is using a solid  —   a lithium glass. In their paper, they say this glass along with a new design allows their battery to perform so much better. But many others are skeptical. ”If you could accomplish what this paper claims, it would rewrite the way we think about chemistry,” says Dan Steingart, a professor of mechanical engineering at Princeton. He says batteries are sealed, so it’s hard to know what’s really going on. And he doubts the team’s interpretation of what’s happening here. In fact, he says, the chemical ingredients shouldn’t be storing any power, what he calls ”anomalous capacity.” ”As revered and important as John Goodenough is,” Steingart says, ”the mechanism described to account for the anomalous capacity appeared to be in conflict with the first law of thermodynamics.” If that’s true, there must be something else to explain the results. And the promise of the battery is likely overstated. Goodenough responds to the criticism with a laugh. ”We haven’t violated any laws of thermodynamics, and we have tested it and we have proven we can get 3 volts over 500 cycles,” he says. He says companies have already shown interest in commercializing the invention  —   even while others in the world of science try to reconcile it with the very laws of physics. Mose Buchele reports on energy and the environment for member station KUT. You can follow him @MoseBuchele."
"Late Sunday and early Monday, Texas legislators advanced a version of the divisive ”bathroom bill” regulating transgender students’ restroom access and passed a law that would allow publicly funded adoption agencies to refuse to work with   parents based on religious objections. The ”bathroom bill” proposal, which would affect public schools, was introduced as an amendment to a bill about emergency procedures at schools. It passed the House on Sunday but still needs approval from the state Senate, which is expected to support it. The legislation to allow religious exemptions for adoption and foster care has passed the Senate on Monday and now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. From bathroom bill to bathroom amendment, The bathroom bill amendment comes after months of debate in Texas over a broader,   bathroom bill. Proponents of the legislation object to transgender people using bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity, often citing concerns over the privacy of women and girls. Critics of this proposal, and others like it, say such measures threaten the civil rights and safety of trans youths. The language in the amendment is narrower than versions previously proposed in Texas. It’s also smaller in scope than a law that passed with enormous backlash, and was later partially repealed, in North Carolina. It would cover Texas public schools, not all bathrooms in publicly owned buildings. The amendment says that schools must provide   bathrooms for ”a student who does not wish to use the facilities designated for use or commonly used by persons of the student’s biological sex.” It also prepares for a   with the federal government over the issue, writing that the attorney general will defend any school that wishes to fight a constitutional challenge over this issue. Although the language was pared down from previous versions, Democrats remained steadfast in their opposition, the Texas Tribune reports: ” ’Let’s be honest and clear here: This amendment is the bathroom bill, and the bathroom bill is an attack on transgender people,’ said state Rep. Joe Moody,   Paso. ’Some people don’t want to admit that. Maybe that’s because they’re ashamed, but make no mistake about it  —   this is shameful.’ ” State Rep. Chris Paddie of Marshall, the Republican who wrote the amendment, said it is ”absolutely about child safety . .. about accommodating all kids,” the AP reports. ”Sincerely held religious beliefs” exemption for adoption agencies, Meanwhile, the state Legislature has also approved a bill that would permit publicly funded adoption agencies to deny services to   parents based on religious objections. The text does not specify certain kinds of ”sincerely held religious beliefs” that are protected over others (as Mississippi’s ”religious freedom” law famously did). ”This bill doesn’t prohibit particular groups from adopting,” said Republican bill sponsor Sen. Charles Perry of Lubbock, according to the AP. ”It doesn’t establish one faith over another.” But critics of the bill say it would effectively enable   adoption agencies to turn away single, gay or   people. Supporters say it will expand the adoption opportunities in the state, by attracting religious organizations to participate in programs. The bill includes other provisions, protecting the rights of foster and adoptive parents to send their children to religious schools and ensuring that there would be no ”adverse action” against a foster parent or adoptive parent who refuses to help a child acquire birth control or an abortion."
"Updated at 3:25 p. m. ET, The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that struck down two North Carolina congressional districts, saying the state relied too heavily on race in drawing them. ”A State may not use race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines unless it has a compelling reason,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court’s opinion. ”In this case, a   District Court ruled that North Carolina officials violated that bar when they created two districts whose   populations were majority black.” The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling. NPR’s Nina Totenberg sums up Kagan’s opinion on the two districts at issue in Cooper v. Harris: ”In one district, she said that a substantial minority was perfectly able to elect the candidate of their choice. In the second district, the majority agreed with the lower court that the lines had been drawn not on the basis of political affiliation as the Legislature argued, but on the basis of race, which is illegal.” The   North Carolina state Legislature redrew the district lines after the 2010 census. Neither had     populations before the redrawing, and both did after. In District 1, in the northeast part of the state, the number of black voters grew to 52. 7 percent from 48. 6 percent, according to the court. Likewise in District 12, a narrow area in western North Carolina, the number increased to 50. 7 percent from 43. 8 percent. By boosting the number of black voters in these two districts, The Associated Press wrote, ”the result was to weaken   voting strength elsewhere in North Carolina.” At issue in this case, as Nina has reported, is the relationship between party affiliation and race: ”The U. S. Supreme Court has made clear over the past quarter century that racial gerrymandering is an unconstitutional   but partisan gerrymandering is still permissible. The question is: How do you tell the difference? Especially when the Voting Rights Act allows for some consideration of race to ensure minority representation, and when party affiliation often correlates with race.” Portions of Kagan’s opinion attempt to answer this question ”by moving the Court much closer to the position of treating race and party as proxies for one another in the American South,” University of California, Irvine law professor Rick Hasen wrote in a blog post. Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Kagan in the majority opinion. Justice Samuel Alito wrote an opinion agreeing in part and dissenting in part, and he was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justice Neil Gorsuch was not involved in this case. Alito wrote that the court already had a precedent for District 12, because the justices ruled on it in 2001, when it ”had the same basic shape.” At the time, a lower court had ruled that the Legislature’s main motive in drawing the district was to increase the number of black voters there the Supreme Court disagreed, in part because the challengers could not produce an ”alternative map” that could serve the same political goal ”without producing the same racial effects.” The districts at issue in the ruling no longer exist. They were hastily redrawn after the federal court ruled against them in February 2016, once again radically altering the map in the state. Republicans still won 10 of the 13 districts in the 2016 North Carolina House election. The Supreme Court’s decision is a ”major victory for voting rights plaintiffs, who have succeeded in turning the racial gerrymandering cause of action into an effective tool to go after partisan gerrymanders in Southern states,” Hasen added. ”[T]he Court made it clear that it would not allow states to get away with an unlawful racial gerrymandering by claiming that it’s just politics,” Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. ”This is a critical decision as communities prepare for the 2020 redistricting cycle, where states would still be able to purposely create legitimate   districts, consistent with this opinion.” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, applauded the decision: ”The North Carolina Republican legislature tried to rig Congressional elections by drawing unconstitutional districts that discriminated against African Americans and that’s wrong.”"
"Lawyers for Bill Cosby will get their first glimpse on Monday of potential jurors who will decide the fate of the    comedian in his criminal trial on sexual assault charges in Pennsylvania. Cosby has maintained his innocence in the face of three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault over a 2004 encounter at his suburban Philadelphia mansion. Now, after one and a half years of hearings, the trial is finally about to begin, pitting the story of Andrea Constand against Cosby’s defense. The charges are a   felony, and if the jury convicts Cosby, he could be punished with up to five to 10 years in prison. The jurors are expected to hear about a personal connection that stretches back years. Cosby and Constand met more than a decade ago while she was working for Temple University’s women’s basketball team. Constand viewed Cosby as an acquaintance and career mentor. On the night of Jan. 4, 2004, Cosby invited Constand, then 30, to his home in Cheltenham Township, Pa. What occurred that night has long been in dispute, but prosecutors say it amounted to criminal sexual assault. The trial was set in motion more than 10 years after that night because of a request by Associated Press reporter Maryclaire Dale. Dale filed a motion to unseal depositions of Cosby answering questions from investigators over four days in 2005. The conversations were part of a civil lawsuit that had been settled. WHYY will cover the trial on its new podcast ”Cosby Unraveled.” In 2015, a judge unsealed the bombshell document, unleashing a wave of allegations from more than 50 women who came forward with their own accounts of alleged unwanted sexual advances by Cosby. The federal judge, Eduardo Robreno, justified the release by saying that Cosby’s positioned himself as a ”public moralist,” which infused the depositions with real public value, something worth more than protecting Cosby’s privacy, Robreno wrote. Not long after, prosecutors in suburban Philadelphia announced criminal charges against Cosby citing the new information that surfaced from the public release of the deposition. The charges were handed down just days before Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations for the charges was set to expire. According to court documents, Cosby gave Constand three pills to relax during the encounter as she confided in Cosby about the possibility of leaving the women’s basketball team, a prospect that caused her much distress. Later in a civil lawsuit, she said she had thought the pills were herbal medicine. Cosby said that the pills were Benadryl and that the sexual contact that night was consensual. After swallowing them, Constand’s knees started to buckle and she began to lose consciousness, according to court documents. ”I don’t hear her say anything, And I don’t feel her say anything. And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped,” Cosby said in the deposition about the encounter. Around 4 a. m. Constand recalled feeling sore. She said her clothes and undergarments were in disarray, according to her civil suit. Constand left Philadelphia after the end of the season and moved to Ontario, Canada, where she began her training to become a massage therapist. Prosecutors plan to put Constand on the stand to retell this story. Legal experts say Cosby’s defense team will likely try to poke holes in Constand’s story to try to make her look unreliable. Lawyers may highlight how she waited more than a year to report the incident to police. ”That can lead to an argument that this just never happened,” said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He said Cosby’s legal team sees it this way: ”It was a figment of her imagination or she made it up in order to extort money from him because a person who was sexually assaulted would not behave that way.” Harris said prosecutors can point out that victims of sexual assault often have many reasons to not report something right away, not least of which, in this case, is Cosby’s fame and power. Celebrity, though, didn’t stop the dozens of other women from publicly accusing Cosby of sexual assault or misconduct. And one of them is expecting to take the stand to add to what Constand has to say. The second accuser’s story is critical, says Laurie Levenson, law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. ”What they’re going to focus on is that this was a signature crime, that Cosby had a particular way of drugging his victims and then having sex with him,” Levenson said. ”So even the testimony of one person, one additional person, is enough.” Last week, Cosby broke his silence and talked on a SiriusXM radio program. Cosby said he doesn’t plan to testify in his trial. The show also aired a clip of his daughter claiming that racism has played a major role in the case. ”Could be. Could be,” Cosby replied when asked whether he agrees. Shortly after, he elaborated on whether he thinks racial bias was a factor in his prosecution, saying, ”I just truly believe that some of it may very well be that.” The goal of the interview, says Northwestern University Law Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer, was to make Cosby look like the victim. She adds the interview was part of a concerted effort by Cosby’s defense team to try to shift the optics ahead of the trial. ”I think the hope is that if public opinion shifts outside of the courtroom, that percolates into the courtroom,” Tuerkheimer said. But before opening arguments begin, experts say the task ahead will be challenging: settling on 12     to sit on the jury. ”In a   case, one of the biggest worries are jurors with an agenda. Sometimes it’s an agenda of, ’I’m going to save Bill Cosby. I think he’s a hero.’ Sometimes the agenda is: ’There are too many celebrities getting away with these crimes.’ So both sides have to worry about that,” said law professor Levenson. Then there’s the issue of searching for jurors who have not consumed some of the ubiquitous news coverage of Cosby’s criminal charges. How are prosecutors and Cosby’s defense team going to find jurors who don’t have thoughts about the allegations even before Cosby’s steps foot in the courtroom? ”But remember,” said David Harris, law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. ”That’s not the test. The test is whether you can get 12 people who will say, ’I haven’t made up my mind, and I can be fair.’ ”"
"Four people died on Mount Everest in the past week, bringing the number of climbers killed on the mountain during the current spring climbing season to six. The death toll from the past week had stood at three, with one person missing, until the body of Ravi Kumar of India was spotted by Sherpas on Monday. Kumar, 27, became ill after reaching the summit on Saturday and apparently fell 650 feet, according to The Associated Press. Rescue crews were unable to retrieve his body. An American doctor also was among those who were killed. Roland Yearwood of Georgiana, Ala. was trying for a second time to conquer the mountain after surviving a 2015 avalanche triggered by an earthquake that left thousands dead. The circumstances around Yearwood’s death on Sunday were still unclear, but The Washington Post reports the weather was so bad that many climbers had to turn around halfway up the summit because of high winds. According to a profile on the Georgiana Medical Center’s website, Yearwood had been trying to climb the highest peaks on each of the world’s seven continents. The other two climbers who perished Sunday were Australian climber Francesco Enrico Marchetti and Vladimir Strba of Slovakia. Reuters reports that Marchetti, 54, apparently died of altitude sickness as he approached the summit some 27, 230 feet above sea level. Navin Trital of Expedition Himalaya, the company that helped coordinate that climb, tells the news service that Marchetti ”died while being brought down to a lower camp.” Strba, whose age has been reported as 48 and 50, died at around 27, 500 feet above sea level on the Nepali side of the mountain in the   death zone, where the air is very thin, according to Reuters. However, the circumstances surrounding his death were not entirely clear. According to The Associated Press: ”The Nepalese Tourism Department issued a record 371 permits this year to people to scale the mountain. The increased number of climbers this year is likely because many people were unable to climb in 2014 and 2015, when deadly avalanches disrupted the climbing seasons.” The number of mountaineers ”has fueled concerns about safety issues on the mountain, which continues to suffer environmental degradation,” reports The Post, which adds: ”Veteran climber Tim Mosedale wrote on his Facebook page earlier this month that little remained of the famed ’Hillary Step’  —   the near vertical wall of rock that is one of the final tests before the summit  —   but Nepal officials are disputing that, saying it was covered in heavy snow.” And yet on Sunday, according to the newspaper, about 60 climbers successfully made it to the summit on the Nepali side. ”From the moment it was identified as the highest mountain, it became an object of fascination,” historian and author Maurice Isserman tells LiveScience. ”There are more interesting mountains to climb. There are more beautiful mountains. But it’s a trophy. It’s the biggest.”"
"Updated at 2:15 p. m. ET, In a visit fraught with symbolism, President Trump on Monday became the first sitting U. S. president to set foot in the Old City of Jerusalem. The president and first lady Melania Trump visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, traditional site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection, and the Western Wall, part of the Jewish temple complex destroyed by Rome in 70 C. E. The walled Old City lies in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel from Jordan in the   War 50 years ago. Israel’s subsequent annexation of East Jerusalem is not recognized internationally. The White House said the visit was unofficial and private. The U. S. considers the status of Jerusalem unresolved and subject to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not accompany the president to the Old City. Nonetheless, Trump’s visit  —   and particularly his brief stop at the Western Wall, Judaism’s most revered religious site  —   carried profound significance. Trump said in joint remarks with Netanyahu later Monday that he was ”deeply moved” by the experience. ”It will leave an impression on me forever.” Netanyahu said the Israeli people ”applaud” the U. S. president for making the trip. According to the White House, the visit affirmed the theme of Trump’s first overseas trip, promoting unity and peace among the three Abrahamic faiths. The president stopped first in Saudi Arabia, home of Islam’s most sacred sites. Wednesday he is scheduled to visit Pope Francis in Vatican City. But when it comes to the Western Wall, real estate plays as large a role as religious faith. Israelis celebrate the ”reunification” of Jerusalem in 1967 as a national holiday. Its 50th anniversary, according to the Jewish calendar, begins on Tuesday night, just hours after Trump leaves Israel. The Wall sits at the base of a plateau which Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary. Since the 7th century C. E. it has been the site of Islam’s Dome of the Rock and the   Mosque. Trump did not visit the Muslim sites above the Western Wall. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and    Jared Kushner, who are observant Jews, joined the president and his wife. The chief rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovich and his wife Yael, greeted them. In accordance with traditional Jewish religious practice  —   in which men and women sit separately during prayer  —   Trump’s wife and daughter went to the women’s section with the rabbi’s wife. On the men’s side, Trump approached the Wall alone, rested the palm of his hand on it and stood silently for about 15 seconds. He placed a note between the massive stones, a   tradition of supplication. Israeli security closed off much of the normally bustling Old City in advance of Trump’s visit. A large temporary security screen blocked views of the Western Wall. Many Israelis remarked that the president’s visit implicitly affirmed Israel’s claim to the site, though Trump has made no public statement to that effect. In their press conference, Trump and Netanyahu reiterated their plans to work together. ”We understand each other,” Netanyahu said, thanking Trump for ”the change in American policy on Iran” and the ”reassertion of American leadership in the Middle East.” Referencing his earlier visit to Saudi Arabia, Trump said he believed ”a new level of partnership is possible” in the Middle East. ”This includes a renewed effort at peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. . .. I’ve heard it’s one of the toughest deals of all, but I have a feeling that we’re going to get there eventually,” he said. ”I hope.”"
"President Trump has landed in Israel for the second leg of his   trip abroad, which started in Saudi Arabia and will end in Italy. Trump’s flight to Israel was more notable than most Air Force One landings: His trip from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Tel Aviv, Israel, is believed to be the first direct flight between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations. One Israeli Airports Authority spokesman told The Associated Press that he didn’t know of any previous direct flights from Saudi Arabia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the flight in remarks on Trump’s arrival. ”Mr. President, you just flew from Riyadh to Tel Aviv,” he said. ”I hope that someday, an Israeli prime minister will be able to fly from Tel Aviv to Riyadh. May your first trip to our region prove to be a historic milestone on the path toward reconciliation and peace.” Trump gave a brief statement after landing. ”We have before us a rare opportunity to bring security and stability and peace to this region and to its people, defeating terrorism and creating a future of harmony, prosperity and peace,” he said. ”But we can only get there working together. There is no other way.” The president’s visit will include a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance center, Bethlehem and the Western Wall. NPR’s Daniel Estrin reports that, in anticipation of Trump’s trip, Israel has announced ”goodwill gestures”: ”According to an Israeli official, the Israeli Cabinet has decided to increase the hours at a key border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank and allow Palestinians limited building rights in some areas of the West Bank where Palestinian building is restricted. ”At the same time, Israel is offering a gesture to Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel will begin a process of legalizing some Jewish settlement outposts that were built without government permission.”"
"It should be obvious, but there are loads of spoilers below from the first four episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return.] In a year that has brought us some pretty trippy TV so far, Showtime’s Twin Peaks revival has managed to uncork the weirdest, wildest, most unfathomable four hours of television I have seen this year on a major media outlet. And for David Lynch fans, that’s probably going to sound like heaven. First off, be warned: Those who know little about the world of Twin Peaks will have a tough time understanding anything about Twin Peaks: The Return. This series  —   at least, judging by the first four hours unveiled online Sunday  —   is a serious love letter to hardcore fans of the original show and of Lynch’s work in general. (Those watching the TV broadcast only saw the first two hours.) Lynch  —   an eccentric, visionary director known for   films like Eraserhead and Blue Velvet  —   has assembled a rambling, oddly paced, hugely surreal story that vaults from a spiritual limbo to spots all over the country, including New York City and Buckhorn, S. D. As fans might expect, the action starts in the purgatory of the Black Lodge’s Red Room, the otherworldly space where Kyle MacLachlan’s FBI Agent Dale Cooper found himself trapped at the end of the original Twin Peaks, as his body was taken over in the real world by an evil entity known as BOB. What story there is in these new episodes seems to center on Cooper’s efforts to get out of the Black Lodge. Meanwhile BOB has mobilized a small group of hench people to help him prolong his time on the mortal plane. To get to that plot, viewers must dig through a mountain of symbolism, mysterious scenes and   visuals for story nuggets that surface only occasionally. But as any Twin Peaks fan can tell you, the story really isn’t the point. It’s the willfully eccentric characters and purposefully obtuse scenes that fuel enthusiasm for the show. And Lynch  —   who wrote these episodes with   Mark Frost and directed each one  —   takes advantage of Showtime’s premium cable environment to unleash his most unbridled vision yet. The first new episode begins with an old scene: Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer in footage from the show’s final 1991 episode, gesturing to Cooper inside the Red Room, promising to see him in 25 years. Later, Palmer’s prophecy is fulfilled when Cooper has a new conversation with her in the Red Room 25 years later she tells him, ”I am dead. Yet I live.” He goes on to speak with a   man and a tree that seems to have a brain, before pushing himself through a series of trippier and trippier environments, trying to reach the mortal plane. Told you it was surreal. Meanwhile, some of the law enforcement characters Cooper left behind in Twin Peaks have become aware of a mystery that needs solving. Sheriff’s Deputy Tommy ”Hawk” Hill gets a call from the Log Lady (a woman who receives psychic messages from a log she carries around) telling him that something is missing that has to do with Cooper, who disappeared 25 years ago. Cooper, as fans know, originally came to Twin Peaks to solve Palmer’s murder with the help of the town’s sheriff, Harry S. Truman. Here, we learn that Harry Truman is sick (actor Michael Ontkean is retired and declined to reprise the role) so an appropriately   Robert Forster pops up as his brother, Sheriff Frank Truman, joining Hawk to try to figure out what’s missing. But as much as Lynch has said he loves the characters and world of Twin Peaks, most of these original characters get very little screen time in the first episodes. Instead, Lynch widens his vision considerably, concocting another murder mystery in which a woman in South Dakota is killed and left in her bed, but police discover only her head, placed atop the body of a man, also likely murdered. There are more than 200 people in the cast of this revival, which gives Lynch lots of room to provide cheeky parts for actors you wouldn’t suspect. Michael Cera shows up as a character named Wally Brando, who is dressed like Marlon Brando’s character from the 1953 film The Wild One. David Duchovny reprises his role as transgender government agent Denise Bryson. Ashley Judd, Naomi Watts and Richard Chamberlain all make brief, unexpectedly entertaining appearances. It’s tough to communicate the eccentric, often deliberately stilted nature of Lynch’s scenes while also making the characters feel natural, and not every actor manages that in this revival. Forster and Matthew Lillard, who plays a school principal accused of killing the woman in South Dakota, seem to handle these scenes best. But there are a few too many moments when even the intentionally awkward scenes feel a little too mannered and not natural enough. MacLachlan is a longtime Lynch collaborator, and he shines in every oddball situation the director puts him in, from regurgitating a noxious poison as BOB to somehow sensing every slot machine that is about to deliver a jackpot while puttering around a casino as Agent Cooper. The first hour, in particular, starts very slowly, piled high with references to the old series and surreal,    moments. It’s as if Lynch wanted to weed out the casual   early to make sure those who stuck around for the next three hours were familiar enough with his style to enjoy what they were seeing. And it is an acquired taste. More literal minds  —   like mine  —   will have a tough time with episodes that can go for many, many minutes in between coherent plot points. When watching the original Twin Peaks, the core mystery of Palmer’s murder was enough to pull some of us through the thornier parts of Lynch’s storytelling eccentricities. But so far, the revival’s spine isn’t supported as strongly with the whodunit elements, which may be a problem for some viewers. In the back of my mind, I’m always debating whether the outlandish twists I’m seeing are part of a grand plan or just a fun bit of visual dexterity from Lynch. Given the director’s start as a painter, I’ve always wondered if his ideas for film and TV start as striking visual images, using words, plots and storylines to stitch the visuals together after he’d decided what the scenes would look like. And Lynch has obviously assembled these episodes with care. Advances in cinematography and special effects allow him to create images with more depth and texture than were possible on TV back in the 1990s. Even shots of a character unloading shovels or placing digital chips inside a camera are composed with care and filmed with a majestic breadth of vision. It wouldn’t be a Lynch project if loads of questions weren’t left unanswered. Like: Why can’t Cooper form a coherent sentence or remember his past life when he returns to the mortal plane? Who or what created a third incarnation of Cooper named Dougie Jones? Why is some unseen person paying people to try to kill both of Cooper’s doppelgangers? And when is Sherilyn Fenn going to show up as Audrey Horne, already? I also wish Lynch’s vision had more room for people of color. His affection for styles swiped from the 1950s and Midwestern flavors seems to preclude featuring many   people in these episodes, beyond performers like Latino actor Miguel Ferrer as FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield, Native American actor Michael Horse as Deputy Hawk and Nafessa Williams as an   sex worker named Jade. This new Twin Peaks won’t necessarily revolutionize today’s TV in the way the original challenged the staid formulas of   television. But for fans who have loved the show’s surreal, subversive spirit, Lynch has supercharged every element that made the original series a TV classic."
"The original Twin Peaks series really was original  —   one of the most inventive, unprecedented, sometimes thrillingly unique TV series ever presented. David Lynch directed several episodes, including the very best ones: the   pilot and the dreamy and nightmarish third episode with the Tibetan rock toss and the dancing,   dwarf in the Red Room. In 1990, Lynch and his fellow creator, writer and producer Mark Frost, premiered their show about the death of a   high school girl named Laura Palmer. The first season of episodes was unforgettable. The second season, with Lynch mostly off making movies, was much more incoherent and unsatisfying, but it still had moments, scenes and subplots that stood out from everything else on TV. A quarter of a century later, the original Twin Peaks is still being imitated. In all that time, the closest TV has come to the original is the   first season of FX’s Legion, by gifted TV producer Noah Hawley. But Twin Peaks always had a   way to mount its own sequel, especially one produced 25 years later. A dream sequence in the original series showed a woman who looked like a more mature Laura Palmer making a promise to an   Dale Cooper, the FBI agent, played by Kyle MacLachlan, who was investigating her murder. The scene was subtitled and hard to understand because this Laura, played by Sheryl Lee, is speaking backwards (sort of). She tells him, ”I’ll see you again in 25 years. Meanwhile.” And that exact scene is shown again at the start of Twin Peaks: The Return to set this   story cycle in motion. If you didn’t see last night’s   premiere, Showtime is making it extremely easy for you to correct that oversight. The first two hours of the new show will be rebroadcast on Showtime every night this week, and online viewers can see not only the first two hours, but also the next two  —   the ones that won’t be televised nationally until May 28. Fans of the original series  —   and I’m certainly one of those  —   should delight in every encounter with a familiar plot line, setting or character. So many characters are slated to appear over this new show’s run that it hardly seems to spoil anything to mention just a few: Businessman Ben Horne and his brother, Jerry, as well as receptionist Lucy, Deputy Andy and the mystic Log Lady all show up in the first two episodes and the federal agents played by David Duchovny, Miguel Ferrer and Lynch himself show up in the next two. But for newcomers to the narrative, that means nothing. And to anyone watching, there are new characters and new settings everywhere. The new Twin Peaks does take us to the fictional town of Twin Peaks, but, at first, only briefly. It also takes us, in the first four hours, to South Dakota, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and, most powerfully, to New York City, where a young man named Sam, played by Ben Rosenfield, has a very strange job in a very secluded warehouse loft. As Sam explains to his infatuated and seductive visitor, played by Madeline Zima (Californication) he’s supposed to keep a photographic record of this mysterious, giant glass box, and watch it very, very closely to see if anything appears inside.  Funny  —   that’s pretty much a description of my job. And after watching four of the 18 new hours of Twin Peaks, I’m still a long way from rendering a final verdict. After four hours, Dale Cooper still isn’t acting quite like himself  —   but there are some truly creepy scenes, ruthless murders, otherworldly settings and, as always, Lynch’s fondness for slow pacing and eccentric characters. Sometimes this new Twin Peaks almost seems like a parody of itself. Other times, it just feels wrong, with scenes that could have been written more solidly or eliminated entirely. But then there are times, in all four of these opening hours, when this new show feels so right, so dreamlike, so . .. so very Twin Peaks. I think I have to come back when this entire narrative is over to discuss whether this new Twin Peaks is a success. But for now, I’m very happy to do what I suggest you do, as well: Watch the box and see if anything really special appears inside."
"When I first became a professor, I was 26. And female. (I’m no longer 26 but still female.) The combination made me anxious about whether students would take me seriously as an authority on the material I was trying to teach. I made a point of introducing myself as ”Professor Lombrozo,” and I signed emails to students the same way  —   especially those addressed to  . . Lombrozo or those that simply used my first name. I bought some collared shirts from Brooks Brothers I made a point to never wear jeans when meeting with undergraduates. If I looked more like people’s mental image of a professor, I thought, maybe I’d be treated like one, too. Ten years later, I’ve stopped trying to dress like a    man, but I still receive plenty of email directed to the imaginary  . . Lombrozo, who apparently teaches my courses. I’m still the professor whom people wandering the halls choose to interrupt to ask where the bathroom is. When students ask for an extension on preposterous grounds, I can’t help but wonder: Would they make the same request of my male colleagues? Women in academia and other professions have countless anecdotes along these lines  —   stories of minor (and sometimes major) awkwardness or disrespect, episodes that make them wonder: Is this happening because I am a woman? The trouble is it’s hard to know. Maybe I’m the one interrupted for bathroom navigation because my office happens to be near some point of maximum disorientation. Maybe my male colleagues receive just as many emails directed to ”Mr.” and just as many preposterous requests from students. The anecdotal data suggest this isn’t so, but anecdotes are no substitute for careful data collection and analysis. That’s one reason why a new paper published in the Journal of Women’s Health is so valuable: It systematically evaluates one of the experiences that women anecdotally report, the experience of having their credentials (”doctor” or ”professor”) dropped in forms of address. The paper, authored by Dr. Julia Files and several   analyzed how speakers were introduced during Internal Medicine Grand Rounds at two medical campuses. Using video archives, they found 124 grand rounds that involved introductions and, from these, identified 321 episodes in which one person with a medical degree introduced another with a medical degree. Teams of coders went through these interactions, noting whether the person making an introduction was male or female, whether the person being introduced was male or female and whether the title of ”doctor” was used in the introduction. The results were striking. When a female doctor was introducing another doctor, she almost always used the doctor’s title: Male doctors were introduced as ”doctor” in 57 of 60 cases (95 percent) and female doctors were introduced as ”doctor” in 45 of 46 cases (97. 8 percent). But when a male doctor was introducing another doctor, the form of address depended on whether the doctor being introduced was male or female. Male doctors were introduced as ”doctor” in 110 of 152 cases (72. 4 percent) but female doctors were introduced as ”doctor” in only 31 of 63 cases (49. 2 percent). The anecdotal observation was confirmed: Women were less likely to be addressed with their title. And in this case, the effect was driven by differential treatment from men. Single anecdotes support multiple interpretations, and so do single studies. Perhaps these introductions do not reflect widespread differences in how men and women are addressed but instead show something particular to the two medical campuses that were studied. Perhaps the interactions (improbably) happened to involve more instances in which male introducers were close friends with female speakers than the reverse. Such alternatives are possible, and there’s always room for additional research. But alternative explanations become increasingly implausible when considered in light of a broader body of research revealing systematic disparities in how men and women are treated in many professional contexts. For example, a study published in 2003 found that letters of reference written for male doctors were more likely to repeat ”standout” adjectives (such as ”excellent” or ”exceptional”) than were letters of reference written for female doctors. A study published in 2013 found that scientific abstracts were judged to be of higher scientific quality when they were presented as authored by a man versus a woman. These examples are just two among many. The next time an email from a student comes for ”Ms. Lombrozo,” I won’t know if it has anything to do with my being a woman, and it will be hard to assess whether my absent title reflects a deeper issue that could affect my experience or effectiveness as a teacher or a scientist. But I will know that I’m not alone and that identifying systematic   disparities is a first step in understanding which matter most  —   and how to bring about change. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence say they have issued subpoenas for documents from two businesses operated by former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr,  . C. and Vice Chairman Sen. Mark Warner,  . in remarks to reporters, said the subpoenas were sent to Flynn Intel LLC and Flynn Intel, Inc. with a specific list of documents they are seeking. The senators did not say what to what those documents relate. As the   reported, Flynn has invoked the 5th Amendment and has refused to turn over any documents subpoenaed by the committee related to his interactions with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign. ”While we disagree with Gen. Flynn’s lawyers’ interpretations of the taking the Fifth, it is even more clear that a business does not have a right to take a Fifth if it’s a corporation,” said Warner. One subpoena has been served and another is in the process of being served, he added. Yesterday Flynn’s lawyers said that the committee’s subpoena was overly broad and that complying with them would ”feed the escalating public frenzy against him.” But Burr disagreed and said the committee has sent a letter to Flynn’s lawyers questioning the legal basis for his refusal to cooperate with the request for documents."
"Whales are the largest animals on the planet, but they haven’t always been giants. Fossil records show that ancient whales were much smaller than the currently living behemoths. So when did whales get so big, and how? A new study suggests it might be due to changes in climate that affected the food that some whales eat: krill and small fish. Instead of being spread throughout the ocean, lots of krill started being packed into a small area. Bigger whales were simply more efficient at eating the dense pockets of krill, and they beat out their smaller cousins. These whales use filters to feed on the tiny krill. Known as baleens, they include the largest whale on Earth  —   the blue whale. The baleen filter looks like bristles of a comb and is made up of keratin  —   the same stuff in our fingernails. To eat, the whale opens its mouth and takes in a huge gulp of water. Then it spits the water back out, and food like krill are caught in the baleen filter. It’s a highly efficient way to eat, allowing whales to pack on the pounds. But according to Stanford University researcher Jeremy Goldbogen, it can’t be the only reason whales got so big. ”Baleen evolved about 20 million years ago, and we didn’t see the evolution of gigantism until about very recently, about 3 million to 5 million years ago.” Goldbogen’s group looked back to see what was happening in the ancient oceans, and if there were any clues about what caused the massive growth spurt. They found that around the time baleens began growing larger, the ice ages started. The researchers think changes in climate led to increased runoff and more nutrients pouring into the coasts. At the same time, there was an increase in ocean upwelling, which occurs when wind pushes surface waters   and causing deeper ocean waters underneath surface waters to replace it. Those deep waters are often full of nutrients and food for the whales. The combination of the ice ages and more upwelling resulted in dense patches of food in the ocean  —   setting the stage for massive whales to win out. ”As animals are getting bigger, they’re getting much more efficient. So for every gulp, they’re getting tremendous amounts of energy” Goldbogen says. Think about it this way: It takes a lot of energy for a giant whale to open its giant mouth. If a lot of food is packed into a small space, those whales can swallow it up in one big gulp and it’s worth all the energy it takes. But if the food is spread out and the whales have to swim around opening and closing their mouths a lot  —   then it’s not great to be a big ol’ whale. So big whales are more efficient at eating the dense patches of food, while smaller whales might be more suited to eating food dispersed throughout the ocean. The changes in the ocean also allowed to whales to get really big, really fast. The researchers reported in the journal Royal Society B on Tuesday, that the whales increased in body mass from 10 tons to 100 tons in just a few million years. Although it’s hard to draw a direct connection between whale size and ocean dynamics 3 million years ago, other studies support the hypothesis. ”There are cases where food limitation or food production can basically control body size changes on very short time scales,” Goldbogen says referring to a 2013 study published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science. Therefore, ”the inference here is that if you have enough food available and very very efficient animals, that perhaps they can evolve larger and larger body sizes.” Goldbogen is more than a little excited to be studying these ocean giants. ”We’re totally living in a time of giants. Unlike no other time in Earth’s history” he says. ”We have a unique opportunity to study how the largest animals of all time function in these different ecosystems, and that’s a lot of fun.” Goldbogen thinks the next question is, ”Are whales still getting bigger? If we   a few million years into the future if food is not limiting, can they evolve even greater body sizes?” We’ll have to wait to find out."
"Conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa are putting over 24 million children at risk, according to alarming new research by the U. N. Children’s Fund. ”Beyond the bombs, bullets and explosions, countless children are dying in silence from diseases that could easily be prevented and treated,” says Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa. His staff put together some staggering statistics. In Yemen, a    battle between a   coalition and   rebels has pushed the country ”to the brink of famine.” Cholera has broken out in most of the country and UNICEF says   of the Yemeni population use unsafe water. More than two million children live under siege in Syria or in areas where aid groups struggle to reach. Attacks on health facilities are commonplace, too. Libya is second only to Syria on that front, with 20 attacks on health facilities in the past year. UNICEF warns that without new funding, over 1. 3 million Libyan children won’t be vaccinated against measles or rubella. The battle to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS has trapped 85, 000 children and water supplies in camps for the displaced are ”stretched to the limit.” Overall, 5. 1 million children are in need in Iraq. UNICEF also warns about power cuts and reduced water supplies in the Gaza Strip, where one million Palestinian children are in need of assistance. The report says 8, 000 cases of acute diarrhea have been recorded in conflict zones in Sudan."
"One day after a bombing claimed at least 22 lives at a concert venue in Manchester, England, Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that the U. K. is raising its terror threat level. The move, declared Tuesday evening, means members of the British military will be deployed throughout the country to supplement its police forces. ”It is a possibility we cannot ignore that there is a wider group of individuals linked to this attack,” May said. ”It is now concluded, on the basis of today’s investigations, that the threat level should be increased for the time being  —   from ’severe’ to ’critical.’ ” She added: ”This means that their assessment is not only that an attack remains highly likely, but that an attack may be imminent.” The announcement comes just hours after police identified a suspect  —      Salman Abedi  —   and ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombing. Greater Manchester Police also announced Tuesday that they had ”arrested a    man” in connection with Monday’s bombing. Dozens of concertgoers were also injured in the attack at the Manchester Arena at the end of an Ariana Grande show. The BBC reports this is only the third time the U. K. has reached the highest terror threat level under its alert system  —   and the first since 2007. In her brief speech Tuesday, May said the police request for military support ”is part of a   plan known as Operation Temperer, in which both the armed forces and the police officers involved are   and   to work in this kind of environment.” She laid out what to expect from the operation: ”This means that armed police officers responsible for guarding key sites will be replaced by members of the armed forces, which will allow the police to significantly increase the number of armed officers on patrol in key locations. ”You might also see military personnel deployed at certain events such as concerts and sports matches, helping the police to keep the public safe. In all circumstances, members of the armed forces who are deployed in this way will be under the command of police officers.” NPR’s Bill Chappell has more on the Manchester attack  —   everything that we know, as of Tuesday evening  —   right here."
"Updated at 4:55 p. m. ET Wednesday, The Manchester Arena was packed on Monday night with pop fans eager to hear Ariana Grande perform. Her songs are bubblegum pop, so picture the crowd: kids and their parents, teenagers with their friends, fans looking for a cheerful night out. At the end of the concert, an explosion struck near the arena. The blast killed at least 22 people and injured more than 50. Young women  —   including very young girls  —   are Grande’s core fan base. And authorities confirmed that children were among the dead, which was quickly apparent as friends, family and schools began reporting the names of some of those victims. The first to be named was an    woman. The second, an    girl. Saffie Rose Roussos, the    was attending the concert with her mother and sister, The Guardian reports. Saffie was initially identified as missing after the attack. Her photo was circulated online by friends of the family who knew that Saffie’s mother and sister had been hospitalized, but couldn’t find Saffie, according to Metro. Now her death has been confirmed by the headmaster of her school, Chris Upton, who told the Guardian Saffie was ”simply a beautiful little girl in every aspect of the word. She was loved by everyone and her warmth and kindness will be remembered fondly.” An    college student, Georgina Callander, was also named as a victim. Callander was studying health and social care at Runshaw College, which confirmed her death on Facebook. Callander had a buoyant social media presence, celebrating the singers, actors and shows that she followed passionately, and rejoicing over school achievements like finishing a long paper. She often sought photos with celebrities  —   in fact, took a picture with Ariana Grande two years ago. Her caption read in part, ”I HUGGED HER SO TIGHT AND SHE SAID SHE LOVED MY BOW.” On Sunday, she tweeted at Grande, ”SO EXCITED TO SEE YOU TOMORROW.” A    named Nell Jones died in the attack, the BBC reports. One of her classmates reportedly spent 10 hours in surgery but was said to be in stable condition in the hospital. Olivia Campbell, 15, was killed in the attack, her mother confirmed on Facebook. Charlotte Campbell, Olivia’s mother, had made an emotional appeal on Good Morning Britain when her daughter was missing, before she knew that she had died. ”We can’t get through to her,” Charlotte Campbell said. ”I’ve called the hospitals, I’ve called all the hotels where people say that children have been taken and I’ve called the police. . .. There’s no news and I’ve just got to wait. I’m waiting at home just in case she turns up here.” She pleaded with viewers for anyone who saw Olivia to lend her a phone. ”She knows my number,” she said. The call left one of the TV hosts in tears, struggling to hold it together on live TV.    Sorrell Leczkowski was attending the concert with her mother and grandmother. Sorrell died, her family told the Telegraph, while her grandmother is unconscious after a   operation. A    woman named Kelly Brewster died in the blast  —   with her body partially shielding her sister and    niece from the shrapnel, The Star reports. Her surviving family members are being treated in the hospital. Several parents were killed as they waited to pick up their children from the concert. Two friends  —   Alison Howe, 45, and Lisa Lees, 47  —   were killed as they waited for their daughters, the BBC reports, adding that Howe’s stepson called her ”a caring beautiful mum” on Facebook. Jane   51, a school receptionist, was at the arena with a friend to pick up the friend’s daughter, the BBC says. And Marcin and Angelika Klis were picking up their daughters. Michelle Kiss, 45, was killed in the bombing, Express reports. Her daughter was photographed in the aftermath of the blast, wrapped in an oversized coat and being comforted by a policewoman. A    man who repeatedly appeared on British TV and charmed Twitter users by promoting his mom’s crafts also died in the blast. Martyn Hett was a PR manager who had won a British TV competition where people vie to host the best dinner party, and also appeared on a   reality show. His boyfriend tweeted that ”our wonderful, iconic and beautiful Martyn didn’t survive,” the Telegraph reports. Another victim has been identified as John Atkinson, according to the Manchester Evening News. His age has been reported as 26 and 28. Friends called him ”a beautiful soul” and ”an amazing young man,” the newspaper reports. Greater Manchester Police say they believe they have identified all the victims and notified all their families, but they have not yet released a full list of names. GoFundMe has created a hub for fundraisers on the victims’ behalf. Meanwhile the dark side of the Internet has also made an appearance: Trolls have created fake victims and attempted to rally support for them as a hoax."
"British authorities still have many questions about the Monday night concert bombing in Manchester. They don’t yet know if the suicide bomber had any helpers or how he obtained his explosives. But this much is clear: Western European cities have become regular targets over the past two years, a period coinciding with the rise of the Islamic State and its calls for supporters to strike anywhere they can and with whatever weapons are at hand. The Manchester bombing is the 13th terrorist attack in Western Europe since the beginning of 2015. Collectively, they have claimed more than 300 lives. ISIS has been linked to most of the attacks, and on Tuesday, claimed responsibility for the concert bombing. By comparison, the United States has suffered fewer than 10 deadly terrorist attacks, with fewer than 100 deaths, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Calls to strike Europe, ISIS makes no secret of its desire to hit Europe. Its online magazine, previously named Dabiq after a town in Syria, is now called Rumiyah, or Rome. That’s because the group wants to eventually seize Rome, as the symbolic home of the pope and Christianity. ”We will not rest from our jihad except beneath the olive trees of Rome,” says the quotation under the magazine’s title. It’s attributed to Abu Hamzah   one of the group’s leaders, who was killed in Iraq in 2010. After surging across large swaths of Syria and Iraq in 2013 and 2014, ISIS declared a caliphate, an Islamic nation, in the territory it controlled. Since then, it has been pushed back in its core territory by the U. S. air campaign and by allied forces on the ground. But it has managed to claim terror attacks far from its base. ”The global reach of ISIS right now remains is largely intact, despite the extremely effective work that has been done to degrade ISIS in its caliphate,” Nicholas Rasmussen, head of the U. S. National Counterterrorism Center, said earlier this month in Washington. ISIS claimed responsibility for the Manchester bombing via the group’s Amaq media channel, the same way it has announced attacks in the past. British authorities say a suicide bomber set off his explosive in the entrance hall of the arena as the crowd was leaving the concert by American pop star Ariana Grande. The ISIS statement does not mention a suicide attacker, but says one of its ”soldiers” placed a bomb at the arena. Attacks began in Paris, The European spree began in France, when a gunman went on a shooting rampage on Jan. 8, 2015, at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The attack killed 17 people.  The steady stream of assaults has included   attacks orchestrated in great detail by ISIS, like coordinated shootings and bombings in Paris in November 2015 that left 130 dead. There have also been individual attacks, like one in March by a driver who plowed into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge and then began stabbing people as he tried to enter the British Parliament grounds. ISIS claimed responsibility for that attack, though British authorities have said they believe the man was acting alone and it’s not clear whether he had any links to the group.  Five of the dozen European attacks since 2105 have been carried out by gunmen, vehicles have been used four times and bombs were detonated in three instances. With the smaller scale attacks carried out by individuals, government officials and counterterrorism analysts say it can be difficult to determine the exact links, if any, between an attacker and ISIS. An attacker may simply be a   admirer inspired by the ISIS call to strike in its name. Analysts say it’s also possible that ISIS may claim some attacks  —   even if had no knowledge of them  —   to suggest an ability to hit far and wide. Also, government officials and analysts say that as ISIS continues to lose ground in its core areas of Iraq and Syria, the group is likely to place even greater emphasis on attacks further afield in an attempt to show its relevance. Fighters returning home, Thousands of European Muslims went to fight for ISIS and security officials have been concerned that they will return home and try to carry out attacks. Rasmussen, the U. S. official, says this remains a big worry, though the thinking is evolving. ”Intelligence agencies were initially concerned about the sheer numbers of ISIS returning home,” he said. ”But now the focus is on what’s expected to be a small number who have skills to recruit or carry out sophisticated attacks.” ISIS is struggling to hold on to parts of western Mosul in northern Iraq, the last urban area where the group has a foothold in that country. In Syria, the U. S. and its partners have been advancing toward Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital in the   part of the country. Even if ISIS is driven from the territory it controls, the group is expected to carry out   attacks in both Syria and Iraq, as well as terrorist strikes elsewhere. Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Updated at 5:55 p. m. ET, One day after a bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, killed at least 22 victims and wounded dozens more, police have identified a suspect: Salman Abedi, 22, who also died in the attack. The Greater Manchester Police says it’s investigating whether anyone helped to carry out the attack. Thousands of people packed Manchester’s Albert Square for a vigil Tuesday evening, mourning those who were lost, praising emergency workers for their help and vowing not to be intimidated by the threat of terrorism. More than 18, 500 people have donated to a fundraising page that the Manchester Evening News set up to benefit victims, which hit the goal of £500, 000 ($650, 000) in less than 12 hours. Monday night’s concert had drawn thousands of children and young people  —   many of whom were trying to leave when the blast hit. On Tuesday morning, some parents were still trying to determine the status of loved ones who were at the American pop singer’s show. While an official list of victims has not been released, those who died include an    girl, an    college student and a man in his late 20s. Nearly 60 people had injuries severe enough that they were taken to hospitals. Authorities have made at least one arrest. On Tuesday, the Greater Manchester Police tweeted, ”With regards to last night’s incident at the Manchester arena, we can confirm we have arrested a    man in South Manchester.” ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, via a statement issued Tuesday that promises more bloodshed, according to   group SITE. It’s not yet known what kind of ties the bomber may have had with the group. Here’s a roundup of the latest information and the facts that have been gathered so far: The attack, The explosion struck an area between Manchester Arena and the adjacent Victoria Train Station. Police say the first report came in at 10:33 p. m. local time  —   a time that seems to have been chosen because it meant crowds of concertgoers were starting to head home from the arena, which seats around 21, 000. After the large blast struck, chaos took over at the arena. (See Monday night’s story.) ”A bang went off, and everyone stopped and screamed. . .. We basically hit the deck,” witness Josh Elliott told BBC Radio 5 Live. ”It was bedlam . .. it was horrific. We got up when we thought it was safe and got out as quickly as possible. People were just crying and in tears. . .. Police cars were everywhere.” The morning after the bombing, emergency response personnel were still working in the area of the attack, police said in urging people to stay away from the arena. On Tuesday morning, a security alert prompted an evacuation at the city’s Arndale shopping center, further rattling nerves in Manchester. Police say a man was arrested, adding, ”This is not currently believed to [be] connected to last night’s attacks.” The investigation, In addition to at least one arrest, police tweeted Tuesday that they’ve ”executed warrants, one in Whalley Range, and one in Fallowfield, where a controlled explosion took place.” Those areas are next to each other, roughly 5 miles south of Manchester Arena. No further information was released about the activity. Immediately after the attack, police received more than 240 calls about the blast. Investigators are asking people who were at the concert to share images and footage from the scene if they believe it might help the investigation. They’re also seeking any dashcam video recordings that drivers might have from 8 to 11 Monday night. ”The attacker, I can confirm, died at the arena,” Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said at a news conference. ”We believe the attacker was carrying an improvised explosive device, which he detonated, causing this atrocity.” More than 400 officers were working on the investigation, according to Manchester police. ”The bombing marks the 13th deadly terrorist attack in Western Europe since the beginning of 2015,” NPR’s Greg Myre reports, ”and overall, more than 300 people have been killed. ISIS has been linked to most of the attacks.” The victims, Police say at least 22 people died and that 59 of those wounded were taken to eight hospitals in the Manchester area. Prime Minister Theresa May said, ”We know that among those killed and injured were many children and young people.” Officials have not released a list of those killed, but their identities are beginning to be reported by British media, citing confirmation from families and schools and on social media. Three of the people who lost their lives as Saffie Rose Roussos, 8 Georgina Callander, 18 and John Atkinson, whose age has been reported as 26 and 28. The concert had drawn Ariana Grande fans from across Northern England and Scotland, NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports. He says parents who had dropped teenagers off at the show have been scrambling for information police have posted a phone number for people to check on the status of their loved ones. ”It would appear that this was targeting kids,” Frank said, ”and I cannot remember something recently like that actually happening.” He added, ”It feels different.” From Manchester, NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reported this morning, ”There’s still a lot of chaos here because some of the concertgoers haven’t been found.” The attack is the deadliest terrorist strike in the U. K. since suicide bombings hit London’s Underground in July 2005. More than 50 people died in that coordinated assault. The suspect, ”I can confirm that the man suspected of carrying out last night’s atrocity has been named as    Salman Abedi,” Hopkins said Tuesday afternoon. Authorities have not released any details about the suspect. The Telegraph reports that Abedi was born in Manchester in 1994 after his family fled the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. The newspaper adds that they lived in the Fallowfield area  —   one region of Manchester that saw police activity Tuesday. Police blew open the door at Abedi’s house in Fallowfield, The Manchester Evening News reports, posting a neighbor’s video of the operation. The response, ”All acts of terrorism are cowardly attacks on innocent people,” May said, ”but this attack stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice  —   deliberately targeting innocent, defenseless children and young people who should have been enjoying one of the most memorable nights of their lives.” May later announced the U. K. would be raising its terror threat level to ”critical”  —   the highest level on the country’s alert system. ”It is a possibility we cannot ignore that there is a wider group of individuals linked to this attack,” May said, adding, ”This means that their assessment is not only that an attack remains highly likely, but that an attack may be imminent.” It also means the British military will be supplementing the country’s police force throughout the country. U. K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said, ”This was a barbaric attack, deliberately targeting some of the most vulnerable in our society  —   young people and children out at a pop concert.” Grande tweeted: ”broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words.” President Trump, speaking during his trip to Bethlehem, offered prayers for Manchester, saying, ”We stand in absolute solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom.” The president added: ”So many young, beautiful innocent people living and enjoying their lives murdered by evil losers in life. I won’t call them monsters because they would like that term. They would think that’s a great name. I will call them from now on losers, because that’s what they are. They’re losers. And we’ll have more of them. But they’re losers. Just remember that.” Reactions in Manchester, ”We are grieving today, but we are strong,” Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said Tuesday. A huge crowd gathered in the city’s Albert Square for a vigil that began at 6 p. m. local time. At the vigil, the crowd gave a loud ovation after hearing poet Tony Walsh read his ode to Manchester titled, ”This Is The Place.” They also observed a moment of silence for the victims and their families. ”This is an unbelievable turnout,” Bishop of Manchester David Walker said of the huge crowd. ”It shows that they are the few, but we are the many. We are Manchester.” Walker added, ”We are the successful world city we are because people have come from all parts of the world, and we have welcomed them, and they have made their homes here  —   and they have become Manchester, too.” The attack sparked a ”high response” from people wanting to donate blood, prompting the National Health Service to say, ”We have all the blood required at the present time.” The agency had initially asked for potential donors to register but then cut off new registrations, again citing an overwhelming response. ”A lot of people are coming and bringing sandwiches and pastries, and showing their support,” Soraya reports. ”There definitely is a solidarity here and a protectiveness and also a resilience.” British education officials say the attacks could have wide effects at schools, and that teachers should take students’ reactions into account in deciding whether to hold exams. While the area around the attack remains cordoned off, police said Tuesday, ”We want to remind people that Manchester will not be defeated  —   the city is open for business.”"
"When the Trump administration previewed its budget last March, it called it the ”hard power” budget. The latest details show that it greatly increases spending on defense, veterans and homeland security, and it slashes funding for major social safety net programs such as Medicaid and SNAP (also known as food stamps). Yet amid all that, the budget introduces a new entitlement: six weeks of paid parental leave. That program could end up requiring states to raise their unemployment taxes. Here’s the broad outline of what the budget says about the plan: Still, there are a lot of blanks to fill in if this is really to be viable. The Trump administration has said that the details will still have to be negotiated, according to The New York Times, and that states will design their individual programs. Here are a few of the questions that the administration and the states will have to answer if this plan is to move forward. How much leeway will states have? Unemployment insurance is funded by both state and federal payroll taxes and administered by the states. And while paid parental leave will be a federal mandate, the Trump budget says states will have ”broad latitude” to determine what their programs look like. Unemployment insurance itself varies by state, in terms of who is eligible for benefits and how big those benefits are. So given the ”broad latitude” here, there’s no way of knowing right now exactly what this program would look like and who would get which benefits (and how much). Could it pass Congress? Some Republicans will balk at the possibility of a new social program. For example, Idaho Republican Rep. Raúl Labrador, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, has said he is opposed to the government providing paid leave. Still other Republicans may favor different approaches. And House Speaker Paul Ryan told The New York Times he favored another plan, by Alabama Rep. Martha Roby, who wants employees to be able to save up their overtime pay toward paid leave. And while the plan does call for cutting ”improper payments” from the unemployment program  —   which the budget says could allow some states to cut unemployment payroll taxes  —   it could also, as we said above, require states to raise unemployment taxes. Those taxes are paid by employers. The potential for raising taxes on employers is something that would definitely give congressional Republicans some pause. ”This [proposal] seems very doable,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, who first pointed out the potential tax hike to NPR. ”It’s just surprising to see them put forward a tax increase.” Were Trump to push this proposal, he may find some allies across the aisle: Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York is one major proponent of paid family leave. Recently, she pushed a proposal to give federal workers six weeks of leave and said she was open to working with the Trump administration on it. Then again, the plan is by no means generous in the context of what many family leave proponents want it doesn’t provide paid leave for caring for aging family members, for example, and many proponents believe leave should extend beyond six weeks. Still, the fact that paid leave is even a policy consideration is a big deal, says Vicki Shabo, vice president at the National Partnership for Women and Families  —   even while she maintains that there are major problems with this proposal. ”I think it’s remarkable that it exists in the context of a Republican presidential budget,” she said. ”But that only gets you fairly skin deep when you think about the drastic harmful dramatic cuts and limitations in access to other vital supports.” Will this be enough money for families? Unemployment insurance isn’t nearly a full replacement for a worker’s wages  —   that’s simply how it’s designed. Because this plan is based off of the unemployment insurance system, the question is how much this plan would pay out, and whether that would be enough to cushion new parents who take time off from work. In 2016, unemployment insurance replaced about 46 percent of worker pay on average, according to the Labor Department. Given that level, as well as the differences in unemployment insurance by state  —   the maximum weekly payout is $235 in Mississippi, compared to well over $700 in Massachusetts  —   and given that ”broad latitude” we mentioned, it’s not clear how much families would receive. ”I would like a little more uniformity in terms of eligibility rules  —   in terms of knowing how much they would get if they have to take that leave,” said Aparna Mathur, a resident scholar at the   American Enterprise Institute. ”It’s a bit puzzling doing it through unemployment insurance, not having a clear stream of what that means for funding, what that means for how the states are actually going to implement it.” How does this fit with the rest of the president’s budget? In the broader context of the budget, this program is relatively small, at around $18. 5 billion over 10 years, and it would be paid for in part by creating savings in the unemployment insurance program. Unanswered, however, is which states could have to raise unemployment insurance payroll taxes, and by how much. In terms of philosophy, there appears to be a disconnect between this program and the budget’s other massive changes. The Trump budget makes major cuts to other social safety net programs. It would cut $616 billion over a decade to Medicaid and $190 billion to SNAP, most notably. But then, family leave has been championed by Ivanka Trump, which likely explains its inclusion among all the other sweeping changes. ”They’re going after all these low income programs, and it is a striking contrast that in the end we are actually going to talk about paid leave, which really isn’t the theme of the rest of the budget,” Mathur said. That could mean helping families financially during one stage of life while potentially leaving them hanging during another stage  —   once that   parental leave period is over  —   according to Shabo, of the National Partnership for Women and Families. ”You can’t suggest that working families should have a small parental leave benefit on the one hand and at the same time potentially take health insurance away from them and their families,” she said, referring to the Medicaid cuts in the budget. "
"President Trump’s proposed budget, released Tuesday, calls for a major reworking of the nation’s social safety net for   Americans. It would impose more stringent work requirements and limits on those receiving aid, including disability and food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. It would also give states more control of, and responsibility for, such spending.   advocates have vowed to fight the budget plan, which requires congressional approval to go into effect. Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, called the proposal ”a devastating blow to millions of low income people throughout the country, in a transparent effort to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and increase defense spending.” Overall, the budget would reduce spending on     programs by $272 billion over the next 10 years. Changes in SNAP alone would save $191 billion. These reductions come on top of plans announced earlier to cut billions of dollars in discretionary spending for the poor, in housing assistance, education and other programs. The proposed budget also includes cuts to Medicaid, which provides health care for the poor, by more than $600 billion over 10 years. It would boost spending for defense, border security and law enforcement. The administration’s motive is to get as many people back into the workforce as possible in an effort to spur economic growth, said OMB Director Mick Mulvaney. He noted that while the recession is long over, about 42 million people still receive SNAP benefits, far more than when the recession began. In 2008, there were 28 million recipients. ”We need people to go to work,” he said Tuesday. ”If you’re on food stamps, and you’re   we need you to go to work. If you’re on disability insurance and you’re not supposed to be  —   if you’re not truly disabled, we need you to go back to work. We need everybody pulling in the same direction.” But   groups note that while many food stamp recipients already work, they are unable to earn enough money to live on. They say the Trump plan is unrealistic, because it calls for cuts in job training and other programs that would assist people in getting jobs. ”They’re not putting money into the places that help people go to work,” said Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the   Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Dean noted that Trump’s budget would reduce job training grants next year by more than $1 billion, and does not increase child care assistance, support many   families say they need to work. SNAP already requires   childless adults to find a job within three months or have their benefits cut off. But that requirement was largely waived during the recession. In states that reinstated the limit, such as Kansas and Maine, many of those who had their benefits stopped were still not working a year later. Angela Rachidi, a research fellow at the   American Enterprise Institute, thinks the budget’s emphasis on work requirements is a move in the right direction, but says the administration’s proposals are premature. ”If we had a booming economy and all their assumptions worked out, then we wouldn’t need as much safety net funding,” she said, adding that it’s unclear if those getting benefits could find work now without receiving assistance. Rachidi said she would prefer a broader plan on how to help people get back to work. ”Then, if successful, we could look at reducing funding (for benefits),” she said. The budget would also limit the earned income tax and child care tax credits  —   crucial supports for   workers  —   by requiring that they only be available to those with Social Security numbers. It’s an effort to stop unauthorized immigrants from collecting the credits. Mulvaney said it’s unfair to use taxpayer money to provide payments to those working in the country illegally. ”It’s not right when you look at it through the perspective of the people who pay taxes,” he said. The budget also calls for a 15 percent, or $7. 4 billion reduction, in housing and community development assistance. Trump has proposed eliminating the $3 billion community development block grant program, which helps local communities revitalize distressed neighborhoods. He would also cut billions of dollars in public housing funds. Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, an advocacy group representing more than 100   organizations, called on lawmakers to ”reject the bleak and dangerous vision in President Trump’s budget . .. The basic living standards that everyone needs  —   enough food, health care, and housing  —   are shredded, not strengthened.” Congressional Republicans generally favor cutting domestic spending to help pay for increases in defense and tax cuts. But some of Trump’s spending proposals are so severe, members of both parties are likely to resist, if only because many of their constituents rely on these programs. ”It’s a problem  —   it’s a big problem,” Kentucky Republican Harold Rogers, a powerful member of the House Appropriations Committee, told the Washington Post of the president’s Medicaid plans. ”I’ve got one of the poorest districts in the country, with lots of Medicaid recipients as well as other programs.”"
"Rural communities dependent on U. S. public lands for everything from outdoor recreation to hunting to livestock grazing could be hit hard under the Trump administration’s latest budget proposal unveiled Tuesday. Still subject to approval by Congress, the president’s budget includes a roughly $1. 4 billion cut to the Department of Interior and far deeper cuts to the Department of Agriculture: combined the two agencies own and manage more than 700 million acres of public lands, mostly in the West. Here are three items of note in the Department of Interior budget alone that aren’t generating much attention so far. But they could disproportionately hit rural communities, many of which tended to support President Trump in last year’s election. As a congressman representing Montana, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was a vocal supporter of the Land and Conservation fund. But at a budget briefing for reporters Tuesday he appeared to sound a different tune on future land acquisition and conservation more generally. ”Rather than simply adding more land, we want to make sure we take care of what we have,” Zinke said. Like many of his predecessors, Secretary Zinke has articulated a broad, if sometimes complicated, vision for the future of public lands management. On the one hand, he’s pledged to be a conservation champion in the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. But he’s also promised to boost the economies of rural American towns by increasing mining and other development on public lands that surround them. For sure, this reflects the often competing ”multiple use” mission of DOI agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management. But Zinke predicted that reversing   policies restricting   drilling alone could bring revenue back for many of the restoration and conservation programs currently facing cuts. ”Some of it has been due to oil and gas pricing, but not all,” Zinke said. ”A lot of it is uncertainty that we have not been a good partner with industry.” Still, many influential sportsmen and public lands groups say the administration’s budget is directly at odds with many of the conservation values Mr. Zinke espouses. ”When you talk about on the one hand, increasing access, and then you cut out the very tool to do that, it’s hard to reconcile,” said Land Tawney, executive director of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Tawney says the DOI’s budget proposal is reflective of a broader trend that he says has been building in Washington in recent years: ”when you starve these agencies of their budgets, you make them look sick, so we can [then] think about divesting in them.” As much of the rural West in particular has been transitioning from a   economy to one more dependent on outdoor recreation, groups like Tawney’s have flexed their political muscle recently. They say they plan to press Congress in the coming weeks as well, if the administration’s budget proposal moves forward. Meantime there is early and widespread speculation that much of the budget stands little chance of passing Congress, at least in its current form, even with the president’s party in control of both the House and the Senate. For his part Tuesday, Secretary Zinke seemed to view the latest budget proposal as a conversation starter, even if it’s controversial. He argued that many federal land agencies need to be overhauled and updated with a longer term vision. ”I view this as a reorganization to look at how best to manage, protect and use our public lands in the next 100 years, given that we have a number of challenges,” Zinke said."
"President Trump’s proposed budget released Tuesday rests on a key assumption: The economy will grow much faster than it has in recent years  —   and at a more robust pace than most analysts predict. Trump’s proposal for fiscal 2018 will seek to balance the federal budget over the next decade by making deep cuts to   programs such as Medicaid, food assistance and disability benefits, and by trying to goose economic growth through deregulation and tax cuts. Those policy proposals already face opposition, even from some members of the Republican Party. One of the overarching debates, however, has to do with underlying economic assumptions made in the budget, which are also coming in for heavy criticism. The proposal promises to close the budget deficit by 2027 by cutting federal spending by $3. 6 trillion overall, but it does so by assuming an economic growth rate that is much higher than what the Congressional Budget Office projects it will be. The administration sees roughly $550 billion of that offset coming from ”assumed economic growth,” says Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ”I say ’assumed economic growth,’ because they don’t show us any math of how they get there.” The White House’s assumption is that economic growth, as measured by gross domestic product, will reach 3 percent annually by 2020, and then remain there. ”It’s far above anyone else is projecting,” Goldwein says. U. S. growth during the first quarter was 0. 7 percent, and for all of last year it was 1. 6 percent. The CBO projects U. S. economic growth will average nearly 1. 9 percent over the next decade. Other estimates range between 1. 6 and 2. 1 percent, but no economist, Goldwein says, has arrived at figures close to the 3 percent the White House is projecting. The White House, however, says the naysayers have it wrong. ”The focus is sustained 3 percent economic growth,” said White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said during the unveiling of the president’s budget. Critics who dispute the possibility of that, he said, are wrongheaded. ”It used to be normal. Ten years ago, it was normal.” He calls estimates below 1. 9 percent annual growth ”a pessimistic look at what the potential for this country and for what this country’s people is.” Mulvaney argued the administration considered how various policies and deregulatory measures would help increase economic output, lifting the revenue base and helping to achieve a balanced budget. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s Goldwein calls that magical thinking. The 1990s saw a boom with about 3. 5 percent growth, but he says that was a rare circumstance  —   during which baby boomers were in their peak working years. Things have changed. ”We have an aging population, and that means significantly lower   growth and it also means lower productivity and lower investment,” Goldwein says. ”The numbers just don’t add up.” Some of the administration’s proposals, if adopted, could help boost economic growth, he says, including deficit reduction, and helping more people collecting disability insurance benefits go back to work. But those would contribute only slightly to economic growth and wouldn’t be enough to reach a 3 percent rate. There are other assumptions and omissions in the president’s budget that Goldwein finds problematic: One is that it assumes   spending will continue to decrease to roughly half the current levels. The budget also does not include the   plan the administration has touted, which most estimates figure would add more than $5 trillion to the budget. ”That’s nowhere to be found in this budget.” The administration is double counting its economic benefits, says Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, now a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. ”The administration has said that economic growth will pay for their tax cut, and now in this budget, economic growth will pay to lower the deficit, and you can’t have both,” Furman says. Moreover, the administration’s budget assumes that it will continue to collect revenue at today’s tax rates  —   which it has repeatedly said it intends to lower. ”So, it’s a mistake. It’s wrong. If a central policy is tax cuts, you should include tax cuts in your budget and account for them.” Furman also says it’s been nearly a decade since the last recession, and just about every economist believes another is inevitable over the next decade. But because the 3 percent growth projection is an average, that would mean the economy would need to grow even faster in some years."
"Top officials at the U. S. Department of Agriculture didn’t even try to act enthusiastic as they unveiled details of their agency’s proposed 2018 budget, which includes drastic cuts in spending. ”We’re going to do the best we can,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. ”It’s my job to implement that plan.” The broad outlines of this budget, with its 20 percent cut in the USDA’s discretionary spending, had been released two months ago. This week, it became clear exactly what the Trump administration wants to cut: agricultural research, food aid for the poor, and programs that benefit small rural communities. The budget also includes a surprise that’s particularly unwelcome to big Midwestern farmers. It proposes new restrictions on   crop insurance, a program that is particular favorite of grain farmers. The changes, which would require congressional approval, would limit the ability of large farmers to take advantage of those programs and cut government subsidies by more than $2. 5 billion each year. In a statement, the American Farm Bureau Federation said that ”this budget fails agriculture and rural America.” Similar criticism came from the American Soybean Association and the National Corn Growers Association. The impact of those cuts, however, is dwarfed by proposed restrictions on the SNAP program, which helps the poor buy food. Those changes would cut SNAP spending by $4. 6 billion in 2018, increasing to more than $20 billion annually by 2022. The budget reduces funding for the Agricultural Research Service by $360 million, or 26 percent. This would mean closing the doors at 17 research centers. It also completely eliminates the country’s flagship program of international food aid, called Food For Peace. The current USDA budget includes $1. 7 billion for that program. All of this, of course, is merely a proposal for Congress to consider, and by all indications, Congress is inclined to reject much of it. The Republican chairmen of the agricultural committees in both the Senate and the House released a muted joint statement that said nothing at all about the proposal itself, but promised to ”fight to ensure farmers have a strong safety net.” They also pledged ”to take a look at our nutrition assistance programs to ensure that they are helping the most vulnerable in our society”  —   a signal that they hope to revive the   coalition in Congress that has traditionally defended a package of food aid and farm subsidies. Congressman Collin Peterson ( ) said in a statement that ”this budget is going nowhere on Capitol Hill but it is still a statement of priorities and should be of concern to all rural Americans.” Sen. Debbie Stabenow ( ) called it ”harsh and  .”"
"President Trump’s fiscal plan released on Tuesday claims to balance the budget deficit while cutting funding for safety net programs like food stamps and increasing defense spending. Read more about budget’ aims. Here’s what the plan would mean for: medical research, education,   Americans and economic growth in the U. S. Unlike the White House blueprint outlined in March, this budget includes ”mandatory” spending, including such   items as Medicare and Social Security. Read the full text."
"As a TV critic who keeps an eye on social issues, I’ve long been critical of ABC’s The Bachelor and The Bachelorette franchises. They urge viewers to believe completely contrived events are somehow spontaneous. They also support an unhealthy princess fantasy in which romance is conflated with an   class wonderland filled with reality TV fame and luxury resort getaways. So why do I find it so important that The Bachelorette is welcoming its first black woman as a star this season? The answer came as I watched Rachel Lindsay navigate what turned out to be a pretty typical Bachelorette debut episode, which aired Monday night. The show hit all the expected notes: a quick review of how she was rejected by Nick Viall in the last Bachelor season, a hasty reminder of her background as an attorney and a turn into the new life she was hoping for at the end of the Bachelorette ”journey.” But part of the show’s princess fantasy involves building up its bachelorette as an archetype of beauty: a smart, personable,   woman who a bevy of Abercrombie  Fitch model lookalikes would fight over. And this time  —   for the first time  —   that woman is black. It’s worth noting that until relatively recently people of color  —   especially black people  —   have often been shut out of any significant representation on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. In 2012, two black men sued the show for racial discrimination (a legal effort that ultimately failed) and a different black woman (dentist and model Misee Harris) conducted a futile campaign to be chosen as a bachelorette just a few years ago. Occasionally, the show has presented moments where black contestants have struggled, but for the most part it has ignored or papered over its blind spots on race. So it was with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation that I watched Lindsay meet 31 suitors in hopes that one would turn out to be Mr. Right. (And one did: Lindsay told NPR and other media outlets that she got engaged at the end of this season, which was filmed in advance). Previous recent iterations of The Bachelorette have only featured about 25 or 26 ”suitors,” so it was odd to see so many guys on Lindsay’s season. And even though the field of men was the most diverse in franchise history, there were still only 11 black men in the running. Given how previous shows have been dominated by white suitors, I thought there might have been even more people of color presented (and if they wanted to more closely reflect the population, Hispanic guys were severely underrepresented). My suspicion is that ABC was worried about having enough white guys in the mix for their mostly white audience, while making sure there was also lots of racial diversity onscreen. The pattern of Monday’s episode was familiar. Lindsay met the guys and each one was a ”type.” There was DeMario, the overconfident one who brought Lindsay plane tickets and a plan to elope in Las Vegas together Bryan, the suave one who spoke to her in Spanish and won a rose for best first impression and Lucas, the crazy one who kept shouting an outlandish catchphrase and caused all sorts of drama when he was picked last among the 23 men chosen to move ahead  —   as if producers would let such a great   head home after just one episode. Hopping out of limousines to meet her for the first time, some of the guys resorted to gimmicks that felt a bit contrived: breaking a block of ice with a sledgehammer (breaking the ice  —   get it?) bringing a creepy mannequin as a conversation starter, walking up with a marching band and, of course, Lucas with his      obnoxiousness and  . Also as usual, there wasn’t much acknowledgement of the elephant in the room. Though host Chris Harrison began the episode by saying, ”Let’s take a look at the bachelorette everybody’s talking about,” he never really said why people were talking about her. One of the black men noted how diverse the pool of suitors was and there was an awkward moment where the episode ended with several suitors freestyle rapping. (Really, Bachelorette?) For some, that may be a great development a way to emphasize the universality of everyone’s experience. But The Bachelor and The Bachelorette franchises have always glorified an ideal culture that is both   class and very white. Even among the 23 men left, just eight are black, so the contestant pool will be still dominated by white men. And in the preview scenes flashed at the episode’s end, it seems they’ll be enjoying the typical array of luxury resorts and getaway experiences  —   places and activities that rarely include other black people. From the show’s perspective, this was likely a home run: They presented a diverse field of contestants and a black bachelorette without upsetting the bedrock formula that makes this ”reality TV” soap opera successful. (According to previews, we can look forward to one suitor’s surprise girlfriend bursting onto the show and ramping up the drama). But for those of us hoping to see some of the show’s basic messaging about culture, class and race changed, it was a disappointment. True diversity isn’t just about expecting black people to assimilate into a mostly white world it’s about widening that world to reflect the experiences of everyone in it. With any luck, maybe they’ll get around to that before this season is over."
"In the early 1920s, before he became an icon of the American songbook, composer Cole Porter wrote the score for a protest ballet. The production, called Within the Quota, criticized restrictive immigration laws that had been passed by Congress. According to Princeton music professor Simon Morrison, who rediscovered the score two years ago in Yale’s Porter archives, the show opened in New York at a time of fearful backlash against Polish, Greek and Australian immigrants arriving in the U. S. after World War I. Now, to protest President Trump’s   stance, the Princeton University Ballet is reviving the production. Morrison, who produced the show, says after the election, ”[I] looked again at the score and thought about its context and thought, Oh my God, this is actually what it was about. These things were real and actually we’re feeling them again now.” The updated ballet emphasizes the parallels between the political climate of the 1920s and that of 2017. ”To my mind, the issues are frightfully the same,” Morrison says. He explains that in both eras,   hostility was rooted in ”fear about people losing their jobs, fear about American culture being diluted.” According to The New York Times, the 1920s production of Within the Quota was the first   ballet set to music by an American composer. At the time, Porter was based in Paris and relatively unknown in the U. S. ”He was not even established in New York,” Morrison says. The original production tells the story, in dance, of a newly arrived immigrant who meets various American characters  —   an heiress, a movie star, a ”jazz baby,” a cowboy  —   as well as dark forces who want to kick immigrants out of the country. The Princeton revival, which was choreographed by student Julia Jansen, updates the characters to include an heiress who suggests Ivanka Trump and a Lady Liberty dancer who takes selfies. The set is also an update of the 1923 production, which included large posters of newspaper headlines instead of posters, the revival projects satirical political headlines onto the back of the stage. The show’s finale, a number called ”Sweatheart of the World,” hints at the signature style Porter became famous for decades later. ”The musical language is 100 percent Cole Porter,” Morrison says. ”If you added lyrics and put it in a smoky bar somewhere, it would sound 100 percent ’Night and Day’ Cole Porter.” The   orchestra Penguin Café performed the music  —   Porter’s only score for ballet  —   at the Princeton debut. Daren Berry, who plays percussion, violin and ukulele, says, ”It’s an incredible piece of work. . .. It’s not designed to be listened to it’s designed to be watched.” Earlier this month, there was a packed house for the show’s opening night. Producer Simon Morrison says Within the Quota will eventually tour the country, as it did in the 1920s. ”This work, which was nothing but a bunch of yellow manuscript paper, is back and is very, very relevant,” Morrison says. ”I think there’s something really magical in that.”"
"A remarkably complete fossil of a young child suggests that key elements of the human spinal structure were already in place in an ancient human relative 3. 3 million years ago. The child, about three years old, likely died suddenly and quickly drifted into a body of water, where she was covered in sediment that eventually hardened to sandstone, Zeray Alemseged of the University of Chicago tells The  . His team found the   fossil in 2000 in Dikika, Ethiopia, and for years they have been painstakingly excavating it, revealing what they say is the only known backbone with completely preserved bones of the middle and upper back dated prior to 60, 000 years ago. Their findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Now, Alemseged says this shows ”that the human type of segmentation and numbering of our backbone emerged 3. 3 million years ago, and this fossil provides us for the first time the hard evidence, the fossil evidence, to confirm that indeed the structure is as ancient as we’re claiming it now to be.” The fossil is nicknamed Selam, which means ”peace” in Ethiopian Amharic. She is from an early human relative species called Australopithecus afarensis. The famous Lucy fossil is also from this species. The spines of our early ancestors have been mysterious. They are not well preserved in the fossil record, Alemseged explains, because they are much more fragile than other parts of the animal, like teeth. This specimen is particularly unique, because it belongs to a child whose individual vertebrae are ”still in the process of fusing and forming.” He says that’s why ”the data is so unique, shedding light on one of the key milestone events in human evolution and that is the transition from the more   arrangement of the backbone to the more humanlike arrangement of the backbone.” The specimen has the same number of neck (seven) and   vertebrae (12) as modern humans, while African apes have 13   vertebrae. It is   that this species walked upright on two legs (though there’s some debate about how much time they spent climbing). But this backbone sheds more light on how they moved. ”The specimen says yes, they had the ability to walk like we do today, like humans, but there are some minor differences,” Alemseged says. ”Particularly the transition from the middle part of the backbones to lower part of the backbone, showing that they may have been good walkers, upright like us, but they were clearly not the runners and the endurance walkers that humans are today.” That’s because they ”don’t seem to have the ability to rotate their backbone, even though they had the ability to extend and flex their backbone,” he says. Scientists spent 13 years working on the fossil at Ethiopia’s National Museum it later traveled to Grenoble, France, for   imaging. ”It’s a good example of how much effort you have to put in to get   and reliable information,” says Bernard Wood, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University who was not involved in the research. ”It’s an excellent piece of science.” He described the fossil found at Dikika as the ”gift that keeps on giving,” because its completeness allows researchers to be quite sure about their conclusions. It’s high praise for research on ancient fossils, where findings are often highly controversial. Richard Potts, the director of Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, echoed the sentiment, calling it an ”excellent job of analysis and interpretation.” At the same time, he stressed that other,   vertebrae, such as fossils found in Sterkfontein, South Africa, have previously suggested that a humanlike species more than 2 million years old had some of the same spinal features."
"Health officials from more than 180 countries meeting in Geneva on Tuesday have elected a new leader for the World Health Organization. A former health minister from Ethiopia takes over an agency that’s struggled recently to find the funding and exert the political leadership it needs to tackle the world’s health problems. After two rounds of secret balloting delegates at the World Health Assembly in Geneva chose Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to be the next  . Tedros, who goes by his first name (pronounced  ) won the job over Sania Nishtar, a cardiologist from Pakistan, and David Nabarro, a physician and WHO veteran from Britain who led the U. N.’s response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014. Tedros, who campaigned as ”Dr. Tedros,” is not a medical doctor he has a Ph. D. in community health. All three candidates promised to reform the famously bureaucratic WHO, champion universal health care and make the world safer from the next global pandemic. In his final pitch for why he should lead the WHO, Tedros emphasized his experience as Ethiopia’s health minister, overseeing the expansion of basic health services across the country. ”In six years we built more than 16, 000 health posts, 3, 000 health centers, deployed more than 40, 000 health extension workers,” he said. This model of basic but universal health care in the East African nation has been widely praised. ”It was a massive effort delivering massive results,” he said. But the program was carried out by an authoritarian government in Addis Ababa. During a campaign in which many people have been calling for more openness at WHO, Tedros was criticized for Ethiopia’s habit of downplaying domestic cholera outbreaks by labeling them ”acute watery diarrhea.” But Tedros promised that transparency will be at the heart of the WHO once he’s in charge. ”WHO must evolve to be more transparent, responsive, effectively managed, adequately resourced,” he said during his final pitch. Tedros takes over a World Health Organization that has struggled to live up to expectations. WHO sets global health policy and advocates for improved living conditions, especially for the world’s poor. But it’s also been accused of being overly bureaucratic, slow, wasteful and ineffective. Outgoing   Dr. Margaret Chan admitted that WHO failed to respond quickly or forcefully enough to the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014. Paul Spiegel, the director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the health challenges facing the world are growing more and more complex. ”This is a make or break time for the World Health Organization,” Spiegel told NPR. Infectious disease outbreaks like Ebola and Zika remain a major concern. ”We are still awaiting for example a massive influenza outbreak that could kill tens of millions of people,” Spiegel said. In addition to outbreaks,   diseases like heart disease and diabetes have become huge health problems globally. Spiegel says the world right now needs a strong WHO and WHO needs a strong leader. Tedros, the first African to be the   of WHO, will step in to that job in Geneva on July 1.  "
"Updated at 3:38 p. m. ET, Former CIA Director John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday that Russia ”brazenly interfered in the 2016 election process,” despite U. S. efforts to warn it off. Brennan testified in an open session of the committee, one of a handful of congressional committees now investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Brennan said he told his Russian counterpart, the head of Russia’s FSB, last August that if Russia pursued its efforts to interfere, ”it would destroy any   prospect for improvement in relations” between the two countries. He said Russia denied any attempts to interfere. In his opening statement, Brennan also recounted how he had briefed congressional leaders in August of last year, including House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees about the ”full details” of what he knew of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Brennan said he became convinced last summer that Russia was trying to interfere in the campaign, saying ”they were very aggressive.” Brennan said he is ”aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U. S. persons involved in the Trump campaign.” Brennan said that concerned him, ”because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals,” and that it raised questions about whether or not the Russians ”were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.” Brennan added he didn’t know if ”collusion existed” between the Russians and those he identified as involved in the Trump campaign. While Brennan would not specifically identify any individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had contacts with Russian officials and would not opine as to whether there was any collusion or collaboration, he did tell lawmakers why he was concerned about the contacts occurring against the general background of Russian efforts to meddle in the election. Brennan said he’s studied Russian intelligence activities over the years, and how Russian intelligence services have been able to get people to betray their country. ”Frequently, individuals on a treasonous path do not even realize they’re on that path until it gets to be too late,” he said. Brennan said Russia was motivated to back Donald Trump in the presidential election because of a ”traditional animus” between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He told committee members there had not been a good relationship between Putin and the Clintons over the years. What’s more, Brennan said Putin blamed Hillary Clinton’s actions as secretary of state during the Obama administration for domestic disturbances inside Russia. He said Putin was concerned Clinton would be more ”rigid” on issues such as human rights if elected president. But Brennan told the committee he believed that Russia anticipated that Clinton would be the likely winner of the presidential race, and that Russia tried to ”damage and bloody” her before Election Day. Had she won, Brennan said, Russia would have continued to attempt to ”denigrate her and hurt her” during her presidency. If Russia had collected more information about Clinton that they did not use against her during the campaign, Brennan said they were likely ”husbanding it for another day.” On another question, Brennan criticized President Trump’s reported sharing of classified intelligence with Russia officials. Brennan said if reports were accurate, Trump violated ”protocols” by sharing the information with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador to the U. S. Brennan also said he was ”very concerned” by the release of what he said appears to be classified information from the Trump administration. He said there appear to be ”very, very damaging leaks, and I find them appalling and they need to be tracked down.” Reacting to Brennan’s testimony, a White House spokesman said ”This morning’s hearings back up what we’ve been saying all along: that despite a year of investigation, there is still no evidence of any   campaign collusion, that the President never jeopardized intelligence sources or sharing, and that even Obama’s CIA Director believes the leaks of classified information are ’appalling’ and the culprits must be ’tracked down. ’” Under questioning from Rep. Ileana    . Brennan said the Russians have been trying to disrupt Western elections since the 1960s, and that they’ve quickly adapted to the times. Brennan pointed to the ease with which Russia was able to hack Democratic operatives’ emails, which were then published on WikiLeaks. ”The   now really provides so much more opportunity for troublemaking and the Russians take advantage of it,” he said. Brennan said the use of spear phishing, and ”whatever else so that they can then gain access to people’s emails, computer systems networks,” is something that the Russians are adept at. He said Russia used WikiLeaks as a ”” or   and that protests by WikiLeaks that it is not working with Russia and Russia’s claims it is not working with WikiLeaks are ”disingenuous.” Brennan led the CIA during the Obama administration from  . Prior to that, Brennan was a top counterterrorism and homeland security adviser to President Barack Obama. Tuesday’s public hearing represented an effort by the House Intelligence Committee to get its Russia investigation back on track after political squabbling and concerns about   between its chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes,  . and White House aides sidelined the committee’s work. After pressure from Democrats, Nunes has turned over leading the committee’s Russia investigation to Rep. Mike Conaway,   who is also a CPA. Following Brennan’s public testimony Tuesday morning, he will testify in a   session. His testimony comes a day after former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn refused to hand over documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating Russian interference in the election, in response to a congressional subpoena from that committee. Flynn cited his Fifth Amendment right against  ."
"Justice Department ethics experts have decided Robert Mueller can proceed as the special counsel leading the investigation into the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, despite his former law firm’s representing President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and    Jared Kushner. The law firm, WilmerHale, also represents Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who has been at the heart of questions over whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians. Mueller had no involvement in any work done for the three, according to Bruce Berman, a spokesman for the law firm. Berman said Mueller ”had no role whatsoever in the representation of any client in connection with the Russia inquiry, and he has no confidential information with respect to such matters,” the spokesman told NPR last week. The DOJ cleared Mueller in a statement released Tuesday: ”We can confirm that the Department ethics experts have reviewed the matters and determined that Mr. Mueller’s participation in the matters assigned to him is appropriate.” Mueller is just getting his investigation underway, after being tapped for the job by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday. Mueller resigned from WilmerHale immediately after being selected. The DOJ said Tuesday that Mueller now has office space for his team in Washington. As FBI director from 2001 to 2013, Mueller overhauled that agency, increasing its focus on terrorism and cyberthreats following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. In the time since, he’s become something of a ”consummate cleanup man,” writes The Intercept: ”Last year, a federal judge appointed him to help settle more than 500 lawsuits against Volkswagen for its use of software to hide excess vehicle emissions. The NFL tasked him with writing a report about Baltimore Ravens football player Ray Rice’s assault of his   in an elevator. And Booz Allen Hamilton, the former employer of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, hired Mueller to conduct a review after another employee, Harold Martin, removed classified NSA information.” Intelligence agencies have already concluded that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 U. S. election. In his order creating a special counsel, Rosenstein appointed Mueller to investigate ”any links   coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” Mueller’s team will also have authority to investigate ”any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” The order states that ”the Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.”"
"A Chinese student who praised the ”fresh air of free speech” in the U. S. during her commencement address at the University of Maryland is facing an online backlash from classmates and from people in China who say she insulted her own country. Shuping Yang, who graduated with a   in psychology and theater, is from the city of Kunming in southwest China. As she prepared to speak on Sunday, her mother waved a bouquet of flowers at her from the audience. China has nearly 330, 000 students in the U. S. far and away the largest contingent of any country. Yang’s speech is one of a number of events that have caused acrimonious political debates among them. Yang told the assembly that pollution was so bad in her hometown that she had to wear face masks to keep from getting sick. She also described the evolution of her political views, saying that she once believed that ”only authorities control the narrative, only authorities could define the truth.” She recalled being inspired by the sight of her classmates joining political protests, leading her to the conclusion that ”freedom is oxygen.” In the comments on the YouTube video of the speech, some critics accused Yang of exaggerating China’s problems, pointing out that Kunming is one of China’s less polluted cities. Others accused her of fawning over Americans. And some suggested she was not welcome to return to China. One user with the handle Vivi Yingying on Weibo, China’s main microblog platform, said of Yang’s speech: ”You reaped their [the audience’s] applause, but you lost other people’s respect.” Others sprang to her defense. ”She pointed out the vexation that China’s pollution and freedom of speech issues cause her. She’s not wrong,” said another Weibo user, Ji Xuguang. The incident is reminiscent of controversies like what happened at Duke University in 2008, when student Grace Wang was assailed by critics for trying to mediate between   demonstrators and Chinese students ahead of the Beijing Olympics. In many of these episodes, Chinese critics seem less outraged by the actual content of any speech than the fact that their country’s ”dirty laundry” is being aired in front of outsiders. Yang issued an apology on Weibo in which she said she ”deeply loves her motherland” and intended only ”to share her experience of studying overseas, not to negate or denigrate my country or my hometown.” She promised to use her education to promote Chinese culture, adding that she hoped ad hominem attacks on her would end. In a statement on its website, the University of Maryland said it ”proudly supports Shuping’s right to share her views and her unique perspectives.” Some Chinese students from UMD released a video rebutting some of Yang’s remarks. The theme of the video, according to the   Global Times tabloid, was ”I have different views from Shuping Yang. I am proud of China.” The newspaper added that the official China Students and Scholars Association encouraged the students to speak in the video. Branches of the CSSA in U. S. universities and colleges describe themselves as organizations approved by the Chinese Embassy in the U. S. Critics see them as an arm of China’s government. The article quoted former University of Maryland CSSA President Zhu Lihan as saying that the school’s support for Yang’s ”critical speech is not only   but also raises suspicion about other motives.” Zhu did not elaborate on what those motives might be."
"Gunfire erupted between Philippine security forces and militants in Marawi City in the   Tuesday. By the time the sun had set on the small southern city, President Rodrigo Duterte had declared martial law in the region and vowed to end his diplomatic trip to Moscow early. In the hours between, violence and confusion consumed the community, as armed men linked with the Maute Group occupied the Amai Pakpak Medical Center and several other major buildings. Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who is in Moscow with Duterte, told a news conference that militants even set fire to some of those buildings  —   including the city’s jail, a local Catholic church and Dansalan college. Lorenzana said the confrontation opened Tuesday afternoon, when government forces attempted to arrest a senior leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group, an extremist organization with ties to the Islamic State. They had learned Isnilon Hapilon was in the area, but according to Lorenzana, the military had not expected him to be backed up by ”more or less 100 fighters”  —   many of whom were members of another   organization, the Maute Group. It was not a lapse in military intelligence that caused the clashes, Lorenzana said, but rather a failure to ”appreciate” the intelligence collected. Gunfights ensued, killing at least two soldiers and one police officer and injuring 12 other members of the security forces. Meanwhile, photographs purporting to show buildings aflame and black flags raised above public buildings hit social media. Philippine authorities assert the situation is under control  —   though they have told residents in Marawi City to remain indoors and summoned reinforcements from neighboring regions to redouble their efforts to reclaim the city Wednesday morning. For now, ”the whole of Marawi City is blacked out,” Lorenzana said. ”There is no light and there are Maute snipers all around.” He noted that militants still occupy a central street in the city. Hapilon, the man whom Philippine soldiers had sought at the start of the operation, ”allegedly served as deputy or second in command for the foreign terrorist organization, Abu Sayyaf Group,” according to the FBI. The bureau has placed him on its own list of Most Wanted Terrorists. Abu Sayyaf and Maute, a relatively new offshoot of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, have pledged allegiance to ISIS and vowed further violence against the   country. Or, as Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano put it Tuesday: They are groups that ”have been auditioning for recognition in ISIS.” Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said that as of 10 p. m. local time, Duterte had declared martial law for all of Mindanao, the southern island where both Marawi City and Davao  —   the president’s home city  —   reside. The restriction is set to last about 60 days. As the Philippine news service Rappler reports, the declaration of martial law actually fulfills a warning made by the president just days ago. ”Please do not force my hand into it. I hate to do it. I do not want to do it,” Duterte said in a speech last Friday in Davao, according to Rappler. ”But if there will be loss of lives needlessly, and without reason, just to kill, kill, and kill, I will declare martial law in Mindanao. ”And if I declare martial law in Mindanao, I will solve all that ails the island.”"
"A Tumblr post. A tweet. A Netflix deal. It’s not the normal Hollywood production pipeline, but it’s real: The people of the Internet have managed, through determination and enthusiasm, to bring a movie project into being  —   one written, directed by and starring black women. This is a short story, so we’ll get right to it. Here’s the Tumblr post, featuring actress Lupita N’yongo and singer Rihanna, both fashion icons in their own right, looking fabulous at a Miu Miu show in 2014. The post went viral. The world was unchanged. Two years later, same photo, similar idea (arrived at independently, according to the two women). But it was on a different platform, Twitter. And it was going viral in a different Internet community  —   Black Twitter, a creative and cultural powerhouse. This time, something . .. happened. Nyong’o was game. Rihanna was, too. Then Twitter users called out the names of their dream director and dream writer for this dream project . .. and Ava DuVernay and Issa Rae spoke back.  Now it’s no dream. The final chapter in the saga comes from Entertainment Weekly: ”After a dramatic negotiation session at the Cannes Film Festival, Netflix has nabbed a film project pairing Grammy winner Rihanna with Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, in a concept that began as a Twitter sensation. Ava DuVernay (Selma) will direct, and Issa Rae (Insecure) is writing the screenplay.” After EW broke the story, Rae’s representatives confirmed the project’s existence to Vanity Fair. The original concept creators will be credited in the film, Vanity Fair reports."
"The actor Sir Roger Moore has died at 89 after ”a short but brave battle with cancer,” according to his family and his agent. Moore played the role of James Bond from 1973 to 1985 and was knighted in his home country of England in 2003. He was the third of six actors who have played James Bond in the official silver screen franchise, beginning with 1973’s Live and Let Die. He starred in a total of seven Bond films over 12 years, ending with A View to a Kill in 1985. Moore embraced the Bond legend for decades afterward none of the other Bonds burnished the legend as lovingly as he did. He published four books about his time as Agent 007, all of them with a sense of humor  —   especially about stepping into the shoes that Sean Connery made famous. Some Bond fans thought early on that Moore was far too pretty for the role. In his 2008 memoir, My Word is My Bond, he calls the character ”a lover and a giggler,” and he told NPR’s Scott Simon in 2014 that his Bond looked ”as though I’d squeeze them to death with love and lust.” Bond certainly wasn’t Moore’s first role as a man of action. He got practice in making secret   and daring escapes over seven seasons on the 1960s British TV series The Saint. He played Simon Templar, a criminal mastermind who steals from the evil and the corrupt. Roger Moore was born on Oct. 14, 1927, in London and raised by two   parents, to whom he was very close. He was an only child  —   he would joke that his parents attained perfection on their first try. Throughout his long life, Moore appeared to lead a charmed existence  —   he even titled a memoir One Lucky Bastard. He was married four times and lived abroad for decades as a tax exile. He met just about everyone  —   from Frank Sinatra to crowned heads across Europe. He partied with Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris and Peter Finch. He was knighted in 2003 for his humanitarian work with UNICEF. In an early and   movie script, Moore read a line that stayed with him the rest of his life. ”My attitude about death is, going into the next room, and it’s a room the rest of us can’t go into because we don’t have the key, but when we do get the key, we’ll go in there and we’ll see one another again.” Roger Moore is survived by his wife, Kristina Tholstrup, and three children. He died Tuesday in Switzerland, according to his children."
"Public support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has generally improved in the U. S. Europe and Canada, according to a newly released poll from the Pew Research Center. The uptick in support comes in the wake of the turbulent U. S. presidential race where   Donald Trump called NATO ”obsolete,” prompting European leaders to express alarm. Then, after an April meeting with NATO’s   Jens Stoltenberg, Trump declared: ”I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.” But as NPR’s Tamara Keith reported, ”he still wants its members to pay their fair share, as he puts it, meaning that they should spend a larger share of gross domestic product on their own national defense, as the NATO charter calls for.” The U. S. has seen a jump in support for NATO of 9 percentage points in the past year, up to 62 percent. But that’s fueled by a growing partisan divide on the issue  —   a   point gap last year now stands at 31. Support among Democrats has rapidly climbed, from 58 percent to 78 percent. At the same time, support among U. S. Republicans has slightly dipped, from 52 percent to 47 percent. The researchers polled NATO member countries Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the U. K. along with nonmember Sweden. Support for NATO is up in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. ”And after a steep decline a year ago, most French again express a favorable view of the security alliance,” the report reads. Do the United States’ NATO partners trust the alliance to come to their aid if attacked by Russia? A median of 66 percent in the seven nations that participated said yes. In the U. S. 62 percent of respondents ”are willing to use military force to come to their ally’s defense.” That’s more a result of shifts in U. S. Democrats than Republicans, the report states: ”Today, there are no partisan differences on living up to America’s Article 5 commitment [that commits members to defending an ally if the ally is attacked]. But in 2015, the last time Pew Research Center asked this question, Republicans (69%) were far more likely than Democrats (47%) to back aiding allies in a confrontation with Russia. Since then, such Republican sentiment, now at 65% has not changed much. Democrats’ willingness to offer military support (63%) has increased 26 points.” But willingness in Europe to come to a NATO ally’s defense against Russia varied widely: Germany (40 percent) U. K. (45 percent) Spain (46 percent) France (53 percent) Canada (58 percent) Poland (62 percent) and the Netherlands (72 percent). Pew interviewed 1, 505 people in February and March of this year for the survey."
"Twenty percent of children who were in a car crash where someone died were not buckled in properly or were not wearing a seat belt at all, a study finds, as were 43 percent of children who died themselves. And child fatality rates in deadly car crashes vary widely by state. The results add evidence to the argument that state regulations and public information tactics can affect motor vehicle safety for kids. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted that, for example, seat belt use across all age groups is higher in states with more stringent seat belt enforcement laws. Overall, traffic fatalities in the U. S. are going up, as we have reported. The latest study set out to look at what factors affect child deaths in fatal car accidents, breaking down the data by state and region. The study authors analyzed data collected in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System between 2010 and 2014. In all, they identified more than 18, 000 children under 15 years old who were involved in fatal car crashes, 15. 9 percent of whom died as a result of the crash. But some parts of the country had much worse fatality rates than others. The majority, 52 percent, of children who were in a fatal car crash lived in the South. And across all states, 43 percent of children who died were improperly restrained or not restrained at all, according to Faisal Qureshi, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and an author of the study. The study was published in The Journal of Pediatrics. The authors write that they hope their findings will help lawmakers beef up motor vehicle safety regulations. ”The significant   variation evident in our findings emphasizes the need for close collaboration between the injury prevention community and those enacting and enforcing legislation,” says Qureshi. In fact, he says, there may be ”potential for a federal intervention in the area of child traffic safety.” A 10 percent improvement nationally in the use of appropriate child restraints in cars, they predict, would decrease the national child crash fatality rate significantly, cutting it from 0. 94 per 100, 000 to 0. 56 per 100, 000. For years, the federal government has collected data on child traffic safety deaths, and offered information about the importance of seat belts and car seats. But decisions about traffic safety laws have been largely left to states. The CDC does offer risk reduction information, including warnings about not letting children sit in the front seat, and using appropriate car seats for babies and children. The findings also underscore the importance of proper seat belt use, as opposed to simply using a seat belt at all. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced last year that seat belt use is at its highest level since 1994. But this latest analysis points out that, at least for children, if the seat belt is not correctly fastened across the body, or the child does not have an appropriate car or booster seat, the result can be deadly. The researchers also found that states with red light cameras, which are meant to enforce stoplights, had lower child fatality rates from car crashes. That finding could be of particular interest to local law enforcement and public safety officials, since red light camera laws are often instituted at the municipal level. Past research on red light cameras has found they decrease the number of dangerous ” ” collisions at intersections."
"”Peace is a choice we must make each day,” President Trump said during a visit to the West Bank city of Bethlehem, where he reiterated his resolve to help mediate a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians and sounded upbeat about its prospects. ”The United States is here to help make that dream possible for young Jewish, Christian and Muslim children across the region,” Trump said Tuesday as he stood alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Trump also expressed an even loftier hope than an   peace agreement: ”I also firmly believe that if Israel and the Palestinians can make peace, it will begin a process of peace all throughout the Middle East, and that would be an amazing accomplishment.” The idea of   peace leading to regional peace is the ”exact opposite” of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing, says NPR’s Daniel Estrin: ”He’s looking for a kind of   approach, first peace between Israel and Sunni Arab states, who have a common enemy in Iran, and that regional peace leading to   peace. So Trump is, in those remarks, kind of putting   peace kind of in the center of the agenda.” Trump provided few specifics about how a deal might be achieved in a peace process that has been stalled for years. ”The president notably avoided all of the thorny issues that have stymied peace efforts for decades,” The Associated Press noted. ”He did not weigh in Israeli settlements, the status of Jerusalem or even whether the U. S. would continue to insist on a   solution giving the Palestinians sovereign territory.” Abbas emphasized that he was committed to cooperating with Trump to forge a deal. ”The conflict is not between religions,” Abbas said. ”Our fundamental problem is with the occupation and settlements.” As Daniel pointed out, Trump came    with a major symbol of Israel’s occupation during his journey to Bethlehem this morning ”when his motorcade sped through a gap in the Israeli separation barrier that separates Israel from the West Bank. Around Bethlehem, it’s a tall concrete wall covered in graffiti. . .. Palestinians in Bethlehem say they feel like they’re living in a ghetto with it.” Trump has repeatedly underscored U. S. support for Israel during his first international trip as president. He met multiple times with Netanyahu and said in a joint appearance with the prime minister Tuesday, ”I can tell you that the Palestinians are ready to reach for peace  —   and, from my meeting with my friend Benjamin Netanyahu, I can tell you Israelis are ready to reach for peace as well.” Netanyahu’s tone was somewhat less upbeat, with sharp criticism for Abbas. He said that while Abbas condemned Monday’s attack in Manchester, ”if [the attacker] had been Palestinian, the murderer’s family would have gotten a payment. That law must end.” As Daniel notes, the Israeli leader was referring to ”what Palestinians see as a form of welfare support to families whose relatives have acted on behalf of the Palestinian cause.” Trump visited the Israel Museum and the Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance center on Tuesday and now heads to Italy and later is expected to meet with Pope Francis. Earlier in the trip, he traveled to Saudi Arabia, where he delivered a speech to dozens of leaders from   nations."
"Mistrust and alienation between black men and the police have become so entrenched that we need radical, sweeping change. The collective experience of black men in the criminal justice system is sobering. African Americans are 2. 5 times more likely to be arrested than whites, and numerous studies have shown that black men are disproportionately targeted, stopped, frisked, and searched through the practice of racial profiling. Black men end up in prison more often, receive longer sentences than similarly situated white men, and are more likely to be killed during police encounters than white men  —   21 times more likely. But, as criminal defense attorneys, we can attest to the fact that as harshly and as unfairly as black men have been treated in the criminal justice system, the fate of black boys has been worse. Decades of data show that the journey to racial disparity begins when black men are boys. Black boys are policed like no other demographic. They are policed on the street, in the mall, in school, in their homes, and on social media. Police stop black boys on the vaguest of descriptions  —   ”black boys running,” ”two black males in jeans, one in a gray hoodie,” ”black male in athletic gear.” Young black males are treated as if they are ”out of place” not only when they are in white,   neighborhoods, but also when they are hanging out in public spaces or sitting on their own front porches. Adolescence is a critical time during which young people come to understand and respect or resent the law and legal institutions. Negative attitudes about the police acquired during childhood and adolescence have a ”lasting” effect as youth transition to adulthood. The long history of aggressive and biased interactions with the police  —   perceived or real  —   has socialized a generation of black boys to avoid contact with the police whenever possible and if not, to be hostile  —   sometimes outright confrontational  —   with police. Black boys who congregate on the ”corner” attract the attention of the police day or night. Even when they ”dress nicely” or ”drive nice cars” young black males cannot avoid police surveillance since such signs of wealth among black youth are presumed to be associated with drug dealing. Black boys describe their neighborhoods as   and say officers stop them multiple times a day to pat them down and ask questions like ”Where are you coming from?” and ”Where are you going?” These stories are significant not only for the debilitating and conditioning impact they have on these youth, but also for the message they send to black boys. Videotaping, cursing, ignoring an officer’s orders and running away provoke even greater hostility, disrespect and often physical force from the police. Not surprisingly, black youth are more likely to experience a use of force than white youth. Black boys are angered not only by the frequency with which they are stopped, but also by the treatment they experience during these stops. They describe police as belligerent and antagonistic and are especially outraged by the officers’ use of racial slurs, profanity and demeaning terms like ”punk” and ”sissy.” They complain about police stops that are too often initiated by physical contact such as grabbing, pushing, shoving, pulling or tackling the youth to the ground. Once on the ground, black boys are sometimes held down by multiple officers who sit or lie on them while other officers kick, punch or mace them. More violent encounters include billy clubs or chokeholds like the one that killed Eric Garner in New York. Victims of police violence include black boys like LaQuan McDonald, Tyre King, and most recently Jordan Edwards. Fear of violence by police is now the norm for black boys. In a recent study of police perceptions of childhood innocence, researchers showed police officers a series of photographs of young white, black and Latino males engaged in some purported criminal activity and asked them to estimate the age of each child. While the officers overestimated the age of adolescent black felony suspects by 4. 59 years, they underestimated the age of adolescent white felony suspects by one year. Because of these types of distorted perceptions, black boys are more likely to be treated as adults much earlier than other youth, more likely to be arrested, harassed and assaulted for normal adolescent behavior, and more likely to be perceived as culpable and deserving of punishment or even death. Consider the police encounter with Tamir Rice, a    Cleveland boy who was killed by police on November 22, 2014, after a witness called 911, reporting ”a guy with a pistol” that was ”probably fake.” When police officers arrived, they described a much ”older” person, weighing 170 pounds, standing 5 feet 7 inches tall and wearing size 36 pants and a man’s   jacket. The officers were doing what empirical research on implicit racial bias suggests that police do: routinely overestimate the age and the perceived threat of young black boys. If we expect any meaningful change in the relationship between black men and the police, we have to start early. We have to help police resist the faulty perceptions of black youth as violent and aggressive and work to develop black boys’ faith in law enforcement. To aid this reform, we should revisit our extensive reliance on police in schools, mandate officer training on adolescent development and implicit bias, and require deep shifts in police policy and procedure to facilitate new opportunities for genuine, positive interactions between black youth and the police. Without these reforms, the unfair policing of black boys  —   and black men  —   will continue. Angela J. Davis is a Professor of Law at American University and the Editor of Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution and Imprisonment (July 2017). Follow her @angelajdavis. Kristin Henning is the Agnes N. Williams Research Professor of Law at Georgetown University and a contributing author to Policing the Black Man. Follow her @ProfKrisHenning"
"In the first of three matches with the world’s No. 1 Go player, a Google artificial intelligence program claimed victory Tuesday. It won the round by just a fraction of a point in Wuzhen, China, but the win was enough to leave its grandmaster opponent impressed and thoroughly confounded by the result. Last year, after Google’s AlphaGo dispatched human grandmaster Lee Sedol in the notoriously complex board game for the first time,    Ke Jie expressed confidence that he wouldn’t share the same fate, according to The New York Times. After all, Ke had defeated Lee several times himself. By the match’s end Tuesday, Ke felt markedly different about his nonhuman competitor. ”Last year, it was still quite humanlike when it played,” Ke said. ”But this year, it became like a god of Go.” His statement feels rather apt considering that, like a god, AlphaGo is its own greatest instructor. Last year, NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel broke down the basics of the program developed by Google’s DeepMind lab: ”It started by studying a database of about 100, 000 human matches, and then continued by playing against itself millions of times. ”As it went, it reprogrammed itself and improved. This type of   program is known as a neural network, and it’s based on theories of how the human brain works. ”AlphaGo consists of two neural networks: The first tries to figure out the best move to play each turn, and the second evaluates who is winning the match overall.” DeepMind has further developed the architecture of the program since it defeated Lee last year. Also like a god, AlphaGo has been demonstrating its influence far and wide among the game’s top players  —   including Ke, who Wired notes adopted some tactics from AlphaGo. The program played many of the world’s top players under the pseudonym ”Master” in online matches earlier this year, according to the magazine, and its unorthodox playing style affected Ke’s. In a blog post last year, DeepMind CEO and   Demis Hassabis explained what attracted his lab to the ancient game of Go, which has been around since at least the days of Confucius: ”[A]s simple as the rules are, Go is a game of profound complexity. There are 1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 possible positions  —   that’s more than the number of atoms in the universe, and more than a googol times larger than chess.” It doesn’t hurt that the game originated  —   and remains very popular  —   in China, with which Google has a fraught relationship. Roughly seven years ago, the   tech giant pulled out of the country, citing discomfort with Chinese censorship requirements. Although Reuters reports that Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet, watched the match in person in China, The Times notes that ”there was no obvious live video of the event” available to viewers on the Chinese mainland. Chinese officials don’t allow access to   YouTube, where the match was livestreamed, or to Google search. Yet Google continues to have designs on the massive Chinese market, announcing recently that it intends to bring some of its products back to China, according to Reuters. For now, though, skittish onlookers watching the next two matches between Ke and AlphaGo on Thursday and Saturday might do well to remember Geoff’s reassurance: ”This program will not lead to a dystopian future in which humanity is enslaved by killer robots. ”At least not for a few more years.”"
"Updated at 12:50 p. m. ET, In 1983, an explosive story appeared in an Indian newspaper, The Patriot: the AIDS virus was the result of American biological weapons research. Two years later a Soviet newspaper picked up the thread: The U. S. Army had developed AIDS as a bioweapon at Fort Detrick, Md. Other publications followed suit and by 1986, an East German biology professor was publishing ”research” in which he explained that the virus had been tested on service members used as human guinea pigs  —   who then began spreading it among vulnerable populations. None of it was true. All of it was fiction created by Russian intelligence officers or their allies. But the storyline  —   that the U. S. government created AIDS  —   has proven one of the most durable examples of ”dezinformatsiya,” as it was known to its practitioners in the Soviet intelligence world. Both that story (Kanye West believed it) and those practices endure today in the world’s information bloodstream, and former CIA Director John Brennan appeared Tuesday on Capitol Hill to talk about ”active measures” with the House Intelligence Committee. Members of Congress want to focus on the ones the Russians used last year during the presidential campaign, but the deliberate crafting of falsehoods for political aims is just one of the tools in this kit, and leaders in Washington say the challenge they pose is just as urgent now as it has ever been. ”In essence, these active measures are an ongoing threat  —   not simply something that happened in the past,” Sen. Marco Rubio,  . said at a May 11 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. The heads of America’s spy agencies agreed. ”The use of cyber and social media has significantly increased the impact and the capabilities that  —   obviously this has been done for years and years, even decades,” said Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. ”But the ability they have to use the interconnectedness [of the Internet] and all that provides . .. they literally upped their game to the point where it’s having a significant impact.” And the interest by Russian intelligence in influencing public opinion in the United States goes beyond the political sphere, members of Congress warned. The U. S. intelligence community concluded Moscow intervened in last year’s presidential race to hurt Hillary Clinton and help President Trump, but Sen. Tom Cotton,  . said the Russians have  —   and have had  —   other targets. Cotton cited past Russian efforts to undermine U. S. nuclear modernization, missile defense deployments and enforcement of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty  —   which American defense officials say Russian forces have violated with the deployment of a new missile in Eastern Europe. ”These [are] activities that will go far beyond elections, I think,” Cotton said. The   king, Forgery, lies and skulduggery are as old as statecraft, wrote Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton and Henry Robert Schlesinger in their CIA history, Spycraft. The authors cite a fake letter created in 1777 by Ben Franklin that appeared to be from a German king to England’s King George III. In the letter, King Frederick of Hesse  —   who was paid a bonus each time one of his mercenaries died in fighting the British war against the American colonies  —   ”suggested” to King George that they be used more aggressively and denied medical treatment. In short, the German king appeared to want more of his men killed so the British king would pay him more. That ”letter” was ”leaked” and the callous impression it created, along with other enticements by the American side, induced thousands of Hessians to quit the war, wrote Wallace, Melton and Schlesinger. Such tricks continued down the years, with varying degrees of sophistication. In some examples they go beyond the simple release of information. In 1969, Sudanese goatherds found a cache of ”American” spy equipment: a magnetic Limpet mine, a . 22 caliber gun shaped like a pen and ”State Department” documents revealing a plot against the government. The materials appeared after the government in Khartoum broke off relations with the U. S. over its support for Israel and just as leaders there began to lean toward closer ties with the Soviet Union. As Wallace, Melton and Schlesinger describe, they were placed by the KGB to give the Sudanese a nudge  —   though CIA officer David Crown ultimately defeated that scheme. Today, ”active measures” take a range of forms, according to Mark Galeotti, author of a brief called ”Putin’s Hydra: Inside Russia’s Intelligence Services.” They scale from Internet mischief  —   manipulating which stories Google or Facebook is likeliest to show users  —   to hacking and leaks to political assassination. Cases like the 2006 murder of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned by radioactive tea, are more than the simple use of violence to eliminate troublemakers, Galeotti argues. Targets such as Vladimir    —   an opposition figure who has twice been sickened by mysterious poison that he blames on people connected to Russia’s ”special services”  —   often suffer in public, sending the world a chilling message about the costs of opposing the regime. That kind of violence might not become commonplace within the United States, but national security leaders warn that they expect Russia to resume meddling in the American political process. The current and former spy bosses who’ve been speaking to Congress about the mischief in the 2016 race say that Moscow considers it a success. ”The transcendent issue here is the Russian interference in our election process, and what that means to the erosion of the fundamental fabric of our democracy,” said former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at a May 8 Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing. He called for ”educating” Americans about the use of disinformation and for a major push at ” ” by Washington. Others are more hawkish: Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. wants the United States to impose a ”cost” on Russian leaders so they don’t feel they can interfere without penalty. One problem, as CIA Director Mike Pompeo told a later Senate hearing, is that what technology ultimately does is drive the price the other way. ”The cost,” he said, ”has been lessened.”"
"Harry Friedman has run a consultancy training   retail workers in customer service and other basics for 35 years. But in all his years, he has not retrained retail workers for new skills. ”Nope we do none of it,” he says. ”I don’t know that anybody does any of it.” Many retail workers are undergoing what economists call ”job displacement,” meaning they are losing their jobs largely because of major technological shifts. Layoffs in traditional retail have accelerated sharply this year, with hundreds of store closings and nine U. S. chains filing for bankruptcy so far in 2017. Most of those losing their jobs are     workers, while retailers look instead to bolster the   sides of their businesses, hiring for   positions such as logistics and warehousing. Whereas some industries invest to retrain their workers with new skills for new times, to date the retail industry has not successfully done that. Friedman says that is not good news for the   workers. ”It’s a pretty bleak picture, I’m sorry to say,” he says. Staff and training in general are not top priorities for most retailers, he says, making things tough on his business. Friedman compares retail to other businesses displaced by technology. ”It’s like owning a film processing store or a travel agency it’s kind of tough,” he says. Various industries continue to struggle to keep their workforce apace with the demand for more technical  . Manufacturing, for example, requires higher order computing skills on the assembly line, so workers have had to train up. Retail is increasingly diverse, what experts call ”omnichannel,” meaning most retailers sell through a hybrid of online and traditional stores. Hiring is most in demand for work in  : warehousing, logistics and technology. The National Retail Federation says that to better equip people for those new jobs, it launched a training and certification program for workers. Maureen Conway is skeptical that will work. Conway, who is executive director of the Economic Opportunities Program for the Aspen Institute, notes the industry backed a similar certification program over a decade ago. ”Unfortunately, it didn’t seem that retailers valued somebody with this certificate versus somebody who didn’t,” she says. There are myriad challenges to retraining in retail. Frieda Molina, deputy director of MDRC, a social research group, says many retail workers simply don’t want to stay in the industry. ”It’s hard to make that case to them, given the more negative reputation of retail, and the fact that many people at that lower level don’t have the resources to be able to invest time and effort and lost wages potentially, in getting additional training,” she says. Kathryn Shaw, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says manufacturing adapted in a way that retail cannot. ”These [manufacturing workers] who need to be retrained were both highly paid, on average, and pretty skilled,” she says, so there was a strong economic incentive for them to retrain and retool for the more complex jobs. Retail workers, by comparison, tend to be young and don’t intend to make a career in retail because of the relatively low pay. ”They’re not very skilled to begin with, and they’re not very attached to the industry,” she says. Shaw says when factories closed, their workers lived in a community, which made it easier to target them for retraining. By contrast, retail workers tend to be far more dispersed, geographically, making them harder to target for such programs.   realizes it has a workforce challenge. Two years ago, the retailer started an academy that trains about a   of its employees a year, while they work, in more advanced skills. Kathleen McLaughlin, chief sustainability officer for   says the training  —   for both   and online operations  —   has paid off in higher   sales and improved customer service marks. ”It is very economic for retailers to invest in their people at all levels,” she says. McLaughlin says   is trying to partner with other large retailers to develop industrywide training standards. ”Retailers do need to look at their people, and create paths for them that are exciting, and provide the skills they need to succeed, not only in the jobs of today, but as these jobs continue to evolve,” she says."
"Would the House Republican health care bill impact insurance provided by employers? And why don’t people without insurance just go to an emergency room for regular care? Here are answers to those and other recent questions from readers. Will   health care be affected by the new Republican plan? The American Health Care Act, which recently passed the House, would fundamentally change the individual insurance market, and it could significantly alter coverage for people who get insurance through their employers, too. The bill would allow states to opt out of some of the mandates of the Affordable Care Act, including no longer requiring plans sold on the individual market to cover 10 ”essential health benefits,” such as hospitalization, medications and maternity care. Small businesses (generally companies with 50 or fewer employees) in states that chose to do this would also be affected by the change. Plans offered by large employers have never been required to cover the essential health benefits, so the bill wouldn’t change their obligations. Many of them, however, provide comprehensive coverage that includes many of these benefits.  But here’s where it gets tricky. The ACA, also known as Obamacare, places caps on how much consumers can be required to pay out of pocket in deductibles, copays and coinsurance every year, and the caps apply to most plans, including large employer plans. In 2017, the spending limit is $7, 150 for an individual plan and $14, 300 for family coverage. Yet, there’s a catch: The spending limits apply only to services covered by the essential health benefits. Insurers could charge people any amount for services deemed nonessential by the states. Similarly, the ACA prohibits insurers from imposing lifetime or annual dollar limits on services but only if those services are related to the essential health benefits. In addition, if any single state weakens its essential health benefits requirements, it could affect large employer plans in every state, analysts say. That’s because these employers, who often operate in multiple states, are allowed to pick which state’s definition of essential health benefits they want to use in determining what counts toward consumer spending caps and annual and lifetime coverage limits. ”If you eliminate [the federal essential health benefits] requirement, you could see a lot of state variation, and there could be an incentive for companies that are looking to save money to pick a state” with skimpier requirements, says Sarah Lueck, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. I keep hearing that nobody in the United States is ever refused medical care  ” that whether they can afford it or not, a hospital can’t refuse them treatment. If this is the case, why couldn’t an uninsured person simply go to the front desk at the hospital and ask for treatment, which by law can’t be denied, such as, ”I’m here for my annual physical, or for a screening colonoscopy?” If you are having chest pains or you just sliced your hand open while carving a chicken, you can go to nearly any hospital with an emergency department, and, under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, the staff is obligated to conduct a medical exam to see whether you need emergency care. If so, they must try to stabilize your condition, whether or not you have insurance. The key word here is ”emergency.” If you’re due for a colonoscopy to screen for cancer, unless you have symptoms such as severe pain or rectal bleeding, emergency department personnel likely wouldn’t order the exam, says Dr. Jesse Pines, a professor of emergency medicine and health policy at George Washington University in Washington, D. C. ”It’s not the standard of care to do screening tests in the emergency department,” Pines says, noting that in that situation, the appropriate next step would be to refer you to a local gastroenterologist who could perform the exam. Even though the law requires hospitals to evaluate anyone who comes in the door, being uninsured doesn’t let people off the hook financially. You’re still likely to get bills from the hospital and physicians for any care you receive, Pines says. The Republican [health care] proposal says people who don’t maintain continuous coverage would have to pay extra for their insurance. What does that mean?  Under the bill passed by the House, people who have a break in their health insurance coverage of more than 63 days in a year would be hit with a 30 percent premium surcharge for the year after buying a new plan on the individual market. In contrast, under the ACA’s ”individual mandate,” people are required to have health insurance or pay a fine equal to the greater of 2. 5 percent of their income or $695 per adult. They’re allowed a break of no more than two continuous months every year before the penalty kicks in for the months they were without coverage. The continuous coverage requirement is the Republicans’ preferred strategy to encourage people to get health insurance. But some analysts have questioned how effective it would be. They point out that, whereas the ACA penalizes people for not having insurance on an ongoing basis, the AHCA penalty kicks in only when people try to buy coverage after a break. It could actually discourage people from getting back into the market unless they’re sick. In addition, the AHCA penalty, which is based on a plan’s premium, would likely have a greater impact on older people, whose premiums can be higher, and on those with lower incomes, says Sara Collins, a vice president at the Commonwealth Fund, who authored an analysis of the impact of the penalties. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service supported by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Email questions for future columns: KHNHelp@KFF. org. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter: @mandrews110"
"The revised Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act will leave 23 million more people uninsured in 2026 than if that act, also known as Obamacare, were to remain in place. The GOP bill would also reduce the deficit by $119 billion over 10 years. That’s what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported Wednesday in its latest score of the American Health Care Act. The CBO’s assessment shows that the deficit would fall and premiums would fall for some Americans, but the report also raises potential concerns about the bill. The agency reports that the bill could destabilize individual insurance markets in some states, leaving unhealthy Americans unable to buy insurance. The bill will now move on to the Senate, and should it pass that chamber, it will not look like this current AHCA version. As NPR’s Susan Davis reported Wednesday, the Senate is likely to write its own version of the bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also told Reuters he doesn’t know what that path to passing the bill will look like. ”I don’t know how we get to 50 [votes] at the moment. But that’s the goal,” he said. A smaller deficit, but a far higher uninsured rate, The $119 billion deficit reduction represents a decline from previous versions. When the CBO first scored the AHCA, it said the plan would save $337 billion over 10 years. Later revisions reduced those savings to $150 billion. By far the biggest savings would come from Medicaid, which serves   Americans. That program would face $834 billion in cuts. Cutbacks in subsidies for individual health insurance would likewise help cut $276 billion. But those are offset in large part by bigger costs, including the repeal of many of Obamacare’s taxes. Those tax cuts would overwhelmingly benefit the   Americans, the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, reported on Wednesday. The increase in the number of uninsured is also slightly lower than in the CBO’s initial estimate. That report estimated that 24 million fewer would be insured in 2026 if this bill were to become law, putting the uninsured rate at around 18. 6 percent. This revised bill would reduce that by around 1 million  —   a difference of less than half a percentage point. In contrast, the uninsured rate in 2026 would be around 10 percent under Obamacare, the CBO reports. More than half of that increase in the uninsured  —   14 million  —   would come from reduced Medicaid enrollment. The CBO also notes that the AHCA could mean some Americans would buy policies that don’t cover ”major medical risks.” Because of those policies’ skimpy coverage, the CBO doesn’t count those people as insured in this report. The Trump administration responded by saying it believes the CBO’s numbers are unreliable. ”History has proven the CBO to be totally incapable of accurately predicting how healthcare legislation will impact health insurance coverage,” the White House said in a statement. The CBO did indeed far overestimate the number of people who would sign up for the Obamacare exchanges, as FactCheck. org’s Brooks Jackson wrote in March. Likewise, it undershot on the number of Medicaid enrollees. (That said, Jackson added, the CBO predicted the uninsured rate relatively closely.) Difficulties for some addicted, pregnant or sick Americans, The act could make obtaining health care coverage prohibitively expensive for some sicker Americans, the CBO found. That’s because under the AHCA, states could get waivers exempting them from some Obamacare provisions, including what are called essential health benefits  —   a list of basics like mental health and prescription drugs that the Affordable Care Act required plans to cover. States could also get waivers that allow insurers to charge more for people with   conditions. One challenge the CBO faced in creating these estimates was figuring out how many states would get those waivers, and the report acknowledges that this creates some uncertainty in the estimates. In the end, it estimated that around   of the population lives in states that would seek both of those waivers. Around half of Americans live in states that would seek no waivers, meanwhile, and the remainder live in states that would make ”moderate” changes. In states that obtained both of those waivers, it would mean lower premiums for people buying individual insurance. But less healthy Americans in those states could face ”extremely high premiums,” the report said. ”Over time, it would become more difficult for less healthy people (including people with preexisting medical conditions) in those states to purchase insurance because their premiums would continue to increase rapidly,” the CBO wrote. Waiving essential health benefits could also make medical care much more expensive for people who are pregnant, addicted or have other mental health issues and who live in those states that waive those benefits. ”In particular,    spending on maternity care and mental health and substance abuse services could increase by thousands of dollars in a given year for the nongroup enrollees who would use those services,” the report says of people living in those states. Under current law, the CBO wrote, the markets will be ”stable in most areas” because   Americans buying individual insurance will be shielded from rising Obamacare premiums, thanks to subsidies. However, the report acknowledges that insurers have reduced their participation in the exchanges, leaving some Americans with no options for buying insurance. ”The Affordable Care Act doesn’t have a   plan for this situation,” as Vox’s Sarah Kliff and Sarah Frostenson reported Wednesday, so it’s not clear how this could play out. Cuts to Medicaid, Medicaid accounts for by far the biggest spending reductions under the American Health Care Act. The bill would roll back the Medicaid expansion instituted under the Affordable Care Act, which extended the program to cover some Americans with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line. That expansion increased enrollment by 10 million, as NPR’s Alison Kodjak previously reported. Rolling back that expansion would limit future enrollments. The AHCA would also give states a choice: Receive Medicaid funding via either a block grant or a per capita amount per enrollee. Together, these changes would create major cuts in enrollment for the program: 14 million fewer people by 2026, and $834 billion in spending cuts over a decade. Older,   Americans get higher premiums, Average premiums would be lower in 2026 than they would be under Obamacare, both in states that do and that don’t seek waivers. But it’s impossible to make a meaningful blanket statement about how premiums would change under this bill, as those changes differ vastly for different groups of people. For example, older Americans who make little money and buy individual insurance would see their premiums climb far beyond what they would be under Obamacare. A    making $26, 500 would pay $1, 700 in premiums annually under Obamacare. In a state making those ”moderate” changes to its market, that    would pay $13, 600, and in a state with no waivers, the cost would be $16, 100. That’s more than nine times that person’s premium under the Affordable Care Act. However, younger Americans would see little change in their premiums, or even declines. Likewise, some people with higher incomes could see substantially lower premiums under this bill. For example, a    paying $6, 500 a year under current law could pay an estimated $2, 100 in a state with ”moderate changes” to its market. The bill moves on to the Senate, The CBO’s newly estimated deficit savings mean the bill can safely move on to the Senate. The future of the bill hinged upon this report, as House Republicans passed their most recent version of the bill without waiting for the CBO to report its estimated price tag. Three weeks after passing the bill, however, they have not sent the bill on to the Senate yet, because they were waiting on this score. Budget rules dictate that if the bill’s deficit savings had not reached $2 billion (and that $2 billion had to come from particular spending categories) the bill would be dead upon arrival."
"The year was 1945, and    Lindy Thomson had been given a few weeks to live. She suffered from diarrhea and projectile vomiting, and she was so thin and weak, she could no longer walk. Her parents had taken her from doctor to doctor. Finally, Dr. Douglas Arnold in Buffalo, N. Y. offered a most unusual prescription: She was to eat bananas. ”At least seven bananas a day,” recalls the patient, who now goes by her married name, Lindy Redmond. ”To whom it may concern,” the doctor wrote on a prescription pad that Lindy still has as a keepsake. Lindy Thomson ”has celiac disease (a nutritional disorder).” Arnold recommended that Lindy move to the clean mountain air in California and follow a     diet invented by Dr. Sidney Haas in 1924. The diet forbade starches but included numerous daily bananas, along with milk, cottage cheese, meat and vegetables. It was so effective in patients with celiac disease that in the 1930s, the University of Maryland endorsed the diet, according to pediatric gastroenterologist Alessio Fasano, chair of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a specialist in celiac disease. ”At that time, around 30 percent of children with celiac died. Parents were instructed to drop their children off at the hospital for six months,” says Fasano. If the children survived and thrived on the   diet, the parents could then ”pick them up and take them home.” We now know that celiac is an autoimmune disorder that strikes genetically predisposed people. It’s triggered by gluten in grains such as wheat, barley and rye. In the presence of gluten, the immune system of people with celiac disease attacks the small intestine, damaging the precious, fingerlike projections called villi that line it. This damage can lead to malnutrition, as well as a panoply of problems  —   from gas and bloating to fatigue, anemia, osteoporosis and an increased risk of certain cancers. The disease is estimated to affect 1 in 100 people worldwide. But in 1924, decades before gluten was discovered to be the culprit, celiac disease was a black box of mystery. ”The diet was unintentionally   and also incredibly high in calories,” explains Tricia Thompson, founder of Gluten Free Watchdog. ”It is incredible what the mothers and fathers did, going down to the docks to meet the ships and buy multiple bananas hanging on branches. So many people were so very grateful to him,” she says of Haas. ”He saved their lives.” Haas arrived at his banana diet through an honest error  —   one that, unfortunately, had serious repercussions for people with celiac disease. In his 1924 paper, he wrote of a town in Puerto Rico where ”dwellers who eat much bread suffer from [celiac] sprue while the farmers who live largely on bananas never.” Haas skipped over the role of wheat and focused instead on the exotic bananas, which he thought held curative powers. (Not unlike the esteem in which exotic ”superfruits” such as mangosteen and acai berry are held today.) ”Dr. Haas’ approach,” says Fasano, ”was based on the fact that bananas had the best characteristics to counterbalance the purging diarrhea that was the typical clinical presentation of celiac disease at that time.” Parents and children came to Haas from all over the U. S. He eventually treated over 600 people who had celiac disease. One of his ”banana babies” wrote down her memories for Gluten Free Watchdog’s site, recalling how Haas’ ”office was filled with children of all ages and many I remember looked like they came from the concentration camps . .. with their sunken eyes and swollen stomachs.” Once on the diet, the children recovered. For a time, belief in the healing properties of the banana was widespread and extended beyond celiac disease. Mothers were told to feed their infants bananas starting at 4 weeks. And at Johns Hopkins University, a doctor named George Harrop tried a version of the banana diet on people with diabetes and found that it helped them lose weight. ”The public went bananas,” says Alan Levinovitz, a religion professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. and author of The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat. But Haas’ honest error led to serious consequences. As the children recovered, wheat was reintroduced. ”All my life I have told doctors I had celiac as a child,” says Lindy Redmond, ”and that I grew out of it. And all my life I have eaten wheat.” It was only when she was 66 that her doctor gave her a test and took seven intestinal biopsies. ”My intestine was very damaged,” she reports. ”My doctor said she didn’t know if it would ever recover.” It was then that Redmond wondered about the possible connection between lifelong, untreated celiac disease and her two miscarriages, frequent bouts of colds and bronchitis, and interminable constipation. Now 74 and off gluten, Redmond says the colds and constipation are gone. It was a Dutch pediatrician, Willem Karel Dicke, who first realized that wheat might be linked to celiac disease. He noticed that in the last few years of World War II, when bread was unavailable in the Netherlands, the mortality rate from celiac disease dropped to zero. In 1952, Dicke and his colleagues identified gluten as the trigger for celiac disease, and the   diet was born. But Haas railed against the   diet and went on promoting his   cure, according to Levinovitz. ”Haas saw these miraculous reversals,” explains Levinovitz, ”and didn’t want to give up his status as a trailblazing savior.” Only the banana diet, Haas claimed, could achieve ”a cure which is permanent.” As a result, says Levinovitz, celiac disease was taken more seriously in Europe and continued to be ”massively underdiagnosed here in the U. S.” Jill Neimark is an   science journalist and an author of adult and children’s books. "
"Updated at 1:30 a. m. ET, British police have identified Salman Abedi, 22, as the bomber behind the attack on an Ariana Grande concert Monday in Manchester, England. Abedi died in the bombing, which claimed the lives of at least 22 victims and injured dozens more  —   many of whom were children. Law enforcement in the U. K. continued to expand its investigation Wednesday, citing a wider terror network and arresting at least eight people in connection with the attack, according to Greater Manchester Police. ”Clearly, this was a pretty sophisticated and powerful bomb,” a   Western government official told NPR, explaining that officers believe Abedi received help with the attack. ”Our assessment is he did not have the skills to build such a bomb, and the conclusion is there is a   out there.” Greater Manchester Police say Abedi  —   a British national whose father, Ramadan, comes from Libya  —   was part of a wider terror network. His family has come under scrutiny, as well: Libya’s RADA counterterrorism force issued a statement on Facebook saying it has arrested and interrogated Abedi’s younger brother, Hashim. In the statement, the force says that the    engineering student had been planning to launch an attack of his own in Tripoli and that after his arrest Tuesday night, Hashim confessed to ties with the Islamic State and knowledge of his brother’s alleged plans for the Manchester attack. The Associated Press reports the brothers’ father, Ramadan Abedi, was also arrested in Libya but did not say why. In an interview with the AP before his arrest, Ramadan Abedi said his    son, Ismail, had been arrested Tuesday, as well. ”We don’t believe in killing innocents. This is not us,” Ramadan Abedi told the news service. ”We aren’t the ones who blow up ourselves among innocents. We go to mosques. We recite Quran, but not that.” Ramadan Abedi fled to the U. K. in the early 1990s to escape the regime of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, according to The Guardian. The British newspaper reports that in 2001, he returned briefly to the country, where he fought Gadhafi’s soldiers as part of the    Libyan Islamic Fighting group. A Libyan neighbor says the elder Abedi returned again to Libya in 2011 after Gadhafi’s government fell. Salman Abedi lived for years with family in a modest   house in the Fallowfield section of Manchester, a   to   neighborhood. Though his neighbors tell NPR they did not know him well, some of them recall an incident in which a resident complained to police several years ago that members of the Abedi family had shown signs of radicalization. Police had followed up on the complaint at the time and visited the house. The senior Western official tells NPR that Salman Abedi had returned from a trip to Libya in the past several days."
"Updated at 11:40 p. m. ET, The father and younger brother of suspected Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi have been arrested in Libya. In a statement posted on Facebook, Libya’s RADA counterterrorism force said it had arrested and interrogated Abedi’s    brother, Hashim, on Tuesday. Libyan authorities said that for roughly a month, they had been watching Hashim, who they say had been about to launch an attack of his own in Tripoli. RADA also said their father, Ramadan Abedi, was taken into custody in Tripoli on Wednesday he has been questioned but not charged. Salman Abedi, 22, died in Monday’s attack at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in England. He was reportedly born in the U. K. to Libyan parents who had fled the regime of Moammar Gadhafi. He is believed to have returned to the U. K. from a trip to Libya recently. In a phone interview earlier Wednesday, Ramadan Abedi told the Associated Press that his son was innocent and that another of his sons, Ismail, had been arrested in England on Tuesday. News of the arrests came as authorities in England continue to investigate what they’re calling a network behind the bombing at a concert that had drawn girls and teenagers to Manchester. Grande had been scheduled to perform in London this week, but her management team says she is canceling all shows through June 5. Early Thursday morning in Manchester, police carried out a controlled explosion while searching an address in the city’s Moss Side area. They announced no reason for or result of the explosion. ”I think it’s very clear that this is a network that we are investigating,” Greater Manchester Police Chief Ian Hopkins said in an update on the case. His remarks go a step further than previous statements, in which officials said they were trying to learn whether the attacker had the support of a larger group. From Manchester, NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports: ”In some of my conversations that I’ve had with people who are following this very closely, the feeling is that they were aware of the bomber, but they didn’t think that he had the ability to pull off something like this, something of such sophistication and something so effective and deadly.” Manchester police say officers arrested six more people Wednesday as part of the investigation into the bombing, bringing the number of arrests to seven. The identities of those arrested and any charges against them have not been revealed. The first person was taken into custody on Tuesday in Manchester. Early Wednesday, police said three more men had been arrested ”after police executed warrants in South Manchester”  —   the area of the city where the suspected suicide bomber is believed to have lived. Police carried out another arrest that evening in Wigan, in western Manchester, where police say they apprehended a ”man carrying a package which we are currently assessing.” Police later announced they had arrested a woman in connection with the investigation in Blackley, a Manchester neighborhood. Police later said she had been released without charge. The arrest had come in the course of searches they were carrying out Wednesday evening. The seventh arrest came ”at an address in Nuneaton, Warwickshire,” Greater Manchester Police tweeted. Authorities also raided an apartment near the University of Manchester in the city center, where officers armed with automatic weapons blew open a door. ”There’s sort of ash and the smell of smoke,” that resident, Adam Prince, tells Frank. ”There’s about eight officers sitting up there.” In Monday night’s attack, 22 people died and nearly 60 were sent to hospitals after an explosion struck in the area between the concert venue and the adjacent transit station. As of Wednesday morning, police say, they have identified all of the fatalities and contacted all of the families involved. Those killed in the attack, which targeted a concert by a pop singer whose core fan group is young girls, include    Saffie Rose Roussos. Other victims who have been identified range from teenagers to a Polish couple, Angelika and Marcin Klis, who came to the venue to pick up their daughters. ISIS has issued a claim of responsibility for the bombing, but the level of the terrorist group’s involvement isn’t known. The U. K. is now at its highest terrorist threat level of ”critical” for the first time since 2007. As part of the security response, military personnel are being deployed to civilian areas to work alongside and bolster police. The head of the U. K.’s National Counter Terrorism Policing unit, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, says that using military troops ”is part of an agreed and   plan and military personnel will remain under the command and control of the police service.” ”The investigation into the terrorist attack in Manchester is     and making good progress,” Rowley said. In London, police and security are being boosted, the Metropolitan Police Service announced Wednesday. Police are asking the public ”to remain calm but alert” and to report suspicious behavior. ”We will do all we can to protect the capital that we serve at this unsettling time,” said Cmdr. Jane Connors, who leads the London policing operation. ”All our work is designed to make our city as hostile an environment as possible for terrorists to plan and operate.” The more prominent security presence in London will include armed officers who are supporting what the police call Project Servator. Here’s the description they gave: ”This tactic uses teams of specialist police officers who have been trained to spot the telltale signs that a person may be carrying out hostile reconnaissance or committing other crime. The approach is based on extensive research into the psychology of criminals and what undermines their activities.”"
"Melania Trump accompanied the president to the Vatican on Wednesday, wearing a black veil and a   black Dolce  Gabbana dress. The meeting was cordial. But the first lady’s clothing choices  —   specifically her decision to cover her head at the Vatican in contrast to during visits to Saudi Arabia and Israel  —   drew commentary from many sources. Some criticized her for not covering her hair during a visit to the Western Wall, part of a destroyed Jewish temple complex, or while in Saudi Arabia. Others praised Trump for not covering up in Saudi Arabia, seeing the move as a nod to women’s empowerment, which she promoted on the trip. Despite the criticism, the first lady’s attire was in keeping with the protocol of the countries she visited and the precedents set by foreign leaders who have visited them. Vatican protocol dictates that women should wear long sleeves, formal black clothing and a black veil during private audiences with the pope. The United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II attracted attention in 2014 for wearing a lilac suit to meet Pope Francis. That acceptance was seen as an effort by the pope to relax some rules of the Vatican. There is also an exception to black granted to Catholic queens or Catholic spouses of kings, according to Vatican Insider. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, wore cream and did not cover her head when meeting Francis last month, although she had worn black and a veil at a 2009 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. ”Things have become more relaxed over the last few years. There are no hard and fast rules,” a Vatican spokesperson told British newspaper the Daily Express. At the Western Wall, the first family did follow Jewish religious custom. The men (President Trump and    Jared Kushner) went to the men’s prayer plaza while the president’s daughter Ivanka and the first lady went to the women’s area, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism, wore a hat at the Western Wall as it is customary for observant women to cover their hair. Saudi Arabia, where Melania Trump went   has a strict dress code for women  —   Muslim women are to wear a   abaya robe and headscarf. However, foreigners are considered exempt from that rule, according to the Economist. As Fox News noted, in 2015, Donald Trump criticized former first lady Michelle Obama on Twitter for not wearing a headscarf on a trip to Saudi Arabia. British Prime Minister Theresa May visited Saudi Arabia last month sans headscarf as well. Melania Trump’s spokeswoman told CNN that the black dress with long, flowing sleeves she wore in Saudi Arabia was chosen to resemble the country’s abayas. ”If you look at her style, it’s still very much her and her style of dress but being sensitive to the place and host nation for sure,” Stephanie Grisham said."
"President Trump had an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Wednesday, receiving messages about peace, the environment and immigrants from the religious leader. The meeting came a year after the pope suggested that Trump ”is not Christian” because of his plan for a U.  border wall. Their encounter was smooth and brief, lasting about 30 minutes. The two leaders smiled as they posed for photos, and Trump introduced first lady Melania Trump, along with his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner. ”At the end of the audience, the pope gave Trump copies of his writings,” NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome, ”including his encyclical on climate change  —   a topic on which Trump has a very different opinion.” The pair exchanged several gifts: Trump gave Francis books by Martin Luther King Jr. and the pope also gave Trump an emblem of an olive tree, representing the need to pursue peace. ”We can use peace,” the president replied. As they shook hands in farewell, Trump told the pontiff, ”I won’t forget what you said,” adding that the pope should call on him for help. Later, Trump met with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. When asked about his discussion with Francis, Trump said it had gone very well. ”He is something,” Trump said. ”We had a fantastic meeting.” ”We’re liking Italy very, very much, and it was an honor to be with the pope,” he added. Trump later tweeted that it had been an ”honor of a lifetime” to meet the pope. He added, ”I leave the Vatican more determined than ever to pursue PEACE in our world.” Francis had criticized   Trump in February 2016, after Trump unveiled a key goal of his presidential campaign: walling off the U. S. border with Mexico. ”I’d just say that this man is not Christian if he said it in this way,” the pope told reporters after visiting Mexico. ”A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” In response, Trump said, ”For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.” Before the spat, Trump had mostly praised Francis, congratulating Catholics on the choice of the new pope in 2013 and saying via Twitter, ”People that know him love him!” Wednesday’s meeting also included an exchange between Francis and the first lady, who wore a veil in accordance with Vatican tradition. They shook hands and the pontiff asked her what she feeds the president. ”Pizza?” the first lady was heard answering, seeming to try to clarify what the pope had just said. They shared a laugh as Trump smiled. The encounter between the pope and first lady created what’s being described as a ”lost in translation” scenario: public media in Slovenia (where Melania Trump is from) report that the pope was asking about potica  —   a traditional sweet nut roll pastry from Eastern Europe. To our ears, it sounds like the first lady said either ”pizza” or ”potica” back to the pope  —   who seems to get a kick out of her answer. You can decide for yourself by watching the clip. Slovenia’s RTV reports that a Vatican source says Francis is a fan of potica, and that he jumps at the chance to discuss it."
"During papal audiences with heads of state, the exchange of gifts comes after the private encounter and at the end of the event. It offers the press a chance to witness the body language of the two leaders and listen in as they explain their gifts. It also offers a glimpse of what the two leaders think of each other. For example, Pope Francis gave President Trump a large medallion depicting an olive branch as a symbol of peace. The pope said, ”I give this to you so that you can be an instrument of peace.” The president replied, ”We can use peace.” Francis, who has made humility his hallmark, does not like flamboyant gifts, preferring those that are simple or creative. He appreciated President Barack Obama’s 2014 gift of seeds from the White House garden that were later planted at the summer papal retreat at Castelgandolfo. Past U. S. presidential gifts to popes have included a 19th century map  —   from Bill Clinton to Pope John Paul II  —   and a Steuben glass vase, given to the same pope by Ronald Reagan. Lyndon B. Johnson gave Pope Paul VI an autographed photo and a bust of himself. Today, Trump presented the pontiff with a large, boxed collection of Martin Luther King Jr. ’s writings  —   five   books the U. S. civil rights leader wrote during his lifetime: Stride Toward Freedom (1958) The Measure of a Man (1959) The Strength to Love (1963) Why We Can’t Wait (1964) and Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967). Trump also presented the pope with a small piece of granite from the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, D. C. and a bronze sculpture titled Rising Above, by the American sculptor Geoffrey Smith, representing ”hope for a peaceful tomorrow,” according to the White House. In addition to his own gift of peace, the medallion, the pope also gave the president the three documents he has written that he usually gives to visiting chiefs of state  —   Amoris Laetitia, Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si’. The last one reflects Francis’ intense denunciation of the damage caused by humans through climate change  —   a topic on which Trump has a very different view. Francis described the document to Trump as ”on the care of our common home, the environment.” Thanking the pope for the documents, the president said, ”Well, I’ll be reading them.”"
"There were few fireworks Wednesday as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testified before a House appropriations subcommittee on the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal. DeVos deflected much of the skepticism she received and continued to push the administration’s support of school choice. President Trump’s proposal, which has drawn sharp criticism from educators and lawmakers alike, calls for $1. 4 billion to expand school choice  —   namely vouchers and charter schools  —   but slashes $10. 6 billion from   programs, teacher training and federal student loans and grants. In her opening statement, DeVos said Trump’s budget proposal would return power to states and school districts and give parents a choice in their child’s education. Democrats, including New York Rep. Nita Lowey, accused DeVos of taking money from public schools to fund school choice. ”We’re not proposing any shifting of funding from public schools to private schools,” DeVos responded. ”In fact, all of the proposals set forth in the budget commit to fully funding public schools as we have.” ”If you’re pouring money into vouchers, the money is coming from somewhere,” Lowey said. Many Republicans, while upset about proposed cuts to career and technical training programs, expressed support for DeVos. ”We are beginning to see the early stages of a   robust discussion about how we begin the process of getting our federal budget under control,” Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said. Democrats questioned DeVos about whether she would allow federal funds to go to private schools that discriminate against particular populations. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts brought up Lighthouse Christian Academy, a school in Bloomington, Indiana that receives $665, 000 in state vouchers and denies admission to children of LGBT parents. ”Is there a line for you on state flexibility?” Clark asked. ”You are the backstop for students and their right to access quality education. Would you in this case say we are going to overrule and you cannot discriminate, whether it be on sexual orientation, race, or special needs in our voucher programs?” Clark added. ”Will that be a guarantee from you to our students?” DeVos sidestepped the question. ”The bottom line is we believe that parents are the best equipped to make choices for their children’s schooling and education decisions,” DeVos said. ”Too many children today are trapped in schools that don’t work for them. We have to do something different than continuing a       approach.” DeVos’s appearance before Congress was her first public seating since a rough confirmation hearing before the Senate back in January."
"More states than ever are providing publicly funded preschool. That’s according to a new report from the researchers at the National Institute for Early Education Research, or NIEER, who have been tracking state preschool policies and programs since 2002. In 2016, the report found, 43 states, plus the District of Columbia and Guam, provide publicly funded preschool. They serve about 1. 5 million children across the country  —   mostly   and   . Total state spending on preschool is now about $7. 4 billion, an eight percent increase over last year. That increase has pushed spending to nearly $5, 000 per child. Last year 24 states increased spending per child. California and Texas saw some of the biggest increases. Preschool got a pig push under the Obama Administration  —   and the federal preschool development grants that totaled $210 million last year were a big help. Steve Barnett, head of NIEER, says the numbers are encouraging, but he cautions that the quality of most preschool programs is still very uneven. ”The growing inequality between states that have moved ahead and invested in quality preschool programs and states that have done nothing is really stark.” Barnett says the reasons for that vary. Funding is a good example. Washington, D. C. spends $15, 748 per child. Mississippi spends less than $2, 000 per child, roughly half of what states spend on average. The disparities in enrollment are pretty pronounced as well. Florida, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia each serve more than 70 percent of their   . Another 18 states serve more than a third of these kids (New York City is considering universal preschool for    as well). Seven states, NIEER says, don’t fund preschool at all. With the funding issue comes the perennial question: Is the investment justified by the results? The growing consensus among researchers, including folks at NIEER, is that the   programs are  . The   programs, surprise surprise, are not. But the support for preschool funding often depends on whether programs target   kids or   children  —   often called ”universal” programs. ”The difference between universal and targeted [programs] is the difference between public education and charity,” says Barnett. ”Should [preschool] be segregated by income?” The NIEER report doesn’t really get into that question, but previous research suggests that state lawmakers are more likely to fund and expand preschool programs if they benefit   to   families, and not just the poor. Barnett says he worries about programs that fall short of the quality standards NIEER has set for all kids  —   regardless of income. ”If you have large classes with teachers who really don’t know child development or how to teach, this can be very stressful for kids,” he says. The good news, says Barnett, is that   preschool programs are better today than they were just 10 years ago. Quality has improved in states like Alabama, North Carolina, Rhode Island and West Virginia, in large part because they’ve invested in smaller class sizes and quality teachers."
"When President Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, unveiled the administration’s budget blueprint earlier this week, which calls for significant cuts to food stamps, he noted that the aim of the budget was to get people working. ”If you’re on food stamps and you’re   we need you to go to work. If you’re on disability insurance and you’re not supposed to be  —   if you’re not truly disabled, we need you to go back to work,” Mulvaney said Tuesday. But the reality is, many people (44 percent) who rely on SNAP  —   the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as food stamps is now known  —   have at least one person in the family working, according to the latest figures from the U. S. Department of Agriculture. And when it comes to families on SNAP with kids, a majority  —   55 percent  —   are bringing home wages, according to USDA. The problem is, those wages aren’t enough to actually live on. That jibes with what Feeding America, a network of U. S. food banks, found in 2014 when it issued Hunger in America, a comprehensive report on who uses food pantries and why. It found that 54 percent of the families who turn to pantries to help put food on the table have at least one member working, and that rate was much higher, 71 percent, for households with kids. In fact, SNAP already requires   adults without children to find a job within three months and to work at least 20 hours a week or lose their benefits. All told, about 42 million people receive SNAP benefits. As it turns out, many of the working poor who rely on SNAP benefits to get enough to eat are actually employed in the food industry. As we’ve reported, an analysis from University of California, Berkeley Labor Center found that 52 percent of   workers are enrolled in, or have their families enrolled in, one or more public assistance programs such as SNAP, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Overall, Trump’s budget proposal would slash $191 billion from SNAP’s budget over the next decade. But many of the states where residents rely most heavily on food stamps are also states where support for the president is strongest. For instance, in West Virginia, Mississippi and Louisiana, 1 out of 5 residents receives SNAP benefits, according to an analysis from the   Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. All three states voted overwhelmingly for Trump last November."
"Oil producers across the country are watching to see what OPEC does at its meeting in Vienna this week, since the cartel of   countries has recently played a big role in turning around a   U. S. slump. There are more than twice as many U. S. rigs drilling for oil as a year ago, a turnaround that’s felt keenly in places like the Bakken oil patch in North Dakota. Cigarettes and chewing tobacco are flying off the shelves of the gas station Angela Neuman manages in the town of Williston. ”Now there are so many new people, I cannot get a handle on that,” she laughs. A year ago the price of oil was so low that it made drilling less profitable. Production dropped and companies in North Dakota and elsewhere made painful layoffs. Across Williston, at the Winterton Suites hotel, sometimes there was only a guest or two, and the price plunged from $300 a night to the bargain rate of $100. ”We almost actually thought we were going to lose it for a little bit,” says Winterton’s manager Chelsey Crozier. Occupancy has ticked back up this spring. ”Of course, [it’s] not as crazy as it was,” she says, ”but it’s doing better.” In the dizzying   cycle of the oil industry, things were crazy busy here a few years back, when a barrel of oil was around $100. But that led to a surge in production that flooded the market, pushing the price of oil down. That’s when OPEC stepped in to boost prices by cutting its own production, and Russia followed suit. ”Effectively, these cuts that were put into place last fall are being filled in by other countries,” including the U. S. says Eugene Graner, with Heartland Investor Capital Management in Bismarck. U. S. production has risen to 9. 3 million barrels of oil per day, close to the level before prices plummeted. When OPEC meets Thursday, it’s expected to keep its cuts in place. Graner says that would help ensure this   in the U. S. keeps going, though he does not foresee another spike in the price of oil. President Trump has promised to unleash the energy industry by lifting all kinds of regulations. His full rollback has not happened yet. But energy analyst Trisha Curtis with PetroNerds says Trump’s move to approve the Dakota Access Pipeline is helpful. ”That gives sort of a green light,” she says. ”If you were a little hesitant on the Bakken on activity or development, that certainly is a game changer.” The Dakota Access Pipeline is slated to come online next week. It will make transporting Bakken oil cheaper, and allow it to more easily reach a new market in the Gulf Coast. In North Dakota, this means a lot more jobs will be needed to produce that oil. At the Job Service North Dakota office in Williston, customer service representatives are busy taking applications. ”Over 150 jobs we posted this week,” says manager Cindy Sanford. That’s more jobs than there are local workers, she says, and the openings keep coming. Amy Sisk reports for Prairie Public Broadcasting and for Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focused on America’s energy issues. You can follow her @amyrsisk."
"After making the need for a wall along the U. S.  border a central campaign theme, President Trump has asked Congress for just $1. 6 billion to start building 74 miles of barriers. Texas alone shares more than 1, 200 miles of border with Mexico. If Congress approves the current request, 14 miles of old fencing in the San Diego sector would be replaced, and 60 miles of new structures would be built in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas  —   the region with the heaviest illegal traffic. With the 74 miles of new barriers and 654 miles of existing border fence, more than   of the southwest border would be covered. The request is far less than the $21. 6 billion the Homeland Security Department had estimated that wall construction would cost. Still, Trump’s request works out to $21. 6 million a mile, or nearly $13, 000 a yard  —   for what’s expected to be a steel and concrete barrier. At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who represents portions of South Texas where the new border wall will be built, criticized the expected high cost of construction. ”I don’t support the wall,” said Cuellar, a Laredo native, to speaking to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. Cuellar said earlier border fencing had been built for a fraction of the current price tag. He questioned why the government needs all new custom surveillance equipment. ”There’s a lot of technology that works well for the military that should work well for us down there.” The White House has said that the wall will take years to build, and that it plans to ask for additional construction funding in later years. Still, the administration lowered its ambitions when skeptics in Congress questioned the cost and effectiveness of a barrier on the border. Some members of Congress not only oppose the wall but say it would be imprudent to begin building while plans for the project are still incomplete. ”It continues to be irresponsible to start a   dollar construction project that has ignited growing concern from members of Congress . .. without knowing what it costs and where it is actually needed,” Sen. Claire McCaskill said in a statement on Wednesday. The Missouri Democrat is ranking minority member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, has been critical of the border wall plan, saying that in some areas other security measures such as additional Border Patrol personnel would make more sense. ”When I hear the president talk about the wall,” Cornyn said, ”I think he is speaking metaphorically.” Border Patrol officials have asserted they’re in favor of some new wall construction so long as it’s part of a ”tiered approach” that includes more agents and surveillance technology. The president’s fiscal year 2018 budget request also includes 500 new Border Patrol agents and $1 billion for new technology such as upgraded communications equipment. Proponents of the wall say such barriers are needed to prevent the illegal transit of narcotics and humans. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has assured Congress his department does not want a barrier ”from sea to shining sea,” saying it might not make sense to put a border wall in some areas. Meanwhile, U. S. taxpayers would foot the bill to begin construction. Trump had declared on the campaign trail that he would make Mexico pay for the wall but Mexico continues to adamantly refuse Trump’s insistence that it reimburse the U. S. Treasury for the cost of the wall. Ildefonso Guajardo, Mexico’s economy secretary, told NPR last month that President Enrique Peña Nieto ”has been loud and clear  —   there is no way Mexico will pay for the wall.” Customs and Border Protection plans to announce its selection of prototypes for new border wall construction later this summer."
"Aziz Ansari is in the midst of a whirlwind year. In January, the comic hosted Saturday Night Live the day after President Trump’s inauguration  —   an experience he describes as ”one of the most watched   sets I’ll ever do in my life, if not the most.” More recently, Ansari has been focused on his Emmy and Peabody   comedy series, Master of None, which he   and   with Alan Yang. Ansari also stars in the show as Dev, a     actor who struggles to bridge the cultural gap between himself and his parents (who happen to be played by Ansari’s actual parents). The second season of Master of None recently became available on Netflix, which means the comic is experiencing some   downtime. ”I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” he says when asked about upcoming projects. ”Let me relax for a second. Let me just live my life. Forget season three of Master of None, I’m also doing season 34 of Aziz Ansari!” On growing up a   Muslim, I grew up in South Carolina, so it was kind of hard to participate in the religion because there was no mosque or anything like that. I was never really religious. I never really took to religion in general. I just remember being a kid and even having the thought of, Well, it seems like everyone’s just doing whatever their parents’ religion was. . .. So that immediately made me skeptical of the whole thing. On how his parents feel about acting in the show, My dad is a practicing gastroenterologist my mom works at the office. When they come to do the series, they’re using their vacation time to help me. My mom doesn’t even like acting on the show. She’s really just doing it because she loves me very much. She hates acting. Before the second season, when we announced the second season, she’s like, ”OK, this season the mom character’s on vacation or she’s just gone.” And I was like, ”She can’t be on vacation the whole time.” She’s like, ”No, maybe she’s at a wedding sometimes.” She just didn’t want to be a part of it. She did it because she loves me and my brother is also heavily involved with the show. It’s a really special thing that we get to do this together. . .. And after the [first] season aired, my dad came to New York and we went on Stephen Colbert’s show together. . .. And we went out to dinner afterwards, and he was telling me, . .. ”The reason I’m acting in the show and doing all of this is just to spend more time with you and to see you.” On working with Lena Waithe to write the ”Thanksgiving” episode, which was based on Waithe’s own experience growing up black and gay, and coming out to her family  I told [Lena] from the   ”You need to write this with me and I’ll help you and we’ll get this in shape and make it feel like the show. But you’ve got to make sure we get this right.” . .. That episode, it’s just me and four black women, the whole episode. I joked with Melina [Matsoukas] who directed the episode, and Lena, ”This is the most amount of screen time I’ve seen on any film or television show, with one Indian character and four black women.” How am I going to write that episode by myself? It would be offensive! You know? I guess I don’t have the gall of all those white writers who write for minorities. On what it’s like to date when you’re famous, It doesn’t really affect things as much as people assume. It affects things in ways that people don’t understand or predict. . .. The thing that’s tricky is it’s a very weird lifestyle. If you’re filming something in another place, you’re living in another city for three months. It’s weird if . .. other people are taking pictures of you all of the time and you go out on one date with someone and there’s pictures of you guys together. That stuff is kind of intense. Just having the public scrutiny of your personal relationships, that stuff is weird. But I don’t have that at the level of other more famous people. But in my life I haven’t found it to be something that causes me too much [problems]. I’m dealing with the same thing the guy in the show is you’re trying to find a meaningful connection with someone, no matter who you are. On hosting SNL and delivering the opening monologue the day after Trump’s inauguration  What’s interesting about doing SNL is no matter how many times you practice in a comedy club, it’s happening that day. So with the whole election and inauguration, everyone’s mood was changing every day and crazy things were happening every day. So you never knew what you were going to be in for that Saturday. The day before, on the inauguration, everyone was so down and depressed. The whole mood on the set was so bad. And then the next day, Saturday, there was the Women’s March and everyone’s spirits were boosted and it was a totally different environment. No matter how many times you practice in a comedy club, being there at SNL, at that stage, it’s not like any comedy club. Radio producers Lauren Krenzel and Mooj Zadie and Web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"Let’s look at some of the buzziest shows on television in the past year or so, shall we? What do House of Cards, Girls, I Love Dick, Orphan Black, Transparent and The Magicians have in common? Every one of them has featured unconventional romantic or sexual relationships involving more than two people. Exhibit A: the arrangement between the fictional president of the United States and First Lady on one of Netflix’s most popular shows, House of Cards. The most powerful couple on Earth enjoyed a joint affair with one of their Secret Service protectors. The two also regularly pursue separate romantic interests. Exhibit B: I Love Dick’s entire premise rests on a couple’s shared crush on a famous artist (named, of course, Dick). And the lead character in Girls gets pregnant after a fleeting relationship with a man in an open relationship. (It’s also worth mentioning the failed threeway turned bonding experience between two of the main characters.) On the other hand, Orphan Black’s   tend to feature evil clones. A university professor on Transparent insists on   with her much younger girlfriend. In The Magicians, polyamorous marriage is literally magical. And a new show called You Me Her concerns a suburban married couple bringing a girlfriend into their relationship. As for reality TV, surprise! It’s not to be outdone. TLC’s polygamous hit Sister Wives was briefly joined on its home channel by a special called Brother Husbands, both about unconventional marriages. The channel further upped the stakes by introducing a throuple  —   three people in a relationship  —   on its bridal gown shopping show, Say Yes To The Dress. I asked Nusrat Duranni, general manager of MTV Networks, if it was even possible to imagine so many unconventional relationships on TV even five years ago  —   when HBO’s hit drama, Big Love, about a polygamous Utah family, went off the air. ”I couldn’t agree more,” Duranni said. Based on conversations with MTV viewers, he added, there’s probably not enough representation of unconventional and polyamorous relationships on TV. Of course, pushing boundaries and titillating viewers is nothing new for television. Durrani remembers when networks in the 1990s used lesbian kisses on shows such as L. A. Law and Friends to goose ratings during sweeps week. ”You can do that for a little bit, but I think it becomes old and tired and I think your audiences see through that,” he said. What’s happening now, Duranni notes, is that many of these open relationships currently shown on television are an ongoing part of storylines, key to driving plots and understanding major characters. They’re not just stunts. ”People have more and different kinds of relationships than just   committed marriage,” says Dan Savage, the nationally syndicated sex columnist and podcaster. ”That’s not all there is under the sun. In a way, it parallels debates about representations of gay people on television.” Representations of   relationships or poly people on TV often remind Savage of the medium’s early depictions of gays and lesbians. ”Usually they’re trotted out to mean something sinister or it’s a little bit of a freak show like on TLC,” he says. ”You know, we don’t have the   married couple that occasionally has threeways that they find invigorating, that cements their connection, that brings them closer together, where their third is treated respectfully.” The dramatic appeal of   relationships seems  . But Lucy Gillespie takes them as seriously as other subjects she’s investigated, such as Occupy Wall Street and Lee Atwater. The    created an   series called Unicornland. It’s about a young woman who hooks up with a different couple in every episode. ”I think everybody feels like everyone else is having a better time in bed then they are,” Gillespie said wryly, when I wondered if TV’s sexual vocabulary might be influenced by the widespread availability of online porn. Her main character learns about the pitfalls of venturing into other people’s messy relationships: ”I didn’t get out of a bad marriage to join yours,” she tells an insufferable husband who isn’t listening to his wife. Perhaps what we’re seeing reflects a society where so many old rules about gender and sexuality are in flux  —   and one where basic communication  —   let alone everything else  —   presents a challenge for frustrated, overworked couples. Opening a relationship can feel like a fantasy, a fix or both. Gillespie likens it to a hack, the way some people might take a Lyft to work instead of driving. ”We’re all sort of trying to hack our lives and make our lives more interesting and optimal,” she says. That said, Gillespie’s about to enter a monogamous marriage herself. Maybe, she says simply, there’s not a better mousetrap. But Dan Savage points out that the stories about the mice that play accomplish what television, film, and literature have always done: push the envelope, make you think, provide vicarious experiences, and give you a chance to contemplate your choices."
"The NBA has announced that Charlotte, N. C. will host the 2019   Game, after the state partially repealed its controversial law that limited civil rights protections for LGBT people. The professional basketball league moved last year’s   game from Charlotte, where it was originally scheduled, to protest the state’s HB2 law. ”While we understand the concerns of those who say the repeal of HB2 did not go far enough, we believe the recent legislation eliminates the most egregious aspects of the prior law,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. Today’s decision has drawn criticism from some transgender advocates, who say the state is still not providing adequate protections. ”This is a disgrace from the NBA but not surprising,” Chase Strangio, a staff attorney at the ACLU working on LGBT issues, wrote on Twitter. ”Lessons in why you should never trust corporations as your allies.” HB2 is also known as the ”bathroom bill” because it said that in public institutions, transgender people must use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate, rather than their gender identity. The law created an intense backlash, ultimately costing the state an estimated $3. 7 billion after businesses pulled out and events moved elsewhere. In March, lawmakers came up with a compromise to partially repeal the measure  —   but ”the deal prohibits local communities from passing   ordinances for at least three years,” as NPR’s Camila Domonoske reported. ”That will block cities from imposing their own protections for LGBT people.” The NBA commissioner said that the league would work with the Charlotte Hornets to ”apply a set of equality principles” so that the game and other associated events ”will proceed with open access and   policies.” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, applauded the decision: ”Hosting the   Game will pump millions of dollars into our economy and provide an incredible showcase for our state, but it will also remind us of the work that remains to ensure equal rights and protections for all North Carolinians.” Michael Jordan, the legendary basketball player and Charlotte Hornets chairman, said he was ”thrilled” about the announcement and emphasized that it would have a ”tremendous economic impact to our community.” Charlotte has been the focus of the state’s debate over the HB2 law. As Camila reported, ”the city passed a measure protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from being discriminated against by businesses. It included a provision allowing trans people to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender.” State lawmakers then convened and rapidly passed the HB2 law, ultimately overriding the Charlotte city measure. Other events that fled during the controversy are slowly coming back to the state last month, the NCAA announced that it will bring back college sports events, though it said it was doing so ”reluctantly,” as Camila reported."
"Last year’s Zika outbreak in Miami likely started in the spring of 2016, with the virus introduced multiple times before it was detected, researchers say. And most of those cases originated in the Caribbean. The study, published Wednesday in Nature, examined more than 250 cases of local Zika transmission in three Miami neighborhoods. Researchers analyzed 39 Zika virus genomes isolated from 32 people who had been infected and seven Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the species that carries Zika. Comparison of differences in those genomes finds the virus was introduced by travelers at least four and perhaps as many as 40 different times as early as March 2016. Local transmission of Zika wasn’t confirmed in Miami until late July. The study concludes that Miami’s Zika outbreak was caused mostly by infected travelers arriving from the Caribbean, the region with the highest incidence of the disease. ”Miami and South Florida particularly had this correspondence of lots of travelers from the Caribbean as well as high densities of Aedes aegypti that could support local transmission,” says Derek Cummings, a professor of biology at the University of Florida and one of the study authors. ”Both the genetics and the travel data supported that the majority of locally acquired Zika cases were coming from Caribbean origin.” Some 3 million travelers from the Caribbean arrived in Miami between January and June last year. The majority, 2. 4 million, arrived aboard cruise ships. The researchers caution that doesn’t mean cruise ships are risk factors for Zika transmission, only that they are a major mode of transportation from areas where the disease was active. According to the study, Miami is one of the few places in the continental U. S. with enough foreign travelers and a high enough density of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to be at risk for Zika. The study authors say they think Florida is unlikely to see another Zika outbreak unless it’s sparked by one elsewhere in the Americas. While Zika remains active and continues to be spread in areas with high numbers of Aedes aegypti, outbreaks appear to have peaked in many areas. Brazil is reporting that Zika cases are down by 95 percent from last year and has declared an end of its public health emergency. Cummings says: ”Cases in the Americas are on the decline compared to last year. So we might see fewer cases just because there are fewer cases happening in the rest of the hemisphere.” The Miami study is one of three featured this week in Nature using genomic analysis to trace the spread of the Zika virus through the Americas. In a commentary, Michael Worobey, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, says this kind of analysis needs to become part of the   response to future infectious disease outbreaks. ”We should be detecting such outbreaks within days or weeks through routine, massive,   approaches,” he writes, ”not months or years later, when clinical symptoms have accumulated.”"
"There’s a rich body of evidence that links chocolate to heart health. Now comes a new study that finds people who consume small amounts of chocolate each week have a lower risk of developing atrial fibrillation, a heart condition characterized by a rapid or irregular heartbeat. ”The rate of atrial fibrillation was 20 percent lower for people consuming two to six servings [of chocolate] per week” compared with people who ate chocolate less than once per month, explains study author Elizabeth Mostofsky, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. The findings are published in the journal BMJ Heart. Atrial fibrillation, also known as AFib, can increase the risk of heart failure, stroke and cognitive impairment. It affects over 33 million people around the globe, and an estimated 25 percent of adults will develop the condition during their lifetime, according to an editorial published alongside the paper. To assess how chocolate consumption can influence the risk of AFib, Mostofsky and her collaborators analyzed data from a Danish study the includes 55, 000 people. All of the participants had completed detailed questionnaires about their lifestyles, everything from exercise habits to what they ate and drank, including how much chocolate they consumed. ”These people were followed over time,” explains Mostofsky. ”So we were able to identify all of the diagnoses of atrial fibrillation.” As we’ve reported, prior studies have found that habitual chocolate eaters seem to have lower risks of heart disease. Researchers have found that the compounds in cocoa, known as polyphenols, can improve vascular health by increasing blood flow. Cocoa compounds may also help suppress inflammation. The rule of thumb is that dark chocolate is a better choice than milk chocolate, since dark chocolate typically contains more cocoa solids. Many people in Denmark, where the study took place, typically consume milk chocolate. So Mostofsky says she wasn’t sure she’d find such a significant reduction in risk. ”We were pleasantly surprised that  —   despite the fact that most of the chocolate may have [had] relatively low cocoa concentrations  —   we were still able to see robust findings,” she says. Now, these findings are not the green light to add lots of candy bars to your diet. Candy comes with lots of sugar and packs in calories, too. So  —   though this may seem obvious  —   moderation is key. ”If you’re a chocolate lover, eat a nice,   piece of chocolate,” says Tom Sherman, a professor at the Georgetown University Medical Center, who was not involved in the study. The reduction in AFib was highest for people who consumed two to 6 servings of chocolate a week. But people who consumed just one serving a week had a reduced risk of the condition as well. This study is not the final word on how chocolate consumption may influence heart health. And it’s possible that the reduction in AFib risk found in the chocolate eaters could be explained by other factors, too. For instance, the accompanying editorial points out that the chocolate eaters in the study ”had less hypertension, less diabetes and lower blood pressure.” Also, the chocolate eaters ”had higher levels of education, which is often associated with improved health status.” But the editorial concludes that regardless of these limitations, ”the findings are interesting and warrant further consideration.” Indeed, lots of researchers are involved in nailing down the potential health benefits of cocoa. As we’ve reported, scientists are now studying whether a ”chocolate pill” made of cocoa extract can boost health."
"It was in May 1986 that Top Gun brought the need for speed  —   and beach volleyball  —   to American movie theaters. In the 31 years since, we’ve seen Tom Cruise sprint his way from playing Maverick to Ron Kovic and Jerry Maguire to the guy in Mission Impossible five times and Jack Reacher twice (and some other stuff). But these are complicated times. And we might be forgiven our nostalgia for a simpler era when we knew less about Tom Cruise. When yes, he was an action star, but an action star who cried when Goose died. What we need, in addition to speed, is a Top Gun 2. On the Australian morning show Sunrise, Cruise said that’s just what we’ll get. ”Top Gun 2: please say it’s true,” said the host. ”It’s true,” he replied, with all the guile and charm we remember from the old days. ”We’re going to start filming it probably in the next year.” This utterance seems to solidify what’s been in the air for over a year. Last January, producer Jerry Bruckheimer tweeted a photo of him and Cruise, casually dropping that two had just been discussing ”a little Top Gun 2.” And in an Ask Me Anything on Reddit last month, Val ”Iceman” Kilmer was asked if he’d be in a Top Gun sequel, to which he replied: ”Hell yes. What a hoot it will be. ..” There’s no word yet on who might direct the sequel. Tony Scott, who directed the original, died in 2012. It’s been so long since the movie came out, the Navy no longer operates the   Tomcat that Cruise, Kilmer and the other actors flew. The 1986 film grossed $356 million worldwide, according to IMDB. It cemented Cruise’s status as a leading man, box office draw and sunglasses model: After Top Gun was released, sales of   Aviators reportedly went up 40 percent."
"Two thieves. Thirteen pieces of art.   years of mystery. And now, a $10 million reward  —   for anyone who can bring those missing masterpieces back to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Two men disguised as police officers made off with the paintings and sketches in 1990. It is still the largest property crime ever carried out in America, and the biggest heist from an art museum anywhere in the world. The treasures include Rembrandt’s only known seascape and one of just 36 paintings by Vermeer. They’re worth more than half a billion dollars. They have never been located. The search has never stopped. In 2013, the FBI said they were confident they had identified the thieves as two men tied to the mob . .. or as the agency put it, part of ”a criminal organization with a base in the   states and New England.” Having suspects isn’t quite as useful as it might sound, since the statute of limitations for the crime expired years ago. But the FBI also has a good idea what happened to the artworks, at least at first  —   they were smuggled to ”the Connecticut and Philadelphia regions.” Where are they now? The FBI doesn’t have a clue. Somebody knows. The FBI and the Gardner Museum are sure of it. They believe that somebody, somewhere, at some time in the past 27 years, has caught a glimpse of a Vermeer or Rembrandt or Manet or Degas hanging on a wall or rolled up in a safe. If that someone is you, drop an email to theft@gardnermuseum. org. The museum’s leaders ”guarantee complete confidentiality”  —   and, if the tip leads to the artworks’ recovery, a $10 million bounty. There’s always been a reward for information leading to the artworks’ discovery. Within days of the theft, the trustees promised $1 million. The sum was boosted to $5 million in 1997. Now it’s been doubled  —   temporarily. ”The increased offer is available immediately and expires at midnight on December 31, 2017,” the museum says in a press release. The   boost in the reward is meant to signal that the search is still ongoing and enthusiastic. If you’ve got a tip, the museum and authorities really, truly want to know. ”Typically stolen masterpieces are either recovered soon after a theft or a generation later,” Anthony Amore, the director of security at the museum, said in the statement. ”We remain optimistic that these works will ultimately be recovered.” Rick Abath was the security guard who said he was tricked by the ersatz policemen into opening the door for them. He spoke to StoryCorps in 2015, and said he’s still angry about what happened. The thieves sliced two of the Rembrandts straight out of their frames, he noted. ”So even if they get the paintings back they’ll never be the same,” he said. ”And I feel horrible about that.” Also in 2015, Boston Globe reporter Stephen Kurkjian explained to NPR that the works are essentially impossible to sell, as incredibly valuable and recognizable stolen goods. He said one theory for the heist is rooted in the idea that ”the authorities, whether they be federal or state, will do anything to get that artwork back”  —   so it can serve as a ”get out of jail free” card, or at least a ”transfer to a   prison” card."
"Newly arrived from Moscow, just hours after cutting short his diplomatic visit to Russia, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte stepped behind a lectern to explain his decision to declare martial law in the southern island of Mindanao. With his right hand raised, Duterte made a stark pledge. ”If I think you should die, you will die. If you fight us, you will die. If there’s an open defiance, you will die. And if it means many people dying, so be it,” Duterte said at the news conference Wednesday. ”That’s how it is.” As he spoke in Manila, members of the military gathered on the outskirts of Marawi, one of Mindanao’s largest cities. Reinforcements were setting up in barracks, manning checkpoints and preparing to resume an effort to reclaim Marawi City from   militants, who have occupied the area since a raid went awry Tuesday. The military had aimed to quickly capture Isnilon Hapilon, a senior leader with Abu Sayyaf, only to be surprised midafternoon Tuesday by an influx of roughly 100 jihadi fighters backing him. Between that botched operation and Duterte’s speech, Abu Sayyaf militants and their allies in the Maute Group raised the black flags of ISIS above some public buildings, burned some other buildings and killed at least three members of the security forces, according to Philippine authorities. Among those killed, Duterte said Wednesday, is a police officer who was abducted and beheaded. Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, also said jihadi fighters had taken a priest and at least a dozen other people hostage. ”They have threatened to kill the hostages if the government forces unleashed against them are not recalled,” Villegas said in a statement. ”[The priest] was not a combatant. He was not bearing arms. He was a threat to none.” Civilians have also flooded out of the city to escape the violence, which one witness described to   as unrelenting. ”Please pray for us here,” Mohammad Abedin, president of the Lanao Del Sur Medical Society in Marawi, told the publication. ”We can see houses burning and we don’t have electricity now.” In response, Duterte not only interrupted his trip to Russia and declared martial law in the island of 22 million people  —   he suggested the possibility of expanding martial law nationwide. ”I might also decide to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in the Visayas,” the president said at the news conference Wednesday, saying the country’s central set of islands is within walking distance of Mindanao. He added: ”If I think that ISIS has taken a foothold also in [the main northern island of] Luzon, and terrorism is not really far behind, I might declare martial law throughout the country.” Martial law in the Philippines is restricted to 60 days  —   though Duterte, who has been accused of crimes against humanity for alleged extrajudicial killings, alarmed many observers by saying his use of martial law would be similar to that of the Philippines’ longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos. ”To those who have experienced martial law, it would not be any different from what President Marcos did,” Duterte said on his flight back to the Philippines. ”I’ll be harsh.” Marcos himself declared martial law in 1972, using the maneuver to help him maintain his grasp on power for nearly a decade. The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, a human rights group, decried Duterte’s move in a statement, saying it ”appears as a sledgehammer,   reaction.” ”The recent pronouncement made by the President that the martial law in Mindanao will be as harsh as Marcos’ martial law is a dangerous edict,” NUPL   Ephraim B. Cortez said. ”The declaration of martial law should be an option of last resort and should be strictly within the bounds, requirements, and limitations of the Constitution.” Duterte, however, has cast the decision as one he made reluctantly  —   and one that, now that he’s made it, he’s resolved to carry through to its conclusion. ”I have always said, ’Do not force my hand into it,’ ” he declared Wednesday, ”because if I start to declare martial law, I will solve all the problems of Mindanao connected with law and order.”"
"I often get asked what an ”expanding universe” really means. It’s confusing, and for very good reasons. So, if you are perplexed by this, don’t feel bad. We all are, although cosmologists  —   physicists that work on the properties of the universe  —   have figured out ways to make sense of it. In what follows, I’ll try to explain how to picture this. In the next few weeks, we will address other bizarre cosmic questions, such as the meaning of the Big Bang and the future and material composition of the universe. Here is the problem: From our everyday perspective, when we see something expanding, we immediately also see what it’s expanding into. An inflating balloon grows outwards into the space surrounding it. We can easily picture this because we are seeing things from the outside. We see the balloon and its surface growing as air is pumped into it. This is the privileged observer’s view, one where we have a detached and complete grasp of what’s going on, a view ”from the outside.” It is very, very hard for us to get over this   image, no less because we use it all the time to explain the expansion of the universe! But the universe is no balloon. What really complicates things is that we are trapped inside. We can’t step outside the universe to see galaxies moving away from one another. When we measure the cosmic expansion, we must do it from the inside, sort of like a fish that wants to describe the ocean as a whole. Current measurements indicate that the universe has a flat (or nearly flat) geometry. For cosmology, a flat geometry means that rays of light actually travel on a straight line across space. (In a curved geometry, the rays would trace a curved path, like when you run your finger over the meridian of a globe.) Also, and very importantly, a flat geometry means that the universe is probably infinite. If you’d start moving on a straight line, you’d never come back to where you started. (In a spherical geometry, if you move, say, along the equator, you’d get back to your starting point.) How can something   be expanding? The usual   question (inspired by the expanding balloon image) is: ”Expanding into what?” Good questions. The straight answer is that the universe doesn’t expand into anything. There is no space ”out there” for it to expand into. What the cosmic expansion does is stretch space itself, as if space were made of some kind of stretchy rubber material. There is no physical border out here, only stretching space. To picture this, we need to build a ”view from the inside,” as human observers inside the cosmos. Here is one way: Imagine a checkerboard. A checkerboard is a   space  —   you can move in two directions. Real space is   as we can also move vertically up and down. But picturing spaces in 2D is much easier for us, so the checkerboard will do. Now imagine you put a penny at each vertex of the checkerboard, the point where two lines meet. The checkerboard is our flat universe (it extends to infinity in all directions) and the coins are galaxies. Of course, the real universe is not this orderly, but the idea is the same. If the universe were static  —   that is, not expanding or contracting  —   the coins (galaxies) would just stay there. In an expanding universe, the squares would stretch and grow equally in all directions and the coins would be carried along, like corks floating on a river. If you were a creature sitting in one coin ( or galaxy) you’d see all your neighbors move away from you. Proudly, you’d think you are the center of the expansion. But your pride is an illusion. Every observer in every coin would see the exact same thing, its neighbors moving away. No coin (or point in the geometry) is more important than any other point. When it comes to the cosmic expansion, we have complete space democracy. In other words, the universe has no center. It’s incorrect to picture the expansion as a bomb that exploded far in the past. (We will get to this wrong picture of the exploding universe and the Big Bang another week.) Back to the real universe, every point is a center of the expansion, as observers measure their neighbors moving away, carried by the stretching geometry. This is what the cosmic expansion means. In 1929, American astronomer Edwin Hubble measured the expansion and showed that it obeys a very simple law, where the galaxies move away from one another with velocities that grow in proportion to their distances. So, an observer sees a galaxy that is twice as far away from a closer one move away (or recede) twice as fast. A slight, but very interesting, complication is that since gravity is an attractive force, when two or more galaxies are sufficiently close, in their movements they can detach from the general cosmic expansion as they drift toward one another. We say that they acquire ”peculiar velocities.” Peculiar velocities are very important in astronomy and cosmology because they allow us to map how large concentrations of mass are distributed across space in big galaxy clusters, some containing thousands or more galaxies. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of what we call the ”local group.” The mapping of these large concentrations of galaxies  —   and of all galaxies  —   is the grand quest of extragalactic astronomy. There is a story here, a story that began when matter first gathered into clumps way back when the universe was very young, and how these clumps grew to become galaxies distributed in large groups. To uncover this story, we need to go back to the universe’s early history (as close to the Big Bang as we can) and to know what the cosmic ingredients are  —   that is, the different kinds of matter and stuff that fill space. We will get to these two issues during the next few weeks to complete our cosmic trilogy. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"Sleek,   wristbands are extremely popular these days, promising to measure heart rate, steps taken during the day, sleep, calories burned and even stress. And, increasingly, patients are heading to the doctor armed with reams of data gathered from their devices. ”They’re essentially asking us to digest the data and offer advice about how to avoid cardiovascular disease,” says cardiologist Euan Ashley, associate professor of medicine at the Stanford University Medical Center and Stanford Hospital and Clinics in northern California. And, being somewhat near Silicon Valley, he says he gets a lot of   patients bringing   data to appointments. The problem, he says, is that he just didn’t know how reliable that data was. So, he and colleagues decided to study seven of the most popular devices and compare their accuracy to the   tests that doctor’s use. They looked at two metrics: heart rate and calories burned. For heart rate, the fitness trackers were compared to findings from an   or EKG. It turned out the devices were ”surprisingly accurate” says Ashley. ”Most devices most of the time were ’off’ by only about 5 percent.” However, when it came to measuring how many calories a person burned, the findings were way off, says Ashley, showing a degree of inaccuracy that ranged from 20 percent to 93 percent, meaning 93 percent of the time the   device was wrong. Researchers compared the findings of the wrist devices to a sophisticated system of calculating metabolism which measures oxygen and carbon dioxide in people’s breath. ”This is a very   and   study,” says Dr. Tim Church, a professor of preventative medicine at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University who was not involved in the study. Church routinely consults with companies about how to introduce wellness strategies into the workplace. Being wrong 93 percent of the time means the findings from the fitness tracker are more ”fiction than fact,” he says, which can actually undermine a healthy diet. ”It’s just human nature. People are checking these inaccurate counts and they think they’ve earned a muffin or earned some ice cream and they’re sabotaging their   program.” Church points to a study last year which found participants in a   program who also wore fitness trackers actually lost less weight than participants who didn’t wear the trackers. ”It’s an instance of no information is probably better than having bad information,” he says. The Stanford study was published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine. It was relatively small, with 29 men and 31 women. In addition to the primary results, there were some other interesting findings. In certain groups of people  —   for example, those with darker skin, higher BMIs and men  —   the error made by devices was actually greater than for Caucasian women with a more healthy weight. ”So, for those for whom it might matter the most, who are trying to lose weight, the error was actually greater,” says Ashley, who doesn’t know why this may be the case. He speculates that it could be that companies use a fairly narrow group of people for testing the equations they use to measure heart rate and calories burned. The study didn’t look at how well devices count steps or monitor sleep or stress. The   message, says Ashley, is to not rely on the devices to measure total calories burned. Instead focus on eating what we know is a healthy diet, which is low in sugar and high in fiber, and to ”eat not until you’re full but until you’re no longer hungry.” And, of course, people should exercise, he says, adding, ”we have no more important intervention than exercise for the prevention of any number of diseases.” Makers of two devices, Fitbit and PulseOn say they remain confident in the performance of the trackers both in measuring heart rate and calories burned. In a statement, PulseOn questioned the study’s methodology, saying that the high errors for calorie measurements ”suggest that the authors may not have properly set all the user parameters on the device.” Mark Gorelick, the chief science officer at the   Mio Global, says, ”we agree that more accurate calorie estimation is important for the industry as a whole, since most individuals are monitoring calorie deficits for weight loss.” The other device makers did not immediately respond to requests for comment."
"In the   Montana special congressional election on Thursday, President Trump is the shadow hanging over a race that neither candidate can fully escape  —   even though they’re trying. The contest to replace Trump’s Interior secretary, former GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke, has become uncomfortably close in a state the president carried by 20 points. And while both GOP nominee Greg Gianforte and Democratic nominee Rob Quist still hew closely to local and state issues on the campaign trail  —   like public lands, gun rights and agricultural concerns  —   the charged national environment and the Republican health care bill, in particular, are playing critical roles in motivating their differing bases in the closing days. For Montana Democrats, the race is a way to send a message to Washington. ”I think a lot of people that maybe had voted for Trump now look at what’s happened in the next 120 some days, and maybe that might throw some people toward voting toward Rob,” said Bob Church, age 72, a retired high school government teacher who came out to hear Quist on Monday evening in Great Falls. Quist, a   folk singer who’s never without his signature cowboy hat, didn’t directly mention the president in his remarks. But, one of his staffers made a plea to the crowd to work to appeal to more   Trump voters to switch to their side  —   particularly ones who had voted both for Trump and for Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, who beat Gianforte by about four points last November. With ”Rob you have an independent voice, you have an independent message and we work to reach all these people  —   the people that voted for Trump across the ticket and voted for Bullock. The people that might think, ’you know ’I feel disenfranchised, I feel left behind,’” Nation Garza told the crowd. ”These are the people that we’ve been reaching  —   the   people. The people who aren’t always part of the political process.” That was certainly the case for Carol Boughton, age 73, a retired government scientist who had come out to volunteer for Quist. She said she’s never campaigned for a candidate before or gotten involved in politics  —   until Trump’s election pushed her over the edge. ”I just got so frustrated about what was going on and is still going on there in D. C. and got tired of talking to my friends of like minds and I said I’ve got to do something,” Boughton said. And while Trump is certainly atop her mind as she’s been out canvassing, she’s perfectly fine with the fact that the president isn’t being mentioned by Quist all the time. ”Even [Quist] is not talking about it, a lot of the grassroots people here, they see what’s going on” with the growing scandals in Trump’s administration, Boughton argued. A   contest closes in final stretch  The race has certainly tightened in the final weeks, with GOP polling showing a race in the low single digits. Privately, national Democrats are a bit more skeptical of the prospect of an upset  —   instead looking ahead to next month’s special election runoff in Georgia as their chance to send a shockwave through the political system. The terrain in the northern Atlanta suburbs that Trump barely won is better primed for a possible pickup, and that June 20 contest has gotten the bulk of outside money and national attention. Another reason for private skepticism among Democrats is that Quist has had plenty of setbacks, and he’s not exactly a candidate in the mold of Bullock or Democratic Sen. Jon Tester who might be able to easily woo swaths of swing voters to his side. He’s not very polished on the stump, and in recent weeks has been hammered by reports of property tax liens and unpaid debts. Quist claims some of his financial troubles stem from a botched gallbladder surgery over two decades ago, and that’s a talking point that opens the window for him to talk about the GOP’s health care plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. ”They call it ’The American Health Care Act.’ I call it the   Health Care Act,” Quist told the crowd Monday night. ”First of all it raises premiums on everybody by over $300 a month and bringing back the whole concept of   conditions.” ”My health care issues have been ” Quist continued to laughter. ”But you know I’ve worn it like a bloody shirt, because you know when we do our health care rallies, people stand up and share their stories that are just very similar to mine. And in my view, in the world’s greatest country on Earth, you shouldn’t have to go bankrupt because of medical issues.” Quist has gotten his own major national booster in the final stretch, with Sen. Bernie Sanders,  . hitting the trail with him this past weekend. Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in Montana during the Democratic presidential primary, and his brand of populism is what Quist hopes he can replicate in facing off against Gianforte, a multimillionaire software executive who’s partly   his campaign. ”Rob and I are going to do everything we can to bury that horrific, disgusting piece of legislation that passed two weeks ago,” Sanders told voters about the health care bill at a stop in Bozeman. Health care is the focus of Quist’s final ad, and he takes aim at his GOP opponent for supporting the bill. While Gianforte initially hedged on whether he supported the House Republicans’ bill, the New York Times later obtained a recording of the wealthy software executive telling donors he was ”thankful” for the bill. An aide later clarified he was thankful for the repeal process proceeding, and said that Gianforte wouldn’t have voted for the AHCA because he didn’t know the Congressional Budget Office score  —   which is now set to come out Wednesday, less than 24 hours before voters head to the polls. Republicans hit the panic button? Meanwhile, Republicans look like they’ve begun to worry. Vice President Pence, who’s already campaigned with Gianforte, just recorded a   robocall for his campaign. And the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. has also come to Montana on Gianforte’s behalf. That’s a nearly   turn from Gianforte’s gubernatorial campaign last year. He didn’t appear with Trump when he campaigned in Montana ahead of the GOP primary and only reluctantly endorsed him. Now, at a Great Falls campaign stop on Tuesday, Gianforte was rattling off some of the president’s signature slogans while touting his own business acumen and outsider profile. ”I look forward to taking my engineering skills, my ability to do math and the ability to find common ground with people with different views to have a good outcome for both sides, back to D. C. to work with Donald Trump, to drain the swamp and make America great again,” Gianforte said to applause. It was a similar message the president’s son delivered earlier this month, according to Montana Public Radio. ”He doesn’t need this job. Just like my father didn’t need this job,” Trump Jr. said at a stop in Butte, a Democratic stronghold. ”He wants this job because he loves this country. He wants this job because he loves this state.” But that ”outsider” status has also hurt Gianforte. He’s not a native Montanan, though he’s lived in the state almost 25 years after moving from New Jersey, and his wealth doesn’t exactly give him the populist appeal Quist has. It’s all the same problems back again that led him to underperform last November even as Trump rolled to an easy win. And on Tuesday, Gianforte even acknowledged to his supporters that ”this race is closer than it should be.” Ron Hepp, a   old farmer at Gianforte’s rally Tuesday, argued that the GOP candidate’s positions haven’t changed even if the way he talks about the   may have. ”The opponents have put a lot of spin on Gianforte’s positions,” said Hepp. ”He’s a guy that what he says today is still good next week.” Meanwhile, he painted Quist as someone that may sing a catchy tune, but ultimately would hit the wrong chord with voters. ”That was fun to go there and dance and have a good time, but his opponent is the ultimate flimflam man,” Hepp said, pointing to Quist’s financial problems. Big money in Big Sky country, Republicans are leaving no stone unturned to make sure that the seat stays in their column and that they avoid an embarrassing loss  —   with massive political reverberations  —   in a place that hasn’t sent a Democrat to Congress in 20 years. Still, if Quist even comes close to an upset in a state that handed Trump a massive win just six months ago, it won’t do much to ease GOP worries heading into Georgia next month and could only boost the growing opposition to the president. National GOP groups, including the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, have spent almost $5 million against Quist to stop that scenario from happening. CLF in particular went in early to hammer the Democrat even before the race became competitive, in ads like this one, which was their closing spot. In comparison, national Democrats have spent paltry amounts on Quist’s behalf. However, the Democratic nominee’s campaign has seen a major uptick in contributions in the final stretch, now topping the $6 million mark, in large part thanks to   donations much like the ones that fueled Sanders’ campaign. Gianforte, meanwhile, has put $1 million of his own money into his campaign coffers and raised another $2. 2 million. All that cash in a relatively inexpensive state has saturated the airwaves, and left many voters more than ready for Thursday’s election to be done with. Away from both campaign events on Monday, Lisa Carlson, a   old insurance saleswoman, was sitting in a park, complaining about her two choices. She voted for Trump, somewhat reluctantly, and is still willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt as he finds his sea legs. But on the question of Quist vs. Gianforte, she’s torn. ”I think that Quist is probably just not experienced enough, maybe strong enough to get in there for what he thinks is right and probably doesn’t have the connections,” she said. ”I agree with some of the things that both of them stand for so that makes it difficult.” Ultimately, Carlson said she will just be happy when the election is over. ”I’m half tempted to vote for the underdog just cause I don’t want to vote for either of ’em,” she sighed, taking a drag on her cigarette."
"The Fox News Channel has retracted a   story based on a groundless conspiracy theory involving the death of a staffer for the Democratic National Committee, conceding it did not meet the network’s standards. The retracted May 16 online story reported as fact that the late Seth Rich, a    Democratic National Committee staffer, was actually the person who leaked tens of thousands of emails from the DNC to WikiLeaks and that his murder was tied to that action. Rich was fatally shot last July in what police have called a botched robbery, and there is no evidence known publicly to suggest he shared those emails. The Rich family had publicly pleaded with Fox News and others to stop trading in such speculation absent facts. ”The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting,” the Tuesday statement read. ”Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards.” The Fox News statement did not apologize or specify what went wrong or how it did so, and it did not bear the name of its author. But it promised to continue to investigate the story and provide updates. Fox News star host Sean Hannity, who had pushed the theory relentlessly, said on his radio show that he retracted nothing. He also tweeted the importance of finding out the truth. On television Tuesday night, Hannity said he would no longer talk about the story ”out of respect for the family’s wishes  —   for now.” Yet Hannity, a leading President Trump advocate and confidant, did not apologize or say the story was wrong. Instead, he pivoted to assailing the ”  media [and] the Democrats.” The public disclosure of the content of those DNC emails threw Hillary Clinton’s campaign into turmoil during the 2016 election and led to the resignation of the chairwoman of the DNC, though they did not contain any extraordinary revelations. The embrace of the conspiracy theory around Rich’s death by Hannity and others caused similar tumult at Fox News this month, revealing and deepening rifts between its journalists and the opinion side that propels its economic success, according to several people at the network. The handling of the story also exposed the tentativeness of the network’s leadership after the departure of prominent and longtime executives, including former Chairman Roger Ailes and former   Bill Shine. Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls Fox’s parent company, is acting as the network’s CEO. (Ailes, who died May 18, had been accused of sexual harassment by many women, and Shine had been accused of enabling or hiding his behavior. Both men denied those charges.) A version of the Fox News May 16 online story ran on the Fox local station in Washington, D. C. Fox 5, the night before. Journalists and executives within Fox watched with growing alarm as Hannity, the network’s fixture at 10 p. m. repeatedly legitimized suspicion that Rich’s death was linked to the DNC leaks. The claim about Rich’s death has also been embraced on the air by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Fox News contributor. As far back as August, Fox host Eric Bolling compared the story to something out of the Showtime spy thriller Homeland and called Rich’s killing ”a hit.” The May 16 FoxNews. com report claiming proof of Rich’s involvement in the DNC email leaks was used by Trump defenders to deflect growing concerns on Capitol Hill and among current and former intelligence officials about the nature of contacts during the campaign between Trump’s circle and figures with ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia. Breitbart News and the Gateway Pundit were among the other sites that trafficked in the conspiracy theory  —   as did the Twitter account for the Russian Embassy in London. Yet the story had a particular Fox imprint: The May 15 Fox 5 report cited as its source a private investigator who worked for the Rich family named Rod Wheeler, who has been a paid Fox News contributor. Wheeler later said he had relied on the statement of a Fox 5 producer who had prepared him for the segment. As it happens, Wheeler had been hired not by the Riches but by a conservative Dallas investor named Ed Butowsky on their behalf. Butowksy has appeared periodically as a commentator on Fox News and Fox Business. He had his own personality page on Fox’s website until shortly after I publicly pointed that fact out last week. Hannity has told others at the network that Fox needs him more than ever since last month’s departure of former star host Bill O’Reilly. (O’Reilly also left after facing sexual harassment charges, which he disputes.) Hannity told viewers Tuesday night that he would stay at Fox News ”as long as they seem to want me” but cited critics who he said were trying to silence him, such as the liberal advocacy group Media Matters. Hannity called such efforts ”liberal fascism.” Yet many critics of the story could be found on the right  —   even among conservative voices in Murdoch’s own vast media holdings. On May 21, Seth Mandel, opinion page editor of the   New York Post, tweeted: ”Why are you doing this to them? Why are you tormenting a grieving family like this? Please, Sean. Please. Stop doing this. Please.” New York Post columnist John Podhoretz wrote in the magazine Commentary, which he edits, that the theory is ”the unwitting catspaw of an authoritarian government in Moscow.” Podhoretz continued: ”It should go without saying that defaming a dead man by asserting he was killed for doing something criminal is a great evil.” And National Review editor Jonah Goldberg, a Fox News contributor, has been a constant thorn in Hannity’s side on Twitter over the Rich story. Goldberg is the author of a book whose title is apparently familiar to Hannity: Liberal Fascism. Ailes famously hated to retract any reports, arguing that it showed weakness and simply gave more fodder to the network’s critics. In the   era at Fox News, the news side won this round, even though the retraction was grudging, lacked specificity and did not include an apology. But that victory took a full week  —   on a story with major national stakes involving a young man’s death."
"George Foreman at 25 years old was a fearsome champion: 6 foot 4, biceps thick and gnarled as oak, a permanent scowl on his face and a right hand that flattened every opponent he faced. So when Muhammad Ali challenged him in 1974 for a championship fight dubbed the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) most bets were on Foreman. Ali was seven years older and past his prime. He’d had his title stripped after refusing the Vietnam draft in 1967 and was struggling to become a contender again. Foreman was undefeated and planning to stay that way. ”I took the fight because I could knock him out in two rounds,” he says. ”I thought, ’$5 million for two rounds? Wow!’ ” The highly anticipated fight was financed by Zaire’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, and included a multiday music festival that featured James Brown and Miriam Makeba. Then, on Oct. 30, 1974, the two fighters entered the ring in the nation’s capital of Kinshasa. ”As we were in the ring,” Foreman remembers, ”I was staring at him trying to intimidate him and he said, ’George, you were a kid going to high school when I was champion of the world.’ ” Everyone expected Ali to dance around Foreman and avoid his powerful punches. Instead, Ali came out swinging with his right hand, which seemed to disorient Foreman. But Foreman remained confident. ”So I figured I’d knock him out in the second round,” he says. ”You can always tell when you hurt a fighter, he always has something to say. He leaned in and whispered, ’That all you got George?’ ”And I knew from that point, this guy could take a punch and endure.” Ali kept enduring. He would lean back on the ropes and let Foreman hit him, over and over. And he was exhausted from throwing punches by the eighth round. ”He came off the ropes and I came off the ropes with my hand down to come after him,” he says. ”And he hit me with fastest right hand I ever remember receiving in the boxing ring. It was fast more than anything.  ! And I thought, my God I’m going down. And I hit the canvas.” Foreman got up at the count of nine, but the judges stopped the fight anyway. Foreman had never lost before. And it was devastating. ”You never know how important it is that people would have some . .. I hate to say fear but respect is kinda like fear,” he says. ”Now all of a sudden, these people are looking at me with a pitiful eye.” At this point, Foreman didn’t really have anything in his life except boxing. He’d grown up poor  —   literally hungry, without enough food. He was so ashamed he’d bring an empty lunch bag to school. ”I’d seen that pity before,” he says. ”When I was a teenager looking for a job. You fill out your application, and people look at you ’Ah, well, we don’t need anyone right now.’ And there I was, back in same position  —   and I didn’t like it.” As a teenager, Foreman had channeled that rage and frustration into fighting: first on the streets, then in the ring. And after losing to Ali, he became paranoid. He didn’t trust anyone and kept to himself. ”You start getting a little hate in you,” he says. ”I’m going to pay the world back, show them, that kind of thing.” Foreman won his next five matches. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline ”I want Ali again.” ”I thought I could use that hate to get my title back,” he says. ”It was no longer the title  —   it was my title.” But Ali wouldn’t accept the challenge. Foreman finally got his chance for redemption when he took on a talented fighter named Jimmy Young. Everything depended on this fight. If Foreman won, Ali would be forced to accept a rematch. He’d get that chance to win back his title. The fight took place in Puerto Rico on March 17, 1977. Foreman didn’t score a knockout in the early rounds and the two fighters settled into a long, close fight. But by the 12th round, Foreman was clearly exhausted. At one point, he fell to his knees. He made it to the final round, but the judges declared that Young had won. Foreman headed to his dressing room. The air conditioning wasn’t working in the arena and he began to pace up and down to cool off. ”You are told never to sit down after a boxing match,” he says. Foreman became convinced he was going to die he says he could literally smell death in the room. He wasn’t a religious man, but he started to pray to God for his life. ”I started walking faster and faster, everyone is looking at me,” he says. ”My legs started to curl and I told everyone in the room, ’I’m fixing to . ...’ But before I could say another word  —   around me, under my feet, around me  —   there was nothing. I was in this deep, dark junkyard of nothing. There wasn’t any hope.” Foreman collapsed. His trainers pulled him up and laid him down on the table. ”I said ’I don’t care if this is death, I still believe there’s a God,’ ” he says. ”When I said that, a gigantic hand reached in and held me. I jumped off the table and started screaming, ’Jesus Christ has come alive in me!’ I said, ’I got to save the world!’ They said, ’No, you need clothes on!’ They held me down until the ambulance took me to intensive care in the hospital. That experience changed me forever.” Foreman gave up boxing that day. He became a minister and opened a youth center. But the biggest change was right there on his face: George Foreman started smiling. Foreman looks back now and it’s like his whole biography has been turned upside down. He now sees those early successes as the real failure, because he didn’t appreciate them. ”I went over to Africa. I didn’t see a wild animal in the natural,” he says. ”I missed all those things. A whole lifetime missed. I was too focused on the  :     punch.” Ten years after losing to Jimmy Young, Foreman entered the ring again. He says he did it to raise money for his youth center. But there was something else. He wanted to show he could still win, but this time without hate or anger. ”The second time, I really had a time to journey in life. I learned words like, Konichiwa. I went to South Africa and met the different tribes,” he says. ”You get a second chance to live and it makes a better person out of you. You realize that wasn’t really a loss for me in Africa  —   it was a gain that I didn’t appreciate. In 1994, George Foreman regained his title at age 45. He was the oldest fighter to ever win the heavyweight championship. This story is the second in a   series on the experience of failure and how people deal with it. It was developed in NPR’s Story Lab. Nicholas DePrey created original music for the series."
"Updated at 5:40 p. m. ET, The 4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that President Trump’s controversial travel ban should be kept on hold, maintaining a nationwide preliminary injunction that blocks key elements of the executive order from being enforced. A   panel of the court heard arguments over the ban earlier this month. In Thursday’s decision, the chief judge writes that the travel ban ”drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Trump has signed two executive orders restricting travelers from a handful of   countries and putting a temporary moratorium on refugees. The first prompted chaos and was swiftly challenged in court. It was replaced by a second order, which omitted references to religion and explicitly exempted green card holders. That one, too, was promptly challenged in court and its central provisions have never gone into effect. The second executive order  —   ”” as the court dubbed it  —   is the one that was under consideration by the 4th Circuit as well as several other courtrooms across the country. The issue at hand: whether a lower court acted properly in issuing a nationwide injunction to keep the order from being enforced. That means the court was not directly ruling on the travel ban’s constitutionality. But to rule on the injunction, the judges had to evaluate the strength of the case against the ban. They decided the arguments against the executive order were strong indeed. The judges ruled   on Thursday to ”affirm in substantial part” the earlier decisions that have kept the controversial ban from going into effect. In their decision, they drew on the ”backdrop of public statements by the President and his advisers and representatives” to conclude that lawyers have a good chance of proving in court that Trump was motivated by religious animus when he signed the order. The judges ”remain unconvinced” that the travel ban had ”more to do with national security than it does with effectuating the President’s promised Muslim ban.” ”We find that the reasonable observer would likely conclude that  ’s primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs,” Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote on behalf of the majority. ”Surely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment yet stands as an untiring sentinel for the protection of one of our most cherished founding principles  —   that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another,” the ruling read. While the president has broad power over immigration, ”that power is not absolute. It cannot go unchecked,” the court said. And claims of national security are not a ”silver bullet” to defeat any arguments against a decision, the judges ruled. Thursday afternoon, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a response to the ruling, saying the executive order was ”well within [the president’s] lawful authority ”to keep the Nation safe”: ”The Department of Justice strongly disagrees with the decision of the divided court, which blocks the President’s efforts to strengthen this country’s national security. As the dissenting judges explained, the executive order is a constitutional exercise of the President’s duty to protect our communities from terrorism. The President is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism, until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States.” Sessions also said his department would ask the Supreme Court to review the ruling. The judges did overturn one small part of the injunction  —   namely, the bit where it specifically applied to one Donald Trump. The injunction covered the entire administration, but also Trump as an individual, which the judges say was inappropriate. So now he is no longer singled out  —   which, the court says, should not affect the enforcement of the injunction. Three judges dissented, saying they would vacate the injunction. As NPR’s Carrie Johnson has reported, judges in the 4th Circuit had focused on Trump’s own words about a ”Muslim ban” as they heard arguments over the case earlier this month. ”Judges on the court . .. returned over and over to remarks made by Trump during the campaign,” she wrote after that hearing. ”Judges also noted the presence on the Trump campaign website of the ’Muslim ban’ promise, which was only taken down Monday afternoon after it was brought up in the daily White House briefing.” One of the legal battles over the travel ban, whether this case or a similar lawsuit before another court, is expected to ultimately land before the U. S. Supreme Court. And if the high court agrees to hear the case, arguments wouldn’t begin before the fall term."
"Updated at 10 p. m. ET, Polls have closed in the closely watched Montana special election. The race was upended in the final hours following an altercation between the Republican congressional candidate, Greg Gianforte, and a reporter, adding even more uncertainty to an unusually tight contest. Gianforte was charged Wednesday evening with misdemeanor assault against Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian. The incident has drawn extra attention to the race to replace Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, considered a bellwether, in its final hours. It’s unclear how much the turn of events will impact the outcome of the contest between Gianforte and Democratic nominee Rob Quist, especially because many voters had cast their ballots early. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said Gianforte should apologize, while other Republican lawmakers have called the incident ”out of character.” Private GOP polls showed a close race earlier this week, with Gianforte projected to have a slim,   lead. Some voters told Montana Public Radio’s Corin   and Nicky Ouellet that they were aghast at the events of the past 24 hours. ”He assaulted a reporter. I mean, would you want to vote for that? Who would wanna vote for that?” asked Jenny Bevill, a teacher from Whitefish. But several Republican voters were willing to withhold judgment or were   skeptical of what reportedly unfolded. ”The  ? Ah, yeah, it just seems a little too good to be true to me,” said Chandler Ortman, who works in the restaurant industry in Bozeman and voted for Gianforte. ”I guess I’m just gonna say he’s innocent until proven guilty.” James Baker, a lobbyist in Bozeman who also voted for Gianforte, said, ”Sometimes I think a lot of reporters get aggressive, and after the heat of a long campaign people can lose tempers.” Debbie Warriner of Kalispell called the reports ”a crock of baloney.” ”I mean, that story  —   it’s possible it’s not even true,” she told Montana Public Radio. Health care has been a key topic in the race  —   and was, in fact, the subject of Jacobs’ question when his exchange with Gianforte turned violent. According to audio provided by Jacobs, he asked Gianforte for his reaction to the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the American Health Care Act. Gianforte had said previously he didn’t want to weigh in on the Republican health care bill until he saw the CBO score. But Gianforte brushed Jacobs off and then suddenly ” ” him onto the ground, breaking his glasses, Jacobs says. According to three Fox News reporters who were in the room preparing for an interview with the GOP nominee, Gianforte ”grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground . .. then began punching the reporter. As Gianforte moved on top of Jacobs, he began yelling something to the effect of, ’I’m sick and tired of this!’ ” The audiotape taken by Jacobs backs up that account, but Gianforte’s campaign claimed it was Jacobs who was the aggressor, saying he pushed a tape recorder in Gianforte’s face and then ”grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground.” The Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office announced late Wednesday that it was charging Gianforte with misdemeanor assault, which carries a possible maximum fine of $500 or up to six months in jail if convicted. Gianforte has been ordered to appear in court by June 7. At a news conference on Thursday, Sheriff Brian Gootkin said Gianforte cooperated by giving an initial statement at the scene. Reporters asked why Gianforte had not been detained, and the sheriff said his deputies ”got busy with the witnesses and the victim,” and Gianforte left. The candidate was not in custody or under arrest at the time. The sheriff says that the department has been contacted by attorneys on the candidate’s behalf but that law enforcement has not had a   interview with him. Gootkin also disclosed that he had contributed to Gianforte’s campaign but said it ”has nothing to do” with the investigation or his role as sheriff. He would not answer questions about why he contributed or whether he regularly donates to campaigns, saying that ”doesn’t have anything to do with the incident.” House Speaker Ryan said at his weekly press conference that Gianforte should apologize. ”I do not think this is acceptable behavior, but the choice will be made by the people of Montana,” Ryan said Thursday. A statement from National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Stivers, who oversees the House GOP’s campaign arm, didn’t go as far as Ryan’s did. ”From what I know of Greg Gianforte, this was totally out of character, but we all make mistakes. We need to let the facts surrounding this incident unfold,” the Ohio congressman said. ”Today’s special election is bigger than any one person it’s about the views of all Montanans. They deserve to have their voices heard in Washington.” Montana GOP Sen. Steve Daines, who used to work for Gianforte’s software company, told NBC News’ Peter Alexander, ”I’ve known Greg for 20 years. I was very surprised last night. I don’t condone violence of any kind. I’ve got confidence in my local law enforcement back home to investigate the matter.” ”I think Greg should apologize,” Daines continued. ”That’s warranted. And we’ll let the people of Montana decide what happens tonight.” Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, who is up for   in 2018 in what’s expected to be a highly competitive race, said in a statement that the incident was now ”in the hands of law enforcement. But part of the job representing the people of Montana is answering basic questions on important topics, topics such as how a dangerous health care plan could impact the very people you are trying to represent. It’s part of the job.” Gianforte, a wealthy software executive, lost to Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock last year by about 4 points, even as President Trump rolled to a   win in the state. And while Gianforte was hesitant to embrace   Trump during that contest, he has been closely embracing the president this     his familiar ”drain the swamp” phrase and pledging to go to Washington to work with the president. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. has hit the trail twice for Gianforte, and Vice President Pence also made a recent campaign stop on his behalf. Quist, a   folk singer who is   across the state for his music, has tried to ride the rising opposition to Trump to an upset. He hasn’t made the president his central campaign pitch and hasn’t tried to capitalize on the scandals engulfing his administration in recent days but has made his opposition to the health care bill a key point in the campaign’s final stretch. Republicans have hammered Quist with almost $5 million in ads, hitting him for property tax liens and unpaid debts. But Quist has shot back that his financial struggles stemmed from a botched gallbladder surgery over two decades ago, giving him a way to sympathize with people also struggling to afford health insurance and pay their medical bills. Montana Public Radio’s Corin   and Nicky Ouellet and NPR’s Don Gonyea contributed to this report."
"In one of his most   appearances since leaving the White House, former President Obama warned tens of thousands of young people in Berlin that ”the international order is at a crossroads.” President Trump was also in Europe, chiding NATO members while in Belgium for not living up to     levels. Obama delivered an implicit rebuke to Trump’s ”America First” policy, saying in the modern, interconnected world, ”we can’t isolate ourselves. We can’t hide behind a wall.” Despite being largely out of sight since leaving office (aside from appearing in occasional paparazzi photos on billionaires’ yachts) Obama seemed eager to rejoin the debate over globalism that’s been shaping elections in the U. S. and Europe. He stressed that an increasingly integrated economic order had delivered unparalleled peace and prosperity to the continent. But he cautioned that success could not be taken for granted. ”It has to be continually renewed, because there is a competing narrative of fear and xenophobia and nationalism and intolerance,” Obama told the large crowd near Brandenburg Gate. ”We have to push back against those trends.” That tension, between globalism and nationalism, has flared in recent elections in the West, be it Brexit (Great Britain’s choice to leave the European Union) France, Germany and, of course, Trump versus Hillary Clinton. Obama, who offered an upbeat assessment of European progress, was joined on stage by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at an event marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Later, Merkel would join Trump at the NATO summit in Brussels. In his speech, Trump goaded NATO allies to increase their defense spending. While Obama often made the same point, quietly, when he was president, he cautioned his audience in Berlin that military might should not be viewed in isolation. ”The   budget shouldn’t just be seen as military hardware,” Obama said, stressing the importance of diplomacy and development to national security, as well. Trump’s budget proposal would move the U. S. in the opposite direction. It calls for deep cuts to the State Department and foreign aid budgets, while boosting spending on military troops. Obama did not back away from military power entirely, telling a young questioner, ”We do live in a dangerous world.” As if to underscore that point, he and Merkel offered condolences to the victims of Monday’s terrorist bombing in Manchester, England. ”It’s a reminder that there is great danger and terrorism,” Obama said, ”and people who would do great harm to others just because they’re different.” The former president also defended his signature domestic policy, the Affordable Care Act, which the Republican Congress is working to repeal. ”Obviously, some of the progress that we made is imperiled, because there is still a significant debate taking place in the United States,” Obama said. He conceded the law, commonly known as Obamacare, had not extended health insurance to all Americans. But it did boost coverage to some 20 million people. ”For those 20 million people, their lives have been better,” Obama said. ”And we’ve set a standard for what’s possible that people can build on.” This week, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that a GOP replacement bill passed by the House would leave 23 million fewer people with health insurance by 2026. ”If we’re going to solve the problems that we’ve discussed here,” Obama told his audience, ”people have to be involved. They have to get engaged.”"
"At a NATO summit in Brussels, President Trump marked the unveiling of memorials of the Berlin Wall and the Sept. 11 attacks with a speech that, among other things, told gathered NATO leaders their levels of defense funding are ”not fair” to U. S. taxpayers. Trump also omitted any clear statement of support for Article 5, the NATO   pledge  —   something other leaders had been hoping to hear. The Associated Press described Thursday’s speech as an ”unprecedented   punch” that ”further rattled” an already anxious Europe. And at home, one Democratic leader called the remarks ”condescending” and an ”embarrassment,” while Republican Sen. Rand Paul said he applauded Trump’s stance. The speech opened with a moment of silence for the Manchester attack and with an extended reflection on the danger posed by terrorists, who Trump called ”losers,” before pivoting to the question of defense funding. It had been widely expected that Trump would use the speech as an opportunity to call for other NATO leaders to increase their own military spending, as NPR’s Tamara Keith explained on Morning Edition before the event. ”Do your part, pay your fair share. That’s his basic message,” Tamara reports. ”He wants them to keep their commitments that they’ve made  —   they’ve set this goal of spending 2 percent of their nations’ GDP on national defense, to contribute to the strength of the alliance.” The U. S. which has by far the largest military budget in the world, spends well more than that  —   3. 6 percent of GDP last year, for instance, according to The Economist. Most NATO members, meanwhile, spend less than the 2 percent benchmark. Trump said in his speech that he has been ”very, very direct” with NATO leadership about the need for member nations to increase their military budgets. The current situation, he said, ”is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States. And many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years. Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all other NATO countries combined.” Just as notable as what Trump said, however, is what he didn’t say. Other NATO leaders wanted him to ”express a commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter, which says that an attack on one nation is an attack on all nations,” Tamara reports. ”President Trump, during the campaign, had not shown a full commitment to that.” And he didn’t really clarify the situation on Thursday. Trump did mention Article 5 in his speech  —   it was unavoidable, given the memorial he was unveiling. ”We remember and mourn those nearly 3, 000 innocent people who were brutally murdered by terrorists on September 11th, 2001,” he said. ”Our NATO allies responded swiftly and decisively, invoking for the first time in its history the Article 5 collective defense commitments.” But that was a historical observation, not a pledge for the future. And while Trump made rhetorical nods toward common defense, speaking of ”the commitments that bind us together as one” and saying the U. S. ”will never forsake the friends who stood by our side,” he didn’t explicitly recommit the U. S. to Article 5. Trump also took a dig at the cost of the   building where he was speaking. ”I never asked once what the new NATO headquarters cost. I refuse to do that,” he said, invoking the issue by pretending not to talk about it. ”But it is beautiful.” Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the   Democrat in the House of Representatives, said in a statement that Trump ”should not be lecturing our closest and most steadfast allies.” ”I was appalled by his condescending remarks to NATO leaders today, which were an embarrassment for our country,” Hoyer said, suggesting Trump should instead reaffirm the U. S. commitment to common defense. Another Democrat, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, more subtly critiqued Trump’s decorum at the summit, retweeting a video showing Trump pushing aside another leader. Sen. Rand Paul,  . meanwhile, said he applauds Trump ”for holding NATO leaders accountable.” ”We shouldn’t be subsidizing other nations,” he said on Twitter."
"A Manchester crowd’s impromptu rendition of ”Don’t Look Back in Anger,” by hometown band Oasis, emerged as an uplifting emblem of resilience after Monday’s deadly bombing there. The spontaneous singing followed a national minute of silence to honor the 22 people killed as they left a concert at Manchester Arena. It started with a lone voice. The Guardian says    Lydia   began to sing the band’s 1996 hit. Soon others joined in and the song swept through the crowd in St. Ann’s Square. ”It really touched my heart. It gave me shivers, it really did, to hear everyone joining in with me,”   said, as you can see in a video posted by the Guardian. ”Don’t look back in anger, that’s what this is about,” she added. ”We have to look forwards to the future. We’re all going to join together. We’re all going to get on with it because that’s what Manchester does.” The video has been widely shared on social media, the Guardian said. ”That moment was something special,” Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham told the Guardian. ”That’s what you need to know about Manchester.”"
"Updated at 4:46 p. m. ET, Police in Manchester, England, decided to stop sharing some intelligence with the U. S. after details from their ongoing terrorism investigation were apparently leaked to the American press, the city’s mayor told CNN. President Trump pledged that the source of the leaks will be identified. Trump said in a statement that he has directed the Department of Justice to open an investigation  —   and that ”if appropriate,” the person responsible will be ”prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” The investigation into the Monday night bombing at an Ariana Grande concert, which killed at least 22 people, has resulted in multiple arrests. On Thursday multiple media outlets reported that the Greater Manchester Police had decided to stop sharing information about the investigation with U. S. intelligence experts. Other forms of cooperation between the two countries will continue, NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports from London. Manchester police have not commented since, although a national counterterrorism official said in a statement that his agency has received ”fresh assurances” from international partners and is working closely with international law enforcement groups, including the U. S. But one thing is very clear: U. K. officials are upset about the leaks, which they blame on U. S. officials. ”They hate it,” Frank says. ”They’re angry they’re frustrated.” On Tuesday, ”U. S. officials” named the suspected attacker as Salman Abedi, hours before the British authorities released that identity. On Wednesday morning, an NBC reporter said he had heard from a U. S. intelligence official that Abedi’s family had warned authorities about him in the past. And late on Wednesday, The New York Times published photos of items ”found on the scene in Manchester,” including possible switches and power sources for the bomb. The piece said the analysis was based on ”evidence photographed and collected at the crime scene and distributed by British authorities.” There’s a cultural contrast between how the police in the U. S. and in the U. K. approach these kinds of attacks, Frank reports from London. Where U. S. law enforcement might release a name sooner, British investigators are more likely to keep it quiet. As a result, they’re ”really, really, really mad about this,” Frank says. ”This is not their style.” Frustration has been expressed at every level of British government. The mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, called the leaks ”arrogant, wrong and disrespectful.” The British home secretary, Amber Rudd, called them ”irritating.” ”The British police have been very clear they want to control the flow of information in order to protect operational integrity  —   the element of surprise,” she said, according to the BBC. And the prime minister very tactfully signaled her displeasure. ”I will make clear to President Trump that intelligence that is shared between our law enforcement agencies must remain secure,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said Thursday. The two leaders spoke Thursday on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Brussels. It’s not just the British who are expressing outrage, either. The acting U. S. ambassador to Britain, Lewis Lukens, called the leaks ”reprehensible” and ”deeply distressing” in an interview on BBC radio. ”We have had communications at the highest level of our government” about the leaks, Lukens said, according to the BBC. ”We are determined to identify these leaks and to stop them.” And Trump called the allegations ”deeply troubling,” saying he has asked the Department of Justice to ”launch a complete review of this matter.” Allegations that the U. S. is mishandling intelligence from an ally has already been in the news this month  —   after Trump spoke with senior Russian officials in the Oval Office and reportedly described highly classified intelligence that was not supposed to be shared. And since Trump took office, he and other Republicans have repeatedly expressed frustration about leaks within the U. S. intelligence community, particularly of damaging information about Trump and his associates. (As NPR’s Greg Myre has noted, ”Leaking classified information is a crime, but it’s also one of the most popular sports in the capital and is the bane of every administration. ”)"
"The sudden resignation of an Obama appointee who oversaw student aid at the U. S. Department of Education has brought forth competing explanations. James Runcie managed the Federal Student Aid office, which administers $150 billion in grants, loans and   funds that help 13 million students pay for college each year. The announcement of his resignation came a day after the Trump administration called for large cuts to these aid programs and on the same morning that Runcie’s boss, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, was testifying about those cuts on Capitol Hill. ”I cannot in good conscience continue to be accountable as Chief Operating Officer given the risk associated with the current environment at the Department,” Runcie wrote in his resignation memo, which was confirmed by NPR. Reaction to his departure split along partisan lines. Statements by DeVos’ office, as well as from Republicans in Congress, pointed to recurring allegations of financial mismanagement against the FSA, going back to at least 2011, as well as to online security lapses. Runcie was scheduled to testify before the House oversight committee Thursday. ”He chose to resign rather than face Congress,” Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for DeVos, told NPR. In an email response to NPR on Thursday, Runcie denied this explanation. ”I did not leave simply to avoid a hearing on improper payments,” he wrote. ”That is not credible.” He declined further comment. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress called the resignation ”deeply troubling” (Sen. Patty Murray of Washington) and ”cause for serious alarm” (Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts). Runcie’s departure comes as the Education Department, like other federal agencies in the Trump administration, is facing an unusual number of vacancies and a slow pace of appointments. So, did Runcie resign out of conscience? Or because he didn’t want to face the music? And what is all this likely to mean for young people seeking help paying for college or managing their debt afterwards? Here are two possible scenarios: Storyline No. 1: Federal Student Aid was mismanaged. A statement on the resignation by the oversight committee chairman, Jason Chaffetz,   said that under Runcie’s leadership federal student aid systems were ”less secure, performance has suffered, and improper payments have increased.” Those ”improper payments” were to be the subject of Runcie’s testimony Thursday. The phrase basically refers to any erroneous, and therefore wasteful, money spent by the federal government. At least as far back as 2011, the Office of Management and Budget had identified student aid programs, both Pell Grants and student loans, as being particularly prone to paying out money when they didn’t have to because of poor   and other issues. A little background is in order. Runcie, who had led the FSA since 2011, comes from the banking world. He oversaw a big transition in student lending initiated by   Barack Obama: from loans originated by banks to all student loans being made directly by the Education Department. Under his tenure, the portfolio of loans held directly by the government grew almost tenfold, to more than $1 trillion. This move saved students billions. It also took away business from banks like Citibank and Wells Fargo. And it forced the reorganization of Sallie Mae, a once enormously profitable student lender. But, while the federal government now originates loans, the FSA continues to work with ”servicers”  —     middlemen that deal with borrowers and collect payments. Navient spun off from Sallie Mae to become the largest of those servicers. And here is where one set of issues have arisen with the FSA, according to other federal agencies: In a statement provided to NPR, Navient spokeswoman Patricia Christel said, ”Since the 2014 voluntary settlement, which was grounded in conflicting federal guidance, there have been six independent reviews confirming that Navient was following federal regulations . .. Navient is a leader in enrolling eligible borrowers into   repayment programs and helping borrowers avoid default.   borrowers are 31 percent less likely to default, and 49 percent of Direct Loan balances serviced by Navient are enrolled in   repayment programs —  more than any comparable servicer.” Second, in his statement on Runcie’s departure, Chaffetz also referred to security issues. In March, the IRS reported a ”major” breach of an online tool that was supposed to make it easier for families to apply for college financial aid by adding tax information with the click of a button. The Education Department took down that tool in the middle of application season. Runcie testified earlier this month before the House oversight committee that the FSA was working with the IRS to enhance security through encryption.  Storyline No. 2: Runcie left because of ”political meddling” by DeVos. That’s the phrase used by Warren in her statement. It’s been reported that, in his resignation memo, Runcie referred to plans underway to shift responsibility for federal student loans to the Treasury Department, and that he complained ”about significant constraints being placed on our ability to allocate and prioritize resources, make decisions and deliver on the organization’s mission. According to this narrative, the idea that Runcie left because of the FSA’s myopic oversight of companies like Navient doesn’t square with DeVos’ own actions. DeVos wrote to Runcie in April withdrawing three memos issued under Obama, all regarding the oversight of loan servicers to protect borrowers. This move was seen as improving Navient’s chances to become the sole student loan servicer when the current contract is up in 2019  —   a massive federal contract. Plus, Navient announced last month the purchase of $6. 9 billion more in student debt from JPMorgan Chase  Co. Some public officials, including the state attorneys general in Washington and Illinois, urged DeVos to block that acquisition because of Navient’s legal troubles. Some are calling for an investigation to find out more. ”Congress needs to get to the bottom of what’s going on here,” Warren said in her statement. This story was updated on May 26."
"NASA’s Juno spacecraft has spotted giant cyclones swirling at Jupiter’s north and south poles. That’s just one of the unexpected and puzzling findings being reported by the Juno science team. Juno arrived at Jupiter last summer. It’s the first spacecraft to get a   look at the planet’s poles. It’s in an orbit that takes it skimming close to the cloud tops of the gas giant once every 53 days. After each close pass, the spacecraft sends a trove of data back to Earth. Scientists weren’t expecting to see cyclones at the poles. ”You point a camera at terra incognita on Jupiter, and ’surprise!’ you get a surprise,” says Cornell University’s Jonathan Lunine, director of the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and a member of the Juno science team. Ultimately, scientists will want to understand how these cyclones change over time and whether they form differently in the north and south poles. ”But for now, just to sit back and stare at these images is just a delight to the eye,” Lunine says. The Juno team met earlier this week at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, where scientists discussed the latest data to come back from the spacecraft. (The results from Juno’s earliest passes are in the journal Science and in a special collection in Geophysical Research Letters.) ”We’re all jumping up and down with huge excitement,” says team member Fran Bagenal, professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. ”The results are really quite fabulous,” she says. ”And they’re fabulous because they’re not what we expected. If we just saw what we expected, it would be ’ho hum, ho hum, that’s good but, you know,’ . .. Seeing puzzles and mysteries and getting us all excited wondering what we are seeing is more exciting.” Some of those puzzles and mysteries are pretty obscure. For example, there’s some startling new data about the spectacular auroras at the poles of Jupiter  —   which are like the Northern Lights on Earth but much more dazzling. These auroras are caused by energetic particles streaming along Jupiter’s magnetic field lines, and Bagenal says there should be strong electrical currents associated with all those streaming particles. ”But we haven’t detected the magnetic field perturbation associated with them,” she says, a detail perhaps important only to people who’ve spent their entire lives studying Jupiter. Another puzzle that Juno is supposed to help solve is whether Jupiter, a gas giant, has a solid core. ”The early data are suggesting the presence of a core,” Lunine says. ”But not a discreet core. It seems that it’s fuzzy.” He says more data should help provide a more precise understanding than fuzzy. Another surprise from Juno is the concentration of ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Scientists thought ammonia was most likely distributed evenly throughout the atmosphere. ”That’s not what Juno is showing us,” Lunine says. The data show there’s more ammonia near the equator than there is at other latitudes. Juno is expected to make about two dozen more close passes over Jupiter’s poles, so there’ll likely be more puzzles to come."
"Skirting California’s coastline, Highway 1 offers a popular and dramatic drive through the Big Sur region. On a normal day, a drive along the winding   road gets one’s heart pumping with fears of plunging down the hillside. But a weekend landslide has reshaped the coastline and closed part of the route, as a third of a mile of highway is now covered with dirt and rocks at an area called Mud Creek. As you can see in the    graphic below, where the coast used to form roughly a straight line, it’s now a rocky bulge into the Pacific. The slide shut down a   section of the highway south of Monterey, from Ragged Point to Gorda, Calif. The New York Times reports. The executive director of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, Stan Russell, told the newspaper that while residents are used to erosion strewing rubble across the road, ”This one, people are referring to as the mother of all landslides.” After a   drought, California finally got a rainy and snowy winter, but that precipitation has caused flooding, landslides and coastal erosion, the AP notes. Susana Cruz, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Transportation, told the AP on Tuesday that the landslide was the largest in the state’s history that she knew of, calling it ”one of a kind.” Authorities say they don’t know when the road will reopen. Landslides like this one may become more frequent. Dan Carl, a district director for the California Coastal Commission, told the AP, ”A lot of Big Sur is moving you just don’t see it.” While this slide is unusually massive, it’s one among many that have made for a very expensive winter. In the fiscal year ending in June, Caltrans said that storms across the state have caused more than $1 billion in highway damage, the AP reports. No one was hurt in the slide, according to the Times. The state had already closed the highway at Mud Creek after an earlier slide there left debris and buckled pavement. Crews that were working on repairs left the area last week after deciding the ground was too unstable, the AP reports. The barricaded section of Highway 1 will no doubt have repercussions for the area’s tourism industry. That beautiful,    hair drive between Big Sur and Gorda, which Mapquest says usually takes a cool 48 minutes, now takes four hours, according to The Washington Post, owing to the now inevitable detour inland. Landslides are so common in Big Sur that they get names. This weekend’s tumble has been christened Arleen’s Slide, after a local highway worker who was ”standing by the side of the road when part of the hillside fell away,” according to the San Luis Obispo Tribune. In the ongoing battle between Mother Nature and Highway 1, nature has decisively won this round. But some local residents are hopeful the big slide will stabilize the terrain. Kirk Gafill, a restaurant owner who leads the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, told the Monterey Herald that ”[o]ne big slide took out all those smaller slides.” With all the excess material out of the way, he says, now maybe ”stability for that area may be restored.”"
"Four decades ago Friday, The Dallas Morning News committed an error so grave, so egregious, that it long remained shrouded in silence  —   out of a deep sense of shame and   that one can only imagine. The paper called Chewbacca a ”Wookie.” On Thursday, the 40th anniversary of the original Star Wars’ release, editors nobly faced down the dark truth of their institution’s past, publishing a correction: ”Our review of the original Star Wars, which appeared in The Dallas Morning News on May 26, 1977, incorrectly referred to Chewbacca as a ’Wookie.’ The correct spelling, of course, is ’Wookiee.’ We regret the error and apologize to the    hairy alien biped community.” Thank you, Morning News, for offering a model of journalistic rigor and integrity. Which brings us to our own dark past: Roughly seven years ago, we wrote a post about a trend that had hit Twitter at the time. It was a hashtag purporting to reveal the deepest secrets of the Star Wars universe  —   known, of course, as #WookieeLeaks. Or is that #WookieLeaks? In the post we had it both ways, spelling it with two E’s in the text and one E in the tag at the bottom of the page. And it appears we weren’t alone: Both spellings of the hashtag have had adherents for years. (It’s still not entirely clear which is right.) But before we get too lost in this tangled web of grammar and galaxies, here’s a word from the journalist behind that post: Mark Memmott,   of The   blog and now NPR’s standards and practices editor. ”As Yoda might say, ’make mistakes, I too have.’ Can I justify it by saying that the tag ’wookieleaks’ is more useful to the majority of users since so many of us routinely leave off the second E? Would I buy that excuse from any of The  ’s current correspondents? (No. )” So while some questions linger, one truth remains: We take responsibility for our spelling here on this blog. Got that, Chewbaccca?"
"This week, the latest installment in the Star Wars film saga is posting record numbers around the world. In 1981, NPR hoped the interstellar fable would do the same for its audience numbers. That’s right: Some of you may have forgotten (and some might not even know) that the network created three radio dramas based on George Lucas’ original three movies. NPR figured it could maybe get more listeners by reviving the radio drama, which had been out of fashion for some 30 years. So the network called Richard Toscan,   of the theater program at the University of Southern California. He remembers asking a colleague for advice on what story to dramatize: ”There’s this long pause, and he says, ’Create a scandal.’ ” Toscan was at a loss. Then he mentioned the problem to a student. ”And he said, ’Oh, why don’t you do Star Wars?’ ” Toscan recalls. ”There was the scandal.” See, Star Wars was a commercial juggernaut. And as Toscan puts it, ”Folks working at NPR thought, ’Oh good grief, we’re selling out to Hollywood.’ ” But if this was selling out, it sure came cheap. George Lucas had graduated from USC and was a fan of the campus NPR station. So after a little prodding, he gave away the radio rights to Star Wars for $1  —   a public radio budget if there ever was one. The producers brought in John Madden, a   theater director who had worked with the BBC. Madden says, ”The idea of doing this seemed a complete hoot, but I was so up for it.” And so were some of the movie’s stars: Anthony Daniels returned as the uptight protocol droid   and Mark Hamill voiced Luke Skywalker. The   radio collaboration was so notable that there was a photographer in the studio to document it. Madden says Hamill, a radio newbie, was an absolute natural. But turning a film known for its spectacular visuals into noncommercial radio wasn’t easy. The producers had to create 13   episodes from a movie that had only about 30 minutes of dialogue. They enlisted   novelist Brian Daley to write more back story and exposition. So for instance, the radio version has an extended scene aboard the Death Star that never appeared in the movie. In it, Princess Leia undergoes an excruciating interrogation at the hands of Darth Vader. Brock Peters plays Vader and Leia is voiced by Ann Sachs: Sachs still gets the shivers when she thinks about taping that scene. ”It was really scary,” she says. ”I’ll never forget after it was finished, [Peters] came out to the greenroom and he gave me a big hug. And I kind of clammed up as he hugged me and he said, ’Oh, you poor dear. I am so sorry.’ ” Sachs says part of what makes that scene work is the mix by engineer Tom Voegeli. It didn’t hurt that Voegeli had access to John Williams’ music and Ben Burtt’s sound effects from the film. But it could still take him an entire day to put together just a minute of audio. ”Just choreographing Darth Vader’s breathing so that he wasn’t breathing in the wrong places,” Voegeli says. ”You know, now you could take those breaths and move them on a computer screen and do it pretty easily.” Back then, Voegeli was mixing with    tape machines and editing with razor blades. Toscan, the drama’s executive producer, says, ”It was analog with a vengeance.” He says when the drama debuted in 1981, ”We were all walking way out on a plank, I think, keeping our fingers crossed.” But it was an overwhelming success. The sleepy little network received 50, 000 letters and phone calls in a single week, and there was a 40 percent jump in audience. For Madden, the experience eventually led him to direct his own movies, including the   Shakespeare in Love. ”We were making movies with the lights turned out,” he says of his Star Wars experience. ”You know, movies to watch with your eyes closed.”"
"How is this for a first day on the job: Maurice Murphy, the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO)’s late principal trumpet player, spent his very first day with the orchestra recording Star Wars’ iconic opening theme, with its incredible brass fanfare  —   and Murphy leading the trumpets. ”It was an amazing moment, that blast of brass that opens the film. It was the first sound I heard from Maurice, really,” the film’s composer, John Williams, told the London Symphony Orchestra in a 2007 podcast celebrating Murphy, who was then retiring from the orchestra. ”It was electrifying . .. Everyone felt it. And I think people around the world, whenever they hear that piece now, there’s a kind of instant reaction that I think really was elicited in its initial spirit by Maurice’s sound, and just that heraldic spirit that lies within everything he plays . .. I think of his playing, or the effect of his playing, as having created the voice of a hero.” Star Wars opened 40 years ago today  —   and pop culture was changed forever with its release and the ensuing constellation of shorthand cultural references. Its epically scaled, lushly orchestrated score, written by John Williams and played by the LSO, became a global touchstone in music. The LSO is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its   recording with a page of goodies, including the attendance sheet for that first recording session. (If you’re a   buff, by the way, you might want to check out that whole podcast about Maurice Murphy  —   Williams also talks about working with Murphy on other films throughout the Star Wars series as well as on the Harry Potter films.) Williams’ heroic music, embedded with references to the music of composers like Gustav Holst, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, has been heralded as a musical landmark. When the Library of Congress added the Star Wars soundtrack to the National Recording Registry in 2004, Emilio Audissino wrote on behalf of the Library: ”Apart from the huge popularity and the many awards, Williams’s ’Star Wars’ is a milestone because it was instrumental in reviving the musical style of the Golden Age of Hollywood (1930s to 1950s) and was seminal in boosting a new interest for symphonic film music . .. The score is rich in leitmotivs  —   à la Wagner through the Hollywood tradition  —   and is lushly orchestrated and highly coloristic, and follows tightly and extensively the visual actions and narrative lines.” The matter of how a British orchestra came to be associated with one of the U. S.’ most canonical   tentpoles might be simply a matter of economics. In those years  —   and in a situation that continues to this day  —   most American orchestras’ studio recording activities were tightly constrained by very strict union regulations and the associated costs of getting a major American orchestra into the recording studio under those union stipulations were, usually, deemed prohibitive. As a matter of comparison, the hourly rate for American players was roughly three times that of equally talented European musicians. According to a 1977 Twentieth   budget breakdown unearthed a few years ago, the studio had allotted $100, 000 for the score and recording costs, out of an $11 million total budget. The LSO tells the story of their involvement from a different angle, recounted in the orchestra’s official history, the 2003 book A Century of Triumph and Turbulence, written by Richard Morrison. According to Anthony Camden, the orchestra’s former oboist and chairman, he had a business meeting with   conductor André Previn, who was a widely heralded Hollywood composer, particularly for his work in the 1950s and 60s. During their meeting, Camden suggested that Previn write a new film score that the orchestra could then record. Previn declined, but proposed that Camden get in touch with another American film composer by the name of John Williams. Previn promptly called Williams, and passed the phone over to Camden. Williams said that he was, in fact, just starting to work on a new score, but that ”it wouldn’t interest the LSO because it was all ’up in the universe. ’” The LSO already had a long history of working within film music, going all the way back to 1935. Coincidentally, its very first recorded score was for another   fantasy, Arthur Bliss’ music for Things to Come. It was H. G. Wells’ screen adaptation of his novel about the rebirth of civilization after a long world war  —   and whose population attempts space travel. Even though the 1977 Star Wars soundtrack became one of the most famous pieces of recorded music in the 20th century, it didn’t become a major   for the British orchestra. There’s a   but apparently spurious, anecdote floating online about supposed negotiations between the LSO musicians and the film’s director, George Lucas, in which Lucas allegedly offered the orchestra the choice of either receiving their regular fees for the work upfront, or waiting to receive a ”small” share of any   profits. The LSO’s archivist, Libby Rice, took a peek at the ensemble’s records for NPR, and confirmed that Twentieth   paid the orchestra the standard British Musicians’ Union rates, as well as standard residuals from the album release and a standard administration fee to the LSO organization for arranging the sessions. According to the LSO, there is no record of any negotiations, or any discussions about the fee structure for Star Wars, in the orchestra’s minute books. That first Star Wars film went on to earn more than $786 million worldwide."
"By night, they play gigs. By day, they sample ramen in cities across America. They’re the three women of Shonen Knife, a legendary rock band from Japan. For over 35 years, the band has been serving up infectious punk songs with a delicious twist: Many of them are about food. Think song titles like ”Wasabi,” ”Hot Chocolate” and ”Sushi Bar.” But don’t dismiss them as bubblegum pop: Over the years, some of their biggest fans have included giants of   music. This spring, Shonen Knife embarked on its latest adventure  —   a ramen rock tour of the U. S. Why ramen? Well, ramen is really like Japanese soul food, says Daisuke Utagawa, a ramen restaurateur in Washington, D. C. and unofficial ambassador of Japanese food culture. ”It’s probably as important as your pizza here.” And the noodles are becoming all the rage in America. So, to promote its latest album, called Adventure, Shonen Knife is on what it calls the ”Ramen Adventure Tour” of the U. S. I met up with the band at Haikan, one of Utagawa’s hip ramen restaurants. The band’s line up has changed over the years, but these days, it consists of drummer Risa Kawano and its two founding members  —   guitarist Naoko Yamano and her sister, Atsuko Yamano, who plays bass guitar. Like Cher or Beyonce, all three ladies prefer to go by first names only. Naoko is the most fluent in English and does most of the talking. I kick off by asking the obvious: Why go on a ramen tour? ”Sushi is already very popular, but ramen is now happening in America,” Naoko says. And  —   oh yeah  —   they happen to have a   anthem called ”Ramen Rock,” written for a former band mate who had a habit of dining out on the noodles after playing shows. (Ramen is also a traditional hangover food in Japan.) Naoko and Atsuko formed Shonen Knife in 1981 in Osaka, Japan. They were inspired by pop punk bands like the Ramones. (In 2011, the band released a tribute album called Osaka Ramones.) These days, Naoko says, she’s more into ”’70s hard rock music, like Judas Priest or Black Sabbath or sometimes KISS.” Naoko has always been the  . And from the very beginning, many of their songs have been about food. ”When I started Shonen Knife, I was ashamed to write about love,” she explains. Naoko says romantic love, the standard stuff of music lyrics, was just too embarrassing to sing about. But love of food was another story. ”I found that eating delicious food is the most important thing for people,” she says. ”It’s a kind of universal topic.” So is dieting. Naoko  —   who is quite petite  —   says the need to curb her love of cookies inspired the song, ”I Wanna Eat Cookies,” which features a memorable refrain that many listeners can identify with: ”I wanna eat delicious cookies . ... as much as I want to eat!” By 1989, Shonen Knife’s catchy, playful songs had attracted some pretty   fans  —   including influential   bands like Sonic Youth, Red Kross and L7, all of whom sang on a tribute album to the group called Every Band Has A Shonen Knife Who Loves Them. In 1991, Nirvana asked Shonen Knife to join them on tour. At the time, Naoko says, she’d never heard of Kurt Cobain and company, but their grunge look gave her pause. ”I was so scared because their looking was very wild,” Naoko recalls. That was just as Nirvana’s seminal album Nevermind was blowing up. But as Cobain told MTV News a couple of years later, he was the one in awe of Shonen Knife, watching them perform night after night from the side of the stage. ”I was an emotional sap the whole time. I cried every night,” said Cobain, who frequently shared his love of the band with interviewers. Unlike Nirvana, Shonen Knife never made it huge. But over the decades, the band has remained a cult favorite. A couple of hours after our ramen dinner, they took the stage at D. C.’s Black Cat. And they kicked things off with a song called ”Banana Chips” . .. of course. Shonen Knife’s latest U. S. tour wraps up this weekend."
"When Ahmed Badr was 8 years old, his family’s home in Baghdad was bombed in the midst of the Iraq War. The family was uninjured. They moved to Syria, which was peaceful then, and in 2008, they came to the U. S. as refugees. Writing helps Badr deal with what he’s been through, and he wants to give other young people the same outlet. Now a student at Wesleyan University, Badr founded the website Narratio to empower others to tell their stories. Badr used writing to figure out what it meant to be an   kid. His life had dramatically changed since coming to the U. S.  —   in Baghdad, his parents were civil engineers in the U. S. they worked minimum wage jobs at Home Depot and  . Overtime, Badr realized that writing on his personal blog helped other people understand who he was and where he came from. ”There was this feeling of empowerment that was just overnight, all of sudden people were interested in my story,” Badr says. ”. .. And so with that in mind, two years passed, and I thought, ’OK, well this was great, but this is only helping me. This is only helping my own expression. So how about I take that feeling and that space that I created for myself and turn it into something that allows youth, refugee or otherwise, all over the world to do the same exact thing.’ ” So Badr created Narratio, where young people from around the world submit poems, essays and stories. Badr curates them, and he’s expanded the program into workshops to help young people learn how to express themselves. Badr tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro they are looking for pieces with a theme of empowerment. ”You’re telling your story. You’re expressing yourself through your own experience, and it’s very very hard to dispute that,” he says. ”It’s very hard to denounce someone’s own personal experience. I think that’s something that’s incredibly beautiful about storytelling is that storytelling doesn’t have to be divisive. Storytelling is meant to bring people together.” When Badr returned to Iraq for the first time two years ago, he says he felt guilty around his cousins who still live in Iraq. He says he feels personally responsible to give Iraqi youth  —   18 million of whom are younger than 19  —   an outlet to express themselves. ”I want to be able to turn that guilty feeling that I had when my cousins asked me, ’What are you up to?’ into a responsibility . .. and make it possible for them to be able to answer that question as freely as they would like to,” he says. ”And so, if I can do that by giving them a website that they can share their stories on, that’s a step in the right direction.”"
"May 25 is Red Nose Day in the United States. And millions of people are probably going, ”huh, what?” The short explanation: It’s a campaign to raise money to fight child poverty. But how does buying a red foam nose at a drugstore for a buck help the cause? And does this charity with the silly name really do good work? We did some reporting, and here’s what we learned. The British charity Comic Relief started Red Nose Day in England in 1985 as a way to raise money to fight child poverty. Why Red Nose Day and not, say, Fight Child Poverty Day? It’s hard to get a definitive answer. But it appears the organizers wanted a symbol that would make people laugh. Everyone from the Spice Girls to Hugh Grant have put on red noses to promote the fundraising effort. Red Nose Day is held every two years in the U. K. and has raised $1. 4 billion, which is distributed to charities that fight child poverty. Three years ago, the event crossed over to the U. S. where it’s become an annual event. Although it hasn’t yet become a household word. Last year, Comic Relief USA surveyed 1, 000 Americans and found that ”60 percent didn’t quite understand what we did,” says Janet Scardino, CEO of the group. In the weeks leading up to Red Nose Day and on the day itself, money is raised in all sorts of ways. Of the dollar people pay to buy a red nose at Walgreens and Duane Reade drugstores, 50 cents goes to charity (the other half covers the cost of producing the nose). The public can also make direct donations on the Red Nose Day telethon airing Thursday night on NBC. According to the organization’s 2015 tax filings, 85 percent of the proceeds go to a handful of charity partners that support children in need around the world. In the U. S. that includes multiyear grants to groups like Feeding America, the Boys  Girls Clubs of America, Save the Children and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The Bill  Melinda Gates Foundation, a supporter of NPR, is also backing Red Nose Day in the U. S. by matching donations to the cause made on Facebook up to total of $1 million. Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits using a   evaluation system, has found that most of Red Nose Day’s charity partners have a three or   rating. But Comic Relief has been criticized in the past for its controversial investments. In the U. K, some funds raised by Red Nose Day are invested in various ways, with the returns going toward the cost of the campaign. In 2013, the BBC program ”Panorama” reported that around $816, 000 was invested in the arms company BAE Systems while $3. 5 million was invested in tobacco companies. A spokesperson from Comic Relief U. K. told NPR that the group stopped investing in those companies in 2014. And then there’s the question of the goofiness of it all. Part of the appeal of Red Nose Day is that it makes people feel good, says David Bishai, a professor who specializes in economics and public health at Johns Hopkins University. ”The red nose doesn’t drag you into the dark side of the poor, showing you children with swollen bellies. That’s not fun,” he says. ”The [campaigners] say: We understand there’s terrible suffering in the world and we’re doing something about it.” But it’s a tricky line to toe. This year’s BBC telethon for Red Nose Day in the U. K. on March 24, garnered 150 complaints for profanity and lewd comments from the celebrity entertainers. There was a skit showing a bounty of biscuits followed by footage of a starving infant in Liberia. One viewer tweeted: ”Comic Relief . .. painful.” Asked to comment on the controversy, a spokesperson for Comic Relief U. K. did not address the issue specifically but told NPR: ”The broadcast was a live studio event enjoyed by a peak audience of 7. 6 million. The amazing British public yet again dug deep to raise over 73 million pounds [about $94 million] so far.” U. S. campaigns haven’t brought in quite as much: more than $60 million in the first two years. Still, ”that’s nothing to sneeze at,” says Sandra Miniutti of Charity Navigator. But the name might be an obstacle, suggests Miniutti. ”Stand Up For Cancer, I know I’m giving to cancer,” she says. ”Red Nose Day doesn’t have that attribute.” So on Red Nose Day the group devotes a lot of effort to explaining what kinds of projects it supports. Tonight, for example, Julia Roberts guest stars on a Red Nose Day episode of the TV series Running Wild with Bear Grylls. Grylls and Roberts head out to deliver vaccines from Wamba Hospital in Kenya to children in the a remote community. The challenge? They must keep the vaccines cold the whole time  —   while avoiding crocodiles and hippos. Tonight’s Red Nose Day TV marathon also features a reunion of the cast of the 2003 movie Love Actually. It sounds gimmicky, but academics who study charitable giving don’t seem to mind. ”I could have been holy about it  —   but they’re helping Americans think about those less   in other countries,” says Bishai. ”Give them a break.”"
"Singer and   Krystle Warren has been compared to artists like Tracy Chapman and Nina Simone. The latter comparison is particularly intriguing: Not only does Warren share that icon’s talent for evocative storytelling, but she also lives in France, as Simone once did. It’s a long way from her native Kansas City, Mo. which Warren left in her early 20s to pursue her music career. On her forthcoming album Three The Hard Way, Warren pays tribute to her roots. Warren tells NPR’s Audie Cornish that she has been feeling the pull of home more than ever. ”When I’m home  —   and when I say home, [I mean] in the States, but specifically Kansas City  —   there’s a part of me that’s just invigorated, and feels very much a part of everyone and everything there. And then at some point there’s the other half of me that really pulls to be back in France.” Hear their full conversation at the audio link, and read on for highlights. On her song ”Red Clay,” about the 1921 riot in the Tulsa, Okla. neighborhood of Greenwood, then known as Black Wall Street, [The] community was completely leveled by the Klan, and this song is basically telling their story. . .. My mother grew up in Spencer, Okla. along with her 10 other siblings. So in the summer I would head down to Spencer. So I’m   with the red clay. However, I didn’t know the story of Greenwood until maybe five years ago. It’s just something that wasn’t really spoken about in my family. And so, finding out about one of the worst attacks on U. S. soil  —   I really had to dig to find out about it. And oftentimes that’s a story with so many things that have happened in our country. Some of the worst atrocities are between nationals, fellow countrymen. On observing events in the U. S. from a distance, I feel that I’m getting a healthier dose of the news through television. As far as news from France [goes] there’s nothing partisan about it. And so we’re trying to put an album together that is going to touch on things politically, spiritually, whatnot  —   I think a great deal of distance was needed. Being far away, I guess, I can see things a bit more clearly. On her two homes of Kansas City and Paris, I do come back to the States as often as I can, but like it or not, a lot of [French] culture has seeped in my veins just as much as Kansas City is. I mean maybe in some years’ time, if and when I become a parent, then France will be home home. But in the meantime at least  —   I’m a bit split at the seams, but it’s comfortable, as well. I like that I can’t be someplace for too long without missing the other. It’s a nice feeling."
"Most anyone who has encountered a flamingo has probably been impressed by its signature ability to balance on a single long, spindly leg for remarkably long periods of time. But actually, scientists have now shown that what appears to be a feat requires almost no muscle activity from the bird. In fact, they found even a dead flamingo’s body will naturally fall into a stable   balance if positioned vertically. That research was recently published in Biology Letters. Until now there have been two basic schools of thought about why a flamingo stands on one leg, Lena Ting, a biomedical engineer at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, tells The  . Some scientists have suggested it was a way for the bird to conserve heat that would have been lost if that foot had been in the cold water. Others thought it was a way to reduce muscle fatigue, letting one leg rest while the other did the work. But for muscles to get fatigued, the posture must actually be tiring for the bird. Nobody had ever tested whether the flamingo’s iconic   posture required any actual muscle effort  —   until now. Ting and     Chang from the Georgia Institute of Technology headed to Zoo Atlanta, where they tested eight juvenile Chilean flamingos using a device called a force plate. She compares the machine to a Wii balance board or a   bathroom scale  —   it ”can measure the small motions of the body when you stand.” They recorded a small amount of swaying motion when the animals were awake. But then something surprising happened  —   when an animal dozed off, the swaying dropped off dramatically. ”And that’s the opposite of what we would expect for you or me  —   if I was standing on one leg and then closed my eyes, typically I would see a great increase in the amount of body sway and usually that results in people having to put their foot down,” she says. It suggests that while awake and active, the bird’s swaying could be correcting for other movements, ultimately settling into a position while asleep that requires little to no muscle activity. That was put to the test in an experiment with a flamingo cadaver, which of course has no muscle activity because it is not living. First, the researchers tried manipulating the cadaver’s joint in search of a locking mechanism that could explain the stability, she says. But the joint moved very loosely and did not lock. The key moment happened when they rotated the bird into a standing position: ”We held onto its ankle . .. and we turned it vertically, and then all of a sudden it just collapsed right into the position that you see when they’re standing on one leg.” This video shows the remarkable stability of the cadaver, even when it is pushed and pulled in different directions. (A warning to the sensitive viewer: It is a video of a dead flamingo, though the scientists say the animal was euthanized for other reasons and was not harmed for the study.) This suggests that the reason for the animal’s stability is mechanical and is actually aided by gravity. ”What we showed is that when they go to sleep their bodies can sort of flap forward due to gravity, and then the whole thing just collapses and becomes very stable,” Ting says. The mechanics behind a flamingo’s leg are a bit counterintuitive. The flamingo actually has an upper leg bone that is positioned horizontally, hidden among its feathers. A knee connects that bone to the long, slender part that it stands on. And the knobby bit in the center of that vertical portion is actually the bird’s ankle. When the flamingo lifts its leg, its body folds forward, so the center of gravity is pushing down on the leg from the front of the body  —   perfectly balancing it. In fact, says Ting, ”our research also suggests that it may require less effort for the flamingos to stand on one leg than on two.” The bird was not able to maintain this kind of passive balancing on two legs as Ting explained, when the leg unfolded the joint ”sort of collapsed” from its more stable position balanced on one leg. This study is not inconsistent with the idea that flamingos stand on one leg to reduce heat loss, especially if the bird doesn’t need to expend much energy to do so. But Ting says it may be even simpler than that: They may just balance on one leg because it’s easier for them than any other way. It’s worth noting that lots of other birds balance on one leg too, such as wood ducks and storks. Ting says this could be a ”more general mechanism that many birds use.”"
"Health care groups that represent doctors and patients are warning members of Congress that the House Republicans’ plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act would hurt people who need insurance most. The groups are responding to the latest assessment by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which concluded that the proposed American Health Care Act would leave 23 million more people without health insurance than under current law and would cut the deficit by $119 billion over 10 years. The latest CBO analysis came after House Republicans made changes to the bill earlier this month to try to ensure that people with   medical conditions can still get insurance. ”  changes to the AHCA made by the House offered no real improvements,” said Andrew Gurman, president of the American Medical Association, in a statement. ”Millions of Americans will become uninsured  —  with   families on Medicaid being hit the hardest.” Those concerns were echoed by group after group, including AARP, the American Hospital Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Association of American Medical Colleges and the March of Dimes. The Republican plan would roll back the requirement under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, that everybody has to have insurance. It also would replace the ACA’s   tax credits and subsidies with   credits that most analysts say are less generous. Older,   people would be hit hardest by the changes, the CBO says, because the proposed tax credits are less generous than those in Obamacare, while insurance for those older than 50 is the most expensive. As NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben reported, a    making $26, 500 would pay $1, 700 in premiums annually under Obamacare. In a state making those ”moderate” changes to its market under the proposed law, that    would pay $13, 600, and in a state with no waivers, the cost would be $16, 100. But premiums would fall overall, the report said, because policies would offer fewer benefits and sicker people would leave the market because they wouldn’t be able to afford insurance. The bill also would roll back the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid. As a result, the CBO analysis estimates that 14 million people would lose Medicaid coverage, which accounts for most of the savings under the bill, $834 billion over 10 years. ”The CBO confirmed the American Health Care Act will further lower premiums, deliver more immediate tax relief for individuals and families, and decrease the deficit,” said Rep. Kevin Brady,   the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. But Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called the bill ”dangerous, deadly and deeply flawed.” He said the proposal, which is now in the hands of the Senate, would eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which helps promote immunization, smoking cessation and other public health initiatives and makes up 12 percent of the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CBO reports that the bill could destabilize individual insurance markets in some states, leaving unhealthy Americans unable to buy insurance. But the CBO also acknowledges that its analysis includes some uncertainty, in part because the AHCA would allow states to get waivers that would exempt their insurers from many Obamacare coverage rules. This includes what are called essential health benefits, a list of medical services, such as mental health care or prescription drugs, that plans are required to cover under the current law. The CBO estimated how many states might accept those waivers and what they might put in place of the current rules. It figures that states making up about half the population would apply for a waiver of some sort, reducing the benefits that insurers in those state will offer. ”Services or benefits likely to be excluded from [essential health benefits] in some states include maternity care, mental health and substance abuse benefits, rehabilitative and habilitative services, and pediatric dental benefits,” the report said. States could also get waivers that would allow insurers to charge more for people with   conditions, a practice banned under the ACA. ”Over time, it would become more difficult for less healthy people (including people with   medical conditions) in those states to purchase insurance because their premiums would continue to increase rapidly,” the CBO wrote. Republicans argue that by allowing insurers to sell less comprehensive insurance, premiums will fall and more people will buy basic coverage. And their bill includes money for states to create     pools in which people with medical conditions can buy coverage if commercial insurers refuse them. But two   groups, the Main Street Alliance and the Small Business Majority, said the bill could hurt their members, many of whom rely on the individual insurance market for their coverage. ”Many solo entrepreneurs would likely be forced out of the insurance market entirely. This means many small firms would close up shop while others would never get off the ground,” said John Arensmeyer, founder of Small Business Majority, which represents 55, 000 small businesses."
"The title of Cate Shortland’s new film, Berlin Syndrome, is a sly riff on ”Stockholm syndrome,” that condition in which a hostage begins to feel sympathy for her captor. It’s never clear what sets the Berlin version apart, and in some ways Shortland and the screenwriter, Shaun Grant, seem to be figuring it out as they go along. That’s not a knock. Berlin Syndrome might look on the surface like a polished   a crafty and violent tale of a woman in captivity but it’s also the rare psychological thriller that feels not just taut and gripping, but genuinely exploratory. It nudges an overworked   into fascinatingly unresolved territory. Teresa Palmer plays Clare, a young Australian photographer who has just arrived in Berlin as the movie opens. She spends her nights in a hostel and her days wandering around the city, snapping pictures of buildings, with a particularly fond eye for Cold   architecture. Clare looks lonely and somewhat forlorn, but also open to the thrill of a new experience. And she gets one when she meets Andi, played by Max Riemelt, a friendly schoolteacher with Ryan Gosling good looks and a talent for mangling the English language in the most charming way possible. Clare, who has just been thinking about moving on to Dresden, puts her plans on hold and spends a night at Andi’s place. The love scene that ensues is passionate and raw, but also faintly ominous. Clare is too lost in her pleasure to notice that none of the windows in Andi’s apartment open, or that the whole building seems suspiciously vacant. The next morning, Andi goes off to work and Clare finds herself locked in. She chalks it up to a silly misunderstanding. One of the most unnerving things about Berlin Syndrome is its eerie sense of modulation, the way it takes its time confirming Clare’s worst fears. Even after Andi returns home later that evening, she doesn’t realize that her hot   stand is a serial creep who has no intention of letting her leave. Shortland is a masterful director of action, and her   leave you duly gasping for air: Clare’s first escape attempt, involving a jigsaw puzzle and a   screwdriver, is a perfect balance of squirmy buildup and gory release. But the mechanics of suspense interest Shortland only so much. What she has fashioned here is a dual character study in which her attention, if not her sympathy, is distributed evenly between predator and prey. Riemelt scrupulously avoids even a hint of    villainy, and he’s in no hurry to give up his character’s secrets, but there are telling clues nonetheless. The movie follows Andi as he visits his father, teaches his classes and awkwardly tries to engage with his  . Andi’s   have a way of emerging in random conversation. At one point he chats up another woman on the street, eyeing her as a possible replacement for Clare. He’s clearly done this all before. What makes Berlin Syndrome so compelling, and keeps it from devolving into a leering exploitation movie, is that Clare is even more fascinating than her captor. Palmer plays her character as not just a heroine but an enigma. While we learn an awful lot about what makes Andi tick, Clare’s own backstory remains something of a blank. There are no flashbacks, no insights into what might have motivated her to move around the world, or what she might even be fleeing. As days become weeks and weeks become months, Clare retreats into her own private madness. We’re never entirely sure what to make of her relationship with Andi, or the fragile layers of trust and affection that seem to develop between them. Has Clare resigned herself to her fate, or is she just playing one very long mind game? As it patiently untangles that mystery, Berlin Syndrome occasionally loses its narrative momentum, particularly toward the end as one brutal climax follows another. But the underlying tension never goes slack. We remain a captive audience to the end."
"Updated at 2 p. m. ET, U. S. personnel ”could not have predicted” that dozens of Mosul residents would be in a building where ISIS snipers were firing when they authorized a strike on it in March, the Pentagon says in a newly released report. That airstrike in Iraq killed at least 105 civilians. The report also says the building collapsed after the strike triggered explosives that had been planted by ISIS. ”Our condolences go out to all those that were affected,” said Maj. Gen. Joe Martin, commanding general of the ground force fighting ISIS. ”The Coalition takes every feasible measure to protect civilians from harm. The best way to protect civilians is to defeat ISIS.” The report provides new details about a strike that devastated several families and prompted rights groups to accuse the U. S.  coalition of not taking adequate precautions to protect people in Mosul, which Iraq is trying to reclaim from the terrorist group. It wasn’t until after the attack that officials learned civilians were in the targeted building, the Pentagon says. Between 101 and 137 people are believed to have sought refuge there, according to an executive summary of an investigative report prepared for the commander of Operation Inherent Resolve. Of the 105 civilians who died, 101 died in the structure and another four died from damage to the neighboring building, the Pentagon says. ”Eye witnesses and media outlets reported that an additional 36 civilians may have been at the building,” according to the report, ”however, there is insufficient evidence to determine their status or whereabouts at this time.” The strike had targeted two ISIS snipers who were on the building’s second floor the U. S. bomb was expected to damage no more than 20 percent of the structure, the Pentagon says. Instead, the building was reduced to a crater of rubble, after   explosives detonated, the report says. The Pentagon says the home that was hit on March 17 either was used to store bombs or was rigged with explosives that ”conservatively contained more than four times the net explosive weight” of the   munition (with 192 pounds of explosive material) that was dropped on the building. A summary of the report says the munition, described as a ”  with a delayed fuse,” was chosen by the coalition’s Target Engagement Authority in the belief that it would achieve ”the necessary effect and minimize collateral damage.” Coalition investigators’ analysis of the blast site found ”residues common to explosives used by ISIS, but not consistent with the explosive content of a ” the Pentagon says. One of those explosives was nitroglycerin, which investigators say was ”likely used by ISIS to sensitize the secondary explosive devices to detonate more easily.” The report adds that the crater at the rear of the structure was in a different area from where the   entered and detonated on the second floor. The civilians who died in the building had been forced out of their houses by ISIS fighters and invited into the home by its owner, the report says. It adds that ISIS fighters had interacted with the residents  —   and that a   neighbor told investigators he had been warned to evacuate his family and move north by the morning of March 17 to avoid danger. The Pentagon’s summary was prepared by the investigating officer, Air Force Brig. Gen. Matthew C. Isler. After the strike, Iraqi rescue workers told NPR they found dozens of bodies in the rubble. Coming amid a new offensive to try to retake Mosul from ISIS, the attack set off a debate over how to prevent civilian casualties when people are used as human shields  —   and whether the U. S.  coalition has been cautious enough in its attacks. Survivors of the strike told NPR’s Jane Arraf about the devastating losses they suffered, and why they hadn’t been able to leave. ”Three times we tried to leave and ISIS sent us back,” Ala’a Hassan told Jane. ”They fired in the air and in the end they said if you try to leave we will hang you.” The deaths prompted Amnesty International to accuse the U. S.  coalition of not taking adequate precautions to protect people in Mosul, not providing a safe escape route for civilians, and using munitions that are too powerful. The group’s senior crisis response adviser, Donatella Rovera, also acknowledged the challenges in places such as Mosul. Rovera told NPR in March: ”There was no easy option because obviously prior to the fighting, Islamic State did not allow people to leave. However, once the fighting got underway, possibilities are created for people to leave.” Within weeks of the strike, as The   reported, Iraqi and U. S. officials said they would slow the offensive and reduce the number of airstrikes to minimize civilian deaths. In response to the findings being released Thursday, Amnesty International’s Samah Hadid said, ”While we welcome the U. S. investigation into the Jadida airstrike, we are curious to know whether any lessons were learned and what steps were taken to ensure such horrors do not occur again.”"
"U. S. aid for international family planning would be eliminated. Programs to combat   in the world’s poorest countries would be slashed by 17 percent. Efforts to fight malaria would be chopped by 11 percent. Those are just some of the cuts to global health spending called for by President Trump in the proposed budget he unveiled this week. On one level the reductions did not come as a surprise. Trump had already made clear in his ”skinny budget” proposal, released in March, that he wanted to lower spending on foreign assistance by more than a third. Yet advocates for global health programs say they are nonetheless reeling as they pore through this week’s more detailed release. ”This is an official act of the executive branch. It’s not a press release,” says Scott Morris, director of the U. S. Development Policy Initiative at the Center for Global Development, a Washington D. C. think tank. He adds that the shock is all the greater in light of longstanding bipartisan support for global health spending. Overall, Trump would cut the annual global health budget by about 26 percent, or around $2. 2 billion in the 2018 fiscal year that begins October 1, decreasing it from about $8. 7 billion in the current fiscal year budget to less than $6. 5 billion. The program that would be hit hardest would be family planning. The U. S. currently spends $607. 5 million per year to provide women in poor countries with birth control and reproductive healthcare. Trump appears to want to zero that out entirely. His budget proposal explicitly calls for eliminating the largest source of this funding: $524 million disbursed by USAID, stating that the cut ”achieves further savings” to the budget. Earlier this year Trump also announced he was withholding $32. 5 million in funding earmarked for the U. N. Population Fund, the lead United Nations agency on family planning and maternal health. Trump made that decision on the grounds that the agency helps to support a Chinese government family planning program that forces people to get abortions and sterilizations  —   a determination that both the agency and many advocates for foreign aid vigorously dispute. The U. S. government has also been providing an additional $51 million for international family planning grants through a separate account at USAID. Trump’s proposed budget is silent on this front, but in light of his other decisions, it seems doubtful the administration would spend that money either, says Jennifer Kates, vice president and director of Global Health  HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The impact on women and children worldwide would be severe, contends the abortion rights advocacy group PAI. In an analysis released this week based on research data compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, PAI calculates that the reduction in family planning services that would result from ending U. S. funding would lead to 3. 3 million more abortions, 15, 000 more maternal deaths, 8 million more unintended pregnancies, and 26 million fewer women and couples receiving services per year. Kates thinks it’s ”unlikely” Congress will go along with a wholesale elimination of international family planning funding. Still, she notes that in contrast to other areas of global health spending, ”family planning is one of the more contested areas. So even though over the last several years Congress has ultimately provided family planning funding at the current level, it’s unclear if that will happen this year.” Analysts are more confident that Congress will ignore Trump’s wishes when it comes to the proposed cuts to spending on   and malaria, which are widely seen as signature Republican initiatives. Trump would reduce funding for   efforts 11 percent from $755 million to $674 million. And he wants to lower annual contributions to PEPFAR  —   the program that funds both   drugs for infected people as well as prevention efforts  —   by 17 percent from $4. 6 billion in the current budget to $3. 8 billion. In the documentation released with the budget, the administration said it was making such cuts ”with the expectation that other donors can and should increase their commitments to these causes.” But George W. Bush, who launched PEPFAR, has been making the case that full funding is in the national interest of Americans. In an   in The Washington Post last month Bush noted that PEPFAR has helped saved 12 million lives and wrote that ”societies mired in disease breed hopelessness and despair, leaving people ripe for recruitment by extremists. When we confront suffering  —   when we save lives  —   we breathe hope into devastated populations, strengthen and stabilize society, and make our country and the world safer.” In addition to the outright cuts, advocates are also somewhat concerned that 38 percent of the funding that Trump’s budget does provide for   efforts comes from   unspent monies from a supplemental bill to fund Ebola fighting efforts back in 2015. That same source is also used to fund all $72. 5 million that Trump has proposed toward global health security programs, which are charged with identifying and protecting the U. S. from disease threats around the world. ”It’s money that is unspent, so it’s good to use it,” says Kates. But she adds that it could signal a lack of commitment to appropriating the funding directly in future budgets: ”What happens next year is unclear. It creates uncertainty about the stability about these programs.” More broadly advocates worry that by putting such an unprecedented cut on the table Trump will at least chip away at the longstanding bipartisan consensus that global health aid should be funded at current levels. ”I have no doubt Congress will succeed in restoring some level of funding,” says Morris. ”But it strikes me as an insurmountable lift to get back to the level of funding these programs currently enjoy.”"
"One of President Trump’s boldest, most ambitious proposals on the campaign trail was to build a wall along the Southern border and get Mexico to pay for it. Amid the tumult of Trump’s first few months in office, the border wall hasn’t gotten as much attention as some other things. But new legislation has been introduced in Congress to help fund it. It’s called the Border Wall Funding Act of 2017, introduced on March 30 by Rep. Mike Rogers,  . And it would put a 2 percent tax on all    wire transfers to Mexico, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. It’s not the only bill targeting remittances. An earlier proposal in the Senate, which didn’t advance out of committee, would have placed a 7 percent ”fine” on remittances unless the sender can prove he or she is in the U. S. legally. It should be noted that these proposals would only apply to personal transfers and not to businesses moving money abroad to say, Mexico or the Cayman Islands. As you might expect, people who send remittances are not happy. ”I’ve already earned my money and paid taxes on it,” says Rafael Villalobos Jr. a community college administrator in eastern Washington state who regularly sends money to his parents in Mexico. ”The whole thing with this administration is about not having to pay more taxes, yet I have to pay an extra tax on money that I’ve already earned when I give it to my parents just because they are coincidentally on the other side of the border.” Villalobos says he’s very concerned about any additional costs for sending money. He recently switched from using traditional wire transfer firms like MoneyGram and Western Union to a new mobile app called Remitly because it saves him a few bucks on fees per transfer. ”When I used to send money through those other means, it was typically a $10 sending fee, and instead of sending $400, I’d send $390,” he says. That 10 bucks, he says, goes a long way in Mexico. ”That is essentially another couple of days worth of food sometimes, depending on what you’re buying,” he adds. Remittances are hugely important for the developing world. For some countries, they’re the leading source of foreign capital. In Haiti, they add up to more than $2 billion and represent 28 percent of the country’s overall gross domestic product. For Mexico, remittances bring in more cash each year  —   $28. 5 billion  —   than its vast oil fields do. More than $60 billion in remittances are sent out of the U. S. each year, more than twice the $26 billion that the American government spends on foreign development aid. Advocates for tighter border controls say a tax on those funds is long overdue. ”There is a certain symmetry in having illegal immigrants underwrite part of the enforcement to prevent illegal immigration,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a D. C. think tank that advocates for stronger limits on migration to the U. S. He says a remittance tax is an obvious place to look for new money for the border wall. ”Because the people who would be paying it are people who don’t vote,” Krikorian says. ”I mean they’re not even citizens.” But a remittance tax would affect anyone sending money regardless of their immigration status. Villalobos, for instance, is a U. S. citizen. Legal permanent residents would also be hit by the tax. Krikorian would like to see a tax similar to one that Oklahoma put in place in 2009. Oklahoma slaps a $5 surcharge on personal wire transfers up to $500 leaving the state and an additional 1 percent on higher amounts. Technically, the tax is fully refundable as a tax credit the next year so long as the sender retains the wire transfer receipt and files state taxes in Oklahoma. The fee raises roughly $12 million a year for Oklahoma because hardly anyone claims a refund. To Krikorian, this is proof that a significant amount of remittances sent out of Oklahoma are from people who aren’t in the country legally. Or it might be that it’s too much of a hassle to file for the refund. Itai Grinberg, an international tax lawyer and a professor at Georgetown Law School, says it’s fairly unusual for governments to tax outflows of cash. This is not something you’d normally see, he says, from Europe or Japan or the U. S. ”From the perspective of a major developed economy, it would be very unusual,” says Grinberg. Taxes are usually levied on goods or services or income but not on the movement of money from one place to another. Taxing cash transfers is usually a strategy employed by leftist autocrats, like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, when their currency has gone in to a nosedive, he says. But the idea of taxing remittances is gaining support in some wealthy countries that rely heavily on migrant labor. Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have recently proposed remittance taxes. The World Bank has blasted the idea of these taxes, calling them a ”bad idea.” The World Bank says they hurt some of the poorest countries by reducing the inflow of desperately needed cash. In addition, a World Bank report on the subject last month says remittance taxes are difficult to administer. Even if the taxes are put in place, the report notes, migrants are likely to find some other way to get their money sent without paying a tax."
"The Fox News Channel has struck back at a lawyer representing former host Andrea Tantaros in her sexual harassment allegations against the network, belittling his claims Fox used online accounts to intimidate her and asking that he be punished by the court. The network’s volleys responded mockingly to a lawsuit filed by attorney Judd Burstein late last month alleging that Fox News executives arranged for Tantaros’ private exchanges to be spied on as part of a campaign of intimidation relying on online sock puppets. ”The allegations are not just false, they are outrageously and flagrantly so,” wrote Fox’s outside lawyers, led by Andrew Levander of Dechert LLP. ”This sensational allegation, broadcast in   type, was made solely to generate negative headlines for, and inflict maximum damage on, Fox News.” Levander’s legal papers contended that Burstein failed to do his basic homework: he argued Twitter accounts Burstein had alleged were ”sock puppets”  —   operated on behalf of Fox  —   were not fake but in fact run by actual people. The attorney for Fox focused on a key Twitter account that corresponded with Tantaros and, Burstein alleged, tweeted out images closely linked to Tantaros’ private correspondence and conversations. Levander countered, ”Mr. Block is a real person living in Gainesville, Florida who maintained the account in his own name. That fact could have been determined in minutes.” Levander cited instances in which Block tweeted out images said to be part of the intimidation before the conversations invoked by Burstein had occurred. Fox’s lawyers argued that timeline showed the tweets from Block’s account did not hinge on any surveillance. In his response, Burstein wrote Fox News’ own filings provided support for his allegations. Among other elements, Burstein noted that Block said he wasn’t aware of an account that his account exchanged tweets with. ”If Mr. Block is telling the truth, then someone else is responsible for these tweets,” Burstein wrote. He also says he did not allege Block was fictional, but that he either acted on Fox’s behalf or allowed others access to his account. Previously, Tantaros had sued Fox News for what she said was sexual harassment by its former chairman, the late Roger Ailes, and former star host Bill O’Reilly, naming both men and other Fox News executives as defendants. That suit was referred to binding and secret arbitration. In some ways, Levander’s legal argument seemed most driven by Burstein’s filing of yet another lawsuit in federal court, placing Tantaros’ dispute in the public eye once more in a move that circumvented the confidentiality of the arbitration process. In the April suit alleging intimidation, filed before Ailes’ death, Burstein sued the Fox News chairman for Tantaros again, along with other defendants, including, among others, the network’s former president, Bill Shine, and its public relations chief, Irena Briganti. The network, its parent company and all the defendants have vigorously rejected the allegations. Burstein’s response Wednesday additionally stated that private investigator and former paid Fox News contributor Bo Dietl admitted this week that he was hired on behalf of Fox News last year to investigate Tantaros. Lawyers for Fox News pledged to report on that element. NPR has also sought comment from Dietl. Dietl has previously acknowledged digging into the backgrounds of former Fox host Gretchen Carlson, whose sexual harassment suit last summer led to Ailes’ departure, and former Fox News producer Andrea Mackris, whose sexual harassment lawsuit against O’Reilly led to a   settlement to avert a jury verdict. Multiple other women accused both Ailes and O’Reilly of sexual harassment, though both men denied all misconduct. Star host Megyn Kelly left the network for NBC News after saying that she was among those who Ailes harassed. Though Burstein’s allegations seem outlandish on their face, revelations at the network over the past 11 months have shocked many of the networks’ critics and even some staffers, including the disclosure that Fox secretly paid more than $3 million in 2011 to a former employee who alleged Ailes had extorted sex from her for more than two decades. The structure of that hidden payment is the part of an ongoing federal investigation of Fox News, with which parent company 21st Century Fox has pledged full cooperation. Since Ailes’ departure last summer, corporate and network officials have effectively confirmed employees’ fears that Ailes ordered that Fox’s corridors and offices be bugged and that work devices and accounts were closely monitored. Lawyers say Fox was likely acting legally under employment law. Other Ailes advisers, since dismissed, worked in a back room at Fox devising strategies against his critics. In Tantaros’ case, Fox News outside counsel Levander argued this week that Burstein has failed in court and is instead trying to make his case in the press. ”Burstein’s history of grandstanding and threatening a ’media event’ betray his true intention: to pressure Fox News to accede to Tantaros’ extorionate settlement demands,” Levander wrote. Burstein has pledged to seek disciplinary action against the Fox News lawyer, too."
"If you fly into Haines, Alaska, you’ll be on a prop plane so small that your pilot will call the roll. ”Melissa.” Yup. ”Mary.” Yes. ”Joseph?” Right here. Just 2, 500 people live in Haines  —   a small town in southeast Alaska surrounded by water. The scenery is incredible, with snowy mountains and lush green forest beyond. The city center is just a few blocks, with several bars, a few restaurants and a beautiful,   library. But lately, this idyllic place has been roiled by a bitter political battle. A group of residents wants to recall more than half the members of the local government, the borough assembly. In the 2016 presidential election, Haines split right down the middle: Hillary Clinton eked out a   margin of victory over Donald Trump, getting 374 votes to his 370. To better understand this community, and to find out what all the fuss is about, we gathered a small group to talk about their lives. On a weekday evening, they gathered in a circle at the community center. Among those who came: a motel owner, a fisherman . .. and one of the targets of that ongoing recall effort. Shane Horton is the motel owner. He also drives a snowplow, and he’s circulating that recall petition. ”This is kind of like a family, it’s typical of a very dysfunctional family,” says Horton. ”There is little but dissent around here, for the most part.” Heather Lende is a writer who was just elected to the borough assembly last fall  —   she’s one of the people Horton and others are trying to remove. When she heard that some in her community were trying to oust her, ”it was heartbreaking.” Social media makes it worse, Lende says: People in Haines are saying things online they wouldn’t dare say in public in such a small town. Haynes Tormey shares his first name with the town where he grew up. He’s a mechanic and commercial fisherman and, at 34, he’s the youngest of our group. He moved away from Haines, but recently decided to move back, with his wife, Katie, and four kids. It’s a different place than he remembers. Angrier. Louder. ”It’s a pretty hot political climate here,” says Tormey. ”It’s like a petri dish! Haines is following footsteps with what’s happening in our country. The rhetoric and the volume has been turned up . .. I’m scared that it’s never gonna stop and I don’t think it’s a healthy way to live.” That gets nods of agreement around the room. So what’s at the root of all the contention? Sure, some people are upset over local issues, like a harbor expansion or who should be the new borough manager. But it’s about more than that. It breaks down as   versus newcomers, to some extent. But also, people who want resource development, like mining or logging, against ”greenies”  —   environmentalists who stand in the way. ”One of the things that make ornery, bitter old farts like me,” explains Horton, ”is that I came here and was doing construction and dirt work involved with the timber industry. And that went away. So I went into doing something else, and then that gets blown out of the water. How many times can I get told to completely start over because what I am doing is now not acceptable?” For people in Haines, maybe it’s a question of who are we now? What’s our identity in this place that’s changing? Dave McCandless, a family physician in Haines, has seen these same tensions in other places he’s lived. ”I think we’re actually hardwired to judge things around us and decide if somebody is one of us or one of them,” McCandless says. ”But once you decide somebody’s one of ’them,’ it’s real easy to you know, switch over and say, ’Well, if I disagree about this, maybe I disagree with him about everything. And suddenly I can’t find any common ground.’ ” That common ground has been elusive in Haines lately, but Heather Lende says, despite the recall effort against her, she’s optimistic. She’s a liberal, and has very close friends who are Trump supporters. ”I’m not gonna lose a friend over whoever votes for someone in the national election,” Lende says, ”and maybe that’s the lesson that can come from Haines for the rest of the world. We’ve lived with divisiveness for a long time, but is it worth losing a friend over? I don’t think so.” Doc, as the group affectionately calls him, sees it every year: Anger builds through the long, dark winter months, he says, ”and February, March, April is when people kind of fall apart. The holidays are over and it’s a long time till spring.” Shane Horton laughs. Yep, that sounds about right. ”When I first came to Alaska, that was basically a kind of a joke,” says Horton. ”About March, there was a whole slew of divorces and screaming arguments and everybody switched . .. Traded vehicles, bought a new truck. Ended up with a new wife and everybody took off and struggled through another year again.” Joanne Waterman, who just retired from working at the ferry terminal calls it ”spring breakup.” ”We will go through these times,” she says. ”We will fight, we will scrap, we’ll go to the bar and have a beer together. And we’ll bounce back and we’ll be different. But you know? We’ll still be a community that, at the base of it  —   at the heart of it  —   we love each other.” Dave McCandless says he’s sure this current climate will pass: ”What you’re seeing, this tension and this turmoil and all that, it’s all happened before,” he says. ”This country has been full of that, just like the town is full of it. Three years from now we’ll be arguing about something else just as feverishly. And we won’t be able to remember what this was.” The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"Model Dani Mathers, whose haughty posting of a photo of a naked woman at her gym sparked outrage last summer, will be punished by spending a month removing graffiti in Los Angeles. Mathers pleaded no contest to a charge of invading the    woman’s privacy. ”The issues that surround body shaming can be devastating,” Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said, ”not only to daughters and mothers, but also to sons and fathers, members of the LGBTQ community, to a trans kid who might be struggling with identity, to people who are disabled. The message today is clear: Body shaming is not tolerated in the city of Los Angeles.” Mathers, 30, was Playboy’s 2015 Playmate of the Year. She was banned by the LA Fitness health club chain for surreptitiously taking a photo of a woman in a shower area and publishing it along with the caption, ”If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.” When it announced the ban, LA Fitness called Mathers’ behavior ”appalling.” Saying it had revoked her membership, the company added, ”It’s not just our rule, it’s common decency.” In the fallout that ensued, the model lost her job at Los Angeles radio station KLOS, where she was a contributor. In November, the criminal charge was filed, leaving Mathers facing a potential   jail term. As negative responses poured in at the time of the initial posting, Mathers sought to apologize. ”That was absolutely wrong and not what I meant to do. . .. I know that   is wrong,” she said, as member station KPCC reported. ”That is not the type of person I am.” In February, Mathers had asked for a diversion in her case so she could avoid a criminal record and receive a light or suspended sentence. But as The Wrap reported, Feuer’s office said she ”does not qualify nor merit such leniency.” On Monday, California’s Senate approved an invasion of privacy bill that would stiffen the punishment for those convicted of the crime, allowing a judge to impose a fine of up to $1, 000. In addition, courts would be required to seek restitution for victims’ costs related to removing images from the public sphere."
"In the early 1950s, Clarence White was a rookie policeman with the Indianapolis Police Department, and being   there were rules he needed to follow. He says the department had a gentleman’s agreement where black cops could not arrest white people. White is the patriarch of three generations of   police officers in the Indianapolis Police Department. It was a career he initially did not want. ”I was sort of forced into this,” says White. ”I tried to join the fire department three times, turned down three times because they said I didn’t pass the test.” White credits his persistent uncle, who was already on the police force, for getting him to take the police exam. White said it was the same questions as the fire department test. He passed with a 99 percent. During that time, White was only allowed to ride in two police cars  —   Car 27 and Car 29. Those numbers let the public know   police officers were inside. The Indianapolis department had   police officers dating back to the 1890s, but White, now 90, was part of the first generation of   to make rank. He ascended to captain before retiring in 1974. Despite his role in desegregating the department, he made every effort to keep his sons from following in his footsteps. In the mornings, he says he would throw on an overcoat to keep his sons from seeing his police uniform. But when his oldest son, Clarence White Jr. now 66, joined the force in 1975, his father kept his reservations to himself. White Jr. said he started his career on the force during the end of the hippie revolution, when police officers were not  . Public opinion grew worse when the department became embroiled in national scandals involving excessive use of force and the shootings of unarmed black men. Today, White Jr. thinks police shootings of unarmed black people continues, in part, because of racism in the department. ”I’ve been involved in a situation where a white officer . .. I felt his big issue in working in the community was his dislike of black people. It exists. It will always exist and is something that we have to continually work toward making better,” he says. His nephew Rodney White, 41, also says it will take some work, but these issues can be fixed. Rodney is still active in the Indianapolis Police Department. Growing up, he was surrounded by police officers, including his mother and father. When it comes to dealing with police shootings of unarmed black people. He said it will require more training, and a focus on recruiting more officers from the community. ”If you don’t grow up in a specific location, and you’re not used to dealing with the   culture and some of the mannerisms and the way that we speak and the way that we carry ourselves . .. You have to actually be around it to really kind of understand,” Rodney says. Despite efforts by police departments nationwide to employ more people of color into the force,   still hold a more unfavorable view of police than their white counterparts, according to Pew Research. Clarence White Sr. says this point of view is an issue   officers still have to navigate while they’re in the field. ”Black men and women in the street  —   when they confront a white officer, it’s with the sense that what they say or how they say it, they’re going to jail. And the black officers, the same thing happens,” he says. ”We put on a uniform, and the black community says you represent the white establishment. So we have a problem trying to win them over.” But White Sr. has an approach he used before he retired. ”When I approached a white perpetrator or a black perpetrator, I whispered to him what I was going to do,” says White. Sr. ”I didn’t force anybody  —   punch him, anything.” He says it’s how he would have liked to be treated."
"When it comes to poor Americans, the Trump administration has a message: Government aid is holding many of them back. Without it, many more of them would be working. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney said as much when presenting the administration’s budget plan this week to cut safety net programs by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years. The administration also wants to tighten work requirements for those getting aid, such as food stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. ”If you’re on food stamps, and you’re   we need you to go to work. If you’re on disability insurance and you’re not supposed to be  —   if you’re not truly disabled, we need you to go back to work,” he said. On Wednesday night, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson  —   whose budget to help   households would be cut by more than $6 billion next year  —   added his own thoughts. He said in a radio interview that ”poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind.” Carson  —   who himself grew up in poverty to become a widely acclaimed neurosurgeon  —   said people with the ”right mind set” can have everything taken away from them, and they’ll pull themselves up. He believes the converse is true as well. ”You take somebody with the wrong   you can give them everything in the world (and) they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom,” Carson said.   advocates say both Carson and Mulvaney are fundamentally wrong, that most   people would work if they could. And many of them already do. They just don’t make enough to live on. ”All Americans, but particularly one of the top federal   officials, should understand that the main causes of U. S. poverty are economic, not mental,” said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America. ”Overwhelming facts and data prove that the main causes of poverty are low wages, too few jobs, and an inadequate safety net  —   not some sort of personal attitude problem.” He and other advocates say the image of millions of   people sitting around collecting checks doesn’t match reality. About   of the 42 million people who get SNAP benefits are elderly, disabled or children. A majority of SNAP families with kids have at least one person who’s working, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Olivia Golden, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) says one of the biggest obstacles to getting people off government aid is the lack of   jobs. ”  of poor children live with an adult who’s working,” she says. ”So working is no guarantee of being above poverty.” Golden says Carson’s suggestion that poor people are lazy or somehow at fault is ”an idea that through American history has been an excuse for really bad policy decisions.” She cited lack of investments in education, and says the comments are especially egregious given the president’s budget proposal. It calls for steep cuts in education, health care, job training and other supports for   Americans. Golden argues that, rather than discourage work, government support  —   such a food aid and health care  —   can encourage people to seek and keep jobs by helping them to stabilize their lives. She says it’s easier to work if you aren’t worried about being hungry or sick. Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute also thinks Carson is wrong about poverty being a state of mind. ”Poverty is being poor,” says Tanner. But he agrees that government benefits can sometimes be a disincentive to working, because people make an economic decision about whether they’ll be better off if they take a job. By the time they calculate the loss of benefits, taxes they’ll have to pay and the cost of employment  —   such as child care and transportation  —   it’s often not worth it. He also thinks that some people stuck in poverty do make bad choices  —   such as dropping out of school or getting pregnant  —   that worsen their economic outlook. But Tanner says many poor Americans have to deal with conditions that are not of their making and prevent them from getting ahead. He thinks the answer isn’t cutting government aid, but dealing with the barriers to work, including a lack of education and a criminal justice system that leaves many  —   especially   men  —   with criminal records that prevent them from getting hired. Joel Berg thinks raising the minimum wage would also help, as would making housing more affordable for   families. The Trump budget would cut some of these programs, overseen by HUD Secretary Carson. In presenting the budget, OMB Director Mulvaney did offer this assurance for those people who are getting government aid. ”We are going to do everything we can to help you find a job that you are suited to and a job that you can use to help take care of you, yourself, and your family,” he said. He didn’t provide details other than to add, ”If you’re in this country and you want to work, there’s good news, because Donald Trump is President and we’re going to get 3 percent growth, and we’re going to give you the opportunity to go back to work.” Mulvaney also promised that the administration would not kick ”anybody off of any program who really needs it . .. we have plenty of money in this country to take care of the people who need it.” Defining just who does and doesn’t ”need it” will likely be a big part of the debate as Congress considers what to do with the president’s plans."
"Last Saturday, I took part in the first Reducetarian Summit on the campus of New York University in Greenwich Village. Panel discussions and interaction with the audience  —   not ”sage on the stage” lectures  —   were the main events of the summit. As often happens for me, in the midst of trying to process insights coming fast and furiously, my brain grabbed hold of one simple utterance, held on fast, and build connections from there: Lunch should be an academic subject for our children. Speaking about food in our schools, Richard McCarthy, of Slow Food USA, talked about how  —   instead of being rushed through the lunch line  —   kids could be taught about what to eat and where food comes from. They could practice, too, the art of conversation. Yes! (That was the sound of my brain shifting into high gear.) Of course, there’s been a lot of attention paid nationally to lunch in schools. Research shows that healthy food does improve school performance, as this 2017 Brookings Institution report shows: ”We find that in years when a school contracts with a healthy lunch company, students at the school score better on    academic tests. On average, student test scores are 0. 03 to 0. 04 standard deviations higher (about 4 percentile points). Not only that, the test score increases are about 40 percent larger for students who qualify for   or free school lunches. These students are also the ones who are most likely to eat the school lunches.” And Michelle Obama went viral earlier this month when she reacted to the Trump administration’s walking back of some of the   reforms she had spearheaded. But McCarthy’s comment, for me, brought about a perspective shift. It’s not just what we serve our kids to eat, it’s also about how we create a community for them around the foods they eat  —   and as they eat. And that’s an insight that  —   outside the school context  —   holds for adults, too. McCarthy’s three    —   in a discussion moderated by Katherine Martinko of Treehugger  —   all came at this notion of food and community in different ways. Gene Baur, president of Farm Sanctuary and a vegan activist and athlete, noted that he favors ”vegan integration” over vegan isolation. In this way, he supported the ideas behind creation of a reducetarian community  —   with members ranging from committed vegans and vegetarians to people who are serious about cutting back on meat and animal products  —   as envisioned by Brian Kateman, the force behind the summit. Baur repeatedly invoked the historical equation of ”meat” and ”power,” the   idea that meat, compared with other foods, endows people with particular vigor. Learning that some   athletes  —   including Olympic track and field star Carl Lewis and Olympic weightlifter Kendrick Farris  —   are vegan, Baur noted, can help overturn this myth. Karen Washington’s comments anchored the panel in a focus on hierarchy and inequality  —   and in opportunity as well. Washington is the founder of Rise  Root Farm, a group described on the website as growing ”a variety of vegetables, fruit, and herbs. We will raise chickens and bees, sell the eggs, honey, and possibly the meat,” and   of Black Urban Growers. She explained that poor people, often told to ”eat healthy,” are too often surrounded by junk food, processed food, and fast food. In stressing the community theme, Washington noted that financial support is critical for people of color who work to establish businesses based on healthy eating. On a smaller level, panelists suggested, it’s effective  —   in all neighborhoods  —   to incorporate cooking demonstrations in farmers’ markets. One after the other, the speakers remarked on how many plant foods there are to discover and experiment with as we cook and eat together. George Tenedios, CEO and   of freshco, said that many ”ethnic” food traditions today are very  . The panelists envisioned that this    ratio could shift through   education and effort. This panel was my favorite of the summit, but throughout the day I felt energy and excitement in the discussion rooms and in the halls. Not everyone outside the venue, though, was a fan. A handful of pickets greeted us outside the NYU gates at Saturday’s lunch break. Their concern? That any animal slaughter is wrong and, thus, that the reducetarian goal is ethically weak. On Twitter, NYFarmer  —   a lawyer and   dairy farmer in New York state, with whom I have corresponded about her farm work  —   offered a barrage of comments through the weekend expressing dissatisfaction with the summit for other reasons. NYFarmer’s tweets included these: Back home, I emailed Kateman to ask if I was right to think that Washington of Rise  Root Farm was in fact the only farmer invited as a panelist. He confirmed that this was so. Is it possible to imagine a dairy farmer joining in at a conference where vegan foods  —   including   milk for coffee  —   are featured because many people in the room don’t eat many (or any) animal products? Should family farmers, dairy or otherwise, be explicitly invited into the reducetarian community, where a key goal, after all, is to end animal suffering in   factory farming? That last question deserves discussion. In my own panel remarks on Saturday, I was asked to consider the psychology of  . (Note: I was not paid to speak at the conference but, like everyone else attending, I did receive some fun swag like    vegan chocolate and vegan mayonnaise.) I raised a question that, for me, was an elephant in the room  —   and one that I would soon hear outside on the pavement in slightly different form, from the protesters. Is any slaughter of farmed animals rightly considered humane, when thinking, feeling animals are deprived of years of their life? No   conference can take on all the important issues. I left this one with fresh ideas and new nagging questions. For me, that means it was a success. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s new book is Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"Everything President Trump has done in office, apart from international affairs and foreign policy, has been a ”complete disaster,” says former House Speaker John Boehner. Boehner was speaking at an energy conference Wednesday and praised the president’s willingness to dedicate more resources to combating ISIS. ”Everything else he’s done [in office] has been a complete disaster,” Boehner said. ”He’s still learning how to be president.” The comments were made at a QA lunch event and were first reported by Rigzone, an energy trade publication. Boehner, who resigned from the House in October 2015, spoke for about an hour, and a spokesman for the former speaker confirmed the comments to NPR on Friday. The Ohio Republican added that he ”never envisioned” Trump as president, throughout their 15 years as friends and golf buddies. In regard to policy, Boehner said he’s ” ” on whether Trump will be able to get tax reform done and he thinks the president ”did what he could” on health care. He said, however, that a repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act is ”not going to happen.” ”Republicans never ever agree on health care,” he said. Boehner faced challenges leading the   House in 2015, as the more conservative Republican members became especially unsatisfied with him. Wednesday’s comments weren’t his first digs since leaving office. Last year, he called Sen. Ted Cruz,   ”Lucifer in the flesh.” Boehner said he is happier now since he left Congress and added that he has no desire to run for president. ”I drink red wine. I smoke cigarettes. I golf. I cut my own grass. I iron my own clothes,” he said. ”And I’m not willing to give all that up to be president.”"
"Mike and Amy Mills are a   team from southern Illinois. Mike was trained as a dental technician. ”I made false teeth  —   crowns, bridges, partials  —   this type of thing. It’s what I did as a trade,” he recalls. ”Later on, I started barbecuing just for the fun of doing it.” And that’s what made him famous. Mike is 75 now. Along with a pen and glasses, he carries a meat thermometer in his shirt pocket. He doesn’t like to brag, but he has won numerous international barbecue competitions. He is even in the Barbecue Hall of Fame in Kansas City, Mo. In short, the guy standing on my porch on a recent rainy day is a barbecue legend. With his daughter Amy, he runs a place in Murphysboro, Ill. called 17th Street Barbecue, where they spread ”the gospel of barbecue,” as Amy puts it. Hence the title of their new cookbook, Praise the Lard: Recipes and Revelations from a Legendary Life in Barbecue. It has simple recipes like pimento cheese and tangy coleslaw, as well as more ambitious projects  —   like instructions on how to select and prepare a whole hog. We didn’t get in that deep. I asked Mike and Amy to show us something people can make in their own backyards: smoked chicken wings finished on the grill. These barbecue evangelists preach that you don’t need fancy equipment to make great meat. To prove it, they set to work on a   and very basic Weber charcoal grill. For heat, Mike likes a natural lump charcoal  —   not charcoal briquettes. ”It’s   wood  —   it’s not got chemicals and coal and other additives just to extend the wood product. It’s 100 percent wood,” he says. He puts the charcoal lumps in a chimney and lights them. Once the coals are red hot, he dumps them onto the grill. ”You want your coals to be nice and red and charred,” he explains. Then, right on top of the glowing coals goes an almost magic ingredient: a branch of apple wood, which Mike and Amy brought with them from southern Illinois. ”Something a lot of people don’t know: Trees have bark. Bark blackens your meat. Your apple wood has a skin. . .. It’s very thin,” Mike says. So apple wood won’t darken your meat, he says. ”So charcoal is the heat source,” Amy adds, ”and wood is the flavor.” As soon as the apple wood goes on, a sweet, smoky aroma fills the porch. ”It smells like heaven,” Mike says  —   and that’s before there’s even any meat on the grill. The wings have already gotten a spice rub. They go on over indirect heat and should sit there for about an hour and a half undisturbed. They’re not intensely cooking just yet, just slowly smoking. That’s one of the beauties of barbecuing, Mike says  —   it’s ”the great friendship maker,” an excuse for people to get together with no hurry and just sit around and talk. ”People aren’t pushing and shoving they know when it’s ready there’s going to be something good.” Finally, we move on to the second step in these   wings: It’s time to apply a couple of different house sauces  —   with a tiny little mop. ”We’re not painting a house we’re fixing a meal. That’s why we use a mop” instead of a brush, Mike explains. At this point, he and Amy add more hot coals and sear the wings over direct heat. The cookbook includes the family’s recipe for barbecue sauce, which you’ll find below.  You want to pull the wings off the grill when the internal temperature hits 165 degrees Fahrenheit, or when they look nice and charred but not blackened. ”You eat with your eyes, too,” Mike notes. ”In fact, that’s the first thing you eat with is your eyes and your nose.” At this point, I need to recruit an impartial judge to help taste these wings, so I corral my   neighbor, Diane Swann. She has lived in this neighborhood for decades and she loves a good wing  —   hot, mild or  . Amy hands Diane a wingette. Her verdict? ”Very delicious,” Diane declares. (Food  Wine magazine agrees  —   it called the Mills’ wings the best in the country.) ”There are just so many layers of flavor here  —   garlic, salt, dry rub, smoke, chicken itself, and then the sauce,” Amy says. As Diane puts it with a chuckle, ”Poor chicken don’t stand a chance.” (Courtesy of Mike And Amy Mills) Makes about 2 cups,    cup ketchup (made with cane sugar, such as Red Gold or Hunt’s)   cup rice vinegar, 1   cups apple cider,   cup apple cider vinegar,   cup packed light brown sugar,   cup Worcestershire sauce, 2 teaspoons prepared yellow mustard,   teaspoon granulated garlic,   teaspoon ground white pepper,   teaspoon cayenne pepper,   cup bacon bits (real, not imitation) ground in a spice mill,   cup grated peeled apple,   cup grated onion, 2 teaspoons grated green pepper, Combine the ketchup, rice vinegar, apple cider juice, cider vinegar, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, granulated garlic, white pepper, cayenne and bacon bits in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, stir in the apple, onion and green pepper, then lower the heat. Simmer the sauce, stirring often, for 10 to 15 minutes, until it thickens slightly. Decant into a Mason jar, cover and refrigerate. The sauce will keep for at least a month. Warm or bring to room temperature before serving. Variation: To make this sauce a little hotter, add more cayenne pepper to taste, an additional   to   teaspoon. Be careful: A little goes a long way. Excerpted from Praise The Lard by Mike Mills, Amy Mills, and Ken Goodman. Copyright 2017 by Mike Mills, Amy Mills, and Ken Goodman. Used by permission of Rux Martin   Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved."
"On Friday, Hillary Clinton addressed the graduating class of her alma mater, Wellesley College. She used the opportunity to wade into current politics and direct a few jokes at President Trump. ”When people in power invent their own facts and attack those who question them, it can mark the beginning of the end of a free society,” she said. ”That is not hyperbole it is what authoritarian regimes throughout history have done. . .. They attempt to control reality.” She called Trump’s new budget proposal ”an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us  —   the youngest, the oldest, the poorest and   people who need a little help to gain or hang on to a decent,   life.” ”Let’s call it what it is, it’s a con. They don’t even try to hide it,” she said, referring to the Trump administration. She joked about her 1969 Wellesley class being furious after the election of Richard Nixon, saying the class was angered over ”a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice.” (Nixon actually resigned before the House could vote on his impeachment.) She continued, ”after firing the person running the investigation into him at the Department of Justice,” an allusion to Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey. ”We got through that tumultuous time, and once again, we began to thrive,” she said. Clinton also spoke about fake news and theories perpetuated on social media, joking that ”some are even denying things we see with our own eyes, like the size of crowds.” Clinton talked about her November loss. ”You may have heard that things didn’t go exactly as I planned. But you know what, I’m doing OK,” she said. She talked about spending time with her family after the election, walking in the woods and organizing her closets and added, ”I won’t lie, chardonnay helped a little too.” But what helped her most, she said, was ”remembering who I am, where I come from and what I believe.” ”Don’t be afraid of your ambition, of your dreams or even your anger,” she continued. ”Those are powerful forces, but harness them to make a difference in the world.” The Wellesley stage is a familiar one for her  —   Clinton delivered the commencement address as a student and again 25 years ago. Clinton has made few public appearances since last November’s crushing loss, mostly addressing groups that advocate for women and children. She has also been seen hiking, shopping at bookstores and doing other regular people things in her ”peaceful alternate universe,” as the Huffington Post described it. The young activist was the first student to address the graduating class, and she used that speech to lean into politics of the day. She challenged Sen. Edward Brooke, who spoke at the same event. He celebrated incremental progress and argued against protest, as NPR’s Tamara Keith reported. When it was Clinton’s turn, she   a response to Brooke, declaring that empathy was not enough in politics. ”Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn’t do us anything,” she said. ”We’ve had lots of empathy, we’ve had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible.” ”The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible,” she continued. Earlier this week, Clinton made similar comments blasting Trump’s budget saying that it, along with efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, ”shows an unimaginable level of cruelty and lack of imagination and disdain for the struggles of millions of Americans.”"
"Watching footage of April’s military parades in North Korea  —   with soldiers marching in formation to patriotic tunes  —   Lee   recalls all the steps. She was once one of those soldiers. The daughter of a university professor, Lee, now 41, grew up in North Korea’s North Hamgyong province. But when famine devastated the country in the 1990s, women  —   including Lee  —   volunteered for the military in droves, often for the food rations. Since 2014, North Korean women have been drafted for seven years of mandatory military service. Men serve 10 to 12 years. For each gender, those are the longest conscription terms in the world. Lee joined the North Korean army in 1992 and served nearly 10 years, mostly in a desk job with the signal corps. But on holidays, she had to march. ”All of us soldiers had to march,” she recalls in an interview inside a    skyscraper in South Korea’s capital, Seoul. ”It unified us, and showed off our strength to the outside world.” In the military, Lee says, she witnessed sexual abuse and violence against female soldiers. She tried to defect but was imprisoned and tortured. Finally, in 2008, she managed to sneak across the Tumen River to China. ”I was shocked by freedom  —   that I didn’t need permission to do anything!” Lee recalls. ”I couldn’t believe there was hot water, hair dryers! I could vote for whomever I wanted. And all the food!” Lee has since become an advocate for female defectors as head of the New Korea Women’s Union, based in western Seoul. But from her time in the military, she is able to offer insight into what the North Korean government wants its own people to know  —   and what it’s like to be inside one of the most secretive regimes in the world at times of heightened tension with the West. When she was a soldier, state TV blasted nonstop in her office, she says. ”There’s a TV in every army barracks. When there was a nuclear test, state TV told us to feel proud, so we did,” Lee says. ”Even when there were peace talks between North and South Korea, state TV told us it was a ploy by the South to take over our country.” The media in North Korea do not merely report information. Instead, they’re a tool for the regime to stir emotion, especially when it feels threatened  —   as it does now, says Jeon   a professor of North Korea studies in Seoul. ”Outside pressure on North Korea  —   sanctions or threats of attack  —   actually help the regime win domestic support,” Jeon says. ”North Korea is as always on the defensive, and fear rallies people around their Dear Leader.” It’s not just soldiers. Defector Lee Hyeonseo was a high school student in 1994, when the Clinton administration came close to a   military strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities. Her school ended classes and sent the students out digging trenches for months. ”We were so scared at the time. We really thought we were going to have a war,” says Lee, 36. (She is not related to Lee   with whom she shares a surname.) ”And then, we were proud. Somehow, we believed we were going to win that war, because our dear leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, they were superior gods who can make everything happen.” Lee wrote a 2015 memoir of her escape from North Korea, The Girl With Seven Names, about how she used fake identities to escape across China and, finally, years later, to Seoul. She also helped bring her mother and brother to safety in Seoul. The family still talks occasionally to relatives inside North Korea, who live close enough to China to pick up a Chinese cellphone network. But authorities are cracking down, Lee says. She recently spoke with her aunt, asking what it feels like inside North Korea now, after President Trump warned of ”major, major conflict” with Pyongyang. But they’re unable to talk on the phone in confidence and can’t speak for very long. Lee couldn’t get a real answer from her aunt. ”It’s really, really difficult right now. After only one minute, the GPS reveals [to North Korean authorities] where the phone call is taking place,” Lee explains. ”People are super scared.” Many defectors, having been exposed to North Korean propaganda for so long, cannot leave it behind. At one point during NPR’s interview with Lee   the former North Korean soldier, she began to sing  —   an old army song, about becoming a bullet for the Dear Leader. Lee laughs and says she realizes how strange it is to sing a North Korean propaganda song in Seoul, the capital of what the song’s lyrics call a ”puppet regime.” ”But I was brainwashed,” she says. ”And that’s what’s scary.” Jihye Lee contributed to this story."
"In Mexico, the race is on to save a small, gray porpoise that is on the brink of extinction. It’s called the vaquita, which is Spanish for ”small cow.” Scientists believe only 30 remain in the warm, shallow waters of the Gulf of California, between Baja California’s peninsula and mainland Mexico  —   the only place they live in the world. Twenty years ago, more than 600 vaquitas lived in the Gulf of California. In recent years, Mexico put forth an unprecedented and expensive effort to try and save the animal  —   but the vaquita’s chances don’t look good. The town of San Felipe in the state of Baja California Norte, with a population of just about 30, 000, is ground zero for the fight to save the tiny porpoise. It’s also where international environmentalists, scientists and local fishermen are entangled in the fight to save the world’s most endangered marine mammal. Just offshore, Caroline   of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a U. S. environmental group, leans over the stern of a    boat, the   Sam Simon. After giving the OK to her fellow deckhands, she lets go of a large metal hook, called a port ray. With a large splash, the hook drops into the water and is dragged behind the vessel, one of two   ships belonging to the group, which is scouring the upper Gulf of California for illegal fishing nets. Standing on the bridge with San Felipe’s dry, brown shoreline behind her, Oona Layolle, the boat’s captain, says the large nets pose the biggest threat to the vaquita. ”Those nets are just killing everything, so it is important that they just get out,” says the    French citizen. ’They have nowhere to go’ The tiny porpoise, with black patches around its eyes and mouth, is dying at a catastrophic rate. The population was estimated at 100 in 2014, 60 the next year and just half that in 2016. Local fishermen use large gill nets to catch the giant totoaba fish that also share these waters. The fish has become a prize catch in China, where its bladder is believed to have medicinal properties, and can sell for thousands of dollars. But the gill nets also snag the vaquita, says Barbara Taylor, a conservation specialist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in La Jolla, Calif. ”So they have nowhere to go and it does make them very vulnerable,” she says. Two years ago President Enrique Pena Nieto banned the use of large gill nets in more than 5, 000 square miles of the vaquita’s habitat. He also put up $74 million to pay local fishermen to stay out of the water, and he sent Mexico’s marines to patrol for poachers. Despite all those unprecedented measures, Taylor says the illegal fishing continues. Five vaquitas died just last month, caught in the nets. ”The ones where we could actually look at the dead bodies and evaluate what killed them,” she says, ”they had the gill net marks from this illegal fishery for totoaba.” Drones over the water, The Sea Shepherd boat, equipped with drones and radar, arrived five months ago to help Mexico’s marines in their patrols. At nightfall, the busiest time for illegal fishermen, Carlotta Sanlarri of Italy is watching the ship’s radar. She spots suspected poachers’ small boats, called pangas. She picks up as many as 18 hits on the ship’s radar. She’s closely watching one in particular. ”It’s inside the vaquita refuge,” she says. The captain sends out a drone to get a closer look. At the back of the vessel, Tom Hutton, 19, a security camera repairman from Ireland, prepares the flying machine, equipped with night vision cameras. ”Bridge, bridge, drone, I’m going to take off now,” he says through a walkie talkie. It’s off  —   and within minutes it’s hovering above the small boat about two miles away. On his control screen Hutton can see everything, including three people in the boat. Hutton says it’s clear the suspected poachers know they’ve been spotted. ”They dropped their net right there when they seen the drone, they dropped it in the water,” he says, his eyes glued to the screen. Hutton speculates the fishermen must have thought the drone belonged to the Mexican Navy. Given that a new law went into effect in December stiffening prison penalties for illegal totoaba trafficking, the men apparently decided to ditch any evidence and head back to shore. ”Currently, they are running away at 60 kilometers an hour and the drone is just chasing them,” Hutton says. Using the drone’s coordinates, the Sea Shepherd ship’s crew spends the next two hours searching the area for the fishermen’s illegal net. They find it, then destroy it  —   just as they have with more than 300 pieces of illegal fishing gear, including 200 gill nets they’ve found in the past five months. This work has made them heroes among environmentalists and many scientists, but also enemies of some of San Felipe’s fishermen. ’We don’t know if she will survive’ Tensions have been running high in the town, and boiled over in March. On the town’s waterfront, fishermen burned a small panga with the names of environmental groups, including the Sea Shepherds, written on the side. As the panga went up in flames, the angry crowd broke into the Mexican national anthem. ”The boat . .. that order was given by me,” says Sunshine Rodriguez Pena, who heads the largest federation of fishermen in San Felipe. ”That boat was not in the water, that was a protest.” Rodriguez, who was raised on both sides of the U. S.  border, says authorities in Mexico are paying more attention to foreign environmentalists than the needs of their own citizens. He’s worried about calls for a Mexican shrimp boycott  —   the mainstay of legal fishing in the Gulf  —   in hopes of pressuring the government to do more to save the vaquita, by reducing net fishing. Rodriguez says that the vaquita is pretty much sure to go extinct, and that he’ll keep fighting the environmental groups. ”They’ve made me the enemy of the world, but the hero of my town,” he says. And ”any day, any time, I’d rather be the hero of my town.” Next month will be critical in the fight to save the world’s 30 remaining vaquitas  —   and for the fishermen: The $74 million Mexican program compensating them for not fishing ends, and there’s no word whether it will be renewed. Efre Pacheco says he received his last check on May 1, and without another one coming, he’ll have no choice but to go back out to sea. ”I don’t know how to do anything else,” he says. Pressure also is building on the Mexican government to make the gill net ban permanent in the vaquitas’ habitat. The World Wildlife Fund has joined the call, as has actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, who engaged in with Mexico’s president on Twitter earlier this month regarding vaquita protection. The Mexican government also hasn’t provided a   net it had promised. The country’s two main fishing regulatory agencies did not respond to NPR’s multiple requests for comment. Back on the bridge of the Sea Shepherd’s ship, Layolle, the captain, says it’s not time to give up. ”For the vaquita, we don’t know if she will survive or not,” she says, ”so we have to fight until the end.” On land, an international consortium has recommended a   effort to save the animal: Capture as many of them as they can and keep them in captivity. That won’t start until October."
"Impulsive children become thoughtful adults only after years of improvements to the brain’s information highways, a team reports in Current Biology. A study of nearly 900 young people ages 8 to 22 found that the ability to control impulses, stay on task and make good decisions increased steadily over that span as the brain remodeled its information pathways to become more efficient. The finding helps explain why these abilities, known collectively as executive function, take so long to develop fully, says Danielle Bassett, an author of the study and an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. ”A child’s ability to run or to see is very well developed by the time they’re 8,” she says. ”However, their ability to inhibit inappropriate responses is not something that’s well developed until well into the 20s.” The results also suggest it may be possible to identify adolescents at risk of problems related to poor executive function, says Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the study. These include ”all kinds of disorders such as substance abuse, depression and schizophrenia,” he says. The study is part of an effort to understand the brain changes underlying the development of executive function. It used a technology called diffusion imaging that reveals the fibers that make up the brain’s information highways. ”What we were interested in asking is whether that pattern of highway structure changes as children grow, and whether those changes are related to the emergence of executive function,” Bassett says. The team found two important changes. One was that the highways tend to cluster in ”modules” of the brain that perform specialized functions, like impulse control. The effect is like building more roads to move traffic inside a city. At the same time, though, the connections between these specialized modules get stronger, which is a bit like adding lanes to the interstates that let people get from one city to another. The result of these changes is a brain network in which information flows more efficiently, both within specialized areas and also between areas. And this speedy network is really important when it comes to executive functions like impulse control, Bassett says. ”Being able to inhibit inappropriate behavior requires you to quickly stop yourself from doing something that you might naturally do,” she says. The study had limitations, though, because it did not track the changes in each participant’s brain over time. Other studies are underway that will allow scientists to study brain changes in individuals over many years. Researchers suspect that they will see abnormal changes in the brain pathways involved in executive function in people who go on to develop psychiatric or substance abuse disorders. If so, ”this could help in terms of identifying individuals who are at high risk,” Gordon says. Eventually, Gordon says, brain scans might be used to show whether a particular treatment for a psychiatric disorder is working."
"The Air Force says it will investigate an incident in which an employee at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary allegedly offered to show John Glenn’s remains to Defense Department inspectors. As part of a new policy, an inspection team completed a weeklong review of the mortuary at Dover in March. During the inspection, according to an Air Force spokesman, ”someone reportedly offered to show the remains of Sen. John Glenn to DoD inspectors.” ”According to DoD, the inspectors declined the offer and at no time viewed the remains,” the spokesman wrote in an email to NPR. Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson has directed the Air Force inspector general’s office to investigate the incident. Military Times, which first reported this story Thursday, obtained an internal memo about the incident written by Deborah Skillman, the Defense Department’s director of casualty and mortuary affairs. The Times reports Skillman identified William Zwicharowski, the branch chief of the mortuary, as the employee who ”offered to allow the inspectors”  —   including Skillman  —   ”to view the deceased.” ”Concerning to me,” her memo states, according to the publication, ”is that even after Mr. Zwicharowski was counseled by his chain of command regarding the inappropriate nature of his earlier offer, he repeated it. . .. This breach of protocol is serious and troubling as these offers were made to members of an official Department of Defense inspection team   to inspect the facility and determine whether it was in compliance with applicable procedures and policy and being   by its leadership.” John Glenn died in December at age 95 he was the first American to orbit Earth and went on to have a long career as a U. S. senator. Glenn flew 149 combat missions as a Marine. Glenn’s family entrusted his body to the Air Force until his burial at Arlington National Cemetery on April 6. Dale Butland, a longtime Senate aide to Glenn, told The Columbus Dispatch that the Glenn family was not available for comment. ”If protocols were violated as it appears they were, this is an unfortunate sign of the times,” he said. ”It violates all standards of decency.” The Air Force spokesman said that when it concludes the investigation into the incident, ”the Air Force will determine what further corrective actions, if any, may be necessary and appropriate. If any allegations of misconduct are substantiated, those involved will be held accountable.” In 2011, the Dover mortuary was at the center of a scandal over how it handled remains of deceased service members. Zwicharowski, the mortuary employee named in the Pentagon memo, was the first employee to blow the whistle on the mortuary’s practices, according to a 2013 article in the Wilmington News Journal. ”Investigators confirmed what had taken place, the three top mortuary officials were disciplined and new policies and processes were put in place to handle the nation’s war dead with greater accountability,” it reported. Skillman’s memo noted that ”Zwicharowski made comments indicating he believed the inspection was an act of reprisal for having exposed, six years prior, how the mortuary mishandled the remains of some fallen service members returning home from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq,” according to the Times. The Air Force notes that the inspection of the Dover site was the fourth inspection of a Defense Department mortuary facility since the DOD commenced its new inspection process, and its first official inspection of Dover. The Dover mortuary passed the inspection with a score of 94 percent. Zwicharowski told The Washington Post on Friday that the investigation into the Glenn incident was ”continued retaliation” against him for speaking out: ”Zwicharowski said he did nothing improper by offering to let the inspectors view Glenn’s remains. He said his staff had further embalmed the body because Glenn’s funeral was still weeks away and wanted to show the inspectors their techniques. ” ’I was proud of the job we did and wanted them to see our care and work,’ he said. ’After all, that was what we were being inspected for.’ ”Air Force officials denied they were retaliating against Zwicharowski but declined to comment in detail about the investigation, citing privacy concerns.” According to the Post, Zwicharowski and other workers at the mortuary questioned the inspection team’s legitimacy. Two of its members, he said, had previously worked at the mortuary and had been implicated in the 2011 scandal. The Post reports that the Air Force has reassigned Zwicharowski."
"Across a field from the unfinished concrete house where she lives, Suad Thabet can see the spires of the Abu Qarqas monastery. The    Coptic Christian grandmother has had trouble sleeping since she was attacked in her nearby Egyptian village of Karm a year ago. She says living near the monastery makes her feel safe. Since the toppling of former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and in the wake of a security vacuum that followed, there have been dozens of attacks on Egypt’s Christians. Friday’s attack on buses carrying Coptic Christians in Minya province, home to most of Egypt’s estimated 9 million Christians, left at least 28 dead and was the latest in a recent string of assaults on this minority. Last month, suicide attacks at churches in two Egyptian cities killed 46 people attending Palm Sunday services. In February, murders claimed by ISIS militants forced many Christians to flee their North Sinai hometown. And in December, a suicide bombing left 29 dead at a church in Cairo. While not deadly, the attack last year on Thabet by Muslim villagers in Minyan province whom she had known for years stands out as one of the most shocking. It started with a rumor that her son, Ashraf Attiya, was involved with a married Muslim woman. Attiya is himself married and a father. On a Friday evening last May, ”we were about to sit down to dinner, and then the house filled with people  —   each of them had a gun or a knife,” Thabet tells NPR, as she sits on a wooden bench against a brick wall. She has a kindly smile, framed by a wrinkled face. In the tradition of village Christian women, she wears pants under a   dress. Her hair is covered with a fraying knitted scarf. She says more than 40 people were in the mob. Some of them started shooting inside the house and beating her    husband. ”When I saw them hitting him, I screamed,” she says. ”Then they caught me and dragged me in the street and stripped me. I was standing naked in front of all those people.” Attiya had left a few days earlier with his family, after villagers, angered by the rumor, threatened to kill him. Thabet says they dragged her other    a teacher, from the second floor of the house and started beating her. Her terrified children hid behind a sofa. One of the men hit Thabet’s    and stabbed her grandson in the shoulder. Then the mob poured gasoline inside the house and set it on fire. ”They burned the house and everything in it,” Thabet says. ”They burned it. And we walked away  —   we were in shock.” Thabet had gone to the police the night before to register a threat she had heard about burning Christian houses. She says they told her to go home. At first, she didn’t want to file a complaint about the attack. A few days later, the regional prosecutor insisted that she tell him what happened. The whole family ended up leaving the village. ”We tried to go home, and they said, ’None of you can come back. Don’t enter the village. It’s not your village,’ ” she says. Like many in Egypt’s countryside, Thabet can’t read or write. Although she would have liked to go to school, girls in her village were kept at home. She says she has found the courage to tell her story because she wants justice. For two months after she filed her complaint, village leaders tried to persuade her to agree to local reconciliation  —   a process that bypasses courts and in which victims are often pressured to agree to a settlement. ”We did not agree about reconciliation. We said we take our rights, then we reconcile,” she says. Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church has taken up Thabet’s case. It sees the attack she suffered as a dangerous precedent that needs to be openly punished to prevent similar attacks. ”Her case is the first time the church said ’no,’ and it forced the state to take the legal route rather than the reconciliation,” Bishop Makarios, the church’s highest official in Minya province, tells NPR. ”What happened is different than the murders and destroying the churches, shops and houses. It is different than the discrimination in jobs and universities,” he says. ”All of this we endure. But this humiliation? What is left if you strip a lady from her clothes?” After centuries of persecution  —   starting with the Romans in the early days of Christianity  —   Egypt’s Coptic Christians say their church has been built on the blood of martyrs. But in the country’s conservative Arab society, dishonoring a woman  —   and, by extension, her family and entire community  —   is often seen as the ultimate insult. The case has been postponed twice for lack of evidence, most recently in January. Makarios says he expects it be reopened soon. The attack was so shocking that President      —   who enjoys support from many Egyptian Christians  —   ordered the army to rebuild Thabet’s   house. Thabet says it has been rebuilt, but it is an empty shell. She says her family was left with no money to replace furniture or anything else. To put food on the table in the village where they are staying, her husband, now 80, has resorted to working as a field laborer for less than $2 a day. Thabet says her son Attiya can’t leave the house to work because townspeople have threatened to kill him. She says worse than the attack itself is that it has separated her family. Her elder son, a teacher, moved to Cairo with his wife and daughter after the attack. ”We can’t go back to the village,” she says. ”They are threatening [Attiya] and threatening us. They say none of you can go back.” Of roughly 50 Christian families living in Karm, Attiya says more than half moved away after the attack. ”Our village, Karm, does not have a lot of Christians. So [Muslims] come from other villages and do and say what they want to Christians there because we are poor and simple  —   and they know even if they curse us or hit us, we will keep quiet,” he says. His mother says despite the attack, she still wants to go back to her house  —   after she gets justice. ”Whenever we try to go home, they threaten us,” she says. ”I am a Coptic woman and an Egyptian citizen.”"
"Updated 5:40 p. m ET, Gunmen attacked buses that were taking Egyptian Christians to a monastery Friday, killing at least 28 people and wounding about the same number, according to local reports citing Egypt’s government. In retaliation, NPR’s Jane Arraf reports, ”President Abdul Fatah   says he ordered strikes near Derna in eastern Libya after determining that militant forces there were involved in Friday’s attack. [Egypt] hit the same area two years ago after an Islamic State affiliate beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya.” Friday’s attack in Egypt was carried out by men riding in three trucks, the interior ministry says, according to the official Middle East News Agency. The Christians had been traveling to the ancient St. Samuel monastery in Minya, a province some 160 miles south of Cairo along the Nile River. Government officials say they were traveling in two buses and a truck, Jane reports. ”Church officials say children and elderly people are among” the victims, Jane adds. ”Minya province has the largest percentage of Christians in Egypt,” Jane says. ”Religious tension in some communities in Minya has increased in recent years and in many villages, they are prevented from building churches.” Coptic Christians were targeted by two deadly attacks in northern Egypt last month, in suicide bombings that killed at least 44 people. Those attacks were claimed by ISIS. The   Middle East News Agency says the attack was condemned by Ahmed   grand imam of Egypt’s Al Azhar mosque. Egypt’s Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam also denounced the attack, saying, ”Those traitors breached all the religious principles and humanitarian values,” according to the Middle East News Agency."
"When Hanson’s inescapable ”MMMBop” topped the charts back in 1997, Hanson brothers Isaac, Taylor and Zachary were 16, 14 and 11, respectively. So if you didn’t come of age to (or otherwise fall in love with) that song and the bestselling album from which it came, this may sound like a bold statement: Hanson was, and still is, a terrific band, complete with real musical and songwriting chops, airtight harmonies and boundless stage charisma. For skeptics, tarring Hanson with the dreaded ”boy band” label has been all too easy, but to dismiss it is to miss out on a ton of delightful music. Hanson has stayed active in the two decades since Middle Of Nowhere, releasing a string of albums amid side projects ranging from Taylor Hanson’s 2009 supergroup Tinted Windows to the band’s line of ”Mmmhops” beer. So it only makes sense that 2017  —   which marks not only 20 years of Middle Of Nowhere, but also Hanson’s 25th anniversary as a band  —   would spawn a   collection, titled Middle Of Everywhere: The Greatest Hits. What’s actually, genuinely surprising is that the compilation’s token new song, ”I Was Born,” is fantastic. Seriously, watch this video. It’s plenty cute, with the Hanson men sharing   duties with 11 of the most adorable Hansonian offspring you’ve ever seen. But the song is a gloriously rousing,     anthem that’s virtually impossible to resist  —   seriously, ”I Was Born” is out today, and if it’s not in a car commercial by this time next week, every ad agency in America will have fallen down on the job. ”The video is about celebrating the dreams that we all have and the pure optimism of the human spirit,” Taylor Hanson writes via email, backing up the sense of joy that shines through within the first 10   seconds of ”I Was Born.” ”And what better way to show that optimistic view of the world than through the eyes of children? For 25 years, we have been able to live out what we feel we were ’born to do,’ and this song brings that message full circle.”"
"Four months into the Trump administration, the president’s lawyer needs a lawyer. Intensifying investigations into Russian interference in last year’s presidential election and ties between Russians and the Trump campaign have a lot of   people in search of legal advice, if only out of an abundance of caution. And, two sources tell NPR, one of them is White House counsel Donald McGahn. Experts said it is natural that McGahn would seek out legal expertise he served as the lawyer for President Trump’s campaign, which has come under scrutiny from the FBI and Congress. This week, Trump himself reportedly enlisted New York lawyer Marc Kasowitz, a   ”tough guy” corporate litigator, to help him with legal issues related to Russia. Several other figures inside and outside the White House have been lawyering up, expecting to be called as witnesses, even before the Justice Department named former FBI chief Robert Mueller to be special counsel for the agency’s Russia probe last week. That announcement has focused attention all over again on McGahn and his performance as White House counsel  —   a   act in the best of times and one that requires an understanding of the Constitution, the scope of executive branch power, national security threats and, especially, damage control. According to lawyers from both political parties, by those measures, McGahn is hanging on by a thread. First, there’s the legal work product. They point out that the president’s travel ban executive order, blocked by the courts after a chaotic rollout, had inconvenienced thousands of airline passengers, had to be rescinded and was overridden. A second order was blocked, too, after judges cited statements by Trump and his advisers that signaled that an animus against Muslims had motivated the ban. Those cases are still moving through the appeals courts. A separate executive order seeking to punish   sanctuary cities by withholding federal grant money has since been significantly narrowed by the Justice Department after judges and local politicians raised questions about its scope and legality. Jack Goldsmith, a Republican and a veteran of the George W. Bush administration, has written a series of tweets and posts detailing McGahn’s shortcomings in the White House this year for the website Lawfare. ”I was pretty hard on White House Counsel Donald McGahn in connection with the horrible   of the Trump Executive Order on immigration, and his inability or disinclination to control the President’s   attack on courts,” Goldsmith wrote in February. To that list, Goldsmith has since added the vetting of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and McGahn’s apparently glacial response to warnings from the Justice Department in January that Flynn had been ”compromised” by contacts and undisclosed payments from the Russians. Sally Yates, the acting attorney general and Obama administration holdover who was fired by Trump after she refused to defend his travel ban, told Congress that she warned McGahn about Flynn but that he failed to take swift action. So, Yates said, she tried again  —   only to find that Flynn remained in his job longer than she did in hers. ”McGahn is reportedly ’an iconoclast bent on shaking things up,’ ” wrote Goldsmith, who now teaches at Harvard Law School. ”Unfortunately for the President, that is not an attractive quality in a White House Counsel, whose main job is to ensure that the President and the White House steer clear of legal and ethical and related political problems.” Other lawyers, veterans of the Obama years, have expressed concern over contacts by the president and his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, with the FBI over the Russia probe and other sensitive topics. As a matter of course, those conversations are generally limited to a small number of people at the White House and the Justice Department, which guards its independence and tries to steer clear of politics in its law enforcement responsibilities. ”It’s important that the White House counsel police, for lack of a better word, the lines of communication between the White House and the Justice Department,” warned Obama White House lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler, in an NPR story after last year’s election. ”Under President Obama, those communications were restricted.” Now, those conversations will be picked over by Congress and even the special counsel, when it comes to what Trump told   Director James Comey in a series of meetings and chats this year before Comey was fired. Others are noticing signs of trouble, too. ”Yo, Where’s Don McGahn?” asked a headline in The American Lawyer. ”Clean Up on Aisle Trump,” concluded the   magazine Mother Jones. To be sure, five lawyers told NPR, it’s not clear what kind of advice McGahn may be providing the president  —   or whether the president is listening to it. ”Who knows?” one attorney said, adding that he is inclined to point the finger at the client as much as the lawyer. The barbs come as something of a surprise for McGahn, who made his name in Washington defending politicians accused of ethical foot faults and helping campaigns navigate a thicket of laws and rules governing finances and donations. The White House press office didn’t respond to a request for comment from McGahn. But Reginald Brown, a prominent Republican lawyer who worked in the George W. Bush White House counsel’s office, offered praise for McGahn’s hiring, calling it ”exceptionally strong.” The counsel’s office operates like a small law firm, filled with about two dozen lawyers. McGahn’s picks include a dozen graduates of Yale, Harvard and Stanford seven former Supreme Court clerks and 15 lawyers who clerked for other top appeals court judges. Brown also took note of perhaps the Trump administration’s most important legal accomplishment to date: the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. ”Gorsuch was probably the best choice Trump could have possibly made for the Supreme Court, and the quick rollout and vetting seem to have been handled with great skill,” Brown said. True enough, critics said, but they point out that much of the heavy lifting on the Supreme Court nominee was outsourced to Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the conservative Federalist Society."
"Updated June 20, 2017, at 2:42 p. m. ET, A lot of people wonder why there is such a focus on the Russia investigations, what Trump’s campaign did (or didn’t do) and whether there was obstruction of justice. Below, we laid out the case for why you should care about those items. And in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8 former FBI Director James Comey added his voice again with this observation: ”The reason this is such a big deal. We have this big messy wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time. But nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for except other Americans. And that’s wonderful and often painful. But we’re talking about a foreign government that using technical intrusion, lots of other methods tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act. That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it. It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally. They want to undermine our credibility in the face the world. They think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them. So they’re going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible. That’s what this is about and they will be back. Because we remain  —   as difficult as we can be with each other, we remain that shining city on the hill. And they don’t like it.” On Wednesday, the underlying actual thing you should care about is getting discussed on Capitol Hill  —   some of what Russia actually did to meddle in the election and how the U. S. can try to avoid it in the future. This issue has gotten so steeped in politics, that it’s been hard for some in Congress, particularly Republicans, to see the bigger picture. The marquee testimony will come from Jeh Johnson, the former Homeland Security secretary under President Obama. He testifies before the House Intelligence Committee. Also on Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee hears from outside experts on what exactly they found Russia did. Here’s the original version of this story, which ran May 24: Some people have FOMO that they might miss an Orlando Bloom waitress update. Others have a fear of missing out when it comes to the latest on whether Michael Flynn is going to turn over documents that have been requested by Congress  —   and what’s going to happen next in the Russia investigation. Your author is in the latter category  —   and doesn’t really know how much people care about Orlando Bloom and his waitryst (see what we did there?) but it was a trending Google search. There is a divide in this country  —   and it’s not the one between Democrats and Republicans. It’s the one between people who are deeply captivated by politics and those more engaged with other priorities and ”real” lives. At NPR, it’s our goal to try and bridge that divide the best we can  —   to make the complicated understandable and relatable, and especially to tell you why something in politics matters. That’s why a question asked at Tuesday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing about the Russia investigation with former Obama CIA Director John Brennan caught our attention: ”Please tell my constituents, my neighbors, why they should care  —   and not just in Washington, D. C. but in Washington state and Texas and Connecticut and points in between  —   and why should they care, and why do you care, sir?” The question was posed by Washington Democrat Denny Heck, and it provoked a   response. Here’s what Brennan said in full: ”Well, for the last 241 years, the nation and the citizens have cherished the freedom and liberty upon which this country was founded upon. Many brave Americans have lost their lives to protect that freedom and liberty and lost their lives to protect the freedom and liberties of other peoples around the world. Our ability to choose our elected leaders, as we see fit, is, I believe, an inalienable right that we must protect with all of the resources and authority and power. ”And the fact that the Russians tried to influence resources and authority and power, and the fact that the Russians tried to influence that election so that the will of the American people was not going to be realized by that election, I find outrageous and something that we need to, with every last ounce of devotion to this country, resist and try to act to prevent further instances of that. And so, therefore, I believe, this is something that’s critically important to every American. Certainly, it’s very important for me, for my children and grandchildren to make sure that never again will a foreign country try to influence and interfere in the foundation stone of this country, which is electing our democratic leaders.” Russia is accused, as Brennan said, of not only trying to influence the election by hacking and releasing emails, but engaging in a   influence campaign through propaganda to get Donald Trump elected. That’s the assessment of 17 U. S. intelligence agencies. Not only that, but the FBI is investigating potential collusion between Trump associates and Russia to help in that effort  —   in Russia’s interest. Trump’s former national security adviser, Flynn, is at the center of all of it. Others, including Trump’s former campaign manager for a time, Paul Manafort Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser and, the Washington Post reported, a senior adviser currently in the Trump White House, also are being investigated for their ties. Jared Kushner, Trump’s    and a top adviser, also was found to have met with the head of a Russian   bank and to have communicated with Russian officials. He has offered to speak with the Senate Intelligence Committee. James Comey was fired as FBI director after testifying twice in the past few months on the FBI’s investigation. Wednesday is the deadline set by House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz for the FBI to turn over any Comey memos related to the Russia investigation (though it’s unclear the Justice Department will allow them to be sent over). It turns out, Heck also asked Comey and Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and head of U. S. Cyber Command, the very same question at a hearing back in March. Rogers’ answer: ”I don’t think it’s in the best interest of our nation for any external entity to attempt to manipulate outcomes, to shape choices. That should be the inherent role of a democracy. The investigation we’re going through, I think, is a positive in the sense it’ll help illuminate to all of us, regardless of party, what are the implications here and what does it mean for us, because I think our conclusion, and that of the intelligence community broadly here, is this  —   absent some change, this behavior is not likely to stop. Absent some change in the dynamic, this is not likely to be the last time we’ll be having these discussions about this kind of activity, and I don’t think that’s in anybody’s best interests for us as a nation.” Regardless of party, Rogers said, as he looked across the dais where plenty of Republicans were seated. Comey went next and delivered the most consequential answer, given his central role in the investigation. This was the same hearing at which Comey first made public that there was, in fact, an FBI investigation into Trump associates’ potential collusion with Russia. The way he ended his answer may have portended his fate (emphasis added): ”Well, like Adm. Rogers, I truly believe we are a shining city on a hill to quote a great American, and one of the things we radiate to the world is the importance of our wonderful, often messy, but free and fair democratic system and the elections that undergird it. And so, when there’s an effort by a foreign   to mess with that, to destroy that, to corrupt that, it’s very, very serious  —   threatens what is America. And if any Americans are part of that effort, it’s a very serious matter. And so you would expect the FBI to want to understand  —   is that so? And, if so, who did what?  ”But, again, I want to be very careful, so that people don’t overinterpret my words, to preserve our ability to answer those questions, we’re not talking about our work. I’m not here voluntarily, right? I would rather not be talking about this at all, but we thought it was important to share at least that much [that there is an FBI investigation into Trump team connections to Russia] with the committee and the American people, and now we’re going to close our mouths and do our work to see if we can answer those questions ’cause the answers matter.” He emphasized that last bit and assuredly shut off his microphone. ”Shining city on a hill,” of course, is a reference to Ronald Reagan. Comey was a registered Republican until saying last year he no longer was. He served as a prosecutor in the Reagan Justice Department, as well as the ones under Republican George H. W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, and was appointed to positions twice under Republican George W. Bush, including No. 2 at DOJ, before being appointed by Democrat Barack Obama to replace Robert Mueller as head of the FBI. Trump has derided the Russia investigation as a ”witch hunt,” essentially declaring it Democratic sour grapes for losing the election. He has tried to reassure Flynn with encouraging notes telling him to ”stay strong,” per Yahoo. Trump also seemed to dismiss the concerns of Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general, because she was ”somebody who we don’t even know,” he told NBC, as compared to Flynn, whom Trump described as a ”very good person.” Brennan, Rogers and Comey, who have long, distinguished careers serving under presidents of both parties, all believe asking the questions and getting the answers are important. They should guide decisions for America’s future, they said, because the American democracy and its ability to choose its leaders without fear of foreign influence is at the core of the republic. Many Trump supporters are skeptical and view even any questions asked as attempted indictments. But these three men would argue that Americans should let the conclusions be guided by the facts and allow a rigorous effort to attain them, because there’s nothing more fundamental to a free and fair democracy. That’s why this matters."
"It’s a beach in Florida this time  —   I know you care because we’re all here for the plot, right?  —   and head lifeguard Mitch Buchannon is now The Rock not The Hoff. ”Our team is the elite of the elite,” Dwayne Johnson’s Mitch tells his Baywatch recruits, ”the heart and soul of this very beach.” Also the pecs, glutes, and washboard abs of this very beach, of course. A beach that is apparently in peril, though you’d hardly guess from the      Mitch is holding. Or from the snark he throws at Zac Efron’s   Olympic swimmer, Matt Brody, who tries to get out of those tryouts. Mitch won’t even utter the kid’s name. ”Hey, One Direction. ..” he snorts, then turns to returning guard Ilfenesh Hadera for support. ”New Kid on the Block here is from Iowa. A lot of oceans in Iowa?” ”What is this,” wonders Brody, ”lifeguard hazing?” And yeah, that’s it in a clamshell, and it’s all the film has going on for most of the first hour. Which will probably be fine with its intended audience. On TV, the series was cancelled after its first season, then became a megahit during a decade or so in syndication. Movies operate on different principles, though, and internet porn has made skimpy bathing suits less potent draws than they once were. So the screenwriters have come up with jokes to fill the time between explosions and  . Dwayne Johnson is endearing enough to keep that   name thing going a lot longer than you’d think he could. Efron’s decently amusing, too, mostly at playing dumb, as when Alexandra Daddario suggests he raise his gaze. ”You should look at my face,” she flirts. ”I’m trying,” he smirks, ”but it’s so close to your boobs.” You’ll note that the women are a   bunch these days (not that Pamela Anderson wasn’t  —   no emails please). No one would accuse the film’s women of having personalities, but the filmmakers did decide to let them make the jokes about physicality, not be the butt of them.  ”Why does she always look like she’s running in  ?” wonders Daddario, as she watches Kelly Rohrbach’s CJ do what Anderson did before her.  ”You see it too?” marvels Jon Bass’ pudgy   . It’s the cinematic equivalent of  .  The guys meanwhile get the   stuff  —   genitalia caught in a lounge chair, a trip to the morgue where the talk turns scrotal (actually, the   frequently takes that turn). And when nudity is called for, who ends up naked? Bass, natch, who doesn’t realize he’s in a   shower.  Females empowered, males embarrassed. All played with bathing suits skimpy enough that you figure there must be a spandex shortage in Florida. Which is    fun for a while, until director Seth Gordon feels the need to tell an actual story, involving real estate deals and a gorgeous villain (crossover Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra) in evening gowns so clingy,   and slit up the side that she might as well be in the red suits Mitch’s team is wearing.  Unlike the setup, the story founders and cramps like a tourist who swam too soon after an     buffet, which is pretty much the only thing the filmmakers don’t toss into the water by film’s end. The plot doesn’t quite sink Baywatch, but it sure slows it down. Still, as Efron shouts over a motorboat’s roar, ”all things considered, things coulda gone a lot worse.” True that."
"    years passed between Rocky and Creed, a film about the scion of Rocky Balboa’s   . The span dividing the original Pirates of the Caribbean from its latest sequel, Dead Men Tell No Tales, is about a third of that. But life moves faster at sea, apparently, because the ersatz, angular hero of this fifth Pirates cruise  —      Brenton Thwaites  —   is playing the adult offspring of lovers Keira Knightley (current age 32) and Orlando Bloom (40) from the initial trio of Pirates pictures. In this chapter, Bloom’s character has been placed under a spell that confines him to the ocean as a   sea creature. Only by locating the magical Trident of Poseidon can Thwaites break the curse and return his papa to terra firma. At the same time, the villainous Salazar (incoming Javier Bardem) a   in the Spanish Navy who suffers from the same alarming skin condition and travel restrictions as Bloom, is after Captain Jack Sparrow  —   that’s our man Johnny Depp  —   for . .. revenge, probably? That’s about as simply as I can chart the picaresque course of what we might call   of the Caribbean, a Disney Company line item that works hard to gin up a sense of urgency and portent on its way to nowhere in particular. It’s an amiable shrug of a summer movie that is neither bad nor good but is unequivocally loud, dark (especially in murky   that slides out of focus any time you move your neck) and long. Depp, of course, is the reason the movie exists  —   well, him and the 3. 7 billion other reasons hauled in by the four prior Pirates, circa 2003 to 2011  —   but Jack Sparrow could be lopped out of this   like Captain Hook’s hand and the only effect on the story would be to make it shorter. That’s not a problem, really these films have been at their most amusing when Depp is liberated of any narrative responsibility and allowed to mug and   all over his   second banana, Kevin McNally (as Sparrow’s first officer, Joshamee Gibbs). At least screenwriter Jeff Nathanson finds a sly way to acknowledge what Depp is really doing here: Sparrow makes his entrance when he’s found napping inside a bank vault. (He was going to rob it, you see, but he got tired.) A platoon of Her Majesty’s infantry starts shooting at him, and a team of horses takes off, dragging the bank vault, and the bank, with them. You know a series is starved for inspiration when it starts cribbing set pieces from The Fast and Furious movies, the most larcenous franchise of them all. But there are a few novel ones, too, like when Sparrow gets trapped in a spinning guillotine. Norwegian   Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, whose success with the seafaring historical epic   got them this   studio gig, put the camera right under Depp’s chin as, again and again, the contraption almost beheads him. The cute young couple this time are Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario, playing an astronomer who is  —   in the movie’s best and only bit of fresh characterization  —   forever being accused of witchcraft because she reads books, basically. (It’s a disturbing aspect of The Handmaid’s Tale played for laughs.) She is also a horologist, she announces. ”So was me mum, but she don’t cry about it like you do,” a pirate replies. Geoffrey Rush once again returns as the dread pirate Barbossa aside from Depp and McNally, he’s the only actor to appear in in all five Pirateses, despite having been killed off in the first. But Dead Actors Tell No. .. whatever. Even Tell No Tales’ flaws aren’t original to this film. The    computer animation spoils any sense of escapism by making the whole picture appear to take place in some virtual void. (It was largely shot in Australia, two full years ago, but the environments still look dodgy, at least in  .) The battles are all too similar to one another and too inconsequential the plot, such as it is. Salazar’s   looks more like a Transformer than an 18th century warship its mouthlike bow rises out of the water and . .. bites other vessels in half (! ). Only in the finale does all this digital noise jell into something that actually feels like spectacle. It involves Sparrow’s ship, the Black Pearl, which gets embiggened to   from its bottled miniature form in the most wondrous of the film’s digital effects, surfing along a   part in the sea, with water flowing over rigid   angles like a sinking M. C. Escher drawing. Yes, there’s a Paul McCartney cameo that’s even more underwhelming than that one time Keith Richards finally showed up in one of these, but the plucky Scodelario acts her English heart out and the digital makeovers that Bardem and his crew get  —   rendering some of the   partially invisible  —   are appropriately otherworldly. Though there’s a strong emphasis on continuity with the prior films, most of the key creative positions are staffed by Pirates  . That includes Nathanson, an old pro who wrote Steven Spielberg’s delightful Catch Me If You Can but whose resume also includes Speed 2: Cruise Control, Rush Hour 2 and 3, and the widely reviled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It is the faintest of compliments to say that this sequel can hold its own against any of those. In fact, I daresay it is the very best fourth sequel ever made to a movie based on a    theme park ride. Bold words I know, but I stand by them,    ."
"Ever since the twin surprises of Brexit and Donald Trump’s political rise, Western media has been obsessed with what’s going on in the minds of rural and   people. In America, this helped make a star of J. D. Vance, whose book, Hillbilly Elegy, is looked on as a kind of Rosetta Stone to the psyche of forgotten America. In France,    literary sensation Édouard Louis has played a similar role. During that country’s recent election  —   in which Emmanuel Macron defeated the   populist Marine Le Pen  —   Louis’ autobiographical novel The End of Eddy was seen as a bulletin from the enraged heart of Le Pen country. Yet Louis’ account of growing up gay and poor in a   village isn’t only a story about France. Just released in a highly readable translation by Michael Lucey, this painfully insightful tale of entrapment and escape could’ve easily been set in Michigan or West Virginia. When we first meet Eddy Bellegueule, he’s being beaten up at school. It’s clear to everyone, especially him, that he doesn’t fit in. Secretly attracted to boys  —   with whom he starts having sex at a startlingly young age  —   Eddy’s shrieky voice and   walk get him identified as gay, although, naturally, nobody calls him anything so gentle as ”gay.” Things are no easier at home, where his family struggles to make ends meet in their cramped house with concrete floors. His mother, who had her first child at 17, lives in a permanent state of rage punctuated by puffs of cigarette smoke. His father is a violent,   factory worker who suffers vicious back pains from his job and eventually gets laid off. Both are disturbed by a son so unmanly that he doesn’t even like soccer. As Eddy wittily puts it, they treat his obvious gayness as if it was some weird art project that he does just to annoy them. While Eddy’s parents are both vivid characters  —   Louis has a great ear for their patois  —   what makes the novel special is the way it expands outward. Louis shows how his parents’ values have been shaped by a profound sense of powerlessness shared with their neighbors in the village of Hallencourt, a   community bleak with unemployment, alcoholism, violence, racism and a deadening sense that life goes nowhere. Hallencourt is the kind of place where the high school has the same architecture as the local factory, because you’re supposed to go straight from one to the other. When Eddy’s sister dreams of studying to be a midwife, everyone makes her feel this is too grand for someone like her  —   better off to be a cashier. As prisoners of economic forces they don’t understand and can’t control, the locals learn to take pride in toughing out miserable circumstances, and they loathe the style of the political and economic elite. When Eddy uses the term ”have dinner” instead of his father’s inevitable ”chow down,” he’s mocked for pretending to be part of a higher social class. In most classic novels about poor boys rising beyond their beginnings, the road to freedom is paved by a love of books, and Eddy is bookish by his family standards. He writes with artful precision about everything from his floundering attempts to   himself by dating girls to the way Airness tracksuits brand village guys as  . Ironically, what helps Eddy escape is the very thing that gets him abused: his gayness. Where the men around him, including his older brother, affirm their dignity by honoring a   image of masculinity  —   with its drinking, fighting,   and physical labor  —   Eddy is immune to that image’s allure. There’s an abyss between the name Eddy  —   chosen by his dad because it sounds tough  —   and who he actually is. He needs to get away. And eventually, he does. I won’t say how, but The End of Eddy ends with the beginning of a journey, one that will lead him to change his name from Eddy Bellegueule to the classier Édouard Louis. He will study in Paris, edit a scholarly book about sociology and appear on French talk shows where he’ll explain how, even though he was treated cruelly, his parents and the Hallencourt villagers aren’t intrinsically cruel. Instead, like so many people who feel abused by our globalized world, they were merely passing the abuse along."
"It was eight against one, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. On one side, leaders of Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, plus two EU representatives. On the other side, President Trump. And up for debate, the peril of climate change and the urgency of the U. S. commitment to the Paris accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Merkel said that everyone at the table at the   summit in Taormina, Italy, was urging Trump to stick with the pact, according to Reuters. After that conversation, Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn said the president’s views are ”evolving” and that he feels ”much, much more knowledgeable” after the conversation with world leaders. ”He came here to learn. He came here to get smarter,” Cohn said. ”His views are evolving, which is exactly as they should be.” Any decision on climate change would ultimately be based on what’s best for the United States, Cohn said. The Paris accord, created in 2015 after lengthy negotiations, calls on 196 nations to ratchet back greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to keep the rise in global temperatures no higher than 2 degrees Celsius, as compared with   levels. (As NPR reported at the time, the global average temperature has already increased about 1 degree Celsius.) The deal includes voluntary pledges to reduce emissions. It also calls for developed countries to provide billions of dollars to help the developing world switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The accord was historic in its scope and its ambition, even though its reliance on voluntary pledges made it less robust than some advocates had hoped. On the campaign trail, Trump said he would ”cancel” the Paris deal. He has previously suggested that climate change is a hoax and appointed as the head of the EPA a man who said he does not believe human activity is a primary contributor to global warming. (Climate change and its impacts have been observed by scientists working in multiple fields, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that human activity is the primary cause.) But since taking office, Trump has not moved to withdraw the U. S. from the Paris agreement. He has rolled back a number of   climate change measures, which will hamper U. S. efforts to fulfill its Paris pledges. But he hasn’t retracted the pledges themselves. Just this week, members of his administration indicated that the White House had not yet decided what to do on the issue. Before the conversation between Trump and the other   leaders, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni noted that all the other countries had confirmed ”total agreement” to the pact, while the U. S. commitment was an ”open question.” ”We are sure that after an internal reflection, the United States will also want to commit to it,” Gentiloni said, according to the Associated Press. But Gentolini and other world leaders weren’t just waiting for internal reflection. They added some external pressure, too. French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly discussed climate change with Trump at length on Thursday at a meeting in Brussels. Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church broached the topic when Trump visited the Vatican. And then there was the chat between the   leaders. Merkel called the conversation ”controversial.” Cohn said it was ”robust.” Still to be determined: whether it was persuasive, or consequential."
"The legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly said: ”Football is not a matter of life and death. It’s much more important than that.” Philosopher David Papineau quotes these words admiringly in his intelligent and very personal new book on sport titled Knowing the Score: What Sports Can Teach Us About Philosophy (And What Philosophy Can Teach Us About Sports). This is not a book on the philosophy of sport as much as it is a collection of meditations by a philosopher who happens to be a sports nut. Papineau explores questions like: What is choking? How does it differ from other ways in which the performance of the most accomplished athletes can break down (such as the yips)? How do players make decisions, and how do teams  —   groups of individuals that are more than the sum of their parts  —   force us to rethink decision theory and game theory? He even ventures into terrain that has almost nothing to do with sport, such as the status of race as a category and whether the fact that race doesn’t correspond to anything biologically real gives us a reason to stop using racial categories. The book is not a treatise it is more like a recording of conversations the author might be imagined to have had with his buddies after a good game of tennis on a Saturday morning. Philosophy is surely not a sport, not on Papineau’s definition or anyone else’s. In my view, it is more like an art. But it must be admitted that many philosophers practice it as if it were something  : an activity aiming at the cultivation and exercise not of physical but, rather, of distinctively intellectual skills, as it were, for their own sake. But this is not true of Papineau. His book is motivated by love of sport and by real curiosity about it. But there is an argument that unfolds here, nonetheless, something like a defense of Shankly’s quote. According to Papineau, sports aren’t really good for anything: They aren’t useful. They aren’t a diversion from life that can be praised or, as Papineau considers, criticized, for just this fact. Sports belong to life and are about as intrinsically meaningful, or meaningless, as just about anything else we do, which is to say either not at all, in an ultimate sense, or a whole heck of a lot. Sports, for Papineau, are valuable because we love cultivating our skillfulness and because it is joyous and daunting and thrilling and hard to cultivate and exercise our physical capacities. I’m not quite convinced by this. Not because I’m not persuaded the sporting life is valuable, nor because I think the value of sports consists in some further good (health? perfection? enlightenment?) that it might be thought to enable. My doubts have to do with whether the value of sports can come down to the individual player’s particular experience of sporting activity. Sports are social, and a big part of playing a sport is not only the act of playing with others, but also talking with others about the sport. This is especially true when it comes to the whole business of being a fan or a spectator. Sports fans  —   and, like Papineau, I am not only a philosopher but also a sports fan  —   can be   . They study the games they acquire expertise, and they argue endlessly about teams and plays and tournaments and who’s the best, the worst, the greatest, and so on. Isn’t that true of players as well? To love sports isn’t just to love running all those miles alone on a weekend morning, or even the thrill of trying, finally, to manage a new trick in real play with friends. The sporting life is also a life of reflection on sports  —   and these reflections are social, collective and communicative. These things are evident in Papineau’s book. He’s player and a fan and a    and he flaunts his knowledge the way any   would. This is not a personal criticism. He’s charming. The book is engaging. And his knowledge of sports is genuine and impressive. But it is meant to be a friendly critique, or the start of one, of his argument. The fact is, sports aren’t just activities bent on cultivation of physical skills for their own sake, they are little social worlds in which doing is one thing and reflection on what you’re doing is another. But both are very much required. And this, in turn, opens up the possibility that sports are not just physical. Papineau knows this. In fact, one of the best bits of his book is his exploration of the ways in which successful sporting performance is a mental  —   as well as a physical  —   achievement. Or rather, he rejects the idea that physical accomplishment can be divorced from the possession and exercise of powers of concentration and appreciation. A baseball player, a tennis player, a cricket player, need to use their minds to govern the more distinctively physical aspects of their performances. Papineau rejects, and I agree with him, what he calls the yoga conception  —   according to which success at sports requires the achievement of a kind of Zen state of mindless flow and automaticity. No, being good at a sport may mean that you don’t need, indeed, that you shouldn’t, focus on the   mechanics of what you’re doing. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to concentrate, pay attention and, in general, use your head in the right kind of way. I don’t mean to suggest that sports are not physical. When it comes to sports, it is the physical performance that matters. But there is another way in which the mind gets into the act. Sports is social and is always embedded in a setting of talk and reflection. To be a player who didn’t participate in any of that would be like being a speaker who had no   views on language and how to talk. That’s an unrealistic conception of what it is to be engaged with sports. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"In Lebanon, the LGBT community has made important strides in recent years. A series of court rulings have poked holes in a law that essentially criminalizes homosexuality. This has encouraged activists to push for greater rights. Lebanon is a relative safe haven in the region, with   gay bars and clubs tolerated by the authorities. A number of organizations advocate specifically for LGBT rights. Last week was the   Beirut Pride celebration, and the first time activists raised the rainbow flag in honor of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, May 17. But this is a region where gays have faced deadly persecution at the hands of extremist Islamist groups. Activists say they still have a long way to go to feel safe to be themselves, much less achieve equality under the law. Joseph Aoun is one of the Lebanese activists pushing for change. He heads the community center of the LBGT advocacy group Helem, which, along with another group called Legal Agenda, provides legal services to those persecuted under existing laws. Helem also serves as a community center. I meet Aoun at Madame Om, a bar in an old Beirut mansion overlooking the city port. A   painting of the bar’s Egyptian diva namesake, Om Kalthoum, watches over as organizers prepared for the evening’s Beirut Pride event about protecting oneself under the existing laws. ”People are sick of being treated like s***,” Aoun says, sipping a gin and basil cocktail. He is annoyed that a separate LGBT event was canceled after an Islamist group protested and a hotel venue backed out. And he is even more exasperated that local media took the cancellation as a sign the gay community is facing setbacks. A coalition of Muslim clergy has been ”fighting Helem since 2005,” he says. But Helem has persevered. ”It’s about having the guts to confront,” Aoun says. He believes the LGBT community should always have a Plan B and work around obstacles. ”We can’t frustrate the community,” he says. I first met Aoun years ago, when he ran Bardo, a   bar and dance venue. As the manager, he had to remain on good terms with the authorities in order to keep the place running. Today, he seems liberated from that role and has thrown himself into his activism. He is in fighting mode and fiercely proud of Helem’s 2017 campaign marking the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The group’s Arabic video campaign, with the slogan ”Homophobia is Terrorism,” aired on a major national TV network and garnered more than 120, 000 views on Facebook. Men and women stare directly into the camera, as a narrator speaks: ”I’m someone like you. I don’t pose a threat to society. But this society allows the fact that I am beaten, humiliated, imprisoned, raped or even killed. Don’t be part of it. Acceptance is what builds societies. Hate is what creates terrorism.”  Aoun says the video campaign struck a chord and received far more positive feedback than negative. ”We had a firm slogan: ’Homophobia is terrorism.’ It’s not a disease it’s not a phobia. It’s a terrorism act  —   it’s a hateful act.” He notes that while life can be hard for gays in Lebanon, the challenges are even greater for trans women, who can’t blend into society as easily as gay men, or refugees from Syria and Iraq, who face added discrimination. At Helem’s headquarters, there is a washing machine and a shower, to help give those on the fringes a measure of dignity. The Lebanese law regarding homosexuality is a vague one, criminalizing ”unnatural” sexual acts. In recent years, Lebanese judges have made increasingly progressive interpretations of the law. Aoun says his group’s work with Legal Agenda helps ensure all those who face criminal charges over their sexuality are provided representation. Their goal is for the progressive interpretations of the law to continue. Earlier this year, Justice Rabih Maalouf, in Lebanon’s Metn district, ruled that intimate relations between homosexuals are a ”natural right” and thus cannot be criminalized. Legal Agenda, whose lawyers provided the defense, says the judge stated that depriving homosexuals of those rights would amount to discrimination, and was therefore contrary to the law. ”He said the role of the judge is not to convict people based on the opinion of the majority,” Aoun adds, but ”to protect natural, basic rights of human beings.” Aoun smiles. ”Cheers to that,” he says. The last afternoon sun streams through the arched windows of the Madame Om bar, now filled with attendees. The first speaker, Naji Raji, whose causes also include heritage preservation, rises to offer his experience as a member of the gay community. He recounts a 2007 encounter with the police. A friend had been caught with   pornography on his laptop. He had brought up Raji’s name during an interrogation, claiming he’d helped with the filming. ”My mom came to the [police] station and she was hysterical,” Raji says. ”They told her, ’Your son participated in a porn movie and he’s a homosexual and he’s in jail now and he’s going to be imprisoned.’ My mom was so hysterical, she fell to the floor.” Raji was charged under Lebanon’s Article 534 against unnatural acts, which activists say can be punishable by a   jail sentence, or usually a fine. Because the police believed he participated in the making of the film, he was also charged with ”promoting prostitution.” Raji’s family was able to get him out of jail in a matter of days, which he says took the help of personal contacts intervening on his behalf, and a $2, 000 bribe. Helem helped, too, appointing him a lawyer for the next three years of court hearings. During a subsequent arrest, Raji was subjected to an invasive anal test, a practice that Human Rights Watch has condemned as torture and is illegal under United Nations conventions Lebanon has signed. ”Nowadays, things are a little bit different. There’s social media and social pressure,” Raji tells the crowd. But he still advises those arrested under existing laws to deny all charges related to homosexuality. ”You shouldn’t utter a word before hiring a lawyer. This is the most important thing . .. because regardless of how strong you are as a person and how evolved society is nowadays, the pressure you experience there is unbelievable.” He takes a question from the audience: A man asks whether his arrests have made it more difficult for him to get official documents, like a passport. Raji responds that while he could legally have the charges erased from his police record, at this point, he considers them a badge of honor. ”I want the hurdles. They’re amusing,” Raji says boldly. The man commends him: ”It’s very good to be defiant.”"
"People complain about nursing homes a lot: the food’s no good or there’s not enough staff, and so on. It’s a long list. But the top complaint, according to the federal government, is eviction from a nursing home. Technically, it’s known as involuntary discharge, and in 2015 it brought in more than 9, 000 complaints. Now, a couple of states are looking for ways to hold nursing homes accountable for unnecessary evictions. One of those states is Maryland. Brian Frosh, the state’s attorney general, says that, in Maryland, more than half of all involuntary discharges have come from just one small chain of nursing homes run by Neiswanger Management Services, or NMS Healthcare. ”Your odds of getting evicted from an NMS nursing home are about a hundred times what they are of any other nursing home in the state,” says Frosh. Maryland is now suing NMS for Medicaid fraud. The suit alleges that the company charged the state for services it didn’t deliver, specifically for discharge planning. Nursing homes are supposed to make sure a resident has a safe place to go. But Frosh says that NMS sent residents with complex medical needs to homeless shelters or to unlicensed    facilities. For example, according to the complaint, a woman with severe dementia was dropped off in front her son’s home. Someone from NMS ”just opened the car door and let her out and drove away,” says Frosh. ”Her son found her wandering around several hours later when he came home from work.” The company’s motivation was purely financial, says Frosh. To understand his argument you need to know two things. First, Medicare pays nursing homes a lot more than Medicaid does. And, second, Medicare payments for   care only last for 100 days, and can only be used for skilled nursing care. Frosh says that NMS evicted hundreds of residents just as they were transitioning from Medicare to the   Medicaid. ”We cite emails in the complaint that offer a bounty for getting patients out quickly,” says Frosh. ”A hundred bucks is offered for somebody who can make a bed vacant within two hours.” That made more room for new patients who were on Medicare. Attorneys for NMS did not make anyone available to NPR for comment. But, in court documents, the company calls the state’s charges false, reckless and inflammatory. In Illinois, concern over nursing home evictions goes way beyond a single nursing home chain. That’s because nursing home evictions in the state have more than doubled in the last five years for which data is available. State Sen. Daniel Biss has sponsored legislation to crack down on nursing homes that improperly discharge residents. It would also beef up enforcement of staffing standards. ”We’re seeing nursing homes that have made a financial decision that they would like a certain type of resident,” says Biss. He means residents who are compliant and don’t require too much staff time, and when a nursing home has a resident who doesn’t fit the mold ”they’re able to essentially drop them at the hospital and walk away,” Biss says. That’s what happened to a    Chicago man named Vincent Galvan, who first went to a nursing home in 2012 after his right leg was amputated. His left side was already damaged from an earlier accident. He thinks he was evicted because he complained too much, especially about staffing levels and about not getting the physical therapy he needed to use a new prosthetic leg. First, he complained to the staff at the nursing home, ”but they didn’t pay no attention,” says Galvan. ”So, I heard they had a hotline for the corporation they belong to. I called them also. And nothing really happens.” He also called the Illinois Department of Public Health. As he tells it, one day without warning, the paramedics showed up and took him to a hospital psychiatric unit. ”They were actually accusing me of being aggressive and that I was a schizophrenic, that I have manic depression. And none of that was true,” he says. Galvan’s hospital progress notes confirm that he did not have a serious mental illness. But the nursing home still wouldn’t take him back. It took the hospital 102 days to find another nursing home for Galvan. All that time he remained in the psychiatric ward. ”It was crazy,” he says. ”It was really crazy. It was one of the worst experiences of my life.” There are perfectly legal reasons to evict someone from a nursing home. For example, a resident might improve and no longer need nursing care. Residents can also be evicted if they are a danger to other people. And residents have a right to protest if they think that the law wasn’t followed, but, in Illinois, even if the nursing home is found to be in the wrong, the Department of Public Health can’t force the nursing home to take the resident back. That’s what Biss’s legislation would change. ”It gives the department the power to order a resident readmitted,” he explains, and failure to do that would result in a fine of $250 per day, which could add up quickly. ”This bill . .. goes above and beyond what should happen,” says Matt Hartman, Vice President for Public Policy at the Illinois Health Care Association which represents nursing homes. He disagrees about the magnitude of the evictions problem. Anyone can complain, he says. That’s not the same thing as verified   and he says that raising fines on nursing homes won’t help residents. ”Anything that takes that much money away from resident care and away from staffing and medical equipment is just not the correct approach,” he says. Hartman has been making that argument in negotiations with Illinois lawmakers, who could vote on the bill before the end of the year."
"On Monday night, a bombing timed to coincide with the end of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester killed 22 people, many children, and injured dozens more. Today, Grande responded at length to the tragedy in a letter to her fans that she posted on social media. In the letter, Grande says she will return to Manchester ”to spend time with my fans and to have a benefit concert in honor of and to raise money for the victims and their families.” No date was given for the concert, which the singer writes is still being finalized. ”Our response to this violence must be to come closer together, to help each other, to love more, to sing louder and to live more kindly and generously than we did before,” the note also says. A   post included a link for fans to donate to a fund in support of victims and their families. Grande initially posted a brief Twitter message the day after the attack, and suspended all scheduled performances through June 5. The attack outside Manchester Arena, carried out by a    named Salman Abedi, was said to be part of a wider network, with NPR’s Frank Langfitt reporting that some he’s spoken to think the bomber lacked the   to construct the bomb used to carry out his attack. At least seven people have have been arrested during the investigation into the bombing."
"With a gleaming new roller coaster towering above the boardwalk, one Jersey Shore amusement park is hoping this Memorial Day weekend will herald a new beginning. Nearly five years after Superstorm Sandy ravaged Casino Pier and dumped its old coaster into the ocean, the park in Seaside Heights, N. J. has big hopes for its Hydrus ride, which opened earlier this month. ”It’s going to bring so many people and families back and that’s what Seaside needs,” Casino Pier spokeswoman Maria Mastoris told NJ. com. ”It’s going to be a huge push to getting the tourists back this year.” The neon green and blue roller coaster carries riders up and over a    vertical plunge and whips them through a loop. The Storino family, owners of Casino Pier, said in a statement that opening the new ride was ”a very big moment” The New York Times reported. ”We can now say we are fully back and can close the books on the superstorm era.” Sandy tore through the amusement park in October 2012, chewing off the end of the pier and plunging the old Jet Star coaster into the surf. The image of the twisting metal coaster with waves lapping around it became an iconic reminder of the storm’s destruction. The wreckage was removed seven months later. The Jet Star had sat on the end the of the pier, and Park owners decided it would be safer to rebuild above the beach. But that required a land swap. The state Department of Environmental Protection let Casino Pier use a slice of beach and in return, the amusement park donated some of its land to the borough of Seaside Heights, according to The Associate Press. The park also handed over a historic carousel for display in a new museum to sit on the donated land. ”This is part of the rebirth of the town,” Mayor Anthony Vaz told the AP. ”It’s like a new start for us.” The mayor was one of many residents who were displaced from their homes by the storm, but he sees one positive outcome from the storm  —   it gave the town a chance to move past its reputation as a party scene, as depicted in the MTV show Jersey Shore, Vaz told the news service. ”It’s in our history book, past tense we’ll never do that again.” Vaz said Seaside Heights is about 70 percent recovered from the storm, with taxable property worth $200 million less than it was   the AP reports. Some nearby towns aren’t rebounding so quickly. Homes abandoned after the storm still dot the area. Back on Casino Pier, the recovery continues. After opening or reopening rides and attractions each year since the storm, the park says more than 20 are now running for the holiday weekend. And the Hydrus seems to be having the desired effect. ”When we got here,” Brooke Rongo, 17, told the Times, ”we were just like, oh, we have to go on that.”"
"In a South Carolina courtroom Friday, Todd Kohlhepp stood before a judge and pleaded guilty to murdering seven people. The plea was part of a deal he worked out with prosecutors, whereby Kohlhepp would avoid the death penalty and receive seven consecutive life sentences for killings committed across a span of approximately 13 years. He was also sentenced to 60 years in prison for an assortment of other crimes, including kidnapping and sexual assault. The real estate agent confessed to the seven murders last year, after investigators discovered a woman chained in a storage container on his nearly   rural property in Woodruff, S. C. She had been reported missing months earlier, and says she was held captive and raped by Kohlhepp. Her boyfriend, Charles David Carter, had already been shot dead and buried by the time she was rescued. Another couple, also killed by Kohlhepp, was discovered buried on his property  —   and he confessed to still more killings. As NPR’s Bill Chappell reported last year, Kohlhepp said he was also responsible for ”shooting and killing four people in Chesnee, S. C.  —   a case that’s been known locally as the Superbike murders.” Several relatives of Kohlhepp’s victims sat in the courtroom for his guilty plea Friday. ”Today is not so much his day in court as it is Meagan’s day of justice and retribution,” a relative of Meagan   who was killed at the age of 26, told the room, according to NBC News. ”One day, he will face final judgment, and then may God have mercy on his soul.”"
"Updated at 4:55 a. m. ET, Republican Greg Gianforte won the special election for Montana’s lone congressional seat on Thursday despite an election eve misdemeanor assault charge for allegedly   a reporter. Gianforte had been silent following the allegations, with his campaign only releasing a statement claiming that The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs had been the aggressor. But speaking at his victory party in Bozeman shortly after the race was called, Gianforte admitted he was in the wrong and apologized to Jacobs. ”[Wednesday] night I made a mistake, and I took an action that I can’t take back, and I’m not proud of what happened,” Gianforte said. ”I should not have responded in the way that I did, and for that, I’m sorry. ”I should not have treated that reporter that way, and for that, I’m sorry, Mr. Ben Jacobs,” the   continued. ”That’s not the person I am, and that’s not the way I’ll lead in this state.” Gianforte defeated Democrat Rob Quist to win the seat formerly held by Ryan Zinke, whom President Trump tapped earlier this year to be his interior secretary. According to the Associated Press, with 98 percent of the vote in, Gianforte was winning 50 percent to Quist’s 44 percent. Libertarian candidate Mark Wicks was taking 6 percent. The race was roiled in the final hours following Gianforte’s alleged assault of Jacobs after the reporter asked him about the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the GOP health care bill, the American Health Care Act. According to audio from Jacobs, after he pressed Gianforte for his reaction to the CBO score, the candidate   him to the ground, breaking his glasses and injuring his elbow. Three Fox News reporters who were in the room preparing for an interview with Gianforte also witnessed the incident and confirmed that Gianforte ”grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground . .. then began punching the reporter.” Gallatin County Sheriff Brian Gootkin  —   who had donated $250 to Gianforte’s campaign  —   announced he was charging the GOP nominee with misdemeanor assault. Gianforte must appear in court by June 7. If convicted, he faces a possible maximum fine of $500 or up to six months in jail. Even before the tumultuous final hours, some began to see the contest as a bellwether on health care and the AHCA. Republicans had conceded well before the last 36 hours that the race had tightened to an uncomfortable degree. Outside groups poured about $5. 6 million into the contest, while Democratic groups jumped in with only about $1 million to aid Quist. The controversial health care legislation had become a key point in the contest, with Quist  —   a   folk singer in the state  —   seizing upon it as he looked to build resistance to Trump and the Republican agenda in a solidly red state that the president carried by 20 points in November. While Quist was outspoken in his opposition to the bill, Gianforte had hedged. The wealthy software executive said he didn’t want to say how he would have voted on the bill until he saw the CBO score, which came out Wednesday. But The New York Times had previously obtained audio of the GOP nominee praising the bill to his donors. The Democratic nominee had seen a surge in his fundraising, topping $6 million largely through   donations. Quist campaigned in the closing stretch with Sen. Bernie Sanders,  . who won the state’s Democratic presidential primary last year. Quist had hoped to ride that same populist wave to an upset victory. Privately, however, Democrats were skeptical that was possible, even after the altercation between Jacobs and Gianforte. Republicans believed that the race had closed in the final days but that Gianforte still had a slim lead. And both parties privately grumbled about their candidates. Republicans were frustrated they had to swoop in to prop up an underperforming Gianforte despite his ability to  . And Quist had plenty of baggage too, with a history of property tax liens and unpaid debts. Gianforte lost a race to Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock in November by about 4 points even as Trump rolled to victory in the state, and his negatives were still high from the attacks he tried unsuccessfully to deflect then. Gianforte also didn’t exactly embrace the GOP presidential nominee last fall, but this time around, he didn’t shy away from Trump, promising to work with him if elected. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and Vice President Pence also traveled to the state on his behalf. In his victory speech, Gianforte echoed many of the themes of Trump’s campaign. ”Tonight, Montanans are sending a   call to the Washington, D. C. establishment,” Gianforte said. ”Montanans said Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi can’t call the shots. Montanans said, ’We’re going to drain the swamp.’ ” Even with the assault charges against Gianforte complicating the race just hours before voters went to the polls, a significant portion of voters had already sent in   ballots, so the impact of the accusations was likely minimal. And, as voters told reporters from Montana Public Radio as they went to the polls Thursday, they didn’t necessarily see the altercation between Gianforte and Jacobs as a disqualifier. Ultimately, the special election could have been a chance for Democrats to send a political shock wave to the Trump administration  —   but it was always a long shot, and national Democrats never expected Quist would pull off the upset, even after the   assault charge. Democrats have had success statewide in Montana, with Bullock and Sen. Jon Tester, who is expected to face a tough   fight himself next year. But they haven’t held the state’s congressional seat in over two decades. The better bellwether will come in just under a month in the closely watched Georgia 6th District special election, with Democrat Jon Ossoff facing off against Republican Karen Handel in the northern Atlanta suburbs for a chance to succeed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. That’s a district that Trump won by fewer than 2 points, and it’s already the most expensive congressional contest ever with both sides pouring in millions of dollars. The seat  —   in the rapidly changing suburbs that largely rejected Trump despite historically voting Republican  —   is more of the type Democrats will need to flip to win back the House in 2018. They need to flip 24 seats to do so, and there are 23 seats held by Republicans who sit in districts won by Hillary Clinton in 2016. If Trump’s approval ratings continue to fall, the House will be firmly in play. Midterm elections in a president’s first term are almost always a referendum on the White House incumbent, and historically, the president’s party loses an average of 29 seats in that first midterm cycle. And while Democrats may well need a win on the board to prove that the protests and marches against Trump can translate at the ballot box, the trend line is in their favor and should be worrisome for Republicans, as the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman noted. In Montana, Gianforte is on pace to win by about 6 points, underperforming by 14 points. In the Georgia   primary in April, Ossoff overperformed by 7 points. And in a special election in Kansas last month, the Democratic nominee overperformed by 14 points."
"I was, admittedly, thrown for a loop when Gabriel   told me that he wanted to perform unaccompanied, just him and a piano. The meticulousness of his work is clear on his debut album, Jardin, a   creative process in which Gabriel plays most of the instruments, tracking them to   tape, layering its overall sound. Jardin takes its title as an umbrella fruits, bugs and other plants are the driving metaphors tying together this dense work, which blooms over successive listens.   doesn’t necessarily wear his heart on his sleeve  —   he forces you to listen and peel the layers back.  ’s career trajectory veers wide  —   living with Philip Glass for a year while his late mother played in the composer’s ensemble, sitting under the minimal maestro’s piano as he practiced Lenny Kravitz making possible his first tour experience while Drake exposed Gabriel’s sound to the masses. That decision to go it alone at the Tiny Desk made sense, though, the moment he started to play his talent is left elegantly exposed in this unadorned performance. He says his visit to the Tiny Desk ”with just piano and vocal reminds me of what is lost when a song is fully produced and arranged  —   it was an exciting and vulnerable experience. I was nervous for this one.” Here then, are three songs from Jardin, along with the song that introduced Gabriel to the world. .. laid bare. Jardín is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Gabriel   (vocals, piano) Credits, Producers: Bobby Carter, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"President Trump has had, according to the White House, a successful maiden trip outside the U. S. But the bad news is he has to come home. Back in Washington, the ongoing Russia investigations await him along with another appeals court setback for his travel ban. So, now that Air Force One has wheeled down at Andrews Air Force Base, here are 5 takeaways from Trump’s first foreign trip since becoming president. 1. Trump harangues NATO, In Trump’s speech at the NATO summit in Brussels, he did briefly mention the ”the commitments that bind us together as one,” but he didn’t give NATO what it wanted: an explicit endorsement of Article 5, which says that when invoked, NATO allies must aid a fellow ally under attack. This ”an attack on one is an attack on all” pledge has only been invoked once in NATO’s history  —   for the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead, the president used his speech to publicly scold the 23 out of 28 NATO countries that are not living up to their commitment to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. He described NATO as a kind of protection racket where the NATO allies pay the U. S. to defend them and even suggested NATO members are in arrears and owe the U. S. past dues. On the substance of this issue, Trump is on solid ground. Past U. S. presidents have also complained about NATO ”free riders.” But by humiliating NATO leaders in public Trump may add to the growing backlash against him in Europe, making it harder for NATO leaders, who have to answer to their own voters, to give in to his demands. By Saturday morning, Trump was already tweeting that the NATO partners had given him a big win on this issue and that the money was beginning to roll in. Maybe that will make him more disposed to his European partners as they lobby him to stay in the Paris Climate Accord. He tweeted he will make a decision next week  —   but he did not, on behalf of U. S. join the rest of the   in reaffirming a commitment to implement the Paris agreement. 2. Iran is the enemy, The biggest idea of Trump’s trip was to reorient U. S. foreign policy in the Middle East against Iran. Where President Obama tried to encourage Iran to reform through the Iran nuclear agreement, President Trump sees a new alliance of Sunni Arab states and Israel, united against their common enemy Iran, as the key to curtailing terrorism and to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Details of exactly how this ”outside in” approach would work are TBD but if it succeeds it would be a real foreign policy triumph for Trump. 3. Sheiks are better company than presidents and prime ministers, Trump seemed to have a much better time in Riyadh than Brussels. No, he didn’t repeat his description of the Belgian capital as a ”hellhole,” but the contrast between Trump’s warm embrace of Saudi autocrats and his awkward interaction with the democratically elected European leaders was hard to miss. 4. Beware the glowing orb, Every presidential trip abroad has its share of weird  . But the image of a smiling Trump communing with a couple of Middle Eastern dictators as they placed their hands on a glowing orb was hard to beat. Other odd moments from this trip include the ”grip and grit your teeth” handshake with new French President Emmanuel Macron, the failed attempts at hand holding with the first lady and video of Trump shoving aside Dusko Markovic, the prime minister of Montenegro, as the NATO leaders got ready for their class photo. 5. Did the pope just call the president chubby? When Pope Francis met the president and first lady he asked Melania Trump, ”What do you give him to eat? Potica?” Potica is a Slovenian dessert that’s sweet and, apparently, very fattening. Was the pope just trying to make small talk, by bringing up delicacies from Melania’s homeland? Or was he actually referring to the president’s weight?"
"Updated at 10:09 p. m. ET, Jared Kushner discussed the possibility of Trump’s transition team secretly communicating with the Kremlin, the Washington Post reports. Kushner, the president’s    and adviser, spoke with Russian Ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak in early December of last year about setting up a ”secure communications channel . .. using Russian diplomatic facilities” in the U. S. according to the report. Intercepts of Russian communications reportedly found that Kislyak told his superiors about the conversation. The Post cites ”U. S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.” NPR has not independently confirmed the Post’s report.   national security adviser Michael Flynn was also in the meeting, the Post says. After Trump took office, Flynn was forced to resign from the administration because of revelations that he had misrepresented his conversations with Kislyak to Vice President Pence. The White House previously disclosed that the meeting between Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak had occurred. Friday’s report reveals one of the things they discussed: the possibility of a direct and secret line of communication. Post reporter Greg Miller, who shared a byline with two other reporters on the story, tells NPR establishing such a channel ”would be pretty extraordinary.” ”I really don’t know of an instance in history where an incoming administration is trying to set up a private channel of communication with Moscow,” Miller says. Miller reports that even Russians were concerned about the security risks of such an arrangement. ”For Russia, it’s extremely important that their officials here are able to talk with . .. the government in Moscow beyond U. S. surveillance  —   out of reach of U. S. surveillance,” he says. ”So bringing an American in to use that phone line would be pretty remarkable.” The FBI reportedly considers the conversations to be of investigative interest. ”It’s easy to see why the FBI would be intrigued by this,” Miller says. The White House declined to comment, Miller says, adding, ”That’s not for lack of trying” on the part of the Washington Post. The CIA concluded in December that Russia had attempted to interfere in the U. S. election with the intention of aiding Trump. There have been multiple congressional committee investigations launched as well as an FBI investigation into Russian election meddling and possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. Since the firing of FBI Director James Comey, a special counsel has been tapped to lead the FBI probe, and the various congressional committees are continuing their work. The Senate Intelligence Committee is seeking documents from Flynn related to his interactions with Russian officials. Flynn has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against   refusing to hand over potentially relevant material. The committee is now trying a different approach: subpoenaing Flynn’s businesses for information. Flynn has offered to testify before Congress in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Trump’s actions relating to the Justice Department’s Russia probe have also been under scrutiny. Trump reportedly asked the director of national intelligence and the head of the National Security Agency to push back against the FBI’s investigation into possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russia. In a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said, ”I have always believed that given the nature of my position it is not appropriate for me to comment publicly on any of that. So I don’t feel it’s appropriate to characterize discussions with the president.” Trump also asked Comey to close down the FBI investigation into Flynn, two sources close to the former FBI director told NPR a week after Comey’s firing. The White House has denied that Trump asked Comey to end the FBI’s inquiry regarding Flynn. The president also faced backlash over revelations that he shared ”highly classified” information with Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during an Oval Office meeting  —   which took place the day after Trump fired Comey. The president defended the intelligence sharing and said he had ”the absolute right” to share information about ISIS plots involving airplanes with the two top Russian diplomats. In a May 18 press conference prior to departing for a weeklong trip overseas, the president denied there was any collusion between himself or his campaign and Russia. ”There is no collusion between, certainly myself and my campaign, but I can only speak for myself and the Russians. Zero,” Trump said. ”Believe me, there’s no collusion,” he continued. ”Russia is fine, but whether it’s Russia or anybody else, my total priority, believe me, is the United States of America.” The president has also described the various inquiries into Russian election meddling and possible collusion between Moscow and some of his campaign aides as ”the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”"
"Gregg Allman, founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, has died at the age of 69. Allman’s manager, Michael Lehman, told NPR News Allman had suffered a recurrruence of liver cancer five years ago, and died from complications of the disease. A statement on the southern rock musician’s website reads, ”Gregory LeNoir Allman, December 8, 1947  —   May 27, 2017, ”It is with deep sadness that we announce that Gregg Allman, a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band, passed away peacefully at his home in Savannah, Georgia. ”Gregg struggled with many health issues over the past several years. During that time, Gregg considered being on the road playing music with his brothers and solo band for his beloved fans, essential medicine for his soul. Playing music lifted him up and kept him going during the toughest of times. ”Gregg’s long time manager and close friend, Michael Lehman said, ’I have lost a dear friend and the world has lost a brilliant pioneer in music. He was a kind and gentle soul with the best laugh I ever heard. His love for his family and bandmates was passionate as was the love he had for his extraordinary fans. Gregg was an incredible partner and an even better friend. We will all miss him.’ ”Gregg is survived by his wife, Shannon Allman, his children, Devon, Elijah Blue, Delilah Island Kurtom and Layla Brooklyn Allman 3 grandchildren, his niece, Galadrielle Allman, lifelong friend Chank Middleton, and a large extended family. The family will release a statement soon, but for now ask for privacy during this very difficult time.” Lehman said Allman died at about 2:30 p. m. ET, surrounded by his family and Middleton. Lehman called Allman’s death ”a huge loss for the music industry, and the rest of the world.” Lehman told NPR News Allman had finished a new album, which would be released in September."
"Gregg Allman had one of the most recognizable voices of his generation. And he always felt like a blues artist  —   one who was haunted by losses that propelled some of the most memorable music of the 1970s. Allman died Saturday due to complications of liver cancer. He was 69. Gregg Allman and his older brother, Duane, were born in Nashville, Tenn. but raised in northern Florida. They were children of the South, where a blend of country, blues and gospel could always be heard on the radio and in the air. Gregg Allman’s voice reflected all of those influences. ”Growing up in the South at that time, there was a proximity to a lot of different kinds of music,” says Alan Light,   of Allman’s autobiography, My Cross To Bear. ”There were different influences that enabled you to draw on a spectrum of sounds and different emotions  —   that in other parts of the country, you just wouldn’t be exposed to in the same way.” Gregg Allman was just one year younger than Duane. They formed a   bond after their father was murdered when Gregg was 2. As teenagers, they formed various bands that mimicked the sound of the British Invasion. But when Duane Allman left behind a lucrative gig as a session musician in Muscle Shoals, Ala. he called his younger brother to join a band with two lead guitarists and two drummers. That’s how a collection of friends and former bandmates coalesced into The Allman Brothers Band, which released its first album in 1969. ”[Gregg] was always so careful . .. to say that the vision for the music for The Allman Brothers came from his brother,” Light says. ”Duane had an idea for the band. He could see something Gregg couldn’t see. It took sitting down in the room and seeing the caliber of those players, and the chemistry between them, for him to see what Duane was talking about.” The induction of the Allman Brothers Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 was based largely on the music the band had made on its first four albums. That music has been labeled ”Southern rock” thanks to the band’s home base in Macon, Ga.  —   but it was much more than rock, and it reflected a lot more than the South. The Allmans embarked on lengthy musical explorations that reflected the discipline and dynamics of classical music, the passion of soul and the improvisational spirit of jazz. Gregg Allman’s contributions were his singing, his chops on the Hammond organ and his songwriting. As a composer, he wrote songs that not only were FM radio hits back in the ’70s but eventually became popular with an entirely new generation of Allman Brothers fans. The Allman Brothers Band’s offstage history was a bit of a rock and roll soap opera. Shortly after the release of that first album, the band experienced the deaths of both Duane Allman and bassist Berry Oakley within a year of one another. There was significant substance and alcohol abuse among band members, the pressure of constant touring, strained relationships, illnesses, breakups, reunions. As the title track of his 1987 album suggests, Allman was admittedly no angel. But Alan Light says a sense of mortality and loss haunted his life and fueled his most powerful songwriting. ”In his house, there were framed notes from Duane hung on his walls,” Light says. ”He surrounded himself with reminders of his family and that loss. And yet, to get up every night and play in The Allman Brothers Band when you’re the Allman brother who is still there  —   and the other Allman brother isn’t  —   is a perpetual reminder of that loss.” While Gregg Allman’s death closes a chapter on rock and roll history, perhaps it also means that the Allman brothers are once again making music together."
"Robert Jenkins was only 21 when he started balding. It was a condition he’d expected given that his dad had been bald for as long as he could remember. What Jenkins did not expect, however, is that he’d have to deal with hair loss at such a young age. He wasn’t prepared for it. ”I had a lot of low   I started to get depressed,” Jenkins, now 28, says. ”I wouldn’t go to events. I would stay in the house because I was just embarrassed.” About two years ago, Jenkins’s wife, Jayniece came across the Instagram page Wade the Barber and saw the work Wade Menendez was doing to help balding men sport a full and gorgeous head of hair. ”She told me to reach out to him. So, I reached out to him,” Jenkins says. Luckily for Jenkins, Menendez’s barber salon The W Hair Loft was located less than 20 minutes’ drive from his Odenton, Md. home. He booked an appointment and Jenkins got himself a ”man weave.” ”The results were amazing,” Jenkins says. ”I think I was shocked because I hadn’t seen myself with so much hair for so long. I really didn’t know how to take it.” He was anxious about how his wife would react, but when she saw it she was blown away. ”She absolutely loved it,” he says. Jenkins has since had the man weave installed four times. ”This might seem a little bit much or dramatic, but I was honestly just grateful to God that we were able to find somebody that can bring that confidence back. Because I did not think that this would be possible at all.” Jenkins says. ”I thought that my hair was just gone forever, that I would never be attractive . .. This was extremely life changing for me.”   black hair care industry, Fashion trends are becoming more unisex and less gender specific  —   like, for example, the romphim. Weaves, which for decades have been associated with women, especially black women, are now being deemed by many hairstylists and barbers across the country as the ”game changer” for balding men. Man weaves, more formally referred to as cranial prosthesis, hair replacement units or hair systems, are a nonsurgical procedure to help men who’ve lost their hair  —   be it through just balding or thinning, alopecia or cancer treatments  —   ”regain” hair. Man weaves are designed for most hair types including Caucasian, Latino and    and have been growing in popularity over the past two to five years. In most cases, man weaves are 100 percent human hair, although some are blends with synthetic hair. Don’t think of them as fake hair, think alternative hair. Not only have man weaves been providing a cover for balding men but among   men, the trend has been injecting even more cash into the already booming black hair care industry. According to Mintel, which compiles data on the beauty industry, the black hair care category is expanding with new brand and product entrants to the market, which is causing expenditure increases. Black consumers were estimated to have spent about $2. 56 billion on hair care products in 2016. Mintel forecasts that expenditures will keep growing. The company also notes that these figures are missing specific data on weaves and extensions but ”if all of those things were to be taken into consideration. . .. expenditures could reach a whopping   dollars.” What it costs to get a man weave, A single installation of a man weave, including special custom made hair units, can cost from $275 to $800, so it’s safe to say hair suppliers, hair stylists and barbers such as Wade Menendez are being kept busy. Menendez, 34, has been a barber since 2004 and began installing man weaves about two years ago. He says that when he first started and for much of 2016, he’d spend about $1, 500 a month purchasing man weaves, doing just a few clients weekly. Now, he says he spends $16, 000 to $18, 000 monthly because of his increasing number of clients. He says he dedicates his Tuesdays and most nights solely to man weaves. ”It’s been really great,” Menendez says. ”At one point, it was like in three months I made $130, 000 just people coming in, flying in from everywhere. It’s been crazy.” When asked, Menendez wouldn’t reveal his financial information but barbers in other cities say these figures are realistic if one has a full roster of man weave clients. Menendez says he has a budding clientele that flies into Maryland from various states, a client who travels almost monthly from St. Lucia and just recently, he got a new client from London. Man weave classes, Such is the phenomena, that on a recent spring day about a dozen hairstylists and barbers  —   men and women  —   had traveled from cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and Jackson, Miss. for a class at Menendez’s barbershop in Glen Burnie, Md. where they would learn the secrets of this relatively new trade. This is the 10th class that Menendez has taught on installing man weaves. Today’s class is from 11 a. m. to 3 p. m. During this session, Menendez will teach two techniques, one to install the weaves on men who have very little or thinning hair at the top of their heads and the other, for men who are totally bald in the crown area. He insists that some of what he instructs not in any way be recorded for public showing. After all, participants are paying $650 each to take this class. Menendez starts the class by displaying one of the   about man weaves. It’s black and resembles an Afro wig. The hair is actually affixed to breathable lace just like many of the weaves worn by women. Menendez says he sources these hair units from overseas, mostly China, but he also has a few U. S. companies that supply them. He’s currently working to come up with his own line. How to man weave, Each man weave  —   whichever technique  —   takes Menendez 90 minutes to two hours to install. For the technique he’s allowing the class to photograph, a full hair unit will be attached to the client’s head using an adhesive. Today’s first   is Cliff Holcomb, an early 40s man who is balding at the top of his pate and keeps his hair low at the sides and back. Menendez first cleans Holcomb’s scalp and then uses a marker to draw along the front of his head to mark what will be the hairline for the man weave. Next, Menendez applies an   treatment. Then, he lays adhesive all over the bald area to firmly secure the weave. Next, he uses a   blow dryer to make sure the hair quickly bonds with the adhesive. The weave is then cut, trimmed and shaped to complement Holcomb’s head and own natural hair. To ensure that his hairline is full and sharp, Menendez uses an atomizer to emit additional hair fibers. He then sprays on products for hold and sheen. Holcomb looks like a new man. ”It feels great, I love it,” Holcomb says. He plans to keep it on for the next three months. During that time, Menendez advises not to wash it or get his own natural hair wet as this could remove the adhesive or otherwise ruffle the coiffed do. Should he wish to have it cleaned, Holcomb can return to Menendez, who’ll remove it, wash it and put it back on for $150. ”Do a   give it a soft or light brush and wear a shower cap when you bathe,” Menendez advises. Spreading man weave love, ”After this class, I’m so confident,” says student Angel Johnson, 44, who flew in from Atlanta. ”I got all the information that I needed to go ahead and pursue this. I plan to do my first client this weekend.” Way ahead of this class is New York City —  based barber stylist John Cotton, who took the man weave course with Menendez last spring. Cotton, who works at the upscale Leona   LW Salon in midtown Manhattan, says his   clientele includes the likes of Calvin Klein, Maxwell, Tracy Morgan, Fox’s Empire’s Jussie Smollett and Saturday Night Live alum Jay Pharoah. Cotton has been creating a buzz around the Big Apple for transforming the lives of men in their 30s and 40s with his expert installation of man weaves. He says he does all hair types and about half a dozen a week. ”When they get their hair done, some of them have even cried,” Cotton, 35, says. ”It boosts their ego from two to 10. All of a sudden, they want to go socialize.” Robert Jenkins’ wife, Jayniece, can relate to this. ”I used to catch moments of Robert looking sad, just staring at himself in the mirror,” she says. ”Now his confidence is back. I see him now looking at himself in the mirror and he knows he looks good. Just to see how much it [man weave] has changed his life and how happy it made him, makes me happy, so I’d encourage others to do it.” The barbers say the one side effect of man weaves is an occasional itchy scalp. Menendez says he advises his clients, when possible, to first consult with a dermatologist or doctor and their insurance company before getting a man weave. In addition to man weaves, Menendez is also installing complementary beards for men who may have a challenge growing and grooming their own. These beards will cost a client a cool $700. But the real game changer at present is man weaves. Menendez says when he first started trying to learn the technique, he was rebuffed by barbers who wanted to monopolize the market, so this inspires him to continue teaching and sharing ”the man weave love.” He says he’s also reached out to cancer support groups and other community organizations whose members may require his service. ”When you try to hold on to something, you limit yourself to God blessing you,” he says. ”I live a blessed life and I’m going to continue to do so because I help to bless those [people].” The Robert Jenkinses of this world  —   now with a full head of hair  —   may tip their hats to that."
"What a week it’s been for education news. Let’s begin NPR Ed’s weekly roundup as the week began, on Monday . .. DeVos talks choice in Indianapolis, It was expected to be an important speech, perhaps the unveiling of President Trump’s   $20 billion plan to expand school choice nationally. But that didn’t happen. Instead, when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos took the stage in Indianapolis at the American Federation For Children’s National Policy Summit, she talked philosophy. ”It’s fitting that we’re in Indiana, one of the states that is providing real choices for families and students,” DeVos told the crowd. Indeed, as the NPR Ed Team reported recently, Indiana is home to the largest single statewide voucher program in the nation. Once billed as a modestly sized ”social justice” program for   students looking to leave   public schools, the state’s Choice Scholarship has grown into something else entirely. For more on that, grab a comfortable chair and read (or listen to!) this. After praising Indiana and celebrating a few students who have thrived using vouchers, DeVos laid out her school choice vision. ”The time has expired for ’reform,’ ” Devos said. ”We need a transformation  —   a transformation that will open up America’s closed and antiquated education system. If we really want to help students, then we need to focus everything about education on individual students  —   funding, supporting and investing in them. Not in buildings not in systems. It shouldn’t matter where a student learns so long as they are actually learning.” The Secretary of Education planted a flag for choice, calling her critics ” .” Then she arrived at the moment many had been waiting for: ”The president is proposing the most ambitious expansion of education choice in our nation’s history,” DeVos told the crowd. What will this expansion look like? And how will it work? DeVos offered no details. Still, there is consensus among education experts that, when the President’s pitch is finally fleshed out, it will likely resemble something called a   scholarship. For more on what that is and how it might work, try this, this and this. Trump releases proposed 2018 education budget, Tuesday brought a very real unveiling  —   of President Trump’s 2018 budget, including his vision for education. The Education Department faces a 13. 5 percent cut in spending, including the elimination of $1. 2 billion in   programs and a $2. 3 billion program to reduce class sizes and train teachers. On the higher ed front, Trump’s proposal would cut the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, pull back on the federal role in subsidizing student loans and consolidate the many repayment plans now available to student borrowers into one plan. That plan would cap monthly payments at 12. 5 percent of discretionary income and forgive the balance of a loan after 15 years. The budget wasn’t all cuts. Trump and DeVos proposed setting aside several hundred million dollars to expand charter schools and private school vouchers. The budget would also make Pell Grants for   students available  . The proposal was roundly criticized by advocacy groups representing students, teachers and school leaders. ”The Trump administration’s budget request is an assault on the American Dream,” according to a statement from former Education Secretary John B. King, Jr. who is now president and CEO of The Education Trust. ”This shortsighted and cruel proposal would make the climb to success much steeper for all our young people, especially students of color and students from   families.” For more details, check out our earlier reporting here and, as always, keep this in mind: Every budget is like Cinderella, a burst of big dreams in desperate need of a Fairy Godmother to make them come true. Without Congress, this budget will forever stay a scullery maid. DeVos on Capitol Hill, On Wednesday, the day after the budget unveiling, DeVos defended it before a House appropriations subcommittee. In her opening statement, she said Trump’s proposal would return power to states and school districts and give parents more choices. Democrats questioned DeVos about whether she would allow federal funds to go to private schools that discriminate against particular students. Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin called vouchers in his state a ”failed experiment.” He cited press reports, quoting NPR among others: ” ’Over the years much of the research found test scores flat, lower in some cases or slightly improved in others.’ ” In one of the most heated exchanges, Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts brought up Lighthouse Christian Academy, a school in Bloomington, Ind. that receives $665, 000 in state vouchers and denies admission to LGBT children. The school and its policies were highlighted in our recent report on vouchers in Indiana. ”Is there a line for you on state flexibility?” Clark asked, seeking from DeVos clarity on whether the federal government would protect voucher students from discrimination. ”You are the backstop for students and their right to access quality education. Would you in this case say we are going to overrule and you cannot discriminate, whether it be on sexual orientation, race, or special needs in our voucher programs?” Clark added. ”Will that be a guarantee from you to our students?” DeVos sidestepped the question. ”The bottom line is we believe that parents are the best equipped to make choices for their children’s schooling and education decisions,” DeVos said. ”Too many children today are trapped in schools that don’t work for them. We have to do something different than continuing a       approach.” For more on the hearing, here’s our story. Top federal student aid official resigns, While DeVos was on the Hill, James Runcie resigned as head of the Federal Student Aid office (FSA) in the Education Department. The office administers $150 billion in grants, loans and   to help 13 million students pay for college each year. Those programs are facing deep cuts under Trump’s budget proposal. Reaction to Runcie’s departure split along partisan lines. ”FSA has faced a litany of unsolved problems going back years,” Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for DeVos, told NPR. Hill, as well as Republicans in Congress, pointed to recurring allegations of financial mismanagement and to online security lapses. Runcie was scheduled to testify before the House oversight committee on Thursday. ”He chose to resign rather than face Congress,” Hill said. In an email response to NPR, Runcie denied this: ”I did not leave simply to avoid a hearing on improper payments,” he wrote. ”That is not credible.” He declined further comment. The New York Times and The Washington Post introduced a different explanation: According to his resignation memo, Runcie left because DeVos was considering moving student loan oversight to the Treasury Department. Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, called the resignation ”deeply troubling” (Sen. Patty Murray of Washington) and ”cause for serious alarm” (Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.) There are 15 positions requiring Senate confirmation in the Education Department. All but DeVos’ are unfilled, according to a tally by The Washington Post. Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Harvard  One of Harvard’s most famous dropouts, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, returned to accept an honorary degree at the college’s 366th commencement. The    billionaire is rumored to have political ambitions, and the speech touched on   issues like climate change, globalism, the importance of education, the burden of student loans and ”universal basic income” as a solution to technologically based shifts in the job market. ”We can fix this,” he told the graduates."
"There’s a narrative about the methamphetamine epidemic in Montana that says the state tackled it in the 2000s, yet now it’s back with a vengeance because of super labs and drug cartels in Mexico. But here on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, it never really went away. ”Getting high in your car in front of the store that ain’t a big deal,” says Miranda Kirk. Kirk works on the reservation, which is about 40 miles south of the Canadian border. She says no one even bothers to hide their drug use. ”Leaving your paraphernalia out in the open for someone to walk in, that’s alright. Having and seeing needles everywhere, that’s ok. Even talking about selling your needles  —   that’s normal too,” Kirk says. Kirk is a    mother of four. Born and raised in Fort Belknap, home to the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes, she grew up around drugs, alcohol and addiction. She struggled with opioids after a miscarriage landed her in the ER and she was discharged with a handful of prescriptions. But, she says, with the help of her church, she broke that addiction. Now, she wants to help others. According to the Tribal Epidemiology Centers of the Indian Health Service, dependence on methamphetamine and other psychostimulants more than tripled for tribal members in Montana and Wyoming between 2011 and 2015. ”People are saying they’re seeing it as young as third grade, because, ’Oh that’s ok, I see that at home  —   my aunt does this, my mom does this, my dad does this, my grandpa does this.’ So, they can’t see the error in it. Or they don’t see it as a risk,” says Kirk. Miranda Kirk and her sister, Charmayne Healy, felt like everyone had given up trying to do anything about the rampant drug use. And, they worried about their kids falling into the same trap. So they went to tribal leaders last year and said someone needs to do something  —   now. George Horse Capture, Jr. vice president of the Fort Belknap Tribal Council, helped the sisters persuade the council to declare a state of emergency against methamphetamine last January. Tribal leaders then gave Kirk and Healy $150, 000 to fund a   prevention and treatment program. The sisters were caught off guard, but right away, Kirk started hunting for a model that might work with the strengths of Fort Belknap. She heard about something called peer recovery, a movement centered on the idea that people who have succeeded in conquering their own addictions are uniquely equipped to coach others. ”The light bulb came on,” Kirk says. ”That works, because what got me clean, in a sense, were peer mentors. They’ve been there. That made it easier for me to be able to express myself and not feel judged, or condemned. Like I’m a horrible person for what I was going through.” She’s determined to break the stigma attached to reaching out for help. In early 2016, Kirk and her sister officially launched the Aaniiih Nakoda   Movement, a   peer recovery project. Jessica Healy, 30, came knocking before they were even up and running. Her only son was taken away last year. ”They helped me. And it took a big step . .. it took all that I had,” Jessica Healy says. She had been using drugs on and off since the age of 18. Once a week, one of Kirk’s peer recovery groups, the Life Givers Circle, meets at the Lodge Pole Elementary school. ”We talk about stuff and we make ribbon skirts, [do] activities, and we just help each other out,” Jessica Healy says. It’s one of about four peer support groups that Kirk and Charmayne Healy have helped start, both on and off the reservation. ”It was a good feeling to be clean and to be close to people that had been going through the same thing. To know that there are others out there,” Jessica Healy says. In addition to peer meetings, Aaniiih Nakoda members go to schools and talk to kids about prevention. They help organize events like zombie walks, in which people pretend to be the   walking dead. There’s only one outpatient drug treatment facility in Fort Belknap, and no emergency housing or   facilities. The only   support available is Kirk’s group. Dr. Aaron Wernham, of the Montana Healthcare Foundation, says that what Montana needs is a more integrated,   approach to treating addiction. That means primary care doctors working next to behavioral health professionals, and coordinating care all along the way. ”Peer recovery fits in very well with it, but if you decided you were just going to build a whole treatment system around peer recovery, you probably wouldn’t end up getting the results you want,” he says. A new state law enacted in March goes a long way toward recognizing peer support specialists as legitimate members of a treatment team. The law sets clear professional standards, and paves the way for billing insurance companies and, potentially, Medicaid. The challenge is how to bring that comprehensive care to Fort Belknap. Until that happens, the sisters’   peer program is one of the only options available for people. And she’s intent on doing that work, no matter what. ”You have to keep your phone on during the night because addiction don’t sleep and normally we don’t either,” she says. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Montana Public Radio and Kaiser Health News. "
"On a Saturday afternoon, 10 students gather at Genspace, a community lab in Brooklyn, to learn how to edit genes. There’s a recent graduate with a master’s in plant biology, a high school student who started a synthetic biology club, a medical student, an eighth grader, and someone who works in pharmaceutical advertising. ”This is so cool to learn about I hadn’t studied biology since like ninth grade,” says Ruthie Nachmany, one of the class participants. She had studied anthropology, visual arts, and environmental studies in college, but is now a software engineer. In the 1970s, personal computers emerged from labs and universities and became something each person could have. That made it possible for people like Nachmany to become a professional programmer despite not having studied it in school. Some compare that democratization of personal computing in the ’70s to the current changes in access to genetic engineering tools. In 2015, the journal Science declared the gene editing tool CRISPR Cas9 the breakthrough of the year. It let scientists make changes in DNA of living cells easier and cheaper than before. Today, the CRISPR tool is no longer something that only researchers do in labs. You can take classes in gene editing at a community lab. You can buy a $150 kit to do it at home. Some middle schoolers are doing it in their science classes. Genspace lab manager Will Shindel, who teaches the   class, says his students are usually professionals who want to learn a new career skill or curious everyday people. ”They just know that it’s this word that everybody’s throwing around,” Shindel says. ”It’s either going to lead to the singularity or the apocalypse.” Shindel, a biologist by training, is one of many people now dreaming about and starting synthetic biology projects using the CRISPR tool. With some friends, he is working on genetically engineering a spicy tomato. Some people are trying to make bacteria produce insulin. At Acera, an elementary and middle school in Massachusetts,    Abby Pierce recently completed a CRISPR experiment, genetically modifying bacteria so that it could grow in an antibiotic that would have killed it otherwise. Pierce’s science teacher, Michael Hirsch, made the argument to get genetic engineering kits for his science students to experiment with in class. ”It’s going to take molecular bio out of the ’Oh man, cool, they do it in labs’ to ’Wait, we can do this in our homes,’ ” Hirsch says. ”We could do things like create pigments, and create flavor extracts, and all of these really nifty things safely and carefully in our kitchens.” New skill set, In fact, the University of Pennsylvania’s Orkan Telhan argues, genetic engineering will become an increasingly important skill, like coding has been. Telhan is an associate professor of fine arts and emerging design practices and he worked with a biologist and an engineer on a desktop machine that allows anyone to do genetic engineering experiments, without needing a background in biology. ”Biology is the newest technology that people need to learn,” Telhan says. ”It’s a new skill set everyone should learn because it changes the way you manufacture things, it changes the way we learn, store information, think about the world.” As an example of a recent application, Telhan points to an Adidas shoe made from bioengineered fiber, inspired by spider silk. The comparison between genetic engineering and computing is not new. Two years ago at a conference, MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito gave a talk called ”Why bio is the new digital”: ”You can now take all of the gene bricks, these little parts of genetic code, categorize them as if they were pieces of code, write software using a computer, stick them in a bacteria, reboot the bacteria and the bacteria just as with computers, usually does what you think it does.” ’We need to dig deeper’ Gene editing tools have already started a debate about ethics and safety. Some scientists have warned about not just intentionally harmful uses, but also potential unintended consequences or dangerous mistakes in experimentation. The German government in March sent out a warning about one kind of CRISPR kit, saying officials found potentially harmful bacteria on two kits they tested, though it’s not clear how those bacteria got there. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control responded with a statement earlier this month that the risk to people using these kits was low  —   and asked EU member states to review their procedures around these kits. Earlier, the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety also issued a reminder that depending on the kit,   laws still applied, and doing this work outside of a licensed facility with an expert supervisor could lead to a fine of up to 50, 000 euros ($56, 000). In the U. S.   of National Intelligence James Clapper in early 2016 added genome editing to a list related to ”weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.” But bioengineering experts say overall, the U. S. government agencies have long been monitoring the   and the DIY bio movement  —   ”very proactive in understanding” the field, as Johns Hopkins University biosecurity fellow Justin Pahara puts it. ”There is a lot of effort going into understanding the scope of DIY biology, who can do it, what can be done, what are some of the concerns, how do we mitigate risk,” says Pahara, who is also a   of   company Amino Labs. He says DIY bio, or biohacking, poses little security concern for now, being at a very early stage. ”I would suggest that just all of these discussions, including looking into the past at computing and other technologies, [have] really helped us understand that we need to dig deeper,” he says. More variables, As much as the   revolution is being compared to the PC revolution before it, bacteria are not as predictable as computers, says Kristala Prather, associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT. Her team studies how to engineer bacteria so they produce chemicals that can be used for fuel, medications and other things. ”I have a   graduate student . .. who was lamenting the fact that even though she has cloned genes many times before, it’s taking her a little while to get things to work well at my lab,” Prather says. ”And my response to her is that the same is true for about 80 percent of students who come into my group.” Prather explains that engineering bacteria isn’t quite like coding because many more variables are at play. ”One of the common mistakes that people make it to assume all water is just water. The water that comes out of the tap in Cambridge is different than the water that comes out of the tap in New York,” she says. ”So there are very small things like that that can turn out to make a significant difference.” But Prather  —   who remembers writing programs on a Commodore 64 computer as a     —   is nonetheless excited about the prospect of more people learning about genetic engineering through kits and classes: She says even if all this access does right now is get more people excited about becoming scientists, it’s still really valuable. Alan Yu reports for WHYY’s health and science show, The Pulse. This story originally appeared on an episode of its podcast called Do It Yourself."
"Here’s a quick roundup of some of the   you may have missed on this week’s Morning Edition. What a world, Ah, the life of a   . It’s usually pretty great and carefree. You still have to go to school at 6, but at that point everything is fresh, new and exciting. Looking back, you’re probably feeling a bit nostalgic, but maybe you’re also asking yourself what you had accomplished by the time you’d been on Earth for six years. Chances are it’s not nearly as impressive as what DJ Itsuki Morita has done. Those two letters in front of his name might not be MD or another professional classification, but he is a DJ. In fact, he’s a world record holding DJ. As Morning Edition host David Greene said on Monday, the Japanese DJ recently stopped by Bar L in Osaka to do a set. With his bright red headphones, he ruled the room, worked the deck and officially set a Guinness World Record for youngest club DJ. When talking about the career choice, he said he had found his true calling. ”I saw people DJing,” he said, ”and thought it looked fun.” So to recap, DJ Itsuki Morita is six and already setting world records. Keep an eye out to see what else he does in his lifetime. It is clear we can expect great things from you, Mr. Morita. The power of Twitter, Can you believe Twitter is free? No, but really. The social media platform has given us so many gems, from pop culture icons and their petty feuds to more direct or insightful knowledge into the lives and minds of politicians. And retweets? Well, those might just be more powerful than tweets themselves. Just this month, one high school student was awarded a year of chicken nuggets from Wendy’s when he ended Ellen DeGeneres’ reign of the most retweeted tweet. As Morning Edition host Rachel Martin said on Tuesday, Twitter and its users even have the power to get students out of exams. The latest comes as students in Laura Roberts’ sports literature class desperately did not want to take their final. So, they struck a deal. Roberts agreed to cancel the final if Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers retweeted a tweet sent by any student in her class. I’m not going to say this is almost too easy, but it is a scenario that has been repeated with other professional sports players. Then Peyton Meyer, a student in the class sent a plea to Rodgers saying ”please retweet, she’s your biggest fan,” while referring to Roberts. Rodgers did oblige, but did say, ”I’m sure a sports lit final is very important.” Again, Twitter is free and anything is possible if you just tweet. Bear with me, What should you do when you see a bear out in the wild? Well here at NPR, we have some tips from you, but let’s just start out by saying this man did not do what most would. As Morning Edition host Rachel Marin said on Thursday, Brad Meck, of Pennsylvania, was out fishing when he noticed a black object in the water. It wasn’t a log of wood or a beaver like he might have thought. Instead, Meck found a little baby black bear struggling to keep his nose above the water. Of course Meck wasn’t going to let the little guy drown, so he pulled him into the boat. Now it’s one thing to come    with a bear in the wild, it’s another to invite it into your personal space. Meck says he was a little worried about getting bit, but instead the cub just sat there quietly as Meck rowed the boat to shore. When they hit the bank, Meck dropped his new found friend off with the hopes that mama bear would find him. Ten points for Meck’s altruism. Wookiees win, Issuing corrections are not a fun part of a job in the news industry, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun with them. The Dallas Morning News is well aware of this. As Morning Edition host Rachel Martin said on Friday the newspaper made a serious error 40 years ago on May 26. At that time the original Star Wars movie had been released and the News published a review calling Chewbacca a ”Wookie.” There’s just one problem Chewbacca is actually a Wookiee. Now, 40 years later, the record is finally set straight and a formal apology has been issued to the ”   hairy alien biped community.”"
"When Roger Moore died last week at the age of 89, many tributes hailed him as the actor who’d played James Bond the longest. That isn’t quite wrong, but it isn’t exactly right. The span between his first 007, Live and Let Die, and his last, A View to a Kill, was 12 years, during which he played the famous spy in seven movies. But Sean Connery, who’d quit the role with one film remaining on his contract only to be lured back twice, eventually got to seven, too. That is, if you count the   Never Say Never Again, released in 1983  —   21 years after his   debut in Dr. No  —   when it competed against an ”official”   entry, Octopussy. The latter would be the one where Bond goes undercover as a circus clown. (Yes, really.) The Bond pictures were never without humor, but they got a lot goofier during the Moore era. But between Connery’s departure and his (first) return there was a    Bond, perennial Trivial Pursuit curiosity George Lazenby. He’s now the subject of Josh Greenbaum’s Becoming Bond, a very funny original Hulu documentary that, through pure coincidence, made its debut on the streaming service only about 48 hours before the news of Moore’s passing broke. The   movie is comprised of a longform interview with a     Lazenby intercut with Drunk   reenactments of the frequently    episodes he recounts, mostly from his   life. Australian actor Josh Lawson is an appealing   for the young Lazenby  —   never mind that this is a role that should have gone to Matt Gourley, comedian and   of the podcast James Bonding. (Gourley’s other credentials include having played Bond creator Ian Fleming on Drunk History and on the Superego podcast, a gift for mimicking accents, and   superknowlege.) The rest of the cast is rounded out by some very recognizable comedic actors, and maybe even a Bond series veteran or two, but it’s more fun if you discover their identities as you go. But they’re not just riffing. There’s an actual story here, one of the greatest casting stories ever told. That an actor played the role of James Bond just one time is of less interest than the fact that he was not, in fact, an actor. What in 1968 was the most   role in showbiz went to an Australian car salesman turned male model whose sole prior acting experience was bluffing his way past the receptionist at the London offices of EON Productions. (The Bond company, so to speak.) Lazenby had never spoken one line in a movie. He’d never acted in a play. Bond producers Albert ”Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman saw him in a TV commercial for Big Fry’s Chocolate wherein Lazenby doesn’t speak a word. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service director Peter Hunt says that he and the producers interviewed roughly 400 actors to find their new star. (One of them was a    Royal Academy of Dramatic Art dropout named Timothy Dalton, who would become the next next next Bond, 19 years later.) Not until the    Australian actually broke a stuntman’s nose in a fight scene, performed as one of his many screen tests, did Broccoli finally decide to take a chance on him. Say what you will about his performance in the movie, he’s very convincing in the action scenes  —   more than the older, suaver, Britisher Moore ever was, certainly. Accounts have varied over the decades as to whether Lazenby bailed of his own volition or was fired. On the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service   former United Artists CEO David Picker, among others, says it was the latter. And in a 2011 interview, Diana Rigg  —   Lazenby’s    —   told the BBC, ”George Lazenby was  . It’s not for nothing that they didn’t offer him any sequels.” Even Lazenby himself has told the story both ways. In Becoming Bond, he insists that he was offered a   contract plus a generous signing bonus, a package he declined on the advice of his manager. It was the end of the sixties, and Bond  —   a   but otherwise totally square ”blunt instrument” in the service of the waning British Empire  —   would soon look dated or worse, Lazenby and his advisers concluded. That Lazenby refused to cut the long hair and beard he’d grown since filming of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service wrapped for the movie’s London premiere did not endear him to Broccoli and Saltzman. (In hindsight, this seems wildly  . Lazenby looked great with long hair, and having him photographed this way might help alleviate any creeping sense of conservatism.) They booted him off the movie’s American press tour, so Lazenby flew to the U. S. at his own expense and when knocking on TV station doors, asking to be let in to promote a movie from which he’d already distanced himself. Of course, the bigger issue was that Lazenby had announced before the movie even opened that he would not reprise the role  —   the same move Connery had pulled two years earlier. While On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was not warmly received upon its initial release, it’s now frequently named among the two or three best of the entire Bond series. Some of this is just   naturally   will always want to claim that the obscure document most folks don’t know is superior to the popular one that they do. But OHMSS really is a marvelously rewatchable curiosity that looks and feels like no other entry in the   series. In many ways, it foreshadows the the way the Bonds would become more physical and (briefly) more emotional when the franchise rebooted with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, 37 years later. Craig was born in March of 1968, more or less the exact time when Lazenby was Becoming Bond."
"Known for his work with Weather Report, Joni Mitchell and Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius was one of the most inventive bass players in music history. He is the only electric bassist in DownBeat magazine’s Jazz Hall of Fame. But like with many musical geniuses, alcohol and drugs took a toll  —   as did his bipolar disorder  —   and Pastorius ended up living on the streets. He died in 1987, after a violent encounter with a bouncer in a Florida nightclub. But new generations still discover his music. To add to Pastorius’ legacy, a 1982 recording at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall for NPR’s Jazz Alive! has been remastered for Resonance Records as Jaco Pastorius: Truth, Liberty  Soul. Paul Blakemore, now a   engineer, was the original recording engineer for NPR. After Resonance recovered the original   tapes, Blakemore remixed them to capture some of the sounds and nuances that were lost in the initial mix. ”The players . .. were having a really grand old time,” Blakemore says. ”They were not standing like good choirboys and concentrating on playing right into their microphones  —   they were moving around and giving a great performance. And so sometimes things would go on and off mic, and with the equipment that we had to mix it originally, it was difficult  —   if not impossible  —   to fix those little balance problems . .. whereas in a digital setup, I was able to go track by track and fix volume discrepancies, so that all the players are audible all the time. And then you can really hear what’s going on in the musical texture.” Blakemore says that when he listens to the recordings after all these years, it takes him back to the time he spent in New York after the Pastorius concert. ”I had cassette tapes of the whole concert . .. and I had a Sony Walkman with a set of headphones, and I would walk around New York and just listen to this music and look at the city,” he says. ”This music is so New York  —   the cacophony and the rhythm, the dramatic counterpoint of the city  —   it’s great, great music, and it sounds as fresh to me as it did in 1982.” Web editor Rachel Horn contributed to this story."
"Back when Stefani McCoy was 17, she felt isolated and depressed. Her mother was raising her solo while her father battled drug addiction. One day, she decided she was done with going to school. ”No one could talk me out of it,” says McCoy, who soon ended up living out of her car. Eleven years later, she’s in the Peace Corps, trying to help dropouts in Namibia in a similar situation. As McCoy says, ”They’re me in African form.” McCoy is stationed in Rundu, on the northern border of the country, working with the local branch of the Community Skills Development Center (COSDEC). Its programs provide vocational training in areas such as plumbing and office administration for dropouts who want to enter the work force but lack the skills to succeed. There are number of reasons it’s so common for kids to leave school early in Namibia. COSDEC colleague Toive Pessa ticks off a few: ”There’s no support from their parents, their parents pass away, teenage pregnancy.” Plus, until 2016, secondary education cost money that many families didn’t have. (It’s now free.) Dr. Cynthy Haihambo, head of the department of Educational Psychology and Inclusive Education at the University of Namibia, says the other barrier is the grade 10 exam, which many students fail. ”That’s basically it for them,” she says. And they join a worldwide pool of some 70 million secondary school dropouts. That’s a figure that’s been dramatically reduced from just a few years ago but it is still ”a very big number,” says Jordan Naidoo, director of UNESCO’s Education for All. ”Just having that completion [of school] it makes a difference in terms of employability.” That was something McCoy realized not long after dropping out. So about a year later, she enrolled in night classes and got her diploma just before she turned 19. Determined to catch up, she raced through DeVry University in 2½ years, and immediately landed a management position at Enterprise   . As nice as it was to have a steady salary, McCoy kept pondering her next challenge. And then she remembered the Peace Corps recruiter she’d met a few years back. That’s how McCoy ended up in Namibia in May 2015, excited to use her skills to work with youth and promote economic development. When she toured COSDEC, the first thing she noticed was that it lacked a career services office. So she commandeered an extra room and got the project approved. ”I said this is going to turn into something great,” recalls McCoy, who set about offering mock interviews, job placement advice and   planning strategies. These sorts of lessons may be covered in Namibian secondary schools in ”life skills” classes, Haihambo explains. But the curriculum of these courses varies, and poorer students almost invariably get less instruction in how to prepare for jobs. Because there are no guidelines for this type of instruction, ”teachers do what they’re comfortable with or what they know,” she says. So perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that McCoy’s activities didn’t go exactly as expected. ”A lot of them didn’t know how to use a computer, move a mouse or type,” McCoy says. So she backed up and started with a basic computer skills class. Then, as she was describing what makes a bad interview or a good one, she was met with an odd reaction. ”All of them were looking at me like, ’You don’t understand my story,’” says McCoy, who now knows how different she seemed to them. She is an American who speaks English. She’s multiracial. ”To them, I’m not a traditional black person,” McCoy explains. So she talked about her path to the Peace Corps, and her life back in the U. S. ”In America, I’m as black as you are in Namibia,” McCoy told them. The message resonated, says Pessa, who is McCoy’s partner in the career services office. McCoy may use some unfamiliar terminology  —   ”We say CV, but she says resume,” Pessa notes  —   but her experience isn’t as foreign as it might appear on the surface. And particularly at a place like COSDEC, that helps her serve as a role model. ”They can see that anyone can drop out and become successful. You still have a chance to make it up,” Pessa adds. Achieving that success, McCoy explains, is contingent on learning how to behave in the working world. That includes breaking some bad habits, like the tendency in Namibia to never look another person in the eyes. What she’s learned is that kids here are taught not to make eye contact with adults. ”When a parent talks to you, you must look down,” McCoy says. This habit often becomes a reflex in all conversations. And that’s a major   she adds, when you’re talking to a potential boss instead of your dad. She repeatedly reminds her students: ”You can look at me.” Mumbling is another issue. McCoy’s method of dealing with that is to call out, ”I can’t hear you.” It becomes a rallying cry for the entire class, which really encourages students to speak up. This is particularly critical for the women, who tend to be much more reticent. ”Imagine growing up in a traditional home,” McCoy says. Women and girls stay inside the house, taking care of chores, while men and boys go out into the field, where they have more social interactions. So she tries to instill the lesson in her female students that ”your turn is any turn,” and when they have something to add, they should say it. ”Do you understand?” McCoy asks them in their native language of Rukwangali. McCoy has learned that humor can work wonders. When students are nervous during a mock interview, she tells them to imagine her naked. ”They all bust out laughing,” she says. Silly stuff helps them tackle some serious questions, like, in an interview, how do you explain to a potential employer what you did after dropping out. For many students, that time was spent at home, helping with their families. McCoy’s advice? ”They won’t focus too much on the gap if you’re able to articulate the experience you have.” There’s been no better experience for McCoy than watching her students use these strategies to help get jobs. She can’t take credit for their hard work, but she’s proud of the role she played. ”I helped them believe,” McCoy says. One student in particular stands out:    Haita Ester. In many ways, she’s typical  —   Ester completed secondary school up to grade 10 and is raising a    daughter. Before going to see McCoy and Pessa last year, Ester says, she wasn’t familiar with ”career development.” But she is no shrinking violet. ”The first time I met her, she came up to me and had all of these questions,” McCoy says. ”It’s refreshing to see a woman I don’t need to encourage to speak.” The answers gave Ester a lot to ponder as she completed her office administration certification. She started considering how to conduct herself in interviews, how to behave in a professional setting, how to create   career plans. ”It just really helped me put my thoughts together on how to be more successful and focused on my future,” explains Ester, who now has a government position as a receptionist. It’s a good job, but Ester continues to take classes on the side. ”I will still go for a diploma,” she says. Vicky Hallett is a freelance writer in Florence, Italy. She was previously a reporter and fitness columnist for The Washington Post."
"Judith Leiber’s handbags are meant for wowing  —   not schlepping. They’re shaped like penguins, fruits, zebras, streetcars and firecrackers. First ladies and movie stars have carried them, and now they’re the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in Manhattan. ”I wanted to make something that was more interesting and more special than what other people made,” explains Leiber, now 96. But that also meant they weren’t cheap. ”I wanted to make the most expensive bags that anybody could make,” she adds. ”That’s what I like to do.” Leiber initially planned to make her fortune in cosmetics. Her family sent her to college in London to study chemistry, but World War II broke out and she returned to her native Hungary. Completing her education was no longer an option and the Jewish teenager became apprenticed to a handbag company  —   rising to master craftswoman. But as the war escalated, the business closed.   Her family was moved from their home, her father sent to a camp, and Judith, her sister and mother were forced to live in the ghetto. They all survived the Holocaust and Judith met Gus Leiber, an American soldier, and moved with him to New York in 1946. There, she worked in the American handbag industry and, at her artist husband’s insistence, founded her own company in 1963.  ”Every night she would cut patterns,” Gus Leiber says. ”She was simply a genius with a knife. She worked night and day  —   it was remarkable.” Gus Leiber taught art by day and, in his spare time, made deliveries and did whatever else his wife’s fledgling company needed. After an iffy line of green handbags that weren’t so popular, the company grew rapidly, from four employees to 200. All told, in her   career, Leiber designed 3, 500 bags. There are about half that many in the museum next to her house. Collections manager Ann Stewart says Leiber’s ideas could come from anywhere  —   paintings she’d seen, a piece of pottery, photographs, nature, even grocery produce. Leiber’s food series  —   sparkly fruits and veggies  —   is ”really fun,” Stewart says. The blood red tomato looks tempting enough to eat. The eggplant is a perfect specimen. And the bunch of asparagus? That was a favorite for sculptor Larry Kallenberg. It was his job to make many of the   wax molds used to cast Leiber’s bags. ”This asparagus has always been the favorite thing I ever made for her,” Kallenberg says. ”Lions, peacocks, ah, every day, but an asparagus pocketbook? How crazy is that? And how wonderful that she would think of it.” Leiber called him her buddy boy. ”I was her hands,” he said. ”They were all her ideas what I did was to modify somewhat, every once in a while I’d come up with a design. But basically everything was run by her. . .. I just did what she told me to do  —   magnificently  —   but they were all Judith Leiber.” Now, nearly 100 of them are in New York’s Museum of Art and Design, in the first major museum exhibition of her work in more than 20 years. Show curator Samantha De Tillio says no woman would have carried an asparagus on her arm before Leiber came along. ”She, I think, introduced the idea that handbags could be whimsical and fun and that kind of humor could be appropriate for the red carpet or for a First Lady,” De Tillio explains. ”So I think she created the environment where women wanted something more, or different  —   and then filled it very successfully.” Leiber is now retired. She likes to sit in a comfy chair in her spacious,     Long Island home and read murder mysteries.  ”I was very happy with all the bags I made,” she says. ”I made all kinds of things, some of them were very classic, some of them were kind of crazy, but we did all kinds of things that I thought were very good.” Plenty of others agreed  —   and some spent several thousands of dollars to own one of her works of art. They’ve become not just collector’s items, but family heirlooms. In homage, many visitors arrive at the New York exhibit with Leiber bags on their arms. Radio editor Tom Cole and Web producer Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"It’s planting time in America. Farmers are spending long days on their tractors, pulling massive planters across millions of acres of farmland, dropping corn and soybean seeds into the ground. Most of those seeds have been coated with pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics for short. And despite attempts by pesticide makers to reduce this, some of that coating is getting rubbed off the seeds and blown into the air. That dust is settling on the ground, on ponds, and on vegetation nearby. Honeybees and wild bees, looking for food, will encounter traces of the pesticides, and some will be harmed. They may become disoriented and bring less food back to their colony. Many may die. Several years ago, Christian Krupke, an insect specialist at Purdue University in Indiana, became one of the first researchers to discover that rogue dust was wiping out bee colonies. At first, Art Schaafsma, an entomologist at the University of Guelph, in Canada, didn’t believe it was true. ”Unfortunately  —   myself included  —   in the early days there was a lot of skepticism,” Schaafsma says. He regrets that reaction now. ”We do have a problem, and we’ve got to fix it,” he tells me. There are a lot of things that Krupke and Schaafsma disagree about when it comes to neonicotinoids. Krupke believes  —   while Schaafsma does not  —   that bees may also be harmed by exposure to smaller quantities of neonicotinoids that show up in the leaves and pollen of plants grown from coated seeds, or even in wildflowers that grow in or near fields where the crops are planted. They do agree that the dust is a problem. They just have different ideas about how to fix it. Schaafsma’s solution is sitting in a garage on the Ridgetown Campus of the University of Guelph. It’s a shiny new piece of farm equipment, a seed planter that Schaafsma has taken apart and  . Like most modern planters, it uses air pressure to move the seeds from a storage bin through tubes and into the soil. Schaafsma points to the end of one pipe. ”This is the air intake, OK? See the problem already? That pipe is close to the ground. When a tractor pulls this planter across a field, dust will get sucked into this opening, along with air. Inside the planting mechanism, ”the air is rushing past that seed, it’s laden with dirt, and it’s acting like a sandblaster,” Schaafsma says. That dirt grinds a little bit of the neonicotinoid coating from the seed, and then carries the pesticide dust with it as it exhausts from the planter, straight up into the air. That’s normally how the planter works. But Schaafsma has made some changes on this one, outfitting it with special dust traps, similar to   vacuum cleaner filters. ”We’re probably filtering 99 percent of what comes out of the exhaust,” he says. Schaafsma thinks that this equipment, if installed on all seed planters, would eliminate most of the risk to bees from   seeds.  Schaafsma has been testing his theory by setting up honeybee hives near corn fields that were planted using his   equipment, monitoring these hives and measuring their honey production. ”We just want to demonstrate that it can be done  —   that bees and corn can ” he says. Schaafsma wants   because he wants farmers to be able to use   seed. ”I see them as valuable tools, which should be handled with care,” he says. This, however, is where Schaafsma and Christian Krupke part ways. Krupke is not convinced that farmers are getting much benefit  —   if any  —   from the seed coatings. In most cases, Krupke says, the pesticides don’t appear to be worth the money that farmers are spending. So his solution is even simpler: Stop using them so much. At the very least, he says, seed companies should give farmers the option of planting seeds without neonicotinoids on them. Right now, it’s often difficult to find such untreated seeds. This month, Krupke and some colleagues published two scientific papers with evidence to support his case. The first study, conducted by researchers at seven Midwestern universities, concluded that   soybean seeds performed no better than untreated seeds in fending off aphids, one of the major pests that the seed treatments are supposed to control. According to the study, farmers would be better off leaving their seeds untreated, monitoring their fields, and resorting to conventional spraying of pesticides when the aphids attacked. In another study, Krupke found that the seed treatments weren’t of much benefit to corn yields, either. In some fields,   seed performed better, in other fields it did worse. Combining the results from all the sites, the average yield from the treated seed was about 2 percent higher, but Krupke says that difference is not statistically or economically significant  —   certainly not the kind of clear effect that would justify its use on nearly all the corn in the country. Companies that sell seeds and neonicotinoid pesticides have attacked similar studies in the past, arguing that farmers clearly do see benefits from the seed treatments, because they’re happy to pay for them. Other researchers, including Schaafsma, have reported that treated seed has produced higher yields, with the increase ranging from 1. 5 to 5 percent. Krupke says he’d like to do more extensive studies comparing treated and untreated seed, but companies that control the seed now are refusing to provide samples for him to use. Krupke says that there’s growing interest among farmers in plant seeds that are not treated with neonicotinoids  —   if only they could find such seeds. Schaafsma, for his part, thinks it will be easier to stop dust pollution from seed planters than to convince farmers not to use   seeds. This is something that farmers clearly would like to do, he says, and it’s technically feasible. Bayer CropScience, the big chemical company that sells most of the neonic seed coatings, has developed its own version of a dust trap that could be installed on planters. The problem is, none of the big   companies are offering the dust traps for sale. These companies that make planting equipment, such as Case, Kinze, and John Deere, have installed shields that direct the   exhaust down toward the ground, rather than into the air, but Schaafsma says that’s not good enough. ”The only people who don’t recognize [the problem] well enough yet are the equipment manufacturers,” he says."
"Nearly every weekend since Inauguration Day, President Trump has flown from Washington to one of his homes outside the capital. Most often he has stayed at    his private club in Palm Beach, Fla. In April, he hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping there for a summit meeting, and in February he invited Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe down for a round of golf. Trump has also overnighted at his golf club in Bedminster, N. J. All the travel means a lot of work for the U. S. Secret Service, the legendary agency that protects presidents and their families. ”It is hard enough when the president and his wife and children all live in the White House together and take an occasional trip to Camp David,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler,  . Y. ”But what we have seen from this administration is unprecedented.” Nadler spoke Wednesday night during a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, which approved by voice vote a bipartisan measure that removes a $200, 000 cap on how much money the Secret Service can spend to protect the president at his weekend homes  —   a figure fully divorced from reality. The president’s travels  —   as well as his   adult children who also have a Secret Service detail  —   are taking a toll on the men and women who protect the Trump family. Former agent Jonathan Wackrow says the Secret Service ”is currently operating at lower numbers than they have in modern times. That combined with just the travel schedule and the need to secure multiple locations that the president resides puts a manpower strain on the Secret Service week after week.” There are now some 3, 200 special agents and another 1, 300 uniformed officers in the Secret Service. That’s down from its peak at the start of the Obama administration, due to congressional budget caps. Wackrow, who is now executive director of RANE, a   consultancy, says not only are agents spread thin, they’re under a lot of personal stress. In fact, in the most recent survey of workplace satisfaction at 305 federal subagencies, the Secret Service placed dead last. Wackrow says that’s not surprising. ”Numerous times you have agents that may be working a midnight shift in Bedminster and then have to travel to Washington, D. C. or on to another assignment.” Wackrow says where normally the agents would have a day or two off, now, ”they’re just rolling from one assignment to the next. It just shows you their dedication to the mission.” The House Judiciary Committee’s bill would also require that the director of the Secret Service be confirmed by the Senate, which is not now the case. That’s intended to serve as an additional check on the agency, which has had some   incidents of agents behaving badly. The Trump administration’s budget does boost funding for the Secret Service, including money for more agents and officers. There’s also $25. 7 million allocated for security related expenses at Trump Tower, where first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron continue to live. Some of that money, $6. 3 million, is for rent and utilities the Secret Service would pay Trump."
"Sherpas are extraordinary human beings. In the high peaks of the Himalayas, members of the Nepalese ethnic group are famous for their   records, ascents of routes that no one has ascended before, expert guiding and other skills. What makes Sherpas so good at climbing into the wispy atmosphere of the world’s tallest mountains? They may be better at harnessing oxygen than the rest of us, suggests a new study, which also offers insights that could eventually help ordinary people whose tissues become deprived of oxygen because of medical conditions. ”You don’t need to spend very long in that part of world to see that the people living there, particularly the Sherpas, perform extremely well at altitude  —   a lot better than we do,” says Andrew Murray, a physiologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and one of the study’s authors. ”There’s certainly something really remarkable about their ability.” The study adds to evidence that their genes play a role. The Sherpas and other ethnic groups have lived on the high plateau of the Himalayas at an average altitude of more than 14, 700 feet going back at least 6, 000 years. But life at such high altitudes remains inhospitable for most of us. People from low altitudes who travel or move to higher elevations face multiple risks: with access to limited oxygen above 8, 000 feet or so, symptoms often include headaches, low appetite and trouble sleeping. Severe cases of mountain sickness can cause swelling in the brain, a condition called High Altitude Cerebral Edema, or fluid in the lungs, called High Altitude Pulmonary Edema. Both conditions can quickly become deadly. Pregnant women also suffer higher rates of miscarriage and other complications because of higher blood pressure at altitude  —   which illustrates the potential for evolution to favor genes that help mountain people cope with oxygen deprivation. So how do the Sherpas do it? Over thousands of years, the bodies of   dwellers have developed ways to make the most of oxygen, Murray says. When most of us climb, a hormone in our bodies called erythropoietin (EPO) triggers the production of more red blood cells, which can then carry more oxygen to our muscles. But the extra cells also thicken our blood, which puts extra stress on the heart to pump it and can cause symptoms of altitude sickness. Sherpas increase their red blood cell count at altitude, too, but not nearly as much as people from lower down do. To better understand how Sherpas manage to perform so well, even without help from a surge in extra   red blood cells, Murray and colleagues studied a group of 15 Sherpas and 10 lowlanders on an expedition to Everest Base Camp in 2013. None of the participants were allowed to climb to extreme altitudes in the weeks leading up to the study, which began with a flight from either London or Kathmandu to Lukla, Nepal, at nearly 9, 200 feet. All of the participants were offered the same food as they trekked for 10 days to Everest Base Camp at nearly 17, 400 feet. Before, during and after the trek, the researchers took blood samples as well as   chunks of muscle from everyone. Interesting differences showed up in the muscle cells of the two groups, the team reported this past week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the muscles of the Sherpas, the study found, the cells’ mitochondria (the   parts) converted more oxygen into energy. ”The Sherpas’ mitochondria were less leaky and therefore more efficient than the Westerners’ mitochondria,” Murray says. ”They were better at using oxygen.” Like a small,   car that has a smaller gas tank than a   4x4, he says, the Sherpas’ muscles are capable of getting more mileage out of less total oxygen. The Sherpas were also able to produce more energy without any oxygen at all, a process called anaerobic metabolism. Together, the findings help connect the dots from previous research that has revealed intriguing mutations in the DNA of Sherpas, says Tatum Simonson, who studies the genetics and physiology of high altitude adaptations at the University of California, San Diego. For a 2010 study, she and colleagues scanned the genomes of Tibetan people living at high altitudes and found a handful of genes with distinct mutations that appeared to be related to oxygen metabolism and adapted to a   environment. By probing deeper into the potential role of one of those genes (which also appears in people of Ethiopian ancestry who live at high altitude) Murray’s group has built off her work ”and taken it many steps further,” Simonson says. ”I think this is one of the first studies that has actually done that. I was so excited to see this paper.” The study shows that the metabolisms of lowlanders and Sherpas work in similar ways at low altitudes, suggesting that gene differences between Sherpas and lowlanders kick in at high altitudes, she adds. ”But then, when you push the system by exposing them to low oxygen, you start to see differences between populations.” Because Sherpas have adapted to high altitudes over hundreds of generations, Simonson says, they offer a window into the potential of the human body to deal with oxygen deprivation. The same gene variations that help Sherpas cope with a meager oxygen supply also show up occasionally in the general population, Simonson says. So studies like this one might eventually help explain why some people deal better with hypoxia, or low oxygen levels in their tissues, as a result of both high altitudes and medical conditions like heart disease, respiratory disease and cancer. In hospitals, as many as 25 percent of people with hypoxia die, Murray says, and those who survive don’t recover their previous quality of life. Treatment has traditionally focused on increasing oxygen levels however possible, but that strategy often doesn’t work and may even cause harm. Perhaps it would work better to develop drug treatments that would enable patients to mimic what the Sherpas are doing, Murray says  —   use the oxygen they do have access to more efficiently. ”Instead of trying to get their oxygen levels up and potentially damage patients, is there something we can do to make them more tolerant to that stress?” he asks. ”Hopefully, there will be huge medical implications.” Emily Sohn is a freelance journalist in Minneapolis who writes regularly about health and science for Nature, the Washington Post, bioGraphic, Hakai and others. More at www. tidepoolsinc. com. On Twitter: @tidepoolsinc"
"Lim   lives in a tiny apartment in a bustling student neighborhood of South Korea’s capital, Seoul. The apartment is just 30 sq. ft.  —   basically a   closet with a toilet, shower and shared kitchen  —   for $400 a month. ”It’s uncomfortable, because when I lay down my legs hit the back wall,” explains Lim, 25. She has to be quiet because the walls are thin. Lim’s neighbors are all young people like her, studying 15 hours a day for job entrance exams. Lim graduated at the top of her high school class. She wants to be an accountant. So for now, her parents support her on a path that’s typical for young South Koreans: Study for months or years to pass exams for jobs in government, or in big   Korean conglomerates like Samsung, LG and Hyundai. ”All these tests, and memorizing the right answers,” says Lim, ”I sometimes wonder if this is really the only way to succeed.” South Korea’s economy has slowed, and it appears to have hurt young people the most. Some 11. 3 percent of youth aged 15 to 29 are out of work. That’s nearly three times the overall jobless rate. A new liberal president, Moon   won office earlier this month, with huge support from young voters. Now one of his first tasks  —   on top of dealing with   North Korea  —   is to improve the economic prospects for young South Koreans. Big conglomerates, or chaebols, run South Korea’s economy. Sales revenue from the top five chaebols amounted to 58 percent of South Korea’s GDP in 2015. And it’s not only cellphones and cars. In Korea, there’s a Samsung art gallery and a Samsung amusement park. You can buy life insurance from Samsung. In the case of Hyundai, the big Korean carmaker, the company also runs a hospital in Seoul. LG, another electronics giant, also has a Korean cosmetics line  —   and dozens of other businesses and subsidiaries. ”They’re just giant conglomerates that control so much of the economy on a scale just not seen in a lot of the world,” says Geoffrey Cain, who trained as an anthropologist and is writing a book about Samsung. Cain says South Korea’s conglomerates are so pervasive, they squeeze out smaller businesses. ”They can basically tell a small business to supply them a part and just pay them whatever they want, and then pay them whenever they want, and give them a terrible contract,” he says. Small businesses struggle to grow. ”So that’s what creates so few job opportunities,” Cain says. For many Korean youth, it’s the dream of a    with a big conglomerate  —   or nothing at all. As the economy slows, there aren’t enough jobs for all the college graduates here. So many turn to   as competition rises. Like Lim in her tiny apartment, many Koreans study for years. Hyundai requires a   exam, just to get your foot in the door. Samsung has its own version of the SAT. President Moon won office May 9 in part on a promise to ease youth unemployment by creating more public sector jobs. But some economists say that’s only a   fix. ”Job creation should be [by] business, not the government,” says Kim   an economist and professor at Seoul’s Hanyang University. ”In the long term, all the government should do is make an environment in which companies can invest more.” Kim says the new president should help small businesses, boost entrepreneurship, and reform the conglomerates. On the campaign trail, Moon promised to do just that. But the conglomerates remain the backbone of the Korean economy. It’s unclear whether he really has the will or ability to change them. In the test prep section of a big Seoul bookstore, young people sit on the floor, pouring over test materials on a Saturday morning. ”As the economy goes bad, there aren’t many good jobs, and the competition is fierce,” says Baek  . He’s 28 and still unemployed, after studying for two years for a public administration exam. He failed twice, and is browsing for other tests he might take. He says young Koreans are frustrated. ”Of course they don’t want to spend their time being stuck in a tiny room studying books for exams,” he says. ”But there aren’t any alternatives.” The President Moon’s success may be measured not only in how he deals with North Korea, but in the alternatives he offers some of his youngest voters."
"Receiving a diagnosis in 2017  —   at least one made at a medical center outfitted with the latest clinical gadgetry  —   might include a scan that divides your body into a bread loaf of   digital slices. Your DNA might be fed through a gene sequencer that spits out your mortal code in a matter of hours. Even your smartphone might soon be used to uncover health problems. Yet nearly 130 years since its inception  —   after decades of science has mapped out our neuronal pathways  —   a simple knob of rubber with a metal handle remains one of medicine’s most essential tools. I’m referring to the cheap, portable,    reflex hammer. This unassuming device can be invaluable in diagnosing nervous and muscular disorders, and in determining whether a patient’s pathology lies in the brain or elsewhere in the body. It can also help curtail health care spending by preventing unnecessary, often expensive testing. Yet like so many major medical and scientific discoveries, the reflex hammer has humble origins, in this case: the basement of a Viennese hotel. The inn was run by the father of Leopold Auenbrugger, an 18th century doctor who is considered to be among the founders of modern medicine. To gauge how much wine was left for customers, hotel employees would thump casks with their hands and listen for a dull thud or hollow tympany. Auenbrugger realized that the same technique  —   now called ”percussing”  —   could be applied to the human torso to, say, determine how much fluid had built up around a diseased heart. He wrote as much in his 1761 paper ”New invention to detect diseases hidden deep within the chest.” Relflex hammer warfare, Thought to be more accurate than the human hand, it wasn’t long before percussion hammers were being designed to more precisely diagnose disease. Competition ensued. Scottish physician Sir David Barry’s model, released in the 1820s, was the first. German doctor Max A. Wintrich’s came shortly after and was more popular, but was not without its critics: ”[Wintrich’s hammer] is inconvenient to hold, it is rigid . .. it required education to use it, and even then it does not fulfill its purposes,” a rival inventor commented. As neurologist Dr. Douglas J. Lanksa wrote in a 1989 paper   on the many types of reflex hammers, ”Some were   or   others resembled battle axes, tomahawks, or even magic wands.” He adds that no material was off limits: wood, ebony, whale bone, brass, lead, even ”  worsted” (a type of yarn). As percussion hammer warfare waged on, doctors and scientists were also beginning to understand the concept of reflexes, or involuntary,   responses to stimuli that occur before any sensory information reaches the brain. Muscular jerks. Blinking. Sneezing. Gagging. All of these are automatic feedback loops between sensory and motor neurons that help us navigate our environment and protect us from danger. In 1875, German neurologists Drs. Heinrich Erb and Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal were among the first to realize that eliciting a reflex by briskly tapping the tendons of major muscles might be useful. They felt the knee jerk  —   or ” ” reflex  —   in particular could help assess nerve function. Hammers specifically suited to test reflexes were soon developed, the first of which had the now classic shape we’re accustomed to  —   a thin metal handle with a triangular rubber head. Designed by American physician John Madison Taylor in Philadelphia in 1888  —   and modified ever since by many  —   the simple device was heavy enough to elicit reflexes, and had round edges to ease impact. An entry level model runs just $2. 25 on Amazon. The Krauss hammer, developed by   physician William Christopher Krauss, was designed around the same time. It had two rounded heads: a large one for knees and a smaller one for biceps. Dr. Ernst L. O. Trömner’s did too, but it also tapered to a thin end to assess skin reflexes. There were also the Queen Square hammer, the Babinski hammer, the Buck hammer and the Berliner hammer. The Stookey hammer flaunted a camel hair brush to get a better sense of touch sensation. The list goes on. Past to present, Daniella C. Sisniega is a third year medical student at the Boston University School of Medicine. Last month at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting, she presented a poster explicating the reflex hammer’s past. ”I’m fascinated by how the reflex hammer started out as a percussion hammer, but was [then] adapted to elicit reflexes and has been in every neurologist’s tool box ever since,” she told NPR. ”I also did not know that the little rubber triangle was the first reflex hammer. I feel like I owe it an apology!” Sisniega jokes about the lackluster quality of the inexpensive Taylors. ”The little tomahawk is included in the kit everyone receives when they enter medical school,” she recalls. ”The rubber is cheap and very light, while the other hammers are heavier on the head so that you can use the ’swing’ of the hammer as opposed to the strength of the strike to test the reflex.” While attending the AAN conference myself, I asked multiple sclerosis expert Dr. Stephen Krieger about the role of the reflex hammer in modern medical diagnosis. ”We could argue about the nuances of the hammer  —   the Queens Square, the Tomahawk, plastic handle, metal handle, weighted, flexible or rigid  —   but the hammer itself is always in the hand. Reflexes tell the story of neurologic diseases of all sorts,” he says. Krieger explains how disorders of the brain, like a stroke or brain tumor, result in hyperactive reflexes, while conditions affecting muscles and peripheral nerves usually result in reduced or   reflexes. Reduced reflexes are, for example, a common symptom of back pain due to degenerative disk disease. Dr. Andrew Wilner, an assistant professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic, recounted the story of one of his patients, who had back pain, weakness and numbness of the legs. Wilner was leaning toward a diagnosis of either   Syndrome (GBS)  —   an autoimmune disorder of peripheral nerves  —   or a myelopathy, an injury of some kind to the spinal cord. Both conditions can lead to medical emergencies, but each requires drastically different treatment. ”The reflex hammer was arguably our most important tool in narrowing down the differential diagnosis,” he says. ”Had we found diminished or absent deep tendon reflexes, GBS would have been more likely. As it turned out, the patient had brisk pathological knee jerks, pointing to a lesion in the brain or spinal cord.” Based on these findings, Wilner ordered an imaging study of the patient’s spinal cord, where a lesion was found  —   as opposed to pursuing the costly tests involved in a GBS diagnosis. Wilner feels that the simple art of interviewing and examining a patient can get overshadowed by the myriad new diagnostic technologies. When it comes to clinical tools, he feels, sometimes basic is better. ”Technology is glorious,” admits Krieger, ”and [it] will teach us things about patients that we could never have known or imagined. But the simple, elegant, inexpensive almost plebeian swing of the reflex hammer has a   ratio that I think no advanced technology will likely ever match.” Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired and Scientific American, and on The Atlantic. com. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. He’s also on Twitter: @BretStetka"
"Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. Today the Sugars hear from two women, each of whom has cut a parent from her life. In the first situation, a    writes about a father who left her mother for another woman. She calls him ”emotionally abusive and toxic” and seems to be content with her decision to cease communication with him. A second writer describes her mother as manipulative and having ”narcissistic personality disorder, alcoholism and some undiagnosed bipolar madness.” She knows she has to keep her mother away, but, she asks, ”How can I live without her? How do I move out of a constant state of guilt?” Dear Sugars, I’m a    from Canada. I’ve been backpacking around the States on my own for more than a year. I left home after my dad left my mom for a woman closer in age to me than him. He had been cheating on my mom for months and left us all. My mom is kind and sweet, and even though I believe they were probably not meant to be together forever, there was nothing visibly terribly wrong with their marriage.  One day my dad just left. My mom was heartbroken and shocked. My dad spent months after this manipulating my mom, my sister and I to bend to his will. He tried to get full custody of me and my sister and tried to make us meet his girlfriend and move in with him. He completely disregarded my feelings and also my sister’s. His obliviousness to human emotion sickens me. I could go on about the things he did, but I’ll just jump to the conclusion: I cut him out of my life because he is emotionally abusive and toxic. The last thing I need in my life is another   white male thinking he can tell be what to do and who to be  —   thinking he can use me against my mother. The only thing I could do to free myself from the incredible weight he pushes upon me every day was to stop contact with him for a while. I did it myself, so that I could feel OK  —   so that my life wouldn’t be bogged down by his negative impact on my  . I haven’t spoken to him for more than a year, though he recently emailed me. I was shocked to read that he wrote to you, Cheryl Strayed, my favorite author, about his relationship with me. He said there is a podcast about it  —   all that went through my mind was, ”My dad is in correspondence with Cheryl Strayed about me? !” I could barely listen to the podcast. It disgusted me to listen to how, in his letter, my dad acts like he’s so perfect and innocent and that he wasn’t cheating and that his relationship with my mother was bad. You just need to know, Cheryl, I’m a huge fan of what you did. You’re human and you admit to your mistakes. My dad doesn’t do this. He erases all the bad parts and then contacts his daughter’s favorite author, acting like I’m the bad one for cutting him out of my life. I did what I needed to do. My mom, my sister and I have a tighter bond than ever. My dad and his    girlfriend are expecting a child soon. He’s moving on and soon he won’t have time for me or my sister. I’m free and I don’t need my father right now. I guess I just wanted you to know that. Sometimes it’s better for kids to not talk to their parents, and sometimes fathers can send extremely deceiving emails to their daughter’s favorite authors just to get under some skin. Sugar, how does a woman free herself from the heavy weight of the patriarchy when her father is a misogynist? Oh wait, I already know the answer. Go to the woods, go away from society, go hiking. The trees will heal you. Signed, Daughter, Steve Almond: That’s a lot of pain and anger in a very short space. One thing that is curious about this letter is, the daughter says that we answered her dad’s letter in our parental alienation episode, but some of the ways that she describes her family structure in this letter don’t match the letter from the father in question. We wrote to her, and she clarified that her father hadn’t written the exact letter that we responded to, but she related so deeply to it that she felt compelled to write us this letter. It’s such a powerful indication of how people can be struggling with completely different lives, but the parallels are so eerie that she thought, my dad wrote to my favorite author. Cheryl Strayed: This letter really stopped my heart. I feel an enormous amount of sympathy for Daughter. I am estranged from my father, and I chose to do that for some of the same reasons Daughter is talking about now. He’s toxic. But one of the most healing parts of the story for me has been acknowledging that he has a right to his version of events. He feels betrayed by me. If you read a letter from my father about our relationship, he would say, ”Her mother turned her against me.” Even though that’s not true, it’s what he believes. I’ve had to learn in my own heart to make room for his right to tell his story. That’s what I wish for you, Daughter, and for your father  —   that you both can find a way, whether it’s in relationship with each other or not, to have a sense of peace and harmony and forgiveness about what is past. I think it’s too fresh to do that now but, speaking many years out from this, I can say that it’s possible. Dear Sugars, I am estranged from my mother. She is beautiful, wickedly funny, an accomplished artist and the mother of two children  —   neither of whom speak to her. She struggles with a toxic combination of narcissistic personality disorder, alcoholism and some undiagnosed bipolar madness. My estrangement from her has come in phases. After a crazy night when she tried to strangle me when I was in my early teens, I did not speak to her for almost five years. I missed her. I had taken care of her for so many years. I was her therapist and trusted friend. I was never her daughter. Eventually, I caved to these feelings and I   contact with her. At this time, I was also actively seeking therapy and continue to. I tried to establish boundaries. I thought that I could manage her by making rules: only see her in public, always have a getaway car. But a person like this is  . She would manipulate me into staying the night at her house, or she’d come to my place and refuse to leave. I broke it off again in my early 20s for another stretch of years, but again it tortured me. I felt her pain. I felt her aloneness. I waited for an apology from her. I waited for her to come and find me and take it all back. It never came. She projected onto me and told me I was her abuser. She sent me vicious emails. I caved again, my heart swollen with blame. I was happy to relieve both of us of the silent agony we’d both been suffering. But she was always horribly, tragically and diagnostically the same. Our estrangements left me feeling raw, paranoid and sick with guilt. I’d be walking down the street and I would see her in everyone. I felt her eyes on me everywhere. The guilt chewed on me like a rat. I dreamed of her constantly. I am now approaching 30. I have an incredible relationship, and friendships and a family that isn’t sick with narcissism. This has taken me unimaginable work and time, Sugars. I have had my fair share of relationships with alcoholics,   anxiety. Most of the time when I tell people of my estrangement, especially those who have lost a parent early, they are stunned. I’m judged for being too hard on her and for taking her for granted. People who lost their moms young tell me what they wouldn’t give to have their mother still here. I am told, ”You will regret this.”  But death is different than estrangement. Death is permanent, this is chosen permanence.   freedom. Occasionally, I meet someone who is also experiencing the loss of a parent by choice and estrangement. We are a small, shameful group of people.  Subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio:RSSApple PodcastsStitcher, My mother and I are now estranged again. This time I am resolving permanence. I miss her terribly. I am grieving her. But I’m trying to live a life that doesn’t include abuse, I’m trying to approach this in black and white. I want to call her and have it all be different. Can I make it different? I think about her walking the earth, the woman that gave birth to me, and I am irrevocably heartbroken. How can I get beyond the loss of choosing to leave my mother?  My question used to be: Should I have contact with my mother? But I know that answer now. I should not. But my question to you is: How can I live without her? How do I move out of a constant state of guilt? This choice feels wrong in my bones, but it is absolutely the right decision in reality. How can I live the rest of my life without my mother, who is living in the same zip code? Signed, Motherless By Choice, Cheryl: Motherless by Choice, the first piece of grieving this loss is to forgive yourself. It’s a big deal to permanently cut off an essential person in your life. But you’re not doing it to be cruel  —   you’re doing it for reasons that run deep and are never going to change. The line in this letter that hurt me the most was, ”Can I make it different?” because that tells me that, even though you know you can’t, there’s still a tiny piece of you that thinks, ”but maybe.” Until you can teach yourself that it won’t be different, you won’t ever truly accept this reality and let your mother go. I recommend that you begin there, and weed out the judgment you have absorbed from the culture. There are points we reach with our parents where there is no going back, and you need to end a relationship permanently so you can continue forward with greater strength, clarity and light. Find people who support you and a therapist who can talk to you honestly and openly about how to recover from such a profound and primal loss. Steve: Motherless by Choice, you tried to heal your mother into being someone who would take care of you. That leaves you unable to rid yourself of the guilt, but also of the dream that if you can just be loving and empathic enough, you will be able to restore the good parts of your mother that exist between the shards of dysfunction and abuse. You have to get free of that, but that doesn’t mean you have to abandon the parts of your mother that were beautiful and illuminating. Cheryl: For me, the process of estranging myself from my father was ongoing  —   until the final one, about 10 years ago. When that happened, I knew it was the final one, because I wasn’t in conflict anymore. I had made a decision, I felt peace and I had an expansive sense of goodwill towards my father. Steve: Daughter and Motherless by Choice, I can see both of you locked into the dynamics of afflictive love. The process of estrangement is about not letting that pattern continue and about finding a way to manage the crushing disappointment of having a parent who is unable, in one way or another, to live up to what you deeply desire and what you deserve. Cheryl: And forgiving yourself for the time you’ve stayed locked in it, too. This is part of you learning how to make good choices for yourself. If that choice is letting go, you are on the journey of discovering that. I also want to say, Motherless by Choice, you got the mother you got. You ask us, ”How can I live without her?” What you do is what you always do when things feel impossible: you just keep going. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear about troubled relationships with parents. Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail. com and it may be answered on a future episode. You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app."
"This week’s physical assault by Montana’s new GOP Congressman, Greg Gianforte against The Guardian reporter, Ben Jacobs  —   who was asking a question about the budget  —   is the latest example of hostility toward journalists. But, unlike those others, which only caused tiny blips on the radar of average media consumers, the Jacobs body slam appears to have hurled the American public into a new realm of incivility. The   violent incident  —   that went viral instantly  —   has people wondering if an invisible line has been crossed. Reaction in the social media world, from all sides, raised three questions. The first: How did we get here? It was just a matter of seconds after audio of the altercation made it onto the Internet that people began blaming reality TV and the anonymity of the Internet itself as the main culprits behind the erosion of civic discourse. But, for those who were appalled by Gianforte’s overreaction to a straight forward question, the lion’s share of the blame was placed on President Trump’s shoulders for deliberately stoking animosity against the press. This comes at a time when Trump supporters cheer gleefully whenever the president points to reporters at his rallies and calls them ”the enemy of the people” and White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon refers to the press as the ”opposition party.” And, just two days after the   incident, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott held up a   target sheet and joked to a TV news crew and a group of photographers and journalists gathered around him, ”I’m gonna carry this around in case I see any reporters.” But, for those who study the influence and impact of rhetoric on the political sphere, a better explanation for how we find ourselves here is that the animosity in the political divide has been fomenting for a very long time. Deborah Tannen traces the origins of this particular strain of hostility back more than two decades. She wrote about it in her book, The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words. ”I was making the point then that we are more and more approaching everything in an adversarial spirit,” she told NPR. That’s when we started to conceive of ideas as ”warring camps.” That was when widespread use of the war metaphor began. ”Think of the ’war on cancer . .. war on drugs,’ ” she recalled. Her approach is one of a linguistics professor and she argues that the use of the word ”war” in this context planted a seed that’s in full bloom now: that there’s no middle ground and everything is a battlefield. A familiar sentiment was expressed by voters after the 2016 election. The second big question: Where’s the ref in all of this?  In the political arena the referee never seems to step forward, although Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan came close this week when he called on Gianforte to apologize. ”There’s never a call for physical altercations,” Ryan said in a news conference. ”There is no time where a physical altercation should occur with the press or just between human beings. That is wrong and should not have happened. Should the gentleman apologize? Yeah, I think he should apologize.” But Ryan was roundly criticized for clarifying that neither he nor Congress could impose any sanctions on Gianforte, should he win. And there are no tangible repercussions for the Montana congressman now that he has won the special election. Still, nonpolitical organizations have attempted to inject a degree of comity in political races. In 2000, the Interfaith Alliance, which is made up of a group religious leaders of different faiths, created the Covenant of Civility. They got all five of the presidential candidates to sign on  —   Gov. George W. Bush, Vice President Al Gore, Sen. John McCain, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen. Bill Bradley. Rabbi Jack Moline, who is today president of the Interfaith Alliance, explained that it felt imperative to come up with this type of framework  —   a code of conduct  —   because the rancor of President Clinton’s impeachment trial still hung over the campaign. Which made what happened all the more sad for Moline. Rather than elevate discourse, it triggered a widespread ”gotcha” attitude in which each side was quick to rat out anyone who was perceived to have committed a transgression. ”Once it became public, we started getting calls from all over the country,” Moline said. ”People were asking us to enforce, what people consider to be violations . .. and they demanded that Interfaith Alliance step in and call these people out publicly.” In the end, the Alliance was inundated with complaints. They became overwhelmed and, Moline said, had to reluctantly admit that ultimately, it’s an individual choice whether or not to wade into toxic territory. It wasn’t their place to be the nation’s political hall monitor. The final outcry: What good is your ”sorry”?  Gianforte won the election over his Democrat challenger Rob Quist by about 6 points. The apology to Jacobs came wrapped up in his victory speech. ”When you make a mistake,” Gianforte said to his supporters, ”you have to own up to it. That’s the Montana way.” ”Last night I made a mistake,” he added, before being interrupted by jeers and snickering from the crowd. ”I took an action that I can’t take back and I’m not proud of what happened.” Overall, it covered a lot of bases that a good apology should cover, according to Cynthia Frantz, a social and environmental psychologist who conducted a landmark study on apology timing. ”He clearly expressed that he understood that what he did was wrong and he clearly expressed that he will not behave that way in the future,” Frantz said. But it also contained some flaws, she said. Primarily, the fact that it completely ignored the statement put out by Shane Scanlon, Gianforte’s spokesperson, the previous day in which he blamed Jacobs for the body slam because the reporter had been overly aggressive in asking his question. ”Jacobs entered the office and began asking badgering questions. Jacobs was asked to leave. After asking Jacobs to lower the recorder, Jacobs declined. Greg then attempted to grab the phone that was pushed in his face. Jacobs grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground. It’s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ.” That is a huge omission, leading to an apology fail, said Frantz (and nearly everybody else who heard Gianforte’s seemingly remorseful apology). As it stands now, Gianforte is headed to Capitol Hill  —   but not before a court appearance. He’s been charged with misdemeanor assault and could face up to six months in jail. I’m sure Twitter will have plenty to say about that."
"Fifty years ago, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s acknowledged nearly universally as one of the most   and influential rock albums of all time  —   and critic Colin Fleming argues that the artwork on the cover is just as important as the music. The Sgt. Pepper’s cover art,   by pop artist Peter Blake, is iconic. It depicts The Beatles surrounded by the images of famous figures from history and pop culture  —   ”almost like a giant birthday party or an Irish wake,” Fleming says. ”Kind of like a death of the ’pop’ Beatles and a rebirth, really, of this new, almost    Beatles.” And while the Sgt. Pepper’s cover has prompted its fair share of imitations, Fleming thinks its cultural impact goes beyond that. ”I think it expanded the notion of what was possible,” he says. ”And the notion of freedom  —   I think the cover as much as the final, famous chord of ’A Day In The Life’ signifies the same kind of idea.” Hear more of Fleming’s conversation with NPR’s Lulu   at the audio link."
"When   artist Nora Litz first talked with her students about immigration  —   she was shocked to hear how scared they were. ”I felt I had to do something,” she says. She was already teaching a children’s writing workshop  —   but she decided to offer a specific weekend class for kids with parents in the country illegally  —   targeted at the Mexican population in downtown Philadelphia. The class is called Illustrated Stories of Immigration  —   a free,   comics workshop led by artists and writers every Saturday. In the class, students crafted stories about ICE taking away their family members in the night, of the proposed wall with Mexico, of having to move to an unknown place. Telling these stories is therapeutic. For many kids, their imaginations created happy endings and by the end of the class, they reported being less afraid, sleeping better than before, Litz says. The workshop lasted just a few months, but the organization, Mighty Writers, intends to do more. Watch this short video to meet them and hear their stories."
"For many people, New Orleans is practically synonymous with jazz it’s the birthplace of both the music and many of its leading lights, from Louis Armstrong to Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. But now, one organization is working to draw attention to the city’s history of opera music. OperaCréole, an opera company founded in New Orleans, is resurrecting music written by local composers of color and others who’ve been left out of the overwhelmingly white, male canon. The company’s latest production, La Flamenca, is by the Creole composer   Guillaume Lambert, whose father was born in New Orleans. OperaCréole founder and   Givonna Joseph joined NPR’s Lulu   to discuss La Flamenca and her company’s work in general. Hear their full conversation at the audio link. Lulu  : So tell us about this composer,   Lambert. Givonna Joseph: He was born in Paris his father was a   New Orleans free composer of color. His father, Charles, performed and wrote music here as well as South America, and landed in Paris, where he married a Parisian. And Lucien was born there. He had the pleasure of studying with one of the great French composers, Jules Massenet. And in 1903, Massenet opened the French opera season in Paris with a production of Hérodiade, and 10 days later his student debuted his opera, La Flamenca. And it has been essentially not performed anywhere since 1903, that I have been able to find  —   certainly not in America. And we were lucky enough to bring it home. La Flamenca is set in Cuba during the   war. There’s a unique heroine faced with a very dramatic dilemma: a conflict between desire and country. [In one scene, the main characters] are talking about the conflict between the love for each other and her determination to fight for the independence of Cuba. She says, ”I am a Creole and you are a Spanish officer, and we should be enemies.” And, of course, they find great love with each other, and so she has to try to negotiate the independence of her country  —   continuing to be politically involved in that  —   and this love relationship. Can you hear evidence of Lambert’s Creole heritage in this work? Well, the Creole heritage in   New Orleans was very much a French heritage. They all spoke French, his father would have spoken French, and so it’s natural that he would have written it in French. And New Orleans is the first city of opera  —   we hear about the birth of jazz, but the first opera performed in America was performed here in 1796. . .. And from that point on, until about 1919, we had about five opera houses. In those opera houses, free men of color were in the orchestras. You hear some of the infusion of the flamenco style of music  —   that is also part of New Orleans’ heritage. We were such a great city where all people can come from their native land and bring their culture with them, and their culture would survive. So you hear some of that in the music that he infuses with French grand opera. You’ve said that works by composers of color are ”hidden on purpose.” What did you mean by that, and why is it important to bring works like this to audiences now? Well, the opera audience is a very diverse audience. When I said it was hidden on purpose  —   historically is what I mean, not currently. But historically, we have evidence of composers all the way back to Mozart’s time  —   le Chevalier de   upon his death, someone did burn some of his music. Luckily, some things did survive, and we have finally found them and people around the country are enjoying that music. But historically it’s been an issue, keeping that part of who we are suppressed. I had to grow up with people saying, ”Well, black people don’t really do that.” And at the age of 15, when I started studying voice and my voice teacher, Charles Paddock, who taught at Loyola, was encouraging me to do this . .. I did not know the wealth of information that was just not there for most of us to find. And so we didn’t really know what our heritage was in terms of opera and hundreds of years’ worth of classical music. I’m curious about the wider world of opera  —   have you seen the same embrace of this history of musicians of color actually influencing something like the Met, for example? I would like to say that I see a lot of it. There has been some changes in terms of new composers like Terence Blanchard’s work being done  —   New Orleans Opera will present his work next spring. But unfortunately, I just don’t see enough of it happening. Great composers like William Grant Still  —   still not getting his due on the main opera stage. I think [there’s] still work to be done in that department. Unfortunately, the difficulty for a huge opera company is: How do you put on a work that people don’t know? How do you know if you can fill up your theater or your opera house with this, and how do you sell it? That’s probably part of the difficulty, but in some cases I don’t think that they even know about the work. . .. I decided that I really needed to make this my baby, that I just needed to take it and run with it and do the best that I could, and hopefully I would really help to bridge the gap. What do you think audiences are getting out of this that they might not get from a more mainstream opera performance by someone like Mozart? Well, I think in part because we’re a small company  —   and the Marigny Opera House, where we’ve been performing these productions, is an intimate venue  —   I think people enjoy that intimacy. The biggest thing that I hear, especially from people who are not regular   is that they come up and they thank me for the history. It is the history that people are starving for. They want to know who they are they want to know the great things that they have accomplished and [that] we have accomplished as a people in New Orleans in general. I think that is really what drives a lot of people, and they enjoy the music once they get there. . .. We had someone this past weekend that said, ”This is my first opera experience. I’ve never gone, I thought I would never go, but I will be here for everything that you all do.” Is that what you’re hoping people will come away with  —   a newfound appreciation not only for opera, but also for the contributions of people of color? Absolutely. Opera is just a thing that I love and I want everybody to love it and to give it a chance. There’s such fun and such drama in it, and so that’s really great. But I think so much of our future as a country, and especially as New Orleans will celebrate 300 years next year  —   we need to have a better understanding of who we are as a country and how everyone has contributed to its greatness in so many ways that we don’t know about. And I think that will make a difference for all of us. And I especially hope that it makes a difference for young people like me, when I was 15  —   that a    doesn’t have to hear, ”We don’t do that.” That we’re not putting ourselves in boxes where we don’t belong. Because we have done many, many amazing things across the board, not just in music but in science and everything else. So I’m hoping to spread the joy."
"By the end of the state legislative session in Texas on Monday, the Capitol had devolved into scuffles and grave accusations. A Democratic lawmaker had accused his GOP colleague of threatening to ”put a bullet” in another lawmaker’s head. That GOP state representative, meanwhile, accused a counterpart of threatening his life, saying he was prepared to use his gun in  . To understand how the day ended this way, one must first rewind to its start. Earlier Monday, demonstrators gathered in the Capitol to protest a recently signed law aimed at what have come to be known as ”sanctuary cities”  —   or cities that, as NPR’s Nina Totenberg put it, ”have limited their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.” Earlier this month Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, which also allows ”police to inquire about the immigration status of anyone they detain, a situation that can range from arrest for a crime to being stopped for a traffic violation,” according to The Associated Press. Protesters from around the state descended on the Legislature, first watching Monday’s session in silence then gradually growing louder. The demonstrators, many of whom were Latino and dressed in red, shouted slogans from the   viewing area, eventually interrupting the proceedings below. It’s about this time that decorum on the floor began to break down and later descriptions of the incident begin to diverge. GOP state Rep. Matt Rinaldi says he called Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the protesters, several of whom he says carried signs proclaiming ”I am illegal and here to stay.” Later, he told the Texas Tribune he did it ”to incentivize them to leave the House.” He added: ”They were disrupting. They were breaking the law.” After he placed the call, he says he simply told his Democratic colleagues he did so. Those Democratic colleagues, however, remember that conversation very differently. ”He came up to us and said, ’I’m glad I just called ICE to have all these people deported,’” state Rep. César Blanco said at a news conference after the incident, according to the Tribune. State Rep. Ramon Romero recalls blunter language: ”He said, ’I called ICE  —   f*** them.’ ” At this point, Rinaldi says that Romero ”physically assaulted” him, and that another Democratic lawmaker, Poncho Nevarez, threatened to ”get” Rinaldi on his way to his car. ”I made it clear,” Rinaldi said in a statement posted on Twitter, ”that if he attempted to, in his words, ’get me,’ I would shoot him in self defense.” In the midst of the scuffle, which was recorded on video by several bystanders, Democratic Rep. Justin Rodriguez says he heard Rinaldi say something rather different to his colleague: ”I’ll put a bullet in his head.” And Nevarez made quite clear on Twitter what he thinks of Rinaldi’s account of the scrum: ”He’s a liar and a hateful man.”"
"Updated at 4:11 p. m. ET, Through nearly four decades, at least five presidential administrations and seemingly countless Super Bowls and World Series, NPR listeners could depend on at least one thing in the   world of athletics: Frank Deford. A mainstay on Morning Edition, the Hall of Fame sportswriter was public radio’s scholar of sports for some 37 years before hanging up his cleats earlier this year. Deford died Sunday at the age of 78 at his home in Key West, Fla. his wife confirmed to NPR. He leaves behind an astonishing 1, 656 commentaries for NPR. ”We are saddened to hear that Frank Deford has passed away,” NPR President and CEO Jarl Mohn said in a statement Monday. ”Since 1980, Frank voiced sports commentary for NPR, leaving us 1, 656 of his signature insights into the world of sports and the human stories behind athletic triumphs. He was a beloved colleague and a signature voice of public radio.” Upon his retirement earlier this year, Deford himself expressed gratitude for this longstanding relationship with listeners. ”The wonderful thing about delivering sports commentary on NPR was that because it has such a broad audience, I was able to reach people who otherwise had little or no interest in sport  —   especially as an important part of our human culture,” Deford said at the time. ”Nothing made me happier than to hear from literally hundreds of listeners who would tell me how much the commentaries revealed about a subject they otherwise had never cared much for. I’ll forever be grateful to NPR that they gave me such extraordinary freedom. . .. It was 37 years of a fond relationship.” As NPR’s Tom Goldman notes, that relationship didn’t exactly begin as a   commitment. In fact, at the time he was recruited by a Morning Edition that was still in its infancy, Deford hadn’t expected to contribute his commentaries for more than a few months. After all, back in 1979, Deford was already one of the star writers at Sports Illustrated, having already been with the magazine for about a decade and a half. He was an accomplished sportswriter, producing pieces that would ultimately earn him the honor of U. S. Sportswriter of the year six times, according to SI. He had nothing to prove. Still, he embraced the opportunity. ”I am something of a ham,” he told Tom earlier this month. ”Yeah, I’d always been a writer. But in high school I acted in plays. So it wasn’t as if you had to drag the words out of my vocal chords.” And so what began as a brief gig in 1980 became a deep and lasting relationship with NPR’s listeners. Each week, he would voice opinions both creative and controversial, references to Shakespeare and scathing takedowns  —   not just of commissioners but even occasionally entire sports, as some ice hockey and soccer fans may still remind you. His body of work on NPR  —   as well as in Sports Illustrated, HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and 20 books of his own  —   earned him not just listeners’ loyalty but his profession’s and the nation’s highest honors, too: an induction into the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame in 1998, and a National Humanities Medal in 2013. He was the first sportswriter to win that medal. ”A dedicated writer and storyteller, Mr. Deford has offered a consistent, compelling voice in print and on radio, reaching beyond scores and statistics to reveal the humanity woven into the games we love,” President Barack Obama said of Deford in a statement at the time. All the while, Deford remained an evangelist for the games he loved  —   and for the crucial role they continue to play in our lives. ”This is part of your life  —   it’s the second tier,” he told Tom. ”The first tier is eating, drinking and procreation. The second tier is religion, the spirit, music, art and the physical. Sports. It deserves to have as much attention paid to it, seriously.”"
"Frank Deford, NPR’s   sports commentator, announced Wednesday that he’s retiring after 37 years on Morning Edition  —   37 years of entertaining, educating and yes, annoying some listeners, like any good commentator should.  The warnings from Frank Deford arrived via email, days before our scheduled interview. When I get to his third floor apartment in Key West, Fla. Deford cautioned, I’ll be greeted by a screeching dog. He was right, although Miss Snickers, Deford’s yorkiepoo rescue, sounded more ferocious than she actually was. Deford also had this warning: ”Unfortunately, I will be a terrible host.” He wasn’t able to greet me at the door or give me a tour of the spacious apartment he shares with his wife Carol, which overlooks boats and turquoise water and palm trees. Prior to my visit, Deford had had a couple of tough days because of a lung condition. It left him short of breath and on oxygen. But his performer within carried the day. The oxygen machine went off, Deford switched on. The first topic of conversation: his adopted home of Key West. He first visited in 1996 and within hours of his arrival he was on the phone to Carol. ”You’re going to love this place,” he told her. A place nicknamed ”the Conch Republic.” ”Conch, y’know, the shells,” he says. ”And you get to be a ’conch’ only one way and that’s by being born here.” You can, he says, be a ”bubba” if you’re not originally from Key West. ”That’s the greatest compliment I can get, when somebody from Key West says ’Hey, Bubba.’ That means I’m in!” he says. ”Bubba” doesn’t seem to fit this urbane man with his pencil mustache and natty dress. But Key West has been a haven for writers  —   some of the greats have lived and worked there, including Ernest Hemingway and playwright Tennessee Williams. Deford knows he’s been a writer since a composition assignment in elementary school. His classmates wrote half a page. Deford filled eight. So being a ”bubba” in Key West, tapping out his prose, actually does fit him. ”It’s off the beaten track,” he explains  —   which, of course, is where Deford took Morning Edition listeners for nearly four decades. The very model of a creative commentator, Who else would be inspired by 19th century comic opera as a way to address the subject of spitting in baseball? I am the very model of a baseball star. I hit them hard and hit them far. No, not a swimmer nor a sprinter, Nor a skier nor a point guard, me, For I’m lean and mean and fit as a fiddle, Ready to show the world my spittle, Ready to show my spittle. ”When Frank came on, being outrageous, it was very much what we wanted in our commentators,” says former Morning Edition sports producer Ketzel Levine. ”He just kind of took it in a whole different direction that no one had really taken it before.” Levine recruited Deford in 1979, the year Morning Edition first went on the air. At the time, Deford was one of the top writers at Sports Illustrated. She remembers flying to meet him in New York to make her pitch, and being nervous. ”I was kind of flipped out,” Levine remembers, ”because here was this super tall, handsome, sexy, intelligent, irreverent,     erudite guy! And I was just kind of tripping all over myself knowing very little about sports. And he was very, very gracious.” And open to the idea. ”I am something of a ham,” Deford says. ”Yeah, I’d always been a writer. But in high school I acted in plays. So it wasn’t as if you had to drag the words out of my vocal chords.” What Deford thought would be fun ”for a few months” turned into 37 years. From April 2, 1980  —   the date of his first  —   until his last on Wednesday, Deford churned out 1, 656 commentaries. He was given a lot of freedom, especially in the beginning. [Deford’s NPR commentaries, Sweetness And Light, are here.] ”There was no doubt,” says Levine, ”that when I sold him on NPR, it was to do totally autonomous commentaries that would only be edited for grammar and time.” The only expectation was that Deford would be original  —   on Wednesdays, which just happens to be a notoriously slow sports day. ”If I come on three days after the Super Bowl and say pretty much what everybody else has said, what’s the point?” Deford says. ”That was the tricky thing . .. coming up with a new angle every time  —   or most times, because you couldn’t bat a thousand.” He came close. Deford imagined Shakespeare covering the Super Bowl. He compared Babe Ruth to   . And almost always, he had a fresh, pointed take on the issue of the moment. In 2007, he seized upon   comments by a former NBA star to write about gay male athletes: I believe that the reason gay male athletes stay in the closet has far more to do with the public than with the locker room. Especially in our society today where you find so much incivility in the grandstand, what player would dare risk giving the   Neanderthal creeps a chance to scream vile personal insults every time he missed the basket or struck out? NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell often was in Deford’s crosshairs. In a 2014 commentary, Deford wrote that Goodell ”just looks like a slick, selling us 76 trombones.” And Deford often spoke out against the NCAA, which oversees college sports. In 2013 he told the story of a woman who worked with University of North Carolina athletes who needed study help, and found herself in a system rife with academic fraud. Hated by some  —   loved by many, Of course strong opinions beget strong reactions, and Deford got his share. After he wrote a controversial commentary about the National Hockey League, a listener responded with this particularly scorching letter, read on air by   Edition host Bob Edwards: ”His comment that perhaps hockey should stay in Canada, suggests to me that he lacks the drive to follow its victories, failures and personal triumphs. If Mr. Deford were to step off a plane in Detroit  —   Hockeytown  —   under anything but an assumed name, he probably wouldn’t live to find his luggage.” Threats weren’t the norm. But listener hackles went up, especially when the subject was soccer, a sport Deford pilloried over the years. And the angry response hasn’t been limited to listener phone calls, emails and letters. Deford says about 10 years ago, fans at a major international soccer match in Washington, D. C. held up a banner that read, ”Deford is clueless.” ”If I’d grown up in Sao Paulo,” Deford says, ”I’m sure I would’ve been a great soccer fan.” But he didn’t and he wasn’t. Deford grew up in Baltimore, and he hates tie games. He hates that in soccer you can’t use your hands. He hates the pace, which he calls ”tedious.” Despite his   feelings, Deford says it’s never been his goal to alienate listeners. Rather, he wanted to show a largely   audience that sports were closer to them than they thought. ”This is part of your life  —   it’s the second tier,” Deford says about sports. ”The first tier is eating, drinking and procreation. The second tier is religion, the spirit, music, art and the physical. Sports. It deserves to have as much attention paid to it, seriously.” Many NPR listeners did, thanks to Deford. ”The number of letters I’ve gotten through the years, saying, ’y’know, I never really cared for sports, but I like listening to you because you bring something new to it,’ ” he says. ”I’m sort of proud of that. I am proud of that.” Beyond the microphone  Beyond his NPR commentaries, Deford fed a   audience a steady diet of memorable Sports Illustrated articles, often they were athlete or coach profiles that delved deeply into the person’s psyche, earning Deford the nickname ”Frank  .” They also earned him countless awards, and a spot in the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. Deford has written 20 books, with a new novel coming out later this year. He was also a regular on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel for 20 years. And we’re pretty sure Deford is the first and perhaps only NPR commentator featured in a beer commercial.   years after filming that ad, Deford made the leap from a bar to the White House. In 2013 he received what he calls his highest honor: a National Humanities Medal. He was the first sports writer to win the prestigious award. Before former President Obama gave him his medal, the announcer mispronounced his name as ” .” He was mortified at the time  —   but now he chuckles about it. ”Nothing’s ever perfect,” he says. Many a listener, reader or viewer would argue that Deford’s career came pretty close."
"For families spread out across the country, videos and video chats have become a meaningful way to share a baby’s first steps, a birthday party or a loved one blowing a kiss. But for people in prison, rules limiting access to the Internet and cameras can make sharing these moments difficult. In Colorado Springs, an artist came up with a creative solution. Like many proud parents, Nicole Garrens captured her son Zander’s first steps on her cellphone. She wanted to share the video with her husband, Roy, but he recently went to prison in Texas. ”The last time he saw him he was between five and six months, and you know, he was crawling, and kind of standing up holding onto things,” Garrens says. ”But when a baby starts to walk, it’s one of their biggest milestones, and it breaks my heart to know what he’s missing.” Garrens moved to Florida after Roy was incarcerated, so she could be near her family. But she wanted to figure out a way for her husband to see the video. ”You know, pictures can only say so much,” Garrens says. ”They’re still pictures.” While almost anyone with a smartphone can send or receive short videos these days, prisoners still have little access to technology. So Garrens went looking online for a creative solution. She found flipbooked. com, a small company that turns short videos into flipbooks. The company’s founder is Colorado Springs artist Liza Tudor. For her, this 19th century technology was the perfect solution to a 21st century problem. Tudor’s   had gone to prison, and she wanted to send him a video. ”We had a dog that we’d gotten together and she was getting really old,” Tudor says. ”Her name was Nala. And she was 13, and I was worried she was going to die soon, which she did. So I took a video of her giving me some kisses.” Before long, Tudor had written her own software to turn short videos into flipbooks. ”I’ve programmed to break it into frames and essentially lay it out in a contact sheet,” Tudor says. It looks like a sheet of stamps. She prints the images out, tears the paper along perforations and stacks them by number. When Tudor sends flipbooks to prisoners she just sends the printout in an envelope. The prisoners assemble the books themselves. Tudor’s   Nick Wells, has been at the Limon Correctional Facility in eastern Colorado since 2011. He remembers when he got that first flipbook three years ago. ”The next thing I know, I’m in my cell, and I get mail . .. and I saw my dog running around acting crazy, and it made me laugh,” Wells says. ”It brought the biggest smile to my face.” Tudor also sent him a flipbook of his young nephew. ”Being able to see him walk for the first time was just heartbreaking, at the same time . .. overwhelming sense of joy,” Wells says. ”I get to be a part of that. When you look back at your life, those are the moments, these little tiny things, you know.” And those tiny moments aren’t just about toddlers. Lori Kuhn lives in Los Angeles. She turned to Flip Booked with a video of her godson tying his tie for the first time. ”There are many milestones, and learning to tie your first tie something typically that your father teaches you,” Kuhn says. Her godson’s dad, Wayne Boatright, is currently serving a   sentence in San Quentin. He was overjoyed. ”It’s beautiful,” Kuhn says. ”It’s heartbreaking. I can’t even put it in words. I’m glad I was there to capture it and share it with Wayne.” Even if it becomes easier to send personal videos directly to prisoners, Flip Booked users say there’s something magic about being able to hold a little bit of time in your hands."
"Updated at 12:15 p. m. ET, Newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had a whole lot of ground to cover Monday: Between the   conflict in eastern Ukraine, the    civil war in Syria and their own countries’ tattered ties, the Russian president’s stop at the Palace of Versailles promised plenty of difficult topics for conversation. It’s little wonder, then, that talks between the two leaders at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris ran a little longer than expected. But when the two men finally did emerge to speak with members of the media, Macron and Putin expressed optimism that their two countries could work together on the daunting list of issues. Standing in the opulent Gallery of Great Battles, a spacious ode to France’s military achievements, the two men vowed close cooperation in fighting terrorism  —   though it was plain that differences remain in their approaches to Syria, where the two countries back opposing sides. Russia backs President Bashar Assad’s embattled regime, while France supports the rebel factions seeking his removal from power. At the news conference, according to The Associated Press, Macron vowed that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a ”red line” for France. The French president was clear in the days leading up to the discussion that he expected it to be a difficult one. ”It’s indispensable to talk to Russia because there are a number of international subjects that will not be resolved without a tough dialogue with them,” Macron told reporters Saturday at the end of the   summit in Italy, according to Reuters. ”I will be demanding in my exchanges with Russia.” Still, Monday opened with hearty handshakes and smiles. Macron welcomed Putin by first harking back to a historic visit from another Russian leader. It was at this elaborate royal manse that Czar Peter the Great paid a visit in 1717, seeking to build a relationship with France. Now, 300 years later, Macron escorted his guest through a new exhibition commemorating the diplomatic moment of their forebears. The discussions Monday, however, were less about building than rebuilding, as both leaders hope to repair a relationship that has recently grown fraught. For instance, The Associated Press reports a previous visit from Putin, scheduled for last October, was even canceled after   Francois Hollande said Russia could face war crimes for its role in supporting Assad. And Macron himself adopted a tough stance toward Russia during his campaign, indicating, as NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley noted earlier this month, that he might consider increasing sanctions on the country for its role in the fighting in eastern Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea. It was this annexation, in fact, that turned the   into a   as the group of industrialized countries effectively revoked Russia’s seat at the table in 2014 over the incident. Just before the French election, Macron’s campaign announced it had been targeted with a massive hacking operation  —   and several experts were quick to point a finger at Russia. And the AP notes that on Monday, he did not hesitate to say two Russian media outlets, Sputnik and Russia Today, acted as spreaders of ”propaganda” during the campaign. Putin, for his part, made little secret of his preferred candidate, at one point even inviting and hosting Macron’s main rival, Marine Le Pen, in Moscow. At the news conference, though, Putin denied attempting to influence the French presidential election, saying Le Pen’s visit was intended as no more than a warm gesture toward a politician who wanted stronger relations with Russia."
"On the heels of last week’s   summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a   call for European Union nations on Sunday. At a Munich stop on the campaign trail, Merkel told supporters that Europe can no longer count on the U. S. and the U. K. as reliable allies. The days that Europe could completely rely on others are ”over to a certain extent,” Merkel warned at a rally in a packed Bavarian beer tent, Reuters reports. ”I’ve experienced this in the last few days.” Her impassioned comments indicate her disappointment with the past week’s contentious meetings of NATO in Brussels and the Group of 7 in Italy. Merkel had described the climate change talks at the   meeting as ”very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying.” While leaders from the U. K. Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan upheld their support of the Paris Climate Accord, President Trump said he needed more time to decide whether he would recommit to the accord that aims to combat climate change. ”I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!” President Trump tweeted Saturday morning. ”We Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands,” Merkel said, while also stressing the importance of maintaining friendly relations with the two nations, as well as other countries, ”even with Russia.” ”But we have to know that we must fight for our future, on our own, for our destiny as Europeans  —   and that’s what I want to do together with you,” she added. Polls show the chancellor is on track to secure a fourth term in the September elections."
"Donald Trump made his first Memorial Day remarks as president, paying tribute Monday to fallen U. S. service members, and thanking their families for their sacrifice. ”Words cannot measure the depth of their devotion, the purity of their love, or the totality of their courage. We only hope that every day we can prove worthy, not only of their sacrifice and service, but of the sacrifice made by the families and loved ones they left behind,” Trump said. ”Special, special people,” he added. The sun broke through the clouds as the president’s motorcade crossed Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River on the way to the cemetery. A   salute greeted him on his arrival. A somber Trump, clad in a dark blue suit buttoned over a light blue striped tie, placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, and paused for several seconds with his eyes closed, and his hands still on the wreath, before stepping back and standing at attention while a U. S. Army bugler played taps just a few feet away. The president then climbed the steps above the tomb to the cemetery’s marble amphitheater, where he delivered his address. ”Here at this hallowed shrine, we honor the noblest among us, the men and women who paid the ultimate price for victory and for freedom. We pay tribute to those brave souls who raced into gunfire, roared into battle, and ran into hell to face down evil,” Trump said. He paid special tribute to two soldiers who died in Afghanistan, Army Capt. Andrew D. Byers of Colorado Springs and Christopher D. Horton of the Oklahoma National Guard. Their family members wept as the audience gave them a standing ovation. Trump recognized former Sen. Bob Dole, who was severely wounded in action during World War II. Dole, 93, rose from his wheelchair to acknowledge the applause. The president also thanked Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, whose son Robert was killed in Afghanistan in November 2010. After his speech, Trump visited Robert Kelly’s grave in Section 60 of the cemetery. During that visit, the president greeted other families who had lost loved ones. He accepted a yellow rose from Alison Malachowski, whose son, Marine Staff Sgt. James Michael Malachowski, is buried in Section 60. Trump also paused to talk to a young boy dressed in a crisp Marine uniform.    Christian Jacobs’ father, Marine Sgt. Christopher Jacobs, died during military training exercises in Twentynine Palms, Calif. in 2011. The boy was visiting his father’s grave with his mother, Brittany Jacobs."
"A towering oak tree draped with Spanish moss offers little relief from the Florida sun as Andrew Lumish scrubs grime from the headstone of a World War I veteran. ”It’s pretty messy, pretty dirty,” he says. ”We’re pulling out dirt and biological material that’s been here since 1921. So, a lot of elbow grease here.” Lumish, who has so far cleaned about 600 veterans’ headstones, says he restores them out of respect for those who died and to learn about how they lived. Among the stories he’s unearthed: a veteran born in 1840 who was shot and returned to combat with a bullet in his lower back, a Civil War veteran wounded at the Battle of Shiloh and a    whose headstone reads, ”You have died for the world, but not for your parents.” Woodlawn Cemetery dates back to 1888, and is just blocks from Tampa’s downtown skyscrapers. The burial ground houses the remains of soldiers who fought in conflicts from the Civil War to Vietnam. Many of the graves have been darkened by mold and mildew and some of the names inscribed in stone are unreadable. ”If you were just walking or driving by, you would just see a weathered, very dirty monument and would have no idea who it belonged to,” Lumish says. He started restoring headstones of military veterans five years ago. It all began when the history buff was taking photos at another cemetery and saw dozens of headstones in terrible shape. Lumish isn’t a veteran, but he does own a cleaning company and knew there was something he could do about it. ”At first it was to respect those who served to preserve our rights to everything that we do today and all of our freedoms,” he says of the project. ”On a personal level, I have friends who served who didn’t necessarily make it through. Some who died, and some who suffer from the aftereffects of war.” Each Sunday, Lumish packs his car with 25 gallons of water, an assortment of brushes and an environmentally safe cleaning solution. That last part, he says, is the most important. ”Because when people see the results of what I do, everyone wants to get a big brush, some bleach and a power washer,” he says. ”In the hope of doing something good, people can actually do permanent damage.” Lumish says his cleaning process can take anywhere from four days to four months to complete. Since sandstone and limestone are porous, it can take some time for   biological matter to break down. Gravestones made of marble and granite are easier to clean because the dirt is mostly on the surface. But what Lumish uncovers is much more than names and dates etched in stone. ’I think about what they fought for’ As the    walks through the cemetery, he can point to markers he’s already cleaned and he can tell you how each veteran died. ”I put myself in the shoes of the people who are here,” he says. ”I think of the times in which they lived. I think of their families and I think about what they fought for.” But Lumish also actually learns how these men and women lived. On his ”Good Cemeterian” Facebook page, he posts photos and stories of the deceased. He gets the information from genealogy websites and finds new articles, draft notices and death certificates at the library. ”We uncover heroes,” he says. ”They were not considered heroes of their day, so I hope that some of the stories that I tell make people appreciate the men and women that serve currently. There are heroes today that surround us on a daily basis.” Lumish’s Facebook research page has received thousands of hits, including one from Paul Heimel, a county commissioner from the central mountain region of Pennsylvania. ”I just thought to myself, if a guy in Florida can do this and we have a commitment to do it, let’s give it a shot,” Heimel says. This month, Pennsylvania’s Potter County, with consulting help from Lumish, began a project to clean the tombstones of veterans buried in the cemeteries there. ”To have a veteran’s stone fall apart and then have his name covered by moss and lichens just isn’t right,” Heimel says. ”But the part that we really need to restore and permanently save is the record of who that person was. This is an opportunity to restore some of the dignity and honor that they have earned.” Back at the Tampa cemetery, Lumish kneels in the grass and uses a toothbrush to scrub dirt from the nooks and crannies of a large ornate tomb. ”In the next month, this monument is going to be spectacular,” he says. ”It’s a sad occasion, but there’s nothing I can do to change what has happened to some of the people who we lost so long ago.” But what he can do, he says, is keep their memories alive. Cathy Carter reports on education for member station WUSF. "
"”I hope you’re having a meaningful day.” That might be one of the better things to say to a veteran this Monday. You should probably avoid the common refrain, ”Thank you for your service,” according to someone who should know. ”On Memorial Day, the veteran you’re talking to may be going through a bit of melancholy remembering people who died over the years,” says Navy veteran Luke Visconti, who also   the website DiversityInc, which wrote about the subject recently. As most people are aware (or should be) Memorial Day and Veterans Day serve different purposes. Veterans Day is to honor the service of people who have worn the uniforms of the armed forces. Memorial Day is intended to remember those who died while serving. Visconti encourages those who want to say supportive words to a veteran to recognize ”that the person may have friends who died in combat.” As far as saying thank you goes, ”I don’t need to be thanked for my service,” he tells NPR’s Michel Martin. ”I think it’s become kind of a platitude,   thing to say.” Memorial Day and Veterans Day have separate origins going back to two different wars: the Civil War and World War I. Shortly after the Civil War, Memorial Day began as Decoration Day. ”The reason for that is because it was a day on which Americans, South and in the North, would decorate the graves of soldiers who died in the Civil War,” history professor Matthew Dennis told NPR in 2005. It was a ”vernacular, grassroots kind of expression of mourning.” Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, who headed a group for Union veterans, declared in 1868 that Decoration Day would be observed on May 30. According to a Memorial Day history from the Department of Veterans Affairs, after World War I the holiday was broadened to include service members who died in all of the country’s wars, not just the Civil War. Multiple cities claim to be the birthplace of the holiday, but President Lyndon Johnson formally gave the honor to Waterloo, N. Y. in 1966. An act of Congress in 1971 switched the observance to the last Monday in May, the VA notes. Veterans Day, on the other hand, was originally called Armistice Day, which commemorated the end of fighting in World War I  —   you may have heard before that it happened on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918. President Woodrow Wilson celebrated the first Armistice Day in 1919. In 1938, November 11 became a legal holiday by an act of Congress, and in 1954 it was changed from ”Armistice” to ”Veterans” Day, in order to honor all veterans. So save the thanks for Veterans Day, if you must. ”I think sometimes maybe just a pat on the back or an arm around the shoulder is really better than words,” Visconti says. ”So just be a friend.” NPR radio producer Dustin DeSoto and editor Jennifer Liberto contributed to this report."
"Diagnosing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can be difficult. The symptoms of the disorder, as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM, have changed multiple times. Even if you know what to look for, many of the symptoms are pretty general, including things like trouble focusing and a tendency to interrupt people. Discerning the difference between people who have a problem and those who are just distracted requires real expertise. Which is why many people were excited when earlier this year a World Health Organization advisory group endorsed a   screening test that a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported could reliably identify adults with ADHD. A lot of people were intrigued by the seeming simplicity of the screening. We reported on it, including one implication of the study’s findings: that there could be a significant population of U. S. adults with undiagnosed ADHD. But that may not be the case, and even if it is, some ADHD researchers say the   screening test is not necessarily the simple diagnostic solution its proponents hope it will be. ”Despite the questions put out by WHO and mentioned in JAMA, in America if your talents and temperament don’t match your goals and aspirations, that incongruity generates a series of feelings or behaviors that match quite nicely the diagnostic criteria in the ” explains Dr. Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician and ADHD specialist who has been following trends in ADHD diagnosis and medication since the  . For example, he says, some adult patients meet multiple criteria for ADHD, such as inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity, but may not have the disorder. ”So you meet the criteria, but the question is, ’Are your goals realistic for who you are? Or are you trying to do too much?’ ” he cautions. ”I think this culture absolutely encourages people to do too much.” Doctors, drug companies and patients, Dr. David Goodman, an ADHD specialist at Johns Hopkins University and the Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Center of Maryland, agrees that not everyone who experiences the symptoms of ADHD necessarily suffers from the disorder, and that a simple screening test cannot diagnose it. Diagnosing ADHD in adults takes time, he explains. ”The diagnosis gets made in a clinical interview with the patient over the course of an hour or so, tracking the symptoms from childhood into adulthood,” Goodman says. ADHD in adults typically occurs with other psychiatric disorders, he says, such as anxiety or mood disorders, ”so we need to sort out which disorder accounts for the symptoms.” But, Goodman says, he believes there is evidence of a significant population of adults whose lives are being disrupted by ADHD, and who remain undiagnosed. ”Children with ADHD grow up into adults with ADHD,” he says, citing longitudinal studies by a team in Canada that suggested more than half of children with ADHD continued to experience symptoms as adults. ”If you’re disorganized, you’re confused, you’re tardy, you’re not following through, you’re making a lot of errors, your spouse or partner is going to grow increasingly frustrated,” Goodman says. Goodman says simple screening tests can be helpful to identify who those undiagnosed people might be, and encourage them to see a specialist. Alan Schwarz, the author of the book ADHD Nation and a former investigative reporter for The New York Times, has investigated the ties between pharmaceutical companies and doctors. ”The   screening instrument that was endorsed by the World Health Organization was devised by doctors with a very long history in ADHD research,” he says. ”These are, generally, men who have been enriched by the pharmaceutical industry in order to churn out research and churn out things like this that merely expand the ADHD market. ”What we’ve seen over the past 10 [to] 20 years is a constant enthusiasm on the part of the ADHD lobby to get more and more adults to consider the possibility that they, too, have ADHD,” Schwarz says. Questions about drug company influence on prescribing has dogged the industry for years. A 2015 ProPublica analysis of multiple medical specialties found deep financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and some doctors. And a recent study found that, in general, doctors who have less contact with drug company representatives are less likely to prescribe the company’s   drugs, knowingly or otherwise. Goodman, for one, has disclosed that he has received money from the pharmaceutical company Shire, which makes Adderall, and says that in the last two years he has worked as a scientific consultant for multiple companies that make or are testing drugs to treat ADHD. He says that work helps him ”provide the latest insight and clinical care for my patients, who seek me out and appreciate the     care they receive.” Advice for patients, One thing ADHD experts agree on is that people who think they might have ADHD should see a doctor, and preferably an ADHD specialist. There are multiple treatment options for ADHD, not all of which involve medication. Cognitive behavioral therapy can address symptoms of the disorder, and antidepressants have been shown to help with impulsivity and hyperactivity. Adults who choose to take amphetamines, Diller says, should be prescribed   versions, which are harder to abuse than   versions. ”You can’t, at a minute’s notice, pop one of these into your mouth and hope you’ll get the work done,” he explains. ”Use of   Adderall actually permits and facilitates an ADHD lifestyle of impulsivity.” Many physicians stress the importance of being monitored by a professional, to make sure that whatever treatment is prescribed is actually helping with the symptoms, and making life easier."
"Tomas Villegas was looking for information about a product on YouTube, but couldn’t find it. ”So I thought, well, I’m sure there’s other people looking for it. So I made a video.” Four years later, Villegas, who works at a technical college, has a side business doing product reviews on his YouTube channel. He found that adding a little music really improved his videos. ”It just adds that third dimension that is missing sometimes,” he says. Of these two music excerpts, one is composed by Vivaldi and the other is a computer imitation of his style. Click on each to test your ears. Answers below. But he hit a snag. Music is expensive. Villegas would either have to pay for rights or pay a composer. ”I upload weekly,” Villegas says. ”So for me to pay a composer for 52 separate custom songs . .. wouldn’t make sense in the return on investment for me.” Then Villegas discovered Jukedeck, a company that creates and sells   music. Jukedeck charges as little as 99 cents a track for a small business and $21. 99 for a large business. Jukedeck is a program that enables users to choose the length of a piece of music, its style, the instruments featured and even climactic moments to heighten emotion. Ed   the company’s founder, is a composer who studied computer programming, and says he started to ask himself: ”Given what we know about how music’s put together, why can’t computers write music yet?” Enter Jukedeck. ”You basically make a bunch of choices that really anyone can relate to,” Rex says. ”That’s one of our aims. We wanted to make it as simple as possible, [to] really democratize the process of creation.” But Rex isn’t the first to discover   music. In fact, one of the first compositions by computer was the Illiac Suite in 1957. David Cope, professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is among the pioneers of computer composition. He says despite the successes there’s been limited investment, because audiences and producers are uncomfortable with it. ”On the credits they don’t want to see ’Composed by Computer Program Experiments in Musical Intelligence by David Cope,’ ” he says. ”It’s the last thing they want to show their audience.” But the world has changed and although Jukedeck isn’t the first program to write original music, its business model may be right for this moment, with millions of content creators on platforms like YouTube and Vimeo every day. Many would like to use music but can’t afford large sums for rights or composition. Even some corporate giants, like Google and IBM, are developing music composition programs. And Cope says he thinks eventually the public will get over its bias. As Cope sees it, composers who write soundtracks and jingles may need to look for another job. ”It’s going to go that way eventually,” he says. ”It may be 20 years from now, it may be 50 years from now, it may be two years from now. But, no matter when it is, it’s going to happen. Period.” Answers to the quiz"
"Computers are part of the everyday sounds of our times  —   for a while. But as each new digital device slips into inevitable obsolescence, so do their signature sounds. Composer Matt Parker thought that meant losing touch with some of our history  —   so, he’s has created an archive of 126 sound recordings from the historic computers of Bletchley Park, the site where British mathematicians, scientists and spies broke German’s military codes during World War II. And he’s worked those sounds into a new series of musical compositions on an album called The Imitation Archive. Parker is no stranger to computers: He’s used modern ones plenty of times to make his music in the past. But the Bletchley Park machines, like one he recorded named Colossus, are ancient beasts compared to today’s laptops. ”It’s the size of a large hall, and there were several of these in use during the second World War,” he says of Colossus, the   programmable digital computer, which was kept a secret while in use. ”It’s amazing that no one wanted to make music out of them before, really, because they make such distinctive rhythmic patterns that I just had to work with.” For Parker, The Imitation Archive  represents more than a new set of tools for his own compositions: It’s also an attempt to hold onto the memory of the computers’ functions and the unique place in history they occupy. Without preservation, he says, the machines could be forgotten over time. ”You can look at an object that’s inside a Perspex box in a museum in the future, but you will never be able to hear what it sounds like,” he says. ”I think it’s really important to be able to bring some of the reality of what some of these machines were like  —   to listen to as much as to see  —   in the future.” Hear the full conversation with NPR’s Scott Simon in the audio link."
"Can a computer write a sonnet that’s indistinguishable from what a human can produce? Computer scientists at Dartmouth College tried to answer that question with a competition that NPR’s Joe Palca reported on as part of his series, Joe’s Big Idea. NPR’s Robert Siegel, host of All Things Considered, served as one of the judges of the competition. Each judge was asked to read 10 sonnets and decide whether they were written by man or machine. None of the judges was fooled by the poetic computers. Now’s your chance to be the judge! Here are six poems. Try to figure if they are written by a human or machine. Are you as good as Robert Siegel? Take the quiz below to find out!"
"A new Rembrandt painting unveiled in Amsterdam Tuesday has the tech world buzzing more than the art world. That’s because the painting is the creation of a   printer  —   and not the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn himself, who has been dead for almost 450 years. ”The Next Rembrandt,” as it’s been dubbed, was the brainchild of Bas Korsten, creative director at the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson in Amsterdam. A digital reconstruction of the face of Jesus Christ  —   based on skulls found in Jerusalem  —   inspired Korsten, he says. ”I thought, well, if you can basically take historical data and then create something new out of it, why can’t we distill the artistic DNA of a painter out of his body of work and create a new artwork out of that?” Korsten tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. ”And that’s how the idea was born.” The new portrait is the product of 18 months of analysis of 346 paintings and 150 gigabytes of digitally rendered graphics. Everything about the painting  —   from the subject matter (a Caucasian man between the age of 30 and 40) to his clothes (black,   hat, black shirt and white collar) facial hair (small mustache and goatee) and even the way his face is positioned (facing right)  —   was distilled from Rembrandt’s body of work. ”A computer learned, with artificial intelligence, how to   a new Rembrandt right eye,” Korsten explains. ”And we did that for all facial features, and after that, we assembled those facial features using the geometrical dimensions that Rembrandt used to use in his own work.” The statistical data even determined the type of painting  —   a portrait, which was the most significant portion of the artist’s work, and were most common between 1632 and 1642. The portrait looks like an actual Rembrandt, right down to the texture of the brushstrokes, which the   printer mimicked. But Korsten will be the first to say that it won’t fool experts. ”I wish it was that good, and it isn’t,” he says. ”I think the expert eye sees that this isn’t a real Rembrandt. And it’s also got to do with the state of technology that we’re in, the amount of time that we had for the process,” he says. ”Every extra month would have (made) a better painting.” Even a better painting will never be the same as one by the actual artist. But Korsten says the program  —   which started as a project for ING, the Dutch bank  —   could be used to help restore lost or damaged art. ”If a piece of a painting is lost, if it’s burned and you’re left with only 20 percent of a painting, you could, with this technique, maybe   the other 80 percent,” he says. ”So other than the advertising side of this project, I think the outcome is going to have a bigger effect, bigger impact.”"
"Dali Shonia, 57, pulled down the surgical mask covering her face to reveal a single loop of black thread piercing her upper and lower lips. ”I will not   my mouth until they give me an apartment,” she said. It was Feb. 5, 2017, the eleventh day of the hunger strike, according to a handwritten sign pinned to the wall of a makeshift tent. But so far, the   protesters were getting nowhere with their demands. They had set up their protest camp on a busy street in downtown Zugdidi, a city in the western region of the Republic of Georgia. Inside, they relaxed on twin beds, watching a small TV in the corner. The local press had stopped by, as had politicians from both major parties. But the protest’s target audience  —   the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees  —   had yet to make an appearance, and the protesters were growing impatient. One of them declared that if the government continued to ignore them, he would set himself on fire in front of the ministry. Internally displaced people, or IDPs, have fled war and violence  —   but unlike refugees, they have not crossed international borders to reach safety. In Georgia, there are more than 250, 000 IDPs, displaced by multiple conflicts in the country’s brief   history. As is the case for IDPs everywhere, they are dependent on their own government, not the international community, for assistance. But for Georgia’s government, figuring out how to help, and for how long, has proved complicated. Following wars in the early 1990s, the government’s main response to the sudden influx of displaced people was to open up public buildings as temporary shelters. It was a stopgap solution, implemented without a   strategy, but as the years ticked by, it became the system. Then, in 2007, Georgia finally adopted its first official policy for addressing the needs of IDPs, which called for moving people out of those temporary shelters into more permanent housing. A decade later, that plan is still very much in progress. Shonia fled her home in the Black Sea region of Abkhazia in the early 1990s, after   separatists took control there during a   war. More than two decades later, she is still living in what was supposed to be a temporary shelter, despite new government programs to give new housing to displaced people. She explained that water ran down the walls of her room when it rained  —   how could the government not see she was desperate for a new house? ”It is unfair that they give apartments to people who don’t deserve it and they don’t give apartments to us,” Shonia said. From across the tent, another woman offered to take me on a tour of a temporary shelter  —   a former hospital complex turned IDP housing just behind the protest camp. Rain splashed through the hospital’s doorless entryway and into the   corridor, where an old woman was chopping wood. Just inside, my tour guide pointed up at the ceiling, to a gaping hole extending all the way to the second floor. It turned out to be one of many holes throughout the building  —   some of them inside people’s makeshift apartments, others in the hallways. It was undeniable that the building was falling apart and unsafe. So why weren’t the people living there a higher priority for new housing? I headed over to the regional office of the Ministry of Internally Displaced People to find out. Inside a drab,   waiting room, a dozen people sat in rows of plastic chairs underneath an electronic ticker displaying which number was up next. A sign announced visiting hours  —   Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 10 a. m. and 2:30 p. m. with a lunch break from 1 p. m. to 2 p. m. Everyone was silent until my translator, Mariam Aduashvili, told the security guard I was an American journalist there to speak with the deputy minister. Then the room erupted with people shouting at me in Georgian. They were annoyed, Aduashvili explained, that I was speaking to officials at the ministry. ”You should go to the settlements and talk to the IDPs, rather than come and talk to the representatives of the ministry  —   they are not going to tell you the truth,” she paraphrased. After a long wait, we were ushered in back to the office of the deputy minister, Manuchar Chilachava, who sat behind his desk, flanked by staffers. Yes, he was aware of the protest, he said. No, he did not have plans to go visit the protesters. ”Bad living conditions are bad living conditions,” he said. ”We get it.” But, he repeatedly explained, the ministry has rules it must follow  —   Resolution 320. ”If they have really horrible living conditions, that . .. is included in the points,” Chilachava said. Resolution 320, a decree adopted in 2013, lays out a point system for ranking people’s suffering to determine who gets an apartment first: Three points for those living in ”particularly harsh” conditions such as ”a garage, staircase of a building, watchman’s booth,     building,  .” Three points if a family member died in the war. Three points for a family member with a disability. ”We have to follow the law,” Chilachava said. But how did Georgia end up in a situation where a law designed to help displaced people had resulted in them sewing their lips shut and threatening to set themselves on fire? I decided to go to the top  —   the minister himself. On the day I met Sozar Subari at the agency’s headquarters in Georgia’s capital city, Tbilisi, the commission that decides who gets apartments was meeting. Inside a conference room, 20 or so people sat around a table with huge reams of paper in front of them  —   lists of the 4, 000 applicants for just 144 newly built apartments in Zugdidi. Projected at the front of the room were photos of the inside of an IDP applicant’s house. Subari explained they were verifying that people’s living conditions were in fact as they said they were  —   a process he readily admitted was flawed. ”To say who is living in the worst conditions is impossible because there is no clear border between them,” Subari said. He professed no illusions about the problematic reality of ranking people’s suffering: ”We have criteria,” he said, ”but the criteria are not always fair.” Nevertheless, he defended the system as the best way to help displaced people  —   short of them being allowed to return to their homes in the disputed regions. By giving IDPs property, Subari argued, the government was providing the essential   for them to reintegrate into Georgian society and live as any other citizens. ”They can start businesses and become millionaires, or they can go gamble the whole thing and lose it all in the hour  —   they can do whatever they want” with their new property, he said. ”But once the government has given them accommodation, the government’s responsibility is done.” His vision is that once all displaced people have been given new housing, the ministry will no longer be necessary. He’ll put himself out of a job, and IDPs will be treated like any other Georgians. ”They are now ordinary citizens,” he said. ”If they lost, they lost.” Stephanie Joyce reported in Georgia as NPR’s Above the Fray fellow. The fellowship is sponsored by the John Alexander Project, which supports foreign reporting in undercovered parts of the world. This story was produced with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."
"Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh is considering the removal of her city’s Confederate monuments, as New Orleans did just days ago. ”The city does want to remove these,” Pugh told the Baltimore Sun. ”We will take a closer look at how we go about following in the footsteps of New Orleans.” Earlier this month, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu delivered a speech that drew widespread attention, explaining why he had ordered the removal of that city’s confederate monuments. Among Baltimore’s monuments to the Confederacy is a statue of Roger Taney, the Supreme Court chief justice who wrote the infamous Dred Scott decision that said, among other things, that   could not be citizens. The city also has statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Pugh suggested one way to get rid of the statues, telling the Sun, ”It costs about $200, 000 a statute to tear them down. . .. Maybe we can auction them?” The previous mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie   ordered the placement of interpretive plaques at the monuments. One such plaque, placed at a statue of Lee and Jackson, states: ”These two men became subjects of the Lost Cause movement which portrayed them as Christian soldiers and even as men who opposed slavery. Today current scholarship refutes these claims. These    representations of Lee and Jackson helped perpetuate the Lost Cause ideology, which advocated for white supremacy, portrayed slavery as benign and justified secession.” Carolyn Billups, former president of the Maryland chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, told the Sun, ”I find it interesting that Baltimore city has that kind of money to move statues when there are problems with crime and schools. I would think that would be more of a priority.”"
"Pankaj Rayamajhi hears something. Senioritis? The director of school logistics and operations has a kind of sixth sense about that unique Spring affliction as he roams the hallways of Columbia Heights Education Campus, a public middle and high school in Washington, D. C. Rayamajhi quickens his pace,   in hand, and turns a corner into a stairwell. Yep, senioritis. When they see him, the small group of students loitering on the stairs scatters back to class. ”Right outside Whitaker’s room there are some students here probably cutting class,” he says into his   radio to a security guard. ”Can you please make sure these hallways are clear?” ”Copy that.” It’s just one of a hundred fires small and large the burly   school administrator will handle on this day, tasks that in years past would have likely been handled by the principal. We like to think of school principals, at their best, as instructional leaders with a laser focus on boosting student achievement, school culture and academic accountability. But too often principals and their deputies have to deal with hundreds of things that have little to do directly with teaching and learning: student discipline, school maintenance, the cafeteria, safety, transportation, paperwork  —   and lots more. The District of Columbia Public Schools is taking a national lead in trying to change that by adding directors of operations and logistics. The idea is to liberate principals to focus more on teaching evaluation, planning and assessment and far less on milk, leaky faucets or security. Rayamajhi oversees a daunting list of daily needs, from maintenance and security to procurement and HR. Part logistician, part disciplinarian as well as coach and security guard, he roams the hallways and lunch rooms,   and talking to everyone, including the nearly 50 employees he manages. If a teacher or teacher’s aide needs something, they come to Pankaj, as he’s known. ”Be it a teacher saying, ’Oh, my AC’s not working and my sink’s clogged’ to a student survey that needs to be done in the next two weeks,” he says. ”It’s been an immense help,” says Maria Tukeva, principal at the   Columbia Heights Education Campus, and the city’s   principal. ”I was worrying about whether there was soap in the bathroom or there was toilet paper in the bathroom.” These things are important, and urgent, Tukeva says. ”However, I also have to worry about is everyone learning how to read at a high level, is everyone learning math at a high level.” What began in D. C. in 2014 as a small pilot project has now spread to 70 of the city’s 115 public schools. Lots of research shows the vital link between school leadership and student success. But many principals say their daily   lists eat up valuable time they could better use to focus on instruction, motivation and innovation. Tukeva says having Rayamajhi has helped free her and her staff to spend more time on instructional feedback and professional development. ”To do an excellent job, principals and assistant principals need to spend the majority of their time in the classrooms and with teachers and in planning curriculum,” she says, ”all those things that go into a strong instructional program.” Chief operations officer? Rayamajhi has had to handle everything from rescuing a janitor stuck in a broken elevator at 11 p. m. to settling a student’s family problem by calling his uncle in Guatemala. He also oversees the school’s five daily lunch sessions. Food for 1, 400 in a small time window. What could go wrong? ”This is where the magic happens,” he says amid a cacophony of student jostling and noise. ”This is organized chaos.” On this day, he quickly confiscates a basketball from a student dribbler. ”You know the rules, man,” he tells him. ”Pull up your pants please, sir,” he shouts to a   sophomore nearby. Also on Rayamajhi’s   list: school registration. And transportation issues. Oh, and don’t forget customer service for several dozen parents who come into the office daily, as well as the regular evening and weekend events at the school. His list seems endless. ”Field trips. That’s all me. I have to get the buses,” he says with a smile. I ask him if he sees himself as a kind of the chief operating officer. ”That’s one way of putting it, yes,” he says. ”It is a lot but it takes all of these off the principal and assistant principals so they can focus mostly on the classroom. Hey, where’s your uniform, man?” he asks a student not wearing the required blue top. His day starts with a text or call at 6 a. m. from the school’s lead maintenance man, Christopher Best, giving the physical plant update and  . Best, a 12 year veteran of the place, says things improved under Rayamajhi’s stewardship. ”I report directly to him. Let him know what’s going on for the day instead of burdening the principal. She’s already got her plate full,” Best says. ”Going through him is a lot smoother.” An idea whose time has come? The duties of the American school principal have not fundamentally changed all that much in the last century. Few districts today have an operations chief to oversee and coordinate the majority of   work. In many traditional public schools, it still falls on the principal and assistant principal to oversee learning as well as ”all of those logistical and managerial tasks that are supporting student learning,” says Bob Farrace, director of public affairs for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, or NASSP. Farrace says NASSP does not track or have any data on which districts in the U. S. have added operations managers. But the practice is not widespread and confined mostly to large urban districts, Farrace says. ”It’s the rare principal that doesn’t need more support with administrative tasks,” he says, ”but that doesn’t mean the principal is going to abdicate duties for those things.” Farrace argues that creating an ops or logistics manager simply isn’t practical   for many districts, especially smaller and rural ones. ”These are the principals that are   instructional leaders, and coaching baseball and driving the bus in the morning.” The practice is common, however, in many charter schools. In fact, the D. C. schools hired Doug Hollis, a school operations expert, from a city charter school in 2014 to run a pilot project with nine schools. Hollis now manages the expanding program. It’s not just liberation from toilets, soap, milk and buses. Columbia Heights Principal Tukeva says now she and her deputy principals no longer have to deal with streams of paperwork for hiring, procurement or registration. Most of all, she says, they can better focus on academic and   planning and the vital work of observing teachers, with coaching and   on classroom methods and following student assessments. ”And then working with teacher teams to see how these results should be used to adjust instruction.” DCPS officials say it’s too soon to tell. But the hope is the program helps boost student achievement, saves money and improves efficiency. The District aims to add more directors of operations and logistics to more of the city’s schools over the next few years. ”Corporations, they all have a director of operations, a chief operational officer. So this is definitely something that we need on a permanent basis in all schools,” Tukeva says. Back in the hallway, Rayamajhi speaks firmly yet politely into his   readying for another chaotic lunch shift. ”OK, all security let’s get ready for first lunch please. All security, let’s get ready for first lunch!”"
"An ad that came out on Monday has gone viral this week in India. The topic? Open urination and defecation. It goes like this. A group of guys heads out at the break of dawn to relieve themselves in the fields surrounding their village. But, as they start to undo their pajamas, they hear a metallic beat. From around them, a group of veiled women appear, striking utensils and silverware. They mock the men for answering nature’s call in nature. They call several of them out by name  —   and attack their pride and honor. The men ask the women to consider their own pride and let them have some privacy. The women respond: ”Oh, really? When we are assaulted or raped because we have to go to the field in the cover of darkness to relieve ourselves, what happens to privacy or honor?” In this video, which had almost 600, 000 views by early Monday, the men are shamed into building toilets at their homes. The ad is for plumbing pipes made by Astral Pipes. It’s funny, but it’s also calling attention to a serious problem in India  —   a lack of toilets. The ad is part of the ”Corporate Social Responsibility” goal for Astral Pipes by law every company in India has to spend 2 percent of their annual profit on some kind of corporate social responsibility. (And of course it can’t hurt the company’s bottom line.) More than 500 million people  —   representing more than half of the world’s   people  —   live in India. According to UNICEF, India has nearly 200, 000 diarrheal deaths yearly among children under age five, the highest number in the world. Open defecation is a contributing factor. And without private toilets, the health of women and girls suffers, too. Many develop genitourinary infections from not urinating frequently enough  —   and from poor hygiene during menstruation. The U. N. report also says the lack of private toilets exposes women to physical attacks and even natural dangers like animal attacks and snake bites. Stories of girls being assaulted when they go to do their business in the fields abound. The ”lack of access to washrooms in public spaces and at homes leads to crimes as well as girls dropping out of schools when menstruation sets in,” says Swarnima Bhattacharya, the head of Women’s Health Line who has developed a ”Bathroom Justice” campaign to promote public toilets for women. ”In rural spaces, girls need to have their own toilets. It’s not just about privacy and dignity but also practicality and health.” The government is aiming to address the issue with the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan (Clean India Mission)  —   India’s ambitious plan to improve access to toilets by 2019. There’s a social movement pushing the issue as well, sometimes by focusing on the high    ratio in India: 943 women to every 1, 000 men. The message is that a man will have a better chance of finding a bride if his family home (or the home he’s preparing for his future mate) has a toilet. One campaign commands: ”No loo? No ’I do. ’” Another campaign that translates as ”No toilet, no bride” in the state of Haryana, where there are 834 women for every 1, 000 men  —   has resulted in a sharp upturn in the number of families who suddenly want to build   restrooms. Toilet ownership there increased 21 percent in households with ” ” men  —   22 to 25  —   between 2005 and 2009, according to a report released this week in the Journal of Development Economics. Some 1. 42 million toilets were built in Haryana during these years, and a third were built in households below the poverty line. The report’s authors say Haryana state’s imbalanced sex ratio gives women the upper hand in marriage (and toilet) bargaining. Case studies show that after the campaign launched in 2005, brides’ families, traditionally treated as inferior to the groom’s family, have been able to insist on a toilet before agreeing to a betrothal. And in February, the heads of 110 villages in the state pledged to end open defecation and not marry their daughters into homes without private toilets. Grooms’ families have to show the village head a certificate of building completion before the marriage can be sanctioned. And though the ad is fiction, the   ”Cleanliness Committee” of each village in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district conducted similar actions a few years ago. They stood at crossroads in their villages at dawn with flashlights and sticks, taunting, mocking and then entreating the men who were off to use the fields. They appealed to the men’s sense of honor to protect women who have to go outside to defecate or urinate. The idea was reinforced by the state’s ”No toilet, no bride” message. The number of toilets in the district doubled between 2001 and 2009. As of 2012, more than 1, 600 villages in the state are   free. And the state has declared it will be totally   free by the end of 2017. But there have been many reports throughout India of toilets being built but not used, or documented as built but really not, and complaints of  toilets falling apart because of shoddy material. And having a toilet at home doesn’t guarantee a woman can use it. Women are low in the pecking order, Bhattacharya says. ”The presence of a toilet is not tantamount to access or control,” she says. In most families, she points out, men get first dibs, then children, and women last of all. And the ”No toilet, no bride” campaign hasn’t worked elsewhere  —   like in the neighboring state of Madhya Pradesh  —   where the   ratio is slightly better, 931 women for every 1, 000 men. The authors of the journal report found that, instead, what did work was linking a private, indoor toilet to elevated social status and respect. So, maybe the appeal to honor in the viral video could work in changing the status quo, at least to some extent, says Bhattacharya. ”I personally don’t think it’s the best way,” she says  —   to appeal to the male ego to promote women’s rights. ”But on the field, this approach is known to have helped,” she says. ”Men are traditionally viewed as providers, and if providing all this makes a man feel like more of a ’man,’ then, yes, he will be proactive to some extent.” The ad is being distributed digitally, says Kairav Engineer, senior business development manager at Astral Pipes. ”Naturally, it will reach rural India this way,” where mobile phones and data connections are more ubiquitous than toilets, he says. Chhavi Sachdev is a journalist based in Mumbai. Contact her @chhavi"
"Dr. Mark Sklansky, a   germaphobe, can’t stop thinking about how quickly microbes can spread. ”If I am at a computer terminal or using a phone or opening a door, I know my hands are now contaminated, and I need to be careful and I need to wash my hands,” says Sklansky, a professor of pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Not all health workers are so careful, despite strict handwashing policies in virtually all medical facilities. A 2010 study published in the journal Infection Control  Hospital Epidemiology shows that only about 40 percent of doctors and other health care providers comply with hand hygiene rules in hospitals.   infections are a serious and potentially   problem. On any given day, 1 in 25 hospital patients suffers from at least one infection acquired while they are in the hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And studies show the hands of health care workers are often to blame. So Sklansky decided to test a new method for limiting the spread of germs and reducing the transmission of disease in the hospital: a   zone. ”We are trying to do everything to minimize   infection except for the most obvious and easiest thing to do, in my opinion, which is to stop shaking hands,” he says. Sklansky doesn’t believe this is a substitute for handwashing, but he does think reducing handshakes could help cut down on the spread of infection. He first proposed the idea in a 2014 editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. His proposal launched a lively debate about the possible risks of the   greeting. Then in 2015, Sklansky decided to try out the idea with a   experiment. He picked a place where patients are especially vulnerable  —   the neonatal intensive care unit at two of UCLA’s hospitals, one in Westwood and one in Santa Monica. Infections among infants can cause them pain, prolong their stay in the NICU, require more medications and even put their lives at risk. Staff and families in the units were told the reasons for dropping the handshake. And signs were posted designating the new   zones. The signs feature two hands gripping each other inside a circle with a blue line through it and the words: ”To help reduce the spread of germs, our NICU is now a   zone. Please ﬁnd other ways to greet each other.” Other greetings include options like a fist bump, a bow or a wave. Handshakes weren’t banned outright, but it was recommended that a smile or another   form of salutation like a Namaste gesture might be better. ”We aren’t like a military operation,” says Sklansky. ”We are just trying to limit the use of handshakes.” In a survey of staff and family members about the experience, Sklansky and his colleagues found that establishing   zones does reduce the frequency of handshakes. And most health care workers support the idea. The findings were published in the American Journal of Infection Control. The survey didn’t determine whether avoiding handshakes actually reduced the rate of infections, but Sklansky hopes to answer that question in a future study. The formal experiment is now over, but the signs in the NICUs remain. And doctors and nurses still discourage handshakes. It’s is an effective way to decrease the spread of germs, says Maureen Shawn Kennedy,    of the American Journal of Nursing. ”There are just so many reasons to avoid handshakes, even when people are washing their hands,” Kennedy says. ”Just because someone is walking around in a white coat [. ..] doesn’t mean they don’t have bacteria on their hands.” Health care providers do wash their hands frequently, she says, but often they don’t do it for long enough or use the right technique. And bacteria live on computers, phones, medical charts and uniforms throughout hospitals, she notes. Although there is no data to prove that reducing handshakes limits hospital infections, one study showed that bumping fists was more hygienic than shaking hands. However, some infectious disease specialists believe health care workers don’t need to stop shaking hands. They just need to scrub better. ”The problem isn’t the handshake: It’s the ” says Herbert L. Fred, a Houston physician and associate editor of the Texas Heart Institute Journal. In a 2015 editorial he urged doctors to ensure their hands are clean before touching patients. After all, he wrote, ”If we ban the handshake, we might as well ban the physical examination. Both practices can spread germs,”  —   if you don’t wash your hands properly.   zones are not the solution for   infections, according to Didier Pittet, director of infection control at the University Hospital of Geneva. They simply ”reflect the lack of capacity in infection prevention and control,” he wrote in an  . Sklansky agrees that hospitals need to improve compliance with hand hygiene. He says   zones aren’t designed to replace hand washing but to complement it. ”I actually think   zones will bring attention to the hands as vectors for disease and help improve compliance with hand hygiene,” he says. Neonatologist Joanna Parga, who was part of UCLA’s   survey, says she liked the idea when she first heard about it, but wasn’t convinced it would work. Shaking hands is ”so ingrained in our culture,” she says. And it is how many doctors connect with patients. After trying several alternatives to shaking hands, including bowing, making eye contact and touching people on the shoulder, Parga now believes some of these other options are more intimate than a handshake. And they open up a conversation about safety, she says. On a recent afternoon, as Parga walks through the Westwood NICU, she introduces herself to a mother holding her infant son. ”Hi. I’m Dr. Parga,” she says. ”Are you Mom? I’m not gonna shake your hand.” Parga explains she’s just trying to help prevent infection in the NICU. Not shaking hands can feel uncomfortable, says Meena Garg, a neonatologist and medical director of the Westwood NICU. Patients often extend their hands in greeting, so sometimes ”you feel like you are being rude,” she says. But Garg supports the   zone, because it is an easy and inexpensive way to reduce infections. ”I am the medical director, so I have to look at costs,” she says. ”This doesn’t cost anything, but it may be just as important as anything else we do.” As part of the UCLA survey, Sklansky and his colleagues asked staff and parents what they thought of the new   zones. The majority of health care workers support the idea, especially medical school students and nurses. Male doctors are the most resistant, partly because they aren’t convinced stopping handshaking is necessary to prevent infections. Families, however, are universally supportive of the   zones, Sklansky found. On one recent day, Brittney Scott stands beside the crib of her    son, Samuel, as he sleeps. He’s in the NICU because of intestinal problems. Scott had never heard of a   zone, and instinctively offered her hand to a doctor when she first arrived. She was ”a little taken aback at first” when the doctor declined to take her hand. ”But once you really understand the meaning behind it, it’s great,” Scott says. Scott knows Samuel is at risk of infection, so avoiding germs is critical. She now prefers a smile to a handshake. ”A smile goes a long way in here,” she says. ”There’s a lot of ups and downs [. ..] being a parent to a NICU baby.”"
"Sharks have been swarming around southern California beaches for weeks. NPR wanted to know more about why, so we placed a call to Chris Lowe, a professor in marine biology and head of the Shark Lab at California State University at Long beach  —   or rather, we tried. Lowe was offshore on a boat trapping sharks to tag, and at the appointed time for our interview, Lowe had his hands full . .. of shark. Morning Edition producer Justin Richmond, who was on the boat with a microphone, delivered a    as Lowe and two of his students from Cal State Long Beach tugged on a net. ”They’re literally catching a shark right now!” Justin said. It was a great white shark  —   although not a big one. It was a baby, about six feet. The boat they were on was a   whaler. The idea was to tug the shark alongside that little boat, then hoist it up on the deck of a bigger boat  —   yes, in an    Jaws reference, there was a bigger boat  —   and there, the researchers quickly performed surgery, implanting tracking devices on and in the baby shark, so she could be studied later. All this action was happening only about 30 feet from Long Beach, Calif. In that neighborhood, Justin said, everybody has been talking about the sharks right there in shallow water. After Lowe gently lowered the baby shark back in the water, he was able to describe what he thinks is going on. Lowe says though these beaches have been hot spots of nurseries for white sharks, what is different now is global climate change. ”It’s changing our ocean temperatures, it’s changing our ocean currents,” he says. ”What it’s doing is it’s making conditions more favorable for some of these babies.” Los   beaches are basically the nursery for white sharks in the northeast Pacific, he says. ”And we need those sharks. They’re really important in keeping our oceans healthy. So while the public always has some concerns about the fact that there are white sharks off their beaches, what they have to remember is that these are babies and they’re coming to these beaches for the same reason they do: they want a safe place to hang out and enjoy life.” Lowe says that baby sharks are usually at least as afraid of people as we may be of them. Morning Edition producer Justin Richmond and Morning Edition editor Amy Isackson and digital producer Heidi Glenn contributed to this story."
"North Korea fired a   ballistic missile off its east coast on Monday into the Sea of Japan, South Korean and Japanese officials say, its ninth launch this year. The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff described it as a   missile that flew for some 280 miles, NPR’s Jihye Lee tells our Newscast unit, from Seoul. ”The military is saying that the launch took place from Wonsan, home to a test site of   missiles,” Lee reports. The Associated Press adds: ”[The missile] landed in Japan’s exclusive maritime economic zone, which is set about 200 nautical miles off the Japanese coast, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said. He said there was no report of damage to planes or vessels in the area.” It’s the latest in a string of   as the North aims to build a   ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead possibly as far as U. S. soil, experts say. North Korea’s last missile launch took place eight days ago. Moon   South Korea’s new president, has called an emergency National Security Council meeting. It is the third North Korean missile launch since Moon took office earlier this month. Upon his return from the   summit in Italy, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters that ”North Korea’s provocation by ignoring repeated warnings from the international society is absolutely unacceptable,” The AP reports."
"In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first   to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Hers was a Pulitzer in poetry, specifically for a volume titled Annie Allen that chronicled the life of an ordinary black girl growing up in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s famous South Side. Brooks was in her living room when she learned she had won, she recalled in a Library of Congress interview, and it was growing dark. She didn’t turn on the lights, because she knew what would happen. Money was tight, and the bill hadn’t been paid. She also knew that her Pulitzer made her something of a unicorn, and began to worry about what was going to happen when word got out. ”The next day, reporters came, photographers came,” she recalled. ”And I was absolutely petrified. I wasn’t going to say anything about the electricity. But I knew when they went to plug in their cameras and all, nothing was going to happen.” The photographers came. They plugged in their lights. The living room was sufficiently illuminated. Someone  —   ”I never did find out who”  —   had quietly paid the bill. The universe had made sure that Gwendolyn Brooks, so generous to others, was taken care of. In a way, it was life imitating art imitating life: she mostly wrote about everyday people with everyday problems, in language that varied from the classic to the colloquial. Brown girl in Bronzeville, Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kan. but she moved to Chicago with her parents, Keziah and David, when she was 5 weeks old. The Brooks family joined thousands of black families that were streaming into the city’s South Side, part of the Great Migration that would transform many large American cities north of the   Line. Segregation confined the new arrivals to the South Side, where they created parallel institutions to the white ones that excluded them. Young Gwen came from a family of readers and book lovers, and announced early on that she intended to become a poet. Her mother encouraged her, and helped Gwen send her poems to magazines and to the Chicago Defender, the legendary black newspaper whose   editorials were known in black communities throughout the country. In the 1930s, she received encouragement from the great James Weldon Johnson, and from Harlem Renaissance icons Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. Poet and biographer Angela Jackson says Brooks was published regularly in the Defender for several years, but the Pulitzer gave her a whole new kind of fame. ”The fact that she was the first   to be awarded the Pulitzer made her notoriety go through the roof,” Jackson said. ”Kindness was her religion” The award, and the financial reward that accompanies it, came at a time when Brooks and her husband, Henry Blakely, had a young son, Hank. Soon after, baby sister Nora arrived. Mothering took up a fair amount of time, but when the children were a bit older, Brooks continued giving readings, and she also began to teach. Nora Brooks Blakely remembers when her mother taught at three colleges concurrently: ”That Christmas, suddenly the Christmas presents changed . .. she just had a happy little fit, where she only got presents from Marshall Field’s and C. D. Peacock.” Brooks loved being able to do nice things for other people, even though she did not live a lavish lifestyle herself. ”It was more important to help a writer than to have the latest Nike or pair of shoes or Gucci bag or whatever, so that’s what she spent her money on,” Blakely says. The prize money funded poetry prizes Brooks created to encourage aspiring poets  —   especially children. It also took the pressure off people who were trying to write. ”There were people she gave rent to, gave car payments to,” Blakely remembers. ”She gave chunks of money and just said, ’I think this will help.’ ” ”Kindness was her religion,” says Haki Madhubuti, director of Third World Press, in Chicago. Madhubuti met Brooks in the early ’60s, when he was a young veteran writing poetry in Chicago. He’d read her in anthologies while he was in the service. ”Like so many young poets at the time, I was in awe of her, her craft and her commitment to the black community.” In his early career, Madhubuti was published under his birth name, Don L. Lee. But as a key member of the Black Arts movement  —   a contingent of artists, playwrights, poets and writers whose work reflected the cultural side of the growing Black Power movement  —   he chose a name that reflected his African heritage. He and Brooks grew as close as family  —   she often referred to him as her ”other son.” She would later say he drew her into this new cultural circle and she felt reborn. Her poetry became more urgent, more pointed. She, in turn, was celebrated by what she fondly called ”the riotous young people” who gathered at her home for long, often passionate discussions about black life, politics and culture. Black cultural celebrities of all sorts came by to visit the Blakelys: They held a party for Langston Hughes that was   only. It was less   more salon: Ideas were exchanged and vigorously debated over food and drink. ”I remember James Baldwin coming through the front door,” Nora Blakely says. She remembers Baldwin’s large, piercing eyes, ”I panicked! I was just a little kid, and his eyes looked so big and commanding to me.” When she taught, Brooks took the summers off, and would retreat into her home to enjoy reading and watching soap operas, rarely venturing out until summer’s end. Nora Blakely remembers that after she received her driver’s license, her mother sent her off to the grocery store. ”Some of her grocery lists were poetry in themselves,” she laughs. ”She would describe things like ’bright, pearlescent, ruby tomatoes’ and so forth, to be very clear about what we were supposed to find.” (Those grocery lists are included in Brooks’ archives, at the University of Illinois.) A global consciousness, Brooks also began to travel during those summers off from teaching. She visited Kenya and Tanzania, and enjoyed making contacts on the African continent. Later, she and Henry would journey to Ghana. ”She was making global connections between what was happening beside her and what was going on across the world,” says biographer Angela Jackson. This enhanced consciousness was reflected not only in Brooks’ poetry, but in her person. ”One day we walked in,” Madhubuti remembers, ”and she had a scarf on her hair . .. then she took the scarf off her head and she had a natural. She had a natural hairdo.” Brooks was no longer interested in the tyranny of the straightening comb. She even wrote a poem about it. ”To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals” celebrates ”the rich rouch right time of your hair,” despite a country whose aesthetic seeks to coerce kinks. By the time Gwendolyn Brooks died, in 2000, she’d been showered with prizes and prestigious appointments. She’d been appointed poet laureate of the state of Illinois, a position she held for several years. In that role, she became a circuit rider for poetry, crisscrossing the state, visiting schools, prisons and hospitals, reading her poems and listening to others recite them. (”We Real Cool” was a perennial favorite.) She was the recipient of more than 70 honorary degrees from colleges around the country. She also served as a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress  —   the position that would eventually be renamed poet laureate of the United States. A writer’s conference was established in her name at Chicago State University. One year, Toni Morrison was the speaker, and the author told the audience she probably couldn’t have done what she did without Gwendolyn Brooks’ example and work to show her it was possible. Despite all the accolades and literary fame, ”She was very unassuming, very humble,” says fellow poet and friend Haki Madhubuti. ”Her   was relentless,” says Angela Jackson. But she didn’t sacrifice her craft to tell those truths. ”She insisted upon an elegance of speech, an elegance of writing  —   a heightened language that pierced through to people to engage the souls of readers.”"
"Alamo Drafthouse is not a typical corporate movie chain. For a horror movie screening this week, it gave its patrons gas masks and took them by school bus out into the woods. Last night it showed the latest Pirates of the Caribbean flick on a boat. Its queer film series is called Homo Arigato. So when the Drafthouse announced last week that to celebrate the release of Wonder Woman, it was going to offer a   screening at its downtown Austin location, it didn’t sound all that edgy: ”The most iconic superheroine in comic book history finally has her own movie, and what better way to celebrate than with an   screening? ”Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying ’No Guys Allowed’ for one special night at the Alamo Ritz. And when we say ’People Who Identify As Women Only,’ we mean it. Everyone working at this screening  —   venue staff, projectionist, and culinary team  —   will be female. ”So lasso your geeky girlfriends together and grab your tickets to this celebration of one of the most enduring and inspiring characters ever created.” Innocent enough. Right? Well, this may or may not surprise you, but some men did not like this one bit. ”I hope someone sues this is discrimination based on sex,” tweeted one. ”Er, isn’t this kinda inherently sexist? Not to mention the fact that the legality is questionable given the Civil Rights Act. ..” wrote another. And the comments on the Drafthouse’s Facebook page rolled in  —   as did the theater’s cheerful replies. The Drafthouse responded by adding a second   screening  —   which, like the first, quickly sold out. Other   public spaces have made the headlines in recent years. Cities including Mexico City, Tokyo, and Delhi have   subway cars. In 2011, Istanbul’s Fenerbahce soccer club played a game before a crowd of 41, 000 women and children only men were banned as punishment for fans’ unruly behavior. The screening isn’t the only unusual event on display here: witness also the rare sight of a company’s social media manager earning plaudits. The Alamo has a history of wearing its attitude on its sleeve tattoo. A few years ago, a woman left an angry, perhaps drunken, voicemail for the theater, complaining that she had been kicked out for using her phone during a movie. The theater incorporated her   message into one of its legendary   PSAs it shows before movies. The late Texas Gov. Ann Richards was a frequent visitor to the Drafthouse in Austin, and the star of its   ’Don’t Talk’ PSA."
"No one in the history of the NBA has been a louder proponent of the underhanded free throw than Rick Barry. The unorthodox technique  —   sometimes known as the ”granny”  —   earned the Hall of Famer the title of one of the best free throw shooters of all time. Barry swears by its accuracy, but players hardly ever use it. ”I really truly can’t comprehend the aversion people have to trying something that could be very effective for them,” Rick says. He holds a career free throw average of 90 percent.  Even within his own family, his wife  —   Lynn Barry, a former Assistant Executive Director of USA Women’s Basketball  —   and his four sons prefer the overhead. His youngest son, Canyon, 23, is the only one to continue the tradition. ”Logically dictated, if you have one of the greatest free throw shooters of all time as your personal free throw coach, you should at least give it a try,” Canyon says. He just finished his fifth year with the University of Florida Gators. During his last two seasons, Canyon scored, on average, 86 percent of his free throw shots. To compare, the average in the NBA over the same period is 76 percent. For the Barrys, performing the underhanded free throw requires gripping the sides of the ball, bending your knees and lifting both arms in simultaneous motion up to the release which then lands the ball over the rim. The move is meant to be seamless and soft. The idea is that there are less moving parts involved like elbows and wrists to ruin the arc. The method has been honed and refined since Rick learned it from his father. Rick took most of the wrist out of it and would go on to use the technique throughout his illustrious career in the NBA, ABA and NCAA  —   including leading the Golden State Warriors to the 1975 championship. It’s a large shadow that’s followed Canyon throughout his own collegiate career. Upon missing a free throw at one tournament, he recalls the audience slowly cheering, ”you’re adopted” from the sidelines. He took the jeers in stride. Why no one uses it, For most players who’ve tried it, that ribbing is one reason they stopped. Basketball great Wilt Chamberlain is famously ranked as one of the worst   shooters of all time. But when he briefly switched to the underhand during the   season, he made 61 percent of his free throws that season, the highest of his career. But then he decided to stop, and his   game never recovered. In his autobiography Chamberlain said using the ”granny” shot made him ”look silly” and ”like a sissy.” The use of underhand is so rare that watching a player perform it almost guarantees weird looks and endless chatter. The most recent case is Chinanu Onuaku of the Houston Rockets. A Reddit thread dedicated to Onuaku’s underhand garnered comments, such as ”women will assume he lacks masculine rigor” and ”The other players don’t respect him now too.” Rick had that initial reaction while in high school in the 1970s. He says his father, a   player and coach, kept bothering him about switching, saying it would make him better. But Rick was   about the underhand shot because he says girls were known to shoot that way. ”So I said, ’I can’t do that dad, everyone’s going to make fun of me,’ ” Rick says. ”I remember him saying, ’Son, they can’t make fun of you if you’re making them.’ ” A changing game, Canyon refined the technique for changing times. For example, he now holds the ball further away from his body. ”The ball would get caught on the inseam of the shorts,” says Canyon about the longer, baggier basketball uniforms. His father prefers the short shorts of days past. Besides the changing fashion, Rick says Canyon’s generation also produced a new type of athlete. ”The players have gotten bigger and stronger, they look like Greek Gods  —   you know chiseled bodies,” Rick says. ”Its just astonishing how they got themselves to be physically.” For Canyon getting to that level means a strict regiment of   drills, lifting weights and calibrating his nutrition. These are all things Rick didn’t have to worry about. This includes injuries on the court. Rick would even get his knee drained during games and keep playing. Not so much for Canyon. An injury today can mean the end of a burgeoning career. His ultimate goal is to play in the NBA. But if that doesn’t work out, Canyon has a backup plan: finish his master’s degree in nuclear engineering. Either way, he’s sticking with the underhand free throw."
"Doctors can save thousands of lives a year if they act promptly to identify sepsis, an often lethal reaction to infection. Sometimes called blood poisoning, sepsis is the leading cause of death in hospitals. A    regulation in New York state compels doctors and hospitals to follow a certain protocol, involving a big dose of antibiotics and intravenous fluids. It’s far from perfect  —   about a quarter of patients still die from sepsis. But early intervention is helping. ”Intervention has to be quick,” says Dr. Howard Zucker, commissioner of the New York State Health Department. He knows what happens when it isn’t. In fact, he says, he has a cousin in the hospital right now who has been struggling to recover from a severe bout of sepsis  —   hospitalized in another state, he adds. Doctors didn’t immediately realize that he was developing sepsis, and by the time they did, Zucker says it was much more difficult to treat. ”That’s what we’re trying to do. We want people to intervene quickly. That’s the regulation, to intervene fast in a situation of this nature.” Indeed, sepsis death rates in hospitals have declined where these rules are in place. But Dr. Jeremy Kahn at the University of Pittsburgh has mixed feelings about these regulations. ”If we [doctors] were great at doing the right thing  —   the thing that most people agree on  —   then we wouldn’t need regulation,” he says. But in reality, doctors don’t all keep up with the latest best practices and follow them, Kahn says, so regulations save lives. ”The downside is that a regulatory approach lacks flexibility,” he adds. ”It essentially is saying we can take a     approach to treating a complex disease like sepsis.” That’s problematic, because doctors haven’t found the best way to treat this condition. The scientific evidence is evolving rapidly, Kahn says. ”Almost every day another study is released that shows what we thought to be best practice might not be best practice.” Kahn wrote a commentary about the rapid changes earlier this month for the New England Journal of Medicine. For a while, medical practice guidelines distributed to doctors called on them to use one particular drug to treat sepsis. It turned out that drug did more harm than good. Another heavily promoted strategy, called   therapy, also turned out to be ineffective. And a study presented last week at the American Thoracic Society and published electronically in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that one of the steps required in New York may not be beneficial, either. The regulations call for a rapid and substantial infusion of intravenous fluids, but that didn’t improve survival in New York state hospitals. Many doctors consider fluids helpful, but ”what we haven’t learned is the specific type of fluid to give patients, how much and how fast of a rate,” says Dr. Christopher Seymour, a critical care researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who   the analysis. ”It’s been quite controversial.” ”There are consequences and adverse effects that can come from too much fluid,” Seymour says. In fact, some doctors believe that most patients are better off without this aggressive fluid treatment. There’s a study getting underway to answer that question. Dr. Nathan Shapiro at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center hopes to enlist more than 2, 000 patients at about 50 hospitals to answer this    question. But that study will take years, and in the meantime doctors have to make a judgment call. ”It is possible that at present they are requiring hospitals to adopt protocols for fluid resuscitation that might not be entirely appropriate,” Kahn says. There could also be other big changes on the horizon for treating sepsis. Doctors scattered coast to coast are trying a new protocol that, in addition to limiting fluids, uses high doses of intravenous vitamin C, steroids and vitamin B1. That has generated a great deal of enthusiasm and some startling claims of success, though it remains to be seen whether it is indeed an exciting advance or will become another disappointment in treating sepsis. Dr. Zucker at the New York Health Department says the current regulations would not stand in the way of advances to treatment. ”If there is a disruptive technology that comes out, or a therapy that comes out, we would adjust accordingly.” You can reach Richard Harris at rharris@npr. org."
"The U. S. military invaded Panama in hot pursuit of the country’s dictator, Manuel Noriega, in December 1989. As he rapidly ran out of options, Noriega took refuge at the Vatican Embassy in Panama City. In deference to diplomatic protocol, U. S. forces did not enter the embassy. But they did concoct a plan to smoke out Noriega, who died Monday at the age of 83. The plan involved music, mostly heavy metal and rock, with a few ballads thrown in. It was blasted on loud speakers, at deafening volumes, around the clock. Here’s a small sampling of the playlist designed to send Noriega a musical message: ”Give It Up,” by K. C. And The Sunshine Band, ”No More Mister Nice Guy,” by Alice Cooper, and ”Paranoid” by Black Sabbath. You get the drift. The U. S. military launched the operation on Dec. 20, 1989, to seize Noriega, who had once been a U. S. ally but was by this point wanted on drug trafficking charges. The U. S. military radio for Central America, known as the Southern Command Network, initially did what it always did  —   play requests from the troops. Many of those requests were directed at Noriega. As U. S. Southern Command later noted in an   report: ”When the troops started coming in from the field, the requests became quite imaginative,” it said in dry,  . The favorites included ”Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns N’ Roses, ”Wanted Dead Or Alive,” by Bon Jovi, and ”The End” by The Doors. After several days on the run, Noriega was allowed to enter the Vatican Embassy on Christmas Eve. And on Christmas Day, the radio station broadcast only Christmas music. But with requests streaming in, the U. S. effort ramped up after the holiday. On Dec. 27, ”someone who identified himself as a member of the PSYOPS [Psychological Operations] team from Fort Bragg [N. C.] called to tell us what they were doing with their loud speakers,” the military report said. U. S. Gen. Maxwell ”Mad Max” Thurman had ordered speakers placed as a ”musical barrier” around the perimeter of the Vatican Embassy and turned to full volume. Noriega was reportedly partial to opera. What he got was ”Panama,” from Van Halen, ”Danger Zone,” from Kenny Loggins, and ”Refugee,” courtesy of Tom Petty. And remember, this was the ’80s. So the strongman also got an earful of Rick Astley’s ”Never Gonna Give You Up,” though that may have been intended more for Noriega’s hosts at the embassy. As the standoff dragged on for days, the playlist became part of the story. Not everyone was happy with the military’s approach, including the White House, and the music was stopped after several days. President George H. W. Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, said afterward that he thought the use of   music was ”undignified.” On Jan. 3, 1990, Noriega surrendered to the U. S. forces, though not until after he’d been treated to a version of ”I Fought The Law.” Noriega was flown to Miami, tried and convicted of drug trafficking, and spent nearly two decades in U. S. prisons."
"Military commander, drug trafficker, CIA informant, dictator, convicted murderer: The strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega wore many labels during his tortuous path to  —   and fall from  —   the heights of power in Panama. Announcing Noriega’s death at age 83 Tuesday, Panama’s president said it ”closes a chapter in our history.” Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela announced Noriega’s death via Twitter. And while the cause of death wasn’t immediately reported, Noriega had recently been dealing with complications from brain surgery in March, it was reported that he was in a coma. The era in which Noriega exercised absolute control over Panama is long past  —   but his   reign continues to cast a long shadow both in his home country and the United States, with whom he had a complex relationship. At the time of his death in a Panama City hospital, Noriega was serving a prison sentence for corruption and having opponents killed. Varela said Noriega’s daughters and other family members ”deserve a funeral in peace.” Rise to power, As he clawed his way out of an impoverished childhood, Noriega looked first not to the military, but the medical profession for his preferred profession. It was only after he was denied admission from medical school as a young man  —   likely because of his financial circumstances  —   that Noriega continued his studies at a military academy in Peru. When he returned to Panama to begin his military career in earnest, he went into the intelligence services, where he quickly cultivated a stellar reputation among his fellow officers. Noriega ”possessed the uncanny ability to absorb information, size up the options available to an adversary, place himself in the other person’s shoes and astutely anticipate probable courses of action,” says John Dinges, author of the Noriega biography Our Man in Panama. By the ’70s, Noriega had parlayed that ability into a burgeoning relationship with U. S. intelligence services  —   and with various   and   cartels, including infamous Colombian narcotrafficker Pablo Escobar. Indeed, Noriega was so trusted by the U. S. that, as CNN notes, the U. S. government requested that he travel to Cuba to seek the release of ”two American freighters seized by Cuba” in 1971. As the decade wore on, the CIA paid Noriega for information even as Noriega climbed the ranks of his own country’s military intelligence division, ultimately becoming its chief officer and one of the principal lieutenants of Panama’s strongman at the time, Omar Torrijos. After Torrijos died in a plane crash in 1981  —   a crash that later engendered suspicions of foul play  —   Panama descended into a   struggle to fill the power vacuum Torrijos left behind. Noriega emerged from the    with the mantle of commander of the combined Panamanian Defense Forces in 1983  —   and in doing so, assumed absolute power in all but official name. The de facto dictator would leave those official (and empty) titles to the series of puppet civilian presidents whose electoral victories he’d help engineer behind the scenes, a convenient fiction he would maintain until the twilight of his rule in 1989. A fall from great heights, It wasn’t long before Noriega’s benefactor, the U. S. would turn on him, however. Evidence of the Panamanian dictator’s extrajudicial killings and dealings with drug cartels mounted until it was nearly impossible to ignore  —   no matter how helpful he had proved to the CIA in the past. By 1986, reports were circulating in the U. S. that Noriega had spearheaded the gruesome torture and murder of a   rival and that he was now earning a payday from Eastern European governments for U. S. secrets. The U. S. Congress ended economic aid and military assistance to Panama in 1987. Yet it was not until Noriega openly interfered with the 1989 Panamanian presidential election, seizing ballot boxes and installing his preferred candidate, that the U. S. openly began plotting his downfall. After a U. S.  coup attempt failed in October 1989,   George H. W. Bush took a more direct step before year’s end. On Dec. 20, citing Noriega’s indictment on charges of racketeering, money laundering and   the administration launched Operation Just Cause, an invasion force of more than 20, 000 troops intended to oust him from power. Noriega, naturally, explained the souring of his relationship with the U. S. differently. ”The United States understood that Noriega is not the same man that was lieutenant colonel,” Noriega told American filmmaker Oliver Stone, who interviewed him in a U. S. federal prison in 1993. ”Now he is commander in chief and said ’no’ to our interests. And he is not our man.” Though the reason for the conflict was disputed by Noriega, its result was not: After roughly a fortnight, Noriega surrendered to the U. S. at the Vatican Embassy in Panama City  —   but only after U. S. forces loudly blasted rock music (including Rick Astley’s ”Never Gonna Give You Up”) outside the building during their efforts to drive him out. Just a few days into 1990, Noriega was captured by the U. S. and transported to Miami to await trial. There, he was convicted of a host of charges in federal court. And though his sentence in the U. S. was reduced to 15 years, his prison time ultimately was not  —   for he was also convicted of crimes in France and Panama, where he died at 83, still in custody for his crimes."
"At the   summit last week, Donald Trump   and posed for photo ops with leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Tuesday, however, he had some harsh words for Merkel’s Germany. ”We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO  military. Very bad for U. S. This will change,” he tweeted on Tuesday morning. That ”MASSIVE” trade deficit is what we’re going to focus on here. Trump often brings up trade deficits with other countries, but economists say that this is the wrong way to think about trade deficits. Moreover, to cast trade deficits as uniformly bad  —   as some sort of score of who’s winning and losing in global economics  —   ignores the substantial gains that countries make from trade. A trade deficit results when a country imports more than it exports  —   that is, it buys more from the rest of the world than it sells to the rest of the world. Trump is talking here about what is called a bilateral trade deficit  —   a trade deficit that describes only what two countries buy from and sell to each other. ”Massive” may be in the eye of the beholder here. The U. S. ran a trade deficit of around $65 billion with Germany in 2016. That’s substantial  —   around   of the total U. S. trade deficit  —   but it’s not gargantuan. The U. S. deficit with China, by comparison, was $347 billion in that year. And the total U. S. trade deficit was around $734 billion. Bilateral trade deficits aren’t all that important, Caring all that much about the U. S. trade deficit with Germany in particular doesn’t make much sense, said Douglas Irwin, professor of economics at Dartmouth College, because Germany is part of the European Union. ”It’s like saying our trade deficit with Alberta is hurting us,” he said. The economic union between European nations means it doesn’t make sense to single out Germany in particular. But much more importantly, bilateral trade deficits just don’t say much about U. S. economic health at all, as former U. S. Trade Representative Carla Hills told NPR in April. ”Bilateral trade deficits are not as relevant as your overall trade deficit,” Hills said. ”I have a deficit with my grocery, and I have a surplus with my clients. But I can’t have a surplus with my grocer. I have to buy from them.” Were you to look solely at Hills’ grocery bills, you might think she were in dire financial straits it would look like she spends all her money there, and they never give her any back. But the grocer is simply better at providing food than Hills is, so she relies on him. And that grocer likely isn’t trained to fill cavities, so the grocer goes to a dentist for that. And on and on and on  —   this is just how trade works. Countries sell the things that they are good at producing, and they can simply buy the things they’re not so good at producing from other places. Likewise, while the U. S. buys lots more goods from Germany and China than those countries buy from the U. S. the U. S. also does run some trade surpluses with countries including Hong Kong, Australia and Brazil (among others). The global trade deficit is a different story, The United States’ total global trade deficit of $734 billion matters more than the U. S. trade deficit with Germany (or China or Mexico or whatever other country Trump may be tweeting about on any given day). And that might sound bad  —   it sounds like the U. S. is consistently sending all of its money out into the world and getting no money back. Moreover, a trade deficit subtracts from the nation’s total GDP. And because a lot of what the U. S. is buying from overseas is manufactured goods, a trade deficit hits American manufacturing harder than other industries, as economists Gary Hufbauer and Eujin Jang wrote earlier this year. But a big trade deficit isn’t necessarily bad. There are a few ways to see why this is. One is that a trade deficit doesn’t say much about the overall current health of the economy  —   a surplus or a shrinking deficit doesn’t necessarily signal a healthy economy, and a bigger deficit doesn’t necessarily mean a failing economy. Here’s one simple example of why that is: the U. S. trade deficit has tended to fall in recent years when the U. S. economy is doing worse. In the   to the Great Recession, the trade deficit shrank, going from around $816 billion in 2008 to around $500 billion in 2009. That didn’t signify good economic health and Americans suddenly producing more compared to other countries it signified Americans buying less stuff from other countries. So all those dollars going out aren’t necessarily a bad thing. And here’s one big reason why: Other countries are investing in the U. S. at the same time, as economist Chad Bown told NPR’s John Ydstie in April. ”We’re essentially borrowing from the rest of the world at relatively low interest rates to be able to make the investments that we need without having to do the savings ourselves,” he said. That means Americans don’t have to sock away a bunch of money to fund that investing (which is good, because Americans aren’t saving enough to do that, as Ydstie reported). This does show a potentially dangerous flip side to a trade deficit, however: if all that investing is holding interest rates down, it can lead to bubbles. A big trade deficit may have therefore been related to the housing bubble of the   Irwin explained. The U. S. also has one more unique thing going for it: Dollars are used all over the world. ”We are the reserve currency of the world,” Irwin said. ”There’s a shortage of safe assets in the world. The dollar’s considered a safe asset, so it’s widely used it’s widely popular it’s in demand.” He added, ”That’s a burden and a privilege.” All that demand for dollars makes the dollar stronger. And a strong dollar hurts exports, because it makes U. S. goods more expensive to foreign buyers. That can push up the trade deficit. (Moreover, this implies that the U. S. economy needs to run a trade deficit to keep the global economy going.) But then, for a factory worker whose plant has moved to Mexico, it could be tough to make the case that trade isn’t a destructive force. This is the hard truth of the   of trade: trade does bring widespread economic benefits (a wider variety of goods, lower prices) but it can also be harmful to particular people. And something similar is true of trade deficits: while it’s easy to see them as some sort of an international scoreboard of who’s winning or losing at trade, they are neither entirely good nor entirely bad."
"For a few hours Monday, the bitter   between a bull and a girl in New York City got a curious,   interloper: a tiny pug, with one of those legs suggestively raised beside the girl’s leg. There was no urine, no caustic caption, but it was clear where the dog’s disdain was directed. The statue’s placement by sculptor Alex Gardega marks an odd, if brief, digression in a contentious chapter that’s been unfolding off Wall Street for months. It was there that the financial district’s nearly    Charging Bull confronted a new arrival earlier this year: the statue of a defiant girl, hands placed firmly on hips and chin thrust forward against the bull’s implied threat. The artist behind the bull, Arturo Di Modico, has not appreciated the installation of Fearless Girl, a work designed by Kristen Visbal and commissioned by an international investment firm State Street Global Advisors. The firm says it intended the girl as a means to ”to raise awareness and drive a conversation around the need to improve gender diversity in corporate leadership roles.” Di Modico, however, feels the new statue mutates his   bull into a villain for the sake of ”an advertising trick.” If his disdainful pug wasn’t indication enough, Gardega made clear to NBC News’ affiliate in New York which side of the dispute he is on. ”I have a lot of empathy for the creator of the bull, Arturo,” Gardega told NBC on Tuesday. ”I’m a pretty happy person, not seething or angry and certainly not  . My piece is not without a sense of humor. There is plenty of room for Fearless Girl it just interferes with another artists  .” In an interview with the New York Post, he called Fearless Girl  —   which recently had its temporary permit renewed by the city through 2018  —   ”corporate nonsense.” ”It has nothing to do with feminism, and it is disrespect to the artist that made the bull,” he said. Visbal did not immediately make a public comment about the dog’s placement. If nothing else, Gardena’s pug joins a tradition of imposition established by the two statues it briefly came between: Fearless Girl was set up overnight opposite the Charging Bull against the wishes of Di Modico  —   who, in turn, initially set up his own bull overnight outside the New York Stock Exchange in the late 1980s, also against that institution’s wishes. As one might imagine, though, the dog did little to ease the dispute. A quick glance at Twitter confirms the inflamed frustrations on either side. At any rate, the little dog is gone now, picked up after several hours by Gardega since, as he tells NBC, he ”certainly had no rights to bolt it to the ground.” The bitter   between Di Modica and the Fearless Girl’s many defenders, though  —   that remains standing as firmly as the two statues themselves."
"Renowned sports writer and commentator Frank Deford, 78, died on Sunday, just a few weeks after his last piece aired on Morning Edition. He had recorded 1, 656 commentaries for NPR over nearly 40 years. Deford left everything on the field when choosing topics for his commentaries. One of his early 1980 pieces argued that losing teams didn’t deserve support, and later that year he opined that the Heisman Trophy was ”the second stupidest award given in sports.” In 1992, he told us ”television coverage of football is abysmal. It stinks.” A few years later, he weighed in on   NBA player Jason Williams’ nickname, ”White Chocolate.” But Deford wasn’t always the sports curmudgeon, as Jon Wertheim, executive editor for Sports Illustrated, told Morning Edition.  ”I think there was a real versatility to him,” said Wertheim, who knew Deford for more than 20 years. Many sports writers, Wertheim said, got into the business because of Deford. ”He could write with empathy, compassion, and sweetness. He could take stands  —   as NPR listeners know there were certainly, there were dimensions to sport that bothered him. There was a level of moral outrage,” Wertheim said. ”And then he could come back the next week and write about something with real sweetness and tenderness. And he did the same thing in his prose. And he is just an absolute giant in the field.” For Wertheim, what made Deford’s writing so good, was his reporting and analysis. ”And I think something that gets lost with Frank Deford  —   you hear what a brilliant writer he was, and all of that is true  —   but I think his writing in some ways was really shaped by his ability to report, and his ability to analyze. Analyze situations, analyze people, analyze games,” Wertheim said. ”And too often we talk about brilliant writers and we lose sight of the fact that they were brilliant reporters as well. Which made the writing easy. And I think Frank is a classic example of that.” It’s hard to distill 37 years of Deford’s Sweetness and Light commentaries down to a few ”best of” pieces. But, before he retired, he shared some of his favorites with us and, here, we share them with you. Plays, Monet, Faure and football? Deford came to the defense of Gary Walters, the athletic director at Princeton University, who compared sports to art, in his Oct. 17, 2007, commentary: What we accepted as great art  —   whether the book, the script, the painting, the symphony  —   is that which could be saved and savored. But the performances of the athletic artists who ran and jumped and wrestled were gone with the wind. Now, however, that we can study the grace of the athlete on film, a double play can be viewed as pretty as any pas de deux. Or, please: Is not what we saw Michael Jordan do every bit as artistic as what we saw Mikhail Baryshnikov do? Toss the ball to Shakespeare, There are plays on the field and court, and, well, plays. Deford put the ball in The Bard’s hands for his Jan. 30, 2008, commentary: Methinks the crunch upon his presence is so great, And the paparazzi do shine forth such a spangled glareThat the great golden orb above must be dimmedAnd the sounds of Niagara itself seem noiselessBefore the din of questions that confront our great Brady. Hey, you guys! Deford observed that there was a new ”linguistic phenomenon” in his Sept. 27, 2011, commentary  —   the ”  of America”: How did females become guys? How did everyone become guys? Remember, too, that a male guy was something of a scoundrel. And a wise guy was a fresh kid, a whippersnapper. In its most other famous evocation, men in Brooklyn said ”youse guys.” Damon Runyon referred to hustlers, gamblers and other nefarious types as guys. Now every mother’s son is a guy and every mother’s daughter, too. If they wrote the musical now, it wouldn’t be called Guys and Dolls  —   —   just Guys and Guys. Our indecent joy,  Deford revisited the topic of concussions and football over and over again, and in his Jan. 16, 2013, commentary he reflected on Americans’ love of the game despite what he called, its ”violent nature”: Football teams represent cities and colleges and schools. The people have built great stadiums, and the game is culturally intertwined with our calendar. We don’t go back to college for the college. We go back for a football game, and, yes, we even call that ”homecoming.” It would take some unimagined cataclysmic event to take football from us. Concussions for young men are the price of our love for football, as broken hearts are what we pay for young love. Put down the ball, pick up a book, In his Sept. 4, 2013, commentary, Deford weighed in on the whistleblower who called attention to fake classes for athletes at   Hill: So much about   college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the     are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren’t educated so much as they are just kept eligible."
"Timothy Loehmann, the police officer who shot and killed    Tamir Rice in 2014, was fired by the Cleveland Police Department on Tuesday. At a news conference, city authorities announced that the reason for his termination wasn’t the deadly incident that brought him to national attention, but rather violations he committed in the course of his hiring process. ”Patrol officer Loehmann had been charged with rule violations concerning his application process to be considered a cadet with the Division of Police  —   specifically, answers he had provided on his personal history statement,” Michael McGrath, the city’s director of public safety, told reporters in prepared remarks. The Cleveland Plain Dealer explains that Loehmann failed to disclose the full circumstances of how his time at a previous police department ended: ”Loehmann was allowed to resign from the Independence department after six months following a series of incidents where supervisors determined he was unfit to be a police officer. ”The disciplinary letter cites a letter in Loehmann’s personnel file from Independence that says he was emotionally immature and had ’an inability to emotionally function.’ The letter also cites an emotional breakdown Loehmann had on the gun range in Independence.” Cleveland authorities also announced that Frank Garmback, the officer driving the patrol car at the time Loehmann shot Tamir, would be suspended for 10 days for administrative rule violations of his own. He would also be required to take a tactical training course. The penalties cap a review process conducted by Cleveland’s Critical Incident Review Committee, or CIRC, in the wake of Tamir’s death and the widespread protests it elicited. As the Plain Dealer reported last month, CIRC already ”found no fault in the officers’ actions leading up to, during and after the Nov. 22, 2014 shooting at Cudell Recreation Center on Cleveland’s West Side.” In 2015, a little more than a year after the shooting, a grand jury also declined to bring criminal charges against the two officers. Rather, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor said at the time, it was simply a ”perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunications by all involved that day.” Here is how Nick Castele described the police shooting on Morning Edition: ”On a Saturday afternoon last year, Tamir Rice was playing with an air gun at a park on the west side of Cleveland. Someone called the police, mentioning in the process that the gun could be fake. ”The dispatcher didn’t relay the caller’s doubts. ”Soon afterward, police drove onto the grass within feet of    Tamir. Investigators say surveillance shows Tamir reaching toward his waistband and lifting up an outer garment. Within seconds Officer Timothy Loehmann stepped out of the passenger side and fired two shots, striking Tamir once in the abdomen. Tamir Rice died early the next day.” Tamir’s death, ruled a homicide by the Cuyahoga County medical examiner, drew demonstrations both in Cleveland and several other cities across the U. S. And though the officers faced no criminal charges for the incident, the city of Cleveland later agreed to pay $6 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit brought by the Rice family. At the news conference announcing Loehmann’s firing Tuesday, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson offered ”condolences to the family of Tamir Rice.” ”You know, it’s difficult when a child  —   in this case, a     —   loses their life,” he said. ”It makes it even more challenging and more difficult in terms of accepting it if it happens at the hands of a police officer.”"
"Updated 7:10 p. m. ET, The mayor of Portland is calling for the cancellation of two   rallies and marches scheduled for the next few weeks, given a recent stabbing in the city by a suspect who police say has expressed ”extremist ideology.” Mayor Ted Wheeler has asked the organizers to cancel the events voluntarily while also urging the federal government to block the protests. The ACLU of Oregon has responded on Twitter, saying in part, ”The government cannot revoke or deny a permit based on the viewpoint of the demonstrators. Period.” Wheeler’s comments come days after a man on a Portland train shouted racial and religious hate speech, some of it directed at two women, police say. The man then stabbed three male bystanders who apparently tried to intervene, killing two of them. Local media say the suspect in the stabbing, Jeremy Joseph Christian, has been identified as a white supremacist. ”Free speech or die,” Christian shouted during his first court appearance Tuesday, repeatedly yelling over officials in the courtroom, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. ”Get out if you don’t like free speech. You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism.” The Oregonian reports that a ”  probable cause affidavit filed after court” says Christian confessed to the stabbings immediately after his arrest: ” ’I just stabbed a bunch of [m************] in the neck,” Christian told police from the back of a patrol car after he was taken into custody. ’Just a punk ass bunch of [m************]. Get stabbed in the neck if you hate free speech . .. I can die in prison a happy man . .. I stabbed the two [m************] in the neck and I’m happy now. I’m happy now. I can rest easy.” ”While still in the back seat of a patrol car, Christian said he hoped his victims died.” He is scheduled to be back in court June 7. A ”Trump Free Speech Rally” in Portland is scheduled for June 4, and a ”March Against Sharia” for June 10th. Both events are planned in a plaza that is managed by the U. S. government, which offers permits for demonstrations. ”Our city is in mourning,” Wheeler wrote on Twitter. ”Our community’s anger is real, and the timing and subject of these events can only exacerbate an already difficult situation.” The ”Trump Free Speech Rally” is advertised as featuring Kyle Chapman, who is popular among   groups and is famous for hitting an   demonstrator with a stick. ”There will be speakers exercising their free speech, live music, flags, and an uplifting experience to bring back strength and courage to those who believe in freedom,” the Facebook post for the event says. Christian ”attended a similar   rally on April 29 called a ’March for Free Speech’ in East Portland,” member station OPB reports. ”Police confiscated a baseball bat Christian took to the rally. He frequently used the   and saluted Hitler.” The June 10 event is one of nearly two dozen marches ”against Sharia law and for human rights” planned by ACT for America in various cities. The organization calls itself ”the NRA of national security,” while the Southern Poverty Law Center calls it ”the largest grassroots   group in America.” ”I am appealing to the organizers of the   demonstrations to CANCEL the events,” Portland’s mayor said. He also called on the U. S. government to revoke or refuse to issue the necessary permits for the demonstrations. It was the appeal to the federal government to intervene that prompted a response from the ACLU of Oregon. The group defended the rights of the demonstration organizers, writing on Twitter, ”We are all free to reject and protest ideas we don’t agree with. That is a core, fundamental freedom of the United States.” ”If we allow the government to shut down speech for some, we all will pay the price down the line,” the ACLU of Oregon says. Meanwhile, the mother of one of the stabbing victims has written a letter to President Trump asking him to condemn violence born out of hate. Asha Deliverance’s son,    Taliesin Myrddin   was one of the two men who died. He ”did not hesitate to act with love,” she writes. ”You have said that you will be President for all Americans. So, I ask you Mr. President to take action at this time,” Deliverance wrote to Trump. ”Please encourage all Americans to protect and watch out for one another. Please condemn any acts of violence, which result directly from hate speech  hate groups.” You can read her full letter here."
"Two people are dead and one was injured after a stabbing on a train in Portland, Ore. on Friday afternoon. Police say the disturbance began when a man on a   train ”began yelling various remarks that would best be characterized as hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions.” Among the subjects of his diatribe were two young women who appeared to be Muslim one was wearing a hijab. ”In the midst of his ranting and raving, some people approached him and appeared to try to intervene with his behavior and some of the people that he was yelling at,” Sgt. Pete Simpson told The Oregonian. ”They were attacked viciously.” The suspect stabbed three men before fleeing the train police located him and took him into custody. On Saturday afternoon, police identified the two men killed as Ricky John Best, age 53, who died at the scene and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, who died at the hospital. A third man,    Micah   Fletcher, is injured but expected to survive. Namkai Meche’s mother, Asha Deliverance, wrote a tribute to her son on her Facebook page Saturday morning: Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, My dear baby boy passed on yesterday while protecting two young Muslim girls from a racist man on the train in Portland. He was a hero and will remain a hero on the other side of the veil. Shining bright star I love you forever. Police identified the suspect as    Jeremy Joseph Christian of North Portland. He has been booked on two counts each of aggravated murder and intimidation in the second degree, and one count each of attempted murder and being a felon in possession of a restricted weapon. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that Simpson said that, though the attack happened just before the start of Ramadan, police weren’t yet sure the attack was ”religiously motivated.” ”According to some preliminary witness statements, he was kind of spewing hate about a lot of different things,” said Simpson. ”So not specifically and exclusively  . . .. So that’s why it’s hard to say at this point was he directing it at any one person, or was it just kind of in general to everyone around him.” ”We don’t know if he’s got mental health issues, we don’t know if he’s under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or all of the above,” said Simpson. ”Right now we’re in the very early stages of the investigation.” Imtiaz Khan, president of the Islamic Center of Portland, told OPB that since the election, hate speech and harassment of the Muslim community have increased. ”We are very sad. Ramadan started just a couple hours ago,” said Khan. ”We are very sorry for the two men who tried to do the right thing.” Khan said that ”of course people from the Muslim community are concerned. And unfortunately the easy targets are women because of the headscarf.” Police say they have identified and been in contact with the two women, whose identities were not released. The Portland Mercury reports that the suspect was a ”known local white supremacist.” The alternative weekly published photos and video of Christian at a ”March for Free Speech” on April 29, to which he brought a baseball bat. Draped in an American flag, he yelled ”I’m a nihilist,” and shouted profanity and racial slurs. The Southern Poverty Law Center reviewed Christian’s Facebook page, and found numerous posts espousing extremist views. In a post from April 19, Christian praised the Oklahoma City bomber, writing, ”May all the Gods Bless Timothy McVeigh a TRUE PATRIOT! !!” In a February 2016 post, he wrote: ”I’m sure most of you don’t remember but the American Nazi Party was taking care of a stretch of highway in Oregon about 10 years ago until ODOT took down their sign. Apparently Nazis don’t have the freedom to exercise their civic duties in this State. Why? Because we live in a Fascist Police State run By ’Liberal’ ’Multicultural’ NAZIS! !!” In a statement released Saturday, police say they will ”extensively examine” Christian’s background, ”including the information publicly available about the suspect’s extremist ideology” in their investigation. Christian wasn’t flagged as a gang member, ”nor does he have any known mental health history listed,” the department said. Court records show that Christian was convicted in 2002 of robbery, kidnapping and a weapons charge, according to the AP. Police say the state medical examiner was conducting autopsies on the victims on Saturday. Christian will be arraigned on Tuesday and could face additional charges."
"When Ebola erupted in West Africa a few years ago, it was catastrophic. But one good thing emerged from the outbreak: The development of an Ebola vaccine —   a powerful vaccine. As we reported back in December, the vaccine is highly effective. ”We were able to estimate the efficacy of the vaccine as being 100 percent in a trial,” said Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, who helped test the vaccine. ”It’s very unusual to have a vaccine that protects people perfectly.” Of course, no vaccine is perfect. In the end, the efficacy is likely to sit somewhere between about 70 percent and 100 percent, Longini said. And that’s enough to bring outbreaks to a screeching halt. Now that vaccine is headed to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help fight a small outbreak there. Since late April, Congo has reported about 19 cases, the World Health Organization said. On Monday, the Congo government agreed to use the vaccine. ”Now there’s a Medecins Sans Frontiers team that is arriving [in Congo] today to validate the protocol with the technical teams,” Jonathan Simba, a health ministry spokesman, told Reuters. The outbreak already shows signs of slowing down. There hasn’t been a new confirmed case since May 11. And several suspected cases were ruled out last week. Congo has a long history fighting Ebola. Since the virus was first detected there in 1976, the country has reported seven other outbreaks. In all instances, health workers have stopped the disease by isolating infected people. This is the first outbreak since the vaccine became available. The vaccine  —   called    —   took about two decades to develop. Scientists in the U. S. and Canada started working on it back in the 1990s and early 2000s. Then it sat on the shelf for years because of lack of funding. Toward the end of the outbreak in West Africa, scientists began testing the vaccine in a large trial with more than 4, 000 people. The shot worked extremely well and had mild side effects, such as headache and muscle pain. The vaccine hasn’t been approved yet by either the World Health Organization or the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. That’s predicted to happen sometime in 2018. But GAVI  —   the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization  —   has already spent $5 million to help finish the development and manufacturing of the vaccine, in partnership with the pharmaceutical company Merck. Together, they have stockpiled 300, 000 doses of the vaccine. Now the challenge is getting the shot to a remote corner of Congo. "
"There are museums, and then there are ”wonderfully specific museums.” Atlas Obscura writer Molly McBride Jacobson compiled a list of such unique institutions as the American Toby Jug Museum, the German Watering Can Museum and the U. S. National Tick Collection. Her list includes 86 places around the world. Jacobson tells NPR’s Robert Siegel most of these collections are born out of one person’s obsession, like the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia. ”That was the work of Gary and Nancy Doss, and they had this computer repair shop,” Jacobson says, ”and sort of collected Pez  —   I’m assuming the only real Pez memorabilia is Pez dispensers  —   but they collected these and displayed them sort of as a hobby in their shop and then that took over, and the entire shop became the Pez museum.” Some of the places on Jacobson’s list are more scientific than silly, depending on how you look at it. The Museum of Snoring in Germany explores humans’ longstanding, concerted efforts to stop snoring. ”Basically as long as snoring has been around people have been trying to stop it,” Jacobson says. ”You find all sorts of contraptions, some of them are almost surgical in their appearance. They go up your nose or into your sinuses. I like museums like this because they sort of lend a very specific lens to human history or human medicine.” While most of these places begin as a person’s passion, Jacobson says the key to making a collection interesting depends on the variety of the items. ”In some cases, you know, someone has a collection, and it’s just a collection,” she says. . .. ”But sometimes the size of the collection and the variety of the items that they have  —   whether they’re hand fans or mustard jars or garden gnomes  —   the variety in the breadth of the collection can actually tell you something about this phenomenon, and what people were doing when they were making gnomes or Pez dispensers.”"
"For nearly 40 years, Little Pete’s was more than just a greasy spoon. It became a landmark and the pride of Philadelphia. Now the city is mourning the loss of one of its last   downtown diners. Little Pete’s was named after Pete Koutroubas, a Greek immigrant who started in the restaurant industry as a dishwasher. He was so short he had to stand on a milk crate to do the job. That’s where he got the nickname. ”Because I used to work at a place, and the owner was Big Pete  —   he was like   something. And there was a manager there who was Pete. And I was the busboy. I was the little one. They used to call them Big Pete, Middle Pete and Little Pete. So I got stuck with Little Pete,” he said. That name, in red on a white   sign, is what invited people in before sitting down at one of the simple booths or on a stool around a   counter. Generations of lawyers, construction workers, business people and janitors have been served Reubens and chicken pot pies here since 1978. It became a community outpost in a section of the city that went from seedy to bustling. Waitress Margie Storn, wearing big gold hoop earrings and purple eye shadow, says regulars have even developed nicknames over the decades. ”We have a customer whose name is John, and we call him   because he doesn’t want a pickle or a chip,” she said. As Tracy Mueller found out, it didn’t take long to become part of the Little Pete’s family. ”The second time I came here, the waitress knew my name, she knew what I drank, before I even sat down. She’s like, ’Hi Tracy, would you like some ice tea?’ I love this place. It’s like Cheers without alcohol,” Mueller said. It’s the place where campaigning politicians would come to shake hands and celebrities would sneak in for a   meal. But it’s now coming to an end. New York developers are razing the diner and building a luxury hotel on the site, a symptom of the growing affluence of the city’s core. Philadelphia resident Andy Kaplan isn’t embracing the news. ”What we need is affordable food that isn’t a fancy restaurant where the culinary critics are going to come and criticize and break down a restaurant,” Kaplan says. ”You need a little of everything to make a city diverse.” Koutroubas, meanwhile, says he’s long known the end was near. Selling $6 mozzarella sticks and $7 roast beef sandwiches kept things rolling for decades, but when he started in the 1970s his monthly rent was $800. Last month, it was $10, 000. On Monday, Little Pete’s served up its last meals. Bobby Allyn is a general assignment reporter for WHYY in Philadelphia. You can follow him @BobbyAllyn."
"A New Jersey town must pay $3. 25 million to a local Islamic society and allow it to build a mosque, ending a   dispute. This is the result of settlements finalized on Tuesday stemming from two separate federal lawsuits against Bernards Township, in central New Jersey. The $3. 25 million settles the lawsuit filed by the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge. And the ISBR will be allowed to move forward with its plans to build a mosque as a result of a lawsuit filed Justice Department. ”Federal law requires towns to treat religious land use applications like any other land use application,” acting U. S. Attorney of the District of New Jersey William Fitzpatrick said in a statement. ”Bernards Township made decisions that treated the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge differently than other houses of worship.” Both the Justice Department and the ISBR argued that Bernards Township violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects ”individuals, houses of worship, and other religious institutions from discrimination in zoning and landmarking laws.” Mohammed Ali Chaudry, president of the society, told NJ. com that they are ”very pleased by this resolution and hope to receive prompt approval to build our mosque. . .. We look forward to welcoming people of all faiths and backgrounds to our mosque.” This dispute started in 2011, when the ISBR purchased a home with the intention of building a mosque in a residential zoning district where it was, at that time, acceptable to establish places of worship. But the plan was met with public opposition. The ISBR filed for site approval in 2012, which initiated 39 public hearings that spanned more than three years. ”The Planning Board has never held such a large number of hearings for any previous site plan application,” according to the Justice Department’s complaint. In Oct. 2013, the township enacted a new ordinance that ”amended the classification of a house of worship from a permitted use in residential zoning districts to a conditional use,” the complaint added. The new ordinance also required places of worship to be on a lot of at least 6 acres, larger than the   property where the ISBR wanted to build a mosque. Eight of the 11 houses of worship built and approved by the Planning Board before the rule was enacted were on lots smaller than 6 acres, the complaint says. The Planning Board ultimately rejected the application in 2015, saying it was particularly concerned about its number of parking spaces. The plans had 50 spaces allotted, at a ratio of one for every three worshippers, which is the usual standard applied to other places of worship. But the Planning Board said the mosque needed 107 spaces. The Justice Department said that higher number came from a ”traffic engineer hired by a group of mosque opponents,” while the town said it came from a report introduced by an expert hired by the plaintiffs. The planning board also said the mosque must follow more stringent   management and fire lane procedures than those required of other institutions, according to the complaint. Michael Turner, a spokesman for Bernards Township, denies the claims of discrimination. ”The Planning Board denial was based on legitimate land use and safety concerns which Plaintiffs refused to address,” Turner added. He said that the decision to settle was ”not made lightly” and that the township is a ”diverse and inclusive community.” The Associated Press notes two other recent lawsuits on the same issue in New Jersey. ”A similar lawsuit cost nearby Bridgewater Township almost $8 million in a 2014 settlement,” the wire service states. ”Last week, a Muslim group sued the city of Bayonne, claiming its proposal to convert an abandoned warehouse into a mosque and community center was unfairly voted down amid a climate of hostility and religious intolerance.”"
"  has risen to music stardom while playfully disregarding many rules of popular music. Over its past two albums, An Awesome Wave and This is All Yours, the British trio has displayed a taste for the unpredictable and unconventional. And now, the forthcoming album Relaxer features two different songs that include counting in Japanese, a cover of a classic folk song with a veritable orchestra of classical guitarists and hardly any tracks under five minutes in length. ”We enjoy luxuriating in the kind of sounds that we’re making,” says keyboardist and vocalist Gus   noting that the band’s producer is the one who trims the sprawling tracks created in the studio.   and Newman joined NPR’s Ari Shapiro to discuss the creative decisions behind Relaxer and how the band has changed since its inception. Hear the interview at the audio link and read on for an edited excerpt of that conversation. Ari Shapiro: I hope it doesn’t sound rude, but I think one of my favorite tracks on this album is actually your cover of ”House of the Rising Sun.” Joe Newman: No, I think that’s great. We are a folk band and we’ve taken a very old folk song and we’ve kind of reimagined it. There are lyrics I’ve never heard before and I didn’t know if they were lyrics from an early version of the song that I just wasn’t familiar with, or if you’d written them yourself. But this line, ”Like a bird flying over a forest fire, my father feels the heat beneath his wings.” That just stopped me dead. Gus  : That’s original, original stuff. Joe wrote a second verse for it, and the first verse of our version is based on Woody Guthrie’s version. And then there’s the chorus which we wrote, and the second verse. So it’s more original material than cover really, this song. Is it at all scary? To take a classic that is as old and beloved as this, and just tear it apart and do what you want to it and rewrite it, and yet keep the title and keep the framework?  : I think it’s something we’d only have the confidence to do, being on our third album. I think if we’d done this on our first album we’d have felt like we were, you know, out of line. Newman: And I think we live by the rule that if it excites us, we should be moving forward. What was it about this song that pulled you in in the first place? Newman: The Animals’ version, I think, is the one I grew up listening to.  : This is the famous version from the 60s that people are familiar with. Newman: Yeah, exactly. That’s probably my first living memory of rock ’n’ roll. And it’s always stayed with me.  : I heard the song being sung as a folk song by my family, so I didn’t know any of the versions  —   The Animals’ version, or anything. It was just this song that was around in my family. So I feel like I’ve always known it, I think. And so when you take these two memories and relationships that each of you has to the song, and filter it through your own talent and aesthetic, how do you create what we’re listening to now?  : [Laughs.] I don’t know. I think that in   we feel like we can try anything. So in this song for example, the guitar is actually played by 20 different classical guitarists, all in one room playing at the same time. What?! Oh, my God. What did you want by having 20 classical guitar players, rather than one, or five, or just using a computer to make one sound like 20?  : I think when you do something like this, if you can do it properly, you should. And who knows, there might even be some extra magic to it, and actually I think there was. There was this almost kind of John   kind of  —   you’re not just hearing the guitar riffs, you’re hearing the sound of the room, you’re hearing 20 different people’s fingers creaking on the neck. And you’re listening to everything, and that’s what you get from doing it properly and not just layering up one person 20 times. I was really aware of those fingers squeaking on the neck of the guitar. It’s almost like a percussion instrument in the arrangement. Newman: Yeah. It’s true. You met as university students when you were teenagers 10 years ago. And the song ”Hit Me Like That Snare” has the lyric, ”We are dangerous teenagers.” Which you’re not anymore! How do you think age has changed your music?  : I think it always comes back to confidence with us. I think that when we started at university we were   and full of ideas. And we’ve tried to keep that spirit, but we also got better at our instruments, we also learned new instruments, and I think the experimental side of it has become a bigger thing. Newman: I think there’s a lot to be said about getting to know people before you ever see yourself going down those creative ventures with those people. You need to find out if you’re on the same wavelength, recommend things to each other. We went through that process. That really helped us establish a chemistry. Essentially our attitude is if you like what we’ve done, then you’ll like what we’re about to show you. The band has been a critical and commercial success, even though you consistently defy so many of the pressures of the music industry and break so many of the rules for pop music. Do you think that means there are unexplored paths for musicians to be successful or do you think it just means that   is a unicorn? Newman: I don’t think we see it as defying the rules and regulations set by the music industry. I think we’re just lucky we can do what we do and have people around us who believe in what we do.  : I also think that people’s capacity and appetite for challenging music is underappreciated by most of the industry. And I think that somehow despite that, there’s this view that people can’t take anything too out there. But we’re pleased to be hopefully disproving that."
"With lines like ”Let’s bomb hatred with love,” a Kuwaiti company’s new holiday video is earning praise for urging peace in an era of terrorism. But the music video is also being criticized for portraying a famous young victim of airstrikes in Syria alongside survivors of ISIS bomb attacks. Released at the start of the Ramadan holiday, the   video portrays a   suicide bomber as he moves toward an attack, and the Arab community that tries to dissuade him. It’s an advertisement for Zain, a telecommunications firm that says it does business in eight Middle Eastern and North African countries. Interspersing scenes of the bomber’s preparations with clips of people going about their lives  —   children playing, adults planning a wedding  —   the video mixes footage from recent devastating attacks with scenes of actual survivors and potential victims confronting the   bomber. The video’s narrative turns on a duet featuring the phrase ”Allahu Akbar”  —   Allah is greater  —   completing that idea with lines like ”. .. than those who obey without contemplation.” Singer Hussain   of the United Arab Emirates then leads the community’s message, offering the dissuaded bomber his hand and singing, ”Let’s bomb violence with mercy Let’s bomb delusion with the truth Let’s bomb hatred with love.” The video has found a receptive audience: It’s been viewed more than 3 million times and received more than 56, 000 positive ratings on YouTube. Some of the   victims who participated in making the holiday video are identified   as having survived the deadly 2015 bombing of Kuwait’s Imam   mosque, for instance, or a 2005 attack on a wedding in Amman, Jordan. But amid the acclaim, there are concerns about conflating attacks by extremist groups ISIS and Al Qaeda with Syria’s civil war. That’s because one of the victims is portrayed as Syria’s Omran Daqneesh, who was 5 when a photo of him, sitting bloodied and covered in dust in the back of an ambulance, sparked widespread concern and sympathy last August. The photo put a human face on the intense fight over Aleppo. And now there are concerns that by evoking it, Zain and Joy Productions, which made the video, are distorting the truth about Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. NPR has sought comment from Zain and Joy neither had replied before this story was published. Accusing Zain of misusing the boy’s image, some critics are also calling for the company to pull the video. Arab News translated some of the messages: ” ’The Zain advert uses the child Omran’s picture as a victim of a jihadist group, thereby hiding the crimes of Assad and the regime and exploiting the image of victims to benefit their murderer,’ wrote Ahmed Abazeid on Twitter. ’This ad is with terror not against it.’ ”Zakaria Nassani, a   news producer, went a step further, demanding that the commercial be removed. ’Omran, like thousands of children, is a victim of Assad terror and not ISIS,’ he wrote, using ’ISIS’ as another name for the terror group Daesh. ’We demand that Zain. .. remove your ad.’ ” The BBC reports: ”Prominent Syrian activists Hadi Abdallah and Lina Shamy criticized the video for ’indirectly acquitting Assad of crimes’ and ’forgetting that Omran’s pain and the pain of thousands of Syrian children was not caused by someone in an explosive belt but someone who wears a suit and tie and sits in a palace. ’” But not everyone has been as critical. Tahaab Rais, an advertising executive from the U. A. E. said on Facebook that Zain had made ”a brave statement” by ”taking on an issue that’s affecting everyone’s lives in this region (and around the world). Respect for taking this topic on.” Replying to a critic who said it was misleading not to note the Syrian distinction, Rais wrote, ”Execution is definitely not perfect. Broader message and pov is worth respecting!”"
"Updated at 4:50 p. m. ET, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that reports that Jared Kushner asked Russia about setting up a secret line of communication with Moscow were based on ”facts that are not substantiated,” but he did not explicitly deny the allegations. Instead, in the first press briefing since President Trump returned from a   trip abroad, Spicer focused on the fact that The Washington Post story, which first reported the request, used anonymous sourcing. When pressed on whether the president would approve of such a back channel with Russia, Spicer said, ”You’re asking if he approves of an action that is not a confirmed action.” He added that Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster have both discussed that ”in general terms, back channels are an appropriate part of diplomacy.” NPR has not independently confirmed the claims made in The Post’s story, which cites ”U. S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.” The article describes a Dec. 1 or 2 meeting in which Kushner, Trump’s    and adviser, discussed setting up a direct communication system between Trump and Moscow with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. The meeting was also attended by former national security adviser Michael Flynn, but both Kushner and Flynn were still just private citizens at the time. Spicer also said the president is meeting Tuesday afternoon with two more candidates to replace James Comey for FBI director: John Pistole, a former TSA administrator who previously served as FBI deputy director, and Chris Wray, a former Justice Department official who served during the George W. Bush administration. Reports continue to circle about other impending White House staff changes, and the briefing followed news Tuesday morning that communications director Michael Dubke had resigned. ”I think [President Trump] is very pleased with the work of his staff,” said Spicer. ”I think he is frustrated, like I am, and like so many others, to see stories come out that are patently false. To see narratives that are wrong. To see ’fake news.’ ” CNN’s Jim Acosta, who has notably sparred with Trump over the concept of ”fake news,” pressed Spicer for an example. The press secretary cited a tweet from over the weekend, and reporters pushed back again. Watch the exchange:"
"Updated at 3:20 p. m. ET  White House communications director Michael Dubke has resigned. Dubke offered his resignation on May 18, prior to President Trump’s overseas trip to the Middle East and Europe. He is still working at the White House and has not set a departure date yet. Dubke, 47, had been a    player who helped manage the White House communications strategy, including the aftermath of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey. Before joining the White House in February, he had been a Republican strategist and founder of Crossroads Media. In a statement, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus thanked Dubke for his service. ”We appreciate Mike and are very grateful for his service to President Trump and our country,” Priebus said, adding Dubke ”offered to remain on board until a transition is concluded.” Dubke’s resignation could be the forerunner of a larger staff   in the administration. Reports have circulated that Trump may bring in trusted former aides, including his original campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former deputy campaign manager David Bossie, as the White House struggles to keep focused on its policy agenda while dealing with FBI and congressional investigations into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia. The latest twist involves the president’s    and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who reportedly tried to set up a back channel for communications between the Trump team and Moscow. Trump is also struggling with his legislative agenda, as health care and tax reform initiatives remain behind schedule with several fiscal deadlines looming. Among the changes reportedly being contemplated is a diminished role for White House press secretary Sean Spicer, including fewer televised briefings. Asked about the possible changes in Tuesday afternoon’s briefing, Spicer said, ”I think the president is very pleased with his team.” But the challenges any White House communications team will face were made evident when the president took to Twitter on Tuesday morning, targeting NATO ally Germany: And once again Trump implied the Russia investigation was nothing but an attempt by Democrats to change the subject from their defeat in November: As long as Trump maintains control of his Twitter account, he will remain his own communications director. As Spicer put it Tuesday: ”Ultimately the best messenger is the president himself. He’s always proven that.”"
"Pop star Ariana Grande will return to Manchester this Sunday, June 4, as part of a concert, One Manchester, to be held at a famed cricket field southwest of the city. The concert is intended to honor and raise money for the victims and families of the May 22 bombing in the city. The attack, which occurred just outside of the Manchester Arena and was timed to coincide with the conclusion of a performance by Grande, killed 22 and injured dozens more. Grande will be joined by Katy Perry, Coldplay, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Pharrell Williams, Usher, Take That, former One Direction member Niall Horan and others yet to be announced at the Emirates Old Trafford Cricket Ground, which can support an audience of 50, 000. Reached by telephone, One Manchester producer Live Nation, which also promoted Grande’s Dangerous Woman tour, of which last week’s Manchester Arena show was a part, directed NPR to an outside publicist when asked of specifics for Sunday’s concert, who responded that organizers are not commenting on security measures at this time. Attendance, pricing and other performers will be announced ”in due course.” Concerts in Manchester have had increased security since last week’s suicide attack, carried out by   Salman Abedi. A performance by The Courteneers that took place at Old Trafford this past weekend was subject to increased security, with all entering the venue searched and no bags being allowed on the grounds. The One Manchester benefit also mentions a similar   policy and likely have concertgoers undergo equally stringent security measures. A joint statement posted by trio of Manchester venues  —   Albert Hall, The Deaf Institute and Gorilla, all owned by the Trof company, which also operates two   in the city  —   indicated that events at all three would go forward as planned and that their ”management and security teams are in regular communication with the police and relevant authorities and are continuously reviewing and enhancing our safety procedures.” Fourteen people remained in custody in connection with an investigation into the bombing and 19 people, including six children, remained in critical condition as of Monday, The Guardian reported. Net proceeds from the June 4 concert will be directed to the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund, a joint project of the British Red Cross and the Manchester City Council, with help from the Manchester Evening News. A statement from the Manchester City Council encouraged those directly affected, ”for example young people and parents who were at the Arena and may have had minor injuries or witnessed traumatic event,” to contact a support line set up for them. Fans who attended Grande’s May 22 concert are being offered free tickets to the event if they register by tomorrow, May 31. General admission tickets go on sale the following day, and the show will be televised worldwide via the BBC and streamed digitally by an    digital partner that will ”be announced soon.” A testimonial soccer match (a ” ” match that does not count towards teams’ standings) scheduled to celebrate the career of Manchester United footballer Michael Carrick  —   also a charity event  —   was moved to accommodate the concert. ”We are proud to be part of what promises to be an emotional occasion and a showcase of music, enjoyment, memories and reflection, that we can hope can go some way to easing the pain and heartache that this great city has endured in the last week,” David Hodgkiss, chairman of Lancashire County Cricket Club, told the Manchester Evening News. Hodgkiss continued, saying the field would ”continue to work closely with the artists, promoters, Police, Trafford Council, Manchester City Council and all relevant authorities to ensure that the event is a fitting way to remember the 22 people who lost their lives, the hundreds who were injured, and the many other people who will never forget, and always be affected, by the awful events of Monday, 22 May, as well as continue to help promote the fundraising initiatives of the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund.”"
"This year, 25 states and the District of Columbia are considering measures that would bar employers from asking job candidates about their prior salary. Last year, two states  —   California and Massachusetts  —   adopted similar policies, aimed at trying to narrow the pay gap for women and minorities. Such measures are designed to help people like Aileen Rizo. She was four years into her job as a math teaching consultant for Fresno County, Calif. when she found out, in 2012, that a new male hire with less education and experience was offered a salary roughly 20 percent more than she was making. Rizo was stunned. ”I kind of knew that I had broken stereotypes, as a mathematician, and as the only   woman in that department,” as well as being a Latina minority, she says. ”But then to find out that you’re getting paid less than all of your male counterparts  —   that they all started much higher salary steps then you did  —   is just . .. devastating.” Rizo complained to human resources, assuming the problem would be ironed out. Instead, she was told her salary was set based on previous pay  —   and that her salary would not be adjusted. She says she was shocked and felt locked in. ”I couldn’t educate myself out of being paid less, I couldn’t get more experience or be in the job market longer to break that cycle,” she says. ”Because low wages will follow you wherever you go as long as someone keeps asking you how much you were paid.” Rizo filed suit, arguing her employer violated the Equal Pay Act, the 1963 law aimed at abolishing wage discrimination based on gender. ”I have three young daughters, and I don’t want them ever to feel that way,” she says, her voice cracking. Rizo prevailed in lower court, but last month the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling. Now, she’s considering an appeal to the Supreme Court. ”After the 9th Circuit decision, I felt like now it’s black and white . .. you can pay a woman less,” she says. ”I don’t want that to be the end of the story.” In the years since Rizo filed her case, states and cities have been passing laws banning employers from asking about previous salaries. Last year, Massachusetts and California became the first states to do so. New York City adopted a similar law, and Philadelphia’s ordinance is temporarily stayed pending litigation. Most of the measures have yet to take effect, so there is no data to show what effect they’ve had. ”The problem with proving the efficacy of public policy that hasn’t been tried before is that it hasn’t been tried before so no one can research it,” says Kevin Miller, a researcher at the American Association of University Women. In a 2013 report looking at Department of Education data, his group found that women make 7 percent less than men a year out of college, even after controlling for variables such education, college major, occupation, industry and hours worked. Miller says that gap tends to compound with age, and is bigger for minorities  —   although the disparity is less where salaries are set by union or government rules. ”When you have more room to maneuver and more room to negotiate, I think that’s where you see bias come in,” he says. Rizo’s case prompted congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton,  . C. to introduce federal legislation banning employers from asking about prior salary information. She points to data that show even highly professional women such as doctors and lawyers start out earning less. ”That means, for the rest of their career, they will carry a lower wage,” she says. Norton says her bill has support from only Democrats, but she’s hoping to build broader support over time. ”We don’t sit here and say, ’Look at the current Congress, why put this bill in?” she says. ”We do the opposite. I ask you to look at what you think the next Congress is going to look like.” But employer groups say a patchwork of different laws add to administrative burdens. Nancy Hammer, government affairs counsel for the Society for Human Resource Management, says many employers ask about prior salary, but not in order to discriminate. ”They don’t want to waste the time of a candidate who’s seeking a higher salary than they can offer,” she says. Hammer argues that instead of a ban on salary history, policy should focus on encouraging businesses to identify and fix any internal pay gaps  —   in exchange for legal protection from pay discrimination suits. ”Right now, employers are hesitant to do that because it raises alarm bells that they were doing something wrong all along,” she says. Employers want to keep their workers happy and motivated, Hammer argues, so it’s in their interest not to create disparities in pay. And she says many are willing to take a hard look at whether it’s necessary to look at a person’s past salary."
"As a child in elementary school, I hoped that my   heritage would give me supernatural abilities like uncommon tracking skills. Many Native sidekicks in movies and TV seemed to have the power to discern in the smallest detail what had passed their way. I remember sitting on a large yellow carpet with my classmates, convinced that I could sense when our teacher was about to return from the bathroom. It has taken a lot of growth to free myself from the superficial fantasies and   anxieties about what it means to be First Nations. For too long, those fantasies ensnared me thanks to the images of Native peoples belonging only in the past or on reservations, dead or in poverty. My identity is complicated by the fact that I have the privilege of passing for white, which means that I am never a direct target of interpersonal racism or ever suspected by colleagues as having ”an agenda” when I introduce Native voices into my   classroom. My   heritage, Oneida, which is part of the Iroquois Confederacy, comes from my paternal grandfather Leslie Roy ”Big Jim” Doxtdator. The Canadian government recognizes me as a status Indian under its Indian Act, which for generations stripped legal status from Indian women who married white men. (Before I could comfortably start writing this essay, I searched the house for my status card, which makes me legally Indian in Canada for five years at a time.) When I left Canada, I never renewed it, and it now sits in my wallet, of no use to me in Belgium, where I have lived and worked for the past five years. While I feel very geographically detached from my family, I hadn’t much thought about the nomadic history of First Nations people when I moved overseas. It turns out that my Oneida ancestors, after New York State reduced their lands from six million to a few hundred acres, moved to Ontario in the 1840’s and bought their settlement on the Thames River near London. My more distant Oneida ancestors were betrayed by broken treaties, which didn’t stop many   peoples from fighting in the World Wars only a few generations later. Both of my grandfathers, Big Jim and Harry Edwards, of Welsh descent, passed through Belgium on their way to liberate Holland and Germany. In his war records, one lieutenant described Big Jim as ”a better than average Indian lad.” While at times I feel disconnected from my   roots, too often I lose sight of the interconnections that I have through my family. My father worked as a probation officer for youth for over three decades, and many of his charges were from the Six Nations reserve in Canada. Though he never really talks about it, I know he helped a lot of people. I remember travelling to a school for a basketball game when I was in 9th grade. Someone from the other team came up to me and said, ”Hey, I recognized you. Your dad has a picture of you on his desk.” I waited to hear something menacing, but instead he said, ”Your dad’s helped me stay out of detention and in school.” I am thankful for what my family made me, but my personal nomadic story is nothing like that of my ancestors. After studying philosophy in college, I fell into teaching it at an alternative high school in Toronto. In my first year, I got it all wrong. Quite simply, I took some contemplative questions, started way back near the beginning, possibly with Socrates, and traced the debate up through the present. (”What’s knowledge? What’s justice? What’s truth? Now, let’s hear what John Locke has to say. ”) Years of studying philosophy made me feel sure that I had a discerning and educated eye for the naive   in high school textbooks. For my course materials, I carefully read through my bookcases, selecting the most interesting and lively passages from great western male thinkers. Not only did I reproduce a syllabus full of mostly privileged white men, but I reproduced a syllabus filled with their questions, their writing styles, and their elevation of dispassionate logic above emotion. To my utter regret, it took years for me to recognize that once a dominant frame is applied to an issue an important operation of power has already transpired. And, as a teacher who is also First Nations, I was complicit because of how I prepared and carried out my lessons. My central mistake began as a  . Before I ever stepped into a classroom for the first time, I should have taken Aboriginal studies courses, spent time developing an educated eye for my culture, and sought out chances to connect with other   youth. I didn’t do any of that because I would have felt shame to enter the spaces where other First Nations people live and thrive and admit that I have no sense of my culture. In the classroom, I have started to break my reluctance to speak openly about my   roots because I want to clarify what stake I have in discussions about equity. But I feel more like I was hiding my ignorance of my roots than my roots themselves. But   students value it when teachers open up and become vulnerable, and increasingly I feel like I need to reciprocate since they share so much of themselves with me in their writing.   One of my favorite stories to teach, ”A Coyote Columbus Story” by Thomas King, features anachronisms, like Native people shopping and going on vacations before Columbus arrives, but it tells the often untold truth that Columbus kidnapped and sold Native people. The story both counters the familiar narrative that valorizes Columbus as a heroic explorer, and it also crosses the boundary that aligns realism with truth against the magical and fantastic. We restrict our imaginations when we go to trusted forms in search of comfortable meaning. My identity as First Nations and as a teacher build on one another. Reflecting on my past teaching mistakes has made me more reflective about who I am. Sure, part of teaching is a performance, pretending to be in a better mood than I am some days, being patient even when I face personal struggles. But the real work of teaching involves making the world, and myself, knowable to students. The last time I taught Thomas King’s story, my voice wavered near the end as we read it. Indigenous stories are ongoing, not simply legends from the past. I don’t want my students to have the distorted idea that   people have vanished or are not ”modern.” Not only do I live this truth, but increasingly realize that my life gives shape to this truth. Benjamin Doxtdator lives, writes, and teaches in Brussels, Belgium. Follow him @doxtdatorb"
"Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Saad Ali Shire is clearly frustrated. Somaliland is being hit by a regional food crisis that the U. N. has described as one of the largest humanitarian emergencies since 1945. More than a million of Somaliland’s four million people are at risk of starvation yet relief has been slow to come. ”We are being treated unfairly,” Shire says seated in a conference room of a consulting firm in downtown Washington, D. C. He’s in town lobbying American lawmakers for what has become his perpetual cause  —   official recognition of Somaliland as a nation. ”You know by lumping Somalia and Somaliland together, it is slowing down the delivery of assistance.” Somaliland declared its independence from the failed state of Somalia in 1991, but the world . .. for the most part . .. has ignored the declaration. The similar names are rooted in colonial history: Somaliland became known as British Somaliland in the 19th century, while the southern region was Italian Somaliland. ”We have a functioning democracy. We have our own army. We have our own police. We have our own coast guard. You know, we have our own border police. We have fulfilled all the conditions of a sovereign state,” Shire says as he ticks through why Somaliland is its own nation. And there’s more. Somaliland has its own currency. It regularly holds elections. ”The only thing that’s missing is the sovereign recognition,” he says. Bronwyn Bruton, the director of programs and studies at the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, says the international community has been uninterested in recognizing Somaliland as a new nation for several reasons. Quite frankly, she says, the first is apathy. Somaliland doesn’t have oil or other resources to make other players on the international stage care about it. Second, she explains, is the belief that recognizing Somaliland would undermine international efforts to get a functioning government in Mogadishu, which Somaliland broke away from. ”The international community led by the United States and Britain has put a lot of time and effort into trying to build a government in Mogadishu,” Bruton says. ”And it’s perceived that if Somaliland were to be granted its separation it would reflect poorly on that nascent government.” Finally the African Union doesn’t want to encourage independence movements in other restive regions around the continent. Foreign Minister Shire says lack of recognition is impeding what has already been a slow international response to the food crisis in Somaliland. Aid from international agencies is being coordinated and routed through   Mogadishu  —   the Somali capital 900 miles to the south. ”It is affecting us in many ways,” Shire says. ”We are not present in the forums in which these [aid efforts] are discussed. We cannot access bilateral aid. We cannot get loans. We cannot attract international investors.” Because it’s not officially a country Somaliland isn’t eligible for loans that the World Bank makes to poor nations. It can’t get in on other assistance programs that are traditionally delivered to governments. Somaliland broke away from Somalia to keep from getting sucked down as Somalia disintegrated in to a failed state in the 1990’s. It lacked any central government from 1991 to 2006. Pirates took to terrorizing ships in its waterway. Islamist militants set up shop. Somalia is still one of the world’s most dangerous countries for international aid groups to work in. And Somaliland continues to be tarnished by its former partner’s woes. When aid groups consider working in Somaliland, officials at their head offices in Europe or the U. S. often treat the project as if it’s occurring in Mogadishu. ”For example a U. S. NGO will go to the State Department website,” Shire says. ”They look at the traveler advice [for Somalia] and they would be dissuaded by what they see on the screen. This really does not reflect what’s on the ground in Somaliland.” Africa specialist Bruton says Shire’s frustration is justified. Somaliland, she says, has created a relatively stable enclave in a turbulent part of the Horn of Africa. ”Somaliland gets a ton of good press for being stable and kind of a peaceful island in a sea of violence that is Somalia,” Bruton says. ”The reality is that unlike southern Somalia, where you have a lot of violence, Somaliland is essentially a single clan territory. And so what’s happening is it’s being run as a traditional clan democracy.” This has its drawbacks if you aren’t part of the dominant clan, she points out, but one of the upsides is stability. ”Somalilanders have made an excellent case that because they were a British rather than an Italian colony, they were never really part of Somalia and so they have a right to be separate,” Bruton says. The two colonies merged after they each won their independence from the Europeans in 1960. But she says African nations worry that Somaliland secession from the rest of Somalia sets a dangerous precedent on the continent. Foreign Minister Shire says what’s dangerous for Somalilanders right now is to stay in international limbo. The lack of recognition is impeding international relief, he emphasizes, and stymying development. Bruton at the Atlantic Council says he definitely has a point: ”Somaliland is effectively being held hostage to the chaos in southern Somalia, Which is grossly unfair.”"
"Drive around this mostly white Minnesota suburb that sits between Minneapolis and St. Paul and you’ll see signs in some front yards saying: ”Falcon Heights  ” the nation is watching.” It was here on Larpenteur Ave. a   road that borders the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, that St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled over a 1997 Oldsmobile on the evening of July 6, 2016. Over the police radio, Yanez told his partner that he thought the driver fit the description of a suspect in a convenience store robbery that happened down the road just a few days earlier. He told the driver and passenger that he was pulling them over for a broken brake light.   seconds after Yanez activated his squad lights, he fired the last of seven shots into the car, fatally injuring the    driver, Philando Castile. As Castile slumped over, dying, his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, began   on Facebook. Her    daughter watched from the back seat. Now, Yanez faces manslaughter and weapons charges tied to the shooting. Jury selection begins Tuesday in what’s believed to be the first time a Minnesota police officer has been indicted for shooting a civilian while on duty. At meetings with city leaders over the last year, many residents said Castile’s death came amid a long history of racial profiling of drivers passing through this town. The police department is undergoing a voluntary review by the U. S. Justice Department. While taking a break from mowing his lawn,    Ron Brisbois says he hasn’t reached any conclusions about the case, but he is glad the process will play out in a public courtroom. ”I think it was appropriate that charges were filed, and I think it’s appropriate now that a jury will hear the testimony,” he says. ”I think that’s the way the system is intended to work.” Castile, who worked for years as a school cafeteria supervisor, had a handgun he was licensed to carry in his pocket the night he was pulled over. Prosecutors say he told Yanez about the gun before trying to pull out his driver’s license when the officer asked for it. They also say Yanez warned Castile three times not to remove the gun, and Castile said repeatedly that he was not going for his weapon. According to the criminal complaint, Castile’s last words were: ”I wasn’t reaching for it.” As the video rocketed around social media, weeks of protests shut down freeways in the Twin Cities and spurred an encampment outside the governor’s residence. Four months after the shooting, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi charged Yanez with   manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. Yanez told state investigators that he feared for his life, but Choi argues Castile never threatened the officer. ”The mere mention or presence of a firearm alone cannot justify the use of deadly force,” Choi says. The officer’s attorneys tried to get a judge to dismiss the case. They argued, among other things, that Castile was negligent in his own death. The defense lawyers claim he was driving while high on marijuana and did not follow Yanez’s commands. Phil Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, says police officers shoot and kill people about 900 to 1, 000 times per year. Since 2005, Stinson says, 80 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter and just a third were convicted. Along Larpenteur Ave. near the spot where Castile died, the temporary memorials of balloons and candles are gone. In their place is a modest,   polished wooden monument. The words of Castile’s mother, Valerie, are inscribed on one side. Noting her son’s   nature, it reads: ”You never talked much here. But you’re making a lot of noise now.”"
"Philando Castile’s trouble with traffic stops began when he still had his learner’s permit. He was stopped a day before his 19th birthday. From there, he descended into a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, late fees, revocations and reinstatements in various jurisdictions. Court records raise big questions: Was Castile targeted by police? Or was he just a careless or unlucky driver? An NPR analysis of those records shows that the    cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, Minn. suburb, was stopped by police 46 times and racked up more than $6, 000 in fines. Another curious statistic: Of all of the stops, only six of them were things a police officer would notice from outside a car  —   things like speeding or having a broken muffler. The records show that Castile spent most of his driving life fighting tickets. Three months after that first stop, for example, his license was suspended and he went into his first spiral: Police stopped him on Jan. 8, 2003. They stopped him on Feb. 3 and on Feb. 12 and Feb. 26 and on March 4. ”What Mr. Castile symbolizes for a lot of us working in public defense is that driving offenses are typically just crimes of poverty,” says Erik Sandvick, a public defender in Ramsey County, which includes St. Paul and its suburbs. When he heard about Castile in the news, his name sounded so familiar that Sandvick looked up the records and saw his own name listed as Castile’s public defender in a 2006 case. He vaguely remembers Castile, but his story is like that of many other clients he’s had. They get tickets they can’t pay, and then they are ticketed over and over for driving with a suspended license or not having insurance. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University and the author of Crook County, which documents the problems in the criminal justice system of Chicago, said Castile was the ”classic case” of what criminologists have called ”net widening,” or the move by local authorities to criminalize more and more aspects of regular life. ”It is in particular a way that people of color and the poor are victimized on a daily basis,” Gonzalez Van Cleve said. Many times, both Gonzalez Van Cleve and Sandvick agree, the system leaves citizens with no good choices  —   having to pick, for instance, whether to pay a fine or pay for car insurance. Larpenteur Avenue is a dividing line separating St. Paul from surrounding suburbs. Falcon Heights, where Castile was pulled over by St. Anthony police, is one of them. Maplewood, about 10 miles away, is another. Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell said he couldn’t comment about the Castile police stop, but he has seen the list of nearly 50 citations Castile received when driving through nearby communities. ”It seems like a lot,” he said. ”So it does prompt the question, what was the basis and why so many stops?” Schnell says all of the communities along Larpenteur have policing priorities. He said many consider traffic enforcement good policing. ”Communities where they might not have demand for services, officers will be looking to take action, to do things, to produce, because that’s one of the things that’s being more and more expected,” Schnell said. In some ways, Schnell added, this is a cycle for everyone involved: Unable to dig themselves out, drivers may lose their licenses and police may run their plates. ”The registered owner pops up as driving after suspension or revocation, and that can often trigger the stop,” Schnell said. Castile’s driving problems often appeared to be triggered by something small  —   a problem with his license plate or blocking an intersection. When he couldn’t keep up with the fines, his license would get suspended, and he’d keep driving. One   period in particular  —   from 2006 to 2012  —   stands out. Castile was stopped 29 times. Sometimes he was fined $270, sometimes $150, but it kept adding up. He soon amassed more than $5, 000 in fines. ”I am just baffled, and I’ve been pulled over in the same vehicle my brother died in,” Castile’s sister said. Allyza Castile thinks it was her brother’s dreadlocks and the big sedans he loved to drive  —   like the Oldsmobile he was in  —   that made him stand out. ”I’ve been pulled over in that car for three or four times for the same exact reason  —   supposedly a broken taillight,” she said. ”When you run the plates, his name comes up, so I’ve been harassed driving his vehicle myself. So I know that they harass my brother.” Of course we don’t know intent. Or if police knew something about Castile that’s not in the public record. University of Minnesota Law School professor Myron Orfield says this doesn’t really surprise him. Back in 2003, he studied racial bias in policing. The   study found that   and Latinos were more likely to be stopped than whites. That was especially true as they crossed into mostly white suburbs  —   or through the borderlands, as the Twin Cities locals call it  —   where they were up to seven times more likely to be stopped by police. ”When you see those stark residential differences between neighboring communities, it’s often a sign that there’s some underlying discrimination going on,” Orfield said. This week, the St. Anthony Police Department released statistics on its traffic stops. They show that officers issue citations at the same rate as neighboring suburbs, but police disproportionately arrest  . About 7 percent of the residents in the area patrolled are   but this year they make up about 47 percent of arrests. The data show that since 2011,   have been making up a larger percentage of arrests. The head of the Minneapolis NAACP, Nekima   compared the situation in the Twin Cities to Ferguson, Mo. In the aftermath of the police killing of a black man there, the U. S. Department of Justice found Ferguson was more concerned about raising revenue than public safety. ”Shame on Falcon Heights,”   said during a speech at a rally. ”They should have known that something was wrong. Shame on the St. Anthony Police Department for that   scheme.” In a statement, St. Anthony City Manager Mark Casey said the data unfortunately show that St. Anthony and Falcon Heights face many of the same challenges that Minneapolis, St. Paul and other cities do. ”We do share concerns about the information and what it represents,” Casey said. ”Racial inequality, in terms of arrests, citations and incarceration, is a complex yet urgent challenge for all of us.” He said St. Anthony and other suburbs are continuing to review how officers are trained and engaged in activities addressing racism and bias issues. But he didn’t say how and did not specifically address the issue of traffic fines. During some periods of his life, Castile was sometimes able to emerge from a mountain of fines. From 2012 to late 2014  —   like clockwork  —   he paid off fine after fine, some of them more than $500 a month. ”He was trying to make it right,” said Beverly Castile, Philando’s aunt. ”And it was right. He paid off all his tickets, got his license back and everything else. It was done right.” But about three months after he was done with probation, he was stopped again  —   for ”improper display of original plate.” By January of this year, his license was suspended, but he quickly paid $275 to get it back. Last week, police stopped Castile once again. Castile’s girlfriend, who was in the car, said it was because of a broken taillight. But in scanner traffic audio obtained this week by Minnesota Public Radio, a nonchalant officer, yet to be confirmed as Jeronimo Yanez, told dispatchers a different story. ”Two occupants just look like people who were involved in a robbery,” he said. ”The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just because of the   nose.” Gloria Hatchett, an attorney for the Castile family, said that’s racial profiling. ”How do you say, ’There’s a robbery suspect with a broad nose,  ?’ ” she said. ”That’s equivalent to saying there’s a white woman with blond hair.” What happened next is unclear. Was Castile just reaching for his ID, or was he reaching for his gun? What we know is that Yanez fired his weapon. What we know is that throughout his life, Castile was stopped by police at least 46 times before that moment. If there was anyone familiar with the routine and perils of a traffic stop, it was Philando Castile. The July 6 stop was his last. Alyson Hurt, Sarah Knight and Avery Lill contributed to this report."
"Senate confirmation hearings aren’t known for their viral moments. But Sen. Al Franken seems to have a knack for creating them. At hearing after hearing this year, some of the most newsy and memorable quotes came when the Minnesota Democrat was asking questions. He stumped Education Secretary Betsy DeVos by asking about ”the debate between proficiency and growth” in education standards  —   a debate DeVos didn’t seem to be aware of during her confirmation hearing. He lectured Neil Gorsuch during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on an opinion about the right of a company to fire a trucker for abandoning his rig in order to avoid hypothermia. ”That’s absurd,” Franken said. ”Now, I had a career in identifying absurdity, and I know it when I see it.” In addition to the headlines the exchange generated, it was notable for another reason. Franken was embracing what he refers to as ”The Funny.” For the bulk of his first   term in the Senate, Franken did everything he could to keep his long tenure at Saturday Night Live at arm’s length. ”It was very important to me to prove to the people of Minnesota that I was going to be a workhorse and not a show horse,” Franken tells NPR. Franken was especially sensitive about coming across as serious, since he was elected to the Senate by the thinnest of thin margins: about 300 votes. But as he gets deeper into his second term, Franken is much more comfortable owning his long comedy career and showcasing the humor that made it possible. He’s comfortable enough to acknowledge a connection between those memorable hearing performances and his time at SNL. ”Comedians kind of get to the point in an effective way,” he says. ”That’s what comedy does.” Franken is also comfortable enough to have written a new memoir, modestly titled, Al Franken: Giant of the Senate. ”Just pivot” It’s one of the more blunt accounts published of just how strange running for office can be. Franken writes about having ”to learn a set of weird and occasionally sociopathic Politician Skills.” Like: Franken says the strangest skill to learn was the art of the ”pivot”  —   essentially, ignoring reporters’ questions. ”If someone said, ’Why are you 20 points behind?’ I explained, ’Well, you know, we have a long time to go.’ ” His campaign staff quickly shut that down. ”They’d say, ’No, no, no  —   just pivot! Just say, ”Minnesotans don’t care about the polls. What they care about is their kids’ education and whether they’re going to go bankrupt if they get sick.’ ” ”It took me forever to learn how to do that,” Franken says. Longing for ” ” As an entertainer who ran for federal office as a political rookie, Franken was in a position to be uniquely puzzled by President Trump’s march to the White House. ”I figured it was especially incumbent on me, an entertainer, to prove that I knew stuff. You know, as a sign of respect to the voters,” Franken writes. ”So you can imagine my frustration when Trump, an entertainer (sort of) quickly showed not only that he had no knowledge about the details of public policy, but that he had no interest in learning the details of public policy.” Add to that the fact that Franken once wrote a book about conservatives, called Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. ”This campaign it felt like you were in the   era,” Franken says. ”I hope that this is cyclical, and we’ll be in an era of   very soon.” Franken was finishing up the book at a point when Democrats were especially nervous and uncertain about how the Trump Era would play out. ”Lately things have been trending crapshow,” he writes. ”And while we don’t yet know exactly how bad things are going to get under President Trump, I think we should probably be prepared for the worst.” In an interview, he compared how things have actually played out with how he expected them to. ”Oh, I think they’re slightly worse,” he says. ”I didn’t expect to like this, but I can’t believe how fast this Russia investigation is going. I also am appalled by this budget. I’m appalled by the health care bill that the House passed.” Franken actually played a role in changing the course of that Russia investigation. It came when he was questioning Jeff Sessions during his attorney general confirmation hearing. ”I had been called a [Trump] surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians,” Sessions said in response to a Franken question. That wasn’t the case, and because of that, Sessions ended up recusing himself from the Russia investigation. Franken admits this is not a case where all those years of performing came in handy. ”He answered a question I didn’t ask, so I can’t really take credit for it,” he says. Sessions is one of many Republicans Franken says he’s become friendly with during his time in the Senate. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is decidedly not in that group. Franken writes at length about learning and appreciating the rules and norms of the Senate, which basically boil down to lawmakers treating each other with respect. Despite that, Franken devotes an entire chapter to insulting Cruz. Among the key quotes: ”The problem with Ted  —   and the reason so many senators have a problem with Ted  —   is simply that he is an absolutely toxic coworker. He’s the guy in your office who snitches to corporate about your March Madness poll and microwaves fish in the office kitchen. He is the Dwight Schrute of the Senate.” ”You have to understand that I probably like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz,” Franken says. ”And I hate Ted Cruz.” Cruz says the book is ”obnoxious and insulting.” For Franken, that might be the best blurb imaginable to slap on the back cover of the eventual paperback edition."
"The company that owns the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, site of the worst nuclear disaster in U. S. history, announced that it plans to shutter the facility in 2019 unless the state of Pennsylvania steps in to keep it open. The plant near Harrisburg, Pa. hasn’t been profitable for the past five years, according to owner Exelon Corp. The company announced last week that it failed to auction off future energy production from Three Mile Island for the third year in a row. ”Today is a difficult day, not just for the 675 talented men and women who have dedicated themselves to operating Three Mile Island safely and reliably every day, but also for their families, the communities and customers who depend on this plant to produce clean energy and support local jobs,” Exelon CEO Chris Crane said in a statement. Tuesday’s announcement highlights the challenges to the nuclear power industry  —   which ”faces slowing demand for electricity, and competition from cheaper natural gas and renewables,” as StateImpact Pennyslvania’s Marie Cusick has reported. Exelon has been seeking the same kind of subsidies from Pennsylvania, which it provides to solar, wind and hydro energy power sources. As Cusick reported, New York and Illinois recently ”agreed to give billions in subsidies to the nuclear industry by essentially broadening the definition of clean power.” That’s because nuclear reactors don’t release carbon emissions. Opponents of the subsidies say nuclear energy is risky and more expensive than alternative forms of power. And environmental groups are mixed, Cusick said, with some stressing that nuclear power is not renewable. Exelon said Pennsylvania ”has an opportunity to take a leadership role by implementing a policy solution to preserve its nuclear energy facilities and the clean, reliable energy and   jobs they provide.” It criticized the state’s reluctance to subsidize the industry, saying it produces ”93 percent of the Commonwealth’s   electricity.” On March 28, 1979, the core of one of Three Mile Island’s nuclear reactors partially melted down. As NPR’s Joel Rose reported, a problem with one of the valves was compounded by slow reaction from the operators at the time. ”When the crisis ended five days later, relatively small amounts of radiation had escaped from the plant. No one had been injured,” Joel said. ”But the accident had a huge impact on the industry.” The meltdown put the brakes on building new nuclear plants in the U. S. and prompted the industry to apply more stringent safety standards. It’s becoming increasingly common for nuclear power plants in the U. S. to close in light of market conditions  —   as Bloomberg reported, at least five have shut down in the past five years. Three Mile Island has a license from the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate until 2034."
"In a South Dakota court room, ABC News will defend a series of stories it reported five years ago in a defamation law suit. Jury selection started Wednesday. It’s a trial that could prove to be a measure of public attitudes toward the media. Back in 2012, ABC Correspondent Jim Avila reported on a practice of a South   company called Beef Products, Inc. To lower the fat content of its ground beef, the company added something it called finely textured beef product, made from the trimmings of the cow  —   lean bits derived from muscle and connective tissue  —   after it was butchered. ”Seventy percent of the ground beef we buy at the supermarket contains something he calls pink slime,” Avila said in a clip from the original reporting  —   using the name for the substance that former USDA scientist microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein had given it: ”pink slime.” ABC News pointed out in its stories that the addition of ”pink slime” was common and not unsafe to eat, but was not labelled on meat packages. Beef Products, Inc. says sudden public awareness of something with such an unappetizing name cost it business, leading it to close three plants and lay off more than 700 workers. In the wake of the ABC News reports,   chains severed ties with the company, and hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions to keep pink slime” out of school lunches. In 2012, Beef Products, Inc. brought the suit that is just now coming to trial. All Things Considered host Robert Siegel discussed the case with Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota. A transcript of their conversation follows, edited for brevity and clarity. What does the company, Beef Products, Inc. have to show to win a defamation judgment against ABC News? If what they’re suing under is the agricultural disparagement law in South Dakota, they have to prove that ABC News said the beef product was unsafe to consume. If it’s a common,   libel case, they have to prove that what was published about them was false. Moreover, they have to show that ABC News acted with what is called actual malice. Is the company bringing this action under both laws? It’s suing under everything under the sun  —   product disparagement, interference with business operations and a variety of other claims. Can Beef Products, Inc. argue successfully that by being the only company that was described doing this  —   even though it was done by many other companies  —   that this constituted defamation in some way? One of the questions about the agricultural disparagement law is whether it deals with the company or with the product itself. BPI has claimed that essentially what ABC News has said is that the company was complicit in mislabeling or not labeling when [finely textured beef product] was included in beef that was sold to consumers in grocery stores. This case reminds me of Bismarck’s line that people who want to savor either sausage or the law shouldn’t watch the process of making either one. Making beef can look pretty ugly here. Is that essentially the essence of the lawsuit? ABC News actually did some reporting at BPI and showed what it characterized as a pristine plant with pristine processing. But the mere use of the phrase pink slime was something that captured the public imagination and I think, frankly, escalated the ick factor. This case comes to trial at a time when the   mainstream media, which would include ABC News, are routinely attacked for purveying fake news and the president of the United States complains about lax libel laws. Could this case possibly move the standard for defamation? It’s only a trial decision at this point, so of course, it would have no precedential value. But I do think it’s a bellwether in the sense that it raises two very critical issues. One is that BPI claims that ABC News was basically on a disinformation campaign, which is another way of saying fake news. The other goes at the heart of what the media are supposed to be doing, which is informing the public about things that might be matters of interest to them but which corporate America might not be interested in sharing with them. And I think that was ABC’s justification for doing this story  —   simply to let people know that this substance was in their ground beef. NPR senior editor and Salt host Maria Godoy contributed to this report."
"The state of Ohio has sued five major drug manufacturers for their role in the opioid epidemic. In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, state Attorney General Mike DeWine alleges these five companies ”helped unleash a health care crisis that has had   financial, social, and deadly consequences in the State of Ohio.” Named in the suit are: The lawsuit  —   only the second such suit filed by a state, after Mississippi did so earlier this year  —   accuses the companies of engaging in a sustained marketing campaign to downplay the addiction risks of the prescription opioid drugs they sell and to exaggerate the benefits of their use for health problems such as chronic pain. Or, as DeWine’s office put it in a press release Wednesday, the ”lawsuit alleges that the drug companies engaged in fraudulent marketing regarding the risks and benefits of prescription opioids which fueled Ohio’s opioid epidemic.” ”We believe that the evidence will show that these pharmaceutical companies purposely misled doctors about the dangers connected with pain meds that they produced, and that they did so for the purpose of increasing sales,” DeWine tells NPR’s All Things Considered. ”And boy, did they increase sales.” By the late 1990s, DeWine’s suit says, each of the five companies had embarked on a persuasion scheme targeting doctors, whom the state positions as victims of systematic misinformation: ”Defendants persuaded doctors and patients that what they had long known  —   that opioids are addictive drugs, unsafe in most circumstances for   use  —   was untrue, and quite the opposite, that the compassionate treatment of pain required opioids.” Asked by NPR’s Robert Siegel whether doctors had a role of their own in overprescribing potentially dangerous medication, DeWine says more fault rests with a culture created by these companies. ”This was not something that the pharmaceutical companies just woke up some day and just started to do a little bit of it,” he says. ”I mean, there was a concerted effort for an extended number of years to really pound this into the heads of doctors. And when you’re told something time and time and time again and there’s a lot of advertising that is being spent, yeah, it takes a while to turn that around.” In a statement provided to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a spokeswoman for Janssen, one of the defendants, called the lawsuit ”legally and factually unfounded”: ”Janssen has acted appropriately, responsibly and in the best interests of patients regarding our opioid pain medications, which are   and carry   warnings about the known risks of the medications on every product label.” Purdue Pharma, another defendant, told The Plain Dealer that it has been involved in seeking to combat widespread opioid addiction: ”OxyContin accounts for less than 2 percent of the opioid analgesic prescription market nationally, but we are an industry leader in the development of   technology, advocating for the use of prescription drug monitoring programs and supporting access to Naloxone  —   all important components for combating the opioid crisis.” And that crisis shows few signs of ebbing soon. As All Things Considered notes, the state of Ohio estimates some 200, 000 people within its borders are addicted to opioids  —   a number roughly the same as Akron’s entire population. In his release Wednesday, DeWine says he filed the suit in Ross County for a reason: ”Southern Ohio was likely the hardest hit area in the nation by the opioid epidemic.”"
"Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders have asked the energy giant to publicly disclose how the fight against climate change could affect the company’s bottom line. It’s a victory for environmental activists, who have been urging the oil company to consider the economic impact the Paris accord would have if it is fully implemented. The global agreement calls for more investment in renewable energy and for deep cuts in the greenhouse gas emissions that result from burning fossil fuels. The nonbinding proposal was passed at the company’s general meeting in Dallas on Wednesday, and now goes before Exxon Mobil’s board. Chief executive Darren Woods said the board members would factor in the evidently strong support from shareholders, Agence   reports. The initiative was supported by more than 62 percent of shareholders who voted  —   a big leap from last year, when there was 38 percent support for a similar proposal, Reuters reports. As The Dallas Morning News reports, a vote that resounding indicates that major Wall Street investors are following the lead of environmental activists on this issue. The yearly reports ”would include details on how the company would survive in the event that   policies lead to lower oil demand,” Travis Bubenik of Houston Public Media reports. ”Exxon Mobil supports the Paris deal  —   but opposed the shareholder effort, saying the company is tackling climate change in other ways.” So how exactly is it a victory for environmentalists if Exxon Mobil is tallying up the economic impact of the Paris accord? The Dallas Morning News explained earlier on Wednesday: ”The goal is to make Exxon plan for a world where fossil fuels like oil and natural gas may be replaced by renewable energy from sunlight and wind. ” ’The real objective is to get the company to stop thinking about climate risk as a reputational risk or peripheral risk and to understand that it’s actually a material risk to their core business,’ said Shanna Cleveland, carbon asset risk director at CERES, a nonprofit focused on sustainability. . .. ”[She] said some companies they’ve approached  —   including Exxon  —   have said they don’t believe the world is going to achieve the Paris Agreement goal to limit global average temperature rise to ’well below’ 2 degrees Celsius. But she said the planning and self reflection required by the proposal would help the company prepare for the eventual decline in fossil fuel demand.” The newspaper notes that Irving,   Exxon Mobil is the world’s largest publicly traded energy company. The vote comes as President Trump is expected to announce his decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. The Washington Post, citing an anonymous source, suggested that major financial firm BlackRock, and possibly Vanguard and State Street, supported the initiative, which was opposed by Exxon Mobil management. Within the past two years, evidence has emerged that oil giant was aware of the threat posed by climate change, directly caused by the use of fossil fuels, for decades before the company publicly acknowledged it. Exxon Mobil provides financial support to NPR."
"President Trump is nearing a decision on whether to formally withdraw the U. S. from the Paris climate agreement  —   a landmark deal in which nearly every country volunteered to curb its greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit global warming. Trump is getting conflicting advice from various quarters of the administration. He met Tuesday with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, one of the strongest voices calling for the U. S. to drop out of the Paris accord. Trump is to meet Wednesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who believes the U. S. should stay in so it can keep its place at the international bargaining table.  Various news outlets have reported that Trump has already made the decision to withdraw. But the president is doing his best to maintain suspense. Trump tweeted early Wednesday that he’ll announce his decision ”over the next few days.” For all its symbolic importance, the decision may have little practical effect on U. S. carbon emissions. Trump has already taken steps to reverse many of the Obama administration’s rules designed to cut carbon pollution. Those moves make it unlikely the U. S. will meet its Paris commitment. If Trump does decide to pull out, he has a number of options. He could unilaterally withdraw from the Paris agreement without any action by Congress. The Paris deal was never approved by the Senate, so no congressional approval is needed to exit the agreement. However, under the terms of the Paris deal, withdrawal can’t begin until November 2019, three years after the agreement took effect. And even then, the U. S. must give a year’s notice. So the withdrawal would not take effect until November 2020, shortly after the next presidential election. Alternatively, the president could pursue a faster course by dropping out of an underlying treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. That requires the same   notice, but there’s no waiting period. Unlike the Paris agreement, the UNFCCC is a   treaty, so senators would probably want to have a say in such a move. However, presidents have previously exited   treaties on at least two occasions without Senate cooperation. And while doing so remains controversial, the Supreme Court has declined to intervene."
"Leon Watts III stands out among his fellow gerontology students at the University of Southern California’s  Davis School of Gerontology. They all look to be under 25. Watts is 66. What led up to his return to school was decades spent rehabbing homes in Los Angeles. Over that time, his clients have aged and he’s seen their needs change. Watts decided he’d be able to do a lot more for them with a master’s degree in gerontology. Nearly 90 percent of Americans 65 and older say they want to stay in their current homes and communities as they age, according to the AARP. But homes don’t keep up with their aging occupants. They don’t keep them safe from hard to climb stairs and slippery bathtubs. Leon Watts can take care of things like that. And since he’s been working with older adults for a long time, he’s wasn’t shy about giving his classmates some advice on what it takes. ”If you’re going to be working with seniors,” he told them, ”you have to be patient enough to listen to their stories and even ask questions about their life.” His professor, George Shannon, has welcomed these contributions. It’s been great having Watts in class, said Shannon, ”because his perspective is so broad.” Just days before his graduation, Watts was dressed in work shoes and a   that said Guardian Home Services, the name of his business. He was installing an emergency generator outside the home of Lee and Suzanne Chase. They’re now both in their late 80s. Their power went out for 24 hours recently. At their age, it’s not safe for them to be left in the dark. The Chases have been Watts’ clients for more than 30 years. He can walk around their home and point to the many improvements he’s made over the decades, like the widening of a driveway and the fencing on the upstairs deck. But now he has some more urgent work to do because recently, Lee had a serious fall. After weeks in the hospital, Chase was allowed to come home only if he got round —    care. ”I don’t know how long it’s going to last,” Chase said. ”It’s a little expensive and I don’t have any income anymore.” He   that ”between all this medical care and Leon, there’s not much left.” Then he looks at Watts: ”I told you I’d get you,” he said, as both men laughed. The Chase’s home is a traditional   with bedrooms upstairs. For now, Lee sleeps in a hospital bed in the dining room. So next on Watts’ agenda is a chairlift for the back stairs. But Lee isn’t so sure. ”I can still go up the front stairs,” he said, ”and that’s good exercise for me.” Well, that chair lift is going in anyway, Suzanne said. It’s not just her husband’s fall. It’s also the bout of pneumonia she had over the winter. ”I felt reeeaally old,” she said. ”It’s a whole new ballgame.” She and her husband used to think of aging as some vague future they needed to plan for. But now that future has caught up with them. And they’d been counting on remaining in their home ”until we were carried out feet first,” Suzanne said. Watts said that the Chase’s situation illustrates the points he wants to get across to all of his clients: do the work on your house before it’s an emergency make a plan for home care before you need it designate someone to make medical decisions for you, if you can’t make them for yourself. This is where his gerontology degree fits in. One of the reasons he went back to school, he said, was to make more contacts with other people interested in gerontology. ”My dream idea is to develop a firm that would have all these different professional people,” what he calls a ”holistic” management service for older adults. In his vision, everyone in his firm, whether an accountant or an electrician, would also have a background in gerontology. ”The home modifications and maintenance is just part of it,” Watts said. As Watts has aged along with his clients, he’s gained a deeper appreciation of how much home means when you’re older. ”When you can’t ski anymore, you don’t golf anymore, your friends aren’t around anymore, and your kids have grown up and they’ve gone, the only familiar thing in a person’s life is their home.”  Watts said that it doesn’t matter whether that home is a big old family house like the Chase’s or a   apartment. That territory is still all yours."
"Do trees grow from seeds that goats eat and later expel? That is a question that has long bedeviled ecologists. Let’s say it’s a small seed. The goat will swallow it, poop it out and a tree could sprout. But what if it’s a sizable seed? It probably wouldn’t make it through the goat’s digestive tract intact. And so . .. no tree. Unless . .. the goat spit out the seed instead of pooping it out. A new study probes the question of excretion vs. expectorate. The answer has important consequences for the birth of baby trees  —   in particular, the gnarled argan tree of Morocco. We were interested in this study for two reasons. First, our blog is, after all, called Goats and Soda. (Here’s why.) And second, argan trees are an important part of the economy in this   income country. They bear fruit. And the seeds of the fruit are valuable  —   they can be pressed to yield argan oil, valued in beauty treatments and foodie circles. By some reports, argan oil exports bring in $6. 5 million. It’s not easy to harvest seeds from atop a    tree. In the arid parts of Morocco where argan trees grow, goats are encouraged to climb, dine and deliver the seeds to earth, where they are collected by humans and eventually turned into argan oil. But argan trees don’t always thrive because of overharvesting and climate change. It would sure be helpful if the goats did a little planting of their own. The study is titled ”  goats disperse seeds during rumination” and was just published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. We talked to one of the   biologist and ecologist Jose Fedriani, to learn more. Okay, before I even get to the seeds, let’s discuss the fact that goats climb trees! Yes, they are climbers. You see them climbing rocks, they are able to climb on top of chairs, so they are good climbers. But . .. trees? How? They go very slowly and they do it. Some goat keepers modify the trees to make them easier to climb, they cut some branches off the trees so the goats can start climbing the trees more easily. Do the goats ever fall? No, no, no, they don’t fall. They are so good, they don’t fall. [Editor’s note: Let’s take a minute now to look at this video, which reveals that goats are indeed very, very good tree climbers, although some sources say they do take the occasional tumble.] Your interest was not climbing but the dispersal of seeds. As I understand it, the conventional wisdom was that in Morocco goats climb argan trees, eat the fruit and then poop out the seeds. Your theory was that the goats spit out the seeds. Um, why should we care? A small seed can go through the goat’s stomach and intestine and get out without damage and grow into a tree. But large seeds cannot do the same thing. The large seed has to be split into small pieces or destroyed completely. Let’s get a sense of size. How big is the argan seed? The size of, say, a lemon? Not like a lemon, much smaller, it would be like an acorn from an oak. It’s the shape and size of the acorn. In the study you fed lots of fruit with large seeds to goats. What happened? They disperse the seeds by spitting them out during rumination. I see from your study that sometimes they spit out the seeds within hours but sometimes take up to 6 days. In either case, the seeds are not damaged and can grow into new trees, correct?  So are goats agricultural heroes? The answer depends on the context. If we have a huge number of goats, they eat all the new baby trees, they kill them, so even though the goats are dispersing the seeds, they are eating the baby trees. So the effect is negative. But if there is a small or moderate number of goats, they will not kill all the baby trees produced by the dispersed seeds. What happens in the areas where argan trees are grown in Morocco? These people who take care of the argan trees get money from selling the argan fruit, so they buy more goats. So there is no rejuvenation of the argan forest because the goats are eating all the baby trees. Sigh. So your study does not necessarily reflect well on goats. This may not be the story you want. What is the moral of the story? We need to have a balance between the number of goats and number of trees and try to keep the equilibrium. That is the important point to me. Are more studies needed? More local studies should be done on trees and plants to find out the net effect of goats."
"It’s a mission that’s been in the works for nearly 60 years. NASA says it will launch a spacecraft in 2018 to ”touch the sun,” sending it closer to the star’s surface than ever before. The spacecraft is small  —   its instruments would fit into a refrigerator  —   but it’s built to withstand temperatures of more than 2, 000 degrees Fahrenheit, all the while maintaining room temperature inside the probe. ”Even though the sun is so close to us, there’s actually a lot about it we don’t understand,” says heat shield lead engineer Betsy Congdon from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Scientists are hoping the data gathered might solve some of the big mysteries about the sun. First, what allows the sun to fling winds out at supersonic speeds? Understanding this will be important for protecting astronauts during space travel, Congdon says, and solar events can damage satellites and knock out power on Earth. ”Unless we can explain what is going on up close to the sun, we will not be able to accurately predict space weather effects that can cause havoc at Earth,” NASA says. Second, why is the sun’s atmosphere actually hotter  —   300 times hotter  —   than its surface? ”That defies the laws of nature. It’s like water flowing uphill. It shouldn’t happen,” mission project scientist Nicola Fox of the Johns Hopkins lab said at a news conference. The probe is expected to complete 24 orbits over the course of more than six years, looping closer to the sun and eventually hurtling toward it at a speed of 450, 000 miles per hour. At that speed, you could travel from Philadelphia to Washington, D. C. in one second. Here’s a map of the route: It’s worth noting that the probe will not literally touch the sun’s surface  —   the closest it will get is about 3. 9 million miles away. But Congdon says that’s actually very close. ”If you think about a football field and the sun’s sitting on one side and the Earth’s sitting on the other, we’re getting within the   line,” she says. It’s about seven times closer than any previous mission. The circuitous route involves careening closer to the sun and then back out to Venus, which means wild oscillations in temperature. Congdon says protecting the probe’s scientific instruments from getting fried is ”quite an engineering feat.” It basically involves ”putting up a big umbrella,” she says. The shield is an   wide disc made of layers of carbon, which would get burnt to a charcoal crisp if it weren’t for the fact that there’s no oxygen in space. Today, NASA announced that it is naming the spacecraft after Eugene Parker, a retired physicist who predicted the existence of solar winds almost 60 years ago. He is about to turn 90, and this is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft after a researcher during their lifetime. Parker’s ideas fundamentally changed the study of the sun. But at this point, Fox compared the state of the field with learning about weather by looking out the window. ”You can see the sun is shining, you can see the birds are singing. But until you actually go out, you have no idea quite how hot it is out there or how windy it is or what the conditions are like,” Fox said. ”I really think we’ve come as far as we can with looking at things and it’s now time to go up and pay it a visit.” The European Space Agency also has plans to launch a probe toward the sun."
"It has been more than 60 days since Venezuela’s Supreme Court moved to dissolve the country’s National Assembly. The move, intended to eliminate a thorn in the side of embattled President Nicolas Maduro, was reversed after three days  —   but the political fallout has barreled into its third month, roiling city streets across the country. In that time, the list of protesters’ demands  —   from the resumption of local elections to an end to the nationwide food shortage to even the ouster of Maduro  —   has grown. And the death toll has mounted. As The Associated Press reports, at least 60 people have died in clashes between demonstrators and security forces, and at least 1, 000 protesters have been jailed. More than 250 people were injured in Monday’s protests alone, according to the BBC. Lately, the opposition’s ire has affixed to a new target, one outside Venezuela’s borders: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Last week, the   investment bank bought bonds from Petróleos de Venezuela, the   oil and natural gas company. According to multiple media outlets, the deal included $2. 8 billion in bonds  —   a purchase that, despite the reportedly steep discount the company offered, is a   boon to an   government reeling partly from anemic oil prices worldwide. In a statement, Goldman confirmed the purchase but not how much it paid. The bank said it did not buy the bonds directly from the Venezuelan government. ”We recognize that the situation is complex and evolving and that Venezuela is in crisis,” the bank said in a statement quoted by Reuters. ”We agree that life there has to get better, and we made the investment in part because we believe it will.” Julio Borges, leader of the   National Assembly, did not accept this explanation. ”Given the unconstitutional nature of Nicolas Maduro’s administration, its unwillingness to hold democratic elections and its systematic violation of human rights, I am dismayed that Goldman Sachs decided to enter this transaction with the Maduro regime,” Borges wrote in a letter earlier this week. ”It is apparent Goldman Sachs decided to make a quick buck off the suffering of the Venezuelan people,” he added. Borges also promised ”to recommend to any future democratic government of Venezuela not to recognize or pay on these bonds,” which he says were bought at a 69 percent discount. On Tuesday, Reuters reports, the National Assembly voted to request that the U. S. investigate the deal, and protesters gathered outside Goldman Sachs’ headquarters in New York City. Meanwhile, in Venezuela’s city streets, violence between riot police and protesters has shown no sign of relenting. Another opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, alleged that he and his entourage were ”ambushed” and beaten by the Venezuelan National Guard at a protest in the capital, Caracas. A visibly bruised Capriles detailed the incident at a news conference Monday, according to the BBC: ” ’I was practically choking [from the tear gas] . .. when a National Guard team ambushed us,’ he said, showing photos of the injuries some of his supporters had suffered. ” ’They took all of their gas masks and their helmets,’ Mr. Capriles said. ” ’I asked them ”what is wrong with you?” and their answer was to hit me with a helmet in the face.’ ” Maduro continues to maintain that the protests are driven by   opposition leaders and outside powers  —   foremost the U. S.  —   seeking to undermine his government. Many of those foreign leaders, for their part, plan to meet Wednesday to discuss a possible way forward in negotiating with Maduro’s government. The Organization of American States is gathering foreign ministers from Western Hemisphere countries to ”establish a mandate for new diplomatic engagement,” according to a senior U. S. State Department official. ”What is happening there in Venezuela today, the people need to recognize  —   and in fact, I think it’s quite clear now that they do  —   the common Venezuelan citizen recognizes that they are not alone,” the official says, ”that the hemisphere is in solidarity with them, that the hemisphere is supportive of their just calls for democracy.”"
"What do you do about a problem like ”covfefe”? That word from President Trump’s   tweet set Twitter ablaze overnight, sparking jokes and   of what seems to have been a typo. The covfefe kerfuffle is a reminder that we’re living in a unique political era: Even the words are  . The tweet  ” ”Despite the constant negative press covfefe”  ” was retweeted and liked more than 100, 000 times after it was posted Wednesday just after midnight Eastern time. It was deleted around 6 a. m. Wednesday, but by then, the typo had become a word, with a rapidly evolving life of its own. The new term is being received as a modern take on Citizen Kane’s enigmatic ”Rosebud”  ” and it seems the president approves. After deleting the tweet, Trump, sphinxlike, wrote, ”Who can figure out the true meaning of ’covfefe’ ? ?? Enjoy!” By the time that message went out, the search was well underway. Charles M. Blow of The New York Times published a take on Trump as chef, sprinkling a dash of covfefe that could presumably take a dish to the next level. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel tweeted, ”what makes me saddest is that I know I’ll never write anything funnier than #covfefe.” When we asked the White House for a hint of the term’s meaning Wednesday, representatives didn’t respond before this story was published. A California man reportedly registered covfefe as his license plate. Around the world, people are taking the president up on his offer. As of Wednesday morning, covfefe was a top trending term on Twitter from Perth, Australia, to Delhi, India, and from Mexico City to Paris. Debates sprang up over how to pronounce covfefe. While some prefer ” ” many others gravitate toward the more continental ”  ” or ”  .” And a small but insistent minority says it’s simply ” .” When we plugged the word into Google Translate, the service suggested covfefe could be Samoan. But any hopes of an evocative translation were dashed by the default result: covfefe.   whose Twitter account has taken shots at Trump in the past, seemed overwhelmed, posting just after 1 a. m. ”Regrets checking Twitter. Goes back to bed.” A figure named Covfefe the Strong used a new Twitter account to announce, ”I have been summoned to this world. I know not why.” He was countered by the Wizard Cofefe, who said that he had been summoned by ”the Great Orb of T’kketh!” The tweet even struck a nerve with another man known for his tan and his unnatural hair. Yes, wrestling legend Ric Flair woke up early and entered the fray, leaping off the top turnbuckle with a GIF of himself and saying, ”To be the #covfefe, you gotta beat the #covfefe   WOOOOO!” But for one day at least, the covfefe was simply unbeatable."
"A Chinese labor activist has been arrested and two others have disappeared after investigating alleged labor abuses at a factory that makes shoes for several major brands  —   including Ivanka Trump’s. Hua Haifeng disappeared sometime Sunday while en route to the Huajian International shoe factory in southern China. On Tuesday, police in the province called Hua’s wife, Deng Guimian. ”They said, ’You only need to know that your husband has been arrested on criminal charges,’ ” Deng told NPR by phone from her home in Hubei province. ” ’You don’t need to know anything other than that.’ ” Hua works for China Labor Watch, a New   group that investigates violations of workers’ rights. China Labor Watch says two of Hua’s colleagues are also missing and presumed detained. Deng said she has not informed the couple’s two young children, her own parents or Hua’s about the incident. She wants to keep from upsetting them. And she says she is indignant at how police have treated her husband. ”I understand and support my husband’s work,” she said. ”I feel his work is legal and meaningful, so why should they arrest him?” The Huajian factory makes as many as 20, 000 pairs of shoes a year for the Ivanka Trump brand. It makes millions more for others, including Coach and Nine West. Factory managers couldn’t be reached for comment by phone. China Labor Watch director Li Qiang says his investigators worked undercover in the factory for more than a month and shot some eight hours of video footage. He says he has evidence that workers at the factory were forced to work overtime without pay. One instance happened, he says, after a batch of shoes was found to have defects. ”The workers all wanted to leave,” he says, ”but they couldn’t, because if they did, they’d be fired. So they were forced to work until 1:30 a. m. and they had to go back to work the same morning at 7:10 a. m.” Li says he also found evidence that workers were threatened with dismissal if they took sick leave and that they were forced to sign falsified time sheets. Li says he investigated the Huajian shoe factory precisely because it was making shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand and he thought he could leverage that to help the workers. ”We’re helping Ivanka to discover labor abuses at the factories that supply her,” he says. ”That way, she can improve her supply chain. We also hope that through her influence, we can reduce labor abuses on the production lines of multinational corporations.” Li says he is going to submit his video footage to Ivanka Trump’s company. He believes that the police are trying to protect this factory because it makes shoes for President Trump’s daughter. While he has no hard proof of this, he says that he has investigated hundreds of factories in China and that while his staff have often been caught and kicked out, they have never been arrested until now. He also rejects the police charges that Hua and his colleagues were using illegal surveillance gear in the Huajian shoe factory. Li says all they had were cellphones. When the factory became the subject of critical reports earlier this year, the   Global Times tabloid leaped to its defense, accusing Western media of ”maligning the reputation of the Trump family by publishing distorted reports.” Analysts say China’s government has not hesitated to avail itself of the back channel to the White House provided by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. ”China has no other choice,” Renmin University international relations scholar Shi Yinhong said of Kushner in an interview ahead of last month’s meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. ”Since Trump took office, U. S.  relations have faced a rather dangerous situation. Luckily, China discovered someone they can talk to who has direct access to the president.” As the Trump and Xi families gathered at Trump’s Florida resort in April, China’s government approved three new trademarks to sell Ivanka   products in China, although Beijing insists it gave her no preferential treatment."
"The number of people apprehended while trying to cross the Southwest border illegally has plummeted, as the   practice of hopping the border without papers has changed profoundly in recent months. One human smuggler, who gives his first name as Orlando, said his business is worse than he’s ever seen it. He blames the Trump administration’s increased emphasis on border security and enforcement of federal immigration laws. ”There’s a lot more security on the river,” says the    whose nickname is El Lobo, or the Wolf in Spanish. He doesn’t want to give his full name because what he does is unlawful, though he agrees to an interview at a McDonald’s in central Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas. He’s wiry with a dark complexion and a habit of constantly checking his cellphone. ”With the change in administration on that side, it’s heated up: There are more agents, more dogs, more trucks, more boats. We have to charge more, and fewer people want to cross.” In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas  —   the nation’s hotspot for human smuggling  —   apprehensions of illegal border crossers have fallen 75 percent since January to less than 4, 000 in April, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley has been surging agents to the riverside in recent weeks as part of a special operation. And as fewer unaccompanied children from Central America are asking for asylum, agents say they’ve been able to do less ”babysitting” and more guarding the border. And that means the Wolf charges a premium for his services. ”Now, you pay $4, 800 from Matamoros to Brownsville before it was $2, 500. My business has dropped by more than half,” he says. ”If it goes down anymore, I’ll have to think about doing something else. Maybe open a little store, or sell cars.” ’We’ll just climb over it’ Human smuggling involves a cast of characters  —   and they’re all paid. The Wolf paddles his clients across the river in inner tubes. Scouts stationed along the riverbank watch for the Border Patrol. A safe house operator in Texas shelters the immigrants until they start the journey north. And the Gulf Cartel, which controls the drugs and people that move across the river, collects $200 a head. The White House hopes to shut down operations like Orlando’s. President Trump’s budget, submitted to Congress last week, asks for $4 billion for additional agents, new surveillance gizmos and more miles of border wall. On this point, the smuggler gives a wry smile. ”The wall is a big expense for him,” he says. ”But we’ll just climb over it!” Some metal fencing has already been erected between Brownsville and the river. Orlando displays red friction burns on the insides of his forearms. He says he got them climbing an iron pole and sliding down the other side before hauling his less athletic clients over using ropes. Across the Rio Grande in Texas, at the office of the National Border Patrol Council, union official Chris Cabrera said the increased border security is working. ”I would say the guy’s probably a little full of himself,” he says of Orlando. ”I mean I think that a wall is a barrier for him. Does it stop him? No. Does it slow him down? Yes, it does. If there was no wall, he wouldn’t have any bruises and he’d get his traffic across that much easier. The dramatic decline in illegal border crossings is subtly affecting life throughout this border city. The director of the   migrant shelter in Matamoros, for instance, reports that his occupancy has dropped from 100 people a night to 20. And, he says, almost all of them are deportees from the U. S. One of the travelers staying at the shelter is Jesus Morales. He’s a    construction worker from Monterrey, Mexico, who plans to look for work at a downtown plaza. He came to Matamoros with the intention of swimming the river and joining his buddies on a sheetrock crew in Harlingen, Texas. But Morales says he was robbed at the riverside, and he saw lots of   agents on the other side. Morales is broke and disconsolate. He says all he wants to do is get a bus ticket home. Even those who have lived illegally in the United States  —   and started families there  —   are deciding it’s better in Mexico. Ruby Degollado is a    mother who now lives in Reynosa, upriver from Matamoros. For 14 years, she says she lived illegally in Alamo, Texas. Her family moved back to Mexico four years ago when her husband was deported. She had been seriously considering hiring a smuggler to take her back to Texas so that her daughters, who are U. S. citizens, could resume their studies at superior schools. But she has changed her mind. ”He doesn’t want us Mexicans,” Degollado says of Trump. ”Why would I want to risk it going back there?” That’s one more potential customer the Wolf has lost."
"Howard Scott Warshaw has had many gigs over the years, but perhaps his most notable achievement was also a spectacular failure: ”I did the E. T. video game, the game that is widely held to be the worst video game of all time,” he says. E. T. The   for the Atari 2600 was a commercial flop and a gaming disaster. Based loosely on Steven Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster of the same name, the game was a confusing mess that left players frustrated and disoriented. Millions of copies went unsold, and Atari ended up literally burying the game by dumping many surplus cartridges into a New Mexico landfill. Within a year of E. T.’s release, the entire video game industry collapsed. Warshaw ultimately had to give up his career as a game designer. But the failure also laid the foundations for a new life. To understand the makings of what has been described as the worst video game ever, you have to understand the mind of the man who made it. From the very start of life, Howard Scott Warshaw was in a hurry. ”When I was a kid, I wanted to be older. When I was older, I wanted to be an adult. I wanted to get out and I wanted to engage life,” he says. He wanted to get through school fast, make a quick, tidy fortune in business, and retire by 30. To that end, he zipped through college, got a master’s degree in computer engineering and headed to Silicon Valley. In 1981, he was hired at a new company called Atari. Atari was basically an early Silicon Valley startup. Its main product, the Atari 2600, was the first really popular video game console. Warshaw’s job was to design games. This was the era of games like Pong, in which users used    virtual paddles to push a small, square ”ball” around a screen. It was pretty sedate. Warshaw took a much more exciting approach to game design. At a time when graphics were primitive and   plots were nonexistent, he pushed to make his games feel more like movies. ”I tried to make every single thing on the screen move and pulse with color and sound,” he says. His first game was Yars’ Revenge. The user played a mutant space fly, trying to kill a giant monster. It was unlike anything that had come before, and it was a runaway hit. Warshaw quickly became one of the company’s superstar programmers. When Atari got the rights to make the video game version of Steven Spielberg’s first Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, they put him on the job. Now to put this in perspective, nobody had ever made a video game based on a movie. At 23, Warshaw was going to be the first programmer to ever attempt it. It took him 10 months to design the Raiders game, write the code, get feedback, reprogram it and put it through quality control. When all that was finished, he showed Spielberg the final product.  ”He looks up at me and he says, ’It’s just like a movie. I feel like I just watched a movie,’ ” Warshaw recalls. ”I thought, ’Oh my God! Steven Spielberg thinks my adventure game is just like a movie!’ To me that was the ultimate compliment I could possibly receive on this work.” And here’s where the trouble began. The next movie Spielberg made was E. T. Spielberg wanted a video game based on E. T. And he wanted Warshaw to program it. ”Spielberg had requested that I do E. T. So fine, I’m not going to argue,” Warshaw says. ”But what had happened, the negotiations for E. T. had run very long.” Atari and Spielberg haggled over rights and money until the end of July 1982. To get the game out in time for the Christmas holiday, Warshaw would have to build it from scratch in five weeks. The CEO of Atari called him directly. ”He goes, ’We need an E. T. game and we need it for September first, can you do it?’ And I said, ’You bet I can. I absolutely can,’” he says. ”I don’t know exactly what I was full of at the time, exactly, but whatever it was I was overflowing with it, and I believed I could pull it off. I mean the hubris of it!” Warshaw wasn’t the only one full of hubris. During this period, Atari was one of the fastest growing companies in America. Its profits were soaring and bonus checks were rolling in. Inside the headquarters were drugs and sex and booze. ”It was a ridiculous, excessive, sort of ’fall of Rome’ kind of environment,” he says. And everyone there believed that nothing could stop them. Warshaw had just 36 hours to come up with a concept for the game. In the movie, E. T. puts together a communicator he uses to ”phone home.” So Warshaw made that the basic plot of the game, too. The player as E. T. was to go around gathering parts for the phone. ”Another issue with me is that it’s not enough that we’re going to do something in five weeks. I wanted to do something that was a step up, not just an ” he says. Warshaw created an elaborate world for the Atari E. T. to explore. The world was designed to wrap around on itself, so traveling in any direction eventually returned E. T. to his starting point. Then Warshaw added lots of pits in the ground to hide parts of the phone in. (We’ll get back to those pits later.) Warshaw flew down to LA to show Spielberg the concept. ”I lay the whole thing out and here it is, and Spielberg looks at me and he goes, ’Couldn’t you just do something like  ? ’” Warshaw was furious. ”Just to give you an idea of how full of myself I was at that point. I’m sitting there with Steven Spielberg and I wanted to say, ’Well, gee, Steven couldn’t you do something like The Day the Earth Stood Still? ’” In the end Spielberg signed off on the game’s design. Warshaw went back to Silicon Valley. He had a game development system moved into his home so he could work on E. T. day and night. ”I would say workwise it was the hardest five weeks of my life,” he says. And in five, magical weeks, he took the blockbuster film E. T. and turned it into a horrible video game. Here’s the fundamental problem with E. T.: It’s really confusing to play. The E. T. game character travels through a wraparound world that keeps returning players to the same screen again and again without explanation. The pits in the ground, in which E. T.’s phone is hidden, constantly trap the little alien. In the words of NPR’s Gene Demby, who received a copy one Christmas in his youth, E. T. is the   equivalent of ”purgatory.” Warshaw has a different way of explaining the game’s problem: ”There’s a difference between frustration and disorientation,” he says. ”Video games are all about frustration. It’s OK to frustrate a user. In fact, it’s important to frustrate a user. But you don’t want to disorient the user.” At first, Warshaw didn’t know that he’d made a dud. Sales around the holidays were strong. E. T. was at the top of the charts. But then, in the halls at Atari, people started coming up to him and saying things that made it clear E. T. had flopped. ”It hurt,” Warshaw recalls. ”I mean it hurt to hear that people aren’t liking my game.” At the same time Warshaw’s game flopped, Atari was running into real trouble. The company’s owners were making bad business deals. Programmers like Warshaw were making bad games. And just as quickly as it had risen, Atari was falling. The CEO was fired, and the company had to lay off hundreds of employees. Soon, Warshaw was out of a job. ”Atari was the world to me,” he says. ”You want to talk about a failure. The failure of E. T. was really nothing at that time in my life compared to the loss of Atari as a workplace.” But when it came to failure, Warshaw was just getting started. Atari had made him a millionaire, but he squandered it on bad investments. And then the IRS came after him for back taxes. Warshaw hit bottom. ”Until one day, I really had a   with myself, and I said, ’You know, the IRS can only take my money. That’s really all they can do. If I give them my happiness, that’s on me.’ ” And he began a long, slow journey toward finding that happiness again. He went from job to job: computers, videography, real estate. Some gigs were better than others, but none compared to his time at Atari. The months stretched into years, and eventually more than a decade. And then one day, he was talking to his girlfriend at the time and she asked him, ”What do you really want to do?” ”I said, ’Well, I’d be a therapist.’ I mean, I didn’t even think for a second, I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” he says. Therapy. It made perfect sense. Silicon Valley was booming, except instead of video games it was smartphones and apps. Startups were failing. People’s careers were crashing and burning. And after everything he’d been through, Warshaw knew he was the guy who could help. ”I have been there I do know what it’s like. I have succeeded and I’ve failed and I’ve lost it, and I’ve had it and I’ve lost it. I’ve seen all this go. I can help people really understand and relate and find a way around and through it,” he says. Warshaw got his license, and today he calls himself the Silicon Valley Therapist. His clients are a lot like he was back in the day: young, ambitious and rushing ahead. Business is good. This story is the third in a   series on the experience of failure and how people deal with it. It was developed in NPR’s Story Lab. Nicholas DePrey created original music for the series."
"It’s National Spelling Bee week! That wonderful time of year when we honor young Americans’ spelling prowess and admire their chutzpah for memorization and sussing out the ”dreaded schwa.” Lest we get too highfalutin (boastful, bombastic, vainglorious) Google has published a map that demonstrates the opposite of spelling prowess (ineptitude, lack of skill, incompetence). It has mapped, state by state, the words that people most often Google ”how to spell.” (To see the   map, click the tweet below, then click on the map.) Many of us Google words to see how they’re spelled. And perhaps we don’t even type ”how to spell” because we trust that Google will nudge us in the right direction even if we, ignoramuses that we are, typed ”highfaluting.” Thank goodness no one sees which words we perennially misspell, because it turns out that this information can be a little embarrassing, even when aggregated by state. We’re looking at you, New Hampshire. The   spelling in the Granite State is ”diarrhea.” And though that is not an easy word to spell and may be trickier than ”disease,” which is tops in Utah, or ”patient,” which gets Googled in Oklahoma, no one wants to be from the diarrhea state. Then there is South Dakota, where folks are searching ”how to spell college.” The jokes write themselves! Come on, Google, try a little subtlety. Some of these search terms raise larger questions. Why are so many Rhode Islanders trying to spell ”liar”? How can it be that people in New Jersey can’t spell ”twelve”? And really, New Mexico: ”banana”? Perplexingly, the word for which Wisconsinites most often need spelling help is: ”Wisconsin.” We hoped that maybe there was a   Badger fight song called ”How to spell Wisconsin” i. e. ”         for the win!” but no. There is no song. Perhaps this map reflects something deeper, something innate about what drives us, well beyond spelling’s reach. Hawaii is about people, Vermont is Little Europe, and in Kansas, diamonds are forever. It’s always tomorrow in Arizona and sauerkraut season in Pennsylvania. Hallelujah for Delaware! In that case, we’re doubly sorry, New Hampshire. It’s spelled          ."
"Just after the sun rose on Wednesday, people began streaming into the Mombasa terminal station. There was a red carpet, a helicopter and Kenyans dressed in their very best attire, with shimmering fabrics and dazzling hats. A little more than a hundred years after the British built a railway through their East African colony, Kenyans celebrated building one of their own. Consolata Muvea took a bus more than 10 hours to come to Mombasa for the first time and she was entranced by the train waiting at the station. ”I understand there is tea. There is a toilet. I want to see even the type of toilet is there,” she said laughing. ”Because if I hear that there is a toilet there, I just imagine. How? I am always traveling by bus and there is no toilet. How can there be a toilet here? So, I am happy.” Peter Asiokomweka, 69, was marveling at the machine in front of him. It’s a diesel locomotive because Kenya didn’t have the infrastructure to pull off an electric train. Still, moving at around 65 mph, it is going halve the time it takes to get from the port city of Mombasa to the capital city of Nairobi. ”This one is going to make our country richer than it has been,” Asiokomweka said. He looked around at the terminal, a modern building with swooping lines and a tower that reaches high into that vast African sky. He was awed. He says the building of this train is already overwriting the colonial legacy left by the British. The rail line was financed with more than $3 billion borrowed from the Chinese government. A Chinese company built it, and a Chinese company will operate it for the first five years. For China, this project is part of a grand plan to revive the old Silk Road. In Africa, China imagines a vast network of rails, from Kenya, through Uganda and Burundi and up to South Sudan that can help it move its goods in and out of the continent with expediency. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said it was a ”historic moment” because the rail line will ”transform the economy of this country.” The government hopes cargo from the port of Mombasa will be able to flow inland faster, more efficiently and cheaper than it does moving along a   highway. But critics have denounced the project for saddling the Kenyan people with debt. Back in 2013, the World Bank said it would not help finance the project and it also released a damning report questioning the project’s financial logic. Kenya was already running a railway left over from colonial times. According to a World Bank analysis, refurbishing that rail would have resulted in the same performance as the new line and cost less than half of what it took to build the new railway. At the inaugural ride, however, finances were not discussed. To singing and dancing, President Kenyatta boarded the train and it began to snake its way across swaths of African bush. It’s a route that the British termed the Lunatic Express, in part because lions had a habit of eating the men working on the railway. But it’s spectacularly beautiful country. It’s rugged plains dotted with hulking hills, and every once in a while you’re likely to spot an elephant or a baobab tree jutting improbably from the ground like a prehistoric giant. And as the train cut its way from one town to another, over the course of 300 miles, one thing became certain: This was a proud moment for Kenyans. As the train lurched forward, little kids ran toward it waving and smiling, and women and men left their fieldwork and sought higher ground to get a look at this new, marvelous machine."
"Updated at 2:45 p. m. ET, A huge truck bomb explosion early Wednesday killed at least 80 people and wounded more than 400 others in Kabul’s diplomatic zone, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health says. The attack struck the busy neighborhood in the capital city just before 8:30 a. m. local time, during Kabul’s morning commute. The explosion destroyed or damaged more than 50 vehicles, the Ministry of Interior Affairs said. The bomb was detonated near Zanbaq Square outside the ”Green Zone,” according to the   Resolute Support mission, which adds that Afghan security forces kept the car bomb from entering the Green Zone, ”but the explosion caused civilian casualties in the vicinity.” At least 13 officers of the Afghan National Police were killed, says Resolute Support, which added, ”May these heroes rest in peace.” The U. S. State Department tells NPR’s Michele Kelemen that 11 U. S. contractors are among the wounded, and that the injuries are not considered  . A driver for the BBC and a technology worker with TOLO TV were killed and other people who work in the media were wounded, the Pajhwok Afghan News network says. The blast targeted a neighborhood that is home to several embassies and is not far from the presidential palace. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the bombing. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told NPR that ”his outfit has nothing to do with this blast and that they have not carried out the attack,” Abdul Sattar reports for NPR. Jennifer Glasse reports for NPR from Kabul: ”The [truck] bomb exploded at the height of the morning rush hour on one of Kabul’s main streets, not far from the German Embassy, at the entrance to the offices of a major Afghan cellphone company and popular TV station. ”It’s not clear what the target was, but as is often the case, many civilians were injured by the blast. ”A mile away there was first a low rumble like an earthquake, then the shock wave from the blast followed and blew open doors and windows. Closer to the explosion it shattered glass in homes, offices and cars. ”Both the Taliban and Islamic State have stepped up attacks on Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan.” An Afghan security officer who had been protecting the German Embassy died in the attack, and while members of the embassy’s staff were injured, ”All are now safe,” says German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. The blast blew in the doors and windows of the embassy building, Esme Nicholson reports for NPR from Berlin. She adds that for now, Germany will suspend deportations of rejected Afghan asylum seekers, to ease the workload of the embassy staff in Kabul. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a statement saying he ”strongly condemns the cowardly attack in the holy month of Ramadan targeting innocent civilians in their daily life.” The president visited victims of the attack who were being treated in a hospital today later tonight, he’ll address his country on national television to discuss what he called an ”inhuman attack.”"
"Trying to make out what someone is saying in a noisy environment is a problem most people can relate to, and one that gets worse with age. At 77, Linda White hears all right in    settings but has problems in noisier situations. ”Mostly in an informal gathering where people are all talking at once,” she says. ”The person could be right beside you, but you still don’t hear them.” White, a retired elementary school teacher and principal, has not gotten hearing aids, although she says she probably will in the future. Instead, she’s part of a group of people testing out a different intervention for dealing with hearing loss: learning music. She is part of an ongoing study organized by Frank Russo, a professor of psychology and director of the Science of Music, Auditory Research and Technology Lab, or SMART Lab, at Ryerson University in Toronto. He says understanding speech in noise is a top complaint among older adults with hearing loss. ”The complaint often is, ’I hear just fine when I’m speaking to someone    but when I’m in a crowded situation  —   if I’m a party, if I’m at bus station, if I’m in a mall  —   speech in noise becomes very problematic,’” Russo says. And hearing aids can only help so much, because separating speech from noise is not so much a task for our ears as it is for our brains. As people age, something declines along the pathway between the inner ear and the brain’s auditory cortex, explains Russo. ”So, the hearing aids we have that are becoming increasingly remarkable in their ability to suppress noise, they can’t completely correct this problem of aging auditory systems,” he says. Previous research has found that aging musicians fare better than   when it comes to distinguishing speech from noise, even when their overall hearing is no better than that of  . Try listening to these clips and repeating what you hear. (They get progressively more difficult.) The answers are at the bottom of the page. So Russo and his colleagues are getting older adults to join a choir, with no musical experience or talent required, and then testing whether it changes how their brains process speech in noisy environments. The choir is run through Ryerson’s 50+ Continuing Education Program. Each session lasts ten weeks, with one   rehearsal each week. ”We wanted to see how   could we make the musical training. How quickly can we see these improvements?” says Ella Dubinsky, a graduate student in the SMART Lab who recruits study participants from among the choir singers. She grew up playing music with her family and later studied classical piano. ”Singing is sort of like brain boot camp. You’re sort of whipping your neurons into shape,” she says. The dozen or so participants in the current session are nearly all women. They’re working on four tunes that are familiar to this crowd, including ”Love and Marriage” and Charlie Chaplin’s ”Smile.” Choir director Sina Fallah puts them through vocal challenges, such as singing a   scale, ascending and descending, under the melody of ”Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” which he plays on violin. ”My duty, of course, is to make sure they have fun. They also learn something. They become better singers,” Fallah says. In addition to the choir participants, the researchers are following two control groups. One is not singing, but is listening to a lot of music in a music appreciation course. The other has no musical intervention. And all of the study participants undergo    lab evaluations that include    tests, in which they’re asked to repeat sentences that are played against increasingly loud background noise. And participants also get homework. Using Theta Music Trainer software, participants practice their singing at home, trying to match sequences of notes played from the computer. The program evaluates the singing, and tells the participants whether they’re sharp, flat or right on the money. Another exercise involves listening to two notes played on different instruments, and choosing the one with the higher pitch. The different timbres of the instruments make the exercise challenging. White says she struggles with some of the exercises, but that she feels like overall the homework is helping her singing. To Frank Russo, that’s important progress. He says one way we follow a particular voice is by locking onto its pitch, allowing us to use frequency as an anchor. ”When we’re listening to voices and speech, there’s a frequency trail we can follow, but it’s often buried under a din of noise. But if our brains have improved in tracking that anchor, we can better reconstruct the nuance of each speech fragment,” he says. ”So that’s the presumed mechanism for why this pitch training is so important.” Russo says the research is a little messier than he would like. People who sign up for the choir may have more musical interest and, conceivably, more ability than the control groups. The choir may also yield social benefits that improve people’s outlook and performance. But it’s a messiness he can live with. ”There’s been this general liberalization of science that makes it ok to ask these messy questions now,” he says. The Ryerson University SMART Lab plans to present some initial findings from their research at a conference on music, sound and health in Boston this summer. Here are the answers to what is being said in the clips above: Clip 1: ”His plan meant taking a big risk.” Clip 2: ”The baby slept in his crib.” Clip 3: ”The workers are digging a ditch.”"
"In the days before the Manchester Arena attack, Salman Abedi, the man police have identified as the bomber, ”made most of the purchases of the core components” of the weapon himself and was largely alone as he moved about the city, British police say. ”Many of his movements and actions have been carried out alone during the four days from him landing in the country and committing this awful attack,” Detective Chief Superintendent Russ Jackson of the North West Counter Terrorism Unit said, referring to Adebi’s recent return from a trip to Libya. ”With specialist support, we have also had a good understanding of the likely component parts of the bomb and where these came from,” Jackson said. When the bomb detonated at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, it killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens. Police are still trying to find the distinctive blue suitcase Abedi was seen carrying as he moved around Manchester’s city center and other areas ahead of the attack. The suitcase is ”a different item” than what was used to carry out the bombing, Jackson said  —   but he added that people should be cautious and contact police if they can help track it down. ”We are especially keen to find out why he kept going back to the Wilmslow Road area, and we need to find the blue suitcase which he used during these trips,” Jackson said. Officials have not ruled out Abedi’s acting as part of a wider network  —   a crucial question that arose last week because of the sophisticated and effective nature of the attack and the timing of his visit to Libya. Last week, a   Western government official told NPR, ”Our assessment is he did not have the skills to build such a bomb, and the conclusion is there is a   out there.” Manchester police have made at least 16 arrests in connection to the attack and were still holding 11 men in custody, according to the department’s latest updates. As we have reported, Abedi’s father and brother were also detained in Libya last week. Another brother was arrested in England. The latest police findings are the results of painstaking work, Jackson said, with more than 1, 000 officers working on the case and helping to track Abedi’s movements through security camera footage, his phone calls and his interactions with people. Calling the scale of the investigation ”enormous,” Jackson said there are more than 7, 000 entries listed on the counterterrorism unit’s lines of inquiry. Investigators are talking to hundreds of witnesses and looking at ”almost 300 pieces of digital equipment, including phones,” he said. ”There has been huge progress made over the week, and the speed of the inquiry remains the same,” Jackson said."
"President Trump has suggested the filibuster should be eliminated to help move along his legislative agenda, though you might not know that’s what he was talking about when he tweeted this on Tuesday: The filibuster used to be a rare and powerful tool for lawmakers to use when they wanted to hold up the normal course of business. But as rules changed to require fewer votes to shut one down, senators began to invoke it as a regular threat. Now, there are even fewer circumstances where it can be used. These two episodes of Ron’s Office Hours look at what the filibuster is, how it’s changed and what it might mean for Trump’s agenda. In Part 1, NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving looks at the history. Part 2 covers what may lay ahead, for the filibuster and for Trump. For more episodes of Ron’s Office Hours and to follow related coverage, like the NPR Politics Facebook page and subscribe to NPR’s YouTube channel."
"When it comes to health care, Americans may be having buyer’s remorse. More adults approve of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, than the alternative health care bill passed this month by House Republicans, according to a poll published Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The numbers come just as members of the Senate are hammering out details of their own health care plan. Republicans are looking to fulfill their   campaign promises to repeal Obamacare. It’s just not clear that voters want them to do so. ”This is the kind of information that they’ve been dreading,” Joe Antos, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says of GOP leaders. ”They could see the negative reaction that the House bill got, and clearly, they recognize that their job is to come up with something that will work better politically and, ideally, work better for the people that will be most affected.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week that the House Republican bill will result in 23 million fewer people having health insurance than if the Affordable Care Act were left in place. Here are highlights of the poll, as explained by Mollyann Brodie, senior vice president of Public Opinion Research at Kaiser. It was conducted May 16 to 22, before the latest CBO score was released: The survey was conducted from May 16 to 22 among a sample of 1, 205 adults living in the United States. The margin of error is 3 percentage points."
"It all started when a director and producer from a tiny theater in Portland, Ore. posted a message on Facebook he was outraged that the Edward Albee estate wouldn’t grant him rights to produce Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because he’d cast a black actor in one of the roles. His post went viral, and a firestorm ensued. Michael Streeter says he wanted to dust off Albee’s    play and give it a new angle. So, he cast an   actor in the role of Nick, a young biology professor who visits an older academic couple with his wife. Nick is described in the script as blond and  . ”In 1962, the year the play was written,   were facing tremendous strife with the civil rights movement and the character of Nick was ambitious,” Streeter says. ”He is striving to get ahead and he puts up with a lot of invective from the other characters in the play. And this is something that I see as emblematic of what was happening in the   community in 1962.” But the Albee estate  —   which approves the casting of all professional productions of the late playwright’s work  —   did not agree. Streeter vented his frustration online and the media responded.   actress Tania Richard, who   a podcast called Race Bait, wrote a blog post about it. Richard is black, Streeter is white. ”I knew the minute I read the initial article that I felt it wasn’t racist,” Richard says. ”That I felt it was completely within Albee’s estate’s rights to maintain the vision that he intentioned. . .. To ask the character of Nick to be black, in this world, in the ’60s on a small campus in New England, is sort of suggesting an alternate universe that couldn’t have existed, you know? And this isn’t a fantasy piece. This is a very specific piece.” Many plays in the American canon are very specific about time and place, which can limit opportunities for actors of color. So, for years, theaters have attempted to correct this with   casting. There have been   productions of plays by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, says New York Times drama critic, Ben Brantley. ”It has to be done, I think, on a    basis,” he says, ”in which you weigh the elements and think: How much does this distort the author’s vision? But when you’re talking about Shakespeare, when you’re talking about musicals, when you’re talking about plays that have been in the canon of Western civilization for centuries, I think then anything goes.” What Streeter was proposing with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was not   casting. ”There’s also color   where you deliberately choose to cast a person that is different from what’s written in the play,” Streeter says. ”This was a   choice on my part because I thought that it added depth to the play that there would be certain lines that would have more resonance. There would be the question that would happen throughout the play, as the audience is watching these people abuse this character. And you wonder, ’OK are they going to start using racial slurs?’ ” In the boozy second act of the play, things get particularly nasty between the two academic couples. ”Will they or won’t they throw a racial slur at this guy . ..” Richard says. ”As an actor, I don’t want to be put in that position. I don’t want to be sort of the target for the audience almost blood lust about whether or not the character is going to be called the   or not. That’s creating a whole other layer to the piece that was never intended in the first place.” The Albee Estate wouldn’t speak directly to NPR about the decision. Instead, it sent a statement, saying Albee had remarked on several occasions that a   marriage in the early 1960s would not have gone unnoticed in the script  —   though Albee did approve the casting of a black actress as the older professor’s wife when the playwright was still alive. This is the first time the estate has had to deal with this issue since Albee’s death in September 2016. ”The vast majority of roles in Edward Albee’s almost 30 plays can and should be cast diversely,” wrote Sam Rudy, spokesperson for the Albee Estate. ”The Estate is eager to encourage as much diverse casting as possible. There are many opportunities for diverse casting throughout the body of Edward’s work with the most recent example being Sophie Okonedo and Archie Madekwe as Stevie and Billy in the current the West End production of The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” For his part, Streeter, while disappointed, understands the estate’s position. ”I don’t think this is racially motivated,” he says. ”This is absolutely about a fealty to the integrity of Edward Albee.” New York Times drama critic Ben Brantley says he kind of likes the idea of Nick as a black man. ”I could see it being played that way,” he says. ”I could see it bringing out elements in George and Martha. On the other hand, it would be a different play.” Ultimately, when it comes to inserting your own ideas into someone else’s play, Tania Richard always remembers the advice of one of her old writing teachers: ”He had this wonderful quote where he would say: Well, maybe you should write that play.”"
"There’s a hidden force shaping our politics, says author Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and it’s hidden in plain sight. In his forthcoming book, Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that the top 20 percent of Americans  —   those with   incomes and above  —   dominate the best schools, live in the   homes and pass on the best futures to their kids. ”They are members of the American   class, who, through various ways of rigging the market . .. are essentially hoarding the American dream,” he tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep. Originally from England, Reeves has been ”startled” to see what he calls ”opportunity hoarding mechanisms” in America. ”[W]e protect our neighborhoods, we hoard housing wealth, we also monopolize selective higher education and then we hand out internships and work opportunities on the basis of the social network  —   people we know in the neighborhood or meet on the tennis courts. And so to that extent we are kind of hoarding those things that should be more widely available,” he says. On the class differences in the U. S. and England, I never thought I’d say this but I sort of miss the class consciousness of my old country which I grew up hating. The reason I miss it is because at least we’re aware of it. It seems to me that in the U. S. you have a class system that operates every bit as ruthlessly as the British class system but under the veneer of classless meritocracy. There isn’t even a self awareness. On how the tax system helps richer people buy houses near the best schools, The tax incentives that are available to buy houses in the U. S. are necessarily tilted. . .. Something like $70 billion go on mortgage interest deductions and the deductions for local property taxes. [I]t means that we’re not increasing housing ownership in terms of the breadth we’re increasing it in terms of depth. We’re actually encouraging people who already have a lot of wealth to just double down on that by buying an even bigger house [and then selling it for even more money later]  —   and you’ll get an even bigger tax incentive for doing so. And so the entire cycle is almost designed to seal off the   class from everybody else. On where this system came from  Many of the mechanisms actually have racist roots. So the zoning laws quite often . .. had racist origins. Legacy preferences are one way college admissions are rigged. Legacy preferences are genuinely extraordinary in the sense that no other country in the world does that. They’re actually an attempt by elite colleges to keep Jewish students out, and so what you see is these sort of mechanisms that were evolved for different reasons. Now they interweave with each other to create a deeply unequal society. On how these trends drive the history we’re living now, I’ve come to believe that the dangerous separation of the American   class from the rest of society is a huge problem for politics because there’s a sense of a bubble, there’s a sense of people who are kind of making out pretty well from current trends and who are increasingly separate  —   occupationally, residentially, educationally and economically  —   from the rest of society. They are also disproportionately powerful and the fact that they are not only separate but unaware of the degree to which the system works in their favor strikes me as one of the most dangerous political facts of our time. NPR editor Steve Tripoli and digital producer Heidi Glenn contributed to this story."
"A court in Bahrain has ordered the country’s last major opposition group to dissolve, amid a wider crackdown on freedom of expression. Wednesday’s ruling from the High Civil Court targeted the secular National Democratic Action Society, also known as Waad, and ordered the liquidation of its assets, according to the state media. The ruling is subject to appeal, Reuters reported. Human rights groups are decrying the court order, with Amnesty International describing it as part of a ”blatant campaign to end all criticism of the government.” The island nation’s ruling family is Sunni, and its population is majority Shiite. Like many other countries in the region, it saw major   protests in 2011. The government’s allies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE sent in troops and tanks, and security forces have detained thousands in the crackdown on dissent. Part of the government’s rationale for dissolving Waad stems from a statement the group made in February to mark the sixth anniversary of the start of the 2011 protests. It described ”ongoing violations of human rights” and said the ”constitutional political crisis continues.” Bahrain’s Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs filed a lawsuit weeks later, saying this ”attitude” violated a law that called for ”respect for the rule of law.” It also took issue with the group’s characterization of three men convicted of killing three police officers and then executed, as ”martyrs.” According to Amnesty International, the group has ”repeatedly stated their opposition to violence and commitment to peaceful means and they have denied the charges.” There are still two smaller opposition groups operating in the country, according to The Associated Press, but Waad ”was seen as the last major opposition group still functioning in Bahrain, which is home to the U. S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.” Both Sunni and Shiite activists are part of the group. Last year, according to Reuters, the government’s crackdown on dissent escalated ”when authorities banned the main Shi’ite Muslim opposition group,   and revoked the citizenship of Ayatollah Isa Qassim, the spiritual leader of Bahrain’s Shi’ites, accusing him of fomenting sectarian divisions.” Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the director of advocacy for the U. K.  Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, described Wednesday’s court order as a ”declaration of a de facto ban on all opposition.” President Trump met with Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa   earlier this month, as Reuters reported, where he stressed the countries’ ”wonderful relationship” and said there ”won’t be strain” between them under his administration. Last week, a major raid on protesters became ”deadliest day since protests began in 2011,” according to the Bahrain Institute. Five people were killed, according to news reports, and the Ministry of Interior said it arrested 286 people."
"Updated at 2:25 p. m. ET, CNN is cutting ties with comedian Kathy Griffin after she was photographed posing with a model of President Trump’s head covered in blood. The photo and video were first posted Tuesday morning by TMZ Griffin apologized Tuesday evening but by then the image had already been widely shared and condemned. For the past decade, Griffin has been a staple on CNN’s annual New Year’s Eve coverage alongside Anderson Cooper. The cable network first said it was evaluating her role, but announced Wednesday afternoon it was terminating her contract. Cooper said Tuesday he was ”appalled” by the ”clearly disgusting” photo. Much of the first family also weighed in on the image. First, the president’s son: Then President Trump himself: And Wednesday morning, first lady Melania Trump called the image ”simply wrong”: ”As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturbing. When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it.” Chelsea Clinton called the photo ”vile and wrong,” adding, ”It is never funny to joke about killing a president.” In her video apology, Griffin said she was sorry. ”I sincerely apologize . .. I’m a comic, I cross the line. I move the line, then I cross it. I went way too far. The image is too disturbing I understand how it offends people. It wasn’t funny. I get it. . .. I beg for your forgiveness.” She said she was asking the photographer, Tyler Shields, to take down the photo, and it was no longer on his website Wednesday morning. Still, the picture is affecting the comic’s public image. Bathroom product company Squatty Potty had recently enlisted Griffin for an ad campaign, but released a statement saying it had been suspended: ”We were shocked and disappointed to learn about the image Ms. Griffin shared today, it was deeply inappropriate and runs contrary to the core values our company stands for. In response, Squatty Potty has suspended its ad campaign featuring Ms. Griffin. We have acted swiftly and decisively to demonstrate our commitment to a culture of decency, civility, and tolerance.” Shields, who took the photo, is known for his edgy and controversial celebrity photography. By Wednesday morning he had taken down the images. He and Griffin had joked earlier in the week about the impending reaction to their photo shoot. The two had about 10 different ideas and props for the shoot, he said in an interview Tuesday, and then settled on the gory image. ”It’s not even about [Trump],” Shields told Entertainment Weekly before he pulled the content. ”It’s just about the whole thing of where we’re at right now as a society and he just happens to be the one speaking at that.”"
"Humorist David Sedaris admits that his latest work, Theft by Finding, isn’t exactly the book he set out to publish. It was originally meant to be a collection of funny diary entries, but then Sedaris’ editor had a suggestion that changed its course. ”My editor said, ’Why don’t you go back to the very beginning and find things that aren’t necessarily funny and put those in as well?’ ” Sedaris says. ”Soon those [entries] outweighed the funny ones, and the funny ones seemed almost   so I got rid of a lot of them.” The result is a collection of moments pulled from the diaries Sedaris wrote between 1977 and 2002. Theft by Finding includes major turning points in Sedaris’ life: the NPR broadcast of excerpts from his SantaLand Diaries collection, meeting his longtime boyfriend, Hugh, and the death of his mother. But most of the entries are quieter moments in which Sedaris writes about cleaning houses for a living, doing drugs and observing patrons at IHOP. Though Sedaris has published personal stories and books based on his journals before, the idea of pulling from   diaries took some getting used to. ”Publishing a first draft of something you wrote when you were drunk and 21  —   I’ll do it if it works and it’s inviting on the paper, but a lot of the entries in this book, they’re like three lines long,” he says. ”I might’ve written four pages that day, but of those four pages the only thing that might be of interest to someone else are these three lines.” On wanting to be a successful writer  I really don’t think anybody could’ve wanted it more. . .. I was picturing exactly the life that I have today. Exactly the life that I have. . .. I recently saw that movie La La Land on a plane and it made me think about people who didn’t have dreams. There are plenty of people I know in my life who  —   I don’t mean to suggest in any way that they’re failures  —   but I don’t know that they ever wanted things, like were very specific about what it was that they wanted. . .. A lot of people don’t know what they want, or they’re just kind of vague about it. I was never vague. I knew exactly what I wanted. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to get it, but it’s scary . .. because what if that doesn’t happen? On how reading helps teach people how to write  There are folk artists out there who live in the woods, who have never been to a museum, who can create artwork that will move you, right? But there’s no such thing as a folk writer. There’s no such thing as somebody who’s never read a book before suddenly sitting down one day and writing one. You have to learn how to captivate a reader. I don’t mean you have to go to school for it, but if you pay attention you can learn it by reading books. On how he met his boyfriend Hugh, We met through a mutual friend, borrowing a ladder. That’s just such a nice story. I meet so many [couples] and I [say] ”How did you guys meet?” and they say ”OKCupid” or ”Grindr,” so it sounds so very old fashioned to meet someone over a ladder. At least ladders still exist. On how he reacted to friend and fellow writer David Rakoff’s illness, You know how, like, when people get sick sometimes you just don’t want to acknowledge that they’re sick? . .. I think about [writer] David Rakoff. The last time I saw David he looked awful. . .. He had Hodgkin lymphoma years ago and then he had radiation for it, and then the radiation caused a new kind of cancer. When I last saw him, I just said, ”Alright, I’ll see you later.” And I knew I would never see him later, but it just seemed like if I had said more than that it was just burdening him. He was so brave and who was I to suggest that he wouldn’t get better? On his sister Tiffany, who took her own life in 2013  My sister Tiffany was child number five. So she was the youngest girl and the second to the youngest child there were six kids in the family. It’s interesting. Looking back over her life, my mom never really liked Tiffany very much. Tiffany was too much like my mother, and I remember that as a child almost . .. I just thought, Ugh, wouldn’t want to be Tiffany. . .. The rest of us should’ve said, ”Mom, you need to do something about this, because that’s not OK for you to treat somebody that way.” But we never said that. We never called our mother on her behavior towards Tiffany. You think, You’re 7, what are you going to do? But I wasn’t always 7. I was 20 and I was 30. . .. Tiffany had a lot of anger at us and a lot of it was really  . We were adults, we could’ve said to our mother, ”This isn’t OK.” . .. [Per Tiffany’s wishes] nobody [from the family] went to the memorial service. Her ashes went to somebody that she had worked with once, and my sister Lisa called this woman and said, ”Could we have just a thimble full to scatter in the ocean behind the beach house?” And the woman said, ”No.” I understand that. Tiffany didn’t want us to have them. The woman was just honoring Tiffany’s wishes. On deciding to quit drinking after years of struggling to admit he was an alcoholic, I was on tour and it was one thing to be drinking like that at home, but it’s a lot to take that show on the road. . .. I would be on a book tour, and so I’m signing books, and let’s say I get back to the room at like 1 o’clock in the morning, and then it’s time to start drinking. . .. And then you order room service around 4. And then you get high, and, oh look, it’s 5:30 in the morning and it’s time for your car to come and take you to the airport. . .. I had been wanting to quit for a long time. I was afraid to quit, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to write, because I started drinking shortly after I started writing. And then I kind of got it in my head that I needed to be drinking while I wrote. . .. I don’t know why I was so convinced of it, it’s like saying ”I can’t sing unless I have a blue shirt on.” Radio producers Sam Briger and Heidi Saman and Web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly   contributed to this story. "
"Signing up for coverage on the health insurance marketplace should be easier for some people this fall because new federal rules will allow brokers and insurers to handle the entire enrollment process online, from soup to nuts. Some consumer advocates are concerned, though, that customers going this route won’t get the comprehensive, impartial plan information they need to make the best decision due to the financial   of insurers and brokers. ”Facilitating the participation of brokers and getting web brokers involved is a good thing for the market,” says Timothy Jost, an emeritus professor of health care law at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia. But he says there are risks for consumers. ”If you’re enrolling with a web broker, you could see ’best deals’ that often aren’t the best deal for you but are the best deal for the people who are marketing them.” The guidance was released May 17 by the Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services, which oversees the online marketplaces. It will streamline the enrollment process for people who work directly with an insurer or broker to shop for coverage for 2018 on healthcare. gov, the federal marketplace in more than 30 states. States that run their own marketplaces aren’t affected by this change. The presumption is that people will continue to buy insurance through the marketplace this fall. In the past, people could start the online enrollment process with a broker or insurer, but then they had to bounce off the broker’s or insurer’s website to go to the federal marketplace website to see if they were eligible for premium tax credits, among other things. In theory, they then could return to the insurer or web broker to complete the enrollment process. In practice, many didn’t  —   though they may have enrolled elsewhere, either completing the process on healthcare. gov or with another vendor. This fall, healthcare. gov consumers with straightforward enrollment needs will be able to complete the entire process on one website. Complex cases and those involving a special enrollment period, for example, will still have to go through the original   process. The staff at online health insurance broker eHealth is thrilled with the change. ”It’s a big deal,” says Nate Purpura, vice president of consumer affairs at eHealth. ”Many people, including our CEO, have been to Washington, D. C. multiple times to explain the benefits of being able to help in this way.” The eHealth website, which works with 180 insurance carriers nationwide, offers about 75 percent of the plans that are available on healthcare. gov, Purpura says. That’s a problem, say some policy analysts. Federal rules require web brokers to display basic information about all the plans that are available on the federal marketplace, whether or not they actually sell them. It includes the name of the plan and insurer that offers it, the type of plan  —   HMO, PPO, EPO  —   and metal level (bronze, silver, gold or platinum.) Web brokers must also publish a disclaimer that says the website information about all the available marketplace plans might not be complete and provide a link to healthcare. gov. But the information web brokers present about plans they sell and get a commission for may be much more comprehensive than the information provided about plans they don’t handle. On a broker’s website, ”consumers won’t necessarily have the full range of options,” says Elizabeth Hagan, associate director of coverage initiatives at Families USA, a consumer advocacy group. ”On healthcare. gov, the plan display is the same for all the options, and consumers have the ability to sort plans based on what they want.” CMS suggests that brokers not sort their plans in such a way that consumers could be steered to policies from which brokers receive a commission. It also suggests that brokers not run ads or information about other insurance products in the marketplace plan selection area. But these are suggestions, not requirements. In addition, some analysts are concerned that people who don’t sign up through healthcare. gov won’t receive important notifications about their coverage from insurers and web brokers. In the past, for example, some people have lost their coverage after enrolling outside healthcare. gov because they weren’t directed to make their initial ”binder” payment, or first month’s premium, says Sarah Lueck, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which has filed comments on proposed enrollment rules. Enrollment this fall will run for just six weeks, from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, a significantly shorter time period than in previous years. Encouraging brokers and insurers to sign people up may help more people get signed up in that time frame. ”This is another important step to help create stability in the health insurance market,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in the press release announcing the new process. But some analysts remain concerned that details about how consumers’ privacy and security will be protected under the new system are still too vague. ”This is really sensitive information, people’s tax information, which needs to be highly protected,” says Jost. ”There are a lot of concerns with confidentiality and privacy. I have some concerns about fraud.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow Michelle Andrews on Twitter: @mandrews110."
"The United States will withdraw from the international climate agreement known as the Paris accord, President Trump announced on Thursday. He said the U. S. will negotiate either   the Paris agreement or a new deal that would put American workers first. NPR journalists   and added context to his remarks, including comments about the economy and U. S. energy sector. For more: Here’s what is in the accord, and here’s how the decision could affect the coal industry, the climate, U. S. global leadership, Trump’s public support and the U. S. economy."
"Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in December 2015 and was republished with minor updates ahead of President Trump’s decision to pull the U. S. out of the Paris climate agreement. Some of the information on approval by individual governments has been changed to reflect changes in status. Representatives from 196 nations made a historic pact on Dec. 12, 2015, in Paris to adopt green energy sources, cut down on climate change emissions and limit the rise of global temperatures  —   while also cooperating to cope with the impact of unavoidable climate change. The agreement acknowledges that the threat of climate change is ”urgent and potentially irreversible,” and can only be addressed through ”the widest possible cooperation by all countries” and ”deep reductions in global emissions.” But how deep will those reductions be  —   and how soon, and who’s paying for it? Here are some key figures from the final agreement. The central goal of the agreement is laid out in one phrase: ”Holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above   levels . ..” Limiting the rise in temperature to 2 degrees (3. 6 degrees Fahrenheit) has been discussed as a global goal for several years now. That amount of warming will still have a substantial impact, scientists say, but will be less devastating than allowing temperatures to rise unchecked. The global average temperature has already risen about 1 degree Celsius, relative to   levels. And even if every signatory country meets its current pledge for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the world is still expected to pass 2 degrees of warming, as the agreement itself notes with concern. (That section is literally labeled ”Notes with concern. ”) The current emission targets are just a first step, in short, and the Paris signatories hope the world can figure out how to get closer to the   goal as time goes on. But wait! There’s more! That same sentence in the deal continues: ”. .. and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1. 5 degrees C above   levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.” That’s right. The big, ambitious goal is immediately followed . .. by a bigger, more ambitious goal. Small island nations, in particular, fought hard to have this number appear in the agreement, noting that even if the temperature increase was held at 2 degrees, the resulting rise in sea levels would be devastating for them. Island representatives adopted the   motto, ”1. 5 to stay alive,” as NPR’s Ari Shapiro has reported. And while those vulnerable nations didn’t manage to establish 1. 5 degrees C (2. 7 degrees F) as the legally binding target, it is worked in as an aspiration. But it’s a goal that would be even harder to achieve than 2 degrees  —   which, again, is a target the world hasn’t yet figured out how to meet.  ”To help developing countries switch from fossil fuels to greener sources of energy and adapt to the effects of climate change, the developed world will provide $100 billion a year,” NPR’s Christopher Joyce reports. But that amount is identified as a ”floor,” not a ceiling. ”Developed countries won inclusion of language that would up the ante in subsequent years,” he explains, ”so that financial aid will keep ramping up over time.” This one isn’t exactly a number . .. but it’s the target time for ”global peaking” of climate change emissions. It’s an acknowledgement that in the near future, total emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases won’t fall  —   in fact, they’ll rise, as developing economies consume more energy. But the plan assumes that greener technology, conservation efforts and processes to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere will eventually allow emissions to decline instead of rise  —   and at that point, the ”peak” will be achieved. Nations aren’t expected to ratchet their emissions back immediately. ”Each country came to Paris with a voluntary pledge to reduce emissions,” Christopher says. ”The agreement now codifies that and sets a framework for those reductions to begin in 2020.” That year is also the deadline for countries to submit a more   plan  —   not an immediate pledge, like their current goals, but one looking decades into the future.  After the 2020 reductions kick in, it’s not over: The deal is designed to evolve as the years pass. Every five years, specifically, each nation’s targets will be reevaluated to move the world closer to the   target. This element of the deal was one strongly supported by   Barack Obama, and it’s highlighted in a White House fact sheet: ”Targets must be submitted   months before they are finalized, creating time for other countries and civil society to seek clarity about the targets submitted,” the Obama administration wrote. ”Each target should reflect progress from the prior one, reflecting the highest possible ambition that each country can achieve. This durable, long term framework will drive greater climate ambition as technologies improve and circumstances change.” This target date isn’t actually precise: The deal describes it as ” .” But that’s when the world is supposed to meet another goal, which is much more concrete: Zero, as in net zero emissions of greenhouse gases. No one expects that over the next 40 years, the world would entirely stop using every form of technology that releases greenhouse gases. Instead, as Christopher Joyce explains, the   target would be met by balancing inputs and outputs: ”Any greenhouse gases emitted would be balanced or zeroed out by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere. In the case of carbon dioxide, that would presumably be accomplished by growing forests, which absorb carbon dioxide.” Diplomacy isn’t always quantifiable. Many sections of the deal, of course, don’t nail down any numbers at all. For instance, nations around the world ”should strengthen their cooperation on enhancing action on adaptation” to the effects of climate change, the agreement states. ”All Parties should cooperate to enhance the capacity of develop country Parties to implement this agreement,” it says elsewhere. And ”Parties shall cooperate in taking measures, as appropriate, to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information.” A total of 196 nations committed to the climate deal in 2015 and had a deadline of April 21, 2017, to officially sign on to the agreement. At least 55 nations  —   between them accounting for at least 55 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions  —   needed to formally approve the pact before it went into effect. That threshold was reached on Oct. 5, 2016, and the accord kicked in 30 days later."
"Updated at 5:45 p. m. ET, President Trump has announced that the U. S. will be withdrawing from the Paris accord  —   the historic global agreement reached by 195 countries in 2015 to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting the rise in average global temperatures. During a news conference Thursday in the Rose Garden at the White House, Trump said the withdrawal is aimed at keeping his campaign promise to put American workers first. But he added that the U. S. would begin negotiations to possibly   the Paris accord or a similar deal that, he said, would result in a better deal for American workers. ”The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States’ wealth to other countries,” Trump said. ”It’s to give their country an economic edge over the United States. That’s not going to happen while I’m president. I’m sorry.” He later added: ”Our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of American workers’ sovereignty.” During his campaign, Trump vowed to ”cancel” U. S. participation in the deal. World leaders and business figures had recently urged him to reconsider, but by Wednesday morning, reports began to surface that Trump had decided to leave the pact. Barack Obama had used his authority as president to join the Paris accord without a vote in Congress. That means Trump can remove the U. S. from the accord without a vote. But it will take awhile: Under the terms of the agreement, he wouldn’t actually be able to withdraw until November 2020. Leaving the underlying treaty  —   the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change  —   would be faster and could be completed within a year. But that treaty was ratified by the U. S. Senate. Presidents have unilaterally exited   treaties before, but it’s rare and controversial. Urged to stay, urged to leave, A wide chorus of voices had called for Trump to recommit to the Paris agreement: other world leaders and hundreds of scientists, of course, but also CEOs of major energy companies and other big U. S. corporations. Even many of Trump’s own advisers support the deal, according to The New York Times. But those supporting a departure won out. More than 20 Republican senators had called for Trump to leave the deal. Influential Trump advisers, reportedly Steve Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, also urged him to withdraw. And then, of course, there was the argument advanced by candidate Trump. On the campaign trail, he criticized the agreement that the U. S. formally signed on to last year. He called the deal ”unfair” to the U. S. objecting in particular to the requirement that wealthy nations help developing countries build renewable energy sources. He remained consistent with those criticisms Thursday. ”I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States, which is what it does, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters,” Trump said  —   singling out China and India by name. ”In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States and ships them to foreign countries,” he added. ”This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.” Though in his announcement Trump referred to himself as ”someone who cares deeply about the environment,” he has signaled, more broadly, that fighting climate change is not a priority for his administration. He has denied the existence of climate change and appointed as the head of the EPA a man who doesn’t accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And he has already overturned several   efforts to reduce emissions. A   diplomatic agreement, The Paris accord was reached in 2015 after lengthy negotiations. The deal relies on voluntary cuts in emissions by all member nations. The agreement also, significantly, sets a global target to keep the rise in the average temperature to no higher than 2 degrees Celsius above   levels. And it calls for some $100 billion a year in funding from developed countries toward developing countries to support green energy sources. Still, it fell short of what some parties had hoped for. Island nations  —   which face an existent threat from rising seawaters  —   had pushed hard for a target of 1. 5 degrees Celsius. (Why not even lower? Well, as of 2015, the global average temperature had already risen by 1 degree Celsius, and even with robust efforts to cut emissions, some further increase is essentially inevitable.) And the agreement relies on voluntary cuts in emissions, seen by some critics as a major weakness. Still, the fact that the world managed to agree on a target was celebrated as a diplomatic achievement, one that multiple world leaders have emphasized as crucial to support. After the recent   meetings of leading industrial nations, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and vocally supported her commitment to action on climate change. Modi said failing to act on climate change would be ”a morally criminal act.” Merkel had previously vowed to ”convince the doubters” among world leaders that ”protecting the climate matters to all of us.” The doubters are in the minority. Only two countries  —   Syria and Nicaragua  —   have completely rejected the deal. Several dozen countries have signed but not fully approved  —   including Iran, Turkey and, most significantly, Russia, which is a major emitter of greenhouse gases. But   of the countries on Earth have fully committed to the accord. A pact in name or in deed? It is important to note that the Paris accord is only as strong as each nation’s actual reduction in emissions. That means leaving the agreement isn’t the only way to weaken it: Trump could have kept the U. S. as a signatory but continued to slash the programs that would actually make it possible to reach the target for emissions. The opposite is also true: U. S. greenhouse gas emissions could continue to go down, at least in the short term, even as Trump withdraws from the accord. As NPR’s Christopher Joyce recently reported, emissions in the U. S. have declined by about 12 percent since 2005. ”The U. S. has successfully bent its greenhouse gas emissions curve,” Kate Larsen, of the economics research team Rhodium Group, told Christopher. ”And we are going to continue to reduce emissions over the next 10 years, likely regardless of Trump policy.” But while the Paris accord isn’t synonymous with U. S. emissions cuts, that doesn’t mean Trump’s decision on the accord is meaningless. Economist Marc Hafstead, who is with Resources for the Future, told Christopher that exiting the deal ”could potentially have political ramifications  —   to the extent that our pulling out of the agreement is going to cause other countries to do less.” It would also threaten the $100 billion a year pledged to help developing countries achieve emissions cuts, as Bloomberg has reported. Meanwhile, many analysts see a U. S. departure from the deal as paving the way for China to take the lead on climate change. It’s not just a question of intangible moral leadership or even of the potential profits from green energy that would be on the table. The Atlantic reported last year that a U. S. departure would likely result in   mechanisms for actually enforcing the Paris accord  —   because Chinese ”faulty and unreliable energy statistics” could play a prominent role. By staying in the deal, the U. S. would have kept a spot at the negotiating table  —   and potential influence over how the agreement is enforced. Reaction in the U. S. Obama decried Trump’s decision in a statement released Thursday. ”The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created,” the former president said. He added: ”I believe the United States of America should be at the front of the pack. But even in the absence of American leadership even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got.” John Kerry, Obama’s secretary of state and a key player in crafting the Paris agreement, also denounced the U. S. withdrawal as ”a   step that puts our nation last.” ”This is an unprecedented forfeiture of American leadership which will cost us influence, cost us jobs, and invite other countries to walk away from solving humanity’s most existential crisis,” he said in a statement Thursday. ”It isolates the United States after we had united the world.” Even before Trump announced his final decision, Democrats in the U. S. decried withdrawal as ”a low point in modern American leadership,” as Rep. John Garamendi,  . put it. On Wednesday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,  . Y. wrote on Twitter that it would be ”catastrophic for the President to cede our leadership on this issue.” Some Republicans in Congress, including several representing districts particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, also rebuked reports of Trump’s decision. ”Climate change is a serious issue,” tweeted Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida  —   with a photo of development near a Florida beach. In a tweet Thursday, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk announced that Trump’s withdrawal from the deal means Musk will be withdrawing, as well  —   from the president’s business advisory council. But GOP Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma strongly defended the decision to leave the accord. ”The main thing is, it’s something that we couldn’t do it’d be impossible to do,” he told Here  Now. ”It’s necessary, then, to make sure that we don’t have a bunch of people out there suing us because we’re not doing what the president said we’re supposed to do.” And in a statement, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy applauded the move, calling it the ”right call”: ”The previous Administration refused to recognize that private innovation and American natural gas have achieved more than government mandates and misguided international agreements  —   and that naiveté led President Obama to sign a climate deal that will impose great costs with little gain. President Trump made the right call in leaving a deal that would have put an unnecessary burden on the United States.” Reaction from beyond U. S. borders, Immediately after Trump’s speech, France, Germany and Italy issued a joint statement announcing that the accord could not be renegotiated, as Trump said he would try to do. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Trump briefly by phone, expressing that fact directly to him and saying France would no longer be working with the U. S. on climate issues, The Associated Press reports. A spokesman for U. N.   António Guterres called Trump’s decision ”a major disappointment for global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote global security.” ”The   remains confident that cities, states and businesses within the United States  —   along with other countries  —   will continue to demonstrate vision and leadership by working for the   resilient economic growth that will create quality jobs and markets for 21st century prosperity,” the spokesman said in a statement. The United States’ northern neighbor weighed in as well. ”Canada is deeply disappointed at the U. S. position,” the country’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna, told reporters Thursday. ”The Paris agreement is a good deal for Canada, and it’s a good deal for the world. No one country can stop action on climate change.”"
"President Trump announced Thursday that the U. S. will leave the Paris climate deal. Here are five things that could be affected by the decision. 1. The coal industry  Even coal companies had lobbied the Trump administration to stay in the agreement. They said they needed a seat at the table during international climate discussions to advocate for coal’s place in the global energy mix. The industry also wants financial support for technology to capture and store carbon emissions, something that could keep coal plants operating longer even as cities, states and other countries work to address climate change. While President Trump had promised to ”cancel” the Paris deal to boost coal, the decision is not likely to create more jobs. The industry is in a   decline as it faces competition from cheaper natural gas and  —   increasingly  —   wind and solar. Some utilities are also responding to customer demand for renewable power, and the policies of any one administration have little impact on those decisions. ”As a utility, we’re trying to plan many years out into the future,” says Ron Roberts of Puget Sound Energy. 2. The climate, The main goal of the Paris deal was to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (or, aspirationally, even 1. 5 degrees). Beyond that point, scientists worry that catastrophic impacts of warming become irreversible. The various Paris pledges by each nation were not actually enough to achieve that target. And even with the environmental regulations passed under President Barack Obama, the U. S. was unlikely to meet its original commitment  —   to reduce carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels. Now, the U. S. may fall further from that goal. That said, U. S. carbon emissions will still probably continue to decline, at least for a few years. Market forces are pushing utilities to switch from coal to natural gas or renewable power. ”We are on a path to reduce emissions below 2005 levels by about 15 to 17 percent in 2020,” says Kate Larsen of the Rhodium Group. But the Trump administration is rolling back a host of other climate regulations, and that impact will start to be felt in a few years. Economist Marc Hafstead of Resources for the Future says if economic growth picks up, leaving the Paris deal may mean overall U. S. emissions drop only by 10 percent. 3. U. S. global leadership, Trump’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, warned against leaving the Paris deal. It puts the U. S. in a very small camp the only other countries not part of the agreement are Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war, and Nicaragua, which argued that the Paris accord did not go far enough to curb global emissions. Former Secretary of State John Kerry calls Trump’s decision ”an irresponsible walking back of American leadership.” Instead of putting America first, Kerry tells NPR’s Morning Edition, Trump is putting the nation last. Kerry accuses Trump of basing his decision on ”alternative facts,” calling it ”one of the most disastrous, shallow, untruthful decisions a president of the United States has made in my lifetime.” The European Union’s top climate change official, Miguel Arias Canete, calls it a ”sad day for the global community” but adds that the ”world can continue to count on Europe for global leadership in the fight against climate change.” China, too, is poised to take a stronger role on climate diplomacy. U. N.   António Guterres is counting on that and argues there are economic benefits to this. ”The sustainability train has left the station,” he said earlier this week. ”Those who embrace green technologies will set the gold standard for economic leadership in the 21st century.” 4. President Trump’s public support (but maybe not the part that counts) Most Americans want the U. S. to stay in the Paris climate accord. But in bucking that broad public opinion, Trump is playing to his base. A Washington Post poll in January found just 31 percent of those surveyed supported withdrawing from the Paris deal, while 56 percent were opposed. But conservative Republicans are far less supportive of the Paris agreement than liberal Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center. Before taking office, Trump repeatedly dismissed climate change as a hoax and suggested that   climate regulations put the U. S. at a competitive disadvantage. Many conservative Republicans share the president’s climate skepticism. And less than a third support measures like the Clean Power Plan  —   Obama’s principal tool for meeting America’s Paris climate commitments. Pulling out of the Paris accords will undoubtedly anger many Americans, but it keeps a promise to Trump’s core supporters. As   activist Grover Norquist told the New York Times, ”Everybody who hates Trump wants him to stay in Paris. Everybody who respects him, trusts him, voted for him, wishes for him to succeed, wants him to pull out.” 5. The U. S. economy, President Trump has repeatedly called the Paris accord a ”bad deal” for the U. S. and said it will hurt the economy. One big outlay is the Green Climate Fund set up under the deal. Obama had committed the U. S. to contributing $3 billion to the fund, which aims to help developing countries adapt to climate change and develop   energy technologies. Under Obama, the U. S. transferred $1 billion, but Trump’s budget proposal does not include payments for the rest. Opponents of the Paris agreement also say imposing regulations to reduce carbon emissions is too costly. ”It’d be very, very expensive,” Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who has denied climate change is real, told WBUR’s Here  Now. ”It’d constitute probably the largest tax increase in the history of America.” It’s not clear whether that is true, but the coal industry has spent many millions installing technology to curb its emissions in recent years. That said, the White House could easily have stayed in the Paris accord even as it opted not to pay into the climate fund or impose emissions cuts. Of course, supporters of Paris say if the U. S. withdrawal leads to more severe climate change, that would greatly harm the U. S. economy. Nate Rott, Chris Joyce, Michele Kelemen, Scott Horsley and Jennifer Ludden contributed to this report."
"Crude oil is now flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline, despite months of protests against it by Native American tribes and environmental groups. The pipeline spans more than 1, 000 miles from North Dakota to Illinois and cost some $3. 8 billion to construct. It is expected to transport approximately 520, 000 barrels of oil daily. ”Construction on the project was supposed to wrap up late last year,” as Prairie Public Broadcasting’s Amy Sisk reported. ”But protests led to delays in permitting the final stretch of the pipeline under the Missouri River in North Dakota.” At least 761 people were arrested during the standoff, according to The Associated Press. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose reservation lies just downstream from the place where the pipeline crosses the Missouri River, vow to continue fighting. They fear that a pipeline leak could contaminate their drinking water and sacred lands. ”Just because the oil is flowing now doesn’t mean that it can’t be stopped,” Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II said in a statement. A lawsuit from the tribe is still pending in federal court. ”The tribe wants a judge to shut the pipeline down and says a thorough environmental review of the project must be completed,” Sisk added. During President Trump’s first month in office, he reversed a decision by the Obama administration and called on the Army to expedite the approval process for the section of the pipeline that had not yet been built. As The   reported, a federal judge in March denied a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop construction, clearing the way for the completion of the pipeline. The pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, argues that the pipeline represents a ”more environmentally responsible manner than other modes of transportation, including rail or truck.” The tribe has pointed out three separate incidents of pipeline leaks recently in the area. The Associated Press described what happened: ”The Dakota Access pipeline and a feeder line leaked more than 100 gallons of oil in western North Dakota in separate incidents in March, and the Dakota Access line leaked 84 gallons of oil in northern South Dakota in April. No waterways were affected.” If you’re catching up on the Dakota Access Pipeline issue, check out our timeline of key events here."
"Welcome to Invisibilia Season 3! The NPR program and podcast explores the invisible forces that shape human behavior, and we here at Shots are joining in to probe the often tenuous line between perception and reality. Here’s an excerpt from Episode 1.  In 1967, anthropologists Renato Rosaldo and his wife, Shelly, went to live with the llongot, an isolated tribe that lived in the rain forest in the Philippines. It wasn’t exactly an accident that this tribe was unstudied  —   it was known for beheading people. But Renato and Shelly were undeterred. As they immersed themselves in llongot culture, they began to learn the language. Simple words at first, then more nuanced ones that encompassed such things as love and anger. To Renato, all of the words were familiar except one. Liget. At first, he thought this word meant ”energetic” or ”productive.” But then liget exploded out of that definition into an emotional landscape he had never before encountered. One evening, members of the tribe asked Renato if they could hear tape recordings of his conversations with the people he studied. The voice of a deeply loved and respected man who had recently died began to play. The room fell silent. The men’s eyes narrowed and their lips curled, their faces turned into masks of rage. They told Renato that hearing the tape made their hearts feel liget. It makes us want to take a head, they told him, over and over. It makes us want to take a man’s head and throw it. Renato didn’t understand the world of chaos and violence that the llongot people connected to this word. Why did it drive men to kill? He tried to gain a deeper understanding, but defining liget was like trying to describe the color blue without ever seeing it. Until later. Fourteen years later, Renato and Shelly, along with their two young sons, went to live with the Ifugao, another tribe of the Philippine rain forest. While on a hike to a different village, Shelly fell off a   cliff to her death. That day, crouching next to Shelly’s body on the riverbank, Renato felt the seed of an alien emotion he had never experienced begin to grow inside him. Back in America, after the funeral and the resettling into daily life, this feeling continued to grow. But Renato did not know how to express it, how to define it. And then one afternoon, as he was driving down a sunny street in Palo Alto, Calif. he couldn’t bear it any longer. He pulled to the side of the road, and a howl came roaring out of him. And then he knew: This was liget. The English words that best describe liget might be ”high voltage”: a powerful energy running through and out of the body. Renato had no control over when this feeling would come or how long it would stay. There was nothing within the American palette of emotions or in mainstream books about death that helped him. He just knew he had to howl. And because Renato could now grasp the force and meaning of the word liget, he was able to make some sense out of the chaos. He was able to give his emotions form, and let them pass through his body. He could begin to heal. Renato documented his journeys, both physical and emotional, through photographs and poetry. These poems are excerpted from his book The Day of Shelly’s Death (copyright Duke University Press, 2013).  The Omen of Mungayang, The morning after the full moon our baby burpsAnd clear liquid splats into the wall. Shelly and Conchita hike toward a village upstream. I nap with our sons, one and five years old. A flock of songbirds abruptly silent. Minutes later, Conchita steps into the hut and rasps, She fell into the river. I run, reach Shelly’s body, drop to her side. A fly buzzes in, then out of her mouth. Back on the trail, Shelly’s voice, not the wind, Her voice echoes from death. I rush to our sons. Conchita’s cousin lifts Manny on her back, Then crumples into sobs. I put Sam on my shoulders, tell him his mom is dead. He wants to know when he will get a new one. An excerpt from How Do I, Renato, Know That Manny Knows? The next day a priest drives Manny, Sam and meDown to the Magat Valley. Hot. Hotter. Then up a winding mountain road. Cooling. Cooler. Manny grows giddy, giggling incessantly. In Baguio City I carry him into our apartment. He searches. Swivels. Nobody here. He bellows and shatters the enormous thick silence. An excerpt from In A White Cubicle, A nurse pulls the gray sheet from Shelly’s face. Blood and bruises. The doctor tells me to take the body to Solano to be embalmed. It is up to me, she says. I say, no. No, I will not leave my sons alone here. The Mayor of Lagawe shouts, How could you allow your wife to walk the trail alone? Why don’t you embalm the body here in Lagawe? Father George says, Never mind the Mayor, he’s drunk, then drives me and the boys to the convent in a VW bug. An excerpt from Static, How could the American knowThe reach of shockAnd sympathy in this landWhere grief lives in public? He’s pale, shaking, Like a boxer he keepsHis guard up, his feet heavy."
"Emotions, the classic thinking goes, are innate, basic parts of our humanity. We are born with them, and when things happen to us, our emotions wash over us. ”They happen to us, almost,” says Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and a researcher at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. She’s also the author of a book called How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. In it, she argues for a new theory of emotions which is featured in the latest episode of NPR’s program and podcast Invisibilia. The ”classical view” of emotions as innate and limited in variety, she says, ”matches the way that many of us experience emotion, as if something’s happening outside of our control,” she tells Shots. ”But the problem with this set of ideas is that the data don’t support them. There’s a lot of evidence which challenges this view from every domain of science that’s ever studied it.” Lisa Feldman Barrett spoke to Shots about her alternative theory of emotions. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. On the ”classical” theory of emotions, The classical view of emotion is the idea that somewhere lurking deep inside you are the animalistic engine parts of your brain. There are circuits  —   one each for anger, sadness, fear, disgust and so on. And that when something happens in the world to trigger one of those circuits  —   say, for fear  —   you will have a very specific facial expression, a very specific bodily response, and that these expressions and responses have universal meaning. Everyone in the world makes them and recognizes them without learning or any experience at all. On the wide variety of human emotions, There’s tremendous variability when it comes to emotion. Variety is the norm. It’s not the case that there are there’s one set of facial movements that you make when you’re sad, or when you’re angry, or when you’re afraid. For example, people don’t just scowl when they’re angry or smile when they’re happy. People smile when they’re sad, they cry when they’re angry, they scream when they’re happy. A person can tremble in fear, jump in fear, freeze in fear, scream in fear, hide in fear, attack in fear, even laugh in the face of fear. So, I think that’s one important observation that’s really meaningful for understanding how emotions work in everyday life. That it may feel to you as if you look at someone’s face and you just know how they feel. But in fact your brain is guessing, [and] it’s using your own experiences from the past to make those guesses. On how the brain’s predictive ”guessing” can change how we think about emotions, Your brain is organized in such a way as to [make] anticipatory guesses about what is going to happen next. And this is happening entirely outside of your awareness. You have past experiences, and those experiences become wired into your brain, and then your brain uses those past experiences to make guesses about the immediate future. So, emotions aren’t happening to you. Your brain makes them as you need them. You are the architect of your own experience. It’s just that most of this is happening outside of your awareness. On how much control people have over their emotions under Feldman Barrett’s theory  It’s interesting. There are two ways in which I would say you are not a slave to your past. One is that your brain is able to take bits and pieces of past experience and combine them in new ways. Think of it like this: if you have a set of general ingredients in your kitchen, you can combine them in novel ways to make new recipes that you’ve never made before. The other way though is that we can invest effort in the present to cultivate new experiences for future use in prediction. This is a really nice discovery, because what it means is that your horizon of control over your own experience is much broader than you might think. For example, if you look at cognitive behavioral therapy, if you look at many of the books and articles which talk about cultivating compassion, cultivating wonder, cultivating a number of pleasant experiences that are thought to have beneficial effects, this is exactly what’s happening. Your past experience is one ingredient to making emotions in the present. On how states of displeasure and arousal are related to emotions, Those feelings are not properties of emotion, they’re properties of consciousness because they’re always with you, whether or not your brain is using them as ingredients of emotion, or for thoughts or perceptions. They are part of you and your experience of the world even when you are not experiencing emotions. For example you know that’s a delicious drink. That guy’s a [jerk]. You know this is a beautiful painting. These are these are examples of when affective feelings from your body are very strong, but you are not making emotions with them. You’re making perceptions of the world or perceptions of another person. But when an affect is very intense, those are the moments when the brain is usually making emotion out of them. [For example] you can sometimes have a very strong feeling of fear when you’re feeling very unpleasant and very worked up. But fear can also be pleasant. When you’re on a roller coaster, for example. People pay money to be afraid. My point here is that in the classical view is that anger is negative  —   sometimes positive, but usually negative. Fear is negative, disgust is negative, happiness is positive. But what the evidence shows is, in fact, that the pleasantness or unpleasantness of an emotion is really variable. So there are varieties of sadness that can feel very pleasant, varieties of happiness that can feel very unpleasant. And the quality really comes from these sensations in your body."
"A former SS guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp has died at the age of 95 before beginning his prison sentence for being an accessory to the murder of 170, 000 people. Reinhold Hanning’s attorney confirmed the death to The Associated Press. Last June, as we reported, a German court sentenced Hanning to five years in prison for his role in the deaths of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944. He had not yet reported to prison because his conviction was under appeal. Hanning maintained that while he did work as a guard at the concentration camp, he was not assigned to the section where prisoners were gassed to death, reports NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. But prosecutor Andreas Brendel argued that anybody who worked at Auschwitz knew exactly what was going on. ”The cries and shouts of victims being gassed could be heard outside the gas chamber and everyone who heard them knew that the victims were fighting for their lives,” Brendel said, according to The Guardian. Prosecutors determined the number of murders in which Hanning was complicit by examining transport logs of Hungarian Jewish victims at Auschwitz. They concluded that 170, 000 overlapped with his time there. During Hanning’s trial in the city of Detmold, in northwestern Germany, several Auschwitz survivors took the stand to recount their experiences. ”I am nearly 95 years old and still I often have nightmares about this,” Leon Schwarzbaum told the courtroom,” according to the Guardian. Schwarzbaum’s time at Auschwitz  —   where he says 35 of his family members perished  —   overlapped with Hanning’s. Looking the former guard in the eye, Schwarzbaum implored him from the witness stand, ”Mr. Hanning, we are virtually the same age and soon we will face our final judge. I would like to ask you to tell the historical truth here, just as I am. Tell the truth about what you and your colleagues did.” While Hanning remained silent during the weeks of testimony, he read a statement at the end of his trial, saying, ”I am ashamed that I witnessed injustice and allowed it to continue without taking any actions against it,” The New York Times reports. ”I am sincerely sorry.” Hanning came from a small town called Lage in North   the same German state where his trial took place. He joined the Hitler Youth in 1935 at the age of 13, then volunteered for the Waffen SS at 18, the AP reports. After suffering head and leg injuries from grenade splinters in 1941, he was deemed unfit for   duty and assigned to Auschwitz. He worked there from January 1942 to June 1944. Approximately 1 million people died at Auschwitz, the most at any concentration camp. Millions of people died in the Holocaust, including up to 6 million Jews. Hanning’s sentence was likely one of the last that will be handed out in Germany for atrocities committed during World War II, according to the BBC. It says two dozen prosecutions are still underway against accused camp guards and war criminals, but most of the accused are older than 90."
"Professional astronomers have been turning to the public for help with their research. So far, these ”citizen scientists” have helped characterize distant galaxies and discovered gravitation lenses. Now you can add finding brown dwarfs to the list. An article just published in Astrophysical Journal Letters describes a brown dwarf discovered with the help of four volunteers through an online crowdsourced search. The project is called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. When NPR reported on it in February, the focus was on finding the planet that astronomers predict exists at the farthest reaches of the solar system. But from the start, a second goal was to find brown dwarfs in the sun’s celestial neighborhood  —   within about 300  . Brown dwarfs are curious objects. Their existence was predicted at least 50 years ago, but it wasn’t until 1995 that astronomers had proof they exist. ”They’re sometimes called failed stars,” says astronomer and educator Jackie Faherty of the American Museum of Natural History. ”But I don’t like using the word ’failure’ in the title, so sometimes I call them overexcited planets.” Brown dwarfs are more massive than planets but not quite massive enough to kick off the sustained nuclear fusion reaction that would turn them into true stars. They do, however, give off some light, mostly at infrared wavelengths. NASA’s   Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, space telescope is designed to look for objects that emit infrared light. Faherty and some colleagues wondered whether they could use the millions of images taken over the years by that telescope to search for brown dwarfs. Objects relatively close to the sun can move over time against a background of stationary stars. And it turns out that the human eye is very good at spotting things that move against a crowded background. Volunteers with Backyard Worlds get a kind of flipbook on their computer of four images of the same patch of sky, taken over a period of years. The volunteer’s job is to look for something moving in the images. Just a few weeks after the project started earlier this year, four people found something. ”They saw a tiny speck of light jump,” says Faherty. ”It’s just a speck of a jump, and that jump indicated to them that they found something that was moving near the sun.” They didn’t know what they had found. All they knew was that it was dim and it was moving. To figure out what it was, Faherty asked for time on a telescope that NASA runs in Hawaii that can also see infrared light. ”I got the telescope time at one o’clock in the morning,” she says. It wasn’t easy to find the object because it is so faint. She says she worked with a furious intensity. ”I was like a telescope ninja trying to get this thing,” says Faherty. But she got it and recorded enough of its light to confirm it was indeed a brown dwarf. Rosa Castro is one of the volunteers who found the moving object that turned out to be a brown dwarf. ”I’ve always enjoyed astronomy, but life has a funny way of distracting you so I never really kept up with it,” she says. Castro says you don’t have to know a lot about astronomy to join the hunt. ”I will be very honest with you,” says Castro. ”I didn’t know what a brown dwarf was until this project. So this project became both a curiosity adventure for me and a learning process as well.” Faherty says 36, 000 people have signed up to search for other interesting objects in the Backyard Worlds project and already have identified a couple dozen new objects worth checking out. More volunteers are welcome."
"The city of Oakland, Calif. will pay a    woman $989, 000 to settle her claim that city police officers had sexually abused her. The woman has said she had sex with more than a dozen Oakland police officers, according to the Los Angeles Times. She also alleged that officers tipped her off to prostitution stings in exchange for sex. ”The settlement occurred with no admission of liability, but obviously, if you pay $1 million, you figure you got some responsibility,” the woman’s attorney, John Burris, said. NPR generally does not name individuals who are the alleged victims of sexual assault. The Oakland City Council voted   to approve the settlement, according to the Times. Council member Desley Brooks cast the dissenting vote, saying the city should pay more. ”Think about this young girl, who was victimized under the color of authority,” Brooks said, according to the East Bay Express. ”There is something wrong with this.” The scandal dates to September 2015, when an Oakland police officer left a suicide note indicating he had been having a sexual relationship with a young prostitute, the Times reports. An investigation led to criminal charges against seven officers in the Bay Area. Several officers at other nearby departments were fired. ”It was in the best interest of the city to settle this matter quickly and fairly,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said, according to The Associated Press. ”We remain focused on rebuilding the public trust that was so damaged by this incident.” The woman said Wednesday she was satisfied with the settlement and felt relief, according to the East Bay Times. ”It’s taken its toll on me,” she said. Her attorney described the police officers as a ”cabal.” ”People were passing her around as if she was a kickball or something,” Burris said, according to the Times. Last June, Schaaf placed the police department under civilian control, after the department cycled through three police chiefs in nine days. ”I’m here to run a police department, not a frat house,” Schaaf said at the time. In January, Schaaf named a new chief of police, Anne Kirkpatrick, to ”deliver on fair and just policing, prevent violence and increase accountability, and of course, most importantly, build community trust.” Kirkpatrick came from the Chicago Police Department and had previously been police chief in Spokane, Wash. Council member Rebecca Kaplan attributed the scandal in part to a lack of diversity in the Oakland police force, according to the Express. ”We need to ensure that we are building the conditions that make it possible to have trust and healing between the community and our law enforcement officers, and cut sexual misconduct and other forms of abuse,” she said. ”This includes recruiting more women, LGBT people, African Americans and more people from Oakland.” The AP says the woman continues to pursue her case against other law enforcement agencies in the area, including the police departments in San Francisco, Richmond and Livermore, and the sheriff’s offices in Alameda and Contra Costa counties."
"Researchers are giving us new insight into the problem of food allergies and intolerances. A new study out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital finds 3. 6 percent of Americans are dealing with those problems. The study, published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, looked at the electronic health records of 2. 7 million people and identified 97, 482 with one or more food allergies or intolerances. Researchers defined allergies and intolerances as anything resulting in an adverse reaction to a food, including hives, anaphylaxis or shortness of breath. Women and girls were found to be more likely to suffer from the problem  —   4. 2 percent compared to 2. 9 percent among males. And people of Asian descent were the likeliest subgroup to be affected at a rate of 4. 3 percent. But as NPR’s Allison Aubrey has laid out, it can be difficult to determine what actually constitutes a food allergy and so pinning down how many people are afflicted can be tricky. And even if patients are diagnosed with an allergy, they can outgrow it about one in five people outgrow their peanut allergy. The most common allergens are shellfish, fruit and vegetables, dairy and peanuts, in that order, according to the study. Lead researcher Dr. Li Zhou said food allergies are estimated to cost the United States $25 billion dollars a year. And yet we may be   to accurately evaluate and diagnose them, since there are fewer than 7, 000 allergists and immunologists in the country. Zhou adds that only 20 percent of patients with a peanut allergy actually received followup testing."
"Wonder Woman is certainly basking in accolades these days. The new movie starring Gal Gadot is being widely praised for finally giving the world a   female superhero who  —   to quote just a few of the glowing reviews  —   is both ”awesomely fierce” and ”surprisingly funny,” ”sexually aware without being sexualized” and a refreshing throwback to the days of ”uncomplicated role models . .. fighting for peace and justice.” All of which got us thinking about our coverage last fall of Wonder Woman’s   tenure as the United Nation’s honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women of girls. Remember that episode? Back then her reviews were decidedly more mixed. The idea was to make the character of Wonder Woman the face of a U. N. social media campaign to promote women’s rights via tweets and facebook callouts. Women’s rights advocates exploded in outrage, and nearly 45, 000 people signed a petition against the decision. ”It’s an insult, frankly,” said Anne Marie Goetz at the time. Goetz, a professor of global affairs at New York University and a former adviser on peace and security issues to the United Nations agency, U. N. Women, said a big issue was the timing. The Wonder Woman campaign rollout  —   a collaboration with Warner Bros. and DC Comics, which owns the rights to the character  —   was intended to celebrate both the character’s 75th birthday and the upcoming movie featuring Gadot. The actress even attended the appointment ceremony at the U. N.’s New York headquarters, along with Lynda Carter, who portrayed the superhero in the 1970s television show. But the announcement also came on the heels of a disappointing, yearlong   effort to get the U. N. to choose its first female  . ”This was months and months of campaigning by feminist organizations around the world for a woman to be selected,” said Goetz. Seven women  —   including a prime minister and other highly qualified individuals  —   were in the running, an unprecedented number. Ultimately the Security Council went with a man  —   Antonio Guterres. So at the time, the selection of Wonder Woman to represent women’s issues for the U. N. came off to Goetz and others as a sort of demeaning consolation prize. ”It’s frivolous, it’s fatuous and it reduces an extremely serious human rights problem experienced by half of the world to a cartoon,” she said. And not just any cartoon, added Goetz. Wonder Woman in her view was tantamount to a   pinup. Like most female comic action figures, she has big breasts bursting out of a skimpy outfit and an impossibly tiny waist. ”The message to girls is that you are expected to meet a male standard in which your significance is reduced to your role as a sexual object,” said Goetz. Maher Nasser, the U. N. official who essentially brokered Wonder Woman’s appointment, responded at the time that he and other U. N. colleagues had considered those concerns. ”I mean we have had these discussions, of course, with our partners,” said Nasser, who directs the Outreach Division of the U. N.’s Department of Public Information, which handles partnerships with celebrities and entertainment figures. And Nasser noted that his team worked closely with artists at DC Comics to tone down the image that was used in the U. N. campaign. ”The campaign art that we are working with . .. doesn’t have that caricature image of the wrong stereotype of what a woman should look like,” he said. For instance they only showed Wonder Woman from the waist up. And they gave her a cape draped round her neck and shoulders, making her bust less prominent. Nasser also said the social media campaign was all about emphasizing Wonder Woman’s girl power credentials, what he called ”the essence of the character.” ”The focus [of the U. N.] was on her feminist background, being the first female superhero in a world of male superheroes and that basically she always fought for fairness, justice and peace,” he said. Nasser said he expected the campaign to last well into 2017. But less than two months later, with little fanfare, U. N. officials announced that Wonder Woman’s U. N. career was coming to a close, adding that, actually, they had always intended it to be brief. Jill Lepore, a professor at Harvard University who wrote a book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, about the comic book character’s creation, said disputes like this have long dogged Wonder Woman. On one hand, said Lepore, the character has solid feminist roots. She was invented in 1941 by William Moulton Marston, a   Ph. D.    columnist for Family Circle magazine. Marston had been brought on board by the company that eventually became DC Comics to help deal with a public relations problem. The company’s first two superheroes, created in the late 1930s, had become controversial. ”Superman looked a bit like a fascist  —   he’s an ubermensch. Batman carried a gun and was quite violent,” explained Lepore. It had gotten to the point where various religious and parental groups had banned the comics. According to Lapore, ”Marston said, ’You know, you need a female superhero because she will embody the nurturing values of womanhood. She will be about peace not war. ’” The character he set about creating drew largely on a   woman Marston knew personally and greatly admired: Margaret Sanger, the   of Planned Parenthood. In the comic book  —   and now in the new movie  —   Wonder Woman is a princess of the Amazons of Greek mythology, living on an island where there are no men. That story, said Lepore, ”comes not from science fiction but from feminist utopian fiction” popular with Sanger and other early feminists of the progressive era. (The cartoon then introduced the character of a U. S. Army officer, Capt. Steve Trevor, who crash lands on the island. Wonder Woman rescues him and then resolves to go with him to America to fight for democracy and equal rights.) Marston had an ambitious vision for his new character, laid out in a remarkable press release, distributed soon after her debut. He stated: ”The only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women in all fields of human activity. He added, ”Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.” Yet even in those earliest years Wonder Woman embodied contradictions. It wasn’t just the risqué outfits. Marston insisted that in every episode Wonder Woman had to be tied up or otherwise bound by the villain. In part, said Lepore, this was a nod to the iconography of the suffragettes of the early 1900s, who often wore chains on marches seeking the right to vote. But it also became clear from letters to DC Comics that Wonder Woman’s largely male audience found this aspect of her story titillating. And last fall, that bondage theme  —   at a time when women are under threat from extremist violence around the world  —   was just one more reason activists like Goetz were uncomfortable with the idea of Wonder Woman as a U. N. ambassador. Wonder Woman nonetheless remained a darling of feminists through the 1970s  —   she was on the first cover of Ms. magazine. But by the end of that decade she had started to symbolize a split within the feminist movement. ”A lot of people started to say, ’Why is she the symbol of women’s power? She’s just so obviously made for men to look at and ogle,’” said Lepore. So it’s no surprise that she continues to raise conflicting feelings to this day. ”Part of the richness of this character is that there are many layers to understanding her. Wonder Woman is always going to have a mixed legacy.”"
"As the   reported earlier this week, some men are quite perturbed about a   screening of Wonder Woman at an Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in Austin, Texas. The theater responded with some finely crafted posts on Facebook and Twitter, and by scheduling   screenings in Brooklyn and Northern Virginia, too. One man was so angry about the screening that he wrote a letter to Austin Mayor Steve Adler. In addition to writing some  —   ahem  —     ideas about women and bringing up a 1966 mass shooting, the man threatened to not grace Austin with his presence. This is the email that Adler received on May 26: ”I hope every man will boycott Austin and do what he can to diminish Austin and to cause damage to the city’s image. The theater that pandered to the sexism typical of women will, I hope, regret it’s decision. The notion of a woman hero is a fine example of women’s eagerness to accept the appearance of achievement without actual achievement. Women learn from an early age to value   that it’s OK to pretend that you are greater than you actually are. Women pretend they do not know that only men serve in combat because they are content to have an easier ride. Women gladly accept gold medals at the Olympics for coming in 10th and competing only against the second class of athletes. Name something invented by a woman! Achievements by the second rate gender pale in comparison to virtually everything great in human history was accomplished by men, not women. If Austin does not host a men only counter event, I will never visit Austin and will welcome it’s deterioration. And I will not forget that Austin is best known for Charles Whitman. Does Austin stand for gender equality or for kissing up to women? Don’t bother to respond. I already know the answer. I do not hate women. I hate their rampant hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of the ’women’s movement.’ Women do not want gender equality they want more for women. Don’t bother to respond because I am sure your cowardice will generate nothing worth reading. ”Richard A. Ameduri” Today, Adler posted his response: ”Dear Mr. Ameduri, ”I am writing to alert you that your email account has been hacked by an unfortunate and unusually hostile individual. Please remedy your account’s security right away, lest this person’s uninformed and sexist rantings give you a bad name. After all, we men have to look out for each other! ”Can you imagine if someone thought that you didn’t know women could serve in our combat units now without exclusion? What if someone thought you didn’t know that women invented medical syringes, life rafts, fire escapes, central and solar heating, a   communications system for   torpedoes that laid the technological foundations for everything from   to GPS, and beer? And I hesitate to imagine how embarrassed you’d be if someone thought you were upset that a private business was realizing a business opportunity by reserving one screening this weekend for women to see a superhero movie. ”You and I are serious men of substance with little time for the delicate sensitivities displayed by the pitiful creature who maligned your good name and sterling character by writing that abysmal email. I trust the news that your email account has been hacked does not cause you undue alarm and wish you well in securing your account. And in the future, should your travels take you to Austin, please know that everyone is welcome here, even people like those who wrote that email whose views are an embarrassment to modernity, decency, and common sense. ”Yours sincerely, ”Steve Adler” Jason Stanford, the mayor’s communications director, says that while the mayor gets a lot of interesting mail, ”We don’t get a lot of Wonder Woman letters.” ”Most people are aware that the mayor’s office has precious little control over movie screenings,” he says. ”This is the first time we’ve ever been asked to insert ourselves into the seating process at the Alamo Drafthouse.” A number of the men who were angry about the screening questioned its legality. But Stanford says the screening doesn’t break any laws. ”It’s legal,” he says. ”It’s a private business. Furthermore, 99 percent of all the screenings in Austin are  . It’s almost like the whole world is set up for us. I think the real shocking thing is it took this long to get a lady superhero movie.”"
"Princess Diana of Themyscira was sculpted from clay by her mother, Queen Hippolyta, brought to life by Aphrodite and bequeathed her superhuman powers by the Greek gods. Over the 75 years she has been kept off the big screen, her fitful appearances on the small screen, most notably in the Lynda Carter TV series and on animated shows like Super Friends and Justice League, have made it easy to forget that Wonder Woman is not one of us. She wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider or transformed by some environmental cataclysm and instead was born a demigod, above and apart from the flaws and frailties of humankind. Of the many things the new Wonder Woman gets right, the first and most important is a triumph of scale, of emphasizing the alien immensity of Princess Diana before she mingles with humans and accepts her civilian alter ego, Diana Prince. In that respect, director Patty Jenkins has successfully modeled the classicism of the original 1978 Superman, which also builds up the alien mythos of its hero before Clark Kent turns up in nerd glasses and identifies more closely with the denizens of his adopted planet. It’s not unfair to say that Jenkins has gone the conservative route, adopting a   strategy that is closer to the tightly managed Marvel Cinematic Universe than that of Wonder Woman’s DC Comics. With its World War I adventure plot, in fact, Wonder Woman could be tagged a   Captain America: The First Avenger. But the conservative choice also happens to be the right one, and the film has the scale and storytelling clarity to sell the mythology and give Princess Diana the stature her many titles suggest. Here, she is a figure of remarkable totemic power. The most critical stretch of the film  —   and the best  —   comes at the beginning, when Diana (Gal Gadot) is growing up among the other Amazon women on Themyscira, an island cloaked by an invisible shield to protect its inhabitants from Ares, the god of war. Over the objections of Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) Diana starts training with her aunt, General Antiope (Robin Wright) for the epic battle they’re all certain will eventually reach their shores. For as long as it remains untouched, the island is an appealing feminine utopia of benevolent values and esprit de corps, a powerful contrast to the fractious world outside its magical borders. That innocence is lost when Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) a U. S. fighter pilot,   on Themyscira and brings the war with him. After she and her fellow warriors fend off Steve’s German attackers, Diana takes an interest in him  —   he is the first man she has ever met, after all  —   and in the call to end World War I, which she is certain is Ares’ handiwork. Packing her bulletproof bracelets, her golden ”Lasso of Truth” and a ” ” sword with which to slay Ares, Diana ships off to London with Steve, joining his covert mission to dismantle a weapons program headed by a   general (Danny Huston) and a chemist named Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya). Before sending her off into war, Wonder Woman takes advantage of the     comedy of Diana leaving her tranquil island paradise for the   gray of industrialized London, where women don’t enjoy the freedoms to which she is accustomed. Gadot’s physical presence as Wonder Woman was established in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but she handles the Diana Prince side with equal dexterity, whether puzzling over the excessive formalities of early 20th century womanhood or trading banter with Steve and his abashed comrades. Diana’s   to human dictates gives her the freedom to dismiss their social mores, which can be played as alternately funny and empowering. Wonder Woman loses some of its edge when the uniqueness of her origin story and her acclimation to people and a new environment gives way to more familiar   conflict. The original comic had Steve and Diana fighting Nazis, and while the shift back to World War I is a sensible choice, given the overwhelming nature of Nazi iconography, it occasionally flattens the film into rote  . Once the showdown with Ares finally materializes, Jenkins can’t solve the common problem that    matchups tend to result in two characters tightening their faces and shooting beams of light at each other. Even in its weaker moments, Wonder Woman honors the scale of a superhero who stands alongside Superman and Batman in the DC lexicon but has never had a vehicle worthy of her. Jenkins and Gadot do the hard work of properly establishing her stature on screen for the first time. She can go anywhere from here."
"Fifty years ago Thursday, Americans got their first chance to hear The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Since then, the album has been hailed by critics and listeners as the greatest in the history of rock music. It has also been recognized as a groundbreaking work that pushed the   technology of the late 1960s to the limit. While The Beatles were testing themselves musically, their engineer, Geoff Emerick, was stretching the limits of what was then considered acceptable recording technique  —   and pushing the equipment in Abbey Road studios to the breaking point. ”I started to   the drums  —   really, really close,” Emerick told NPR in a 1987 interview. ”’Course, no one had done that before, and I had a letter sent that I was damaging microphones because the air pressure from the bass drum was destroying the capsules of the microphone, and so on. But I was given special permission to use the technique on The Beatles.” That technique was essential to the magic listeners hear, according to acclaimed producer, composer and musician Todd Rundgren. ”The Beatles’ drums just sounded liver and louder than everybody else’s drums, the guitars would just cut through in a way that they didn’t on other peoples’ records, and the vocals were tight,” Rundgren says. ”Those were the things that fascinated me more  —   the fundamentals of the recording less than, y’know, the trickery.” Those ”fundamentals”  —   the individual tracks The Beatles laid down during sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s  —   were leaked online years ago, and fans have been listening to them ever since. In today’s studios, musicians can lay down a nearly infinite number of tracks and mix them together to create a song. The Beatles had just four. The shortcomings of   recording forced the band and its late producer George Martin to become expert arrangers, Rundgren says. ”That process engendered a kind of creativity about which things go together when you’re gonna put them on the same track,” he says. Emerick was forced by the recording process and the band itself to invent new techniques for manipulating sound. Today, the same can be accomplished with a click of the mouse. ”It was always, ’Well, yeah, we know we’ve got a guitar and we know we’re playing piano and we know we’re playing drums, but let’s do something with it. Let’s make it sound different,’ ” he said. ”And so it was a question of sitting there thinking and thinking and thinking. . .. What we did was all through imagination, mechanical means and human means, really.” The way the songs on Sgt. Pepper’s flow from one to the next was another layer of studio innovation. But when Martin and The Beatles started recording the album, there was no grand, unifying vision behind it. ”Really, the songs don’t link up very well. I mean, there’s no real reason why we should have such diverse songs on it,” Martin told NPR in 1980. ”It was a collection of songs still, but I tried to make it a coherent whole. . .. And it was at that stage where the record almost grew of its own. It was like a crystal  —   it seemed to have a life of its own.” Though Rundgren remains a Beatles fan, Sgt. Pepper’s isn’t his favorite album, and he doesn’t have much time for the argument that The Beatles were trying to prove that pop music could be high art. ”The Beatles were just pushing the envelope as far as they could for their own benefit,” he says. ”And it can’t be underestimated the effect that that had on everybody else.” Nevertheless, Rundgren says, a lot of the technology that made Sgt. Pepper’s the album it is has aged out. And though digital recording gives today’s musicians more flexibility, there’s still no software that can quite replace Geoff Emerick, George Martin and the four Beatles."
"Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band turns 50 next week  —   so what’s been done to celebrate one of the greatest records ever? They’ve remixed the entire album! The word ”remix,” in fact, may not capture the scope of the project  —   it’s more like someone rebuilt a pyramid with fresh bricks. But a question remains: Why would anyone do so? I traveled to New York to meet Giles Martin, who spearheaded the project, to find that out. Giles Martin is the son of George Martin, who originally produced and mixed the album. In fact, during George Martin’s senior years, as his dad was losing his hearing, the    Giles Martin served as his father’s ears. What’s important to understand is that in 1967, albums mixed in stereo were still fairly new. You had to buy a system with two speakers to play those records, so albums were offered in both mono and stereo. (1967 may have been the rough turning point in the U. S. where stereo began to outsell mono  —   but still for many producers, mono remained a primary focus.) When George Martin mixed Sgt. Pepper’s, he spent three weeks mixing the mono version and three days mixing the stereo version. A few years later, mono records were hardly to be found, so the elder Martin’s 1967 stereo mix became most everyone’s de facto version. For this 50th anniversary edition, being officially celebrated on June 1, Giles dug into the Abbey Road archives and found the original recordings, along with his father’s meticulous notes, to make a new stereo version. Hearing my favorite album of all time remixed was a bit scary, but it’s truly stunning. Giles traveled to NPR’s New York bureau with a laptop bearing the original mono and stereo versions along with his new mix. On this edition of All Songs Considered, we explore the case for remixing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in conversation with Giles. The album and its many bonus tracks, packaged in many forms, will be out May 26. ”I mean, it’s the most famous album of all time. It’s not as though it sounded bad. But if you think about when Sgt. Pepper was made, which is 50 years ago, it was really designed for mono, and the band spent a lot of time on the mono mixes. The mixes, in those days, were a performance [there was no automation, all hands were on the mixing console] they were live  —   and the band, with my father George Martin and with Geoff Emerick, mixed Sgt. Pepper. When the stereo [mixes] were done, they were done very quickly. But no one listens to the monos.” ”We now can go back to the early generations of tapes. It’s hard to explain, but my father had to record everything on a    —   that means you can record four things on one tape. And that was bounced to another  . [Each time sounds are bounced to another tape the sound degrades]. What we do is we go back to the previous generation [the original tapes] so we’re mixing off generations of tape that they never mixed off. [Martin here is referencing the final takes of each instrumental part, which were transferred to   tapes, which were then used to create the final mix.] So it’s almost like a car that comes straight out of a paint shop. The tapes are glistening. What was recorded in ’67 sounds pure and crystal clear  —   there’s not any hiss or anything. And with this version of Sgt. Pepper that’s what we try to do  —   we’re trying to get you closer to the music.” ”You know, one of the criticisms of the stereo of Sgt. Pepper was that you couldn’t hear Ringo. Now we can have kick drum, because if you think about that time in 1967, there was a protection [system from producers and mastering engineers] with records then, so you didn’t get the needle to jump out of the groove. We’ve done a great vinyl cut of this, which we did   so it’s a much more precise cut. We still use the same techniques, we’ve just developed them.” ”You’re challenged by this weight of expectation, but the joy is actually just finding how great Geoff Emerick’s engineering was, how great my dad was as a producer, how organized the recordings are and, you know, the beauty the arrangements  —   and how great the Beatles were at playing.”"
"The wait for the finals is finally over. Well, at least for game one. Follow along with with NPR reporters and fans before and during tonight’s game here or on Twitter:"
"For NBA fans, grumbly and otherwise, the wait is almost over. The Finals, finally, begin tonight. The grumbling has accompanied the Cleveland Cavaliers’ and Golden State Warriors’ respective romps through the postseason. Golden State is   and has won those 12 playoff games by an average of more than 16 points. Cleveland is   . .. and has annihilated opponents at a slightly lower clip  —   a 15 point average margin of victory. THE NBA IS DOOMED!! IT’S TWO SUPERTEAMS AND NO ONE ELSE!! So goes the argument heard throughout the 2017 playoffs. Sure, there’s been a John Wall highlight here: Or a Giannis Antetokounmpo highlight there: But those were moments  —   and no players, nor teams came close to stringing enough moments together to threaten Cleveland and Golden State. So here they are. And for the next two weeks, or however long it takes to decide which superteam is   the caterwauling is bound to turn to purring, frequently interrupted by howls of joy. The Cavs and Warriors are about to engage in a best     series that is both historic and rich in subplots. History, And Stardom, This is the first time in NBA history that two teams have faced each other in the Finals, three straight years. ”I think everybody [on the two teams] knows each other pretty well,” laughs Cleveland guard Iman Shumpert. ”It’s definitely going to be good for the people to watch.” It’s a   final  —   there are seven players who were   this season, and 11 players who’ve been   in their careers. There haven’t been that many in a Finals since 1983. But the intrigue and beauty of this matchup goes beyond the considerable talents of Cleveland’s Lebron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love . .. and Golden State’s Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson. It’s how that talent has been woven into two dynamic teams that owe their success as much to sharing the ball, moving on offense and prioritizing the unglamorous act of playing defense. But if watching great basketball isn’t enough, consider the subplots. Quote Unquote Champions, When asked recently about the Finals matchup, Golden State’s   wizard Steph Curry referred to Cleveland as the ”quote unquote” NBA champions. That comment sent the ” ” into the red. Golden State, it seems, has a bit of an issue, and a score to settle, with the defending champ Cavs. For Cleveland, there was nothing ”quote unquote” about its historic comeback in last year’s Finals  —   down   the Cavs roared back to win in seven games. For Golden State, the feeling is it was a giveaway. Up   and cruising to a second straight title (the Warriors won the first matchup in 2015) Golden State fell victim to one too many boneheaded actions by the otherwise tremendous Draymond Green. His suspension in Game 5 provided an opening for Cleveland which the Cavs gladly went through and kept on going. But if anyone on the Warriors should have a chip on the shoulder, it’s acting head coach Mike Brown. Not because of last year’s finals. But because of his past that had nothing to do with Golden State. And everything to do with Cleveland. Brown has twice been the head coach of the Cavaliers. And he was fired by the Cavs both times. Giving us subplot two: the Mike Brown revenge finals. Here he is, an assistant coach thrown into the head coaching job for the Warriors because real head coach Steve Kerr is still not feeling well enough to be on the bench during games. More on that coming up. And here he is thrown in against his old team. But Mike Brown couldn’t be less interested in revenge. ”Maybe I’m made up differently,” Brown said yesterday at media day in Oakland. ”Cleveland fired me twice, this is a time to get back at ’em . .. extra incentive. But no! I just want to win. I don’t care who it is.” Brown does acknowledge the matchup against Cleveland is a little ironic. He said in a recent interview he was talking to his sons about it, ”and [I said] it’s just one of those things, especially in the NBA. it’s like ’The Lion King.’ It’s just the circle of life.” Not on the Bench, But Still Present  Being philosophical comes naturally for a man like Steve Kerr. Good thing. Nearly two years ago he had routine back surgery and lingering complications from the procedure have rendered him unable to do what he’s done masterfully since joining the Warriors in 2014  —   coach from the bench. The intrigue of will he or won’t he coach in the Finals was building in the run up to tonight’s opening game. Whatever he decides, the consensus from both teams is that either way the Warriors will be ok. ”I think that the foundation that’s he’s laid on that team and influence he’s had on that team, stays with them,” says Cleveland’s Shumpert. ”We [the Cavs] aren’t heading into [the Finals} thinking that they’re missing out on their x’s and o’s.” Indeed, Mike Brown has done well leading the Warriors through the playoffs since Kerr stepped aside midway through Golden State’s first round series. Warriors players talk about gaining confidence in Brown  —   his game management, his substitution patterns. Brown says he’s better understanding Golden State’s unique culture that blends play calling with intuition on the court. It helps, says Warriors assistant coach Ron Adams, that there’s a tight knit coaching staff to help Brown, along with a roster of very smart players. But Adams says they’ve missed Kerr’s special leadership style, and will miss it if he’s not on the bench for the Finals, when the pressure is most intense. And against a very good Cleveland team. ”He’s a very mindful person,” Adams says about Kerr, ”who has the ability to not overuse language. [Kerr] gets to his point. Through Kerr’s ”vast experiences,” as an NBA player, executive, and TV broadcaster, Adams says, ”he’s able to paint these very thoughtful pictures and I think he’s a very calming influence [on] our team. He always has been. This is his strength.” Kerr has still been able to do all that behind the scenes before and during games. He’ll talk to the team in the locker room. He talks to Mike Brown constantly  —   on the phone when not in person. ”I think we have great rapport with one another,” says Brown. ”At the end of the day, this is his team, he’s the head coach and I’m just doing my job.” And so it will be for everyone involved in this hardcourt drama. Players and coaches, on the bench and off, will try to do their jobs. For those who do them better, a victory in the rubber match. For those who don’t, a promise that may very well come true in this time of Super Teams   see you next year in the Finals."
"A Canadian former nurse has pleaded guilty to the   murder of eight elderly nursing home patients in Ontario, making her one of the deadliest serial killers in the country’s history. Elizabeth Wettlaufer also pleaded guilty to four separate counts of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault, according to Canadian media reports. The CBC describes her exchange with Justice Bruce Thomas in Superior Court in Woodstock, Ontario, on Thursday: ”Wettlaufer stood up straight and spoke clearly and concisely as she pleaded guilty to the charges. ”She confirmed that she was not intoxicated by drugs or alcohol while injecting the victims with insulin with the intent to kill. ” ’You knew this could be fatal?’ Thomas asked Wettlaufer. ” ’Yes, your honour,’ she answered.” Police arrested Wettlaufer and formally charged her last October for the murders over a span of seven years. As we reported at the time, the string of murders shocked the Woodstock community: ”Wettlaufer lived in the town of Woodstock, Ontario. Seven of the patients also lived there, at the Caressant Care   home, according to police. The eighth patient was a resident at the Meadow Park nursing home in nearby London. ”The first victim,    James Silcox, died in August 2007, while the most recent victim,    Arpad Horvath, died in August 2014. The three men and five women ranged in age from 75 to 96.” The Globe and Mail published short biographies of each victim: Wettlaufer has struggled with addiction and mental health issues, the Globe and Mail reported. And the Toronto Star reports that testimony in court described how Wettlaufer ”felt ’anger and pressure’ building inside her” before she injected Silcox with insulin. She told the court about how she felt ”overwhelmingly angry” about her life. Some of the victims’ families, such as Silcox’s daughter Andrea, said that they were relieved that Wettlaufer’s guilty plea would likely speed up the trial. ”I will forgive her, I have to forgive her . .. my father would want that,” Silcox told The Associated Press. ”Forget? I’ll never forget what happened.” The Star reports that ”convictions for first degree murder carry an automatic life sentence, with no parole eligibility for 25 years.”"
"Updated 5:15 p. m. ET Friday, Local media report at least 34 people have been found dead by suffocation in a luxury resort complex in the Philippines on Friday. Police have said they believe the man was robbing a casino when he fired a gun at Resorts World Manila, then used gasoline to burn gambling tables before stealing chips and escaping. Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa told reporters that police searching for the gunman found him dead of apparent suicide in a hotel room in the complex. Dela Rosa said the man had covered himself with a blanket, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. ”We’re looking at robbery as an angle because he stole, he barged into the storage room for casino chips,” Dela Rosa said, according to the local news service Rappler. ”He took the chips, put them inside his backpack but eventually left it. We have recovered the backpack.” He says law enforcement has seen CCTV footage that appears to show the lone gunman ”not hurting anyone,” and therefore committing an act of terrorism, The Associated Press reports  —   though a police spokesperson referred obliquely in a statement to ”the loss of lives due to suffocation” without explaining further, Rappler reports. The police chief confirmed his original statement to the AP that there is ”no concrete evidence that the attack was terrorism”  —   despite President Trump’s opening remarks while announcing the U. S. withdrawal from the Paris accord on climate change. During those remarks, he referred to ”the terrorist attack in Manila.” ”We see no terrorism in this act,” the spokesperson said. ”We see this as an isolated incident confined to a disgruntled individual.” This contradicts a statement issued Friday by ISIS through its news agency Amaq, which claimed responsibility for the attack. ”They can always claim whatever they want to claim,” local police chief Oscar Albayalde said Friday, according to CNN. ”They have this reputation of claiming all atrocities all over the world to perpetuate themselves to gain global notoriety. There is no truth that the incident is a terror act.” Police cordoned off the area near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport shortly after the attack began, according to the AP. Resorts World Manila is located essentially across the street from the airport. It is home to a casino, four hotels, four bars, eight restaurants, a movie theater and a mall, according to its website. ”We ask for your prayers during these difficult times,” it wrote on Twitter. Meanwhile, as The   reported, the Philippine military has been battling   militants that seized parts of the southern city of Marawi last month."
"If you were just passing by Sam Durant’s huge wooden structure in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, you could easily mistake it for a   high jungle gym. Indeed, it’s designed to be climbed and explored. ”Maybe you are not sure quite what it is, but it looks interesting, it looks playful,” Durant explained in a 2014 video. ”It’s something that kids might think of as, yeah, a big jungle gym kind of thing.” Durant intended for that playfulness to draw people in to a more serious conversation. The work is called Scaffold and it’s a commentary on capital punishment in the U. S. It includes design elements from gallows used in a seven historic executions including those of abolitionist John Brown, and Saddam Hussein. But last week, the Walker Art Center which manages the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, revealed that Scaffold also includes a reference to the mass hanging of 38 Dakota men following the U. S.  War of 1862. The War began when a local agency refused to deliver promised food to starving Dakota. The hanging in nearby Mankato, Minn. that followed the war is the largest in U. S. history, and 155 years later the pain has not diminished. Within hours native people had set up a protest site outside the garden. ”This is a murder machine that killed our people because we were hungry,” says Sam Wounded Knee, a Crow Creek Dakota who protested the sculpture. Speaking at a press conference at the Walker yesterday, Dakota elder Sheldon Wolfchild said he was stunned the museum had not consulted the community. ”It is beyond our comprehension that this could actually happen,” Wolfchild said. Wolfchild spoke after a mediation session among elders, the Walker, the Minneapolis Park Board and artist Sam Durant. Durant said his intention was to raise questions about government sanctioned executions. He included a reference to Mankato because it was the largest U. S. mass hanging. The work has been exhibited in Germany and Scotland, but he realizes with its installation so close to the actual tragedy, he should have talked to the people living with the history. ”I just wanted to apologize for the trauma, the suffering that my work has caused,” he said. The mediation group decided the best course is to dismantle Scaffold and then some time later to burn the wood after a Dakota ceremony at Fort Snelling. It was the site of an infamous prison camp where many Dakota died after the war. For its part, the Walker also apologized and said it will work to improve communication with the Dakota community. That includes commissioning native artists  ” perhaps even an artwork to fill the space left by Scaffold’s removal."
"Reyna Gordon was an aspiring opera singer fresh out of college when she began contemplating the questions that would eventually define her career. ”I moved to Italy when I finished my bachelor of music, and I started to take more linguistic classes and to think about language in the brain, and music in the brain,” she says. ”What was happening in our brains when we were listening to music, when we were singing? What was happening in my brain when I was singing?” Those questions led her to a graduate program in neuroscience in Marseilles, France. Today, Gordon is director of the Music Cognition Lab in the Department of Otolaryngology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She studies the connections between rhythm and grammar, and how rhythm and music training might help children with atypical language development. Gordon has previously published research showing a correlation in children between good rhythm skills and a good grasp of grammar. She found children who can detect rhythmic variations in music have an easier time putting sentences together. ”One thing that rhythm and grammar have in common is that they both unfold over time, and our brains form expectancies about what’s coming up based on what we just heard,” says Gordon. Consider the following sentence: The boy read the book that his mother gave to him. ”When we hear ’The boy read,’ then we’re expecting an object after that,” Gordon says. ”Then when we hear ’The boy read the book that,’ then we’re expecting an additional clause  —   something else about the book.” By age 5, Gordon says children typically understand and use complex sentences. But studies have shown that about 7 percent of children have what’s known as specific language impairment or developmental language disorder, which hinders their language skills even though they have IQs in the normal range and don’t have autism or hearing impairment. It often goes undiagnosed. ”They have some grammar, but they haven’t acquired it at the same rates as their peers,” Gordon says. ”So expressing complex ideas, especially as they start to go through school, is difficult.” In her lab, Gordon studies children with and without language impairment. Some of the kids might already be seeing speech therapists. Gordon wants to see if, in addition, music and rhythm training can help them. On a recent afternoon,    Adalyn Patel paged through a picture book with research analyst Allison Aaron, who asked her to describe what she saw and offered prompts. ”The dog ran to the door and was barking,” Aaron said to Patel. ”What does the boy think? Start with ’He. ..’” Patel answered, ”He thinks the dog is barking at something that’s, that’s not there.” A child with atypical language development might answer the same prompt with just a couple of words. In one rhythm test, kids listen to several musical rhythms and say whether they are the same or different. In another, they mimic a string of spoken syllables, with variations in timing and intonation. Gordon and her team invite families of children who show weaknesses in these assessments to take part in a training program called MILEStone, or Music Impacting Language Expertise. It’s a   program the lab created that involves weekly Suzuki violin lessons and a weekly movement class. ”There may be something that music training can do to help boost things. Maybe we’re able to boost their auditory processing skills in the brain, or something about their rhythm sensitivity in their everyday listening to language, ” Gordon says. ”We don’t know yet, so we actually have a whole series of questions to look at. And while we’re in these initial stages I think that music is a fun thing, and if the families are enjoying it, it’s a good program to do.” Gordon and her colleagues plan to present some initial findings from their research at a conference on music, sound and health in Boston this summer."
"Most people have an uncanny ability to tell one face from another, even though the differences are extremely small. Now scientists think they know how our brains do this. In macaque monkeys, which share humans’ skill with faces, groups of specialized neurons in the brain called face cells appeared to divide up the task of assessing a face, a team at the California Institute of Technology reports Thursday in the journal Cell. ”The cells were coding faces in a very simple way,” says Doris Tsao, an author of the study and a professor of biology at Caltech. ”Each neuron was coding a different aspect of the face.” The actual coding involves some complicated math. But the approach is a bit like having one cell measure a variable like the distance between a person’s eyes while another cell looks at skin texture, Tsao says. And the system is so efficient that the team was able to accurately reconstruct the face a monkey was seeing using the signals from just 205 neurons. When placed side by side, the pictures the monkey saw and the reconstructed images are ”almost indistinguishable,” Tsao says. The finding helps explain primates’ ”exquisite ability to distinguish faces,” says Ed Connor, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the study. ”Neuroscience really gets exciting when it shows you physically what is happening that gives rise to an experience,” he says. The study is the result of nearly 15 years of research by Tsao and her team. They had previously shown that macaque monkeys, like people, have brains with six separate areas that specialize in processing faces. Then they began trying to solve the mystery of how the cells in these brain areas tell us whether we’re looking at our grandmother or a complete stranger. ”The reason why this is such a big mystery is that, as we all know, it seems like there’s an infinite number of possible faces,” Tsao says. Tsao thought the brain must be using some sort of code to represent each face it encounters. So her team studied two monkeys as they looked at pictures of human faces, focusing on the electrical activity of just 205 brain cells in two of the six brain areas that process faces. Connor says the coding system Tsao discovered helps explain something that has puzzled him for a long time. ”Matt Damon and Chris Pratt look very different to me,” he says. ”But I cannot tell you what it is that makes Matt Damon look like Matt Damon and Chris Pratt look like Chris Pratt.” Now Connor thinks he understands why. ”The process of differentiating faces is so highly developed in the brain, it’s invisible to us,” he says. The research also suggests the possibility of some   applications, Connor says. For example, he says, if researchers could stimulate the right cells in the brain of a blind person, it should be possible to give that person the experience of seeing a face, though they wouldn’t actually be seeing someone with their eyes."
"Spotify has agreed to put $43. 45 million on the table (and an additional $5 million for attorneys’ fees) in order to settle a class action suit brought against it by songwriters who accused the company of not licensing or paying them for use of their music. ”This is the first time that songwriters, not one of the industry organizations, have successfully mounted a sort of corrective measure against the streaming services over this unlicensed use of their work,” says David Lowery, a songwriter and artist advocate who brought the first of two lawsuits against Spotify before his was absorbed by a subsequent class action suit —   brought by three people, the musician Melissa Ferrick, the estate of famed bassist Jaco Pastorius and Gerencia 360 Publishing, which administers a small catalog of Latin music. ”It’s the first time we’ve had some sort of general, broad victory like this,” Lowery tells NPR. ”It’s kind of historic.” Lowery’s suit and the one filed by Ferrick, Pastorius and Gerencia were largely identical. Each accused Spotify of failing to properly licensing their work before making it available to stream to its customers. Spotify has always maintained it wants to pay for every penny of music it streams, but has repeatedly pointed to a lack of sufficient data on where to direct that money  —   the recordings of songs are generally paid out properly, while compositions have had consistent problems. (A similar suit was brought against Tidal last year, while YouTube and SoundCloud have both had their own   collisions with the problem.) Spotify refused to comment on the settlement or the lawsuits that sparked it. Jeff Price,   of Audiam, a company which helps labels and artists track uses of their work across digital platforms like Spotify and YouTube, has long maintained that the onus is on the services using the music to make sure they’re properly licensed and paying up. ”All   services [like Spotify, or Apple Music] are required to get permission  —   a license  —   from songwriters. And many of the challenges that face Spotify also face these other services,” Price tells NPR. ”If you’re going to create a company that uses other people’s stuff to make money, you need to build an infrastructure to identify and get permission to use that stuff, and then make the appropriate payment. Fortunately in the United States we have laws to protect people from the use of their intellectual property.” Price says that services never built that song identification infrastructure in the first place. ”The same challenges that did or didn’t exist for Spotify do or don’t exist for everybody else as well  —   let’s say there was a magical database with every piece of information about every song in the world. Many of [the digital streaming services] couldn’t even use that data, because they have no way to take it in and use it.” Price should know  —   he’s a large reason this sizable settlement exists. Both suits trace back to late 2015 and a public spat between Spotify and Victory Records, a     Chicago metal and hardcore label. Assisted by Audiam, Victory found a large discrepancy between the payments it was receiving from Spotify for the recordings it controls and the money Spotify was sending to Another Victory, the label’s sister publishing arm which deals with songwriters and compositions. Victory was getting money, Another Victory was not, to the tune of 53 million streams. (For numerical context, Drake’s ”One Dance,” the most popular song of last year, was streamed 1. 23 billion times  —   not to suggest that less popular songwriters don’t deserve to be paid the same as everyone else.) A little over a month later, following some tit for tat in the press between Victory and Spotify, the streaming service announced in a blog post its plans to to create an ”administration system” to deal with the problem going forward. Another month later, Lowery and    each filed their lawsuits. Lowery’s suit even made an oblique reference to Spotify’s blog post as supporting his case. A year later, during which time Spotify settled another lawsuit with a more mainstream trade body around the same issue for an estimated $  million, Spotify and those   have come to an agreement that creates a substantial pool of money for others whose work may have gone unpaid and also doubles down on Spotify’s earlier promise to create a way to fix the deeper, byzantine problem. The settlement calls for the formation of a committee that could prove substantive for those who nest in the industry weeds. The formation of a Copyright Data Sharing Committee would include voluntary participation of several mainstream music industry groups, including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) the performance rights organizations ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and Global Music Rights major publishing companies Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG)   and   and the tech companies Apple, Amazon Digital Services, Google and Pandora. According to the settlement, the ”purpose of this committee will be to discuss sharing of catalog data in order to facilitate mechanical licensing” and the ”digitization of   copyright records for free use by the public.” Whether these organizations and companies  —   somewhat incongruously, all quite major players being cited in a suit brought by some very   independent artists and business  —   can actually create any reasonable fix to a persistent problem with digital listening remains to be seen. It’s been attempted before and has failed every time. However pointed his   criticism of the industry has been, Lowery remains optimistic: ”I’m kind of hopeful that this pushes the entire industry  —   songwriters, record labels, everybody  —   towards a big fix for all of this.”"
"Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton argued Wednesday that Russian meddling in the 2016 election in large part cost her the White House, and said she was ”leaning” toward believing that President Trump’s campaign did, indeed, collude with the Russians. During an interview at Recode’s Code Conference, Clinton argued that the Russians ”could not have known how best to weaponize” damaging information about her campaign and fake news stories perpetrated on social media unless they had been ”guided” by Americans. Multiple investigations into potential ties between Trump associates and Russia, as well as Russian interference in the U. S. election, are ongoing. Clinton’s latest comments continue a postelection emergence in which the former Democratic nominee continues to point fingers for her loss, though other accounts of the Clinton campaign have put more fault in her corner. Trump tweeted Wednesday night that she ”blamed everybody but herself, refuses to say she was a terrible candidate.” Clinton’s response: ”People in covfefe houses shouldn’t throw covfefe.” At the conference, Clinton said her campaign’s assertions that there was Russian meddling had been ”basically shooed away.” ” ’There she goes, ”vast   conspiracy.” ’ Now it’s a vast Russian conspiracy,” she said. ”It turned out we were right, and we saw evidence of it.” The U. S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia attempted to interfere in the election in an effort to get Trump elected, though there so far has been no evidence of collusion with the Trump team. Former CIA Director John Brennan told lawmakers last month that he was concerned about contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials, but he said he didn’t know if ”collusion existed.” In addition to her Russia comments, Clinton on Wednesday said stories about her controversial private email server while at the State Department were overblown, calling it ”the biggest   ever.” ”It was a mistake. I’ve said it was a mistake,” she added. ”And obviously, if I could turn the clock back, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place. But the way that it was used was very damaging.” Trump brought up the server regularly on the campaign trail. Clinton said she takes responsibility for mistakes made by her campaign, but echoed comments she’s made since the election as well  —   that she was on a trajectory toward winning until   Director James Comey released a letter less than two weeks before Election Day saying that he was   her email investigation. ”Comey was more than happy to talk about my emails, but he wouldn’t talk about the Russians,” she said. Comey has testified that it makes him ”mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election.” But he defended his handling of both investigations, saying that not disclosing that they were reopening the investigation just before the election would have jeopardized the FBI’s independence and that the Russia investigation, which began last summer, was treated ”consistently under the same principles” as the Clinton email probe. Trump fired Comey last month, initially citing how he handled the investigation into Clinton’s email server as the impetus. However, the president later said the Russia investigation played a role. Even with that   October surprise, Clinton said she still believed she was going to win  —   and that perhaps that was why the warnings about Russia’s involvement seemed to fall on deaf ears. ”I also think I was the victim of the very broad assumption I was going to win. I never believed it, I always thought it would be a close election,” she said. But her campaign ultimately saw measurable drops with female voters in the suburbs of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, in particular, Clinton said. ”I knew that I’d taken a tremendous hit after the Comey letter and later I understood the role that WikiLeaks played in it. But the Comey letter was measurable,” she said. ”You could see my drop.” However, pollsters have said that ”there is at best mixed evidence to suggest that the FBI announcement tipped the scales of the race.” And the new book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign details how many early missteps ultimately hurt her campaign. Clinton has pointed fingers before at Comey for contributing to her loss. And in a commencement address last week at her alma mater, Wellesley College, she jabbed more directly at Trump and the controversies engulfing his administration. But on Wednesday she unleashed her harshest blame yet against her own party, claiming the Democratic National Committee was vastly unprepared for the 2016 election when it came to   compared to the GOP’s robust operation. ”I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination, so I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherited nothing from the Democratic Party,” she said. ”I mean, it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong,” Clinton added."
"It’s still early in the French Open, but the tournament has already seen a remarkable show of sportsmanship. On Thursday, Juan Martín del Potro climbed over the net to console his opponent, Nicolás Almagro, who was visibly upset by an injury that forced him to withdraw from their match. The score in their   match was tied at one set apiece when del Potro served  —   and Almagro was unable to move on the opposite baseline, his head down as he tried to cope with the realization that a recurring knee injury would end his run at Roland Garros. As del Potro stepped over the net and walked toward him, Almagro collapsed on the clay court, his sobs clearly audible over the crowd’s cheers of encouragement and appreciation. Del Potro, an Argentine who has faced his own injuries, talked quietly with Spain’s Almagro before the two walked slowly back to the bench. As he passed center court, Almagro, who at 31 is ranked No. 69 in the ATP’s world tennis rankings, turned back to shake hands and hug del Potro, and to shake the chair umpire’s hand. ”People first, tennis players second,” the Roland Garros Facebook page stated. Soon after the match, del Potro used a tweet to tell Almagro, ”I wish you a speedy recovery, @NicoAlmagro. I can imagine what you’re feeling. Strength.” The red clay at the Grand Slam tournament in Paris is called the terre battue, or beaten earth. But as Tennis. com explains, it can be deemed the ”tear battue” this year, after a string of emotional incidents has already played out early in the tournament. On Wednesday, Steve Johnson won a grueling match just weeks after his father and coach died, the site reports. And earlier in the tournament, Petra Kvitova and Kristina Mladenovic won victories that had meaning beyond the scoreboard, representing possible new steps in their careers."
"Visitors found a noose Wednesday at an exhibition on segregation at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D. C.  —   the second time in less than a week that a noose was found on Smithsonian grounds. The incident ”is a painful reminder of the challenges that   continue to face,” the museum’s founding director, Lonnie Bunch, said in a statement. ”The noose has long represented a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity  —   a symbol of extreme violence for  .” David Skorton, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, condemned what he called an ”act of hatred and intolerance, especially repugnant in a museum that affirms and celebrates the American values of inclusion and diversity.” In the institutionwide email reported by Smithsonian magazine, Skorton added, ”We will not be intimidated.” After U. S. Park Police came to investigate the incident, they removed the noose and the exhibition reopened within a few hours, the magazine reports. The police did not respond to NPR’s request for comment about the ongoing investigation. Five days earlier, police found a noose hanging from a tree near the Hirshhorn Museum, less than a mile away. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate incidents and says they’re on the rise. In   two    men were arrested and charged in connection with a noose found hanging in front of a middle school in Crofton, Md. reports The Washington Post. And KPIX News says longshoremen walked off the job for a few hours on May 25 at the Port of Oakland in California, after nooses were found there a few weeks earlier. ”We’ve never had reports like this ever,” says Southern Poverty Law Center Spokesman Ryan Lenz. He tells NPR that hate incidents  —   including bomb threats to religious institutions, racist graffiti and white nationalist flyers  —   have spiked in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. ”We never counted them before because they were so staggered,” says Lenz. In the three months between Election Day and first week of February, the center has tracked more than 1, 300 reports of bias incidents. ”We are in a moment where hate and extremism have been legitimized in the public sphere,” says Lenz. ”During times like this, it is more important than ever for individual citizens across the country to voice their opposition to the acceptance of this behavior as standard operating procedure.”"
"Passengers are being praised for subduing a man who threatened to blow up their Malaysia Airlines jet shortly after takeoff Wednesday in Melbourne, Australia. The plane safely returned to the airport, and by the time police arrived, the man was tied up. But passengers are also complaining that they were forced to sit on the plane for 90 minutes after landing, along with what was, for an agonizing stretch of time, suspected to be an explosive. It was later determined to be either a type of speaker or phone charger. Witnesses say Manodh Marks, 25, sparked alarm on the overnight flight when he began making threats and walking in the aisle, holding an electronic device and shouting, ”I’m going to blow this f****** plane up.” Marks ”tried to enter the cockpit,” say police, but he was tackled by passengers and crew members. Videos posted to social media show the suspect tied up and facedown, with a crew member bracing himself against his back and a passenger sitting in the seat above him. ”I would say that it would have been quite heroic for the crew and passengers to restrain this person,” Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said. After landing back at Melbourne Airport, the plane, which was carrying more than 330 people, taxied to a spot far from the terminal. Heavily armed police wearing full tactical gear came aboard and arrested the man. While passengers said they were glad to be safe, they were frustrated that police left the suspect’s device on the plane with them as they sat on the tarmac for more than an hour. The police say they needed the time to evaluate the situation. The device Marks held has been described as a Bluetooth speaker. The passengers who took action included former Australian Football League player Andrew Leoncelli, who told Melbourne radio station 3AW that he had never seen anything like the device, adding that it was the size of a watermelon and had antennas. Here is Leoncelli’s account of the attempted takeover in the sky and the aftermath: ”I could hear this idiot saying that he wanted to go in and see the pilot. And the staff were saying, ’Sit back down, sit back down, sir.’ Then he goes, ’No, I’m not going to sit back down, I’m going to blow the plane up’. The staff screamed out, ’I need some help, I need some help.’ ”So I jumped up, undid my buckle and approached him. Said, ’Mate, what are you actually doing?’ He goes, ’Man, I’m going to blow the f****** plane up, I’m going to blow the f****** plane up.’ ”I’m like, my God, he’s f****** insane. So, I took a step back, and said to my friend, ’Mate, this guy’s serious. We’d better f****** do something.’ ”So, I approached him. Then he ran down the side and then he ended up going down the back of the plane. And then two lads grabbed him and disarmed him and bashed the crap out of him and then put hogties on him and took the giant black thing that was [in] his hand out of his hand. And then that thing sat on the plane for the next hour and a half.” The time that elapsed before the device was removed and passengers were allowed to leave the plane was needed to ensure their safety, Ashton said, noting the initial uncertainty over whether the incident was a terrorist act. ”We have to make sure all possibilities are taken into account,” Ashton said at a news conference Thursday, ”including the possibilities of    —   or if there was an explosive device, the possibility of there being other explosive devices that a sudden removal of the passengers could cause an issue with.” It took around 90 minutes to ascertain that there was no longer any danger, Ashton said, adding that he can ”certainly appreciate when you’re on a plane in that situation, one minute can seem like an hour, can seem like an interminable wait.” The wait seemed excessive, a passenger named Laura, who did not want to give her last name, tells Australia’s ABC. She was seated only feet away from what could have been an explosive device. ”I think the worst part was that we were sitting on the aircraft for just under two hours, and we were under the impression that there was still an explosive on the aircraft,” she said. ”We were online getting the live feed from news and that was when a lot of people found out it was [feared to be] an explosive, so a lot of people started to freak out once we’d actually touched down.” The delay was not ”unacceptable,” Ashton said in response to criticism. He noted that the passengers’ safety was the main concern and that the suspect was safely taken off the plane. Marks is a native of Sri Lanka who was in Australia to attend culinary school, officials say. His history appears to show mental illness, Police Superintendent Tony Langdon said. Marks now faces charges of endangering the safety of an aircraft and making threats or false statements. Coming three years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing during a flight from from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the incident jangled nerves and caused delays for travelers. After they were allowed to deboard the plane, passengers were interviewed on the tarmac and were made to wait for several additional hours at the airport. Their flight, which had been scheduled to leave after 11 p. m. Wednesday, was rescheduled for an 8 p. m. departure Thursday, Malaysia Airlines said."
"When a Bangladeshi factory building collapsed in 2013, killing more than 1, 100 people,   retailers from Europe and North America suddenly found themselves facing a crisis that threatened their carefully tended public images. It was a problem not unlike that faced by Ivanka Trump this week, when a trio of activists disappeared while investigating working conditions at a Chinese factory where her company manufactures shoes. Both incidents underscore the fact that in a global economy, problems that companies create in   places have a tendency to find their way back home. The activists who disappeared worked for China Labor Watch, a nongovernmental organization that has been monitoring labor conditions in the country for years. Hua Haifeng was arrested by the Chinese government no word has been received about the fate of the others, but the head of the organization says he assumes they also are being held by security officials. Trump’s brand is only one of the retailers that sell products made in the plant, but her unique position as the daughter of the U. S. president has raised questions about the motivations of Chinese officials. The disappearances also add to the pressure on Trump’s brand, which has been subject to a lengthy consumer boycott. Several major retailers, including Nordstrom, have dropped her products from their shelves. Embarrassing revelations about working conditions in factories in the developing world are nothing new, retail consultant Jan Rogers Kniffen notes. Nike, Apple and Walmart have endured shocking headlines about long hours, dangerous environments and abusive situations at their factories in the developing world. But, Kniffen adds, ”we’ve . .. never had anybody who was that   and that close to an extraordinarily controversial figure trying to build a brand.” Such scandals have usually blown over pretty quickly, with no discernible impact on the company’s sales, Kniffen says. Consumers may not love the idea of sweatshop conditions, but they love cheap products. But consumer behavior could be changing, in part because social media create a platform to publicize the worst abuses, says Allen Adamson, founder of BrandSimple Consulting. ”There’s a growing and large group of consumers that want to vote with their pocketbook or their wallet, and if the company is not behaving in a way that they consider fair or right, they’re very quick to switch their purchase behavior,” he says. Not everybody shares that view, Adamson notes, ”but it’s a growing group  —   particularly younger, millennial consumers, people who are very passionate about the issues.” Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, says there is no question that scandals over workplace conditions matter to companies. ”The brands certainly believe that it can damage the company’s image. That’s why they have elaborate social responsibility programs designed to insulate them from reputational damage related to the working conditions in the factories they use,” Nova says. ”Unfortunately, brands and retailers have been much better at the public relations aspect of this issue  —   creating the impression that they’re making an effort to address labor rights issues in their supply chain, thus burnishing their own reputation, but making very little in the way of practical changes in wages and conditions in the factories,” he says. After the Bangladeshi disaster, many European retailers signed on to an accord on factory and building safety. Major American companies formed a separate agreement that worker safety advocates criticized as less effective. Still, the fact that retailers felt compelled to do something in the wake of the tragedy underscores how much is at stake for Ivanka Trump, he says. ”With Ivanka Trump’s brand, as with any brand, when consumers hear reports that the products are made in factories with abusive conditions, that hurts the brand,” Nova says. ”If consumers are reading credible reports that investigators [who are] simply trying to find out what kinds of conditions exist in those factories are being persecuted by the Chinese authorities, that has to hurt the brand.”"
"More than a week after   militants seized Marawi, the Philippine military suffered a significant blow in its bid to retake the southern city: The country’s defense secretary, Delfin Lorenzana, announced Thursday that an errant airstrike killed at least 10 of the military’s own soldiers and injured seven others. ”A group of our military army men were hit by our own airstrikes,” Lorenzana said in a text message, according to The New York Times. ”The coordination was not properly done so we hit our own people.” Reuters reports the incident occurred ”during the first offensive deployment of   aircraft in the operation” against militants of the Maute Group, who have pledged their loyalty to the Islamic State. The militants have held parts of the city since a military raid went awry on May 23. Since the Philippine government lost control of the city, at least 39 soldiers, 19 civilians and some 120 militants, several of whom were foreign fighters, have been killed in the fighting there, according to the news service. An unknown number of civilians  —   including a Catholic priest and several churchgoers  —   have also been taken hostage in the city of 200, 000. Shortly after the situation in Marawi descended into chaos, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law on Mindanao, the island where the city lies, suggesting he might soon broaden that emergency status nationwide. ”If I think you should die, you will die. If you fight us, you will die. If there’s an open defiance, you will die. And if it means many people dying, so be it,” Duterte said at a news conference last week, after returning from an abbreviated diplomatic visit to Russia. ”That’s how it is.” ”Since the Philippine government announced martial law, there have been relentless air strikes, ’surgical air strikes,’ as the Philippine military described it,” Al Jazeera reported from the outskirts of Marawi City. ”There have been organisations and civilians here who have been asking the government to stop the air strikes, simply because of the danger they pose for civilians.” CNN notes that Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla, said Thursday that the Philippine military does not intend to halt airstrikes after the incident, citing a need to combat enemy snipers in the city."
"After much anticipation, President Trump has decided to postpone his campaign promise to move the U. S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He signed a waiver Thursday to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv for the time being. The belief is that Trump is looking to restart peace talks and doesn’t want to anger his Arab and Muslim allies by taking sides on the thorny question of Jerusalem’s political status. ”[N]o one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the President’s strong support for Israel and for the United   alliance,” a White House statement said. ”President Trump made this decision to maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, fulfilling his solemn obligation to defend America’s national security interests. But, as he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel was ”disappointed” by Trump’s decision, arguing that the presence of embassies outside the city ”drives peace further away by helping keep alive the Palestinian fantasy that the Jewish people and the Jewish state have no connection to Jerusalem.” But Netanyahu’s office said Israel appreciated Trump’s statement of ”friendship.” The Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to the U. S. Husam Zomlot, said that Trump’s decision ”gives peace a chance” and that the Palestinians ”are ready to start the consultation process with the U. S. Administration” on a peace deal. In Israel, the whole issue of embassy location has largely been greeted with a shrug. Moving the U. S. Embassy to Jerusalem has never been the highest issue on any Israeli government’s agenda, observers say. No Israeli government, including Netanyahu’s, has wished to create conflict with the U. S. by insisting on the embassy move, says leading Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea. ”For many Jews in America, it is a kind of symbol. Here, it was never the top of the agenda. It was never prioritized,” Barnea said. In fact, when the U. S. Congress passed a law in 1995 requiring the U. S. to move its embassy to Jerusalem, the Israeli leader at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, was said to be hesitant. He was in the process of negotiating peace with the Palestinians, who also had political claims to Jerusalem. ”As much as he wanted the move to occur,” former U. S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro wrote on Twitter, ”he didn’t want it forced when it could disrupt the overriding strategic goal of completing successful negotiations [with] the Palestinians.” The whole matter boils down to symbolism. Israel has declared Jerusalem, a city that is central to Judaism, as its ”eternal” capital. But Jerusalem is also important to Palestinians, who want the predominantly Arab eastern part of the city, which Israel captured in the 1967   war, to be the capital of a Palestinian state. In 1947, the United Nations presented its plan for Palestine: partitioning the land into an Arab state and a Jewish state. According to that plan, Jerusalem  —   with its religious sites revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims  —   would not be part of either state and would be governed by an international body. When Israel was established a year later, the U. S. and other countries based their embassies in the Tel Aviv area instead of Jerusalem, out of respect for the U. N. plan. The U. S. and others say the status of the city should be resolved in peace negotiations. They haven’t wanted to take sides on the issue, so they’ve kept their embassies in the Tel Aviv area. To circumvent the 1995 law requiring the embassy to relocate to Jerusalem, each U. S. president since Bill Clinton has signed a waiver every six months to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv. Today, no country has an embassy in Jerusalem. And Israelis seemed to have gotten used to that reality, says Eytan Gilboa of the   Center for Strategic Studies, a   think tank in Israel. ”[Israeli] politicians didn’t make a big deal about it. They failed,” says Gilboa. ”They thought it is not going to happen. Other things were more important. And there was a concern about consequences in the Muslim world.” Today, Gilboa says, the average Israeli is more interested in the U. S. finally allowing Israelis to travel to the U. S.    —   so they won’t have to go through arduous visa questioning at the U. S. Embassy, no matter which Israeli city it’s located in. ”Given the choice between moving the embassy to Jerusalem or getting a waiver on visas,” Gilboa said, ”the second is preferable to most Israelis.”"
"Michael Bloomberg is pledging to fill a funding gap created by President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, offering up to $15 million to support the U. N. agency that helps countries implement the agreement. ”Americans will honor and fulfill the Paris Agreement by leading from the bottom up  —   and there isn’t anything Washington can do to stop us,” said Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who now serves as the U. N.’s special envoy on cities and climate change. ”Mayors, governors, and business leaders from both political parties are signing [on to] a statement of support that we will submit to the U. N.,” Bloomberg said, ”and together, we will reach the emission reduction goals the U. S. made in Paris in 2015.” Dozens of cities have said they are committed to the Paris climate accord, with at least 86 mayors signing a statement saying they will adopt and uphold the agreement’s goals. Under the Paris accord, the U. S. sent some $1 billion to the Green Climate Fund that is guided by the U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change  —   the body that coordinates international climate policy. The U. S. was supposed to provide an additional $2 billion, but Trump has balked at that idea, and his proposed budget includes cuts to international climate programs. Bloomberg’s plan calls for his foundation to work with other groups, from governments to philanthropies, that want to support the U. N.’s climate change agency. ”We are grateful to Bloomberg Philanthropies for this generous contribution,” UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa said in a news release about the funding pledge. While government funding remains vital, Espinosa said, ”this kind of support is crucial for the work of the Secretariat to assist nations in their efforts to implement their commitments under the Paris Climate Change Agreement.” The announcement follows Trump’s decision to pull out of the climate deal that nearly 200 nations agreed to in late 2015. As NPR has reported, ”the only other countries not part of the agreement are Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war, and Nicaragua, which argued that the Paris accord did not go far enough to curb global emissions.” The architects of the Paris Agreement included Christiana Figueres, who until recently led the UNFCCC. After the U. S. withdrawal from the Paris deal sparked pledges of money and solidarity, Figueres said via Twitter on Friday, ”Thank you Trump. You have provoked an unparalleled wave of support for Paris and determined resolve on climate action. Deeply grateful.”"
"After President Trump announced that the U. S. would be withdrawing from the international agreement to fight climate change, the responses were immediate  —   from denunciation to celebration. And some reactions were particularly pointed  —   and personal. French President Emmanuel Macron gave an address, in English, in which he riffed on Trump’s campaign slogan. ”Make our planet great again,” Macron said, calling the decision to leave the agreement a mistake and inviting scientists in the U. S. to ”come and work here with us” on efforts to combat climate change. And in case you didn’t want to watch the video . .. he doubled down. Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered a video of his own. ”One man can’t go back in time. Only I can do that,” Schwarzenegger said, as former Terminator. ”Local and state governments will rise up,” he said, as former governor of California  —   pointing out that his state passed strict environmental rules and then experienced economic growth. Schwarzenegger addressed Trump directly and told him, ”We remember the great leaders. The great leaders that don’t walk backward into the past but . .. charge forward into the future.” And the Democratic mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, had some thoughts about Trump mentioning his city in announcing the decision on the accord. ”I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump said Thursday. ”Fact: Hillary Clinton received 80% of the vote in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh stands with the world  will follow Paris Agreement,” Peduto tweeted. Trump carried Pennsylvania, but Pittsburgh itself was an island of blue in a sea of red. Astronaut Mark Kelly provided his sense of perspective. And Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, sent a tweet about the issue that was unremarkable in its wording. And he’s hardly the only major corporate figure to express support for the accord. But the message raised eyebrows anyway . .. because Blankfein has been on Twitter for six years, but had never tweeted before. Meanwhile, many Trump supporters and conservative commentators expressed amusement (or delight) at the intensity of the reaction against Trump’s decision. And several noted that celebrities and executives, many of whom spoke up to criticize the president’s decision, often lead jetsetter lifestyles  —   which are conspicuously  ."
"As he announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, President Trump said he was putting American jobs ahead of the needs and desires of other countries. ”I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” he said Thursday. Trump said the agreement was ”very unfair” for the U. S. especially the U. S. coal industry. And he alluded to some recent good news for the battered industry: the development of new mines. ”The mines are starting to open up, having a big opening in two weeks. Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places. A big opening of a   mine. It’s unheard of. For many, many years that hasn’t happened. They asked me if I’d go. I’m going to try.” Yes, mines are beginning to open up, including a new one in Pennsylvania. But that doesn’t reverse the overall decline of the coal mining industry from its glory days. The coal mines that are opening up produce a special kind of coal used in steelmaking and are opening largely because of events unrelated to federal policy, experts say. The market for the kind of coal used in electricity  —   the biggest use for coal  —   remains down relative to where it was several years ago. In other words, the industry has rebounded slightly after years of layoffs and closures caused mainly by competition from cheap natural gas. And a handful of new mines in Wyoming, Alabama, Pennsylvania and West Virginia are either opening or slated to open in the next few years. The coal mine Trump referred to is the Acosta Deep Mine in Jennerstown, Pa. about an hour east of Pittsburgh. It is scheduled to have an opening ceremony next week, but there’s no word yet on whether the president will be there for the  . ”We’re staffing up,” George Dethlefsen, CEO of Corsa Coal Corp. which owns the mine, told Bloomberg in February. The mine plans to employ about 70 people. Betty Rhoads, the owner of the nearby Coal Miner’s Cafe, in Jennerstown, says she has seen an uptick in business from miners at the mine since last year. ”You’ll see a group of 12 or 20 of them come in and have a big breakfast after their shift is over,” she says. ”It helps the cook get paid. It helps the waitress get paid. It helps us pay our electric bills.” The mine, as are many of the others slated to open, will produce metallurgical coal, a special type of coal that is used in steelmaking. This is different from ”steam” coal, which is used to generate electricity. ”Met” coal makes up about 15 percent of worldwide coal production, according to the International Energy Agency. The Acosta Deep Mine is one of a handful of metallurgical coal mines opening up around the country to take advantage of very high prices for metallurgical coal, says Art Sullivan, a mining consultant and former coal miner in Washington, Pa. He says the uptick in met coal is related to events oversees that have little to do with U. S. policy or politics. One of these factors is that Australia, the far and away leader in metallurgical coal, has experienced disruptions to its supply chain. There have been problems with rail transport of coal, and Cyclone Debbie further hurt the coal industry there, Sullivan says. Those disruptions, combined with    demand for steel in China  —   the world’s leading steelmaker  —   caused prices of this special coal to soar to $300 per ton, triple the price of met coal from three years ago. ”With the disruptions in Australia and continuing high level of demand in China, there has been this upsurge in the U. S. with the planning, development and production from metallurgical coal mines,” Sullivan says. James Stevenson, director of the coal team at IHS Markit, says the metallurgical coal boom has helped the coal industry rebound. The rest of the coal industry has also benefited from higher natural gas prices. ”I think that the   characteristic is that things have really improved from the bottom,” Stevenson says. ”We really saw the bottom of the U. S. coal market in early 2016.” Since then, the industry has picked up a bit. Several large coal companies have begun to emerge from bankruptcy, buoying the industry. Still, despite this uptick, the industry isn’t going back to its glory days of a few years ago, regardless of Trump’s   policies, Stevenson says. He expects natural gas prices to fall and the shortage of met coal to ease. ”The direction is downward,” Stevenson says. ”There’s not a whole lot a government can do to change economics, so we don’t really expect a whole lot of change to the coal demand outlook from what any administration really can do,” he says. ”Most analysts would agree [Trump’s   policies] are probably a case of slowing the decline [rather than generating] any real upside.” Coal production reached a   low in 2015, and the number of U. S. coal miners fell from 90, 000 in 2012 to 50, 000 in 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of U. S. coal mines dropped from 1, 831 in 2006 to 1, 159 in 2015, according to the Energy Information Administration. Overall, coal industry analysts say this rebound will pick the industry up, but not to the levels seen at its height around 2011. Blame fracking. ”Natural gas is the big reason why coal use for electric power has declined,” says Jay Apt, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. Apt says natural gas from the fracking boom has replaced coal on the electric grid natural gas recently overtook coal as the largest source of electricity in the country. A recent Columbia University study found that regulations accounted for 3. 5 percent of coal’s decline, while competition from natural gas accounted for around 49 percent. Trump’s   policies certainly won’t hurt the industry, but the broad trends pushing the industry down are likely to continue, experts say. It’s simple economics. Reid Frazier is a reporter for The Allegheny Front, a public radio program based in Pittsburgh that covers the environment. You can follow him @reidfrazier."
"Micah Fletcher, who survived last week’s stabbing attack on a Portland, Ore. train, was grateful for the massive outpouring of support he received. But he was also concerned. Not by what he saw, but by what he didn’t see  —   support for the young women he stepped forward to defend. ”They are the real victims here as well,” he said in a video posted Wednesday, in which he called for more financial and emotional support for the teenage girls. In the hours that followed, donations to the young women more than quadrupled, according to the donation site YouCaring. Fletcher was seriously injured last Friday, after intervening when a man on a MAX commuter train in Portland began shouting   invective at two teenage girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab. The other young woman,    Destinee Mangum, told a Fox channel in Portland about the hate speech. ”He told us to go back to Saudi Arabia,” she said. ”He was just telling us that we basically weren’t anything and that we should kill ourselves.” Fletcher and two other bystanders tried to get the man to stop, and were stabbed. Fletcher, 21, survived the attack. Taliesin   23, and Ricky John Best, 53, died. The two young women were not injured. ”I just want to say thank you to the people who put their life on the line for me,” Mangum told Fox, weeping. ”Because they didn’t even know me and they lost their lives because of me and my friend and the way we look. And I just want to say thank you to them and their family and that I appreciate them because without them, we probably would be dead right now.” Many people were moved by the story of how Best,   and Fletcher stepped forward to defend the girls. Crowdfunding campaigns started almost immediately, to cover medical costs and funeral expenses and help support the families. One fundraiser was launched by a local restaurant owner another by a group of Muslims one just for Fletcher was started by a friend of his. There was a crowdfunding effort to help the young women, too, to raise money for mental health services and transportation. By Monday afternoon, the fundraisers for the stabbing victims totaled more $1 million, The Oregonian reports. The fundraiser for the girls had less than 2 percent of that total  —   not quite $20, 000. By Tuesday, $1. 2 million had been raised for Fletcher and the two other men’s families, and just over $30, 000 for the girls, the paper says. Fletcher addressed the disparity in a Facebook video he posted Wednesday. He started by thanking all the people who had supported him. And he said that crowdsourcing efforts should continue for the two men who died: ”There is no amount of money that will ever bring back their lost loved ones and anything you can donate  —   your time, your energy, your money, food, whatever, doesn’t matter  —   anything you can give to them you should.” But Fletcher, who is a poet, then said he worried people were forgetting about the young women who were the initial target of the attacker’s hatred. Looking directly into the camera, he said: ”I want you to imagine that for a second, being the little girl on that MAX. This man is screaming at you. His face is a pile of knives, his body is a gun, everything about him is cocked, loaded and ready to kill you. There’s a history here with this. You can feel that this has happened before. And the only thing that was different was the names and faces. ”And then a stranger, two strangers, three strangers, come to your aid, they try to help you, and that pile of knives just throws itself at them. Kills them. . .. ”I’m pretty sure my blood got on at minimum one of the so, so brave young girls that experienced that and still find ways to wake up in the morning and put smiles on their faces and trudge through the day and make their parents proud. And we need to remember that this is about them.” He said that Portland has a ”white savior complex” that was playing out in the response to the attack. ”I think it’s immensely, immensely morally wrong and irresponsible how much money we have gotten as opposed to how much support, money, love, kindness that has been given to that little girl,” he said, referring to one of the teenage girls he had protected. He said they were victims, too, and posted a link to the crowdfunding on their behalf. ”Make a status about the thoughts and prayers you have for them. . .. When a kid’s hurt like that we as a society, as a world, have a moral obligation to do something about it and to help.” YouCaring, the website hosting the fundraiser for the teenagers, tells NPR that in the hours after the video went up, donations went from 15 per hour to 70 per hour. More than $118, 000 has now been raised for the young women."
"We astronomers are trained to think long. A hundred million years, a hundred thousand years  —   after a while these   time scales become so familiar you can kind of feel them in your bones. That training also yields an unusual perspective on the daily events of politics. Sometimes, when I worry about this vote or that court decision, I think about how people in Imperial Rome (2, 000 years ago) Song Dynasty China (1, 000 years ago) or the Iroquois Confederacy (400 years ago) must have had similar worries over the events and personalities of their day. The wheel of cosmic and planetary history is always turning  —   and we only get our turn on it for a moment. That is why almost everything we do will be forgotten in just a few thousand years. Almost. The Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord will have consequences that will not be measured in election cycles or decades or even generations. The Earth, it turns out, thinks long, too. Some of the CO2 dumped into the atmosphere today (via fossil fuels) will be washed out of the climate system on time scales of hundreds of thousand years. But even more important is that once the ball gets rolling, in terms of shifting Earth out of a stable climate state  —   like the one we’ve been in since the last ice age 10, 000 years ago  —   the ride goes on for a long, long time. Planets are big, powerful, complex systems  —   and they operate with their own logic and their own clocks. So while most of what this administration does will not be remembered in a few thousand years, its shortsighted decision to step out of the Paris accord is different. It may be a tragedy that echoes down our history for as long as we have one. Achieving the Paris accord was a delicate and difficult endeavor. Across the long story of our civilization, we’ve never faced something like climate change. It’s global. It’s long term. It affects everyone, and everyone is responsible in some way. These are all radical new ideas for our relatively young civilization. Getting virtually every nation in the world (only Syria and Nicaragua did not sign) to face up to the science and do something, no matter how small, was an achievement. It was a significant step forward in our maturing as a planetary species. It was a major win for our cherished project of civilization. Pulling away from those accord is the opposite. It only happens because our leaders willfully ignore the overwhelming evidence provided to them by their own science agencies. Saying climate change is a hoax, or that no one thinks it’s worth worrying about, requires a special kind of magical thinking, a special kind of determined   and  . But more than anything, it is just plain folly. Folly, as historian Barbara Tuchman showed, means pursuing policies against your own interest. Projects of civilization, like the governments Tuchman explored in her The March of Folly, don’t fare well under folly. Instead they require maturity  —   adults in the room  —   who see things for what they are and who will make difficult choices. On Thursday, folly won  —   and now we face the consequences. Under even the most charitable assessments, climate change is going to stress the deeply interconnected world we’ve built. There is a great deal of fragility in the multiple overlapping networks on which our project of civilization depends (food, energy, economic, communication). If things fall on the ”really hard” side of the spectrum, then consequences like a collapse of those systems is not unimaginable. That’s why Thursday, the day a U. S. administration choose to pull out of the Paris climate accord, may end up being unlike any other in our long collective history. While it might be possible to repair the damage with a new administration, the ball will already be rolling downhill toward dissolution and away from structured, organized response. Everything will be harder. In that way, we may have reached a split in the road of our fate  —   and we have taken ourselves down the wrong path. While those alive today might want to forget the consequences of Thursday’s decision, the future will not have that option. The future will not be able to forget. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"When President Trump announced this week that he was taking the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, there were swift and vocal reactions from many industries  —    but most of the organizations that represent American agriculture were silent. Chris Clayton, though, a veteran reporter at one of the leading farm publications in the country, took to Twitter: Clayton is a Midwesterner and agricultural policy editor at   Progressive Farmer. He’s also the author of The Elephant in the Cornfield: The Politics of Agriculture and Climate Change, which describes in detail how farmers and farm lobbyists have dealt  —   or, more often, refused to deal  —   with a changing climate. It has sometimes put Clayton in an awkward spot, as he acknowledged when I reached him this week in his office in Omaha, Neb. Does it make you nervous, as a reporter at a farm publication, talking about climate change? All the time. I feel like the guy who has to tell people things they don’t want to hear. But if I simply ignore the topic or ignore the issues, am I doing anybody any favors? You decided to write a book on climate change during a Farm Bureau convention in 2011, when you were hearing lots of climate change skepticism. Oddly enough, we were at a convention in Atlanta, where a freak ice storm shut us in. I was stuck at a bar, a Trader Vic’s, and got into a long conversation with friends who were analysts and lobbyists for Farm Bureau. [The group represents mainstream commodity farmers.] And I felt like the issue was not being fully addressed by farm groups. The attitude you were hearing at the convention was ’efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission are a bad thing and we’re just against them?’ Yes,    specifically, the   bill as it was called. Farm Bureau came out very aggressively against that bill, after pushing    throughout the decade before. During the Clinton administration, Farm Bureau was really one of the leaders in helping pitch the concept of a    plan that also partially would have paid farmers for sequestering carbon in soil, using the kind of practices that build organic matter. Farm organizations helped pitch this idea to the Clinton administration. By the time you get around to the debate in 2009, Farm Bureau takes a very skeptical attitude, and then starts inviting some of the strongest climate critics to become speakers at its convention. You go into lots of detail on how the politics of this evolved. But I’m left with the overall impression that farm groups became more and more opposed to doing anything on climate change  —   and it was driven, as much as anything, by hostility to the Obama administration. That’s accurate. Farm groups pushed back even before Obama had been officially put into office. There were press releases put out right after the election warning farmers about an impending EPA ”cow tax” that was really a myth. But it pushed this narrative that the Obama administration was going to be  . Do you have any explanation for why the farming community is so hostile at this point to efforts to address climate change? Well, EPA did not help itself at all. It’s a separate topic, but EPA really put a lot of fear into agriculture over the ”Waters of the U. S.” issue. [This Obama administration rule defined which waterways are covered by the Clean Water Act farmers considered it too expansive, and the Trump administration has moved to reverse it.] That really was a big driver behind a lot of   sentiment out there, so the idea that you would have something involving greenhouse gas emissions which the EPA would oversee [created] a lot of fear of regulations coming back on farmers. Unfortunately, you’re really going to have the proof in the pudding, so to speak, for farmers and agriculture to really change on this topic. In the meantime, you run more risk of droughts, more risk of floods, more risks of insects and pests affecting crops. And just to be clear where you’ve ended up: You write that climate change is real and that it could have profound and negative effects on farming. You know, the science has not changed. The EPA put out a really detailed report in 1989, as the Reagan administration switched to the first Bush administration  —   so under Republican administrations, it put out this big report on impacts of climate change over the next   years. Well, we’re almost at that   mark, and you can see a lot of the impacts that EPA said were going to happen. We’ve seen algae blooms, California has water problems because of issues with snow packs. Researchers at the University of Nebraska have said that North Platte, Neb. could have the same climate as Lubbock, Texas, 60 or 70 years from now. That’s hard to fathom. You don’t grow much of anything in Lubbock unless it’s irrigated. So that is the risk, especially in the Great Plains. The impact that it will have on farmers that don’t have really good irrigation will be pretty devastating. And this is what we don’t talk about much. What kind of reaction do you get when you say this to farmers or farm lobbyists? They’ve become pretty quiet on the situation, other than maybe the National Farmers Union [a smaller farmer group that’s more critical of big agribusiness companies]. We’re not really having much discussion about climate in agriculture at the moment. Do you see attitudes in farm country changing at all? Slowly and surely, I think. Part of the challenge that farmers have right now is the fact that even if the administration tells us that we’re not going to do anything differently, there’s a push down the supply chain to lower emissions. It starts at  . If   is telling food suppliers that I want lower emissions, and lower fertilizer use on corn acreage, it’s getting back to the farmer. You’ve got companies like Cargill and Unilever that have made these commitments to lower emissions and lower water use. So farmers are going to be asked to make these changes, but nobody is going to be paying them more for it. And this is what’s lost when you don’t have a policy. Have you become a black sheep in the farm community? A little bit. I’m trying to be the friend that says, don’t drink and drive. This is something that you need to pay attention to. That’s all I can do. If it gets me in trouble down the line, so be it."
"One taco is good, but two tacos are better. By that reasoning, hundreds of tacos should be incredible. And Mike Sutter, food critic for the San Antonio   is now about halfway through his ”365 Days of Tacos” quest to eat at a different taco joint every day for a year. So far, he’s consumed about 700 tacos. Back in January, NPR’s Kelly McEvers talked to Sutter as he set off on his taco trek. He did it before in 2015, when he consumed a whopping 1, 600 of them. But then he moved to San Antonio, a town where tacos are a part of the fabric of life, and where some taquerias have been around for decades. The challenge, he told us at the start, would be limiting himself to just 365 different kinds. Six months in, we thought we’d taco bout how it’s going. A transcript of the conversation follows, edited for clarity and brevity. Kelly McEvers: Be honest. Are you sick of tacos?  Mike Sutter: No, because you can put so many different things inside of a taco. It’s just an infinite wonderland of choices  —   the constant being the tortilla. But even that, [with] flour or corn, you can multiply your choices by two, and it just becomes this infinitely rolling equation. What are some of the surprises since we talked to you in January? I think I’ve had some unusual proteins. I found some brains in my barbacoa. I found a knucklebone in my cabrito. But that’s sort of an occupational hazard  —   any full animal roast is a contact sport. This is the NFL of tacos. For those people who do not live in taco country, what wisdom do you have to impart to them? What have you learned that you can teach us as a nation? I think we have to respect the tortilla. That’s the number one thing. The big difference in San Antonio is how many places make their own tortillas. And that makes a huge difference because it’s a fresh bakery product. But a bigger lesson, I think, is that we have to be careful not to call everything you put in a tortilla a taco, in the same way that you don’t want to call every political scandal a ”gate,” because it starts to lose its meaning after a while. NPR’s Laurel Dalrymple contributed to this report."
"Is Joe Biden plotting a 2020 bid for president? Don’t entirely rule it out. The former vice president launched a political action committee this week  —   the surest sign yet he intends to keep his toe dipped in the White House waters over the next few years. On the new American Possibilities PAC website, Biden writes that ”the negativity, the pettiness, the   of our politics drives me crazy. We’re better than this.” ”It’s time to treat each other with dignity and respect. Not as opponents, but as fellow Americans. Because that’s what we are,” he continues. ”This is a time for big dreams and American possibilities. If that’s what you believe  —   and you’re ready to help elect folks who believe that, and to support groups and causes that embody that spirit  —   then I’m asking you to join me today.” The PAC will allow Biden to fundraise and help candidates ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, which would allow him to keep up donor relationships as well as engender goodwill with future potential political allies, if he does decide to run. ”Joe is not going away, and you know that, all of you,” Biden’s wife, Jill, said on CBS’s This Morning on Thursday. ”I mean, he loves politics, he loves what he’s doing and he said he would stay involved.” Ever since passing on jumping into the 2016 Democratic fray, there seems to have been a growing sense of ”what if” from the former Delaware senator, who previously ran twice for president during his three decades in the Senate before joining   Sen. Barack Obama’s ticket in 2008. ”I regret it every day, but it was the right decision for my family and for me, and I plan on staying deeply involved,” Biden said in January. The vice president wrestled with whether or not to join the Democratic race, which already included eventual nominee Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders,  . And after his eldest son, Beau, passed away from brain cancer in May 2015, balancing his political ambitions with his grief and family obligations became a very public struggle. ”I don’t think any man or woman should run for president unless, No. 1, they know exactly why they would want to be president and, No. 2, they can look at folks out there and say, ’I promise you, you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy, and my passion to do this,’” Biden told CBS’s Stephen Colbert in September 2015. ”I’d be lying if I said that I knew I was there.” And, ultimately he wasn’t. Just over a month later, Biden announced in the White House Rose Garden, flanked by his wife Jill and President Obama, that he would not enter the race. ”As my family and I have worked through the grieving process, I’ve said all along what I’ve said time and again to others, that it may very well be that the process, by the time we get through it, closes the window,” he said. ”I’ve concluded it has closed.” But could that window   over the next three years? A bid by Biden would certainly be unprecedented in many aspects. He’d be 77 years old on Election Day in 2020. President Trump eclipsed former President Ronald Reagan as the oldest person ever elected to the presidency after he was inaugurated at age 70. The Democratic Party has no heir apparent to take on Trump in about three and a half years. And the Scranton, Pa. native, who relishes talking of his   upbringing, could certainly fill in some of the cracks Clinton was unable to, particularly with working class whites in the Rust Belt. But the party may also be eager for some fresh blood atop the ticket just four years after Clinton, who many saw as a retread candidate too tied to her husband’s presidency in the 1990s. And a   old Biden, with plenty of attributes Clinton was missing, still may not be their best fit. But it’s important to watch how Biden uses his PAC in the coming months. Does he pay special attention to candidates in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, or travel there to campaign? Does he place an emphasis on battleground states? How forcefully and publicly does he go after Trump? Biden has been far from Shermanesque in his denials that he’s seriously considering a White House bid, and his statements  —   often with a wink and a smile  —   keep stoking that very idea. ”I’m going to run in 2020,” Biden told a group of reporters on Capitol Hill last December. After one reporter pressed him, ”For what?” he responded with a smile, ”For president. ..What the hell, man.” ”I’m not committing not to run,” Biden clarified soon after. ”I’m not committing to anything. I learned a long time ago, fate has a strange way of intervening.” Earlier this month when asked about running in 2020, this was his response: ”Could I? Yes. Would I? Probably not.” ”I may very well do it,” he later added, saying that if his health is good and if his family is in a strong financial position, he would consider it. In that same speech at the SALT hedge fund conference in Las Vegas, Biden also offered some pointed words in comparing himself and Clinton: ”I never thought she was a great candidate. I thought I was a great candidate.” He did, however, later add that ”Hillary would have been a really good president.”"
"In a tragic turn in South Sudan, an effort to protect 15 children ended up killing them. The children, all under age 5, died of severe sepsis and toxicity due to a botched vaccination campaign, according to a joint statement issued Thursday by UNICEF and the World Health Organization. The vaccine had been left unrefrigerated. One syringe was reused over the course of four days. The campaign, which took place in early May in the rural town of Kapoeta, was part of an effort by the South Sudanese government to vaccinate 2 million children against measles. The vaccines were provided by UNICEF. The World Health Organization provided some training in how to administer the vaccines. How could something like this happen? We talked to William Moss  —   a professor of epidemiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the head of epidemiology at the International Vaccine Access Center  —   about what went wrong. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. This is a tragedy on so many levels. How could this have happened? South Sudan has been plagued by a civil war, conflict, famine and other outbreaks for three years. Measles vaccination campaigns are complex operations with logistical challenges  —   and this is a place with poor health infrastructure. That’s not an excuse, but it provides some context in understanding how such a thing could have happened. In addition to the deaths, 32 children were sickened from the   vaccination campaign in South Sudan. What went wrong, exactly? Untrained people were administering the vaccine. The measles vaccine needs to be diluted. One has to take a liquid and mix it with the dry form, and that’s where the error occurred. The [WHO and UNICEF] report says they used the same syringe to reconstitute the vaccine [instead of discarding it after single use]. If that vaccine vial gets contaminated with a toxin or bacteria, then gets injected into a child, that’s what causes disease and death. Some reports are saying children as young as 12 years old were administering the vaccine. I have never heard of children being used in a vaccination campaign before, so this would be highly, highly unusual. Measles is administered with a needle and syringe. In measles vaccination campaigns, it’s trained health care workers who deliver the vaccine. For polio vaccines where it’s oral, you can have trained lay people administer the vaccine, but not children. If in fact children were administering the vaccine, that’s inexcusable. Does this show that there was pressure to rush this measles campaign in South Sudan? In 2016, there were 2, 294 suspected measles cases. Measles is a public health problem [in South Sudan]. A measles outbreak can be devastating with high death rates in part because of the undernutrition of the population and the lack of access to health care services. You have the urgent need to get the population vaccinated  —   but in this village where [this vaccination campaign] occurred, there was improper staffing in terms of administering the vaccines. Do you anticipate this will slow down vaccination campaigns around the world? That’s obviously a big concern. This is a tragedy on multiple levels, primarily for the children and families who were involved in this. When an event like this happens, there’s a lot of concern that this will decrease the willingness of parents to have their children vaccinated against measles. What people need to know is that this is a rare event. The problem is not the measles vaccine, which is very safe. This is a failure of the health system. According to the Red Cross in South Sudan, some mothers are angry and are unconvinced they should take their children to get vaccinated. What will groups need to do to reassure these mothers that vaccines are safe? The organizations involved in the campaign, such as WHO and UNICEF, need to ensure that anyone administering the measles vaccine in South Sudan is trained and qualified to do so. The government of South Sudan needs to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. Oftentimes in these types of settings, it comes down to community leaders. Groups like the Red Cross and [aid groups] on the ground would need to engage with those leaders to point out the value and importance of measles vaccinations, particularly in these communities at high risk of measles outbreaks and deaths. If not, it might be extremely difficult to turn this around. Given the   movement in the West and skepticism about vaccines in many poorer nations, how much of a setback is this for vaccine efforts around the world? The   movement is complicated. But my understanding is that the argument against vaccines is not based on this type of event. They raise different issues, but not around the possibility of a vaccine vial getting contaminated with bacteria or people dying from toxins. Still, events like these generate a lot of negative publicity around vaccines. Anytime there’s an event like this, it’s a major setback for the global vaccine efforts. It takes a long time to establish trust. What else should we know about the measles vaccine? We have to remember that the introduction of the measles vaccine saves millions of children’s lives each year. Prior to the introduction of the measles vaccine in the 1960s, millions of children died each year from measles. Now slightly over 100, 000 people are estimated to die each year. This is an enormous public health success story. This is why the measles vaccine campaign continued in South Sudan after this tragedy. This wasn’t a problem with the vaccine. This was a problem unique to that village."
"Renée Fleming and Francis Collins have something unexpected in common: music. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, plays guitar. Fleming, of course, is a renowned soprano. She is also an Artistic Advisor at Large to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. and the two of them are joining forces this weekend for a program called Sound Health. The   event will explore connections between music, health, wellness and science through musical performances and presentations from neuroscientists. All Things Considered host Robert Siegel spoke with Fleming and Collins about their work together and what they hope to convey to the public about the intersection between art and science. They also sang a duet. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. On how their collaboration on music and the brain came about, Fleming: We met unexpectedly at quite an extraordinary dinner party. Collins: It was two years ago. It was on a Saturday night. It happened to be the Saturday night after the Supreme Court had issued their final decisions for 2015, and three of the Supreme Court justices were present. So, having a little unwinding going on there, because they had been on different sides. We had Anthony Kennedy, we had Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and we had Antonin Scalia, all gathering to have a wonderful dinner and a little music, which was provided by a sort of ok band  —   which, somehow, I think we took over. Fleming: We had an interesting conversation that night at dinner, because I said ”Do you think that we could collaborate with these two institutions? Put something together to amplify the work being done in this field?” and he didn’t hesitate. On research showing humans may have sung before they spoke, Collins: I think it’s increasingly becoming clear that must be the case. One of the really exciting findings that has recently come forward as we have better means of imaging the brain, [is] that if you put somebody in an MRI scanner and you look to see which part of the brain is getting activated when you hear a voice or when you hear a musical sound, they’re different. Your brain has a music room, and evolution would not have gone to the trouble of designing that if it didn’t have some benefits. So, that suggests to me that we and our ancestors have had music as a central part of our experience for eons. And we’re just beginning to understand how that might be. I think that’s fascinating. On whether Fleming thinks about her brain while she’s singing, Fleming: The brain has to support me in my singing, no question. Having to memorize in foreign languages that I don’t even speak is an arduous task. I participated in a study at the NIH. I was in an fMRI machine for two hours, singing this tune, [The Water is Wide] imagining it and speaking it. It’s not an attractive sound, especially because I’m competing with the sound of the machine, but it’s incredible to see the pictures  —   how it looks with the revolving brain and all the parts that are activated in this fMRI under those three different circumstances. It’s all quite different. On the opportunities presented by advances in brain imaging, Collins: For me it’s both a basic science opportunity, to use what we’re learning about how music affects the brain to understand the brain better, but it’s also got this therapeutic implication. Music therapy can be incredibly powerful for kids with autism, adults with Alzheimer’s and everything in between, but we don’t really understand most of the time how it works. We can give this field a stronger scientific base, and it can be even better. On future funding for research in the field of music and neuroscience, Collins: We’re just bold enough to think that we might be able to figure out how the circuits in the brain do what they do, and use that information to help people with many different disorders that affect the brain, including mental illness, including epilepsy, including traumatic brain injury. Music is part of that need for understanding. So, even though we’ve never been in a position where I would say we have enough resources, we would certainly want to prioritize this effort."
"A Connecticut law makes it the first state to provide animals with   advocates to represent them in abuse and cruelty cases, similar to laws that provide for victim’s or children’s advocates. Seven lawyers and a law professor in the state are approved as volunteer advocates, the AP reports. Judges have discretion on whether to appoint an advocate defense attorneys and prosecutors may request them. This week University of Connecticut student Taylor Hansen was the first of the advocates to testify in court, in a dogfighting case, alongside the approved law professor, Jessica Rubin. The case involves three pit bulls, according to the AP: ”One emaciated dog with scars from fighting had been found wandering. The other two were found in a home filled with animal feces, rotting food and evidence of dogfighting. One animal had to be euthanized.” Hansen argued  —   unsuccessfully, in the end  —   that the man charged in the case should not be allowed to participate in a program for   offenders, in which his record would eventually be cleared. That outcome is one that has happened before, in the case for which Connecticut’s law is named. Desmond’s Law is named after ”a shelter dog that was starved, beaten and strangled to death” in 2012, according to the Hartford Courant. ”Despite a recommendation by the prosecutor for prison time, the man charged in the crime received accelerated rehabilitation, which meant that his charges were dismissed and his record was wiped clean.” ”The animal advocates are an official party to the case,” the AP explains. ”They can do investigative work prosecutors often don’t have time for, such as interviewing veterinarians and other witnesses. They also make arguments, write briefs and make recommendations to the judge.” Between 2006 and 2016, only a small portion  —   19 percent  —   of Connecticut’s 3, 723 animal abuse or cruelty cases ended in convictions, according to the wire service. One percent of the cases resulted in   verdicts, but the bulk  —   80 percent  —   of cases were dismissed or not prosecuted. Hansen, the advocate, found value in the process, even if the outcome wasn’t the one she had argued for. ”It showed the animals do have a voice,” she told the AP. ”We are able to have an impact on the proceedings.” Advocates like Hansen are part of the emerging field of animal law. According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund, nine law schools had courses in animal law in 2000 by 2015, that number was 151. That growth is due in part to a few   animal lovers. Former The Price Is Right host Bob Barker has donated $1 million to several law schools to create endowments for the study of   law. And last year philanthropist Jeff C. Thomas gave $1 million to Harvard Law School’s Animal Law  Policy Program with the goal of helping farm animals. Studies have found connections between animal abuse and violence against people. In one study cited by the Humane Society, the Chicago Police Department found that 65 percent of those arrested for animal crimes had also been arrested for battery against another person. Another study found that pet abuse was a significant risk factor for people inflicting violence against their intimate partners. ”We hope with this law in place, we will start to see much better procedural outcomes [in animal abuse cases],” Annie Hornish, Connecticut director for the Humane Society of the United States, told the AP. ”We are very excited that judges seem to be taking advantage of it.”"
"Florence has taken aim at picnicking tourists. The problem: visitors who choose to dine on the steps of the Italian city’s historic churches. Earlier this week, just before lunchtime, the city began hosing down the front steps of a basilica where sightseers like to sit and eat. Mayor Dario Nardella’s goal is to make the steps wet enough that tourists won’t gather there. Tourists ”eat and drink and make it dirty,” Nardella told ToscanaTV. ”They’re treating our churches like they’re a restaurant. And they’re not restaurants. These are religious and cultural sites that you should love and care for.” Tourism is big business in Florence. The Guardian reports that more than 12 million tourists a year have visited the city since Nardella took office in 2014. But tourists don’t always conform to the Florentine modo di vivere. So around 1 p. m. on Wednesday, two workers began spraying soapy water on the steps of the Basilica of Santa Croce  —   the church where Michelangelo is buried. ”Tourists were surprised and in some cases angered by having to get up to allow the jets of water to be aimed at the steps,” Italian news agency ANSA reported. Nardella says his ”experiment” is a ”more gentle measure” than fining tourists for snacking or drinking, which Rome has done. He said the city is also considering other tactics, like cordoning off certain areas ”in a very elegant way.” While the move may sound draconian, the picnicking conundrum is part of a larger question in Florence: how to balance the tourism industry with the needs and desires of its residents. In May 2015, UNESCO sent a letter to Italian authorities expressing concern about the ”absence of a tourist strategy” and the preservation of the ”outstanding universal value” of the city, which is a World Heritage site. ”The whole historic centre is a pedestrian centre,” an activist named Tiziano Cardosi told the Guardian. ”It is not for citizens, though, just for big groups of tourists and rich [foreign] students. This is a dying town.” He said Florentines could no longer buy bread in the city center because the shops only sell gelato to tourists or alcohol to students. Nardella has said he would try to encourage tourists to spend more time on the city’s outskirts, rather than thronging the center, and would try to attract a better ”quality” of tourist. ”Bad tourists,” he suggested to the Guardian, are those with lowbrow taste and   food: ”  and one panino. No museum visit, just a photo from the square, the bus back and then on to Venice. . .. We don’t want tourists like that.” The mayor defended his     program, saying there are plenty of benches and tables at which tourists can eat. He cited his own sterling conduct as a tourist abroad. ”When I went to Istanbul, I didn’t go and sit on the steps of their mosque and eat my mortadella sandwich and throw my   on the ground in front of the Blue Mosque,” he said. ”All we’re asking for is a little bit of respect.” In the end, though, water alone may not succeed  —   because there is a force that can fight City Hall: the famed Tuscan sun. Just 10 minutes after the steps had been washed on Wednesday, they were dry once more, and the tourists returned. This time, the police stopped them, ANSA reported. Still, Nardella had a request for the visitors lolling about eating panini and gelato: ”If you’re going to buy a sandwich, don’t eat it while strolling around, taking in the beauty of Florence.” Or you just might get wet. NPR news assistant Maddalena Richards contributed to this report."
"Updated at 3:45 p. m. ET, Penn State University’s Board of Trustees approved a series of new initiatives Friday that are designed to change how the school’s fraternities and sororities are regulated. The change comes after the death of    sophomore Timothy Piazza brought new attention to the problem of hazing. The most significant move is that Penn State will take over the monitoring and disciplinary processes currently run by student organizations. In announcing the changes, Penn State President Eric Barron said the university will encourage other schools to crack down on hazing, too. ”We intend to take a national leadership role in this, and as a matter of fact, I will introduce to the Big Ten this weekend that we organize a national conference on Greek life,” said Barron. Barron also said Penn State will urge state lawmakers to strengthen penalties for hazing. Piazza’s parents, Evelyn and James, have not seen the video that captured the events before their son’s death but have said they hoped the ”horror” he experienced would prompt change at Penn State and lead to stricter laws more generally around hazing. In February, Piazza wanted to join the Alpha Upsilon Chapter of Beta Theta Pi at Penn State. It was supposed to be a ”dry” fraternity, but it clearly was not. Alcohol played a central role in Piazza’s death. Surveillance cameras captured much of what happened the night of Feb. 2. Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller says that video evidence was central in a decision to bring dozens of charges against 18 people. Parks Miller says the evening started with something called ”the gauntlet.” At a May 5 press conference, she described it as a hazing ritual ”where they bring the pledges and make them go from station to station and drink copious amounts of alcohol really quickly.” Parks Miller says that after that, Piazza fell down a flight of stairs. He was moved to a couch where he stayed for a few hours. But then, Parks Miller says, Piazza stumbled around the house before again falling down the same flight of stairs. ”He had injury to his side that was visible,” says Parks Miller. ”And also people at that point, the presentment will tell you, were pointing to his head.” She says that fraternity leaders were aware of Piazza’s injuries but that they did little to help him. Court documents show someone put a backpack on Piazza to reduce the risk he would roll over and choke on his own vomit. The prosecutor says one person wanted to call 911, but a fraternity brother pushed him against a wall and stopped him. Parks Miller says that by the time Piazza got medical care the next day, injuries to his brain stem were irreversible. Because of a spleen injury, doctors say, large amounts of blood had pooled in Piazza’s abdomen. He was pronounced dead on Feb. 4. Attorneys representing the 18 people charged in the case say the counts filed against them are not warranted. ”These charges  —   involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, simple assault  —   they require an element of intent,” says attorney Pete Sala. He is representing his godson Joe Sala and believes this case doesn’t clear that legal hurdle. Piazza’s parents stood next to the prosecutor at the May press conference. They’ve read the prosecutor’s presentment from cover to cover, but they can’t imagine watching the video. ”It’s bad enough that when I close my eyes, I see him in the hospital,” says Evelyn Piazza. ”I don’t know that I want to see his head hitting a floor, a wall, a railing,” she says as her voice breaks up. James Piazza says there is one circumstance that would change his mind about subjecting himself to those images. He would watch it with the Penn State Board of Trustees and Barron. ”So that they can see the horror that my son had to deal with that night,” and, James Piazza says, so that they will know that serious changes are needed in how Penn State’s fraternities and sororities are governed. In addition to the initiatives announced Friday, Penn State has banned the local chapter of Beta Theta Pi forever, and the school plans to issue report cards on fraternities and sororities so students and parents can learn whether there has been trouble in the past. Beyond Penn State, the Piazzas want laws changed so   crimes get stiffer penalties. Across the country, laws and penalties vary, says Emily Pualwan of the group HazingPrevention. Org. ”The laws are constantly changing, and we advise everyone  —   parents, students and organizations  —   to know your laws.” Her group offers an interactive map to help those who want to learn more. Pualwan says the video evidence has led to the Piazza case receiving more attention than many other hazing cases. ”Our main goal and most important focus is making sure some kind of positive change is effected to ensure that this type of thing never happens again,” says Timothy’s brother Mike Piazza. The family may end up filing a lawsuit against the university and others. But right now, they’re focused on the criminal case. As the Piazzas wait for the trial, they’re adjusting to life without their son and brother. Evelyn Piazza wears a   pendant around her neck that has Timothy’s thumbprint on it. ”It’s like holding his hand when I rub my finger across the thumbprint. It’s him. I’m wearing him,” she says. The Piazzas have started a foundation to offer scholarships in Timothy’s name. They also want to further one of his passions. If he had lived long enough to earn an engineering degree, Timothy Piazza planned to spend his career making prosthetics for children and veterans."
"Just two days after a car bomb tore through Kabul, killing at least 90 people and injuring hundreds more, demonstrators took to the streets of the Afghan capital in droves to demand the resignation of top officials. But even as the demonstrations called for better security from extremist violence, further violence arose Friday as security forces opened fire on the protesters. Several demonstrators died in the ensuing chaos. News reports cited Afghan officials who provided varying death tolls, ranging from two to eight people killed. As Jennifer Glasse reports for our Newscast unit: ”Hospital officials say some of the dead protesters had been shot in the head and the chest. ”One of those killed was the son of an Afghan senator. His body, wrapped in a bloody sheet was briefly carried through the streets. ”Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister, Murad Ali Murad, says some of the protesters were carrying weapons, and that police fired in  . He said Afghan security forces were wounded, as well.” The protesters had been marching toward the presidential palace, demanding the ouster of President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah. The situation came to a head as many of them charged riot police, some throwing stones, according to The Associated Press, and police loosed a barrage of bullets in addition to tear gas and water cannons. After the protests began, The New York Times reports, Ghani released a statement calling for peace but also blaming ”those who want to agitate and hurt public order, their issue is separate  —   they will not be allowed to use the people’s emotions against the people’s interest.” The demonstration had been prompted by the massive truck bomb Wednesday, which blew through morning rush hour traffic close to the German Embassy. At the time, Glasse reported that explosion was so huge, even ”a mile away there was first a low rumble like an earthquake, then the shock wave from the blast followed and blew open doors and windows.” ”Closer to the explosion it shattered glass in homes, offices and cars,” she added. In addition to the dozens who died, more than 450 people were wounded in Wednesday’s attack. ”Our brothers and sisters were martyred in the bloody attack on Wednesday,” one protester told Agence   on Friday, ”and our leaders are doing nothing to stop this carnage.”"
"Hayao Miyazaki’s many fans worldwide just got an unexpected gift. Studio Ghibli, the animation firm   by the beloved anime director, plans to build a theme park dedicated to one of his most famous creations: My Neighbor Totoro. Hideaki Omura  —   governor of Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, where the park is scheduled to open in 2020  —   announced the plan at a news conference Thursday. ”Studio Ghibli’s films have love toward living creatures and Earth, which fits the concept of the expo,” he said according to The Japan Times. ”I would like to pass down this idea to future generations.” Tentatively named Ghibli Park, the space will span some 500 acres in Aichi’s Expo Park, which hosted the World’s Fair in 2005 and already boasts a   replica of the house featured in the film. The park will recreate the rest of the world from the film and focus on its theme of ”respecting and embracing nature,” as Omura said Thursday. Totoro, the magical keeper of the forest, befriends two young sisters in the film, comforting them during their mother’s illness and introducing them to the wonders of the natural world. Beyond the bounds of the 1988 film, though, Totoro has become something more: a longtime totem for Miyazaki’s studio, a popular plush toy in toy stores the world over  —   and soon, the marquee star at a theme park built in its honor. No word yet on whether a flying Catbus shuttle will be included in ticket fare."
"The revered Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, 72, announced this weekend at the Venice Film Festival that he’s retiring from making   feature films. (He previously went into ” ” after directing Princess Mononoke in 1997.) Hearing the news reminded me that My Neighbor Totoro (1988) was the very first film I remember watching when an   cousin played the movie for me and my sisters on a VHS machine at a family gathering. We all sat in the basement, gawking at what flashed on the television screen while our parents clacked   tiles together upstairs. Throughout my childhood, Miyazaki’s visions chased me as I drew up my own imaginary characters. When I first watched Totoro, I was pushed with   wonder into a different world that was filled with unknowns but also whimsy. I wanted a mystical creature just like Totoro to be my friend  —   him and his enormous, engorged, bounceable belly. Miyazaki’s films left me with impressions I couldn’t name or understand as a child  —   and feelings that parents (mine, at least) found hard to convey. That is, the longing to be a part of something larger, to simply not feel alone and to occasionally embrace eeriness. And then, years later, I watched Totoro again as a teenager. I was older and watching of my own accord. There was something comforting, familiar, about the way Mei and Satsuki battled melancholy and fear. One of the things that set Miyazaki apart is his respect and understanding of the complex inner lives of young children. (I didn’t get this type of emotion from watching   movies like Mulan. But I did dress up as the lead character one year for Halloween because I was so stoked there was an Asian Disney princess.) In Totoro, Mei and Satsuki’s mother was bedridden with an ailment that seemed serious, if not terminal, and their father was not all that present. (My own mother died of cancer when I was 13, and my father grappled with how to raise a   teenaged daughter.) The scene where Mei and Satsuki wait for their father at a bus stop in the middle of the woods, at night, during a rainstorm, is heartbreaking. And stark. We’re left with a pervasive sense of loneliness at the thought their father may not collect them. But the sisters are not alone. The forest is teeming with spirits that sweep away the girls’ worries. There’s the school bus in the shape of a cat with a maniacal grin. And then there’s Totoro, with an expressionless,   face. Together, the creatures whisk the sisters into a terrifying and whimsical world. All of it done without the benefit of much dialogue. When Pixar released Up in 2009, one of my sisters worried that the movie would make my dad acutely aware of his own loneliness. The opening scene in Up shows a brokenhearted old man reflecting on his life and the love he felt for his late wife. Some cite Miyazaki’s influence in Up. Fantastical yet grounded. In Up, the crotchety Carl Fredericksen (aka, old man dude) and the   Russell (the     Scout who also happens to be  ) go on an adventure in a house turned hot air balloon. Their relationship, at first antagonistic, develops into something that resembles the friendship between a grandfather and grandson. But there’s a difference between Up and Miyazaki’s work. With the Japanese animator’s films, there is no distracting humor (”SQUIRREL! ”) or no cheap   references (”Take a bath, hippie”) directed at parents. In Miyazaki’s work, there is artistry and, mostly, a silence that teeters on melancholy. And that’s perfectly OK."
"India is having a debate about its national animals. Currently, the mighty tiger is the national beast and the peacock is the national bird. But the cow has recently been proposed as a replacement for the tiger because of its status as a holy animal. And this week, both bird and bovine have caused an internet explosion that touched on reproductive issues, education and science. On Wednesday, Justice Mohan Chand Sharma of the western state of Rajasthan, put in a good word for the peacock. Peacocks don’t have sex, he told a TV reporter on his last day as a judge. Instead, he said, peahens are impregnated when they swallow the tears of the peacock. Citing religious texts as the source of this intel, he indicated that the peacock is pure and chaste and therefore deserving of its status. The tiger not so much, according to the judge. He thinks the cow should be the national animal. Its dung can cure cholera, he said, and its horns absorb ”cosmic” energy. Sex and science educators were reminded that they have their work cut out for them. And the hashtag #peacocksex took on its own (sometimes raunchy) life.   folks posted footage of peacocks mating to prove that Justice Sharma’s ”theory” was wrong. Others despaired about how educated civil servants had such distorted views on reproduction. This is not the first time Justice Sharma’s views on animals have made headlines. The peacock comment came on the heels of his verdict in a case about cows. Sharma has been presiding over a lawsuit brought by the Jago Janta Society (an NGO whose name translates to ”Awaken, Public”) over the death last July, allegedly due to negligence, of several hundred cows at a   shelter for abandoned and old cattle. On Wednesday, he passed a judgment that penalized the shelter and suggested that the shelter monitor its funds and staff better. He also recommended that Rajasthan state law be amended to a life term for anyone who killed a cow. That’s a hot topic in a country where cow vigilantism is on the rise, with fatal attacks on Muslim and lower caste cattle traders and transporters, who typically include beef in their diets. Currently, cow slaughter is a crime in all but eight of India’s 35 states and union territories because cows are regarded as holy in Hinduism. (Buffaloes are exempt because they’re not revered in the same way: India is the world’s largest exporter of buffalo beef.) The current punishment for cow slaughter in Sharma’s home state: 10 years imprisonment   a fine up to $160. Sharma went on to recommend that the sacred cow replace the tiger as India’s national animal. Not everyone is amused by all this ado about animals. With Friday’s news of the Indian GDP falling to 6. 1 percent, many people are annoyed by the frivolous chatter. Presumably, peacocks won’t cry when their hashtag dies a natural death. Chhavi Sachdev is a journalist based in Mumbai. Contact her @chhavi"
"Now that we’re well past the start of spring, you’re probably inured already to all the green. I mean, after those long months of winter, everyone’s pumped about the first buds and shoots  —   so bright green and promising. But then, it’s all   leaves everywhere  —   whatever. Well, not me, pal. See, this spring I’ve been digging in on photosynthesis for some research I’m doing and, I gotta tell you, it’s blowing my mind. Now, for those of you who’ve been out of a bio class for a while, let’s remember that photosynthesis is the   shenanigans plants use to create food from sunlight. But why, exactly, is photosynthesis worth freaking over, a bit? Well, let’s jump into my   machine! When life first formed on Earth about 4 billion, or so, years ago, the only way   critters could get energy was from chemistry. They had to find   chemicals like methane and covert them into   chemicals like carbon dioxide. What was left over they used for, well, you know, being alive. But it was hard times. The chemical foodstuff like methane was limited. That kept life from doing what it likes best  —   reproducing like crazy to take over the entire planet. So, from life’s point of view, the situation back then was a little like trying to run a marathon on a diet of saltines. But, then, evolution got creative. Really creative. The sun sends the Earth the energy equivalent of 8, 000 atomic bombs every second. Eventually life, through evolution, figured out how to directly tap the energy in all of that sunlight. By combining light particles with molecules of carbon dioxide and water, photosynthesis opened the energy floodgates  —   freeing life from its starvation diet. Did I mention life taking over the world? Because that’s what happened. Literally. Using photosynthesis, life changed the entire planet. If you think I’m exaggerating, take a deep breath. The atmospheric oxygen you’re sucking in is only there because of photosynthesis. If it stopped, the oxygen in the air would react away pretty quickly. And why is oxygen so important for the Earth’s history? For starters think of big brains, like the kind we have knocking around our skulls. They would never have evolved without the   biochemistry oxygen allows. So that means you can thank photosynthesis for even thinking about thanking photosynthesis. Oh yeah, you can thank photosynthesis for our planet’s characteristic   color, too, since chlorophyll molecules, which are essential to photosynthesis, just love reflecting green light. So there you go. From ocean plankton to Venus’ flytraps, inside every plant there is an insanely complex little molecular engine that turns sunlight into food. Across billions of years, life figured out how to pull off this trick and, in the process, photosynthesis shaped the history of the entire planet. Not bad for a bunch of biomolecules. So, thank a leaf next time you see one  —   and celebrate the glory of the green. The glory that is photosynthesis. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"For years, states have been arguing that they are losing millions of dollars in uncollected taxes from online sales. In response, a few of them have begun crafting their own rules to get some of that tax money back. Massachusetts is one of the latest  —   and the way it’s doing this is unprecedented. ”I buy all my pet food and pet supplies online,” says Michelle O’Brien, a    Internet shopping fanatic. ”I buy most of my laundry detergent, shampoos and almost everything really besides groceries.” O’Brien  —   like a lot of Americans  —   started shopping online more in the past couple of years. ”You don’t even have to be . .. on your laptop,” she says. ”You can be pretty much anywhere, and just open an app and order some things.” Thanks to people like O’Brien, online sales are growing by about 15 percent each year. But all this   isn’t necessarily translating into tax dollars for states. Amazon, the largest online retailer, started collecting sales tax nationwide this past April. Most online retailers still don’t: Back in 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that retailers must have a physical presence in a state to collect taxes. ”It usually means when there’s a warehouse, an office, an employee located in those states,” says Richard Jones, a Boston tax attorney. ”It doesn’t have to be much, but it has to be something. Something real, something physical.” The cookie approach, Technically, when you shop online, you’re still supposed to   your state when you file your annual taxes. But in reality, most people don’t. And there’s nobody actively enforcing the rules. That means there’s a lot of potential money being left on the table for state governments. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimated that in 2015 states lost roughly $17 billion in uncollected taxes from electronic sales. Massachusetts is one of the latest states to step up the fight for tax dollars, issuing a new directive for    online retailers to begin collecting the 6. 25 percent state sales tax starting July 1. As a trigger, the state is adopting a hyperliteral definition of physical presence  —   one that relies on any downloaded apps as well as ”cookies,” the little bits of data that websites store on users’ computers or phones to track their visits. Massachusetts is now considering them a physical   operation for a company. ”Massachusetts is arguing that these vendors with no property and no people and no offices in this state, they still have physical presence because of Internet cookies,” Jones says. Essentially, it’s an Internet answer to an Internet problem. But Jones says it raises a lot of questions about how you define property. ”Who’s the owner? There’s a presumption that the Internet vendor retains ownership of that little tiny bit of advertising software tracking code,” Jones says. ”I’m not sure if that’s right.”    versus   But whether or not it’s right doesn’t matter to a lot of    stores  —   they’re happy something is finally being done as they say the current tax system hurts their businesses. ”You know, for years, retailers here and across the country have argued for a level playing field,” says Bill Rennie, vice president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. ”It’s become much more important each year now with the growth of mobile commerce. Folks can shop and comparison shop and purchase anywhere they want from their smartphone.” And so to some folks, the Massachusetts tax theory seems like sheer genius, but to others, it’s a shameless tax grab. Steve DelBianco is on the    side. He leads NetChoice, a national trade association representing   sites. He says under this strange Massachusetts theory, ”your business is subject to the taxation [and] regulation in any state where a user simply enters their website address. That can’t hold up to legal scrutiny, because it certainly doesn’t hold up to common sense.” DelBianco is not convinced a cookie on your computer is the same thing as a storefront in a strip mall. He is willing to take that argument to court and says his group is pursuing an injunction to block enforcement of the law before it goes into effect in July. Asma Khalid leads WBUR’s BostonomiX team, which covers the people, startups and companies driving the innovation economy. You can follow them @BostonomiX."
"Three former Penn State officials will be spending a few months in jail for their failure to report former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky to authorities, back when they first heard about Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children. Former university President Graham Spanier was given the most lenient sentence among the three men, The Associated Press reports: ”  Graham Spanier, 68, got a sentence of 4 to 12 months, with the first two to be spent in jail and the rest under house arrest. ”Former university athletic director Tim Curley, 63, received a sentence of 7 to 23 months, with three in jail. Former vice president Gary Schultz, 67, was sentenced to 6 to 23 months, with two months behind bars.” The men were sentenced Friday. All three were convicted of misdemeanor charges of child endangerment. Spanier had also been accused of conspiracy, but a jury acquitted him on that charge. Spanier plans to appeal, the AP writes. Sandusky, a former assistant coach in Penn State’s football program, is serving a   to   term in prison after he was convicted on 45 counts of child sexual abuse. His molestation of multiple boys spanned a decade and a half. He continues to appeal his sentence. In 2001, a graduate assistant named Mike McQueary saw Sandusky abusing a boy and reported what he observed to head coach Joe Paterno, Schultz and Curley. Those men described McQueary’s account to Spanier. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that emails show the officials considering, then rejecting, the idea of reporting Sandusky to the police. Sandusky was not arrested until 2011, a decade later."
"Updated at 11:46 a. m. ET, The U. S. economy added 138, 000 jobs in May, according to the monthly jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday morning. The national unemployment rate nudged lower, to 4. 3 percent from 4. 4 percent  —   a   low. The 4. 4 percent level had been the lowest since since 2007, before the recession hit. But the jobs numbers were not as strong as some were hoping to see. Economists had been expecting job gains of about 185, 000, NPR’s Yuki Noguchi reports, and to see the unemployment rate holding steady. Last month’s report initially showed job creation bouncing back in April, with the economy adding 211, 000 jobs to nonfarm payrolls. That figure was revised to 174, 000 Friday, a drop of 37, 000. Revisions also cut disappointing March results even further, from a gain of 79, 000 to a gain of only 50, 000 jobs. The numbers suggest job growth is slowing slightly, The Associated Press reports, with an average gain of roughly 121, 000 jobs over the past three months, compared with an average of 181, 000 over the past 12 months. Still, in May, the number of unemployed Americans (6. 9 million) remained essentially unchanged from the previous month. ”Since January, the unemployment rate has declined by 0. 5 percentage point, and the number of unemployed has decreased by 774, 000,” the BLS said. ”Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs declined by 211, 000 to 3. 3 million in May,” according to the BLS report. The Department of Labor also recently released more specific data about the job markets in different U. S. cities. For metropolitan areas in April, the agency says Ames, Iowa, and Boulder, Colo. had the lowest unemployment rates, at 1. 7 percent and 1. 8 percent, respectively. The highest unemployment rate was in El Centro, Calif. at 19. 2 percent. For large cities (with a population over 1 million in the 2010 Census) the Denver area had the lowest unemployment rate, at 2. 1 percent. The highest rate was in the Cleveland area, at 5. 4 percent."
"Updated at 7 p. m. ET, President Trump’s administration filed a petition with the U. S. Supreme Court on Thursday night seeking to reverse rulings by lower courts in Hawaii and Maryland that blocked a temporary ban on travel to the United States from six   countries. The Trump administration says the Constitution gives the president ”broad authority to prevent aliens abroad from entering this country when he deems it in the nation’s interest.” On Friday, the Supreme Court set a June 12 deadline for the travel ban’s challengers to respond to this petition. Federal judges issued a nationwide temporary restraining order and injunction that blocked the travel ban in March, after separate legal challenges were mounted by the International Refugee Assistance Project, which filed its suit in Maryland, and by the state of Hawaii. Last month, the Maryland District Court’s preliminary injunction was upheld by the 4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with the chief judge writing that the travel ban ”drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” The 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on May 15 regarding the administration’s request for a stay pending appeal to lift the Hawaii injunction, but it has not ruled. Trump and the Justice Department are asking the Supreme Court to review the case in the 4th Circuit and to place stays on the injunctions that resulted from both cases. The administration made three filings with a total of more than 880 pages late Thursday. The executive order was issued in early March. It ”suspends for 90 days the entry of foreign nationals from six countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism (Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen),” the White House says in its Supreme Court filing. In a statement about the new filing, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said: ”We have asked the Supreme Court to hear this important case and are confident that President Trump’s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism. The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism, until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States.” Trump’s executive order calls for a ”worldwide review” of the visa process to take place during the three months of the travel ban. It would also suspend the U. S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days and lower the maximum number of refugees who can enter the U. S. in 2017. The two cases in question both sought to block the travel ban  —   but the Hawaii case also resulted in the court’s blocking the Trump administration’s plan to suspend the Refugee Admissions Program and cut the number of refugees. In its Supreme Court filing, the Justice Department says, ”Respondents barely mentioned any of these provisions in seeking to restrain the Order.” The contested executive order is a revised version of Trump’s first attempt at a travel ban, which was issued during his first week in office and sparked a lawsuit led by Washington state. The temporary travel ban created chaos at airports both in the United States and abroad, as officials grappled with ambiguous instructions on whether and whom to admit to the country. A U. S. District Court judge in Seattle blocked the executive order. The Justice Department appealed to the 9th Circuit, which upheld the lower court’s injunction. After first pledging to take the case to the U. S. Supreme Court, the president issued a revised executive order on March 6 in an effort to address objections raised by the Seattle judge."
"In the dense megacities of East Asia, millions of people dwell in   with very little green space. This isn’t an ideal setting to raise big dogs or more unusual pets. Cramped quarters aren’t great for domesticated pets in general. The solution? Entrepreneurs in cities like Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong  —   and my current hometown of Seoul  —   have opened animal cafes, where you can have a coffee and work on your laptop, surrounded by furry,   friends. This all sounds OK, right? Well, we thought so, too. Until we tried a raccoon cafe . .. Watch all of Elise Tries on YouTube. "
"Fired FBI Director James Comey may tell the Senate Intelligence Committee next week that President Trump suggested he ease off at least part of the FBI’s Russia investigation. But a month ago, he said this to the Senate Judiciary Committee: ”I’m talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason, that would be a very big deal. It’s not happened in my experience.” Why did Comey say he has never been asked to stop an investigation for political reasons after that conversation with Trump? Some writers on the Internet, particularly Comey critics, have a couple of simple explanations  —   the memos are fake or he perjured himself in front of Congress. But there’s more context. Here is the full exchange from the Judiciary Committee hearing, when Comey was being questioned by Sen. Mazie Hirono,  . HIRONO: So if the attorney general or senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation, can they halt that FBI investigation? COMEY: In theory, yes. HIRONO: Has it happened? COMEY: Not in my experience. Because it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something that  —   without an appropriate purpose. I mean where oftentimes they give us opinions that ”we don’t see a case there and so you ought to stop investing resources in it.” But I’m talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason, that would be a very big deal. It’s not happened in my experience. Hirono’s question was very specific  —   referring to ”the attorney general or senior officials at the Department of Justice”  —   and not the president. There’s been no indication that officials at the Justice Department applied pressure to Comey to stop any part of the Russia investigation. What we have learned from Comey associates is that he wrote a memo shortly after a private meeting with Trump in February, in which Comey recounted Trump saying, ”I hope you can let this go.” This was just after national security adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign after misleading Vice President Pence and others regarding his interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump’s comment to Comey was said to refer to the investigation of Flynn as part of the FBI’s larger Russia probe. As NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported, Comey recalled giving a nonresponse and wrote a ”very, very detailed” memo to recount the meeting shortly after. Comey is known to keep such memos to record important professional episodes, like the night in 2004 when he stopped senior members of the Bush administration from reauthorizing the domestic surveillance program without proper approval. Congress wants to see Comey’s memos regarding his meetings with Trump. In legal proceedings, such contemporaneous notes can hold a lot of credibility. But the White House has vehemently denied Trump ever said anything that would pressure Comey to back off of Flynn or the larger Russia investigation. ”While the President has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the President has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” a White House official said in a statement. ”The President has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr. Comey.” It seemed to some that Comey’s statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee just before he was fired may have affirmed the White House’s position, because that quote was often heard without the question. When Comey   in public before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, he could well be asked whether he was lying in his earlier testimony. But given Hirono’s wording and Comey’s   attention to detail, he may simply say that he was answering the question he was asked."
"Russia’s intelligence services interfered in the 2016 presidential election to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump win, the U. S. intelligence community says. During this time, American spy agencies say, they also found that people connected to Trump’s campaign were communicating with Russians in ways that caused ”concern.” The story has raised many big questions. So NPR News has created this resource of background information to try to help make it all a little clearer.  The people involved in the aftermath of the   range from some of the   in the world  —   including the current and immediately former presidents of the United States  —   to   government officials and   campaign aides since elevated to prominence. The Russian election interference and its aftermath have involved a range of government intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The primary source materials referenced in investigations or legal proceedings including public U. S. law and potential evidence. A Justice Department special counsel and multiple congressional committees are looking into potential connections between Trump campaign associates and the  . The legal,   or law enforcement ideas behind the headlines. NPR’s Context Cards are a product of NPR News, including work by Camila Domonoske, David Eads, Philip Ewing, Dana Farrington, Tyler Fisher, Brittany Mayes, Amy Morgan and Martina Stewart. This page was originally published on June 2, 2017."
"We already knew Nick Grant was a sick lyricist. Then he arrived at NPR headquarters with a mild case of the flu and quickly demonstrated why the title of his debut  —   Return of the Cool  —   should be taken quite literally. Hailing from a region where rap’s young guns and lil innovators tend to defy tradition, the South      native proves being a purist is not just for the old heads. Being cut from a vintage cloth has kept him in good company. He groomed himself on high school freestyle battles before working his way up to become the first signee to Culture Republic, the new partnership started by three of the most proven executives in the game, Jason Geter (T. I. Grand Hustle) Chaka Zulu (Ludacris, Disturbing Tha Peace) and Bernard Parks (Goodie Mob, Organized Noize). He’s a sly reminder that, contrary to popular opinion, the South still has a mouthful to say  —   and it doesn’t always have to be yelled, gurgled or   to death. Sometimes it can be conveyed coolly, from a seated position, while backed by Washington D. C.’s soul garage band Black Alley, and still cut through all the noise. Return Of The Cool is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Nick Grant (vocals) Danny Henderson (drums) Andrew White (guitar) Joshua Cameron (bass) Branden Jacobs (keys) Walter Clark (percussion) Credits, Producers: Rodney Carmichael, Niki Walker Audio Engineers: Suraya Mohamed, Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Niki Walker, Kara Frame, Bronson Arcuri Production Assistant: Maia Stern Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Updated at 6:30 a. m. ET June 4, London Metropolitan Police say at least seven people have died, and 48 others were injured, after the terrorist attacks at London Bridge and Borough Market on Saturday. Updates to this story can now be found here. In a statement broadcast on Sunday morning, Metropolitan Police‏ Commissioner Cressida Dick announced that a seventh victim had died. The department tweeted a video clip of the press briefing. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said in an earlier statement on Twitter, that, in addition, ”three attackers shot dead by police.” Police believe all the attackers have been killed, but say the investigation is ongoing. ”We believe that this incident is under control,” Commissioner Cressida Dick said. ”However, a large cordon remains in the area . .. as we need still to carry out a thorough search of the area to ensure that everyone has been accounted for, and to make the whole area safe.” On Saturday evening, police responded to the scene at London Bridge after a vehicle plowed into pedestrians. According to The Associated Press, a van struck multiple people on the bridge in a    incident, and ”witnesses also reported seeing people being stabbed by at least one man.” Says the AP: ”Police say the incidents occurred on the bridge and at Borough Market a short distance away. ”The force initially said they were also responding to a reported third incident, in the Vauxhall area of London. But they said later that turned out to be an unrelated stabbing.” Rowley said armed officers responded quickly and confronted three male suspects. ”The suspects were wearing what looked like explosive vests but these were later established to be hoaxes,” he said. Before they’d confirmed any deaths, British police had retweeted a statement from the London Ambulance service, which said in part, ”We have taken at least 20 patients to six hospitals across London.” That number was later updated to 48. British Transport Police say an injured BTP officer is expected to survive. A day after British Prime Minister Theresa May expressed sympathy with those caught up in the ”dreadful events,” she said that campaigns will resume as the U. K. gears up for the general election Thursday. Following the third deadly attack in Britain since March, May said the recent attacks, while not connected, are all driven by the ”single evil ideology of Islamic extremism.” Late Saturday evening, the U. S. Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying, ”At this time, we have no information to indicate a specific, credible terror threat in the United States.” The White House subsequently said in a statement that President Trump called Prime Minister May to offer his condolences ”for the brutal terror attacks”: ”He praised the heroic response of police and other first responders and offered the full support of the United States Government in investigating and bringing those responsible for these heinous acts to justice.” Trump also tweeted a similar sentiment: ”Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K. we will be there . ..” The original story continues: NPR’s Frank Langfitt says that the bridge is closed in both directions and that officials are asking people to stay away from the area. Armed police also responded to reports of stabbings and shots fired at the nearby renowned Borough Market, as well as to the unrelated stabbing in the Vauxhall district. In response to these incidents, police have posted a    graphic to Twitter, telling people in the areas to run or hide and to alert police when it is safe to do so. Meanwhile, White House press secretary Sean Spicer tweeted, ”National security team has briefed @POTUS on situation at #LondonBridge and will continue to provide updates.” Britain’s terror threat was recently lowered from ”critical,” which had been put in place after a bombing killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert last month in Manchester. This is a developing story. We’ll update with further information as it becomes available."
"Late night host Bill Maher is under fire for using a racial slur on a live broadcast of his show Real Time on Friday. During an interview with Sen. Ben Sasse,  . about his new book, The Vanishing American Adult, Maher and Sasse were discussing adults who dress up for Halloween. Sasse said that happened less often in Nebraska, where the practice is ”frowned upon.” ”I’ve got to get to Nebraska more,” said Maher. To which Sasse earnestly replied, ”You’re welcome. We’d love to have you work in the fields with us.” Maher narrowed his brow. ”Work in the fields?” he said, raising his palms. ”Senator, I’m a house [ ].” Sasse smiled uncomfortably, and some groans were audible from the audience. ”It’s a joke,” protested Maher, moving the conversation along. Claps could then be heard from the audience. While neither Maher nor Sasse addressed the slur in the moment, by Saturday afternoon, both had done so. ”Friday nights are always my worst night of sleep because I’m up reflecting on the things I should or shouldn’t have said on my live show,” Maher said in a statement. ”Last night was a particularly long night as I regret the word I used in the banter of a live moment. The word was offensive, and I regret saying it and am very sorry.” In a series of tweets Saturday morning, Sasse wrote: ”I’m a 1st Amendment absolutist. Comedians get latitude to cross hard lines. But free speech comes with a responsibility to speak up when folks use that word. Me just cringing last night wasn’t good enough. Here’s what I wish I’d been quick enough to say in the moment: ’Hold up, why would you think it’s OK to use that word? . .. The history of the   is an attack on universal human dignity. It’s therefore an attack on the American Creed. Don’t use it.’ ” Criticism and calls to #FireBillMaher quickly emerged on Twitter after the show aired. Activist DeRay Mckesson tweeted a clip of Maher’s comments and said that the host ”had to go. There are no explanations that make this acceptable.” Chance the Rapper asked HBO to air no further episodes of Real Time. The Rev. Al Sharpton tweeted that his National Action Network ”wants to meet   HBO asap about the normalizing of the use of the N word. I know and love Bill Maher but this is unacceptable.” There are no indications that HBO will fire Maher. ”Bill Maher’s comment last night was completely inexcusable and tasteless,” the cable network said in a statement. ”We are removing his deeply offensive comment from any subsequent airings of the show.” The episode occurred two days after comedian Kathy Griffin was dropped by CNN after appearing a photograph in which she poses with a bloody model of President Trump’s head."
"Even though President Trump took office with   approval ratings, multiple polls (and, accordingly, news reports) have shown his approval rating dipping even further. Look at his ratings on polling aggregators like RealClearPolitics or FiveThirtyEight, and the drop sure looks dramatic. While his approval rating has fallen and the gap between approval and disapproval has widened considerably, it has not shifted in any extraordinary sense. This is, in part, because of how those charts are scaled, as well as the fact that they show the widening gap between approval and disapproval (and that he started lower than past presidents  —   there is only so low you can go). To be clear, this isn’t to say that those are misleading. But it is to say that with more historical context, Trump’s sliding approval rating really hasn’t slid that much. By RealClearPolitics’ average, Trump’s approval rating has fallen off by about 4 points since the first day of his term. FiveThirtyEight has it a bit bigger, at around 6 points. We wanted to know how big this type of decline compared with that of other presidents. Gallup has been tracking presidential approval ratings since the Truman administration, so we used its data to figure this out. According to Gallup, Trump’s approval rating is 5 points lower than it was when he took office. Compared with that, other presidents’ approval ratings in their first four months have fallen by more  —   often, much more  —   than those once they took office. (Gallup measured approval ratings less often in the past, so we tried to find approximate time periods for other presidents.) Trump’s disapproval rating has also climbed, by 9 points in Gallup’s poll. Once again, this is far smaller than the increase that most other presidents have sustained in their first four months. As a side note here, you might notice that Trump’s disapproval increase is larger than the decline in his approval rating, which may seem odd, but that is a common trend among presidents. When pollsters have asked in late January about approval of new presidents, people often answer that they don’t know how they feel or have no opinion they simply haven’t known that president long enough. So once they do decide, approval and disapproval ratings both tend to climb. (For Trump, check out the Jan. 31 through Feb. 3 period, which shows a sharp climb in both.) During that sorting out, as it turns out, disapproval often climbs by more than approval. ”[Approval] is a pretty labile measure in general,” said Frank Newport,    at Gallup. But for Trump, he said, it just ”isn’t changing much.” He added, ”When I talk about it, I generally say his approval hasn’t changed that much on a relative basis.” A big part of this is, of course, that his approval is so low that it doesn’t have as much room to fall as it otherwise might. From that perspective, it could be considered notable that his approval rating has fallen as much as other presidents whose approval ratings were much higher. As with so many other phenomena in politics these days, polarization appears to be another driving factor here. Democrats had little love for Trump to begin with, and nothing thus far has shaken Republicans’ loyalty to him. Given his   approval ratings, Trump would have to lose ground among independents and Republicans in order to dip much more. For proof, a look at the smallest gap between Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of the past dozen presidents during their first (roughly) four months in office. Granted, there are differences between Gallup’s data in the 1960s and today  —   that is, it took far fewer measurements of approval than it does now, so the data doesn’t have the    ups and downs that today might make any given gap slightly smaller or bigger. But the trend is what is important  —   approval gaps for new presidents have widened in recent years, and for Trump, the gap is remarkably wide. One telling historical comparison of how polarizing Trump in particular is: Democrats’ approval of the president is at 8 percent right now, according to Gallup. That is right around, or perhaps even a hair under, where Democrats’ approval of Nixon was when he left office. ”It’s more tribal than anything else,” said Patrick Murray, founding director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. ”The   system has moved from this idea that these were two admirable foes who just have different approaches to governance to seeing the other party as an existential threat.” He points to the relative movement (or lack thereof) of approval by party as proof, noting that, for example, Nixon’s job approval fell to the   by the end of his presidency, when he was embroiled in the Watergate scandal. Should the Russia investigation become much more damaging to the White House or should another scandal arise, Murray said, ”there’s the possibility that that won’t happen to Donald Trump, because people are so viscerally tied to their party identification today.”"
"When Colby Palmer started his freshman year at Virginia Commonwealth University, some students approached him in his dorm and asked whether he wanted to play quidditch. Palmer had read all of the Harry Potter books and knew about the sport but said he felt reluctant to try it out. ”My impressions of quidditch was just that it’s for nerds by nerds  —   that they wouldn’t be like people who I would find things in common with,” Palmer says. Despite his hesitations, Palmer did give it a try and found he loved it and the community. Now, he’s heading into his senior year at VCU and is spending the summer playing for the Washington Admirals, one of 16 Major League Quidditch teams. The season starts this weekend. Maybe you’ve never heard of quidditch. And you might have missed the images of actor Daniel Radcliffe as the boy wizard Harry Potter plunging toward the ground on a flying broomstick in the screen adaptation of J. K. Rowling’s series. If that is the case, you have a lot to learn. But then again, so does everyone who comes to the sport. ”There’s such a dichotomy within the community because there are people who got into it because of Harry Potter and became athletic through friendship and playing, and then there are people like me who are looking for something to really stay in shape,” Palmer says. Quidditch 101, Unlike the majority of large spectator sports, quidditch is more complex  —   partly because it is rooted in magic. Teams may have only seven players on the field, or pitch, at a time: three chasers, two beaters, one keeper and one seeker. All of the players wear headbands, and each color designates their position. Chasers wear white, beaters wear black, keepers wear green, and seekers wear yellow. There are three hoops mounted on each side of the pitch, and each player has a broom or stick. And, unlike basketball, baseball and football, in quidditch, up to five balls can be moving around the pitch at all times. First, there is the quaffle. In the   version of the game, it’s a volleyball handled by the chasers and is the only ball that results in a score when it goes through the hoops. Each goal is 10 points. Then there are the bludgers. Those familiar with Harry Potter might remember that these balls have a mind of their own and are sent speeding toward other players to knock them off brooms. In real life, these balls don’t fly, but they can still knock players off their brooms. There are three bludgers on the field at a time. The bludgers are dodgeballs and are used by the beaters like they would a regular dodgeball. If players are hit by a bludger, they dismount from their brooms and run back to their hoops and tag up. On both defense and offense, the bludgers are used to clear paths for a team’s chasers as players run toward the opposing team’s hoops and help the keepers  —   or goalies  —   protect their own hoops. Bludgers also used to keep the opposing team’s seeker away from the snitch, the last of the balls. Like in the fictional sport quidditch is based on, the snitch is vastly smaller than the other balls  —   about the size of a tennis ball  —   and it’s worth 30 points if caught. But the snitch is also a position in the game, though this person is not a member of either team on the field, to keep things fair. The ball is secured in a cloth strip, which is Velcroed to the back of the person’s shorts, similar to flag football. The person who is the snitch can do just about anything, including running, dodging and grappling, to make sure the seekers  —   whose sole focus is to catch the snitch  —   don’t get the ball. Once a seeker catches the snitch, the match is over. With all of that going on at once on the field, it can seem a little chaotic to   viewers, but that complex strategy is what a lot of players enjoy about the game. ”If you don’t have the snitch, you have the quaffle and three bludgers active at all time on the field. It creates such a more dynamic sport, and it can kind of play out in crazy ways,” says Ethan Sturm, a   of Major League Quidditch. ”There’s so many things you can do strategically because there’s so much more variety . .. you have to worry about a bludger taking you out of the play and allowing the quaffle to be easily scored.” The gender rule, Additionally, quidditch has proven itself to be one of the most progressive sports in terms of gender equality. The game isn’t divided based on sex, and anyone, regardless of their gender identity, is welcome to play. The rule was established in US Quidditch, which serves as the governing body for the sport and has a league and season that takes place during the school year. ”It’s not strictly the gender binary by either male or female, so it creates a really unique way for people to identify outside of that binary to have a way that they can play sports and be accepted for who they are and really be able to have an atmosphere and a community that fully accepts them and be themselves,” says Sarah Woolsey, executive director of US Quidditch. The main rule regarding gender on the field only allows a maximum of four members of a team who identify the same way to be playing at a time. This is something that many players, such as Augie Monroe of the Texas Cavalry team, like about the sport. Monroe played football in high school but says the locker room culture turned him off. That is not a problem with quidditch, he says. ”I wasn’t all that big on the [football] culture, and I love   teams because there’s a balance of opinions and perspectives just in communicating with people on your team,” Monroe says. ”I think it’s a more fun group to be a part of.” And Monroe has been a part of the quidditch community for a while. He started his career in 2011 at the University of Texas, where he played with the Longhorns as they won three straight national titles from 2013 to 2015. After graduating, he knew he wasn’t done playing and founded the Texas Cavalry team, which plays in the US Quidditch league and won the championship cup in April. Although he has been on four championship teams, Monroe was far from the best player on the pitch when he started out. It was the people that made him come back. Once he found his place on the pitch, Monroe just had to work on the skills. ”The thing that proved the most difficult was running around with a broom and getting used to that,” Monroe says. ”I kept like tripping over myself and didn’t have a clue what was going on with the team, but then again at the same time, it wasn’t the most competitive at that point.” Quidditch through the ages, The level of competition has quickly changed despite the sport’s young age. The first quidditch match took place at Middlebury College in Vermont in 2005. Initially, the sport spread slowly, with the concentration of teams located in the Northeast. As time went on, teams from the across the country started to compete in the annual championship tournament, but they weren’t limited to colleges and universities. Community teams started to form and are also part of the US Quidditch league. By 2012, more than 110 teams had registered with US Quidditch, and along with that growth came rule changes. One of the major shifts involved the snitch. Back in 2005, the snitch wasn’t limited to just running around the pitch and could often run off to completely different areas of a campus where a match was taking place. While that was great for keeping with the spirit of how the snitch is in the magical world, it turned out to not be the best implementation for consistent play. ”Some of those changes are a lot bigger than others, and you know we’re just always kind of looking at what we can do to make this sport as safe as possible and as effective as possible for quality competition and fair opportunity for all players,” Woolsey says. And significant changes are on the horizon. One of the biggest issues facing US Quidditch right now is the debate surrounding the mixture of collegiate and community teams. Community teams are largely made up of previous collegiate players who, after graduating, didn’t want to stop playing. These players often have more experience than those on college teams who just joined the sport, and when community teams form, they are usually made up of many strong players, so issues of fairness arise. ”I think it’s a whole lot easier to get people involved and excited about quidditch when school teams are competing against other school teams and having that as something that’s kind of reassuring and something that is familiar and makes sense to people in the general public who are college sports fans,” says Jack McGovern, media outreach coordinator for Major League Quidditch. US Quidditch is working on changing how the collegiate and community teams compete against one another, but as that is taking place, a new league has emerged. Playing in the majors, Major League Quidditch started when   Sturm saw the potential for the sport to draw more fans and become more established. Sturm played quidditch throughout his undergraduate and graduate years at Tufts University and watched as his teammates graduated and got involved with community teams. ”While I could tell, and people who knew the sport well could see how far it was coming, it was just in the format which was a really helter skelter regular season and then a giant tournament at the end,” Sturm says. ”It was just really hard to kind of reach out using that format to a wider audience to get them to perceive it as a sport.” Unlike US Quidditch, MLQ’s season is much shorter and takes place over the summer. The 16 teams are divided into four regions, with four teams in each region. Like any other major league, the teams travel and compete against one another in series and then all the teams converge for a championship at the end of the summer. ”I knew that if we wanted quidditch to succeed and kind of pop into the public eye, we needed to do it in a more consumable form,” he says. Before the season started, each team held tryouts for collegiate and noncollegiate players. Once the rosters were formed, each team had 30 players. The players and teams are   but hold fundraisers to pay for their equipment and travel. Sturm says that in addition to being consumable, the sport also has to be sustainable, which prompted MLQ to create practice teams in each of the 16 cities for players who may not have made the roster but are still working on developing their skills. In addition to players having room for improvement, Sturm says the sport does as well. ”I think we’ve still barely scratched the surface on what can be done in the sport. I think it’s easy to be lazy and do what’s been working,” he says. ”We definitely want to get into more people’s eyes and have a larger following.” The next generation, Growth of the sport is something many in the sport want to make happen. ”We’re kind of getting to a point where some of the older players are starting to retire,” Sturm says. ”Is there going to be a kind of a second generation of great players or is it kind of dissipated out because of this stagnation at the top?” The way the structure is now, and because quidditch was founded on a college campus, the majority of the players and teams are at a college level. And while there are community teams, many of the players are graduates of college teams. There are some high school teams, but there is not a solid structure for them. That doesn’t mean there isn’t interest though. US Quidditch has adapted rules for high school and middle school teams. One big difference is that tackling is not allowed, because quidditch can get rough and sometimes players get concussions and broken bones. Sturm admits that a lot of people who play or who come to the sport eagerly are fans of the Harry Potter series and says that is something that will always be a factor. But he says that people who aren’t fans learn to love the game, but the key to getting recruits isn’t asking them whether they want to play. ”You can’t talk to them about quidditch  —   you’ll never change their mind on it and you’re not going to get past any preconceived notions they have,” Sturm says. ”You really need to show them . .. because if people watching quidditch can see the technicalities and see the athleticism, it 9 times out of 10 gets rid of all those preconceived notions, and then you have somebody who can potentially get into the sport.” Though he was at first hesitant to join the game, this is Colby Palmer’s second season with the Washington Admirals. Once he joined the game, he found it was more than a way to stay in shape. ”The people on this pitch right here are some of my lifelong friends,” Palmer says. ”These are the people that I’ll be friends with for the rest of my life and that’s something that other sports really don’t afford you in the same way that quidditch does. It gives you a sense of community as well as a sense of competition, and to me, nothing binds people more than being on a team and working towards a goal. And it just so happens they’re some of the coolest people on the planet.”"
"This is the story of a    duck that is being called a counterfeit of a different giant duck, which itself is a replica of a beloved bath toy. Got that? Here we go. As part of a celebration for Canada’s 150th birthday, Ontario’s provincial government gave a grant to a waterfront festival, which will spend about $150, 000 to rent and deploy a   floating duck. The oversize toy weighs 11 tons and will visit six cities in the province. In addition to the typical grumbling you would expect about a government spending money to rent a giant rubber duck, there is also this: The original giant rubber duck maker says the fowl Ontario is getting is a counterfeit bird. Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s Rubber Duck has been showing up in ports since 2007. Cities the world over have paid for Hofman’s duck to float in their waterways and draw big crowds. It’s a statement duck, and Hofman says the statement is this: ”We are living on a planet, we are one family, and the global waters are our bathtub, so it joins people.” But then a guy named Craig Samborski made another enormous inflatable duck. That duck, which he and   Ryan Whaley call ”Mama Duck,” is even bigger. And some localities have hired that duck! That includes Ontario. Hence this press release sent from Hofman’s studio on Wednesday: ”In 2014, Studio Florentijn Hofman retained Mr. Craig Samborski to assist in the production of our art installation in Los Angeles. Since that time, Mr. Samborski has been using our patterns, our design, and our intellectual property to profit off of what was supposed to be a public art installation,” said Kim Enbers, a spokesperson for Studio Florentijn Hofman. ”The duck was never supposed to be used for profit. It was designed to be a public art installation to bring joy and hope wherever it went. By renting the duck at exorbitant rates against the wishes of its creator, Mr. Samborski not only is stealing this joy from the public, he is stealing from the legitimate artist and creator of this exhibit,” Enbers continued. ”We are deeply saddened that the Canadian people have to pay for the actions of Mr. Samborski. In fact, we feel that it is the antithesis of what we assume the Canada 150 celebrations should be all about. Had a Canadian government official tried to contact us, we would have provided the real duck. It is unfortunate this due diligence wasn’t completed.” On Friday, CBC’s Carol Off interviewed Whaley,   of the supposed counterfeit: CAROL OFF: Mr. Whaley, these are serious claims being made about your duck by this artist. Is your duck a fraud? RYAN WHALEY: It is not. I’d like to remind you that we are talking about a large rubber duck. So, the duck is public domain. That duck was actually created in the ’30s, not by Florentijn Hofman as he claims . .. Our duck is actually based on a toy company in the ’30s, which is now considered public domain. We’ve actually had an intellectual property lawyer look into this, and we were able to patent our duck and trademark it to have it at events. The duck, itself, could still be used by anybody. So, someone could take a picture of the duck we’re using and make a bigger one and there would be no legal precedent at all. CO: But Mr. Hofman said you have been using his patterns, his design and his intellectual property. RW: Once again, that duck is public domain. It goes back to the 1930s way before Florentijn Hofman ever did anything. . .. If he has any legal precedent at all, I would encourage him to reach out. But, he will not. Events featuring Hofman’s duck have not always gone smoothly. In 2013, Rubber Duck floated in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, until it deflated. A few months later, it popped up in Taiwan’s Keelung Port, when, before ”scores of people gathered on a quayside,” it suddenly burst. Hofman’s press release this week is not the first alleged copyright issue around the duck. When the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust brought Hofman’s duck to town for a festival, a local man named Joe Wos made   depicting a rubber duck, accompanied by some yinzer slang. The trust sent him a    letter, calling his   ”a major problem.” ”It symbolizes the David and Goliath story,” Wos told the Pittsburgh  . ”A little rubber duck versus a big rubber duck.” In 2015, Philadelphia hired Samborski’s duck, over the protestations of Hofman. ”It’s not his duck,” Samborski told Philadelphia magazine. ”It’s just another large inflatable duck.” And then that duck in Philly also deflated in dramatic fashion. The rubber duck isn’t the only public art being scrutinized as a copycat. In 2015, a   of Chicago’s Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor popped up in Karamay, China. And just last week, artist Jeff Koons admitted that his    inflated ballerina at Rockefeller Center was in fact a copy of a sculpture by a Ukrainian woman. Beyond the copyright issue and the ongoing   problems, there is also this question for city officials thinking of bringing a giant duck to town: Why? CityLab’s Kriston Capps plumbed this issue in 2014, pointing out the expense not only to city budgets, but also the opportunity cost of not spending that money supporting local artists: ”Cities that cash in with Rubber Duck are outsourcing their public art . .. ”Creativity is and ought to be a source of pride for cities as diverse as London, Beijing, and Los Angeles  —   and an engine for their economies. When I see images of it floating in a new harbor, I can almost hear Rubber Duck whispering, in a raspy duck voice: The place you love is no more. ”When it’s done right, public art expresses some unique value about a city’s particular cultural vantage point. Rubber Duck has all the nutritional value and regional identity of a Diet Coke.” So for this summer’s birthday festivities, Ontario will get a huge duck. But it might end up a little deflated."
"Welcome to another edition of NPR Ed’s Weekly Roundup! Warren announces ’DeVos Watch’ Since before her entry into politics, Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  . has been a fervent advocate of consumer protection, particularly when it comes to financial matters, like student loans. In an   and a video this week, she introduced ’DeVos Watch,’ to intensify oversight of what she called the U. S. Secretary of Education’s ”steps that undermine protections for students and taxpayers.” What are these alleged steps? Most of the actions that the Education Department has taken so far with respect to student loans are pretty tough to unpack in simple terms. Betsy DeVos hired two advisers from the   college industry, one of whom resigned after Warren sent a pointed letter asking about conflicts of interest. The secretary delayed enforcement of an   rule called ”gainful employment” that was meant to rein in  . And she’s signaled a rollback in oversight of the servicers that collect student loans. Finally, the head of the office of Federal Student Aid suddenly resigned last week, citing ”the risk associated with the current environment in the department.” As part of her project, Warren is asking for ”whistleblower tips” about DeVos from the general public. In other DeVos news, a story in The New York Times pointed out that some of her appointees are more diverse than one might assume. And the secretary raised eyebrows by issuing a public statement in praise of President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. Online upgrades for special education and   repayment, The federal hub for resources on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, was revamped and relaunched this week. There was an outcry when the site went down briefly in February, close to the time of DeVos’ confirmation. And, the IRS data retrieval tool is now back up and working for those applying for   repayment of their student loans. This online tool experienced a ”major” security breach and was taken down in the middle of college application season, potentially bogging down applications for federal student aid. The department says the tool will be back up for college applicants this October. Education journalists meet, without the Education Secretary, The 70th annual National Seminar of the Education Writers Association took place this week, the largest single gathering of journalists on the education beat. The association’s top award for the year went to Brian Rosenthal, whose series in the Houston Chronicle investigated how state education officials devised a system to limit access to special education. NPR Ed ran a   this week, on the impact to English Language Learners. Every previous education secretary has addressed the group DeVos begged off due to a scheduling conflict. Slate, Columbia University investigate online high school courses, Slate magazine just wrapped up an   series on how online courses are impacting high school graduation rates, concluding: ”The view from the ground suggests that many online credit recovery courses are subpar substitutes for traditional classroom instruction.” A team of reporters found dramatic increases in graduation rates in districts that ”relied on virtual learning as a crutch to lets kids retake —  and sometimes retake and retake —  core subjects that they failed the first time around.” New Orleans principal loses his job after being filmed with Nazi insignia, Nicholas Dean, principal of the Crescent Leadership Academy, an alternative charter high school in New Orleans, was fired after a video surfaced of him wearing Nazi and white nationalist insignia. Dean was spotted at a protest against the removal of a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee in downtown New Orleans. Initially, he told the The   that, ”I went because I am a historian.” Later, after his dismissal, he had no comment. NPR Ed interviewed Dean as part of a story about Crescent Leadership Academy back in 2015. He is an Air Force veteran who was then in his first year as principal at the school, which accepts students who have had trouble at other schools or with the law. The students are overwhelmingly  . Free college  —   for a few, The city of Boston announced a new free college tuition program for   students, called The Boston Bridge. High school seniors graduating this spring are eligible. They must first apply for federal Pell Grants and enroll full time at one of three area community colleges, with intent to transfer and stay on track to graduate in four years. The city and state will cover tuition and fees over and above the Pell Grant, but not living expenses. Boston already has a Tuition Free Community College initiative and Massachusetts has a Commonwealth Commitment, with a GPA requirement, both launched last year. These have just a few dozen students each."
"The word of the week is covfefe. Ask your doctor about covfefe. Say it loud and there’s music playing say it soft and it’s almost like praying  —   covfefe. At 12:06 a. m. Wednesday, President Trump tweeted, ”Despite the constant negative press covfefe”  —   and nothing more. Twitter runnethed over with questions, speculation, GIFs and jokes, which we won’t repeat because if there’s anything worse than fake news in the news business, it’s old jokes. Several people ran the word through translation software, and briefly reported that covfefe is Samoan which Samoans say it’s not. I entered covfefe into a rhyme generator: no match, but Mojave and Qadhafi are rated as close. Way out o’er the sands of the Mojave. The winds whip and whisper covfefe. President Trump deleted his tweet at 5:50 a. m. Just after 6 a. m. he posted a new message: ”Who can figure out the true meaning of ’covfefe’ ? ??” he wrote, followed by three question marks. ”Enjoy!” Like a lot of people, I assumed the president meant to type a complaint about negative press ”coverage,” but his fingers misfired and tapped out ”covfefe.” Who among us hasn’t committed a typo? It’s happened to you it’s happened to me it’s probably happened to J. K. Rowling. But Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary who told reporters after President Trump was inaugurated, ”This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” which it was not, and once uttered a horrifying gaffe that twisted the history of the Holocaust, seemed unwilling to accept that President Trump could be wrong about even a typo. He told reporters who asked about covfefe, ”The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.” The problem with trying to put a happy face on a gaffe is that it can pump air into wild and ludicrous theories. Late this week, some of President Trump’s supporters insisted on social media that his covfefe was actually a shrewd and subtle presidential invocation of an ancient Arabic term for standing up against an attack. Language experts say it is not. But I’d like to try another explanation. Tweets travel at twice the speed of light  —   please don’t check that, by the way. Covfefe may be a signal President Trump sent this week, in the middle of the night, when he thought no one on Earth would notice, to the people on a planet that is   from our own. Reporters may wonder. But the people on Covfefe know the president was saying: Do you see any greenhouse gases down here?"
"Objects in the Mirror, a new play from American playwright Charles Smith, seems ripped from the headlines. It’s about a young man who escapes   Liberia only to confront new dangers and an identity crisis in Australia, the country where he found shelter. The play is based on the true story of a young actor named Shedrick Yarkpai. Smith met Yarkpai when a theater company in Adelaide, Australia, produced two of Smith’s plays with Yarkpai in the lead. The playwright traveled to see the productions, and afterwards went to lunch with Yarkpai and the theater’s artistic director. At that lunch, Yarkpai told Smith about his escape from Liberia and the crushing questions he still faced. ”I was just blown away,” Smith says. ”I said to him, ’I would like to write this.’ . .. I think he cried, and I cried. And we took off from there.” Smith’s play is about the dangers of both revealing and concealing your identity. In the first act, the character Shedrick tells a sympathetic lawyer friend about his harrowing escape and the baggage that weighs him down: the fact that he came to Australia under someone else’s name, a cousin who died in the war. ”I lied to the government,” Shedrick says in the play, ”and that makes me a criminal. And every day I lie, I sink deeper and deeper. And now I am drowning.” The lawyer offers to help Shedrick correct the record, but Shedrick’s Uncle John has grave concerns. He risked his own life and orchestrated multiple lies to get the family out. He reminds Shedrick, whom he carefully addresses by his assumed name, that he can’t leave behind the social reality of race: ”You think the danger is behind us, that it’s in the past, but it’s not that far behind us, Zaza. The objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. . .. You will always be only one of two things in the world: either a commodity or a liability.” Uncle John flat out forbids Shedrick to move forward with reclaiming his given name. Playwright Charles Smith says Yarkpai’s account of this exchange is what sparked Objects in the Mirror. ”According to Shedrick, he said flat out, ’Absolutely not. You will not do this. You will obey me. I saved your life.’ And in my head, I heard Shedrick’s response, and the response was: ’Well, what good is my life without me?’ And I thought this is just an incredible decision. It’s a Shakespearean decision.” It’s been eight years since Smith first heard Yarkpai’s story. His play premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in April. The theater had hoped to bring Yarkpai to Chicago for the opening, but the actor says, ”Traveling at this time to the United States is not as easy as it [once] was.” While he was putting together his visa application, Yarkpai discovered that some documents from when he arrived in Australia still showed the name he had used to enter. In the end, it was Rob Croser, the artistic director of the Adelaide theater company, who traveled to Chicago for the premiere. Croser says, ”I found it one of the most emotional experiences that I’ve undergone in a long, long time.” He saw a version of himself onstage as the lawyer who helps Shedrick straighten out his identity. It’s a role Croser also played in real life: He earned his living as a lawyer, running the theater in his spare time. But Objects in the Mirror complicates Croser’s role. In act two, Shedrick’s Uncle John accuses the lawyer of trying to steal the young man he calls his son. ”Your white skin and your governmental position does not give you the right to take a man’s son away simply because you believe you can give him a better life,” Uncle John says. On opening night, some people in the audience applauded that speech. ”I found that quite confronting,” Croser says. Playwright Charles Smith says that moment of discomfort was intentional. ”Shakespeare wrote a play and there was a speech, ’to be or not to be’ I think that, you know, that scene is a ’to be or not to be’ scene. And if we knew whether or not we should be or not be and it was an easy choice, then, you know, there’s nothing for us to do. We might as well go home. We continue to watch because we said, ’Boy, this is difficult.’ ” And you don’t have to be a Danish prince or a Liberian refugee for that difficulty to hit home."
"Once a month, NPR Music checks in with hosts and music curators from public radio stations across the country to find out which new songs they just can’t let go. The depth and variety of their selections is always a joy to behold, and this month’s list is no exception. Whether your pleasure is   chamber pop, hypnotic   or   that’s literally made of star stuff, public radio has you covered. Listen at the audio link to hear Folk Alley and WYEP’s Cindy Howes, Wyoming Public Media’s Micah Schweizer and World Cafe’s Talia Schlanger share their picks, and read on for the full list."
"A mother leaves her    son locked in an airless apartment for a week with no food, water or light. He breaks out through a window, and police find him weak and bleeding they also find his mother passed out in a nearby crack house. The boy, Anton, winds up in the hearts and arms of David and Delores Coleman, a prominent political couple who raise him with all the advantages their name, wealth and love can offer. Anton grows up to be a man of character and distinction  —   and then discovers the truth: that his adopted father manipulated his biological mother into giving him up. That’s the plot of Everybody’s Son, a new novel by Thrity Umrigar. Umrigar says the book’s title reflects the fact that Anton belongs to both his black biological mother and his white adopted family. ”They all have competing claims on him and they all perhaps love him and need him for slightly different reasons,” she says. ”But if I have done my job right, the reader will understand that there is not one of these characters who would not give their life for this boy.” On Anton’s biological mother, Juanita, One of the things that it was very important for me to convey in this novel is that despite the fact of her addiction and despite how harsh the bare bones facts of what happens very early . .. in the book, Juanita is actually a very good mom. And the paradox of this whole situation is nobody else seems to know that except for her son himself, who is of course her victim. And yet the court system, you know, the police and certainly David Coleman himself all seem to think of her as a very bad mother, which arguably in some ways she is because, all said and done, she does abandon her son for a week. On where the Colemans are in their lives when they decide to adopt Anton, They have lost their own biological son several years prior to when the novel opens. And as is often true with couples, they each mourn in their own way. I don’t think either one of them has really had an extended conversation about whether they should, you know, permanently adopt another child. But clearly David appears to be edging toward that with an express desire to foster a child. And each seems to think that they are giving the other what they want or what they secretly desire, but of course they never quite have that conversation openly and candidly with one another. . .. And then what ends up happening, of course, is that David sees the untapped potential in Anton and convinces himself  —   in that   way that human beings often operate  —   that he only wants to permanently have custody of Anton because it’s in the boy’s best interest and sort of conveniently ignores the fact that it is also what his heart desires. On Anton’s struggle for identity, which a college girlfriend distills for him, I think she says something to the effect of, ”I can’t decide if you’re the whitest black man I’ve ever known or the blackest white man I’ve ever known.” You know, because Anton is grappling throughout the novel with this question of, well, who is he? He clearly looks   even though there are many people who sort of mistake him for being Middle Eastern. He’s extremely light skinned, but clearly he is not white. And yet he is raised with all the privileges that the Colemans  —   who are not just this white family but almost this patrician, aristocratic white family  —   can bestow and confer upon him. So it is a question of who does Anton become at the end of the novel and how does he reconcile the various strains of his life and all the contributions that each one of his parents makes to build him into becoming who he does. On writing a novel about white American and   characters when she herself is from India  I did not spend a lot of time debating whether I had the moral or even the literary authority to write the book. If I thought about it at all it was from the point of view of, I mean, heck, if people can write about UFOs and space aliens, why the heck can’t I write a novel about somebody who happens to be from a different race? . .. The thing that mattered to me in the writing of this novel is the thing that matters to me in every book that I’ve ever written, which is: Am I writing a book that is emotionally honest? . .. Having said all that, I mean, clearly when you’re writing about a community that is not yours, a culture that is not yours, you know, it comes with great responsibility. And that’s a responsibility that I take seriously. So you can bet that I did my research when I wrote this book. You can bet that I was trying not to indulge in stereotypes of any kind. I didn’t want to take any shortcuts in the writing of this book. Radio producer Lucy Perkins, radio editor Jordana Hochman and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"When I was about 5 years old, my father passed away and life took a dramatic turn. My uncles from my father’s side took all his properties, per the custom in my village in Ghana, so each of my father’s seven wives had to find ways to provide and take care of their children. My mother struggled to get enough food  —   mainly beans and vegetables  —   to make even one daily meal for myself and my six siblings. She would make our food as spicy as possible so that we would have to drink a lot and fill our stomachs with water. But during these difficult years when I was in primary school and junior high, my mother always made sure I went to school. Primary and secondary school are not free in Ghana. At the beginning of each school term, my mother asked the headmaster if I could start classes while she tried to get money to pay the fees. I still remember one time, when I was 7 or 8, the school authorities got tired of her excuses and kicked me out of school. The next day, Mom took her most precious clothing and traditional beads, which she had hidden in a trunk, and sold them for less than half their value. She used the money to pay my school fees. It was only about $10. It doesn’t sound like much, but that was a lot of money in that time. I was confused. Why hadn’t she sold her belongings months ago to buy food for us? Her unselfish act made me regard education as a necessity. My mother’s sacrifice has been my anchor and source of strength ever since. My mom knew  —   and I later recognized  —   that education is more important than food. As a child, I realized that all the people in the village who could provide good food, school uniforms, books and shoes for their children had some form of education. I knew from that point that I could change my destiny if only I was able to succeed in school. I completed high school, but it was nothing like high school in the United States. I never saw a computer. My school had no electricity it had no library, gymnasium or cafeteria. I was picked on and beaten up by the other kids because I could not afford a school uniform. In my senior year, my classmates and I had to take the final national exams that determine whether we could attend college. We knew even before starting the test that most of us would fail because our schools didn’t have the staff and resources to teach us properly. Out of over 200 classmates, I was one of only seven who passed all seven subjects. But none of us earned scores high enough for admission to the public universities in Ghana. Still, to our classmates, we were heroes just for passing. What would I do next? During high school, I had served as a community health volunteer through the Ghana Health Service. I did receive money for my work, but that was not the only reward. As a volunteer, I carried vaccines to rural villages, sometimes walking for miles to deliver them. I felt satisfaction and joy as I administered the oral vaccines to infants and children, knowing that they would be protected from diseases that had killed many children. But I wanted to be able to administer injectable vaccines. I wanted to help provide checkups and counseling for pregnant women. I wanted to be able to organize better preventive health services in these villages. Even though I could not get into any university, I was able to qualify for a community health worker certificate program. It took two years to complete and was quite an intensive program. I hoped that becoming a community health worker would help me achieve what I could not as a volunteer, but I soon realized that the care I could provide was not enough. I spent some time working with a medical team from Canada that visited remote villages, and I was amazed at the level of interaction with patients. They tried to explain a person’s condition, whether drugs would help or not, and more. I vowed that if I ever got the opportunity to continue my medical education, it would be in Canada. I asked a Peace Corps volunteer I had met to help me prepare a resume so I could apply for school. Little did I suspect that a year later, we would be married. After her two years of service, we moved to the United States derailing my Canada plans.  Education in America, We moved to Nevada. I got a job as a custodian in an elementary school and tried to enroll in a university, but the school wanted my high school transcripts. They were impossible to get. High schools in Ghana don’t keep transcripts, just final exam results. I finally found one small community college that offered a placement test in lieu of high school transcripts. This was a turning point. I felt I had another chance to change my destiny. I was nervous as I started classes in January 2014. I considered myself to be the weakest academically among all the students. In the elementary school where I worked, I saw that all the students had laptops. How could I compete with these American students? I was fully discouraged. I felt that if any of these students studied for two hours, I would have to put in three times that effort to master the same material. When I got my midterm exams and papers back, I first thought, ”Oh, the professor has made a mistake this cannot be my test score.” My scores were 95 percent, even 100 percent. After my first semester, I transferred to a larger community college and continued to perform well. For the first time, I felt as if I was free from the limitations imposed on me by the environment and circumstances in which I grew up. My next plan was to transfer to the local university to complete my undergraduate studies. But then I found out about a scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation for community college students transferring to a   university. This scholarship encouraged its applicants to apply to top schools in their field of interest. For me, that was public health  —   and Johns Hopkins University. I didn’t believe I had a chance in a million of being accepted into such a school, so I applied to another school known for its public health program: the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I was accepted by both schools but did not get the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation scholarship. So Hopkins and North Carolina were out. I would instead go to the local university where I would get   tuition and a partial scholarship. My plan was to continue working as a custodian to help pay the bills. But there was an unexpected twist. About a week after I was admitted to Hopkins and the University of North Carolina, both schools offered me a full scholarship. The door of opportunity opened again. Still, I was afraid. I feared leaving behind my first American friends, my first American home, to go to a new place where nobody knew me. I began school on Aug. 15, 2015. Last month, I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Bachelor of Arts in public health studies. May 24, 2017, was the end of a long journey yet the beginning of a new chapter full of promises, difficult questions and deliberations. As I heard my name and began to walk across the stage, I wondered: How is this possible? In Ghana, I was not qualified to attend even a   college, yet here I am walking across the stage, graduating with honors, shaking the hand of the president of Johns Hopkins University. I briefly thought: Maybe this is one of those good dreams that I will soon wake up from. In America, I have learned, dreams can turn into an unexpected reality. George Mwinnyaa, now 29, lives in Baltimore with his wife and    son. He plans to start a master’s program at the Bloomberg School of Public Health this fall."
"It begins the way all great stories should: with a boy, a girl, a shotgun and a cheap motel room. 300 lightning bolt pages later, it ends the same way  —   a girl, a boy and a gun. And in between White Fur, the new novel from Jardine Libaire, is . .. I don’t know what it is. Not so much a story as a fable. A fairy tale of love and class and money and death and New York City in the 1980’s, as seen through eyes so new and so young that everything seems like magic all the time. The plot is    and   . No one loses anyone, not right away, anyhow. They hold on so tight, every page you’re worried their bones will break, these idiot kids. These stupid, beautiful, passionate children, Elise and Jamey. Her from the wrong side of the tracks. Him from the right side of every track ever laid  —   from generations of   a scion of wealth and power so large as to be almost incomprehensible. They meet while he is at Yale and she is living in an apartment next door to his house. She is everything he’s never been allowed to touch. He is a prince in waiting, but sad. Handsome in a way that shames people around him. The beautiful boy and the wrong girl, the friends and family who disapprove  —   a plot so simple, so guileless, that it seems to vaporize into nothingness if you look too hard, leaving something not really a book, but a series of vignettes, of moments cut off from any history that isn’t personal. Nothing so much happens as occurs. Haphazardly. Chunkily. Like life. They meet. They fall hard in love. There are cars and apartments, distant warning bells of trouble coming on a horizon that neither of them are tall enough to see. Elise is a survivor  —   smart and savage and canny in a way that might be disingenuous if not for the fact of the absolute honesty of her feelings for Jamey. And he is conflicted (about his wealth, his station, his feelings) but only when Elise isn’t in his  . Only when reality interjects itself, however fleetingly, into their conjoined fantasy of youth and choices without consequences. What holds it together is ferocity  —   Libaire’s elegant, incongruous,    command of the language of youth and young love, and the uncompromising fire of her main characters as they drift and dash from page to page. On Elise and her friend Robbie, just before she meets Jamey: ”The new roommates bonded by cooking macaroni together, dancing in pajamas and socks to Michael Jackson, drinking soda, and watching   public access TV. Shit, neither of them had a clue what to do in life except live.” And on Jamey himself, ”He’s got the surfeit of an only child: cream collecting on top, thick and rich, excessive. He’s never been stirred. The loneliness shows up as latchkey keyholes for pupils.” And more and more and more, gorgeous sentence after gorgeous sentence tumbling down the page. On a particular arrangement of furniture in a glitzy Manhattan apartment: ”The furniture arranged as if people, late at night, huddled to discuss Marxism or Rothko or volcanoes here.” And on girl fights: ”It’s beautiful, the ugliness of it, and girl fights are especially awkward and unredeemable aesthetically. There’s no boxer’s punch, no fast feet. There’s strength and intention, hatred communicated with nails, with teeth, box cutters. Hair in the eyes, or caught in the mouth, girls move and heave like fat animals even if they’re skinny. They grunt and squeal inside, not audibly. It’s oddly silent, a mute disaster.” White Fur is soaked in sex, in violence, in pain like neon on wet streets. It is a novel with no  . With nothing left unsaid. And as Elise and Jamey move from New Haven to a borrowed apartment in Manhattan (because Jamey has never had to rent an apartment, doesn’t even know how) then Newport and the Village and out west, the world swirls and churns around them almost like something seen in a dream. In the way of fierce and uncompromising love, it mutes everything else in the universe that is not itself, and Libaire has captured that perfectly  —   frozen it, moment by moment, in curated glimpses into the lives of these two kids as they careen through the 1980’s and America and love like twin suns, forever locked in orbit around each other, until all that remains is a last look, the click of the safety coming off, and one finger tightening on a trigger in a motel room far away. Jason Sheehan knows stuff about food, video games, books and Starblazers. He is currently the restaurant critic at Philadelphia magazine, but when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book."
"Updated at 5:57 p. m. ET, ISIS has claimed responsibility for Saturday’s terror attack in London. The Islamic State’s news agency Amaq said in a statement Sunday that ISIS ”soldiers” carried out the attack. Our original post continues, Seven people were killed in London on Saturday night in what police declared a terror attack. Three men used a van and knives in the incident, which also injured 48 people. The attack began at about 10 p. m. local time, when a van crossing London Bridge veered into pedestrians, crashing outside the Barrowboy  Banker Pub. Witnesses told the BBC that van hit ”five or six people,” then the attackers exited the vehicle and pursued others in a ”rampage” in which hundreds ran for their lives. One witness said he saw a woman stabbed ”10 or 15 times” by the men, who he said shouted ”This is for Allah.” The men then ran down a set of stairs and began stabbing people at a number of different pubs and restaurants in Borough Market, a historic fruit and vegetable market. Witnesses said that people threw chairs and pint glasses at the men, who wore what police said were fake explosive vests. Eight minutes after police were called to the market, the three suspects were shot dead by police. Officers fired 50 rounds at the men, wounding a civilian   in the process. Police declared the incident a terrorist attack shortly after midnight. This is the third terrorist attack on Britain in the last three months, following the attack on Westminster Bridge in March that killed five people, and the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester less than two weeks ago in which 22 were killed and dozens were injured. The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre said that because no more perpetrators are thought to be at large, it recommends keeping the country’s threat level at ”severe” rather than elevating it to ”critical.” The U. K. is holding a general election on Thursday Prime Minister Theresa May called for the snap election in April. The attackers and the investigation, On Sunday, police arrested 12 in the east London neighborhood of Barking police say searches of buildings in the neighborhood continue. The BBC reports that police raided a flat thought to be owned by one of the attackers. A photographer for Reuters saw four women escorted into police vans. A man named Furqan Navi lives on the block in Barking that was raided. He told The Guardian that he had seen a photo of one of the men shot dead by police, and recognized him as his neighbor: ”He lived there with his wife and two children, he’d been there for about three years. He seemed pretty friendly but I didn’t know him,” Navi said. Another neighbor said he had seen the man two days ago. ”He seemed a friendly, cool sort of guy. He was friendly and liked playing with kids. He was in his 20s I guess.” Another woman in the neighborhood told The Guardian she had the same experience, recognizing one of the suspects in a photo that was circulating after the attack: ” ’I realised it was him,’ she said. ’It is shocking. Everybody here has children and jobs. We never thought anyone here would have the type of mentality to do something like that. I used to see them every night, He had a wife and child and would drop them off home and would look for a parking spot. ” ’He never used to communicate with the women here. I just knew him as the guy that always came at a certain time and would drop his wife and kid off right close to the main door and then go. ” ’He never used to park where he should park. He never really looked at us and if he did he didn’t look happy as if he had a why are women out on the street at this time of the night type of look on his face.’ She said he wore traditional Islamic robes and his wife wore a   veil.” Reuters reports that police also conducted a search of a building in London’s East Ham neighborhood on Sunday. The victims, Seven people were killed in the attack another 48 were injured. Reuters reports that 21 of the victims are in critical condition. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that a Canadian citizen was among those killed. Among the injured is a British Transport Police officer who was seriously wounded when he fought the attackers, armed with only a baton. Also hurt was a journalist named Geoff Ho, who reportedly was stabbed in the throat when he tried to assist a wounded bouncer. An Australian waitress named Candice Hedge was having a drink at the bar after her shift at Eliot’s Cafe when a man came up behind her and slashed her throat, according to the Brisbane  . She told family members that she was recovering well. Officials said the wounded include citizens of France, Germany, and Spain. The prime minister’s response, In an address Sunday outside 10 Downing Street, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May asked for new laws against terror. She said that ”while the recent attacks are not connected by common networks . .. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism.” ”Defeating this ideology is one of the great challenges of our time, but it cannot be defeated by military intervention alone,” she said. ”It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence and make them understand that our values  —   pluralistic British values  —   are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.” She also pointed to the internet and ”the big companies that provide   services” as ”the safe space” that allows extremism to breed, which The Guardian notes is a reference to an initiative she championed at the G7 last month, in which she wants internet companies to remove extremist content. May said eliminating   safe spaces for extremists would require not only ”taking military action to destroy Isis in Iraq and Syria. But it also means taking action here at home.” There is, she said, ”far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society.” ”That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations. But the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism, and we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities, but as one truly United Kingdom.” Finally, May suggested tougher sentences for ”  offences  —   even apparently less serious offences.” May said that ”the security and intelligence agencies and police have disrupted five credible plots” since the Westminster attacks in March. The Labour Party’s shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, told the BBC that May’s statements appeared to breach a   agreement that Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the SNP had made after the attacks: ”None of the things [May] is proposing in the   plan are immediate steps, and so I regret the timing of this. There is an agreement between the parties that there will not be party political campaigning until this evening or tomorrow. ”She has said enough is enough. Well I thought enough was enough after   I thought that enough was enough after   I didn’t think we should be taking any more of these attacks on our people, we all agree on that. ”We need to do more but we also need to be sensitive to the fact that there are people who are only just discovering that their loved ones have died.” President Trump’s Response, Saturday night, President Donald Trump tweeted his support of the U. K.: ”Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K. we will be there   WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!” Trump’s next tweet was more political: ”We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!” In a series of tweets Sunday, Trump criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan, writing ”At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ”no reason to be alarmed!” What Khan said in the interview that Trump seemed to reference was this: ”Londoners will see an increased police presence today, and over the course of the next few days. No reason to be alarmed. One of the things the police and all of us need to do is make sure we’re as safe as we possibly can be. I’m reassured that we are one of the safest global cities in the world, if not the safest global city in the world. But we always evolve and review ways to make sure we remain as safe as we possibly can.” Then Trump turned his attention to the weapons used by the attackers. ”Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now? That’s because they used knives and a truck!” he tweeted. The U. K. has strict gun control its laws were tightened after a mass shooting of schoolchildren in 1996. Since then, the country has had just one mass shooting: a 2010 incident in which 12 people were killed. Saturday’s attack in London was significantly less deadly than the 2015 attacks by gunmen and suicide bombers in Paris, in which 130 people were killed. The London Metropolitan Police tweeted an updated statement from Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley about the ongoing investigation and thanking the media for its support. ”I would like to assure them and the public that this is directly assisting the progression of the investigation and confirm we will release the identities of the three men directly responsible for the attacks yesterday, Saturday, 3 June, as soon as operationally possible,” Rowley said. Londoners React  —   With Humour, One image from the attack has already emerged as iconic. A crowd of people runs along a sidewalk  —   and among them, one man walks calmly, holding a pint of beer. The man was quickly hailed as a folk hero. ”This Brit showed what the phrase ’keep calm and carry on’ is all about,” tweeted one person. ”Correct London response to terror attack: leg it, but take your pint with you,” wrote another. English actor and comedian Chris Addison took umbrage at The New York Times’s declaration that the U. K. was ”still reeling” from the Manchester attacks. Addison encouraged Brits to tweet at the Times the ways they were #reeling, and many happily obliged, in a testament to life marching on."
"It’s a simple, frequently recurring phrase: ”The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack.” But it raises some questions: Is the claim credible or just an empty assertion, and if it’s true, what does ”responsibility” actually entail? Experts who closely follow the Islamic State say that in general when it comes to attacks in the West, an ISIS claim of responsibility usually means there was some sort of connection. But the attack might have been planned, funded and directed by ISIS  —   or it could just have been inspired by the group’s propaganda. Here’s a look at where that simple sentence comes from, and what, exactly, it can mean. How does the Islamic State make these claims? Where are they published, and how do we know it’s actually the Islamic State speaking? ISIS, which sees itself as a state, has its own news outlet  —   Amaq News Agency. It ”purports to be independent” but is actually an ISIS propaganda arm, said Thomas Joscelyn, senior editor of the counterterrorism publication The Long War Journal. Amaq stories get posted on social media and the agency’s website. The site has to move URLs, because it’s frequently taken down. So one way to claim responsibility is for Amaq to run a story tying an attack to ISIS, citing ”sources” within the Islamic State. ”It’s a little coy,” Joscelyn said, but it amounts to a claim of responsibility by ISIS leaders. The other route is more direct though less common: The Islamic State issues a statement itself, with no intermediary. The Nashir Media Foundation is considered the official ISIS channel, and its statements are considered to come directly from the group, said Rita Katz, the director of the SITE Intelligence Group. ”When these claims show up, it’s an indication of the role that ISIS played,” she said. Katz also said she saw a flood of communication among ISIS supporters shortly after Monday night’s attack in Manchester, England, reminiscent of other large ISIS attacks. That was a strong signal to her that ISIS was directly behind the bombing. On Tuesday, as she expected, ISIS issued its own statement, strengthening her belief that it was directly involved. The Amaq News Agency followed shortly afterward with a bulletin of its own. Either way, outlets like the Long War Journal and SITE Intelligence Group monitor what’s being posted. When a claim has been made, they’ll translate it and publish it online. Reporters can be fairly confident the claims come from ISIS, because the extremist group has been very conscious of controlling and spreading its message. In addition, ISIS has a radio station and uses other social media, so it could respond in multiple ways if it sees something that is not its official position. Has ISIS ever claimed responsibility for attacks that turned out to be totally unrelated to it? ”We have not been able to find a real lie from ISIS,” said Katz, who follows the group’s social media obsessively with a critical eye. ”Despite the fact that they are a terrorist organization, they want to provide their followers and supporters with authentic information.” Joscelyn said he can’t think of an example of an outright false claim by ISIS in the U. S. and western Europe. There are plenty of exaggerations  —   on death tolls, for instance  —   and the statements shouldn’t be assumed to be true. (For instance, the ISIS claim for the attack on a concert in Manchester didn’t describe a suicide bomber, and had slightly inflated numbers of the dead and wounded.) But in the West, ”when ISIS claims something . .. usually there’s something there,” Joscelyn said. That’s not true in Turkey and other parts of the world, where claims can be murkier, he said. What does it mean to be ”responsible” for an attack? Does the Islamic State distinguish between attacks it inspired and attacks it planned?  Joscelyn said ISIS will credit ”a soldier of the caliphate” for an attack, regardless of whether it was planned by ISIS or just carried out in the group’s name. ”The way they issue claims mixes and mingles different types of operations,” he said. Groups of   operatives have carried out   bombings. ISIS handlers in Raqqa, Syria, have guided untrained people in Europe through online communications. And at the far end of the spectrum, there are ”lone wolf” attacks planned and carried out independently, based on ISIS propaganda. ”You can have somebody who had no direct ties to ISIS whatsoever, at least that we’re aware of  —   someone who was inspired by the Islamic State but not actually directed by them at all,” Joscelyn said. The attackers responsible for mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif. and Orlando, Fla. for instance, were claimed by ISIS though they appeared to have no direct ties to the group. ISIS is equally willing to claim them all. The distinction seems to make no difference. How long does it usually take for an ISIS claim to go up? ISIS will generally claim an attack within one day, although it can sometimes take longer. If ISIS puts up a statement immediately after an attack, if there is a prerecorded video made by the attacker, if the group provides the name and other details of the attacker . .. these all suggest a carefully planned ISIS attack. Conversely, if it takes longer than usual to respond, and if there are no details about the attacker, and if the information is coming only from the Amaq News Agency and not directly from ISIS, then it suggests that ISIS was not aware of the attack in advance. Does ISIS claim every attack? No, Joscelyn said  —   for reasons that are often unclear, ISIS will sometimes never lay claim to an attack that turns out to be linked to them. That means a lack of an ISIS claim doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t   or even  . What does it mean for a claim to be ”unconfirmed”? Needless to say, investigators won’t just take the Islamic State at its word when it claims responsibility. They’ll look for statements by the attacker, communication with ISIS online, evidence that the attacker consumed Islamic State propaganda  —   ”real connective tissue,” Joscelyn said. It can take weeks to get sense of ISIS’ involvement, and months for the full picture of what happened to be uncovered by authorities. That work is necessary not just to confirm an ISIS link, but to determine what kind of link it is. That’s why early reporting will say that ISIS ”claimed responsibility,” but stories published later might note that the group either ”carried out” or ”inspired” an attack."
" . White nationalist. Free speech. Hate speech. A number of labels involving the far right have been tossed about once again after a white supremacist allegedly stabbed three people who tried to keep him from shouting at two teenage girls, one wearing a hijab, on the Portland metro. Fearing trouble because emotions are running high, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler asked the federal government to revoke a permit for a ”Trump Free Speech Rally” on Sunday, describing the organizers as ” .” But a rally organizer rejected that characterization, insisting he didn’t even know precisely what the phrase meant.   groups also are planning rallies this weekend. Here’s a look at some of the phrases being used to describe the people involved, and what’s behind them:    Nationalist, White supremacist Jeremy Christian, who has been charged with two counts of aggravated murder, attempted murder and intimidation in the second degree, began his courtroom appearance last week shouting about free speech. ”Free speech or die, Portland. You call it terrorism I call it patriotism,” Christian shouted. ”If you don’t like free speech get the f*** out of my country.” So what exactly was Christian ranting about? Was it nonsensical ravings or something more  —   an exclamation of his political ideology? Was he saying he allegedly stabbed the three men, two of them fatally, because he believed they were interfering with his right to speak to the young women? Understanding the language of the far right is a good place to start. There’s plenty of disagreement and debate about what language to use to describe far right politics and the groups that operate there. These days, the labels white nationalist and   have become ubiquitous. Radical right and   are older terms from the 1950s and 60s, and other terms include   the militia movement, identity movement, American fascists, national socialists,  . But according to Mark Potok, a leader at the Southern Poverty Law Center for the last two decades, essentially these groups can be broken down into two main categories  —   those who focus primarily on issues of race and those who focus primarily on conspiracy theories. One idea that courses through nearly all of them is the belief that healthy societies are dependent on racial, ethnic and cultural purity  —   that for the white race, diversity is the path to political and cultural extinction. The thinking is that each   group should get their own country, but the USA (and Europe) is for white, European, Christian culture. It’s why language like Christian’s  —   ”get out of my country”  —   is prevalent among the far right. This supremacist vision is what separates alternative   nationalists from others on the political spectrum. It’s an enormous leap ideologically from mainstream conservatism and the main reason why   membership remains relatively low. Where does the term   come from?   philosopher Paul Grottfried first used the phrase in 2008 but white nationalist Richard Spencer ran with it and helped make   ubiquitous. Spencer is a new face of the extreme right movement. Well educated at the Universities of Virginia, Chicago and Duke, he is a world away from old images of the Ku Klux Klan. According to Pete Simi, professor of Sociology at Chapman University ant the   of the book American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate, the term   was a successful attempt by Spencer to rebrand himself and his followers as something fresh, young and smart for a new generation. Among its allies, the   embraces President Trump advisor and former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon. Bannon has called the site a ”platform for the  .” Free Speech or Hate Speech? Free Speech has grown into a major issue for both mainstream conservatives and the  . For mainstream conservatives, the belief that the left is more intolerant of dissent than the right is evidenced by the protests against   speakers on college campuses. White nationalists believe their First Amendment rights go further: that they should have the freedom to say whatever they like and not suffer consequences  —   for example, getting fired from their job for posting something hateful on Facebook. The   has developed its own language and symbols on the Internet. Parentheses around a person’s name means they are Jewish. ”Cuckservative” is a particularly ugly racist and derogatory term describing establishment Republicans who aren’t considered conservative enough. Professor Simi says a key feature of white nationalist belief is seeing themselves as victims. ”We’re not the haters, we’re the victims of white genocide,” Simi says, describing the   mindset. Marginalized, oppressed, and fighting an uphill battle against the powers that be, they view themselves as noble, courageous, even heroic warriors. ”Patriot” or Terrorist? A second category of the extreme right in the American militia movement, which can be characterized by its belief in conspiracy theories. On his Facebook page, Christian praised Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, ”May all the Gods Bless Timothy McVeigh a TRUE PATRIOT! !!” Former SPLC director Potok said the movement’s fundamental idea is that the federal government is involved in a conspiracy against its people’s liberties. The imposition of martial law will be followed by the forced confiscation of guns and Potok explains that in the end, the U. S. government will be forced into a one world government, the   ”New World Order” that will be run to serve the global elite. Elements of these conspiracy theories recently made a prominent appearance in Texas in 2015 during an armed forces military exercise, which stoked fear among some worried Texans that President Obama was about to use Special Forces soldiers to confiscate guns and round up resisters. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded by ordering the Texas State Guard to monitor the Special Forces soldiers while they trained in Texas. Martin Kaste contributed to this story."
"There is a whole range of feelings that happen with the delivery of bad news. In my case, like many others, knees lock, the heart speeds up and the hairs on my arms get a funny little tingle. My circumstances, however, were a little less expected. When my dad told my husband and me that he and my mom wanted to come into Manhattan for dinner, I was excited to see them and quickly made a plan for an 8 p. m. dinner at Café Orlin  —   my favorite for Middle Eastern food. As soon as we sat down, I knew something was very wrong. My mom had been in and out of breast cancer treatment for 15 years and had been managing and treating the disease like it was no big deal, even though she was just in her 50s. Were they about to tell us that the other shoe had dropped and she was dying? No, this time it was about my dad. He had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. My    world shook. We all knew what this meant. As a photojournalist, I did the only thing I knew: I picked up my camera and documented my parents’ dual cancer treatments for the next 24 months and our lives as they unfolded. From the   chemotherapy infusions to running errands with Mom according to her   lists, I was there with my camera slung across my shoulder. When I look back on the time I spent documenting these complicated months, I don’t immediately remember feeling scared. I remember the    laughter,   dinners (as per the doctor’s request, of course) the   dance parties in my parents’ kitchen and the   conversations over a cup of Chappaqua roast from Susan Lawrence Gourmet Foods and Bea’s Bakery blueberry pie. Everyone deals with their fears, especially death, in their own way. My family leaned on humor to carry us through this difficult time. I remember one night sitting on my parents’ bathroom floor as my father began to cut off my mother’s hair, which had become flat dreadlocks tightly knotted against her scalp. The chemo had stopped its growth, but she hadn’t been ready to part with her hair for the third time  —   once with each cancer diagnosis. I remember cursing the universe, asking it to give my mom a break just this once. The next thing I knew, my mother jumped in front of me and my lens, discarded hair held to her face like eyebrows. A fashion show followed suit, as we all wore her hair as costume, including the dog! That she found the lightness and ability to find joy in this moment speaks to the tremendous woman she was. By confronting what I feared most, using my camera as my shield, I was able to move past the trauma that I anticipated and truly enjoy the time we had left together. Had I hidden away from the reality, I wouldn’t have the beautiful photo of my parents holding hands across the chemo chairs as they received their respective treatments. They were the definition of strength and courage, and seeing these images reinforces to me the importance of not letting fear hold me back. It also reminds me to appreciate each day and not lose perspective. As Mom once told me, ”There’s also life going on here. I am having marshmallows, you know!” Was it scary? Of course. When he died in 2013, my dad, Howie, was 58. My mom, Laurel, was 59 when she died one day shy of the anniversary of my dad’s death. But what was most notable was how those final months were filled with love and life. Although my parents are gone, my siblings and I continue to feel their love and guidance, as we sift through decades of found letters and notes, including one small stack of   notes from our mother, exemplifying the importance of leaning into fear and taking chances: Courage isn’t the absence of fear  —   it’s knowing that you are afraid and doing it anyway. Don’t spend your days avoiding risk, being fearful. Act. Live your life on your own terms. Life is precious spend it without regrets in your own precious voice. For my three angels: If you want to talk or feel my love, look up at the night sky  —   I am always watching over you. Nancy Borowick is a photojournalist based on the island of Guam. She has covered humanitarian stories for many organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Her book documenting her parents’ life with cancer, The Family Imprint: A Daughter’s Portrait of Love and Loss, is now available, and the work will be on exhibit beginning Friday in Brooklyn, N. Y."
"The pace of hiring in the U. S. slowed last month. Employers added just 138, 000 jobs. But the unemployment rate dropped to 4. 3 percent, the lowest it has been in 16 years. The monthly snapshot from the Labor Department is one of the most closely watched indicators of the health of the economy. No matter what the numbers actually say, how we feel about them is often colored by politics. For the first time in a decade, most Americans are feeling good about the economy. A survey this spring by the Pew Research Center found nearly 6 in 10 think the economy is in good shape. That is up 14 points from a year ago. Nearly all of the gain has come from Republicans, who are now twice as likely to say the economy is doing well as they were last year, even though actual conditions haven’t budged much. ”There’s no big change in the economy. Clearly, the change is the election and the politics,” says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Markit. ”Obviously, there’s some people who like what happened and some who don’t. The politics is sort of outweighing the economics.” You see a dramatic display of that in Wisconsin, where surveys before and after the November election found a stark partisan   in economic expectations. Democrats are now much more pessimistic about the economy than they were before the election, while Republicans are more than three times as likely to think the economy is going to get better. ”There’s nothing irrational in partisans believing that a change of government will dramatically improve the outlook of the economy,” says Charles Franklin, who conducts the poll for Marquette Law School. But the election didn’t just change people’s expectations for the future. It also changed their feelings about the recent past. President Trump had been in office less than two months when Franklin conducted his most recent survey, and already, four times as many Republicans said the economy had gotten better in the last year than said so in October. ”It’s really hard to see how people change their views of the past, except that our perceptions of the economy are filtered through partisan lenses,” Franklin said. When he was running for president, Trump often dismissed encouraging economic indicators as ”phony.” Now he celebrates every positive bit of news. This past week, he boasted of ”absolutely tremendous economic progress since Election Day on Nov. 8. The economy is starting to come back, and very, very rapidly.” Franklin says it has long been the case that Americans are more satisfied when their own party controls the White House. But the trend lines for both Democrats and Republicans used to go up and down together, in response to real world conditions. However, over the past dozen years or so, those lines have become untethered from each other. Partisan differences now seem to carry more weight than our shared national experience. ”How do you have responsive politics if in fact the public is seeing two such different worlds?” Franklin asked. Much of this partisan filtering is not even conscious. ”It would be one thing if we put on   glasses, and we knew we were doing it,” Franklin said. ”But I’m afraid with a lot of political perceptions, the color of our glasses is something we don’t even think about. And when the party in control switches, we switch the shade of our glasses, without really much consideration of that.” Those partisan lenses probably wouldn’t blind people to another deep recession or a genuine boom. But so long as the economy is chugging along in fits and starts, there’s lots of room for partisan interpretation."
"Thousands of protesters gathered around the country in a series of ”March for Truth” rallies on Saturday. Demonstrators were calling for a congressional independent commission to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. In full view of the White House, protesters in Washington, D. C. demanded answers in the ongoing Russia probe. Chants of ”Investigate Trump!” and ”Resist, resist!” rang across the National Mall. Some protesters even lined up together to spell out ”Investigate Trump.” ”I want to know what the ties are to Russia,” said Atossa Shafaie, who joined protesters in the nation’s capital. ”I want to know how Russia has infiltrated our government. I don’t think there’s a question that they have.” Shafaie was among hundreds of fellow   activists who argue that neither the Senate committee nor the special counsel can disassociate from politics sufficiently enough to uncover any potential collusion between the White House and Russia. That’s why they want an independent commission. They were also demanding that the president release his tax returns. Marchers took to the streets in more than 100 cities including New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. Meanwhile, Trump supporters staged their own, smaller ”Pittsburgh Not Paris” event in D. C. to show support of President Trump’s decision to pull the U. S. out of the Paris climate agreement. The rally, orchestrated by the Fairfax County Republican Committee and the Republican Party of Virginia, was a   effort, The Hill reports. A few demonstrators at the March for Truth told NPR what brought them out to rally on Saturday. Christopher Prince  ”It’s important for us to stand up for truth. I think in this day and age when facts are being attacked, when   are being attacked, it is important for us to stand in opposition to that.” Julie Locascio  ”I’m outraged at how slow the investigation of the   possible collusion has been going. And the fact that the GOP is completely complicit.” Erin Gould, 16, with her mother, Elizabeth Burke  ”There’s just been so many lies lately and it’s like, it’s really affecting all of our lives, even us younger people. There’s been a lot of speculation at school, there’s been a lot of arguments and everything. And everyone just kind of wonders, like, what’s going on. ’Cause you can’t really trust the news anymore.”"
"There is one generation that has been consistently defined by its obsessions: avocado toast, memes, Harry Potter . .. and  . They are often perceived as entitled snowflakes, but millennials might be the generation of emotional intelligence.   existed long before millennials did. Ancient Greeks saw it as a way to make people more honest citizens who were more likely to care for others. In her 1988 book, A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde wrote that ”caring for myself is not   it is   and that is an act of political warfare.” Today,   as it’s defined by Gracy Obuchowicz, a facilitator and   mentor and coach in Washington, D. C. ”assumes that we’re OK as we are and we just need to take care of ourselves . ..   alone is not enough. You need to have   too.   plus   equals  .” While   has been around for centuries, it has only recently been   by stars such as Solange and consumerized into   kits. In 2015, according to the Pew Research Center, more millennials reported making personal improvement commitments than any generation before them. They spend twice as much as boomers on   essentials such as workout regimens, diet plans, life coaching, therapy and apps to improve their personal  . They’ve even created   Twitter bots. But why is there a generational divide in taking care of yourself? One study showed that this might have all sprouted out of the Internet. It found that students reported using the Web to identify   strategies, alternative therapies and other information related to nutrition and fitness. Do a quick Google search and you’ll find hundreds of articles about   occasionally accompanied with lists of advice such as ”go to a farmers market” or ”buy a new candle” or ”drive with the windows down.” So it comes as no surprise that the generation that takes advantage of the Internet the most is also the generation that devotes the most time and money to the $10 billion   industry. Hyepin Im, the president and CEO of Korean Churches for Community Development and an expert on mental health and digital literacy, also found that the Internet was likely the cause. ”In a way of having that affordable free access to information increases awareness to these areas we didn’t know from schooling or families,” Im said. ”Once you’re aware, these new tools and apps equip us . .. to actually make that investment.” Then again, Im points out, we might have created a solution for a problem of our own making. ”Increased awareness is very powerful,” Im said. ”The other piece, in some ways we’re constantly bombarded in  .” Im said we might find ourselves comparing our lives to the perfection we see on the Internet, which leads us to utilizing online tools for    —   and the cycle continues. ”There is this point where you do also have this time for   and you start seeking substance and meaning beyond a whole selfie. You start searching. Those are also things that push our generation,” Im said. Furthermore, Im said the introduction of social media throughout the millennial generation has increased understanding of mental illnesses and decreased the stigma. ”Maybe in the past, you thought someone was crazy or lazy, but now we’ve learned more,” Im said. ”It’s a continuum. A lot of those things [like increased Internet access] allow you to become more sensitive to others.” Beyond social media, Obuchowicz said she has noticed an uptick in the interest in   lately, particularly since the election. It’s true: Google searches for the term reached a   high after the election. But Obuchowicz says it’s more than just social media that has pushed millennials to the forefront of the   discussion. ”Our generation has seen enough,” she said. ”People are really hungry for knowledge. It’s a relatively new idea in our culture that we would be paying attention to how we feel and using that as a kind of intelligence. It’s something that’s really waking up in our culture and our generation.” Obuchowicz said millennials look at their parents and grandparents and are grateful for what they’ve done but aren’t willing to go about life in the same way. And they are not the first generation to do so. ”What our mothers did in comparison to our grandmothers was epic,” Obuchowicz said. ”This is our revolution.” Christianna Silva is an NPR Digital News intern."
"Manila police say the lone suspect who carried out Friday’s attack on a casino at a resort complex, that left dozens dead, was a heavily indebted    Filipino who was hooked on gambling, according to his family. In a Sunday news conference, the National Capital Region Police Office Police Chief Oscar Albayalde said the gunman was identified by his estranged wife and his parents as Jessie Carlos, a father of three, and a former Department of Finance employee, Rappler reports. He owed more than $80, 000 USD, the local news service reports, ”plus an undisclosed amount of    debts, due to his gambling problem.” The news backs up the police chief’s earlier claim that there’s ”no concrete evidence that the attack was terrorism.” ”This incident is confined to the act of one man alone as we have always said,” Albayalde says, according to The Associated Press. The attacker’s mother, Teodora, in tears during the news briefing, asked for forgiveness, the wire service reports. ”We can’t accept ourselves that my son became like this, he was a very kind son,” she said. ”He chose to end his life rather than . .. kill people.” The AP adds: ”The message of what happened to my son is people should not get hooked on gambling so their families won’t get destroyed,” she said. Albayalde said the man had sold off property to support his gambling habit of at least several years, including a vehicle. His family had grown so concerned they had asked casinos in the capital to ban their husband since April 3. At least 37 patrons and employees died, mostly due to smoke inhalation while they tried to hide on the second floor of the casino, Albayalde said. The   gunman was found in an hotel room in the resort complex, where police found him dead of apparent suicide, as The   previously reported."
"Each morning at 8,    Mariatu Kamara puts on her jeans, jacket and bright yellow helmet. She climbs onto her motorbike and rides up the mud path beside her house in Freetown, Sierra Leone. As she passes, children nudge one another and whisper, ”That’s a woman.” She parks on the edge of the main road, next to four men on bikes. This is where the motorbike taxis (locally known as ”okadas”) wait for their customers. Kamara, once a prostitute, is one of the few female motorcyclists in Freetown. She was trained to ride a bike  —   along with 34 other women  —   in October 2014 through a women’s empowerment program. The female riders were nicknamed ”okada babies” by their male counterparts. Okada driving was once a lucrative job, but now taxi bikes have been banned from the central business district and the main roads leading into town. Many riders are out of work. Only eight okada babies are still riding. ”Work is not there, and the women are very discouraged,” says Fatmata Nathuma, who founded the Female Commercial Motorbike Corporation, the program that trained Kamara. Nathuma is a   motorcyclist who set out to prove that women can do anything men can. ”I went to find girls in bars and nightclubs and invited them to my house the next day,” she says. ”I explained they could make better money riding okadas than working on the streets.” Nathuma received government funding to buy 18 motorbikes for her trainees: 18 prostitutes and 17 unemployed women. After five months of lessons and safety talks, the women received their licenses and got to work. For two years, they ferried passengers around Freetown, earning the equivalent of about $20 a day. Nathuma says, ”The money was very good they were able to look after their families and send their children to school.” But since the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the okada ban on 19 of the city’s roads, most of the women have given up. ”It’s difficult,” Nathuma says. ”They can’t go on the busy roads and find customers.” In addition, she says, they are scared of the police. Many have reported police harassment or extortion both on the banned roads and legal ones. Three women spent weeks in prison after being found on a forbidden road, and some have had their motorbikes confiscated. The director of traffic police, Patrick Johnson, says the crackdown on okada riders is because of their ”reckless and lawless behavior.” He brings out a table showing that 134 people were killed in the country by motorbikes last year and says, ”They are simply a law unto themselves. They overtake on all sides and disobey road traffic signs.” Much of the general public would agree  —   many people grumble about the scratches that okada riders have left on the sides of their cars. When asked about allegations that policemen are asking for bribes and intimidating female riders, Johnson says, ”Not to my knowledge. The women riders are more careful. I don’t know why police would be aggressive with them.” Kamara says she has experienced police aggression. She lifts her right arm to show a thick scar from wrist to elbow. She was taking a passenger on a road in the central business district when policemen came after her. ”They grabbed the back of my bike so I fell to the ground. I went to the station to complain, and the police accused me of using bad language. They put me in a cell for three days without any food,” she says. After her release, she was too scared to ask for her bike back. For Kamara, this was a big financial hit a new motorbike would cost her about $353  —   more than the $340 average annual income in Sierra Leone. For Kamara, learning to ride a motorbike represented a new start. She had become a prostitute at age 14 after running away from her village to join a friend in Freetown. Upon reaching the city, she found out the friend was really a sex worker. The ”auntie” that she stayed with was an older prostitute. Kamara worked on the streets for eight years. ”I hated it,” she says. ”I used to drink and smoke weed until I didn’t feel human. But I left school young and had no other work opportunity. I had to do it if I wanted to eat.” In 2014, Kamara heard about the okada babies and immediately enrolled. ”I would always arrive to the training early,” she says. ”I was excited. I had already planned to change my life, but I didn’t know what to do.” Once qualified, she worked six days a week, earning enough to support herself and help out her family in the village. ”I began to admire myself,” she says. ”My family was proud, and people in Freetown were impressed to see a woman riding.” But after the ban, she could only make $6 a day driving on the side roads. If she strayed into the city center, she says, police would stop her and ask for bribes bigger than her daily income. When her bike was confiscated three months ago, she was out of work. Another rider, Kadi Barie, who had been unemployed before joining Nathuma’s team, describes similar problems. She says that now she barely makes a profit and loses money to corrupt policemen daily. ”The police are the most lawless group in the country,” says Alphonso Manley, director of the advocacy group Civil Rights Coalition. ”There have been reports that some of them ride confiscated bikes by night to earn money for themselves as taxis. When they catch riders in forbidden areas, they are always asking for bribes instead of following the protocol.” Manley is a supporter of the okada babies: ”The solution is to fire corrupt police officers and structure the okada riders, assigning them to different neighborhoods where they are allowed to operate,” he says, Kamara decided that having her motorbike confiscated would not stop her from riding. She started renting a bike last month. She pays $4 for the daily rental and her profits are slim, but she refuses to give up. ”I love riding and will continue the job. I am never going back on the streets,” she says. And so on a recent morning, she sits on her parked motorbike waiting for customers. One approaches on foot, waving and shouting, ”Okada! Okada!” Kamara drives up alongside him. ”Where to?” she asks. He names a destination, and they agree on a price  —   about 58 cents for a   journey. He clambers on behind Kamara and grips the metal bar at the back of the bike. They rumble off up the road. Olivia Acland is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. She writes on a variety of topics from women’s rights to education, politics and trade. She rattles around Freetown on a secondhand motorbike."
"Alan Alda’s father wanted him to become a doctor, but it wasn’t meant to be. ”I failed chemistry really disastrously . .. ” Alda says. ”I really didn’t want to be a doctor I wanted to be a writer and an actor.” Which is exactly what happened, but Alda didn’t leave science behind entirely. His new book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? is all about communication  —   and miscommunication  —   between scientists and civilians. ”People are dying because we can’t communicate in ways that allow us to understand one another,” he writes. ”It sounds like an exaggeration, but I don’t think it is. When patients can’t relate to their doctors and don’t follow their orders, when engineers can’t convince a town that the dam could break, when a parent can’t win the trust of a child to warn her off a lethal drug. They can all be headed for a serious ending.” Alda explains why empathy is crucial to successful science conversations, and describes his work at the Alan Alda Center For Communicating Science. On the experience that inspired the book, I was at a dentist’s office in the chair ready to have him start an operation on my gum. So he’s got the scalpel ready to poke me in the face with it. He says, ”Now, there will be some tethering.” I said, ”Pardon me?” He said, ”Tethering, there will be tethering.” I said, ”What do you mean tethering.” He said, ”TETHERING! TETHERING!” He started barking at me. I was too impressed by his surgical gown to say, ”Put the knife down and tell me what you mean by tethering.” I let him go ahead with the operation and it turned out that it changed my smile, because he cut the little tissue between the upper part of your gum and your upper lip. And I was making a movie a couple of weeks later, and the cameraman said, ”What are you sneering about? I thought you were supposed to smile.” But it turned out that when I told the dentist that maybe it would be a better idea to tell people what was going on, firstly he said, ”I told you there were two steps to the operation.” And then he sent me a letter trying to maneuver me off of a lawsuit. And I had no interest in a lawsuit. I just wanted him to communicate better with his patients. On his improvisational theater program to help scientists learn to communicate better, First of all, it’s not to encourage them to be funny. . .. It doesn’t make them comedians, it doesn’t make them actors. The reason for the improv exercises is to really get everybody accustomed to the idea that contact with the other person is essential, is a first step toward good communication. Because if you are thinking only about communication as having the perfect message regardless of how it lands on your audience, then you’re likely just to be spraying information at them and not really saying something to them that sticks. On how he began reading scientific studies, I followed the same path that humanity did, which was to start with superstition. I was interested in things like spiritualism and astrology, and one of the books I was reading was supposedly written by someone who had been dead for a couple hundred years but written recently through a medium. And I thought, if any of this is true, the physicist who lives across the street would probably know the answer. And I asked him about it and he said, ”I don’t know, doesn’t sound familiar to me.” So I said, maybe the answer’s in the Scientific American. And I started reading that, and I think one of the things that attracted me, engaged me right away, was that I saw there was a completely different way to think and to weigh things, which was on the basis of observation and evidence. And there’s something deeply moving about it and entertaining at the same time. That’s what I’m trying to get scientists to do  —   to share that excitement and passion that they have with those of us who don’t do that for a living. On why there’s such hostility to science  I think it’s at least partly a communication issue. Trust is really important, because . .. we [don’t] have the time in our ordinary lives to get up to speed on . .. nanoscience or quantum mechanics. It’s kind of important to have trust that we feel toward those people who have spent their lives doing that. Science and the public have separated so much that many people in the public consider science just another opinion. On scientists’ reluctance to speak in declaratives, I think many of us feel: ”Wait a minute, you told me a year ago red wine was good for me. Now you’re telling me it’s not. . .. What’s going on here? Can’t you make up your mind?” . .. That’s also a communication question. I think there are basic things about science that people should be helped to understand. For instance, any one study is not supposed to arrive at the truth for all time. It gets us a little closer to truth. Almost every research paper that I read says at the end: ”More research is called for.” I wish articles about science would include that more. This is not the final word. On his invitation to    It’s a beautiful experience to learn what science is up to. It’s just, just wonderful. So I recommend to anybody to open their mouths and let the hook catch them. Radio producer Ian Stewart, radio editor Ed McNulty, web producer Beth Novey, and Shots editor Nancy Shute contributed to this report."
"Mary Kidd pops a VHS tape in the deck and rewinds. Two kids appear on the screen, dancing to music and laughing. Kidd and her colleagues meet in this loft in Tribeca in New York City every Monday to digitize tapes like this one. The loft has racks of tape decks, oscilloscopes, vector scopes and   monitors that help ensure a quality transfer from analog to digital. Kidd and the others are archivists and preservationists, and they’re part of a group called XFR Collective (pronounced Transfer Collective). Most work professionally, but they volunteer their free time to do this. And while the mood is light, there is a sense of a deadline. ”In the heads of all Transfer Collective members, we do have kind of this ’’” Kidd says. That’s because research suggests that tapes like this aren’t going to live beyond 15 to 20 years. Some call this the ”magnetic media crisis,” and archivists, preservationists, and librarians like the ones in the XFR Collective are trying to reverse it. Here’s how magnetic tapes work: Sounds and images are magnetized onto strips of tape, using the same principle as when you rub a piece of metal with a magnet and it retains that magnetism. But when you take the magnet away, the piece of metal slowly loses its magnetism  —   and in the same way, the tape slowly loses its magnetic properties. ”Once that magnetic field that’s been imprinted into that tape has kind of faded too much, you won’t be able to recover it back off the tape after a long period of time,” says Howard Lukk, director of standards at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Most tapes were recorded in the 1980s and ’90s, when video cameras first became widely available to Americans. That means even the   tapes will eventually be unwatchable. Lukk estimates there are billions of tapes sitting around. There are plenty of services out there to digitize tapes  —   local stores, online services, even public libraries and universities. Some services are free some cost a lot of money. The thing is, many people don’t realize their tapes are degrading. And some who do know  —   even members of the XFR Collective, like Mary Kidd  —   haven’t even gotten around to their own tapes. ”Sometimes I do fall asleep at night thinking to myself, ’Oh my gosh, is this tape in the storage space that I own slowly turning into goo?’ ” Kidd says, laughing. ”I hope not. I really hope not.” Digitizing also takes a lot of troubleshooting. Each transfer the Collective does requires them to play the entire tape through while they sit there and watch it. At one point during the Monday night transfer, the video started dropping frames, and Collective member Michael Grant jumped up to adjust the tracking and try to figure out what was happening. At the same time in the corner, a member named Brendan Allen was struggling with a tape stuck in the jaws of a deck, searching Google and archivist listservs for the answer. ”There’s also something very satisfying about seeing something going wrong . .. putting our collective consciousness together and figuring out a problem,” Kidd says. ”It’s always an adventure, and I live for it.” XFR Collective works together to identify tapes they think are important to save. That’s often videos from communities they believe aren’t always   in the archives of institutions these archivists work at during the day: People of color, queer people, immigrants, artists and activists. Some are old videos of police brutality others are just weddings or old public access TV that isn’t saved anywhere else. All tapes are from people who want their content to be publicly available, and after the tapes are transferred, they’re stored on the nonprofit Internet Archive. To date, they’ve transferred 155 tapes —  67 hours in total. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that they will be saved forever. Digital has its own problems, and Lukk says that some film preservationists argue we should be looking back to before magnetic media for stable preservation  —   many Hollywood films, for instance, are often stored on film in salt mines, where they can last 100 years. Grant says he sometimes transfers tapes of people who have been dead for 30 years. ”You get to be really intimately familiar with them in this creepy way,” Grant says. ”If they were alive and saw you on the street, they would have no idea who you are, but they sort of feel like your old friends.” But over everything, the volunteers devote themselves to this work because if they don’t save these intimate, personal histories, it’s possible no one will. Scott Greenstone is a news assistant at Weekend All Things Considered. You can follow him @evergreenstone."
"With its propulsive,   emoting about jealousy and paranoia, The Killers’ ”Mr. Brightside” became a hit rock anthem back in 2004. Thirteen years later, it goes without saying that we’re in a different world. Yet ”Mr. Brightside” has never entirely left us  —   a fact that hasn’t escaped watchers of the U. K. singles charts. Somehow, the song has hit the U. K. Top 100 at some point during 11 of the past 13 years. As recently as January, it climbed all the way to No. 49. The website Noisey recently published a   assortment of theories as to why the U. K. continues to embrace ”Mr. Brightside,” from elaborate and unlikely political machinations to the fact  —   the cold, scientific fact  —   that the song is an absolute jam, perfect for parties and breakups and countless occasions in between. But there are more mundane reasons for ”Mr. Brightside” to keep cracking the U. K. charts, including the rise of streaming services like Spotify (which lessen the power of   gatekeepers) and the fact that England, and by extension its music scene, is far less populated than the U. S. and is thus more capable of registering the whims of lightly inhabited constituencies within its audience. Still, there’s more to it than that. When The Killers’ song was first hitting the charts back in 2004, many of the songs that surrounded it now sound like relics  —   and, with good cause, are not still hovering somewhere on the U. K. charts. The biggest reason of all for the endurance of ”Mr. Brightside” may just be that, as sung by Brandon Flowers, it expertly and efficiently taps into feelings that never entirely go away. Who among us hasn’t, at some point, felt our feelings so hard that we feel like they’re actually killing us?"
"Monte Ellis’ whole world is being uprooted. ”They’re just forcing us out,” he says, as he watches his   old sister, Ashay, at what passes for a playground in the battered McBride housing projects on the south end of Cairo, Ill. For years, families like the Ellises complained to the local housing authority of squalid conditions here  —   leaky ceilings, mold, bugs and rats. Sometimes there is no heat, so people turn their ovens on to keep warm. Things never got fixed. ”A lot of broken promises,” Ellis says. Last year, when the federal Housing and Urban Development agency, HUD, took over the   local housing authority, there was hope that things would turn around. Instead, a few weeks ago, the dreaded news: The projects were deemed uninhabitable and will be demolished within months. HUD says it doesn’t have the estimated $7. 5 million to bring these buildings up to code. Instead it will offer relocation assistance and housing vouchers to the estimated 400 residents of the two projects. The anger here is palpable. ”It’s not all about money, it’s about us, too,” Ashay Ellis, 11, says. ”We’re not just gonna leave.” The housing crisis is just the latest blow for this isolated rural town at the northern tip of the Mississippi Delta. Once a thriving river port and manufacturing hub, Cairo (pronounced  ) today has one of the fastest depopulation rates in the United States. Most of the factories have closed. The town’s history is also plagued with racial tension and violence as well as corruption and poverty. Many people who live in the two projects slated to close have few options. A lot of the other properties in town are abandoned or condemned. Some residents of the projects don’t have cars. The nearest cities of size, Cape Girardeau, Mo. and Paducah, Ky. are close to an hour’s drive away. Anyway, most people’s families, support networks and jobs are here in Cairo. ”I go to Cairo High School,” Monte Ellis says proudly. ”I want to see Cairo High School get big and succeed and you can’t do that if there’s no community.” A domino effect, Cairo and its schools were already on life support before the announcement that the projects are being demolished. One elementary school recently closed and the high school and middle school recently consolidated. If everyone from the projects were to leave town, the district’s enrollment would drop another 40 percent, leading some to question whether the town is even viable without its school. There are real fears of a domino effect here, with the school district also being Cairo’s largest employer.   teacher Mary Beth Goff got so frustrated that she had her students write letters to HUD Secretary Ben Carson, pleading with him to reconsider the decision. ”I get what Ben Carson says, public housing should be a springboard, not a hammock, I’ve read that statement,” Goff says. ”But these are kids.” In a letter back, the secretary promised to help the families find a better home. Goff says she will hold him to that. This housing crisis is just the latest disruption for her students. Most teachers have had to abandon their lesson plans to help kids cope  —   and survive. ”Our kids are living in conditions that they should not have to live in I don’t think anybody disagrees with that,” Goff says. ”So then the question is, do you make it better or do you abandon them.” For its part, HUD says it’s committed to finding better, safer homes for the affected families. ”Nothing is simple with Cairo,” says Jerry Brown, a deputy undersecretary at the agency. ”Because when you go there and you look at the units it literally tugs at your heart.” But Brown says the unfortunate reality is that HUD is no longer in the housing construction business. It relies on private developers, and attracting them to an isolated, predominantly   rural area like Cairo is tough. The agency also says it doesn’t have enough money to rehabilitate the projects as well as keep open the other Section 8 properties in town it acquired after taking over the Alexander County Housing Authority. Demolishing and rebuilding the projects entirely has an estimated price tag of nearly $40 million. Originally, residents were told they’d have 150 days to vacate after receiving their vouchers, but recently it was announced there is some flexibility. ”We’re going to do everything we can to allow everyone that can find affordable housing in that community to remain there,” Brown says. Saving Cairo, Brown’s right, there is stuff happening in a frenzy on the ground in Cairo right now to try to house the     families who want to stay. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner sent down teams to assess abandoned properties to see which, if any, could be quickly brought up to code. The state’s housing agency is offering grants of up to $35, 000 to interested landlords. The city also recently held a landlord fair. ”I am 99. 9 percent sure there will be housing available for those who want to stay,” says Tyrone Coleman, Cairo’s mayor. For the first time in years, the mayor’s office has also been fielding calls from developers who have expressed interest in building new housing. There hasn’t been a new, private home built in Cairo for an astonishing 50 years. ”I’ll never give in to the point that Cairo is finished, never,” Coleman says. ”There’s enough of us here to keep life here.” But just how far do you go to keep people in a town where opportunities are few? Like a lot of rural America, Cairo was also built for industries  —   river barges, manufacturing  —   that are not as relevant today. A frustrated Coleman shakes his head at questions like these. The housing crisis is especially bad timing. Cairo is close to getting a grocery store back. A state senator is also trying to establish a port authority on the Mississippi River, which would attract new investment and jobs. ”Cairo is used to having to overcome,” Coleman says. ”That’s just a part of our character, our nature.” Leaving is a ”last resort” Not unlike in a lot of small towns, people’s character, their identity, is wrapped up tightly in Cairo, Ill. So even if it was easy to pick up and move to a new city, a lot of people probably wouldn’t. ”They’re literally gonna have to put me out,” says Melvin Duncan. ”I’m going to do what I can to stay.” Duncan, 38, has lived most of his life in the McBride projects on Cairo’s south end. One morning on a break from his job as a handyman at the school district, Duncan pointed out possible properties on abandoned lots surrounding McBride that he says could have been easily redeveloped over the years. Duncan says people from outside Cairo are making decisions without fully understanding the ramifications. For instance, he figures he could find work elsewhere  —   and may have to if the district enrollment drops further and there are more staff layoffs  —   but it’s not that easy. Duncan has some possible leads on housing for his family in another town, but he’s not sure whether they’ll take Section 8 vouchers. It’s also a last resort, he says firmly. ”I was born here, I’ve been here most of my life, this is home,” Duncan says. ”Who wants their home destroyed?”"
"Missy Hart grew up in Redwood City, Calif.  —   in gangs, on the street, in the foster care system and in institutions. ”Where I’m from,” the    says, ”you’re constantly in alert mode, like fight or flight.” But at age 13, when she was incarcerated in juvenile hall for using marijuana, she found herself closing her eyes and letting her guard down in a room full of rival gang members. Back then, she says, yoga was just another mandatory activity, run by a Bay Area program called The Art of Yoga Project. It offers what it calls ”  yoga” to incarcerated girls. At first,    Hart felt uncomfortable. But, gradually, she learned to use the poses and breathing to relax, and she loved it. ”Most of us [in juvenile hall] come from traumatic childhoods,” she says. ”It was the only time you experienced a quiet time, when everything was so chaotic.” She believes the practice helped her cope with symptoms of bipolar disorder. A new report from the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University’s law school, says that for young women like Hart, who have been through trauma, there is mounting evidence that yoga can have specific benefits. The study focuses on girls in the juvenile justice system. It also reviews more than 40 published studies on the mental health benefits of yoga. ”What we’re learning,” says Rebecca Epstein, one of the report’s authors, ”is that fights go down on wards after adolescents participate,” in yoga. Girls, she adds, ”are requesting medicine less often. They have fewer physical complaints.” The findings, Esptein explains, come from speaking to experts in the field, as well as the authors of   articles and some randomized, controlled trials. Two Georgetown pilot studies showed girls and young women who did yoga reported better   and developed skills that they could use in stressful situations  —   taking care of their own children, for example. Educators and others who work with youth are, increasingly, paying attention to the science of trauma. Large studies show that people who have been through one or more ”adverse childhood experiences” have not only poor mental health outcomes, but also higher incidence of heart disease, diabetes and even some cancers. Those experiences might include such things as physical abuse, the incarceration of a close family member or mental illness in their household. Further, statistics show that compared with boys, girls experience different forms of childhood trauma, with an impact that adds up over time. They disproportionately experience sexual violations, for example. And, for girls, this abuse is more likely to occur in the context of a relationship, Epstein says, which interferes with forming intimate and trusting relationships with others. The new Georgetown Law report argues that, since the effects of trauma can be physical, ” ” interventions, like yoga, may be able to uniquely address them. Regulated breathing, for example, calms the parasympathetic nervous system. Practicing staying in the moment counteracts some of the dissociative effects of trauma. And the physical activity of yoga, of course, can directly improve health. Yoga that is specifically designed for victims of trauma has modifications when compared with traditional yoga teaching. For example, says Missy Hart, ”they always ask you if you want to be touched,” for an adjustment in a pose. ”I see now that really helped me. Other girls who have experienced sexual abuse, sexual trauma or are in there for prostitution at the age of 13, 14, they had their body image all mixed up.” And the institution doesn’t always help, she says. ”Being asked to be touched, it gave us a little power back in a place where all our power is taken,” she explained. ”We’re kids and we’re being  . We can’t even go to the bathroom, take a shower, or brush our teeth without asking.” Yoga, she said, offered choices. ”You can sit and reflect and think about what you want to think about. It helped us feel normal.” When Hart turned 18, she was out of the foster care system, and became homeless for a time. ”I was really searching for myself.” Today, she is painting and studying to become an art therapist at Foothill College, near San Jose, Calif. She’s going back this summer to one of the institutions where she spent time as a girl, this time as an art teacher. And, she is beginning her vinyasa yoga teacher training certification. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to open a group home that will offer creative arts and yoga. ”When I was doing yoga, that seed was planted. I built my toolbox.”"
"Updated at 9 p. m. ET, Russia’s military intelligence agency launched an attack days before Election Day on a U. S. company that provides election services and systems, including voter registration, according to a   report posted Monday by The Intercept. The news site published a report, with redactions, by the National Security Agency that described the Russian   scheme, one it described as perpetrated by the same intelligence agency  —   the GRU  —   that the Obama administration imposed sanctions on for the 2016 cyber mischief. According to the NSA report, Russian hackers sent emails to people who worked at a company that provides state and local election offices with voter registration systems, trying to trick them into giving up their user credentials. The Intercept reports, ”At least one of the employee accounts was likely compromised, the agency concluded.” The NSA report says that the Russians then used information from that account to launch a separate phishing attack targeting 122 local election officials. The hackers apparently sent the officials emails that appeared to be from the vendor in an effort to trick the recipients to click on an attachment or link that could have introduced malware into their computers. If they had been successful, the hackers could have gained control of the infected computer. The American spy agency acknowledges it doesn’t know how successful the Russian efforts were in that effort or what information or access the GRU may have gotten. A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. VR Systems, the   election systems provider referenced in the material, said in a statement: ”When a customer alerted us to an obviously fraudulent email purporting to come from VR Systems, we immediately notified all our customers and advised them not to click on the attachment. We are only aware of a handful of our customers who actually received the fraudulent email and of those, we have no indication that any of them clicked on the attachment or were compromised as a result. ”Phishing and   are not uncommon in our society. We regularly participate in cyber alliances with state officials and members of the law enforcement community in an effort to address these types of threats. We have policies and procedures in effect to protect our customers and our company. ”It is also important to note that none of our products perform the function of ballot marking, or tabulation of marked ballots.” Separately on Monday, the Justice Department announced that it is charging a    Georgia woman who works for an intelligence agency contractor with sending classified material to a news organization. Reality Leigh Winner of Augusta was arrested Saturday. The FBI said in court documents that she had been accused of printing out classified material and sending it by mail to a news outlet. Two national security officials with knowledge of the matter confirmed to NPR on Monday that the cases are connected. Winner’s arrest follows the promise of a crackdown by the Trump administration on leaks, which have detailed a number of sometimes embarrassing details about the inner workings of the government and some of its national security arrangements. ”Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nation’s security and undermines public faith in government,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement on Monday. ”People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation.” The NSA document posted on Monday offers some of the most official details yet about Russia’s cyberactivity, which the U. S. intelligence community has previously discussed in much broader terms. It also confirmed that the Russian attacks continued after the Department of Homeland Security publicly attributed the meddling to Russia’s intelligence agencies, confirming that those statements did not deter more cyberattacks, and after President Barack Obama’s warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin in September ”to cut it out, there were going to be serious consequences if he did not.” Intelligence agency leaders say that Russia’s attacks did not change any actual votes in the 2016 race, but election technology experts have been concerned for years that hackers could attempt to manipulate not only individual voting machines but also other equipment used to run elections, such as those that tabulate votes or keep track of voter registrations. While the machines that voters use to cast their ballots are not connected to the Internet, the computers used to program these machines, or to run elections, can be connected at some point, leaving them vulnerable to cyberattacks. J. Alex Halderman, a computer security expert from the University of Michigan, is among those who have been sounding the alarm for years. ”It’s highly significant that these attacks took place, because it confirms that Russia was interested in targeting voting technology, at least to some extent. I hope further investigation can shed more light on what they intended to do and how far they got,” he says. Halderman and others note that local election officials often contract with private vendors, such as VR Systems, to program their voting equipment. He says if those vendors are hacked, then malware could easily be spread to local election offices and ultimately to individual voting machines. Jeremy Epstein, another voting security expert, said that even though the NSA report describes efforts to hack into voter registration systems, once hackers have access to a local election office’s computers, they can potentially infect other aspects of the election. ”If I was a Russian trying to manipulate an election, this is exactly how I would do it,” he says. Experts say it would be difficult to know whether votes had been tampered with unless the equipment had a paper ballot backup. Those paper ballots can be used to verify whether the election results reported electronically were correct. Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law notes that seven of the eight states that use VR Systems services  —   California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina and West Virginia  —   have   systems. And most of the equipment used in the eighth state  —   Virginia  —   also use paper. Another concern is that even if hackers did not try to change the actual election results, they could undermine confidence in the voting system by causing enough confusion at the polls to raise doubts about the results. That could happen, for example, if voters showed up at the polls to find that their names were not listed or listed incorrectly."
"Alex Honnold has shocked the sport of climbing by reaching the peak of El Capitan without using ropes, climbing one of the world’s largest monoliths in less than four hours with little gear other than a bag of chalk. ”So stoked to realize a life dream today,” Honnold wrote on Facebook on Saturday. He shared a photo of himself on the Yosemite National Park landmark taken by Jimmy Chin of National Geographic, which is basing a new documentary on Saturday’s climb. ”Speechless,” wrote the American Alpine Journal in its response to the news that Honnold had tackled the imposing   granite wall in a ”” ascent, climbing alone and without safety gear. Honnold raced up the wall in 3 hours and 56 minutes, prompting Alpinist magazine to say, ”This is indisputably the greatest free solo of all time. Congratulations, Alex!” ”This man,” Honnold’s friend and fellow climbing star Conrad Anker wrote on Facebook. ”Respect. Life goal realized.” After his climb, Honnold told National Geographic that the first challenge was simply to walk up to the California monolith, sit next to the base and put his climbing shoes on. ”Because you look up and go, ’that’s a f****** big wall,’ ” he said. ”It’s like, pretty crazy.” A lighter moment came later, Honnold said, when he passed some climbers who had spent the night on a ledge. He did his best not to wake them. ”I woke up one guy and he sort of said, ’Oh, hey.’ Then when I went by, I think he discreetly woke up his buddies because when I looked down they were all three standing there like ’What the f***?’ ” By conquering El Capitan, Honnold fulfilled a goal he had worked toward for years. He first wrote about the potential   climb in his journal in 2009  —   but he repeatedly found reasons to set it aside, as he said last year on the Basecamp podcast with Gripped editor Brandon Pullan. ”Obviously, that’s like, the thing to do,” Honnold said when discussing El Capitan with Pullan in 2016, adding, ”it’s always seemed really scary.” Honnold, 31, has become famous for   ascents that rely on his unique blend of athleticism and mental focus, ascending Yosemite’s Half Dome and Zion National Park’s Moonlight Buttress. But Gripped says of Honnold’s El Capitan   climb, ”this is by far the most groundbreaking.” While Honnold said in the podcast that he found the idea of   the monolith ”out of the question,” he also told Pullan that he’d been studying it for years and ”El Cap is definitely doable.” ”I mean, there are two routes that you could potentially do, like Freeride or Golden Gate  —   they’re the two easiest free routes,” Honnold said, in a statement that only makes sense coming from someone who’s often called one of the greatest rock climbers the world has ever seen. The challenges on El Capitan, he said, start early, no matter which route you take. ”They all start with Freeblast, which is like a   slab,” Honnold said, adding that large sections of the granite slab are ”basically like walking on a sheet of glass.” The crux of one pitch, he said, is ”like this   foot traverse thing, where you’re just like, shuffling across a blank wall.” Honnold added, ”That’s before the [main] wall even starts, that’s just like getting up there.”"
"Two men are facing criminal charges in connection with a deadly warehouse fire in Oakland in December 2016. The ”Ghost Ship,” a warehouse that was used as a residence and performance space, caught fire during a concert and dance party on Dec. 2. People were trapped inside the crowded space 36 people died. Now the Alameda County district attorney has filed 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter against Derick Almena, the manager of the space, and Max Harris, who is accused of planning the event. According to The Mercury News, DA investigator Cristina Harbison wrote in court documents that Almena was repeatedly warned about the dangerous situation he was creating, as he filled the warehouse with flammable materials and rented it out to  . Harris was Almena’s ”creative director,” the local newspaper reports, and is accused of planning the Dec. 2 event and blocking off one of two exits as he prepared for it. District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said the men ”knowingly created a firetrap with inadequate means of escape” and may face up to 39 years in prison if they are found guilty, The Associated Press reports. Almena, the warehouse manager, spoke to the Today show after the disaster. It was an uncomfortable conversation, as we reported at the time: ”After Matt Lauer welcomed him with ”good morning,” Derick Almena shook his head. ’It’s not a good morning,’ he said. ”What am I doing here? Can I just say I’m sorry?’ ”When asked if he should be held accountable for the disaster, Almena  —   who has been accused of failing to correct unsafe conditions  —   said, ’What am I going to say to that? . .. I can barely stand here right now.’ ”Further questions from the hosts about the possibility of criminal charges seemed to agitate Almena, who ultimately said: ” ’I’m an honorable man. I’m a proud man. I’m not going to answer these questions on this level. I’d rather get on the floor and be trampled by the parents  —   I would rather let them tear at my flesh than answer these ridiculous questions. ” ’I’m so sorry,’ he repeated. ’I’m incredibly sorry.’ The ”Ghost Ship” warehouse was not zoned for residential use, but Almena ran it as an artists’ collective. He told the Today show that he didn’t think the space was dangerous, as evidenced by the fact that he usually lived there with his children he said they stayed at a hotel the night of the party to get some sleep. Reuters has more on the fire itself: ”On Dec. 2, flames raced through what authorities say was an illegal dance party on the second floor of the sprawling   building, which was permitted as a warehouse but leased to an artists’ collective. ”It was the deadliest blaze in the United States since 100 people perished in a 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island. ”The    building lacked sprinklers and smoke detectors, and wooden pallets partially formed a makeshift stairway between the first and second floors, officials have said. It had just two exterior doors.” Filing criminal charges against the manager and organizer won’t end the debate over who should be held accountable for the fire. Reuters has previously reported that before the fire, city officials ”had multiple opportunities to see that residents were illegally living there in hazardous conditions,” but failed to take action. ”Oakland officials have repeatedly denied that fire and building officials were aware of the danger,” the Los Angeles Times writes, although ”public records released by the city in February show the building had been subject to at least 10 code enforcement complaints.” As KQED’s Sandhya Dirks has reported for NPR, there are also concerns about how a crackdown on illegal living spaces might affect artists struggling to live in the gentrifying Bay Area."
"President Trump took to Twitter on Monday to complain about Democratic ”OBSTRUCTIONISTS,” blaming the Senate for being slow to approve his nominees, including his ambassadors. A spokesman for the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee threw it right back, saying Trump should be spending less time on Twitter and more time actually filling those positions. So far, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his deputy John Sullivan are the only   top officials in Trump’s State Department. The White House hasn’t nominated any undersecretaries or assistant secretaries  —   those jobs are being filled on an acting basis by career foreign service officers. Overseas, the picture is similar. Trump has nominated only 11 ambassadors, including Nikki Haley to the United Nations, Terry Branstad for China and David Friedman for Israel. Those three have been confirmed, as have two career Foreign Service officers for postings in Africa. There are nearly 190 ambassadorships. It’s that lack of nominations that’s the real issue, tweeted Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the committee’s top Democrat. The remaining six nominations are pending in the   Senate, though some are recent nominations and some haven’t turned in the necessary paperwork. Callista Gingrich, the Trump administration’s choice for U. S. ambassador to the Vatican, is in the latter camp. Trump’s pick to serve in Japan, Bill Hagerty, is awaiting a Foreign Relations Committee vote, while Scott Brown is awaiting a full Senate vote to become ambassador to New Zealand. A Republican staffer says the committee ”continues to review and process all nominations in a rigorous and timely manner.” About two hours after Trump’s tweet, Cardin’s spokesman, Sean Bartlett, responded: ”The President should get off Twitter and lead his team in sending more ambassadors and other crucial nominees to the Senate. We’re ready to do our job, but he needs to do his first. That’s how the process works.” The spat over nominations seems to have become an issue after the acting U. S. ambassador to the U. K. praised London’s mayor for his leadership in the wake of this weekend’s terrorist attack. Trump blasted Mayor Sadiq Khan for telling residents they have ”no reason to be alarmed.” Khan was trying to reassure Londoners that they should not be alarmed by the increase police presence in the city. Trump took those words out of context and   in   tweets Monday. Back in January, Trump said he would name New York Jets owner and GOP donor Robert ”Woody” Johnson to be the next U. S. ambassador to the U. K. However, the White House has yet to actually nominate him."
"Days after President Trump announced that he would be pulling the U. S. out of a global agreement to fight climate change, more than 1, 200 business leaders, mayors, governors and college presidents have signaled their personal commitment to the goal of reducing emissions. In an open letter, the signatories vow to ”continue to support climate action to meet the Paris Agreement,” even ”in the absence of leadership from Washington.” Since Trump’s announcement, many mayors and governors have been stepping forth to declare their continued commitment to fighting climate change. Twelve states and Puerto Rico have formed the U. S. Climate Alliance, all committing to uphold the Paris Accord. Leaders of 211 cities have declared themselves ”Climate Mayors” and promised to work toward the Paris targets. The new open letter features many of those mayors and governors, as well as more than 170 college and university presidents and hundreds of businesses, investment groups and other organizations. The corporations include tech giants, like Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, as well as businesses from a wide range of industries  —   including Target, Timberland, Campbell Soup, Burton Snowboards, breweries and health companies. ”In the U. S. it is local and state governments, along with businesses, that are primarily responsible for the dramatic decrease in greenhouse gas emissions in recent years,” the letter reads. ”Actions by each group will multiply and accelerate in the years ahead, no matter what policies Washington may adopt.” The letter is called ”We Are Still In”  —   as in, still in the Paris Accord. Only two nations, Nicaragua and Syria, have never signed on to the global agreement to fight climate change, and the U. S. is the only country to declare it will leave the pact. The departure couldn’t officially go into effect until November 2020, but Trump said he would cease implementation efforts immediately. The Paris Accord defines shared goals: most significantly, a global goal of allowing the world to warm by less than 2 degrees Celsius (about 3. 6 degrees Fahrenheit). Each country also sets voluntary targets for reducing its carbon emissions. But the agreement leaves it up to each nation how exactly to meet that goal. So abiding by the Paris Accord isn’t a matter of following specific rules or regulations  —   just about contributing, in one way or another, to substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The signatories to ”We Are Still In” say they are ”delivering concrete emissions reductions that will help meet America’s emissions pledge under the Paris Agreement.” The letter was coordinated by a group of organizations including ”The B Team,”   by Virgin’s Richard Branson, and Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has already promised $15 million to fund climate change efforts at the U. N."
"Updated at 6:30 p. m. ET, London Metropolitan Police have identified two of the three attackers involved in Saturday’s violent rampage on and around London Bridge, releasing photos of Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane and asking the public for help in tracing their movements. Police shot and killed the three attackers within eight minutes of the initial emergency call about the attack that killed at least seven people. Detectives are still working to identify the third attacker. Both Butt and Redouane had been living in Barking, east London, police say. The department adds that while Butt ”was known to the police and MI5,” the agencies had no reason to believe he was involved in planning the attack. Redouane was not known to the authorities, according to the police. ”I urge anyone with information about these men, their movements before the attack and where they frequented to come forward,” Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said. Butt, 27, ”was a British citizen who was born in Pakistan,” police said, while Redouane, 30, ”had claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan” and had also used the name Rachid Elkhdar. On Monday evening in London, a massive crowd gathered at Potters Fields Park, adjacent to London Bridge, to hold a vigil and pay tribute to those slain and the survivors of the attack. Of the 48 people taken to the hospital following the violence that started on London Bridge and continued in Borough Market, officials said Monday that ”36 are currently being cared for in London hospitals with 18 remaining in a critical condition.” ”This was an attack on London and the United Kingdom, but it was also an attack on the free world,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday. ”The police are working hard to establish the identity of all those who were tragically killed or injured in the event on Saturday night,” May added. ”But it is now clear that, sadly, victims came from a number of nationalities.” She said the U. K.’s national threat level remained at severe on Monday, which ”means that a terrorist attack is highly likely.” Metropolitan Police say that as of Monday evening local time, they had searched six properties and ”arrested 12 people  —   seven women and five men.” Later, the police tweeted that everyone arrested had been released without charges. The   described how the attack unfolded on Saturday: ”The attack began at about 10 p. m. local time, when a van crossing London Bridge veered into pedestrians, crashing outside the Barrowboy  Banker Pub. Witnesses told the BBC that van hit ’five or six people,’ then the attackers exited the vehicle and pursued others in a ’rampage’ in which hundreds ran for their lives. One witness said he saw a woman stabbed ’10 or 15 times’ by the men, who he said shouted, ’This is for Allah.’ ”The men then ran down a set of stairs and began stabbing people at a number of different pubs and restaurants in Borough Market, a historic fruit and vegetable market. Witnesses said people threw chairs and pint glasses at the men, who wore what police said were fake explosive vests.” Three Metropolitan Police officers and one British Transport Police officer were injured during the attack, the police said in a statement Monday, and one of the officers is still in serious condition. ISIS said its ”soldiers” carried out the attack. It made the claim in a statement published by its Amaq news agency. ”Questions are arising as to how much the police knew about the three attackers,” NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports from London. ”One of them had been reported to police because of his extremist views and may have previously been confronted by officers.” Metropolitan Police have identified the first of the seven people killed in the attack: Chrissy Archibald, a Canadian citizen on vacation in London. Police released a statement from her family: ”We grieve the loss of our beautiful, loving daughter and sister who was 30 years old. She had room in her heart for everyone and believed strongly that every person was to be valued and respected. She lived this belief working in a shelter for the homeless until she moved to Europe to be with her fiancé. She would have had no understanding of the callous cruelty that caused her death. Please honor her by making your community a better place. Volunteer your time and labor or donate to a homeless shelter. Tell them Chrissy sent you.” The Telegraph and other news outlets reported that Archibald was struck by the van driven by the attackers and died in her fiancé’s arms."
"President Trump said Sunday night that the violence in London over the weekend was a ”horrific terrorist attack.” Trump made the remarks at a fundraising gala at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D. C. Seven people died Saturday night and dozens more were injured when a van crossed London Bridge and veered into pedestrians. Three men exited the vehicle and began a stabbing rampage. Police shot and killed the three attackers. According to a pool report from the gala: ”Trump told the crowd at the gala that he spoke with British Prime Minister Theresa May to ’express our unwavering support.’ The president said the U. S. will do everything in its power to ’bring those that are guilty to justice.’ Adding, ’American sends our thoughts and prayers.’ ” ’We renew our resolve, stronger than ever before, to protect the United States and its allies from a vile enemy that has waged war on innocent life. And it has gone on too long. This bloodshed must end. This bloodshed will end. As president I will do what is necessary to prevent this threat from spreading to our shores.’ ” The Washington Post reports: ”Trump and his wife, Melania, hosted a   reception before a show at the downtown theater, which marked the return of a tradition that dates back to the Carter administration. ”Typically, the president hosts the   gathering, which draws a crowd heavy on CEOs, lawmakers and the city’s   class. ”So important is the exclusive mingle for donors. ..that when the Obamas weren’t available for last year’s shindig, the theater canceled the whole evening.” Those attending the gala included Vice President Pence, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other political, business and philanthropic leaders."
"People from New Jersey are used to defending their state. But, in fact, New Jersey has a history to brag about. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, the phonograph and the movie camera there. Many decades later, Bell Labs invented the transistor in the state. Geography favored New Jersey. On one end, it borders New York City, and on the other end is Philadelphia. That means easy access to Wall Street financing, transportation and industry headquarters. It all started in the 18th century, when Alexander Hamilton took one look at the plunging Passaic River waterfall in Paterson and his eyes lit up with dreams of industry. That came true for silk, textiles and locomotives. Then in 1870, a smart young inventor named Thomas Edison set up shop in Newark. ”The things that make it attractive for Edison are the things that kind of make it attractive for a lot of aspiring people who come to New Jersey today,” says Leonard DeGraaf, an archivist at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, N. J. ”Edison has the resources,” DeGraaf adds. ”He could live and work anywhere, and the fact that he decides to stay in New Jersey I think says something about how he perceived New Jersey as a good place for him to set up laboratories and build companies and manufacture his inventions.” Edison moved a bit south to Menlo Park, and, like a literal precursor to many a cartoon character, a light bulb lit up. The light bulb was one of his more than 1, 000 patents. By the time he was working away on his phonograph and his moving camera, Edison had invented a new way of inventing itself. ”He creates the first industrial research and development laboratories and brings it within the corporation,” DeGraaf says. In other words, Edison invented the modern lab  —   teams of people working together, sharing ideas and perfecting devices. In the century after Edison, New Jersey became the place to set up shop if you wanted to invent. On top of all the other assets, the state had lots of inexpensive land available. That’s what made it attractive to Bell Labs. It spread out over several sites in the middle of the state and created many of the technologies that paved the way for 20th century inventions. One of its former facilities, which once held 6, 000 engineers and researchers, is in the suburb of Holmdel. ”We perfected cellular communications in this building,” says Edward Eckert, a Bell Labs corporate archivist. ”Even before this building was built, we used this property for wireless research  —   transatlantic radio, telephone, microwave.” And not too far from there a group of Bell Lab scientists discovered the transistor  —   the root technology of all silicon chips. So why didn’t Silicon Valley rise up in New Jersey? Johns Hopkins professor Stuart Leslie, who studies the history of science and technology, says it should have. ”If you were going to place a bet on whether it was going to be New Jersey or Northern California and you placed that bet, say, in 1950, where would you put your money?” Leslie says. ”You’d obviously put it on New Jersey.” But a migration happened west because, as Leslie puts it, the East Coast had become ”insular, isolated,  .” Plus, big companies such as Bell Labs, demanded their employees remain loyal to only them. ”In California, the expectation that you would stay with a company for more than five years would be unusual,” Leslie says. ”And the expectation would be, in fact, that you may very well start your own company.” Some cultural differences were also shaped by the law. New Jersey has strict   laws that make it hard to take what you learn at your job and create a new company. William Shockley, one of those brilliant Nobel laureates who invented the transistor, moved to California to open his lab in Mountain View, the current home of Google. His employees also left to found their own companies. It’s not entirely fair to say innovation has vanished from the Garden State. New Jersey ranks 11th among the 50 states for tech industry employment, according to tech association CompTIA. But the excitement and experimentation surrounding Silicon Valley is but a whisper in New Jersey. That Holmdel facility where Bell Labs perfected cellular communications is being redeveloped as a hub for startups like Vydia. It’s a company that helps people make money on videos they post on social media. ”I’m from New Jersey, and I grew up in New Jersey,” says Vydia CEO Roy LaManna. ”I think it’s becoming a tech hub because it was a tech hub. . .. There’s almost like no doubt in my mind that that’s gonna happen. It just feels like something is happening here.” There’s a lesson in what happened to New Jersey. Technology centers can shift and change. Bell Labs rested on its laurels maybe it was a little smug. Nothing lasts forever. Smugness is not a New Jersey exclusive."
"It’s a public health problem that spans the globe. It kills close to 6 million people a year. Teenagers are at risk. It’s not the latest epidemic or chronic disease. It’s the cigarette. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control looks at rates of smoking among   to    (most smokers start in adolescence) and how they feel about it, with a nod to the kinds of measures that work to cut rates of teen smoking. Worldwide, about 10 percent of the youngest teens smoke, according to the report, which analyzed data on more than 170, 000 young teens in 61 countries. But in some countries, numbers are significantly higher, especially among boys. In   the study found, 61 percent of early teen boys smoke cigarettes. And of course it’s not just boys. In Bulgaria, 29 percent of the girls smoke. Most kids who smoke say they want to stop. The survey asked kids in 51 of the countries if they wanted to stop smoking in 40 countries, more than half of them said yes. Rates of wanting to quite ranged from 32. 1 percent in Uruguay to 90. 2 percent in the Philippines. ”I think what this story is about, at least for me, is that it tells us there are too many kids that are smoking globally and the majority of them want to quit,” says Indu Ahluwalia, the Global Tobacco Control Branch Chief at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health in Atlanta, and one of the study’s  . The new study used data from the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, a World Health Organization program that periodically asks a nationally representative sample of school kids about their recent   behaviors. Overall, the CDC reported, nearly 15 percent of boys and 7. 5 percent of girls in the   to    age group had smoked at least once in the previous 30 days. The spread from country to country was large even within regions of the globe. Just 5. 5 percent of young teens in Mozambique smoke, compared to about 16 percent in Zimbabwe and more than 25 percent in the Seychelles. In Jordan, some 23 percent of kids (and nearly 33 percent of boys) smoke, compared to nine percent in Pakistan. Why do the numbers vary so much in different places? The study didn’t ask kids why they chose to smoke, but a country’s commitment to tobacco control is a major factor, Ahluwalia says. Of the 61 countries considered in the report, 59 have ratified an international treaty called the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which recommends   measures for reducing numbers of young people who smoke. But some places have implemented those measures more fully than others. Among the strategies known to make a dent in youth smoking rates, according to WHO, are taxes that make cigarettes more expensive, bans on ads and vending machines, policies that make public places   and mandated warnings on cigarette packaging that show the gruesome consequences of smoking. These strategies can make a big dent if they’re executed well, found a study published this year by Canadian researchers. Raising cigarette prices by 10 percent, for example, leads to a reduction in demand by four percent in   countries, and even more in   and   countries, according to WHO estimates. And tobacco use drops by up to 16 percent when countries ban tobacco ads. Eighty percent of the world’s smokers live in   and   countries. ”When countries strongly implement these policies, the rates of tobacco use go down,” says Mark Hurley, head of Indonesia programs with the Campaign for   Kids, a   organization in Washington, D. C. who was not involved in the recent studies. ”The report underscores the urgency of the global tobacco crisis and clearly demonstrates that tobacco use by youth is a major public health problem around the world.” Still, social norms are powerful, especially among teenagers. And many kids continue to think that smoking is cool, especially when   policies are weak. In Indonesia, where Hurley spends a lot of time, kids see advertising banners that promote cheap cigarettes right outside the gates of their schools. Sales of single cigarettes are also allowed, Hurley says, making it easier for young people to buy them for just 10 cents each. The vast majority of adult smokers start the habit during their teenage years, and evidence suggests that the adolescent brain is particularly vulnerable to nicotine addiction. As regulations grow stronger in developed countries like the United States, Hurley says that tobacco companies are increasingly targeting young people in countries that haven’t enforced strict tobacco control policies and are often less able to deal with the health burdens of tobacco. But when aggressive ad campaigns associate tobacco with values like adventure and independence  —   a strategy evident in many   and   countries, Hurley says, young people get easily hooked. Tobacco companies ”are actively interested in getting youth addicted to their products,” he says. ”These are their future customers.” Emily Sohn is a freelance journalist in Minneapolis who writes regularly about health and science for Nature, the Washington Post, bioGraphic, Hakai and others. More at www. tidepoolsinc. com. On Twitter: @tidepoolsinc"
"In the past day, countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the Maldives have cut ties with Qatar, citing terrorism concerns. The severance in relations affects air transport, trade and  —   more crucially for the U. S.  —   efforts to unify Arab allies. Qatar is host to the U. S. Central Command’s regional headquarters, and hosts a key air base for the U. S.  coalition against the Islamic State. It remains unclear how or if coalition members that have severed ties with Qatar will continue to participate in the operations out of that base. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have banned Qatari flights from their airports and airspace. They’ve ordered Qatari diplomats to leave in 48 hours and other Qatari nationals to pack up in two weeks. And Saudi Arabia is shutting its border with Qatar. The cutoff in relations was sparked by a purported hack into Qatar’s state news agency and leaks of alleged comments by the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad   in support of the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia’s   Iran. The diplomatic row follows President Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia two weeks ago  —   his first trip abroad as president, where he convened a summit of Arab and Muslim allies. The meeting aimed to gather those states into one camp to counter Iran and ISIS. It appears Saudi Arabia is now working to consolidate its position as the leader of that group and sideline Qatar, whose policies have often been at odds with other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional alliance of six nations. In a statement, Qatar’s foreign affairs ministry ”expressed deep regret over the decision of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain to close their borders and airspace and cut off diplomatic relations. Such measures are unjustified and are based on baseless and unfounded allegations. ”Qatar has been exposed to an instigation campaign based on allegations that amounted to absolute fabrications, which proves that there are premeditated intentions to cause damage to the State.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson quickly offered his help to mediate the rift, calling on the GCC to maintain unity. He expressed confidence that the growing crisis would not affect military efforts against ISIS. ”I do not expect that this will have any significant impact, if any impact at all, on the unified fight against terrorism in the region or globally,” he told reporters while on a visit to Australia. ”I think what we’re witnessing,” Tillerson said, ”is a growing list of some irritants in the region that have been there for some time, and obviously they have now bubbled up to a level that countries decided they needed to take action in an effort to have those differences addressed.” A similar diplomatic spat erupted in 2014, in which diplomats from various Gulf countries were withdrawn from Qatar but air links and borders remained open. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab states blame Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups in the region, and they view the     satellite channel   as a mouthpiece for Islamists who challenge their governments. On Monday, Saudi Arabia shut down the Qatari broadcaster in its territory and took it off the air. Gulf analyst David Roberts, an assistant professor at King’s College London and the author of Qatar: Securing the Global Ambitions of a   says whether or not the alleged comments that led to the current rift are true, ”These comments attributed to Emir Tamim effectively voiced all the policies and issues that everyone thought Qatar was doing anyway.” Qatar and the countries that have broken relations with it have ”a fundamental clashing [of] opinions of how to operate or with whom you should operate. The UAE’s approach to foreign policy, where possible, is always seek to work with a   group, as opposed to Islamist,” Roberts says. ”Qatar, more often than not, seems to forge its relationships along Islamist lines.” But the bottom line, Roberts notes, is ”there’s been a feeling for decades that Qatar is an individually focused state doing what it wants to do, and hasn’t paid enough attention to GCC security issues. The crux is that the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia think that Qatar has made their security situation and regional stability worse.” He tells NPR it is not entirely clear why longstanding issues have boiled over now, but notes, ”We can’t ignore the fact that Donald Trump was in the region not too long ago, which really empowered Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They feel they have a certain carte blanche to push their agenda.”"
"Saudi Arabia and at least four other Arab nations are cutting all ties with Qatar, citing concerns over terrorism and regional stability and igniting debate over the rift’s impacts among key U. S. allies in the Middle East. Qatar’s government ”expressed deep regret over the decision” and said it was the victim of ”an instigation campaign” that is meant to hurt the nation. ”Such measures are unjustified and are based on baseless and unfounded allegations,” the government’s foreign ministry said in a statement. The moves came in quick succession, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the Maldives all announcing that they were ending diplomatic relations with Doha and giving Qatari diplomats and citizens days or even hours to get out of their territories. The nations are closing ports and airspace. Saudi Arabia is also shutting its border to neighboring Qatar, locking the state out of its only   border crossing. Qatar is a peninsula that is otherwise surrounded by the Persian Gulf. The Qatari government says its citizens won’t be affected, but news of the closing sent citizens rushing to grocery stores to stock up on supplies. The country imports 90 percent of its food, ”mostly through the land border with Saudi Arabia,” according to the UAE site The National. ”I’ve never seen anything like it  —   people have trolleys full of food and water,” a resident told Doha News while at a Carrefour grocery store in a mall. Saudi Arabia’s government says it’s cutting ties to protect itself ”from the dangers of terrorism and extremism,” the Saudi Press Agency reports. The   Arab nations are unhappy with Qatar’s ties to   Iran. They also say its authorities have supported both ISIS and  . Egypt has led the way in faulting Qatar for giving a safe haven to leading figures of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudi news agency also said Libya and Yemen had cut ties with Qatar, but those claims have not been independently verified. Qatar blamed Egypt for coordinating the severance of ties and said the other countries’ goal is ”the imposition of guardianship over the State.” As for the U. S. response, both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis say they don’t think the decision will affect the fight against terrorism. ”I do not expect that this will have any significant impact  —   if any impact at all  —   on the unified fight against terrorism in the region or globally,” Tillerson said in Sydney, where he’s attending security talks along with Mattis. Mattis predicted the diplomatic rift will be healed, but he wasn’t sure when. ”I believe Iran’s actions speak louder than anyone’s words,” Mattis said, ”and they are going to incite the international community in that region to try to block them.” NPR’s David Welna, who is traveling with Tillerson and Mattis, notes that the rift among U. S. allies ”comes just 10 days after President Trump addressed an   summit of Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, and some see Trump’s siding there with Sunni monarchs and his rhetoric against Iran as having given a kind of green light to blackballing this Gulf nation.” As David notes, ”the biggest U. S. air base in the Middle East is in Qatar, while the Navy’s fifth fleet is based in Bahrain.”"
"The hamlet of Sevnica, population 5, 000, sits right in the middle of the small, alpine nation of Slovenia, in a green valley along the Sava River, surrounded by   hills. ”It’s really an amazing climate,” chirps Lidija Ogorevc, a   tour guide here. ”You should try our wine, our salami.” She stops in front of a   building  —   not unattractive, but clearly closed. ”A cultural monument,” she declares. This used to be the factory where Amalija Knavs, the mother of Melania Trump, designed children’s clothes decades ago, when Slovenia was still part of Yugoslavia. The first lady, born Melanija Knavs, is a native of Slovenia  —   which, to many Slovenians’ frustration, is often confused with Slovakia, another tiny European country. In Sevnica, where the first lady was raised, Ogorevc leads a tour that includes the first lady’s elementary school, the   apartment block where she first lived and the neighborhood where her parents still own a handsome,     white house. (Viktor and Amalija Knavs are often in the U. S.) The   walking tour, which costs about $90 for two, is one of several   tours offered by the Sevnica municipality. ”You see houses there?” Ogorevc says, waving her arm at a   street of manicured lawns. ”OK, that’s the Beverly Hills of Sevnica. I say it like that because most people who have money can afford to build a house there.” Ogorevc takes us to a cafe offering Melanija torte (white chocolate mousse, nuts and edible gold) and a bakery with First Lady Apple Pie. ”We wanted to do something that is a mix of America and Sevnica,” says Maja Kozole Popadic, whose family owns the bakery. The town’s Kopitarna shoe store also sells ”White House slippers” (  with white  ) for about $60 a pair. ”We made 300, and we’ve almost sold out of them now,” says the slipper’s designer, Maja Stamol. Residents and tourists alike are buying them, she says. Demand for tours like the one Ogorevc leads has gone up by 30 percent since the beginning of the year, according to the municipality. That’s a boon for a town that, until last year, was known mostly for its underwear factory and salami festival, says Mayor Srecko Ocvirk. ”A lot of people are coming from Europe, Japan, China and the U. S.,” Ocvirk says. ”From an anonymous little town, we are now on the world tourist map.” I meet him at Sevnica’s hilltop castle, which dates to the early Middle Ages, and where an accordionist in lederhosen serenades a wedding party. The castle sells first   red wine, using blaufränkisch grapes from four local wineries dark chocolate with walnuts and gold leaf salami made from local Krskopoljc pigs and ” ” teacups handmade by local potter Bozo Gligic Krmelj. ”Melania was raised here, she used to be our neighbor,” the mayor says. ”Yes, she’s President Trump’s wife, and that’s what she’s known for. But we want to focus only on her.” Melanija Knavs left Slovenia in the 1990s to pursue fashion modeling in the United States. She hasn’t been back in more than a decade. Last year, she hired Natasa Pirc Musar’s law firm in the capital, Ljubljana, to go after tabloids in Slovenia publishing stories claiming she was an escort for older men. ”She is not going to tolerate lies,” Musar said. Musar also makes sure the first lady’s photo and full name are not used in   products, and that those products are appropriate. ”We would react heavily if someone is going to make an underwear called Melania Trump,” Musar says. ”She’s a tolerant lady. She knows how to draw a line, where the border is, we discuss this. Until now, the reaction was not needed in a single case.” People in Sevnica are careful not to criticize the first lady or her husband. The closest thing to a critique has come from restaurant owner Bruno Vidmar, who created a President’s Burger, with a frizz of fried yellow cheese on top of the bun to represent Trump’s hair and fiery pickles for his ”hot statements.” At a cafe in Ljubljana, Natasa Briski, CEO of the digital media network Metina Lista, is more critical. ”I would like to Melania to be more active, more involved on issues other than maybe how well you dress and how good you look,” Briski says. And how, Briski asks, can Mrs. Trump tackle online bullying, an issue in which she’s expressed interest, ”when she has her hands full with her husband, the president of the United States, who is the troll of the Internet at this moment?” Ivo Vajgl, a Slovenian member of the European Parliament, is not just put off by the president’s Twitter feed. ”I wish [the] president would appreciate responsible and creative politicians, not just   populists,” he says with a sigh. Slovenia, he says, has flourished because of help from the European Union, which Trump has slammed. ”I just hope his wrongdoing will be limited,” Vajgl says. ”That the world would not suffer because of his decisions. I think everyone in this country wishes [his wife] the best.” Slovenians loved it when the pope recently asked the first lady if she fed the president potica, Slovenia’s rich, traditional nut cake. Seizing on its newfound fame, Slovenia is planning to ask the EU to officially recognize the recipe."
"Scientists have found a shockingly hot, massive,   planet that has a tail like a comet. ”It is so hot that it is hotter than most stars that we know of out there,” says Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, whose team describes the scorching world called   in the journal Nature. The planet, which is around three times more massive than Jupiter, orbits a blue star about 650   away from Earth. This star is nearly twice as hot as our own sun, and this planet whips around it once every one and a half Earth days. One side of the planet is locked in perpetual night. The other side always faces the searing heat of its host star and has a surface temperature of around 7, 820 degrees Fahrenheit. ”It’s so hot that we think that there’s no molecules that can live on the day side of this planet,” Gaudi says. ”Its day side would be very bright orange. Its night side would be very dark red. And it would have a cloud of evaporating hydrogen and helium, which would actually look violet.” The gas giant’s atmosphere is probably evaporating at a high rate, maybe even fast enough that it would all get blasted away before the star dies. All that would remain is a rocky, barren core  —   if the planet has one. ”For a long time, we went back and forth about whether or not this planet could possibly be real. In fact, I had a bet with my graduate student over a very nice bottle of single malt scotch,” Gaudi says. ”Just for the record, I won.” In recent years, scientists have focused on finding small planets around small, cool stars, such as Proxima Centauri. That’s because, with today’s technology, it’s much easier to study the atmospheres of planets around those stars to look for hallmarks of a potentially habitable world. But as a result, scientists haven’t spent much time looking for planets around bigger, hotter stars. What’s more, these stars have certain characteristics that make finding their planets especially challenging. So even though researchers have detected thousands of planets orbiting other stars, they know of only a   that orbit hot,   stars, and none has been found orbiting even hotter   stars. This new planet’s star is just on the dividing line between those two types. ”It is certainly exciting to have spotted another rare system of   star plus planet. The A stars are the brightest stars in the sky, and likely most of the stars you know by name: Sirius, Vega, Altair, etc. ,” says Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. ”Since A stars are so bright and yet still common, we tend to know a lot about them  —   their sizes and shapes and what they look like when they are young. So it’s been frustrating not to have many planets known around such stars to study.” Our own sun is a   star, which is pretty     in terms of temperature. If you go outside at night and just look up, ”the majority of the stars you can see are more luminous, or hotter, than the sun,” Gaudi says. While this new planet was detected with a relatively inexpensive telescope built using    technology, the team hopes to do   studies using space telescopes such as Hubble and Spitzer. That way, ”we can really study a planet under the most extreme conditions, basically, that we’ve seen any kind of giant planet experience,” Gaudi says. Jonathan Fortney at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says he thinks the most interesting question is how warm the planet’s permanent night side might be. ”What kinds of winds might operate to bring absorbed stellar energy to the night side?” Fortney wonders. ”Understanding that could only come from viewing the thermal infrared radiation from the planet over the course of a whole orbit. That could certainly be done with the Spitzer Space Telescope.” He notes that  ’s surface temperature is so unusual that he wasn’t able to analyze it using his regular computer simulation of hot   planets. ”In my database of the absorption coefficients of molecules and atoms, I never expected we would go beyond 3000 Kelvin,” Fortney says, ”and here we are at 4000+ Kelvin!”"
"The Trump administration is taking steps to allow five energy companies to use seismic air guns for oil and gas exploration off the U. S. Atlantic coast even though they would incidentally harass marine mammals. Environmental groups and some coastal communities object. ”The testing would take place over a huge area ranging from the Delaware Bay, south to Cape Canaveral in Florida,” NPR’s Jeff Brady reports. ”Ships would crisscross the ocean shooting loud bursts of sound underwater to map the geology.” The proposal by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register Tuesday, will open for public comments for the next month. Groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council are concerned about the impact on marine mammals exposed to the loud sounds, which they said could injure or even kill marine life, or damage their ability to communicate. In a call with reporters, Jolie Harrison from the National Marine Fisheries Service said that the agency has ”no reason to anticipate certainly mortality from this.” She added that ”we do have concerns about how these activities may impact marine mammals, but we also believe that we’ve put measures in place that will allow us to offset them.” Donna Wieting, the director of the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, said that the proposal includes measures to ”minimize negative effects to marine mammals” including ”acoustic monitoring to detect marine mammals sounds beneath the surface, so we know when they’re in the area.” It would also include   if observers spot ”sensitive species.” The seismic operations typically would continue 24 hours a day, according to the proposal.   Geophysical Company has planned the longest program, at more than 300 days long, while ION GeoVentures has the shortest plan, with 70 days of seismic operations. The oil and gas industry hopes that the survey data will point to new potential drilling sites. As The Associated Press reports, ”no surveys have been conducted in the region for at least 30 years.” Likewise, environmental groups are worried that the surveys could open the door to drilling. ”Commercial and recreational fishing off the   and southeast Atlantic generate billions of dollars in annual sales and support close to 200, 000 jobs. The tourism economy is responsible for many billions more,” the NRDC’s Michael Jasny wrote in a blog post. ”It makes no sense to risk these   industries, our beaches, our marine environment, and our   future for the sake of Big Oil.” As Jeff noted, the Obama administration rejected the survey plans in January. ”We believe that the value of obtaining the geophysical and geological information from new   seismic surveys in the Atlantic does not outweigh the potential risks of those surveys’ acoustic pulse impacts on marine life,” the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said at the time, according to The Washington Post. Then, President Trump signed an order reviving the possible surveys. As the AP notes, industry groups argue that ”seismic surveys have been conducted in the U. S. and around the world for decades, with little adverse impacts.”"
"Here’s a classic scene from a telenovela. It’s the funeral of a very rich man whose heirs are battling over his fortune. An indignant woman says to a female guest: ”You are disrupting the service. Who else would you be saving this seat for other than Richard Juma’s second wife?” Death, family feuds, mayhem over money  —   they’re part of the plot in one of Kenya’s most successful telenovelas, Lies That Bind (see sample in video below). But many of the telenovelas on East African airwaves aren’t locally produced. They’re imported from Latin America and dubbed into local languages. And they’re booming. Most cable companies have at least one telenovela channel. Billboards promote them. You can see them on TV sets in restaurants and government offices. One reason for the popularity of the Latin American telenovelas is Africa’s economic divide, says Pascal Koroso of Dubbing Africa, whose company started a few years ago with a staff of two dubbing soap operas and now has 250 workers who are busy 24 hours a day. Some Africans are making a ton of money right now, but the vast majority are still poor  —   and telenovelas are aspirational, Koroso explains. ”Everybody aspires to be rich,” he says. ”Everybody aspires to move into the middle class. So these sorts of stories resonate in terms of people seeing [a lifestyle] that is possible for them.” ”The themes are things that Africans identify with a lot,” he says. ”You know, the corrupt politician who rigged an election, your marriage is having a rough time.” ”These [programs] resonate in countries that have undergone upheaval,” says Carolina   a communications professor who studies telenovelas at the University of Georgia. The storytelling is all about struggles and suffering, she says. And that’s not just something that happens in Latin America.   has found that the export of telenovelas works in a cycle. First they’re dubbed in a local language. As countries start coming to terms with their own struggles, they produce their own. Dorothy Ghettuba, who produced Lies that Bind, has been watching Mexican soaps since she was a kid. At her boarding school, the girls would fill a TV room to watch the Mexican telenovela Rosa Salvaje  —   Spanish for ’Wild Rose.” One time there were so many of them sitting against a wall, that the wall tumbled. ”One girl had her leg broken,” Ghettuba says. ”She went to the hospital saying, ’Damn, I’m missing the soap series.’ ” As a storyteller now, she realizes Wild Rose struck a chord with Kenyan viewers because of the interplay between rural and urban cultures. ”A girl comes from the village and she gets a job as a nanny or housemaid in a big mansion . .. She’s pretty, and the father of the house sees her,” she says. Bottom line, she says, is that the Latin American telenovelas work in Africa because they feel authentic."
"Babies get less sleep at night and sleep for shorter stretches when they sleep in their parents’ room after 4 months old, a new study finds. Parents are also more likely to engage in unsafe sleep practices, such as bringing their child into their bed or leaving pillows, blankets or stuffed animals with the baby when the infant shares their room. The findings appear to contradict recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics for safe infant sleep, creating more confusion for parents trying to choose the safest, yet most practical and realistic, place for their babies to sleep. The AAP recommends infants share a parents’ room, but not a bed, ”ideally for a year, but at least for six months” to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Approximately 3, 700 infants died of   causes in 2015, including 1, 600 from SIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although this recommendation has technically been part of AAP policy for years, it was largely overlooked due to the policy’s wording until last October, when new recommendations were released. At the time, some prominent pediatricians questioned the evidence behind it. Among the skeptics was Ian Paul, lead author of the new study published Monday in Pediatrics. ”It’s important for the Academy to have strong evidence and not just expert opinion to support our recommendations because these guidelines have such influence on practice and on parenting and child health,” Paul says. ”One of the reasons we wanted to explore this is that the evidence is really weak for 6 to 12 months. I think in [the Academy’s] strong desire to prevent every single case of SIDS, they have looked at the data with a biased perspective.” Paul analyzed data from 230 families participating in a randomized, controlled trial for up to 2 years. Half the mothers were encouraged to consider moving their children at 3 months old to wherever the child would sleep at 1 year old. The other half received intensive advice on reducing SIDS risk, in which nurses visited the home and provided specific feedback on improving the safety of the sleep environment. The percentage of infants sleeping in their parents’ room at 4 and 9 months old, however, didn’t end up differing between the groups. More than half the infants were sleeping in their own room by 4 months old, and just over a quarter were sleeping independently between 4 and 9 months, And infants who slept in their own rooms after 4 months slept for longer, in general.      infants slept an average 9. 75 hours per night, compared to 10. 5 hours for those who began sleeping alone by 4 months and 10 hours for those who began sleeping alone between 4 and 9 months. Infants who slept alone after 4 months also slept for longer stretches: 9 hours compared to 8. 3 hours for those infants who slept in their parents’ room between 4 and 9 months and 7. 4 hours for those who continued to share their parents’ room after 9 months old. By 2. 5 years old, all the children got a similar amount of total daily sleep, although those sharing their parents’ room through 9 months old got 45 minutes less at night. Given these findings, Paul worries about unintended consequences of encouraging parents to keep children in their parents’ room until 1 year old. ”There are so many other factors in child and parent health that are consequences of this decision,” Paul says. He said it’s completely impractical for parents to start sending children to their own room at 1 year old, when separation anxiety peaks. ”That’s the worst time to make a change from a developmental perspective.” Experts in developmental infant sleep generally agree with him, according to Jodi Mindell, associate director of the Sleep Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Mindell founded the Pediatric Sleep Council’s website babysleep. com, a free resource of   information on children’s sleep. ”We want babies and parents to get a good night’s sleep because we know that will affect infant safety, infant development and family wellbeing,” Mindell says. ”It’s a balance of trying to make sure babies are safe, everyone’s getting enough sleep and everyone’s developing appropriately.” Past research has shown that infants sleep better, go to bed earlier and sleep for longer periods at a time when they sleep in their own rooms, Mindell says. In this new study as well, infants sleeping on their own at 4 months old were twice as likely to have a consistent bedtime and be in bed by 8 pm than the other infants. Families should feel free to decide without fear whether their babies sleep in the parents’ room or their own room, she says. ”I think the AAP guidelines unfortunately scare parents, and we don’t want parents scared and avoiding doing what’s going to work best for their family,” she says. ”You don’t want parents resenting their child because they don’t get a break.” The tension between what the AAP recommends and what parents feel works for their family isn’t new. Experts advised parents to put babies to sleep on their stomachs for decades until multiple studies revealed that it doubled the risk of SIDS. Since 1994, when pediatricians began recommending babies sleep on their backs, SIDS rates have halved, but some questioned the reversal of advice at the time. (Evidence didn’t bear out concerns that children with reflux might choke in their sleep.) More recently, many parents have wrangled with the difficulty of following other AAP guidelines, such as the updated recommendations against   which nonetheless acknowledge that mothers often fall asleep in bed with their infant, and confusion about the safety of swaddling infants for sleep. The updated recommendations on   were actually intended to offer parents some leeway after 6 months, says Rachel Moon, lead author of the AAP recommendations and head of pediatrics at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. ”We’re being as careful as we can,” Moon says. ”Yes, it’s important that families get enough sleep. It’s also important that they have a baby that wakes up in the morning.” But while there is ample evidence of risks from   evidence of risk from not sharing a room after the child is 6 months old  —   when fewer than 10 percent of SIDS deaths occur  —   is far weaker, Paul says. ”For a family affected by a death after six months, that’s a terrible loss, so I understand that perspective,” he says. Yet he notes that infant sleep deaths remain exceedingly rare, especially after 6 months old. For the 4 million children born each year, other risks from inadequate sleep in parents may be more serious, such as motor vehicle accidents, poorer bonding with their baby, marital strain and child abuse such as abusive head trauma (shaken baby syndrome) Paul says. Parents, particularly moms, could also be at greater risk for postpartum depression and accidental injuries around the home without a solid night’s sleep, Mindell adds. ”These are all considerations when you take a   perspective on infant sleep and don’t focus only on the relatively rare, yet certainly devastating, occurrence of SIDS,” Paul says. In fact,   after 4 months may even increase SIDS risk in other ways, his study shows. ”One of the surprising things we found was the   parents had   sleep practices,” Paul says.   infants were four times more likely to end up in their parents’ bed during the night than those sleeping independently by 4 months and 9 months old. The odds of risky items being in babies’ sleep environments, such as pillows, blankets and stuffed animals, also doubled for   infants at 4 months old. Still, the AAP, which periodically updates its recommendations as new evidence emerges, is unlikely to change their recommendations at this time, Moon says. She acknowledges that downstream consequences are a valid concern but that too few data exist to know if they’re really happening. ”I haven’t looked at the data to say that if you’re   with your baby, there’s a higher risk of a car accident. I don’t know that that data is out there,” Moon says. ”Sometimes there are things that seem like they’re related, but when you do the study, they’re not.” She points to research showing that parents often underestimate the sleep they’re actually getting and that findings on parents’ sleep duration while   are ”all over the place,” sometimes depending on whether the mother is breastfeeding or formula feeding. ”Yes, maybe parents are more sleep deprived if they are   but we don’t know that for sure, and until we do, we cannot make policy based on anecdotal reports or perception or assumption,” Moon says. ”I know it sounds   but our expertise is in [infant sleep deaths] so our job is to look at this from the SIDS perspective.” But that’s the problem, Paul and Mindell say. ”They’re only looking at infant safety with this one lens in the extreme,” Mindell says. ”It has to be balanced by the bigger picture.” Moon also emphasizes that the AAP is ”pretty persnickety at trying to base our recommendations on the literature.” But Paul says the three European studies the AAP used to recommend   up to 1 year don’t actually support it. In one, the infants over 4 months old who died of SIDS were actually more likely to be   than sleeping in their own rooms. Another dates to the 1990s when stomach sleeping  —   a strong risk factor for SIDS  —   was much more common. And the average age of children in the third study was 3. 5 months only 15 of the 123 total infants who died of SIDS in that study were sleeping in their own room. All this    can leave parents confused and frustrated. Ben Hoffman, a pediatrician who specializes in injury prevention at Oregon Health  Science University in Portland, says that’s the nature of creating broad public health recommendations with incomplete evidence. ”Good policy should be based on the best science,” he said, but science always involves a certain amount of uncertainty. ”We try to do the best we can for the greatest number of kids with the information we have,” he explains, while ensuring ”that policy recommendations will not be harmful.” Ultimately, parents have to do the same thing: make the best decision they can with the information they have. ”The AAP has to err on the side of being conservative,” Mindell says, ”but every family has to decide what works for them to be sure the baby is safe, that everyone is getting enough sleep and that everyone’s wellbeing is taken care of.”"
"Nancy and Dan Gapinski of Glendale, Wis. remember a time when they couldn’t really communicate with their own son. ”He used to not really have any kinds of conversations with us. He did a lot of echoing things that we said, and scripting from movies,” Nancy Gapinski says as she and her husband wait for their son Ben’s school bus to arrive. ”A lot of times kids didn’t know how to respond to him then, and didn’t know what he was trying to say and conversations wouldn’t really go anywhere.” But that’s all changed. On a recent Friday afternoon,    Ben hops off the bus, greets both his parents and starts chatting about his day. ”So what I did today was I had an extra recess today, and also I had to do two star math tests,” he reports. He says he did pretty well on those tests. When Ben was a toddler he was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. He barely communicated with his parents and needed constant monitoring to stay safe. The Gapinskis needed help. They found a therapist to work with Ben for 24 hours a week, which cost more $50, 000 a year. Dan’s workplace insurance paid for some of the costs, but not all. So they turned to Medicaid. Ben’s disability was severe enough  —   he was deemed by the state to require ”an institutional level of care”  —   that he was eligible for Wisconsin’s children’s   care program, funded by Medicaid. ”They work with the child on basic language skills, trying to learn words, trying to do some intellectual exercises,” Ben’s father Dan recalls. ”It eventually graduates into some back and forth conversation, and doing homework and doing things that are more like what normal kids do.” While Medicaid is best known as a health care program for poor people, more than 80 percent of its budget goes to care for the elderly, the disabled and children, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Only 15 percent goes to health care for   adults. The program has been growing in recent years and it now makes up almost 10 percent of federal spending. That’s why it’s the number one target in President Trump’s proposed budget, and figures prominently in the Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act. Some estimates suggest the program could be cut by more than 1 trillion dollars over 10 years. After three years of intense therapy, Ben now goes to his local public school and works on grade level in math and English. He no longer works with his private therapist or uses Medicaid benefits. ”We just decided not to reapply,” Nancy says. ”The need had been met.” President Trump and Republicans in Congress have proposed massive cuts to Medicaid’s budget over the next decade, and Nancy and Dan Gapinski worry that the services they used for Ben won’t be there if he needs them in the future, or be there for other families. ”I don’t know what Ben will need in his lifetime,” Nancy Gapinski says. ”Our goals for him are very much like our goals for our daughter Zoe. We really want for them to be active, engaged citizens.”  Ben’s not the only one in the Gapinski home who has used Medicaid services. His grandmother Evelyn Benjamin is also a beneficiary. Evelyn is 84. She’s had a few falls and depends on a walker to get around. She also has heart disease and uses three different inhalers. ”They take very good care of me,” Evelyn says, sipping tea in the living room surrounded by her family. ”I’m very lucky to be one that can stay in my home, and know that I’m cared for.” Evelyn has health insurance through Medicare. But after her husband suffered a stroke and needed constant care, she depleted her savings and now qualifies for Medicaid as well. It helps pay for her 12 prescription medications and, through a   program called IRIS, she gets   help. Wisconsin’s IRIS program is an example of how states tailor Medicaid to their own needs. It gives beneficiaries a budget to use for the services they need, and it allows people to hire whoever they want. So Evelyn hired her daughter, Nancy, who gave up her   career to care for her mother and son. She works   from home, and supplements that income with $11. 50 an hour for 20 hours a week caring for her mother. She says it’s helped keep them out of bankruptcy. And her hourly rate is a fraction of the going rate for such services from an agency. According to a 2015 study by Genworth, home health aides and homemaker services in Milwaukee cost an average of about $22 an hour. ”It’s just a big, big help for not only me, but for my daughter who worries about me constantly,” Evelyn says. Nancy Gapinski worries that help may disappear under the proposed budget cuts. That’s because the services her family uses are considered optional under the Medicaid law. The program is required to pay for doctor visits, hospital care and even nursing home care. But   support services that Evelyn uses and therapies like those Ben received aren’t. Dan Gapinski says his children love having their grandmother around. When they have nightmares they climb into her bed and they giggle with her in the living room. ”I don’t think we, as a society, appreciate the value of that,” he says. ”There’s a lot of talk about entitlements and how that’s become a bit of dirty word. We don’t take the satisfaction in having made a greater society by making these kinds of situations possible.” The day I visited the Gapinskis, Ben was excited to go on a sleepover at his aunt’s house. He was packing up pajamas, his Nintendo DS game, some comic books and Minecraft books. As he heads for the door, his grandmother calls out for a hug. ”Give my love to Aunt Susie OK?” she says, while reaching her arms around Ben. ”Yeah, I’ll give your heart to Aunt Susie,” he replies with a laugh."
"President Trump announced Monday a plan to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system  —   a move that would remove the job of tracking and guiding airplanes from the purview of the Federal Aviation Administration. ”Today we’re proposing to take American air travel into the future, finally,” Trump said. The nation’s air traffic control system was designed when far fewer people flew, Trump said, calling it ”stuck, painfully, in the past.” He also called the system ”ancient, broken, antiquated” and ”horrible” and said his reforms would make it safer and more reliable. The FAA has worked to upgrade its system, but Trump and other critics say it was taking far too long. ”Honestly, they didn’t know what the hell they were doing,” Trump said. ”A total waste of money.” Privatization of air traffic control is an idea long supported by most of the commercial airlines. Executives from those companies joined the president at the White House to announce the plan. Guided by legislation that has been proposed in the past by House Transportation Committee chairman Bill Shuster, a private, nonprofit corporation would be created to operate, manage and control air traffic control nationwide, similar to what Canada does. The FAA would still have some oversight capacity, but a board made up mostly of representatives of the major airlines would govern this corporation. The air traffic controllers’ union is generally supportive of the proposal, as it sees the current FAA air traffic control system as somewhat inefficient. The Shuster plan would still allow for the controllers to be part of the union. The FAA says it has modernized in recent years by updating its computers and other systems. Administrator Michael Huerta told an industry conference in March that the agency has made ”tremendous progress,” per The Associated Press. But some groups have been critical of efforts to privatize air traffic control operations, saying it gives the airlines too much control over the system for their own benefit. The group Flyers’ Rights calls it the ”creation of an airline controlled corporate monopoly.” It also says privatizing air traffic control amounts to ”handing the airlines (for free) control over a core public asset, and providing them nearly unbridled power to extract new fees and increased taxes from passengers.” Trump has been critical in the past of the FAA and air traffic control, saying his personal pilot has complained about how out of date and inefficient the agency is. Trump’s plan to privatize air traffic control operations will likely be included in legislation reauthorizing the FAA. The Senate Transportation Committee will discuss the proposal on Wednesday, with Trump’s Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao testifying. Chao will again address the issue before the House Transportation Committee on Thursday. This plan is part of Trump’s broader infrastructure vision. He may also talk more broadly Monday about what he has called ”third world airports” in particular, as he launches what the White House is calling the president’s ”infrastructure week.” Trump will be in Cincinnati on Wednesday to continue talking about infrastructure, focusing on inland waterways on the Ohio River including aging dams."
"Updated at 2:20 pm ET  President Trump is mounting a vigorous defense of his controversial travel ban, continuing an argument he started over the weekend in response to a terrorist attack in London. That message launched a series of tweets. His uncompromising language could complicate matters for administration lawyers charged with defending the travel ban in court. The tweets also threaten to overshadow a series of White House policy announcements on infrastructure this week. This is not the first time that a carefully choreographed   by the administration has been upended by the president’s itchy thumbs. Trump’s original travel ban, barring   visitors from seven   countries, prompted airport protests throughout the country and was quickly blocked by the federal courts. The administration crafted a second version, which dropped Iraq from the list of targeted countries, removed religious language and made other adjustments in an effort to pass constitutional muster. The revised ban has also been blocked by the courts. A federal judge in Hawaii cited comments from White House adviser Stephen Miller, suggesting the changes from the original travel ban were merely cosmetic and would have little practical effect. Courts have also pointed to Trump’s own language during the presidential campaign when he called for a ”total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” A federal appeals court in Virginia also ruled against the administration, saying despite the changes, the revised ban ”drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Last week, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to issue an emergency order reinstating the travel ban. The high court has given critics of the ban until June 12 to respond. Trump’s tweets Monday morning could give fresh ammunition to those who argue the revised travel ban still has constitutionally suspect motives, and hedges on Trump’s stated desire to reinstate the original version. Neal Katyal, an attorney for the state of Hawaii in its challenge to the executive order, embraced the president’s tweets on Monday morning. George Conway, who was in the running for a top Justice Department job until he withdrew last week, made a similar point, saying the president’s tweets would make it harder for the Solicitor General’s office to prevail at the Supreme Court. Conway, who is married to White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, later added that he still strongly supports both the president and the travel ban, but cautioned that ”tweets on legal matters seriously undermine” the administration’s agenda. Conway said via twitter that ”every sensible lawyer” in the White House counsel’s office and ”every political appointee at” the Justice Department would agree. While the travel ban remains on hold, the administration is pressing ahead with efforts to improve screening of   travelers, including a review of their social media habits. Last week, Reuters reported that some visa applicants worldwide may be asked to provide social media information covering the past five years. This is all likely to draw attention away from the administration’s intended message this week concerning infrastructure. On Monday, Trump unveiled a proposal to privatize the air traffic control system. Wednesday, he’ll visit Cincinnati to focus attention on the nation’s inland waterways. He’ll also drop by the Transportation Department on Friday to argue for a streamlined permitting process. Infrastructure is one of the few areas where Trump has a chance of attracting bipartisan support. But while the president has repeatedly promised to spark a trillion dollar investment in roads, railroads, pipelines, and other projects, the White House envisions a very limited role for the federal government, with most of the money coming from state and local sources or the private sector. Despite the fanfare that the White House hoped would accompany this   the administration’s infrastructure ideas are still in the formative stages, with many details yet to be worked out."
"And then there were three. Apple has finally unveiled its answer to Amazon’s and Google’s smart speakers slash digital assistants  —   and it’s called HomePod. This has been one major area in consumer electronics lacking Apple’s footprint. Amazon has heavily dominated the field with its home speaker called Echo, which uses the digital assistant Alexa. Google Home followed in October and Microsoft’s assistant, Cortana, is also finding a home in home speakers. Both Amazon Echo and Google Home respond to voice commands to play songs, look up stuff online, check the weather, set a reminder or control   home appliances. Siri can do those things, too, but Apple’s pitch for   HomePod is instead focused heavily on music  —   the company appears to bank on consumers paying for smart speakers that deliver   audio sound as a sort of gateway into the world of smart home assistants. ”Just like we did with portable music, we want to reinvent home music,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the Worldwide Developers Conference, where HomePod was unveiled, becoming Apple’s first new device since the release of the Apple Watch in 2015. The HomePod  —   due to launch in December  —   looks like a mesh cylinder. Inside is the same processor that powers the iPhone and an     woofer. Pulling music from the Apple library, the speaker was presented as being able to recognize its placement and direct rich audio sound into the room. The HomePod will be priced at $349, more expensive than Amazon’s $180 Echo or $50 Dot and Google’s $129 Home. The pricing of Apple’s device was shared at the conference in comparison to both smart home speakers as well as premium audio speakers. As The New York Times points out, that’s where one company might feel the competition the most: ”Though Apple appears to be playing catch up with Amazon and Google, the primary casualty here may be Sonos. That company offers a similar wireless   system for listening to music throughout the home, similar to HomePod’s ability to chain together multiple speakers. Observers are skeptical about Siri’s ability to successfully compete against Alexa and Google Assistant, as CNET notes: ”A big question mark for the new speaker, though, is whether Siri is good enough to power its own dedicated device. Siri was introduced as a feature in the iPhone 4S in 2011, three years before Amazon came out with Alexa and the Echo. However, Siri has been slow to improve its   technology and set of responses, especially compared with the more capable Alexa and Google Assistant. A smart speaker utilizing an underachieving voice assistant could dampen interest in the product.” The conference is typically devoted to software updates and this year, Apple released a series of new features and updates for the iPhone, the iPad, Mac and the Apple Watch  —   including an   kit for developers aimed at making the iPhone ”the largest AR platform in the world.” As Reuters points out, the   push might be combined later with another push by Apple Maps indoors: ”New indoor maps of areas like malls and airports indicated that Apple might be laying groundwork to display information over images of those places in the future.” The latest version of Apple’s Safari browser will be able to stop automatically playing videos as well as online trackers used for advertisers. The company is also launching new models of both the iPad and the Mac computer."
"Two months and change after he accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature in a small ceremony in Stockholm, Bob Dylan has delivered his Nobel Lecture, required of all laureates in order to finalize the award. ”Now that the lecture has been delivered and made public, the Dylan adventure is coming to a close,” writes Sara Danius, permanent secretary for the Swedish Academy, in a blog post. The lecture,     minutes long, finds Dylan contemplating the literary roots of his work and the nature of it, and of song, more elementally. ”When I received the Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature,” opens Dylan. ”I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. I’m gonna try and articulate it to you  —   and most likely it will go in a roundabout way.” He opens  —   as slow, thoughtful, Sesame   piano plinks softly in the background, his paper rustling here and there  —   with some thoughts on Buddy Holly, who he says looms the largest in his life. ”I felt a kin . .. like he was an older brother. ”Something about him seemed permanent.” Dylan says Holly looked him straight in the eye, and claims that a day or two after that, Holly died. Through Holly and Leadbelly, he was exposed to the raw nerve and roots of American music. ”I had a natural feeling for the ancient ballads in country blues . .. but everything else I had to learn from scratch,” the last word pronounced ’scrats.’ ”You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man, and that Frankie was a good girl, you know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you heard the   voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in a boggy creek and you’re pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You heard the muffled drums, the fifes that played lowly, you’ve seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen.” Dylan then examines his literary development by looking, through a refracted lens, at the three works that had the biggest impact on him personally and artistically  —     All Quiet On the Western Front and The Odyssey. He penetrates each in a   examination of the themes and plot points and contours and shapes and colors of each work, much as he does in that kaleidoscopic folk music family tree. ”And that’s it  —   that’s the whole story,” Dylan says of   after an impressionistic monologue that could have been ripped from Finnegan’s Wake. ”So what does it all mean,” he wonders, concluding a pointillistic breakdown of The Odyssey. ”[The themes] could mean a lot of different things. If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs, and I’m not gonna worry about it  —   what it all means. ”Songs are unlike literature,” he continues, softly contradicting the Academy. ”They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words of Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage, just as the lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get to listen to some of these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert, or on record, or however people are listening to songs these days.” Dylan closes with a quote from Homer: ”Sing in me, oh muse   And through me, tell the story.”"
"As horrific as mass shootings are, they are outliers. The vast majority of gun deaths in America are either suicides or    shootings. Mass shootings represent a small fraction of deaths by firearm. Still, the premeditated shooting of multiple people is the kind of crime that preys on people’s sense of security, so it makes sense to drill down and take a closer look at those events. The advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety has inventoried all mass shootings between 2009 and 2016, and its data are revealing. Its statistics show that mass shootings are, in the main, linked to domestic violence. That’s apparent in the locations of the incidents. .. . .. as well as in the relationships of the victims to the shooter: Even when you count   mass shootings, 54. 49 percent of all incidents include victims who are the shooter’s current or former partner, or another family member. It’s important to point out that these statistics are driven by which definition of ”mass shootings” is used. Everytown defines it as ”any incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are killed with a firearm.” That leaves out criteria used by some other groups, which narrow ”mass shooting” to mean only indiscriminate attacks in public places. Under Everytown’s broader, ”   ” definition, mass shootings take on a decidedly domestic character. ”We didn’t actually come in with any preconceived idea of what we would find,” says Sarah Tofte, Everytown’s director of research and implementation. ”And it’s almost like we backed into this idea that, ’Oh my gosh  —   the vast majority of these are connected to domestic or family violence.’ ” Most shocking, Tofte says, is the finding that 1 in 4 mass shooting fatalities is a child. ”We’ve never really broken that out before, and that’s an essential part of this story,” she says. By combing through court records and news accounts for every mass shooting since 2009, Everytown has gathered other details not generally available from government statistics. NPR analysis of the Everytown data shows: The ”red flag” category is of special interest to Everytown  —   and especially controversial for gun rights organizations  —   because it’s at the heart of the gun control movement’s recent strategy to promote state laws allowing judges to remove firearms from people deemed to be a threat to others. These ”gun violence restraining order” laws vary in the criteria they use to take away someone’s guns, so it’s not clear that all of the ”red flag” situations tallied here could have led to judicial intervention. Everytown uses the term ”red flag” for any of a number of warning signs, ranging from threats of violence to certain firearms offenses. Twelve of the 64 ”red flag” cases since 2009 consisted solely of problems stemming from substance abuse. Finally, Everytown’s numbers offer some new data points for the perennial national argument about semiautomatic long guns, sometimes called ”assault weapons.” Critics say these powerful rifles make mass shootings even deadlier in fact, when you break down these data, the picture is more complicated: This counterintuitive result may be explained by the fact that handguns tend to be used at close quarters, while long guns are more likely to be used at a distance, and with less precision. So in these mass shootings, someone shot with a handgun is more likely to die. But there’s no doubt that assault rifles produce more victims, overall, both dead and wounded. Despite the lower accuracy, mass shootings with assault rifles average 32 victims per incident. Shootings with handguns average 10 victims. Methodology: NPR data analysis was performed on Everytown data to calculate some of the numbers used in this story. You can see our work on GitHub and view Everytown’s report and appendix of the data."
"A ”disgruntled employee” who was recently fired from a business near Orlando, Fla. fatally shot five of his former   before killing himself on Monday morning, according to local law enforcement. Four of the victims died at the scene, while a fifth died at a hospital, authorities said. Seven other employees were in the Fiamma Inc. building at the time of the attack and were unharmed. Fiamma is an   manufacturer of accessories for motor vehicles. Local media have reported that at least one of the survivors was in the bathroom during the shooting. The survivor reportedly called her sister and told her, ”My boss is dead.” The suspected shooter was fired from the company in April, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said at a news conference Monday morning. There’s no indication that he had ties to ”any subversive type organization” or terrorist group, Demings said, and authorities believe the shooting was ”likely a workplace violence incident.” The sheriff said the former employee had a minor criminal record and that police had visited Fiamma Inc. several years ago after a call that involved the shooter. Demings added that the suspect ”allegedly battered another employee” in that incident but no charges were ultimately filed. The suspect reportedly returned Monday to his former workplace armed with a handgun and knife. He ”shot five innocent people this morning and then turned the gun on himself,” Demings said. Later in the day, the sheriff identified the shooter as    John Robert Neumann Jr. and said Neumann was ”certainly singling out the individuals he shot” and had a ”negative relationship” with at least one of them, The Associated Press reports. Demings said Neumann was an Army veteran, honorably discharged in 1999, who did not have a concealed weapons permit, the wire service says. The AP has more on the shooting: ”State and federal law enforcement officers converged on the awning business in an industrial park in Orlando after a woman ran out and called 911 from a tile business across the street, said Yamaris Gomez, that store’s owner. ” ’All she kept saying was he was holding a gun and told her to get out,’ Gomez said. ”That woman had been hired after Neumann was fired in April, so he probably did not recognize her, the sheriff said. ”Officers arrived two minutes later, the sheriff said. The FBI also responded, said Ron Hopper, who runs the FBI’s Orlando office.” Almost a year ago, an attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando left 49 people dead, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U. S. history. Florida Gov. Rick Scott referenced the Pulse shooting in a statement Monday, saying, ”Over the past year, the Orlando community has been challenged like never before. . .. I ask all Floridians to pray for the families impacted by this senseless act of violence.” Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs told reporters that ”certainly the situation here appears to be very different from the situation at Pulse. . .. I will just say what I said earlier, I would ask our citizens if you see something that troubles you, please go the extra mile, make the call.”"
"CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is the basis for a revolutionary   technology that allows researchers to make very precise modifications to DNA. The implications are enormous  —   not only for the treatment of disease, but also for genetic engineering and scientific research more broadly. It’s no surprise, then, that CRISPR has been making the news, especially over the last few years, as its applications have become increasingly appreciated and developed. In 2015, the journal Science named CRISPR the breakthrough of the year earlier this year, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna received the 2017 Japan Prize for their role in inventing the technology  —   just one of the latest in a string of honors. CRISPR seems to be everywhere, from headlines to classrooms. So surely everyone understands exactly what CRISPR is and how it works? Or not. That’s one reason a new video, produced by Wired magazine, is worth a look. The video features Dr. Neville Sanjana, an assistant professor at New York University and a member of the New York Genome Center, explaining CRISPR five ways: to a child of 7 a high school student a college student a graduate student and an expert in the field. The conversation ranges from genomes to allergies, from ethics to the value of basic research. Besides offering a valuable introduction to CRISPR, the video illustrates how understanding can evolve from a relatively short description to a dialogue with more nuance. Research finds that we indeed explain science differently to children than to adults, and Sanjana’s explanations showcase some of that range. The video won’t transform your genome, but it might make a helpful edit to your understanding. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Wonder Woman was a box office smash on its opening weekend, raking in more than $100 million domestically  —   a new record for a movie directed by a woman. Deadline reported Monday that the final tally for the film was $103. 1 million, even higher than the initial Sunday estimates. That handily defeats the previous record for a movie directed by a woman  —   $85. 1 million for Sam  ’s Fifty Shades of Grey. And it compares well to similar movies  —   that is, superhero flicks that aren’t sequels or ensemble films. While it’s not as big as the opening weekend for Man of Steel or Deadpool, it easily surpasses Doctor Strange and the first Iron Man, Thor and Captain America movies. Sales overseas were impressive too, as NPR movie critic Bob Mondello notes. The film has made $223 million internationally. The film’s robust earnings are a big win for DC Comics, which has often struggled to match the success of Marvel properties at the box office. And, of course, it’s a triumph for Patty Jenkins  —   the first woman to ever direct a   superhero movie. In fact, she’s only the second woman to   direct any Hollywood   movie with a production budget over $100 million. The first was Kathryn Bigelow with  : The Widowmaker, in 2002, according to the Hollywood Reporter. (There won’t be another   gap before the next one: Ava DuVernay and Niki Caro are both working on major projects.) Wonder Woman is Jenkins’ second feature, after Monster, and she’s spent more than a decade working to make the movie happen. She told CBS that when her dream project became reality, it brought a sudden sense of pressure: ”The surreality of, ’I can’t believe we’re getting to make Wonder Woman,’ and also, ’Oh my God, we have to make the greatest Wonder Woman of all time!’ ” she said. ”The director in me wants this film that I made to succeed. But the person who’s not me at all, who lives inside of me . .. has heard people say for many years, ’Ah, nobody would go see a female superhero film, women don’t like action,’ all those things. That part of me is watching, saying, ’Ah, let’s prove them wrong.’ ”"
"For more than a decade, the number of women choosing bilateral mastectomy to treat breast cancer has been on the rise. That’s the case even for women with early stage breast cancer, cancer in only one breast or   breast cancer, which has raised concerns that women are getting more surgery than they need. Now a study suggests that trend may be turning around. Repeat surgeries including mastectomies declined by 16 percent from 2013 to 2015, after medical groups recommended a smaller   margin around tumors removed by lumpectomy. The results were published Monday in JAMA Oncology. It’s important to consider the history here. Before the recommendations were published in 2014, there was disagreement in the medical community about how wide the margin of cancer   removed along with the cancer should be. Some doctors wanted 2 millimeters or more of normal tissue beyond the edge of the cancer. Other doctors believed that 1 millimeter of healthy tissue was fine. Still others thought that a clear margin could be even smaller than 1 millimeter. The difference of opinion led many doctors to recommend a second surgery when the margin was minimal and the cancer cells were close. That meant 23 to 38 percent of women who received a lumpectomy returned to the operating room to have additional normal tissue removed or to undergo a mastectomy. ”There’s no question that the need for a second surgery was associated with women deciding to have a mastectomy,” says Dr. Monica Morrow, a breast cancer surgeon at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Patients felt like they didn’t want to go through this anymore, especially if the second surgery still didn’t produce a ”clean margin,” she says, motivating many women to simply say ”just take it off and then I know I’ll be done.” Breast cancer surgeons and radiologists were concerned about this high rate of second surgeries and decided to establish a standard for lumpectomy margins. The American Society for Radiation Oncology and the Society of Surgical Oncology reviewed studies, looking at evidence of margin size and its impact on cancer recurrence. They came to a stunning conclusion: A minimal negative margin was just as good as a bigger margin at reducing the risk of cancer coming back in that breast. Pathologists call the minimal margin ”no ink on tumor,” meaning the ink the pathologist used to mark the edges of the removed tissue isn’t on cancer cells. Surgeons seem to have adopted the new guideline quickly, resulting in that 16 percent decline in second surgeries in women having lumpectomy for Stage 1 and Stage 2 breast cancer from 2013 to 2015. ”That’s a rapid and impressive change in a short period of time,” says Morrow, and a ”positive step” in the effort to help women choose the best breast surgery options for them. She   the panel that wrote the guidelines and headed the study. More progress could be made, Morrow adds. ”These were the early adopters of the new guidelines.” She thinks in the next few years the number of women having mastectomies could decrease even more. Though there hasn’t been enough time elapsed to know how the guideline change affects survival, the fact that earlier studies showed no difference in survival due to margin size is encouraging. Numerous studies have found similar survival rates for lumpectomy and mastectomy in people with cancer in one site and a tumor under 4 centimeters, about an inch and a half. The study also found that from 2013 to 2015 the number of women choosing   lumpectomy as their ”definitive surgery” increased by 13 percent. The trend observed in the study is ”good news for women with   breast cancer,” says Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, adding that the findings are a nod to another emerging trend in medicine  —   examining the evidence from   research and using it to guide medical practice, referred to as   medicine. ”We are taking the science we know, what we can actually demonstrate that works and applying it to the care of patients,” he says. ”Sometimes that care is more complex and expensive and sometimes, frankly, we’ve learned that by doing less we can actually do more.” Morrow says its important breast cancer patients don’t think a second surgery is always wrong. There will still be cases where more surgery is needed."
"As farmer Jon McConaughy wades through his flock of 400 sheep, lambs bleat, seemingly saying ”maaaaa” as they look for their mothers in the huge pasture. ”Between seven and 10 lambs a week is what we use,” McConaughy says, looking across the field. ”That’s what goes through the slaughterhouse.” McConaughy’s Double Brook Farm in Hopewell, N. J. has one of only two U. S. Department of Agriculture certified   slaughter facilities in the country. That means that, instead of taking his animals to a large commercial slaughterhouse, he can slaughter his own pigs and lambs each week, all within the confines of the farm. ”When it comes time for them to be harvested, we walk them to the slaughterhouse. So they never get on a trailer, they never have to experience the stress that goes along with most slaughterhouses,” McConaughy says. His livestock live their entire lives on this farm, from birth to harvest. Double Brook works to reduce the stress on its animals for a few reasons: McConaughy thinks the quality of the life of an animal is just as important as the quality of its death. And, secondly, stress can ruin meat. ”Stress hormones affect the acid levels, which affect the meat to the point in some cases where it’s inedible,” he explains. On slaughter day, lambs and pigs are walked to the back of the slaughterhouse, which looks like a barn from the outside. The pigs grow up in the shadow of the building, and it’s a short walk from their pasture to the holding pen. Then about 10 of each animal are selected for harvest. ”I would say that’s probably the hardest thing for me, is that on that particular day, why are those the ones chosen?” McConaughy says. The last pig of the day is waiting in the holding pen, snorting and walking around the enclosure that held nine of its litter mates before. He has beady black eyes like marbles and is covered in dirt and coarse black hairs. Butchers herd him down a curved path into the slaughterhouse. Once inside, a gate is closed behind him and he stands in what’s called the knock box. The butchers pet the pig and talk to him, while another butcher prepares the captive bolt  —   a bullet that is shot into the pig’s head to render it unconscious. ”In a commercial slaughterhouse, there is a pig every 15 to 20 seconds. We’re watching the process right now and we have probably been sitting here for a minute and a half, watching this whole thing going on,” McConaughy explains. The butchers get the pig in place and the captive bolt fires with a loud crack. They open the gate and the pig falls to the floor. They take a knife and slice open its jugular vein, and the pig’s blood spills out. ”The heart will continue to beat for another three or four minutes after the brain has been killed. And so the animal will continue to move and convulse,” McConaughy says. The pig twists and writhes in its own blood until it stops moving. The butchers, clad in heavy aprons and black rubber boots, lift the lifeless body into a metal machine, which boils its hair off. When the pig comes out it looks less like an animal and more like meat  —   its flesh is pink and clean. A butcher then pops the toenails off with a knife. Another takes a blowtorch to scorch the remainder of the hair. They saw into the breast plate until the bone cracks, and use a giant serrated knife to cut the head off. Chains jangle as they hoist the body to the ceiling. One butcher slices the stomach and the guts plop into a metal wheelbarrow. ”I happen to think that the slaughter process is something that most people should watch if they’re going to eat animals, and if it turns them away from animals, then that’s probably a good thing,” McConaughy says. He thinks being exposed to the slaughter process helps people connect the meat on their plate to the animal it once was. ”One of the big differences with our kids versus other kids is that they very, very rarely waste anything,” McConaughy says. ”They understand that these animals gave their lives for us.” Paige Pfleger reports for WHYY’s health and science show, The Pulse. This story originally appeared on an episode of its podcast called The Meat Show.  "
"There is a joke among cider makers when they open a bottle and its contents taste disappointingly sour or flawed: ”We say, ’Oh yeah, this cider went bad, so we just put it into green bottles and called it Spanish,’ ” says cider maker Nathaniel West, owner of Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider in Portland, Ore. The joke refers to the fact that northern Spanish cider, which has been made for centuries along Spain’s Atlantic coast, is characteristically tart, almost entirely flat, cloudy with sediment and a bit funky tasting  —   as though the fermented juice might have been filtered through a hay bale. It can taste a bit off to   more accustomed to the sweeter, and sometimes   ciders of America’s rather limited, if growing, craft cider market. However, Spanish cider is a beloved tradition in its homeland, mainly in the lush coastal state of Asturias. Here, apple orchards blanket the emerald slopes that plunge toward the Bay of Biscay, and sidra natural  —   so called because it is fermented with wild yeasts found naturally on apple skins  —   is made in scores of commercial cider houses, homes and roadside bars. Sidra natural of Asturias is, in fact, a product protected by European Union regulations, with growers restricted to using 22 specific varieties of apples in order to label their beverage ”sidra de Asturias.” America’s craft cider culture has been growing rapidly for about a decade, with cider makers both experimenting with flavored styles as well as following old traditions from France and England. But   cider has only recently begun to gain traction among American craft cider fans. Imports of Asturian brands seem to be on the rise, according to Jim Asbel, a   importer who deals exclusively in Spanish ciders and has closely studied the American cider market. Within the United States, a growing pool of cider makers is making their own impressions of the style. Some American producers even serve their sidra in the traditional Spanish way  —   from the spigot of an elevated barrel or poured from a bottle held overhead. The idea is to create some effervescence, as the otherwise almost   cider splashes into the glass. West makes a sidra natural  —   a sharp and   rendition called Sidra Bravo, which he first introduced in 2015. Tilted Shed Ciderworks, in Sonoma County, Calif. first introduced theirs, a lively interpretation called Inclinado, in 2014. Other riffs of the tart Asturian style are made by Millstone Cellars in Maryland, Finnriver Farm  Cidery, near Seattle, and Angry Orchard  —   a side project of the Boston Beer Co. ”A lot of this has to do with sour beers becoming so popular,” says Tim Prendergast, cider maker and   of ANXO Cidery  Pintxos Bar, a   tap house and restaurant in Washington, D. C. ”Even people who don’t necessarily like sour beers now know that sourness is something that can be intentional and doesn’t necessarily mean, ’Oh, this cider has gone bad.’ ” ANXO just released its first sidra natural. In early November, Prendergast put almost 600 gallons of apple juice into a huge oak barrel. Here, the juice spontaneously fermented for about six months, much the way sidra natural is made in Spain. Yeasts and bacteria worked slowly away at the sugars, and finally, in late April, Prendergast transferred the sour cider into kegs and small bottles. It was served at a small onsite festival on April 30. In Portland, Ore. Asbel founded his import company, Ciders of Spain, in 2013  —   a career move that was a culmination of decades of traveling in Spanish cider country. Asbel remembers his first taste of Asturian sidra natural. It was 1974, and he was touring by bicycle. While passing over the Picos de Europa, the spectacular mountain range that crowns the state of Asturias, he stopped in at a roadside bar, starved and ready to eat anything  —   but he wasn’t expecting sour cider. ”I probably wrinkled my nose at it,” he says. But it only took a few sips for Asbel to fall in love with the sidra’s prominent tartness  —   partly the effects of acetic acid (what makes vinegar sour)  —   and complex flavors. Today, Asbel calls himself ”the torchbearer” for sidra natural. He says many cider aficionados have reacted the way he first did to sidra natural. He recalls a few years ago when he periodically presented Asturian ciders at tastings and competitions. ”They were horrified by this sour,    stuff,” he says.  Now, people want funk and sourness, especially in the craft beer world, where sour ales have become wildly popular. But Ellen Cavalli,   of Tilted Shed Ciderworks, is reluctant to call her sidra rendition  —   and the style as a whole  —   ”sour.” ”I think it’s a bit reductive,” she says. ”These ciders are so much more complex than that. They’re lively and fruity, and they’ve been making them in Spain for hundreds of years. But if the word sour is going to push the category forward in the U. S. then I’ll go with it.” In the United States, few of the designated apple varieties used in Spanish sidra natural are commercially available  —   but it’s debatable whether this makes much of a difference in taste or quality. ANXO’s sidra was made in large part from bitter crabapples harvested along D. C.’s sidewalks. Angry Orchard has used a blend of sour and bitter varieties. Tilted Shed’s sidra natural is made with Gravenstein apples, the storied heirloom variety of Sonoma County. ”And I really don’t see a whole lot difference between ours and the Spanish ciders,” Cavalli says."
"On Sunday night at the Old Trafford cricket field southwest of the city, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, Miley Cyrus, Marcus Mumford, Take That, Robbie Williams, Pharrell Williams, Imogen Heap, Liam Gallagher (who afterwards lambasted his brother Noel for not attending the show, held in the town they were born and raised) former One Direction member Niall Horan, the Black Eyed Peas (without Fergie) and Little Mix took to a quickly constructed stage for a quickly organized benefit concert, One Love Manchester. Less than two weeks ago, a terrorist bombing took place outside of the nearby Manchester Arena, precisely timed to the ending of a concert by Grande that evening, killing 22 and wounding dozens. The concert also came one day after an attack at London Bridge killed seven and injured 48. The concert, which sold out with an attendance of around 50, 000, raised over $3 million for the Manchester Emergency Fund. Its broadcast drew the largest television audience of any program so far this year, according to The Hollywood Reporter, peaking with 14. 5 million viewers, or 49. 3 percent of overall viewers. The concert was also streamed online on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook (those viewership numbers hadn’t been made available at the time of this writing). A Facebook spokesperson reports the social media giant’s own had 76 million views, with a view being defined as three seconds or more being watched. The concert seemed a philosophical success, too, as Grande played host,   the evening’s lineup of musicians, all of whom pleaded the case for solidarity and love. Police danced with children. Justin Bieber, a guitar on his chest, led a chant of ”love.” Grande referenced the ”medicine” being served that night. Katy Perry encouraged concertgoers to touch their neighbor to say ”I love you.” Coldplay singer Chris Martin sang the Oasis classic ”Don’t Look Back in Anger,” as Grande smiled on. Grande performed the final song for the evening, a patient, minimalist rendition of ”Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” It was a perfect choice, thematically and musically, to close a concert so defiant and communal in aim and execution. Grande, her voice tired from the long evening, paused with tears in her eyes before the song’s coda as the crowd, made up of people the same age as those who attended her concert in the area less than two weeks earlier, watched on  —   no doubt tired, but no less passionate for it. Updated, June 6, 9:16 a. m.: This article was updated with viewing numbers from Facebook, one of three streaming partners (along with YouTube and Twitter) of the concert."
"The last time we saw singer Monica Martin at the Tiny Desk she was singing with Phox, her folky, poppy band based in Madison, Wisconsin. But, while that band is on hiatus, Martin took time to walk into the world of Violents, the project of pianist, string arranger and songwriter Jeremy Larson. Larson and Martin make a lovely pair and have created a subtle, soulful record  —   Awake And Pretty Much Sober  —   that benefits greatly from Laron’s classical training. It’s the first   Jeremy Larson has released as Violents, a project that, generally, sees him joined by a different singer each outing, resulting in an EP. Clearly there was a chemistry driving these sessions, inspiring and stretching the two artists into creating a   work. Here at the Tiny Desk they performed with the string quartet Rootstock Republic, which they only had met earlier in the week. In fact, this was filmed during the first week Violents had ever performed live! It’s a special collaboration you shouldn’t miss  —   actually I almost did, running from a late train, coming from New York. If Stephen Thompson had not stopped the band to wait just a few minutes I’d have missed this rare treat. Enjoy. Awake And Pretty Much Sober is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Jeremy Larson (piano) Monica Marten (vocals) Juliette Jones (violin) Jessica McJunkins (violin) Kristine Kruta (cello) Jarvis Benson (viola) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri, Colin Marshall Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"  firm Uber has fired about 20 of its employees, including some senior executives, after an investigation into more than 200 sexual harassment and other   claims. The company is not commenting on the findings of the report from Perkins Coie, which was hired after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler last year alleged that she was sexually harassed, and her complaints disregarded by the company’s human resources department. On Tuesday, the San Francisco company held an   meeting for its 12, 000 employees, where it discussed those findings and, according to a source familiar with the meeting, 40 additional employees were reprimanded or referred to counseling and training. Uber set up a hotline where employees and former employees could file complaints. The findings from the investigation will feed into a second, broader report from former Attorney General Eric Holder due out next Tuesday, which will include more detailed recommendations for how Uber should address and remediate its workplace culture. The case has has gotten attention in part because Silicon Valley already has a reputation for attracting and catering to male tech talent, but not to women. So, in a way, Uber is a test case for how serious the tech industry is about fixing its   problems. Uber has rapidly become a household name. It’s hugely successful with investors. But it is also a consumer brand, and consumer brands have to care very much about their public image. And that’s an area where Uber has struggled recently."
"Southeast Alaska is known as the Panhandle: It’s a long, narrow strip of mainland coastline, plus 1, 000 islands and the braided waterways that surround them. In most places, there are no roads connecting the communities there, so Alaskans depend heavily on ferries: the Alaska Marine Highway System. The ferries connect 35 communities in all, and not just in the southeast: The routes stretch for 3, 500 miles, from Bellingham, Wash. in the south, all the way to Dutch Harbor, Alaska in the west, far out on the Aleutian Island chain. In Southeast Alaska, the ferry route runs through the Inside Passage, a spectacular landscape of forest, mountains and fjords. And that’s what we’ll get to see as we hop on the MV LeConte in Haines, heading for the state capital, Juneau. It will be a 4½ hour trip down the Lynn Canal, traveling at ”schoolbus speed,” as our Captain Brian Flory puts it: 15 knots, or about 18 miles per hour. We get a prime vantage point up on the bridge with Captain Flory and his crew. As we head southeast from Haines, we pass by a colony of sea lions that have hauled out on rocks in a lumpy brown mass. Flory has been known to stop the vessel for something amazing, like the time there were over 200 humpback whales within view. ”That was during the early morning hours,” Flory recalls, ”and we woke the passengers up for that. You run the danger of someone who doesn’t want to get woken up at 3 or 4 o’clock to look at whales, but I figured it was important enough, because it was such an unusual sighting of so many.” As we sail, Flory and First Mate Aaron Isenhour scan the route through binoculars, looking for any smaller vessels we need to avoid. This unique system is the only marine route to be designated a National Scenic Byway and   Road by the U. S. Department of Transportation. It is called a marine highway, after all, and that nomenclature is deliberate, Capt. Flory says: ”The name, the Marine Highway System, is to try and jog people into thinking that it’s not just a ferry on a back and forth,   run all day and night. We basically provide the moving highway as the deck of the ship.” The ferries are a vital link for these tiny communities, who rely on them to bring everything from construction materials to a mobile mammogram van. ”This is what delivers the groceries,” explains passenger Wyatt   who depends on the ferry to get him between Juneau  —   his hometown  —   and Haines, where he’s just moved for a new job w the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He and his girlfriend (and their dog) have taken many rides recently, slowly moving their lives up north. ”We don’t have Costcos and Fred Meyers and anything in bulk, so everything is coming up and down here on the Inside Passage. This is our major artery.” For the smallest communities, especially, ”we are their lifeline,” says the ship’s purser, Mary Dahle. She started working on the ferries in 1981, a job that allowed her to put herself through college, and over the decades she’s come to know her passengers well. She’ll often welcome on board pregnant women from tiny villages, who are heading to the hospital in Juneau to have their babies. She’ll be there to greet them when they head back, too. ”Every week we take a newborn baby home for the first time,” Dahle says. ”Last week we took a grandma from Haines down to Angoon to see a grandbaby she hadn’t seen yet. And she spent a week there, and we just delivered her home this morning to Haines.” Dahle continues, ”We get to see everything from babies coming home for the first time, to  —   we bring the caskets of the elders back to the villages to be buried. So we are part of the community’s life. We are part of that fabric.” Our trip from Haines to Juneau is a relatively short one, but some of the southeast runs are well over 24 hours. You’ll get on in Ketchikan at 1 pm and get off in Skagway at 6 pm the next day. School sports teams in Southeast Alaska do this all the time to get to games hundreds of miles away. The kids pile on the ferry and spread sleeping bags out on the deck floor. ”It’s a big slumber party,” Dahle says. A few days later, games over, they do it all again in reverse. Capt. Flory tells me he had 260 kids on the ferry recently, heading to a music festival in Sitka. I imagine there must have been a wild cacophony of music on deck, but Flory says, no: ”We might even have said, ’leave your instruments downstairs.’ You know, like ’check your guns at the door!’ ’All trumpets left down on the car deck!’ But they were a very   group, so it was kind of fun.” Purser Mary Dahle says you never know what you’ll see on the ferry. It might be a passenger hauling a washing machine or a rocking chair back home. Or it might be the wedding party she remembers clearly: ”Everybody had a dog, and we had 36 dog kennels on the car deck, going to a wedding in Tenakee.” Lately, the Marine Highway System has been hit hard by state budget cuts, losing nearly 30 percent of its state funding over the last four years. Alaska has a state budget deficit of nearly three billion dollars, due to low oil prices and declining oil production. As a result, ferries have been taken out of operation, service and port calls have been cut, and staff have been laid off. ”Budget cuts are a scary thing,” Dahle says, ”because we have been running at a pretty minimal schedule for communities to thrive, or survive, for a number of years. If you go to communities less, it’s like closing down a highway for four days out of the week.” Privatizing the system is not an option, according to Capt. Flory. ”The normal American model is, commercial enterprise can do that,” he says. ”Well, the reason we’re doing it is commercial enterprise can’t do it and make a profit. These aren’t necessarily   operations. They’re more like an essential public service.” For example, Pelican, Alaska  —   population under 100  —   gets ferry service to Juneau once a month, year round. It’s easy to imagine a private company deciding that stop just isn’t worth the money. As we approach Juneau, I step outside onto the ferry’s rear deck, where the American flag is snapping in a stiff wind. The view off the back of the ship is wild and gorgeous. Then I turn toward the bow. A brilliant rainbow arcs over the ferry, extending from shore to shore. As if that’s not enough, passenger Phyllis Sage has spotted something else: ”It was a whale! He just came up by the rainbow arch.” Disappointed, I tell her that I missed it. ”Well, you were looking up,” Sage says, with a laugh. ”It’s a beautiful rainbow.” Suddenly, she exclaims, ”Oh! Double! Double rainbow! Lookit, double!” It’s true. We have not one but two rainbows welcoming us to Juneau. You couldn’t ask for a better finish. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"America’s sprawling elections infrastructure has been called ”a hairball”  —   but as people in Silicon Valley might ask, is that a feature or a bug?   Director James Comey touted it as a good thing  —   ”the beauty of our system,” he told Congress, is that the ”hairball” is too vast, unconnected and woolly to be hacked from the outside. That was before Monday’s leak of a top secret National Security Agency report about a Russian election cyberattack. What that document confirms is that if the whole is safe, its many individual parts may not be. The NSA report, posted by The Intercept, documents a scheme by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, to compromise the systems of a Florida elections services company  —   then use that access to explore local voting registration records. ”It is unknown whether the aforementioned   deployment successfully compromised the intended victims, and what potential data could have been accessed by the cyber actor,” as one NSA analyst wrote in the report. Here are 5 other questions that remain unknown about this story and the ongoing threat that national security officials say Russia poses to the integrity of American elections. 1. How widespread are these attacks? The Department of Homeland Security and U. S. intelligence leaders have said generally that voter registration rolls were a pet target of Russian cyberattackers, but that Russia didn’t change any votes. The American leaders also have warned, however, that they expect the Russian mischief to continue in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles. If the GRU continues operations like this elsewhere, how much better of an understanding will it have of local elections officials and their vendors next year or beyond? Elections systems analysts tell NPR that although electronic voting machines are not connected to the public Internet, the computers that update their firmware are, or the ones that program them at the factory. It isn’t clear what’s practically possible in this realm in terms of hacking or compromising those systems Comey told members of Congress that Russia has attempted to tamper with votes ”in other countries,” but the details aren’t clear. Even with the redactions, The Intercept made at the request of the NSA to protect some of its key secrets, there are tantalizing details about the extent of the GRU mischief. One note makes clear that this   ” ” campaign was separate from another major program known within secret circles  —   though the name of that is blacked out. Another mention in the NSA report suggests that   authentication  —   the popular system in which Gmail, for example, sends users a text message with a code they must enter along with a password in order to log in  —   is not a failsafe security feature. The GRU hackers were able to use fake websites that used real Google verification codes to gain access to victims’ accounts. 2. Can the federal government do more?   Secretary Jeh Johnson said last year that the federal government was offering help across the board to local elections officials to be aware of the Russian  . And Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee last month that the government continued to provide information about the ongoing threat. ”Two things we can do, and that we are doing, both in the United States and with our allies, is telling the people responsible for protecting the election infrastructure in the United States everything we know about how the Russians and others try to attack those systems,” Comey said. ”How they might come at it, what [Internet protocol] addresses they might use, what phishing techniques they might use.” That may have been one eventual goal for the NSA report posted on Monday  —   it could have been the top secret original from which DHS or other agencies might have created unclassified advisories to send out to states. But is it enough just to share information about such a sophisticated adversary? Local vendors and state officials don’t have vast IT resources or sophisticated counterintelligence to help defend themselves against   adversaries. And states ”pushed back” against Johnson when he offered help last year, as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress  —   they rejected what he called ”federal interference.” Clapper said he believed Congress should designate the national election apparatus ”critical infrastructure,” the way the U. S. has labeled 16 other ”sectors,” including the American chemical industry, dams, the power grid and others. That could get very complicated, however, and it would take time and cost money. 3. Why do these leaks keep happening? The Justice Department has charged a U. S. intelligence community contractor, Reality Winner, with allegedly leaking the NSA report to The Intercept. According to court documents, when the news site’s correspondents asked the NSA’s public affairs office to verify the report, that enabled the FBI to narrow down who had access to it and pinpoint Winner. From the perspective of NSA leaders, that’s a partial success story: they plugged a leak quickly instead of having it turn into a gusher. But at the same time Winner’s case is just the latest example of a contractor on the outer periphery of a spy agency hazarding closely held secrets. Last month, tens of thousands of sensitive files connected to the National   Agency were left on a publicly accessible Amazon server by an engineer with contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Last year, an NSA contractor also with Booz Allen was charged with hoarding a ”breathtaking” amount of sensitive material. And before that, NSA contractor Edward Snowen took huge amounts of secret information about the U. S. intelligence community and the military. Agency bosses, now led by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, say they’ve focused intensely on what they call the ”insider threat” since the Snowden days, and the intelligence community now has a task force dedicated to helping snuff it out. The question that Winner’s case again raises is how secure Coats and agency leaders can make a constellation of 17 separate agencies that each has its own wider network of contractors who support it. 4. Why can’t the U. S. stop these cyberattacks?   Director John Brennan called his counterpart in Russia last year to read him the riot act: ”I said that all Americans, regardless of political affiliation or whom they might support in the election, cherish their ability to elect their own leaders without outside interference or disruption,” Brennan told the Senate last month. ”I said American voters would be outraged by any Russian attempt to interfere in the election.” But Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s FSB intelligence agency  —   the successor to the infamous KGB  —   claimed he didn’t know anything about any election meddling. In Brennan’s telling, he promised he’d relay the details of the phone conversation to Russian President Vladimir Putin. President Barack Obama also is believed to have warned Putin to knock off the interference  —   with no result. The NSA report posted on Monday describes a cyberattack that lasted until just before Election Day in November, well after the U. S. announced publicly that Russia had been responsible for campaign mischief. U. S. intelligence officials said at the time that they believed   ”attribution” was a powerful weapon. The FBI later issued indictments for Russian intelligence officers and others involved with the meddling, making public how much information Americans have about what’s taking place behind the scenes. None of it, however, appears to have made a difference. Coats, Comey, Brennan and other leaders continue to warn that Russian   proceeds, that Moscow considers it successful and that it could ramp up again in the 2018 midterm and 2020 presidential elections. One political scientist told NPR the world of foreign meddling is ”the new normal.” Is that so, or can the U. S. government do more  —   launch cyberattacks of its own, impose further restrictions on Russia or take some other step  —   to impose greater costs on the Russians? 5. Will this change Trump’s tune? ”As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,”    Trump said at a news conference before Inauguration Day. Since then, however, he’s dismissed the   story as an excuse created by Democrats to cover up Hillary Clinton’s loss, or opined that cyberspace is so complicated that no one could ever know for certain who might have been behind it. Russian President Vladimir Putin made the same point over the weekend to NBC News’ Megyn Kelly. The NSA report leaked on Monday, however, shows that, in fact, American intelligence officers have a highly detailed technical understanding about how much of Russia’s hacking operation works. They attribute the scheme without hesitation to the GRU and talk in detail about the software and other tools used to try to compromise the victims’ computers. It was one thing for the intelligence community to conclude that Russia had interfered and not explain how it knew. Now there are more clues in the open about how it knows. And the report, completed in May, shows that its analysis continues about the ways Russia’s intelligence agencies attacked the U. S during the 2016 cycle. Trump rejects any notion that his campaign aides might have colluded with the Russian operatives who meddled in the election, but does the emergence of this NSA document make it tougher for him to continue to question whether it even happened?"
"Updated at 1:40 p. m. ET, A few days ago, based on her apparent Instagram account, Reality Winner was prepping vegan meals and thinking about her weightlifting goals. Now she’s in jail, awaiting prosecution on charges of mishandling classified information. Winner is the first person accused of leaking classified information to be charged with a crime under the Trump administration. The    National Security Agency contractor, who is also an Air Force veteran, is accused of orchestrating the latest bombshell leak from the NSA. Winner, who was working in the Georgia office of contractor Pluribus International, allegedly printed out a   document last month and mailed it to an online news outlet, which was not named in court documents. However, The Intercept broke a story Monday with details on Russian attempts to penetrate U. S. election systems. At roughly the same time, the Justice Department announced that it has charged Winner with mishandling classified information on national defense. She was arrested Saturday at her home in Augusta, Ga. but the case was not announced until Monday. Winner spent several years in the Air Force before leaving last year, according to her social media accounts. She began working with Pluribus in February and had ” ” clearance, according an affidavit from the Justice Department. It said she printed and removed the document on or about May 9 and passed it on to a news outlet. Pluribus says on its website that it works with the defense, security and intelligence community sectors and offers a range of services, including translation in languages such as Farsi and Pashto. Winner’s mother, Billie   said in a CNN report that her daughter was a linguist with the Air Force in Maryland and speaks Pashto, Farsi and Dari  —   languages widely spoken in Iran and Afghanistan. Investigations into national security matters can often drag on for months or even longer. But in the affidavit, the FBI said it began investigating just last Thursday  —   after a news outlet contacted the government saying it had received the document anonymously and was working on a story. The Intercept has provided a similar account. Ryan Grim, one of reporters who wrote the story, told NPR’s Morning Edition that the news site received the document from an unknown sender. He described the document as ”an NSA analysis of Russian efforts to tamper” with the election.   told The Daily Beast that she spoke with her daughter on Sunday evening  —   the day after she was arrested  —   but they apparently did not discuss details of the case. ”She called us (Sunday) night. She asked if we could help out with relocating her cat and dog,”   said.   said she was not aware of the details of her daughter’s work or the charges against her. ”I don’t know what they’re alleging,” she said.   described her daughter as ”passionate” about her beliefs. An Instagram account that appears to belong to Winner  —   it has a photo of Winner in uniform with her last name clearly visible  —   is almost entirely nonpolitical. The photos on @reezlie are dedicated to Winner’s love for CrossFit, yoga, vegetarian food and her pets, with rare references to listening to Ron Paul’s podcast or supporting protesters at Standing Rock fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. On Inauguration Day, the account posted about crispy tempeh, her   run and her workout. A Twitter account with the same username, by contrast, is almost entirely political. The account of ”Sara Winners” began on June 2015 but doesn’t show any posts until October 2016. The account, which has a profile picture that appears to be Reality Winner, swiftly began tweeting and retweeting criticism of   Donald Trump, along with support for Standing Rock and updates on the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. ”I’d literally eat the original constitution if that would mean #FourMoreYears” of the Obama presidency, @reezlie wrote on Nov. 5. On election night, the user wrote that ”people suck.” After Trump’s election, the Twitter account doubled down on sharing mockery and outrage of the incoming president. The user repeatedly used the hashtag ”#notmypresident,” along with one much more   denunciation. The account ”liked” tweets by Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks and   ”rogue” government accounts, as well as various journalists and politicians."
"Andrea Constand has said Bill Cosby drugged and assaulted her in 2004 while she was working for Temple University’s women’s basketball team. On Tuesday, in a Pennsylvania courtroom, she told her story publicly for the first time. ”In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen,” Constand said, according to The Associated Press. ”I wasn’t able to fight in any way. . .. I wanted it to stop.” Cosby, the    comedian, is charged with sexually assaulting Constand in his home outside Philadelphia. According to the wire service, Constand was ”calm and collected” while she testified and looked at the jury as she described the assault: ”She said Cosby gave her pills he claimed were a natural remedy to ease her stress about a looming career change. ’They’re your friends. They’ll take the edge off,’ she quoted him as saying. ”She told the jury she started feeling woozy after about 20 minutes, with blurred vision, slurred words and legs that felt like rubber. Cosby then [assaulted her] she said. ”She said she was unable to push him away or tell him to stop. ”Afterward, Constand said, ’I felt really humiliated and I felt really confused.’ ”Cosby, sitting across the room at the defense table, leaned in to listen, whispered to his lawyer and, at times, shook his head.” According to WHYY reporter Laura Benshoff, who spoke with NPR’s All Things Considered, Constand described meeting Cosby at a Temple basketball game, where he inquired about some facilities in the women’s locker room. Cosby became a mentor to Constand, and he would sometimes invite her to dinner at his house either alone or with others. Benshoff says Constand testified that on a previous occasion, Cosby tried to unzip her pants, but she rejected the advance and said, ”I’m not here for that. I don’t want that.” The defense has highlighted phone records showing that Constand called Cosby 53 times after she says he assaulted her, the AP reports. Constand said the calls mostly concerned the women’s basketball team. ”It had more to do with business than it did with me personally,” she said. More than 50 women have said Cosby assaulted them, but the statute of limitations has run out in nearly all cases. Only in Constand’s case has Cosby been charged. Cosby said in a recent interview that he won’t testify. The mostly white jury is composed of seven men and five women, according to WHYY’s Bobby Allyn. On Monday, the first day of the trial, prosecutor Kristen Feden asked jurors not to let memories of Cosby as a TV actor and comedian cloud their judgment of what happened to Constand 13 years ago. The defense attorney, on the other hand, asked jurors to ”be the juror you would be if this was your own grandfather,” Allyn reports, and pointed to apparent inconsistencies in Constand’s statements to suggest that she couldn’t be trusted. In Monday’s testimony, a woman identified as ”Victim No. 6” described being drugged and sexually molested by Cosby. Allyn reports that the woman was subjected to a tough   by Cosby’s attorney, who attempted to show that her memory was incorrect. The judge in the case has forbidden cameras in the courtroom, and reporters must turn off their phones throughout the proceedings."
"The Trump administration is warning that the U. S. might leave the U. N. Human Rights Council, arguing that it displays   bias and ignores violations by certain countries. U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in a speech to the council Tuesday that the United States is ”looking carefully at this council and our participation in it. We see some areas for significant strengthening.” ”It’s hard to accept that this council has never considered a resolution on Venezuela, and yet it adopted five biased resolutions in March against a single country, Israel,” Haley told the 47 member states gathered in Geneva. ”It is essential that this council address its chronic   bias if it is to have any credibility.” Later in the day, Haley stressed that the U. S. doesn’t ”seek to leave the Human Rights Council. We seek to   the council’s legitimacy.” She elaborated on changes the Trump administration wants made to the council during a talk at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She spoke sharply against allowing ”the worst human rights abusers” to participate on the council  —   calling out Venezuela, Cuba, China, Burundi and Saudi Arabia by name  —   and called for changes in the way members are elected, including scrapping the secret ballot system. Haley also blasted a standing agenda item to discuss human rights violations by Israel, referring it as a ”central flaw” in the council. She described Israel as having a ”strong human rights record,” phrasing that drew scattered laughter from the crowd at the institute. Israel regularly draws criticism from human rights groups for its occupation of territory seized in 1967 and for continuing to build settlements that the U. N. says are counter to international law. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has characterized the council as an ”  circus,” according to the BBC. On multiple occasions Tuesday, Haley highlighted human rights violations in Venezuela, saying the government is ”conducting a campaign of violence and intimidation against unarmed demonstrators, businesses, civil society and freely elected political opposition.” As NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports, the administration of George W. Bush chose not to become a founding member when the council was established in 2006. ”The Obama administration had a different approach  —   joining and sending Ambassador Eileen Donahoe to try to reform it from within.” Donahoe, who was U. S. ambassador to the council from 2010 to 2013, told Michele that ”the idea of withdrawing so that agenda reflects what the U. S. wants is backward. It’s completely nonsensical.” Donahoe pointed to the establishment of a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, which she says ”happened because we were there, not because we said we won’t come until it gets put on the agenda.” Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program, criticized Haley’s stance in a statement to Reuters. ”It’s hard to take Ambassador Haley seriously on U. S. support for human rights in light of Trump administration actions like the Muslim ban and immigration crackdowns,” he said."
"Conservation photographer Paul Nicklen has spent more than two decades documenting the ice and wildlife in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth  —   the Arctic and the Antarctic. It’s a risky business: Nicklen often finds himself immersed in frigid waters, just a camera’s length away from deadly predators. Once, in Antarctica, he came    with a   leopard seal: ”She opened up her mouth and her head is twice as big as a grizzly bear, and I am starring down her throat,” he says. Nicklen adds that his utmost concern is for the   of the animals he encounters. ”I want to get close, but I also never want to harass an animal,” he says. ”What you learn about these animals is how communicative they are, how intelligent they are, how social they are, how forgiving they are.” On how he’s come to ignore his gut in dangerous situations  When it comes to working with these big predators . .. your, sort of, innate fear mechanisms are telling you not to do it. So you’re always ignoring your gut. And when you ignore your gut all the time, at some point you don’t know where that benchmark is anymore. . .. You’re always stepping into this gray area and you’re stepping over the line, and so now I’ve learned . .. when my gut’s really screaming at me, to slow down and be smart. I start to back up a little bit and just spend more quality time analyzing, thinking, watching and then . .. moving on with it if it seems like the right decision. . .. I think I get so caught up in how important these stories are and how my images have to have that   feel to them, to really bring people into the issues I care about, and I think I just get so focused sometimes on getting those images. On not being afraid of dying doing his work  I’m not really scared of death, I just want my death to be cool, and I guess being speared by a narwhal would be a pretty cool way to go. . .. I think if I’m out there pushing and trying to push the limits to come back with something amazing to connect the world to what I love, then sure. On a memorable interaction with a leopard seal, This leopard seal stayed with me for four days straight. And every time I would show up on the water, she’d be there to greet me. She would follow me back to the sailboat at night. Once she established her dominance, she completely relaxed, and then she disappeared and I thought the encounter was over. Then she showed up a few minutes later with a penguin in her mouth. She had just caught a penguin chick  —   she was holding it by the feet  —   and the penguin is flapping, trying to get away from her. And she would sort of line it up with me, and when it was lined up perfectly with me she would let it go, and it would swim off, she caught it, she did this over and over. And I realized at that moment that she was trying to feed me a live penguin. And I think she realized quickly in this encounter that I was not capable of catching a live, moving, swimming penguin, and so she brought me another penguin. She did all these different attempts to feed me live penguins. And at one point . .. there’s a photo of her looking dejected, sort of disappointed in me that I’m so useless that I’m unable to catch or accept one of her gifts, so then she started to bring me dead penguins, and at one point I had five penguins floating around my head. . .. Further on in the encounter . .. she got so tired of me being unable to accept one of her penguins that she grabbed it and she flipped it on top of my head. On falling in love with the leopard seal  I definitely fell in love with this seal. It’s embarrassing to admit this to you. . .. I’d fall asleep at night with tears coming down my cheeks. . .. I was just so grateful, just to spend your life out with animals and to be fighting to get yourself into a situation where you can try and get close, where you can try and even get within 100 meters of something. And all of a sudden here’s a top predator, and not only are you getting to see it, it’s interacting with you it’s trying to   you penguins, it’s trying to take care of you. It’s a very very humbling thing. . .. Just to flop yourself into its world and for it to spend that much time and energy trying to figure out who you are and to interact with you. . .. I think that’s why I get emotional, because we had such a connection. On what happens to the polar bears when the sea ice melts  In the last 20 years, to have the scientists talking about how we’re reaching the lowest extent of ice we’ve ever had, a place like Svalbard, Norway historically has been covered by sea ice  . In the last 20 to 30 years that ice has been just in a few fjords, and then now in the last few years there’s been no ice at all around Svalbard. There’s been a little strip down on the east side. And when there’s no ice that means bears basically do not have that platform to catch seals, and that’s their main food source. They might eat a little bit of seaweed . .. they might get the odd bird egg or the odd bird, but that’s not giving them any nutritional value. Essentially, bears are designed to go on land for long periods of time. They can be on land for two months and not eat a meal. But they’re not designed to go four or five or six months on land without eating any food, and that’s where we’re starting to find emaciated bears, dead bears. . .. I’ve never had a scary moment with a polar bear, and people come to me like, ”Isn’t that the only animal that actively pursues humans for food?” And I just see this powerful, but very fragile, vulnerable species that is so at the mercy of its ecosystem. And it’s sort of the one species that I really use to drive home that connection to how important this icy ecosystem is. I want people to realize that ice is like the soil in the garden  —   without ice the polar regions cannot exist. Radio producers Amy Salit and Thea Chaloner and Web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"Milagros ”Mili” Hernandez loves soccer, and she’s good at it. Really good. At age 8, the   Nebraska girl plays on an Omaha club team with   . But on Sunday, Mili’s dad, Gerardo Hernandez, found out his daughter’s girls’ team had been disqualified from the finals of a Springfield tournament, set for that day. The   Chicas couldn’t play, The Washington Post reports. Somebody had complained that there was a boy on the team. ”They only did it because I look like a boy,” Mili told WOWT 6 News. Hernandez figured the mistake would be easily rectified. He took his daughter, along with her insurance card listing her gender as female, to the tournament. But when he got there, ”They didn’t even want to take it,” he told the Post, ”They told us the thing was decided.” ”Just because I look like a boy doesn’t mean I am a boy,” Mili said to WOWT. But the tournament organizers said Mili’s looks did not influence their decision. Rather, it was a mistake on her registration form. ”(T) he roster submitted to the state by the club identified this player as male, and the competition rules for US Youth Soccer do not allow boys to play on a girls’ team,” Nebraska State Soccer Executive Director Casey Mann said in a written statement. But Nebraksa State Soccer also said in a statement on Twitter that while it was the local tournament organizers, not the state group, that made the call, ”we recognize that our core values were simply not present this past weekend.” It added, ”We apologize to this young girl, her family, and her soccer club for this unfortunate misunderstanding.” The soccer organization said it has suspended its sanction of the Springfield Invitational tournament pending a review of the incident. Mili’s father said the experience was upsetting for his daughter and that she had cried after finding out she and her team couldn’t play. But if there’s a silver lining, it may be the outpouring of support Mili has received on social media, especially from some of the world’s best female soccer players. Olympic gold medalist and Women’s World Cup champion Abby Wambach  —   who also happens to have short hair  —   posted a video to Mili, saying, ”You’re inspiring, you’re a   leader, Honey, and I’m so proud of you.” Mia Hamm, another Olympic gold medalist and World Cup champion invited Mili to participate in Hamm’s TeamFirst Soccer Academy. Hamm told Mili to ”Be You!” And Billie Jean King, once a top women’s tennis player, tweeted, ”Mili, continue to be yourself, dream big and go for it. Take Mia up on her offer.” As for Mili’s hair, the reason she keeps it short is simple. ”When my hair starts to grow, I just put it short because I’ve always had short hair,” says Mili, ”I didn’t like my hair long.” The Post reports Mili is back to kicking the soccer ball and still wants to play the game all the way through high school and college. Then she wants to go pro."
"After a long day, many of us try to set down our technology and unplug from the world around us. But, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, over the next few years, that will become much more difficult to do. Almost half of the world’s population is connected online. And technology is constantly looming in our lives: the Nest thermostat regulates our household temperature, a camera watches our dogs, our health is constantly monitored, and technology keeps our houses safe when we’re at work. The Internet of things will continue to spread between now and 2026, until human and machine connectivity becomes ubiquitous and unavoidably present, according to experts who participated in what Pew described as a ”nonscientific canvassing.” About 1, 200 participants were asked: ”As automobiles, medical devices, smart TVs, manufacturing equipment and other tools and infrastructure are networked, is it likely that attacks, hacks or ransomware concerns in the next decade will cause significant numbers of people to decide to disconnect, or will the trend toward greater connectivity of objects and people continue unabated?” The answers they gave were telling: 15 percent said significant numbers of people would disconnect while 85 percent said most people would just move more deeply into connected life. Unplugging is futile, and plugging in is unavoidable. It’s already difficult to create distance from the technology that surrounds us, but as connectivity increases, it might become impossible to do so. Marti Hearst, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says just that. ”People’s businesses, homes, cars and even their clothing will be monitoring their every move, and potentially even their thoughts,” she says. ”Connected cities will track where and when people walk, initially to light their way, but eventually to monitor what they do and say. The walls of businesses will have tiny sensors embedded in them, initially to monitor for toxins and earthquakes, and eventually to monitor for intruders and company secrets being shared. People currently strap monitors on their bodies to tell them how many steps they take. Eventually, all fluids in and out of bodies will be monitored and recorded. Opting out will be out of the ordinary and hugely inconvenient, just as not carrying a mobile device and not using a fast pass on the highway are today.” So once people are involved in the system, it’s hard to get out of it. What if they didn’t get involved at all? Judith Donath of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet  Society says that isn’t actually a choice you get. ”People will move more deeply into connected life  —   and they also will be moved there whether they want to be or not,” she says. ”The connection of the physical world to information networks enables the collection of an unimaginably vast amount of data about each of us, making it possible to closely model how we think and to devise increasingly effective ways of influencing how we act and what we believe. Attaining this ability is extraordinarily valuable to anyone with something to sell or promote.” People crave connection and convenience over all else, and   technology serves this well. People are used to risk, and most people believe bad things won’t happen to them anyway. David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT and Internet Hall of Fame member, says: ”Unless we have a disaster that triggers a major shift in usage, the convenience and benefits of connectivity will continue to attract users. Evidence suggests that people value convenience today over possible future negative outcomes.” What about technology hacks, like WannaCry and the Mirai bot? Robert Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, says it probably won’t bother users as much as you might expect. ”Most adults in the U. S. drive cars even though it entails risks,” he says. ”Most adults will use IoT devices even though they involve risks because the benefits will vastly outweigh any potential risks. Moreover, as IoT progresses security will improve.” The Internet of things might become safer over time. Many of the experts surveyed noticed that the Internet of things isn’t particularly safe   but will become safer as more people become aware of the issues. Amy Webb, futurist and CEO at the Future Today Institute, writes: ”Technology can be like junk food. We’ll consume it, even when we know it’s bad for us. There is no silver bullet. The only way to effectively prevent against malware and data breaches is to stay continually vigilant. To borrow an analogy from ’Game of Thrones,’ we need a ’Night’s Watch’ for security. Because when it comes to the Internet of Things and data breaches, ’winter is coming.’ Organizations must hire enough knowledgeable staff to monitor and adjust systems, and to empower them to keep pace with hackers. IT and security staff must be willing to educate themselves, to admit when they need help and to demand that executives make decisions proactively.” Christianna Silva is an NPR Digital News intern."
"Last July, the country’s attention was focused on Dallas after a peaceful protest against police shootings of black men turned violent. A single gunman shot and killed five officers. He injured nine more, as well as two protesters. After he was killed and the incident was over, Dallas Police Chief David Brown commanded the nation’s attention. At a news conference Brown said we’re asking cops to do too much  —   to address problems he says policing was never meant to solve. And when asked about protesters, Brown famously told them they could help by becoming cops. Applications for the police force soared. Brown has since retired as Dallas police chief and has written a book about his life, Called To Rise: A Life in Faithful Service to the Community That Made Me. He tells NPR’s Robert Siegel about what was going through his mind when he addressed his city and the nation after the shootings. ”I’m running on fumes, and so I’m pretty raw, so this is kind of my belief system that I’m expressing  —   particularly to the protesters, to get involved in ways where they put some skin in the game beyond protest, and put an application in, because that’s what I did as a young man,” Brown says. ”I’m sensing that this is a symbol, a moment, for the country around policing  —   in that we can either rise and come together, or we can continue to be divided in our positions and not listen to one another.” Brown says he didn’t always trust the police, having developed a worldview from his parents and grandparents, who grew up in the Jim Crow South, ”that the police are not your friend.” Brown’s experiences growing up make it remarkable that he did not become a casualty of his environment. His mother essentially raised Brown and his siblings alone his brother became a crack addict and was murdered in an argument over drugs. Brown says he owes his success to his mother, who put him and his older brother in a parochial school when they began their studies. He also says that, when it came to drugs, he didn’t face the same temptations as his younger brother. ”The drug of choice for experimentation during my generation was marijuana,” Brown says. ”It’s not addictive when you try. The drug of choice for my younger brother when he was of age for experimentation was crack, and you’re addicted when you try, for the rest of your life.” Desegregation also had a big impact on Brown. When he was 11 years old, he said, one of his new white classmates invited him over. ”I feel like Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” Brown says. ”It really was one of those surreal moments where you don’t know whether you’re going to be uninvited. And his mother comes out with two pot pies, and we sit there and have a really nice dinner, and they make me feel at home. And they make me feel like I am no different than them.” Brown says he carries that memory with him when confronting divisions about and conversations on race. ”I wonder, ’Why aren’t we smarter than sixth graders? Why can’t we figure this out?’ ” Brown says. ”It takes not a big group, not yelling and screaming, but ’let’s sit down and listen to each other and invite someone home for dinner.’ ”"
"This week saw a remarkable collision of free speech, toxic Internet culture and more, unfolding at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. At least 10 admitted Harvard students in the Class of 2021 had their admissions offers rescinded after a group exchange of racist and sexually offensive Facebook messages, the Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported this week. NPR Ed tries to focus on the types of colleges that the vast majority of American students attend. But this incident, small as it was, took place at the end of a school year that has been marked by clashes and riots pitting free speech against hate speech, both online and on campus. Elite colleges like Harvard are expanding financial aid but still struggling to assemble classes that represent America’s diverse population. And despite the use of ”trigger warnings,” the line between hateful memes circulated in chatrooms and the voices amplified in campus auditoriums seems thinner than ever. Meanwhile, college admissions officers and high school counselors across the country are reminding students that what they say online can hurt themselves and others. But first, let’s back up and go over the details. According to our reporting and The Crimson, members of Harvard’s incoming class are invited to join an official Facebook group, which is moderated. From there, some students form their own group chats around interests or similarities, such as studying political science or being from New Jersey. The students in question, admitted in early December, formed a group chat known variously as ”General F**kups” and ”Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.” At one time, it had as many as 100 members. They sent one another images with captions that were racist and   and that made light of pedophilia, among other offensive themes. Harvard spokeswoman Rachael Dane told us in an email, ”We do not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants.” Like other colleges, Harvard has a policy of revoking admissions offers if an applicant does not graduate high school, has plunging grades in their last semester, is found to have lied on their application or engages in other morally questionable behavior. This can include online speech. However, university officials and high school counselors we spoke with told us these policies are rarely invoked. ”Most students attend community colleges and public universities that don’t care what memes their admitted students post online,” says Jeremy Goldman of the Maryland School Counselor Association. Nevertheless, he says, ”we reinforce messages to students to be positive digital citizens in all contexts. Inappropriate, offensive and threatening posts have a much greater impact on students’ and their peers’ emotional and social   than . .. on college admissions.” Stephanie Beechem, a spokeswoman for the University of California system  —   the nation’s largest  —   said in an email that officials there do not ”actively monitor social media accounts. Social media presence plays no role in our admissions process. As we stated, only if an incident is reported to us that purportedly violates our Principles of Community   Student Code of Conduct, will it be investigated in the proper channels.” Nancy Beane is the president of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling and a college counselor for 25 years. She says, ”colleges can rescind offers for all kinds of reasons,” but ”from our perspective, it doesn’t happen very often.” Nevertheless, she says she often reminds students: ”You have to be responsible for what you say,” and if students make mistakes, they should own up to them. According to The Crimson, some of last year’s admitted Harvard freshmen engaged in similar behavior using a program called GroupMe, which sends group text messages. That time, they were criticized by university administrators but not individually punished. But in the past year, the question of what type of speech is permissible has repeatedly arisen on campuses nationwide. Protests, even riots, roiled University of California, Berkeley, Middlebury College in Vermont, and Alabama’s Auburn University over appearances by   provocateurs Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, The Bell Curve author Charles Murray and white nationalist Richard Spencer. Some states are introducing legislation to protect free speech on campus. Meanwhile, 43 percent of young people have been called offensive names on the Internet, according to a national study released earlier this year by the nonpartisan think tank Data  Society. And an overwhelming majority, 84 percent, say they have witnessed it happening to someone else. ”We’re around memes all the time,” says Wyatt Hurt, an incoming Harvard freshman from Grand Junction, Colo. who was not involved in the meme exchange. He says fellow students he has spoken to online overwhelmingly agree that these students should be barred from admission. ”You have your First Amendment rights. But when you apply, you sign an honor code to be good and virtuous. Why would we want to have those people in our class?” he asks. For Monica Bulger, a researcher with Data  Society, the incident is a reminder that ”ignorance isn’t a matter of stupidity.” She says that researchers like herself are increasingly taking an interest in ”transgressive behavior” among youth: for example, studying the motivations of cyberbullies as well as the experiences of the victims. While a lack of mature   skills has always been a hallmark of late adolescence, Bulger says, the online arena allows speech to persist, endure and travel further. It also creates a sense of distance: ”When I’m talking to people counseling students at the college level,” she explains, ”they’re saying that the students have a lack of awareness of the consequences of harmful messages. The students say, ’It’s not real. It goes away.’ ”"
"For nearly four years now, an unusual coalition of Republicans and Democrats has worked to reduce mandatory prison terms for many federal drug crimes. But that bipartisan movement may be shallower than it appears. Indeed, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who both supported a   on some drug punishments, are preparing a bill that would create tough new penalties for people caught with synthetic opioid drugs. Grassley chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Feinstein is the panel’s ranking member. A draft of the legislation reviewed by NPR suggests the plan would give the attorney general a lot more power to ban all kinds of synthetic drugs, since criminals often change the recipe to evade law enforcement. It would impose a   maximum sentence on people caught selling them as a first offense. That would double if they do it again. Michael Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for lighter punishments for drug offenders, has seen language in the proposal. He said he thinks it’s a bad idea. ”These synthetic drugs are added to heroin often outside the U. S. but the bill takes such a broad approach that it’s penalizing individuals who sell drugs at a low level inside the U. S. and so it’s going to do nothing to deter and stop the supply of drugs,” Collins said. Collins said drug addiction is a public health challenge. He said sending more people to prison won’t help, just as it didn’t help in the crack cocaine era a few decades ago. ”The problem is really we’ve been here before with this approach in terms of the war on drugs and ramping up sentences, and we know that escalating sentences . .. does nothing to help the opioid epidemic,” Collins said. ”In fact, it only serves to increase the prison population.” Many people inside the Justice Department disagree. Just last week, federal prosecutors in Utah announced charges against a   people in suburban Salt Lake City. Authorities say two of them quit their jobs at eBay to embark on a new enterprise. They allegedly ordered a version of the synthetic opioid fentanyl by mail from China, then pressed the drug into counterfeit pills and sold them online to customers across the country. U. S. Attorney John Huber brought the case. ”Like much of the country, we are not escaping the heroin and opioid epidemic and this latest version or brand of it with the fentanyl danger just makes it that much more pressing of a concern for us,” Huber said. The alleged ringleader  —      Aaron Michael Shamo  —   could spend the rest of his life in prison if he’s convicted under the current drug laws. ”Mr. Shamo faces a mandatory life minimum sentence if he’s convicted and that shows how serious this is, when you’re dealing in such large quantities of such a dangerous substance,” Huber said. ”This is as serious as it gets.” The problem is getting attention at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called for a return to a tough approach on drug crimes. Sessions recently directed prosecutors to seek more mandatory minimum penalties. On Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appeared at the Drug Enforcement Administration. He warned police about the deadly risks of exposure to various forms of fentanyl and synthetic drugs like it. Rosenstein said people are dying in record numbers. And overdoses, he said, represent the leading cause of death for people under 50. ”There’s a horrifying surge in drug overdoses in the United States of America,” Rosenstein said. ”Some people say we should be more permissive, more tolerant, more understanding about drug abuse. I say we should be more honest.” He said the country doesn’t have the time to argue about whether this is a public health crisis or a law enforcement crisis. Rosenstein said the government will use all the tools it can: prevention, treatment and prosecution."
"Every Friday, Christine Crawford has a counseling session at a clinic at New York City’s Mount Sinai Health System as she moves ahead with plans for gender transition surgery later this year. In addition to the many medical and psychosocial issues, there are practical ones as well. So, Crawford was thrilled when a Mount Sinai representative told her they would assign a lawyer to help her legally change her name to Christine. The lawyer filed her   petition with the court and helped Crawford with other steps, such as notifying her former spouse and publishing the name change in the newspaper. She gave Crawford information about what she needed to do to make the change official with organizations such as the Social Security Administration and the Department of Motor Vehicles. Perhaps best of all, when Crawford graduated with a master’s degree in social work last month, her diploma had her new name on it. ”[The lawyer] was able to expedite the petition and the court date,” Crawford says. ”She was a godsend.” As health care systems continue to shift toward becoming comprehensive medical homes for patients, health care providers are increasingly incorporating lawyers into the team of professionals who are on hand to help with legal issues at no additional charge to patients. Roughly 300 health care systems, children’s hospitals and federally qualified health centers have set up these programs, says Ellen Lawton,   of the National Center for   Partnership at George Washington University in Washington, D. C. The pairing makes sense in many ways. Legal issues all too often can cascade into problems with bad medical outcomes. Lawyers might file for an order of protection from a violent spouse, help appeal an insurance claim denial or get involved in child custody, guardianship or power of attorney issues. For Care Connections at Lancaster General   Medicine in Lancaster, Pa. housing problems are a key area that requires legal expertise. The    program provides comprehensive primary care services for people with complex health and social needs, especially patients who are frequently hospitalized, says Dr. Jeffrey Martin, managing physician for the program. For someone with severe asthma and other chronic medical conditions, ”it’s hard to use inhalers and take 16 other medications if you’re living in the back of a car or on someone’s couch,” Martin says. When someone is fighting eviction, has problems with federal housing subsidies, suffers a utility   or has poor housing conditions, the staff members of Care Connections call on Catherine Schultz. She is a legal aid attorney with MidPenn Legal Services, which has a contract to work on such cases for Lancaster General Hospital. Martin describes the case of one patient, a licensed practical nurse in her   who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The woman lost her job because she could no longer work, and then her car was repossessed. She stopped taking her medications and couldn’t make it to her medical appointments. Schultz worked to get this patient a federal housing subsidy and helped her apply for Social Security disability benefits, and then appeal the administration’s denial of benefits. They’re awaiting the results of the appeal. In    medicine, the hospital’s work traditionally was considered finished once patients were discharged, Lawton notes. But health care has shifted toward   care that focuses on outcomes and avoiding preventable hospital readmissions. Now, ”you are accountable for patients beyond the four walls of the hospital, and you have to think creatively about how to create stability for them,” Lawton says. With that in mind, many health care systems are focusing on   partnerships that target patients who are high users of services. ”Once upon a time, the attitude of the provider was, ’It’s not my problem that you have mold in your apartment,’ ” says Emma Kagel, manager of   partnerships at   Centura Health System. ” ’I’m just going to keep pumping you full of steroids and give you an inhaler.’ ” That attitude, she says, doesn’t work with   care. Funding is always a problem for these programs where demand far outstrips supply. They are frequently staffed by legal aid attorneys under contract to the health care providers. Some programs use private sector lawyers working on a pro bono basis. Mount Sinai, whose program is just getting off the ground, is taking a hybrid approach. In addition to a grant from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to provide child and family law services, the hospital partnered with law firms and other organizations to provide transgender and    legal services on a pro bono basis. Sena   president of the Mount Sinai Medical Legal Partnership, says she’s focused on identifying gaps in patients’ needs where she can offer assistance. ”There’s no way to handle all of it,” she says. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow Michelle Andrews on Twitter @mandrews110."
"President Trump’s Twitter account may be popular among his fans at home, but his latest missives are complicating the work of American diplomats overseas. As some diplomats push back, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert cautions that they ”are expected to use their judgment.” Consider Trump’s personal attack on London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, after Saturday night’s deadly terrorist attack in the British capital. ”At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ’no reason to be alarmed!’ ” Trump tweeted (ignoring the fact that Khan was advising Londoners not to be alarmed by an increased police presence in the British capital). The U. S. Embassy in London, in contrast, praised the ”strong leadership” of the mayor ”as he leads the city forward after this heinous attack” in a tweet signed by acting Ambassador Lew Lukens. At her first State Department briefing, held Tuesday, Nauert played down the contradictions. Diplomats serving overseas are ”professionals,” she said, who are ”entitled to use social media.” ”We expect them to use it responsibly,” she said, adding that the U. S. stands ”shoulder to shoulder” with the British government in the wake of the London attack. The U. S. ambassador to Qatar is also on the spot this week after Trump linked Qatar on Twitter with the ”funding of Radical Ideology” and seemingly took sides with Saudi Arabia in Monday’s diplomatic   with Qatar. Trump’s Tuesday tweet came a day after Ambassador Dana Shell Smith retweeted some of her previous statements praising Qatar’s efforts in combating terrorism financing and its role in countering ISIS. Nauert echoed that message Tuesday, saying Qatar has made ”great progress” in cutting terrorism financing, but warned, ”They still have work to do.” Asked whether Trump’s tweets signal a shift away from Qatar and toward Saudi Arabia, Nauert stressed, ”Our relationship with Qatar is one that is strong.” Qatar is home to the U. S. Central Command’s regional headquarters and hosts a key air base for the U. S.  coalition against ISIS. Many of the questions at Nauert’s debut on the State Department podium were about Trump’s tweets. Nauert said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has no intention of advising the president how to communicate. She also fielded questions on the department’s most recent   departure. David Rank, the charge d’affaires at the U. S. Embassy in Beijing, abruptly ended a   career in an announcement Monday, reportedly resigning over Trump’s decision to withdraw the U. S. from the Paris climate accord. Nauert called Rank’s departure a personal decision."
"Updated at 5:20 p. m. ET  Spokespeople at the White House and the State Department say the Trump administration remains committed to cooperation among Arab allies in the Middle East. The reassurance comes after a series of tweets in which President Trump appeared to be siding with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in their push to isolate Qatar. The Saudis, Egypt and several neighboring countries abruptly severed diplomatic ties to Qatar on Monday, while also cutting off transportation links to the country. Qatar is regional headquarters for U. S. Central Command and home to some 10, 000 American troops. ”The United States continues to be in close communication with all the parties to resolve the issues and restore cooperation, which is so important to regional security,” said White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Tuesday. ”The U. S. still wants to see this issue   and resolved immediately, in keeping with the principles that the president laid out in terms of defeating terror financing and extremism.” Spicer acknowledged the longstanding tension between Qatar and its Arab neighbors, who accuse the tiny   nation of bankrolling extremist groups, including the   affiliate in Syria. The Saudis and others also object to Qatar’s backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is seen as a threat to hereditary rulers in the region. On Tuesday, Trump seemed to join in the   as he tapped out a series of tweets. ”So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” Trump wrote. ”They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!” Spicer insists the president is eager to work with Qatari leadership as it cracks down on terror financing. ”The president had a very, very constructive conversation with the emir during his visit to Riyadh,” Spicer said. ”His message of toughness on terror finance is being heeded by countries in the region.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert delivered a similar message, while conceding that Qatar’s effort to cut funding to terrorist groups is incomplete. ”We recognize that Qatar has made some great efforts to try to stop financing of terror groups, including prosecuting suspected financiers, freezing assets, and introducing stringent controls on its banking system,” she said. ”However, let me make this clear: They have made progress. But they still have work to do.” It wasn’t clear how much warning the U. S. had been given before Saudi Arabia and the other countries moved to isolate Qatar. Spicer said that notice was given ”through proper diplomatic channels.” Over the weekend, the U. S. ambassador to Qatar retweeted a   old message about Qatar’s ”real progress” in countering terrorist financing. On Monday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to calm the Arab feud, telling a news conference in Australia it’s important for the Gulf countries to work together. The mixed signals pose a recurring question for U. S. allies: Who speaks for the Trump administration? ”I think it signals to the world that you should look at what’s tweeted out of Washington,” said Saudi expert F. Gregory Gause of Texas AM University, ”and not necessarily what the secretary of state says when he’s in Australia.”"
"William Krisel, a pioneering architect who brought his vision of modernism to Southern California tract housing, died Monday at age 92. Tract housing often implies  . But in Palm Springs, Krisel varied homes’ rooflines, paint schemes, and setbacks from the street so no two tract homes next to each other looked the same  —   despite all having one basic floorplan. He also popularized the ”butterfly” roof. His homes featured open floorplans and clerestory windows to bring in even more light. ”First of all, it makes you aware that it’s a beautiful day or a dark day  —   you’re aware of the weather because the outdoors comes in,” Krisel told NPR last year. ”Secondly, the space that you’re in is not held in by four walls, that your space goes as far as your eye can see.” Krisel grew up in a big house with staff of servants in Shanghai, where his father was the sole film distributor to Asia for all of the big Hollywood studios. At 11, he drew a sketch of a proposed family home in Southern California his father sent the drawings to the architect. The architect told Krisel’s father that the boy had talent and ought to become an architect  —   and that’s just what he did after leaving the Army. He served during World War II and said he often chatted with his fellow soldiers about what they would do after the war. ”Everybody had an idea of what kind of a home they wanted and what not, and so I listened to all this and made up my mind that I was going to try and be a specialist in housing,” he said. He’s best known for the 1, 200   homes in California that he designed from 1957 to 1963, when he worked with the   George and Robert Alexander, according to the Los Angeles Times. The partnership revealed Krisel to be a pragmatic architect, attracting buyers with appealing architecture at a price that made the developers happy. The Alexanders’ ”main interest was to make money,” he said, according to the Times, ”and my interest was to do good design. In order for them to do my work, I had to come up with a design that was less expensive than the dingbats they were building.” Krisel told NPR that in the late 1950s, buyers could purchase one of his small homes on ”a 100 x 100 lot, all fenced in, landscaped, modern design, air condition, swimming pool  —   all for $29, 900.” The Times notes that Krisel also was a talented artist, whose   drawings also sold buyers on the appeal of a home in Palm Springs or elsewhere. Krisel himself wasn’t sold on the desert life, though: ”I wouldn’t like to live there,” he said, ”but I like it as a locale for my architecture.” Krisel later designed residential buildings like   apartments and condos, as well as commercial projects such as offices, shopping centers and hotels, according to the Getty Research Institute, which houses Krisel’s archive. The publication of a book about his work spurred a fresh wave of interest in Krisel homes last year Palm Springs renamed a street after the architect in February 2016. More than 40, 000 homes are thought to have been built from his designs, according to the Getty. ”I’ve had a very happy and successful career,” he told NPR. ”And I’ve achieved what I set out to do: create housing for the masses that they could afford and that would change their way of living and make life more enjoyable.”"
"That the 1976 song ”Convoy” was created by a fictional musician is perhaps the least interesting thing about it. Attributed to   C. W. McCall  —   a character originally invented and performed by advertising executive Bill Fries for a bread company’s ad campaign  —   the song tells a tale of truck drivers protesting government regulations on a struggling industry. It features a conversation between them as they drive from California to New Jersey, spoken in the truckers’ inscrutable vernacular: There’s armored cars and Interstate tanks and jeeps and rigs of every size. Yeah, them chicken coops was full of bears and choppers filled the skies. Well, we shot the line and we went for broke with a thousand screamin’ trucks And 11   Friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus. To make sense of ”Convoy,” consider what was happening in 1976. The United States was still reeling from a gas crisis. Motorists had to wait in line for hours to get fuel, prices skyrocketed and the federal government imposed a nationwide 55 mph speed limit. The economy was in bad shape, and the trucking industry was hit hard. Enter citizens band (CB) radio. Truckers used it to communicate, help each other on the job, forge camaraderie and even keep one another awake on long hauls. But when the FCC eliminated the need for an operator’s license to use a CB radio, suddenly anyone could listen in and join the conversation. Fries did just that, learning the code words truckers used and weaving them into lyrics: ”Swindle sheets” are logbooks, ”chicken coops” are weigh stations, and ”bears” are police. The narrator of ”Convoy,” a driver who goes by the handle The Rubber Duck, uses the CB to lead a group of truckers in protest of government regulations. As they move across the country, the excitement builds. Law enforcement tries to intervene, but in a grand act of unity and resistance, more truckers and other motorists join the convoy, making them unstoppable. Even though ”Convoy” is sung by a fictional character and its story is fantastic, Fries’ use of trucker lingo resonated throughout popular culture  —   by the end of the 1970s, millions of Americans had used a CB radio. Sure, ”Convoy” is a novelty song, but it topped the pop and country charts and became a phenomenon, inspiring movies and TV shows. It’s also an improbable protest song  —   an asphalt fable of workers pushing back at a system that always seems to lean on them the hardest."
"We all know that cellphones and driving can be a dangerous mix, and yet a quick glance at the sound of a ping can be irresistible to many motorists. So beyond turning off your cellphone or leaving it at home, Apple has a new solution aimed at keeping drivers’ eyes off the screen and on the road. When Apple’s iOS 11 update comes out this fall, it will include a ”Do Not Disturb While Driving” mode. Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, announced the feature at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. on Monday. USA Today reports that when the feature is turned on, your iPhone can detect when you are driving and will automatically mute all notifications so amid a flurry of texts, posts or tweets, your screen remains dark. Contacts can receive an automatic reply saying that you are driving and will get back to them once you arrive. There remains some wiggle room, however, so it’s unclear just how effective the setting will be. Users can allow certain contacts to get through so ”you have the peace of mind that you can get contacted,” Federighi said. Federal data show that every day, eight people are killed and more than 1, 000 are injured because of distracted driving. And on any given day, around 660, 000 people are on their cellphones or other electronic devices while driving. Most states ban cellphone use by new drivers, but only 14 have rules against all drivers using   devices. Apple’s move follows a lawsuit filed by a family in December 2016, after their    daughter was killed by a distracted driver allegedly using the FaceTime video chat feature. The lawsuit said that despite filing a patent in 2014 on a safety feature to block the use of FaceTime by drivers, Apple had failed to implement it. Joel Feldman also lost his daughter to a distracted driver in 2009 and founded the advocacy group End Distracted Driving. He said that while he welcomed Apple’s move, it is not a quick fix. ”We should not lose sight of the fact that drivers using the iPhone are involved in thousands of crashes,” Feldman told the Huffington Post. ”Crashes involving iPhones will continue.” The group advocates changing ”our culture so that just like with drunk driving, distracted driving will no longer be socially acceptable.”"
"The overwhelming majority of bats are friends of humanity. They gobble up the insects that bite us and ruin our crops. They pollinate flowers and they replant forests by spreading seeds around. But as agriculture overtakes rain forests and jungles, humans have come into conflict with one bat species: the common vampire bat. In Latin America, vampire bats drink the blood of livestock. Very rarely, these bats contract rabies. Before they die, they can spread the deadly virus to pigs, chickens, cows  —   and even humans. The disease costs farmers in Latin America $30 million every year and kills dozens of people. In March of this year, a man in Brazil reportedly died of rabies after being bitten by a vampire bat. Ranchers, whose livelihoods are threatened, want the government to wipe out this threat. But is extermination the best course of action? Would the world be better without vampire bats? Is there anything that makes them worth saving? NPR’s science YouTube channel Skunk Bear is all about tackling tricky questions. So we headed down to Panama to try and better understand the problem and this seemingly sinister species. In a winding limestone cavern, we encountered wild vampire bats. They have amazing powers  —   not just   fangs, but a nose with infrared heat sensors that can detect the warmth of flowing blood beneath the skin. They don’t just fly, they use their wings to execute an awkward but effective gallop on the ground. In the small town just outside the mouth of the bat cave, we met the people and animals they prey upon. And in a shed on the campus of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, we saw another side of the bats. Scientist Gerry Carter has spent years documenting how they treat each other in a very human way  —   hugs are a big thing. These little monsters regularly save the lives of their friends by sharing food. Watch our video to learn more about this surprising species. And submit your own science questions to Skunk Bear here."
"Arguments over Confederate statuary and flags rage on across the South. Confederate memorials in Norfolk and St. Louis were vandalized, the small town of Brandenburg, Ky. welcomed a Confederate statue that the University of Louisville had taken down and New Orleans has now removed four monuments. Controversies have also sprouted in Virginia, South Carolina and Maryland. The debate over monuments usually centers around one question  —   should they stay or should they go? Now, some leaders of a town in Texas with their own controversial confederate statue believe they’ve found a third option  —   though not everyone is thrilled with their compromise. Georgetown Mayor Dale Ross stands in his historic town square, hand resting proudly on the chest of Dan Moody, the city’s latest statuarial acquisition. ”He is an icon in Williamson County. He was responsible for the first successful prosecution of the KKK in the United States of America,” Ross explained. Young Dan Moody stands proudly in bronze, hat in one hand, law book in the other. In 1923, Georgetown’s    district attorney charged and convicted four members of the local Ku Klux Klan for the whipping and tarring of a traveling salesman. It was during the height of the Klan’s power, which had grown to millions of members nationwide. In Texas, that included one U. S. senator and the mayors of Dallas, Ft. Worth and Wichita Falls. Ross says Moody’s decision to prosecute stunned the conservative Georgetown community.  ”Back in the day you had the Ku Klux Klan that was in every level of government, they were the leaders of the community,” he said. ”And so this was a totally courageous move by Dan Moody because he put his life in jeopardy.” Moody’s triumph over the Klan made him nationally famous and he went on to become the youngest governor in Texas history. These days, Georgetown is a conservative suburb north of Austin of 60, 000 people. There’d long been talk about erecting a statue of Dan Moody. But in June of 2015, a racist rampage at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S. C. changed the conversation. The killings of nine black worshipers prompted a political backlash against Southern battle flags and Confederate memorials. And that included in Georgetown. ”I called our county judge [and] said, ’I’m sure there are going to be some kind of issues here,’” said Mickie Ross, director of the Williamson Museum in Georgetown. Her prediction was correct. A local group of   Unitarian and Methodist Ministers and white liberals had been advocating for something to happen with a    statue of a confederate soldier that towers over the town square  —   move it to Ross’s museum or at least put a plaque next to it detailing the realities of Georgetown slave life at the time. But the town’s predominately conservative white leadership wasn’t crazy about either of those ideas. But what about adding a statue of the local hero who once fought the Ku Klux Klan? ”And there began to be some letters to the editor about maybe we should promote Dan Moody here,” Ross said. So last October, a spiffy, forever young Dan Moody took his place on the courthouse square. In the beautifully restored courtroom where Moody won his four historic assault cases, author Patricia Bernstein recently addressed a crowd who’s come to hear her talk about Moody and the Klan. Bernstein’s book is entitled 10 Dollars To Hate, because that’s how much it cost to join the Texas Klan in the 20s. ”My motive is not so much to remove every Confederate statue but to have more of a balance in our public life,” she said. ”This new wave that’s just starting to get started of celebrating other kinds of heroes that have more to say for our own time.” But some in Georgetown disagree that adding a statue of someone like Dan Moody fairly offsets the history a Confederate statue represents. ”Well it came about without our input. No one asked us,” said Jaquita Wilson, a leader in Georgetown’s small   community. Wilson says Dan Moody means little to nothing to people of color in Williamson County. And that people of color have historically meant little to nothing to white Williamson County. ”When you walk around this courthouse, there’s no mention that there were Latinos, that there were Native Americans, that there were   here,” she said. ”Just white Georgetown.” Now here’s the twist in the Dan Moody story. Remember that traveling salesman the Georgetown Klan whipped and tarred back in 1923? Ralph Burleson was a young, World War I veteran, knocking around the country selling silk hosiery door to door. And he was white. The reason the Klan got agitated was that Burleson rented a room in a Georgetown widow’s house. It was a straightforward boarding arrangement but the Klan didn’t like the optics so it turned Burleson into a   bloody pulp. The young district attorney was appalled and decided he didn’t want the KKK to get away with it on his watch. But, Wilson says, none of it had anything to do with Georgetown’s black community. The Dan Moody statue, she says, ”definitely wasn’t for us.” After he rode that victory to governorship, he made it his business to reduce the voting rights of  . In 1944, Moody tried to prohibit   from voting in the Texas Democratic primary, arguing the party was like a private club and therefore could keep black voters out. Jaquita Wilson says if Georgetown wants to make a gesture to its black community it should take down the towering symbol of slavery and oppression that stands in the town square.  ”It gives me like a punch in the gut,” she said about the statue. But for Retired Colonel Shelby Little, leader of the Williamson County chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the memorial is a monument, not to slavery, but to the Confederate soldiers that served in the war.  ”It’s something we are facing all across America and even right here in Georgetown Texas,” he said, ”the abysmal illiteracy when it comes to history.”  Standing in a Georgetown cemetery next to the graves of 113 Confederate soldiers, Little says the memorial will stay right where it is unadorned by any plaque about black people or slavery.  ”They have an agenda and they are not going to stop until they see that agenda satisfied,” he said of people who want to move or change it. ”If they want to put a plaque on the other side of the courthouse or somewhere in the area that is great. But don’t impugn the integrity of our Confederate heroes.” It’s almost cliché when writing about politics in the South to quote William Faulkner’s line: ”The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” But never is that more true than when trying to decide who exactly gets honored in Southern town squares."
"Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Tuesday that more than 150 people died in last week’s truck bombing in Kabul, raising earlier counts and making it one of the deadliest such attacks since the   invasion toppled the Taliban in 2001. ”Over 150 entirely innocent Afghan sons and daughters were killed and more than three hundred were brought to hospital with burns, lacerations, and amputations,” Afghan news site TOLOnews quoted Ghani as saying. Previous estimates had put the number of dead at 90. The president did not explain the sharp increase. The bombing took place during Wednesday morning’s rush hour, when a truck exploded in the diplomatic zone of central Kabul. The streets were packed with commuters as well as children heading to school. The blast shattered windows at the presidential palace, while Ghani was inside, The New York Times reports. In his remarks, Ghani praised the work of 13 Afghan police officers who died in the blast, saying that thanks to them, ”nobody from the diplomatic community was killed.” Ghani was addressing representatives from about two dozen countries and international organizations at a   peace conference called the Kabul Process. While he spoke, demonstrations continued outside on the streets of Kabul. As The   has reported, the explosion prompted protests and calls for Ghani and other top government officials to step down over the security lapse. The protests themselves turned deadly Friday when security forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing several. Nearly a week after the explosion, no group has claimed to have carried out the attack. And while the Taliban have specifically denied responsibility, Afghanistan’s intelligence service believes the Haqqani network, a   group in Pakistan, carried out the attack, CNN reports. ”Taliban sponsored terrorism is creating a platform that is bringing terrorists and criminals from all over the region to Afghanistan,” Ghani said, according to his prepared remarks. He called for peace talks with the group. But a Taliban spokesman told The Times that talks are pointless while foreign troops remain in the country. While Ghani said he would not be drawn ”into a blame game,” he did call out Pakistan, saying that despite attempts at negotiations to bring an end to conflict and terror, ”we have made little progress.” Ghani added that Afghanistan’s other Asian neighbors must also play a role. ”In the past there has been a misperception that this was ’America’s War,’ ” he said. ”By now that illusion should be finished.” The United States officially withdrew from Afghanistan in 2014, but it maintains a presence of about 8, 400 troops there. The Trump administration has been mulling calls to add more military personnel amid continued insurgent attacks. Ghani appealed to the international community to end ”global terror” and cited the May 22 attack at Manchester Arena in England that left at least 22 people dead. ISIS claimed responsibility. ”As [British] Prime Minister [Theresa] May recently said, ’Enough is enough,’ ” Ghani said. ”And today we are demanding that the world make good on this promise. The violence must be stopped.”"
"If you’ve ever bought coffee labeled ”Uganda” and wondered what life is like in that faraway place where the beans were grown, now’s your chance to see how climate change has affected the lives of Ugandan coffee farmers  —   through their own eyes. Rising temperatures and prolonged drought can make coffee trees less productive and increase their exposure to pests and diseases. This is especially a problem in Uganda, where nearly all of the coffee is produced by small farmers who have little access to irrigation or other modern farming conveniences. Coffee is by far the country’s most valuable industry: It accounts for   of export revenue, and about 1 in 5 Ugandans rely on it for part or all of their income. Yet climate change could slash the country’s coffee production in half by 2050  —  a loss worth $1. 2 billion, according to a 2015 economic analysis commissioned by the Ugandan government. Because Uganda is a relatively small player in the global coffee market, disruptions there won’t necessarily affect the price of your morning joe in the U. S. But within the country, a disturbing new reality is taking root. To find out exactly how Uganda’s coffee farmers view their experience of climate change, I recently equipped a dozen of them with disposable cameras. None of the farmers had ever used cameras, and the ones I gave them were pretty  . But I was amazed by the more than 300 images that the farmers delivered. Many are candid,   and achieve a level of intimacy that would be hard for an outsider to capture. You can access the full Flickr album here. The photos show the struggles of everyday life for small family farmers who are facing drought on Mount Elgon, one of Uganda’s oldest and most prestigious   regions. We see cows and chickens children on their way to school people bustling around water sources and plenty of manual labor around the farm. That might all sound a bit mundane, until you realize the photos are really a window into the minds of a vulnerable population living on the front lines of climate change. I set up this project in March with a group of   agronomists at the Kampala offices of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) a nonprofit research organization. We found our 12 volunteers  —   six married couples spread across low, middle and high elevations of Mount Elgon. We gave each a quick briefing on how to operate the camera, then asked them to document the impacts of climate change. We left those parameters intentionally vague so the farmers would feel free to define ”climate change” in their own terms. A week later, we got the cameras back  —   and with them, an unfiltered glimpse into how the farmers understood their situation. Among the intriguing images is a sort of   shot on the farm of Sam Massa and his wife, Robinah Muzaki. They live in a   house in the   upper slopes of the mountain, surrounded by coffee trees that Massa’s   planted more than 100 years ago. The photo shows artifacts from the farm that represent the effects of rising temperatures: leaves affected by fungal disease a   beetle, which lays eggs inside coffee trees, causing branches to wither a clutch of red coffee berries that Massa says ”are not properly matured.” ”When you open the inside, there’s nothing,” he says. Massa’s wife is fond of a picture she took of the family cow. She says that because drought had severely reduced the last coffee harvest, the family was desperately looking for other ways to raise cash. When she took the picture, she and Massa were considering selling the cow. By the time the pictures were developed, the cow was gone. (A calf, also seen in the image, is still on the farm.) So the picture became a memorial to something climate change had taken from the family. ”I had to sell that cow to pay the school fees for the kids,” she says. ”If the yield of coffee had been good, I wouldn’t have needed to sell it.” There were other revelations, things that people might not normally associate with climate change, but that are painfully obvious to those living in its harsh reality. Pictures of nondescript dusty roads show the challenges of transporting produce to market photos of children in uniforms represent school fees, which is many families’ biggest cash expense  —   paid for by coffee. ”We are in poverty now,” says Michael Lullonde, whose wife, Lofisa, snapped the picture of a school seen on this page. ”To take our children to school, or even get food, is very hard.” Peter Magona, another of the photographers, says that despite the obvious change in climate, for him and other farmers on the remote Mount Elgon, there’s no other viable livelihood than coffee: ”If you look around, you can see the environment has changed considerably. There’s no rain. The yield is very poor, and the income is very poor, due to this prolonged drought. But coffee is our cash crop, and we cannot drop it. We depend on it.” There are many other stories hidden in the photos, too. Over the coming months, IITA scientist Onno Giller plans to finish interviewing the farmers about the images they took and compile the findings in a   research paper. In the meantime, Massa plans to use the prints of his photos as a teaching tool, to encourage his neighbors to take a second look at their own farms and see what they can do to   their practices. Journalist Tim McDonnell spent three months reporting in Uganda as part of a   Geographic Storytelling Fellowship. "
"Last week, NPR and I shared a little paean to photosynthesis, which I defined as ”the molecular scale shenanigans plants use create food from sunlight.” The piece was short, coming in at under three minutes. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to talk details. So, in the interest of scientific completeness, we present the above video which goes into lovely details, including the baroque Calvin Cycle. You can also find other video explanations here and here. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"He was a world leader who was not a household name. But he definitely made an impact as an advocate for the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls. Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U. N. Population Fund, died on Sunday night at his home. ”Our world lost a great champion of   for all, especially women  girls,” tweeted U. N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The Nigerian doctor, 68, had led the UNFPA since 2011. The year that he was appointed, an article in The Lancet made it clear how this father of five was guided by lessons from his own parenthood. He told how his children ”teach me about their own lives”  —   and how he was going to let the world’s young people teach him in his new job: ”Too often we imagine that we know what young people need” but to his mind, adults need to ”listen and experience, to learn about our children, our ability to allow them their space.” That philosophy guided his work at UNFPA. ”Family planning is not a privilege but a right. Yet, too many women  —   and men  —   are denied this human right,” Osotimehin said in 2012. He sought to eliminate preventable maternal deaths and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation. And he aimed to ensure access to family planning for all. ”. ..wherever I travel, I continue to meet women and girls who tell me they are unable to exercise their right to family planning and end up having more children than they intend, burdening them economically, harming their health, and undermining opportunities for a better life for themselves and their families,” Osotimehin wrote in a 2012 report.  ”The international community made a commitment in 1994 to all women, men and young people to protect their rights as individuals to make one of life’s most fundamental decisions. It is high time we lived up to that commitment and made voluntary family planning available to all.”  In 2015, a UNFPA program helped about 18 million women get modern contraceptives and access reproductive health care, according to a report by the agency. Sarah Craven, director of the UNFPA office in Washington, D. C. says her boss was kind and compassionate to his staff. He called her to offer condolences after her father died. ”I feel like he was a great friend and a mentor, and I’m going to miss him terribly,” Craven says. Not that long ago, he talked to Craven about his own mother, telling her: ”I am who I am because of my mother teaching me how important it was to honor and respect and advocate for women and girls.” She remembers how he would proudly identify as a feminist  —   and sometimes make the comment at   panels that he was an ”honorary woman.” That line would get laughs, she says, but it wasn’t meant as a joke. It was his way of making a point. ”Here was somebody who was so supremely gifted as a physician, as a politician, and yet he had chosen to take on, really, a thankless task  —   to advocate for women and girls in the most trying and dire circumstances. And he did it with such passion and commitment and energy,” Craven says. ”He will be impossible to replace.” Osotimehin had previously served as Nigeria’s Minister of Health. He was married and had five children and several grandchildren, according to UNFPA. He was an active presence on social media. Just days before his death, he tweeted:"
"On his visit last month to Saudi Arabia, President Trump devoted special attention to the U. S. alliance with Bahrain, a major   ally that is home to the U. S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. During a bilateral meeting with King Hamad bin Issa   Trump told the monarch that Bahrain would not experience the same ”strain” there’d been with Trump’s predecessor, President Obama  —   whose administration had linked military sales to human rights. In the days that followed Trump’s meeting with the king, Bahraini authorities cracked down on domestic opponents. The country’s security forces used deadly force to clear a longstanding   around the house of Bahrain’s foremost Shiite religious leader, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim, whose nationality had been revoked in June 2016 over charges of ”creating an extremist sectarian environment.” Last month, a Bahraini court also charged Qassim with laundering alms money, and he was handed a   suspended prison sentence. The May 23 raid on the   left five protesters dead and hundreds of others arrested. Bahrain’s interior ministry said 19 policemen were also injured. One woman came forward with an account of torture at the hands of state security, which she said included sexual assault and threats that her daughter would be raped. A secular opposition party was ordered dissolved and Bahrain’s sole independent newspaper was shuttered. Amnesty International warned that ”Bahrain is now heading towards total suppression of human rights.” The small Persian Gulf island country is ruled by a Sunni monarch who’s closely allied with Saudi Arabia. Most of the population is Shiite, as is the bulk of the opposition. The suppression of dissent has thus taken on a sectarian tone, and reverberates in a regional already sharply divided by the wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Bahraini human rights activists say unrestricted U. S. backing for the monarchy is encouraging an atmosphere of impunity. They see Trump’s public assurances to Bahrain’s monarch about ending ”strain” as a turning point. ”This was seen as a green light to the massive human rights crackdown on all forms of dissent in Bahrain,” Sheikh Maytham   tells NPR from Beirut. A leading human rights activist and a Shiite, Salman is staying outside Bahrain for now, out of concerns he will be detained in his home country. His cousin, fellow human rights defender Nabeel Rajab, has been in jail for his activism for the past year. ”It’s very unfortunate that President Donald Trump has not taken a position in either reminding the government of Bahrain or other governments of their human rights commitments, and this clearly indicates that human rights are not a priority,” Salman says. During the Obama administration, a multibillion   fighter jet deal with Bahrain was delayed. The State Department linked its final approval to tangible improvements on human rights  —   namely, safeguarding freedom of expression and accountability for abuses. ”What Trump did, or what his administration did, is lift this condition,” says Salman. While the deal has yet to be finalized, Congress is unlikely to block it. ”What’s happening in Bahrain is not only a human rights issue. What’s happening in Bahrain is a geopolitical issue,” Salman says, referring to the regional competition between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. ”Bahrain is in the middle of a very tense region with sectarian alignments, wars based on identities,” he explains. ”Therefore, when Bahrain targets and practices systematic discrimination against 65 percent of the religious demography [Shiites] and revokes the nationality of the highest religious authority for 65 percent of the religious demography, obviously this will lead to further tensions  —   not only in Bahrain, but in a very tense region.” Salman says Bahrain’s Shiite majority is marginalized from participation in national institutions including the judiciary and security forces. ”They’ve been segregated and marginalized from all these positions for decades,” he says, ”so when you have a police force that deals with the majority of citizens of the country and probably less than 5 percent of the police force are Shiites, it’s very natural for these tensions to rise and grow.” Salman says extremists on both sides have fueled tensions in Bahrain:   television stations and newspapers have issued calls to ”purify” Bahrain of its Shiite population. Earlier this year, an exiled Bahraini cleric in Iran called for the Shiite community to choose the path of ”resistance,” implying an armed struggle against the Bahraini monarchy. Still, Salman does not believe that Bahrain will experience a violent escalation ”at this stage,” in part due to the firm   stance of Ayatollah Qassim  —   who remains in his hometown of Diraz  —   and other prominent opposition leaders. Salman says his own experiences of torture at the hands of Bahrain’s authorities during the country’s Arab   protests of 2011  —   which were also met with force and a crackdown on activism  —   only hardened his commitment to ending human rights abuses. But he warns the monarchy is closing off channels for peaceful dissent. ”When Ayatollah Isa Qassim, who not only denounces violence, but forbids, on religious grounds, all forms of violence or the use of arms  —   when he’s targeted, this obviously paves the way for the use of violence,” he says, suggesting there could be a possible escalation of opposition tactics. Salman hopes the U. S. will change its policy and place human rights back on the agenda. He says if there is one thing the Gulf monarchies do care about, it’s their image on the global stage."
"British police have identified    Youssef Zaghba, an Italian of Moroccan descent, as the third attacker in Saturday’s violent rampage in London that killed at least seven people. The announcement came a day after London’s Metropolitan Police Service named two other men as attackers:    Khuram Sharzad Butt, a British citizen born in Pakistan, and    Rachid Redouane, who ”claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan.” Zaghba ”was not a police or MI5 subject of interest,” according to the Metropolitan Police. Like Butt and Redouane, he lived in east London. Police shot and killed the three attackers within eight minutes of receiving an emergency call, police said. They stressed that while they believe they know the attackers’ identities, ”formal identification is yet to take place.” The security forces have been raiding addresses in London. In a statement Tuesday, authorities said they arrested a    man Tuesday morning. Twelve people who were detained in connection to the attack have been released without charge, police say. Questions are being raised about whether British police missed crucial warning signs that could have prevented the attack. Butt was known to police and was ”openly fundamentalist,” NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports from London. ”Neighbors say he tried to radicalize their kids in a public park.” In fact, Butt was one of the main characters in a television documentary called The Jihadis Next Door. ”Today, newspapers are asking how he was able to even walk the streets,” Eleanor says. ”The attack, the third in Britain in three months, has raised questions over the government’s ability to protect Britain following cuts to police numbers in recent years.” ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, in a statement published by its Amaq news agency. This is how the rampage unfolded, as The   has reported: ”The attack began at about 10 p. m. local time, when a van crossing London Bridge veered into pedestrians, crashing outside the Barrowboy  Banker Pub. Witnesses told the BBC that van hit ’five or six people,’ then the attackers exited the vehicle and pursued others in a ’rampage’ in which hundreds ran for their lives. One witness said he saw a woman stabbed ’10 or 15 times’ by the men, who he said shouted, ’This is for Allah.’ ”The men then ran down a set of stairs and began stabbing people at a number of different pubs and restaurants in Borough Market, a historic fruit and vegetable market. Witnesses said people threw chairs and pint glasses at the men, who wore what police said were fake explosive vests.”"
"A man in Paris attacked police officers with a hammer on Tuesday near Notre Dame Cathedral, and he was shot and wounded by police. One officer has minor injuries, the BBC reports, while the assailant has been hospitalized. Authorities are investigating the incident as a terrorist attack, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports. ”Paris is on alert after terrorist attacks in London over the weekend killed seven people,” Eleanor says. ”Paris police say the situation is under control.” Immediately afterward, Notre Dame  —   one of Paris’ most popular tourist destinations  —   was put on lockdown, with about 900 people inside, Eleanor reports. ”French TV showed footage of many people sitting on the stone floor,” she said Tuesday. ”They are being told to remain calm and stay put until police wrap up their security operation.” A few hours later, the people trapped inside the church began being released one by one, The Associated Press reports. The attacker was armed with kitchen knives and a hammer, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters, according to the AP. The man had documents ”suggesting he was an Algerian student,” the wire service reported, citing the interior minister. Collomb said the man shouted, ”This is for Syria.” Former U. S. Ambassador to the U. N. Nancy Soderberg was among the hundreds of people trapped inside the cathedral after the attack, the AP reports. Soderberg told the news service that ”everyone was very quiet and very scared” as police examined each of the cathedral’s pews, but that everything inside the cathedral was calm and orderly."
"Nursing homes and hospitals need to do more to protect their patients from catching Legionnaires’ disease from contaminated water systems in their buildings, federal health officials warned Tuesday. An analysis of more than 2, 800 cases of Legionnaires’ that occurred in 2015 found that 553 definitely or possibly occurred in a health care facility such as a nursing home or a hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.   patients died from the disease. ”It’s widespread, it’s deadly and it’s preventable,” says Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s acting director. Legionnaires’ disease is a potentially   form of pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria, which can grow in water systems such as water storage tanks or pipes. The elderly and people who have weakened immune systems because they are sick are especially at risk. The CDC says hospitals and nursing homes need to work harder to keep the bacteria from getting into places where patients might be exposed, such as showers, sinks and bathtubs, as well as medical equipment that uses water. ”We know if those facilities have an effective   system they can prevent these infections,” Schuchat says. ”Nobody wants their loved one to go into a hospital or a   care facility and end up with Legionnaires’ disease.” According to the report, 6, 079 Legionnaires’ cases occurred nationwide in 2015. The analysis focused on 2, 809 cases that occurred in 20 states and New York City. Among those, 468 were possibly associated with health care facilities and 85 definitely were. Among the 85 cases that were definitely associated with health care facilities, 68, or 80 percent, were associated with   care facilities and 15, or 18 percent, were associated with hospitals. Schuchat says she was surprised by the number of cases associated with health care facilities. They need to be especially attentive to the problem, given the vulnerabilities of their patients, she says. ”This analysis has uncovered a problem that is happening every day in health care facilities around the country and something we can do a lot about,” she says. ”This report suggests that in many health care facilities, there’s really just an outbreak waiting to happen.” For their part, hospitals and nursing homes say they are working to protect patients from Legionnaires’. ”America’s hospitals and health systems are committed to providing safe and healthy environments for the patients they serve,” Nancy Foster, vice president of quality and patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association, wrote in an email. ”This includes ensuring the development and use of an effective water management program to help prevent the outbreak of diseases, including Legionnaires’ disease.”"
"For years, says Corinne Bobbie, shopping in Arizona for a health plan for her little girl went like this: ” ’Sorry, we’re not covering that kid,’ ” Bobbie recalls insurers telling her. ” ’She’s a liability.’ ” On the day I visit the family at their home in a suburb north of Phoenix,    Sophia bounces on a trampoline in the backyard. It’s difficult to tell she has a complex congenital heart condition and has undergone multiple surgeries. ”She’s a kid whose clock is ticking every day,” her mother says, ”but she goes to school, she rides horses. She does everything a regular kid can do with a certain level of limitation.” In the early years of Sophia’s life, the child’s   condition kept Bobbie and her husband, who runs a sandwich shop, on a constant quest for health coverage for Sophia. Her premiums alone were so expensive that the rest of the family often did without health insurance. The little girl’s medical bills were still huge, and the family racked up debt and lost their car and home.  Then the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, came along. In 2013, the Bobbies bought good health insurance for Sophia on Arizona’s exchange, for coverage to start the next year. ”For the first time in her life, we had a choice,” Sophia’s mom says. ”I didn’t know what do. My head was spinning.” Arizona’s federally run marketplace was a success early on. There were lots of insurers and multiple plans that consumers could choose from, including many policies with low premiums. But that didn’t last. This past year, when the couple tried to add coverage for themselves and their son, they couldn’t afford it. ”It’s more disappointing to be so in favor of something, but to have such animosity toward it at the same time,” Corinne Bobbie says. ”I’m angry about it. Why can’t I have insurance, too?” The family faced limited options  —   there was only one insurer to choose from in Maricopa County, where they live. The networks were narrow, meaning insurers didn’t offer a lot of doctors and facilities in their plans. Furthermore, the Bobbies were looking at hundreds of dollars more in premiums and a $6, 000 deductible for each person on the policy.  On the one hand, the ACA had finally guaranteed that someone like Sophia Bobbie  —   with her   medical condition  —   could apply for insurance and switch policies without risk of being turned down. And yet the plans on the marketplace were unaffordable for the rest of the family. The Bobbies are the kind of consumers that should be the target audience for Republicans intent on repealing the Affordable Care Act. But, so far, Corinne Bobbie is far from sold on the alternative the GOP is proposing  —   the American Health Care Act. ”It’s a bunch of garbage,” she says. And about the lawmakers who passed it: ”They could be the heroes. And instead it just became this nonsense.” Opponents of the effort to repeal Obamacare are tapping into this unease, running TV ads that accuse Republican moderates like Rep. Martha McSally, who represents Tucson, of voting for ”a disastrous health care repeal bill.” ”They are trying to put her in league with the extreme, hardcore Republicans in Congress,” says GOP consultant Jaime Molera, who is a partner at Molera Alvarez. Democrats think McSally and Sen. Jeff Flake,  .  —   who are both up for    —   are vulnerable. The politicians have a fine line to walk. ”It’s a balancing act between being aggressive in wanting to repeal Obamacare,” Molera says, ”with the fact that there are a lot of components of it that people like.” Those components include protections for   conditions and Medicaid expansion, which has covered more than 400, 000 people in Arizona alone. The replacement bill would scale back that expansion, and the proposed curtailment concerns many Republicans in Arizona, including Gov. Doug Ducey. The major cuts to Medicaid, however, probably won’t survive in the Senate version, and Molera says that could actually help Flake. ”He doesn’t have to take that extreme position in order to get out of a Republican primary,” Molera says, ”and then that affords him the opportunity to be more of a centrist running against the Democrats.” Among Republican incumbents in Arizona, Flake is likely in the toughest race, but Democrats are even taking aim at Republicans in safer districts like conservative Rep. David Schweikert, who represents Scottsdale and is a member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus. Schweikert says he voted for the GOP health plan in order to give states flexibility to transform Medicaid  —   through block grants, for example  —   even though that means less federal money for the state. He admits his decision makes some in Arizona’s health care industry nervous. ”They are concerned because they are quite comfortable with the current Medicaid model instead of a model that would provide a lot more choices,” Schweikert says. The state’s health care industry has warned that the GOP bill would result in more people showing up in the emergency room without insurance coverage, leaving hospitals  —   and, ultimately, consumers  —   to pick up the tab. Schweikert also claims the bill will help salvage the state’s marketplace, which, he says, is ”imploding.” ”We can lower the price so much for that 50 percent that’s healthy, that they’ll start to participate in the system, because that’s the only way the math works,” Schweikert says, adding that the ACA’s penalty system is not getting enough young people to join. About 20 percent of people who signed up for Arizona’s marketplace are between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The GOP bill is expected to bring down the cost of some premiums, but prices would rise significantly for those who are older or have   conditions, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Schweikert also predicts that, as configured right now, the insurance marketplace will not survive for much longer, given the exodus of insurers in recent years. ”Today, you’re lucky we have one,” he says, ”and tomorrow, you may have zero.” But Allen Gjersvig, who oversees enrollment for the Arizona Alliance for Community Health Centers, disagrees that the state’s insurance exchange is in crisis. ”We believe that the two insurance companies that are covering Arizona will be back next year with the same footprint,” Gjersvig says. He also doesn’t expect Arizona to see the same dramatic rate hikes it saw last year, calling that an adjustment for underpricing in previous years. But with the current uncertainty about what is in store for the health care law, insurers are having a tough time planning for the future. Gjersvig says the biggest unknown is whether the Trump administration will withhold key payments known as   reductions these payments to insurers help subsidize coverage for   people. If insurers lose those, Gjersvig says, the insurance premiums for consumers will go up. All this uncertainty is also a problem for Corinne Bobbie. She says the debate over the ACA has become a political game in which her family and others have been forgotten. She has one overriding fear: ”We are potentially in a position where this time next year, nobody in this house will have insurance,” Bobbie says. ”If that happens, it’s going to be ugly. It’s going to be real ugly.” And the political fortunes of elected officials in Arizona and across the U. S. may well depend on voters like her family getting the care they need. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with KJZZ and Kaiser Health News."
"Updated on at 2:30 p. m. ET on June 8, Former FBI Director James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, saying he believes he was fired because of the Russia investigation he was leading at the time. The committee posted Comey’s opening statement on Wednesday Comey did not read it aloud during the hearing. In the document, Comey says President Trump asked him for ”loyalty” at a dinner in January and later in the Oval Office said he ”hope[d] you can let” the investigation into his former national security adviser Michael Flynn ”go.” The White House has denied that Trump ever asked for the investigation to be shut down. Before Comey was fired on May 9, he led the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential ties between Trump associates and Russia. That probe is now led by a special prosecutor. Here is his full opening statement, annotated by NPR journalists."
"Neil Shook was relaxing at home in Woodworth, N. D. on a Saturday afternoon just over a week ago. ”My wife was outside and she yelled at me to come outside and take a look at this,” he recalls. A massive brown cloud covered the horizon to the west. It was a dust storm  —   although Shook, who’s a scientist with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, doesn’t like to call it dust. ”I like to refer to it as soil, because that’s basically what it is,” he says. ”We saw this huge soil cloud moving from west to east across the landscape.” That soil cloud is a result of farming practices  —   and of government policies. Soil has been blowing away from the Great Plains ever since farmers first plowed up the prairie. It reached crisis levels during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when windblown soil turned day into night. In recent years, dust storms have returned, driven mainly by drought. But Shook  —   and others  —   say farmers are making the problem worse by taking land where grass used to grow and plowing it up, exposing vulnerable soil. ”The first soil storm that I saw was in 2013. That was about the height of all the grassland conversion that was happening in this area,” he says.  This is where federal policy enters the picture. Most of that grassland was there in the first place because of a   program. The U. S. Department of Agriculture rents land from farmers across the country and pays them to grow grass, trees and wildflowers in order to protect the soil and also provide habitat for wildlife. It’s called the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP. Ten years ago, there was more land in the CRP than in the entire state of New York. In North Dakota, CRP land covered 5, 000 square miles. But CRP agreements only last 10 years, and when farming got more profitable about a decade ago, farmers in North Dakota pulled more than half of that land out of the CRP to grow crops like corn and soybeans. Across the country, farmers decided not to   15. 8 million acres of farmland in the CRP when those contracts expired between 2007 and 2014. Environmentalist Craig Cox wants this     cycle of land protection to end.  ”One of the fundamental problems is that we’re not making lasting change,” he says. Cox is in charge of advocacy and research on agricultural policy at the Environmental Working Group. The EWG just released a report calling for big changes in how the Department of Agriculture spends billions of dollars in conservation money.  According to Cox, when farmers decide to take land out of the CRP, it means that most of the money spent on environmental improvements on that land is wasted. ”The benefit is lost really quickly,” he says. He says that instead of renting land for 10 years, the government should buy more easements  —   legal restrictions ensuring, for instance, that a farmer cannot plow a piece of land for the next 30 years . .. or forever. It takes a lot of money to buy easements, so the government would have to focus on places where protecting land does the most good where it limits water pollution most effectively, for instance, or keeps most soil from blowing away in the wind. ”If you’re really targeting the most environmentally sensitive lands, and you’re providing permanent protection, we’re going to be able to get a lot more return for the investment that taxpayers are making,” he says. The government already is doing this on a small scale. The USDA used to buy easements to protect wetlands, and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Program buys ”conservation easements” that restrict a landowners right to farm particular parcels of land. In North Dakota, there’s a waiting list of farmers who’d like to get into this program, and get paid to permanently protect their soil with grass."
"The Trump administration has granted ethics waivers or partial releases to about a dozen federal agency officials, freeing them from full compliance with ethics rules. That’s according to documents released Wednesday by the Office of Government Ethics. This latest release marks the second wave of disclosures. Last week, the Trump administration revealed the ethics waivers it has granted to White House staffers, including chief of staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Steve Bannon and presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway. The new release reflects waivers given to agency staffers. For example, one was granted to Lance Leggitt, who last year lobbied to influence Medicare policy at the Department of Health and Human Services  —   and who is now chief of staff at that agency. Critics say the relatively small number of agency waivers may fall far short of revealing the true level of ethics exemptions. They worry that conflicted agency officials may be avoiding the need for broad waivers simply by following narrow recusal standards, according to Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a progressive   group. Weissman told NPR he is suspicious because Wednesday’s list of waivers seems ”fairly perfunctory,” even though large numbers of former lobbyists and corporate executives have been coming in to government. ”Why aren’t there more waivers, given what we know about the extraordinary number of conflicts and   issues for the administration’s nominees and appointments so far?” he asked. Ethics waivers grant dispensations to federal employees who want to work on the policy matters that they had handled while employed as lobbyists in the private sector. And waivers can free the federal officials to interact with their former colleagues in their old industries. Shortly after Inauguration Day, President Trump said he would fulfill his campaign promise to ”drain the swamp” by signing an executive order barring lobbyists from coming into the administration and going to work on issues related to their former industry jobs. But in fact, Trump has granted at least 16 ethics waivers to his own staff. In addition, his administration initially resisted disclosure of ethics waivers, which would have broken with precedent. In April, OGE began to demand the waivers, which are considered public documents. The administration responded by saying OGE didn’t have the legal authority to require the revelations, but in the end, it agreed to post the waivers online. Disclosures can help citizens and public interest groups know which public employees might need extra watching. The OGE documents released Wednesday also contained ethics waivers granted in the final months of the Obama administration. For example, former Securities and Exchange Commission head Mary Jo White got permission to participate in decisions involving a case in which her husband had represented a witness, and former Secretary of State John Kerry got permission to contribute a chapter to a book. NPR correspondent Jackie Northam contributed to this report."
"Updated at 6:28 p. m. ET, Former FBI Director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that President Trump did ask him for ”loyalty” at a January dinner and later told him alone in the Oval Office that he ”hope[d] you can let” the investigation into former national security director Michael Flynn ”go.”  The opening statement from Comey, released by the committee less than 24 hours before his testimony, effectively confirms many of the bombshell reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post over the past month that have raised the question of whether the president tried to interfere in the ongoing investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump campaign associates colluded with Moscow. Comey was fired by Trump last month, and the president later said the Russia investigation factored into his decision. Comey will testify that in March, Trump called him and asked what the FBI could do to ”lift the cloud” around him and his administration involving Russia. The former FBI director details an awkward Jan. 27 dinner with Trump, at which the president asked him whether he wanted to stay on as FBI director. The president later said he expected ”loyalty” from Comey despite the FBI’s independence from the White House: My instincts told me that the    setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch. . .. I replied that I loved my work and intended to stay and serve out my   term as Director. And then, because the   made me uneasy, I added that I was not ”reliable” in the way politicians use that word, but he could always count on me to tell him the truth. I added that I was not on anybody’s side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense, a stance I said was in his best interest as the President. A few moments later, the President said, ”I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner. And Comey confirms earlier reports, which sources had confirmed to NPR, about his solo Oval Office conversation on Feb. 14 with Trump the day after Flynn had been asked to resign after he misled Vice President Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the transition. According to Comey, Trump signaled for him to stay behind after Attorney General Jeff Sessions lingered: The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, ”He is a good guy and has been through a lot.” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, ”I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” I replied only that ”he is a good guy.” (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would ”let this go.” Comey says he immediately prepared an unclassified memo of his conversation with Trump and shared the events with senior FBI officials. However, he says he did not interpret that the president was asking him to drop the entire Russia probe: I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what had just happened with Flynn’s departure and the controversy around his account of his phone calls. Regardless, it was very concerning, given the FBI’s role as an independent investigative agency. During a May 18 news conference, Trump denied that he had asked Comey to scuttle his investigation into Flynn and denied that there had been any collusion between his campaign and Russia. Comey says he did not inform Sessions about that conversation because he anticipated the attorney general would have to recuse himself from the Russia probe (which Sessions did two weeks later) nor did he talk with it about with   Attorney General Dana Boente, who was only the interim deputy. However, he did tell Sessions that being left alone with Trump ”was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply.” Comey says that he had ”nine    conversations with President Trump in four months  —   three in person and six on the phone” and that he wrote memos after each of those encounters, some of which he shared with top FBI officials. In comparison, he spoke alone with President Barack Obama only twice in two years and never on the phone. Comey’s testimony does support the president’s assertion in his termination letter to Comey that the former FBI director assured him on three occasions that he, personally, was not under investigation. However, Comey was wary of that being publicized and told Trump in a March 30 phone call: I explained that we had briefed the leadership of Congress on exactly which individuals we were investigating and that we had told those Congressional leaders that we were not personally investigating President Trump. I reminded him I had previously told him that. He repeatedly told me, ”We need to get that fact out.” (I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.) But, according to Comey, the president did appear to press him to go even further in his final phone call with Trump before he was fired: On the morning of April 11, the President called me and asked what I had done about his request that I ”get out” that he is not personally under investigation. I replied that I had passed his request to the Acting Deputy Attorney General, but I had not heard back. He replied that ”the cloud” was getting in the way of his ability to do his job. He said that perhaps he would have his people reach out to the Acting Deputy Attorney General. I said that was the way his request should be handled. I said the White House Counsel should contact the leadership of DOJ to make the request, which was the traditional channel. He said he would do that and added, ”Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal we had that thing you know.” I did not reply or ask him what he meant by ”that thing.” I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do and the call ended. During a gaggle with reporters on Air Force One, returning from Ohio where Trump had just given a speech on infrastructure, White House principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that she wasn’t aware whether or not the president had a chance yet to review Comey’s opening remarks. ”I did find the timing of the release a little bit interesting, directly after testimony from. ..hearing earlier today,” Sanders did say, referring to testimony by top intelligence officials before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier on Wednesday where two of them declined to speak in an open hearing about their private conversations with the president. Republicans quickly zeroed in on Comey’s confirmation that he had indeed assured Trump three times that he personally was not under investigation. ”President Trump was right,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. ”Director Comey’s statement reconfirmed what the president has been saying all along  —   he was never under investigation.” Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s private attorney recently engaged on the Russia investigation, said in a statement that Trump was ”pleased” that Comey had confirmed those assurances he gave the president. ”The president feels completely and totally vindicated,” Kasowitz said. ”He is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda.” But Democrats found plenty of damning admissions in Comey’s opening comments. House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff,  . said in a statement that the former FBI director’s ”testimony confirms a host of troubling allegations concerning the President’s conduct,” particularly his request for loyalty from Comey and his request for Comey to scuttle the investigation into Flynn. ”Director Comey was right to be concerned that the President was trying to form a patronage relationship with him, in which the Director would guarantee loyalty in exchange for job security. Had the Director agreed to do so would have been antithetical to the independence of his agency that he did not, does not mitigate the unethical nature of the President’s request,” Schiff said. ”The fact that this request, and the subsequent effort to have the Director drop the Flynn case, were made after the President excused everyone else from the room, strongly indicates that the President was more than aware of the illegitimacy of such demands.”"
"Updated 9:35 p. m. ET, On the third day of Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial, his lawyer attempted to portray the comedian’s relationship with accuser Andrea Constand as a romantic one. But throughout her nearly seven hours on the stand over two days, Constand was unwavering in her testimony, according to The Associated Press. Constand was an employee of Temple University’s women’s basketball team in 2004, when, she says, the assault occurred. Reuters reports that Cosby’s attorney, Angela Agrusa, did not ask Constand about any details of the incident instead, Agrusa attempted undermine Constand’s credibility in other ways. The AP reports that Agrusa began by paraphrasing Constand’s 2005 statement to police: ”You were sitting by the fire. The room was dark. There was a nice mood . ...” ” ’I don’t know what that means,’ Constand said. ” ’The lights were dim and the fire was going,’ the lawyer continued. ” ’I don’t really remember how dim the lights were, but I did have to eat my dinner,’ Constand said.” This week’s testimony was Constand’s first public comment on the case, according to NPR member station WHYY. She reached a settlement in her civil case against Cosby in 2006 and was barred from discussing the case. Cosby’s attorneys pointed to an inconsistency in the date of the alleged assault in statements Constand gave to police. But the AP reports that Constand ”perhaps muted the expected attack by acknowledging some initial confusion over just when the encounter occurred. She said she first thought it was after a group dinner in March and later realized it happened after a private dinner a month or two earlier.” Cosby’s defense team tried to portray the encounter in January 2004 at his home in suburban Philadelphia as a consensual one. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Cosby has maintained that he and Constand had what the paper termed ”several consensual romantic dalliances.” More than 50 women have said Cosby assaulted them. Defense attorneys pointed to phone records showing that Constand called Cosby 53 times after the alleged assault. Prosecutors said the records indicate Constand would check her voicemail and return the calls that Cosby made to her work cellphone. Constand said that the calls were about Temple women’s basketball and that they ended when she stopped working there. ”She continued to do her job,” the AP reports that Constand’s lawyer, Dolores Troiani, said outside court. ”This man was a trustee at Temple. Of course she was calling him back.” Cosby, the celebrity comedian and television actor, is charged with aggravated indecent assault. If he is convicted, the    could be sentenced to 10 years in prison, the AP reports. The judge has instituted strict decorum rules for the trial, dictating that journalists turn off their phones while court is in session. On Wednesday afternoon, the judge ordered a    hearing for a reporter from the local NBC affiliate, WHYY reports. The Inquirer later said the reporter had been banned for sending a text from the courtroom."
"Reality Winner, the government contractor accused of leaking a secret NSA report to the media, plans to enter a plea of not guilty, her lawyer Titus Nichols tells NPR. She hopes to be released on bond Thursday. Winner, 25, works for a private contractor, Pluribus International Corp. in Augusta, Ga. and is an Air Force veteran who speaks three languages. She was arrested Saturday. The federal government has charged her with ”removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.” That material, presumably because of the timing of Winner’s arrest, is an NSA report about efforts by Russian military intelligence to execute a cyberattack on an American election software company, as well as sending ” ” emails to local election officials, just before the presidential election. That leaked report was the basis of an article published Monday by The Intercept. In the government’s criminal complaint against Winner, it says it was able to track her down as the leaker because The Intercept showed government officials a copy of the leaked document, which showed signs of having been folded. That led investigators to think the document had been printed out. They say they were able to narrow down the source using the unique ”microdots” in the printout, which identify the source printer, as well as the fact that Winner had been in email contact with a news outlet, presumed to be The Intercept. The Intercept has come under criticism in the last few days for exposing its anonymous source by showing the government a copy of the leaked report. Winner’s lawyer, Nichols, would not confirm that his client was the source of the leak. ”There’s not much to comment on right now as far as whether there is a connection between my client and Intercept,” Nichols said. ”I know that there is documents circulating on the Internet and everything else, but as far as concrete proof, we’re just not at that stage, yet.” In recent months, President Trump has railed against leakers, promising to find them and prosecute them. In this, he’s not different from his predecessor the Obama administration prosecuted an unprecedented number of federal employees for leaking information to the news media."
"It was time for Emily Harrington to make a choice. Harrington is a professional climber. In 2014, she was trying to reach the top of the tallest peak in Southeast Asia, a   mountain called Hkakabo Razi that had been successfully climbed only once before. ”We were on this ridge at about 18, 100 feet, and it just dropped off on both sides about 4, 000 feet,” Harrington recalls. She could see the summit from the narrow ridge, but one of the more experienced climbers warned her that the final route to the top was going to be harder than anything they’d done up until this point. Was she really up for the final push? Or was it time to climb down? Harrington had spent her whole life fighting failure. ”I just grew up in this atmosphere of competitiveness,” she says. As a kid in Boulder, Colo. she was always trying to beat her two male cousins. When she discovered she was better than they were at climbing, she stuck with it. She started visiting a climbing gym, an artificial wall that climbers use to practice. The gym had a junior team that competed against teams from other gyms, and that led to her first competitive climb against a girl named Zoe. ”She beat me by a long shot. I mean she just crushed me,” Harrington says. ”But I remember that, like, fueled my fire, and I was like, OK, next year I’m going to come back. I’m going to do better. And so I just worked my way up.” Harrington started winning: local, national, international. She became a   U. S. champion. She won second in the world. But competitive climbing is an unforgiving sport. Unlike climbing a natural rock face, there’s only one path up. And if Harrington slipped even slightly, or hesitated for a moment, she became a loser. When that happened, she became deeply depressed. ”I’d get super dark, just like: ’I’m never going to be good. I’m never going to do what I want to do. I suck.’ ” In 2008, Harrington was feeling burned out when she got an extraordinary opportunity. The gear company The North Face offered her a spot on its team of professional climbers. All of a sudden her horizon expanded from the indoor wall to rock faces all over the world. She spent a few years learning the ropes, and then she was invited on an expedition to Mount Everest. The expedition took 2   months, and getting to the top wasn’t just about climbing skill. She had to stay healthy the weather had to stay clear. ”There were all these factors that worked in my favor, and in a way there was a lot of luck involved,” she recalls. ”But I summited, I completed and I went home and I was like, all right, that was amazing, I should do more of this.” She kept climbing big mountains, and summiting. And then, Harrington was approached by a fellow climber named Hilaree O’Neill to embark on an expedition that was something completely different: a journey to the more than   peak Hkakabo Razi. O’Neill’s idea was to start in Yangon, the capital city of Myanmar, and travel to the mountain. They set out by a bus, then boat, then a jarring overnight train trip. They got off the train and took motorcycles 80 miles into the jungle. When the trails got too rough for the bikes, they walked for 125 miles to the mountain’s base. It took more than two months just to get to the bottom of Hkakabo Razi. By the time they were ready to start climbing, they were low on food. And there wasn’t a trail to the top. ”There were a lot of wrong turns, a lot of back tracking, a lot of intense ” Harrington recalls. After 10 days of climbing, they finally made it to that ridge, which led to the summit. ”It was extremely difficult to get there, extremely scary,” Harrington says. ”It involved a lot of climbing on loose rock and snow.” For most of her life, Harrington had judged success and failure by whether she’d made it to the top. She was so close, she could see it. But she was exhausted and stretched to the limits of her skill as a climber. She felt that if she went on, she might not make it down. ”It wasn’t my time to keep climbing,” she says. She turned around. And giving up? It may have been the best thing she ever did. Not just because she didn’t fall to her death. High up on that ridge, she really understood that life wasn’t so simple. There were wrong turns, bad weather and bad luck that were beyond her control. It was OK to give up. In the end, even the more experienced climbers had to turn back and go down with her. ”We all failed, but I didn’t take it as a bad thing. We did our best,” she says. In that moment on the mountain, Harrington finally let go of something. Something she’d carried with her through all those years of competition. ”I can’t control everything that’s going to happen to me in my life, and I’m going to have to just take it as it comes and deal with it, and be OK,” she says. ”Success or failure, it’s going to be OK.” This story is the fourth in a   series on the experience of failure and how people deal with it. It was developed in NPR’s Story Lab. Nicholas DePrey created original music for the series."
"Updated at 3:44 p. m. ET, The members of the Senate Intelligence Committee had one question they asked again and again Wednesday of the country’s intelligence chiefs: Did President Trump want you to downplay investigations surrounding Russia? And time and again, the intelligence officials declined to answer. At the often contentious hearing, Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, the committee’s vice chairman, was the first to press the question. He asked the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, and the head of the National Security Agency, Adm. Mike Rogers, about media reports that Trump asked them to intervene in the Justice Department investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and the broader inquiry surrounding Russia. Both answered in broad terms. ”In the   years I have been director of the National Security Agency, to the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate,” Rogers said. ”I do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so.” Coats responded in a similar vein. ”In my time of service,” Coats said, ”I have never been pressured, I’ve never felt pressure to intervene or interfere, in any way, with shaping intelligence in a political way.” However, neither would discuss their conversations with Trump, and declined to say if he asked them to take any action regarding the investigations. Warner, along with several other senators, kept pushing and ultimately expressed frustration with the intelligence chiefs. There are ”reports, that nobody has laid to rest here, that the president of the United States has intervened directly in an ongoing FBI investigation and we’ve got no answers from any of you,” Warner said. The verbal sparring became so intense that Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, intervened at one point during a sharp exchange between California Democrat Kamala Harris and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. ”The chair is going to exercise its right to allow the witnesses to answer the question, and committee is on notice to provide witnesses the courtesy, which has not been extended all the way across,” Burr said. Republican John McCain of Arizona took a softer approach, drawing chuckles when he asked Coats, ”Do you want to tell us any more about the Russian involvement in our election that we don’t already know from reading The Washington Post?” Coats did not offer any details, but said, ”Just because it’s in The Washington Post doesn’t mean it’s declassified.” The hearing brought four senior intelligence and law enforcement officials before the committee on Wednesday. In addition to Coats, Rogers and Rosenstein, Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe also testified. The hearing was highly anticipated because stories about the Russia investigation have emerged piecemeal, often based on anonymous sources. The intelligence chiefs are all key figures in the investigation, but have rarely spoken publicly, and not in one place, at one time, and under oath. However, the hearing offered relatively little new information, and shortly after it ended at midday, it was overtaken by the release of a statement by James Comey, the former FBI director who was fired by Trump on May 9. Comey is scheduled to testify before the committee on Thursday morning, and his prepared statement was posted on the committee’s website. In the statement, Comey says Trump asked him for ”loyalty” at a January dinner. Comey says the president also spoke to him about the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and said, ”I hope you can let this go.” The president has repeatedly called for an end to the various inquires swirling around his administration. But Democratic senators, in particular, want to know what he’s told intelligence officials in private discussions. Trump reportedly asked Coats and Rogers to state publicly that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Neither official has done so. Citing these reports, Warner said in his opening statement: ”If any of this is true, it would be an appalling and improper use of our intelligence professionals  —   an act that could erode the public’s confidence in our intelligence institutions. The (intelligence community) fiercely prides itself on its apolitical service to the country. Any attempt by the White House or even the president himself to exploit this community as a tool for political purposes is deeply, deeply troubling.” While Democrats have focused on possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, Republicans have focused on leaks about the investigation. The president has frequently railed against leaks, and a government contractor, Reality Winner, was charged Monday with leaking an NSA document that details Russian efforts to penetrate U. S. election systems."
"TV networks have deployed countdown clocks. People are tweeting about places to watch and whether they’ll offer morning cocktail specials. Congressional aides report that demand for seats inside the Senate hearing room has reached levels not seen for decades. Anticipation is building for testimony from fired FBI Director James Comey, not least in the White House, where the president and his aides worry the telegenic former law enforcement leader could inflict both political and legal wounds. What Comey might say, Friends and associates of the former FBI director described Comey as shocked that news of his firing came from a television screen, while he was speaking to agents in California last month. Just three years into a    Comey’s associates said he had no inkling he was on the verge of losing his job, especially not while the Bureau was in the middle of investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential contest. Comey did, however, have an uneasy feeling about President Trump, friends said. This year, he chronicled his conversations with Trump in a series of contemporaneous memos. One reflected his concern about Trump’s alleged request to back off from the investigation of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Comey also told associates the president had tried to get him to pledge ”loyalty” on multiple occasions this year, a pledge the FBI director declined to make. The White House has changed its public rationale for firing Comey, first blaming his mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email probe and pointing to recommendations from leaders at the Justice Department. But then the president told an interviewer he got rid of Comey because of ”this Russia thing.” And the New York Times went on to report Trump had told Russian officials in the Oval Office the day after the dismissal that Comey was a ”nut job” and firing him had ”taken off” pressure over his campaign’s contacts with Russia. Of course, the opposite happened. Comey’s dismissal triggered the deputy attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate Russian interference. What Comey will avoid, The fired FBI director has been in contact with the special counsel, who happens to be his predecessor at the FBI, Robert Mueller III. Comey may testify about his confidence that Russian hackers targeted American institutions last year, but he’s expected to steer clear of details about the ongoing Russia investigation in his hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Legal experts said that makes sense, because as a former prosecutor, Comey understands he should not take steps to complicate the ongoing criminal probe. So, don’t get your hopes up for a discussion about retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s request for immunity, the fate of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort or what the former FBI director knows about meetings between Trump’s    Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador last year. Comey may be more willing to discuss his dealings with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who backed the White House decision to fire him. Comey’s greatest hits, There’s a reason why people are eager to hear Comey tell his side of the story. For a man who’s spent most of his adult life pursuing law and order, he’s an unusually vivid communicator. People sat up and listened when he likened the influence of Islamic State social media accounts on young Western recruits to ”a devil on their shoulder all day long saying, ’kill, kill, kill. ’” Reporters and congressional aides still recall, from memory, exact passages from Comey’s 2007 congressional testimony about racing up the steps of a hospital to interdict George W. Bush White House officials seeking to bypass him in a surveillance dispute and get to the ailing attorney general, John Ashcroft. He once blamed the FBI’s challenge in recruiting cyber talent on its prohibition on marijuana use. ”I have to hire a great workforce to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” he said. Comey later clarified that was a joke after  . Jeff Sessions,  . offered criticism. Some of his greatest hits are memorable for other reasons. Days before he was fired, Comey told lawmakers he was ”mildly nauseous” about the idea his actions in the Clinton email probe may have swayed the 2016 presidential election. How the Trump administration may push back, President Trump called James Comey ”a showboat” and ”a grandstander” after the firing. ”I wish him luck,” Trump told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday of the former FBI director’s looming testimony. White House adviser Kellyanne Conway emphasized to NBC this week that Comey wouldn’t win any popularity contests. ”Most of Washington, of course many of the Democrats, detested this man until Donald Trump fired him, which Jim Comey said in his own goodbye letter was the right of the president to do,” Conway said. She added that Comey had to correct his testimony about the Clinton email probe just days before he was fired, causing the FBI to ”scurry” and send a letter to Congress to fix it. Comey misstated facts about some emails the FBI discovered on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton’s close aide Huma Abedin. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that Comey’s handling of the email probe was more than an isolated mistake. ”I cannot defend the Director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken,” he wrote in a memo. What happens next, Other committees in Congress have been angling for the fired FBI director’s testimony, but it’s not clear that he will accept those invitations, at least not anytime soon. The congressional probes in the House and Senate into Russian election interference are proceeding, as is the special counsel investigation. But it could be many months, if not years, for a full accounting."
"Ten years ago, my husband and I were traveling around South Africa for a few weeks and fell in love with the baboons. They were everywhere. Eating fruit in the middle of the road. Having sex on the side of a hiking trail. Even just hanging out in a gas station parking lot. They’re magnificent creatures. Weighing up to 100 pounds, they have this alluring attitude  —   kind of like Sam Elliot in The Big Lebowski, sipping a beer at a bar, ready to offer sage advice. ”I’m going to go touch him,” my husband, Matt, says, referring to the male at the gas station parking lot, munching on a cracker. ”Just one little pat on the head.” So Matt  —   a very smart man, with a degree in computer science  —   steps slowly toward the creature. He’s 3 feet away . .. 2 feet away . .. 1 foot away when . .. boom! Mr. Baboon opens his mouth wide and reveals ginormous front teeth  —   about the size of thumbs. Matt freezes, turns to me and starts running back. Mr. Baboon left us alone, thank goodness. He could have been carrying rabies, tetanus or a deadly type of herpes. And he might not be as friendly as he looks. Monkey bites are surprisingly common around the world. They account for up to 20 percent of animal bite injuries, the World Health Organization reports, and are second only to dog bites in prevalence. Hot spots include temples in Southeast Asia and parks in southern Africa. Now researchers in the U. K. say they understand better why monkey bites are such a problem: Human primates are really bad at interpreting facial expressions of nonhuman primates. Really, really bad. Most of the time, what we think the animal’s expressions means is exactly the opposite of what it is feeling, researchers at the University of Lincoln in England reported Friday in the journal PeerJ. And that naivete can get tenderfoot tourists in trouble. Try the test yourself. Toward the top of this story, there’s a quiz with six photos of Barbary macaques, which often interact with tourists in Morocco. Anthropologist Laetitia Marechal and her colleagues gave these photos to 124 volunteers. Then she asked them: Can you guess how the monkey is feeling? Friendly? Aggressive? Scared? ”In the second photo, the animal’s mouth is open and round  —   with his eyebrows raised,” Marechal says. ”People generally think the macaque is blowing them a kiss. I’ve even seen tourists reciprocate and blow a kiss back.” But love and warmth are the last thing on this monkey’s mind. ”This is a type of ’aggressive’ face,” Marechal says. ”He’s telling the human that he is uncomfortable and basically to go away. This is the expression adult macaques give to their kids to reprimand them.” And if tourists don’t ”listen,” the monkey will get nervous and is more likely to attack, Marechal says. ”Generally, macaques are not aggressive,” she says. ”But if they’re provoked, they will respond, like any animal will.” In the study, a third of the volunteers mistakenly thought the aggressive faces (A and B above) were friendly or neutral faces. More than half misinterpreted a friendly monkey face as aggressive or distressed. When Marechal and her team gave the volunteers a quick lesson in monkey communication, the error rates dropped a bit only about 20 percent mistook the aggressive face for a friendly one, But in the end, the best strategy is to keep your distance from all nonhuman primates  —   whether they’re in zoos, parks or gas stations  —   Marechal says. ”It’s an absolutely amazing experience to be around these creatures,” she adds. ”We learn so much by observing them in parks and zoos. But you miss that opportunity to learn when you try to feed or touch them.” ”Keep a distance of a few meters, at minimum,” she says. ”And never try to pet, touch or feed any wild animal. There can be very bad consequences for the animals and the person.”"
"A team of European and Moroccan scientists has found the fossil remains of five individuals who they believe are the most ancient modern humans (Homo sapiens) ever found. In a remote area of Morocco called Jebel Irhoud, in what was once a cave, the team found a skull, bones and teeth of five individuals who lived about 315, 000 years ago. The scientists also found fairly sophisticated stone tools and charcoal, indicating the use of fire by this group. The researchers’ claim is controversial, however, because anthropologists are still debating exactly what physical features distinguish modern humans from our more primitive ancestors. Archaic forms of humans  —   other, earlier species of Homo  —   emerged more than a million years ago. Exactly how and when our species  —   Homo sapiens  —   evolved is a mystery. Up to now, the oldest known bones widely recognized as Homo sapiens were from people who lived in East Africa about 200, 000 years ago. The new discovery in Morocco would push the date for the emergence of our species back another 100, 000 years.   Hublin directs the department of human evolution at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He led the team that found a skull, bones and stone tools. ”This material represents the very root of our species, the oldest Homo sapiens ever found in Africa or elsewhere,” he says. It’s a big claim, described in detail in Hublin’s report Wednesday in the journal Nature. Others in his field are skeptical, among them paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, who runs the human origins program at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. He says some of the skull’s features, especially its elongated cranium and the shape of the face, suggest it could be a more primitive ancestor of modern humans. ”The new finds from Morocco are a kind of snapshot in that whole process of transition from archaic to us,” Potts says. He suspects it’s a snapshot from a period just before modern humans evolved. This is a common argument in anthropology  —   where does a newly discovered fossil, especially one with a mix of ancient and more modern features, fit in the bushy family tree of human ancestry? Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at London’s Museum of Natural History, says even if the Moroccan skull is a bit of a mashup of modern and archaic features, it’s still one of us. ”As evolution happens, as we go back in time,” he says, ”they are going to look less like modern humans. . .. They have faces which are really like bigger version of our faces.” Stringer and Hublin suggest that the elongated cranium, or braincase, may have been one of the last things in the human line to evolve to what it looks like now (more globular, as anthropologists describe it) perhaps as the brain grew more connections and became more sophisticated. What is clear, now more than ever, is that humanity’s ancestors, and eventually early forms of ”us,” were popping up all over Africa. They evolved in eastern Africa, southern Africa and now, apparently, northern Africa. And it’s increasingly evident that these ancestors moved all over the continent, swapping tool technology as well as genes. ”If there was a ’Garden of Eden’,” Hublin says metaphorically, ”it’s Africa. So the Garden of Eden is the size of Africa.” And eventually, after all that evolutionary experimentation on the human form, the current form evolved  —   somewhere yet to be determined."
"Water stagnating at a construction site. A dwindling number of mangroves along the shore. Lakes choked with algae and hyacinth. Sewage pipes leaking into the sea. These are common sights in India. Until recently, the best people could do to try to draw attention to such problems was to tweet pictures to the government or write letters to the newspaper  —   hoping someone with the power to make changes would take note. Increasingly, scientists and activists are enabling citizen observers to collect data and upload it to the cloud with the aim of pushing all stakeholders  —   government agencies, corporations and citizens  —   toward change. One of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is free, drinkable water for all by 2030. ”These initiatives are very important for empowering citizens, making more data available  —   and this helps in strengthening accountability,” says Binayak Das, program coordinator of the Water Integrity Network, an NGO in Germany. In her fieldwork across India over the last few years, activist Latha Sankarnarayan says she’s ”often seen scarcity or quality [of water] as a core issue.” Often official data is spotty, inaccurate or simply fudged, she says. In Tamil Nadu, for example, ”people living in [a certain] area claimed that for the past two to three years there was no rainfall. Official rainfall data showed that rainfall was normal for those years and yet the farming lands were fallow and dry.” Additionally, says Umrbek Allakulov, Research and Development Officer at Water Integrity Network, government agencies and research centers in developing countries may not have the ability to monitor and test water quality. ”Under such circumstances,   water quality monitoring can offer a supporting hand to help ensure that water is safe for human consumption.” So Sankarnarayan launched an app called Climatix to measure climate resilience by crowdsourcing. Technology like this is enabling scientists to gather frequent and reliable data from the grassroots level  —   and to fill in gaps. And proponents of citizen observations say having more hands on deck helps advance not only science but also policy. ”If I train 200 citizen scientists, I’ll be able to have a much more valid, scientifically robust reason for why something needs to be changed,” says Steven Loiselle, head of the FreshWater Watch program at the nonprofit EarthWatch Institute. Freshwater Watch has active projects in Delhi’s Yamuna river and Hyderabad’s lakes. And people supporting citizen data gathering say they have seen outside data lead to change. Claire Grandadam, also from Water Integrity Network, says it happened in Costa Rica three years ago. With the data and citizen pressure, the water board set up water meters to check supply and billing, she says. ”The measurements were used as evidence to advocate policy change,” she says. ”We’ve seen that when   are faced with concrete data, they can be pushed to take action.” Change and accountability are, of course, the Holy Grail. Elsewhere, in Costa Rica, citizens measured the levels of herbicides and pesticides in their drinking water. While these groups are still awaiting recourse, documentation has helped them take their fight to the courts. ”The Flint water crisis is [another] case in point,” adds Allakulov, ” where independent and   water testing raised the alarm about the   water, which eventually exposed neglect, unethical behavior and potential corruption on the part of several public officials.” Sometimes governments initiate citizen drives themselves, like in California, where IBM worked with the state to make a water mapping app called Creekwatch. In India, though, crowdsourcing apps are not yet hugely popular. But they are gaining steam. In cities like Mumbai, where monsoon rains are torrential every year, there several   apps. In Bangalore, the Jackboy app can measure air pollution. But the app advocates note that there needs to be education about the issues before an app will find an audience. Sankarnarayan, for example, is leading interested parties on a walk through the rivers and wetlands of Mumbai to create awareness and highlight their connection to the near constant flooding of the city. She hopes it’ll encourage citizens to log data about air, water and soil in the Climatix app. ”Anybody can send in their observations or report on things like   [where water saturates the soil] in a specific area, which may lead to flooding if there’s a sudden cloudburst or extreme climatic event  —   water scarcity, salinity increase or drought,” Sankarnarayan says. Sometimes, needed information goes beyond simple observations on water levels or color it can require doing a quick lab test on the go. Akvo (Esperanto for ’water’) is a nonprofit foundation that provides software and services for disadvantaged populations, with a focus on water management. Conducting a breakout session during World Water Week in Stockholm last year, Akvo’s   demonstrated the      tests that their lab in Bengaluru uses. One kit contains a simple strip test, say for pH or phosphates. Another consists of a collection jar and a reactant chemical that can test for fluoride  —   a big problem in India and Bangladesh. There, too much fluoride in the drinking water has led to mass fluorosis, a condition that leads to calcification of ligaments. ”This [fluoride] test on a mobile phone is of equivalent quality as an ion selector device used in the lab the difference is this cheaper and portable,”   says. The data is calibrated, interpreted and sent to the cloud with time stamps and GPS markers. The test can be extended to check chlorine, bacteria levels in the water, and, soon, arsenic  —   another big problem in the Indian subcontinent. Saikiran Gaddam, an engineering student in Hyderabad, was one of 11 Akvo volunteers who spent 10 days last year in the field  —   in the rural Nalgonda district about 60 miles from the city  —   testing 240 wells, streams, ponds and water filtration plants. Armed with gloves and a small kit the size of four decks of cards, they did basic tests for five hours a day out in the hot sun. The Akvo app on their mobile phones let them log, map, and upload data on contamination and chemical run off. ”We came to know ground realities,” Gaddam says. ”We saw the pipeline connections, how water is getting polluted, we saw how the villagers live and what they have to face.” The drinking water options in this part of India are limited. Local water sources may be toxic because of runoff from industries, for example. If water is delivered from a filtration plant, it could lack minerals. But the local administration and police department of Nalgonda were responsive: The water authorities promised to monitor the filtration plant and close off contaminated wells. ”We fill a vacuum,” says Gaddam. ”With our help, citizens can hold the government accountable.” He admits there are limitations. Citizen observatories are not labs, though their trainers work to put checks, balances and   to keep the data as reliable as possible  —   and to keep the people safe. There also are some concerns about putting the data in the cloud. ”When data is collected in India, it is not only about water and sanitation but also demographics,” says Das of Water Integrity Network. The information can also be used to see if a lower caste doesn’t have the same access to water and sanitation as high castes do. ”And many studies show that minority communities don’t have access,” says Das of Water Integrity Network. It’s important for the data to get the right kind of attention, proponents say. ”Ensuring universal access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030 requires serving the unreached and underserved in remote and difficult areas,” says Allakulov. ”Walking the last mile and extending safe drinking water to those at the base of the pyramid may be just the avenue that will benefit greatly from   water quality monitoring” Sankarnarayan with the Climatix app remains hopeful. Her mantra: ”What we can measure, we can manage.” Chhavi Sachdev is a freelance reporter in India. You can reach her @chhavi. This story was reported partially through a grant from SIWI at World Water Week, 2016."
"A diplomatic crisis continues to develop in the Persian Gulf, where four Sunni states are attempting to isolate the small,   nation of Qatar from the rest of the region. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism, which Qatar denies. President Trump has offered to host a conciliatory meeting in the White House, according to his administration. The West African nations of Senegal and Mauritania have severed their diplomatic relations with Qatar in expression of solidarity with the four Arab countries that cut ties. The Arab countries aren’t just recalling diplomats they’re also closing airspace to Qatar and restricting access by sea. Qatar is on a peninsula, sharing one land border with Saudi Arabia  —   which is now closed  —   and otherwise surrounded by the Gulf. The UAE is threatening up to 15 years in jail and a fine of more than $130, 000 for anyone who expresses sympathy for Qatar on social media, The Associated Press reports. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the Turkish parliament ”approved a draft bill allowing its troops to be deployed to a Turkish military base in Qatar,” apparently in support of the Qatari government. And the emir of Kuwait has met with two top United Arab Emirates officials to attempt to mediate the situation, the wire service says. Trump spoke with the emir of Qatar on Wednesday, the White House announced, and ”offered to help the parties resolve their differences,” by hosting a meeting if necessary. Trump had previously appeared to side with the Saudis and other nations against Qatar in a series of tweets on Tuesday. But other officials in his administration sought to downplay that message and emphasize the need for regional cooperation. Qatar is home to the largest U. S. airbase in the Mideast. It’s also the world’s largest exporter of liquid natural gas. Gregory Gause, a professor at Texas AM and an expert on the Gulf region, spoke to NPR on Tuesday about the diplomatic rift. He said there are multiple issues at play. The Arab Sunni nations accuse Qatar of supporting radical groups, including allowing or encouraging financial support. Gause notes that compared to its neighbors, Qatar ”is less stringent about regulating the movement of private monies.” Gause also noted Qatar’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood ”and other oppositional political groups,” as well as Qatari cooperation with Iran on some issues ”at a time when Saudi Arabia is confronting Iran directly on all sorts of fronts.” Finally, he said, there’s ”Al Jazeera and other   media, which is just an irritant to these governments because they see Al Jazeera as the platform through which opposition members talk to their own publics.” CNN and The Guardian have also reported that the FBI believes Russian hackers planted a false story about the emir of Qatar in recent weeks, potentially contributing to the crisis. Qatar’s foreign minister told CNN that hackers put a false story on Qatari state media, claiming the country’s leader made remarks friendly to Iran and skeptical of Trump. The Financial Times also reports that Qatar is said to have paid a massive ransom after members of the royal family were kidnapped, also contributing to the crisis."
"After more than two weeks of bloodshed, brutality and the creeping danger of starvation, Marawi remains a city under siege. Philippine authorities are reckoning with a mounting death toll  —   which by many media counts is more than 170 people  —   as well as the looming threat that the siege might become a bloody stalemate. The alliance of   militant groups that seized parts of Marawi on May 23 continues to exercise control over the urban center  —   or about 10 percent of the city, military Chief of Staff Gen. Eduardo Ano tells The Associated Press. And he says the militants had long prepared for this fight by stockpiling supplies and weapons in mosques, schools and other civilian sites, as well as in a network of tunnels. ”There are underground tunnels and basements that even a   [bomb] cannot destroy,” another general, Carlito Galvez, said at a news conference Monday. ”Even if they fight two months, they will not starve here.” Starvation poses an increasingly desperate threat to civilians, however. A     negotiated between the Philippines and the cluster of extremists led by the Maute Group gave way to gunfire after just one hour on Sunday. The breaking of that truce, which was intended to allow civilians to escape, has left up to 2, 000 bystanders still stranded there, according to the BBC. The British news service details the dire situation that confronts those who remain in Marawi, an overwhelmingly Muslim city in a   country: ”[One Christian mother] described how they hid with 70 other Christians in a basement, and how stressed everyone became when the children cried, for fear they would be given away to the gunmen outside. ”Another mother, a Muslim, said she had to dissuade the militants from taking her    son to fight.” The BBC reports that the 71 Christians, who were hidden and protected by a community leader, later escaped to safety only by crossing a bridge racked by gunfire between militants and government forces. Others have not managed such an escape. A Catholic priest was taken hostage with roughly a dozen members of his church near the start of the occupation. ”The priest was last seen pleading for their lives in a video posted last week,” Michael Sullivan reports for NPR’s Newscast unit. He notes that footage of militants smashing Christian iconography has been circulating online, as well  —   prompting government officials to ask social media outlets to remove posts of the video. ”The military says it’s worried the videos may be an attempt to fan religious hatred and turn the conflict into a religious war,” Sullivan says. ”Padilla also asked citizens not to share the video online.” There is another video Philippine authorities have wanted the world to see, though. On Wednesday, The Associated Press posted footage it says was obtained from the Philippine military and that appears to depict Islamist fighters, including Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, planning their attack on Marawi. Officials say the video was on a cell phone picked up by government troops. The wire service describes the ”audacious plot sketched in chilling detail”: ”In the video clip obtained by the AP, which runs for just over two minutes, a   man identified by the military as Abdullah Maute addresses other militant leaders gathered around a white plastic table. ”Pointing to a crude sketch of Marawi’s main streets and speaking in Tagalog and Marawi’s Maranao dialect, he declares, ’We’ll take this first and then here.’ ” ’Or,’ he says, ’we can go here first. We seal this off so you’ll have a passageway. But we need to capture a highway so the people will get scared.’ Another militant can be seen videotaping the clandestine meeting.” The footage appears to confirm the Philippine claim that its botched raid to capture Hapilon, which sparked the violence, in fact interrupted a much larger plot the militants intended to enact just days later. Since that operation late last month, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has declared martial law on the whole island where Marawi is, aiming to wrest momentum from the cluster of groups that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. But efforts to reclaim the city have been dogged by the military’s own missteps and by an extremist force that dwarfed initial expectations. Government officials say the militant groups count foreign jihadis among their number  —   including fighters from as far away as Saudi Arabia and Chechnya. ”Had the assault not been ” the AP reports, paraphrasing Philippine officials, ”the militants likely would have seized more territory and inflicted far more damage.” The footage also appears to confirm something else: that from the start, the militant groups occupying Marawi had long been preparing for a protracted fight."
"Scientists say they may have solved a big medical mystery: why mammograms don’t save more lives. A study involving thousands of breast cancer cases, released Wednesday, concludes that a significant proportion of tumors detected through mammography are not small because they are found early. Instead, the tumors are small because they are biologically prone to slow growth. ”For over 100 years, we’ve known that small breast cancers have a much better prognosis than large breast cancers,” says Donald Lannin, a professor of surgery at the Yale School of Medicine, who led the study. ”We always assumed that it was because we were catching the small cancers early and then that’s why the cure rate was much better.” To test that assumption, Lannin and a colleague analyzed information about thousands of breast cancer cases collected between 2001 and 2013 by the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database. They found that about 22 percent of tumors detected by mammography are the very slow growing kind. The study looked at factors such as whether a tumor is more or less likely to grow faster when exposed to hormones. The results were published in a special report in the New England Journal of Medicine. ”We thought almost all breast cancers were alike. You know, a breast cancer was breast cancer  —   it was bad,” Lannin says. Instead, he says that breast cancer varies ”tremendously,” from some cancers that are extremely fast growing and aggressive to others that are extremely slow growing. ”It takes 15 or 20 years for [these small tumors] to cause any problems. And you can kind of imagine that a lot of patients will die of something else over that 15 or 20 years,” Lannin says. That means a significant proportion of women who get screened for breast cancer with a mammogram go through biopsies, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation  —   and experience a lot stress  —   for tumors that may never pose a health threat. It appears that ”screening disproportionately finds good cancers  —   cancers that may be better off not found,” says H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine, community and family medicine at Dartmouth College. He was not involved in the new study. ”I think that we all need to realize that we’ve probably oversold the idea that looking for cancer early is the best way to avoid it,” Welch says. ”Mammography’s a really close call. It’s a choice. We’ve exaggerated its benefit and we’ve sort of understated its harms.” The American Cancer Society and other groups have recently pulled back on their recommendations for how often women should get mammograms, and the society now says most women can wait until they are 45 to start getting screened annually. But the long debate over mammography is unlikely to end anytime soon. Debra Monticciolo, a radiologist at Texas AM Health Science Center and chairwoman of the American College of Radiology’s Breast Imaging Commission, argues the new study is flawed. ”We know that mammograms have led to finding tumors earlier and have decreased mortality overall and it’s pretty significant,” Monticciolo says. ”What I’m concerned about is this will give patients or their physicians the idea that, well, if you have tumor with a ’favorable biology’ that we just don’t need to worry about it. And that’s just not true,” she says. Others argue that the   solution is to come up with new tests that can tell the difference between breast tumors that are more likely to grow quickly and become   and those that truly are nothing to worry about. ”What we need to do is go from a   century definition of cancer that involved a biopsy to a 21st century definition of cancer that involves both [biological] and genomic testing,” says Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Association. That kind of test would allow doctors to say, ” ’Mrs. Jones, you have a breast cancer that we should watch’ or ’Mrs. Smith, you have a breast cancer that we should treat,’ ” Brawley says. In the meantime, Brawley recommends women continue to follow current guidelines for getting mammmograms."
"Natalia Lafourcade is one of the most successful   in Latin America. The Mexico City musician has been a longtime popular and critical favorite  —   she swept the Latin Grammy Awards in 2015, where her last album Hasta La Raíz (”To The Core”) was named Record of the Year and Best Alternative Music Album. Lafourcade has always been inspired by her musical forebears, but for her seventh album, Musas (”Muses”) she expressly wanted to pay homage to the greats of Latin American music in their ”full glory.” ”I wanted the music to sound made in Mexico,” Lafourcade tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. ”I wanted to connect to my roots.” On Musas, Lafourcade pays tribute to artists such as Agustín Lara, Margarita Lecuona and Roberto Cantoral. Some of her idols helped out: Cuban singer Omara Portuondo of Buena Vista Social Club sings on ”Tu Me Acostumbraste,” for instance. And the legendary acoustic guitar duo Los Macorinos  —   Juan Carlos Allende and Miguel Peña, who are both in their 70s  —   accompanies the    Lafourcade on every song. Allende and Peña were different from her usual collaborators, she says: ”The Macorinos were more calm. They were patient with music and they were paying a lot of attention to the details.” When asked to name songs on Musas that explore Latin American musical tradition in a way that makes her happiest, Lafourcade names Lara’s ”Te Vi Pasar,” as well as ”Qué He Sacado Con Quererte,” associated with Chilean artist Violeta Parra. ”That music . .. has a lot of richness,” she says. ”When you take some of that and mix that [with] the things that are happening now and that I feel now, I think it becomes stronger. But also, my music becomes different.” Not only did Lafourcade’s music change, so did her attitude towards her own heritage. ”As I have been discovering all these lyrics and these stories and composers, now I feel more proud about the place where I come from,” she says. ”It’s really important for your spirit, and your identity also. . .. I really want to become a composer for my people, my country, that will photograph the things that are happening now, in story and life and love.” Lafourcade acknowledges that her fans, who tend to be younger folks, are likely to be unfamiliar with traditional Latin American music and older songwriters. But it has become important to her to serve as a conduit to that history. ”If I can make them listen to something that will make them connect to those things,” she says, ”maybe I am doing something right.” Web intern Karen Gwee contributed to this story."
"Shareholders in a zoo near Shanghai, frustrated that they weren’t making a profit on their investment, fed a live donkey to zoo tigers as a form of protest. Video of the scene shows the donkey pushed down a makeshift ramp into the water surrounding the tiger habitat, where it is promptly pounced upon. Tigers bite and claw the donkey as it bleeds and struggles in the water. The footage has prompted protest and outrage in China. In a statement, shareholders who invested in Yancheng Safari Park say they held a meeting and voted in favor of feeding the live donkey to the tigers to express their frustration. Their objections center on the zoo’s debts and legal troubles, which resulted in a court freezing the zoo’s assets. For two years, the shareholders said, they have seen no profits from the zoo. They argue that the court’s decision was unfair, and that the trial is moving too slowly. ”Shareholders are very unhappy about this,” the group of investors said in the statement. ”So in a rage, a live donkey and sheep will be fed to the tigers.” The Guardian reports that zoo officials did not intervene in time to save the donkey, but managed to prevent the shareholders from sending the sheep into the tiger enclosure. The shareholders said that their anger was not just over their own money. ”The animals became the biggest victims” of the   the shareholders say, noting that two giraffes and other rare animals have died because the zoo could not provide them with ”timely and effective treatment.” Yancheng Safari Park, located in Changzhou, confirmed in a statement that a legal dispute has frozen the company’s assets, and that inadequate care has led to the death of several animals. The zoo apologized for the donkey incident, which it says occurred ”without warning.” ”Since the incident, our zoo has gone into emergency alert,” the zoo’s statement says. After news coverage ”causing widespread disgust, our zoo would like to express our deepest apologies.” The zoo said it is holding a meeting to ”calm shareholders’ nerves” and promised to improve safety standards to prevent such an incident from ever happening again. The tigers reportedly spent 30 minutes mauling the donkey before they finally killed it. The footage of the scene, showing the tigers manhandling the donkey, went viral in China, the BBC reports. The South China Morning Post has more on the regional reaction: ”Mainland social media users strongly criticised the action and called for more care for animals in zoos. ”One wrote: ’The donkey screamed miserably when it was pushed down. What has a donkey to do with humans’ problems?’ ” But The Guardian notes that the shocking scene, while unusual as an act of shareholder protest, is not entirely unprecedented in China. ”Although the incident with the donkey was not sanctioned, zoos in other parts of China regularly feed live animals to tigers for the amusement of the public,” the newspaper writes. ”Guests visiting one tiger sanctuary in   China’s Heilongjiang province can pay to have a live cow or chicken hurled into the tiger enclosure.” NPR’s Wanyu Zhang and Ronald Chan contributed to this report."
"President Trump and Saudi King Salman bin   Al Saud sat side by side in the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and watched as agreement after agreement was signed by Saudi officials and American CEOs. The signing ceremony lasted 22 minutes. ”Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments [into] the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs,” Trump raved to reporters a short time later. A State Department official says the agreements are worth $380 billion: $110 billion in arms sales and $270 billion in commercial agreements. But beyond that, U. S. officials were slow to provide a complete list of the agreements or a full accounting of the totals they provided. That hasn’t, however, stopped Trump and members of his administration from using superlatives to describe what was achieved in Saudi Arabia. ”The president was able to make some of the most amazing deals that have really been made by an administration ever,” said White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, speaking to reporters at the end of the president’s trip. ”I have to tell you personally: I’ve been in business for 30 years, I’ve been doing this my entire life  —   I’ve never seen anything come together like this.” After Cohn said that, NPR emailed White House press secretary Sean Spicer asking for details  —   and not for the first time. Spicer’s   response: ”working on it.” A week later, Spicer suggested calling the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department didn’t have a    list or fact sheet. An administration official later provided by phone what he said was a ”partial list” that included only some of the commercial and arms deals. Added together, the total came to just $83 billion  —   a far cry from the   number touted initially. A State Department official offered this: ”At least 30 commercial Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) between U. S. companies and the government of Saudi Arabia were exchanged at a Royal Court ceremony in the presence of President Donald J. Trump and King Salman. According to information supplied by the majority of U. S. companies involved in these deals, we believe that the MoUs, when fully executed, represent nearly $270 billion in commercial deals for U. S. companies, and potentially tens of billions of dollars more.” Late Tuesday, a White House spokeswoman provided NPR with two spreadsheets: one listing the commercial deals and another listing the proposed defense deals. The commercial deals add up to nearly $267 billion. But it turns out that most of what was signed in the palace wasn’t completed deals or signed contracts but rather nonbonding agreements (”memoranda of understanding”) between U. S. companies and Saudi entities. Press releases from the companies included the words ”preliminary,” ”proposed” and ”potential.” Others make it clear that the arrangements had been in the works before Trump was elected. While the White House spreadsheet lists Exxon Mobil as inking a $22 billion deal, the company wasn’t willing to put a dollar figure on it when contacted by NPR. ”ExxonMobil and SABIC are proposing to build a plastics manufacturing facility in San Patricio County, Texas. It’s anticipated to be a multibillion dollar project however, it is premature to speculate on final costs until detailed design is completed and the value of construction contracts is available,” said Aaron Stryk, an Exxon Mobil media relations adviser, in an email to NPR. He went on to describe how many jobs could be created by ”the envisioned project if it moves forward.” The agreement signed during the president’s visit would allow both parties to begin engineering and design work and construction site preparations, though Stryk noted that the project was initially announced in July 2016, well before Trump took office. Japanese SoftBank announced during the president’s trip abroad that it had secured $93 billion in funding for its Vision Fund, with a big chunk of that money coming from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The White House spreadsheet lists that as $100 billion in ”technology investments with main investments in U. S.” However, it’s not clear how much of that money will be invested in the U. S. When SoftBank first announced the plans for the fund in October 2016, CEO Masayoshi Son said in a statement: ”With the establishment of the SoftBank Vision Fund, we will be able to step up investments in technology companies globally.” This isn’t the first time the Trump White House has hailed an announcement involving SoftBank (and many analysts suspect this very same fund) as an American job booster. In December, Son visited Trump Tower, and the   said SoftBank would be making a big investment in U. S. technology companies as a result of his election. The White House lists $40 billion in U. S. infrastructure investments through a fund created by Blackstone and the Saudi Public Investment Fund. The Saudi investment is $20 billion. The rest hasn’t been secured yet. ”Blackstone anticipates that the program will have $40 billion in total equity commitments in a permanent capital vehicle, including $20 billion to be raised from other investors,” Blackstone said in a statement announcing the planned launch of the investment fund. ”The MOU is   and the parties will continue their negotiation to agree definitive documentation.” As for the $110 billion in military equipment sales, that is easier to track because the State Department has to sign off and information about the sales has to be posted before final contracts can even be negotiated. About $25 billion of it has been posted. However, those potential arms sales were all set in motion during the Obama administration. And the other $85 billion? It is partially deals that were already announced. And the rest are still subject to approval by the State Department and Congress, all before final sales agreements  —  which are very much subject to change  —   can be hammered out. Aaron Mehta, the senior Pentagon correspondent with Defense News, started digging into the numbers immediately after the announcement. He points out a $6. 8 billion deal for munitions and support was posted and brought to Congress in October 2013. ”Before everyone goes celebrating  —   ’This is the biggest deal ever announced, this is a major program, this is going to shift relations in the Gulf and make Saudi Arabia into even more of a global power’  —   let’s see what happens,” said Mehta in an interview with NPR. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel was even less charitable. ”There is no deal. It’s fake news,” he wrote in a scathing piece on the Brookings website. ”I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday.” It could be years before anyone knows for sure whether the preliminary agreements announced in Saudi Arabia have become real deals worth hundreds of billions or whether the announcements were the kind of hyperbole Trump perfected during his time in the business world. Washington Desk interns Abigail Censky and Madeline Garcia contributed to this report."
"In the annals of TV villains, actor Giancarlo Esposito’s Breaking Bad character, Gus Fring, stands out. Gus was an upstanding, impeccably dressed, New Mexico businessman who spoke with an elegant Chilean accent  ” and also happened to be a vicious drug lord. Esposito describes the character as resembling ”someone who may live next door, who is successful and very caring, but who is also ruthless.” In 2011, Esposito’s portrayal of Gus seemed to end when the character died in a gruesome explosion on Breaking Bad. But now, six years later, the actor is reprising the role on Better Call Saul, AMC’s prequel series. Esposito describes his work on the current series as going ”back in time with the character.” In fact, audiences are meeting a younger, slightly less polished version of the notorious villain. ”It was a very interesting journey to think youthfully,” Esposito says. ”I wanted a Gus that was more vulnerable, a Gus that was . .. not so definitive, knowing where he was going, but not knowing exactly how to get there.” On developing Gus Fring’s voice and accent  I try to let the words speak to me and jump off the page in silence, so I can hear the rhythm of what they are trying to write. In this case, obviously, Gus has a Chilean accent, which I bring to the copy. But then I go from letting it permeate my being, and then allowing my voice to join it in a whisper. So I start that way, and from that whisper comes a sound, so that I can allow what the writers have honored in this character, and my voice, to join together in a seamless way. On growing up biracial, the child of an Italian father and an   mother, It’s been a part of me to acknowledge and recognize that I’m not a color. I’ve always said, ”Hey, you go to England and these are English people. You go to Spain, there are Spanish people.” They could be black, they could be all different colors. You come to America and it’s black or white. Unfortunately, I grew up here, where the divide is talked about and it’s labeled in a very different way, and . .. I dislike it a lot. Because before someone even comes into your presence, you’re judging them by their color. On being biracial and not being sure where he fit in  I had to make a choice, and I made this choice over and over and over again in my life. I walk into an audition and I’m ”Giancarlo Esposito” and they thought I was a white guy. . .. I walk into the audition and it’s all white guys sitting out in the waiting room and they come out and they’re like, ”We’re sorry. We had no idea . .. you were black, so this is only for white guys.” . .. We still check those boxes, right? And it says ”” ”Spanish,” you know, ”Indian?” And I, all my life, have checked the box that that said ”other.” Now, there’ s a connotation to that, too. I’m an ”other”? How did I get to be an ”other”? . .. I’ve had to revisit this often, and I’m getting a little choked up now, because I believe that we hold ourselves in a way that also projects who we are. And if I project my humanity and I’m a human being, that goes beyond any color. It goes to the soul. . .. I want to be judged for who I am organically. I want to have real interactions not based on my color. On the roadblocks his mother, an opera singer, faced in her career and her recent death, When I was 17, I stopped playing ”bad”   young people, because I didn’t want to represent them in that way. I wanted a more positive, thoughtful image of   so I stopped playing the bad guys. I know that it crushed [my mother] to not have the opportunity to express herself, and I know that she gave up for many, many years . .. and became an observer. . .. She said to me, ”I’m a queen, I will never work again. I won’t participate in this madness.” . .. I don’t fault her for it, it was her journey, her life, but I do have the sense that she’s really dancing in the clouds now, because she had an idea of how far I’ve gone. On working with director Spike Lee in Do The Right Thing Do the Right Thing, School Daze, Mo’ Better Blues and other films, It was a definitive turning point in my life to work with Spike Lee, because Spike represented . .. the truth [of] who   were at that time. He didn’t pull any punches. He wrote what he saw. He wrote what he felt, as raw as it may have been, as hard as it may have been to digest for  . And so I respected Spike for changing the game in film. . .. I took a little issue when Spike said, ”Giancarlo, Giancarlo, I gotta tell you this.” I said, ”What, Spike?” ”You know, you’re an  .” That’s what he called me! I went, ”OK, Spike.” We’ve butted heads. We’ve disagreed. We’ve agreed. I guess that’s what friendships are about. Radio producers Lauren Krenzel and Heidi Saman and Web producers Bridget Bentz, Molly   and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"Ever heard of the freshman 15? Nowadays, some people who are unhappy with the current political environment are complaining of the ”Trump 10.” We first heard this term from actress Jane Krakowski, who recently told late night TV host Stephen Colbert, ”Now that I’ve put on my Trump 10, I’ve got to work out a little.” When Colbert said he hadn’t heard of the term, she replied, ”You know  —   like the freshman 15,” referring to the weight gain typical during the first year of college. She’s not the only one. Similar complaints of politically induced stress eating have come from megastar Barbra Streisand and director Judd Apatow, who told The New York Times, ”I’m trying so hard to have it not turn into 30 pounds.” So is there anything to this? I put the question to Janice   of the Ohio State University. She studies how stress can influence our bodies  —   and our eating. ”I think the   Trump 10 could indeed be real,” she says, ”because when people are stressed, they typically do reach for the     foods that are more likely to put on pounds.” In a recent study, she found that stress may even override the benefits of a healthy diet. Now, to be clear, there’s no direct evidence pinning weight gain to the president or his policies. And let’s face it: It’s convenient to blame someone else for our personal struggles. But a hint that the effect could be real comes from a recent poll. The American Psychological Association surveys Americans about stress levels. The survey asks whether the political climate is stressing them out. More than half of those who responded said yes, the current political climate is a significant source of stress. Elissa Epel of the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the physiological effects of stress, says those findings are telling  —   and that the unease seems to cut across party lines. ”Regardless of whether people are   or   most people do not like what they’re seeing on the news,” she says. People who stay   in  —   taking in every tweet, every news cycle  —   are more likely to be stressed out, the poll suggests. ”Constant checking of the news on your phone TV  —   it’s a bad idea. It’s keeping you in a vigilant state,” Epel says. And that can add to your stress. So maybe this explains a March tweet from Streisand, in which she complained, ”Donald Trump is making me gain weight. I start the day with liquids, but after the morning news, I eat pancakes smothered in maple syrup!” There’s nothing wrong with eating this way every once in awhile, but over the long term, chronic stress can pack on the pounds. If you’re looking for help in tamping down your nerves, there are lots of foods that may help with mood. Check out these tips. And as much as we in the news business hesitate to advise this, another tip might be: Step away from the headlines. Epel suggests giving yourself curfews for checking your smartphone. She offers more advice on avoiding stress eating in this video."
"Kansas lawmakers have voted to roll back a series of major tax cuts that became an example for conservative lawmakers around the country but didn’t deliver the growth and prosperity promised by Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican. A coalition of conservative Republicans, some of whom voted for sweeping tax cuts in 2012 or defended them in the years since, sided with moderates and Democrats to override Brownback’s veto of a $1. 2 billion tax increase. The law to increase taxes over the next two years comes as legislators seek to close a projected $900 million budget gap for that same period and bolster funding for   schools under a Kansas Supreme Court order. ”It’s a huge vote,” said state Rep. Steven Johnson, a Republican and chairman of the House tax panel, adding that legislative leadership had explored many routes to find a tax solution that would gain sufficient support in both chambers. ”It’s a huge vote for looking for an option for Kansas among limited options.” Floor debates on taxes ran late into Tuesday evening, but in the end, 27 senators and 88 representatives rendered Brownback’s veto  —   which had been handed down just hours earlier  —   irrelevant. Passage of the tax bill brings to an end signature tax policies of the Brownback administration. Most of those policies were part of a 2012 law that exempted owners of more than 300, 000 small businesses and became a political flashpoint in recent elections. With a tax plan complete and new school finance formula sent to the governor, the Legislature still must agree on the state budget. It was the second time this session the governor sought to block legislation that would unravel 2012 tax changes and raise revenue through a   income tax structure. The first time, in February, lawmakers fell three votes short in the Senate of pushing past his opposition. The veto nearly survived this time, too: Though the House exceeded the override threshold by four votes, the Senate results came in at exactly the minimum needed. State Rep. Barbara Ballard, a Lawrence Democrat, described feeling tremendous relief, and said she believes many Kansans will share that sensation. ”Now we have a source of money. Then we can work our way out of the hole that we’re in,” she said. ”It’s almost like you can breathe.” Mopping it up, Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning said lawmakers had known since May 2014 that the tax cuts were leading to fiscal woes and not playing out as intended. He said while he voted for the 2012 changes, he believes in cleaning up one’s messes in life and planned to cast his vote accordingly. ”I’m going to mop it up,” he said. Conservative Republican state Sen. Dennis Pyle drew on the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty in his appeal that colleagues uphold the veto. He suggested some lawmakers might think Brownback is like the main character in that poem, but it is in fact the   legislators who are shattered. ”They continue to want more and more,” he said. ”They want to interfere in people’s lives.” The tax plan sets three income tax tiers: 3. 1 percent, 5. 25 percent and 5. 7 percent. Kansas currently has two rates, 2. 6 percent and 4. 6 percent, for tax year 2018. Much of the impassioned debate in the Senate came from conservative opponents of the bill, while many moderate Republicans and Democrats sat silent. Those who rose to comment rejected conservatives’ claims that increasing taxes defies common sense. ”From our side of the aisle, that tax plan didn’t receive a single vote,” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley said of the 2012 cuts, adding that Democrats had foreseen repercussions for the state’s financial health. State Sen. Tom Holland, a Democrat, said Kansas had been riding ”the crazy train” and was long overdue for a solution."
"Two teams of attackers used gunfire and explosives to strike Iran’s parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on Wednesday, according to state media. The twin attacks killed at least 12 people and wounded 42 others. ”Deputy Interior Minister Hossein Zolfaqari said that the terrorists had entered the parliament in [women’s] dress,” Iran’s state news agency reports. It adds that a female assailant detonated herself outside the mausoleum. The Iranian Intelligence Ministry says it foiled a third attack and is asking people to avoid public transportation, state broadcaster IRIB reports. The Islamic State, via its Amaq News Agency, claimed responsibility for the attacks, NPR’s Alison Meuse reports. Alison translated the extremist group’s message to: ”Fighters from the Islamic State have attacked the Khomeini shrine and the parliament building in central Tehran.” The message quotes an ISIS ”security source,” which Alison says is typical for such claims. In an unusual move, the group also released a short video that it said was taken by one of the attackers inside parliament. In it, a gunman is seen leaving an office area where a man lies wounded and not moving on the floor. A security siren and gunfire are heard as men yell in Arabic. At the parliament building, four attackers reached the interior, where they shot at security guards, according to IRIB. It says one of the attackers exploded a suicide vest inside the building, though other local news agencies said the explosion may have been caused by grenades thrown by the attackers. The second attack  —   at the shrine of Khomeini, the nation’s first supreme leader  —   came within an hour of the assault on the legislature. Assailants reportedly killed a security guard and wounded 12 other people, and a suicide bomber also detonated an explosive vest. Four attackers were said to have targeted the shrine. Despite the violence at Iran’s parliament Wednesday morning, lawmakers returned to business by the afternoon. Officials say the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helped security forces control the situation. ”As you know, some coward terrorists infiltrated a building in Majlis [Parliament] but they were seriously confronted,” Speaker Ali Larijani said. ”This is a minor issue but reveals that the terrorists pursue troublemaking.” The U. S. State Department offered condolences to victims and their families, saying in a statement, ”The depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world.” Iran is deeply involved in the fight against ISIS, both in Iraq and Syria, and along with Russia is a major backer of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad."
"Updated at 12:14 p. m. ET, President Trump says he has chosen Christopher Wray, a former Justice Department official during President George W. Bush’s administration, to head the FBI. Wray now works on white collar crime at an international law firm. The president named his pick via Twitter, writing Wednesday morning, ”I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow.” The announcement comes one day before ousted FBI Director James Comey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U. S. election. Trump fired Comey in May and has been interviewing candidates to succeed him. Among Wray’s credentials is a stint as the assistant attorney general leading the Justice Department’s criminal division, from 2003 to 2005. In that post, he worked under attorneys general John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales  —   as well as under Comey, who was then the deputy attorney general. Wray has been in private practice since then, working on   crime and regulatory cases as a partner in the Washington, D. C. and Atlanta offices of the King  Spalding. He has recently been involved in representing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the ”Bridgegate” case over politically motivated lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. The Asbury Park Press reports that Christie and Wray previously worked together during the Bush administration, when Christie was a U. S. attorney and Wray was a deputy attorney general. ”I have the utmost confidence in Chris,” Christie told the Press last week. ”He’s an outstanding lawyer. He has absolute integrity and honesty, and I think that the president certainly would not be making a mistake if he asked Chris Wray to be FBI director.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions praised the choice, saying, ”Chris Wray is an extraordinary person, possessing all the gifts necessary to be a great director of the FBI.” Stating that Wray has ”a brilliant legal mind,” Sessions added, ”We are fortunate that he is willing to make this personal commitment to serve his country at this important time.” The American Civil Liberties Union was less enthusiastic, issuing a statement saying that Wray’s history, which includes work by his firm on behalf of the Trump family, ”makes us question his ability to lead the FBI with the independence,   judgment, and commitment to the rule of law that the agency deserves.” The FBI Agents Association, which includes thousands of current and retired agents, says its board ”looks forward to meeting with Mr. Wray.” According to Wray’s law firm bio, he ”has substantial federal appellate experience, including successful oral arguments before the U. S. Court of Appeals for Eleventh Circuit sitting en banc and before the U. S. Supreme Court.” In awarding Wray’s law firm a ”White Collar Group of the Year” award in February, legal website Law360 noted several   cases the group won in 2016. They range from defending Huntington Ingalls Industries in a $2. 5 billion false claims case over Hurricane Katrina funding to having claims dismissed against auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers over a corruption probe against Brazil’s Petrobras. As the leader of King  Spalding’s special matters and government investigations unit, Wray was featured in a story about the award. Discussing the group’s approach, Wray told Law360, ”It’s kind of a ’keep calm and tackle hard’ philosophy.” Wray said, ”We’re more known for calmly and quietly diffusing a crisis or making matters go quietly away and keeping things in the middle of the road.” Early in his career, Wray spent nearly a decade at the Justice Department, focusing on corporate fraud in addition to trade sanctions, money laundering and other areas of the law. ”He served on the president’s Corporate Fraud Task Force and oversaw the Enron Task Force and other major fraud investigations, both around the country and internationally,” Wray’s biography at King  Spalding states. From 1997 to 2001, Wray was an assistant U. S. attorney in northern Georgia. In May 2001, he rose to become an associate deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice. Wray graduated from Yale University in 1989 and also attended law school there, serving as an executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and earning his law degree in 1992."
"Today we address the composition of the universe, in the final essay of our trilogy on cosmic questions. As the great German astronomer Johannes Kepler once wrote in the early 17th century: ”When the storm rages and the shipwreck of the state threatens, we can do nothing more worthy than to sink the anchor of our peaceful studies into the ground of eternity.” So, let’s sink our anchor, once again, into the study of the heavens. Previously, we discussed both what an expanding universe means, and whether we can make sense of the hardest question of them all  —   the origin of all things. Our question today? How much do we know of the stuff that fills up the universe? In the interest of clarity, I’ll break the cosmic recipe into its three main ingredients: the stuff we are made of dark matter and dark energy. The stuff we are made of, In school, we learn that everything in the world is made of 92 naturally occurring atoms  —   from hydrogen to uranium  —   and that each atom is made of only three particles  —   protons, neutrons and electrons  —   in different numbers. A hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron, while one of uranium has 92 of each. To have been able to reduce the material composition of the stuff around us, including the stuff we are made of, to only three particles is an amazing achievement of   physics. The reduction doesn’t stop there, since protons and neutrons are, themselves, made of more elementary constituents, the up (u) and down (d) quarks. A proton is a    composite, while a neutron is a    composite. So, we can proudly state that the stuff that makes up the world is made of two quarks and electrons in different arrangements and numbers. Three particles to describe everything, from water to bones to leaves to rocks to air to planets to stars. Of course, the details are a bit more complex, since the particles need to interact  —   attract and repel  —   to make stuff up. These are the forces between the particles  —   gravity and electromagnetism being the two more familiar, and the strong and weak nuclear forces acting only at very short distances, within an atomic nucleus. All four forces are described in terms of the exchanges of particles. A helpful image is of two   gliding along a lake together, each carrying a bag full of tennis balls. As they throw balls at one another they recoil, mimicking a repulsive force between them. (Like two equal electric charges.) So, modern particle physics (aka   physics) describes matter and forces as made of elementary constituents. If we count all of them, we get 12 particles of matter plus the Higgs boson, the particle that gives mass to all others (with the exception of the photon, the particle of light, responsible for transmitting the electromagnetic force) and the particles responsible for the forces. It’s amazing that this simple picture holds so well, and that it holds across the known universe and its history. A star 5 billion   away is still made of mostly hydrogen, as is our sun. All the atoms that make up the 92 naturally occurring chemical elements originate from stars. (Light nuclei, such as helium and lithium, and some of their isotopes, together with the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, were also made when the universe was very young.) In a sense, stars are true alchemical furnaces, transmuting the lightest element into all the others, as they struggle against the pressure from their own gravity. As we like to say in astronomy, people is what happens to hydrogen when you wait long enough! The atoms in your body, the iron in your blood cells, the calcium in your bones, the oxygen and hydrogen that make the water that is about 60 percent of you, come from stars that died billions of years ago, before the sun and Earth formed. We are animated agglomerates of very old matter. There are also other particles out there, such as the ghostly neutrinos (three kinds of them) that go through you by the trillions every second. And photons, the particles of light  —   some remnants from when the first hydrogen atoms formed only about 400, 000 years after the Big Bang, and others from burning stars and hot gases in our galaxy. The amazing thing is that all this stuff that is made of the 92 atoms, neutrinos, and photons  —   that is, everything that we see around us and in the skies  —   amounts to a pitiful five percent of the total. What total? The rest of the stuff the fills the universe. Here’s where the mystery begins. Dark matter, In the 1930s,   astronomer Fritz Zwicky noticed that when galaxies clustered in large groups, they moved about with speeds much larger than what he could explain with the gravitational pull they ought to be exerting onto one another. Zwicky conjectured that galaxies carried with them much more mass than what we could see. He called this invisible matter ”dark matter”: It pulled matter that shined around but it didn’t shine. Now, people and planets don’t visibly shine, but they are not dark matter. They can still reflect visible light, and do shine, albeit in invisible frequencies such as infrared. (Our eyes see only a small window of the whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves.) Dark matter is truly dark, not emitting or reflecting light. The trouble is that whatever dark matter is, it’s not made of quarks and electrons, or photons  —   and presumably not neutrinos either. (Although neutrinos have been proposed as dark matter candidates for many years, chances that they are remain slim.) To make things more exciting, current measurements indicate that about 26 percent of the cosmic stuff is made of dark matter. That’s five times more than the amount in ordinary matter. And we don’t know what it is or could be. There is no shortage of candidates, of course, some by yours truly, as the mystery of dark matter inspires the imagination of thousands of physicists around the world. But so far, no luck, despite a ferocious hunt for such particles, in ground and   detectors. Some even propose that there is no dark matter, that it is our understanding of gravity that is limited. Either way, solving the mystery of dark matter would, no doubt, open a whole new window into the universe and its constituents, one that seems tantalizingly close, but that has proven immensely deceitful thus far. Dark energy, Well, we still have 69 percent of stuff filling the cosmos to deal with. Here we find the greatest of all puzzles in current cosmology  —   ”dark energy.” Discovered in 1998 by two teams of astronomers, dark energy is generally described as being responsible for accelerating the cosmic expansion, apparently acting as a kind of stretchy force on the very fabric of space. (See our first essay on how the cosmic expansion is due to the stretchiness of space.) It makes distant galaxies move away from one another as if they were on steroids. Current measurements attribute their amount to the 69 percent of missing stuff. We have no clue what dark energy is, although we model it as a very smooth fluid that fills the whole of space, like water in a bathtub. But a strange and nasty kind of water, almost imponderable, yet capable of pushing everything apart. People are puzzled by this cosmic repulsion, asking how come we don’t feel it. The answer is that the effect of dark energy is truly cosmological, that is, it is only felt over gigantic distances of many millions of   apart. Our solar system, our galaxy (only about 100, 000 light years in diameter) are glued together by local gravitational forces much stronger that the dark energy repulsion. Another curious fact about dark energy is that it seems to have fired up around five billion years ago, not too far from when the sun and our solar system formed. This is often called the ”coincidence problem.” Why then? Although we’ve made enormous strides in understanding the nature and composition of the physical universe, it is clear that much remains to be learned. And this is how it should be. After all, it is the very nature of scientific inquiry to generate new questions to each of our answers. We move forward, humbled by what we don’t know, as we confront some of the hardest questions we can ask. Not a bad way to spend a lifetime. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"Amnesty International says that shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, security forces turned up at the home of its Turkey country chairman, brought him to his office, then took him into custody. The detention of Taner Kiliç is part of a massive crackdown on people accused of having links to cleric Fethullah Gulen started after last July’s failed coup attempt. Turkish authorities blame the attempt on the U. S.  cleric, who has denied involvement. Critics see the accusations as a pretext for silencing opponents. ”The fact that Turkey’s   purge has now dragged the Chair of Amnesty International Turkey into its web is further proof of just how far it has gone and just how arbitrary it has become,” said Amnesty Secretary General Salil Shetty. ”Taner Kiliç has a long and distinguished record of defending exactly the kind of freedoms that the Turkish authorities are now intent on trampling.” Amnesty says police also detained 22 other lawyers in the western coastal city of Izmir. Kiliç has served as the chair of Amnesty International Turkey since 2014 and has been involved in its board since 2002. Amnesty says the detention does not appear to be connected to the organization’s work. ”The detention order refers to an investigation into suspected members of the ’Fethullah Gülen Terrorist Organization,’ the   rights group said. ”It is currently unclear why Kiliç is suspected of having these links.” U. S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert says in a statement that Kiliç is ”the latest in a series of respected human rights defenders, journalists, academics, and activists detained in Turkey. These detentions, often with little evidence or transparency, are an alarming trend.” Since last year’s failed coup attempt, Turkish authorities have arrested an estimated 50, 000 people, The Associated Press reported. An additional 100, 000 public sector workers have been dismissed from their jobs, Amnesty International reported last month. At least 130 media outlets have been shuttered and 150 journalists detained during the purges, according to Reuters. Turkish authorities did not immediately officially comment on Kiliç’s detention. They ”detained 60 soldiers on Wednesday and issued detention orders for another 128 people” on suspicion of links to Gulen, Reuters reported, citing local media. A referendum in April, which passed by a narrow margin, radically expanded the powers of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan."
"In Suitland, Maryland a giant warehouse holds the largest collection of whale bones in the world. Stacked from floor to ceiling are bones of sperm whales, gray whales, and the largest whales on Earth —  blue whales, which can reach 380, 000 pounds. Ancient whale fossils, tens of millions of years old, are also packed into the collection. It’s the job of Nick Pyenson to try to figure out how these whales developed to what they are now. He sees himself as kind of a paleontologist detective. His more formal title is Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. I sat down with him to find out what it’s like to be a scientist at the top of their field. Like all scientists, Pyenson is a focused on making sense of the world around him. Here are some snippets from our conversation: Why study whales? For me, I got interested in whales because I thought they were fantastic vehicles to understand evolution. I think that’s the job of any paleontologist, is trying to understand what happened in the history of life that we didn’t see. It’s a big detective story. With whales, we know how amazing they are in the modern world. How did that ever come to be? If you want to be able to answer that question, that is when you turn to the fossil record. So that’s what got me broadly interested in where whales came from. What’s the most frustrating part of your job? The most frustrating thing about my job is that there are not enough hours in the day. I have way too many questions and not enough time for me to do what I want to do. Science takes time. So I have to be choosey. And also being a steward of the legacies. That’s something that really weighs heavily on me. I want to make sure the collection is as good, if not better, than when I received it, as it would be for somebody maybe 200 years from now. I want to make sure someone I will never meet will look at the fossils that I brought in to the museum and say, ”Yeah, Nick didn’t screw it up too badly, he did an okay job.” What motivates you? When you wake up in the morning are you thinking whales? First I need a coffee before I do anything else. I get up in the morning because I love what I do. It’s tremendously exhilarating and exciting to me, to be able to walk through museum collections. It’s basically like walking through time. You get to encounter the remains of past worlds that would seem so strange that you would think you’re on a different planet   but you’re not. You’re on planet earth, but at a different time in the geologic past. With different organisms —  some of which are extinct, some of which are around today. And you’re charged with that detective story, trying to figure things out. How would you describe yourself? You can think of me as a marine mammal detective through geologic time. I look to the past to track down whale bones to understand how whales came to be and where they’re going.  "
"Updated at 2:30 p. m. ET, The death toll from Saturday’s terrorist attack in London has risen to eight, the city’s Metropolitan Police said Wednesday. The announcement comes shortly after authorities recovered a body from the Thames River in east London. In a statement about the recovery of the body Tuesday, police said they haven’t formally identified the victim  —   though they asked for information about    Xavier Thomas, a French national who has been missing since Saturday. The BBC reports that Thomas was last seen on London Bridge walking with his girlfriend, who was seriously injured in the violence. As the   has reported, three attackers opened their assault on London Bridge by ramming pedestrians, then left the vehicle on foot and began stabbing people in nearby Borough Market. Police shot and killed all three. NHS England, the British health authority, said Wednesday that of the dozens of victims hospitalized after the attack, 10 people remain in critical condition. Meanwhile, the Spanish government has confirmed that Ignacio Echeverría, 39, was killed in Saturday’s attack. Officials there had been upset at how long it took U. K. authorities to offer information on the Spanish national, who had been missing since the rampage. ”We’re pushing the British authorities because, frankly, this isn’t the kind of thing that can go on and on,” Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis told the news agency Efe earlier in the week, according to The Guardian. As the British newspaper notes, accounts of that night have highlighted the bravery shown by Echeverría: ”Echeverría, who is from Madrid but lives in London and works for HSBC, has been hailed as a hero for apparently using his skateboard to take on the London Bridge attackers. ”He is thought to have been skateboarding in a park when he stopped to defend a woman who had been injured in the attack near Borough Market. Friends who were with him at the time said he fell to the ground after confronting one of the assailants. He has not been heard from since.” Echeverría has been hailed as a hero in Spain, where Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy tweeted he will be remembered ”for his heroic and exemplary act.” Of the eight people killed, British authorities have publicly identified two other individuals, both Australian nationals: Kirsty Boden, as confirmed Tuesday by NHS England, and Sara Zelenak, as confirmed Wednesday by police. The Guardian has a report on several other victims who have been identified by family members. Meanwhile, London police have taken down much of the security cordon they initially placed around the crime scene, leaving only Borough Market and some areas nearby still closed. The visible police presence remains, however  —   as does the memory of the attack in the minds of British voters, just one day before the country undertakes its national elections. And, as NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports, that means the issue of security promises to loom large for voters as they decide whether to bolster or erode Prime Minister Theresa May’s base of support in Parliament."
"British police have named the third man responsible for Saturday’s terror attack in London. Security has now become the lead issue in the United Kingdom’s general election, which takes place on Thursday."
"As far as flashy, oversize coffee table books go, opera star Maria Callas is a fitting subject. A    figure, she had a complicated   story that played out with as much searing drama as the operas she sang. With hard work and sacrifice, Callas vaulted to the top of her art while pushing it to new levels of intensity. In her personal life, she searched for love, found it, then lost it and died young. Photographer and film maker Tom Volf (with publisher Assouline) has just released a gorgeous new photo book, Maria by Callas. It is a loving and luxuriously upholstered tribute to one of the most fascinating artists of the 20th century. Its publication marks the 40th anniversary of the soprano’s death, which falls on Sept. 16. Volf came late to the Callas bandwagon. But once he discovered the controversial singer, he was moved to begin a journey that led him around the world, interviewing Callas’ friends and colleagues and gathering photographs and other materials along the way. The book, which weighs in at more than seven pounds with its satin cover and deluxe slipcase, includes photos never before published. But more importantly, the ones we’ve seen before have never looked better. Volf also has a documentary film about Callas on the way, and he says that a batch of rarely heard Callas recordings will be reissued in the fall, Our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity. Tom Huizenga: Every Maria Callas fan seems to have a story about how they first discovered her. What’s your story?  Tom Volf: My story, I guess, is a pretty modern one. I discovered her through YouTube. It was in January 2013, and I was in New York. I just had come back from my very first opera at the Met, which was Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda with Joyce DiDonato singing, and I had a complete shock when I came back home. I was looking to find out more about who was this Donizetti who gave me such a shock, and very quickly found, on YouTube, Maria Callas’ ”Mad scene” from Lucia di Lammermoor, and that was a true revelation. I think that was at about 2 a. m. and I probably spent the rest of the night on YouTube listening to any other pieces I could find. That was my first Callas encounter. What did you find so special about her at the beginning, because the voice actually is not always beautiful, at least by conventional standards?  I was coming not at all from the operatic world. I had no technical comparison or standards. The only thing I could see and feel was something incredible, indescribable, passing through me when I was listening to her. And I think it was a blend of discovering at the same time  —   and for the first time  —   some of these magnificent pieces with such incredible melodies that were taking me completely to another world. I didn’t know the operas, I was a complete novice. But there was something going through my whole body and my heart. It made me want to cry, and it was a very strange experience to describe. I could only feel what was happening to me. And I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like a drug. Right. By the way, I also attended that run of Maria Stuarda with Joyce DiDonato, which was an extraordinary performance.  I think if I had not been at that performance, I may have never really discovered opera and fell in love with opera, and fell in love with Maria Callas. So what was the ”light bulb moment” for you, the one that sent you on this   journey to learn all you could about Maria Callas?  Well, it wasn’t a moment where I suddenly decided, ”I’m going to start a   journey on Callas.” It was actually very much of a process. There was that ”aha” moment that night, and that is still very vivid for me. I spent weeks after that listening and learning all I could about her. And you know, YouTube was a great vector for me. I connected with people around the world who were posting excerpts of her various performances. Through that, I learned a lot. And then throughout this process of learning and getting myself into this world, and getting all excited about it, I realized two things. One very quickly: It was a phenomenon that someone who had passed away almost 40 years ago was still so   all around the world  —   no country boundaries, no age boundaries, a transcendence of time and space. It made me want to understand how such things could happen. Secondly, in my process of learning about her, I devoured every book and every documentary. And having watched and read all that, I still couldn’t get a true feel of who she really was  —   who she truly was as a woman, who she truly was as an artist. I only felt I was getting glimpses from people talking about her and writing about her. The moments that were the most striking to me were the moments when she was speaking. From that frustration the journey was born, and I started, step by step, of going to find and meet every possible person still alive who really knew her. Of course, I had no idea I would get so far and that it would take me almost four years. You say in the forward to the book that you felt it was your duty to share the emotion that you felt when you first started listening to Callas. What was that emotion?  I think it’s even so much more than an emotion. It was in a dark, difficult time of my life, and something was coming from out of this world and bringing me elsewhere  —   but also uplifting me, giving me hope, giving me joy. The suffering that you can feel sometimes through her interpretation of tragic roles as Norma or Traviata, I could relate to it. It was also a catharsis because it allowed me to feel entirely these emotions. I felt there was very much a serendipity, or destiny, in the fact that I would discover Callas right at that time. And again, I was not an opera fan or anything. I was not coming from that world at all but somehow something happened. If she was able to comfort me in that way and bring me such emotions and such beauty into my life, I wanted to contribute somehow to making this happen for others. What was one of the most surprising or extraordinary things you discovered on this Callas adventure?  There were a lot. But one that really was striking for me was that I discovered an unknown interview that someone had preserved and in that interview, which has never been heard since it was recorded in 1970, she said something that really struck me. She said, ”There are actually two people in me. There is ’Maria’ and there is the ’Callas’ that I have to live up to.” To understand that there were actually two personalities in her  —   and that it was a constant battle between the two. It took me time to understand that for all her life, she sacrificed one for the other. I think that was her biggest struggle, and that explains so much about her personality both as a woman and as an artist. Maria the woman and Callas the artist: They were sometimes at odds with each other. But I think your book leans a little more towards Maria the woman, focusing not so much on the operatic stage photos but more on the personal images, and the considerable glamour. I think it’s even borne out in your title, which is Maria By Callas  —   and that you really let her speak her own words.  Well that was my intention from quite early on. I decided that all of the projects that I’d be working on would not be in my own voice, not someone else again talking about her. But on the contrary, I saw myself as a messenger and a vehicle that could, for the first time, put her own voice in the center and allow her to convey her own sentiments. I mean, it is Maria By Callas because Maria was a very private person. She really didn’t show much of herself as a woman in the various public appearances or interviews. I think people have very little knowledge about what her life was like. And therefore, when you see her in these incredible personal pictures of her on holiday, or on the beach with her friends, you have the feeling of a very different woman. Then there’s the    question: Why did she die so young? Yes, she supposedly had a little problem with pills, but 53 is not very old.  I personally don’t believe much of what has been said about the pills or anything because I can only rely on what I was told by direct witnesses. The truth is on that day, September 16, 1977, there were only two direct witnesses. There was Ferruccio, her butler, and Bruna, her maid. And I was very fortunate to meet and become friends with both of them. And they have recounted for me very vividly what happened that day. And, very briefly, what happened was a heart attack. There could be several reasons. She had gone through the war she had poor health in the beginning. She had a crazy, intense life. And I think this may be less of a mysterious and strange story than it actually is. The truth is she died from a heart attack. Some say she also died of a broken heart, after her one true love, Aristotle Onassis, left her for Jackie Kennedy.  I would totally agree with that because she did die one year and a half after [Aristotle] Onassis, who I believe was truly the greatest love of her life. Why do we keep revisiting Callas? Almost every year, her record company reissues her recordings and there have been at least two movies about her  —   a documentary and Franco Zeffirelli’s   Callas Forever  —   and then Terrence McNally’s play Master Class. Why does she still matter to us?  As I said in the beginning, why is she still so   and continues to interest a whole new generation who has never been to her performances? She still has something fascinating, and I think there is a mystery to that. But I can say personally that I am a big advocate of revisiting because when I was discovering her  —   and I saw the movies and everything  —   it didn’t really give me any insight into who she was. I kept coming back to her music and to her interviews. I mean, she can be revisited 100 times and a lot of things can be invented about her. But it’s much more interesting to find out the truth. Because if you find out the truth about her, you’ll find it in her singing. She said herself, ”It’s all in my music.” That’s the beauty of understanding who she was as a woman and who she was as an artist. And that’s what matters in the end. It’s not the gossip and the love stories. It’s her art because that is what is so unique about her."
"Pro baseball saw something Tuesday night it hadn’t seen since 2012, after the Cincinnati Reds’ Scooter Gennett hit four home runs in a   game. He became the 17th player in MLB history to hit four homers in one game  —   an outing he called ”surreal.” ”For a guy like me to do that, it’s amazing. It’s maybe a little short of a miracle,” Gennett, who is listed at 5 feet, 10 inches and 185 pounds, said after the game. ”But I’m just blessed, man. Baseball’s an amazing game.” Gennett started his night by hitting a grand slam by the end of what became a blowout win over the rival St. Louis Cardinals, he had more than doubled his home run production for the year, to seven. He went a perfect    at the plate and finished the game with 10 runs batted in. As ESPN’s Sports Center notes, Gennett was responsible for more runs than 24 of the 30 MLB teams that played Tuesday night  —   ”he scorched the entire sport,” the show said via Twitter. The record performance came at the right time and in the right place for Gennett, 27, who was born in Cincinnati and joined the Reds after spring training, when he was put on waivers by the Milwaukee Brewers. By signing Gennett, the Reds were seen as bringing in a solid bench player who could play a variety of positions. The team now has the first player in its storied history to smack four dingers in one game. The outburst followed an    streak of recent offensive futility for Gennett. ”None of this was supposed to happen,” Deadspin writes. ”Gennett’s 17 total bases are tied with Gil Hodges and Mike Schmidt for the third most since at least 1913,” MLB. com notes. In its headline about the feat, the Cincinnati vs. Everyone site clarified, ”no typo here.” Gennett broke into the big leagues with the Brewers as a second baseman back in 2013. In 2015, he further endeared himself to fans in Wisconsin by using an   to get married at a brewery. If you’re wondering about his name, Gennett  —   born Ryan Joseph Gennett  —   has said he chose the nickname Scooter for himself as a kid, after his favorite Muppets character."
"In his   strategy to overhaul the federal health law, President Donald Trump is threatening to upend the individual health insurance market. But if the market actually breaks, could anyone put it back together again? The question is more than theoretical. Since Jan. 20, the Trump administration has already acted to depress enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans, has instructed the IRS to back off enforcement of the requirement that most people have health insurance or pay a penalty and threatened to withhold billions of dollars owed to insurance companies. All of those actions make it more difficult for insurers to enroll the healthy people needed to offset the costs of the sick, who make it a priority to have coverage. The president himself has made his strategy clear in interviews and tweets. ”The Democrats will make a deal with me on healthcare as soon as ObamaCare folds  —   not long,” Trump tweeted March 28. ”Do not worry, we are in very good shape!” But the individual insurance market is not in such good shape. A growing number of insurers are asking for   premium increases or deciding to leave the market altogether. In the latest announcement, Anthem said Tuesday that it was pulling out of the Ohio marketplace, where it serves more than 10, 000 customers, next year. And while most analysts say the market probably would eventually rebound, in the short term things could get messy. ”Is the administration doing what it needs to do to stabilize the market? No, they’re doing the opposite,” says Kevin Counihan, CEO of the insurance exchange program during the Obama administration. Trump’s biggest weapon by far is refusing to reimburse insurance companies for billions of dollars in payments the law requires them to make to help policyholders with incomes up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, about $30, 015 for an individual and $61, 500 for a family of four, afford their deductibles and other    payments. These ”  subsidies” are being challenged in an ongoing lawsuit filed by Republican House members against Health and Human Services in 2014, and Trump can effectively end them at any time by dropping the suit. Meanwhile, major insurance companies like Aetna and Humana have already announced that they won’t participate in the health exchange market for 2018. Other insurance companies have said they would like to stay in, but only if they are granted huge rate hikes, citing the uncertainty of whether the Trump administration will repay them for the   discounts and whether it will enforce the health law’s ”individual mandate” that requires most people to have coverage or pay a fine. In Pennsylvania, for example, insurers are seeking premium increases of less than 10 percent for 2018  —   but warn that if the mandate to have insurance is not enforced or   reductions are not paid, those increases could balloon to 36 percent or more. Those who follow the market closely say the exits and requests for large premium increases are no surprise. ”It’s just been one thing after another in this market,” says Kurt Giesa, an actuarial expert at the consulting firm Oliver Wyman. He said if the administration follows through on its threat not to fund the   subsidies for the rest of the year, ”that could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.” Giesa pointed out that it’s not just insurance companies that would suffer if the individual insurance market is crippled. ”That strategy of crashing the market has real human consequences,” he says. ”There are 15   people relying on that.” That group includes not only people who purchase insurance through the ”health exchange” state marketplaces, but also those who purchase insurance on their own, usually because they earn too much to get federal assistance paying their premiums. Premium subsidies are available to those who earn less than 400 percent of the poverty level, about $48, 240 for an individual and $98, 400 for a family of four. People who pay their own way are the ones getting hit hardest, says insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski. ”There is a horrific death spiral going on with the [ ] part of the market right now,” he says, because rate hikes are limited for those getting help from the government, but not for those paying the full premiums. A major question is how hard would it be for the government to regain the trust of insurers as a reliable business partner, regardless of what changes are eventually made. Counihan acknowledges that insurers felt they were treated unfairly even before the Trump administration took office, when Republicans in Congress prevented full payment of ”risk corridor” funds that the law promised to insurers who enrolled more than their expected share of sick people. Insurers are still owed millions of those dollars, and many have sued the federal government to try to get the money. Counihan said the first words out of the mouths of most insurance CEOs he met with were ”we don’t trust you guys.” Giesa says the government’s misbehavior goes back even further  —   to the fall of 2013, when the Obama administration allowed some consumers to keep their old plans. That effectively kept healthy people out of the new markets, ”after companies had set their prices,” Giesa says, resulting in some big losses for insurance companies. Despite the woes, insurance analysts say they doubt the individual market would stay down for long. One reason, says Laszewski, is that for many nonprofit insurers serving the individual market as the insurer of last resort is part of their mission, unlike with big commercial insurers. Boards of Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and other nonprofits, he says, tend to be made up of representatives of ”labor, the local hospitals, big employers. . .. They have community connections. So it’s going to take a lot to drive them off.” Another reason insurers will likely return or work to remain in the individual market is that it’s part of the future of health care, says Counihan. With so many people now working for themselves in the ”gig economy,” he says, selling insurance ”is going to be more    than   .” ”This market could grow,” agrees Giesa. ”And I don’t think [insurance companies] want to be left out completely from this market if there’s an opportunity to break even, or make a little money.” In the end, says Counihan, regardless of what he considers the Trump administration’s ”disorganized neglect, I think this market is here to stay.” Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Fired FBI Director James Comey’s   testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee was the rare Washington hearing that actually lived up to its billing. And if you didn’t get in line at 4:15 a. m. ET Thursday, as some reportedly did to secure a seat in the Senate Hart Office Building to watch in person, here are some of the highlights: Comey comes out swinging, From his opening remarks, the fired FBI director made clear he believes President Trump was not truthful when he stated he fired Comey because the FBI was in disarray and poorly led. ”Those were lies, plain and simple,” Comey said, adding that Trump ”chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI” in those remarks. Comey learned of his abrupt dismissal while giving a speech, and said he was sorry he didn’t get a chance to say farewell to his former colleagues. ”I am so sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye to you properly.” Comey said Trump repeatedly told him he was doing a good job, ”so it confused me when I saw on television that he actually fired me because of the Russia investigation.” Comey used the ”L word” again while explaining why he decided to take notes during his meetings with the president. After meeting with the   at Trump Tower in New York, Comey said he ”was honestly concerned he might lie about the content of our meeting, so I felt I had to write it down.” Obstruction of justice? Comey was asked several times about Trump’s request to Comey to drop the bureau’s investigation into former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, and whether it amounted to an attempt to obstruct the probe. Comey said that was up to special counsel Robert Mueller to decide. But Comey said he did ”take as a direction” the president’s words to mean he should drop the investigation, though he testified that he refused to do so. He also said it was significant that Trump told other officials in the Oval Office to leave before saying to Comey that Flynn ”was a good guy,” and asking him to ”let this go.” Comey said, ”Why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office? That to me as an investigator, is a very significant fact.” He later said he thought Trump’s firing of him was an effort to hinder the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling, which he said was ”a big deal.” Good Lord, release the tapes! Comey said he was aware the president tweeted Comey ”had better hope” there were no tapes of his conversations with Comey. Comey injected a moment of levity, exclaiming, ”Lordy, I hope there are tapes!” He added he had no problem with the Trump releasing the tapes, if they exist. A strategic leak, Comey testified that after he was fired, he gave copies of the memos he wrote about his meetings with Trump to ”a friend of mine to share” with reporters. Comey added, ”I thought it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” And indeed it did. (Comey said he decided not to directly give the memos to any of the reporters who were gathered at the end of his driveway staking out his home, likening it to ”feeding seagulls at the beach. ”) After Comey’s testimony, Trump’s lawyer Marc Kasowitz said Comey ”admitted that he unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the President.” As NPR’s Scott Horsley reports, the lawyer also accused Comey of misstating the timing of the leak. ”Although Mr. Comey testified he only leaked the memos in response to a tweet, the public record reveals that the New York Times was quoting from these memos the day before the referenced tweet.” In fact, Comey’s timeline appears to be correct. Trump tweeted on Friday, May 12, that ”James Comey better hope that there are no ’tapes’ of our conversation before he starts leaking to the press.” Comey said it was that tweet that prompted him to ask a friend to reveal the contents of the memo to a reporter the following Tuesday, May 16. The Times ran a story about the memo contents later that day. Although the Times also reported on May 11  —   before Trump’s tweet  —   about Comey’s private dinner with the president, that story made no reference to Comey’s contemporaneous memos. New York Times reporters corroborated Comey’s timeline on Thursday after Kasowitz’s statement. Trump is not (or was not) the subject of an FBI investigation, Comey said that as of his dismissal on May 9, Trump was not personally under investigation. But he also testified that another member of the FBI’s leadership team believed that Trump’s conduct ”will fall within the scope” of the Russia investigation and was therefore ”reluctant” to assure the president that he was not personally under investigation. When those   games catch up to you, Comey said he was ”a little confused” by Sen. John McCain’s line of questioning, and judging by social media, he wasn’t alone. McCain appeared to try to connect Comey’s announcement that he found no reason to recommend Hillary Clinton be prosecuted over her email server with the ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election. But his point wasn’t at all clear, as the senator himself later acknowledged. In a statement after the hearing, he joked that he ”got the sense from Twitter” that his line of questioning ”went over people’s heads.” McCain added, ”Maybe going forward I shouldn’t stay up late watching the Diamondbacks night games.” McCain said what he was ”trying to get at was whether Mr. Comey believes that any of his interactions with the President rise to the level of obstruction of justice.” King Henry II makes a cameo, It’s not often that congressional hearings hark back to medieval times, but then again this was not a normal hearing. During questioning by Sen. Angus King about Trump asking Comey to ”let this go,”  —   the Flynn investigation, that is  —   Comey said it rang in his ears ”as kind of ’Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’ ” That’s a line attributed to King Henry II, who was referring to the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket. Some of the king’s followers interpreted that as a royal edict, and Becket soon met an untimely end."
"Television viewers were confused and concerned when Sen. John McCain,  . took his turn to question former FBI Director James Comey Thursday  —   and McCain has now responded. The senator started his questioning of Comey by walking through the timeline of the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, which Comey confirmed was closed in July, and then asked how the FBI could have concluded that matter while the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election was ongoing. ”I’m a little confused, Senator,” was Comey’s response. McCain went on: ”At the same time you made the announcement there would be no charges brought against   Clinton for any activities involved in the Russia involvement in our engagement, in our election. I don’t quite understand how you could be done with that but not done with the whole investigation to affect the outcome of our election.” The Arizona Republican, serving his sixth term in the Senate, seemed to conflate the investigation of Clinton’s emails and the investigation of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Making matters worse, McCain then referred to President Trump as President Comey. It did not go unnoticed by those watching. Nor did his fellow senators necessarily follow along. In response to the outcry on social media, McCain released a statement Thursday afternoon: ”I get the sense from Twitter that my line of questioning today went over people’s heads. Maybe going forward I shouldn’t stay up late watching the Diamondbacks night games. ”What I was trying to get at was whether Mr. Comey believes that any of his interactions with the President rise to the level of obstruction of justice. In the case of Secretary Clinton’s emails, Mr. Comey was willing to step beyond his role as an investigator and state his belief about what ’no reasonable prosecutor’ would conclude about the evidence. I wanted Mr. Comey to apply the same approach to the key question surrounding his interactions with President Trump —  whether or not the President’s conduct constitutes obstruction of justice. While I missed an opportunity in today’s hearing, I still believe this question is important, and I intend to submit it in writing to Mr. Comey for the record.” The Arizona Diamondbacks played the San Diego Padres Wednesday night in Phoenix. The game began quite late for those in Washington  —   9:40 p. m. ET. But the silver lining for McCain is that the Diamondbacks won,  ."
"Updated at 3:35 p. m ET, President Trump’s outside lawyer flatly denied that the president ever asked former FBI Director James Comey for a pledge of loyalty, and he accused Comey of disclosing privileged communications with the president to the news media, without authorization. Trump’s attorney, Marc Kasowitz, went on the offensive only a couple of hours after Comey concluded his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee  —   a highly anticipated performance that was broadcast live on national television. Kasowitz highlighted Comey’s most favorable point for the president: that Trump was not personally the target of an FBI investigation. But he challenged Comey’s account of a private dinner he had with the president on Jan. 27, during Trump’s first full week in the White House. The president ”never told Comey, ’I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,’ in form or substance,” Kasowitz said in a statement, rebutting Comey’s testimony that Trump appeared to be trying to create a patronage relationship with the FBI director. Comey said he was so concerned by the dinner, and the perceived threat to the FBI’s independence, that he documented that and other meetings with the president in personal memos. After he was fired, Comey asked a friend to leak the contents of a memo about an Oval Office meeting that he had with Trump to a newspaper reporter. ”Comey’s excuse for this unauthorized disclosure of privileged information . .. appears to be entirely retaliatory,” Kasowitz said in the statement. ”We will leave it [to] the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leaks [sic] should be investigated along with all those others being investigated.” The lawyer also accused Comey of misstating the timing of the leak. ”Although Mr. Comey testified he only leaked the memos in response to a tweet, the public record reveals that the New York Times was quoting from these memos the day before the referenced tweet.” In fact, Comey’s timeline appears to be correct. Trump tweeted on Friday, May 12, that ”James Comey better hope that there are no ’tapes’ of our conversation before he starts leaking to the press.” Comey said it was that tweet that prompted him to ask a friend to reveal the contents of the memo to a reporter the following Tuesday, May 16. The Times ran a story about the memo contents later that day. Although the Times also reported on May 11  —   before Trump’s tweet  —   about Comey’s private dinner with the president, that story made no reference to Comey’s contemporaneous memos. New York Times reporters corroborated Comey’s timeline on Thursday after Kasowitz’s statement. The president himself was uncharacteristically restrained during the Comey hearing. Trump didn’t send out a single tweet. Trump’s elder son was active on Twitter, however, defending his dad. Donald Trump Jr. took particular aim at Comey’s claim that by saying, ”I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go,” the president was effectively directing the FBI director to close the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. ”Hoping and telling are two very different things,” the younger Trump tweeted. ”Knowing my father for 39 years, when he ’orders or tells’ you to do something there is no ambiguity, you will know exactly what he means.” Administration spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to project an air of normalcy, telling reporters, ”It’s a regular Thursday at the White House.” She said the president spent much of the morning in meetings with his national security team, although a person close to his legal team said Trump planned to watch at least part of the Comey hearing with his attorney. Sanders declined to answer specific questions about Comey’s testimony, referring those to the president’s lawyer. She did take issue, though, with Comey’s claim that Trump is less than honest. ”I can definitely say the president is not a liar,” Sanders said. ”And I think it’s frankly insulting that that question would be asked.” Comey accused Trump of lying in multiple instances in the hearing. Trump later addressed the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group of religious conservatives who have been supportive of the president. He made no direct reference to the Comey hearing in his speech, though he did liken himself to people of faith who feel persecuted by the government. ”As you know, we’re under siege,” Trump said, promising to protect religious liberty. ”You understand that. But we will come out bigger and better and stronger than ever.” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the president’s contacts with Comey, saying any breach of the usual firewalls was a product of inexperience, not nefarious intent. ”Of course there needs to be a degree of independence” between the FBI and the White House, Ryan said. ”The president is new at this. He’s new to government. So he probably wasn’t steeped in the   protocols that establish the relationships.” During the hearing, Comey offered a different take. ”Why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office” before raising the Flynn investigation, if the president’s intent was innocent? Comey asked. ”That, to me, as an investigator, is a very significant fact.”"
"Updated at 5:06 p. m. ET, Former FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he believed he was fired by President Trump over the growing Russia investigation and that other arguments by the White House were ”lies, plain and simple.” In bombshell testimony Thursday, Comey, who was abruptly let go a month ago, said he began documenting his numerous, and often uncomfortable, conversations with Trump  —   in which the president asked for his ”loyalty” and for him to scuttle the FBI’s investigation into former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn  —   because he ”was honestly concerned (Trump) might lie” about their meetings. ”I knew there might come a day when I might need a record of what happened not just to defend myself” but also the FBI, Comey added. ”My impression is something big is about to happen. I need to remember every word that is spoken,” he said of the memos he wrote immediately after his encounters with the president. White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later pushed back on Comey’s assertions, telling reporters that ”I can definitely say the president is not a liar and I think it’s frankly insulting” that the question was asked. ”Shifting explanations” for Comey’s firing  The former FBI director also zeroed in on Trump’s evolving explanations for why he had been let go, saying he was ”confused” and ”increasingly concerned” about the ”shifting explanations” Trump gave. The president initially pointed to Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as the impetus but later conceded the firing was because of his handling of the Russia investigation and claimed Comey was overseeing a demoralized FBI in disarray. ”So it confused me when I saw on television the president saying he actually fired me because of the Russia investigation and learned again from the media that he was telling, privately, other parties that my firing had relieved ’great pressure’ on the Russia investigation,” Comey said, referring to reporting on Trump’s conversation with Russian officials in the Oval Office the day after the dismissal. ”The administration then chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI,” Comey said, by claiming the agency was ”poorly led.” ”Those were lies, plain and simple,” Comey bluntly told the committee. Awkward ”loyalty” dinners and Oval Office pressure, Comey’s highly anticipated testimony followed the release by the committee of his written statement on Wednesday, which ticked off in rich detail the extent to which Trump pressed him about the Russia investigation. Comey wrote that Trump asked him for a ”loyalty” pledge during a    dinner and later told Comey in a solo Oval Office meeting that he ”hope[d] you can let . .. go” of the Flynn investigation. The president has denied both those accusations. But Comey’s testimony only confirmed the many bombshell reports over the past few weeks about the private conversations he had with Trump, many of them unprecedented and possibly inappropriate. Comey told the committee that he did see Trump’s request for loyalty from him  —   an independent arbiter atop the FBI  —   as a sort of quid pro quo. ”My common sense told me what’s going on here is he’s looking to get something in exchange for granting my request to stay in the job,” Comey said. He also said that in a   photo just days after Trump’s inauguration in which the president shook his hand and embraced him, Trump whispered in his ear, ”I really look forward to working with you.” On Trump’s Feb. 14 private conversation with Comey in the Oval Office  —   the day after Flynn was asked to resign for misleading Vice President Pence over his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the transition  —   Comey said that he believed the president was indeed directing him to scuttle the investigation into Flynn. ”I took it as a direction,” which he didn’t follow, Comey said. ”I took it as, this is what he wants me to do.” Comey also added that, at that time, Flynn was indeed in ”legal jeopardy” over his ties and contacts with the Russians. He noted that Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to linger in on that meeting, and he said that it was his ”sense” that Sessions ”knew he shouldn’t be leaving.” According to Comey’s written testimony, he later told Sessions he didn’t want to be left alone with Trump again. Comey said during questioning that he was ”stunned” by that conversation and the president asking everyone else to leave and later said it was a ”significant fact” to him as a prosecutor that Trump wanted to speak with him alone. Obstruction of justice? Up to special counsel Mueller to ”sort that out”  Comey did testify that he didn’t believe Trump was asking Comey to stop the broader Russia investigation being conducted by the FBI and that while his conversation with Trump was ”disturbing,” he didn’t ”think it’s for me to say that the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct.” Later asked by Sen. Joe Manchin,  . Va. whether Trump’s interactions with him over Flynn rose to the level of obstruction of justice, Comey responded that was newly appointed special counsel Robert Mueller’s ”job to sort that out.” Comey said he had seen Trump’s tweet last month suggesting that the president had ”tapes” of their conversations  —   and that if those did exist, they would corroborate his testimony. ”Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” he told senators. And, Comey revealed, it was Trump’s tweet about those alleged tapes that prompted him to call up a friend to leak the memos about his conversations with the president to the press last month in hopes that doing so would lead to the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation. Republicans have already seized on one section of Comey’s written testimony as vindication. The former FBI director does detail in his written submission to the committee how he told Trump on three occasions that the president was not himself under investigation  —   a surprising assertion that Trump had put in his termination letter to Comey. Comey told the committee that deliberations with senior FBI leadership about whether to tell the president he was not personally under investigation beginning in January, before he was inaugurated, were not unanimous. ”One of the members of the leadership team had a view that although it was technically true, we did not have a counterintelligence file case open on    Trump, his concern was that because we’re looking at the potential  —   again that’s the subject of the investigation  —   coordination between the campaign and Russia, because it was President Trump  —     Trump’s campaign, this person’s view was inevitably his behavior, his conduct will fall within the scope of that work. And so he was reluctant to make the statement that I made. I disagreed,” Comey said. ”I thought it was fair to say what was literally true  —   there is not a counterintelligence investigation of Mr. Trump  —   and I decided in the moment to say it given the nature of our conversation.” He later confirmed that when he was let go on May 9, there was no counterintelligence nor criminal investigation of Trump individually and that the president was not personally under investigation. Asked by Sen. Tom Cotton,  . as to whether he believed Trump colluded with Russia during the campaign, Comey responded, ”I don’t think I should answer in an open setting.” Following his open hearing with members of the intelligence committee, Comey went into a closed briefing with senators. Comey did underscore that while there was plenty of evidence that Russians meddled in the 2016 election, he was confident that no votes were altered. However, he also said Trump never asked him what the FBI was doing to investigate the Russian meddling or to stop it from happening again in future elections. Comey said he fully expected Russian mischief in U. S. elections to resume in subsequent electoral cycles. Comey was also pressed by Republicans on the committee, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, about why he didn’t alert White House officials or the White House Counsel’s Office about what he believed were inappropriate conversations with Trump and a breach of protocol. ”I don’t know,” Comey responded to Rubio. ”I think the circumstances were such that I was a bit stunned and didn’t have the presence of mind.” Comey critical of Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch  Republicans also pressed Comey on how he handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign, usurping   General Loretta Lynch by announcing the FBI was not recommending prosecution for the handling of classified information on Clinton’s private server. Comey testified he was disturbed by Lynch’s tarmac meeting with Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and that was one reason he made his announcement in July, though he did say at that time he believed Hillary Clinton had been careless with classified information. ”I didn’t believe she could credibly decline that investigation, at least not without grievous damage to the Department of Justice and the FBI,” Comey said of President Barack Obama’s attorney general. Comey said it made him uncomfortable that Lynch had directed him to refer to the Clinton email investigation as a ”matter” and not an investigation, even though she was, indeed, under criminal investigation. Pressed by Sen. John McCain,  . as to why he didn’t call for an independent counsel to handle that matter, Comey said that he ”knew there was no case there” and that ”calling for a special counsel would be brutally unfair.” Republicans push back that Trump has been ”vindicated”  The president did not immediately respond directly to Comey’s testimony and has not tweeted, as many people speculated he might. However, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. did largely   the event. And Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal lawyer regarding the Russia inquiries, underscored in a statement that Comey did confirm what Trump has long asserted  —   that the former FBI director assured the president he was not under investigation. ”[Comey] also admitted that there is no evidence that a single vote changed as a result of any Russian interference. Mr. Comey’s testimony also makes clear that the President never sought to impede the investigation into attempted Russian interference in the 2016 election, and in fact, according to Mr. Comey, the President told Mr. Comey ’it would be good to find out’ in that investigation if there were ’some ”satellite” associates of his who did something wrong.’ And he did not exclude anyone from that statement,” Kasowitz said. Kasowitz also claimed that Trump never told Comey he needed loyalty from him ”in any form or substance,” even though the president ”is entitled to expect loyalty from those who are serving in an administration.” And he raised alarm over Comey’s admission that he had encouraged a friend to leak his memos about his conversations with the president to the press, suggesting those were privileged communications. ”We will leave it the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leaks should be investigated along with all those others being investigated,” Kasowitz said. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan defended Trump at his weekly press conference, arguing that one reason the president had unusual conversations with Comey was because he was a novice president learning the ropes. ”Of course there needs to be a degree of independence between DOJ, FBI and the White House and a line of communications established. The president is new at this. He’s new to government. So he probably wasn’t steeped in the   protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses,” Ryan said. ”He’s just new to this.” Ryan was pushed by a reporter who asked how being new is an acceptable excuse when he has staff and legal counsel. ”I’m not saying it’s an acceptable excuse, it’s just my observation,” the Wisconsin Republican replied. ”I think people now realize why the president is so frustrated,” Ryan added. ”When the FBI director tells him on three different occasions he’s not under investigation yet the speculation swirls around the political system that he is, that’s frustrating. Of course the president is frustrated, and I think the American people now know why he was so frustrated.” NPR’s Susan Davis contributed to this report."
"House Republicans voted Thursday to deliver on their promise to repeal    —   the massive set of Wall Street regulations President Barack Obama signed into law after the 2008 financial crisis. In a near   vote, the House approved a bill, dubbed the Financial Choice Act, which scales back or eliminates many of the   banking rules. The legislation is the brainchild of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling,  . ”  represents the greatest regulatory burden on our economy, more so than all the other   regulations combined,” Hensarling told reporters Wednesday. ”There is a better way: economic growth for all bank bailouts for none.” Rolling back regulations, Hensarling’s nearly   bill would defang   by repealing the   Volcker Rule, which prevents   banks from making risky bets with investments. It would also scrap a requirement, which goes into effect Friday, that retirement advisers put their clients’ interests ahead of their own. In perhaps the biggest partisan flashpoint, the bill aims to scale back the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to regulate large banks and payday lenders. The CFPB was created under   and is designed to operate as an independent watchdog with a single director. Hensarling considers its structure to be undemocratic. ”To think in a democracy that one   individual can functionally decide what credit cards go in our wallets, what mortgages we can have on our home, whether or not we even have a checking account. I mean, that’s just anathema to me to the founding principles of this republic,” Hensarling said while speaking last month at the   American Enterprise Institute. Financial reform advocates argue the Choice Act would leave the U. S. economy vulnerable to another financial crisis. ”It is bad for consumers, it is bad for investors, and it’s bad for the stability of the American economy  —   which is bad for all of us,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform. ”People believe there should be more  —   not less  —   regulation of Wall Street. They’re worried about regulators being too weak and being too afraid to take on the big guys. Not about their being tough.” ”The bill even specifically exempts payday and car title lenders  —   notorious for springing devastating debt traps for their already vulnerable customers  —   from any regulation,” added Yana Miles, senior legislative counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending. The top lobbyist for the banking industry  —   which supports parts of the Choice Act  —   says the bill would bring relief to community banks, which many say have been overburdened by  ’s onerous,     regulations. ”We are not seeking to roll back all of the policy response, all of ” said Rob Nichols, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association. ”That’s not our intention. Our intention is to acknowledge what many regulators and legislators will tell you both publicly and privately, which is aspects of   overshot.” The Senate has been working on a separate bill that is more focused on loosening regulations on community banks. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellin has endorsed efforts to ”mitigate the regulatory burden” when it comes to small banks. Frank: ”You don’t get everything 100 percent right the first time” Former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts agrees  —   despite having his name attached to the regulations, alongside that of former Sen. Christopher Dodd,  . ”Anytime you pass a very complicated piece of legislation, you don’t get everything 100 percent right the first time,” said Frank, who is the former Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Frank says his namesake financial reform law has been too restrictive on smaller banks. He also believes the threshold used to identify other banks ”as too big to fail” should be higher. ”Beyond that what you have are Republicans  —   including the chairman of the committee, Mr. Hensarling, who is a very honorable, very pleasant, deeply rigidly ideological conservative who is essentially against any regulation.” Democratic opposition can stop the bill in the Senate, Even though some Democrats recognize there are some problems with   they are unified in opposing the Choice Act. ”The Wrong Choice Act is a vehicle for Donald Trump’s agenda to get rid of financial regulation and help out Wall Street. It’s an invitation for another Great Recession, or worse,” said California Rep. Maxine Waters, currently the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. Hensarling’s bill is a revised version of legislation he proposed last year, which stalled in Congress. Waters says it’s no surprise that Republicans see success in their sights this time around. ”With the majority that they have in the House and the Senate and President Trump, this is their big opportunity to deregulate, deregulate, deregulate  —   and they’re going to go for it,” she said. But the GOP will run into obstacles in the Senate, because Republicans in the upper chamber don’t have the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation. Hensarling says he’s undeterred. ”If I live my life thinking that something might not pass the Senate, I would never even get up and bother to go to work,” he said."
"Updated at 5:30 p. m. ET, Exit polls are projecting a loss of Conservative seats in the U. K. general election, in a blow to Prime Minister Theresa May and her party. Reuters reports that May will win 314 seats, short of the 326 needed for a majority in the   Parliament, according to exit polls released after voting ended Thursday. If the projections are correct and the Conservatives lose their majority, May could remain prime minister. But it would require a coalition with other parties. ”If the poll is anything like accurate, this is completely catastrophic for the Conservatives and for Theresa May,” former British Finance Minister George Osborne told ITV News, according to Reuters. ”It’s difficult to see if these numbers were right, how they would put together the coalition to remain in office. But equally it’s quite difficult looking at those numbers to see how Labour could put together a coalition, so it’s on a real knife edge.” The pound fell sharply, losing more than two cents against the dollar, after exit polls showed the Conservatives failing to keep their majority, The Associated Press reports. NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley, who watched the results from London, told All Things Considered that many in the room of journalists and political scientists where she was ”gasped and even yelled” when the results came in, ”it was so shocking that she lost this many seats.” Beardsley said that if projections hold, May will have to put together a coalition to govern, and a hung Parliament is possible. Just a month ago, Beardsley said, May was talking about winning a   majority. Exit polls also projected major losses by Scottish nationalists, according to the AP, a hindrance to their plan to vote for independence. May called for the snap election two months ago, and at the time, her party was expected to win by wide margins. In polls leading up to the campaign’s final day, May’s lead over Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was seen shrinking to 6 percentage points. Voting closed at 10 p. m. BST  —   or 5 p. m. ET. May’s Tories had been hoping to build on their small majority in the House of Commons, where they hold 330 of 650 seats. Explaining the surprise election announcement in April, she called it the ”only way to guarantee certainty and stability for the years ahead.” Thursday’s vote took place less than two weeks before the U. K. is to begin formal negotiations on leaving the European Union  —   the same issue that brought May into office last July, after the resignation of fellow Conservative David Cameron. While the subject of Brexit was a main issue when the vote was scheduled, much of the campaign has focused not on Brexit, but on security after   attacks on public spaces in Manchester and London. And in recent weeks, the Conservative Party’s lead in polls has been cut in half. ”The third terrorist attack on May’s watch has weakened her, especially after it came to light that she had cut 20, 000 police officers as home minister,” Beardsley reports. Responding to criticism, May said this week that she’ll push for tougher policies on prison sentences and deportations. ”If our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we’ll change the laws so we can do it,” May said. By contrast, Corbyn has been gaining momentum despite a widely held belief that his Labour Party won’t be able to force May out of No. 10 Downing St. On Wednesday, he promised to stand up to President Trump if he’s elected. As NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports, ”[Corbyn] has been running a kind of Bernie   campaign, looking for a lot more funding for the National Health Service, which has really suffered. He’s offering free higher education  —   so, really focusing on younger voters.” Both May and Corbyn were criticized for notable absences on the campaign trail. For May, it was her refusal to take part in a debate on BBC TV, leaving Corbyn to spar with other members of her party. For Corbyn, it was his   at an event touting Labour’s populist message  —   feeding suspicions that rivals in his own party may have been working against him. May’s voice was also used against her in a protest song that hit the Top 5 on Britain’s charts, as the relatively unknown group Captain Ska interspersed May’s comments on social issues with chants accusing her of lying on ”Liar Liar GE2017”  —   referring to the general election by its initials."
"A day after the twin terrorist attacks in Tehran, Iranian state media said the death toll has risen to 17 and Iran’s foreign minister denounced the official White House response as ”repugnant.” Iran’s Intelligence Ministry also identified five extremists who attacked the Parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Wednesday and confirmed that they had fought for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to the   IRNA news agency. Two teams of attackers armed with guns and explosives targeted the Parliament building and the mausoleum in apparently coordinated attacks that occurred within an hour of each other. Five of the attackers died and, Reuters reports, more than half a dozen suspects have been arrested in connection with the assault  —   the first major attack Iran has experienced in years. Iran initially said a dozen victims died it’s unclear whether the toll announced Thursday includes the five attackers. Dozens of people were wounded. Meanwhile, President Trump’s statement on the attack has prompted criticism in Iran. The statement from the White House read in full: ”We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times. We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.” That second sentence, suggesting Iran bears responsibility for an attack against its civilians, was not   NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad   called it ”repugnant” on Twitter and said the Iranian people ”reject” the statement. Other parts of Trump’s administration have been striving to moderate that message. NPR’s Michele Kelemen notes that the State Department condemned the attack and wrote that ”the depravity of terrorism has no place in a peaceful, civilized world.” The United States and several allies in the Middle East have been fighting against the Islamic State. Iran also has been fiercely opposed to the militant group. Iran is a   nation, and the Islamic State is a Sunni group that often targets Shiite Muslims. Iran has indirectly suggested that Saudi Arabia, its major regional rival and a U. S. ally, played a role in the attack. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have suggested that the attack was linked to Saudi Arabia. They never named the country directly, but the implication was clear. Their statement, according to a Financial Times translation and annotation, read: ”This terrorist act took place a week after a joint meeting between the US president and head of a reactionary regional country [Saudi Arabia] which has been a constant supporter of terrorism. . .. The fact ISIS claimed responsibility proves that they [Saudi Arabia] were involved in the brutal attack.” Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi told IRNA on Thursday that it is clear Saudi Arabia supports terrorist groups but it is too soon to say whether it was involved in the Parliament and mausoleum strikes. Saudi Arabia has denied involvement, Reuters reports."
"Zika is a scary virus because of the terrible birth defects it can cause. Now scientists have a clearer sense of the size of that risk. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified 2, 549 pregnant women with the Zika virus in Puerto Rico and other U. S. territories between Jan. 1, 2016 and April 25, 2017. The CDC found that 122 of these women  —   about 5 percent  —   gave birth to babies with birth defects such as small heads (known as microcephaly). The federal health agency, which has been struggling to get clear information out of Puerto Rico about Zika, declined to say how many of those birth defects came from Puerto Rico. But Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the CDC, said she is confident that health officials in the territory are now fully reporting its cases to the federal health agency. Puerto Rico is not required to use the CDC definition when publishing its own figures, which have appeared to be out of step with expectations. CDC will blend the Puerto Rico numbers with any cases reported from the U. S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Federated States of Micronesia and Marshall Islands for ”an assurance of privacy,” Schuchat told reporters. The upshot is that the public will not be able to identify risks specific to any of these areas. Puerto Rico’s population accounts for more than 90 percent of the total. Earlier this week, Puerto Rico, which has been struggling to attract tourists during the Zika outbreak, declared that the epidemic had ended. Schuchat agreed that the number of cases has fallen sharply since the peak of the epidemic. But in a telephone news conference Thursday, she said, ”We don’t feel the period of risk is over.” Another mosquito season is on the way, she noted. Scientists have had trouble pinning down the risk of Zika to pregnant women. Estimates of birth defects have ranged from 1 percent of pregnancies to more than 10 percent. This latest study, published Thursday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, provides a sharper answer. The study found that even infected women without symptoms of the disease were at risk of giving birth to babies with abnormalities. Women whose infections were identified in the first trimester of pregnancy had a somewhat higher risk  —   8 percent overall. The study found that women whose infections were identified later in pregnancy were also at significant risk for having a baby with birth defects. Not all birth defects are immediately recognized at birth, Schuchat said, so it’s important for doctors to follow up with these babies. In addition to microcephaly, the children may have other brain malformations, eye problems and neurological damage."
"Updated at 8:15 p. m. ET, Reality Winner, a    National Security Agency contractor accused of leaking classified information to a news outlet, has pleaded not guilty at a hearing in Augusta, Ga. The judge denied her bail after prosecutors suggested she may possess more secret documents. A federal grand jury had indicted her on one count of ”willful retention and transmission of national defense information.” In legal documents, an FBI agent stated that Winner had admitted to printing the classified information and mailing it to an online news outlet. That news outlet is widely believed to be The Intercept, which published a report Monday detailing an apparent NSA document that said Russian military intelligence attempted to hack a U. S. company that provides election software. Court documents do not explicitly name the site however, two national security officials have told NPR that the cases are connected. Citing court documents, NPR’s Martin Kaste describes how investigators zeroed in on Winner: ”In the government’s criminal complaint against Winner, it says it was able to track her down as the leaker because The Intercept showed government officials a copy of the leaked document, which showed signs of having been folded. That led investigators to think the document had been printed out. They say . .. that Winner had been in email contact with a news outlet, presumed to be The Intercept.” The Intercept stated that it has ”no knowledge of the identity of the person who provided us with the document” and stresses that the allegations against Winner are unproven. She was arrested at her home in Augusta on Saturday. Before the hearing, Winner’s stepfather, Gary Davis, told The Associated Press that she is ”not a flight risk.” He added: ”Everyone in America knows what she looks like at this point. She’s never run away from anything in her life. She’s not a violent person. She has no record. There’s no reason to hold her.” The indictment alleges that Winner, a former Air Force linguist, leaked the confidential information in May 2017 while employed at private contractor Pluribus International. If convicted, Winner faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison   a fine of up to $250, 000, according to court documents. She is the first person to be criminally charged with leaking classified information under the Trump administration, which has vowed to crack down on leaks. Winner’s mother, Billie   told the AP that she fears ”they’re going to try to make an example out of her because of the political climate right now.”"
"In search of an answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that    money train where all the cars are linked together, Universal Pictures has been trying to revive its classic monster movies from the ’30s and ’40s, in the hope that Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man will do for it what Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America have done for Marvel. After taking a mulligan on Dracula Untold, a middling attempt to do gothic on a budget, the studio has now officially launched its ”Dark Universe” cycle with The Mummy, sparing no expense in casting Tom Cruise, the world’s most bankable action star, in the lead role. And with Russell Crowe making an appearance here as Dr. Jekyll, the brand integration is already firmly on track. To watch The Mummy is to witness all that boardroom calculation come to life. There’s no prevailing notion for how this   revival is going to work 85 years after Boris Karloff donned the rags, so the director, Alex Kurtzman, and a team of seasoned screenwriters have made an   entertainment, an     that flails and thrashes and desperately cajoles. At times, Cruise plays Indiana Jones by way of Brendan Fraser in the 1999 remake, a dashing rogue who gallops through the Middle East in search of buried treasure. At others, he’s Lou Costello in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a   goofball who does his best    when confronted by the supernatural. Neither look suits Cruise in the least, but he isn’t to blame for the    aesthetic that lurches the film forward. Packing several movies’ worth of mythology into one, The Mummy flashes back to ancient Egypt to tell the story of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) a princess who was next in line to the throne (and a    ) when her father sired a son, denying her place in succession. Pledging her allegiance to Set, the God of chaos and war and evil, Ahmanet killed her entire family, but was thwarted in her effort to bury a   dagger into the human host that would bring Set a mortal form. As punishment, she was mummified alive, embalmed in mercury, and buried deep in the sands of Mesopotamia. Centuries later, enter Cruise as Nick Morton, a private military contractor who’s only interested in fighting insurgents if he can raid their territory for precious antiquities. When Nick unearths Ahmanet’s tomb, he inadvertently awakens her and she targets him as the perfect, morally compromised host for Set, provided that she can recover the dagger gem, which just so happens to have been recovered on a separate archeological find in London. For help, Nick turns to archeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) and the mysterious Dr. Henry Jekyll for their expertise on suppressing ancient evil, but they have agendas of their own. The competing agendas don’t stop with the characters, either. The Mummy doesn’t know what it wants to be, so it keeps hedging its bets between the horror of a relentless,     mummy and the thrills of a Mission: Impossible movie, like Nick attempting to improvise his way out of a tumbling cargo plane. Making only his second feature after years as a blockbuster screenwriter —  he and his former creative partner, Roberto Orci, wrote the first two Transformers movies for Michael Bay and the first two Star Trek movies for J. J. Abrams —  Kurtzman has a style that could generously be described as ”accommodating.” In lieu of any strong vision of his own, he seems content to assemble The Mummy out of a hodgepodge of commercial ideas. Lost in the noise is the simplicity and   appeal of those old Universal monster movies, which relied on mood and   intimacy to achieve their shock effects. (They were also nice and short. The original Mummy is only 74 minutes.) The sprawl of Kurtzman’s Mummy does suggest the global threat of supernatural evil, but it does nothing to distill the tension or heighten the   atmospherics. In trading classic minimalism for   maximalism, Universal misses the treasure in its own vault."
"At almost 72, onetime   star Lee Hayden faces the afflictions of age: loneliness, a fading career, dwindling sexual magnetism, and the fear that his relationship with his daughter is unsalvageable. Also, he might be dying. It’s a cancer diagnosis that compels the lackadaisical Lee (Sam Elliott) to focus on the big issues in The Hero, a ruefully comic drama that observes a few days of his   existence. But it’s a younger woman, unsurprisingly, who reenergizes him. Directed and   by Brett Haley, The Hero is a bespoke vehicle for Elliott, who had a supporting role in the filmmaker’s previous movie, I’ll See You in My Dreams. Most of its plot elements are overly familiar, but they’re invigorated by Elliott’s easygoing performance and the way Haley deploys them in explicit homage to his muse. (Or muses, since the name of Elliott’s character combines those of Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden.) With Elliott, the rugged visage  —   even the luxuriant mustache  —   is less iconic than the weathered voice. Haley emphasizes both that and Lee’s diminished career by opening the movie in a recording studio where the former movie star is recording tag lines for a   ad. He has just the   tones for the pitch. In recent years, Elliott has played the old boyfriend of such counterculture veterans as Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise that The Hero is one of the druggiest Hollywood movies in years. The Malibu cowboy spends a lot of time with former   Jeremy (a becalmed Nick Offerman) who’s forsaken acting for the more reliable trade of  . The two enjoy sharing joints, listening to reggae, and watching Buster Keaton movies. It’s at Jeremy’s that Lee meets Charlotte (Laura Prepon) a peppery standup comic who’s about half his age. The two have an odd chemistry, catalyzed by his fame and her caginess. When Lee is tapped to receive an award from a group of Old West buffs, he ponders inviting skeptical   Valarie (Katharine Ross, Elliott’s   spouse) or resentful grown daughter Lucy (Krysten Ritter). Neither of those options click, so Lee impulsively asks Charlotte. Not only does she agree, she provides the MDMA that spurs Lee to give a wacky acceptance speech that becomes a YouTube hit. Will resurgent celebrity renew his career? That plot strand is the least convincing one, but it or something like it is necessary to the concept: a legendary tough guy encounters his vulnerability. The director also gives Lee dreams that mingle his current life (and eventual death) with scenes from his biggest and best movie  —   also titled The Hero, of course. These moderately surreal inserts suggest a Clint Eastwood remake of Fellini’s 8  . Although the age gap between Lee and Charlotte is altogether typical of films about spiritually adrift men, the couple’s tentative relationship is the movie’s   aspect. Impressively for such a movie, Charlotte pursues her own agenda, whether using the fling as material for her comedy act or  —   in a beautifully believable moment  —     a book she feels Lee didn’t appreciate enough the first time. The crusty loner turns out to need the young woman’s guidance, but The Hero isn’t a tale of redemption or transformation. It’s a cowboy picture, which means its laconic protagonist doesn’t change all that much before he ambles out of the frame."
"Law enforcement agencies announced on Wednesday a litany of charges against 33 people  —   including 27 who were allegedly associated with a Russian crime syndicate. Authorities said the indictment represents one of the first federal racketeering charges ever brought against a vor v zakonei  —   a Russian phrase that translates roughly as ”  .” That vor is identified as Razhden Shulaya, 40, living in Edgewater, N. J. who investigators said also goes by ”Brother” and ”Roma.” He and the 26 others are named as defendants in the Shulaya indictment, which charges that they operated a nationwide racketeering enterprise. ”The suspects in this case cast a wide net of criminal activity, aiming to make as much money as possible, all allegedly organized and run by a man who promised to protect them,” FBI Assistant    William F. Sweeney Jr. said in the statement. The charges were announced by Joon H. Kim, the acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, as well as U. S. Customs and Border Protection, the New York City Police Department and the FBI. The charges include a variety of racketeering, fraud, narcotics, firearms and stolen property offenses. The statement said most of the crews were based in New York but that the ”Shulaya Enterprise” also had operations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and Nevada. Most alleged members of the syndicate were born in the former Soviet Union and maintained ties to Georgia, Ukraine and Russia. Vor refers to ”an order of elite criminals from the former Soviet Union who receive tribute from other criminals, offer protection, and use their recognized status as vor to adjudicate disputes among   criminals,” according to the Justice Department. ”As a vor, Shulaya had substantial influence in the criminal underworld and offered assistance to and protection of the members and associates of the Shulaya Enterprise.” In the three indictments and one complaint that were unsealed, some of the crimes are the stuff of classic mobster movies: a poker house in Brighton Beach, buying and selling cases of purported illegal cigarettes and selling stolen jewelry. Among the more colorful allegations is the charge that two of the defendants arranged the transport and sale of a whopping 10, 000 pounds of ”stolen chocolate confections” to a government informant. And some of the syndicate’s crimes were more elaborate, according to the unsealed racketeering indictment. The enterprise is alleged to have completed ”reconnaissance” on predicting the behavior of particular models of electronic slot machines to defraud casinos. In April, two of the defendants allegedly executed the scheme, making over $1, 000 by manipulating the machines. Another scheme involved using a female member of the syndicate to ”seduce men, incapacitate them with gas, and then rob them,” according to the Justice Department. The darkest crime alleged is a    plot, with enough lurid details to make the complaint read like a juicy novel. According to the document, Nikoloz Jikia, 26, and Bakai   25, both of Brooklyn, sold a revolver to an informant identified as  . The informant allegedly discussed with the defendants killing and robbing the informant’s supposed business partner, who   said stored large trucks filled with contraband cigarettes.   offered Jikia and   a percentage of the sale of those cigarettes in exchange for assistance in killing and robbing the business partner.   Jikia and the informant then ”discussed the means and logistics of disposing of the corpse of the Victim following the murder of the Victim,” according to the complaint, which cites recordings of conversations conducted largely in Russian. ”For example, Jikia suggested, among other things, that ’maybe you [ ] should disappear it [sic],’ and more specifically referred to the use of ’acid’ to dissolve the corpse.   suggested, among other things, covering the corpse with lime and burying it, so that ’in a year, there won’t be a hair.’ ” The 27 defendants charged with racketeering each face penalties of up to 20 years in prison and $250, 000 fines. If convicted, Jikia and   could face life sentences on charges of firearm possession ”in furtherance of a crime of violence,” as well as charges of conspiracies to murder for hire and selling firearms to a felon. The Justice Department said it had taken most of those charged into federal custody, but five were still at large."
"Manal  ’s path to activism began simply enough: In 2011, the Saudi woman filmed herself driving a car, then uploaded the video to YouTube. Ordinarily such a video might not get much notice, but because it’s not socially acceptable for women to drive in Saudi Arabia, where there is a de facto ban, Sharif’s video went viral. Sharif describes driving as an act of civil disobedience: ”For me, driving  —   or the right to drive  —   is not only about moving from A to B it’s a way to emancipate women,” she says. ”It gives them so much liberty. It makes them independent.” Initially arrested for driving, Sharif was released when her story elicited outrage from around the world. She now lives in Sydney, Australia, with her second husband and son. Though she is no longer in Saudi Arabia, Sharif remains outspoken about women’s rights: ”When I see something wrong, I speak up,” she says of her advocacy on behalf of Saudi women. ”It should be the norm, not the exception.” Her new memoir is Daring to Drive. On the guardianship system for women in Saudi Arabia  We have the guardianship system and that is the one that imposes a lot of restrictions on me, as a woman. . .. A woman cannot choose her guardian. So when you’re born, your father is your guardian. When you get married, it moves to your husband. If you get divorced, it either moves back to your father if he’s alive if he’s not alive, it could move back to your brother. If you don’t have a brother, it could move back to your adult son, as young as 18 years old. He could be your own guardian issuing you permissions . .. for important things like going to school, getting a job, leaving the country, going to the court, even going to the police and complaining. They always ask for a man’s consent and permission. On why she decided to advocate for Saudi women’s right to drive  I think it chose me. I didn’t choose it. As a single mom, I was divorced with a son and I had a car and I had a driver’s license, but I couldn’t drive my car. I was paying the installments for this car for five years. That was very frustrating. I almost got kidnapped once because I couldn’t find a car to take me back home. It’s a daily struggle to find a car to do anything in your life in a country where there’s no public transportation and our cities are not  . It was a continuous struggle, and it was very empowering that I know how to drive. I have a car and I have a driver’s license. When I knew that there is no law, I was thinking, ”Well, if there’s no law, so why are not driving?” It was accumulating, it didn’t just happen overnight. On Saudi women’s reliance on foreign drivers  [Private drivers] get paid around $500 a month. No Saudi would accept this salary, and no Saudi will be   available . .. to drive you around. . .. [Drivers] work long hours with you, because they drop the kids at school, they drop you at work, when you need to go for grocery shopping, all these things  —   you will not find Saudis accepting these jobs. The private sector itself in Saudi Arabia, 90 percent of the people working there are   so also the contradictions here make me mad, because you don’t allow me to mix with Saudis or men in general all my life, but then you enforce a perfect stranger to be living in my house, to be driving my own car and have my own phone number. . .. Most of them don’t even know how to drive! My first driver, I had to teach him how to drive. He didn’t even know the signs. . .. He didn’t know the city. He didn’t speak Arabic. On how her protest helped inspire others to drive, I know a girl, she’s 14 years old. She’s so young, but in Saudi Arabia, you can drive as a boy as young as 14 years old. She dressed like a boy and I met her mom and I met her other sister, and they said [the police] stopped her so many times and they found out she’s a girl, and she would plead with the police officer and explain to him that she doesn’t have anyone. But she continued driving. She always posted videos of herself driving, and that was amazing. She said, ”We never thought of buying a car, because we were three girls in the house,”  —   they don’t have a man  —   ”until we saw you driving.” Her mom . .. kept saying, ”Don’t stop.” Her daughter said, ”They stole Mom’s life. We’ll not allow them to steal my life.” On the   views she encountered as a student, In the ’80s in Saudi Arabia, you were radicalized. We were radicalized in the ’80s and the ’90s. There was one source of information, the books were censored and we had all these wars going on around in the Islamic world. . .. I was brought up in this era or in this time. . .. We’ve been through this. . .. Destroying our photos, stopping everyone from listening to music, questioning the beliefs of the others, the hate against the infidels, we were brought up this way. . .. I always questioned them, even when I was practicing to be a ”good Muslim” and I was trying to please God and stay away from hellfire and go to heaven, I was still questioning these things. I wasn’t really happy. The more I was trying to follow the rules we had been taught, the more miserable I became. On undergoing female genital mutilation as a girl, The one, really, who circumcised us was a barber. He was my father’s friend. My mom herself was circumcised and she told us the story that she ran away when they cut one labia and the other one they couldn’t cut, and she was bleeding and she hid in the neighbor’s house. It was shocking to me that [my] mom, she put us through the same thing. But the pressure from the society is huge . .. that a mother and a father can put their own daughters through so much pain just to abide by the society rules. This is how dangerous it is, that your own children, you put them through so much pain because you need to be obedient. . .. I think the worst was not the pain, the worst is losing trust in the people you love. . .. It’s very difficult even to talk about today. . .. They didn’t explain to us what was going to happen. . .. These things bother me so much, that we put women through this pain, because it’s all about controlling us. On the risks she faces when she goes back to Saudi Arabia to visit her son from her first marriage  I’m always worried, every time I go to Saudi Arabia, I’m always worried, because you never know when you’ll get arrested again, for a tweet or a retweet or something that I said in an interview like I’m doing now with you, something that slipped. So you have to always have this filter going on the whole time you talk. Radio producers Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner and Web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly   contributed to this story."
"John Minor of Manhattan Beach, Calif. epitomized the active Californian. The retired psychologist was a distance runner, a cyclist and an avid outdoorsman, says his daughter, Jackie Minor. ”He and my mom were both members of the Sierra Club,” Jackie says. ”They went on tons of backpacking trips, you know  —   climbing mountains and trekking through the desert. He was just a very active person.” But in the autumn of 2014, he fell ill with terminal pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease that his family says slowly eroded his quality of life. So, on September 15, 2016, surrounded by his family, John Minor sipped his last drink: apple juice laced with a lethal dose of medication his doctor had prescribed for him. ”He lay down and went to sleep and he was in a coma for about two hours and then he passed,” Jackie says. ”And it was  —   it was very peaceful.” In the year since California’s End of Life Option Act took effect on June 9, 2016, at least 500 Californians have received   prescriptions, according to newly released data collected by Compassion and Choices, a nonprofit advocacy group working to pass    laws nationwide. The organization reports that, throughout California, nearly 500 hospitals and health systems, more than 100 hospice organizations and 80 percent of insurers now participate. The California law created a process that allows dying patients to ask their doctors for a lethal prescription that they can then take privately, at home. ”What the numbers are showing is that the law is working incredibly well,” says Matt Whitaker, who directs Compassion and Choice’s work in California and Oregon, which also has an    law. ”It’s working as the lawmakers intended.”  Still, for a number of patients in California, finding a doctor willing to prescribe the   drugs can be difficult, in part because the state’s law allows doctors to opt out of prescribing, even when the hospital where they work participates in the law. ”It’s a very nuanced decision,” says Dr. Elizabeth Dzeng, an assistant professor of hospital medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She estimates that about three dozen patients have made the request so far at UCSF. Dzeng says the decision to prescribe can be hard for many doctors. ”Even if they’re in support of    they don’t necessarily want to be the person identified as the   person for    because that’s a very different implication,” she says. Dr. Stephanie Harman, medical director of palliative care services for Stanford Health Care, where she has closely followed the issue at Stanford Hospital and its affiliated clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. Harman recently tracked 13 Stanford patients who received prescriptions for lethal drugs, and learned that half of them couldn’t get the drugs from their own doctor. One reason, she says: ”There is a certain stigma for being known as a physician who writes these prescriptions. There is in the field  —   in medicine  —   a question of whether this is an ethical act for a physician.” Other hospitals and health systems statewide are also trying to get a sense of what their terminal patients are experiencing. At the University of California, Los Angeles, about 20 patients so far have received prescriptions  —   but only about half of them have taken the drugs, says Dr. Neil Wenger, a professor of medicine at UCLA and director of the UCLA Health Ethics Center. Wenger has helped develop the UCLA protocol that guides doctors through the requirements of administering the medication to qualified, terminally ill patients. Among the physicians he’s spoken with, there is a ”whole range of preferences” regarding how and whether to participate in the law. A ”relatively small number” oppose the law, Wenger says. Many others, however, believe patients should have access to    medications, but don’t want to be involved themselves. Complying with the law requires physicians follow extensive legal guidelines and have conversations with patients that are often difficult. ”It raises a lot of feelings on the part of the doctor,” says Wenger. ”It is something very, very different than what a doctor does  —   which is saving people . And it’s complicated. It takes a whole lot of time.” Dr. Catherine S. Forest is one doctor who is committed to taking that time to assist patients who want the prescription. She practices family medicine in the Stanford health system. Since the law passed, she’s assisted five patients who came to her after their own doctors refused to prescribe the medications. Forest says what’s happening now in California reminds her of the 1970s, when abortion became legal. Even among doctors who agreed with Roe v. Wade, there was a reluctance to perform abortions. ”It takes a while for people to train, to feel comfortable and to provide,” she says. ”And that was because it was not legal, and then it was legal  —   and there are very few instances where we do that in medicine.”    she says, is at another of those transitional moments. It will take time, she says, for California to catch up with other states (like Oregon) that have   training resources to help doctors learn the process. Until that happens, some terminally ill patients who want a lethal prescription may find it challenging to get one. That was John Minor’s experience. After he learned his doctors would not prescribe the medicine, Minor’s family started scrambling. ”I started    —   like, just different hospitals and different departments within different hospitals,” says Jackie Minor. Ultimately, the family was able to enroll her father in a Kaiser Permanente plan where he received the prescribed medicine that he took last fall. ”Mentally he was ready,” says his widow, Sherry Minor. ”It was an easy day for him.” This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Kaiser Health News."
"Provocative new research suggests that fetuses have the ability to discern faces when they’re still in the womb. A study involving    fetuses found they were more likely to focus on a pattern of lights that resembled a human face than on the same lights configured to look nothing like a face. While the results need to be confirmed by   experiments, some researchers who were not involved in the experiment say the findings are a significant advance in understanding early human sight development. ”I think it’s fantastic,” says Scott Johnson, a developmental psychologist at UCLA who was not involved in the research. ”It’s really a breakthrough. Scientists have long known that fetuses respond to sounds, such as their mother’s voice and music. But it’s always been a mystery how much they could see. ”Vision really was the last of the sensory systems for us to understand,” says Vincent Reid, a professor of psychology at Lancaster University in Britain who led the new research. ”And that’s because, until now, we haven’t able to look at vision.” But Reid thought scientists could use something he suspected would have the best chance of eliciting a response: faces. Scientists have long known that newborn babies are particularly drawn to faces. Reid wondered if that preference might start in he womb. So Reid and his colleagues created a very primitive representation of a face he could show to fetuses. ”We call it ” Reid says. ”It’s not a face, but it has the same sort of parameters as a face, visually.” It’s three red lights glowing in just the right intensity red that a fetus can see shining through the mother’s belly. Previous studies have shown that fetuses in the third trimester can see red light. The three dots of red light are arranged like an   triangle. There are two bright red dots next to each other at the top and one at the bottom  —   oriented like two eyes and a mouth would be. Reid and his colleagues shined the patterns at the abdomens of 39 women in their third trimester of pregnancy and used sophisticated ultrasound technology to watch in real time how the fetuses reacted. ”We moved the stimuli and then we tracked how the fetus would look at this,” Reid says. In the journal Current Biology, the researchers report that the fetuses seemed to turn towards and follow the red dots more frequently and for longer than they did when the lights were flipped upside down and looked nothing like a face might. ”You can actually see the face of the fetus. And then you can actually see them move their face,” Reid says. ”They would move their heads more to try to track the stimuli when we showed the stimuli in an upright orientation.” While the overall rate at which the fetuses responded to either stimulus was relatively low, the fetuses were about four times more likely to respond to the   pattern, Reid says. Reid stresses the findings do not mean fetuses can recognize their parents’ faces before they’re born. ”They can’t see their mother’s face. They can’t see their father’s face or someone else’s face. And we don’t want to recommend that people shine bright lights into the uterus, because that could be aversive. It could be damaging, potentially, if it was too bright,” Reid says. And, while the differences were somewhat modest, other researchers say the results are nevertheless compelling. ”Obviously a lot of development happens in the nine months before birth. So this paper for the first time gives us a window into some of those processes,” Johnson says. For example, it could indicate when sensitivity to faces, which is probably crucial for bonding with parents, begins. ”It kind of pushes down the age at which we know now that the developing human shows a socially relevant visual preference,” Johnson says. ”The visual system, in effect, kind of knows something about faces even before any exposure to faces at all. It’s just astonishing to think about.” Mark Johnson, a professor of psychology at Birkbeck College in London, calls the findings ”noteworthy.” ”This study suggest the fetus’s visual world might, in fact, be more interesting and contain more structure and visibility than we’d previously thought,” Johnson says. ”This new technique allows us to get a window into their visual world.” And Reid and the other scientists say the same technique might help them learn other things about fetuses. Reid already has used the technique to find clues that indicate fetuses can differentiate between different numbers of objects. The technique could enable scientists to test whether fetuses can associate certain patterns of lights to other kinds of stimuli, such as specific nursery rhymes, says Mark Johnson. ”This would be quite important because it would tell us that the ability of the brain to integrate information across senses is present very early on, even prior to birth,” Johnson says."
"Updated at 9:30 p. m. on June 20, Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testifies in front of the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday morning. It’s the first time in a while that the House committee, and not its Senate counterpart, will be in the headlines. The Senate Intelligence Committee dominated news headlines  —   and TV screens  —   over the past few weeks as it held hearings featuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former FBI director James Comey, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, among others. But during that period, the House Intelligence Committee has continued its work, too. So has special counsel Robert Muller’s investigative team. Here’s a primer to help you sort out which investigation is doing what. What is it focusing on? The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is conducting a broad inquiry looking at what, exactly, Russia did to influence the 2016 elections and how that fits into broader ”cyberactivity and active measures” the country has used to target the United States. Part of that includes examining whether there is any evidence that members of Donald Trump’s campaign collaborated with Russian operatives. ”The Committee will follow the intelligence wherever it leads,” Chairman Richard Burr,  . C. and Vice Chair Mark Warner,  . said in a statement announcing the probe. ”We will be conducting the bulk of the Committee’s business behind closed doors because we take seriously our obligation to protect sources and methods.” Key players, The panel is being led by Burr. He advised the Trump campaign last year but has vowed to take the investigation seriously. ”It overrides any personal beliefs that I have or loyalties that I might have,” he told reporters earlier this year. Burr has separated himself from the Trump administration more than other key Republicans involved in Russia investigations. He voiced concerns about Comey’s firing and has said he has seen no evidence backing one of Trump’s more outlandish claims  —   that President Barack Obama ordered a ”wiretap” of Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Warner is the top Democrat on the committee. While the House Intelligence Committee has been characterized by partisan infighting, Warner has worked hard to present a united front with Burr. The   senator and former Virginia governor has repeatedly said the investigation is the ”most important thing I’ve ever done” in public service. The Senate Intelligence Committee has several members who are often speculated about as future presidential candidates: Republicans Marco Rubio of Florida and Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Democrat Kamala Harris of California. Most memorable public moment, Nearly 20 million TV viewers tuned in when former FBI Director Jim Comey testified in front of the Intelligence Committee. ”Those were lies, plain and simple,” Comey said of the White House’s justifications for firing him, adding that Trump ”chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI” by claiming the bureau was in disarray under Comey’s leadership. Comey went on to say that he believed he had been fired because of the way he handled an ongoing investigation into whether anyone on Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. What the investigation could lead to, Burr and Warner have said their goal is to produce a detailed, bipartisan report summing up what actions Russian operatives took in 2016 and how similar attacks can be prevented in future elections. The committee can’t recommend criminal charges, as the special counsel investigation is empowered to do. What is it focusing on? Like its Senate counterpart, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wants to write a report answering four questions: Chairman Devin Nunes and other Republicans on the committee have publicly focused much of their attention on leaks and whether the Obama administration ”unmasked” intelligence about Trump associates for political purposes. Key players, California Republican Nunes remains chair of the House Intelligence Committee, though in April, he temporarily stepped down as head of its Russia investigation. Nunes’ move came in response to an Ethics Committee inquiry into whether he improperly disclosed classified information over the course of the investigation. The ethics probe was launched after Nunes made a   trip to the White House to discuss information that he claimed raised questions about whether the Obama administration had improperly ”unmasked”  —   or asked for the identity of  —   Trump associates surveilled during routine foreign intelligence operations. He spoke to reporters about this information before telling his colleagues on the committee about it. ”The committee has been put into suspended animation,” Rep. Jim Himes,  . told MSNBC afterwards. Nunes later admitted that his information had initially come from the Trump administration. That raised questions about whether Nunes was providing political cover for the president he was investigating. While Nunes stepped down from the Russia investigation, he has continued to issue and sign   subpoenas. Rep. Mike Conaway,   is leading the Russia investigation in Nunes’ place. California Rep. Adam Schiff is the top Democrat on the committee and one of the most commonly seen public faces of the Russia inquiries. As the committee’s investigation became more partisan, Schiff was forthright not just with the available evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia  —   but also with what it would mean if such a thing were proven true. ”Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated, and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible. But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated, and that the Russians used the same techniques to corrupt U. S. persons that they have employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply don’t know, not yet, and we owe it to the country to find out,” Schiff said at a March hearing featuring Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers. Conaway and Schiff tried to repair public confidence in the bipartisan integrity of their investigation by making a joint press statement on Tuesday. Most memorable public moment, Nunes’ White House trips created weeks of headlines. But the committee’s public hearings have led to several key moments, as well. The most notable: Comey’s first public disclosure of an active FBI probe into whether anyone on Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian efforts to influence the election. What it could lead to, The House Intelligence Committee’s end goal is a report laying out its findings. Like the Senate committee, the House investigation wouldn’t lead to criminal charges. The key question is whether the House Intelligence Committee will issue one bipartisan report or two separate findings from its Republican and Democratic camps. What is it focusing on? On May 17, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Mueller to take charge of the FBI investigation into whether anyone on Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian operatives. This is the leading Russia investigation but also the most secretive. While the House and Senate committees play out in   public hearings, Mueller’s investigation will take place behind closed doors. Congressional investigations also tend to defer to law enforcement when it comes to access to witnesses and evidence. Muller is charged with investigating ”any links   coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Campaign of President Donald Trump and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” That second clause has been interpreted to include the question of whether Trump or other White House officials improperly acted to impede the FBI investigation and likely includes the circumstances of the dismissals of both former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Comey. Key players, Mueller led the FBI for 12 years and began his tenure just a week before the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He’s widely respected in Washington. Other key members of Mueller’s investigative team include former FBI Chief of Staff Aaron Zebley onetime Watergate prosecutor James Quarles Andrew Weissmann, who led the Department of Justice’s fraud division and helped investigate Enron and Jeannie Rhee, who worked in the Justice Department, as well as Mueller’s law firm WilmerHale. And according to the National Law Journal, Mueller recently added another   lawyer to his team: Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, who’s one of the most respected lawyers within the Department of Justice. Most memorable public moment, Over the course of his career, Mueller developed a reputation as someone who does not leak to the news media. So we don’t know too much about how the investigation is going. But as Mueller has added more   lawyers to his team  —   and outlets like The Washington Post have reported that Mueller may be examining whether President Trump obstructed justice  —   the president has begun openly criticizing Mueller’s investigation. In that tweet, Trump seems to be criticizing Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller but isn’t playing an active role in his investigation. Despite Trump’s tweet to the contrary, his personal lawyers have repeatedly denied the fact the president himself is under investigation. What it could lead to,  Special counsel investigations into White Houses are notoriously unpredictable. Ken Starr’s probe into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s alleged real estate improprieties led to a report about Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky and the president’s eventual impeachment. The investigation into whether the Bush White House improperly leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame ultimately led to a top White House aide, Scooter Libby, being convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury. The key detail here is that Mueller has the power to press criminal charges based on what his investigation uncovers. And his investigation is likely to have broader scope and intensity than the congressional committees, so its findings could have political ramifications as well. While those are the three most   Russia investigations, there are various other inquiries in different parts of the federal government. Those include:"
"As a group of visiting scientists prepared to board a plane in Hawaii that would take them back home to China, U. S. customs agents found rice seeds in their luggage. Those seeds are likely to land at least one scientist in federal prison. Agriculture today is a   business, but as that technology has developed, so has the temptation to take shortcuts and steal trade secrets that could unlock huge profits. The FBI calls agricultural economic espionage ”a growing threat” and some are worried that biotech piracy can spell big trouble for a dynamic and growing U. S. industry. Crime in the lab, On the western outskirts of Junction City, Kan. just off Interstate 70, sits an unassuming industrial building. The white lettering on the blue sign out front reads ”Ventria Bioscience,” and driving by, it is hard to believe the nondescript building houses a   research facility. Scientists at Ventria have developed a way to genetically engineer rice so that it can be used to grow human proteins for medical uses. The process places a microscopic piece of synthetic DNA into the rice genome, which tells the growing plant to make the desired protein as it matures. Ventria President and CEO Scott Deeter says the idea goes back 25 or 30 years, but his company was the first to commercialize it.  ”It’s really been the dream of our industry for a long time,” Deeter says. ”The challenge has really been that the yield of the target product in the plant material was never high enough to make it  .” The company invested some $85 million in developing the technology, Deeter says, and he thinks it has the potential to generate upwards of $1 billion in annual revenue. But that potential could be undermined by foreign piracy. Former Ventria rice breeder Weiqiang Zhang is awaiting sentencing in federal court in Kansas City for conspiring to steal the company’s trade secrets. He hosted the delegation of visiting scientists from a Chinese crops research institute in whose luggage authorities found the rice seeds in 2013. Had they succeeded in stealing the   rice, the scientists may have been able to   it and ultimately undercut Ventria’s market. Deeter says it could have driven his company out of business. Crime in the field, In 2011, a field manager for agribusiness giant Pioneer   International found a man on his knees in an Iowa field, digging up seed corn. It was Mo Hailong  —   also known as Robert Mo  —   according to court documents. Hailong, who is originally from China, pleaded guilty in January 2016 to conspiring to steal trade secrets involving corn seed developed by Monsanto and Pioneer. Jason Griess, the assistant U. S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, says the investigation began as a simple matter of a farmer being suspicious about something he saw and reporting it. Digging up seeds in an open field may be simple, but it is difficult to put a precise value on the loss in cases involving trade secrets. ”Without question, the value of the seed technology in our case was absolutely off the charts,” Griess says. ”There’s simply no disputing by anyone how valuable this is.” Intellectual property is often hard to protect, no matter what form it takes: films, books, consumer products. The technology used in our food system, however, presents a unique challenge. ”Where the commodity in question is grown in open fields, it’s sometimes difficult,” Griess says. ”And this case is a testament to that.” The court cases in Kansas and Iowa are the only ones Griess is aware of that have been criminally prosecuted, but he says there have been a few other investigations. ”There are countries in this world that are in dire need of this technology, and one of the ways you go about obtaining it is to steal it,” Griess says. Ties to China, Theft of intellectual property costs the U. S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars each year, according to a recent report from the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, a Washington, D. C.    panel formed to study intellectual property theft. China, the authors say, is the biggest offender. ”In the last five to seven years, the majority of the cases the government has brought have involved espionage by the Chinese,” says Peter Toren, an intellectual property attorney in Washington, D. C. Toren was not involved in the IP Commission Report, but as a federal prosecutor in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Justice Department, he won one of the first cases ever prosecuted under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. It should come as no surprise, he says, that scientists in China would be interested in technology related to agriculture. ”Whether it’s in agriculture or any other field, they need access to the technology,” Toren says. ”And, certainly, if you have 1. 4 billion people, access to better seeds is something that you’re going to be very interested in.” Ventria’s Scott Deeter hopes that China will crack down on these cases, and that scientists across the world will respect each other’s innovations. ”I think the world is better off with that, I mean you get more creativity,” Deeter says. ”If you make creativity a commodity and something to be stolen, and don’t respect it, you won’t have very much. It will go away. And that’s the risk.” For now, Deeter says his company has to continue to innovate in order to stay one step ahead of the thieves. This story comes to us from the Kansas News Service, a collaboration covering health, education and politics across the state. "
"In the West African country of Burkina Faso, nearly 50 percent of children do not attend school. The reported cost of getting them there would be close to $182 million, and yet the small, francophone country received only $17 million in education aid in 2012. This comes from a new policy paper released this week by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, which found that the countries most in need of education funds aren’t getting them. While total development aid has risen 24 percent, aid for education has been on the decline for six years  —   falling 4 percent since 2010. The report analyzes data from every country in the world. Some believe the refugee crisis is to blame  —   that as more resources are pulled to address the immediate needs of health, food, and shelter for asylum seekers, education is neglected. But the report finds ”little evidence” of that. So why the decrease? ”Donors are giving less priority to education,” says Manos Antoninis, a senior policy analyst at UNESCO who   the report. Governments hold countries that receive aid accountable, explains Antoninis. Which means they have to show results. ”That is difficult for education,” says Antoninis. ”In health, you can achieve results very quickly. For education, everything takes more time and requires donors to be patient, but that is not a very attractive result.” Whether a country receives aid, says Antoninis, is often a question of that country’s trade and history. Take Burkina Faso: a former French colony. The French aren’t spending much on aid in education, according to the report. In 2015, France was among three G7 countries that didn’t make the list of top 10 donors to basic education. (The other two were Japan and Italy.) Former American and British colonies, on the other hand, are likely to receive ”a much higher share of aid than their need,” says Antoninis. Even so, between 2014 and 2015, the United States and the United Kingdom reduced their allocations to basic education by 11 and 9 percent, while Norway and Germany increased theirs by 50 and 34 percent, respectively. ”Aid is not being allocated according to need,” the report reads. ”  Africa, home to over half of the world’s    children now receives less than half the aid to basic education it obtained in 2002.” Antoninis said bilateral and multilateral donors, like the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education, try to make up that difference. The Global Partnership gives 77 percent of its ”disbursements” to   Africa and 60 percent to countries facing ”instability and conflict.” The report advises that donors should work together to avoid ”unnecessary administration costs” and ”duplication of effort.” Such redundancies are ”a major issue” in the world of international aid, says Antoninis. The international community has come together on a number of occasions to address this issue. A notable example was in 2005 for the Paris High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. Since then, there have been ”varying reports on the success of aid effectiveness,” Antoninis says. So is the money helping? While the debate runs the gamut, most agree that when carefully managed and directed, aid works  —   especially for education and health, The problem, Antoninis contends, is that education is not prioritized  —   it’s not a matter of life and death. ”Education is the least ” Antoninis says. ”But we argue that it’s extremely important.”"
"During Ramadan, refraining from even a bite to eat is a challenge, but what about a month of daylight hours without anything to drink? ”After a long day  —   especially in summer  —   of fasting, one becomes more thirsty than hungry,” says food blogger Amira Ibrahim. ”So when it is time to break your fasting day, everybody rushes to the drinks.” ”The basis for [fasting from] drinking and food is the same,” explains Imam Adeel Zeb, interfaith scholar and Muslim chaplain at The Claremont Colleges. ”God says in the Qur’an: O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may become pious.” Fasting, Zeb says, provides a constant physical reminder of God, as well as a reminder of all the people in the world who don’t have enough food or water. ”It creates an impetus of both gratitude and charity,” he says. ”The Islamic fast is a complete fast, with absolutely nothing passing your lips during the hours of the fast,” says Saadia Faruqi, author and interfaith activist. ”This is why only healthy adults may fast, and not anyone whose health would be adversely affected by a lack of water or food. The fast is negated or broken if you inadvertently drink water.” When Ramadan coincides with summer, many Muslims avoid going to the beach or a swimming pool to make sure that no water enters their mouths. Once the evening call to prayer sounds, the fast can be broken, and hydration is paramount. In Ibrahim’s native Egypt, locals turn to qamar   a thick apricot nectar. ”Qamar means moon, and   means religion,” Ibrahim says. Ramadan begins when the new crescent moon is spotted, and it is said that the drink ”got its name from a caliph back in the old days, who used to pass this drink as a celebration of seeing the Ramadan crescent moon.” Ibrahim wasn’t fond of qamar   as a kid in Cairo, but now she can’t imagine Ramadan without it. ”Although it would be a lovely drink to enjoy any time, especially in the summer, it only appears on Egyptian tables during the holy month of Ramadan,” she adds. Ibrahim shares her recipe here, for anyone interested in trying it at home. Favorite Ramadan drinks vary by country. In Jordan and Lebanon, tamer hindi, a   beverage, is often offered alongside qamar  . In Palestine, carob juice (kharoub) is the drink of choice, says Dima Al Sharif, a Palestinian chef and cookbook author who lives in Dubai. Emiratis follow Prophet Muhammad’s tradition of breaking the fast with a glass of milk or liquid yogurt. In neighboring Saudi Arabia, sobia, a cold drink made with barley, brown bread, cinnamon, sugar and cardamom is a traditional Ramadan refresher, sold street side in plastic baggies. Around the globe, Ramadan beverages restore electrolytes and offer a sugar kick. In Indonesia, many Muslims break their fast with es kelapa muda, made with the water and flesh of a young coconut, typically sweetened with coconut sugar or syrup, and sometimes garnished with bits of fruit. Drinks made with the fluorescent pink syrup Rooh Afza appear across the South Asian subcontinent during Ramadan. First produced in 1907 by a doctor of herbal medicine in New Delhi, the syrup is said to contain essences of flowers, fruits, vegetables and herbs, including rose petal, orange, pineapple, mint, cilantro and even spinach. Growing up in Pakistan, Faruqi drank Rooh Afza mixed with either water or milk. She notes, however, that ”it not something universal among all Pakistanis or all Muslims.” While traditional Ramadan drinks bring back childhood memories for some Muslims, others have new favorites to quench their thirst. Zeb’s favorite beverage for breaking the fast? An ice cream milkshake with protein. Since Ramadan follows a lunar calendar, its start date shifts by 10 days each year. When the holiday coincides with warm weather  —   as it does for the majority of Muslims this year  —   not drinking is especially challenging. ”The first couple of days are usually the hardest,” Ibrahim says. ”But as the month goes by, your body gets used to it and it becomes second to nature. Still, you get thirsty by the end.”"
"It’s tricky to nail down exactly what makes someone feel like a ”racial impostor.” For one Code Switch follower, it’s the feeling she gets from whipping out ”broken but strangely colloquial Arabic” in front of other Middle Easterners. For another  —   a   Native American woman  —   it’s being treated like ”just another tourist” when she shows up at powwows. And one woman described watching her white, black and   toddler bump along to the new Kendrick and wondering, ”Is this allowed?” In this week’s podcast, we go deep into what we’re calling Racial Impostor Syndrome  —   the feeling, the science and a giant festival this weekend in Los Angeles that’s, in some ways, all about this. Here’s how we got started down this track. A couple months ago, listener Kristina Ogilvie wrote in to tell us that ”living at the intersection of different identities and cultures” was like ”stumbling around in a forest in the dark.” She asked, ”Do you hear from other listeners who feel like fakes?” Good question. So we took it to our audience, and what we heard back was a resounding ”yes.” We got 127 emails from people who are stumbling through that dark, racially ambiguous forest. (And yes, we read every single one.) Here are excerpts drawn from a few of the many letters that made us laugh, cry and argue  —   and that guided this week’s episode. Let’s start with Angie Yingst of Pennsylvania: ”My mother is a Panamanian immigrant and my father is a white guy from Pennsylvania. I’ve always felt liminal, like I drift between race and culture. When I was young (20s) and living in the city, I would get asked multiple times a day where I was from, where my people were from, because Allentown, Pennsylvania, clearly wasn’t the answer they were looking for . .. It always felt like the undercurrent of that question was, ’You aren’t white, but you aren’t black. What are you?’ ”But truthfully, I don’t feel like I fit with Latinas either. My Spanish is atrocious and I grew up in rural PA. Even my cousin said a few weeks ago, ’Well, you aren’t really Spanish, because your dad is white.’ Which gutted me, truly. I identify as Latina. I identify with my mother’s culture and country as well as American culture. In shops, I’m treated like every other Latina, followed around, then ignored at the counter. I married a white guy and had children who are blonde and blue eyed, and I’m frequently asked if I’m the nanny or babysitter. And white acquaintances often say, ’You are white. You act white.’ And I saltily retort, ’Why? Because I’m not doing your lawn, or taking care of your kids? You need to broaden your idea of what Latina means.’ ” Jen Boggs of Hawaii says she often feels like a racial impostor, but isn’t quite sure which race she’s faking: ”I was born in the Philippines and moved to Hawaii when I was three. . .. I grew up thinking that I was   and   under the impression that my mom’s first husband was my biological father. I embraced this ’ ’ identity (as they say in Hawaii) and loved my ethnic ambiguity. My mom wanted me to speak perfect English, so never spoke anything but to me. After she divorced her first husband and   my stepdad from Michigan, my whiteness became cemented. ”Except. As it turns out, my biological father was a Filipino man whom I’ve never met. I didn’t find out until I tried to apply for a passport in my late twenties and the truth came out. So, at age 28 I learned that I was not half white but all Filipina. . .. ”This new knowledge was a huge blow to my identity and, admittedly, to my self esteem. ’But I’m white,’ I remember thinking. ’I’m so so white.’ After much therapy, I’m happy and comfortable in my brown skin, though I’m still working out how others perceive me as this Other, Asian person.” Indigo Goodson’s mom is Jamaican and her dad is  . She wrote about the way people’s perceptions of her change based on where she lives: ”Culturally we grew up as Jamaican as two   black American children could have in the Bay Area. . .. We ate mostly Jamaican food (prepared by both our mother and father) our Jamaican family lived with us growing up, and it was my mother that told us Anansi stories and other tales or sayings popular in Jamaica. ” . .. Both my parents are black, so no one ever asked ’What are you?’ . .. But then when folks would meet my mum they would say things like, ’Oh I thought you were black!’ or ’You do look Jamaican!’ And I would tell people I’m still black and clearly Jamaicans look like black Americans because we are both the descendants of enslaved West Africans. Now that I live in New York City, where if you’re black people assume you are first generation Caribbean, I often have to remind people that my dad is black American and so am I.” Helen Seely is originally from California. She told us what it’s like for her to interact with different groups as a   biracial woman: ”White people like to believe I’m Caucasian like them I think it makes their life less complicated. But I don’t identify as 100% white, so there always comes a time in the conversation or relationship where I need to ’out’ myself and tell them that I’m biracial. ”It’s a vulnerable experience, but it becomes even harder when I’m with black Americans. It may sound strange  —   and there are so many layers to this that are hard to unpack  —   but I think what it comes down to is: they have more of a claim to ’blackness’ than I ever will and therefore have the power to tell me I don’t belong, I’m not enough, that I should stay on the white side of the identity line. ”You know that question we always get asked? ’What are you?’ Well, I still don’t know. I’ve never had an answer that I can say with confidence I still don’t know what I’m allowed to claim.” Natalia Romero echoes some of those feelings. Her family left Colombia for the U. S. when she was 9 years old, and she says that while she doesn’t consider herself white, she gets treated like she’s white all the time: ”My mother doesn’t speak English and so when I am home all we speak is Spanish and act like a bunch of rowdy, tight knit Colombians . .. I grew up experiencing what many poor young immigrants face  —   bad schools, hunger, poverty, a lack of resources  —   but eventually managed to pay my way through college and work now as a musician and teacher, often very white communities. ” . .. When people talk about the current political climate, they speak to me as if I were white, not someone who is terrified of the hatred of Latinx and Hispanic people, someone who walks around with my green card in my wallet, knowing that until I am a citizen (which I morally have a huge problem with) I am not safe. I exist and inhabit these white spaces, but my experience is not white. My experiences comes from being the sole English speaker in my house at age 9 and having to speak for my parents at the bank, at school, in apartments. My experience is from pretending my youngest sister wasn’t part of our family because the apartment complex only allowed 4 people to a 1 bedroom apartment and we couldn’t afford a 2 bedroom one. I come from a place where people speak poorly of Latinx people around me not realizing I am one . .. ” Everyone’s story is different, and as is discussed on the podcast, we’re still learning how to talk about identities that fall outside of our traditional understandings of race in the United States. Luckily, for those who are confused, you’re in good company."
"Updated at 12:30 p. m. ET Thursday, A   is trying to put a story about   a newspaper reporter behind him. Greg Gianforte has apologized in a letter to The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs, saying Jacobs was just ”doing his job” in asking a legitimate question when Gianforte knocked him down. The apology is part of a deal that the future congressman struck with Jacobs. ”Jacobs agreed not to pursue a civil claim in exchange for Gianforte donating $50, 000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists,” Montana Public Radio’s Eric Whitney reports. ”And Jacobs says he won’t object to Gianforte entering a ’no contest’ plea to his criminal misdemeanor assault charge. Gianforte requested and was granted an extension to his original court date. He now must appear by June 20.” Whitney says Gianforte’s legal team did not respond to requests to clarify precisely how the   would plead. On the eve of a May 25 special election for the House in Montana, Gianforte was about to do a television interview when Jacobs asked a question about congressional Republicans’ health care plan when  —   as captured in an audio recording  —   Gianforte physically attacked him. Jacobs is heard on the recording saying the candidate had   him and broken his glasses. A spokesman for Gianforte issued a statement saying Jacobs, brandishing a cellphone, interrupted an interview and badgered the candidate with questions, and that Gianforte reacted by attempting ”to grab the phone that was pushed in his face.” ”Jacobs grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground,” Gianforte spokesman Shane Scanlon said. ”It’s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ.” As we reported, three Fox News reporters who were in the room preparing for the interview with Gianforte confirmed that the candidate ”grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground . .. then began punching the reporter.” Later that evening, the sheriff cited Gianforte for misdemeanor assault. The next day, Gianforte was elected to the House. In his letter of apology to Jacobs, Gianforte says, ”You did not initiate any physical contact with me and I had no right to assault you. I am sorry for what I did.” He says, ”I understand the critical role that journalists and the media play in our society. . .. I acknowledge that the media have an obligation to seek information.” Gianforte says, ”In the hope that some good can come of these events, I am making a $50, 000 contribution to the Committee to Protect Journalists.” Jacobs responded: ”I have accepted Mr. Gianforte’s apology and his willingness to take responsibility for his actions and statements. I hope the constructive resolution of this incident reinforces for all the importance of respecting the freedom of the press and the First Amendment and encourages more civil and thoughtful discourse in our country.”"
"The Cleveland Cavaliers came into the third game of the NBA Finals in a dispiriting but familiar position after two Golden State blowouts. Last year, that led to one of the most stunning comebacks in NBA history, That remained a possibility the entire game Wednesday night  —   until the closing minutes, when the Warriors ripped the Cavaliers’ hearts out. Now Cleveland, which last year became the first team to recover from a   Finals deficit, faces historically long odds again. Golden State closed the game in Cleveland on an   run to win   with perhaps no basket bigger than Kevin Durant’s transition   over LeBron James with 45 seconds left. That gave the Warriors a lead they held the rest of the way. ”I’ve been working on that shot my whole life, and for that one to go in, that’s liberating,” the forward told ESPN’s Doris Goodwin after the game. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said that Durant has played with purpose throughout the series. ”You can tell, he knows this is his moment,” Kerr said. ”He’s been an amazing player in this league for a long time, and I think he senses this is his moment, his team.” Durant finished 31 points and eight rebounds, with guard Klay Thompson adding 30 points in a breakout performance after two weak games to start the series. Point guard Steph Curry scored 26 points and led the team in rebounding with 13. The Warriors’ turnover problems from Game 2 carried over to Wednesday night, when they had 18, which helped the Cavaliers stay in the game. Cleveland was led by James with 39 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists. Point guard Kyrie Irving added 38 points, though he missed all seven of his   shots. Forward Kevin Love went   from the field, including   from three, but did have six steals. Starting center Tristan Thompson went scoreless for the second time in the series. Friday night in Cleveland (9 p. m. ET, ABC) both teams will have an unprecedented goal in mind. For the Warriors, a win will make them the first NBA team to get through the playoffs with four series sweeps,  . For the Cavaliers, a win would be the first step toward becoming the first NBA team to overcome a   deficit in the Finals."
"This week, the podcast and show Invisibilia examines the nature of reality, with a Silicon Valley techie who created apps to randomize his life, a psychologist who trains herself to experience the world like dogs do and a wildlife biologist who thinks bears aren’t dangerous. In San Francisco, the life Max Hawkins lived was arguably perfect. He was employed by Google, surrounded by friends and had his routine nailed down. He woke to artisanal coffee, biked to work along the beautiful Embarcadero waterfront roadway, lunched on Google’s famed free food (”like four different kinds of kale” level) and  —   possibly the true mark of a successful millennial  —   got invited to many happy hours. But something was missing. Sometimes Max would lay awake at night pondering what felt so . .. wrong. ”I just started thinking about these loops that we get into,” he says. ”And about how the structure of your life . .. completely determines what happens in it.” Max’s once beautiful routine suddenly seemed unfulfilling. He felt like he was growing closer to people in his own bubble and becoming isolated from those outside of it. ”There was something . .. that just made me feel trapped,” he says. ”Like I was reading a story that I’d read before or I was playing out someone else’s script.” As any computer developer would do, Max turned to technology to craft his way out  —   a series of randomization applications. Max started small, with an app that integrated Uber. It starts like a regular   app: He would press a button in the app and a car would arrive. But then, a twist: He couldn’t select a   location the app would choose a spot within a range without disclosing it. The only thing the rider had to do was enjoy the journey  —   and hope for a good destination. From there, Max’s applications became more complex. He built an app that used a Facebook search function for public events to find ones near him. Then the app would randomly choose which event Max would attend. At first, he was nervous: What if people wouldn’t let him in? But, as a kind of unassuming white guy, he actually didn’t have this problem. (And Max acknowledges this privilege.) Once Max explained how and why he had arrived at these events, hosts usually welcomed him, often with only a few questions asked. Most of the time, people were taken by the idea of Max expanding his bubble. One night, he got to drink white Russians with some Russians. Another, he attended acroyoga (as in, acrobatics + yoga). A community center pancake breakfast. A networking event for young professionals. The algorithm chose Max attended. Most of these events were something that the nonrandomized Max would never have thought to try. The computer was breaking him out of a life driven by his own preferences. He was suddenly seeing the world in a whole new way, and he really liked it. ”If I went out myself and said, like, ’I want to see the world!’ I have an idea of what I need to see to do that,” Max says. ”But when I’m turning that over to a random algorithm, it has its own different idea. You’re taking on the computer’s view of the world, and because that’s not human, it’s likely to be completely different from your own.” One year, Max decided to use the   generator app to choose where he would celebrate Christmas. It came up with a party at someone’s home in Fresno, Calif. With a pie and a friend, Max drove for three hours and showed up on the doorstep of a retired psychologist, Karena Beasley. Karena was celebrating with a handful of friends and family  —   and now, also two   strangers. ”She was completely not fazed,” Max says, describing the moment they met Karena. ”She didn’t miss a beat. She said, ’Oh, wonderful! We love Facebook, I’m so glad you’re at the party. Welcome.’ And it was like instantly we were friends.” Max says he and his friend stayed at the party for five or six hours. In a video from the night, the group sings carols to guitar and Max looks as if he is right where he belongs. Max lived a randomized life for the better part of two years. In fact, he went global. He created an app that chose the places he would live, travel and eat. When he traveled, he continued using the Facebook events app to find random activities. Would the old Max have chosen to attend a socialists’ rally in Berlin? Or a meetup for bloggers of central Iowa? Max’s randomized travels sent him to Vietnam, Germany, India, United Arab Emirates, Slovenia. He met people whom he would have never encountered inside his own perfect prerandomization bubble. Max’s app accounts for the costs of the   style. ”It knows about my budget,” Max says  —   he can set price parameters. He freelances as a developer on the side. And, if he needs a break, he just turns the app off. The computer isn’t entirely in charge, yet. In fact, these days, Max has silenced the app. He is taking time off and living in Los Angeles (by choice, not randomization) and finalizing his suite of randomization apps. He hopes to introduce them for public use in the upcoming months. He has also created a Facebook group that encourages people to attend strangers’ publicly listed events and offers tips and tricks for doing so. He shares updates on his projects on his website. Maybe what Max is doing can be called art. And maybe it’s a lifestyle that few would want to live. But one thing is for sure: His new bubble is fluid and   capturing new bubbles, other people’s bubbles, and changing how he sees the world. Micaela Rodríguez is the project assistant for Invisibilia. You can follow her @mikayrodr."
"This week the podcast and show Invisibilia examines the nature of reality, with a Silicon Valley techie who created apps to randomize his life a wildlife biologist who thinks bears aren’t dangerous and a psychologist who trains herself to experience the world like dogs do. Noses are the unsung feature of the face, sunscreened or surgically fixed, but rarely exalted. And the sense they enable, smelling, is likewise uncelebrated. Regularly voted the ”sense I’d be most willing to lose” olfaction is largely ignored  —   unless it brings word of something savory or foul nearby. But we are born smellers. After being enveloped while in the womb in the smell of our mother and the foods she ingested, babies emerge macrosmatic,  . They find the mother’s nipple and recognize their parents by scent. Children can identify their siblings and friends by smell. In those earliest sniffings, smelling is all about discovery and navigation. Gradually, though, we forsake our noses. What have you smelled today? Perhaps a   odors, mostly likely food or manufactured fragrance, or maybe one. Or none. Over the same period, your dog has sniffed his way out of sleep, come to examine your smell in the morning, busily investigated the smell leavings from the night before on your walk outside, and may have found his way to his fellow canines by scent. We admire the dog’s olfactory acuity, and we should: dogs have hundreds of millions more olfactory receptors, the cells at the back of the nose that grab odors out of the air, than we do. They have two dedicated, separate routes in their snouts for sniffing and breathing they have elaborate bones in their nose that hold yet more olfactory tissue they even exhale out the side slits of their nostrils in order not to disturb the odors coming in. And as the performance of dogs that do tracking,    and other detection tasks, they can use their highly sensitive olfactory instruments to locate substances that we never even thought had an odor: cancerous cells minute quantities of TNT the   footprint left by a missing person. All is not lost for us humans, though. We have the equipment, and, while not as varied or extensive as the dogs’ it works perfectly well. Last month John McGann, an Associate Professor at Rutgers, published a review in Science last month reminding us that humans do, after all, have an olfactory bulb, and Swedish professor Matthias Laska has extensively demonstrated that in detecting some odors, such as amyl acetate (which smells like banana) we are plenty sensitive. Our experience of the flavor of food is mostly due to smell, experienced through the back of the mouth  —   retronasal olfaction  —   instead of through the nostrils. Knowing all this, I recently embarked on a project culminating in my book Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell, in which I tried to improve my sense of smell by following the dog’s lead, as well as that of some olfactory experts, among them a perfumer, a sommelier, and a pair of animal trackers. Dogs excepted, few of these experts were born noses. I learned that a few simple steps can change your nose from neglected to noticed, as it had for them: Stick your nose in it. Consider a dog’s daily behavior, and contrast it with the frequency with which you see a person with nose smashed against a surface, inhaling calmly and confidently. Simply getting closer to a source and bravely sniffing will bring more odor molecules into our noses. Get over it. In the U. S. at least, our culture is a discourager of smells. The baby who notices an interesting smell? Her parents ignore her. Eventually, she will think of smells in a mostly binary way, as lovely or horrible. By contrast, experts in smelling view odors merely as information, not intrinsically good or bad, just as the images that we see tell us about our world. Treat scents like sights and it becomes easier to smell. Name the source. Once you start bringing your attention to what you smell, you may be at a loss for words: English doesn’t have much of a vocabulary for smells. So olfactory experts create their own jargon. You can adopt theirs, but consider, too, our smell memories: The scent of cedar mixed with tobacco that floods me with memories of my father’s desk a whiff of pencil shavings, zipping me back to learning cursive in my third grade classroom. Find your own language, images or memories to represent the smell, and in so doing it will be easier to invoke the next time you sniff it. Even after spending months learning how to smell like a dog, observing detection dog training, following truffle dogs, and accompanying my own dog train in the sport of ”nose work” I feel certain: I don’t experience the world my dog does. But my own world is changed: It smells. And by smelling intentionally instead of just letting smells happen to me, odors have lost their simplicity. I’m glad to smell my family and friends. I know the smell of the afternoon in my office, warmed by sun, as well as the smell of the advent of spring. Before opening my eyes on awakening this morning, I could smell that the dogs and cat had joined me in bed, but my husband was up. In the next hour, I smelled mown grass and a waft of cloves in the park the mustiness of a raincoat taken out of a back closet when the toast was ready and the beautiful,   smell of the top of my son’s head. I relish it all. Alexandra Horowitz is head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College and author of the recent book Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell. "
"This week the podcast and show Invisibilia examines the nature of reality, with a Silicon Valley techie who created apps to randomize his life a psychologist who trains herself to experience the world like dogs do and a wildlife biologist who thinks bears aren’t dangerous. When you live in northern Minnesota, wildlife is usually no big deal. A giant bull moose casually strolled through our neighborhood in Duluth a couple summers ago, past screaming and   kids at a nearby park. Wolves also have ventured into town, occasionally killing dogs that strayed too far from their owners. Deer are as common as flies, and I only seem to notice them when they jump out in front of my car. But bears are different. I hadn’t seen one in town, while driving or even at the zoo. So in 2012, when Minnesota Public Radio reporter Dan Kraker asked if I wanted to join him as he went out with wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers to find a bear, I jumped at the opportunity. Dan was going to write a story about Rogers’ work putting webcams in bear dens and radio collars on bears. That work is controversial he argues that it’s creating a priceless database on the animals’ behavior. Others say that because he feeds bears and touches them, the bears become accustomed to humans and pose a danger to people who aren’t accustomed to wild bears approaching them. (In 2014, the state Department of Natural Resources rescinded Rogers’ permit to collar bears, citing complaints from local residents.) My excitement at seeking out a black bear in the wild would seem to be at odds with my innate instincts to flee when confronting creatures more than twice my size that have the ability to turn me into lunch meat. But I felt safer tagging along with a researcher who had experience with bears. Rogers, fellow biologist Sue Mansfield, Dan and I all met at Rogers’ Wildlife Research Institute near Ely, Minn. We talked about his work and what he had planned for the day. They fired up their GPS tracking devices, found a lock on June, a pregnant black bear whose radio collar needed a new battery, and we drove off. After 45 minutes, we had to get out and hike through the sparse aspen and birch forest, which had been a former logging site. They lost the signal a number of times, but after about an hour we narrowed in on June’s location until we suddenly saw a black speck moving about 50 yards away. ”That’s her,” Lynn said. My excitement suddenly waned. I felt a lot more cautious than I had been an hour earlier when we were trudging through the woods flicking ticks off our sleeves and swatting mosquitoes away from our faces. Lynn and Sue kept on moving toward the bear like nothing was unusual, until June was standing right in front of us. They took out food and started   her. I won’t lie and say visions of June taking a chunk out of their hands didn’t cross my mind. It just seemed so odd to encounter a bear in the woods and not have bear or human take off running away from each other. But June was so calm with Lynn and Sue as they prodded her with instruments to determine heart rate, temperature and other information. Then Lynn said we could pet her. The idea of petting a wild bear in the woods seemed so surreal to me. I reached out and patted the top of her coarse head. June lifted her eyes and looked at me. In that moment, I wasn’t afraid. Within a few minutes, Lynn and Sue were done and we were on our way out of there. This time we were using the GPS to find the way back to the van. The scene still feels so odd because none of it seemed natural. Me not running from the site of a wild black bear. The black bear not running from me. People petting and feeding the black bear in the woods like it was a dog. But between fear and excitement, curiosity won out. Still, it hasn’t changed how I interact with bears. I keep a distance. Derek Montgomery is a freelance photographer based in Duluth, Minn. His work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Minnesota Public Radio."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. It’s been six years since Fleet Foxes released Helplessness Blues, a sonically and thematically expansive take on what it’s like to feel adrift and anxious in a world that seems to be breaking apart around us. On     Robin Pecknold follows those ideas to their logical conclusion: After a long foray into academia, he’s opted to slow down, settle in and craft an album that takes its time the way he’s taken his. Fleet Foxes’ music has long sought a strange and distinct balance of finely detailed introspection and cavernousness: No matter how audaciously Pecknold’s voice radiates heavenward, and no matter how ambitiously his arrangements sprawl out to form suites, his songs still conjure the sensation of withdrawing into one’s own   head. On   listening can entail following a complex train of thought, as Pecknold meanders and   through many points within lengthy songs that double as medleys  —   most notably in the   ”I Am All That I     Scar” and the nearly   single ”Third Of  .”   is enveloping enough to get lost in, and it doesn’t always offer easy entry points. For every contained and elegantly pretty ballad like ”Kept Woman,” there’s a byzantine engine of ambition like the title track, which closes   with a burst of energy worthy of its title. But the point never gets lost that these songs chronicle the pursuit of contentment, however frustrated  —   and take great care to linger in the beauty that crops up along the way. "
"Steve Earle has always kept at least a foothold in his outlaw country roots, but he’s seldom embraced them as explicitly as he does on So You Wannabe an Outlaw. Over the past couple of years, Earle’s been enmeshed in specialized projects  —   the 2015 bluesman’s holiday Terraplane Blues and 2016’s   duo album with Shawn Colvin. But a tour last year to commemorate the 30th birthday of his landmark debut album, Guitar Town, and some time spent reconnecting with key early influences like Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes and Willie Nelson’s Phases and Stages helped put Earle back in an outlaw state of mind. Back when a    Earle abandoned his native Texas for Nashville, there wasn’t a better place for a rebellious country songwriter’s apprenticeship. Waylon and co. were making their raw, revolutionary  ’70s records, and troubadours like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt (the latter the subject of a 2009 tribute album by Earle) were adding their   brand of songpoetry to the mix. Assimilating all those influences, Earle became the   for a new kind of country maverick in the second half of the ’80s, when alt country didn’t exist and most of the soul was being systematically sucked out of the Music City mainstream. He’s remained true to that renegade spirit ever since, and it was that same iconoclasm that drove him to various   experiments over the years, from blues to bluegrass and beyond. But as Earle puts his early inspirations in tight focus, So You Wannabe an Outlaw is the sound of a man honing in on his wheelhouse and bashing one out of the park. Waylon’s signature growling Telecaster tone is a sonic touchstone for this album, and it’s at the heart of the title track’s cautionary tale, an overt homage to Jennings’ ”Waymore Blues” that includes an appropriately gritty guest vocal from Willie himself. The phaser effect that was a crucial component of Waylon’s sound is summoned up by Earle on the roughneck stomp ”Looking for a Woman,” a     narrative that’s tempting to read as the aftermath of Earle’s 2014 split from wife Allison Moorer. It seems like Earle’s been reading up on his firefighting history for the rugged   ”The Firebreak Line.” Its forest fireman narrative revolves around the heroic deeds of   forest ranger Ed Pulaski during the Great Idaho Fire of 1910. But there’s nothing heroic about the narrator of the ferocious ”Fixin’ to Die.” Fueled by a guitar assault far nastier and more rocking than anything Waylon ever attempted, it follows a cuckold’s journey from fatal retribution to the last mile. But while the first half of the album is heavily   with snarling   the subtler side of Earle’s vision is given more room on the second half. Written and sung with Miranda Lambert, ”This Is How It Ends” is a bittersweet look at the unwinding of a marriage, a topic that both Earle and Lambert know a bit about. ”You Broke My Heart” sidles up to the same subject, but with an       feel. ”Walkin’ In L. A.” taps into a   vibe, too, with its classic Ray   shuffle, sweetly sawing fiddle licks, and a vocal assist from ’60s   hero Johnny Bush (who once played in Price’s band). The album’s closing cut, ”Goodbye Michelangelo,” simultaneously brings to mind beginnings and endings. The mournful acoustic ballad is an elegy for Guy Clark, who passed away in 2016. Besides pointing the way toward new paths in country in the ’70s, Clark was one of the young Earle’s most important mentors in Nashville, and the latter’s sense of loss is palpable in his sorrowful but unsentimental farewell. Fortunately, Clark left behind a country music universe populated by a new breed of outlaws like Lambert, Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton. But for all the eminence of Clark, Van Zandt, et al, the new school owes as much to Earle as anybody. In that sense, it’s doubly significant to hear him saluting the lessons he learned at the feet of the outlaw masters. So You Wannabe an Outlaw is out June 16 on Warner Bros Records."
"The Trump White House had been considering Robert Mueller as a top candidate to lead the FBI before the deputy U. S. attorney general changed course and tapped Mueller to serve as special counsel investigating Russian interference in last year’s election, two sources familiar with the process told NPR. Mueller had gone so far as to meet with Justice Department leaders and White House officials about the FBI job, which opened after President Trump fired Director James Comey on May 9. But that idea went by the wayside after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein instead reached out to Mueller to run the politically sensitive Russia probe, which is examining ties between Russians and Trump campaign aides, the sources said. Mueller has long been considered one of Washington’s most indispensable men. He served in top roles at the Justice Department and became President George W. Bush’s FBI director only days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks devastated the country. President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue to serve for two more years past the director’s normal   term, a move that required Congress to pass special legislation. Congress cited ”the critical need for continuity and stability at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the face of ongoing threats to the United States and leadership transitions at the Federal agencies charged with protecting national security.” That law stated that lawmakers had made a   exception and made it clear that Mueller ”may not serve as Director after September 4, 2013.” The idea that the Trump administration had considered bringing Mueller back to the FBI underscores the difficulty it had in finding a replacement for the fired Comey  —   as well as Mueller’s sterling reputation among both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. And the idea that Rosenstein, who had been criticized for his role in the dismissal of Comey, reached into the White House process to fill the FBI post and invited Mueller to serve as a Justice Department special counsel underscores the heavy pressure Rosenstein was under to find an independent law enforcement leader to take charge of the Russia probe. Rosenstein’s selection won applause from Congress and Justice Department veterans, who said Mueller would do the job without fear or favor. Mueller is slowly filling his special counsel office with an   team. Beyond his law partners Aaron Zebley and James Quarles, who once worked on the Watergate team, Mueller has hired the head of the Justice Department’s fraud section, Andrew Weissmann  —   a sign that the money trail will be critical in getting to the bottom of the Russia affair. He also brought on Jeannie Rhee, a former prosecutor and lawyer in the Obama Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, whose biography describes her background in ”criminal law, criminal procedure, executive privilege, civil rights and national security.” On Friday, the National Law Journal reported that Mueller had enlisted Deputy U. S. Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, one of the most highly respected lawyers in the Justice Department, to work part time on the special counsel team. Dreeben plays a critical role in advising and defending the department’s criminal prosecutions on appeal. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined comment for this report."
"A   confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill this week raised eyebrows when the questioning turned to theology  —   specifically, damnation. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont pressed Russell Vought, nominated by President Trump to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, about his beliefs. ”Do you think that people who are not Christians are condemned?” Sanders repeatedly asked, challenging that belief as Islamophobic. Christian organizations have denounced Sanders’ questioning as amounting to a religious test for public office  —   one that would disqualify millions of people. Polls show about half of all Christians in the U. S. believe that some   can go to heaven. But particularly among evangelicals, the traditional view of damnation remains widespread. A confirmation showdown rooted in college dispute, How did hellfire come up in a confirmation hearing in the first place? In 2015, an evangelical Christian college suspended a tenured professor who said that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. That’s a belief shared by many Christians, but not all Wheaton College said it contradicted the school’s statement of faith. Vought, an alumnus of Wheaton, wrote a blog post last year expressing support for his alma mater. He quoted a theologian who said   have a ”deficient” theology but could have a meaningful relationship with God. Vought disagreed. ”Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology,” Vought wrote. ”They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned. ” Ahead of Vought’s confirmation hearing, that quote was picked up by advocacy groups concerned about whether Vought could serve all Americans fairly. Sanders brought up the passage, again and again, in the hearing. He asked Vought if he thought his statement was Islamophobic. ”Absolutely not, senator,” Vought said, ”Do you believe people in the Muslim religion stand condemned?” Sanders asked. ”What about Jews? Do they stand condemned, too?” ”I’m a Christian,” Vought repeatedly responded. ”I understand you are a Christian,” Sanders said, raising his voice. The senator is Jewish and has said he’s not particularly religious. ”But there are other people who have different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?” ”I believe that all individuals are made in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect regardless of their religious beliefs,” Vought said, while also emphasizing ”the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation.” ”This nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about,” Sanders said, announcing that he’d vote against him. Did focus on a nominee’s faith cross a line? Sanders was criticized almost immediately for focusing on a nominee’s religious principles instead of qualifications or behavior. His office has defended the senator’s questions. ”The question at hand is not about Mr. Vought’s freedom to hold certain religious beliefs,” a spokesman for Sanders said. The spokesman said Vought’s post expressed his views in an ”inflammatory way” and said Sanders is concerned if Vought can ”carry out the duties of his office in a way that treats all Americans equally.” Many news outlets  —   religious, conservative and mainstream  —   highlighted the exchange as a possible application of a religious test, which is prohibited under the Constitution. U. S. News  World Report spoke to legal experts who say Sanders is on solid legal ground. ”Senators can vote against nominees for any reason or no reason at all,” one law professor told the magazine. ”It may be atrocious, but it’s not unconstitutional,” another said, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics  Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, called Sanders’ comments ”breathtakingly audacious and shockingly ignorant,” and deeply troubling even if they are legal. ”This is not some arcane or obscure private opinion being held by this one individual,” Moore told NPR. ”The language that Sen. Sanders, finds so disturbing  —   ’stands condemned’  —   is language right out of the New Testament.” Moore says there’s nothing hostile about Vought’s comments. ”In Christian theology, no one is righteous before God,” he said. ”[Evangelical] Christians don’t believe that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. Christians believe that all of humanity is fallen.” And Moore argues there’s a fundamental misunderstanding at play: Secular people often assume that beliefs are ”just ideas and opinions” that can shift. But for religious people, he says, ”we don’t believe that we are constructing our faith. We believe that it’s been handed to us by God.” A question of belief, or a question of behavior? Scott Simpson, public advocacy director for Muslim Advocates, defended Sanders’ questions and said it’s important to keep Vought’s comments in context  —   both his original post and the broader political climate. ”This isn’t some personal expression of how he feels in his heart about theology,” Simpson said. ”This is the type of speech that was being used against somebody” to argue a professor should lose her job. He also says the Trump administration has a ”pattern of appointments” of people with   views and rhetoric. ”We’re very sensitive to the concept of religious liberty, because Muslims’ religious liberty is under attack every day,” Simpson said. ”But we’re talking about something very specific. . .. When a nominee calls the faith of millions of Americans deficient, that is something that should be questioned. That is what hearings are for.” Meanwhile, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said the belief that vast swaths of people are damned might, in fact, be inherently problematic for certain government positions. ”If [someone] believe these people are to be condemned . .. is that the person who ought to be making budgetary decisions for the country as a whole?” asked Zogby, who is a Maronite Catholic. ”Can you be a fair adjudicator of decisions?” he asked.  Hussein Rashid, founder of the religious literacy consultancy Islamicate L3C, doesn’t agree that the belief itself is a problem. ”I think we have to accept that there are theologies that are what I would call exclusionary, that only certain people will go to heaven and certain people will go to hell. They are not inherently Islamophobic or ” Rashid said. ”It’s when it turns into action that we start getting worried. ” He, like Moore, emphasized that these beliefs are not particularly unusual. ”Exclusionary theologies are far more prevalent than I think we realize,” Rashid said, noting many Americans’ reticence to talk about religion in public. A substantial number of Christians believe Catholics are going to hell, he noted. Belief in hell is widespread, but views differ on who is damned, Different Christian sects, and individuals, have varying interpretations of damnation. The traditionalist view is that eternal suffering awaits all who do not accept Christ on the other end of the spectrum is the universalist belief that everyone will be saved. And then there are disagreements about what hell actually is. In short, it’s hard to pin down exactly how many Americans believe   are going to hell  —   but polling data suggests a strong minority. The Pew Research Center recently found that nearly 60 percent of Americans surveyed believe in hell. And among Christians, 48 percent of Protestants and 56 percent of evangelicals believe Christianity is the only path to eternal life. (Catholics and mainline Protestants were far more likely to believe that other faiths can get into heaven.) A LifeWay Research survey, conducted online with a much smaller sample, found that 40 percent of Americans believe those who do not accept Jesus are bound for hell. But it’s complicated: Some of those people appear to also believe other faiths can attain salvation. At any rate, Vought’s belief is not a fringe view. ”Most conservative evangelical churches believe that faith in Christ is necessarily for salvation,” Moore says. And it’s not unique to evangelicalism or Christianity. The Quran is quite clear that there is a hell, says Mohammad Hassan Khalil, a professor of religious studies at Michigan State University and author of Islam and the Fate of Others. The general view is that those who reject the message of Muhammad are damned, he says, but just like in Christianity, there’s a vast spectrum of beliefs. You’ll see ”a popular preacher who has many YouTube hits saying that all   go to hell,” he says, and at the same time, ”you’ll get other people who say there are multiple paths to heaven.” Khalil says belief in hell does not have a   implication for behavior on Earth. ”If I believe all   go to hell . .. it can lead me to look down upon them, see them as just fuel for hell, and not really take them too seriously. Or I could be motivated to want to save them,” he says, ”and be unusually kind and nice to them in the hopes that they will convert.” NPR asked Sanders’ office if the senator would have challenged a devout Muslim who believed   are condemned to hell, in the same way he challenged Vought. Sanders’ spokesman said yes. Moore of the Southern Baptist Conference says Sanders confronting a Muslim would be equally problematic. ”We’ve been working for religious freedom for everyone,” said Moore, who has spoken up in defense of mosques. Rejecting a nominee for their religious doctrine is ”a troubling trend, and if this were the direction that American public officials were to go this would be very dangerous for American democracy,” he said. ”We’ve seen what happens when the state sets itself up as a theological referee.”"
"NPR journalists David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna died a year ago this week, ambushed on a remote road in southern Afghanistan while on a reporting assignment traveling with the Afghan National Army. Since their deaths, NPR has been investigating what happened, and today we are sharing new information about what we learned. It’s a very different story from what we originally understood. The two men were not the random victims of bad timing in a dangerous place, as initial reports indicated. Rather, the journalists’ convoy was specifically targeted by attackers who had been tipped off to the presence of Americans in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Gilkey, an experienced photojournalist, and Tamanna, an Afghan reporter NPR hired to work with him, were sitting together in a Humvee when they were attacked. ”After the loss of our colleagues, we wanted to be sure we understood what really happened on the road that day,” said Michael Oreskes, senior vice president of news and editorial director at NPR. ”So we kept reporting.” In addition to discovering that the attackers had been told about the convoy Tamanna and Gilkey were riding in, the continuing reporting revealed new, disturbing details about how exactly the two journalists were killed. Tamanna did not die from a    attack, as originally reported. He was shot. This fact was suspected by other NPR journalists who saw his body shortly after the attack and is now confirmed by the Afghan Ministry of Defense. And unlike Gilkey, Tamanna did not suffer any burns, a fact that further casts doubt on the original story of a sudden, random attack by   explosives. New reporting confirmed by Afghan officials indicates that Gilkey died inside the vehicle, and Tamanna died outside. Gilkey died of severe burns to his upper body. It is unclear whether his vehicle was struck by an RPG. Aside from the burns, he did not have any injuries that would indicate close proximity to a blast. The NPR journalists had come to Helmand province that day to assess the effectiveness of the Afghan National Army, which had taken over responsibility for security of southern Afghanistan from American forces. For Gilkey, a   war photographer who had been to combat zones and disasters around the world, this was familiar territory. He had been to Afghanistan nearly every year since the American involvement began there in 2001. Same for correspondent Tom Bowman, a veteran Pentagon reporter who has deployed multiple times to Afghanistan and Iraq, typically with American troops. He and Gilkey had been on assignment together at least eight or 10 times  —   enough that Bowman couldn’t remember the exact number. With them was Monika Evstatieva, a veteran producer for the NPR program All Things Considered. Unlike her two American colleagues, she was making her first trip to Afghanistan  —   or any combat zone. The fourth member of the team was Afghanistan native Tamanna. A lawyer by training, he chose to become a journalist and had worked freelance for a number of years for news organizations from around the world. He left his wife and children behind in Kabul when NPR came to Afghanistan, and he served as the group’s interpreter and local guide. They all called Tamanna by his nickname, ”Zabi”  —   Gilkey liked to tease him by calling him ”  .” They had worked together with Bowman the year before, and this time, after three weeks touring the Afghan countryside, the team of four had all grown close. Friends. They went to Helmand province toward the end of their trip, first touring military bases and then arriving at the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. The group met with the governor of Helmand and interviewed the top Afghan general in the region, Mowein Faqir. The general declared that his security operation in Marjah was successful, and he invited the journalists to see for themselves by driving in a convoy of Afghan soldiers to the town, about 20 miles away. Faqir assured the group that his troops had fought off Taliban forces on the road to Marjah three days earlier. The road, he said, was open. Three Humvees formed the convoy to Marjah. Bowman and Evstatieva got into the first one, along with a   driver, a   Afghan general and a third soldier manning the vehicle’s   machine gun. Gilkey and Tamanna rode in the second Humvee, followed by a group of Afghan soldiers in the third. Helmand is flat, dusty and hot  —   even hotter from inside a sealed military vehicle whose windows don’t open. Bowman and Evstatieva settled in and watched the countryside roll past through the thick front windows, catching glimpses of Afghan soldiers walking along the road or resting in the scarce shade under their parked vehicles. The violence was subtle at first. A few thuds and pops. Bowman turned to Evstatieva and said, ”Everything is going to be OK.” ”I really meant it,” Bowman recalled. ”We have been shot at with mortars on previous trips. This is going to sound nuts, but this really did not sound all that dangerous.” Evstatieva, caught in her first firefight, had a different reaction. ”I am horrified,” she said. As a radio producer, Evstatieva was doing what she always does on assignment  —   recording audio of what was going on. She sat in the back of the Humvee, but her view was blocked by the vehicle’s thick, curtained side windows. With a microphone in her hand, the pops and pings of each bullet or explosion amplified the sounds of danger in her headphones. She was scared. The Afghans, meanwhile, were frantic. The driver stopped, and a soldier outside motioned for Bowman to get out of the vehicle. He did, and looked back to see the roadway cluttered with soldiers shooting off toward the roadside to his left. He couldn’t see the other Humvees in the convoy, nor could he tell what  —   or whom  —   the Afghans were shooting at. Soon, the Afghans were screaming at each other. ”Give your guests to me  —   I will keep them safe,” the soldier said. ”Get the journalists back in! Close the door!” the general screamed back. Bowman jumped back into the Humvee, and with the sounds of bullets and explosions behind them, the group raced off toward a small base nearby. Through the front windshield, Bowman could see them driving so close to the shooting soldiers that he feared they would shoot his vehicle by mistake. After just a few minutes, the Humvee reached safety when they pulled through the gate at a nearby Afghan military camp. Bowman and Evstatieva got out. The Afghans had tried contacting the rest of the convoy over their radios, but no one answered. Bowman and Evstatieva settled in to wait. Evstatieva also called the closest American base. She had been in touch with American troops throughout the trip to Afghanistan, and they had offered to watch the group’s convoy to Marjah with a surveillance drone. The U. S. military officials she spoke with told her they didn’t have any details about what had happened but said they saw something: a Humvee on fire. Afghans at the base didn’t seem to know what was happening. They gave the journalists nuts and raisins to eat, then lamb and rice. Slowly, vehicles began to arrive at the base, carrying Afghan soldiers who were wounded from the firefight. Bowman and Evstatieva rushed to them each time, hoping to find their colleagues. The few people who spoke any English seemed to offer words of encouragement, saying things were OK, or suggesting their friends had a flat tire or were at another camp. The journalists didn’t know what to think. Almost three hours passed. Then, a truck arrived with two bodies in the back, both of them clearly dead. ”Taliban?” Bowman asked the Afghans. ”No Taliban,” was the response. ”Zabihullah.” Zabihullah. Tamanna’s first name. Bowman and Evstatieva were in disbelief. With Afghans crowded around the truck it was difficult to see, so Bowman and Evstatieva pressed in. ”At first I cannot tell, but then I see Zabi’s shoes,” Evstatieva said. ”He bought those shoes, those gray sneakers, just a day before we left for Helmand. They still looked so shiny.” Zabi was dead. Evstatieva cried and sat down she realized that she had forgotten about her recorder, and it was still on. Her sobs and wails are the last sounds on the recording before she clicks it off. Bowman came over. ”Just know that David is probably dead too,” he said. She nodded, and the two sat on a bench and kept waiting, together. Gilkey arrived 45 minutes later, laid down alone in the back of a Humvee. Bowman got up to look and quickly recognized Gilkey’s checkered shirt. He could tell immediately he was dead. ”That’s all I remember,” Bowman said. ”I was numb, shocked. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.” He went back to sit with Evstatieva. ”I am so sorry you have to go through all of this,” he told her. ”It’s not your fault,” she said. It was a Sunday afternoon. Helmand province is 8   hours ahead of the U. S. East Coast, so by the time the news made it home it was Sunday afternoon there, too. Early accounts, based on information from the Afghan National Army, said Gilkey and Tamanna were killed by the Taliban, when their Humvee was hit by a   grenade. But once Bowman and Evstatieva had gotten over the initial shock, they started to think: That doesn’t make sense. How could they both have died the same way, when their bodies looked so different? The night of the attack, they had flown out of Helmand on an Afghan military helicopter and later took an American Chinook to Kandahar Airfield. During the   flight aboard the Afghan helicopter, Bowman and Evstatieva had gotten a long look at their colleagues. Gilkey clearly suffered serious burns to the upper half of his body, but Tamanna looked like he was asleep. The only wound they could see was a small cut on his belly. Months later, the report of an autopsy on Gilkey conducted by military doctors in the United States added to the confusion. It noted the obvious burns but didn’t find any other injuries except smoke inhalation, and it determined that the burns killed him. The journalists checked with military doctors, who had years of experience in Afghanistan dealing with combat trauma. They said one can never predict what combat injuries will look like. But with a   grenade, you would often see serious tissue or organ damage from a blast. Such wounds were not present. Bowman and Evstatieva decided to confront the Afghan Ministry of Defense. Back in the United States by this time, they found reporting complicated by language and time differences. But they finally arranged a call with Baryalai Helali, a Defense Ministry spokesman, and this time got a different story: Tamanna wasn’t killed by an RPG. He was shot, outside the vehicle. Helali had no explanation for how Tamanna got out of a Humvee, without any apparent injuries, if it had been attacked by an RPG with enough force to kill the person sitting next to him. Meanwhile, an American military official reached out to NPR to inform us that U. S. forces had killed the Taliban leader who they believed had launched the strike against them. His name, the official said, was Mullah Ismail. Sources in Afghanistan confirmed to NPR that Mullah Ismail had been killed and even provided a picture of the dead Taliban leader. Still, a lot of things didn’t seem right to Bowman and Evstatieva. For one, during their trip from Lashkar Gah to Marjah, they passed scores of Afghan soldiers along the road. The Taliban could have attacked any group of soldiers that day but didn’t strike until the NPR convoy was on the road. Why? Sources in Afghanistan confirmed their suspicion. They said the Taliban fighters knew they were coming  —   were very happy about it, one source said  —   because they had been tipped off by someone at the governor’s palace that morning. ”They knew exactly when we would be on that road,” Bowman said. ”It almost seems obvious now. It was broad daylight and the Taliban usually don’t attack in midday. There were lots of other soldiers on the road  —   standing outside their armored vehicles  —   resting under the vehicles. The Taliban could have hit at any time. They only started shooting when we arrived.” Bowman called the Taliban to ask. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that Taliban forces carried out the attack but said the group had information indicating that American military troops were in the convoy, not journalists. ”This attack was not meant to target journalists, but [an] American caravan and American soldiers,” Mujahid said, adding, ”If these journalists had informed us . .. in advance about their visit to our area, we would have given them a safe route.” Mujahid disputed the Americans’ claim to have killed Mullah Ismail and said the Taliban leader is still alive. And he added another detail that didn’t make sense: He said the Taliban used only mortars and rockets in the attack, not small arms like rifles or pistols. NPR journalists didn’t know whom to believe. But they were certain of this: The early story about a random RPG attack didn’t add up. There may be some more answers yet to come. Gilkey and Tamanna’s Humvee is said to still be somewhere in Helmand, and it might offer some clues. Also, Gilkey was carrying two cameras when he died, one of which contained pictures taken earlier that day. The other was melted and its memory card partially disintegrated. NPR is trying to work with forensic investigators to see whether any photos of the convoy can be recovered from the card, which might offer more clues. Officials at the FBI  —   which investigates the deaths of Americans overseas  —   say they are still looking into Gilkey’s death, but wouldn’t comment. The Afghan National Directorate of Security, akin to the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, is also investigating. One answer has become apparent  —   to the question that took Gilkey, Tamanna, Bowman and Evstatieva to Helmand province in the first place: Have Afghan authorities brought security and stability to a country wracked by decades of war? The answer is no. The Taliban says it is on the move in Helmand, and earlier this year, American Marines returned to the district in hopes of restoring order. They might be working with the same people in Lashkar Gah who tipped off the Taliban that Americans were in the convoy carrying NPR journalists. While the lack of clarity about precisely what happened to Gilkey and Tamanna seems to underscore the continued instability in Afghanistan, Bowman and Evstatieva said they took some satisfaction in at least getting closer to the whole truth. And they plan to keep reporting. ”We’re not going to let this drop,” Bowman said. ”We not only owe it to David and Zabi, but to the Marines and soldiers who still deploy there, who will continue going into harm’s way.” This week, NPR dedicated a memorial to the journalists at its Washington headquarters, including a display with one of Gilkey’s cameras from Afghanistan and photographs of the journalists. Evstatieva and Tamanna’s wife, Fauzia, have become close friends. ”We miss Zabi and David every day,” Evstatieva said. NPR’s Nicole Beemsterboer produced the radio story and audio components of this digital story."
"President Trump said Friday he would be willing to testify under oath about his interactions with former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired in May. The president said Comey’s testimony on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee mostly vindicated his previous claims about their interactions. ”Frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said  —   and some of the things that he said just weren’t true,” Trump said in his first   remarks following Comey’s testimony. Trump told reporters during a joint press conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis that he never asked Comey for a loyalty pledge or urged him to scuttle an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The president said he would be willing to tell that to the newly appointed special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert Mueller. Asked if he would speak to the issue under oath, Trump said: ”100 percent.” Earlier in his press conference, Trump said he was ”happy” with parts of Comey’s testimony, including that the former FBI director said he had assured the president he wasn’t personally under investigation regarding the Russian meddling in the election and possible collusion by Trump campaign aides. ”No collusion. No obstruction. He’s a leaker,” Trump said of Comey. ”But we want to get back to running our great country.” Comey testified he had nine    conversations with Trump  —   and detailed each in memos just after they met for fear that the president would subsequently lie about their interactions. While Comey said Trump had lied about him, Trump didn’t use that exact terminology in return on Friday. Still, he maintained he had never asked Comey for a pledge of allegiance. ”Who would do that?” Trump asked, though he went on to say such a request wouldn’t have been inappropriate. Trump continued to be coy about the possibility of there being recordings of his conversations with Comey, which he has suggested previously. During Comey’s testimony, the former FBI director said, ”Lordy, I hope there are tapes!” arguing that such recordings would back up his version of events. ”I’ll tell you about it over a very short period of time,” Trump told reporters. ”I’m not hinting at anything,” Trump said, but then he teased, ”You’ll be very disappointed.”"
"President Trump has broken the silence he maintained during former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony Thursday, saying on Twitter that he was vindicated in the hearing that explored Russian meddling in the U. S. election, its ties to Trump’s security adviser, and Trump’s dealings with Comey. ”Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication. ..and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” the president tweeted early Friday morning. In referring to Comey, Trump was citing the former FBI director’s acknowledgment that he had asked a friend to leak his memos about his conversations with the president. Comey told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had hoped to prod the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation, which occurred last month. By referring to ”total and complete vindication,” the president was likely thinking of Comey’s confirmation Thursday that, as NPR’s Jessica Taylor reports, ”there was no counterintelligence nor criminal investigation of Trump individually and that the president was not personally under investigation.” Testifying one month after Trump fired him, Comey said he lost his job because of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U. S. election. He also said that any other explanations that have come from the White House were ”lies, plain and simple,” as Jessica reports. Comey described how he had documented his conversations with Trump, in which he said the president asked for his ”loyalty” and for him to end the inquiry into Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned in February over discrepancies in his explanations for contacts with Russia’s ambassador. The former FBI chief told senators that he created those records because he ”was honestly concerned [Trump] might lie” about what was said in the encounters, in which the president had ensured the two of them would be alone. After Comey delivered his   testimony, Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, held a news conference in which he sought to refute several of Comey’s assertions. Stating that Trump had never tried to pressure Comey into ending the probe into Flynn’s behavior, Kasowitz added, ”The president also never told Mr. Comey, ’I need loyalty, I expect loyalty’ in form or substance.” Trump’s attorney also criticized Comey’s leaking of details about his talk with Trump, calling it an ”unauthorized disclosure of privileged information.” Kasowitz accused Comey of misleading senators about the timing of his leak  —   Comey said he did it only after being alarmed by a tweet in which the president said the fired FBI boss ”better hope that there are no ’tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Kasowitz declared that ”the public record reveals that The New York Times was quoting from these memos” before Trump’s tweet about tapes. But NPR’s Scott Horsley reports that ”in fact, Comey’s timeline appears to be correct.”"
"Updated at 11:05 a. m. ET, Ordinary people often get into legal trouble in response to desperate circumstances. Politicians, however, seem to make the worst trouble for themselves when they are riding high and carrying all before them. Thus the most famous political scandals of U. S. history have happened not when presidents or members of Congress had their backs to the wall but when their sails were filled with a favorable wind. In earlier generations we have seen presidents from Warren Harding in the 1920s to Richard Nixon in the 1970s, Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and Bill Clinton in the 1990s beset by scandal  —   all at the apex of their political clout and acclaim. What these cases have in common is the sense that these presidents (and the people around them) perceived in their success a special dispensation. They regarded themselves as above it all, exempt from the rules. A familiar scenario returns to Washington, We are reminded of this now because echoes of the past have been audible in the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday. Comey sketched the scope of the alleged Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election in the U. S. He also said he had been fired by President Trump over his handling of the FBI investigation of that interference and possible connections to the Russians among the Trump campaign’s inner circle. With the appointment of Comey’s FBI predecessor, Robert Mueller, as a special counsel to investigate the Russian interference and its relation to Trump World, we are entering a new phase of this story. Remarkably, it appears the Trump White House continues to regard it all as political badinage more than an actual legal exposure with enormous implications. And in that sense, they share an attitude with other administrations that have suffered from a myopia about their own vulnerability  —   and suffered for it as well. The stage is set, Late last year, having won a presidential election few expected them to win, Trump and Company had the political world at their feet. Republicans as divergent as Mitt Romney and Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan were willing to forget their past rivalry, criticism and opposition to be part of a new future  —   in service to the new leader of the party and the nation. But in this sunburst of success, the transition team around the then   seems to have been blind to what was looming on the horizon  —   a threat born of the campaign’s own relationships with elements of the Russian government. In his testimony this week, Comey spoke of cyberattacks on ”perhaps more than a thousand” different entities and agencies in and out of government. He called it an effort to tell Americans ”what to think and what to fight about,” and ”a big deal.” But the response of Trump and his entourage has been all along to cast doubt on the existence of the attacks, doubt on the Russian role and doubt on the motives of those who, like Comey, saw something nefarious afoot. It was, said the president, all an excuse for the disappointing showing by the Democrats at the ballot box, a line he has repeated even into the spring. Mueller is now beginning his investigation with a heavyweight staff and a meaningful mandate. Committees in Congress will also continue taking testimony. Much of all this will take place in private. Time will pass before we know the full extent of their findings. But this much is clear: something the Trump team might have dealt with expeditiously as recently as six months ago has grown to cast a shadow on the White House and the prospects for the president’s agenda. In that sense, the early stumbles of the new administration remind us of previous rough patches for predecessors. Other administrations also missed the chance to cut their losses at the first sign of scandal, and they did so in part because trouble struck when they were at a moment of maximum power and expectation. On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said President Trump’s only problem was ”he’s new at this.” Trump, 70, has been called many things over the years, but rarely ”naïve.” It is more likely the   of late 2016 and early 2017 considered himself to be bulletproof. Lessons to be learned, What we have seen in the past is that the Oval Office can quickly become a   version of Olympus from which policy decisions and appointments are handed down. This attitude takes hold during the first transition into office and often reaches an apogee after  . (If that is true, it is a challenge to imagine what a second Trump transition period might look like.) In the hubris of the moment, having vanquished the world of electoral politics, a new or   administration is fully confident of its mandate, and equally full of itself. In such a moment, when that first bad story comes down the pike, the first impulse in the White House is to will it away or eradicate it by any means necessary. And in their resolve to rid themselves of the problem in this way, they make mistakes that less cocksure people would be less likely to make. To wit: denying the story or the problem even exists, moving to quash all evidence to the contrary and to remove all those who disagree (and, as a rule, to denounce the media). What may begin as a relatively minor matter of limited and temporal consequence morphs into a disaster. Underlings and intermediaries lose their jobs and sometimes go to jail. And once in a while, the destruction even reaches the top of the pyramid. The paramount example is, of course, Watergate, which ultimately forced Nixon to resign. It began even as Nixon was sweeping to a   landslide   in 1972. When the burglars were arrested at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, the question for those who sent them became whether to pay hush money. Then the sources of the money had to be hidden, and so on. Lies were piled upon lies. It all led back to the president himself, and there turned out to be incriminating conversations preserved on tape. In the end, Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment. After their own   Reagan and Clinton both saw their second terms in office nearly derailed by scandals that could have been smothered far sooner with a bit of foresight and the proper resolve. In Reagan’s case it was an effort to free hostages held by a terrorist group in Lebanon by selling arms to their allies in Iran and then using the proceeds to finance   insurgents in Central America. Known as the   scandal, it was rather legalistic and devolved to a partisan hearing on Capitol Hill that allowed for dramatic defenses by some of the accused. The public was interested, some were exercised, but Reagan himself was  . No one went to jail but one fellow was caught in the backwash and found to have evaded some taxes. The public was also rather ambivalent about the main scandal of the Clinton years, his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and subsequent perjury in denying it. The affair came to light after Clinton’s surprisingly easy  . Clinton had been unwilling to settle a sexual harrassment lawsuit in the   filed by an Arkansas woman named Paula Jones and that suit became the platform on which Lewinsky was introduced to the nation. The result was impeachment and a grinding, debilitating trial in the Senate, which failed to result in even a majority for conviction, let alone the required  . The illusion of invincibility blinded these presidents and their inner circles in the critical moments when an infection was becoming a systemic threat to life. In those moments, they reacted with arrogance to what they saw as an embarrassment or a distraction with political implications. They made a fire in a garage into a   catastrophe that shattered careers, sent officials to jail and turned the trajectory of a presidency to the worse. It is not a history anyone wants to see repeated."
"Updated at 7:28 p. m. ET, Former FBI director James Comey may have done more damage to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday than even President Trump, whom Comey publicly accused of waving him off part of the Russia investigation. Comey said he expected Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation weeks before he did because of reasons that are classified. That does not comport with Sessions rationale when he announced his recusal in early March. Sessions has been the subject of scrutiny over his failure to disclose meetings with Russian ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 campaign, which Sessions has defended as routine  —   part of his duties as a U. S. senator. In his opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, released on Wednesday, Comey detailed a private conversation with President Trump in the Oval Office shortly after National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was forced to resign, in which Comey recalls the president saying, ”I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” This has raised questions as to why Comey didn’t tell others, including the attorney general. Comey said in his opening statement that his leadership team at the FBI agreed not to share this with Sessions for the following reason: ”We concluded it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in   investigations.” Comey also pointed out that they were right  —   Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation less than two weeks later. The question is why Sessions recused himself. Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee took advantage of Comey’s mention of this in his opening statement to raise such questions about Sessions’ recusal on Thursday. ”What was it about the attorney general’s interactions with the Russians or his behavior with regard to the investigation that would have led the entire leadership of the FBI to make this decision?” asked Sen. Ron Wyden,  . Comey responded, ”He was very close to and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons. We also were aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a   investigation problematic.” The prospect of facts that would be problematic for Sessions seems to vary for the reason Sessions himself gave when he recused himself from the Russia probe on March 2. ”I should not be involved in investigating a campaign I had a role in,” Sessions said. His rationale was that his role as a   surrogate and advisor for the Trump campaign made it inappropriate for him to be involved in an investigation of that same campaign, a rationale which received little pushback, except reportedly from the president himself. In fact, Sessions’ recusal came after he said in his confirmation hearing that he ”did not have communications with the Russians.” Sessions had met with Kislyak twice during 2016, though Sessions said his misstatement was a result of the fact that he met with Kislyak in his role as a senator involved in foreign policy. ”I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions said in March. The Department of Justice put out a statement Thursday evening, asserting that Sessions’ ”participation in President Trump’s campaign” was the sole reason for his recusal. ”Shortly after being sworn in, Attorney General Sessions began consulting with career Department of Justice ethics officials to determine whether he should recuse himself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States,” the statement said. Democrats pounced on Thursday after hearing Comey’s suggestive language about ”facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting.” ”The hearing raised serious questions about Attorney General Sessions that he and the Justice Department must answer immediately,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech shortly after the hearing with Comey ended. ”The Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and special counsel Mueller ought to get to the bottom of this matter.” The White House stood behind Sessions. Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked if Trump has confidence in his attorney general, a question press secretary Sean Spicer would not answer earlier in the week. ”Absolutely, the president has confidence in all of his cabinet and if he didn’t, they wouldn’t be here,” Sanders said on Thursday. Sessions will soon face questions from senators. He is scheduled to testify on Tuesday in a committee hearing about the 2018 budget for the Department of Justice  —   but it’s a pretty sure bet that Russia will come up."
"Authorities in Mozambique say bald men are being killed, allegedly because of the belief that their heads contain gold. So far five bald men have been killed, all in central Mozambique: two in May in Milange district close to the border with Malawi and three this month in the district of Morrumbala. Bald men across the country are afraid of exposing their scalps. Some stay indoors. Others hide their baldness with caps. During his regular press briefing this week in Maputo, Inacio Dina, spokesman for Mozambique’s general police command, said the phenomenon was new to the country. He threatened to take tough measures against those involved. ”Our preliminary conclusion indicates that the phenomenon is due to cultural beliefs,” he stated. ”We are currently investigating the case to find out more and to understand the dimension of the problem. The phenomenon can lead bald people to be pursued and killed. This is a serious homicide crime. Our current interest is to catch and hold all those involved responsible.” Dina accused traditional healers of conniving with the murderers of bald people because of the cultural belief that their heads contain gold. It is also possible that the goal is to obtain body parts to use in rituals aimed at bringing wealth  —   the reason that albinos have been targeted for their body parts in some countries. Jose Tembe is a Radio Mozambique journalist and a BBC correspondent in Maputo."
"Standing outside 10 Downing St. today, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May tried to put a brave face on the disastrous results of Thursday’s vote. After calling a snap election in April in anticipation of a landslide, she ended up with an electoral train wreck, in which her Conservative Party actually lost its parliamentary majority. It now holds 318 seats. Clinging to power, May said the Tories would form a minority government with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which won 10 seats. ”What the country needs more than ever is certainty,” she said. Now, though, the political landscape of the United Kingdom and the country’s path toward leaving the European Union seem more unclear than ever. Front and center among many questions facing May’s new government is the matter of Brexit. Negotiations with the EU are scheduled to begin later this month. ”The irony of this is that Theresa May is calling this a certainty government and talking about how it’s delivering certainty,” said Brian Klaas, a fellow in comparative politics at the London School of Economics. ”I think the only thing that political commentators can agree on is that we have uncertainty right now and nobody has any clue what shape this negotiation is going to take.” May has been pressing for a   ”hard” Brexit, which would include leaving the EU’s massive collective market and no longer allowing EU citizens to come and live and work freely in the United Kingdom. Some members of Parliament in May’s Tory party and the rival Labour Party favor a softer Brexit, in which the U. K. might maintain a much closer relationship with the EU. Analysts say May’s electoral debacle could reopen what had seemed largely a closed debate  —   both with   members of Parliament trying to take advantage of the prime minister’s weakness and   government ministers threatening her if she dares water down a Brexit deal. ”Everybody is positioning themselves,” said Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at Kings College London. ”Remember, both parties are divided.” It’s hard to predict how they’ll react, he says. For instance, Menon said, some   Conservative legislators may wait until the Brexit legislative program comes to Parliament to start attacking it. ”I think the Conservative party as a whole is reluctant to get rid of Theresa May now because it would mean a leadership election, it would mean stalling on Brexit talks,” Menon said. ”But at the same time, she’s very, very weak. So whether they can hold a weak leader in place  —   tactically, as it were  —   until they are ready to move, I don’t know.” In Brussels, home of the EU, there was a mix of puzzlement, confusion and frustration over the chaos of British politics. Donald Tusk, president of the European Commission, urged the May government to get on with negotiations, noting that the U. K. has less than two years to extricate itself from the EU  —   which is considered a gargantuan task. ”We don’t know when Brexit talks start,” Tusk tweeted. But ”we know when they must end. Do your best to avoid a ’no deal’ as result of ’no negotiations. ’” Given May’s diminished state, many in the European Union are wondering how long she will be leading the country and  —   by extension  —   guiding the Brexit negotiations. ”How do you negotiate when you know that the position of the partner that you’re negotiating with is extremely weak?” says Klaas of the London School of Economics. Some in Brussels may see this as an opportunity to drive a hard deal and dictate terms, Klass believes, while others may worry a weak prime minister won’t be able to get parliamentary approval for a tough deal. If all this uncertainty weren’t enough, the Labour Party, which won 261 seats in the election, has its own divisions to deal with. And the relationship between the Conservatives and its minority government partner, the Democratic Unionist Party, also remains unclear. The DUP is skeptical of Europe and is  . But it is also deeply worried that splitting from the EU will mean a return to a hard border across Ireland that could create economic and even political problems. With the DUP providing the Conservatives a narrow, but crucial, majority in Parliament, it could have an outsized influence. At a press conference today, DUP leader Arlene Foster was vague about a working relationship with May’s Conservatives. ”The prime minister has spoken with me this morning,” Foster said. ”We will enter discussions with the Conservatives to explore how it may be possible to bring stability to our nation at this time of great challenge.”"
"Updated at 10 a. m. ET, After receiving formal permission from the queen, U. K. Prime Minister Theresa May said Friday that she will forge a government after a   gamble that cost her Conservative Party its parliamentary majority. ”I will now form a government,” May said in front of No. 10 Downing St. moments after speaking with Queen Elizabeth II, ”a government that can provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time for our country.” Noting the ”crucial Brexit talks that begin in just 10 days,” May said the new government will work to fulfill the will of U. K. voters who decided last year to leave the European Union. May also promised that her government will ”keep our nation safe and secure,” after recent attacks in London and Manchester, by ”cracking down on the ideology of Islamist extremism and all those who support it and giving the police and the authorities the powers they need to keep our country safe.” In the new government, May plans to ally with the small Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland. The U. K. is facing a hung Parliament and May has resisted calls to resign, after her Tories lost 12 seats and the rival Labour Party picked up 29. One electoral district is still not final. May had called for Thursday’s snap election just seven weeks ago, rather than waiting until the next scheduled national election in 2020. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said May should resign. ”The prime minister called the election because she wanted a mandate,” Corbyn said. ”Well the mandate she’s got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes, lost support and lost confidence. I would’ve thought that’s enough to go, actually. And make way for a government that will be truly representative of all of the people of this country.” May took a gamble in April by calling for the snap election. She had hoped to boost the Conservatives’ majority in Parliament and get a stronger mandate in negotiating the Brexit from the European Union. But that gamble did not pay off, as concerns about social programs and security issues replaced Brexit as the main talking points in the U. K. Now with 318 seats, May’s Conservatives falls about eight seats short of the 326 needed for an outright majority in the U. K.’s   House of Commons. Corbyn’s Labour Party now has 262 seats. Before the election, the Conservatives had 330 and Labour 229. The election results create uncertainty surrounding the negotiations over Britain’s exit from the European Union. Negotiations with European officials had been set to begin on June 19. Reuters reports that Gunther H. Oettinger, a European Commission budget and human resources commissioner, expressed doubt about the talks starting as planned. The former prime minister of Finland, Alexander Stubb, tweeted, ”Looks like we might need a   in the #Brexit negotiations. Time for everyone to regroup.” Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka of the Czech Republic told Czech Television that ”now it will be necessary to wait for who will form a government and what this government will bring to negotiations over Brexit,” Reuters reports. ”We need to get started on the negotiations as soon as possible because time is ticking,” German Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Roth told Germany’s ZDF, according to Reuters. ”Regardless of the question of who will form a government in Britain, time is ticking. . .. We have less than two years to negotiate the exit . .. so we should not waste any time now.” The EU wants a ”legally smooth British departure” in March 2019, the wire service says. European officials are worried that the weaker position of the Conservatives make a breakdown in negotiations more likely. A stronger majority would have given May more ability to resist ”hardline   factions in her party” and would have let her offer better terms to the EU. Some Brexit advocates want the U. K. to reject terms offered by the EU and possibly leave the union without an agreement. ”Britain will now go into its most important challenge in 40 years  —   extricating itself from the European Union  —   at a severe disadvantage,” NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports from London. The Scottish National Party lost more than 20 seats to knock the party down to 35 seats. Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP, said the results were ”a disaster for Theresa May,” the BBC reports. ”Her position I think is very, very difficult. We have to wait and see how things shake out.” The broadcaster said Sturgeon was ”disappointed at the SNP losses.” After the election, the   UK Independence Party, which helped drive Brexit, was left with no seats in Parliament. ”Theresa May has put Brexit in jeopardy. I said at the start this election was wrong. Hubris,” Paul Nuttall told the BBC. Nuttall served as leader of UKIP until he announced his resignation Friday morning."
"You might be wondering about the guy wearing a bucket on his head. That’s OK. When broadcast news outlets panned across the row of candidates standing beside British Prime Minister Theresa May on election night in the U. K.  —   revealing several   gentlemen, then a   figure without a face  —   a number of people had questions, just like you. His name is Lord Buckethead. He ran to unseat May as representative of the Maidenhead constituency. And he got 249 votes. That might be surprising, given that the honorable intergalactic space lord ran on some pretty radical positions  —   many of which, in true democratic spirit, excepted him entirely. Here’s an abridged list of his rather extensive platform: He has a music video too, naturally. Lord Buckethead’s appearance was part of something of a political tradition in the U. K. where it’s not uncommon for all of the candidates for a particular parliamentary constituency  —   no matter how, well, eccentric  —   to stand side by side as the vote is decided. That’s why, if you scanned just a little farther along the line, you might have noticed a person dressed in a giant Elmo costume. It’s also why, elsewhere in the country, a candidate called Mr. Fishfinger  —   who according to The Guardian, ”changed his name by deed poll to take part in the election”  —   stood behind the night’s local winner, Tim Farron. Fishfinger got 309 votes, by the way. And as the BBC notes, Lord Buckethead himself  —   or at least some person dressed as the star lord of buckets  —   has become something of a tradition in his own right. The broadcaster reports the character has been around at least since 1987, when he took on another British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. (And got 131 votes.) Perhaps Lord Buckethead said it best when he sang, euphonious voice muffled by his noble bucket: ”You never knew that space lords would do that.”"
"You probably never want to hear you’ve been fired. If you’ve heard those words, you know they feel like a punch in the gut. Now, imagine that instead of your boss telling you face to face, you get the news from a   alert on your smartphone. That’s how it works at Uber. Eric Huestis didn’t realize that, until it happened to him. At first, there was nothing unusual about that day in April. He took his Chrysler 300 to a Burlington, Vt. car wash. He bought the used car specifically to drive for Uber. After the car wash, he slid into the front seat and tried to open his Uber app. Nothing. He’d been ”deactivated,” as Uber calls it. Uber has created one of the   workforces in American history. And to recruit drivers, company leaders are fond of saying you can ”Be Your Own Boss.” But through dozens of interviews and an informal survey, NPR found that hundreds of drivers feel the company is not living up to that promise. They say the San   startup sets strict rules and punishments, just as other bosses do, but it’s eerily distant. Even in dire situations  —   like when you’ve been axed  —   it’s impossible to reach a human in charge. This facelessness is decidedly unlike other workplaces. In interviews with NPR, Uber officials acknowledge that the company has to improve its communication with drivers and that in the initial years of growth, it was not a top priority. Now, they say, that’s going to change. When Huestis found himself locked out, he wasn’t sure if it was just a software glitch. He recalls the app alert told him to ”please contact customer support.” It’s counterintuitive, but again in   the driver is the ”customer.” Drivers rely on the company’s service  —   the now iconic black app  —   to match them with riders. Huestis hit the button on the Uber app, which directed him to a form (not a person). Moments after hitting submit, he got a message from a company Uber uses to do criminal background checks. Checkr, another Silicon Valley startup, told him he had a marijuana record that needed to be reviewed before he could drive again. The timing threw Huestis off. The    who lives with his girlfriend and her child, indeed had a record for three marijuana possessions  —   spanning from 1993 to 2010. He says when he started driving for Uber in early 2016, he passed the background check. The only thing that has changed since is that on New Year’s Day, Jan. 1, 2017, Huestis was pardoned by the governor of Vermont, clearing his record. ”It wasn’t a DWI. It wasn’t a felony. It wasn’t a rape charge. It wasn’t a kidnapping,” Huestis says. ”It was nothing violent or anything that would stop me from being a Uber driver. So I was like, ’Why is this happening?’ ” Huestis felt like he was invested in Uber  —   he even runs a Facebook page for local Uber drivers to bond  —   but the company isn’t invested in him. Uber is among the largest private companies on earth and is currently valued at about $70 billion. But it didn’t even have a number for him to call. Uber doesn’t offer that kind of customer support. Huestis did manage to contact state officials, he says, but they didn’t have a way to call Uber either. So Huestis found himself trapped in a maze of online forms and generic emails. At first, the notifications told him it would take 15 days to review his case then, 30 days. If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, he puts it in perspective: ”What if you got booted off your cellphone provider? That [would] change everything. I mean, I got booted off my income provider, for no reason.” The experience of this Uber driver may be a window into the future of work. For years, workers have enjoyed the way technology creates distance from the boss. You can join meetings from home, or from Hawaii. But with Uber, we are coming to a strange inflection point. The company has designed an app that is so efficient, cheap and scalable that it manages 600, 000 drivers in the U. S. Yet there’s an underside to distance. It can create a system that lacks the most basic sympathy. NPR conducted an informal survey of Uber drivers, using email lists and social media. It’s not a scientific poll. Respondents are   and possibly more negative toward Uber than the average driver. Still, it’s a window into how hundreds of drivers feel and an Uber spokesman says many of NPR’s survey results track the company’s own findings about its driver workforce. Huestis’ experience is clearly not unique. Of the respondents, 193 said they were able to speak with a person at Uber to get the help they needed. But 688 said they were not  —   no human was available. In phone interviews with NPR, drivers shared examples of how they couldn’t reach Uber after an accident on the job (one man contacted Uber’s insurance company, which then became the conduit to Uber) or after being kicked off the platform (drivers typically don’t get a hearing). Huestis lives week to week. After his deactivation, he managed to make a bit of money by picking up scrap metal from nearby farms and recycling it. Only he can’t do that work alone. He needs a friend to help because he’s an amputee. He lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident. Huestis contacted NPR the same day he was axed and, over the weeks, we followed his ups and downs. On May 1 he texted, ”i’m in tears today, rents due, no income from uber in over 20 days.” He spent day and night checking his Uber app, waiting to learn the fate of his career the way some people check Facebook to see if a selfie got liked. Uber says the proper appeals procedures were followed with the   background check company in Huestis’ case. After nearly a month, he was allowed to drive for Uber again. He says he would like to sue Uber for about $3, 000 in lost wages. That’s a lot of money for him, but not enough for a lawyer to bother with his case.  ”Be Your Own Boss” or ”do what I say”?  Uber’s tagline  —   ”Be Your Own Boss”  —   is an invitation as empowering as Nike’s ”Just Do it” and Apple’s ”Think Different.” Though in Uber’s case, it’s more than just savvy marketing. Being one’s own boss is the legal argument that underlies Uber’s entire business. The company says drivers are independent contractors  —   not employees entitled to expensive benefits. An   study says 87 percent of drivers joined because that’s what they want: to be their own boss and set their own schedule. Uber lawyers cite that statistic in court as evidence when drivers sue the company for employee benefits. But Uber leaders have not publicly asked an obvious   question: At Uber, do you feel like your own boss? So NPR asked drivers, in the informal survey. A little more than half of respondents  —   491 total  —   said they did and, perhaps unexpectedly, nearly half  —   436  —   said they did not. ”You don’t feel like your own boss at all,” says driver David McKee from Vista, Calif. ”The only thing you control is the time when you sign on and sign off. Other than that, Uber controls everything. It’s ’Be Your Own Boss’ and ’do what I say.’ ”  Few workers can drop their kids off at school every morning and then run errands as needed before clocking in. The power to set one’s own hours is rare. While McKee and other Uber drivers appreciate that flexibility, they say it is important to not overestimate it. A total of 779 survey respondents  —   more than 80 percent  —   say that to make enough money as an Uber driver, they have to work peak hours, like morning rush or weekend nights. It’s not unparalleled freedom, which is hardly surprising. After all, Uber is a transportation service that relies on customer demand, not a coding job where you can flip open your laptop and work anytime. But drivers go a step further and say they are not just subject to market forces. At Uber, they are also bound by the company’s determination to protect the brand by tightly controlling driver performance. Uber uses the sensors in drivers’ own smartphones to monitor their turns and lane changes and rolling stops. Of the survey respondents, 116 (more than 10 percent) say they didn’t realize Uber was doing that (they may have missed that line in the very long contract) and 433 (nearly half) would like Uber to stop it. Uber’s competitor Lyft does not do such tracking. McKee says it is the job of the government to license you, penalize you and take away your license if warranted. He says Uber is making a power grab and ”becoming the police.” He and other drivers also don’t trust the company’s intentions with their private data. Many Uber drivers work for more than one   service, and they fear the tracking is a way for Uber to collect intelligence on smaller competitors like Lyft. Uber says smartphone tracking is good for safety and protects drivers against unfair complaints from passengers. If you want to drive, opting out is not an option. Drivers also don’t have a choice when it comes to UberPool  —   the service where you can share a car with others. Drivers say they feel Uber is coercing them into offering it. They say while passengers get to pay much less, drivers also make much less  —   it is a money loser. In the NPR survey, 7 out of every 10 respondents who offer UberPool say they do not like it and wish they didn’t have to provide it. But they do. Uber has bundled its products, so if you want to drive for Uber’s standard service (UberX) you have to offer Pool too. For many, that doesn’t feel very     . Dynamic pricing: Keep ’em guessing, and driving,  The way pricing works at Uber also subjects drivers to a kind of control that’s novel. While people who are independent contractors typically set their own price for services, at Uber, the company sets the price. And it’s dynamic, able to change second by second according to a calculation that is secret. While economists marvel at dynamic pricing  —   it’s a superpower that the smartphone and algorithms make possible  —   drivers scratch their heads. It leaves Uber   and drivers clueless. Unlike in other jobs, they’re not sure what they’ll make per hour, and so they can end up on the road far longer than expected.   drivers tell NPR they have driven shifts 14 hours or longer. That means being in the car, Uber app on, either driving a passenger or waiting for work. Three people showed NPR documentation for driving 20 hours in a single day. Uber does not limit how many hours a driver can work. This is clearly a public safety hazard. But at Uber, drivers talk about it as though it is normal. Kyle Reninger is an Uber driver from Muncie, Ind. The    works weekend nights because, he says, that’s when he is most likely to pick up surge fares  —   the higher prices (two, three, five times the regular rate) that passengers hate to pay and that drivers live by. They are the nuggets of the Uber gold rush. Over the course of several weeks, he kept an audio diary for NPR, sending WhatsApp messages and screenshots between rides. His voice memos become a way to peer into his modern workplace and observe how the nights stretch out. Reninger says he feels like his own boss: He chooses when to turn the Uber app on and off. And it’s a side gig. He and his wife run a vegan bakery. As that business gets off the ground, Uber is a way to make quick money and also advertise to his passengers. He keeps vegan cookies in the car. (An Uber spokesman says it’s OK for drivers to advertise another business in their own cars, so long as it is not an Uber competitor.) One Friday, Reninger sets out to make $200, not counting the cost of gas. He is on Uber and competitor Lyft, though the vast majority of his business comes from Uber. Business is slower than he would like. It takes him 98 minutes on the road to get his first payment of $14. 14. That amount is less than he expected. The Uber app estimated he should bring in $7 more. He says he is used to Uber playing this game  —   suggesting one fare, then paying another. He sends a message in the app basically saying: I got underpaid fix that. Then, he keeps waiting for his next passenger. ”This is the hard part, the in between,” he says in his voice memo. ”Not really sure, you know, if I should drive around, hope to get another ping. Or if I should head back north.” He had driven down to Indianapolis, a little more than an hour from home, hoping for a busier night. In between the waiting, the passengers he does get make him laugh, think or sometimes cringe. One man is a   who talks about his forays in Europe. Another sneaks an open beer can into the car, even though it’s against the law and Reninger asked him not to. ”That was kind of a jerk move,” the driver says. By 1:42 a. m. nearly nine hours into his shift, he is only about halfway to his $200 goal. An hour later, he gets another passenger who says over and over, ”I’m so drunk I’m so drunk, man.” The passenger wants to go to IHOP, which is typical. A bit less typical, Reninger says in another voice memo, is that the drunk man got out of the car, ”zipped down his pants and started to urinate, right in front of IHOP. Then walked in, like nothing happened.” By 6:11 a. m. you can start to hear Reninger’s voice fading. And there is something he doesn’t admit in his voice memos while he is on the road: He is having a hard time staying awake. He sips water and rolls down his window to help him. He waits until he gets home to mention this.  All told, the Uber driver was in his car 14 hours, 9 minutes, and covered 401. 2 miles. He got only one small surge fare. If you put aside the cost of gas, he made $165. 30. Including tips, he nearly hit his goal. It just took a couple of more hours than he had hoped (and it was by no means his longest shift). And so it goes. Each night for the Uber driver is a gamble. The hours go by  —   just like in a casino. Only here, you could get tired and kill someone. This is a problem that Uber could solve. It designed the app to lock out drivers if they don’t accept a certain number of passengers (kind of like being put in the digital corner). It could design a safety feature to lock out drivers after a certain number of hours. (Lyft does that.) But Uber lacks the will to do so. A company spokesman says in an email, ”Uber is a flexible work opportunity, so people can drive whenever they want.” Also, according to Uber data, more than half of U. S. drivers use the app less than 10 hours a week. (Uber declined to disclose data on how long   drivers have the app on.) And finally, the spokesman says, Uber is testing out a new app alert in some cities, to remind drivers about the importance of getting enough rest. Uber’s awakening, The hype around Uber is that the company doesn’t need drivers because it is developing   cars and the biggest workplace crisis is sexual harassment  —   the way women in the corporate office are treated. But according to current and former employees as well as investors, Uber feels far more threatened by its broken relationship with drivers. This is the existential threat to the business, because   fleets won’t be ready anytime soon. Uber needs the human workforce now. Last year, Uber hired Janelle Sallenave to improve the way it responds to drivers’ and riders’ needs, disputes and accidents. ”How could my job not exist? How could there not be somebody whose job it would be to oversee the support of our drivers?” she says in a phone interview with NPR. Sallenave says Uber, which began service in 2010, has grown so fast, it just didn’t have the time to ”marinate”  —   like older companies  —   on some of the basics. The focus has been on launching in more cities. But now, she says, drivers are a top priority and Uber will be announcing changes. ”I think in the coming months some of the improvements we are making directly address feedback that our drivers have been giving us for the last year plus.” Sallenave acknowledges that getting an Uber representative on the phone six months ago was a feat that, she says, ”frankly I don’t know I would be able to do.” She says Uber has a lot of work to do to improve communication with drivers, and the company is doing that. It’s staffing more than 200 physical   centers (called ”green light hubs”) and introducing new dedicated phone lines. Drivers’ complaints about poor communication are no surprise to Sallenave. She says Uber needs to revamp the way it ”deactivates” drivers and that the company faces ”some serious work” in how it handles those situations. Sallenave says Uber is undertaking significant policy changes, though she declined to provide details. She also maintains that drivers are their own boss that Uber is a digital platform (like eBay) not an employer and that drivers are a lot like her own husband, who recently started a consultancy business. ”He doesn’t get benefits. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s going to make. I mean, that to me is all of the risks, but also the potential reward, of being an individual   owner,” she says. A case study in disruption, A former federal regulator strongly disagrees with the Uber official’s position. ”You know, I can’t just declare a pigeon a duck because I think it should be a duck,” says David Weil. He was head of the Department of Labor’s    division under President Barack Obama. It was Weil’s job to investigate companies that misclassify workers. In 2016, Weil visited Silicon Valley. He came with   Secretary Tom Perez (who is now head of the Democratic National Committee). And something struck Weil: While people in tech talked like they were all disruptors in the same boat, they weren’t. At a startup like TaskRabbit, for example, the people providing a service set their own price and define what work they’ll do. The company doesn’t control those things. But at Uber, the company sets the price and designs the services (like Uber Black, X and Pool) and those services are core to the brand. ”Yeah, it looks a lot like an employment relationship. It looks like a very sophisticated, branded product provider,” Weil says. Weil’s opinion, which is not based on inside knowledge, strikes at the heart of a number of legal battles and court cases in which workers are suing Uber, saying they are employees entitled to benefits. But Weil didn’t publicly express his opinion about Uber as a regulator and he didn’t put resources into investigations or outreach to Uber drivers. He says that is because although these drivers were a rapidly growing workforce, they were still a tiny sector, compared with janitors or nurses aids. ”As the head of the agency, I everyday dealt with this reality. We were responsible for 130 million workers in 7. 3 million workplaces,” he says. ”When you face those kinds of numbers you have to think every day very strategically about, where will you put your very limited resources?” In this respect, Uber becomes a fascinating case study in how disruption works. While the tech startup pursued aggressive growth  —   move fast, think later  —   public officials describe their collective response as cautious. ”You don’t want to be seen as stopping progress,” another former federal labor official told NPR. About the survey, NPR conducted an informal survey of Uber drivers from May   2017, based on questions developed in consultation with a nationally recognized survey company. NPR distributed survey invitations to Uber drivers through an email list and through popular and active general online forums. We avoided recruiting from any forum focused on complaints or negative topics to avoid unduly biasing the responses. The survey respondents are not a scientific sample and not representative of all Uber drivers nationwide. They are   and therefore represent the views of drivers who chose to participate. For example, drivers may be more likely to respond if they are more comfortable filling out an online survey or if they have more negative feelings toward the company. To verify that survey takers were indeed Uber drivers, NPR included questions in the survey that require intimate knowledge of how the company pays drivers. Of the 1, 158 respondents, NPR determined 943 responses valid. This is just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people who drive for Uber. Not all respondents replied to every question. Percentages may not total 100 because of rounding. NPR asked about length of service, to ensure a diversity of driver experiences with Uber. NPR solicited contact information of drivers surveyed and called dozens of drivers for   interviews. The drivers were almost all still active a handful had stopped driving in the last three months. NPR Business Desk intern Mollie Simon, Senior Research Director Lori Kaplan and News Apps Developer Brittany Mayes contributed to this story. "
"The pirate north of the border has conceded defeat. After five years of buying Trader Joe’s products in the U. S. and selling them at a high markup in Vancouver  —   and fighting a protracted legal battle to keep doing so  —   the man behind Pirate Joe’s has finally shuttered the secondhand store. Mike Hallatt’s farewell, which came overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, spells the end to a twisty saga that saw his small outlet long locked in conflict with the popular American grocer. Trader Joe’s sued its unofficial (and unwelcome) Canadian counterpart in 2013 for hurting its brand  —   and though Hallatt got a temporary reprieve when the case was dismissed in federal court, an appeals court decision last year put the matter squarely back in court. Hallatt long protested that he was well within his rights to carry on this operation in a Canada starved of Trader Joe’s locations. ”I buy up the stuff, retail, full monty,” he told NPR last year. ”I own it, I get to do with it whatever I want to and I just happen to want to sell it to my friends in Canada.” That argument did not convince Trader Joe’s, which, according to the New York Times, had banned Hallatt from its stores. The Times details Hallatt’s manifold efforts to get around the ban  —   including disguises, day laborers hired on Craigslist and even a couple of freelance purchasers who had tattoos, dreadlocks and, by the end of their buying spree, some $600 in chips and crackers. He even tried a name change, dropping the ”P” from his store’s name and swapping in an underscore, to make it _irate Joe’s. But now, Hallatt says the mounting legal fees have simply proved too much for his rogue business. ”I had to face the music,” he told CTV on Thursday. ”I got myself into this, so I had to get myself out of it.” The Canadian broadcaster reports Hallatt shuttered his shop only ”after coming to an agreement with Trader Joe’s”  —   though it remains unclear what this decision spells for the lawsuit. The American grocer has not commented publicly about the move."
"Every so often, brightly lit Hollywood comedies set in West Coast mansions will slip in five minutes of   banter between a Latina housekeeper and her wealthy white liberal boss. Mild joshing ensues about the cluelessness or prejudice of the employer, perhaps with a   roll of the maid’s eyes thrown in. That done, everyone slips back into their assigned slots in the social pecking order. Point taken, but not really. Beatriz at Dinner, a new collaboration between director Miguel Arteta and screenwriter Mike White (The Good Girl, Chuck  Buck, among others) is not that banter or that movie. The   Beatriz, played with restraint by a deglamorized and slyly tamped down Salma Hayek, is not a housekeeper. She’s a healer with her own business and a gentle, spiritual soul. An apparent ingénue in sensible jeans and adolescent bangs, Beatriz keeps goats in her Altadena apartment and wonders why the neighbors complain. She’s funny and anachronistic in context, but she’s not being laughed at, at least not by the filmmakers, who bring Beatriz front and center in a black comedy of manners with an earnest undertow that places ethnic and class inequality on an audacious continuum with wanton environmental destruction. Invited to dinner when her car breaks down at the Newport Beach McMansion of her client, Kathy (a very good Connie Britton) Beatriz takes it on trust when Kathy introduces her as ”my dearest friend” to a small group of   guests assembled to celebrate a commercial takeover of protected land they’re about to turn into millions in hard cash. Despite barely suppressed sneering from the visitors, played by Chloe Sevigny along with Transparent’s Amy Landecker, Jay Duplass and John Lithgow, Beatriz and Kathy begin the evening believing in their friendship. The train wreck that follows  —   hilarious with a growing edge of sinister  —   will strip away everyone’s illusions on that score, and a few others. With hardly a raised voice, the air soon fills with poison. Arteta directs with irreverent brio mixed with a somber touch, but Beatriz at Dinner is (almost) all talk, and dependent on the crisply funny dialogue that keeps taking left turns into the unexpected. White is always on the side of the marginal and the dispossessed, but he likes to throw us off our game a bit so we don’t just go home smugly confident that we’ve done our bit for justice and empathy. Beatriz, like the others, walks a purposefully confounding line between naturalism and caricature. She hugs everyone on sight, offers free treatments all around, and asks Kathy’s incredulous husband to bring her a glass of wine. But though she’s getting drunker by the minute, Beatriz is also an astute observer whose reflexive desire to please wanes visibly as she mixes it up with the wonderfully named Doug Strutt, a cocksure,   developer played with delicious glee by Lithgow, whom she thinks she recognizes from her childhood in Mexico, when her family, community, and habitat were destroyed by a corporate predator. War is declared, and Doug and Beatriz perform a rivetingly complicated pas de deux that pitches his boorish charm against the coiled ferocity that grows within the unwanted guest. Is Doug, who knows what he is and is frank about fiddling while Rome burns, the enemy here? Perhaps, but the target at the bullseye’s center is the liberal elite itself, nice enough   like Kathy who commit daily hypocrisies while persuading themselves they’ve conquered prejudice, yet who flee in terror when confronted with contradiction and pushback. It’s Kathy’s abrupt withdrawal from her ”friend” and her panicked attempt to revert to patroness that really cuts, and carries the action from wicked comedy into potent melodrama. In the movie’s several startling endings you may see a horror story or a Greek tragedy unfolding. Beatriz at Dinner is also a love story that restores agency to a woman who has lost all, and asks us to take a hard look at our own."
"While many Americans are familiar with dishes like egg foo young, there are   and Chinese immigrant communities throughout the country where foods like ma po tofu and congee are also on menus. And Panda Express, America’s biggest Chinese   chain, hopes to make those more traditional dishes mainstream. ”Panda Express . .. has the opportunity to be the ambassador of Chinese food to many people,” says Andrea Cherng, the company’s chief marketing officer. Chern’s parents opened Panda Express in 1983, at a time when Chinese food was still seen as ”exotic.” It’s now America’s biggest Chinese   chain, with more than 1, 900 locations around the world. But as Americans have become more curious, adventurous eaters, the challenge for the chain is to keep up with the changing food culture  —   while still seeming familiar enough not to alienate those many mall and airport diners who come to the chain for its Americanized spin on Chinese food. ”Our job at Panda Express is to follow that journey of how palates have grown,” Cherng says. A history of adaptation for American palates, Over the years, critics have often knocked Panda Express for serving up ”mediocre” Chinese food that you wouldn’t actually find on a menu in China. (Buzzfeed went so far as to create a video called ”Chinese People Try Panda Express for the First Time. ”) But the story of Chinese food in America has always been one of adaptation. ”It still takes time for many Americans to like Chinese food,” says historian Haiming Liu, author of ”From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express: A History of Chinese Food in the United States. ”It’s a historical problem for Chinese food, and Chinese restaurants have to do something about it.” As Liu explains, Chinese food didn’t start to become popular in the U. S. until the 20th century. Before that, hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers who landed on the West Coast in the mid 19th century  —   to help build railroads, farm and mine  —   were met with deep racism. Many   were suspicious of the newcomers and saw them as competition for jobs. Those racist, nativist attitudes extended to cuisine: Prejudiced Americans complained of the stench of Chinatown’s kitchens, and editorials asked whether ”Chinese eat rats?” Liu says   fervor on the West Coast prompted some Chinese to head East. And that’s why, ”in the 1900s, Chinese restaurants started to grow really fast in places like New York City,” says Liu. (As The Salt has reported, a loophole in immigration law also played a big role in the Chinese restaurant boom of the 1910s.) In New York, Chinese immigrants found diners that were more    —   as long as the recipes were adapted for American palates, Liu says. Americans didn’t care for the strong, pungent flavors of ingredients that might have been used in traditional Chinese cooking such as bitter melon, black mushrooms or mustard greens. So chefs adapted. ”In   Chinese food, the vegetables used tend to be crunchy but flavorless  —   broccoli, carrots, celery, bean sprouts,” says Jennifer 8. Lee, whose documentary, The Search for General Tso, traces the roots and myths of the popular American Chinese chicken dish. ”Chop suey, for example, is based on a familiar dish, but it’s not something you see Chinese people eat. It became this food that completely catered to Western tastes.”   cuisine got an additional profile boost in the 1960s, when the U. S. overhauled immigration laws that had previously kept may Asians out. A flood of new immigrants were able to come from different regions of China, like the Sichuan and Hunan provinces, and they brought their regional cuisines with them, Liu says. Those newcomers also tended to be more affluent than their predecessors, and that made an impression on   Americans, says Liu. ”Americans realized that Chinese people can be rich and wealthy,” he says, ”and their food could be good, accordingly.” (Indeed, the way immigrant cuisines are valued in America has often reflected the way those immigrants themselves are seen.) But those immigrants who opened restaurants still adapted and softened their dishes so they would be welcomed by their new country. That’s a tradition that Panda Express  —   which was born in California’s San Gabriel Valley, home to a large   population  —   followed as it expanded throughout America. Searching for the next orange chicken hit, ”There is this bridge that we are making from our Chinese heritage to a wider American audience,” says Cherng. ”How do we introduce the flavors that we experience around the San Gabriel Valley to the mainstream?” Take the chain’s single most popular dish, orange chicken. It makes up a third of its sales, but it’s not a traditional Chinese recipe: Developed in the 1980s, the dish actually sprung from a blend of cuisines that Panda Express’   chef had tasted, both in China’s Sichuan province and in Hawaii. Though orange chicken is often derided as ”inauthentic,” Cherng believes the dish honors the food of her family because it evolved to suit its surroundings, just as her own immigrant parents did when they first moved to America in the  . So she and her team have been looking to the cuisine her friends and family grew up on to discover the next orange   hit. Helping her on that quest is Jimmy Wang, who works as Panda Express’ ”innovation chef. He’s developing recipes that are familiar enough to Americans, but also familiar to Chinese people trying an Americanized version of a classic dish. ”We want to make sure that whatever we change isn’t a sacrifice, but an enhancement,” he says. ”We don’t want to be so focused on the history of it that we forget that we need to make a delicious dish at the end of the day.” For example, in developing Panda Express’ recipe for Pacific Chili Shrimp, Wang needed to find an alternative for the fermented, nutty flavor of Chinese black vinegar that’s traditionally used. ”A lot of times, customers would say that it tasted weird,” he says. So he swapped in distilled, white vinegar. And instead of adding heat from the fermented chili paste, he used crushed chilis. ”It’s warm and less abrasive,” says Wang, ”and it’s something that customers have had before.” Changing those ingredients may get the dish away from its origins, but it’s a modification that makes it accessible to more diners, says Wang. ”If there’s history tied to something that we know of, then that’s good start,” Wang says. One traditional dish that the chain altered and is now trying out in certain Southern California outlets: cōng yóu bing, also known as a scallion pancake. Less traditional is how Cherng envisions diners eating it  —   like a wrap or a burrito, stuffed with orange chicken or other entrees. Cherng and chef Wang are testing out lots of other recipes, too, like a beef brisket stew inspired by hóng shāo niú ròu, a dish of braised beef that Wang’s mother and grandmother used to make for him when he was growing up in Taiwan. ”The best that American Chinese food can bring to bear is taking parts of the past  —   the flavors that we know  —   and bringing it forward in original ways,” says Cherng."
"Women and men will compete together in mixed relays at the next Summer Olympics, the International Olympic Committee says, announcing a slate of changes for Tokyo 2020. The IOC says it will get close to gender balance among Olympic athletes, boosting women to nearly 49 percent, from 45. 6 percent in Rio. The Tokyo Games will feature 18 mixed events, up from nine at the Rio Olympics. The IOC’s executive board approved the new event program for Tokyo at its meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, Friday. Both swimming and track will hold mixed relays, as well as a triathlon team relay other sports will also allow national sporting federations to blend their male and female athletes, from mixed doubles in table tennis to team events in sports such as judo, cycling and fencing. Arriving along with five new sports, the shifts represent what IOC President Thomas Bach is calling ”a   in the Olympic program.” The changes are part of a plan to attract younger viewers. The new sports include surfing, sport climbing, skateboarding, karate, baseball and softball. Existing sports will add new competitions, such as    basketball. ”I am delighted that the Olympic Games in Tokyo will be more youthful, more urban and will include more women,” Bach said. To rebalance the gender participation rates, the IOC shifted a number of men’s events, reclassifying them as either women’s or mixed. Both the canoe and shooting sports saw three events transferred from men to women. For the U. S. team, women have outnumbered men in the past two Summer Olympics  —   in Rio, the margin was 292 to 263, and the women won 61 medals, compared with 55 for the men. The IOC’s moves will also have other effects. While they will bring an overall increase of 15 events, the board also cut athletes’ quotas in a variety of sports, for a net loss of 285 athletes. The biggest cut hit one of the biggest sports: Athletics, which includes track and field, will have 105 fewer athletes in Tokyo. Weightlifting will lose 64 athletes, while wrestling will lose 56."
"If you were worried you had cancer, who would you call for information? Chances are a   cancer helpline isn’t the first place that pops into your mind. But for 40 years, a helpline funded primarily by the National Cancer Institute has been answering people’s questions about cancer. It’s a source of information for people who have been called back for a   after routine screenings and are worried they might have cancer. And it can also help cancer patients get information about participating in clinical trials and help them figure out questions to ask their doctors. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle runs the Contact Center, which is funded mostly by the National Cancer Institute with some support from the Veteran’s Administration. Last month, the NCI awarded Fred Hutch a $24 million,   contract to continue operating the helpline. ”There will be about 1. 7 million Americans diagnosed with cancer this year. For many of them, access to good information can be the difference between life and death,” says Peter Garrett, a spokesperson for the National Cancer Institute. More than 91, 000 people reached out to the Contact Center via phone, email or social media in 2016  —   a total of about 250 inquiries per day. This year, more people have been contacting the center through a live chat, email or social media than with a phone call, says the center’s director, Nancy Gore. ”Over the years, call volume has declined although the complexity of the calls has increased,” says Gore. ”People seek information via the Internet, so [they] can often find answers to basic questions such as general cancer symptoms, a common call before the Internet became pervasive.” Now, people more often need technical information about clinical trials and gene therapies, she says. But the helpline remains relatively   by the general public. About 10 percent of those inquiries were from repeat clients, according to data provided by the center. Back in the 1980s, more than 20 cancer call centers operated around the country. Now there’s just one. Assuming that the cancer center spends about $8 million this year to handle a similar number of inquiries, by our very rough calculation that adds up to a cost of about $87. 14 per inquiry. There’s no limit on the amount of time a helpline staffer can spend on the phone with a client. Eric Suni, a cancer information specialist at the center, says he has occasionally spent more than an hour on the phone with a caller during the seven years he’s worked there. ”Sometimes people will call and say they have one quick question, but answering that one quick question requires a much more   discussion because you can only answer that question by explaining some other concept,” Suni says. ”Even those that seem like, oh, this should take two minutes to answer is actually a much more involved conversation. So you never really know until it actually starts to unfold.” Hotline staffers, who are required to have a   college degree, spend six to seven weeks in initial training. The center calls this process ”the metamorphosis from civilian into a Cancer Information Specialist,” in a training overview document. It’s hard not to think that the call center had become less necessary in an era when people can Google symptoms and get advice in patient groups on Facebook, but Gore says there’s still a need. ”In fact, it is such a common, common comment that is shared with us that they [the clients] wish they had known we were here when they were first diagnosed, or when their mother was diagnosed,” Gore says. Gore’s husband died of melanoma when he was 34. She didn’t know much about his disease at the time of his diagnosis, she says. ”Until a cancer diagnosis is part of someone’s family or close friend situation people are aware of it, but until it hits home you’re not that in tune to it,” Gore says. ”Once it actually hits home, then people have intense interest and a thirst for knowledge because they want to understand.” Doctors may explain information to patients, but sometimes the shock of a cancer diagnosis can make it tough for a patient to focus. ”For most people, you don’t hear anything after the diagnosis. You’re just processing the words,” Gore says. The NCI estimates that about 4 in 10 people in the U. S. will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, according to data from 2010 to 2012. Callers to the hotline ask most frequently about breast cancer, according to 2016 data, followed by other more common cancers including lung and prostate. And more people called with questions about a spouse, friend or relative than about themselves. The people who reach out to the center in English tend to be in their 50, 60s and 70s, but those who seek a conversation in Spanish are generally younger  —   most are in their 30s, 40s or 50s. Other sources of information about cancer also exist, such as a   hotline run by the American Cancer Society, which received about 744, 000 inquiries last year. Dr. Deanna Attai, a clinical professor of surgery at the University of California Los Angeles, participates in the weekly Breast Cancer Social Media chats known as #bcsm. She says she got involved after she noticed a Twitter conversation where a breast cancer patient was asking for treatment advice. Attai started a private conversation with the patient, offering her advice about reliable surgeons. She calls it her Twitter ” ” moment. ”Just by stumbling across a conversation in the middle of the night, you could really have a big impact,” Attai says. ”That was for me, when I started to realize where my voice is among the community, that I could act as kind of like a guide.” Attai doesn’t see social media making the NCI Contact Center obsolete. Instead, the cancer institute could use social media to point people to the NCI as a source of    unbiased information. ”I think they should be using social media to promote themselves,” Attai says. ”People don’t really understand what the NCI does, unless you’re a researcher or physician or maybe someone that’s participated in a clinical trial.”"
"Despite America’s rapt attention on former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony, the White House has been observing Infrastructure Week. Infrastructure is one of the only policy areas that could have crossover appeal, but there has been little real movement so far on getting something through Congress. To kick off the festivities, the president on Monday pushed his plan to privatize   control. And on Wednesday, he touted his broader infrastructure spending plan. The basic idea of this plan is that the government will spend $200 billion, using tax breaks to incentivize private business to, in turn, spend more money on infrastructure projects. Altogether, with state and local contributions as well, spending would total $1 trillion. The administration also said that it would cut regulations to help the government ”get out of the way” of building projects. Those are the basic outlines of the infrastructure proposal that the administration has been talking about throughout Trump’s first four months in office. However, there’s still not a detailed plan, nothing has been introduced in Congress and answers to some big questions remain elusive. The administration will have to figure out those details before it formally introduces its plan (and isn’t simply touting it to attempt a diversion from the Comey testimony). Here are a few more of the questions the administration will have to ask itself  —   and, perhaps, transportation policy wonks  —   if the White House is hoping to implement the plan. 1. Where are the details? Trump’s speech in Cincinnati on Wednesday and a subsequent press release contained little new information on how his plan would work. The administration had said ahead of time that it would be announcing new spending on rural infrastructure, for example. That kind of spending might calm the fears of some rural residents, after Trump’s initial budget proposed slashing rural development and transportation spending. But in a Wednesday press release on the plan, the only details were: ”Rural America will receive grants to rebuild crippled bridges, roads, and waterways.” A White House spokesperson told NPR via email on Wednesday that there are no further details on that spending. And while the plan released Wednesday also said the government would spend $200 billion, it didn’t say how that spending would break down  —   how much would be for tax credits, and how much would be for grants, for example. The White House spokesperson likewise said those details are not available. One other question, says one expert, is what the specifics of these partnerships between the government and the private businesses will look like. ”The idea that you can spur a larger amount of infrastructure funding than the federal dollars is not, in and of itself, unique,” said Jacob Leibenluft, a senior adviser at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a   fiscal policy think tank. ”But it’s pretty important to explain how you do it.” 2. How many jobs could it really create? Trump promotes jobs as a big selling point of his infrastructure plan. But given current economic conditions, the job creation could be underwhelming. ”The administration talks jobs, jobs, jobs, but I think most economists would recognize that we have the unemployment rate quite low,” said Douglas   president of the   American Action Forum and a former head of the Congressional Budget Office. ”The number of new jobs that would be created is limited.” There could be some economic boosts,   added, but it might not show up in those headline jobs numbers. Rather, he said, there are other potential benefits. ”It would be a productivity improvement, and that will show up in higher wages more than in higher jobs,”   predicted. There are also certainly other benefits of infrastructure projects  —   smooth roads and   bridges, for example  —   but as jobs are a big selling point here, it’s worth asking how big the effect would actually be. One related question is about the nature of the projects the tax credits might spur. They are designed to incentivize building, but it’s possible, Leibenluft warned, that builders would take the credits on projects they would have done anyway. ”Your hope would be that they’re only supporting projects that wouldn’t happen otherwise,” he said. 3. Could the plan be undercut by other federal infrastructure spending cuts? In the president’s budget proposal, the $200 billion would be spent over the next 10 years. But other infrastructure spending would take a hit over the next decade, Leibenluft pointed out in a blog post this week. The president’s budget would cut Amtrak spending, for example, and it would ensure that the Highway Trust Fund doesn’t dole out any more than it takes in in revenue. The fund has some major fiscal problems, and a 2015 CBO report showed a shortfall projected to grow in the coming decade. Part of the funding issue is that gas tax revenues have fallen off. (The gas tax pays for the fund.) But how to fix the fund’s shortfalls is a topic for a different article. All of which is to say: the Trump administration’s budget focuses heavily on cutting spending. But whatever infrastructure spending is cut means the   plan could have that much more ground to make up, both in terms of projects and economic gains. 4. Will state and local governments be able to afford it? Infrastructure spending comes from a mix of federal, state and local sources. In fact, only around a quarter of total spending on transit and highways comes from the federal government, according to a May 2014 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The question then is to what degree this plan could leave state and local governments to pony up more money. Earlier information from the White House on its infrastructure proposal said the plan would ”support more communities moving toward a model of independence,” arguing that local officials know necessary infrastructure programs better than the federal government. Some state and local officials have balked at this idea of ”” as Bloomberg reported earlier this year, saying that they may not be able to afford the kind of investment their infrastructure needs. ”Our citizens think they’re overtaxed today,” said Oklahoma City Republican Mayor Mick Kornett, as reported by Bloomberg. ”If the idea is that we’re going to somehow pass initiatives with funding to keep up the roads and the bridges and all of the infrastructure that’s out there, that seems like a tough sell to me.” "
"There’s a classic moment in the romantic thriller Charade, when Audrey Hepburn says to Cary Grant in exasperation, ”Do you know what’s the matter with you? . .. Nothing.” For decades, the whole world felt the same. Grant’s unrivaled blend of charm, good looks and silliness  —   he hadn’t a shred of pomposity or elitism  —   made him a movie star everyone loved. Everyone, that is, except Archie Leach, the actor’s   self who wrote that he’d spent years cautiously peering from behind the face of a man known as Cary Grant. The journey from Archie to Cary is the subject of Mark Kidel’s enjoyable documentary, Becoming Cary Grant. Weaving together the actor’s private home movies, excerpts from his unpublished writings and terrific clips from his Hollywood work, this Showtime film tells the story of an arduous act of  . Archie was born in   Bristol, England to a dapper, unreliable father and a   mother, Elsie, who was ravaged by inner demons. When Archie was 11, he came home one day to find his mother gone  —   he wouldn’t learn why for 20 years. In short order, the poor kid was shunted off to live with his grandparents. Small wonder that, seeing a performance by a group of acrobats, he was smitten by their free and confident lives. At 14, he joined their troupe  —   hence his famous physical grace, even in pratfalls. Archie traveled with the company to New York, and when they went home, this dashing 18 year old stayed behind to work in vaudeville and in musical theater. Despite a disastrously hammy first screen test  —   which Kidel shows us  —   he eventually found his way to Hollywood. There, a second screen test proved successful enough that he was ordered to change his name. He then became Cary Grant. Even so, it took him several years and 28 movies until, in a brilliant screwball comedy called The Awful Truth, he discovered how to capture  —   and radiate  —   the ease that we think of as Cary  . Once he did, he starred in some of the greatest movies ever, including Holiday, Only Angels Have Wings, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Notorious and North by Northwest. I wouldn’t swap those six for the whole careers of Marlon Brando and James Dean. On screen, Grant always knew how to talk  —   and listen  —   to women.   he messed up several marriages. Beneath his debonair facade, he was lonely, insecure and haunted by fears of being abandoned.  It wasn’t until his 50s that he began finding peace  —   when a doctor began giving him LSD. Taking a hundred trips, Grant confronted his past and learned how his mother’s abandonment had tainted his relationships with all women. He also began glimpsing a road to inner happiness. All of which makes Grant a better advertisement for dropping acid than anything Timothy Leary ever did. Now, it’s not surprising that Grant was torn by personal wounds and a yearning for love. That’s common with stars. Even John Wayne spent his whole life trying, and failing, to win his mother’s affection. But Grant’s story is striking by the breadth of the chasm between his wounded inner self and his seductive persona that was attentive, buoyant and up for anything. The best moments of Becoming Cary Grant show how the   duality gave him an enthralling elusiveness  . He was a layered actor whose provenance was neither English nor American, whose light touch could veer into darkness and whose work, as critic David Thomson shrewdly tells Kidel, played with the ambiguities of gender. No male star of his stature ever donned so many women’s clothes. In the end, Grant was and remains the supreme incarnation of what I always think of as ”The Movies,” a vanished form of collective dream in which people went to the movie palace to sink into a world more glamorous and exciting than their own. In this world, artificial surfaces gave rise to genuine feelings, and stars taught you how to act with grace, style and high spirits. Grant’s image was possibly the most glorious dream of them all, and as this documentary makes clear, he knew it. When an interviewer once told him, ”Everyone would like to be Cary Grant,” he replied, ”I’d like to be Cary Grant, too.”"
"The Saudi Arabian Football Federation issued an apology after its national team provoked outrage in Australia by not formally participating in a moment of silence for London rampage victims. Ahead of a World Cup qualifying match on Thursday in North Adelaide, the Australian players lined up in a row, put their arms around one another and stood silently in memory of the eight people killed on Saturday. Members of the Saudi team largely appeared to disregard the tribute, with some milling around the field. One player appeared to bend down and tie his shoe, which can be seen in a video from Euronews. Saudi Arabia’s federation hasn’t specifically explained why its team did not participate. But in a statement carried by The Associated Press, Football Federation Australia said it was told by the Saudi team prior to the game that its players did not plan to take part for cultural reasons. ”Both the (Asian Football Confederation) and the Saudi team agreed that the minute of silence could be held,” the FFA said in a statement, as quoted by the AP. ”The FFA was further advised by Saudi team officials that this tradition was not in keeping with Saudi culture and they would move to their side of the field and respect our custom whilst taking their own positions on the field.” This has drawn sharp criticism. As Australian politician Anthony Albanese told Channel Nine’s Today Show: ”That was a disgraceful lack of respect not just for the two Australians killed, one of whom was a young South Australian, but also all of those victims of that terror attack in London.” In a statement, the Saudi Arabian Football Federation said it ”deeply regrets and unreservedly apologises for any offense caused by the failure of some members of the representative team of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to formally observe the one minute’s silence.” It added that the ”players did not intend any disrespect to the memories of the victims or to cause upset to their families, friends, or any individual affected by the atrocity.” FIFA has said it would not discipline the team over the controversy, as Reuters reported. Soccer’s governing body said, ”After reviewing the match report and images of the said match, we can confirm that there are no grounds to take disciplinary action.” The Saudi team lost the Thursday night game against Australia,  . Since the incident, several examples have emerged of Saudi teams appearing to participate in similar tributes. In Doha, Qatar, in December,   Saudi FC joined FC Barcelona in observing a moment of silence honoring members of a Brazilian soccer team killed in a plane crash, according to the BBC. The broadcaster also reported that ”Saudi male handball players also held a minute’s silence before a match against Germany in January 2015 to remember the late king, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.” So is this kind of commemoration actually against Saudi culture? Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, tells The   that ultraconservative Salafi clerics like those in Saudi Arabia ”would be opposed to minutes of silence since they’d consider it a bida’a or ’innovation’ ” to the way early Muslims practiced the faith. He adds: ”That doesn’t mean the Saudi football team has to follow suit, but it’s hard for me to imagine a   activity of any sort directly contradicting the state’s religious establishment’s ultraconservative version of Islam.”"
"A group of about 30 volunteers gathers in a Paris park on a sunny afternoon for lessons in    campaigning. They’ll soon be trying out their new skills in the surrounding apartment blocks  —   plugging two young candidates from President Emmanuel Macron’s new party, Republic On The Move. Delphine O, 31, is one of the candidates. The     diplomat says she never imagined she’d be running for parliament. ”Of course, I’m nervous because I’m very conscious of the responsibility that will be given to me if I win,” O says. ”But I’m also very hopeful and excited. The victory of Emmanuel Macron was something that really lifted us all.” The newly elected French president has taken the country by storm and upended a   political system that’s been in place since the founding of France’s Fifth Republic in 1958. But if Macron wants to revolutionize the country as he promised, he must win a majority in the French parliament in legislative elections in the coming week. As of today, his brand new party has no seats at all. Citizen candidates are on the hustings all across France. Half of the new candidates put forth by Macron’s party are women. Fifty percent are citizens with no prior political experience. The party will have to win 289 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly to hold a majority. At an outdoor street market in Paris, vendors call out, hawking their wares. Stan Guerini is handing out flyers and shaking hands with shoppers. The entrepreneur, who founded a   company, is now running for a seat on Macron’s ticket. ”I feel like a citizen going for parliament,” Guerini says. ”And this is very important because we want to keep the spirit of a citizen movement. We want to change the country.” Many of the parliamentary races will be extremely tough, as the newcomers go up against entrenched opponents from the political establishment. But polls show Macron’s party is actually in the lead. Only on rare occasions have French voters not given a legislative majority to the president they’ve just elected. But this time the president is starting from zero. In another Paris congressional district, a Republic On The Move candidate is holding a campaign event in a bar. English teacher Owen Chiver says he’s unlikely to vote for him, but he’s shown up out of interest. He admits the new president has totally shaken up the system. ”The divide between right and left has just exploded,” Chiver says. ”It is no longer valid. And we don’t know what’s going to happen exactly but we’re going to see!” The candidate in the packed bar in Paris’s 19th arrondissement is Mounir Mahjoubi. Mahjoubi became a kind of star during the presidential campaign, when he lead Macron’s   digital team and foiled Russian hackers. He’s now been put in charge of a newly created digital affairs ministry. At 33, the son of Moroccan immigrants (his mother worked as a cleaning lady and his father as a house painter) is the youngest member of Macron’s cabinet. ”When you grow up in a poor family in a rich town, first you feel very grateful to the country and to the city,” Mahjoubi says. ”I had the best schools, I had the best universities, I had everything, and I didn’t pay for it because the state was there to help my family.” Mahjoubi says he has always thought he would be useful to others one day. And he believes there’s no better way than by serving in parliament. Parisian Annick Garache has come out to support Mahjoubi. She’s wearing a   with a smiling image of former U. S. President Barack Obama. Garache says she’s known Mahjoubi his whole life because he’s a friend of her son. ”He is a great person,” she says. ”When he was 13, he won a science project award and got 5, 000 francs. And with the money, he bought his first computer. All along his studies, he worked. He’s an entrepreneur and a businessman at heart, and he knows how to make things work.” Garache says President Macron recognized Mahjoubi’s worth. Mahjoubi says he wants to help Macron build a dynamic economy that will allow strivers with dreams to succeed, but also protect those who need help. Jean Pierre Numa, 60, is listening. He says Mahjoubi and Macron represent the new face of France. ”They are young, from diverse backgrounds and they symbolize this   nation that is part of a globalized world,” he says. ”But what binds us all are our common values of liberty, equality, fraternity and secularism.”"
"Judging by the headlines Friday morning, Taylor Swift’s music has finally returned to streaming services. But that’s not exactly the case. Taylor Nation, an official arm of the Swift machine, posted   on Thursday that, in celebration of her 2014 album 1989 selling 10 million albums globally and a   song ”certification” from the Recording Industry Association of America, Swift and her management would make her entire back catalog available on streaming services. As of this morning, a Spotify playlist of her greatest hits had drawn nearly 30, 000 subscribers. In truth, her back catalog was available in piecemeal or in full on various services well before early this morning.   services all had her previous   albums, and Apple Music, in a very public coup for the company following a very public act of contrition, also had 1989. And because of the legal structure of song licensing in the states, listeners on Pandora’s radio service also could hear tracks from her catalog. The one conspicuous place you couldn’t hear Swift’s work was Spotify. That was because of Spotify’s   dedication to its ”free tier,” which lets listeners hear music without a subscription in exchange for regular interruptions from ads. ”It’s my opinion that music should not be free,” Swift wrote in an   for The Wall Street Journal in 2014. Adding to the acrimony, Spotify had also maintained a   policy on ”windowing,” wherein certain albums would be available to paid subscribers for a certain period of time. (”Windowing” should not to be confused with ”exclusives,” where an artist makes their work available only on a specific service, a strategy Apple Music has prolifically chased.) Both policies were taken as affronts by Swift and her team  —   on the latter point, as robbing artists and their labels of control. That’s in large part why Swift pulled her entire catalog from Spotify in 2014. A year later, an entirely different dispute, this time with Apple and its     Apple Music service, ended much differently. Swift pointedly criticized the company for not paying royalties on music streamed during a   free trial of the service it was offering to customers, drawing an apology (and a phone call) from a top executive at the company, which pledged to pay royalties on those streams. Swift ”happily” made 1989 available on Apple Music afterwards, at a time when the album was still (relatively) fresh. Some months later Apple announced an exclusive concert film, ’1989 World Tour Live,’ for its music streaming service. Less than a year after that, she was starring in commercials for the service listening to Drake, while Drake was starring in commercials for the service listening to Swift. (Drake’s More Life was an Apple Music exclusive, too.) It’s an open question as to whether Apple’s public contrition was enough to sway Swift. So the question this morning is, why are Taylor Swift’s albums now on Spotify? A request for clarification on that question by Swift’s management and record label was not immediately returned. But it’s worth noting that Spotify recently softened its stance on windowing  —   in return for paying lowered fees to labels  —   according to a report from the Financial Times in March. Streaming has also become the dominant revenue driver for the recording industry since the release of 1989. Spotify’s anodyne statement on the news simply confirms ”that Taylor Swift’s entire back catalogue is now available on Spotify for her millions of fans to enjoy.” Perhaps most importantly (intimations of dueling pop queen pettiness notwithstanding and not worth repeating) Swift hasn’t released a record in some time. The downtime means she’s largely been absent from the mainstream conversation outside of precisely tailored Instagram posts, most of which are screenshots of her using. .. Apple Music. (Apple also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) This is just a guess, but Swift’s Spotify announcement feels like the first volley of a long publicity campaign behind a new album to come later this year. One thing is for sure: If and when that record arrives, you’ll have to pay to hear it."
"Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made it clear, appearing before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Tuesday, that she sees no connection between school funding and school performance. As evidence, she criticized the Obama Administration’s $7 billion grant program to improve struggling schools, an effort that yielded no significant impacts in test scores or graduation rates. ”The notion that spending more money is going to bring about different results is   and ” DeVos said in an exchange with Louisiana Republican John Kennedy. This is a   debate in education. To be sure, spending more in troubled schools won’t automatically lead to better student outcomes. But, when the dollars are spent wisely and consistently, research suggests, they can have a profound effect in the classroom. Last year, as part of the School Money project, the NPR Ed Team collaborated with 20 reporters across the country to explore how states pay for their schools and to answer some fundamental questions, including this one: ”Can More Money Fix America’s Schools?” With that very question back in the headlines, we thought we’d revisit what we came up with."
"A year ago, a gunman opened fire in Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Deonka Drayton was one of the 49 people killed that night, in what was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U. S. history. Drayton was 32 at the time, and had a son with Emily Addison. ”She had a beautiful voice, the most amazing smile, and she smelled so good all the time,” Addison said during a recent visit to StoryCorps. The two moved to Florida together in 2012, and Drayton hated the heat. ”But it did not matter how hot it was outside, she would go outside and play ball with our son,”    Addison said. ”And she used to always tell me that, as long as she was alive, our son and I would never want for anything. And she kept her word.” The night she was killed, Drayton sent texts to Addison. ”She said that she was scared people were shot,” Addison recounted. ”But when our son is asleep, we turn our ringers off. And I feel like I wasn’t there for her when she needed me the most.” When she finally saw the texts, Addison tried to contact Drayton, but her calls went straight to voicemail. ”I prayed so hard my knuckles were white,” Addison says. ”But she was one of the ones that was murdered in the bathroom.” As the first anniversary gets closer, Addison is constantly reminded of the last time she saw Drayton. ”I can tell you what was in her stomach because I made the last meal. She loved my cooking. She loved my cooking,” she says. ”My son, he’s 3 now, and every night . .. when we’re going to bed, we walk up the stairs, he’ll turn to her picture and say, ’Night, night, mommy.’ I don’t know how to get him to understand that she’s never coming back, and I miss her so much. That feeling is constant. Like, I need her to call me. I need to see her. ”I will always love her, no matter what,” Addison says. ”There will never be an end.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Von Diaz. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"For a long stretch of his early performing career, vibraphonist Gary Burton was always the youngest man on the bandstand. A child prodigy from Indiana, and then an onrushing force on the scene, he apprenticed with the great Nashville guitarist Hank Garland before going on tour with pianist George Shearing, followed by tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. He was all of 18 when he released his debut album, New Vibe Man In Town, on the RCA label. In short order, he would change the technical vocabulary of mallet instruments  —   perhaps you’ve heard of the Burton grip  —   and create one of the early prototypes for fusion. He would become an important pioneer in jazz education. He’d win an armload of Grammy Awards, and come out as gay at a time when few jazz artists of his stature had done so. He’d also become a mentor, to more than a few young phenoms like his former self. This spring Burton became something else altogether: a retiree. With little warning and a bare minimum of fuss, he announced his intention to step away from music. And at 74, still in possession of his quicksilver fluidity and deep intuition, he went on a farewell tour, bringing one of his old protégés and duet partners, the pianist Makoto Ozone. They played in a small handful of cities that mean something to Burton, playing material that fit the same criteria. Jazz Night In America caught up with the tour at Blues Alley in Washington, D. C. at Birdland in New York City and at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis, the final stop on the tour. Backstage, Burton opened up about the factors that led to his decision, acknowledging that retirement is an exceedingly rare outcome in his field. ”We’ve seen so many elder statesmen of jazz go on way past the point of really being able to play even halfway decently,” he says, ”and no one will tell them.” In the radio episode of Jazz Night, you’ll hear much more from Burton about the pressure he always imposed on himself and the encroaching pall of diminishing prowess. You’ll hear from Pat Metheny and Julian Lage, two brilliant guitarists who know him not only as a musical hero but also as a former bandleader and a friend. And you’ll hear some of the actual music from Burton’s farewell tour, along with some from earlier in his career. Jazz Night’s video short takes you into the clubs with Burton, where fans poured in to pay their respects. Hang long enough and you’ll even catch a glimpse of Burton’s   life thus far  —   at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. with nary a mallet in sight. Backstage at Birdland, I asked how he felt about rounding the home stretch of the tour, one last time. ”Well, part of it will be a sense of relief that I’ve done it,” he replied, with trademark Midwestern stoicism. ”I’ve completed my mission.”"
"All we want are the facts, ma’am. During his congressional testimony Thursday, James Comey played his best Sgt. Joe Friday, the protagonist of the 1950s Dragnet TV series known for that signature line. Asked whether he thought President Trump obstructed justice, Comey, the fired FBI director, declined to give his opinion. ”I don’t know,” Comey said. ”That  —   that’s Bob Mueller’s job to sort that out.” Mueller is the former FBI director who is now the special counsel in charge of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and Trump campaign associates’ connections to Russia. Comey admitted to authorizing the leak of a memo he wrote about a meeting with the president that gave him pause. And he did it for an   reason  —   ”because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel,” Comey said. For as much as Comey wanted to be the indefatigable facts man full of public rectitude, he clearly thought Trump had done something wrong  —   and he revealed that he had an agenda. While Comey may not have expressed an overt opinion about whether Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice, the careful former prosecutor certainly laid out a set of facts that any prosecutor could use to try to prove just that. Trump has contested Comey’s testimony, saying in a news conference Friday that Comey said things that ”just weren’t true.” Specifically, Trump claimed he never asked for a pledge of loyalty from Comey or asked Comey to let go of investigating former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Someone’s lying. Comey was under oath on Thursday  —   and he accused Trump of lying. Pressed Friday, the president said he would be ”glad” to testify under oath if that’s what Mueller wants, ”100 percent.” Asked whether there are tapes of the conversations with Comey, which the president teased on Twitter after Comey’s firing, Trump seemed to have his bluff called. ”I’ll tell you about that maybe sometime in the near future,” he said. ”You’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer, don’t worry.” Comey, during testimony Thursday, said he welcomed their release. ”Lordy, I hope there are tapes.” Until Trump does go under oath, any of his accusations against Comey should be met with skepticism. He and his White House have damaged their credibility with a history of falsehoods and misstatements on things small and large. There are a lot of people with assured opinions about whether Trump obstructed justice in this case, if the facts Comey lays out are true. On the one hand: ” ’No question’ Trump involved in obstruction of justice: Former Watergate prosecutor.” But on the other: ”What Comey described wasn’t obstruction of justice. Here’s why.” First, what exactly constitutes obstruction of justice? Here’s how Cornell Law School explains it: ”Obstruction of justice is defined in the omnibus clause of 18 U. S. C. § 1503, which provides that ’whoever . .. corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be (guilty of an offense).’ Persons are charged under this statute based on allegations that a defendant intended to intefere with an official proceeding, by doing things such as destroying evidence, or intefering with the duties of jurors or court officers. ”A person obstructs justice when they have a specific intent to obstruct or interfere with a judicial proceeding. For a person to be convicted of obstructing justice, they must not only have the specific intent to obstruct the proceeding, but the person must know (1) that a proceeding was actually pending at the time and (2) there must be a nexus between the defendant’s endeavor to obstruct justice and the proceeding, and the defendant must have knowledge of this nexus. ”§ 1503 applies only to federal judicial proceedings. Under § 1505, however, a defendant can be convicted of obstruction of justice by obstructing a pending proceeding before Congress or a federal agency. A pending proceeding could include an informal investigation by an executive agency.” Comey issued a detailed opening statement the day before the hearing. In it, he said that during a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office, the president dismissed a large group that was in the office, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trump’s    and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Trump told them he wanted to speak to Comey alone. At one point, the president even waved off White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who had poked his head in to check on the meeting. ”I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump told Comey, according to Comey’s notes. ”He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” Trump denies he said this, both through his lawyer and in the news conference Friday. But as the investigation picked up steam, and Flynn was increasingly a key player, the president fired Comey. The White House initially cited a memo from the deputy attorney general about Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation during the campaign. Trump later undermined that rationale in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. Comey believed the reasoning was dubious, and, for him, the NBC interview confirmed that he was fired because of the Russia investigation. There are a few key points in all of this to dig into to determine whether what Trump did, if Comey’s account holds up, is obstruction (which can be difficult to prove). 1. What did Trump mean by ”hope”? 2. Does Trump dismissing senior officials during his    meeting with Comey constitute intent? and, 3. Is it reasonable to assume that Trump was hoping to quash the FBI’s investigation with Comey’s firing? Let’s take these point by point. 1. Hope and change the investigation? The line about ”hope” was at the center of questioning by some Republicans. Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, also a former prosecutor, was making Trump’s case. ”Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or, for that matter, any other criminal offense, where this  —   they said, or thought, they hoped for an outcome?” Risch asked.  Comey said he wasn’t sure, but added insistently, ”I took it as a direction. I mean, this is the president of the United States, with me alone, saying, ’I hope’ this. I took it as this is what he wants me to do.” In response to questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein,  . Comey defended not telling agents working on the case about the interaction with the president: ”We don’t want the agents and analysts working on this to know the president of the United States has  —   has asked  —   and when it comes from the president, I took it as a direction  —   to get rid of this investigation, because we’re not going to follow that  —   that request.” 2. Did Trump clearing the room equal intent? Comey seemed intent on making sure there was no ambiguity that he thought it was a big deal that Trump asked others to leave. Here is how he laid it out in his opening statement: ”The President signaled the end of the briefing by thanking the group and telling them all that he wanted to speak to me alone. I stayed in my chair. As the participants started to leave the Oval Office, the Attorney General lingered by my chair, but the President thanked him and said he wanted to speak only with me. The last person to leave was Jared Kushner, who also stood by my chair and exchanged pleasantries with me. The President then excused him, saying he wanted to speak with me. When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, ’I want to talk about Mike Flynn.’ ” Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford attempted a Trump defense, noting that the president has already tweeted publicly that he ”is not real fond of this investigation.” He is telling 6 billion people he doesn’t like it, Lankford noted, before asking this: ”Do you think there’s a difference in that?” Without missing a beat, Comey answered  —   absolutely, there was a difference. ”I think there’s a big difference in kicking superior officers out of the Oval Office, looking the FBI director in the eye and saying, ’Hope you’ll let this go,’ ” Comey shot back. ”I think if our  —   if the agents, as good as they are, heard the president of the United States did that . .. there’s a real risk of a chilling effect on their work. That’s why we kept it so tight.” Comey stressed repeatedly the significance of Trump dismissing the attorney general and Kushner. Early on in the hearing, for example, Comey set this dramatic scene  —   veering from just the facts with a subjective interpretation of Sessions’ and Kushner’s behavior: ”My impression was something big is about to happen. I need to remember every single word that is spoken. And, again, I could be wrong, but I’m 56 years old. I’ve been  —   seen a few things. My sense was the attorney general knew he shouldn’t be leaving, which is why he was lingering. And I don’t know Mr. Kushner well, but I think he picked up on the same thing. And so I knew something was about to happen that I needed to pay very close attention to.” If that wasn’t enough, later Comey implored the committee: ”You got to take it all together. And I’ve tried to be open and fair and transparent and accurate. A really significant fact to me is, so why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office?” And in case you missed that he thought it was significant, with his next breath, he seemed to pull the curtain back and try to show the committee the road map for how to build a case, even noting how he would gather evidence as an investigator: ”Why would you kick the attorney general, the president, the chief of staff out, to talk to me, if it was about something else? And so that  —   that, to me, is  —   as an investigator, is a very significant fact.” Comey tried to get across that he thought what Trump did was so inappropriate, so much of a threat, that he said he did not want to be left alone with the president again: ”I specifically, as I said in my testimony, asked the  —   told the attorney general, it can’t happen that you get kicked out of the room and the president talks to me.” House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . acknowledged the interaction was inappropriate but chalked it up to Trump being a harmless political naïf. ”Of course there needs to be a degree of independence between [the Justice Department] FBI and the White House, and a line of communications established,” Ryan said Thursday across the Capitol from where Comey was testifying. ”The president’s new at this. He’s new to government. So, he probably wasn’t steeped in the   protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He’s just new to this.” But Comey’s testimony undercuts this line of reasoning. The picture Comey paints is not of political naïveté on the president’s part but of one who intended to pressure him, who knew exactly what he was doing and who knew he might be about to say something that could be construed as inappropriate even by top White House allies. 3. Out of the fire, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov feigned surprise and disbelief when he heard from reporters at the State Department that Comey had been fired the day before. ”Was he fired?” he asked with a smirk. ”You’re kidding,” he added, before walking away. That was the same day, across town at the White House, that Trump bragged to the Russians that he had fired Comey and that pressure had been taken off the investigation. ”I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump told Lavrov and other Russian officials gathered in the Oval Office exactly one month ago, according to The New York Times. ”I faced great pressure because of Russia. Now, that’s taken off.” In his testimony, Comey made note of that, mentioning that Trump brought up his firing as evidence that the investigation would lighten up now. ”It confused me when I saw on television the president saying that he actually fired me because of the Russia investigation and learned, again, from the media that he was telling, privately, other parties that my firing had relieved great pressure on the Russia investigation,” Comey said. ”[T]elling, privately, other parties” is a clear allusion to the Trump meeting with Russian officials in the Oval. But that was not the only mention: ”I know I was fired. Again, I take the president’s words. I know I was fired because of something about the way I was conducting the Russia investigation was, in some way, putting pressure on him, in some way, irritating him. And he decided to fire me because of that.” And: ”It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. I was fired, in some way, to change  —   or the endeavor was to change the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.” Comey repeatedly implied that he believed Trump was holding his desire to stay in the job over his head, thinking he could extract loyalty from him, a quid pro quo: ”My common sense told me that what was going on is either he had concluded, or someone had told him, that you didn’t  —   you’ve already asked Comey to stay, and you didn’t get anything for it, and that the dinner was an effort to build a relationship  —   in fact, he asked specifically  —   of loyalty in the context of asking me to stay.” Comey expanded on what he found to be the significance of being fired because of the Russia investigation (just in case the senators and viewing audience couldn’t discern it for themselves): ”That is a  —   that is a very big deal, and not just because it involves me. The nature of the FBI and the nature of its work requires that it not be the subject of political consideration. And on top of that, you have  —   the Russia investigation itself is vital, because of the threat. And I know I should’ve said this earlier, but it’s obvious  —   if any Americans were part of helping the Russians do that to us, that is a very big deal. And I’m confident that, if that is the case, Director Mueller will find that evidence.” Once again, it was another Mueller reference from Comey. That is yet another bread crumb Comey is laying out for investigators to follow and connect to intent  —   that Trump was trying to quash the investigation. ”Again, I take the president’s words. . ..” The trail is out there. And Mueller is an uberdetailed, hyperthorough investigator. He will likely pick each one up with tongs and latex gloves, put them in a Ziploc bag and have them sent back to the lab for examination, leaving no bread crumb unanalyzed. After all, as Comey said in the hearing, ”In any complex investigation, when you start turning over rocks, sometimes you find things that are unrelated to the primary investigation, that are criminal in nature.” The president has hired a bulldog lawyer, one who has protected Trump’s interests  —   and his brand  —   over the years. He’s a loyalist and a corporate lawyer  —   not a criminal defense attorney. If Trump and his team aren’t careful  —   and they don’t start treating this as a genuine legal problem instead of just a political one  —   all the president’s men could find themselves in a heap of trouble. And that doesn’t mean his political problem is going away. Even if Mueller doesn’t believe the standard for criminal prosecution of obstruction is met, his findings, if he puts credence in Comey’s testimony, could be damning and lay the foundation for articles of impeachment when or if Democrats wrest back control of Congress at some point in the Trump presidency."
"Updated on June 10 at 7:32 p. m. ET, So now that former FBI Director James Comey has appeared before a Senate committee and accused the White House of lying about his firing  —   and, in the process, raised significant questions about obstruction of justice  —   what happens next? A lot. In a surprise announcement Saturday evening, Attorney General Jeff Sessions bowed out of planned hearings about the Justice Department’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal set for June 13 on Capitol Hill, sending Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in his place. Instead, Sessions said in letters to lawmakers, he will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. ”In light of reports regarding Mr. Comey’s recent testimony . .. it is important that I have an opportunity to address these matters in the appropriate forum,” Sessions wrote, pointing to the committee’s ongoing Russia investigation and access to information. While Sessions’ testimony Tuesday has the makings of another   event, much of the next phase of the various investigations will likely not be as   and straightforward as the drama of congressional hearings carried live with millions watching on television and online. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees will continue to sift through raw intelligence materials, and interview witnesses, behind closed doors in secure rooms. And special counsel Robert Mueller’s team will conduct a criminal investigation that, based on Mueller’s reputation, likely won’t produce many leaked tidbits or updates to the outside world. Here’s what we do know will happen next with the multiple investigations digging into what Russia did to influence the 2016 presidential election, and into whether any Trump campaign associates collaborated with those efforts. The Senate Intelligence Committee, After Comey’s hearing Thursday, Committee Chair Richard Burr,  . C. said that at some point in the coming days, he and Vice Chair Mark Warner,  . will meet with Mueller’s team to discuss how the Senate can continue its investigation without interfering with Mueller’s separate criminal probe. The general concern is that the Senate committee could potentially make the special counsel investigation more difficult, by requesting evidence or interviews from people who may be key witnesses for Mueller. Grants of immunity  —   a key part of both criminal and congressional investigations  —   are a key area where coordination would be needed. In the immediate aftermath of Mueller’s appointment, several key Senate Republicans, like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, suggested the House and Senate Intelligence Committees may need to slow down their efforts, in order to stay out of the special counsel’s way. Burr asked Comey about that Thursday. ”Is there any doubt in your mind that this committee can carry out its oversight role,” he asked, ”in parallel with the  —   now  —   special counsel that’s been set up?” ”No  —   no doubt,” Comey responded. ”It can be done. It requires lots of conversations, but Bob Mueller is one of this country’s great, great pros. And I’m sure you all will be able to work it out with him to run it in parallel.” The Senate committee recently received documents from former national security adviser Michael Flynn, in response to a subpoena. All along, Burr and Warner have said they plan to meet with Jared Kushner, a top White House adviser and President Trump’s   . Several media reports indicate that conversation could happen in the coming weeks. Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee has asked Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman to turn over his copies of Comey’s memos about his meetings with President Trump. During his Thursday testimony, Comey told lawmakers he provided the documents to Richman, and instructed his friend to share the memos’ details with the New York Times. In the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton asked Comey if he would encourage Richman and the Department of Justice to share the memos: ”Sure.” And Friday evening, Sen. Dianne Feinstein,  . the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recommended that the committee investigate ”all matters relating to obstruction of justice and use its subpoena authority if necessary,” after testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier in the week from Comey and four other current intelligence chiefs. The House Intelligence Committee, The House investigation is facing the same ”deconfliction” challenges its Senate counterpart is, when it comes to making sure to stay out of Mueller’s way. The committee has issued subpoenas for ”testimony, personal documents, and business records” to both Flynn and Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s personal attorneys. Additionally, the committee has subpoenaed former Obama administration officials John Brennan, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power, in relation to the question of whether intelligence information was improperly shared or distributed for political purposes. And on Friday, the committee sent a letter to Comey requesting any notes or memoranda ”memorializing discussions Comey had with President Trump.” The committee sent a second letter to White House Counsel Don McGahn, requesting, as a press release put it, ”he inform the committee whether any White House recordings or memoranda of Comey’s conversations with President Trump now exist or have in the past.” Of course, this is a reference to Trump’s tweet warning Comey that there may be ”tapes” of their conversations. If there are tapes, the committee asked McGahn to turn them over by June 23. Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will also likely testify before the committee, though a date has not been set yet. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, said the goal would be to hear from Johnson about what sort of warnings about potential Russian cyberattacks the Department issued to state election officials in the   to Election Day. The Department of Justice special counsel, We don’t know too much about where Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation stands. And based on Mueller’s reputation for keeping developments out of the headlines, we don’t expect to anytime soon. Comey did tell the Senate Intelligence Committee that he handed his memos about meetings with Trump over to Mueller’s office. He also indicated multiple times that he believed that as part of his probe, Mueller is investigating whether or not any obstruction of justice took place after the initial federal investigation into Russia meddling began. One thing we do know about the Mueller investigation is the lawyers he has brought onto the team. When Mueller initially took over the FBI’s investigation, he enlisted the help of prosecutors with deep experience investigating corporate fraud, Watergate and the mafia, among other matters. According to the National Law Journal, Mueller has now added another   lawyer to his team: Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, who’s one of the most respected lawyers within the Department of Justice. The Trump wild card, On Thursday, Comey told lawmakers that he decided to tip the media off about Trump’s ”let this go” comment only after Trump tweeted about the possibility of a recording device inside the Oval Office. Comey’s move was just the latest significant develop in the Russia investigation to spring directly from unilateral, unprompted actions by President Trump. Trump has repeatedly raised the profile  —   and the stakes  —   of the congressional and criminal investigations through his actions. The most significant example of this was his decision to fire Comey. Other key moments include the ”tapes” tweet, and a tweet accusing President Obama of ordering an illegal wiretap of Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. That’s an accusation that the House Intelligence Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey, and other officials all say was made without any factual basis. Trump’s personal lawyer in relation to the Russia probes, Marc Kasowitz, has indicated he’ll file complaints with both the Department of Justice and the Senate Judiciary Committee related to Comey’s decision to feed information about his Trump memos to the New York Times via an intermediary. Trump has repeatedly threatened legal action over the course of his political career, and often failed to follow through on those threats. But if Kasowitz does, in fact, file those complaints, that could be the next key development in this saga."
"I am a man of science. Okay, perhaps not of science, but certainly near it. As a science journalist, I’m  . But I consider myself to be bound by logic and facts. Which is why it was weird when I took my infant son in for his first vaccines and started peppering his pediatrician with questions. I inspected the boxes, telling myself that I was concerned about a recent bad batch of vaccines in Chiapas, Mexico, that made a bunch of kids sick. But really, I was looking for a label that read ”not the autism kind of vaccine.” I felt really uncomfortable and started to sweat. I looked at the clear liquid in the vials and wondered, will I regret this for the rest of my life? I started to think about maybe delaying the injections until it was safer or maybe stretching them out over a longer period of time. I mean, it just can’t be safe giving all these vaccines at once. Seriously? I’ve spent years following the vaccine safety debate, reading the stories and writing a few about how safe and effective vaccines are. And yet here I am putting my entire profession to disgrace, just as scared and confused as anyone else. In that moment, I wanted to slap my brain upside the temporal lobe. The sight of one little needle was turning me into a raging  . Before I go any further, just so we are clear, every scrap of reliable data confirms that vaccines are a safe and crucial part of medicine. Plenty of very clever people have pointed out that they have very few risks and many benefits, which accrue not only to the child being vaccinated but also to society at large. And there is abundant evidence that they don’t cause autism. But this is not a post about vaccines or autism or even evidence. This is a post about fear. If there is one thing that psychologists can say for sure, it’s that fear is more deep and powerful than just about any other emotion we can experience. In my book, Suggestible You, I note that while placebos can be incredibly potent in treating some (often chronic) diseases, their alter egos  —   nocebos  —   are reliably more so. Nocebos occur when something unhealthy happens to your body, solely based on belief. They can be as simple as feeling slightly more pain during an experiment just because a doctor says you should or as complex as side effects for placebo pills, or mass hysteria. Perhaps the best example of a nocebo in pop culture would be a curse. (In the book, I even get cursed myself at one point.) In other words, if placebos are hope, nocebos are fear. Scientists have found that nocebos are easier to create than placebos  —   and last longer. So fear is more powerful in the body than hope. Saying ”fear is a powerful thing” is a little like saying ”money can come in handy”  —   it kind of undersells it. Fear is the No. 1 tool for selling newspapers, insurance,   medicine and Swedish cars. Sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s not. It’s what kept our ancestors alive for millions of years, and it’s history’s favorite way of selling political ideology. So it’s not surprising that fear forces people to accept some strange ideas about medicine. The most tragic and extreme of these are cancer patients so terrified of modern cancer therapies that they turn toward more ”natural” solutions and shun proven treatments that could have saved their lives. I would gladly suffer a few rounds of chemotherapy to prevent harm from coming to my child. The bottom line is that what happens to me when I go in for my kid’s shots has nothing to do with vaccines or mercury or thimerosal or any science whatsoever. It’s about fear and a loss of control. Maybe I’ve done one too many stories on autism and crossed some kind of threshold. So that is how I ended up sweating when I was in the doctor’s office again two weeks ago, waiting for the   vaccination that would protect him from diphtheria, meningitis, whooping cough and tetanus. Here I was again, deeply ashamed yet still wondering whether we should put off the shot until it was ”safe.” But I knew I could never make the shot, or the world, as safe as I would like. Safe from what? I don’t know, I just want my baby to be safe all the time, OK? And do you have any smaller needles? The doctor asked me to restrain my son, who looked at me a little bewildered but trusted his daddy. Then the doctor injected four neutralized pathogens into his legs. The baby screamed for a few seconds with what I assumed was a deep sense of personal betrayal before the doctor deftly pulled out a tin of lollipops and slipped one into his mouth. I gotta give the guy some credit the kid shut right up and went to work on the candy. Then at that moment, I had a realization. If fear is more powerful than hope and this could happen to a fundamentally rational person like me, then what hope does science really have? What chance does ”This is a   safe intervention” have against ”Holy s*** I might be ruining my child! ”? Now go beyond that to other issues where fears and tribal loyalties conflict with reason, like GMOs, climate change or evolution. How can rationality win when irrationality is so much more attractive? I sat in the doctor’s office staring into space, now terrified of something totally different. The doctor looked at me for a second, then grabbed his tin and pushed it at me. ”Maybe Daddy wants a lollipop, too?” Vance is the author of Suggestible You, which was supported in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. A version of this essay appeared on the blog The Last Word On Nothing."
"Bald eagles and   hawks are not typically friends  —   in fact, they have been known to fight each other to the death. That’s why Canadian bird watchers were so surprised when they spotted a pair of bald eagles sharing a nest with and caring for a baby   hawk, in addition to their own three eaglets. The unexpected interspecies family is living in a Douglas fir at the Shoal Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary in British Columbia, as the Vancouver Sun reported. And bird experts are putting forward two main theories about how a   hawk chick, a species that is a fraction of the size of an eagle, ended up in the nest. Both theories reflect a degree of aggression more typical of   relations. And the two options essentially boil down to a timeless question  —   which came to the nest first: the chicken (ahem, hawk) or the egg? First, raptor scientist David Bird proposes to the Sun that one of the eagles may have raided a hawk nest, grabbed the young hawk and carried it back home. Then, ”my guess is that this little guy begged loud and hard for food  —   not even thinking about the danger,” Bird told the Sun. ”Food overrides everything in these birds. He begged away, and Mom and Dad said, ’OK, here’s an open, gaping beak. Let’s put food in it.’ ” A second theory, proposed in a blog post by David Hancock of the Hancock Wildlife Foundation, suggests that the egg actually hatched in the nest. It’s common for   hawks to divebomb bald eagle nests, he says. ”If the attacking   egg in oviduct, did get carried back to the nearby eagle nest, it is not unlikely that either in the death throes or upon being torn apart (less likely in my experience!) the egg got deposited into the eagle nest.” Then, the eagles inadvertently started incubating the egg and eventually reared it along with their own eaglets. Video published by CTV Vancouver Island shows an adult bald eagle tenderly feeding the   hawk baby. But now some are concerned about what will happen to the youngster now. ”This little   chick is sharing the nest with three   usually aggressive siblings,” Hancock says. ”Sibling rivalry and fratricide is not uncommon in eagles.” Bird told the Sun that the young hawk will be ready to take flight in about a week. He said: ”The big question is: Will it survive the next week to get out of the nest?” Though hawks are smaller than eagles, they have been known to put up a fight. Kerry Finley, a caretaker at the Sanctuary, tells the Sun that the parents are taking good care of the young hawk. ”It’s quite something to see the way it is treated,” he said. ”The parents are quite attentive.” And so far, he says, ”the other birds are keeping their distance  —   they know it is something different.”"
"As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tries to heal a deep rift among Arab partners, President Trump seems to be upping the ante. Trump says he consulted with Saudi Arabia and others on a recent trip to Riyadh and decided to call out Qatar for its ”very high level” of terror financing. Since then, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain and Egypt have severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar. Tillerson told reporters at the State Department shortly before Trump spoke that this blockade is hindering the U. S.  military campaign against ISIS, creating hardships for the people of Qatar and ”impairing U. S. and other international business activities in the region.” Trump had asked Tillerson to help mediate the crisis, and the secretary has been calling his counterparts in the region to ” ” the situation and resolve their grievances. Tillerson’s carefully crafted statement urges the emir of Qatar to do more to stem terrorist financing but adds that ”others must also continue to eliminate factions of support for violent organizations within their own borders.” He also pointedly asked Saudi Arabia and others to ease their blockade on Qatar. Tillerson then went to the White House, where Trump seemed to contradict him, putting the focus squarely back on Qatar. At a joint news conference with his Romanian counterpart, Trump described his recent visit to Riyadh, where ”nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior. So we had a decision to make. Do we take the easy road or do we finally take hard but necessary action?” he said, adding he decided ”the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding.” Qatar is the regional headquarters for U. S. Central Command and home to some 10, 000 American troops, NPR’s Scott Horsley has reported. ”While current operations from Al Udeid Air Base have not been hindered or curtailed, the evolving situation is hindering our ability to plan for   military operations,” said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, according to The New York Times. Asked for comment after the president’s remarks, a State Department spokesman offered a chart comparing parts of the two speeches that appeared to track, but he did not directly answer whether the speeches were coordinated. A senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, Chris Murphy,  . noticed the contradiction between Trump’s and Tillerson’s remarks, writing on Twitter that this is not how foreign policy is supposed to work. ”This is bananas,” Murphy wrote."
"A looming decision about whether to abolish or shrink the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah should provide an early signal of how the Trump administration will deal with a long list of public lands issues. For roughly a month and a half, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has had 27 national monuments under a microscope, reviewing the protected status of these vast expanses of land (and, in some cases, water) at the prompting of an April executive order by President Trump. The idea, according to the order, is to assure that each of these areas is appropriately designated under the 1906 Antiquities Act, a law that gives the president the authority to establish national monuments . .. with a few caveats. Namely, they must include ”historic landmarks” or ”other objects of historic or scientific interest,” and they must not exceed ”the smallest area” necessary for their upkeep. At issue is whether the presidents who created the monuments overstepped their authority. But just as important to those who live around the sites is whether they restrict the economy and ignore local interests. Bears Ears, established last year by President Barack Obama, is the first on Zinke’s list. But a second Utah site, the Grand   National Monument, offers a more comprehensive glimpse into the controversy that eddies around many of the monuments  —   and a revealing peek into what Zinke may ultimately recommend to the president. So, here it is: a tour of Grand  . That is, a tour of the national monument’s economic impact, the political cloud surrounding it  —   and what we can expect once Zinke’s decision comes down. So, what is the benefit or harm of having a national monument in your neighborhood? According to Headwaters Economics, a   think tank that crunched the data on jobs and the economy around 17 of the national monuments under review, the effect is anywhere from nothing to a modest net positive. Chris Mehl, the group’s policy director, says that from 2001 to 2015, overall jobs in the communities around Grand Staircase, in particular, increased by 24 percent and personal income overall grew by 32 percent. These jobs are believed to be mostly service based, in fields that include everything from health care to hospitality, outdoor recreation and tourism. The monument lies within two rural counties in southern Utah, home to about 12, 000 residents and about a   towns across an area that’s nearly 10, 000 square miles in size. Mehl says the economies of rural Western communities like the one around Grand Staircase have changed dramatically, ”with huge social impacts we’re just coming to grips with.” So other, larger economic factors may be involved. ”But there’s no sign of an economic apocalypse here,” he says. Commissioners in rural Garfield County, Utah, have long seen it differently. In 2015, they passed a resolution declaring a state of emergency, saying the monument had all but wiped out the natural   economy in the area. They cited a remarkable 67 percent drop in enrollment at Escalante High School since the monument was designated, while other schools have suffered similar drops. ”We see markers that don’t indicate a healthy economy,” says Matthew Anderson of the Sutherland Institute, a   free market think tank. He argues that Headwaters’ study doesn’t tell the whole story. Local anger still runs deep over President Bill Clinton’s 1996 designation because it also effectively nixed a proposed coal mining operation. A Dutch mining firm’s proposal could have brought in $100 million in new tax revenue and created about 600 jobs, according to state estimates at the time. Anderson argues the types of jobs created by a national monument designation  —   namely in recreation and tourism  —   tend to be   and seasonal, and he says these jobs don’t always sustain families the way livestock grazing does. A national monument grandfathers existing activities like grazing leases but bars new ones. Some residents throw cold water on the idea of shaky employment. ”We are awash in jobs,” Blake Spalding,   of a local grill, tells The Salt Lake Tribune. ”What we need is people to fill them.” The debate around Grand Staircase by no means ends with the balance sheet.   percent of Garfield County is owned and controlled by the federal government. And for some detractors, like former Escalante Mayor Jerry Taylor, the federal presence feels akin to that of an unwelcome relative. ”We love our  ” he once said, according to EE News. ”But sometimes we don’t want her to tell us how to run our house.” Those detractors have not forgotten how the monument was established in the first place: planned largely without input from state leaders and designated by Clinton at a signing ceremony that wasn’t even in Utah. ”Remember,” Zinke said during a visit to the state, according to The Tribune, ”when this monument was formed, the governor of Utah read it in the paper.” As recently as February, Utah lawmakers called on Washington to reduce the size of the monument, citing ”a negative impact on the prosperity, development, economy, custom, culture, heritage, educational opportunities, health, and   of local communities”  —   among other grievances. Nevertheless, when Zinke visited Grand Staircase last month, he was greeted by chants of demonstrators calling for him to ”save our monument,” the St. George Spectrum  Daily News notes. The site  —   flush with ancient artifacts and fossils that date back tens of millions of years  —   has been lauded as ”the   for dinosaurs.” And proponents defend its value not only for recreational visitors, but also for scientists. ”What we learn here matters to the entire West,” Nicole Croft, executive director of Grand   Partners, tells EE News. The ultimate fate of the monuments is murky partly because a president’s authority under the law that established them, the 1906 Antiquities Act, may be open to dispute. ”What’s unclear right now is whether the president has the authority to undo what one of his predecessors has done,” says Mark Squillace, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. The act ”essentially authorizes the president to proclaim, but not to modify or revoke, national monuments.” Squillace says only Congress has the clear authority to revoke a designation because Congress has authority over public property. While some small monuments have been turned over to states, no precedent exists for the abolition of a national monument the size of Grand Staircase. Because of that lack of clarity, one thing is fairly clear: Any order by Trump to shrink or nullify any monument will almost certainly end up in court. It is widely expected that environmentalists would immediately sue. Squillace says the dispute could go all the way to the Supreme Court. Even Zinke himself hinted at the uncertainty during his confirmation hearings earlier this year. ”The law is untested,” he said."
"This week marks the 50th anniversary of the   War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This is one of two stories examining how lives were changed by the war. Fifty years ago, Ephraim Bluth was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving. And listening to the news that Israel was at war. He was a    college student at Brooklyn College, born and raised in Brooklyn, and a devout Jew. To him, it felt like Israel was the biblical David  —   up against many, many Goliaths. ”The sense at that moment was that Israel was standing at the edge of a precipice. Israel was at risk,” Bluth recalled, sitting in his son’s Jerusalem apartment. ”And then, thank the Lord, six days later, everything was different.” Israel had won, tripling the amount of land under its control, including east Jerusalem and the West Bank of the River Jordan  —   land featured in the Bible. Bluth saw Israel’s capture of the land as a biblical promise fulfilled. ”Someone once said to me, ’You can transplant a tree anywhere, but it grows best in its natural environment,’” Bluth said. ”For us, as Jews, Israel is the place we need to be. Israel is the place we want to be.” Bluth and his wife Shoshana moved in 1971 to Jerusalem, became Israeli citizens and had eight children. He worked for the Jewish Agency, a   organization that encourages other Jews around the world to move to Israel. Then, in 1988, his family made another move: to Neve Tzuf, also known as Halamish, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank established in 1977. The Bluths liked the rural lifestyle of the West Bank and wanted to help strengthen the Jewish presence in the captured territory. But Bluth doesn’t like the word ”settlement.” ”I prefer the word community to settlement,” he says. ”Unfortunately, the word settlement has been given a negative connotation.” That’s because, in the eyes of most countries, Israel’s West Bank settlements are seen as a key obstacle to reaching   peace. Since the 1967 war, about 600, 000 Israelis have spread out in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Palestinians want those areas for an independent country of their own, and it’s a matter of   international consensus that Israel’s settlements are gobbling up the very land that is supposed to be negotiated in a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Even Israelis are divided on the issue of settlements. But today, settlers are a part of the Israeli elite, holding top jobs in the government and the military. Bluth’s daughter served in the army and his seven sons all served as combat soldiers, some in elite units. ”They have shown an ability to lead with courage and distinction,” he said. ”I don’t think it’s an accident.” He thinks a pioneering life as settlers gave his children their sense of patriotism. But it has come at a price. His son, Netanel, then 19 years old, was severely injured in 2002, when a Palestinian attacked a Jewish religious school he attended in a settlement in the Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in 1967. (Israel removed its settlements from Gaza in 2005). Netanel eventually recovered from the attack. Despite his son’s   with death, Bluth does not regret moving his family into the heart of a conflict. ”These are the risks we need to take if we want to establish our independence. You need to fight for your independence,” he said. The way Bluth sees it, Israel is still fighting to keep the West Bank  —   and there will only be peace once his Palestinian neighbors accept that he and other Israelis are there to stay. Driving with Bluth from central Israel to the West Bank, which he calls by the biblical name Judea and Samaria, we pass an Israeli checkpoint. ”You’ll notice in many cases, the hilltops are barren,” Bluth says. We pass a cluster of billboards advertising new homes. ”There is a tremendous amount of building, a tremendous amount of construction,” Bluth says. We drive past a Palestinian village and enter a hilly area carpeted in olive trees. We pass an Israeli army encampment. At a bus stop, we see a Palestinian minibus picking up two young Palestinian men. ”The road is open to both Arab and Jew,” Bluth says. ”And this is normalcy.” But for many, I point out, the pervasive presence of the military in the West Bank does not feel normal. ”Israel is at war,” he replies. ”We need to maintain the ability to respond to military action taken against soldiers and against civilians. Unfortunately, that’s Israel’s normalcy.” Palestinians see soldiers not as their protectors, but as their enemies who control their movement, arrest Palestinian suspects in the middle of the night and kill and wound them during clashes. They see Bluth’s settlement as sitting on stolen land. When some settler youth fixed up a nearby spring, building low walls to collect the water into deep pools and bringing in picnic tables, it was seen as a takeover and led to Palestinian protests. And then there was the fire. Late last year, Israeli authorities say, some Palestinians threw a firebomb into a forest next to Bluth’s settlement. It started a forest fire that damaged Bluth’s home and destroyed his neighbors’. It also burned nearly all 28 trees Bluth and his late wife had planted for each of their 28 grandchildren. Now, the garden is filled with new Goldcrest cypress and pomegranate saplings, each one accompanied by a small plaque bearing the name of a grandchild. ”Happily, they’ve all been replanted,” Bluth said. And the families whose homes were burned down are about to begin rebuilding. ”We are rebuilding not just homes. We’re rebuilding futures,” Bluth said. Fifty years after he was inspired to go to Israel, Bluth is firmly rooted in the West Bank. He’s 69 years old now, with a trim white beard. He’s just remarried. And he’s renovating his home to make room for more grandchildren."
"This week marks the 50th anniversary of the   War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This is one of two stories examining how lives were changed by the war. When Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, Omar Omar was stuck. He was 16 years old, going to a high school in Jordan, while his parents were back home in the West Bank, a few hours’ drive away. Israel and neighboring Arab states had gone to war, and in six days, Israel won. It occupied the West Bank, and does so to this day. Like most other Palestinians who were away from home or who fled during the war, Omar couldn’t get Israeli permission to move home afterward. A few months after the June 1967 war, Israel took a census of Palestinians in the West Bank. The majority of those who were not present at the time were not allowed to resettle in the West Bank, according to historians. ”Many times, I tried,” said Omar, now 66. ”If you weren’t counted during war, you are not from here anymore. You are not Palestinian. Despite your father, your mother, your family  —   no. They consider you not from here.” According to Israeli historian Neve Gordon, about 200, 000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from the West Bank during the war, and Israel ultimately allowed only about 17, 000 of them to return. But Palestinians who were abroad when the war broke out  —   like Omar  —   were not allowed to return to the West Bank after the war ended. For those who were in the West Bank after the war, life was gradually met with restrictions. Since 1967, as hundreds of thousands of Israelis have settled in the   West Bank, Palestinians have faced life under military occupation. Over time, that has meant living with army checkpoints, road closures, nighttime arrests, and clashes with soldiers that can be deadly. In 1983, after more than a decade living in Jordan, Omar decided to head toward better fortunes  —   in America. Many enterprising Palestinians, both inside and outside the West Bank, sought opportunities in Jordan, the Gulf countries and in the West. Once he became a U. S. citizen, he could finally return to the West Bank a few times a year  —   as an American tourist. Now, after decades in the U. S. whenever Omar visits the West Bank, he sees it with the eyes of an outsider. This is the story of how Omar’s life became divided. In the years when he was stuck in Jordan after the 1967 war, his family sent a cousin to Jordan to marry him. The couple had six kids, and Omar built a successful business importing clothing. But money ran dry, so he sent his wife and children, who all had West Bank residency rights, to live with his parents while he tried his luck in the U. S. He became a limousine driver in New Jersey, and sent his family money. He lived a different life than they did. ”I dealt with the Americans,   people, executives,” Omar recalls. ”They don’t look at you [as] black, white, Palestinian. They don’t look at these things. They [are] fair people!” On one recent visit back to the West Bank, the two halves of his life collided at an Israeli army checkpoint. He was returning from a picnic when soldiers asked him to exit the car and raise his shirt, to check for explosives. ”I told [them] I am not going to take it off,” Omar said. ”When you live 20, 25 years as a free person  —   full rights  —   you can’t take these things!” The soldier started yelling at Omar. ”So I look at the guy next to him, the other soldier,” Omar continued. ”I saw that soldier. And exactly, that jumped to my mind  —   this guy I know! This guy, I swear I know. I said, ’Aren’t you from Fair Lawn? ’” The soldier was indeed from New Jersey. Omar used to drive his family to the airport. And here he was, in an Israeli army uniform, ordering Omar to lift his shirt. ”Don’t you know me?” Omar asked the soldier. ”Oh, I see, I see, I am sorry,” Omar said the soldier replied. ”What you’re doing here?” Omar asked. ”It’s my duty,” the soldier said. ”Why do these things to the people?” Omar asked the soldier. ”Go to the car. Just go, Omar. Go, go. Don’t worry,” Omar recalls the soldier saying. The soldiers let him go. Omar’s most difficult moment came many years earlier, though  —   when his son, Esmat, was a teenager. Esmat, who’d grown up with his grandparents and mother in the West Bank, had seen the first Palestinian uprising, the Intifada of the late 1980s and early 1990s, up close. He had seen a kid in his West Bank village of Deir Jarir get shot and killed while throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. In 1993, Esmat and some others tried to kidnap an Israeli settler named Haim Mizrahi, who bought eggs at a chicken farm where Esmat worked. Mizrahi resisted. Esmat helped hold him down while an accomplice stabbed and killed him. Esmat spent the next 20 years in prison. Omar was in the U. S. working as a limo driver when he got word what his son had done. ”It was the hardest days in my life. That day, when they call me, I had an accident in the car, limousine car,” Omar said. ”I don’t know. Everything mixed up.” Omar believes Esmat would not have done what he did if Omar hadn’t been far away in the U. S. ”He would never do that. Because, if the father [is] in the house every night . .. every day in house, I would be, like, supervising,” Omar said. ”I wish . .. but wishes doesn’t do nothing.” Israel released Esmat Mansour from prison in 2013 as a goodwill gesture toward the Palestinians at the start of renewed, U. S.    peace talks. Those talks collapsed in 2014. (Haim Mizrahi’s mother, Mazal Mizrahi, declined to comment about her son’s murder when contacted by NPR, saying it was still too painful to discuss). Today, Omar’s son says he no longer believes in violence. But Omar rationalizes what Esmat did as a part of a   conflict with Israel. ”They [are] killing us, they [are] humiliating us. They are doing everything to make us less than human beings,” Omar said. ”What he did, when he was 16, 17 years old  —   why he killed?” His answer is that his son was caught in a cycle of violence. ”What do you expect?” Omar said. ”What do you expect?” With so many Israeli settlements dotting the West Bank, Omar thinks it is too late for Palestinians to establish their own separate country. Instead, he wishes Palestinians and Israelis could live as equal citizens of one democratic country. But he knows that is unlikely. Many Palestinians are still committed to independence, while many Israelis oppose granting millions of Palestinians citizenship in Israel, fearing that could lead to the end of Israel’s Jewish character. Omar used to think he could help his family members most by sending them money. Fifty years later, he wants to send them to America."
"A nonprofit group’s claim that President Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause of the U. S. Constitution should be dismissed because the plaintiffs have no standing to sue, according to a court filing by the Department of Justice. ”Those claims falter on threshold grounds: no Plaintiff has alleged an injury” that meets the standing requirement, the DOJ says in a document submitted in federal court. The administration’s argument is a response to the lawsuit filed in January in the Southern District of New York by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The suit claims Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause whenever foreign entities book rooms at the Trump D. C. hotel or lease Trump office space. The Emoluments Clause bars presidents from taking money from foreign governments. CREW is asking the court ”to stop Trump from violating the Constitution by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments” with ties to Trump business interests. The lawsuit states: ”These violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause pose a grave threat to the United States and its citizens. As the Framers were aware, private financial interests can subtly sway even the most virtuous leaders, and entanglements between American officials and foreign powers could pose a creeping, insidious threat to the Republic.” The suit cites numerous examples of how Trump personally stands to profit from doing business with companies linked to foreign governments. For example, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which is owned by the Chinese government, is a tenant at Trump Tower in New York, and its lease is due to expire during Trump’s term, the suit says. That means the Chinese government would be in negotiations with the Trump Organization to renew the lease  —   and it might agree to extremely favorable terms that, in effect, would be a financial gift to the president. ”CREW, which avers that the President’s conduct is in conflict with its mission of preventing official corruption, has proffered only an abstract injury of the sort long held insufficient to confer standing,” the administration’s filing says. ”It’s clear from the government’s response that they don’t believe anyone can go to court to stop the president from systematically violating the constitution. We heartily disagree and look forward to our day in court,” CREW’s Communications Director Jordan Libowitz says in a statement about the administration’s motion. Friday’s White House response is just one of many legal steps that would have to be taken before a court could decide the case. The next step will involve CREW responding to the administration’s filing, and on it will go as it makes it way through the court. The CREW suit was filed by legal scholars and former White House ethics officials, including Richard Painter, ethics adviser to President George W. Bush Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine and Supreme Court litigator Deepak Gupta."
"A recent report from Save the Children documents what many people have known for a long time  —   a baby is far better off being born in Europe than in   Africa. It’s a point that has been made before. ”But it’s important that Save the Children and others keep bringing it up and putting it before the public because it can be forgotten, ignored or passed over amidst the news of the day,” says Robert Black, the director of international programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ”These are important issues,” says Black, who was not involved in producing the report. 1. Norway, Slovenia3. Finland4. Netherlands5. Sweden6. Portugal7. Ireland8. Iceland9. Italy10. Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, South Korea, 1. Niger2. Angola3. Mali4. Central African Republic5. Somalia6. Chad7. South Sudan8. Burkina Faso9. Sierra Leone, Guinea, Source: Save the Children, The report looks at how child labor, early marriage, preventable diseases and lack of educational opportunities not only threaten kids’ lives but also deprive them of a chance to be children. ”For at least 700 million children worldwide  —   and perhaps hundreds of millions more  —   childhood has ended too soon,” the report concludes. Using data from a variety of United Nations and governmental sources for 172 countries, the report lays out stark estimates of how many kids around the world have had their childhood cut short: The report ranks countries based on their conditions for children. Norway and Slovenia tied for the top slot. Niger  —   which also happens to have the highest fertility rate in the world (the statistically average woman in Niger has more 7. 6 children in her lifetime)  —   is at the bottom. All the countries in the top 10 are in Europe (except for South Korea, which is tied for the No. 10 slot with Cyprus, Germany and Belgium). The U. S. came in at No. 36. It didn’t make the Top 10 because the United States doesn’t spend as much on early childhood education and other social programs for children. The nations found to be the 10 worst places for kids are in Central and West Africa, where hundreds of thousands of children die each year from malaria and diarrhea. Angola, the second largest oil producer in Africa, ranked as the second worst place in the world to be a child. Black praises the focus on all the problems that affect whether a child can grow, learn and thrive  —   from lack of food to disease to education. Too often, he says, reports consider just one factor. But to improve kids’ lives, it’s not just about food or disease or education but about how all these things interact: ”Underlying conditions such as malnutrition make infections more severe and more likely to be fatal.” ”The factors are quite broad that disadvantage these children,” he says."
"Colstrip, Mont. is about 750 miles away from Seattle, as the crow flies. Politically, the two places may be even further apart. And yet, they’re connected. If you’re turning the lights on in the Pacific Northwest, some of that electricity may be coming from Colstrip. And if you’re in Colstrip, wondering how long your own lights will stay on, you’re likely looking west. America’s energy system is a web, connecting inland to coast and urban to rural. And as that system shifts, people are starting to ask: What  —   if any  —   support should a town like Colstrip get from places like Seattle or the federal government as the town enters an uncertain future? Despite the recent promises from the Trump administration to bring the coal industry back, America’s energy system is shifting increasingly toward natural gas, wind and solar. Economics are driving the change. But so are politics. In the week since President Trump announced that he would withdraw the U. S. from the Paris climate agreement, a broad coalition of cities, states, businesses and universities have promised to uphold the agreement and reduce their carbon emissions. ”We’re still in,” is their motto. Washington state was already in. It has a commitment to use less coal. Colstrip is a coal town. And even though the challenges it’s facing existed long before Trump’s announcement, people there are angry about the push to change America’s energy demands. They feel like they don’t have a say. And they fear they’ll be left behind. A town built on coal, Colstrip is a company town that’s built on coal  —   coal that’s scraped from beneath the surrounding   hills and trucked or transported past   streets and idle train cars, to a towering   power plant at the heart of this tidy,   town. It’s there  —   at the     power plant in the West  —   that the coal is burnt, heating water to steam, generating 2, 094 megawatts of electricity that travels by wire across Montana to the greater Pacific Northwest. ”That’s who we are,” says Lu Shomate, the director of the town’s historical center. ”If it wasn’t for the coal, and then the generation of course, none of us would be here.” And what’s here, she says, is good. Colstrip isn’t some dusty, dreary,    town. There’s an   golf course, a    recreation center and 32 parks that are all free to the town’s 2, 300 residents. The streets are wide and clean. The estimated median household income in Colstrip is $84, 145. In Montana overall, it’s $47, 169. But recently, things have started to change. A lawsuit filed by two environmental groups alleged that the Colstrip Generating Station hadn’t updated its technology to meet air quality requirements. A couple of the utilities that own the plant settled, agreeing to close the older two of the plant’s four units by 2022. There have since been indications it could happen sooner. On top of that, the two biggest customers for Colstrip’s power  —   Washington and Oregon  —   announced   commitments to get off coal. The combined uncertainty has sent real estate values in Colstrip plummeting, leaving people in sunken mortgages. Kerri Kerzmann, who helps run the town’s   programs for coal workers’ children, says her house has gone from being worth ”a couple hundred thousand dollars,” to maybe $60, 000 or $70, 000 now. Resident and activist Lori Shaw says a ”crisis fatigue” has set in. ”You’re so used to being on the edge for so long,” she says, ”It’s almost like you forget to panic anymore, even though it is  . It’s like, yeah, I know we might lose everything next month. What’s new?” Shomate says the same thing that’s happened in Appalachia and other parts of   America is starting to happen here: ”The middle class is being ripped apart.” Shomate, Kerzmann and others in Colstrip want a plan to help the town now and as it transitions into an uncertain future. All say that coal should be part of that plan, but they know it can’t be the only part. ”We know there are better ways of doing things, so let’s work on that together,” Shomate says. ”But we’re not getting that support. It’s just: shut it down, dirty, filthy coal.” Planning for an uncertain future, A plan for a town like Colstrip requires resources. It needs money. And if you ask people here where that money should come from, they’ll point west. ”There would be no Facebook. There would be no Bill Gates. None of that would be in Seattle without   reliable power that comes from Colstrip, Mont. ,” says Duane Ankney, a state senator who represents the town in the state legislature. The reality is a bit more complex. Hydroelectric power provides the bulk of Washington’s energy. But coal has historically played a role there as well. The construction of the power plant in Colstrip, which began operating in 1970s, was actually spurred by power companies in the Pacific Northwest that wanted another source of electricity for the region’s   energy demands. Before that, it was the Northern Pacific Railroad that turned this   patch of prairie into a company town to provide coal for the rails. Today,   Puget Sound Energy owns   of Colstrip’s electric output, enough to power 500, 000 homes in western Washington. That history is   in Colstrip and it factors largely into the local sentiment that outsiders should be partly responsible for the town’s future. At Alison’s Pantry, a coffee shop in town, Hugh Mannix and a group of older men who call themselves the ”Rusty Zippers” sneer when they talk about Washington’s efforts to get off coal. ”So we can put up with all the pollution and they get the gravy,” Mannix says. ”And that’s gone on for 40 years. And we took it. We run with it. We made it successful and now these prima donnas out there can just walk away? Well, no. Pay your way out of it now.” Ankney, the state senator, proposed a bill in Montana’s legislature earlier this year that would require utilities to do just that. There are six utilities that have ownership in Colstrip’s plant. All are based out of state. Ankney’s bill would have required them to help pay for the social costs of decommissioning the plant, by making them have ”a plan in place for the workers,” he says. That plan would include money for lost real estate values, tax revenues and to help   the workers. The bill, Ankney says, was about accountability to the state of Montana and to the workers who made the utilities what they are. ”I think that would go a long ways, to cop a phrase, to make America great again. It’s when you have corporate responsibility,” says Ankney, a Republican and retired coal mine superintendent. The bill failed in Montana’s legislature. It was fought by utilities and environmental groups, who feared that it would scare away future investment in Montana from renewable energy companies. A related bill, which required that the utilities have a plan and money set aside for environmental remediation at the plant site, passed. Shaw, the community activist, says it seems like there’s more interest in helping ”grass and dirt” than people. A federal plan, At the union hall in Colstrip, Rex Rogers shares some of the same frustrations as Shaw and others. Rogers is the business manager for the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He represents about 250 workers at Colstrip’s power plant. And he too wants to see a plan in place to help those workers when parts of the plant start to close down. The irony is that there was a plan: President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Rogers keeps a copy of it at the union hall. He lifts it  —   all 1, 560 pages  —   from a wood side table and plops it down on a table in the middle of the room. ”I wouldn’t have printed it, if I’d known how big it was going to be,” he says. The Clean Power Plan was Obama’s biggest effort to combat climate change. It would have required that states like Montana reduce their carbon emissions. Rogers was on Montana’s team that studied how that would play out on the ground. The expectation, he says, is that it would have forced the closure of the two older units at the town’s power plant. Put another way: ”The impact on Colstrip would have been exactly what we’re seeing now,” he says. Only now, the Clean Power Plan is gone. Montana was one of dozens of states that successfully sued to stop the plan. Trump has ordered that it be repealed. ”Well the concern with that is, built into the Clean Power Plan was [a section] about transitioning, taking care of the workers and those parts of it,” Rogers says. Rogers is referring to Obama’s Power+ Plan, which aimed to give resources to ”assist communities and workers that have been affected by job losses in coal mining, coal power plant operations, and   supply chain industries due to the changing economics of America’s energy sector.” It was the Obama administration’s way of saying: We know the market is changing here’s our plan to help cushion the fall. Now, Rogers says, the cushion is gone and there’s nothing being proffered by the new administration to replace it. ”Even though we won the ’war on coal,’ it doesn’t appear that there was anything in that for the workers,” he says. Rogers’ opinion of the Clean Power Plan is not widely shared in Colstrip. Most people in the town are happy to see it, and other   regulations on the coal industry, gone or on their way out. ”With Trump in there doing some of the things that he’s doing to eliminate some of those needless regulations, I think it’s going to make a positive impact here,” says Colstrip Mayor John Williams. If nothing else, he says, it’s nice to have a president who supports coal. A difficult question, While Trump’s    approach to the coal industry is refreshing to some, it’s worrisome to others. ”It appears that that comes with a price of: then let’s pretend that the transition isn’t happening,” says Julia Haggerty, a professor at Montana State University. ”That, I think, does not do a service to the places that are experiencing the transition.” Haggerty studies efforts to help struggling coal towns. She’s spent a lot of time in Colstrip and other coal towns in the Mountain West. And she knows how hard it is to even have a discussion about transitions in those places. ”These are   energy towns,” she says. ”So it’s pretty tricky, I think, to ask ’what comes next?’ That’s often a painful conversation to have because what comes next in a remote, isolated   town is really a very difficult thing to know.” She says it’s important that these conversations happen though that plans are made for the future as the nation moves further away from coal. Those conversations, Haggerty says, need to include places like Colstrip that have historically provided energy and places like Seattle who no longer want it. As a professor, she sees students who have very little understanding of where energy comes from and where it’s traditionally come from. That lack of recognition, she says, ”to the places and resources that have created enormous wealth for the region, I think, really contributes to the bitterness and the difficulty of these conversations.” And, she says, it’s contributing to the divisions that exist in America today."
"Eight miles down a dirt road through the swamps of southwest Alabama, Lane Zirlott has 1. 8 million oysters in the water at his family’s farm in Sandy Bay. ”What we’ve been doing is trying to redefine what people are thinking of a Southern gulf oyster,” Zirlott says. The Murder Point oyster farm covers about two and half acres in the bay. The name changed from ”Myrtle Point” in 1929, after a deadly dispute over oyster territory. ”Two men got in an argument over rights to a lease. One guy come back that afternoon and killed the other guy. And so from that time forward they called it Murder Point,” Zirlott says. ”So we kind of adopted the name and put it with the tag line ’oysters worth killing for. ’” There are 10 long rows of wood piling and PVC piping. Oblong oyster baskets hang from lines strung between them. Zirlott explains that this is called the Australian long line system. ”We have the oysters hanging in line with the line that’s running down pipes,” he says. Wave action tumbles the oyster baskets, which can be positioned up and down the water column, and pulled out to dry so barnacles won’t attach. If it’s a calm day, like this one, farmers wade into the   water to manually shake the oyster baskets. Zirlott says that action is key. It knocks the edges off the shell, keeping it more compact and forcing the oyster inside to grow deep and plump, instead of wide and flat. ”We found that the petite oyster was the way to go,” he says. ”Deep cupped.     three inches max. Perfect little   oyster.” All of Zirlott’s oysters are destined for the premium   market  —   showing up on raw bar menus alongside more   farmed oysters from the East and West coasts. His clients include trendy spots in Houston and New Orleans. The Gulf oyster industry suffered a blow during the 2010 BP oil spill. And while wild oyster harvesting from reefs is back in business, the industry is still not up to   levels.   farming, in which the oysters rest in floating aquaculture cages instead of on the muddy bottom, has taken off since. There were no oyster farms in the Gulf of Mexico in 2009. Now there are dozens from Louisiana to Florida, according to Auburn University marine scientist Bill Walton. He’s also known as ”Dr. Oyster” because he spawns oysters at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab on the Alabama coast. Walton pours a bucket of larvae into a big blue tank. ”The fertilized egg that we put into this tank, within a day it’s a swimming larva that actually has to eat, and it’s swimming around and has got a stomach,” Walton says. ”I mean it’s a critter.” The hatchery produces oyster seed to sell to farmers. Louisiana State University has a similar program. Walton says the industry is still young and vulnerable to the same threats and forces of nature that wild oysters face. Last year a harmful algal bloom shut down harvesting. But he’s hopeful it can be an option for people looking to make a living on the coast. ”Even in 2008, 2009 you had people before the oil spill who weren’t sure,” he says. ”Do you tell your teenage son or daughter to go into shrimping? But you don’t want to move away and you don’t want to leave your family, so how do you . .. stay living in your community working on the water?” For Zirlott, a 5th generation commercial fisherman, oyster farming was a way back home. ”We shrimp from the   border as far as Virginia at times. And so you had to be gone,” he says. But after his two children were born, he wanted a change. ”It was time for me to be home,” says Zirlott. ”But what to do?” His mother took an aquaculture class and got the family to try oyster farming about 3 years ago. Now Murder Point is looking to double in size and open its own hatchery. Zirlott says he’s encouraging his children to get degrees in biology. ”I’m looking to keep a tradition alive but by new modern ways to do it,” he says. He touts Murder Points as the ultimate    food, and uses social media to market with the hashtag #Butterlove. That’s for the flavor. ”When you get past the salt . .. you start to get a rich buttery aftertaste,” says Zirlott. Celebrity Chef Emeril Lagasse’s Instagram recently featured a shot of an   platter of raw oysters he was having at Fisher’s Restaurant in Orange Beach, Ala. They were Murder Points."
"This week in race: Bill Maher crosses a line Kevin Hart takes a pass on President Trump a Cosby Kid stands up for Dr. Huxtable. Let’s get to it. America’s Favorite Dad showed up in court, and one of his TV children was there. Keshia Knight Pulliam, who played Rudy Huxtable, helped steer him through the press gantlet and into a Philadelphia courtroom, where Cosby is on trial for sexual assault. There’s fallout, still, from Bill Maher’s Friday show, in which he talked with Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, and declared himself a ”house n*****.” The comment came after Sasse invited him to see how beautiful his state was by coming out and working in the fields. Black Twitter  —   and lots of other people’s  —   exploded. Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, canceled his   appearance. There were calls for Maher to be fired, and plenty of arguments around free speech and the responsible use of it. In the end Maher apologized, and the show went on. More on the comedy front: Donald Trump is often fertile fodder for jokes, but don’t sit and wait for Kevin Hart to go there: He has announced there will be none of that. One of the   black comedians says he doesn’t want to alienate his audience. Or at least the ones who don’t find Trump jokes funny. Meanwhile, in the world of books . ..  The Washington Post this week wrote about the history of the Green Book (full title: The Negro Motorist Green Book). The book was a guide through the segregated South that black travelers depended upon to steer them to restaurants, hotels, guesthouses and shops that were ” .” The Green Book stopped publishing in the  ’60s, after America was de jure desegregated. But given the current political climate, some have suggested it might be time to revisit that idea. Moving on to computer games . .. The Oregon Trail is a game set in   America, where players get to manifest their destiny by assuming the role of Western expansionists. Indian Country Today interviewed one of the game’s original creators (it was created in 1971). Don Rawitsch says if he were to redesign the game today, it would be a Native American version. The game has been used in schools to educate students about the rigors of the pioneer experience. The versions for mobile devices are popular, which is worrisome to some critics the   scenarios have no context. ”Part of why the game is dangerous is because you can pretend you’re learning history and teachers endorse it,” one university professor told Indian Country Today."
"Hello, and welcome to another   edition of our weekly news roundup! Questions about federal law and discrimination for DeVos, On Tuesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos appeared before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, and Democrats pounded her with questions about civil rights protections, particularly for LGBTQ students and those with disabilities. After facing similar questions in a House subcommittee appearance last month, DeVos this time took a new tack, repeating the same answer at least 14 times: ”Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law.” At one point, Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, demanded, ”But what does that mean?” The question went unanswered, and it’s an important one, especially if the Education Department is suggesting, as it seems to be, that federal laws would offer vulnerable students meaningful protections from discrimination if they attend private schools, which are mostly religious, using vouchers. Attempting to answer Reed’s question, NPR Ed unpacked the relevant federal laws  —   Title IX, IDEA, ADA, etc.  —   and found an important trend: When it comes to regulating private schools, especially private religious schools, federal law provides relatively weak civil rights guardrails. More on that here. The hearing was also marked for its pushback on President Trump’s proposed 13 percent cut to education, coming from both sides of the aisle. ”It’s likely that the kinds of cuts proposed in this budget will not occur,” summed up Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican and chair of the subcommittee. History suggests he may be right.  New York City announces school integration goals, The nation’s largest public school system released a plan this week to increase integration by race, income and English language learner and disability status. But advocates called it less than ambitious, and it didn’t use the word ”segregation.” Seventy percent of New York City school children are black and Latino. But more than   attend schools that don’t look like the city, with   and Latinos clustered in some schools and whites and Asians overrepresented in others. The same clustering is seen with regards to income. The city plans, within five years, to increase by 50, 000 the number of students attending schools that reflect the city’s racial demographics and to decrease by 10 percent the number of schools that are concentrated in terms of both poverty and wealth. The city will also simplify the   admissions processes for middle and high school in an attempt to make it easier for families with fewer resources to access better opportunities. WNYC interviewed Ritchie Torres, a city councilman from the Bronx, who called it ”an incremental approach” but one that ”legitimizes diversity as a public policy objective.” Chicago is an example of a large urban school system with an ambitious integration plan, which we covered here. Harvard students’ admission rescinded over obscene Facebook memes, At least 10   members of Harvard’s Class of 2021 had their admissions offers rescinded after a group exchange of racist and sexually offensive Facebook messages, The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported this week. The Crimson reported that within a group of about 100, the students exchanged images with captions that made light of pedophilia and the Holocaust and had other offensive themes. Nationally, 43 percent of young people report they have personally been called offensive names on the Internet, according to a study released earlier this year by the nonpartisan think tank Data  Society. Billionaires disrupt education, The New York Times took a look this week at the attempts by tech titans to transform public schools with what one scholar called ”a monopolistic approach to education reform.” In a wave of philanthropy on a scale not seen since the Rockefeller and Carnegie era, leaders like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Reed Hastings of Netflix, and nonprofits like Code. org, have each invested tens of millions of dollars in technology and direct grants to schools. Some of these investments serve companies’ direct business interests, such as preparing more students for computer science jobs or selling software and hardware to what is projected to soon be a $21 billion   market. In all cases, concluded The Times, there is little independent oversight of these efforts and little independent proof of benefits to learning."
"The National Park Service announced it will drain and clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, after a   parasite killed approximately 80 ducks there since May 20. The service said Friday that postmortem examinations done on the ducks by the U. S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center suggested that their deaths were caused by ”high levels of parasites that develop and grow in snails that live in the pool.” Chemical treatments alone aren’t sufficient to reduce the parasite and snail population, it said, so the service needs to drain and clean the pool. In addition to killing ducks, the parasite   known as a schistosome   can cause swimmer’s itch in humans, which is also called cercarial dermatitis. The CDC explains that the microscopic parasites ”are released from infected snails into fresh and salt water (such as lakes, ponds, and oceans). While the parasite’s preferred host is the specific bird or mammal, if the parasite comes into contact with a swimmer, it burrows into the skin causing an allergic reaction and rash.” The risk of people contracting the parasite at the reflecting pool is ”extremely low,” says the Park Service, because you need sustained contact with affected water  —   and swimming in the pool has never been allowed. (Though it’s been done.) The draining will begin Sunday and the Park Service hopes to reopen the pool on June 19. In 2012, the Reflecting Pool was completely rebuilt with water conservation features. The bottom of the pool was also tinted to make it more reflective. According to the site Histories of the National Mall, the District of Columbia operated three small   public pools near the Washington Monument in the   and early ’30s, which were demolished in 1935. The site says that starting in the 1880s, there were segregated swimming areas near the Mall in the Tidal Basin: ”In 1914, Congress voted to create an official beach on the Tidal Basin for white patrons. African Americans swam nearby in a segregated area that never received funding or buildings. Facing increased criticism from black leaders and concerns that the water was polluted, Congress voted to ban swimming in the Tidal Basin in 1925.”"
"Nobody likes a snitch. But if you’re in jail, informing on fellow inmates can pay. Legislators in at least four states are now trying to make sure that rewarding jailhouse informants  —   with cash, perks or deals for freedom  —   isn’t leading to wrongful convictions. Bruce Lisker knows how convictions can go wrong. He was only 17 when he discovered his mother murdered in her suburban Los Angeles home. ”I lost my mom and nothing would ever be the same. And I had no idea how not the same it would ever be,” Lisker says. It took investigators less than an hour to zero in on him as a suspect. It took 26 years for a court to determine that they were mistaken. A key piece of evidence used to convict Lisker was testimony from a savvy jailhouse informant, whom he met after being moved out of juvenile detention. ”Somebody put it in for me to be transferred to LA County Jail and suddenly I was,” Lisker says. ”Under 18, I was placed in what later came to be known as the snitch tank.” A grand jury investigation found that the   ”snitch tank” of 1980s LA was designed to give seasoned informants access to naive inmates. Lisker says there were holes in his cell’s walls. The man in the next cell over suggested that they pray together. He said he could help with Lisker’s case and asked for a copy of the police report. ”I rolled it up and shoved it through that little hole in the wall and let him look at it over dinner,” Lisker says. ”And then we’re going to talk later and he’s going to tell me what he thinks, how to help me . .. How to help himself.” The man, it turns out, was working for law enforcement. For a reduction in his sentence, he said Lisker had confessed to him and his story matched the case file. ”He had taken notes of all the stuff that was in there,” Lisker says. Today, inmates still trade information for rewards   —   sometimes big ones. Two Southern California tipsters pulled in more than $300, 000 between 2011 and 2015 informing on fellow inmates. California Assemblyman Reginald   has written a state bill to limit these kickbacks. He thinks they can distort the truth. ”I’m concerned about the veracity of the information. I might incriminate you at $100, 000 dollars a year. That could be a sideline business in prison,” Jones Sawyer says. The bill, AB 359, requires better tracking and   disclosure of who says what in jail. And   is proposing a maximum of a $100 in cash or perks paid per case. ”It’s the taxpayers’ money. And that’s where I’m really concerned that we set an equitable number and that we don’t exceed it,”   says. But Cory Salzillo of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, a group opposing the bill, says it’s impossible to tally the costs of certain perks informants receive. ”Some of these things are not necessarily quantifiable  —   a better cell assignment, or some other type of benefit that is not a tangible good with an inherent value,” Salzillo says. Sheriffs and district attorneys have other concerns about the bill as well. They say that tracking informants over time will be tough and that revealing too much about them will jeopardize other investigations they’re helping with. When it comes to judging their credibility, Salzillo thinks the system works. ”I’m not sure you can say just because a person receives something in exchange that they are inherently unreliable. But, the defendant will raise the question, certainly. Ultimately, that has to be adjudicated by the court,” Salzillo says. But criminal informants are ”inherently unreliable by definition,” according to Loyola Law School Professor Alexandra Natapoff. ”They’re giving the government information in exchange for a benefit,” she says. Natapoff is the author of Snitching, about how criminal informants erode justice. ”As one court has said, it’s hard to imagine a greater inducement to fabricate than the promise of one’s own liberty,” she says. Still, Natapoff agrees, transparency helps. California prosecutors already have to disclose leniency deals. AB 359 adds to that requirement an informant’s criminal record and history of substance abuse, mental illness and informing in other cases. Texas, Washington and Illinois are all considering similar bills. ”States seem to be coming to a consensus that more information is better. It leads to fewer wrongful convictions and it’s just a fairer and better way to run the adversarial system,” Natapoff says. Back in 1983, when he was returned to juvenile detention, Bruce Lisker was still sure he could prove his innocence. Then, one day, his lawyer dropped a bombshell  —   that friend he’d prayed with at the county jail was planning to testify against him. Lisker remembers hearing the news. ”My jaw [was] on the table,” Lisker says. ”I think it was at that moment that whatever hope I had shining back at me from my attorney was gone.” It wasn’t only his hope for acquittal that was gone. Lisker says it was also his faith that the justice system delivers truth. He spent 26 years behind bars before a court overturned his conviction and set him free. Today, Lisker teaches creative writing classes to teenage girls at a juvenile hall near Los Angeles. Occasionally, his students ask him for tips on how to survive on the inside. ”Keep your mouth closed and your eyes and ears open. That’s pretty much a universally good piece of advice in any custody situation,” Lisker tells them. ”The more that you can take in and the less that you can put out, the better.”"
"For years, Canada’s tech industry has watched in frustration as Microsoft and Google hired the country’s top computer science grads for   jobs in Seattle and Silicon Valley. Now Canada believes it has found a new way to lure American and international tech workers. Canadian tech companies are eager to capitalize on anxiety among international visitors and   immigrants following President Trump’s travel ban and other immigration policies. Meanwhile, the Canadian government is making it easier for highly skilled workers to move there. ”We feel that Canada has a window of opportunity here to be able to attract the best and the brightest,” says Salim Teja, vice president of the MaRS Discovery District, a major incubator for tech companies in Toronto. Teja says there’s fierce global competition for talent in the industry, with companies offering escalating salaries and perks. And those employers need to know that they can get visas for the people they’re hiring. ”A lot of these technology companies are very international businesses where talent is flowing freely in and out of different countries,” says Teja. ”If the U. S. becomes a tough place to do business that way, they may look at Canada as an easy market for them to set up in.” Facebook, Google and Uber have recently opened or expanded their offices in Toronto. Microsoft has satellite offices in Vancouver. And smaller Canadian companies say they’re getting interest from a pool of American and international job applicants they hadn’t heard from before. Roy Pereira is the founder of Zoom. Ai, a startup in Toronto. After Trump’s election, Pereira says he saw a 30 percent jump in Americans applying for engineering jobs. ”As Canadians, we’re not accustomed to seeing Americans want to move to Canada,” says Pereira. ”They have a perception that Canada is cold. But there is a certain anxiety around the immigration policies and so forth.” A lot of Americans who opposed President Trump talked about moving to Canada after the election. Kathryn Hume actually did it. Earlier this month, she packed up her New York apartment and moved to Toronto. ”It wasn’t like, going on Facebook [saying] I’m done. I’m moving to Canada,” Hume says. ”It was a little bit more organic.” Hume works in artificial intelligence. She is now employee No. 3 at a startup company called Integrate AI, where her title is vice president of product and strategy. ”I had a couple job offers also in the U. S.,” says Hume. ”And I chose it primarily because it really felt like the right job.” Still, Hume says Trump’s election was in the back of her mind. She voted for Hillary Clinton. ”I thought, well, if there’s a time to move to Canada, it might as well be now.” Starting Monday, Canada’s government says it will streamline the visa process so that international tech workers can get a work permit in just two weeks  —   compared to a complicated process in the U. S. that can take months. ”For us to compete globally, we need to be open,” says Navdeep Bains, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and economic development. ”We do believe it does give us a competitive advantage.” Bains insists this was in the works before last year’s U. S. election. But the timing is striking. President Trump has sharply criticized the U. S. visa program for technical workers. ”They should never, ever be used to replace Americans,” Trump said at an event in Wisconsin in April. Pereira and other tech leaders hope that means a warmer forecast for the Canadian tech industry. ”Every company is in a global battle for talent,” says Alex Norman, the   of TechToronto, an organization that puts on monthly events featuring leaders and innovators from the city’s tech community. ”And anything that takes the barrier away, and makes it easier for someone you want to recruit to come, is a huge win.”"
"Protesters who gathered on Saturday to denounce Islamic law were met across the country with equally sized or larger  . Organizers called the ”March Against Sharia” rallies to protest what they say is the threat to U. S. society posed by the set of traditional Muslim practices, which they say includes oppression of women, honor killings, homophobic violence, female genital mutilation and other abuses. But reports and pictures show large   around the country, with activists accusing the ” ” marchers of racism and Islamophobia. Sharia ”is a legal or philosophical code derived from Islamic scripture and meant to guide the behavior of observant Muslims,” as NPR’s Tom Gjelten noted. Religious experts say it’s similar to parts of Christian and Jewish customs. The rallies were held in about two dozen cities and about 20 states. They were organized by the conservative group ACT for America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the ”largest grassroots   group in America, claiming 280, 000 members and over 1, 000 chapters.” The organization describes itself as ”the NRA of national security.” ”I feel like we need to make a stand now, before [sharia] makes more inroads,” protester Shannon Boulogne told WABE reporter Adhiti Bandlamudi. ”I’ve always been, you know, for women’s rights.” Bandlamudi reports that Boulogne was among a small group of demonstrators who gathered in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. The Los Angeles Times reports they were met by a ”small gaggle of ” who ”held up placards and shouted, ’No Hate! No Fear! Muslims Are Welcome Here.’ ” A few miles away, other Atlantans held a   and food drive. Asma Elhuni, of the Georgia chapter of the Council on   Relations, criticized the ” ” protesters. ”If they’re against sharia, are you against feeding the poor? Are you against being friendly, showing love? Because essentially that is Sharia,” she told Bandlamudi. In Syracuse, N. Y. ”March Against Sharia” organizer Lisa Joseph told North Country Public Radio’s Brian Mann that she put the rally together because she and others are ”against female genital mutilation, honor killings, throwing gays off of buildings, stoning people to death.”   in Syracuse responded by shouting ”Shame! Shame! Shame!” and described the opposing demonstration as   bigotry, Mann reports. On the other side of the country, several dozen ” ” protesters gathered at Seattle’s City Hall, according to The Associated Press. But the AP reports that ”[h]undreds of   marched through downtown Seattle behind a large sign saying ’Seattle stands with our Muslim neighbors.’ ” In Chicago, ”about 30 people demonstrated against Islamic law and in favor of President Trump,” but twice as many   shouted back, the wire service reports. ”Each side boasted about    people” in a protest and   in Denver, according to The Denver Post, and law enforcement arrested four people. In Harrisburg, Penn. about 60 ” ” protesters were separated from the same number of  . ”This is a march against sharia, not Muslims,” Steven R. Moore, of Washington County, Pa. told The Washington Post. ”We are not affiliated with any extremist groups. . .. Sharia is a barbaric system that the Islamic State is trying to impose in our country.” Several   were ” ” or ”antifa” activists, who ”dressed in black masks and hoods and chant[ed] ’No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA,’ ” Reuters reports, a slogan modified from a 1980s punk song. Similar protests and   also happened in St. Paul, Minn. where authorities arrested several people ”when scuffles broke out,” the AP reports, and New York City, where   banged pots and pans in an effort to drown out ” ” demonstrators. Despite the concern, sharia has no chance of being imposed in the U. S. in the foreseeable future. ”It’s like the Ten Commandments for Muslims. It’s nothing to be enforced upon anyone. It’s a moral code that I follow for myself as an individual,” Muslim youth leader Mansoor Shams explained to NPR earlier this year. No area of the U. S. has legally implemented sharia, despite false reports on social media that Dearborn, Mich. enacted it. According to the Pew Research Center, the U. S. has a population that is only 0. 9 percent Muslim and Liyakat Takim, a professor of Islamic studies at McMaster University, told the AP that the vast majority of U. S. Muslims oppose implementing sharia in the U. S. Then there’s the Constitution, which states that ”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”"
"Pride parades are known for glitter, upbeat music and happy people dancing on bright floats, as they make their way through loud, colorful crowds. This was not a pride parade. ”Stonewall began as a riot,” Sian Lewis, a member of the D. C. planning committee for the Equality March, said, as ”YMCA” by the Village People blared from large, black speakers behind her. ”We are living the legacy of Stonewall,” she said. Crowds stretched for blocks across the parade route near the National Mall, and while Lewis said they anticipated more than 200, 000 marchers, she said the number of people who showed up blew their expectations. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, straight, white, black, Latinx Americans and people from across the world all marched in solidarity Sunday to protest how they believe the Trump administration could negatively affect the LGBT community. Participants were all ages. And they came from all over the world, on two feet or more. One group of   best friends from Tampa, Fla. arrived with lettered signs that spelled out RESISTANCE. They all wore top hats as a tribute to their friend, Top Hat Eddie, who was killed one year ago in the Pulse shooting that rocked the LGBT community. They said part of the reason they came out was in remembrance of their friend and to make sure nothing like that happens again. That starts, they say, with resisting the Trump administration. ”It’s very important to express the importance of how far we’ve come,” said    Anthony Micheletti from Chicago. ”I will not allow them to take [my rights] away. You’ll have to drag me in heels.” The political march for equality comes one day after the Pride Parade in D. C. while marches and protests are ongoing around the country this June for Pride month. And many participants feel as if this time in history is a turning point for the LGBT movement. They see it as an opportunity to note that while LGBT rights increased over the past decade, there’s still a long way to go. ”The parade yesterday was fun, but today we’re fighting for our rights,” Sh’mon Jackson said. She’s a drag queen from New York who traveled to the nation’s capital for this weekend’s festivities. ”You have whatever you want,” she said of the politicization of pride. If you want to get political, you can come to this march, she said. If not, ”across the block there’s a party. You can make [Pride] what you want.” Nemat Sadat wandered around the Mall after the Equality March with a sign proclaiming his identities: immigrant, gay, creator. ”Since Stonewall, this is a continuation and expansion,” he said. ”Today, we’re here to fight against the Trump administration.” In particular, Sadat said, they were there to advocate against how the Trump administration has accepted human rights violations against the LGBT community across the world, like in his home country of Afghanistan. Estrellia Sanchez, a transgender woman from Atlanta who was born and raised in Mexico, said she attended the march to fight on multiple fronts  ” through her passions for immigration reform, prison reform and transgender rights. ”I want equity for my community who are incarcerated,” she said. ”I am human.” Sanchez is one of many who traveled far for this march. ”We came here to show that all corners of the country are united,” said John Dyrcz, a    man who traveled to D. C. from New Mexico with friends Chris Heise, Jason Anderson and Jesus Gallegos. They all identify as gay men. Dyrcz said they’re glad the politicization of the movement is becoming stronger again. ”To make [the movement] political, makes it visible.” Reg Franchi, a transgender gay man, traveled from Los Angeles, which is having a resist march in place of its annual Pride Parade this year, where they’ve traded the typical pride floats for a march on civil rights for LGBT people. Franchi echoed the feelings of the rest of the marchers in D. C. and back home. He said he’s ready for pride to get back to being political. ”The very first march was in memory of Stonewall,” he said. ”So it’s going back to our roots.” Dustin Moore is a    gay man who says he understands why the movement has always been so political, but that LGBT people never actually asked for its politicization. Many members of the LGBT community, Moore included, feel that their identity has been   into a political movement without their consent. ”It’s not our decision to politicize it,” he said. ”Treating it like it’s not a political arena does us no good.” The entire month of June has historically been dedicated as Pride Month, with celebrations all month across the country. For the first time in years, the U. S. president did not acknowledge the month publicly, and the lack of action by President Trump did not go unnoticed by the LGBT community and their allies. Despite that, Pride Month will continue with events around the world for people to stand in solidarity with the LGBT community. Nemat Sadat said he’s looking forward to all the progress that’s left to be made. ”We have to be the beacons of hope and light in this world,” he said. Christianna Silva is an NPR Digital News intern."
"A recent string of violent episodes in Southeast Asian countries sheds some light on the challenges facing this region as it grapples with extremism. In Indonesia last month, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a Jakarta bus station. The attack was linked to an   group. In Thailand, a rash of attacks linked to Islamist insurgent groups took place throughout April and into May in the restive,   south  —   including a car bomb attack outside a shopping mall that wounded more than 50 people. And in the Philippines,   militants recently took over and occupied Marawi, a city in the country’s   island of Mindanao. President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law on Mindanao on May 23, and the Philippine army has been fighting the militants for almost three weeks. The death toll has topped 150, according to the military. The attacks raise important questions about the extent of militancy and potential threats in this region. The Islamist groups battling the Philippine military in Marawi  —   including the   Abu Sayyaf and a newer group, called Maute  —   have only recently come together under the ISIS flag. And they’ve been getting some help from abroad, analysts say. ”We see the southern Philippines emerging as an important venue for foreign terrorist fighters,” Rohan Gunaratna, the head of Singapore’s International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, tells NPR. Foreign fighters from countries including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have been among those killed in the battles in Marawi, he says. Sidney Jones, who tracks militant groups in Southeast Asia as director of the   Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, says as ISIS continues to lose territory in the Middle East, fighters are looking elsewhere. ”If you can’t go to Syria,” Jones says, they think, ”go to the Philippines.” Since its independence from the U. S. in 1946, the Philippines has grappled with an alphabet soup of separatist, Islamist groups in Mindanao. This   struggle has made the region a sanctuary for such groups, and fighters are drawn there by porous borders and a growing inability to make it to Syria. Jones says she expects to see more   and   attacks in the region as a result. Philippines and beyond, The Philippines, she says, is just one alternative theater that’s opened up in the region. A similar situation could develop along the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have attempted to flee persecution. An armed Rohingya insurgency already operates along this border. A recent report by Jones’ organization calls this insurgency the ”wild card” in a growing collaboration between Islamist militants in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia. Jones predicts that in the coming years, extremists from Southeast Asia may try to get to Myanmar to join Rohingya insurgents. ”Indonesian and Malaysian mujahidin have long been interested in helping their persecuted Rohingya brethren but have had no good channel for doing so,” her organization’s report says. Meanwhile, Jones sees a shift in what’s driving Islamist attacks in Southeast Asia. Where they often used to be triggered by local factors  —   such as a sectarian conflict between Indonesia’s Christians and Muslims that triggered a deadly bombing in 2002 by Jemaah Islamiyah (with some support from  ) in Bali that killed more than 200  —   now, fighters are inspired by what’s going on thousands of miles away in Syria and Iraq.  Another growing concern in Southeast Asia is a rise in political extremism, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia. A ”tactical, opportunistic use of   Islam could have serious negative effects on the quality of democracy in those two countries,” Jones says. A recent survey found that 9. 2 percent of Indonesia’s population supports the imposition of an Islamic caliphate. Indonesia is the world’s most populous   country. Terrorism experts say the recent case of Basuki ”Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, the Christian former governor of Jakarta, illustrates the dangers. In April, he lost his   bid to a Muslim candidate. He had been charged earlier with blasphemy, and in May, he was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. The blasphemy charge stemmed from an accusation on the campaign trail last September. The governor told a group of fishermen that any politician who quoted the Quran to say they should not vote for a   candidate was lying to them. But he also advised them to vote their conscience. Some conservative Muslims and local   Islamist organizations, such as the Islamic Defenders Front, took offense to this. Ahok later apologized and said he never intended to insult the Quran or Islam.  Andreas Harsono, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Jakarta, says the Islamist groups asked the Indonesian Ulema Council, the country’s Islamic authority, to issue a fatwa declaring Ahok committed blasphemy  —   which the council did in October. This ”automatically divided Muslim voters, getting a lot of Muslims who believe they cannot vote [for] a blasphemer, plus mobilizing Muslims to pressure the national police to charge Ahok,” Harsono says. During the trial, many of the same groups pushed for Ahok to be found guilty. The verdict was a win for the country’s Islamists, says Harsono, who recently wrote in The Guardian they have been ”emboldened by the government’s inaction on discrimination and violence against religious minorities.” And even though the current president, Joko Widodo, is seen as a progressive, Harsono tells NPR that the government has not taken steps to undo any of the discrimination. The verdict left Ahok’s supporters and those hoping for a more pluralistic Indonesia feeling vulnerable, he adds. ”The   group feels angry,” says Harsono. ”The   feel they are a minority being discriminated against . .. that the government isn’t doing enough to protect them.” Different agendas, new permutations, Terrorism expert Joseph Chingyong Liow, dean of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, says it’s important to keep the ISIS threat in perspective. The number of recruited fighters leaving Southeast Asia for the Middle East to answer the call of ISIS is still a mere fraction of the number of recruits the Islamic State gets from North Africa and Europe, he says. So even as ISIS loses ground in Syria and Iraq, it seems unlikely that huge swarms of fighters would come back to Southeast Asia to continue their jihad. Additionally, Islamist groups in Southeast Asia are diverse and the threat of terrorism is not confined to ISIS, he says. ”There are a number of different agendas and disputes among the jihadi groups,” says Liow, ranging from ideology to disputes over tactics and targets. ”Efforts to unite [the groups] have proved to be quite challenging,” he says. But even if an   group of fighters is defeated, he says, that does not mean the threat of terrorism in the region is under control. ”The threat of terrorism is not something new in Southeast Asia,” he says. ”Every time it appears to recede, some new permutation resurfaces.” This story includes reporting by Michael Sullivan."
"The Philippine military suffered its worst day yet in its fight to reclaim Marawi from   militants, losing 13 marines during heavy    fighting on Friday. Yet the casualties  —   which bring the number of military deaths there to 58  —   mark just a ”temporary setback,” a Philippine military spokesman said. It ”has not diminished our resolve a bit,” Col. Edgard Arevalo said, according to The Associated Press. ”It instead primed up our determination to continue our prudent advances to neutralize the enemy, save the innocent lives trapped in the fight, and set the conditions for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Marawi.” The news comes as the U. S. has joined the fight in Marawi, offering the Philippine military assistance ”pertaining to exercises, training, technical assistance,” another Philippine military spokesman said earlier this week. Lt. Col.   Herrera added that the U. S. special forces there are not directly engaged in the fighting. The U. S. Embassy in the Philippines confirmed the move in a statement released to several media outlets. ‪”At the request of the government of the Philippines, US special operations forces are assisting the (Armed Forces of the Philippines) with ongoing operations in Marawi,” the embassy said, according to the Philippine news service Rappler. The U. S. will ”continue to work with the Philippines to address shared threats to the peace and security of our countries, including on counterterrorism issues.” The AP confirms seeing a U. S. Navy surveillance aircraft high in the skies above Marawi on Friday, noting it ”flew above   Philippine helicopters that struck militant positions, causing plumes of smoke to billow skyward.” Reuters notes that at least 200 militants  —   led by the Maute and Abu Sayyaf groups, both of which have pledged allegiance to ISIS  —   remain holed up in the city with about 500 to 1, 000 trapped civilians. The militants have been using some of these civilians as human shields, Herrera said. ”The key component we saw in the firefight with the marines [on Friday] was how the terrorists are using mosques,” he said, as Rappler reports. ”The enemies took defensive positions there. They also used civilians as human shield.” Militants have controlled significant chunks of the city since May 23, when a raid to capture Isnilon Hapilon, Abu Sayyaf’s leader, devolved into protracted violence. The   has reported that an alliance of extremist groups have held out against the siege using supplies stored in civilian sites such as mosques and schools, as well as a network of underground tunnels. Yet the militants appear to have suffered a major setback recently themselves. Herrera says the Philippine military is ”still awaiting confirmation” that the Maute brothers, two leaders of the militant occupation, were killed in the fighting this week  —   but, as Reuters reports, Hererra says ”there are strong indications” they were."
"”Why is a welder like a woman in love?” I’m 7 years old, standing between the two dogwood trees in my backyard. It’s autumn there’s a crispness in the golden, late afternoon air. I’ve taken the hood of my parka and thrown it over my head, but my arms are not in the sleeves. The coat falls over my narrow,   shoulders and down my back. Like a cape, you see. I’m cold, sure, but the important thing is that I’ve achieved the necessary look. My next door   friend Eric is here too. He’s done the same thing,   because we both need capes. Because I’m Batman. He’s Robin. That’s not technically correct: I’m Adam West. He’s Burt Ward. He pretends to read from an imaginary computer punch card, with a bit more oomph this time: ”Why is a welder like a woman in love?” ”Because,” I say. Intone, really, letting my thin voice undulate through the words as I speak them. ”They both . .. carry a torch.” We then leap into action. The specifics of said action elude me, today, but I’m reasonably certain it involved a lot of punching the air. Whiffed jabs and haymakers in the gathering suburban dusk, each one punctuated by a shout: ”Biff!” ”Bam!” ”Pow!” To be clear: neither Eric nor I understood what we were saying. Didn’t know what welders were, and certainly didn’t have any idea what ”carry a torch” meant as a figurative expression. We were simply aping a scene we’d just witnessed on television, from a   rerun of a show that had enjoyed a cultural moment a decade before. Batman, it was called. It came on at 3:00 p. m. on Channel 29. After The Space Giants. We liked it. We liked the costumes, the sets, the big brawls that occurred at precisely the    of every episode you could set your   watch by them. But that wasn’t why we’d donned our   and retired to my backyard to throw punches at nothing. No, that was Adam West. I know this, because I remember how I carried myself that day, how I spoke my memorized yet mystifying lines, adopting  —   internalizing  —   West’s knack for sending his delivery slithering through a range of registers and tempos and volumes. It felt good. I stood straighter, as West’s Batman. I was a devout   a   I lived in abject fear of getting in trouble. Adam West’s Caped Crusader understood me: he lectured Robin about seat belts and pedestrian safety  —   things I worried about! He drank milk. I drank milk! He was ferociously intelligent. I drank milk! West’s Bruce Wayne voice was sonic milquetoast, slight and bland and even, placid as a pond. But his Batman voice was supple and sinuous, and it wrapped around my young brain. Grave Seriousness, Played For Laughs, Think about this: The role that would define the man’s acting career  —   the man’s life  —   obscured 80 percent of his face behind a mask. Maybe you know some actors personally. Imagine any of them agreeing to that. But West did, because  —   I suspect  —   he knew. He knew that he could shunt the expressiveness of facial expressions, of eyebrows, into his voice, his stance, his waggling finger. And it was all there, from the very beginning. Watch these two screen tests. First up, Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell. Waggoner’s   is passable,   dutiful, unremarkable. Had the network gone with his take, Batman would be remembered today  —   if it was at all  —   as a solid   actioner in the Voyage to the Bottom of the   Time Tunnel vein. But then comes West (and Burton Gervis  —   later Burt Ward). What’s remarkable  —   what’s absolutely crucial  —   is how deeply, how thoroughly, how comprehensively he hurls himself into his delivery. The show is a goof, yes  —   but for the show to work, West’s performance can’t be. There’s nothing glib or withering or safe in his Batman. It’s a risk, a big swing, and it works. In my book, The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, I attempt to unpack how the show, and West’s performance in particular, are the reason anyone’s talking about the character of Batman today. Batman comics had languished near the bottom of the sales charts  —   the publisher even made (likely disingenuous) threats to cancel them outright  —   before West took the hero into the mainstream. The mainstream embraced him, and  —   after a brief Batmania fad gripped the country in 1966  —   swiftly tired of all things Bat. Batman comics sales plummeted again. Comics creators and fans resented the clownish version of their hero who’d spent time in the cultural spotlight, and reacted against it by engineering a version of the character who was  —   specifically and intentionally  —   everything West’s Batman wasn’t: dark, haunted, gothic, brooding. Obsessed. A new generation of comics readers  —   who knew a little something about obsession  —   saw themselves in this new, grim,   Batman. For better or worse, he’s been DC Comics’   hero ever since. You don’t get to the Batman of today without going through Adam West. You don’t get to the me of today without going through Adam West, either. Since hearing of his death, I’ve been trying to imagine the person I’d be if I hadn’t spent so many afternoons in that suburban backyard, with that dumb parka over my head. I’m not having much luck. I’ve dressed as the Adam West Batman on four Halloweens (and counting). I’ve got a replica 1966 Batmobile on my desk. I’ve got     coffee table books and action figures bearing his likeness. But that’s just merch. My connection to him, my sense of loss, goes deeper. Because West’s Batman was, at the end of the day, a hopeless, inveterate, unrepentant square. I’m a square! As a kid, I didn’t get that this was the whole joke, the central goof of the entire endeavor: Look at this     doofus in the dumb costume! A part of me  —   a big part  —   still doesn’t get it, if I’m honest. Because milk is good. And seatbelts are sensible. And the costume is awesome. Adam West lived inside the joke, but was never a part of it. That’s his secret. That’s why his performance will endure. Ready to Move Out, I don’t wear parkas anymore. But just this morning my husband and I got into our car  —   he in the driver’s seat, me in the passenger’s seat  —   and as we put on our seatbelts(!) I did what I always do when I get into the car with him. ”Atomic batteries to power,” I said. ”Turbines to speed.” ”Roger,” he said. (It took him a few years to learn his part, but he’s got it down pat now.) ”Ready to move out.” It’s a ritual, I now realize. A kind of invocation, a summoning. Today, it felt different. Softer, sadder. It’ll feel that way from now on, I suppose. Every time we do it, through all the years to come. Not so much an invocation. More like a benediction."
"Updated at 1:04 p. m. ET, Adam West, the actor behind one of the most beloved and enduring renditions of Batman, died Friday night at age 88. West donned the black mask of the Caped Crusader in the 1960s, playing the role as a plucky, intrepid hero for television. ”Adam West passed away peacefully last night after a short but brave battle with leukemia,” his family writes in a Facebook post. ”He was a beloved father, husband, grandfather, and  . There are no words to describe how much we’ll miss him.” It’s fair to say Batman has worn a number of masks since the character launched nearly eight decades ago it’s also fair to say that few  —   if any  —   have proved as lasting as West’s portrayal. The TV series West led, which ran from 1966 to 1968, filled the small screen with ”  sensibility, vibrant colors and rogue’s gallery of playful guest stars,” Fresh Air critic David Bianculli said in 2014. Despite this revolving door of big personalities, it was West’s bright spin on the Dark Knight that came to be synonymous with the series. The show  —   and its 1966 film adaptation  —   managed a distinctive ”tonal jiu jitsu: high silliness executed with grave seriousness,” NPR’s Glen Weldon wrote last year. See Exhibit A: ”Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!” Of course, West eventually dropped the cape of that intrepid hero, starring in dozens of films and eventually reinventing himself as a voice actor  —   perhaps known best for his recurring role as the mayor (also named Adam West) on Family Guy. But he never quite got out of Batman’s long shadow, both for better and for worse. West shared a complicated relationship with his signature character. ”There was a time when Batman really kept me from getting some pretty good roles, and I was asked to do what I figured were important features. However, Batman was there, and very few people would take a chance on me walking on to the screen,” West once told Variety. ”So I decided that since so many people love Batman, I might as well love it too. Why not? So I began to   myself with Batman. And I saw the comedy. I saw the love people had for it, and I just embraced it.”"
"Republicans in both the House and the Senate are considering big cuts to Medicaid. But those cuts endanger addiction treatment, which many people receive through the government health insurance program. Charlene Yurgaitis is one of the people who’s been helped. She’s 35 and lives in Lancaster, Penn. and once supervised 17 people at an insurance company. But when some college students moved in next door about a decade ago, they became friends and she started doing oxycontin with them. Then she moved onto heroin and harder drugs. Earlier this year, after about a decade of using, Yurgaitis finally had enough of that life and went into recovery. It’s hard. ”I’ve been doing everything that I can possibly do to stop using,” she says. ”My normal thought is to just do it. Nobody will ever know.” To support her determination to stay sober, Yurgaitis gets a monthly shot of Vivitrol, also known as naltrexone. ”That stops me,” she says. The medication blocks receptors in her brain so she can’t get high off opioids, but it also costs about $1, 000 a dose. The monthly shots are paired with weekly therapy sessions, and visits with a recovery coach. Medicaid in Pennsylvania pays for all the treatment. Having this health insurance is how she’s managed to break her addiction over the past few months, Yurgaitis says. ”I would never be able to afford counseling,” she says. ”I would never be able to afford psych meds. I would never be able to afford the Vivitrol shot.”  Yurgaitis is just one of more than 124, 000 Pennsylvanians who depended on Medicaid to get help for their drug or alcohol addiction last year. The Republican health care bill that passed the U. S. House of Representatives in May and is now under consideration in the Senate would reduce spending on Medicaid by more than $800 billion across 10 years. Yurgaitis’ congressman, Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican, voted for the GOP bill in the House in the Senate, Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey has said he agrees that Medicaid should be cut. Pennsylvania expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and the state pays no more than 10 percent of the bills for the people who gained coverage under the expansion federal funds contribute the other 90 percent. Toomey says states should have to pay a higher share. ”If it’s not worth it to the state to buy this coverage at 43 cents on the dollar, [about what the state contributes to   Medicaid recipients] then how is it worth it to those very same taxpayers  —   who, at the end of the day, have to provide the funding for the federal program  —   why is it worth it to them to pay 90 cents on the dollar? It just doesn’t make sense,” Toomey says. If federal Medicaid money gets cut, that would leave states to either fill in the financial gap, limit access to care or drop some people’s coverage. At a clinic in Harrisburg, Dr. Sarah Kawasaki says recovering from opioid addiction is so physically difficult that people need access to medication like naltrexone to help them break free. If they can’t get that medicine, she says, ”I think that by necessity, they would probably have to go back to using heroin or any other medications they could find on the street to avoid getting sick. And I would worry about that.” Kawasaki is adamant  —   if funding is reduced, more people would die from overdoses, and Hepatitis C and HIV infections would rise because of dirty needles. Yurgaitis, who is still in recovery, gets worked up just thinking about the potential cuts. ”Why are you trying to change something that’s working? You know, that’s what I don’t understand,” she says. ”If I don’t have those places to go to, I don’t have anything else. I need to have that safe place to go to, and when I’m in my counseling session, that’s my safe place. That’s where I can unleash my demons, and clear my head out.” Yurgaitis hopes she’ll be able to get treatment for years to come, so that at some point she can go back to work  —   perhaps helping other people recover from addiction. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WITF and Kaiser Health News."
"We’ve nearly reached the year’s midpoint, and Alt. Latino is taking the opportunity to look back at all the new music that’s come out so far in 2017. Our little corner of the music business, the   world, is always full of artists who push (or even ignore) boundaries, take risks, make us think and make us feel  —   and it’s all well outside of the mainstream spotlight. So far this year, the music lives up to that promise. Hear the conversation with NPR’s Lulu   at the audio link, and listen to three of our favorites below."
"Just as class lets out for the summer across the country, a new one has just been announced. NASA has chosen 12 people from a pool of more than 18, 300 applicants for two years of training before giving them the title of ”astronaut.” The space agency received a record number of applicants after announcing an open application in December 2015. Jasmin Moghbeli, one of the dozen candidates, spoke with NPR’s Lulu   from Houston’s Johnson Space Center, where she’ll undertake the training program starting in August. Moghbeli, who says she’s wanted to be an astronaut since the sixth grade, talked about what kind of candidate it takes to earn the coveted spot. ”Start looking into science, technology, engineering, math, those kinds of fields,” the   New York native says. But whatever you do, she says, love it. ”There were many other applicants that applied who were extremely qualified for this position that aren’t lucky enough to be sitting up here like I am,” she adds. ”So make sure you’re doing what you love. If I did not get the call saying, ’Hey can you join us here at NASA?’ I still would’ve been extremely happy in the career that I was in.” The seven men and five women of the class bring an impressive resume to NASA: The astronaut candidates are an athletic crew and include former SpaceX employees, a marine biologist and half of them are military officers. ”You are the 12 who made it through, you have joined the elites, you are the best of us,” Vice President Mike Pence said at a ceremony introducing the candidates Wednesday. ”These are 12 men and women whose personal excellence and whose personal courage will carry our nation to even greater heights of discovery.” Current and alum NASA astronauts welcomed the newest class in a video last week. You can find the full biographies of each new class member on NASA’s site, or meet the candidates below the interview highlights. NPR radio producer Malika Gumpangkum and editor Ed McNulty contributed to this report. On the application and job interview process, It starts out a little underwhelming  —   you just submit your resume on USAjobs[. gov] and, in addition to that, just my summary of my aeronautical experience  —   so basically my piloting time. So that’s the first step, as I said, very simple. But then from there, they select highly qualified applicants and send reference forms out to you, five of your references  —   and then that’s where it got interesting. They slimmed it down to 120 applicants and they brought us in in groups of 10. The first round was three days of interviews  —   you know, only three days I could say I got so close to that group of nine other people and we still keep in touch. And then, the final round, they pair it down to 50 people, and again, 10 at a time, but this time it’s a   process. So you can imagine, you get really close with the other applicants, and I left that thinking: Wow, I want this job even more, based on the incredible people I’ve met, both at NASA and the applicants, but also thinking: if I don’t get it, someone very deserving will get it, ’cause every single one of them had a very impressive resume. On the toughest question she was asked, First they asked, three words friends would use to describe me, which, I didn’t have a problem with that, but then they asked one word I would use to describe myself, and I don’t know, it’s just tough to pick one word. And out of nowhere I said, ”intense,” and I think I was just feeling intense in that moment in the interview, but I don’t know that that’s really the single word I would use to describe myself. On wanting to be an astronaut from a young age, I did a book report on Valentina Tereshkova, the first female in space, got to dress up like her in school for a day. I’d always been interested in science, math, technology, that sort of thing always drew me in. And, added to that, the sense of adventure and exploration, you know, I thought space exploration was the coolest thing. So yeah, I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time. On why so many people want to be an astronaut today  I think it’s one of those things that ignites our imagination. I remember when I was a kid in history class, reading about the explorers who would travel across the ocean and discover new continents and, you know, different worlds to them at the time. And this is kind of our   version of that. We’re going off and exploring where we’ve never been before. One, the teamwork at NASA, I think people are pretty familiar with NASA’s record and the incredible things that have been accomplished here. And it’s just really impressive to see  —   when you bring a group of smart, hardworking people together  —   what you can accomplish. So, I think all those things get people excited and that’s why it’s almost like, even as an adult, gets you excited like a little kid. On what she’s being trained on, There are a lot of things on the horizon right now, I know learning about the systems on the [International] Space Station will be part of our training over the next two years. But they’re training us, and like I said, there’s a possibility of a range of missions that we could go into. Right now, both Boeing and SpaceX are working on commercial crew vehicles  —   the   Starliner and the Dragon vehicle. . .. And then NASA itself is working on the Orion. So, a lot of new, exciting things coming up that we could potentially be doing in the near future. . .. If they could assign me any mission, I’d be overjoyed. On her message to young girls, particularly of color, That is one of the most exciting things about this job for me. Not just exploring space and that stuff but also getting the message out to the younger generation and getting them excited. If they can see someone similar to them that they can relate to more, then it makes it all that much more possible in their minds to imagine them doing this as well. So, to them I say, do what you love and do it well. Jasmin Moghbeli, 33, major, U. S. Marine Corps, Hometown: Baldwin, N. Y. Moghbeli earned a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering with Information Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. She’s also a noted graduate of the U. S. Naval Test Pilot School and has flown more than 1, 600 hours and completed 150 combat missions. At the time of her selection, Moghbeli was testing   helicopters and serving as the quality assurance and avionics officer for Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1 of the U. S. Marine Corps in Yuma, Ariz. Kayla Barron, 29, lieutenant, U. S. Navy, Hometown: Richland, Wash. She graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering, followed by a master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Cambridge. As a submarine warfare officer, Barron was part of the first class of women hired to the submarine community. She’s currently the flag aide to the superintendent at the U. S. Naval Academy. Zena Cardman, 29, Hometown: Williamsburg, Va. Cardman earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Master of Science in Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow is finishing her doctorate at Pennsylvania State, where she studies microorganisms in caves, deep sea sediments and other subterranean environments. Her fieldwork includes multiple Antarctic expeditions working as a scientist aboard research vessels, as well as NASA analog missions across North America. Raja Chari, 39, lieutenant colonel, U. S. Air Force, Hometown: Cedar Falls, Iowa, He graduated from the U. S. Air Force Academy with bachelor’s degrees in Astronautical Engineering and Engineering Science, before earning a master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also graduated from the U. S. Naval Test Pilot School, and now serves as the commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and the director of the   Integrated Test Force at California’s Edwards Air Force Base. Matthew Dominick, 35, lieutenant commander, U. S. Navy, Hometown: Wheat Ridge, Colo. Dominick earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of San Diego and a Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He also graduated from the U. S. Naval Test Pilot School. Dominick was at sea on the USS Ronald Reagan, heading the Strike Fighter Squadron 115, when he was selected as a candidate. Bob Hines, 42, Hometown: Harrisburg, Penn. The NASA research pilot earned both a bachelor’s (Boston University) and master’s degree (University of Alabama) in Aerospace Engineering. He’s also a graduate of the U. S. Air Force Test Pilot School, and has served in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves for 18 years.  Warren ”Woody” Hoburg, 31, Hometown: Pittsburgh, Penn. Hoburg got his bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley. He comes to NASA from MIT, where he’s an assistant professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Jonny Kim, 33, lieutenant, U. S. Navy, Hometown: Los Angeles, The Navy SEAL has completed more than 100 combat operations, earning a Silver Star and Bronze Star with Combat ”V.” He went on to earn his Mathematics degree at the University of San Diego and his doctorate at Harvard Medical School. Robb Kulin, 33, Hometown: Anchorage, Alaska, The Fulbright fellow earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Denver, a master’s degree in Materials Science and a doctorate in Engineering at UC San Diego. Also a private pilot, Kulin has experience as an ice driller in Antarctica, and as a commercial fisherman in Chignik, Alaska. He comes to NASA from SpaceX in California, where he’s senior manager for flight reliability, heading the Launch Chief Engineering team. Loral O’Hara, 34, Hometown: Sugar Land, Texas, The certified EMT and private pilot earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas and a Master of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University. As a student, she participated in NASA’s   Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and interned at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. O’Hara also spent four years working on design and engineering to upgrade Alvin, the     submersible. At the time she was selected for the candidacy program, the research engineer was working at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Francisco ”Frank” Rubio, 41, major, U. S. Army  Hometown: Miami, Fla. The father of four graduated from the U. S. Military Academy with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences with a Doctorate of Medicine. He’s flown some 1, 100 hours as a   Blackhawk helicopter pilot, with more than half of that time in combat during deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Also a certified family physician, Rubio was working as a battalion surgeon for the 3rd Battalion of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) of the U. S. Army when he was selected as a candidate. Jessica Watkins, 29, Hometown:  Lafayette, Colo. Watkins earned her bachelor’s degree in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University, where she also played for the school’s rugby team. She went on to get a doctorate in Geology at UCLA, where she taught and studied landslides on Earth and Mars. Watkins’ previous NASA experience includes internships at the agency’s Ames Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At the time she was selected for the astronaut training program, she’d been working with the Mars Science Laboratory’s rover, Curiosity, as a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology."
"President Donald Trump may not have the most Twitter followers on the platform but he is probably the most powerful person in the world who is tweeting on a regular basis. (Look no further than the recent ”covfefe” incident and the raging wildfire of memes it incited.) And it is precisely the president’s compulsion to     that Allyson Kapin is counting on as the best vehicle to keep Democrats and progressives engaged in the national   movement  —   especially novice activists. Kapin is the brains behind WeCanResist. It, a new app launched in late May that funds social justice organizations ”whose issues are being targeted by Trump.” ”It is basically America’s swear jar but for toxic ideology,” she said. ”So every time Trump goes on a Twitter rampage or tweets something dangerous or hateful, the app lets you automatically donate to a nonprofit that’s fighting to protect our democracy, human rights, or the environment,” she explained. Unlike single or annual donations, which Kapin said can be quickly forgotten, these recurring contributions not only keep political causes top of mind, they also ”help channel people’s anger and frustrations.” The nonprofits on the receiving end of the app are vetted by Kapin and her   team of colleagues. But, beyond providing instant gratification for her fellow lefties, Kapin is clear about the   objective of the app: To keep people new to the world of political activism engaged beyond a single rally  —   what she describes as a growing number of   protesters who have not been involved in the ”activist” space before. Additionally, Kapin hopes to draw attention to some of the smaller or less   advocacy groups that are often overlooked because people have never heard of them. Kapin’s efforts are part of a building national movement of      —   when consumers seek out companies, products or services that align with their political values. Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, confirms that the growing polarization that has permeated today’s political discourse is mirrored in an expanding polarization in the economy and the way citizens are spending disposable income. Although he hasn’t studied the phenomenon, Naroff notes there is ample evidence that consumers at large are exerting their partisan power over companies. And he argues technology is playing a critical role. ”Just look at Nordstrom,” he said. The national department store chain dropped the Ivanka Trump brand in February after a viral campaign called #GrabYourWallet encouraged shoppers to boycott all Trump products. Officially, Nordstrom cited the brand’s poor performance as the reason for the decision without explicitly stating what role the boycott or the social media backlash may have played in those dropping sales. ”Given that we’ve got the Internet, we’ve got email, we’ve got Twitter and everything else that’s out there, the ability to reach these disaffected people and turn them into disaffected consumers is probably greater now than it’s ever been,” he said. Although he usually refrains from advising his clients to out their own political leanings, he notes many large companies benefit from publicly staking their ground. For instance, shortly after Trump announced the U. S. is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, Andy Pharoah, vice president for corporate affairs at Mars Incorporated, told NPR that he is disappointed in the president’s decision, but that the candy and pet food company will be undeterred in its own efforts to combat climate change. That is the kind of statement that will likely lure chocoholics who also support stringent climate change policies. Tracking the financial gains for large companies that go out on these ideological limbs is complicated, because a multitude of factors can contribute to rising sales, but small organizations can sometimes make those connections more easily. Take Rachel Berks, owner of the boutique shop, Otherwild. Berks, who continues to be an avid Hillary Clinton supporter, was the first designer to set off the ”The Future is Female”   craze leading up to the 2016 election. The simple cotton tee  —   Berk’s riff on a 1960s lesbian mantra  —   was outperforming all of her other designs but it wasn’t until she decided to donate a quarter of the proceeds to Planned Parenthood, that her business exploded. ”When I did that it really blew up and went viral,” she said. Berk was moved to make the donation during the period when Congress was first voting to defund Planned Parenthood. Just as she was inspired to contribute, Berk said, ”I think [people] were interested in a tangible way to give back.” It’s anecdotal but Berks said it was proof to her that slews of progressives are looking for new ways to carry their political values into other areas of their private lives. ”People were feeling just like me  —   frustrated, hurt, asking what do we do next?” she said. Similarly, Nate Lerner, executive director of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, took a look around his own circle of friends and observed the same longing for direction. That prompted him to create the Boycott Trump app shortly after the November election. It is essentially a searchable database that shows links between companies and the Trump administration. Lerner estimates the app has been downloaded more than 350, 000 times since November. He said he created it because he was afraid to lose the momentum progressives opposing Trump had managed to build leading up to the election. Lerner wanted them to know, ”They can still speak through their wallets and through their purchasing power every day,” he explained, ”So we wanted to remind them of that and give them the ability to take action through that.” Since its debut, Lerner has added several new features to the app that he says make people feel more empowered. In addition to connecting users with their local representatives, they can now also email companies directly through the app to convey their dissatisfaction. Like Kapin, Lerner hopes the Boycott Trump app will act like a gateway to political action. ”There certainly is a new generation of political activists that we’re seeing rise and come forward,” he said, ”but at the same time they’re not getting engaged on traditional means of political action like volunteering and donating and calling their representatives and we aim to change that.” But there have been some unintended uses of Lerner’s creation.   shoppers have been downloading it too in order to find and buy products that will go to companies aligned with the administration. That doesn’t bother Lerner. ”If you’re downloading our app and if you’re using it for a negative purpose, you’re actually still helping our cause,” he said. That’s because every download only helps bump up the app’s rankings. ”So the joke’s on them,” he said."
"John T. Edge is a man who knows how spin a good yarn. Listening to him talk can feel like falling under the spell of your favorite college professor. He’s wickedly smart, funny, warm and welcoming. And for years, the tale he’s been telling is all about Southern food: about its central role in Southern identity, and about what it owes to the   and immigrant cooks who have historically been left out of the standard narratives the South tells about itself.  In his new book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, Edge attempts to pay down what he calls ”a debt of pleasure to those farmers and cooks who came before me, many of whom have been lost to history.” ”These were women, these were often times people of color who didn’t get the respect they definitely earned,” Edge says. ”And in paying down that debt of pleasure, I hope to bring their lives into relief and make explicit the ways in which, if you want to dig into Southern food, you’re explicitly digging into issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity.” Edge is the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, part of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. And he says those two things  —   Southern food and culture  —   are inextricably intertwined. As he writes, ”agriculture begat the region’s original sin: slavery.” But food is also a lens to trace where the South is now, as an influx of immigrants has transformed the region, and as Southern cuisine itself has gone from being thought ”retrograde” to being recognized as ”foundational to American cuisine.” His book spans a   period, telling the story of the South, decade by decade, through food  —   from the kitchen of Georgia Gilmore, who organized cooks and bakers to sell food to raise funds to support the Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott, to the modern Southern artisanal food movement. One of the fascinating stories it shares is that of Fannie Lou Hamer, the famed voting rights activist from Mississippi who also became what could be called a ”food sovereignty” activist. In the late 1960s, she began amassing farmland and organized a livestock sharing program  —   which she called the Pig Bank  —   that recruited poor, rural black families in her native Mississippi Delta to care for pregnant female pigs. The families returned two piglets to the bank, which were then shared with other families. By the second year of the program, 100 families had pigs to slaughter. ”What she was attempting in the late 1960s seems modern even today,” Edge says. Edge spoke recently with NPR. A transcript of the conversation follows, edited for brevity and clarity. Southern food can go from grits to greens to tamales. What is Southern food? Southern food is for me a story of people as much as ingredients or dishes. Tamales, a food that’s very popular just west of where I live, in the Mississippi Delta, shows the early imprint of Mexican migration into the Mississippi Delta to work cotton harvests in the early 20th century. Each dish spins a narrative of the region I call home. A lot of these dishes which give us pleasure were created by people in subjugation, sometimes created for their overlords. Indeed, the title of my book references just that sort of dish. You took a pot of greens  —   could be collards and mustards  —   and cook it down, low and slow, with pork hocks or pig tails. And the liquid that remains at the bottom of that pot, the distilled essence, is the ”potlikker.” And there’s a subversive beauty in that dish. During the days of enslavement, slave masters would often retain the greens for themselves and deign to give the potlikker to the enslaved, not knowing that the nutrients leach out of those greens and remain in the potlikker. So the slaves were left with what was truly the nutritious part of the dish. For me, this book was an attempt to boil down, distill down 60 years of Southern history and offer voice to all those cooks who express themselves through a kind of subversive creativity in the kitchen and the fields and at tables. Does the fact that you’re a white man writing about Southern food skew your work in certain directions? I grew up in the home of a Confederate brigadier general in   Georgia, with a historical marker out front that celebrated exploits of Gen. Alfred Iverson Jr. If you read that marker you’d think him a hero. If you dig into your history like I’ve done, you’d recognize he was not. So much of the history of American South is mythos and fable. As a white son of the South, I feel it my duty to tell a truer, more honest history of my place, to look our past squarely in the face. There are now Southern restaurants in Brooklyn. I mean Southern food is hipster food. What does that say?   It says a lot. Southern food has been cyclically hip for the last 50 years. In the late 1960s, America fell in love with soul food, which is the food of rural, black Southerners who moved north. By the 1970s, the American press falls in love with Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer, falls in love with grits and the references to grits as ”Georgia ice cream.” By the 1980s Paul Prudhomme steps to the stage. And Paul Prudhomme, son of Opelousas, La. the proselytizer of Cajun cuisine, Louisiana cuisine  —   the 1980s are his. I think it also reflects a kind of mainstreaming of the American South. For the longest time, we were an exotic place and we were exotic people, outside the American mainstream. And this latest love affair with the region reflects a    South, but a fitfully redeemed South  —   a South kind of reclaiming its history, staring it down, and now reinterpreting it. And does it change the food? Is that OK?   It changes the food. What I hope it doesn’t change is the narrative. That’s really what’s important to me . .. if we’re going to canonize fried chicken in the roster of great American dishes, we also canonize George Gilmore, a great fried chicken cook from Montgomery, Ala. who leveraged the talents of the stove to drive change in our region.   What about changing demographics in the South? More people are arriving from Central America and Asia, for example.  The South, over the span of 60 years, has changed more briskly than any other region of our nation. You see that in my son, who’s now 16. I grew up going to eat barbecue sandwiches on a Saturday afternoon. He’s more likely to opt for tacos al pastor and salsa verde. In a city like Houston, you see Vietnamese Cajun crawfish restaurants spread across the city. I see all these beautiful combinations coming into focus. A new, kind of ”  South” is at hand, and it is in the hands of immigrants  —   Southerners,   Southerners.   Is it a good and gratifying time to be writing about Southern food?   We now as a nation recognize, in ways we never have before, the value of our food culture. We recognize food as an expression of people and place, comparable to the way we express ourselves through literature or music or religious expression. Michael Twitty’s book, The Cooking Gene, will soon be out in August. [Twitty is a chef and historian who explores   foodways.] Ronni Lundy just published her beautiful book, Victuals, about Appalachian food culture of the American South. There are a range of conversations going now, at a moment when we recognize the value in our meals is more than about sustenance. There’s deep meaning in there."
"Several decades ago, Evan Nodvin’s life probably would have looked quite different. Nodvin has his own apartment just outside Atlanta, in Sandy Springs, Ga. which he shares with a roommate, and a job at a local community fitness center. He also has Down syndrome. ”I give out towels, and put weights away, and make sure people are safe,” the    says. To get to and from work, Nodvin relies on rides from people who are hired to help him. He also has a counselor to help him do daily chores like grocery shopping, cleaning and cooking. ”My favorite thing to cook on Wednesdays  —   I like to cook turkey patties once a week,” he says. ”And on Thursdays I make fish, and other days, I make other good stuff like spaghetti.” Nodvin can live independently because of these services that are covered in Georgia under Medicaid, the government health insurance for people with disabilities and the poor. According to the Georgia Department of Community Health, the state spends about 6 percent of its Medicaid budget on services for people with developmental disabilities. When Congress started to talk about making big changes to Medicaid in the health care bill in March, Nodvin went to Washington, D. C. with a group of advocates to lobby. He read a speech there, which he recites in his living room. ”As you can see, my life is very full. I work, live and play in the community. My dream is to continue this healthy and useful life. Thank you,” he reads. But that dream is uncertain. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the proposed cuts to Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act repeal bill that passed the House of Representatives amounts to $834 billion over 10 years. In Georgia, more than half of the state’s Medicaid dollars go to the elderly or people with disabilities, according to the Georgia Department of Community Health. In the   bill, the federal government would give states a fixed amount of money based on what they’ve been spending, says Bill Custer, a professor of health administration at Georgia State University. ”In a state like Georgia, the impact would be immediate and fairly severe over time,” he says. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Georgia ranked the second lowest in Medicaid spending per enrollee in fiscal year 2011. Georgia currently gets about two federal dollars for every one dollar the state puts in, but the new plan would give states a capped amount of funding for Medicaid. Custer said Medicaid in Georgia might be okay in the beginning, but as health care costs rise, states will increasingly have to shoulder the burden. ”That means states are going to have to either find the money to maintain the program or shrink the program, either by covering fewer services, or covering fewer people, or both,” he says. That worries Eric Jacobson, executive director of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, a state advocacy group. ”Medicaid is the lifeline for people with disabilities,” he says. Jacobson says the community support services like those Nodvin gets under Medicaid are considered optional by states. ”Those are the kinds of services that we hope won’t get cut, but because of the reduction in funds, [they] might be the first on the chopping block,” he says. He said services are already limited. According to the state Department of Community Health, nearly 9, 000 people with intellectual or developmental disabilities are on a waiting list to get help in order to live on their own or in their communities. Jacobson worries if there are budget cuts, more people might be forced into institutions. ”The way I look at it, institutionalization for people with developmental disabilities  —   it’s kind of like sending you to jail for no crime,” he says. ”You can’t go out. I remember talking to somebody and he said, ’I want to take my girlfriend to the movies. I can’t take my girlfriend to the movies because I’m not allowed to go off campus.’ ” Jacobson says there’s been a movement over the last several decades to allow people with disabilities to live in their communities. He says it’s about quality of life, and can save the state a lot of money. In his Sandy Springs apartment, Evan Nodvin tabs through his CD collection. He has a Beatles poster hanging up in his room. ”I have Michael Jackson, Beatles, whatever. .. I got more of them here,” he says. He’s lived on his own for the last 16 years, not long after graduating high school. He has a job, a girlfriend, an apartment. And as he said in his speech in D. C.: ”I am able to be independent because I get help from my Medicaid waiver in my state of Georgia.” That’s why Nodvin and his family will be watching what happens next in Washington, D. C. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WABE and Kaiser Health News."
"The 71st annual Tony Awards, which recognizes achievements in Broadway productions, will be held Sunday at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Topping the list of nominees this year, with 12 nods, is the hit musical Natasha, Pierre  the Great Comet of 1812. It’s somewhat based on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and has been lauded by critics for its diverse casting, wildly innovative set and fresh take on a classic story. Written by Dave Malloy, who is also its composer and lyricist, The Great Comet of 1812 is lavish in its staging, and its   music helps whisk audience into the lives of Moscow’s aristocracy. The musical chronicles the misadventures of young, beautiful and very naïve Natasha, played by    Broadway newcomer Denée Benton, previously known for her role as Ruby Carter in the   Lifetime series UnREAL. Natasha travels to Moscow to wait for her fiancé who is away at war. While there, she falls under the sway of an unscrupulous but handsome nobleman who starts an affair with her for the fun of it. Meanwhile, Pierre, a disillusioned aristocrat, played by multiplatinum recording artist Josh Groban, tries to help save her reputation. And yes, there’s a comet. Other than that, it’s challenging to explain. The musical is directed by   Obie   Rachel Chavkin, who’s also artistic director of the Team, a   theater company. Chavkin and Benton are among the key reasons for The Great Comet’s breakout success. For their stellar contributions, both women have been nominated for Tony Awards this weekend. Chavkin and Benton spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about the epic production that is The Great Comet. On the guiding principle for directing The Great Comet of 1812, Rachel: I mean, the original north star for the whole production was this night that Dave had in Moscow a number of years ago, where he stumbled at this café, Café Margarita, and there was a classical pops trio playing, and he ended up sitting next to the viola. And there were shakers and dumplings and vodka on the tables. So that story was the spirit that Mimi Lien, our incredible set designer, and I took and ran with. And, so it was very much about creating chaos, but also making sure that every moment of the story was as clear as possible. So there’s this huge amount of energy in the room. On whether she ever had a moment of   in taking in directing a Broadway musical, Rachel: Sure, of course. I mean, I think that the happy thing is because the project has grown so slowly, you know? Our first production was at Ars Nova in 2012, and that was for a room of 87 seats. And the following spring, we got to take it to a theater that we actually built ourselves in a tent for 199 people. And then, two years later, we went to ART, which was an incredible home to us and allowed us to grow it to what it would be like in a more traditional proscenium theater space. And then, we arrived on Broadway. So I think because we got it to grow so slowly, by the time we got to Broadway, even though it was midday view. . .. I’ve never, ever known a work better than I know this piece, and I’ve never known something that I have seen and felt be as emotionally and spiritually effective as I think this work is. So, I went into it really trusting my material and trusting my creative team and my cast, and I don’t know how we would’ve done it without that. On whether when she was growing up she ever thought she’d be playing a rich Russian countess, Denée: I have to say that I’m probably the one person who did. It was always my dream to be in the center of the stage telling those stories, and it’s very ambitious that I would get to this place. So, I’m very thankful because Natasha is the type of character I always saw myself in. I heard her song for the first time, I feel like we were kindred spirits. Our souls just really get each other, so I’m thankful to have had people like Dave and Rachel in the room, who were awake enough to see what I had to bring to this character and who allowed me to pour myself into it.  On whether there was a part of her that she had to release to fully embrace this role as a princess  Denée: It’s interesting, I think, that a lot of people are still shocked that that’s the culture that we still live in. But it is, and I think that our industry has a lot of power to change that and represent the truth of what actually exists in the world, which is that there are tons of ingénues walking around on the Earth, of every race. I think for me, more than having to release those insecurities, I think it helped me embrace parts of myself that I always knew to be true. And I think that’s been the beautiful part of it. And an extra layer of already getting to do a role that I feel I’m so perfect for is also getting to affect this conversation and affect how other black girls see themselves and how other people see them, and what they feel they’re capable of.  Oh what she’d like for people to know about this production  Rachel: The world that we have created inside the Imperial Theater is high and low. It’s opulent and luscious but deeply funny and raucous and relaxed. And it really is the world that I personally feel like I want to live inside, always. And that spirit of joy and community that the cast creates with the audience. It’s an unbelievable amount of energy and integrity, and it makes space for these moments of really quiet grace. On what she would say to make to make people come see The Great Comet of 1812  Denée: The heart of the show will move you, and it will make you feel connected to humanity, connected to your humanity. There will be tears. There will be laughter. It really, it hits all of the checkmarks for me into the kind of experience I want to have when I spend that money to sit in a Broadway theater for a couple hours. NPR producer Denise Guerra contributed to this report."
"During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which we’re in the middle of right now, it’s traditional to break the fast in mosques and homes. In fact, you’re supposed to be in congregation with others. ”It’s almost like the Christmas for Muslims,” jokes Omar Salha. ”When you have on Christmas day everyone gathered with family members —  it just doesn’t seem right that during Ramadan you’re breaking fast alone.” When Salha was a graduate student in his native London, he felt especially bad for his classmates who were far from home, and left on their own during Ramadan. So with a handful of donated cookies and chips (or ”biscuits” and ”crisps” if you’re feeling British) Salha started what he called Open Iftar. Students from many different countries sat down in a park, and broke bread together. While the event was initially started for students, many far from their homes in   countries, it quickly expanded  —   incorporating people of different faiths, or no faith at all, or those who just happened to be passing by. Since that first event in 2011, Salha has worked with groups launching Open Iftars around the world, hosting tens of thousands of people —  from Turkey to Canada, the U. K. to Zambia. He has also extended it to a larger organization, the Ramadan Tent Project, which does charitable events throughout the year. Although the Open Iftar format varies  —   every night versus a few days, a set location or a roaming one  —   the participating cities all follow the same basic template. The event is held outdoors (weather permitting) and is open to all. Often there are guest speakers and evening prayers, and then everyone  —  Muslim and   alike  —  breaks bread together. The first Open Iftar in the United States was held last year in Portland, Oregon. And this year, the event was especially charged, coming less than 24 hours after two people were killed standing up to   violence. Over 600 people turned out for the Open Iftar at a local community center, sitting on folding chairs and on the ground, indoors and out. Many had never really sat down with their Muslim neighbors before, but felt compelled to show up and show support. ”I didn’t know should I dress differently, should I take my shoes off when I walk in the door —  you know, all those things that go through your mind when you’ve never been to a mosque before,” admitted Laurie King, who drove a half hour to attend the event. ”I just found that you come as you are, and you’re welcome.” And the welcome was a warm one. Although the Open Iftar volunteers had been fasting for nearly 18 hours, they were all concerned with making sure their guests had enough to eat, dishing out donated trays of curried chicken and   rice (and a stack of pizzas for the kids) and donated squares of   baklava. Over the meal, Muslims and   moved beyond political rhetoric and religious divides, and got to know each other. Which Open Iftar founder Omar Salha says is the true point of Ramadan. ”These are interesting habits which are conducted over the course of the month which allow us to come closer to our community,” said Salha. ”And becoming closer to our community means we are becoming closer to God as well.” The month of Ramadan lasts another two weeks. But Salha hopes this closeness and sense of community  —   not just among Muslims, but among all neighbors  —   will last much longer."
"Actress Salma Hayek has never had anything handed to her. ”I have had to fight, very, very hard for every little mediocre part I ever got,” she says. When Hayek first arrived in the U. S. she was told to go back to Mexico  —   that she’d never be more than a maid. ”They told me: You’ll never work. I got to work. Then they said: It’s going to be over at 35. And I’m 50. . .. I take so much pleasure in proving everyone wrong. It’s such a great satisfaction.” Hayek is now starring in Beatriz at Dinner, a poignant comedy about class and culture. Beatriz is a massage therapist originally from Mexico who attends a dinner party at the home of her wealthy clients. ”Never have I had so many opportunities before,” Hayek says. ”This is the best time of my life.” On how she came to star in Beatriz, It really landed in my lap . .. top. I was always a fan of [director] Miguel Arteta and [screenwriter] Mike White. . .. Two weeks before my 49th birthday they called to see if we if we could hang out. I thought it was strange, but I was so excited. They came and they said, ”We have a project that we have in mind . .. Mike has not written it yet, it’s just like a vague idea. But we’d like for you to be a part of it.” And I said: ”Oh, that’s great, what is it about?” And Mike said, ”It’s a dinner.” . .. I thought: ”For sure, I’m going to be cooking it. I’m just going to be a small role.” And I said, ”What do I play?” And he said, ”You’re a masseuse.” And now I was very confused. And I said, ”All right, who else is in it?” And he said, ”So far, only you.” Two weeks later, the day of my birthday, I get an email from him that said, ”Happy birthday,” with a script. On her friend’s theory about getting roles as older actresses, I have a friend  —   an Italian friend who’s a brilliant actress . .. she’s working a lot, too, and we were looking at each other one day and saying, why are we working so much? And she said: ”You know why? We don’t have Botox!” . .. We don’t have the injections. This is what it is! We don’t look as hot, that’s true . .. but we’re working   because we can look like real people. We can play any part. And I think maybe it’s true. On once auditioning for a role despite knowing they wouldn’t pick a Latina actress, I went in and they made me wait five hours. And when I went in, it was a long table with maybe six people. They said, ”Why would humiliate yourself, and waste our time and your time and do this and force us to see you? You already know you’re not wanted.” . .. They were kind of laughing and smirking at the beginning. When I finished I was so proud because they looked at me completely different. [One of the men at the table] said: ”That was smart, I had no idea you were that good. I still want what I want  —   and it’s Caucasian. But I have to give it to you, you surprised me.” Years later, that lovely man came back to me and said, ”I apologize, I made a mistake. You would have been better in that movie and I thank you for exposing me to it.” I didn’t sue them, I didn’t scream at them, I did my best work. The way to shine the light on ignorance, it’s not by violence or regression  —   it’s just by putting a light in the right place. On whether she has been typecast because of her beauty  All stereotypes are difficult to shake. . .. I used it. I turned the tortilla around on them. Because at the time . .. [the available roles were] either a drug dealer wife, or the maid, or an extra in the supermarket. And I realized, this is what, at this time, they were capable of opening up to. So, you just go by steps. They couldn’t have accepted a lawyer, but they could accept a hot Latina. That was not who I am, but that’s what they could feel safe with. On what she learned making and starring in the 2002 biopic Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, It took me eight years to get it off the ground, and I did it myself. Nobody wanted to do it, nobody helped me with it. And then little by little they start changing their minds . .. and what a beautiful journey it has been. If I had come here with everything landing on my lap, then you don’t develop as far and as strongly as you can. Because of that, I know how to produce film, television, I know how to write, I know how to direct, I can do many things and I can do them well. I’d rather have the hard road into excellence than the easy road into mediocrity. So I’m not complaining. And it’s important that I say this: If we have any Latinos or any immigrants listening to this, this is an invitation for us to wake up and be excellent at anything that we do. Radio producer Malika Gumpangkum, radio editor Evie Stone and Web producer Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"For years, people with addiction have wondered when the media would recognize our condition as a medical problem, not a moral one  —   when they would stop reducing us to mere ”addicts” and speak of us in the more respectful and accurate ”person first” language that has become common for people with other diseases and disorders. Last week, The Associated Press took an important step in that direction. The new edition of its widely used AP Stylebook declares that ”addict” should no longer be used as a noun. ”Instead,” it says, ”choose phrasing like he was addicted, people with heroin addiction or he used drugs.” In short, separate the person from the disease. The style guide clarifies other important language to maximize precision and reduce bias in addiction coverage. There are new entries on ”alcoholic” and on an array of substances, from bath salts and cocaine to PCP and synthetic cannabis. Unlike many matters of style, these changes aren’t mere semantics or political correctness. Widespread media misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of addiction has led to some deadly misconceptions about how it should be managed. The AP provides news to around 15, 000 media organizations and businesses, and its stylebook is highly influential in setting standards for usage. If its more accurate terms are adopted and understood by institutions like The New York Times and CBS News, it could genuinely help improve drug treatment and policy by reducing stigma against lifesaving forms of treatment  —   amid an overdose crisis that shows no signs of slowing. ”Around the beginning of the year, in January, we noticed that there was a hole in our guidance on addiction,” says Jeff McMillan, an AP enterprise editor who was the lead author of the new section. He adds, ”As we began talking to experts, we learned that the language that was traditionally used is changing, and we thought it would be good to give people a vocabulary.” The new language has been widely welcomed. ”It’s very good  —   really well done,” says John Kelly, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard and founder and director of the Recovery Research Institute at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Kelly was the lead author of a study published in 2010 that showed that clinicians  —   from the least educated up through   professionals  —   take a more punitive stance when patients are described as ”substance abusers” rather than ”people with substance use disorder.” The stylebook directs its users to ”avoid words like abuse or problem in favor of the word use with an appropriate modifier such as risky, unhealthy, excessive, or heavy. Misuse is also acceptable.” Notably, it adds that not all risky use involves addiction  —   a distinction that has been clear to epidemiologists for decades but has not often been noted by the press. And perhaps most important, the new stylebook specifies that journalists should not use ”dependence” as a synonym for addiction. In fact, ”substance dependence” was dropped as the official diagnosis for addiction by psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, the DSM, in 2013, in part because it erroneously implied that the two are the same. While the AP doesn’t spell this out, journalists and readers should understand why it matters. In essence, dependence means relying on a substance to function normally. People who take certain medications for blood pressure, depression and addiction will suffer withdrawal if these medications are stopped abruptly, but that does not mean they’re addicted. This is true even for those taking opioids, like methadone or buprenorphine, to treat addiction. When people are stabilized on an appropriate individualized dose of either addiction treatment medication, they are not impaired at all because of the precise way this class of drugs affects the brain and causes tolerance. By contrast, addiction is a medical disorder marked by compulsive drug use despite bad consequences like impairment. So while addiction is always a problem, dependence may not be. Understanding this is critical for good pain care. Patients taking opioids over a long period of time are often physically dependent, but unless they experience negative consequences and compulsive use, they are not addicted. Similarly, babies exposed to opioids in the womb may suffer withdrawal symptoms from dependence after they are born, but they aren’t addicted either. Addiction requires persistent compulsive drug use, and these babies don’t even know that what they need is opioids, let alone have the ability to obtain and use drugs to support an addiction. Yet the media has often failed to recognize these differences. Headlines about ”addicted babies” abound, and this stigma can itself do great harm. During the crack years in the 1980s and ’90s, exposed children were subject to abuse and neglect by caregivers and others who misinterpreted normal behavior as malicious. Recently, The Washington Post surveyed chronic pain patients on opioid therapy, asking them whether they were ”addicted or dependent” but without defining those terms. Not surprisingly,   of the patients answered yes. While that made for a scary headline, it didn’t tell readers how many actually had   disorders. And that is what you really want to know: Stopping effective pain treatment when you mistake it for addiction can be deadly. At The New York Times, there are no plans to update the paper’s style manual along the AP’s lines. ”I definitely understand the arguments and the sensitivity,” Philip B. Corbett, the paper’s associate managing editor for standards, wrote in an email, adding that ”language evolves, and we will continue to think about these terms and consider changes as they seem warranted.” But about dependence and addiction, he said he thought ”very few readers would immediately understand or pick up on the distinction.” Unfortunately, another unhappy result of conflating addiction and dependence is to undermine the only treatment we know that cuts mortality from opioid addiction by 50 percent or more:   treatment with methadone or buprenorphine. Too often, these treatments are mischaracterized as merely replacing one addiction with another —   and this deters families and patients themselves from seeking or sticking with the safest care. If the AP’s guidance can help members and their readers stop making this error, it could end up saving many lives.  Of course, how the news media talk about addiction is only one aspect of a   cultural problem. In   groups, which are used in at least 80 percent of American addiction care, people are encouraged to identify themselves as ”addicts” or ”alcoholics.” They often use what the AP’s McMillan calls ”almost   language” when speaking to the press, even if they don’t publicly identify themselves as group members. This could be seen as a way of trying to reclaim stigmatized terms by an oppressed group, just as other marginalized people have sometimes done with slurs against them. The AP suggests similar guidelines for using ”addict” as a noun. It’s all right when used in a quote about oneself or in the name of an organization, but not otherwise. NPR already had encouraged reporters and editors to avoid using nouns like addict. ”While we have not banned the words ’addict’ or ’alcoholic’ (there are very few words we come even close to banning) we do agree that it’s better to use a   approach,” wrote NPR’s standards and practices editor Mark Memmott in an email. Language is complicated and often slow to change  —   and for a group that has been criminalized, fighting stigma and misinformation is a constant struggle. But when the media start treating people with addiction with the same respect that they use for other patients —   and when we cover addiction care with the same skepticism about possible quackery used in other health reporting —   perhaps the rest of America will start to accept that addiction is a medical problem and that moralizing and punishment have failed. Maia Szalavitz is the author of the   Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, which was just released in paperback. She was formerly addicted to cocaine and heroin. A version of this essay originally appeared in Undark, the online science magazine. "
"On Sunday night the spotlight will be on Broadway stars at the 71st annual Tony Awards. The evening also includes honors for some people behind the scenes  —   writers, directors and designers, for example  —   but there are many more, working backstage, who aren’t eligible for Broadway’s highest honor. If you peek into the wings at a Broadway show, you’re likely to find a stage manager, sitting at a desk with video monitors and lots of buttons and switches. He or she will be wearing a headset  —   sometimes called ”the God mic”  —   to communicate with the cast and crew. ”I like to think of a stage manager as the chief operations officer of the corporation that is the show,” says Ira Mont, stage manager of Cats. Donald Fried, stage manager of the   play, Sweat, says stage managers are kind of ”the Captain of the Enterprise.” ”I would call us the hub of the wheel,” says Karyn Meek, production stage manager for the   musical Natasha, Pierre  The Great Comet of 1812. ”We are . .. in charge of communication across all departments. . .. During the show, we are in charge of making sure the lights happen, the set moves, sound happens, all the things . .. we are the person who’s controlling all of that.” Long before a show starts its run, the stage manager is an integral part of the rehearsal process, explains Fried. ”Everything begins and ends with the script,” he says. ”I’ve got to read the script, read it several times. Once, just to read it as a person, not as a stage manager or an artist or anything. Just to have an initial emotional feeling for it. Then, I go back and read [the writer’s] stage directions, so that I know what would happen   how she envisions the props, how she envisions the set moving, people entering and exiting, whether or not they’re changing costumes.” Once a show is up and running, Meek says stage managers and their teams put in long hours. Her day begins at 9:30 a. m. with cast members telling her whether they’d be in or out of that day’s shows, due to injuries or illness. Depending on the day, she’ll arrive at the theater around 12:30 for a matinee or rehearsal. There’s a dinner break around 5:00 or 5:30, and then everyone’s back at the theater for the evening show. Shows that feature complicated choreography or simulated fight scenes require daily rehearsals. Sweat manager Donald Fried says they do a fight rehearsal before every show. ”We want to make sure everyone is safe and limber, and that the props are working,” he explains. In the half hour before each performance, the stage manager walks through a beehive of activity, making sure everyone’s ready for curtain. Meek climbs a ladder to her perch, high above stage left at Great Comet. Actors perform throughout the theater and Meek can keep an eye on them all. Once the show starts, she follows a musical score, with sticky notes showing all of the lighting and tech cues. Through one of her video monitors, she can see Josh Groban, who plays Pierre, standing at the back of the stage. By the time the opening number really gets going, Meek is calling cues to the lighting technician every other beat. She literally calls hundreds of sound and tech cues for each performance. All the stage managers I spoke with started out doing other things  —   Meek was a costume designer, Fried was a dancer. As a former actor, Cats manager Ira Mont was used to getting applause  —   but not anymore. ”I don’t expect or look for praise or acknowledgement,” he says. ”I am here to support the shows I work on and the actors who do them and that’s what gives me the joy. And I’m very fortunate to have had a   career in a profession that is not easy to get into and is not easy to stay in. I’m a lucky guy.” He’s got lucky   too. Even as Mont juggles countless cues that go into a Broadway performance of Cats, over the headset he reminds the cast and crew of one more detail: to gather for a cast member’s birthday toast at the end of the show."
"Note: Given the subject this story explores, the discussion includes some explicit language. Jaha Dukureh, now 27, was only one week old when the incident that came to define her life’s mission occurred. That is when, as was the custom of her home town of Gambissara, Gambia, a traditional ”cutter” removed her clitoris and labia and then sewed the opening together, leaving only a tiny hole to allow the flow of urine and menstrual blood. Today she knows that she had been subjected to the most extreme form of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) called infibulation or Type 3 FGM. Yet Dukureh had no inkling until her wedding day, at the age of 15, that she numbered among the approximately 200 million women around the world alive today who have undergone the procedure  —   one that yields no known health benefits but that raises a range of health risks, from infection and pain to difficulties getting pregnant and obstetrical complications during childbirth. In 2010, that knowledge compelled her to make a promise to her newborn daughter, now 7, that she would not subject her to FMG  —   and would do everything she could to end the practice for girls all over the world. To fulfill that promise, three years ago she began with Equality Now and the Guardian newspaper on an ultimately successful campaign to ban FGM in Gambia and founded the   organization Safe Hands for Girls. NPR spoke to Dukureh as she was preparing to leave for her latest trip to Gambia, along with her three children, to speak to communities in rural areas around the country and help educate and persuade them to stop the practice. She has been bolstered by the warm reception for Jaha’s Promise, the documentary film that tells the wrenching but ultimately inspiring story of how, in the wake of her ordeals, she transformed herself into the influential activist she is today. ”Jaha’s story shows how one woman can make a huge difference in breaking the silence surrounding female genital mutilation,” says Purna Sen, director of the policy division of U. N. Women. Last year, Dukureh was on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In March, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark sat beside Dukureh at the film’s world premiere at the Copenhagen Film Festival in March. This past week, the film, directed by Patrick Farrelly and Kate O’Callaghan, was screened at the United Nations in New York, and on Saturday had its United Kingdom premiere at the Sheffield Documentary Festival. Additional screenings are being planned at other festivals. ”The film is an advocacy tool” to ”raise the profile of the issue” of FGM, Dukureh says. ”It’s not so much about me but about the issue. It is our moral obligation to end the practice” of FGM. In the film, Dukureh reveals that she only began learning about FGM and how that had changed her body in perhaps the hardest way possible, on her wedding night. She now recognizes that her ignorance about what had been done to her body was not unusual in her community. ”There is a huge cultural silence in talking about these issues,” she says. ”It is taboo. So there was no way I could learn about this growing up.” She did know that her parents had arranged a marriage for her when she was eight, but beyond a ceremony at home nothing changed for her. By the time she turned 10 or 11, though, she says, ”it started to hit me, and I hated the whole idea. It felt very strange” to have been promised to a husband in another country whom she didn’t know. Then, at 15, she was sent to New York to begin her life as the wife of a man approximately 30 years her senior whom she’d never met before. When her husband attempted penetration, the pain was ”excruciating,” she says. At first she did not know why. Then, after several days of grueling, unsuccessful attempts to consummate the marriage, in an eerie reprise to the original procedure, a doctor had to cut her open again. Afterwards, he ordered her to have sex within 24 hours in order, he said, to make sure the opening did not close again. Sex was now possible but the absence of sexual genitalia still made it anatomically impossible for her to feel sexual pleasure. Far from home, and still grieving for her mother who had died only three months before, Dukureh felt despondent and alone. She tried desperately to continue her education, but ten different high schools in succession refused to enroll her because she was without parents or a guardian. Finally, the eleventh said yes  —   after she cried in the principal’s office. By then, with the support of Taina   who then worked for the women’s rights group Equality Now, Dukureh had gained the courage to leave her husband and stay with family members. She soon divorced her husband and moved to Atlanta, where she remarried. This was also an arranged marriage. ”But a happy one,” she says, to a man who ”is more my age and is very supportive.” She went to college, began work at a bank where she was quickly promoted, and became the mother of three children, ages 8, 7 and 3. ”Taina made me believe in myself and made me believe that my life was worth living,” Dukureh says. Nonetheless, of her time in New York, Dukureh now says, ”I think it was the most traumatizing experience. ”It was a difficult time in my life and I don’t like talking about it.” All the more impressive, then, is her openness in telling her story on film. In Atlanta, she began meeting other women and mothers in her community who had also undergone FGM and began a support group. Soon, with the support of Equality Now, she began a petition on Change. org calling for an end to FGM in the United States. It was signed by 221, 169 people. The film depicts her meeting with former President Barack Obama, Gambia’s president Al Hadji Yahya Jammeh and former U. N. President Ban  . At once dignified,   and firm, Dukureh is also shown in the documentary talking with men, women, and children in schools and communities throughout Gambia, as she corrects one myth after another by FGM. No, it is not necessary to have the procedure in order to deliver a baby actually, it may cause additional complications. Nor is it a religious teaching of Islam, despite the belief that it is, among many Imams  —   including, until recently, her own father. At one point in the film they are seen discussing the issue, each one politely firm in their opposing opinions. He does, however, promise to study the issue further. Eventually he comes to agree that her research is correct: It is not an Islamic teaching. That leads to the film’s happy conclusion: Her father’s announcement that his own newborn child, a girl, will not undergo FGM. Her father, Dukureh told NPR, is ”now my biggest cheerleader.” She will see him in Gambia this summer and will continue her campaign around the country. Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Jewish Week, and is book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is dianejcole. com."
"Updated at 8:19 p. m. ET  President Trump is preparing to announce changes in U. S. policy toward Cuba, possibly tightening restrictions on travel and trade that were loosened under former President Barack Obama. Trump is expected to announce the changes in Miami on Friday. The move was confirmed by a congressional source with direct knowledge of the situation. Sen. Marco Rubio,  . has been leading the push for a more restrictive policy, along with his fellow   Rep. Mario    . The changes could make it more difficult for Americans to visit the island and for U. S. companies to do business there. The Obama administration ended decades of economic and diplomatic isolation of Cuba, in hopes that renewed engagement would lead to reforms in the communist country. The White House declined to discuss the pending changes. ”When we have an announcement on the president’s schedule, we’ll let you know,” said spokesman Sean Spicer. ”But just stay tuned.” Advocates for greater engagement with Cuba warn the administration’s changes could be costly. ”This is the opposite of ’America First.’ This is America last,” said James Williams, who leads the nonpartisan lobbying group Engage Cuba. He warns that reduced travel and trade with Cuba could cost thousands of American jobs. Travel to the island is already limited to visitors in 12 authorized categories, but there is little enforcement. And with renewed commercial air service, visits to Cuba have soared. The administration is considering stepped up policing to discourage pleasure travel and limiting visitors to one trip per year. Williams says that would be especially hard on   with relatives on the island. ”Imagine, your mother is sick in Cuba,” Williams said. ”You might have to decide between going to see her in the hospital bed before she dies or going to the funeral. And that is just tragic.” Polls suggest a majority of Americans support greater engagement with Cuba. Last month, 55 senators sponsored legislation that would further relax travel restrictions. The opening has also led to modest changes in Cuba, with increased revenue for   owners and Internet hot spots in Havana. ”I think Cubans in Cuba will be terribly disheartened” by the renewed restrictions, said Carlos Gutierrez, who served as commerce secretary under former President George W. Bush. ”This decision will not play well anywhere, except for in those very cloistered spots in South Florida where Sen. Rubio and Mario   have constituents.” Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Rubio said in a statement that he was heartened the new administration would reverse ”the failed Cuba policy of the last two years.” When the Obama administration policy was first rolled out in late 2014, Rubio blasted the move. ”Just as when President Eisenhower severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, the Castro family still controls the country, the economy and all levers of power. This administration’s attempts to loosen restrictions on travel in recent years have only served to benefit the regime,” he said in a statement. ”But most importantly, the regime’s brutal treatment of the Cuban people has continued unabated. Dissidents are harassed, imprisoned and even killed.”"
"Fifty years ago, on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia legalized interracial marriage. Just two weeks earlier, shooting had been completed on a movie about that very subject  —   Stanley Kramer’s         smash Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier. Profits are a powerful motivator for Hollywood studios. So it might seem obvious that a blockbusting indicator of audience acceptance for interracial romance   would lead to studios greenlighting more of them. But prejudices in Hollywood were as   as they were elsewhere in society. Those prejudices did not disappear overnight, and the film industry did not embrace   couples  . There had been interracial screen romances, even in the silent era, but they were almost always pictured as either comically foolish or   doomed. D. W. Griffith ended his silent tragedy Broken Blossoms Or the Yellow Man and the Girl with the deaths of both his title characters  —   a Chinese immigrant and a London prizefighter’s daughter. The silent drama The Bronze Bride, about a white fur trapper who marries a Native American woman, also ended with tears. And in Show Boat in 1936, things end happily for nearly everyone except Julie, the wife of the showboat’s white leading man. She is of mixed race, but has been passing as white. In the song ”Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine,” Julie sings of being helplessly in love, and her husband is devoted to her. But she will nonetheless end up drunk and alone at the film’s end, looking from the shadows at the happier characters who have married within their own race. In that, she had lots of company  . Hollywood had adopted a Motion Picture Production Code in 1930  —   popularly known as the Hays Code for its author, Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America  —   which explicitly prohibited the depiction of ”sex relationships between the white and black races.” The code was meant to curb what bluenoses of that era considered immorality, and with interracial marriage then illegal in 30 states, depicting it would arguably have been condoning an illegal act. Though Show Boat had been a hit on Broadway, movie theaters, especially in the South, might well have refused to play it even with the Production Code seal of approval. But the filmmakers had a trick to get around objections  —   a casting gambit used in many motion pictures of that era: Audiences were not actually seeing a   couple   because the biracial character was played by Helen Morgan, a white actress. Griffith had done the same thing in Broken Blossoms, casting a heavily   Richard Barthelmess as Chinese immigrant Cheng Huan. The same thing happened when Show Boat was remade in 1951. Although Lena Horne campaigned hard for the role, Ava Gardner was cast as Julie, and not only was she not black, she wasn’t even singing (though she certainly could have she recorded a vocal track they ended up not using that is lighter and more contemporary to modern ears). Colorblind and, in several different senses,   this qualified as Hollywood artificiality at its peak. And it followed close on the heels of another drama Horne had campaigned for, Pinky, about another character who was passing as white. That part went to Jeanne Crain, for whom passing was relatively easy, as she was white. She got an Oscar nomination as best actress for pretending not to be. Foreign films weren’t as timid. In 1935, Josephine Baker  —   who had moved to Paris because of racial prejudice in the U. S. and was becoming a big star there  —   starred in the   Princess Tam Tam, playing a Tunisian woman who is the muse of a white French novelist. In the U. S. though, because of the Hays Code, that film and others like it played only in theaters catering strictly to black patrons. Then, in 1956, the code was revised, and the stipulation about race was dropped, which allowed a blonde Inger Stevens to have what was, at the time, an incendiary conversation with Harry Belafonte in The World, The Flesh and The Devil, a   film in which a nuclear war had left the two of them virtually alone in the world. (Note: The dialogue below contains language some readers may find offensive.) Stevens has asked Belafonte to be honest with her, and Belafonte has responded that if she pushes, he’ll be ”so honest it’ll burn you.” When she does push, he erupts in fury: ”If you’re squeamish about words, I’m ’colored.’ If you face facts I’m a Negro. If you’re a polite Southerner, I’m a ’Negra,’ and I’m a ’nigger’ if you’re not. . .. A little while ago, you said you were ’free, white and 21.’ That didn’t mean anything to you. Just an expression you’d heard a thousand times. Well, to me it was an arrow in my guts.” Stevens asks for help getting it right: ”You’re a fine, decent man what else is there to know?” ”[In] that world we came from you wouldn’t know that,” Belafonte’s character replies. ”You wouldn’t even know me. Why should the world fall down to prove I’m what I am, and that there’s nothing wrong with what I am?” Good question, and others were asking it, too: In the British film A Taste of Honey, Rita Tushingham gets pregnant by a black sailor and decides to keep the baby. Hollywood’s first interracial kiss appeared in the drama Island in the Sun. And the   Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner arrived in theaters six months to the day after interracial marriage was legalized by the Loving decision. Lawyers only had to make their closing argument to nine Supreme Court justices. Spencer Tracy’s summation went out to more than 40 million moviegoers, when he said this to Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton: ” ’Anybody could make a case  —   and a helluva good case  —   against your getting married,’ he says. ’The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them. But you’re two wonderful people, who happened to fall in love, and happen to have a pigmentation problem. And I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse. And that would be if, knowing what you two are, knowing what you two have, and knowing what you two feel, you didn’t get married.’ ” And that broke the logjam, right? No, not really. Hollywood spent the rest of the 20th century debating how to follow Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, and mostly deciding not to. Bromances with   pairings were fine  —   say, the Lethal Weapon franchise. Producers who could attract stars of sufficient wattage  —   say Kevin Costner at the height of his fame, and Whitney Houston at the height of hers  —   could dare audiences to resist their pairing in a film like The Bodyguard. And there were occasional   that tackled the issue   as an issue  —   Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, for instance, or the lesbian interracial romance The Watermelon Woman. But for many in Hollywood, the risk of alienating some part of the audience has not seemed a risk worth taking on a   budget. So Will Smith and Denzel Washington have spent most of their careers appearing opposite   love interests, and Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise have not. Never mind that multiracial casting has been a boon at the box office for, say, the Fast and Furious films. There are, of course, outliers. Jordan Peele’s satirical dramedy Get Out is a witty look at social stereotyping, which uses race to subvert and amplify horror tropes. With a   director, Get Out has taken in almost a quarter of a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Also this year, in Everything, Everything, an       and a white neighbor fall in love. The supporting cast of Beauty and the Beast turned out to have two interracial couples, once the magic spell was broken. And in the upcoming comedy The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani will tell the true story of how he, a man of Pakistani descent, met his Caucasian wife. These films, let’s note, make sense in the current movie marketplace, especially for younger viewers. The Pew Research Center recently reported that in 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available, ”17 percent of all U. S. newlyweds had a spouse of a different race or ethnicity.” That compares with 3 percent in 1967  —   the year of the Loving decision and of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The nation has changed, and Hollywood will, too. At the moment, though, it’s still playing  ."
"D. J. and Angela Ross were not supposed to end up together, according to their families. ”Actually my grandma on both sides used to tell me, ’Boy, you better leave those white girls alone or else we’re going to come find you hanging from a tree,’ ” says D. J. 35, who is black and grew up in southern Virginia. Angela, 40, who is white and was also raised in Virginia, remembers being warned: ”You can have friends with black people, and that’s fine. But don’t ever marry a black man.” But on Valentine’s Day 2008, Angela tied the knot with D. J. in their home state. More than 50 years ago, their marriage would have broken a Virginia law. Designed to ”preserve racial integrity,” it allowed a white person to only marry people who had ”no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian” or who fell under what was known as the ”Pocahontas Exception” for having ”  or less of the blood of the American Indian” and ”no other   blood.” Virginia wasn’t always for all lovers, In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were thrown in jail and later banished from Virginia for breaking that law. He was white, and she once described herself as ”part negro and part indian.” After receiving a marriage license in Washington, D. C. the Lovings returned home to Central Point, Va. where weeks later, police burst into their bedroom late one night to arrest them. That ultimately led to a legal battle against Virginia’s   law that went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court almost a decade later. ”This period was a very dangerous period. You didn’t want publicity for them, still living in the South,” says Philip Hirschkop, one of the lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union who argued the Lovings’ case before the Supreme Court. ”President Kennedy was assassinated. Medgar Evers was assassinated. The girls were killed in the church in Alabama. These were very tough, difficult times.” Still, on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the Lovings, striking down laws banning   marriages in sixteen states, including Virginia. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the opinion that ”the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.” For the Lovings, the ruling meant they could finally live openly as husband and wife in Virginia with their three children. ”Society righted the wrong to some extent,” Hirschkop says. ”But no one ever paid them for the horrible years they had to spend in terrible fear.” Fifty years after the landmark Supreme Court decision, though, the story of the Lovings resonates with interracial couples in Virginia like D. J. and Angela Ross. ”It’s true that we can be together in the open. But some things, I don’t think we’ve made much progress,” D. J. says. ”Discrimination still happens.” Angela says whenever she and her husband are in public with their five children, she often sees other people shaking their heads. ”Someone may look at me who disagrees with my choice in marrying my husband. I can’t take that on,” she says. ”I can’t take on their opinion of me because I know my value and  .” Interracial marriage since Loving v. Virginia, Opinions about interracial marriages have shifted dramatically since the Loving ruling. While adults ages 65 and older and those with a high school diploma or less education are more likely to oppose having a close relative marrying someone of a different race, Americans overall are more open to the idea, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. The share of newlyweds in interracial marriages has grown sharply. Overall, one out of every six newlyweds today is married to someone of a different race. While Asian and Latino newlyweds are the most likely to marry outside of their racial groups, there have been rapid increases in the share of black and white newlyweds with spouses of different races since 1980. As they head towards their 10th wedding anniversary next year, Angela and D. J. Ross say they’re focused on providing a safe home for their family among the rolling, green hills outside of Roanoke, Va. Angela homeschools their two youngest daughters, Marianna and Jordis, in their garden and living room, where the windows overlook cows and horses grazing on farmland. D. J. says he’s at peace out here with his family. ”As soon as I get here, it’s like everything is just gone. You don’t have to worry about people looking at me differently, because I’m home,” he adds. ”It’s just us here.”"
"Jury deliberations resume Tuesday in the sexual assault trial of comedian Bill Cosby, after the prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments on Monday. Jurors deliberated for four hours before stopping for the night. Cosby is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. Cosby has been accused of raping or assaulting dozens of women, often after offering or slipping them drugs. By the time the stories became public knowledge, the statute of limitations had expired on most of the cases Constand’s case is an exception. The Associated Press provides some background: ”Constand, 44, testified . .. that Cosby gave her three blue pills and then penetrated her with [his] fingers against her will as she lay paralyzed and  . She sued Cosby after prosecutors in 2005 declined to press charges. ”Cosby testified over a decade ago as part of her lawsuit, eventually settling the case for an undisclosed sum. His deposition was sealed for years until a judge released parts in 2015 at the request of The Associated Press, prompting a new set of prosecutors to take a fresh look at the case. ”Cosby was charged a year and a half ago, just before the statute of limitations was set to run out.” Last week the prosecution spent days laying out the case against Cosby, calling 12 witnesses to the stand. As NPR reported last week, Constand testified, telling her story in public for the first time. She spent nearly seven hours on the stand over two days, as Cosby’s attorneys attempted to undermine her credibility. On Monday, the defense moved through its case  —   quickly, reports Laura Benshoff of member station WHYY. ”Cosby’s lawyers spent only a few minutes asking a local detective whether or not he was aware of the entertainer’s vision problems in 2005,” Benshoff reports: ”In closing, lead defense attorney Brian McMonagle called the accuser’s statements a ’stone cold lie.’ . .. The defense spent more than an hour rehashing its claims that Cosby and Constand were in a romantic relationship, and implying that she concocted the assault with the help of attorneys.” Cosby did not take the stand, and the defense rested after just one witness. Constand was in the courtroom for the defense’s closing arguments on Monday, as was Cosby’s wife, Camille Cosby, Reuters reports: ”McMonagle argued that Cosby was guilty of infidelity but no crime. ” ’We’re not perfect, are we?’ he said, pausing and looking at Camille Cosby, 73. ”McMonagle focused on Constand’s shifting story, pointing out that she changed her estimate of when the alleged assault occurred several times in speaking with police in 2005. ” ’She’d remember it for the next 365 days and all the days of her life if there were a sexual assault in this case,’ the attorney said.” Prosecutors said that Cosby, at his deposition more than a decade ago, admitted to giving Constand pills (Cosby said it was Benadryl) and touching her sexually. ”Ladies and gentlemen, he has told you what he has done,” District Attorney Kevin Steele said in his closing argument, according to Reuters. ”It is about as straightforward as you are ever going to see in a sex crimes case. . .. If you have sexual relations with somebody when they’re out, when they’re asleep, when they’re unconscious, that is a crime.” If convicted, Cosby could spend the rest of his life in prison, the AP notes."
"Every Friday morning when I was very little, the women who ran the daycare center I went to would gather all the kids into a circle and goodnaturedly quiz us on what happened the night before on The Cosby Show. I distinctly remember the first time I sat in that circle having no idea what The Cosby Show was, feeling whatever   understand as shame. The center’s staffers were all black, as were we, the assembled moppets. Watching the Huxtables was quite literally my first homework assignment. The show was, of course, the most popular program in America for the better part of a decade, in no small part because it managed to be both very funny and allowed white audiences to cotton to the wealthy, relatively apolitical black family at its center. But it owed no small part of its influence to the fact that black folks considered its success part of a larger civic project  —   around race and representation and respectability  —   to which they had certain obligations. (Cosby’s cultural ubiquity in the 1980s was even more pronounced for us Philadelphians he was a local boy done very very good, more famous and avuncular than Ben Franklin.) Like so many important black institutions, The Cosby Show  —   and Cosby himself  —   was a private concern entangled with broad, collective stakes. ”Rep sweats” on a trillion. You could hear a nod to these dynamics on the trial’s opening day, as Cosby arrived at a courthouse in Montgomery County, not far outside the Philly city limits, for his sexual assault trial. He was escorted by Keshia   who played his youngest TV daughter Rudy, on The Cosby Show. ”I can only speak to the great man that I know and love, who has been so generous, who has been such a philanthropist and giving back millions of dollars to education and schools,” the now    actress told reporters. It was a qualified defense of Cosby that still managed to neatly sum up some complicated context: Cosby had long encouraged the linking of his own fortunes with the condition of black folks more broadly. As the dozens of rape and sexual assault accusations against Cosby have piled up, both he and his lawyers have tugged at that sense, trying to rally black support by suggesting that the claims are at least in part fueled by racism. Other black luminaries have played this hand  —   Clarence Thomas and O. J. Simpson, most notably  —   but Cosby’s invocation has a different weight, however one might feel about its legitimacy. Unlike those guys, he had been a race man for decades, and he had rewarded those communal stakes with literal investment. Black colleges and prospective black college students were buoyed by his philanthropy, while his collections of black art graced important museums. Even before his   turn as black America’s moral scold, Cosby had spent decades leaning into his popular image as a paternal figure to bolster his influence as a paternalistic one. And yet there have been notably few   defenses of Cosby most of the statements from his former Cosby Show cast members have been along the lines of  ’s respectful to the man they still call ”Mr. Cosby” but also cautious and tepid. It did take a while for the drumbeat of accusations against Cosby to spur the many black institutions linked with him to start distancing themselves from him. In 2015, Spelman College, the famed  ’s institution in Atlanta to whom Cosby and his wife Camille donated $20 million in the 1980s, quietly did away with the endowed professorship that bore his name. Central State University, a black school in southwest Ohio to whom Cosby had bestowed millions, removed his name from the building that housed its school of communications. Other institutions have made similar calls  —   and for schools without large endowments, these are tough decisions. That all these moves were met with little uproar is telling of how much Cosby’s power and influence has waned. That’s why it’s worth noting how much the very real political position Cosby himself occupied  —   the kindly cultural ambassador of Negritude  —   has become if not entirely outmoded, then at least viewed far more skeptically. Blackness has always been a variegated, sprawling thing, but there is far more room now for expressions of it in the wider culture. And where the Huxtables were once the template for black aspiration, there are now many  —   most notably the    family that took up residence in the White House until very recently. To the extent that folks have begun the knotty work of disentangling Cosby’s fate and cultural legacy from their own, it’s in part because there is no longer the same need for the sole figure anointed as a kind of racial emissary Cosby  —   a role Cosby once clearly reveled in playing. No matter how his trial concludes, Cosby will live out his last years in an America in whose culture he has become far less essential, an obsolescence that he, ironically, helped usher into existence."
"In more than 50 marches across the states, LGBT people and their allies gathered to stand in solidarity against the Trump administration over the weekend. In Washington, D. C. people gathered in droves. Troy King, a    gay man from Atlanta, marched to continue to pressure politicians to stand up for his community’s rights. ”I’m not proud I’m just gay,” he said. Corey Williams, a lesbian woman from D. C. smiled on the sidelines with her dog, Boogie. She said she was happy to see Pride returning to its roots in protest. But the month of June, which is celebrated as gay pride month, can be fraught for one subset of the LGBT community: Trump supporters. That is particularly true this year, as many marches are billed as ”resistance” protests against the administration.  ’Political’ Vs. ’Partisan’ Protest, Matthew Craffey, a member of the conservative LGBT group Log Cabin Republicans, lives in Los Angeles, where he leads the local chapter. There, the Pride Parade has morphed into a Resist March to stand against the ideologies of a Trump presidency and how some of the members of the LGBT community fear his potential policies impact their lives. ”I’m not discrediting people who have issues with the Trump administration, but my problem is that the Pride parade has always been political, but it’s never been partisan,” he said. ”So it’s a missed opportunity for all of us to have a break from the division and the anger.” Gina Roberts, a transgender woman from Los Angeles who served as a delegate at the 2016 Republican convention, said she was disappointed in the change to the Pride parade. ”There’s no way in heck that I would attend LA pride because it’s a Resist march,” said Roberts. ”Instead of celebrating diversity, it’s the opposite of what Pride stands for.” But supporters of the Resist movement, like David Stacy, the government affairs director of the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group, said he was frustrated at the thought that this march shouldn’t be partisan. ”Pride has always been a protest movement and a Resist movement and a challenge to the status quo,” Stacy said. Other LGBT activists on the left, like GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, agree. She said the plans for over 50 ”resistance and equality marches . .. symbolizes a community that feels under attack. Pride started as a resistance march back in the ’70s. We’re going back to our legacy: When we’re being targeted, when we’re being attacked, we’re going to go to the streets and speak out.” So what does that mean for the members of the LGBT community who voted Trump and don’t want to resist his administration? ’We Exist’ Exit polls from NBC News and elsewhere showed that Trump received 14 percent of the LGBT vote against Hillary Clinton’s 78 percent. Compare that with Romney’s 22 percent in 2012, McCain’s 27 percent in 2008, and George Bush’s 23 percent in 2004. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 9 in 10 LGBT voters rated Trump as ”cold” on a ”feeling thermometer,” and 9 percent found him ”warm” or ”somewhat warm.” But LGBT supporters of the president find this hard to believe. They cite the difficulty of not only coming out as LGBT but also coming out as a Republican. ”The beauty of a secret ballot is no one is going to know who you vote for except you,” said Charles Moran, a gay Republican who voted for Trump. He added, ”[LGBT] people are shamed into lying that they didn’t vote for Donald Trump [when they did].” Other   members of the LGBT community have echoed Moran’s opinions, including Gays for Trump President Peter Boykin, who suspects that Trump got closer to 25 percent of the LGBT vote. ”We exist. . .. We’re not some little small minority,” he said. ”I’m pretty damn sure there are more gays who voted for Trump but won’t admit it.” Some supporters say they feel they’re openly shamed for their political opinions  —   at times more than they’re shamed for their sexual orientation. ”Generally, in 2017, it’s a lot easier to be openly gay than to be openly Republican,” said Vincent Foster, president of the Miami chapter of Log Cabin Republicans. ’LGBTQ Is Not A   Highway’ One theme echoed across   members of the LGBT community who spoke with NPR: They define themselves by other identities and values before their sexual orientation. And they don’t think the members of their community on the Democratic side feel the same way. ”First of all, one of the distinctions I make about a lot of Republican LGBT members is that we tend to identify ourselves as Americans . .. and then we’re patriots. And we happen to have this feature where we’re gay,” Gina Roberts of Los Angeles said. ”That’s kind of the biggest difference I can see between the two sides.” Roberts said LGBT people voted for Trump for the same reason straight people did: He was their favorite candidate, not in spite of his stances of social issues, but because of them. But GLAAD’s Ellis doesn’t think voters can parse out stances of social issues and separate them from any of the other issues. She said no issues can be isolated from the LGBT community. ”If you care about employment, and you could get fired because you’re LGBT, it’s an employment issue,” Ellis said. ”At every intersection being LGBTQ is not a   highway.” And many conservative members of the LGBT community have similar lines of thoughts. They just don’t see it as a    issue. ”Being a gay Republican, I have to ask, ’How much I am going to have to sacrifice my equality agenda with backing up my candidate?’ And the good thing about Trump is that I didn’t have to do that,” Moran said. ”I realized that he was the type of candidate the Republican Party needs, and his record was quite good.” Moran was referring to Trump’s business record with hiring members of the LGBT community when he first bought    Trump was believed to be the first club owner in Palm Beach to admit an openly gay couple, as the New York Times has reported. Tracking forward, some LGBT voters, like Vincent Foster, weren’t positive if that was enough to sway them to his side  —   until the Pulse night club shooting in Orlando one year ago. ”In the aftermath of the Orlando radical terrorist events, his words of acceptance to the LGBT community as a candidate, was when I knew I was going to vote for him,” Foster said. ”We need better vetting, and we need to increase our FBI abilities and resources. Especially to the LGBT community . .. we were specifically targeted. We can’t afford to let in everyone. If you want to help a refugee, help LGBT homeless youth.” The Pulse shooting shook the entire community. And for a few members, it made them wish the U. S. was more aggressive in the war against terrorism. ”The Orlando Pulse night club killing opened a lot of things,” said George Gramer, Colorado’s Log Cabin president. On the anniversary on Monday, Trump tweeted in remembrance of the victims. ’A Disservice To This Movement’ Overall, many of these voters say they aren’t ignoring their identity in the LGBT community as a trade for conservative values. Rather, they say, they align. ”LGBT people should have a real choice in being able to vote for either party and feel good about it,” Craffey of Los Angeles said. ”We should each be fighting to make our side better. We’re just doing it in different ways and from different perspectives. I think in my opinion, you get a lot more accomplished from engaging than resisting. So I’m going to engage the administration who has been willing to engage with us.” But Craffey doesn’t think the other side of politics necessarily agrees with him. He said he feels ostracized by the rest of the LGBT community, and that makes it more difficult to work together on the policies they do agree on. ”I knew I was a Republican before I knew I was gay,” Craffey said. But he said he never felt uncomfortable with the Republican Party after coming out as gay. ”If we are a community who celebrates diversity, that has to include political diversity as well. I’m fighting as much for my friends on the left . .. as I am for the people in my group and myself.”   members of the LGBT community said they’re trying to be part of both groups, but the partisanship that has taken over politics and the politicization of their identities has made that rather difficult. ”We have values that promote equality,” Moran said. ”I believe in traditional family values, but that includes my LGBT family. There is no gay perspective on the environment or education. . .. Just because I sleep with a man and have a different family doesn’t mean I’m any less of a conservative. And now I have to convince the left that I’m gay. For the community on the left to sit there and not treat us equality and not respect our belief is a disservice to this movement.” What does the community on the left think? ”The president has made a handful of statements saying he’s going to be good for LGBT people, but there’s been nothing to back that up,” Stacy of the Human Rights Campaign said. ”I understand people . .. saying, ’I’m glad he’s not going out and bashing us,’ but that’s an incredibly low bar to set in 2017. . .. If you’re continuing to think the president will be good on LGBT rights, you really have your blinders up.” Christianna Silva is an NPR Digital News intern."
"Updated at 6:20 p. m. ET, The 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a preliminary injunction blocking President Trump’s travel ban should remain in effect, at least for now. It’s the second appeals court decision in less than a month to maintain a nationwide stay on the ban. Monday’s decision centers on an executive order to temporarily suspend the admission of refugees to the U. S. and limit travel from some   countries. It’s Trump’s second attempt at such a policy. The first executive order was issued in late January, with no advance notice, causing chaos for some travelers and prompting swift legal challenges. After that order was blocked by courts, the White House issued a second executive order, omitting references to religion and specifically exempting green card holders. That one was challenged by lawsuits and blocked by injunctions before it ever went into effect. There are multiple cases pending against the revised order. The one before the   9th Circuit was the case of Hawaii v. Trump  —   the first lawsuit filed by a state against the revised travel ban. A   panel heard oral arguments on that case last month. The 9th Circuit sided with the state of Hawaii in deciding that the ban should stay on hold as the cases against it move through the courts. The judges were not directly ruling on the merits of the travel ban itself however, to evaluate whether the injunction was appropriate, they had to weigh the probable impact of the travel ban and the likelihood that a case against it would succeed. They concluded the travel ban would probably cause irreparable harm if it went into effect and that the revised executive order ”does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality.” ”National security is not a ’talismanic incantation’ that, once invoked, can support any and all exercise of executive power,” the judges wrote. It’s the second such decision in less than a month. The Richmond, Va.  4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld another nationwide injunction against the president’s travel ban. Both courts were broadly skeptical of the government’s argument that the president  —   who has wide latitude on issues of immigration  —   was well within his rights to issue the executive order. The president has ”broad power,” the 4th Circuit ruled, ”but that power is not absolute.” The 9th Circuit took a similar stance on Monday, writing: ”Immigration, even for the President, is not a   show.” But the appellate courts’ opinions were notably different in focus. A   panel of the 4th Circuit extensively considered issues of religious freedom, drawing heavily on Trump’s public statements calling for a ”Muslim ban.” The majority of those judges found that Trump’s executive order ”drips with religious intolerance” and that ”the reasonable observer would likely conclude that  ’s primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs.” As a result, they found the order to be probably unconstitutional. The three judges of the 9th Circuit, writing unanimously, barely discussed religion at all. In a footnote, they said they ”need not address” claims of religious discrimination to rule on the injunction. And unlike the 4th Circuit, they did not consider whether the order is constitutional. Instead, they focused on federal law. They ruled the order likely violates the Immigration and Nationality Act by discriminating on the basis of a person’s country of origin. Any exception to the INA would need to be justified based on national interest, the judges write  —   and they were not convinced by Trump’s argument that the order ensures national security. ”The Order does not tie these nationals in any way to terrorist organizations within the six designated countries,” they wrote. ”It does not provide any link between an individual’s nationality and their propensity to commit terrorism or their inherent dangerousness.” The 9th Circuit invoked the case of Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of   during World War II, to highlight the danger of classification by nationality. That case had come up in oral arguments, as NPR reported at the time: ”Judge Richard Paez asked [acting Solicitor General Jeffrey] Wall what separates Trump’s executive order from the World War   mass imprisonment of   which was also initiated by an executive order from President Roosevelt and justified on national security grounds. ”That executive order was upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court at the time. It’s now nearly universally recognized as being unconstitutional and profoundly unjust, born of ’race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership,’ as a congressional apology put it.” The 9th Circuit decision has another key difference from the 4th Circuit ruling: It also denies the White House’s request to reinstate a temporary suspension of the refugee program, as well as a reduction in the number of refugees admitted in general. Among other things, the judges concluded that the president didn’t adequately consult with Congress before reducing the number of refugees who could be admitted to the U. S. Ultimately, the appellate court said the central provisions of the revised executive order  —   regarding both travelers and refugees  —   should remain on pause. However, the 9th Circuit did rule that the preliminary injunction, as originally imposed by the district court of Hawaii, was too broad. One portion of the ”travel ban” executive order  —   which does not limit travel or immigration and calls for the government to carry out an internal review of the refugee admission process  —   should be allowed to go into effect. At a news conference Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the travel ban is lawful and is a necessary tool for fighting terrorism. He also said the administration  —   which has already asked the U. S. Supreme Court to intervene and reinstate the revised travel ban  —   looks forward to hearing from the high court on the issue. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a statement later on Monday. ”The Executive Branch is entrusted with the responsibility to keep the country safe under Article II of the Constitution,” he said. ”Unfortunately, this injunction prevents the President from fully carrying out his Article II duties and has a chilling effect on security operations overall.” Sessions called the threat of terrorism ”immediate and real,” saying Trump knows ”there are active plots to infiltrate the U. S. immigration system  —   just as occurred prior to  .” The attorney general said the Department of Justice will continue to ”seek further review by the Supreme Court.”"
"Two years ago, a mental health advocate named Steve McCaffrey stood at a lectern in the Indiana statehouse, testifying in favor of an addiction treatment bill. After years of rising overdose rates, lawmakers in the health committee were taking action to combat the opioid epidemic. And they often turned to McCaffrey, who leads Mental Health America of Indiana, to advise them. His brief testimony appeared straightforward. ”We rise in support, urge your adoption,” said McCaffrey. He said the legislation would move the state ”toward   treatment.” But the bill wouldn’t do that. Instead, it would cement rules making it harder to access certain addiction medications  —   medications that many patients rely on. The goal was to steer doctors toward a specific   drug: Vivitrol. The drug is a monthly shot used to treat alcohol and opioid addiction and one of a handful of   treatments for addiction to opioids such as pain relievers, heroin and fentanyl. State Rep. Steve Davisson, the bill’s sponsor, says McCaffrey helped write the bill, one of many related to addiction treatment that McCaffrey has worked on since 2015. But there was something important that Davisson and other lawmakers didn’t know about him. State lobbying records show that McCaffrey lobbies for Alkermes, the company that makes Vivitrol. Asked earlier this year whether Indiana lawmakers knew about his lobbying for Alkermes, McCaffrey said, ”I imagine some do and some don’t.” But several lawmakers who have worked closely with McCaffrey, including Davisson, say they were not aware. His efforts have helped turn Indiana into what Alkermes describes in investor documents as an ”  ” state, where the drug’s sales are poised to jump dramatically. McCaffrey’s work promoting Vivitrol via legislation in Indiana is part of a larger pattern. An investigation by NPR and Side Effects Public Media has found that in statehouses across the country, and in Congress, Alkermes is pushing Vivitrol while contributing to misconceptions and stigma about other medications used to treat opioid addiction. While policymakers are grasping for solutions to the nation’s opioid epidemic, Alkermes, which has its U. S. headquarters in Waltham, Mass. is using policy to promote its drug and, in some cases, hamper access to medications that can help. And in so doing, it’s looking to turn its drug into a blockbuster. Science vs. stigma, There’s growing urgency among state policymakers to fight the addiction epidemic. The number of opioid overdose deaths quadrupled from 1999 to 2015. In that year, an average of 91 people died per day. There are now more deaths from overdoses in the U. S. than from car accidents. Opioids cause most of them. But those looking for   solutions to the crisis must navigate diverging views on treatment, making them receptive to lobbyists who attempt to guide them through medically complex and emotionally charged territory. Among those devoted to helping people addicted to opioids, there are conflicting opinions about the role of medications in recovery. Medical researchers emphasize that the proven standard in addiction treatment includes medication, preferably combined with counseling and other behavioral and social support. The research shows that   treatment helps prevent relapse and save lives. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration and professional medical organizations all recommend   treatment for opioid addiction. But others disagree with the very concept of using medicine to treat addiction. Though this contradicts medical consensus, some, especially those with a background in the   movement, view it as simply trading reliance on one drug for another. Addiction is a moral or spiritual problem to be overcome by willpower or faith, some believe. Medication is a crutch. Two of the medications used to treat opioid addiction receive the most scrutiny, because they’re opioids themselves: methadone and buprenorphine, which is known as Suboxone, a   formulation. Both medicines, called   therapy, reduce cravings and prevent withdrawal, helping people to avoid the harmful behaviors associated with addiction. ”If the addiction is the monster, then methadone and Suboxone cage the monster,” says Dr. Andy Chambers, an addiction psychiatrist in Indianapolis. In a proper treatment setting, people with an existing tolerance to opioids don’t get a feeling of euphoria from opioid maintenance drugs because of how they’re formulated and administered. Still, many people, including lawmakers, law enforcement and corrections officials, see lurking risks in any substance with street value  —   any substance that activates the opioid receptors in the brain. As a result, methadone and buprenorphine are two of the most heavily regulated drugs in America, even more than the highly addictive painkillers that have touched off the addiction crisis. The third medication, Vivitrol, sidesteps much of the debate. Approved to treat opioid addiction in 2010, Vivitrol is a monthly injection of   naltrexone. It is not an opioid. Instead, it blocks opioid receptors in the brain. Vivitrol is effective for some patients, but like the other two medications, it’s not the right choice for everyone. For example, it’s not ideal for patients who are dealing with chronic pain on top of their addiction, or for pregnant women. It’s also more expensive than opioid maintenance  —   around $1, 000 a shot. And it requires patients to stop using opioids and go through a painful detox before they can begin taking it. That thought can deter people from beginning treatment. ”The opioids hijack that part of your brain that has to do with survival,” says Dr. Camila Arnaudo, an addiction psychiatrist in Bloomington, Ind. ”The idea of being off of them . .. is tantamount to telling them you’re going to take away their food or the air they breathe.” Some clinicians are also hesitant to prescribe Vivitrol to patients because of relapse risk. Using opioids again after an extended period of opioid abstinence can increase the risk of overdose and death. That Vivitrol has no street value and no potential for abuse has helped the drug shake some of the skepticism directed toward   treatment. For the last several years, the company has marketed the drug heavily to people in the criminal justice system, convincing judges and corrections officials to offer Vivitrol to inmates and parolees. But there hasn’t been as much research on Vivitrol’s   effectiveness compared to methadone and buprenorphine, partly because it’s a newer drug. A   drug?   Alkermes is open about its basic strategy  —   influencing legislators and officials to increase sales of Vivitrol. ”We have an entire team of people fanned out across the country working from coast to coast with state and local government officials,” said Jeff Harris, the company’s government affairs director, at an investor event in September 2016. In a presentation, Harris described Alkermes’ lobbying strategy as ”ecosystem development”  —   raising awareness and promoting policies favorable to Vivitrol. Alkermes has poured money into the political process. In 2010 they spent less than $200, 000 on federal lobbying in 2016 they spent $4. 4 million, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. Alkermes has also been spending aggressively at the state level and has been a generous campaign contributor. Harris showed the crowd a map of the U. S. that showed Vivitrol programs in most states he said sales are increasing because of the company’s work. At that event, Alkermes displayed a chart that showed sales of Vivitrol and ranked states on how friendly they are to its product  —   and how high each state’s overdose rate is. The chart shows circles of varying sizes representing the quantity of overdose deaths in state per 100, 000 people. Alkermes is a niche player in the pharmaceutical industry, and Vivitrol is central to the company’s growth plans. Although the drug was first approved to treat alcohol addiction in 2006, it wasn’t until the company began marketing Vivitrol to law enforcement and policymakers that sales took off. Last year, Vivitrol’s sales reached $209 million  —   up from just $30 million in 2011. Some of that money comes directly from the federal and state governments, through Medicaid and other programs that help people pay for addiction treatment. In the presentation, Alkermes said sales could reach $1 billion by 2021. At the 2016 investor event, CEO Richard Pops suggested that among pharmaceutical companies, Alkermes is unique. ”We find ourselves really deeply dedicated to bringing in new medicines to patients and profoundly affecting their lives, the lives of their families and even the communities that they live in,” he said. But a number of people working in the field of addiction policy are concerned about their tactics. ”In a number of states, there has been a significant push by Alkermes and their lobbyists to really squelch other treatment, so that they can get access to bigger markets for their drug,” says Dr. Corey Waller, an addiction specialist who heads legislative advocacy for the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Waller says people should be wary of the notion that Vivitrol is better than other drugs to treat opioid addiction. No studies comparing Vivitrol with buprenorphine or methadone have been published. Chambers expressed similar concerns. He says Alkermes operates as though methadone and buprenorphine are competitors, when the drugs are actually meant for different types of patients. ”That’s really an unfortunate dynamic,” he says. ”They’re not designed to do the same thing. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.” Legislating brand awareness, In a cramped hearing room at the Indiana statehouse in 2015, a week after McCaffrey’s testimony in the health committee, the House Committee on Courts and Criminal Code convened to discuss another bill related to addiction  —   members were preparing to vote on an amendment that would write Vivitrol into state law. ”Vivitrol or a similar substance may be required to treat opioid or alcohol addiction as a condition of parole, probation, community corrections, pretrial diversion, or participation in a problem solving court,” the bill digest read. McCaffrey didn’t testify that day, but he was there, although it wasn’t clear whether he was representing Alkermes or his nonprofit, MHAI. When the meeting adjourned after a   vote in favor of the amendment, the camera and microphones were left on. In the video, McCaffrey pops into view to huddle with lawmakers, including Rep. Ryan Dvorak. Dvorak had raised concerns earlier about the drug’s cost and about identifying a   medication in state law. In an interview, Dvorak said that after the vote that day, McCaffrey ”was trying to explain why it wouldn’t really be that expensive.”  When McCaffrey testified later in front of a Senate committee, he characterized Vivitrol as the ”  opportunity.” The final version of the bill, which passed in April 2015, heeded concerns about using a brand name. The word ”Vivitrol” was replaced with a distinctive phrase: ”a federal Food and Drug   long acting, nonaddictive medication for the treatment of opioid or alcohol dependence.” The effect was the same. The only   drug that currently fits that description is Vivitrol. In fact, it echoes language from Vivitrol marketing materials, and the phrase appeared in the bill a dozen times. That language showed up in other bills in 2015 and 2016, essentially writing Vivitrol into sections of state code that deal with criminal justice and the regulation of methadone and buprenorphine treatment. As of 2016, the phrase ”nonaddictive medication” appeared in Indiana state code 11 times. And it’s not just in Indiana. The word ”Vivitrol” or variations of the phrase that refers to Vivitrol appear in more than 70 bills and laws in 15 states, according to a   search of legislation using Bloomberg Government. Addiction treatment experts say the intent is obvious: to encourage the use of Vivitrol over other options. ”I think anyone who’s willing to put somebody’s advertisement in legislation should be ashamed of themselves,” says Waller. He worries the phrase could influence decisions made by lawmakers, judges and anyone else who reads or interprets the law. Using ”nonaddictive” to describe Vivitrol raises another issue for treatment experts, because it contributes to the widespread confusion between the meanings of addiction and dependence. Addiction, also known as substance use disorder, is ”characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. But in a treatment setting, buprenorphine and methadone help people avoid those risky behaviors. Patients are dependent on the medications  —   they would go into withdrawal without them  —   but that’s not the same thing as being addicted to them. Some doctors compare being dependent on buprenorphine to the dependency someone with diabetes has on insulin: It’s simply a medication needed to help manage a chronic condition. The use of the term ”nonaddictive,” both in Alkermes marketing materials and in its lobbying efforts, indirectly disparages other treatments, says Basia   a researcher at the Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis, who studies   treatment. ”Even using ’nonaddictive’ suggests that the other ones are super addictive, even though for most people, they’re helpful and not abused,” she says. Barriers to treatment, Some of the policies that Alkermes and its lobbyists have supported can have   implications for people struggling with addiction. About a year ago, Angela and Nate Turner of Greenwood, Ind. were trying to quit heroin. They each had been injured years before, and doctors prescribed them opioid painkillers. Soon they were making regular trips to various doctors to feed their habit. Later, when doctors stopped filling their prescriptions, the Turners switched to heroin. The overuse of painkillers like OxyContin is often blamed for the scale of the opioid epidemic. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control issued voluntary guidelines for prescribing opioids in response to the crisis, and some states have placed their own limitations on how the drugs are used. The opioids used to treat addiction, however, have always been heavily regulated, and as a result can be hard to come by. Methadone, when prescribed to treat opioid addiction, can be delivered only at specialized clinics. Doctors need a special waiver to prescribe buprenorphine and are limited to treating 100 patients at a time (or 275 for select prescribers who meet special requirements). It’s the only prescription opioid with such limitations. And patients who need buprenorphine can face further hurdles. When the Turners decided to stop using heroin, it took them a while to find a doctor. Eventually, they found one who prescribed Suboxone, a   formulation of buprenorphine. But their insurance company made Angela wait three days to get her prescription filled. She spent that time in withdrawal: cold sweats, hot sweats, diarrhea, nausea and body aches. When interviewed by NPR and Side Effects Public Media in 2016, Angela said she was tempted to go back and use, just so she could take care of her daughter. ”That sounds bad, [that] you have to use to be a parent,” she says. ”But it’s either that or lay there and not being able to get up and feed your kid and do what you’re supposed to be doing, you know?” For Nate, the wait was five days. He relapsed and used heroin. ”I couldn’t do it no more,” he said. ”I had to get something.” He nearly lost his resolve to quit. The delays the Turners faced were caused by their insurance company, which operates under Indiana’s Medicaid program. Before paying for a given drug, insurers can force doctors and nurses to deal with    paperwork, phone calls and even faxes. The process is known as prior authorization, and it’s the single most significant barrier to prescribing buprenorphine, according to a   study. It can mean a dangerous wait for patients who need the medication. Some insurers and state Medicaid programs have started to eliminate the practice for buprenorphine, to make it easier for patients to get the medication. But following McCaffrey’s endorsement two years ago, Indiana lawmakers voted to explicitly allow Medicaid insurers to use prior authorizations for buprenorphine, and specifically exempted Vivitrol from those rules. (The final version of the bill removed the Vivitrol exemption, but most insurers under Indiana Medicaid will pay for Vivitrol without a prior authorization.) ”That really upset me,” said   when we showed her the bill. ”That is pretty explicitly saying that we’re going to hamper one medication moreso than the other.” Deterring   providers, Buprenorphine treatment providers can already be hard to find, especially for patients in rural areas. Many doctors with the waiver to prescribe buprenorphine don’t make use of it, and those who do often prescribe far below the   cap. Even if every doctor with a waiver reached the limit of 100 patients, they would treat fewer than half of all Americans suffering from addiction. Despite these circumstances, Alkermes has pushed for increased regulations on buprenorphine. For example, under a law recently passed in Ohio, doctors treating more than 30 patients with buprenorphine must now apply for a special license from the pharmacy board which adds new rules and a significant administrative burden to how they run their practice. Lobbyists for Alkermes ”applauded the bill,” says the bill’s author, state. Sen. John Eklund. ”Their interest was in, is there anything they can do because Suboxone had such a toehold here in the state of Ohio, and they’re looking to expand their business.” Doctors are worried that these regulations could cause some smaller medical practices to simply give up on prescribing buprenorphine, or to never start  —   they might instead turn to Vivitrol as the option instead of dealing with these regulations. ”It might increase that pressure,” says Dr. Shawn Ryan, an addiction specialist and president of the Ohio Society of Addiction Medicine. Alkermes tried a similar approach at the federal level, too. Leading up to the passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act in 2016, the company sought increased federal regulation of buprenorphine. ”This is one of the most intense    lobbying efforts,” said a Democratic congressional staffer, who was not authorized to speak on the record. ”It frustrated me to no end for 2   three years.” The company circulated a document, obtained by NPR and Side Effects, that presented slanted material about buprenorphine, focused on the drug’s potential for diversion and abuse while largely ignoring its benefits for individuals and for public health. ”This is basically a very long attempt to bash buprenorphine,” said   when we showed her the documents. A spokesperson for Alkermes, Matthew Henson, acknowledged in a phone interview that the company circulated the white paper, which he described as a ”working document” meant to educate federal lawmakers about   treatment options. The document doesn’t mention Vivitrol. Asked why Alkermes was circulating a document focused on a medication it doesn’t manufacture, Henson said he would get back to us. He never did. As lawmakers sought to expand access to treatment, the white paper called for stricter regulation of buprenorphine through a bill dubbed the Opioid Addiction Treatment Modernization Act, introduced in the House in June 2015. ”The legislation they wanted introduced was actually going the other direction, in terms of making it more onerous to be a doctor wanting to prescribe these medications, and would have hurt treatment capacity in this country,” says the staffer. That bill died, but the staffer says the company still influenced the way some federal lawmakers speak about opioid maintenance. ”This is   addiction. It is not moving people to sobriety,” said Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, in a subcommittee meeting in March 2015, referring to buprenorphine and methadone. The staffer says they often heard Alkermes lobbyists disparage opioid maintenance therapy using the same language. Murphy has received campaign donations from Alkermes, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Recently, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said methadone and buprenorphine treatment was simply ”substituting one opioid for another,” a comment that angered treatment professionals and contradicts information provided by his own department’s website: ”A common misconception associated with [  treatment] is that it substitutes one drug for another. Instead, these medications relieve the withdrawal symptoms and psychological cravings that cause chemical imbalances in the body.” He made the remarks not long after touring an Alkermes plant with CEO Pops. Advocating abstinence, In its quest to increase market share for Vivitrol, our investigation found, Alkermes leverages another common misconception about addiction and recovery to influence policy in its favor: the idea that   therapy should be used on a   basis. At the end of 2016, Indiana released new guidelines for addiction treatment providers in the state. The guidelines were created as a result of two bills, and according to testimony, lobbyist Steve McCaffrey was instrumental in drafting both. If a patient tests positive for a controlled substance, the new guidelines say that the doctor needs to consider adjusting the treatment plan with the ”goal of opioid abstinence.” But pushing for opioid abstinence can be dangerous, according to federal health agencies and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services puts it this way: ”[A]ll forms of withdrawal are less effective compared with ongoing opioid maintenance.” The Indiana guidelines even contradict themselves. The document borrows verbatim from ASAM’s treatment guidelines, saying that if a patient is using another opioid, the doctor should consider increasing  —   not decreasing  —   the buprenorphine dose, so the patient feels less desire to use additional opioids. ”If you prematurely stop the   treatment, then you have a super high risk of relapse and death,” says Waller. He says addiction is a chronic disease, needing ongoing treatment, and the medications help regulate it. ”I don’t know why we seem to have such a fascination with a need for [patients] to be fully off of treatment,” he says. Pushing for opioid abstinence, however, could help Alkermes sell more Vivitrol, since the drug is the only   treatment for opioid addiction. The language used in Indiana recommending treatment with a ”goal of opioid abstinence” is mirrored in a new Pennsylvania bill. The bill would require   treatment providers (which means doctors who prescribe buprenorphine) and methadone clinics to conduct a ”periodic review” of their patients’ treatment plans and to consider ”the possibility of opioid abstinence.” The measure’s author, state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, acknowledges she spoke to Alkermes. ”I’ve talked to them,” she says. However, she denied that it would benefit a specific medication. ”This is not a pharmaceutical bill. This is a treatment bill.” Another bill introduced in Pennsylvania would require buprenorphine prescribers to pay $10, 000 for a license to operate. Sales goals vs. the common good, Waller says it is troubling to see Alkermes promote legislation that makes it harder for patients to get access to other   treatments. ”It’s just unethical,” he said. But the company’s tactics don’t exist in a vacuum. Pharmaceutical companies routinely try to undercut their competitors and promote their own products, says Adriane   who studies pharmaceutical marketing at Georgetown University. She added that some drug makers have also used legislation to gain an edge over competitors. What Alkermes appears to have done,   says, is combine those strategies. ”That is not   health. That is   health,” she said. Despite repeated requests, Alkermes did not make any of its leadership available for an interview for this story. In an email to NPR and Side Effects, company spokesman Henson wrote: ”To suggest that we have any more authority or influence than any other company, advocacy group or treatment provider that cares about this disease just isn’t fair.” Alkermes’ success in influencing state policy comes from the way it plays into people’s   beliefs about addiction. ”When you talk about Vivitrol or naltrexone, you’re talking about working more towards abstinence,” said Davisson, the author of one of the   bills in Indiana. ”A lot of people are more comfortable with that type of language.” When told about Steve McCaffrey’s lobbying for Alkermes, Davisson said the arrangement didn’t bother him, even though he was unaware of it when he worked with McCaffrey on the bill. Other lawmakers who worked closely with McCaffrey were also unconcerned about his ties to the company. In its emailed statement, Alkermes says it favors access to all treatment options, a sentiment McCaffrey echoed: ”I would always agree that we want open access to whatever treatment is available according to the physician.” McCaffrey argued that as policymakers become more accustomed to using Vivitrol to treat addiction, they will eventually become more open to supporting treatment with buprenorphine and methadone as well. After an initial interview, McCaffrey did not agree to talk further. Earlier this year, McCaffrey released a list of   bills that Mental Health America of Indiana worked on in 2017. The bills insert ”nonaddictive medication” into state law seven times. All of them were signed by the governor. But policies favoring Vivitrol can have drastic consequences for people like Nate and Angela Turner, who want to overcome their opioid addiction but struggle with long wait times for access to   treatment. ”Doctors got us on the the pain medication,” said Angela, ”and got us on the drugs. A doctor should be able to help us.” ”We actually need these things to help us back into society and to be productive,” said Nate. With millions of people addicted to opioids, the people treating addiction want to reduce the pain, suffering and death associated with the disease. To do that, they need whatever medications are available, not just one. This story is part of a reporting collaboration with NPR, Side Effects Public Media and WFYI. Ben Allen of WITF in Harrisburg, Pa. Esther Honig of WOSU in Columbus, Ohio and Carmel Wroth of Side Effects Public Media contributed reporting. Katie Daugert and Courtney Columbus of NPR provided research assistance. Visuals were produced by Alyson Hurt and Juan Elosua of NPR, and edited by Meredith Rizzo of NPR."
"When Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, it will be in a hearing that is open to the public. A Justice Department spokeswoman tells NPR that Sessions requested it be public. The hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building is scheduled to start at 2:30 p. m. ET. ”The Attorney General has requested that this hearing be public. He believes it is important for the American people to hear the truth directly from him and looks forward to answering the committee’s questions tomorrow,” DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement, relayed by NPR’s Carrie Johnson. Sessions initially was scheduled to appear at a hearing about the Justice Department’s budget on Tuesday morning. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will attend that hearing in his place, and Sessions will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senators on that committee are expected to question Sessions about his meetings with Russians  —   a topic that has come under increased scrutiny amid investigations into Russian meddling in the U. S. presidential election. In March, Sessions recused himself from any investigations into Russia’s actions in the 2016 campaign. As he did so, he defended himself against allegations of improper contacts, saying, ”Let me be clear: I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign.” That remark came after revelations that Sessions had met with Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. last year, despite testifying under oath during a confirmation hearing that he ”did not have communications with the Russians.” The former senator later issued a clarification saying he had met with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. New questions about Sessions emerged last week, after former FBI Director James Comey said he and other leaders at the agency had expected Sessions to recuse himself weeks before he did so  —   and that the reasons behind that thinking are classified. Sessions could be asked about that part of Comey’s testimony as well as his role in Comey’s firing last month. The attorney general has also been the subject of rumors that he might leave the Trump administration. As NPR’s Carrie Johnson recently reported on All Things Considered: ”[Sources] are telling me Trump has been very angry with Jeff Sessions for recusing himself in the Russia investigation to begin with, lots of profane conversations and yelling. Sessions actually offered to resign, even though his friends say he doesn’t want to leave, but Trump has refused to accept that resignation.” In addition to the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation on Russia, special counsel Robert Mueller is leading an independent inquiry into Russia’s election meddling and potential links between Russians and the Trump campaign. Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last month."
"Monday marks the anniversary of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U. S. history, when a gunman opened fire at Pulse nightclub in Orlando last year. The shooter killed 49 people and wounded more than 50. Pulse has become an unofficial site of remembrance. Outside the nightclub, the Associated Press reports, hundreds of people gathered in the early hours of the morning, as the names of all of the 49 victims were read aloud. The AP reports that the recitation of names began just after 2 a. m. the time that Omar Mateen began shooting, during the gay club’s ”Latin Night.” ”I realize that gathering here in this place, at this hour, is beyond difficult,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said during the service, according to the AP. ”But I also know that the strength you’ve shown over the past year will carry you through today and in the future.” All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro traveled to Orlando last year after the shooting last week he returned to talk to survivors and others about their recovery. Answai Bennett, 26, was one of those shot that night. He has a line on his hip six inches long marking where he was shot doctors told him he’d probably never walk the same way again. After a year of physical therapy and going to the gym, his limp is gone. As Ari reports, Bennett recently came back to Pulse for the first time in almost a year. ”I just felt like I could hear them if I was praying here and talking here. Like I could come here and talk with my friends.” Among Bennett’s friends who died that night was Paul Terrell Henry. ”Paul, I think about every day,” he says. ”He was a part of my everyday life. He was my best friend, so I think something about him every day.” Olivia Baez, a nurse at Orlando Regional Medical Center, cared for victims the night of the shooting. She says she comes to the memorial outside Pulse almost every day. ”I still come back sometimes and go back to that night, and it’s like I know we need to go on with our lives, especially with the type of work that I do. I know a lot of people say divide the work and the personal,” she says. ”You can’t. Not in this case, you can’t do that.” Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered the state’s flags flown at   Monday, which he declared Pulse Remembrance Day throughout the state. As Amy Green of member station WFME reported Sunday, Pulse owner Barbara Poma is turning the building into a memorial and museum. Two groups of survivors will oversee the effort, funded by Poma’s onePULSE Foundation eventually she will solicit bids from designers. ”We have no idea how long it’s going to take,” said Poma. ”We don’t know if it’s going to be one year, three years, five years. And I think putting a time on it is unrealistic. . .. [Some] people aren’t ready yet.” Mayra Alvear, whose    daughter was among those killed in the attack, hopes the memorial will be a space of peace. ”My daughter’s life was taken there and so many others,” she told Green. ”And somehow, when I visit there, it’s just like the angels embrace me somehow. It’s just I feel their love, you know? . .. And I don’t want that feeling to go away.”"
"Gerry Realin says he wishes he had never become a police officer. Realin, 37, was part of the hazmat team that responded to the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando on June 12, 2016. He spent four hours taking care of the dead inside the club. Now, triggers like a Sharpie marker or a white sheet yank him out of the moment and back to the nightclub, where they used Sharpies to list the victims that night and white sheets to cover them. He says small things make him disproportionately upset. He gets lost in memories of the shooting, he says  —   his young son will call him over and over again. Then, he gets angry that he let himself get trapped in thought, and that spirals into depression. ”Then there’s the moments you can’t control,” Realin says. ”The images or flashbacks or nightmares you don’t even know about, and your wife tells you the next day you were screaming or twitching all night.” Realin was diagnosed with   stress disorder and hasn’t worked since just after the shooting. He worries about his family, he says, ”hiding from your kids so that they’re not traumatized by your rage or depression,” which ”gives them a sense of insecurity, which isn’t good.” At least one other police officer has publicly discussed being diagnosed with PTSD after the Pulse shooting, and it’s possible there are more who suffer from it. Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan says there are people who go to war and don’t see what officers saw inside Pulse. ”I’ve talked to some of the officers and they’re pretty traumatized by what they saw,” Sheehan says. ”It was horrible, the sights and the smells, and the thing that really haunts them is the cell phones that were in [the victims’] pockets ringing.” Sheehan has heard from first responders and mental health workers that there are more officers, possibly with PTSD, who don’t want to come forward because they don’t want to be seen as weak or unfit for duty. She says she wishes they would, though. ”If someone is to the point where they have had an emotional stress to where they can’t perform their job, of course I don’t want to put a gun in their hand,” Sheehan says. ”That’s just common sense to me.” Researchers estimate that 28 percent of mass shooting survivors will develop   stress disorder. Researchers say there isn’t a lot of data on PTSD rates in first responders, but the it could range from 7 to 19 percent in police officers. When clinicians interviewed more than 400 officers in the Buffalo, N. Y. police department, 15 to 18 percent had PTSD. A 2012 study found police officers were twice as likely to die from suicide, which can be associated with PTSD, than from traffic accidents or felony assaults. ”I don’t think officers are disposable,” says Ron Clark, a retired officer who works with Badge of Life, a police   group. He says when he started with the Connecticut State Police decades ago, people were told to suck it up. Officers used alcohol, drugs or sex to cope with stress because, if they spoke up, they were likely to get fired. But, he says, ”Police officers are human beings. They’re affected by what they see out there  —   decapitated children, families wiped out in car accidents, suicides  —   just name all the horrors you can think of.” The Realins have been advocating for workers’ compensation in Florida to cover PTSD. Gerry’s wife Jessica Realin visited the state capitol in Tallahassee in April, going    to ask state senators to support a bill which would give first responders with PTSD access to benefits like lost wages if they can’t work. She tried to meet Republican Anitere Flores, the    in the Senate, who also chairs the Banking and Insurance Committee that would be voting on the bill later that day. But, even after two attempts, the senator didn’t have time. Realin did meet Democrat Victor Torres, a retired police officer who shepherded the bill. He’s seen   what happens when PTSD goes untreated. ”You leave work, have the weekend off and you come in Monday and hear about officer    committing suicide,” Torres says. ”Young man. You wonder why. What were his issues?” The bill did not pass this session, but Torres did get the Banking and Insurance Committee to hear the bill. Realin spoke to the committee, as did Amanda Murdock, whose husband is a Vero Beach, Fla. firefighter with PTSD. ”I’m going to make myself very vulnerable, my family very vulnerable,” Murdock told the committee. ”This last fall my husband attempted to take his own life. Six days later, one of his closest friends, battalion chief Dave Dangerfield, was successful in taking the final step in taking his own life, leaving behind two sons.” Murdock says all she could think about on the way to the funeral was that it could have been her, losing her husband to suicide. After hearing the testimony from Murdocks, the Realins and others, the committee passed the bill unanimously but, ultimately, it did not move to the House. Advocates vow to try again next year. Orlando officer Gerry Realin, meanwhile, is trying to cope. He escapes alone on his paddle board on the water, ”hearing the sounds of nothing else  —   the breeze, maybe, wondering where the fish may be, wondering which way the tide is turning, which way the wind is blowing,” he says. ”For some reason, nothing dark follows me there and I can reset, find some serenity.” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WMFE, Health News Florida and Kaiser Health News."
"In Pakistan, a court in Punjab province has sentenced a    man to death over posting allegedly blasphemous content on social media. Prosecutor Shafiq Qureshi confirmed the sentence against Taimoor Raza, according to The Associated Press and Reuters. It’s the country’s ”harshest handed down yet for a   related offence,” according to Amnesty International. The AP quotes Qureshi as saying that a counterterrorism force ”arrested Raza in April last year following a complaint that he was showing onlookers objectionable material on his cell phone at a bus terminal.” He is allowed to file an appeal, Reuters reports. The death sentence comes as the government pushes a campaign against blasphemy on social media. Raza is a member of Pakistan’s Shiite minority, his brother Waseem Abbas told The Guardian, and added that Raza inadvertently ended up in conversation with a government official on Facebook. ”My brother indulged in a sectarian debate on Facebook with a person, who we later come to know, was a [counterterrorism department] official with the name of Muhammad Usman,” he said. It’s not clear exactly what Raza said in his posts. The New York Times reports that he was initially charged ”under a section of the penal code that punishes derogatory remarks about other religious personalities for up to two years.” But the newspaper reports that during the investigation, he was later charged under a law ”specifically on derogatory acts against the Prophet Muhammad, which carries the death penalty.” Rights groups such as Amnesty International have criticized the blasphemy laws, arguing that they are ”often used against religious minorities and others who are the target of false accusations, while emboldening vigilantes who are prepared to threaten or kill the accused.” Saroop Ijaz, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, told the Guardian that ”the casual manner in which death sentences are handed in blasphemy cases coupled with the lack of orientation of Pakistani courts with technology makes this a very dangerous situation.” In March, according to The Washington Post, the government ”asked Twitter and Facebook to report potentially troublesome posts to authorities.” Last month, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan threatened ”to block all social media websites with ’blasphemous content. ’”"
"Montana   Greg Gianforte pleaded guilty Monday to a charge of misdemeanor assault after   a reporter from The Guardian on the eve of Gianforte’s election to the U. S. House. He received a   deferred sentence and will serve no jail time. Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs was asking Gianforte a question on May 24 when the Republican candidate threw him to the ground. ”A Gallatin County judge sentenced Gianforte to 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management classes and a $300 fine,” Montana Public Radio’s Eric Whitney reports. According to Whitney Bermes, a reporter for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the judge initially gave Gianforte four days in jail, where under the terms of a jail work program he would be able to spend two of those days working. However, after consulting with prosecution and defense lawyers, the judge changed the initial sentence minutes later, Bermes reported: ”NO jail time for Gianforte. But has to do 40 hours of community service, 20 hours anger management.” In Montana, the maximum penalty for misdemeanor assault is a $500 fine and six months in jail, as Montana Public Radio’s Corin   reported. ”When you make a mistake, you have to take full responsibility,” Gianforte told reporters. ”That’s what I’ve done today and you know, I look forward to putting this behind me.” The   has previously described how the incident unfolded: ”On the eve of a May 25 special election for the House in Montana, Gianforte was about to do a television interview when Jacobs asked a question about congressional Republicans’ health care plan when  —   as captured in an audio recording  —   Gianforte physically attacked him. Jacobs is heard on the recording saying the candidate had   him and broken his glasses. ”A spokesman for Gianforte issued a statement saying Jacobs, brandishing a cellphone, interrupted an interview and badgered the candidate with questions, and that Gianforte reacted by attempting ’to grab the phone that was pushed in his face.’ . .. ”[However,] as we reported, three Fox News reporters who were in the room preparing for the interview with Gianforte confirmed that the candidate ’grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground . .. then began punching the reporter.’ ” The   entered the plea days after reaching a deal with Jacobs, which involved an apology from Gianforte and a donation of $50, 000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists in exchange for Jacobs agreeing not to file a lawsuit. Part of the deal was that Jacobs wouldn’t object if Gianforte entered a plea of ”no contest,” which would not formally be admitting guilt. In a statement to the court, Jacobs said he hoped the sentencing would send a message about the ”important role of the free press and the need to help heal our political system.” He adds: ”While I have no doubt that actions like these were an aberration for   Gianforte personally, I worry that, in the context of our political debate, they have become increasingly common. In recent years, our discourse has grown increasingly rancorous and increasingly vile. This needs to stop.” Montana Public Radio’s Whitney adds that after the assault on Jacobs, ”state and national Democratic Party officials called on Gianforte to resign the U. S. House seat he won.” His   date has not yet been set."
"Dog owners often say the best thing about dogs is their unconditional love. But new research suggests there’s another benefit, too. Dog owners walk more. In a study published Monday in the journal BMC Public Health, dog owners on average walked 22 minutes more per day compared to people who didn’t own a dog. And they weren’t just dawdling. ”Not only did we see an increase in exercise, but also the exercise was at a moderate pace,” explains study author Daniel Mills of the University of Lincoln, in the United Kingdom. The study found that the dog owners walked briskly and got their heart rates up. At times, their pace was about 3 miles per hour, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers moderate intensity. Prior studies have shown that   walking is just as effective as running in lowering the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes and other conditions. And the more people walk, the more the health benefits increase, according to the American Heart Association. The U. K. study included men and women in their 60s and older. Some were dog owners and some were not. In order to assess the intensity of the walking, the volunteers agreed to wear activPAL devices, which measure speed, distance and other factors. ”People wore it 24 hours a day, which gave us a real insight into the total amount of activity,” explains Mills, who was surprised by how much more active the dog owners turned out to be. ”This is a great study,” says Robert Sallis, a family physician with Kaiser Permanente in California. He was not involved in the research, but commented on the findings. ”The national physical activity guidelines call for 150 minutes a week of   exercise, and that’s what they got in this study,” says Sallis. In contrast, a CDC analysis has found that only about 50 percent of Americans get that much exercise every week. Sallis says adopting a dog may help put an end to the excuses people have for not exercising. As dog owners know, when your hound leaps up onto your bed in the morning, you have little choice but to get up and go.  ”If you look at studies on pet ownership, people who own pets seem to live longer than those who don’t own them,” Sallis says. An analysis from the American Heart Association finds dog ownership can protect against cardiovascular disease, for example. Sallis says as beneficial as it is for our health, walking is not likely the only factor that explains why pet ownership is linked to longevity. Companionship can lead to lower rates of depression and stress, he says. ”I think having a pet as you grow older is a great idea.”"
"Every year, hundreds of millions of documents are notarized in the United States: wills, mortgages, citizenship forms, handgun applications. And since the founding of this nation, notarizations have been done pretty much the same way: in person. Now, new technology and new laws are making it possible to skip the   search for the notary stamp in favor of a video chat  —   though some concerns about digitization have divided the notary industry. ”I don’t think people realize how important of a part of the economy notarization is,” says Adam Pase,   of Notarize, one of the companies that remotely connects signers and notaries. ”Despite the fact that there are so many [notarizations] the industry really hasn’t changed much in literally centuries. It certainly hasn’t kept up with the digital economy.” The idea of   virtual notarizations first became possible when Virginia enacted a remote notarization law in 2012. In June, Texas became the largest state to follow.   apps and sites have been popping up: DocVerify, NotaryCam, Safedocs, SIGNiX. The process is pretty straightforward: You upload a document to an app or website and get connected with a notary by video, on a split screen you verify your identity by showing a   photo ID, and the notary witnesses you signing your name on screen using your finger or mouse. Then, the notary adds their electronic signature and a digital version of a stamp or seal. The whole transaction is recorded and secured on the cloud in compliance with retention rules both the signer and the notary can get copies. Right now, even though notarization apps and sites are accessible by everyone, the participating notaries themselves are certified and based only in Virginia and Texas. Nevada will also join those states it enacted a   law on June 9. But overall, America’s 4 million notaries are split on the idea. ”It’s the notary issue of the year,” says Bill Anderson, vice president of government affairs at the National Notary Association. ”Allowing that appearance to take place via   communication technology is certainly new and to some extent, untested. . .. We’re being cautious. But we are trying to accommodate those that think this is a good idea and to add some security to it.” One of the main concerns has to do with identification. How can online notaries make sure you are who you say you are? Under the Texas law, authentication involves a few steps: First, the notary runs your   photo ID through a   verification system that can confirm the document’s authenticity. Then, the user has to answer     questions, the kind you might get asked if you’ve lost your credit card: ”Have you ever lived on Main Street?” or ”What’s the name of the high school you attended?” ”If states want to enact this law they would do well to see what Texas has done in terms of security and identification,” Anderson says. The other worry for webcam notarization is around coercion. Lorraine Pereverziev, a lawyer and mobile notary in Santa Barbara, fears people could be pressured into signing documents  —   like spousal agreements or wills  —   by someone out of the   range. ”How can we know for certain,” she says, ”that there isn’t someone beyond the camera’s view holding a gun, whether literally or figuratively, to the signer’s head to induce them to move forward with the signing?” Pase, with the company Notarize, says the notary could ask the signer to show their surroundings. But Pereverziev doubts a coerced signer would do so. The one aspect of webcam notarization Pereverziev does like is the ability to save audio and video recordings. That kind of accountability is part of the reason why major mortgage companies such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Quicken Loans are supporting online notarization. Even though the cost of remote notarizations is a bit higher  —   in Texas, one webcam session is $25 compared with $6 per document in person  —   the idea has taken off. Pase estimates that Notarize has facilitated some 10, 000 notarizations for people on every continent except Antarctica. Digitally notarized documents are valid across state lines thanks to the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U. S. Constitution however, Anderson says it is possible for a state to enact a law calling into question that recognition. So far, he says he doesn’t know of any states that haven’t accepted a webcam notarization, but the state of Iowa has a law saying notarizations performed in other states will only be recognized if the individual appears physically before the notary. Of course, there will always be those who prefer to get their documents notarized in person, if only to hear the   stamp of approval. Lauren Silverman covers health, science and technology for member station KERA. You can follow her @silverwoman."
"A wave of   protests swept across Russia on Monday, starting in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok and rolling west, across    time zones. About 2, 000 miles from Moscow, thousands of people in Novosibirsk heeded the call of opposition leader Alexei Navalny for a second round of rallies after nationwide protests in March stunned the Kremlin. Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia and Russia’s third most populous city, is becoming an important regional center in Navalny’s quixotic campaign to run for president next year. Under the slogan ”Corruption is robbing us of our future,” protesters in the city marched along the embankment of the Ob River, one of Siberia’s great waterways. Lenin Square, the city’s main plaza, as well as other central locations, had already been booked for official celebrations of Russia Day, Monday’s national holiday. ”Why am I here? Because I have grandkids, and I’m afraid they don’t have a future,” said Galina Vorivoda, 62, holding a balloon in one hand and her granddaughter’s hand in the other. Vorivoda, who worked 35 years in light industry, is upset that her monthly pension amounts to 10, 500 rubles, barely $200. ”I consider that to be way below the subsistence level, and that’s why I’m here,” she said. The petite,   woman said she used to support Russian President Vladimir Putin. ”I believed that Putin would make things better,” she said, ”but it didn’t work out. He made things better only for a few people.” As Vorivoda spoke, demonstrators chanted, ”Putin is a thief!” and ”Power to the millions, not the millionaires!” The enrichment of government officials and those close to them has been the No. 1 issue of Navalny’s   Foundation and his new YouTube channel, which bypasses state media to get out his message. Navalny was arrested Monday as he was leaving his apartment to attend an unsanctioned march in central Moscow. Navalny has proven to be a strategic thinker compared to other opposition leaders, who often spent more time squabbling among themselves than trying to expand their base beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg. The first wave of protests in March was largely inspired by a film Navalny distributed on YouTube that accused Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of overseeing an empire of luxury properties. Navalny then laid the groundwork for the June 12 rallies, crisscrossing Russia to open campaign offices  and meet volunteers, many who have known no national leader other than Putin. Alexander Klevtsov, a bespectacled    high school student born during Putin’s first presidential term, was holding a sign at the Novosibirsk rally with a quote from Medvedev himself: ”Corruption should become indecent.” His friend held a similar sign, turning another Medvedev slogan against its author: ”Without defeating corruption, we won’t get anywhere.” Novosibirsk, once a center of scientific innovation, has seen a sharp decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Many graduates of its prestigious university have left Russia to work in the West. ”I myself wanted to leave for Europe because I thought there wasn’t a bright future in Russia. But Navalny has given us hope,” Klevtsov said. ”I want to study in my country if I can be sure there will be a bright future. That’s why I showed up.” As Klevtsov spoke, a policewoman snapped photographs of him and his friend on her smartphone. But compared to other cities, the police in Novosibirsk kept a low profile. Two protesters were detained for trying to launch a drone with cameras, according to the organizers. ”It’s silly to be afraid. Nobody knows what will be in our lives,” said Pyotr Druzyaka, 28, a lanky teacher. ”I know something bad can happen, but that’s not a reason not to struggle with bad things.” Russia’s biggest problem is that people don’t believe they can change anything, he said, so the government feels free to do whatever it wants. That same realization motivated Sergei Boyko, the head of Navalny’s Novosibirsk office, to put his IT career on hold and get into politics. ”Right now, a closed, noncompetitive political system is squeezing the last juice out of the Russian economy,” Boyko, 33, said in an interview. ”I think I can do more good working to transform our political system.” Boyko headed up the march along the Ob on Monday. Many of the protesters who followed him were young and male  —   but not all of them, by far. Tatyana Bogdanova, a retired scientist, said she turned out to show that older people also oppose the government. The lively    said she’s been in the opposition since 1968, when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. Back then, eight lone protesters dared to go on Moscow’s Red Square to protest the invasion. Today, thousands marched in Moscow  —   and in Novosibirsk. ”I hope there will be changes, but I’m not sure I’ll live to see them,” Bogdanova said. ”But they will come one day.”"
"Updated at 6:30 p. m. ET, A Moscow court has sentenced Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to 30 days in jail, after police arrested him outside his home Monday ahead of nationwide demonstrations against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Protesters turned out anyway, and security forces detained hundreds of demonstrators in both Moscow and St. Petersburg. ”Alexei was detained at the entrance of the house,” his wife, Julia Bulk, wrote on Navalny’s Twitter feed. She posted a photo showing police taking her husband to a police vehicle, captioning the photo, ”Russia Day!” A judge sentenced Navalny after midnight for ”staging an unsanctioned rally,” The Associated Press reported. Other images from the day show thousands of demonstrators in St. Petersburg chanting slogans against Putin  —   and   police marching through the crowd, making arrests and pulling people off of monuments. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly was at the scene in Moscow: ”Under blue skies, security forces massed in Pushkin Square, a vast public space in central Moscow. ”Barricades went up, helicopters circled, lines of police in body armor and wielding batons pressed protesters. ..and the protesters surged back. ”Government security forces never appeared to lose the upper hand and by later afternoon here in Moscow, protesters had either been dispersed or hauled off to jail.” Some 500 people were detained in St. Petersburg, Interfax reports, citing police. In Moscow, more than 150 were detained in the city’s downtown ”for violating public order,” says   Tass media. The Interfax news agency adds that Navalny ran into problems setting up a planned demonstration on Sakharov Avenue, and instead told his allies on Sunday to gather on Tverskaya Street. Navalny, who was also arrested for organizing large   protests in March, had called for national demonstrations on the holiday that marks Russia’s formal emergence from the Soviet era in 1990. He’s hoping to challenge Putin in next year’s presidential election, delivering speeches around the country, as NPR’s Lucian Kim reported last week. Mary Louise reported earlier in the day that while the crowd in Puskin Square was huge, it’s also difficult to ascertain how many people are there for Navalny’s cause, and how many for the national holiday. ”There are people walking around the streets in World War I uniforms,” Mary Louise says. ”There are big stages set up for concerts.” She adds that while the mood in the square had seemed peaceful earlier Monday, ”the situation is changing very quickly” with ”images streaming in of police and protesters pushing toward one another” as bystanders struggle to get out of the way. The arrests began, Mary Louise says, after the crowd began chanting  —   something the authorities had warned them not to do. From images that we’re seeing, many young people were among the protesters  —   and many were detained. After opposition activist Ilya Yashin, 33, was detained and put in a police bus, he tweeted an image from inside, showing himself with a   youths in Moscow. And in St. Petersburg, several teenage girls were arrested, as Financial Times journalist Max Seddon tweeted. ”I am glad that the protest movement is getting younger,” Yashin said in a posting that showed a young woman next to riot police late Monday. It was an answer, he added, to those who complain Russia has no future. An unlikely object of dispute emerged at the St. Petersburg demonstration: As Russian journalist Arseny Vesnin and others noted, a giant yellow duck was among those detained by police, after being batted around in the air by the crowd. By making an appearance, the duck was reprising its role in the large March protests. It’s a reference to a report by Navalny’s   Foundation from last fall, which said that a vacation estate frequented by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has a special house just for ducks."
"Two major corporate sponsors have pulled their support for a New York City production of Julius Caesar. At issue: The titular role has an unmistakably Trumpian air. And, um, spoiler alert: He gets assassinated. The Julius Caesar in the The Public Theater’s production ”has blond hair, a fondness for long ties and a fashionable wife who speaks with a Slavic accent,” as NPR’s Jeff Lunden reports. Conspirators stab him to death onstage, making for some Kathy   gore. In the funeral scene, according to The New York Times’ review, ”Marc Antony exposes not just Caesar’s   garment, as Shakespeare indicates, but also his bare,   flesh.” Delta and Bank of America both pulled their sponsorship over the production, which has been the target of criticism in recent days from   outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News as well as from President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. ”No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values,” Delta said in a statement to Deadline Hollywood. ”Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste. We have notified them of our decision to end our sponsorship as the official airline of The Public Theater effective immediately.” Bank of America also terminated support for the production, though it will continue its relationship with the theater. ”The Public Theater chose to present Julius Caesar in a way that was intended to provoke and offend,” the bank said in a statement to Deadline. ”Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it.” The Times review says the play ”takes onstage   to a startling new level.” On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a link to a Fox News story that described the production this way: ”A New York City play appears to depict President Trump being brutally stabbed to death by women and minorities.” Pointing to the play’s complex characters and consequences, the production’s director, Oskar Eustis, wrote on the theater’s website, ”Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” It’s not unusual for productions of very old plays to use modern dress and current political references. A 2012 New York production of Julius Caesar by The Acting Company was set ”at our precise historical moment, in Obama’s Washington, D. C. The capital is rocked by ’Occupy Rome’ protests,” wrote Noah Hillman in The American Conservative, noting that this Caesar was ”a tall, charismatic   politician he doesn’t look or sound much like Obama (he more closely recalls Michael Jordan) but the audience is unquestionably going to read him as an Obama   nonetheless.” Gregg Henry, who plays Caesar in the Public Theatre production, made the Trump connection overt. ”I have great costumes and wigs that show you that this could be Trump. But I’m also trying to bring in the larger knowledge of tyrants,” he told Backstage. ”Hopefully, I’m able to sort of show what’s happening with this president, tweak this president for kind of what he is in a lot of ways and also show the dangers of dealing with a tyrant or possible tyrant in our country.” As anyone who knows the play can attest, the killing of Caesar is complicated, and the tragedy has no clear protagonist. ”This puts the moral burden where I imagine Mr. Eustis wants it: on the audience,” the Times wrote in its review. ”We are asked to consider how far citizens may go in removing a destructive leader, and we are warned about unforeseen consequences. Dressing Caesar as Trump gives that agenda its juice but leaves the production a bit desiccated and incoherent thereafter. To be fair, this is a problem built into the play, which like all of Shakespeare’s tragedies begins with astonishing rhetoric and ends as an abattoir.” But for Eustis, Caesar’s ambiguity is a defining factor: ”Julius Caesar is about how fragile democracy is. The institutions that we have grown up with, that we have inherited from the struggle of many generations of our ancestors, can be swept away in no time at all. The difficulty in determining the protagonist of Julius Caesar  —   there are at least four credible candidates  —   is not a formal weakness of the play, but rather essential to its structure. When history is happening, when the ground is slipping away under us and all that is solid melts into air, leadership is as transitory and flawed as the times.” . .. ”And in case you were wondering: no, we didn’t write any new lines. It’s all Shakespeare.” The production, which has been in previews since May 23, opens Monday night."
"A noted art collector and philanthropist has sold a major painting for an   $165 million to raise money for criminal justice reform. Agnes Gund sold Roy Lichtenstein’s 1962 work Masterpiece, reportedly to billionaire hedge fund manager and art collector Steve Cohen. The sale apparently took place months ago an art industry newsletter reported on the transaction in January, but Gund would not confirm it. On Monday, The New York Times confirmed that the sale was real, noting that the painting becomes one of the 15 most expensive pieces of art known to have been sold. And the newspaper revealed that Gund sold the piece ”for a specific purpose: to create a fund that supports criminal justice reform and seeks to reduce mass incarceration in the United States.” Gund is urging other wealthy art collectors to sell prized pieces to support the effort, NPR’s Elizabeth Blair reports. ”Gund says $100 million from that sale will go to the new Art For Justice Fund, described as a ’movement to end mass incarceration,’ ” Elizabeth says. ”Other collectors have also promised gifts of art or donations to the fund, which is being managed by Rockefeller Philanthropy Partners and the Ford Foundation. ”According to a statement, the fund will support efforts to cut the prison population and strengthen programs to help people when they leave prison,” Elizabeth reports. The Times, which interviewed Gund, described what inspired the collector to start the initiative: ”Six of Ms. Gund’s 12 grandchildren are   and she has worried about their future as they’ve matured, particularly in light of shootings of black teenagers like Trayvon Martin in Florida. ” ’I have always had an extreme sensitivity to inequality,’ Ms. Gund said. ”She added that she was also deeply affected by Michelle Alexander’s 2010 book, ’The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,’ and by Ava DuVernay’s 2016 documentary, ’13th,’ about   in the prison system.” ”The criminal justice system in its current state  —   particularly in its treatment of people of color  —   is unfair and unjust,” Gund said in a statement from the Ford Foundation. The fund will issue grants to groups and individuals working on issues of criminal justice reform."
"Can states force President Trump to sell off his businesses? That question is being raised by a new legal challenge to Trump’s continued ownership of   businesses. On Monday, the attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in a Maryland federal court, saying that Trump’s failure to sell off his interests in hotels, golf courses, office buildings and other properties is undermining public trust and violating the U. S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. ”President Trump’s continued ownership interest in a global business empire, which renders him deeply enmeshed with a legion of foreign and domestic government actors, violates the Constitution and calls into question the rule of law and the integrity of the country’s political system,” the lawsuit charges. A similar suit was filed in a New York federal court in January by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, a   group. On Friday, the Trump administration’s Justice Department responded, saying the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs lack the legal standing to sue. The court will have to decide that in coming months. On Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the new   lawsuit. He replied that Trump’s business interests ”do not violate the Emoluments Clause,” for reasons spelled out by the Justice Department’s filing on Friday. This new suit was brought by attorneys general who are both Democrats, Spicer noted. ”It’s not hard to conclude that partisan politics may be one of the motivations” for filing suit, Spicer said. ”We’ll continue to move to dismiss this case in the normal course of business,” he added. But the latest suit may make a stronger case than CREW’s because the plaintiffs are D. C. Attorney General Karl Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. Racine and Frosh said in a news conference that the Trump hotel, just blocks from the White House, creates unfair competition for other businesses in the District and Maryland. For example, the Trump property competes against Washington’s convention center a   conference center in Bethesda, Md. and the National Harbor resort in Prince George’s County, Md. Lobbyists, foreign diplomats and others who might wish to curry favor with Trump have been frequenting the Trump hotel, which is unfair, the argument goes. ”It’s unprecedented that the American people must question day after day whether decisions are made or actions are taken to benefit the United States or to benefit President Trump,” Frosh said. Lawrence Noble, senior director and general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, told NPR the two attorneys general are ”saying that they’re being adversely affected by the president’s violation of the Emoluments Clause, and they make a very strong argument that financially, they’re being affected.” The attorneys general accused the president of violating the Constitution’s clause that blocks federal officials from accepting gifts, or emoluments, from foreign governments. The Constitution also bars a president from accepting economic benefits from federal or state governments, other than a basic salary. Since Trump continues to own and profit from the Trump Organization, the lawsuit claims citizens cannot know whether their president is making decisions in the best interests of the nation or rather out of ”  motivations grounded in the international and domestic business dealings in which President Trump’s personal fortune is at stake.” Trump has stepped back from daily management of his businesses, which have been placed into a trust run by his sons and another close associate. But he remains the sole beneficiary of the trust. His son Eric has said the president will continue to get updates on profits. NPR correspondent Jackie Northam contributed to this report."
"You know America’s turning cold again when Ice Cube freezes over. Like a thermostat set to gauge the temperature of our racial transgressions, gangsta rap’s first political provocateur got triggered this past Friday night it took the abuse of one of his favorite words to resurrect his former self. When Bill Maher sparked outrage one week prior by jokingly referring to himself as a ”house n*****” on his    HBO talk show Real Time With Bill Maher,  ’s response ran the gamut. Chance the Rapper called for the show’s immediate cancellation, while Killer Mike, a recurring Real Time guest and a successor to Cube’s righteous rage, claimed he found the impromptu wisecrack funny  —   and, more importantly, the least of black America’s concerns. But it took the rapper most responsible for making the   a celebrated part of today’s lexicon  —   as a founding member of incendiary ’90s rap group N. W. A. (you know, as in N***** Wit Attitude)  —   to turn Maher’s wrongheaded usage of the word into a ”teachable moment.” Best known for such anthems as N. W. A. ’s ”F*** The Police” and his caustic solo debut AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, the old Cube couldn’t have returned at a better time. His appearance on the show coincided with the 25th anniversary   of his most potent sociopolitical treatise, 1991’s Death Certificate. Dressed in black and wearing the signature scowl that characterized his raucous entrée into rap, Cube wasted no time mincing words with Maher.  ”I knew you was gon’ f*** up sooner or later,” he told the comedian. The sentiment summed up much of the   criticism surrounding what Doha Madani, a writer for the HuffPost vertical Black Voices, describes as Maher’s history of ”racist, sexist, transphobic and Islamophobic remarks.” But this was more than Cube piggybacking on   culture it was a return to the   ’s first role, as vocal objector to America’s underlying bigotry. Without a doubt, he’s been sorely missed. For nearly 20 years, every profile written about Ice Cube has hinged on one question: What happened to the mad, unrepentant, explicit   AmeriKKKa loves to hate? The MC who added political bite to N. W. A. ’s bark traded in his   cred for Hollywood his breakout role as Dough Boy in director John Singleton’s 1991 debut Boyz N the Hood eventually led to crossover film success. Disgruntled fans protested, while Cube’s icy exterior melted with each successive release of a new   comedy. That’s an oversimplified version of the transformation that turned the South Central native into a successful screenwriter and   of his Cube Vision production company  —   but it suggests a larger absence in rap. For close to two decades, the genre’s most prominent and promoted voices have found the paper chase more topical than political consciousness. The original release of Death Certificate delivered an urgent diagnosis: ”N***** are in a state of emergency,” Cube announces on the album’s original intro. Not only did it expose a generation to an urban America ravaged by gangs, guns and drugs, the album offered a pointed racial critique to contextualize the inner city’s economic disparity. On ”Black Korea,” Cube practically predicts the 1992 uprisings that would follow the brutal,   beating of Rodney King. ”I Wanna Kill Sam” castigates     hypocrisy from slavery through the present day. On ”Alive On Arrival,” he highlights the devaluation of black life by narrating his own    while bleeding from a minor gunshot wound on the floor of a public hospital waiting room. He holds a mirror up to his peers with songs like ”Us” and ”Doing Dumb S***,” grounded in a message of personal responsibility that reflected the Nation of Islam teachings Cube was loosely affiliated with at the time. Of course,  ’s attempt to transform the   from racial slur to   term of endearment got muddied by white America’s sense of entitlement. Despite accepting Maher’s apology, Cube stressed the need to get to ”the root of the psyche” that made Maher feel comfortable with using a word so historically loaded with racial animus. When Cube referred to ”guys out there who cross the line because . .. they think they’re too familiar,” it was definitely a dig at Maher. The comedian has vociferously defended his right to use the word in the past due to  ’s manipulation of its meaning. But, as Cube told a visibly frustrated Maher, ”that’s our word now, and you can’t have it back.” On an episode designed to absolve Maher of some guilt  —   thanks to thoughtful, tempered objection from public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson, who endured plenty of criticism for defending the comedian’s   record  —   Cube reminded the nation of rap’s ability to speak the raw, uncut truth to power.  ’s blunt approach has always served as the perfect   to the civil rights era’s articulated patience. In the same sense, Dyson and Cube wound up playing a compelling version of ”Good Cop Bad Cop”  —   which happens to be the title of one of three new songs on Cube’s Death Certificate  . But Cube also played the very role Maher needed him to play. With their exchange now viral, his public chastening has satiated enough critics to ensure the preservation of the comedian’s   show. And Ice Cube the rapper simultaneously revitalized his own rep. When Ice Cube the actor receives his star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame this summer, the character he displayed on Real Time last Friday night will be the one inspiring  ’s loudest applause."
"There’s no doubt about it: Zika is on the retreat in the Americas.  In Brazil, cases are down by 95 percent from last year. Across the Caribbean, outbreaks have subsided. And in Florida, the virus seems to have gone into hiding. Health officials haven’t investigated a new Zika case for more than 45 days in   County. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted the last travel warning for southern Florida. The agency is no longer recommending that pregnant women avoid the region. ”That’s really exciting news,” says Dr. Christine Curry, an   at the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial Hospital. ”Everybody has sort of exhaled.” But the threat to pregnant women, whether residents or travelers, isn’t over  —   not in the least  —   Curry says, neither in Florida nor abroad. So what should pregnant women and their families, or women who are trying to get pregnant, do? Let’s start with Florida. Then we’ll swing back to the international question at the end. Living or traveling in South Florida, ”We can’t go back to the days before Zika, where you just walked around without thinking about bug spray or the clothes you’re wearing,” Curry says. ”People still need to practice good   prevention when they’re living in South Florida or traveling there.” The CDC outlines the precautions needed in   County and other areas of the U. S. where Zika has circulated, such as Brownsville, Texas. These precautions are most important for pregnant women, those trying to get pregnant and their mates. For example: Such precautions are important, Curry says, for several reasons. First, even when it looks like Zika has ”disappeared,” Curry says, it could still be circulating. About 80 percent people who are infected with the virus don’t have any symptoms at all. And if the virus is merely lurking below detectable levels, Zika cases could start cropping up again at any moment. Last summer, Zika likely circulated in Florida for months before it was detected by health officials, a recent study found. So if you live in South Florida, or are headed there this summer, pack the DEET, cover clothes in permethrin and be on the lookout for skeeters. Traveling overseas, Although Zika cases have dropped across the Caribbean and Latin America, the CDC’s travel recommendations haven’t changed. Pregnant women should not travel to places where Zika is circulating. If a spouse travels to one of these areas, the couple should use condoms for at least six months. Couples trying to get pregnant should also not travel to these regions. If they must, the CDC recommends waiting at least six months before trying to conceive after a man returns from a country with Zika and waiting at least eight weeks after a woman returns. Fetal medicine expert Dr. Neil Silverman worries that some doctors are forgetting to give their patients these travel warnings. ”We’ve gotten calls at our practice from women who have traveled to areas where’s there’s clearly active transmission of Zika,” says Silverman, an   at the Center for Fetal Medicine in Los Angeles. ”Either their doctors have essentially decided the risk is over or the woman forgot to ask. Then they come back home and realize that there was a risk.” Even if a country has reported only a few cases  —   or hasn’t had a case in months  —   Silverman says the recommendations are the same. Take for instance, India, which reported its first official cases in May. There were only three cases recorded, across the entire country. But the virus has likely been circulating in India for decades, studies show. And pregnant women should avoid travel there, Silverman says. ”For the purpose of a traveler, there’s not a huge distinction between whether a country has a large number of new cases occurring or whether there’s sort of a background,   risk,” he says. Places with this sort of background risk include large parts of Southeast Asia and Africa. So if you’re pregnant or ”trying,” check out the CDC’s Zika map before booking a plane ticket, and avoid all the areas that are purple on the map. ”With everything else going on in the country and in the world, Zika has taken a little bit of a backseat in the news cycle,” Silverman says. ”But it’s still a big concern.”"
"Zika may have fallen from headlines, especially with everything going on in politics these days, but the threat remains. And recommendations for pregnant women haven’t changed: Pregnant women  —   and those trying to get pregnant  —   should not travel to places where the Zika virus is circulating. It’s just too risky because Zika can cause birth defects. But what about babies? Or kids? Is it safe to travel with them? ”So we don’t have tons of data on that particular question,” says Dr. Neil Silverman, at the Center for Fetal Medicine in Los Angeles. But, he says, doctors can offer some recommendations based on what’s known about how Zika damages developing brains. The biggest concern is with infants. ”I would not take a small newborn  —   under 6 months  —   to a country at risk for Zika,” Silverman says. Several studies have shown that Zika can damage a fetus’s brain in the third trimester. ”Even when a mother is infected late in pregnancy, adverse outcomes can occur,” Silverman says. A newborn’s brain, at least in terms of development, is similar to that of fetuses late in the third trimester. The problem is that Zika attacks developing brain cells. They’re called neural progenitor cells. And newborns’ brains are filled with them, just like the brains of fetuses late in pregnancy. ”So I don’t think any of us know quite yet what the break point is from being a newborn or a late pregnancy fetus in terms of Zika’s risk,” Silverman adds. By about age 2, many of these developing brain cells are gone. ”And the majority of brain development has already occurred,” Silverman says. So Zika’s danger is likely reduced. ”Kids older than 2 probably don’t have any significantly higher risk than an adult who’s not pregnant,” Silverman says. Several studies have supported this hypothesis. In particular, a study published in September followed 158 children, under age 18, with Zika. In all instances, kids had similar symptoms as seen in adults  —   a rash, fever and joint pain. None of the children developed   syndrome, which occurs rarely in Zika patients. Two of the children were hospitalized. One was 4 years old, and the other was only 1 year old. All the children recovered with no apparent   damage. So when traveling with kids above age 2, Zika doesn’t really add more risks, especially if you take a few precautions, says Dr. Desiree LaBeaud, an infectious disease pediatrician at Stanford University, who studies   viruses. ”I have three beautiful children and I bring them all over the world with me,” LaBeaud says. ”I personally think the benefits of traveling with your kids and seeing the world is greater than the risk associated with Zika.” ”But we do travel safe!” she exclaims. That means protecting her kids from mosquito bites. She slathers repellent with DEET on their skin, treats clothes with permethrin and stays in places with screens in the windows. ”Children in general are quite resilient little beings,” she says. ”So instead of being a fearmonger, I like to tell people, ’A lot of this is in your control, and you can take precautions that will decrease your risk of acquiring any   infection.”"
"The music of Perfume Genius can be intense, shuddering with a breathtaking fragility  —   but also shimmying with   defiance. The songs, much like frontman Mike Hadreas himself, are strong, but not hard. As he worked his way through two new tracks (”Valley,” ”Slip Away”) and one older (”Normal Song”) there were moments that were both beautiful and unnerving, in no small part because the songs are so deeply personal. Hadreas, who years ago battled addiction and a parade of inner demons before finding love and an   confidence, wrote much of No Shape as a love letter to his boyfriend (and Perfume Genius keyboardist) Alan Wyffels. On ”Valley,” Hadreas reflects on the creeping past as he sings, ”How long must we live right   before we don’t even have to try?” On ”Slip Away,” he celebrates having emerged on the other side of darkness: ”Don’t hold back, I want to break free, God is singing through your body, and I’m carried by the sound.” But Hadreas saved the most powerful moment for the final song, as guitarist Tom Bromley and percussionist Herve Becart stepped away from the Tiny Desk, leaving just him and Wyffels on keys as the two played ”Normal Song,” a profoundly moving plea for strength in the face of an always uncertain future. ”Take my hand when you are scared and I will pray,” sings Hadreas. ”. .. And no secret, no matter how nasty, can poison your voice or keep you from joy.” The fourth   from Perfume Genius, No Shape, was released May 5 on Matador Records. The band’s tour through the U. S. and Europe continues through the fall. No Shape is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Mike Hadreas (vocals) Tom Bromley (electric guitar, vocals) Alay Wyffels (keyboards, vocals) Herve Becart (percussion) Credits, Producers: Robin Hilton, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Bronson Arcuri Editor: Morgan Noelle Smith Photo: Raquel  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The social media world is heavily populated by trolls  —   you know, those people who write nasty, mean comments online. Sometimes it can be tempting to respond back, but what if there’s a better alternative? Like sending them a cake. ... with their words written on it. New York City baker Kat Thek does just that. She’s the founder of Troll Cakes, a bakery and detective agency. The process is simple. First, customers go to the Troll Cakes site to submit the comment and address of the troll in question. Thek will then bake a cake, write the comment on it using frosting or fondant letters, wrap it up in festive confetti, and send it to the perpetrator. ”When you open it up, [the box] looks like 100 percent good news,” Thek laughs. ”And then you see a screen grab of your comment, and it says, ’Congratulations! Your Internet comment has been made into a Troll Cake.’ ” Don’t know the address of your troll? That’s where the ”detective agency” part of Thek’s business comes into play. She offers to do the investigating for you. She will search for the troll’s address and send it to his or her home or workplace. Customers can also send cake orders to the White House. After all, President Trump is   . Thek calls it the ”Tiny Hands Special” and promises on her site that these cakes are ”bigly satisfying.” Thek has designed a cake that included Trump’s comment that he draws higher television ratings than did the September 11 attacks. ”That went on a cake,” Thek said. The president’s infamous ”I don’t stand by anything” quote was also iced on a cake, as well as his tweet, ”I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.” Thek jokes that if the White House is all set for cakes, she doesn’t mind sending some to    or ”wherever else Trump is hanging out.” The   baker was inspired to start this business after she saw a rude comment on Dolly Parton’s Facebook that read, ”Your momma be so disappointed in you.” ”It was infuriating, but also hilarious, because who would actively try to hurt her feelings? It was so ridiculous,” Thek said. And so she put those words on a cake and sent it to that Facebook user. The Internet is a ”bottomless pit of mean things,” Thek says, but her goal isn’t to ”cure the world of pettiness.” Thek wants to poke fun and have people imagine what their comments would look like on a cake. So for those trolls out there, be careful what you write, because you never know  —   you just may end up eating your own words."
"When Maisha Watson heard about baby boxes, her first reaction was: ”Why would I want to put my baby in a box?” She was talking with Marcia Virgil  —   ”Miss Marcia” to her clients  —   a family support worker with the Southern New Jersey Perinatal Cooperative. True, it’s a cardboard box, Miss Marcia told her. But it’s also a safe place for a baby to sleep: It comes with a firm mattress and a snug sheet, in line with American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations meant to protect against   deaths, including sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. Watson learned more, and now the mother of    Solomon is a big fan. Solomon has slept in a baby box ever since he came home from the hospital. That’s because he’s living with his mom and dad in a cramped motel room outside Atlantic City, N. J. Watson has lived here for about a year, after a bad car accident made it hard for her to work and stay in school. There’s no space for a crib or a bassinet. And Watson knows it’s dangerous for a baby to sleep on a bed. The box they’re using is one of roughly 20, 000 that New Jersey has given away since January as part of the first program to provide a box to every newborn in the state. Since then, Ohio, Alabama and Texas have started similar programs, with more on the way. The idea is borrowed from Finland, where for decades, in exchange for a prenatal checkup, the government has given expectant mothers a maternity package that includes a box that doubles as a crib. With the new   programs in the U. S. anyone who watches a series of online videos focused mainly on safe sleep  —   and then passes a short quiz  —   can get a box. Supporters say the free, cheerfully decorated box is just a cool hook, and that the heart of the program is to teach all parents about simple, proven ways to help keep their babies safe while sleeping. Moms like Watson are already finding the boxes useful. But skeptics say there haven’t been enough studies or enough testing done on the boxes to prove whether they’re safe or effective at preventing infant deaths. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes: ”Currently, there is insufficient data on the role cardboard boxes play in reducing infant mortality.” Moreover, there are unanswered questions about the boxes’ safety, says Dr. Thomas Heygi, medical director of the SIDS Center of New Jersey. For instance, he says, will bacterial growth increase if the cardboard gets wet? Or are there glues or emissions that could cause dermatitis or that babies could inhale? Hegyi says enthusiasm for the boxes has outpaced the science. And that worries him, because there are many things that sounded like a good idea for newborns but ended up being dangerous, he says, citing crib bumpers as one example. ”We’re very concerned as pediatricians in adopting interventions for babies without thoroughly testing them, because historically we’ve been burned,” he says. There is work underway to address safety and testing concerns. A task group of the independent standards organization ASTM International is looking at expanding the standards for bassinets to cover baby boxes. The current ASTM bassinet standard already addresses issues such as sharp edges, small parts, finger entrapment and mattress suffocation hazards. The task group, which next meets later this month, is considering the development of requirements for additional hazards associated with baby boxes. In addition to the questions raised by Hegyi, the task group is considering issues such as the boxes’ stability, handle strength and product integrity, among others. But it will likely take at least a year before they’re finalized and formally adopted.  In the meantime, the   Baby Box Company, which produces the boxes and videos used in the program, says it has tested the boxes against relevant bassinet standards and has posted documentation of its voluntary safety testing on its website. Dr. Kathie McCans is chair of the New Jersey Child Fatality and Near Fatality Review Board, which is using a $40, 000 federal grant to partner with the Baby Box Company for the state program. McCans agrees that standards, regulations and more testing are needed. But she says the benefits of the baby box program’s educational component outweigh potential risks. ”How many babies should die while we wait for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to do testing?” she says. ”The reality is, babies have died in bassinets, babies have died in cribs.” Proponents point to the long track record of Finland, which started distributing baby boxes in 1938, at a time when nearly one out of every 10 children in the country died before age 1. Finland now has one of the world’s lowest infant mortality rates, but many say that’s a result of improved medical care and social safety nets, not use of baby boxes. In fact, a recent survey found that the majority of Finnish parents these days don’t use the box as a crib. But the Finnish government notes clearly that the box can be used that way  —   and was used that way more frequently in the past, when Finland was a less wealthy country. Ultimately, McCans and other supporters say you can take or leave the baby box  —   just be sure to take the knowledge. ”My hope is that we will not have people making the errors of putting a baby in a sleep surface that has blankets and pillows and crib bumpers, that everyone will know that every baby needs to be put to sleep on their back each and every time,” she says. In New Jersey, most sudden unexpected infant deaths are related to sleep  —   a baby sharing a bed with an adult, or being suffocated by a blanket. Parents can do a lot to reduce the risk of SIDS, McCans says, and the goal is to spread that message  —   using a cute, free baby box as the incentive."
"Neuroscience isn’t on many elementary school lesson plans. But this spring, a second grade class at Fairmont Neighborhood School in the South Bronx is plunging in. Sarah Wechsler, an instructional coach with wide eyes and a marathoner’s energy, asks the students to think about the development and progress that they’ve made already in their lives. ”You probably don’t remember, but there was a time when you didn’t know how to speak and you were just like ’Wah wah wah blah blah blah, mama, mama!’ ” she tells the kids. ”Our brain grows and changes when you try hard things, when you learn new things.” The children offer their own ideas. ”Brains are pink!” ”Your brain can get smarter. For example, if you need help with your work, your brain is there in your head for you.”  After watching a video with a cartoon brain, and doing an exercise where yarn stands in for connections between neurons, they seem to have absorbed the main point of the lesson. ”There is stuff in your brain that if you take on a challenge and if you stick with it, it makes your brain smarter and it makes you smarter,” says one girl. And Wechsler makes sure they also know the day’s big vocabulary word. ”Neuroplasticity! Say it to the light! Say it to the floor! Tell it to your brain!” The science of adversity, The children here aren’t just learning this word for a little science enrichment. They’re learning it because their school, and the nonprofit Wechsler works with, called Turnaround for Children, are trying to put a wave of science experiments into practice. The big mission: empower children growing up in poverty with the   tools to transform their own developing brains. And that means, in part, giving them the understanding that brains can indeed grow, change and heal. In the part of the South Bronx where Fairmont Neighborhood School is located, 49 percent of kids are growing up in   households, according to census data. Nearly half of families earn $25, 000 a year or less 17. 5 percent make less than $10, 000 a year. That kind of poverty is inherently stressful, says Fairmont’s principal, Scott Wolfson. ”Some of our students are sleeping in shelters, or not even in shelters but on the streets,” he says. ”They’re thinking about, ’Where is Mom right now? And where am I going to sleep tonight?’ That’s a huge thing for an    to carry.” Chronic stress and uncertainty, not to mention missed meals and restless nights, make it physically and mentally difficult for children to concentrate or form trusting bonds with adults. They become hypervigilant, prone to emotional meltdowns, with bodies thrown into    mode at the slightest disturbance. ”There’s a body of knowledge that is not a hypothesis, it’s a fact,” says Dr. Pamela Cantor, the founder of Turnaround for Children. ”Adversity alters how children develop as learners, and not in a good way.” Cantor first learned about the impact of trauma on the brain and body in medical school at Cornell in the 1980s. She worked in mental health in poor communities in the Bronx as part of her training, and saw what she called a ”symptom cluster.” ”It began to be obvious to me that all the children that I was seeing were struggling with relationships,” she says. ”They were struggling with learning. They were struggling with trust, struggling with attention span.” And regardless of the details of their lives, she adds, these struggles had an underlying cause. ”Adversity has a biological impact on children’s development through the mechanism of stress,” she explains. ”Cortisol [the hormone released when a person is under stress] is toxic to the developing brain and immune system. It impacts the development of the architecture of the brain so that children don’t grow up to have the attentional or behavioral control to be able to engage as learners.” She says it has taken far too long for the science she first learned three decades ago to make it into schools. So Cantor took things into her own hands by founding Turnaround for Children. The group has been working at Fairmont since Wolfson took over as principal in 2014. And they are now expanding to 10 schools in New York City, Newark, N. J. and Washington, D. C. while also working on research and policy to spread the word about the science of trauma and the science of resilience. Drawing ACEs, Along with poverty itself, research shows that children in communities like these are more likely to have ”adverse childhood experiences,” known as ACES for short. These include the death of a caregiver, the incarceration of a family member, domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or addiction or mental illness in someone close to the child. When a child has more than four ”ACEs,” the impact lasts for decades. It can be seen not only in mental health, but in the incidence of chronic diseases and even cancer. But, Cantor says, there’s a flip side. While the young brain is impressionable to trauma, it can also be resilient. In a safe and orderly environment full of caring adults, she explains, children can find calm. They can build relationships. If they are given a chance to make better choices when they act out, rather than being punished, they learn that they can exert  . That, in turn, readies them to learn. ”Neuroplasticity,” that $5 word taught to the   at Fairmont, is the term that captures the ability of the brain to grow, change and form new connections into adulthood. That safe and caring environment is what Principal Wolfson and his teachers are trying to create at Fairmont, with Turnaround’s help. Damon Cohen, who teaches second grade, is a   man with a beatific smile. ”We are in the inner city and it’s edgy,” he says. ”I want them to be peaceful, social creatures that know how to work and act and communicate.” Calming the chaos, The school has come a long way, but also has far to go. A previous school in this building, P. S. 50, was phased out by the city due to poor performance. Fairmont was founded to replace it using nearly $3 million of federal grant money, by a principal who was gone within a few months. Wolfson, who was raised in the Bronx and has spent most of his education career here, stepped in midyear. Both he and parents say the building used to be chaotic, with children roaming the hallways and fights in the classrooms. Tameka Cassaberry has two girls at Fairmont and is the PTA president. Her older daughter, Kya Anpong, now 10, started in the previous school in kindergarten. At Kya’s    celebration, a physical fight started among family members in the audience and spilled onto the stage, Cassaberry says. ”My family was there recording it, and it was out of control and it was embarrassing. People left, they didn’t get to see my daughter perform. She was afraid to.” Cassaberry pulled her daughter out and sent her to school across the district, a tough commute. Now they’re back at Fairmont. ”With my older daughter, I’ve seen a crazy improvement,” she says. ”Her reading is amazing.” Wolfson reached out to nonprofits like the Children’s Aid Society and the Girl Scouts to provide   programs and other services. One day when I visit, several children in each classroom are wearing new glasses supplied by donation. He turned to Turnaround to help his teaching staff. ”Teachers needed a lot of professional development,” he says. ”They needed to be able to create physical environments that would be able to support children’s success” and ”allow and encourage children to work together.” Turnaround spent its first year in the school helping teachers perfect order, habit and discipline. The theory here is that chaotic schools  —   a loud hallway, a messy class  —   simply reproduce the stress that children may bring from home. Rules should be the same across the school, so students know what to expect. And students should be met with understanding and patience. No detail is too small. I sit in on an individual session with Wechsler, Turnaround’s instructional coach. She and a new teacher hash out whether to line up for lunch by girls and boys, or by table. Many classes are   or have paraprofessional aides to help with behavior issues nearly a third of the students are in special education. When children act out, teachers give them a chance to calm themselves and look for root causes. ”My son was having issues a couple years ago, so he was seeing a social worker” at the school, says Tracy White, who has three boys at Fairmont. ”She’ll bring him to the office, have him color or take a walk so he could get his anger down.” Principal Wolfson says that with concerted effort, suspensions have fallen to fewer than one a year. Last year, Turnaround introduced daily mindfulness sessions after lunch, which had been a tough transition time. They use an app called Headspace. The classroom I visited fell perfectly silent for 10 minutes while the   voice of a former monk filled the room, narrating a guided relaxation exercise. Some students stretched out on the rug and closed their eyes. Others pulled their hoods over their heads. Students say Headspace ”quiets down your mind,” ”makes me feel calm and is fun.” Bu it’s more than that, says Cantor, ”Meditation has roots in neuroscience.” Regular   stress reduction, she says, can actually shrink the amygdala, the ”fear center” in the brain. Children who practice calming themselves get better at it. They spend more time in a state of mind where they are open to learning. Believing in effort, This year, while continuing the mindfulness program, Turnaround has been applying another set of research findings by training the whole school in growth mindset. This is the term coined by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck to describe the belief that people can progress and get better through effort, as opposed to ”fixed mindset,” the belief that ability is innate and unchanging. Experiments show each of these mindsets can become a   prophecy. In a group professional development session, Wechsler coaches teachers on giving feedback. Instead of telling a child ”good job” or ”you’re so smart” or ”wrong answer,” the teachers are encouraged to praise students’ efforts, ask them about another strategy they might try or even talk directly about how hard their brains are stretching and growing. Before the session, Wolfson speaks to the teachers about how he is trying to adopt a growth mindset about the progress that needs to be made at Fairmont. ”Thinking of ourselves as learners means that we will have the ability to get better through practice, through effort, and through possibly failures along the way,” he tells me. ”Growth mindset is helping, not only my children, but also my teachers, to understand that.” Over the course of the spring, Wechsler comes into each classroom, from kindergarten to fifth grade, to help teach growth mindset. It takes some time to schedule these, because the school also has to get ready for an intensive quality review from the district, as well as spring testing. The changes at Fairmont have yet to be reflected in dramatic improvement in academics. Last year, just 10 percent of students met state standards on the English Language Arts test, and just 8 percent in math. That compares with 40 and 39 percent citywide. Turnaround for Children is tracking its impact across schools in other ways. It has documented improvements in classroom management and student engagement, using independent observers. The group also has seen drops in suspensions and increased referrals to mental health services. And most recently, it has found that students’ theories of intelligence are changing. After the growth mindset lessons, students are more likely to say they can get smarter if they try. ”I do worry about our test scores,” says Wolfson. ”Unfortunately, that’s like the bottom line for us. But without the   support we can’t address the academics. We have to support the whole child.”"
"The 2016 Tony Awards were fun, but undeniably a little anticlimactic. By then, it was in large part a coronation of Hamilton, a delivery mechanism for the many, many awards we all knew it would win. (And did.) Not so in 2017. On the musicals side, the highest nomination count rested with Natasha, Pierre  The Great Comet of 1812, a musical based on a section of War And Peace. There is much affection for the   Come From Away, about the aftermath of September 11. The bruising Dear Evan Hansen has seized a lot of the ”cool ticket” buzz. The nominated plays included Sweat, which won the Pulitzer Prize Oslo, a   examination of the Oslo Accords A Doll’s House Part 2, which dares to extend the story of an unforgettable   play about gender and Indecent, a play about the consequences of political and socially provocative theater that was up for awards on a day when two corporate sponsors reportedly withdrew some or all of their financial support from New York’s Public Theater over its staging of Julius Caesar. The closest thing to a lock was probably Ben Platt, whose physically transfixing performance in Dear Evan Hansen seemed highly likely to bring him a Tony for Best Lead Actor in a Musical  —   and it did. (In his speech, he thanked the physical therapist he says is preventing him from permanently adopting Evan’s hunched posture.) Rachel Bay Jones, who plays Evan’s mother, won Best Featured Actress in a Musical (the Tonys’ equivalent of a supporting actress) and the show won for its book and score (the score is from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, also the team behind the music in La La Land) as well as for its orchestration. So it was no surprise when Dear Evan Hansen was also the winner for Best Musical. But there were other musicals that won awards: Hello, Dolly! for Best Revival of a Musical, plus Bette Midler for her performance in it and Gavin Creel for his. Best Director of a Musical went to Christopher Ashley for Come From Away. Best Play went to Oslo, with acting awards in plays going to Kevin Kline in Present Laughter, Laurie Metcalf in A Doll’s House Part 2, Cynthia Nixon in Little Foxes and Michael Aronov in Oslo. The revival of August Wilson’s Jitney was named Best Revival of a Play, while Rebecca Taichman won Best Director of a Play for her work on Indecent. It was an interesting theater season in a bunch of ways. American playwrights wrote new works that felt urgent and pointed. More standard concepts like the musical movie adaptation (this year of Groundhog Day) sat beside new musicals resting on recent history, classic literature and a firm grasp of the runaway nature of social media. What did become clear as the night wore on is that it was a season with a fair amount of heft. Racism, poverty, war, terrorism, the Holocaust  —   in both plays and musicals, the    brand of theatricality really only seemed to reign in Groundhog Day and Hello, Dolly!.  The other new musicals, in particular, could be called vigorous, energetic, vibrant, but they grow out of suicide, September 11 and Tolstoy. It’s not traditional   stuff. And the plays are, in every case, plucking at exposed nerves that are as exposed now as they’ve ever been. Sweat is about the devastating, cascading effects of economic devastation in towns where people have limited options. Oslo is about a conflict that seems never to rest. A Doll’s House is about how men and women navigate their public and private lives together and apart. And Indecent is about the risks artists take when they challenge and provoke the societies in which they live. Normally, the Tony Awards are a little different from other awards shows for a very simple reason: theater people know how to put on an evening’s entertainment in front of a live audience. The performers have a   advantage, because they’re in their natural habitat, after all. The TV broadcasts have tried a lot of ways to present plays  —   scenes don’t really work  —   and this year’s solution, having the playwrights describe their plays, wasn’t a great way to get the flavor of the work, but it at least gave often unknown artists a chance to be seen and heard, and to frame their nominated pieces the way they wanted to. Having said that, not all the musical numbers seemed   to emphasize the strengths of the shows they came from. Come From Away and The Great Comet put their most intense feet forward, Falsettos was fun and Dear Evan Hansen showcased Platt nicely (and unsurprisingly). But Hello, Dolly! went with David Hyde Pierce singing solo in front of the curtain, and Groundhog Day rather bafflingly chose its heartfelt closing number that doesn’t really scan unless you’ve seen the rest of the show. It all proved to be hard material to load into an awards show hosted by Kevin Spacey, not in his brilliant actor mode, but in his mugging goofball mode. Spacey opened with a strangely   number that did the opposite of what the Tony Awards are meant to do  —   it made theater seem opaque instead of accessible. How many people watching at home were likely to get the joke, which wasn’t that funny anyway, about Groundhog Day star Andy Karl having hurt his knee? And yes, Spacey is known for impressions, but did we really need both his Johnny Carson and his Bill Clinton, in 2017? And if they had to bring him on stage in his Frank Underwood incarnation from House Of Cards, why bring his   Robin Wright, who’s currently appearing in Wonder Woman, the hottest movie there is, and have her stand there wordlessly? Couldn’t find a single Amazon joke? Couldn’t find a single reference to her shooting a few arrows at him? It would have been better than the long sequence where Chazz Palminteri brought snacks. (Don’t ask.) Rachel Bloom, of the CW’s Crazy   did very well on light duty backstage  —   just enough to make it seem like maybe she’d have been a more successful host. There were other highlights: Mark Hamill introduced an In Memoriam segment that included Carrie Fisher. Bette Midler simply refused to be played off . .. for quite a while, because she is Bette Midler and will speak as long as she pleases. And if you miss   Miranda, well, there was a glimpse of him, too. The Tonys are fun theater is fun. The winners are excited, the audience isn’t too jaded and you get to see people sing and dance. And if it felt like a heavy year thematically, well, perhaps we’ve earned that."
A musical by   songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul opens Saturday in New York. ”Dear Evan Hansen” is a   about social anxiety and teen suicide in the age of social media.
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Lust and love will always inspire songwriters, but some of popular music’s most compelling dramas stem from people’s relationships to their backgrounds. The impulse to put distance between yourself and the environment you came from, or at least plot an escape from it and flaunt your independence, can be every bit as strong as the impulse to celebrate the familiar, live out an inherited sense of identity or idealize a rooted way of life. There’s a comforting clarity to the emotions that such songs conjure they can envelope listeners in the warmth of nostalgia, or awaken fantasies of rebelling against social restrictions. Jason Isbell, one of the finest   working at the intersection of folk, country and rock today, has proven himself to be adept at the exacting art of mapping out the territory between those poles. He’s written of disillusioned souls tethered to people and places by a sense of obligation of restless types confronting the fact that they’ve changed in ways that render them unrecognizable to people back home of those who wring satisfaction from withstanding lives of limited options. His songs have an exquisite, rawboned realism and deeply embedded   partly because he’s dedicated himself to cultivating his literary gift and partly because it’s often been the contours of his own life, begun in the hardscrabble setting of rural, northern Alabama, and the lives of people he understands, that he’s tracing. Journalists and fans latched onto the autobiographical narratives around his most beloved albums to date: Southeastern (the fruit of his falling in love with his artistic and intellectual equal, Amanda Shires and adjusting to newly achieved sobriety) and Something More Than Free (informed by his embrace of domesticity, stability and contentment with Shires). The Nashville Sound, Isbell’s sixth studio album  —   produced by Dave Cobb and arranged in the moment at historic RCA Studio A with Isbell’s brawnily virtuosic band The 400 Unit (featuring guitarist Sadler Vaden, keyboardist Derry deBorja, bassist Jimbo Hart, drummer Chad Gamble and Shires on fiddle)  —   arrives on the heels of a major life event, too Isbell and Shires’ daughter, Mercy, was born in 2015, so he wrote and recorded the album having experienced his first taste of fatherhood. But the perspective that animates these 10 songs is a deliberately enlarged, newly awakened one. In an interview for an upcoming NPR story, Isbell was   about expanding his repertoire: ”Finally you get all of those things [in your life] dealt with. What are you gonna talk about now? You can’t moan, and you can’t sing the blues anymore. So you have to figure out how to empathize, better than you’ve ever done.” ”White Man’s World” and ”Hope the High Road” are Isbell’s first forays into outright political  . The latter conveys a feeling of kinship toward those who are as troubled by the current political climate as he is, and the former, a tense,   number, is a true protest song. He implicates himself, and those like him, in a pattern of unexamined privilege, owning his former blindness to how he benefitted from and helped perpetuate racism and sexism. He also distills his guilt into an acceptance of responsibility. ”There’s no such thing as someone else’s war,” he insists, his rough, woolen timbre inflamed by urgency. ”Your creature comforts aren’t the only things worth fighting for.” Then he ends the song with unnerved introspection: ”I still have faith, but I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the fire in my little girl’s eyes.” It’s not that Isbell has done away with what makes his music feel personal and particular. If anything, he’s elevated what’s at stake in his intimate attachments by considering the individual costs of inequality. In the     romp ”Something To Love,” he wishes his daughter happiness and fulfillment, but acknowledges that he can’t imagine what that will look like in the world in which she’ll grow up. Both the bewitching ballad ”If We Were Vampires” and the     ”Anxiety,” bookended by roiling, ominous guitar vamps, are haunted by the inevitability of loss, the realization that he can’t insulate his family from outside forces. ”Even with my lover sleeping close to me, I’m wide awake and I’m in pain,” he laments during ”Anxiety,” shadowed by Shires’ feathery, high harmony. ”Last Of My Kind” stands among Isbell’s most evocative character sketches. Over a jaunty, fingerstyle guitar figure, he unfurls an   son of a farmer’s bewildered yet biting perceptions of the big city’s bustling indifference. One track later, in the hurtling   number ”Cumberland Gap,” Isbell delves into the interior life of another   dweller, who appraises a changing world with acrid, lived insight. Isbell named the album for a lush, sweetened approach to   that was meant to help country music compete in the popular landscape of the early rock ’n’ roll era, a production style famously associated with RCA Studio A. His take on the Nashville Sound proceeds from more or less the opposite philosophy he couldn’t be less concerned with making his music go down easy. With eyes clear and nerves jangled, he’s wrestling with unpleasant social and political realities. He’s hardly the first   to take up these concerns, but coming from him, with his gift for representing people who exist worlds away from elite, abstracted discourse, it’s a vantage with visceral impact. "
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions flatly denied reports of a possible undisclosed meeting with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 campaign in his opening statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. He called the suggestion that he colluded with Russia during the campaign an ”appalling, detestable lie.” In the questioning that followed, senators asked about Sessions’ recusal from any investigation into Russian interference in the election and followed up on questions raised during former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony on June 8. Here are his full prepared remarks to the committee, annotated by NPR journalists."
"Updated at 12:40 p. m. ET, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Tuesday that even if President Trump told him to fire Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Department of Justice investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, he would not follow the order unless he thought there was good cause. The statement came after Sen. Susan Collins,   asked Rosenstein during an open Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing what he would do if Trump asked him to fire Mueller. ”Senator, I’m not going to follow any order unless I believe those are lawful and appropriate orders,” Rosenstein said. ”Special counsel Mueller may be fired only for good cause, and I am required to put that cause in writing. That’s what I would do. If there were good cause, I would consider it. ”If there were not good cause, it wouldn’t matter to me what anybody says.” Collins’ question was prompted by recent media reports that Mueller’s role leading the DOJ’s Russia investigation could be in jeopardy. Last night, a longtime friend of President Trump, Christopher Ruddy, said the president is considering firing Mueller. ”I think he is considering perhaps terminating the special counsel,” Ruddy, who leads the conservative news website Newsmax, said on PBS NewsHour. ”I think he’s weighing that option. . .. I personally think it would be a significant mistake, even though I don’t think there is a justification [for a special counsel].” The White House, however, said Trump and Ruddy have never discussed the issue. ”With respect to this subject, only the president or his attorneys are authorized to comment,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told NPR. Collins’ question wasn’t the only time the Mueller investigation came up during Rosenstein’s hearing on Capitol Hill. New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, opened her line of questioning, in the hearing that was supposed to focus on the Justice Department budget, by asking whether Rosenstein had seen any evidence of good cause to fire Mueller. After responding that he had not, Rosenstein reassured Shaheen of his confidence in the process. ”Director Mueller is going to have the full degree of independence that he needs to conduct that investigation appropriately,” Rosenstein said. Republicans in Congress are also shaking off the notion that Trump could fire Mueller. ”You’re creating a debate that’s not happening,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday morning, responding to a reporter’s question about the rumor. The responsibility for appointing (or theoretically firing) Mueller lies with Rosenstein because his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, recused himself in March from all investigations involving Russia and the 2016 elections. At the time, Sessions said he was recusing himself only because he was involved in the 2016 campaign as an adviser to the Trump campaign. Doubt, however, has been cast on that explanation because of cryptic testimony from former FBI Director James Comey last week. Comey said he and other FBI officials expected Sessions to recuse himself before it was publicly announced but would not discuss why they came to that conclusion. Sessions is testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday afternoon."
"Updated at 5:37 p. m. ET, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a Senate committee Tuesday that any suggestion he colluded with Russia during last year’s U. S. presidential campaign was an ”appalling and detestable lie.” Sessions spent more than 2   hours before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which included several testy exchanges with Democratic senators who accused him of obstructing their investigation. Throughout the questioning, Sessions defended himself and refused to discuss any details of conversations he has had with President Trump. In his opening statement, Sessions said: ”Let me state this clearly, colleagues: I have never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States. Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign.” The attorney general on March 2 recused himself from the FBI investigation into Russia’s role in the election, saying he felt he was required to do so because he had been a prominent figure in Trump’s campaign. ”Many have suggested that my recusal is because I felt I was a subject of the investigation myself, that I may have done something wrong,” he said, stressing this was not the case. ”The suggestion that I participated in any collusion, that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government, or hurt this country which I have served with honor for 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process, is an appalling and detestable lie,” Sessions said. His testimony came just six days after James Comey, the fired FBI director, appeared before the same committee. Comey discussed a host of issues surrounding Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, though his remarks also raised questions that were directed at Sessions on Tuesday. Comey referred frequently to the attorney general and included the tantalizing tidbit that there were ”facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting.” Sessions requested an open hearing, though he made clear in his opening remarks and several times during his testimony that there were some things he would not discuss, including confidential conversations with the president. Democratic senators expressed frustration with Sessions on several occasions. In one tense exchange, Ron Wyden,  . said, ”I believe the American people have had it with stonewalling. Americans don’t want to hear that answers to relevant questions are privileged or off limits.” ”I am not stonewalling,” Sessions said. ”I am following the historic policies of the Department of Justice” on private discussions with the White House. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the committee, raised his concerns in his opening statement: ”Our committee will want to hear what you are doing to ensure that the Russians  —   or any other foreign adversaries  —   cannot attack our democratic process like this ever again. I am concerned that the president still does not recognize the severity of the threat. He does not acknowledge the unanimous conclusions of the U. S. intelligence community that Russia massively intervened in our election.” Before he became attorney general, Sessions served two decades as a Republican senator from Alabama. But his former Democratic colleagues pressed him repeatedly on his contacts with Russia and his role in the dismissal of Comey  —   who led the FBI’s probe on Russia until he was ousted. The attorney general has acknowledged two meetings last year with Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak. But he denied reports that he had a third, previously undisclosed meeting with Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in April 2016. ”I did not have any private meetings, nor do I recall any conversations with any Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel,” said Sessions. He was asked about the event several times, and said at one point, ”If any brief interaction occurred in passing with the Russian ambassador during that reception, I do not remember it.” In his testimony last week, Comey said he and Trump had a    meeting in the Oval Office on Feb. 14 about the investigation into the former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. According to Comey, Trump said of Flynn: ”He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” After that meeting, Comey said, he told Sessions he did not want to be left alone with Trump, because he didn’t think it was appropriate for the president and the FBI director to have such private meetings. The FBI is part of the Justice Department that Sessions heads. Sessions confirmed Comey’s account, but he placed less emphasis on the   meeting. ”I believe it was the next day that [Comey] said something, expressed concern, about being left alone with the president,” Sessions said. ”But that in itself is not problematic. He did not, at that time, tell me any details about anything that was said that was improper. I affirmed his concern that we should be following the proper guidelines of the Department of Justice, and basically backed him up in his concerns.” Earlier, Dianne Feinstein,  . asked Sessions why, after recusing himself from the Russia inquiry, he signed a letter last month recommending that President Trump fire Comey. Sessions said he agreed with a letter drafted by his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, that Comey should be replaced. Sessions added his own letter to that effect, and both documents were sent to Trump, who then fired Comey later on the same day, May 9. However, Sessions refused to say whether he ever spoke with Trump about firing Comey."
"The only literary work about punctuation I’m aware of is an odd early story by Anton Chekhov called ”The Exclamation Mark.” After getting into an argument with a colleague about punctuation, a school inspector named Yefim Perekladin asks his wife what an exclamation point is for. She tells him it signifies delight, indignation, joy and rage. He realizes that in 40 years of writing official reports, he has never had the need to express any of those emotions. As Perekladin obsesses about the mark, it becomes an apparition that haunts his waking life, mocking him as an unfeeling machine. In desperation, he signs his name in a visitors book and puts three exclamation points after it. All of a sudden, Chekhov writes, ”He felt delight and indignation, he was joyful and seethed with rage.” Yefim Perekladin, c’est moi! At least, I used to be one of those people who use the exclamation point as sparingly as possible. We’ll grudgingly stick one in after an interjection or a sentence like ”What a jerk!” but never to punch up an ordinary sentence in an essay or email. We say we’re saving them for special occasions, but they never seem to arise. The written language provides us with a dozen or so punctuation marks to clarify our meaning, but only one that conveys our feelings about what we’re saying. Yet the exclamation point gets no love at all. Apple computer forbids its distributors to use it in their ads. The British school curriculum penalizes students for using it. There’s a blog called Excessive Exclamation!! dedicated to documenting its misuse. It wasn’t always so disreputable. Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne used it freely. But by the late 19th century, it had become the staple of lurid novels and the sensational yellow press, whose printers called it a screamer, a shriek or a bang. Ever since then,   authors have regarded the wanton use of exclamation points as illiterate and slightly vulgar. F. Scott Fitzgerald said that it was like laughing at your own joke. The mark was banished to the literary margins. Manual typewriters didn’t even give it a key of its own. You had to type a period, then backspace and then type an apostrophe, by which time any spontaneous excitement would have fizzled away. It lived most of its life on the pulp paper of Nancy Drew mysteries and Superman comics. Tom Wolfe and Roy Lichtenstein made it the emblem of pop culture kitsch: ”POW!” ”WHAMM!” ”VAROOM!” To be sure, most people pay no attention to the qualms of editors and grammarians and have always used exclamation points freely in their letters and diaries. Nobody found that alarming until the marks began to surface in emails and texts. Critics suddenly discerned a plague, an exclamation point addiction that copy editors call ”bangorrhea.” The impression is understandable. Exclamation points have become so obligatory in email that it can sound brusque to merely write, ”See you then.” People scatter them with abandon in texts and tweets to convey friendliness, surprise or indignation. Others use them for pure emphasis  —   they write their message in all caps and then hold the exclamation point key down to string them out like a row of air horns. Of course, the more the bangs pile up, the more numbing they become. But the moral panic is overdone. We’re not talking about The New York Times, after all. Texts and tweets are just an extension of spoken language. We punctuate them to capture the way we talk, and we aren’t always going to use our indoor voices. I think of the Seinfeld episode when Elaine and her boyfriend broke up after he took down a phone message that her friend Myra had a baby without putting an exclamation point at the end. Elaine: See right here? You wrote ”Myra had the baby” but you didn’t use an exclamation point. Jake: So? Elaine: It’s nothing, forget it. I just found it curious. Jake: What’s so curious about it? Elaine: Well, if one of your close friends had a baby and I left you a message I would use an exclamation point. Jake: Well, maybe I don’t use my exclamation points as haphazardly as you do. Elaine: You don’t think that someone having a baby warrants an exclamation point? Jake: Hey, look, I just jotted down the message. I didn’t know that I was required to capture the mood of each call. Elaine: I just thought you’d be a little more excited about a friend of mine having a baby. Jake: OK, I’m excited. I just don’t happen to like exclamation points. Elaine: Well, you know, Jake, you should learn to use them! Like the way I’m talking right now, I would put exclamation points at the ends of all of these sentences! On this one! And on that one! Jake: Well you can put one on this one  —   I’m leaving! You could think of that exchange as a skirmish in an orthographic gender war. Exclamation points have always been seen as expressions of girlish gushiness, and Jake’s aversion to them suggests a certain horror of emotional display. As it happens, the research shows that women do use them more than men in online communication, chiefly to signal friendliness. That might suggest that some people aren’t using them enough. Yet writers and editors only pride themselves on expunging the marks, never on sticking them in. When it comes to exclamation points, the only virtue we recognize is  . Look at the lengths people go to to find workarounds to avoid them. Some suggest replacing them with more descriptive language  —   instead of saying ”See you there!” with an exclamation point, you can write ”I’m so looking forward to seeing you,” at the expense of replacing one skinny character with a couple of dozen fat ones. Others suggest that rather than effusing over some bit of news, you can add an animated GIF of Shirley Temple clapping her hands and let her do it for you. Or you can separate your words with what I think of as power periods, as in ”Best. Party. Ever.”  —   each one a little puff of certitude. But at that point, avoiding an exclamation point becomes more of a fetish than using one. I dropped my reservations a while ago. Now I use the marks as abundantly as I did when I was 12. Like Chekhov’s Perekladin, I didn’t come to appreciate them ’till later in life. But I figure I may as well go out with a bang."
"How do you start a dairy industry overnight in a wealthy desert nation with its transport links closed? You buy 4, 000 cows from Australia and the U. S. and put them on airplanes. That is what Qatari businessman Moutaz Al Khayyat told Bloomberg he is doing. The airlift will require as many as 60 flights on Qatar Airways, but Al Khayyat said, ”This is the time to work for Qatar.” Last week, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates all cut ties to Qatar. While it’s very wealthy because of its oil and gas reserves, Qatar imports 80 percent of its food from bigger neighbors, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Or rather, it did until last week. Qatar is a peninsula in the Persian Gulf, and it shares its only land border with Saudi Arabia  —   a border that is now closed. The news sent people rushing to grocery stores, with reports of long lines and empty shelves. Qatar is the richest country in the world  —   its gross domestic product per capita is $141, 542, according to 2015 data from the World Bank. The average annual income of native Qataris is reportedly about $400, 000. But while Qatari citizens are very wealthy, foreign workers make up 90 percent of the country’s population. The   migrant workers, mostly from Asia, continue to face abuse and exploitation, according to a 2017 report from Human Rights Watch. And Qatar needs those foreign workers now more than ever. As it prepares to host the 2022 World Cup, the nation is building eight stadiums and a metro system for Doha, its capital. Some 40, 000 workers are reported to be working on the metro project alone. It’s the   workers who would bear the brunt of any food shortages from the blockage, which is happening in the middle of Ramadan. Hence the Great Qatari Bovine Airlift of 2017. After they land, the cows will make a home in the Wisconsin of Qatar ”on a site covering the equivalent of almost 70 soccer fields, (where) new grey sheds line two strips of verdant grass in the desert with a road running through the middle up to a small mosque,” according to Bloomberg. Al Khayyat, chairman of a company called Power International Holding, told Bloomberg that he had already been planning on importing the cows by boat. But when Qatar was cut off by Saudi Arabia and four other countries, he picked up the pace. He expects milk production to begin by the end of June and to meet a third of Qatar’s milk demand by  . He told the publication that shipping the cows by air raised the transport cost five times over, to $8 million. Qatar’s ”National Vision 2030” aims to create ”a diversified economy that gradually reduces its dependence on hydrocarbon industries.” Becoming less reliant on foreign foodstuffs is a key part of that effort. Al Khayyat told Entrepreneur Middle East in a 2015 article that he was exploring opportunities in farming and dairy manufacturing and noted that his construction company had ”set itself apart from its peers with its ability to successfully perform and deliver a wide range of diverse projects on a   turnkey lump sum basis.” Flying in thousands of cows when you need them is certainly one definition of turnkey. ”No one in his daily life feels a crisis” because the border is closed, Al Khayyat told Bloomberg. ”The government is working very hard to ensure there’s no effect.” Sounds like Qataris won’t be asked to plant victory gardens anytime soon."
"Whenever Esteban Castillo visited his grandparents in Colima, Mexico, he’d sit by his grandfather’s taco stand and watch him cook. He’d also see his grandmother carry her homemade cheeses on her back and go door to door, selling them in different neighborhoods. To this day, his grandparents still make a living off of food. ”They basically transform their living room into a restaurant during the weekends to make ends meet,” says Castillo. Castillo grew up in Santa Ana, Calif. where more than 75 percent of the population is Latino. He says Mexican food was the foundation of his childhood. So when he started to see popular food blogs present recipes as traditional Mexican dishes when they were anything but, it got him riled up  —   and motivated him to mesh his love for design, cooking and culture. And, so, Chicano Eats was born. It’s a bicultural and bilingual food blog where Castillo shares traditional and fusion Mexican recipes  —   presented with a stunning visual sensibility. His photos have a vibrant and crisp aesthetic that reflect his background in graphic design and marketing. He says his colorful, minimalist presentation is meant to challenge the way people see Mexican food. ”When you think of Mexican food, I feel like people envision this very rustic feeling, where everything is in a clay pot and stuff like that,” Castillo says, adding, ”I wanted to give Mexican food this minimalist, very colorful treatment, because that’s what I always gravitated to when I was in school.” His visual style is also a way to challenge how Mexican food is often perceived in the U. S. he says. ”Here in the U. S. Mexican food doesn’t really hold a lot of clout. A lot of people think it’s not something you would see at a   restaurant. They think it’s street food. It’s something we try to fight.” And when Castillo fuses Mexican flavors with American classics in his recipes, he says it’s a way to honor his own upbringing. With innovative dishes like homemade Peeps covered with Tajin, a Mexican spice mix of chili peppers, salt and lime, and cupcakes made with Chocomil, the powdered chocolate milk beloved south of the border, he is literally mixing his cultures. ”I see it as a nod to my bicultural identity  —   and how we’ve . .. immersed ourselves into this culture, too,” he says. Castillo says these days, millennials want to connect with their history and culture. So when he saw a popular food site’s social media sharing a recipe that called for using a jar of sweet salsa to make pozole rojo  —   a traditional Mexican soup made with hominy, meat and chilies  —   he was reminded that context is key. ”If you’ve ever made pozole, or if you’ve ever had pozole, you know that salsa is not used in it. So I was just kind of like, is anybody doing their research? I feel like nowadays, this is a huge piece that’s being left out” of the conversation around food. ”Where did things originate and how is it important to that specific culture?” says Castillo. Castillo isn’t the only one having these kind of conversations about food and culture. Take the recent uproar over Kooks Burritos, a Portland, Ore. food  . In an interview with the Willamette Week, a local   newspaper, the two white American women behind the enterprise revealed that they learned how to make the burritos on a trip to Mexico by spying on all the ”tortilla ladies” they would meet and grilling them for recipe information  —   seemingly without compensating them for their guidance or disclosing they were profiting from it. The incident rekindled the   conversation in the food world on the role of cultural appropriation in food and restaurants. The backlash was so strong, Kooks closed. Castillo says it’s important to understand the culture that food comes from. ”It’s such a sensitive topic. I feel like if people are going to be talking about food or making food that is out of their culture, I feel like [the dishes] just need to be   and really pay tribute to those cultures and honor them.” That’s what he tries to do with his creations. At an event a couple of weeks ago, he was contracted to create a cocktail. So he decided to play with tepache, a   drink from Mexico consisting of fermented pineapple peels and rinds, brown sugar and cinnamon. The event attracted a racially and ethnically mixed crowd, but he was surprised to learn that many people didn’t know about this ancient drink, and found it an opportunity to create conversations on its origins. As for the guests who did recognize tepache  —   mostly Mexicans and    —   he says the beverage stirred up memories of drinking it in Mexico. Castillo has called his blogging a kind of activism, and he says he hopes to see more people of color take up food blogging. ”When it comes to food blogging, I would like to see more diversity,” he says. ”I feel like when it comes to other ethnicities blogging, we don’t have that representation.” And he says that now is the best time to show that representation. ”People aren’t afraid to voice their opinions or feelings on things. Our voice is really coming out to the spotlight. It’s the time.”"
"Nevadans will find out this week whether their state will become the first in the country to allow anyone to buy into Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor and disabled. Earlier this month, Nevada’s legislature, where Democrats hold the majority, passed a ”  ” bill, and it’s now on Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval’s desk awaiting his signature or veto. If he does not act by Friday, it will automatically become law. State lawmakers hope the proposal will give Nevadans a cheaper health insurance option as premiums for individual health insurance rise. The move comes as Republicans in the U. S. Congress are working to roll back the expansion of Medicaid that happened under President Barack Obama. ”With the uncertainty and mixed messages coming from our current federal administration in regard to health care and health care accessibility, there is an absolute need for states to become more reliant on providing insurance options to its citizens,” said Assemblyman Mike Sprinkle, who sponsored the bill. Under the proposal, Medicaid coverage would be offered alongside commercial insurance on Nevada’s   health exchange starting in 2019. Sprinkle says he’s not sure what the coverage would cost. The state would conduct an analysis of the Medicaid program to determine the size of premiums. They would likely be lower than traditional insurance premiums, because Medicaid reimburses doctors less than most insurance plans and also pays lower prices for prescription drugs. ”If the expansion goes away, I really think this is going to be a viable option for those who lose coverage,” Sprinkle says. He estimates about 300, 000 Nevadans may enroll. He says that if the Republican health care bill becomes law, people could use the tax credits in the bill to buy into Medicaid. And if it doesn’t, they could still use their tax credits and subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, to buy in. To be able to sell policies on the exchange, Nevada would have to get approval from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the form of a waiver. Sprinkle says he has had discussions with CMS officials who were open to the idea. CMS administrator Seema Verma has said she wants to allow states to experiment with their Medicaid programs and make it easier for them to get waivers."
"The House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved legislation making it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire employees for misconduct while better protecting staffers who bring wrongdoing to light. The bill, dubbed the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, cleared the Senate by a voice vote last week and is expected to be signed into law by President Trump soon. ”These changes are crucial to ensure that there’s accountability at the VA so that it can deliver for our veterans,” said Sen. Marco Rubio,  . who sponsored the legislation. Rubio crafted the bill with Sens. Johnny Isakson,  . and Jon Tester,  .  —   the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. ”Probably 99. 9 percent of the people who work in the VA do a great job,” said Tester. ”And the veterans will tell you when they go into the VA clinics, they do do a great job. But we got a few bad apples.” The new law would give the VA secretary more power to discipline or fire employees and would shorten an appeals process that can last years. The legislation prohibits employees from being paid while they appeal. The measure also grants the VA secretary the authority to revoke bonuses from underperforming staffers and, in certain cases, reduce the pensions of   employees who are disciplined. ”That being said, you also need to know that it protects those people who are working at the VA, who are doing a good job,” said Tester. New protections for VA whistleblowers, The bill includes new protections against retaliation for VA staffers who expose corruption. It establishes an Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection within the department and forbids the VA secretary from retaliating against whistleblowers who have filed a complaint with the VA general counsel’s office. It was whistleblowers who helped expose the nationwide scandal over long waits for care three years ago. Beginning in 2014, VA medical facilities across the country were found to have covered up delays in providing care, making waits as long as four months appear much shorter. Since then, the VA has fired fewer than 10 people connected to the wait list scandal. ”It’s a system that is failing the VA  —   making it harder to bring in better employees and also keeping bad employees around in jobs where they can often harm veterans,” said Dan Caldwell, policy director for Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group that supports the legislation. VA still faces systemic challenges  Recent news reports and anecdotes suggest that the VA still faces widespread challenges in providing timely, quality medical care to the nation’s military veterans. When Raymond Delgado checked into the Department of Veterans Affairs’ West Los Angeles Medical Center last year for an angiogram, he expected a routine,   procedure and a weekend hospital stay. But the    Marine Corps vet says, instead, ”they ran out of food to feed us.” ”Things we were supposed to eat, they didn’t have it,” says Delgado, who is diabetic and has heart problems. ”They said they were out of it, out of it, out of it. So they brought us potatoes, like small potatoes. I told the gentleman, ’I can’t eat potatoes, I’m a diabetic.’ He said, ’Well, that’s all you’re gonna get.’ ” Delgado shared his hospital room with three other veterans. He says that he was discharged because of the food shortage and that he had to wait more than a month to get the angiogram rescheduled. The Department of Veterans Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. ”It’s frustrating,” Delgado says of the episode. The frustration is shared on Capitol Hill, where the scaling back of job protections for civil service workers at the troubled agency has gained new momentum with Republicans controlling the White House and Congress. Employee union: ’Fill the 49, 000 vacancies’  But the labor union that represents VA employees  —   the American Federation of Government Employees  —   argues that the VA’s most pressing problem isn’t culture or management  —   it’s manpower. The union cites as evidence a statement by Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, who says the VA needs to fill some 49, 000 vacancies across the country. ”Fill the 49, 000 vacancies that exist at the VA today, that Congress has already appropriated the money for so that there wouldn’t be the wait list, so that veterans can receive the care that they deserve. That would be true accountability,” says J. David Cox, union president. Tester agrees. ”Hiring the folks we need  —   whether it’s doctors, nurses, administrations, whatever it might be  —   is critically important.” Tester and the other lawmakers who back the bill acknowledge that the VA’s hospitals and clinics do need to add thousands of employees  —   while boosting accountability."
"By the time Stephenie Hashmi was in her   she had achieved a lifelong dream  —   she was the charge nurse of one of Kansas City’s largest intensive care units. But even as she cared for patients, she realized that something was off with her own health. ”I remember just feeling tired and feeling sick and hurting, and not knowing why my joints and body was hurting,” she says. Hashmi was diagnosed with systemic lupus, a medical condition in which the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues and organs. She’s had surgery and other treatments, but now, at age 41, Hashmi is often bedridden. She finally had to leave her job about six years ago, but when she applied to the Social Security Administration for disability benefits, she was denied. ”I just started bawling,” she recalls. ”I felt like, if they looked at my records or read these notes, surely they would understand my situation.” In the U. S. less than half of all people who apply for disability benefits  —   about 45 percent  —   are ultimately accepted, says Lisa Ekman with the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives. Getting a hearing takes an average of nearly 600 days. ”It is not easy to get disability benefits, and it’s a very complicated and difficult process,” she says. It may become even harder for people like Hashmi, whose disability is difficult to actually see or measure. This spring, the Social Security Administration introduced changes to fight fraud and streamline the application process, including a new rule that removes special consideration given to a person’s longtime doctor. Ekman says this is a mistake. ”Those changes would now put the evidence from a treating physician on the same weight as evidence from a medical consultant employed to do a   brief examination, or a medical consultant they had do a review of the paper file  —   [who] may have never examined the individual,” Ekman says. She says relying on these examiners who don’t know the patient could lead to more denials for disabled people with complex conditions like lupus, multiple sclerosis or schizophrenia. These illnesses can affect patients in very different ways and may be hard for an unfamiliar doctor or nurse to evaluate. Ekman says more denials will lead to more appeals, which will increase the backlog. That backlog started snowballing about 10 years ago, says Jason Fichtner he’s now a senior research fellow in public policy at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, but was acting deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration back then. During the recession, he says, a lot of people who applied for benefits were disabled, but not necessarily unable to work. ”They can work, but when the recession happens, those are the first people who tend to lose their jobs and then they apply for disability insurance,” Fichtner says. There are now more than a million people across the country waiting for hearings, and, adding to the strain, the administration’s core operating budget has shrunk by 10 percent since 2010. Fichtner says the agency is obligated to weed out any and all fraud that it can  —   including the rare cases in which a patient’s personal physician might be trying to tip the scale to get a patient benefits. Fichtner says the administration can still legitimately prioritize applicants, if its investigation shows that the patient’s disability, although not obvious, merits it. ”For patients that are really in a dire condition and really have major disabilities, I don’t think they have to worry about these rule changes,” he says. Fichtner acknowledges that the backlog needs attention, and says the agency has safeguards to monitor whether the rule is working as it should. But in Kansas City, Stephenie Hashmi is still struggling with lupus, and still struggling to get disability benefits. She’s increasingly pessimistic. After several rejections from the Social Security Administration, Hashmi’s now appealing again. Her hearing is scheduled for November  —   of 2018. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with KCUR and Kaiser Health News."
"Uber made two big announcements Tuesday, adopting new policies to improve its workplace environment and saying CEO Travis Kalanick is going on a leave of absence for personal reasons. Kalanick said he needs time to grieve the recent death of his mother. ”The ultimate responsibility, for where we’ve gotten and how we’ve gotten here rests on my shoulders,” Kalanick said. ”There is of course much to be proud of but there is much to improve.” Kalanick said he would be working on a team that could lead ”Uber 2. 0.” ”But if we are going to work on Uber 2. 0, I also need to work on Travis 2. 0 to become the leader that this company needs and that you deserve,” he added. The statement was included in Uber’s note announcing new policies that are meant to help it fight sexual harassment and change a corporate culture that has been blamed for allowing workplace misconduct to flourish. Uber’s board unanimously accepted former Attorney General Eric Holder’s recommendations for improving the company. The first recommendation in the report, according to a   summary, is titled ”Changes to Senior Leadership.” It calls for some of Kalanick’s duties to be reallocated and emphasizes the importance of the company’s plan to hire a chief operating officer. Other recommendations ranged from improving accountability and training at the company to bolstering both Uber’s human resources department and its employee complaint process. The plan also calls for increasing diversity and establishing a version of the NFL’s ”Rooney Rule” that would require Uber to include at least one female and one minority candidate in hiring for jobs and to include a woman   a minority on hiring panels. As Uber released details of the plan to its roughly 12, 000 employees Tuesday, Chief Human Resources Officer Liane Hornsey said: ”Implementing these recommendations will improve our culture, promote fairness and accountability, and establish processes and systems to ensure the mistakes of the past will not be repeated. ”While change does not happen overnight, we’re committed to rebuilding trust with our employees, riders and drivers.” The need for a new approach was highlighted by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, who published a blog post in February in which she said that she was sexually harassed at the company and that both managers and the human resources unit ignored her complaints. In response to that and similar accusations, Uber fired 20 employees, including senior executives, and reprimanded 40 more employees. Those moves came last week, after an outside firm was hired to investigate more than 200 misconduct claims against the company, as NPR’s Yuki Noguchi reported. Another recommendation in the new plan calls for Uber to forbid ”any type of romantic or intimate relationship between individuals in a reporting relationship.” It also calls on the company to prohibit the consumption of alcohol during core work hours and to ban the use of controlled substances. The final item in the summary that Uber released Tuesday calls for a review of the company’s pay practices to make sure it complies with state and federal equal pay laws. The new plan is emerging at a time of turmoil for Uber’s top executives. Its president, Jeff Jones, quit in March after less than six months. Later Tuesday, a comment about women reportedly made by board member David Bonderman at an   meeting drew outrage and reportedly has led to his resignation. ”There’s a lot of data that shows that when there’s one woman on the board, it’s much more likely that there will be a second woman on the board,” board member Arianna Huffington said, according to leaked audio published by Yahoo Finance. Bonderman then interjected: ”Actually, what it shows is that it’s much likely to be more talking.” News outlets including the New York Times later reported that Bonderman had resigned from the board, saying his comment had not reflected what he intended to say. Earlier, Bonderman reportedly apologized in an email to staff. Uber’s PR team reweeted a Times reporter’s post with an excerpt from the apology, where Bonderman called it a ”disrespectful comment” and saying ”I deeply regret it.”  Thanks to an aggressive growth strategy, Uber now operates in cities on six continents. Valued at around $70 billion, it’s one of the largest private companies in the world. But its reputation has suffered over the harassment reports, and the company has also faced challenges to its labor and competition practices, as well as a lawsuit from Google’s parent company over its   vehicle program. Here is how NPR’s Aarti Shahani described perceptions about Kalanick, after news of his leave of absence began to circulate Monday: ”We really don’t know too much about this yet, but a couple weeks ago, his mom died in a boating accident, and his dad landed in the hospital  —   so I mean really horrible personal loss. And it could be he just needs a break. It could also be that leadership is losing faith in his ability to pivot the company.” The board first announced it had adopted the proposals in Holder’s report on Sunday hours afterward, the company saw another   departure, as senior vice president for business Emil Michael announced his resignation."
"Murder. For writer Anthony Horowitz, that’s where it all starts. He says everyone is fascinated by murder  —   just look at Foyle’s War, his BBC mystery series. The show is set in the U. K. during World War II, but that wasn’t its selling point. ”If I had gone to the BBC and said I wanted write about, I don’t know, the social history of 1940 to ’47, they would have probably said no,” Horowitz explains. ”When I said, ’I’ve got a whole series of terrific murders which take place in that time,’ they opened the door.” Horowitz has written two Sherlock Holmes novels (with the blessing of Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate) and created two popular mystery shows for the BBC, Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders. His latest foray into fictional crime solving is a whodunit about whodunits: a novel called Magpie Murders. Horowitz says murder is a fast way to get to know someone  —   their secrets, their habits, their enemies, their friends. It takes a smart detective to sort through all the pieces of the puzzle and put them in the right place, because, of course, in a good whodunit the murder always gets solved. ”A whodunit is one of the few types of fiction that dot every i and cross every t, for all fiction is in a way a search for truth,” Horowitz says. ”Whodunits give you truth. The final chapter always nails it, closes it down, and you come away with a sense of satisfaction, which I don’t think you get in any other sort of book.” When Horowitz was a teenager, he hitchhiked around the world and read all of Agatha Christie’s novels along the way. His show Midsomer Murders is a series of classic whodunits, and it was during that show’s first season, some 20 years ago, that he got the idea for Magpie Murders. Still, it took Horowitz a long time to finally write the book. ”I wanted it to be more than just a murder mystery story,” he says. ”I wanted it to be . .. a sort of a treatise on the whole genre of murder mystery writing. How the writers come up with the ideas how these books are formed. That was my interest in writing it. I didn’t just want people to have the fun and the pleasure of ’Oh, it was the doctor’ . .. on the final page. I wanted there to be something a little bit more.” It’s clear from the first page of Magpie Murders that something different is afoot in this mystery. It opens on a rainy day in London as an editor at a small publishing company is settling in to read a book, also called Magpie Murders. It’s the latest whodunit by her   author, and it unfolds a quaint English village. ”English villages are very peculiar places,” Horowitz says. ”Everybody knows everybody, everbody has something bad to say about everybody else and everybody has secrets. You get the sense that behind those net curtains everybody is up to something they’d rather you didn’t know. And so it’s a sort of a cauldron it’s a microcosm. And it is a perfect environment for something unpleasant  —   a murder, for example  —   to take place.” Of course, there’s a major plot twist in Magpie Murders: When the editor discovers a chapter is missing, she turns sleuth and (not surprisingly) her search for the missing pages leads to another tale of murder and mayhem, also set in a quaint English village. Horowitz says if he’s done the job right, you won’t be able to figure out who the murderers are until the very end of the book. ”It has to have that big smile that comes with the surprise ’Oh, it was him!’ or ’Oh, it was her! I should have seen that.’ And if you can manage that, if you can pull it off, then I think you’ve written a successful whodunit.”"
"Researchers are working to revive a radical treatment for Parkinson’s disease. The treatment involves transplanting healthy brain cells to replace cells killed off by the disease. It’s an approach that was tried decades ago and then set aside after disappointing results. Now, groups in Europe, the U. S. and Asia are preparing to try again, using cells they believe are safer and more effective. ”There have been massive advances,” says Claire Henchcliffe, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. ”I’m optimistic.” ”We are very optimistic about ability of [the new] cells to improve patients’ symptoms,” says Viviane Tabar, a neurosurgeon and stem cell biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Henchcliffe and Tabar joined several other prominent scientists to describe plans to revive brain cell transplants during a session Tuesday at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting in Boston. Their upbeat message marks a dramatic turnaround for the approach. During the 1980s and 1990s, researchers used cells taken directly from the brains of aborted fetuses to treat hundreds of Parkinson’s patients. The goal was to halt the disease. Parkinson’s destroys brain cells that make a substance called dopamine. Without enough dopamine, nerve cells can’t communicate with muscles, and people can develop tremors, have difficulty walking and other symptoms. Drugs can temporarily raise dopamine levels, easing symptoms. But their effectiveness tends to wane over time. So researchers thought a better approach would be to simply replace the cells that produce dopamine. ”The rationale is that if those cells are lost, and we know they make dopamine, and we know that dopamine is important for good coordination, good automatic movement, why could we not replace those cells,” Henchcliffe says. For some patients, the transplanted fetal cells produced dramatic improvements. But rigorous studies eventually showed that many other patients were not helped. And some developed an unwelcome side effect: uncontrolled movements. So in 2003, researchers declared a moratorium on transplants for Parkinson’s. ”There was a stepping back to   what exactly just happened,” Henchcliffe says. That took a while. But it’s clear now that over the long term, some patients really were helped by the procedure. Henchliffe got to examine five people who’d received transplants more than 15 years earlier. ”These were patients with decades of Parkinson’s disease, and I thought it was really striking that a subset actually seemed to be doing much better than one would expect,” she says. Meanwhile, researchers never stopped looking for ways to make cell transplants safer and more effective. The early transplants were pretty crude, Tabar says. One problem was that the cells came directly from the brains of fetuses, she says. ”What you were placing in the patient was just a soup of brain,” she says. ”It did not have only the dopamine neurons, which exist in the tissue, but also several different types of cells.” Some of those other cells may also have grown in the patients’ brains, causing side effects, she says. To prevent that sort of problem, scientists at Sloan Kettering have spent the past dozen years figuring out how to turn stem cells into pure lines of dopamine cells in the lab. Unlike the transplanted fetal cells, these cells are an exact replacement for the neurons that produce dopamine in an adult brain, ”So you are confident that everything you are putting in the patient’s brain will consist of right type of cell,” Tabar says. Another advantage of   cells is that the supply is unlimited. ”Not only can we grow them, in fact we have almost 1, 000 doses of these cells already sitting in a freezer,” Tabar says. Tabar, along with her colleague and husband, Lorenz Studer, hope the Food and Drug Administration will give them permission to begin testing those cells in Parkinson’s patients in 2018. Both have a financial stake in a startup that’s funding the project. Meanwhile, several other groups around the globe are also launching transplant studies. Researchers say a handful of patients in Australia have already received cells. Some scientists are worried that the renewed rush to make transplants work could lead to more disappointments. But Tabar says the time is right. ”On the one hand, you don’t want to rush,” she says. ”On the other hand I think the field is ready for something bold.”"
"Trump ally Chris Ruddy has caused quite a stir over the past 24 hours. The CEO of the   website Newsmax, a close friend of Trump’s, has been making the media rounds saying President Trump is considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Department of Justice investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. ”I think he’s considering perhaps terminating the special counsel,” Ruddy told PBS NewsHour Monday night, though he went on to say he thinks, personally, it would be a bad idea. ”I think he’s weighing that option. I think it’s pretty clear by what one of his lawyers said on television recently. I personally think it would be a very significant mistake.” Why not, right? It’s believable enough. After all, Trump fired James Comey as FBI director. Trump reportedly told top Russian diplomats in the Oval Office that pressure is now taken off after firing Comey. And here’s that lawyer interview Ruddy was referring to: But firing Mueller would be a political bomb in Washington. Mueller, the former FBI director, is widely respected on both sides of the aisle, something that’s pretty tough to do in Washington nowadays. Both Democrats and Republicans pushed back. House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff,  . said the move would have the unintended consequence of keeping Mueller in charge: Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. said the move would be a ”disaster” and, he added, ”There’s no reason to fire Mueller. What’s he done to be fired?” Sen. Susan Collins,   said it would be ”extraordinarily unwise.” House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . said Tuesday he had confidence in Mueller and that he should be left alone to conduct an independent investigation, NPR’s Susan Davis reports. ”These investigations are important,” Ryan said. ”They need to be independent. The need to be thorough. They need to go where the facts go. But we also have a duty to serve the people that elected us to fix the problems that they are confronting in their daily lives and that’s what we’re doing.” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,  . accused the media of ”creating a rumor that’s not happening.” The White House forcefully disputed Ruddy’s claims, saying he speaks for himself, not the president. ”Mr. Ruddy never spoke to the president regarding this issue,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said. ”With respect to this subject, only the president or his attorneys are authorized to comment.” Of course, neither of those statements is a denial that Trump is considering it. The move would be Nixonian. Trump himself does not have the authority to directly fire the special counsel. That would have to be done by the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, given that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from DOJ’s Russia investigation. Both Rosenstein and Sessions are testifying Tuesday on Capitol Hill. Rosenstein was asked about it and answered this way, ”You have my assurance that Director Muller will have the full degree of independence that he needs to conduct the investigation.” He added, ”I’m not going to follow any order unless I believe those are lawful and appropriate orders. Under the regulation, Special Counsel Mueller may be fired only for good cause, and I am required to put that cause in writing. That’s what I would do. If there were good cause, I would consider it. If there were not good cause, it wouldn’t matter to me what anybody says.” But both Rosenstein and Sessions serve at the pleasure of the president, and if Rosenstein refused to fire Mueller, in theory, Trump could appoint someone to Rosenstein’s job who would do his bidding, just as Nixon did after the infamous ”Saturday Night Massacre,” where Robert Bork (yes, that Robert Bork) carried out Nixon’s wishes. Ruddy issued a terse response directed at Spicer, but also admitted he didn’t speak to Trump personally about this. ”Spicer issued a bizarre late night press release that a) doesn’t deny my claim the President is considering firing Mueller and b) says I didn’t speak to the President about the matter  —   when I never claimed to have done so,” Ruddy told Politico Playbook and others in an email. ”Memo to Sean: focus your efforts on exposing the   Russian allegations against POTUS and highlighting his remarkable achievements! Don’t waste time trying to undermine one of your few allies.” The president himself got in on the act this morning, tweeting about ”fake news” and ”phony sources”: But Ruddy continued to double, triple and quadruple down Tuesday morning. On CSPAN: ”I have some good sources in the administration. I think it’s an accurate statement.” On CNN to anchor Chris Cuomo: ”I think it is a consideration the president has had, because Mueller is illegitimate as special counsel. Chris, remember there is no evidence of wrongdoing there’s no evidence of collusion there’s no evidence of obstruction. . .. The basis of his investigation is  .” CNN also reported, per an administration source, ”No one is recommending that,” but it ”hasn’t been ruled out.” 1. There has been a   effort to delegitimize Mueller. See, for example, Newt Gingrich’s changed tone. From a conservative radio talk show: ”I think Congress should now intervene and they should abolish the independent counsel, because Comey makes so clear that it’s the poison fruit of a deliberate manipulation by the FBI director leaking to the New York Times, deliberately set up this particular situation. It’s very sick.” On Twitter Monday, Gingrich said, ”Republicans are delusional if they think” Mueller ”is going to be fair” (Gingrich appears to be referring to donations to Democrats by some members of Mueller’s team, as reported on by CNN): Less than a month ago, he called Mueller a ”superb choice,” someone whose ”reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity.” And he’s not the only one: 2. Let’s not overthink this: Trump, his allies and his White House also just like to mess with the media and stir confusion among the public. They don’t mind stirring the pot to distract, deliberately provoke and disrupt. They have done it before: Think about how it floated the idea of Mueller’s potential conflicts of interest and remember those charges of Democratic ties to acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe? It’s all an effort to manufacture news cycles, create conflicts, distract from other pressing issues and raise questions about someone for a couple days. When it dies down, in the end, they hope they’ve succeeded in muddying up opponents."
"Drones could soon be dropping off packages at customers’ doors. But researchers in Sweden have drones in mind for a different, potentially lifesaving delivery: automated external defibrillators. Using drones to carry AEDs to people who are in cardiac arrest could reduce the time between when patients go into cardiac arrest and when they receive the first shock from an AED, the researchers say. The more time a person spends in cardiac arrest before being shocked with an AED, the lower the chance of survival. Shocking someone within three minutes gives them the best shot. More than 350, 000 cardiac arrests happen across the U. S. in places other than hospitals each year, according to the American Heart Association  —   and a person’s chance of surviving is about 1 in 10.   AEDs beat ambulance trip times to the scenes of cardiac arrests, the researchers say in a letter published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Michael Kurz, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of   and an American Heart Association volunteer, sees the potential for   drones to help save lives. He says this is the first time he has seen published data on the use of drones to deliver AEDs. ”This is a really neat, innovative method to combat a problem that we have been struggling with for decades,” says Kurz. ”It’s the same reason we have public access to defibrillation. Airports, casinos, large public venues have AEDs on the wall because presumably, it would take a while for EMS to get there. This is, like,   defibrillation on steroids, where we just bring the defibrillator to you.” The researchers used drones to deliver AEDs to places in a rural area of Sweden where people had gone into cardiac arrest between 2006 and 2014, says   Andreas Claesson, the letter’s lead author as well as a paramedic and registered nurse. In each of the 18 flights that the drones made, they beat the ambulance time. The median reduction in response time was about 16   minutes. And the median time from dispatch to drone launch was three seconds, while it took emergency medical services a median time of three minutes to hit the road. Claesson says the idea to use drones to drop off AEDs came from an analysis that showed some people in rural Sweden had to wait about half an hour for EMS to arrive on the scene of an    cardiac arrest situation, leading to a survival rate was 0 percent, which he calls ”catastrophic.” The team used geographic information system mapping to pinpoint locations that would be most effective for the test flights, Claesson says, and drafted predefined flight corridors that avoided flying over residents’ homes until the drones were about to land in yards. But more research needs to be done before we start seeing   drones touching down at cardiac arrest scenes. ”We know nothing about bystander interaction,” says Claesson. One of his concerns: Sending an AED via drone means that there won’t necessarily be a medical professional  . The typical cardiac arrest patient is a    man, he says, which means spouses  —   who may not be trained how to use an AED  —   would most likely be the ones using it in an emergency situation. But dispatchers could help coach people through the process of using an AED, Claesson says. ”We know that health care professional CPR is better than layman [CPR]. But we still believe that if we can deliver a defibrillator within five minutes, the proportion of people with shockable rhythms could be pretty high,” Claesson says. AEDs have simple enough instructions that allow just about anyone to figure out how to use them effectively, says Kurz, whose daughter has a congenital heart disease and is in fourth grade. He taught 400 of her classmates how to do CPR and use AEDs this year. ”They’re   so there’s a certain amount of corralling that has to occur, but yeah, they do great,” Kurz says. Are you as   as a  ? The Red Cross has a    guide to using an AED. Claesson is planning a   drone trial in Sweden next summer, when the local emergency medical services receive the most calls. Kurz says future studies should go beyond analyzing response times and also examine patient survival rates. ”Now the idea of doing this in real life with real patients, when minutes matter, can be demonstrated.”"
"Can eating insects help people survive a famine? Are there new ways to help farmers water their crops when drought strikes? Isn’t the basic hunger problem that there’s just not enough food to go around? Those are some of the tough questions that you submitted in April for our monthly #CuriousGoat series. We’d asked what you wanted to know about world hunger. You sent in so many good queries that we didn’t want to pick just one to answer, as we typically do. So here are some of the best  —   and our best answers. The questions have been edited for length and clarity. What’s the difference between hunger and famine? And why should we care about famines?  —   Anjala Illemassene, ”Hunger is a physiological sensation,” explains Tufts professor Daniel Maxwell, acting director of the university’s Feinstein International Center, based at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. It’s brought on by what is formally called ”food insecurity,” which is just another way of saying a lack of nutritious food on a regular basis. ”Famine is an extreme event leading to widespread death,” he says, and it’s typically about politics and violence, as much as it is about the overall availability of food. Hunger exists everywhere, although it’s more common in areas with high levels of poverty. For a situation to be officially declared a famine by the United Nations, hunger needs to be concentrated and catastrophic. As we explained in February, there’s a   scale used to rate food insecurity emergencies. To hit No. 5, which is ”famine,” here are the criteria: ”At least 1 in 5 households now faces an extreme lack of food, more than 30 percent of the population is suffering from acute malnutrition, and at least two people out of every 10, 000 are dying each day.” In the 20th century, Maxwell notes, famines killed nearly 75 million people  —   although outright starvation was often not the direct cause. Instead, people in famines die from cholera, measles or other nasty diseases because severe malnutrition leads to compromised immune systems, he says. Even people who manage to survive a famine are gravely affected, adds Stephen Were Omamo, deputy director of the World Food Programme. Severe malnutrition  —   which according to UNICEF affects an estimated 16 million children under the age of 5 worldwide  —   has health implications for life, particularly among kids affected during their first 1, 000 days. When does food aid work well, and when doesn’t it work?  —   Anna, It works best when people actually get it, and that’s not always so easy to pull off, says Tufts’ Maxwell, who’s   of the book, Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role. Beans, lentils and other staples are great, he says, unless they’re sitting in a warehouse, waiting to get boxed, shipped, trucked and who knows what else. The clunky transportation process can take months to coordinate. Now, though, food is often purchased and stored closer to where it’s needed, Maxwell says. But this approach can still be problematic, he says, if its distribution interferes with local markets. That’s why the new form of food aid that’s really taken off is money. Cash can be transmitted digitally rather than airdropped or shipped. ”It allows us to move much more quickly with a tailored response,” WFP’s Omamo says. Plus, buying power gives people the chance to pick and choose what they need, while generating economic activity. Omamo says   transfers  —   a term that includes all cash transfers and vouchers, both physical and digital  —   accounted for less than 1 percent of the food assistance WFP delivered in 2009. Now it’s close to 20 percent (with a value of about $1 billion a year). Can you address population growth in relation to hunger and famine?   —   Nadia G. To do that, we need to discuss Thomas Robert Malthus, an English economist and scholar born in 1766. One idea Malthus laid out in his most influential paper, ”An Essay on the Principle of Population,” was that the world population continues to grow exponentially, and the food supply can’t possibly keep up. If that’s true, any day now, we should have too little food for too many people. It’s a concept called the Malthusian theory of population. Although the theory has continued to circulate, it’s been disproved, Omamo of WFP says. Agricultural innovation has helped produce much more food than Malthus ever expected, and population growth is actually showing signs of slowing. ”The answer is not, ’More people bad,’ ” Omamo adds. ”There isn’t a direct link.” Consider the current state of the world: There are plenty of calories to sustain all 7. 5 billion of us, but they’r not distributed evenly. Hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry each night. That’s not to say Omamo isn’t worried about the future, and particularly the effects of climate change. If we don’t change how we use energy, Omamo says, hunger will become an even bigger challenge. There are some regions that cannot support the population that lives there. What’s the point in providing food aid to an unsustainable population?  —   Anonymous, We’re going to assume you meant drylands, or places without much water. There’s a major problem with writing them off, says Bilal Butt, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment in Ann Arbor. ”They’re almost half of the world’s surface area,” he says. They’re home to hundreds of millions of people, and have supported livestock and people for thousands of years. What’s more, Butt adds, drylands have generally been quite sustainable, especially for nomadic herders. That they move from place to place ”has been looked at as outdated and irrational,” Butt says. ”But it could not be further from the truth.” They must stay mobile to find forage and water because resources are distributed unevenly in drylands. Because of this strategy, they’re not continually degrading one patch of land by grazing on it. Over the years, nomadic groups have developed various strategies for survival in tough conditions, Butt says. One example he offers is from Kenya, where groups often keep a diverse group of livestock, each with separate feeding strategies. Cows eat differently than sheep, goats and camels, Butt says, so to have a mix is an adaptation to drylands. In most circumstances, at least some of your animals will find enough grub to survive. (Here is a fascinating story from Beef Magazine extolling the virtues of multispecies grazing.) This technique relies on widespread mobility, and being able to seek out new places to live. So as more land has been developed and taken away from grazing, and conservation areas have banned livestock, that’s limited options. That’s why, Butt says, it’s common to see livestock nibbling on grass in downtown Nairobi. The animals have been there much longer than the cars and buildings. The name of that city comes from the Maasai ”cold water,” he explains, because it’s historically been a place that the Maasai would water their livestock. The big problems arrive when a drought strikes, Butt says, and that’s when you’re likely to see images of crowded displaced persons or refugee camps, where people flee not only to escape conflict but also to find food and water during a drought. What you can’t tell from looking at their faces, Butt notes, is that they’ve often traveled from hundreds of miles away. ”It’s all too easy to dehumanize people in this process,” he adds. ”But they’re not careless, and unsustainably using the land.” Instead, they’re dealing with droughts that in recent years have increased in frequency and intensity. ”Then you ask yourself why,” Butt says. ”Some would speculate that this [increase in droughts] is a climate change signature. The people contributing the least to climate change are being affected the most.” What are some of the boldest, most sustainable ways help farmers water their crops in   areas?  —   Karen Teber  Pose this question to Robert Opp, director of the World Food Programme’s innovation division, and he’ll start talking enthusiastically about Styrofoam with holes poked into it and plastic trays. It may not sound like much. But use the holes to prop up plants, and let the roots soak in a   mix in those trays, and you’ve got a hydroponic garden. Opp believes the soilless technique has the potential to change how people cultivate crops, particularly in the developing world. ”You can grow food with 90 percent less water and 75 percent less space,” he says. WFP has sent starter hydroponic kits that cost $25 to urban households in Peru, where they face a number of the same constraints as people living in conflict zones. (Namely, no space.) And it’s been helping them grow leafy greens in about 4 to 6 weeks that they can serve to their families and sell to make money. Hydroponics are also being tested with a refugee population in Algeria that was displaced 40 years ago because of conflict in the Western Sahara. ”They didn’t want vegetables for themselves,” Opp explains, since that’s not typically a part of their diet. But they’ve grown barley shoots to feed their goats, which then produce milk for the people to consume. The latest twist is combining hydroponics with food computers, which are units about half the size of a dishwasher and that boast a completely controlled environment, including LED lighting and automated nutrient release. Basically, they allow researchers to create any climate imaginable. WFP has teamed up with MIT and other partners to test a bunch of these computers in Jordan and determine how playing with variables can translate into the highest yield possible for crops. Can eating insects help people during a famine?  —   Anonymous, On a small scale, the answer is yes, according to Patrick Durst, senior forestry officer for Asia and the Pacific at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In various times of famine, he says, people have hunted insects for sustenance. ”They are tough and can survive in harsh conditions. When crops die, there are still insects around that people are eating,” he says. They can be nutritious sources of protein and fat. And they can be delicious  —   hence, why edible insects are a ”preferred food” for many people around the world. So how about shipping giant bags of bugs to starving people in famines? Durst sees several potential hurdles to this idea. For starters, you’d need to produce a lot more bugs, and the recipients would have to want to eat them. Maybe that’d be more likely in the form of   flour, he says, which could be an extra nutritious alternative to the normal stuff. ”There’s no reason that can’t be part of the arsenal, but we have a long way to go,” says Durst, who explains that more research is needed into shelf life and allergic reactions. (Apparently, people who have shellfish allergies often have the same problems with insects.) Anyway, Durst is not saying we can’t use insects to fight famine worldwide. It’s just not likely anytime soon. Thank you to everyone who participated in this #CuriousGoat. Vicky Hallett is a freelance writer in Florence, Italy. She was previously a reporter and fitness columnist for The Washington Post."
"Panama has announced that it is cutting ties with Taiwan and instead establishing relations with China. The shift is a major win for China as it seeks to isolate Taiwan, which now has diplomatic relations with just 20 countries. China and Panama announced the move in a joint statement, saying it was in the ”interest and wishes of both peoples.” The two countries agreed to exchange ambassadors. ”The Government of the Republic of Panama recognizes that there is only one China in the world, the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing all of China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory,” the statement reads. ”Eleven of the 20 countries left that recognize Taiwan are in Latin America and the Caribbean,” NPR’s Carrie Kahn reported. Of the countries that still have ties, Panama has the largest economy. The Panama Canal is a crucial waterway for trade. NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing that Panama ”is emerging as a hub for China to ship its goods to South America, and Beijing has invested millions of dollars in infrastructure around the Panama Canal.” China considers Taiwan a breakaway territory, and relations between Beijing and Taipei have recently grown more tense. ”Beijing does not trust Taiwan’s President Tsai   whose party has traditionally taken a   stance,” Anthony says, ”so it has used investment and other incentives to lure away Taiwan’s diplomatic partners.” Taiwan is slamming the shift in ties. Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee called it ”most unfriendly” and said that Panama had been deceitful ”until the last moment,” according to the Taipei Times. Taiwan ”strongly protests and condemns Beijing for luring Panama to switch diplomatic ties, squeezing Taiwan’s space in the international community and hurting Taiwanese feelings,” Lee said. Other countries in the region with ties to Taiwan have issued little response. Guatemala declined to comment, Reuters reported. An official from Honduras, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the news service that the country intended to maintain ties. Ross Feingold, a senior adviser at D. C. International Advisory, tells The New York Times that Panama was one of Taiwan’s most important allies  —   and now, ”it is very possible that the remaining countries will switch.” These are the countries that Taiwan still has diplomatic relations with, according to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs:"
"A bipartisan group of senators has taken a step to limit the Trump administration’s ability to ease sanctions on Russia, adding an amendment to a widely supported Iran sanctions bill to make sure Congress has a say in future Russia policy. The Senate is considering the bill this week. The amendment ensures that Congress has time to review any plans by the Trump administration to relax, suspend or terminate sanctions  —   some of which were imposed after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatists in Eastern Ukraine, in a conflict that is ongoing. The Obama administration expanded sanctions in December 2016, after accusing the Russian government of meddling in U. S. elections and harassing American diplomats. With the Trump team now under scrutiny for contact with the Russians during the campaign, many lawmakers are worried that the White House is looking to ease up on that pressure. ”We think that is a fundamental policy shift for the United States that needs to be done in sunlight and therefore a review of Congress is urgent,” says Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. The amendment would also slap new sanctions on Russians involved in human rights violations, those supplying weapons to the Syrian government and those conducting ”malicious cyber activity on behalf of the Russian government.” A third part is aimed at helping countries in Central and Eastern Europe counter disinformation from Russia. ”We know that Russia is actively engaged in cyber attacks on democratic institutions. We experience it firsthand,” Cardin told a group of journalists Monday before announcing an agreement on the amendment with the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and colleagues from the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The amendment incorporates language from earlier bills the senators had introduced this year. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been trying to find areas of cooperation with Russia. He is sending a top State Department official, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, to St. Petersburg on June 23 to work through some ”irritants.” That includes the possibility of allowing Russia to regain access to compounds in New York and Maryland that the Obama administration seized last December, saying Russia was using the compounds for intelligence activities. ”We have a large place mat of difficult issues with Russia,” Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a budget hearing on Tuesday, explaining that he is trying to ”stabilize” relations.   Tillerson said the Trump administration’s talks with Russia about Syria are ”progressing in a positive way” and he argued that he does not want to close any channels to Russia at this time. However, he did not outline any progress that might pave the way for an easing of sanctions.  "
"NPR’s Robert Siegel speaks with Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent at Yahoo News, about the Trump administration’s efforts to ease Russia sanctions."
"The Food and Drug Administration has delayed the deadline for food companies to adopt a new Nutrition Facts label on food and beverage packages. A design for the new label was unveiled by Michelle Obama in 2014 at a White House event held on the anniversary of her campaign to fight obesity. The updated label highlights the calories in packaged food and drinks using a big font with bold lettering. It also labels added sugars. Originally, large companies had been given until July 2018 to comply with the new label, and at least one food giant, Mars Inc. has said it could be ready to meet that deadline. But several industry groups asked for more time. Now, in announcing an extension of the compliance date, the FDA issued this statement: ”The agency is mindful of the importance of balancing its mission of protecting public health with the practicalities of implementing the amended labeling requirements.” The Trump administration has also delayed the deadline for complying with a rule that requires chain restaurants to post calories and has eased   school lunch regulations as well. When the   delay was announced in May, Tom Price, Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said the FDA would aim to make the rule more flexible and less burdensome, while still providing useful information to consumers. But a   advocate applauded today’s decision. The ”decision by the Trump administration to delay a new round of food labeling mandates was the right decision,” Michelle Minton, a consumer policy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote in a statement. Minton added: ”Federal regulators were about to impose burdens on our nation’s food companies while making nutrition labels harder for consumers to interpret.” But consumer advocacy groups have been vocal in their disappointment. ”As with its delay of menu labeling, the FDA will end up denying consumers critical information they need to make healthy food choices in a timely manner and will throw the food industry into disarray,” writes Jim O’Hara of the Center for Science in the Public Interest."
"Updated at 3:12 p. m. ET, The first sentence of Yahoo’s Wikipedia page now reads, ”Yahoo! Inc. was an American multinational technology company.” Yahoo’s Internet properties officially became Verizon’s properties Tuesday, as the telecom giant finalized its $4. 5 billion acquisition. And Marissa Mayer officially became Yahoo’s last CEO. She is expected to receive a compensation package of more than $23 million as she exits the company, according to a regulatory filing. Although Mayer’s fate under Verizon was uncertain, her resignation was a frequently predicted outcome. The country’s largest wireless carrier got Yahoo and its more than 1 billion monthly users at a bargain price following years of turmoil at the Internet provider  —   high CEO turnover and uncertain direction, culminating in the disclosure (while the merger was pending) of massive data breaches that happened under Mayer. After the disclosure of the hacks, Verizon lowered its bid for Yahoo to $4. 5 billion from $4. 8 billion. (Yahoo’s biggest value is in its stakes in the Chinese online retail giant Alibaba and in Yahoo Japan, which will remain separate under a new brand called Altaba.) Taking over for Mayer will be former AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. Verizon has placed him at the helm of a new digital subsidiary, called Oath, that will house Yahoo’s brands together with the previously acquired AOL brands. These include HuffPost, TechCrunch, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail, Flickr and Tumblr, among others. ”Given the inherent changes to my role, I’ll be leaving the company,” Mayer wrote in a post on Tumblr on Tuesday, titled ”Nostalgia, Gratitude  Optimism.” In it, Mayer thanks Yahoo employees and lists various accomplishments in which she says Yahoo’s team ”rebuilt, reinvented, strengthened, and modernized” the company and its products. ”Looking back on my time at Yahoo, we have confronted seemingly insurmountable business challenges, along with many surprise twists and turns,” Mayer wrote, signing off with: ”  ! Marissa” Verizon and Oath confirmed Mayer’s departure in the last paragraph of Tuesday’s press release about the deal, ending with: ”Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors.” The purchase of Yahoo’s core Internet business is Verizon’s ongoing play to sprawl its   presence and break into the   market, where it could become a No. 3 to the dominant duo of Google and Facebook. ”Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners,” Armstrong said in a statement."
"ATT’s bid to buy Time Warner for a hefty $85. 4 billion has unleashed a flood of excitement on Wall Street, where analysts are now predicting a new wave of   in the media industry. The heated competition for our attention and for advertising dollars is increasingly pitting traditional media and entertainment stalwarts against Internet and telecom giants. And some media companies are once again seeking refuge in larger conglomerates. To wade through who owns what, we decided to build a chart that outlines some of the notable holdings of big media companies. This research, of course, will not cover everything. We stopped short of delving deep into the world of publishing, news and television broadcasting, where, for instance, News Corp. Hearst, Time and Gannett are big players. The chart also does not fully reflect the intertwined relationships within the industry: For example, Hearst is party to numerous joint ventures with Comcast, Disney and others. But it illustrates the changing dynamics of this influential industry, and begins to paint the picture of the sprawling properties of some of its biggest players. NPR researcher Ayda Pourasad contributed to this report."
"Updated at 1 p. m. ET, North Korea has released American college student Otto Warmbier, who is on his way back to the U. S. and won’t be forced to serve a   prison term, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Warmbier is in a coma, his father tells NPR. News of the University of Virginia student’s medical condition came on the heels of his release. Fred Warmbier tells NPR’s Emily Kopp that he’s been told his son has been in a coma since sometime after his sentencing in March of 2016. Fred and Cindy Warmbier tell the AP that Otto Warmbier is now on a medevac flight. ”We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime” in North Korea, the Warmbiers said in a statement quoted by the AP. Earlier Tuesday, Tillerson had provided only few details about Warmbier or the circumstances around his release. ”At the direction of the President, the Department of State has secured the release of Otto Warmbier from North Korea,” Tillerson said in a statement. ”Mr. Warmbier is en route to the United States, where he will be reunited with his family.” Later, Tillerson said at the start of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ”We have no comment on Mr. Warmbier’s condition, out of respect to him and the family.” Warmbier, 22, was freed more than a year after a North Korean court sentenced him to 15 years in prison and hard labor. Warmbier initially was detained in January 2016, accused of trying to steal a propaganda banner at his Pyongyang hotel. Tillerson added that discussions are still ongoing with North Korea ”regarding three other U. S. citizens reported detained.” The secretary said that out of ”respect for the privacy of Mr. Warmbier and his family, we have no further comment on Mr. Warmbier.” Warmbier was freed on the same day former NBA star Dennis Rodman landed in North Korea to visit its leader, Kim Jong Un. Rodman has said he practices ”basketball diplomacy” it is not clear whether he spoke on Warmbier’s behalf. If Warmbier had been able to return to the U. S. he would have graduated from college in May. Today, University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan released a statement saying that while the school’s ”community is relieved to learn of Otto’s release from North Korea, we are deeply concerned and saddened to learn from his family that he is in a coma.” Sullivan said, ”The UVA family will continue to keep the Warmbiers in our thoughts and prayers as Otto returns to the United States and his home where he will receive the care and support of those who love him.” During a tearful court appearance in February 2016, Warmbier apologized for his actions in North Korea. One month later, he was sentenced to prison. Warmbier has said he arrived in the country on Dec. 29, 2015, and was arrested Jan. 2, 2016, as he prepared to fly out of Pyongyang’s international airport. North Korean officials had accused Warmbier of subversion. As we reported, Warmbier was ”paraded in front of cameras and diplomats in Pyongyang, where he read a confession and public apology.” ”On camera, Warmbier said he stole the propaganda poster on behalf of a member of the Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio, who wanted it ’as a trophy.’ In exchange, he would receive a used car worth $10, 000.”"
"Updated at 10:22 a. m. ET, Former NBA player Dennis Rodman is now in North Korea, returning to the isolated nation to try to ”open a door” with leader Kim Jong Un, he told reporters before his flight departed from Beijing on Tuesday. ”I’m back!” Rodman said on Twitter, announcing his trip. Despite saying he is on a ”mission,” he did not provide details about his plans. Speaking to journalists and wearing a   for his sponsor, the marijuana banking service PotCoin. com, Rodman said he thinks President Trump is pleased with his visit to North Korea. ”Rodman is in the unusual position of being an acquaintance of both President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un,” NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports from Shanghai. He adds, ”Though Rodman appeared on Trump’s reality show and endorsed him for president, analysts don’t think he is acting as a back channel conduit between the two countries.” The trip comes at a time of heightened tensions between the U. S. and North Korea, which has conducted missile tests and detained four American citizens. One, Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was released Tuesday. The others are still in custody. Rodman said the detainees aren’t the reason he is traveling to see Kim. As NPR’s Elise Hu reports from Seoul, the U. S. State Department has issued several warnings advising Americans not to travel to North Korea. While the U. S. is aware of the current visit, Rodman is acting as a private citizen. Rodman is being accompanied by a small entourage: his agent, Chris Volo, and Joe Terwilliger, a geneticist who has taught in Pyongyang and who has said he serves as Rodman’s translator. Rodman, who won national titles with both the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons, has visited North Korea several times, including for a birthday celebration in 2014 in which he played basketball. As for the current trip, here is what Rodman said about his aspirations, in a video released just before he departed: ”Hopefully we come back with a positive attitude and hope that the door can be a little bit open. So give us luck and praise for doing what we’re doing.” Rodman added, ”I’ll discuss my mission when I return.”"
"As Virginia voters go to the polls Tuesday to pick their nominees for governor, President Trump has cast a shadow over both parties’ primaries in very different ways. In the much closer Democratic contest, both Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former U. S. Rep. Tom Perriello have tried to use anger against the president to motivate their voters in an   primary. On the airwaves, Northam has branded the president a ”narcissistic maniac,” while one of Perriello’s closing spots has talked about fighting ”tyranny” at home. On the Republican side, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie is the heavy favorite in a   contest, but he has faced a fight from the far right in staunch Trump ally Corey Stewart. The general election will be a closely watched affair as the first statewide competitive contest of the Trump era in a state that has been consistently trending blue. Bernie vs. Hillary redux?  Whoever wins the Democratic nomination on Tuesday could say a lot about the direction of the party. Initially, Northam looked like he would sail through the primary as the heir apparent to Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. (Virginia is the only state that limits its chief executive to one term.) But then Perriello, a   congressman who was swept in with President Barack Obama in 2008 and then promptly swept out two years later in the GOP wave, announced in January he was launching a surprise gubernatorial bid. The now   race has shades of the 2016 primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Perriello is touting his progressive credentials and has the support of the Vermont senator as well as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Meanwhile, Northam has the state’s Democratic establishment in his corner  —   McAuliffe and Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, the latter Clinton’s running mate last year. To Joshua Butler, 32, who came to a Perriello town hall in Leesburg last week, the candidate’s progressive credentials and   endorsers were critical. ”Anyone that both Sen. Warren and Bernie support, I’m all for,” Butler said. ”I believe that they are the change and the force that Democrats need moving forward, and anyone they support I believe is the right choice for the party.” But that isn’t enough for everyone. John Clisham, 53, came out to a Northam canvass kickoff on Saturday morning clad in a Bernie shirt. And even though the man he once supported in the presidential race is endorsing Perriello, he said he is still lining up behind Northam, citing his experience as lieutenant governor, his military service and his career as a pediatric neurologist. ”The party does seem to have two very distinct groups right now vying for people’s respect and ideas,” Clisham said. ”I have a lot of respect for Bernie Sanders and I love his politics. But I think in this race, for the state of Virginia, Ralph Northam is the better candidate.” A difference of style more than substance, While Perriello may have embraced the party’s progressive, populist mantle more than Northam, there are few gaps between the two when it comes to policy. But their style and approach to the campaign are distinct. The frenetic Perriello, 42, held a   marathon campaign blitz throughout the commonwealth at the end of last week, stopping in diners and gas stations and holding a fun run. The    Northam has stuck to the more traditional way of campaigning, emphasizing the deep support he enjoys from every statewide Democratic official and state legislator. He has heavily outspent Perriello on air in the closing stretch. Perriello’s campaign ads don’t just feature Sanders and Warren but also a clip of former President Obama campaigning for him in 2010. Obama has remained neutral in the race, but many of his former aides have lined up behind Perriello. Perriello once ran the Center for American Progress Action Fund and later went on to serve in Obama’s State Department. He also has the endorsement of Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, who worked with Perriello at CAP. The former congressman from Charlottesville made his   message a priority early on, and he told NPR that was a big reason why he decided to get in the contest. ”Leadership, in my mind, begins not when you take office, but with how you run your race. And we were very clear in stepping into this race that we were going to be that brick wall against Trump’s policies,” Perriello said in an interview. ”We didn’t see that from others who were in the race at the time or since. What we’ve seen is both identifying it ahead of time, being willing to step into that breach,” Perriello said, claiming early resistance to Trump’s proposed travel ban. Northam hasn’t minced words about Trump either, and in his most memorable television spot, after touting his support for gun control and how he fought a GOP push in the state Legislature to require transvaginal ultrasounds before abortions, the physician bluntly calls the president of the United States a ”narcissistic maniac.” ”He’s a dangerous man. I don’t like the direction that he’s taking this country,” Northam later told NPR. ”And so I think it’s fair to refer to him as a narcissist, because that’s what he is.” But while fierce criticism of the president has been a hallmark of his campaign, the lieutenant governor underscores he is stressing his experience in Richmond, arguing that has best prepared him for the job. ”I think if someone looks at my history of public service in Virginia, they will see that I have been unwavering in support of progressive Democratic values,” Northam argued. Party officials, and many Democratic voters, say that whoever wins, the emphasis should be on defeating the GOP nominee this November, with the goal of delivering a shock to the White House. ”I’m so hopeful that this state of Virginia shows up and sends a big message for all Americans” against Trump, said Barbara Jones, 58, an independent undecided voter. She said she was leaning toward voting for Northam in the Democratic primary but liked what she heard from Perriello at his town hall last week in Leesburg. Gillespie’s challenge this fall  Trying to convince voters like Jones that this race isn’t about Trump will be Gillespie’s biggest challenge  —   if he wins the primary on Tuesday night. The president certainly won’t be a plus for whomever the GOP nominates this fall. Trump’s approval among Virginians was at just 36 percent in an April Quinnipiac University Poll, and last November he lost the state by 6 points. But a primary challenge from the right has forced Gillespie into some uncomfortable territory as he would much rather look ahead to the general election. Stewart, the head of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, was a former Virginia   for Trump. And capitalizing on the recent trend where insider status isn’t a desirable label in GOP primaries, Stewart has tried to turn Gillespie’s stellar resume  —   former RNC chairman, former adviser to President George W. Bush,   2014 Senate nominee  —   against him. ”This is a guy who . .. doesn’t want to change anything he’s the establishment,” Stewart said at a Virginia Beach campaign event earlier this year. As NPR’s Sarah McCammon reported, Stewart has seized on a controversial and polarizing strategy to motivate his voters to go to the polls: ”Stewart, a former Trump campaign chairman, also draws frequently from Trump’s repertoire: giving opponents catchy nicknames (’Establishment Ed’ for Gillespie) and promising to ’crack down’ on illegal immigration and ’take back Virginia.’ The Minnesota native also is running on a theme of preserving Southern heritage, making multiple statements opposing the removal of Confederate monuments. And he is explicitly appealing to Trump supporters.” There’s been limited public polling of the race, but most predict Gillespie will easily dispatch Stewart and a third candidate, state Sen. Frank Wagner. Still, Stewart’s constant invocation of Trump and reliance on identity politics and nationalist ideas have forced Gillespie to walk a fine line. Ultimately, he hasn’t fully embraced or rebuked the president. ”As I travel Virginia, Virginians are very focused on Virginia,” he told NBC News in an interview last month. ”And I’m very focused on Virginia.” Pressed by NBC as to whether he would campaign with Trump, Gillespie also hedged and argued this was about state and local issues. ”Look, a lot of Virginians voted for President Trump. And a lot did not,” Gillespie said. ”This election’s about Virginia and the future of the commonwealth we love.” But unfortunately for Gillespie, the commonwealth is in the shadow of Washington, D. C. and the contest for Virginia governor is going to be the nation’s biggest race come November. It may give Democrats a sense of whether an   message can work in 2018  —   and whether Republicans will be forced to define their relationship with the president."
"A lot of people think of Sarah Bergmann as the ”Honeybee Lady,” and that really annoys her. It’s an attribution that might make sense at first glance, given that Bergmann is the celebrated creator of what’s called the Pollinator Pathway project. So, pollinators, honeybees  —   what’s the problem? Well, spend a little time with Bergmann and you’ll see that the issue she’s trying to address with the Pollinator Pathway is way bigger than honeybees and their current colony collapse disorder troubles. In fact, for Bergmann, the honeybees are actually part of a much bigger problem she’s trying to solve. And that much bigger problem is nothing less than how to design the planet in a   age. The basic idea of Bergmann’s Pollinator Pathway is to connect landscapes that have been broken up by human development. The goal is to allow pollinators to move as they need to, in order to do their good work. Bergmann, a designer by training, has won various kinds of attention for the Pollinator Pathway project, including a Genius Award from Seattle’s The Stranger magazine, as well as articles in Popular Science, GRIST and even an NPR story a few years back. But Bergmann has found that almost everyone she talks to misses the point of her work. The problem starts when people hear ”pollinator” and assume the project is about honeybees. But for Bergmann, honeybees aren’t the ones with the problem, they’re part of the problem. ”I don’t mean that to be an [deleted expletive],” she told Atlas Obscura magazine in a story about her work. ”The entire basis of my work is basically: Don’t save anything, and certainly don’t save the honeybee.” If that seems like a radical statement, that’s because Sarah Bergmann thinks on radically large scales. She believes we’ve got the environment and our place in it all wrong, especially in this dawning era of climate change. She told me: ”I made the Pollinator Pathway to bring about a shift in environmental imagination. I’m saying that we aren’t thinking big enough for the world we live in. It’s about thinking less like conservationists, and a lot more like designers. Moving away from ideas of restoration and conservation, and moving toward the idea that we are active participants in the design of the planet.” From Bergmann’s perspective, everything living designs the environment. ”We live in a designed world,” she explains. ”I mean this in the sense of the built world  —   everything from our sneakers to our highways and even our national parks  —   but also the design of all species.” She gives the example of how a beaver organizes not just the shape but also the behavior of the pond it inhabits. ”The design of other species also holds together the physical shape and behavior of the world,” she says. ”We are beneficiaries of this design.” So how does this relate to the honeybees? ”This is about connecting landscapes,” Bergmann explains. ”And what that really means is, plants.” Plants create the basic fabric of ecosystems that define different kinds of landscapes. And pollinators, for Bergmann, are just the sex life of plants. It’s at this point that Bergmann’s insights into the ”design” of the natural world really hit their stride. We may think of honeybees as nature’s pollinator extraordinaire but they are, in fact, anything but natural. ”Honeybees were part of a massive transformation of landscape now called the Columbian Exchange,” Bergmann says. From the 15th to 18th centuries, Europeans relocated animal and plant species around the world via trade and travel at an unprecedented rate in Earth’s history. That’s how honeybees got here. They were purposeful imports from Europe. Then they escaped and went feral into the landscape (they were called the white man’s fly by Native Americans). Remarkably, after a while people just thought of them as natural. But then the story shifts again. These days, almost all honeybees are working for Big Agriculture. Trucked in boxes with road trip ”pollen patty” food, they make their way across the country, stopping in different states as the agricultural season progresses. So for Bergmann, modern honeybees are part a wave of purposeful design. ”It was the global scaling up of agriculture,” she says. ”We designed a system that required an outside pollinator in order to produce food, because, by design, these landscapes [of Big Agriculture] have no biodiversity.” Pollination services, which are what the   honeybees provide, are a new industry that was born from the choices we were making about our land use. For Bergmann, these sprawling farms ”are economic landscapes, pared down to a handful of components that now make up our industrial food supply: seed, soil, water, fertilizer, pesticide, time  —   and now pollination services.” So while people began fretting for the honeybees after colony collapse disorder (CCD) hit the news, Bergmann’s larger point that honeybees are actually bit pollination players in most natural landscapes got lost. She says the bulk of pollination in the natural world is really being carried off by other kinds of bees as well as bats, butterflies, moths, flies, midges and more. And these are the pollinators she’s interested in building pathways for  —   because they’re ones that represent thriving and diverse ecosystems. And while huge monoculture industrial farms may provide much of our food right now, their species ”simplicity” is exactly their vulnerability (as the CCD illustrates). So from Bergmann’s perspective, thriving, diverse ecosystems are exactly what we need to ”design” into a future that includes a thriving biosphere with a big honking project of civilization in it. In the final analysis, Bergmann’s Pollinator Pathway is the ultimate ”think globally act locally” kind of project. A specific city might think about how to create specific corridors that allow natural pollinators to move through its domains and connect outer, fragmented ”natural” landscapes. But hiding within the project is a much deeper vision of how to understand the human future in the Anthropocene. The distinctions between natural and human landscapes will have to be redefined as our activity touches every aspect of the planet’s operation. It is in this way that we must come to understand how to make choices  —   how to design our interactions with the rest of the world to ensure that everyone and everything thrives. And that’s how Sarah Bergmann is on to something much bigger than honeybees. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"South Korea in recent years has become the hot place for beauty product innovation, and it is often called the cosmetic surgery capital of the world. By some estimates, South Korean women spend twice as much of their income on beauty products and grooming as American women  —   a figure that would be even higher if Korean beauty treatments weren’t so affordable. (Treatments like facials and eyelash extensions can run as low as a third the typical U. S. price.) One of the hot treatments for faces these days is pore vacuuming  —   also known as aqua peel facials  —   which I don’t want to describe too much. You can see for yourself."
"Updated at 9:55 a. m. ET on June 15, President Trump dismissed a potential obstruction of justice investigation into his conduct, calling allegations of collusion between him, his campaign or people associated with him and Russia a ”phony story.” Of course, it’s possible to obstruct justice without colluding. Trump was responding to a Washington Post report that special counsel Robert Mueller, who is overseeing the Department of Justice Russia investigation, is looking into whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice. An hour later, Trump was back at it, calling the investigation the ”single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history.” (People who followed McCarthyism closely might disagree.) The president also appeared to undermine Mueller’s leadership, saying the ”witch hunt” was being ”led by some very bad and conflicted people!” There has been an effort on the right to try to undermine Mueller to   his potential findings. ..: . .. even though some of the same people just a month earlier had been praising the former FBI director for his esteem: News of Mueller looking into potential obstruction comes after former FBI Director James Comey testified last week. He said he didn’t know if Trump obstructed justice, but said it was for Mueller to decide. Comey testified that he told the president he was not personally under investigation three times and confirmed that Trump was not under investigation at the time of his firing on May 9. But, ”Officials say that changed shortly after Comey’s firing,” the Post reports. It stands to reason that the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing would now be at the center of Mueller’s query. That’s particularly the case since other   administration officials have declined under oath in open testimony to provide more details about whether Trump asked them in any way to influence Comey or the investigation. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers and Rogers’ former deputy, Richard Ledgett, agreed to be interviewed as part of Mueller’s investigation, according to five people ”briefed on the requests” who were ”not authorized to discuss the matter publicly,” the paper reports. Officially, Mueller spokesman Peter Carr told NPR’s Carrie Johnson, ”We’ll decline to comment.” NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told NPR’s Phil Ewing, ”NSA will fully cooperate with the special counsel. We are not in a position to comment further.” A spokesman for Trump’s personal lawyer in the Russia matter, Marc Kasowitz, said, ”The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal.” Comey’s firing is a ”central moment that’s being looked at” in the investigation, Post reporter Devlin Barrett told NPR’s Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered, ”but it’s not the only thing.” Investigators are also considering the conversations Comey and the president had leading up to that point. In his testimony on June 8, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he believed Trump had fired him over his role as lead of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the U. S. election and Trump campaign associates’ possible ties to Russia. The White House has been inconsistent with its public messaging about the dismissal  —   initially saying Trump took the recommendations of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about Comey’s management of the FBI and his handling of the Clinton email investigation. But then the president himself said he had made up his mind prior to receiving the recommendations from the two top lawyers at the Department of Justice. Comey testified that initial explanations that he was fired because of poor leadership were ”lies, plain and simple.” He also said Trump had privately urged him to pull back on the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn  —   a claim that the president has denied. Comey said he declined to tell agents working on the case about his conversation with Trump to shield them. The Washington Post previously reported that Trump also asked Rogers and Coats to push back against the FBI’s investigation. The intelligence chiefs declined to discuss their private conversations with Trump during a Senate panel hearing on June 7. Asked whether Trump’s actions rose to the level of obstruction of justice, Comey testified last week: ”I don’t know. That’s Bob Mueller’s job to sort that out.” But Comey did lay out facts that a prosecutor could use to try to prove obstruction. Trump and his supporters cast Comey’s testimony that he had told the president he was not personally under investigation as vindication. Trump disputed, though, Comey’s assertion he had asked for a pledge of loyalty. After Comey’s   Senate testimony, the president said in a press conference that he would testify under oath regarding his interactions and conversations with the former FBI director. ”I think, frankly, our story shows that the president is by no means out of the woods as far as the investigation goes,” the Post’s Barrett told NPR. Chatter surfaced earlier this week that the president was considering firing Mueller. After a day of speculation, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, ”While the president has the right to, he has no intention to do so.” The New York Times reported that Trump had been waved off the idea by advisers. Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller on May 17, testified on Tuesday that he would not fire the special counsel without ”good cause.” Trump is not the only one under scrutiny, Barrett said: Investigators are also looking into the finances of Trump associates. ”Oftentimes what happens, frankly, in counterintelligence investigations is you start looking at sort of a core intelligence question  —   What did the Russians do and did they do it with any Americans?  —   and it grows into: What did any of those Americans do in their financial matters that may also raise alarms with the FBI?” Barrett said. Mueller’s investigative team has expanded in recent weeks. The National Law Journal reported on June 9 that Mueller has brought Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben onto the team on a   basis. Reporter Tony Mauro noted the addition of Dreeben may signal that ”Mueller may be seeking advice on complex areas of criminal law, including what constitutes obstruction of justice.” At the end of May, the chief of the Justice Department’s Fraud Section, Andrew Weissman, also joined the team, NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported at the time. Justice Department policy is that a sitting president cannot be indicted by a grand jury, the Post also reported Wednesday. Any findings by the department’s investigation would be referred to Congress, where lawmakers would determine whether to impeach the president."
"The violence that struck a ballfield in Alexandria, Va. on Wednesday abruptly plunged what had been a routine start to the day in the Del Ray neighborhood into chaos. Residents were focused on morning workouts and getting coffee a congressional contingent had driven over for an early baseball practice. But then the shooting started, and they all scrambled for cover. Here’s how witnesses  —   from members of Congress to a passerby  —   describe the attack, in conversations with Morning Edition and with NPR’s Jessica Taylor, who spent the day reporting from the scene of the attack. About 25 people had gathered for the Republican team’s practice for an annual charity game, scheduled for Thursday night. The shooting began around 7 a. m. When the gunman opened fire, resident Katie Filous was walking her dogs on the sidewalk next to the baseball field and a YMCA. Here is what Filous recalls: ”Somebody from the baseball team starting screaming, and I heard really, really loud pops very close to me. So I started crying and laid flat on the ground with my dogs. And [some of] the baseball team was huddled behind a large tree that was maybe 10 feet from me. ”And we all laid flat, and the pops got louder  —   so I think the shooter was coming across the baseball field towards everyone. And this security person stepped out of a Suburban and had a handgun and yelled, ’Drop your weapon!’ And the person shot that guard, and he or she fell in front of us.” The security contingent was there because of who was practicing this morning: House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was working with his fellow Republicans to sharpen their batting and fielding. Scalise was among five people who were sent to the hospital. Sen. Jeff Flake,  . says: ”Scalise was playing second base, his position, and all of a sudden we heard a loud  —   what sounded like a gunshot, very loud and very close. But we weren’t certain until the second one a few seconds later, and then just a full rally. And it was clear that there was a gunman. ”We dove for the dugout, those of us who were on the field still. And Steve Scalise went down  —   and dragged himself off of the infield into the outfield, about 10 or 15 yards, and was laying motionless out there. But there was gunfire going overhead, so I couldn’t get out there. Another staff member with a leg wound who was shot in the field made it to the dugout . .. and we . .. got a belt and put pressure on his wound. ”I got a look at the gunman behind the backstop, and he had a line of sight into our dugout. I feared he was going to start firing into the dugout.” When the baseball field became the scene of a gunbattle, a member of the U. S. Capitol Police was using the dugout as cover, behind which to fire at the gunman, Flake said. At some point, Flake says, it seemed that the shooter dropped his rifle and began using a handgun. And sometime after that, the assault on the congressional team ended. ”So we finally got  —   somebody said that the gunman was down. And that’s when I ran out to Steve and applied pressure on the wound,” Flake said. He added that Scalise was bleeding ”quite a bit.” James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Ill. the man who officials say carried out the attack, was wounded in the fight and later died. No other deaths have been reported from the shooting. Scalise was shot in his hip and underwent surgery as of Wednesday afternoon, he was listed as being in critical condition. Photographer Marty LaVor was a witness to the shooting. The    from nearby Mount Vernon says he has been photographing the annual charity baseball game for more than 30 years. He was watching practice, LaVor said, when ”I happened to look over, I saw the gunman, white male, behind a   fence, behind third base.” LaVor says that at first, the sight left him confused: ”He picked up the rifle, and so I saw the rifle, and the thought that ran through my mind . .. because it was so out of context, why would anybody have a rifle there? And, what ran through my mind was, ’Why would anybody be trying to shoot birds at six o’clock in the morning?’ ”And then, of course, it started. But I didn’t take a picture of him and I heard somebody yell ’Get in the dugout!’ And, the gunfire rang out. There was a clip with at least eight shots. So, that went off and I thought it was over.” Someone yelled to get in the dugout  —   and LaVor dove for cover. Telling the story later, his pants were still scuffed and muddy and his elbows were scratched and bandaged. ”I went in and I landed on a congressman, who I don’t know who it was, and that probably saved my fall from breaking something,” he said. After the first burst of gunfire, LaVor said, ”Then there was silence, I thought it was over.” ”I started to look up and somebody in the dugout  —   I don’t know who it was  —   saved my life because he said, ’Get down!’ and ’Get next to the wall’ because as I understand . .. apparently, a bullet came into the dugout and took out some cinder block.” Witnesses have estimated that anywhere from 50 to 100 shots were fired on the baseball field. Many have credited the U. S. Capitol Police for effectively engaging with the gunman, using their pistols against his rifle  —   a decidedly uneven matchup across a wide open space. When the federal officers first began firing, those in the dugout weren’t certain whether there was more than one shooter, Rep. Mo Brooks,  . said. After initially being trapped behind the backstop, Brooks had run over to the   dugout, where others had sought cover. They attended to a wounded staff member who had been shot in the leg, he said, and then laid back down in the dugout. Shortly afterward, Brooks said, he heard ”loud explosions and I look up and there is a guy with a gun about 5 feet above me, shooting  —   and at first you don’t know if that’s a second shooter, but it turned out to be one of our guys.” The officer, he said, was ”shooting back, risking themselves, giving us protection. When I say risking themselves, I mean, they’re shooting   feet away. One guy’s got a rifle, and you’ve got a pistol. That’s not a fair fight.” The Capitol Police were directing their fire at the opposite dugout, over by third base, Brooks said. He added, ”At some point or another, he goes around the third base dugout towards home plate, where he is taken down.” Throughout the early moments of the shooting, the feeling in the dugout was one of ”helplessness,” Brooks said: ”When you’ve got a baseball bat and the guy’s got a rifle. And you see your friends, Steve Scalise in particular, lying on the ground dragging himself from the infield dirt to the outfield grass while there’s nothing we can do to help. That’s, a long lasting impression I’ll always have. . .. ”But, the second impression would be the bravery that they displayed taking on a guy with a rifle, while they have pistols shooting from long distance. And if they if they had not been successful, then the tragedy here would undoubtedly have been much greater because those of us who are in the first base dugout, we’d [have] no chance.” Saying that the Republicans’ baseball team has ”been practicing here for years,” Flake said that if Scalise hadn’t come to Wednesday morning’s workout, ”there would not have been any detail at all.” The charity baseball game against congressional Democrats will go ahead as planned Thursday night, Rep. Eric Swalwell,  . said Wednesday. ”We will play for charity, but also for the victims and the heroic officers who took down the shooter,” he said via Twitter."
"Updated at 9:36 p. m. ET, A shooting Wednesday morning at a baseball field in Alexandria, Va. left the    member of the House of Representatives lying at the edge of the outfield with a gun wound to his hip. The shooter has died, President Trump announced. Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, headed into surgery at a hospital in Washington at 10 a. m. according to a statement from his office. He remained ”in critical condition” as of 8:15 p. m. according to a statement from the hospital, following a surgery and multiple blood transfusions, with more operations to come. The bullet that struck his left hip traveled across his pelvis, ”fracturing bones, injuring internal organs, and causing severe bleeding,” the hospital said. When the shooting started earlier that morning, he was playing second base, his normal position on the congressional baseball team. ”All of a sudden, we heard a loud, what sounded like a gunshot, very loud and very close,” Sen. Jeff Flake,  . told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”[Scalise] went down and dragged himself off of the infield into the outfield about 10 or 15 yards and was laying motionless out there.” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a doctor, plays on the team and was among the first out to Scalise to apply pressure to the wound, according to CNN. Capitol Police were also on hand because Scalise was present, NPR’s Scott Horsley reports, and exchanged gunfire with the suspect. Two officers were wounded, and lawmakers and the president said the outcome would have been worse if they were not there. At a press conference Wednesday morning, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was ”visibly emotional,” according to The Washington Post: ”Asked about Scalise, McCarthy started to well up. ” ’I’ve known Steve since Young Republicans. Long before we ever served in the House,’ he said before walking away.” Scalise is married and has two children. According to his office, he spoke to his wife by phone before going into surgery. A highly popular politician in Louisiana, Scalise, 51, represents the state’s 1st Congressional District. He was elected in 2008 in a special election to replace Bobby Jindal, who had just been elected governor. Since then, Scalise has always gotten more than 65 percent of the vote in primaries, avoiding runoff elections, the New Orleans   has reported. In November, he garnered 75 percent of the votes in his district. The former systems engineer got his start in politics at Louisiana State University, where he was twice elected speaker of LSU’s Student Government Association. He served as a member of Louisiana’s state Legislature for 12 years before being elected to the U. S. House. The turning point in his career was a 2012 win that made him chairman of the influential Republican Study Group. He beat Rep. Tom Graves,  . who had been unanimously recommended by the group’s founders prior to the election. After his victory, Scalise told reporters that his goal would be to pull Republican leadership ”as far to the right” as possible. ”There are going to be times when we disagree with our leadership, but ultimately, we’ve got to work hard to pull our leadership to the right,” Scalise said, according to The Hill, ”and to move a conservative agenda forward and unite as conservatives if we’re going to get things done.” Two years later, he won the race for the House majority’s   position. Scalise ran for majority whip against Peter Roskam of Illinois and Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, after the former whip, McCarthy, was elected majority leader. ”Scalise was the more conservative voice many members have been clamoring for and he’s from a red state,” NPR’s Ailsa Chang reported at the time. Right around the same time, the congressman came under scrutiny when it was revealed he may have inadvertently spoken at an event organized by a white supremacist group when he was a state representative. ”I didn’t know who all of these groups were and I detest any kind of hate group,” he told the New Orleans   at the time. ”At the end of the day, you are judged by your character. And look, I’m proud of my record of working to help people throughout my years of public service.” Louisiana has gone for the Republican presidential candidate every election since 2000. Even so, Scalise wasn’t an early endorser of Trump last year. Once he committed, however, he stayed that way even as negative press rained down on Trump in the months leading up to the election."
"Updated at 10:15 p. m. ET, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana has undergone surgery and will need further operations, after being shot by a man who opened fire with a rifle on an early morning baseball practice for Republican members of Congress in Alexandria, Va. Scalise was the most seriously injured of four victims of the shootings. The suspect was fatally wounded during a gun battle with law enforcement, including a U. S. Capitol Police officer who had been shot. MedStar Washington Hospital Center issued a statement Wednesday night about Scalise’s condition: ”Congressman Steve Scalise sustained a single rifle shot to the left hip. The bullet travelled across his pelvis, fracturing bones, injuring internal organs, and causing severe bleeding. He was transported in shock to MedStar Washington Hospital Center, a Level I Trauma Center. He underwent immediate surgery, and an additional procedure to stop bleeding. He has received multiple units of blood transfusion. His condition is critical, and he will require additional operations. We will provide periodic updates.” President Trump and Melania Trump visited the hospital Wednesday evening, bringing bouquets of flowers. Trump later tweeted: ”Just left hospital. Rep. Steve Scalise, one of the truly great people, is in very tough shape   but he is a real fighter. Pray for Steve!” White House press secretary Sean Spicer says the Trumps met with Scalise’s wife Jennifer at the congressman’s bedside, and with his doctors. He says they also visited wounded U. S. Capitol Police officer Crystal Griner and her wife. The Trumps gave flowers to both families. In an evening press conference, FBI Special Agent Tim Slater said investigators believe the shooting suspect had been living out of his van and had been in the area since March. Slater identified the him as James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Ill. Hodgkinson, 66, was taken into custody at the scene of the shooting and transported to a hospital ”where he succumbed to his injuries.” The FBI said it was not currently looking for other suspects, though Slater cautioned that he does not know where the investigation will lead. ”We hope to answer motive, and why he was here, and why he did what he did,” said Slater. FBI agents are searching Hodgkinson’s home in Illinois, he said. The suspect’s vehicle was located on site and was swept by the Alexandria Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ”Obviously we are looking to glean what we can from the contents of his [electronic] devices,” said Slater. He said that they also hoped to learn where the suspect’s handgun and rifle had come from, and who had purchased them. Hodgkinson was a member of several online groups that took stances against Republicans and the president, the Belleville   reports. Those hit with gunfire in the incident Wednesday morning were: Scalise, Griner, congressional staffer Zachary Barth, Tyson Foods lobbyist Matt Mika, and the gunman. Rep. Roger Williams of Texas and Special Agent David Bailey of the U. S. Capitol Police sustained minor secondary injuries. Griner was shot in the ankle, and is in good condition in the hospital, according to the U. S. Capitol Police. Capitol Police officers are being widely praised for helping to stop the attack. ”Many lives would have been lost if not for the heroic actions of the two Capitol Police officers, who took down the gunman despite sustaining gunshot wounds during a very, very brutal assault,” President Trump said shortly before noon. The shooting occurred around 7 a. m. ET in the Del Ray area of Alexandria, just south of Washington, D. C. about 8 miles from Capitol Hill. A helicopter arrived to medevac at least one victim. The FBI has taken over the investigation because the attack involved violence against a federal official. The FBI is ”exploring all angles” in the case, Slater said, responding to a question about whether the attack was an act of terrorism. Federal investigators are conducting emergency traces on the two firearms, an ATF spokesman tells NPR’s Carrie Johnson. In the wake of the shooting, the House of Representatives canceled legislative business for the day, and security was increased around the White House. A public event that had been scheduled by Trump at the Labor Department on Wednesday afternoon was canceled. ”Prior to entering surgery, the Whip was in good spirits and spoke to his wife by phone,” Scalise’s office said in a statement. ”He is grateful for the brave actions of U. S. Capitol Police, first responders, and colleagues.” The shooter opened fire at a baseball field at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park, across the parking lot from Alexandria’s YMCA. Gunshots hit the YMCA’s windows, and the building was shut down and the block cordoned off, NPR’s Tom Bowman reported from the scene. After receiving a call of shots fired at 7:09 a. m. officers arrived within three minutes, Alexandria Police Chief Mike Brown said. By 7:14 a. m. the FBI says ”the subject was engaged by law enforcement and shot.” At least two officers fired at the gunman, Brown added. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who was at the practice, told CNN that the gunman was holding what he described as a   rifle in the area behind third base and that Scalise had been near second base. Brooks told CNN that he tried to help Scalise, saying, ”We used my belt to help put a tourniquet around his leg.” Two Capitol Police officers showed ”incredible bravery,” Brooks said, describing how they used their pistols to engage in a gun battle with a man armed with a rifle, from a distance of 90 to 120 feet. Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico, who was at the practice but unharmed, tweeted prayers for the victims. A local resident who posted a video of the scene after the shooting said, ”There were probably about 80 to 100 shots fired over there.” That resident, Benjamin Childers, added, ”We had three members of Congress [who] took shelter in our apartment.” Trump had issued a statement earlier: ”The Vice President and I are aware of the shooting incident in Virginia and are monitoring developments closely. We are deeply saddened by this tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the members of Congress, their staffs, Capitol Police, first responders, and all others affected.” The shooting occurred the day before the Republican team is scheduled to play in the annual Congressional Baseball Game at Nationals Park. Pitting members of one party against another, the contest supports charities ranging from the Boys and Girls Clubs to the Washington Literacy Center. Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said on Twitter that Thursday’s game is still on. Members of the Democratic Party’s team were practicing elsewhere Wednesday morning after the attack, they tweeted a photo of themselves taking a moment to think of their colleagues. The violence disrupted what had been a quiet start to the day in Del Ray, hitting an area where many residents go to work out in the mornings and grab a coffee from a shop around the corner from the YMCA. As NPR’s Jessica Taylor reports from the neighborhood: ”This is people going about their normal mornings, probably not even knowing that there were members of Congress that were practicing a few blocks down the road here. And it just went from really sort of a calm, peaceful morning to utter chaos in here.” This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"There’s nothing that quite says summer like baseball. A baseball field is a sanctuary for millions of boys and girls, moms and dads. From the working class to the white collar, from the Marine to the congressman, America’s pastime has been a respite from the    grind for generations. That’s why Wednesday’s shooting at a congressional baseball practice in a placid neighborhood in a Virginia suburb of Washington was so shocking. ”We were upbeat, getting ready for a game,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup,   told NBC, ”and then something like this happens, and you can’t believe it.” Washington in recent years has been marred by acrimony and partisanship. And members of Congress have increasingly faced threats and hostility. There are few bipartisan traditions that have survived, but the Congressional Baseball Game is one of them. Its peace and civility was shattered Wednesday morning when a gunman opened fire with what one witness described as a semiautomatic weapon in a local park on a warm sunny day, hitting Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise and four others at the Republicans’ practice the day before the big game. The game is still on, scheduled to be played Thursday at Nationals Park. NPR’s Susan Davis reports, per Rep. Martha McSally,  . that when it was announced that the game would go on, it was met with cheers and applause. Many outside Washington might be surprised that the game is even played, given the rancor and discontent that seems to define the political arena. But the game is more than a century old the teams practice separately in the early mornings and come together to square off every year to raise money for charity. Here’s a little bit of the history:   game has been happening since 1909.  ’s game will be a tiebreaker between the two teams. Each side has won 39, lost 39 and tied once. (It’s the 57th annual game, but in some years multiple games were played.)   idea is ”Senate and House members of each party team up to settle scores and solidify friendships off the floor and on the field,” the Congressional Baseball Game’s website notes.   year’s charities are the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, the Washington Literacy Center and the Nationals Dream Foundation, which supports academic, arts, nutrition and sports initiatives for Washington area youth. The game has raised as much as $500, 000 in the past.   game hasn’t happened every year. For a while, it was occurring biennially, and sometimes leaders complained it was getting in the way of legislative business.   1958, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, for whom there’s now a congressional building named, ended the game. He thought it had become ”too physical.”   1962, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call picked up sponsorship of the game and began awarding a trophy for a   series. That series was played 10 times Republicans won eight of them.   recent years, Democrats have had more success, mostly because of one person  ” Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond. Richmond, who played college baseball at Morehouse, had been dominant until last year’s game. Republicans broke a   losing streak to Democrats in 2016. Richmond is now 43 and has had shoulder surgery. Before last year’s game, where he gave up six runs in six innings, he was   with 45 strikeouts in just 27 innings work. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the coach of the GOP team, called Richmond ”the best player, in my opinion, who’s ever played in the game.”   Richmond, Steve Largent dominated the congressional baseball scene. The Republican was a former wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks. He joined Congress in 1994, went   with a 2. 44   average in his starts, leading Republicans to five wins in seven years. He left Congress to run for governor and was inducted into the Roll Call Congressional Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002.   won’t be the first time the game was played after a tragedy, though nothing has touched the game this closely. Last year, Democrats wore rainbow wristbands for the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting. There are already suggestions on Twitter for how to change up the game to maybe make it an even less partisan affair:"
"Updated at 4:45 p. m. ET, The FBI says the man who opened fire on a group of Republican members of Congress on Wednesday is    James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Ill. who was shot by police and later died at a hospital. The alleged shooter expressed fervent opposition to the Republican Party and called for higher taxes on the rich, in statements on social media and letters to a local newspaper. He apparently volunteered for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to the Vermont senator, who condemned the attack. Early on Wednesday, witnesses say, a man armed with a rifle opened fire on a group of Republican members of Congress practicing for a baseball game in Alexandria, Va. Four victims were transferred to the hospital with gunshot injuries: Majority Whip Steve Scalise,  . a congressional staffer, a lobbyist and a Capitol Police officer. Another congressman and a second police officer also suffered minor injuries. The FBI says it is actively investigating Hodgkinson’s ”associates, whereabouts, social media impressions, and potential motivations.” Hodgkinson owned a home inspection business in Belleville, Ill. but dissolved the corporation early this year, according to public records. Sanders said Wednesday that he had been informed that ”the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign.” The senator said he was ”sickened by this despicable act” and condemned it ”in the strongest possible terms.” Two   Facebook accounts under the name of James Hodgkinson and purporting to be located in Belleville, Ill. were full of posts supporting Sanders and opposing President Trump. ”Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump  Co. ,” one of the pages posted in March. That post linked to a petition calling for Trump’s impeachment ”and or legal removal.” The account called Sanders ”a Candidate of a Lifetime” while expressing distrust of Hillary Clinton. ”Make America Great Again, Resign!” the other account posted in June, with a photo of Trump. The Belleville   a newspaper in his hometown, said Hodgkinson was politically vocal in person, as well as online: ”In 2012, Hodgkinson took part in a protest outside the downtown Belleville post office. He said he was part of a ’99%’ team drawing attention to the amount of money and political power the top 1 percent of Americans acquired.” Hodgkinson also appears to have written letters to the   for several years. A resident by his name wrote repeated letters to the editor, often arguing in favor of raising taxes on the rich. ”We need to vote all Republicans out of office,” said a letter in 2011. ”Let’s work to get this country back.” ”This country is in need of a major change in more ways than one, but let’s start with the federal income tax rates,” said a 2008 letter. A real estate agent who has worked with Hodgkinson told the   that ”from a business standpoint, he did not seem like he is a radical  —   opinionated but not a radical.” ”He wasn’t obnoxious, he wasn’t problematic,” Charlene Brennan said. ”When he did home inspections for me, he didn’t rile up the buyers or make ridiculous statements.” Law enforcement records show that Hodgkinson had been arrested on suspicion of battery and motor vehicle damage, among other arrests. In 2006, he was arrested for battery after allegedly punching a young woman in the face and striking and choking another individual. In the same incident, he fired a shotgun. Charges in that case were dismissed. Hodgkinson was still in Illinois as recently as March, when the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department responded to a ”shots fired” call and found Hodgkinson shooting a hunting rifle. He had a valid firearms owner identification card, and the deputies advised him to shoot his weapon safely. But he has been in Northern Virginia since early April, according to The Washington Post. A bar manager at a restaurant in Alexandria told the newspaper that Hodgkinson visited repeatedly and seemed like ”not a friendly person” but did not discuss politics or why he was in Alexandria. The former mayor of Alexandria, Bill Euille, told the Post he had spent the last month and a half talking to Hodgkinson nearly every morning. Euille worked out at the local YMCA (next to the baseball field that was the site of the attack) and realized Hodgkinson, who was showering at the Y every morning, was living out of his gym bag. Euille, a general contractor, even tried to help Hodgkinson get a job, The Post reports. After the attack on Wednesday, The St. Louis   sent a reporter to Hodgkinson’s house. Neighbors ”indicated the man had been gone from the house for several months,” the paper reports. ”One said, in reference to the suspect’s wife: ’She’s got enough problems.’ ” This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"Updated at 1:20 p. m. ET  Members of the protective detail for Rep. Steve Scalise,  . are being hailed as heroes Wednesday, shining a spotlight on the   police force that guards the Capitol and prominent members of Congress. If not for the presence of the U. S. Capitol Police officers, authorities say, the toll could have been much worse when a heavily armed gunman opened fire at a congressional baseball practice just outside Washington early Wednesday. ”Had they not been there, it would have been a massacre,” Sen. Rand Paul,  . told MSNBC. Although the practice was taking place in Alexandria, Va. across the Potomac River from the Capitol, police were on hand to protect Rep. Scalise, the majority whip and No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives. ”I’m sure it made a significant difference,” said Tim Slater, the FBI agent overseeing the investigation. Authorities say two members of the Capitol Police force, Special Agent Crystal Griner and Special Agent David Bailey, returned fire with the gunman before local police arrived shortly after 7 a. m. ”Many lives would have been lost if not for the heroic actions of the two Capitol Police officers who took down the gunman despite sustaining gunshot wounds during a very, very brutal assault,” said President Trump. ”Our brave Capitol Police perform a challenging job with incredible skill, and their sacrifice makes democracy possible.” The two wounded officers are in good condition and expected to make a rapid recovery, according to Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa. ”Suffice it to say that our officers acted, I believe, heroically today,” Verderosa said. The security service for the U. S. Capitol began with a single watchman when Congress first moved to Washington from Philadelphia in 1800. The force was expanded and formalized in 1828 after a series of incidents, including an assault on the son of President John Quincy Adams in the Capitol Rotunda. Today, the Capitol Police force employs more than 1, 700 officers who patrol the Capitol grounds and provide protective services to top lawmakers and their families. Two Capitol Police officers have been killed in the line of duty. Officer Jacob Chestnut and Detective John Gibson were shot to death on July 24, 1998. Chestnut was staffing a checkpoint at a Capitol entrance when Russell Eugene Weston, Jr. burst in and began shooting. Gibson was part of the protective detail for Rep. Tom DeLay,   who was majority whip at the time, the same post now held by Scalise. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,  . praised the members of Scalise’s security detail, saying they helped to draw fire away from the baseball dugout where most of the lawmakers were located. ”Those two Capitol Police are amazing individuals,” McCarthy said."
"Sen. Bernie Sanders, who led a progressive,   populist effort that very nearly won him the Democratic presidential nomination, condemned the shooting Wednesday at a congressional baseball practice  —   and acknowledged the suspect was apparently a supporter of his campaign. ”I have just been informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign,” the Vermont independent said in brief remarks on the Senate floor. ”I am sickened by this despicable act. Let me be as clear as I can be  —   violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society, and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs counter to our most deeply held American values.” He continued, wishing for the speedy recovery of Republican Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, congressional staffers and Capitol Police Officers who were shot. Scalise and others were practicing in a quiet Washington suburb for Thursday’s Congressional Baseball Game that pits Democrats against Republicans. The alleged shooter  —   identified by two federal law enforcement sources as James Hodgkinson, 66, of Belleville, Ill.  —   is dead. He was strongly   according to various reports. Trump responded to the incident, calling for calm: ”We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember that everyone who serves in our nation’s capital is here because, above all, they love our country.” Rhetoric during the 2016 presidential campaign, though, was hyperbolic on both extremes. There was notable online harassment from   ”Bernie Bros,” and Trump himself got Secret Service attention when he said this at a rally about Hillary Clinton: ”If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people  —   maybe there is, I don’t know.” There was even a man who went to a pizzeria in Washington and fired shots inside because he believed a completely fabricated story about a   ring. (The conspiracy theorist,   radio host who promulgated the story eventually apologized and admitted it was fake.) And in early June, a man shouted   hate speech at two women on a train and stabbed three bystanders, killing two of them. Politicians are often able to move on from the rhetoric. To them, the words are just part of the game. But the broader concern has always been their effect on vulnerable or unstable people. The timeline for politics creeping in after these tragedies has been shortened to almost immediately after. So, perhaps it’s not surprising it already is. At a news conference this morning with Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, he brought up background checks and closing   loopholes (before anything was publicly known about the shooter). McAuliffe is in a state with some of the most lax gun regulations in the country. It always happens  —   after Newtown, Conn. after Aurora, Colo. after former Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot at a constituent event. President Obama defended doing so after Newtown: ”Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?” It’s perhaps not surprising that this is where we are as a society. Social media and campaigns have pitted people against each other, painting them with broad brushes that result in pictures that are caricatures barely resembling real life. (Just check out how people are already responding to the fact that this was a Sanders supporter.) Get ready  —   this is only the beginning."
"Updated at 3:55 p. m. ET. Federal Reserve policymakers have raised their target for the benchmark federal funds interest rate by a   to a range of 1 percent to 1. 25 percent. Despite the increase  —   the fourth since December 2015  —   interest rates remain near historic lows, but the move will mean higher borrowing costs for consumers. The Fed previously raised rates in March, and on Wednesday, it signaled plans for one more rate increase this year. In a statement Wednesday, the policymakers said that ”the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity has been rising moderately so far this year.” The economy grew at a rate of 1. 2 percent in the first quarter of this year, about half as fast as it did in the final three months of 2016. Unemployment dipped to 4. 3 percent in May, a   low. ”Job gains have moderated but have been solid, on average, since the beginning of the year, and the unemployment rate has declined,” the Fed statement said. ”Household spending has picked up in recent months, and business fixed investment has continued to expand.” Greg McBride, an analyst with consumer financial site Bankrate. com, tells NPR’s Yuki Noguchi that, taken together, the Fed’s moves have caused home equity and car loan rates to increase about 1 percentage point over the last two years. ”The combination of rising debt burdens and rising interest rates is starting to strain some households, and we’re seeing delinquencies pick up from recent lows,” McBride says. In the wake of the financial crisis, the central bank added Treasury securities and   securities to its balance sheet. Now it’s making plans to reduce those holdings, which total more than $4 trillion. The Fed said it ”currently expects to begin implementing a balance sheet normalization program this year, provided that the economy evolves broadly as anticipated.” As Reuters reports: ”The central bank said it would gradually ramp up the pace of its balance sheet reduction and anticipates the plan would feature halting reinvestments of   amounts of maturing securities. ”The Fed said the initial cap for Treasuries would be set at $6 billion per month initially and increase by $6 billion increments every three months over a   period until it reached $30 billion per month in reductions to its holdings. ”For agency debt and   securities, the cap will be $4 billion per month initially, increasing by $4 billion at quarterly intervals over a year until it reached $20 billion per month.”"
"The Bosphorus is a strait that separates Europe from Asia  —   and in recent days, its normally dark blue waters have turned a remarkable turquoise. Some residents of Istanbul, noticing the suddenly bright and milky waters, wondered on social media whether the hue was caused by pollution or an earthquake that shook the region on Monday, AFP reported. But the cause of the   waters is a bloom of phytoplankton, according to NASA. Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that live in watery environments  —   and they make their own food, using sunlight and dissolved nutrients. ”When conditions are right, phytoplankton populations can grow explosively, a phenomenon known as a bloom,” says NASA. ”Blooms in the ocean may cover hundreds of square kilometers and are easily visible in satellite images. A bloom may last several weeks, but the life span of any individual phytoplankton is rarely more than a few days.” The agency says that a type of phytoplankton common in the Black Sea (to which the Bosphorus connects) are coccolithophores, which are plated with white calcium carbonate: ”When aggregated in large numbers, these reflective plates are easily visible from space as bright, milky water.” ”The May   in reflectivity in the Black Sea, with peak brightness in June, seems consistent with results from other years,” said Norman Kuring, an ocean scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. But not all phytoplankton blooms make the water brighter, Kuring explains. ”Diatoms, which also bloom in the Black Sea, tend to darken water more than they brighten it.” Ahmet Cemal Saydam, professor of environmental science at Hacettepe University, told the Dogan news agency that the coccolithophore in question is Emiliania huxleyi, according to AFP. ”This has nothing to do with pollution,” he said, and added that the organism is good for anchovies, popular fare in Istanbul. ”Across the Black Sea there is an explosion of Emiliania huxleyi,” he said. ”This is a blessing for the Black Sea.”"
"Updated at 3:26 p. m. ET, A gunman opened fire at a UPS facility in San Francisco on Wednesday morning, killing three people and later dying of a   wound, police say. The shooting, which unfolded on the eastern edge of the city’s Mission District, began at around 9 a. m. local time, just as the workday was getting underway. Authorities said the gunman was wearing a UPS uniform. Company spokesman Kyle Peterson tells NPR that the shooter was a current UPS employee. Two other employees were injured in the shooting, Peterson says. Member station KQED describes an eyewitness account: ”Hayward Cook, who described himself as a UPS human resources manager, said he was interviewing people in a conference room when he heard five gunshots. ”He said that as the shots came closer, he moved people into nearby offices to ’hunker down.’ ”Cook said he heard another series of five shots before the area fell silent and he escaped from the building with others.” ”Officers encountered shooting victims and immediately evacuated them to a safe location to get medical treatment,” law enforcement said at a news conference. Officers then confronted the suspect, ”who was still armed with an assault weapon. The suspect put his gun to his head and discharged his weapon.” Police say they believe the attack, which was carried out by one person, was not related to terrorism. ”The company is saddened and deeply concerned about affected employees, family members and the community we share,” UPS says in a statement. ”Our thoughts and prayers are with all those touched by this incident.” ”We are always saddened by the loss of life to gun violence,” Mayor Ed Lee tweeted Wednesday after the shooting. ”Any shooting is one shooting too many.”"
"In books and movies, a monster is often more than just a monster. Maybe it represents anxiety, or corruption, or the id  —   all of which are themes that slither under the surface of Sarah Perry’s new book, The Essex Serpent. Set in England at the end of the 19th century, ”it’s about the return of a mythical beast that’s menacing the local villages,” Perry tells me. ”An atheist, Darwinist, progressive widow comes down to the Blackwater Estuary, determined to find out what this monster is  —   and while she’s there, she meets a man of the cloth who is determined to protect his flock from the hysteria and the terror that surround them.” On the   Essex Serpent My husband and I are both from Essex, and one thing that American listeners may not know about Essex is that it’s the butt of jokes in the U. K. so it’s considered to be the most unglamorous, foolish and vulgar of places. And Essex actually has a lot of history, and a lot of ancient myth and legend in it. And my husband told me, as we were driving through the Essex countryside, that a great beast had been seen in 1669, near the village of Henham on the Mount. And that immediately struck off the idea for the book. It was like someone lighting a match in a dark room, and then suddenly you can see all these pictures on the wall. My imagination went into overdrive. So I said, what if it came back, when ideas around the fossil record and paleontology, and the debate between science and religion and superstition and rationality were really kind of the common currency, and it was something people talked about a lot? On preferring to be afraid of monsters, rather than to learn about them, I think it’s a really human failing, that we nourish and nurture our fears and our prejudices, and we don’t really want people to turn up with their facts and their statistics and show us that we’re wrong, because our fears are ours, and we can construct them to suit our own ends. And obviously increasingly since the book was published, that has seemed more and more relevant, I think. On the monsters Perry is afraid of, I find myself now a different writer from the one who wrote The Essex Serpent. I’m more afraid than I have ever been, because, you know, the state of politics recently  —   what’s happened in the U. K. what’s happened elsewhere  —   has shown me that my tendency to be a benevolent humanist and think the best of my fellow men has perhaps been misplaced, and actually that there has been a fermenting of ill will and a fermenting of willful ignorance that was maybe going on the whole time, and I didn’t notice. So I had my eye fixed on other monsters, and the whole time, there was something waiting in the water. And it sort of burst out, and it’s been quite chastening, actually, to be the person that wrote The Essex Serpent, which ultimately I think is a relatively hopeful book, and have been confronted with the possibility that there are monsters that can’t be vanquished. Not with the power of friendship, not by the power of grace  —   that maybe they have to be lived with for a while before we know what to do about them."
"Three days before the Dallas Street Choir leaves for New York, its traveling members are assembled and listening intently to choir director Jonathan Palant. He makes an announcement about yet one more phase of preparation: haircuts at 12:45 for anybody who wants one. When you’re organizing singers who are homeless for a performance at Carnegie Hall, arrangements have to be particularly thorough. However, a glance around the room at the Dallas Stew Pot  —   the city’s homeless shelter and the choir’s rehearsal spot  —   quickly shows that no one in the Street Choir appears offended. The haircuts are one more piece of evidence that this performance is real, and that they’re being taken seriously. The Dallas Street Choir is a group composed of the city’s homeless. Though its lineup has varied over the years, over time it’s become a more concrete unit, and 25 of its most dedicated singers  —   including some with mental illness and addiction issues  —   have been picked to tour the East Coast. Its stop Wednesday night in New York is historic: Never before in its   history has Carnegie Hall hosted a musical ensemble solely comprising performers who are homeless. And what’s more: Tickets have been donated so hundreds of New York City’s homeless, from all five boroughs, can attend. The sound the Street Choir will bring to the hallowed venue is, Palant freely admits, ”scrappy.” ”We acknowledge that,” the veteran choral director says. ”But it’s unbridled, passionate  —   filled with love and joy and uniqueness.” The Street Choir’s sound is understandably rawer, Palant points out, because ”you’re teaching the most basic musicianship skills  —   loud, soft, slow, fast, long, short. You’re teaching folks who have a hard time staying awake because they spent the previous night on a heating grate outside.” Deborah Scott is one of the singers who made the travel team. ”There are so many professional singers that would kill to be on the stage at Carnegie Hall,” she says. ”Through the choir, I’m going places that I never would’ve imagined myself being a year or two years ago. Never. I’m so grateful.” For decades, Scott was a customer service representative for the transit authority in Houston. But after a downsizing, followed by divorce and a move to Dallas that turned out to be a mistake, Scott found herself homeless. Though she’s recently found a room with the help of professionals at the Dallas Stew Pot, she still returns for the Street Choir. Becoming homeless was a blow to Scott’s   but singing in the Street Choir has given her a reason to get up in the morning. ”We are coming together over our love of singing and our desire to show that there’s more to being down and out and homeless than just sitting on the street corners all day,” she says. Scott and the rest of the Street Choir will be joined at Carnegie Hall by some of the brightest stars from Broadway and the opera. These include composer Jake Heggie, who has has arranged music and will accompany the choir on piano.   Frederica von Stade will join the singers again, after she performed with them in Dallas two years ago. Heggie, whose opera Great Scott was next door at the Winspear Opera House, was in attendance that night in Dallas. ”[My cast and I] were in the back row listening to this group of people who don’t have a voice or face and we were all weeping,” he remembers. The Street Choir’s performance reminded the celebrated composer of something he’d started to lose track of in New York City: why he started doing this in the first place."
"When it comes to comedy, Late Night host Seth Meyers is clear about what drew him in: ”I got into it because it looked like the most fun job in the world,” he says. ”And it has not led me astray.” Indeed, Meyers’ resume is packed with fun. Before taking over the reins at Late Night, he spent 13 years at Saturday Night Live, first as a performer, then as head writer and the   alongside Amy Poehler, of the show’s ”Weekend Update” segment. But both writing and working in front of a live audience each week on SNL was not without its drawbacks. Meyers recalls ruminating over shows that didn’t quite hit the mark: ”If you had a bad SNL, it stayed with you all week,” he says. Now, as host of his own nightly show, Meyers actively works against the instinct to second guess himself. ”We made this decision after [Late Night] every night not to do a   . .. [and] instead [to] sleep on it,” he says. ”And if it’s still bothering you in the morning, let’s talk then. The reality is, you are then just focused on the next show. . .. It’s nice to be in this place where you can be very forward focused.” On late night comedy in the Trump era, People say, Oh you are doing the job of journalists. We can’t do our job without journalists. Journalists can do their job without late night comedians they’d be just fine without us. But we, of course, use their work every day to build our pieces. . .. I think we’re all lucky as a society that journalists are trying to hold this standard and hold this line of what it means to be a journalist, and the integrity that it means to be a journalist. Whereas comedians are built for the Donald Trump era, because we comedians notoriously have very low levels of integrity. On making fun of Donald Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner  I saw him three days after, and we were at an event in New York. . .. The reason that I found him to be such a fair target that night [of the dinner] was the birther issue  —   that was what he was loudly championing at the time, which I still, to this day, find to be one of his more disgraceful things he’s ever done. So I wasn’t just bullying for the sake of bullying. I thought he was, and continue to think he’s a bully. Lorne Michaels, [creator and executor producer of SNL] one of the things he’d always say to you is: Don’t tell a joke about somebody where, if you saw them, you would feel you had to leave the room. Be decent enough, if it’s fair enough and you believe in it, you shouldn’t have to leave the room. And so I saw him and I walked over and I said, ”Hey, I just wanted to thank you for being a good sport the other night.” Even though he hadn’t been and he had already criticized me. I wanted to give him the chance to have some revisionist history with me. And he did not, and he said: ”You were very rude. It was too far, the president was funny. You were too rude.” And I said, ”Well, it’s good seeing you.” But then we ran into each other at the SNL 40th, which I would say [was] maybe only about four months before he announced [his candidacy]. . .. It was very crowded, and that studio is very small and I realized  —   I was with my wife  —   and I realized we are going to cross in an aisle getting to our seats. . .. He and I actually had a very lovely bygones be bygones interaction then, and I think we would be in a perfectly fine place had he not decided to run and win president. On getting his start in comedy, My father to this day is the funniest person I know. And he was the funniest person anybody who knew him knew. And when he started laughing at me, when I could make him laugh, I had the sense of, Oh I might be good at this. And also, my parents, at a very inappropriate age, introduced us to things like SNL and Monty Python, and it was stuff I just loved and was delighted by. And I went off to college and I hadn’t really done much comedy stuff, but I went to Northwestern University . .. and they had a really good improv troupe and I saw it [during] ”  week” my freshman year, and I had a real sense of . .. I think I can get onstage with other really funny people and come up with things off the top of my head.  On being hired at SNL as a performer in 2001, I was hired as a performer and then they course corrected. [Becoming a staff writer] took about five years, and those were my hardest five years on the show. I thought when you showed up at SNL, that meant you were as good as everybody at SNL. Like how could Lorne be wrong? And you walk down the hallway . .. there’s everybody’s first head shot. And your first few weeks there, you just see all the people that are super famous and you realize that’s your next chapter: Oh Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Will Ferrell, I’m on that path. And then, about three months in, you start looking at the people who were there only a year, and you’re like, Oh no, maybe I’m gonna be that person. I was really afraid I would be fired. On getting the phone call from SNL that they might not renew his contract  Two years in, and this happens, you basically get a call where they’re like, ”We’re supposed to pick up your contract this day [but] we’re gonna wait another month.” [They’re] basically saying, We’re gonna see what else is out there before we make a decision. I did get that call, and that is an awful way to spend a month in the summer. . .. It was really bad, and the other thing that was really bad, and this is something that was my own shame and something that I did not find attractive in myself: The people that came after me were some of the great performers I think of this generation. Fred Armisen came, Will Forte, and then Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis, and Andy Samberg. And these were people that I was in competition with, and they were my friends. And I felt great jealousy towards them and their successes  —   which was an awful thing to feel. And so I was kind of saved by the fact that Lorne offered me this position on the writing staff, and then I felt at home. It was the first time that I felt like I was adding value as opposed to keeping space warm. On how hosting Late Night has changed his life, It is strange, because I do walk into the same building, it is on the same floor as Saturday Night Live, so there are parts of my life that are very similar I did not have to move to a different place or a new elevator bank. But there is this lovely consistency to a job that is the same hours every day and the same schedule everyday. And also at SNL, they call the guests ”hosts” for a reason, because they completely take over the DNA of [the show] that week. Whereas your own show, you are the host, because the guests ultimately don’t change the show that much. . .. It’s nice to be in a place that is more consistent. That is the part I enjoy the most. On the best parts of working in comedy, It was a chance to work with people who are really funny, which has been the greatest gift of this life. . .. I loved sports and was terrible at sports, and I never once in my life did anything on any field of play that gave me that adrenaline rush of success. But I do feel that when you write something or when you tell a joke that works really well it’s the greatest feeling on Earth. I am chasing it because it makes me feel good, I’m not trying to cloak anything that feels bad. Radio producers Lauren Krenzel and Therese Madden and Web producers Bridget Bentz, Heidi Saman and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"In the fall of 1974, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali met in the country of Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo, for the legendary boxing match known as ”The Rumble in the Jungle.” Although the Rumble had to be postponed until later that autumn, a related promotional event went on as scheduled and turned out to be similarly momentous: Zaire 74, a music festival where some of America’s greatest black artists played alongside Africa’s leading talent to an audience of tens of thousands. Documentaries and albums chronicling that festival have concentrated on the American performers, such as James Brown and B. B. King. The African artists have not received the same shine  —   and disputes over money and control, which kept a tight lid on concert footage, have not helped. Except for the South African legend Miriam Makeba, these musicians were all Congolese, including rumba maestros Franco and Tabu Ley Rochereau. But now their performances can be heard, many of them in full, on a new live album titled Zaire 74: The African Artists. It was produced by South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela and American record producer Stewart Levine  —   the same men who organized that festival in Kinshasa more than 40 years ago with the aim of making the world more conscious of African music. Read on for highlights from Ari Shapiro’s interview with Masekela and Levine, and listen at the audio link to hear the full conversation and snippets of music from Zaire 74: The African Artists. On what organizing the festival was like, Hugh Masekela: From the time we started to organize the festival, until after the festival, it was very hard work. I think we both lost about 20 pounds each. . .. It was the first thing of its kind and it was very exciting, the artists were excited. The Congolese audience had never been to anything like it. And actually nobody had ever been to anything like it. Stewart Levine: You must remember one thing: The African artists had never played in front of such a large audience. So they were incredibly inspired. And the audience knew them better than they did James Brown, and they were out to cut James Brown. [Laughter.] On rediscovering the recordings that would become Zaire 74: The African Artists, Levine: I refer to it as musical archaeology because we in fact had never heard these performances. They were recorded while, like Hugh says, we were running around trying to help get this thing organized and put up onstage. So when we opened these tapes up about a year and a half ago, we were stunned. We were mesmerized. Because with all due respect to the American artists, who were great, these guys were out to do it in front of their own people. You have to realize this was a big moment for this country, and a big moment for these performers. So you really do have this music being played at its highest level. We were lucky to have had these tapes. When we opened them, we just decided maybe after 42 years, we should remember the plot, which was to introduce this music to the world. So it’s never too late, I guess. On the poignancy of these performances seeing the light of day only after the musicians’ deaths, Masekela: Louis Armstrong has been dead for a long time, but people still listen to his music. One thing that is great about the music is that you can be dead and [it can] become popular. You can get known whether you are alive or not. Music lasts forever. Levine: If we didn’t think that these things were relevant and vibrant, then we wouldn’t have released it, period. If they sounded like field recordings from the ’20s, we wouldn’t go near it. But they’re hot! They’re energized. We caught it. It was the golden age of   recording, it was   recording. They hold up, and besides just being a piece of history, it’s a great piece of recording. I don’t mean technically, I mean the recording is great when it captures the moment, and there you have it. These artists become alive when you put the needle down. Here they are! Web intern Karen Gwee contributed to this story."
"The director of Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, Nick Lyon, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and misconduct in office over the Flint water crisis. Both are felonies in Michigan. The state’s chief medical executive, Dr. Eden Wells, will be charged with obstruction of justice. Four other officials, including the former Flint emergency manager and former director of public works, were also charged with involuntary manslaughter. Lyon and Wells are the   state officials to be charged in the crisis. The charges stem from an investigation led by Michigan’s attorney general. ”Mr. Lyon failed in his responsibilities to protect the health and safety of the citizens of Flint,” Michigan’s Attorney General Bill Schuette said at a press conference Wednesday. ”The families of Flint have experienced a tragic, tragic health and safety crisis for the past three years,” he said. The involuntary manslaughter charge stems from an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, a type of pneumonia, that spread in the city following its switch in water source. According to the indictment, Lyon knew about the outbreak but failed to alert the public. The disease killed 12 people and sickened more than 70 in 2014 and 2015, according to MLive. Flint’s water quality attracted national attention after lead seeped into the city’s pipes. The city had switched its water source to the Flint River and failed to immediately treat it. Officials dismissed residents’ concerns that the water was discolored and smelled. Residents were forced to use either contaminated or bottled water. The state’s culpability is rooted in the fact that Flint was being run by   emergency managers at the time of the water crisis. Many say that state officials, therefore, were responsible for the health and safety of the city. The state officials involved have contended that because the outbreak was contained to one county, the county health department held ultimate responsibility. Schuette launched a probe of the water crisis in January 2016. The investigation is looking into ”what, if any, Michigan laws were violated in the process that resulted in the contamination crisis currently forcing Flint residents to rely on bottled water for drinking, cooking and bathing as they fear for their health.” Former Flint Director of Public Works Howard Croft, one of the officials charged with involuntary manslaughter, maintains he is innocent. In a statement, his lawyer said Croft ”continues to maintain his innocence on this forthcoming charge and the charges previously brought against him” and that he will be vindicated as more facts about the water crisis come to light. In response to the charges, Rep. Dan Kildee, who was born and raised in Flint and now represents the district that includes it, said he supports the investigation and its attempt to ”hold everyone accountable who did this to Flint.” ”The state and the Governor created this crisis and they must do more to help Flint’s recovery,” Kildee said in a statement. More than a dozen former state and city officials have been criminally charged in connection with the Flint water crisis."
"The gray seal population in New England has bounced back, and new data points to how well seal numbers are doing. Gray seal numbers had been decimated for more than a century when the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in 1972. The animals were hunted in New England, and as NPR has reported, Massachusetts even paid a bounty of $5 each. Though it has been clear that the population has grown in number, it has been difficult to pinpoint just how much. ”Past surveys based on traditional methods of counting, using occupied aircraft to survey seals on beaches, islands and seasonal ice cover, counted about 15, 000 seals off the southeastern Massachusetts coast,” David W. Johnson, a professor of marine conservation ecology at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, said in a statement. ”Our   aerial survey, which used Google Earth imagery in conjunction with telemetry data from tagged animals, suggests the number is much larger  —   between 30, 000 and 50, 000,” he adds, calling it a ”conservation success.” The researchers also pointed to ”exponential growth” in the population from a Nova Scotia breeding colony, where animals are known to move south and vice versa. The animals can grow to 10 feet long and live up to 35 years. The team’s research published in BioScience counted gray seals along the coasts of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Cape Cod. ”These remote    sky technologies make it easier and safer for scientists to study migratory wildlife in remote locations and estimate their numbers accurately,” Duke University said in a statement. The pinnipeds spend a lot of time in the water, and during aerial surveys their   coats can blend in with ice and snow, which have posed challenges to assessing their population in the past. But using drones equipped with thermal imagery technology allowed the researchers to ”see” animals that had eluded them in the past, and they used telemetry data to estimate the portion of animals on land vs. in the water. The surging gray seal population has rankled some fishermen. In 2012, Curt Nickisch reported for NPR that fisherman in Massachusetts complained of seals stealing their fish. ”The seals just sit there and eat the fish out of the net as it’s coming up into the boat,” fisherman Sam Fuller told Nickish. Fisherman are not allowed to shoo them away, he added. Some groups have even advocated culling the seal population, Popular Science reported. But Johnson decried the idea as illegal and premature. ”We know almost nothing about what gray seals eat, how and where they forage, and whether they interact in an ecological way with fisheries,” Johnson told Popular Science. ”There is very little evidence that culling seals will increase fishery yields or provide positive effects on the local ecosystem.” At the same time, Nickisch reported the seals are popular with tourists and   boats are a booming industry."
"It’s morning meeting time at Our Place Day Services, a day center for adults with disabilities, housed in a small concrete and glass building on Lovers Lane in Slinger, Wis. About 30 people are gathered here, around a long table, reciting the pledge of allegiance. One man paces alongside the table, another sits in a wheelchair a few feet away. There’s a woman holding a baby in her lap and a friendly dog  —   a goldendoodle  —   wandering around greeting people with a sniff and a lick. A modest operation based north of Milwaukee, on Interstate 43, Our Place serves as a safe place for people with severe cognitive disabilities to spend their days and learn news skills while the family members who usually care for them are at work. Clients at Our Place can participate in fun activities  —   do art or go bowling with staff from the center  —   and they also work on specific skills like money management or cooking. The center provides the sort of crucial support services that many people are concerned will no longer be offered if Republicans proceed with their planned cuts to Medicaid. On this Monday morning the clients at Our Place are sharing their goals  —   big and small. One man wants to finish a mosaic he’s working on, while a woman down the table says she hopes to go to the movies with a friend someday. Danielle Wirsbinski reads from a long list. ”To have a job, to do more volunteering, learn new skills, talk . ... taking classes, go to school, to live on my own,” she says. Another group member, Eric S. (who asked that we not use his last name because he’s not comfortable going public about his condition) describes the work he’s doing to be able to live on his own someday. ”Learning how to cook with Justine. Justine teaches me how to shop,” he says, referring to Justine Orr, a staffer who works with him at Our Place. ”I learn how to clean with Justine and I did safety skills in the home.” ”We help men and women become the men and women they were meant to be,” says Donna Ellenbecker, director of Our Place. But she’s worried about the Republican plan to overhaul Medicaid. All but one of her 33 clients pay for their classes and care at Our Place with Medicaid dollars. Wisconsin’s Medicaid system includes a program called IRIS that grants people with disabilities a budget, based on their level of need, to use for services that help them live in the community. The state’s approach is part of a national trend in recent decades to move people with severe developmental disabilities out of institutional settings by providing the support they and their families need to live more independently  —   either with their families, in   group homes or even on their own. ”Many of our people are interested in having their own apartment someday, and are living with their parents now,” Ellenbecker says. ”They really need some help with the everyday skills of cooking and cleaning and doing the things that everyone else does to be able to live independently.” President Trump and Republicans in Congress want to restructure the way Medicaid is funded. Instead of paying for all the medical care and services beneficiaries need, the health care bill Republicans passed through the House last month would grant each state a fixed sum per beneficiary based on what the state has spent in the past. That   allowance would increase over time, but at a slower rate than health care costs generally rise. So the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicaid funding under the plan would be 25 percent less in 10 years than it would be under current law. ”We’re no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs but by the number of people we got off those programs,” White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said last month. ”We’re no longer going to measure compassion by the amount of money that we spend but by the number of people that we help.” While Medicaid is best known as a health care program for poor people, more than 80 percent of its budget goes to care for the elderly, children and people with disabilities, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Only 15 percent goes to health care for   adults, the people that Mulvaney was likely referring to in his remarks. The program has been growing in recent years and it now makes up almost 10 percent of federal spending. That’s why it’s the top target in President Trump’s proposed budget, and figures prominently in the House Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Some estimates suggest the program could be cut by more than a trillion dollars over 10 years. But some Republicans in the Senate, who are now hammering out their own plan to replace Obamacare, are hesitant to make such big cuts to services for the poor, elderly people and those with disabilities. The people who come to Our Place each day aren’t likely to be among those who can ”get off” Medicaid. They’re likely to need care and support services for their entire lives. Ellenbecker describes how her program helps people engage in the community. ”We actually have a class that’s a date,” she says. ”You know, ’how you go to the movies with a friend.’ ” That everyday joy has a number of steps  —   you have to figure out transportation, money, movie times and simply how to choose a seat in a theater. To navigate all that, the woman who’d listed going to a movie as one of her goals ”would need somebody to come with her to help her with all of those things,” Ellenbecker says, ”because she doesn’t have the skills to be able to do it independently right now.” Other group members benefit from a job coach who can help them learn how to find and do a job, or keep one. Others need help managing money, cleaning their homes or getting to work. And other clients have even more basic needs, such as personal care and help with eating. Ellenbecker worries that if the current Republican plan is passed, or the kinds of budget cuts Trump is proposing go through, the money for those support services just won’t be there. ”It’s a 25 percent cut you know, and a 25 percent cut it is going to affect these programs,” she says. ”There’s no way that a 25 percent cut can come out of any other program  —   except   care.” That’s because many support services are considered optional under the law that governs Medicaid. So, if state lawmakers are forced to choose between say, job coaches, and traditional medical care, the job coaching is likely to lose out."
"Worries about whether her children can still get the health care they need are never far from Dawn Poole’s mind. It’s a constant, underlying concern. Much of her anxiety is a direct result of living in Texas. To qualify for Medicaid in the state, most children must come from families with incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level. In 2017, that’s $33, 948 for a family of four. Texas also has one of the country’s strictest Medicaid verification systems: It runs regular checks on family finances after children are enrolled to make sure they continue to qualify. Those frequent checks are the cause of Poole’s angst. She and her husband work in seasonal industries. She’s an hourly employee in agriculture and he’s in oil. Their hours and incomes change on a monthly, even weekly basis. That means their nine children, five of whom were adopted, and all of whom have complex health condition, could lose health insurance one month but then qualify the next, even though the family’s total income for the year does not exceed the eligibility threshold. ”You have to show all the pay stubs and your information and where you’re working and what you’re doing,” Poole says, outlining the paper trail she must maintain for these eligibility checks. If not, she says, she receives notices from the state with a clear message: ”You need to have this done now, or we will drop coverage.” It’s not an empty threat. State figures suggest the number of children who have temporarily lost Medicaid has shot up since Texas started verifying in 2014. Stories like Poole’s may become more common, as giving states more flexibility to design and administrate Medicaid is a critical part of the GOP plan to overhaul the program. The idea is that less federal oversight will cut bureaucratic runaround and trim wasteful spending. But detractors point to policies in states like Texas that already have significant leeway as a prime example of how a state’s   efforts can lead to more red tape and limit access to care. ”I just find it amazing that a state that says that it needs to have . .. new flexibility to innovate is engaged in something this harmful and burdensome,” says Sara Rosenbaum, a health policy and law professor at George Washington University. How Texas Checks Eligibility  Texas starts income tests five months into a child’s coverage, when an automated system runs through several databases to ensure the family’s income hasn’t climbed above the eligibility cap. The test repeats in the sixth, seventh and eighth month of the year. If at any point the family’s income crosses the line, they have 10 days to prove otherwise. If they fail, they lose coverage. If families have multiple children who enrolled in Medicaid at different times, say, because the enrollment happened as a result of a specific brush with the health care system, the income checks are pegged to each child’s start date, not done simultaneously  —   which means even more paperwork for parents. Systems with such frequent checks aren’t common, says Tricia Brooks, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. Neither she nor any other researchers interviewed for this story had heard of other states using a comparable level of scrutiny for children. State officials say that the practice is a ”program integrity initiative.” ”The goal is to make sure, if people are getting the benefit, it’s because they’re eligible,” says Christine Mann, a spokeswoman for Texas’ Health and Human Services Commission. This concept of program integrity is one way that states control enrollment, and potentially curb costs. But Texas has not tracked the financial impact of this aggressive testing regimen. Mann says it’s not a relevant concern. While proponents say enforcing program integrity can cut costs, critics say the argument doesn’t hold up. Nationally, children account for more than   of Medicaid’s enrollment, but are responsible for less than   of program spending. Seniors and people with disabilities, who generally require more health services, drive about half of Medicaid costs. So kicking children whose families’ incomes exceed the threshold doesn’t necessarily hold costs down, particularly when eligibility is reinstated within a few months and sometimes retroactively. Instead, the skeptics add, the verification checks pose logistical hassles, require greater resources and save little money upfront. And it can have   impacts on kids’ health. Still, some say there is value to the approach, at least on paper. ”Texas is not wrong to check eligibility,” says Robert Moffit, a senior fellow at the   Heritage Foundation. ”It just seems that going through this every month is an administrative burden that is probably not necessary.”  Is The Goal Efficiency? Poole is not alone. At Conroe’s Lone Star Community Health, a community health center in Poole’s hometown, near Houston, most Medicaid patients are children, says CEO Karen Harwell. Almost all come from families with hourly jobs. A family like Poole’s could make $2, 000 one month and $100 the next, losing coverage for August but   three weeks later. Texas has not tracked how many children lose coverage because of income testing. But in September 2014, a month before this practice began, just under 10, 000 children on Medicaid faced a gap in coverage of three months or less. By June 2016, the most recent month for which Texas could provide statistics, almost 23, 000 children experienced such a gap. Meanwhile, internal data kept by the Texas Association of Community Health Centers suggests that in a single month, about 5. 6 percent of   children will lose insurance because of income testing, and a third of that group will regain coverage within three months. ”Over the course of the year, the percentage of children put through the wringer is huge,” Rosenbaum said. But Texas is not measuring the cost of its enforcement program. And critics say the number of children who cycle back onto Medicaid fairly quickly means it can’t be saving that much, but the potential to keep kids from needed health care is significant. ”This is obviously not a huge money saver. It’s a culture thing, an attitude thing,” says Anne Dunkelberg, associate director of Texas’   Center for Public Policy Priorities. Of course, saving money isn’t everything, says Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. A state like Texas may place inherent value in only providing a publicly funded service to the most needy, regardless of cost. And state flexibility can breed innovation, others noted. ”There are some states we think would run very good Medicaid programs with more flexibility. And there are other cases where, if you have a little more flexibility, they do   things,” says Leighton Ku, who directs George Washington University’s Center for Health Policy Research and has researched the consequences of interrupting children’s coverage. Still, the calls for Medicaid flexibility have been accompanied by proposed federal funding cuts  —   the argument being that   ideas will yield enough savings to make up for the loss. Critics counter that notion is hardly a sure thing. ”To think they’re going to find enough savings in their programs or could raise taxes to offset the loss of federal funding is highly suspect,” Brooks says. ”Instead, then, states have to make tough choices. And those choices are not going to be good for kids and families.” Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Listening to SZA’s new RB album, Ctrl, is like floating into a dream. Filled with her silvery voice, electronic production and an unabashed openness about her stage in life  —   she’s    woman trying to balance relationships and honesty with herself  —   SZA’s songs feature collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott and Isaiah Rashad. (There’s also the inclusion of phone calls with her mom and grandmother, used as interludes throughout the album.) As many have noted, there was a (very recent) time when SZA threatened to leave music. ”I actually quit,” she tweeted last year, promptly deleting her message  —   but not before it was screen grabbed and  . Thus followed speculation about Ctrl and its arrival. But what’s here has resonated, and deeply so. SZA, whose name is Solána Rowe, grew up in Maplewood, N. J. was raised Muslim, trained as a gymnast and was often one of few black girls in the room. Many of her songs, like ”20 Something” and ”Anything,” feel like very specific anthems that young women, especially young black women in their 20s, need in 2017. ”I feel good being a black woman I’ve always felt good. But to be a black woman right now, it definitely feels like I have back up,” she told Complex in 2016. ”That’s a good feeling. I’ve never felt like that before.” We tapped in a few members of the NPR fam including Jenny Gathright, Sydnee Monday and Brandi Fullwood to chat with us about how SZA and Ctrl has resonated with them. Our conversation has been lightly edited.   Kat Chow and Leah Donnella, Code Switch (Kat and Leah): All righty. So, we heard that the three of you have some very strong feelings about SZA and Ctrl. What brought you to this album to begin with? Jenny Gathright: Have had my eye on SZA for a while. And then she got signed to TDE  —   and she’s the only woman signed to that label, I believe. I like the music of Kendrick, Schoolboy Q, and the other Black Hippy members but definitely always see it as pretty . .. masculine. So I was excited about what SZA would do on this label. And also, the anticipation for this album really seemed to build among young black women this year  —   this album release had been rumored for a while so I was just excited to see what she was gonna come out with. Sydnee Monday: To be completely honest, her last project (2013’s Z EP) didn’t really register with me. I liked the way it sounded, but the lyrics were so metaphorical and combined with her tone, I couldn’t connect as viscerally as I do with this album. But her first song that she dropped after her last project, ”twoAM” was more honest and grounded than I was expecting from her. I felt it. Which began the long wait for Ctrl. Brandi Fullwood: I’ve been a SZA fan for awhile now, I saw her last summer at Panorama Festival and even photographed her. I’ve been in an interesting time in my life for reflection and writing, understanding complex ideas about myself, race, sexuality, and so on. This comes after almost like a stream of ”Black Girl Magic” content in the last couple of years in music, but SZA’s closer to my age to resonate with. ..so I guess I was waiting for that to happen and she delivered! Sydnee: Yes! I think age has a lot to do with my connection, too. Solange’s album allowed for black girl vulnerability, but she’s in her early 30s. She has a family. There was a sense that she was more removed from twentysomething problems. Brandi: Sydnee, I agree. I really liked the last project’s poeticism, it marked SZA as a great writer but Ctrl is a lot more personal and vulnerable  —   anecdotes and all. Jenny: Yeah, there’s actually this great quote from her interview with Breakfast Club about that. She was talking about how this album she really turned down the reverb, etc. and the message was much more direct. ”When you turn down all the reverb and all the plugins and all the stacks. ..you’re left with just your voice. And your thoughts. And you kind of have to say something  —   you don’t have to say anything, but you have to mean it.” Code Switch: Ooh, that’s a good quote. What were your first impressions of the album? Sydnee: I really appreciated the vulnerability. I felt like I was listening to the audio version of someone’s diary. Brandi: Heh, twentysomethings. Solange and Beyoncé are tying in a lot of marital issues, but I’m not there yet. At the same time . .. those themes seemed like more universal ideas that really bring black people together, but this one feels like a   conversation with my friends about people we’re interested in. ..so, that’s really special. First impressions, I went off. Talking about how SZA planted me in the earth and I grew from a weed to a   rose garden. Initially, and now, I felt so aligned and just couldn’t stop asking why SZA published my journals behind my back. Code Switch: What specifically resonated? Sydnee: Yeah, I think there’s so much power in being able to share insecurities without tone policing for young black women. Brandi: It’s like the ”Killing Me Softly,” but written by SZA for me and obviously other people. Jenny: Honestly, the first thing I was struck with was the sound of her voice. I feel like no one right now is singing the way she sings  —   the way she kinda winds through the beats. And yes, then I was so struck with the honesty. And the things you don’t say out loud but you think! Exactly, Brandi. like when she was talking about body insecurity in ”Garden (Say It Like Dat)” . .. it felt really real. Things you don’t often hear getting talked about in music. Brandi: Definitely a thing of ”tone policing,” but I definitely thought about how black women are sexually and emotionally perceived. Sydnee: Yeah, like so often there’s this sentiment that we’re not allowed to share the    parts of ourselves. But this was complex in that young WOC are given the space to have a full range of emotion and agency and not feel as though one is more important than the other. Brandi: And because I feel as though SZA was able to reclaim themes surrounding the body pertaining to objectification with  . And   beyond like mud masks and deep breathing exercises, but in actual actions  —   or vocalizing that action  —   of celebrating, reflection, and even holding on to genuine reactions to pain (anger, sadness, bitterness, etc. ). Code Switch: Can y’all be even more specific? We’re getting nosy here  —   but what lyrics specifically did it for you? And why? Jenny: I just keep returning to ”Garden.” ”You know I’m sensitive about having no booty   Having no body   Only you, buddy   Can you hold me when nobody’s around us?” Something about the way she was being so openly ”needy” felt so powerful. Because I feel like so often black women are not allowed to be that way. I’m drawing power from her vulnerability there. Brandi: There are a few lines. ... but, I’m listening to ”20 Something” now and whenever the line ”Why you ain’t say you was gettin’ bored?   Why you ain’t say I was fallin’ short?   How you lead me out so far away?” I think about the times when black women, myself included, put themselves away to make room for other people that they love or are intimate with, but this being a return to those moments and questioning them. That time was hurtful and there’s almost a history of second guessing whether you and any other WOC is being mistreated  —   but especially black women. This album is validation that people are being mistreated and their feelings and personhood are being put aside for momentary, if that, sexual satisfaction. Then, just because I love ”Sit back, relax, just ease your mind, just ride   You are now watching MADtv.” It’s just a great juxtaposition of the trendy mindfulness with a  . Sydnee: Yeah, and I think there’s a sense of hope even in the middle of questioning herself and her experiences. In ”Anything,” she opens by saying ”Maybe I should kill my inhibition   Maybe I’ll be perfect in a new dimension,” but she always seems to bring it back to belief in her ability to get over it. In ”Love Galore,” she says ”Promise I won’t cry over spilled milk   Gimme a paper towel   Gimme another Valium   Gimme another hour or two.” Brandi: That song, ”Doves in the Wind,” even with Kendrick’s critiques of women, is liberating. That could be my own listening and hearing exactly what I want from SZA, but I believe that song was meant to be more empowering of the body and women’s power in owning their sexuality. Jenny: Yeah and Sydnee, that brings me back to Brandi’s point about   but not in the face masks way but in the  —   how can I really FEEL what I’m feeling and then find a way to     what I need to do in my life  —   way. Code Switch: Say more on that point, Jenny?  Sydnee: Yes! Such a good point, Jenny. Thought that space that she allowed herself to have on this album to be open and honest about ~ feelings ~ and less than perfect romantic situations is really the first step towards healing. Jenny: When SZA talks about this album, she says it came from four years of just living her life. giving herself time to process all the relationships she’s had with men since high school. and her putting this out there  —   even the moments that she hasn’t taken a super defined moral stance on (like, for example, ”The Weekend,” which talks about the messiness of being the second woman in some man’s life)  —   feels like   to me. Brandi: Jenny! That’s so true for me as well, especially when    is so universal  —   in policy, pop culture, walking around. ... It can be hard to not feel ”the weight of the world” or its ideologies and projections in a heartbreak or relationships in general. Not sure if that’s true for everyone, but that ”Drew Barrymore” joint definitely suggested a lot of awareness of pop culture and marginalizing black women. Jenny: And in that song, ”The Weekend,” she’s kind of speaking from the perspective of both women in that scenario. When she’s like ”My man is your man is her man. ..” Brandi: When she said ”You’re like 9 to 5, I’m the weekend” though, I definitely said aloud ”I wish.” She’s at a point of reflection that I’m gonna crave to have now! Sydnee: Yeah, I think this album does a lot of   work. Brandi: That line ”Promise I won’t cry over spilled milk   Gimme a paper towel   Gimme another Valium   Gimme another hour or two” that Sydnee was just talking about. .. was so challenging to break down. The endurance, potential substance abuse and then just time. ..so more endurance. I can imagine because that’s such a critical and open address of coping as a ~millennial~. Sydnee: Same. I wanted to ask everyone how we felt about how the male features work in this? Juxtaposed with the recordings from her mom and grandma (I believe). Brandi: I think the male features that were equally open, poetic or even ”needy” were really great for me. Isaiah Rashad’s insecurity and even Travis Scott’s low pine for someone, those were special to me. And also really great sound texture. .. Jenny: Yeah, I agree with Isaiah Rashad + Travis Scott, it felt nice, for once, to have them kind of have to enter SZA’s space on those songs. Like, she dictated the terms of their presence in a way by setting the emotional tone. but i’m not gonna lie that when Kendrick got on the track and started talking about pussy I felt like. ..I didn’t need or want his perspective there? Sounds harsh but idk. Brandi: Yeah. .. after ”Humble,” I have to ask Top Dawg features to, well, do better. At the same time, I can understand the feature, but that doesn’t mean other people will. Maybe people will hear Kendrick’s verse and agree with him, continuing a history of stigma and stereotyping on how best to define and determine a ”purpose” for black women. Sydnee: No, I totally feel you. And I was kind of grappling with that question, too. In this project that’s so vulnerable and open, is there a space for that masculinity and tone? And in that same Breakfast Club interview, she mentions that Kendrick really pushed for more mention of ”pussy” in that song, so I thought that was an interesting dynamic. Brandi: Too much ctrl. Heh. Code Switch: To wrap up. .. Can the three of you talk more about why this resonates with you as young, black women? Jenny: I feel like I hear indie rock where women are super emo, talking about feelings, singing sad songs. ..and honestly, I sometimes like that stuff. But it felt special to hear this album, RB, with like 808s and   drums and   beats, where a black woman was being intensely vulnerable, showing insecurity, not asking or expecting herself to have anything fully processed. ..and it sounded, idk, like super BLACK. It feels like important representation. A reminder that we contain multitudes. I don’t want to be essentialist about race and genre, but . .. yah. Sydnee: I think it resonated so deeply for me because it’s a    album. There’s space opening up surrounding emotional honesty because young women of color are making it that way through their art. I think that I could pair Ctrl with Mitski’s last album (Puberty 2). Both are the same age, 26. Both are being open and transparent about really going through growing pains. But I do agree that to have that content packaged in this genre was special to me as well. Millennials seem to get this bad rep for being ”too sensitive,” but it’s so apparent that especially for people of color, we’re going through difficult, heavy things. We see Black Death plastered on the news always. How much space is there for us to just feel? Without it being fetishized. Jenny: I really love the Mitski comparison. Brandi: As a black woman, anything that reinforces what black women are worth really resonates with me. The Oppositional Gaze by bell hooks set that up for me. There are parts of that book that suggest that black people, in particular women, are constantly striving to find pop culture actually about them. This album exemplifies my relationship to my blackness, to intimacy, to  . Of course,   is for everyone . .. but when a black woman tells you and other black women their struggle, progress and potential, solidarity doesn’t even begin to explain it. I have a whole summer to cry over this album and mistakes I’ve made, but the validation and new suggestion of what to reflect on will really be great. Sydnee: K, one last point: And I think the idea of Ctrl relates to how she approaches the content in this. The entire project isn’t about changing the history of trauma that POC have experienced that might contribute to relationship dynamics, and it resists the pull to be like a protest album (even though those are important) that calls out the patriarchal system that we’ve been placed in that may be contributing to these feels. It’s an honest   of how things are in her experience. It’s a black woman feeling her way through in real time. Jenny Gathright is a news assistant for NPR One and a former NPR Music intern. Sydnee Monday is an NPR Arts  Life intern. Brandi Fullwood is a former NPR Music intern."
"Jeff Sessions did exactly what he needed to do Tuesday  —   help himself in the eyes of his boss, President Trump, and, in turn, help Trump. The attorney general, an early Trump supporter, revealed little in the congressional hearing about the ongoing Russia saga or Trump’s role in possibly trying to quash the investigation looking into it. Using vague legal justification, Sessions shut down potentially important lines of investigative questioning  —   and that may be exactly how the White House wants it. Sessions showed flashes of anger rarely seen from the    Alabamian, calling any suggestion that he colluded with Russia to interfere in the U. S. presidential election a ”detestable lie.” The tactic  —   combined with the earlier testimony of   Trump administration officials, who also deemed it inappropriate to divulge conversations with the president  —   may have created a road map for the White House to keep its secrets without the public relations blowback of invoking executive privilege. Sessions wanted this open hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee so he could respond to fired FBI Director James Comey. Comey  —   a man whom, it was revealed Tuesday, Sessions wanted gone before Day 1  —   intimated in testimony last week that Sessions’ potential conflicts went deeper than were originally known. Sessions denied all of it and shielded his boss from any potential damage. Silence is golden? It became obvious from the   Tuesday that Sessions would not disclose conversations between himself and the president. That cut off lines of inquiry about the exact circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing, what may have happened in the Feb. 14 Oval Office meeting in which Sessions was asked to leave so Trump could speak    with Comey, and Trump’s reaction to Sessions’ recusal. Sessions’ legal rationale for his silence was muddled at best and deliberate interference at worst, something Democrats accused him of. ”My understanding is that you took an oath,” said New Mexico Democrat Martin Heinrich in some of the sharpest questioning of the day. ”You raised your right hand here today, and you said that you would solemnly tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And now you’re not answering questions. You’re impeding this investigation.” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon was even more blunt. ”I believe the American people have had it with stonewalling,” he said. Sessions shot back: ”I am not stonewalling. I am following the historic policies of the Department of Justice. You don’t walk into hearing or committee meeting and reveal confidential communications with the president of the United States, who is entitled to receive conventional communications in your best judgment about a host of issues, and have to be accused of stonewalling them.” Sessions did not invoke ”executive privilege.” As he acknowledged to Heinrich, ”I’m not able to invoke executive privilege. That’s the president’s prerogative.” And yet, he told Sen. Joe Manchin,  . Va. who asked whether Sessions could ”speak more frankly” in a closed session with senators, as Comey did: ”I’m not sure. The executive privilege is not waived by going in camera or in closed session.” Sessions repeatedly clung to vague reasoning for not answering many of the senators’ questions. He could not point to specific Justice Department language, even though Sessions said he had consulted with department attorneys before the hearing. Senators got just five minutes each to ask questions (the chairman and vice chairman got 10). When Sen. Kamala Harris,  . asked about Sessions’ recollection of meetings with Russian officials or businessmen, he complained, ”I’m not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous.” When Republican Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina noted that ”the senator’s time has expired,” a wide grin swept across Sessions’ face, as he looked up at the chairman and former colleague. Round and round it went. And all of it probably made Sessions’ boss very happy. ”He thought that Attorney General Sessions did a very good job,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters, including NPR’s Tamara Keith, traveling on Air Force One on Tuesday night. She added that Sessions ”in particular was very strong on the point that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.” Can’t recall, Sessions’ silence kept a lid on important details that could have illuminated much more of the Russia story. He said he couldn’t ”recall” 18 times. It reminded Washington of another attorney general, who testified 10 years ago, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales, who served under President George W. Bush, said that he couldn’t ”recall” some 60 times in an April 2007 hearing about the dismissal of federal prosecutors, accusations of coordination with the White House and overall Justice Department leadership. Ironically, Sessions was one of the senators questioning Gonzales that day and expressed frustration with Gonzales’ faulty memory. ”Well, I guess I’m concerned about your recollection, really, because it’s not that long ago,” Sessions said. ”It was an important issue. And that’s troubling to me, I’ve got to tell you.” Other attorneys general, of course, have evaded congressional questions. Eric Holder, President Barack Obama’s attorney general, was held in contempt of Congress for invoking executive privilege and not turning over documents related to the ”Fast and Furious”   investigation. But if questions coming into Tuesday’s hearing were ”How would Sessions respond to fired FBI Director James Comey’s intimation that there was something else  —   something classified  —   about Sessions to be concerned about?” or ”What more do we know about President Trump’s role in firing Comey or putting pressure on officials to drop the Russia investigation?” there wasn’t much light shed on them. Having it in for Comey from the beginning, What was learned, though, was that Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, now deputy attorney general, may have always been looking for a reason to fire Comey  —   and so was Trump. Sessions revealed that he and Rosenstein discussed before they were even confirmed getting rid of Comey. They wanted a ”fresh start,” Sessions said. But Comey was kept on for months after they were both confirmed. And, like Trump, Sessions didn’t exactly criticize Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation during the presidential campaign. When Comey came forward in October just before the election saying he was reopening the investigation, Sessions praised him. ”Now, he’s received new evidence,” Sessions said on Fox Business. ”He had an absolute duty, in my opinion, 11 days or not, to come forward with the new information that he has and let the American people know that, too.” He added that Comey, after being uncomfortable with the airplane meeting between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton, had ”stepped up and done what his duty is, I think.” Sessions was critical of the investigation but seemingly only because it didn’t ”get to the bottom” of what happened. ”I think it should have used a grand jury,” he said. Sessions wanted people put under oath. ”So you have to grill them, and people will surprise you how sometimes they’ll just spill the beans when they’re under oath like that.” He then pointed out that with the ”new evidence,” Sessions thought the investigation was ”back on track again.” All that seems to undermine the rationale for Comey’s firing that Sessions says he relied on  —   Rosenstein’s memo that charged Comey acted inappropriately in the handling of the Clinton email investigation. It wasn’t until the stars aligned, as the Russia investigation was heating up, that Sessions and Rosenstein could pull the plug, with at least Trump’s blessing. Sessions also admitted that neither he nor Rosenstein, Comey’s direct supervisor, ever talked to Comey about his job performance. And Trump himself undercut the reasoning for firing Comey that Sessions and Rosenstein had presented, saying he was going to fire Comey anyway ”regardless of recommendation.” In Mueller’s court, The questions will continue, especially of everyone who steps before Congress, but Trump allies have proved that even going under oath won’t shed light on the full details surrounding the Russia investigation and whether Trump pressured   officials to drop it. That is something that may have to be determined by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller when he releases his findings. And Trump allies have already been trying to insulate themselves and the president by attempting to delegitimize whatever Mueller comes up with. The irony, of course, is that if the president has done nothing wrong, as he has insisted all along, Mueller is the one guy in Washington who has the credibility to clear him."
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday, fiercely maintaining he did nothing wrong in meeting twice with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. during President Trump’s 2016 campaign and also infuriating Democrats by refusing to detail any conversations he has had with the president. The hearing lasted about 2   hours and included a number of testy exchanges. Here are the highlights: 1. ”An appalling and detestable lie” Similar to former FBI Director James Comey, who testified before the same committee last week, Sessions came out ready to defend himself. After his confirmation hearing in January, Sessions was skewered for saying, ”I did not have communications with the Russians.” He later amended the record by revealing he had met with the Russian ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak, twice over the course of the 2016 campaign. On Tuesday, Sessions argued that he was caught off guard by the question at the hearing and thought he was answering whether he was involved in any election collusion with the Russians, not whether he had any communication with Russian officials as he normally would as a member of the Senate: ”Let me state this clearly: I have never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election. Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign. ”I was your colleague in this body for 20 years, and the suggestion that I participated in any collusion or that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country, which I have served with honor for over 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process, is an appalling and detestable lie.” He added that any assertion that he did not honestly answer the question at the confirmation hearing is ”false.” 2. Sessions gets testy, The first real fireworks flew almost 90 minutes into the testimony. Sen. Ron Wyden,  . pressed Sessions on why the attorney general actually recused himself from the Russia investigation. Sessions originally said that he disaffiliated himself simply because he was an adviser to Trump during the campaign, but doubt was cast on that explanation when Comey testified last week and said he had thought Sessions would recuse himself earlier than he did for ”problematic” reasons that needed to be discussed in a closed session. Sessions raised his voice in protest when asked what those reasons were. ”Why don’t you tell me? There are none, Sen. Wyden. There are none!” he said. ”I can tell you that with absolute certainty. This is a secret innuendo being leaked out there about me, and I don’t appreciate it.” 3. Democrats push for Trump conversation details, While no new bombshell details emerged from the Sessions testimony Tuesday, there were a number of threads and themes that are sure to crop up again as hearings continue on Russian election meddling. Maybe most prominent is the Democrats’ insistence that those testifying share conversations they’ve had with President Trump. Sessions wasn’t having any of that. At one point, Sen. Martin Heinrich,  . M. asked whether Trump had expressed any frustration with Sessions about his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. ”Sen. Heinrich, I’m not able to share with this committee private communications  —   ” Sessions said, before Heinrich cut him off. ”Because you’re invoking executive privilege,” Heinrich interjected. ”I’m not able to invoke executive privilege, that’s the president’s prerogative,” Sessions said. But the attorney general added that he needed to not discuss his conversations with Trump, to preserve the president’s ability to theoretically invoke executive privilege in the future. Sessions was talked into a corner a few times when it came to the actual legal basis for the argument, by Sen. Kamala Harris,  . and Maine’s Angus King,   but no real damage was done. It appeared as though Sessions had consulted with a legal team  —   at the Department of Justice or the White House Counsel’s Office  —   and burning that much time at the hearing without revealing any private conversations with the president had to be viewed as a victory. 4. Tom Cotton goes deep into the spy novel canon, In general, as with most of the   hearings conducted by Congress, it was a tale of two parties. Republicans were mostly noncombative, if not friendly to Sessions Tuesday, maybe none more so than Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. ”Do you like spy fiction? John le Carre? Daniel Silva? Jason Matthews?” Cotton asked at one point in his questioning. Sessions caught on quick. ”Yeah, Alan Furst, David Ignatius,” he said. ”I just finished Ignatius’ book.” ”Do you like Jason Bourne or James Bond movies?” asked Cotton. ”No,” said Sessions, followed by a giggle and laughter in the audience. ”Yes, I do.” ”Have you ever in any of these fantastical situations heard of a plotline so ridiculous that a sitting United States senator and an ambassador of a foreign government colluded at an open setting, with hundreds of other people, to pull off the greatest caper in the history of espionage?” Cotton asked rhetorically. ”Thank you for saying that, Sen. Cotton,” Sessions said. 5. In writing a letter, did Sessions break his recusal? Sessions continued to insist that he could both recuse himself from the FBI’s Russia investigation and support the dismissal of Comey as the FBI director. Sessions recused himself from the Department of Justice Russia investigation in March, but then signed a letter endorsing Comey’s firing in May. He said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had begun discussing replacing Comey before either of them was confirmed in their jobs. ”I recused myself from any investigation into the campaigns for president, but I did not recuse myself from defending my honor against scurrilous and false allegations,” he said. Comey was overseeing thousands of investigations at the time of his firing, Sessions argued, so the fact that he was recused from just one of them shouldn’t mean he couldn’t make a judgment call on Comey’s leadership abilities."
"Updated at 8 p. m. ET on Wednesday.  Fire and rescue crews are fighting a blaze and searching for people who may have been trapped in a   apartment building in London that was engulfed in fire overnight. At least 12 people have died from the fire, twice the original estimate, and that number is expected to rise further, The Associated Press reports. The fire burned uncontrolled for hours. By 11 a. m. ET, the fire had been contained but the building continued to smolder. Up to 600 people may have been inside the building’s 120 apartments at the time the blaze broke out. The blaze at Grenfell Tower was reported around 1 a. m. (8 p. m. ET Tuesday). Soon after, people nearby reported seeing smoke and flames shooting from its windows. Since then, more than 64 people have been taken to hospitals, and 20 are in critical care units, the London Ambulance Service says. ”This is an unprecedented situation, with a major fire that has affected all floors of this 24 story building, from the second floor up,” said London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton. Cotton told reporters she’d never seen anything like the fire in her nearly 30 years as a firefighter. Alex Ritson, reporting from London for NPR, says the blaze appeared to start on a lower floor of the building and spread with astonishing speed. ”At its height, pretty much the entire building appear to be ablaze, with huge flames of several hundred feet running up the side of the tower,” he says. ”Forty fire engines and around 200 firefighters went to the scene  —   but their equipment didn’t reach much beyond the 11th floor.” ”There are already disturbing reports emerging of the pipework in the building for a fire emergency being out of action,” Ritson says. ”Also, the fire escape plan for the building told residents to stay in their apartments behind supposedly fire safe doors. Those who escaped the blaze were the ones who both woke up and ignored that advice.” Mickey Paramasivan, who took his children out of the building after he woke up and smelled smoke, told Ritson they made it out with just a few minutes to spare. ”I sure would have been dead if I weren’t awake,” he said. ”Five more minutes and that was us. That’s how close it was.” He described a perilous situation: ”Only one fire escape to get down, and apparently that caught on fire,” he said. ”And the fire alarm that was going off, that wouldn’t have woken no one up. It was as silent as it could be. . .. Someone’s got to be held responsible for this. It’s ridiculous.” Eyewitness accounts describe horrifying scenes of people who could not escape from the building. The Telegraph reports: Residents who escaped spoke of others trapped and screaming for help, with some holding children from windows and others jumping from upper floors. Some were reported to have attempted to use bin bags as makeshift parachutes. A witness, Samira Lamrani, told the British Press Association a baby was thrown from a 9th or 10th floor window and caught by a bystander. ”The windows were slightly ajar  —   a woman was gesturing that she was about to throw her baby and if somebody could catch her baby,” Lamrani said, according to the BBC. ”A gentleman ran forward and managed to grab the baby.” Lamrani said there were ”endless numbers of people” trapped and ”screaming for their lives.” One person, who did not want to be identified, told the British newspaper The Guardian, ”I’m lucky to be alive  —   and lots of people have not got out of the building.” Police say it will take some time to confirm the cause of the fire, and authorities did not want to speculate on why it spread so rapidly, The Associated Press reports. As noon approached Wednesday, the building in the west London neighborhood of North Kensington was still smoldering and breaking out into flames. Volunteers were bringing sandwiches to people forced out of their homes others donated supplies and money. The AP reports that the building had been viewed as a fire risk: ”Local residents said they had warned local authorities about fire issues in the building, a public housing block built in 1974 and containing 120 homes, according to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. ” ’We’ve complained to council,’ said Edward Daffarn, 55, who said nothing had been done to improve safety. ’I consider this mass murder.’ ” The building was recently refurbished at a cost of 10 million pounds ($12. 8 million) the work was completed in May 2016, according to the local council, which owns the building. On Twitter, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the fire was declared a major incident he and other city officials are spreading information about how survivors and families can find one another or report someone missing. The borough said in a statement Wednesday night that it is providing housing and financial assistance to those affected. ”We have heard a number of theories about the cause of the fire at Grenfell Tower,” it said. ”All of these will be thoroughly investigated as part of the formal investigation which has already begun.” A local community organization called Grenfell Action Group said it has been calling for better fire safety in the building for years. In a post on its website Wednesday, it said ”All our warnings fell on deaf ears and we predicted that a catastrophe like this was inevitable and just a matter of time.” ”There is something seriously wrong with a bureaucracy that is incapable of reacting to serious negligence, affecting fire safety in a densely occupied tower block, with any sense of urgency,” the group said in a post in 2013. ”Does anyone actually give a damn?”"
"More than 190 Democrats in Congress joined together to sue President Trump on Wednesday in the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia. They say Trump is violating the U. S. Constitution by profiting from business deals involving foreign governments  —   and doing so without congressional consent. And they want the court to make it stop. Trump has ”repeatedly and flagrantly violated” the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, Sen. Richard Blumenthal,  . told reporters on a conference call. The clause says that ”without the Consent of the Congress,” the president can’t accept benefits ”of any kind whatever from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Blumenthal said Trump ”has never sought the consent of Congress” for the profits from deals in the more than 20 countries where he has business operations. Just one example he offered: Trump has sought  —   and obtained  —   valuable trademarks from China’s government but did not clear those transactions with Congress. Blumenthal, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it took ”a lot of research” involving legal experts to determine who would have legal standing to successfully sue the president. ”We have standing that no one else has” because the Constitution makes it clear that ”the consent of Congress is absolutely essential,” he said. The Democrats believe that Trump ”must either sell his vast holdings . .. or he must tell us and disclose now” all of the benefits he gets from foreign governments, he said. They also want to see the president’s tax returns and business records. This suit is just the latest in a series of legal efforts to force Trump to fully separate himself from his business interests. Other suits have been filed by a   group representing private businesses and the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia representing their jurisdictions. That means Trump is now facing a triple threat in court, with plaintiffs coming at him from 1) the private sector, 2) the state level and 3) Congress. Each group must try to convince a court that it has the legal standing to challenge a president. The private businesses say they are being harmed because Trump’s D. C. hotel is presenting unfair competition, i. e. foreign officials take their business to Trump to win his favor. And Maryland’s attorney general says that state’s National Harbor resort  —   just across the river from Washington  —   also faces unfair competition. But the Democratic lawmakers are focused on what they call the harm being done by being stripped of the consent power granted by the Constitution. Trump has stepped back from daily management of the Trump Organization, but he has moved the assets into a trust, headed by his two oldest sons and a business associate. Trump is the sole beneficiary of the trust, and his son Eric Trump has said the president gets regular updates on profits. On Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the lawsuit from the attorneys general, and he replied that Trump’s business interests ”do not violate the Emoluments Clause.” Spicer noted that the lawsuits are being brought by Democrats. ”It’s not hard to conclude that partisan politics may be one of the motivations” for filing suit, Spicer said."
"When Leo Varadkar assumed power in Ireland on Wednesday, he blazed a trail of firsts: At 38 years old, the biracial son of an Indian immigrant father and Irish mother became the country’s   taoiseach, or prime minister. He also became the first openly gay man elected to lead the Republic of Ireland, where homosexuality was illegal until just 24 years ago. Now, as newly elected leader of the ruling Fine Gael party, Varadkar has delivered his first speech to Parliament and received his seal of office from the country’s president, Michael D. Higgins. ”The government that I lead will not be one of left or right, because those old divisions don’t comprehend the political challenges of today,” Varadkar told lawmakers Wednesday. ”So the government that I lead will be one of the new European center as we seek to build a republic of opportunity,” he continued, ”and that is a republic in which every citizen gets a fair go and has the opportunity to succeed and in which every part of the country has the chance to share in our prosperity.” Despite Varadkar’s firsts, Irish media and voters are ”not obsessed about his sexuality or his racial origins,” The Guardian’s Henry McDonald tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro. Rather, it’s the   politician’s policies that have been the subject of significant debate. ”Some people label him a Thatcherite,” McDonald says. ”They think he’s a kind of a son of Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister  —   right of center, very   market, you know, in the style of Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.” These   economic stances stand in contrast with Varadkar’s generally liberal positions on abortion rights and other social issues  —   and they drew criticism from Varadkar’s rival for his party’s leadership, Simon Coveney. Varadkar, who defeated Coveney earlier this month, appointed him the party’s deputy on Tuesday. Varadkar cemented his win Wednesday, with a confirmation parliamentary vote of 57 to 50, with 47 abstentions. His predecessor, Enda Kenny, lauded the man he’d nominated as his replacement. ”As the country’s youngest holder of this office, he speaks for a new generation of Irish women and Irish men,” he said earlier this month, according to the BBC. ”He represents a modern, diverse and inclusive Ireland and speaks for them like no other, an Ireland in which each person can fulfill their potential and live their dreams.”"
"When it comes to seafood, we’re awash in labels. There are labels to identify sustainable wild, farmed or Fair Trade fish. We’re able to scout the canned tuna section for lingo like ”pole and line caught.” And plenty of us use Seafood Watch’s green, yellow or red   system to help us avoid a side serving of guilt with our fish supper. But there’s another designation many consumers look for in   proteins like beef, poultry and pork that is largely missing from the conversation about seafood: humane treatment. A pair   fishermen  —   Michael Burns and his brother, Patrick Burns  —   are trying to change that. The brothers  —   now both in their 60s  —   spent decades fishing the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea for salmon, halibut and crab, finally settling on Pacific cod. But the inspiration for their humanely harvested seafood didn’t come from the ocean. It came from their side business  —   a     cattle ranch in eastern Oregon  —   and from their deep admiration for scientist Temple Grandin and her advocacy of animal welfare and humane slaughter. ”Fish aren’t warm and fuzzy, but they are sentient beings. They experience pain and panic,” says Michael Burns. ”We had been following Temple Grandin and the better treatment of livestock for years, and then it dawned on me: Maybe we could apply it to wild capture fish,” while at the same time, creating a safer work environment for the crew. That chance arrived last fall, when the Burns brothers launched their new $40 million,   fishing vessel Blue North. The ship is designed to catch Pacific cod using bottom longlines. The catch method has earned a green ”best choice” rating from Seafood Watch, but it can still involve   dangerous work for the crew. ”The image of a crew member with a gaff [fishing hook] hanging over the side of the boat, with ice in their beards, feeds the idea of the    fisherman in the Bering Sea,” says Michael. ”But people get hurt out there. We chose to go the route of safety and better conditions for the crew.” The Burns brothers replicated a design feature they had first seen on a Norwegian fishing vessel called a ”moon pool”  —   a round opening in the center of the ship that allows the crew to work inside in a controlled environment, pulling fish up one at a time from the bottom of the boat. The moon pool improved crew safety, but on it’s own, didn’t address the problem of a thrashing, panicked cod. So the brothers brought in a tool often used in aquaculture to process farmed fish: a stun table. Stunning fish to render them unconscious before processing is a method that’s been used by companies like Cooke Aquaculture, the largest independent salmon farming operation in North America, for the last 15 years. The idea is to prevent fish from stressing and thrashing  —   an action which can build up lactic acid in the fish’s flesh, creating unappetizing gaping in the fillets or affecting the color of the final product. While Cooke Aquaculture uses percussion stunning  —    where a pneumatic hammer bops the farmed salmon on the head to knock them out  —   the same technique didn’t work well for   cod. ”We first started experimenting with concussion stunning, but the heads of [wild] cod vary too much,” explains Patrick Burns. So ”we went to [a 48 volt, direct current] electrical stun.” So far, the Burns brothers say they’re the only fishing vessel using this technique. As for Grandin, who inspired their approach, ”I think it’s excellent they’re doing this,” she says. ”Fish definitely feel fear.” Whether or not fish feel pain is still vigorously debated. ”There are still some questions about pain. That’s the   question right now.” Grandin believes it’s an area that the seafood industry will be focusing on more going forward. ”Stunning [fish] is going to become a regular practice. People are concerned about it. That’s why if you look, there are hundreds of patents on GooglePatents for stunning fish.” (We did. She’s right.) But the launch of a brand new fishing vessel like Blue North doesn’t happen every day. Incorporating stunning tables on existing, older vessels could prove tricky. And fishing methods like purse seining or trawl fishing  —   which bring up the catch all at once, in one giant haul  —   would make it difficult to use a stunning table. Still, the idea of harvesting fish humanely is one that is starting to gain attention from a number of certification groups and retailers. ”Animal welfare issues are definitely on ASC’s radar,” says Contessa   spokesperson for the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, which certifies   seafood. ”Many salmon farms, for instance, that are taking care to slaughter fish in humane ways” are making the processing as stress and   as possible, she says. The Marine Stewardship Council, which certifies   seafood, says that while it currently does not have set requirements for the humane harvest of wild fish, it is listening. ”Should humane capture become of heightened stakeholder interest, and of relevance to our mission, we would consider it through our review process,” says spokesman Jon Corsiglia. Whole Foods, which stopped carrying live lobster in stores in 2006 over concerns about humane conditions for the crustaceans, has also included language in its farmed fish standards requiring producers to minimize stress to fish during harvesting, transport and slaughter: ”Fish should also be slaughtered in the most humane way possible. Mechanical or electrical stunning systems are preferred.” Mimi Dale Stein, director of operations for Humane Farm Animal Care, whose familiar Certified Humane label can be found on meat, poultry, egg and dairy products, says the group is actively working on fish standards for several species. Meanwhile, Emily Moose, director of outreach for A Greener World, says it’s something the organization is open to exploring as well ”if the demand is there.” A Greener World certifies livestock and poultry through the Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Grassfed and Certified   labels. So far, most of Blue North’s cod catch gets fed directly into the commodity market (much of it shipped overseas) where its ”humanely harvested” pedigree gets left far behind. But the Burns brothers are hoping that other hook and line fishing vessels will join them  —   and that a ”humanely harvested” label will become something consumers will eventually see displayed at the seafood counter. ”It’s our awareness or sensitivity to how the animals are treated,” says Michael Burns. ”If we extend those sensitivities to cattle, why wouldn’t we extend it to fish?” Clare   is a journalist based in San Diego who covers food policy and sustainability issues."
"If it seems like there’s an explosion of TV coming at you this summer, that’s because there is. And it’s a trend that’s been building for quite a while. Back in the day  —   say five or 10 years ago  —   summer was a time of experimentation and slowing down. Network TV aired shows that would keep the lights on while reserving its best stuff for the fall, and cable TV took advantage by debuting more new shows as an alternative. These days, that playbook has blown up  —   at least a little bit. There are dozens of new and returning shows rolling out this summer on the networks, cable and streaming, and the major projects on deck are big as anything on TV  —   from the beginning of the end of Game of Thrones to Netflix’s superhero super group The Defenders. This year, June feels like an opening act a callback to those summer days when you got experiments like American Idol, Survivor, Louie or Sex and the City  —   bold swings that might evolve into something classic and substantial, if the TV cards land right. Here’s my list of June premieres that are among the best of those experiments, with a few old favorites thrown in: Claws (TNT) Niecy Nash gives the performance of her career as Desna, the owner of a   nail salon in rural Florida who allowed her business to become a front for a family of dysfunctional,   crooks. She’s the leader of a band of women who are characters themselves, including Ann (Judy Reyes) as the shop’s   tomboyish muscle, and Polly (Good Wife alum Carrie Preston) as a   super nice lady just out of jail with an ankle bracelet. But it’s Nash who shines as a woman caught in the middle, struggling to please her misogynist, knuckleheaded criminal bosses while protecting the women working in her salon and trying to save enough money to create the glitzy, upscale nail business of her dreams. When Desna’s bosses start shorting her and taking her for granted, she has to take matters into her own, um, claws. Extra points to the show for filming some exterior scenes in Florida, though the locations feel more like urban Tampa than the more suburban Manatee County. (Hey, you notice these things when you’re a TV critic living in Florida.) The show walks a compelling line between absurdist dramedy and poignant drama, with a dollop of commentary on gender, class and the struggle to excel when so many things in life seem determined to pull you down. The Great British Baking Show (PBS) This is the last cycle of Britain’s beloved cooking competition filmed with the crew that made it a sensation on both sides of the pond. Fans know that The Great British Bake Off (as it’s called in the U. K.) has been engulfed in controversy over producers’ decision to move it from the BBC, a public broadcaster, to Channel 4. As a result, the show is losing its two celebrity hosts  —   Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins  —   along with    judge Mary Berry. (    judge Paul Hollywood is reportedly staying on.) So PBS’ airing of the show’s most recent season (which was broadcast in Britain last year) is your last chance to see these   in action. It’s a pleasure to see Giedroyc and Perkin’s goofy charm while introducing contestants and explaining the show’s various challenges. Hollywood is equal parts brutal British taskmaster and encouraging coach, egging on competitors who falter while pulling no punches explaining why they have. And Berry is the grand dame of it all, delivering tough assessments of the bakers’ wares with expert precision and a grandmotherly hopefulness. Compared to    unscripted shows like Big Brother or Masterchef, this competition between 12 amateur bakers is like a soothing glass of wine at the end of a long day. Contestants cheer each other on, and the stuff they make  —   from tiny,   Jaffa Cakes to ”biscuits,” aka cookies  —   springs from British culture in wonderful ways. Producers will have a tough task recreating the show’s delicate chemistry with new players, so it’s fortunate that PBS has given U. S. fans a chance to savor the last   of this genteel reality competition’s classic lineup. The Mist (Spike TV) Based on the 2007 film (which was based on the 1980 Stephen King novella) this series is about the calamitous events that unfold after a mysterious mist envelopes a small town in Maine. Residents soon discover there are some awful critters in the impenetrable fog  —   critters that seem to have a taste for human flesh.   fans will remember the film as a showcase for all the creepy ways characters can get killed off, from spiders that lay eggs inside living human hosts to mostly unseen meat eaters with   tendrils. This   series gives a bit more backstory, including a soldier from a nearby military base who has amnesia, and a teenage girl who may have been sexually assaulted by a popular high school jock. It may sound predictable, but this   fan was hooked by the first episode. The original movie surprised viewers with low expectations, and the TV version just might do the same. Broadchurch (BBC America) There may be no crime fighting couple on TV as compelling as David Tennant’s Alec Hardy and Olivia Colman’s Ellie Miller on Broadchurch. He’s prickly,    and seemingly impervious to everyone else’s emotional needs she’s kind, conscientious and protective of the small seaside English hamlet where the two of them serve as detectives. It would be a mistake, however, to expect the third and final season of this British cop drama to match the electric complexity of its debut, which depicted Hardy and Miller’s heartrending effort to catch a  . In this season, the pair investigates a brutal sexual assault committed near a party that was attended by dozens of local men. Along the way, the show comments on the corrupting nature of modern technology and online porn, the toxic quality of modern masculinity, the disintegration of local media and so much more. The season we’ll see this summer has already drawn blockbuster ratings in the U. K. and while this finale can’t really measure up to the show’s breathtaking debut season, it is a   farewell to my favorite crime fighting duo on TV right now. GLOW (Netflix) Named for the mostly female wrestling league Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, Netflix’s new series is a fictionalized take on the origin of the sports world’s weirdest televised product. Pop culture geeks will remember that GLOW emerged in the 1980s, during the heyday of wrestling. The syndicated show featured women who looked like     actresses and    athletes tossing each other around in highly choreographed bits. In the Netflix series, Alison Brie (Community, Mad Men) plays a comically unskilled actress who auditions for a comically unskilled   director played by Marc Maron. Maron’s character is assembling the league for a rich kid who’s bankrolling it all. Maron is perfectly cast as a reprobate director fully aware of how screwed up he is, while Brie plays a clueless, plucky woman whose knack for making terrible decisions is matched only by her yawning lack of acting talent. Throw in Nurse Jackie’s Betty Gilpin as a   suddenly single mother who lands in GLOW after a stint on a soap opera, and you have the makings of a compelling, sardonic, occasionally heartwarming series about the creation of a   show. GLOW is a loving look at a   scheme developed during an awkward age, as the neon glitz of the 1970s became the cynical,   1980s. The time period depicted feels like the only pop culture moment when GLOW could have been a thing. And in the same way the wrestling league surprised viewers 30 years ago, viewers may be surprised to find Netflix’s GLOW is one of the best new shows they’ll see this summer."
"The Australian government has agreed to a $53 million settlement with 1, 905 people who were held at a refugee detention camp on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. It’s one of the largest human rights   settlements in Australian history. The Manus Island camp, an   facility, has for years been blasted by rights groups for its conditions. The detainees party to the lawsuit were held there at various times between November 2012 and May 2016, and say they suffered from negligence and false imprisonment.   trying to reach Australia by boat were routinely intercepted by Australian authorities and taken to facilities on Manus or on the island of Nauru. ”Officials say they will never be allowed to settle in the country. That’s true even if authorities determine them to be refugees who would qualify for asylum,” NPR’s Camila Domonoske has reported. Instead, they were held indefinitely at the detention centers. ”Eyewitnesses have reported appalling conditions at some of the detention facilities, with violence, abuse and pervasive psychological trauma.” The governments of Papua New Guinea and Australia announced last August that they plan to shut down the Manus Island camp, after the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court found the detention of the refugees ”unconstitutional and illegal.” The facility is now scheduled to be closed in October, according to The Guardian. Some beneficiaries of the   lawsuit are likely heading to the U. S. The Obama administration agreed to take 1, 250 refugees from Manus and other offshore facilities. The Trump administration has agreed to uphold the agreement, though President Trump has called it a ”dumb deal.” ”While no amount of money could fully recognize the terrible conditions the detainees endured, we hope today’s settlement can begin to provide them with an opportunity to help put this dark chapter of their lives behind them,” plantiffs’ attorney Andrew Baker said in a statement. Lead plaintiff Majid Kamasaee fled Iran in 2013 because of religious persecution. ”I was severely burned in a fire when I was a child, and needed more than 30 operations, including skin grafts,” he said in a statement read by his attorney. ”When I arrived on Manus they confiscated my medicine. Every day in the harsh sun my skin felt like it was on fire. ” He was eventually transferred to Melbourne, Australia, for medical treatment, according to court documents. The settlement deal still needs court approval. Private contractors G4S and Broadspectrum, which were involved in running the camp, are also named as defendants, and it’s not clear how much each will pay under the agreement. It’s worth noting that Australia’s government does not view the settlement as an admission of liability. Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton said in a statement that the ”Commonwealth strongly refutes and denies the claims made in these proceedings.” Dutton said that settling the matter was a ”prudent outcome for Australian taxpayers,” rather than wade into a   legal battle that could cost tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. Even though the case did not go to trial, the plaintiffs’ lawyers say it involved more than 50 court appearances, more than 200 witness interviews and more than 200, 000 documents. The defendants are also liable for about $15 million in legal fees, in addition to the $53 million in the settlement. It’s not clear exactly how the money will be distributed between the people who were detained according to Reuters, lawyers said that ”the compensation would be distributed among the former and current detainees according to the length of their detention and the severity of the injuries and illnesses they alleged they had suffered.” According to The Guardian, about 900 men remain at the Manus Island facility."
"From Cara Cara oranges to clementines, California’s farmers deliver novel navels, mandarins and tangelos. But the state’s growers have watched with worry as the devastating disease known as citrus greening has crippled Florida’s citrus industry. It’s a threat not just to California’s orange industry, but to the collection of rare, wild and heirloom varieties used to breed new crops that the U. S. Department of Agriculture currently ”stores” in the state. This collection of varieties is grown in   plots and   greenhouses in places like Riverside or the Coachella and Central valleys. To conserve valuable genetic diversity, the USDA maintains at least two copies of each plant in these fields. Unlike seed crops, however, most fruit crops are clonal, or grown from cuttings  —   which means they are not backed up at gene banks like the Svalbard Seed Vault in Norway. So, to create its own deep freeze of tissues, the citrus industry turned to cryopreservation. Cryobiology for plants first took off in the 1980s, but   protocols have so far only been developed for a handful of crops, like apples and garlic. Gayle Volk, a USDA plant physiologist based in Fort Collins, Colo. has developed a way to freeze citrus cuttings so they can later be revived. The process requires snipping tiny shoot tips off a living plant, adding a cocktail of chemicals that replaces water in the cells, and plunging the cuttings into liquid nitrogen. To date, this method has protected 344 commercially important varieties, largely within the past nine months. Consumers desire a diverse selection of tasty, seedless and    citrus, says Jeffrey Steen, a third generation citrus grower near Visalia, Calif. and a member of the Citrus Research Board. ”We need genetic diversity to ensure we can continue to offer consumers new, interesting varieties that are also profitable to produce.” Diversity could also yield much needed   traits. The Asian citrus psyllid, an   insect originally from China, infects plants by delivering   bacteria that constricts a tree’s vascular system, shriveling fruit and eventually killing the tree. Since the scourge was confirmed in Florida, the U. S. capital of orange juice production, in 2005, the state’s $1. 5 billion citrus industry (sales only) has suffered dramatic declines  —   orange production alone has fallen from 147. 9 million boxes in 2005 to 81. 5 million boxes in 2015. Cryopreservation is only one part of a   strategy to protect California citrus. The Citrus Research Board also funds work on early disease detection methods, including training canines to sniff out signs of trouble. Prevention is key. Once an infected tree is found  —   only a few dozen have been identified so far, and largely in urban areas  —   it is removed to a quarantine area. But, at best, Steen laments, the disease can be slowed its arrival is virtually unavoidable. ”With an increasing number of infected trees being identified and psyllid populations increasing in southern California, the [USDA citrus collections] have become dangerously threatened. We called it an ’all hands on deck’ situation,” says Marylou Polek, director of the USDA National Clonal Germplasm Repository for Citrus and Dates. Frozen tissue banks will also serve as a backup should   collections be damaged by storms, droughts, floods, extreme temperatures, other pests and pathogens, and inadvertent harm caused by humans, says Peter Bretting, the USDA Agricultural Research Service senior national program leader for plant germplasm, based in Washington, D. C. ”The sooner that we can place duplicates in secure gene banks like Fort Collins or the Svalbard vault, the better,” he adds. Now that apple and orange collections have been cryopreserved, Volk and her colleagues want to use the method to safeguard more fruits. ”It is inevitable that there will be threat and pressures, that’s the nature of agriculture, and these irreplaceable collections will be lost if we can’t get them backed up,” says Christina Walters, research leader for the USDA’s National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins. ”Right now, the clonal collections are about 14 percent backed up,” Walters says. But the vast majority of commercial fruit crops  —   such as peaches, plums and strawberries  —   don’t yet have a frozen   because   protocols aren’t yet worked out. Steen hopes that these efforts to protect diversity inspire other crop industry groups to help fund cryopreservation efforts. ”Preserving diversity  —   not just for disease but for taste and flavor  —   gives us the ability to bring things back,” he says."
"Tracy K. Smith knows many readers are intimidated by line breaks. She knows people don’t like identifying consonance, assonance or alliteration. But Smith  —   the newly announced 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry of the United States  —   wants to help America push past that anxiety. ”What do you hear? What do you feel? What does this remind you of?” she asks NPR. ”These are all real and valid reactions to a poem.” The poet laureate is appointed by the librarian of Congress and fills the role for a year. Smith takes the mantle from Juan Felipe Herrera, who has served two terms. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement that Smith’s work ”brings history and memory to life” and ”calls on the power of literature as well as science, religion and pop culture.” The job doesn’t come with a lengthy description. The Library of Congress ”keeps to a modest minimum the specific official duties,” as the statement put it, so each new poet can have maximum freedom. But the library notes that many recent poet laureates have sought to expand the audience for poetry. ”I think the responsibility really is to just help raise the awareness of poetry and its value in our culture,” Smith tells NPR. ”To me that means talking to people  —   getting off the usual path of literary festivals and university reading series and talking to people who might not even yet be readers of poetry. ”I would love to go to places where people might be struggling, where people might wonder if there are voices out there for them,” she says. Smith, 45, is the Pulitzer   author of three books of poetry. Born in Massachusetts, she grew up near an Air Force base in California as the youngest, by far, of five children. She went to Harvard and Columbia, was a poetry fellow at Stanford and now teaches at Princeton. You might have heard her voice on NPR. Several years ago, she spent a day with the network and wrote a poem about the news. In recent years, Smith has been exploring other forms. Among other things, she’s currently working on two operas. One, with composer Judd Greenstein and video artist Joshua Frankel, is about two competing visions of progress in New York City. The other, with composer Gregory Spears, is about the legacy of slavery ”and how it shapes our sense of what is possible for moment to moment in our everyday lives,” she says. She has also written   nonfiction. Her recent memoir, Ordinary Light, describes her mother’s death from cancer and explores her experiences growing up black in suburban Northern California reared by parents with deep roots in the American South. ”I feel that as a person of color I’ve always been interested in the stories that are quiet and the stories that often get overlooked,” Smith says. ”I think that inevitably I’m aware of these margins and I’m curious about them because I know what it feels like to be [outside] of one.” As poet laureate, she says, ”I think it will be very easy to say, ’Let’s have a diversity of voices, perspectives, experiences, aesthetics that we draw from. And let’s listen.’ ” Poems, Smith says, house contradictions and disrupt certainties  —   and, fundamentally, ”connect us more fully to our own inner lives and to the lives of others.” Her Pulitzer   2011 collection, Life On Mars, explores the infinite expanses of space and plays with the tropes of science fiction. It also draws on her father’s experience as an engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope. But sometimes no telescope is necessary. Smith can find the vast and profound in the smallest of domestic spaces. In ”The Universe as Primal Scream,” reflecting on a noisy neighbor, Smith wonders if the children screaming upstairs will ”  magic decibel” and carry the whole building off to the afterlife: . .. If this is it  —   if this is whatTheir cries are cocked toward  —   let the skyPass from blue, to red, to molten gold, To black. Let the heaven we inherit approach. . .. I’m readyTo meet what refuses to let us keep anythingFor long. What teases us with blessings, Bends us with grief. And she traveled from the ”workaday” world to the ”brief ecstasy of being” as she addressed her daughter before conception in ”When Your Small Form Tumbled Into Me,” which she read for NPR in 2013. Smith tells NPR that poetry, as a form, is comfortable with the expansion from the personal to the cosmic. ”It’s most closely akin to the logic of our dream lives,” she says. ”I think poems trust that quick associative leaping, that disruption of the ordinary. ” Another poem leaps from one glistening star to another  —   from outer space to the genius of David Bowie. ”Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” found new readers after Bowie’s death as it circulated online, passed from one mourner to another. The poem reads, in part: . .. there are occasions, When a man his size can meetYour eyes for just a blip of timeAnd send a thought like SHINESHINE SHINE SHINE SHINEStraight to your mind. Bowie, I want to believe you. Want to feelYour will like the wind before rain. ”A poem gives me a chance to have an encounter with a feeling, with an experience, with a wish, with an idea,” Smith said. ”When that poem became useful to other people I was  —   I was grateful.” Smith says she’s been thinking, lately, about how people turn to poetry in fraught times. ”It’s often those large moments where big things happen, where loss occurs  —   or in moments of isolation, where a voice on a page that’s saying, ’I have lived, I have felt, I have questions, and I have wishes,’ where that’s consoling.” One of her goals as poet laureate is to make even more people aware that poems are, as she puts it, ”another resource that you can turn to” in times of uncertainty. ”What excites me is that I’m an ambassador for poetry, which is something that I wholeheartedly believe in and that has been an anchor and a force of stability and consolation throughout my life,” she says. ”I think that’s good news.”"
"Updated at 1 a. m. Friday ET, The sun danced and dipped through a bright blue sky over Nationals Park Thursday night, leaving a warm still evening in its wake. ”What a beautiful day for baseball,” blared a voice over the loudspeakers, after Bruce Springsteen’s ”Glory Days” faded out, and John Fogerty’s ”Centerfield” finished, too. Even so, a poignant and immovable shadow cast itself over Thursday’s annual congressional baseball game. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the    Republican in the House of Representatives, is still in critical condition after undergoing his second surgery as a result of a gunshot wound to his hip. He was one of four wounded by a gunman Wednesday in an attack on a Republican team practice in Virginia. A hospital statement said Scalise was doing better over the previous 24 hours but would ”be in the hospital for some time.” The FBI says the shooter,    James Hodgkinson, was killed by police. Members of both teams gathered at second base to pray before the game, and both sides wore Louisiana State University baseball caps, Scalise’s alma mater. After winning the game   the Democrats gave their trophy to Republican manager Rep. Joe Barton,   to give to Scalise. ”The Congressional Baseball Game has never been about Republicans against Democrats,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar,  . in an opinion piece he wrote for CNN before the game. ”It’s about Republicans and Democrats.” Aguilar played outfield for the Democratic team and hit a key single that pushed the Democrats’ lead to   in the bottom of the third inning. ”We will not give in to fear, violence or hate,” Aguilar said. ”We will play for those affected by these despicable and cowardly actions, to support local charities . .. and to remind the American people that this violence will not define or divide us.” Before the shooting, Scalise was slated to play second base on Thursday night for the Republicans. More than 24, 900 people attended the game in Southeast Washington. That was the most ever in the history of the game, which was first played in 1909, and then began as an annual tradition in 1962. With their victory, Democrats took the lead in games won,   . Attendees, both politicians and constituents, spoke about how important the game was as a bipartisan beacon. ”Right now the country is more divided in their political ideology than any other demographic or characteristic, and yesterday it showed,” said Holly Spease, a Republican spectator from Tennessee, who wore a   with an elephant on it. ”I think these events humanize the other side, whatever the other side means to you,” she said. ”We tend to live in echo chambers, so maybe when there’s a more personal foundation in Washington it could ease political tension.” Rep. Dwight Evans, a Democrat, and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican, represent districts in Pennsylvania. They sat next to each other at the game above the   dugout, as a show of friendship across the aisle. ”We need to send a message to change the tone,” said Evans. ”It starts here, it starts with each other.” There was also a massive security presence at the game police in body armor could be seen strolling the outfield promenade with weapons. President Trump did not attend the game, due to security concerns according to the White House, but he did record a video message that was played before the game. ”By playing tonight, you are showing the world that we will not be intimidated by threats, acts of violence or assaults on our democracy,” he said. ”The game will go on.” Before the game, the House minority whip, Rep. Steny Hoyer,  . wore a shirt that read ”Team Scalise.” When asked whether he feels like the safety of members of Congress is more in jeopardy than it was five or 10 years ago, Hoyer ultimately agreed. ”I think the answer to that question is yes,” he said. ”But there’s always been a level of violence. What’s not always been present is the     repeat of that violence over and over and over and over again. When you have people watching that who are deranged. .. We need to be very careful, to the extent we can, to guard our own rhetoric so it’s respectful of one another.” He said he was encouraged by the public outpouring of support, but ultimately wasn’t sure if anything about the polarization between the two parties was going to change in the   as a result of the shooting. ”I don’t want to be cynical, but in my experience there is a short time   it may be a month, two months, three months,” he said. ”But then you go to a town meeting, or you see Rush Limbaugh and you get your juices going again. ”And you forget, that this resulted in something that was not right in a democracy.” NPR’s Scott Detrow, Abigail Censky and Madeline Garcia contributed to this report."
"The Wednesday shooting at a Virginia baseball field that critically wounded Louisiana GOP Rep. Steve Scalise and at least four others shook Washington. Members of Congress were breaking into tears talking about the event. But the violent outburst, while shocking and distressing, was not a complete surprise threats and aggression toward members of Congress have gotten a lot of press in recent months, notably at town   events. And especially related to the health care debate. There was a lot of talk in the immediate aftermath of the shooting about political polarization, specifically the vitriol aimed at politicians. ”In our political culture, people don’t give elected officials the benefit of the doubt,” said Rep. Ryan Costello,  . ”They certainly don’t give members of Congress the benefit of the doubt. They probably think a lot of things about me that are totally false.” ”But people down here, members of Congress, are just trying to make the country better,” Costello added. Most politicians sought to make their messages Wednesday apolitical, like House Speaker Paul Ryan. Some, like Rep. Martha McSally,  . Z. who has received death threats in recent months, spoke of persevering. ”I’m going to continue to be accessible. I’m going to continue to engage,” she said. ”I am not going to let fear be a motivating factor to stop me from doing my job.” ”One down, 216 to go” Wednesday morning, after the shooting in Virginia, Rep. Claudia Tenney,  . Y. received a threatening email. ”One down, 216 to go,” it read. The email seemed to refer to the number of Republicans who voted in favor of the American Health Care Law last month. A spokesman for Tenney’s office confirmed the authenticity of the email to NPR, and also sent screenshots of Facebook comments on her page that talked about the possibility of her son, a Marine, being killed. Weaver drops out, The Democrat running for Iowa’s 4th Congressional District dropped out on June 3, citing threats to her safety, among other reasons. Kim Weaver, who lost to Rep. King in the 2016 race, announced the decision on Facebook: ”After much deliberation, I have determined that the best decision for me is to withdraw my candidacy for the U. S. House race in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District. ”One consideration has been raised again by recent events at my home. Beginning during my 2016 campaign, I have received very alarming acts of intimidation, including death threats. While some may say enduring threats are just a part of running for office, my personal safety has increasingly become a concern.” King sought to pin the blame on the left, and did so again after Wednesday’s shooting. ”America has been divided,” said King, according to The Washington Post. ”And the center of America is disappearing, and the violence is appearing in the streets, and it’s coming from the left.” ”I was just so mad” In May, two people were removed from a town hall meeting focused on health care held by GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer in North Dakota. According to the Bismarck Tribune, one man in the audience of about 80 people approached the congressman, following a woman’s tearful testimony about her sick child. ”After taking dollar bills out of his wallet, [resident Mike Quinn] attempted to shove them into Cramer’s suit pocket . .. pushing him in the process while saying his money could go toward the medical expenses of the woman’s child,” the Tribune reports. In an interview with the newspaper after the event, Quinn, who was not arrested, said he was reacting to what he thought was evasion on the part of the congressman. ”It was spur of the moment. I was just so mad. I just kept getting angrier and angrier,” he said. Quinn also insisted that his actions weren’t planned or connected to any organization. Threats in Arizona’s 2nd District, FBI agents arrested a man in the same Arizona district Gabrielle Giffords was shot in 2011 for making threats to shoot current Republican Rep. Martha McSally. Steve Martan, a    Tucson Unified School District employee, left three separate threatening voicemails on McSally’s office machine, according to a criminal complaint filed in May. ”Martha, our sights are set on you,” he said in one message. ”Right between your f****** eyes.” In another: ”Yeah Martha, your days are numbered.” According to the complaint, Martan said he was ”venting frustrations” with McSally’s congressional votes in support of President Trump. Giffords commented at the time, through the gun violence prevention political action committee she   in 2013. ”No matter where you live or what job you have, you have a right to feel safe in your community, at your workplace, and in your home,” she said. NPR’s Susan Davis contributed to this report."
"Uber is a mess  —   the ”bad boy” ethos shattered, a nervous breakdown in its place. This week, the CEO announced he is taking a sudden leave of absence. A former U. S. attorney general released a brutal audit of the startup’s culture. It’s a terrifying moment for many investors who want that $70 billion unicorn to make them rich or richer  —   not implode. But there is one Uber investor who stands out for how she decided to speak up. It was not very Silicon   of her, but Freada Kapor Klein wanted to turn the crisis into a teachable moment. And while this week’s events could lead her to say ”I told you so,” she has a different takeaway. Let’s rewind a few months. Kapor Klein decided to write an open letter to Uber  —   which she published with her husband  —   after a young woman shared an explosive account of sexual harassment at Uber headquarters. Kapor Klein is a venture capitalist, or a VC. That means she makes money by betting on technology startups. Uber is one of those startups. She has committed to ”impact investment”  —   businesses that can turn a profit while also making the world a better place. For too many years, she says, critics would question her on Uber, and she stayed silent. She tried to influence the company from the inside, though she didn’t see a real will among leadership to change. While ”Silicon Valley prides itself on pattern recognition,” the letter said, Uber had ”toxic patterns” that needed to stop. Kapor Klein thought she was just saying what insiders knew: This is not a  . Turns out, her peers didn’t like that and wanted her to pay for it. ”I could imagine that they wouldn’t love the Uber letter,” Kapor Klein says in an interview with NPR in  . ”But then that they would decide the next step they ought to go, is go after our high growth, hot startups and try to get them away from us!” She’s just learned that other VCs are trying to poach one of her hottest investments, and they’re citing the Uber letter to do it, basically saying: this investor throws her own people under the bus. ”I mean, it’s one thing to go pitch them. It’s another to say, ’Get away from Kapor. See, they’re going to do this to you,’ ” she says. It may be counterintuitive, but in Silicon Valley, the land that created tweeting, there is a code of silence among the rich. People are here to make money, not to agitate. She violated that code. But she won’t back down. She tells me I should call a shortlist of her most powerful peers and demand they respond on the record. ”Go to Sequoia, go to Benchmark, go to Kleiner, go to Accel, go to Andreessen, go to Khosla,” she names the kings of   Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif. She’s sitting inside the Kapor Center for Social Impact  —   a name that spells out the intent of the place. Kapor Klein and her husband bought this   building in central Oakland  —   what’s become the edge of Silicon Valley as tech expands beyond Cupertino, Mountain View and San Francisco  —   and it houses an investment arm, research and philanthropic projects. Kapor Klein is 64 years old, petite with jet black eyes and curly hair to match. She is tense as she recounts the blowback, her folded hands resting on a conference table made of reclaimed wood. Meanwhile her dog is napping by her feet, sprawled on a gray carpet made of recycled fishing nets. (She designed the building to be green.) Dudley’s snoring breaks her concentration, and she lets out a laugh. He’s a rescue dog, but sometimes she claims he’s a therapy dog. ”You can see why. Doesn’t he make you feel better?” She wakes him up and the two go in search of her husband and business partner, Mitch Kapor. When they find him, he happens to be meeting with the president of Silicon Valley Bank  —   who is trying to not get in the middle of the couple’s conversation. But Kapor Klein reels him in, telling him about the letter and the response. Greg Becker politely offers his take: ”Yeah, people compete . .. anyway they can, right? That’s  —   unfortunately it’s human nature . .. .” Kapor Klein points to her dog, who is now rubbing his enormous cream coat against the banker’s leg, and she teases: ”I thought it was just dogs that did that. Dogs, not humans.” Her husband ends the conversation by saying: ”It’s a    world.” This is his way of acting as her buffer  —   she, the one who pushes he, the one who moderates. Mitch Kapor is a bit of a legend, by the way. In the 1980s he founded Lotus, the famous spreadsheet maker. Some compare him to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He pulled Kapor Klein into the tech world when he hired her to fix Lotus’ culture in 1984, to make it the most progressive employer in the U. S. Quite the job description. She would lecture her boss about how he carries himself at work, how he should be ”more sensitive” about his power, how he could make or break an employee’s day just with eye contact. The couple didn’t get together until years later, when she sought him out for career advice and his second marriage fell apart. He asked her out on a date. He had a son and a daughter. She was 43 and didn’t have kids. She assumed it was a summer fling and warned him, date two, that she’s not ”stepmom material.” Turns out, it wasn’t a fling. Her life’s work is to change the culture of Silicon Valley  —   a place she feels has gone backward in time. There are far fewer women in computer science today than in the 1980s. Blacks and Latinos are missing too. Kapor Klein faults the investor class, which holds on to the myth of meritocracy, that they are the   conduits of capital and it so just happens that white men are the most worthy. She shares a hokey saying she’s heard one too many times: ”We don’t care if you’re orange or blue the only color we care about is green.” If all Kapor Klein did was critique, she’d be irrelevant here. This place values people who build things. And that is what she is doing. The building feels like an alternate universe  —   one where tech somehow looks like the rest of America. On one floor, there’s the investment team. Their portfolio includes Genius Plaza  —   the hot startup that others now want to poach. It’s an online education platform founded by Ana Roca Castro, a woman from the Dominican Republic (which is exotic in these parts). She’s landed major contracts with national agencies throughout Latin America, and is working to get into more U. S. schools. Castro, who is based in Albany, N. Y. describes Kapor Klein as ”protective,” an early investor who tries to shoo away others who don’t share their values. Asked if that could mean possessive, the tech founder disagrees. ”When someone is territorial they want nobody around,” but in multiple instances, Kapor Klein has opened doors she didn’t know to knock. ”She’ll be the first to push me, saying, ’Don’t be afraid.’ ” Kapor Klein keeps an eclectic inner circle. It includes a former head of the NAACP the woman who filed (and lost) a   sexual harassment lawsuit against a leading venture capital fund and Ulili Onovakpuri. The    advises the health care portfolio, deciding which startups get money. But their relationship started when she was a teenager. Her now   mentor gave her a scholarship to UC Berkeley. (Kapor Klein launched the IDEAL Scholars Fund, for   minority students, after California ended affirmative action in schools.) Round the corner, social scientists are running data on why people leave tech, looking for holes in the leaky pipeline, so to speak. (They later published this study.) Downstairs, Gabriel Chaparro  —   who ran the center’s SMASH math and science program for students of color at Stanford  —   shares the lesson he wants to drill into young minds. ”You’re going to step into places where there’s a line of people and none of them look like you. But you’ve earned your space. So get in that line, push them aside,” he says. ”You can’t just look at that line and say I don’t fit in there. Make your fit.” It’s a very Silicon Valley way of being. It’s how Uber CEO Travis Kalanick broke the yellow cab industry in city after city. In some ways, Kapor Klein wants young people who grew up poor to channel Silicon Valley’s sense of entitlement  —   the idea that it’s OK to fail that failure is necessary and that one deserves support anyway. She herself doesn’t come from money. She grew up on a U. S. Air Force base in Biloxi, Miss. and one of her earliest memories was seeing, at age 3, her    brother bloodied, beaten for being a Jew. She knew then the world isn’t fair. The Uber row isn’t her first in Silicon Valley. To some extent, she’s used to it. She is rich (she won’t disclose how rich) and travels in wealthy circles, where people have strong feelings about money. She remembers a billionaire who suggested she’s spending too much on her   education programs. She recollects telling him, ”Well, you probably write a check that’s somewhere between five and 10 times that amount of money for private kindergarten for your child.” She’s quick to point out, though, that she jabbed because she was asking him to donate. If there wasn’t a specific ask, a concrete step she was advocating, she said she would hold back. NPR did approach leading investors (as Kapor Klein suggested) to get their take on Uber, her letter, and what’s the real problem. One was willing to go on the record. ”If you are a shareholder in a company and a stakeholder in a company, you would want to speak with one voice and you would want to work on the problem primarily,” says Jason Calacanis. ”To kind of blindside a company with a post like that means now the company not only has to solve the problem, they have to react to that position publicly.” Calacanis is an influential angel investor, and author of a new book on how to invest. While he respects Kapor Klein’s work with the underprivileged (he’s invited her to speak about it to his startups) he says that the way she spoke out created a ”negative atmosphere”  —   a media circus. And, Calacanis adds, it takes a   CEO to build the Uber empire. Soft questions around culture, an inclusive culture  —   those come later. ”After you’ve won, or won a decent amount of market share or won the early fights, I think you have to shift gears a bit. And I think that’s what Uber’s going through.” Kapor Klein disagrees  —   and Uber’s monumental meltdown is arguably proof she was right. But when I sit down with her in April, as the drama continues to unfold, she’s become hesitant. Uber reached out to her for help, after her letter. Now, as I ask questions about it, she’s being  . Asked if she is uncomfortable, she says she is, ”because my goal now is to help Uber and any other company that really genuinely wants to change. I don’t know what snippets you might use, how they might hear that, and whether that’s going to hamper the efforts.” Kapor Klein wants the world to understand: Yes, she spoke out when others would not. But no, Uber isn’t the only problem child in Silicon Valley. They just happened to get caught. This week she and her husband issued a statement to that effect, saying ”the company deserves some room” to work on itself."
"After surgery to treat her epilepsy severed the connection between the two halves of her brain, Karen’s left hand took on a mind of its own, acting against her will to undress or even to slap her. Amazing, to be sure. But what may be even more amazing is that most people who have   surgery don’t notice anything different at all. But there’s more to the story than that. In the 1960s, a young neuroscientist named Michael Gazzaniga began a series of experiments with   patients that would change our understanding of the human brain forever. Working in the lab of Roger Sperry, who later won a Nobel Prize for his work, Gazzaniga discovered that the two halves of the brain experience the world quite differently. When Gazzaniga and his colleagues flashed a picture in front of a patient’s right eye, the information was processed in the left side of the brain and the   patient could easily describe the scene verbally. But when a picture was flashed in front of the left eye, which connects to the right side of the brain, the patient would report seeing nothing. If allowed to respond nonverbally, however, the right brain could adeptly point at or draw what was seen by the left eye. So the right brain knew what it was seeing it just couldn’t talk about it. These experiments showed for the first time that each brain hemisphere has specialized tasks. I spoke with Gazzaniga about his seminal research and what it can tell us about the nature of the human brain and even human consciousness. He’s the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of the upcoming book, The Consciousness Instinct. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. It’s incredible now to think that until you did those experiments, no one knew about brain lateralization. What does it feel like to make such a profound discovery? Before we conducted our experiments, it seemed very clear that cutting the corpus callosum did not have any effect. Karl Lashley, an influential memory researcher, joked that the corpus callosum’s role was simply ”to keep the hemispheres from sagging.” So it was pretty stunning to witness a guy who was otherwise just like everybody else be completely unaware in his left hemisphere about what his right hemisphere was capable of. All of the information in half of his visual field could not be verbally described. And yet, the right hemisphere responding nonverbally was aware that the information had been presented. It boggles the mind. If you were witnessing that, trust me, you would just be stunned. You’d say, ”I want to understand that more.” So what’s the benefit of having the two halves of the brain specialized like that? Well, people have been wondering about lateralization of the nervous system for a long time, and there are many theories, but it’s basically not known. Up until you get to the human brain, if you look at monkeys and chimps, both sides of the brain serve basically the same functions. And then in humans, there starts to be this vast amount of lateral specialization. One simple idea that we’ve offered is that the human is really set with more capacities than fewer, and each one of those capacities takes up some kind of neural space. If you start with a normal, intact brain with things duplicated on each side and you need more cortical space to add on all the new, higher functions of the human condition, you’re gonna say, ”Maybe let’s recraft some of this space and just use one hemisphere, so we have more space for another capacity.” But as I say, it’s just speculation it’s not in the category of ”we know how it works.” What are ”functions of the human condition”?  Well, over time, as our experiments evolved, rather than just asking patients to identify what they saw, we asked them to select objects or drawings to match the images we showed them, and then we would ask them to explain themselves. For example, we showed the right eye of one patient a picture a chicken claw. The right hand had to pick a related drawing, and one was a chicken. So, the chicken claw obviously goes with the chicken. At the same time, we showed to the left eye a New England snow scene. The left hand had to pick a related image, and one was a shovel, so the left hand pointed to the shovel. Afterward, we asked the patient, sort of confrontationally, ”Why did you do that? Why did you point to the chicken and the shovel?” And the patient said, ”Well, the chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.” And we realized  —   BOOM!  —   we do that all day long! We have all these separate systems, these impulses, these emotions, these behaviors, all this stuff, and we’re constantly thinking about it and spinning it into a story that fits. Once you’re onto that as a big feature of the human condition, you could then see how you can take that kind of interpretive system and build larger stories about meaning and why we’re doing things and our origins, and all the rest of it. What can   research teach us about normal brains? One of the fundamental facts of   research that people have to remember is that you can take any normal person and normal brain and disconnect the hemispheres and all of a sudden you have two consciousnesses. And through analysis and examination of all kinds of neurologic cases, you realized there are consciousnesses all over the brain! So if you’re looking at one system that somehow generates our subjective sense of being conscious  —   that’s wrong. That’s not how we should think about how consciousness evolved. You can take a conscious system and divide it in two just by disconnecting some neurons  —   that is a thing to go home and think about real hard."
"Updated at 6:37 p. m. ET, Less than a month after President Trump hired an outside lawyer to deal with inquiries related to the Russia investigations, Vice President Pence has followed suit. Pence’s office confirms he has hired Richard Cullen, who served as U. S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia during the term of George H. W. Bush and later worked on George W. Bush’s legal team during the 2000 Florida recount. An aide tells NPR that the decision to hire an outside lawyer has been under consideration for weeks, and Pence decided to go forward with it earlier this week. The vice president’s communications director, Jarrod Agen, said in a statement, ”I can confirm that the Vice President has retained Richard Cullen of McGuire Woods to assist him in responding to inquiries by the special counsel. ”The Vice President is focused entirely on his duties and promoting the President’s agenda and looks forward to a swift conclusion of this matter,” he added. Pence has not come under any particular scrutiny over the course of the Department of Justice Russia investigation. As head of the Trump campaign’s transition committee, he was involved in the hiring of Michael Flynn as national security adviser. Flynn was forced to resign after misleading Pence about his contact and conversations with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the U. S. during the transition. Pence’s choice for outside counsel contrasts with the president’s. Richard Cullen has a long record as a   attorney in Washington, particularly in Republican circles. His official biography from McGuireWoods lists, in addition to his time at the Justice Department, his experience working for former Sen. Paul Trible, a member of the Senate committee that investigated the   scandal, and his work for Rep. M. Caldwell Butler, a key Republican vote on the House Judiciary Committee who voted in favor of impeaching Richard Nixon during Watergate. Marc Kasowitz, the outside counsel hired by President Trump, does not have experience in politically charged cases. He has represented Trump for years in civil matters, including a libel suit against a Trump biographer that was dismissed. Kasowitz’s background is in litigation and securities law, and his professional biography notes: ”Described by CNBC as the ’toughest lawyer on Wall Street’ and by Bloomberg Financial News as an ’uberlitigator,’ Marc E. Kasowitz is widely regarded as one of the preeminent trial lawyers in the country.” He also has represented banks owned in part by the Russian government. Kasowitz and his spokesman have served as public attack dogs in defense of Trump in the Russia matter. He delivered an   statement sharply criticizing James Comey after the former FBI director’s recent testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Pence praised Trump’s ”decisive and strong leadership” when he fired Comey in early May. He told reporters that the president fired Comey due to the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein shortly before Trump contradicted Pence and other surrogates by telling NBC News he was thinking about the Russia probe when he fired Comey. It appears that decision may have played a large role in triggering special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Trump for possible obstruction of justice, as the Washington Post reported Wednesday night. Trump lashed out at that report at various times on Thursday through his Twitter feed, even recalling language from the campaign to criticize Hillary Clinton as ”Crooked H.”"
"Updated at 3:50 p. m. ET, Otto Warmbier, the U. S. student freed this week after more than a year in North Korean detention, sustained ”extensive loss of tissue” in all parts of his brain, his doctors say. Warmbier has remained in a coma since his return, suspended in a state ”best described as unresponsive wakefulness,” Daniel Kanter, head of the neurocritical care program at University of Cincinnati Health, told reporters at a news conference Thursday. Kanter and his colleagues say they’ve found no evidence that Warmbier, who has demonstrated no awareness of his surroundings, suffered from the effects of botulism  —   a finding that appears to contradict the explanation offered by his North Korean captors. Authorities there have said Warmbier fell into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill. Instead, the doctors told reporters that the more likely cause of Warmbier’s condition is cardiopulmonary arrest. Their tests also did not reveal any signs of physical trauma to Warmbier, such as ”acute or healing fractures.” Earlier Thursday his father, Fred Warmbier, said that North Korea’s regime had ”brutalized and terrorized” his son for more than a year, and that he’s happy Otto Warmbier is now home. He said his son will now get medical care that he was denied in North Korea. As he spoke to the media Thursday, Fred Warmbier also said he was glad to be wearing the same jacket his son had worn during his court appearance in North Korea. ”I’m proud of Otto, and the courage he showed by going to North Korea,” Warmbier said, ”and having that adventurous side to him . .. so the fact that he was taken and treated this way is horrible, and it’s tough to process. But we’re tremendously proud of him. So we’re looking to the future.” ”We don’t believe anything that they say,” Fred Warmbier said, describing North Korea as a pariah state. He said his son had become ”fodder” for the regime, after being lured into visiting the country by a Chinese travel company that promised its customers were never detained while on a tour in the isolated nation. Otto Warmbier, 22, had been sentenced by a North Korean court to 15 years of hard labor in prison after he was accused of trying to steal a propaganda banner at his Pyongyang hotel. But it emerged as he traveled back home that Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was in a coma. ”Disbelief,” is how Warmbier described his immediate reaction to being told last Tuesday that his son is in a coma. ”I don’t know what being in shock is,” he said, ”but I’m pretty sure I was.” In recent months, Warmbier said, he and his wife, Cindy, had decided to take a more public stance in calling for their son’s release, after months of following advice that they should try not to antagonize or offend leaders in North Korea. When asked whether he believes the Obama administration could have done more to secure Warmbier’s release, he replied, ”I think the results speak for themselves.” He said that he had spoken to President Trump last night, describing the call as gracious."
"Esraa Yousria Saleh was walking down El Hussein, a busy street in downtown Cairo famous for its souvenirs and tchotchkes, when a man in his early 20s made eye contact with her. He followed her, circled her, then suddenly  —   she felt a hot breath in her ear: ”I would like to put it all inside.” Saleh, 28, a feminist and activist based in Egypt, was furious. Why did that man feel like he could look at her? Follow her? Say those lewd words to her? A May study from Promundo, an international research group, and U. N. Women sheds fresh light on men’s motivations for harassing women on the streets in four areas in the Middle East: Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and the Palestinian territories. ”We know quite a lot about women and girls but [relatively little] about men and boys” when it comes to harassment, says Shereen El Feki,   of the report and the author of Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World. The report found that of the 4, 830 men surveyed, as many as 31 percent in Lebanon to 64 percent in Egypt admitted to having sexually harassed women and girls in public, from ogling to stalking to rape. Of course, street harassment is a global phenomenon. Studies have shown that vast majorities of women across cities in Brazil, India, Thailand and the U. K. have been subjected to harassment or violence in public. And the U. S. isn’t immune  —   65 percent of 2, 000 women surveyed said they had experienced street harassment, according to a 2014 study conducted by the research firm GfK for Stop Street Harassment, an advocacy group. But there are a couple of things that stand out about street harassment in the Middle Eastern areas, according to the Promundo report. In the Palestinian territories, Morocco and Egypt, young men with   education were more likely to sexually harass women than their older,   peers. The researchers were surprised by the findings. Generally, men who have finished high school or college hold more enlightened attitudes toward women than those who have had no primary school or schooling at all, says Barker, who has studied men and gender equality in over 20 countries. Barker and El Feki suspect that factors contributing to the behavior include the region’s high unemployment rates, political instability and pressure to supply their family’s daily needs. About half the men surveyed, for example, said they felt stressed, depressed or ashamed to face their families. Perhaps harassing women is a way to assert their power, suggests Barker. These young men ”have high aspirations for themselves and aren’t able to meet them,” he says. ”So they [harass women] to put them in their place. They feel like the world owes them.” In a place like rural Egypt, the situation is easy to understand, says El Feki. ”It speaks to the   tedium of being a young man [there],” she says. They can’t find work. They can’t afford to marry. They’re stuck living with their parents. There is nothing to do. ”They’re in a suspended state of adolescence,” she says. The harassment is also a way for young men to ”get their kicks,” says El Feki. When the men in the survey were asked why they sexually harassed women in public, the vast majority, up to 90 percent in some places, said they did it for fun and excitement. That is not how women see it. ”It’s not fun at all,” says Saleh. ”It’s a nightmare.” Holly Kearl, executive director for Stop Street Harassment and author of Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World, says she is not surprised. ”I’ve seen that reasoning before in other studies: ’I’m bored. I’m bonding with my male friends. We’re just having fun,’ ” she says. ”Men aren’t thinking about how women are feeling.” The researchers at Promundo suspect that men’s motivations behind the behavior is not unique to the Middle East. ”We know that street harassment is an issue around the world, and there are likely similar dynamics at play,” says Brian Heilman, a fellow at Promundo who helped write the report. ”We just happen to have a rich glimpse of what it looks like in (this) region through this data set.” This report is the first time that the group has studied street harassment from the male point of view  . Women can experience a wide range of psychological effects from street harassment, says Kearl. Studies have shown that for women who are survivors of sexual violence, harassment can be triggering and traumatic. It also can make women feel unsafe, and as a result, they restrict their movement. Saleh, for example, has stopped using the metro transit system in downtown Cairo. She has started to use Uber to get around for fear of another El Hussein incident. ”But sometimes I run out of money so I’m forced to use [public transportation],” she says. Groups across the Middle East, like HarassMap in Egypt and HarassTracker in Lebanon, are using crowdsourced data to map and report harassment incidents to keep streets safe. And in 2010, the U. N. launched Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces, a global program to prevent street harassment in more than 20 cities around the world through education and intervention. ”Unfortunately, we don’t know what works long term,” says Kearl. ”It’s hard to see which efforts are working at a   level.” She suggests outreach to schools to talk about harassment in a   environment. Perhaps boys and men could then understand that their ”fun” has consequences: ”It’s as if there’s a hand reaching into my stomach and grabbing my intestines,” says Saleh. ”Like I want to vomit, but I can’t.”"
"About 20 percent of baby food samples tested over a   period had detectable levels of lead, according to a new report from Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit group. The group evaluated data collected by the Food and Drug Administration from 2003 to 2013. This included 2, 164 baby food samples. They found 89 percent of grape juice samples, 86 percent of sweet potatoes samples and 47 percent of teething biscuits samples contained detectable levels of lead. ”The levels we found were relatively low, but when you add them up  —   with all the foods children eat . .. it’s significant,” says study author Tom Neltner of the Environmental Defense Fund. None of the baby food samples seemed to exceed the Food and Drug Administration’s allowable levels of lead. However, the FDA is in the process of reviewing its standards, and there’s concern that current standards do not reflect the latest science about the potential health risks, especially for young children. ”I think the onus is really on FDA and industry to change their standards to reflect what we know, that there is no safe lead level,” said pediatrician Jennifer Lowry. She chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Environmental Health. The FDA has ”old standards . .. and they haven’t been updated in decades,” Lowry said. In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidance on lead in children. The CDC considers a level of 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood to be high in children, but no level of lead is considered safe because of its potential detrimental effects on child development. The CDC concluded that ”even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. And effects of lead exposure cannot be corrected.” Pediatricians recommend children eat lots of different kinds of fruits and vegetables. This can help minimize the risk from a single food. And as we’ve reported, diets high in iron, calcium and vitamin C can limit the absorption of lead. Also, parents can limit the amount of fruit juice their children consume. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended new limits on juice consumption. The pediatric group recommends that children under 1 year should not drink any juice. The FDA says its goal is to protect human health by ”ensuring that exposure to lead is limited to the greatest extent feasible.” However, it also points out that traces of lead in food can come from the environment. It’s not clear whether the lead detected in baby food is coming from soils or other sources. If lead is in the soil, it can be absorbed by crops growing in that soil. So lead ”cannot simply be removed,” according to an FDA fact sheet."
"At the United States Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa. prisoners with serious mental illness are handed crossword and sudoku puzzles instead of counseling, according to a lawsuit that says prisoners at one of the most violent federal prisons are denied routine mental health care. The lawsuit also alleges that prisoners at Lewisburg are cut off from the medications they were given at other prisons and housed in small cells, where they often spend up to 24 hours a day with other prisoners, who also often have serious mental illnesses. Filed on June 9, McCreary v. The Federal Bureau of Prisons says the meager mental health treatment violates the U. S. Constitution’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. It also says the inadequate treatment is in violation of the Bureau of Prisons’ own rules, which say men with serious mental illness should, in most cases, be removed from the Special Management Unit for violent prisoners at Lewisburg. A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons declined to respond to the lawsuit, saying in an email, ”the Bureau of Prisons cannot comment on matters that are the subject of legal proceedings.” Last year, an investigation by NPR and the Marshall Project showed high rates of violence at Lewisburg, where    assaults are six times more common than at all federal prisons. The investigation linked the heightened violence to the lack of mental health care, the practice of   solitary confinement  —   putting two men in one small cell  —   and the frequent use of restraints. The lawsuit  —   filed by   legal group Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project and the law firm Latham and Watkins  —   finds those problems, too. Attorney Philip Fornaci, project director of the D. C. Prisoners’ Project of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, says it’s dangerous for mentally ill prisoners to live in   solitary confinement. ”For a person with a serious mental health issue  —   particularly paranoia, schizophrenia, things of that nature  —   it’s almost completely intolerable to be caged in that kind of situation indefinitely,” he says. The lawsuit is based on three years of visits to Lewisburg interviews and correspondence with scores of inmates and prison documents including medical records. The Special Management Unit at Lewisburg was created in 2009 for what the Bureau of Prisons defines as ”dangerously violent, confrontational, defiant, antagonistic inmates.” It was set up as a   program, but last year, the Bureau of Prisons changed the rules to make it a   program. But Stacey Litner, the advocacy director for the D. C. Prisoners’ Rights Project, says several of the men she has met over three years of visits to the Pennsylvania prison have been there for several years. ”During the course of my visits, I’ve seen people deteriorate fairly significantly in terms of their mental health,” says Litner, as she explains the claims in the lawsuit. People who arrived at Lewisburg with medications they got at other prisons were taken off, she says, ”with little or no explanation. They can’t get access to the therapy they are desperately seeking. When they tell staff they are suicidal, there is no recourse.” The   Project investigation reported that men whose conditions were made worse by the isolation of solitary confinement often attacked their cellmates, and in some cases, there were serious injuries or killings. In October 2015, Gerardo Arche was killed in his cell, strangled with a bedsheet, court documents show. Arche had a long history of serious mental illness, according to his prison medical records, but when he arrived at Lewisburg he was taken off his antipsychotic medications and given no therapy, he told his family. His daughter and sister say that in his calls and letters, he sounded increasingly depressed or detached from reality. The family pleaded with prison officials to give him medication and treatment. Instead, when he acted agitated or paranoid, he sometimes was placed in tight handcuffs and restraints, his family said. Prison documents obtained by NPR and the Marshall Project show that psychology staff at Lewisburg repeatedly found that he had ”no significant mental health issues.” Arche’s death had been overlooked by the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania until the   Project investigation. But last month, the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury had indicted Arche’s cellmate, Jose   on a charge of   murder. In 2014, the federal Bureau of Prisons issued a policy: Men with serious mental illness did not belong in a Special Management Unit for dangerous prisoners. This month’s lawsuit says Lewisburg got around that rule, because around that same time, many prisoners there with serious mental illness were taken off medications and given a lesser diagnosis. Andra Gray, a former Lewisburg inmate who is not included in the lawsuit because he was released last year, says he, too, was denied medications  —   even though at other prisons he was treated for depression and schizophrenia. ”They cut it off when I got to Lewisburg,” he says. ”I was getting medication until I got to Lewisburg.” Gray says when he asked for counseling, he was given the   packets, with puzzles and   pages, instead. ”And then they give you a book and say color this or draw this picture or cross this word out, because it’s usually sudokus and Word Search. You’re not thinking about searching a word out. You’re thinking about, you know, life or death. So how do a word or a puzzle help you, at that point?” Gray says only after he returned home to Washington, D. C. did he get the medications and therapy that now enable him to try to get his life back on track. Last year, new federal rules called for more mental health screening of inmates in solitary confinement. The lawsuit says men at Lewisburg still get little to no counseling. But there has been some change: The number of men in the program at Lewisburg has dropped by about half in just the last year."
"The    success of Pixar’s Cars series can be chalked up to a great many things, but don’t discount the little   frowns the cars make with their dashboard eyes when they want to go fast. When Lightning McQueen, the Owen   stock car with the bright flames decal, guns for pole position, he squints so much that any human who might be driving him wouldn’t be able to see the road. But of course there are no humans in this world, unless you count the invisible giant kids who must be steering the racers with their hands and making the motor sounds themselves. That enduring childhood (typically but by no means exclusively boyhood) fascination with moving vehicles has propped up this franchise for the backseat set, seeing it through three   films, a   Planes series, and countless toy  . Cars has helped secure Pixar’s financial dominance, even as the company’s recent   on easily marketable sequels has caused it to lose some trophies of its own. But after more than two decades of restless invention, followed by a recent round of ”places” (The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory) instead of the ”wins” of yore, perhaps John Lasseter and Co. have started to pause and reflect on their limitations in the limelight. Thankfully, Cars 3, the first in the series to be made without Lasseter writing or directing, is not the sign of a slow death —  even if its story may suggest as much. The film toys with a certain degree of ”auto” . Here, McQueen finds his ol’ motor isn’t running like it used to, as younger, more technologically savvy upstarts led by Armie Hammer’s sleek, sneering Jackson Storm start squeezing him out of the winner’s circle. His longtime sponsor,   gets bought out by a giant conglomerate whose CEO, a shiny coupe voiced by Nathan Fillion, pushes his star to slap his grinning metal hood on every product he can find —  shades of Disney purchasing Pixar in 2006. Plus, his buddy Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) the   tow truck who ” ”’ed his way to the starring role in Cars 2, is barely around. Strangely, no one seems too broken up about it. McQueen’s efforts to rebuild himself on the racing circuit give him a chance to pause and reflect on the lessons he learned in the first Cars, when Paul Newman’s sage Doc Hudson and the   residents of forgotten Route 66 town Radiator Springs taught him there was more to life than going  . In accordance, this time around McQueen becomes the father figure Hudson was to him. He gets assigned to a trainer, the perky yellow Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo) who once harbored racing aspirations of her own but lacked ”confidence” (a codeword in this   gearhead sport). Only gradually does McQueen realize that, in fact, he’s training her. The best parts of Cars 3 are the ones that embrace the passage of time and the joys of mentorship, as they are the bits most likely to remind you how Pixar can deliver meaningful messages of aging and acceptance —  when it wants to. Helmer Brian Fee, making his directing debut after working as a storyboard artist on past studio greats like   and Ratatouille, effectively keeps us thinking about these themes throughout McQueen’s journey. He also delivers some sequences that are among the most stunning animations the company has ever produced: a breathtaking beach race at dusk a demolition derby in which it’s only a matter of time before everything is caked with mud and a weathered filmstrip of Doc’s old races that makes you wonder how hard it must be for   tech to make something look convincingly ”old”. Yet Fee is clearly getting instructions radioed in from the Disney pit crew, so while the third Cars lap is an improvement over the   spy spoofery of the second film, it’s not very convincing when it tries to peddle the sense of an ending. Of course, in retrospect, Toy Story 3 feels less profound now that we know there’s a fourth outing on the way. Meanwhile, we have our best scientists still puzzling out the logistics of the Cars universe. In this film the   ones put on headsets and use duct tape, and at one point, Mack the Mack truck (John Ratzenberger) somehow knocks on the inside of himself. And then there are the larger social problems creeping in, like the fact that   and   discrimination still exists even without any physical signs that the cars are different genders or races. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for the small flickers of human error that persist in a land ruled by   vehicles. Or maybe all will be revealed once we’re racing each other with our own sets of Cars cars.  . A NOTE ON THE PRESHOW: In ”Lou,” a playground    box comes alive and teaches a lesson to a school bully who likes to mess with other kids’ things. It’s sweet and silly, if a bit reminiscent of the famous scene in Toy Story where the toys confront Sid. Among the modern crop of Pixar shorts, ”Lou” rests closer to the splendid ”Sanjay’s Super Team” and ”Piper” than to the obnoxious earworm ”Lava.”"
"Kate McKinnon plays an Australian in Rough Night, a shrewd   of   bro comedies like Bachelor Party, Very Bad Things, and The Hangover. There’s no particular reason for her to play an Australian, beyond a thin running joke about cultural insensitivity of failing to distinguish between Aussies and Kiwis. And yet it’s funny. McKinnon merrily swishes her dialogue around the accent and makes her character’s jet lag and     misunderstanding to keep her a beat behind the action, like the caboose of the comedy train. It seems highly unlikely the part was written for an Australian, but her instincts  —   and the instincts of her    Lucia Aniello  —  prevailed and the film is funnier because of it. There are some twists and turns of the plot in Rough Night  —   twists and turns lifted from all of its predecessors, especially the      gambit of Very Bad Things  —   but it’s mostly a frantic accumulation of jokes, staked on group chemistry and     audacity. In that, it mirrors the crazy, spontaneous progression of the bachelorette party itself, which aims for nonstop euphoria but occasionally strays into regrettable moments when it goes too far or stumbles into awkward patches. Casting a   to be Australian for no essential reason is the first clue that Rough Night will be going after laughs at whatever random place it can find them. ”Fasten your seatbelts,” as Bette Davis would say. Getting the night started turns out to be the toughest part. After an extended prologue establishes the bond between four   college friends a decade earlier, Rough Night has the laborious task of    through their individual lives before bringing them together for a bachelorette weekend in Miami Beach. A game Scarlett Johansson stars as Jess, a neophyte State Senate candidate who’s seen as too uptight to connect with voters, despite an opponent whose behavior is Anthony  . Her   life has put some distance between herself and Alice (Jillian Bell) her crass college   her other friends, Frankie (Ilana Glazer) and Blair (Zoe Kravitz) have their own problems, like a former romance that didn’t end gracefully. The strained chemistry among the four friends threatens to sour the film before it even gets started, particularly because Bell is such a dominant presence that the others are deprived of oxygen. But when they get to Miami for Jess’ bachelorette party and her newish friend Pippa (McKinnon) enters the mix, the ensemble starts to gain some balance, right in time for a little cocaine bump and involuntary manslaughter to take the evening to another level. When an overzealous Alice accidentally kills a stripper (Colton Haynes) the women decide to cover it up rather than explain the    coke party that’s been raging in their beachside rental home. Meanwhile, Jess’ concerned fiancé Peter (Paul W. Downs, who   the script) is convinced by his buddies to drive nonstop through Florida in adult diapers, kept alert by Red Bull and expired Russian Adderall. This last detail, which Peter’s friend dubs ”the sad astronaut,” takes its inspiration from the bizarre true story of a former NASA astronaut who drove hundreds of miles in adult diapers to attack her rival in a love triangle. It’s also another example of Rough Night committing to an    comic idea and going all the way with it. Though Aniello and Downs’ script feels like a patchwork of other   comedies, with scenes from Weekend At Bernie’s tacked on for good measure, they’re smart enough to allow for silly digressions to keep the action from getting stale and predictable. Rough Night isn’t satisfied with being the latest in      comedies, though it does pull a fun role reversal by making Peter’s bachelor party a staid affair, with the guys comparing notes at a wine tasting. The setbacks that befall Jess and her friends are not marked as punishment for their sinful behavior, but obstacles for them to improvise their way around, so they can go back to partying some more. Rough Night may be a shameless comedy, but it’s also a comedy without shame. There’s something liberating in that."
"Partisans on either side of Northern Ireland’s ”Troubles” will naturally gravitate to one of The Journey’s two principals: Republican Martin McGuinness or Unionist Ian Paisley. But for those watching at a certain distance  —   from across the Atlantic, say  —   the movie is as much a clash of acting styles as a political debate. Playing McGuinness, Colm Meaney emphasizes warmth, humor, and naturalness. As the older and chillier Paisley, Timothy Spall is more mannered, relying on such gear as false teeth that make his occasional grin even more menacing than his frequent scowl. The Journey travels toward an actual destination  —   the 2006 St. Andrews Agreement that achieved political   in Northern Ireland  —   but it’s no docudrama. An opening title announces that Colin Bateman’s script ”imagines” the exchange between McGuinness and Paisley, who had never spoken to each other before the negotiations began. In Bateman’s scenario, both men are in Scotland for the talks as Paisley’s 50th wedding anniversary looms. Heavy rain makes a flight to Belfast problematic, but the U. K. government arranges a private plane. Prime Minister Tony Blair (Toby Stephens) asks for McGuinness’ consent to the interruption he agrees, so long as he can travel with his longtime enemy.  It’s a setup, organized by veteran British operative Harry Patterson (John Hurt). The men will be driven by an agent (Freddie Highmore) who poses as a chatty, clueless   underling. The van is outfitted with audio and video equipment, so McGuinness and Paisley’s conversation can be monitored. At first, there’s not much for the snoops to overhear. Paisley even snoozes for a bit, before the driver rouses him with a supposedly accidental burst of hard rock. Gradually, the two enemies begin to gab, alternating small talk with vehement denunciations of each other and their respective movements. The characterizations may owe less to historical accuracy than the script’s tidy opposition of freewheeling Catholic vs. repressed Protestant. McGuinness mocks Paisley, an austere Presbyterian minister, for never drinking or dancing. But the actual McGuinness was also a teetotaler. Since the two men don’t seem to be developing much of a rapport, Patterson instructs the driver to take a detour. The trip wanders through a woods and into an abandoned church. There are several other complications, including one that highlights the two warriors’ attitude toward firsthand violence. Patterson is stalling, but sometimes it seems director Nick Hamm is, too. He adds physical locations and archival footage as if to prove that he’s not simply filming a stage play. Along the way, McGuinness and Paisley’s relationship shifts in ways that are more interesting politically or philosophically than convincing dramatically. The movie is as carefully contrived as Patterson’s plan. While seeming to favor McGuinness, it doesn’t emulate Meaney’s naturalism.  If Paisley is the less likable, both men are allowed to make their arguments, sometimes very effectively. The filmmakers even offer an alternate villain for viewers who come to root for both the Republican and Unionist: Tony Blair, presented as a conniving buffoon who’s out of his depth. As the former PM, Toby Stephens gets to use all his shocked and abashed expressions. How much any of this has to do with the actual personalities of Blair, McGuinness and Paisley will inspire heated debate, at least in certain localities. But as the conversation drifts away from Northern Ireland  —   invoking   tribalism, and Nelson Mandela  —   such specifics become less important. The Journey ponders nothing less than the intractability of political violence. Which means it’s pertinent far beyond Belfast."
"The real estate company run by the family of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s    and adviser, has dropped its quest for a major tax break for a skyscraper project in New Jersey. The Kushner Companies had been seeking a   tax abatement for One Journal Square, a proposed $821 million luxury residential development in Jersey City, N. J. Last week, the project’s developer informed Mayor Steve Fulop that it will no longer seek that tax abatement, a spokeswoman for Jersey City confirmed Thursday. Fulop had already withdrawn his support for the tax break, after news reports appeared last month recounting how Jared Kushner’s sister had mentioned his name and position at the White House while pitching the project to Chinese investors. Jared Kushner stepped away from his role as CEO of the family business when his    took office. After the stories appeared about the investment pitch in China, the Kushner Companies apologized for the name dropping. This is the latest hurdle for the developer’s plan to build two skyscrapers on a   lot in the heart of the city’s Journal Square neighborhood. The office space provider WeWork, which was originally pitched as an investor and anchor tenant, is no longer involved in the project. But a spokesman for the Kushner Companies insists that One Journal Square is not dead yet. ”We are committed to moving ahead with this   investment in the   future of Journal Square, which will provide nearly 4, 000 union construction jobs, a memorial plaza, and $180 million in tax revenue for Jersey City over the next 30 years,” he said in a statement."
"An advertising blimp fell from the sky on Thursday and crashed near the scene of golf’s U. S. Open in Wisconsin, injuring the pilot. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office described the pilot’s injuries as ”serious.” It said in a statement that the pilot was the only person on board. ”The initial investigation reveals the blimp may have experienced mechanical problems prior to the crash,” the sheriff’s office added. Justin Maynard, a representative of the blimp company AirSign, told The   that the pilot had been transported to the hospital. He suffered burns but is expected to be ”OK,” Maynard added. The company does not know what caused the crash, which occurred as the blimp was advertising for a client near the U. S. Open, Maynard said. Two fire departments were at the golf course when the blimp went down at about 11:15 a. m. local time, the sheriff’s office said. They were able to quickly reach the scene, about 1 mile from the tournament. Video posted by someone attending the tournament shows the dark form of the crumpled blimp rapidly descending, eventually falling from view behind a crowded grandstand. ”It started deflating, and then it started going down,” witness Bryan Rosine told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ”They were trying to give it some throttle and it didn’t go up. . .. Then there was a bunch of kabooms and smoke clouds.” Another video, posted by Fox Sports, shows the blimp already on fire in the field when an explosion rips through it. Earlier in the day, AirSign had shared blimp pictures from the U. S. Open, advertising PenFed Credit Union. The PenFed logo is visible in an Associated Press photo of the blimp plummeting to the Earth. The blimp was airborne for ”several hours” before it went down, the sheriff’s office stated. It says the office had been in touch with the Federal Aviation Administration before the crash and ”determined the aircraft was lawfully operating at the proper altitude.” The U. S. Open, played this year in Erin, Wis. is one of the four major tournaments in golf."
"Video of Turkish security personnel appearing to punch, kick and club demonstrators in Washington, D. C. went viral and sparked outrage last month. Now, the Metropolitan Police Department has announced that 18 people are facing charges in connection to the incident outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence during a visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Nine protesters were injured in what D. C. Mayor Muriel Bowser described during a news conference Thursday as a ”vicious attack.” Police arrested two people on the day of the incident and two others Wednesday. This is how those four people were identified in an MPD statement: Outstanding warrants have been issued for the remaining 14 people  —   two Canadians and 12 Turkish citizens. ”When you have folks that are peacefully protesting here in Washington, D. C. which is a place where we welcome peaceful protest, and they are attacked for no reason, we think it’s extremely important,” MPD Chief Peter Newsham told reporters. Newsham said police worked with the U. S. State Department and the Secret Service to identify the suspects. None of them are Turkish Embassy personnel, he added. He called on those who have not been arrested to travel to the U. S. and present themselves. Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it told the U. S. ambassador that it believes the decision to issue arrest warrants is ”wrong, biased and lacks legal basis.” It stated that the incident happened because of the ”failure of local security authorities to take necessary measures.” In one of the episode’s more inflammatory aspects, video emerged that appears to show Erdogan himself at the scene, sitting in a black  . In the video posted by the Voice of America’s Turkish Service, an aide leans into the car to speak to someone inside, as protesters can be heard chanting in the background. The aide then speaks to another man in a suit, who nods. Seconds later, the group of security personnel moves toward the demonstrators and starts to attack them. The video then apparently shows Erdogan getting out of the car and watching for a few seconds. He then turns around, with his face in full view of the camera, and walks into the ambassador’s residence. When asked about the president’s involvement, Newsham stated: ”We don’t have any information right now to suggest that we have probable cause to make an arrest of the president.” As The   has reported, ”The demonstration was arranged by   and Armenian groups protesting a range of Erdogan policies.” After the incident, the State Department said in a statement that it was concerned by the violence, saying, ”Violence is never an appropriate response to free speech, and we support the rights of people everywhere to free expression and peaceful protest.” Here is the list of the 14 suspects with outstanding warrants, as provided by the Metropolitan Police Department:"
"Former Vice President Joe Biden has figured something out: ”I learned how to become one of the most popular politicians in America,” he says. ”Announce that you are not running for president, and be authentic.” Biden shared that secret with Fresh Air on Tuesday in front of a live audience at WHYY studios in Philadelphia, where he received WHYY’s Lifelong Learning Award for his distinguished career in public service and commitment to education. Biden became a senator when he was 30 years old, and this is the first time in 44 years that he hasn’t been in office. ”This is the first time in not just eight years, probably 15 years, I haven’t gotten up and a CIA agent . .. hasn’t briefed me on what’s going on in Ramadi or South Korea,” he says. Biden remarked on how, during his time in the Senate, he witnessed the decline of collegiality and bipartisanship. ”We continued to dumb down American politics, and decided that the way to win was to denigrate the institutions and individuals,” he says. ”That became the pattern . .. and I thought it was disastrous.” Toward the end of his time as vice president, Biden and former President Barack Obama learned that Russia was interfering in the election. ”These guys are for real,” he says. ”I am desperately worried that we are not going to  —   this administration will not and [will] maybe even try to prevent  —   finding out the truth about the depth and the breadth of the Russian attempts to undermine our electoral process.” But on the issue of whether he is planning to get back into electoral politics and run for president in 2020,    Biden remains elusive: ”I have no intention of running for president but I’m a great respecter of fate. . .. I don’t have any plans to do it, but I’m not promising I wouldn’t do it.” On the way Obama responded to racism, Barack Obama is the most   man I’ve ever met in my life. He has a full, complete understanding of who he is, what he is and the realities he faces. I used to get very upset sometimes when the body language of people in the Oval [Office] would be disrespectful. I remember one day going out after a congressman, literally walking out, and Barack grabbing me and pulling me back, and saying, ”What are you doing?” I said, ”I’m gonna teach that guy some lessons.” . .. He looked at me and he said, ”Joe, you take the good with bad. Do you think I would have beaten you in 2008 if I had been a    white boy?” . .. The fact is: There is racism it does exist. He was the brunt of it many times, but because of his caliber, because of his integrity, because of his humanity, he was able to rise above what I would have found difficult to dismiss and go on and get a lot of business done.  On watching Donald Trump take the oath of office, I don’t think Donald Trump ever expected to win. . .. His [is] the only administration that won or lost that I’m aware of since 1972 that during the campaign did not have a transition team in place. And so I was hoping that he would know what he didn’t know, and not let the bravado get in the way of acknowledging what he didn’t know and reaching out to really talented people to fill the void for him. I was hoping he would step up in a way and I still hope that will happen, as reality sinks in. On his hopes for President Trump, I give you my word as a Biden, I’ve been rooting for his success. It’s desperately in all of our interest to do that, and if you’ve noticed, Barack and I have not gone after him personally, we’ve not gotten into that mosh pit. We have taken issue with him when we think he’s wrong, which is  —   to be very blunt about it  —   most of the time. But here’s the thing: He is not ideological in my view. Barack and I talked about it, and the hope was that he would be able to find some common ground, he would reach out, but it seems as though his leadership style has gotten in the way of what, intellectually, I don’t think he has a problem with. On the current investigations into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, I find it hard to believe how the Republican Party cannot be apoplectic about the impact of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, in particular, and Russia generally in trying to fundamentally alter our democratic processes. It’s real and it’s not going to stop. Mark my words. It is not going to stop until we respond as swiftly and as directly as Barack did, when it became clear to 17 agencies what was being done and so it just really baffles me. I just wonder when they’ll gain the willingness to stand up and say, ”Enough, man.” On knowing during the campaign that Russia was trying to interfere in the election but not saying anything about it publicly  People who had to know were informed. There was no direct evidence that we could find of them actually able to manipulate the actual machines   voter rolls. And, you know, in this environment, I think the president was right, we would have been accused of being engaged in trying to manipulate the election by using information that was not   to the public, and required the release of classified information to prove. It would have been, I think, far worse. On Trump’s use of Twitter, Words matter. When presidents speak, the world listens, and look, the idea that somebody . .. gets up at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning and tweets vitriol, what it does, [is] it fundamentally alters the view of the character of the presidency in the rest of the world. On surviving an aneurysm, They told me I had somewhere between a 30 to 40 percent chance of living, and I thought: What the hell? That’s three in 10, why not me? Because look, you know I don’t talk about it, but I find great solace in my faith, I happen to be a Roman Catholic, a practicing Catholic . .. I found that, for me, the externalities of my faith bring me a sense of peace. . .. My son died, and he had this set of rosaries on and I’ve been wearing it since and I will wear it till I die. . .. I’m not saying when I pray the rosary God’s gonna help me  —   it’s just solace. Radio producers Amy Salit and Mooj Zadie and Web producers Heidi Saman, Beth Novey and Martina Stewart contributed to this story."
"In the 21st century, destination music festivals seem like a dime a dozen. But just 50 years ago, there was only one: the Monterey International Pop Festival, which featured more than 30 artists and bands playing over the course of three days in the summer of 1967. Monterey Pop set the template for all the huge rock festivals that would follow  —   Woodstock, Coachella, Bonnaroo and all the rest  —   and its influence would spread even further via a documentary, Monterey Pop, that was helmed by D. A. Pennebaker and would set a gold standard for concert films. The festival’s   lineup reads like a who’s who of rock royalty, but four names rise to the top of any conversation about the festival. There was Janis Joplin. (”When she sang, all of her sang,” Pennebaker remembers.) The Who left the audience in awe after Pete Townshend concluded ”My Generation” by smashing his guitar. As for Otis Redding, ”the power and the feeling in his voice was something that a lot of us had never seen before,” photographer Henry Diltz says. Finally, there was Jimi Hendrix, who threw his guitar down onstage and doused it with Ronson lighter fluid. ”Then [he] lights it, and then leans back in this sacrificial rite of giving his guitar to the gods,” photographer Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal remembers. ”One of the most iconic rock ’n’ roll moments in musical history.” The musicians who weren’t playing were watching Hendrix, transfixed, from behind the curtains at the side of the stage, says Grace Slick, who performed at Monterey Pop with Jefferson Airplane. ”We hadn’t seen a lot of these people. And everybody was just blown away by Jimi Hendrix in particular, because we hadn’t seen him live. But we were amazed at each other.” Those three days of rock communion were initially conceived as a   affair. Two promoters, Alan Pariser and Ben Shapiro, were booking musicians for an   event at the same fairgrounds that hosted the storied Monterey Jazz Festival. But then record producer Lou Adler got wind of the project. ”Rock ’n’ roll was not considered an art form,” Adler says. ”So when this idea came up to possibly do this at the same venue that had jazz festivals, we thought this might be the chance for that validation.” Adler and his partner  —   John Phillips of The Mamas  The Papas  —   took over. Planning did not get off to a smooth start: Though the idea for the festival had always been to showcase a wide range of musicians, the psychedelic bands from San Francisco wanted nothing to do with the more commercial pop musicians from Los Angeles. Those meetings that took place in San Francisco, Adler says, ”pretty much almost came to blows.” On top of that, local authorities in Monterey were starting to get cold feet over the prospect of their town being overrun by hippies. To smooth things over, Phillips wrote a song, ”San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair).” The song was an instant hit and broke through to the Top 10 charts in the United States. In the meantime, ABC TV put up a $200, 000 advance to get a film made about Monterey Pop for its new ”Movie of the Week” series. Pennebaker, fresh off the success of his Bob Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back, was hired to make it. ”Usually I just did my films by myself,” Pennebaker says. ”The idea of having to do a concert film with four or five or six cameramen was something I never even thought about doing before.” As a result, Monterey Pop was made by ”kinda letting everybody go out and do whatever they thought a concert film should be.” Drugs were everywhere at Monterey Pop, as was par for the course in the ’60s and the Summer of Love. In fact, Los Angeles band The Association kicked off the festival with ”Along Comes Mary,” a thinly veiled salute to marijuana. But the festival wasn’t what the Monterey police force expected. ”It didn’t take long for them to have flowers in their hair and in their helmets and flowers on their guns,” Adler says. ”The changeover from what they were told was going to happen to what actually happened in Monterey was very special.” Most of the Monterey Pop musicians played for free, with ticket proceeds going to charity. A foundation set up for the festival still donates royalties from any   releases and from Pennebaker’s documentary, which was released in theaters the following year. However, Monterey Pop never aired on ABC, the network that bankrolled it  —   a decision made by Tom Moore, the head of ABC at the time and, according to Adler, ”a very conservative Southern gentleman.” ”We showed him Jimi Hendrix fornicating with his amp and we said, ’What do you think?’ ” Adler recalls. ”And he said, ’Keep the money and get out.’ He said, ’Not on my network.’ ” In celebration of the festival’s 50th anniversary, a restored version of Monterey Pop will be released in theaters across the country Friday, and this weekend artists like Norah Jones, Regina Spektor and Kurt Vile will take to the same fairgrounds to celebrate the momentous festival whose influence can still be felt half a century on."
"Australian journalist Adam Harvey was struck with a bullet to the neck Thursday while covering the fighting in the southern Philippine city of Marawi. The   correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had been interviewing children whose families have been displaced since   militants laid siege to the city on May 23. ”We’d just taken all the safety gear off, because we were in what we thought was a very safe place in Marawi, in the civic center where the refugees are brought into, where the medical center is, where the press conferences are held,” he told the network. ”But I guess it’s not safe.” Harvey said he was opening the back door of a car to get food and water when he felt a pain in the side of his neck. ”I thought I’d been hit by a bit of shrapnel, and I started bleeding,” he recounted on the air. ”It felt actually like I’d been . .. hit in the side of the neck with a cricket ball.” The blood flow was enough to suggest he should go to the hospital. He had an   taken to get a better look, and when the medical staff showed him the image, Harvey asked with surprise, ”Is there something in there?” ”There’s a bullet in there,” someone told him. ”Holy [expletive],” said Harvey. ”I can see a bullet in my neck. Jesus, that’s [expletive] scary.” The   showed an intact bullet lodged behind his jaw. Harvey never lost consciousness, and while he says his neck hurt, he had no idea he’d been shot. He said he was told to wear a neck brace as a precaution. In a sign of just how dangerous Marawi has become, Harvey and his colleagues began hearing gunfire just outside the door of the hospital. ”We made the decision it was too dangerous to stay and pulled out,” he said, adding that he was heading to the medical center in a nearby city. ”The bullet is actually still in my neck,” he said, ”but luckily it missed everything important, and it just got lodged behind my jaw. . .. The casing and everything is not on it, obviously, it’s just the perfectly formed little   bullet.” Harvey said though there had been a few bullets hit the road in front of their crew when they had been closer to the fighting, they were a long way from the fighting when he was struck by the errant shot. ”This was the last place we expected this to happen.” Marawi remains a very dangerous place as the Philippine government tries to regain control of the city, a Muslim area on the southern island of Mindanao. Zia Alonto Adiong, a politician who is helping in rescue and relief efforts, told reporters that fleeing residents told him they’d seen at least at least 100 dead bodies scattered in villages. The military says more than three weeks of fighting has left 206 militants, 58 soldiers, and 26 civilians dead, Reuters reports. Lt. Col.   Herrera, a military spokesman, told the news service that government troops were up against some 200 militants, many using sniper positions. ”We intend to finish the fight as soon as possible,” he said. ”Our tactical commanders are doing their best.”"
"After more than 30 hours of jury deliberations, there is still no conclusion to the sexual assault trial of comedian Bill Cosby. The members of the jury say they are deadlocked and ”cannot come to a unanimous consensus on any of these counts.” The judge has ordered jurors to return to deliberations and try  —   again  —   to reach a decision. Cosby has been charged with multiple felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, over allegations that he drugged and molested Andrea Constand, then a Temple University employee, in 2004. The prosecution spent a week presenting its case, and the defense less than a day. Cosby did not testify. The jury deliberations have stretched across four days. Seven times, the jury returned to the judge with questions, asking to rehear portions of the testimony or asking for clarification on the language in a charge. On Thursday morning, the jurors told the judge they were deadlocked. Judge Steven O’Neill gave them instructions to try again, issuing a ”dynamite charge” or ”Allen charge,” intended to motivate an uncertain jury to reach a decision. If convicted, Cosby, 79, could spend the rest of his life in prison: He has been charged with three   felony counts, and each carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison. Constand is not the only woman who says Cosby raped or sexually assaulted her. Dozens of women have come forward over the past several years, with stories that echo one another. But in most of those cases, the statute of limitations had expired by the time the women came forward. Constand’s case was the exception. Cosby’s defense team argues that the encounter was consensual and ”romantic,” while prosecutors say it was one assault within a larger pattern of drugging and sexually assaulting women."
"At an unmarked apartment building in Moscow, there’s a notice taped to a large metal door with a list of tenants who haven’t paid their rent. Up five flights of stairs, on the top floor, two young men sit side by side on an old couch in a   apartment. They’re calling themselves Gregory and Arnie. They don’t want to use their real names because they fear for their lives. Both men recently left Chechnya, where they were detained and beaten because they’re gay. ”I was kidnapped and kept for 12 days in a basement,” Gregory, 21, tells us through an interpreter. ”I was beaten and interrogated.” Stories like this started to surface in April, when the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that more than 100 men had been rounded up and detained by Chechen authorities because of their ”untraditional sexual orientation  —   or suspicions of such.” The paper reported there had been three deaths. Human Rights Watch conducted its own investigation and confirmed what it calls an ”  purge” by Chechen authorities. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered an investigation into the claims.  Chechnya, a small, southwestern republic of Russia, is conservative and predominantly Muslim. ”Homosexuality is generally viewed as severely tainting family honor,” the Human Rights Watch report says. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov denies claims of an   campaign. He told the Interfax news agency last month that gay people don’t exist in Chechnya: ”In Chechen society, there is no such thing as nontraditional orientation,” he said. ”Our people have for millennia lived by different rules prescribed by God Almighty and dictated by the moral and ethical norms of   relations.” But Gregory and Arnie tell a different story. ”When I was detained, the police went through my phone and social media,” Gregory says. ”They forced me to contact someone I was dating.” He complied, and set up a date. Then he was driven by authorities to the place where the date had been planned. ”They put a black plastic bag over my head and put a gun to my head,” Gregory says. ”They made me call the other guy and tell him to come the car. Then they kidnapped him as well.” This is one way the kidnappings in Chechnya have multiplied, Gregory says. Detained men have been forced to name partners. ”They told me I wasn’t a human being and deserved to be murdered,” Gregory says. Eventually Gregory was released. He says he’s not sure why, but thinks it may be because he is not originally from Chechnya but elsewhere in Russia. The police gave him a bus ticket and told him to leave Chechnya. He contacted the St.   Russian LGBT Network, which operates a   hotline, and they arranged for him to go to Moscow. That’s how he ended up in this safe house, run by the Moscow Community Center. The organization, which serves the LGBT community, says it has evacuated more than 30 men from Chechnya. Most of those who escape may never be able to return, activists say. That’s the case for    Arnie. As Gregory is talking, Arnie stares straight ahead, hands clenched in his lap. He asks for a smoke break and steps out onto the balcony off the living room. When he comes back, Arnie struggles to remember details of what happened to him in April. He’s pieced together that he was kidnapped and severely injured, and spent nearly two weeks in a coma. ”I don’t remember anything,” Arnie says. ”I can only tell you what my cousin told me.” Based on his cousin’s   Arnie went missing and then he was delivered to his family’s doorstep  —   unconscious, inside a burlap bag. ”Some guys came to the house and told my relatives, ’This is your son, he is a homosexual,’” Arnie says. His uncle grabbed him by the neck, ready to strangle him. The only reason he stopped was because Arnie was already on the verge of death. Weeks later, when Arnie woke up in the hospital, family members came into his room and told him they were disowning him. Arnie thinks that is because of their Muslim faith. Human Rights Watch has reported that families in Chechnya, ashamed to learn their sons are gay, have been ”indirectly encourag[ed]” to kill them to restore the family’s honor. Arnie says he feels safe for the moment because it’s the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Once it ends, he’s afraid his uncle will hunt him down and kill him."
"For more than half a decade Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have been an inseparable creative duo, racking up record sales and Grammy awards. But the premiere of ”Glorious”  —   the first single from Macklemore’s new, unnamed album  —   comes today with news that the Seattle rapper’s next release will be a solo effort. It’s not a permanent divorce, but a temporary separation. The amicable split follows their 2015 release, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made. Failing to score gold sales, it fell far short of their   2012 debut The Heist. Macklemore explained the reasoning via Instagram: ”After the last tour, Ryan and I agreed that some creative space would be good for the both of us. Ryan Lewis is my brother forever. We have been working together damn near every day for 9 years and it felt like the right time. This decision came from a place of love for one another. I’m the best man at his wedding next month. There will be more MRL music to come when the time is right.” ”Glorious” features Skylar Grey singing the hook of a motivational anthem produced by Budo and Tyler Dopps. ”It felt like the right record to come back with,” Macklemore writes. ”Embarking on this new chapter of life.”"
"A former mayor in central Mexico channeled Frank Underwood to deliver a speech that echoed, nearly word for word, an ominous promotional video for Netflix’s House of Cards.  ”Imitation isn’t always the best form of flattery,” the official House of Cards Twitter account said in response. But Miguel Angel Covarrubias Cervantes has denied allegations that he ”plagiarized” the speech, saying he was clearly referencing the show, as a way to draw attention. ”I think Mr. Underwood has helped us go a little viral,” he told the Mexican newspaper. Cervantes is preparing for a political campaign in 2018, Univision reports. The original speech was delivered by Kevin Spacey, as the malevolent fictional president Frank Underwood, whose devious deeds are at the heart of House of Cards. Underwood is sitting in the Oval Office and staring straight at the camera. Cervantes delivered his version in a more modest office, but with similar dramatic lighting. ”They say we get the leaders we deserve,” Underwood says. ”America deserves a leader who’s not afraid to look you in the eye and tell you what he believes. . .. I’m willing to work with both sides so that we all get what we want.” ”They say that we have the government we deserve,” Cervantes says in Spanish. ”Mexico deserves something bigger: a person who isn’t afraid to look you in the eye and tell you what he thinks. . .. I’m ready to work with whomever is necessary to achieve what we all want.” But there’s one very noteworthy distinction between the two videos. The Netflix version is intercut with scenes of Underwood engaging in, well, unsavory behavior . .. like murder. The camera doesn’t waver from Cervantes as it zooms in on his solemn face. In the House of Cards version, there’s a dark twist as Underwood, after the torrent of scenes of malice and cruelty, intones, ”I think America deserves Frank Underwood, and in your heart you know I’m right.” There was no apparent irony as Cervantes said, ”Now is the start of this great story.” Netflix didn’t seem too bent out of shape over the video. The response tweet featured a video of Underwood’s chief of staff, Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) telling the people of Mexico, ”It’s not a competition.” The clip ended with a twist on Underwood’s line, ”There is only one rule: Hunt or be hunted.” ”Solo hay una regla,” Netflix wrote. ”Copiar, or ser copiado.” Copy  —   or be copied."
"The title of Maile Meloy’s new novel is misleading: Do Not Become Alarmed sounds like a suspense story. Granted, I did read it in two nights but, while I’m a unapologetic fan of thrillers, Meloy’s novel is something else, something trickier to characterize. I’d call it a very smart work of literary fiction that exposes how very thin the layer of good luck is that keeps most of us from falling into the abyss. Meloy begins her book with an epigraph from Teddy Roosevelt that warns: ”Americans learn only from catastrophe, and not from experience.” The two American families at the center of this story think they’re setting off for a cruise down the California coast to Central America, but, instead, they’re in for a catastrophic learning experience. Nora and Raymond are couple number one: she’s white, he’s black and a recognizable Hollywood actor. They have a little girl and an    boy who seems to have a mild case of Asperger’s Syndrome. Nora’s cousin Liv and her husband Benjamin, both white, are the other couple, and they have a boy and a girl of similar ages. Even before the massive ship lumbers out into international waters, we readers sense this won’t be a lighthearted Disney family cruise. Flipping on the TV in his cabin, a bored Benjamin comes upon the ship’s own channel, where employees of the cruise line are being interviewed and are surprisingly blunt about the grueling hours they put in every day: ”Why would they put this on the TV?” [Liv, asks when she comes into the room.] ”I don’t know!” [Benjamin jokes.] Couldn’t they find one cheerful kid who wants to see the world? Or that Ukrainian girl who’s just happy not to be in Crimea?” Meloy is intent on contrasting the ”below decks” workers’   knowledge of deprivation and danger with her privileged characters’ relative sense of security. The weaknesses inherent in insularity become more evident once the ship reaches Central America. The two husbands accept an invitation to play golf on shore, while the moms and kids sign up for a   tour of a rain forest canopy. That plan is derailed, however, when their tourist van is hit by a car. To pass the sweltering hours before help arrives, their guide suggests that the group trek to a nearby beach and swim. ”You promise there’s nothing dangerous in that water?” Liv asks the guide, who naturally reassures her. But it’s the water itself that’s dangerous. As the moms doze in the sand, the tide shifts and the kids playing with inner tubes are gently carried off, up the river that feeds into the lagoon. When the moms wake up to an empty beach, their kids are already lost, deep in the jungle. That’s just the opening crisis of Do Not Become Alarmed, a title that’s, of course, sarcastic. There is, indeed, much to be alarmed at in this world  —   especially in terms of the horrors that children everywhere are subjected to  —   and Meloy, without being heavy handed or voyeuristic, doesn’t shy away from depicting those grim truths. A parallel storyline chronicles the parents’ agony as they wait for news of their missing kids. Stress fractures in the marriages widen, as the husbands and wives find all sorts of inventive ways to blame each other and themselves. In the grip of fear, Nora, the white mom of the biracial kids, worries that she taught her kids to be too polite, too obedient, in order to fit into, for instance, the community of their white private school. Nora tells her    that she’s afraid her two kids ”are huddled somewhere being good, like I taught them . .. [a]nd they won’t take a chance. . .. and so they won’t be rescued. . .. And it will be all my fault.” That’s an unexpected moment in a novel that’s filled with them. Meloy is such a deft writer that she keeps the adventure plot whizzing along even as she deepens our sense of the characters and the unfamiliar culture they have to navigate. You may (mistakenly) think that you don’t want to enter the nightmare world of this novel, but Meloy makes you realize what a luxury it is to have that choice."
"Rosalie Sorrels died this week, at her daughter Holly’s house in Reno, Nevada, with her daughter Shelley and son Kevin at her side. She was 83 years old, and had crammed a lot of living into those years. The New York Times quoted an old piece of mine in its obituary: ”She traveled around the country while raising five children. She drinks strong men under the table and is the first one up in the morning, bright and cheery and planning one of her famous dinners. And she can make the noisiest barroom crowd shut up and listen when she sings.” I was surprised to see that quote  —   she counted   writers among her fans and friends. Hunter S. Thompson and Ken Kesey were particularly close  —   Thompson wrote the liner notes to her 1972 Travelin’ Lady LP, declaring, ”Some of Rosalie’s songs are so close to the bone that I get nervous listening to them.” Studs Terkel wrote notes to another, and in a 1969 piece for Cosmopolitan magazine, Nat Hentoff called her ”an uncommonly personal and probing singer and composer” and promised, ”She’s not well known yet, but she will be.” A film clip from the Woodstock festival that year, below, shows her singing in a field, backed by Jerry Garcia and David Bromberg. The next year, Hentoff included her If I Could Be the Rain in a list of his favorite albums. If Hentoff’s prediction never quite came true, that was because Rosalie’s life included a lot more than music. After making three albums back in Utah with her husband Jim on guitar, including the first recorded songs by her friend Utah Phillips, she went eastward in 1966 for the Newport Folk Festival, before deciding to end the marriage and strike out on her own. As she sang in ”Travelin’ Lady”: ”I used to live in a big fine house, I had rooms for twenty friends or more. Now I run begging from lover to friend, For a pallet on any old floor.” It sounds like a fairly typical example of a ramblin’ folksinger lyric, until you realize that Sorrels hit the road in a station wagon with five children, a journey that became an indelible part of her legend. It wasn’t easy. Reached by phone, her daughter Shelley recalls to NPR that ”a lot of people believed we traveled back and forth with her across the country  —   which we did a few times, and it was always an educational experience. We stopped at all the historic sites, and had a lot of picnics, and we sure sang a lot of songs in the car. But the most important thing for her, and the challenging part, was finding a safe place for us to be, so she could go out on the road and make a living.” Fortunately, along with the music, Rosalie had a talent for friendship. ”One of the things I’ve always found so incredible about my mother,” Shelley says, ”was that with all the challenges, her friends were always there for her. There aren’t many people that will take in a folk singer with five children, but she had incredible friends.” I met Rosalie about fifteen years after that, staying with one of those friends in Saratoga Springs. Lena Spencer, who ran the Caffè Lena, had provided one of the family’s havens, and now Rosalie and Holly were returning the favor. I came through to play the Caffè, Rosalie cooked one of her amazing meals, everyone traded songs till well after midnight, and the next morning I woke up on the couch to hear her whistling as she swept the kitchen. She was a good whistler, and a great singer  —   the best description came from her mother, Nancy Stringfellow, who used to cook chicken basted in ”Rosalie sauce,” so called because ”it is made of wine and honey and cayenne, like my Rosalie’s voice.” I visited Rosalie whenever I could in the house her father Walter Stringfellow built, stone by stone, near a creek on a mountain above Boise. It felt like a classic pioneer setting, except for the thousands of books Rosalie’s parents were voracious readers and her mother ran the bookstore in Boise from the early ’50s into the ’70s. Rosalie moved back there in the 1990s to take care of her mother and stayed long after friends and family began suggesting that winter in a mountain cabin, down a dirt road that flooded regularly, might not be ideal for someone her age. She didn’t give a damn about that, even after the aneurism, the breast cancer, the fire. It was the place she loved. Friends and neighbors would stop by. She was surrounded by her books and records, with a picture of Lenny Bruce pinned above her bed. And, until the last few years, she would get away regularly to do tours and concerts. When I published a book, Riding with Strangers, I planned a hitchhiking tour from Portland to Boston and asked Rosalie if she could recommend a bookstore in Boise. Other friends did that for me in other towns, but Rosalie responded with four stores, scattered across Idaho, and the suggestion that she drive me around and trade songs at the readings. It was a ridiculously generous offer and a wonderful week. We traveled her favorite roads, listened to her stories and stayed with her friends. At every reading she sang ”Hitchhiker in the Rain,” the song she wrote for her older son, David, who committed suicide in 1976, and it tore the room apart. Rosalie always considered herself a singer more than a songwriter. Her heroes were people who had what she called ”the heartfelt tone”  —   the Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Patsy Cline, Sam Cooke, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. It had nothing to do with genre and everything to do with feeling. She treasured traditional folklore and made her first professional reputation singing songs she had collected in Utah and Idaho, but would also tell of   dinners cooked for Count Basie’s musicians when they came through Salt Lake. She liked any music that related directly to people’s lives. In later years, her performances were autobiographical   shows, the songs interspersed with stories, poems, and readings from her mother’s Report from Grimes Creek After a Hard Winter or the musings of Gino Sky, her beat poet friend and  . As for the songs, some were her own, but many were by friends she did an album of Malvina Reynolds compositions, and was an early supporter of Townes Van Zandt and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. In particular, she sang the songs of Bruce ”Utah” Phillips, first ”Rock Salt and Nails,” which he sang privately in her Salt Lake kitchen and she spread to all the other people who have done it over the years. Then ”If I Could Be the Rain” and dozens more. Though Phillips eventually became better known than she was, for many years his reputation was as the guy who wrote Rosalie’s songs. Rosalie could be cranky about the path of her career, though more about the finances than the fame. She would have liked to be able to provide a better cushion for her children and not to have to worry about her health care. She couldn’t help noticing that most of the men who had been rambling folksingers along with her in the ’60s had younger wives taking care of them, while she had her son and daughters and didn’t want to burden them. ”It’s hard when you start getting crinkled up and the bones start to hurt, and my mom was hoping she wouldn’t stick around so long,” Shelley recalls. ”But Malvina Reynolds was a big example for her, writing all those songs late in life. That encouraged her about aging  —   it was really important to her to spread the knowledge.” Interviewed in 2005 for a television tribute, Way Out in Idaho, Rosalie explained she was starting concerts with a Reynolds song, ”This World,” because ”things are really bad right now, and I’ve been through what I think is rotten at least four times that I can think of  —   which is hopeful to me, because I made it through all those things, and I want to communicate that to other people, that even though things get really rotten, you actually can survive them, and that the world is a beautiful place, and it’s worth doing.” Since her death a lot of old friends have been posting remembrances, and several have posted the lyric of ”Postcard from India (Keep on Rockin’),” another song from the Travelin’ Lady album: ”If I should die before I wake, There’s nothing here I’ve got to take with me, because: I’ve had the best, I’ve had the worst. I’ve been last, I got into the line first. I’ve been hungry, I’ve been satisfied. I’ve seen the carnival, taken every ride.” Most of us, if we made it to the carnival at all, avoided some of the scarier rides, and much as we admired Rosalie for taking them, we’ll never know that feeling. Rosalie was a fighter  —   and she had a lot to fight against. But the dark moments were balanced by her deep love of life and of the people around her. If she read this she would immediately point out that mostly she was fighting for, not against. She really did believe the world was a beautiful place, and tried to show people that beauty, onstage and off. The hard times were part of that, but in that documentary she countered a suggestion that she hadn’t been a great success, by asking, ”What do you mean I’m not successful? I do what I like to do. .. I have the respect and the friendship of my peers. I live in a house my father made with his hands. I have a damn good life.”"
What does an artist do to follow up a critically and commercially successful album? The   might go for more of the same. But the truly innovative and visionary shed that success like a snake’s skin and do something completely different. That is the story behind Mexican vocalist Natalia Lafourcade’s new album Musas. Music writer and Alt. Latino contributor Marisa   had a    with the singer to talk about the motivations behind her new sound.
"A study published Thursday shows how a bird flu virus that’s sickening and killing people in China could mutate to potentially become more contagious. Just three changes could be enough to do the trick, scientists report in the journal PLOS Pathogens. And the news comes just as federal officials are getting ready to lift a moratorium on controversial lab experiments that would deliberately create flu viruses with mutations like these. Public health officials have been worried about this bird flu virus, called H7N9, because it’s known to have infected more than 1, 500 people  —   and killed 40 percent of them. So far, unlike other strains that more commonly infect humans, this deadly virus does not spread easily between people. The fear is that if it mutates in a way that lets it spread more easily, the virus will sweep around the globe and take a heavy toll, because people’s immune systems haven’t ever been exposed to this type of flu before. Past pandemics caused by novel flu viruses jumping from animals or birds into people have killed millions. ”As scientists we’re interested in how the virus works,” says Jim Paulson, a biologist at The Scripps Research Institute. ”We’re trying to just understand the virus so that we can be prepared.” That’s why he and his colleagues recently tinkered with a piece of the H7N9 flu  —   a protein that lets the virus latch onto cells. It’s thought to be important for determining which species the virus can infect. ”So it’s not the whole virus,” says Paulson. ”It’s just a piece  —   just a fragment  —   that we can then study for its properties.” What they studied is how different changes affected the virus’ ability to bind to receptors found on the surface of human cells. It turns out that three small mutations made the fragment bind far more strongly to receptors found on human cells than to receptors from bird cells. Scientists know, from studying strains that led to past pandemics, that this kind of switch appears to be involved in enabling a bird flu virus to become transmissible between people. ”All we’ve done is to look at one of the properties that we’re pretty certain is important,” says Paulson, who cautions that additional genetic mutations might be necessary for this virus to become more contagious in humans. ”So, just because we’ve changed the one property doesn’t mean that that property alone is sufficient to let the virus transmit.” One way of finding out would be to test the effect of these mutations in the actual H7N9 virus. And he and a colleague did put in a proposal to the National Institutes of Health to modify the virus to explore what changes could make it transmissible among lab animals. ”And then the moratorium came out and so it wasn’t reviewed,” says Paulson. That unusual moratorium, announced by the White House in 2014, halted federally funded research that might make flu viruses more dangerous. It came after more than two years of debate among scientists about whether these experiments are too risky. Critics argue that the information gained isn’t worth the possibility that a   mutant flu might escape the lab, either by accident or because someone intentionally used it as a bioweapon. They argue that scientists shouldn’t be in the business of taking deadly viruses and making them even worse. ”These are all legitimate concerns, in my view,” says Paulson. Because of those concerns, he now wants to test these genetic changes  —   not in the H7N9 virus itself, but rather in a weakened strain of flu that can move from ferret to ferret, the lab   for people in flu studies. And it probably won’t be long before he can propose such an experiment to the NIH, because the Department of Health and Human Services is almost finished with drafting a new policy that spells out how officials will review this type of flu experiment in the future. ”As soon as that policy is finalized, the moratorium will be lifted and NIH will move forward in concordance with that new policy. Our expectation is it will be very soon,” says Carrie Wolinetz, acting chief of staff and associate director for science policy at the NIH. ”We want to make sure that there is an appropriate level of review to seriously consider the balance of that   equation in a way that allows us move forward responsibly.” One scientist who’s been critical of deliberately creating potential pandemic pathogens is David Relman, a biologist at Stanford. If a scientist wanted to test the effect of these   mutations in a weakened lab strain of flu, he says, ”I would be much more accepting of that kind of experiment.” But if researchers wanted to make these genetic changes in the actual H7N9 virus, he says, ”I would be very hesitant, were they to want to do that. In fact, I would be reluctant to have them do that.” Relman notes that a policy guidance released in the last days of the Obama administration says work that could create a highly virulent, highly transmissible virus requires special scrutiny. ”Now, the part I don’t agree with,” he says, ”is they don’t come right out and say, ’Let’s not do that.” Other researchers, like Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, who receives NIH funding, have publicly argued for the need to modify H7N9 in the lab to see exactly what this virus might be capable of. They believe such research is essential to truly understand the threat. ”The rest of the world is moving forward with this type of experiment already,” says Fouchier, whose genetic experiments with a different bird flu virus sparked a public outcry in 2011. ”And so the U. S. can either join or not join. It’s up to them, but the work will continue,” he says. ”I’m pretty sure that the U. S. government will start funding this research again,” Fouchier says, ”because this is clearly important work. In the flu field, this is one of the most important questions to be addressed: How do we identify, among thousands of viruses that cause outbreaks, those viruses that are going to cause the next pandemic?” He’s hoping to learn more about how officials will handle all this when a network of federally funded flu researchers meets next month in Atlanta."
"Remember the movie Quest For Fire? It’s an iconic Hollywood moment: Ancient humans discover how to make fire. It happens pretty quickly, and there’s a chase scene  —   starring a   tiger  —   to heighten the suspense. Off the big screen, though, evolutionary changes, including   changes that would underpin our species’ control of fire, often happen in fits and starts over lengthy periods. In papers just published in a supplement to the journal Current Anthropology devoted to human evolution and fire, we see just how lengthy that process may have been. In his contribution, ”Identifying and describing pattern and process in the evolution of hominin use of fire,” Dennis Sandgathe of Simon Fraser University notes that it’s quite challenging to distinguish between the archaeological signature of fire use by our early ancestors and that of   fires: ”The probability seems vanishingly small that the location of any   Early Stone   Paleolithic site would not have natural fires pass over it at least once (and probably many times) in the period of time since its deposition. If the site is not too deeply buried, artifacts and bones can be altered by the heat of a passing natural fire, and charcoal and ash from natural fires can be introduced into the site sequence.” In other words, what looks like evidence for human use of fire may actual be evidence of a natural process. Sandgathe continues: ”Even in cases where it seems very clear that the fires were the result of hominin behavior, there still remains the possibility that they acquired the fire from natural sources and did not create it themselves. This possibility seems to be consistently overlooked, underappreciated, or simply dismissed out of hand.” While acknowledging the possibility that the site of Gesher Benot Ya’akov in Israel indicates the first repeated fire use by our ancestors at around 800, 000 years ago, Sandgathe concludes that ”the earliest unquestionable examples” of continuous,   fire use come later, between 350, 000 and 200, 000 at the cave sites of Hayonim, Qesem, and Tabun, also in Israel. There, hearths and burned lithics occur in such abundance as to reasonably preclude other explanations. Sandgathe notes, however, that ”continuous” doesn’t necessarily mean ”habitual,” that is, ”there may still be decades, centuries, or in some cases even millennia between   events.” We can, Sandgathe says, take the date of 400, 000 years ago as a kind of milestone in our ancestors’ use of fire. But even then, fire use wasn’t anything like a key behavioral adaptation for a long while, as he explained to me via email: ”The current evidence does suggest that, while there may have been rare, isolated   events prior to 400, 000 years ago, no hominins were regularly using fire prior to this and, in fact, it seems pretty clear from my (and colleague’s) research that at least some Neanderthal populations in Europe were not regularly using fire as recently as 50, 000 years ago and perhaps even later. ..[Fire use] continued to be intermittent, opportunistic, involve the exploitation of natural fire sources, and was not an integral part of any hominin adaptations until sometime after 50, 000 years ago.” A   primate model may help us understand the evolution of fire behavior, too. Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University and Nicole Herzog of the University of Utah in their paper Savanna Chimpanzees at Fongoli, Senegal, Navigate a Fire Landscape explain why Fongoli is an unusual site for wild chimpanzees: There, in a   setting with environmental pressures quite similar to those our early ancestors may have faced, chimpanzees encounter wildfires quite regularly, some extensive in size. This situation sets the Fongoli chimpanzees apart from all other habituated chimpanzees who live in forested environments where fire is rare. The Fongoli fires are mostly anthropogenic, set by people in order to clear land for cultivation or to make hunting, or even just walking through the grassland, easier. But those fires impact the chimpanzees’ daily lives, too. The data collection that Pruetz and Herzog carried out shows, first, that the Fongoli chimpanzees spent more time foraging and traveling in burned areas compared to unburned areas. That’s smart thinking on the apes’ part, because it’s an efficient use of their energy. Second, the primatologists conclude that the apes ”can accurately predict the leading edges of fire and assess other aspects of fire behavior” such that they seem to be quite unconcerned with smoldering fires or even early flaming fires, but avoid more serious fires. Pruetz, via Messenger app, described for me a memorable experience she had a few years ago at Fongoli that highlights chimpanzees’ fire knowledge: ”I almost violated my own rule of ’follow the chimps’ when we’re in close proximity to a wildfire. The three adult males I was following first skirted the fire but then watched it for some minutes and went down into the ravine it was moving through. I thought we’d all be burned up and almost turned around but found that they’d crossed a spot in the ravine where there was still some green vegetation at the bottom, and the fire died out there and moved around while we quickly crossed. Note to self: Don’t doubt the chimps!” Writing in Current Anthropology, Pruetz and Herzog conclude that the chimpanzees ”appear strategically to use burned landscapes and exhibit cognitive abilities necessary for interacting with wildfires, which tentatively provides support for the early   theory.” Here we have a key insight about our own past: In the periods before the confirmed, repeated fire use that Sandgathe pinpoints, our ancestors may very well have understood fire and incorporated the effects of fire into their normal routines in intelligent ways. The process of fire manufacture and control would then have evolved quite gradually. Sandgathe himself concludes something that aligns beautifully with the primatologists’ perspective. He writes in Current Anthropology: ”In some regions (and time periods) high frequencies of natural fires may have provided some hominin groups with constant, reliable access to fire, limiting any pressure to develop   techniques or   technologies.” Not as sexy, perhaps, as Quest For Fire  —   but good solid science. As the headline to a recent post of mine here suggests, new evidence in human evolution is being announced at a ”dizzying” rate. Just last week the news broke that, based on fossil finds from Morocco, our species Homo sapiens may be over 100, 000 years older than we thought. Often though, the       work  —   such as that discussed in the Current Anthropology issue on fire  —   is where advances in paleoanthropology come. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara’s new book is Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"”What’s the difference between the FBI director and Mr. Snowden?” Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Thursday during his yearly live   show, saying that he would offer political asylum to fired FBI head James Comey in the same way Russia has sheltered former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. By phrasing a question uniquely constructed for these unusual times, Putin put a new spin on the ongoing saga over Russia’s tampering in the U. S. election, links between President Trump’s inner circle and Russia, and allegations that the president tried to stop at least one line of inquiry. Comey recently testified that Trump fired him after asking him to end the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn  —   a request that Comey says he memorialized in personal notes that he allowed to be leaked to the media. ”[Comey] said he’d written down his conversation with President [Trump] and handed it to the media through a friend of his,” Putin said, according to a translation by Radio Free Europe. ”This does sound and look odd: the director of a security service making records of his talks with the supreme commander and handing it over to the media through a friend of his.” Putin made the remark during his annual Direct Line appearance on state TV, in which he spends hours taking questions from a studio audience and from civilians across Russia. Comparing Comey to Snowden, Putin said, ”It makes him not a security service director, but a civil activist advocating a certain belief.” He added, ”By the way, if he faces any kind of prosecution in this regard, we will provide political asylum in Russia for him as well. He should be aware of that.” As wide smiles broke out among the studio audience at that last remark, Putin pivoted in his chair, signaling that the question had been dealt with. This year, the Kremlin says, the call center that funnels the public’s curiosity received some 2 million messages, including 1. 3 million phone calls. The Kremlin says most of the calls at this year’s    session dealt with Russia’s future. Many of the topics centered on wages, inflation and the economy. Noting that the U. S. Senate has moved to impose new sanctions on Russia and to prevent the Trump administration from rolling back the sanctions without congressional approval, Putin said, ”Whatever the case, I believe this is utterly groundless.” Putin’s annual QA sessions are notorious for generating softball questions for the president. Late in Thursday’s session, for instance, one man asked, ”What is the largest fish you have ever caught?” Putin replied, ”20 kilograms (44 pounds),” while also acknowledging that if someone added a bit of weight to the scale when he wasn’t looking, he hadn’t noticed."
"Updated at 8:40 p. m. ET Sunday, The U. S. Navy has identified the seven sailors who were found in the USS Fitzgerald, just one day after the Navy destroyer collided with a large   container ship off the coast of Japan. In a press release Sunday, the Navy said: ”The remains of seven Sailors previously reported missing were located in flooded berthing compartments, after divers gained access to the spaces, June 18, that were damaged when the Arleigh     destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) was involved in a collision with the   merchant vessel ACX Crystal. The deceased are:   Gunner’s Mate Seaman Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19, from Palmyra, Virginia,   Yeoman 3rd Class Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, from San Diego, California,   Sonar Technician 3rd Class Ngoc T Truong Huynh, 25, from Oakville, Connecticut,   Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Noe Hernandez, 26, from Weslaco, Texas,   Fire Controlman 2nd Class Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23, from Chula Vista, California,   Personnel Specialist 1st Class Xavier Alec Martin, 24, from Halethorpe, Maryland,   Fire Controlman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm Jr. 37, from Elyria, Ohio, The incident is currently under investigation.” The original story continues below, ”As search and rescue crews gained access to the spaces that were damaged during the collision this morning, the missing Sailors were located in the flooded berthing compartments,” the Navy said in a statement Sunday morning local time. ”They are currently being transferred to Naval Hospital Yokosuka where they will be identified.” Seven sailors had been missing since the collision, which occurred at 2:30 a. m. Saturday local time it remains unclear at this time how many of them the Navy found. ”Out of concern for the families and the notification process, I will decline to state how many we have found at this time,” Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin, commander of the 7th Fleet, said at a news conference. Aucoin told reporters the U. S. Navy had ended its search at sea, however. And Reuters, citing Japanese media, reports that all of the missing sailors had died. Three other sailors were evacuated for their injuries. Among their number is the destroyer’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, who was transferred to the hospital in Yokosuka ”and is reportedly in stable condition,” the 7th Fleet said in a statement. On Saturday the ship returned under its own power to port in Yokosuka, Japan, though it sustained severe damage from its collision with the ACX Crystal, which is significantly larger than the Fitzgerald. Much of the destruction came to two berthing compartments where 116 of the crew sleep, Aucoin said. ”You can’t see most of the damage,” he explained. ”Most of the damage is underneath the waterline, and it’s a large gash near the keel of the ship. And so the water flow was tremendous.” It was only ”through the heroic efforts of the ship’s crew [that] they prevented the ship from foundering or even sinking,” Aucoin added. ”As you can see now, the ship is still listing. They had to fight the ship to keep it above the surface.” Aerial footage shot by Japanese broadcaster NHK appeared to depict the damage to the destroyer as it returned to port with the assistance of the USS Dewey, Navy aircraft and the Japanese coast guard. ”Right now we are focused on two things: the safety of the ship and the   of the Sailors,” Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U. S. Pacific Fleet, said in the Navy’s statement. ”We thank our Japanese partners for their assistance.” ”Navy officials say they’re notifying the families of the deceased and will officially release names of the dead sailors at a later date,” John Matthews reports from Tokyo for our Newscast unit. ”Japanese investigators have questioned the crew of the ACX Crystal about the collision, and they say they’ll be cooperating with US officials in determining why it happened, which is still unclear.” Editor’s note: The U. S. Navy has since corrected a typo to a name of one of the deceased. Sailor Carlosvictor Ganzon Sibayan now reads Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan."
"Nate Kramer was a tall, quiet college swimmer when he was diagnosed with leukemia. His dad, Vince, says it was the beginning of four difficult years. Nate battled through chemotherapy, a fungal infection of the sinuses, 30 operations, bone marrow transplants, a lung infection and the removal of his spleen. Vince says his son kept rallying back. During these ups and downs, although his health was precarious, Nate started working with a music therapist from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital named Brian Schreck. ”Brian would come over to the house,” says Nate’s mom, De Ann. ”They would play music, they would record music. Brian was really teaching him to play his guitar.” Brian says Nate loved to play riffs by The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix  —   but for the most part, Nate’s parents didn’t really know what Nate and Brian were recording. As the years passed, Nate and Brian grew close. ”I think Nate could talk to Brian about things that he didn’t want to talk to us about because it would hurt us,” De Ann says. One day, Nate asked Brian about a project Brian had been working on. As part of his work as a music therapist, Brian had been recording the heartbeats of babies and children near the end of their lives, then layering the rhythmic pulses over melodies. Brian asked Nate if he would like to record one, and Nate agreed. But Nate’s father wasn’t too keen on the idea of the heartbeat project. ”It was like, ’OK, is that the only heartbeat I’m going to have left of him?’ ” Vince says. ”Um, no thank you.” To Vince, it felt like giving up, and he wasn’t ready for that  —   even a couple weeks later when Nate, then 26, was back in the hospital. ”He was doing very poorly, and I just actually asked . .. ’Nate, do you still want to fight?’ ” Vince says. ”And he said to me, ’Wanna fight.’ That was the last words he said to me.” Nate couldn’t talk after that. Five days later, his mom was up early with him. ”It was just the two of us, and I was laying basically on his chest and listening to him,” De Ann says. ”[I] could still hear his heartbeat then that afternoon he had passed.” After Nate died, Brian gave Vince and De Ann a couple CDs from Nate, but Nate’s death was still too raw for them to press play. They sold their house with its painful memories, packed up their belongings and moved. Just over a year later, Vince was at home. It happened to be Father’s Day. ”I was rearranging my office, and I came across CDs that had a very unique  —   some sort of custom cover,” Vince says. When he plugged it into the computer, the first thing he heard was, ”Happy Father’s Day, old man. Love ya.” ”It was Nate’s voice,” Vince says. ”And I was like, ’What?’ So then I listened to the next song, which was the heartbeat song.” Nate had made a CD for his mom, too. ”Hearing the heartbeat for me is very bittersweet because of the morning of the day that he passed,” De Ann says. ”But I would never give it up. How strong it sounds.” Vince says the CD will probably never leave his CD player. He has made about half a dozen spare copies of the CD. ”Nate had a very powerful, smooth, slow, rhythmic heartbeat,” Vince says. ”It’s Nate. It’s life. I cannot explain why it just sort of calms me down.”"
"Some conservatives have seized on Wednesday’s shooting of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and three others as the latest example of what they see as rising political violence from the left. Fox News’ Sean Hannity accused Democrats of ”dehumanizing” Republicans, and the   Washington Times ran an editorial by a Tea Party activist that called leftist protests ”the first skirmishes of the second American civil war.” But those who track extremism say that while there are a few   groups that raise red flags, their numbers remain small. Much of the conservatives’ anger has been aimed at ”Antifa”  —   short for ” .” Antifa are loosely affiliated groups of mostly young people, mainly on the West Coast but spreading around the country. They dress in black and wear masks when they confront   groups in the past few months there have been clashes or confrontations in Berkeley, Calif. Portland, Ore. and, just this week, on the campus of Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Wash. ”The moment we got here, they started throwing rocks,” says Joe Allen, one of the   protesters who descended on the college Thursday to challenge what they see as its leftist ideology. They were met by a large number of the masked,   counterprotesters. Allen says the Antifa have been harassing Trump supporters since Election Day. ”That night we went to downtown Portland to see what everything was like, and we got stuck on the bridge because [the Antifa were] stopping all traffic, hitting cars, jumping on cars, asking people, ’Who did you vote for?’ ” A heavy presence of police in riot gear kept the confrontation at Evergreen State from escalating. The leader of the conservative protesters and the ”Patriot Prayer” movement, Joey Gibson, was slightly injured  —   he said someone threw a can at his head. He later found his tires slashed. Witnesses say masked counterprotesters did it. Antifa rarely talk to reporters and rarely give their names, at least not while wearing masks. But in online discussions they say the   activists are being disingenuous. They point to what they regard as the racism and white supremacist ideology of the other side. They say groups such as Gibson’s only pretend to be interested in peaceful political protest and would attack minorities or leftists, given the chance. ”People are desperate,” says one masked counterprotester, a student at Evergreen State who gave his name as Felix. ”They see the government turning back to regressive Reaganomics and racist undertones and rhetoric, so once they start kicking 25 million people off health care, then you’re going to start seeing riots.” The idea that some on the far left are openly condoning violence is a red flag for extremist group monitors. ”This is a dangerous game people are going to die. No one’s died yet, but it’s just a matter of time,” says J. J. McNabb, an expert on political extremism at George Washington University. McNabb says white supremacists and   are widely condemned  —   and deservedly  —   for their violent tendencies. But she says the Antifa shouldn’t get a pass on their violence just because they oppose white supremacists. ”These guys are odious, [but] attack them with words. Don’t come in with sticks and nails in them,” she says. Antifa are not new. They’re a   version of the anarchists and ”black bloc” groups who, over the years, have often challenged police and broken windows during May Day protests in Seattle and Portland. Their membership is hard to track, but it appears to be expanding beyond the West Coast. They are also embracing other leftist causes beyond just fighting white supremacists. Still, their numbers are tiny in relation to the mainstream political left. And, say experts, it’s misleading for   groups to suggest that the Antifa are more violent than   extremists. ”The far left is very active in the United States, but it hasn’t been particularly violent for some time,” says Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the   League’s Center on Extremism. He says the numbers between the groups don’t compare. ”In the past 10 years when you look at murders committed by domestic extremists in the United States of all types,   extremists are responsible for about 74 percent of those murders,” Pitcavage says. You have to go back to the 1970s to find the last big cycle of   extremism in the U. S. Both Pitcavage and McNabb say we have been in a predominantly   extremist cycle since the 1990s  —   the abortion clinic bombings and Oklahoma City, for example. And, more recently, racially motivated attacks such as the one at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S. C. and last month’s stabbings on a commuter train in Portland. Still, Pitcavage says Wednesday’s shooting attack on Republican members of Congress is a warning sign. He is especially concerned because the shooter apparently was not particularly extreme in his political ideas his views were seemingly in the mainstream left. ”One act does not a trend make,” Pitcavage wrote after the shooting attack. ”But I am concerned that, in this highly polarized and divided society, more people who have stances that fall within the mainstream, on the left and right alike, may consider political violence an attractive option.” Domestic terrorism experts say that concern is only heightened by the fact that the line between what’s considered mainstream and what’s considered fringe is becoming increasingly blurred."
"Updated 2:15 a. m. ET Saturday, Hundreds of people gathered in St. Paul, Minn. Friday evening to protest a verdict that found a Minnesota police officer not guilty on all counts in his deadly shooting of a black man during a traffic stop in 2016. Demonstrators gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol holding signs that included the phrases ”black lives matter,” and ”no justice, no peace,” and hundreds marched toward the nearby Cathedral of Saint Paul. Some of the protesters that the Minnesota State Patrol estimated to be about 500 people made their way onto Interstate 94 and blocked traffic for more than an hour. Shortly before 1 a. m. Central time, the State Patrol tweeted that they were arresting protesters ”who failed to leave the roadway.” Police had mostly cleared protesters from the highway after midnight, according to The Associated Press, and protests were largely peaceful. After five days of deliberations, the jury found Officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty of all counts in the July 2016 shooting of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul. ”The system continues to fail black people, and it will continue to fail you all,” Valerie Castile, Philando’s mother, told reporters after the verdict. ”My son loved this city and this city killed my son and the murderer gets away. . .. I’m mad as hell right now.” Castile’s sister Allysza, weeping, said, ”He didn’t deserve to die the way he did, and I will never have faith in this system.” Castile family lawyer Glenda Hatchett vowed to continue fighting. Castile, a    school cafeteria worker, was driving with his girlfriend and her    daughter when they were pulled over by St. Anthony police Officer Jeronimo Yanez. ”  seconds after Yanez activated his squad lights, he fired the last of seven shots into the car,” Minnesota Public Radio’s Matt Sepic reported. Yanez was charged last November with one count of felony   manslaughter in Castile’s death. He also faced two felony counts of intentional discharge of a dangerous weapon over allegedly endangering Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her daughter. He pleaded not guilty. ”Yanez stared ahead with no reaction as the verdict was read,” the AP reported. ”Afterward, one of his attorneys, Tom Kelly, said the defense was ’satisfied.’ ” The City of St. Anthony said after the verdict that Yanez ”will not return to active duty.” In a statement, the city said that it ”has concluded that the public will be best served if Officer Yanez is no longer a police officer in our city.” It said that Yanez would receive a ”voluntary separation agreement.” The incident drew national attention when Reynolds started   the immediate aftermath of the exchange on Facebook, as Castile lay dying and her daughter sat in the back seat. ”In the stream,” as The   reported, ”she said Castile was stopped for a broken taillight, had notified the officer that he was licensed to carry a handgun and was reaching for his wallet at the officer’s request when he was shot.” The video was a crucial piece of evidence during the trial, along with dashcam video from the police vehicle. As MPR reported, jurors requested to review both of these videos again Tuesday during their deliberations. Yanez said in court that ”he was forced to shoot Castile because the driver was not complying with the officer’s commands and was reaching for a gun. Yanez previously testified he had stopped Castile because the driver resembled a suspect in a local convenience store robbery days earlier,” MPR reported. Yanez’s defense attorneys also maintained that Castile was high at the time of the shooting. However, the member station adds that prosecutors ”say Yanez never saw Castile’s gun, never told officers who responded to the scene or to his police dispatcher that there was a gun[ and that he] shot recklessly, killing Castile.” Castile was licensed to carry the weapon. The shooting last July sparked protests, as we reported, and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton described the incident and its aftermath as ”absolutely appalling at all levels.” Castile was said to know the names of all 500 students he worked with, and after the verdict St. Paul Public Schools said the verdict ”may bring strong emotions” for those who knew ”Mr. Phil,” whom they describe as a ”beloved SPPS employee.” The school district said it was making counselors available for students and staff over the summer. NPR’s James Doubek contributed to this report."
"As far as standard photo op images go  —   the kind where one has 10 seconds to hit a mark, smile and pose  —   this one is definitely memorable. Rhode Island teacher Nikos Giannopoulos is holding a delicate black lace fan while wearing a rainbow LGBTQ pin on a blue print jacket, a silver and gold statement necklace and a nose ring as he stands beside the president and the first lady in the Oval Office. You’ve probably got questions. And NPR got some answers after speaking directly with Giannopoulos by phone Friday evening. But know this: Everything you’re seeing was meticulously chosen. So here it is  —   all you need to know about the ”sassy” teacher, his fabulous fan and that amazing White House photo. Let’s get the basics down. I’m Nikos Giannopoulos  29 years old, and I am a special education teacher at the Beacon Charter High School for the Arts. I was named Rhode Island’s 2017 Teacher of the Year, which is why I got to go to the White House, with all of the other teachers of the year. What’s the story behind the fan? Where did it come from? What does it mean? The fan was actually my partner’s. He bought it as a souvenir on a trip to Venice, but I found it about five years ago. Since then I’ve integrated it into my    life. I’m extremely campy, and it’s a popular prop of mine. I’ve taken it with me all over the country whenever I go on vacation, so that’s why I had it. But ultimately, I have been visibly gay my entire life I was more feminine than a lot of boys and I carried myself in a nontraditional gender expression. And I got a lot of flak for it. As a boy, I think I internalized that and didn’t embrace that part of me. Now, as an adult, I adjusted to my queer identity. So the fan represents   and being unabashedly myself in a society that’s not always ready to accept that. What was President Trump’s reaction to the fan? Did he say anything?  Oh, he loved it! I popped it open when I walked into the office because I’m a very sassy person. And [President] Trump complimented it right away. He said, ”I love the fan!” And he told me I had great style. Then, when I was ushered in for my private photo with the president and Melania [Trump] I was told I should put it away. So I just folded it up and held it at my side. But when it came time for the photo, I just asked the president, ”Do you mind if I use the fan for the photo?” He said, ”Absolutely go for it.” So I popped my fan and did my pose. The necklace is pretty amazing, too. It looks like it has an anchor on it.  Yes. That’s an image of Rhode Island that’s prevalent throughout the state. It’s on the state motto, which is based on a Bible verse  —   that hope is the anchor of the soul. It’s a beautiful verse that is relevant for people of all faiths and is especially meaningful for minority groups. For anyone in a marginalized group, hope is the last thing you give up. The photo is becoming quite an Internet sensation. What kind of response are you getting to it? It’s been really overwhelming because I am a really socially anxious person. I don’t ever really go on social media that much. The only reason I’m on Facebook as much as I am this year is because it’s the primary way I communicate with the other teachers of the year. But overall, I’ve gotten a really positive response through the whole thing. From younger people I get a lot of, ”You’re my hero!” And a lot of ”Werk Kween!” which makes my day. Your Facebook page is open. Are you afraid of a backlash or trolling flooding your space online? I’m not. I haven’t really noticed any negative comments on there so far. And I guess I’m used to that kind of negative response to my outward expression because I’ve always been this way. Congratulations on being named a teacher of the year.  Thank you. I just want to say that the teaching profession has been the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Every single day I go to the classroom energized and thrilled to be there and to have been elevated to represent all of the teachers in my state. I’m not the best teacher in my state. I’m not the most thoughtful planner. But I do care a lot about my students and they mean a whole lot to me."
"  Yemen is now being convulsed by cholera. Over the past six weeks, more than 124, 000 suspected cholera cases have been reported. To put this in perspective, there were only 172, 000 cases reported globally to the World Health Organization for all of 2015. To be fair, many cholera cases go unreported each year, but by any standard the current outbreak in Yemen is huge. ”And geographically it is expanding,” says Mohamed El Montassir Hussein, the country director for the International Rescue Committee, based in the capital Sanaa. ”It’s not a small area. It’s almost the whole country.” Cases have now been reported from 20 of the country’s 22 provincial governments. The IRC, along with other international aid groups and WHO, is attempting to set up treatment centers for the growing number of people suffering from the violent form of diarrhea. Left untreated, cholera can cause victims to lose so much fluid so quickly that it can kill them within a matter of days or even hours. The outbreak in Yemen began last year, but a second wave of the waterborne disease is now spreading rapidly. WHO blames it for more than 900 deaths since the end of April. Hussein with the IRC says cholera is the latest crisis to hit the beleaguered country. ”The situation is definitely deteriorating,” he says. ”It’s is absolutely getting out of control. ”Yemen has been facing war for the past two years. There is food insecurity throughout the country. There are pockets of famine. Now cholera. It’s three crises in the same time happening in Yemen.” He says one of the challenges of combatting the cholera outbreak is that much of the health system has collapsed. ”Health workers’ salaries have not been paid for the last eight months basically essential preventive health services are not being provided,” he says. UNICEF has started paying ”incentives” to local doctors, nurses and other health care workers to make up for their missing wages. In an email exchange with NPR, a UNICEF spokesman in Yemen says the U. N. children’s agency is paying incentives to ”at least 1, 500 health workers in 512 cholera treatment centres and 27 diarrhoea treatment centres for a period of three months.” UNICEF is also giving stipends to other health care workers in an effort to prevent a ”complete collapse” of Yemen’s health care system. Yemen’s civil war broke out in 2015, when Houthi rebels ousted the sitting president from the capital. Forces loyal to both sides have clashed for control of the country ever since. Saudi Arabia’s military has been involved in the conflict, launching airstrikes in support of the ousted regime. Even where there isn’t active fighting, the collapse of the government has caused health clinics to close. Schools have shut down. Telecommunication and power grids have broken down. The economy is in shambles. ”There is nowhere in the country you can say this place is better than another,” says Hussein. ”Every family is suffering from something whether it’s cholera or lack of food, having child soldiers in the family or having someone go join the rebels or the military. There’s been a whole collapse of the social life.” And there’s no end to the suffering in sight. The war shows no sign of letting up, and the World Health Organization predicts there could be an additional 200, 000 cholera cases in Yemen over the course of 2017."
"After Otto Warmbier, detained for more than a year in North Korea, returned home this week in a coma, the Trump administration is looking into ways to stop other Americans from going there. The State Department currently warns Americans against travel to that country, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has signaled he may go further. ”We have been evaluating whether we should put some type of travel visa restriction to North Korea,” he told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday. ”We have not come to a final conclusion, but we are considering it.” Fred Warmbier, Otto Warmbier’s father, told reporters that his    son is ”a young,   great kid” who was on a trip organized by a   company called Young Pioneer Tours. ”They advertise it as the safest trip ever,” he said Thursday. ”But they provide fodder for the North Koreans, and my son happened to become fodder for the North Koreans.” The travel company says on its website that North Korea is ”extremely safe!” A Young Pioneer Tours official told a news site that focuses on the region that only one person  —   Otto Warmbier  —   has ever been arrested among the   international travelers who have taken part in the company’s tours. It is highly unusual for the U. S. government to restrict the ability of Americans to go abroad. ”Those toughest restrictions on travel and tourism right now only really apply to Cuba,” says former Treasury Department official Elizabeth Rosenberg. She says there are plenty of restrictions on what Americans can do in countries that face U. S. sanctions  —   like North Korea or Iran. But U. S. citizens are not banned from travel to either place. It would take an act of Congress to impose a   travel ban. But, according to the State Department, the secretary of state can unilaterally impose a ”geographic travel restriction.” None are in effect now, but such a restriction means U. S. passports are invalid ”for travel in, through or to” a country with ”armed hostilities,” at war with the U. S. or posing ”imminent danger to the public health or physical safety of U. S. travelers.” But, says Rosenberg, ”Putting in place the kind of restrictions that would require U. S. citizens to seek a license to go to North Korea  —   most of that falls to Congress to do.” South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson   a House of Representatives bill to do just that, even before Warmbier’s release. The Republican congressman says he wants to make sure the Treasury Department does not issue licenses for tourism to North Korea. ”If there are humanitarian efforts that are being conducted, that’s fine,” he says. ”But tourism only really backs up a totalitarian regime.” Wilson was part of a congressional delegation visiting North Korea back in 2003. Wilson describes what he saw as a Potemkin village. ”It appears to be exotic to go to the country, but it’s all staged,” he says. ”People don’t need to go because there is nothing real. While I was there, it was clear to me that the people on the street, the people we met, the tours that we had, were not real.” Wilson points out that 17 Americans have been detained in recent years in North Korea. Three are still in jail."
"It sounds like the title to an awful,   memoir: Everything I learned about fatherhood, I learned from TV. But, as Father’s Day approaches, this TV nerd finds himself reflecting on exactly that, the surprising lessons about fatherhood and parenting that came to me from iconic figures on the small screen. My own father isn’t with us anymore, and I loved him a lot. But he and my mother split before I was born, and during my formative years, it was mostly me and Mom against the world. Any sense of what it might feel like to have a father close by came from the first sitcom with a father who felt like he could live in my world: James Evans on Good Times. These days, when TV shows like   and Queen Sugar offer lots of different takes on black family and fatherhood, it might be tough to imagine how rare and important it was for a young black kid to see Good Times in 1974. Centered on a poor family living in a Chicago housing project, Good Times featured the kinds of people I had never seen on TV before. And thanks to the insistence of actress Esther Rolle, whose character Florida Evans was spun off from the sitcom Maude to create this new show, the series had a strong father figure. So it was like looking at a dream to see John Amos as powerful,   dad James Evans  —   even when he was tough on his kids, like the episode where he challenged youngest son Michael, after he joined a club that seemed to be turning into a gang. ”The only reason I let you join this club is because you said it stood for self pride and awareness,” he said, after Michael reported the group got in a fight with other neighborhood kids. ”But if your club is talking about revenge, it ain’t become nothing but a gang and you just quit. And when Michael objects, James Evans reaches to take off his belt and asks, ”You wanna discuss it?” It’s a little jarring now to see how many Good Times episodes there are where James Evans threatens corporal punishment. But he also taught me that real fathers worked hard for their families  —   and never hesitated to discipline their kids to ensure their respect and obedience. In those days, I was clueless about what life with a dad might be like. I actually thought married couples slept in two twin beds like on The Dick Van Dyke Show and the early days of I Love Lucy. And as much as I loved the kindhearted TV fathers like Robert Reed’s coolly avuncular Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch, to see characters like the dads in my neighborhood, I had to look to the theater. Specifically, frustrated negro league baseball    collector Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences. James Earl Jones gave a legendary performance as Troy on Broadway in 1987, playing a man warped by hard times who didn’t know how to give his son the approval he craved. To Troy, fatherhood is obligation, and good fathers take care of their children because it’s their duty. ”You live in my house, you sleep your behind in my bedclothes, you put my food in your belly because you are my son, you are my flesh and blood,” he thunders. ”Not because I like you.” But even though I grew up in a neighborhood filled with Troy Maxons, I wanted a less angry, more emotionally available fathering role model. And I found him in Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable  —   a funny, successful doctor who wasn’t chafing under the weight of paying bills or fighting The Man. In one scene on The Cosby Show, Cliff used monopoly money to show his son Theo how he might struggle financially if he skipped college and got a lower paying job. ”I’ll take $350 (a month) for taxes,” Cliff said, snatching bills out of Theo’s hand. ”Because the government comes for the regular people first.” Cosby’s current trial for aggravated indecent assault shows actors can be very different from who they play on TV. It also ruins the memory of a TV dad who showed how patience and humor could decode the toughest parenting problems. But beyond the issues in reconciling Cosby’s real life with the character he played, there was also more than a whiff of respectability politics in his parenting. Cliff couldn’t imagine a future where his son might skip college and succeed in life a troubling lesson for kids out there who didn’t see time at a university as an option. In raising my own kids, sometimes I’ve felt a bit like the stereotypical sitcom dad characters on the 1990s, veering between a clueless Homer Simpson and some version of Ray Romano’s   but     Ray Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond. Still, few depictions of fatherhood have touched me like the ones on NBC’s new drama This Is Us. The characters range from Milo Ventimiglia’s steady, encouraging father of triplets, Jack Pearson, to his grown up adopted son Randall  —   who tracked down his biological father in the show’s pilot. I needed more than a few Kleenexes when Randall, played with a determined earnestness by Sterling K. Brown, said goodbye to biological father, William Hill, on his deathbed, reconciling with the man he felt abandoned him at birth. William, played by Ron Cephas Jones, was a sensitive, caring soul dying of cancer after a life of bad breaks and questionable decisions. ”I haven’t had a happy life . .. a life of almosts and could haves,” William told Randall in his final scene. ”Some would call it sad, but I don’t. Because the two best things in my life, were the person at the very beginning, and the person at the very end.” My dad and I didn’t really get that kind of moment before he passed away. But This Is Us did help me accept that good men can make unfortunate choices. And when that happens, forgiveness might be the most important skill any father  —   or son  —   can have."
"It is hard to imagine Africans would record and release an album of music with the name White African Power. But that is the title of an album released this month by the Tanzanian Albinism Collective, a group of amateur musicians from Africa who have albinism  —   a rare genetic condition that results in a lack of pigment in skin, hair or eyes. According to the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation (NOAH) albinism occurs in about one in 18, 000 to 20, 000 people in the U. S. In other parts of the world, it could be as high as one in 3, 000, NOAH says. The title of the album is meant to be ironic, to create a sense of discomfort. ”They live in a society where   is used by some people and lighter skin is seen by some as desirable. But being too white can get you killed,” explains Ian Brennan, the producer who brought the musicians together. That’s because of a persistent belief in some societies that the body parts of people with albinism can bring good fortune. Attackers will kill people with albinism or hack off limbs. And 2017 has been a devastating year. ”I have received cases of attacks every single month this year,” says Ikponwosa Ero, the U. N. expert on albinism, although she is encouraged to see a drop in attacks in Tanzania. Amnesty International reported on Tuesday, International Albinism Awareness Day, that at least two people with albinism were killed and seven others were attacked, with intent to murder or abduct, since January. According to the U. N. Refugee agency, at least 20 people with albinism have been killed in Malawi since 2014 for their body parts. A    boy with albinism was murdered while visiting relatives in Mozambique last month. That’s why the song titled ”White African Power” is subtitled ”We Live in Danger.” The danger of their lives, the dread of attack, mutilation or murder, is reflected in the cacophonous, crashing percussion that makes up the backbone of the tune. This song, like others on the album, is more like a mantra, a chanted prayer with one verse, than a traditional ”song.” These mantras are set to percussive, acoustic accompaniment music that has more in common with punk rock,   jazz and noise than African music. The songs are meant to be pure vehicles for the writers’    —   producer Brennan’s ultimate goal for the project. White African Power is the newest in a string of projects produced by Brennan that seek to give voice to people who are normally voiceless. ”The whole intention,” says Brennan, ”is to hear from individuals, the invisible, and learn from them. So our only directive was ’What do you want the world to know? ’” Christina Wagulu, a singer and songwriter on the album, wanted the world to know that for her, ”Life is Hard.” ”The world is hard and I’m feeling defeated,” she sings on her original song. The song continues: ”Hatred, jealousy, and other emotions damage my heart. Disease weighs me down like defeat.” These themes recur across the album’s 23 tracks, but some of the songs go down a more personal road. ”My parents abandoned me, because I look the way I do,” sings Hamidu Didas in ”Maishe Yangu,” which means ”my life.” ”They said I’m not their child  —   that I belong to the whites.” Hamidu and others in the Tanzanian Albinism Collective use their songs to convey the pain and alienation they face from all sectors of society. ”Whenever I walk past, people in my village call me ’deal,’ which means ’money,’ ” says Thereza Phinias, another singer and instrumentalist in the group. ”They are referring to the widespread myths that the body parts of a person with albinism can make one rich. We people with albinism stick out very visibly amongst black people. We look very different. You cannot hide yourself.” Salif Keita is another person with albinism who takes a public stand. He’s probably the most famous person with albinism in the world. Born in Mali, Keita is a global,   star who has devoted much of his musical career to raising awareness for albinism. In 2005, he founded the Salif Keita Global Foundation to bring attention to the medical and social conditions and the violence that people with albinism face. On a Sunday night in April, he was greeted with   levels of adulation by a   crowd at The Fillmore in Silver Spring, Md. Watching the audience of screaming fans, whose bodies twisted in spiritual fervor and physical jubilation throughout the show, there was no stigma, no discrimination against him because of the color of his skin  —   only joy and love. But that’s clearly not always the case. ”If you look at movies out of Hollywood that depict persons with albinism, the person with albinism is evil, they’re mentally unstable,” says Peter Ash, a Canadian with albinism who founded the advocacy organization Under the Same Sun that was instrumental in starting International Albinism Awareness Day. ”This is a problem of human attitude, this is a problem of belief systems, this is a systemic problem that’s been around for thousands of years and it’s never gotten any attention, meaningfully until the last decade.” Ash is just one of many people with albinism who, like Keita, are trying to fight for the human rights of all their brothers and sisters. In 2008, he founded Under the Same Sun and began to build programs that would help uplift people with albinism in Tanzania through education and better educate the general populace through advocacy and outreach programs. It’s part of the growing movement that encourages people with albinism to to raise their voices, to speak out (and sing out) against their mistreatment. And while the act of protest is important, the therapy, the personal transformation that comes from performing, may be even more so. ”[Music] allowed me to see that life is possible and that everybody is here for a mission,” Keita said after his Silver Spring benefit concert. Christina Wagulu makes the undeniable point that for, people with albinism, ”Life is Hard.” But White African Power doesn’t end with a song of despair it ends with Thereza Pinias’s song ”Happiness,” Asserting her pride in her identity, she sings: ”Here we are on the stage, Tanzania Albinism Collective members.” Jackson Sinnenberg is a freelance music writer based in Washington, D. C. Reach him @sinnenbergmusic"
"A   letter, barely a hundred words long, unwittingly became a major contributor to today’s opioid crisis, researchers say. ”This has recently been a matter of a lot of angst for me,” Dr. Hershel Jick,   of that letter, told Morning Edition host David Greene recently. ”We have published nearly 400 papers on drug safety, but never before have we had one that got into such a bizarre and unhealthy situation.” The letter, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980, was headlined ”Addiction Rare in Patients Treated With Narcotics.” Written by Jick and his assistant Jane Porter of the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program at Boston University Medical Center, it described their analysis of hospitalized patients who had received at least one dose of a narcotic painkiller. Among the nearly 12, 000 patients they looked at, they found ”only four cases of reasonably well documented addiction in patients who had no history of addiction.” Their conclusion was that despite widespread use of narcotics in hospitals, addiction was rare in patients who had no history of addiction. Inaccurate representations of that 1980 letter led to a dramatic increase in the prescribing of opioids for chronic pain, according to an article published this month in the same medical journal by Dr. David Juurlink of the University of Toronto, who researches drug safety. He and his   found more than 600 citations of the letter, a majority of which failed to note that the patients whom Jick and Porter described were in hospitals for brief stays when prescribed opioids. Some of the citations ”grossly misrepresented the conclusions of the letter,” they found. ”We believe that this citation pattern contributed to the North American opioid crisis by helping to shape a narrative that allayed prescribers’ concerns about the risk of addiction associated with   opioid therapy,” they write, pointing out that citations soared after the introduction of OxyContin in the  . Jick says that when the letter was published in 1980, it was almost inconsequential. ”Only years and years later, that letter was used to advertise by new companies that were pushing out new pain drugs,” he says. ”I was sort of amazed. None of the companies came to me to talk to me about the letter, or the use as an ad.” He says the drug companies used his letter to conclude that their new opioids were not addictive. ”But that’s not in any shape or form what we suggested in our letter.” Asked whether he regrets having written the letter, Jick says, ”The answer is, fundamentally, sure. The letter wasn’t of value to health and medicine in and of itself. So if I could take it back  —   if I knew then what I know now, I would never have published it. It wasn’t worth it.” Morning Edition editor Steve Tripoli contributed to this story."
"Updated at 1:26 p. m. ET, President Trump issued an   tweet Friday morning. ”I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt,” he wrote. Trump’s tweet comes less than a day after a strange statement from a senior official in his administration. On Thursday night, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a statement in which he cautioned Americans against believing stories about the Department of Justice Russia investigation that cited unnamed sources: ”Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous ’officials,’ particularly when they do not identify the country  —   let alone the branch or agency of government  —   with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated. Americans should be skeptical about anonymous allegations. The Department of Justice has a   policy to neither confirm nor deny such allegations.” Though Rosenstein did not explain what prompted the statement, many political observers connected it to recent reports that special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the DOJ investigation into Russian election meddling, is also investigating whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice. Although USA Today also noted that the tweet came shortly after a Washington Post report that Mueller’s team is also investigating Trump    and adviser Jared Kushner’s business dealings. After Trump’s tweet Friday morning, a person close to the president’s legal team told NPR’s Scott Horsley that the tweet referred to the Wednesday Washington Post report regarding possible obstruction of justice. The tweet was not confirmation that the president or his attorney has been informed by the Department of Justice or Mueller that Trump is the subject of an investigation. Mueller took over the DOJ Russia probe after a chain of events set in motion by Trump, Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In a May 9 memo, Rosenstein lambasted   Director James Comey for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Trump initially used that memo along with a recommendation from Sessions to justify firing Comey. But soon after the abrupt termination, Trump  told NBC News that he had been going to fire Comey regardless of any recommendations. After the firestorm caused by Comey’s firing, Rosenstein appointed Mueller, Comey’s predecessor as FBI director, to take over the DOJ Russia investigation. (The decision to tap Mueller was left to Rosenstein because Sessions had recused himself from any involvement in the investigation owing to his role in Trump’s presidential campaign.) On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that Trump was under investigation for obstruction of justice, citing unnamed officials. While the investigation had originally been focused on potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the Post reported, the obstruction inquiry began after Trump fired Comey. Through a spokesman, Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, blasted the Post’s report, though he stopped short of denying it. ”The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal,” said Mark Corallo, the spokesman, according to the Post. In light of Trump’s concern about leaks, it’s possible that Rosenstein’s Thursday night statement was aiming to appease a president who has himself often criticized the news media for citing unnamed sources. If that is the case, it could be part of what appears to be a pattern of statements that are intended to back the president. After the ”mother of all bombs” was deployed to fight ISIS in Afghanistan in April, a U. S. Central Command spokesman appeared to affirm Trump’s aggressive statements against the Islamic State. ”We mean business,” he said, as The Hill reported. ”President Trump said prior that once he gets in he’s going to kick the     out of the enemy. That was his promise and that’s exactly what we’re doing.” CENTCOM later said that person was ”unauthorized” to speak for the command and that the statement was ”inappropriate.” Likewise, CIA Director Mike Pompeo in February responded to a Wall Street Journal story that agents were withholding intelligence information from the president. ”The CIA does not, has not, and will never hide intelligence from the president, period. We are not aware of any instance when that has occurred,” Pompeo said in a statement. Trump’s tweet Friday morning came after a series of angry tweets Wednesday in which he also complained about a ”witch hunt” and criticized the investigation into ties between his campaign and Russia as ”a phony collusion with the Russians story.”"
"In most American cities these days, it seems like there’s a Chinese restaurant on every other street corner. But in the late 1800s, that ubiquity was exactly what certain white establishment figures feared, according to a new study   by Gabriel ”Jack” Chin, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. Chin examined how white union workers and lawmakers waged a nationwide ”war” on Chinese restaurants in America from 1890 to 1920. ”It shows this tradition of an expectation on the part of some white Americans that public policy should be organized for the benefit of their employment,” says Chin, who adds that he sees parallels with   policies being put forth today. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from entering the U. S. for decades. Some white Americans worried that Chinese laborers would steal their jobs and hijack their opportunity. And this xenophobic fear carried over to the restaurant industry. Chinese restaurants  —   known by some at the time as ”chop suey houses”  —   were understood to be a good value, offering inexpensive meals in an exotic setting. ”The economic menace [of Chinese restaurants] was twofold,” says Chin. ”First, if Chinese people had the opportunity to earn a living, then they might stay. And their communities would continue to exist, and the Chinese presence, which many objected to, would continue.” The second thing, says Chin, is that ”if Chinese restaurants made Chinese food available at a relatively low price and then American restaurants wouldn’t be able to compete, either the wage scales for American restaurants would have to go down or they would close.” And then, there was the pervasive idea that Chinese men were lecherous threats to white women. Chinese restaurants were considered ”dens of vice,” Chin says, where white women were at risk of moral corruption by way of sex, opium and alcohol. I talked with Chin about his research and how   sentiment can manifest itself in even the most ”creative” of methods. He told me about six different ways that Chinese restaurants were targeted: 1. Race riots,  There were Chinese communities expelled from Western and Mountain States through race riots, Chin says, where Chinese restaurateurs or miners were beaten or quite literally burned from their homes. 2. Boycotts  Unions representing cooks, waiters and bartenders organized largely unsuccessful boycotts against Chinese restaurants in many places, including Massachusetts, Arizona, California, Montana, Minnesota and Ohio. The unions imposed fines on union members who ate at Chinese restaurants, Chin says, but couldn’t keep their members from eating there: ”Individual members of the public had incentives to cheat because the food was understood to be a good value at the time.” And, Chin points out, for the most part, these unions weren’t trying to enlist Chinese restaurant workers to join their ranks. Instead, they were vying for Chinese employees to be replaced by white workers. 3. A peculiar law, When boycotts were largely unsuccessful, the unions turned to the legal system. At the American Federation of Labor’s 1913 convention, organizers proposed that all states should pass laws that barred white women from working or patronizing Chinese or Japanese restaurants for both moral and economic reasons, Chin says. (A similar law had been enacted in Saskatchewan, Canada, and upheld by Canada’s Supreme Court.) States including Montana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Washington and Oregon saw versions of the bill, which were ultimately unsuccessful. In Massachusetts, for example, the state Supreme Judicial Court struck down the law on the grounds that it was discriminatory. 4. Government agencies and licenses  Chin points to old newspaper reports that show that government agencies refused to issue business or restaurant licenses to Chinese restaurateurs, citing various reasons: Some officials claimed they had already issued enough licenses. Others said they would not issue licenses to people who were not citizens. And since Chinese people couldn’t naturalize, this targeted them. 5. Policing  While the proposed white women’s labor law was never officially enacted, some police officers began patrolling the restaurants of their own volition, Chin says. ”We see newspaper reports,” he explains, ”where the police in the first decades of the 20th century believed they had the authority, and exercised it, simply to issue orders in the public interest.” For example, he adds, ”when there were concerns about white women patronizing Chinese restaurants and when the police thought this was prejudicial to the safety of white women, they would simply order white women out.” In 1909, the murder of a prominent white union leader’s daughter by a Chinese restaurant worker inflamed tensions. In June of that year, Leon Ling reportedly strangled Elsie Sigel in a jealous rage and stuffed her body into a trunk in his bedroom. Sigel had met Ling when she worked in Manhattan’s Chinatown as a missionary, and her death and the subsequent manhunt for her killer sparked a wave of racial profiling across the country. Newspapers hyped the story, with headlines like ”Was Strangled By Her Chinese Lover: Granddaughter of General Sigel Slain in the Slums of New York.” The case seemed to justify the fears that union workers had of all the misfortunes that would spring from Chinese restaurants. ”To be a Chinaman these days,” one Connecticut newspaper wrote, ”is to be at least a suspect in the murder of Elsie Sigel.” 6. Banning private booths  Private booths were little rooms where customers could dine they were often found in Chinese restaurants. But in 1917, the United States Public Health Service published a model ordinance that prohibited private booths, Chin says. Some people campaigned to get rid of them, ”because in chop suey restaurants and other restaurants, nefarious things could happen behind the curtain.” This was a way to specifically target Chinese restaurants. While Chinese restaurants were able to weather these affronts from the unions  —   Chinese restaurants even surged in New York City during this time because of a loophole that allowed   owners visas into the U. S.  —   Chin argues that enough damage had been done. The   viewpoints of white labor unionists helped solidify the notion that Chinese people were both economic and moral threats to white Americans and paved the way for the passage of the Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924, which more broadly restricted the immigration of people from all Asian countries. It wasn’t until there was a dramatic drop in Chinese immigrants in the U. S. that union organizers began to ease up on their targeting of Chinese restaurants. ”The issue wasn’t Chinese restaurants per se,” Chin says. ”It was: What if Chinese restaurants grow and grow and drive out American restaurants  —   then what?”"
"British authorities are launching a criminal investigation into the London apartment building fire  —   as the death toll from the blaze has nearly doubled, to 30. The death toll is expected to rise further as rescue workers continue to search for victims  —   an operation that Metropolitan Police Commander Stuart Cundy described as ”extremely challenging.” The upper floors of Grenfell Tower sustained significant damage, he says, and ”the sad reality is that this work will take some time, stretching into many, many weeks.” Dozens are still missing. Police say 24 injured people remain at the hospital. And as NPR’s Frank Langfitt in London, police are hoping that the death toll will not reach the triple digits. Areas near the blaze are covered in posters showing missing persons. Guardian reporter Jamie Grierson has been tweeting the posters of the missing. The police stressed in a statement that ”there is nothing to suggest the fire was started deliberately.” But as Frank reports, questions are being raised about whether materials used in the building’s construction could have contributed to the tragedy: ”People are wondering why it seemed to burn very quickly. . .. Now, you look at the government documents on this building and It turns out this siding, it’s a pair of aluminum sheets sandwiched around a composite core. One version of the product [has] a polyethylene core, the other version is around a   mineral core. ”Contractor says that he met all the fire safety standards but the questions are going to be, which kind of siding was used and what were the risks?” Residents had raised concerns about the fire safety of the building prior to the blaze. Frank adds that anger is rising in London about the deaths  —   for example, a leading tabloid was emblazoned with the headline ”Arrest the Killers” while Labour MP David Lammy has said the incident amounts to ”corporate manslaughter.” Protesters gathered to call for help for the residents of the burned building, and the BBC reports that dozens of people ”stormed Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall with a list of demands.” Today, Prime Minister Theresa May announced a 5 million pound ($6. 4 million) fund to help the families impacted by the fire, and The Associated Press reports that it ”includes a guarantee to rehouse people as close as possible to where they previously lived.” May has faced criticism for not meeting with survivors during her first visit to the site after the blaze, the wire service reports. Hours before the fund was announced, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan wrote an open letter to May over the perceived lack of government response. Here’s an excerpt: ”I spent several hours yesterday talking to local residents around Grenfell Tower. These were difficult conversations with a   community that is understandably distraught, frustrated and increasingly angry. They feel the Government and local council haven’t done enough to help them in the aftermath of this horrific incident, or to provide answers to their increasingly urgent questions.”"
"Updated at 4:57 p. m. ET, Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who for more than a decade and a half helmed a country through historic upheaval, died Friday at age 87. The German leader’s political party, the Christian Democratic Union, confirmed Kohl’s death on Twitter. ”We are in sorrow,” the party tweeted. In a statement, former U. S. President George H. W. Bush mourned the death of his colleague and close ally, who first led West Germany and then oversaw its reunification with Communist East Germany. ”Working closely with my very good friend to help achieve a peaceful end to the Cold War and the unification of Germany within NATO will remain one of the great joys of my life,” Bush said in a statement Friday. ”Throughout our endeavors, Helmut was a rock  —   both steady and strong.” Understated and often underestimated, Kohl took power in West Germany in 1982. He was ”a Gerald Ford figure, an undeniably decent man . .. who had never been expected to make it to the top job,” The New York Times reported at the time. Still, he quickly went to work cultivating the confidence of allies both personal and on the world stage, projecting an unassuming personality all the while. ”For 70 percent of the time that he was in office he looked like he was ” John Kornblum, U. S. ambassador to Germany during Kohl’s final years in power, told NPR’s Eric Westervelt. ”He wasn’t one of these people out ordering people around. He spent much more time talking with people on the phone and getting a feel for what was going on. He schmoozed all the time.” Kornblum added: ”But when it came time to do something, he did something.” And no time demanded action of Kohl more than the tumultuous months around the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. For decades a barrier between the democratic and communist halves of the erstwhile German state, the wall brought much of those divisions down with it. As East Germans poured into the West  —   seeking an escape from a land where hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops were still stationed  —   the   politician quickly angled for a solution. Within weeks of the wall’s fall, Kohl surprised European allies and even some members of his own cabinet with a speech laying out a   plan for reunification. The plan to make Germany whole again, a prospect that alarmed British and French leaders with lingering memories of Nazi Germany, nevertheless eventually earned the support of the U. S. and the Soviet Union. ”I know Washington was quite surprised by them. I’m sure, I know everybody was,” Kornblum says. ”He seemed to understand instinctively that unless someone took the lead and put it together, it was going to be chaos. And that Germany’s interests were going to suffer.” By October 1990, Germany was once more  —   for the first time since World War II  —   a single country. And Kohl was its chancellor. Kohl would continue to steer the newly unified Germany for much of the 1990s, helping to assure its place at the heart of another vast project of integration: the European Union. Kohl worked with other leaders on the continent to pull together the Treaty on European Union, which helped pave the way for the international organization of today. Yet by the end of his time in office, Kohl had begun to fall out of favor with the German electorate. Voted out of office in 1998, Kohl soon found himself in legal trouble. Investigators uncovered what they called illegal money deposited in his party’s coffers with Kohl’s knowledge. The probe would carry on for several years, until it was finally dropped with Kohl’s promise to pay hefty fines. The Times notes that Kohl left Parliament the year after paying these fines. Germany’s   chancellor since World War II lived long enough to see the European unity he championed see difficult times after he left office. The U. K.’s vote to leave the European Union, the Eurozone debt crisis and a resurgence of   populism have all shaken European cohesion in recent years. In comments Friday, current German Chancellor Angela Merkel  —   Kohl’s   protege and later political adversary  —   gestured toward these challenges, saying Kohl’s memory offers a crucial guide. ”This man who was great in every sense of the word  —   his achievement, his role as a statesman in Germany at its historical moment  —   it’s going to take a while until we can truly assess what we have lost in his passing,” Merkel said at a news conference, according to a translation by German publication Deutsche Welle. ”Helmut Kohl was an important German, and an important European.”"
"Julia Brennan grew up in a family of nearsighted people  —   so nearsighted that they joked they were blind as bats. She, however, had perfect eyesight. ”Julia can see around corners,” her mother would say. Today, Brennan is a textile conservator in Washington, D. C, and her work involves everything from fixing tiny holes in antique christening dresses to delicately stitching tears in the Brooks Brothers coat President Lincoln had with him the night he was shot. While her sharp eyesight is essential to her work, it was not something she thought about consciously when choosing her field. ”I simply used it in one of the best professions possible,” she says. Now, a small study published this week out of the University of California, Berkeley backs up what Brennan has experienced throughout her career: Dressmakers may have superior stereoscopic vision. That’s the ability to accurately perceive depth and distance between objects  —   to see in  . Adrien Chopin, a postdoctoral researcher in visual neuroscience, made the discovery as he was testing the stereoscopic vision of about three dozen people, 13 of them dressmakers. We all use stereoscopic vision when we throw a ball to someone, grab a pencil or park a car, but Chopin noticed that some individuals have much better stereoscopic vision than others. The testing was part of ongoing research aimed at finding ways to improve stereoscopic vision through computer games, some using virtual reality. Chopin found that among the people in his study, dressmakers who spend a lot of time sewing by hand outperformed the study participants from other professions. The results intrigued him, given that prior studies of surgeons and dentists, who also do fine manual work, did not turn up similar results. In fact, Chopin says, dressmakers are the only group of professionals he and his colleagues have found so far who seem to have enhanced stereoscopic vision. Is it the endless hours of delicate, manual work that hones dressmakers’ stereoscopic skills, or does the field naturally attract individuals with superior eyesight? Chopin says further study is needed to be certain. But the findings have led him to believe there might be something unusual in the way dressmakers interact with the world. ”It’s very fine manual tasks  —   at close range, with direct feedback,” he says. ”If you misplace the needle just a little, you get pain. That’s direct feedback on your vision.” He hopes his research might eventually help people who are  . Dr. Rebecca Taylor, a Nashville ophthalmologist and the clinical spokeswoman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, says about 10 percent of the population lacks depth perception, and one cause is poor vision in one eye. She cautions that this is not always correctable and says some problems such as amblyopia, or lazy eye, should be corrected in childhood. Still, she thinks further study is worthwhile, given how much we use stereo vision in our daily lives. ”The more information that we have about depth perception, the better we can be set up to help people who struggle with it,” Taylor says. Of course, good stereoscopic vision will only take you so far. More than 30 years into her career in textile restoration, Brennan says she now needs strong reading glasses and a good source of light to do her best work. ”I often defer to my   or    colleagues to   a stitch or detail now,” she says."
"Chinese police have identified a suspect in the bombing of a kindergarten in the city of Xuzhou on Thursday. The man, a    surnamed Xu, detonated a homemade explosive device just before 5 p. m. local time at the building’s front gate, killing himself and at least seven other people in the process, according to authorities. ”Two people died at the moment of the explosion, six more died of their injuries at the local hospital, and four of the 65 injured remain in critical condition,” NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports, citing a police account. Local authorities have said no students or teachers at the school were harmed in the blast, though, as Rob notes, ”images taken in the aftermath of the blast showed children and adults, their clothing burned, strewn about at the gate of the kindergarten in pools of blood.” The Chinese news outlet Xinhua reports the suspect, whose identity was determined partly through DNA evidence, suffered from ”vegetative nervous function disturbances”  —   or an autonomic nerve disorder, which The Associated Press explains can have symptoms including ”depression, anxiety, dizziness, vision problems and problems with basic bodily functions.” The condition caused Xu to take a leave of absence from a school he’d been attending. In his apartment, police say they discovered materials for explosives and the words ”death” and ”exterminate” scrawled on the walls. In the aftermath of the attack, Xinhua reports the country’s Ministry of Education has called for schools to increase security procedures on their campuses."
"Updated at 9:20 a. m. ET on June 19, Amazon is buying Whole Foods, in a merger that values Whole Foods stock at $42 a share  —   a premium over the price of around $33 at the close of trading on Thursday. The Internet retailer says it’s buying the    fixture in a deal that is valued at $13. 7 billion. Whole Foods, which opened its first store in Austin, Texas, back in 1980, now has 465 stores in North America and the U. K. Amazon says that Whole Foods’ CEO,   John Mackey, will remain in that role and that the grocer’s headquarters will still be in Austin. ”Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, adding, ”they’re doing an amazing job and we want that to continue.” The sale, which has not yet been approved by Whole Foods shareholders, is expected to be concluded in the second half of 2017. In its news release, Amazon says Whole Foods stores will continue to operate under their own brand and will continue to source products ”from trusted vendors and partners around the world.” For Amazon, the move furthers its push into   retail, a direction it has been moving in with its Amazon Go and ”Fresh Pickup” grocery experiments. We’ve sent a message to Amazon asking whether the company plans to include Whole Foods in its   delivery and drone service plans. A representative had not returned the message by time of publication. Whole Foods released its most recent earnings report in May. At the time, Mackey said, ”Our business is strong with record revenue of $15. 7 billion, and over $1 billion in operating cash flow in 2016.” But Mackey also said that ”the operating environment remains challenging,” and he promised to enact changes at the company to keep it competitive and profitable. In April, activist investor Jana Partners announced it had bought nearly 9 percent of Whole Foods’ stock and was reportedly hoping the grocer would make changes to boost its value. Mackey called his new investors at Jana Partners ”greedy bastards,” in an interview that the Texas Monthly published earlier this week. ”These people, they just want to sell Whole Foods Market and make hundreds of millions of dollars, and they have to know that I’m going to resist that,” Mackey told Texas Monthly. ”That’s my baby. I’m going to protect my kid, and they’ve got to knock Daddy out if they want to take it over.” Both Amazon and Whole Foods provide financial support to NPR."
"A Massachusetts judge has found Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter after, prosecutors say, the   sent a fellow teenager text messages that urged him to commit suicide. Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz decided the case, which Carter had opted to be heard by a judge rather than a jury. Even before Moniz read his verdict Friday, Carter, 20, was weeping and holding a tissue in the courtroom. The judge agreed with prosecutors that Carter’s ”wanton and reckless conduct” had resulted in the death of Conrad Roy III. The state’s punishment for Carter was not announced sentencing will be delayed until early August, to allow a   report to be prepared. The case stems from the death of Roy in July 2014, when Carter was 17 and Roy was 18. At the time, Carter was living in Plainville, Mass. Roy was found dead about 50 miles away in a parking lot in Fairhaven, Mass. in a truck whose cab was filled with carbon monoxide by a generator. In text messages that were later entered as evidence, Carter told Roy he was ready to kill himself and asked him to promise he would go through with it. Prosecutors said during the trial that Carter had told Roy to get back in the truck after he told her he had gotten out and that she had failed to notify anyone that Roy was in danger. Moniz agreed with the prosecution, saying Friday that ”Ms. Carter’s actions, and also her failure to act, where she had a   duty to Mr. Roy, since she had put him into that toxic environment, constituted, each and all, wanton and reckless conduct.” Moniz said that Carter’s ”conduct caused the death of Mr. Roy.” Carter’s defense attorney had maintained that the case was one of suicide, not homicide. Joseph Cataldo noted that Roy had previously attempted to kill himself. The trial was allowed to begin only after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the charge against Carter should stand, saying there was probable cause for charges based on the ”coercive quality” of Carter’s messages to Roy. Here’s how WBUR’s David Boeri described the start of the trial last week: ”In court Tuesday, Bristol County prosecutor Maryclare Flynn called them boyfriend and girlfriend, which seems belied by the fact that Roy and Carter ever only saw each other two or three times after they first met. ”But, in some ways, they were actually closer than teenage sweethearts, since they were confiding their thoughts and plans for killing themselves. ” ’He came to rely on her more and more than anyone else during that time period,’ Flynn said. ’They texted at all hours of the day and night. When Conrad told her that he didn’t believe in himself any longer, she brought up the fact: ’Take your life?’ she questioned. He said, ’You think I should?’ ” ”They conversed about psychiatric hospitals, antidepressants and the best ways to kill yourself.”"
"Updated at 2:34 p. m. ET Friday, President Trump has announced new restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba, backtracking on the policy of greater engagement with the island pushed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. ”Effective immediately, I am canceling the last administration’s completely   deal with Cuba,” Trump told a cheering crowd of Cuban exiles in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. ”Easing of restrictions on travel and trade does not help the Cuban people. They only enrich the Cuban regime.” Trump will not go so far as to sever diplomatic ties with Havana or shutter the U. S. Embassy, which reopened there in 2015. But he will impose new limits on commercial transactions that involve the Cuban military. And Americans will no longer be allowed to travel to the island on their own for ”  ” purposes, once the new rules are in place. The new restrictions were championed by Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mario   two   lawmakers from South Florida. Both men were on hand when Trump announced the changes in a sweltering theater named for a veteran of the failed, 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Rubio accompanied the president on Air Force One. ”America is prepared to outstretch its hand and work with the people of Cuba. But we will not, we will not empower their oppressors,” Rubio said. The policy change fulfills a promise Trump made to Florida’s Cuban exile community last fall. Although Trump lost the Miami area to Hillary Clinton by double digits, he credits support from   with helping him eke out a narrow victory statewide. ”You went out and you voted, and here I am,” Trump said Friday. The policy changes won’t take effect immediately, so Americans with plans to travel to Cuba in the near future won’t be affected. But as soon as new regulations are drafted by the Treasury and Commerce departments, they’re likely to pour cold water on the burgeoning Cuban travel business. Cuban diplomat Josefina Vidal told the Miami Herald that more than 600, 000 Americans visited the island last year, a 34 percent jump from 2014. The trips were made easier by the resumption of scheduled commercial air service from the U. S. for the first time in decades. By law, travel to the island from the U. S. is still generally limited to 12 authorized categories such as educational activity, humanitarian projects and support for the Cuban people. The Obama administration eased those restrictions by allowing visitors to merely declare their reason for going, with few questions asked. The new Trump policy will require greater documentation. And travelers seeking ”  ” contact will have to sign up with an organized tour group. ”They know exactly what they’re doing and what they’re trying to do is stop travel to Cuba,” said James Williams, president of a lobbying group that advocates for greater engagement with the island. The new policy will also prohibit most commercial transactions that involve the Cuban military. ”We will very strongly restrict American dollars flowing to the military, security, and intelligence services that are the core of the Castro regime,” Trump said. That could have   effects since the military touches almost every corner of the Cuban economy. Many of the big hotels in Havana, for example, would be   to American visitors. White House officials say there will be some exceptions. Airlines will still be allowed to pay landing fees at Cuban airports, for example. And U. S. companies will still be allowed to support telecommunications and Internet service on the island. ”There are about 50 or 60   hot spots in Havana. And you can tell where they are because there are dozens of people crowded around there,” said Carlos Gutierrez, a   who served as commerce secretary in the George W. Bush administration. ”That has also happened as a result of normalization and I just can’t imagine backtracking on something like that.” Polls suggest most Americans support the liberalized policy toward Cuba pushed by the Obama administration. Even among   in South Florida, nearly   want to lift the U. S. embargo. Trump’s policy, however, is being steered by a handful of politicians  —   including Rubio and    —   who insist the best way to bring about reform on the island is renewed economic isolation. ”This is limited to perhaps as small as three voices in the U. S. Congress, certainly less than 10, suggesting a course of action that is not only not the best interests of the United States of America, but it’s not the popular view,” said Rep. Tom Emmer,  . one of seven House members who wrote to the president to oppose the changes. The White House says it’s willing to negotiate more favorable terms with Cuba, but only if the Castro regime allows free and fair elections and releases political prisoners. Human rights advocates acknowledge that Cuba has made little progress in that area, despite the Obama overtures. But they argue, economic isolation didn’t topple the Castro government either, despite more than a   of trying. ”We’ve had this new policy for basically two years. And we’ve already seen significant changes,” said Williams. ”Is it as much as we’d like to see? Absolutely not. And the Cuban government should do more. But the idea of returning to something that we know does not work doesn’t make any sense.” ”I think the evidence is modest but real that engagement contributes to a climate in which human rights can improve,” said Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America. Trump plans to preserve some of the policy changes made by Obama. Cubans who make their way to the U. S. without authorization will still be returned to the island, just like unauthorized visitors from other countries. And Americans who visit Cuba will still be allowed to bring rum and cigars home with them."
"There’s a provocative interview with the philosopher Daniel Dennett in Living on Earth. The topic is Dennett’s latest book  —   From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds  —   and his idea that Charles Darwin and Alan Turing can be credited, in a way, with the same discovery: that you don’t need comprehension to achieve competence. Darwin showed how you can get the appearance of purpose and design out of blind processes of natural selection. And Turing, one of the pioneers in the field of computation, offered evidence that any problem precise enough to be computed at all, can be computed by a mechanical device  —   that is, a device without an iota of insight or understanding. But the part of the interview that particularly grabbed my attention comes at the end. Living on Earth host Steve Curwood raises the, by now, hoary worry that as AI advances, machines will come to lord over us. This is a staple of science fiction and it has recently become the focus of considerable attention among  . (Discussion of the   ”singularity. ”) Dennett acknowledges that the risk of takeover is a real one. But he says we’ve misunderstood it: The risk is not that machines will become autonomous and come to rule over us  —   the risk is, rather, that we will come to depend too much on machines. The big problem AI faces is not the intelligence part, really. It’s the autonomy part. Finally, at the end of the day, even the smartest computers are tools, our tools  —   and their intentions are our intentions. Or, to the extent that we can speak of their intentions at all  —   for example of the intention of a   car to avoid an obstacle  —   we have in mind something it was designed to do. Even the most primitive organism, in contrast, at least seems to have a kind of autonomy. It really has its own interests. Light. Food. Survival. Life. The danger of our growing dependence on technologies is not really that we are losing our natural autonomy in quite this sense. Our needs are still our needs. But it is a loss of autonomy, nonetheless. Even auto mechanics these days rely on diagnostic computers and, in the era of   cars, will any of us still know how to drive? Think what would happen if we lost electricity, or if the grid were really and truly hacked? We’d be thrown back into the 19th century, as Dennett says. But in many ways, things would be worse. We’d be thrown back  —   but without the knowledge and   that made it possible for our ancestors to thrive in the olden days. I don’t think this fear is unrealistic. But we need to put it in context. The truth is, we’ve been technological since our dawn as a species. We first find ourselves in the archaeological record precisely there where we see a great exposition of tools, technologies,   and also linguistic practices. In a sense, to be human is to be cyborgian  —   that is, a technological extended version of our merely biological selves. This suggests that at any time in our development, a   breakdown in the technological infrastructure would spell not exactly our doom, but our radical reorganization. Perhaps what makes our current predicament unprecedented is the fact that we are so densely networked. When the library of Alexandria burned down, books and, indeed, knowledge, were lost. But in a world where libraries are replaced by their online versions, it isn’t inconceivable that every library could be, simply, deleted. What happens to us then?"
"At Yale University’s commencement ceremony last month, hundreds of graduating students and their supporters staged a labor protest. The dispute pits graduate student teachers who voted to form a union in February against a Yale administration that refuses to bargain and disputes the election’s validity. Yale is asking the National Labor Relations Board to review the Local   Here union’s organizing tactics. The university also intends to ask the federal labor regulator to reconsider its policy ruling last year that graduate student instructors at private universities are employees and therefore eligible to organize. The response on New Haven, Conn. campus has been very divisive a rotating group of students held a   hunger strike to protest the university administration. Yale’s stance has divided students and faculty, and both sides have alleged the use of unfair tactics. Political science Ph. D. candidate Aaron Greenberg, chair of the Local 33 union, says although classes have ended for the school year, the graduate students intend to continue their fight to bring the university to the table to negotiate over questions of pay, sexual harassment policies, health care, child care and other benefits. ”I had every expectation that the administration would sit down and begin negotiating with us” following the February elections, in which eight of the nine academic departments that held votes approved the union, Greenberg says. When that didn’t happen, he says, ”we decided we needed a different kind of action. I fasted for 13   days.” Julia Powers, a comparative literature Ph. D. candidate, says she also fasted, for a week, because she does not believe that Yale is addressing what she calls a pervasive culture of sexual harassment on its campuses, documented in a 2015 report by the Association of American Universities. ”There’s a sexual predator in my department, who was put in a position of supervision over me and my work,” she says. The toxic environment forced some of her fellow students to leave the program, Powers says. ”For me, it became unfortunately necessary to take drastic action.” The university says a panel of faculty and students review all sexual harassment claims filed, and it carries out punishment, but that the process is, by law, private. Both at Yale and at Columbia University, where the administration is in a similar standoff with students, the central issue is whether graduate student instructors should be considered employees with a right to organize. The interpretation of the law today stands with the unionizing students they can be considered employees with the right to collectively bargain. But that has not remained consistent over the years, so both sides have laid claim to legal precedent. Yale and other universities point out that for most of labor history, students were not legally employees. That changed with an NLRB decision in 2000, although the board later reversed itself two more times  —   in 2004 and again last year  —   under different White House administrations. Lynn Cooley, Yale’s dean of graduate schools, says classifying graduate student teachers as employees is wrong. ”I was a graduate student the last thing I thought of myself as was an employee,” she says. ”You learn a huge amount from teaching. It’s like the way you really learn your craft is by trying to teach it to someone else.” Cooley says there are many factors that make Yale’s case unique. One of them is that, since 2000, the university has provided all of its doctoral graduate students at least $30, 000 in annual stipend, full tuition, and health benefits. That cost, the university says, amounts to between $374, 000 and $445, 000 per student over six years, and enables the students to graduate  . She notes the students already have an elected body  —   the Graduate Student Assembly  —   that ”fights for them with the administration and lobbies for them with the administration for things that are important to the students.” Cooley says Yale decided to dispute the unionization vote because of the way it was structured: separate elections were held for each academic department. And, she says, because only students who were teaching assistants were permitted to vote, only about 9 percent of the 2, 600 doctoral students in the Graduate School voted. She says that set up a system where the university might have to individually bargain with each department. That makes no sense, Cooley says, because students often work across departments, and receive the same financial packages and benefits. Cooley defends Yale’s refusal to bargain with the union as the university awaits federal review of the election. As is the case with many agencies in Washington, however, the NLRB has not fully staffed up with the new Trump administration. Two Republican seats on the   board remain vacant, and appointments have been slow amid congressional investigations into Russia’s role in the 2016 U. S. elections. Once the board is fully staffed, however, Robert Battista, former Republican chair of the NLRB from 2002 to 2007, says he expects that under Trump, the policy on graduate students as employees will switch again  —   this time in favor of universities. ”You shouldn’t be overturning precedent ” Battista says. But he says boards led by Democrats have used the wrong legal reasoning in deciding to allow students to unionize. Greenberg, the grad student union activist, says Yale is exploiting the partisan swing to the right, and that by appealing to federal regulators, the university is undermining his efforts and those of many other graduate students at other campuses. ”What they do want is for Donald Trump to appoint   judges to the NLRB that will overturn our rights to organize as well as the rights of thousands of other workers across the country,” he says. If there is a middle ground between the Yale administration and her fellow students, musicology Ph. D. candidate Laura Brown occupies it. ”I am very   I come from a union family,” she says. Brown does not, however, support the Local 33. She points out that Yale covers all of its Ph. D. students’ full tuition and stipends, an atypical privilege. ”Yale’s package for its graduate students is very, very good. That’s not the case at other schools, necessarily,” Brown says. She does not think Yale students need a union. But she doesn’t want to see Yale pushing for a national policy change that would bar students at other schools from making their own choice."
"Japanese toilets have come a long way from the early 20th century, when many people in Japan still used ”squatters,” which were built into the floor. Western toilets became popular after World War II. And today, signature Japanese toilets offer the world’s most futuristic and automated technology when nature calls. The units are not just toilets, but also bidets, offering a dizzying menu of options for washing and also for privacy  —   not to mention heated seats, automatic   and lids that rise when you approach. A Japanese government survey last year found more than 80 percent of Japanese homes have   combos. Check out the Washlet  —   the name given to a popular   combo made by Japanese company Toto  —   and its more advanced cousins in this showroom tour. Toto is the world’s largest toilet maker, with more than $5 billion in annual sales. Its Washlet line ranges in price from $400 to $1, 800.   Toto Neorests, which count Leonardo DiCaprio and Madonna among its fans, can cost as much as $5, 000."
"Gerry Newman buys vanilla by the gallon. He’s   of Albemarle Baking Co. in Charlottesville, Va. and vanilla goes into everything from his cookies to pastry cream. A few years ago, each   bottle of organic,   vanilla set him back $64. Today, it’s $245, more than Newman can comfortably stomach. It’s a global phenomenon, hitting pastry chefs and ice cream makers alike. Some have changed their recipes to use less vanilla. Newman has switched suppliers to find a cheaper product. ”It’s not certified organic. It’s not fair trade,” he says. ”There’s a guilt I have over that, because we’re talking about something that’s all hand labor, and if these people aren’t being treated fairly, it’s really sad.”  To understand the current vanilla crisis, this is the first thing to understand: It’s one of the most   foods on Earth. Vanilla beans are the seeds of an orchid. It grows wild in Mexico, where its flowers are pollinated by birds and insects. Most of the world’s vanilla now is grown in Madagascar, though, where those native pollinators don’t exist. So it has to be done by hand. ”Every flower of this orchid has to be fertilized by hand, with a little stick,” says Jürg Brand, who runs a small vanilla business in Madagascar called Premium Spices. And that’s just the start of it. After you harvest the seed pods, you soak each one in hot water, ”and then you wrap it in woolen blankets for about 48 hours, and then you put it in a wooden box to sweat,” Brand says. Later, the pods are laid out to dry in the sun, but for only one hour each day. The whole process takes months. It’s so   and   that during the decade that preceded the recent   of prices, some farmers simply gave up. Prices for vanilla were so low, it just wasn’t worth the effort. ”A lot of farmers abandoned their plantations during this time,” Brand says. This brings us to the second factor in today’s vanilla crisis. During that period of low prices, a lot of food companies were content to use a synthetic version of vanilla. This   version is composed of a single chemical compound, vanillin, which is the main flavor compound in natural vanilla. Synthetic vanillin is much cheaper than natural vanilla. On the list of ingredients of, say, packaged cookies, it may show up as vanillin or simply ”artificial flavors.” The vanilla market began to flip when food companies noticed that consumers were avoiding foods with artificial flavors. ”Consumers are reading the labels much more, and they’re demanding all natural, and even organic,” says Craig Nielsen,   of the company   which makes vanilla the traditional way, from beans. About three years ago, several huge companies, including Nestle and Hershey’s, announced that they were shifting to natural ingredients. That means they now want vanilla from orchid seeds, not factories. The problem is, there aren’t enough   orchids. ”We don’t have the supply to meet the demand right now,” says Nielsen.   isn’t taking orders from any new customers at the moment, because the supply of vanilla beans is so limited. Food companies  —   and   bakers like Gerry Newman  —   all are trying to secure a piece of that limited supply, bidding up the price. A bag of vanilla beans in Madagascar now costs more than 10 times what it did five years ago.  Bad news for bakers, though, is great news for   farmers in the coastal regions of Madagascar. ”There’s really, really, a lot of cash around in these coastal towns now,” says Jürg Brand. So much cash is going to pay farmers, in fact, that an odd thing happened during the last vanilla harvest season. ”The national central bank ran out of cash,” says Brand  —   at least the large bills that vanilla traders use to pay farmers. Farmers don’t trust banks, so they were hoarding that cash at home. ”All the money was somewhere on this coastal strip, under mattresses or locked in houses or I don’t know where,” he says. Brand, who’s been living in Madagascar for the past 25 years, expects the craze to end eventually. Farmers in Madagascar now are rebuilding vanilla plantations as quickly as they can, but it takes four or five years before those orchids start producing seeds. This past March, there was a big setback: A cyclone hit Madagascar, destroying perhaps a third of the crop, pushing prices up even more. Vanilla pods are so precious, theft has become a major problem. Farmers are so worried about their crops being stolen directly from their fields that they are harvesting the beans much too early. For vanilla lovers, it’s doubly bad news. Not only are vanilla beans scarce and expensive, the quality is generally quite poor, too."
"The music of Penguin Cafe is like no other. Its origins date back to the early ’70s, within fever dreams Simon Jeffes had that were brought on by food poisoning. In those dreams he imagined a dispassionate world ”where everyone lived in big concrete blocks and spent their lives looking into screens. In one room, there was a couple making love lovelessly. In another there was a musician sat at a vast array of equipment, but with headphones on, so there was no actual music in the room.” Eerily accurate. But he also imagined a place, the Penguin Cafe, where folks could gather, for pleasure, cheer and music. He wanted to hear what that music would sound like, and so created the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. I was always a huge fan of that original music listeners of NPR may have heard it often   news stories during the many years I directed All Things Considered. While Simon Jeffes died in 1997, his son Arthur has been creating new music infused with his father’s original inspiration. He calls his group, simply, Penguin Cafe. You can hear Brazilian sounds in the rhythms, classical and minimalism in the strings, Asia in its harmonium, African sounds in the kalimbas. But honestly, it’s none of these it’s a universal dream state. If you’re looking to explore further be sure the listen to Penguin Cafe’s recent album The Imperfect Sea, which nods to Kraftwerk, Simian Mobile Disco and Franz Schubert. It’s none of these. The Imperfect Sea is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Arthur Jeffes (piano, cuatro) Oli Langford (violin) Neil Codling (piano, harmonium, dulcitone, ukulele) Darren Berry (percussion) Clementine Brown (violin) Vincent Greene (viola) Des Murphy (ukulele) Andy Waterworth (double bass) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame, Beck Harlan PA: CJ Riculan Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Updated at 1:05 p. m. ET, The judge in the sexual assault case of comedian Bill Cosby has declared a mistrial. After several days of deliberations, the jury could not come to a unanimous agreement on whether Cosby drugged and molested Andrea Constand, a former employee of Temple University, at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. But this does not mean an end to the   case: Prosecutors immediately said they will retry the case. Cosby, 79, remains charged with three   felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, and each count carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison. All told, if found guilty, Cosby could spend the rest of his life in prison. ”I remind everyone that this is not vindication or victory,” Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill said Saturday. ”A mistrial is merely the justice system at work.” Nevertheless, Cosby’s legal and publicity team emerged onto the front steps of the courtroom triumphant. ”Justice is alive in Montgomery County,” Cosby’s attorney, Brian McMonagle, said with his client standing silently behind him. ”We wanted an acquittal, but like the Rolling Stones song says, you can’t always get what you want sometimes you get what you need.” And in a scathing statement read aloud by a representative, Cosby’s wife, Camille, called the the district attorney ”heinously and exploitatively ambitious” and the judge ”overtly and arrogantly collaborating” with him  —   among other allegations. Asked later whether he believes Saturday’s mistrial represents a victory for Cosby, spokesman Andrew Wyatt said: ”I do. I think the DA  —   he has to say he’s going to retry. But why keep costing these citizens millions of dollars?” Meanwhile, Constand’s attorneys are ”confident that these proceedings have given a voice to the many victims who felt powerless and silenced,” they said in a statement. ”We commend those prosecutors,” they continued, ”who raised awareness that one of the hallmarks of drug related sexual assaults is the affect the drug has on the victim’s memory and ability to recall and were nonetheless willing to present this evidence to the jury.” Andrea Constand is ”entitled to a verdict in this case,” District Attorney Kevin Steele said at a news conference later Saturday. ”We will push forward to try to get justice done.” He says that legally, he has 365 days to retry the case but that he hopes to ”push it along” sooner than that. ”You can’t put a price tag on justice,” Steele said, when asked by reporters about the cost of the trial. ”If you do, you’re saying if someone is wealthy or famous, they don’t deserve the same sort of justice as everybody else.” How the case unfolded, Constand is not the only woman who says Cosby raped or sexually assaulted her. Dozens of women have come forward over the past several years, with stories that echo one another. But in most of those cases, the statute of limitations had expired by the time the women told their stories publicly. Constand’s case was the exception. She reported the crime to police in 2005 and filed a civil suit against Cosby after prosecutors declined to press charges. A decade later, as more and more women stepped forward with accounts of assault, prosecutors took a second look at the allegations and this time, filed criminal charges. Prosecutors argued that Cosby drugged Constand to incapacitate her so he could assault her. They cited Cosby’s own statements that he gave her pills and touched her sexually and called another accuser to the stand to make the case that Cosby had a pattern of drugging and assaulting women. Cosby’s defense team questioned Constand’s credibility, pointing to inconsistencies in her accounts to the police, and argued that the 2004 encounter was consensual and ”romantic.” The prosecution took five days to present their case the defense, less than a day. Cosby did not testify in his own defense. Cosby’s wife, Camille, joined him in the courtroom as his defense team presented its case. Supporters and   also gathered outside the courthouse at times during the trial, Cosby ”appeared in good spirits” as he spoke to and saluted his fans, The Associated Press reports. Jury deliberations started Monday afternoon. As the days passed, the jury repeatedly asked to rehear portions of the testimony. On Thursday, after more than 30 hours of deliberations, the members of the jury told the judge they were deadlocked and could not reach a unanimous consensus. The judge ordered them to try again, giving them instructions meant to motivate an undecided jury to come to a conclusion. By the time a mistrial was declared Saturday, the exhausted jurors had spent more than 50 hours in deliberations. A growing wave of allegations, For decades, Cosby’s public image seemed not just untarnished, but untarnishable. He was the star of the wildly popular The Cosby Show and a successful   comic. Genial, avuncular, beloved: He was America’s dad. As NPR’s Gene Demby has written, Cosby was a black luminary who served not just as a racial and cultural ambassador to white America, but also as a financial backer of black America. ”Black colleges and prospective black college students were buoyed by his philanthropy, while his collections of black art graced important museums,” Gene writes. ”Even before his   turn as black America’s moral scold, Cosby had spent decades leaning into his popular image as a paternal figure to bolster his influence as a paternalistic one.” Cosby presented himself as a sort of moral leader and advocate for responsibility: His controversial ”pound cake” speech excoriated poor black Americans for what he described as ignorance and poor parenting. In Philadelphia, where he grew up, Cosby was a hometown hero. ”Cosby gave money to the city, and whenever he could, his time,” Annette   reported for NPR. ”In the early 2000s, he participated in ’callback sessions’ with public housing residents in North Philadelphia, where they would talk about education, violence and teen pregnancy, among other issues.” In short, Cosby’s name was synonymous with community leadership, black success, sitcom fatherhood, bold sweaters and   ads. But a series of allegations of rape and molestation began swirling around the edge of that reputation. In 2000, a woman accused Cosby of groping her. Then Constand’s allegations drew attention in 2005. Constand’s story led another woman to step forward, telling the Today show that Cosby drugged and assaulted her in the 1970s. Then another woman. Then another. Cosby repeatedly and vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Almost a decade passed, and no criminal charges were filed. Cosby’s legacy and career survived  —   by early 2014, Gawker described the allegations as ”effectively forgotten.” Then, in the fall of 2014, comedian Hannibal Buress mentioned the allegations in a set. He said he was annoyed by Cosby’s ”smug” persona: ” ’Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. . .. Brings you down a couple notches.” ”You leave here and Google ’Bill Cosby rape,’ ” Buress told the audience. ”It’s not funny. That s*** has more results than Hannibal Buress.” The bit went viral, and suddenly Cosby’s alleged assaults were back in the news. As in 2005 and 2006, more women stepped forward with stories of assault. But this time, the wave of allegations didn’t stop, and few people seemed inclined to forget and move on. NPR’s Scott Simon asked Cosby to directly address the allegations in a November 2014 interview. Cosby responded with an   series of silences. The Associated Press went to court to get access to a previously sealed deposition from Constand’s civil suit against Cosby. The wire service released the document  —   in which Cosby admitted that he obtained quaaludes, a sedative, with the intent of giving the drug to women he wanted to have sex with. Then 35 women told their stories to New York magazine. Side by side, the stories showed the same themes again and again: Women who saw Cosby as a mentor, a father figure or an admired celebrity. A drink or a pill. Helplessness or fear or a night entirely lost to memory. Years of silence. Cosby has continued, through his representatives, to deny that he committed any sexual assaults  —   admitting to infidelity but maintaining that all the sexual contact was consensual."
"”They’re not gonna want me to play ’babies in space’,” says Greg O’Brien. ”You know, where I pick ’em up in my hands and I swirl them around over my head like a rocket ship. I always say ’Babies! In! Spaaaaace!’ ” It’s October 2016, and he is musing about the latest O’Brien family news. His daughter, Colleen, is due to have a baby in November, and ever since he found out, Greg has been struggling with competing emotions. ”I’m not quite sure what to expect,” he says. ”Am I excited? God, yes. And will it lift me up? Yes it will.” Eight years after he was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, O’Brien knows that becoming a grandfather could add new motivation and joy to his life. But eight years of memory loss, depression, anger and mental decline have left    O’Brien, who lives in Brewster, Mass. a different man than the outgoing writer and father who raised Colleen. He is easily confused, overwhelmed by groups and exhausted by conversation. Sometimes he is paranoid. Sometimes he knows he is paranoid. So even before his grandchild arrives, he knows there will be physical limits on how he can interact with the infant. ”You know, they’re not gonna want me to put the baby on my shoulders. Hug the baby, pat the baby,” he says. ”I get it. I’m not going to fight it.” There are other problems, too, with meeting a new person when your mind is in decline. Greg’s identity is slipping and shifting under him. He never used to be angry or anxious. ”You know, I’m an imperfect guy, but an OK guy,” he says, ”and my grandchildren really aren’t going to get to know me. Someone else will have to tell them.” ”I feel a little bit, when I think about grandkids, like a shell of myself. So it’s kind of bittersweet.” ”Maybe through my writing, through other things, you leave a legacy behind,” he says. ”I may try to connect in the heart and the soul. Just looking, smiling, touching and have my grandkids remember me that way.” Adeline, It’s Christmas. Adeline is 1 month old, and she spends most of her time sleeping. The house on Cape Cod is full of people, celebrating and talking. Colleen sees her father leave a crowded living room, seeking quiet and solitude. She finds him later sitting with his granddaughter, both of them content in their own worlds. It’s January. In Massachusetts, the snow is 2 feet deep. The Christmas tree made it out of the living room and onto the back porch, only to be stranded in a snowdrift. When Greg sees it out of the corner of his eye, his mind transforms it into a billowy monster, crouching outside the door. But it’s just a tree, and he pulls his mind back to reality and snaps a picture on his phone.    Adeline would like this tree monster. He sends her a text,   her mother. Adeline, Too bad you couldn’t make it to the Cape on your tricycle last night. The Christmas tree on the deck turned into a snow monster and ate Conor and Mary Catherine. One gulp! I’m here alone and need you. .. Lots of snow, lots of sap. .. Love, Grandpa, ”Sometimes I’m thinking straight, and sometimes not,” he says, but when something makes him laugh these days, he likes to send his granddaughter a text. ”So she kind of gets a sense of me today,” he explains. In another text, he calls her his snow angel. In another, he updates her on a New England Patriots game. Now it’s April. Colleen has brought    Adeline to visit her grandparents. An evening conversation about the cable bill quickly turns into an argument between Greg and his daughter. Colleen is alarmed by her father’s angry outbursts. Greg is frustrated by all the people in the house, talking into the evening, making him feel like he needs to be social. Both feel like the other person just doesn’t get it. Sometimes, it feels to Greg like his granddaughter is the only person who gets it. ”She’s so innocent and so accepting of me that I enjoyed being with Adeline far more than anyone else,” Greg says. ”It’s the innocence of a child.” Now it’s May. At nearly 8 months old, Adeline is a joyful baby, screaming with delight, bouncing up and down and drooling onto her clenched fist. She and her grandfather do not play babies in space. When they spend time together, there is almost always another adult around. And yet they interact so naturally. He holds her, makes faces at her and sings to her. ”They do a lot of snuggling,” says Colleen. He does his legendary Donald Duck impression and Adeline giggles uncontrollably. Since his granddaughter was born, Greg has written extensively about her, in text messages, emails and essays. A revised edition of his memoir being published this summer includes a chapter titled Sweet Adeline. In it he writes of her birth. ”New life. New hope. Something new to live for.”"
"Updated 11:00 a. m. ET Saturday, This week, Washington is looking ahead to another stretch in which the time is always news o’clock and the stories just don’t stop. The marathon of   congressional hearings continues Tuesday with a session scheduled by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s panel on crime and terrorism. It appears aimed squarely at the ongoing imbroglio over Trump associates’ possible connections to last year’s Russian election meddling. Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham,  . C. titled the session ”Concurrent congressional and criminal investigations: lessons from history.” In other words: How can House and Senate committees keep clear of an executive branch process  —   like that being led by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller? Then on Wednesday, the House and Senate intelligence committees both have hearings planned about last year’s election. Texas Rep. Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the House committee’s Russia inquiry, announced that former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will appear to ”answer questions related to Russian active measures.” In other words: the slate of dirty tricks that U. S. intelligence agencies say Russia’s spy services pulled on the United States, including cyberattacks on elections systems and American political figures and some of their top aides. Meanwhile over on the other side of the Capitol, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr,  . C. and Vice Chairman Mark Warner,  . will be having their own version of that discussion with two panels of outside experts at nearly the same time the House Intelligence Committee is in session with Johnson. Witnesses at the Senate hearing are to include the acting director of the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence and analysis cyber division, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and state elections officials. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe also makes an appearance on Capitol Hill Wednesday afternoon  —   ostensibly about the bureau’s FY 2018 budget, but other topics could come up. McCabe was supposed to testify Friday, but that hearing was canceled after a difficult few days in Washington that began when Rep. Steve Scalise, the House majority whip, and three others were shot Wednesday in an attack on a Republican congressional baseball practice that appeared to be politically motivated. After several weeks in which D. C. has focused on the Trump aspect of the story, and especially actions the president might have taken this year in response to these investigations  —   including firing FBI Director James Comey  —   the election itself could move back into the spotlight. News organizations including NPR have reported that Russian cyberattacks last year against state elections offices were much more widespread than first understood, and national security leaders like Comey have warned that unless Washington does more to deter them, the Russians will resume their mischief in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles. State election systems were designated as part of the nation’s ”critical infrastructure” by Johnson in January of this year, during the final weeks of the Obama administration. That allows DHS ”to prioritize our cybersecurity assistance to state and local election officials, but only for those who request it,” Johnson explained in a statement at the time. And there are other such ideas that will likely get an airing next week. Should presidential campaigns get cyber protection from a federal agency the way the Secret Service provides physical protection for presidential candidates? Should the United States launch a big information war against Russia to retaliate against its aggressive wave of cyberattacks and disinformation? And should the FBI try harder to deliver criminal punishment to the Russians it knows were involved? Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates raised that prospect when she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism with Clapper at one of its hearings about the Russian election hacking  —   but she also made clear about the limits of what might be practically possible. ”I think we have to do more to deter the Russians, and it wouldn’t hurt to prosecute a few folks, but I don’t think we should kid ourselves,” Yates said, ”that we’ll be able to prosecute our way out of this problem.”"
"Over the last 2 years photographer Nichole Sobecki and journalist Laura Heaton have documented the devastating impact of climate change on one of the most unstable places in the world, Somalia. Their reporting appears in Foreign Policy magazine in an article titled ”Somalia’s Land is Dying. The People Will Be Next.” What they found is summed up by   environmental activist Fatima Jibrell. Jibrell tells them that the changing weather patterns are making Somalia unlivable. ”Maybe the land, a piece of desert called Somalia, will exist on the map of the world,” Jibrell says of the future of her country, ”but Somalis cannot survive.” Sobecki and Heaton repeatedly traveled to Somalia and the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp in Northeast Kenya to report on how the lives of Somalis are being affected. Goats and Soda’s Jason Beaubien talked with Sobecki about this reporting project and the current state of Somalia. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Because of the security situation, there’s not much reporting that comes out of Somalia. Just to start, what are conditions like in Somalia right now?  We are seeing a massive humanitarian crisis this year. About half the country is facing food shortages, famine has been declared in parts of country. There was a drought in parts of the country last year, and what we’re seeing this year is far, far worse. How is climate change transforming the landscape or changing people’s lives? Somalia is a place where people’s livelihoods are intimately tied to the land. It’s a hot and dry place. Somalis have traditionally been incredibly resilient at coping in a harsh environment where there’s maybe only a few inches of rainfall each year. But what we’ve seen happening is that as the rainfall becomes more erratic, people are not just facing a drought once every 10 years they’re facing the drought every year or every other year. We met Somalis all over the country who were impacted, where this is transforming people’s lives right now. And you’re saying these erratic rains are forcing people off their land, which is adding to the conflict and turmoil in Somalia. Yes. So this project has focused on how climate change and environmental degradation are fueling migration. There’s a lot of other things at play  ” politics, insecurity. But I think it’s really critical to understand the role of the changing environment. And you know there’s very little understanding of how the environment plays into the [high] levels of migration that we see in Somalia. One of your photos is of migrants waiting under an outcropping of rocks for smugglers to take them to Yemen. What was going on in that scene? That is in Mareero [a coastal village] which is sort of a smuggling hub in Puntland, a   region in the northeast. And that day I had gone just to see the area. I wasn’t expecting to come across migrants. But as I was getting closer to Mareero I started seeing people walking through this really dry, stark landscape. There’s no town or anything that they would be walking toward. And what I realized as I got closer was they were walking to these caves and people were gathering there, waiting for night to set in and the boats to arrive that would take them to Yemen. They were both Somali and Ethiopian migrants. They had decided to make this very dangerous journey by ship to Yemen. Why Yemen? There’s a brutal war going on in Yemen, a food crisis, a cholera outbreak.  I think that there are no paths for migrants to take that are safe or secure. What we’re seeing is that migration is increasing exponentially in all directions. People are leaving the region however they can. Some are going through Libya and across the Mediterranean and some are going to Yemen. That’s really telling because you know Yemen is not a place that I view as secure or where I would want to go. The fact that people are making that choice is a sign of how desperate the situation is. I want to ask about your own security doing this reporting. Somalia is an extremely difficult place for Westerners to work. Rates of kidnapping are incredibly high. You’re a white American. How do you go about operating for weeks at a time in Somalia? We put a tremendous amount of research into planning this trip, really mapping out the journeys we wanted to make. This meant factoring in not only which roads do we take and how long can we stay in any given place but also what clan is my driver compared to the security [person] compared to the translator. Part of your story focuses on British ecologist Murray Watson, who for decades had been doing an extensive mapping of Somalia’s land and natural resources. He was abducted by gunmen in rural Somalia in 2008 and has not been heard from since. I was struck by how lush some of his images of Somalia were. Have you seen Somalia when it’s lush and green like that? I never had an opportunity to see Somalia in the way it was back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Also the south of Somalia is far more lush than the north. But what we’ve seen in the last few decades is a combination of increasingly erratic rainfall coupled with environmental degradation, much of which has been driven by the charcoal trade. And we’ve just seen massive deforestation across the country. So what Murray Watson and his team of scientists saw no longer exists. [Somalia] is a different landscape than it was 30 years ago. I think when many Americans think about Somalia they think about the terror group   or they think about the movie Black Hawk Down depicting American soldiers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. For you as an American who’s spent quite a bit of time there, what comes to mind when you think about Somalia? I love working in Somalia. I think Somali people are some of the funniest people I’ve ever met. They have a good sense of humor and they’re incredible storytellers. Poetry and storytelling is a key part of their culture. It also remarkably beautiful and I think that’s a part of the country that people often don’t get to see. It’s important to understand those things because people often do write Somalia off as a lost cause. You know this is not just a hopeless case. This is a place that has been traumatized by conflicts over decades. But there are reasons for this, and this isn’t a cycle that needs to keep repeating itself. We need to look at Somalia in terms of what we can be doing to better adapt to environmental degradation and climate change. We live in an increasingly interconnected world, and Somalia is not just somebody else’s problem. Somalia’s problems are our problems."
"When the news broke that Amazon had agreed to buy Whole Foods for $13. 7 billion, the retail food sector went a little bananas. The stock prices of large food retail chains, such as Costco, tumbled a bit. And this headline from Business Insider helps explain it: Amazon is acquiring Whole Foods  —   and Walmart, Target, and Kroger should be terrified. The message is this: The    retail business that pioneered organic, fresh food and the country’s dominant   company make a powerful combination. Whole Foods was quick to point out, in a statement, that its stores will continue to operate under the Whole Foods Market brand, that its headquarters will remain in Austin, Texas, and that John Mackey will stay on as CEO. Nonetheless, a lot is about to change. We spoke to food analyst David Portalatin of the NPD Group, a market research company. A Moody’s analyst described the   Foods deal as a ”transformative transaction, not just for food retail, but for retail in general.” Do you agree? Yes. The world’s largest   company is now a very substantial    food retailer. I think ultimately, this is good for consumers. Why? Convenience. More of our shopping visits are digitally enabled, and this is going to continue to grow. Increasingly, we’ll be doing everything from home. Take the restaurant sector, where customer traffic is flat, digital orders are up 45 percent over the last two years. So when you give consumers the flexibility and power to procure the goods they want, and have them delivered straight to their front door, that’s a winning proposition. Americans have been slowly moving toward online grocery shopping. But there have been challenges. For example, when it comes to buying fresh food, we like to feel, see and touch the fruits and vegetables we’re buying. At least, I do! Has that been a problem for Amazon? Fresh foods are the final frontier for Amazon. And figuring out how to get it to your front door is the ultimate inconvenience for consumers. In order for Amazon to get the volume growth they are looking for, fresh foods has to be part of the equation. This deal gives Amazon a major foothold in that space. Whole Foods gives Amazon a tremendous amount of credibility around the quality of the food and the reputation they have with their customer base. Especially among millennials, is that right? You point out that 24 percent of millennials bought something from Whole Foods last year. Yes. That’s an extraordinary penetration for a supermarket chain with just 431 stores. The deal now gives Amazon control of those 431 stores, nearly all of which are in neighborhoods that are more affluent and younger than America as a whole. Those stores solve much of Amazon’s ”last mile” delivery challenge for fresh groceries. What do you think it will be like to walk into a Whole Foods 10 years from now? Will we just be stopping by to pick up what we ordered online? I think it’s going to look a lot different than it looks today, for sure. The stores will evolve to become more experiential. The stores could teach cooking skills, hold classes and educate about food. There could be all kinds of initiatives to repurpose the    store. There’s also the ”grocerant” trend  —   a blending of grocery stores and restaurants. Whole Foods already has a lot of   dining and lots of prepared foods. Yes, we’ll continue to see prepared foods in demand. Tonight, 1 in 10 entrees served in Americans’ homes will be a ”prepared,   ” item purchased outside the home. Again, it’s about convenience. Editor’s Note: Whole Foods Market and Amazaon. com Inc. are two of NPR’s corporate sponsors."
"The decision last week by Gulf Arab states to sever ties and halt trade with the tiny,   country of Qatar has focused attention on what critics call Qatar’s funding of Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. U. S. investigators believe the crisis was sparked by hackers who transmitted fake, inflammatory messages appearing to come from Qatar’s emir. But the dispute is unfolding against a backdrop of   irritation with Qatar among its larger Sunni Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia (which has also been accused of supporting terrorist groups) the United Arab Emirates and others have frequently complained about Qatar’s   media outlet   and its equable working relationship with Saudi Arabia’s main rival, Shiite power Iran. To some, the current crisis is a simple tale of cracking down on one source of terror financing. To others, it’s the latest effort to rein in a small country with a history of going its own way. Tensions that date back decades, Long before it was an oil and gas power, Qatar was controlled by outsiders. In the late 19th century, the Ottoman Turks held sway. For much of the 20th century, until it gained independence in 1971, Qatar was a British protectorate. The oil and gas age  —   the tiny peninsula controls the   gas reserves in the world  —   made Qatar into one of the richest nations on Earth per capita. But Qatar’s leaders, all from the ruling Al Thani family  —   Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is currently in charge  —   chafed against the dominating, conservative influence of the behemoth next door, Saudi Arabia. The tensions date back decades, but here are a few highlights: A 2014   followed by worse, The Saudi ruling family loathed the Arab Spring uprisings as destabilizing to the region and possibly a threat to its own rule. It stepped up its own activism in the region, both on the ground and diplomatically. In Libya and Syria, the Saudis and Qataris backed different fighting groups that were vying for influence. In 2014, Gulf states  —   led by Saudi Arabia  —   suspended diplomatic relations with Qatar for several months and threatened to do worse. Now, after a visit last month by President Trump to Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, they have done worse. They are demanding far greater concessions from Qatar than they ever did in the past  —   such as closing   and expelling Hamas leaders  —   in return for restoring ties. ”This is far more dramatic than the diplomatic row that occurred in 2014,” says Mehran Kamrava, head of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University’s outpost in the Qatari capital, Doha. This time, the Saudis have closed Qatar’s only land border, through which around 40 percent of its imports enter the country, and Gulf states have stopped air and sea shipments to Qatar. (Saudi Arabia has denied that there is a blockade against Qatar.) Qataris in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have been given two weeks to leave, and citizens of those three countries were given the same June 18 deadline to leave Qatar. Beyond that, says Kamrava, the dispute feels more visceral. ”This time, the disagreement appears much more personal,” he says, adding that Qataris are ”a bit  ” by the hostility. Kuwait has tried to mediate. But Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the escalating tensions and tougher demands will make a diplomatic solution that much harder to reach. ”Some of what [Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are] asking for . .. expelling members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and shutting down   . .. those are pretty big asks,” he says  —   not to mention demands that Qatar cut ties with Iran. But in the wake of Trump’s visit to Riyadh  —   and his ensuing comments specifically targeting Qatar without mentioning complaints about Saudi Arabia’s behavior in the region  —   the view among Gulf states is that they now have the leverage to force Qatar to be more cooperative. Riad Kahwaji at the   Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis says the ”gray zone” Qatar has been operating in  —   pledging allegiance to its Sunni Muslim neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council while continuing to support Islamist militants and cooperate with Iran  —   is disappearing. He says it’s time for Qatar to choose. ”If you are a true ally, and a member of the GCC,” he says, ”you cannot be supporting extremist groups, you cannot be in the same trench with Iran.” A new alliance? The crisis has forced Qatar to seek help  —   including from Iran. Iranian media are reporting that the country will send ”humanitarian aid” shipments to Doha. Russia has also voiced support, and Turkey has stepped in to send food. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says a ”very grave mistake is being made in Qatar” and has decried the isolation of the country as ”inhumane and against Islamic values.” Some wonder whether all this pressure on Qatar might backfire, driving the country into an alliance with Russia, Turkey and Iran  —   one with very different objectives from the U. S. But Sinan Ulgen, director of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies in Istanbul, says he doesn’t see a     alliance being forged  —   at least, not yet. ”There certainly is a risk, now that Turkey has firmly sided with Qatar, that this would lead to increased tension” with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, says Ulgen. But at the end of the day, Qatar ”does not have the ability to withstand sustained pressure from its larger neighbors in the Gulf, especially if this strategy is indeed being backed by the U. S.” Thus far, Washington has sent mixed messages about the dispute, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calling for calm and dialogue, and President Trump saying it’s time to put an end to Qatar’s ”very high level” of terror financing. The Pentagon, meanwhile, maintains the U. S. Central Command’s regional forward operating base in Qatar and has just signed a deal reportedly worth $12 billion to sell   fighter jets to Doha. Efforts to resolve the dispute appear to be still in the early stages, with a number of questions unanswered, says Mideast analyst Steven Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”How sustainable is the Turkish relief effort? How far are the Iranians willing to go to exploit this problem on the other side of the Gulf?” he asks  —   and wonders, for that matter, how far Qatar will be willing to go to satisfy the Saudis. ”Can they really, truly expel members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and will that be enough?” says Cook. ”We’re still in the, kind of, opening bids here, so I think this is going to go on. This is going to occupy us for the better part of the summer  —   and well beyond, actually.”"
"She kept getting confused, losing her place in lessons at the University of Utah, where she taught. And then, just before she turned 61, Gerda Saunders was given a diagnosis: She has   microvascular dementia. Saunders and her husband Peter are South African they emigrated to the States back in the 1980s. Now, at age 67, Gerda Saunders has written a memoir, Memory’s Last Breath: Field Notes on My Dementia. And she remembers vividly what her ”rather blunt” neurologist said when she gave Saunders the news. ”She said, it looks like you may already have been dementing. And because I’m involved with words, I have always been, it just struck me in that moment, really, as funny in a way that there’s this verb that I never thought could be derived from the noun dementia. Suddenly it felt that this was something I . ..” Saunders grasps for the word she wants. ”When you are sort of, almost like guilty of participating in an act, in the way that we speak about it in colonialism, that you are  —   complicit is the word I’m thinking of. That I’m complicit in something that my body and my head is doing something, in a verb form, which means I’m actively engaged in doing this.” On what it’s meant to write about her dementia, Certainly, my whole life path was determined by the fact that I had a good brain to start with. I was very fortunate. And now this big brain is being eaten away. So what am I now? What will I be? What is my identity, and what does it mean to live with an identity that’s eroding all the time? I felt a strong feeling to understand this disease before a time when I couldn’t understand anything anymore. On how her diagnosis has altered her marriage, It has a constant and daily effect on our relationship. And I am more convinced than I’ve ever been in my life that Peter loves me until the day I die. Because he’s so tender and loving, and just always there for me. And it’s hard for me to know that I’m not fully reciprocating. You know, my mind drifts. I’m not good at doing my share of the household, I’m getting worse at it every day. His responsibility is mounting. But we do talk about it, and I feel that our relationship is deeper than it’s ever been. On not sounding impaired, If you are in a conversation with me like this, where there are no distractions, I can hold together a framework of concepts, and speak within that framework. Where you see, really, some kind of craziness is when I interface with the world. I have severe attention deficit disorder. So I see something in front of me, and that is the thing I interact with. You know, when Peter and I have to go somewhere, we have an appointment, and I have to get ready  —   and I get sidetracked ten times in minutes, you know, where I go to fetch something, or I go to comb my hair. It’s a very exhausting way to get through a physical day. And it’s incredibly exhausting for Peter, too, because he is really thinking for two people. On talking to her family about the end of her life, We worked out a plan for me and my family whereby I would go somewhere where I could find a legal assisted death. At the moment, it does not look as though that would be possible for me in the United States, so that means we would have to go to another country. And so we have tried to financially provide for that possibility, and also emotionally prepare for that possibility with my family . .. And I asked this gift of them, to do this for me. It is such a comfort to me, to know that my family love me enough to want to give me this gift."
"It’s the weekend, and that means our rollup of education news around the country  —   starting this week with some rollbacks. The U. S. Department of Education is rolling back two regulations introduced during the Obama administration and designed to protect students, especially those at   colleges. In a statement, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said previous rulemaking ”missed an opportunity to get it right. The result is a muddled process that’s unfair to students and schools, and puts taxpayers on the hook for significant costs.” The first rule, ”gainful employment,” was announced two summers ago. Colleges and universities were to be evaluated based on how many graduates are able to pay back their loans. The logic being, if too many students end up with low incomes and high debt, the program is not offering good value for money. Programs that consistently failed the test were supposed to lose access to federal   dollars. The Obama administration released the first data set in January, which found one in four courses of study reviewed either failing, or borderline. The vast majority were at   colleges, yet as higher education scholar Robert Kelchen pointed out, a graduate theater program at Harvard also failed. The second rule, ”borrower defense to repayment,” was supposed to go into effect on July 1. In part a reaction to the shutdown of large   Corinthian and ITT Tech, it was meant to make it simpler for students at colleges found to be fraudulent to get their loans forgiven. The regulatory clock will be reset on both rules, a process of hearings, public comment and negotiation that can take months. Some student advocates decried the news, while historically black colleges were among those that supported it. According to an internal memo obtained by ProPublica, the Department of Education has loosened the requirements for campus investigations of civil rights violations and complaints related to sexual assault. Advocates fear the move will limit enforcement. Candice Jackson, the acting assistant secretary for the Office of Civil Rights, wrote in the memo that the department, in an attempt to ”clear case backlogs,” will decide the scope of investigations on a ”case by case basis” rather than ”one size fits all.” In particular, it will no longer automatically obtain three years of previous complaints and files to determine the context of a reported violation. DeVos has also called for staff cuts to the civil rights division. ”At best, this administration believes that civil rights enforcement is superfluous and can be easily cut. At worst, it really is part of a systematic agenda to roll back civil rights,” Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama, told ProPublica. The Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment. The Office of Civil Rights has 335 open campus sexual assault investigations, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Secretary DeVos came to the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools conference this week with a familiar message: ”A system that denies parents the freedom to choose the education that best suits their children’s individual and unique needs denies them a basic human right. It is   and it is fundamentally unjust.” She praised charter schools, which are free to students, have open admissions, run independently of districts using taxpayer money, and are bound by federal and state accountability. She also praised private schools, which are generally none of the above. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has signed a large and controversial education bill into law. HB 7069 allocates more money to charter schools: both local tax revenue and federal Title I funding intended for poor students. It also expands a homeschool scholarship program NPR Ed has covered. DeVos has repeatedly cited Florida as a national model for school choice. In other state news, this summer, Texas will again try to pass a ”bathroom bill,” which would require transgender people to use the public restrooms that correspond with their biological sex instead of their gender identity. The bill failed during the regular legislative session, but Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has now called for a special session and the bill is back on the agenda. Harvard University announced this that its first woman president, Drew Gilpin Faust, will step down next year after 11 years, leaving behind a legacy of change. Faust was appointed in 2007 to succeed Lawrence H. Summers, who departed in a cloud of controversy after claiming that women are innately   for math and science. Faust was hailed for increasing diversity and inclusion efforts among students and faculty. Drawing in part on her background as a historian, she moved to publicly acknowledge Harvard’s slaveowning past. She suffered criticism, however, for the poor financial performance of Harvard’s endowment."
"Alaska is home to about 18, 000 fishermen who harvest nearly 6 billion pounds of seafood each year. Salmon dominates the catch, five species in all: chum salmon, sockeye, king, coho and pink. For a taste of Alaska fishing life, we head out with a   fishing team as they go trolling for king salmon in the waters off Sitka, in southeast Alaska. We’re on the Alexa K, a     troller, with captain Charlie Wilber, 69, and his    daughter, Adrienne, ”heading out into the briny deep!” as Charlie wryly tells us. Charlie has been fishing these waters for nearly 40 years. ”I never would have imagined I’d end up doin’ this,” he says. Raised in Omaha, Neb. he came to Alaska fresh out of college. He had a job as a smoke jumper, fighting fires near Fairbanks. But once he went out fishing with a friend, he ”got the bug,” as he puts it. He’s been fishing ever since. And it’s always been a family adventure. Charlie says he bought the Alexa K because the boat’s bulwarks were high enough that his daughters, Adrienne and her younger sister, Berett, couldn’t fall off. Adrienne remembers lots of nights spent sleeping head to toe with Berett in a bunk below deck. She started fishing with Charlie when she was about 11. It was on the Alexa K, she says, that she learned a lot of the qualities she values most: ”Persistence, having a good attitude, and optimism. Living closely with one other person that you’re not always getting along with, but still having to work with in a productive way. . .. Those are skills I use every day.” Once the Wilbers have filled the coolers with ice to chill the day’s catch, and have motored out into Sitka Sound, it’s time to fish. Charlie and Adrienne lower the trolling poles  —   one on each side of the boat  —   and get busy hooking artificial lures to the four lines that spool out from the poles: spoons, flashers, an array of shiny and colorful pieces of gear to attract the salmon to bite. It’s a smorgasbord of temptation for fussy fish. ”You have to have a variety to offer,” Charlie explains. ”That’s the art of it, trying to figure out what they want to bite. And just about the time you get it figured out, they change! Their appetites are fickle. And then, see, you gotta start all over again.” Father and daughter work in tandem on opposite sides of the stern. They share an instinctive, easy rhythm born of the many years they’ve spent together on this boat. Adrienne laughs as she thinks back to her early days learning how to fish: ”I remember . .. having to go really slow, and getting my gear tangled up, and then Dad would have to come fix it, and ’Ohhhh no, I’ve messed up!’ ” But today, she says, ”it feels so good to be out here, just that motion of hauling the gear, and setting the gear.” Which they do, repeatedly, over several hours: reeling the lines in, removing and reattaching the lures, and sending the lines back out. But on this day, persistence doesn’t pay off. The salmon just aren’t biting. So we’ll take Adrienne’s word for it: She describes king salmon as being especially beautiful, with ”really dark black mouths, silver sides and white bellies and dark tops. But in that darkness are also these shimmers of gold and shimmers of lavender.” ”Gorgeous fish,” her father agrees. It’s clear the Wilbers take real pride in the quality  —   and sustainability  —   of their wild catch. In fishing season, the family will enjoy salmon for dinner every other night. ”We eat so, so much fish!” Adrienne says. ”When we go out and catch it, it’s a cheap protein, and it’s delicious. You’d think we’d get tired of eating king salmon because we have it so often, but it’s just so, so good that to this day, grilled king salmon is still my favorite food. Ever since I was a little kid.” Alaska fishermen operate under a quota system that limits the harvest. But lately, the fishermen of southeast Alaska are contending with alarming trends. This year, the numbers of wild king salmon returning to rivers to spawn are at an   low. In May, that led the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to temporarily shut down the commercial king salmon trolling season in southeast Alaska one month ahead of schedule. Charlie says that has never happened in all the years he has been fishing. Some salmon biologists have concluded that warming ocean temperatures are the main reason behind the decline in fish stocks. And out on the water, Charlie says it’s clear: Things are definitely changing. ”The water temperatures are warmer,” he notes. ”We’ve seen species of fish that don’t ordinarily get up this far. We’ve seen sunfish we’ve seen turtles we’ve seen some pomfret.” ”And there’s been a bunch of squid that have come in, in the last two years,” Adrienne adds. Those new arrivals could be competing with the salmon for food. ”Yeah,” Charlie says, ”it’s really hard to pin it down, to say this is climate change, but things are definitely changing.” The changes are clearly visible around them, too. They just have to look at the rapidly retreating glaciers all over southeast Alaska. For whatever reason, on the day we go out, the salmon elude us. Charlie is philosophical about it. ”Trolling is kind of a marathon,” he says. ”You just gotta grind away on it. You have some really good days and some days that aren’t so good. But you gotta still stay focused through the bad days, ’cause you never know when they’re gonna bite.” On this day, though, the fish win. The Wilbers haul in the lines one last time, lower the poles, and head back to port. ”We were skunked!” Charlie says with a grin. Adrienne is smiling, too. ”Next trip, Dad. Next trip.” The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"The land border crossing between Tijuana, Mexico and San Ysidro, Calif. is one of the busiest in the world. Every day 25, 000 people cross the border on foot. Among the crowd are students whose families live in Tijuana. Each morning their families commute many hours to bring the children to school in the U. S. Juan and his mom, Maria, wake up at 5:30 a. m. each day to make the trek from their home in Tijuana to Juan’s high school in San Ysidro. Some mornings, crossing the border can take up to an hour and half. ”It’s been kind of, it’s been a lot,” Juan says. ”Every day crossing it’s like, the time management, it’s finishing homework on time. It’s a lot.” But Juan’s mom says it’s worth the sacrifice. ”He has more of a future here in the United States,” Maria says. ”The school is much better here than in Tijuana. It’s a lot of work. A lot for him and for me. We wake up very early, wait in line, but it’s worth it.” Juan and Maria asked not to be identified by their last name because families caught living outside the district can be fined the cost of their education. Teachers in San Ysidro say as many as 1, 000 students cross the border every morning to go to school. By 5:30 a. m. on a typical day at the border crossing, a steady stream of cars continues to pull up to the Mexico side of the border and drop off kids. They all make their way through the fence and up the ramp to cross the border into the U. S. to go to school. The kids are of all ages. High school students come in groups of three, four and five, and younger kids walk with their parents. On the other side of the border, some students get on the bus, and others take off on skateboards and bikes. Many of the younger children will walk just a few blocks to Willow Elementary School where Nancy Alvarado has taught 5th grade since 2000. ”In many cases, those are the kids who are here every day with their little backpacks on, their hair done, their breakfast eaten, and they get up at the crack of dawn,” Alvarado says. ”Any parent who makes that sacrifice obviously wants their children in school.” Alvarado says there are two primary reasons families move to Tijuana. One is the cost of living in southern California. The San Ysidro School District has a staggering 33 percent student homelessness rate, the highest in the country. In other cases, if parents of kids who are U. S. citizens find themselves forcibly removed from the U. S. many parents still want their children to have a U. S. education. ”We have kids arrive   because someone got deported, and that’s every year,” Alvarado says. ”We have kids who arrive in, like, April.” She says they ask the students questions like, ” ’Where were you before? Bakersfield. And what brings you here? Ah, my dad was deported.’ That’s every year.” All but one of Alvarado’s 30 students are Hispanic and many commute from Mexico. She says she can see that her students are visibly stressed by having to cross the border every day, especially now with the heightened rhetoric about illegal immigration. ”They hear the rhetoric of ’build the wall’ and imagine the Berlin Wall,” Alvarado says. ”My kids are very aware of it.” Public school budgets are determined by attendance and funded through property taxes. In order to enroll, families must prove residency. No one from the school district responded to a request for comment on whether families or kids traveling daily from Tijuana were skirting the rules. But Jason Wells, the executive director of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce says the community has faith in its system. ”As a community we trust in our school district and what they do as far as their handling of residency confirmation,” Wells says. ”I wouldn’t say that the community sees children coming from Mexico as a tax burden. This community is very supportive of people regardless of their immigration status.” When Maria registered Juan for school last year, the two still lived in the district. ”We lived here in San Diego, but here the rent is very expensive,” she says. ”So, I decided to go to Tijuana.” But before next school year, they will have to find another way to prove residency. ”I’m scared. Next year, they’ll ask for a lot of papers,” Maria says. ”I’ll ask for an address from one of my family members. I’ll ask for a favor and maybe he’ll stay here with them. It will be harder for me because we’re used to being together, but, well, he has to.” Alvarado is quick to point out that most of the families who cross the border would likely be homeless if they stayed in San Ysidro, and wouldn’t be paying property taxes anyway. ”Those kids are American citizens,” she says. ”They have a right to live here. That they don’t live here now doesn’t mean they won’t live here someday.” With that being the case, she says it’s in the community’s and the country’s best interest to see that these students get an education."
"This trip is not going to end well. That much is clear from the outset in Arabia Felix. The book  —   first published by Danish novelist Thorkild Hansen in 1962, later translated into English by James and Kathleen McFarlane, and now out in a new edition  —   flirts with the ambiguous boundaries between history, fiction and travelogue. But almost from the very beginning, it is unmistakably firm on one point: Just about every one of the bright young scholars who undertake the ambitious scientific expedition at the heart of the book is going to die. What’s more, Hansen notes: ”Today, two hundred years after their expedition, they are almost completely forgotten.” Yet at the outset of the actual trip, in 1761, the Danish financiers behind it could scarcely have had higher hopes. This quest to uncover the empirical truths behind the Bible in Arabia Felix  —   ”Happy Arabia,” or Yemen, as it’s known today  —   was to be King Frederick V’s chance to make his own splash in the era of the Enlightenment. It was to be a testament to humankind’s capacity to make sense of the worldly and holy at once, by gratifying ”simultaneously two of the greatest obsessions of the age  —   the great interest in science, and the enthusiasm for foreign and particularly Oriental lands.” Trouble is, humankind  —   as it’s wont to do sometimes  —   got in the way. Out of the journals, illustrations and correspondence the unfortunate expeditioneers left behind, Hansen cobbles together a narrative as concerned with the men themselves as what they sent back  —   the scientific contributions that are also partly memorials to the disaster, when they even survived at all. Hansen’s account dances in the ample daylight that separates these   scientific heroes: There’s the cold, abrasively uncompromising botanist Forsskål, for instance the scheming philologist von Haven, who might be another Iago if he weren’t so damn lazy and Niebuhr, the survivor and beating heart of the book, whose achievements did have some lasting value. Between these three men, and occasionally a few interlopers, Hansen triangulates a rich study of all the little human failings that erode our big ideas. At the same time, he keeps his sense of humor about it. Though Hansen clearly feels affection for his subjects, he also feels no hesitation in slyly poking fun at their foibles (and no one more so than von Haven). After an extended passage from a diary, he will chip in a line or two of snark or sarcasm  —   like a congenial wink from the director to the audience: Don’t we both know better than those guys on stage? For, despite the humor, it’s tough at times to avoid the book’s kinship to drama  —   namely, ancient tragedy. Like an Oedipus Rex, we know the way this one ends already after all, it can be tough to call it a spoiler if the ending already lives in a Wikipedia entry. And Hansen only bolsters this connection, pointing out the sad refrains he hears in the young men’s accounts, like their wistful observations of young women that seem to surface every time they depart a city. ”It almost seems as if the same girls are reappearing,” Hansen writes, ”entering upon the scene like a Greek chorus to mark an entr’acte.” Hansen has refrains of his own. With a favorite phrase  —   ”we can picture”  —   he and his able translators repeatedly call upon us to conjure scene after scene from the dustbin of history: a rare balmy evening on the Atlantic, a troupe of girls dancing barefoot on the sand, a bitterly painful request from one member of the expedition to another. These moments lurk between the lines of diaries that might otherwise have made for dry reading in Hansen’s words, they take on the weight of the living. It can be tough sometimes to root for these guys. Their failings can be deeply frustrating to watch, and their astute observations are matched only by their blithe obliviousness  —   to the plight of the slaves around them, for example, or the colonial blind spots most of them bear. But then, that’s part of the ”double chord” that Hansen mentions at one point, that quietly plays throughout this book. There are, at all times, two separate strains playing at once: the hopes for the expedition and the foreknowledge of its fatal end, and the sympathies for each man and their   frustrations, their discoveries and what they sacrificed to make them. And always, the two sides to the impossible question driving both author and expeditioneers from the book’s front cover onward: Why Arabia Felix? Why, after it has eluded so many and brought woe to so many more, is the land they’re seeking called ”happy”  —   and why, in the end, do they seek it?"
"Updated 4:10 a. m. ET, A van drove into pedestrians early Monday morning in north London, police say, in what they are investigating as a terrorist attack. ”One man was pronounced dead at the scene,” the Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement. ”Eight people injured were taken to three separate hospitals two people were treated at the scene for minor injuries.” The U. K. police service said officers were called at 12:20 a. m. local time (7:20 p. m. Sunday ET) to the scene on Seven Sisters Road in the Finsbury Park neighborhood, home to many immigrants. ”The driver of the van  —   a man aged 48  —   was found detained by members of the public at the scene,” according to the police report. He was taken to a hospital as a precaution, where he’ll receive a mental health assessment, according to the statement. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said the people at the scene ”worked with officers to calmly and quickly get him into our custody. Their restraint in the circumstances was commendable.” Police have not yet determined whether the fatality was a result of the van attack. ”The attack unfolded whilst a man was receiving first aid from the public at the scene,” Basu said. ”Sadly, he has died. ”It is too early to state if his death was as a result of the attack.” According to multiple reports and social media posts, the van ran over people leaving the Finsbury Park Mosque. ”We have been informed that a van has run over worshipers as they left #FinsburyPark Mosque,” the Muslim Council of Britain said on Twitter. ”Our prayers are with the victims.” According to the council in a   tweet, the van struck the victims closer to the Muslim Welfare House. The mosques were busy with people observing the holy month of Ramadan. Finsbury Park Mosque Chairman Mohammed Kozbar tweeted his condolences for the ”cowardly attack.” Early this month, in what police called a terror attack, three Muslim extremists in a van veered into pedestrians on London Bridge, before attacking people with knives in the nearby Borough Market. Eight people were killed and dozens were wounded before police fatally shot the three attackers. This is a developing story. Some details reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"Updated at 4:06 p. m. ET, An ”ongoing attack” has roiled a luxury resort near Mali’s capital, Bamako, the U. S. State Department confirmed Sunday. ”Malian forces are responding” to the attack at Le Campement Kangaba, the agency tweeted, warning U. S. citizens to avoid the area. ”There was an exchange of gunfire with special   forces (FORSAT) who arrived only a few minutes after the attack began,” Mali’s ministry of security said in a statement. ”The special forces have now sealed off the perimeters of the site and are in the process of securing it.” At least two people have been killed in the violence, the ministry says, adding that a civilian and a member of the security forces have also been wounded. ”The situation is under control,” ministry spokesman Baba Cisse told Reuters by telephone. The United Nations mission to the country, known as MINUSMA, tells NPR the Malian security forces are in charge of the operation. ”Westerners were fleeing the encampment while two plainclothes police exchanged fire with the assailants,” a witness tells The Guardian. ”There were four national police vehicles and French soldiers in armoured vehicles on the scene.” Earlier this month, the U. S. Embassy in Mali warned Americans of ”a possible increased threat of attacks against Western diplomatic missions, places of worship, and other locations in Bamako where Westerners frequent. ”Avoid vulnerable locations with poor security measures in place, including hotels, restaurants, and churches,” the Embassy said. Late last year, the U. S. State Department also warned U. S. citizens against traveling to Mali ”because of ongoing terrorist attacks and criminal violence.” Another luxury site popular with tourists came under attack in Mali in 2015, when gunmen stormed a Radisson Blu hotel in the country’s capital, killing at least 19 people. That attack was claimed by the militant group   which said it collaborated with an   affiliate in the violence."
"For most people, 2017 has yet to reach its midpoint. But that is not the case for Congress, which has already burned more than half its scheduled legislative days without accomplishing much of its historic agenda. In recent years, partisan gridlock has kept Congress from major achievements. But this year was supposed to be different. For the first time in a decade, Republicans have control of the White House as well as both chambers of Congress. Expectations for action were high. But expectations have been lowered as the first five months went by and legislative accomplishments remained sparse. The House passed a version of a health care bill that the Senate has treated as radioactive. Other priorities remain stuck further up the pipeline, and the prospect of a banner year on Capitol Hill is ebbing fast. How can that be when it’s still technically spring? It has to do with congressional rules and the congressional calendar. There is still time for the Hill to move the    of the Affordable Care Act, the annual federal budget, some kind of tax cut and a debt ceiling increase. There is still a chance for an infrastructure bill and a start on rewriting the underlying tax code. But August comes at you fast, and after that Capitol Hill’s calendar is dominated by recesses and holidays  —   with September devoted to spending bills that keep the government up and running. To be fair, Congress regards time away from Washington as time on the job  —   officially ”district work periods.” This means that you are working back home, meeting with constituents and listening to their concerns. Some members visit military bases around the world or look into how American foreign aid is being spent. These congressional delegations or ” ” as they are known, have often been derided as junkets  —   thinly veiled excuses for world travel at taxpayer expense. But they can also be important in fulfilling Congress’ oversight role. So we are not saying that Congress out of town is Congress goofing off. What we are saying is that when Congress leaves town, it cannot legislate. And that means the opportunity for Congress to accomplish its agenda  —   or that of President Trump  —   is rapidly diminishing. And the dwindling weeks on the calendar are not even the worst of it. In terms of Hill procedure, the best chance to pass bills is between the beginning of the Congress in the first week of January and the end of the fiscal year in the last week of September. Why? Because this   window offers the best time to pass major legislation affecting the    policies of the federal government using a process known as reconciliation. That’s the kind of word that means something to insiders (reconciling new fiscal policy with existing law) and also tends to make everyone else stop paying attention. But bear with us. This process, invented in the 1970s and first used extensively in the early 1980s, is how big tax cuts were passed in the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and again in the first year of George W. Bush. It’s part of how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) got through in 2010. And it’s important to everything else the Congress will or won’t get done this year. It allows bills that affect revenue and outlays to pass both House and Senate by a simple majority vote with no filibusters allowed. That means a mere 51 votes are required in the Senate, instead of 60 that would otherwise be needed to advance a bill. The majority Republicans of 2017 can legislate fiscal policy without a single Democratic vote, so long as they stay within the limits and rules of the reconciliation process. You may have noticed that the   requirement to defeat filibusters has been in the news lately. That is because the majority Republicans changed the rules regarding filibusters to get President Trump’s first appointee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, confirmed. Pleased with that outcome, the president has subsequently said the filibuster should be eliminated entirely  —   for legislation as well as appointments. He has repeatedly tweeted about it. But the Senate doesn’t want to eliminate the filibuster for legislation. The institution doesn’t want to, and the individual senators do not want to. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said there is not one Republican who wants to kill the filibuster for legislation. Not one. And, obviously, the minority Democrats aren’t eager to kill the filibuster either, at least not while it’s their last remaining weapon in the minority. So reconciliation stands as the Republicans’ best friend, so long as they move the health care bill soon  —   preferably before they move the 2018 fiscal year budget and complicate the availability of the reconciliation procedure. That is why McConnell was eager to get health care done early. He was counting on reconciliation to allow passage with just a bare majority, and he was also hoping to have as much time as possible for other matters to have the Senate’s full attention. So, for all practical purposes, this Congress’ best window of opportunity for major achievements is going to close rather soon. That would be OK if all the big stuff was well on its way to passage. But nothing could be further from the reality of this moment. On the health care overhaul, the Senate is still stuck at the ”task force” stage with a ”pig in a poke” bill that McConnell refuses to make public. And the struggle over the budget and the dozen appropriations bills needed to avoid a government shutdown has barely begun. Somewhere in the next several weeks, the Congress must also raise the debt ceiling to permit more borrowing to cover the bonds and other securities that are coming due. The alternative would be the first default in U. S. history, and at least a partial government shutdown. Suffice it to say neither a shutdown nor a default would be in the game plan for the congressional leadership. The president has spoken of a ”good shutdown” that might refocus people’s priorities, but that is not a tactic embraced on Capitol Hill. In fact, it sends shudders. Painful though these circumstances may be, the prospect of shutdown or default has yet to break through the other preoccupations of the moment or receive much attention from the media. There is just too much other news, from the shooting at a congressional baseball practice to climate change to the president’s tweets  —   and all the distracting internal struggles fracturing the Republicans’ supposedly united front. And the longer all these circumstances dominate, the less time there will be for Congress to do the legislative heavy lifting it needs to do now. Watch more episodes of Ron’s Office Hours on the NPR YouTube channel."
"Updated at 11 a. m. ET, A wildfire swept through central Portugal on Saturday, killing more than 60 people and injuring dozens more in what the country’s prime minister called ”the biggest tragedy of human life that we have known in years.” The deadly blaze, which was just one of dozens that broke out Saturday, ravaged the heavily wooded municipality of Pedrogão Grande, roughly 100 miles from Lisbon. According to officials, most of the victims died in their cars along a single road as they attempted to escape. ”Many cars could not get out, and people burned to death inside their cars,” Jorge Gomes, Portuguese secretary of state of internal administration, told CNN affiliate TVI. Officials say they expect the death toll to rise as hundreds of firefighters continue to battle the inferno in Pedrogão Grande, using aircraft and some 300 vehicles in the area. In total, The New York Times reports about 1, 600 firefighters are at work attempting to quell wildfires across the country. Eight firefighters are among the dozens of injured, CNN reports, four of whom remain in critical condition. As Alison Roberts reports from Lisbon for our Newscast unit, officials believe a lightning strike is likely to blame for the Pedrogão Grande fire, and they have ruled out a criminal cause. The Associated Press, citing Portuguese media, reports that investigators trace the cause to a ”dry thunderstorm.” ”Dry thunderstorms are frequent when falling water evaporates before reaching the ground because of high temperatures,” the wire service notes. ”Portugal, like most southern European countries, is prone to forest fires in the dry summer months.” ”This is a region that has had fires because of its forests, but we cannot remember a tragedy of these proportions,” said the municipality’s mayor, Valdemar Alves, according to The AP. ”I am completely stunned by the number of deaths.” The Portuguese government has declared three days of mourning to commemorate the victims, and tributes have poured in for those killed and those firefighters still battling to save other people. ”We express our condolences to those that have lost loved ones,” the European Commission, executive arm of the European Union, said in a statement Sunday. ”The EU is fully ready to help. All will be done to assist the authorities and people of Portugal at this time of need.” The commission said France had offered the use of three planes, which ”will be quickly sent to assist the local emergency efforts. In addition, Spain has also sent aircraft on a bilateral basis.”"
"What’s a dad joke? Oh, basically just really goofy jokes told by fathers in the interests of gently torturing their offspring. Last Thanksgiving,   Obama turned the traditional   ceremony into an opportunity to, in his words ”embarrass my daughters with a   of dad jokes about turkeys.” Off he went with groaners about cold turkey and fowl play. You can watch guys (and a few women) cracking each other up in dozens of dad joke battles on Youtube. (Sample volley: ”Why didn’t the melons get married? Because they cantaloupe! ”) Repulsed by the puns? You’re hardly alone. The kids’ channel Nickelodeon in Australia broadcast a fake public service announcement about the dangers of dad jokes. It’s very convincing: ”Somebody has to do this,” insists   humorist Dave Barry. ”If anyone says to me, ’Did you get a haircut?’ I have to say, ’I got them all cut. ’” DAAAAAAAD!! Barry learned to make dad jokes from his dad before him. He says dad jokes are meant to be delivered in person. ”They look even stupider when you write them down,” he said in part of the interview that didn’t make it into the radio piece. (Click the listen link above to hear the yucker that ends with ”tanks” and ”you’re welcome. ”) That’s what makes these specifically dad jokes, says behavioral scientist Peter McGraw, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. ”Dad jokes are just a verbal form of play,” he says. ”It’s just a different way to tickle and roughhouse with your kids.” You could argue that dad jokes fall into that   stereotype that can get a little annoying. Funny, ineffectual fathers on shows like The Simpsons and Modern Family who can’t even tell a decent joke and who likely helped inspired the hashtag #stopitdad. But McGraw says that’s missing the point. ”If you have dad jokes in your life means you have a dad in your life,” he says. ”And it means you have a dad with a sense of humor, and who’s interacting with his children and having fun with them.” Dad jokes aren’t just fun. They can also be disarming, says lawyer and activist Qasim Rashid, who uses his popular Twitter account partly to swat down Islamophobes. ”People come to me constantly and say, ’Is sharia law taking over America?’ ” he told NPR. ”And I say, ’I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Shakira law is, because . .. hips don’t lie. ’” Rashid’s corny dad jokes lighten up a feed otherwise mostly dedicated to Muslim rights, Black Lives Matter and women’s rights. ”We live in a society of toxic masculinity,” he says. ”And what I mean by that is, when you look at the   violence against women by men, it’s just horrific. And I think a lot of that has to do with men refusing to let their guard down, men refusing to laugh at themselves, or show sympathy, or empathy, or emotion, because they see that as a weakness.” Whereas dad jokes give men a way to be silly and deeply, sweetly connected with those they love."
"It’s a depressing question to ask on a Father’s Day weekend: What does it mean that a superstar comic and philanthropist once ”America’s Dad” just saw his prosecution on sexual assault charges end in a mistrial? The trial against Bill Cosby ended Saturday, when a deadlocked jury was unable to reach a verdict on three counts of aggravated indecent assault after several days of deliberations. Until and unless the jurors speak, we won’t know if just one or two of them declined to convict or if there was more widespread disagreement. Prosecutors have already said they will retry Cosby and people on every side of the issue have used the outcome to argue their cause  —   from advocates for rape victims concerned that other victims won’t be believed to those, including Cosby’s wife Camille, who say the jurors resisting conviction stopped an unfair process out to ruin a successful man. I think the verdict shows, once again, how difficult it is to convict a celebrity of serious criminal charges, especially in a case that boils down to taking one   person’s word over the celebrity’s account. But it also reveals something else: How the court of public opinion can overlook scandal in one pop culture moment, only to deliver a very different verdict in another, later, time. And Cosby isn’t the only powerful man to recently find his legacy ground into the dust over a similar dynamic. Cosby’s defense against Andrea Constand’s allegation that he drugged and raped her in 2004 was that they had consensual sex. His deposition testimony in her civil suit revealed the man who has a bestselling book about fatherhood had procured Quaaludes for the purpose of having sex with women who were not his wife. Given that he has been married to Camille Cosby for 53 years, he seemed to be admitting an awful truth to defend himself against even worse accusations. These charges were first reported in the press many years ago Constand filed a lawsuit against Cosby in 2005 when prosecutors at the time declined to file charges. Her lawyers lined up 13 other women who were ready to testify on similar allegations of being drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby. Some of them talked to the press, even after Constand settled her lawsuit. But the public’s reaction back then was much different. It was as if we all decided to undergo a massive case of cultural amnesia at once, shrugging off the case with little public outcry. As a story on the website Gawker put it a few years ago, ”Basically, nobody wanted to live in a world where Bill Cosby was a sexual predator. It was too much to handle.” And the world seemed to move on  —   until a joke by comic Hannibal Burress calling Cosby a rapist became a viral video in 2014, inspiring one of his accusers to write an   column for the Washington Post, which brought an avalanche of new allegations. When those allegations against Cosby were pulled back into the light nearly 10 years later, the public had a much different reaction. Media outlets scrambled to speak to women who alleged he had abused them 35 of them posed for the cover of New York magazine. A sitcom deal with NBC vanished, and TV outlets pulled reruns of The Cosby Show. We had reached a moment where those who allege sexual assault are believed more readily, particularly in the court of public opinion. Women seemed less inclined to accept a world where they have to tolerate harassment and worse from bosses and power brokers. And social media gave a voice to people who might have been overlooked before. Doubt that notion? Then consider the recent fate of Fox News Channel founder Roger Ailes and former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly. Both men saw allegations of sexual harassment and lawsuit settlements rise from the past and smash their current careers. Ailes, who died in May, was ousted from the cable channel built in his image O’Reilly followed, after the New York Times reported on settlements with five women totaling about $13 million. And even though Donald Trump was elected president after audio surfaced of him seeming to admit to sexually harassing women, it was perhaps the biggest speedbump in his campaign  —   the only scandal that looked like it might actually reduce his popularity with his base. Cosby has felt the sting of changed attitudes in another way how people view his criticism of poor black people as somehow being enablers of their own problems with poverty and oppression. The comic’s words advising young people to pull up their pants and stop committing petty crimes as an antidote to persistent inequality reminded me of my parents’ generation and their approach to survival in an often racist world. I don’t think they ever expected white America could be fair enough to elect a black man like Barack Obama president. So the way to survive is to keep your nose clean and never give the system an excuse to come after you. That perspective was summed up in the title of Cosby’s 2007 book, Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors. But there is less patience now for that rhetoric, derided as ”respectability politics.” As yet another police officer was acquitted Friday in the questionable shooting of a young black man, Philando Castile  —   sparking hundreds of people to protest in Minnesota  —   it seems that keeping your nose clean isn’t enough. After decades covering show business, I’ll never underestimate Hollywood’s capacity for overlooking people’s heinous pasts to make money (Exhibit A: Mel Gibson’s   turn in the new Will   Wahlberg movie Daddy’s Home 2. Exhibit B: Mark Wahlberg’s career in general). But it’s tough to imagine another major corporation lining up to work with Cosby again. His career is likely over, with decades of philanthropy and role modeling washed away by the star’s own admission that he cheated on his wife many, many times, and allegations from dozens of women that he did far worse. For those convinced of his guilt in Constand’s case, that’s not likely to feel like justice. But in a world where money, power and celebrity still buy exemption from quite a lot of rules, a guilty verdict in the court of public opinion may be the best outcome possible. At least, until a little more time passes."
"Would you rather raise your kids in Europe or Africa? That’s the question that Carl Manlan faced. Carl, who’s from the Ivory Coast, and his wife, Lelani, who’s from South Africa, started their family in Geneva, Switzerland, where they were working at the time. They have two children, a daughter named Claire, born in May 2012, and a son named Liam, born in September 2014. Geneva is a great place to raise kids, Carl says. ”Lots of opportunities to stimulate kids outside of the home, playgrounds for kids. You don’t really find that in most cities in Africa.” But he wanted to be a dad in Africa. So he and his family moved to Johannesburg and then Accra, where he works as a chief operating officer for a foundation. I spoke with Carl about his decision to be an African dad in Africa. What is behind your decision? Raising my two African children in Geneva has limitations. There are experiences they will not be able to have because of the geographic location. Like what? In Geneva she could see pictures and images from Africa but the visual and sensory experience of being here is something I cannot replace, even with social media. In Ghana, we see many people, kids, selling things in the street. It’s something I saw growing up. Does your daughter ask you why there are kids living on the streets? She asked that question when we were driving her to school. Part of the explanation we gave her is that there are many children who cannot go to school, and they have to find a way to make a living. What if she looks back and says, Gee, Dad, Geneva would have been a nicer place to live? Maybe she would say, ’My life in Geneva would have been much better.” But my answer would be, ”It’s a decision we made as parents. We think it is important for our children to understand the continent where their parents come from, to be part of the local culture, to hear the local languages, to see the challenges we have to resolve as a society.” Are you worried about health risks in Africa, where there are high rates of communicable diseases like malaria? We focus on prevention  ”   spray and lotion on the body. And if something goes wrong we are fortunate to be able to access medical facilities. Are you kind of the ”new African dad”? I wouldn’t say the ’new African dad.’ But there are fathers taking a different role in Africa. Meaning what? As fathers, we cannot just relay on the nanny. Raising children is a commitment. If parents delegate that responsibility they may not be helping society. Because having children is a commitment we’ve made to society, to make sure they become good citizens. And becoming a good citizen starts at home. Any other advice for new dads? Enjoy! What was your dad like? My father was a doctor and used to travel a lot. It took a while to make time to connect. With my kids, when I travel for work I make sure we have a conversation about my traveling before I go. I explain what I’m going to do. When I come back I bring a book from the country I’ve been to. And as much as possible it’s 100 percent dedication to an activity for my children. How did you connect with your dad? In my teenage years in Abidjan, he’d wake me up in the early hours, around 5 in the morning, and we’d go for a walk. During these walks he would speak about being a professional and what it entails, how as a medical doctor he was committed to save people’s lives and sometimes it means he cannot be home. Being able to walk with him when it was just the two of us is something I cherish a lot. But he woke you up at 5! Teenagers love to sleep late, right? I would look forward to the nudge in the early hours, that voice that troubled my sleep. I am grateful for those moments because it was our moment. And he was very good at increasing the pace as a training in perseverance. Going for an early walk became a habit. Even now I wake up early and I walk my walk. I’m not a runner but I walk my walk. It’s a quiet moment, a special moment. It gets me ready for the day. Do you plan to teach that custom to your kids? I don’t know if my children will want to do that. But I will definitely try and see what the reaction is."
"At a childbirth class at Doula Love in Portland, Ore. a   pregnant women lean on yoga balls. Their partners are right behind them, learning how to apply pressure for a pelvic massage. Together, they go over the stages of labor, birthing positions, and breathing techniques. Cole Cooney, who is expecting his second child, says he can’t imagine missing the birth. Not just because he’d miss meeting his child, but because he’d miss the opportunity to help his wife. ”I’m certainly not a medical professional or anything like that,” Cooney notes, ”But I know my wife a lot better than any of the people at the hospital. And so being able to advocate for her is really important.” Dads in delivery rooms may be routine these days, but not that long ago, childbirth was an experience few American fathers were a part of. So how did we go from an age of men pacing   waiting rooms to this modern era where they attend birthing classes and learn about pelvic massage? Medical historian Judy Leavitt, a professor emeritus at the University of   traces the history of fathers and childbirth in her book ”Make Room for Daddy: The Journey from Waiting Room to Birthing Room.” ”Traditional childbirth was really a female event,” Leavitt explains. ”The woman would call her friends and relatives together to help her, and they’d be all around the birthing bed. And there’d be the midwife.” A male physician might come and go, she says, and fathers might be asked to boil water, but mostly it was a room full of women. In the 20th century, childbirth moved from the home to the hospital. In 1938, half of American women gave birth in hospitals. Within twenty years, nearly all of them did. While there were advantages to medicalized births  —   having antibiotics and blood banks on site, for example  —   Leavitt says it was lonely. ”The nurses are busy, going in and out, and the laboring women are laboring on their own. And they don’t like it.” Meanwhile, some fathers weren’t happy about being stuck in waiting rooms, nicknamed ”stork clubs,” especially when they were close enough to the labor and delivery wards to hear their wives cry out. Leavitt says doctors typically didn’t want fathers present for the delivery any more than they’d want them around during an appendectomy. But parents began to push back. The women’s movement and the natural childbirth movement helped drive the campaign, Leavitt says. Women argued that they should have a say in who could be around during labor and delivery. Fewer drugs, especially at a time when sedatives were widely used in labor, meant women were more aware of who was in the room. Getting fathers into delivery rooms didn’t happen overnight, and progress across the country was uneven, Leavitt found. By and large, by the 1960s, fathers were regularly allowed in the room during labor. By the 70s and 80s, they were allowed to stay for the birth. Today, most do. As Cole Cooney prepares for the arrival of his second child, he looks back in amazement at the hours he and his wife shared right after the birth of their first. ”We kind of have different memories of the experience, but ultimately the two memories kind of make it a whole,” says Cooney. ”It’s just such a bonding experience, and it’s such a special moment  —   bringing this human into the world.”  Deena Prichep is a freelance print and radio journalist based in Portland, Ore."
"Are there Nazis in today’s German military? It’s a question that’s been plaguing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government since the arrests in late April of two German army officers accused of an elaborate plot to assassinate the German justice minister and former German president, as well as planned attacks on refugees. German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen is overseeing the probe to locate other   extremists within the ranks. She’s been especially upset with her generals after learning that the suspects’ superiors failed to act, even though they knew the two men harbored   views. One of the accused officers even did a master’s thesis that was flagged for its   content. He was nevertheless assigned to an elite   battalion in   France. Starting next month, Germany’s military intelligence will conduct intensive background checks on all recruits to prevent more   from joining the armed forces. The checks  —   which required a change to German law  —   were originally aimed at uncovering Islamist extremists who might try to infiltrate the German military. Military investigators are also reviewing 280 complaints of soldiers carrying out ”  actions” within the armed forces, including giving Hitler salutes, spreading   propaganda or posting   comments on social media. In one case, a soldier posted in a Whatsapp group chat: ”Missing since 1945  —   Adolf Hitler please check in Germany needs you!” The arrests and worries about a   infiltration of the   German military come as a surprise to Florian Kling, an army captain and spokesman for a military watchdog group called Darmstaedter Signal. He said during his 11 years in the German military, he’s never experienced   ideology as being endemic. ”All of the superiors I had were very critical of   activities,” King said. ”I personally experienced several soldiers who claimed to be Nazis and were telling Nazi jokes and Nazi mottoes . ..[and] were caught and they were kicked out of the army.” One veteran who was expelled for his   ideology is Christian Weissgerber, 27, of Berlin. The former   now about to start a Ph. D. studying new media and politicization, served two months in the German army in 2008 before being dishonorably discharged . Unlike King, Weissgerber said he believes there are far more German soldiers currently on active duty who harbor   views than the two arrested or 280 with complaints. He said that certainly was the case while he was in uniform. Weissgerber recalled an encounter with a superior who was conducting an inspection of his room and came across a hand towel Weissgerber had with the black, red and white colors of the Nazi flag. ”He saw the hand towel and then said: ’Okay, no problem at all. When the next [inspection] officer comes in, you can just hang it over your cupboard and he will be delighted to see that,’” Weissgerber said. ”So I did and he was delighted, which came in handy because I got good treatment by this particular kind of officer.” Since the arrests in April of the   terrorism suspects, military inspectors have combed through all 1, 500 German barracks and posts to locate and confiscate such memorabilia. The defense minister has also ordered changes to how the German military or Bundeswehr conducts itself with regard to Nazi history. ”The Bundeswehr has to send signals both internally and externally that it is not rooted in the tradition of the Wehrmacht,” the Third Reich armed forces, von der Leyen told the   newspaper Bild am Sonntag last month. ”It needs to confidently put more of an emphasis on its own   history.” The defense minister is also demanding the renaming of German military installations named for   icons. There are at least five such posts across the country, including the Lent Kaserne or barracks on the edge of the North   town of Rotenburg. Helmut Lent was a World War II   ace admired by Hitler confidant Hermann Goering. Marc Andressen, a spokesperson for the Green Party in Rotenburg who has repeatedly tried but failed to get the name changed, says he’s happy the defense ministry has finally come around. Currently, he said, ”we have a tendency toward   parties in Europe. We need new rules, moral values, ideals and idols [that] exclude the Nazi era and its heroes.” But most of the   soldiers at the barracks, as well a majority of the Rotenburg town council, object and have asked to keep the name as is. Mayor Andreas Weber says a review by the Center for Military History in Potsdam shows Helmut Lent was not a member of the Nazi party and in fact had family members who were pursued by the Gestapo for their involvement in an evangelical opposition movement to the Nazi regime. ”His wife was also   and he had reason to fear under the racial laws back then that he could persecuted,” Weber said. ”You can’t rule out that he was simply a victim of Nazi propaganda.” Weber says he’d like to see a plaque erected at the barracks to explain the history behind the Lent name. But he doesn’t think majority opinion will prevail, given the pressure von der Leyen is facing. The sensitivities are simply too great. Florian Kling, the army captain, summed it up this way: ”Obviously, as German soldiers who are now fighting abroad and also protecting our democracy, we have to very carefully make sure that no one ever gets seen as being too close . .. to the Third Reich again.”"
"Conservatives won’t have Julius Caesar to kick around anymore. The latest production in the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park series is closing Sunday  —   presumably bringing an end to demonstrations outside of the Delacorte Theater but unlikely to quell the raging debates over exactly whom is entitled to free speech, under what circumstances and over the limits of artistic expression. Those debates are not likely to subside, especially as the appetite for creative works tackling an array of political themes continues to grow. Protests against the Shakespearean production escalated online and provided hours of talk radio and cable news fodder over the past week, but they reached a fever pitch in real life during Friday night’s performance when one woman rushed the stage just after the third act’s assassination scene and another man stood in the audience shouting at the actors and other theatergoers for supporting the show. Laura Loomer  —   it is unclear if that is her real name  —   recorded her short outburst and later posted the video online, the New York Times reported. In it she is heard yelling, ”Stop the normalization of political violence against the right,” and ”This is violence against Donald Trump!” The actors on stage stopped the performance as Loomer was escorted out of the theater. However, at the same time security was maneuvering her off the stage, Loomer’s protest partner, an unnamed man, began invoking Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels. ”You are all Goebbels! Goebbels would be proud!” he screamed over and over. ”It was really confusing,” Amanda Fuller told NPR. Fuller and her husband Chris, attended the Friday night performance. ”A big part of the production was blurring the lines between the performers and the audience so we weren’t sure if it was part of the performance or not,” he said. When the action on stage resumed  —   with the lines ”liberty and freedom”  —   ”the whole audience burst into applause and stood up a full standing ovation for about 30 seconds. It was really powerful,” she added. The sudden eruption of outrage by conservatives is over the play’s depiction of the slaying of the title character  —   cast and costumed to resemble President Donald Trump. They also complain that the scene during which several senators take a turn at stabbing Caesar, and which Shakespeare is believed to have written in 1599, is especially bloody. (In 2012, according to the New York Times, another American production of the play depicted Caesar as President Barack Obama.) As a result of public outcry, after three weeks of a   run, two of the Public Theater’s corporate backers  —   Bank of America and Delta Air Lines  —   yanked their sponsorship of the show. Delta issued a statement saying the show’s ”artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste.” Anger over the production took on new life after the shooting rampage by a lone gunman in Alexandria, Va. Wednesday that left House Majority Whip Steve Scalise in serious condition as of Saturday and four others shot and wounded. Following the baseball field shooting, some conservatives argued that the play’s graphic images of the president being murdered and the photo of Kathy Griffin holding up the severed head resembling Trump that circulated on the Internet in May both serve to stoke hatred and violence from the left toward Republicans. But  —   bad taste or not  —   in this time of   the public appears to have an insatiable appetite for politically themed material. And it’s not limited to fiction. The   classic ode to journalism All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which chronicles the Washington Post’s Watergate investigation, is experiencing a revival. Book sales are on the rise and the LA Times this week reported that it may get a    makeover. Additionally, there may even be a TV or film version of the duo’s sequel, The Final Days, which recounts the days inside the White House leading up to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. As of Sunday, two of the 10 most read nonfiction books on Amazon  —   Al Franken’s Giant of the Senate and J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy  —   touch on the political climate of the day, while The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is the most read fiction book and the second most sold fiction book on the site. Atwood’s fable is set in a fictionalized United States ruled by a   government that has stripped women of their civil rights. And the Hulu adaptation of the novel became a smash hit for the video streaming service. A stage production of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, about a man charged with creating fake news as an employee of the Ministry of Truth, is in previews before it opens in New York City on June 22. ”It’s quite something to bring it to New York now, in this political climate,” Duncan Macmillan, who   and   the Broadway adaptation, told NPR. During a preview performance on the same day President Trump announced the U. S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the audience became raucous. ”[It] was like a sort of volatile town hall meeting. People were shouting out ’resist!’ People were arguing with characters and applauding certain sentiments,” Macmillan recalled. The play debuted in London in 2014 and was both a critical and financial success. Book sales have also soared in recent months, triggered in part by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who in a televised interview uttered the now infamous ”alternative facts” phrase. In a New York Times interview, Macmillan explained the urgency behind the Broadway production. ”I think the feeling was, we have to do it now,” he said. ”If we don’t, we’ll miss our chance.”"
"Donkeys have been loyal beasts of burden for 5, 000 years, yet they still don’t get a lot of respect. In the wild, burro herds are a nuisance. In captivity, they can be mistreated. But in recent years, donkey sanctuaries have sprung up across the country. The largest among them is Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue, outside of San Angelo, Texas, where the air periodically erupts with the unpeaceable sounds of donkey braying. Just like its   so much about the donkey is species specific. Their temperament  —   intelligent, cautious and playful  —   is unique in the equine world. Males and females are called jacks and jennies. And they’re widely misunderstood. ”[People] assume they’re stubborn. They assume they’re stupid,” says Mark Meyers, the founder and executive director of Peaceful Valley. ”So there’s a very negative connotation out there, the Bugs Bunny  —   turn into a donkey when he does something stupid.” Meyers has become America’s foremost donkey defender. Bored with the electrical contracting business, he and his wife, Amy, began adopting abused and unwanted donkeys at their ranchette outside Los Angeles. By 2005, they had accumulated 25 animals, and he decided to sell his companies and protect donkeys full time. They moved out to hot, flat, west Texas seven years ago. When Meyers  —   a burly,   Buddhist  —   walks into a pen, he’s mobbed by   donkeys. ”These donkeys here are some of our ambassador donkeys,” he says, patting two affectionate beasts named Buddy and Houdini. ”We do public outreach with them. We’re headed to the Topeka Zoo in a few weeks to show the people how cool donkeys can be.” At any given time, his paddocks are home to 1, 000 donkeys. Together with a network of sanctuaries scattered around the country, Peaceful Valley has grown into the largest donkey rescue organization in the world  —   sheltering some 3, 000 total animals. Half are wild burros removed from public lands half were abandoned, abused or neglected. But the idea is not to run a home for old donkeys the idea is to find them new homes. The ranch gives up more than 400 donkeys a year for adoption because their new owners say they make great pets. ”Like a really smart dog” ”Hi, Buck . .. you want a cookie?” calls out Melissa Schurr in a singsong voice. The equine dentist approaches her    spotted jack, Buckaroo, on the ranch where they live outside of Sacramento, Calif. Meyers helped her adopt Buckaroo, who was a wild ass in western Arizona in his youth. ”Donkeys are very   creatures. They’re loyal, they’re sweet. It’s like a really smart dog  —   a border collie  —   and the best horse you ever had, wrapped up in one animal,” Schurr says. ”We’ve had to change how we shut our gates. He’ll watch you and figure out how to open gates,” she adds, rubbing the insides of Buckaroo’s ears. In response, he closes his eyes and nuzzles her shoulder. ”We have to latch everything. You can’t just tie it. He’ll untie it. They’re very smart.” The Bureau of Land Management estimates there are more than 13, 000 wild burros on public lands in five Western states  —   but thousands more are uncounted. (Some semantics: donkeys are domesticated burros are wild.) Feral populations can become a nuisance. Burros foul springs, overgraze, trample the ground and drive away native species. Kevin Goode, a special assistant at Texas Parks  Wildlife, says in the outback, burros are wild. ”They are very skittish,” Goode says. ”They are very aggressive, both towards humans and other animals. They don’t play well with others.” In the old days, people shot bothersome burros. Today, land managers typically tolerate them until the herd gets so big it has to be removed or culled. Captured wild burros then have to be gentled up before they can be adopted. Later this month, Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue will send trailers, wranglers and herding dogs to Ajo, Ariz. to round up some 500 donkeys that have wandered over from Mexico onto public grazing land. Crossing the border may have saved their lives. The U. K.  animal rights group Donkey Sanctuary reports that Mexico is one of 21 countries that slaughters donkeys and exports their hides to China, which uses them to make a popular traditional medicine. ”Quite simply, supply has not kept up with demand,” says Donkey Sanctuary campaigns manager Simon Pope. ”Wild populations of donkeys around the world are being looked at and sized up as potential supplies to feed into this trade.” Mark Meyers and other animal rights activists report that more donkeys and burros are being sold to ”kill buyers” in the U. S. and exported to Mexican slaughterhouses to feed the insatiable global skin market. ”China has increased the demand for donkey hides to 4 million a year,” he says. ”They’ve decimated their own donkey herds. They’ve decimated several African nations’ donkey herds. So now they’re turning to South America and Mexico.” So the people at Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue believe their work is more urgent than ever."
"Ethiopia’s government doesn’t want Ethiopia to be thought of as a donkey country. Donkeys have a reputation there as the lowliest of animals and of being unclean to boot. Yet Ethiopia has the world’s largest population of donkeys. It has 7 million of the animals  —   outstripping the No. 2 donkey country, China, by about a million. And life can be pretty tough for a   Ethiopian donkey. On a recent trip to Ethiopia, I saw one donkey straining mightily while pulling a cart. Overloaded with rows of water jugs and people, the cart weighed hundreds of pounds. The animal’s head was bowed. His thin, shaking legs looked ready to break as he fought for footing on the muddy, rutted road. In Ethiopia, it’s common to see donkeys laboriously hauling loads as drivers, many of them children, crack whips or switches across their backs and faces. People depend on these animals to transport water, wood for cooking, food and other goods, as well as people. About 80 percent of Ethiopia’s population of 93 million depend on donkeys in some way, according to The Donkey Sanctuary, a U. K. nonprofit. In spite of their importance in Ethiopia, these beasts of burden are overworked, neglected, abused and stigmatized. They suffer from harness sores, maggot wounds, infections and colic from poor food, among other ailments. Because people don’t think much of donkeys, they usually do not take them to the veterinarian if their animal gets sick or is injured. Until recently, veterinary colleges didn’t even train students to treat them. If donkeys were sick or too old to work, they were abandoned or left to hyenas  —   a painful death. But that is changing through the work of The Donkey Sanctuary, which operates in countries with large donkey populations like Egypt, India, Mexico and Kenya. Since 1994, The Donkey Sanctuary has educated Ethiopians about proper care for donkeys, raised awareness about animal welfare with farmers and schoolchildren, and strengthened government livestock and animal welfare policies and training at veterinary colleges. In 2015, veterinarians treated 185, 000 donkeys since 1995, The Donkey Sanctuary has treated more than 2 million total. It also runs several free veterinary clinics, like one in the capital Addis Ababa, at Merkato, one of the largest outdoor markets in Africa. Some 3, 000 donkeys work at the market, mostly carrying grain from mills. One Saturday morning, three gray donkeys plodded into The Donkey Sanctuary’s Merkato clinic, where ”patients” are examined in corrals. Owner Gosaye Assef, 28, brought the trio to drink from the clinic’s water troughs. Assef earns a few dollars a day by using his donkeys to transport grain from Merkato’s mills to markets. ”I use donkeys to feed myself and my family. Using donkeys is my life,” he says. Before he was trained by The Donkey Sanctuary’s staff in Merkato, Assef didn’t give his donkeys water. Now he lets them drink several times a day. He gives them animal feed rather than letting them forage through trash. And he seeks treatment when the donkeys suffer from hoof problems, step on nails, eat stones or bite each other. The Donkey Sanctuary also showed him how to make better pack saddles and harnesses using heavy fabric and rope to prevent sores. ”My attitude toward donkeys is completely changed. Before, I simply used them. I used to let them go without food,” says Assef, who has an eighth grade education. ”Before, I don’t care for the donkeys. When they have a wound on their eye or wound on their body, I simply let them work. Now I use treatment for wounds or when there is a big problem I bring them here to the clinic.” Because many donkey owners have low literacy and can’t necessarily read brochures and fliers, The Donkey Sanctuary gives demonstrations of improved pack saddles and holds   workshops with communities. It has also started animal welfare clubs in schools to change attitudes at a young age. In the noisy, bustling lanes of Merkato, donkeys silently wait as mill workers strap    sacks of hot grain onto their backs. Since 2009, The Donkey Sanctuary has focused less on treating sick donkeys and more on educating people about proper care, such as improved pack saddles, avoiding overloading and animal welfare. Zerihun Assefa, a Donkey Sanctuary veterinarian, says that in rural areas, a third of donkeys treated by The Donkey Sanctuary in Debre Zeit, outside of Addis Ababa, had back sores and open wounds from poorly fitting saddles. Four years later that figure has dropped to 5 percent. ”Previously people didn’t treat them when they were sick,” says Assefa. ”Now farmers see them as equal to other animals.” ”Donkeys are taken for granted as beasts of burden. They are invisible but reliable resources for communities,” says Dr. Bojia Duguma, country director of The Donkey Sanctuary, based in Addis Ababa. ”Their socioeconomic value is not properly validated or researched. If they are valued, the community will take care of them.” One sign that they may be valued more is the going price of a donkey. A donkey now sells for $90 to $150, up from $13 to $22 a decade ago. The Donkey Sanctuary works in four areas of Ethiopia and helps about 223, 000 donkeys each year. That’s just a drop in the bucket in a country with millions of donkeys. Yet efforts are helping some donkeys and their owners. ”Previously, the community had no habit to take care of donkey if they were injured or sick. Rather, they [left them for] the hyena to enjoy. The community had a belief that the first choice to treat the donkey was the hyena,” said Dr. Berihu Gebrekidan, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mekelle University in Ethiopia. But in areas where The Donkey Sanctuary works, ”the thinking and attitude has completely changed and farmers are taking care of the donkeys as much as possible.” In Merkato, owner Getachew Mokonin, 35, sits as his donkeys munch from sacks of grain. These animals are solidly built, have shiny coats and don’t shy away when people approach. ”All these things [showing] social interaction with owner is good,” says veterinarian Assefa. Mokonin says that with better pack saddles, the donkeys ”feel comfortable. There’s no injury and wounds due to poor harnessing.” He adds, ”To increase performance of donkeys we need to care for them properly. That is why I’m feeding my donkey.” His donkeys don’t mind being stroked on their muzzles. And for a moment, they lift their heads to eagerly eat a special treat of fresh carrots."
"Doctors treating wounded House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise say his condition has improved from ”critical” to ”serious.” Scalise and three others were shot Wednesday morning at a GOP baseball practice in Alexandria, Va. The    Republican congressman from Louisiana underwent another surgery on Saturday, the hospital treating him said, which was at least his third operation since being transported to the facility. Scalise ”continues to show signs of improvement,” MedStar Washington Hospital Center said in a statement Saturday evening. ”He is more responsive, and is speaking with his loved ones. The Scalise family greatly appreciates the outpouring of thoughts and prayers,” the hospital wrote, ”on behalf of the Scalise family.” The American Hospital Association defines ”critical” condition as: ”Vital signs are unstable and not within normal limits. Patient may be unconscious. Indicators are unfavorable.” And defines ”serious” as: ”Vital signs may be unstable and not within normal limits. Patient is acutely ill. Indicators are questionable.” On Friday, the hospital’s director of trauma, Dr. Jack Sava, called Scalise’s injury a ”transpelvic gunshot wound” which had ”fragmented, and caused significant damage to bones, internal organs and blood vessels.” He continued: ”[Scalise] will require additional operations to manage abdominal injuries and other broken bones. He will be in the hospital for some time. Predicting the length of that hospital stay will be much easier after a few more days have passed. After discharge he will need a period of healing and rehabilitation.” The doctor said U. S. Capitol Police Special Agent Crystal Griner, who was also wounded in the shooting, ”sustained a gunshot wound to the ankle, and remains hospitalized in good condition.” Lobbyist Matt Mika was shot in the chest at the baseball practice. His family said in a statement Saturday that Mika had undergone another operation and was expected to recover fully, according to NBC News. Congressional aide Zach Barth was the fourth person hit and is also expected to make a full recovery, NPR’s Vanessa Romo reports. The shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, was killed by police Wednesday after firing dozens of bullets during the congressional practice session."
"Otto Warmbier, a U. S. citizen who was freed last week after more than a year in North Korean detention, has died. Doctors who examined him after his return to said he had ”extensive loss of tissue” in all parts of his brain. Warmbier, 22, had been in a coma since coming home to the United States last week. His parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, said in a statement that their son died on Monday afternoon. ”Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today,” they said. ”When Otto returned to Cincinnati late on June 13th he was unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands. He looked very uncomfortable  —   almost anguished,” the family said. ”Although we would never hear his voice again, within a day the countenance of his face changed  —   he was at peace.” They added: ”He was home and we believe he could sense that.” On Thursday, as The   reported, Daniel Kanter from the University of Cincinnati Health told reporters that Warmbier was suspended in a state of ”unresponsive wakefulness.” Here’s more: ”Kanter and his colleagues say they’ve found no evidence that Warmbier, who has demonstrated no awareness of his surroundings, suffered from the effects of botulism  —   a finding that appears to contradict the explanation offered by his North Korean captors. Authorities there have said Warmbier fell into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill.” The University of Virginia student was arrested in Pyongyang in January 2016, and as we have reported, was ”accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster from an employee area of his hotel.” He was swiftly sentenced to 15 years in prison and hard labor. His medical condition was a surprise to U. S. officials and his family, who were told about it earlier this month. It’s not clear how long he had been in a coma or what triggered it, though doctors said they did not find signs of physical trauma. Warmbier’s family described him as a ”warm, engaging brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds.” President Trump offered condolences to the Warmbier family in a statement, saying that ”Otto’s fate deepens my Administration’s determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency.” U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in a statement that ”countless innocent men and women have died at the hands of the North Korean criminals, but the singular case of Otto Warmbier touches the American heart like no other.”"
"The Supreme Court has ruled that six men detained after the September 11 attacks are not legally able to sue top officials from the Bush administration. The men, who are of Arab or South Asian descent and in the U. S. illegally, were detained with hundreds of others and held for periods of between three and six months at a federal facility in Brooklyn, according to the opinion. Five are Muslim. The men say they were subject to harsh condition and physical abuse in detention. For example: ”Guards allegedly slammed detainees into walls twisted their arms, wrists and fingers broke their bones referred to them as terrorists threatened them with violence subjected them to humiliating sexual comments and insulted their religion.” They sued seeking damages and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the lawsuit could proceed. But the Supreme Court said the former detainees are not able to hold top Bush administration officials personally liable for constitutional violations. The officials named in the case include former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former FBI Director Robert Mueller. The case is Ziglar v Abbasi. ”The court’s decision allows for   officials to violate the Constitution without fear of personal accountability  —   a dangerous message in this time of rampant   discrimination against Muslim and immigrant communities,” attorney Rachel Meeropol said in a statement. She represents the former detainees through the Center for Constitutional Rights. In a   vote, the justices found that Congress has not provided a legal mechanism for seeking damages for ”constitutional violations by agents of the Federal Government.” Such a mechanism exists for constitutional violations by state officials. In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote that Congress’ silence on the issue is unlikely to have been accidental. There is ”a balance to be struck, in situations like this one, between deterring constitutional violations and freeing high officials to make the lawful decisions necessary to protect the Nation in times of great peril,” the opinion reads. However, ”the proper balance is one for the Congress, not the Judiciary, to undertake.” As NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported, Kennedy said it is Congress that generally authorizes damages suits. And while he acknowledged some exceptions, ”he said those exceptions do not apply in this case.” He stressed that the Supreme Court’s opinion ”should not be read to condone” the alleged abuse, calling it ”tragic.” The opinion also remanded back to a lower court a prison abuse claim against a warden in charge of the New York facility. Justice Stephen Breyer ”took the rare step of dissenting orally from the bench,” Nina reported. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined him in dissenting. Breyer said he is critical of the court’s apparent reluctance to weigh in on balancing rights and security at times of national emergency, suggesting that history provides examples of executive or legislative overreach at these moments: ”As the Court correctly points out, the Constitution grants primary power to protect the Nation’s security to the Executive and Legislative Branches, not the Judiciary. But the Constitution also delegates to the Judiciary the duty to protect an individual’s fundamental constitutional rights. Hence when protection of those rights and a determination of security needs conflict, the Court has a role to play.” Three of the justices played no role in the case. As the Associated Press writes, ”Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor had been involved in earlier stages of the lawsuit, before they were on the court.” And the case had already been argued which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court. This is not the first time the justices have sided with Ashcroft according to the AP, ”The decision was the third in which the court has intervened and ruled for Ashcroft in lawsuits against him and others from Muslims who were arrested in the U. S. following the 2001 attacks.” It’s not clear how   this decision is, Nina reports. ”I think that with regard to policymakers, it’s a pretty strong statement that you’re not going to have damages actions for   decisions,” William McDaniel, who represented one of the Bush administration officials, tells Nina. Seton Hall law professor Jonathan Hafetz tells Nina he does not think the decision reaches ”rogue acts by individual federal agents, or other unconstitutional acts by government officials in a different context.” However, as Nina reported, University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck says this opinion cements ”far greater limits on damage suits unless they are explicitly authorized by Congress.” Here’s more from Vladeck: ”What’s so surprising and alarming about this ruling is its breadth, not just to be limited to the special and specific context of the    counter terrorism response, but actually to make it harder for just about everybody to sue the federal government for damages when our constitutional rights are violated.” Plaintiff Benamar Benatta, who flew in from Canada to witness the case being argued, said in a statement from his lawyers that he was ”very disappointed” in the court’s ruling. He added: ”Being labeled a terrorist and sitting there in your small cell without any distraction or reading material, not knowing what will happen to you or where you will end up is the worst thing that can ever happen to a human being.”"
"Members of the   rock band The Slants have the right to call themselves by a disparaging name, the Supreme Court says, in a ruling that could have broad impact on how the First Amendment is applied in other trademark cases. The Slants’ frontman, Simon Tam, filed a lawsuit after the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office kept the band from registering its name and rejected its appeal, citing the Lanham Act, which prohibits any trademark that could ”disparage . .. or bring . .. into contemp[t] or disrepute” any ”persons, living or dead,” as the court states. After a federal court agreed with Tam and his band, the Patent and Trademark Office sued to avoid being compelled to register its name as a trademark. On Monday, the Supreme Court sided with The Slants. ”The disparagement clause violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion for the court. Contrary to the Government’s contention, trademarks are private, not government speech.” The band has said it wanted to reclaim what is often seen as a slur. ”We grew up and the notion of having slanted eyes was always considered a negative thing,” Tam said in January. ”Kids would pull their eyes back in a   gesture to make fun of us. . .. I wanted to change it to something that was powerful, something that was considered beautiful or a point of pride instead.” Attorney Lee Rowland of the American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision: ”The government’s misguided effort to protect minorities from disparagement instead hurt members of that very community by hindering their right to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Fortunately, today’s opinion prevents the kind of absurd outcome that results when the government plays speech police.” The case could inform arguments over other, much larger entities than The Slants. As NPR’s Nina Totenberg has reported, ”the trademark office has denied registration to a group calling itself ”Abort the Republicans,” and another called ”Democrats Shouldn’t Breed.” It canceled the registration for the Washington Redskins in 2014 at the behest of some Native Americans who considered the name offensive.” In his opinion about another facet of the case, Alito wrote: ”There is also a deeper problem with the argument that commercial speech may be cleansed of any expression likely to cause offense. The commercial market is well stocked with merchandise that disparages prominent figures and groups, and the line between commercial and   speech is not always clear, as this case illustrates. If affixing the commercial label permits the suppression of any speech that may lead to political or social ’volatility,’ free speech would be endangered.” The judgment was unanimous  —   with two asterisks: Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wasn’t yet on the court when the case was argued in January, did not take part. And with different parts of the case drawing differing legal explanations, four opinions were written."
"The U. S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up an appeal over electoral districts in Wisconsin after a lower court ruled that the state’s   map constitutes an ”unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.” It’s the first time in more than a decade that the nation’s highest court will take up the issue of partisan gerrymandering, or drawing voting districts with the aim of strengthening one political party. And it gives the court an opportunity to formally determine a metric on what constitutes unlawful gerrymandering, which could have major implications for the way voting districts are drawn in other states. The Supreme Court has weighed in on the issue of race and congressional   most recently last month when it rejected two North Carolina districts, as The   reported. But the court has not ruled on ”purely partisan gerrymanders” since 2004, as NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported: ”In 2004, a   Supreme Court plurality all but ruled out challenges to even extreme partisan gerrymanders, while four members of the court would have allowed some limited challenges. Justice Anthony Kennedy cast the fifth and deciding vote, declaring that he might someday embrace a challenge to a partisan gerrymander if someone could come up with workable standards.” The defendants in this case, Gill v. Whitford, claim to have come up with such a standard. Here’s how Shawn Johnson of Wisconsin Public Radio explained it: ”The metric that they came up with they called the efficiency gap, and it measures what they call wasted votes. Let’s say you have a strongly Democratic district. And if a Democrat got a lot of votes there, but they only get one seat, they’re saying that they wasted a lot of votes to get those seats. If Democrats come up just short in a lot of other districts, they’re saying they wasted those votes as well. ”So they compare that    to the statewide total, and that gives them this efficiency gap measure. And by that metric, plaintiffs looked back at redistricting plans throughout the U. S. going back to 1972, and Wisconsin’s redistricting plan was one of the most strongly political gerrymandered in history.” Last November, a panel of federal judges ruled against the state’s electoral district map, which was drawn by Republican lawmakers after the 2010 census. As Johnson said,   Barack Obama did well in the state when he was   in 2012, and ”yet Democrats gained no seats in the Legislature, remained deeply in the minority.” Wendy Weiser from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice said in a statement Monday that ”gerrymandering has become so aggressive, extreme, and effective that there is an urgent need for the Supreme Court to finally step in and set boundaries.” Supporters of Wisconsin’s map say that ”the election results it produced are similar to those under earlier   maps,” as The Associated Press reports. The lower court’s ruling ”ordered new maps drawn in time for the 2018 elections,” the wire service adds. And ”that work is proceeding.”"
"The headline shocked the   world of the surface Navy: Seven sailors aboard the destroyer USS Fitzgerald were killed, and other crew members injured, when the warship collided with a cargo vessel off Japan. As the Navy family grieves, both it and the wider world are asking the same question: How did this happen? The short answer is that no one knows  —   yet. Official inquiries into what led up to the encounter could take months or more. The Navy and the U. S. Coast Guard both likely will eventually issue reports that describe what happened and could make recommendations for preventing another such accident. ”I will not speculate on how long these investigations will last,” said Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, commander of the Navy’s 7th Fleet. The Fitzgerald and the other ships of Destroyer Squadron 15, based outside Tokyo, fall under his authority. There are clues, however, that explain how something like the Fitzgerald’s collision could happen, including photographs of the ships involved, navigation data about the container ship ACX Crystal and the experience the Navy has had with past mishaps. The $1. 8 billion Fitzgerald is one of the most modern and technologically advanced warships afloat, capable of using its powerful sensors to look up into space, if necessary, and reach up to hit targets there with its battery of missiles. The destroyer still has a human crew, however, most of which was likely asleep around 2:30 a. m. local time when it collided with the Crystal. There was no moon over the waters south of Tokyo Bay, according to local accounts, and the channel there is frequently crowded with ships on their way into and out of the Japanese capital. Vessels of all sizes sail to other ports in Asia or head east into the vast Pacific. Sailors in the Fitzgerald’s combat information center and on its bridge are responsible for using the ship’s sensors to plot the location of each one, as well as the directions they’re headed and the speed at which they’re sailing. Officers and sailors must at all times keep what the Navy calls good ”situational awareness” about not only what their own ship is doing, but about what might be ahead in the next patch of ocean where the Fitzgerald wants to sail. In 2012 a sibling of the Fitzgerald, the destroyer USS Porter, was in a congested,   seaway called the Strait of Hormuz  —   the ribbon of water that connects the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea  —   when it collided with an oil tanker. The Navy’s investigation later found that as sailors tried to keep track of the traffic all around them, including those ships headed the other direction, they lost focus on their own immediate course ahead. When the tanker Otowasan suddenly loomed ahead, Cmdr. Martin Arriola ordered the Porter to turn left to cross ahead of the huge other ship to avoid a   crash. But he hadn’t done so with enough time, and not even ordering full speed at the last minute could get the destroyer safely clear. The Otowasan hit the Porter along its right  —   or starboard  —   side, in a location on the ship very near where the ACX Crystal hit the Fitzgerald early Saturday. But when the sun came up and photos appeared of both ships, they revealed the Crystal had damage on the left or port side of its bow  —   suggesting it might have been traveling in the same direction as the Fitzgerald. It may have been trailing the smaller destroyer at a perpendicular angle that stayed relatively the same even as the distance between the ships closed: ”constant bearing, decreasing range.” If the crew of the Fitzgerald was watching what was ahead of them and got used to the presence of the container ship on their starboard quarter because it didn’t appear to be moving in either direction relative to the destroyer  —   even though it was getting closer all the while  —   the sailors might not have realized what was happening until they were in extremis. Another similar possibility: the Fitzgerald wanted to sail east, say, and its course crossed over that of the Crystal, heading north. The destroyer might have been like someone trying to get across a busy street, thinking it could get out of the way of the oncoming cars in time  —   in this case, a miscalculation. Investigators will focus closely on what the crews on both ships were doing. When the fast attack submarine USS Hartford collided with the amphibious transport USS New Orleans in 2009, discipline on the sub was lax, the Navy later found. The Hartford’s captain never came into the control room during the transit through the crowded Strait of Hormuz. The navigator was in the wardroom listening to his iPod. It’s possible that no one was on the bridge of the Crystal  —   even huge container ships are comparatively lightly crewed, compared with Navy ships, and unlike warships, often use an autopilot. In the wide open Pacific, mariners sometimes let ”Iron Mike” take the helm. After a series of accidents, the U. S. Coast Guard warned mariners last year about the dangers involved with relying too heavily on autopilot. The Fitzgerald’s bridge almost certainly was crewed, by sailors and officers on the overnight ”midwatch” and those are the watchstanders who may have made the critical decisions about what to do or not do before the collision. Were they managing a whole screen full of contacts and too distracted to notice the one bearing down on them? Or was it a quiet night with so little to do that the crew became bored and complacent? Investigators will conduct interviews, review navigational data and could even listen to recordings of what happened on the bridge, like the one eventually released from the Porter. One detail already is known: The Fitzgerald’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, was in his cabin at the time of the accident, 7th Fleet’s Aucoin said. The captain’s compartment is located on the starboard side of the ship that was crushed by the Crystal, and Benson was hurt  —   the Japanese Coast Guard took him to shore by helicopter. Other sailors were berthed in compartments farther below decks, which were flooded by the Crystal’s bulbous bow. In all, two berthing compartments and one machinery space, which houses one of the gas turbines for making the ship’s electrical power, quickly filled with seawater. ”Heroic efforts prevented the flooding from catastrophically spreading, which could have caused the ship to founder or sink,” Aucoin said. ”It could have been much worse.” The Fitzgerald limped into Tokyo under its own power the crew of the   Aegis combatant used a magnetic compass and their backup instruments to get home with only one of the ship’s two propellers. The destroyer now needs millions of dollars’ worth of repairs, including a visit to a dry dock, before it could be ready to take another mission. The Navy identified the seven sailors who died in the accident on Sunday evening. Acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley vowed that service officials would answer the question everyone is now asking: how it could have happened. ”In due time, the United States Navy will fully investigate the cause of this tragedy,” he said, ”and I ask all of you to keep the Fitzgerald families in your thoughts and prayers as we begin the task of answering the many questions before us.”"
"In 2010, Sonia Vallabh watched her mom, Kamni Vallabh, die in a really horrible way. First, her mom’s memory started to go, then she lost the ability to reason. Sonia says it was like watching someone get unplugged from the world. By the end, it was as if she was stuck between being awake and asleep. She was confused and uncomfortable all the time. ”Even when awake, was she fully or was she really? And when asleep, was she really asleep?” says Sonia. The smart, warm, artistic Kamni  —   just 51 years old  —   was disappearing into profound dementia. ”I think until you’ve seen it, it’s hard to actually imagine what it is for a person to be alive and their body is moving around, but their brain is not there anymore,” says Eric Minikel, Sonia’s husband. In less than a year, Sonia’s mom died. An autopsy showed Kamni had died from something rare  —   a prion disease. Specifically, one called fatal familial insomnia because in some patients it steals the ability to fall asleep. Basically, certain molecules had started clumping together in Kamni’s brain, killing her brain cells. It was all because of one tiny error in her DNA  —   an ”A” where there was supposed to be a ”G,” a single typo in a manuscript of 6 billion letters. Sonia sent a sample of her own blood to a lab, where a test confirmed she inherited the same mutation. The finding threw the family into grief all over again. ”But that grieving period sort of started to resolve within about a week or so,” she says. ”And we weren’t in crisis anymore. We were finding our way toward a new normal, where this was something that we were going to have to live with and deal with and learn more about.” Today, Sonia and her husband live and work in Cambridge, Mass. where they are both doctoral students in the lab of Stuart Schreiber, a Harvard professor of chemistry and chemical biology. Over the past several years, the couple has completely redirected their careers and their lives toward this single goal: to prevent prion disease from ever making Sonia sick. The two wear bright colors and laugh easily. When they answer my questions, they look at each other instead of at me. They like complicated board games, urban walks and efficient cooking. They are thinkers and problem solvers, which is why, when Sonia got her genetic test results, it changed everything. The change, ”It didn’t happen all at once,” Sonia says. ”There wasn’t a day when we woke up and said, ’OK let’s change everything about our lives. ’” At the time, Sonia, who has a Harvard law degree, had just started a new job as a legal consultant. Eric was a transportation analyst. But they couldn’t stop thinking about Sonia’s test result. They started researching prion diseases online, and invited over friends who are biologists and chemists, to help them understand the science. ”And around that time,” Sonia says, ”we both enrolled in night classes as well,” in subjects like biology and neuroscience. They were hungry to learn more as quickly as possible the night classes weren’t enough. ”I was basically fresh out of law school and started walking into classes at MIT during the day because this was kind of all I could think about,” says Sonia, who at the time wore sneakers every day so that she could rush between work, classes, and a neuroscience lab at Massachusetts General Hospital. She’d started volunteering there, thanks to a professor from one of her classes, and mentors in the lab who helped her learn everything from how to use a pipette to how to work with human brain cells. ”And from there, this is where things happened surprisingly quickly,” Sonia says. The couple started a nonprofit, Prion Alliance, in hopes of raising money for research. Sonia left her legal job to work in the Mass General lab   as a technician. Then, Eric left his job and joined a genetics lab, applying his skills in coding to analyzing genetic data, rather than transportation data. ”I was getting left behind!” he says. ”Sonia was out there doing all this science. It was her day job now and I was still in my old career and, you know, it was a good job and all, it was meaningful, but it wasn’t the mission that it was increasingly clear that we were going to be on.” Just months after they’d finished grad school in law and urban planning, the pair went back to graduate school, this time in biomedical sciences  —   to study prion diseases. ”You are talking to two   graduate students,” says Eric. Life as scientists, The two now share an office and a lab bench, under Schreiber’s supervision, at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. ”There’s a date in the future when Sonia will get the first dose of the drug that’s going to save her life,” Eric says. ”What can I do today that brings that date closer to the present?” A posted printout of an email says: ”Let’s just blast forward and solve problems as they become real and as they need immediate solutions.” It’s a note Schreiber sent the pair at one point when they were worrying about bureaucratic hoops they had to jump through. ”I thought it was a good philosophy, so we printed it out and put it on the wall,” says Eric. Sonia and Eric are ”the best of humanity” Schreiber tells Shots. ”Their story is, of course, remarkable, and they personify the concept of patient —  scientists. But their deep understanding of science and ability to innovate and execute on one of the hardest challenges in biomedical science are breathtaking.” Schreiber says that his lab, like many others in biomedicine, has long included researchers who are physicians as well as scientists that dual training and experience brings an important perspective to the research, he says. ”But the last decade has seen the emergence of patient —  scientists  —   including Sonia and Eric, but also others in my lab,” he says. ”And this has had an even greater impact on the lab. They remind us of our mission  —   to understand and treat human disease.” Still, it’s really hard to cure diseases  —   especially conditions like this one, because the usual way scientists look for a treatment isn’t going to work. Sonia is 33 years old. On average, people with the kind of genetic mutation she has usually start to show symptoms at age 50. But they could surface at any time. Symptoms of fatal familial insomnia have set in as early as age 12 and as late as 84. Once they do, it’s a rapid decline  —   like Alzheimer’s disease on  . ”You’re healthy, you’re healthy, you’re healthy and then you’re falling off a cliff,” says Sonia. ”You wait a little bit too long, and that patient is gone. We need to get out ahead of it  —   aggressively.” The challenge, They need to keep Sonia from getting sick in the first place. And they need to do it quickly. But right now, Sonia appears to be just fine, and that’s actually one of the first obstacles. Across medicine, there is an understandable resistance to testing experimental drugs on healthy people. That’s why, traditionally, drug trials go something like this: Take a group of people who are sick, give some of them an experimental medicine, and wait to see if it makes them get better, live longer, or decline more slowly than people who didn’t get the drug. But Sonia has to convince the medical establishment that, especially in the age of genetics, some people who seem perfectly healthy should be considered patients. ”We have to be willing to act upstream of what we would traditionally call ’illness’,” she says. It’s a shift in mindset that she had to come to grips with, personally. ”I feel very lucky to be healthy today,” she says. ”But I hold a sort of dual reality understanding of my own health, which is that I’m healthy today but very seriously at risk for a very serious disease.” Others in the medical field, like Dr. Reisa Sperling, who studies Alzheimer’s disease, are making the same mental shift as they think about the best time to intervene. ”Alzheimer’s disease is a terrible disease. Many people fear it more than cancer,” says Sperling, a neurologist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Like Sonia and Eric, she, too, is on a quest to prevent even the first symptoms of a terrible brain disease. Sperling is now enrolling people whose brain scans show they might be in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s in a clinical trial to test an experimental drug treatment. And she’s planning another study in people as young as 50 who have no noticeable symptoms, but are at high risk of developing them. ”It really does primarily come down to thinking about disease as beginning years before symptoms,” says Sperling. ”If we can shift that thinking  —   not just in Alzheimer’s disease, but in rarer diseases like prion diseases  —   I think this is the way we win the war.” But before any of that can happen with a prion disease, there’s the problem of actually doing the science to find a good candidate drug. The plan, Researchers don’t have one in hand yet, but they have a clear idea of what it should look like, based on studies in mice. Sonia and Eric already are talking to pharmaceutical companies that may be involved in running human trials in the future, and have requested a meeting with the Food and Drug Administration to talk about what a trial should involve. Other efforts at treating prion disease have focused on preventing the misfolded proteins from killing brain cells, or on preventing them from accumulating. Sonia and Eric have a different approach. ”We’re really interested in preventing the misfolding in the first place,” says Sonia. ”Sonia’s brain is producing this mutant protein,” Eric says. ”But as far as we know it’s not misfolded yet, and the disease process hasn’t started. I want her brain to be producing half or less of the amount of that protein as she is [producing] right now, because we know that less is better.” Essentially, they want to muffle the faulty gene in order to reduce the amount of prion protein floating around in Sonia’s brain. But a key question right now is this: Say they make the right drug and give it to Sonia and others with her type of mutation. If the goal is to change nothing about her current health, then how will they know it’s actually working? A traditional clinical trial is out of the question, Eric says. It would be unethical and untenable he says, to ”just treat half of the people with a drug and half with placebo and then wait 30 years to see when they die.” Not only would that kind of experiment condemn some patients to terrible death, it would also be wildly expensive and require thousands of participants. There are only a few hundred people in the U. S. with prion disease mutations. ”Instead, we need a biomarker,” Eric says. ”We need some laboratory test that we can run on a living human to see if the drug is having its effect.” The answer, Sonia and Eric hope, could be in a very cold refrigerator in the lab where they work. It’s full of samples of spinal fluid. In mouse studies, at least, reducing prion protein in the brain seems to delay disease progression. So, Sonia and Eric are now studying samples of spinal fluid from all sorts of people  —   from people who already have symptoms of prion disease, from others like Sonia (who have mutations for prion disease but no symptoms yet) and from healthy controls. The aim is to establish how the levels of protein in the samples change over time, to figure out if protein levels would be a good enough measure to say, ”Yes, this drug works.” ”We have strong evidence that 50 percent [reduction]  —   if we could achieve that  —   would be protective,” says Sonia, based on preliminary findings in mice. Others are optimistic, too, Sonia and Eric are organized, hardworking, and efficient. Ultimately, for them, failure is not an option. But on a    basis, failure is what science is all about. ”In biology, if everything you did one day goes wrong, and then you figure out why it went wrong, that was a good day,” says Eric, who chronicles their struggles on a blog. It’s an achingly slow process. But Eric thinks they will do it  —   they’ll find a drug. ”I’m an optimist that we’ll get there in our lifetime,” he says, ”but not this year and not next year.” He’s not alone in his optimism. Sonia and Eric have some powerful colleagues who believe the couple can pull it off  —   colleagues like Eric Lander, a renowned mathematician, geneticist and molecular biologist. He started the Human Genome Project and founded the Broad Institute where Sonia and Eric now work. ”This is not pie in the sky,” says Lander. ”I see a path forward for multiple shots on goal. All you have to do is get one through.” Fifteen years ago, he says, solving this puzzle would have seemed impossible. But now he believes the science, the technology, and the knowledge about what certain mutations mean for a person’s health have made defeating prion disease possible. ”Human genetics and molecular medicine are reaching a point of maturity where they’re becoming much more powerful,” he says. ”It’s exciting and important and there’s nobody who’s more motivated than somebody who’s going to be affected by the disease themselves.” One small success, In one way, Sonia and Eric have already stopped the disease in its tracks. Sonia is very pregnant. She’s due in July to have a daughter  —   a daughter without a mutation for prion disease. That’s something the couple made sure of by screening embryos after in vitro fertilization. So, they’ve stopped the transmission of prion disease in Sonia’s line of the family. And in a way, that’s a gift from Sonia’s mom, Kamni, the couple says. ”If my mom was still alive, we wouldn’t know any of this and we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to choose to have a   baby,” says Sonia. ”But, tragically, it also means that they’ll never meet.” Sonia and Eric hope that, by the time their daughter is in elementary school, Sonia will be taking an experimental drug that could keep her as healthy as she is today."
"Police have arrested and charged a man in the murder of a Muslim teenaged girl who went missing early Sunday morning in northern Virginia. Authorities haven’t released details of how Nabra Hassanen of Reston, Va. died but tweeted that they are not investigating the killing as a hate crime. Hassanen and four or five others teenagers had left the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) mosque in Sterling, Va. on Sunday to get breakfast at an IHOP a little more than a mile away, The Washington Post reports, citing accounts from police and a mosque official. Fairfax County police say the teenagers were walking back to the mosque when they got into a dispute with a man in a car. Authorities say the suspect,    Darwin A. Martinez Torres, got out of the car and assaulted Hassanen, whose age has been reported as 16 and 17. The Post reports that the teenagers ran to the mosque but that Hassanen wasn’t with them. Her friends reported her missing at around 4 a. m. ET, and police began conducting an extensive search of the area using a police helicopter,   teams and search and rescue teams. During the search, according to police, an officer noticed a car being driven suspiciously. The driver, identified as Torres, was arrested as a suspect in Hassanen’s disappearance. Police say they found remains of a female in a nearby pond around 3 p. m. that day the medical examiner’s office will conduct an autopsy in order to identify the remains and the cause and manner of death. Fairfax County police spokesman Don Gotthardt told NPR that while the department has no indication so far that Hassanen’s murder is a bias or   crime, it will take all evidence into account. ”The fortunate thing is we have someone under arrest, and we will be very, very meticulous in our investigation,” Gotthardt said. Shoyeb Hassan,   of ADAMS, told the Post that during the last 10 days of Ramadan, ”the mosque has extra prayers at midnight and 2 a. m. and members frequently go to McDonald’s or the   IHOP to eat before they start their fast at sunrise, as Nabra and her friends were doing.” Hassanen’s mother told the Post that detectives said the girl had been struck with a metal bat. Sawsan Gazzar said her daughter had borrowed an abaya from her to wear to Ramadan services at the mosque on Saturday night, as she ”wasn’t ordinarily religiously observant” according to the newspaper. Gazzar said a detective had told her that Hassanen had tripped over the long dress and fallen to the ground before she was hit. ”I think it had to do with the way she was dressed and the fact that she’s Muslim,” Gazzar told the newspaper. ”Why would you kill a kid? What did my daughter do to deserve this?” ”We are devastated and heartbroken as our community undergoes and processes this traumatic event,” Imam Mohamed Magid, executive imam at ADAMS, said in a statement. ”It is a time for us to come together to pray and care for our youth.” U. S. Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia said in a statement: ”We are heartbroken and horrified by the news of the brutal murder of a beautiful   old girl. We know there is no greater pain for any parent and Chip and I extend our prayers to her family and loved ones at this difficult time and the entire ADAMS Center community.” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe tweeted, ”Dorothy  I are heartbroken over this senseless act of violence. We are praying for Nabra’s family  ADAMS Community.” A crowdfunding campaign set up to raise money for Hassanen’s family had already collected more than $160, 000 as of Monday afternoon."
"Updated at 11:30 a. m. ET, So it seems that it’s not only Democrats who have trouble keeping their digital information secure online. An extensive database of information about 198 million Americans collected by a contractor hired by Republican groups was obtained by a security researcher, who found it on an Amazon server, with not even a single password protecting it. The data included home addresses, birth dates and phone numbers of voters from both parties. It was discovered by Chris Vickery, a   analyst with the firm UpGuard. The data was compiled by Deep Root Analytics, which advises campaigns on political TV advertising and was contracted by the Republican National Committee, and other GOP groups. In a statement to NPR, Deep Root said since being made aware of the data breach, it has updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access. The company said it had last evaluated and updated its security settings on June 1, suggesting that access settings were changed later. ”We accept full responsibility, will continue with our investigation, and based on the information we have gathered thus far, we do not believe that our systems have been hacked,” the company said in a statement, adding that Vickery was ”the only entity that we are aware of that had access to the data.” The unprotected data included information on voters’ positions on issues from gun ownership to abortion as well as religious affiliation and ethnicity. It was amassed from public sources as well as less public ones, which Gizmodo reported ranged from ”the banned subreddit   to American Crossroads, the super PAC   by former White House strategist Karl Rove.” Cybersecurity played a big role in the 2016 presidential campaign  —   with Republicans mostly pointing fingers at Democrats. The hacking of emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta became a major   controversy. Intelligence officials blamed the hacking on Russia, and it indirectly set in motion the current investigation of Russian meddling into the 2016 election and possible Trump campaign officials’ ties to Russia.   Trump made an issue of the DNCs hacks, tweeting, ”Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place. The Republican national committee had strong defense!” Well, maybe not as strong as Trump thought. In January,   Director James Comey testified there had been ”penetration on the Republican side of the aisle and old Republican National Committee domains,” but he said none of those emails had been released. He said then there was no evidence that the current RNC or the Trump campaign had been hacked. It may just prove that in the digital age there are two types of people, those who have had their data hacked, and those who haven’t had their data hacked  —   yet."
"With a driving layup late in the second quarter against the Los Angeles Sparks Sunday evening, the Phoenix Mercury’s Diana Taurasi became the WNBA’s   leading scorer. Taurasi now stands alone atop the league’s   scoring table with 7, 494 points, an average of 19. 9 points per game. It took her less than 13 full seasons to set the record she surpassed Tina Thompson, who racked up 7, 488 points over 17 seasons before retiring in 2013. Thompson congratulated Taurasi on breaking her record: ”Diana is one of the best players to ever play the game and definitely one of my favorites. She has done amazing things and I am so grateful that I’ve been able to share many of those with her. I am really excited for Diana and I think she is going to blow that record out of the water.” Though it was a night for the record books for Taurasi, the Mercury got hammered by the Sparks,  . ”I was just trying to get a basket at that point, I think we were down 20,” Taurasi told ESPN. ”It’s a pretty cool, special moment. You know, it’s a lot of basketball. I’ve been really lucky, played with a lot of great players, lot of great coaches.” Taurasi has played her entire career with the Mercury, winning WNBA Championships in 2007, 2009, and 2014  —   and winning MVP in the latter two. ”Diana is everything you would want in a basketball player, and the kind of player who not only defines a franchise but an entire league for a generation,” said Phoenix Suns and Mercury Managing Partner Robert Sarver. ”We could not be more proud of what she has done for the game, our franchise, and the city.” Less than three weeks ago, Taurasi broke the WNBA record for career   which had been held by Katie Smith. Tarausi, who turned 35 last week, has won four straight Olympic gold medals with Team USA. Earlier this month Taurasi said she’d be happy to play in the 2020 Tokyo Games, the Associated Press reported. ”As long as I’m playing at a high level, and I deserve to be out there, then I’ll always put that USA jersey on,” she said. ”There’s nothing better than that, no matter how many times you’ve done it.”"
"There’s no rain in her clouds, no gray in her shadows Maud Lewis’ small paintings are bright with sunshine, and filled with blue skies, crystal snow and calm waters. Now, a new movie tells the true story of a painter from Nova Scotia whose joyful works hardly hint at the difficult life she led. Lewis had rheumatoid arthritis, which made it difficult for her to work, even as a young woman. To support herself, she took a job cooking and cleaning for a peddler  —   a man she would later marry. In the film Maudie, the couple is played by Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke. (Critic Bob Mondello says the film is remarkable, click here to read his review.) Lewis had no formal training, but she got her start painting Christmas cards with her mother, which they sold for 25 cents. As an adult, she used leftover house paint to brighten walls, bread boxes, cookie sheets  —   even the stove  —   with butterflies, tulips and swans. Canvas was expensive and hard to come by, so Lewis painted on beaver boards and Masonite  —   and she did it all from her own imagination. ”I’ve never seen any paintings from other artists,” said Lewis, who died in 1970. Lewis painted what she saw  —   cows, horses, cats, oxen  —   ”often with a very cheeky sense of humor,” says Shannon Parker, Curator at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax. The gallery has 55 of Lewis’ paintings in their permanent collection. ”She’s a local artist, who, if we didn’t collect them  —   especially in the beginning  —   nobody else would have,” Parker says. Lewis became known in the late 1960s, as passing tourists saw her sign: ”Paintings for Sale.” These were landscapes, painted on boards. She charged $2. 00, later, $5. 00. ”She was very hesitant to ask for more money,” Parker says. A writer learned about her, there was a magazine article, then the CBC interviewed her, and eventually she couldn’t keep up with the demand. She began selling her pictures while they were still wet. Now her paintings sell for $8, 500 to $20, 000. Lewis’ entire house  —   a work of art in and of itself  —   now has a permanent home in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. After Lewis and her husband died, the   house started to fall into disrepair, but it was saved, restored, and moved into the gallery in 1998. In the years before she died, Lewis told the CBC she rarely left home. ”Contented right here in this chair,” she said. ”Ain’t much for travel anyway. As long as I’ve got a brush in front of me, I’m all right.” Parker thinks Maud’s popularity and her story is a work of slow magic. ”They didn’t have a lot of money,” Parker says. ”They had no running water, they had no electricity. [She] was very limited in what she was able to do with her life. And yet her artwork was what she wanted to do and it’s something she was able to do. And touched so many other people. That’s pretty amazing.” Radio editor Nina Gregory and Web producer Beth Novey contributed to this report."
"Maudie is the largely true story of a Canadian painter whose work was so exuberant, you’d never guess at the difficult life she lived. In her 30s when we meet her, Maud is tiny, bent of frame, fingers crippled by juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. As played by a plucky Sally Hawkins, she has been treated all her life as if she were a child. Which is precisely what her brother does, when he tells her she’s going to have to stay with their Aunt Ida, now that he’s sold their house out from under her. More On Maud Lewis, ”I’d look after it,” she tells him. ”You can’t look after yourself,” he snorts. It’s easy to see why he, and indeed their fellow Nova Scotians in the tiny seacoast town of Digby might underestimate Maud. She walks with a limp, talks tentatively. But she’s far from helpless. When the town eccentric  —   a wizened   fellow named Everett Lewis  —   comes into the general store looking to post an advertisement for a   housekeeper, she spies an opportunity. His ad’s barely up before Maud has grabbed it and started walking miles to Everett’s place. Played by an almost unrecognizable Ethan Hawke, this curmudgeonly   is seriously   after growing up in an orphanage (he still takes his meals there). He lives in a    foot wooden shack, and appears genuinely startled when Maud shows up on his doorstep, negotiates a tiny pittance of a salary and starts cleaning and cooking for him. It’s almost as if he never quite imagined what he was asking for. Though he bridles at this, Maud also starts adding color to things around the house using leftover house paint she finds outside. First a shelf turns turquoise, then purple birds appear on the walls, then flowers bloom on the windowpanes. ”Who told you you could paint fairies on the wall?” growls Everett. ”Not fairies, they’re birds. You did,” Maud replies. ”You said make the place look all right. I think it looks all right.” They’re quite the pair  —   Maudie crabbed, Everett crabby. Still, there’s something about this couple on screen that kind of works, partly because Hawkins and Hawke are remarkable together, and partly because director Aisling Walsh and screenwriter Sherry White let them make much of small things: The looks on their faces, say, when she starts popping bright, cheerfully painted cards in with his bills, and a New York visitor offers to pay more for her card than for his fish.  The world didn’t give this woman much, but then, not much was required to make her happy  —   just a window to look out at the world.  ”The whole of life,” she smiles, ”already framed.” Maud’s life was constricted, but her gaze was expansive. And so is her movie. To learn more about Maud Lewis, click here to read Susan Stamberg’s story about the real Canadian folk artist."
"On Monday, Seattle officials released dash cam audio of a Sunday morning police shooting that left Charleena Lyles, a pregnant mother of three, dead. The two Seattle police officers had been called to Lyles’ apartment so she could report a burglary. The shooting is under investigation by the Seattle Police Department’s Force Investigation Team, and also SPD’s Office of Professional Accountability, but here’s what we know now:   Lyles, 30, was  .   The two officers were white. They have not been publicly identified.   Lyles had been arrested two weeks earlier at her house after she threatened other officers with scissors.   Because of the previous incident, police considered her an ”officer hazard,” which is why two officers were dispatched to take her burglary report.   At least two of her children were at home during the shooting. One child can be heard crying in the background during Sunday’s incident.   Police said Lyles was armed with one or more kitchen knives, but they have not said whether she directly threatened the officers.   efforts? On the scratchy dash cam audio released Monday, the two officers can be heard preparing for the call by discussing the previous police call to her house. An arrest report for the June 5 encounter describes Lyles as speaking bizarrely about wanting to ”morph into a wolf,” about the officers being devils and also members of the Ku Klux Klan. During that incident, the report says she threatened officers with a large pair of scissors, saying, ”Ain’t none of y’all leaving here today!” The officers drew their firearms, but the report says they eventually talked her into dropping the scissors. But the encounter on Sunday ended with gunfire. The police may have had less warning, the second time around. According to the dash cam audio, they seemed to be having a normal conversation with her, as she tells them about what’s been stolen  —   she confirms a missing Xbox. Then there’s a   pause, followed by a sudden commotion  —   you can hear Lyles say, ’You ready?’ she calls them an expletive, and the cops react, saying ”We need help,” presumably over their radios, and commanding someone to ”get back.” This commotion lasts 16 seconds, and then they fire the gunshots that kill her. Investigators are likely to look closely at whether the officers could have done more to   the situation. As part of a federal consent decree, the Seattle Police Department has emphasized training in ”crisis intervention,” which stresses techniques for lowering the tension when encountering people with mental illness or other cognitive problems. What’s not yet clear is whether the officers had the time or physical space to use   techniques, and whether the presence of children influenced the decision to use deadly force. Some of Lyles’ relatives have asked why officers didn’t tase her. Police sources say the officers did not have Tasers with them, but that they did have a ”less than lethal” weapon, which has not been specified. ’We want justice!’ As many people across America wrapped up their Father’s Day activities on Sunday, protesters in Seattle gathered outside Lyles’ apartment building. The crowd, which at times yelled out, ”We want justice!” held signs and candles. Lyles’ uncle, Michael Taylor, spoke to them: ”This is my family and we’re going to be as one,” said Taylor. ”And we’re not going to stop until we get to the bottom of this.”"
"Roxane Gay has finally written the book that she ”wanted to write the least.” The author of Bad Feminist and Difficult Women says the moment she realized that she would ”never want to write about fatness” was the same moment she knew this was the book she needed to write. The result is Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. Hunger, she writes, is not about wanting to shed 30 or 40 pounds: ”This is a book about living in the world when you are three or four hundred pounds overweight,” she explains. Gay traces her complicated relationship with her weight back to being a victim of sexual assault as a child. ”I grew up in this world where fat phobia is pervasive,” she says. ”And I just thought, ’Well, boys don’t like fat girls, so if I’m fat, they won’t want me and they won’t hurt me again.’ But more than that, I really wanted to just be bigger so that I could fight harder.” The memoir is also about living with contradictions: She describes growing up a daughter of   Haitian immigrants, and not fitting into the narrative of blackness. She talks about being a feminist. And she explains why she identified as a lesbian even though she was still attracted to men. The book is a confession, she says, and ”having that kind of vulnerability in the hands of strangers really scared me.” On the difficulty of the writing process, When I was writing it I was worried about exposing myself like this, and being this honest. . .. That’s why I dragged my heels for so long  —   the book was actually delayed a year because of that, because I just procrastinated and procrastinated because I was just dreading writing the book, while still feeling like this was a necessary book to write.  On being the victim of a gang rape at age 12, I had very little comprehension of what happened to me. I was stunned and I just assumed, ”OK, we just had sex.” And I didn’t realize that there was a thing called rape. I didn’t realize that there was a vocabulary to describe the experience, and that it wasn’t my fault. I thought I didn’t fight enough, I didn’t get away, and so I was complicit in what happened. . .. My    self thought, ”Oh, I must’ve asked for this.” Not in the way that we say, ”She asked for it,” but I just thought I deserved it because I was that weak, and that gullible and just that easily manipulated by some random boy I thought I knew. . .. To this day, I don’t know how I was able to cover up what happened. I just remember sneaking up to my room and doing my best to hide my clothes and to hide myself for as long as I could, to just try and pull myself together, and I did, because I was a really good kid. I did what I was supposed to, and I think when you’re a really good kid, you know how to play that role, and you know how to hide that anything is wrong. On why she kept it a secret from her parents, A secret starts out small sometimes, but then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and it becomes scarier and scarier to imagine ever sharing it with someone. So the longer I kept the secret to myself, the more dire the consequences became for me, or the more dire I perceived the consequences of revealing my secret became. . .. I was 12, so my fears were really that I was going to get in trouble and that I was going to go to hell, because I had had premarital sex. We were Catholic, and very devout Catholics. And though my parents raised us with the understanding that god was a god of love, I was really terrified nonetheless. On the boys spreading their own story, The boys’ version of the story was that it was my choice and that I wanted it and that I initiated it. . .. The other students in school believed it. I walked into class, I think it was French class, and I was sitting in my seat and the kid behind me tapped my shoulder and said, ”You’re a slut.” And for the rest of the day I realized that pretty much everyone in school knew what had happened  —   well, they knew the boys’ version of what had happened  —   and that’s when I realized, ”Now I can really never tell my family, because I will bring this much shame into our home.” . .. I didn’t engage at all, I just shut down completely. I would go to class and try to hide in class by sitting in the back, and I would just endure the taunts and then eventually, as it is in middle school, the story moved on, but my reputation never changed. I was still an outcast, I was still a loser. On overeating, After I was raped I needed comfort. . .. I felt so weak and I felt so powerless, and I wanted to make myself bigger. And so I would overeat, and I would get quite a lot of comfort from that, and when you are 12 and 13 and 14 and 15 and a sheltered kid from the suburbs, you don’t really have access to vices other than food, and so I ate. On her body image as a young woman  My body was only a problem when the outside world intruded. I was very scared of boys, but I was also a reader and very romantic and very much interested in someone loving me, and so I had those yearnings but I didn’t allow them to go beyond this idea of being loved. When I would look at myself I knew I was getting bigger. And I could tell that I was so much bigger than my peers, and I knew that was a problem, at least in terms of social standing, but I didn’t feel any  . I didn’t really feel any shame until people in my life forced me to feel shame because they were ashamed of my body, or they were disgusted by my body. On coming out as a lesbian, even though she knew she was bisexual  When I came out I knew it wasn’t the whole truth. I knew that I was also still attracted to men, but I was so scared of me that I just thought, ”OK, I’m just going to find some safe harbor here,” and so I wanted to be the best lesbian I could so that maybe that would make my attraction to men go away. . .. No community has been more welcoming to me, and when I needed community the most, [that] community was there for me. It was like discovering water for the first time, discovering clean air for the first time  —   to be seen, and to be appreciated and to be thought of as sexy and beautiful, it was just invaluable and I will never, ever forget the ways in which I was embraced by my community as I came out. On meeting people online in the early days of the Internet  When I look back now, knowing what I know about the Internet, I cannot believe I was not hurt or murdered, but I also have to say, the Internet was a lot different then. There were creepers, but it wasn’t what it is today. People were just so thrilled to have this new technology, and it was all   so it was different. I don’t know that it was safer, but it felt safer. It felt like it was OK to meet people this way and I also had very little   so I just threw myself into the face of danger nonetheless. . .. I was able to meet people and have them feel something for me and be interested in me for me before they saw me, and before they might judge me for my body, so that was really seductive. On looking up her rapist and calling him, but not saying anything, It was creepy. I actually in that moment was like, Girl, what are you doing? and then part of me wanted to say something, and to just scream at him. But I just hung up. . .. I wonder all the time, but what the wondering really is, is that I want him to say ”I’m sorry.” I want him to acknowledge that this terrible thing happened, and that it wasn’t my fault, and I want him to know that I didn’t just walk it off, and that I was broken for a really long time because of it. And I’m never going to get that. On the way people write about her weight, The most surprising thing is that in the book I write about what my highest weight was and every single review and article about the book thus far has mentioned it. That’s fine, because I put it in the book. . .. I think it says to me that there is a bit of salaciousness that people are trying to draw from it, when in fact for me it’s a number, it’s a truth. But the way people are writing and discussing it, it’s like ”Oh my god! When she was at her largest.” So it is what it is. On getting trolled online, I would say 40 percent of my trolling is because I’m a feminist. Thirty percent of my trolling is because I’m black, and 30 percent of my trolling is because I’m fat. . .. I have so many trolls. The Venn diagram of my trolls would be a circle. On where she is with her body now  I would definitely like to tear down this wall I’ve built around myself, because I don’t need it anymore. And I know that intellectually, and on good days, I know that emotionally. I don’t want to be thin, I want to be smaller, because I just do. I think it makes so many things easier just on a    basis, and also I have no small amount of vanity, so I just want to be able to find cuter clothes. Sometimes it’s really basic things that I would like for myself. I think getting rid of the fortress is the final step that I need to take in just moving on from this thing that happened to me once. . .. I wasn’t writing the book to heal myself, but in writing the book I was really forced to take a look at some of the habits I’ve developed over the years, and I’ve been able to acknowledge that I don’t need these behaviors anymore and I would like to come up with different behaviors that serve me more effectively. I don’t know that it will be easier, but I do know that I am in the best emotional and mental space that I’ve ever been in to at least try. Radio producers Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie and web producers Molly   and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"Photographer and journalist Katie Hayes Luke reported throughout the year on an innovative school for homeless children in Oklahoma City, Okla. We’re not using the first names of students and family members to protect their privacy. On the last day of school, the fifth grade students at Positive Tomorrows perform   rehearsals for the inaugural ”Classy Awards.” Teachers, parents and mentors file into the classroom through a doorway pasted with dangling gold stars, along a red paper carpet. While similar scenes play out in classrooms across the country, this particular group of   has a more uncertain future than most. Positive Tomorrows is a small, privately funded school in the heart of Oklahoma City, designed to meet the needs of homeless children. The future of these students hinges on the one constant in their lives: the school, which addresses both education and basic needs. The educational challenges associated with homelessness are broad and extend to every corner of a child’s life. Without consistent access to adequate food, shelter and safety, students are often too hungry, tired and stressed to keep up in the classroom. ”It is sort of like trying to change your tire on   and I am trying to teach you how to read while that is happening,” says Amy Brewer, the school’s director of education. ”Obviously that does not go very well.” The National Center for Homeless Education reported that 1. 3 million students experienced homelessness during the   school year, with a 3. 5 percent increase in each of the three previous years. Unfortunately, a new study just released by the Institute for Children, Poverty  Homelessness points out that federal funding has remained flat over this time. And states vary widely in their commitment to identifying and serving homeless students. In Oklahoma City, schools saw the number of students reported to be homeless rise from 3, 600 in 2016 to more than 5, 400 this past year. ”That is a huge jump,” says Kathy Brown, the homeless education coordinator for the Oklahoma City public schools. ”I think that part of it is because we had students that rolled over from last year that were already homeless [and] hopefully, better identification within the schools.” Of these 5, 400 students, Positive Tomorrows is able to serve 74 at a time in its   through   program, totaling 123 students for this academic year. Positive Tomorrows began in 1989 as a collaboration between the city’s public school district, the state department of education and some national nonprofits to target the specific educational needs of homeless students. But with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, public school systems were no longer allowed to segregate students based on their homeless status. After losing public funding, Positive Tomorrows reopened as a private,   elementary school, with the majority of its funding coming from private donors, foundations and corporations. While there is no official data on how many schools specifically target homeless students, there are at least three similar schools in the U. S.: Monarch School, a public   in San Diego TLC, a public   in Stockton, Calif. and Children’s First Leadership Academy, a   charter school in Phoenix with 100 percent of students at or below the poverty level, with the majority being homeless. At Positive Tomorrows, support services focus on the needs of the whole family  —   finding   opportunities, running parent support groups and helping connect students to stable housing. In addition, teachers and administration work with the children on social skills techniques for managing stress, anxiety and feelings. On this last day of school, Shelly Fryer walks her   and   to Braum’s, a local restaurant, for an    ice cream treat. The excitement and laughter fill the small store and exemplify what Fryer considers one of the greatest misconceptions about homeless students. ”These kids are like other kids,” says Fryer. ”They come to school and they are ready to learn and excited about learning.” They aren’t sad or constantly in trouble, she says. While all of her students are defined as homeless, she explains that none of the students consider themselves homeless. ”Wherever their mom is, wherever they are staying, that is home,” explains Fryer."
"President Trump did it again on Twitter late last week. ”I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt,” he tweeted Friday morning. Once again, a Trump tweet set off a media frenzy, this time making everyone wonder whether he was indeed confirming that he was under investigation for obstruction of justice. (The White House later said the tweet was not confirmation that Trump has been informed that he is under investigation.) This isn’t the first time that Trump has made trouble for himself in his tweets (see: the tweet that a judge recently cited in once again blocking Trump’s travel ban). But his tweets are more than a potential legal liability, and they’re even more than fodder for the occasional breaking news alert  —   his Twitter feed is groundbreaking in that he seems to be letting us inside his head. And in doing so, he is the first president to narrate his presidency in real time. But he is not just any kind of storyteller. He peppers those tweets with things that most politicians strain to hide: factual inaccuracies, evidence of character flaws, unsupported allegations. Social media have given America President Donald Trump, unreliable narrator. A point of view that clouds the story, Trump’s Twitter account  —   with its commentary on current events by one of the main players in those events  —   could someday be an obsession of postmodern literature professors. And just as it’s impossible to put down Catcher in the Rye or Lolita  or Gone Girl, Trump’s Twitter feed has captivated Americans’ attention. Every ambiguous post sparks a debate about not only what he means but also what prompted it: What is motivating him today? Why say this, and why now? In literature, an ”unreliable narrator” is someone who tells the story while layering a clearly distorting lens over that reality  —   there is a clear point of view (The Catcher in the Rye’s   teenager, Pale Fire’s unhinged professor) and it shapes how the story is told. It doesn’t necessarily imply malice (consider Huckleberry Finn or Tristram Shandy) but simply a point of view that clouds the story. In The Art Of The Deal, Trump praised ”truthful hyperbole”  —   a kind of purposeful   to get people ”excited.” In other words, he has shown a willingness to distort the facts. With his regular usage of factual inaccuracies and disputes with the ”fake media,” Twitter Trump has given us a framework to figure out what exactly his lens on the world looks like. Trump isn’t entirely unique in this regard: Everyone is an unreliable narrator in some way. And Americans often regard politicians in general as unreliable narrators. When politicians explain their views of the world, we can easily guess at their basic motivations: advancing policies, winning for their party, protecting their legacies. And that means we can easily determine for ourselves how big the gap is between what any given politician says and what we perceive to be factually true. But with every Trump tweet, Americans have the unique opportunity to measure and remeasure that gap. Trump demands our attention  —   over and over again, We occasionally get glimpses of presidents’ inner lives (like Obama tearfully admitting his fury over the Sandy Hook shooting). And after presidencies, we get memoirs (George W. Bush writing about his   in Decision Points). However, no president has narrated his presidency so heavily in real time. And Trump adds to that an aggressively unfiltered voice  —   his tweets present a man willing to be impulsive, say things that aren’t true and take aim not only at members of his own party but also at his own administration. His Twitter feed seems to let us know when he wakes up, when he goes to bed, what he is obsessing over at the moment and even which cable news outlets he is watching. It’s the kind of hints that J. D. Salinger has Holden Caulfield drop for us in The Catcher in the Rye. Yes, Holden tells us what he is doing, but Salinger wants us to also pay attention to the lens through which Holden views the world. Holden himself is the story. That second part  —   drawing our attention not only to the story but also to the point of view it’s coming from  —   is what makes this kind of story compelling. A   Catcher in the Rye would be hopelessly dull. Similarly, up until now, the presidency has largely been narrated in the third person, by the media, by political scientists, by pundits (some of them unreliable themselves). We’ve been able to glean all of those usual political motivations from past presidents, but it has been dull in comparison to what we could only imagine was going on in their heads. What was going on in Clinton’s brain when he hit on a young intern? What did George W. Bush think on Sept. 11, 2001? We had no way of knowing in the moment. Is Donald Trump actually Nabokov? If Trump is indeed the unreliable narrator, his Twitter feed perhaps best resembles Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, considered one of the greatest works of 20th century fiction. A quick summary: In Pale Fire, a fictional poet and professor named John Shade writes a   poem, which is presented near the start of the book. The poem is, by turns, poignant, mundane, funny and wrenching, telling about Shade’s youth, his marriage, his daughter’s suicide and his struggle to come to terms with death. After Shade’s death, a fellow professor, Charles Kinbote, writes a   analysis of the poem. That analysis is a total misreading  —   Kinbote believes the poem to be about himself, and he also claims to be the exiled king of a foreign country named Zembla. And yet, even while it’s a rambling, deranged delusion of grandeur, it’s also utterly captivating. Kinbote’s analysis seems to have entirely lost touch with reality in a way that Trump’s tweets have not. But just as the reader can look at the ”reality” of the poem and then at Kinbote’s commentary to decide how big the gap between reality and his commentary is, we can see what is going on in the real world, then look at Trump’s tweets and decide for ourselves how big that gap is. And on top of all that, there is yet another layer. After all, Trump’s tweets have led to endless conjecturing about why he tweets. Does he simply lack a filter? Is it red meat for his base? Is he carefully planting distractions when the news isn’t going his way? Does he secretly want his executive order to fail? Is covfefe a coded message? ??? Literary critic Wayne Booth, who is credited with coining the term ”unreliable narrator,” expounded on what makes this kind of narrator work. ”All of the great uses of unreliable narration depend for their success on far more subtle effects than merely flattering the reader or making him work,” he wrote in his The Rhetoric of Fiction. ”Whenever an author conveys to his reader an unspoken point, he creates a sense of collusion against all those, whether in the story or out of it, who do not get that point.” So the question is who is colluding with us as readers. Essentially, one of the great debates over Trump’s tweets boils down to this: Is Trump Kinbote, or is he Nabokov? At one extreme, some Trump opponents consider him to be Kinbote  —   delusional or, at the very least, showing his weaknesses while being oblivious to the fact that he is doing it. There is a sort of collusion for these readers in the sense that Trump is unconsciously colluding with them by  —   in their minds  —   letting them know how far his perceptions are from reality. At the other extreme, some supporters consider Trump to be Nabokov. They think he is playing ”  chess.” Just as readers ”collude” with Nabokov, seeing Kinbote’s flaws as Nabokov lays them out, some Trump supporters feel they are colluding with the   Trump, the one who carefully draws our attention away from scandals and uses secret codes.  This point of view squares with his affinity for ”truthful hyperbole.” (But then again, potentially damaging tweets like his Friday message about being investigated for firing FBI Director James Comey undermine this point of view.) In each case, each group feels like it’s privy to a secret the other group just doesn’t get. The upshot seems to be that Trump has discovered a way to push the president of the United States even further into the spotlight. As Catcher in the Rye makes Holden’s internal monologue a part of the story, Trump has found a way to make the president not just a person who does things he is a person whose very thoughts seem to be on display. (And, as has been reported, Trump loves being the center of attention.) But it’s also possible that he loses something in the process  —   namely, a portion of his potential symbolic status. The president is always a symbol. Yes, he gives off flashes of humanity from time to time, but he exists at a remove from Americans. And despite the constant clamoring for ”authenticity,” this kind of remove is, arguably, how many Americans want it. ”People want the president to be a symbol, like they want the monarch to be a symbol, but there’s always this curiosity about the gossip about the royal family,” Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, told NPR last month. ”But we don’t know, and we get to muse about it. There’s a comfort level about not knowing.” That arm’  president, shown in TV news shots shaking hands and striding purposefully from meeting to meeting, is the norm. But then, Trump isn’t one for norms. Our brains try to push him to that arm’  symbolic status we’re used to, but he resists, yanking us back in. Every tweet eliminates the distance, putting us right inside his head with him (or, some might argue, that is what he wants us to believe). This kind of whiplash happens in books like Pale Fire as well. The story is humming along, but then it jolts to a stop. Wait. Am I being played? That whiplash may be one reason why Americans seem to be souring on his Twitter feed. Fully 69 percent of voters, including 53 percent of Republicans, believe the president tweets too much, according to a recent Morning   poll. The difference between Trump and Kinbote, of course, is that Trump is real, and his policies have real effects on people. So do his tweets, says one literature professor, creating a sort of Rube Goldberg machine of tweets. ”Especially in real time, the narrator has to keep going on the same storyline,” said Nathalie Cooke, professor of literature at Montreal’s McGill University. ”So as Trump fuels the storyline with the populist Trump, the polarization in his readers actually fuels the continuation of the story.” And as the story continues, Trump has more to tweet about, creating more news  —   and more fodder for that polarization among readers about whether he’s Kinbote or Nabokov. That kind of polarization arguably fuels even more tweets  —   tweets in which he further intensifies his  .  point of view. But Trump’s tweeting is also a risky pastime. His tweets have weakened the case for his ”travel ban,” for example. And his Friday tweet further intensified the nation’s focus on the   investigations storyline. And this is the nature of the dilemma that Trump’s addictive Twitter account presents. Unreliable narrators are fascinating, but it’s often because they say too much."
"Diarrhea is not only a topic that makes people a bit squeamish, it turns out to be a difficult disease to put into numbers. But two trends are clear, says an author of a new report: The number of deaths from diarrheal diseases is dropping dramatically in   countries  —   and ticking upward in wealthy nations. An infection by E. coli, Cryptosporidium, Shigella or rotavirus, and the resulting diarrhea, is often a death sentence in much of the world. In 2005, about 1. 6 million people died from   diseases, and roughly 770, 000 of them were kids under 5. But that number has been steadily dropping, as a new study points out. The study comes out of a research collaboration called the Global Burden of Disease group, a consortium of over 2, 500 researchers working around the world to track major causes of illness and death, including diarrhea. Published this month in The Lancet, the study shows   deaths have declined about 20 percent from 2005 to 2015 for all ages to 1. 3 million people, and 35 percent for children under 5 to about 500, 000 children during the same time period. ”There are a lot of challenges on the horizon, but here’s a case where there’s been really quite steady progress,” says Dr. Christopher Murray, lead author on the study and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. But some experts caution against that the estimates may not be comprehensive. In a published response to the Global Burden Disease group’s work, Boston University global health researchers commented good public health data are lacking in several countries included in the study. Places that have experienced recent conflict or upheaval like Liberia are less likely to have robust data collection compared to stable,   countries like Switzerland or Sweden, but all the countries’ data are aggregated into global diarrhea estimate. There are cases where ”nobody really knows” what the diarrhea outcomes truly are, the Boston University researchers write. ”Those comments are not unreasonable,” says Dr. Richard Cash, a senior global health lecturer at Harvard University who was not involved with either article. ”[The authors] are using some crappy data and good data, but they incorporate [all of it].” That’s a valid criticism, but ultimately unproductive, Murray says. ”In some academic circles, but never in policy circles, people only want to pay attention to diarrhea in places where there’s the most robust or highest quality data,” he says. But if there’s no data available, he says, policy people assume ”that it’s a zero problem” in that country. So Murray says the group did the best it could with the data that are available. Without even rough estimates built on shaky data, Murray says policymakers might be tempted to ignore the areas where diarrhea exacts the greatest toll. And even if some of the estimates are built on shaky data, Cash says that the study illuminates an undeniable success in public health that began nearly half a century ago: ”There were 4 million child deaths from diarrhea in the  ’60s. The population of the world has just about tripled [since then.] If we still had those rates, we’d be seeing something like 12 million deaths, and now the number is roughly 1. 3 million. It’s remarkable.” Identifying what’s responsible for these trends is difficult, says Manoj Mohanan, a public health researcher at Duke University. ”We can conjecture that things like improvement in nutrition and economic statuses have led to better outcomes, but to pin down what’s driving it causally is a lot harder.”   Murray and his team give a few good guesses as to why diarrhea deaths have been on the decline, though. The rollout of the rotavirus vaccine in Latin America and Africa has likely contributed to fewer cases, Murray says. He also believes that ”education of mothers has a huge effect on this.” More mothers understand how to treat diarrhea cases, and therapies like oral rehydration packets are more widely available now, Murray says. ”There are fewer cases coming into the hospital, and those that are coming in are less dehydrated than in the past,” he says. ”There’s also the ubiquitous availability of drugs and the contributing factors of [improved] water and sanitation  —   who can argue with that?” Cash adds. There is one exception to the improving diarrhea situation, Murray points out. ”There’s a whole set of countries where diarrhea is getting worse [or more common]. It’s the   countries, and it’s because of the widespread use of antibiotics, perhaps inappropriately.” The overuse of antibiotics, particularly in the elderly, has contributed to a rise in C. difficile infections, a deadly gut infection that can take root following aggressive antibiotic treatment. But on the whole, Cash is optimistic. ”These dramatic changes over a   period are incredible and will continue,” he says."
"Diarrhea isn’t something we usually discuss in public. But as the second leading cause of death for children younger than 5, it’s a topic global health advocates want more people to talk openly about. Worldwide, there are nearly 1. 7 billion cases of diarrhea each year. The disease caused an estimated 1. 5 million deaths in 2012, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization. But it’s both preventable and treatable  —   if more people understood the underlying causes. What is diarrhea? Three or more loose or watery bowel movements within a day. Some episodes may be triggered by food sensitivities or an intestinal disease. But the most common source is an intestinal infection. In developing countries, the main culprits are any one of four pathogens: E. coli, shigella, cryptosporidium and rotavirus. They all spread through   food and water, and they cause the intestines to secrete excessive fluid. When the body fails to absorb that fluid, it passes right through the guts and gets flushed out along with vital nutrients. Accompanying symptoms can include fever, abdominal pain, vomiting and severe dehydration. How is it deadly? Mild diarrhea is no more than an inconvenience for many, but moderate to severe symptoms can lead to death from dehydration if lost fluids and nutrients aren’t replaced. Who are the most vulnerable? Those with a weak immune system, like HIV patients and the elderly. Most vulnerable are young children, whose immune systems aren’t fully developed. In fact, 2015 data from UNICEF shows that diarrhea kills 526, 000 children under 5 every year. A 2013 study estimates that the risk of death is especially high in the first two years of life. Where is it most prevalent? Everyone gets diarrhea from time to time, but most at risk are the roughly 2. 5 billion people living without access to toilets and the 780 million lacking clean drinking water. More than half of childhood diarrhea cases occur in Southeast Asia and   Africa, where many people still defecate in public, often in open spaces, behind bushes or near the water supply. India has the highest number of   deaths among children under 5: over 130, 000 child deaths in 2013. A vicious cycle: Even if a child survives multiple bouts, studies show that the constant mild infections damage the digestive system, making it hard for the body to absorb nutrients needed for physical and cognitive development. What results is a vicious cycle in which diarrhea leads to malnutrition, which further weakens the child’s underdeveloped immune system and increases susceptibility to future infections. What vaccines or treatments are out there? Nearly a third of severe diarrhea cases are preventable, and vaccines against the rotavirus  —   the most common source of diarrhea among children  —   are available through national immunization programs in at least 80 countries mostly in Africa and Latin America. A hundred more countries offer the vaccine through the private market. But they’re still hard to come by and too expensive to provide in many   countries. For treating diarrhea, UNICEF and WHO recommends water mixed with a special solution of salt and sugar, along with zinc supplements, yet only 39 percent of children get that treatment. No silver bullet: Vaccines and treatments are only part of the solution. Diarrhea will persist as long as people lack clean water, adequate sanitation and refrigeration to prevent bacteria from growing on food. In an effort to end child deaths from diarrhea by 2025, WHO and UNICEF laid out an action plan in 2013 to target those issues and involve local governments. There are also campaigns to stop open defecation, promote   with soap and encourage breastfeeding to reduce infant’s exposure to   bacteria. Yet a study suggests that between 1985 and 2008, there was a drop in funding for the fight against diarrheal disease. But there are signs of hope. Over the last 15 years, overall child mortality has fallen by 4 million to 5. 9 million, in part due to the reduction of deaths related to diseases like pneumonia  —   the leading cause of child mortality  —  malaria and diarrhea. But researchers behind the finding warn that the world still has a lot to do. Local and national governments alike will have to invest in water and sanitation efforts. Sometimes, though, reducing the risk of diarrhea is as simple as teaching children to wash their hands. Our sources: Louise Maule and Therese Dooley, sanitation and hygiene specialists at UNICEF."
"There’s a good chance something you’ve bought online has been in the hands of a ”picker” first. These are the workers in warehouses who pick, pack and ship all those things we’re ordering. At Amazon and other companies, they’re working side by side with robots. Experts say while the robots are replacing some human workers, the machines aren’t quite ready to take over completely. To keep pace with a growing hunger for fast delivery, more pickers are being hired in the distribution industry. And on the outskirts of the Bay Area, a school is using technology to train students in these new jobs. Patterson High School is about two hours east of San Francisco. It’s surrounded by the farmland of California’s Central Valley, which produces half of the country’s fruits, vegetables and nuts. But this group of students isn’t learning how to be farmers. They’re training to work in warehouses. Recently, teacher Hilario Garcia was instructing a student perched on a virtual reality forklift simulator. The machine is part of a mock warehouse the school built for vocational courses to train students like Justin Lockhart. He says he appreciates having such a course, especially in a town dominated by farming. ”It’s now turned into a big logistics and distribution center out there,” including an Amazon facility, Lockhart notes. The giant online retailer operates one of a dozen distribution centers just down the road. Stanislaus County has struggled with unemployment. But since 2000, warehouse and transport jobs have more than doubled, from 4, 000 to over 9, 000. Those workers keep the stream of items flowing to customers, most of whom are in the richer urban areas to the north and west. Mariela Zepeda works at a local CVS distribution center. Her nimble fingers snag everything from bottles of pills to boxes of condoms. She has to move quickly to ship these orders. The company tracks her progress. ”It’s heavy work, but it definitely beats fast food chains or anything like that,” she says. For one, pay is better. Zepeda, who’s also a   college student, says she makes $14. 79 an hour. Companies advertise   hourly wages of $11 to $14, sometimes with benefits. It’s a good start Zepeda says, but it isn’t the kind of job you can support a family with  —   not in Patterson. It’s close to the Bay Area, which means housing isn’t cheap. ”Me, by myself . .. maybe I can get by,” Zepeda says. ”But if you’re trying to feed a family, definitely no, I don’t think so. I think a lot of places are like that too.” Shelley Burcham is the economic development manager for Tracy, another distribution hub about 30 minutes north of Patterson. ”We know that there are citizens that require these   jobs, or that’s their skillset,” she says. ”But we want to kind of up the game.” Burcham wants jobs Tracy can build a community around. Jobs that pay enough for people to own a house and raise a family here. Jobs in industries like tech and   manufacturing. Right now, most people who live in Tracy don’t work here. ”About 70 percent of our resident workforce actually commutes out of Tracy every day,” Burcham says. ”They go to the Bay Area.” Patterson and Tracy are just two of many small towns that have become distribution hubs to feed wealthier urban centers. There’s Union, N. J. outside of New York City, Riverside by Los Angeles, and many others. While companies continue to hire human pickers for their warehouses, they’re also automating the work. The Amazon fulfillment center in Tracy is huge  —   it’s about 1 million square feet, or the size of 28 football fields. Visiting it is like walking through a ginormous machine. There are miles of conveyor belts moving an endless stream of yellow plastic boxes carrying customers’ orders. ”It’s all part of the symphony of Amazon fulfillment,” says Ashley Robinson, an Amazon spokesperson. (Amazon is among NPR’s financial supporters.) Only the conductor of this symphony is a computer. It keeps track of every item in the warehouse, with the goal of getting the stuff to you, the consumer, as quickly as possible. Orange robots that look like large square hockey pucks fetch the stuff customers order online. The robots glide around the warehouse through a labyrinth of thousands of storage units  —   shelves crammed with a random assortment of stuff: books, paper towels, board games  —   or zombie bobbleheads. When a robot finds its storage unit, it glides underneath, lifts it up and then delivers it to a worker  —   they’re called pickers. On a recent day, the computer told a picker to grab what looked like a fantasy board game. The picker found it, scanned it and placed it on the conveyer belt. ”In a traditional fulfillment center where the associate would walk to the different items, it can take hours to fulfill a customer order,” Robinson says. Now, with the help of robots, that task takes minutes  —   and fewer humans. So is this a sign we’re entering a new industrial revolution? ”It’s definitely going to take over a lot of jobs,” says Karen Myers, a scientist at SRI, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest research centers. At the same time, she says, we’re running against the limits of technology. Take ”the picker” at the Amazon fulfilment center. Myers says those skills are proving to be uniquely human. ”Our fingers are incredibly dexterous and the current generation of robotic manipulators, they’re getting much, much better,” she says. ”But they’re just not quite there yet.” There’s also the robot’s brain. Remember that board game the Amazon worker was looking for? She could barely see the box  —   it was crammed into the storage bin  —   but she could tell it was a board game. Robots can’t do that. Technologists say that, increasingly, humans will work side by side with robots  —   instead of robots working alone. Amazon says robots and humans enabled the Tracy warehouse to fulfill customer orders faster. That means more customers and more human workers. Sam Harnett covers tech and work and Queena Kim covers the intersection of technology and life in the Bay Area for member station KQED. "
"The new album from Tigers Jaw, spin, revels in quiet pleasures, even as its rich production pulls power from the band’s open wounds. It’s the   debut from a band that, at one point, made yelping and earnest   before finding its way to intricate, and melancholy, pop. After the lineup   three years ago, Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins both step into larger roles as the primary songwriters and singers, here playing songs from spin stripped down to an acoustic guitar and keyboard. It’s a strikingly intimate format that illuminates their close harmonies that tangle like garlands, and spare arrangements that open gingerly. Spin is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Ben Walsh (guitar, vocals) Brianna Collins (keyboard, vocals) Credits, Producers: Lars Gotrich, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Beck Harlan PA: CJ Riculan Photo: Raquel  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The Endangered Species Act is facing a growing number of calls for significant changes. Momentum in Congress and in western states is building to give states more of a say when making changes to the landmark regulation that protects about 1, 600 animal and plant species, and their habitats. Animals like the Wyoming toad. Back in 1985, there were only 16 of these   amphibians left at the Mortenson Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Laramie, Wyo. Today, thanks to a   collaboration between the state, federal agencies, landowners,   and the University of Wyoming, there are about 1, 500 Wyoming toads. Sharon Taylor, who did her Ph. D. on the endangered toad’s decline, arrived at the refuge with her two daughters earlier this month to help reintroduce about 250 toads back into the wild with a group led by Dough Keinath, the recovery coordinator with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This was one of five sites around Laramie where scientists released a total of 853 toads that came from a captive breeding site in Saratoga, Wyo. Down at the lake shore, Taylor knelt next to her two daughters as her   old daughter Christina released one of the brown, warty toads into the lake. Without stopping, the toad raced straight toward the water’s center. ”Look at him swimming!” Taylor said to her daughter. ”You’ve now released an endangered species.” As to when the Wyoming toad  —   one of the state’s 12 endangered species  —   will be taken off the list, Keinath says it will take a long time. ”That’s a biological question, not a political question,” he says. But often, it is a political question. The Endangered Species Act is credited with keeping 99 percent of listed species from crossing over into extinction. Still, critics contend it’s ineffective, burdening local wildlife managers with excessive federal oversight and leading to   legal battles to get species off the list. One solution say critics: Give states more power over their endangered species. Chief Game Warden Brian Nesvik, of Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department, says the state’s work with the grizzly bear is one example. ”By all biological and scientific measures, grizzly bears have been recovered in Wyoming since 2003. And to this day, after being delisted once and relisted again, they still remain under federal protections . .. the goal is not perpetual federal management,” he says. Wyoming’s Governor Matt Mead agrees. He’s leading an effort among western governors to review the Endangered Species Act. The National Governor’s Association unanimously adopted the initiative in March. Congress is stepping up its own efforts, too. Since January, 28 pieces of legislation were introduced to change the act. Sen. John Barrasso,  . who’s also a doctor, says only three of every 100 species are healthy enough to be  . ”As a doctor, I will tell you if for every 100 people I put in the hospital only three recovered enough to come out, I would lose my medical license!” he says. Barrasso has held two Senate sessions to discuss ”modernizing” the act, but that’s a term the conservation community finds troubling. ”I think these calls are entirely disingenuous. Modernize when it comes from the likes of Matt Mead . .. is a euphemism for: gut protections for endangered species,” says Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Greenwald says species like grizzly bears may be recovered at a local level, but that doesn’t mean they recovered nationally. And he says, the Endangered Species Act is meant to be a last line of defense. Greenwald also takes issue with the complaints about the act. He says species like grizzly bears may be recovered at a local level, but that doesn’t mean they’re recovered nationally. Greenwald says the act is an insurance policy for when states fail to protect their species. ”The states have primary jurisdiction over wildlife within their boundaries,” he says. ”The fact that species get listed reflects that they weren’t able to manage that.” He also says states simply don’t have the expertise or funding to properly protect their species. And even with federal and state support, recovery just needs time. Take the Wyoming toad. Back at Mortenson Lake, Taylor got emotional when she remembered reintroducing toads there for the first time more than 20 years ago when they were still on the brink of extinction. With tears in her eyes, Taylor said, ”seeing all carcass after carcass when they were dying. And we were down to 50 animals . .. it’s just phenomenal to be out here doing this.” More than two decades since Wyoming toads were reintroduced in this national refuge, scientists say they still need to watch closely to see how many can survive on their own. Cooper McKim reports for Wyoming Public Radio and for Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focused on America’s energy issues."
"On the heels of his historic induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (and amid unconfirmed rumors of new arrivals to his family) Jay Z has announced his thirteenth solo studio album, 4:44, to be released on June 30. The album was announced jointly through a Sprint promotion in partnership with Tidal and will be initially exclusive to that streaming platform. Jay Z purchased Tidal and unforgettably relaunched it in early 2015. Earlier this year, Sprint bought a $200 million stake in the streaming service, which Jay Z purchased for $56 million. Little is known of 4:44 outside of a promising    promotional video for the song ”Adnis,” below, which stars Moonlight’s Mahershala Ali playing a boxer shot in high contrast, while Jay Z laments: ”Letter to my dad   that I never wrote   Speeches I prepared that I never spoke   Words on a paper that I never read   Proses never penned they stayed in my head.” The beat under Jay here is steadfastly Los Angeles, a wobbling time signature and twinkling,    instrumentation, anchored by a Lynchian vocal line. (No need to rush to Sprint and Tidal just yet, however  —   ”Adnis,” both the song and video, are still only available as a sample even to subscribers.) In addition to offering new Sprint customers a   trial of Tidal’s HiFi tier  —   which offers   streams than competitors, though, as we’ve noted before, the devices you use have a huge effect on its sonic efficacy  —   Sprint is using the   to tout its 1Million Project, which will provide high school students with wireless Internet devices and unlimited access. The initiative launched a pilot program earlier this year to 4, 000 students in five districts, five schools and through one   initiative. There are 15 million students in public high school in the U. S. according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which means the program could eventually provide 6. 6 percent of U. S. high school students with reliable web access."
"Every group of working musicians has its own origin story, ranging from the widely familiar  —   friends jamming in a garage, someone responding to a classified ad  —   to the random and unusual. The story of how the Pet Shop Boys met  —   by chance at a   shop in London as they were separately browsing equipment  —   makes for a particularly charmed example. The band Algiers might have one of the most unexpected stories of all: As one member explains, it all started not merely before they knew each other, but before any of them individually existed. ”You can probably trace our origins back to the births of me and Ryan, because our mothers were friends before we were born,” Lee Tesche says. ”We’ve been playing music together for probably almost 20 years.” Tesche is speaking on the phone from Atlanta, the closest thing his band has to a hometown. Deep as its roots go, Algiers also has distance and disagreement woven into its DNA. On a separate call from the UK, where he’s lived for some years, Ryan Mahan tries to be a bit more precise. ”Really, the band fundamentally came together in 2012,” he says, pointing specifically to the day a tiny Southern indie released the group’s first 7” single. ”Before that, we were spread out: We were exploring our own musical and political spaces, and trying to figure out how it would work. It really didn’t form until Franklin put down the foundations of ’Blood’ and then it came into the world.” Joining our conversation from New York, Franklin Fisher listens as Mahan lays out his timeline. When asked if he agrees, he laughs and responds, ”No  —   but that’s what makes this band interesting. We’ve gone through just as many evolutions and phases as any band that’s put out however many records, in however many years’ time.” Exactly when and where Algiers began may be less important than where it is has ended up. Founded as a trio of Atlantans, it is now four musicians living in three cities on two continents, separated by one massive ocean. On June 23, Matador Records will release its second album, The Underside of Power, a work of political critique that draws on and repurposes aggressive ’80s punk, Italian horror soundtracks,     and RB, film, literature, current events and continuing tragedies, all conceived as national politics on both sides of the Atlantic were boiling over. If there’s anything in their history that the members do agree on, it’s that the group  —   named for The Battle of Algiers, the 1960s film about an   uprising  —   has always prized a collective instinct, where no one vision is definitive. From the outside, there’s at least one moment in the story of Algiers that feels pivotal: around 2008 back in Atlanta, where Tesche and Mahan had begun playing in bands together as teens. Fisher, also active on the scene, was frequently at their shows, and a creative current had started to stir between the three of them. Then, their circumstances changed. ”Ryan and Frank were both about to move overseas to do   degrees,” Tesche explains. ”I was still in Atlanta. I think at that point I kind of just decided not to play music anymore, because it was always a tough experience to do stuff creatively with a bunch of people and then have it come apart. [But] Ryan and Frank were quite keen to continue making music when they left town, and tried to rope me into it. They had an idea of the overarching ethos of all this stuff, and even the sounds they were going for.” As the three began to collaborate remotely, it became clear that some discipline was needed to turn their sounds and ideas into statements. Mahan says making ”Black Eunuch,” the   to ”Blood” and one of their earliest songs, demonstrated that one way to get there was simply to take turns. ”If you look at the liner notes it’s like, ’Well, Frank’s the vocalist, Ryan’s on bass and synths’  —   but we were trading that off. And then Franklin took it and developed it more, and then I threw in a chorus, and it kind of developed organically,” Mahan says. ”We feel comfortable as individuals to construct even the barest of demos and share it with the rest of the band, and know that one, there’ll be little judgment, number two, there’ll be little ego, and number three, the other person can make something of it.” ”We have been trying to create something that is our own for much longer than just 2015, which is when the majority of people heard of us,” Fisher adds. ”It was just in our own private space.” That private space, it seemed, looked outward as much as inward, as political observation became a central engine in the band’s songwriting. ”I guess you could trace it all the way back to growing up in the South: developing a structural critique of racism, and then looking back into history and understanding where that came from,” Mahan says. ”I think what we wanted to reflect in our music  —   not even necessarily through the lyrics, but through the music itself  —   is this idea of time and memory collapsing upon one another. That’s why the music extends in different directions, because our thoughts on history and society and violence and racism and capitalism extend in so many different directions.” The range of those directions became even clearer in 2015, when Matador released Algiers’     debut. As Tesche describes it, the sessions for that album were transformative: ”That was really the first time the three of us had been in a room playing music together in five or six years, so there were a lot of growing pains,” he says. ”We were just   each other’s personalities, because we’d changed completely as people over time.” The popular critical line on Algiers was ’industrial meets soul,’ an attempt to describe the base equation of Fisher’s singing and the dark, energetic music pounding beneath it. But its appeal was broad, finding favor with everyone from recovering goths to Motown obsessives to   fiends to   heads to Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode, with whom Algiers recently finished a series of dates in Europe. It was also recorded in London with producer Tom Morris, a choice that ultimately led to the addition of a fourth member. ”I fell in with the band pretty quickly,” Matt Tong says. Known for over a decade as the powerhouse drummer of Bloc Party, the   New Yorker was familiar with the music on Algiers through his own friendship with Morris  —   but even he was surprised when the band recruited him to drum on tour. ”That came out of the blue. It came up when I was about to go back to university and go down a different avenue. I felt like I didn’t have anything to lose.” With Tong, the band solidified as a   each working with a variety of instruments and programming. Though on stage they now fit the profile of a traditional rock band  —   Tesche on guitar, Mahan on bass, Fisher on vocals and Tong on drums  —   Fisher says they were determined as ever not to let those designations dictate how they worked. ”I don’t particularly view myself as a singer,” he says. ”If you look at how Lou Reed worked in The Velvet Underground, different people would sing depending on what was appropriate for that song. I think that’s a really healthy way of going about it. My favorite record has always been Kid A by Radiohead, and I remember reading interviews saying they had to learn how to be a band without playing their instruments, because at that time they were changing their sound. That was such a challenging and daring idea, and I think that’s something that we do in this band  —   not just from one album to the next, but from one song to the next.” This sense of a   creative space, of constant process and healthy instability, was top of mind as the members began to consider their next   release. ”Once we got the band on the road, it clicked I was really blown away by how fun and easy it was touring,” Tesche says. ”Being put back in the studio was almost like rolling the dice again.” ”These recording sessions were sandwiched between two European festival tours,” Fisher recalls ruefully. ”It’s crazy to switch gears between recording and shows. It was a bit of a baptism by fire for us.” Bringing songs from a variety of sources  —   live improvisations, old and new demos  —   Algiers began initial sessions for The Underside of Power in the UK. Working with the band for the first time was the team of Adrian Utley and Ali Chant as producer and engineer, longtime collaborators based in Bristol, where Utley first made his mark more than two decades ago as a member of Portishead. On a FaceTime call from Utley’s home studio, Chant says one circumstance defined their time with Algiers above all else: ”We never seemed to get them all in the room at the same time.” ”Every band’s different,” Utley says. ”I think for them, they were really busy touring. They had been jumping about a bit. And they live in different countries as well. We had a fairly long time with them, but there were gaps in between it was quite fragmented. That was what it was, so that informed how we did it.” The patchwork schedule, Chant says, meant that ”things could go in oddly different directions” depending what combination of members was present, at what time of day. Sometimes, as with Tesche’s guitar odysseys, that unpredictability could be rewarding. ”He’d get out little dictaphones and string together bizarre combinations of effects,” Chant says. ”He did a lot of stuff with putting cymbals, drum cymbals, under the strings. Once when he was about to overdub something, I remember saying, ’Wait, do you need to sit down or anything?’ And I looked at him and he had a rope around the guitar and was dragging it across the studio floor.” When the members did collaborate more directly, they found other ways to upend expectations. In the interlude ”Bury Me Standing,”   by Tesche and Tong, the latter’s famed drumming punch is almost entirely absent, in favor of layers of drones and chimes. ”I wanted to be very clear from the outset that it wasn’t about adding a drummer and having to showcase certain aspects of what it is I’m able to do,” Tong says. ”They had known each other for so long they had a certain musical rapport that I’m still weighing up. I didn’t want to be intrusive. I just wanted to be able to what I needed to do, and to contribute texture.” Elsewhere, there was lively tension. ”We definitely all pushed for certain things, and it’s our job to convince each other,” Mahan says. ”We had written some really interesting demos going into it, but we hadn’t had a chance to actually build upon those demos like we did for the first record. You’ll hear more individual voices than on the first album. That’s good and interesting, and I think is also indicative of how this process worked.” At times, they called upon voices other than their own. The song ”Cleveland” creates a terrible sublimity via a sample of the gospel standard ”Peace Be Still,” as police shooting victims like Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland are named and memorialized, interrupted by a brutal   of wailing and blasting sounds. The stellar opening number, ”Walk Like a Panther,” begins with a speech by the slain Black Panther Fred Hampton, before Fisher jumps in with a lyric inspired by his experience checking coats at an East Village nightclub  —   a black man watching white yuppies shout along to mainstream   and finding all sides wanting. All the while, clouds from the world outside crept in, shading the songs’ intensities by default. ”The Brexit thing was happening right there when we were doing it,” Utley notes, ”so we were amongst a huge political volcano.” In a set of notes released to press early this year, Fisher explained that his lyrics for the snaky,   ”Death March,” modeled on T. S. Eliot’s ”The Hollow Men,” were a direct reaction to the 2016 global political climate: Oh noOn no, no, noThis can’t be how it all falls apartConstant fear of   contagion, Oh yeahOh yeah, yeah, yeahThey took no time to unwind it allManufactured suggestionWag the dog and then drown him, ”Lyrically, this was probably the easiest song for me on the record, because all I had to do was simply describe the recent events in the UK and US,” he wrote. ”I imagined someone struggling with denial as they watch the world burn.” In the end, it was the more prosaic pressures of money and time (further complicated by Utley’s own heavily booked schedule) that proved the most imposing. The Bristol sessions couldn’t be completed as fully planned, much to both the band’s and the producers’ regret. ”A little bit more time would have been good,” Chant reflects. ”The bulk of the key tracks of the album, we’d already done what we felt we could bring to them, and the rough mixes were sounding great when the guys left. [But] there were a couple of tracks that only really surfaced as going concerns right at the end, so I don’t know if we felt like we really got a chance to work through those.” ”Everybody was scrambling,” recalls Fisher, ”realizing that if we wanted this record to come out when it was supposed to come out, we needed to find somebody to help us do  .” New   musician and producer Ben Greenberg had been suggested to Fisher by a mutual friend. ”I reached out to Ben,” Fisher says, ”and Matt and I met him for coffee. Immediately, I saw he had this Tristero [a drawn symbol of a muted trumpet] from Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 tattooed on his arm. I was like, ’I like this guy already. ’” Greenberg punctuates his sentences with plenty of easy laughter, reflecting an ebullience that doubtless stands him in good stead in studio situations like the one he found himself in with Algiers: Namely, the album was unfinished, time was still an issue, and while Tong and Fisher were also NYC denizens, that was only half the band. ”Lee and Ryan were going to be in town in two weeks,” Greenberg says. ”There was a bit of a scramble.” At the same time, he says, the tension around the US election was peaking. ”By the time they came to me, it was October. We worked on the record before and after I went on a tour in November, so we were meeting each other and they were starting to finalize things  —   lyrics, song content, song titles, the title of the record  —   all under the guise of, ’Holy s***: What is about to happen to the world? ’” Between dates at two New York recording spots and his own home studio, Greenberg assembled a week’s worth of sessions with the band. Most of that time, he says, they were all in the room together  —   ”listening through things, throwing out editing ideas, arrangement ideas. We did some new vocals, we added a bass line to a song we jumped around a lot. It was really fun, because I got through the material very quickly. And I fell in love with it, honestly.” The band members, in turn, were thrilled. Mahan praises Greenberg’s ”incredible scope and knowledge of music,” and calls him ”one of the loveliest people you will ever meet.” Tesche says Greenberg worked especially well with Fisher, locking into a space where the latter’s vocals could get even more focus and care. ”He’s become such a great singer between the two records,” Tesche avers. ”He was really particular about wanting to get certain things right, and making sure his voice was as strong as possible on a lot of things. Even though we only did a handful of days, that’s where everything came together for all of us, and we were like, ’Wait, maybe this is OK. ’” The last link in the creative chain was mixer Randall Dunn. ”If you asked me what Randall’s other career would be,” Mahan volunteers, ”it would be as a psychologist. The man just understands people.” Dunn himself, a reflective conversationalist, makes the same comparison unprompted when we connect on the phone: ”Sometimes you’re called in to psychologically help the artist through the record, just finishing it. Sometimes that can be the role,” he says. Known for producing and mixing bands with a heavier bent, including Boris, Sunn O))) Black Mountain and others, Dunn had entered the band’s orbit months earlier, when he met Tesche by chance at a Chelsea Wolfe concert and told him he’d love to participate in the album somehow. ”One thing I noticed about them right away was the vision of what they wanted to say about sound,” Dunn says. ”Amongst a lot of modern music, the trend is a bit escapist and electronic and luxurious. This record stands out because it’s confrontational, and it takes a stand on politics, and it’s not ambiguous or escapist. I think that’s something really powerful that needs to happen with music and art right now.” Working with Dunn, then based in Seattle, meant another radical shift in location  —   and a hard decision. While three of the four members made the trek, Fisher stayed behind in New York, unable to attend to due to work commitments and, by this time, general exhaustion. ”I wished that I could have been there,” Fisher says. ”There were a lot of references to some songs that weren’t communicated to him, that I would have been able to do if I had been there. But the way that Randall was still able to bring things together is astounding. We were joking about this: It’s kind of as if we took parts from a Lexus and a Honda and Buick and were like, ’Here. Make us a car. ’” Dunn is more   about his contribution. ”It’s kind of a fluid space that you occupy when you mix a record,” he says. ”You can actually end up being a very heavy force in how it sounds, or you can be a very passive force  —   just making it sound good because it’s already good, and embracing the work that happened before you were involved. I think for the most part they knew what they wanted to do. They weren’t quite sure how to get there, so I was brought in to sort of midwife that.” He adds, ”If everyone’s happy in a band with a mix, usually I feel like that makes us boring. So I try to take a stronger stand for things that are most impactful. And that is not always a consensus.” In late April, Algiers released the video for Underside’s title track. In it, a group of anonymous revolutionaries move about a dimly lit,   compound, reviewing documents and planning activities. Black and white film clips from past protests and rallies are interspersed throughout, callbacks to an American tradition of resistance. The band members are seen in quick cuts, playing and singing to no one in particular before disappearing again into shadow. As the song’s glowering stomp surges upward, a violent conflict breaks out in the room, the radical instinct suddenly caught up itself  —   until at last, Fisher falls to his knees to belt the final chorus: Because I’ve seen the underside of powerIt’s just a game that can’t go onIt could break down any hourI’ve seen their faces and I’ve known them all, To know that this simultaneously catchy and thorny, compelling and forbidding collection of songs is a product of separation, crossed communication and irresolution, that it exists very much against the odds, may be to understand something essential about the group of people that made it. Toward the end of our phone conversation, Mahan ventures a thesis statement for the album. ”It’s a place with all the imperfections and all the layers of history stacked upon each other  —   just like us, as individuals, have all these different experiences and histories that we bring to the table,” he says. ”It’s just this constant negotiation process. There’s constant construction and destruction. And I think it’s indicative of us.” There is a beat, and then he adds, ”There’s so many things that I would love to have done differently. I could write an essay on it.” Reflecting on his growth from touring player to full member, Tong emphasizes just how differently he sees the band today than when he started. ”This next part, of making an entire work, was something very unfamiliar to me  —   and it took a while to figure out how it works in Algiers, which is more of a long chiseling away at a piece of marble,” he says. ”There’s such a turnover of culture and it happens so quickly. Some people get caught chasing their tails, trying to do something that will be current or ahead of the curve. You’ve got to step back and some point and accept it for what it is.” ”This record is just riddled with imperfections, but those imperfections are what makes it charming,” Fisher offers. ”[The experience] taught me, with any artistic endeavor but particularly within a band, how little control you really have over the final product of something. It’s really you trying to harness and organize chaos to the best of your ability, in order to make a statement from a specific point in time.” Were the word not lately drained of all meaning, it would almost make sense to call this body of work ”disruptive.” A better word, perhaps, is ”questioning.” The Underside of Power never feels like a series of grand declarations  —   rather, portraits of situations, states of mind, songs that begin or continue conversations. In the   uneasy beauty of ”Mme Rieux,” the chilled goth intensity of ”Plague Years,” the   hardcore thrash of ”Animals,” there is righteous ire, tender reflection, relentless   and overwhelming sadness. And there are four people trying to work together, in a situation where the simple way through is rarely an option. ”I think if a process doesn’t go through that entire range of emotions, then maybe you’re not doing something right,” Tesche says. ”I would actually be really worried if we went through the whole process thinking we were making the greatest record of our career, all these songs are incredible, every single bit is perfect. I’m sure we would come out with a record that was a total piece of trash.”"
"Russia says its missile systems in Syria will track everything in the air west of the Euphrates River as a potential target  —   including aircraft from the U. S.  coalition  —   after the U. S. shot down a Syrian jet Sunday. U. S. officials say the aircraft had struck America’s rebel allies. Russia also says it will suspend its participation in a ”deconfliction” line that was established to prevent inadvertent clashes when Russia began military operations in Syria’s airspace 20 months ago. The announcement by Russia’s Ministry of Defense comes one day after a U. S. Navy    Super Hornet shot down a Syrian Air Force  . The Pentagon says the Syrian jet was downed ”immediately” after it dropped bombs near fighters from the U. S.  Syrian Democratic Forces, who had been holding a town west of Raqqa as part of an offensive against ISIS. ”As a result of the attack, the Syrian aircraft was destroyed,” the Russian ministry said Monday, adding that the pilot ejected over an   area and his status is unknown. It’s believed to be the first time in nine years that ”a U. S. combat aircraft has shot down a manned enemy aircraft in aerial combat,” The Aviationist reports. On Monday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense accused the U. S. of ”a cynical violation” of Syria’s sovereignty, saying that Russian aircraft had also been carrying out combat missions in the same region  —   and that the coalition didn’t use the deconfliction channels. Raqqa sits along the Euphrates’ eastern bank the aerial combat took place south of Tabqah, a city on the other side of the river and about 30 miles to the west of Raqqa. The new clash comes two months after the U. S. launched a barrage of Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase that had hosted airplanes responsible for a chemical weapons attack in Idlib province. Before that attack, U. S. officials informed their Russian counterparts."
"The U. S. military says it shot down a Syrian air force jet that dropped bombs near U. S.  forces in the fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. According to a statement from the Pentagon,   regime forces attacked a Syrian Democratic   town West of Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital the rebel fighters were trying to take back. The bombings wounded ”a number of SDF fighters and driving the SDF from the town.” Two hours later, the U. S. military said it shot down the Syrian warplane, acting ”in collective   of Coalition partnered forces.” Following the   forces attack, the coalition called its Russian counterparts ”to   the situation and stop the firing,” according to the statement. ”The Coalition’s mission is to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” the Pentagon added. ”The coalition does not seek to fight Syrian regime, Russian or   forces partnered with them, but will not hesitate to defend coalition or partner forces from any threat. ” But Sunday’s event signals the mounting conflict in the region, as the U. S. tries to defeat the Islamic State in the eastern part of the country, as NPR’s Tom Bowman reports: ”I don’t recall this before, where you have U. S. forces shooting down a Syrian aircraft. But what we are seeing is more   regime forces moving into areas where you have American advisors, where you have Syrian rebels. They are moving increasingly east, we have already seen a couple of skirmishes between US forces and Shi’a militias backed by Iran south of here. On a couple of occasions, the U. S. had to use drones and warplanes to attack these Shi’a militias to attack an American training area for Syrian rebels."
"For the second time in eight months, the fate of former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing is in the hands of a jury over the fatal shooting of black motorist Sam DuBose. A previous trial ended in a deadlocked panel, and a mistrial. As in the earlier trial, Tensing, 27, faces murder and manslaughter charges over his killing of DuBose in July of 2015. The police officer had pulled DuBose over because the car he was driving was missing its front license plate. As we reported last fall: ”  footage of the shooting created an uproar after it showed that Tensing, who is white, engaged in a brief struggle with DuBose before firing his pistol into the car. Seconds before, the two had been discussing whether DuBose had a license, and whether he should take off his seatbelt. ”When he announced that Tensing had been indicted for murder less than two weeks after the fatal traffic stop, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters called the officer’s actions ’asinine’ and ’totally unwarranted.’ ” Tensing took the witness stand in his own defense on Friday, delivering tearful testimony in which he said he had fired his weapon ”to stop the threat,” not intending to kill DuBose. As member station WVXU reports, Tensing said he has thought about the encounter ”millions of times” in the past two years. From WVXU: ”Tensing said Sam DuBose’s demeanor  —   acting evasive and stalling when asked questions  —   made him think ’something else is going on here.’ ”As the incident unfolded, Tensing said, he believed his arm was pinned between DuBose’s and the steering wheel. He felt himself falling and the car moving into him, he testified. Then he perceived he was being dragged.” It could be several days before we learn the outcome of this trial. In the earlier trial, the jury began deliberations on a Wednesday but after the jurors were unable to agree on a verdict, a mistrial was declared on Saturday, Nov. 12. Seeking to give the jury another option in the current trial, prosecutors asked Hamilton County Judge Leslie Ghiz last week to allow the jury to consider the   charge of reckless homicide. But Ghiz denied that request."
"”I’m afraid to say there are now 79 people that we believe are either dead” or presumed dead in London’s Grenfell Tower fire, Metropolitan Police Cmdr. Stuart Cundy said Monday morning, in an update on the huge fire that overtook a   building last week. ”Sadly, for many families, they have lost more than one family member,” Cundy said. ”This is an incredibly distressing time for all of them.” Only five victims have been formally identified, and Cundy said that because of the fire’s intensity and the devastation it caused, authorities may not be able to identify everyone who died. Over the past few days, another five people who had been reported missing in the fire have been found to be safe and well, Cundy said, saying he’s ”so grateful” for the news. On the same morning Cundy delivered his update on the fire, a moment of silence was observed in honor of those it has affected. Cundy said it was hard to describe what he saw when he went into the building on Saturday. ”I’ve investigated major crime for most of my service, and I’ve seen some terrible things. But I don’t think anything prepared me for what I was going to see when I was in there,” he said. Search and recovery crews have been working in the tower since last Wednesday’s fire. For police, fire and emergency crews inside the tower, ”it is incredibly emotional working in there,” Cundy said. He expects the operation to last ”many, many weeks.” Dozens of people have been reported missing since last Wednesday’s early morning blaze that struck while many who live in the building’s 120 apartments were asleep. Providing an update on the situation Monday morning, police said the death toll may rise further. The fire triggered both sorrow and outrage, as residents described the futility of their earlier attempts to have the building’s safety issues addressed, particularly its fire escape plan. Many questions also center on the speed at which the fire spread. Records have shown that in a renovation a few years ago, the building was   with siding that may have had ”a polyethylene core,” rather than a more   mineral core, as NPR’s Frank Langfitt reported. The job’s contractor has said the work met all fire standards. The investigation into the fire will span a ”wide range of areas,” Cundy said, from its original construction, to the refurbishment and how it has been managed and maintained. While he refused to speculate on the inquiry’s outcome, Cundy said, ”I would like to reassure everybody that we will be looking at all criminal offenses that may have been committed by any individual or organization.”"
"You can tell a lot about a culture by its food, particularly if food is all that remains. District Six was a   section of Cape Town, South Africa, that was home to Europeans, Asians, Africans, Christians, Muslims and Jews. A   ago, District Six, which was just outside of downtown, was declared a   area. By the early 1980s, 60, 000 people had been forcibly removed from their homes. To commemorate the anniversary of the order and as part of its ongoing work to preserve the culture of the lost community, the District Six Museum in Cape Town has released District Six Huis Kombuis: Food and Memory Cookbook. Huis kombuis means ”home kitchen” in Afrikaans. The book presents recipes from about   former District Six residents, remembering and recreating the food they ate as children. ”This is not a cookbook in the sense of recipes of the greatest chefs,” says Tina Smith, head of exhibitions at the museum and the book’s lead author. ”This is ordinary stuff and how people put it together.” District Six was far from the only area in South Africa that experienced ethnic cleansing during the apartheid years. Perhaps because of its central location, it has been better documented than most. Last year, a musical commemorating the area called District Six  —   Kanala enjoyed two successful runs in Cape Town. (The area was originally called Kanaladorp, enshrining in its name the idea of a community ”helping each other,” which is what kanala means.) The cookbook grew out of an ongoing project at the museum to bring former district residents together. A core group of about a dozen women meets regularly to share stories and do crafts such as embroidery. ”It’s always like yesterday when we speak of what we did in childhood and what we ate,” says Patience Watlington, a former District Six resident. ”We decided we were going to start cooking our recipes.” Their recipes  —   and stories  —   were collected over the course of several years, along with others offered by about a dozen other former residents, including a few men. Many of the recipes in the book are reprints of embroidered cloths stitched by contributors. The book is illustrated with photographs of all the contributors, each one holding a street sign or household keepsake. There are also historic photos showing District Six as it was: boys playing cricket in the street, girls skipping rope, food vendors pushing carts. The book offers narrative memoirs from all the contributors, who talk about cooking food slowly on stoves heated by coal, wood or paraffin. Many of the recipes are simple, with three to five ingredients that can be put together in a few simple steps. This was definitely not a   culture. Many houses lacked electricity. Nomvuyo Ngcelwane’s family would take jelly to a neighbor’s house to use their refrigerator ”for a small fee.” Annie Bam, another contributor, recalls taking her mother’s kneaded dough to Johnson’s bakery to be baked. Because there often wasn’t a way to store food, everyone seems to remember the names of the specific bakers and grocers where they went to shop daily, often ”on tick,” or credit, with the bill generally being paid on Fridays. There was a lot of food to be made. Many of the contributors recall growing up in cramped conditions in small apartments. Some describe living as many as 10 to a room, screaming for space alongside extended or multiple families. ”My parents were both economical and creative because they knew there was a mouth waiting for every crumb that they had,” recalls Ruth Jeftha, the third eldest of 11 children who lived in a communal house with three other families. One chapter of the book is called ”Stretching the Pot,” with tips on how to make dishes go farther with beans or potatoes or other starches, or with lang sous, literally meaning long sauce  —   giving a dish more volume with liquid. Another chapter is called ”Nothing Went Wasted,” referring to the creative uses of bones and inner organs. ”If the butcher did not clean it, the dirty tripe was free,” Doreen Hanning remembers. Some of the recipes presented in the book will not be to mainstream American tastes. Perhaps not many people in the U. S. make lung stew or sheep tongue and pumpkin mash. But the book reflects the   nature of the old District Six, mixing and matching dishes from Africa, India and what is called Cape Malay, the South African community descended from former slaves originally from the East Indies. Passed down is a recipe from Janap Masoet’s grandmother for mutton curry, flavored with cumin, coriander, cinnamon and heated up with green chili. Anastacia Schouw offers a tangy treatment of bobotie, a kind of meatloaf that is a staple in South Africa. Chicken, various contributors assert, was a luxury reserved for special occasions  —   either on weekends or during annual holidays, depending on a family’s level of income. But if the book reflects a culture of scrimping, it’s also suffused with the spirit of helpmekaar, an Afrikaans term for helping each other, or mutual support. District Six meals were shared on a kind of barter system, with ingredients or plates passed around to neighbors who otherwise might have gone without. Those neighbors, in turn, would send something around the next day, if they had a little extra or if they’d had some luck fishing in the nearby bay. ”Nobody ever went to bed without a plate of food,” says Marion  . ”We knew people who didn’t have food, and plates were sent into their home. The beauty of District Six was the sharing.”"
"One of the most glamorous creatures ever to grace the silver screen is back in pictures at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C. A dazzling new exhibition features dozens of photographs of the seductive,   movie star Marlene Dietrich. Dietrich’s legs were so famous that her studio insured them, and you can see why in the big photograph Milton Greene took of her in 1952. It shows the actress sitting, her face covered by a curtain of blonde hair. She’s bending over her long, shapely, crossed and extremely exposed legs  —   legs so shapely that she shaped them in the photo, writing notes on the contact sheet about  . As a movie star, Dietrich was known for controlling her image. But a very early photograph from 1918 shows her as a slightly pudgy Berlin schoolgirl with a big black bow in her hair and big lace collar. Exhibition curator Kate Lemay says, ”This is a very sweet, innocent [teenage] Marlene Dietrich who had recently changed her name.” (She was born Marie Magdalene Dietrich.) But on closer inspection, she doesn’t look so innocent. ”She has a curl escaping her hair,” Lemay says. ”At the time, hair being brought all the way up off your neck was the sign of a good girl with good family, and Dietrich let that curl escape. She’s already declaring her independence.” The teenager also has the eyes of a seductress: Her lids are a bit lowered and she’s looking straight at us, daring us not to notice. By the time World War II rolls around, Dietrich is a huge star. One photo, taken while entertaining American troops, shows her standing in a sea of soldiers. Her   sequined gown makes her look like a mermaid. ”She’s in her element,” Lemay says. ”She is flirting, and probably the best kind of flirt anyone’s ever seen. She’s just having the time of her life.” By then, Dietrich had made The Blue Angel (1930) in which she sings what became her signature song, ”Falling in Love Again” Blonde Venus (1932) in which she sings ”Hot Voodoo” and Morocco (1930) in which she tromps through the desert in   pumps and kisses a woman. All those films were directed by Josef von Sternberg, her Pygmalion: He slimmed her down, penciled in her eyebrows and lit her into a femme fatale. ”He knew how to transform a young woman who had beautiful eyes, but maybe not the most perfect nose and some flaws,” Lemay says. ”And he lit her from 4 feet above her head and from the right side of her face with specific soft lighting. She was transformed into this incredible magnet for the eye.” She took that lesson from the director and applied it for the rest of her life. Bathed in light and made up to perfection, Dietrich often wore ties, top hats and tuxedos. ”She dressed in menswear, and she pioneered dressing in menswear in the ’20s and ’30s,” Lemay says. ”She was the first   woman to do so for a large audience.” Shocking? It certainly was. But according to Lemay, ”Dietrich made it palatable.” She says that’s what made her want to put this exhibition together: ”This is 1930 and American audiences are conservative, and yet here we have this   actor who’s presenting an androgynous image and kissing a woman onstage. That’s incredible.” So how did she get away with it? ”She was just really charismatic,” Lemay says. ”And she never apologized. When people did criticize her and ask her why she would dare do such a thing, she just let it roll off her back. She really did not apologize.” Dietrich’s image changed over the years (though her lighting didn’t). She became more relaxed in films, downright funny, even. In Destry Rides Again, a 1939 Western with James Stewart, she played a rollicking saloon girl in boots, a cowboy hat and a spangled vest (can’t give up the glitter). By then she had applied for American citizenship, and adopted big American smiles. In 1955, the scandal magazine Confidential published an article with the headline ”You’ve Heard Lots About Marlene But You Haven’t Heard It All.” (The National Portrait Gallery show has the magazine on display.) Dietrich  —   who was married with a daughter, and had lots of lovers  —   was outed as bisexual. Few in her adoring public had a clue. In today’s age of social media, a secret like that couldn’t be kept for long but in Dietrich’s day, stars and studios had secrets that stuck. How did the great, glamorous actress react to being outed? We don’t know for sure, but Lemay’s guess is she wouldn’t have cared. ”I really do believe she was unapologetic and just thought that was their problem.” Dietrich was 90 when she died in 1992. In her last several years, she had stopped going out in public. Her looks had faded, and breaks in those gorgeous legs kept her bedridden. But she stayed in touch with friends by telephone, and her image (and  ) blazed on screens and in memories for decades."
"Updated at 1:20 p. m. ET on June 21, Republican Karen Handel has won the costly and closely watched special congressional election in Georgia’s 6th District, a blow to Democratic hopes of pulling off an upset in a district that President Trump only narrowly carried last year. The former Georgia secretary of state won by almost 4 points, beating Jon Ossoff, a    documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer  —   51. 9 percent to 48. 1 percent. The more than    battle smashed House race spending records after the candidates as well as GOP and Democratic outside groups poured in more than $50 million combined, used to slam the respective opponents on the airwaves. Handel will succeed former Rep. Tom Price, whom Trump tapped as his secretary of health and human services earlier this year. The race had been framed by some as a referendum on Trump and his agenda, and the win may ease any GOP fears  —   for now  —   that its base wouldn’t stay engaged heading into the 2018 midterms. Handel’s win shows that even Republican voters who may have been reluctant to embrace Trump will still come home to vote for more traditional GOP candidates. It also suggests that attacks tying more centrist Democrats to the national party, particularly House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, can still prove effective. Groups like the Congressional Leadership Fund, backed by House GOP leadership, spent heavily early on to try to knock down Ossoff, and it worked. ”Over the past month, Democrats not only declared this as a   they all but guaranteed victory. After spending more than $30 million, Ossoff becomes the biggest loser in the history of Congress,” CLF executive director Corry Bliss said in a statement. ”Nancy Pelosi threw the kitchen sink at her, yet Karen still came out on top and ready to fight for Georgia in Congress,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Stivers,   said. Trump also took to Twitter to praise Handel’s win and celebrate Democrats’ shutout in special elections. The loss in such a   contest has already started some   from Democrats. Rep. Seth Moulton,  . who backed Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan over Pelosi in last year’s leadership elections, tweeted that the defeat should be a ”  call” for his party and that Democrats need a new message. Democrats have so far been unable to prove that they can turn their marches and protests against Trump into victories at the ballot box. The Georgia race was their best shot to do that, and they fell just short. Despite all the money spent on the Georgia race, Ossoff fell below presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s margin in the 6th District. The race seemed to have tightened in the closing days. It’s unclear how much a shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice on June 14 might have impacted the race. A neighboring district GOP chairman had said he believed the shooting could inspire GOP voters to come out to combat ”  extremism.” Five people were injured in the incident, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who remains in the hospital (on Wednesday, the hospital upgraded his condition to ”fair”). A   super PAC also made a small TV buy in the contest with an ad tying Ossoff to the alleged gunman, who appeared to be motivated by anger at the GOP and Trump. In her victory remarks Tuesday night, Handel acknowledged the shooting and paid homage to Scalise, who she said would frequently text her encouraging messages before he was injured. She said the tragedy should be a call for more civility in politics on both sides. ”We also need to lift up this nation so that we can find a more civil way to deal with our disagreements,” Handel said. ”Because in these United States of America, no one  —   no one  —   should ever feel their life threatened over their political beliefs.” Democrats badly needed a win somewhere after falling short in a handful of other special elections  —   including another one on Tuesday in South Carolina’s 5th District that was much closer than expected. In that contest, Republican Ralph Norman beat Democrat Archie Parnell by just about 3 points to succeed Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. That race received little national attention or money compared with the one in Georgia or other special elections. But the narrow win, compared with the 19 points Trump won the district by in November, is a major swing. Similarly, there was a   swing in a Kansas special election and   shift in Montana last month. As anger with Trump rose across the country, Ossoff became a somewhat unlikely vehicle for the resistance to the president and the GOP agenda, attracting support from many people who said they were   by Clinton’s loss in November and who wanted to engage in politics. The   candidate raised more than $23 million for his campaign, but most of that came from outside of Georgia from liberal enclaves like New York and California. Volunteers from across the country flocked to help him on the ground, too, and with that money, he was able to build an impressive ground game. In the end, though, it wasn’t enough, and the longtime GOP lean of the district was too much for Ossoff to overcome. This is a seat Republicans have held for decades  —   former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had represented areas in the current 6th District. Still even though this seat has been in GOP hands for decades and Price routinely won   easily, this wasn’t Trump country in 2016. The president only narrowly carried the district by just over 1 point in 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney won it by 23 points. It is the type of district Democrats have to do well in come 2018 to flip the 24 seats they need to win back the House. There are 23 districts currently held by Republicans that Clinton carried in November, and some of them share similar characteristics to Georgia’s 6th District  —   rapidly growing with diverse constituents who are  . While special elections aren’t a perfect predictor of future success in regular elections, Handel’s win is still a disappointment for Democrats. However, as strategists point out, there are plenty of opportunities on the board for them in 2018 a president’s party typically loses seats in the   midterms. And it’s futile to project what the environment may look like 17 months from now. ”There are more than 70 districts more favorable to Democrats than this   district, and Ossoff’s close margin demonstrates the potential for us to compete deep into the battlefield,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján,  . M. said in a statement. ”The strong headwinds facing Republicans, incredible grassroots enthusiasm behind Democrats, and a damaged and exposed House Republican Caucus all clarify that we have the momentum heading into 2018.” While Ossoff successfully harnessed the anger against Trump to fuel his rise and his fundraising success, he didn’t make it the focal point of his campaign. Some of his ads early on ahead of the April   primary  —   where he got 48 percent of the vote in an   field  —   talked about taking on the president. But later spots focused on cutting government waste and working to attract more tech jobs to the area. Those aren’t typically the top Democratic talking points, and often, he didn’t even mention his party ID. In his concession speech, Ossoff argued that the enthusiasm his campaign was able to generate was still a good sign for the party in a race that wasn’t expected to be close at the outset. ”We showed the world that in places where no one thought it was even possible to fight, we could fight,” Ossoff told a gathering of disappointed supporters. The outside money in the race became one of the most potent attacks by Handel, who was previously the Fulton County Commission chairwoman, the most populous area of the district that ultimately delivered decisive margins to help her finish off Ossoff. Handel emphasized her experience and decades of public service, tying Ossoff to national Democrats and pointing out that he didn’t even live in the district. Ossoff grew up in the district but now lives just outside the border near Emory University, while his fiancee finishes medical school. Handel also never fully embraced or distanced herself from Trump. The president held a fundraiser for her early on and sent out tweets on her behalf in the final days of the race, including on Tuesday night. But other surrogates like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President Pence were the ones who provided    support. She thanked the president in her victory remarks on Tuesday night, getting loud cheers from her supporters. The argument made by even Trump allies, such as Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, the state’s former governor, was that even if you don’t like Trump, don’t hold that against Handel. ”Some Republicans may even be turned off by our president,” Perdue acknowledged at a rally Saturday. And, he seemed to admit, a loss could have be damaging for the Trump administration’s agenda: ”This is a harbinger of national politics. And the world is looking the nation is looking.” Ultimately, the win could be a good sign for the GOP going forward and may provide a boost for its efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, with Senate Republicans expected to unveil their health care bill on Thursday. Handel supported the GOP House version, the American Health Care Act, while Ossoff opposed it. But neither made it a major issue in the contest."
"The   special election in Georgia is finally happening. On Tuesday, people will head to the polls to cast their votes for either Democrat Jon Ossoff or Republican Karen Handel in the sixth congressional district special election in the Atlanta suburbs to replace Republican Tom Price. Price left his seat to become President Trump’s health and human services secretary. That ”” though, has been pretty long. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver pointed out recently, between the runoff for Tuesday’s race and the race itself, the U. K. has already gone through an entire election process. ”The UK *literally initiated and completed an entire parliamentary election* in the time in between the   primary and runoff,” he wrote. Only 51 days passed from the day British Prime Minister Theresa May called those elections (April 18) to Election Day (June 8). Meanwhile, April 18 was the day of Georgia’s runoff, and June 20 will be the general election for that House seat. And that’s just counting from the runoff. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal declared the election date on Feb. 10 (130 days before the general election) when Price was confirmed as HHS secretary. That’s not even the longest special election campaign happening this year. On Dec. 12 (Dec. 12!) Alabama will elect someone to fill the Senate seat Jeff Sessions vacated when he became Attorney General. The governor called that election on April 18, 238 days before the vote will take place. So here’s how those long stretches of campaigning stack up to the lengths of elections in a few other countries, as well as the 2016 presidential election: In 2015, Canada’s   election campaign drove voters to distraction, even   Americans looked on with envy. Likewise, Australia’s   campaign in 2016 was considered lengthy (there). And this even undershoots, to a degree, the length of the campaigns in those U. S. special elections, because candidates started jumping into the races long before. The first candidate entered the Georgia special election on Nov. 30, 2016 (202 days before Tuesday’s vote). Likewise, the first candidate in the Alabama Senate race, state Attorney General Luther Strange, declared he would run back in December  —   385 full days before the election. (That election took some time to be announced, however, as the last governor, Robert Bentley, appointed Strange to replace Sessions instead of calling for an election, as the law requires.) Counted from when the first person declared he was running, and this year’s Alabama Senate race is even longer than the span between last year’s Iowa caucuses and Election Day 2016. Here’s how those numbers stack up: Of course, this kind of comparison obscures some important details about foreign countries’ elections. For one, even with restrictions on campaign lengths in place, candidates in some foreign nations can start making noise about running well before ”campaigning” officially begins. A ” ” had already been going on well before Australia’s 2016 election, as London’s Guardian reported last year. And while Mexico imposes a   campaign period  —   that marks when candidates can spend their public campaign funds and thereby start campaigning in earnest  —   candidates can still declare they’re interested in running well ahead of time. Already in June 2015, the first candidate for that country’s 2018 presidential election declared she was in. So while they may not be able to fill the airwaves with ads, they can still make their way into news coverage for quite a while before the vote happens. (Of course, that happens here, too, before the first candidate declares.) In addition, parliamentary systems are by nature going to have starkly different elections than the U. S. as Bill Scher pointed out at RealClearPolitics last year. ”. ..[I]t’s completely disingenuous to compare America’s presidential election season to states with parliamentary systems. The political parties in those countries typically select their leaders years before elections are called  —   and not in   democratic primaries where the entirety of the nation’s electorate has an opportunity to decide on their choices. The party leaders then square off inside their respective parliaments day after day.” And one final addendum: shorter doesn’t necessarily mean better. In Japan, tight rules like limiting campaigning to 12 days keeps opposition parties out of power, the Sunlight Foundation argued in 2014. So there’s some reason not to want the shortest campaign period possible. Still, after months of phone calls and door knocking, the residents of Georgia’s sixth district may want more of a happy medium."
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans will release a discussion draft of their version of the health care bill on Thursday, with a vote likely next week. Private health care talks have been underway in the Senate for weeks. McConnell tapped a   working group last month to hash out senators’ differences over the   American Health Care Act. McConnell’s office has since taken the lead drafting the Senate version of the party’s   legislation to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Senate Republicans have been coy  —   or simply out of the loop  —   on the specifics in the Senate plan, but here is what we know about what might be in the bill and where it could be headed: It Sounds A Lot Like The House Bill, After the House passed AHCA in early May, leading senators asserted that the Senate would go their own way. ”We’re writing a Senate bill and not passing the House bill,” Sen. Lamar Alexander,  . said then. ”We’ll take whatever good ideas we find there that meet our goals.” In the end, those goals appear to be aligned. The structure of the Senate bill, as described by GOP senators and aides, appears fundamentally the same as the   plan. The Senate bill is also expected to repeal the individual mandate and all or most of the ACA’s taxes, phase out the Medicaid expansion as well as change how the Medicaid program is funded, establish a system of tax credits to help people buy insurance if they choose, and make it easier for states to   of the ACA’s mandates for preexisting conditions and minimum insurance coverage mandates. There will be changes. For instance, the Senate version is expected to include more generous tax credits to make sure older, poorer Americans don’t get hit with higher costs. Republicans are also battling over how best to remake the Medicaid program, with key vote senators like Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia sounding skittish about Medicaid reductions. Other Republicans are excited by the bill. Sen. John Barrasso,  . has been one of the most vocal advocates for Obamacare repeal. ”People didn’t want to have to buy this product. This is a sinking ship, people are ready to jump off,” he said Tuesday. Republicans like Barrasso see the bill as a win for the GOP and for the promises they made on the campaign trail. ”We eliminate the individual mandate. You’ll see more people as free citizens making a decision to not have Obamacare insurance, but certainly have more freedom,” Barrasso said. The Process Stinks, ”Can you say it was done openly? With transparency and accountability? Without backroom deals and struck behind closed doors? Hidden from the people? Hell no you can’t! Have you read the bill? Have you read the reconciliation bill? Have you read the manager’s amendment? Hell no you haven’t!” That’s not Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2017, that was former Minority Leader John Boehner in 2010 before House Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act. Republicans vilified Democrats seven years ago for negotiating the final details of Obamacare behind closed doors. Today Senate Republicans’ response could be: We learned it from watching you. The Senate has not held any public hearings on their health care bill (the House did) senators involved in the talks have been   on the substance, and the public will only have a few days to see it before it gets a vote. McConnell brushed off questions about transparency. ”They’ll have plenty of time,” he told reporters Tuesday. ”We’ve been discussing all the elements of this endlessly for seven years. Everybody pretty well understands it. Everybody will have adequate time to take a look at it.” That argument rings hollow with some of his fellow Republicans. ”We used to complain like hell when the Democrats ran the Affordable Care Act. Now, we’re doing the same thing,” Sen. John McCain,  . told CNN. ”If you’re frustrated in the lack of transparency in this process, I share your frustration,” Sen. Mike Lee,   said in a Facebook video for his constituents. Lee is a part of the   working group, but he said he hasn’t seen the draft bill. ”I just haven’t been able to see it yet and as far as I know the overwhelming majority of my colleagues haven’t been able to see it either.” Failure Is An Option, McConnell has been quietly leading Republicans’ to a vote next week but that doesn’t mean it’s going to pass. ”We’re going to make every effort to pass a bill that dramatically changes the current health care law,” McConnell said when asked if he has the votes. ”I think the leader has made it pretty clear we’re going to vote, one way or another, and hopefully we’ll have 50 votes when that time comes,” Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune said when asked if he believed McConnell would bring a bill to the floor that didn’t have the votes to pass. While no Republican senator has yet come out opposed the bill, McConnell has only a   margin of error with many senators voicing problems with the legislation. ”If our bill comes in with greater subsidies than Obamacare, it makes it hard for conservatives to support a bill that actually has greater subsidies than Obamacare,” Sen. Rand Paul,  . told reporters in regards to the tax credits in the GOP plan. ”That for me is a nonstarter.” Conservatives like Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee have Utah have been skeptical about the bill’s ability to ultimately lower premium costs for Americans. Both are seen as potential ’no’ votes on the bill. More moderate senators like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are also seen as potential ’no’ votes on the other end of the spectrum. Defeat of the   bill wouldn’t necessarily end the health care debate in Congress, but it would redefine it. Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson hinted at what that would look like at a constituent event last Friday. ”I’m not sure if we’re going to come up with 50 votes with a Republican solution. Let’s stabilize the markets and then,   work with the Democrats colleagues to actually fix the healthcare system,” Johnson said. The White House Doesn’t Love It  —   Yet, The White House has maintained a light tough when it comes to shaping the policies in the health care bill, but President Trump reportedly told a group of senators last week that the bill passed in the House was ”mean” and he wanted the final bill to do more to help needier Americans. On Tuesday, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters the president ”wants a bill that has heart in it” but did not offer any specific policies Trump wants in the bill. Spicer also said he didn’t know if the president had seen a draft of the Senate bill. If the Senate approves a bill next week, it still has more hurdles to go. The House either needs to pass the Senate bill   and send it to Trump’s desk, or the House and Senate have to go into a third round of negotiations in which both chambers would have to vote again on a final, compromise bill. Either way, the health care debate is likely to continue into July if the Senate can pass a bill next week. Democrats Debate How Far To Take Their Fight, Senate Democrats can’t filibuster the bill because it’s protected under special budget rules and only requires a majority vote. They’re all going to oppose it, but they can’t ultimately stop it from eventually getting an    vote. Democrats have started a series of protests this week that could intensify as the Senate approaches that vote. They held the floor Monday evening for a series of speeches in opposition to the bill. On Tuesday, they invoked a rule to block any committee hearings from taking place that afternoon to draw attention to their opposition to the health care bill. Outside Democratic activists associated with Indivisible are calling for Democrats to use every procedural tactic available to slow down debate. Since amendments are unlimited on a bill like this, one activist has even called on Democrats to introduce 40, 000 amendments to keep the Senate on the bill through the 2018 midterms. It’s unclear how Democrats will respond next week, but Schumer said Republicans should expect a fight. ”If Republicans won’t relent and debate their health care bill in the open for the American people to see, then they shouldn’t expect business as usual in the Senate,” Schumer said in a statement. NPR congressional reporters Scott Detrow and Geoff Bennett contributed to this report."
"Argentine police have uncovered some 75 Nazi artifacts hidden in a secret room in a house near Buenos Aires. The objects include children’s harmonicas in a box adorned with swastikas and a large bust relief of Adolf Hitler. Argentina’s Ministry of Security stated that the pieces were all ”of illegal origin and of great interest due to their historical value.” The finding came after a federal police investigation. The artifacts were found at a home in Beccar, north of the capital, and authorities tell The Associated Press that ”they suspect they are originals that belonged to   Nazis in Germany during World War II.” Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told the wire service the artifacts are believed to be original pieces  —   including a magnifying glass accompanied by a photo of Hitler holding a magnifying glass that looks similar. The combination of object and photo ”is a way to commercialize them, showing that they were used by the horror, by the Fuhrer. There are photos of him with the objects,” the minister told AP. Other chilling objects discovered include a statue of the Nazi eagle, weapons and an hourglass with Nazi symbols. Police also found a number of toys that authorities believe were used to indoctrinate children. ”There are Nazi objects used by kids, but with the party’s propaganda,” Commissioner Marcelo El Haibe from the federal police told The New York Times. He added, ”There were jigsaw puzzles and little wood pieces to build houses, but they always featured   images and symbols.” The hidden area also held mummified animals and items originally from Egypt, Japan and China, according to the ministry. Many prominent Nazis fled to Argentina at the end of World War II, including Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann and Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. The Washington Post reports that both men lived near the suburb where the artifacts were discovered. The investigation started ”when authorities found artworks of illicit origin in a gallery in north Buenos Aires,” according to the AP. Then, ”agents with the international police force Interpol began following the collector and with a judicial order raided the house on June 8.” The collector ”remains free but under investigation by a federal judge.” It’s not clear when the items arrived in Argentina, or who brought them there. Once authorities have completed an investigation, Newsweek writes, the artifacts will be given to the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires. Claudio Avruj, the minister of human rights and cultural pluralism, said, ”This decision to bring these pieces to the Holocaust Museum will put strong barriers against hatred and discrimination,” according to Newsweek. ”These facts show that the Holocaust did not end with the passage of time because there are people who try to keep this policy of death, discrimination and hatred alive.”"
"President Trump has updated his personal financial disclosure report from last year, and here NPR updates our December 2016 analysis of that earlier report. The new filing, published by the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) adds some insight into the president’s sprawling business network. But not too much insight. Trump’s Form 278, or ”executive branch personnel public financial disclosure report,” by no means gives a complete picture of his wealth, and his financial strengths and weaknesses. That’s not what the report is meant to do. ”What the 278 is designed to do is detect conflicts of interest,” said Stuart Gilman, former special assistant to the OGE director. So it discloses revenue, and estimates value, for each of Trump’s hundreds of business entities. But it is silent on their expenses. And there’s nothing on taxes, which Trump has refused to release elsewhere. The form requires disclosure of transactions that exceed $1, 000, and gifts worth more than $375, but Trump reported nothing in either category. As Gilman said, ”An accountant would go crazy with this.” Three things are worth noting about the numbers released on Friday: Finding trends across Trump’s 2016 and 2017 reports is impossible because they cover different lengths of time. The latest report shows assets and revenues from January 2016 through April 15, 2017. The previous one covered the period from January 2015 through May 15, 2016. NOTE: All companies, locations and revenues listed below are as reported by Trump in his Office of Government Ethics filing. In most cases, Trump reported revenues in some, only ranges.  We are including only   assets and activities that discernibly fall into the categories below, based on the description reported on the form. NPR intern Mollie Simon contributed to this report."
"Although President Trump has had a troubled relationship with big commercial lenders over the years, financial disclosure forms filed recently suggest he is still able to borrow money when he needs it. While Trump’s debts appear to be easily outweighed by his assets, government ethics experts say any sizable debt represents a potential conflict of interest for a president. ”It’s so profound that, actually, when I was working for President Obama, we wouldn’t even let him refinance his modest home in Chicago because of the appearance of conflict,” says former White House ethics adviser Norman Eisen, currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Records released Friday suggest that Trump holds mortgages of at least $50 million on Trump Tower, the office building known as 40 Wall Street and the luxury resort Trump National Doral Miami. He also owes millions of dollars on properties in Chicago, Florida and Washington, D. C. Trump has had an     relationship with major lenders, alternating periods of lavish borrowing with bankruptcies. When he first emerged from Queens in the 1970s, eager to make a splash in the Manhattan real estate world, his father, Fred, a   developer, was able to   loans for some of his first projects. ”He was the gravitas, the guarantor, the force behind Donald [Trump] when Donald was still untested enough to need that kind of backing,” says Gwenda Blair, author of The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President. By the   after the construction of Trump Tower, the future president was becoming something of a household name, and banks were eager to lend him money. Trump went on a spending spree, buying casinos, an airline and even a football team. ”The banks were lined up to loan him money (but) did not really do due diligence. A lot of this was unsecured loans to [Trump] directly. And the banks were extremely reckless,” Blair says. Many of those banks would come to regret their ties to Trump. Within a few years, large parts of Trump’s financial empire came crashing down, and Trump filed for bankruptcy for the first time in 1991. During long, contentious negotiations with Trump, bondholders were forced to take big losses on their investments. They had no choice, Blair says. Although lenders could have seized Trump’s properties, they needed the Trump brand name. ”They wanted his name on the buildings because he still had this kind of allure. So he was too big to foreclose on,” Blair says. During a campaign debate last year, Trump urged people not to shed many tears for his creditors, saying, ”These lenders aren’t babies. These are total killers.” The dislike is mutual. After Trump’s first bankruptcy, major banks grew considerably more skittish about doing business with him. Lenders tend to look askance at borrowers who have a history of walking away from debts too quickly, says economist Sam Chandan, who is the Larry  Klara Silverstein chair of New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. They also avoid borrowers whose exploits can generate bad press. ”When underwriting some of these very large loans with very visible borrowers, there is an element or the possibility of headline risk,” Chandan says. To borrow money, Trump has had to turn to smaller and less conventional sources of capital, such as Ladder Capital Finance, a New York real estate investment trust that holds mortgages on several Trump properties. Ladder doesn’t keep the mortgages it issues and instead packages them into securities and resells them to other financial institutions. It therefore has somewhat more freedom to take risks with its customers than more heavily regulated banks. More troubling is Trump’s relationship with his other major lender, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, a subsidiary of the giant German bank, says Eisen of the Brookings Institution. Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas is in talks with the federal government over various financial irregularities and faces big potential fines over its handling of   securities. Like other big banks, it will be affected by Trump’s vow to overhaul bank regulations. ”Here you have one of the world’s largest financial institutions, Mr. Trump’s principal lender, whom he owes many, many millions of dollars to, that creates a conflict that cuts across Mr. Trump’s job as president, ” Eisen says."
"You’ve heard the one about it being so hot you can fry an egg on a sidewalk, well how about it being hot enough to ground a jet? That was the case in Phoenix on Tuesday, where temperatures were forecast to climb as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. More than 40 American Eagle regional flights scheduled to take off or land at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport between 3 and 6 p. m. local time were canceled. American Airlines said in a statement that the Bombardier CRJ aircraft used on some shorter routes have a maximum operating temperature of 118 degrees. For bigger jets, the threshold is higher. The carrier says that, for example, Airbus aircraft have a maximum operating temperature of 127 degrees and that for Boeing, it is 126 degrees. As USA Today reports: ”Extreme heat affects a plane’s ability to take off. Hot air is less dense than cold air, and the hotter the temperature, the more speed a plane needs to lift off. A runway might not be long enough to allow a plane to achieve the necessary extra speed.” Bianca Hernandez, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tells NPR that Phoenix is seeing an unusually strong   system, which is causing the soaring temperatures. ”We are used to 100 to 110 degrees, but once it gets this much above average, it poses a threat to people,” Hernandez says. ”Heat is the No. 1   killer in Arizona.” The National Weather Service has issued an ”excessive heat warning,” effective until Sunday evening local time, for   and southwest Arizona. The city of Phoenix advised residents to take precautions, such as limiting outdoor activity to before sunrise or after sunset, staying hydrated and wearing   clothing. Phoenix is operating additional cooling centers and other emergency facilities during the heat wave. But the worst of it might soon be past. ”It looks like (Tuesday) is the peak of the heat wave,” Hernandez says. But ”temperatures are expected to be above 110 degrees for the next week.” The extreme weather extends over much of the Southwest, including parts of California and Nevada, which are also under excessive heat warnings."
"Two years ago, Eqbal Dauqan was going to work in the morning as usual. She’s a biochemistry professor. And was driving on the freeway, when suddenly: ”I felt something hit my car, but I didn’t know what it was because I was driving very fast,” she says. Dauqan reached the parking lot. Got out of the car and looked at the door. What she saw left her speechless. ”A bullet hit the car, just on the door,” she says. The door had stopped the bullet. And Dauqan was OK. She has no idea where the bullet came from. But it turned out to be an ominous sign of what was to come. Gender Canyon, Dauqan is a female scientist in what’s possibly the hardest place on Earth to be a woman: Yemen. The World Economic Forum ranks Yemen as the worst country for women’s rights. In Yemen, many women can’t leave the house without permission from a male relative. ”If she goes out with her husband or brother, that’s OK. But not by herself. ” Dauqan says. ”Not everyone follows this. But this is our culture.” A culture where   of women can’t read. About half are married by age 18  —   and sometimes as young as age 8. And then there’s the black veil. Many women in Yemen wear a niqab  —   a black veil that completely covers their faces, except for a tiny slit across the eyes. Daquan wears a niqab when she’s in Yemen. She even wore one during her TEDx talk there back in 2014. But she doesn’t wear one in other countries. ”I cover my face [in Yemen] because I respect the culture,” Dauqan says. ”I respect the culture.” She may respect it  —   but not blindly. For the past decade, Dauqan has burst through glass ceiling after glass ceiling with fearlessness and grace. Even as a young girl, she was a rebel. ”I was a little naughty,” she says with a snicker. She liked breaking rules. And proving people wrong. So when her parents told her she might not have the smarts to go into science and engineering  —   like her dad  —   Eqbal thought: Watch me. ”I told my father, ’I’ve heard a lot about scientists in chemistry. What is the difference between me and them? So I want to try,” she says. And she did more than try. She crushed it.  Eqbal won over her father and got his financial support. She was the first among her friends to finish college. Then she got a scholarship to do her Ph. D. in biochemistry at the Universiti Kebansaan Malaysia, where she studied the nutritional properties of palm oil.  That led to her writing a popular book about the fruits mentioned in the Holy Quran and their health benefits. For example, Indian Jujube  —   also known as red dates  —   are the most cultivated plant in the world and have 20 times more vitamin C than citrus fruit, Eqbal writes in her book.  Next came the prizes. In 2014, Dauqan was named one of the top female scientists in the developing world by the Elsevier Foundation. News programs in the Middle East and in China ran feature stories on her. She became so famous that Al Saeed University made her an assistant professor and head of a department  —   all this before she’d turned 35. Dauqan was on top of the world. And then one morning, it was all taken away. ”They were just sleeping” In March 2015, Dauqan’s hometown of Taiz got pulled into Yemen’s bloody civil war. Planes started flying over head, dropping bombs  —   even on homes and schools. ”They were bombing my university!” Dauqan exclaims. ”They killed some of my students. ”It was really bad. Really bad,” she says. ”I’ll show you.” Dauqan turns to her computer and brings up some photos. On the screen is a photo of several bodies laying flat on the ground. The bodies are covered in white sheets, with only their faces showing. ”This is nine person from my family,” she says. ”They were sleeping. And a bomb hit their house. They all died. Nine person from my family.” A few of the bodies are small. ”Those are two children in our family,” Dauqan adds. ”They were just sleeping.” And then they were gone  —   Dauqan’s cousins on her father side and their sons and daughters. ”That is why I leave my country,” she says. ”I have to be strong. I want to be strong” After the bombings began, Dauqan had to stop her research. The university shut down. And it wasn’t safe for her to leave home. She was trapped in a city where snipers target children and bombs fall on mosques, schools and markets. During one month of 2015, doctors treated more than 4, 000 civilians in a Taiz hospital, the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders reported. MSF hospitals have been hit with bombs four times. Across Yemen, about 10, 000 civilians have been killed in the war and more than 40, 000 have been wounded. the U. N. reports. More than 370, 000 children are now malnourished because they can’t get food. And then one day, after spending months in hiding, Dauqan had an idea: Maybe her science could get her out of the war. She started texting her mentor, Aminah Abdullah, a food scientist at the Universiti Kebangsaan in Malaysia. They applied for a special refugee scholarship with the Institute of International   Rescue Fund, based in New York. She got it, and after a few months, she was safe on a plane headed for Malaysia. Now she’s working to save up money so she can bring her parents and sister to Malaysia. ”It’s very difficult,” she says. ”But I have to be strong. I want to be strong!” Dauqan works long hours in labs, continues to publish papers and mentor students. And she has never lost sight of her dreams  —   even her ultimate dream. ”My dream is to win the Nobel Prize,” Dauqan says with a chuckle. ”It is very hard. So I don’t know. ” But Dauqan has already done so much for science  —   and society. When little girls in the Middle East see photos of Eqbal as a chemist  —   wearing a head scarf, measuring pH  —   they don’t need to use their imagination to think: ”I could be just like her. I could be a scientist.”"
"Belgian soldiers patrolling Central Station in Brussels Tuesday night shot a suspect after a small explosion that officials called a ”terror attack.” Eric Van der Sypt, spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, said that after the blast ”the suspected perpetrator was neutralized by the soldiers present.” No bystanders were injured in the explosion and the station was evacuated. Van der Sypt said it is unknown whether the suspect survived being shot. He also said he does not know the attacker’s identity. The Belgian capital has been on high alert since suicide bombers killed more than 30 people at the city’s airport and a subway station in March 2016. Tuesday’s incident is the third attack in two days in a European capital. On Monday, a motorist rammed a police van on Paris’s  . Earlier in the day, a van driver plowed into a group of Muslims outside a north London mosque."
"There is a certain peace that comes with being surrounded by a bunch of men with big guns. As much as you want to run or fight or scream, there’s not much you can do  —   except whatever they say. On a Friday afternoon in April, I was sitting in a restaurant in Juba, South Sudan’s capital, trying to persuade two government officials to issue me press credentials so I could report there. I had tried and failed to do this over the phone from my home base in Nairobi, and so my bosses and I made the decision that an   appeal would be best. I flew to Juba, and this was the moment of truth. The two government officials and I made small talk for a while, and then I sheepishly said, ”So . ..” One of them grinned. ”We’ll give you the credential. You can come pick it up on Monday,” he said. We were midcelebration, in the middle of our beers, when half a dozen men with guns showed up. They were in plain clothes, carrying assault rifles. ”I need you to come with me quietly,” one of the men said. ”I’m not coming with you I don’t even know who you are,” I protested. ”National security,” he said, as the guys with guns stepped closer. I looked at the government officials still sitting at my table and they looked as shocked as I was. I knew then that I was going with these guys wherever they wanted to take me. So we walked down a dark hallway, out a back door, into the hot afternoon and an alley crawling with more men with weapons. They were all young, some of them in military uniforms. They looked like teenagers hanging in the alley behind a movie theater. But as they saw us coming out, they all clutched their old   and moved toward me. When I prepare for assignments like these, I think through the risks. In this case, the South Sudanese media authority was not pleased with my previous coverage of the dire refugee situation in neighboring Uganda, so it did not want to grant me a press pass before coming to its country. But sometimes as a journalist, you have to insist and show up anyway. You have to try. You have to tell an unsympathetic government official, ”Look, I’m here in search of an explanation for one of the worst conflicts in the world and I want you to let me tell these stories.” When I ran through that scenario, I thought the worst case would be that the official would laugh. He would tell me, ”You’re not welcome in South Sudan”  —   and I’d be escorted to the airport to catch the next plane out. Just a few minutes earlier, in the restaurant, everything seemed to be turning out much better than I’d expected. But now, the young men with guns forced me into the back of a pickup truck. I was on my back, caged in by two benches above me. The bed was soaked in gasoline. I could smell it. I could feel it soaking through my shirt. I could feel the vibration of the engine in my body and I could see the tops of buildings zoom past. Every once in a while, the guys with weapons, who were sitting on the benches above me, took a peek at me. I tried to keep track of the turns we were making and tried to look for landmarks. But it felt like we were driving in circles. We accelerated. I felt the bed of the truck turn hot, and suddenly, the tops of buildings disappeared. I tried to keep my mind from going to dark places. But it did anyway. Maybe these guys were driving me to some field somewhere, where I’d be forced to kneel and I’d feel the muzzle of one those weapons on the back of my head. A burgeoning humanitarian crisis, In July 2011, South Sudan became the darling of the international community. With a referendum, it ended the   war on the African continent, and the 10 southern states of Sudan formed their own independent country. On the streets of Juba, there was elation. The two biggest tribes split leadership: Salva Kiir, a Dinka, won the presidency, and Riek Machar, a Nuer, was his vice president. The hope was that the South Sudanese, who had for so long suffered under the oppressive regime of Khartoum, could finally build their own country  —   in peace. But that was not to be. In 2013, Kiir accused Machar of organizing a coup. He fired him, and a civil war erupted. In the summer of 2015, the international community helped broker a deal that called for a   and for Machar to come back to Juba and resume his vice presidency. By the spring of 2016, Machar had returned, but by summer, a fresh war had broken out. Machar was injured and close to death as he was carried across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Eventually, with the help of the United Nations, he went into exile in South Africa, where he still lives. Since then, the conflict has spread, sparking famine and a mass exodus. More than 50, 000 have been killed since 2013. This year, precipitated by war, South Sudan surpassed Syria to become the   humanitarian crisis in the world. There are now some 1. 8 million South Sudanese refugees. Kiir remains in power. ”You’re an Arab” After the truck stopped, the men escorted me into a   building. The power was out so they pointed at me with flashlights, accusing me of being a spy. ”You’re an Arab,” one of them told me. The South Sudanese won their independence after a bloody fight with the Arab north. I knew the implication, and it scared me. I told them I was Latino, born in Nicaragua, raised in the U. S. ”You’re an Arab and you don’t even know it,” the man responded. He took me out of the office and up some stairs, where I saw some men gathered behind iron bars. It was the first time I realized I was in a prison. The place was hot and the air felt completely still. I could see only what the officer pointed at with his flashlight  —   fragments of tile floor, dirty walls, a wooden door. I could smell sweat mixing with the gasoline on my shirt and I could hear the clatter of the prisoners as they clamored to get a look at me. The officer barked at them to get back in their cells and they scattered in seconds. My heart was racing. Before I knew it, the officer was pushing me into a cell toward the back of the prison. ”There’s some water,” he said, closing the door. And then everything went black, as if my eyes had suddenly closed. I felt my way to the ground and touched the concrete with my palms. It was warm. Somehow the sun had worked its way through steel and concrete and onto this floor. I ran my hands across the water bottles but they felt gritty, like they had been dragged through dirt. In the distance, I could hear tracked vehicles, probably tanks, moving across the terrain, and every once in a while, a helicopter zooming past. Just outside my cell, I could hear the prisoners talking and playing dominoes. If there is one thing darkness does, it lights up your mind. I thought of Miami, where I was raised. I thought of my wife and my little girls. I thought about all of the brutality that this government had inflicted on civilians. Three days, I thought. That’s how long I’ve heard humans can survive without water, and there’s no way they’d let me die in here. ”I think we made a mistake” One of the defining characteristics of the South Sudanese conflict is its brutality. A few months ago, I flew to Uganda and drove up to the border with South Sudan. Thousands of people crossed over each day, fleeing the violence. Each one brought harrowing stories: They saw women being  . They described government soldiers going door to door and killing civilians because of their tribe. One woman told me that as she fled her village, she saw the bodies of her neighbors thrown near a ditch. The violence is systematic and widespread. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and a monitor set up by East African states have all documented government atrocities. A report by the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan documented the torching of an entire village. Satellite images had tipped off investigators to the events taking place, and when they finally made it into Yei, just southwest of Juba, they found a breakdown of humanity. In one case, they found that government soldiers had disrupted a funeral. According to residents, the soldiers claimed the deceased was a rebel. They assaulted mourners, and when a man and a woman suggested the man was just old and died of natural causes, soldiers took them outside. The woman was raped before both of them were shot dead. Not far away, investigators found that   militias had tied up six civilians, thrown them inside a hut and set it on fire. The South Sudanese government has refuted reporting from refugee camps and these official investigations, saying the refugees fleeing the conflict are lying and the president has ordered soldiers who perpetrate atrocities to be punished. But a panel of experts commissioned by the United Nations Security Council found that the government’s inability or unwillingness to prevent or punish abuses is ”a key driver of the war.” The panel of experts also found that as the conflict drags on, it has taken an increasingly tribal dimension. Last December, the U. N.’s Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned that the country was in a process of ”ethnic cleansing . .. using starvation, gang rape and the burning of villages.” At a refugee camp in Uganda, a South Sudanese Nuer man named John told me that in his village, government soldiers walked door to door. If you didn’t speak Dinka, the language of the ruling tribe, you were killed. ”It was the national soldiers, the ones who started this,” he said. ”Slaughtering people, shooting people, tying people.” He told me he remembered independence day in 2011 vividly. People, he said, walked for hours to get to Juba to celebrate the birth of a new nation. But underneath that mango tree, in the middle of that refugee camp, he was doubting all that joy. He was questioning whether the people of South Sudan were better off now than they had been under brutal Sudanese rule. ”I think we made a mistake,” he said. A shared dinner, a sense of familiarity, At some point, the prisoners outside my cell went completely quiet, but the helicopters and tracked vehicles kept going all night. No one came to check on me. I felt completely alone trying to find comfort on a bare concrete floor and trying to quiet my mind. At some point, I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I saw a sliver of light sneaking in through a tiny hole near the ceiling. A couple of prisoners came by to peer through a tiny window in the door. They asked if I was OK, and one of them came back a few minutes later. ”Don’t tell anyone we spoke to you,” he said. It was hours after I saw that sliver of light that a soldier opened the door to my cell. Honestly, I was scared. Who else was the government keeping in this place? What would they do to me? I walked out cautiously, but into brightness. The prison was all concrete. There were prisoners sleeping along the hallways. Dozens of plastic bottles filled with dirty water were neatly stacked in every corner. Just outside my cell, an old man was lying on a mat. He stood up with a bowl in his hand. He looked sad, skinny but he offered me some posha, corn flour that has been boiled into a kind of dough. The last 15 hours had been miserable and isolating, but all of sudden, I felt like I was stepping into humanity. The prisoners stopped by, introducing themselves one by one. They shared tips  —   you’re free to use the shower shoes outside the toilet don’t talk to the man three doors down in solitary. They offered to wash my   shirt. At one point, the guards gave me back some of my money and told me I could order anything I wanted from the market. I ordered bread, Cokes, shawarmas  —   enough for everyone. It was delivered within hours by one of the prison officials. The other prisoners and I shared dinner on the floor. Some of them told me they had been held for two years, others for three. They said that they had never been charged and that they had never appeared before a judge. George Livio was one of them  —   a South Sudanese journalist for a United   news outlet who reported on corruption. He’d been held since August 2014. Every morning, he woke up thinking this was the day he would finally be released. But by now, he had missed watching his three young children grow up. Justine Wanawila was another prisoner  —   a former Catholic priest. He said authorities accused him of feeding rebels. They threw him on a plane and brought him to Juba. On a couple of mornings while I was there, he led the prisoners in praying the rosary. I listened from my cell and told him it reminded me of my grandmother. I thanked him for the familiarity. ”You came to South Sudan to report on what the government is doing to innocent people,” he told me. ”You can still do that from here.” ”We all want peace” When NPR informed the U. S. Embassy of my detention in Juba, it sent consular officers to come check on me daily. It was a relief to be walked out of the prison and into another building and to know that my family, my country, my place of work knew where I was. But every time I made that walk, a South Sudanese officer would pull me into his office after the U. S. officials had left. He was a lean, angular guy, and he sat on his chair thumbing through a Bill Nye book. Sometimes he would just stare at me for minutes at a time. I wouldn’t break eye contact because I wanted to show him that I had nothing to hide. He asked questions  —   ”Is it fair that your country is slaughtering civilians? Is it fair that they keep prisoners in secret prisons?”  —   but every time I tried to talk, he’d interrupt with warnings and boasts about how South Sudan could kill me and my family if it wanted us dead. I remember when he said that, another officer in military fatigues was in his office. He smiled. It was gentle, but also clear that he found this whole scene a little entertaining. ”Eyder,” he said. ”Have you ever been a soldier?” I chuckled. ”Never.” He wanted to know what life was like in New York City, how kids went to school. He wanted to know what life would be like if you didn’t have to be on the run. Most South Sudanese have had to flee multiple times in their lives. Some of the refugees I spoke with in Uganda could remember hiding in the bush with their parents when they were attacked by Sudanese troops. Now they had fled with their own kids. Before we could talk, the first officer sent me off. The next day, he called me back to his office, and he shouted that the United States was undermining the independence of South Sudan. He was agitated, belligerent. I lowered my voice and I told him that he had to listen to me. A person, I told him, is not a country, and also, he didn’t know me. I told him I was a child of war, born during the civil war in Nicaragua. Like so many of his people, my family fled. We found peace and a home in the United States. It’s not a perfect country, I told him, but it was instrumental in supporting South Sudanese independence  —   and it was also, right now, paying for more than half the food that is being dropped out of airplanes in   areas. His demeanor changed. His voice became softer. ”Eyder,” he said. ”When you go back to your country, I want you to tell your people that we all want peace.” He pointed out the window. He said in that direction was the first paved road most South Sudanese had ever seen. ”We’re trying to build a country,” he said. This war, this killing, he said, is necessary to emerge a stronger country. At that moment, I had no doubt he believed it. I nodded. But I also suspected that to the millions of South Sudanese who have been forced from their homes and to those who have lost children, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, those words would sound hollow. I was released from jail without charges on May 1, four days after I was picked up. Livio, the United Nations journalist, was released without charges on May 26, after two years and nine months. A government official drove me to the airport for my deportation to Kenya. ”You are welcome in South Sudan,” he said. ”This was all a misunderstanding.” South Sudan is the biggest tragedy unfolding on the continent today. It’s not a story you just let go. I told him that maybe someday, I would test that invitation."
"Prodigy,   of iconic New York rap duo Mobb Deep, has died, according to a statement provided to NPR by a publicist for the group. The statement goes on to say that the rapper, born Albert Johnson, was hospitalized ”a few days ago in Vegas after a Mobb Deep performance for complications caused by sickle cell anemia crisis.” Johnson battled the disease throughout his lifetime. He was 42 years old. No cause of death is known at this time. The emcee was best known for crafting narratives of struggle and survival, depicting New York in the depths of the crack era, but he had music flowing through his veins from the beginning. Prodigy’s mother, Fatima Johnson, was a member of the ’60s RB group The Crystals, and also served as Mobb Deep’s first manager. When she passed, on Christmas Eve, 2016, Prodigy publicly eulogized her on Instagram: ”I want to take a moment and salute this beautiful soul. Fatima Johnson, may u Rest In Peace,” he wrote. ”There wouldn’t be a Mobb Deep without you literally!! Our first manager, our first support team and believed in us when no one else did! You’ll always always be remembered.” Prodigy   the   Mobb Deep in the early ’90s, alongside partner Havoc (Kejuan Muchita). The two became synonymous with a brand of East Coast gangsta rap that represented the ill street blues, grit and grime of   New York City, debuting with Juvenile Hell in 1993. But it was their 1995   The Infamous, that cemented their image and legacy. The music was dark, with eerie undertones that reflected the environmental hazards and criminal exploits of    living in the hood. ”New York got a n**** depressed   so I wear a   underneath my Guess,” Prodigy rapped on 1995’s ”Survival of the Fittest.” The Queensbridge Houses from which they hailed and represented on record are the same, storied projects that nurtured   legends Marley Marl, MC Shan, Roxanne Shante, and Mobb Deep contemporaries Nas, Cormega, Nature, Tragedy Khadafi, and more. Like the projects, Mobb Deep’s discography stands as a testament to the socioeconomic conditions into which they were born and bred. ”I got you stuck off the realness   we be the infamous   you heard of us   official Queensbridge murderers,” Prodigy raps in their most memorable song, ”Shook Ones Pt. II.” Other classics among Mobb Deep’s   discography include ”Quiet Storm,” the duo’s 1999 collaboration with Lil’ Kim. In recent years, Prodigy had parlayed a prison sentence into a solo career, an autobiography (My Infamous Life)  —   even a cookbook. Released in 2016, Commissary Kitchen: My Infamous Prison Cookbook highlighted the ingenuity he exercised to eat healthy while serving a     year sentence for gun possession. Prodigy had been in Las Vegas, where Mobb Deep performed over the weekend as part of the Art of Rap tour, featuring other legendary acts Onyx, Ghostface Killah,   and  ."
"What does it mean to lose your land, your language, and your heritage? For Alaska Natives, these are existential threats. On a trip to Southeast Alaska, I traveled to one village that is finding new ways to survive: Klukwan, ancestral home of the Tlingit tribe. Nestled along the banks of the Chilkat River, Klukwan is quiet and tiny, home to about 90 people. The Haines Highway runs through town, but on the day we visited, you could walk right down the middle of the   road without worry of passing cars. On a tour of the village, we pass by small homes and trailers: some abandoned, some with rusted old trucks out front, sinking into the soil. ”It’s a struggle,” says tribal president Kimberley Strong. ”You see the buildings, some of ’em are falling down and dilapidated. But we’re working at it. We’re working very hard at trying to keep the village alive.” By doing that, they’re also trying to preserve the heritage of the Tlingit people, who have lived in Southeast Alaska for thousands of years. In fact, the town’s name   Klukwan   means ”eternal village” or ”ancient land” in the Tlingit language. Unlike other Tlingit communities in Southeast Alaska, Klukwan is governed exclusively by its traditional tribal council. To stay alive for future generations, Strong believes Klukwan needs to develop. ”There’s younger people who want to live here,” Strong says, ”but there’s no suitable housing at this point for them to move into.” Klukwan does have a school: just 17 kids total, from kindergarten through 12th grade. There’s a health clinic, open two days a week a community garden and a small grocery store. Looking to the future, the tribe has great hopes for the new Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage Center, a soaring,   space that opened in Klukwan last spring. It’s an $8 million investment in the tribe’s future, funded through grants, as well as state and federal money. On display are examples of famed Chilkat weaving:   blankets and robes. But the most prominent treasures are the tribe’s colorful totems and carved screens, hundreds of years old, which depict the ravens, eagles and killer whales that help define the identity of the Tlingit (pronunciation guide here) people. The heritage center’s executive director, Lani Hotch, estimates it will draw thousands of tourists to Klukwan this summer and provide 30   jobs. Hotch, a master Tlingit weaver herself, and the sister of tribal president Kimberley Strong, was the driving force behind creating the heritage center. To illustrate how the Tlingit lands have shrunk, she leads me to the first exhibit: a map of the tribe’s ancestral land. ”Our ancestors would say that the mountaintops were like our fence posts,” Hotch says. ”That’s what marked our territory.” That territory used to cover a sprawling expanse nearly the size of Connecticut. Now, the tribe has jurisdiction over a tiny fraction of that: about three square miles. For the Tlingit people, the land is key to their identity, as is language. Lani Hotch and others are trying to reclaim and teach the Tlingit language, which has been lost to many. That’s because children of her parents’ generation were often sent away to white, missionary schools and were forced to speak English. Children would get their hands slapped, their mouths washed out with soap, or worse, if they spoke in their native tongue. ”People think that’s ancient history,” Hotch says. ”It’s not that long ago. That’s the reason why my generation doesn’t speak Tlingit fluently, because all our parents spoke to us in English. Because they didn’t want us to go through what they went through.” For many Tlingit elders, that generational trauma is still deeply felt. Hotch recalls asking an elder to sing a traditional song so she could learn it properly. But as soon as the elder started singing, Hotch says, ”her throat seized up on her, and she was coughing and sputtering.” Hotch later learned that this elder was punished more than any of the other kids in grade school because her parents didn’t speak any English. The only language she knew was Tlingit. ”She still carried that with her 60 years later when she tried to sing,” Hotch says. ”She had a physical reaction.” Now, the village of Klukwan is facing a potential threat of a different order. About 10 miles upstream from the village, a Canadian mining company is in the middle stages of exploring and drilling for a     mine. According to the company, Constantine Metal Resources, Ltd. the site is a   deposit discovery with ”tremendous expansion potential.” If that mine goes through, the tribe is deeply worried about environmental threats to the Chilkat River and the fish they depend on for their food supply. The river feeds them, just as it fed their ancestors. The people of Klukwan fish for salmon right outside their back door. As we walk along the river, the two sisters, Lani Hotch and Kimberley Strong, point out the   tables along its banks, and the smokehouses people have built behind their homes to cure their fish. ”If our river gets polluted with mine tailings,” Hotch says, ”that will be the end of us.” The tribe is trying to get the highest level of protected status for the Chilkat under the federal Clean Water Act. As we walk along the river, Hotch looks up at the majestic,   mountains that surround us. ”I always feel like we’re nestled in the hand of God here,” she says. ”When I go to someplace that’s flat, I feel like . .. there’s nothing holding us in place. We just feel protected here and nurtured, you know? Like we really belong here.” ”We’re rooted here,” adds Strong. ”It’s not a choice.” Strong thinks about their ancestors, and about the many other Tlingit villages that have disappeared over the centuries. ”I do not want to be one of the last generations that lived in a traditional Tlingit village,” she says. ”I don’t want my name to go down in history as being one of the last tribal leaders of the 21st century.” She continues, ”I would like people to respect the fact that we do have a culture here, a strong Tlingit culture, that could disappear. And we need to fight to keep it.” We are stewards of the land, the sisters tell me, and we are obligated to care for it. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"Before we can talk about Eddie Izzard’s new memoir, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death and Jazz Chickens, we have to talk about the jazz chickens. Because of course, cows go ”moo,” sheep go ”baa,” and a chicken will      —   unless you get tired of the racket and jam a trumpet over its head. Full disclosure: There are no actual jazz chickens in the book. ”They said there’s gotta be something funny in there,” Izzard tells me. ”I do talk about love and death, and ’jazz chickens’ is just there to be funny, in a way.” And it’s true: There are some very somber moments in Believe Me. On his mother’s death, It was an unusual thing . .. Mum and Dad decided not to say that this cancer was going to kill her. And then one day she was gone, and, yeah, it doesn’t get better. You just put layers and layers over it. I’m trying to do all these things, because if I do enough, maybe she’ll come back . .. if I can really do enough interesting things, maybe it’ll cut through to the other side. Now, I don’t believe in a god  —   I just think unfortunately that we live and then we die, and then that’s it, kids. So I don’t think Mum can come back  —   I think she would have got a message back, you know? Surely one person would have got a message back over the eons and eons of time, 10, 000 years of civilization! Just one! One message, one cloud to pull aside and say, ”It’s me, Janine! I died last Tuesday. Anyway, it’s great, they get massages up here, and God’s nice, he’s a bit full of himself, but alright. They’re all hanging out here, everyone gets on, it’s great. Be nice, and you’ll end up here, if not you go down and it’s smelly and it’s horrible, it’s all cold and hot at the same time.” On his ”pigheadedness” It was locked in from coming out in 1985, coming out as transgender, or, I was ”TV” when I came out, the language has changed over the years  —        —   we are now at transgender. So, I came out in 1985, and it was very difficult to go out and forge a way out and lock it into your life. Once I did that, once I pushed back on all that fear and hatred and the feelings that society all around the world was saying to me, ”You’re not allowed to do this, this is wrong,” and I’m saying it’s built into my genetics and I think I have girl genetics and boy genetics, so I’m going to express them, I’m not going to feel shame or guilt, and that has given me the confidence for everything else. On the way he develops his routines, I just start   on the stage. Everything is verbal sculpting . .. you get this energy that goes into it, and the audience really reacts to the energy. But then after a while, you can get it locked down, and if you get it precisely, ”Oh, I’m going to use these jokes in this section,” and then it starts become leaden, and then I thought, if I always keep it molten, it will always be live. So I write down some ideas in the notes section of my iPhone, and then I go onstage and I develop them."
"The Florida elections vendor that was targeted in Russian cyberattacks last year has denied a recent report based on a leaked National Security Agency document that the company’s computer system was compromised. The hackers tried to break into employee email accounts last August but were unsuccessful, said Ben Martin, the chief operating officer of VR Systems, in an interview with NPR. Martin said the hackers appeared to be trying to steal employee credentials in order to launch a   campaign aimed at the company’s customers. VR Systems, based in Tallahassee, Fla. provides voter registration software and hardware to elections offices in eight states. ”Some emails came into our email account that we did not open. Even though NSA says it’s likely that we opened them, we did not,” Martin says. ”We know for a fact they were never opened. They did not get into our domain.” Instead, Martin said, the company isolated the suspicious emails and alerted law enforcement authorities, who it was already working with because of two attempts to break into state voter registration databases earlier last summer. The NSA document said that at least one of the company’s email accounts was ”likely” compromised based on information uncovered later in the   campaign. That attack took place days before the November election and involved fake emails sent to as many as 122 local election officials in an apparent effort to trick them into opening attachments containing malicious software. ”They tried to pretend to be us to leverage our relationship with our customers,” said Martin. But Martin noted that while the NSA says the emails were made to look as if they came from VR Systems, they were sent from a phony email address  —   vr. elections@gmail. com. He said his company does not use Gmail and never sends its customers documents in the form of email attachments. He added that no elections vendor would send customers software updates once voting had begun, which in this case it had. ”That’s why I believe most of our customers knew immediately that this was bogus,” said Martin. The company was alerted to the fake emails by one of its customers, and Martin said it immediately warned its other customers. So far, there is no evidence that any of the recipients opened the attachments or had their systems infected with the malicious software. Still, cybersecurity experts say the attempted attacks are a clear sign of Russian interest in interfering with U. S. elections  —   either by manipulating votes or causing chaos at the polls. Some have warned that vendors might be exploited to gain access to local or state voting systems. In this case, the NSA report concluded that the purpose of the malicious software was ”to establish persistent access or survey the victim for items of interest to the threat actors.” While last year’s attacks appeared to only involve voter registration systems, some experts say such systems can be used as a gateway to actual voting machines. The Senate and House intelligence committees will explore Russia’s efforts to interfere in U. S. elections last year  —   and how to prevent future attacks  —   at two hearings on Wednesday. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson will appear before the House committee. The Senate panel will hear from current U. S. intelligence officials and state election experts."
"As new reports emerge about   attempts to hack state and local election systems, U. S. officials are increasingly worried about how vulnerable American elections really are. While the officials say they see no evidence that any votes were tampered with, no one knows for sure. Voters were assured repeatedly last year that foreign hackers couldn’t manipulate votes because, with few exceptions, voting machines are not connected to the Internet. ”So how do you hack something in cyberspace, when it’s not in cyberspace?” Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler said shortly before the 2016 election. But even if most voting machines aren’t connected to the Internet, says cybersecurity expert Jeremy Epstein, ”they are connected to something that’s connected to something that’s connected to the Internet.” A recently leaked National Security Agency report on Russian hacking attempts has heightened concerns. According to the report, Russian intelligence services broke into an election software vendor’s computer system and used the information it gained to send 122 election officials fake emails infected with malicious software. Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that Russia might have attempted to hack into election systems in up to 39 states. While it’s unclear if any of the recipients took the bait in the email attack, University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman says it’s just the kind of phishing campaign someone would launch if they wanted to manipulate votes. ”That’s because before every election, the voting machines have to be programmed with the design of the ballots  —   what are the races, who are the candidates,” says Halderman. He notes that the programming is usually done on a computer in a central election office or by an outside vendor. The ballot program is then installed on individual voting machines with a removable memory card. ”So as a remote attacker, I can target an election management system, one of these ballot programming computers. If I can infect it with malicious software, I can have that malicious software spread to the individual machines on the memory cards, and then change votes on Election Day,” says Halderman. There’s absolutely no evidence any of this happened in last year’s election. But Halderman notes that some, or all, electronic voting machines in 14 states have no paper ballot backups that can be checked to make sure the electronic results are correct. State and local election officials insist such an attack would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, because they’ve imposed tight security measures  —   including restrictions on who has access to voting equipment and repeated checks to make sure machines are working properly. Still, Connecticut Election Director Peggy Reeves told a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel on Monday that many local election officials are   to handle cybersecurity threats. ”Many of our towns actually have no local IT support,” she said. ”Seriously, they don’t have an IT director in their town. They might have a consultant that they call on if they have an issue. So they look to us, but we’re a pretty small division.” Reeves said the best protection against hackers is probably the fact that the nation’s voting system is so decentralized, with different processes and equipment used in thousands of different locations. Larry Norden, an election technology expert with the Brennan Center, agrees, but he’s worried that hackers were laying the groundwork for more serious attacks when they probed voter registration databases, as Russia is accused of doing. ”This is a real threat,” says Norden. ”It’s not going away, and if anything, foreign adversaries, even people at home, might be emboldened to do this more going forward. And to me it is a real call that we have to do more as soon as possible to secure these systems.” He and computer security experts, such as Halderman, think the best solution is to make sure all voting machines have paper records to back up the electronic results. They say states should also conduct audits after every election to make sure the electronic results match the paper ones. About half the states already do some audits, but Norden says most are inadequate."
"There was a moment last week in Moscow when I had occasion to wonder if I was being surveilled. ”They’ll be tracking you from the moment you land,” my CIA sources back in Washington had warned, as I prepared for a reporting trip to Russia. ”For God’s sake, don’t log on to your regular email accounts from there.” I’ve reported from Russia before. I’m careful. But one evening, typing away in NPR’s Moscow bureau, the cursor began to jump around on its own. Words moved. I raised my hands from the keyboard and watched in wonder as the screen went black. Several minutes of panicked cursing later, and after plugging into a different power source, my computer revived. All seemed well. It wasn’t until two days later that I noticed one document was scrambled. Words were missing or jumbled out of order. It was a document containing names and contact information for intelligence officials whom I’d asked for interviews. Russian hackers? Glitch on my hard drive? Who knows? Russia has a way of doing that to you. Of messing with your head, until you’re no longer sure if you really are being monitored or you’ve jumped off the deep end into a pool of paranoia. The strangest episode on this particular Russia trip came in the form of a note responding to an interview request I had made for the    of RT, the   news channel funded by the Russian government. RT’s critics accuse it of being a mouthpiece for the Kremlin RT denies this. I’ve requested thousands of interviews in my two decades as a journalist. Sometimes people say yes sometimes they say no. Fair enough. But I’ve never received a response quite like this one, which hit my inbox on June 7: Dear Mary Louise Kelly, Thank you for your request to meet. We have been informed, via our red phone straight to the Kremlin, that the officers who have tracked you since you landed sense that your mind is already   on this issue, and so meeting to discuss the baseless accusations made against RT would be fruitless. We politely refer you to the man in the   Volga parked outside your hotel for further explanation. Best regards, RT Press Office, Seriously? After my NPR colleagues and I landed back in the U. S. we wrote to ask what prompted the note. The RT press officer who had sent it referred us to RT’s head of communications, Anna Belkina. We wrote to her, too. I asked: Was there a specific report of mine that you object to? Is it customary for RT to decline interview requests in this way? She has yet to reply. I kept my eyes peeled, but to my disappointment, I spotted precisely zero   men lurking behind the wheel of a Volga, once the favorite vehicle of Soviet apparatchiks. But here’s the twist: NPR actually landed an interview with the    of RT. My colleague David Greene sat down with Margarita Simonyan at her office at RT headquarters the day after I received that note. They talked for nearly an hour. ”She was lovely,” David told me afterward. So was the note a joke? Was it a threat? Or something in between: a little hint of both mischief and menace, just to remind you that someone might be watching? You tell me. Or you could ask the guy parked outside. You know, the one in the   Volga."
"At the wine tasting room of Taylors Wines in Sydney, Australia, bottles are uncorked, poured, swished, sniffed and sipped. There’s a lot for employees to toast this year. ”The Australian wine sector is growing at a fast rate,” says Mitchell Taylor, the winery’s managing director. ”And what is exciting is the top level, about 20 to 30 dollars a bottle and above, that segment is growing at 53 percent.” That’s thanks, in part, to China. Five years ago, the biggest importers of Australian wines were the U. K. and the U. S. Now that title is held solely by China, and Australia’s exports of wine there are growing at 40 percent per year. In the past year alone, Chinese investment in Australia’s overall agricultural sector has skyrocketed threefold, from $300 million to $1 billion  —   an unprecedented investment boom. ”We’re very excited about this agricultural boom that is starting to happen now, not only in the wine sector, but in so many agricultural industries,” says Taylor. ”And I really believe it’s due to having that access of being on the same time zone as China, and being able to provide that clean, green, positive image that Australia presents.” And for Chinese companies, this presents a way to feed the world’s largest and   consumer class. ”Chinese investors want a piece of that action,” says James Laurenceson, economist at University of Technology Sydney. Last year, Chinese   bought up to a quarter of the new housing stock in New South Wales. In the past few years, Chinese companies have either purchased outright or bought significant shares of the Australian ports of Darwin, Melbourne and Newcastle. It’s the same story for agriculture, says Laurenceson. ”I mean, they’re the ones who can see it most clearly, right?” he asks from his office above Sydney. ”They’re seeing Australian wine to China going up by 40 percent last year, dairy products, everything. So they see profit opportunities. And at the same time, rural Australia has this chronic shortage of capital.” And that’s why China has replaced the United States as the   foreign owner of agricultural land in Australia. (The U. K. is No. 1.) Two years ago, Dakang, a private Chinese agricultural company, offered to buy Australia’s largest cattle ranch. The Kidman ranch makes up 2 percent of Australia’s farmland  —   it’s the size of South Carolina. ”The original Chinese bid was 100 percent of Kidman,” says Laurnceson. ”It got rejected. The treasurer said it was against the national interest. There was another deal, 80 percent, that also got knocked back  —   still not in the national interest.” Public opposition was strong to a Chinese owner of such a big chunk of Australia. A poll taken by Australia’s Lowy institute showed 80 percent of Australians surveyed oppose foreign investors buying Australian land. In the end, the Australian government approved the deal only when Dakang knocked down its offer to a third of the ranch. But the Kidman deal hasn’t slowed Chinese investment in Australia’s farmland. University of Sydney professor of Chinese business management Hans Hendrischke says it’s only changed the way Chinese investors do business down under. ”The Chinese investors will essentially have to bundle properties and assets to get the volume,” explains Hendrischke. ”There are all these stories about the Australian vineyard, where Chinese buyers come up and say, ’Let’s take the annual harvest and put in the container. Off they go.’ ” Hendreischke says this trend will speed up the inevitable: the buying up of 135, 000 family farms, and their transformation into   corporate farms, many of which will be devoted to feeding the world’s largest consumer class."
"The   Ford Focus will be built in China and exported for sale in the U. S. Ford Motor Co. said Tuesday, abandoning a plan to build the small car in Mexico. Production of the new car is scheduled to begin in 2019. Ford says the move will save it $1 billion in investment costs and will make it ”a more operationally fit company.” It also promises that ”no U. S. hourly employees will be out of a job” because of the move to China. The move is not likely to please the White House, as the topics of manufacturing jobs and the location of auto companies’ plants have been recurring themes during the first months of the Trump administration. Back in January,   Trump tweeted, ”Car companies and others, if they want to do business in our country, have to start making things here again. WIN!” When Ford announced a $1. 2 billion investment in three of its Michigan facilities in March, the president celebrated by tweeting, ”Car companies coming back to U. S. JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!” Ford is coming off a record year in China, having sold 1. 27 million vehicles there in 2016  —   a 14 percent gain over 2015. That figure includes vehicles made in China by Ford’s joint ventures, as well as Ford and Lincoln imports. When it opened its sixth assembly plant in China back in 2015, Ford said it could build 1. 4 million vehicles a year in the country. For Mexico, this is the second dramatic shift from Ford in 2017. The new Focus originally was to be built in the central state of San Luis Potosi, but the company canceled construction of a $1. 6 billion plant there in January. Plans then called for building the vehicle at an existing facility in Hermosillo in the northwestern state of Sonora  —   but the company nixed that plan on Tuesday. The new development prompted the Mexican business journal El Financiero to recount ”the sad story of Ford Focus and Mexico,” with sections titled ”The Illusion,” ”The Drama” and ”The Outcome.” Ford’s operations in Mexico have been a talking point for Trump since last year’s campaign. ”Trump criticized Ford during the campaign for its decision to move   production from Michigan to Mexico,” NPR’s Sonari Glinton reported last November. ”Trump suggested he might impose tariffs on Ford cars assembled in Mexico.” After the November election, Trump took credit for Ford’s decision to keep a production plant for the Lincoln MKC in Louisville, Ky. instead of Mexico  —   but the carmaker clarified that it had never planned to close the Kentucky plant. Ford executives have said that while it can make money off of SUVs built in the U. S. it needs to produce small cars in other countries to keep their sticker prices low enough to compete. Back in November, Ford’s   Mark Fields said the company would move forward with a plan to build the Focus in Mexico. But under new CEO Jim Hackett, that plan has changed again. When Fords shifts production of the Focus overseas after   it will also convert its Michigan plant to produce the Ranger pickup truck in late 2018 and the Bronco midsize SUV in 2020."
"In recent years, a small but growing number of medical practices embraced a buffet approach to primary care, offering patients unlimited services for a modest flat fee  —   say, $50 to $150 per month  —   instead of billing them a la carte for every office visit and test. But a pioneer in the field  —     Qliance  —   shut its public clinics as of June 15, and some health care analysts are questioning whether the approach to medical care is valid and viable. This style of medical practice is called ”direct primary care,” and many doctors and patients say they like the arrangement. Typically, these physicians don’t accept insurance  —   which frees the doctors from having to get preapprovals from insurers on treatment and lets them skip the paperwork involved in insurance claims. Doctors say that allows them more time and energy for their patients. Meanwhile, patients say they like being able to consult with their doctor or a nurse practitioner as often as they need to, at a relatively low cost. (Some employers buy the service for their workers.) Patients who are signed up for the plan still need to carry a regular insurance plan (typically a   policy) to cover hospitalizations, consultations with specialists and other services. In theory, the result should be better health for patients and lower health care costs overall. But some who analyze the use of health care are concerned that the approach encourages the ”worried well” to get more care than they need. They describe unlimited primary care as a blunt instrument that doesn’t necessarily improve the odds that patients will get   services that improve their health. Others argue it’s important to find a way to provide   primary care within the health insurance context, not outside it. Although only a sliver of medical practices operate this way, the number is on the rise, says Shawn Martin, a senior vice president at the American Academy of Family Physicians. He puts the figure at about 3 percent. Qliance, founded in 2007, was an early leader in this type of care. With startup funding from   investors Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, the company was serving 35, 000 patients at several clinics in the Seattle area by 2015. Those patients included individuals, workers at large companies like Expedia and Comcast, and Medicaid patients through a contract with the state’s Medicaid insurer. In a 2015 press release, Qliance said medical claims for its patients were 20 percent lower than those of other patients because, among other things, Qliance members went to the emergency room less often, were hospitalized less frequently and saw fewer specialists. By early 2017, though, Qliance was faltering. The company had lost some of the big employers, and its patient base had shrunk to 13, 000. Last week, it closed the last of its private clinics, though its CEO, Dr. Erika Bliss, will continue to operate one site that provides occupational health services for Seattle firefighters. In general, Bliss says, the market is reluctant to pay what is required for primary care to flourish. In some cases, she says, payers were resistant to rewarding Qliance even when it exceeded its targets for quality and savings. ”The bottom line is it’s not for free,” Bliss says.  The closure took January Gens, a    Seattle resident, by surprise. A Qliance patient for a couple of years, Gens had worked with her primary care doctor to manage crippling pain from endometriosis. The $79 monthly fee was worth every penny, she thought. She had been able to reduce the dosage of some of her medications and was awaiting a referral to start physical therapy when she learned that Qliance was shutting down. Now she’s not sure what she’ll do. ”I had felt very lucky to have found Qliance, to know I had a doctor and could always be seen when needed without causing more damage to the family budget,” Gens says. ”Now it’s just gone.” Patients who have chronic conditions that need ongoing management may benefit from this sort of   program, says Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, an internist who directs the University of Michigan’s Center for   Insurance Design. But for people who are generally healthy and without symptoms that need to be diagnosed, ”unlimited primary care is no guarantee that the services that are provided will improve the health of those people,” he says. As an example, Fendrick notes that the annual checkup  —   one of the most popular primary care services  —   isn’t clinically helpful for most people, according to the Choosing Wisely initiative, a program of the American Board of Internal Medicine  Foundation that identifies overused and unnecessary medical services. An examination of research related to direct primary care practices, published in the   2015 issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, found that they charged patients an average $77. 38 per month. In contrast, ”concierge” or ”boutique” medical practices  —   which are similar to ”direct primary care” programs, but charge more  —   typically have higher fees for patients  —   averaging $182. 76, the study found  —   and they generally also bill insurers for their services. However, there was a paucity of data related to the quality of care provided by these practices, the study found. Some analysts say that while they’re sympathetic to doctors’ frustration with insurance companies’ intrusion into patient care and the billing hassles that go along with that, the answer isn’t to turn their backs on insurance. ”I think, absolutely, this type of care could be done inside insurance,” says Robert Berenson, a fellow at the Urban Institute who specializes in health care delivery. ”But it means we have to learn how to pay within the system for the things that doctors should be doing  —   and are doing  —   in direct primary care.” As things stand now, the   model can create difficulties for some patients. Take the situation in which someone in this sort of practice goes to his primary care provider for an earache, but antibiotics don’t work and he needs to be referred to an ear, nose and throat specialist. That patient, who likely has a   insurance policy to cover care that goes beyond the primary practitioner’s purview, will probably be on the hook financially for the entire cost of medical services provided by the specialist  —   rather than insurance paying a share. Qliance’s Bliss scoffs at the idea that patients may get stuck paying more out of pocket if they have direct primary care. Most people these days have   health plans, she says. ”The reality is that, unless you have Medicaid, you are on the hook no matter what.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow Michelle Andrews on Twitter @mandrews110."
"Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle has always been more comfortable with machines than people. It’s a dynamic he’s   and even romanticized, in his work, with tales of misfit characters and their troubled relationships with everything from robots to appliances. Perhaps it’s because mechanical friendships don’t require much of an emotional investment  —   they’re not built on a lot of open and earnest discussions. Lytle has always been a private and often guarded person who finds comfort knowing he never has to listen to a microwave talk about its feelings or, more importantly, talk about his own. ”I kind of have this unhealthy fondness for inanimate objects,” says Lytle. ”I find myself talking to a frying pan. Or, like, I found this rock in Grand Junction, Colorado and I brought it with me [on a] road trip and I’ve gotten really close to this rock. And, like, certain pens and writing utensils and my gear.” Grandaddy takes this kind of kinship to absurdist levels in a new video for the song ”Brush With The Wild,” from the band’s latest album Last Place on 30th Century   Columbia Records. After his girlfriend leaves him, a dejected loner  —   played with perfect deadpan by actor Jonah Ray  —   finds that his only true friend in life is an office chair. Together they go on an epic journey to reclaim lost love. It doesn’t end well. ”I had to be convinced it was okay to tell someone that I loved them or to just let my guard down,” says Lytle, reflecting on how he came to write the song. ”And then, once I did, it was almost like this wild, primal thing. But it only comes in little flashes. It’s like a fish swimming through the river and every now and then it’ll turn and the light will flash off its skin and you get a glimpse of it, then it’s gone. Lightning is like that. But you get to experience it very briefly. [So] I was thinking how sad and bummed out I was finding the relationship being done [but] at least I got to experience that. I got to brush up against it.” Director Aaron Beckum brings this experience to life with a mix of   visuals and quirky design that’s both touching and playful. ”We got especially lucky with Jonah Ray and Deanna Rooney [the couple in the video],” says Beckum. ”The fact that they are a   happily married couple made the breakup elements of the story all the more real and sad. Actually this video might be the saddest thing I’ve ever made. But it’s also hilarious. .. but also sad. Like real life.” Grandaddy’s video for ”Brush With The Wild” is the first thing the band has felt like it could share since bassist Kevin Garcia died suddenly on May 2 after suffering a stroke. He was just 41 years old. Grandaddy remains on indefinite hiatus, its previously scheduled tour canceled. At this point, Lytle says it’s anybody’s guess as to when, if ever, the band gets to work again or hits the road. But in an early morning phone call from his home in Modesto, Calif. Lytle reflected on the past few weeks and where Grandaddy goes from here. ”All of us were just in shock. You know, he was doing so well. He had a big scare in March and was in and out of the hospital, but he got the green light from the doctor to go on tour. He was really cleaning up his act, just eating well and losing weight and really doing well. This whole second bout just came out of nowhere and it all happened so fast. It was really a terrible surprise.” ”It was pretty obvious we were going to cancel everything that was scheduled for the immediate future. We had three sets of tours on the horizon. I sat down with [drummer] Aaron [Burtch] and [keyboardist] Tim [Dryden] and we had a real sober conversation. And what I was attempting to do was, ’We may think we’re capable of doing this, but I really want you to try to imagine what it’s going to be like rehearsing and, even if we get to that point, playing these shows without [Kevin]. I just want you to try to imagine that. Don’t think about money. Don’t think about the fact that we’re obligated to go through with these shows.’ And when it was all said and done we were just like, ’No, we’re just going to shut it all down.’ I just wanted to deal with a good friend who’d passed away. There’s the Grandaddy thing and obligations and I thought, ’No, no, no. I don’t want that anywhere near it.’ So it made the most sense to shut it down and see what time does.” ”We were sounding pretty good. I think I was really feeling the energy. At some point I’d done away with all my hesitation and all my reluctance [to get the band back together] and I was thinking, ’Alright, let’s do this!’ I mean I moved back to f****** Modesto, [California] for that matter. If a year ago you’d told me I’d be moving back to Modesto, I would have had a pretty good laugh. But I was committed to this and it was going well. And I was excited. So in addition to how tragic the whole thing was, I was like, ’Uh, alright. Now what?’ It was [going to be] my life plan for the next year. But that’s pretty inconsequential to the whole story.” ”I keep getting these big, sweeping waves of like the wind has gone out of my sails. I don’t even want to pick up the guitar. Like, I just went on this 3, 000 mile driving road trip by myself. I went to Nevada, Utah and Colorado. My primary focus was I was just going to do some trail running and climbing and hiking and mountain biking. I had my truck all loaded up. I kind of figure things out when I travel long distances, and I could barely listen to the radio. I was just driving. Just kind of on autopilot. I took a guitar with me but didn’t play it once. I was gone for two weeks and the thing sat in the back of my truck, I didn’t touch it once. I just feel like something’s getting sorted out on another level. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not about me hunkering down and making any decisions. I still feel like I’m in that mode. I’m not forcing anything.”"
"This amazing kid got to enjoy 19 awesome years on this Planet. What he left behind is wondtacular. See why we have an absolutely ridiculous standard of beauty in just 37 seconds. A boy makes   comments in front of an American soldier. The soldier’s reply: priceless. You know it well. The Upworthy headline. That model of building curiosity by keeping the true topic of a story hidden until you click. You may hate them. But they work. By the end of 2013, at least two news outlets said Upworthy was the   media site of all time. At its peak, the site, which is founded on a mission of promoting viral and uplifting content, was reaching close to 90 million people a month. Seemingly overnight, the newish company had changed the way the world wrote headlines, what it meant to create viral content and what kinds of expectations people bring to what they’re clicking. But around November 2013, everything changed. Facebook began to introduce a number of alterations to the algorithm that controls your news feed on the site. Those changes threw Upworthy off a cliff. Upworthy told NPR that according its internal numbers and Google Analytics, in December 2013, its unique monthly website visitors dropped to 68 million from a high of 87 million. The month after that, they fell to 49 million. By November 2014, the site’s reach plummeted to about 20 million, under a quarter of the traffic Upworthy experienced at its peak. Upworthy CEO Eli Pariser speaks of the precipitous drop in muted tones. He never says he is mad at Facebook. That would be like being mad at the weather, he says. Pariser never says he thought about killing his website. And in an interview with NPR, he never spoke of having a big freakout moment when things started to come crashing down. ”The roller coaster tide that is a startup is real,” Pariser said. And he said that part of what kept Upworthy going (yes, the website still exists yes, it is still making content) was its mission ”of getting attention for important stories and activating and unlocking human potential.” He says the company was always about more than ”just hitting some numbers.” Despite all the criticism, most Upworthy content is actually pretty positive. And that’s by design. But Pariser also readily admitted that at least some of what Upworthy did was clickbait. ”Were there particular Upworthy headlines that struck some people the wrong way?” he said. ”Totally. Did some of them strike me the wrong way? Sometimes.” He pointed out one headline that even he admitted was bad and misleading: ”His first 4 sentences are interesting. The 5th blew my mind. And made me a little sick.” That’s actually a headline for a video about America’s health care system, but you’d never know from that headline. Pariser said he’d score the headline a three on a scale of one to 10 (10 being the best). But then he quickly changed his mind. He said it really deserves a score of two. Facebook declined an interview request from NPR, but engineers there have spoken before about why Facebook’s algorithm started to hurt headlines and stories like Upworthy’s. In a recent New York Times Magazine piece, several engineers said they could see that people clicked on clickbaity headlines like Upworthy’s a lot, but didn’t stay on such sites for a long time after they clicked. And lots of stories that got lots of clicks didn’t get lots of shares, another sign to engineers that the content wasn’t valuable to Facebook users. Facebook determined that such stories were clicky, but not sticky. In a statement to NPR, a Facebook spokesperson said, ”It’s no secret there have been several improvements to News Feed in recent years. There has been clear communication about those updates, and why the community of people on Facebook wanted them  —   particularly in the instance of reducing clickbait and sensationalism.” That spokesperson also said Facebook stands by the reporting in The New York Times about why Upworthy clicks suffered. (Pariser disagreed. He said a big part of why content like Upworthy’s started to decline in News Feed is because Facebook wanted to push its own content instead of someone else’s.) Whatever the case, how do you bounce back after such a hit? Slowly  —   and with a little help. After the big dips in traffic, Upworthy hired a new chief story officer, Amy O’Leary. She said the company has pivoted a bit, focusing more on original reporting and hiring more writers. And yes, O’Leary said they’ve turned down the headlines. ”If a headline maybe is saying, this story will definitely make you cry,” she said, ”one of the rules I have is I go back to the writer every time and say: ’Well, did this story definitely make you cry? Did you actually shed tears at your desk when you were working on this?’ ” Upworthy also merged with GOOD Worldwide Inc. which describes itself as a ”global media brand and social impact company.” And strangely enough, Upworthy has also partnered with Facebook to make original video content for the social network. (Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams.) Traffic to the site still sits around 20 million unique users a month, still less than a quarter of the peak, but Upworthy says that through Facebook’s News Feed, about 200 million people are reached by video   article content from Upworthy every month. It seems likely that Upworthy will survive, but its story offers lessons about another kind of viral content that seems to have taken over Facebook: fake news. While Upworthy’s content and the stuff we’ve come to know as ”fake news” are very different, they both have  —   or at least had  —   one thing in common: sensational headlines. ”They really optimized this technique of manipulating people through headlines to coming to see that they might not want to see otherwise,” said Jen Golbeck, a computer scientist who studies social networks at the University of Maryland. ”You can blame them for opening that Pandora’s box but still feel bad that they’ve lost a lot of their ability to do something that I think is a positive contribution to what we see on the Web and social media.” Golbeck says the story of Upworthy also shows just how dangerous it can be for media companies to rely on Facebook for traffic. ”It’s like a devil’s bargain  —   not to cast Facebook as a devil, necessarily,” she said. There’s another takeaway: It shows just how averse Facebook is to making any decisions around content that seem purely editorial. Remember, Upworthy was punished because of what the data said, not because Facebook said it was tired of clickbait and didn’t like that kind of content. ”Facebook has wanted to avoid any connection with being editorial,” says Kurt Wagner, a senior editor at the tech blog Recode. ”They did not want users to think that Facebook is deciding what you read and what you don’t read.” Instead Facebook said it was you that decided, with your clicks and shares, or the lack thereof. Upworthy’s story is ultimately a tale of a Web redemption. It’s also a reminder to those who might want our news feed to look a little different. Don’t wait on Facebook to change. Facebook is waiting on you."
"On his first day in the seventh grade, Sherman Alexie opened up his   math book and found his mother’s maiden name written in it. ”I was looking at a    math book,” he says  —   and that was the moment he knew that he needed to leave his home. Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. His mother was one of the few people who could still speak the native language, but she didn’t teach it to him. In his new memoir, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, he describes growing up surrounded by poverty, alcoholism and violence. ”I knew  —   because of my race, and my class, and rural geography . .. all these forces that crush all sorts of American kids, crush their hopes and dreams  —   I knew I had no chance unless I left and went to a better school,” he says. The reservation school, Alexie explains, not only wasn’t preparing him for college it wasn’t even preparing him to think about college. Eventually, he found his way to college and became an   writer. He received the    Award for his short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for The Absolutely True Diary of a   Indian. Alexie says he came of age as a writer during a ”golden era” of Native American literature. He remembers a very active period of publishing for dozens of Native American writers all across the country. More recently though, he’s seen a ”fallow period.” ”There was more going on in Native American literature in 1991 than there is now,” he says. ”I kept making the joke about being ’Indian du jour, and it’s been a very long day.’ ” He’s hoping that, with the emergence of new writers, some of whom he’s taught and mentored, the sun is setting on that very long day. ”I really hope that like 10 or 12 Native writers, fiction writers,   writers, really launch into the national consciousness . ..” he says. ”So I don’t have to answer all the questions, so I don’t have to get invited to all the conferences. Share the burden of being a public figure Indian! Come on, people! Hurry up, finish your books!” On the legacy of a very difficult childhood, I’ve been sober now for 26 years, but I am   I do have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A recent study from Johns Hopkins studying reservations found that Indian children on reservations have the same rate of PTSD as combat veterans. So I imagine if they did that study in poor white communities or other poor minority communities they’d find the same sort of numbers. On being bullied as a kid  When you grow up in a warrior culture, an extremely masculine culture, tears can be seen as a sign of weakness. . .. Any surrender, any conceding of anything can also be seen as a sign of weakness. I’ve always been a rather androgynous, emotional person, so my emotional state, my androgyny  —   I was more androgynous as a youth than now  —   but I think all of that combined to make me a target. It wasn’t just the influence of tribal cultures, it was the assimilation into fundamentalist Christianity, which is even more warrior culture, even more honor culture, and even more suspicious of difference. So I was getting bombarded not only by the more fundamentalist aspects of my tribe, but the more fundamentalist aspects of our assimilation into Christianity. So that was going on all around us, and, in fact, in second grade we had this   teacher who put us into stress positions as torture. On learning that his mother was conceived by rape, She told me that in my teen years as I was going to school off the reservation, as I was preparing for a life off the reservation, as I was preparing to become this person I am now. Looking back, I think it was my mother’s highly dysfunctional way to tell me, to warn me, about what a man can be . .. hoping that I would become a good man, a man who treated women with respect. A man who honored women and their power, and a man who would not become a criminal. I think it was her highly dysfunctional version of the sex talk. On the book’s title, taken from the Dusty Springfield song  My mom sang a lot and she was always singing the songs on the radio. . .. Music filled my childhood, as it does with a whole bunch of folks. So I looked at my birth year and I thought, ”What songs would my mother have been singing in my birth year?” I looked through the songs and I hit on Dusty Springfield’s song [”You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”] which of course I’ve heard, everybody’s heard, everybody knows. Somebody called that the most heartbreaking love song of all time, and I don’t disagree. . .. I mean, sitting here right now I can’t remember a specific instance of [my mother] saying ”I love you.” Nothing is coming to mind, and not from my father either. On being influenced by white medical professionals as a child, I had brain surgery when I was a kid, and I spent most of my first seven years of my life off the reservation, in and out of hospitals, for speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, so it ended up being as a toddler that my primary peer group was white, adult doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists, nuns, priests at the Catholic hospitals, so you become who you’re with. So in those early formative years, I was primarily influenced by all these   workaholic white people who had gone to college. So I was imprinted by white college graduates, I was like a little duckling following these white doctors and nurses who were wondering, ”What’s this strange feathered creature following me?” So at the time, I was being raised by my native family, of course, but I was being influenced by them, but I was also being influenced by white folks in a way that natives of my generation on my reservation did not receive then. I was being given so much kindness and care. I was being taken care of in a way by white folks that natives on my reservation of my generation were not. On the moment he woke up after a recent brain surgery, It’s been, I guess, 19 months since surgery, and whenever I even ponder that question, as I am pondering it now, I start to cry. Waking up after surgery is the greatest moment of my life. It made me realize despite all the trauma, despite all my past and current mental illnesses, despite any pain that I have, that my life as I’ve constructed, as it has been constructed around me and for me, is something amazing, and I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful to be an indigenous man married to an indigenous woman with indigenous children in   United States. I am happy to be here, despite everything. That feeling has made me a slightly different person. Radio producers Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner and Web producers Molly   and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"There is a certain kind of look I get when I tell people how much I love video games. It lies somewhere between ”You’re not serious” and ”Oh my God, you are serious.” And by ”people” giving me these looks, I mean adults of a certain age and outlook. Of course, given that I’m a    tenured professor, these ”people” are pretty much everyone I know (including my now adult children). So today, I want to speak to all of you ” ” and attempt to explain why you, too, should become a gamer. Basically, it comes down to robot dinosaurs. I am just about to finish an amazing game called Horizon: Zero Dawn. I’ve been in its world, working my way through its story, for the last six months. In this experience, I’ve encountered all the great things a great game has to offer. This includes, but is not exhausted by, fighting robot dinosaurs. Now wait. Just wait before you click away to that   analysis of President Trump’s most recent tweet. Give me a minute to explain. First of all, there are lots of different meanings for the term ”video game,” and many of these hold no interest for me. There are the ”platformers” like Mario Brothers, which are really just games. Their concept is simple and you basically do the same thing over and over again, which is fun if you’re into it. But I’m not. There are also the multiplayer first person shooter (FPS) kinds of games, where you ”spawn” into the game’s terrain (a ”map”) and then you fight against other real people playing the game. These are mostly, probably    in Korea or Kansas who are much, much better than you. That means you’ll probably spend a lot of time just dying. This is not the kind of game I want you to try either. See, the kind of game I want you to try is the one with a story  —   a good, long, intricate story. And that story should be set in a   and intricately imagined world. And just as important, that world should be brought to life through the eyes of an artist. That may mean a visual   that leaves your jaw permanently dropped, or it can be an impressionism that serves the story at subtler levels. And, yes, it will also be cool if there are robot dinosaurs. So Horizon: Zero Dawn is what’s called an RPG (role playing game). An RPG basically means you play as the central character in the game’s story. For Horizon: Zero Dawn, the story is a hybrid, lying somewhere between science fiction,   tale and sword and sandal drama. It takes place 1, 000 years after our civilization has fallen. This new world has been reclaimed by nature in the most beautiful, verdant way imaginable, except for one addition: robot dinosaurs (which, OK, might not really be robot dinosaurs but robot animals.) These machines, until recently, had been pretty docile. The main character  —   a young woman named Aloy  —   begins the story as an outcast in a primitive tribe but is given the task of venturing out into the world to find why ”the machines” (as they are called) have suddenly become dangerous. To answer that question, you have to follow Aloy’s journey by literally taking it on yourself. You will have decisions to make, battles to fight and discoveries to unveil. This is a lot like a great escapist novel you read on a long, lazy summer vacation  —   except in the game you get to be the protagonist. Now, ultimately, it’s this story that makes Horizon: Zero Dawn a great game. It’s always the story that matters most. Technology alone can’t leap over that hurdle. The story in Horizon: Zero Dawn is   with engaging characters you like or hate, and it slowly peals itself away in a manner that is both surprising and satisfying. But, on the other hand, if that were all there was to the game then it would be just a   novel. What makes this kind of video game worth your time is the immersion. That’s what makes it a new kind of experience reaching above the older narrative forms humanity has come up with. Horizon: Zero Dawn is what’s called an ”open world” game. That means that you can go pretty much anywhere in its extensive map. While you work your way through the story of Aloy and her fallen world, you can just stop and go off to explore anywhere you want. See those beautifully rendered mountains over there? Yeah, go climb them. There’s probably a giant robot   that will attack you. How about those islands on the other side of the lake? Wonder what’s over there? And did I mention the art? The world of Horizon: Zero Dawn is so beautiful to look at that sometimes you have to just stop climbing or running or fighting and just look. The game artists managed to take the most beautiful aspects of a rainy meadow or a mountain pass and turn them up to 12. RPGs may demand a good story to start, but the world you inhabit derives its felt quality from that world’s art and design. Now, I get it that you may not be interested in a game that includes fighting robot dinosaurs. That’s fine (sort of, I guess). There are other games with other kinds of stories. Some are heavy on investigation others have more fighting. Choose what you like. The point is this: I spent six months slowly working my way around Aloy’s world and her story and, in the end, the whole experience was delightful and exciting and engaging. But more than anything, it was a waste of time. That might seem like a strange recommendation, but what I really mean is that it was a delicious waste of time. We live in a world of endless pressing concerns with so many competing avenues of being productive. A good game makes no demands other than the   pleasures of great story combined with the very modern possibilities of immersion. And none of it matters except the enjoyment of the doing. That, I would argue, has real value. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"In 1980, soon after Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, Zubair Popal fled the country with his wife, Shamim, two young sons and infant daughter. ”There was no hope for me to stay,” he recalls. ”I thought about the future of my kids. And in those days when the Soviet Union went to a country and invaded that country, they never left.” Eventually, the Popals landed in America and rebuilt their lives. Today, the family owns several successful restaurants in Washington, D. C. including the acclaimed Lapis, which serves Afghan cuisine. On a recent evening, they opened up the restaurant to host a free dinner welcoming refugees in their city. ”We came here exactly like these people  —   we had no place to stay,” Zubair Popal recalls. He chokes up and takes a long pause before adding, ”It reminds me of the days we came . .. I know for these people it’s very hard, very hard.” The dinner was part of Refugees Welcome, a campaign that encourages locals across the U. S. to host similar meals for refugees in their community  —   and to break barriers by breaking bread together. ”The intention is to really humanize the refugee issue and to say, let’s meet each other as neighbors. Let’s talk about ways that we’re similar rather than ways that we’re different,” says Amy Benziger, the U. S. lead organizer for the dinners, which were launched in February. The campaign is sponsored by UNICEF, among other partners. The first dinner was held just a few weeks after President Trump signed an executive order barring travelers from several   nations and new refugees from entering America. That ban has since been blocked by courts, but the dinner campaign is still going: More than 30 such events have been held so far in the U. S. and they’re now expanding into Canada and Europe, Benziger says. About 40 people showed up for this D. C. dinner, which was organized by four local female entrepreneurs in collaboration with the Popal family. ”I’ve been living in Washington for 12 years, and I’m a recent U. S. citizen,” says Kalsoom Lakhani, one of the night’s organizers and the founder and CEO of Invest2Innovate, which funds entrepreneurs in developing nations. ”I’ve been conflicted and angry about the recent news about the travel ban and what that meant for how people that were coming into this country felt  —   especially as a new American citizen,” she says. Guests and hosts mingled for a while before sitting down at one long dining table set up in an intimate,   space in the lower level of the restaurant. Main courses were served family style  —   the better to encourage conversation while asking your seat mate to pass the challow, a   Afghan rice dish seasoned with cumin. Because the dinner took place during the   Ramadan holiday, it was presented as an iftar  —   the meal Muslims eat to break the fast each night. That meant no alcohol on the menu. Instead, the hosts served ” ” and Afghan fare including a mint yogurt drink called doogh and murgh qorma, an onion and   chicken braise traditionally eaten during Ramadan in Afghanistan. Ten refugees showed up for the Lapis dinner. They included several young men from Afghanistan and Beza, a journalist who fled Ethiopia last year after being tortured and imprisoned. She asked us not to use her full name to avoid endangering her family still in Ethiopia. ”I’m not afraid here anymore,” she says of her new life in D. C. ”I feel safe. There’s a huge Ethiopian community here. I feel like home.” Also present was Manyang Reath Kher, who arrived in the U. S. more than a decade ago as a teenager. He was one of thousands of children, known as the Lost Boys of Sudan, who were orphaned by that country’s   civil war. ”It’s real hard ’cause you don’t know anyone here,” he recalls of his arrival. ”You’re like, where’s my family? First of all, you don’t know language. You don’t know anyone. It’s also cold.” But now, he laughs, ”I’m good.” And he’s doing good, too: He’s the founder of Humans Helping Sudan, a nonprofit that runs several    programs that teach refugees in Ethiopia and Sudan how to fish and farm and creates employment opportunities there. Creating opportunities is also one of the goals of this dinner, says Benziger. ”We’ve had amazing outcomes from dinners like this that have happened organically. Jobs have been created, friendships have been made.” She says a connection made at a New York City dinner helped a refugee from Yemen win a scholarship. And two people who met at an event  —   one of whom was a refugee  —   are working to launch a   restaurant. ”For tonight, I just want to see people happy, starting to connect, feeling comfortable in their skin and their community,” Benziger says. As for Zubair Popal, he had a simple message for the refugees present  —   one that was rooted in his own experience: ”Things will be OK. They will be OK.” Maria Godoy is a senior editor with NPR and host of The Salt. She’s on Twitter @mgodoyh."
"The U. S. Supreme Court, forging its way to the end of the current term, unloaded a raft of important decisions Monday, with many more expected in the days to come. At the same time, the court agreed to hear a case next term that will test whether there is a constitutional limit to how much partisanship can be used to draw legislative maps. Among Monday’s decisions were these: Of all the court’s actions, the most   was its announcement that it will hear a constitutional challenge to partisan gerrymandering next term. Both major political parties have long sought to gain partisan advantage when drawing state legislative and congressional district lines after each decennial census. But with the advent of computers and the growth of   dominance in many states, the practice has grown exponentially. Republicans have more to lose in next term’s case because they control state legislatures in many more states than the Democrats do, and they stand to maximize that advantage again after the 2020 census. The partisan gerrymander to be reviewed next term is in Wisconsin, where the state legislature and the governorship are controlled by Republicans. The result is that while Republicans won only a minority of the statewide vote  —   48. 6 percent  —   they captured a 60 of 99 seats in the state Assembly. A federal appeals court panel struck down the map as so lopsidedly partisan that it violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the law. The lower court ordered the state to draw new district lines in time for the 2018 election, but in a sign of how closely divided the Supreme Court is, it split   on Monday, ordering that map redrawing to be halted while the case is under review. The Supreme Court has for decades forbidden racial gerrymandering, but it has repeatedly shied away from addressing partisan gerrymandering. The last time it tackled this issue was in 2004 when it split five different ways, ultimately refusing to dive into the partisan gerrymander pool by a   vote. The fifth and decisive vote was cast by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who left the door open to revisiting the issue if a manageable test could be found for evaluating how much is too much partisanship. Now the court has walked through that open door, with Kennedy as the likely deciding vote once again."
"Young Pioneer Tours, the travel company that took Otto Warmbier on a fateful trip to North Korea, will no longer take U. S. citizens into North Korea. The company says the ”tragic outcome” of Warmbier’s trip  —   the American died after being jailed and had been in a coma  —   prompted the change. Based in China, the touring company promises ”adventure holidays” trips like the one Warmbier took commonly include   travel from Beijing, with several guides for groups of up to 24 tourists. ”There had not been any previous detainment in North Korea that has ended with such tragic finality and we have been struggling to process the result,” Young Pioneer Tours said in a statement on its website. ”Now, the assessment of risk for Americans visiting North Korea has become too high.” Warmbier, 22, was a student at the University of Virginia when he was arrested in Pyongyang in early January 2016, accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster from an employee area of his hotel. Within weeks, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and hard labor. His release some 17 months later came as a surprise, particularly when it was revealed that he was in a coma. North Korean authorities said Warmbier fell into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill. But after his return home to Ohio last week, doctors said they suspected his condition had been caused by cardiopulmonary arrest. Last week, Warmbier’s father, Fred Warmbier, said his son had been ”lured” into traveling to North Korea by Young Pioneer Tours and that the company had promised its customers were never detained. Instead, Warmbier said, the company helped his son become ”fodder” for the isolated regime. In the wake of Warmbier’s detention and death, the Young Pioneer Tour company has updated is ”North Korea FAQ” page, starting with its top question: ”How safe is it?” Weeks before Warmbier took his trip, the travel company’s response to that question began (according to a Web archive) ”Extremely safe! Despite what you may hear, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit.” It now begins: ”Despite what you may hear, for most nationalities, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit provided you follow the laws as provided by our documentation and   briefings.” And where a   answer had previously sufficed, the reply is now three paragraphs. The move to stop taking Americans to North Korea comes after the country had relaxed some of its travel restrictions in recent years  —   including granting tourist visas to Americans in 2010, Young Pioneer Tours says. But in May, the U. S. State Department reiterated its warnings against traveling there, saying at least 16 Americans had been detained in North Korea in the past 10 years. As NPR’s Michele Kelemen reported last week, U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said his agency is considering a travel visa restriction to North Korea but that would stop short of a full travel ban, which would require action by Congress."
"Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday, in what Poroshenko had earlier described as part of a ”substantial visit” and the White House called a ” .” Ukraine is concerned about what the Trump administration’s efforts to improve relations with Russia might mean for its own relationship with Washington. The White House didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for the Ukrainian leader  —   he dropped in to the Oval Office to see Trump following a meeting with Vice President Pence. Ahead of the meeting, Poroshenko had stressed on his Twitter account that ”it is important that President of Ukraine will meet with President of the US earlier than Putin.” Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to meet in Germany next month at the   Summit. During a brief joint appearance, both Poroshenko and Trump described meeting each other as a ”great honor,” and Trump said Ukraine is ”a place that we have all been very much involved in.” Poroshenko had earlier touted his meeting schedule with U. S. officials and stressed that ”there has never been such a substantial visit.” After talking with Trump, he said he was ”satisfied with the results of the negotiations,” and that they discussed military and technical cooperation, without elaborating. Earlier Tuesday, the U. S. Treasury announced sanctions against 21 Ukrainian separatists, entities and their supporters. They are ”part of an ongoing effort to hold those responsible for violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity accountable for their actions,” the Treasury said. It also designated 11 other individuals and entities tied to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and six individuals and entities linked to the Russian government over sanctions evasion. ”These designations will maintain pressure on Russia to work toward a diplomatic solution,” Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in the statement. ”This administration is committed to a diplomatic process that guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty, and there should be no sanctions relief until Russia meets its obligations under the Minsk agreements.” U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently raised questions about whether the U. S. is fully behind the Minsk agreements, which are intended to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Tillerson stated at a recent hearing in Congress that there may be other diplomatic options: ”So my caution is I wouldn’t want to have ourselves handcuffed to Minsk if it turns out the parties decide to settle this through different agreement.” Steven Pifer, a former U. S. ambassador to Ukraine, stressed in an interview with NPR that Minsk is, for now, the only deal on the table. And in his view, ”if the Russians wanted the fighting to stop, they could make most of it stop. That hasn’t happened in the two years since Minsk.” He says he sees the new sanctions as a ” ” for the Poroshenko visit. But he also sees them as a message to Congress, where lawmakers are trying to ramp up pressure and sanctions on Russia while the White House seeks more flexibility."
"Broken teeth are all too often a punchline in conversations about poor people in rural places. But for Heather Wallace, dental problems are anything but funny. ”Basically it’s just like a nerve pain. Your whole body locks up you have to stop for a second to try to breathe,” she said. ”And sometimes if it hurts bad enough, you might cry.” Wallace and her husband, James, are both in their 20s. In early June, they traveled a couple of hours from Knoxville, Tenn. to a free medical clinic in Chattanooga hosted by the nonprofit group Remote Area Medical. The Wallaces joined about 100 people camped out in their cars  —   and a few in tents  —   overnight to get a morning medical or dental visit. James Wallace earns about $9 an hour working in hotels, and he said Heather earns a little less. The job barely pays enough to cover groceries, he said, and doesn’t come with health insurance or other benefits like dental care. ”We don’t have it we can’t afford it, and we don’t make enough to be penalized at the end of the year so either which way it goes we don’t have the money to pay for it,” he said. Under the Affordable Care Act, millions more Americans now have insurance through online exchanges and Medicaid. But like the Wallaces, many still lack coverage, especially in states like Tennessee, where elected leaders declined to expand Medicaid. The Wallaces were camped out on a blanket outside Red Bank High School in Chattanooga on a Friday afternoon, the day before the clinic was set to open Saturday morning. They said they make too much money for Medicaid, and they looked into an ACA exchange plan but couldn’t afford the premiums. President Trump has promised to replace the ACA, also known as Obamacare, with something better. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates a plan passed by the House of Representatives would leave 23 million more Americans uninsured, and Senate Republicans have yet to reveal the details of their plan. Amid debates about health policy, RAM has for decades put on these clinics serving   people around the country. It now holds dozens each year. Founder and President Stan Brock said most patients lack dental or vision coverage, and those who have some kind of health insurance often can’t afford their copays and deductibles. ”That is something that we hear all the time  —   it’s costing me so much money before my insurance kicks in,” Brock said. Heather Wallace said Obamacare ”was not what they said it was gonna be,” and suggests that maybe the United States should move to a system like Canada’s, where everyone is covered by   government program. James Wallace agreed. ”Make it to where everybody can have health insurance, and they’d have more productive members of society and maybe drop the percentage of Americans on food stamps,” he said. But both say they have low expectations for any major changes from Washington. Neither voted in the 2016 election, though James Wallace said he likes the way Trump speaks his mind. Sabra Howard, 55, voted for Trump because she wanted change, and she hopes he can follow through on his campaign promises. ”I just want him to sit down and talk with, you know, the people smarter than me and come up with a good plan that will help everybody,” she said. Howard was among scores of people who slept in their cars overnight in the high school parking lots waiting to receive medical care. She lives just outside Chattanooga and has a few chronic health issues, but her most pressing concern is her teeth. Over the years, she said she prioritized her children’s dental care over her own. She has gradually lost all of her upper teeth and has learned not to smile so that people don’t notice. At the clinic, she received a teeth cleaning and met with a physician assistant to talk over her health issues and update her medication. ”I think I probably still [smile] every once in awhile, I’m sure, but intentionally? No. You take a picture, you don’t open your mouth all the way,” she said. Howard has also trained herself not to lisp when she talks on the phone for her    customer service job. She said she loves the work, but she doesn’t receive benefits because she is a temporary employee. Her dental problems have compounded her financial struggles she said she turned down an opportunity to sell insurance because of them. ”I felt like, you know, I’d be sitting there talking to a client, and next thing I know, they realize I don’t have teeth,” she said. ”And who wants to buy insurance from somebody that, you know, don’t have any teeth?” Howard has mixed feelings about government involvement in health care, and she worries about people taking advantage of benefits. But she said too many people are struggling to afford care. ”I don’t really think government should be all in it, but I think that a lot of people need someone to speak for them,” she said. Howard says she just wants to be able to take care of herself she’s trying get a position with benefits. Until then, she’s hoping to get dentures at another free clinic, on another day."
"The Republican effort to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has led to a standoff in the Senate. Senate Democrats on Monday night began using parliamentary maneuvers to slow Senate business as part of a coordinated protest against the GOP push to pass an Obamacare replacement bill. A small group of Republican senators has been working in private for weeks, shielding from public view the bill and the negotiations surrounding it. In a show of frustration with what they deem the GOP’s ”shameful” and ”secret” legislative process, Democrats on Monday also held the Senate floor with a series of    speeches. ”If Republicans are not going to allow debate on their bill on the floor or in committee, Democrats will make opportunities to debate,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking Monday on the Senate floor. ”And these are merely the first steps we’re prepared to take in order to shine a light on the shameful Trumpcare bill and reveal to the public the GOP’s backroom  .” Liberal activists cheered on social media as Schumer forced McConnell to object to a motion to hold public hearings on the health care bill, and then pressed the Republican leader to commit to 10 hours of open debate. Senate Democrats, in taking action Monday, are inserting themselves into a process that has excluded them by design. Democratic lawmakers are also responding to growing pressure from progressive activists who have been calling for more aggressive opposition. Members of the Democratic base have expressed concern that Republicans are moving forward with their health care bill while attention has been focused elsewhere  —   namely on the Russia investigations. Some Republicans are also out of the loop, It’s not just Democrats who have been left out of the health care deliberations. Many Republican senators have seen little more than an outline and a Power Point summary of the Senate health care legislation that is being drafted. ”It’s not unusual, especially for a big bill like this. It’s okay that the drafting is happening behind closed doors,” Tommy Binion, a congressional liaison at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told NPR’s Morning Edition. While GOP senators aren’t objecting to the process as vehemently as Democrats, a number of Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio,  . say the health care legislation should eventually be subject to open debate. ”If it’s an effort to rush it from a small group of people straight to the floor on an up or down vote, it’ll be a problem,” Rubio said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. McConnell: ”Nobody is hiding the ball here” The Republican health care bill could be voted on as early as next week  —   ahead of the July 4th recess  —   without any committee hearings or public input. For his part, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is defending the closed health care talks. ”Nobody is hiding the ball here,” McConnell,  . told reporters last week. ”There have been gazillions of hearings on this subject when [Democrats] were in the majority, when we were in the majority. We understand the issue very well and we are now coming up with a solution.” Republicans contend the secret Senate negotiations give them time and space free from scrutiny to hash out the significant and serious differences among themselves over contentious issues, such as phasing out Medicaid expansion and determining the plan’s coverage requirements. Democrats say the closed talks are a tacit acknowledgment by Republicans that their efforts are unpopular. ”There’s only one reason why Republicans are doing this: They’re ashamed of their bill,” said Schumer on Monday. ”The Republicans are writing their health care bill under the cover of darkness because they’re ashamed of it, plain and simple.” While the Senate is crafting its own legislation, the   American Health Care Act is viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans  —   55 percent  —   compared with 31 percent who viewed it favorably, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released in May. What’s more, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House health care bill would result in 23 million fewer people with insurance in a decade, and it would leave many sicker and older Americans with much higher costs. Republicans eager to move on from health care, Still, Senate Republicans badly want to take up other priorities such as overhauling the country’s tax code. ”We’ve been debating Obamacare’s failures and what to do about them for so many years now,” McConnell said Monday on the Senate floor. ”Members are very, very familiar with this issue. Thankfully, at the end of this process, the Senate will finally have a chance to turn the page on this failed law.” Any legislation the Senate passes would head back to the House for consideration before President Trump can sign it into law."
"If you’re tired of popping pain medicine for your lower back pain, yoga may be a good alternative. New research finds that a yoga class designed specifically for back pain can be as safe and effective as physical therapy in easing pain. The yoga protocol was developed by researchers at Boston Medical Center with input from yoga teachers, doctors and physical therapists. During the class, trained instructors guide participants through gentle poses, including   triangle pose and child’s pose. Simple relaxation techniques are part of the class as well. More difficult poses, such as inversions, are avoided. A guidebook that details the poses taught during the class is freely available, as is a teacher training manual. The findings, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, are in line with new guidelines for treating back pain from the American College of Physicians. The group recommends that people with back pain should avoid pain medicines if possible, and instead opt for alternatives such as tai chi, yoga and massage. As we’ve reported, those guidelines are aimed at people with     back pain, rather than pain due to an injury or other diagnosed problem. Who was in the study? Researchers recruited 320 racially diverse, predominantly   participants in the Boston area, all of whom had chronic low back pain. The study lasted one year. What did participants in the study do? Participants were divided into three groups. One group was assigned to a weekly yoga class for 12 weeks. Another group was assigned 15 physical therapy (PT) visits. The third group received an educational book and newsletters. For the remainder of the year  —   roughly 40 weeks  —   participants in the yoga group were assigned to either   classes or home practice. The PT group was assigned to either ”PT booster sessions” or home practice. The skinny: Researchers assessed changes in pain and function using a   questionnaire. The participants in the yoga and physical therapy groups had about the same amount of improvement in pain and functioning over time. When the study began, about 70 percent of the patients were taking some form of pain medication. At the end of three months, when the yoga classes were wrapping up, the percentage of yoga and PT participants still taking pain medication had dropped to about 50 percent. By comparison, the use of pain medication did not decline among participants in the education group. ”It’s a significant reduction,” says study author Rob Saper, director of integrative medicine at Boston Medical Center. ”I’m not recommending that people just go to any yoga class,” Saper told us. He pointed out that their research has helped nail down poses and relaxation techniques that are helpful and safe. Saper says he chose to compare the effects of yoga with physical therapy because ”PT is the most common referral that physicians make for patients with back pain. It’s accepted, it’s reimbursed, and it’s offered in most hospitals.” Saper says if research shows that yoga can be as effective, ”maybe yoga should be considered as a potential therapy that can be more widely disseminated and covered [by insurance].” An editorial published alongside the study points out that treating low back pain is complicated and improvements documented in the study were modest. ”Any single treatment approach is unlikely to prove helpful to all or even most patients,” writes Stefan Kertesz of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine and his   Douglas Chang of University of California, San Diego. Nonetheless, as this new study has shown, ”yoga offers some persons tangible benefit without much risk,” they conclude."
"The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes is the highest since World War II. According to a new report from the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, 65. 6 million people are currently living as refugees or as displaced persons inside their own countries. This includes 10. 3 million people who were uprooted from their homes in 2016. Syria continues to be the largest source of refugees. According to the U. N. 12 million Syrians  —   more than half the country’s population  —   have been forced from their homes. Five million have fled to neighboring countries and Europe, while the rest remain inside Syria, officially labeled as displaced persons. Syria is also the largest source of new refugees: 824, 000 in 2016. It was followed by South Sudan, where 740, 000 people fled the country because of the brutal civil war. There are now 1. 4 million South Sudanese refugees abroad, along with 1. 9 million internally displaced people. Neighboring Uganda has taken in hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese over the last three years. In 2016, the Bidi Bidi camp in Uganda grew so much it’s now the largest refugee camp in the world, giving shelter to more than 270, 000 South Sudanese. Here are some of the surprising facts and trends from this new report. 1. A shockingly high percent of the world’s displaced are kids. More than half the refugees around the globe are under the age of 18, even though children make up 31 percent of the world’s population. 2. Many of these kids are fleeing alone. In 2016 alone, according to UNHCR, 75, 000 children applied for asylum as ”unaccompanied minors.” Most were from Afghanistan and Syria. The country receiving the greatest number of requests for asylum for these children was Germany: 35, 900. 3. The greatest burden of the global refugee crisis falls on   and   countries. Turkey remains the largest host of refugees globally, with nearly 3 million living inside its borders. Pakistan is second. Among the top ten host nations only one is a   country: Germany, at number 8 on the list, hosting 669, 500 refugees and asylum seekers. 4. Most people who are driven from their homes by armed conflict don’t end up officially as refugees. If they haven’t crossed an international border, the U. N. designates them as ”internally displaced persons” or IDPs. In 2016 there were 40. 3 million internally displaced persons around the world, far overshadowing the 25. 3 million refugees. From the UN’s perspective this is an important distinction. Refugees fall under the auspice of the U. N. High Commissioner for Refugees and are entitled to certain rights and basic assistance. IDPs are the responsibility of their own government, often the government that failed to protect them in their homes in the first place. 5. Colombia has the highest number of IDPs in the world: 7. 6 million. A huge portion of its population are internally displaced because of the   conflict between the FARC rebels and the government. Syria had the second highest number of people listed as internally displaced last year, with just over 6 million."
"What if you could go back in time and follow your food from the farm to your plate? What if you could see each step of your meal’s journey  —   every ingredient that went into its creation, and every footprint it left behind? Back in February, The Salt reported on English researchers who did just that: They rigorously investigated the origin of a single loaf of bread, from wheat field to supermarket. Their report is full of incredible detail. How big a field would you need to grow enough wheat for a loaf of bread? Seven square feet. How much fertilizer? About a third of a cup. How much greenhouse gas is released in the creation of a loaf? The equivalent of 1. 7 pounds of carbon dioxide. Now, NPR’s science YouTube channel Skunk Bear has tackled a BLT in the same way. The latest video walks through the myriad steps involved in creating this simple sandwich, drawing on research into the production of bacon, the lettuce, the tomato and the mayonnaise. Scientists have estimated the carbon footprint for each ingredient. The video is a reminder that every product we buy or consume has traveled a long way before it enters our lives. By understanding those journeys, and the impact each step has on carbon emissions, we can figure out how to change our own impact on the world. You can see more by subscribing to the Skunk Bear YouTube channel. If you have a question you’d like Skunk Bear to tackle, submit it here."
"If you think of a company as a sports team  —   let’s say, basketball  —   then Uber is at a point where the players are still on the court, but the coaches and general manager are gone, the arena is filled with jeers and the owner’s hair is on fire. The resignation of   Travis Kalanick as CEO under pressure from investors (instead of the originally announced leave of absence) is only the most dramatic of various dramatic turning points in the disorderly narrative arc of Uber. And though business annals are rife with powerful founders who were forced to leave their companies, such stories typically hinge on poor financial results or wrong business decisions. Few companies have had such a rapid fallout from such a vast number of crises stemming from the workplace culture perpetuated from the top, while appearing to be at the peak of their success. (Uber is one of the largest privately held companies, valued at nearly $70 billion.) How long will Kalanick’s shadow be over Uber’s future? Leadership void, In a statement, Uber’s board of directors said the departure of Kalanick  —   who was at the helm for more than six years  —   will give the company ”room to fully embrace this new chapter in Uber’s history.” And the slate is remarkably clean thanks to an exodus of executives in recent weeks as the company shed employees amid the very public airing of stories involving sexist HR practices, sexual harassment of female employees, rampant bro culture and immaturity, shady skirting of regulations, lawsuits by drivers and allegations of   theft. What does history teach about turning around a company in turmoil with an empty executive bench? ”I think that the people who are now in charge  —   and the question is who is really in charge . ..  —   that better get sorted out pretty quickly,” says Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School and expert on corporate leadership. ”That’s the real historic lesson, that you need to move quickly or you’re highly vulnerable. . .. It’s a perfect time for competitors to start poaching the best executives, for morale to go down, because even staff who have great ideas aren’t sure they can implement them.” The Uber board had already been searching for a chief operating officer  —   a more seasoned executive who might tone down the volcanic Kalanick as CEO. This call followed a pledge from Kalanick to ”grow up” after a leaked video showed him berating an Uber driver, who complained to him about pay. According to Recode, the board had considered former Disney Chief Operating Officer Tom Staggs, Helena Foulkes from CVS and various executives of media and transportation companies. Investors are also calling on Uber to hurry up and hire a chief financial officer  —   a position that’s been vacant since 2015. Uber has also lost executives from its product, engineering, mapping, communications, business, finance and   units. ”Clearly there was a terrible workplace culture . .. terrible enough for a lot of these people who are highly competent individuals to want to go,” says Valerie Demont, a lawyer at Pepper Hamilton who represents companies undergoing restructuring. In other words, the exodus is also a reflection on Kalanick’s ability to pick and retain talent. But is he really leaving? Kalanick is a polarizing figure. He’s come to personify both Uber’s toxic cowboy culture, but also its phenomenal business growth. On Friday, before his abrupt resignation, NPR asked an early Uber investor Jason Calacanis what he thought of the CEO. ”Indefatigable, phenomenal, unlimited upside,” Calacanis said. ”I think he has another 20, 30 years ahead of him as founder, and I think the company can grow 10x from here, 20x from here. I think he’s going to wind up being one of the top 10 CEOs that Silicon Valley has ever seen.” Kalanick’s resignation comes as a surprise to employees and people close to the company. Notably, he and his close allies have majority voting shares in Uber, which means he could have fought it. He’s known for not caving. But here he did cave, under tremendous pressure from large, powerful Silicon Valley investors. One tricky thing is that technically, Kalanick isn’t leaving for good. His large stake in the company keeps him on Uber’s board of directors  —   the same board that will search for his and his team’s successors. ”I would like to know who’s heading the search and how much independence they’ll have and how much veto power Travis will have,” Harvard’s Kanter says. She predicts Kalanick’s successor might be someone unexpected, someone seasoned and, notably, someone with a ”calming presence”  —   again, because Uber’s turnaround will be not financial, but cultural. Stories of other ousted CEOs include the famous departures of Steve Jobs from Apple or Jack Dorsey from Twitter  —   both of whom later returned to the companies they helped found. This has spurred speculation of Kalanick doing the same. But Kanter argues, Uber as a company is not closely tied to its founder at all  —   in fact, he has come to be the face of Uber’s problems, not of Uber as a company. ”What Uber is to its consumers is . .. whatever driver they get, Uber is the app on their smartphone,” she says. ”Uber is not Travis. In fact, most people can’t even pronounce his name, let alone know who he is.”"
"Updated at 9:50 a. m. ET, The chief of Uber has resigned. Travis Kalanick, under pressure from his top investors, announced his departure Tuesday night. The move, which comes as a surprise to employees, plunges one of the largest private companies on Earth into an even bigger leadership vacuum. A week ago, Kalanick said he was stepping away from his position as CEO temporarily, taking a leave of absence to mourn his mother, who recently died in a boating accident, and to work on his leadership, to grow into ”Travis 2. 0.” Now, it turns out, investors don’t want him back. In a statement, the company’s board says: ”Travis has always put Uber first. This is a bold decision and a sign of his devotion and love for Uber. By stepping away, he’s taking the time to heal from his personal tragedy while giving the company room to fully embrace this new chapter in Uber’s history. We look forward to continuing to serve with him on the board.” Kalanick is staying on the board of directors. In a succinct note to employees, he echoes the board’s message: ”I never thought I would be writing this. ”As you all know, I love Uber more than anything in the world, but at this difficult moment in my personal life, I have accepted a group of investors’ request to step aside, so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight. I will continue to serve on the board, and will be available in any and all ways to help Uber become everything we’ve dreamed it would be. ”Thank you for everything, ”Travis” The New York Times, which broke the story, reported that the sudden move came after five major investors demanded Kalanick’s immediate resignation. The paper notes that those investors ”included one of Uber’s biggest shareholders, the venture capital firm Benchmark, which has one of its partners, Bill Gurley, on Uber’s board.” For months, Uber has been in a dramatic and public downward spiral. Former President Jeff Jones left abruptly, the company was searching for a No. 2 to help the CEO, and Uber is struggling to revamp its workplace culture in the wake of rampant sexual harassment problems and to regain the loyalty of drivers who feel taken for granted. The company on Tuesday announced a set of efforts to improve the driver experience (including   tipping) but that gesture was quickly overshadowed by the standoff among the leadership. Uber, which is valued at about $70 billion, now has a stunning list of executive positions it has to fill. The list includes CEO, chief operating officer, general counsel, senior vice president of engineering, chief marketing officer and board chair."
"Updated at 5:54 p. m. ET, A jury has found a former Milwaukee police officer not guilty of   reckless homicide in the shooting death of Sylville Smith, a    black man, last August. ”Cries of outrage” erupted in the courtroom after the verdict was announced, member station WUWM reported. Dominique   who also is black, was in on patrol when he and another police officer stopped two men. The men ran and the officers gave chase, and   shot and killed Smith. The death sparked riots on Milwaukee’s north side, The   had reported. After the verdict was announced, Smith’s father, Patrick, was quoted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as saying, ”I want the community to calm down and come together.” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said the jury’s verdict was ”based on the objective evidence before it.” He added that he’d ”seen nothing in the [body camera] video that was a violation of the law or policy.” In charging   with reckless homicide, WUWM reported, the local district attorney said that ”the first shot he fired, hitting Smith in the arm was justified because [Smith] was armed, but not the second shot” that hit him in the torso and killed him. The complaint states that the deadly encounter started when   and the other officer saw a man leaning in through the passenger window of a car with    license plates, talking to another man. It added that   had said in an interview that he thought it ”could be consistent with drug activity.” Smith ran into a yard carrying a   handgun, according to the complaint. It says police body camera video shows Smith slip to the ground near a chain link fence. He then gets to his feet and throws the gun over the fence. This is the moment Smith was shot twice  —   once before, and once after he threw the gun. The time between the two shots was 1. 69 seconds. The complaint describes the moment: ”While Smith raises his gun upward, P. O.   discharges one shot from his service weapon at Smith and Smith falls to the ground on his back. It was later determined that  ’s first shot struck Smith in his right bicep area with the bullet passing through Smith’s bicep and lodging in a window casement to the east of the shooting. After going to the ground, Smith was unarmed. ”The video shows Smith fall to his back, with his legs and arms going up towards his head in what appears to be a half backwards roll. P. O.   is observed standing a short distance from Smith with his weapon pointed down at Smith when   discharges a second shot from his weapon at what appears to be Smith’s chest. After the second shot, Smith’s arms and legs are still moving and he appears to bring his left hand toward his waistband. A review of the body camera video from both   and [Officer] Malafa confirms that at the time of the second shot, Smith was unarmed and had his hands near his head.” During the trial,  ’s lawyer told the jury that the ”first shot was a justifiable shot and that justification did not change in 1. 69 seconds,” The Associated Press reported. The defense team also ”argued that   was following officer training in ending a threat, and that the former officer could not know whether Smith had another weapon,” WUWM added.   was fired from the Milwaukee Police Department in October over a separate matter in which he is facing charges of sexual assault, according to the Journal Sentinel."
"When Elizabeth II rolled up to the Palace of Westminster on Wednesday, she did so without many of the trappings that typically attend the Queen’s Speech. Declining her traditional   carriage, keeping the imperial crown beside her rather than atop her head and swapping the royal robes for a blue dress, the queen pointedly toned down the pomp this year. The circumstance, however  —   the speech’s role mapping British legislative priorities for the new parliamentary session  —   remained as crucial and revealing as ever. In a U. K. roiled by surprising election results, terrorist attacks and the fallout from a deadly tower blaze, the Queen’s Speech offered a concrete road map of the next two years under diminished Conservative leadership. And that road map includes a whole lot of Brexit. Of the 27 proposed bills put forth in the speech, nearly a third pertain to the U. K.’s departure from the European Union. That includes a measure to transpose current EU laws into British laws, so as not to lose them when the country leaves the international organization, as well as bills that give the U. K. autonomy in crafting new policies in immigration, trade and agriculture. ”My Government will seek to maintain a deep and special partnership with European allies and to forge new trading relationships across the globe,” the queen said in prepared remarks. For now, details on how exactly the British government will do so remain sparse, but the speech does appear to signal preparations for a clean break with the EU. In other respects, her speech  —   which is shaped by the governing party’s priorities  —   was notable for what it left out entirely. Gone was any mention of a few controversial points in the manifesto released by Conservatives before their anemic showing at the polls earlier this month  —   pledges such as an expansion of grammar schools and a   of a ban on fox hunting. Another detail earned notice for its absence: In a speech that traditionally notes important state visits  —   this time around, it was an upcoming visit from the king and queen of Spain  —   there was no mention of President Trump. Upon her own visit to the White House in January, Prime Minster Theresa May had agreed with Trump that he would pay a visit to the U. K. ”later this year,” though that visit has received its fair share of protest among Brits. Still, one outstanding issue did receive attention in the Palace of Westminster: Grenfell Tower. The   complex suffered a deadly blaze last week in which scores of people were killed and still others were stripped of their homes. As protesters marched on the prime minister’s residence in what they called a ”day of rage”  —   a demonstration against perceived malfeasance and government inaction  —   the queen announced a Conservative plan to launch a ”full public inquiry into the tragic fire” in order to ”ascertain the causes, and ensure that the appropriate lessons are learnt.” In a speech following the queen’s, May apologized for how her government handled the aftermath of the tragedy. ”That was a failure of the state, local, and national, to help people when they needed it most,” she said, according to The Guardian. ”As prime minister I apologise for that failure, and as prime minister I’ve taken responsibility for doing what we can to put things right.” The Queen’s Speech now heads to debate among May, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and other lawmakers to hash out potential amendments and eventually vote on its agenda next week. In the meantime, onlookers both in the U. K. and abroad can content themselves that at least one of the beloved  —   and decidedly more eccentric  —   traditions of the Queen’s Speech remains intact: the customary royal heckling. For some three decades, Labour lawmaker Dennis Skinner has shouted a   as the ceremony gets underway. Even amid the gravity, frustration and uncertainty surrounding this year’s speech, Skinner bore the great weight of his informal duty gladly, quipping about the queen’s plans to catch a horse race later that day. ”Get your skates on,” he shouted, according to The Independent, ”the first race is half past two.”"
"Spirits company Diageo is buying Casamigos, the tequila company   by George Clooney, in a deal that values the company at up to $1 billion. The actor founded the company in 2013 with longtime friend Rande Gerber. Diageo will make an upfront payment of $700 million for Casamigos, with another $300 million to follow if it hits sales targets. Casamigos ”has delivered impressive growth,” Diageo says in a news release, ”reaching 120, 000 cases in 2016, primarily in the U. S.” The company says the tequila brand is expected to top 170, 000 cases by the end of this year. To maximize future growth, Diageo says it will build on what it calls ”significant international potential of the brand.” Casamigos’ founders (Clooney, Gerber and Michael Meldman) will continue to promote and lead the tequila brand they created, Diageo says. The company began after Clooney and Gerber built neighboring vacation homes in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. ”As you do when you’re in Mexico, you drink a lot of tequila,” Gerber told CNBC last year, explaining how he and Clooney came up with the idea of designing a tequila to their own tastes. They worked with a distiller in Jalisco, Mexico, to create the tequila that became Casamigos  —   but did not have any intention of selling it. After the distiller told them they needed to get a license to go along with the roughly 1, 000 bottles they were making each year, they reluctantly created the company, Gerber said. In 2013, the company’s first bottles went on store shelves today,   bottles of Casamigos retail for around $50. The idea to make a smooth house tequila, Gerber said in Wednesday’s news release from Diageo, ”has quickly turned into the fastest growing   tequila.” If the deal closes by the end of 2017 as expected, the tequila will join a spirits house that includes Don Julio tequila, as well as venerable brands such as Guinness beer, Johnnie Walker scotch, Tanqueray gin and Ketel One vodka."
"Several years ago, when Garrett Graff was working at Washingtonian magazine, a coworker brought him a lost ID badge that he’d found on the floor of a parking garage. ”It was a government ID for someone from the intelligence community, and he gave it to me since I write about that subject, and he’s like, ”I figure you can get this back to this guy,’ ” Graff recalls. There were driving directions on the back of the ID, so Graff looked it up on Google Maps, and it led him to West Virginia. ”The road dead ends into the side of a mountain,” he says, ”And you can see very clearly these big concrete bunker doors  —   this little guard shack,   fence, and then this set of concrete bunker doors beyond.” Graff had stumbled onto one of the government bunkers designed to protect U. S. leaders in the event of a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon attack  —   most of which were built at the outset of the atomic age and throughout the Cold War. ”It was a facility that I had never heard of, that wasn’t on any map . ..” Graff says. ”It just made me so curious to go back and understand what the history of these plans were, and what they are in modern times as well.” The result of that curiosity is Graff’s new book Raven Rock: The Story of the U. S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself  —   While the Rest of Us Die. Based in part on recently declassified documents, it describes the bunkers designed to protect government leaders, lines of succession to replace officials who are killed, and the roles for various agencies in the event of catastrophe. ”Part of what makes these plans so interesting is thinking through . .. this idea of what you’re going to save for America,” Graff explains. ”If you’re trying to preserve and restart the government after an attack, [it] becomes this very existential question about what is America? Are you trying to preserve the presidency? Are you preserving the three branches of government? Or are you preserving even the historical totems that have bound us together across generations as Americans?” On the Raven Rock Bunker just outside of Waynesboro, Penn. It’s a bunker that dates back to the late 1940s, right at the beginning of the atomic age, as the government began to think about what it was going to mean to build evacuation facilities, in case something happened to Washington. Raven Rock is this massive,   mountain. It’s a   city . .. with individual buildings,   buildings, built inside of this mountain. It has everything that a small city would  —   there’s a fire department there, there’s a police department, medical facilities, dining halls. The dining facility serves four meals a day, it’s a 24 hour facility, and it was sort of mothballed to a certain extent during the 1990s as the Cold War ended and then was restarted in a hurry after Sept. 11 and has been pretty dramatically expanded over the last 15 years, and today could hold as many as 5, 000 people in the event of an emergency. On the Cold   plan for the U. S. Post Office and other government agencies in the event of a nuclear attack, The post office was the agency that would’ve been in charge of registering the dead and figuring out who was still alive. In part, because the post office knows where people live, they understand who was left. So you would arrive in the refugee camps, after your cities had been destroyed, and you would’ve been handed Form 801 from the post office, which were   in millions and millions of quantities and located in post offices around the country through the Cold War in the event of an emergency. And you would’ve filled it out with your name and family members that survived with you at the camp, and then the post office would’ve sorted through these cards and figured out who was still alive and where everyone was to begin the process of reuniting families. The Parks Service, for instance, would’ve been the agency that would’ve actually been running, in many cases, the refugee camps, because the thinking was that park service land would be largely untouched by nuclear war. [The Dept. of Agriculture] worked for years with Nabisco to come up with this special survival biscuit. . .. They   about 160 million tons of this Nabisco survival wafer that were manufactured and boxed up in tins and then hidden away in government fallout shelters around the country. This was a whole strange, shadow   government that existed just out of sight through the Cold War. On what the IRS would do, Not even nuclear war would stop the taxes. So the IRS had all their plans for how they would levy taxes on nuclear damaged property and how they would raise revenue to keep the government going. The Federal Reserve built this bunker in Mount Pony, Va. where they kept $2 billion cash, which would’ve been the money that we would’ve needed to keep the economy going for 18 months, which was the length of time that they expected it take us to begin printing currency again after a nuclear attack. . .. A large portion of that money was hidden away in $2 bills because in the 1970s when the government first introduced the $2 bill and discovered that Americans didn’t want to use them, they didn’t want to pulp and waste the money. So they just   all the $2 bills and hid them away in a government bunker, figuring that after nuclear war, people wouldn’t have that much of a choice about what type of currency they wanted to use anymore. On hard decisions about what to save in the event of a nuclear attack  The National Archives sat down and decided that they would have, in the event of a nuclear attack, they would save the Declaration of Independence before they saved the Constitution. The Library of Congress sat down and they ranked their collection and decided that they would save the Gettysburg Address before they saved George Washington’s Military Commission. . .. Through the Cold War there was even a specially trained team of park rangers in Philadelphia whose job it was to evacuate the Liberty Bell in the event of a Soviet threat. On the line of succession  We think of the presidency as just the person who we elect every four years. . .. The presidency today, the   War presidency, is actually this entity of several hundred individuals where you have the people who are in the line of succession as outlined by the 25th Amendment: the president, the vice president, the speaker of the house, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and then all of the cabinet officials. But then each of those cabinet officials also has their own line of succession, which can be 15 or 20 people long. In most cases [it] includes officials who are outside of Washington so that if something happens to the Capitol you have a set of people and a set of leaders who could reassemble government from outside of Washington. But you end up with this very obscure set of people that would really surprise most of us who were left standing after an attack. On misconceptions about the nuclear football  The nuclear football is the briefcase that follows the president wherever he goes, and it’s carried by a military aide. Contrary to pop culture or public perception, there is no such thing as the red phone or the nuclear button. What the nuclear football entails is basically a bunch of binders with different plans. One military aide compared it to a Denny’s menu. You can go through and point at different pictures and that’s the type of nuclear war you would order. . .. The military aide would come up and hand these binders to the president. The president carries with him a little sealed index card that he would break open that’s designed by the NSA, and that card and the codes that are in it would identify him to the military command structure as the president. And then, from there, he would be able to launch nuclear war whenever he was. On protocol around a presidential launch order, The way that these procedures have evolved over the years is to remove any middlemen that could slow the process down, because the   window would be so short as it is. The president might only have 8 to 10 to 12 minutes to make a decision about launching a nuclear weapon. There wouldn’t be any time to double check with someone else, so we have very carefully crafted a system that ensures that there’s nothing that slows down a presidential launch order. Those plans were always predicated upon the idea that the person giving the launch order is the most thoughtful, most intelligent, most   individual that you could possibly imagine atop the nuclear command and control system. On the subtitle of the book: ”The Story of the U. S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself —  While the Rest of Us Die” These plans start out in the 1940s and 1950s with the grandest of hopes and ambitions  —   the idea that we’ll be able to evacuate all of our urban centers, that nuclear war could be survivable with a little bit of warning. Then we watch over the course of the Cold War as the weapons get faster, we go from bombers to missiles, and then they get stronger. We go from nuclear bombs, atomic bombs, to thermonuclear bombs, to hydrogen bombs. And then we also see the arsenals expand. They go from a few dozen or a few score bombs to the tens of thousands of weapons that we had by the end of the Cold War, and that combination of stronger, faster, more numerous weapons means that the government’s ambitions shrunk over the course of the Cold War, until they effectively are what they are today, which is: The civilian population will be left to itself for weeks or months at a time, and a small number of senior government officials will be spirited out to these bunkers with the hope that within months or a few years they’re able to reconstitute something that resembles the United States again. Radio producers Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie and Web producers Molly   and Beth Novey contributed to this story."
"Contains spoilers for both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. Two shows, two slow, inexorable descents into moral bankruptcy. Over five seasons, from 2008 to 2013, Breaking Bad showed us feckless chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) transforming  —   coalescing, really  —   into the coldly brutal   known as Heisenberg. Beginning in 2015, its    Better Call Saul has tasked itself with following       Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) as he gets drawn into the criminal underworld to become the gleefully corrupt, perennially hustling shyster known as Saul Goodman. Saul’s third season wrapped up Sunday night. We don’t know if Better Call Saul will undershoot or overshoot the    of its predecessor. We don’t even know, at this writing, that it will definitely get a fourth season (spoiler: it will definitely get a fourth season) as AMC has yet to announce the  . But comparing where Walter White and Jimmy McGill find themselves along their respective downward trajectories as of the   mark helps to clarify the two shows’ shared narrative DNA  —   and to underscore their stark differences. Walter White, Three Seasons In, By the end of ”Full Measure,” Breaking Bad’s   finale, Byran Cranston’s Walter White was not yet The One Who Knocks. Not quite. He was more The One Who Calls Ahead And Asks Sort of Menacingly If He Could Pop By And Get A Few Minutes Of Your Time. Oh sure, he’d violently murdered four people, ordered the killing of another, and was responsible for the death of many more, both through action (unleashing a prohibitively addictive drug upon the population) and inaction (failing to save the life of a young woman, whose death indirectly led to a massive airline disaster  —   look, it’s a long story). But after three seasons (a total of 33 episodes) Walter White was still convincing himself that his criminal career was a means to an end, a   gambit to provide for his family after his death. Throughout season three, he regularly displayed flashes of the imperious, proud and inflexible   he would become  —   particularly in his sneering, tetchily dismissive treatment of Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman  —   but Cranston also took pains to let the   chemistry teacher’s roots show. The actor was still leaning into the comedy of the role, letting White seem nervous, desperate, overmatched by the forces swirling around him. There is no   moment, no turning point, that transforms White into Heisenberg. That’s the show’s strength. Scene to scene, episode to episode, there is a constant push and pull. But the thing about ”two steps forward, one step back” is that, over time, it will get you where you’re going. And we all know where Walter White is going. In ”Full Measure”’s first act, the White who meets with   Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) in the middle of the New Mexico desert is calm rational, and in control. It’s an act, yes  —   White is assuming the mask of a man who can discuss, with a cool, scientific detachment, the very real possibility that Fring will murder him, there on that spot. In the episode’s final act, White adopts another mask  —   that of a man blindly panicking that he is about to be murdered by Fring’s lackey Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks). But with a phone call to Pinkman, in which he dispatches his partner to murder a colleague (David Costabile’s placid Gale) the mask slips, and in that devious, victorious smirk, we see the face of Heisenberg. Many more heinous acts lie in his future, over the next two seasons. But this is the man he will become, the man who knows himself thoroughly  —   who knows, as he will finally admit with pride in the series finale, that he did what he did because ”I liked it. I was good at it. I was alive.” Saul, Midway On The Road To Damascus, The Jimmy McGill of the first three seasons of Better Call Saul has a lot in common with the Saul of Breaking Bad. He’s clever, he’s voluble and he’s an inveterate cutter of corners. When we learn of his past as a     and perennial   it doesn’t surprise us, exactly. It just helps us understand where some of Saul’s very particular set of skills came from. We also see that Jimmy McGill is deeply conversant with the law, and its sundry loopholes. That checks out, too. What we conspicuously haven’t seen, in these first three seasons, is evidence of the very worst aspects of Breaking Bad’s Saul  —   his coarseness, his unapologetic sliminess, and his blithe ability to recommend, for example, that murdering a witness represents an efficient way to avoid sticky legal trouble. That’s because for these first three seasons of Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill has had three things outside of himself to care about, and care about deeply: Chuck (Michael McKean) his withholding older brother, Kim (Rhea Seehorn) his partner in life and law practice, and his surprising  —   and surprisingly sincere  —   passion for elder law. Each of these three aspects of Jimmy’s life ground him in an existence devoted to the service of others. With the season three finale, ”Lantern,” two of those tethers are severed forever. Jimmy’s life has been shaped by Chuck in uncountable ways. He’s lived in his brother’s shadow, even  —   especially  —   when he fought to escape it with a career as a scam artist. He’s striven for Chuck’s approval, following him into the law profession  —   an act that only served to incur Chuck’s abiding disgust. And when Chuck succumbed to a debilitating condition, Jimmy dutifully assisted him, because to do anything else was not something Jimmy, as we know him, could imagine. The perennially strained relationship reached its breaking point this season, and Jimmy’s   attempt to salvage it in the season finale only earned him an emotional disemboweling from which he’ll never recover. Chuck won’t be around to apologize, much less grant Jimmy the brotherly and professional approval and attention he’s craved for so long. Jimmy will also spend the rest of the show’s run dealing with the knowledge that all his selfless efforts on Chuck’s behalf weren’t enough. And when we first witnessed Jimmy’s attempts to work his way into the lives  —   and wills  —   of the elderly residents of Albuquerque, we naturally regarded it in the context of his past as a scammer. But we soon came to appreciate the surprising fact  —   which likely surprised Jimmy, too  —   that there was something more than smarm to his relationships with these men and women (well, women, mostly). He had their best interests at heart. And he was good at it. All of that, too, came to an abrupt and shattering end in Sunday’s season finale. Better Call Saul, Season 4: It’s All About Kim, Without Chuck or the residents of Sandpiper to counter his worst instincts, Jimmy McGill’s preordained descent into the moral bankruptcy of Breaking Bad’s Saul Goodman can only accelerate. How quickly this happens over the rest of the show’s life, be it one season, two, or (please no) more, depends entirely upon Kim. She’s been a   completely equal partner for much of these first three seasons, a fact around which the rest of the show’s run will likely revolve. Unlike Chuck, who understands Jimmy but regards him with disdain, or the Sandpiper clients, who see only the unctuous mask Jimmy puts on, Kim alone sees him for who he is, and accepts him. Loves him, even. There are signs of stress in that relationship lately, which over the next season or so can only lead to fissures, and collapse. On the Better Call Saul Insider podcast, an       discussion with the show’s cast and crew, Seehorn, Odenkirk and show creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have all   asserted that it’s perfectly conceivable for the Saul of Breaking Bad to still be together with Kim, even though we never saw her during that show’s run. It may be conceivable, but it’s not possible. The Breaking Bad Saul Goodman is not a good man. There’s none of the interior conflict Odenkirk brings to his Better Call Saul’s Jimmy. Which only makes sense  —   Saul Goodman is a secondary character, tasked with advancing the plot and delineating Walter White as a protagonist. But Jimmy McGill is a primary character, rounded and real, with nuances that keep us watching  —   and guessing. For one to become the other, those nuances, those conflicts, have to get papered over, or swallowed, or discarded. And Kim, for her part, believes in Jimmy McGill, but she’d never believe in Saul Goodman. Which is why the story that remains to be told on the remaining episodes of Better Call Saul is, in a very real sense, Kim’s story. Which probably won’t end well, for either of them."
"Firefighters in Portugal have gained control over a wildfire that swept through central Portugal over the weekend and killed at least 64 people, authorities said Wednesday. But the investigation into what ignited the wildfires, and why they proved so deadly, is just beginning. The fire near the town of Pedrogao Grande ”is no longer progressing,” Civil Protection Agency spokesman Vitor Vaz Pinto told reporters, according to The Associated Press. The blaze, one of dozens that erupted Saturday, quickly swept through the hilly area about 120 miles northeast of Lisbon. Many people died in their cars as they tried to flee. The New York Times spoke with survivors who described terrifying ordeals as they drove away or huddled in a water tank to escape the flames. ”The moment will come to determine what happened,” Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Sunday. That time may have arrived. The head of Portugal’s firefighters’ association said Wednesday that he believes the fire was started by ”a criminal hand,” the Times reports. That contradicts the national director of Portugal’s judicial police, who said Sunday, ”Everything points very clearly toward natural causes.” The police chief also said authorities had identified the precise location where lightning had struck the ground and started the fire. The prime minister has also asked for an investigation into the emergency response following criticisms that communications systems failed and a roadway that became engulfed in flames hadn’t been closed. ”Costa had acknowledged that early efforts to alert the public had been hindered after the flames destroyed phone lines and communications towers,” The Guardian reports. Authorities didn’t close down the N236 road. The newspaper says 47 people died there, 30 of them ”burned to death in their cars, trapped by the flames, while others died after abandoning their vehicles.” ”Around the Pedrógão Grande area, several residents said they were largely left to their own devices in terms of working out whether to drive off  —   and where to,” the Times reports. ”As roads got cut off, firefighters, too, struggled to reach isolated hamlets. In Mosteiro, for instance, residents said firefighters  —   who had traveled from the city of Porto de Mós, about an hour’s drive away  —   arrived long after the fire had already crossed the hamlet.” More than a thousand firefighters continue to battle another fire burning north of Pedrogao Grande, near the town of Gois, the AP reports. More than 150 people have been injured in the fires across Portugal, which have burned more than 98, 000 acres, according to Reuters. Wildfires in Portugal are an annual hazard. The BBC notes that the country’s location on the southwestern edge of Europe makes for strong Atlantic winds and warm weather. Scientists say climate change has extended wildfire season in Portugal from two months to five, according to the broadcaster, and many privately owned plots of land are neglected, allowing brush to accumulate. And as authorities assess the charred landscape after what AP calls the country’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, environmentalists point to one particular fire hazard: eucalyptus trees. The Australian import is now the country’s most grown tree, the Times reports, ”covering about 26 percent of forested land.” The trees are highly flammable and quite thirsty, sucking up groundwater. ”The leaves and the bark are very flammable, strips of bark hang off the trunks and are carried by the wind, spreading the flames,” João Branco, a forestry engineer and president of an environment group, told Politico. ”Large parts of the center and north of the country are almost completely covered by eucalyptus and it contributes to this type of fire.” Eucalyptus provides the raw material for Portugal’s paper and pulp industry, which accounted for 4. 9 percent of the country’s exports last year, according to Politico. And the industry is a key employer in the hinterlands  —   its 3, 000 employees often live in rural areas. The paper industry has been fighting a proposed ban on new plantings of eucalyptus, but the deadly fires may push the government to take action. ”The government was negligent,” Branco told NPR’s Lauren Frayer. ”Everybody knew this could happen. It was a matter of time.”"
"Updated at 5:52 p. m. ET, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee want to see White House records on the president’s    Jared Kushner, his security clearance and his access to classified information. In a letter to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the oversight panel’s 18 Democrats question why Kushner’s security clearance hasn’t been revoked. The Democrats say Kushner, one of President Trump’s closest advisers, had meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the CEO of a Russian   bank. They say he failed to disclose the meetings as he applied for security clearance and allowed administration officials to say he’d had no such meetings. ”It is unclear why Mr. Kushner continues to have access to classified information while these allegations are being investigated,” says the letter, which seeks similar records on former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn was asked to resign in February after misleading Vice President Pence about his contacts and conversations with Kislyak during the transition period. This and other investigative efforts put the Oversight Committee Democrats, led by ranking member Elijah Cummings,  . at the center of a brewing battle over congressional oversight. The Trump administration has ignored hundreds of congressional letters of inquiry. It is also brandishing a legal opinion, crafted by the Justice Department, holding that most of Congress lacks the constitutional power to conduct oversight of the executive branch. It isn’t just an attack on Democrats, currently the minority party in both chambers on Capitol Hill. ”This is nonsense,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley,   wrote to Trump earlier this month. Grassley is a champion of strong oversight and has been known to do investigations of executive branch agencies using just his personal staff. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,  . this week dispatched a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House counsel Don McGahn, accusing the administration of waging ”a campaign of increasing secrecy if not dishonesty.” The letter was also signed by 25 other House Democrats. The Justice Department’s legal opinion takes a dismissive view toward individual members of Congress. It says the Constitution limits oversight powers  —   the authority to ask executive branch agencies for information on what they’re doing  —   to committee chairs. That freezes out even most Republicans, the overwhelming majority of whom don’t chair committees  —   and every Democrat on Capitol Hill. Under this policy, when your local representative writes a letter asking questions about some problem, the agency most likely blows it off. House Democrats now keep lists of their letters ignored by the administration. The total so far: 260, on issues ranging from infrastructure priorities to possible records of Russian financial ties to President Trump and his family. In an interview with NPR, Grassley said the administration policy runs counter to ”everything that every   student has studied about checks and balances of government.” Citing language from the presidential oath of office, he said the policy ”eliminates the check of most members of Congress to see that the laws are faithfully executed by a president.” An administration spokesman told NPR the White House is reviewing Grassley’s letter and looks forward to ”a mutual understanding.” The statement concluded, however, that the Justice Department document ”accurately states the law and the legal obligations” for dealing with congressional requests. Grassley told NPR that if the Trump White House doesn’t act to roll back the policy, Congress can kill it through legislation. The policy can sound innocuous. ”The Justice Department said they should treat individual members of Congress’ requests for information as Freedom of Information Act requests like anyone in the public can send in,” said Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. ”So this is a bit of a subtle change, but it’s important.” Not all agency heads are taking as hard a line as the Justice Department. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told a Senate hearing this month that his department would respond to all congressional inquiries, ”regardless of who the letter comes from, and it doesn’t have to just come from a ranking member or chairman.” Then there’s the ”  rule,” which requires executive branch agencies to deliver any information requested by at least seven members of the House Oversight Committee. The rule dates from 1928 and isn’t   but it was most recently invoked just five months ago. Rep. John Sarbanes,  . contrasts the administration’s position with Trump’s ”drain the swamp” rhetoric last fall. He told NPR, ”They certainly put an emphasis, with this idea of draining the swamp, on accountability and transparency. But so far, they seem to have moved in the complete opposite direction.” The Trump administration may also stumble over the bipartisan institutional loyalties that run deep on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,  . I. said in an interview, ”The idea that the legislative branch would willingly go along with this kind of an assault on its powers by the executive branch runs contrary to the interests of every senator.”"
"The Department of Defense procured uniforms for the Afghan Army in a camouflage pattern that is both far more expensive than other options and likely inappropriate for the landscape there, a U. S. government watchdog says. The pattern choice cost U. S. taxpayers as much as $28. 2 million extra since 2008, according to a report out Wednesday, and if changed could save up to $72. 21 million over the next 10 years. Nearly 1. 4 million full uniforms and nearly 90, 000 pairs of pants had a camouflage print designed to help military personnel blend in with a forest environment. But according to the report, only 2. 1 percent of Afghanistan is comprised of forest. The findings were detailed in a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR  —   a military agency set up by Congress that audits U. S. spending in Afghanistan. No formal testing was carried out to assess whether the pattern was a good fit for the environment, according to the report. And while it stresses that determining a camouflage pattern’s suitability can be complicated, some aspects are not  —   as one expert put it, ”desert designs don’t work well in woodland areas and woodland patterns perform poorly in the desert.” The forest pattern wasn’t just potentially inappropriate for Afghanistan, it was chosen over other options that were far less costly. As the report explains, there are two basic kinds of camouflage pattern categories: those that are proprietary (meaning they are owned by a company and require permission and possible licensing fees to use them) and those that are not (meaning no additional permission or fees). When it came time to choose a uniform pattern, personnel from the U. S. Combined Security Transition   ( ) carried out ”internet searches” and came across proprietary patterns belonging to a   firm called HyperStealth. They then showed those patterns to Afghanistan’s defense minister at the time and he ”liked what he saw.” Several months later, the Ministry had settled on the pricey forest pattern and the U. S. military personnel ”began to move forward with the acquisition process.” Uniforms made with that proprietary forest pattern are about 40 percent more expensive than the uniforms of the country’s police, which have a   camouflage pattern. And even as the Defense Department was ordering the uniforms, the report notes, the U. S. government ”already had rights to multiple uniform patterns that were not in use by U. S. forces.” Other coalition partners may have also had options to offer. A Defense Department contracting office apparently expressed concerns about the pattern choice at the time. However, a senior official with the   responded that the Afghan army ”has already chosen the pattern they want. We cannot and will not pick for them.” The watchdog is recommending that the Defense Department carry out a   assessment of the pattern, which the department says it will do. Among other   proposals, SIGAR proposes simply acquiring the rights to the pattern from the Canadian firm. As of March 31, Congress has appropriated some $66 billion to support the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, SIGAR adds. Previous SIGAR reports have highlighted notable examples of wasteful spending, as we have reported. For example, it found that ”nearly a   dollars’ worth of transport aircraft procured for the Afghans were found unfit for use and were scrapped for pennies on the pound.” Also, ”some buildings were built with concrete that dissolved in rain, or with walls and roofs that could collapse, or with unsafe wiring and inadequate plumbing.”"
"Updated at 1:56 p. m. ET, If two nearly simultaneous hearings Wednesday by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into Russia’s meddling in last year’s presidential election revealed anything, it’s that U. S. officials saw what was going on but were all but powerless to stop it. In his prepared remarks, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the Russian government, ”at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our Nation for the purpose of influencing our election  —   plain and simple.” But in response to a question from the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam Schiff,  . Johnson said he was concerned he would be criticized ”for perhaps taking sides” in an ongoing election if he publicly spoke out about the Russian meddling that he knew was going on. One of the candidates, Johnson said, not naming but clearly referring to Donald Trump, ”was predicting that the election was going to be rigged,” Johnson said, and so we were concerned that by making the statement, we might in and of itself be challenging the integrity of the election process.” Johnson said that on October 7, he and   of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement accusing the Russian government of interfering with the U. S. election process  —   a claim Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied. But that statement he said ”did not get the attention it should have,” because of the release of the Access Hollywood tape that day  —   in which   Trump boasted of groping and kissing women. In retrospect, Johnson said he wished ”he had camped out with a sleeping bag” in front of the Democratic National Committee to get them to take seriously warnings that their email server had been hacked. Johnson said he was disappointed the DNC would not accept Homeland Security’s help in finding its  . He said he had asked on a number of occasions if the DNC had taken up the Department of Homeland Security’s help. ”I recall very clearly that I was not pleased we were not in there helping them patch this vulnerability,” Johnson told lawmakers, adding that the agency does not have the authority to go into a private company with a warrant to fix its IT problems. Johnson also testified he feared designating states’ election systems as ”critical infrastructure” earlier than he did would have driven away states that were suspicious of federal involvement in their elections. He said he first raised the issue with states in a conference call in   after seeing ”troubling reports” of scanning and probing activities around various state voter registration databases. Johnson said initial reaction from state officials to the designation ”ranged from neutral to negative.” It wasn’t until after the election, that Johnson formally made the designation. But Johnson told lawmakers that there was no evidence that votes were altered as the result of Russian efforts to breach state election systems. ”Based on everything I know, that is correct,” Johnson told Rep. Mike Conaway,   ”I know of no evidence that, through   votes were altered or suppressed in some way.” His prepared remarks were released by the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday evening: ”In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election  —   plain and simple. Now, the key question for the President and Congress is: What are we going to do to protect the American people and their democracy from this kind of thing in the future?” While Johnson testified on the House side, the Senate Intelligence Committee held its own hearing focused on state election systems. Senators heard from cybersecurity experts from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as well as from representatives of state election systems and state secretaries of state across the country. In the Senate hearing, Department of Homeland Security and FBI witnesses told lawmakers they expect the Russian   against the U. S. to ”evolve”  —   and that governments across the country must try to keep up as well. ”I believe the Russians absolutely will continue to try to conduct influence operations in the U. S. which will include cyber operations,” said Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. Democrats on the Senate panel, however, are frustrated by DHS Secretary John Kelly’s unwillingness to disclose more detail about the states that were targeted or compromised last year. DHS acknowledges that Russia’s intelligence officers went after elections systems in 21 states, only two of which  —   Arizona and Illinois  —   have been officially confirmed. Jeanette Mafra, acting director of DHS’ national protection and programs directorate, told senators that DHS must ”build trust” with the state and local agencies it supports and that releasing names or details about them would ruin that by embarrassing them. Vice Chairman Mark Warner,  . complained that the official work of investigating and explaining Russia’s mischief last year was hamstrung by all the secrecy about what had been compromised. ”I understand the notion of victimization,” he said. ”But I do not believe our country is made safer by holding this information back from the American public. I have no interest in trying to embarrass any state, but we’ve seen this too long in cyber . .. people try to sweep this under the rug and assuming it will all go away.” Sen. Marco Rubio,  . also said he hoped the Intelligence Committee could reveal as much as possible because of how corrosive Russia’s influence efforts have already proven. ”I think you could argue they’ve achieved quite a bit because if you look at the amount of time we’ve spent in this country on what happened and if you look at the political fissures that formed.” Rubio told a story about seeing a fake story that said President Obama had ”banned” the Pledge of Allegiance  —   and getting text messages asking him about it. ”I knew it wasn’t true,” he said, ”but people thought it was.” The testimony was grim from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s second panel, which included state elections officials and a computer science expert who described the vulnerability from which he said electronic voting systems suffer. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, described the work he and colleagues had done exploring state computer systems with a view toward helping improve their security. ”My conclusion from that work is that our highly computerized election infrastructure is vulnerable to sabotage, and even to cyberattacks that could change votes,” he warned. ”These realities risk making our election results more difficult for the American people to trust. I know America’s voting machines are vulnerable because my colleagues and I have hacked them.” Federal and state officials insist that no votes were changed by Russian cyberattacks in 2016, but Halderman said that would remain a real possibility unless the nation took a series of steps to update its security. States must replace what he called ”obsolete” paperless machines with   machines that count paper ballots, Halderman said. States must audit election results by examining paper ballots to ”provide high assurance” that the election results were correct. And state officials must apply tougher cybersecurity safeguards to voting equipment and elections management. The federal government is supposed to be helping states do that, but state officials complained to the Senate Intelligence Committee that they’re waiting to see any benefit from the designation by DHS of elections systems as ”critical infrastructure.” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr,  . C. asked Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, the   of the National Association of Secretaries of State, whether there had been any negative consequences after the efforts DHS has made to assist states. ”Nothing has negatively happened, but also nothing positive has happened,” Lawson said. She and other state elections officials are frustrated by what they call a lack of clear guidance or information from the federal level and an absence of understanding by Washington about how elections practically work around the country. The hearings Wednesday refocused all the recent drama in Washington about the Russian   narrative back onto what Russian intelligence services sought to do to breach the security of state election systems, among other things, in order to interfere in the 2016 presidential race. NPR’s Phil Ewing contributed to this report."
"127 degrees in California’s Death Valley. 124 degrees in Ocotillo Wells in San Diego County. 119 in Phoenix. Parts of the Southwest and West are suffering through a heat wave, which is bringing problems beyond sweat and bad hair. Here’s what’s happening: 1. Airplanes can’t take off, Nearly 50 flights were cancelled in Phoenix on Tuesday, as NPR’s   blog reported. In Las Vegas, some airlines changed flights to take off in the morning when it’s cooler. Why are planes grounded? As the Arizona Republic explained, the hotter it is, the more speed a plane needs to lift off. Planes may not be able to go fast enough on take off in limited runway space. Also, some regional flights have a maximum operating temperature of 118 degrees, which Phoenix topped on Tuesday. 2. You can burn yourself . .. on the road, In temperatures this high, asphalt can reach 140 or 160 degrees, says Paul Iniguez of the National Weather Service in Phoenix. ”That’s hot enough that if you trip and fall, or something happens and you find yourself on the road, it can cause burns instantly, just from touching that,” Iniguez told NPR’s Morning Edition. People who are homeless are also at risk  —   shelters are distributing blankets to protect those sleeping on the streets from burning on the asphalt. Pets can also burn their feet on the ground. A PetSmart in a Phoenix suburb distributed free booties this week to protect pets’ paws from hot pavement, the AP reported. Door handles, playground equipment, steering wheels and car shifters can also cause burns. 3. Dehydration, heat stroke and heat exhaustion, Maricopa County, Ariz. which contains Phoenix, had 130   deaths last year, U. S. News reported, and emergency rooms are preparing for an onslaught during this heat wave. As with any heat wave, officials caution that body temperatures can rise quickly and lead to sickness or death. Even when temperatures cool down to the   or   experts say the heat index could still reach dangerous levels. People over 65, children, people with medical conditions and people who play or work outdoors are at increased risk. By the way, ”Coronas all day long don’t really count as hydration,” one emergency room doctor told the Sacramento Bee. 4. Wildfires, It’s already typical wildfire season and recent years have brought disastrous conditions in California and surrounding states. Wildfires have been mostly under control this year so far, but a fire in California’s San Bernardino mountains prompted temporary evacuations Tuesday after the wind shifted. Two firefighters sustained   injuries, the   reported. Meteorologist Jimmy Taeger explained to the Tribune that high temperatures, low humidity and low cloud cover all create ideal conditions for fires to burn. 5. Rattlesnakes, This one’s not for the faint of heart. San Diego County Animal Services says it has received around 30 rattlesnake calls in the past week as the weather has warmed. ”Snake sightings may spike during hot spells,” CAS Director Dan DeSousa told the  . If you see a snake, Animal Services recommends keeping an eye on it from a distance and calling animal control. But, there’s an upside. You can ski in your shorts, like this guy:"
"Summer officially began at 12:24 a. m. ET Wednesday, but as the Southwestern United States bakes in a heat wave, the season may already feel like a long and sweltering slog there. The mercury hit 119 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix on Tuesday, 117 in Las Vegas and 121 degrees in Palm Springs, Calif. And while forecasters say the heat was expected to peak on Tuesday, excessive heat warnings remain in effect through Sunday evening in parts of Arizona, Nevada and California. The National Weather Service is telling residents to take the heat seriously, with a somber warning on its website: ”If you don’t take precautions immediately when conditions are extreme, you may become seriously ill or even die.” The advice is straightforward: Drink lots of water, limit outdoor activities and wear loose and   clothing. Check in on the sick, elderly and those who don’t have air conditioning. And never leave children or pets alone in a vehicle  —   no matter how briefly. In Tempe, Ariz. PetSmart offered some extra help to keep animals safe in the heat. The store gave away free booties to protect pets’ paws from the sizzling cement, The Associated Press reports. Some of the highest temperatures in the Southwest are in Arizona. On Tuesday it was hot enough to ground some planes. And Wednesday’s expected high of 117 degrees promises little relief. With heat like that, simply stepping outside can become a hazard. ”It’s not unheard of for the asphalt, the road, to get to 140, 160 degrees,” National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Iniguez told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”That’s hot enough that if you trip and fall, or something happens and you find yourself on the road, it can cause burns instantly, just from touching that.” The homeless are especially vulnerable to the extreme heat. David Smith of Central Arizona Shelter Services tells Morning Edition his agency is handing out more blankets. ”Obviously it’s way too hot for a blanket,” he says, ”but for individuals who are sleeping on the streets, they put it down to prevent themselves from burning, to insulate themselves from the asphalt.” And while   days in Phoenix are rare, they are not record breakers. Phoenix hit its record high of 122 degrees on June 26, 1990, according to The Arizona Republic. In Nevada, the Las Vegas Strip looked like a ghost town Tuesday. People who did venture out flocked around spray misters, even though the water evaporated fast, the Los Angeles Times reports. In parts of California, a red flag warning is in effect  —   the National Weather Service’s highest alert for the risk of fire  —   through Thursday evening. Hot and dry air, combined with gusty winds, could allow a mere spark to quickly become a major wildfire. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says extra firefighters are on duty, battling multiple blazes across the state in the past few days. And while the current heat wave may be the result of a high pressure system, scientists say it is also part of an overall global warming trend. A study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that ”around 30% of the world’s population is currently exposed to climatic conditions exceeding (a) deadly threshold for at least 20 days a year.” Forecasters say the current heat wave should break by early next week, returning Phoenix to more typical summer temperatures  —   around 110 degrees."
"There is no one sure way to reach combat veterans suffering from   stress disorder, depression, or substance abuse. But a new   album called Combat Medicine, released Wednesday, might help. It was written and performed by George ”Mik” Todd, who goes by the name Doc Todd. He’s a former Fleet Marine Force corpsman  —   essentially a combat medic  —   who served alongside the U. S. Marines in Afghanistan. Todd’s style is tough and direct in a way that only one veteran can be to another. In the song ”Not Alone,” he urges veterans to take action in their own recovery. Take those bottles out, dog, and pour ’em in the sink. Take the needles out of your arm, And the gun away from your forehead. It’s time, man. You’ve been through enough pain. Stand up. It’s time to stand back up.  Todd says the song is about empowerment, ”about taking charge of your life, taking charge of your transition” from the combat zone to civilian life. In his own transition, Doc Todd went through many of the issues other veterans face: shame, isolation,  . For Todd, it began in 2009 after he was in a large and dangerous battle in Afghanistan. Many of his friends were seriously wounded. His roommate was killed. Todd was medically evacuated to Germany after he fell seriously ill with pneumonia. ”That tore me up so bad, because I felt like I was alienated from the guys I served with,” Todd recalls. ”I felt like there was an asterisk next to my deployment. I felt like it would’ve been better if I got shot because that would’ve been more heroic.” Todd says it took him several years before he got help for his PTSD. He was depressed and started drinking heavily. Eventually, he realized what he needed to be doing was helping other veterans. With savings from his job as a money manager and help from his wife, he was able to quit his job. He’d been making music since he was a teenager. Now, he wanted to use his music to help veterans heal. And he had plenty of material for his lyrics. The struggle is real, Found a feast, And lost a soul, Eventually my drinking, It got out of control, There in darkness, I roamed, Struggling to find home, See Suddenly death didn’t, Feel so Alone, In the video for ”Not Alone,” a young veteran gets out of bed and immediately reaches for the bottle. That scenario is all too real, says former Marine Zach Ludwig who served with Todd in Afghanistan and is now working through his own PTSD. ”He knows what to say and how to say it,” Ludwig says, pointing to Todd’s combat experience. ”What the man says is just blunt force truth.” Todd says facing the truth, no matter how difficult, can do more to help veterans than ”coddling” them. His mission with Combat Medicine is to show vets they’re not alone and to urge them to get help. ”We have to be responsible for empowering our own lives. And it doesn’t really help when the overwhelming narrative is victimization and brokenness,” he says."
"This story includes content some readers may find disturbing. Who killed Sister Cathy Cesnik? The Baltimore nun and school teacher was murdered in 1969, and in the Netflix documentary series The Keepers, her students tell a troubling story of abuse by priests, alleged police complicity and a possible   by the Catholic Church. Jean Wehner is one of those students. She attended Archbishop Keough High School in the late 1960s. Wehner tells NPR that she was ”systematically abused, manipulated, raped, conditioned by [school chaplain] Joseph Maskell for a good year and a half before any of this with Sister Cathy happened.” Wehner buried her memories of the abuse, and they stayed buried until 1992, when she began to remember things  —   like telling Cesnik about what was happening to her. After their conversation, Cesnik transferred to a different school, then disappeared. She was found dead nearly two months later. Her murder remains unsolved. Wehner believes Cesnik may have been killed for knowing too much, but Maskell always maintained his innocence in both the killing and any abuse allegations. (He died in 2001.) The Archdiocese of Baltimore denied that there was any   but they have paid nearly $500, 000 in settlements to 16 people (including Wehner) who accused Maskell of sexual abuse. On her memory of telling Cesnik about the abuse  That’s one of the first memories I had of her. And that was the last day of school and she was just talking very comfortably about what did I think of school, you know, how was I doing? And I said I didn’t really care too much for Keough. And she really nonchalantly was saying, ”What’s going on?” And I said I really didn’t want to talk about it. And she said, ”So how about if I talk to you and you just nod your head?” She began asking me questions about was anyone there making me do something I didn’t want to do? And I shook my head yes. Then she asked was it anyone that she knew? And I shook my head yes. She said, ”Is it the priest?” And I shook my head yes. And she said, ”Oh my God, I suspected as much.” And she gave me a big hug and she said, ”I want you to go have a nice summer. I’m going to take care of this.” On her memory of Maskell showing her Cesnik’s body, He knew that I was concerned and upset that she was missing, and he made it sound as if he knew where she was  —   he knew where she was and it was as if she were alive. And did I want to go see her? And so I am taken from the school. We’re in the car and the man would speak nonstop like he was giving a sermon, and a lot of what he would be saying is about what happens to people when they say bad things, and that you really need to be a good person and that when you’re not good  —   just on and on and on and on. All I was thinking is Where is she? . .. I’m thinking she’s alive. So we go around a little bend and he stops the car and I’m thinking, What is she doing? There’s no houses or people, what’s she doing back here? And we get out of the car and he’s in front of me and we go walking back and he goes around a little bend and he moves over and I see this clump on the ground and I recognize it to be her. And I ran over and I got down on the ground and there were maggots in the side of her head. And I began wiping her head, her face, and saying, ”Please help me, please help me, please help me.” And he came down beside me and he said in my ear, ”You see what happens when you say bad things about people.” On how she has learned to cope with her memories of the abuse, One of my coping mechanisms is looking in control and looking like I’m really very strong. So what you see is what I want you to see, who I am is who I need you to see me as. But when I go home and I curl up in the bed and I cry, or I am so afraid to go out and be out in public by myself, or I sit and I wonder, What are they thinking? and Who’s going to say I’m lying? I am both. And I’m constantly  —   and survivors will understand this  —   I am constantly integrating all of that horror with all that you see, because I had the right to be a very in control, strong, articulate, intelligent woman. Radio producer Gabe O’Connor, radio editor Jolie Myers and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"Defeat is an orphan. Summing up the left’s response to its deflating loss in a special congressional election in the Atlanta suburbs were two reactions: 1. Jim Dean, chairman of the progressive activist group Democracy For America, in a statement: ”Defeating Republicans in districts that they have traditionally held requires doing something drastically different than establishment Democrats have done before  —   specifically, running on a bold progressive vision and investing heavily in direct voter contact to expand the electorate. That’s what it will take to win districts like this one in 2018 and take back the House. The same, tired centrist Democratic playbook that has come up short cycle after cycle will not suffice.” And . .. 2. Seth Moulton, a congressman from Massachusetts and former Iraq War veteran, who tweeted that the loss should be a ”wake up call” for Democrats. He said the party needs to look to the future, have a ”bigger tent” and a ”serious jobs plan” and ”stop rehashing 2016”: The Democratic divide is highlighted pretty starkly in the string of responses to Moulton’s tweet. Call it the   Line of Demarcation: Be more progressive! Or  —   no, be more moderate where you need to be. Special elections can be overinterpreted. Believe me  —   some of us thought a special election to replace a Democratic congressman in a white,   district in Pennsylvania was a good sign for the party in 2010. It turned out not to be, and Democrats were ”shellacked,” in President Obama’s words, losing 63 seats and control of the House six months later. But Democrats did this to themselves. They hyped a race that they were hoping would be a referendum on President Trump, and more money was spent on it  —   more than $50 million with outside groups factored in  —   than for any congressional race in history. The party still doesn’t know what it is or needs to be  —   and that can portend problems heading into next year’s midterms. Should the party focus on Trump, whose approval rating is in the tank? (Pro tip: It wasn’t so hot in the presidential election, either.) Or should it try to have something else to stand on and sell as a unified party vision? Can it do both? So far, Democrats haven’t been able to walk that line. This year, they are 0 for 4 in special elections, from Kansas to Montana to Georgia and South Carolina. Some Democrats are taking solace in the fact that they fared better in each of those places than candidates who ran for those seats in 2016. And maybe with good reason. But Georgia 6 was the most moderate by far. Yes, Democrats need to win a net of 24 seats to take back Congress, and 47 districts held by Republicans are less conservative than Georgia 6. But it’s the kind of district Democrats need to win to take back the House. It is the    district in the country and chock full of moderate, suburban Republicans. (The top five   districts are held by Democrats, as are 13 of the top 15.) Those Republicans chose their comfort level with their party and a candidate in Karen Handel, who is a known quantity, over someone with little experience  —   who didn’t even live in the district  —   in Jon Ossoff. So is it possible Democrats can still take back the House? Sure, but it’s always been less than likely because of how the districts are drawn. And this was a race they needed for momentum in the short run. The loss is already negatively affecting the ”resistance’s” morale and could hurt recruiting. That’s not to mention what it could mean in Washington. President Trump tweeted that Democrats should stop ”obstruction” and work with Republicans: Trump weighed into the race, tweeting support for Handel. Handel didn’t talk much about Trump on the trail but embraced him as the party’s leader and welcomed him to the district if he so chose to go. Will that be how other candidates in somewhat moderate districts deal with the Trump factor? GOP leadership in the Senate is set to drop a health care bill this week, to be voted on next week. Had Georgia turned out differently, it’s possible the bill would have been dead and something more moderate would have emerged. But Republicans don’t see a need for that now with the wind at their backs again. What’s more, there is already renewed pressure for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to step aside. She was the main focus of many of the Republicans’ ads against Ossoff. Moulton supported Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan in his failed bid for Democratic leader. Do those calls grow stronger? Pelosi staffer Drew Hammill defended Pelosi as the party’s best fundraiser who keeps the conference in line: Ossoff tried to walk the   Line. Dean’s group actually endorsed Ossoff, and he gladly took that San Francisco and Hollywood money. Ossoff did not campaign as the resistance candidate, though, despite that being projected onto him by the Democratic (and GOP) base. Progressives made this about Trump, even if Ossoff didn’t, and they lost. On the ground, he didn’t talk much about Trump and tried to appear moderate, talking about the issues important to the district. That didn’t work either. It could be that Ossoff shouldn’t have taken that outside money and refused the lefty image. It could be that he should have leaned in more to the   messaging. Or it could be that a somewhat wooden    documentary filmmaker and former Capitol Hill staffer didn’t have much of a chance in the first place in a   district. The fundamentals of this race always favored Handel. As a former Georgia secretary of state who had run twice (and failed) for governor and Senate, she was  . The district has long been Republican. And there are far more registered Republicans in the district. With all the attention on the race, turnout was up for a special election, and that helps the party with the registration advantage. All of Ossoff’s deficiencies would have been papered over by a win. With the loss, not only are they magnified, but so are the party’s. And what is the party right now  —   a ”big tent” inclusive party or one with   litmus tests, like the ones it used to criticize conservatives for having? How the party and its candidates should proceed from here sure sounds like the existential conversation Republicans were having with themselves in the age of Obama. The GOP put out an autopsy advocating for specifics after Obama was    —   in particular, calling on candidates to support comprehensive immigration reform. And then the rank and file nominated Donald Trump  —   and he won. Go figure."
"Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has changed his pick for a successor, naming his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman as crown prince and deposing Prince Mohammed bin Nayef from the post. At 31, the country’s new successor to the throne is 50 years younger than the current monarch. Mohammed bin Nayef, 57, had served as crown prince since 2015, taking the post shortly after Salman, his uncle, was crowned. He also had been Saudi Arabia’s interior minister  —   another job that will now be filled by Mohammed bin Salman. According to the royal order making the change, the Saudi Allegiance Council overwhelmingly approved the new line of succession, by a vote of  . The abrupt shuffle has come as a surprise to many: When Mohammed bin Nayef became crown prince two years ago, he was the first member of his generation to rise to the top of the royal family. With his removal, Saudi Arabia is now on a path to be led by someone far younger. The newest crown prince has amassed a number of responsibilities and powers, and while he’s known for his economic and social ideas to modernize the kingdom, he also served as the Saudi defense minister during the kingdom’s military intervention in Yemen. ”He symbolizes the hopes of a youthful local population, more than half of which is under 25,” Gulf News reports. The site adds that because the king’s son has acquired such a wide portfolio, diplomats nicknamed him ”Mr. Everything.” A public pledge of allegiance to the new crown prince is scheduled for Wednesday evening in a video that was posted shortly after the change was announced, the two princes are seen greeting each other and exchanging pleasantries. ”The   in the Saudi line of succession comes as the kingdom and other Gulf Arab states continue a feud with Qatar that has seen borders close and trade shipments halted,” NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports for our Newscast unit. ”The U. S. State Department appears to be losing patience with the Saudis and their allies, demanding that they reveal their list of grievances against Qatar.” Mohammed bin Salman has already met several world leaders. He visited President Trump at the White House in March and hosted U. K. Prime Minister Theresa May in Riyadh in April. In May, he visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Of the new crown prince’s personal life, Gulf News reports: ”A law graduate from Riyadh’s King Saud University, the   prince with a receding hairline is the father of two boys and two girls and has married only once.”"
"Rachael Goldring was born with congenital heart disease. Had she been born a few decades earlier, she probably would have died as a baby. Goldring is now 24 and among a population of patients who present new challenges to a health care system unaccustomed to dealing with survivors of   conditions. Today there are more adults than kids living with some of these diseases, and medical training is lagging. Young adults who can’t find suitable doctors may drop out of care, and their conditions may worsen. Goldring’s condition was pulmonary atresia with tetralogy of Fallot. She was born without a pulmonary valve directing blood from her heart to her lungs. It’s the condition that talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s baby was born with this spring. ”I had my first surgery when I was 9 months,” Goldring says. ”Now, they do it from birth.” Her condition has also meant three more surgeries, a heart valve from a cadaver, complicated secondary diseases and a lifetime in and out of doctors’ offices. ”I just celebrated my   anniversary of staying out of the hospital for the first time since birth,” Goldring says. ”So, this year, knock on wood, it’s been amazing.” But she fears it might not last. Right now, she is in limbo between pediatric and adult medical care. For Goldring, finding a good doctor could be a matter of life and death. Today, survivors of congenital heart disease can live well past childhood. Dr. Patrick Burke, a pediatrician at Valley Children’s Healthcare in Madera, Calif. says other   ailments like sickle cell disease and spina bifida have undergone similar advances. ”This is the   medical miracle promised to our parents and grandparents,” Burke says, adding that miracle kids like Goldring grow up to be complicated adults. ”The job’s not done after the surgery or the initial treatment. Many if not most of these conditions require ongoing medical care  —   lifelong medical care.” Burke is in charge of a new program at his hospital in the new field of ”transitional care.” He says many conditions worsen around age 18, right as children age out of pediatric care. For instance, he says, that is when patients with congenital heart disease suffer complications with their blood and organs. The trend is particularly stark for cystic fibrosis. ”We’re seeing this spike of deaths that are happening in the early 20s. And it’s bizarre,” he says. Dr. Megumi Okumura, a pediatrician with the University of California, San Francisco, became interested in this transition during her residency in the early 2000s. She would see   and    in pediatric wards. The reason, she says, partly lies with a fragmented health care system. ”They are transferring from differing systems of care,” she says, noting the silos that separate pediatric care from adult care. ”We have different funding streams and programs.” Now, Okumura and other researchers are looking for ways to remove what she considers artificial barriers. Clinics around the world are trying out new strategies such as giving nonpediatric doctors more training or bringing in transitional specialists to connect young adults who are chronically ill with new providers. A relatively new fellowship track even trains doctors to work specifically with adults with congenital heart disease. Goldring is fortunate in that she can remain with her pediatricians until she finds the right adult provider. She’s working on it, but at the moment, she’s much more focused on another transition: She’ll be getting married in October. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, local member stations and Kaiser Health News."
"When Pakistan clobbered India in the ICC Champions Trophy final on Sunday  —   pulling off an upset so shocking, ESPN called it ”some     nonsense”  —   flabbergasted fans took to the streets in several countries to celebrate the national cricket team’s big win. In India, those celebrations got some fans in deep legal trouble. Police have arrested at least 19 people across the country on charges of sedition, according to the Times of India. ”While the entire country was saddened by the defeat, these people were raising slogans in favour of Pakistan and burst crackers on Sunday night, threatening peace in the area,” Sanjay Pathak, a police inspector in Madhya Pradesh, a state where 15 men were arrested, told the newspaper. ”They celebrated with firecrackers, distributing sweets and raising slogans of ’Long live Pakistan,’ ” another Madhya Pradesh police officer, Ramasray Yadav, told The New York Times. ”They expressed hatred toward India and friendship toward Pakistan. They are charged for sedition and criminal conspiracy.” The Times reports that all the people arrested are Muslims: ”The arrests come as some Muslims in India say they feel a sense of rising alienation. There have been episodes of violence, including by vigilante groups that have staged attacks on Muslims and   Hindus suspected of slaughtering cows, which are considered sacred in Hinduism, the dominant religion in India.” ”These arrests are patently absurd, and the 19 men should be released immediately,” Asmita Basu, program director of Amnesty International India, said in a statement. ”Even if the arrested men had supported Pakistan, as the police claim, that is not a crime,” Basu continued. ”Supporting a sporting team is a matter of individual choice, and arresting someone for cheering a rival team clearly violates their right to freedom of expression.” But Pathak maintains similar situations have caused unrest in the past. ”This has been happening for several years, whenever there is an   match,” he told CNN. ”We don’t have any previous cases or official complaints on record but those residing in Mohad have told us that this has happened before.” As NPR’s Michel Martin reported, the two countries rarely play each other in cricket, partly because of political tensions between them  —   which made Sunday’s match all the more heavy with consequence. Osman Samiuddin, senior editor of ESPNCricinfo, told Michel that ”450 to 500 million people watched it around the world on TV. . .. It’s not just a sport. It’s not just a religion. I think it’s become a compulsion.”"
"The Senate vote on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is, according to conventional wisdom, one week away.  And we still don’t know what’s in the bill. Not having concrete information is deeply uncomfortable for a journalist like me. But for lots of people, like those who work in the insurance industry, not knowing what’s in that bill is a bigger deal. Wednesday is a deadline of sorts for these companies. If they want to sell policies next year in states that use the federal health exchange on Healthcare. gov, they have to let Health and Human Services know their intentions. How are they dealing? I reached out to a couple of insurance executives and asked. Mario Schlosser is CEO of Oscar, the insurance startup that’s betting hard on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Wednesday morning, Oscar announced it’s going to keep selling individual insurance in New York in 2018, and expanding its offerings in five states  —   New Jersey, Ohio, California, Florida and Tennessee. It’s a bold move, considering Congress is right now considering dismantling the Affordable Care Act markets and changing the rules governing health insurance. ”When the dust settles, the individual market will be stable, and we want to be part of getting it there,” Schlosser told me. He agreed with President Trump that the American Health Care Act, passed by the House in May, is ”mean.” ”I think that bill was mean and I think that bill would lead to loss of coverage that would be bad for pretty much everybody in the system,” he said. Schlosser said it’s crucial for the Trump administration to stabilize the current system in preparation for any changes. That includes enforcing the individual mandate, which penalizes people who don’t buy insurance, and promising to make   payments required under the ACA that reimburse insurers for giving extra discounts to the   customers. If they don’t, ”it would kill the market overnight.” Schlosser said. ”That would be terrible for society, it would be terrible for the whole health care system, and everybody would be worse off,” he said.  I pointed out to Schlosser that his company has a direct line to the White House. His partner and   is Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, Trump’s    and senior adviser. Schlosser avoided talking about that relationship and suggested he didn’t know what Trump will do. Later, I sat down for a cup of coffee at the National Press Club with Dan Hilferty, who runs Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia and is chairman of the board of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. His company sells ACA health plans in the Philadelphia area and southern New Jersey. ”I’m here in DC because of what’s happening in health care,” he said. But acknowledged he doesn’t know what’s in the Senate bill, even though the Blue plans he represents as chairman of the association insure   of all Americans. Hilferty said the ACA has problems, but it did manage to bring insurance coverage to about 20 million people who didn’t have it before. That’s what he’s focused on in meetings with members of Congress. The Congressional Budget Office says the bill passed by the House would result in 23 million fewer people having insurance coverage in 10 years, compared to current law. ”So I would say let’s build a system that doesn’t that doesn’t push those 20 million people back to uninsured, ”Hilferty said. He says his company is focused on ensuring that whatever lawmakers do, they don’t make it harder for   people to get insurance. ”Frankly, we don’t care if it’s the ACA or the AHCA as long as it gives us the ability to cover more people, get them access to care and not lose money,” Hilferty said. Like Schlosser, Hilferty is worried about what’s going to happen next year. His company has filed to sell ACA plans in the Philadelphia area. But if the Trump administration doesn’t commit to making   payments or to enforcing the individual mandate that requires people to have insurance, his rates could go up a lot. Either way, both companies are operating as if the ACA markets will be alive and functioning in 2018. ”I do think that in the end, reason and compassion will prevail in DC,” Schlosser said."
"A top FBI official says that the man who opened fire at a Republican baseball practice a week ago didn’t appear to be targeting a specific individual and that the attack appears to have been spontaneous. James T. Hodgkinson was killed by police after he fired more than 60 shots at GOP congressmen, staffers and police at a baseball field in Alexandria, Va. last Wednesday. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was hit by gunfire in the attack, along with three other victims. The FBI said at a news conference on Wednesday morning that its investigation so far indicates that Hodgkinson acted alone and that investigators have not found a ”nexus to terrorism.” Tim Slater, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Criminal Division, said Hodgkinson was ”struggling in all kinds of different ways” at the time of the shooting. Hodgkinson left his home in Belleville, Ill. in March and drove to the Alexandria area, where he then lived in his car at a YMCA across the street from the baseball field. He was having marital problems, Slater said, and was running out of money around the time of the attack. ”On the shooter, we found a paper that contained the names of six members of Congress,” Slater told reporters, though he did not characterize it as a hit list. Slater did not identify which party those lawmakers belong to, whether they had anything in common or whether they were present at the practice. Additionally, Slater said, Hodgkinson did not appear to have had specific targets or ”an agenda to actually follow through on these six individuals. No threats.” Some signs suggest that Hodgkinson might not have known about the daily GOP practices ahead of this year’s Congressional Baseball Game. For example, Slater said, a witness told the FBI that on the morning of the shooting, Hodgkinson asked him, ”Is this the Republican or Democratic baseball team?” When he heard the players were Republican, the witness said he lingered near the field. The FBI so far has not found evidence that Hodgkinson searched the Internet for the baseball practice or the charity baseball game, Slater said. A family member has told the FBI that two days before the shooting, Hodgkinson said he wanted to return home to Illinois. The evening before, Hodgkinson was searching Google maps for routes from Alexandria, just south of Washington, to his home in Illinois. The FBI also said Hodgkinson purchased the two guns he used in the attack legally, through federal firearms licenses. Hodgkinson also frequented a local library during his time in the Alexandria area and, based on photographs found on his cellphone, saw various sites in D. C. such as the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and the Washington Monument. He also visited the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Slater said. Sanders has previously stated that the shooter apparently volunteered on his presidential campaign. The FBI also said Hodgkinson had been renting a storage unit in the area since April 16. Investigators say they found a laptop, more than 200 rounds of ammunition, a receipt for a gun purchased in November 2016 and rifle components. Scalise’s condition has been upgraded to ”fair” from ”serious,” according to the hospital on Wednesday. He is ”beginning an extended period of healing and rehabilitation.”"
"Presidential spokesman Sean Spicer held an   briefing at the White House Tuesday, his first in eight days and possibly his last. At least he refused to say it wasn’t. ”We’re always looking for ways to do a better job of articulating the president’s message and his agenda, and we’ll continue to have those discussions internally. When we have an announcement of a personnel nature we will let you know.” No one wants to discuss his own job security with a room full of   hostile reporters. But that wasn’t the White House press secretary’s only awkward moment. He was also seen repeating the kind of    responses he has been reduced to lately. Has President Trump seen the health care bill being written in secret by Republicans in the Senate? ”I don’t know,” said Spicer, his expression an apparent mix of chagrin and bewilderment. Does the president accept the consensus judgment of the U. S. intelligence community that the Russians tried to hack, if not hijack, the 2016 elections in America? ”I have not sat down and talked to him about that specific thing,” Spicer said, looking slightly dazed. There has been a rising storm of high dudgeon among the national media in recent days because the daily briefings  —   when they happened at all  —   have been closed to cameras. For TV reporters, that’s the professional equivalent of being excluded, and they have not been shy about complaining  . Moreover, when the briefings do happen, whether on camera or off, they are shorter  —   sometimes very short  —   and terminated abruptly by Spicer. That means fewer questions are taken, and answers are more brief. All these facts are assumed to mean Spicer’s tenure is nearing its end. Over the weekend it was reported (though not confirmed by NPR) that he would ”move upstairs” to be communications director. That office has been vacant since Mike Dubke resigned in May. It is widely believed that Spicer will make that move as soon as a successor can be found to occupy the podium in the press room  —   a prop made famous in the Saturday Night Live skits in which Spicer is impersonated by comedian Melissa McCarthy. Rumors have swirled around various conservative media stars, including TV and radio talk show host Laura Ingraham. But the decision will ultimately be up to the president. And that might well be announced not from the podium, but from a certain Twitter account at dawn. The larger question for the White House is not Spicer’s job title but the strategy for dealing with the media that burrow into the building every day in search of news. They come in many shapes and sizes and serve all forms of media from venerable newspapers and TV networks to overnight websites and upstart blogs. They also represent far more of the full political spectrum than most viewers would imagine. But they all share a need for raw material so they can do their jobs. And if someone from the administration does not give it to them, they will seek it out by whatever means necessary. That reality has led even the most   presidents to accommodate ”the press” with White House space and staff time. Initially, reporters were regarded as an annoyance at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The first stood outside the White House gate, waylaying those who came and went during the administration of Grover Cleveland. Teddy Roosevelt brought the   wretches indoors and regaled them with tales while he had his afternoon shave. Woodrow Wilson tried to impose some order on the rabble with formal press conferences, of which he soon tired. Franklin Roosevelt gathered the regulars around his desk and told them quite a bit  —   but all off the record. He even told them not to share his tidbits with their editors. Dwight Eisenhower had the first televised news conference in 1955, but it was scarcely a spontaneous affair. John Kennedy was the master of journalistic    showing an active interest in the individual personalities of friend and foe alike. In the ensuing years, the administrations of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter all ended disastrously in terms of media relations. Ronald Reagan did far better, setting a standard for dominating the media that his successor, George H. W. Bush, could not match. The years of Bill Clinton were rocky as well, beginning with a sour relationship between White House reporters and Clinton’s first spokesman, George Stephanopoulos (now an anchor for ABC News). Clinton later installed Michael McCurry at the podium, and McCurry’s daily briefing became a cable TV hit. In a different style, Ari Fleischer would have a brief career as a media star for George W. Bush in the early 2000s. And after Trump took office in January, something of that ”must see” quality seemed to have returned to the daily briefings with Spicer and his   notably Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Once again, the afternoon reality show from the White House was the top soap opera on TV. But it was not a hit, by all reports, with its most important audience of one. The president routinely sniffs at ”fake polls” that show him below 40 percent approval and refers to ”fake media” that criticize and question him. But he would surely prefer those polls to be higher and those media  —   which he watches obsessively  —   to be more respectful. Whatever happens to the briefing format and whoever stands at the podium, the essential tension between the president and the news media will remain. Ideally, they are all for the public. As a practical matter, they are engaged in an exercise of mutual exploitation. The media need material to feed their various audiences, the president needs the approval of those audiences as well. The White House can decide how it wants to treat the media, but the media will decide how they handle the president. On that you can rely."
"When you walk into a cheese shop to buy a wedge for your next party, your   person behind the counter is the cheesemonger. In France, where cheese is king, this role is crystal clear. In the U. S. it’s a bit hazy. In case you are wondering, a monger is a bit of a cheese therapist. It’s someone who helps you navigate your tastes and desires. Don’t want anything too barny? A good cheesemonger will steer you clear of   cheeses. New   cheese importer Adam Moskowitz is trying to elevate and celebrate both the mongers and the products they pitch. Acting as unofficial cheese coach and mentor, Moskowitz last Sunday accompanied three other Americans to the ultimate cheesemonger competition in Tours, France  —   Mondial du Fromage  —   to compete for a medal. One of the three, Nadjeeb Chouaf, 30, won third place. It was the first American win on European terroir ever. ”The goal was . .. to show that the U. S. had arrived,” said Chouaf. Of course, he wanted to win, but it was still pretty awesome. ”The most excitement and energy in the cheesemonger world is in the States,” he said. This confident cheesemonger cut his teeth working at Whole Foods for several years before opening his own specialty cheese shop in Charlottesville, Va. Worldwide cheese competition, Mondial du Fromage began in 2013 and is held biennially in France. Distributors, vendors, cheesemakers and mongers come from as far away as Japan, Brazil and Israel. The competition is the brainchild of Rodolphe Le Meunier, who has achieved the   title in France and beyond. If you saw him pacing the stage in his white chef’s jacket with a blue, white and red neckband, you might have known that Le Meunier is also a MOF (rhymes with moth) which means he’s won Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, a craftsman competition held every four years. Le Meunier is renowned in his country, but even he felt it was time for a U. S. win. ”It would be a revolution to have an American cheesemonger win,” Le Meunier said. The revolution didn’t happen, but this was still a big deal. Mondial is a day of extremes. Borrowing a bit from the set of Iron Chef, there’s a giant clock hanging at the back,   lighting and even a DJ. Contestants have two wide stainless steel tables, a small refrigerator and a hundred blocks of cheese from all over Europe. Cameras capture every grimace, drop of sweat and puzzled look of the contestants. Crowds wave flags from home countries, air horns blare and   children holler loudly in support: ”Allez Papa!” The contestants, from Japan, France, Holland, Belgium and the U. S. are the best in their home countries and have won a prior competition there. The American cheesemongers earned their place at Mondial by winning the Cheesemongers Invitational (CMI) a local contest that Moskowitz hosts twice a year in New York and San Francisco. It’s not   outside of the   cheese community, but soon that may change. Rigorous tests and challenges, The 10 contestants began their grueling day at Mondial with a   written exam. Know what a Sveciaost PDO from Sweden is? Neither did the Americans. Next, the contestants received a plate of cheese for a blind taste test. Mongers had to correctly know the name of the cheese, how it was made, the region it was from, the type of milk used and how long it was aged. This was a doozy. ”It was very difficult. I’ve never had such a difficult one,” said Nathalie Vanhaver. Despite the challenge, Vanhaver, a Dutch cheesemonger, took home the gold. In case you’re not sure: It is extremely hard to win. This was her third attempt to capture the top medal. Luc Callebaut, Vanhaver’s husband, was swaddled in the Belgian flag and surrounded by friends and family making a great deal of noise. He knows exactly how hard his wife has worked  —   he’s also won awards. ”It’s the little details that make the difference,” said Callebaut. ”Competition is one thing, but it’s the friendships you have with people from around the world,” he said. Next, the contestants were challenged to cut four identical,   pieces of cheese. Perry Soulos, 31, from Arlington, Va. said he was a finger guy. He held up two fingers side by side to show the width of a wedge. Lilith Spencer, 28, from Santa Fe, N. M. was confident, ”All I need is the weight and I can cut it.” In the end, fingers and eyeballing didn’t work. Most got close, but nobody nailed all four pieces. Up next was a   oral presentation in which each cheesemonger shared a favorite cheese with the eight international judges. As one might expect, preparation for Mondial began long before the actual contest. For the Americans it began last October, when Moskowitz sent an email asking previous CMI winners if they wanted to enter the French contest. Spencer wrote back immediately. But she still needed to assure him of her diligence. She recalled the   : ”He said, ’I need to remind you: this is really serious. We want one of you to win.’ ” The three Americans and Moskowitz held weekly   to review their progress. Hours were spent discussing all things cheese. Even the French helped the Americans. Fabien Degoulet, 2015’s winner, gave them crucial instructions: ”You will be working for seven hours, so get a good night sleep and eat a big breakfast.” They only   listened to his advice: No one ate a big breakfast, but at least they refrained from champagne. ’Four hardest hours of cheese’ With the morning tests wrapped, there was still a   left of the competition. ”The second half of the competition is where everyone hits their stride,” said Vanhaver. For Soulos, who also competed in Mondial in 2015, it was a different story: ”It’s the four hardest hours of cheese you can imagine.” The mongers were required to make a cheese plate, a carving using cheese, a large board with their take on the year’s theme  —   The Alchemy of a Cheesemonger  —   and several edible bites for the judges using various cheeses (yes, Brie was one of them). The plate also included ingredients purchased the day prior at nearby Halles de Tours:   grapes, cherry tomatoes, porcini mushrooms or whatever caught their eye. Shoppers at the local market tracked the Americans and cheered them on. Back home, it’s a different story. ”People are like, ’Cheesemonger, what the hell do you do?’ ” said Soulos, who has worked in cheese since he was 16. Third place winner Chouaf echoed that, but also pointed to a relatively unknown pressure: ”We’re the last thing a customer will remember before they take a cheese home and serve it to their friends,” he said. Before Mondial, Chouaf had heard it would be cutthroat, which is the opposite of CMI. ”When people are done with their bites [for the judges] people walk around and help,” he explained. Despite the rumors, Chouaf felt a great level of camaraderie among the international contestants. Christophe Gonzalez, the Frenchman who took the silver medal, said he’d like to enter CMI one day. ”I like the American approach to cheese. It’s very friendly,” he said.   When Vanhaver won the top slot after six long years of work, everyone cheered, including the Americans and a little girl in   bunny ears. Even third was enough for Moskowitz. ”I’m really impressed,” he said, excited that the Americans won a medal of any color. ”The experience here has really energized the mongers back home.” Larissa Zimberoff is a food writer whose work has been published in the New York Times, Bloomberg, Wired, Fast Company and more. You can find her on Twitter @ibikeforfood and read a collection of her writing here."
"Sometimes, I veer off my beloved scientific topics to explore another of my passions  —   human endurance. Although there are many ways to push our limits, few come close to extreme mountain running, conquering incredible vertical ascents in the shortest possible time, often under formidable weather conditions. Of the current heroes of the sport, the    Spaniard Kílian Jornet is absolutely superhuman. Some consider him to be the greatest mountain runner and alpine climber ever. His 2013 book, Run or Die, describes some of his extraordinary feats and his passion for the mountains, in often moving terms. A few years back, Jornet set off to climb some of the world’s highest peaks in record time, culminating in Mount Everest, with as little equipment as possible. He called the series Summits of My Life, and his feats have been   in video. He is almost done. The stats: In July 2013, Mont Blanc (15, 780 feet) in the Alps in 4 hours and 57 minutes in August 2013, the Alps’ legendary Matterhorn (14, 692 feet) in 2 hours and 52 minutes in June 2014, Mount Denali (20, 236 feet) in Alaska in 11 hours and 48 minutes. In 2013, he tried Mount Elbrus (18, 510 feet) in Russia but had to turn back because of bad weather. In December 2014, he conquered Aconcagua (22, 830 feet) in Argentina, in 12 hours and 49 minutes. In February 2015, that record was broken by Karl Egloff, who completed it in 11 hours and 52 minutes. And, now, Mount Everest (29, 029 feet). Jornet made an attempt in September 2016 but had to give up because of bad weather and the high risk of avalanches. But he returned this past May and, trying a new route starting at Base Camp without fixed ropes or oxygen, succeeded on May 21 in 26 hours, fighting stomach cramps and vomiting. (Here’s another view sponsored by Finnish sports instrument company Suunto.) There was no known fastest time on this route. Amazingly, he then tried again on May 27, his second attempt in a week, reaching the summit in 17 hours. This was through the North Face route, different from his previous attempt. As detailed in the Trail Runner magazine article, two runners had completed this route in a bit under 17 hours. It remains to be seen if Jornet will try again, or if he will be satisfied with his amazing ascent from Base Camp at 26 hours. Remember that at the top of Mount Everest, there is only 33 percent of the amount of oxygen available at sea level. Try climbing some stairs breathing only once in the time you would normally breathe three times to see what it feels like. One may think that Jornet has this giant ego and wants to show off his physical prowess. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Jornet is an extremely humble, quiet fellow, who grew up running across the Spanish Pyrenees with his family. To him, the mountains are a sacred realm, one to be revered, a portal to a spiritual dimension that enlarges our human experience in this world. He wants to set an example of simplicity, of minimal materialistic attachment, inspiring people to face nature’s grandiosity with a level of confidence they don’t even know they have. We are capable of achieving much more than we believe, ultrarunner or not. As Jornet wrote in his website, ”I want to show that we are part of this world, neither less nor more important, but complementary.” Failure, for him, is an opportunity to try again. He says he fails about 50 percent of the time in his most daring projects, either because of adverse weather conditions or to physical limitations. That only motivates him to try harder the next time. This is a lesson we can all take home, whatever mountains you choose to climb in life  —   real or metaphorical. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"Two government watchdog groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Trump and the Executive Office of the President. The complaint alleges that White House staffers’ widely reported use of encrypted messaging apps, such as Signal and Confide, for internal communication violates the Presidential Records Act. In the lawsuit, the groups claim the Trump administration has ”failed to adopt adequate policies and guidelines to maintain and preserve presidential records.” Encrypted messaging apps automatically delete messages, which would prevent those communications from being archived. ”The American people not only deserve to know how their government is making important decisions, it’s the law,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. ”By deleting these records, the White House is destroying essential historical records.” Presidential records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act while a president is in office. However, they become eligible under the PRA five years (and 12 years for classified material) after a president leaves office. Additionally, the lawsuit draws attention to Trump’s use of his personal Twitter account. Under the Obama administration, social media posts were included as a type of communication to be archived under the PRA. Any of Trump’s statements made on Twitter are subject to federal record keeping, and the lawsuit argues that any deleted tweets would count as a violation of the PRA as well. The lawsuit points to an instance in November when Trump deleted a tweet about meeting with generals at his    resort. CREW and NSA say they have the legal standing to sue, though that assertion is likely to be challenged by the White House. CREW spokesman Jordan Libowitz tells NPR that both groups have what’s called ”informational injury,” which would allow them to sue. This isn’t the first lawsuit CREW has filed against Trump and his administration. The watchdog group filed one in January stating that Trump’s failure to fully divest from his businesses allows him to receive favors from foreign governments by their staying at his properties or holding events at his hotel, which the group says violates the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the latest lawsuit."
"Senate Republicans on Thursday unveiled their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act  —   also known as Obamacare. The   plan marks a big step toward achieving one of the Republican Party’s major goals. The Senate proposal is broadly similar to the bill passed by House Republicans last month, with a few notable differences. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been criticized for drafting the bill in secret with just a dozen Republican Senate colleagues, says the proposal  —   which he calls a discussion draft  —   will stabilize insurance markets, strengthen Medicaid and cut costs to consumers. ”We agreed on the need to free Americans from Obamacare’s mandates. And policies contained in the discussion draft will repeal the individual mandates so Americans are no longer forced to buy insurance they don’t need or can’t afford,” McConnell said. Instead, the bill entices people to voluntarily buy a policy by offering them tax credits based on age and income to help pay premiums. This bill is better designed than the House version, according to Avik Roy, founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, because it offers more help to older people who can’t afford insurance while making coverage cheaper for young healthy people. ”The bill will encourage a lot more of those individuals to buy health insurance,” Roy says. ”That, in turn, will make the risk pool much healthier, which will also lower premiums. And the tax credits in the bill will also be  .” But Caroline Pearson, a senior vice president at the consulting firm Avalere Health, says the bill bases its tax credits on   insurance. ”If you’re paying a similar percentage of income, you’re getting a less generous product under this new plan,” she says. The plan keeps some popular parts of Obamacare. It allows parents keep their children on their policies until age 26 and requires insurers to cover people with   conditions. But it then allows states to opt out of that requirement. ”The protections around   conditions are still in place in the Senate bill, but the waiver authority gives states options that could include limiting coverage for people with   conditions,” says Pearson. Those waivers would allow state to drop benefits required by Obamacare, such as maternity coverage, mental health care and prescription drug coverage. Both bills would eliminate most of the taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act. And they would bar people from using tax credits to buy policies that pay for abortion and also block Planned Parenthood from getting any money from Medicaid for a year. Perhaps the most sweeping move, however, is that the Senate plan follows the House lead in completely changing how the government pays for health care for the poor and the disabled  —   and goes even further. Today, Medicaid pays for all the care people need, and state and federal governments share the cost. But Medicaid has been eating up an   share of federal spending. The Senate Republicans’ plan puts a lid on that by rolling back the   expansion of the program and then granting states a set amount of money for each person enrolled. Republicans also want to change the way the federal government calculates payments to the states starting in 2025, reducing the federal government’s contribution to the states. ”The Medicaid cuts are even more draconian that the House bill was, though they take effect more gradually than the House bill did,” Pearson says. ”So we’re going to see very significant reductions in coverage in Medicaid and big cuts in federal funding that will result in significant budget gaps for states.” Several Republican senators have already said they oppose the bill, at least as of now. Senate leaders are aiming for a vote before July 4."
"Updated at 2:32 p. m. ET, Senate Republicans unveiled their   health care overhaul proposal on Thursday. The Senate bill, called the ”Better Care Reconciliation Act,” would repeal major parts of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The broad outlines of it look a lot like the House bill, the American Health Care Act, which was passed in May. It rolls back the ACA’s Medicaid expansion  —   making for deep spending cuts to that program, compared with current law. The Senate bill also proposes eliminating many ACA taxes, and the employer penalties associated with the employer and individual mandates would be repealed retroactively, dating to the start of 2016. And as in the House bill, young adults up to the age of 26 could stay on their parents’ health care plans. Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, summed up his thoughts on the bill Thursday on Twitter: ”In broad strokes, the Senate bill is just like the House: Big tax cuts, big cut in federal heath spending, big increase in the uninsured.” As with the House bill, the Senate proposal also allows insurance companies to charge older people five times more than younger people  —   under the ACA, that ratio is 3 to 1. That’s just one provision that could hit older Americans hard. A small group of Republican senators has written the bill in secret in recent weeks, with many Americans and even some fellow Republicans eagerly awaiting details about what’s in it. After the bill was released on Thursday, protesters gathered outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office. Video from NBC showed police removing some of those protesters from the hallway. Big changes to Medicaid, Some of the biggest changes this bill makes are to Medicaid, the entitlement program that provides health care to   Americans. In that sense, it looks like the House bill, which the CBO said would cut Medicaid by $834 billion over a decade (relative to current law) with a loss of 14 million beneficiaries. Both bills roll back a Medicaid expansion undertaken under the Affordable Care Act. That law extended the program to some   Americans above the poverty level. The Senate proposal would roll back that expansion, though it would do so more slowly than the House bill proposes. As did the House, the Senate also proposes giving states either a per capita cap on Medicaid spending or a block grant of funds. That’s a fundamental change currently the program is ”” meaning funding increases as need increases. But there’s another change on top of that. Those caps would vary based on the rate of inflation, and the inflation rate the Senate would attach to those caps is one that is lower than the inflation rate the House attached. That might sound like a minor wonky change, but it’s not, says one former Medicaid administrator. ”That’s a big deal. It’s a big shift,” said John Corlett, president of the Center for Community Solutions, who also served as a director of Ohio’s Medicaid program. ”It means billions of dollars less in federal aid to states for their Medicaid programs.” Tax cuts for richer Americans, The Senate bill is also much like the House bill in that it would repeal most of the taxes associated with Obamacare (it would bump out the implementation of the   Cadillac tax on expensive,   health care plans, from 2025 to 2026). Repealing those taxes, as the Tax Policy Center reported in May (regarding the AHCA) would overwhelmingly benefit   Americans. The taxes in the Affordable Care Act were largely progressive, as Kyle Pomerleau of the   Tax Foundation told NPR. To one health policy expert, those tax cuts, combined with the cuts to Medicaid, mean the bill isn’t a health care overhaul. ”It is a   bill, and they had to find a way to finance it, and Medicaid beneficiaries are going to be the ones who hurt,” said Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan Law School professor who specializes in health law. A different tax credit system, One other big change this bill could make is creating a new system for who gets premium tax credits, and how big those premiums are. For example, it cuts the   limit that determines who gets premium tax credits. Currently, that upper limit is at 400 percent of the poverty level. This bill would limit that to 350 percent. It also would determine those credits based on age and income  —   that’s a change from the House bill, which based credits mostly around age. And it would change what people could buy with their tax credits on the health care exchanges. The way the size of those credits is determined would also change, and according to Bagley, it would change in such a way that people would get less health care for their buck. ”The GOP health care plan says, ’Yes, we’re going to make sure you can purchase a plan, but the plans we’re going to make sure you can purchase are going to be very high deductible plans,’ ” he said. More similarities with the House plan, There are a few other ways the Senate bill mirrors the House bill. It bans the use of any federal funds for any health care plan that covers abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest or where the pregnancy puts the mother’s life in danger. And it also would defund Planned Parenthood for one year. As of 2020, the bill also eliminates   subsidies that help   Americans pay for their insurance. And the Senate’s proposal allows states substantial freedom in determining their own health care programs  —   but it’s even more freedom than the House bill allows for. Under the Affordable Care Act, states can apply for ”innovation waivers” exempting them from parts of the law and allowing them to determine their own health care systems, to an extent. However, there are strict rules in place  —   what health policy experts call ”guardrails”  —   stating that states getting those waivers must provide coverage that is ”at least as comprehensive” as they would otherwise provide, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services explains. The Senate proposal changes those guardrails, saying that states can get those waivers, as long as their alternative plans simply don’t increase the deficit. That allows states to make some big changes if they’d like  —   for example, changing the ”essential health benefits” that insurers are required to provide under Obamacare."
"Updated at 6 p. m. ET June 23, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller on Friday became the latest GOP lawmaker to voice concerns about the Senate health care bill  —   a development that further complicates Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. ”I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes away insurance from tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans,” Heller said at a news conference back in Nevada. It was a stunning indictment of his own party’s crucial legislation from Heller, who also said that it was a ”lie” that the bill would lower insurance premiums. Heller is the most vulnerable Republican senator up for   in 2018, and he represents a state that accepted the Medicaid expansion under the ACA, more commonly known as Obamacare. Political pressure from the White House was already mounting against Heller, with the outside group America First Policies, which supports President Trump, was preparing a major ad buy targeting the Nevada senator. ”Obamacare is collapsing. This is a crisis for the American people. There is no excuse for any Republican or Democrat to oppose the Senate health care bill outright,” Brian O. Walsh, the group’s president, said in a statement. ”Senator Heller, who once claimed he would focus on ’repealing and replacing Obamacare with a willing partner in the White House,’ appears to be heading down a path with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the radical left. We sure hope he changes his mind as he learns more about the bill. We at America First Policies will make certain that citizens know who stood in the way of repealing and replacing Obamacare, and we will ensure the people’s voices are heard.” Heller did indicate he is open to negotiations on the bill that could move him to a yes vote, but any movement toward the center in the bill could risk further alienating a group of conservatives who announced on Thursday that they do not support the draft legislation, saying that the bill didn’t go far enough for them. But, like Heller, they indicated they are open to negotiating. ”Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor,” Sens. Rand Paul,  . Ted Cruz,   Mike Lee,   and Ron Johnson,  . said in a statement Thursday afternoon. With Republicans in the Senate holding only a   seat edge, they can afford only two defections to get to a   tie, allowing Vice President Pence to then presumably break any logjam. However, the four senators do appear open to negotiations and amendments that could turn their ”no” to a ”yes.” ”There are provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current healthcare system but it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their healthcare costs,” the quartet continued in their statement. The Tea   group FreedomWorks also said in s statement that the bill doesn’t live up to promises by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . of a full repeal of the ACA. ”Unfortunately, the Senate bill is an amendment to ObamaCare, not a repeal of it,” said FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon. Termed the ”Better Care Reconciliation Act,” the Senate’s answer to the House’s efforts to repeal and replace the ACA was finally released Thursday morning after weeks of secret negotiations. As NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben reports, the BCRA is similar in many ways to the House’s health care alternative, the American Health Care Act, that passed last month. The bill ”rolls back the ACA’s Medicaid expansion  —   making for deep spending cuts to that program, compared with current law. The Senate bill also proposes eliminating many ACA taxes, and the employer penalties associated with the employer and individual mandates would be repealed retroactively, dating to the start of 2016. And as in the House bill, young adults up to the age of 26 could stay on their parents’ health care plans.” The bill in its current form may not just alienate conservative voters and lawmakers who think it doesn’t go far enough but also may not assuage moderates like Heller and others enough to get their votes, either. Annie Clark, a spokeswoman for Sen. Susan Collins,   said the centrist has some misgivings about the bills as well. ”Sen. Collins will carefully review the text of the Senate health care bill this week and into the weekend. She has a number of concerns and will be particularly interested in examining the forthcoming CBO analysis on the impact on insurance coverage, the effect on insurance premiums, and the changes in the Medicaid program,” Clark said. ”She has met with and heard the concerns of many Mainers about their health care challenges, and she will continue to do so as she studies the impact of this legislation on Maine and the nation. Predictably, Democrats were firm in their opposition to the GOP bill. Sen. Elizabeth Warren,  . didn’t mince words when she ripped into the bill on the Senate floor earlier Thursday. ”These cuts are blood money. People will die,” Warren said. ”Let’s be very clear. Senate Republicans are paying for tax cuts for the wealthy with American lives.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,  . Y. said that the new Republican bill was ”every bit as bad as the House bill” and ”even worse” in some ways. ”This bill will result in higher costs, less care and millions of Americans will lose their health insurance, particularly through Medicaid,” Schumer said. ”The way this bill cuts health care is heartless.” Former President Barack Obama, whose signature legislation is the target of GOP repeal efforts, wrote in a lengthy Facebook post that the Republican plan ”is not a health care bill.”  ”It’s a massive transfer of wealth from   and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on   conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.” ABC News also reported that as the GOP bill was being released Thursday morning there was a ”large protest gathered outside McConnell’s office, with people in wheelchairs staging a ’’ and protesters chanting that no changes be made to Medicaid. Protesters were physically removed by Capitol Police officers.”"
"Federal regulators on Thursday said they’ve identified ”the perpetrator of one of the largest . .. illegal robocalling campaigns” they have ever investigated. The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $120 million fine for a Miami resident said to be   responsible for almost 97 million robocalls over just the last three months of 2016. Officials say Adrian Abramovich   hundreds of millions of phone calls to landlines and cellphones in the U. S. and Canada and at one point even overwhelmed an emergency medical paging service. Making prerecorded telemarketing phone calls to people without their prior consent is prohibited. So is making telemarketing calls to emergency phone lines and deliberately falsifying caller ID to disguise identity with the intent to harm or defraud consumers. According to the FCC, the robocalls made by Abramovich through his ambiguously named companies (Marketing Strategy Leaders or Marketing Leaders) would show up ”spoofed” as if they came from a phone number with the same area code and the same first three digits of the recipient’s number. If the recipients answered, they’d get a recording offering an ”exclusive” vacation deal from prominent travel companies such as Expedia, Marriott, Hilton or TripAdvisor  —   instructing them to ”Press 1” to learn more. But pressing 1 would instead land people on a line with a call center hawking ”discounted” vacation packages and   unaffiliated with any of those brands. According to FCC documents, TripAdvisor investigated some of the robocalls that purported to offer that company’s deals and found call centers that it said were based in Mexico. Abramovich now faces the largest penalty ever proposed by the FCC, according to FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. The fine is for Abramovich’s unlawful caller ID spoofing, the FCC says. The agency’s Enforcement Bureau has also issued a citation to Abramovich, and the documents say his ”mass robocalling campaigns violate the Communications Act, and his misrepresentations in the prerecorded messages constitute criminal wire fraud.” Abramovich now has 30 days to respond to the FCC, which is expected to finalize the investigation and penalties in the following months."
"Renee Rabinowitz, a Holocaust survivor in her 80s, was flying from Newark, N. J. to Tel Aviv in 2015, when a flight attendant on Israel’s El Al airline asked if she would be willing to change seats. An   Jewish man had said he did he not feel comfortable sitting next to her. Rabinowitz agreed to move. But afterward, she said she felt ”deep humiliation”  —   and sued the airline in Israeli court. Jerusalem’s Magistrate Court ruled Thursday in her favor, saying that asking her to change seats based on her gender was discrimination. ”I’m thrilled because the judge understood the issue,” Rabinowitz told The New York Times. Her lawyers are calling it a ”revolutionary” decision. Rabinowitz, an Orthodox Jew, is a retired lawyer with a Ph. D. in educational psychology, according to the Times. ”Despite all my accomplishments  —   and my age is also an accomplishment  —   I felt minimized,” she told the newspaper. Rabinowitz was represented by the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal and advocacy arm of the Israel Reform movement. The group says requests for seat changes to accommodate men who don’t want to sit next to women have become common. ”It’s difficult to find someone who has flown New York to Tel Aviv who hasn’t seen it or been a part of it,” IRAC Deputy Director Steven Beck told NPR. ”Particularly around the holidays, a lot of   are taking flights” and the men ”would not sit down.” Some deeply religious Jews believe any contact between the sexes is immodest. That has caused delays and even chaos on numerous flights in recent years when men refused to take seats next to women. Beck says the phenomenon isn’t limited to flights on the Israeli airline: ”It’s just [that] the number of   Jews on El Al is greater, and the effort to accommodate them is greater.” The court ruling requires El Al to instruct its staff in writing that such requests are illegal and train workers in the new rule within six months. The court awarded Rabinowitz 6, 500 shekels, or about $1, 800, in damages. Requests from El Al for comment were not immediately returned. The airline was owned by the Israeli government before being privatized in 2006. After the lawsuit was filed last year, El Al told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that its ”employees in the air, on the ground, in Israel and around the globe do all possible to listen to and provide solutions to the concerns or requests from our customers whatever they might be, including seating requests on the airplane.” In court, the Times reports, the airline said it had not discriminated against women because its reseating policies also applied to men. But it pointed out that Israeli courts have allowed religious observance to be considered in the past. Why doesn’t El Al have passengers request special seating requirements in advance, as they would request a kosher or vegetarian meal? Beck says his organization suggested El Al require passengers to do just that, but the airline refused. ”Our problem is with pressuring women,” says Beck. ”It’s not fun to be told a flight will be delayed or sent back to the gate if you don’t accommodate a man’s request.” Rabinowitz’s case echoed other recent battles in Israeli public life. Beck called the ruling a victory over ”the gender segregation that Israel has been battling for more than a decade  —   all of the attempts by the   community to push women out of the public sphere.” IRAC won a lawsuit in 2007 against gender segregation on public buses (though Beck notes that buses in   neighborhoods continue to have de facto segregation). And in 2014, an Orthodox feminist group won a   lawsuit against an   radio station that wouldn’t allow women’s voices on the air. Rabinowitz’s family fled Europe to escape the Nazis at the beginning World War II and moved to the United States she later moved to Israel. Beck said his client is a mother of two, grandmother of six,   of 32, ”and now a civil rights activist.” Rabinowitz told the Times she was ”exhilarated” by Judge Dana  ’s ruling because ”she realized it is not a question of money they awarded a very small sum. She realized it’s a matter of El Al changing its policy, which they have been ordered to do.”"
"A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that the confession of Brendan Dassey, whose case was part of the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer, was involuntary. Dassey was found guilty of helping his uncle kill a young woman in 2005, and has been held in a Wisconsin prison. The case against Dassey was constructed largely on that confession, in which he stated that he helped to rape and kill a woman named Teresa Halbach, as The   has reported. A   panel from the 7th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its majority opinion that Dassey should be released unless the state of Wisconsin decides to retry him within 90 days or appeals to the U. S. Supreme Court. Now, the state is weighing its options. ”We anticipate seeking review by the entire 7th Circuit or the United States Supreme Court and hope that today’s erroneous decision will be reversed,” Johnny Koremenos, director of communications and public affairs for the Wisconsin Department of Justice, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Here’s further background on the case: ”Dassey was 16 years old when he confessed to helping his uncle, Steven Avery, carry out the rape and murder of    photographer Teresa Halbach. ”Halbach was killed at the Avery Salvage Yard, where she had been hired to photograph vehicles for a magazine, according to court documents. Investigators found burned human remains that matched Halbach’s DNA, along with her car, where they discovered multiple bloodstains.” Dassey’s 2007 conviction, as we reported, was overturned last August by a federal judge who determined that the confession was involuntary: ”The focus of the judge’s decision was on the interrogation when Dassey confessed. Over the course of a   period of questioning, ’generally responding to the investigators’ questions with answers of just a few hushed words, a story evolved whereby in its final iteration Dassey implicated himself in the rape, murder and mutilation of Teresa Halbach,’ according to the judge’s [August] decision.” The state’s attorney general filed a notice of appeal against that decision in September, as we reported. In November, the federal judge who overturned the conviction granted a petition for Dassey’s release, but just three days later the 7th Circuit granted the state’s motion that Dassey remain in prison during the appeals process. Today, the   panel said it determined the confession was involuntary not because of a single statement or question, instead calling it ”death by a thousand cuts.” The judges’ opinion takes issue with numerous techniques used by interrogators: ”Because of the cumulative effect of these coercive techniques  —   the leading, the fact‐feeding, the false promises, the manipulation of Dassey’s desire to please, the physical, fatherly assurances as [Calumet County Sheriff’s investigator Mark] Wiegert touched Dassey’s knee etc.  —   no reasonable court could have any confidence that this was a voluntary confession.” One judge on the panel dissented, saying that while there were some ”factors” supporting the view that the confession was not voluntary, others support the view that ”overall, the confession was voluntary.” Dassey’s lawyers called today’s ruling a ”significant step closer to achieving justice.” In a statement, they said, ”In rejecting the State’s assertion that Brendan confessed voluntarily, the court acknowledged what many parents already recognize: Brendan’s youthfulness and intellectual disability make him particularly vulnerable in the interrogation room.” The state has argued that ”Dassey’s confession was not coerced because the investigators who questioned him never made him any explicit promises,” as the Journal Sentinel reported. Dassey’s uncle, Steven Avery, was convicted in a separate trial and is serving a life sentence."
"Throngs of mourners paid their final respects to Otto Warmbier Thursday at a public funeral at the high school he attended near Cincinnati. Just four years ago, Warmbier graduated from the school as the salutatorian. The    University of Virginia student was detained in North Korea for 17 months and died on Monday, shortly after he returned to the United States in a coma. ”It doesn’t really feel real yet,” his former soccer teammate Grady Beerck said, according to The Associated Press. ”He’s so young, and he’s been gone for so long. The impact he made is always going to last with people.” Beerck described Warmbier as a ”goofy kid” who would ”drop anything to help his friends.” An estimated 2, 000 people packed Wyoming High School, in Wyoming, Ohio, with more lining the streets, CNN reports. The service took place in the arts center, which could hold only 800 people, so many more watched on screens set up in overflow rooms. Warmbier’s brother, sister and friends spoke at the service, NPR member station WVXU in Cincinnati reports. Inside the arts center, some of the personal items Warmbier took to North Korea were on display: a wallet, a University of Virginia notebook and the   linen blazer he wore there, CNN says. Warmbier’s North Korean trip was only supposed to be a   tour. But he was arrested in Pyongyang in January 2016 and, as we have reported, was accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and hard labor. Warmbier was returned to the United States last week in a coma. North Korea said he had contracted botulism and that it was releasing him on ”humanitarian grounds.” But the doctors who examined him after his return disputed the botulism claim and said he had ”extensive loss of tissue” in his brain. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who had met with North Korean officials in New York to press for Warmbier’s release, attended the funeral. ”North Korea needs to be held accountable for what happened to Otto Warmbier,” Portman said. ”They’ve shown through their treatment of Otto a disregard for basic human rights, for human dignity.” Portman said sanctions against North Korea should be tightened, WVXU reports. As a hearse carried Warmbier’s coffin away, some mourners held up their fingers in the shape of a ”W,” for his name, according to AP. A Hamilton County Coroner has not yet determined Warmbier’s cause of death. According to his family’s wishes, no autopsy was performed. But a statement from the coroner said, ”There are additional medical records and imaging to review and people to interview.”"
"For the first time in more than four decades, the Yellowstone grizzly bear is set to lose its federal protections under the Endangered Species Act. Citing a rebound in the bear’s population, the U. S. Department of Interior announced its intention Thursday to end these protections and return oversight of the animal’s status to the state level. The agency says the rule to remove the grizzly from the endangered species list will be published ”in coming days” and ”will take effect 30 days after publication.” ”This achievement stands as one of America’s great conservation successes the culmination of decades of hard work and dedication on the part of the state, tribal, federal and private partners,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. ”As a Montanan, I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together.” Since those federal protections were instituted in 1975, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear population has climbed from 136 to roughly 700, according to the National Park Service. The NPS says the bears  —   which generally roam in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho  —   ”have gradually expanded their occupied habitat by more than 50%.” Others are less enthusiastic than Zinke about the bear’s future without federal protections. ”Grizzly bears are the slowest reproducing mammal on the planet, and a population decline can take decades to reverse,” Derek Goldman of the Endangered Species Coalition says in a statement emailed to NPR. (Update: While grizzlies do have an extremely slow reproduction rate, other mammals  —   such as orangutans  —   are actually slower in reproducing.) ”Therefore,” he continued, ”we have been calling on Fish and Wildlife Service and the states to develop adequate management plans for grizzly bears before any delisting is finalized. We will closely review the final rule to ensure there are adequate protections for grizzly bears.” Against the population rebound over the past 42 years, the coalition also set another, grimmer set of numbers about grizzlies: ”In the 1800’s, approximately 50, 000 grizzly bears roamed the lower 48 states. Today, fewer than 2, 000 remain.” Tim Preso, an attorney for the conservation group Earthjustice, suggested the organization might fight the move. ”The government’s campaign to remove protections provided by the Endangered Species Act overlooked important conservation issues and denied public comment on key points,” Preso said. ”We will closely examine this decision, and are prepared to defend the grizzly if necessary.” This isn’t the first time the fate of the Yellowstone grizzly has proved to be a point of significant contention. Last year, under the Obama administration, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service also proposed removing the bear from the endangered species list  —   using the roughly the same language Zinke adopted for his statement, in fact: ”The restoration of the grizzly bear in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho during the last three decades stands as one of America’s great conservation successes.” And, as The New York Times notes, the Fish and Wildlife Service also attempted to strip the bear of federal protections in 2007 ”but was ordered by federal court decisions to reconsider its analysis because of a decline in white bark pine, a key bear food source that has been decimated by insects partly because of warmer temperatures in the region.”"
"Women in their 40s at average risk for breast cancer should talk to their health care provider about the risks and benefits of mammography before starting regular screening at that age, according to guidelines released Thursday by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The group had previously recommended annual mammograms starting at age 40. But the advice has changed to better incorporate input from the woman being screened, says physician Christopher Zahn, vice president of practice activities at ACOG. ”A patient’s preferences and values need to be an important part” of the decision, he says. Now the group says providers should offer the test when a woman enters her 40s, and that after a discussion, she may opt to start screening. If she doesn’t, she should start by age 50, ACOG says. Zahn says the guidance intentionally encompasses advice from other major groups. The U. S. Preventive Services Task Force says women should start regular mammograms at 50, and that women in their 40s should make an individual decision about whether or not to screen. The American Cancer Society says screening should be offered starting at age 40, and outright recommends starting at 45. And the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance of major cancer centers, recommends starting at 40. The question all these groups have wrestled with is how to balance the benefits and harms of mammography their different recommendations reflect differences in how they interpreted and weighed the available data. ”All three [schedules] are reasonable approaches to take,” says Zahn. Mammography clearly saves lives for women over 50 and likely does so overall for women in their 40s, says Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society. But the benefits in those younger women are smaller, and they come at the cost of false alarms, unnecessary biopsies and overdiagnosis, when cancer that is detected and treated never would have threatened a woman’s health had it gone undiscovered. (The ACS says estimates of overdiagnosis vary widely, from 0 percent to 54 percent of breast cancers, in part depending on whether cases of ductal carcinoma in situ  —   abnormal cells that sometimes turn into cancer  —   are included.) Once a woman starts mammography, she can be screened every one or two years, again after a discussion about the pros and cons of the different schedules, ACOG advises. The American Cancer Society recommends annual screening for women through age 54 and every other year for older women, with the option to continue annual tests, while USPSTF says every other year is sufficient and the network of cancer centers recommends annual screening. A statistical model from the USPSTF finds that if 1, 000 women are screened every other year from age 40 to 74, there will be eight fewer breast cancer deaths compared with no screening, 213 unnecessary breast biopsies and 21 overdiagnosed breast tumors. Meantime, if 1, 000 women are screened every other year from 50 to 74, there will be seven fewer breast cancer deaths compared with no screening, 146 unnecessary biopsies and 19 overdiagnosed tumors. Some women may decide that the small additional benefit doesn’t outweigh the increased risk of biopsy or possibly being treated for a cancer that didn’t need attention. There’s as yet no sure way to know which tumors are harmless and can be left alone. Others may choose differently. ”There’s more of a respect for the individual person,” says Brawley about the new ACOG guidelines and the 2015 changes by his own organization. ”You’re starting to hear, ’Let the woman decide.’ ” ”If a woman is told to get a mammogram starting at 40, it’s very reasonable to question that and ask, ’Why? I’ve read that there are conflicting guidelines,’ ” says Deanna Attai, assistant clinical professor of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She says women should know, or ask about, the risk factors for breast cancer so they can have the screening conversation with some understanding of where they fall on the spectrum. And don’t stop the   discussion at screening. ”Ask what lifestyle or health habits can help reduce risk,” she says. (For example, research suggests exercise can cut breast cancer risk.) On the question of when to stop routine mammograms, ACOG says screening beyond age 75 should be based on a conversation about a woman’s health status and longevity. The group also recommends against regular breast   but says women should be aware of the normal feel and appearance of their breasts so they can report any changes. Keep in mind that these recommendations are for   women who are not experiencing symptoms. Many factors can increase risk, including a family history of breast or ovarian cancer and certain genetic mutations. So those women should check with their physician about when, how and how frequently they should be screened. There’s also not enough evidence to make recommendations on whether women with dense breasts should be screened differently. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson"
"A naturalized U. S. citizen should not have been stripped of her citizenship for the sole reason that she lied to U. S. officials, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, vacating a lower court’s decision. The plaintiff, an ethnic Serb who entered the U. S. as a refugee, had argued that false answers she gave to immigration officials were immaterial to procuring citizenship. ”We have never read a statute to strip citizenship from someone who met the legal criteria for acquiring it,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court’s opinion. ”We will not start now.” The case centers on Divna Maslenjak, who entered the U. S. in 2000 as a refugee along with her husband and their two children. Maslenjak became a naturalized citizen in 2007  —   but around the same time, she was found to have lied to U. S. officials when she said her husband had not participated in Bosnia’s civil war. In fact, he served in a brigade that was involved in the notorious Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims in 1995. During the original trial in a federal district court, a jury was told that making a false statement under oath to a government official was enough to revoke Maslenjak’s citizenship because of a law that makes it a crime for a person to ”procure” naturalization ”contrary to law.” After the 6th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision, the case went to the high court. ”At oral argument, Chief Justice John Roberts expressed real reservations about stripping citizenship without proof of materiality,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports, ”and the court has historically been reluctant to strip citizenship without the government meeting a high bar of proof.” The Supreme Court justices say the lower court’s instructions to the jurors were ”in error” and that while the jury could have been asked to convict Maslenjak under a number of circumstances  —   if it found her false testimony to be proof of ”bad moral character,” for instance  —   it was not asked to do so, and so it did not make any of those determinations. The statute against knowingly procuring naturalization contrary to U. S. law, Kagan wrote, ”is not a tool for denaturalizing people who, the available evidence indicates, were actually qualified for the citizenship they obtained.”"
"Bad Boy Records and its founder, Sean ”Diddy” Combs, helped shape much of what we take for granted in pop culture: Bigger is better, reaching for money and power is nothing to be ashamed of, everybody wants to be a millionaire. The new documentary Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, available on Apple Music June 25, tells the label’s story around a concert that reunited some of its stars last year. We know Combs for grandiosity  —   we know him by his stage names, P. Diddy and Puff Daddy. Everybody’s heard Bad Boy’s records. And most people can picture the parties in the Hamptons, helicopters in the videos, the choir behind him as he danced in tribute to his fallen friend, Biggie Smalls. In Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, he will wear fur onstage and he will demand a certain kind of lighting. ”I like God light,” Combs says onscreen. ”I don’t want the Chrysler that looks like the Phantom. I want the Phantom.” Combs didn’t do all that he’s done to rub his success in your face. He did it for the kids. That’s what he says when I meet him at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. ”I was gonna live life the way the kings live life,” he says. ”But as a man of color. And I’ma let the kids, and the world, see that. And it’s gonna have an effect on them. Because they constantly getting hit and hit with images of theyselves  —   images of us as African Americans being unsuccessful, like when you watch the news  —   to the point now where they see images of theyselves actually getting shot. I have to show ’em another image. No matter how it rubs people the wrong way. It’s important.” ”Black people are not found to be glamorous or famous or rich,” says Judnick Mayard, a writer who grew up in New York, where Combs and his label began. ”So Puff has always been applying himself to the audience that was never considered glamorous.” ”He knew where the money was and where the value was from the very beginning,” she says. ”That’s pretty much why he’s my hero that’s why I think he still has so much respect in our community, because Puffy has always found value in black dollars.” In the documentary, Combs describes sitting on his stoop as a kid in the summer, staring at his neighbors’ pool, wishing they would invite him over. And he says he never wanted to feel that way again. The film tells the story of major labels rejecting musicians he later guided to platinum sales. But Mayard says she admires him for more than his business acumen. Bad Boy was the soundtrack of a generation. ”It was the sound of a generation that, I guess, was in between,” she says. ”You know,   was one thing and soul was the thing before it, and I think Bad Boy was finally the connection of all that we had heard. All the samples were from our parents’ time but all the artists were very much our time. I guess when I think of Bad Boy I just think of being black in the ’90s.” And it’s the songs that Combs puts first. ”The legacy to me is in the bass line, and in the beat, the pocket of the beat, and the melody on the music, and the spirit that’s put in the music,” Combs says. ”That’s all you left with. . .. Nothing could compare to that feeling, that feeling you’re able to give people through music.” The first night of the reunion does not go well. And, in the documentary, Combs has to psych himself up to give it another shot. He starts singing in the shower James Brown’s ”The Boss” is on in the background. ”Time to get on Diddy time, baby. Time to get on Diddy time,” he tells himself onscreen. ”I’m taking control of this. That’s what I gotta get into, is that beat. Nothing else matters. That pocket. Nothing else matters. Feel it in the spirit, nothing else matters. Gotta get into that spirit. Out of my brain, and into my heart. Out of my brain, and into my heart.” In Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Combs is the great motivator. Some of his artists are anxious about performing again, while others have to resolve old disagreements before they can share a stage. But Combs gets them together. Mayard saw it happen live. ”It really is a pleasure to see him on stage, cause he’s so himself. And he really enjoys it,” she says. ”He’s like a hype man for the artists and a hype man for the audience and a hype man for himself. So it just feels like you can’t be in the room with him without being happy. . .. It feels like you can’t be in the theater with him and not be on his level.” Right before the concert, a doctor pays a house call. He asks somebody to get Combs a tissue. The tissue that materializes is printed with $100 dollar bills. I ask Combs if the    who started Bad Boy Records in a basement in 1993 could do it today. ”If I was 13 today I could start Bad Boy Records,” he says. ”Due to the accessibility and the knowledge that kids have, due to social media. Kids, actually, that are gonna be business men and women, or hustlers, they start at the age 13 right now, because the business is something that’s attainable to them, it’s something that they’re allowed to be a part of, it’s something that they rule. So if I were coming up at this time I’d have more access. And I’d probably be able to build something bigger than Bad Boy Records.” Imagine that."
"Updated at 1:59 p. m. ET, President Trump gave a straight answer on Thursday about whether he has recordings of his private conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey  —   No. The question of the existence of tapes arose on May 12, when shortly after firing Comey, Trump tweeted that the former FBI director ”better hope that there are no ’tapes’ of our conversations.” That tweet appeared to come in response to a New York Times article that said that during a private dinner at the White House, Trump asked Comey for ”loyalty.” Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he told the president he would be ”honestly loyal” and that the conversation made him ”uneasy.” He also said he orchestrated a leak of information from memos he wrote about his recollections of private conversations with the president to trigger the naming of a special counsel, which did follow. At one point during his Senate testimony on June 8, Comey memorably said, ”Lordy, I hope there are tapes.” He added, ”The president surely knows whether he taped me, and if he did, my feelings aren’t hurt. Release the entire  —   release all the tapes, I’m good with it.” In the weeks since that May 12 tweet, Trump and his aides kept the mystery alive, refusing to say whether such recordings actually existed. Trump was pressed on it by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl and other reporters during a press conference on June 9. Q: And you seem to be hinting that there are recordings of those conversations. Trump: I’m not hinting anything. I’ll tell you about it over a very short period of time. Q: When is that? Trump: Okay. Do you have a question here? Q: When will you tell us about the recordings? Trump: Over a fairly short period of time. Q: Why not now? Are there tapes  —   Trump: Oh, you’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer. Don’t worry. ”I think the president’s statement via Twitter today is extremely clear,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday when pressed by reporters on why the president waited 41 days to clear up whether he had any recordings of Comey. ”You guys asked for an answer. He gave you one. He said he would have it to you by the end of this week, which he did. And beyond timing of that, I can’t really speak anything further,” Sanders said. The House Intelligence Committee had requested that any tapes that might exist be turned over by the White House by Friday, so the president was up against a deadline to deliver an answer. The president’s statement on Twitter went out just two hours after Senate Republicans released a nearly   bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and reshape America’s health care system."
"Tim Mueller has raised corn and soybeans on 530 acres near Columbus, Neb. for decades, but now he is planning to take a huge gamble. The   retailer Costco is building a new   plant in Fremont, Neb. about an hour away from Mueller’s farm. The company plans to slaughter 2 million birds per week. To raise all those chickens, Costco is recruiting about 120 farmers to sign on as contract poultry farmers. Mueller wants in. But to do that, he plans to take out a massive $2 million loan to finance the construction of four chicken barns. As pork and poultry production grows in the U. S. this is an increasingly common arrangement. Farmers sign   dollar deals to do business with big corporations. The company provides animals and feed. The farmer builds the barns and cares for the animals. It requires a major investment from the farmers who enter into the agreement. About 50 yards down a gravel driveway of Mueller’s home is a cornfield speckled with young, green stalks. This plot of land is where he wants to build as many as 12 new chicken barns, with enough room for 180, 000 birds. That would require about $6 million worth of loans. ”Makes me a little more diversified, brings some extra income in,” says Mueller. ”Every farmer needs extra income.” Mueller has never raised chickens, except for backyard birds. But like many farmers, the chance for steady income when grain prices are down, as they are now, has grabbed his attention. Also, he says, adding chickens would help two of his sons come back to the business.  ”Bringing the boys back to the farm is huge for me,” Mueller says. ”I’m not a big enough farmer to where another family could farm and do corn and soybeans and survive. This way they can.” You can hear the excitement in Mueller’s voice when he talks about raising chickens, and maybe some nerves, too, thanks to that big loan. Should his two sons join the business, they would have to take out similar loans. ”My wife and I talked a lot about this investment,” Mueller says. ”She said the same thing, ’God, that’s a lot of money’.” Buying another section of farmland to raise more corn would cost nearly as much, Mueller says. The poultry contract is supposed to pay off the debt. ”You take out a loan over 15 years, you’re getting your barns paid for plus you’re taking good money home to live on,” Mueller says. ”That’s why when you compare buying ground to this investment, to me, it’s sounder.” That   scenario, however, is not guaranteed. In other parts of the country, poultry contracts have not always been a sound investment. ”The upfront promises of a poultry production contract are really enticing,” says Christopher Leonard, author of The Meat Racket, a book about cutthroat contracts in the poultry industry. In states like Arkansas, Leonard says, poultry growers often sign contracts for one flock at a time, with no guarantee that there will be another. They are also typically paid according to a tournament system: the best farmers are paid extra, with money taken away from farmers at the bottom. ”These entrepreneurial farmers take on a lot of debt, and then after just a year or two find themselves really bound up in onerous conditions they never expected to find,” Leonard says. Lincoln Premium Poultry, the Costco subsidiary managing the Fremont project, says the Nebraska contract is written differently. It will pay extra for the best chickens, but will not cut the pay of farmers whose chickens are below average. Also, the contract will not be   . The company will ask farmers to sign a   contract, the same length as the bank loan needed to build the chicken barns. ”I wish I had this contract that I’m giving these growers in Nebraska, that’s how strongly I feel about it,” says Walt Shafer, the project manager for Lincoln Premium Poultry and a contract poultry grower in Virginia. Ultimately, Costco wants to make the arrangement work, Shafer says, because the company needs all the chicken the farmers can produce. ”We’re sold out and we haven’t produced a product yet,” he says. Other observers say the Costco contract is far from a sure thing. The Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) a   that advocates on antitrust issues in agriculture, and the Nebraska Farmers Union sent a letter to Costco outlining their concerns with an early draft contract. For instance, if the project struggles financially, Costco can cancel the contract. It can require farmers to pay for expensive building upgrades. And farmers can always lose money on a bad batch of birds. ”A disaster flock I call them,” says OCM President Mike Weaver, who raises poultry on contract in West Virginia. ”They contract a disease that stunts their growth. And that’s going to happen to (the farmers) eventually. The feed and the chicks, they don’t have control over, but their pay is going to be based on those.” Weaver says neither Costco nor Lincoln Premium Poultry responded to the concerns the groups raised. Shafer says the company has responded to some issues raised by a grower advisory committee made up of prospective contract producers, including Mueller. Mueller says he understands the potential pitfalls, but he is still ready to sign on. He has talked to other contract farmers and played out   scenarios. He also ran the contract by his banker, attorney and accountant. ”There’s some things that aren’t perfect, but you’re never going to get a perfect contract,” Mueller says. ”And there again you got to have some faith and you’ve got to have some trust.” In the coming weeks, Mueller plans to sign a final contract with Costco. The    language in that document will largely determine whether his optimism pays off or whether it is just wishful thinking. Grant Gerlock reports from Nebraska for NET News and Harvest Public Media, a public radio reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture and food production issues.  "
"One of nature’s most efficient   systems is the egg. Eggs evolved over 300 million years ago as vertebrate animals adapted to living on land. And since then, they’ve taken on numerous shapes, especially among birds. Biologists have long wondered why there are so many shapes, and what determines each one. Hummingbirds, for example, have eggs like Tic Tacs. Birds called murres produce eggs shaped like big teardrops. Some eggs are more like pingpong balls. Now, an international team of scientists believes it has solved the mystery of the eggs. Biologist Mary Caswell Stoddard of Princeton University led the team. She had heard the shape theories:   eggs don’t roll away, they roll in a tight circle so maybe that’s good for birds that nest on cliffs. Or elliptical eggs, like slightly flattened spheres, might stack closer in nests and incubate better. Stoddard looked at nearly 50, 000 eggs and   them with 1, 400 bird species. ”We are able to look at the egg in many dimensions and crack the mystery,” she says. The answer surprised her. ”Egg shape appears to be related to flight ability in birds,” Stoddard says. Take chickens. They’re lousy fliers, with more   eggs. But eggs from   migrating birds tended to be quite different. ”We find that good fliers, birds that seem to be adapted for strong powerful flight, tend to lay more asymmetric or more elliptical eggs, and this came as quite a shock to us,” Stoddard writes in the journal Science. Think of a banana compared with a grapefruit, for example  —   similar volume but slimmer shape. It made sense, she says. Birds that evolved for powerful or   flight needed a body to match: sleeker, more streamlined. That meant less internal cargo space. ”We think that the birds’ abdominal cavity is becoming smaller, the internal organs are becoming compressed” over evolutionary time, she says. ”And this has an effect on the   process.” She notes that this process starts inside the mother bird even before the shell grows around the egg and its outer membrane. Even penguins, which are marathon ”flyers” through the water, have elongated eggs. Mark Hauber, an ornithologist at Hunter College and the author of The Book of Eggs, says the research by Stoddard’s group resolves years of controversy. ”We kept thinking that eggs are adapted to being in the nest, adapted to being on the ground or in a tree cavity,” Hauber says, ”and it turns out that eggs may be the result of how the bird is shaped.” He says he can’t wait to show the paper to his students."
"If you’re standing in the blazing sun struggling to read this on your cellphone, there may be some relief in sight. And you’ll have a moth to thank. The reason you have to find shade to read your phone is the way the light reflects off the screen. The reflection reduces contrast, washing out images. And so ”the lower the surface reflection, the better,” says   Wu, a professor of optics and photonics at the University of Central Florida. Wu’s team of researchers has developed a film that coats cellphone screens to cut down the glare. Their inspiration? The eyes of a moth. Most moths are nocturnal. Their eyes are covered in   nanostructures that prevent light from reflecting off them when they fly at night and giving away their location  —   helping them to avoid predators. Think of all the terrible photos of people with glowing red eyes. It’s like that, but a bit worse. Because instead of being embarrassed, you’d be eaten. The researchers copied those   structures on the moth eyes for their film. Current cellphone displays use a sensor to detect bright light, and then boost the screen brightness to improve readability. But that drains battery power. There are some   screens on the market now, but they trap only certain wavelengths of light. Adding the   film to a cellphone made it four times easier to read the screen in sunlight, according to research published in the journal Optica. The new film is helpful even when you aren’t in the sun  —   screens also were 10 times easier to read in the shade. It can also help keep your screen cleaner. ”Some commercial   films can be contaminated by fingerprints or dust,” Wu says. ”In our film, we have a special treatment that has a   effect,” owing to the film’s ability to repel moisture left behind by fingerprints. That moisture often traps dust and dirt on your screen. Films that mimic moth eyes have already been used to increase the efficiency of solar cells. Wu’s group wanted to find a way to use similar technology to develop   film for phones. But the structures in the moth eyes are really small. The researchers had to come up with a way to quickly assemble the tiny structures to cover large screens, so they used   nanoparticles that mimic   structures to build a template that they could apply to any display surface, like a smartphone screen. The tiny structures are also flexible. That means that the   film could be used to coat foldable displays in the future. But don’t expect to see these special films on your phone or tablet just yet. The authors still have to tweak the flexible film so that it is tough enough to withstand prolonged use. After all, moth eyes weren’t built to take the abuse that some cellphones get. The   technology is far from the first invention inspired by nature. Velcro was inspired by burs from the burdock plant that stuck to a dog’s fur after a hunt. And sticky gecko feet inspired NASA scientists to start designing a robot that can walk around in open space on the International Space Station."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify or Apple Music playlist at the bottom of the page. Beach House has spent 13 years and six albums perfecting a hazy   sound that’s as versatile as it is enduringly, endearingly simple. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally make brooding, deliberately paced music that still sparkles and sweetens in surprising ways  —   a contradiction summed up by the title of one of Beach House’s best records, Depression Cherry. Perhaps because the Baltimore duo works with such spare and distinctive ingredients, its new,      collection hangs together as a cohesive set of songs, even as Beach House throws chronology to the wind and bounces around the margins and dark corners of its catalog. ”Chariot” and the seething ”Baseball Diamond” are both strong, previously unreleased outtakes from the busy stretch of 2015 that produced Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars, while an atmospherically hissy recording of ”Rain In Numbers” drifts all the way back to 2005 without breaking stride. Elsewhere, ”Norway” and ”White Moon” remix old iTunes Session recordings from back in 2010, ”Play The Game” resurfaces a   Queen cover the band recorded for charity, and the Teen Dream outtake ”The Arrangement” feels jauntily grabby enough to serve as a single in its own right. Given its title,   And Rarities is upfront about being an exercise for enthusiasts, completists and other loving obsessives. But more casual fans shouldn’t shrug it off, either. Beach House has mounted a marvelous career on its ability to set a gloomy   mood without losing touch with its brighter side  —   and that gift stays on full display throughout this shaggily appealing assortment of orphaned gems."
"Thanks to Sigmund Freud, we all know what it means to dream about swords, sticks and umbrellas. Or maybe we don’t. ”For 100 years, we got stuck into that Freudian perspective on dreams, which turned out to be not scientifically very accurate,” says Robert Stickgold, a sleep researcher and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. ”So it’s only been in the last 15 to 20 years that we’ve really started making progress.” Today, most brain scientists reject Freud’s idea that dreams are highly symbolic representations of unconscious (and usually sexual) desire. That dream umbrella, they say, is probably just an umbrella. But researchers are still trying to figure out what dreams do represent, and what their purpose is. ”There’s not really a solid theory about why dreaming is there,” says Benjamin Baird, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin   —   Madison. ”It’s a big mystery.” But it’s not surprising that we do dream, Baird says. One of the main functions of our brain is to constantly create a model of the world around us, a sort of virtual reality that helps us interact with our environment. When we’re awake, that model is heavily influenced by what we are seeing and hearing and feeling. But during sleep, when there’s not much input from our senses, the brain’s model of the world is more likely to rely on internal information, like memories or expectations. ”So something like dreaming is to be expected,” Baird says. And by studying people as they sleep, scientists have learned a lot about dreams. Dreaming All Night Long, One observation from sleep labs is that we dream a lot, even though we rarely remember these dreams. Medical textbooks often say that people average about five dreams each night. But sleep researchers say that’s probably a low estimate. ”I am not convinced that there is ever a time when we’re asleep that we don’t have some form of consciousness going on,” Stickgold says. Some of the evidence for this comes from sleep studies showing many periods during the night when signals from the brain suggest a person is thinking. More evidence comes from sleep studies in which people are repeatedly awakened, which greatly increases the chance they will remember a dream or thought. When a person is woken up, they report some sort of mental activity about 80 percent of the time, Stickgold says. He says many of these ”mentation reports” are more fragmented and less likely to contain narrative elements than what most people consider a dream. And scientists have revised an old assumption that dreams occur only during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. There’s growing evidence that dreams also can occur during   sleep, though these dreams tend to be less vivid. A Hot Zone For Dreams, Sleep studies also have led researchers to an area of the brain they suspect is responsible for generating dreams. This region at the back of the brain becomes very active when people are dreaming, a team reported earlier this year in Nature Neuroscience. The team studied the electrical patterns in the brains of 32 people as they slept, and woke them up repeatedly to ask about dreams. The researchers also found that brain activity could reveal some details of a dream, like whether it included a face or movement. These experiences activated the same brain circuits that become active when an awake person sees a face or experiences movement. The finding supports other research finding that ”we are using our brains the same when we’re dreaming [as] when we’re awake,” Stickgold says. Dreams and Memory, Many researchers believe dreams have a close relationship to the way our brains process memories. ”When we sleep, the brain does a lot of work, taking what we’ve learned, what we’ve encoded as new memories in the last day, and trying to figure out what they mean,” Stickgold says. So dreaming may be a way for the brain to ”take new information, combine it with old information in these totally strange ways, and see if it can get any insights into the usefulness of that information,” he says. This sort of thinking grew out of studies showing that REM sleep can help people remember something they’ve learned. There is also evidence that during REM sleep, the brain relives certain recent experiences, burning them into   memory  —   a process known as memory consolidation. But scientists are still debating whether dreaming is an essential part of this sort of memory processing, or just a novel byproduct of the brain’s nighttime activity. Dreams And The Developing Brain, Even before birth, a baby’s brain begins experiencing intense periods of REM sleep, the sleep state usually associated with dreaming. ”REM sleep is clearly playing a developmental role because it is occurring in huge proportions just before and after birth,” Baird says. One hypothesis is that by dreaming in utero, the fetal brain is experiencing a sort of protoconsciousness that will help it become fully conscious later on. But there’s no way of knowing whether a fetal brain is actually dreaming, or what it would dream about. And children don’t begin having dreams with story lines until about age 5, when their waking brains have learned to tell stories. Dreams We All Dream  A number of Freud’s observations about dreams are still relevant, even if his interpretations of them are less than scientific. For example, he observed that certain dream elements are common, if not universal. Teeth, for example. ”A particularly remarkable dream symbol is that of having one’s teeth fall out, or having them pulled,” Freud wrote in A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. He goes on to say that’s usually a symbol for castration ”as a punishment for onanism.” The castration explanation may be off base, Baird says. But problems with teeth are, indeed, something many people report in their dreams. ”It’s weird,” he says. ”What has that got to do with anything?” Baird suspects we share many dreams like this because we share the same nervous system design, and many of the same anxieties. Lucid Dreaming And Consciousness, Dreams may be so hard to pin down scientifically because they are so closely related to consciousness, a concept that has bedeviled scientists and philosophers for centuries. We all somehow know we are conscious. But it’s been difficult to define precisely what consciousness is, let alone determine how it is generated by the brain. And dreams are ”a nasty little side part of the problem of consciousness,” Stickgold says. When you are dreaming, ”you are in an altered state of consciousness,” Stickgold says. ”It’s just not the same exact kind of consciousness as we have when we’re awake.” In some dreams, ”consciousness” may be as simple as feeling an emotion or seeing a face. In others, though, it can involve complex narratives, detailed images and seemingly real experiences. ”It’s astounding, really, that completely on its own the brain is taking some random activation and structuring it into these fantastic narratives,” Baird says. Both Baird and Stickgold think dreams may offer a way to study consciousness. One reason is that when someone begins dreaming, it’s possible to watch their brain enter a certain state of consciousness. That is allowing scientists to look at the brain circuits that are involved in producing this state. And Baird is particularly interested in dreams known as lucid dreams. They are unusual because the dreamer is actually conscious that they are dreaming, Baird says. He and other researchers say lucid dreaming may be a state in which the brain is simultaneously awake and dreaming. So it may be possible to have dreamers themselves ask what their dreams mean. The dreams illustrated were compiled by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Illustrations are by Jennifer Qian. Kerin Higa, Katie Park and Meredith Rizzo contributed to this report. "
"Mass shootings in Orlando, Fla. Alexandria, Va. and San Francisco during the first two weeks of June  —   two of them on the same day  —   have once again put America’s complicated relationship with guns in the spotlight. Americans have remained fairly evenly divided between a desire to strengthen gun control measures and to protect gun rights during the past eight years, a Pew Research Center survey taken before the June shootings finds. In the latest poll, 51 percent of respondents said it is more important to control gun ownership, whereas 47 percent said it’s more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns. But the divide between Republicans and Democrats who say it’s important to protect the right of Americans to own guns has widened since 2000  —   from an    gap to a   gap. This gap is underscored by reactions to the shooting at a congressional baseball practice that sent five people to the hospital earlier this month. Hours after the shooting, U. S. Rep. Paul Mitchell,  . told NPR that ”gun control laws simply limit . ..   citizens.” In the same conversation, his colleague, Rep. Val Demings,  . remained firm in her commitment ”to keep guns out of the hands of bad people who shouldn’t have them.” But while that gap has widened, the Pew survey did reveal some areas of consensus: ”We can live in a safer place if we kept guns out of the hands of people that shouldn’t have them  —   domestic abusers, felons, people who are dangerously mentally ill, even suspected terrorists,” Mark Kelly said during a recent interview with NPR. His wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in an assassination attempt in 2011.   percent of adults in the U. S. now say they live in a home with a gun. Pew surveyed nearly 4, 000 U. S. adults, including 1, 269 gun owners.   percent of people who didn’t own guns said they could see themselves owning a gun in the future.   percent of Americans said they know someone who has been shot. And 23 percent said they, or someone in their family, has been threatened or intimidated by someone using a gun. The survey also asked about safety practices 7 in 10 gun owners said they had taken a gun safety course such as weapons training, hunter safety or firearm safety.   percent of gun owners said there is at least one gun in their home that is not kept in a locked place.   percent of gun owners have a gun that is loaded and easily accessible to them at home all or most of the time. Poll results come from a survey of 3, 930 U. S. adults conducted March 13 to 27 and April 4 to 18. The poll has a margin of sampling error of 2. 8 percentage points for all respondents, 4. 8 percentage points for gun owners and 3. 4 percentage points for people who don’t own guns. The question about gun rights was asked as part of a separate Pew national survey, most recently conducted April 5 to 11 among 1, 501 adults."
"America’s diversity remains on the rise, with all racial and ethnic minorities growing faster than whites from 2015 to 2016, the U. S. Census Bureau says in a new snapshot of the national population. The agency also found the U. S. median age has risen to nearly 38. Asian and   people are the two   segments of the U. S. population, the U. S. Census Bureau says. Both groups grew by 3 percent from July 2015 to July 2016. In the same 12 months, the   white population grew by just 5, 000 people.   whites remain the only segment of the U. S. population where deaths outpace births, the agency reports. ”While all other groups experienced natural increase (having more births than deaths) between 2015 and 2016,” the Census says, ”the   white alone group experienced a natural decrease of 163, 300 nationally.” The report adds new detail to a picture that’s been coming into focus in recent years. Last summer, for instance, the Census Bureau reported a shift in America’s youngest population, as babies of color outnumbered   white babies.   whites remain the largest group of Americans, at 198 million, the Census says, followed by Hispanics at 57. 5 million and blacks or   at 46. 8 million. (We’ll post the full ethnic breakdown at the bottom of this story). In its population estimates released Thursday, the Census also detailed the aging of America’s population, saying the median age rose in 95 percent of American counties between 2000 and 2016. Nationally, the median age rose by more than 2. 5 years, from 35. 3 to 37. 9, in the same period. The U. S. median age has risen 7 percent since 2000. ”Aging baby boomers will keep driving the growth in numbers of older adults in the U. S.,” NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reports. ”Utah had the lowest median age, at almost 31. The county with the highest median age was Sumter County, Fla.  —   home to a large retirement community  —   where the median age was just over 67.” In some states, the rise has been stark: the median age in Maine, for instance, is now 44. 6  —   six years older than in 2000. It’s one of five states where the median age is 42 or above the others are New Hampshire, Vermont, West Virginia, and Florida. The youngest median ages were in Utah (30. 8) and Washington, D. C. and Alaska (both with 33. 9) the Census says. Maine had both the nation’s highest median age and the highest percentage of   whites, at 93. 5 percent. In terms of national diversity, here’s the Census Bureau’s rundown. We’ve reordered the agency’s list to sort the groups by growth rate:"
"The United States is still a home for everyone the proof is that a Muslim living in suburban Illinois can make a prayer rug joke and have it feel fully, unmistakably American. In The Big Sick, when aspiring comedian Kumail Nanjiani leaves the Chicago stage, he often dines with his Pakistani parents in their    where they expect him to do his full five minutes of prostrating before they can all dig into their biryani. But Kumail, like many a disaffected member of his generation, has soured on the concept of religion. So when he takes his rug into the basement, he sets his iPhone timer and watches exactly five minutes of YouTube videos. This scene is gold. But it comes with the little stinger that Kumail knows he can only tell this particular joke to himself. His parents made sacrifices for him, built new lives in an unfamiliar country for him, and all they asked in return was that he continue to practice Islam  —   the one thing he no longer wants to do, because America has changed his priorities. That extends to their hopes for his arranged marriage, or, as Kumail notes they call it at home, a marriage. ”Who could that be?” his mother asks when the doorbell rings, returning every time with a pretty, single Pakistani woman the bachelorettes leave behind their headshots, which Kumail chucks into a shoebox. It’s an easy laugh with no easy answers. The Big Sick is autobiographical, the story of the   Nanjiani (a longtime comedy ringer you likely know best from Silicon Valley and frequent appearances on L. A.  comedy podcasts) and his   wife Emily V. Gordon. The two   the script, then handed it to director Michael Showalter (Wet Hot American Summer) who ditches his usual archness to do right by the emotional honesty that makes this story so special. Then they let Judd Apatow produce, which was nice of them, as it means he finally gets his name attached to the James L.   blend of sprawling,   comedy and tearjerker melodrama that he worships but hasn’t quite been able to pull off since The    Virgin. Because, yes, this movie about comedians has a side of tears. But not right away, you gluttons for sadness. Opposite Nanjiani, who plays himself, there is the effortlessly charming Zoe Kazan as Emily, a white graduate student who flirts with him at his show before insisting that she can’t see anyone right now. She insists this as one beer turns into three dates and various nights on his apartment’s air mattress. There’s a nice joke where Emily tries to set limits by calling an Uber from Kumail’s place, and his phone buzzes because he moonlights as a driver  —   destiny by way of the App Store. Kumail wants badly to be with Emily, but can’t bring himself to tell his parents (Anupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff) for fear they will disown him he tries confiding in his brother (Adeel Akhtar) who advises him to break off the relationship immediately so he won’t upset the family. His loyalty to his parents leads him to attempt a double life, and soon a hurt Emily has called off their relationship. The complexity of Kumail’s feelings toward his heritage is refreshing. He clearly loves his culture, and has written a   show about Pakistan, including an oral exam, which he makes his friends suffer through. Yet there’s a sense that he’s become trapped by his family, even beyond the familiar    jokes where they hint at preferred careers in medicine or law. They’re barreling toward something that is going to hurt. And that’s all before the Big Sick rears its ugly head. After breaking up with Kumail, Emily collapses and is placed in intensive care at a local hospital, where, in a medically induced coma, she can’t see that her   is doting over her. The film doesn’t get too lost in medical jargon, but the real Gordon has a rare autoimmune disorder called   Still’s disease (AOSD) a form of arthritis that can (and does) shut down major organs in the body. Movie characters spend more time lounging around hospitals than pharmacy reps, but The Big Sick is the first ”hospital film” in a while that makes us feel the stakes of a vicious mystery disease in our guts. While Emily suffers rounds of tests, her parents come to town, and they’re played in a brilliant bit of casting by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano. Hunter’s   nurturing instincts and Romano’s   blunderings give Kumail a different window into parenting from his own though at first wary of him because they know he’s been dishonest with their daughter, they soon warm to his sheepish charms and form an unlikely trio facing down this anxiety together. Though The Big Sick is not especially concerned with making you laugh, it does have a lot to say about laughter: in an electrifying scene, the parents go to Kumail’s comedy show to take their mind off things, and wind up defending him from a racist heckler. Their anger is, at least in part, because their right to laugh at something has been violated. Nanjiani’s biggest strength as a comedian is also his biggest weakness as a dramatic actor: the withering line deliveries that sound like he’s struggling to control his sarcasm. His chemistry with Kazan helps us take him more seriously, though the demands of the story are such that they aren’t together for long before Emily goes comatose. In the film’s second half, the laws of attraction are really being applied to Kumail’s relationship with Emily’s parents, who grow to appreciate him without her knowledge, and without Kazan’s infectious onscreen presence. So maybe this isn’t really a  . But buried inside this seeming flaw is the film’s unique, understated comic irony. After rejecting his parents’ attempts to arrange his marriage, Kumail winds up arranging his own."
"The premiere of John Cage’s   composition ”4’33”” in Woodstock, New York in 1952 stirred some measure of the outrage that greeted Stravinsky’s ”The Rite of Spring,” only here the audience was upset by the notes they didn’t hear, instead of the ones they did. The first of three movements started with the pianist opening the keyboard lid and ended with him closing it that same pattern was repeated for the next two. After four minutes and 33 seconds, the composition was over and the fury began: ”Good people of Woodstock,” one audience member declared, ”I think we should run these people out of town.” The good people of Woodstock felt cheated because they came to a music concert and heard no music. Cage’s piece implies that the deliberate, conscious silence heightens awareness of the fact that music is everywhere —  in the natural sounds bleeding through from the outside, in the shifting of seats, in the whispers of ”isn’t this pretentious twaddle?” wafting down from the balcony. In the decades since, Cage has won the argument: ”4’33”” remains his most widely discussed and celebrated work, and it’s been performed by underworked orchestras in venues as exalted as Carnegie Hall. It seems the noisier the world gets, the more essential Cage’s work as an aural  . Patrick Shen’s documentary In Pursuit of Silence include Cage’s work in a spectrum of other sounds, from the quiet of a Kyoto tea ceremony to the   street noise of Mumbai during its   festival season. Its central purpose is the same as Cage’s: To make the viewer aware of the sounds they accept without thinking and the ones they’re not attuned to hearing at all. Shen makes his case through a globetrotting survey of different soundscapes and interviews with doctors, theologians, scientists, and others who proselytize about the virtues of quiet and solitude. As much a visual treat as an aural one, the film divides its time between using the tools of cinema to isolate and enhance the beauty of sounds and silence and exploring different schools of thought on the subject. Shen follows Greg Hindy, a young hiker who decided to trek from Nashua, New Hampshire to Los Angeles, California without speaking a word, looking to confirm his intuition that his vow of silence would open him up to other inputs. He visits Okutama Forest in Japan, where an environmental research has established therapeutic retreats under the conviction that quiet can help relieve stress and prevent disease. He interviews a student and teacher at a New York public school where noise from the passing train disrupts 15% of instruction, debilitating the learning process. In Pursuit of Silence aims for a comprehensive study of its subject, from the impact of sound pollution to the cacophony of urban centers and technology to the scientific and religious belief that silence brings us closer to our natural, primal, selves. To some extent, the film is fundamentally at odds with itself: There’s no easy way to reconcile the    between conventional documentary interviews where experts share their thoughts and the wordless rapture of sequences where Shen illustrates the point through sound and image. Shen wants to be informative and demonstrative, and he struggles to have it both ways. Not surprisingly, the film works best as pure cinema. It’s one thing to talk about noise and solitude, but much more powerful for Shen to cut from the ”  din” of   arguments to the tea ceremony in Kyoto, where no voices compete against each other for attention. In another sequence, Shen isolates various sounds  —   rain on a rooftop, a child crying, radio static, a marching band, the ambience of Sixth Avenue  —   into a kind of sensory test, calling on us to assess their specific value. Fitting for a documentary about the value of quiet, In Pursuit of Silence is better when it shows than tells."
"While Clint Eastwood was busy playing a wounded Union soldier held at the pleasure of a bevy of Southern belles in Don Siegel’s 1971 Civil War drama The Beguiled, the actor also found time to direct his first film, Play Misty for Me, in which he also starred as a disc jockey stalked by an unhinged female fan. Both films were visceral articulations of male paranoia about the sinister potential of repressed or oversexed women. Imagine such fighting talk in the hands of a woman filmmaker whose aesthetic draws heavily on the world of fashion. Best known for lushly visual meditations like The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, and Marie Antoinette, this year Sofia Coppola became only the second woman since 1961 to win Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for her take on The Beguiled. Though Coppola adapted her screenplay from the original novel by Thomas Cullinan, her interpretation also streams a sly subterranean dialogue with Siegel’s nakedly badass reading. Coppola’s The Beguiled doesn’t so much negate the festering male paranoia as reclaim the point of view for the women it targets. Then she bats the premise around like a graceful cat with an addled mouse in its paws. The Beguiled opens with an archetypal fairytale sequence of a little girl in braids wandering into a forest, pausing to collect mushrooms in a basket. The meaty veggies will be back later in a crucial supporting role. For now they provide innocent ambiance as the girl ventures deeper into the woods, where she stumbles on a wounded Union soldier who is either a wolf in lamb’s clothing or the other way about. Both are viable possible outcomes given that Corporal John McBurney is played by Colin Farrell, who could charm the Spanish moss off the   trees, with an edge of sinister. Back at the gated ladies’ seminary where teachers and girls strive to maintain a chastely Christian life even as the war dwindles their reserves, McBurney turns his Irish magic on every girl or woman who visits his room to nurse him back to health. Which, in short order, is every voluminously skirted female in the house, whatever her age and with or without permission. The first hour of The Beguiled is as slow and atmospheric as you’d expect from Coppola, some of whose exquisitely mounted films, it must be said, are paced like beautifully crafted wall hangings. Posed like tableaux vivants in artfully coordinated pale pastels, the assembled women more closely resemble a   Vogue cover than a besieged community on the losing side of a brutal war. There is cunning method, though, in the suffocating formality of the   civilities that pass at first between the ladies and their patient. Underground energies are released and libido rises as three of our most intelligent actresses  —   Nicole Kidman as the tightly wound principal, a wonderful Kirsten Dunst as an earnest teacher ripe for all kinds of flight, and Elle Fanning in fine form as a trainee strumpet  —   gear up for a covert but accelerating rivalry for their objet de lust. Here the pace quickens nicely into a whispery bedroom farce with modest   attached. McBurney, it turns out, has radically underestimated his hosts, and his practiced efforts to divide, conquer, and score bring about a sharp left turn into Southern Gothic, delivered with Coppola’s signature, coolly amused gaze. Civilization goes out the window, and suffice it to say that a teacher’s injunction to ”brung meh thah anatomy textbook” is not a last call to biology class. Is Coppola’s The Beguiled a ”women’s movie?” As always the director has stacked her cast and crew with female talent, and certainly the film is all about women taking charge of their emerging animal natures. Some feminists have pursed their lips over Coppola’s recent admission that she’s never heard of the Bechdel test, which calls for films in which women talk to each other about anything other than men. The Beguiled’s women do little else, but though I suspect Coppola would wince at the word empowerment  —   ideology and art don’t mix well in her movies  —   they move on to carry the conversation, shall we say, to their distinct advantage."
"One of Mali’s most celebrated singers, Oumou Sangaré began her career as an outspoken champion for the rights of women. On her 1989 debut, Moussolou, she offered sharp critiques of practices such as arranged marriages and polygamy, drawing on her own experiences growing up in a polygamous household. Sangaré’s irresistible voice enhances her music’s power to disarm critics and make defenders of outmoded traditions think twice. She is often referred to as the Songbird of Wassoulou  —   the name of a region in Mali’s forested south and also the name of a musical style Sangaré has helped define. But she chose to take stylistic liberties on her new album, Mogoya (which means ”Today’s People”). Sangaré enlisted young producers in Sweden and France to create a more contemporary sound, rejuvenating her music and aiming her pointed messages at a younger audience. Over the course of Mogoya, Sangaré briskly covers important ground: Malians who lose hope in their country and risk their lives trying to reach Europe by sea, the dangers of gossip and rumors, the breakdown of trust between people in the wake of Mali’s recent political crises. And in the song ”Yere Faga,” which features Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, she takes on the sensitive subject of suicide. Mogoya is Sangaré’s first album in eight years, and only her fifth studio album in some 30 years. That’s partly because Sangaré also owns a hotel in Mali and runs other businesses, remaining unencumbered by the normal rigors of a pop music career. She makes a new album only when she’s good and ready, which shows in the work: Though Mali undoubtedly punches far above its weight in producing great and innovative music, Mogoya is still a landmark release. "
"When faced with allegations of sex abuse against one of its bishops, the Church of England ”colluded and concealed rather than seeking to help those who were brave enough to come forward,” the church’s leader acknowledged Thursday. ”For the survivors who were brave enough to share their story and bring Peter Ball to justice, I once again offer an unreserved apology,” Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, said in a statement. ”There are no excuses whatsoever for what took place and the systemic abuse of trust perpetrated by Peter Ball over decades.” Welby was responding to the findings of an independent investigation into how the church handled the allegations against Ball, a former bishop who pleaded guilty in 2015 to indecent assault against young men. That report, also released Thursday, found that Ball ”abused many boys and men over a period of twenty years or more.” ”That is shocking in itself but is compounded by the failure of the Church to respond appropriately to his misconduct, again over a period of many years,” Moira Gibb, who led the investigation, said in the report. ”Ball’s priority was to protect and promote himself and he maligned the abused. The Church colluded with that rather than seeking to help those he had harmed, or assuring itself of the safety of others.” The report goes on to lay out its extensive evidence against the    Ball, who served a prison sentence of just over a year and was released on probation in February. The ”harrowing” report  —   in Welby’s words  —   details how investigators say Ball would use the trappings of his office to his advantage: ”He had a well worn ’modus operandi’ in which he would target and groom boys and young men. His abuse was charged with religious intensity. The men we interviewed spoke of how he ’exploited the significance, particularly within the Anglo Catholic tradition, of ritual’. For Ball religious rites became ’a mask for abuse, and theology (was) used as a way of justifying abuse’. The evil of what he did was ’compounded by his message that this made the victims more special and more holy’.” But nearly as damning is the report’s assessment of Lord Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury. Investigators say Carey was warned repeatedly about Ball’s actions but failed to act on them appropriately. What’s more, the report states, ”Lord Carey played the lead role in enabling Ball’s return to ministry” after Ball was arrested on suspicion of indecent assault in the early 1990s  —   ”that was not a decision taken by anyone else.” ”This is inexcusable and shocking behaviour and although Dame Moira notes that most of the events took place many years ago, and does not think that the Church now would conduct itself in the ways described we can never be complacent, we must learn lessons,” Welby said in his statement. According to Welby, that includes endorsing the report’s 11 recommendations centered on supporting survivors and reinforcing disciplinary measures. ”For the survivors, it may feel this is all too late,” Peter Hancock, the church’s lead bishop on safeguarding, said in a statement. ”I am personally aware from my meetings with individual survivors in the course of my work that they live with the effects of this abuse for their whole life. I once again offer them my wholehearted apology.” He added: ”It has taken longer than it should have done, but we are absolutely committed to implementing Dame Moira’s recommendations and my role as lead bishop is to ensure this happens.”"
"The humanitarian aid system is broken. That’s the message of a new paper by Paul Spiegel, a former senior official at the U. N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The piece was part of a special series on health and humanitarian crises published by the British medical journal The Lancet in early June. Today, more than 65 million people around the world have been forced from home due to violence, war or conflict. ”The humanitarian system was not designed to address the types of complex conflicts that are happening at present,” wrote Spiegel. ”It is not simply overstretched it is no longer fit for purpose.” Spiegel, a physician and a professor at Johns Hopkins University, explains what the humanitarian system needs to do to fix itself. He’s aiming his remarks at U. N. agencies like UNICEF, international aid groups like Save the Children and national donors like the U. S. government. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. In your paper for The Lancet, you say that the humanitarian system that responds to emergencies due to conflict is ”broken.” How so?  The humanitarian system was made for a simpler era, where conflicts and wars were shorter in nature and had an end. Its purpose was to bring   money and care to people to address their immediate needs. The humanitarian system is based on premise that refugees are temporary. But the point is that refugees stay for a heck of a long time. This   approach made sense in the past, but it’s not functioning anymore.  In Syria in particular, you have millions of people who need help inside [the country] and millions of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon [and Turkey]. We used to talk about acute emergencies lasting for a couple of months, but that hasn’t happened in Syria. They’ve been in that state for the past six years. Their needs  —   shelter, clean water, protection against infectious diseases  —   are extraordinary. The humanitarian system cannot respond appropriately. You outline a few big ways to fix humanitarian aid. For one, you’re not a fan of refugee camps. Why?  In the past, it was easier to put refugees and displaced people in camps. You set up parallel services [for example, schools and clinics] to save lives quickly. But camps cost a huge amount of money, and in the long term, people become dependent on those services. There’s no dignity. Let’s not do that. Let’s not put people in camps. If not camps, then what? Let’s put the money to [  services like health care] to help displaced people.  The government of Iran, for example, has absorbed over a million Afghan refugees. They didn’t put them in camps. They gave them work permits, allowed them into primary and secondary schools and even universities. Over a    UNHCR [worked with Iran’s health system to allow] refugees to access the national health insurance system. This is a bonus not just for refugees but for the Iranian government. It puts more money into their health systems. You also call on big development agencies like the World Health Organization and the United Nations to let go of some of their power.  There needs to be a remaking of how we respond, coordinate, lead humanitarian crises. In the past you had international organizations come in because the governments were too weak to respond. But now governments are becoming stronger and they’re saying: hold on, humanitarian system. You can’t do whatever you want. That will require some changes in the way the international system responds. That means the system will have less power and authority as the host governments deal with the humanitarian emergencies. For the U. N. for example, that means reducing their staff and budget. How that is done is unclear. So where does that leave the humanitarian system?  Humanitarian principles  —   humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence  —   are essential in humanitarian action. We need to make sure that everyone regardless of nationality, ethnic group and religion person receives assistance according to these principles. For example, we cannot rely on the Assad government to provide assistance throughout Syria. Clearly he would provide only to the people who support him. Same in South Sudan. Ethnic fighting is rife, and we cannot rely on Salva Kiir and his government to provide assistance throughout his country. For that reason, governments that are directly part of a conflict cannot generally be relied upon to provide aid in an impartial and neutral manner. In these circumstances, neutral and independent parties are needed to ensure that assistance is provided according to humanitarian principles. Has the humanitarian aid system made any changes for the better?  In the past, the U. S. would provide a tremendous amount of food aid that would come from America’s excess stock and grain, distributed by American [air] carriers. Now technology is a game changer. For example, in Jordan and Lebanon, the most vulnerable refugees are getting ATM cards [with money to buy local foods from local markets]. We’re not shipping food from abroad. We’re giving refugees their own money to buy their own commodities. Do refugees get much input into the way aid is handed out?  They’re not being asked what their needs are. There have been times when the World Food Programme has not given the right type of grain to a population. For example, bulgur wheat as opposed to rice because rice is more expensive. What happens when the people who want rice end up getting bulgur wheat? The people who receive the bulgur wheat say: This is for the animals. So they sell it for rice  —   even if that means getting less of it  —   or for other needs like firewood. A lot of your aid fixes have to do with preserving the dignity of refugees and displaced people.  These people have lost everything. Imagine yourself in their situation. You have nothing and you’re dependent on people. As soon as you can, you’d want to become less dependent and take the future into your own hands."
"A sinewy, grayish, vaguely human thing sits on the ice cap somewhere in the Arctic, before plunging into the water below. That’s when a very unfortunate whaling vessel arrives and harpoons a whale, setting the thing on a rampage. It won’t take long for readers put the pieces together: The creature is the Monster  —   as in Frankenstein’s monster  —   and his encounter with the whaling ship sets him on a mission to destroy, pitting him against the humanity that rejected him centuries ago. That’s the premise of Destroyer, a new     comic by the author Victor LaValle, which hit comic book stands earlier this month. (He also has a new novel out this month  called The Changeling.) LaValle has long married matters of race to the fantastical. The same is true here in Destroyer: The last living member of the Frankenstein line in the modern day happens to be a woman named Josephine Baker, a brilliant   scientist overwrought with grief after her    son is killed by a police officer. But Baker, like her notorious forebear, has the means to bring the dead back to life, and she unknowingly puts her family’s legacies  —   her resurrected son and her ancestor’s   abomination  —   on a collision course. I talked with Victor LaValle to talk about why he thought the Frankenstein myth lends itself to an exploration of the fallout of modern police violence. Here’s our conversation, edited for length and clarity: So much really effective horror literalizes the specific cultural anxieties of the moment, and this comic is very much about the desire for a parent whose child has been killed by the police to overcome death. Why’d you choose Frankenstein as the way into that idea?  It’s one of the first science fiction novels, a great horror novel. But what really stayed with me is the origin of it in Mary Shelley’s emotional life. She’s the daughter of a woman who died giving birth to her, and she held on to this grief all her life: that she didn’t know herself. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a pretty famous woman herself. A suffragette, a vegan  —   A vegan?  Frankenstein’s monster is actually a vegan in her novel! It’s a very minor thing, but he talks very proudly about how he lives entirely off berries and grass  —   which is impressive because he’s eight feet tall, so he’s got to eat a lot of berries! But Shelley lost her mother at birth . .. and then she runs off with Percy Shelley. Their first kid together was born premature, and a couple months into the baby’s life, Mary Shelley walks into the nursery room and finds the baby dead in its crib. She writes in her journal: ”Found baby dead. Very bad day.” That’s all she wrote in her journal that day. Not long after that, Lord Byron and Percy and she all go off on their famous trip where they all say, ”Let’s come up with ghost stories. Let’s come up with something really spooky.” It’s in that context that she comes up with this story about a man who tries to bring the dead back to life. I wanted to explore that kind of grief, that desire  —   forget Victor Frankenstein’s desire but what I read as Mary Shelley’s desire  —   to bring back who you love and to wish for that power not simply out of hubris, but to see the one you love back again. There’s no way I couldn’t think of in 2014, 2015, 2016, all these black parents, and particularly black mothers  —   black mothers on the news that I see wrecked by the murders of their children. And it occurred to me that this is on some level the same urge. If I were to say to any one of them, ”Would you be willing to do anything to bring back your child?” I felt pretty sure the answer would be ”Yes, I’d do anything.” And so I thought of Frankenstein’s monster, and this is how I would make it relevant to today and not this old rehash but a continuation of these really essential ideas and a way to talk about issues that are up to the moment, unfortunately. In the first issue, you synopsize the circumstances under which the young boy, whose name we don’t learn, is shot by the police, although we don’t initially see his killing.  His name is Akai. GD: Like Akai Gurley? [Gurley was an unarmed Brooklyn man who was shot by a police officer while walking down a   stairwell in a public housing complex in 2014. The officer in that shooting was fired by the police department and later convicted of manslaughter.] I didn’t want to call him ”Tamir” like Tamir Rice because it seemed too ghoulish. And because Tamir Rice’s name is a name that many people knew, it would be hard to see this character as a character, and there were ways that readers might demand a more literal version of him. But Akai Gurley didn’t become a national story, even though his story was just as horrible. And I thought, here’s a tiny way I can keep his name alive. It’s clear that Akai and the Monster are going to cross paths, and Josephine Baker is going to have to deal with her family’s legacy. So she’s the     —   a descendant of the original Dr. Frankenstein?  The only Frankenstein who lives in Mary Shelley’s novel is Edward Frankenstein, one of Victor’s younger brothers. When Victor Frankenstein destroys the mate he was making for the Monster, the Monster says ”I will be with you on your wedding night.” And then the Monster shows up and kills Victor’s    brother then he kills the woman Victor was going to marry then he kills Victor’s father. He basically kills everyone. My thinking, was: Edward is the only one who survives and because of what happened in Europe, he comes to America. Eventually, as these things happen, the last living descendant of the Frankenstein line is Josephine Baker. A black woman. A black woman. In the later issues, there’s the suggestion of, ”Well, why couldn’t she be a Frankenstein?” Why would you assume she wasn’t? Especially if you know how the world works  —   particularly how America works. Were people skeptical about the plausibility of that? No, but I was anticipating skepticism. Like sometimes, being used to degrees of ignorance or prejudice, I start coming up with explanations or retorts to things that don’t even come up. I just said, she’s the last Frankenstein, and my editors were like, ”OK, sounds good.” You say in the afterword that you never read the novel until you started working on this project. And full disclosure, I’ve never read it either, but it’s one of those touchstones that’s so iconic that most people probably think they know the rough outline. Yeah, as I wrote in the afterword, the novel is so much weirder than its offspring. I departed from the Boris Karloff Frankenstein depiction . .. With the bolts in the neck. Right, and the flat head and also ’the innocent monster.’ That’s a real change from the book. The sweet Monster who just wants to be loved, that’s in the book. But when Victor Frankenstein rejects him, he basically is like, ”OK, well I’m going to become a serial killer!” And that part magically stays out of the later Frankenstein stuff. Because I think it makes the Monster  —   in a good way  —   complicated, but for popular entertainment, makes him less simple and sympathetic. Your characterization of the Monster in Destroyer is that he’s a rampaging, unstoppable force. At the end of the novel, the Monster sees Victor Frankenstein die, and basically runs away to the Arctic. So my thing is he’s got several hundred years apart from humanity. I don’t see what humanity has done over those 200 years that would make anyone have a softer view of humanity. There are lots of people who would argue on the other end, that there’s a lot of good. But this version of the Monster, will be like, ”All your good intentions, they don’t mean anything. All I look at is the ways in which you have wrecked this world. I’m at war with you.” Toward the end of Mary Shelley’s novel, the Monster says that he is at war with humanity. And I liked the idea of this Monster who is just a being of rage. It’s going to be a very grim depiction of the Monster. But that’s going to be juxtaposed by this other character who is brought back from the dead, in Akai. He’s a    and he’s not going to be a being full of rage, right?  He’s a    and he’s a sweet   . So one, I wanted to show just a sweet black boy, just to have that as something you see in the comic, because I feel like you don’t see that anywhere. And then two, the overarching battle on the spiritual level is Josephine, who is teetering between madness and sanity because of her grief at the loss of her son. And then you have these two literal embodiments of those choices: the Monster, on one end, is just the impulse to give in to grief and rage, and to just say ”I’m sick of humanity, let’s just kill everyone.” And on the other end is Akai, who is, despite even what happened to him, still imbued with the spirit of hope. And to say, ”look how amazing it is, Mom, through your brilliance and technology, there’s still a chance for good in the world to still exist.” But if one of the themes in the original novel is hubris  —   even if Josephine brought back this sweet kid from the dead, she’s still doing something that is ethically . .. let’s, say, murky.  The return of her son and the return of the Monster will force her into a larger consideration of many of the ethical choices she has made up to this point, and to make her have to stop having blinders on about her responsibility and her culpability in some of the harsh thing that her brilliance has brought into the world. The two guys who come looking for Josephine in the first issue work for a woman who is the director of this thing called the Lab. And they have been doing, as they must always do, ”secret government experiments.” [Laughs.] And Josephine was always the brilliant scientist at the heart of those experiments, but those experiments came with a cost as well. Did she stop working at the Lab after Akai was killed by the police? It was because of the birth of Akai, and that being the beginning of a flowering of new conscience. But I do really want to wrestle with some   things, and as women talk about quite a bit, you get pregnant at a   job and they push you out. Even the people who are higher up, they lose confidence in you as a serious professional. So outside of the superpowers and the     stuff, I wanted to deal with how hard it is to be an ambitious woman within an organization. It’s harder than it is to be an ambitious man. In the first issue, we see an allusion to the police dispatch call that leads to the police encounter in which Akai is killed. Did you model the way his killing happened on any of the specific stories of black people being killed by the police in the last few years?  That call is literally the call that is the beginning of Tamir Rice’s murder. I went and found the transcripts between the dispatcher and the police who eventually showed up. The part we hear is the part where the dispatcher is trying to find a unit that can come to the scene. Whenever one of these stories happen, there’s always this impulse to decontextualize it. This person made that choice and that person made that choice and those choices seem to exist inside this sphere that only involve the people immediately involved. We don’t appreciate the forces that bring a random black kid and a random police officer into contact, even though those things happen literally thousands of times a day. Not necessarily shootings like Tamir Rice’s, but there’s nothing aberrant about those encounters with the police. And there’s a whole bunch of reasons, you know, why Akai Gurley was in a place where he had this encounter while he was just walking down a stairwell . ..  Even down to how or why it was commonplace thing for the lights to be out in that building’s stairwell, so that that cop walks in extra nervous and won’t even walk in the stairway. What I was even more interested in setting up was this other thing that gets lost. How did his parents meet? What was their courtship like? When we finally get to the moment when we sort of replay the moment in which he is killed, I want it to feel like, I’ve known this family since his parents met, since Josephine and his dad met at the lab. That all this life was ended there, and that all these lines of human existence that came to a close at that moment."
"Today we’re going to update a story we first brought you back in 2004. That September, NPR set out to document what may be the most important day in any young child’s life  —   the first day of kindergarten. For parents it’s a day filled with hope, anxiety and one big question: Is our child ready? The answer back then, as far as    Sam Marsenison was concerned, was, ”No, no, no!” For his parents, Paul and Maryanna Marsenison of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. it was tough letting go too. They had spent weeks, if not months, preparing themselves. But on that day, Sam made it very clear that he wanted no part of his new school, Virginia Shuman Young Elementary. Sam lunged toward Maryanna and wrapped his little arms around her waist, tears rolling down both their faces. In the background, the principal was on the PA system with a    warning: It was time for all kindergarten parents to leave. Immediately. And now it was Maryanna, not Sam, who didn’t want to let go. For a while it seemed that even a tractor couldn’t pull her away. Thirteen years later, Sam says he has only vague memories of the drama that unfolded on his first day of kindergarten. Now 18, he has grown into a tall, handsome young man with his mother’s eyes and olive brown skin. A few days ago, Sam graduated from Fort Lauderdale High School, and he will soon be off to college. Sam is well aware that his parents are anxious, wondering  —   again  —   whether he is ready. ”My parents are sending me across the state to go live by myself,” he says, ”which I’ve never done before.” Sam is headed for Tallahassee Community College, about 460 miles north of Fort Lauderdale. His grades weren’t good enough to get into Florida State University, but Sam hopes to transfer there, assuming he takes his studies seriously and his grades improve. Paul, his dad, has his misgivings: ”I don’t have confidence that he’s going to take [his studies] seriously in the beginning.” Maryanna disagrees. ”I think he will. Because he’s done a lot of growing up this past half year.” Throughout high school, Paul and Maryanna struggled to get Sam to work hard, to think about his future. ”A year ago he did not even want to go to college,” says Maryanna. At one point, Sam talked about joining the military. Sam, of course, has heard all this talk before, and he has told his mom and dad hundreds of times: ”I’m definitely ready and I’m confident I’m going to do well.” At Fort Lauderdale High, the few teachers who got to know Sam saw him as an average student. The one thing he seemed passionate about was fishing  —   especially with his dad. ”Not every weekend, but we’d go quite a bit,” says Paul. ”And I think that has given him a tremendous amount of  .” Paul is convinced that being out on the water builds character. It’s one thing that seems to truly bond Sam and his father. Paul says that’s what he is going to miss most when Sam, his ”fishing buddy,” is gone. Listening to Paul reminds me of how strongly he felt 13 years ago about raising a fearless, confident child. It was important to him, for example, that    Sam learn to ride the school bus by himself. Here’s the way Paul put it back then: ”We have to put him on a bus. Get him on a bus and shake him up a little bit,” he told me. ”Make him think on his feet a little bit.” To this day, Maryanna is the   while Paul is the one pushing Sam to be more independent. It’s been a tug of war of sorts. With only a couple of hours before graduation, the Marsenison home is abuzz with aunts and grandparents from out of town. I pull Sam off to the side to ask him how he is feeling. ”I know I could’ve pushed myself harder, studied more, done better,” he says. I ask him: Do you think you have to prove to your dad and your family that you’re ready to work hard and have a bright future? ”I don’t think I have to prove it to them,” he responds. ”It’s what I want for myself, so I’ll do whatever it takes.” ”Heck, I might even work for my dad’s construction business someday,” Sam adds with a chuckle. I have a feeling Paul would really like that. Right now, though, the graduation ceremony awaits. First, Sam needs help with his tie. He has no idea how to put one on and his dad wasn’t much help either. No problem: His mom is there to help. Maryanna still can’t believe her little boy has grown up so big, so fast. She tries to hold her emotions in check, reminiscent of how she tried to hold back tears on Sam’s first day of kindergarten. ”Yeah, there’s going to be tears, again,” she says. ”The emotions are the same. But I’m more confident because he’s a real person now. He’s a person, I should say. He was my baby.” Sam just sighs: ”They don’t want to let me go,” he says. How does that feel? ”It feels good that they’ll miss me.” It’s time. The entire family, aunts and grandparents, squeeze into the two family cars and make their way to the Broward County Center for the Performing Arts, where Sam and more than 500 of his classmates will receive their diplomas. As Sam walks across the stage with diploma in hand, Paul and Maryanna smile. Their    has turned out to be a healthy, happy young man with a good heart. Yes, a late bloomer, perhaps, but someone they believe will one day make them even more proud than they are tonight."
"Planet Earth is a vast place, with humans scattered all over it. But how we’re distributed is far from even. About half of the planet’s 7. 5 billion people live in just seven countries. China tops the list with over 1. 4 billion people, while its neighbor India is catching up fast at 1. 3 billion. Though far below the billion mark, the United States comes in third, with about 325 million people. Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria round out the top seven. Dividing the world up by continents can give a sense of where the world’s population is clustered. North and South America combined have about a billion people. Africa has 1. 3 billion, and Europe is at 742 million. And then there’s Asia, with 4   billion people. That’s more than half of the humans on Earth. How many more people will there be in the next hundred years? The United Nations estimated in a report released Wednesday that by 2100, the human population will actually stop growing. By then, the U. N. predicts that more people will live in cities, make more money, have more to eat, get better health care and have fewer kids. There will probably be about another   people in Asia and 3 billion more in Africa, which is currently the continent with the youngest average age. If the U. N. estimate holds up, there will eventually be 11. 2 billion people living on Planet Earth, about 50 percent more than the current 7. 5 billion. And 80 percent of future earthlings will live on just two continents  —   Asia and Africa."
"The world’s population growth is slowing, according to a new United Nations report, but the number of people living on Earth will still approach 10 billion by the year 2050. The document tallies the current population at 7. 6 billion people, up from 7. 4 billion just two years ago. This year’s count means the world added roughly 1 billion people over the last dozen years. It will take 13 years to add the next billion, according to the report. The planet is expected to have 8. 6 billion people in 2030, and 9. 8 billion by 2050. A decade ago, the world’s population was growing by 1. 24 percent per year today it is 1. 1 percent. The report says China remains the most populous country, with 1. 4 billion inhabitants  —   or 19 percent of the world’s population. But India trails close behind at 1. 3 billion people, and in just seven years, is expected to surpass China in population. Other key findings in the report by the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs: ”Sixty per cent of the world’s people live in Asia (4. 5 billion) 17 per cent in Africa (1. 3 billion) 10 per cent in Europe (742 million) 9 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean (646 million) and the remaining 6 per cent in Northern America (361 million) and Oceania (41 million). Much of world’s population growth is expected to come from developing nations, which have the highest fertility rates  —   4. 3 births per woman. That rate is expected to fall to around 3. 5 by 2030. Nevertheless, the populations in more than two dozen African nations are likely to ”at least double” by 2050. By contrast, the birth rate in Europe is just 1. 6 births per woman. It has been on the rise in recent years and is expected to reach 1. 8 by 2050  —   but that’s not enough to keep the continent’s population from shrinking. Europe is the only region expected to have a smaller population in 2050 than it does today. Life expectancy is also projected to get longer. ”Globally, life expectancy at birth has risen from 65 years for men and 69 years for women in   to 69 years for men and 73 years for women in ” the study finds. Its authors attribute the improvement, in part, to a lower mortality rate among children and successful efforts to fight diseases  —   especially  . The projection that an extra 1 billion people will inhabit the Earth in 13 years raises questions about the ability of global resources to keep up. Already, roughly 800 million people go to bed hungry, according to this 2015 U. N. report. It says a full   of the world’s food is wasted every year. If just a quarter of it could be recovered, it would be enough to feed 870 million people."
"Oh sure, you could argue there are other, more important things happening in the world. And frankly, you’d be right. (For those things, by the way  —   which some people, in somber tones, might call news  —   please see here.) But sometimes, you just need to watch a big gorilla dance in a small pool. Meet Zola the gorilla of the Dallas Zoo. It’s not the first time Zola, amateur dancer, has taken Internet fame for a spin. He also turned some heads back in 2011 when he was at the Calgary Zoo. But it’s quite likely this is the first time his moves have been set to a famous film score of the 1980s. So, while we’re at it, you’d probably better watch that, as well. Here’s Zola dancing to the euphonious strains of ”Maniac,” from the film Flashdance. The zoo says the pool time is an ”enrichment session,” designed to help ”enhance the environment and lives of animals, like Zola, by providing them with mental and physical stimulation to increase natural behaviors.” But feel free to consider the footage an enrichment session of your own. Now, better get back to all that  —   ahem  —   news."
"A live Asian carp  —   an invasive fish so threatening to local U. S. ecosystems that officials have struggled to keep it out of the Great Lakes  —   has been caught 9 miles from Lake Michigan, beyond a system of underwater electric barriers. The silver carp, one of several species of the invasive fish, was captured below the T. J. O’Brien Lock and Dam on Thursday morning ”with a gill net by a contracted commercial fisher,” the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee said in a statement Friday. ”The silver carp was 28 inches in length and weighed approximately 8 pounds.” Kevin Irons, an official with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, tells NPR that tests of the fish and its surrounding waters are now underway and further information will be released soon. ”There are seven species of carps native to Asia that have been introduced to the United States,” explains the ACRCC, a group composed of federal and local agencies, ”but only four types that are considered a threat to the Great Lakes: bighead, silver, black and grass.” In the eight years the group has monitored the Chicago Area Waterway system, it says this is only the second time a threatening species of Asian carp has been caught beyond the barriers. The first was a bighead carp caught in Lake Calumet in 2010. For many onlookers, Thursday’s catch presents cause for alarm. As Fisheries and Oceans Canada notes, the fish have significantly outcompeted native species in the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and they threaten to have the same ecological impact in the Great Lakes. ”They are voracious eaters, able to consume 5 to 20 percent of their body weight each day, leaving far less of the microscopic plant and animal life (phytoplankton and zooplankton) to support native fishes,” the agency says. And that threat has been taken so seriously, millions of dollars have been spent on underwater barriers to keep them in check, according to public radio consortium Great Lakes Today. ”The news of an Asian carp found within nine miles of the Great Lakes is cause for serious concern,” Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman said in a statement. ”The fishing industry in the Great Lakes is a $7 billion a year economic engine and it would be severely threatened if Asian Carp are allowed into the Great Lakes.” Portman called on the Trump administration to release its plan to prevent the problem  —   and to recommit funding to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a $300    program that ”helps states with environmental projects, like cleaning up toxic sludge from tributary rivers and keeping invasive Asian carp out of the lakes,” Karen Schaefer explained on All Things Considered earlier this year. The White House has proposed deep cuts to the program, and the funding for one of its studies, which would focus partly on Asian carp, remains in doubt. ”Asian carp are a very serious threat to our Great Lakes economy,” Portman’s colleague from across the aisle, Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, tweeted Friday. ”The Trump Admin must immediately release the study they have been blocking so we can permanently stop the Asian carp!” For now, the ACRCC cautions: ”It is important to note that this preliminary finding does not confirm that a reproducing population of Asian carp currently exists above the electric dispersal barriers or within the Great Lakes.” That said, the group notes it is launching ”two additional weeks of intensive sampling in the area.”"
Proposed White House budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies will end federal spending on Great Lakes  . That includes axing work on invasive species like Asian carp and a public health program that protects drinking water from toxic algae for 11 million residents around Lake Erie.
"A Catholic bishop has instructed priests in his central Illinois diocese to deny communion, last rites and funeral rites to people in   marriages  —   unless they repent. In the decree he sent to priests, deacons, seminarians and staff in his Springfield diocese last week, Bishop Thomas Paprocki sets forth a set of norms on   marriage and related pastoral issues that he says are the policy of the diocese. Paprocki’s decree bans priests and parish staff from performing   marriages or allowing   weddings or receptions at any Catholic facilities. People in   marriages ”should not present themselves for Holy Communion, nor should they be admitted to Holy Communion.” A person in a   marriage who is facing death may only receive communion after expressing ”repentance for his or her sins.” Finally, Paprocki writes that ”unless they have given some signs of repentance before their death,” people in   marriages may not receive a Catholic funeral. The decree drew strong reactions from LGBT Catholic groups, including DignityUSA. ”[T]his document is   and hurtful in the extreme,” the group’s incoming president, Christopher Pett, said in a statement. ”It systematically and disdainfully disparages us and our relationships.” ”Bishop Paprocki’s decree makes it very clear why so many LGBTQI people and their families feel unwelcome in the Catholic Church and why so many leave it,” Pett wrote. ”It is simply cruel and shameful to refuse burial or Communion to those who seek the grace and comfort that our Church offers at some of the most difficult moments of life,” added the organization’s executive director, Marianne  . ”This is reminiscent of the appalling practice of denying Communion, funerals, and burial to people dying of AIDS at the height of the epidemic.” The Springfield Diocese defends the decree as necessary ”in light of changes in the law and in our culture regarding these issues.” A 2015 Supreme Court ruling made gay marriage legal across the United States, and Paprocki has made headlines with his opposition to gay marriage before. In 2013, he held an exorcism in response to the legalization of   marriage in Illinois. ”[T]he Church has not only the authority, but the serious obligation, to affirm its authentic teaching on marriage and to preserve and foster the sacred value of the married state,” it said in a statement to NPR. ”Regarding the specific issue of funeral rites, people who had lived openly in   marriage, like other manifest sinners that give public scandal, can receive ecclesiastical funeral rites if they have given some signs of repentance before their death.” Observers note that Paprocki’s decree contradicts the more welcoming direction that Pope Francis has set for the Catholic Church. ”I can’t imagine a cruder thing more at cross purposes with what the Holy Father is trying to do,” says Michael Sean Winters, a columnist at National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper. Particularly galling, says Winters, is denying funeral rites to people in   marriages. ”The only time I can remember someone being denied a funeral were mafia bosses, when they were shooting at each other,” he says. Winters says Paprocki’s decree is at odds with the message and tone of Francis’ document on family life, titled Amoris Laetitia, or ”The Joy of Love.” In that 2016 paper, Francis rejected   marriage, but also instructed priests to be inclusive: ”I would also point out that the Eucharist ’is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. ’” The Archdiocese of Chicago told NPR that the policies decreed by Paprocki are not its own, but otherwise would not comment. The U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops directed a request for comment back to the Springfield diocese. Winters notes that ”it’s considered brutta figora  —   an ugly figure  —   to speak ill of other bishops on the record.” But he predicts that ”privately, 95 percent of other bishops in the U. S. are reading [the decree] and are horrified. Even the ones who are pretty arch on   marriage think this is too far.” Despite Paprocki’s decree, support for   marriage is growing in the United States, especially among young people. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 71 percent of millennials supported gay marriage, as did 58 percent of U. S. Catholics. ”With young people, I think they’re wrong to think God is fine with gay relationships,” says Winters. ”The Church doesn’t teach that. But [Paprocki]’s wrong to say this is the most important issue. I don’t think it’s a fair reading of gospels, church teachings or our culture today.” Christopher Hale, who   an online journal for young Catholics called Millennial, says the decree is out of touch with the church’s leadership and its teachings. ”Let’s be clear: Francis would give a funeral to someone in a   relationship,” Hale says. ”A church that excludes the LGBT community is a church without a future.” And burying the dead is a rite as old as the faith itself, says Hale. ”No one goes to the grave without sin,” he says. ”The notion that a murderer could receive a Catholic funeral and someone in a   union could not is absurd. . .. Every Catholic deserves a Catholic funeral.”"
"Arkansas’s pesticide regulators have stepped into the middle of an epic battle between weeds and chemicals, which has now morphed into a battle between farmers. Hundreds of farmers say their crops have been damaged by a weedkiller that was sprayed on neighboring fields. Today, the Arkansas Plant Board voted to impose an unprecedented ban on that chemical. ”It’s fracturing the agricultural community. You either have to choose to be on the side of using the product, or on the side of being damaged by the product,” says David Hundley, who manages grain production for Ozark Mountain Poultry in Bay, Arkansas. The tension  —   which even led to a farmer’s murder  —   is over a weedkiller called dicamba. The chemical moved into the   spotlight a few years ago, when Monsanto created soybean and cotton plants that were genetically modified to survive it. Farmers who planted these new seeds could use dicamba to kill weeds without harming those crops. Farmers, especially in the South, have been desperate for new weapons against a devastating weed called pigweed, or Palmer amaranth. And some farmers even jumped the gun and started spraying dicamba on their crops before they were legally allowed to do so. (Dicamba has long been used in other ways, such as for clearing vegetation from fields before planting.) The problem is, dicamba is a menace to other crops nearby. It drifts easily in the wind, and traditional soybeans are incredibly sensitive to it. ”Nobody was quite prepared, despite extensive training, for just how sensitive beans were to dicamba,” says Bob Scott, a specialist on weeds with the University of Arkansas’s agricultural extension service. As soon as spraying started this spring, the complaints began arriving. By June 23, state regulators had received 242 complaints from farmers who say their crops have been damaged. ”This has far eclipsed any previous number of complaints that we’ve gotten, and unfortunately, this number seems to just keep growing,” says Scott. ”Every day we get an update with eight or ten more complaints.” In his area, Hundley says, ”any soybean that’s not [resistant to dicamba] is exhibiting damage. I can name 15 farmers within three or four miles who have damage, and I can only name   farmers who have used the technology.” On June 20, the Arkansas Plant Board met to consider an emergency ban on further spraying of dicamba, and farmers crowded into the meeting to argue both sides. ”The individuals who were damaged were quite passionate. The growers who had invested money in the technology also were quite passionate,” says Jason Norsworthy, a weed specialist at the University of Arkansas, who attended the meeting. At that first meeting, a procedural   prevented the board from holding a valid vote. On June 23, it reconvened and voted,   to ban any spraying of dicamba on any crops except for pasture land for 120 days. The ban will take effect immediately if the governor of Arkansas signs it. The decision, assuming it goes into effect, is a hard blow for farmers who paid extra for   seeds. They now won’t be able to spray dicamba, which they were counting on doing. ”A lot of those growers will not have a good option for pigweed,” Scott says. Even Hundley, who was in favor of banning dicamba, doesn’t feel that it’s an optimal solution. ”It’s pitting Arkansas farmers against Arkansas farmers, and that’s never good,” he says. Looking toward the future, Scott isn’t sure whether dicamba ever will be a good tool for farmers, because it appears to be so difficult to control. ”I have walked a lot of fields that leave you scratching your head, how did this happen? Because it seemed like they did everything right,” he says. He also doesn’t think the problem will be limited to Arkansas. His state just happened to hit this problem first, because Arkansas’s farmers adopted dicamba earlier than those in other states. ”Arkansas may be ahead of the curve, but I anticipate other states also having this problem,” he says."
"Venezuela’s ongoing political and economic crisis has taken a toll on daily life there. A crash in oil prices and political instability under President Nicolas Maduro have led to food shortages, and that has prompted almost daily street protests by thousands of Venezuelans. A    protester named Carlos tells NPR’s Audie Cornish the food situation is ”pretty extreme.” NPR is using only his first name for his safety. ”I cannot find basic food: no rice, no chicken. Fruits are very expensive. So what has really shocked me is that this past year, you can see on every street of the city, there is someone in the garbage looking for food,” he says. Carlos had been a tour guide until the spring, when he joined the opposition protesters, which the government considers enemies of the state. With the collapse of the economy, Carlos says tourism has pretty much dried up. These days the protests in Caracas  —   Venezuela’s capital  —   are practically his   job. As described by Carlos, the protests are extremely organized. Protesters, he says, are divided into levels. ”There’s level 1 to 7,” he says. Level 1 protesters are up front,    with police. People call them warriors. ”These are kids, most of them under 25, which are students most of them  —   or they have nothing to lose, they don’t have a job, they don’t see a future and they fight for their life,” he says. Carlos mostly hovers in the second wave of the protest. He says these are people who help with logistics. There, he passes out water and snacks and pours Maalox over the faces of protesters who are weeping with tear gas. He gets the food through a network of people who operate more or less anonymously, sharing information through messaging apps about   points and pickup spots where they are hiding supplies. ”It’s like a war. There are soldiers, there’s [logistics] there’s intelligence. It’s like a Cold War as well because we’re hiding,” he says. ”I’m walking down the street, and I’m scared some policeman might [catch] me because now if you have a helmet in your car or a baseball hat of the flag of Venezuela  —   which is like the symbol of the protest  —   they can put you in jail.” More than 70 people have died in protests that have roiled the country since April, after Venezuela’s Supreme Court moved to dissolve the National Assembly. And the protests have taken on new urgency now that Maduro has plans to rewrite the country’s constitution. Protesters believe he’s trying to cement his hold on power. Carlos says protesters want new elections, the release of political prisoners and access to humanitarian aid. Shannon O’Neil, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells NPR that Maduro has the support of between 20 and 25 percent of Venezuelans. Many, she says, are people who are getting baskets of food through a program arranged by the government. ”There is this base of support, though we have seen it eroding as this crisis gets worse,” she says. The U. S. has issued sanctions on Venezuelan leaders and has reached out to other countries in the region to try to bring together a coalition to push for change. But, as O’Neill says, such moves can bolster Maduro’s  . S. rhetoric. In a televised speech last month, Maduro said to ”go home, Donald Trump. Get out of Venezuela, Donald Trump. Enough interventionism.” ”That rallies his loyal followers. If you can blame the problems of Venezuela today not on your policies but on the United States, it serves him well,” O’Neill says. She says some people hope the government will collapse  —   and others fear it because that could lead to more economic hardship  —   and a refugee crisis. ”We’ve already seen tens of thousands of Venezuelans flee to neighboring countries to look for a better life, to get basic health care, to find food, and there’s a worry that you could see those levels increase dramatically if Venezuela and the government collapse.” The number of Venezuelans seeking asylum in the U. S. has more than doubled in the past year. All Things Considered editor Emily Kopp contributed to this story."
"Andy Slavitt understands the inner workings of the U. S. health care system better than most. From 2015 to 2017, he ran the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare, as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Since leaving that post in January, he’s been an outspoken critic of the Republican proposals to dismantle it. Yesterday, shortly after the release of the Senate bill, he tweeted, ”It’s the ugly   of the House bill.” And this morning his message was, ”We must start over. It’s too important.” Slavitt spoke with All Things Considered host Kelly McEvers about the latest Republican plan, called the Better Care Reconciliation Act, and where the Affordable Care Act goes from here. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Fair to say there isn’t anything you like in this new plan? Well, it’s hard to say that you like the uniforms of the team that’s got the guns pointed at you, trying to kill you. And I don’t mean to exaggerate, but in the main, it’s very hard to be supportive of something that takes health insurance away from 20 million or so Americans. The details that we’ve seen, at least so far, aren’t particularly good for people with lower incomes. They’re not particularly good for people who are sicker, and they’re not good for people who are older. Supporters of the Republican plan say the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate forced people to do something they often didn’t want to do. And that this new proposal would allow people to have more choice. True? Well, the individual mandate is about as popular as vegetables are with my kids. We know that. And we know that there needs to be something that helps keep healthy people in the pool, because if we leave people to their own devices to buy health insurance when they get sick, that will just drive the cost up for everybody. There are choices and   made within [the Senate] bill that we should acknowledge. If you are a    person who makes $70, 000 a year and has no illness, this is a good bill for you. If you are younger and don’t get your insurance through your employer, your insurance will be cheaper. It will cover a lot less, but that may not be a problem to you. You may be OK with that. The challenge of course is that if you’re over 50, or if you’re sick, or if you live in rural areas and if your income is low, you pay the price. In fact, people who are over 50, many of them would be asked to pay as much as 50 percent of their income [for health insurance] and that’s all in order to make the policies cheaper for younger people. The problem our country has is how to help people who are in the lowest economic straits, who have the most health challenges, get access to affordable coverage and, indeed, get well. The problem we don’t have is how to help    get cheaper insurance. That’s just not a national concern for us right now. You’ve talked about how the Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect. If the Republican proposal does not pass, what could and should be done to strengthen what’s already there? This is really an interesting question because I actually am a big believer in bipartisanship, in large part because I don’t think our country deserves to go through the    of changing our health care system every election cycle. But the only way bipartisanship happens is if partisanship fails. If this legislation fails in the Senate, I do think we’ll have an opportunity. There are a number of things that we can work on constructively to make insurance more affordable for people, to make insurance more competitive. I think if the people who drafted the ACA had it to do over again, there may be some things that would have been done differently. I think people would have liked to have had more enforcement of competition, more affordability for people in the middle class. I think there are plenty of practical solutions. The hard part is getting people to trust each other once again."
"On the surface, comedian Kumail Nanjiani’s new movie, The Big Sick, sounds like a  : He plays a struggling   comedian, also named Kumail, who meets a cute girl, Emily, at one of his shows. Sparks fly and they start dating. But then she finds out he’s been keeping her a secret from his Pakistani family there’s a huge fight and they break up. But that’s just the beginning. Nanjiani wrote the movie with his wife, Emily Gordon, and they based it on their actual relationship. It’s called The Big Sick because Gordon fell ill and needed to be put into a medically induced coma. Gordon says writing about the coma for the movie helped her understand what happened while she was under. ”I very much got to dig in and interview my family,” she says. ”Kumail and I had endless conversations about what that time was actually like and little tiny moments, and a lot of those made it into the movie.” The film also explores the tension between Nanjiani and his family over him dating a white woman instead of a Pakistani. Nanjiani says a lot of the script was inspired by his parents  —   but not everything. In the movie, when Nanjiani’s character finally tells his family about his girlfriend and her coma, his mother’s reaction is brutal. ”You are not my son,” she tells him. But in real life, Nanjiani says, ”My mom was immediately very concerned for Emily. And then, when Emily came out of the coma and was OK, then my mom was like, ’How could you do this to us? !’” On making sure no one looked like a bad guy in the scene where Kumail comes clean to his family, Nanjiani: This scene was written as sort of, you know, me taking my stand and telling them the truth and I sort of tell them everything about all the stuff I disagree with them on. And then the guy who plays my dad in the movie, Anupam Kher, actually says, ”The American dream isn’t about doing whatever you want to do. You still have to care about your family, you have to care about the people around you. You don’t live in a vacuum.” So we really, really did a lot of work in making sure there were no bad guys in the movie and that their perspective is just as valid and just as articulated as mine is. On his parents’ conflicted feelings about their relationship, Nanjiani: When I was sort of telling my parents how I felt about all this stuff, I could feel them being in America and wanting to stay true to their culture, and I would see that brushing up against them wanting to just love me and be my parents. And at some point, they, I think, decided that their love for me was bigger than whatever sense of obligation they felt in this specific respect. Gordon: I don’t think it was a decision on their part. I don’t think there was any world where they were like, ”You know, we thought it through and we’ve decided we love our son.” They love you so, so much. . .. Nanjiani: Well, I really thought that I would get disowned by my parents, because that is the narrative that you’re sort of raised with. And I was shocked. I didn’t give them credit for changing, because they’re still changing. You know, when you’re a kid you look at them  —   you’re like, ”That’s those people and they are these people and these are the people they’ll always be.” But going through this and now they’ve been in America a little more than a decade, I see them changing as people. I see them becoming different people and I hadn’t really considered that. On their experiences with rebellion, Gordon: I’m from the South. I’m a very rebellious kid. And so I, from the age of 15 on, was kind of like, to my parents, ”Just take it, this is who I am. Haha!” And I kind of naively, when we started dating, was like, ”Just tell your parents how you feel. They’ll understand, they have to. You’re a  .” And I think it’s, you know, even after 10 years I’m still understanding the nuances of it and realizing that this was never about me, this wasn’t about how much he cared about me but this was kind of his own journey that he needed to go through. . .. Nanjiani: Where I’m from, we don’t have the narrative of children rebelling against their parents. What I realized going through this stuff in real life was, you know, we had that narrative of if you sort of marry outside the culture, we don’t talk to you anymore. I have the one uncle and he was like the cautionary tale. You knew about him since you were a kid, you know, he was sort of the absent uncle. With my parents, what helped them, I think, accept it was that they were here. They were in America they weren’t in Pakistan. I think it would have been much harder for them over there. On their advice for young couples who are going through what they went through, Gordon: I would say, as the white person in that, listen more than you speak. And understand that it’s not about you, and just have it be a negotiation, kind of, as things go on. Keep those lines of communication open. Lessons from being a sick person: Appreciate your body, that it’s working on a daily basis, because sometimes it stops working and you have to really, really take care of it. Nanjiani: I think, yeah, what Emily said. Understand that there are different ways of doing things and when two representatives from two different cultures come together, it can be beautiful, but it is also quite challenging. Radio producer Anjuli Sastry and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"A judge has declared a mistrial in the murder and manslaughter case against former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing over his fatal shooting of black motorist Sam DuBose. This is the second time the case has ended in a mistrial  —   the jury was deadlocked in the first trial, which ended last November. ”Jurors sent a note to the judge Friday morning saying they were hopelessly deadlocked after about 27 hours of deliberating,” member station WVXU reported. ”She sent them back to the discussion table.” But then later Friday, jurors returned to say they were still unable to find consensus, after nearly 31 hours of deliberations. The fatal traffic stop happened in July 2015, when Tensing, who is white, pulled DuBose over to ask him about a missing front license plate. Their exchange lasts less than two minutes and was captured on body camera video. Tensing repeatedly asks DuBose for his driver’s license. DuBose stresses that he does have a license and appears to search the car for it and his pockets before finally stating, ”I don’t think I have it on me.” According to the video, DuBose tells the officer that he is going to go home, ”right around the corner.” The next events happen very quickly. Tensing asks him to take his seatbelt off, and then duBose turns the car on. The car begins to roll forward, and Tensing engages in a very brief struggle with DuBose before firing his pistol into the car. As we have reported, Tensing’s bullet hit DuBose in the head, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. ”Tensing maintains he feared for his life as DuBose’s car began to drive away. Tensing pulled his weapon and fired to avoid, he said, being dragged under DuBose’s car,” WVXU reported. However, the member station adds that prosecutors ”argued Tensing was in no imminent danger but rather forgot his training and reacted in an unreasonable manner,” and ”a forensic video expert analyzed Tensing’s body camera footage and testified the car didn’t begin moving until . 178 seconds (less than a second) before Tensing fired the fatal shot.”"
"A week after opening to a tepid critical response and accusations of historical inaccuracies from actress Jada Pinkett Smith  —   as well as a misinterpreted Internet joke that had many searching in vain for the appearance of an iPhone in the film  —   the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez On Me has now been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit. The suit  —   filed today by Kevin Powell, a longtime pop culture writer, author, activist  —   accuses the film’s executive producers, screenwriters and distributors of cribbing from three cover stories on Shakur that Powell wrote for Vibe during the height of Shakur’s career. [Disclosure: NPR Music published an article by Powell, a remembrance of the recently deceased rapper Prodigy, earlier today.] Powell addressed the suit on Facebook, writing: ”After viewing the movie twice in the past few days, it is clear that my exclusive Vibe cover stories on Tupac Shakur (when he was alive) were lifted, without proper credit or compensation of any kind to me.” The list of defendants includes executive producers James G. Robinson, L. T. Hutton, screenwriters Steven Bagatourian, Jeremy Haft and Eddie Gonzales, as well as Morgan Creek Productions, Lions Gate and Program Pictures. Director Benny Boom was not named in the suit. Powell is seeking a series of damages, including $180, 000 for each ”broadcast” of the film. Lions Gate and Morgan Creek were not immediately available for comment on the allegations. The three Vibe articles in question  —   ”Exclusive: Is Tupac Crazy or Just Misunderstood” ”Tupac Shakur Jailhouse Exclusive” ”Live from Deathrow”  —   were published in February 1994, April 1995 and February 1996, and offer a striking view into Shakur’s famously nuanced thinking during the most critical time of his career. Notably, the suit’s allegations rest, in part, on creations and embellishments that Powell placed in his Vibe articles. ”While some of the content in these articles was factual,” the complaint reads, ”some portions of the article were changed or embellished by Plaintiff . .. In fact, the name and character of ’Nigel’ in [the Vibe articles] was specifically created by the Plaintiff without the authority or encouragement of Tupac Shakur. This made up character of Nigel was the embellishment of a real life character that was central to the narrative in [Powell’s] articles.” It also claims as infringing the use in the film of ”metaphorical slang and strong language, including but limited to the liberal use of the   indicative of the way rappers in the 1990’s talk.” As The Hollywood Reporter points out, these admissions could be interpreted as a legal tactic that allows Powell to claim ownership over biographical facts. Powell’s attorney, Keith White, may have been   criticism of Powell on these points in a statement today, writing that ”Kevin took creative license to protect the complex human being that was Tupac Shakur. This included   narrative changes and character creation in an effort to protect the legacy that Tupac was still building. Kevin’s exclusive and intimate access to Tupac Shakur came as a result of the trust established over the years. The narrative that Kevin developed from many intense and exclusive moments with Tupac should not have been used in any film without Kevin’s approval and consultation.” Powell’s lawsuit caps a week of controversy for Benny Boom’s film, which grossed $31 million domestically in its opening weekend."
"Intuitively, we tend to think of forgetting as failure, as something gone wrong in our ability to remember. Now, Canadian neuroscientists with the University of Toronto are challenging that notion. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Neuron, they review the current research into the neurobiology of forgetting and hypothesize that our brains purposefully work to forget information in order to help us live our lives. I spoke with Blake Richards, one of the   of the paper, who applies artificial intelligence theories to his study of how the brain learns. He says that in the AI world, there’s something called    —   a phenomenon in which a machine stores too much information, hindering its ability to behave intelligently. He hopes that greater understanding of how our brains decide what to keep and what to forget will lead to better AI systems that are able to interact with the world and make decisions in the way that we do. We hear a lot about the study of memory. Is the study of forgetting a relatively new thing? Within psychology, there’s a long history of work examining forgetting. So that’s not a new field of study. But the neuroscientists  —   those of us who work with the biology of how the brain works  —   have not really examined forgetting much in the past. Generally, the focus for the last few decades in neuroscience has been the question of how do the cells in our brains change themselves in order to store information and remember things. It’s only been in the last few years that there’s been an upswing in scientific studies looking at what’s happening inside our brains at the cellular level that might actually produce forgetting.  We’ve all heard of people who have encyclopedic memories, and a lot of us probably assume that’d be a great thing to have. But you argue that it’s actually not, because a lot of memories contain details that are irrelevant to living our daily lives.  In fact, I would argue they’re not just irrelevant, but they can be detrimental to living our daily lives. An interesting case comes from this old study by a Russian clinical neuropsychologist [A. R.] Luria, who had this patient, Patient S. who he reported was able to memorize basically everything from his life. But Patient S. was actually at a disadvantage, because he had trouble identifying the commonalities, the patterns in the world. And those commonalities, those patterns are what actually allow us to make intelligent decisions. If you see a dog off leash, barking at you, and previously you’ve been bitten by a dog barking at you off leash, you probably want to avoid that dog, even if it doesn’t look exactly like a previous dog you’ve seen. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t have brown spots or a white tail. What matters is that it has those features that indicate it’s one of those broad categories of aggressive dogs. Our memories ultimately are there to help us make decisions, to act in the world in an intelligent manner. Even though we all get a big kick out of people who can smash a trivia game, evolution doesn’t care if you can remember who hit the home run in the 1968 World Series. Evolution cares about whether or not you are an individual who’s making appropriate decisions in the environment to maximize your chances of survival. And reproduction, of course. Actually, a lot of people become more forgetful after having a kid. How does this work into your hypotheses? I actually love the example of after you’ve had a kid. This is another fascinating piece of forgetting that people have speculated on. And let me just clarify that this is me speculating  —   I don’t know if there’s scientific evidence for this or not  —   but if everyone remembered very accurately what childbirth was like, and we all remembered very accurately what having an infant or toddler is like  —   and I say this as someone who has a toddler  —   most of us would probably not have more than one kid. So it’s actually probably beneficial for us, in terms of making the decisions evolution wants us to make, to forget those parts of our lives. Would you go so far as to say forgetting is a function of memory? Yes, that’s exactly what I’d say, and what we’re trying to argue in this paper. When the goal of memory is to win Jeopardy! then you should try to remember everything you can. But when the goal of memory is to help you make intelligent decisions in a complex, changing world, then the best memory system will be a memory system that forgets some stuff. So a healthy, properly functioning memory system is one that does engage in some degree of forgetting."
"In 1982, Vincent Chin was a    draftsman at an engineering firm living in Detroit. On June 19, the   immigrant went out with friends to celebrate his upcoming wedding. That night at a bar he crossed paths with Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz. The two worked in the auto industry and were angry about recent layoffs which were widely blamed on Japanese imports. Gary Koivu met Chin when they were in the first grade and their teacher introduced Chin to the rest of the class. They were friends for more than 20 years and Chin asked Koivu to be the best man in his wedding. ”I was at work and he called me up and said, ’Why don’t you meet me at the bar tonight?’ It was one last time to go out with the guys before he got married,” Koivu says. ”We were just having a good time and listening to the music.” Koivu remembers that night and the first encounter with Ebens and Nitz. ”There was an auto worker,” Koivu says. ”He said to Vincent, ’Because of little mother f****** like you, a lot of Americans are losing their jobs.’ Vincent wasn’t Japanese. He was Chinese, but that didn’t matter. . .. He was Asian.” Koivu says Chin did fight, holding his own against Ebens and Nitz, but the argument didn’t end at the bar. ”Later, we were outside and [one of the men] went straight to the car and pulled out a baseball bat, and started racing toward Vincent,” Koivu says. Chin ran, but Koivu says the men found Chin and attacked him. ”I don’t know how many times he hit him in the head, but he was swinging the baseball bat like he was swinging for a home run,” Koivu says. ”Still hurts just talking about it. Left an empty hole in my heart.” Chin died four days later on June 23, 1982. Ebens and Nitz were sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $3, 000. ”That was like a punch in the gut,” Koivu says. ”Vincent, he had a good life. He was getting married in a few days. He was looking forward to buying a house, and his mother was gonna live with him, and he was gonna have kids. And I was happy for him. He was living the American dream.” Koivu says he and the rest of Chin’s friends got to live the rest of their lives out, ”but he missed out on that.” After his death 35 years ago, the federal case against Ebens and Nitz was the first time the Civil Rights Act was used in a case involving an   victim. Chin’s death went on to become a rallying cry for stronger federal hate crime legislation. Audio produced for Morning Edition by John White. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"Holly Macve’s voice seems to hover from era to era, coming to rest somewhere between the lonesome twang of Patsy Cline and the moodily modern slur of Lana Del Rey. Macve’s songs lope and shimmer at a lazy pace, but they never lack drama, even as she holds herself motionless. The     recently stopped by the Tiny Desk to perform three songs from Golden Eagle, her debut album. Whether performing on acoustic guitar (for ”No One Has The Answers” and ”The Corner Of My Mind”) or piano (for Golden Eagle’s epic title track) Macve remained in complete command. Backed by a suitably   band, she’d sound subtly radiant just about anywhere, from your nearest country bar to the most dreamily lit stage in Twin Peaks. Golden Eagle is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Musicians, Holly Macve (vocals, guitar, piano) Tommy Ashby (guitar) Michael Blackwell (bass) David Dyson (drums) Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Morgan Noelle Smith, Beck Harlan PA: CJ Riculan Photo: Claire  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"”I wanna go home not sing this song but I’m forced to perform speech napalm”  —  PRODIGY, ”Genesis” To be a black man in America is to be under a constant state of enormous pressure, stress and danger, from outside, from within. From outside there is the ruthless reality of racism, jabbing and stabbing at you from every angle, in the mass media culture, at school with textbooks that forever omit you, with those police encounters that put your soul on trial even if a simple traffic stop, from individual meetings with those who view you as dangerous, immoral, aggressive, violent, whether you’ve demonstrated any such behavior or not. And then if you are me or the late Prodigy of the rap duo Mobb Deep, and happen to hail from one of America’s ghettoes, your end could also easily come at the hands of people who look like you, too. Because not only is the racism mad real, but so is the internalized racism and toxic manhood we’ve digested so well, have taught each other, have gifted from generation to generation like family heirlooms for the boys in the ’hood. This is what crossed my mind when I learned of Prodigy’s tragically sudden death at 42 years old. Another black man dead who, like me, was probably happy  —   and surprised, to some degree  —   to make it to 18, to 21, to 25, to 30, to 40, knowing that those markers of age and time defeated are, for sure, no small miracle. Add to that Prodigy’s battle since birth with sickle cell anemia, and it is little wonder his short and tumultuous life was weighted, at different stages, with alcohol, marijuana, other drugs, anything to numb the trauma and pain of an existence that feels like life    awaiting death. This, to me, is why so many are taking Prodigy’s passing at such a young age so hard. For he truly was one of us, the way Tupac was one of us, the way Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest was one of us. Every generation has its spokespersons, its   its artists there to show us what we do not want to see, or hear, and Prodigy was undoubtedly that. It is like he had no other choice. Born Albert Johnson, his grandfather Budd Johnson was a jazz saxophonist who was there right at the   of that uprising they called bebop. His mother sang for a spell with one of the great ”girl groups,” The Crystals. Yet somewhere between being born out on Long Island, New York, that village of Hempstead, and teaming up, as a teenager, with a fellow rapper and producer nicknamed Havoc, something burned inside of Albert, and he made his way to Queensbridge Houses, the biggest   housing projects in North America, and one of the great incubators of   genius  —   like Marley Marl, like Roxanne Shante, like MC Shan, like Nas. It was there as a precocious teenager Prodigy willed himself into   (The Golden Child) which is not surprising given the Golden Era of   we were immersed in during the late 1980s into the early 1990s. The dominant thread of black nationalism and the influences of Afrocentricity, the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths were everywhere. But so was the utter destructiveness of the Reagan years on urban America, including the wholesale attacks on Civil Rights Movement victories, the deadly crack epidemic and the explosion of gun violence. New York City was the epicenter of this, and also the homeland of   and it was just a matter of time before rap would begin to reflect, explicitly, what we were grinding through daily. You look at an early photo of Prodigy and Havoc and realize the original tag of the group was Poetical Prophets, complete with the Kid ’N Play flattops most of us sported in those days. But as the Reagan years became the age of Bill and Hillary there was no turning back from what was inside of us: hardness, cynicism, rage, an incredible need to spit truths, as Billie Holiday had done with ”Strange Fruit,” as Bob Dylan had done with ”Blowin’ in The Wind.” They called it ”gangsta rap.” We called it reality. Prodigy, Havoc, Mobb Deep, presented us with rhymes straight outta the   hallways of an American nightmare reeking of dried piss, cheap, loose cigarettes, skunk weed and Olde English malt liquor. The first time I truly heard Prodigy’s voice, and Mobb Deep, was the now classic single ”Shook Ones, Part II.” Spare, raw, rugged, this song on that second album that broke through for them  —   and much of their music since, including Prodigy’s solo efforts  —   was unapologetically about the people we do not want to see: the single mothers, the baby daddies, the hustlers, the petty criminals, the drug dealers, the strippers, the addicts, the murderers, the men and boys doing time in prisons, the boys on the block watching life pass them by, the poor people desperately trying to make a way out of no way. Prodigy’s work was Norman Rockwell’s America rebooted with the bullets and blood of a wretched street corner. His poetry was that of Truman Capote scratching, furiously, the dead skin from America’s bloated belly. Indeed, Prodigy’s verbal theatrics were like that of an impatient   poet at an open mic, but he was also an indie filmmaker, his stream of consciousness his camera, his   descriptions of his New York as mean and rich and unflinching as anything Martin Scorsese has ever conjured. Where there was shine and glamour to the tales spun by   Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and The Notorious B. I. G. I think of Prodigy as a different kind of   hero. He could care less about being a superstar. If Tupac was Carole King then Prodigy was Laura Nyro. Those who knew, knew. And like Laura Nyro, another great but    songwriter for the people, Prodigy had great highs with gold and platinum albums, and there were the lows of three and a half years in prison and ugly public beefs with rap rivals. But he was also a husband, a father, a   and he was a man battling a debilitating disease of which most folks are not expected to live past 40 or 50. Perhaps this is why many of us, including me, have said that   saved our lives. Though Prodigy is gone now, I believe that it saved and extended his too, especially when he was at his lowest points, with his disease, while in jail, when he and Havoc had broken up for a time. In a world where countless Black males like Prodigy do not have much to look forward to,   has been our Civil Rights Movement, our     news channel, our counterculture revolution to win, to make something of ourselves, on our own terms, even if it makes sense to no one except us. Yes, much has changed since Prodigy began as a   youth in the 1990s, but the violence and poverty and hopelessness in America’s inner cities remain the same. Those same poor people Dr. King warned us not to forget, those same poor people who created   those same poor people Prodigy dedicated his voice and his life to, may have lost a street soldier with his death, but they forever have an asphalt angel because of the music he has left behind. Kevin Powell is the author or editor of 12 books, including this autobiography, The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy’s Journey into Manhood. His next book will be a biography of Tupac Shakur. You can email him, kevin@kevinpowell. net, or follow him on twitter, @kevin_powell"
"While college campuses struggle with consent, and when and how ”no means no,” a nearly    court case in North Carolina says a person can’t be charged with rape if their partner revokes consent during sex. In 1979, the Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled in State v. Way that ”if the actual penetration is accomplished with the woman’s consent, the accused is not guilty of rape.” State Sen. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, wants this changed. In March he introduced the ”Revoke Consent For Intercourse” bill that would make it a crime for anyone who continued to ”engage in intercourse after consent is withdrawn.” The bill hasn’t made it out of the Senate’s Rules Committee. ”North Carolina is the only state in U. S. where no doesn’t mean no,” Jackson told The Fayetteville Observer. State v. Way is drawing attention because of recent cases in the state. One woman said she agreed to sex with a man at a party in January, but changed her mind when he became violent. She reported the alleged assault to the police, but found out what happened to her isn’t legally rape in North Carolina. ”It’s really stupid,” the    told The Observer. ”If I tell you no and you kept going, that’s rape.” Another woman said her estranged husband showed up at her apartment drunk in December, and demanded she have sex with him. ”Since he was getting angry, I figured it would be better to go ahead and agree to the sex because I figured that was the safer thing for me to do,” she told WRAL. But she said he got violent and even though she begged him to stop, he wouldn’t. He was charged with   rape in the case, but because of the 1979 ruling, the charges were lowered to misdemeanor assault on a female. He pleaded guilty and is serving a   sentence. Sen. Jackson told Broadly that he doesn’t expect the bill to come out of committee, but he plans to refile it next year."
"Updated 12:30 p. m. ET, President Trump kept one of his campaign promises, signing a bill Friday to make it easier for the secretary of veterans affairs to fire and discipline employees. It came in response to the 2014 VA scandal in which employees covered up long wait times while collecting bonuses. The bill, which passed earlier this month with strong bipartisan support, also gives the secretary authority to revoke bonuses and protects whistleblowers who report wrongdoing. ”What happened was a national disgrace and yet some of the employees involved in these scandals remained on the payrolls,” Trump said just before signing the bill. ”Outdated laws kept the government from holding those who failed our veterans accountable. Today we are finally changing those laws.” The Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 marks Trump’s 40th law signed. Sounds like a lot. And in recent days, Trump has boasted about all the legislation he has signed. ”We passed and signed 38 pieces of legislation, which nobody likes to talk about,” Trump said June 13 before a lunch with lawmakers. ”I think probably seldom has any president and administration done more or had more success so early on, including a record number of resolutions to eliminate   regulations.” And he tweeted the same message on Friday morning. A White House spokesperson confirmed to NPR that at the time of Trump’s tweet, the number was actually 39  —   not 38. Measuring laws passed by counting rather than by significance is pretty meaningless. More on that in a bit. Among modern Oval Office occupants, Presidents Jimmy Carter (52) George H. W. Bush (41) and Bill Clinton (41) had all signed more bills into law than Trump has by this point in their presidencies. So, what has Trump accomplished with Congress so far? Nothing that political scientists would categorize as major pieces of legislation. We looked at this question as Trump hit his 100 days mark. This story contains more detail on legislation he signed in the early part of his presidency. As he said, Trump has signed a record number of resolutions reversing   regulations, 15 in total. These resolutions were passed under the Congressional Review Act and only required a simple majority for passage in the Senate. It was only used once before, by George W. Bush. That made it much easier to get them through than regular legislation. The Congressional Review Act was passed in 1996 and allows Congress to reverse rules within 60 legislative days of their submission. That period is now over, so you won’t see more laws like these any time soon. Two of the laws he has signed are budget related. One simply extended federal spending for a week while Congress worked out its differences on a   funding bill. The other was possibly the most significant legislation signed by Trump so far. It kept the government funded and set spending levels through the end of September. But these sorts of spending bills are also the most basic functions of Congress and the president, literally keeping the lights on. On June 6, Trump signed a law designating the courthouse on Church Street in Nashville, Tenn. as the Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse. Thompson served in the Senate, representing Tennessee from 1994 to 2003 and briefly ran for president in 2008. But he is best known for playing District Attorney Arthur Branch on the   police procedural drama Law and Order on NBC. He died in 2015. There was no formal signing ceremony for that bill. On May 16, the president signed a law requiring the government to allow federal employees to use Uber, Lyft, bike sharing and other forms of alternative transportation for official travel. The Modernizing Government Travel Act was also introduced last year and passed the House but wasn’t taken up by the Senate. ”I will say that never has there been a president  —   with few exceptions in the case of [Franklin D. Roosevelt] he had a major depression to handle  —   who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than what we’ve done,” Trump said at the start of a recent Cabinet meeting, ”between the executive orders and the   regulations that have been terminated. Many bills I guess over 34 bills that Congress signed.” Repealing   Rules And Regulations (15) Modifying Existing Programs (6) Encouraging An Agency To Try Something New (5) Naming   A   Flag Flying (5)   (5) Extending   Policy (2) Omnibus Appropriations Bill (1) New Policy (1) Legislative links and text via GovTrack."
"Less than a week after a judge declared a mistrial in the sexual assault case against Bill Cosby, the comedian’s representatives say he intends to host a series of town halls about sexual assault and the legal system. Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt told the TV show Good Day Alabama that the town halls could start as soon as next month and noted that the issues were particularly important for young athletes. The proposed talks drew immediate criticism from organizations that work with survivors of sexual assault. Wyatt said young people ”need to know what they’re facing when they’re hanging out and partying.” Here is his exchange with a WBRC Fox 6 News host: Wyatt: ”Mr. Cosby wants to get back to work. We are now planning town halls, and we’re going to be coming to this city sometime in July.” Host: ”Really? Like a town hall just to talk with people?” Wyatt: ”To talk to young people. Because this is bigger than Bill Cosby. This issue can affect any young person, especially young athletes of today. And they need to know what they’re facing when they’re hanging out and partying, when they’re doing certain things that they shouldn’t be doing. And it also affects, you know, married men [laughs].” Host: ”Is it kind of a          situation?” Wyatt: ”Right.” Ebonee Benson, who has acted as a spokesperson for Cosby’s wife, Camille, also appeared on the program and said part of the idea for the town halls is to discuss changing laws. ”The statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault are being extended, so this is why people need to be educated on a brush against a shoulder anything at this point can be considered sexual assault and it’s a good thing to be educated about the laws.” Critics said it appears Cosby is attempting to train men how to avoid legal trouble after they perpetrate sexual assault. The   violence organization RAINN slammed the town hall idea. ”It would be more useful if Mr. Cosby would spend time talking with people about how not to commit sexual assault in the first place,” Jodi Omear, a RAINN spokeswoman, told The New York Times. The Women’s March, which organized mass rallies after the inauguration of President Trump, said on Twitter that ”#RapeCulture is Bill Cosby planning town halls on how married men  male athletes can avoid sexual assault charges.” Cosby may face another trial over accusations that he drugged and molested Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. The Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele has stated that he intends to retry the case, after a Pennsylvania jury could not reach a unanimous agreement on a verdict after at least 52 hours of deliberations. ”Cosby, 79, remains charged with three   felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, and each count carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison,” The   has reported. ”All told, if found guilty, Cosby could spend the rest of his life in prison.” Dozens of women have accused Cosby of sexual assault. As we’ve reported, the stories often sound similar: ”Women who saw Cosby as a mentor, a father figure or an admired celebrity. A drink or a pill. Helplessness or fear or a night entirely lost to memory. Years of silence.” Cosby has denied wrongdoing."
"Thirty years after Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong labeled golf a sport for the bourgeois and banned it from his worker’s paradise, his successor gave the sport another try. It was January 1979, and President Jimmy Carter welcomed Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping on a historic trip to the United States. Deng came seeking U. S. help to open China’s economy, which had been ravaged by decades of Mao’s violent political campaigns. But if American executives were to invest in China, they would need to travel there. And if they were to travel there, they would need a golf course. At a stop in Seattle, President Carter introduced Deng to Robert Trent Jones Jr. the world’s top golf course architect. ”He brightened up and said, ’I like sports!’ ” remembers Jones of his meeting with the Chinese leader. ”He said, ’What is golf?’ And I said, ’It’s a small ball hit over a big field into a hole, and people gamble about it and they buy each other drinks.’ He said, ’Oh perfect, the Chinese will love it!’ ” Together, Jones worked with China’s leadership to build China’s first golf course in the communist era, the Shanghai Country Club on the outskirts of the city. His first visit to China in 1983 with Prescott Bush, President George H. W. Bush’s brother, wasn’t enough to convince Chinese leaders they should rush into constructing a golf course, though. Jones says after years of delays, China’s leaders finally called him just two weeks after the bloody crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989. He told his Chinese point man, ”I need security for my men under the circumstances, and I need to move 300, 000 cubic meters of earth to create the golf course.” His Chinese contact in Beijing was confused. He asked Jones what, exactly, he needed. ”I said, ’I need a bulldozer,’ ” remembers Jones. ”He went silent for a while. When I arrived, they were literally moving the earth by hand. Someone would take a shovel and they would shovel it into a sort of satchel and they would carry it. And they had a camp of maybe 20, 000 people in and around the site.” The Chinese, remembers Jones, had a bulldozer, but it was a Japanese knockoff and it was missing an engine. The construction of the Shanghai Country Club was a milestone in China’s complicated history with golf, a sign the sport was about to be reincarnated by Deng, 30 years after it was declared a sport of the rich. But now the pendulum has swung back, and golf is again in the crosshairs of China’s Communist Party. By 2004, many of China’s hundreds of golf courses were found to be built on valuable farmland through corrupt land deals others were using too much water in parched areas of the country. Most golf clubs were private, exclusive to businessmen who often invited local government officials. As a result, the government has shut down 111 courses  —   a fifth of all golf courses in China  —   and it’s banned construction of new courses. Party officials in the southern province of Guangdong are now forbidden from playing during working hours. Ozzie Ling, manager of Shanghai’s Yingyi Golf Club, says government inspection squads now show up to his club unannounced, looking for wayward officials. ”So they’ll come check on you,” Ling says from his office overlooking the private club’s course. ”They’ll say, ’On this day, was this person was here?’ They actually look through your computers. Then they start checking day by day, how much he spends, who is playing with, all that.” The new norm is a challenge for the survivors of China’s golf industry. At Shanghai’s Junior Golf Academy, young pros tee off on the driving range. Head coach Gareth Winslow, who used to coach China’s national women’s team, says golf has become a tricky business in this new environment. ”You have a golf academy, you have a pro shop, a golf course, whatever it is. You want to promote it, do some marketing. But at the same time, you want to stay under the radar and not promote the fact that you’re in the golf industry. So it’s very challenging,” says Winslow. And even Shanghai’s first golf course of the modern era  —   the Shanghai Country Club that had its beginnings with President Carter and Deng Xiaoping  —   hasn’t been immune to the party’s war on golf. China’s government shut it down last year for being too close to a water reservoir. Architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. takes the closure of his first Chinese golf course in stride. He’s been designing courses for decades and he’s seen everything, including another communist government fearful of the sport’s reputation. ”When we were working in the Soviet Union, Alistair Cooke came to our aid when he pointed out to the people who were reviewing the fact that golf was a British rich man’s game, and he said, ’Well did you know that both Karl Marx and Adam Smith both played golf?’ ” Jones remembers the iconic British journalist telling him and his Soviet partners. ” ’When Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in London, he’d go out in Hyde Park and go have a hit! We’re not sure about Adam Smith, but he was a Scot, so he must have.’ Once we explained that to the Russians, the ideological drape fell down and we moved forward.” And if the image of the founder of communism out on the links isn’t enough to convince the leader of China’s Communist Party to reverse his direction on golf, perhaps the rise of Chinese golfers will. Feng Shanshan, one of the best women players in the world, won a bronze medal for China at the Rio Olympic Games, leading the way for other young Chinese golfers golfers who are playing not because they want to complete a business deal, but because, in the words of Robert Trent Jones Jr. to former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping back in 1979, they enjoy ”hitting a small ball over a big field into a hole.”"
"The killing of a Virginia teen over the weekend is drawing a new focus on road rage. Fairfax County police say Nabra Hassanen, 17, was killed early Sunday by an angry motorist after an encounter with a group of Muslim teenagers walking along a road on their way back to a mosque. Police have arrested Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, and charged him with   murder. Authorities say he beat Hassanen with a baseball bat, then put her in his car, assaulted her again, and dumped her dead body in a pond. The police are describing it as an incident of road rage that escalated into deadly violence. But local Muslim leaders are skeptical and have called on authorities to investigate the killing as a possible hate crime. For some experts, desciribing this case as road rage seems odd. ”That’s beyond road rage I would say,” says Mary Vriniotis, a researcher at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center in Boston. ”I don’t think most folks who study either auto fatalities or homicides would describe that as a road rage incident,” she says. Law enforcement agencies don’t typically single out road rage episodes as a category for data collection, so it’s hard to get a handle on what factors lead to deadly outcomes in such incidents. Figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration do indicate a rise in traffic deaths attributed to aggressive driving  —   from 292 fatalities in 2011 to 467 in 2015. A 2016 survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that nearly 80 percent of drivers expressed anger, aggression or rage behind the wheel at least once in the last year. It also found that about 8 million U. S. drivers engaged in extreme road rage behaviors, such as purposefully ramming another vehicle or getting out of the car to confront another driver. Vriniotis is   of a study in 2006 on the relationship between having a gun and the likelihood of road rage. She says road rage incidents are most likely to involve young male drivers, who also engage in other risky behaviors such as drinking. Those who said they had a firearm in the car were more likely to exhibit road rage behaviors like making an obscene gesture or aggressively following another vehicle too closely. ”Raising the idea that perhaps just having the gun there changes your response to things in your environment that are aggravating to you, like driving,” Vriniotis says.   cases draw attention to road rage. For instance, consider the 2016 killing of former New Orleans Saints football player Will Smith, who was gunned down by a man who had   his car. There are   road rage incidents just about every day. Like the case in California Wednesday where a motorcyclist kicked a car, causing a chain reaction crash. The car he kicked swerved into another lane of traffic, hitting a truck that then overturned, injuring the driver. ”It’s an increasing    public health crisis,” says Leon James, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii. He teaches a driving psychology class and has written a book about road rage and aggressive driving. ”I believe that it’s been increasing due to the fact that society has become a little bit more permissive of aggressiveness,” says James. It comes down to a lack of civility, he says. ”Aggressive driving is eroding our social conscience.” Shaheen Ainpour is an intern for the National Desk. "
"   Nabra Hassanen was buried Wednesday after a funeral service packed with mourners. The service was held in the Northern Virginia community where she’d lived. An evening vigil organized by her high school’s Muslim Student Association also drew throngs of people. Hassanen was beaten and killed early Sunday morning as she walked back to her mosque after a   meal with friends. Such meals are common during the month of Ramadan, when many Muslims fast from dawn to sundown. ”There is nothing like losing a child, especially in the way that we lost Nabra,” Imam Mohamed Magid said at the funeral, The Associated Press reports. Magid is the religious leader of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society and spoke at the funeral there. Friends said Hassanen was always there for them and befriended everyone she met, The Washington Post reports. The night she died, she had just had a group of Muslim and   friends over to her Reston apartment for dinner to break the day’s fast, the Post says. Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, is being held on   murder charges in Hassanen’s death. As we reported, this is how the attack unfolded: The teenagers were walking and riding bicycles back to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society at about 3:40 a. m. Sunday, according to police. Some of the teens were on the sidewalk, and others were in the road. Torres drove up behind the group, began arguing with a boy on a bike and then drove his car onto the curb, detectives said in a statement. The teens scattered, but, police said, the suspect caught up with them in a nearby parking lot, got out of his car and allegedly chased after them with a baseball bat. Torres caught Nabra and struck her with the bat, according to the statement. Detectives said he then drove her to another location and assaulted her again. Her body was found in a   pond a few miles from the parking lot. An autopsy found that Nabra suffered   trauma to her upper body. Police have described the killing as an act of road rage. After the funeral and burial, Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler Jr. told AP that police have ”absolutely no evidence” the attack was motivated by hate. But Roessler acknowledged that some in the community believe police should explore the possibility it was a hate crime. He asked that anyone with evidence to that effect come forward, AP says, and added that ”if evidence develops of a hate crime, I promise we will charge to the highest levels.” Roessler said police are awaiting results of forensic tests to determine whether Hassanen was sexually assaulted. The AP spoke Wednesday with some of the people at the funeral, who expressed fears for their own families. Lamia Sarver of McLean, Va. told the AP her own daughter is the same age as Hassanen. Sarver said she doesn’t want her daughter to be a target, so she’s told her to pray at home rather than attending   mosque services with friends. And Zahid Hassan of Fairfax told AP, ”I have two daughters.” Choking back tears, he added, ”It could have been anybody.”"
"If Qatar wants to end a recent diplomatic standoff, all it needs to do is comply with 13 demands. That, at least, is according to the four Arab neighbors  —   Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates  —   that drew up the list and sent it via Kuwaiti mediators on Friday. The four countries say Qatar must shut down its   news network   and its affiliates, sever ties with ”terrorist organizations” such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah, and immediately close Turkey’s military base outside the Qatari capital. Those demands top a list that also includes broader conditions such as reparations payments and closer alignment with the Sunni Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. Qatar has 10 days to comply. What would happen after that is unclear. For much of the month, most major trade routes into Qatar have been closed by its neighbors. This includes Saudi Arabia, which occupies the peninsula nation’s only overland border, through which it receives roughly 40 percent of its imports. Yet NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports that ”the impact has been blunted somewhat as Iran and Turkey stepped in to send food and other supplies to Qatar.” Peter notes that these relationships with Iran and Turkey, which have gained strength as Qatar has sought help, might be a sign that the diplomatic pressure could backfire. Even as Qatar’s neighbors try to get it to sever ties with these countries, some experts believe the sanctions might actually encourage those relations. Qatar’s government, for its part, is denying the allegations that it funds and harbors terrorists. And it has vowed to reject any demands as long as its neighbors maintain their sanctions. ”It does seem as if this is Saudi Arabia bullying its tiny neighbor and ganging up on it,” analyst Greg Barton of Australia’s Deakin University told Turkey’s   TRT World. Peter says that Barton sees this list of demands as a kind of opening offer. ”So,” Barton told TRT World, ”it needs to find a way of working with Kuwait and other intermediary powers to find some compromise.” For now the U. S. a major partner of Saudi Arabia, has sent some mixed messages on the diplomatic crisis. Most recently, The Associated Press reports, U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had been frustrated at perceived delays in formulating the list of demands  —   but the wire service notes the U. S. official also warned the demands should be ”reasonable and actionable.”"
"The fire that devastated a   apartment building last week began by accident  —   and the source was a refrigerator, London police say. Investigators have also found that materials used on Grenfell Tower’s exterior failed safety tests. ”We now have expert evidence that the fire was not started deliberately  —   the fire started in a    —   the make and model is a Hotpoint FF175BP,” Detective Superintendent Fiona McCormack said Friday. She added that the refrigerator, which has a freezer on the bottom and refrigerator on top, has not been recalled. Further tests are being done on the refrigerator, she said, with the assistance of the manufacturer. At least 79 people either died or are presumed dead in the blaze, and McCormack said the number could rise further. The forensic and recovery work, she said, could continue into 2018. Police are considering manslaughter charges in the case, McCormack said, along with other ”criminal offences and breaches of legislation and regulations.” While the new information provides details about the fire’s source, McCormack said investigators are working to determine why the blaze spread so quickly and with such tragic effects. Early tests of materials used on the building’s exterior returned alarming results, she said. ”Preliminary tests show the insulation samples collected from Grenfell Tower combusted soon after the test started,” McCormack told journalists gathered outside Scotland Yard. She added that equivalent aluminum composite tiles used as cladding in a recent refurbishment of the building had failed initial safety tests. As questions about the cladding’s safety gain attention, inspectors are evaluating other buildings in Britain that used the same materials. On Thursday, Prime Minister Theresa May said the government can test more than 100 buildings a day and that some tests of cladding on similar large residential buildings have found them to be combustible. NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports from London that ”10 Downing Street has already identified 11 tower blocks in England with cladding similar to the kind that seemed to fuel the rapid spread of the fire in Grenfell Tower.” Any safety findings in the Grenfell investigation are being quickly shared with regulators and civic authorities, McCormack said. Hundreds of people are working on the complex investigation and while a full visual search was completed last week, McCormack said a ”full fingertip search” and other painstaking methods will be required. As of Friday, nine victims have been formally identified. To help the recovery effort, police will install an elevator on Grenfell Tower’s exterior next week, McCormack said. In addition to physical forensic evidence, investigators are looking at surveillance camera footage and more than 70 photos and videos. ”We have also listened to over 600 emergency 999 calls made to the fire brigade, ambulance service and police to understand the events of that night,” McCormack said. ”Some of those calls are over an hour long, and each call tells its own distressing story.” The detective superintendent also said she is worried that the authorities might not have a true sense of how many people were in the building, in part because people who lived there or knew someone who did might be fearful of having their immigration status reviewed. ”The Home Office has assured us that they are not interested in people’s immigration status, and we are not interested in looking at that,” McCormack said. ”We want to identify all those who died as result of the fire at Grenfell Tower, and that is where I need the public’s help,” she added. ”I do not want there to be any hidden victims of this tragedy.”"
"Police have charged Darren Osborne with   murder and attempted murder over an attack in which investigators say Osborne drove a van into a crowd of people leaving a mosque in north London early Monday. Osborne, 47, is scheduled to appear in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday afternoon. One man died and eight people were sent to hospitals for treatment after the attack, which took place shortly after midnight. The van, a rental vehicle, struck a crowd of people who had gathered as a man was receiving first aid. Osborne, a father of four, is from Cardiff, Wales, police say. As The   reported earlier this week, Osborne’s family released a statement saying, ”We are massively in shock, it’s unbelievable, it still hasn’t really sunk in. We are devastated for the families, our hearts go out to those who’ve been injured.” Osborne is accused of killing Makram Ali, 51, in the attack in the Finsbury Park neighborhood, which is home to many immigrants. Ali had come to the U. K. from Bangladesh when he was 10. ”He was married with four daughters, two sons and two grandchildren,” London’s Metropolitan Police said earlier this week. ”He regularly attended the local mosque and enjoyed visiting the local park with his grandchildren.” In the wake of the attack, the Pontyclun van rental company, a   business whose vehicle was used by the London attacker, issued a statement expressing its sympathy  —   and condemning ”despicable comments” that the company said were made online by the son of one of its owners. Police in South Wales arrested Richard Evans over the comments  —   in which he said it was ”a shame they don’t hire out steam rollers or tanks could have done a tidy job then”  —   on the grounds that his message was ”likely to stir up racial hatred,” the BBC reported. His father, Len Evans, said, ”I want to condemn in the strongest possible terms these   Twitter comments, which in no way reflect my own view or indeed of anyone else in the family.”"
"Until The Beguiled, Sofia Coppola had exclusively made movies about rich people. But that’s not the same thing as exclusively making movies for rich people. Drawing on her own upbringing in the cradle of Hollywood, Coppola spent the last two decades turning out formally radical, narratively slight riffs on what life is like inside the cocoon of wealth and privilege. That core has remained constant, whether her subject matter was Marie Antoinette or the Bling Ring gang of pampered L. A. kids who stole from celebrities because they felt like it. But no matter how brilliantly one director can depict characters stuck in the kind of warped mindset that comes from having immediate access to everything, paying so much attention to them can rub the rest of the world the wrong way. 2010’s Somewhere used its haunting rhythms to paint celeb life as corrosive and meaningless, but is that the kind of movie you wanted to watch at the tail end of a recession? Coppola’s sixth   work is different from the others. And yet, in all the ways that matter, it is the same. A retelling of the Thomas Cullinan novel that inspired the 1971 Clint Eastwood vehicle, The Beguiled is her first film not explicitly about wealth  —   although the Civil   romantic thriller still very much wrestles with the consequences of isolation in other forms. What the film most readily demonstrates is that Coppola had other tricks waiting up her sleeve this whole time: she can bring us deep within her subjects’ lives, instead of just needle them from afar. Like the rugged trickster at its center, this movie makes its watchers swoon. Right from the start, with the sun poking through a lush field devoid of humans, we know we are in a land of mystery. Here, a young woman named Amy (Oona Laurence, playing precociousness to the hilt) stumbles on John (Colin Farrell) a wounded Union soldier. (Farrell’s Irish accent is easily explained by turning John into an immigrant who took another man’s place in the army.) She helps him reach her Confederate   school, as a child’s instincts toward charity over conflict set in motion the deceptions and dirty deeds to follow. Dropped into this world of pink and white dresses, with petticoats that skim the floor and engulf the neck, John spies an opportunity to turn up the   heat to his advantage. With no Southern gentlemen rivals in sight, he puts his    combo to good use wooing every fair lass who nurses him back to health. That means flattering the distinguished matron (Nicole Kidman) just enough to keep her from alerting the soldiers to his presence showering the lonely and soulful schoolteacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) with promises to sweep her away from all this war and accepting with good cheer the nighttime smooches of flirtatious teenage student Carol (Elle Fanning). The performers, some of them repeat players for Coppola, are in an   actors’ standoff. Dunst holds us in the palm of her hand with her vulnerability, while Fanning’s note of budding sexuality turns adulthood into another man to conquer. Kidman wears a mask of authority that keeps us guessing there’s a scene where her character makes a gruesome medical decision, and it’s a mark of her acting strength that we can’t tell whether or not it’s informed by personal jealousy. You can always tell a good chamber piece by how much it invests you in the film’s internal geography. Here, Coppola and her cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd suck us into the tiny world of this school (actually Jennifer Coolidge’s house): the music room at the foot of the stairs where John rests, the girls’ bedrooms at the top of the stairs, the dining room down the hall where so many of the loaded conversations unfold, and the invisible barriers separating them all. With sparse, natural lighting, every shot smolders. To simply look upon one another in this setting is to be engaged in something forbidden, and so we are always watching the women watching John, or John watching his effect on them. A wink, a smile, a smooch, an application of lipstick: Coppola often plays the luridness of this world for laughs, before things turn on a dime and darkness intercedes. The original novel and film contained a slave character who didn’t make Coppola’s script. There’s an argument to be made that it was irresponsible for her to excise the only black character from her Civil War movie remake. But the   removal of these characters from the political realities of the time winds up only helping the reimagined story: the core emotions are so tightly coiled that to add another layer of social commentary could have easily sprung them loose. Besides, Coppola, who won the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, had no reason to overload. After making films about people with the means to go anywhere and do anything, she has finally taken that step herself."
"Senate Republicans have little margin for error as they prepare for a vote this coming week on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Some lawmakers are already raising concerns that the bill could aggravate the problem of healthy people going without insurance, driving up costs for everyone else. ”If you can get insurance after you get sick, you will,” Sen. Rand Paul,  . told NBC’s Today Show. ”And without the individual mandate, that sort of adverse selection, the death spiral, the elevated premiums, all of that that’s going on gets worse under this bill.” The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, tried to address that problem by requiring all Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty. But that   ”individual mandate” is one of the least popular provisions of the law. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his colleagues are determined to get rid of it. ”We agreed on the need to free Americans from Obamacare’s mandate so Americans are no longer forced to buy insurance they don’t need or can’t afford,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday. But the Senate bill preserves a more popular piece of Obamacare: the requirement that insurance companies cover everyone, even those with   medical conditions. Imposing a coverage requirement on insurance companies without a corresponding mandate for customers runs the risk of creating a very shaky insurance market. ”What you don’t want to have is a situation where you’re saying we’re going to have everybody, regardless of their health problems, come in, and then have all the healthy people exit the market,” said health policy expert Linda Blumberg of the Urban Institute. ”Because then the average cost of those who remain goes up really high.” As premium costs rise, more healthy people drop out, which causes costs to rise even further. That’s the   ”death spiral.” The House version of the health care bill tries to discourage healthy people from fleeing the market by allowing insurance companies to charge a premium for those who don’t maintain continuous coverage. Senate staffers say they’re open to adding a similar provision to the Senate bill. ”I believe that the bill that the Senate will vote on, assuming they get to that point, will have some sort of mechanism to cause participation in it,” said former GOP Senate staffer Rodney Whitlock. So why isn’t the   provision already in the bill? Whitlock offers three theories. One possibility is that McConnell is worried that the provision runs afoul of the procedural rules allowing Republicans to pass the bill with a simple majority vote. If so, he might be waiting until the last minute to introduce the   language, so Democrats have less time to raise the issue with the Senate parliamentarian. Another theory is that Republicans are waiting for the insurance industry to demand the provision be inserted. That would allow the GOP leadership to show flexibility, while also adding credibility to the   mechanism. Finally, Whitlock suggests, senators could be deliberately trying to create a rickety market, so states will be forced to take matters into their own hands. ”There are folks in the Republican conference who desperately want this to devolve to the states,” said Whitlock, who is now vice president for health policy at ML Strategies, a lobbying and consulting firm. ”So do I completely rule that out as a possibility of why you go that route? I don’t rule it out completely.” The Urban Institute’s Blumberg warns that without a strong provision to keep healthy customers in the market, insurance companies will lean on states for permission to offer more   policies. That could leave some customers in the individual market with even fewer choices than they had before Obamacare. ”What will be available are policies that don’t cover a number of benefits that people are used to getting coverage for today,” Blumberg said. ”They will have much higher deductibles than they are used to seeing. And as you get older, the coverage will be less and less affordable.” AARP is already on record against the Senate bill, citing what it calls an ”age tax” as well as cuts to Medicaid. The senior lobby is promising to hold all senators accountable for their votes."
"Welcome to this week’s edition of our national education news roundup. DeVos appoints current student loan company CEO to head student loan agency, Wayne A. Johnson will be the new head of Office of Federal Student Aid after James Runcie abruptly resigned last month, the U. S. Department of Education announced this week. FSA is the agency responsible for administering $1. 4 trillion in outstanding student loans from 42 million borrowers, plus other aid programs for millions of college students. As not mentioned in the department’s press release, and first reported by BuzzFeed, Johnson is currently the CEO of Reunion Financial Services Corporation, a private student loan company. Liz Hill, press secretary at the U. S. Department of Education, provided NPR with a statement that read in part: ”Dr. Johnson has 30 years of experience in the private sector and is going to be a tremendous asset to the Department and to FSA’s customers [. ..] Wayne knows this industry inside and out and has seen   the benefits of serving students and helping them meet their financial and educational goals. This is just another reason why we are so excited to have him on the team as we work to put students’ needs first.” The head of FSA is an appointment that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. It’s unclear why Johnson did not resign before his appointment was announced. Hill said in the statement, ”This goes without saying, but he will separate from the company should he join FSA.” New federal report says student loan borrowers are being denied their rights, Many ”borrowers attempting to invoke their rights under federal law . .. point to a range of student loan industry practices that delay, defer or deny access to critical consumer protections,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog agency, reported this week. The report reviewed thousands of consumer complaints from student borrowers between March 2016 and February 2017. Over that time, the number of complaints more than tripled. The report particularly focused on troubles from people enrolled, or trying to enroll, in Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a program that cancels the student loans of people employed in the government or for a nonprofit for at least 10 years. The first group of borrowers is supposed to get their loans forgiven starting this fall, but what the report describes as ”servicing breakdowns” is preventing many from enrolling and making progress toward that goal. DeVos named in civil rights probe, The U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, a congressionally authorized independent watchdog group, announced a   investigation of federal civil rights enforcement to be completed by 2019. Its statement cited President Trump’s proposed budget cuts, and ”changing . .. priorities” as reasons to be concerned about a ”dangerous reduction of civil rights enforcement across the country.” DeVos was the only government official named in the statement, which read in part, ”These proposed cuts are particularly troubling in light of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ repeated refusal in Congressional testimony and other public statements to commit that the Department would enforce federal civil rights laws.” As we’ve reported, DeVos has been questioned repeatedly  —   and has repeatedly deflected questions  —   about whether she would uphold the rights of LGBT students at private schools that receive public money, such as vouchers. In the United States, most private schools have religious affiliations. Wealthy, white communities are seceding to form new school districts, And their secession is taking money from poorer schools, a new report from the nonprofit EdBuild finds. Since 2000, 71 communities have attempted to secede from their school districts following this pattern 47 have succeeded. Thirty states ”have processes codified in state law that allow for secession,” according to EdBuild. Among those profiled in the report are Tennessee, Louisiana and Colorado  —   which brings us to . .. Colorado firearms training for teachers, At some schools in Colorado, teachers are undergoing firearms training. The training, offered by an     group known as   Safety Training and Emergency Response, allows ”teachers, administrators, and other personnel to stop school violence rapidly” and ”administer medical aid where necessary,” the BBC reports. FASTER was organized in the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, in which 26 teachers, staffers and elementary students were killed. Colorado law allows firearms to be carried in public places provided they are in plain view. Dallas schools aim for diversity  The Dallas school system, one of the most segregated in the country, is making great efforts to integrate, The New York Times reports. The district plans to open more than 35 new schools in the next three years, with themes such as   education, science, the arts and   programs, in hopes of enticing more white and   families. They are also taking the unusual step of reserving seats at some schools for students who are not considered   even those who come from outside the district. The district went from a majority white population before desegregation in 1960 to a 93 percent black and Hispanic student body today. Dallas is one of a few cities pushing for integration, as nationwide, public schools are more segregated than they were in 1970. Stephens College creates first women’s ’esports’ team, Video games played as a spectator sport, known as esports, are on the rise, and Stephens College wants to be ahead of the curve. This fall the small private women’s college in Columbia, Mo. will have the first  ’s collegiate varsity esports team in the nation. ”There isn’t any reason that women shouldn’t be competitive in esports, just as they’re competitive at any other sport,” the president of Stephens College, Dianne Lynch, told KOMU. The school will also offer esports scholarships."
"The first problem with the airplane bathroom was its location. It was March. Greg O’Brien and his wife, Mary Catherine, were flying back to Boston from Los Angeles, sitting in economy seats in the middle of the plane. ”We’re halfway, probably over Chicago,” Greg remembers, ”and Mary Catherine said, ’Go to the bathroom.’ ” ”It just sounded like my mother,” Greg says. So I said ’no.’ ” Mary Catherine persisted, urging her husband of 40 years to use the restroom. People started looking at them. ”It was kind of funny,” says Greg. Mary Catherine was more alarmed than amused. Greg has   Alzheimer’s, which makes it increasingly hard for him to keep track of thoughts and feelings over the course of minutes or even seconds. It’s easy to get into a situation where you feel like you need to use the bathroom, but then forget. And they had already been on the plane for hours. Finally, Greg started toward the restroom at the back of the plane, only to find the aisle was blocked by an attendant serving drinks. Mary Catherine gestured to him. ”Use the one in first class!” At that point, on top of the mild anxiety most people feel when they slip into first class to use the restroom, Greg was feeling overwhelmed by the geography of the plane. He pulled back the curtain dividing the seating sections. ”This flight attendant looks at me like she has no use for me. I just said ’Look, I really have to go the bathroom,’ and she says ’OK, just go.’ ” Before Greg had Alzheimer’s, he would have discreetly made his way up the aisle, used the bathroom and gone back to his seat. Now, no part of that was possible. He had no idea where the bathroom was. Even after the crew member pointed to the front of the plane, he was still confused. There were two doors. He moved down the aisle, buying time, feeling the flight attendant watching him. The middle door was larger. He put his hand on it. Immediately, he knew it was wrong  —   he had touched the cockpit door. The flight attendant was at his side. He apologized. She asked him to please step away from the door. ”I’m sorry,” Greg told her. ”I have a problem. I got some Alzheimer’s. ”I didn’t get to pee,” he says now. ”But I think I was lucky nothing bad happened.” Eight years after he was diagnosed with   Alzheimer’s disease, the   ’s memory is failing slowly and irreversibly. But, increasingly, it is his other symptoms that interrupt his    life as a writer, father, husband and now grandfather. Some symptoms he is struggling with have largely unknown mechanisms. His depressed immune system, for example, is likely related to his Alzheimer’s disease, but researchers are still unsure exactly how. Same with the exact relationship between the Alzheimer’s and the numbness he feels in his hands and feet. But many of the symptoms he experiences have clear links to the disease  —   things like rage, paranoia, depression and incontinence. And he thinks that a lot of people who are open about some Alzheimer’s symptoms are uncomfortable talking about things like incontinence. He makes an extra effort to be open about his symptoms and joke about the parts of his life that are still funny. ”You’ll never see me with tan pants. I always have an extra pair of pants in the car,” he says, laughing a little. ”I’m not trying to gross anyone out, but that’s my life today.” ”You don’t die of Alzheimer’s,” Greg says. ”You die of everything else. But first, you live with it all. Alzheimer’s is not your grandfather’s disease.” Prescription Side Effects, ”I refuse to take this one because it makes me loopy,” Greg explains, standing at his kitchen sink pointing at one of the pill bottles lined up on the windowsill. He reaches for another bottle. ”I call these ones my smart pills,” he says, struggling with the childproof top. ”These god**** things,” he grunts, the water running into the sink. He extracts a pill and tosses it into his mouth, dipping his head to drink from the faucet. He smiles. ”Not always the best manners, I know.” Although there is no drug to slow or stop the inevitable progression of Alzheimer’s, people like Greg, who was diagnosed with the   form of the disease, often take multiple drugs to treat the symptoms. Greg has prescriptions for four drugs he’s supposed to take every day: two to combat dementia and other cognitive symptoms, and two antidepressants, Celexa and trazodone. Trazodone is the one Greg refuses to take. Along with the second antidepressant, it’s meant to help him deal with the depression and suicidal thoughts that he has been experiencing on and off since he was diagnosed. ”In Alzheimer’s disease, you’re not just affecting the ability to remember things and learn things, but you’re also affecting parts of the brain that control mood,” says Rudy Tanzi, an Alzheimer’s researcher and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. He says Alzheimer’s affects the frontal lobe of the brain, which is involved in the ability to show restraint. As the frontal lobe degenerates, it becomes easier to give into desires and fear. Many people get depressed, angry and anxious. Celexa and other   mood stabilizers can help reduce that stress, agitation and depression. But research has also shown that such drugs can make it more difficult to think and focus, which in turn makes it difficult to do things like write. And Greg is a writer. For years, he worked at newspapers and magazines in Boston and on Cape Cod. After his diagnosis, he wrote an autobiography, On Pluto: Inside The Mind Of Alzheimer’s, a second edition of which will be distributed by   House in July. He still works as a freelance writer and editor, in part because he says his family needs the income. And so, for now, he has decided to live with rage and depression, rather than compromise his ability to write. Not everyone agrees with his choice to forgo some medication. His wife, Mary Catherine, and his son Conor, who works as a   assistant for Greg, have their own opinions. This spring, Mary Catherine talked to one of Greg’s doctors. ”I was asking for some medication so I wouldn’t regret being married for 40 years,” she says,   as she unloads groceries. She has said that one of the unexpected parts of her husband’s Alzheimer’s is that it has brought them closer to each other, but everyone in the family seems to agree that his rage is still particularly difficult to handle. ”They have to put up with this,” Greg acknowledges, ”that’s not fair.” ”I understand,” he continues, his smile fading. ”I’m worried about not being able to control the rage, and it’s getting to the point where it’s upsetting. My son doesn’t even want to watch a Celtics game with me anymore, because if someone dribbles the wrong way, it’s ticking [me off] particularly if it’s at night.” ”How do I get a handle on it? I’m not quite sure. But I want to write. That’s what keeps me whole. That’s what makes me who I am.” Sadness replaces defiance in his voice. ”I don’t know. I don’t want to lose any more than is already being taken from me,” he says. ”It means I become less of me.” ”He’s stalking me” ”That guy is watching me. I’ve got no freaking idea who he is,” Greg says, looking over his shoulder at a man sitting a few tables away. The outdoor patio at a café in Orleans, Mass. is half full. It’s early afternoon on a Thursday. A few minutes ago, the mystery man walked by and said hello to Greg. Now, as Greg looks over at him, he is smiling. ”He gave me a big hug, put his arm around me. Obviously I’ve known him for 20 years,” says Greg, his voice low. ”He’s sitting there on the steps now waiting for me. He’s waiting for me. He’s stalking me.” At some level, he knows it’s not a rational fear. Sitting outside, a few minutes from his home on a spring day, Greg O’Brien is not in danger. But he is a man without a map, adrift in a sea of seemingly random information that has no context or way to order itself in his mind. And so, in place of rational reaction to a man saying hello to him, Greg begins to worry he is being watched by a potential assassin. In Alzheimer’s, ”your brain can no longer regulate how what you hear and what you see at any given moment is integrated into a map of the world,” explains Tanzi. ”The paranoia is coming because you’re really experiencing in a sensory way things that are happening only in your own mind.” But, in some ways, Greg is still the gregarious writer and father of three who frustrated his family with his endless gabbing when they went out to eat. Now, that part of his personality cuts through the paranoia, and he stands up and walks toward the stranger. And this, says Tanzi, is absolutely the best way to react to Alzheimer’s disease. ”Greg is absolutely an outlier,” he says (the two met through the   Cure Alzheimer’s Fund). ”Having the motivation and the incentive and the drive every day to say, ’Look, I have a disease. It’s progressive and it’s going to keep going. But I have a chance every day to try to fight it.’ Having that sense of purpose literally turns on the frontal cortex,” he explains. ”It provides you with meaning, and purpose and  . It’s brave.” Greg approaches the mystery man. ”Hi, I’m Greg O’Brien. Do we know each other?” Yes, the stranger replies gently. He is an old friend, a colleague from back when Greg worked at the The Cape Codder newspaper. He has known Greg for more than 20 years. He is a frequent confidant these days, though mostly by email, he says. He thanks Greg for the help and support with his aging mother, who suffered memory loss. And they sit and chat, like the old friends they are."
"In a major property rights decision, the U. S. Supreme Court has delivered a decisive victory to state and local governments and environmental groups. By a    vote, the justices made it much harder for property owners to get compensation from the government when zoning regulations restrict the use of just part of landowners’ property. The Constitution bars the taking of private property by the government without just compensation. The Supreme Court, for a century, has said that when the government goes ”too far” in regulating property  —   so as to make that property economically unusable  —   the government also has to compensate the owner. The question is: How far is ”too far”? In recent decades, property rights advocates have aggressively tried to limit regulation by demanding compensation. At the same time, cities and states have sought to manage urban sprawl, water pollution, flooding and other problems, by enacting regulations to limit what some property owners can do with their land. Friday’s decision came in a case that involved two plots of land, bought by William and Margaret Murr in the 1960s, overlooking the picturesque grandeur of the St. Croix River in Wisconsin. In 1972, the river was designated for federal protection, and the state enacted regulations to preserve its scenic and recreational qualities. The regulations barred building on any lots smaller than one acre of land. The Murrs’ two lots, including a cabin on one, combined to cover just under an acre of land suitable for development. Under the regulations, the lots were merged into one. After the Murrs transferred the property to their four children in the 1990s, the younger Murrs were denied permission to build on what had previously been the second lot. Under the regulations, they could build a house that was bigger than the existing one, but they could not have two houses on the two lots, which now were considered merged into one. The Murrs challenged the regulations in the state courts as an unconstitutional taking. After losing in the state courts, they appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court. But on Friday, the justices ruled in favor of the regulators. Writing for the court’s majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that regulations that partly limit how a property owner uses his or her land do not necessarily require compensation from the state. ”The provision . . . at issue here was for a specific and legitimate purpose,” he observed. And he quoted Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who in a 1922 opinion declared that ”government could hardly go on if to some extent” property values ”could not be diminished without paying for every such change in the general law.” Holmes made that statement in the very opinion that first established the concept of a regulatory taking. Kennedy also made a point of saying that regulations do not always detract from land value. Indeed, such regulations often enhance that value, he said, as they did here. In the end, he said, the loss in the value of the Murrs’ land was only about 10 percent. Kennedy said that ”no single test” is determinative of which regulations are sufficiently onerous to deserve compensation by the state. Instead, he said that, as in the past, ”courts must consider a number of factors,” including ”the treatment of the land under state and local law the physical characteristics of the land and the prospective value of the regulated land.” For property rights advocates, the decision was a genuine blow. John Groen of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which brought the case, called it ”a shock,” adding that the decision ”undermines traditional understandings of property rights.” William Treanor, Dean of Georgetown University Law Center, said the decision would have a profound effect in cases involving wetlands. He said property owners across the country have been demanding to be paid by the government because they are unable to build on some portion of their land that is protected wetland. Those claims, Treanor said, will now be much harder to make. Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus called the decision a ”clean, big win for both government regulators and environmental protection.” ”There is no nuance to the ruling,” he said. It is a ”soup to nuts” win for the government, and environmentalists. The reason, he explained, is that when the government regulates land owned by private individuals, ”it almost never says that you can’t do anything with all the property you own. It just looks at the most environmentally sensitive part, and restricts your use of that piece.” Justice Kennedy’s decision was joined by the court’s four liberals: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, saying that the court should have a clearer,   test for what constitutes a taking. Roberts acknowledged that the test he suggested might have ended up with the same result, meaning the regulations at issue would not have amounted to a taking of private property, and the Murrs would not have qualified for compensation. The case was argued in March, prior to the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, so he did not participate in the decision."
"You could say Martha is a rather cheeky gal. That is, the jowly    Neapolitan mastiff has some remarkably expansive cheeks  —   so expansive, in fact, they droop practically to her knees and flap like slobbery wings when she shakes her head. And now they’ve earned Martha a prestigious honor: the title of world’s ugliest dog. Martha won the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest in Petaluma, Calif. beating out 13 other very homely pups to claim the crown on Friday. Besides the honor of the title, Martha also gets a trophy, a $1, 500 prize and a flight to New York City for ”media appearances,” according to contest organizers. In winning, Martha also earned another  —   one might say greater  —   honor: her place enshrined on an illustrious list of champions that dates back nearly three decades. ”We’re proud to celebrate all dogs and pets by showing that no matter their imperfections, they are adoptable, lovable and a great addition to any family,” says Erin Post, CEO of the   Fair, where the contest is held. Martha hasn’t always been showered with laurels. In fact, as The Associated Press reports, the   giant has overcome some desperate straits: ”The dog, from nearby Sebastopol, was rescued when she was nearly blind from neglect by the Dogwood Animal Rescue Project in Sonoma County, where the contest was held. After several surgeries, she can now see again, [handler Shirley] Zindler said.” Some took umbrage with the word ”ugly” in Martha’s title  —   she’s ”stunning,” at least according to one prominent onlooker. But it was clear from the start that Martha bore the easy confidence of a champion. The wire service says the judges and the crowd fell immediately in love with her lumbering charms  —   even if she was a little less than impressed with them, ”often plopping down on her side on stage with her droopy face spread across the ground when she was supposed to be showing off.” Don’t let Martha’s lackadaisical confidence fool you, though: The greats often make it look easy, no matter how tough the competition. And the competition was indeed formidable  —   as you can see below."
"There are only two ways to get to Meyers Chuck, Alaska: by boat or float plane. If you go by plane, you might hitch a ride on a de Havilland Beaver, circa 1958  —   one of the planes that brings the mail every week. It comes in low over specks of islands and the forested Alaska coast, and curves into the protected inlet of Meyers Chuck, splashing down at high tide. On the day we visit, a handful of boats are tied up along a floating mooring. Small wooden cabins are nestled among the trees. Meyers Chuck is off the grid, with no roads or cars, and even by Alaska standards, it’s tiny. Summer is the busy season, when people boat up to their cabins and swell the population to 25 or so. In the winter, that drops to about five, or sometimes even just two: Cassy and Steve Peavey. Cassy Peavey, 74, is the postmistress of Meyers Chuck, and Steve, 79, is her husband. The Peaveys have heard the mail plane approach, and are waiting for us on the dock. Today, the plane is delivering about 90 pounds of mail and groceries to Meyers Chuck. Together, Cassy and Steve haul the bags and boxes up the ramp from the dock and into the tiny post office, which is perched on pilings on the rocks. Steve Peavey and some friends built this post office out of cedar    Cassy painted the wooden sign that hangs outside, facing the water, with Meyers Chuck’s wonderful,     zip code: 99903. Cassy has been postmistress of Meyers Chuck for 15 years, and this is her domain. ”She’s the backbone of the community!” Steve says, proudly. She gets busy opening the mail bags and sorting the week’s influx of bills, catalogs and magazines (including, on the day we visit, the fishing newsletter Spawning News). By now, she could probably sort this mail with her eyes closed. There are just 18 mail slots for everyone in town. Every Wednesday, when the mail is sorted, Cassy hangs the American flag outside, and that’s the cue for folks to come by. On this day, Darrell Lee is happy to see that his blackberry seeds have arrived in the mail. Bob Hunley swings by, and hurray! He’s finally gotten a   part for his generator. No mail for Dave Perry today, but it doesn’t matter  —   a visit to the post office is a chance to shake off your solitude, see your neighbors, trade advice on outboard motors or comment on the weather. ”Seemed like kind of a   storm,” Bob Hunley offers. ”Seemed like we had one good gust there yesterday afternoon and then it just kinda fizzled out after that.” You can settle in by the crackling wood stove with a cup of coffee and one of the cookies or cinnamon rolls that Cassy will have baked that morning. The mugs are right there, hanging on hooks on the wall. ”Everybody knows their own,” Cassy says. ”There’s a couple of guys that are pretty touchy about people using their cup.” And if  —   like Gary Nielsen  —   you boat over to the post office in your skiff, and it’s hard for you to climb up on the dock, well, Steve or Cassy will bring your mail down to you. ”Thanks, Steve! See ya next week!” Nielsen calls as he motors away. Cassy keeps a jar of red licorice sticks on the post office counter (5 cents apiece) right next to a jar for residents to leave their $50 contribution for the annual community fund, to help with village upkeep. She has just one rule at the post office: Please, no talking about politics. ”Yeah, I get talked to every once in a while,” Steve admits. Cassy nods: ”I tell him, I say, ’No! You stay away from that.’ ’Cause I’m pretty much the boss.” We’ve walked up to the Peaveys’ cozy home, just a few steps up a path from the post office, where Cassy offers tea and her famous cinnamon rolls. The Peaveys reminisce about days gone by, when Meyers Chuck was a busy fishing town, filled with characters known by their marvelous nicknames: Pipe Pole Slim. Crackerbox Mack. Wooden Wheel Johnson. Logger Bill.   Bottleson. Greasy Ed. (Not to be confused with Greasy Gus.) Now, those nicknames are a thing of the past. Steve and Cassy Peavey share the sweet familiarity of two people who’ve known each other nearly their whole lives. They laugh easily, call each other ”babe” and often finish each other’s sentences. They met in school when she was 10 and he was 15, in Kasaan, Alaska, on nearby Prince of Wales Island. Later, when they were courting, Steve would row from Meyers Chuck to Kasaan to visit Cassy:   miles, in a rowboat. Crazy, but true. Steve shrugs and laughs. ”Just a little stroll in the park!” He grew up in Meyers Chuck, and he and Cassy moved back here as newlyweds 56 years ago, when she was just 18. ”He drug me over here!” Cassy jokes. ”He had me handcuffed!” Steve used to work as a logger, felling trees and bucking the timber into logs. Steve and Cassy also fished commercially together for many years, and raised their two sons in Meyers Chuck. ”I’ll tell ya, this was a great place to raise kids,” Cassy says. ”You stick your head out the window and whistle or yell and your kid usually says, ’OK, I’m on my way home! ’” But now, there are no more kids living in Meyers Chuck. There used to be a school, but with no kids, it’s closed. For a long time, there wasn’t even a telephone here. Finally in the 1970s, Meyers Chuck got a phone. Just one. ”It was fastened to a tree,” Cassy recalls. ”And you’d have to stand in line to make your phone call.” If that phone happened to ring, someone  —   probably a kid  —   would run to answer it, and relay a message. ”You’d hotfoot it down the trail to whomever’s house it was,” says Mike Meyer, who was one of those messengers. ”Tell ’em to call so and so.” Meyer grew up in Meyers Chuck, and family legend has it that one of his forebears gave the town its name. The ”Chuck” part comes from a Chinook word. It means an inlet that fills at high tide. The people of Meyers Chuck are used to doing just about everything for themselves. Because they’re off the grid, they provide their own power. The Peaveys have a little windmill that spins out on the dock others have solar panels. Water is piped down from a lake about a mile away via a water line built by the townspeople themselves in the ’80s. ”Pretty darn nice,” Cassy says. In its heyday back in the 1930s, more than 100 people lived in Meyers Chuck, and the town was thriving, with a store, a barbershop, bakery, and bar. By the time the Peaveys moved here, in 1961, it was smaller, but still humming. ”We had a little store here,” Cassy recalls, ”and of course the post office was here, and there was a   scow here. It was just really sweet. But it’s just slowly, slowly . ..” ”Slowly dyin’,” Steve chimes in. ”Yep, slowly died,” Cassy says. As much as she loves Meyers Chuck  —   loves that it’s so small and independent  —   at age 74, Cassy finds herself wishing they could move away. She’d love to spend more time with her kids, and grandkids. ”Steve isn’t much of a family guy,” she says. ”He’d much rather just talk to the kids on the phone, and that’s good enough for him. I like to have those hugs once in a while.” Cassy has talked about retiring as postmistress, but, she says, ”I was told if I closed the post office it would never open again. So it kind of puts a little pressure on me. It’d be criminal to change it, the way it is now.” Steve points out that there’s nobody who wants to take on the responsibility of running it. And so if the post office were to close, people would have to go by boat to get their mail over in Thorne Bay, 11 miles across Clarence Strait. ”And 11 miles across the straits here would be impossible so many times in the wintertime,” Cassy says. So she figures she’s pretty much stuck. Also, she knows that Steve has absolutely no interest in ever living anywhere else. ”Hell,” he says, ”I’d be just as satisfied to live my life out and die here. I mean, I’m not standin’ in line! But heck, this is a good place!” When Steve Peavey says he can’t imagine leaving this tiny place, Cassy shakes her head, and whispers, ”no, no, no.” But you can tell Cassy is concerned about their future. Steve has had a stroke that’s left his left hand ”pretty well devastated,” as he puts it, and Cassy worries about how far they are from medical care. The Peaveys can’t think of anyone they know who’s managed to live out his life in Meyers Chuck, without having to move away eventually for health reasons. Those questions hang over them, but right now, there are immediate things they need to tend to. It’s summertime. In the next few weeks, Steve Peavey plans to head out to Neets Bay, Alaska, for five straight weeks of salmon fishing on his boat, the Patsy. He fishes solo, managing it all on his own with his one good hand. And Cassy? She’ll be home. This is the busy season at the post office in Meyers Chuck. She knows the people need her there. The ”Our Land” series is produced by Elissa Nadworny."
"President Trump has brought on an eclectic team of outside lawyers to help him navigate the various investigations into Russian meddling in the election. At least six congressional committees are investigating. And, in addition to activities around the election, special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly now also looking into possible obstruction of justice by the president. If you asked a Washington insider to come up with a legal dream team for a situation like this, it’s highly unlikely this is who they would come up with. But President Trump came into office as an outsider and continues to operate that way, and in a way his legal team is a reflection of that as well. Here’s an introduction to the men representing Trump: Marc Kasowitz, Shortly after former FBI Director James Comey finished testifying before a Senate committee, a   man in a suit walked up to a lectern at the National Press Club and faced reporters. ”Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Marc Kasowitz, president Trump’s personal lawyer,” he said, launching into prepared statement. Kasowitz has represented Trump for 15 years in a wide range of cases related to Trump’s business and personal life  —   and now he’s leading the president’s outside legal team. ”The president feels completely vindicated and is eager to continue moving forward with his agenda, with the business of this country and with this public cloud removed,” Kasowitz read, then promptly left without taking questions. He hasn’t made any public remarks since. Over the years, Kasowitz has represented Trump on real estate transactions, libel cases (Trump filed a lot of them) and in the Trump University fraud law suit, settled late last year for $25 million. In the New York Times, he was described as ”more of a scrappy upstart than a member of the city’s   legal machine . .. the Donald Trump of lawyering.” Kasowitz founded his own law firm in 1993, bringing with him a valuable client, Celanese Chemicals, involved in   product liability litigation over pipes installed in more than 6 million homes that had begun leaking. The firm started small and has grown to have some 300 lawyers, with offices in nine U. S. cities. On its website, Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP lists its primary focus as complex commercial litigation. ”He’s a general, and I mean that in a very complimentary way,” said Charles Barrett, an attorney at Neal  Harwell, who started his career at Kasowitz’s firm. ”He’s very smart. He’s a really good leader and great tactician. He’s the one you want running point on an important operation.” Barrett added Kasowitz is ”tough, really tough.” That description is one Kasowitz seems to savor, as the word ”toughest” appears in the first line of his bio. Perhaps his highest profile case came just a couple of years after establishing his firm. Kasowitz represented Liggett  —   the smallest of the big tobacco companies. At his suggestion, Liggett broke with the industry and began settling lawsuits filed by smokers and states seeking damages for   illnesses. Up until that point the tobacco companies had been united in denying that cigarettes were addictive or dangerous. ”Today for the first time one of the five major tobacco companies in the United States is prepared to break this conspiracy,” said Grant Woods, Arizona’s attorney general at the time, as he announced one of the settlements. ”Liggett will now fully cooperate in every sense with these 22 attorneys general as we fight the other four tobacco companies in courts across this country.” Liggett’s move ultimately forced the other tobacco companies to settle, too. Another one of Kasowitz’s clients is Sberbank. As BuzzFeed has reported, Sberbank is fighting ”claims that it helped a   company raid and kill off its main competitor in the Russian market.” Kasowitz’s firm takes on cases other firms would shy away from  —   including whistleblower suits and going after big financial institutions. But civil litigation and   defense are two very different types of law. ”People who do real estate and commercial things really do not have the kind of experience that is useful when you’re dealing with any prosecutor and especially somebody with the experience of Bob Mueller,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at the George Washington University Law School. Saltzburg was part of the special prosecutor’s team during the Iran Contra investigation, so he’s seen one of these sorts of investigations from the inside. One thing Kasowitz does have going for him, Saltzburg said, is that the president knows him and respects him. ”He may be able to say something to the president that the president wouldn’t hear from another lawyer,” said Saltzburg. And Kasowitz has brought on other lawyers. Jay Sekulow, The face of Trump’s team has become Jay Sekulow. On Sunday, he appeared on four different network and cable shows. The next day he did at least three more TV appearances. ”Let me be crystal clear so you  —   you completely understand. We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States, period,” said Sekulow on Fox News Sunday. That appearance turned south, with Sekulow getting tied up by questioning from Chris Wallace. Sekulow later admitted he can’t be sure the president isn’t being looked at as part of the special counsel investigation. The Washington Post reported on June 14 that Mueller’s team was looking into whether Trump obstructed justice and that investigators had reached out to national security officials for interviews.  For regular cable news viewers (like, say, President Trump) Sekulow is a familiar face. His specialty isn’t   defense, but rather religious liberty. He’s argued 12 cases before the U. S. Supreme Court, starting in 1987 in a case that pitted the Los Angeles airport against Jews for Jesus. He argued members of the group should be able to pass out literature at the airport. ”There is no justification for a sweeping ban on First Amendment activities which would subordinate cherished First Amendment freedoms,” he argued before facing a volley of questions from the justices. Sekulow wasn’t just the lawyer for Jews for Jesus. He grew up Jewish in Long Island and came to believe Jesus is the messiah while attending a Baptist college. Around that time he was introduced to Jews for Jesus. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the group’s favor, helping Sekulow make a name for himself. In 1990 he founded the American Center for Law and Justice, or ACLJ, with evangelical minister Pat Robertson. ACLJ was meant to be a Christian conservative answer to the American Civil Liberties Union. Not only does ACLJ pursue religious liberty cases, it fought the building of a mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan and even has a   show that airs on hundreds of stations nationwide. It’s called Jay Sekulow Live! and is hosted by Sekulow and his sons. A spokesman says he plans to continue hosting the show even as he now represents Trump. On top of all that, Sekulow plays drums in a Christian rock band, The Jay Sekulow Band. One of his bandmates was the frontman for the popular rock band Kansas in the early 1980s. On Facebook, more than 110, 000 people follow the band, which has numerous slickly produced performance videos. John Dowd, John Dowd is best known as the author of the Dowd Report, which led to Pete Rose’s lifetime ban from baseball for gambling on the game. ”I’m very, very happy and very proud of the commissioner of baseball for protecting the game,” Dowd told NPR two years ago, when Major League Baseball denied Rose’s request to be reinstated. ”In this day and age, protecting the integrity of anything is a big deal.” In 2011, Dowd represented Raj Rajaratnam in a major   case. Rajaratnam was convicted on all counts and walking out of the courtroom Dowd offered some choice words to a CNBC reporter, flipping off the camera. But more to the point, Dowd is a seasoned Washington hand who represented Sen. John McCain,  . in the Keating Five scandal (McCain was cleared) and helped a retired Air Force colonel get immunity to testify in the Iran Contra scandal. That’s experience that would be quite valuable if the president is in fact being investigated for obstruction of justice by the special counsel. Michael Bowe, Michael Bowe is a partner at Kasowitz’s law firm and has worked on a number of   cases. He went after a hedge fund that had been shorting his client Fairfax Financial. The deposition from that case played a prominent role in a Frontline documentary and also aided federal authorities in an investigation of that fund for insider trading. His bio on the firm’s website says Bowe ”has successfully litigated virtually every type of   business and personal case, on both the plaintiff and defense side, and at both the trial and appellate level. He has also navigated to safety many companies and high net worth individuals facing serious law enforcement and regulatory jeopardy. And he has provided sage crisis management advice during these periods of substantial duress.”"
"The type of siding or ”cladding” used on the Grenfell Tower in London  —   and suspected of feeding the massive fire that killed dozens of residents  —   is not allowed on the exterior of tall buildings across most of the U. S. But a few states and the District of Columbia have relaxed building codes in recent years and have started to permit the use of some cladding containing components that don’t pass a fire test.  The cladding installed on Grenfell Tower as part of a 2016 refurbishing project has become a focus for investigators. NPR’s Frank Langfitt has confirmed that the cladding had a combustible polyethylene core rather than a more   mineral core. At least 79 people died last week when the fire spread quickly through the   public housing tower. Investigators say a refrigerator started the fire, which then spread to the cladding outside. Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament that similar cladding on other buildings has been found to be combustible. Reuters reports that at least 600 buildings in England use the same type of cladding and that authorities are testing the material to determine whether other buildings are at risk of fire. In the United States, most jurisdictions don’t allow this type of cladding for buildings higher than 40 feet. That is because they’ve adopted the International Building Code, which requires cladding for tall buildings to pass a rigorous test developed by the National Fire Protection Association called ”NFPA 285.” The purpose of the test is to ensure that installed cladding will be noncombustible. In recent years, a few U. S. jurisdictions have eliminated this testing requirement when adopting the latest version of the International Building Code. They now permit cladding with combustible components similar to what was believed to be used on the Grenfell Tower, as long as the building has other fire safety measures in place, such as a working sprinkler system. (The Grenfell Tower reportedly did not have sprinklers.) This softening of some U. S. building codes upsets Tulsa, Okla.  fire protection engineer John Valiulis. He says D. C. and three states  —   Minnesota, Indiana and Massachusetts  —   have exempted some cladding with combustible materials from NFPA 285 testing. Valiulis wrote a report about the topic for the Fire Safe North America group. In it, he details a series of cladding fires around the world that were similar to the Grenfell Tower fire. None were in the U. S. and he says there is a good reason for that. ”The fire protection engineering profession in the U. S. is quite active and is often very proactive,” says Valiulis. Thirty years ago, when it became clear builders would start using more of this type of cladding, he says, the NFPA test was developed to determine whether combustible materials used within cladding might pose a fire danger. But that test can be expensive  —   potentially costing $30, 000 or more. And usually a new test must be conducted for each building because the cladding specifications change. Cost is a primary reason the D. C. Construction Codes Coordinating Board, which is under the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, removed the testing requirement. DCRA spokesman Matt Orlins says that during a 2012 code review process, building designers said they were concerned about the difficulty of finding cladding that passed the NFPA 285 test. ”The board agreed that the concerns were valid and that other portions of the codes did provide safeguards,” says Orlins. So the board eliminated the requirement. Advocates for eliminating the NFPA 285 testing requirement have said it’s a prudent   change, given the lack of dramatic fires in the United States like the Grenfell Tower fire. And they point out that most fires start inside a building, where required sprinklers are likely to keep a fire from spreading to the cladding outside. NPR contacted firms that have pushed for code changes in the District and Minnesota, but those businesses either did not respond or declined to comment. Valiulis doesn’t accept their argument. Like most fire protection engineers, he wants multiple safety systems in place in case one fails. ”When a code is   and properly anticipates problems, people observe a lack of incidents, and often assume that the code must be asking for overkill,” says Valiulis. But he says that also can be a sign that ”the code got it exactly right.” Now, at least one of the jurisdictions that relaxed building codes may reverse course. As more cladding options that comply with NFPA 285 have come onto the market in recent years, Orlins with the DCRA says the agency plans to put the testing requirement back into the next revision of the District’s building code. And Orlins says, ”The District is also evaluating whether the change ought to be adopted as an amendment to the current code.”"
"Authorities in London evacuated roughly 650 apartments in a   complex overnight, citing fears that the complex bore many of the safety issues that Grenfell Tower did. Councilmembers for the London borough of Camden say it was the stark memory of the Grenfell blaze, which killed at least 79 people earlier this month, that spurred them to act. ”I know it’s difficult, but Grenfell changes everything,” Camden Council chief Georgia Gould told reporters outside a complex of buildings known as Chalcots Estate on Friday. ”I just don’t believe we can take any risk with our residents’ safety, and I have to put them first.” Tests earlier this week on the Chalcots Estate, a cluster of   apartment buildings, had revealed four of the estate’s towers used exterior cladding and insulation similar to the materials used in Grenfell. ”Whilst we are clear that our cladding design and insulation significantly differs to that at Grenfell Tower, the external cladding panels did not satisfy our independent laboratory testing or the high standards we set for contractors,” Gould said in a statement Thursday, adding that the council had decided to ”immediately begin preparing to remove these external cladding panels.” Added to the cladding, the London Fire Brigade ”also identified concerns relating to services that have been run through compartment walls leading to possible breaches in the buildings ability to stop fire spreading,” Dan Daly, assistant commissioner for fire safety, said in a statement after the evacuation. ”There were also concerns that some fire doors in the building are not working as they should,” Daly continued, ”meaning that in the event of a fire it could spread to other parts of the building.” ”I said to fire services, ’Is there anything I can do to make this block safe tonight?’ I offered to pay for fire services to be stationed outside those blocks just so we could have a couple of days to get the works done,” Gould told BBC Radio 4, according to The Guardian. ”But the message was [that there was] nothing to do to make blocks safe that night.” So, as NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports, ”The council booked some hotel rooms and encouraged people to stay with family. About 100 air mattresses were provided on the floor of a local leisure center.” Some of the residents saw the move as a ”complete overreaction,” however. That’s the assessment of resident Edward Strange, who, according to The Associated Press, told British broadcaster Sky News they should have been given a choice. ”If we wanted to leave, we should have the choice to leave. But being told that we have to leave is just ridiculous. It’s our home.” Frank notes that officials estimate it will take three to four weeks to make the buildings safe. ”Having to evacuate people from their homes is always going to be distressing for those residents, especially when we have to do it at such short notice,” Gould said in a statement after the evacuation. ”I know some residents are angry and upset, but I want to be very clear that Camden Council acted to protect them.”"
"Every month, NPR Music hits up 10 hosts, music directors and writers from public radio stations across the country for the new songs that just won’t let them go. It’s always exciting to watch the picks pour in  —   both to hear the range of music represented and to learn why those songs have been on everyone’s minds. At the audio link above, hear Jesse Menendez of Vocalo Radio, Jerad Walker of opbmusic and Jessi Whitten of Colorado Public Radio’s OpenAir share their picks for this month. Read on for the full list, which includes music from Canadian pop singer Allie X, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Mexican rock stars Café Tacvba and more."
"When principal Kelli Hoffman ran into her students at a McDonald’s during summer break, she knew they weren’t there for the McNuggets. The two rising   at French Middle School had invested in a Coke to unlock a bigger prize: free  . They sat logged into their   Chromebooks studying exercise ideas from their sports coaches. Hoffman’s district, Topeka Public Schools in Kansas, is one of a rising number of systems that are letting students take their   devices home over the summer months. ”It has opened up a huge educational resource to our kids who may not have access otherwise,” Hoffman said. Carrie Grant, who graduated this year from the Lammersville Unified School District in California, said having a device last summer made her life easier. Without the school computer, she wouldn’t have had her own laptop to work on. She used it to stay connected with friends through her school’s Google Chat system and watched Netflix, but also saved time for academics. ”Because I took summer school it was easier for me to get classes done than it was before, and I used it to apply for scholarships,” said Grant, who is now choosing between colleges in Texas and Georgia. Some see distributing school laptops as a tool to extend learning during the summer and reduce the disparities between lower and higher income students. At French Middle, nearly 60 percent of students are eligible for free lunch. ”We don’t want the haves and have nots,” said Kristen Landis, the director of technology for the North Penn School District in Pennsylvania, which allows students to take home their Chromebooks. But, there is no research yet to show whether device distribution cuts back on summer slide, the learning losses most acutely experienced by lower income students during the summer when lessons from the school year are forgotten. And, no one seems to be tracking which schools across the country are implementing the lending programs. ”Summer is the most unequal time in America,” said Matthew Boulay, the interim CEO of the National Summer Learning Association. ”I think we tend to have this idyllic view of what childhood summers are, but the reality is that for kids living in poverty, summer can be a time of isolation and hunger.” While some students head off to camps and family vacations, others are left without the resources that accompany a school year, including school lunches, sports teams and a place to go while parents are at work during the day. Schools across the country adopting       programs at rapid rates. In 2016 alone, 12. 6 million mobile computers were sold for   classrooms for a few hundred dollars. Some see summer lending as a way to level the playing field for students. ”We had essentially three observations: Parents could use their computers for work, students could keep up with   emails and services over the summer and a majority of families who participated described it as a positive experience,” Ankeny School District Superintendent Bruce Kimpston said of his Iowa district’s summer pilot program last year. And the summer months, when there is no one to remind them to charge their computers, can make students more conscious about maintaining the devices. ”It gives students ownership of the device, and they take better care of the device if they have ownership,” said Greater Clark County Schools Technology Director Brett Clark. The Indiana school system also requires students to be registered for the next school year to get a device for the summer. ”It helps encourage families to register for school, which helps us out because we base our school budget on who is enrolled,” Clark said. Letting students leave for break with their laptops in hand is not enough to cut back on inequality though, New York University professor Susan Neuman said. ”One thing we too often focus on is the sexy interventions like sending home a mobile device, but those people who haven’t had the experience will use them differently,” she said. ”In   groups the kids would use the games and cheap thrills [available via computers] whereas those kids that had been mentored with a parent next to them use it as a prep school in a box.” Neuman said it’s important for schools to provide parents with information on the best way to use the devices. Since not all parents are equally familiar with technology themselves, schools can level the playing field by telling them about good online learning sites and best practices for limiting screen time. She emphasized that technology runs the risk of drawing kids away from their parents instead of bringing them together during the summer. ”Parents in   neighborhoods want to learn along with their children and are interested in being part of the digital age,” she said. ”Kids shouldn’t just be given the equipment and told ’go.’ They should be given content recommendations along with that.” Administrators recognize that students aren’t necessarily spending their summers number crunching and reading Voltaire. ”Honestly, it doesn’t matter,” said Jennifer Williams, technology director of California’s Fullerton Joint Union High School District. ”If they are in summer school of course they will be using them for education. For the others, they will use it for what kids use it for. They will use it for games. If you take too many fun things away, they won’t value the device.” Sean Alen Little, a rising   at French Middle, said he will use his computer for his   projects this summer. ”I hope to write scripts for my movies I make,” he said. Little’s mom said she let her son, who has access to other devices at home, decide whether to   to the summer   program. ”I wanted him to take responsibility for it if he chose to keep it over the summer,” Sanela   said. The National Summer Learning Association’s Boulay, who has   and    daughters, said it’s important not to make summer learning punitive or mandatory, but instead to see summer as an opportunity to get away from the constraints and norms of what happens during the school year. Jodi Meyer, a parent and teacher in Ankeny, Iowa, said her son’s teachers gave him summer exercises to do on the educational site Edmodo. Boulay has his kids log on to Duolingo and Khan Academy each day on break. Some school systems are still deciding how to handle student devices when school’s out. Administrators and teachers in the Fullerton Joint Union High School District decided there were compelling reasons for students to have the district’s new devices and reasons they should be left at school. ”Rather than say one way or the other without data to support either one, we said we will try it in different ways in different schools and see at the end of the summer,” said Williams, the district’s technology director. They let the schools decide whether they wanted to check them in, check them out, or just give them to summer school students. Williams said collecting Chromebooks is not as simple as throwing textbooks on a shelf. The devices have to be stored in   rooms and carefully tagged for reissuing. But, checking them out means someone must be available for repairs over the summer. ”We will know at the end of the summer if one was a bad decision. We are hoping that it will be clear what will be the best way to go,” Williams said. Mollie Simon is the NPR Business Desk intern."
"On a typical block in Hong Kong, thousands of people live on top of each other. Pol Fàbrega thinks about all these people as he looks up at the towering high rises above the streets. And then he thinks about all that space above all these people. ”The square footage here is incredibly expensive,” says Fàbrega, staring upwards. ”But yet, if you look at Hong Kong from above, it’s full of empty rooftops.” It is, he says, a big opportunity for growth. Fàbrega is not a developer. In a city full of bankers, he’s a gardener. He helps run a gardening cooperative called Rooftop Republic that aims to make the best use out of Hong Kong’s thousands of roofs. ”In Hong Kong, currently there’re around 700 hectares of farmland that are being farmed,” explains Fàbrega, ”So the amount of rooftop space is almost the same as the amount we’re using today to farm  —   like, actual farmland.” Hong Kong’s agricultural contribution to its GDP is 0. 02 percent. Fàbrega’s goal is to boost that tiny number by filling Hong Kong’s 1, 500 acres of rooftop space with vegetable gardens. He’s starting small, by giving tutorials to city residents. On the roof of Fringe, a French restaurant in Hong Kong’s Central district, Fàbrega and Rooftop Republic   Andrew Tsui give a tour of garden containers full of Romaine lettuce, kale, cherry tomatoes, and carrots. Rooftop Republic has helped fill more than 26, 000 square feet of rooftop on 22 rooftop farms. The biggest one is on the roof of Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific, where 40 employees manage container vegetable plots on a daily basis. Expat resident Gina Ma’s rooftop garden is tiny by comparison, but she’s spreading the word at her children’s school. ”I was like Johnny Appleseed. I was calling everyone up, called the school and I was like, ’I have seedlings they’re amazing! And they’re all, like, organic and stuff that you can’t get here. Take them!’ ” It’s that last point, being organic and healthy, that’s important to Rooftop Republic’s clients. ”In the case of Hong Kong, we also face a particular challenge that 98 percent of our vegetables and fruits come from China,” Fàbrega says. ”There’s endless amount of scandals surrounding food that’s from mainland China.” And that’s why Rooftop Republic’s first clients were a handful of restaurants and hotels in a city where returning to the land can be as simple as a quick trip up the stairs to the roof."
"She has no phone, no laptop, no Internet and no air conditioning inside her cell. It’s 93 degrees outside, but Leila de Lima looks remarkably composed. The Philippine senator spends much of her time reading and attending to Senate business as best she can, though she isn’t allowed to vote. De Lima, a    grandmother, was imprisoned in February on President Rodrigo Duterte’s orders, after poking the bear one too many times. The charges against her, which she denies, include taking money from jailed drug dealers. The final straw for the mercurial and combative Duterte, de Lima believes, was her Senate investigation into the president’s bloody war on drugs, which has left more than 7, 000 dead since last summer in encounters with police and in   vigilante killings. ”I knew he was going to be pissed off and come after me,” de Lima says. ”He’s very, very vindictive.” But, she says, ”I didn’t imagine it would be this severe.” It’s not the first time de Lima and Duterte have tangled. In fact, de Lima says, her incarceration is part of a ”personal vendetta” by the president that started after she began an investigation of him in 2009, when she headed the Philippines Commission on Human Rights and he was mayor of Davao City. De Lima was exploring Duterte’s alleged links to the   Davao Death Squad that operated during his two decades as mayor. The group used tactics similar to those employed by police and vigilantes in Duterte’s current bloody war on drugs. De Lima’s investigation centered on more than 100 extrajudicial killings in Davao City, allegedly carried out by the death squad. ”He will never forget what I did investigating the Davao Death Squad,” de Lima says. ”It’s very, very personal.” After Duterte’s election as president, and de Lima’s as senator, many  —   including Duterte himself  —   believed some sort of confrontation was inevitable. ”Do not pick a fight with me,” Duterte warned her in May 2016. ”You will lose.” But as head of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, de Lima launched an investigation into Duterte’s war on drugs on July 13, 2016. ”By that time, the killings had already started,” she says. ”By the second week in July, the body count was already approaching 1, 000.” Duterte was livid. ”De Lima, you are finished,” he declared at a news conference in Davao City a few weeks later. He then embarked on a public campaign of shaming de Lima, who has admitted to having had a relationship with her former driver. Duterte accused de Lima of being an ”immoral woman” who, during her time as the country’s justice secretary, was ”not only screwing her driver, she was screwing the nation.” Duterte also accused de Lima of taking bribes from drug dealers to finance her Senate campaign and suggested her best course of action might be to ”hang herself.” But de Lima held her ground. ”If this is his way of stopping the Senate’s investigation on the extrajudicial killings, he can try until he finally silences me or the Senate,” she told reporters in August. ”But I think it is already clear what is being done to me is what will happen to anyone who does not bow to the wishes of the president.” And it wasn’t just the president, says Jose Manuel Diokno, the law school dean at Manila’s De La Salle University and one of de Lima’s lawyers. ”She really got it from the president himself and from everybody else in the government and from the trolls,” he says. ”And that included even a fake sex video and all of that, all designed for one thing, and that was to destroy her reputation.” De Lima’s colleague, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, gets angry just thinking about it. Duterte ”seems to react disproportionately to women who challenge his version of reality,” she says. ”And it really validated the warning signs we’d had since the campaign about human rights and about women’s rights. . .. They did that through the very vicious online social media campaign against her . .. and using aspects even of her personal life that, in a mature debate, should be  .” Even more alarming, Hontiveros says, is that ”after going after Sen. Leila, the trolls turned their attentions on Vice President Leni [Robredo] using similar voice, similar tactics and infrastructure and content generation and funding for their campaign also against the vice president.” Robredo has also been somewhat critical of the president and his methods. As for de Lima, she remains unrepentant and unbowed in her jail cell at the Philippine National Police headquarters at Camp Crame, in metro Manila. She isn’t allowed to leave. But de Lima does get regular visits from her son and grandson. She denies all the charges against her and says she never took money from drug dealers. ”It’s a demolition job,” she insists, ”orchestrated by the president.” Her lawyers are working to get her freed. ”There is absolutely no basis for any of these allegations against her,” Diokno says. The evidence he has seen is the ”word of convicted criminals . .. that won’t stand up in court.” But no court date has been set, and de Lima isn’t optimistic that she will be freed anytime soon. For now, she has her food delivered from outside  —   just in case. ”He’s unstable,” de Lima says of Duterte. ”He’s got a dark psychology.” Nevertheless, the president’s approval rating is high  —   between 75 percent and 80 percent, according to the latest opinion polls. This might help explain why there hasn’t been much public outcry about de Lima’s continued detention. But the case has left many Filipinos wondering  —   and worried: If this can happen to a sitting senator, what about ordinary people? The answer may be found in the thousands of dead in the war on drugs to date. Almost all of them were ordinary Filipinos living in metro Manila’s poorer neighborhoods. De Lima says that is one reason she has ended up in jail  —   because of her outspokenness about their deaths. ”I won’t be silenced or cowed,” she says. ”These extrajudicial killings have to stop.”"
"Updated 8:51 a. m. ET Sunday, More than 90 people remain missing after rescuers found 10 bodies among the debris of a landslide in the town of Xinmo in southwest China’s Sichuan province that happened Saturday. Local officials had first estimated more than 120 people and 62 homes were buried under tons of rubble. Rescuers have found at least 10 bodies, authorities said Sunday, contradicting earlier reports from Chinese state news agency Xinhua that 15 people were confirmed dead. The   rescue team, armed with ”  instruments and sniffer dogs,” continued to search for survivors, though experts say the chances for survival are low. Xinhua said the government posted the names of missing people online Sunday. Rescuers had pulled out at least three people on Saturday, Xinhua reported. ”We won’t give up as long as there is a slim of chance,” said an unidentified rescuer, according to the news agency. A family of three managed to escape the disaster after an infant in the home woke up crying half an hour before the landslide hit their house, the father, Qiao Dashuai, tells the news agency. All 142 tourists visiting the site are alive, says Xu Zhiwen, executive deputy governor of the Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba, where the landslide struck. The landslide fell from ”a high part of a mountain” nearby, Xinhua reports. ”It’s a seismic area here,” police captain Chen Tiebo told the state television network CCTV, according to the BBC. About 635 million cubic feet of rock tumbled down the mountain, The Associated Press reports, some of it falling from a mile above. ”Initial accounts from villagers nearby said there had been rain in the area, but some said it was not very heavy and there was no sign of an impending landslide,” Schmitz reports. More children than usual may have been in the town because China’s schools are on vacation, he adds. The landslide fell around 6 a. m. local time Saturday, Xinhua says, and also blocked a section of a nearby river and buried about a mile of a road. The news agency said the regional government had approved about $  of rescue funding. A massive earthquake hit the Sichuan province in 2008, which left about 90, 000 dead or missing, and the BBC notes it also caused a landslide that killed 37 tourists."
"A jury in Nashville has convicted former Vanderbilt football player Brandon Banks for his involvement in the 2013 gang rape of an unconscious female student. Two of his former teammates have also been convicted, and another is awaiting trial. Banks was found guilty on one count of aggravated rape and one count of aggravated sexual battery, The Associated Press reports. He was acquitted on five other counts. The aggravated rape count carries a minimum   sentence. ”He’s shocked but understands that this is only the first part of this process, there’s a lot more to do from here on,” Banks’ lawyer, Mark Scruggs, said after the verdict, according to The Tennessean. ”We have some really good issues to raise.” Banks has said he participated in the dorm room rape out of fear his teammates would bully him if he didn’t. He testified that the other players often chided him because he was smaller and had a girlfriend, so he didn’t sleep with lots of women. Defense attorney Scruggs contended that Banks was ”clearly under duress” and was ”the classic example of someone who has been abused by a group, whether it be a football team, a fraternity or any other group nowadays, that requires complete loyalty, complete obedience,” the AP reports. But Assistant District Attorney Roger Moore argued that Banks chose to join in the assault. The AP reports that in his closing arguments, Moore said even if Banks were being bullied, ”it doesn’t give you a legal defense to commit a crime, particularly not an aggravated rape, an aggravated sexual battery. I mean if that’s the case, then we’d have the ’football team defense.’ ” Former teammates Brandon Vandenburg and Cory Batey were also convicted in separate trials and sentenced to 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively. Jaborian McKenzie testified in the trials with the hope that he can make a plea deal, AP says. He has not yet been tried. The victim also testified in the trials. She said she was 21 years old at the time of the rape and was dating Vandenburg, but didn’t know the other three men. The last thing she remembers on the night of the assault, The Tennessean reports, was Vandenburg giving her a blue drink at a bar where they were drinking. Six hours later, the paper continues, she woke up in an empty, unfamiliar room. The men used their cell phones to take videos and photos of the assault and those were used as evidence in court. Banks confirmed on the stand that he had assaulted the woman with a water bottle  —   as one of the videos showed  —   and touched her and took photos. The AP says only two of the men were accused of raping the woman, but all four were charged with rape because prosecutors believe they were criminally responsible for their actions."
"Snakebites kill more than 100, 000 people per year, the World Health Organization estimates. The organization recently took a step to reduce that number by adding venomous snake bites to its list of neglected tropical diseases  —   a classification that could help get more resources allocated to fighting this public health problem. (WHO did acknowledge that snakebites aren’t a disease but ”an injury” but the ”envenoming”  —   the injection of the snake’s venom  —   can be considered a disease.) Doctors Without Borders, which had previously criticized the global health community for not paying enough attention to snakebites, welcomed the announcement. In   Africa, the best estimate is that 20, 000 to 32, 000 people die from snakebites each year, says Julien Potet, a neglected tropical diseases policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders, where he focuses on   Africa and the Middle East. It can take several hours for victims in   Africa to reach clinics, Potet says, and he worries about a lack of access to  . According to WHO, many snakebite victims are farmers and people in poor, rural communities far from capital cities. Farmers, including migrant workers, are sometimes bitten while walking through fields. Some of them sleep in the fields where they work, putting them at greater risk for bites, he says. Potet remembers the case of a teenage boy in the lowlands of Ethiopia who had been walking back from the fields to his village at night, without a flashlight and with no boots. A snake bit him on the ankle. About 12 hours passed between the time when the snake bit the boy and the time he arrived at the hospital, because the family had struggled to find someone to take the boy to the hospital during the night. A farm manager finally brought the boy to the hospital on a farm tractor. This boy’s story isn’t so unusual  —   it can take victims 6 to 12 hours to get to the hospital after a snake bite, Potet says. ”In some cases, it may be too late,” he says. In this case, the teenage boy was treated in time and survived. Still, Potet says, ”We need to reduce as much as possible the time between the bite and the treatment.” The cost of treatment for snake bites can also deter victims from seeking help, Potet says. Clinics or hospitals may charge from $80 to $150. Doctors Without Borders provides free treatment for snake bites. A common source of poisonous bites in some parts of Africa is the carpet viper, he says. It’s one of the snakes whose venom can cause bleeding and prevent blood from coagulating. Potet also worries about the supply of   in   Africa. ”As the [African] market is not very lucrative for pharmaceutical companies,” he says, ”some of the companies recently stopped production.”   quality can also be a concern. Some products are put on the market without robust testing, he says. WHO is conducting a formal evaluation of   products intended for use in   Africa in an effort to improve the quality. Then there’s the matter of prevention. It’s actually very basic, says Potet: using flashlights when walking home at night from fields, wearing boots and shoes in the fields and educating people so they know to seek treatment as quickly as possible  —   and stressing that local healers cannot substitute for   treatment. Other diseases on the list of neglected tropical diseases include rabies, scabies and leprosy."
"President Trump took to Twitter to question his predecessor’s judgment and actions  —   at the end of a week characterized by a steady drumbeat of questions about how and when the Obama administration chose to respond to Russian interference in the 2016 election. ”Why no action? ,” the president asked in the first of two tweets Saturday evening that suggested the Obama administration didn’t do enough  —   and soon enough  —   to stop Russia last year. Since Wednesday the Obama administration’s response has increasingly come under scrutiny in dueling congressional hearings held by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, in a bombshell report by the Washington Post and in the disclosure of correspondence between two Democratic senators last fall and Obama’s State Department first reported on by BuzzFeed. In the final days of the presidential campaign last year, two Democratic senators asked President Obama to take action against Russia for its election meddling. ”Such attacks cannot be tolerated and the United States must take immediate measures to ensure that those responsible are held to account,” Sens. Dianne Feinstein,  . and Ben Cardin,  . wrote in a letter to Obama dated Nov. 1, 2016, just a week before Election Day. After referencing the hacking and disclosure of emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and other people and organizations aligned with the Democratic Party, Cardin and Feinstein went on to stress to Obama the importance of protecting the electoral process: ”The seminal event in a functioning democracy is an election, and the international implications of the results of a U. S. election are far reaching. Russia’s actions threaten to undermine our democratic process. Our electoral infrastructure is strong, but it is incumbent upon us to ensure that our institutions are protected. A cyberattack on our electoral process or any part of our critical political, economic, or military infrastructure is a hostile action that must be countered.” The senators suggested that the assets of individuals found to have been involved in the Russian interference be frozen. Additionally, they counseled Obama to consider ”expanding the use of secondary sanctions” and ”taking proportional cyber responses beyond sanctions that would shine a direct spotlight on those responsible for the cyberattacks.” They also told Obama that the administration should indict those responsible in U. S. courts. The State Department wrote back to the lawmakers a month later, after Hillary Clinton’s stinging loss to Donald Trump. ”As we have made clear to the Russian government and others, we will not tolerate attempts to interfere with the U. S. democratic process, and we will take action to protect our interests, including in cyberspace, and we will do so at a time and place of our choosing,” the Obama administration told the two senators. The correspondence, reported on by BuzzFeed Friday, was part of a release of government records sought by Operation 45, a transparency project, in the course of Freedom of Information Act litigation filed against several U. S. intelligence agencies. Operation 45 ”is dedicated to ensuring transparency and accountability for the Administration of Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States,” the project’s website says. The BuzzFeed report about the letters came the same day as a Washington Post report that provided a look inside the Obama administration’s response to and   about Russia. The CIA notified Obama in August of last year that Russian President Vladimir Putin was directly involved in the campaign to interfere in the election, according to the Post. ”The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives  —   defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump,” the Post report says. But it would be roughly two months  —   not until Oct. 7, 2016, as Feinstein and Cardin pointed out in their letter  —   before the Obama administration publicly declared that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the DNC and other Democratic groups. The administration did not impose sanctions on Russia until late December 2016, some five months after the CIA’s intelligence report was   to the White House, according to the Post. (”Over that   interval,” the Post report says, ”the Obama administration secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, the release of   material that might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said could ’crater’ the Russian economy. ”) The U. S. intelligence community’s declassified report about the election interference was not made available to the public until early January 2017. Finally, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security did not designate state election systems as ”critical infrastructure,” until early January of this year as well. This would have allowed additional cyber security assistance. On Wednesday, Jeh Johnson, who was Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security during last year’s election, was asked by members of Congress about the timing of the administration’s response  —   specifically why the voting public was not informed about what Russia was up to until the fall of 2016. One of the candidates, Johnson said, not naming but clearly referring to Donald Trump, ”was predicting that the election was going to be rigged,” Johnson testified before the House Intelligence Committee, ”and so we were concerned that by making the statement, we might in and of itself be challenging the integrity of the election process.” Johnson also told the top Democrat on the committee that he had been concerned last year that he would be criticized ”for perhaps taking sides” in an ongoing election if he publicly spoke out about the Russian meddling that he knew was going on. Tony Blinken, Obama’s former national security adviser, defended the previous administration’s response Friday to CNN, saying Obama took action to protect the electoral system itself from interference by the Russians. ”We made massive efforts so they couldn’t do that,” Blinken told the cable news network. ”This led to two things: President Obama issued a very stark warning to President Putin in September at the   conference in China. What we saw, or thought we saw, after that, it looked like the Russians stopped their efforts. But the damage was already done.” Trump’s tweets Saturday were not his first this week in the vein of questioning the Obama’s administration’s response. The president tweeted Thursday morning and Friday evening, apparently in response to questions faced by Johnson and the Post’s reporting. While Trump seems to now be accepting and acknowledging that Russia interfered in the election, as the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman pointed out, also on Twitter on Friday night, Trump has previously called Russian election interference a hoax perpetrated by Democrats to explain Clinton’s loss: Speaking to the international media this month, Putin denied that the Russian government had any role in meddling in last year’s presidential election."
"On Friday night, a new American monarch rose to power beneath a cascade of rose petals, a cracked mask and the ballads of Whitney Houston. But she didn’t just use the glamour, comedy, acting and lip syncing prowess that fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race have come to expect from America’s Next Drag Superstar. Sasha Velour relies on brains. An ”amateur drag historian” When the    queen is at home in Brooklyn, N. Y. she produces and stars in a monthly drag cabaret event called Nightgowns. She   Velour, a magazine spotlighting   styles and issues in drag. She received an MFA from the Center for Cartoon Studies and studied political art as a Fulbright Scholar in Moscow. She also considers herself an ”amateur drag historian,” acknowledging there have always been different schools of drag  —   all competing, warring, pushing the art in new directions. But for Velour, her style comes from simultaneously paying tribute to the queens who came before her and blocking out any voices that might try to dictate what her drag should be. ”I want to do something that is not just a pastiche of drag that’s come before, but is really authentically me,” she said. ”I try to tune out all the drag that’s out there and tap into the drag that I was doing when I was a little kid  —   when I didn’t even know the word ’queer’ or that gay people were out there. . .. Tapping into the things I’ve always loved and building a drag that honors those.” And now that season nine is a wrap, Velour can officially add being the ninth queen crowned on RuPaul’s Drag Race to her resume  —   bringing her eclectic, academic and sometimes controversially intellectual brand of drag to the main stage of American queer culture. ”I mean, it’s been one of the biggest things I’ve gotten pushback about, is being an intellectual and what that means,” she said. ”I grew up in this house of intellectuals, and for me it wasn’t like a negative thing. And what I’ve discovered is for a lot of people it is. But I think knowing history, liking to talk about ideas  —   like, I just genuinely like to geek out and go on these intellectual thought journeys. I want to show people it’s not elitist to be a deep thinker.” Advancing an art form, As reigning queen of the Drag Race empire, Velour said she plans to use her platform  —   and cash prize of $100, 000  —   to bring other LGBTQ artists across America into the spotlight. Over the next year, she hopes to take projects like Nightgowns and Velour magazine across the country, showcasing and connecting drag communities from America’s big cities and small towns. ”I just want to be able to get kings and queens and nonbinary performers working together and having discussions about what drag is currently, what it has been and where we can move it to that is truly new,” she said. ”I think if we work together and have a conversation, we can really advance the art form.” Velour also plans to follow in the footsteps of other notable Drag Race alumni by dipping her toes into video production and music  —   albeit with an noticeably Velourian spin. ”When I was on the show, I said I will never create drag queen music. There’s too much of it and it’s horrible,” she said. ”But then they kind of tricked me into [doing] this weird, academic   that’s  —   it’s not for everyone, but the people who love it are really into it.” The ” ” she’s referring to, for the record, is in two collaborations with fellow season nine contestants  —   ”C. L. A. T.” and RuPaul’s ”Category Is. ..” remix, which was produced as a challenge on the show. In one verse, Velour opens with: ”Radical, magical, liberal art. Gender is a construct tear it apart.” Which, for her, is what the art of drag is all about  —   challenging gender and empowering people to follow their own paths. ”A lot of people still have the idea that drag goes from one end of the gender spectrum to the other end of the gender spectrum, and they expect drag queens to be masculine out of drag and   in drag,” she said. ”I think that portrays a lot of binary thinking and ultimately a lot of misogyny. I hope people appreciate that drag always has been more about the blurriness of gender rather than these two extremes.” ”We make ourselves royals” As Velour watched her victory Friday night as the first queen ever to be crowned on VH1, she had a moment thinking back to her childhood  —   before she had other LGBTQ people in her life or understood the world of gay culture. ”I imagined scrolling through channels and just discovering [Drag Race] on VH1. This, like, giant theater full of people cheering for queer people in the most glamorous, fabulous costumes  —   just being emotional, being angry about politics, being truly themselves. And I thought about how powerful that would be, and it was really humbling,” Velour said. ”That’s really the message of drag in the end. We make ourselves royals.” ”I hope that speaks to people and reminds them that America is full of scrappy, strange, beautiful people making magic for themselves.” The third issue of Velour comes out on July 5 and will include the contestants from season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race. It will also feature discussions on the connection between transgender politics, liberation and the drag community."
"America’s most famous drag queen, RuPaul, is finally mainstream, with two Emmy nominations for his reality show, RuPaul’s Drag Race. We visited set of Drag Race here in Los Angeles, where RuPaul and the gang are taping the show’s ninth season. The show is a competition  —   contestants go through challenges to prove their drag skills: lip synching, runway walks and photo shoots. Then RuPaul and a panel of judges choose a winner. A producer walks us behind a   mirror to see the latest contestants. We can see into a big dressing room where RuPaul tells the contestants about their next challenge we can’t tell you what it is  —   spoilers  —   but we can say the queens are given 30 minutes to go from boy clothes to full drag. We watch as they come up to the mirror to shave their chests, put on makeup, padding on various body parts, wigs, jewelry, and gowns. After the queens finish their challenge, we sit down on another part of the set, a supermodel style runway. RuPaul walks up in a perfectly tailored suit, in a floral pattern they’d usually tell you to never wear on TV, stylish horn rimmed glasses, and no wig. Drag Race started in 2009, and the top queens go on to be   performers. The first thing I ask RuPaul is if he’s worried one of these queens might steal his throne someday. ”Think about it,” he laughs. ”In all these years that RuPaul has been RuPaul, there’s been no b**** who has come for this crown. Year after year, we pick America’s next drag superstar. But has she ever come close to Miss RuPaul? I don’t think so!” RuPaul has a saying  —   ”You’re born naked, and the rest is drag.” Drag is what you put on after you get out of the shower. ”We’re all playing these roles, you know? Even as a kid, I remember thinking, why aren’t we talking about the fact that everybody’s playing a role? I couldn’t get anybody to break the fourth wall and say, ’Everybody’s playing a role, right?’ Are you seeing this?” That’s the general drag RuPaul says we’re all wearing. But then there’s his very particular type of drag, the drag he’s been doing for decades  —   going from a tall skinny gay man to a glam and voluptuous woman. He says he started during the Reagan era, ”as sort of a revolt. Not just against the status quo, but as a revolt against, you know, this hyper masculine culture. Especially even in gay culture that idolizes hypermasculine culture and says, you know what? F you to all you. I’m gonna do all of the things that we were told not to do.” RuPaul says for him, it started with a variety show on Atlanta public access TV called American Music Show. ”And I saw it one evening flipping channels, and wrote a letter to them and said, basically you’re my tribe, I need to be with you, and they said well come on down, be on the show. And I got together with a couple of my girlfriends and we did a dance routine to Junior Walker’s ”Shotgun,” a Motown classic song, and I made some outfits with my girlfriends and we called ourselves RuPaul and the  . So RuPaul found his tribe on American Music Show. He says that’s what his current show, Drag Race, does for young gay men now. ”What the show has done on a broad level is really spoken to young people who are out in the middle of nowhere who don’t know where their tribe is,” he says. ”To help them identify what they’re feeling and who their tribe is, and how to live a life outside of what they were told they’re supposed to do. How to successfully live your life without buckling under the pressure of society.” Drag saves lives, RuPaul says, ”because, you know, in a   culture where feminity is seen as an act of treason, especially when a man does it, it’s important to express yourself. A lot of these kids come from families who have really thrown them out because they are outside of the status quo.” Now Drag Race is finally up for a major award. ”Well, you know, it’s great,” RuPaul says. ”But whether we win or not makes absolutely no difference to me. I’m gonna keep doing what I do.” He’s often joked that he’d rather have an enema than an Emmy  —   but do the nominations mean drag has gone mainstream? These days, everyone talks about ”throwing shade,” and there are   battles on late night TV. ”Those are the sort of the accessories of drag,” RuPaul says. ”Drag at its core is about challenging the idea of identity. It actually mocks identity. So it could never be mainstream. Mainstream is about pick what you’re gonna be and stick with it, because you’d make us feel very uncomfortable if you started shapeshifting and changing ’cause that will wreck my head. So drag will never ever ever ever be mainstream.” RuPaul is now 55 years old, and he’s seen a lot of changes in the LGBT community. But he’s wary about saying things are getting better. ”I’ve gotta tell you, you know, even in the late ’70s we thought we were gonna be where we are now, we thought we were gonna be there then. But overnight, you know  —   disco sucks, and with the AIDS crisis, everything reverted back so fast. Your head  —   you’d get whiplash, it was so fast. So I’m very cautious when I talk about the changes and the advances we’ve made in such a short amount of time. Very cautious. Because in my lifetime I’ve seen that shift go completely backwards.” RuPaul’s Drag Race is up for two Emmys, one for outstanding costumes on a reality show, and one for outstanding host. The awards will be given out in September."
"Balloons, body paint, joy and mourning  —   across the world Sunday, Muslims gathered to celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan, and the festivities took nearly as many shapes as the places they were held. Now, not every Muslim opened the Eid   holiday Sunday. Because it relies on a lunar calendar, the festival marking the start of the new month depends on a sighting of the moon, which can vary from place to place. In Pakistan, for instance, worshipers are to wait until Monday for their celebrations. But much of the world had no such wait. In countries on just about every continent, Muslims gathered for prayer, reflection and a joyous conclusion to the fasting month of Ramadan. Just in case you can’t make it to these dozens of countries yourself Sunday, here’s a glimpse of the festivities."
"Ernest Littlebird put his grill out on the side of Route 39 in Lame Deer, Mont. under the shade of a tree and started grilling hamburgers. ”Come get a dollar burger,” he says. ”Good meal, you know, something to put in the belly at least.” Littlebird is an entrepreneur. This is his second year selling dollar hamburgers out of his minivan when he couldn’t find other work. Jobs are scarce here on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and so is money. But Littlebird thinks they don’t have to be. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation sits on one of the richest coal deposits in the country. There are billions of tons of the black rock buried underneath Littlebird, Lame Deer and the surrounding   prairie. In some places, it’s so easy to access that coal developers have told tribal members it could be scraped up with a spoon. But despite high unemployment and systemic poverty, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe has never touched the coal. It has spurned developers and scuttled plans. Most recently, it sued the Trump administration for opening up the opportunity for new coal development in its corner of southeastern Montana. The land here is sacred to the tribe. Retaining culture is crucial. And tribal leadership says it’s committed to finding   economic opportunities for its members, not the    cycle of extractive industry. But with the Trump administration pushing for new coal development, some on the reservation are wondering whether the tribe should finally cash in on the resources buried beneath their feet. ”We’ve got to do something,” Littlebird says. Farther down the road, Diana McLean, a tribal member, waves at the land and the nearby homes. She says coal would be good for the community. ”We need the economic development. We need the jobs here,” she says. ”We’ve been in the same situation for the last 50 years. And it hasn’t changed. It hasn’t improved. There’s no jobs here.” Unemployment on the Northern Cheyenne, About 5, 000 people live on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and according to the U. S. Census Bureau, the unemployment rate is about 24 percent. The Bureau of Indian Affairs says it’s closer to 60 percent. The tribe’s former economic development officer, Steve Small and many other people you talk to here think the unemployment rate is even higher than that. ”I’d say about 10 percent of us have jobs,” Small says, in an office just outside Lame Deer. ”I’m sure people would be out there working if we had jobs, but we don’t.” A high unemployment rate has led to high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide  —   the symptoms of poverty. Small says people here are tired of it. That is why he says he would like to see the tribe develop the estimated 23 billion tons of coal that lie underneath the reservation. Development would bring jobs, which would bring a sense of   he says. ”You know culture is really nice and I love my culture, but it doesn’t put food on the table,” Small says. As he is talking though, his secretary, who is standing next to the door, starts to shake her head. She disagrees completely. ”I’m concerned about the destruction of our water, our air, our safety for our children and women because of the influx of people that would come into our community,” says Alaina Buffalo Spirit. ”So it brings in money. Guess what? More drugs, more alcohol, human trafficking.” What’s more, she says, ”coal is dead. There’s no economy for it.” Surrounded by coal, The Northern Cheyenne Reservation is in the upper part of the Powder River Basin, which is the source of about 40 percent of the nation’s coal supply. The tribe is surrounded by coal development. But in recent years, as America’s energy system has shifted increasingly toward natural gas and renewable energy sources, the neighboring coal communities have suffered setbacks. Hundreds of workers have been laid off on the Crow Reservation. Real estate values have plummeted in a coal town to the north, where lawsuits are forcing a forthcoming closure of half of the town’s   power plant. There is hope in those places and on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation that President Trump and his push to do away with   environmental regulations will stop the bleeding and help bring the coal economy back. ”He’s for development. He’s trying to create jobs,” says Leroy Spang, a former president of the Northern Cheyenne tribe and a retired coal miner. ”But I don’t trust that guy.” Spang speaks in a measured, raspy voice. He served as the tribe’s president from 2008 to 2012, and he worked hard to bring coal development to the reservation during that time. He looked to other tribes like the Southern Ute, in Colorado, for advice on how best to start developing a natural resource. It wasn’t the first time the tribe had seriously considered mining its resources. Coal companies have been courting the Northern Cheyenne for decades. And they’ve always left disappointed. Spang’s tenure was no different. He projected it would take 10 years and hundreds of millions of dollars for coal development to get going on Northern Cheyenne, but he couldn’t get a project off the ground. Some members of the tribal council resisted his efforts, and a slowing demand and market for coal didn’t help his cause. Now, Spang says, with coal being phased out domestically, he fears it might be too late. ”If you can’t sell it, you can’t dig it,” he says. Someday, he thinks, that will change. The coal will eventually be mined, he says, because it’s a valuable resource. But it won’t be anytime soon. ”We are the ancestors of those who resisted.” Jace Killsback, the current president of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, would like to see the coal never leave the ground. ”I have a cultural worldview that is opposed to the destruction of our land,” he says. That worldview is one he shares with many in the tribe  —   the more traditional members, who are wont to point out that their ancestors died procuring this land. It was the Northern Cheyenne who helped kill Gen. George Armstrong Custer back in 1876. And it was their leaders who fought the U. S. government’s orders to move south to Oklahoma. They battled their way back north to Montana and what would eventually become the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. ”We are the ancestors of those who resisted,” Killsback says. And he says he intends to keep it that way. Earlier this year, the Northern Cheyenne sued the Trump administration for its decision to end an   moratorium on coal leasing. The tribe, he says, should have been consulted before that decision was made because it will have a direct impact on them. Consultation, he says, is a treaty right that was established between the tribe and the U. S. government. With the moratorium gone, the government can begin leasing federal lands for new coal development. And Killsback expects some of those leases will be near his reservation’s borders. The problems, he says, could be many. He has concerns about air and water pollution, heavy traffic from semitrucks and a surge in outsiders moving into the area. ”We want to have a say in how a coal lease is given out next to a reservation and how it will impact our communities,” he says. The lawsuit against the Trump administration raised some eyebrows on the reservation. Some worry it could draw repercussions. The Northern Cheyenne, like many tribes, receives federal money. And without another independent revenue stream, it is largely dependent on those funds. This is a point many   people on the reservation make for development: The tribe would have more independence and flexibility if it wasn’t so tied to federal money. Killsback is concerned about that too, but he doesn’t see coal as the solution. He would like to see the tribe attract other industry like clean energy or  . His administration is helping launch small, Northern   businesses. Off of Route 39, the main road through Lame Deer, not far from where Littlebird sells his hamburgers is a new shopping center. There is an art store, a print shop and cellphone repair shop among others. Brandin Limberhand is opening the cellphone repair shop with a friend. It’s the only one in 120 miles. ”We can find a better solution to create jobs  —   more jobs, different jobs  —   on this reservation,” Limberhand says. ”Coal makes money and all that, but it impacts our land and our people. We can do better.”"
"The man who fought to make child labor a crime against humanity came to Washington, D. C. last week with a message for America and its new president. Kailash Satyarthi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his efforts to end child labor, urged U. S. lawmakers to fight for the freedom of 168 million children forced to work due to poverty, trafficking or slavery. Those in power have a duty to ”protect and care for our young people,” says the    founder of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation. A former engineer who turned to activism decades ago, Satyarthi successfully pressured the International Labour Organization to prohibit child labor in 1999. We spoke to him about whether employing children can ever be justified, a new Bollywood movie in which he’s a character and what advice he has for America’s new president. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What’s the appeal of hiring children to work? Are there not enough workers?  Adults are more expensive labor. Children can be confined [against their will] to work [longer hours] which happens in Bangladesh, Africa, Latin America, Nepal. Children are preferred because of that. It’s hard for consumers to know whether products were made by children, but you helped come up with a solution for carpets. In the 1990s, you supported Rugmark, a special tag for carpets made free of child labor. How did it work?  I talked to congressmen and senators and trade unions and said: If you keep using those carpets in your drawing rooms with pride that these beautiful   carpets were made in Pakistan, Nepal or India, you are responsible for the perpetuation of slavery. I told them: I am not asking you to boycott all those carpets. I’m asking you to buy carpets which are guaranteed to be free of child labor. Today, we have seen the decline of child labor in the three countries where we have been working. In 15 years it has gone from 1 million to hardly 200, 000. Through your charity Save the Childhood Movement, you staged rescue missions to free over 83, 000 children and adults working in slavery. Can you tell me about one kid who made an impression? There was a child I freed from the carpet industry in India. His name was Kalu. He was enslaved for about six years and he was freed by me in a very risky operation. At that time he was about 11 or 12. He was a bright child. He lived in one of our three rehab centers, where he went to school. He topped his class and helped other children, so we promoted him. In the last days of Clinton’s presidency, I invited Kalu to join me at an event with President Clinton [in Washington, D. C.]. By that time Kalu was 13 or 14. Kalu said to Mr. Clinton: ”You are the most powerful person on earth.” The president smiled. ”I am fortunate enough to be freed, but you as the president can do much more. What are you doing for children like me?” Did President Clinton do anything?  Within a week, the U. S. increased its support to the ILO for the eradication of child labor from $6 million to $30 million. That was pure leadership on Kalu’s part. If given an opportunity, these children can speak truth to power. You believe child labor can lead to extremism.  If you stop children from entering good, quality free education, you are creating more tension and violence in the world. The illiteracy and exploitation of children, the growing inequality of children, is the most serious threat. These children can be brainwashed for extremism or terrorism. They’re vulnerable. If we were investing enough in education in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan where we see these problems, we might not be facing threats today. Is all child labor bad? In some cases children bring   income to their families.  That is the most commonly asked question. All child labor is bad. An actor named Boman Irani is playing you in an upcoming Bollywood film called ”Jhalki”  —   about a girl trying to free her brother who has been trafficked for child labor.  This man playing my role has never met me, but he has fallen in love with me! The other day, he said [he was] watching my YouTube speeches and [videos about my] life. He knows more about me than many of my peers. What message do you have for Americans?  I would like to appeal to the president and the administration: No problem in the world can be solved in isolation. America is not on a different planet. If we want to create a secure world, we have to send a message across the world that all children are our children. The children who are victims of slavery or trafficking, the vulnerable seeking refuge in other countries, they are our children  —   be it Syrian, Afghan, Yemeni. This should be the strong message from a country which has been championing human rights and democracy."
"Before it was on top of the world, Imagine Dragons was just another rock band. Founded in 2008 by current vocalist Dan Reynolds and former drummer Andrew Tolman, Imagine Dragons slogged away, touring endlessly and losing member after member before breaking through with its 2012 debut, Night Visions. The 2014 Grammys proved pivotal for the band  —   Imagine Dragons won Best Rock Performance for the blockbuster single ”Radioactive” and pulled off an   onstage collaboration with Kendrick Lamar. A year later, Imagine Dragons delivered a second album, Smoke And Mirrors, then took a   break. After touring for years on end, the band was spent  —   Reynolds, who struggled with one of his   bouts of depression, in particular. ”We got off the road and I spent a lot of time reading   books and meeting with a therapist, and kind of trying to find a sense of solace and spirituality,” he says. Getting to a healthier and happier place sent the band down new sonic roads for its new album, Evolve, which Reynolds describes as ”more minimalistic” and ”more colorful.” This record is a landmark of sorts for Imagine Dragons, says guitarist Wayne Sermon, who characterizes the band’s development over its first two albums as ”playing   with ourselves.” Now, Sermon says, he and his bandmates ”finally feel like we’re starting to feel comfortable in our own skin.” Upon the release of Evolve, Reynolds and Sermon sat down with Michel Martin to talk about depression, spiritual seeking and the road to success. Hear the conversation at the audio link and read on for an edited transcript. Michel Martin: How did your sabbatical come about? Was it an agreement that all of you made that, after a certain point, you’d jump off the train for a minute?  Dan Reynolds: I think it was a necessity. We’d been touring straight at that point for  —   I wanna say, seven years straight? So yeah, I think we just all needed it to reconnect with normal life and home and family and just to get grounded. You’ve been very open about the depression that hit at the height of when you were touring. Was that a part of it? Reynolds: You know, I’ve dealt with it since I was young. But [it] would typically come in   to   bouts, and after the record came out, I think so much happened at once. I just got married, we’d had a baby. The record took off. All of these really beautiful, wonderful things happened. But I think it was really overwhelming for me and I ended up kind of going through a year of really heavy depression. It was probably the worst that I’d ever had and it got to a point where I really had to go seek help, and I decided to talk about it because I think that it’s something that a lot of people hide. Wayne has also dealt with depression for years, and so both of us went through it together in a lot of ways. It was cool because we were able to speak up with each other about meeting a therapist and what was that like. It was a tricky thing, but we’re all really close and they were with me through it a 100 percent. Wayne Sermon: I don’t really know how you could possibly hide anything from your band members. [Laughs.] You’re with these people more than anyone else, and more than you’ve ever been with even your family. And so, I don’t know, even if we tried to hide things from each other I think it would not work for very long. I do think for a lot of men it is hard to talk about. I wondered whether your being artists helped that or hurt that? I mean, part of your job as artists is to articulate for people what other people cannot. Sermon: There is like the stigma attached to it, you know. It’s hard to feel like a manly man, and to feel validated as a man, and admit that you’re struggling with something that’s eating you from the inside. And I think that’s something a lot of people deal with. And yeah, it was really hard for us. Both of you have a shared religious background: You both grew up as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of   Saints, or the Mormon church. And I couldn’t help but notice the religious references that are in the music.  Reynolds: I wouldn’t say religious references as much as just a spiritual reference. I think since I was young, spiritual things have always been interesting to me. In fact, supernatural things. . .. But as far as faith  —   it never came easy for me. And in fact, I really struggled with believing in Mormonism since I was young. I grew up in a large family  —   eight boys, one girl  —   and everybody went on missions and everybody seemed to be super full of faith. And for me, I really had a hard time believing in anything, even a God. But I was infatuated with it and I would read a lot and study a lot, just because I wanted to believe. So then I went on a mission, because I wanted to believe. I thought, well, if I invest myself, I thought I would find something. But I think in doing that, I ended up getting even more lost and feeling like there were no answers. So a lot of the music is kind of speaking about sometimes searching and hoping for answers, but coming up  . And that was scary for me, in a lot of ways. There’s one song on Evolve, ”Believer,” that immediately caught my attention. What inspired it? Reynolds: I think that once I got home and took time off the road, for all of us, we were able to for the first time have perspective. You know, anybody who deals with depression knows that it comes and it goes. Who knows where I’ll be next year, but as for right now, in this moment, I’m really happy and . .. tired of searching and asking questions about, you know, is there a God? Is there not? I’m really done asking those questions. Do you have any advice for people who are starting out where you were seven years ago? Reynolds: I would say  —   have no ego. We opened at a mall for a mime in Las Vegas. We said yes to every single show. And looking back, maybe we should have said no to that one. [Laughs.] Sermon: No, no, no. We wouldn’t have this story! Reynolds: Yeah, we wouldn’t have this story. But I think that you have to pay those dues, you have to take every chance you have to be seen. And that was important because finally one day someone was in the crowd who mattered in the music industry and they got our EP and they took it to somebody and then we got signed. And look, there are a million bands that are way more talented that have been doing this for 20 years, and they never get signed. And so they would say, ”Oh, that’s BS.” And to them, I would say  —   I totally get it, there’s also luck involved. We had Vegas luck on our side and a lot of hard work and we dedicated our lives to music. And that’s all you can do."
"With 2, 500 inmates, the penitentiary institution of Fresnes, about 20 miles south of Paris, is one of the largest prisons in Europe. Like most French prisons, Fresnes is overcrowded. Built in the late 19th century, its tiny cells, each meant for one prisoner, most often house three. Inmates scream curses and catcalls from their barred windows as I visit a small, empty sports yard ensconced between cell blocks. Plastic bags and punctured soccer balls are caught in the surrounding concertina wire. The prisoners here yelled out in just this way back in November 2015, refusing to honor a minute of silence for the victims of the terrorist attacks on Paris cafes and the Bataclan concert hall. Fresnes prison director Philippe Obligis says he began to see a radicalization problem here well before those attacks took place. ”There were some radical Muslims who were putting huge pressure on regular Muslims to adopt a certain kind of behavior,” he says. ”Like taking a shower with their clothes on and not listening to music or watching TV.” Many of the homegrown terrorists who’ve launched attacks in recent years in places like Paris and Brussels were radicalized in prison  —   often while serving jail terms that had nothing to do with terrorism. In France, where a disproportionate number of prison inmates are of Muslim background, authorities are struggling to deal with the phenomenon. In 2014, Fresnes became the first French prison to separate radicalized inmates from the general prison population  —   they were put in an entirely separate wing, one person to each cell, and had different guards from the other prisoners. After 2015, which began with the January attacks at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher supermarket, and ended with the Bataclan attack in November, some other French prisons began separating inmates too. Several of the terrorists who killed nearly 150 people that year were common criminals who had become radicalized in prison. In 2016, the French government put money into a rehabilitation program for radicals deemed not too far gone. The prisoners in these new   units received visits from psychologists and historians they had the chance to attend some workshops or receive some training. The radical units were controversial, especially after two guards at one prison were attacked in September of last year. In November, the French interior minister announced an end to the program. Instead, the French government boosted security around the most dangerous prisoners  —   both radicals and not. And intelligence collecting in prisons was beefed up. A bureau of central intelligence for prisons was created earlier this year. Around 350 French prisoners are serving jail terms for   offenses. And a further 1, 340 inmates convicted of regular crimes are identified as radicalized. ”They’ll contaminate the others” Businessman Pierre Botton went to jail for white collar crime in the 1990s and founded Together Against Recidivism, an organization devoted to improving the lives of prisoners. He says it’s nearly impossible to think about reforming in jail because prisoners are mainly just struggling to survive. He believes radicals should be separated in different prisons entirely, because otherwise, they’ll inevitably interact with the rest of the prison population. He notes what happened when the only surviving terrorist from the Paris Bataclan attacks landed in a French jail last year. ”When Salah Abdeslam arrived, they clapped,” says Botton. ”Do you understand what I’m saying? When he arrived in the jail, they clapped. They applauded.” Botton says criminals like Abdeslam are icons in jails in the Paris region, where up to 70 percent of inmates identify as Muslim. Keeping records on the religion and ethnicity of French citizens is illegal, so there are no official statistics. But Botton says about 70 percent of prisoners in the Paris region observe the Muslim festival of Ramadan. ”So when you put guys like this who represent a certain ideology in the heart of a prison, surrounded by 4, 000 inmates, there’s a huge risk they’ll contaminate the others,” he says. Yannis Warrach, a Muslim cleric who works in his spare time at a   prison in Normandy, says prison is so brutal, inmates can only survive if they’re part of a gang. He has seen how the radicals recruit newcomers. ”The ones who preach and proselytize will at first be nice to a detainee. They see his desperation,” he says. ”They’ll befriend him, give him what he needs. Then they’ll say it’s destiny. They’ll say that God has a mission for him. And little by little, they brainwash him, telling him French society has rejected him, he can’t get a job because of his Arab last name, and he was always put in the worst classes at school. ”The problem is,” says Warrach, ”it’s often true.” Warrach says these young men must have hope for a different future to break out of the spiral of failure. He says French leaders have failed to change the socioeconomic factors that keep many French people of Muslim descent on the bottom rungs of the ladder. Another big problem, he says, is the prevalence of   Salafist reading material in jails  —   often French translations of Saudi, Wahhabist tracts that advocate literal, strict interpretation of religious doctrine. ”I work to debunk this stuff,” says Warrach. ”I give inmates under pressure a historical context of the faith and another narrative of Islam.” He says that because of the pressure from radicals, who consider him an agent of the French government, he has to meet secretly with inmates who desperately want his help. Instead of meeting in rooms designated for religious worship, which are open, they meet in special prison visiting rooms for inmates’ lawyers, where no one can observe them. Because of its strict separation of religion and state, Warrach says France is the only country in Europe where being a prison cleric is not considered a profession. He says he only receives a small stipend, but that he can’t build a life around it  —   there are no retirement plans or other benefits. Because of this, there can’t be an imam at the prison every day, which creates a huge void, he says. And it leaves plenty of room for uninformed, extremist interpretations of Islam in French prisons."
"Moments into his highly anticipated   briefing Wednesday  —   the first after a   absence  —   Trump press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the persistent rumor that he will soon transition into a new role within the White House communications team  —   one that removes him from the spotlight and into a less visible position. He opted for an indirect response to a very direct question: ”I’m still here.” But, he added, ”It’s no secret we’ve had a couple of vacancies including our communications director who’s been gone for a while. We’ve been seeking input from individuals as far as ideas that they have. We’ve been meeting with potential people that may be of service to this administration.” To say that the Trump administration has ”a couple of vacancies” is an understatement. Although that may technically be true for the beleaguered, combative and sometimes flummoxed communications team, a slew of leadership positions across an array of departments remain unfilled five months into Donald Trump’s presidency. To put it in perspective, using data culled by the Center for Presidential Transition and reported by the Washington Post, by this point in his first term, President Obama had confirmed 151 top political appointees, whereas Trump only has 43 in place. It is not that the White House is not trying to fill the posts. Or that these are not lucrative positions. In fact, the role of press secretary has opened the door to   broadcasting deals for many of Spicer’s predecessors. Ari Fleischer, who served under President George W. Bush, and Jay Carney, who served under President Obama, both ended up at CNN. Robert Gibbs, another Obama alum, joined NBC News and MSNBC as a contributor, while Dana Perino, who was on President George W. Bush’s staff, left the White House for Fox News where she remains as the   of The Five. But amid the investigations, low approval numbers, and notoriously capricious nature of the president  —   it’s been challenging for the White House to lure takers. So perhaps it is time for the Trump administration  —   which has promised to run the government more like a business  —   to remove the political from ”political appointees” and ask, ”How does an organization entice   talent when it is embroiled in chaos?” In other words, WWHRD: What would human resources do? It turns out hiring and recruiting experts have a lot to say on the subject, including Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton Business School  —   where Trump took a handful of undergraduate classes  —   and director of the Center for Human Resources. What Trump or his advocates should be doing, according to Cappelli, is appeal to a perspective employee’s sense of patriotic duty and  . Here is his pitch: ”You’re serving your country. The job won’t last that long. Administrations don’t go on forever, but afterwards, you will be more valuable.” At the end of the day, he added, that is the kind of offer employers, regardless of industry, should make whenever they’re courting an   candidate. Ultimately, Cappelli argued, ”it’s a pretty good bet for somebody to take over an organization that everybody knows is in big trouble and that expectations are really low.” It would help for interested yet tentative applicants to think of the troubled company as a ”sinking ship.” ”If you get on board it and it sinks, nobody blames you,” he laughed. ”If it’s sinking and something nice happens and it turns around you get all the credit!” But he cautioned that there is such a thing as a company that is too far gone. Remember Enron? If somehow a jobless executive had been bamboozled into taking a job at the energy giant when it was already mired in lawsuits and fraud charges, there would be no way to recover professionally. He called walking into that situation ”a losing proposition.” One in which it is ”more likely you’re going to be tarred by the brush.” Cappelli suggested the most   type for a job at an organization in crisis and under a boss who is unfazed by completely reversing course on any given endeavor, is someone with a military background. ”People who are used to accepting direction and executing orders for the good of the greater mission,” he said. And perhaps, most importantly, ”they’re used to falling on their swords for superiors.” But Rom Brafman,   of the   book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, disagrees with that analysis and believes the opposite is true. The candidate most likely to thrive under these circumstances, Brafman contended, is one who is flexible and creative because they can more easily adapt to unforeseen changes. For someone like this, he continued, chaos is a terrific trigger for innovation. ”Chaotic systems have gotten a very bad rap,” he said. A mercurial boss could be a great thing, he advised. ”If somebody’s telling you that one day something is good and one day something is bad, that creates the opportunity to go with either direction.” He said the benefits of unstructured systems are  : unlike a structured organization, one that is in turmoil is more tolerant of deviations from the norm and, even in cases where they may not be officially condoned, a motivated   can typically go unnoticed and on task while the rest of the hive buzzes around trying to save their own jobs. So, why then, aren’t more   types clamoring to work for the new administration? Brafman’s answer is what behavioral economists call it loss aversion. It is the idea that ”losses generally have a much larger psychological impact than gains of the same size.” His example involves finding a hundred dollar bill. That would bring most anyone a certain degree of joy, but psychologists have found that losing the same amount of money is two and half times more upsetting. That, he explained, is what is preventing talented and potentially interested applicants from throwing their hat in the Trump White House’s ring. They are more fearful of being tainted by the administration’s reputation or the possibility of failure than the unknown possibilities of success."
"In the late 1970s and early 1980s, tennis great John McEnroe triumphed three times at Wimbledon and four times at the U. S. Open. But all his achievements on the court did not prepare him for life off of it. After his professional career ended, he dabbled as a talk show host and as an art collector and appeared in movies and TV shows. Above all, McEnroe wanted to be a rock guitarist in his wife’s band, but, he admits: ”That was not going to happen.” His wife, singer Patty Smyth, told him, ”I want to play mixed doubles with you at Wimbledon.” To which he replied, ”Well, you don’t play tennis.” And she said, ”Exactly.” During his tennis career, McEnroe became known for outbursts on the court when he thought umpires had missed a call. In one classic exchange, he yelled at an official, ”You cannot be serious! That ball was on the line!”  That line has followed him for decades. ”If a day goes by where I don’t hear that at least a couple times, it’s a miracle,” McEnroe says. So he has decided to embrace it: His first memoir was called You Cannot Be Serious, and his new memoir is called But Seriously. On not taking himself too seriously  Believe it or not, I didn’t take myself too seriously back then. . .. Even though I’m extremely disappointed that the last seven years of my career I didn’t play as well as I thought I was, or get better, or keep improving, I didn’t want to quit tennis at 26 or 27. On reinventing himself after his pro career ended, I was actually going through what turned out to be a separation and divorce from my first wife, [actress Tatum O’Neal] so I was unable to really think about anything else. We had three kids together and my head was all over the place and I couldn’t even think about . .. the transition that I was anticipating I was going to be making. . .. I was sort of lost, but was open enough to experiment . .. so that I can find myself again, which isn’t easy when you’ve peaked in your career at 26 years old. On why there aren’t more great male American tennis players right now, There’s a lot of reasons, but the biggest one to me is the cost of it: the cost of play, the cost to train, the cost to get a court. All of this factors into the difficulty of getting a champion. The truth is . .. the game has become more athletic than ever, and quicker, you need to be more athletic, and our best athletes mainly are playing in basketball or football. . .. If you take a court the size of a tennis court and you decide you want to use it for a soccer field, say, you could fit a lot more kids. . .. When you talk about schools, they say: Well, it’s better if we put a little soccer field in there and we get 20 kids running around kicking a ball. . .. Whereas tennis doesn’t come as easily. On calling Serena Williams the best female tennis player in the world,  : We’re talking about male players but there is of course wonderful female players. Let’s talk about Serena Williams. You say she is the best female player in the world in the book. McEnroe: Best female player ever  —   no question.  : Some wouldn’t qualify it, some would say she’s the best player in the world. Why qualify it? McEnroe: Oh! Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?  : Yeah, the best tennis player in the world. You know, why say female player? McEnroe: Well because if she was in, if she played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world.  : You think so? McEnroe: Yeah. That doesn’t mean I don’t think Serena is an incredible player. I do, but the reality of what would happen would be I think something that perhaps it’d be a little higher, perhaps it’d be a little lower. And on a given day, Serena could beat some players. I believe because she’s so incredibly strong mentally that she could overcome some situations where players would choke ’cause she’s been in it so many times, so many situations at Wimbledon, The U. S. Open, etc. But if she had to just play the circuit  —   the men’s circuit  —   that would be an entirely different story.  : Many people over the years, including, we should mention Donald Trump, the President, wanted you to play her, and you seemed to have at least thought about it. McEnroe: Well I’ve thought about it. I didn’t really want to do it, personally. I don’t know, people always seemed  —   I would say why don’t they go ask Roger Federer? Or someone, you know they added the old fart that’s you know 25 years over the hill. And I think I can still play and I think I could still  —   I mean my kids don’t think I can beat her anymore. Maybe I should get her now because she’s pregnant, but the truth is that I think that sometimes  —  I don’t know why in tennis, I get it’s that one battle of the sexes when Bobby Riggs played Billie Jean.  : Billie Jean one of the most famous, iconic and most watched, I think tennis matches at the time. McEnroe: Yeah, it was no question. I think there was the most, the biggest attendance at the Houston Astrodome, and it was great that Billie Jean did that but. ..OK, but that doesn’t mean, talk about other sports. If you go look at the times, for example, of the world’s fastest females  —   and you know maybe it will change! You know my daughter, one the things she says is ’You’re a feminist, Dad.’ OK. I started with two boys, I got four girls now and I’m all for it and I’m trying to just get with it and figure it out.  : So, you’re a feminist. McEnroe: Maybe at some point a women’s tennis player can be better than anybody. I just haven’t seen it in any other sport, and I haven’t seen it in tennis. I suppose anything’s possible at some stage.  : You really think at 60, you could possibly beat Serena Williams? Maybe pregnant. McEnroe: The way you put that makes me think that you have your doubts.  : Far be it from me to question you Mr. McEnroe. McEnroe: Well, you know, my kids do, so feel free to. But there’s people that because of course as you get older  —   I’m not sure how athletic you are and how often you get out in whatever sport it is, but I have kept at it regularly. I’ve done it sort of doing this playing some other guys close to my age even though they keep getting younger and younger. Obviously, if I was going to do something like that, I would train very seriously for that to make sure my body was at, like, the peak it could be. Absolutely  —   to try and be as ready as I possibly could, but I bring things to the table, certainly until recently. I may be way past it, but I can still bring a few things to the table and so that’s why I guess people still find it interesting to even talk about. On where to go from here, I need to make sure that I enjoy the upcoming 10  —   hopefully 20  —   years of my life and just appreciate the ride that it’s been, and be able to continue to . .. find that inner peace, in a way, because that’s difficult for me. I grew up a perfectionist getting pushed, pushed, pushed a lot. . .. Especially when my dad passed away a few months ago, I said, Wait a second, you’ve got to just take a step back here and smell the roses a little bit more. That would be my Number One goal moving ahead. Radio producer Peter Breslow, radio editor Stacey Samuel and Web producers Beth Novey and Wynne Davis contributed to this story."
"In late May on the floor of a drilling rig on Alaska’s northernmost edge, oil workers were dwarfed by giant pieces of machinery. They were slowly pushing pipe thousands of feet below the tundra to tap one of the biggest oil fields in North America: Prudhoe Bay. The oil field started production 40 years ago this month. Twelve billion barrels of oil later, it has completely reshaped Alaska’s economy. Between 1980 and 2016, oil revenues paid for the vast majority of Alaska’s government services. Now, Alaska’s long dependence on oil may be coming to an end. ”You have a state where oil had paid for almost everything and suddenly the oil revenue  —   most of it  —   has evaporated,” said economist Gunnar Knapp, former director of Institute of Social and Economic Research at University of Alaska Anchorage. After four decades of production, it’s getting harder to pump oil out of Prudhoe Bay. The field has been in steady decline since the  . The amount of oil flowing through the     pipeline each day is now about a quarter of what it carried at its peak in the 1980s. That, coupled with a crash in oil prices, means the state faces an uncertain future. Today, Alaska state lawmakers are battling over what to do next, and narrowly averted a government shutdown this month. But the discovery of the giant oil field that started it all almost didn’t happen. Alaska gambles on 100 million acres of land, You could argue  —   and a lot of people do  —   that Prudhoe Bay’s billions of barrels of oil might still be hidden under the tundra today if it weren’t for Tom Marshall, who’s now 91 years old, and lives in a little brown house in Anchorage. Marshall won’t bring it up himself, but for many Alaskans, he’s a hero. There’s an award tucked between the photos lining his living room wall. It’s for ”professional discernment and courageous foresight.” Marshall earned this award for something he did in the early 1960s, when he worked for the brand new state of Alaska. Then, the state depended largely on federal dollars and a few resource industries, like salmon fishing. Marshall remembers it as a tense time  —   with a tiny economy and population, it was a real question whether Alaska could support itself. ”There was a great deal of anxiety of just how we were going to accomplish this,” said Marshall. But under the statehood act, Congress handed Alaska something like a scratch off lottery ticket. While the federal government still controlled much of the Alaska’s 375 million acres, the state could select over 100 million acres to develop as it pleased. If Alaska picked land with valuable resources, it would have a winning ticket. ”This land would put us in a position to pay our bills,” said Marshall. That’s when Marshall, a petroleum geologist, quietly became Alaska’s most important employee. He was tasked with picking the land. A ragged chunk of Arctic coast called Prudhoe Bay caught his eye. The geology reminded Marshall of big oil basins he’d seen in Wyoming. Marshall thought this could be the jackpot Alaska needed. But when he suggested selecting a remote chunk of tundra on the icy ocean, Alaska’s first governor, Bill Egan, wasn’t impressed. ”Gov. Egan’s comment was, ’doesn’t he know it’s frozen? ’” said Marshall. Still, Marshall kept pressing Egan to select Prudhoe Bay. Some people thought Marshall was onto something. A handful of oil companies were intrigued with Alaska’s northernmost edge, a region known as the North Slope. This vast, remote area stretches from the Brooks Mountain Range north to the Arctic Ocean, and includes Prudhoe Bay. The federal government had started leasing land on the North Slope in 1958, and a few gutsy companies were laying plans to drill there. It took years and a combination of pressure from the oil companies, Marshall and others, but Egan finally relented and selected Prudhoe Bay for the state in 1964. But there were also a lot of skeptics. When the Prudhoe Bay selection was posted, Marshall remembers someone scrawled a note across the map in    letters: ”They wrote ’Marshall’s Folly’ on there,” Marshall said. Harry Jamison worked for one of the oil companies taking a risk on the North Slope. Like Marshall, Jamison hoped there might be a   oil field hiding there. It would take that much to justify the astronomical cost of transporting the oil from the Arctic to market. Jamison knew it would be a challenge. ”  oil fields don’t come along every day. There have been very, very few ever discovered in the United States,” Jamison said. And soon, dreams of a   oil field in Alaska’s Arctic started seeming like a long shot. Starting in 1963, BP and Sinclair Oil Corp. teamed up and drilled six wells on federal land near the Brooks Range. All six were dry. After that, a series of other companies came up short, too. Eventually that included Jamison’s company, ARCO. The oil companies that had taken a risk on Alaska’s North Slope started hemorrhaging money. ”It was extremely discouraging,” Jamison said. ”The whole industry was really down on the North Slope by that time.” After well after well came up dry, Marshall’s Prudhoe Bay selection started to seem like a mistake. By 1967, Jamison said most oil companies had given up. But then, ARCO and Humble Oil teamed up and moved the only drill rig left on the North Slope to Prudhoe Bay. It was the oil industry’s last shot. On a flight to check out the Prudhoe Bay well just before Christmas 1967, Jamison remembers looking out the window of the plane. ”You don’t see anything. I mean, it’s absolutely black,” Jamison said. ”And it’s not just remote and dark and cold, but it’s downright dangerous.” Far in the distance, Jamison spied a single light. It was the lonely rig: Prudhoe Bay State Well No. 1. Gil Mull, a young geologist working at the well at the time, said for weeks, drilling the well wasn’t all that exciting. ”Almost like watching grass grow,” he said. Then one day, they tested the well’s pressure. When the crew opened the valve, Mull said there was a powerful burst of gas. ”It sounded like a jet plane overhead. It’s shaking the rig. It’s a rumble. It’s a roar,” he said. The crews ignited the gas rushing from the pipe. It sparked a   flare that burned in the darkness of the North Slope sky for more than eight hours. A few months later, the companies drilled a second well to confirm the size of the oil field and discovered it was huge. Initial estimates were that Prudhoe Bay held 9. 6 billion barrels of oil  —   at the time, it was the biggest oil discovery in North America. It’s still the biggest ever found in the U. S. ”Ponder for a moment the promise, the dream . ..” Prudhoe Bay’s discovery was a watershed moment for Alaska. It led to the state’s highest highs and lowest lows. It provided the state with so much excess money that to this day, every Alaskan gets a check for more than $1, 000 each year. And in 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling close to 11 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay oil  —   one of the worst environmental disasters in U. S. history. But it would be years before all this would happen. When Prudhoe Bay’s discovery was announced, all Alaska’s leaders knew was that the state would never be the same. ”Alaska has become established as America’s greatest oil province,” Egan said in a 1970 speech. ”Ponder for a moment the promise, the dream, and the touch of destiny.” Finding Prudhoe Bay came down to a few things going exactly right. If the companies hadn’t decided to drill that one last well, if they hadn’t found enough oil, and if Marshall hadn’t pushed the governor to select the land in the first place, there’s no question the state would be very different. Marshall’s not one to brag about his contribution, though. He said he was just doing his job. But that’s not to say Marshall doesn’t get any satisfaction out of it. Asked if it still bothers him that so many people doubted him for so long, Marshall burst out laughing. ”Oh, not at all, because they were so wrong!” said Marshall. ”I mean, let’s face it  —   Prudhoe Bay oil field was the largest oil field ever discovered on the North American continent. Why should I feel bad about that?” Elizabeth Harball reports for Alaska Public Media. This story is part of a new podcast, Midnight Oil, produced by Alaska’s Energy Desk, a public media collaboration focused on energy and the environment."
"In the seventh century B. C. the poet Semonides of Amorgos wrote a catalog of unmanageable women. First, there are the women who resemble pigs, ”resting in filth and growing fat.” Other women, he writes, are yapping dogs, who won’t shut up even if you knock their teeth out. And then there are the lazy horses, slutty weasels and ugly apes with no necks. The only kind of woman he praises is the bee  —   industrious, devoted and, most importantly, fertile. Now, 3, 000 years later, everything is different, and nothing is different. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, cultural critic Anne Helen Petersen has written her own catalog of unruly women: celebrities and other cultural figures who have been called too strong, too fat, too gross, too slutty, too old, too pregnant, too shrill, too queer, too loud and too naked for uncomplicated cultural acceptance. She ranges from Serena Williams (too strong) to Lena Dunham (too naked) and shows how each woman defies norms while still staying close enough to the edges of respectability to achieve mainstream success. Petersen, who has a doctorate in media studies and now writes for BuzzFeed, has made a career of studying gossip, celebrity and scandal with intelligence and empathy: ”Celebrities,” she writes, ”are our most visible and binding embodiments of ideology at work.” The women she has chosen illuminate invisible cultural expectations. ”Each of these women is constantly igniting the line of acceptable behavior,” she writes. ”You don’t know where it is until she steps over it, at which point it bursts into flames.” The structure of the essays is consistent. Each begins with an accessible and deceptively restrained short statement of a social problem (tennis is racist, TV is sizeist) and then launches into increasingly sophisticated analyses that ask what compromise between freedom and palatability each woman has negotiated. ”There are hundreds of women in the public sphere who don’t exercise such careful modulation,” she is careful to note, ”women who are relegated to niche corners of pop culture because they’ve been figured as too big, queer, loud, smart, sexual, or otherwise abject for mainstream audiences.” Being white and thin radically extends the boundaries of acceptable behavior: Of the women profiled, the two black women  —   Nicki Minaj and Williams  —   unquestionably get the cruelest vitriol. Petersen herself can’t be called an unruly writer per se. In its cautious accessibility, this collection is less exuberant, less spiky and less strange  —   less unruly, in short  —   than it could be. She leaves much of the boundary pushing to her subjects. Petersen’s cutting,    analysis of TV shows and music videos is wrapped in glosses, potted histories and pleasantly readable, if not radical, prose. But if Petersen is dancing on the same line of accessibility and acceptability as her subjects, can we blame her  —   if she’ll reach more people, change more minds? To call a writer ”responsible” seems like faint praise, but Petersen is responsible in the best sense: She doesn’t just cite her sources but elevates them. She is deeply but quietly unelitist, incorporating academic theory when necessary but with lucidity and care. She acknowledges her debts and her advantages. And once Petersen has introduced her subjects, her analysis is deeply thoughtful. Sections on Minaj (too slutty) and her unrelenting experimentation with norms are particularly brilliant. When interviewers fail to prepare, Minaj calls them out and in return is described in the press in terms of acting out, letting loose, lashing out. ”But Minaj wasn’t acting out or behaving outlandishly so much as revealing the crude framework behind the manufacture of celebrity, and her natural frustration when someone else fails to match her work ethic in the critique of her art, or when the system itself shows its underlying racism,” Petersen writes. When another interviewer suggests Minaj might have had a bad acid trip, she responds: ”I didn’t have a bad trip. I’m a businesswoman, and I have too many partners out there for me to be out here joking about s*** like that.” At first glance, the subtitle ”The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman” seems misapplied  —   ahistorical, even, given how these women, especially black women, have paid for their unruliness in public humiliation and harassment  —   when the person reigning is not Hillary Clinton (too shrill) but Donald Trump. But after a few chapters of Petersen’s cautious, intelligent optimism, it feels instead like an instruction, a warning, a promise, a threat. Rise and reign. Maybe we could."
"In the novel The Windfall, a newly minted tech millionaire buys a big fancy house, a flashy car and leaves his   life behind to rub elbows with the superrich. What follows is a delightful comedy of errors where he and his family navigate the unexpected pressures and pleasures of newfound wealth in modern India. The book is set in New Delhi and it follows the Jha family from the   to present day. Author Diksha Basu says, ”I myself grew up in New Delhi in the ’90s and I saw the explosion of wealth all around me. And it was hard to ignore and that’s what led to this novel.” On how the Jhas become superrich, The Jha family start off . .. just an average     couple, Mr. and Mrs. Jha. Their son, Rupak, is doing an M. B. A. in America and Mr. Jha suddenly comes into a large windfall of money. He sells a website  —   it’s not money that comes from winning the lottery. He has worked hard in order to earn this money, but it comes in one lump sum as opposed to an accumulated income over a lifetime of work. So he gets this large windfall of money and decides to move him and his wife from their   neighborhood to the flashy suburb of Gurgaon into a   of their own. On how the Jhas’ new neighbors judge the couple for sending their son to study in the U. S. For these wealthy neighbors, the fact that Rupak . .. actually has to go and study is seen like something he does out of necessity, not a step toward his own success. It’s looked at with sympathy that the poor fellow has to study in order to make a living for himself, whereas in their home, their son, in his late 20s, doesn’t actually do anything. He plays tennis and flirts with girls and dates different women and doesn’t actually work towards making anything of his own life. And that is a symbol of his parents’ success, the fact that the son will never have to earn. On Mrs. Ray, a character who ignores what her community expects of her, and the idea that women can never win, She’s a young widow and she is enjoying widowhood, not that she didn’t love her husband. She did. But he passed away, she’s mourned, she’s gotten over it. She’s living her own life. She is not identified by a relationship to a man. There’s no father, no husband, no son. She is living on her own. And within her society, where most of the women are identified as a relationship to a male figure, what she’s doing is looked at with a lot of suspicion and often criticism. And at the same time what I found while I was writing this book  —   I had just got engaged and then married. And in my circle  —   in my urban, elite, Indian, female circle  —   to get married and to have a child, which I just did, is . .. sort of looked at as I shouldn’t have chosen those conventional choices. And so I end up having to defend what’s looked at as conventional choices, where someone like Mrs. Ray is having to defend what’s looked at as unconventional choices. . .. So for her not to have a man in her life is something that she almost has to apologize for and I felt to be excited to get married was something I felt I had to apologize for. So I think at the end of the day it comes down to, no matter what we do, there’s really no way to just win. On the complexity of wealth, I don’t think it is as simple as a tagline of how wealth destroys love. I don’t think it does. I think it’s much more complex than that. And I don’t think it’s as simple as, ”Oh, look at the poor slum children smiling through their poverty,” which is often how some literature from India is perceived. I don’t think it is black and white. . .. I think wealth can be destructive just as much as poverty can be destructive. And wealth can be irrelevant, and wealth can also bring a family together in a completely different and unexpected way. If it was as simple as a destructive power of wealth, I think less people would aspire to it. I think all of it is much more complex than that. And my characters fall into seeing that, and seeing that what their expectations were of wealth continuously gets challenged. Radio producer Ravenna Koenig, radio editor Viet Le and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story."
"Updated at 8:10 pm ET, Congressional forecasters say a Senate bill that aims to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would leave 22 million more people uninsured by 2026. That’s only slightly fewer uninsured than a version passed by the House in May. Monday’s report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could give moderate senators concerned about health care coverage pause. Sen. Susan Collins,   was quick to register her opposition to the bill. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell wants a vote on the bill this week, before senators head home for the July Fourth recess. With Senate Democrats united in opposition, Republicans can afford to lose only two votes on their side and still pass the bill. Sen. Dean Heller,  . who is up for   next year, had already expressed reservations about the number of people who could lose coverage under the GOP bill. Four other Republican senators have complained that the bill doesn’t go far enough in rolling back the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. According to the CBO, the Senate bill does reduce the deficit by $321 billion over the next 10 years, which $202 billion more than the House version that passed last month. The Senate bill would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes over the coming decade, with most of the savings going to those at the top of the income ladder. At the same time, it would phase out the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, while offering less generous subsidies to those who purchase health insurance on the individual market. That combination is expected to reduce the number of people with insurance coverage by 15 million in 2018 and 22 million by 2026. The CBO says   Americans in their 50s and early 60s would be disproportionately likely to lose their health care coverage under the Senate bill. Although people buying insurance in the individual market would see lower premiums in many cases, the policies would cover less, and    costs would be higher. ”Despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few   people would purchase any plan,” the CBO said. The Trump administration challenged the findings. ”The CBO has consistently proven it cannot accurately predict how healthcare legislation will impact insurance coverage,” said an unsigned statement from the White House. ”President Trump is committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare, which has failed the American people for far too long.” For months, the administration has pointed to rising insurance premiums and reduced competition among insurers to argue that a replacement for the ACA is urgently needed. However, CBO forecasters predict the insurance market will remain stable for most of the country, with or without the Senate bill. The report notes that government subsidies under Obamacare help to insulate most purchasers from rising costs. Moreover, the report blames actions of the Trump administration for driving some insurance companies out of the market, with ”substantial uncertainty” over its enforcement of the requirement that individuals carry health insurance and its threats to withhold payment of   subsidies. Eventually, the Senate bill could have even more   effects than the CBO forecast shows. For the first time, the Senate bill would cap federal spending on Medicaid in 2020, forcing state governments to either scale back the   program for the poor and disabled, or make up the difference out of their own budgets. The Senate bill also assumes that after 2025, Medicaid bills will grow more slowly than they have historically. If that assumption is wrong, states would face an even bigger budget gap that would grow with each passing year. Sen. Ron Wyden,  . said he worries the CBO report doesn’t fully reflect those   effects, since the forecast is focused on a   budget window. Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote a letter to CBO Director Keith Hall, asking him to assess how the Senate bill would affect Medicaid coverage 20 or 30 years into the future. ”It is critical that Senators completely understand legislation and its impact prior to casting a vote,” Wyden wrote."
"Updated at 5 p. m. ET  Senate Republicans have updated their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, attempting to patch a hole that threatened to destabilize the individual insurance market. The original Senate bill, unveiled last week, required insurance companies to offer coverage to everyone, including people with   medical conditions. But there was no requirement that individuals purchase insurance. Critics said that created a perverse incentive for healthy people to go without insurance, only buying coverage after they got sick. Without enough healthy customers making regular premium payments, insurance companies would be forced to raise prices, driving more customers away  —   a situation sometimes described as a ”death spiral.” The revised bill attempts to solve that problem by imposing a penalty on those who don’t maintain continuous insurance coverage: People who let their coverage lapse for at least 63 days in one year would be locked out of the insurance market for six months the following year. The change comes as congressional forecasters are trying to predict how the Senate bill would affect insurance costs and coverage. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects the change would slightly increase the number of people buying insurance in the individual market. It’s not clear how strong that effect would be. The Affordable Care Act already includes a limited enrollment window when people can sign up for coverage, along with a tax penalty for those who don’t. Even with those provisions, many insurance companies have struggled to attract a good mix of healthy and less healthy customers. The bill passed by House Republicans relies on a different mechanism to encourage healthy people to buy coverage. Those who don’t would have to pay a premium when they finally did sign up."
"In Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Titus Andromedon is a   character. Tituss Burgess plays the mostly    actor who’s black, gay and an endearing friend to the very naive Kimmy Schmidt. Burgess may share a first name with his    character, but he says they’re plenty different. Unlike Andromedon, Burgess is a quiet homebody who doesn’t need to be the center of attention. He grew up in   Georgia before making his way to Broadway and then TV. It’s a journey that required many leaps of faith, and he credits one woman with giving him the confidence to take those leaps. ”Lena Horne,” he says. ”I saw The Wiz when I was in the seventh grade. . .. The authority with which she sang [’If You Believe’] watching her telling Dorothy, you know, how exactly to get to where she wants to be, and the way she looked down the barrel of the lens  —   you could not tell me that this woman was not singing to me. . .. I would go back and forth to the library and rent The Wiz, and this one piece just was so electric and I felt invincible. I felt, for all intents and purposes, that whatever it was I was going to do, there was absolutely nothing anyone could say or do to stop me. And it has proven true.” On how he bridges the gap between his more subdued personality and his   characters, including Sebastian in Broadway’s The Little Mermaid and   in Broadway’s Guys and Dolls, I am an only child, so I had a great deal of time by myself. I didn’t love being by myself, but that also means a great deal of time sitting back and observing the world. I had a huge family, but believe it or not there are personalities in my family that are far . .. larger and grandiose than Titus Andromedon. . .. And I just filed those personalities away. And when I pick up a script, I go, ”Oh, I know that person,” or, ”I know who that is,” or, ”I recognize this sentiment,” or, ”I recognize this selfish trait.” On how he keeps Andromedon grounded through the show’s parody of Beyonce’s visual album Lemonade, However large or into the stratosphere they wrote him, I would find the one thing in the scene that he needed. And then I would go down the rabbit hole of why he needs it. The deeper the well of emotion, the deeper the cut, the deeper the wound, the larger the cry. The harder you fall, the louder the wail, the louder the ouch. So it made perfect sense that this is how he would exorcise his emotionally heartbroken demons. On how he responds to criticism that Andromedon is feeding the TV stereotype of the flamboyant, gay best friend  They’re not watching the show. Titus Andromedon is more everyman than any other character on that TV show. He’s broke he doesn’t have money to pay the rent he can’t keep a job he gets racially profiled. I mean, so what that he adds a couple of ”s”s to the words he says or wears women’s clothes? But that is what I say to those people, that they are not watching the show. And that if how someone moves about the world on the spectrum of masculinity to femininity is a measure with which the cause or [LGBTQ] characters have either moved forward or regressed  —   if that’s what they’re basing it on, then what kind of   world are they living in? So the question sounds   already, and I tend to not answer it. Radio producer Justine Kenin, radio editor Mallory Yu and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this report."
"Advances in technology have made it much easier, faster and less expensive to do whole genome sequencing  —   to spell out all three billion letters in a person’s genetic code. Falling costs have given rise to speculation that it could soon become a routine part of medical care, perhaps as routine as checking your blood pressure. But will such tests, which can be done for as little as $1, 000, prove useful, or needlessly scary? The first   study aimed at answering that question suggests that doctors and their patients can handle the flood of information the tests would produce. The study was published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine. ”We can actually do genome sequencing in normal, healthy individuals without adverse consequences  —   and actually with identification of some important findings,” says Teri Manolio, director of the division of genomic medicine at the National Human Genome Institute, which funded the study. Manolio wrote an editorial accompanying the paper. ”There’s a lot of excitement and a lot of hope about this new technology and how it’s going to revolutionize medicine,” says Jason Vassy, a researcher at the VA Boston Healthcare System and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who led the study. ”But at the same time, there are a lot of fears and a lot of concerns.” Vassy acknowledges that routine genome sequencing could overwhelm doctors and patients with confusing and sometimes alarming information, leading to anxiety and stress, as well as expensive and sometimes dangerous   testing. So he and his colleagues sought to find out what routine testing would look like in a general medicine setting. They studied 100 healthy,   patients whose primary care physicians randomly asked them if they were interested in having their genomes sequenced. Half of the volunteers had their DNA scanned for genetic variations that could cause nearly 5, 000 rare genetic diseases as well as other genetic markers. The other half answered questions about diseases that ran in their families  —   the traditional way of spotting inherited risks.   One of the volunteers was Renee   63, who runs an elementary school in Boston. ”I’d always been kind of fascinated by genome studies,”   says. ”So I was more than excited, but at the same time now nervous because it was like, ’Well, do I really want to know if things aren’t great? ’” Among the 50 volunteers who got sequenced, the researchers found that about 1 in 5 had a variant in their genome that was associated with a rare, sometimes serious genetic disease. ”That was higher than we expected to find,” Vassy says. ”These were generally healthy   adults who had gone their entire life and didn’t think they had any genetic diseases.” Most of them were fine, but what happened next surprised the researchers: Neither the volunteers nor their doctors overreacted.  ”We were pleasantly surprised to see that primary care physicians were able to manage their patients’ genetic results appropriately,” Vassy says. ”And patients are generally able to handle this information. It does not cause an increase in anxiety or an increase in depression.”  Many of the patients also received useful information, the researchers reported.   says she discovered why she got odd rashes and bad sunburns. It turns out she’s had what so far has been a very mild version of variegate porphyria, a rare skin disease. As a result, her doctor gave her a list of drugs to stay away from because they could aggravate the condition. ”So I feel that was a really positive outcome,”   says.  She also found out she may be prone to diabetes, so she’s trying harder to watch her weight and eat better, she says. Finance professor Irena Vodenska, 46, of Brookline, Mass. learned she was carrying a genetic variation that could put her at risk for heart problems.   tests found nothing wrong with her heart. But Vodenska is still glad she did it. ”It made me think,” Vodenska says. ”It satisfied my curiosity, and it made me change some things in my life.” She walks instead of drives whenever she can now, and she tries to eat better.   Manolio says those in the study who learned they were carrying variations associated with rare diseases could potentially use that information when planning their families. Still, others remain skeptical. ”There’s a lot of, in my opinion, highly misplaced enthusiasm for doing genomic sequencing in the general population,” says James Evans, a geneticist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. ”And this study shows that its routine provision, in that context, is vastly premature and likely lead to more mischief than benefit.” Others fear that people who get sequenced could be subject to discrimination. ”That information is accessible by third parties who can require access to it,” says Mark Rothstein, who directs the University of Louisville’s Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law. For example, he says, ”applying for life insurance or disability insurance or   care or other things.” Vassy and Manolio acknowledged the patients in the study were more affluent and better educated than the general populace. The doctors also received extra training in interpreting genetic information. And they stressed more research is needed before sequencing becomes commonplace. But some private companies have already are starting selling genome sequencing to people who are really curious about what secrets may be hiding in their DNA. ”We think that whole genome sequencing will be part of the foundation of medical practice much sooner than people are thinking,” says Brad Perkins, the chief medical officer at Human Longevity, Inc. one of the companies selling the test. ”It’s a completely new way of looking at things,” agrees Mirza Cifric, CEO of Veritas Genetics. ”By having your whole genome sequenced, you have an asset for life. You have a digitized version of yourself that you can go back to for a variety of reasons.”"
"The first book of the Harry Potter series went on sale in the U. K. 20 years ago today. It offers a convenient excuse to reacquaint yourself with a world before anyone on this side of the Atlantic had heard of muggles, horcruxes or pensieves, before tourists would crowd into London’s Kings Cross railway station simply to peer wistfully at the space between Platforms Nine and Ten. Here’s the first story NPR ever aired about Harry Potter  —   a wonderful piece by the late Margot Adler, from All Things Considered in 1998. Some gems, from that bygone era:"
"We rub, pour, sprinkle and spray them all over our bodies, so you’d hope cosmetics would undergo serious safety oversight before they get into our hands. But in fact, the cosmetics industry is largely   with no requirements for approval before going on the market. And once on the market, there are few systems in place to monitor the safety of personal care products. ”You can start making a cosmetic and start selling it the next day without any kind of permission from the FDA,” says Steve Xu, a resident physician in dermatology at the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University and author of a study on problems with personal care products published Monday. If you suspect that a product has resulted in an ”adverse event,” such as a rash, nausea, stress, or even death, you can report it to the manufacturer or tell the Food and Drug Administration. And while that might get you an apology and some coupons, there is no guarantee that your case will be investigated, or that a manufacturer will report it to the FDA. Last December the FDA for the first time publicly released data collected by its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition on adverse events related to food and cosmetics since 2004. Before, someone would have had to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency to gain access to reports of safety problems. Hair care products, skin care products and tattoos were most commonly reported as the source of problems, according to the analysis by Xu and colleagues at Northwestern, which was in JAMA Internal Medicine. The most common complaints, according to Xu, were hair loss or breakage and local skin irritation. Baby products, personal cleanliness products, and hair care and coloring products were found to have the highest proportion of serious adverse events, including serious injuries, hospitalization and death. From 2015 to 2016, the number of reported adverse events more than doubled. This leap, Xu says, was driven largely by complaints of hair loss and skin irritation associated with WEN by Chaz Dean Cleansing Conditioners. In 2014, the FDA announced that it was investigating WEN products. Although the FDA had received only 127 complaints about these products by that time, the manufacturer had received about 21, 000 complaints, according to the FDA. Unfortunately, manufacturers have no legal obligation to report adverse events to the FDA. So the FDA has asked the public to submit complaints about WEN conditioners directly to the agency. Many of the 2016 complaints, says Xu, were a direct result of that call to action. The agency also welcomes reports on problems with other personal care products through its online MedWatch system.   the marketing company behind WEN products, said in a statement to NPR after the story published, ”We welcome legislative and regulatory efforts to further enhance consumer safety across the cosmetic products industry. However, there is no credible evidence to support the false and misleading claim that WEN products cause hair loss.” In an editorial also published in JAMA Internal Medicine, former FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf and his   say there needs to be better premarket assessment and postmarket surveillance of cosmetic products. Substantial improvements to cosmetics regulations, they say, would require more support for the ”chronically underfunded” FDA, mandatory registration of cosmetic products, and modernization of cosmetics oversight, based on systems the FDA already has in place for drug and device monitoring. With these changes, they write, ”we can achieve the high levels of safety people in the United States have a right to expect.” Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 12:00 pm on June 27 to include a statement from the company behind WEN products."
"In a surreal turn, a judge in Madrid ordered that Salvador Dalí’s body  —   interred for nearly three decades  —   be exhumed after a    Spanish woman claimed the renowned painter was her father. María Pilar Abel Martínez, born in 1956 in Girona, said her mother, Antonia, had a secret affair with the mustachioed surrealist while working as a maid for a neighboring family on Spain’s northeast coast, reports the BBC. Abel said her mother told her several times that Dalí was her father. On Monday the judge ruled said that because no biological remains or personal objects are around to determine paternity, DNA tests on Dalí’s bones are necessary to settle the paternity suit. The     Dalí Foundation manages the estate and said it will appeal the ruling in the coming days, reports Spanish newspaper El Mundo. NPR’s Lauren Frayer reports from Madrid, that Abel is ”working as a tarot card reader  —   and claims to resemble Dalí: ’The only thing missing is the moustache,’ she says.” El Mundo reports that Abel already underwent DNA tests in 2007 and 2008, using retained specimens from Dalí’s body, but she said she was never given the results. This, Abel said, showed that the results must have been positive. If paternity is confirmed, Abel could be entitled to up to 25 percent of Dalí’s work and property, according to The Associated Press. At the time of Dalí’s supposed affair with Abel’s mother, he was married to his muse Gala, born Helena Deluvina Diakonoff, according to The Gala Dalí Foundation. The Salvador Dalí Museum says that by 1953 Gala and Dalí were distancing themselves from one another even though by 1958 they had officially wed. They never had children. Dalí is perhaps the   artist from the 20th Century’s surrealist movement. His most celebrated painting, ”The Persistance of Memory,” depicts clocks melting on a beach. Dalí died in Figueres in 1989 at the age of 85. He is buried in a crypt there at a theater and museum he designed himself. Abel’s lawyer tells El Mundo that no date has been set for the exhumation, but that it could happen as soon as next month."
"The Supreme Court says it will decide the fate of President Trump’s revised travel ban, agreeing to hear arguments over immigration cases that were filed in federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland and allowing parts of the ban that has been on hold since March to take effect. The justices removed the two lower courts’ injunctions against the ban ”with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States,” narrowing the scope of those injunctions that had put the ban in limbo. Trump called the Supreme Court’s order ”a clear victory for our national security.” The president’s revised executive order blocks new visas for travelers from six   countries for 90 days, and suspends the U. S. refugee program for 120 days. Challengers to the ban said it would harm people who have legitimate reasons to be in the U. S.  —   including through family ties, work and education. The travel ban will remain on hold for plaintiffs who challenged the executive order and for anyone who is ”similarly situated,” the justices say  —   in other words, foreign nationals who have relatives in the U. S. or who plan to attend school or work here. Refugees will face similar criteria, with anyone lacking connections in the U. S. denied entry. In its order, the court stated, ”the balance tips in favor of the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security.” Saying the petitions and injunctions ”are accordingly ripe for consideration,” the Supreme Court said on Monday that the two cases will be consolidated. The court’s clerk will set a date for the case in the session that begins in October, the justices said, while noting that the Trump administration ”has not requested that we expedite consideration of the merits to a greater extent.” U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said today’s move is ”an important step towards restoring the separation of powers between the branches of the federal government.” Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, called the travel ban unconstitutional, saying, ”Courts have repeatedly blocked this indefensible and discriminatory ban. The Supreme Court now has a chance to permanently strike it down.” In a statement released by the White House, Trump wrote: ”As President, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive. ”My number one responsibility as Commander in Chief is to keep the American people safe. Today’s ruling allows me to use an important tool for protecting our Nation’s homeland. I am also particularly gratified that the Supreme Court’s decision was  .” The court says its nine justices agreed in the   decision to take the case and place stays on some of the preliminary injunctions. But several justices wanted to go further  —   Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a   opinion, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, in which he said the government’s request for a stay should have been granted in full. ”I agree with the Court’s implicit conclusion that the Government has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits,” Thomas wrote, ”that is, that the judgments below will be reversed.” Thomas criticized the decision to keep the injunctions in place for what he called ”an unidentified, unnamed group of foreign nationals abroad,” saying it places a burden on officials to determine who has a ”bona fide relationship” with a person or organization in the U. S. Trump’s revised executive order was put on hold by lower court judges in Hawaii and Maryland in March, hours before it was set to take effect. Two federal appeals courts left those nationwide injunctions in place, setting up one final appeal for the Trump administration. The White House argues that this executive order, like the previous version the president signed in January, is necessary to protect national security. The initial version caused chaos at airports across the country until it was blocked by a federal judge in Washington state, prompting the administration to craft a revised version that omitted references to religion and specifically exempted green card holders. But that order, too, was challenged by lawsuits, and it was blocked by lower courts before it ever went into effect. As part of its instructions to the parties in the case, the high court said today that they should answer the question of ”whether the challenges . .. became moot on June 14, 2017”  —   referring to the order’s timeframe of 90 days. Both of the federal appeals courts that have considered the revised executive order have ruled against the administration  —   but for different reasons. The appellate judges weren’t directly ruling on the merits of the travel ban itself. But in order to decide if the lower court injunctions were appropriate, they had to weigh the probable impact of the order and the likelihood that the legal challenges would succeed. The 4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals looked extensively at whether the travel ban violated the Constitution by discriminating on the basis of religion. The challengers in that case, led by the nonprofit International Refugee Assistance Project, argued that the travel ban is a thinly veiled attempt to block Muslims from entering the country, something Trump and his advisers talked about during and after the presidential campaign. Lawyers for the Department of Justice countered that courts should look only at the language of the executive order itself, which does not mention religion explicitly. But that argument did not prevail. Writing for the   majority, Chief Judge Roger Gregory said the executive order ”speaks with vague words of national security but in context drips with religious intolerance.” The ruling from the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals focused on federal law. The court found that the president likely exceeded his statutory authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act. ”The order does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality,” the 9th Circuit judges wrote. ”National security is not a ’talismanic incantation’ that, once invoked, can support any and all exercise of executive power.” The Trump administration moved quickly to appeal both rulings to the Supreme Court.   ”The Executive Branch is entrusted with the responsibility to keep the country safe under Article II of the Constitution,” Sessions said in a statement after the 9th Circuit ruling. The attorney general called the threat of terrorism ”immediate and real,” and said the lower court’s injunction ”has a chilling effect on security operations overall.”"
"The U. S. Supreme Court says it will   a case that asks whether immigrants detained by the government have a right to a bond hearing to challenge their indefinite detention. The case was argued in November 2016, months before Justice Neil Gorsuch filled the vacant seat of late Justice Antonin Scalia. It has implications for legal permanent residents that the government wants to deport because they committed crimes and for asylum seekers who are awaiting a court date after turning themselves in at the border. Immigrants’ advocates contend that many of these immigrants have a right to be free on bail until their case is heard. The case pits David Jennings, the field office director at U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California, against a legal permanent resident, Alejandro Rodriguez, who came to the U. S. as a child and worked as a dental assistant. As a teenager, Rodriguez was convicted of joyriding, and at 24, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance. In 2004, U. S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement began deportation proceedings against Rodriguez. He was ultimately detained for three years without the right to appear before a judge to ask for bond. The American Civil Liberties Union took up Rodriguez’s case. The civil rights group filed a class action lawsuit and eventually won his release and the cancellation of his deportation order. Rodriguez remains in the United States. The 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the immigrant detainees and asylum seekers can’t be detained indefinitely and that they have a right to a bond hearing every six months. The appellate court also held that in order to hold these detainees, the government must show that the immigrants would pose a danger or become a flight risk if set free. The Obama administration appealed to the high court, insisting that Congress  —   not the courts  —   has the power to make immigration law and that the law allows the government to detain ”criminal and terrorist aliens” as well as ”aliens seeking admission to the United States.” The administration also argued that detained immigrants should not be recognized as a class that could bring legal action. Lawyers for the Justice Department said detainees should rely on individual habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detentions. The ACLU countered that few detainees have access to legal counsel and that a backlog of such habeas corpus petitions almost guarantees delays in winning release."
"Updated at 7 p. m. ET, The U. S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that   grants for playgrounds available to nonprofits under a state program could not be denied to a school run by a church. ”The consequence is, in all likelihood, a few extra scraped knees. But the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. By denying a benefit to a church school because of its avowedly religious character, he said, the state is penalizing the free exercise of religions guaranteed by the Constitution. In an apparent attempt to limit the reach of the decision, at least for now, Roberts dropped a footnote declaring that the ruling applied only to discrimination for playground resurfacing, and that ”we do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.” Joining the decision in full were Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote separately to emphasize ”the peculiar benefit nature of the public benefit here,” and he noted pointedly that the court has previously ruled that ” ’cutting off church schools from’ such ’general government services as ordinary police and fire protection . .. is obviously not the purpose of the First Amendment’ ” ban on state establishment of religion. Also concurring in the judgment, but not the entire opinion, were Justice Clarence Thomas and the court’s newest justice, Neil Gorsuch. They would have gone further, and would have deemed a denial of funds to religious schools in general to be unconstitutional unless the state could show a justification ”of the highest order.” School choice advocates rejoiced at the decision, seeing it as a vehicle for funneling taxpayer money to private religious schools. Dissenting from the decision were Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sotomayor, who attended parochial schools during her childhood, took the unusual step of dissenting orally from the bench. She called the majority opinion ”radical,” declaring that it ”profoundly changes” the relationship between church and state ”by holding, for the first time, that the Constitution requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church.” The nation’s history, she maintained, guarantees the free exercise of religion, ”to choose for ourselves whether to believe and how to worship,” without allowing the government to be part of that religious process. ”The Court today blinds itself to the outcome this history requires and leads us instead to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.” The court’s ruling came in the case of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo. which operates a preschool and day care learning center as part of its church ministry. In 2012, the church applied for a grant from the state of Missouri to essentially rubberize its playground surface, using old and discarded tires. It applied despite written regulations that barred state grants to religious institutions. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which administers the grant program, had enough money to fund 14 of the 44 applicants. Although Trinity Lutheran would have qualified for one of the grants, the state turned it down, citing the state constitution’s ban on any state aid, direct or indirect, to religious schools. Trinity Lutheran went to court, claiming that the grant denial interfered with its free exercise of religion and unconstitutionally discriminated against the school based on religion. Lawyers for the church school argued that the grant program was open to all    schools, except religious ones. Thus, they said, religious schools were being treated ”worse than everyone else,” as David Cortman, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, put it. Moreover, he said the government in this case ”is not being asked to fund a religious activity. It’s funding the playground where students play.” Not so, the state of Missouri countered. The Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution, in its own words, forbids only government action that prohibits the free exercise of religion it does not require the government to subsidize churches or provide equal funding opportunities to religious and   groups alike. The state continued that position before the Supreme Court, but shortly before the case was to be argued, a new Republican governor, Eric Greitens, took office in Missouri and declared that he was changing the previous   policy on aid programs to religious schools. He blamed ”government bureaucrats” and said he would defend ”people of faith who are too often under attack.” While Monday’s decision involves a small grant program for playground resurfacing, the repercussions will undoubtedly send ripples through public and parochial school programs across the country. The Missouri Constitution’s ban on aid to religious schools is similar to provisions in another 36 states. In recent years, as the Supreme Court has become increasingly willing to lower the wall separating church and state under the federal Constitution, these state constitutions have become bigger and bigger obstacles to those like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, an ardent advocate of     programs. And advocates of religious liberty have gone to court rather than seeking through the democratic process to get rid of the state constitutional provisions that bar all aid to religious schools. To opponents and supporters of such taxpayer aid to religious schools, Monday’s decision in the Trinity Lutheran case is the camel’s nose in the tent."
"Can the family of a slain Mexican teenager sue the federal agent who shot him across the U. S.  border for damages? The U. S. Supreme Court did not answer this question on Monday, instead opting to send a case back to a lower court. The case centers on a larger question: whether the Constitution extends protection to an individual who is killed on foreign soil, even though that person is standing just a few yards outside the United States. It also tests a   doctrine, called a Bivens action, in which plaintiffs are permitted to sue federal officials for breaking constitutional law. But that doctrine had never been applied outside the boundaries of the United States. In oral arguments in February, some justices were concerned that making U. S. agents liable for their actions taken in a foreign nation could be extended to, say, a house full of noncombatants killed by a U. S. drone strike in Pakistan. Bob Hilliard, the Texas attorney for the Mexican teen’s family, argued that a decision could be crafted in such a way as to only address the legally vague U. S.  borderlands, where this fatal shooting took place. In 2010, some Mexican youths were playing a game of dashing across a concrete riverbed between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, to touch the U. S. border fence. A Border Patrol agent, Jesus Mesa Jr. arrived on a bicycle and detained one of the youths. Claiming he was the target of rock throwers, Mesa  —   who was standing on the U. S. side  —   pulled his handgun and shot    Sergio Hernandez Guereca in the head as he peeked out from behind a concrete pillar on the Juarez side of the international culvert. The family claimed the agent violated Hernandez’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights against deadly force, even though he was a noncitizen. Hilliard, the Corpus Christi lawyer representing Hernandez’s family, warned against creating ”a unique  ’s land  —   a   zone in which U. S. agents can kill innocent civilians with impunity.” The FBI cleared Agent Mesa of wrongdoing, and the government has defended his immunity from civil lawsuits. Hernandez had been arrested twice in the U. S. for human smuggling and released because he was a juvenile, but the agent didn’t know that when he shot him under the left eye. A Court of Appeals had ruled that the Border Patrol agent, Mesa, had qualified immunity, which means he cannot be sued. But in today’s opinion, the justices vacated that ruling. The Supreme Court said the lower court made a mistake when it found Mesa had qualified immunity. The lower court’s rationale stressed that Hernandez was not a U. S. citizen, which the justices say that Mesa did not know when he shot him. The court also stated that another case that it decided last week, Ziglar v. Abbasi, could have bearing on Hernandez v. Mesa, which the lower court would not have considered. The final decision has the potential to affect not only the Hernandez family, but several other Mexican families who were waiting to file civil suits against federal officers for   shootings of their loved ones. The Border Patrol changed its    policies in the wake of Hernandez’s death and other controversial   shootings of alleged rock throwers. Agents are now urged, if at all possible, to move out of range of thrown projectiles."
"The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case on whether the owner of a Colorado cake shop can refuse to provide service to   couples due to his religious beliefs about marriage. Jack Phillips, who along with his wife owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver, has argued that a state law compelling him to produce wedding cakes for gay couples, which runs counter to his religious beliefs, violates his right to free speech under the First Amendment. David Mullins and Charlie Craig, who are now married, filed a discrimination lawsuit in September 2012 after Phillips refused to make their wedding cake. The case is ”about more than just a cake,” Craig wrote in a blog post for the ACLU. ”It’s about making sure that Masterpiece and other businesses don’t discriminate against customers because of who they are.” The Colorado Civil Rights Commission sided with Mullins and Craig. It said that if Phillips is creating custom wedding cakes for heterosexual couples, he must do the same for gay couples. The Colorado Court of Appeals also ruled in favor of the couple. Phillips argues that he is happy to sell baked goods to gay customers. ”He simply believes that only marriage between a man and a woman should be celebrated,” his lawyers wrote in the petition asking the court to take the case. ”Thus, he declined to create custom art for a specific event because of the message it communicated, not because of the persons requesting it.” The petition stated that Phillips faced a stark choice: ”Either use your talents to create expression that conflicts with your religious beliefs about marriage, or suffer punishment under Colorado’s public accommodation law.” Advocates for the LGBT community see the case as simply an issue of basic rights. ”Open a business to serve the public? You have an obligation to serve everyone,” Laura Durso of the LGBT research and communications project at the Center for American Progress told NPR in 2013. Durso said that allowing businesses to deny services to gay couples for religious reasons was a ”slippery slope” and warned that it could lead to discrimination against LGBT employees. Now, the nation’s top court will decide."
"When people talk about jobs in Ohio, they often talk about the ones that got away. ”Ten years ago, we had steel. Ten years ago, we had coal. Ten years ago, we had plentiful jobs,” says Mike McGlumphy, who runs the job center in Steubenville, Ohio, the Jefferson County seat. Today, the city on the Ohio River is a shell of its former self. And health care has overtaken manufacturing as the county’s main economic driver. 1 in 4 private sector jobs in the county are now in health care. The region’s biggest employer by far is the local hospital. Trinity Health System provides about 1, 500   jobs and close to 500   jobs, more than Jefferson County’s top 10 manufacturing companies combined. Still, unemployment in Jefferson County stands at 7 percent, 2 percent higher than the state overall. And health care leaders worry that the Republican proposals to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act could take many health care jobs away. Specifically, they’re concerned about the rollback of Medicaid that is central to both the House and Senate bills. Ohio was among the states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA, adding 700, 000 additional   or disabled people to the rolls. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Senate bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, would cut Medicaid spending by $772 billion over the next 10 years, whereas the House bill, the American Health Care Act, would cut the program by $880 million over the same period. At Trinity Health, 1 in 5 patients are on Medicaid, slightly lower than the state average. Joe Tasse, the hospital’s acting CEO, warns that cuts to Medicaid could imperil jobs as well as the hospital’s bottom line. ”It would be pretty devastating,” he says. ”If Trinity Hospital were to fail, this region economically would fail.” Tasse says under the AHCA, Trinity could stand to lose $60 million over 10 years. He says that’s the equivalent of a thousand or more hospital jobs. His fears are backed up by the   Economic Policy Institute, which projects that more than 81, 000 jobs in Ohio could be lost within five years under the AHCA, resulting in a 0. 7 percent drop in the state’s overall employment. A big challenge, Tasse says, is that departments such as emergency care and obstetrics, which have high rates of Medicaid patients, are also among the most costly to operate. Given the   nature of the care they provide, they can’t cut back on staffing on days when demand is slack. ”An OB department is really an emergency department for women and obstetrics,” said Tasse, pointing out that most births are not scheduled. ”If you want to have that service and provide it for your community, you have to incur that cost. There’s really not a way around it. Unless you want to tell the women, ’Hey, we’re closing our service,’ which many hospitals have had to do. ’Here’s your bus ticket or here’s the car ride that you have to take to deliver. ’” Trinity’s obstetrics and emergency care departments are now also dealing daily with the opioid crisis. At Trinity, 1 in 5 babies are born prenatally exposed to opioids, adding complications and cost. In the emergency room, nurses are seeing so many overdose cases that they are set up to meet patients in their cars at the entrance, armed with the antidote drug naloxone. Under federal law, hospitals are required to treat anyone seeking emergency care. So if Medicaid were cut back, Tasse says they wouldn’t turn patients away at the door. They would scale back in other ways. ”Where we’ve tried to move patients to preventive [care] identifying health problems earlier  —   that would all go away,” he says. He’d expect more patients showing up in the emergency department, ”sicker [and] more expensive.”"
"The BET Awards, like black America, is never a monolithic affair. Every year the show, airing live from L. A. is the most   event in black music which, by extension, often means its impact reverberates throughout the pop sphere. The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica said as much last February, when he wrote that the Grammy’s would do well to look to BET (Black Entertainment Television)  —   ”which has three   franchises reverent of music and its performers”  —   for inspiration. The show’s annual attempt to   ride through the entire wave of popular urban music is what makes it a long, bouncy, compelling  —   and sometimes controversial, but always entertaining  —     of generation gaps, regional pride and prejudice, mixed political messaging and cultural representation. Stagecraft is only the half. Rather, it’s the irreverent commentary on social media that shapes the lens through which viewers interpret, and dissect, the award show in real time. After the party, the conversations and critiques continue to reverberate  —   from flubs and fashion choices to backstage happenings that upstaged the onstage performances. Comedian Leslie Jones played host to a live show that forced her to keep pace with the kind of impromptu changes she’s no doubt accustomed to as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. Bruno Mars added another stellar performance to his   highlight reel. Big Sean gave a decidedly minimalist set for ”Sacrifices” and ”Moves,” from his album I Decided. New Edition and Xscape kept ’90s RB alive with performances that highlighted how different the standard for entertainment was a generation ago. Meanwhile, Mary J. Blige’s performance of ”Love Yourself” showed why she continues to endure as the queen of   soul. Her heart soars even when her live vocals struggle to. SZA’s set suffered technical difficulties, but she bounced back to give a compelling performance of ”Love Galore” and ”The Weekend” from her newly released album. Her TDE label mate Kendrick Lamar joined Future to perform their ”Mask Off” remix, a collaborative feat in itself that pairs two   from opposite ends of the artistic spectrum. Rock pioneer Chuck Berry and New York rap icon Prodigy were both posthumously honored. No two events, however, better highlighted how extreme the BET Awards is in range and scope than Chance the Rapper’s humanitarian award acceptance speech and tense moments involving Migos before and after the show aired. After being lauded by fellow Chicagoan and former First Lady Michelle Obama, Chance gave an inspiring, impromptu speech in which he challenged both the politicians in his hometown and himself to do better serving people locally and globally. ”I was gonna say, it feels a little early to get something like this, but my God doesn’t make mistakes, and I like to think that he’s putting this enormous pressure on me to see how I react. And I had plans originally to try and tell the world and everybody watching how to make it a better place,” he said, running down a litany of issues, from the continued criminalization of marijuana in communities of color to the public school funding crisis in Chicago, before focusing on the man in the mirror. ”But my big homie Reese told me we gotta work on ourselves before we can work on the world. So I wanna be a better father. I wanna be a better father to [my daughter] Kensli I want to spend more time with her . .. I want to be more involved outside just my community of Chicago. I want to travel overseas and help out people all over the world. And like I said, being 24 and getting something like this, it doesn’t feel deserved yet. But like I said, my God is putting the pressure on me so I can become who I’m supposed to be. ” Meanwhile, before the show a red carpet interview with Migos turned tense when      (of Everyday Struggle) Joe Budden dropped his mic and walked off the set in apparent frustration. Though it seemed to be aimed at his   DJ Akademiks more than the Migos, the Atlanta rap group felt disrespected and challenged the East Coast   stalwart on the spot.   footage showed more tension between the trio and Chris Brown, who also performed last night. (Migos member Quavo has been linked with Brown’s former girlfriend Karreuche Tran.) Both events were more   than Migos’ thorough onstage performances of ” ” and ”Bad and Boujee,” two anthems that helped make them household names this year. The irony is the trio might not have made it to the BET stage at all last night if not for the notable   they received from Donald Glover at a much more mainstream (read: whiter) awards show, the Golden Globes, back in January. In a sense, it was a full    moment for one of the biggest acts of the year. An act like Migos may never make it to the perenially    Grammy stage, but rest assured, an appearance at the BET Awards means the trio’s place in pop’s collective conscience is plenty secure."
"Passengers at Boston’s Logan International Airport were surfing their phones and drinking coffee, waiting to board a flight to Aruba recently when a JetBlue agent came on the loudspeaker, announcing: ”Today, we do have a unique way of boarding.” On flights to the Caribbean island, JetBlue is experimenting with facial recognition software that acts as a boarding pass. The airline says it’s about convenience. For the federal government, it’s also about national security. But for privacy activists, it’s an intrusive form of surveillance. This is the first trial between an airline and Customs and Border Protection to use facial recognition in place of boarding passes. ”The practical side of that is you will not need to show a boarding pass and you will not need to take your passport out because your face will be essentially your boarding pass,” says Joanna Geraghty, JetBlue’s executive vice president of customer experience. Michelle Moynihan, who was flying to Aruba for a wedding, says facial recognition would make her life easier. ”Typically when I travel I have my three kids with me and I travel alone with them,” she says. ”They’re all under age 10, so flipping through multiple boarding passes on my phone, making sure I have all the kids, all the backpacks, all the suitcases can be cumbersome and frustrating.” Moynihan gets in line and right before she gets to the jet bridge, there’s a camera that’s about the size of a shoebox. It takes her photo and she gets a checkmark, saying she’s good to go. The whole process takes about 5 to 6 seconds. ”We’re basically capturing that picture at the boarding gate and then providing it to U. S. Customs and Border protection,” says Sean Farrell, who works for SITA, the company running this technology. SITA provides a lot of the IT infrastructure you see at airports. ”It’s actually the U. S. government that’s implementing the biometric matching system,” he says. The government uses existing databases to compare a traveler’s face against all the other passengers on the flight manifest. JetBlue is pitching this idea of facial recognition as convenience for customers. It’s voluntary. But it’s also part of a broader push by Customs and Border Protection to create a biometric exit system to track  . S. citizens leaving the country. After the Sept. 11 attacks, there was a lot of talk about the necessity of a biometric exit system, but the tech and computing power just wasn’t good enough. Now, facial recognition experts say it’s more accurate. And Farrell sees a future  —   not too far off  —   where our faces could be our IDs. ”The end game is that in a few years’ time you’ll be able to go through the airport basically just using your face,” he says. ”If you have bags to drop off, you’ll be able to use the   system and just have your face captured and matched. You’ll then go to security, the same thing. . .. And then you go to the boarding gate, and again just use your biometric.” But that worries people like Adam Schwartz, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group. He says facial recognition is a uniquely invasive form of surveillance. ”We can change our bank account numbers, we even can change our names, but we cannot change our faces,” Schwartz says. ”And once the information is out there, it could be misused.” Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, says she’s particularly concerned by the JetBlue program because of the government’s role. ”The biometric databases that the government is amassing are simply another tool, and a very powerful tool of government control,” she says. Customs and Border Protection insists it will discard facial recognition photos taken of U. S. citizens at the airport, and only keep a database of  . S. citizens. Back at Logan Airport, passenger Yeimy Quezada feels totally comfortable sharing her face instead of a barcode. ”Even your cellphone recognizes selfies and recognize faces, so I’m used to that technology already,” she says. ”And, I’m not concerned about privacy because I’m a firm believer that if you’re not hiding anything, you shouldn’t be afraid of anything.” Customs is running similar biometric tests at airports in Atlanta, New York and the Washington, D. C. area. The goal is to deploy facial recognition tech widely by early next year. Asma Khalid leads WBUR’s BostonomiX team, which covers the people, startups and companies driving the innovation economy. You can follow them @BostonomiX."
"From Norfolk, one of the more remote regions of England, came this preternaturally talented pair of teenage girls, Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth. Their close,    friendship dated back to   and they emerged from   clutching a debut set of sophisticated, wonderfully askew songs. Those recordings  —   collected on I, Gemini  —   had the duo playing every instrument themselves. Growing Up, A year on from the release of that acclaimed debut, Let’s Eat Grandma is still sporadically touring behind it. But here’s a funny thing: Walton and Hollingworth now appear keen to shed  —   even shred  —   the public perception that’s wrapped itself around them, despite the fact that it’s based on an aesthetic approach to the project that they’ve rather concertedly worked to establish. Most teenagers hope to look as adult and sophisticated as possible. They’re keen to grow up in a hurry. But the way Let’s Eat Grandma has presented itself up to this point, in live performance and in promo videos, is the complete opposite. The pair’s image in their   video ”Deep Six Textbook”  —   long golden tresses, buttermilk skin, white lace frocks  —   casts Walton and Hollingworth as virtual twins and as    figures seemingly plucked right out of Picnic At Hanging Rock, Peter Weir’s eerie film about disappeared schoolgirls in   Australia. Songs like ”Welcome To The Treehouse,” ”Chocolate Sludge Cake” and ”Rapunzel” seemed to cement the   viewpoint running through the album, exacerbated by the homespun feel of the playing and instrumentation choices like recorder and glockenspiel, which conjured the atmosphere of the elementary school music room. ”Sax in the City,” the most recent video off I, Gemini, regresses even further, into the nursery, with Walton  Hollingworth togged out as Edwardian toddlers in pink onesies, bonnets and bibs. Their friendship began when they were just 4, forged from the start through creative projects. ”It’s our way of processing the world,” said Hollingworth. They started with a series of increasingly ambitious treehouses, built by themselves, unsupervised. It’s a subject  —   one of several  —   that they’re now reluctant to be drawn on, precisely because reviewers and interviewers have found it so charming in the past. Walton and Hollingworth seem wary of being infantilized  —   except in videos like ”Sax in the City,” where they sport pacifiers and crawl    through the city. After that treehouse phase Jenny and Rosa progressed to making short films, taking turns handling the camera while the other acted. Then, aged thirteen, after making ”loads of films,” they decided to ”try something else. So we formed a band.” Only In Dreams, Let’s Eat Grandma’s music often has a   aura to it twinkly,   piano trills at the start of ”Rapunzel” have the quality of a cinematic dissolve, or the kind of     effect that lends gauzy enchantment to a movie. Some songs appear to evolve according to dream logic, ending somewhere completely unexpected, as with the   suites of ”Sleep Song” and the   ”Welcome to the Treehouse,” or the   eruption of the rap section midway through ”Eat Shiitake Mushrooms.” As it happens, dreaming is where the duo derive much of their inspiration. ”I get lots of inspiration for lyrics from that phase just after I’m gone to bed and I’m very tired and falling asleep,” says Rosa Walton, referring to a stage in the onset of sleep called ’hypnagogic’. We chatted in an Echo Park café shortly before Let’s Eat Grandma were to perform their debut Los Angeles concert. ”Lots of images and interesting combinations of words come into my head,” continued Rosa. ”When I’m in that state, I can wake myself up a bit and write things down or record them, then I slip back into the state. I’ll keep doing that over and over for maybe    until I’m just too tired and feel like I really need to fall asleep.” Hypnagogic imagery is actually different to the   you get in the    phases of deep sleep, which are more, well, dreamy. ”You have more control over the images,” Rosa said. ”I can think of myself as being somewhere and then I can change things and they become weirder and they start controlling themselves.” She pointed at the   vent hanging off the ceiling, near our table in the upstairs balcony section of the café. ”If I was in a [hypnagogic state] now, I could look right up that pipe. And then as I went up the pipe the dream would start controlling itself.” The pair’s fascination for dream worlds is very  ’60s. But it also harks back to surrealism, to psychoanalysis in both its Freudian and Jungian schools and to all manner of religious and mystical belief systems going back to antiquity that have set great store in the oracular truths revealed in our night visions. What it’s not, this interest in dreams, is contemporary in any sense. We live in an era that has lost all interest in dreams as an artistic or spiritual resource, as a deeper truth of the self or of the collective unconscious. As a teenager growing up in the ’70s, when books decoding the symbolism of dreams were popular, I kept an incredibly detailed dream diary. But nowadays ”dream” generally refers to secular ambitions of fame and glory, the sort of dreams where, if you just keep on believin’ they’ll come true, or if you work your butt off they’ll be achieved. Instead of dreamed otherworlds we have digital, the virtual realities of games and CGI. So when Rosa talks about writing her dreams down in her diary ”as soon as I get up,” or exalts the dream life as ”free entertainment when you’re sleeping” it’s a sign that the duo are probably not typical of their own generation. Evolution! Evolution? Perhaps the duo’s eagerness to sidestep received ideas of what Let’s Eat Grandma is about is more understandable if you take into account that they are still repping songs written four or five long  —   especially relative to their chronology  —   years ago. The recording process for I, Gemini started when they were fourteen and took two years to finish. Because they were still in high school back then, Walton  Hollingworth could only access the free studio at their local music college during the summer holidays, which is why it took so long to complete. This long, fitful process led to an inevitable mentality gap between I, Gemini and where the duo’s heads are at today. Just think for a moment how different you felt about things aged thirteen from how you saw the world aged eighteen (the pair’s current age). Let’s Eat Grandma are keen to surprise everyone with the new songs they’re writing, which they say center on social and political issues. ”When we were younger we were obviously less clued in on politics  —   we were writing about what we were experiencing then,” says Walton. They are also forthright feminists, indignant about the sexism they’ve encountered in the music industry. It’s not just a case of being taken less seriously on account of their gender and age, says Hollingworth. ”It’s more blatant than that. When we’ve done festivals, and we haven’t gone with our own engineer, people have said really objectifying things to us. It’s the kind of thing that happens so subtly that you don’t really notice at first.” Let’s Eat Grandma might have started to put away childish things, but they are still very much teenagers. There’s an incommunicative tendency that any parent will find familiar  —   even a hint of ”whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not” intractability. ”Wait until you see the show tonight, that’ll help you understand,” they said. Yet that performance, at the Echo, was largely in line with the established image they were ostensibly in the process of shedding. The live rendition of ”Deep Six Textbook,” for instance, involved a   handclap routine to generate a percussive pulse. Then there’s their disconcerting stage moves, like Hollingworth sitting on the floor beneath the keyboards during one number, or the pair lying flat on the stage during the first part of another song, as if hiding from the audience. These stunts are wonderfully suspenseful  —   you start wondering, are they ever going to get up again?  —   but can recall, too, children throwing a sulk. The couple of new songs played in that short set sounded terrific  —   and did, indeed, showcase new sonic directions, featuring electric guitar, in the form of Walton’s elegant lead patterns, for the first time. It was hard to discern a new social consciousness. What We Are Not, Back in the café, after another line of enquiry was parried, it was time to try a different tack. What is the least Let’    fact about Let’s Eat Grandma that is actually true? What information about them would most thoroughly blow their image and blow the minds of their    following of fans and critics? Like, are they secretly into sports cars? Do they avidly watch Top Gear? ”That’s quite a hard question. .. there’s so many things,” says Hollingworth, not very helpfully. ”Everything!” says Walton, less helpfully still. Finally, they think of one secret truth, or one they’re prepared to share, at any rate. ”Even though we like them. ..,” offers Hollingworth cautiously. ”We’re not really inspired by CocoRosie. ... or Kate Bush. ... or Bjork. .. or —  ” ”Cocteau Twins!” they both say, in that charming, chiming unison way of theirs. ”People just like to compare us to any female performer who’s doing something slightly different,” complains Walton. Asking Let’s Eat Grandma about specific bands that possibly do have an affinity with their sound  —   if not an outright inspirational connection  —   isn’t productive, either. Most of the groups that tend to get mentioned in reviews as reference points or influences  —   Kevin Ayers, Caravan, Virginia Astley  —   are ones they say they’ve never heard or even heard of. ”I don’t think there’s anybody who’s fully got it right yet,” says Walton, neither pleased nor displeased. Another thing that vexes Let’s Eat Grandma is language  —   terms like ”kooky” or ”ethereal” that get applied, in a gendered way, to any female artist doing something unusual or arty. ”If we were a male band,” suggests Hollingworth, ”people wouldn’t say ’kooky’ they’d probably say ’psychedelic’. Because, in lots of ways, our music is quite psychedelic.” ”Eat Shiitake Mushrooms” one of the most delightful tunes on the album, might, they hint, be inspired by a mushroom trip. But just try to get them to elaborate. ”Can’t disclose this information,” says a   Hollingworth. That song, which surprisingly erupts midway into a deliciously unexpected rap section, is a wonderful example of Let’s Eat Grandma’s unconfined approach to genre. True children of the      generation, Walton and Hollingworth have in the past described what they do as ”experimental sludge pop” or ”psychedelic sludge.” Well, that’s how I took those descriptions anyway: tags for a   splodge of flavors, like the dripping cup of a kid at a frozen yogurt joint who’s gone a little overboard with the toppings. Actually, sludge  —   they say in unison, again  —   refers to ”drone notes” their love of   that create a smeary, woozy feeling in the music. So  —   on the subject of critics and their misperceptions  —   what is the single most misguided,   thing that a professional pundit has ever said about Let’s Eat Grandma? ”The worst one,” says Walton, wrinkling her nose with annoyance, ”was someone who said ’I think there’s a few very clever adults behind this’. That just made me so cross.” Let’s Eat Grandma bitterly resent this   finding even praise of the ”oooh, look how prodigiously and precociously talented they are!” type to be ”a bit backhanded, like it’s surprising,” complains Hollingworth. ”People find us quite confusing, that we’re two girls and we bond over being creative,” she adds. ”Like teenage girls are just supposed to go shopping together or something! But I think there’s loads of girls like us out there.”"
"Support for   marriage is growing  —   even among groups traditionally opposed to it  —   according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. The report, based on a survey conducted earlier this month, suggests public opinion is shifting quickly, two years after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges made   marriage legal in all 50 states. Overall support for   marriage is at its highest level since the Pew Center began polling on the issue more than two decades ago, at 62 percent in favor compared to 32 percent opposed. Support is also growing among groups that have been more skeptical than the population as a whole toward allowing gays and lesbians to legally marry. Here are six takeways from the survey: 1. Republicans are now split, As recently as 2013, Republicans opposed   marriage nearly   . They’re now virtually split. The survey found that 47 percent of Republican and   respondents favor allowing   marriage, with 48 percent opposed. 2. Older Americans are more favorable now, The survey also found that a majority of Baby Boomers  —   56 percent  —   now approve. That’s still considerably lower than younger generations: 74 percent of millennials and 65 percent of Gen Xers expressed support. But it’s the first time more than half of the Boomer generation has expressed support for   marriage. Boomers are still much more favorable than their parents only 41 percent of the Silent Generation favored   marriage. 3. Among White evangelicals, there’s a generational divide, There’s also a generation gap among another group traditionally opposed to   marriage, white evangelicals. While 59 percent of white evangelical Protestants still oppose   marriage, survey data suggests opinions are changing among the younger generation. Nearly half of white evangelical millennials and Generation Xers said they support legal   marriage, compared to only a quarter of evangelicals born before 1964. Pew says support from the younger group of evangelicals has increased substantially, to 47 percent now, up from 29 percent as recently as March 2016. Meanwhile, the opinions among the older group have held steady. 4. Black support nudges over 50 percent, Among African Americans, a group that historically has been less supportive than whites of   marriage, 51 percent now express support. That’s up 12 points from Pew’s survey in 2015. 5. Religion matters, Overall, weekly attenders of any type of religious service were less likely to support   marriage, at just 39 percent compared with 75 percent of those who attend less than weekly. Protestants were less likely than the nation as a whole to support   marriage, at 48 percent Catholics were somewhat more likely than the overall figure of 62 percent in favor, at 67 percent. Support for   marriage was markedly higher, 85 percent, among Americans with no religious affiliation. 6. Gender, income, and education also make a difference, Overall, women were somewhat more likely than men to support   marriage (64 vs. 60 percent, respectively). Support for   marriage also increased with more income and a higher level of education. For people with a   education, 79 percent approved compared with 53 percent of people with a high school education or less. The growth in public support for   marriage comes at a time when the issue is still a matter of public debate and litigation. On Monday, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its 2015 ruling recognizing the right to   marriage, and said that states should give   couples the same rights as heterosexual couples when it comes to issuing birth certificates. The Court also agreed to take a case about whether a cake shop owner near Denver should be allowed to refuse to create wedding cakes for gay and lesbian couples because of his religiously based opposition to   marriage. Pew surveyed 2, 504 adults in the United States from June  . Respondents were asked, ”Do you strongly favor, favor, oppose, or strongly oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally?” The poll’s margin of sampling error was 2. 3 percentage points for all respondents, 2. 7 percent for white respondents and 7. 3 percent for black respondents it included 1, 737 white, 241 black, and 297 Hispanic respondents. The margin was 3. 5 percent for Republican and   respondents and 3. 2 percent for Democrat and   respondents."
"In many ways, parenting newborns seems instinctual. We see a little baby, and we want to hold her. Snuggle and kiss her. Even just her smell seems magical. Many of us think   is similar. ”I had that idea before my first child was born,” says Brooke Scelza, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Los Angeles, California. ”I definitely thought, ’Oh, I’m going to figure that out. Like how hard can it be?’ ” Although   is easy for some women, for many new moms  —   including Scelza  —   it’s a struggle. ”I was shocked at how hard it was,” she says. In a survey a few years ago, 92 percent of women said they had problems in the first few days of  . They couldn’t get the baby to latch onto the nipple. They had pain. Sore nipples. And they were worried they weren’t making enough milk. ”This is just surprising because   was a critical function for child survival in the past, and if you couldn’t figure it out, your infant was going to be in really big trouble,” Scelza says. It’s almost like in the U. S. we’ve lost the   instinct. That Western society has somehow messed it up. Scelza wanted to figure out why: What are we doing wrong? So a few years ago, she traveled to a place with some of the best   in the world. In the desert of northern Namibia, there’s an ethnic group that lives largely isolated from modern cities. They’re called Himba, and they live in mud huts and survive off the land.  ”They’re cattle herders basically,” Scelza says. ”But they also have gardens where they grow maize, sorghum and pumpkins.” Moms still give birth in the home. And all moms  . ”I have yet to encounter a woman who could not   at all,” Scelza says. ”There are women who have supply issues, who wind up supplementing with goat’s milk, which is not uncommon. But there’s basically no use of formula or bottles or anything like that.” And Himba women make   look easy, Scelza says. They even do it while they’re walking around. ”So women will carry the babies with them on their backs, and then if the baby cries, they take the baby out, feed the baby and then put the baby on their back,” she says. Scelza and other anthropologists have come up with several hypotheses for why Himba women and women in other traditional cultures are so successful at  . One idea is that the mom and her newborn have long, uninterrupted contact right after birth. Since women are at home, there are no doctors and nurses whisking the infant away for weighing, fingerprinting or tests. This contact allows the newborn’s suckling instincts to kick in, researchers have hypothesized. ”Farmers know that separation of mother and newborn farm animals results in . .. an inability on the part of the baby to suckle,” anthropologist Meredith Small writes in her book Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent. ”We have only recently become aware that human babies have the same sort of reflexes designed to seal the pact between mother and infant right after birth,” Small continues. But if you take the baby away from the mom during the first hour or so, you can ”derail the whole process.” The second hypothesis is that Himba women learn how to   throughout their childhood. Because women see their moms, siblings and friends   while growing up. ”  in public isn’t stigmatized at all,” Scelza says. So by the time they have their own babies, Himba women know what to do and it appears instinctual. Here in the U. S. we hardly ever see mothers  . So women never really learn. Well, turns out both hypotheses aren’t quite right. ”I’m telling you that’s exactly what I thought was going on until I started to talk to Himba women,” Scelza says.  A few years ago, Scelza interviewed 30 Himba women in depth about their experiences   especially in the first few days after birth. And guess what? Himba women are a lot like American women. ”Many of the women that I talked to actually struggled a lot with learning how to ” she says.   of the women said they had some problems at the beginning, such as pain, fear, troubles getting the baby to latch and concerns about the milk supply  —   just like American moms. And their problems went behind  . ”Most women talked about having little knowledge about early infant care, such as how to hold babies or how to be sure they’re sleeping safely,” Scelza says. So how do the Himba get over these problems? They have a secret weapon many American women don’t, Scelza says: Grandmothers. ”When a woman gives birth, she typically goes home to her mother’s compound in the last trimester of pregnancy and stays there for months after the birth,” she says. And then the new mom’s mom  —   the grandma  —   shows her everything she needs to know about   and infant care. ”Their mothers actually sleep in the hut with them after birth and wake up the new mom and say, ’It’s time to feed your baby! It’s time to feed your baby!” Scelza exclaims. So it’s really not that we’ve lost the natural instinct for  . But instead we no longer have a grandma around   to be a teacher. We’ve lost the guidance. We’ve lost the support. ”As I started to read about this [Himba practice] you can find so many examples of this in so many cultures,” Scelza says. For example, there’s a small ethnic group in the Ivory Coast, called Beng. In their community, a woman learns to   from other moms, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb describes in her book The Afterlife Is Where We Come From. ”During the first few weeks, a newly delivered woman  —   especially a   mother . .. has a constant stream of visitors, particularly women,” Gottlieb writes. ”Most have   many babies themselves, and they spontaneously share their nursing wisdom. Through them, a new mother is quickly socialized into accepting an almost continual round of   suggestions dispensed by more experienced women.” In many Asian cultures, women have traditionally practiced what’s called ”sitting the month,” or zuo yue zi in Mandarin. For 30 days, a woman stays confined in her home and is looked after by grandmothers,   and aunts. These women cook and help the new mom recover from giving birth. They also teach her how to  . ”Researchers often write about this period as a time for recuperation,” Scelza says. ”But I’m increasingly interested in thinking it as critical period of learning for new moms.” So it’s no wonder American women struggle with  . It would be strange if they didn’t. Because women have problems   everywhere. Moms have evolved to need help, to be taught. ”I think that there’s enormous pressure to succeed with   in the U. S. and that you feel like if you can’t do it that this is a huge failing as a mother,” Scelza says. But Himba women didn’t seem to think the problems related to   were a big deal. ”When [the baby] had trouble latching, they were just like, ’Yeah, this is part of what you have to learn if you’re going to ” she says. ”They didn’t stigmatize the failing.” Tell us a tradition about   in your culture. Send an email to goatsandsoda@npr. org with the subject line ”Breastfeeding” and we’ll consider it for a possible story on NPR. org. "
"As India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in the U. S. over the weekend, President Trump tweeted a warm welcome, calling the Indian leader ”a true friend.” The two are meeting for the first time at the White House Monday afternoon, Modi having arrived for a brief,   call  —   not a state visit, but a working one. Perhaps that’s fitting, as there is so much in the relationship to work on. A host of issues now divides the two leaders, including the Paris climate change agreement, which Modi supports and Trump rejects, and the treatment of Iran as a pariah state, which Trump supports and Modi rejects. India wants the U. S. to ensure visas for its skilled workers, including IT engineers. But Trump says the visas have been misused and undermine jobs for Americans. Perhaps the most important outcome of their meeting will be putting to rest the notion that the U. S.  relationship is adrift. Maya Mirchandani, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank, says the fact it has taken until now for Trump to sit down with Modi has prompted anxiety in India that New Delhi is no longer a priority in the Oval Office. ”We have seen both President Bush and President Obama give India a sense of primacy that’s been missing in the last six months,” Mirchandani said. ”That’s something [both sides] might hope to correct.” Sounding a reassuring note, a senior White House official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity said the Trump administration is interested in maintaining the same ”strategic partnership” India enjoyed under the Obama administration, when the reserved Obama and the more casual Modi hit it off so well they were dubbed the ”odd couple.” But the Trump administration has yet to articulate an overall South Asia policy. There is no U. S. ambassador in New Delhi (though White House aide Kenneth Juster is reported as a likely candidate to fill the slot) and no assistant secretary is in place for South Asian affairs at the State Department  —   diplomatic absences that cannot help but cause even more unease in New Delhi. Defense ties are strengthening, though, as the U. S. is poised to sell more arms to India. In the last decade, it’s sold $15 billion worth of weaponry to New Delhi, according to the senior White House official who briefed reporters on the visit. Modernizing India’s defenses will strengthen both countries, she said. The same could be said for the thousands of Indians studying in the United States, whose talents can benefit both countries. Modi has called India’s relationship with the U. S. ”  and diverse,” noting it extends well beyond    and said he looked forward to an ”  exchange of views” with President Trump to ”consolidate” the ”  partnership.” But the Indian leader’s visit comes at an inopportune time, as the president and his team are distracted by domestic political and legal challenges. The voluble Modi will be in listening mode, says Shyam Saran, India’s former foreign secretary  —   eager to hear the president’s world view, especially on China, and where India fits into Trump’s evolving Asia policy. Trump already ”has had a very important meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping. What is his sense of how  . S. relations will develop?” asks Saran. ”We also see the need for there being a role for India to perform,” he adds. ”After all, we have a certain interest, common interest, in having a more balanced architecture in the   region.” Modi will also be keen to know more about Trump’s policy in the Middle East, especially in the wake of recent Saudi and Gulf state moves against Qatar for its alleged support of terrorists. With millions of Indian citizens working in Gulf countries, India watches developments like this with alarm. In the thicket of diplomacy, Modi must also to try to grasp an unpredictable U. S. president who derides China as a ”currency manipulator” one day, but later calls President Xi ”a great guy.” ”What is really disconcerting in New Delhi is what you get on Monday is not necessarily what you get on Tuesday,” says Milan Vaishnav, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D. C. ”This kind of   turn is very concerning to India.” Vaishnav says Modi’s priorities include making progress on proposed new U. S. visa restrictions that could affect the status of India’s skilled workers  —   and correct the record on climate change. When President Trump pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, he said India had predicated its participation on receiving ”billions and billions and billions of dollars of foreign aid,” a remark that incensed New Delhi, where leaders said it was patently untrue. The competing visions of the two leaders  —   both inspired by nationalist impulses  —   may be the most significant hurdle for smooth relations. The two men rose to office by appealing to majorities who felt persecuted or overlooked  —   fundamentalist Hindus in Modi’s case, and aggrieved white voters in Trump’s. Modi wants to turn India into a manufacturing powerhouse and enlist American businesses to create jobs that would lift millions of Indians from poverty. Trump wants to keep American businesses and jobs at home. While both men are pragmatic   Vaishnav wonders whether Trump’s ”America First” policy can be flexible enough to accommodate India and its need to grow. ”I think we’ve now come to a fork in the road, and it’s not clear which way we are going to go,” he says. For all their differences, though, Trump and Modi share key traits: They positioned themselves as outsiders and rose to the pinnacle of an insider’s game. They brook no criticism and believe in personal diplomacy. Both are large personalities with a penchant for surprise and a deep disdain for the media  —   unless they’re using it to further their own ends. Trump and Modi are the two elected leaders with the most followers on Twitter, and both leapfrogged over the mainstream media in their rise to power. Mirchandani expects this is one area in which the two will find common ground. ”They will certainly see eye to eye,” she says, ”on making a mockery of the media.”"
"Martin Shkreli is known for a number of things. Jacking up the cost of a   drug for AIDS patients by 5, 000 percent. Grinning his way through a House hearing as he pleaded the Fifth. Spending millions to buy the only copy of a   album and then being in no hurry to listen to it. Badgering a journalist on Twitter until his account was suspended. But today, jury selection begins in federal court as    Shkreli goes on trial for something else entirely: securities fraud charges. Prosecutors say he was swindling investors in his hedge fund well before he became ”the most hated man in America.” Federal agents arrested Shkreli in December 2015, and the SEC charged him with committing ”a series of frauds” between October 2009 and March 2014. Before he made headlines as the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Shkreli founded a pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, and a pair of hedge funds, MSMB Capital Management and MSMB Healthcare. Prosecutors say he committed a series of frauds while managing the funds between October 2009 and March 2014. The SEC’s complaint alleges ”widespread fraudulent conduct” by Shkreli  —   a series of misrepresentations and omissions, and of taking money from one fund to cover claims against the other. According to the complaint, he also issued stock and made cash payments from Retrophin (disguised as payments for consulting services) to disgruntled investors in the hedge funds who were threatening to sue. Prosecutors say Shkreli misled investors about the size and performance of MSMB Capital Management, claiming that its returns were ”+35. 77% since inception”  —   when the fund had actually lost 18 percent. In another instance, he claimed the fund had $35 million in assets, when in fact it had less than $1, 000 in assets. He also allegedly lied to MSMB’s executing broker about the fund’s ability to settle a short sale, resulting in more than $7 million in losses for the broker who had to cover the short position. He faces eight counts of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. Five counts each carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison the other three are a maximum of five years each. His defense team has argued no harm, no foul. ”Everybody got paid back in this case,” his lawyer said, according to The Associated Press. ”Whatever else he did wrong, he ultimately made them whole.” But a prosecutor said that depriving people control of their assets is also fraud, reports the Times. The defense may call Shkreli to the stand, in which case he might well describe his   Brooklyn upbringing, as a child to immigrants from Albania and Croatia. Shkreli seems to follow standard legal advice to stay keep mum while he’s in a courtroom  —   but not elsewhere. Last Monday, he sat quietly at his hearing in federal court  —   and then went home and livestreamed his activities for 2   hours, The New York Times reports. Although his Twitter account was suspended in January for his persistent trolling, he posts frequently on Facebook and you can watch a   livestream of him from Thursday. Shkreli’s chatter may cost him. His lawyer has argued he ”doesn’t have any cash,” and that his bail should be reduced to $2 million from $5 million, CNBC reports. His ownership stake in Turing Pharmaceuticals, which hiked the price of the drug Daraprim, is worth $30 million to $50 million, but his lawyer says he can’t sell it without shareholder approval. (Shkreli resigned as CEO the day after his arrest.) But prosecutors, Reuters reports, have pointed to recently touted expenditures: a World War     machine, the only copy of a Lil Wayne album and a Picasso. He also offered $40, 000 for a math proof and $100, 000 for tips on the killing of DNC staffer Seth Rich. If Shkreli is dreading his day in court, he isn’t showing it. ”I’m excited,” he told the AP last week. ”I can’t wait.” Shkreli’s trial is expected to last four to six weeks, according to the AP. And the boy   ”pharma bro” told The New Yorker he doesn’t expect to serve time. ”I think they’ll return a   verdict in two hours,” he said. ”There are going to be jurors who will be fans of mine. I walk down the streets of New York and people shake my hand. They say, ’I want to be just like you.’ ”"
"When the Grateful Dead started out in 1966 in San Francisco, they and all other bands of the Fillmore era were aided by elaborate light shows. Think: clear pie plates, filled with water, with colored mineral oil and other additives dropped in and swished and swirled around, projected through a   overhead onto screens  —   or just plain old bed sheets draped behind the band. The aim then was to approximate the, ahem, psychedelic experiences of the audience. The business of rock ’n’ roll shows has evolved so much since those days, but even so The Grateful Dead continues to blaze new trails. At just about 11pm this past this past Saturday night (June 24) Dead and Company  —   a   outfit featuring original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart  —   New York classic rock station Q104. 3 and the city’s iconic Empire State Building staged a light show for the ages. As the band launched into ”Touch of Grey” for 40, 000 fans at nearby Citi Field, the famed skyscraper’s lights synchronized to the band’s vocals. (Some will call it coincidence, others divine guidance, but I’d like to think that Jerry Garcia offered a metaphysical assist so that, as the helicopter view included the Freedom Tower in the background, the band was singing the inspirational chorus.)"
"The mother of Philando Castile, a black motorist who was shot to death by a police officer last summer in Minnesota, has reached a settlement deal in the city of St. Anthony worth nearly $3 million. ”No amount of money could ever replace Philando,” the Minneapolis suburb said in a statement. Officials in St. Anthony said the settlement was reached quickly ”in order to allow the process of healing to move forward for the Castile family, for the people of St. Anthony Village, and for all those impacted by the death of Philando Castile throughout the United States.” Valerie Castile will receive $2. 995 million through an insurance trust, according to city’s statement. The settlement, which must be approved by a state court, will avert a federal wrongful death lawsuit in the Castile case, according to The Associated Press. ”The important work of healing our community continues,” St. Anthony said, adding that ”the City and residents are working to improve trust between the police department and the communities it serves.” St. Anthony is taking part in a Justice Department program aimed at advancing trust and respect between police and those they serve. The killing of the    school cafeteria worker sparked a national outcry and mass protests after his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, broadcast the shooting’s aftermath on Facebook Live as Castile sat dying in the driver’s seat. Reynolds was in the passenger seat and her    daughter was in the back seat when Officer Jeronimo Yanez stopped Castile for a broken taillight on July 6, 2016. As The   reported, newly released dashcam video shows it took just seconds for the encounter to escalate after Yanez asked Castile for his driver’s license and insurance: ”Castile hands over the cards and says, ’Sir, I do have to tell you I do have a firearm on me.’ Yanez says, ’Ok. Don’t reach for it then.’ ” ’I’m not pulling it out,’ Castile responds. ”Yanez’s voice rises suddenly and he yells, ’Don’t pull it out. Don’t pull it out.’ ”Yanez fires seven shots into the vehicle. Five hit Castile.” Castile had a legal permit to carry the gun. The dashcam video  —   shown in full here by Minnesota Public Radio  —   was released by investigators just a few days after Yanez was acquitted on all charges related to Castile’s death. During the trial, Yanez testified that he had to shoot since Castile did not comply with his commands and was reaching for his gun. But protesters said Castile’s case  —   one of a number of   deaths of black people involving police  —   wasn’t about noncompliance. ”The system continues to fail black people, and it will continue to fail you all,” Valerie Castile told reporters after the Yanez verdict. ”My son loved this city and this city killed my son and the murderer gets away.” On the same day Yanez was acquitted, St. Anthony announced that he will no longer serve as a police officer there. News of the settlement comes a week after the family of Michael Brown  —   the    African American shot dead by a white police officer in 2014  —   settled their wrongful death lawsuit with the city of Ferguson, Mo. The terms of that settlement remain sealed."
"The Democratic Unionist Party has given U. K. Prime Minister Theresa May enough votes to form a government, signing a ”confidence and supply” agreement to back May’s Conservatives in confidence votes and on key economic issues. The DUP also secured more than $1 billion in economic assistance for Northern Ireland. ”This agreement will operate to deliver a stable government in the United Kingdom’s national interest at this vital time,” DUP leader Arlene Foster said. The Northern Ireland party is pledging to vote with Conservatives on two topics that are at the forefront of British politics: national security  —   particularly in the wake of recent terrorist attacks  —   and the U. K.’s exit from the European Union. ”The DUP is skeptical of Europe and is   as NPR’s Frank Langfitt has reported. ”But it is also deeply worried that splitting from the EU will mean a return to a hard border across Ireland that could create economic and even political problems.” By forming the agreement, May takes another step in resisting calls for her resignation that erupted after the snap election held in early June. Rather than solidifying the Tories’ advantage in Parliament, the election resulted in a lost majority, making Monday’s compromise deal a necessity to stay in power. After her party endured that disastrous vote, May promised to bring ”certainty” to Britain. And she used that word again Monday, saying that the new agreement with the DUP will ”give us the certainty we require as we embark on our departure from the European Union, and help us build a stronger and fairer society at home.” The deal is expected to last for at least two years, the BBC reports."
"As June comes to an end, so do many events associated with Pride Month, a   celebration of sexual diversity and gender variance  —   often geared towards increasing the visibility of the LGBTQIA community, as well as combatting stigma and advocating for equal rights. But the battle to eliminate stigma and achieve these rights will certainly continue, as recent debates about which bathrooms transgender men and women should use illustrate all too well. For years here at 13. 7, Barbara J. King has been writing about what she calls the spectrum of gender expression, and ”the fact that gender identity isn’t only  —   or even mostly  —   about biology and that it’s most certainly not reducible to the sex one is assigned at birth.” That’s an especially important lesson in light of new research that identifies one of the sources of prejudice against transgender individuals: the (mostly mistaken) belief that men’s and women’s stereotypical characteristics do, in fact, come down to some immutable feature of one’s biology. In the new study, forthcoming in the journal Sex Roles, researchers Boby   Ching and Jason Teng Xu presented 132 university students in Hong Kong with one of three articles to read. One article was intended to reinforce the idea that gender differences have a biological basis, one was intended to question this view, and a third was entirely unrelated to gender differences and served as a baseline comparison. The article advocating a biological basis for gender presented a study purporting to find that ”the brains of men and women are wired up differently,” which ”could explain some of the differences in personality and behaviour between male and female.” It went on to describe the study and quote fictional experts, including ”Professor Schneider,” who summarized: ”There is a neurological cause of sex differences, which suggests that these differences are difficult to change.” The alternative article reported the same study, but also included some cautionary remarks. For instance, the researchers noted that men and women ”still have many similarities in terms of the brain architecture” and that ”the relations between brain and human behavior are complex.” In this version, Prof. Schneider instead warned that the studies do not ”offer insights into the   developmental processes that lead to observed   differences. ..The neurological associations with sex differences are not fixed, but amenable to change by environmental factors.” After reading one of the three articles and completing an unrelated task, participants then responded to various questions designed to evaluate their stereotypes about transgender individuals, as well as their attitudes towards them. For example, they indicated how much they agreed with statements including, ”transgenderism endangers the institution of the family,” and ”I would feel comfortable if I learned that my neighbor was a transgendered individual.” A final set of questions concerned civil rights, with items such as: ”  transsexuals in Hong Kong should have the right to get married in their new sex,” and ”Transgender people in Hong Kong should have the right to change their birth certificates.” The researchers found that those participants who had read the article endorsing a biological basis for gender differences were significantly more likely than participants who read either of the other articles to report negative stereotypes about transgender individuals, to report prejudicial attitudes, and to reject equal rights. Responses for participants who read the alternative article or the control article did not differ from each other. The authors suggest that the article endorsing a biological basis for gender differences reinforced what psychologists call an ”essentialist” view of gender  —   the idea that men and women belong to fundamentally different categories that have some inherent basis (some ”essence”) such that the categories have sharp and immutable boundaries, and such that members of the same category share many important similarities with each other. On a view like this, it’s hard to make sense of a mismatch between a person’s gender identity and their assigned sex, if it’s the biological basis for their assigned sex that’s taken to reflect their true ”essence.” This, in turn, could support a more prejudicial attitude towards people who identify with a gender other than the one assigned at birth. Prior work supports several of these ideas: that a biological basis for gender differences plays into psychological essentialism and that psychological essentialism can foster prejudice. For example, one study found that after reading a fictional news article that explained a sex difference in biological terms, participants were more likely to report that people cannot easily change, and to associate men and women with their stereotypical attributes, such as being nurturing for women and competitive for men. Another study found that people who thought of a particular social category in more essentialist terms tended to regard the group as lower status. Finally, a survey study found that the belief that gender has a biological basis was correlated with opposition to transgender civil rights. The new study by Ching and Xu goes beyond this prior work in showing a causal relationship between beliefs about the biological basis of gender and a host of beliefs about transgender individuals, with a particular role for the essentialist commitments that a biological basis is taken to entail. Among other things, the findings suggest that if people appreciate the   and diverse nature of gender identity, they’re less likely to maintain negative views towards people who are transgender, and less likely to oppose their rights. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"It’s summer vacation season and many families will be lucky enough to be heading off for at least a few days. At least half of parents say quality time together is the most important reason to take a family vacation, according to a national survey by the rental car company Alamo. Still, there will inevitably be downtime: at airports, on planes, trains or in the backseat. So one new travel necessity is a tablet or smartphone loaded up for the kids with an extra charger or battery. In an ideal world, our kids’ screen time won’t be a bleeping, blooping,   distraction, but a creative and fun, even educational diversion. So NPR Ed reached out to some experts for recommendations and guidelines on helping pick the best apps, for backseat time or any time. These recommendations come with an important caveat. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ new guidelines on screen time for kids emphasize the need for balance with other activities. The goal for   children is at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day, and meals and other designated family activities should be   time. Joint media use is another best practice that the AAP recommends: That means playing games or watching videos alongside your kids and discussing the content. That said, in a backseat situation, that’s not always possible. ”There are plenty of casual games that will burn time, but ideally parents want something that will help their kids learn also,” says Christine Elgersma, who works in parent education for Common Sense Media. The nonprofit provides hundreds of free media reviews to families with information on fun, appropriateness and educational value. So, here are the principles we came up with to guide your children in selecting the perfect apps to while away the time. ”Educational” doesn’t mean ”drill and kill.”  For the littlest kids, ages   Elgersma recommends an app called Busy Shapes. ”It’s   and gets increasingly more challenging as kids play,” says Elgersma. It’s developed by Edoki Academy, which has a group of apps that it says are based on the Montessori method of early childhood education. Montessori emphasizes   and   learning. Even apps that get at specific skills should be more than digital worksheets, says Elgersma, citing   research by Kathy   at Temple University and others. ”If the experience can be replicated on paper, it doesn’t make sense on an app,” Elgersma says. ”A great app offers an experience that can only be had on a screen.” She points to Motion Math, a group of apps that is being used in elementary school classrooms, and offers fun experiences like running a cupcake shop.   play is enriching, too. Children, especially young children, have a developmental need to play and use their imaginations. Many of the most worthy apps for kids are better described as ”a toy as opposed to a game,” in the words of Bjorn Jefferey, the CEO and   of Toca Boca. Toca Boca, one of the most   app companies, is recommended highly by Elgersma. Their first app was Toca Tea Party, basically a   game, with no points or levels. ”It’s more similar to Lego,” says Jefferey. ”You can’t win at Lego, it just is what it is.” In user testing of the tea party game, one surprising, and fun, change that preschoolers asked for was more spilling. In this category, Elgersma also recommends My Playhome, which is like a digital dollhouse, and Me, by TinyBop, which is a personal scrapbook kids can fill in by answering questions, putting in video and pictures. Try an app that enhances your vacation experience.  Headed to an amusement park? Pango Build Park is an app for elementary schoolers that involves building roller coasters and other parts of a theme park  —   there’s a little mapmaking involved too. Going camping? Toca Nature is one of Toca Boca’s newest offerings aimed at kids older than age 4. Explore different habitats and get a gentle introduction to the food chain. And, if you prefer     diversions, there are several free versions of the license plate game available for iPhone and Android, and a wide range of karaoke apps if singalongs are your thing. These can get the whole family involved together. Watch out for ads and  .  Some kids’ apps are free to play initially, but dangle all kinds of extra goodies that cost money. Earlier this year, Amazon was forced to refund over $70 million in   purchases made by children without their parent’s knowledge. Apple and Google have had to do the same in years past. Elgersma says to look for apps that have a flat free or subscription model, maybe with a free trial so you can check it out before you commit. The iTunes store now provides a list of   purchases, so caveat emptor."
"Korean pop, or    —   a genre that embraces a range of Western and Korean influences  —   was once known only in East Asia and among the Korean diaspora. But these days,  ’s techno beats and its signature synchronized, tightly choreographed dance moves are familiar the world over. You might know   best from ”Gangnam Style,” the 2012 monster hit by Psy. Dancing in the   style is not limited to video trainees and stars, however. In   cities, specialized studios have cropped up to teach all of us how to dance according to   video concepts, be they coquettish, sporty  —   or in our test case, ”manly.” Joined by NPR Code Switch reporter Kat Chow in the Korean capital of Seoul, I gamely gave this a try while 6   months pregnant. We thought we were going to a beginners’ class. You’ll see for yourselves how things went down."
"A watchdog group says a top Trump appointee violated a federal law by retweeting one of President Trump’s tweets. In a letter sent Tuesday to the Office of Special Counsel, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) requested an investigation into whether the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, improperly used Twitter for political activity. CREW charges that Haley violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from using their ”official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” Neither Haley nor her office would comment on CREW’s complaint. At issue is the president’s tweet on June 19. He stated his support for Ralph Norman, the Republican running for Congress in South Carolina’s 5th District. Norman went on to win the special election. Haley retweeted Trump’s endorsement of the candidate. Later, she removed her retweet, but not before the message may have reached her more than 350, 000 followers on the social media platform, CREW said. ”As the recent former governor of South Carolina, Ambassador Haley may care deeply about her party’s electoral performance in the state, but the rules separating politics from official government work still apply,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. The Hatch Act does not apply to the president or vice president. ”There is a certain irony that Haley could get in trouble for retweeting what the president tweeted,” said Kathleen Clark, an ethics law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Clark believes CREW’s letter makes a strong case that a violation occurred. Plus, CREW has had success with similar complaints before. As NPR reported in April, the organization filed a complaint against White House social media director Dan Scavino for a tweet advocating for the defeat of Rep. Justin Amash,  . On June 5, the Office of Special Counsel responded by sending Scavino a warning letter that future political activity would result in further action. But since that letter was issued, leadership at the Office of Special Counsel, which handles Hatch Act violations, has had turnover. Carolyn Lerner, an   handled the previous case. With Lerner’s term expiring, however, Trump nominated Henry Kerner to the position. Kerner is a former Republican congressional staffer. Kerner has not yet been confirmed, so CREW’s complaint was directed toward the acting special counsel, Adam Miles. The Scavino and Haley cases do differ, in that Scavino posted his comments directly to Twitter, while Haley retweeted. Clark says that may not matter. ”People retweet for various purposes. Sometimes people say that retweets are not endorsements, but she does not say that or warn people that way,” Clark said. ”It appears to be partisan political activity in support of this South Carolina candidate.” On a spectrum of ethics concerns surrounding the Trump administration, Clark said this may not be a top priority, but it is worth notice. ”There is an overabundance of ethics concerns in this administration. I can’t count on both hands the number, so I would just add this to the list,” she said."
"Since Senate Republicans released the draft of their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act last week, many people have been wondering how the proposed changes will affect their own coverage, and their family’s: Will my   condition be covered? Will my premiums go up or down? The bill is still a work in progress, but we’ve taken a sampling of questions from All Things Considered listeners and answered them, based on what we know now. Q: My husband and I are both in our 50s,   and we have a daughter in college. We buy insurance through the California exchange. Our family premium is now $1, 100 a month with a deductible of $6, 800 per person. We have never received a subsidy. Three months ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was early stage, and I am in treatment with no cancer remaining. We are all very active and healthy otherwise. Here is my concern: Based on what I have read, it appears our age group stands to see the biggest jump in premium costs. Not to mention, I now have a   condition. Will our premiums rise astronomically?  —   Denise Estrada, Los Angeles, Calif. A: This is a   question on premium costs and   conditions, both major concerns to consumers. For a person in their 50s, worries about premium increases are  . Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies are allowed to charge older people up to three times more than young people for the same insurance policies. The Republican health care bills in both the Senate and House would allow insurers to charge up to five times more. That change would likely lead to cheaper health plans for younger people, but also more expensive ones for those over 50. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that a    in Los Angeles County who doesn’t qualify for subsidies would see her premium rise about $2, 600 a year. As for your question about your   condition, the answer would depend on where you live. The Senate bill does preserve the   condition protections that exist under the Affordable Care Act  —   meaning insurance companies must offer you a policy even if you have a medical problem. But it would also allow states to ask for waivers from some federal regulations, including those that define ”essential health benefits.” If a state doesn’t include cancer treatment or pharmaceutical coverage in those benefits, then insurance companies can elect not to pay for some of the care you need. Q: My 2     son has been through eight hospitalizations and is fed partly through a feeding tube. We have insurance through my husband’s employer, and our son qualified for Medicaid last November because of a program in Pennsylvania for children with chronic illnesses. The medical bills we’ve already seen would have been catastrophic without insurance, and our    medical expenses were thousands of dollars a year, even with insurance, before he qualified for Medicaid. His medical care needs have been so intense that I have not been able to work this past year. We are very worried about his future care costs without Medicaid, as well as our ability to afford insurance coverage for him if   conditions are not afforded any legal protections. How is Trumpcare likely to affect our family?  —   Emily Kane, Pittsburgh, Pa. A: It sounds like Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program has been helpful for your child. Under the proposed law, states will have even more power to design their own Medicaid programs, so there’s no reason to think that Pennsylvania would take away a local program that it has implemented. What might be worrisome, however, are the overall reductions to the Medicaid program. The bill turns Medicaid from an   program that pays for all the care beneficiaries need, to one that caps federal spending based on the number of people enrolled. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that if the Senate bill passes, Medicaid spending would be 26 percent lower, over the next decade, than it would be under the Affordable Care Act. Some analysts believe that over time, states will have to cut services, reduce how much they pay doctors and hospitals and make it harder to qualify for Medicaid. Q: My wife and I are both 42, and we have two children, ages 10 and 13. We have coverage through the marketplace but do not qualify for payment assistance. In addition, my wife has rheumatoid arthritis and currently uses expensive monthly injections to treat it. Would insurance still be required to cover my wife’s arthritis treatment under the new law? And how would our premiums be affected?  —   Jeremy Merrill, Cedar Park, Texas, A: As far as premiums go, it looks like yours are likely to remain about the same. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that for a    in Williamson County, Texas, who doesn’t qualify for subsidies, premiums are flat under the new law. Whether your insurance will cover your wife’s condition depends largely on your governor. As I explained above, states can ask for waivers from many of the Affordable Care Act’s consumer protections, including those that define what medical services insurers have to cover. Q: My    daughter has Crohn’s disease. She requires Remicade infusions every six weeks. Each infusion costs $20, 000. I am very concerned about lifetime maximums being reinstated. Additionally, I worry that children will no longer be able to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until 26, and that   conditions will result in higher premiums, even for   plans.  —   Amy Lowe, Dayton, Ohio, A: You only have to worry about one of those things. The Senate bill does include the very popular provision in the Affordable Care Act that allows children to stay on their parents’ health insurance policy until they are 26. However, there is a chance that lifetime spending limits and annual limits [to what an insurer would pay for the care of a given patient] could return. Before the Affordable Care Act, about 60 percent of employers had lifetime limits on their health plans. The section of the bill that allows states to get waivers from federal rules opens the door to those limits making a comeback  —   even in   policies."
"The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office weighed in on the Senate health care bill on Monday, saying that 22 million people would lose health coverage in the next 10 years under the Senate’s plan. Of those, 15 million would lose Medicaid coverage. It’s projected to lower the deficit by billions over 10 years, and also cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Medicaid covers   people including children, pregnant women, older people in nursing homes and the disabled. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government offered subsidies to help states to cover more people, though 19 states chose not to accept the federal money. For individuals who purchase health coverage on the exchanges, the CBO says prices will vary  —   some will see lower premiums, especially in states that opt out of some consumer protections, which will allow insurers to sell plans that offer fewer benefits. However, for people would like to purchase plans that cover the essential health benefits mandated by the Affordable Care Act, including mental health coverage, addiction treatment, maternity care and prescription drug coverage, costs could go way up. Other provisions in the Senate proposal would reduce subsidies and cause    costs to rise, the CBO says. As a result, starting in 2020, ”despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few   people would purchase any plan.”"
"Updated 3:30 p. m. ET, With their health care bill facing a perilous path, Senate Republican leaders have decided to push off a vote until after Congress returns from next week’s July Fourth recess, GOP aides confirm to NPR’s Susan Davis. ”We’re still working toward getting at least 50 people in a comfortable place,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday at a press conference on Capitol Hill. Despite the delay, McConnell confirmed that Republican senators were heading to the White House to meet with President Trump later in the afternoon to continue work on the issue. If three Republicans oppose the bill, it cannot pass. The GOP holds 52 seats, with Vice President Pence as a potential tiebreaker. The delay was announced with at least five Republicans indicating they were against bringing the bill to the floor this week. ”Several of them want more time,” McConnell said. ”We have a number of different discussions going on, that have been going on for six weeks. They continue.” He made the announcement during Senate Republicans’ weekly lunch, which was attended by Vice President Pence. White House chief of staff Reince Preibus and press secretary Sean Spicer were in the Capitol on Tuesday, as well. It’s expected the bill will be altered and get a new score from the Congressional Budget Office before it comes back up. Leaders had been pressing hard for a vote before the holiday. Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas tweeted Monday morning, ”I am closing the door. We need to do it this week before double digit premium increases are announced for next year.” There has been speculation that McConnell had been prepared to bring the bill to the floor, even if it can’t pass, so the Senate can move onto its next big priority: tax reform. Sen. Susan Collins,   said late Monday that she would vote ”no” on a motion to proceed, a procedural step that needs to be taken before a floor debate can even begin on the bill. If two more Republicans were to have voted no on that motion, the bill would have died. Collins cited a report from the Congressional Budget Office released Monday that said the bill would result in 22 million fewer people with health care coverage over the next decade, compared with under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Much of that reduction would be because of the rollback of the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid, which Collins and other Republicans in states that took up the expansion funds have expressed serious reservations over. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski had similar concerns to Collins’. ”I need to understand really what we’re talking about, with some of the conclusions that we saw yesterday with the CBO score,” she told MSNBC. ”Taking the time to get it right is where we should be.” Democrats held a protest on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters, ”We know the fight is not over. That is for sure. We’re not resting on any laurels, nor do we feel any sense yet of accomplishment, other than we are making progress because the American people are listening to our arguments.” But the hurdle for McConnell remains divisions within his own party. Conservative Republicans including Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky had indicated they were very likely to vote no, as they push for greater spending cuts and reduction of regulations on health insurers. Other GOP senators who appear strongly opposed include Dean Heller of Nevada, who excoriated the bill at a press conference on Friday mostly over its cuts, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who had been urging leaders to wait on a vote until after next week’s recess. The House failed to advance a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare in late March, and it was seen as a spectacular failure on the GOP’s most persistent pledge to voters for the past seven years. After rounds of negotiations and amendments, the House passed its bill in early May. The outlook for delaying the bill is tricky. Leaders have been insistent that they need to move on to other issues. To take up tax reform or funding the government in 2018, Senate procedure would require them to scrap the health care effort altogether. Republicans have expressed grave warnings about what that could mean politically. Polls have shown the Republican health care effort is very unpopular overall, with even GOP support for the House bill at just 34 percent in an   Street Journal poll released last week. But that same poll showed that 71 percent of Republicans support repealing the Affordable Care Act, and it would be risky for the GOP to head into the 2018 midterms having failed their base on that pledge. ”I would not bet against Mitch McConnell,” House Speaker Paul Ryan,  . told reporters Tuesday morning when asked about the bill’s fate  —   but before news broke of McConnell’s announcement that he was pushing the vote back. ”He is very, very good at getting things done through the Senate, even with this   majority. I have every expectation that the Senate  —   I don’t know what day  —  but I have every expectation the Senate will move this bill.” The speaker nodded to the political pressure the party is under to deliver on their signature campaign pledge. ”Every Republican senator campaigned on repealing and replacing this law,” he said. The Senate bill repeals the individual mandate to carry health care coverage and the employer mandate for businesses with at least 50 employees to offer coverage. It also repeals most of the taxes enacted under the ACA, which mostly affect   earners and corporations, in addition to rolling back federal subsidies and the expansion of Medicaid. It would allow people up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ plans, and it would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to those with   conditions. Republicans revised the bill on Monday to add a penalty aimed at preventing people from signing up for coverage only once they are sick, which most experts predict would sink the insurance market. ”I’m a ’no’ on it unless the bill changes,” Paul said to reporters on Monday. He has called the bill ”Obamacare Lite” and is seeking a fuller rollback of the ACA. But the changes he wants seem unlikely to be included or would risk losing too many moderates because they would further reduce benefits from the federal government. One frequent critic of Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. was quoted by The Hill as saying Monday, ”If you’re counting on the president to have your back, you need to watch it.” The president confirmed reports last week that he had privately criticized the House version of the health care bill as ”mean,” even though he invited Ryan and members of the House GOP leadership over to the White House Rose Garden for a celebration after it passed. Graham also has said that waiting until after next week’s recess is not likely to make it any easier to pass a bill. The White House led criticism of the CBO report on Monday, assailing its ability to estimate effects on coverage. But Ryan defended the Congressional Budget Office, which has also come under fire by outside conservatives and some Republicans in Congress. ”It is important that we have a scorekeeper,” he said. ”We can always complain about the nature of the score. I think their coverage numbers  —   there’s more to the story than the number implies. Having said that, it’s important that we have a referee.” Many Republicans have taken issue with the CBO forecast, arguing that they believe more Americans will be inclined to sign up if cheaper plans are available. Republicans often note that millions of Americans have opted to pay fines in lieu of signing up for coverage under the ACA. NPR’s Susan Davis contributed to this report. "
"Suddenly, John McEnroe and Serena Williams are involved in a tennis match of words, and the pace picked up Tuesday. Both are rushing the net  —   stick with the metaphor here  —   and firing volleys. First it was McEnroe, who told NPR’s Lulu   on Sunday that while Williams is ”an incredible player,” (she’s won 23 major singles titles and 14 in doubles) she’d be ”like 700 in the world” if she played on the men’s circuit. Williams volleyed back via Twitter  —   with humor, it should be noted. ”Dear John, I adore and respect you but please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based.” ”I’ve never played anyone ranked ’there’ nor do I have time. Respect me and my privacy as I’m trying to have a baby. Good day sir.” And a McEnroe return volley Tuesday on CBS This Morning. When asked whether he wanted to apologize to Serena, he said no. But he did suggest a way the verbal rally, perhaps, could end. ”Why don’t you combine, just solve the problem? I’m sure the men would be all for this, the men and women play together, and then we don’t have to guess.” Here’s another suggestion. Just stop. Both throw down your rackets,   and walk away. And make it a teaching moment for everyone. Because the whole male athlete vs. female athlete comparison debate is  . It’s one of sport’s third rail debates. I encountered it recently doing this story on the fabulous WNBA star Diana Taurasi. Speaking to veteran women’s basketball writer Mechelle Voepel, I mentioned that when Taurasi first burst onto the national scene, as a hotshot guard in college playing for mighty UConn, a lot of male basketball fans marveled at the way she ”played like a guy.” The way she intuitively moved around the court, flicked jump shots and slashed to the hoop  —   skills generally associated with playground ”ballers.” Voepel, a knowledgeable and talented writer, is also a kind person. So she refrained from calling me a moron. But she did make the following point. ”I’ve always heard that ’plays like a guy’ thing,” she said. ”What bothers me is that it delineates ’playing like a guy’ is good. And then the opposite is playing like a girl is bad. It always makes me wonder, are people watching high level women’s sports? Because they all play like they know what they’re doing. Nobody’s in the WNBA that doesn’t have a high degree of athleticism, the ability to do a lot of things on the basketball court. ”Women are supposed to be complimented by it, but mainly I find it irritating, because I don’t think ’play like a guy’ means anything other than you play like you know what you’re doing. And both men and women can play that way.” It’s an important point. Female athletes almost always will lose the women vs. men argument in   sports because the men almost always have more strength and speed. But as Voepel points out, that omits other significant attributes such as mental toughness, feel for a sport, understanding of a sport. So perhaps, once again, we resolve the issue by agreeing not to compare. But to appreciate Diana Taurasi for what she does, and Golden State Warriors star guard Stephen Curry for what he does. And leave it there. Although, we still have that McEnroe vs. Williams rally hanging in the balance. In his CBS interview Tuesday, McEnroe said he didn’t know his comments about Williams would create controversy. He’s a smart guy who’s been around sports a long time so it’s kind of hard to believe him. He’s also a funny and   guy who acknowledged he would ”currently be about 1, 200 in the world” if he played on the men’s circuit today. McEnroe at 1, 200 to Williams’ 700? McEnroe just popped up his volley. Williams moves in to end it with a thunderous  . Point, Serena."
"What would it cost to protect the nation’s voting systems from attack? About $400 million would go a long way, say cybersecurity experts. It’s not a lot of money when it comes to national defense  —   the Pentagon spent more than that last year on military bands alone  —   but getting funds for election systems is always a struggle. At a Senate intelligence committee hearing last week about Russian hacking during last year’s election, Jeanette Manfra  the acting deputy under secretary for cybersecurity at the Department Homeland Security recommended that election officials have a   audit process to identify anomalies after an election. While that’s the advice most cybersecurity experts give, right now more than a dozen states use electronic voting machines that have no paper backup. Replacing those machines would go a long way toward protecting one of the core functions of democracy, says Larry Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. ”I don’t think that would cost a huge amount of money. I think it would probably cost between $200 million and $300 million to replace that equipment,” adding that $400 million is his top estimate. But try finding the money. Congress provided $3 billion to help states replace their punch card machines after the 2000 presidential election but since then, funds have been scarce. A $30 million plan in Arkansas to replace voting equipment, including paperless touchscreen machines, has been left unfunded. Two years ago, Virginia lawmakers rejected Governor Terry McAuliffe’s request for $28 million to upgrade that state’s voting machines, some of which are also paperless. In Ohio, officials say their voting system is secure, but would be even more secure if they can replace their aging equipment before the 2020 presidential election. Timothy Ward, president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials and election director in Madison County, says as in most of the nation, Ohio’s voting machines are more than a decade old. He laughs when asked where election officials will find the money for replacements. His county alone could need as much as $1. 8 million. ”That’s the $64, 000 question,” he says. ”Either the county’s going to have step up and spend that kind of money, which I don’t see that happening. Or the state’s going to have to step up and I don’t see that happening. Or the feds are going to have to step up. And it’s going to be who blinks first.” Right now, no one’s blinking. Several bills have been introduced in Congress to provide more funds for voting equipment, but they’ve gone nowhere so far. President Trump’s budget also includes no new funding for states to improve election security. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security is offering to help states identify where their systems are vulnerable to attack and how they can be made more secure. Manfra recommends   systems so election officials can audit results, where the electronic vote tally is compared with the paper one. An audit is one of the best ways to ensure there’s been no tampering, says Ed Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton University. ”If you’ve sampled enough ballots in the right way, then you can have high confidence statistically that the election was done correctly, or that if there were any errors they were not big enough to affect the result,” he says. Right now, about half the states conduct   audits, but few do the targeted ones that Felten and other security experts say are needed. Norden, of the Brennan Center, says audits wouldn’t cost very much to do. ”We’re certainly talking in the tens of thousands of dollars, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in very close cases,” he says, adding that the cost would be even lower in races where the margin of victory is wide. In any case, Norden says the price tag of an audit pales in comparison to the security it would provide."
"Three investigative journalists at CNN have resigned after the network retracted a story about a congressional inquiry into a link between a Russian investment fund and an American financier who is an adviser to President Trump. Those departing are a past Pulitzer Prize winner, a finalist for the award and a senior editor who had been at CNN since 2001. The resignations are a sign of the stakes for CNN. The cable channel has beefed up its investigative team with major hires from The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among other outlets, to add more reportorial heft to its coverage of the Trump administration. The network also routinely bears much of the brunt of Trump’s rhetorical attacks on the press. CNN’s Jim Acosta gets into almost daily skirmishes with White House press secretary Sean Spicer over questions about the administration’s transparency. The retracted piece was posted to CNN. com last Thursday under the byline of reporter Thomas Frank. The story, which hinged on an unnamed source, said that Senate investigators were looking into a meeting between Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci and the CEO of the $10 billion Russian Direct Investment Fund just days before Trump’s inauguration in January. Scaramucci denied he had done anything wrong, and some of the article’s characterizations soon came under challenge. On Friday night, CNN removed the story from its site. After being contacted by a reporter for BuzzFeed, CNN posted an editor’s note retracting the story, saying it did not meet the network’s editorial standards, and it apologized to Scaramucci. Scaramucci, who had been said to be under consideration for a post in the administration, accepted the apology on Twitter. As senior news executives reviewed the story’s evolution, they found red flags that appeared to have been ignored, according to a person with direct knowledge of the events at CNN. Officials within CNN’s standards and practices unit had raised concerns about several elements of the story, including the reliance on a single source, and others at the network were surprised to see it had been posted anyway. The network did not conclude the report was conclusively wrong, according to the person with knowledge of the incident, but said executives believed it was not solid enough for publication. Those who resigned Monday were Lex Haris, the executive editor of CNN Investigates who is a veteran editor at the network Eric Lichtblau, who edited the piece and had shared a Pulitzer at The New York Times for his reporting on warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration and Frank, who had been lured away from USA Today, where he had been a Pulitzer finalist. None of the three journalists responded to NPR’s requests for comment. Haris issued this statement to his CNN colleague Brian Stelter: ”On Friday, CNN retracted a story published by my team. As Executive Editor of that team, I have resigned,” Haris said in the statement. ”I’ve been with CNN since 2001, and am sure about one thing: This is a news organization that prizes accuracy and fairness above all else. I am leaving, but will carry those principles wherever I go.” Earlier this month, CNN had to correct another story in which Lichtblau was involved it claimed that former FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony would contradict Trump’s claims that Comey told him several times that he was not under federal investigation. CNN’s Gloria Borger went on the air and said Comey would testify that it would not have been proper to do so. Neither contention proved to be true. Comey testified instead that he had given Trump assurances that he was not personally under FBI investigation. CNN corrected that earlier story, but it put more attention internally on Lichtblau, who had shared the byline with Borger and two others and who had also edited the piece, according to the CNN source. Some conservative journalists who have been critical of CNN gave the network high marks last night. Seth Mandel, the   editor at Rupert Murdoch’s conservative New York Post, said conservatives should praise CNN: ”This is   grownup stuff.” CNN executives, from CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker on down, believe they cannot get stories wrong given Trump’s willingness to attack the network. And the president did not miss the opportunity that CNN’s most recent misfire offered, tweeting frequently throughout the morning on Tuesday. In one, he wrote: ”What about all the other phony stories they do?” In another, Trump retweeted someone else’s satiric logo FNN  —   for ”the Fake News Network.”"
"A grand jury indicted three Chicago police officers on felony charges on Tuesday, accusing them of conspiring to cover up the facts of a fatal police shooting in October 2014 of a black teenager in order to shield their fellow officer. Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is white, shot    Laquan McDonald 16 times, according to prosecutors. Dashcam footage, eventually released under a court order more than a year after the killing, showed Van Dyke shooting McDonald as he walked away from the officer. Van Dyke has been charged with   murder and pleaded not guilty. Police initially told a different story, and the Cook County grand jury indictment alleges that three officers  —   David March, Joseph Walsh and Thomas Gaffney  —   were at the scene of the killing and worked together to conceal crucial facts in the initial police report. The report, which was shown to be false in light of the dashcam video, had stated that McDonald was assaulting the three officers, forcing Van Dyke to step in to defend them. The inaccurate story stated that McDonald was lunging toward Van Dyke and slashing a knife when he shot him. In fact, the police report described Van Dyke, Walsh and Gaffney as ”victims” of McDonald. ”The indictment makes clear that these defendants did more than merely obey an unofficial ’code of silence,’ ” Special Prosecutor Patricia Holmes Brown said in a statement. ”[R]ather it alleges that they lied about what occurred to prevent independent criminal investigators from learning the truth.” According to the indictment, the men knew that a ”public airing of the events surrounding Laquan McDonald’s killing, including the video recordings, would inexorably lead to a thorough criminal investigation by an independent body and likely criminal charges.” All three men are accused of failing to locate at least three witnesses who might present a different version of events. March also allegedly ”failed to locate, identify, and preserve physical evidence . .. including video and photographic evidence.” They are also accused of coordinating with one another and attempting to conceal the conspiracy from other law enforcement authorities. March, Walsh and Gaffney are each charged with three felony counts: conspiracy, official misconduct and obstruction of justice. The men could face years in prison and fines of tens of thousands of dollars, according to the prosecutor. The prosecutor says March has served the Chicago Police Department for more than 30 years, and Walsh and Gaffney for about 20 years. Brown told reporters that the three men are not in custody. They are scheduled to appear at an arraignment on July 10. According to The Associated Press, Walsh and March are no longer on the force. The wire service adds that Gaffney ”has been suspended because of the felony indictment, according to the department.” A scathing Justice Department report released in the final days of the Obama administration concluded that the Chicago Police Department ”engages in a pattern or practice of the use of excessive force.” The investigation was launched in the wake of the McDonald killing."
"A federal judge is ordering Alabama to improve the way it treats mentally ill prisoners after ruling that the state fails to provide constitutionally adequate mental health care in state lockups. U. S. District Judge Myron Thompson of Montgomery says Alabama is putting prisoners’ lives at risk with ”horrendously inadequate” care and a lack of services for inmates with psychiatric problems. The ruling comes in a class action lawsuit brought by inmates who argued the conditions violated the U. S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. ”This ruling means that prisoners with mental illness may finally get the treatment they have been denied for so long,” says Maria Morris, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, which represents some of prisoners who sued. ”The suffering some of these men and women have endured is excruciating and inhumane,” Morris says. ”We are pleased Judge Thompson has demanded that the state of Alabama meet its constitutional obligation to provide adequate care.” Potential remedies, In a   ruling, Thompson outlines ”serious systemic deficiencies” in the delivery of mental health services. He says inmates are subject to serious harm and increased suicide risk in the way the state identifies, treats, houses, and disciplines   prisoners. Thompson writes about the severe effects of warehousing, rather than treating seriously   prisoners. He says the impacts were crystallized when a prisoner who testified during the civil trial last year later committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell. ”Without question, [Jamie] Wallace’s testimony and the tragic event that followed darkly draped all the subsequent testimony like a pall,” says Thompson in the ruling. At the time, he approved an interim settlement in which the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) agreed to 15 changes, including putting a licensed mental health worker in every state prison, and providing constant observation for inmates on suicide watch. Thompson is now ordering   meetings between corrections officials and lawyers for the inmates to come up with a remedy. ”The court emphasizes that given the severity and urgency of the need for   care explained in this opinion, the proposed relief must be both immediate and long term,” he says. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey says she’s committed to providing   conditions for all prisoners, and plans to meet with Corrections Commissioner Jefferson Dunn, and legislative leaders. ”All appropriate options at my disposal, including the possibility of a special session, will be considered as potential remedies to address the judge’s order,” Ivey says in a written statement. Deliberate indifference, Critics say the fix should have already come. Judge Thompson finds evidence that the state has shown ”deliberate indifference” to the unconstitutional conditions. ”Officials admitted on the stand that they have done little to nothing to fix problems on the ground, despite their knowledge that those problems may be putting lives at risk,” Thompson says. The problems are driven by chronic overcrowding and understaffing, acknowledged by Commissioner Dunn who testified about wrestling with the ”  monster” plaguing Alabama’s prisons. State lockups are at nearly double capacity, with staffing levels that are half what they should be. For example, as the trial was starting last December, the state had just 21 doctors for more than   prisoners. ”For far too long, Alabama prisons have been little more than warehouses where many people struggling with mental illness have been hidden away and abandoned by the state,” says Lisa Borden, an attorney with the law firm Baker Donelson, which represents some of the inmates who sued. ”We look forward to now having the opportunity for our clients to receive real treatment for their illnesses, and to seeing them afforded the basic dignity to which any human being is entitled,” Bordon says. Dunn says the order requires a broader conversation with political leaders. ”While portions of the trial focused upon issues related to mental health care, it also highlighted many of the other challenges facing the department like our outdated facilities and our   needs in the area of security,” says Dunn. ”We look forward to having an open and frank conversation with our state leadership about how to make meaningful investments into our department to ensure the safety of our staff, the security of our facilities and the   of those in our care.” Alabama’s   legislature has passed some sentencing reforms and other measures aimed at reducing inmate populations in recent years but stopped short of approving a massive prison building program this year. Escalating violence is also a problem for ADOC. Last year the U. S. Justice Department opened a civil rights probe into whether prisoners are safe from physical harm and sexual abuse at the hands of both other prisoners and guards. The investigation came after several inmates and guards were killed or injured in violent confrontations in state prisons."
"On Tuesday the Department of Labor got closer to dismantling an   overtime regulation that has been in limbo for months and would make millions of Americans eligible for additional pay. The department sent a formal request for information on the rule to the Office of Management and Budget. The rule was one of the Obama administration’s labor policy cornerstones. It said anyone making less than $47, 476 a year would be eligible for     pay for hours worked beyond a   work week, doubling the previous salary threshold. ”Our whole mission here is about strengthening and growing the middle class,” Tom Perez, who was labor secretary then, told NPR’s Scott Horsley. ”In order to do that, we need to ensure that middle class jobs pay middle class wages.” But 21 states as well as business groups sued, saying the move amounted to federal overreach and would burden the public and private sector. A federal judge ultimately agreed, blocking implementation of the policy about a week before it was supposed to go into effect on Dec. 1, 2016. As Scott reported, ”The rule was one of the administration’s most   efforts to boost pay for workers at the lower end of the income ladder. It’s one of many administrative actions that was already facing the threat of reversal from the incoming Trump administration.” After President Trump took office, his Labor Secretary signaled he would try to amend the rule, lowering the salary threshold. On Tuesday, the Labor Department moved toward that change by sending a Request for Information to the OMB. ”Once approved by OMB that request would ask the public to comment on a number of questions that would inform our thinking,” Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday. Acosta was responding to Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander from Tennessee who told him, ”That was a bad rule.” Alexander said the rapid increase in the salary threshold would be ”just too high for many parts of the country.” He added, ”So I would urge you to show us how to write a good overtime regulation.” Acosta did not comment on his definition of a good overtime regulation. But on the Obama regulation, Acosta testified at his confirmation hearing in March that expanding the workforce receiving overtime may ”create a stress on the system.” But he also said it was ”unfortunate” the rule had not been updated in more than a decade because life has ”become more expensive,” as reported by The Washington Post."
"An Emmett Till historical marker in Money, Miss. has been vandalized two times in as many months, most recently last week, when panels with the   ’s image and his story were peeled off. Installed in 2011, the sign stands on the Mississippi Freedom Trail, which commemorates people, places and events that played a part in the civil rights movement. Allan Hammons, whose firm made the marker and manages the Trail, told The Associated Press that in addition to the panels being peeled off last week, somebody used a blunt tool to scratch the sign last month. The sign marks the spot outside Bryant’s Grocery Store, where in 1955, Till did something any kid could relate to: He bought candy. The white shopkeeper accused him of flirting and told her husband. A few days later, Till  —   an    —   was kidnapped, tortured and killed, his body dumped in a river. Till’s mother, refusing to cover up the horror of what happened, insisted on an open casket at her son’s funeral. Earlier this year, the woman at the center of the allegations admitted the story she told about Till was made up, according to the author of a new book. In The Blood of Emmett Till, Carolyn Donham tells author Timothy B. Tyson that she gave testimony about Till grabbing her around the waist and using obscenities, ”but that part is not true.” Donham had testified in the 1955 murder trial of her   Roy Bryant, and    J. W. Milam. They were acquitted by an   jury. The next year, the two men gave a detailed confession about killing Till in an article for Look magazine. More than six decades later, the vandalism of the grocery store sign is not unique a number of civil rights markers have been vandalized in Mississippi in recent years, reports The  . ”KKK” was scrawled on an Emmett Till Memorial Highway sign in 2006. And in October, the marker at the Tallahatchie River where Till’s body was found was riddled with bullet holes. ”These are easy targets, a   outlet for racism,” Dave Tell, who works on the Emmett Till Memory Project, told the newspaper. Hammons told the AP, he doesn’t know whether the latest defacement of the Till sign is racially motivated or just random vandalism."
"Tales from the American West are marked by heroism, romance and plenty of cruelty. Among those stories, the saga of the Donner Party stands alone  —   a band of pioneers set out in covered wagons for California, and eventually, stranded, snowbound and starving, resorted to cannibalism. Author Michael Wallis says the story of Donner Party has been sensationalized over the years. His new book chronicles the journey from its beginning, illuminating the challenges the families faced and the fatal error that set them on a tragic course  —   accepting bad advice that an uncharted shortcut would ease their passage to California. About half of the party survived. Without the cannibalism, Wallis suspects the   pioneers would have become a ”footnote” in history. Instead, ”the focus continues to be on the cannibalism itself,” he says, ”when in fact there’s so much more. That’s why I wanted to tell the back story.” His new book is called The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny. On the   Party, The three principal leaders of what came to be commonly called the   Party were the two Donner brothers, George and Jacob Donner, and James Reed, an Irish immigrant who struck it rich in the lead mines of Illinois. Reed became friends, at least good strong acquaintances of the Donner brothers, and those were the three that forged this plan to take their families, to take their livestock, to take their belongings and to move West  —   to follow the California trail to the   ”land of milk and honey.” On what they packed for their journey  Both the Donner brothers and James Reed did their research, and they were actually quite   when they embarked on this long journey across the rest of the continent. They knew that . .. as many as four to six oxen were necessary to pull those wagons loaded with all of their belongings that they wanted to bring with them to start these new lives. They brought with them cattle and spare horses, saddle horses. They brought essentials that they thought that they would need along the way and once they got to California, including items that they could use to trade and win the good graces of people they might encounter along the way. . .. They brought books, they brought bottles of fine wine. In James Reed’s case, he brought such a fine wagon that years later it came to be called ”the prairie palace.” He equipped it with a big feather bed for his infirm    to rest in on the journey. He put a cook stove in it. . .. It was quite a sight on the road. And most of this material, of course, never made it to the Sierras. It eventually had to be discarded along the way. On the   Hastings Cutoff, an alternate route proposed by Lansford Hastings, [Explorer James Clyman, a friend of James Reed, made] a visit to Illinois . .. and sat down over beverages that evening around a fire with members of the   Party and focused on James Reed and said, ”Don’t take this shortcut! Lansford Hastings doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He, in fact, has never taken this cutoff himself. I advise you strongly, don’t take it. Stick to the known California trail. Don’t take this shortcut that’s going to save you time, because it won’t.” And unfortunately James Reed didn’t heed his old friend’s advice. On crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert  They needed to trim down the physical size of their caravan, and that meant leaving behind any nonessentials like big feather beds and iron cook stoves, and sadly some of the animals that couldn’t make the journey. Some things were cached, buried in the desert sands, always hopeful that they’d come back and get them. Alas, that never really happened. But they pressed on, facing this horrific heat and agony of the salt desert, and at night, the freezing temperatures. It just took toll after toll after toll on these people and on their animals. They begin to break up a little bit physically. People move ahead and so forth. This happened throughout the whole journey. On the group starting to break up, There were some deaths. There was the death of a young infant. There was a death of a sick man they had picked up along the way. They lost a lot of their animals. They had to leave behind certain wagons belonging to the different families and groups. They had to consolidate. They had to . .. learn to work together, something that proved to be very difficult. There was already a force at work undermining what should’ve been a cohesive group. Part of that is, I think, just human nature. It was starting to be survival of the fittest and families pulling themselves into themselves and being concerned mostly with their immediate family as opposed to the whole group. On the atrocities the pioneers committed against Native Americans, I don’t think people realize that California, what became the state of California, was particularly brutal. [For] many California tribes, it was total genocide. There are stories of Anglos going out and literally having target practice by shooting Indians. That was part of that whole Manifest Destiny thing  —   ”we” could possess the continent because there were no people out there. There were Mexicans, yes, a lot of it belonged to Mexico and there were all these Plains Indians, but they in fact weren’t people, they weren’t human beings, so it’s ”ours” for the taking. On the winter coming earlier than expected, By October, it became evident that winter was setting much earlier than expected, and in fact, it did. That, of course, was another big problem, another big reason for this tragedy. They made it up to what’s called Truckee Meadows, right around where Reno now is, and were looking towards the Sierras. . .. They got to these meadows. . .. They rested a bit too long. They ended up literally stopped by these winter storms. They could go no further, so they set up camp . .. and there they stayed from October throughout the winter of   just trying to survive. On their failed attempts to get over the Sierra mountains  They didn’t get into these camps and just give up and sit down, there were forays out. . .. They’d get up as far as they could go and then they’d be repelled by this incredibly deep snow  —   we’re talking about snow   and   deep, just impossible to get through. They would even fashion snowshoes, and they tried all kinds of ways to get through the snow and couldn’t. On turning to cannibalism to survive  They ate literally everything before they had to turn to human flesh. They of course killed the great oxen, the horses, everything, and ate that meat. They boiled the hides, they picked out the bone marrow, they made this gelatinous, awful goo from the hides, and it had very little, if any, nutritional value. They ate field mice they caught in their cabins and camps. They finally got to the point where they had to kill all of their beloved dogs, very sadly, and ate all of them. Then they were chewing on pine cones and ponderosa pine bark. They’re starving and they’re freezing to death, they’re becoming delirious, they had to chew on something, so they chewed on anything they could find. But ultimately, they turned to the protein that was the human  —   the dead companions, friends, family that they had storehoused that had already died from starvation and from hypothermia in the snow banks. They did that totally to survive, but it was very much the last resort. . .. They tried their best not to consume flesh of family members, they were so careful. On putting himself in their situation, When people say to me, ”This cannibalism, how awful!” I always just turn it right around on them and say, ”What would you do? What would you do if you were starving to death, freezing to death, and your children were around you, and you saw them, and they were dying, and you knew that this store of protein was there? What would you do?” I know what I would do. . .. Out of all those parties that did [survive] two entire families survived, two large families [including the Reed family.] . .. But it was just the Reed family alone that never partook of a piece of human flesh, they were somehow able to avoid that due to the diligence and the care of the mother, Margaret Reed. On members of the Donner Party murdering two Native Americans who came to their aid, These two Miwoks were with [a segment of the Donner Party,] the Forlorn Hope Party, and after cannibalism in the Forlorn Party began, the two Indians refused to eat human flesh. They were growing weaker and weaker and ultimately the rationalism was, once again, ”Well, these are Indians, so they’re fair game.” So they were shot, field dressed, and eaten. . .. Ironically, a few days later there were Miwok Indians who came to the aid of the Forlorn Hope and made sure they got down to safety. On what can be learned from the Donner Party today, I think it tells us not only about the American West but really about the whole nation. . .. So many people find that really the idea of Manifest Destiny still exists in this country, this whole idea of American exceptionalism. . .. Those of us who do not learn our history are doomed to repeat it  —   the sins of the past  —   and that’s certainly the case with the Donner Party. The words that ring out to me continually are two words that combined can be very fatal, then as now, and those words are: ignorance and arrogance. On a sentence from a letter Patty Reed wrote to a cousin after she was rescued  I think [this] serves as . .. a fitting benediction to this whole story  —   this is what she wrote: ”We have left everything, but I don’t care for that. We have got through with our lives. Don’t let this letter dishearten anybody. Remember: Never take no   and hurry along as fast as you can.” Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Molly   and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web."
"  million. That’s the number of bees Max Nikolaychuk tends in the rolling hills east of Fresno, Calif. Each is worth a fraction of a cent, but together, they make up a large part of his livelihood. Nikolaychuk makes most of his money during almond pollination season, renting out the bees to California’s almond orchards. This year, a thief stole four stacks of his hives. ”He knew about the bees, because he went through every bee colony I had and only took the good ones,” he says. ”But, you know, the bee yards  —   I don’t have no security there, no fences.” That lack of security means his bees have been stolen more than once. And it’s a type of theft that’s been playing out all over the state’s orchards. Literally billions of bees are needed to pollinate California’s almond crop. Not enough bees live in California   to do that. So they are trucked in from across the country, from places like Colorado, Arizona and Montana. Earlier this year, around a million dollars’ worth of stolen bees were found in a field in Fresno County. Sgt. Arley Terrence with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department says it was a ”beehive chop shop.” ”There were so many different beehives and bee boxes owned by so many different victims,” Terrence says. ”All of these stolen bee boxes that we recovered  —   none of them were stolen in Fresno County.” The bees were stolen from across California, but they belong to beekeepers from around the country. A few thousand bee boxes disappear every year, but this bee heist was different. ”This is the biggest bee theft investigation that we’ve had,” Terrence says. Most of the time, he says, beehive thieves turn out to be ”someone within the bee community.” That was the case in the giant heist earlier this year. The alleged thief, Pavel Tveretinov, was a beekeeper from Sacramento who used the stolen bees for pollination and then stashed them on a plot of land in Fresno County. He was arrested and could face around 10 years of jail time. And authorities say he didn’t act alone. His alleged accomplice, Vitaliy Yeroshenko, has been charged and a warrant is out for his arrest. Steve Godlin with the California State Beekeepers Association says the problem of hive theft gets worse every year. ”There used to be kind of a code of honor that you didn’t mess with another man’s bees,” Godlin says. But the alleged perpetrators of this giant hive theft broke that code. ”He went way, way over the line, Godlin says. ”It’s just, you know, heart breaking when you go out and your bees are gone.”  Godlin has had hives stolen in the past. He and many other beekeepers make their income not just from renting out hives but also from selling the honey the bees produce. So when bees are stolen, beekeepers lose out on both sources of income. Godlin says it takes time to develop a new hive by introducing a new queen and developing honey. ”Bees, you know, we have been hit by everything from vandals to bears to thieves. But the vandalism and thieving is the worst. You know, the one that hurts the most.” Godlin says his organization will pay a reward of up to $10, 000 for tips leading to the prosecution of bee thieves. But that only relieves some of the sting."
"Queen Elizabeth II is set to get a raise, with much of the money going toward sprucing up Buckingham Palace, reports the BBC. The annual   Sovereign Grant is ballooning to £82 million (or $105 million) up 8 percent from last year. In addition to palace upkeep, it goes toward staff salaries and official travel. ”Consider that against what the queen does and represents for this country, I believe it represents excellent value for money,” Keeper of the Privy Purse Alan Reid, who manages the royal family’s finances, tells the BBC. The Sovereign Grant comes from taxpayer pounds but is based on the profits of the Crown Estate  —   one of the United Kingdom’s biggest commercial property portfolios. Established in the 18th century, it consists of offices, wind farms, shops and residences and saw its profits rise 8 percent to $420 million in the year that ended in March 2017, reports The Guardian. The increase couldn’t come at a better time, since a $472 million renovation is in the works at Buckingham Palace. Rather than regilding any thrones, officials tell the BBC that the work includes replacing boilers and pipes and seeks to prevent building failure, including from the risk of floods and fire. But the raise is raising some eyebrows as it comes at a time of austerity and on the heels of London’s devastating Grenfell Tower fire that killed at least 79 people. The inferno exposed dangerous infrastructure  —   especially in the form of combustible exterior paneling  —   that many   residents are exposed to, highlighting the divide between rich and poor, says the BBC. The queen’s increased payouts are expected to continue for around a decade  —   the estimated length of time for the palace renovation, says the BBC."
"The last film by documentary giant Albert Maysles gets a rare screening this week in New York. It’s called In Transit, and it takes place entirely on the Empire Builder, a train that runs between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest over three days. Some passengers are heading toward new opportunities, while others are just trying to get away. One scene features a young man travelling from Mississippi to Seattle. He says, ”Nobody at work knew I was fixing to just pack up all my stuff and leave. . .. They actually thought I was going to be at work last night. . .. Sometimes you just gotta do it. You know, what do you have really to lose?” In Transit caps a long and distinguished career for Albert Maysles. The documentary was finished more than two years ago, just before the   director died at the age of 88. Since then, Maysles’ last movie has been difficult to see because of questions about who owns the rights. (Audiences in New York can see it on two screens this week, including the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem.) Rebekah Maysles, the filmmaker’s daughter, says, ”He had always thought that it would be wonderful to make a film about people who were on these trains  —   meet them, and then follow them off the train. It was a place where you could have access to all different people with all different stories.” But raising the money for such an ambitious project proved challenging  —   even for a man who helped invent the documentary film. Albert and his brother David Maysles were pioneers of what they called ”direct cinema”: stories without narrators that turned ordinary people into    figures. Several of their films are considered classics of the genre, including 1969’s Salesman, about a    Bible salesmen, and 1975’s Grey Gardens, about two eccentric socialites living in a crumbling mansion. Maylses had been thinking about making In Transit since the 1960s. He called it ”my dream film” during an interview at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 2009, when he was 82 years old. He said, ”As any of you would know who have travelled on a train  —   even on a bus, and sometimes on a plane  —   meeting strangers, and strangers become friends. That is my goal always in what I do.” Finally, four years ago, Maysles found a willing partner for his train movie. The cable channel   America put up $600, 000 for Maysles and his team to produce an   TV special. The filmmaker and his crew settled on the Empire Builder, and producer Erika Dilday says they shot more than 400 hours of material as the trains rolled across Indian reservations, oil fields and ”this barren winter country.” She says, ”That beauty that he wanted to catch of people in just this moment in time, who lay themselves out there for you  —   I think it’s magic.” Maysles doesn’t ask lot of questions in the film. Lynn True, In Transit’s   and editor, says, ”For him, it was about observing and listening, and allowing things to unfold as they will. You know, he was probably the least nervous of all of us that we would get a film out of this.” In the end, Maysles and his crew collected enough material to make a longer,   documentary. The filmmaker approved the final cut just a few days before he died, in the spring of 2015. Producer Erika Dilday says she was working with   America to release the film in theaters. ”They were starting to put together a big PR campaign,” she says. ”And that’s when everything folded.”   America abruptly shut down in early 2016. In Transit played some film festivals, but it was never broadcast on TV and never got a wider release. Dilday says she approached the network about buying the rights to the film through the Maysles Documentary Center, which she runs, but   has never responded. ”I think the film should be here,” she says. ”This film belongs with the Maysles family and the Maysles Center.”   did not respond to requests for comment. The final cut of In Transit remains at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, which hopes to screen it again when this week’s run is over  —   but nothing is scheduled."
"Geri Allen, a widely influential jazz pianist, composer and educator who defied classification while steadfastly affirming her roots in the   tradition of her native Detroit, died Tuesday in Philadelphia. She was 60, and had lived for the last four years in Pittsburgh. The cause was cancer, said Ora Harris, her manager of 30 years. The news shocked Allen’s devoted listeners, as well as her peers and the many pianists she directly influenced. In addition to her varied and commanding work as a leader, Allen made her mark as a venturesome improviser on notable albums with the   Ornette Coleman, Oliver Lake, Steve Coleman and Charles Lloyd drummer Ralph Peterson, Jr. bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian and many others. Her recent collaborations with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, in separate trios featuring bassist Esperanza Spalding and tenor saxophonist David Murray, found her in a ceaselessly exploratory mode, probing new harmonic expanses and dynamic arcs. Allen’s solo piano work, from Home Grown in 1985 to Flying Toward the Sound in 2010, reveals an uncommon technical prowess and kaleidoscopic tonal range. The subtitle of Flying Toward the Sound claims inspiration from Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock specifically, but on this and other recordings we hear Allen, unfailingly distinctive. From Home Grown, the track ”Black Man,” with its looping, interlocking pulses and forward momentum, points clearly toward a rhythmic sensibility heard today from such celebrated pianists as Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer. Geri Antoinette Allen was born June 12, 1957 in Pontiac, Mich. and raised in Detroit. Her father, Mount V. Allen, Jr. was a principal in the Detroit public school system, and her mother, Barbara Jean, was a defense contract administrator for the U. S. government. Allen took up the piano at age 7 and went on to graduate from Cass Technical High School, the alma mater of jazz greats on the order of Paul Chambers, Wardell Gray, Gerald Wilson and Donald Byrd. While in school, Allen became a protégée of the late trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, who directed the Jazz Development Workshop and also mentored saxophonist Kenny Garrett and violinist Regina Carter, among many others. (Belgrave would go on to appear on Allen’s albums The Nurturer and Maroons in the early 1990s.) From another mentor, the late drummer Roy Brooks, Allen developed a deep love for Thelonious Monk, whose compositions she masterfully interpreted. Allen graduated from Howard University in 1979, as one of the first students to complete a jazz studies degree there. She earned an M. A. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982. For part of a year she sustained herself touring with former Supreme Mary Wilson. In 1984, she debuted with The Printmakers, a tight, imaginative trio session with bassist Anthony Cox and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Soon afterward, Allen made a series of statements with the vanguardist   Collective, spearheaded by Steve Coleman. She appeared on his debut album, Motherland Pulse, in 1985, and on several subsequent releases by his flagship band, Five Elements. Her own album Open On All Sides In The Middle, from 1986, featured Coleman in a bustling   ensemble, alongside other players including Belgrave and trombonist Robin Eubanks. Trio summits followed with Ron Carter, a fellow Cass Tech alum, and Tony Williams (Twenty One) with Haden and Motian (Etudes, Live at the Village Vanguard) and with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette (The Life of a Song). In each setting, Allen proved more than a virtuoso able to marshal the greatest rhythm sections she was a musical partner with prodigious ears, motivated by the percussive energy of the   the elusive unified spark of   swing and the expressive truth of piano balladry. Allen’s 1996 encounter with Ornette Coleman, documented on the albums Sound Museum: Hidden Man and Sound Museum: Three Women, stands out in part for its historical significance: this was the first time since Walter Norris on Somethin’ Else! !!! in 1958 that an acoustic pianist had recorded with Coleman. The piano had little use in his   music, because it tended to impose a conventional chordal fixity not with Allen on the bandstand. She played a multifaceted textural and contrapuntal role, her   harmonic knowledge guiding but never limiting her, from gorgeous and evocative rubato episodes to urgent free blowing. Her melodic voice, too, sometimes moving in unison with Coleman, brought a clarion intensity that remains unique in his output. Along with her rare qualities as a player, Allen had significant impact as an educator for 10 years at the University of Michigan. She began as director of jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh, her alma mater, in 2013, succeeding one of her mentors, Nathan Davis. Three years later she became artistic director of the Carr Center  —   characterized by Mark Stryker, author of the forthcoming book Made In Detroit: Jazz From The Motor City, as ”a downtown Detroit arts organization that primarily champions   culture and has a strong arts education program.” In both her institutional work and her musical projects, Allen engaged in a serious way with jazz as part of a larger   continuum in the arts. Her 2013 album Grand River Crossings: Motown  Motor City Inspirations was a hometown homage, but also a reflection on the porous boundaries of black music. Last year the artist Carrie Mae Weems welcomed Allen and her trio to the Guggenheim Museum for part of a performance series called ”Past   Perfect.” In her own work, Allen often sought to broaden her reference points and sonic palette, featuring the Atlanta Jazz Chorus on Timeless Portraits and Dreams (2006) the electric and acoustic guitar of Living Colour’s Vernon Reid on The Gathering (1998) and tap dancers Lloyd Storey, on Open On All Sides In The Middle, and Maurice Chestnut, on Geri Allen  Time Line Live (2010). She shed light on the legacy of the   pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams on Zodiac Suite: Revisited, credited to the Mary Lou Williams Collective, with bassist Buster Williams and drummers Billy Hart and Andrew Cyrille. Allen is survived by her father, her brother, Mount Allen III, and three children: Laila Deen, Wallace Vernell and Barbara Ann. Her marriage to the trumpeter Wallace Roney ended in divorce. Along with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, Allen received the African American Classical Music Award from Spelman College and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Howard. In 1995 she became the first recipient of Soul Train’s Lady of Soul Award for jazz album of the year, for  . The following year she became the first woman to win the Jazzpar Prize, a highly prestigious Danish honor. Over years of seeing Allen live, it’s striking to recall her at Caramoor in 1994, when she shared a solo piano bill with the great Kenny Barron. She parsed Monk and other material, including her own, and encored in a riotous   showdown with Barron on ”Tea For Two,” dealing impressively with a tune of older vintage. Years later, at the Village Vanguard, she led an engrossing quartet with Hart, bassist (and fellow Cass Tech alum) Robert Hurst and percussionist Mino Cinelu. In terms of the unexpected, however, don’t for a moment discount Allen’s 2011 Christmas album, A Child Is Born. She plays not just piano but also Farfisa organ, celeste, clavinet and Fender Rhodes, taking ”Angels We Have Heard On High” and ”O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” to harmonic places they’ve likely never been. Even at its most searching, complex and sonically novel, there’s a contemplative quality in the music that makes this a worthy listen as we mourn Allen’s untimely passing."
"Updated at 5:57 p. m. ET, Ransomware hit at least six countries Tuesday, including Ukraine, where it was blamed for a large and coordinated attack on key parts of the nation’s infrastructure, from government agencies and electric grids to stores and banks. The malware has been called ”Petya”  —   but there is debate in the security community over whether the ransomware is new or a variant that has been enhanced to make it harder to stop. In either case, it appears to be spreading globally, raising fears it might rival another widespread attack  —   the WannaCry outbreak that struck in May. The Maersk shipping company, based in Denmark, confirmed that its ”IT systems are down across multiple sites and business units due to a cyber attack.” And pharmaceutical giant Merck tweeted that its ”computer network was compromised today as part of global hack.” In the U. S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Scott McConnell says the agency is ”monitoring reports of cyber attacks affecting multiple global entities and is coordinating with our international and domestic cyber partners.” Any requests for help from DHS are confidential, McConnell says. Interpol says it is also ”closely monitoring” the suspected attack. Computers hit by the malware display a locked screen that demands a payment to retrieve files. The malware promises to provide a specialized key to users who pay a ransom of $300 in bitcoins  —   the same ploy used by the WannaCry ransomware, which affected computers in more than 150 countries. WannaCry was based on exploits stolen from the National Security Agency  —   including a program called EternalBlue, which exploited a Microsoft vulnerability. Petya reportedly shares some of WannaCry’s traits  —   but while computers that had gotten a security patch were safe from WannaCry, Petya can also infect patched machines. Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at ‏ says Petya uses other exploits to spread in internal systems. ”That’s why patched systems can get hit.” Signs that this is a new strain led Kaspersky Lab malware analyst Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky to say the outbreak comes from a ”new ransomware we haven’t seen before.” For this reason, Kaspersky announced in a statement it would be coining a new name for the ransomware: ”ExPetr.” ”The company’s telemetry data indicates around 2, 000 attacked users so far,” its statement continued, noting Ukraine and Russia appear to be the most affected. But ”we have also registered hits in Poland, Italy, the UK, Germany, France, the US and several other countries.” Kaspersky is an NPR funder. Raj Samani, head of strategic intelligence at McAfee, echoed these assessments. ”This outbreak does not appear to be as great as WannaCry,” Samani said in a statement, ”but the number of impacted organizations is significant.” Ukraine’s security experts are working to fix the problem, according to the government portal. Until the issue is resolved, the government said, Ukrainians should simply turn off their computers. While the malware’s most concentrated effects were reported in Ukraine, several companies and at least one utility in Russia were also reportedly affected. From Moscow, NPR’s Lucian Kim reports, ”Ukraine has blamed Russia for cyberattacks in the past, a charge Moscow denies. A number of Russian companies, including the state oil giant Rosneft, have also reported suffering cyberattacks today.” The attack struck at 2 p. m. local time, Ukraine’s government says. The country’s National Bank was among the first to report a problem. In Russia, the malware hit companies such as Mars, Nivea and Mondelez International, according to the Tass news agency. Anton Gerashchenko, a lawmaker and adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, says he believes that despite its appearance as a ransomware hack, the attack is actually the work of Russian agents waging a type of hybrid warfare to try to destabilize Ukraine. The malware was delivered in emails that had been created to resemble business correspondence, Gerashchenko said on his Facebook page. He added that the attack took days and likely weeks to stage before being activated."
"Little Rock, Ark. is the latest front in the ongoing battle over Ten Commandments monuments on government property. A    granite monument of the Commandments was installed on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol on Tuesday, flanked by the state senator who raised the money to pay for it and sponsored the legislation that required it. ”We have a beautiful Capitol grounds but we did not have a monument that actually honored the historical moral foundation of law,” Republican Sen. Jason Rapert told reporters. ”And today we have now, through the support of people all over the country, mostly from Arkansas, been able to erect this monument at zero taxpayer expense.” In 2015, the Arkansas Legislature passed   legislation that paved the way for the monument. The Ten Commandments Monument Display Act requires the Secretary of State to permit and arrange for the monument. The law cites the Supreme Court’s 2005 Van Orden v. Perry decision, which allowed the Texas State Capitol to keep its Ten Commandments monument in place. Nonetheless, the Arkansas law anticipates legal challenges: ”In the event that the legality or constitutionality of the monument . .. is challenged in a court of law,” it says, the Attorney General may either ”prepare and present a legal defense of the monument” or hire Liberty Institute to do so. The American Heritage and History Foundation, an organization founded by Rapert, raised the money to pay for the monument. Rapert says he is on the foundation’s board and that he makes no money from it. The ACLU of Arkansas says it will sue to remove the monument from the Capitol grounds. ”At a time when we do not need any more religious conflict and divisiveness in the world and in this country, it violates the First Amendment promise of religious liberty to all,” Rita Sklar, the group’s executive director, told NPR. ”By placing a monument to a particular set of religious beliefs, it appears that the state enforces one particular set of beliefs over others and over no religion. And it makes people who fall into those categories  —   no religion or other religion  —   feel like   citizens in the state of Arkansas, which they are not.” The monument suggests that the Commandments are the basis for American and Arkansas law, she says, even though ”several of the commandments are wholly religious in nature, like ’having no other gods before me,’ or keeping the Sabbath. Those have no purpose in U. S. or Arkansas law.” Rapert has made headlines with his legislation before. In 2013, he sponsored the country’s strictest abortion law, which was eventually blocked by a federal appeals court. And earlier this year, he sponsored a bill to take Bill and Hillary Clinton’s names off the Little Rock airport. Does Rapert believe in a separation of church and state? ”We have freedom of religion, that’s not freedom from religion,” he tells NPR. ”You have to remember, the State of Arkansas, through a legal process, said that they want to have a monument to the Ten Commandments for the Capitol grounds.” He calls the expected lawsuit by the ACLU ”foolhardy.” ”The ACLU has a history of what I call frivolous lawsuits. It’s very sad in this day and time,” he says. ”The Supreme Court of the United States has said these monuments don’t violate the Establishment Clause. This is America, and if they want to spend their money on this, they can do that. But it’s not the right thing to do.” Sklar says the ACLU of Arkansas has won similar battles over the Ten Commandments in classrooms and courtrooms, and she says the Van Orden decision doesn’t protect the new monument at the state capitol, either. The court distinguishes between longstanding, historically significant buildings, she says, ”that have had religious monuments or symbols for decades and decades, which is the case in Texas, and erecting a completely new religiously divisive monument [like that at] the Arkansas State Capitol. The Court sees a huge difference between the two, and so do we.” And she says that it’s Arkansas lawmakers who are wasting money  —   taxpayer money. ”It cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars when we challenged their abortion ban. Talk about foolhardy.” Sklar says the Ten Commandments monument does what she believes Rapert and others intend: to assert ”that Christianity in part has some special place in American tradition, has a higher place, has a more important role.” ”It does what it sets out to do, which is to get people from other religions to feel unwanted and unequal.”"
"The director John Woo, whose filmography contains an aggregate body count in the quadruple digits, has frequently observed that action movies and musicals are close cousins. He’s right about that, and I offer into evidence Edgar Wright’s intoxicating new chase flick Baby Driver as Exhibit A. Also Exhibits D, E,   and whatever other notes one might require to play the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s ”Bellbottoms,” the first of many expertly curated soundtrack selections Wright uses to elevate his natty comic romance into a genre deconstruction that sings like Freddie Mercury and dances like Freddie Astaire. And burns enough rubber to make Vin Diesel’s purely metaphorical hair stand on end. Baby Driver is a rush of a movie, is what I’m trying to convey to you. Walk or take public transit to the theater, as the urge to drive recklessly on your way home will likely prove overwhelming. This is a   symphony that owes more to Jacques Tati, William Friedkin, Nicholas Winding Refn and Michael Mann than to Justin Lin or Michael Bay, channeling equal parts Heat and High Fidelity. It’s supercharged with wit and visual invention even when its characters are just making sandwiches or doing laundry. The writing is sharp and fun (”That’s Johnny   formerly Johnny the Nose”) the performances vivid and dimensional, the pursuit sequences crisp with analog discipline. Like most of the soundtrack (save a new banger from Danger Mouse featuring Run the Jewels and Big Boi) it’s defiantly   but in the   summer multiplex it feels like the boldest, most original thing around. It’s also overcaffeinated auteur Wright’s first feature since his terrific dramedy The World’s End four summers ago in the interim, he signed on to make   before finding the Marvelverse to be less   than he’d hoped. (He retained screenplay and story credit on   which was ultimately directed by Peyton Reed.) He remains best known for his collaborations with   Simon Pegg Baby Driver is the first of his five features on which he is the sole credited screenwriter. As Baby,    Y. A. star Ansel Elgort brings that    thing that the famous amateur racer Paul Newman possessed. He has no taste for violence but no fear of it, either. He plays a laconic wheelman in the employ of Atlanta crime boss Doc  —   Kevin Spacey, sucking in his Frank Underwood persona to give his most appealing performance in many years. This is the   Spacey, the one who always turned his supporting parts into something memorable not the sweaty   he became after American Beauty. Anyway, Baby is the caretaker of his elderly,   foster dad (C. J. Jones) who makes known his disapproval of whatever it is Baby does to earn those fat stacks of bundled bills he hides under the floorboards. Baby wants out of his life of crime, but it takes a lot more than just two weeks’ notice, as you know if you’ve ever seen a movie. Baby manages his chronic tinnitus by listening to music almost all the time, but certainly when he’s working. Like the cat burglars in the immortal classic of the heist genre Hudson Hawk, [EDITOR’S NOTE: The preceding statement does not reflect the opinion of NPR] he times his   maneuvers to specific songs. He is never without his     iPod, the one that cost $499 in 2001 dollars, was the size of a cigarette pack and weighed as much as a baseball. He has others, of course, but his fealty to a device almost as old as he is is explained, though his preference for cassette tapes and   recorders over digital devices never is. Nor are his superheroic reflexes, calm, and spatial reasoning behind the wheel. That’s a choice by Wright, and it’s the right one. Knowing when not to explain is an undervalued skill in storytelling. As in Drive, this is the kind of movie where we stay in the car while whatever violent business is happening inside the bank goes down. And as in Drive, Baby violates his code   by falling hard for a woman he barely knows. But Elgort and Lily James turn their diner   into its own   set piece. It’s a bit of a letdown that Wright’s otherwise boundless invention stops short of letting James do something more than act as a   hostage. The tatooed gallery of crooks Baby is forced to drive around includes Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, and Jon Bernthal, all   actors who’ve sometimes seemed muted or just bored in genre flicks. Not here. Maybe they recognize the strength of what’s on the page, or maybe Wright is just great with actors. (With the exception of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, he’s tended to work with his friends again and again, so it’s hard to know.) Whatever the reason, they and Eiza González, who rounds out their crew, are all menacing and persuasive. In the movie’s first big pursuit sequence, the one that shows us what Baby is made of behind the wheel, there’s a shot of Hamm in the back seat, beaming at the thrill of riding along as his chauffeur leaves a fleet of police cruisers in the dust. He’s not playing all that nice or good a guy, but in that moment, you’ll know just how he feels."
"The U. S. State Department has issued highly public criticism of China in its latest annual report on the global state of human trafficking. China is among the worst offenders of human trafficking, according to the Trafficking In Persons report. It’s now lumped in with ”Tier 3” offenders such as Syria, Iran, Russia and North Korea  —   the worst designation. Tier 3 is used to describe countries that are making no significant effort to comply with international standards. The last time China was ranked part of this group was in 2013, and since then it had moved up a  . ”China was downgraded to Tier 3 status in this year’s report in part because it has not taken serious steps to end its own complicity in trafficking, including forced labors from North Korea that are located in China,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in remarks introducing the   report. North Korea receives hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from forced labor sent primarily from China and Russia, he said. The downgrading has the potential to increase tensions between the U. S. and China, NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports. China is North Korea’s primary ally, and the U. S. has been trying to enlist Beijing’s help in persuading Pyongyang to halt its nuclear program. The Tier 3 designation could mean restrictions on certain kinds of foreign aid funding not tied to humanitarian or trade issues, according to the report. It adds: ”The President may determine to withhold funding for government official or employee participation in educational and cultural exchange programs for certain Tier 3 countries.” However, Reuters notes that U. S. presidents ”frequently waive such action.” China responded angrily to the report, even ahead of its official release. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters that ”no country is immune from this problem and China does not appreciate being judged according to U. S. domestic laws and standards,” NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reported on Morning Edition. Anthony said human trafficking in China can take many forms, such as ”rural migrants who are promised jobs and then they get tricked into forced labor and prostitution,” or ”brides from Vietnam or from other areas get sold to poor villages because bachelors there don’t have many marriage options.” Several other countries also were downgraded to Tier 3 status: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea and Mali. Others such as Myanmar, also known as Burma, climbed out of the lowest category. Myanmar and Iraq were also removed from a separate list included in the report of countries where the armed forces or   armed groups recruit and use child soldiers. Human Rights Watch criticized that change, saying that recruitment of child soldiers has recently been documented in both countries. ”Secretary of State Tillerson apparently believes the list is subject to backroom political calculations, rather than facts on the ground and US law,” Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. In his remarks, Tillerson stressed that the issue of human trafficking is complex and changes rapidly. ”We know shutting down these networks is challenging, but these challenges cannot serve as an excuse for inaction,” he added. Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s daughter and adviser, also spoke at the State Department event. She said combating trafficking is a ”major foreign policy priority for the Trump administration.” ”As a mother,” she added, ”it is much more than a policy priority. It is a clarion call to action in defense of the vulnerable, the abused, and the exploited.”"
"Advocates for ending child marriage are trying a new tactic: Show governments just how much the practice is hurting their own bottom line. That’s the goal of a new report by the World Bank and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) a global research and advocacy group. The report analyzes the impact of child marriage on the national budgets and economic growth of 25 countries where at least one in three women marry before age 18. Its conclusion: By 2030 child marriage will cost developing countries billions of dollars in   and education costs as well as lost earnings potential. Suzanne Petroni, one the report’s   and a senior director at ICRW charged with expanding the evidence base on child marriage, is hoping the data will be a   call for governments. Until now, Petroni says, research on child marriage has mainly focused on determining its prevalence, causes and costs to women at the individual or family level. This prior research has helped bring global attention to the issue and even galvanized some political will to address it. But only up to a point: ”The investments that are needed to end the practice have not been forthcoming,” says Petroni. ”So if we could document and show finance ministers, policy makers, donors and communities that child marriage has a cost to their bottom line budgets, we may finally be able to spur investments in solutions.” The study finds one of the biggest bites to a country’s budget results from the link between child marriage and population growth. The report estimates that a girl marrying at 13 will have an average of 26 percent more children over her lifetime than if she were married at 18 or older. And across the countries studied, ending child marriage would reduce total fertility rates by an average of 11 percent. Take Niger, where more than   of women are married before age 18  —   the highest proportion in the world. The study finds that ending child marriage would slow population growth by 5 percent by 2030. The additional children that are being born as a result of child marriage drive up government spending. For instance, in 18 countries analyzed, the study found that curbing this growth would save as much as $17 billion a year from the education budget. Of course, in theory rising births can be a boon to a country if the short term cost are more than offset by the benefits of a gaining a larger workforce down the line. But Petroni says that only works if the country provides its children with enough education to grow into economically productive adults. And that’s not generally the case in countries with high rates of child marriage. ”Child marriage for the most part takes place in situations of poverty,” she says. ”And the offspring of child brides tend to be not just more children, but also children who less healthy, less educated and less able to contribute economically to their countries.” The study finds that child marriage can also damage a country’s overall economy because of the devastating impact that   marriage has on a girl’s educational prospects, which, in turn determine her earning power. There’s a bit of    conundrum when it comes to quantifying the connection between child marriage and high school dropout rates, notes Petroni. That’s because in places where child marriage is common, it’s also often the case that girls don’t have easy access to schools. So it can be hard to determine whether a girl drops out because she’s been married off, or whether she’s married off because she’s no longer attending school. Either way, however, studies indicate that child marriage and lack of education are closely entwined. And this new report estimates that as a result, child marriage reduces the earnings in adulthood for women by an average of 9 percent. In Nigeria alone that amounts to $7. 6 billion annually in lost earnings and productivity. On the upside, the link between underage marriage and education also suggests a powerful tool for curbing the practice: Get more girls into high school. In those 15 countries analyzed in greatest depth, the study estimates that every year of secondary education reduces a girl’s likelihood of marrying as a child from four to 10 percentage points depending on the country. ”One of the biggest messages from this study is just how important education is,” says Petroni. ”It would be great if finance ministers would come away from this committed to invest in quality education for girls.”"
"Brazil’s top prosecutor slapped President Michel Temer with a lengthy indictment Monday night, charging the embattled leader with corruption. The allegations, which include accepting millions of dollars in bribes and approving hush money, make Temer the first sitting president in the country’s history to be charged with a crime. Among the allegations laid out by Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot: Temer reportedly took a bribe of more than $150, 000 from the chief of   giant JBS appears to have been recorded consenting to the payment of hush money to a jailed politician and, according to The New York Times, is charged with obtaining promises for a further $11 million in JBS bribes. Temer, who has long defended his innocence, called the indictment a ”soap opera plot” on Tuesday. ”I say without fear of being wrong that the accusation is fiction,” he told reporters, as translated by The Associated Press. Still, this doesn’t spell an end for Temer, who has endured a raft of scandals emerging from a massive   probe since he replaced Dilma Rousseff after her impeachment last year. The country’s lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, must decide whether to allow the indictment to proceed. It’ll take a   majority in the chamber to suspend Temer for up to 180 days and allow him to be tried by Brazil’s Supreme Court. There’s significant skepticism that such a strong majority will take shape among this current crop of lawmakers, many of whom count themselves allies of the president despite his abysmal approval rating among voters  —   which, according to a recent poll cited by multiple media outlets, hovers in the single digits. ”Even though the president is clearly weaker than he was before, he still has enough political capital to fend off any threat to his presidency,” the Eurasia consultancy told the AP. ”Lawmakers are unwilling to jump the Temer government’s ship when there is no clear ship to jump to.” This strong support in the Legislature might be why Janot filed only a corruption indictment Monday. The prosecutor is widely expected to charge Temer with further crimes, including obstruction of justice. But with each new charge, the Chamber of Deputies must vote anew, and many foresee Temer’s support eroding each time lawmakers are forced to publicly defend him  —   particularly with their own nationwide elections approaching next year, Reuters notes. ”If this grinds on with multiple votes, you may start to see a lack of governability,” one top lawmaker told the wire service. ”In that case, there will be defections, and colleagues may start to move against Temer.” And all the while, Temer hopes to press ahead with reforms to combat Brazil’s recession by rolling back labor laws and pension regulations  —   reforms that, in their own right, have drawn massive protests in the country. "
"There’s a big push in the U. S. from pediatricians to have mothers of newborns   exclusively for at least six months. And many new moms want to. But only about 60 percent who start off   keep it up for six months or more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Shots interviewed nearly a dozen lactation consultants, pediatricians and researchers who had tips for women on how to reach their   goals. Here’s a quick guide to their advice. 1. Expect problems at first, Many people think of   as automatic and expect it to be easy, says Caroline Kerhervé, a leading lactation educator and counselor in San Francisco. ”We often think moms and babies will know exactly what to do, and they won’t even have to think about it,” she says. ”Sometimes that happens, but it’s not the most common outcome.” Even in traditional societies that don’t use formula or bottles, women often struggle to   it turns out. Take for example, Himba moms in the desert of northern Namibia. As we reported Monday on our sister blog Goats and Soda, essentially all Himba mothers   their babies. But about   of these women have problems at the beginning, one researcher found. They have trouble getting their baby to latch. They have breast pain and worry they aren’t making enough milk. And many, like many women in the U. S. need help and guidance to make   work. So, it doesn’t mean you’re failing as a mom if you have trouble, Kerhervé says. It means you’re normal. ”Most moms need to learn how to position the baby and get the baby to latch onto the nipple,” Kerhervé, tells Shots. ”This takes  —   for most moms and babies  —   about two weeks to get comfortable.” 2. Line up a lactation coach, even before the baby comes, Since problems are likely, Kerhervé says, be ready. Arrange to have somebody who’s experienced with   present at the baby’s birth  —   or right after the birth  —   to coach you, Kerhervé, suggests. This coach can be a friend or a relative, or a professional lactation consultant, like Kerhervé. ”Many women don’t know we exist,” she says. ”They are looking on the Internet, on YouTube about how babies should latch and what to do. But moms really need   guidance.” Many health insurers will cover consultations from lactation consultants, she says. To find one near you, check the International Lactation Consultant Association’s website. And line up that support ahead of time, if you can life gets even more stressful after a new baby arrives. ”Many families are hiring me for prenatal assessments,” Kerhervé says. ”I can do a breast exam and anticipate any problems that might arise. Then we can prepare for them  —   before the mom is overwhelmed.” Because, here’s the tricky thing about  : Little problems early on can affect the milk supply later. And if the baby isn’t latching correctly, Kerhervé says, the infant can damage the nipple. 3. Create your own support network for   ”In the U. S. there’s a tendency for mothers to feel really isolated and confused about what they’re supposed to do after birth,” says Aunchalee Palmquist, an anthropologist at Elon University, and a certified lactation consultant. But being isolated with a newborn is the opposite of how humans evolved, she says. ”Throughout evolutionary history, humans have relied so much on others to share the load of caring for our babies,” Palmquist says. ”It’s one of things that make us human.” Traditionally, new moms  —   all over the world  —   have been taught how to  . They had their moms or aunts or close friends there to help. Himba moms in Namibia, for instance, usually go to live with their own mothers for a few months after the birth. The baby’s grandmother gives the mom   guidance on how to  . And in the Beng culture of West Africa, new mothers are taught by a network of women. ”During the first few weeks, a newly delivered woman  —   especially a   mother . .. has a constant stream of visitors, particularly women,” writes Alma Gottlieb, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois. ”Through them, a new mother is quickly socialized into accepting an almost continual round of   suggestions dispensed by more experienced women.” New mothers can replicate that sort of network, Palmquist says. ”Before the birth, I would suggest spending some time with mothers who know about   or who are   themselves” she says. ”Check out a La Leche League meeting or other   groups in your community.” Make a list of women you can contact when problems arise. Invite them over to help out a few days after the birth. Even just a few words of encouragement can make a huge difference. And when you’re looking for a pediatrician, check to make sure that doctor is knowledgeable about   Palmquist advises. ”It’s important to find a lot of resources ahead of time,” she says, before you’re   and hardly even have time to shower and eat. 4. Don’t sweat a little supplementation with formula, Pregnant women often hear a lot from friends, family and even doctors about the importance of ”exclusively”  . That’s what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends for the first six months. But here’s a little secret many doctors don’t mention: Women all over the world have traditionally supplemented their young babies’ meals  —   and have done so for hundreds of years. The AAP recommends supplementing only with   formula. In particular, honey can cause botulism in infants, for example, so do confer with your pediatrician about what’s best for your baby. Still, in other parts of the world the practice of supplementing   has been common, anthropologists note. ”  feeding patterns also show that no matter the method or style of feeding, mothers use some sort of supplemental food,” Cornell anthropologist Meredith Small wrote in her still popular 1999 guidebook Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent.  ”Quecha mothers in Peru . .. give the baby tea and broth soon after birth,” according to Small. ”In India, mothers use a combination of clarified butter and honey to replace colostrum . .. The Amele of Papua New Guinea use soup, juice and a mash of bananas and papaya as occasional baby food.” And Himba women supplement with goats’ milk if they don’t make enough breast milk, anthropologists have found. Bottom line: Supplementing with formula in no way means you’ve failed, Kerhervé says. ”I want women to celebrate what their bodies can do,” she says. ”Maybe they   40 percent of the time, or 20 percent. It’s all helpful to the baby. Even just a little bit of breast milk.”"
"  miles away from the Supreme Court’s vaulted ceiling and marble friezes,    jobless mother Maria Guereca sat in her $     apartment with a fan and a hotplate  —   beside a picture of her dead son. On Monday, the Court gave Guereca, who lives in Juarez, Mexico, a partial victory, saying a lower court erred in granting immunity to an agent who shot and killed her son. As the Trump administration plans to ramp up security on the border, the case is being closely watched, as it examines whether U. S. agents should get immunity when shooting into Mexico. The case stirs strong reactions down on the border.    Sergio Hernandez was slain by a Border Patrol agent seven years ago. The lawman was standing on one side of a culvert in El Paso, Texas the unarmed teenager was on the Juarez, Mexico, side. Federal courts are deciding whether the young man has rights under the U. S. Constitution, and if his mother can sue the agent for damages. Monday morning, she received a call from her attorney in Texas.  ”He told me there was some good news, but we’re still waiting for victory,” she said in Spanish. ”I want justice. This officer cannot be allowed to continue, because there’ll be another young victim, then another and another.”  The High Court called the shooting ”a disturbing incident resulting from a heartbreaking loss of life.” But it resisted overturning the ruling and instead told the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to reconsider its decision giving Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. ”qualified immunity” from civil liability. He claims he shot Hernandez in the head because the boy had been throwing rocks at him and the agent feared for his life. The Justice Dept investigated the shooting and decided there was insufficient evidence for a civil rights violation. Hernandez v. Mesa is not the only   shooting case. Three other Mexican plaintiffs are waiting and watching to see if they, too, can purse lawsuits against Border Patrol officers who killed family members  —   across the international boundary line. Maria Guereca says she’s in touch with them. ”They’re all the same  —   they’re over rocks,” she said. ”They were killed because the border agents said they were throwing rocks.”  In each case, the Border Patrol says the agents came under attack from projectiles and were acting according to their training. In recent years, in response to these controversial shootings, the agency now urges its agents to take cover or get out of range of rocks. But Stuart Harris, vice president of the Border Patrol union in El Paso, points out agents can still use deadly force.  ”When there’s a situation where your life is threatened by another human being, does nationality matter? It shouldn’t.”  But the victim’s nationality is the reason this case reached the Supreme Court. If the teenager had been shot on U. S. soil, he would have constitutional rights and the officer would be liable. But because the victim was standing outside of U. S. territory, a lawsuit has  —   until now  —   been impossible. Monday’s decision may be the first step toward removing that legal shield. ”It’s a terrible precedent,” Harris said. ”If there’s no qualified immunity there, what are we doing? The job is already dangerous enough, and decisions like this if ultimately it goes against us it’s going to make things even worse.”  The Supreme Court now sends the case back to the   Fifth Circuit to decide whether or not Maria Guereca can move ahead with her lawsuit against the agent. The court instructs the lower court to consider the case in light of a recent decision, Ziglar v. Abbasi, which holds that damages against federal officials can only be considered in light of a specific remedy authorized by Congress. Bob Hilliard, who represents Sergio Hernandez’s family, says he hopes the court will ”determine that constitutional protections apply along the border to anyone who finds himself at the border with a law enforcement officer in the U. S.”  The Supreme Court’s decision split   . Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying liability of federal agents does not extend to ”  conduct” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissenting opinion with Ruth Bader Ginsburg joining. They said Hernandez deserves Fourth Amendment protection because the United States is responsible for what happens on the concrete riverbed that divides the two nations. Justice Neil Gorsuch took no part in the case because he was not on the court when arguments were held."
"The Nordic   scene has become increasingly prominent in the past few years, with authors such Leena Krohn and Johanna Sinisalo, both from Finland, garnering fresh attention and translations in the United States. In Sweden, one of the most promising authors of science fiction and fantasy in recent years has been Karin Tidbeck. Her 2012 short story collection, Jagganath, showcased her knack for sharp yet dreamlike  . Tidbeck’s debut novel Amatka came out the same year, in Swedish only  —   and it’s seeing its first English translation now. Not a moment too soon, either: Despite being originally published five years ago, its surreal vision of deadly conspiracies, political oppression, and curtailed freedom couldn’t be more eerily timely. Amatka takes place in one of the most audacious   settings since   Qoma from China Miéville’s The City and The City. In Miéville’s book, two fictional European   are superimposed upon each other, with residents of each forbidden to acknowledge the existence of the other. In Tidbeck’s agricultural colony of Amatka, a totalitarian government rules over a deprived and economically depressed population. But this is no     dystopia. One of Amatka’s many repressive rules is the requirement that citizens routinely repeat the names of certain marked objects in the colony. If they don’t, those objects will dissolve into what the main character Vanja, calls ”gloop”  —   a formless substance that feels uncannily like living tissue. The strangeness does not come anywhere close to ending there. Vanja is from another colony, Essre, and she travels to Amatka for a work assignment  —   to assess the marketing possibilities there for the   company she works for. This world’s level of technology is woefully backward, and Vanja struggles to acclimate to Amatka’s coldness and remoteness. It’s a place of underground mushroom farms and impossible lakes that freeze and thaw of their own volition, a   with a gray and featureless sky. The more she settles into life in Amatka, though, the more the colony’s oddness intensifies. Objects begin to dissolve at an increasing rate, and conspiracies start to appear  —   some of them connected to a fomenting rebellion, and some of them regarding the government’s apparent   of the true reason behind its draconian laws. Not to mention the   secret of the gloop. Tidbeck’s premise is almost comical, but her execution is anything but. Amatka teems with mysteries, and almost every innocuous detail  —   like the fact that the colony’s residents are vegan  —   winds up having   ramifications later on. As exquisitely constructed as her enigmas are, however, they’re atmospheric and deeply moving. Vanja is not an easy character to latch onto, but that sense of distance makes her ultimate choices and sacrifices  —   and what they say about loneliness and freedom  —   so much more poignant. Amatka does not wrap up as conclusively as many readers may like, but then it’s nowhere near being a conventional   novel. Tidbeck triumphs at crafting an ending that’s both unsettingly vague and unerringly true to the warped internal logic of her world. Amatka is so disorienting that it makes the otherwise generic elements of her political dystopia  —   including crippling procedures and secret camps for dissidents  —   feel almost comfortingly familiar. It’s an unnerving trick, and one Tidbeck pulls off to effect: She paints the moral ambiguities of a repressive society in the same gray tones as the sky above Amatka. Most of all, her meditation on the power of names  —   and how language can be used to control both perception and substance  —   resonates chillingly in our   reality. Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A. V. Club, a Hugo   editor and author of the novel Taft 2012."
"A firm headed by Paul Manafort, who served as President Trump’s campaign manager last year, made more than $17 million in two years working for the   political party that controlled Ukraine’s government, according to documents filed late Tuesday. Manafort, who resigned from Trump’s campaign last August after his work for Ukrainian interests came under scrutiny, has registered as a foreign agent with the U. S. Justice Department, as did his deputy, Rick Gates. Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni said Manafort had started the registration process under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in September of last year, before the November 2016 election. ”Paul’s primary focus was always directed at domestic Ukrainian political campaign work and that is reflected in yesterday’s filing. Paul has appreciated the professionalism and guidance of the FARA unit throughout this process,” Maloni said. Manafort did domestic political consulting for the Party of Regions, headed by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia after an uprising in 2014. Much of Manafort’s work was aimed at ”advancing the goal of greater political and economic integration between Ukraine and the West,” the documents say. ”Manafort was representing a political party, a very strong   political party in . .. Ukraine from 2012 to 2014, pulling in a whopping $17 million by the way,” says Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, a progressive public interest group. Holman says Manafort should have filed the disclosure forms right after he began working for Ukraine’s government. Manafort’s work in Ukraine ended in 2014, after Yanukovych stepped down and well before Manafort worked for Trump’s campaign. Manafort is one of several current and former Trump associates whose ties to the former Soviet Union have attracted attention. He is said to be a focus of interest in the investigation headed by Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s interference in the U. S. presidential election. Manafort is the second Trump associate to register retroactively as a foreign agent. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn has acknowledged lobbying for the government of Turkey in the months leading up to last year’s election."
"Updated at 4:15 p. m. ET, Less than a day after a monument of the Ten Commandments was installed outside the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock, it was destroyed when a man smashed a car into the stone. Authorities say Michael T. Reed II drove a 2016 Dodge Dart into the   granite slab at about 4:47 a. m. local time on Wednesday. ”My boss called me and told me the Ten Commandments monument had been destroyed,” Secretary of State and Capitol Police spokesman Chris Powell told NPR. ”When I got here, it was rolled over on the sidewalk and broken into multiple pieces.” A video that appears to have been taken from inside the car was posted on the Facebook account of a Michael Reed early Wednesday Powell told the AP that officials believe the video is authentic. It shows what looks like the Arkansas State Capitol building. A man’s voice says: ”Oh my goodness. Freedom!” as the car careens into the monument. Powell said the crash into the    slab was no accident. ”This was deliberate. The individual drove down there and stopped. He was videoing it on his cellphone as he accelerated into the monument,” Powell said. ”One of our Capitol Police officers was on patrol and witnessed it.” Reed, who police say is a    white man from Van Buren, Ark. was arrested outside the Capitol and booked at the Pulaski County Jail. He faces preliminary charges of defacing an object of public respect, a Class C felony criminal mischief in the first degree, a Class C felony and trespassing on the state Capitol grounds, a misdemeanor. Reed was arrested in 2014 for driving a car into the Ten Commandments monument at Oklahoma’s state Capitol, Oklahoma County Sheriff’s spokesman Mark Opgrande told The Associated Press. He was admitted to a hospital the next day for mental treatment and was not formally charged, the AP reports. In the 2014 incident, The Oklahoman reported that the U. S. Secret Service interviewed Reed and that he told agents that he has bipolar disorder and that Satan had directed him to destroy the monument. The Tulsa World reported in 2015 that Reed sent the newspaper a letter apologizing for the destruction of the Oklahoma monument. ”I am so sorry that this all happening (sic) and wished I could take it all back,” Reed wrote, explaining to the World that he had begun to believe the voices in his head. Police said Wednesday that Reed was cooperative during his arrest and that, so far, there is no indication of motive. The erection of the privately funded monument has been contentious. The Arkansas Legislature passed a law in 2015 requiring the installation of the monument on Capitol grounds. The Ten Commandments were erected Tuesday morning, and the ACLU of Arkansas has said it will sue for the monument’s removal. Meanwhile, Powell said Capitol workers are left picking up the (extremely heavy) pieces: ”Our crew is in the process of cleaning all that up and carting it off. They have to get a tractor and put it on pallets and lift it up.” And the Dodge Dart was towed away, Powell said, adding, ”There was minor damage, but not what you’d think, from what I hear, from knocking over a big stone monument.” Republican state Sen. Jason Rapert, who spearheaded the effort to install the Ten Commandments monument at the Capitol, says he wants to replace it, Michael Hibblen of member station KUAR reports. ”We will rebuild the monument,” Rapert said. ”It will be put in place and hopefully protect it from any future harm.”"
"Drive east from Washington and eventually you run smack into the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, the massive estuary that stretches from the mouth of the Susquehanna River at Maryland’s northern tip and empties into the Atlantic 200 miles away near Norfolk, Va. The Chesapeake is home to oysters, clams, and famous Maryland blue crab. It’s the largest estuary in the United States. And for a long time, it was one of the most polluted. Decades of runoff from grassy suburban yards and farm fields as far north as New York state, plus sewage and other waste dumped by the hundreds of gallons, made the Chesapeake so dirty that by 1983, the crab population had plummeted to just 2 percent of what Capt. John Smith saw when he explored the bay in the 1600s. For years, people tried to clean it up. States and the federal government spent millions of dollars. The first effort began in 1983  —   officially launched by President Ronald Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union Address. And each time, the cleanup efforts failed. The bay’s health wasn’t getting much better. By 2009, when the Chesapeake Bay Foundation sued the Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to get the EPA to do more to clean up the bay, the Chesapeake’s dead zone was so big it often covered a cubic mile in the summer. Dead zones form when the water becomes too concentrated with nitrogen and phosphorus  —   allowing algal blooms to grow and block out sunlight from reaching beneath the water and causing populations of fish and crabs to plummet. Then, last summer, scientists recorded no dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay. And wildlife was returning, too. The EPA’s new plan seemed to be working. ”When I first heard that spawning sturgeon were back in the bay, my reaction was, ’Yes! We can get this done,’” says Will Baker, the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s president. ”It’s really exciting. You give nature half a chance and she will produce every single time.” Scientists and advocates for the bay say that success is fragile. And it may be even more so now. The Trump administration’s budget proposal calls for eliminating the program’s $73 million in funding. ”I think if we saw the federal government withdraw, you would see the Chesapeake Bay revert to a national disgrace right as it’s becoming a great national source of pride,” Baker says. ”Things are going in the right direction, but nature can turn on a dime and I don’t think it’s a scare tactic to say within the next eight years, we could see the last 35 years of effort go down the tubes and start to change direction.” And that could have implications not only for the future of the bay cleanup, but for any other states hoping to clean up some of the country’s other most polluted waters  —   from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico. Locals like    Matt Gaskins say the difference in the bay’s health is noticeable. He’s on a boat with two of his friends. A handful of blue crabs click in a bucket resting in the middle of his small boat. Gaskins says he can tell how the bay’s doing by how many crabs he’s catching. He was out on the South River the day before. ”Everyone pretty much around the whole river has been doing really well,” he says. ”The rockfish are doing really well this year, and also the crabs are doing really well.” Scientists from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation say that’s proof the cleanup efforts are making a difference. ”The trend is for a smaller volume of the dead zone over time, which is really encouraging. For the last two years, they never measured water that had zero oxygen, which is the first time that it had ever happened in the history of collecting data,” says Beth McGee, a scientist with the foundation. But why is the cleanup finally working now, after all those years of trying? In 2009, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation sued the EPA, trying to compel the agency to enact a tougher cleanup plan. In the past, a group of six states that make up the Chesapeake Bay watershed  —   Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and New York, plus the District of Columbia, had put in place various pollution control plans to limit the fertilizer and sewage they released into the bay. But without sufficient funding or any real consequences for states that didn’t meet benchmarks, things didn’t really improve. The Obama administration needed to change that. To do it, the administration came up with a novel interpretation of the Clean Water Act of 1972, which gives the federal government the power to require that states write a ”pollution diet” for any body of water the feds declare polluted. States have to calculate how much of each pollutant a body of water can take on, and then figure out how to hit those numbers. But actually making the reductions had always been voluntary. Only one in five of these pollution diets had actually been implemented, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation wanted to ensure states followed through. The Obama administration would use its powers under the Clean Water Act to compel states to take action  —   by withholding funding from states that didn’t follow through on implementing their cleanup plans. Baker says that’s part of the challenge  —   cleaning up the Chesapeake requires cooperation not just from the places that have the bay in their backyards  —   but also from states in the whole watershed whose rivers and streams feed into the bay. ”The critical role of the EPA has been to be the glue that holds the six states and the District of Columbia together  —   working in concert to save the Chesapeake Bay system,” Baker says. How do you convince states without that tangible tie to make sacrifices for a bay they don’t even border? ”The Chesapeake Bay is a system of six states, 64, 000 square miles,” Baker says. ”And when you work in Pennsylvania for clean water in the Chesapeake Bay, you’re really working for clean water in Pennsylvania.” The EPA’s plan was controversial from the start. The American Farm Bureau Federation sued over it. As attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt signed an amicus brief supporting the Farm Bureau’s position. He’s now running the EPA  —   the agency that is tasked with administering it. The Supreme Court declined to take up the case  —   letting a lower court’s ruling stand that upheld the program. Chip Bowling’s farm sits on banks of the Wicomico River in southern Maryland. The Wicomico flows into the Potomac River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay. He farms 1, 600 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat on land that’s been in his family for seven generations. ”When we got our work done, we literally would jump out of our work clothes and put a pair of shorts on and   and run down here, and either swim, fish, get on the boat,” he says. He’s been doing that more than 50 years. ”If you walked at the end of this pier when I was a kid, you’d see aquatic grass growing,” Bowling says. ”You actually had a hard time walking through it because the grass was so lush underwater.” That lush grass provided a habitat for crabs and fish. Now, it’s beginning to return. Agriculture was a big focus of the cleanup plan. As chairman of the National Corn Growers Association, Bowling and his organization joined the lawsuit. In Maryland, for example, the state imposed regulations as part of the cleanup that required farmers to write pollution diets for their farms. The federal government provided money to help, like funds for planting buffer strips between cropland and waterways that feed into the bay. States wrote their own plans to meet federal benchmarks and the federal government could withhold funding from states that didn’t comply. That upset farmers, who felt the EPA was going too far. But Bowling has come around. ”Nobody likes rules,” he says. ”Nobody really likes regulations. But you also know that you have to have both.” What changed? The plan appeared to be working. Bowling, who once joined a lawsuit to rule the program unconstitutional, is fighting for the program’s survival. ”It was a struggle to get there,” he says. ”I was critical in the beginning. What we do know now is that working together, we have figured out a way  —   with funding  —   to get those programs in place and to get the bay on track.” But the big part of that, at least for Bowling, is funding. And the Trump administration has proposed cutting it entirely from the federal budget  —   from $73 million to zero. For Billy Crook, a commercial crabber who makes runs on the Chesapeake, a healthy bay can have a big impact on his family. ”I got a bunch of little kids. I had a good year last year, so they got a trip to Disney World,” he says. But that doesn’t mean he gives the EPA credit. ”The EPA  —   they do some good, but mostly, they do a lot of talk,” he says, leaning over the side of his boat. ”They always talk about putting money in the bay. We never see the physical evidence of them doing much.” Bowling may support the Chesapeake Bay’s cleanup program, but that doesn’t mean he’s clamoring for a similar program elsewhere  —   such as in the Mississippi River watershed. Runoff into the rivers and streams there feed the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone  —   predicted this year to cover an area the size of New Jersey. ”I can guarantee you, they’re not going to ask for one like the Chesapeake Bay,” Bowling says. ”Hopefully we won’t have a mandate nationwide. In my opinion, knowing what we’re doing, I think that voluntary is a great way to start. The mandate made us do it, but I can guarantee you we would still change the way we farm.” Lauren Lurkins, director of natural and environmental resources for the Illinois Farm Bureau, says farmers in her state have increasingly prioritized water cleanup over the last few years, but that a   program would be a step too far for states bordering the Mississippi River. ”It’s a huge land mass that is covered and it gets really complicated and it makes for a bigger effort that is pushed down from the federal government,” Lurkins says. ”(Illinois farmers) don’t have the ability to help shape or start to engage in a plan that covers 31 states or even half of that. It’s just something that’s brought down on top of them.” Even EPA officials under the Obama administration  —   and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation  —   have refrained from touting the bay cleanup as a program ready for adoption elsewhere. ”We’re not talking about cleaning up the waters of the world. We’re talking about one iconic national treasure. If others can use the protocols that have been put in place here so successfully, go for it,” Baker says. Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who’s been advocating for the Chesapeake cleanup for decades, is more confident the plan can be employed in other places. Even so, he acknowledges adopting the plan elsewhere won’t likely happen in the near future. ”I think this model will expand and be used in other parts of the country,” he told NPR. ”There’s no question that if we had a different administration that put a higher priority on the environment, that it would be more aggressive in using this type of model in other places in the country.” During his confirmation hearing, Pruitt told Cardin he promised to preserve the program. The EPA did not respond to a request from NPR for an interview. But Cardin says he’s optimistic about the Chesapeake cleanup’s future. White House budgets are just proposals  —   and almost every federal program has an advocate somewhere in Congress. ”I’ve talked to my Democratic and Republican colleagues and they’re very supportive of the federal role in the Chesapeake Bay program,” he says. ”It’s in everyone’s interest to preserve this unique body of water. It’s not of one state or one region, but a national treasure.” Bowling is also confident the funding won’t disappear. ”We think that when the new administration figures out what they’re going to cut and how they’re going to cut it, that there’s still going to be funding left for programs like environmental cleanup,” Bowing says. ”I can guarantee you we’re doing something in D. C. today to make sure that we pass on to the administration and Administrator Pruitt what we’re doing works and we need funding to get there. I don’t think they’re going to allow something that’s come so far to go away.” But funding for new programs? That will be a tough sell. A couple of years ago, environmentalists outside the watershed may have looked eagerly to the Chesapeake Bay as a model cleanup they could adopt in their own backyards. But now there’s an even more basic worry  —   whether the model plan itself will continue. Selena   produced and Jolie Myers edited this radio story."
"Air Force veteran Billy Ramos, from Simi Valley, Calif. is 53 and gets health insurance for himself and for his family from Medicaid  —   the government insurance program for   people. He says he counts on the coverage, especially because of his physically demanding work as a   contractor in the heating and air conditioning business. ”If I were to get hurt on the job or something, I’d have to run to the doctors, and if I don’t have any coverage they’re going to charge me an arm and a leg,” he says. ”I’d have to work five times as hard just to make the payment on one bill.” There are about 22 million veterans in the U. S. But less than half get their health care through the Veterans Affairs system some don’t qualify for various reasons, or may live too far from a VA facility to easily get primary health care there.  Many vets instead rely on Medicaid for their health insurance. Thirty one states and the District of Columbia chose to expand Medicaid to cover more people  —   and many of those who gained coverage are veterans. The GOP health care bill working its way through the Senate would dramatically reduce federal funding for Medicaid, including rolling back the expansion funding entirely between 2021 and 2024. Medicaid coverage recently has become especially important to Ramos  —   a routine checkup and blood test this year showed he’s infected with hepatitis C. California was one of the states that chose to expand Medicaid, and the program covers Ramos’ costly treatment to eliminate the virus. ”Right now, I’m just grateful that I do have it,” he says. ”If they take it away, I don’t know what I’m going to end up doing.” The Senate health plan  —   which proposes deep cuts to federal spending on Medicaid  —   has veterans and advocates worried. Will Fischer, a U. S. Marine who served in Iraq, is with VoteVets. org, a political action group that opposes the Republican health plan. ”If it were to be passed into law, Medicaid would be gutted. And as a result hundreds of thousands of veterans would lose health insurance,” Fischer says. It’s too early to know just how many veterans might lose coverage as a result of the Medicaid reductions. First, states would have to make some tough decisions: whether to make up the lost federal funding, or to limit benefits or to restrict who would get coverage. But Dan Caldwell thinks those concerns are overblown. He’s a Marine who served in Iraq and is now policy director for the group, Concerned Veterans for America. ”The people who are saying that this is going to harm millions of veterans are not being entirely truthful,” Caldwell says. ”They’re leaving out the fact that many of these veterans qualify for VA health care or in some cases already are using VA health care.” About a half million veterans today are enrolled in the VA’s health care program as well as in some other source of coverage, such as Medicaid or Medicare. Andrea Callow with the   group, Families USA, wrote a recent report that shows one in ten veterans are enrolled in Medicaid. ”Oftentimes veterans will use their Medicaid coverage to get primary care,” Callow says. ”If, for example, they live in an area that doesn’t have a VA facility, they can use their Medicaid coverage to see a doctor in their area.” Whether a particular veteran qualifies for coverage through the VA depends on a host of variables that she says leaves many with Medicaid as their only option. But Caldwell says rather than fighting to preserve Medicaid access, veterans would be better served by efforts to reform the care the VA provides to those who qualify. ”We believe that giving veterans more health care choice and restructuring the VA so that it can act more like a private health care system will ultimately lead to veterans who use the VA receiving better health care,” he says. The Urban Institute found that the first two years after the enactment of the Affordable Care Act saw a nearly 44 percent drop in the number of uninsured veterans under age 65  —   the total went from 980, 000 to 552, 000. In large part that was the result of law’s expansion of Medicaid. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Kaiser Health News."
"Boaty McBoatface is back. And according to the British Antarctic Survey, the world’s most famous unmanned submersible returned from its inaugural voyage last week with a trove of ”unprecedented data about some of the coldest abyssal ocean waters on earth.” Boaty’s   expedition with the ship RRS James Clark Ross took it to the Orkney Passage, northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula, where BAS says the submersible undertook several missions to record information ”on temperature, speed of water flow and underwater turbulence rates.” The idea behind the project  —   known as the DynOPO, or Dynamics of the Orkney Passage Outflow  —   is partly to better understand the water flow in this underwater valley, and partly to see how it affects global climate change. This area is a ”critical ’valve’ in the   ’great ocean conveyor’  —   the relentless system of deep circulation that helps redistribute all the heat energy that has built up in the climate system,” the BBC reports. And it appears Boaty acquitted itself well in the mission. ”We have been able to collect massive amounts of data that we have never been able to capture before due to the way Boaty (Autosub Long Range) is able to move underwater,” Alberto Naveira Garabato, lead scientist of DynOPO, said in a statement Wednesday. ”Up until now we have only been able to take measurements from a fixed point, but now, we are able to obtain a much more detailed picture of what is happening in this very important underwater landscape. The challenge for us now, is to analyse it all.” Now, some of you who are new to the grand, twisty saga of Boaty McBoatface, understandably might be confused: Why the heck, you might be asking yourself, is a   instrument of   research named that? Well, originally that was the name of choice for a research ship in the U. K. the name that most respondents in an online poll selected for the newest addition to the British Natural Environment Research Council fleet. But the U. K.’s science minister threw cold water on that selection, choosing to defy the will of the people  —   or, at least, the folks who participated in the poll  —   and name the ship instead after the naturalist Sir David Attenborough. The winning name was used instead for a ”trio of vehicles in the new Autosub Long Range class of underwater robots,” according to the BBC. (Yes, all three got that name.) That includes the submersible that recently returned from its inaugural mission. (Never mind the fact that, as NPR’s Camila Domonoske astutely pointed out, it would be more accurately named Subby McSubface.) All this is to say Boaty’s got a history here. But that drama did little to detract from the steely focus of the vessel  —   and the scientists operating it, of course  —   when the fate of the project was on the line. ”In spite of the occasional hiccup,” says expedition member Povl Abrahamsen, ”and in increasingly cold and dark conditions, Boaty has gathered a unique and exciting dataset that we look forward to studying in more detail in months and years to come.”"
"Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has had several confrontations with Chinese authorities. (He was once beaten so badly by police that he had to have brain surgery.) Through it all, Ai continued to make art, and his art continued to travel the world, sometimes without him. That’s what happened with Trace, a series of Lego portraits Ai created while under house arrest. The artworks, which depict activists and political prisoners from around the world, were first shown at the former prison on San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island in 2014, and nearly a million people saw them there. But at the time, Ai was still under house arrest and couldn’t travel to the exhibition. Now, the artist has his passport back, and he was able to attend a new show of those portraits which opens Wednesday at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D. C. NPR was there for his first look at Trace in a gallery setting:"
"Updated June 29 at 1:20 p. m. ET, The Trump administration outlined Thursday how it will implement its modified travel ban, following the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday lifting a stay on the executive order imposed by two lower courts. The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the modified ban cannot be applied to ”foreign nationals who have a credible claim of bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.” Senior U. S. officials who briefed reporters on a conference call but would not allow themselves to be identified, told reporters that the order will allow travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen to enter the U. S. if they have close family ties. Those ties are defined as a parent, including    spouse child adult son or daughter, including    or    and sibling, including half and step siblings. However, the administration’s definition does not include grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins,    and    fiances and other extended family members. Under the administration’s interpretation of the high court’s ruling, people who have accepted job offers in the U. S. or an invitation to lecture at a U. S. university may also receive visas. The modified order also bars refugees from entering the U. S. for 120 days, although refugees already scheduled to be resettled in the U. S. through July 6 will be allowed in. And, in keeping with the high court’s order, refugees who can show a ”bona fide relationship” will be allowed entry. But that does not include refugees without qualifying family members in the U. S. even if they have established relationships with resettlement agencies, under the Trump administration’s interpretation of the high court’s ruling. In at least a partial victory for the president, the Supreme Court lifted the stay, issued by federal courts in Maryland and Hawaii, that had prevented the order from taking effect, while the justices consider whether the ban is constitutional. During the course of litigation over the revised ban, the president directed his administration to begin implementation ”72 hours after all applicable injunctions are lifted or stayed,” which would be Thursday. As NPR reported earlier this week, the initial version of the travel ban, issued Jan. 27, ”caused chaos at airports across the country until it was blocked by a federal judge in Washington state” on Feb. 3, a ruling that was upheld by the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. That prompted the administration to craft a revised version in March that omitted references to religion and specifically exempted green card holders. But that order, too, was challenged by lawsuits. It was blocked by lower courts in Maryland and Hawaii, decisions also upheld by appeals courts, and never took effect. The State Department said Wednesday that once the order is implemented, it will process visa applications for nationals of affected countries ”as directed by the Executive Order and in full compliance with the Supreme Court’s decision.” The administration has said the order will be implemented ”in a professional, organized and timely way.” Various advocacy groups have been seeking guidance as to what constitutes ”a bona fide relationship” with a person or entity in the U. S. In a statement, Muslim Advocates, a civil rights group, questioned the wisdom of the administration’s approach. The State Department guidelines ”are extremely disappointing and troubling,” the group said. ”Defining close family to exclude grandparents, cousins, and other relatives defies common sense it also directly goes against the intent of the Supreme Court’s order.” The group’s statement also said it will have a presence at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D. C. Thursday night to ensure that travelers ”don’t get ensnared by this still unconstitutional policy.”"
"Updated at 1:35 p. m. ET, Americans broadly disapprove of the Senate GOP’s health care bill, and they’re unhappy with how Republicans are handling the efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, according to a new     poll. Just 17 percent of those surveyed say they approve of the Senate’s health care plan, the Better Care Reconciliation Act.   percent say they disapprove, while about a quarter said they hadn’t heard enough about the proposal to have an opinion on it. With mounting defections within the GOP caucus over the bill, leaders decided to delay a vote on the legislation until after Congress returns from next week’s July Fourth recess. A Congressional Budget Office analysis released Monday found that if the bill were enacted, 22 million fewer people would have health insurance over the next decade due, in part, to the bill’s rollback of Medicaid expansion. ”With numbers like these, it’s not surprising the Republican leadership in Congress is having a difficult time building consensus,” said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. While Democratic opposition to the bill, as expected, is high, GOP support for the Senate GOP’s plan is very soft.   percent of Republicans oppose the bill and just 35 percent support it.   percent of independents also oppose the proposed legislation. In fact, while many Americans want changes to the ACA, also known as Obamacare, they want it to be more  . A 46 percent plurality say they want to see the ACA do more, while just 7 percent want it to do less. Keeping the ACA and having it do less is essentially what GOP congressional plans are doing. Only 17 percent want the 2010 bill left intact and unchanged, while a quarter of Americans want it repealed completely  —   including just over half of Republicans. If Congress doesn’t go through with a repeal of the ACA, 37 percent of Americans said they would blame Republicans in Congress, while 23 percent would blame Democrats, and 15 percent would blame President Trump. Among Republicans, Trump wouldn’t bear the brunt of the blame if Congress is unable to repeal and replace Obamacare. Just 6 percent would blame him, and half said they would blame congressional Democrats. Another 20 percent said they would blame GOP lawmakers. The     poll surveyed 1, 205 adults from June   2017, contacted by live interviewers using a mix of landline and mobile numbers. There is a ± 2. 8 percentage points margin of error. A   of 995 registered voters were also surveyed, with a ± 3. 1 percentage points margin of error. Questions relating to how congressional Republicans are handling the issue of health care, the plan proposed by Senate Republicans, and whom should be blamed if Congress does not repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act were fielded from June   2017 with 939 adults and 769 registered voters. The margin of error is +   3. 2 percentage points and +   3. 5 percentage points, respectively. "
"Last week, a jury awarded a Pennsylvania man $620, 000 for pain and suffering in a medical malpractice lawsuit he filed against a surgeon who mistakenly removed his healthy testicle, leaving the painful, atrophied one intact. However, if a bill before the House of Representatives passes, the maximum he would be able to receive for such ” ” damages would be $250, 000.   damages cover losses that are hard to put a dollar amount on  —   such as suffering, loss of a limb, pain, and loss of companionship. In addition, medical malpractice awards may include monetary damages to cover medical costs and loss of future wages. Sometimes punitive damages may be awarded as well, as punishment for reckless or other harmful behavior. The bill H. R. 1215 is part of a package of proposed reforms that supplement the American Health Care Act, the House measure to replace the Affordable Care Act that was narrowly approved in May. The Trump administration has pledged to support the tort reform legislation. Still, passage is far from certain groups across the political spectrum oppose the measure. Advocates for patients say such legislation would be unfair to people seriously injured by medical negligence, whose lives are changed forever. Many conservatives don’t embrace it either because it would impose federal standards on tort law, an area where states have traditionally determined the rules. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would lower health care costs by reducing the premiums of medical liability insurance and the use of health care services by providers worried about being sued. This would lead to lower spending on federal health care programs. The likely overall result, the CBO says, would be to reduce deficits by nearly $50 billion over 10 years. Supporters of the bill say caps on medical malpractice awards discourage frivolous lawsuits and reduce the cost of health care because providers no longer need to practice defensive medicine. Yet research shows that costs from medical liability make up just 2 to 2. 5 percent of total health care spending. About half of states have a cap of some sort on   damages in medical malpractice cases, according to Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy, a consumer advocacy organization for civil justice issues. Under the House bill, states that already have caps on   damage awards could keep those limits in place. In states without such caps, even if the state constitution prohibits them or state courts have struck them down, the federal $250, 000 cap would apply. The case of the Pennsylvania man’s surgery is a ”never event”  —   one of list of around 30 types of serious medical events that experts on patient safety say should never occur. Since Pennsylvania doesn’t have its own cap on   damages, if the House bill had been in effect, it would have limited the $620, 000 the jury awarded the patient to $250, 000. In this case, the patient, Steven Hanes, also was awarded an additional $250, 000 in punitive damages. Hanes declined to be interviewed, but his attorney, Braden Lepisto, said in an email that his client was shocked to learn of the proposed cap. ”He felt that the $250, 000 cap was ridiculous,” Lepisto said of his client, ”because that amount would not compensate him for what he has gone through and will go through moving forward.” He added, ”The reality is that there are many individuals who are injured from medical negligence who do not have ’economic loss’ as defined by the law. Nonetheless, their lives are altered from the pain and suffering, loss of life’s pleasures, and the emotional effects of the injuries.” The House bill would also come into play in Florida, where earlier this month the state Supreme Court struck down caps on   damages in medical negligence cases because the court ruled they violate the equal protection clause of the state constitution. The House bill would supersede the state court decision and impose the cap in Florida cases. Although the damages cap is noteworthy, other elements of the House bill also trouble consumer advocates. For example, it would establish a   statute of limitations for consumers to bring a lawsuit after an injury, or a   limit from the date that the consumer discovers or should have discovered the injury. ”Because it’s [worded as] whichever comes first, for all intents and purposes it’s one year,” said Doroshow. ”That is a drastic change. Almost no state has a statute of limitations that severe.” The bill would also set limits on the amounts that lawyers can recover in contingency fees from legal judgements in consumer cases. This seemingly   provision could actually harm patients, said Doroshow. Medical malpractice cases are complex and expensive to bring, she noted. ”If you have a law that caps the ability of the attorney to recover from the judgment, they’ll think twice before taking a case,” Doroshow said. ”It hurts the patient’s ability to have a competent attorney or any attorney at all.” Meanwhile, some supporters of tort reform say the House bill goes about it the wrong way. ”The federal government doesn’t really have a legitimate role to play here,” said Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a general surgeon in Phoenix who is also an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, located in Washington, D. C. Conservatives might be relying too much on the idea of tort reform to bring down the costs of health care, Singer said. ”It’s become almost a part of the canon of people who align themselves with the   conservative reforms school,” he said. ”But it should be done at the state level, and we’re fooling ourselves if we think that it’ll be the magic bullet.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow Michelle Andrews on Twitter @mandrews110."
"President Trump’s support among independent voters has eroded since he took office. Though he still clings to a loyal base of supporters, his overall disapproval among Americans has reached record highs, according to a new     poll. Just 37 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing just over five months into his tenure, while 51 percent disapprove. Forty percent of those polled strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance, twice the 20 percent who strongly approved. The most pronounced swing seen in the poll was among independents. Over the past four months, their approval of the president has dissipated. In February, 40 percent of independents said they approved of the job Trump was doing, with 51 percent disapproving. Four months later in June, just 31 percent say they approve of the president with 59 percent of independents disapproving  —   a     drop. Despite almost full employment nationwide, independents are particularly dissatisfied with Trump on the economy. That’s likely driving much of their overall disapproval. Just 31 percent of independents say they have confidence in Trump’s ability to improve the U. S. economy, while 49 percent doubt he can do so. Just three months ago, 44 percent thought Trump could turn around the economy, while 38 percent didn’t  —   a     swing. Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said the scope of the shift over the past few months among independents should cause ”alarm bells to go off” at the White House. ”Independents were certainly willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt when he entered office,” Miringoff said, ”but on issues like the direction of the country and the economy, they’ve really soured on him. It’s hard for someone like him to make a second impression. Independents have come to the conclusion that what you see is what you get.” The good news for Trump is that his base hasn’t abandoned him even as he has faced mounting investigations. Eighty percent of Republicans still approve of the job he is doing, including 91 percent who identify as strong Republicans. Trump has an 89 percent approval rating among those who voted for him last November. He has a 65 percent approval rating among white evangelical Christians, though almost a quarter disapprove of the job he is doing. Still, there are some warning signs for the president among some of his key demographic groups. Only 52 percent of white,    Americans approve of the job he’s doing, though just 37 percent disapprove. And that is higher than most other subgroups. More worrisome for the president, among older Americans, 60 and older, he’s underwater  —   47 percent disapprove, while 43 percent approve. Overall, Americans’ outlook under Trump is dismal. Almost double say the country is on the wrong track as those who think it’s on the right track, 61 percent to 31 percent, a gap that has nearly doubled since February. More people say they feel worse off  —   40 percent  —   since Trump took office, than better off  —   34 percent. There is a deep partisan divide on that question, of course  —   73 percent of Republicans say they’re better off, while 67 percent of Democrats say the opposite. Among independents, far more  —   44 percent  —   say they’re worse off, compared with just 27 percent who say they’re better off. Americans also think Trump has hurt the country on the global stage.   percent say the president has weakened the United States’ position abroad, while 34 percent say he has strengthened it. In addition, by a   margin, Americans believe former President Barack Obama was, by far, a more effective leader in comparison to Trump, 58 percent to 34 percent. Among independents, there is an even more pronounced   difference, 65 percent to 29 percent. A narrow plurality do think Trump is keeping his campaign promises (48 percent who do and 45 percent who don’t) but most people disagree with some of the president’s recent decisions.   percent of those surveyed said they opposed Trump pulling out of the Paris climate accord earlier this month, while just 30 percent supported it. Just over half of Americans also think the Supreme Court should rule against Trump’s travel ban, which would curtail the entry of people from six   countries, while 43 percent say the high court should rule in the president’s favor and allow him to proceed with one of his key campaign promises. A slim majority of independents (52 percent) also think the court should strike down the ban. There is a cloud of suspicion that hangs over the president as well, with mounting questions about his business ties that are only compounded by his continued refusal to release his tax returns. More than 6 in 10 Americans say they believe Trump has either done something illegal (33 percent) or unethical but not illegal (28 percent). Just 31 percent say they believe he has done nothing wrong. One place where Trump is losing GOP support is over his Twitter habit.   percent of Americans say Trump’s use of Twitter is ”reckless and distracting,” while only 21 percent say it’s ”effective and informative.” Even among Republicans, only a narrow plurality (43 percent) say the president’s use of Twitter is positive, while 42 percent agree it’s reckless and distracting. And while Americans have a sour view of Trump, their opinion of Congress  —   both Democrats and Republicans  —   is no better. Congressional Republicans have a     approval rating (28 percent to 61 percent) while congressional Democrats are not much better with a     approval (30 percent to 57 percent). ”Nobody is benefiting in Washington from what is going on,” Miringoff said. Looking ahead to the 2018 midterms, registered voters say they’re more likely to vote for a Democratic member of Congress over a Republican one by a   margin, 48 percent to 38 percent. But, with a gerrymandered congressional map that benefits the GOP, that   advantage is less imposing than it may seem and may not be enough to help Democrats win back the House. What’s more, as they learned in last week’s   loss in a Georgia House race, making the election too much about Trump isn’t necessarily a silver bullet, either. The     poll surveyed 1, 205 adults from June   contacted by live interviewers using a mix of landline and mobile numbers. There is a 2.  point margin of error. A   of 995 registered voters were also surveyed, with a 3.  point margin of error."
"USA Gymnastics announced Tuesday that it will adopt all 70 of the recommendations in an independent review of its policies about reporting abuse. An investigation by The Indianapolis Star last year found that at least 368 gymnasts have alleged they were sexually assaulted by adults working in the sport. ”Even one instance of child abuse is one too many,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement on its website. ”USA Gymnastics is very sorry that anyone has been harmed during his or her gymnastics career, and we offer our deepest regrets to any athlete who suffered abuse or mistreatment while participating in the sport. By working together, we can move the sport forward to better prevent the opportunity for abuse to occur.” The organization’s board unanimously adopted the report’s recommendations on Monday night, the Associated Press reports. But some say USAG’s pledge to do better isn’t enough. ”The same people who have groomed this environment and didn’t catch it to begin with, and now all of a sudden you’re telling us overnight this is going to be fixed?” Olympic gold medalist Dominique Moceanu told the Star. Attorney John Manly, whose firm represents more than 100 people who allege abuse by former team doctor Larry Nassar, called the report ”a public relations facade,” according to the AP. ”The report calls for a change in culture but those who created the toxic culture remain in charge of the organization,” said Manly in a statement, the AP reports. ”The lack of any real investigation, facts or accountability for those who failed thousands of boys and girls victimized by Nassar and others in the report is disturbing.” Late last year, USA Gymnastics hired Deborah Daniels, a former federal prosecutor and current partner at an   law firm, to conduct an independent review of its bylaws, policies, procedures and practices related to handling sexual misconduct matters, and to make recommendations on how to improve. That report was released yesterday, and its overarching recommendation is a ”cultural shift” at both the organization and its member clubs. ”USA Gymnastics has never felt it had the ability to exert influence over the club,” Daniels told the AP. ”You can use membership to enforce the policies.” One of Daniels’ recommendations is reducing the power of the organization’s president. ”A president who was not inclined to take reports of misconduct seriously, or who was concerned about tarnishing the reputation of the organization, or who was a friend of the respondent in the matter, would have the authority to dismiss the complaint, or choose not to pursue it, without the involvement of others.” The group’s former president and CEO, Steve Penny, resigned in March under pressure that followed the Star’s investigation. USA Gymnastics expects to hire Penny’s replacement by the fall, the newspaper reports. USA Gymnastics staff received ”little, if any, formal training” relating to the dynamics or prevention of child abuse, according to Daniels’ report, and it also had no staff dedicated to child protection. The organization says it is ”in the final stages” of hiring a Director of Safe Sport, who will be charged with driving the importance of athlete safety and creating education and training plans for athletes, parents and coaches. The Daniels report describes the specific qualities of women’s gymnastics that increase its athletes’ risk of sexual abuse and harassment: the young age of athletes, long hours of training that prevent athletes from receiving typical socialization, an emphasis on toughness and not complaining, physical contact as a coaches ”spot” an athlete or correct her form, and an emphasis on obedience. ”Everything about this environment, while understandable in the context of a highly competitive Olympic sport, tends to suppress reporting of inappropriate activity,” the report says. And parents of elite gymnasts often defer to coaches, the report explains: ”[P]arents learn that they must turn their child’s upbringing and discipline over to the coach during the training portions of her day, and even beyond. If the coach orders no desserts, the parent is doing the child a disservice by taking her out for ice cream. . .. And generally, the parents are not themselves gymnasts, so they are uncertain of the propriety of actions that may be taken by coaches. They want their child to succeed, so they tend to defer to the authority figures in the sport and not question them.” The report recommends USA Gymnastics create a database of coaches who are dismissed from member clubs, so that coaches suspected of abuse do not move from one club to another. The AP reports that such a database is planned. USA Gymnastics listed a number of policies it would introduce to decrease ”opportunities for grooming and other inappropriate interactions.” Those policies include prohibiting adult members from being alone with minor gymnasts, sharing or being alone in a sleeping room with gymnasts, or having ”  ” contact with gymnasts via email, text or social media. ”What we’ve recommended can’t happen overnight, it will take thoughtful and strategic planning to implement,” Daniels told the AP on Tuesday. ”If USA Gymnastics adopts recommendations and implements them, it is poised to be in the forefront.”"
"The air Americans breathe has been getting cleaner for decades. But air pollution is still killing thousands in the U. S. every year, even at the levels allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a study out Wednesday. ”We are now providing   evidence that we are breathing harmful air,” says Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, who led the study. ”Our air is contaminated.” Dominici and her colleagues set out to do the most comprehensive study to date assessing the toll that air pollution takes on American lives. The researchers used data from federal air monitoring stations as well as satellites to compile a detailed picture of air pollution down to individual zip codes. They then analyzed the impact of very low levels of air pollution on mortality, using data from 60 million Medicare patients from 2000 to 2012. About 12, 000 lives could be saved each year, their analysis concludes, by cutting the level of fine particulate matter nationwide by just 1 microgram per cubic meter of air below current standards. ”It’s very strong, compelling evidence that currently, the safety standards are not safe enough,” Dominici says. Fine particulate matter  —   basically, tiny particles of dust and soot  —   appears to be especially dangerous for   men and poor people, the researchers found. Compared to the general population,   are about three times as likely to die from exposure to it, the researchers found. The study did not examine why that would be the case, but Dominici has some theories. ”People of color tend to be sicker and more affected [by] disease,” she says, pointing out that they also tend to live in places with more pollution and have less access to health care.  Taken together, she says, the results indicate that more should be done to push air pollution levels as low as possible. ”I think it is the responsibility of the government to make sure that our air is clean,” she says. The EPA did not respond to NPR’s request for comment. Scott Segal, a Washington lawyer who works for the energy industry and has advised the Trump administration, argues the study is flawed. And he says that cutting air pollution even further would come with big costs. ”When we have very expensive environmental rules, they in and of themselves can adversely affect public health” by increasing the cost of medical care, suppressing economic growth, and siphoning off resources from more serious health threats, Segal says. But Jeffrey Drazen,    of the New England Journal of Medicine, defended the research in an editorial accompanying the study. ”What these data are telling us is that even with our current standards, if we cleaned up the air more, we could save lives,” Drazen says. ”Anything that we did that pushed things in the opposite direction  —   that gave us dirtier air  —   not only would be unpleasant, it’s going to kill a lot of people.” And Drazen says the Trump administration’s policies would make the air dirtier. He cited the administration’s efforts to cut the EPA, increase the use of coal, relax air pollution standards and withdraw from the fight against global warming.  ”If you look at what’s happening in the Trump administration, the general direction is not to clean up the air,” Drazen says. ”So this is a warning that if we don’t clean up the air, the people who are going to bear that burden are the poor and the disadvantaged, more than the rich and  .”"
"The last few months have not been easy ones for the small companies that supply Whole Foods with quinoa and kale. As big investors demanded a   at the company, maybe even a takeover by a much bigger supermarket chain, Janey Hubschman felt that the fate of her own company, Epicurean Butter, was also at stake. ”The fact that their sales have not been great affects every single product that is in Whole Foods, and their reputation affects everything that is on the shelf,” says the Colorado businesswoman, who has been selling to Whole Foods since 2005. Brian Nicholson, the president and CEO of Red Jacket Orchards, which sells apples and juices to Whole Foods, was worried by rumors that private equity firms might acquire the food retailer. Then, on June 16, the   takeover announcement came, with Amazon as the winner, and many small food companies actually breathed a sigh of relief. Despite Amazon’s huge size, and its reputation for squeezing out small businesses in sectors such as bookstores, these food companies think the online behemoth’s entry into their business could be a good thing. For some, it’s because Amazon is familiar. Robbie Stout of Ritual Chocolate in Utah uses Amazon to buy parts for his factory. Bebe Goodrich of Icebox Coffee in Alabama said Amazon is a tremendous part of her life as an entrepreneur and mom of two kids. And Hubschman says, ”I have a box with that little smiley face on my door four times a week. I love Amazon.” And paradoxically, many small food companies look at Jeff Bezos’ company, which changed the way people shop, and see a hint of their own desire to shake things up in a food industry that is still dominated by powerhouse manufacturers selling to conventional grocery stores. ”Whole Foods came in as an innovator and others changed to catch up, carrying natural and organic foods,” said Sylvia Wyant, CEO of Zest Brands LLC, which makes cakes and cookies that meet the paleo diet. ”I see Jeff Bezos and Amazon as innovators, and I see the grocery business needing innovation.” The problem is,   innovation hasn’t always been kind to small businesses or to the types of products Whole Foods peddles. Searches for ”artisan” or ” local” on Amazon Prime Pantry pull up only a couple dozen results, mostly packaged items like white cheddar popcorn or crackers. In fact, little about Amazon is local, save for the boxes arriving at your door. Their mission is to ”build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” Whole Foods, on the other hand, built a regional purchasing model that gave stores considerable autonomy in finding local products. At least, that was the case until early 2016, when Whole Foods shifted all its nonperishable buying to its Austin, Texas, headquarters. ”I think Amazon’s track record in other sectors indicates they are not deeply invested in creating a decentralized model,” says Leah Douglas, a reporter and analyst with the Open Markets program at the New America think tank. Amazon could help bring down prices at the stores known for taking your ”whole paycheck,” but that is more likely to benefit customers and to come at a cost for producers. Despite all that, small suppliers persist in their hope, perhaps simply out of instinct. After all, they built their ideas and products from the ground up through optimism. Potentially, they say, Amazon will open new and better distribution channels, helping them sell products through an online platform with immediate name recognition. The cost of getting products from manufacturing to a retailer the traditional way eats away at profit for businesses like Zest, Wyant says. ”It is hard as a small company to go from a concept to the shelf and then from the shelf to the cart,” says Indea Leo, the founder of Lillabee, which makes   baking mixes in Colorado. Lillabee was discovered by a Whole Foods representative while selling at a farmers market and later received a product development loan from the company. ”We think there is going to be a lot of exciting possibilities of bypassing the shelf altogether and reaching a wider customer base.” While suppliers remain optimistic, more information is still needed before the crystal ball of kombucha and asparagus water clears. The deal will be subject to regulatory approval before it is finalized, and neither Amazon nor Whole Foods has said what will change once the two companies are married. Nicholson, the   apple grower, wonders what this means for the future of groceries. His family recently planted new trees to meet growing demand. ”How might we be selling things when that fruit comes available in 10 years?” he says. ”I don’t know.” Editor’s Note: Whole Foods Market and Amazon. com Inc. are two of NPR’s corporate sponsors. Mollie Simon is the NPR Business Desk intern."
"For the first time, the number of children paralyzed by mutant strains of the polio vaccine are greater than the number of children paralyzed by polio itself. So far in 2017, there have been only six cases of ”wild” polio reported anywhere in the world. By ”wild,” public health officials mean the disease caused by polio virus found naturally in the environment. By contrast, there have been 21 cases of   polio this year. These cases look remarkably similar to regular polio. But laboratory tests show they’re caused by remnants of the oral polio vaccine that have gotten loose in the environment, mutated and regained their ability to paralyze unvaccinated children, ”It’s actually an interesting conundrum. The very tool you are using for [polio] eradication is causing the problem,” says Raul Andino, a professor of microbiology at the University of California at San Francisco. The oral polio vaccine used throughout most of the developing world contains a form of the virus that has been weakened in the laboratory. But it’s still a live virus. (This is a different vaccine than the injectable one used in the U. S. and most developed countries. The injectable vaccine is far more expensive and does not contain live forms of the virus.) Andino studies how viruses mutate. In a study published in March, he and his colleagues found that the   virus used in the oral polio vaccine can very rapidly regain its strength if it starts spreading on its own. After a child is vaccinated with live polio virus, the virus replicates inside the child’s intestine and eventually is excreted. In places with poor sanitation, fecal matter can enter the drinking water supply and the virus is able to start spreading from person to person. ”We discovered there’s only a few [mutations] that have to happen and they happen rather quickly in the first month or two ” Andino says. ”As the virus starts circulating in the community, it acquires further mutations that make it basically indistinguishable from the   virus. It’s polio in terms of virulence and in terms of how the virus spreads.” In June, the World Health Organization reported 15 cases of children paralyzed in Syria by   forms of polio. These cases come on top of two other   polio cases earlier this year in Syria and four in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ”In Syria, there may be more cases coming up,” says Michel Zaffran, the director of polio eradication at the World Health Organization. He says lab work is still being done on about a dozen more cases of paralysis to confirm whether they’re polio or something else. The cases in Syria are all in the east of the country near the border with Iraq. It has become fairly common each year for there to be one or two small outbreaks of   polio. These outbreaks tend to happen in conflict zones where health care systems have collapsed. ”These outbreaks are occurring only in very rare cases and only in places where children are not immunized,” says Zaffran. The regular polio vaccine protects children from   strains of the virus just as it protects them from regular polio.   outbreaks, he says, ”occur where there are large pockets of unimmunized children, pockets sufficiently large to allow for the circulation of the virus.” WHO is staging a massive response to the Syrian outbreak. WHO plans to work with local health officials and aid groups to vaccinate a quarter of a million children in early July. The goal is to reach every child younger than 5 in the area with two doses of two different types of polio vaccine, spaced one to two weeks apart. This would be a logistical challenge in most parts of the world, never mind in   Syria. ”The access in these areas is a bit limited because of the presence of ISIS,” Zaffran says in what seems like an understatement. Eastern Syria is home right now to Syrians who’ve fled from Raqqa (the ISIS capital in Syria) other parts of the country and even Iraq. ”Also there’s a risk that the fighting might actually move to this area.” Zaffran is confident that the rogue   virus circulating in eastern Syria right now can be wiped out with a massive blast of more vaccine. ”We knew that we were going to have such outbreaks. We’ve had them in the past. We continue to have them now. We know how to find them, and we know how to interrupt them. We have the tools to do that,” Zaffran says. ”So it’s hiccup . .. a very regrettable hiccup for the poor children that have been paralyzed, of course. But with regards to the whole initiative, you know it’s not something that is unexpected.” WHO is attempting to phase out the use of live oral polio vaccine to eliminate the risk that the active virus in the vaccine could mutate into a form that can harm unvaccinated children. But for now, the live vaccine continues to be the workhorse of the global polio eradication campaign for a couple of reasons. First it’s cheap, costing only about 10 cents a dose versus $3 a dose for the injectable, killed vaccine. Second, it can be given as drops into a child’s mouth, which makes it far easier to administer than the inactivated or ”killed” vaccine, which has to be injected. Third, there simply isn’t enough killed vaccine on the market to vaccinate every child on the planet, and vaccine manufacturers don’t have the capacity to produce the quantities that would be needed if such a switch happened immediately. And finally, the live vaccine stops transmission of the polio virus entirely in a community if sufficient numbers of people are vaccinated. The killed vaccine doesn’t fully block the virus from spreading because a person who is immunized can still carry and spread the polio virus. And this is an important difference between these two types of vaccines when the goal is to exterminate the polio virus. ”The fact is this [the live oral polio vaccine] is the only tool that we have that can eradicate the disease,” says Zaffran. That eradication effort has been incredibly successful. In 1988, when the campaign began, there were 350, 000 cases of polio around the world each year compared with the six so far this year. Zaffran credits the oral polio vaccine with getting the world incredibly close to wiping out a terrible disease. ”Four regions of the world have totally eradicated the disease with the use of the oral polio vaccine,” he notes. ”Of course we need to recognize that there have been a few cases of children paralyzed because of the vaccine virus, which is regrettable. But, you know, from a public health perspective, the benefits far outweigh the risk.”"
"A federal appeals court paved the way on Wednesday for Ohio to resume executions by lifting a lower court’s decision to halt the state’s lethal injection process. It was a contentious decision that split the 6th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges in an   vote. In the case brought by death row inmates, the judges focused on the effects of the sedative midazolam, one of the three lethal injection drugs used by Ohio. As The   has reported, the drug has been ”used during multiple botched executions in Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma and Alabama.” Authorities used it in Ohio during the Jan. 16, 2014, execution of Dennis McGuire, who took 24 minutes to die. As we’ve reported, a witness said he appeared to be gasping and choking. Since then, executions in the state have been on hold. Death row inmates Ronald Phillips, Gary Otte and Raymond Tibbetts say that executing them using midazolam would violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge ruled in January that midazolam is not sufficiently humane and blocked the upcoming executions. In that decision, U. S. District Court Magistrate Judge Michael Merz stated that the ”use of midazolam as the first drug in Ohio’s present   protocol will create a ’substantial risk of serious harm’ or an ’objectively intolerable risk of harm.’ ” The state appealed Merz’s decision, which the 6th Circuit’s majority opinion described as ”seriously flawed.” The judges say the district court applied the wrong standard. The proper legal question, they say, is not whether the use of midazolam in the protocol presents a ”substantial risk of serious harm,” but whether it is ”sure or very likely to cause serious pain.” The court concluded that the plaintiffs ”have fallen well short” of proving this, even though they ”have shown some risk that Ohio’s execution protocol may cause some degree of pain, at least in some people.” Ultimately, the court states, the Constitution ”does not guarantee ’a   execution.’ ” McGuire’s dose of midazolam was 10 milligrams, the judges say, far smaller than the   dose in the state’s current lethal injection protocol. Six of the judges disagreed with the majority, writing that the plaintiffs ”should not be executed before a trial on the constitutionality of Ohio’s execution method.” Allen Bohnert, a public defender representing death row inmates, told The Associated Press that Wednesday’s judgment does not constitute ”a decisive ruling on the constitutionality of the   method.” According to the wire service, Bohnert says he plans to appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court. There are currently 139 people sentenced to die in Ohio."
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"Let’s face it: Vegetarians are a strict minority of the U. S. population. The numbers seem to be increasing, though data from various surveys vary widely. For example, a Public Policy Polling survey of 500 respondents indicates a jump in    from 1 percent in 1971 to a whopping 13 percent in 2013  —   6 percent vegans, 7 percent vegetarians. (Somewhat tragicomically, the question about vegetarianism is part of a poll titled: ”Americans pick Ronald McDonald over Burger King for President. ”) Other sources show results that, if you are rooting for vegetarianism, are much worse. A 2006 study endorsed by the Food and Drug Administration concludes that 2. 3 percent of U. S. adults are vegetarians and 1. 4 percent are vegans. A more recent 2016 Harris poll commissioned by the Vegetarian Resource Group puts the number of vegetarian adults at 3. 3 percent and vegans at about half of that. So, this suggests a roughly 50 percent growth in numbers in the past 10 years. These results are somewhat consistent with another poll from Faunalytics, whose mission is ”to make you more powerful in creating change for animals,” which reports only about 3 percent vegetarian, although it indicates the number of people declaring a decrease in their meat intake is increasing. Given the fluctuations in the numbers, we can conclude that: 1. There is urgent need for a more thorough polling 2. The numbers quoted here should be taken only as qualitative indicators of trends. Moving on to the rest of the world, the numbers aren’t much better  —   apart from India, a country where religious practices contribute to the number of vegetarians, at about 30 percent. According to the 2014 Meat Atlas of the Friends of the Earth, the worldwide average is about 5 percent. For the kinds of meat that are being eaten in different countries, these charts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development provide a detailed breakdown. Put together, the numbers indicate that, sadly, humans remain staunch carnivores. The discussion becomes interesting when we ask why some people choose to become vegetarians. A 2009 article on Harvard Health (updated in 2016) points to a diversity of reasons, ranging from moral (unfair treatment of animals) to health to economic to religious to environmental. A 2007 study by Raluca Andrea Ion from the University of Bucharest published in the Russian journal Economics of Agriculture corroborates these results, listing the different factors in order of overall preference: Most people choose to become vegetarians because of a moral concern with animals and to eat a healthier diet. The environment shows up as a lower concern. These results show little understanding of the impact that   has on the environment and why each one of us can make a difference, a point we made here earlier. (For a more global view, see here.) What would happen to the environment if the world population decided to become vegetarian? The answer is not so simple. The   and widely cited 2008 study Livestock in a Changing Landscape lists the pros and cons of the livestock industry worldwide. (For a summary, see this 2010 article from Stanford News.) Here are a few of the findings: So, a   world would have more forests, less demand for fresh water, less use of pesticides and antibiotics, more grains for people and less emission of greenhouse gases. Apparently, a  . But cutting meat completely would not be as good a solution as it seems. As people eat less meat, they need to eat more plants, so farming areas need to be converted accordingly. In some areas where the land is not easily arable (such as mountainous regions with dry climate) grazing cattle, sheep and goats is actually converting inedible grass into edible meat and milk. Pigs and chickens could be fed leftover foods leftover food amounts to an absurd   of total food produced in the world. In some poor regions, meat and milk consumption is the only reliable source of protein and fat. Also, in poor regions, many people work with livestock. They could be redirected and trained for farming, but due to limitations with soil quality this may not be an easy shift. Switching to a vegetarian (  but egg and dairy are OK) as opposed to a strict vegan diet is also impractical, since, in the case of livestock, cows must calve every year to keep producing milk and 50 percent of their offspring are males. What do we do with them? It’s possible that genetic engineering will take care of this issue, producing only cows tweaked to be   factories. Chickens could be tampered with as well. But how moral would such technology be? Circling back to the question in the title, it is clear that less meat is good morally and environmentally, but no meat may not be as good as some may think. Some poor regions in the world need all the meat they can get. The same in areas where there is no arable land and grazing is efficient. Culture also plays an essential role, and   is firmly ingrained in many parts of the world. Try convincing a Maasai from Kenya that he can’t eat meat or drink milk and blood. (Their diet is slowly changing to include more grains.) For those of us who can afford a nourishing   diet, there is little reason to remain a carnivore. But try telling that to a BBQ chef from South Carolina or São Paulo. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and writer  —   and a professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the director of the Institute for   Engagement at Dartmouth,   of 13. 7 and an active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"It all began rather simply. ”Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform,” goes the opening line in the opening book of Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear series. Readers, for their part, first met the orphan bear from Peru in 1958, in the pages of A Bear Named Paddington. Bond died at home after a brief illness Tuesday at age 91, according to publisher HarperCollins. But that beloved bear of his, which has endured nearly six decades, promises to live on much longer  —   not only in books but also in the toy stores and screens, both big and small, that Paddington has graced since his introduction. ”Michael was a giant of children’s literature,” HarperCollins UK said in a statement Wednesday. ”He was a true gentleman, a bon viveur, the most entertaining company and the most enchanting of writers,” said   Murtagh, executive publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books. ”He will be forever remembered for his creation of the iconic Paddington, with his duffle coat and wellington boots, which touched my own heart as a child and will live on in the hearts of future generations.” Bond was prolific  —   both with Paddington and an assortment of other characters  —   and wrote not only for children, but also for adult readers. He published more than 200 books, including roughly one Paddington book a year for the first decade of the series, and Bond’s publisher says his books sold more than 35 million copies. But none of that success was foreordained. In fact, Bond, who had been working for BBC radio in the 1950s, got the idea from a purchase he made out of sympathy for a plush toy. While doing   shopping on Christmas Eve, ”I came across a small bear looking, I thought, very sorry for himself as he was the only one who hadn’t been sold,” Bond recalled in the autobiography series Something about the Author. Bond continues the story from here: ”I bought him, and because we were living near Paddington station at the time, we christened him Paddington. ”He sat on a shelf of our   apartment for a while, and then one day when I was sitting in front of my typewriter staring at a blank sheet of paper wondering what to write, I idly tapped out the words ’Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform. In fact, that was how he came to have such an unusual name for a bear, for Paddington was the name of the station.’ ”It was a simple act, and in terms of deathless prose, not exactly   but it was to change my life considerably. . .. Without intending it, I had become a children’s author.” Looking back on that moment, Bond told The Guardian in 2014 that he was also likely inspired by another memory, at another train station: the evacuee children he would see come through Reading Station during World War II. ”They all had a label round their neck with their name and address on and a little case or package containing all their treasured possessions,” Bond told the paper. ”So Paddington, in a sense, was a refugee, and I do think that there’s no sadder sight than refugees.” As news of his death surfaced, readers took to social media to offer their tributes  —   as well as a pledge: We’ll look after your bear, Mr. Bond."
"The Florida Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a legal dispute over the death penalty that pits a local prosecutor against the governor. At issue is whether Gov. Rick Scott has the authority to remove cases from State Attorney Aramis Ayala of Orlando because she won’t seek the death penalty. When Ayala, a Democrat, announced her position in March, the Republican governor reassigned capital murder cases in her jurisdiction, including a high profile double murder of a pregnant woman and an Orlando police officer. ”Ayala’s complete refusal to consider capital punishment for the entirety of her term sends an unacceptable message that she is not interested in considering every available option in the fight for justice,” Scott said at the time. Ayala sued to get them back. Scott is overriding the discretion of an   prosecutor says lawyer Roy L. Austin, Jr. who represents Ayala in her lawsuit against Scott. ”By taking 24 cases away from State Attorney Aramis Ayala, Gov. Scott violated the constitution and the law,” Austin argues. But Florida solicitor general Amit Agarwal says the governor has broad authority to reassign cases to further the ends of justice. He says Ayala’s position is at odds with the state’s death penalty statute. ”It’s like that law has been nullified,” he argues. ”Is it really the case that every single elected prosecutor in this state may adopt a blanket policy of refusing to apply or adopt any state law with which that prosecutor personally disagrees?” Agarwal asks. Ayala, who took office in January in Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit, is the first black elected prosecutor in Florida. She says the death penalty is broken and does not achieve justice for victims’ families. She didn’t campaign on capital punishment but once in office said she had determined through research that pursuing the death penalty ”is not in the best interest of this community or the best interest of justice.” But several Florida Supreme Court justices question whether her position falls within prosecutorial discretion, given that she has applied it universally and not on a    basis. ”It seems to me that discretion is not to ignore Florida law,” says Justice R. Fred Lewis. ”Your Honor, respectfully, there is nothing in Florida law that requires State Attorney Ayala to seek the death penalty,” says Ayala’s attorney Roy Austin. Chief Justice Jorge Labarga is skeptical. ”So you’re going to have a situation where in the state of Florida you’re going to have one circuit with a death penalty, one circuit without it, all over the place,” Labarga says. ”How is that proper? Why do we need the legislature if we have that?” Ayala spoke with reporters after the oral arguments. ”There was no blueprint for me to follow,” she said. ”I did what I believed was proper under Florida law and no laws have been violated.” Justices did not say when they might rule in the dispute."
"The newly elected South Korean president, Moon   will arrive at the White House on Thursday for his first meeting with President Trump. The meeting will center on a pressing problem that vexes both countries: North Korea. The Trump administration calls North Korea’s growing weapons capabilities its top foreign policy priority  —   and will try to make more headway on the issue with its partner, South Korea, which relies on some 28, 000 U. S. troops for defense. But the two leaders’ approaches to North Korea differ. Moon, a veteran of the liberal former South Korean President Roh  ’s administration, favors rapprochement and engagement with Pyongyang, while Trump’s Pentagon and State Department leaders have rejected talks with North Korea  —   at least for now. Moon’s team says the trip is about establishing a relationship between the two men. Moon was elected just last month in a snap election following the historic impeachment and removal of conservative President Park  . ”Instead of clinging to drawing results on specific issues, we will focus on building a foundation of friendship and trust,” says Moon spokesman Park  . The two leaders must establish their relationship even as both their policy teams are incomplete or just ramping up. There’s still no U. S. ambassador to Seoul and some key posts remain empty to advise on East Asia policy at the Pentagon and State Department. While Trump likes to call himself a ” ” and Moon has been dubbed ”the negotiator,” the two differ sharply not only in perspective, but also in style. Moon is a veteran of the military and government, and a wonky policy expert. Trump came into the White House with no similar background or experience. Moon supports both sanctions and dialogue leading to a suspension or freeze of North Korea’s nuclear development. ”For too long, have we been closed off from each other,” Moon said last week of the North. ”It’s not just the road that’s been closed off between the North and South, but maybe our hearts as well. [Our] government will find ways to restore   relations and to reopen dialogue.” Despite saying last month that he’d be ”honored” to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ”under the right circumstances,” Trump did not lay out preconditions for such a meeting. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has rejected talks toward a freeze and says the administration wants to see North Korean  . But there’s no sign North Korea has any intention of suspending its nuclear weapons development. Nor has there been any headway between the two Koreas toward negotiations, because North Korea has continued to launch missiles and test rocket engines all year. The options for the Trump administration on North Korea are as bad as they were for previous administrations. The U. S. doesn’t want to ”reward” Pyongyang by negotiating without preconditions. Boosting sanctions hasn’t been effective so far because the sanctions are not applied or enforced by all the countries that have agreed to them. And the more North Korea is isolated, the more it has innovated to get around sanctions. The option of a   military strike to destroy the North’s weapons stores  —   something U. S. officials have said is a possibility  —   would be especially dangerous. Pyongyang has made clear that any impending attack would lead North Korea to  . Even without nuclear weapons, the majority of North Korea’s artillery is already trained on Seoul, with a metro population of 20 million. Jihye Lee and Dasl Yoon contributed to this story."
"Updated at 3:15 p. m. ET, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is describing Tuesday’s helicopter assault on the country’s Supreme Court and Interior Ministry as a terrorist attack. But there’s a lot of confusion about who was behind the dramatic incident in the capital Caracas, with opponents of the president suggesting that it may have been staged. ”Maduro’s saying this was part of an attempted coup encouraged by the U. S. His officials claim the stolen helicopter fired 15 shots at the Interior Ministry,” NPR’s Philip Reeves reports from Rio de Janeiro. ”Then it flew to the nearby Supreme Court  —   which was in session  —   and attacked it with four grenades,” Philip adds. Nobody was injured, he says, and it’s not clear how many of those grenades actually went off. At the time of the attack, the government says the Interior Ministry was hosting a reception, according to The Associated Press. Video posted on social media shows dramatic scenes of the helicopter circling, amid the sound of loud blasts. The pilot escaped in the copter. President Maduro said ”sooner or later, we will capture the helicopter and those who have committed this armed attack.” The government says the pilot is a man named Oscar Perez, a longtime member of the country’s forensic police force, according to the BBC. He is also a movie actor, who appeared in a 2015 action film called Suspended Death. The broadcaster cites a promotional interview in which Perez says, ”I am a helicopter pilot, a combat diver and a free parachutist. I am also a father, a companion and an actor,” Perez said. ”I am a man who goes out without knowing if he will return home because death is part of evolution.” Perez apparent involvement in the assault was highlighted on social media, as Philip reports: ”Images appeared on social media that seem to show Perez in a police chopper waving a banner bearing the word Liberty. There’s also a video showing him in front of several hooded armed men, saying an operation’s begun to restore democracy.” Some social media users pointed out that three of the four hooded and armed men in the video do not seem to move, raising questions about whether they are dolls or even painted onto the background. And as The Associated Press reported, despite the video’s claims about the start of an operation, ”there was no sign of any other police or troops taking part.” The country has been roiled by months of protests against Maduro’s leadership, as the president continues to push forward with his plan to rewrite the Constitution. The wire service adds that ”many of Maduro’s opponents took to social media to accuse the president of orchestrating an elaborate ruse to justify a crackdown against those seeking to block his plans to rewrite the constitution.” The Wall Street Journal reports: ”The plan for a new constitution, which has helped fuel deepening unrest, is highly unpopular as it would usurp what few legal avenues of dissent are left to the country’s beleaguered opposition. ”About 80 people have died in three months of constant protests against the embattled president, who has been unable to stop an economic free fall that has seen the economy nearly collapse, with inflation rising to 700 percent while food and medicine have become scarce.” The helicopter incident capped a particularly volatile 24 hours that began with widespread looting in the coastal city of Maracay, which is about a 90 minute drive from Caracas. The looting in Maracay began Monday night and continued Tuesday when opposition lawmakers got into a heated scuffle with security forces assigned to protect the National Assembly."
"Cooking wasn’t a matter of choice for Wilma Consul when she was growing up. Raised in the Philippines, she lost her father when she was 5 years old. A couple of years later, her mother, working long hours to provide for her four children, entrusted her   with the task of cooking for the family. ”My sister had to go to school full day,” recalls Consul. She and her two younger brothers went to school in the afternoon. ”I was left in the morning to do all the rice cooking, going to the market and basically cooking for the whole family.” Every morning, Consul went to the market to buy the ground meat, tomatoes and other ingredients for a dish called Ginisang Giniling (the Filipino name for picadillo, a Spanish dish that migrated to many former colonies). Jump to the recipe. It was a simple dish with sautéed meat that her mother had taught her to make. She’d cook it up for lunch for her brothers and herself, and there’d be leftovers for dinner. The circumstances that led Consul to step into the kitchen as a little girl were unusual  —   her father’s early death. But, she says, girls in the Philippines typically learn to cook early on. And Consul’s chores weren’t confined to the kitchen. She took on housework as well. Her sister would help  —   but not her younger brothers. Her experience is pretty much the norm for girls globally. According to a 2016 UNICEF report, girls age five to 14 spend between four to nine hours a week helping their parents with housework  —   40 percent more time than boys their age. Cooking and cleaning the house seems to be the most common chore  —     of girls do this. The next most common chores are shopping for the household, fetching water or firewood, washing clothes and caring for siblings. ”It’s a universal reality,” says Claudia Cappa, a senior statistics specialist with UNICEF and an author of the report. But ”it is more prevalent in the developing world.” This gender gap is especially stark in three African countries  —   Somalia, Ethiopia and Rwanda were cited as having the highest involvement of girls in household chores: more than half of girls age five to 14 spend at least two hours a day on household chores. ”We disproportionately burden girls,” says Anita Raj, director of the Center on Gender Equity and Health at the University of California San Diego. This largely stems from the fact that children’s roles often mirror gender roles in their families, says Raj: ”Girls go off with the mothers for what the mothers are doing. And boys go off with the father.” In most countries, ”women do greater loads of domestic labor.” So their daughters follow suit. This kind of early gender divide in the house has long term negative impacts on girls. ”This time [spent doing housework] is taking them away from schoolwork and socializing with other girls and thinking about their future,” says Cappa. Consul can relate to that. She is proud to have helped her mother  —   a single mother, struggling to provide for four children. But Consul resented it at the time. ”I just wanted to play,” she says. Despite her daily burden of housework, Consul says she excelled at school. And her accomplishments made her mother proud. But many parents in developing countries don’t care about their daughters’ academic achievements. They just want them to marry and raise a family. Household chores prepare them for that, says Cappa. ”Girls are pushed to think that this is the role they have in their family, this is what they are meant to do,” she says. That is why in many countries, girls drop out of school at the secondary level. ”If families think that there is no value of girls attending school, they make decision to take girls out of school,” says Cappa.   For Consul, that wasn’t the case. In fact, she says her mother put a priority on education. Despite the family’s financial hardships, she sent her daughters and sons to private school to make sure they would all be able to find jobs and be independent. And they did, including Consul. After the family moved to the United States, Consul earned a master’s degree in journalism and later went to culinary school. Consul, now 52, splits her time between working as a journalist and a personal chef. When she cooks for herself, she often makes picadillo, the dish she cooked as a little girl. ”It’s kind of my   comfort food,” she says. And with her mother now gone, too, the dish reminds her of home and of ”taking care of her family,” she says. ”I love this dish a lot. It combines my childhood and my culinary vision of how to eat something healthy, without sacrificing the traditional taste.” Someday, she wants to teach her mother’s picadillo recipe to her niece and two nephews, who are in their teens and early 20s and live in California. ”It’s something Filipino, it’s easy [to cook],” she says. ”And it will be something they have from their Lola, their grandmother.” This recipe is courtesy of Wilma Consul. She calls it her ”healthy twist” to picadillo, a hashed meat dish popular in Spain that made its way to former colonies like Cuba and the Philippines. (The Tagalog name ”Ginisang Giniling” means ”sauteed meat. ”) Today, Consul cooks this comfort food with a few modifications  —   organic vegetables, turkey meat instead of pork or beef and edamame in place of peas. ”I fuse our Filipino way of cooking with the French techniques I learned from [culinary] school,” she says. ”When cooked, the meat resembles that of American Sloppy Joe. But the taste is still truly Filipino.” 1 tablespoon olive oil, 2 cloves garlic, crushed and minced, 1 medium yellow onion, diced, 1 medium tomato, diced, 4 tablespoons fish sauce, 1 pound ground turkey (or chicken) 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce, 1 cup water, Leaves from 3 to 4 stems of thyme, 1 bay leaf, dried or fresh (or 2, depending on your taste) 3 parsley stems, 1 celery stalk, cut in half, 3 medium potatoes, Yukon or red, peeled and diced, 4 small carrots, diced, 1 medium red bell pepper, diced, 1   can tomato sauce, 1 cup edamame, 1 cup raisins, dark or golden (dried cranberries are also OK) Heat olive oil in a large sauce pan or pot until oil starts to shimmer. Add minced garlic. Cook until it’s about to turn brown. Add onions, and saute until translucent. Add tomato and   cup of the water. Cover and cook for 3 minutes. Uncover and crush tomatoes lightly with a wooden spoon. When the water has almost evaporated, add the fish sauce and scrape up the dried bits. Enjoy the aroma. Add the ground meat, breaking it apart with a spoon. Add Worcestershire sauce, then the rest of the cup of water. Add thyme, bay leaf, parsley and celery. Cover and bring to a boil. Turn heat down to medium. Add the potatoes and carrots. Cover and simmer until tender. Add bell pepper and cook for 2 minutes. Add tomato sauce. Stir, cover and cook at medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir again, and turn heat to medium low. Add raisins and edamame. Stir, cover and and cook for about 2 to 3 minutes until all vegetables are soft and the flavors have come together. Add the rest of fish sauce (2 tablespoons) and stir. Turn heat to high, and bring to a boil (just a few seconds). Once it boils, turn the heat off and cover. Serve with brown or red rice. Tips: Tell us a memory you have about a dish you love. Post a video or photo on Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #NPRHotPot, and we’ll gather some of our favorites and post them on NPR. org. Get the details here."
"What we eat and how we cook our food tells a story about who we are, where we’ve come from and what we care about. Our food also connects us to other people  —   family and friends with whom we share our meals. That’s why our favorite dishes often stir up strong memories of people we love. Over the next month, NPR’s The Salt and Goats and Soda blogs are teaming up to present six short cooking videos. Each video will feature one dish made by one person who shares with us the memories they associate with the dish. We know our audience feels that way about food, too. That’s why we’d like for you to share with us a memory about a dish that you love. Post a video or photo on Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #NPRHotPot from now until August 1. We’ll gather some of our favorites and post them on NPR. org. Some of them may even serve as inspiration for future videos and stories. You can make your submission as fancy or   as you want. We are looking for photos, videos, drawings, old photos, anything visual. NPR’s Ari Shapiro, for example, posted this Instagram story of the cucumber dish that reminds him of his childhood summers. The caption  Make sure you tell us what the dish is, where it comes from and what memories it evokes. If you feel so inclined, share the recipe. And don’t forget the hashtag #NPRHotPot! Kim Boral from The Filipino Food Movement, an organization that raises awareness about Filipino cuisine, explains why making lumpia makes her feel at peace. Inspiration, Here’s some inspiration from social media. We look forward to seeing what you all share with us!"
"The ”Petya” cyberattack that has now struck computers in at least 65 countries can be traced to a Ukrainian company’s tax accounting software, Microsoft says. ”We saw the first infections in Ukraine  —   more than 12, 500 machines encountered the threat,” Microsoft says. ”We then observed infections in another 64 countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Russia, and the United States.” The complexity of the attack has fueled debate over whether the malware is a new threat or a more sophisticated version of the Petya malware that was used in an attack last spring. But Microsoft says the ransomware is ”a new variant” of Petya, adding that it has issued new security updates to protect computers running its Windows software. Other   companies have also updated their software, in an attempt to limit the damage. The initial infection can be traced to tax accounting software from a Ukrainian company called M. E. Doc, Microsoft says. That connection was the subject of speculation Tuesday, but Microsoft now says it ”has evidence that a few active infections of the ransomware initially started from the legitimate MEDoc updater process.” Petya is still affecting airports and ATMs in Ukraine and hampering international businesses from the shipping giant Maersk to the drug company Merck. Its victims also include hospitals in Pennsylvania’s Heritage Valley Health System. The malware is being compared to the WannaCry outbreak that struck computers in more than 150 countries last month  —   but so far, at least, Petya seems to be spreading more slowly. Like WannaCry, the Petya ransomware demands a $300 bitcoin payment to retrieve encrypted files and hard drives. As of Wednesday morning Eastern time, the account had received around $10, 000. But in a move that has caused some controversy, German email company Posteo blocked the email address the Petya hackers were using to confirm ransom payments. While some cybersecurity experts have praised the approach, others note that users whose files are held hostage have now lost their sole point of contact. WannaCry was largely undone by the discovery of a ”kill switch” that could shut it down. No such kill switch has been found so far with Petya, and experts are still working to find a way to stop it. But security researcher Amit Serper of Boston’s Cybereason has identified a method that essentially acts as a vaccine for computers infected by the malware. His method tricks the ransomware into thinking that it’s already operating on a machine. Serper is being widely praised for the innovation  —   but he says the fix is ”a temporary workaround.” Security experts also are divided on what to call the ransomeware. Some analysts have dubbed the malware ”NotPetya,” to reflect the differences from the original. Others call it ”Goldeneye”  —   the name of another recent strain of the Petya ransomware. Polish researcher Hasherezade says that because core elements of the malware’s code still resemble the original, ”it is fair to call it a new step in the evolution of Petya.” WannaCry was based on exploits stolen from the National Security Agency  —   including a program called EternalBlue, which exploited a Microsoft vulnerability. Using some of the same exploits, Petya has the ability to worm through computer networks, gathering passwords and credentials and spreading itself. After a   delay of at least 10 minutes, the malware uses a reboot to encrypt files. At that point, users see a fake    ”CHKDSK” message on their screen that claims an error has occurred and that the system is checking the integrity of the disk. This is the last chance, security experts say, for users to power down their computers and protect their files before they’re encrypted and held for ransom. The WannaCry outbreak prompted many network administrators to update their security patches. But as the story of an IT worker in Scotland shows, Petya can still sometimes find a way into those machines, by collecting passwords and credentials from an unpatched computer and using them to log into patched machines. ”We were pretty patched up against [Microsoft’s EternalBlue security patch]   obviously mustn’t have been 100 percent,” Colin Scott wrote, ”but even then, if one single PC gets infected and the virus has access to Domain Admin credentials then you’re done already.” On his blog, Scott doesn’t identify his employer, but he says: ”So far we’ve lost many servers and clients, as you can imagine it’s carnage.”"
"A hundred years ago this month, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act to deal with spying against the U. S. in World War I. Historically, the most notorious U. S. spy cases have been tried under the act, like the one against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted in 1951 of giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union and executed two years later. But prosecutions have been relatively rare and limited almost entirely to spies  —   until recently. The Obama administration used the Espionage Act to prosecute suspected national security leakers and now the Trump administration is doing the same. The act is sweeping and bars any disclosure of secrets that could harm the country’s defense. ”It applies to what would be the conventional [spies] who are spying for an enemy, but it also includes individuals who leak classified information,” said Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security cases. During the Obama administration, eight people were charged or convicted of leaking national security secrets under the Espionage Act  —   more such cases than under all previous administrations combined. The cases included Chelsea Manning, the former Army private who was recently released after serving seven years in prison, and Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who remains in Russia but still faces charges in the U. S. Now the Trump administration is pursuing its own case. Reality Winner, a    government contractor, is accused of divulging an NSA document that details Russian meddling in the U. S. election. Zaid and others say the reason for the rise in prosecutions against suspected leakers is simple  —   technology. We’ve entered a new era with encryption apps, thumb drives and other technology that allows leakers to spread classified information in a click, he said. But there’s a flip side. ”Even though it’s easier now to grab these documents, it is a lot easier for the government to track the documents,” said Zaid. Winner has pleaded not guilty, though the FBI says she left a trail of bread crumbs. The bureau says the NSA document was printed at her office. An anonymous letter was postmarked in Augusta, Ga. where she lives. And she reportedly had email contact with The Intercept  —   the outlet that published the document. She was arrested on June 3, just two days after the FBI was alerted to the leak. Like Snowden and Manning, she’s a young,   figure who had access to highly classified material. ”When I first started representing individuals suspected of leaking classified information back in the  ’90s, the government was never able to catch any of these people,” said Zaid. ”They would have loved to have prosecuted them, but they couldn’t. The evidence was lacking.” The Espionage Act never envisioned modern communications. Its critics call it antiquated it was last amended more than a   ago. Zaid said he believes the law should be turned into two separate statutes  —   one for spying and one for illegal leaking. But he thinks that if Congress was to act, it might overreach and impose highly restrictive measures that would prevent legitimate attempts to bring important information to public attention. Stephen Kohn, the author of The New Whistleblower’s Handbook, said government workers can petition to disclose information legally  —   including classified information  —   in many ways. His book offers 30 rules to follow. He notes that employees can formally appeal to their own agency. They can go to a government inspector general or a federal court. And they can always head to that very reliable source of leaks  —   Congress. ”All of a sudden, what might be just four or five people knowing something could be 200 people knowing something,” Kohn said. ”And some of those entities leak on their own. I’m just saying this is how to protect yourself.” As an attorney, Kohn counsels against unlawful leaks and says being   doesn’t make someone safe. ”You just gotta go ” he said, citing the government’s extensive means for electronic tracking in investigations. ”So when I say beware of your electronic footprint, beware of your electronic footprint.” Kohn looks back to the Watergate scandal and the way Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein handled their key source, FBI official Mark Felt, better known as ”Deep Throat.” ”The way that Deep Throat communicated in the Nixon era,” he says, ”in a parking lot, orally  —   [that was] pretty smart.”"
"A founding father of France’s nouvelle cuisine, Alain Senderens, died Sunday at the age of 77, reports The Associated Press. ”He was one of the last great creators of Paris,” French food critic Gilles Pudlowski said, according to The Guardian. ”This creator was a visionary.” Senderens also earned the reputation of rebel, thanks in part to renouncing the   Michelin stars, so he could move untethered toward less fussy and inexpensive fare. ”I want to do something different that will be   in my heart,” he told The Guardian in 2005. Popularized in the 1960s, nouvelle cuisine sought to transform French cooking from its butter and   tradition toward a lighter and brighter palate, emphasis on regional ingredients. In that vein, Senderens opened L’Archestrate in Paris in 1968, where he gained notoriety for combining unorthodox ingredients like lobster and vanilla. He earned three Michelin stars there. But in 1985 he left to take over Paris’s famed Lucas Carton restaurant. There, he also earned three stars. And he introduced menus with suggested pairings of wines by the glass alongside dishes, a notion that became a worldwide standard, reports The New York Times. In 2005, he gave up Lucas Carton’s stars, telling The Guardian he had had it with the ”senseless race” of restaurant ratings and the ”indecent” prices tied to it. At the revamped restaurant  —   renamed Senderens  —   he swapped expensive seafood for humbler fish. ”We do things with sardines that will make you forget turbot, and at   the price,” he told The Times. Senderens combined a casual ambiance with creations such as roast lamb with curry, mango and lemongrass. ”I don’t want to compete any more,” Senderens told The Times. ”I want to have some fun.” Still, it seemed Senderens could not get away from Michelin it awarded his restaurant two stars in 2006. ”I didn’t want the stars anymore, but I can’t do anything,” Senderens told The AP. ”Michelin says they give stars to whomever they want.” ”Un grand chef indeed,” top American chef Thomas Keller and proprietor of California restaurant The French Laundry, tweeted Monday. Senderens died at his home in   a village in   France says The Times."
"Is music an escape from the world or the key to it? Over and over, when we began considering the best music of the first half of 2017, politics seemed to intrude, whether in moments that echoed headlines or ones that spoke individual truths too often drowned out by that other, noisier machine. Maybe that’s the case every time the calendar turns over. Probably not.  Rather than attempt to come to a consensus about the best albums or songs from the first six months of the year, we opted to select music that was meaningful to us as individuals, music that washed away all the background noise, songs and albums and performances that made sense to us, whether or not they made sense of the world. Moments like that are blessings, not to be taken for granted. Here are nearly four dozen blessings selected by NPR Music staff and our partners from around the public radio system. Let’s count them.  Like many people I know, this year’s deluge of real world news has conjured an   anxiety simmering just below the skin. So when I need a musical reprieve and a      few artists are as satisfying as Charly Bliss. A debut with sunny melodies and blistering guitar riffs that would make Weezer proud, Guppy is a taut,   thrill ride. But there’s more to its charm than meets the eye: Embedded in Spencer Fox’s powerful hooks and Eva Hendricks’ bubbly voice is a wounded vulnerability and blunt honesty that imbues these songs with heartfelt meaning. That’s especially true of the throttling   anthem ”Glitter,” in which Hendricks unfurls     that take aim at anyone who’s mistreated her while owning up to her   behavior. ”Am I the best? Or just the first person to say yes?” she sings  —   one of the year’s best      —   with equal parts   adolescent wonder, introspective regret and   sneer. It’s this sweet and sour combo that makes Guppy one of those immediately   albums that’s guaranteed to enliven even your most   days.  —  Mike Katzif, Wayne Shorter, the illustrious saxophonist and composer, has led his current quartet for the better part of two decades. I’ve seen the group  —   a magically cohesive unit with Danilo Pérez on piano, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums  —   eight or nine times over the years, and I’ve never witnessed a more transcendent or turbocharged performance than this one. Circumstances may have played a role in that remarkable outcome. Shorter had returned at long last to Newark, his old stomping grounds, for a   festival in his honor via NJPAC’s TD Jazz Series the quartet played the second half of a concert that began with Shorter in improvised duologue with the keyboardist Herbie Hancock. There was also the thrill of a new challenge: Shorter had composed a dynamic, suitelike piece, ”Scout,” which the band was performing in public for the first time. But the most important factor was simply the   insatiably curious instinct of the man himself, who at 83 is not only an undiminished force on his horn but seemingly still intent on pushing against every conceivable boundary.  —  Nate Chinen, WBGO, The mythical figure of the rock star was sacrificed on the altar of Generation X’s pessimism long ago. It’s been 26 years since Kurt Cobain ignited the pyre with Nevermind, nearly fifteen since Elliott Smith’s death choked its last ash. Yet this year, another Pacific Northwesterner threw a match. No Shape, the fourth album by Mike Hadreas as Perfume Genius, explodes the   confines of his previous work, reasserting the power of audacious desire and transformative expressiveness. It’s a personal triumph and a challenge to both the misogyny and homophobia that rock performance has often masked, as well as the sexually neutered solution that reformists like Nirvana offered. Hadreas walks through the flame and emerges incombustible, the Khaleesi the rock world needs, and he’s been proving it on tour all year. In May, at Nashville’s   Hadreas wore a corseted gown with Bowie pinstripes and a Castro clone’s muscle tank. As the   band built a roar, he contorted his limbs in rhythm with the music’s crackle. The set peaked again and again. Then, at the encore, Hadreas sat alone at his keyboard to sing ”Alan,” his love song to longtime companion and collaborator Alan Wyffels. ”Though I’d hide, maybe leave something secret behind,” he murmured, dwelling on the diminished expectations of his   star past. But then he put his doubts to rest, and let his falsetto loose to fill the room. ”I’m here, how weird!” he sang. The affirmation went out to both Wyffels and the rapt audience before him. Wyffels emerged and sat next to Hadreas to play an older song, ”Learning” the two men chased each other’s fingers on the keyboard, Hadreas bottoming Wyffels’s arpeggiated runs. It was a perfect moment: an expression of love and security that could take the men offering it to each other somewhere new every night. It was freedom, lighting a way forward in the dark.  —  Ann Powers, My favorite musical experience this year hasn’t necessarily been a favorite song or album. Instead, it’s a ”moment” from the 2017 Folk Alliance International Conference, held in Kansas City in February. The FAI organization brings together folk and roots musicians from around the world for the annual conference, and this year’s theme was ”Forbidden Folk: Celebrating Activism In Art.” M. C. Hansen, from the Danish band The Sentimentals, invited a number of artists who were in town for the conference over to the house where we were staying to record Woody Guthrie’s ”This Land Is Your Land.” It was very impromptu, but Hansen rounded up about 22 artists representing various countries to sing verses of the folk anthem in four different languages. It felt very powerful and positive, and like something we all really needed to hear at the time.  —  Linda Fahey, Folk Alley, It’s weird to say this, but the definitive version of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band came out in 2017, not 1967. I’m saying this as someone who rarely listens to box set   as someone who values original intent. And oddly, that’s exactly why I love the newly mixed stereo version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  In 1967, when George Martin and The Beatles mixed Sgt. Pepper’s, they were caught in a mono world that, unbeknownst to them, was about to become obsolete. And so they spent weeks mixing the mono version, while the stereo mix was almost an afterthought  —   yet the latter is the version the world listens to. I’m one of those geeks that has amassed multiple versions of the mono Sgt. Pepper’s from various pressings around the globe. It’s brilliant. And despite my love for those recordings, hearing Giles Martin’s 21st century mixes based on his father’s careful notes, using original recorded tracks before they had to be bounced to accommodate the   tape machines of the day, I feel that much closer to the four creative souls who made the most important record in my life. The world isn’t going back to mono. And now, having heard these new mixes, I’m never going back to the old stereo version.  —  Bob Boilen, What makes this work so prodigious? Is it the   production? Lamar’s lyricism? (Is it wickedness? Is it weakness? You decide.) Certainly, ancestry plays a role (I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA) along with narratives of social phenomena like political cynicism (I got so many theories and suspicions). One thing is certain: The album’s significance will surely be epic. (Years in the making and don’t y’all mistake it.) With ”Stormy” themes like solitude (Feel like only me and the music, though) and ambition (My resume is real enough for two millenniums) Lamar also reveals his vulnerability (I understand I ain’t perfect). Religious references abound (Nobody pray for me). There’s a touch of romance (Love me, I wanna be with you). One of my favorite lines from ”XXX.” (America, God bless you if it’s good to you) is a sharp political statement. Lamar’s raps about fear (The shock value of my success put bolts in me) gratitude (Oh my! My heart is rich, my heart is famous) and good   storytelling (they say   came circlin’ parking lots) put this album among 2017’s masterworks.  —  Suraya Mohamed, Sometimes, it can seem like there are no more surprises left in the world  —   no ground left unsurveyed, no sonic discoveries yet to be had. And then, along comes the band Bargou 08, with one of the most exhilarating and startling albums of the year. Frontman Nidhal Yahyaoui spent more than a decade collecting the folk music he heard growing up in Tunisia’s Bargou Valley  —   a poor, landlocked and isolated area in northern Tunisia. (The name of the album, Targ, refers to the dialect spoken in the area around Yahyaoui’s home  —   it’s a combination of Arabic and Amazigh, or Berber.) Propelled in part by the energy of the Tunisian revolution in 2011, Yahyaoui and his longtime friend and collaborator, a producer and keyboardist named Sofyan Ben Youssef, transformed those old folk songs into an electronic,   paradise. The result is an intoxicating blend of modern beats, synths, drums, the throaty   gasba flute, a hearty zokra (cousin to the oboe) the   wtar and Yahyaoui’s impassioned vocals.  —  Anastasia Tsioulcas, When I first listened to ”Mary,” I was folding my laundry on a Sunday. Capacity, the latest from Big Thief, has more than its fair share of stunning moments, but when ”Mary” came on, I was transported. The song has a way of hallowing any moment in its even tenderness  —   of ennobling even the tedious matching of socks. It’s a love song to the world and an ode of gratitude to a dear friend. It sounds like a hymn and a lullaby. ”First it sounds and then it means,” Adrianne Lenker, the song’s writer and singer, told me later in an interview. To me, it sounded like my favorite song of the year thus far.  —  Benjamin   The start of 2017 was noisy. It was often hard to hear anything with clarity above the confusing, chaotic and divisive din of news and opinions. This a capella performance by a handful of young women in a crowd of millions felt like the only sound that could cut through that noise. The story goes that L. A.’s Connie Lim, aka Milck, spent years trying to weave her wounds from domestic violence and anorexia into a song that felt true to her experience on ”Quiet”. Lim spent another year shopping around for the right label to execute its perfect release. But in the wake of the 2016 election, Lim threw all planning out the window. She found a group of singers who would be in D. C. on January 21, sent them individual vocal parts over the Internet and met them for one rehearsal before they stood together in pink pussy hats to perform ”Quiet” in cascading harmony at the Women’s March on Washington. The viral video that resulted, the fact that this song became an unofficial anthem for the March and any subsequent attention Milck has received are all   of the purest reason music is made and shared  —   because an artist has something vital to say, and literally can’t keep quiet. The sonic imprint they made on my heart, and I think on a lot of hearts around the country, still pulses well into 2017.  —  Talia Schlanger, World Cafe, I never intended to like this record. I don’t say that to assert my hipster bona fides I rocked out in earnest to ”What Makes You Beautiful” for a good semester and was immediately on board with ”PILLOWTALK” when Styles’ former bandmate Zayn Malik struck out on his own last year. But that was just the problem: Zayn was supposed to be the Timberlake to 1D’s *NSYNC, and I wasn’t ready to entertain a challenge to the throne. Luckily, Styles’ solo debut makes no pass at moody   instead laying bare his   influences. Harry Styles is full of shining moments: Styles soaring over the glorious ”Sign of the Times” coda, the clever poignancy of his best lyrics (”Even my phone misses your call”) the winking,      ’s in ”Woman.” Even the album’s rollout was delightful: At a time when surprise drops are pop’s new normal, Styles’ more traditional campaign included an amiably ridiculous turn as Mick Jagger on SNL and singing ”Landslide” with Stevie Nicks. The trope of the teen pop star hoping to reinvent as Serious Artist is well known Harry Styles strives for artistry without taking itself too seriously.  —  Rachel Horn, In an interview months after the release of Blonde, the album the world thought it would die waiting for, Frank Ocean declared himself free from traditional music strictures: ”Because I’m not in a record deal, I don’t have to operate in an album format. I can operate in    format.” Though not    ”Chanel,” which first emerged on Ocean’s Apple Music radio show in March, is his first foray into this territory of possibility. Where Blonde often meandered through hazy space, ”Chanel” is propulsive, swaggering. ”Can’t you see I am the big man? God level, I am the I am,” he  . For me, the charisma of ”Chanel” comes from the twists of Ocean’s delivery, the rise and fall and rise of his emotive voice throughout the song. When the tenderness that colors ”It’s really you on my mind” gives way to the hoarse,   urgency of a verse about cars, diamonds, cosigns and stealth  —   it’s in those precise moments when Ocean’s assertion that he ”sees both sides like Chanel” and his confident grasp of doubleness are made manifest.  —  Karen Gwee, Beth Ditto doesn’t reinvent pop  —   she reminds us why its basic formula is so effective. Her new album, Fake Sugar, shaved about a minute off my running time. I eventually gave up choosing tracks to add to my playlist and just put the whole album on repeat. If the music feels recognizable, the video for the first single, ”Fire,” reminds us why Ditto is such a radical pop star. She is an unapologetically queer, fat, southern fashionista. And it doesn’t hurt that, like so many beloved divas before her, a single note out of her mouth can blow the roof off a building.  —  Ari Shapiro, I let out a   ”Yes!” at my desk on April 10 when I heard Du Yun’s name announced as the Pulitzer winner in music for her chamber opera Angel’s Bone. The win not only rewards Du Yun’s audacious,   score, but also supports the evidence that   opera is meaningful and thriving. Moments later, I realized that the two finalists  —   Ashley Fure and Kate Soper  —   were also women. Later still, I thought perhaps the Pulitzer jury was somehow listening when composer Andrew Norman spoke to NPR Music last November about diversity in the classical music world. ”The canon is overwhelmingly white and male,” he said. ”But we can use new music to fix that.” The Pulitzer results are a step in the right direction in a musical world dominated by men  —   one where male musicians, such as conductor Yuri Temirkanov, openly declare women unfit to conduct orchestras and where a survey of 85 American orchestras in the   season showed that female composers made up only 1. 3 percent of the music performed. We’ve got a long way to go, but Du Yun’s win made me hopeful.  —  Tom Huizenga, This past year brought on a new wave of feminism, and with it, the most strikingly feminine album I have heard. At 27 years of age, U. K.   Laura Marling has crafted a collection of intimate, emotionally rich songs that seek to explore the female gaze turned on itself. Semper Femina  —   Latin for ”always woman”  —   is Marling’s conscious edit of a cautionary phrase from Virgil’s Aeneid: Varium et mutabile semper femina. (”Woman is ever a fickle and changeable thing. ”) In fact, it is precisely the mutability and complexity of women, in our relationships to each other and to the world around us, that Marling celebrates within these nine vignettes. From the darkly sensual album opener, ”Soothing,” which banishes with love an unwelcome lover, to the coda, ”Nothing Not Nearly,” which concludes ”nothing matters more than love,” she gets to the heart of the beautifully multifaceted nature of women  —   and, indeed, of Marling herself. Personally, I am deeply grateful to her for the gift of this panoramic view of ourselves: We need soothing. We can take away your pain. We need beauty. We cry sometimes. We sing. We put up a fight. We need to be free. We love you. We are the muse, but also the artist. We were wild once, and must remember. Semper Femina.  —  Carmel Holt, WFUV, The show could not be advertised, merely passed by word of mouth and personal text messages. Just four days after the Pizzagate gunman pled guilty to charges, Arrington De Dionyso returned to Comet Ping Pong, the D. C. pizza joint that had been embroiled in malicious and baseless Internet rumors in which the artist himself had also been circuitously implicated. Where his confrontational but stunning visual art once hung, De Dionyso and local improvisers (two drummers and an upright bassist) came to cleanse the space with fervid purpose. The room was nervous, but full and open. With an army of saxophones (both traditional and invented from PVC pipes) De Dionyso inhaled the ghost of Albert Ayler and spewed cathartic fire for over an hour straight, a cyclonic love cry to truth and sonic protest.  —  Lars Gotrich, One of the most important things an artist can do in a time of violent desperation and brazen inequality like the one we’re living in now is to make music that jars, disrupts and intervenes. But throughout the first half of this year, I’ve also found myself craving a salve, and finding it in the willful steadiness of Valerie June’s mystically    opus The Order of Time, her song ”If And” especially. In serene   she reminds us of the consequences of neglecting our most intimate relationships. ”One thing for sho’ one thing that’s fate   If and you don’t show them you love them, it will be too late,” she nudges in her balmy, nasal twang, her melody turning bluesy curls around a droning chord. June doesn’t just sing of trustworthiness  —   she models it vocally, adding syllables for fluidity’s sake and smoothing her phrasing of particular lines into cursive triplets. It feels equally nurturing and insistent.  —  Jewly Hight, This electronic reimagining of the sacred and the secular was like discovering a door into another dimension, a world that is familiar but sounds completely new. Band leader Otura Mun is an     from the Midwest who, through a crazy airline mix up, ended up in Puerto Rico instead of Jamaica. He found a musical and spiritual home in the sacred beats and chants of   Santería music. He and his visionary bandmates attached electronic triggers to traditional percussion instruments and fed their vocals through voice manipulators to create an amazing album that reveals something new with each listen. I have been a fan and student of   music for over 40 years and thought I heard every iteration of the music until I heard this.  —  Felix Contreras, You can’t miss him on the cover of XXL’s 2017 Freshman Issue: He’s the rapper wearing the most tortured expression. XXXTentacion has been knocked out cold during a concert, performed insane stage dives, even   one of his own fans in alleged  . His outlaw record and the hype surrounding his summer tour  —   which he recently cut short after learning his cousin had been shot  —   almost overshadows the fact that he’s behind some of the most unexpected, experimental   released this year. His hardcore Billboard charter ”Look At Me!” is the biggest song to emerge from a scene of     young rappers from South Florida who are stacking up SoundCloud plays by the millions. But as his Revenge EP, released in May, reveals, his sound is boundless, shifting effortlessly from explicit   ballad (”I don’t wanna do this anymore”) to   softcore (”Looking for a Star”) to grunge grinder (”Valentine”) back to punk confessional (”Slipknot”). And when he raps, ”Due to my history   I don’t know what’s next for me,” on the latter, it sounds less like typical   posturing than   premonition.  —  Rodney Carmichael, Sylvan Esso’s spangly   songs can throb joyfully, even ecstatically. But on What Now, even the brashest bashers  —   ”The Glow,” ”Kick Jump Twist,” et al  —   are deepened by the gently reflective ballads that surround them. As producer Nick Sanborn gives weight to the soft static in ”Slack Jaw,” for example, Amelia Meath sings of the way being in love can produce a strangely humbling sense of awe: ”I got all the parts I’ve wished for   I’ve got everything I need   Sometimes I’m above water   But mostly I’m at sea.” As its title suggests, What Now fixates heavily on aftermaths, whether it documents   pressures in the grabby ”Radio” or, in ”Die Young,” faces down a logistical complication Meath hadn’t anticipated: ”I was gonna die young   Now I gotta wait for you.” But the album feels most of all like a celebration  —   of connection, of commitment and acceptance, of movement and sound and the liberation that comes with letting love in.  —  Stephen Thompson, Phil Elverum’s latest album as Mount Eerie, A Crow Looked At Me, deals with the quiet aftermath of his wife Geneviève’s death from cancer. It’s the year’s heaviest album without question, filled with lucid observations about grief, loss and becoming a widowed parent, and all the more devastating for Elverum’s plainspoken delivery. Friends who are obsessive fans have told me that they can’t listen to it, or listened once and put it away. So when Mount Eerie was booked to play at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Forever Cemetery this April, you can only imagine that the    songwriter was in on the incredibly bleak joke. There was an air of trepidation in the Masonic Lodge prior to the show, with fans discretely folding toilet tissue into their pockets in the bathrooms. But although it was by no means uplifting, our complicity in being willing to sit through it, and the sheer, unerring horror of Elverum’s lyrics, gave the evening an air of borderline comedic camaraderie. Elverum performed alone with an acoustic guitar. He told us we could expect 13 songs and no encore. A dead Christmas tree stood to his left. ”If you’re wondering what this is here for, it’s so you have something to look at instead of me,” he informed us. On the song ”Swims,” he sang about how, two months after Geneviève died, ”our counselor died,” which elicited choked laughter at the awful inappropriateness of it all. He paused the song: ”It’s true!” I managed to hold it together until the penultimate song, ”Crow,” Elverum’s address to his infant daughter: ”Sweet kid, what is this world we’re giving you? Smoldering and fascist with no mother.” His composure was admirable and horrifying. After the gig, I was surprised to see a line of people queuing to meet Elverum, who was cheerfully shaking hands. But it reminded me that although we use the word ”funereal” to convey unutterable darkness, it’s the people at those sad events who light up the possibility of carrying on.  —  Laura Snapes, This spring, Leslie Feist returned after a   hiatus with the best album she’s ever made. Pleasure, her fifth   is spare, raw and gritty. It’s also intensely intimate, particularly in the spacious way it was recorded, with a sound that feels like you’re sitting in her bedroom as she unspools her grief and emotional upheaval. The album lacks the infectious, carefree joy of songs like ”1234” or ”Mushaboom,” but is still built around inspired melodies and surprising turns  —   like the group chorus that suddenly kicks in halfway through ”A Man Is Not His Song,” or Jarvis Cocker’s dramatic reading toward the end of ”Century.” Every element, from Feist’s vocal performances to the brilliant production, is utterly transfixing.  —  Robin Hilton, It’s hot out. Take a moment to transport yourself to a winter wonderland: a   in the snow. This music video is shot like a scene from The Revenant, with Quavo, Offset and Takeoff decked out in bearskin, head to claw, bopping around in the taiga. It’s at once goofy and gorgeous and entrancing. And if the visuals are hypnotizing, the rapping is an incantation. Pulsating lyrics (”Neck water faucet   Mockingbirds mocking”) and surging instrumentals make you forget that there’s no real reason to be doing what they’re doing: riding snowmobiles, drinking hot chocolate, shooting wooden arrows into the sky. You want to live with them on that mountain anyway.  —  Leah Donnella, ”Timing’s off, and everything’s lost, and I know it. Elixirs wear off and each dose, the cost of a memory,” Taylor Kirk sings at the opening of ”Moment,” a sad, hopeful song with the contours of a wilted flytrap. I really did try to find, to celebrate the   mark, something more upbeat than Timber Timbre’s dour, restrained, frustrated, lush lament of love that’s seen as deeply undeserved, inevitably lost and retroactively repurposed as a spiritual divining rod. Maybe, considering that I’d found a nice, sustainable bit of my own love recently, the fear of its loss and the odd guilt conjoined to its simple existence resonated more deeply into my tectonics than sad songs usually do (and they always do). ”The privilege of you . .. desire deserving of something more true.” Does everyone, once they have it, fear they have not have earned it? Or is that just for us imposters? Are we all entitled to it? Is the gravity and degree of that love meant to be symbolic of the person who holds it, a totem to their worth? Considering all this . .. maybe I’ll just keep my head down and try to stay out of trouble.  —  Andrew Flanagan, Kelli Schaefer is a local musician, so some of opbmusic’s staff had already seen her unveil songs from her album No Identity during a gig several months prior to this session. We thought we knew what to expect  —   but we weren’t prepared for this. Schaefer, who’s known as a talented guitarist, surprisingly opted to front her band without an instrument. Seemingly freed from that burden, she held the stage with a subtle anxiety that added urgency and importance to virtually every word she sang. The centerpiece of the performance was this powerful version of ”Underground.” Driven by a simple but infectious bass line, the song gives Schaefer room to sing  —   and can she ever sing. Through   verses and soaring choruses, she turned in one of the most impressive performances I’ve seen in years.  —  Jerad Walker, opbmusic, The prodigiously gifted Joanna Sternberg is one of the finest young bassists in New York, playing everything from jazz to klezmer with a multitude of artists. But she’s an equally powerful   who makes a virtue of simplicity paired with subtle subversion for maximum emotional impact. ”Don’t You Ever?” is a perfect example. In a voice as appealingly artless as Sara Carter of The Carter Family, Sternberg brilliantly blurs the line between the earnest and the ambiguous over some workmanlike acoustic strumming in this   home recording. Is the implied punctuation at the end of the chorus’s final line, ”Don’t you dare feel like you are alone,” a period or a question mark? Is this a consolation or a query? And is the admission ”I don’t feel right inside my body . .. never felt that I was a lady, never felt like a man” a statement about gender identity, a more broadly existential dislocation or something in between? The best answer would seem to be ”all of the above,” which is part of what makes the song so effective. And it’s Sternberg’s unvarnished expression of compassion and emotional unrest that gives the tune both its universality and its   quality.  —  Jim Allen, This   film by French cousins Jonathan and Guillaume Alric  —   who make electronic music and videos as The Blaze  —   will make you feel . .. something. It’s hard to predict exactly what because the video for ” Territory” is moving on several different levels. This wordless story of an Algerian man’s homecoming touches on generational schisms in Muslim families, modern depictions of Islamic communities, complex expressions of masculinity and the mental toll displacement can take on a person’s psyche. Those   threads are made all the more poignant by the Alrics’ stunning cinematography. Rarely do we encounter musicians so talented behind the camera. With just a   EP to their name, the Alrics are, both figuratively and literally, artists to watch.  —  Otis Hart, Oumou Sangaré is one of Mali’s most recognized singers. She grew up in a polygamous family and witnessed   the struggles of her mother, who was abandoned by her father. Her lyrics draw from her personal experience and often tackle subjects such as women’s rights and arranged marriage. But it is her voice that sets her apart  —   sweet, yet powerful. Sangaré sings in the Mali’s ancient Wassoulou musical tradition, yet her latest album, Mogoya, is an album of today. Layered and infused with electronic beats, drums, electric guitars and   vocals, the songs uplift you, enchant you and are guaranteed to make you dance. Sangare is also a businesswoman and a hotel owner, so she only records music when she has something to say, updating her sound on every album, never driven by demand.  —  Monika Evstatieva, During an    conversation in New York in early June, the electronic composer William Basinski asked Jerrilynn Patton, who produces abstract, highly rhythmic tracks under the name Jlin, about bass. Though her music often gets labeled ”footwork” (Chicago’s     scene) Patton said she actually doesn’t enjoy mixing in   nightclub environments, because the sound gets muddy and takes away from the controlled state she prefers. ”My style,” added the Gary, Ind. native, ”is CPU: clean, precise and unpredictable.” Black Origami, her second album, is full of   music that fits this description. Its   percussion is aimed less at the intoxicated proletariat dancing its pain away on a Saturday night than those who use precise improvisational movement to escape the contemporary world’s psychic gravity. (Patton regularly collaborates with professional choreographers, and her videos, including the incredible new one for ”Carbon 7,” embody the notion of improvised movement.) Compositions like ”Nyakinyua Rise,” ”Holy Child” (made with Basinski) and the title track seem like offspring of Steve Reich’s Ghanaian and gamelan adventures, the long lineage of Chicago’s great   minimalists and   drumlines, while her personal reinvention of the sampler makes tonal rhythm patterns sound like alien mathematics. Bass is often present, but it’s just a   of the larger whole.  —  Piotr Orlov, Few bands feel as vital as Algiers. That was true when frontman Franklin James Fisher and the gang hit the scene in 2012 with their      pastiche and it’s doubly true in 2017 with the group’s sophomore album, The Underside of Power. That vitality isn’t just a product of our current   climate it’s because the message and the music are so bound up together that it feels like an M. C. Escher painting. The weight of the lyrics is reinforced by the cultural and historical significance of the musical forms the musicians draw from. The instrumentation becomes more potent because of the way it serves Algiers’ message. That increases the gravitational field of the lyrics further, which beefs up the music’s virility . .. so on and so forth. Watch the video for the title track of the new album. Sometimes a music video can perfectly capture the essence of a song, but I’ve never seen one capture the essence of a band so perfectly. The moment during the breakdown when Fisher literally breaks down? It gets me every single time!  —  Sean Cannon, WFPK, If you were in your teens when   crossed over at the turn of the millennium, the reality that its classic lineup is probably never coming back feels a little like learning your high school crush is married: It shouldn’t matter, but it does, because the universe where things worked out differently still glows somewhere in your mind. That may not have been what motivated musician Cameron Hurley to arrange and perform a   Enema of the State pastiche, but he certainly carries it off with studied passion  —   enough so that even with one voice doing all the parts, it still reads decisively as a Mark Hoppus number with Tom DeLonge singing backup. Taking as its vessel the    ”Girls” by The 1975 (heirs to some of Blink’s impenitent juvenility) Hurley’s ”remash” as new. wav gets everything right about the source material: the dropout at the top of the chorus, that   blast beat that momentarily throws you out of the groove, the bridge breakdown whose layered vocals never quite work live but shimmer when they come out of a car stereo. We can’t have our youth or the culture that shaped it back, but we can dream.  —  Daoud   The universe where Juana Molina’s   single ”Paraguaya” exists is a very particular one. In the song’s hypnotic music video, disembodied heads coexist among bones stirring   coffee, jagged cake slices are cut, spooky shadow puppets dance at will and utensils levitate. It ends with a languid shot of Molina sitting down with another woman (her mother, Chunchuna Villafañe) for coffee and cake. The wondrous video invites all kinds of interpretations. But no matter what you think of ”Paraguya,” culled from the Argentinian musician’s latest album, Halo, this song is undeniably a deliberate confrontation with one’s own history, past and present. Listening to ”Paraguaya,” it’s impossible not to reexamine your own actions. The rhythmic quality of Molina’s music, reverberating with the low lull of a drone, ghostly electronic embellishments and the sparse plucks of a string section, suggests that this less a song than it is an incantation, both an inward and outward gesture that beckons towards healing. It’s also evident in Molina’s brilliant, alliterative wordplay, in which she invokes burning the herb rue and prepares a potion and prayer to recite on a moonlit night. Unsurprisingly, this challenging and centering song has become part of a ritual for me: Not a night goes by that I don’t listen to it before drifting off to sleep.  —  Paula Mejia, This year, Gabriel   released his debut album after several brushes with greatness. Jardin was three years in the making  —   the result, partly, of procrastination and partly of his analog recording method  —   and represents a gargantuan, brilliantly produced step toward that elite status. Every nook and cranny of songs like ”My Balloon” is occupied with sound, not just for the sake of filling space  —   listen to the way some instruments splash a faint but effective dash of color to the overall composition. On ”Long Ears,” he manages to make the sound of paper ripping sound funky. He performed at the Tiny Desk recently and stripped his entire production down to reveal vulnerability and clever word play. At the halfway mark of 2017, there have been dozens of projects and artists competing for my attention. Gabriel   and Jardin is the one that I continue to revisit and rediscover.  —  Bobby Carter,   years is a long time to wait for a new album from one of your favorite bands, especially a hometown group whose last record was widely declared album of the year when it came out in 2014. I’m talking about the incredible Philly band The War On Drugs. This past Record Store Day, it released the   track ”Thinking Of A Place,” a contemplative,          kind of song. It was a glorious return, though one couldn’t help but wonder: ”Where’s the rock! ?!?” But Adam Granduciel and his crew don’t mess around it was a great tease of a track, followed by ”Holding On,” an instantly anthemic,   classic. Within seconds, it grabs you by your rock and roll heart, giving faith to humankind that rock is not dead.  —  Bruce Warren, WXPN, When Tank and the Bangas performed at a taping of NPR’s Ask Me Another in April, I expected an impressive show. The band had just performed a spirited, emotional Tiny Desk concert a few weeks earlier, after winning the 2017 Tiny Desk Contest. Plus, the AMA show fell on my birthday  —   so my hopes were high. But when the band took the stage that night, it shattered my expectations. Tank and the Bangas commanded every ounce of attention in the room it was so enthralling that I kept sneaking looks at the crowd  —   a mix of public radio devotees and diehard fans of the band  —   just to make sure I wasn’t alone in my rapture. I wasn’t. I watched people cheer, sing and dance  —   even cry  —   but mostly, I watched them watch intently, similarly captivated. The songs ran through a range of emotions, and the band excelled at tapping into the deepest parts of each feeling  —   heartache, celebration,   joy  —   and pulling the entire crowd with it. Throughout the next month, I saw the band six more times on the tour that accompanied the Contest I never lost the sense of wonder I felt that night.  —  Marissa Lorusso, Talk to enough dance music lovers and you’re bound to hear some comparison between the club and church  —   the dance floor as a place to get in touch with something ritualistic, communal and spiritual. House music has a long relationship with gospel, and Karizma continues the tradition of chopping up a song made for praising God into one made for dancing. The influential Baltimore club producer loops the source material, ”Jesus Can Work It Out” by Dr. Charles Hayes  Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer Choir, over rough and ready percussion for a cut that radiates optimism. It’s sure to lift the spirits of dancegoers looking for something holy.  —  Sami Yenigun, The best of part of watching the Tony Awards every June is sneaking a peek at the nominated musicals, and this season was no different. Seeing Josh Groban (in his broadway debut) lead the cast of Natasha, Pierre  The Great Comet Of 1812, it was hard to believe the show did not take this year’s Best Musical prize. The musical (set in a Russian supper club and based on a passage from Tolstoy’s War and Peace) features 37 juggling,   specially skilled performers who leap further beyond the fourth wall than seemingly possible at the completely transformed Imperial Theatre on Broadway. Somehow the intimacy and theatrics of the production translated perfectly in the vastly larger Radio City Music Hall, as well as on network television. Cast members couldn’t resist flirting with audience members Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert and dragging composer Dave Malloy onto the stage to play out the   number, ”The Abduction,” for the rambunctious crowd of 6, 000 spectators. Breaking the fourth wall in a television broadcast is impossible, but this performance comes as close as any ever could. The only thing missing is Nicholas Pope’s immersive surround sound design in the Imperial Theatre, where the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention on more than one occasion.  —  Josh Rogosin, Last month, John Moreland told a fan on Twitter, ”I ain’t country and I ain’t sad.” While the former can be infinitely debated and parsed, you can forgive the fan for thinking the Tulsa songwriter might be not the happiest guy. Heck, there’s an Instagram account dedicated to cheering him up, complete with images of pugs riding unicorns in space. I’m serious. Moreland’s   lyrics have a way of turning even the biggest and brawniest of us into a puddle of emotions. And his concerts are always a treat because the crowd actually shuts up and listens. Still, hearing the   ”It Don’t Suit Me (Like Before)” is incredibly refreshing. Its disposition differs from most of his prior material, but it’s not a cheery song. It shows a resolute Moreland moving forward, ready to leave the baggage and worries in the past. The accompanying music video follows him around at home and on the road with friends and his wife. You even catch a couple smiles from him in there. While Moreland’s last two albums sounded like he was searching for something, this song signals that he’s finally found it.  —  Ryan LaCroix, KOSU, There are five times in the bridge to The Smith Street Band’s ”25” that make me vigorously start pointing at the ceiling. Four of those times are directly related to the particular way Wil Wagner delivers lyrics with an affect that communicates both ”Punk is fun!” and ”I’m worried about myself.” (Example: ”AND IT SURE. IS. NICE. TO.  . THINGS. YEAH! ”) The fifth time is a production detail. On the drive back into the final chorus, there’s this *pew* sound expertly buried in the mix that seems to say ”Hey, warp speed to the pity party baby! It’ll be a blast!” It’s not wrong.  —  Andrew Limbong, Young Thug released ”Safe” as a single in February, and it didn’t make its way onto his latest album, Beautiful Thugger Girls. Instead, it stands alone  —   which is perfect, because it’s unlike anything else I’ve heard this year. ”I spend more money on security than I make just try to be safe,” goes the hook. And I’m stuck on it  —   because isn’t safety what we all desperately want for the people we love and the communities we care about? The song is best experienced by watching the video Young Thug certainly showed up for this one. It’s actually a   show in which he serves an emotional platter complete with fear, anger, vulnerability and whimsy. He glides around a sparse set, dancing by himself and at times looking directly, intensely at the camera. Like his signature vocal inflections, his movements and facial expressions hold multitudes. My favorite moment? At 2:23, when he skips backwards and fans his arms out over his head.  —  Jenny Gathright, 2017 so far for me is all about a Ralph Towner  . The guitarist, pianist and composer released his latest solo album, My Foolish Heart, in February. And this Friday, the group he   nearly 50 years ago, Oregon, will release what I think is its 30th album (counting a ”best of”). The solo record grabbed my ear from the first note because the playing is so strong  —   it’s all guitar, six and    —   and his finger work is assertive and full of energy. Turns out there’s a reason. A couple of years ago, Towner blacked out during a concert soundcheck. Doctors determined that his heart was beating too slowly, so he had a pacemaker installed. That trauma and its ultimate happy ending seem to have influenced Oregon’s new album, Lantern, as well. Though the only two original members are Towner (who also plays piano and synthesizer here) and woodwind player Paul McCandless, the music is alive and marked by the group’s trademark interactions. And the title tune is a free piece that reminds listeners that Oregon has always played challenging, out music and does not deserve the ”new age” label with which the group is sometimes saddled by jazz snobs. In a group that’s so collaborative, it’s hard to single out any one player  —   though McCandless sounds great. But for me, Ralph Towner’s the man.  —  Tom Cole, Arguably Xiu Xiu’s most   track yet, ”Wondering” from Forget is a collision of shrieking, wobbling synths, an unconventional assemblage of electronic and acoustic percussion, heavily reverberating crashes, and Jamie Stewart’s remarkable, fragile voice. I can confirm the catchiness and danceability by the way the whole room shook when Jamie Stewart  Shayna Dunkelman played it at the Brooklyn Bazaar last April. But what keeps me dancing isn’t the synth pop with syncopated percussion tricks. Stewart sings, ”Alive is anything   Tonight is anything   Outside of anything   Collide with everything . .. Down on your knees   Wondering, maybe?” The reeling synths and reverberant crashes echo his question. Wondering, maybe? To me, the song is about wondering at possibility, but it’s also about being overwhelmed, even floored, by the sheer feeling of wonder, even at life at its most banal. It’s about blinking twice and still being brought to your knees, stopped short, wondering at ”alive,” at ”tonight,” at ”everything.” This song still takes my breath away.  —  Jenna Li, If you hung around Boston’s   scene in the early 2000s, you experienced the phenomenal, yet fleeting solo career of Deb Talan. The writing on her last record, from 2004, cut to the core  —   but she was then becoming very focused on The Weepies, her band with husband Steve Tannen, and the band’s success made the possibility of another Talan solo release seem slim. Thirteen years, three kids, a victory over breast cancer and a bunch of unprocessed feelings later, Talan’s back with Lucky Girl, a project she undertook to regain lost pieces of her identity. Even when she’s pouring herself into emotional songs, Talan shows her lighter, funny side with playful lines like ”Son Volt came to town   I missed them again” (”Son Volt Came To Town”) and ”Daddy will take down Peter Pan from the shelf   And he’ll read it out loud, though you could read it yourself” (”Growing Up”). It’s always a gamble whether a project put down and picked up years later will be as good as your expectations, but Deb Talan has beyond exceeded mine.  —  Cindy Howes, WYEP  Folk Alley, The plaintive ”God In Chicago” appears at the midpoint of Craig Finn’s We All Want The Same Things, his third and most fully realized solo record to date. While it’s got all the characteristics of the best Hold Steady and Lifter Puller songs  —   when push comes to shove, I bet Wayne from Winnetka could hold his own with Charlemagne from ”Separation Sunday”  —   the track feels utterly singular in Finn’s body of work. With unsettling solemnity and uncanny deliberation, ”God In Chicago” befits a Midwestern winter, icy and foreboding. It comes not in hollers, but in hushed tones, hinting at desperation and hiding fresh wounds. It’s a short story of a song that’s fixated on specificity: that Mexican restaurant near Midway, a left turn on Cermak, the Walgreens near the Hyatt. ”God In Chicago” is an attempt at closure amid unfinished business and uncertain future.  —  Lyndsey McKenna, There are so many reasons why I love this multimedia music project inspired by Amazon’s stellar series The Man in the High Castle. Sure, the   compilation itself is grand (there’s virtually no way to beat   covers by Sharon Van Etten and Norah Jones) but it’s more than that. The campaign included a   stream of   radio hosts spinning cuts from the record as if the LP had been freshly pressed in the fictional 1960s of the show’s alternate timeline. Given the mix of contemporary artists playing   music on an Internet stream drenched in postwar   nostalgia, it’s easy to feel simultaneously stuck in the past and living in the present. But isn’t that how many of us feel these days? In 2017 radio can still be our lifeline the voices, our companions and the music, our reminder of the better and brighter (or darker and more haunting) things to come. Needless to say, Resistance Radio continues to give me goosebumps each time I tune in.  —  Joni Deutsch, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, The weeks leading up to the 2016 U. S. presidential election were challenging, to say the least. Tempers snapped. Arguments escalated. Suddenly, small differences of opinion seemed insurmountable. The realization that the nation was on the edge of a gargantuan chasm  —   not to mention the divisive tension he experienced within his own family  —   inspired Raul Malo to write ”Easy As It Seems,” one of the standout tracks on The Mavericks’ Brand New Day. A   with the band’s lead guitarist, Eddie Perez, and Alan Miller, ”Easy As It Seems” has its fair share of The Mavericks’ musical trademarks: it’s a catchy,   dance tune Malo’s voice is as crooningly romantic as ever and the horns and percussion work in perfect harmony. The sound might be comfortingly familiar, but ”Easy As It Seems” is an    —   a reminder that, no matter who you voted for, ”Ignorance is blinding   They tell you that it’s bliss” and ”Building walls between us doesn’t fix a thing.” Hopeful statements, I think, that encourage an   civil conversation with those whose opinions don’t match our own.  —  Elena See, Folk Alley, As ferociously iconoclastic as mainstream pop gets, Lorde’s Melodrama is a rare thing: a   to a huge debut hit that doesn’t just confirm a star’s status but redefines it on her own terms. Like the  ’90s work of Robyn, whom Lorde has cited as an influence, Melodrama (which is perfectly named  —   it’s an album about the   performance of huge emotional moments) is stuffed with extroverted songs about the inner life of an introvert. As a writer, Lorde has taken astonishing steps: She strings a narrative of a single party together over the course of the album’s 11 songs, and is able to draw your focus to crucial small details of personal attraction and betrayal, as well as the way the bright flame of an intense moment can flicker into the past and the future. She manages to stand both inside and outside the action, staring down the closing walls of adulthood, ready to bring her world crashing down before she gets hemmed in insulated by nighttime and justifiable bad choices and proximity to friends that might not be there in the morning or in five years. I don’t live in that place anymore my kids don’t live there yet. But I recognized it instantly, and I bet someday they will, too.  —  Jacob Ganz"
"  Miranda has released an incredibly striking and stylized music video  —   really more of an impressionistic    —   for the song ”Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” featuring K’naan, Snow Tha Product, Riz MC and Residente. The track is taken from The Hamilton Mixtape, a compilation of songs pulled from Miranda’s enormously successful musical and recorded by various artists. It debuted at No. 1 on the charts in late 2016 after a week of impressive sales. The video, directed by Tomás Whitmore and executive produced by Robert Rodriguez and Miranda, is the latest   of Hamilton in the national consciousness, and was launched to help promote fundraising for the Immigrant: We Get The Job Done Coalition, a group of     based throughout the U. S. As part of that effort, Miranda is asking fans to post videos of themselves performing songs from Hamilton, in the spirit of the wildly successful Ice Bucket Challenge. The new   for ”Immigrants” arrives just two days after the Supreme Court announced it would   the case of Alejandro Rodriguez, a young immigrant who was detained for three years without a hearing after being convicted of joyriding and admitting to misdemeanor possession."
"Last week, the New York Times published an   titled ”In Defense of Cultural Appropriation” in which writer Kenan Malik attempted to extol the virtues of artistic appropriation and chastise those who would stand in the way of necessary ”cultural engagement.” (No link, because you have Google and I’d rather not give that piece more traffic than it deserves.) What would have happened, he argues, had Elvis Presley not been able to swipe the sounds of black musicians? Malik is not the first person to defend cultural appropriation. He joins a long list that, most recently, has included prominent members of the Canadian literary community and author Lionel Shriver. But the truth is that cultural appropriation is indefensible. Those who defend it either don’t understand what it is, misrepresent it to muddy the conversation, or ignore its complexity  —   discarding any nuances and making it easy to dismiss both appropriation and those who object to it. At the start of the most recent debate, Canadian author Hal Niedzviecki called on the readers of Write magazine to ”Write what you don’t know . .. Relentlessly explore the lives of people who aren’t like you. . .. Win the Appropriation Prize.” Amid the outcry over this editorial, there were those who wondered why this statement would be objectionable. Shouldn’t authors ”write the Other?” Shouldn’t there be more representative fiction? Yes, of course. The issue here is that Niedzviecki conflated cultural appropriation and the practice of writing characters with very different identities from yourself  —   and they’re not the same thing. Writing inclusive fiction might involve appropriation if it’s done badly, but that’s not a given. Cultural appropriation can feel hard to get a handle on, because boiling it down to a   dictionary definition does no one any favors. Writer Maisha Z. Johnson offers an excellent starting point by describing it not only as the act of an individual, but an individual working within a ”power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group.” That’s why appropriation and exchange are two different things, Johnson says  —   there’s no power imbalance involved in an exchange. And when artists appropriate, they can profit from what they take, while the oppressed group gets nothing. I teach classes and seminars alongside author and editor Nisi Shawl on Writing the Other, and the foundation of our work is that authors should create characters from many different races, cultures, class backgrounds, physical abilities, and genders, even if  —   especially if  —   these don’t match their own. We are not alone in this. You won’t find many people advising authors to only create characters similar to themselves. You will find many who say: Don’t write characters from minority or marginalized identities if you are not going to put in the hard work to do it well and avoid cultural appropriation and other harmful outcomes. These are different messages. But writers often see or hear the latter and imagine that it means the former. And editorials like Niedzviecki’s don’t help the matter. Complicating things even further, those who tend to see appropriation as exchange are often the ones who profit from it. Even Malik’s example involving rock and roll isn’t as simple as Elvis ”stealing” from black artists. Before he even came along, systematic oppression and segregation in America meant black musicians didn’t have access to the same opportunities for mainstream exposure, income, or success as white ones. Elvis and other rock and roll musicians were undoubtedly influenced by black innovators, but over time the genre came to be regarded as a cultural product created, perfected by, and only accessible to whites. This is the ”messy interaction” Malik breezes over in dismissing the idea of appropriation as theft: A repeating pattern that’s recognizable across many different cultural spheres, from fashion and the arts to literature and food. And this pattern is why cultures and people who’ve suffered the most from appropriation sometimes insist on their traditions being treated like intellectual property  —   it can seem like the only way to protect themselves and to force members of dominant or oppressive cultures to consider the impact of their actions. This has lead to accusations of gatekeeping by Malik and others: Who has the right to decide what is appropriation and what isn’t? What does true cultural exchange look like? There’s no one easy answer to either question. But there are some helpful guidelines: The Australian Council for the Arts developed a set of protocols for working with Indigenous artists that lays out how to approach Aboriginal culture as a respectful guest, who to contact for guidance and permission, and how to proceed with your art if that permission is not granted. Some of these protocols are specific to Australia, but the key to all of them is finding ways for creativity to flourish while also reducing harm. All of this lies at the root of why cultural appropriation is indefensible. It is, without question, harmful. It is not inherent to writing representational and inclusive fiction, it is not a process of equal and mutually beneficial exchange, and it is not a way for one culture to honor another. Cultural appropriation does damage, and it should be something writers and other artists work hard to avoid, not compete with each other to achieve. For those who are willing to do that hard work, there are resources out there. When I lecture about this, I ask writers to consider whether they are acting as Invaders, Tourists, or Guests, according to the excellent framework Nisi Shawl lays out in her essay on appropriation. And then I point them towards all the articles and blog posts I’ve collected over time on the subject of cultural appropriation, to give them as full a background in understanding, identifying, and avoiding it as I possibly can. Because I believe that, instead of giving people excuses for why appropriation can’t be avoided (it can) or allowing them to think it’s no big deal (it is) it’s more important to help them become better artists whose creations contribute to cultural understanding and growth that benefits us all. K. Tempest Bradford is a speculative fiction author, media critic, teacher, and podcaster. She teaches and lectures about writing inclusive fiction online and in person via WritingTheOther. com."
"A letter from Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of a White House commission looking into voter fraud and other irregularities, is drawing fire from some state election officials. The letter, sent Wednesday to all 50 states, requests that all publicly available voter roll data be sent to the White House by July 14, five days before the panel’s first meeting. The information requested includes the names, addresses, birthdates, political party (if recorded) last four digits of the voter’s Social Security Number and which elections the voter has participated in since 2006, for every registered voter in the country. Kobach, who is also Kansas’ Republican secretary of state, did not say how the commission plans to use the data other than to help it ”fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting.” However, Kobach has long advocated comparing state voter rolls with other government databases to identify noncitizens or other illegitimate registrants. Voter advocacy groups say such comparisons are prone to error and worry that the effort will result in legitimate voters being purged from the rolls. The bipartisan commission  —   chaired by Vice President Pence  —   was established by President Trump after he made his widely dismissed allegations that as many as 5 million people voted illegally last November. Its stated purpose is to recommend ways to improve the public’s confidence in the integrity of elections. But in response to Kobach’s letter, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said Thursday that he would not provide sensitive voter information to the commission. ”California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach,” Padilla, a Democrat, said in a statement. Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill also released a statement, saying that she would share publicly available data with the commission but complaining about a ”lack of openness” about what the panel is looking for. Merrill cited past legal challenges to Kobach’s efforts to clean up voter rolls in Kansas, which have led to some eligible voters being removed from registration lists. ”Given Secretary Kobach’s history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this commission,” said Merrill, a Democrat and outgoing president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. A spokeswoman for the association said the secretaries will almost certainly discuss Kobach’s controversial request at their summer conference next week in Indianapolis. The commission, which has yet to meet, has been viewed with suspicion from the start by civil rights groups, which think it will be used to justify measures  —   such as strict ID requirements  —   that will make it more difficult to vote. Vanita Gupta, who headed the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department during the Obama administration, said in a tweet that the letter confirms that ”Pence and Kobach are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain  simple.” However, Kobach’s letter also seeks recommendations from state officials on other issues, including how to prevent voter intimidation and disenfranchisement. It also asks how the commission can help with information technology security and vulnerabilities, a growing concern after reports of widespread Russian efforts to hack into U. S. election systems last year. New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, one of four Democrats on the commission, told WMUR reporter John DiStaso on Wednesday that he was impressed that Pence made it clear in a phone call with panel members earlier in the day that they would work on a bipartisan basis ”with no preconceived notion and we should search for the facts.” After that call, the White House released a statement saying that Pence told commissioners: ”The integrity of the vote is a foundation of our democracy this bipartisan commission will review ways to strengthen that integrity in order to protect and preserve the principle of one person, one vote.”"
"Say you’re headed to a summer cookout or barbecue or a family reunion but you don’t want to show up  . What do you bring that can withstand the heat outdoors and make people happy? We asked three chefs for their suggestions for dishes that will stand out from all the beans and burgers and slaw and dips sure to be on the table. The goal is to go home with nothing but a clean serving dish. Chefs need to go to summer summer social gatherings, too  —   often ones where other chefs will be in attendance. Chef James Rigato, owner of Mable Gray restaurant in Hazel Park, Mich. keeps this   recipe in his pocket for those times when he needs to whip something together that is simple to prepare and will please the palate. Serves:   Start to Finish: 1 hour, 13 garlic cloves, 2 cups blended oil, 1 ¼ cup fresh lemon juice, plus extra for seasoning, ½ cup miso, One   jar tahini (2 cups) Tabasco, 1 pound hot peppers (Fresno, jalapeño, serrano, cherry bombs) ½ cup sugar, ¼ cup grapefruit juice, ½ cup orange juice, ¼ cup rice wine vinegar, 2 heads cauliflower, 20 mint leaves, salt to taste, Directions: To make the garlic, thinly slice 10 garlic cloves on a mandolin. Add oil. Place over medium high heat and bring to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Add garlic and stir until golden and crispy, about a minute. Remove with sieve. Be careful not to burn the garlic. Set aside. Let oil cool and reserve to make vinaigrette. To make the tahini vinaigrette, combine one cup lemon juice, three cloves garlic, miso and garlic oil in a blender. Combine until blended. Add tahini and blend until completely mixed. Add in salt, Tabasco and extra lemon to taste. Set aside. (This makes a large amount of dressing  —   probably more than you need for just this one usage. Feel free to cut the dressing by half  —   using 1 cup of oil and 1 cup of tahini. But the dressing lasts a while and it’s nice to use generously.) To make the hot pepper jelly, rinse the peppers and remove stems. Cut each pepper in half and, if desired, remove the seeds. Coarsely chop, place in food processor and puree. Remove puree and place in sauce pan over   heat. Add sugar, grapefruit juice, orange juice, remaining ¼ cup lemon juice, vinegar and salt to taste. Bring to simmer and cook for about 10 to 15 minutes until mixture is a syrupy consistency and sticks to the back of the spoon. You can purchase a hot pepper jelly if you like. For the cauliflower, cut into large florets at the natural breaks. Should get about   florets per head. Season with salt and pepper. Lightly coat with olive oil. When charcoal is at its hottest point after lighting briquettes, add cauliflower on grate, turning often to caramelize each piece, about 5 minutes. Remove from grill. Place mint leaves in ice cold water for about 10 minutes until they plump up. To serve, lay cauliflower flat on a plate. Drizzle with vinaigrette. Add dollops of hot pepper jelly around the plate. Sprinkle with garlic and mint leaves. Baklava is usually a rich desert but in this version, it’s a savory pie with the crunch of crisp filo layers, nuts and a hint of sweetness. Amy Thielen, chef, food writer and author of a memoir, Give a Girl a Knife, suggests a simplified technique that makes working with filo easy: Rather than painstakingly lifting and placing the thin dough, sheet by sheet, to form a layer, grab a clump of filo to make the layer of dough. 10 tablespoons butter, 1   Vidalia onion, diced,   teaspoon, plus   teaspoon, plus a pinch of fine sea salt, 1   tablespoons minced fresh ginger, 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 2 teaspoons ras el hanout * garam masala or curry powder, 2 bunches Swiss chard (1   pounds) greens stripped from the stem, washed, 12 ounces toasted almonds, 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, 1 cylinder filo dough, thawed, 3 tablespoons light honey, Directions: First, clarify the butter. Heat the butter in a small skillet over medium heat until it foams, remove from the heat and let it sit a minute. Tilt the skillet, and scrape off the foamy top with a spoon, removing it to a small bowl. Pour the clear butter into another bowl, and pour the milky bottom liquid into the bowl of foam. The clear yellow butter is your clarified butter. (The foamy caramelized solids are glorious when added to scrambled eggs at the last minute, by the way.) Heat a large skillet over medium heat and add 3 tablespoons of clarified butter, the diced onions, and   teaspoon of the salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions turn golden at the edges and are soft and sweet. Add the ginger and red pepper flakes, and 1 teaspoon of the ras el hanout* garam masala or curry powder. Cook one more minute and reserve. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and blanch the Swiss chard until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain. When cool enough to handle, squeeze most of the moisture from the greens and chop roughly. Add the greens to the onion mixture, reheat for a minute, stirring to incorporate, and season with   teaspoon of salt. Preheat the oven to 350º F. In a food processor, combine the almonds, the remaining 1 teaspoon ras el hanout* garam masala or curry powder, the sugar, and a pinch of salt, and pulse to  . Brush a 9 x   baking dish with clarified butter. (Assembly is key: two layers of    on the bottom, a central layer of Swiss chard, and two layers of    on top.) If your filo dough doesn’t fit the dish, trim the entire stack to fit. Lay   of the stacked filo into the dish. Brush the top with clarified butter and sprinkle with   of the almond mixture. Top with another fifth of the stacked filo dough, brush with more butter, and sprinkle with another quarter of the almond mixture. Add another fifth of the filo dough, sprinkle with another thin layer of almond mixture, and then add the Swiss chard mixture, spreading it out evenly. Add another fifth of the filo dough, brush with butter, and sprinkle with the rest of the almonds. Top with the final layer of stacked filo dough. With a sharp knife, cut the baklava into 24 squares  —   6 rows by 4 rows  —  cutting carefully all the way down to the bottom. Melt the remaining clarified butter again if it has cooled, and pour over the baklava, drizzling it off your brush onto the top and down into the cracks. Bake the baklava at 350º Fahrenheit until it turns dark amber brown, about 50 minutes. Combine the honey and 1 tablespoon water in a small dish and warm until liquid. When the baklava comes out of the oven, drizzle it with the honey mixture. Serve the baklava at room temperature. * Ras el Hanout Spice Mix (makes 3 tablespoons) 15 green cardamom pods, cracked and hulled, 1 teaspoon cumin seed, 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 12 whole allspice berries, 3 whole cloves,   teaspoon anise seed, 1 teaspoon ground ginger,   teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground turmeric,   teaspoon ground nutmeg, In a small skillet, combine the first six ingredients  —   the cardamom seeds, cumin seeds, black peppercorns, allspice berries, cloves and anise seed. Toast lightly over   heat until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Let cool. Transfer the spices to a   coffee grinder and process until finely ground. Pour into a bowl and add the ground ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, and nutmeg. Store in a clean, dry glass jar at room temperature. Krispy Kreme  Sweet Potato Pudding with Orange  Meringue, Chef Edward Lee from 610 Magnolia restaurant in Louisville, Ky. offers a sweet finish for any barbecue, a bread pudding using glazed donuts in lieu of stale bread. Combine that with the vegetable tang of sweet potatoes and you have a unique combo that will have guests scrapping the dish for the last bits. Serve it in rounds as above, or leave it in the baking dish topped with toasted marshmallows instead of meringue. 1 Dozen Krispy Kreme Glazed Donuts, torn into 1 inch pieces, 2 pounds sweet potato, 1 ½ cups of roasted sweet potato puree (see directions for details) 3 eggs, lightly beaten, 1 cup whole milk, 1 ½ cup heavy cream, ½ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup maple syrup, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon vanilla extract,   teaspoon grated nutmeg, 1 ½ cup gingersnap cookies, ground up in food processor, 2 ounces melted butter, orange segments from 1 orange, meringue, fresh mint, Directions: Grind up gingersnap cookies in food processor and then add 2 ounces of melted butter. Add to the bottom of a casserole pan and using the bottom of a cup, pack firmly down. Bake in oven for 5 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Wrap sweet potatoes in aluminum foil and roast at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until they are soft, about 40 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes and scoop out the flesh. You should have about 1 ½ cups of sweet potato puree. Transfer sweet potato mash to a bowl and let cool to room temperature. Whisk in eggs, milk, heavy cream, sugar, maple syrup, salt, vanilla and nutmeg. Mix until smooth. Add the doughnut pieces to the casserole pan. Pour the custard over the doughnuts and let sit for 20 minutes and press lightly before baking. Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes. Before serving, either: Cut portions after cooling slightly, using a   ring mold to punch out four rounds of bread pudding. Pipe out a little meringue over the top of the bread pudding. Using a torch, heat the meringue until the edges are browned. Or, Top with marshmallows and brown them briefly in the oven. Garnish with orange segments and fresh mint. For the Meringue (Optional) 6 egg whites, beaten into peaks, 1 zest of lemon,   teaspoon cream of tartar, 1   cup granulated sugar, 1 zest of lemon, Directions: Add ingredients to a mixer and whisk on high until soft peaks form. Make this right before using."
"Climate scientists agree that this century is getting much warmer and that such warming will likely bring economic pain to the U. S. but economists aren’t sure how much. Now, a team of scientists and economists, writing in the upcoming issue of the journal Science, says it can at least tell which parts of the country are likely to suffer the most. The researchers started with history: How have heat waves and drought affected the economy in the past? Then they applied that metric to a range of future warming scenarios  —   from minor to extreme  —   and mapped the effects, county by county across the U. S. They found that if warming continues at recent rates, it could shave 3 to 6 percentage points off of the country’s gross domestic product by century’s end  —   the warmer it gets, the bigger the hit to the economy. Lead researcher Solomon Hsiang acknowledges that the numbers are uncertain by scientific standards but that they aren’t really the bottom line. ”I think the takeaway message that is most striking is that the effects of climate change on the U. S. are not the same everywhere,” says Hsiang, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. ”Where you are in the country really matters.” Colder places like New England might see an economic upturn  —   for example, from lower heating bills. But places that are already hot, like the South and Midwest, could see huge damage to their local economies, due to enormous electric bills, dying crops or mass migration away from the area. Maybe that is not so surprising, but Hsiang takes it a step further: Climate change will redistribute wealth by driving workers, businesses and agriculture away from those   regions and move them mostly toward the north and west of the country. Again, Hsiang says exactly how much is hard to predict. But he says that is actually part of the new study’s findings: ”When you start changing the climate,” he says, ”it starts affecting all these aspects of the economy, and it makes the future world harder to predict.” Things that are somewhat easier to predict include how many more people die as heat waves get hotter, which has an economic cost associated with it. But it’s much harder to envision what new technologies might emerge to help people adapt to climate change, generate cleaner electricity or remove carbon from the atmosphere. With so many uncertainties, why do this kind of exercise? Even if it’s accurate, a climate change cost of 6 percentage points or even more in the national GDP will be dwarfed by an economy that will grow many times over by 2100. ”Over a century, that could make up for all the losses from anthropogenic global warming and then some,” says Ted Nordhaus, an analyst with the energy and environment group The Breakthrough Institute. ”For citizens of wealthy societies, there is too much infrastructure and technical capacity to see a dramatic decline in living standards.” He says the downside of predictions so far into the future is that they scare people unnecessarily. But economist Billy Pizer at Duke University says research like this at least brings a distant threat into focus. ”It’s important to figure out: Are we talking about something the size of a bread box or the size of an elephant or the size of a mouse?” he says. ”And I think getting those sorts of magnitudes right, I think is really important, and I think that’s what this paper does.” And it continues a   effort to determine something called ”the social cost of carbon” (carbon dioxide being the major greenhouse gas). What’s a ton of carbon pollution going to do to the economy, and should polluters pay that cost now? The administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama endeavored to figure out the social cost of carbon, with an eye toward charging polluters for every ton of carbon they emit. However, the administration of Donald Trump says it’s not interested in the social cost of carbon or moving away from   fuels, arguing that doing so would hurt the economy. Climate scientist Chris Field at Stanford University says yes, decarbonizing the economy would be expensive, but he compares it to the space program in the 1960s. ”It cost a lot,” he says, ”but it also unleashed a huge amount of creativity and innovation and really launched the United States on a trajectory to being ready for the 21st century.”"
"John Huber is a career prosecutor in Utah who’s served in both Democratic and Republican administrations. This month, the Trump White House nominated him to serve as a U. S. attorney in that state. But it came as something of a surprise to current and former Justice Department veterans Wednesday when Huber appeared for a news conference in Washington: not in the halls of Justice, but at the White House podium. Huber and the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement used the platform to advocate for the passage of House bills that increase penalties for undocumented immigrants who break the law and jurisdictions that refuse to share information with federal immigration authorities. ”Kate’s Law enhances our ability to stem the tide of criminals who seem to almost always return to victimize us,” Huber told the reporters assembled in the briefing room. He added: ”Forty percent of my felony caseload in Utah are criminal alien prosecutions. If it’s a problem in Utah, it’s a problem for the nation.” To some Justice Department insiders, that appearance was a problem, undermining confidence that DOJ and the FBI’s law enforcement functions operate independently of the White House. Matthew Miller, the top spokesman for President Obama’s first attorney general, said both location and personnel matter. ”This is another example of the Trump administration blurring the lines between the White House and law enforcement and encroaching on the Justice Department’s independence,” Miller said. ”U. S. attorneys shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House podium in any event, and they certainly shouldn’t be there weighing in on   issues as part of a White House political strategy. Every time the Trump administration crosses one of these lines, they weaken the rule of law in America.” Earlier this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions took his own turn at the White House podium, relieving press secretary Sean Spicer, to speak out against   sanctuary cities, places that limit   with federal immigration officials. A month later, speaking at the border near Nogales, Ariz. Sessions said, ”For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this country, be forewarned. This is a new era. This is the Trump era.” Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Sessions, brushed back questions this week about the department’s proximity to the White House. ”The Department of Justice is committed to making America safe again through fundamental law enforcement principles and will not hesitate to speak out in any venue about policies that endanger neighborhoods and communities around the country.” To be sure, questions about the closeness of top DOJ officials to the president have persisted for generations. President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Robert to run the Justice Department. President George W. Bush selected his friend from Texas and onetime White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to be attorney general. And President Obama’s   top law enforcement officer, Eric Holder, once called himself the president’s ”wing man.” But that gives little comfort to former prosecutors and policy aides who follow President Trump’s tweets and actions. During the campaign, he called for the prosecution of his political opponent, Hillary Clinton. In the White House, he fired FBI Director James Comey and without any evidence, suggested the FBI had illegal wiretapped Trump Tower during last year’s campaign. Trump recently resumed his conflict with news outlets that have reported on him critically. This week, he has bashed CNN as ”Fake News,” tweeted a female MSNBC anchor was ”bleeding badly from a ” and raised questions about whether Amazon, whose founder owns the Washington Post, has been paying its fair share of taxes. For people questioning the distance between top Justice Department brass and the president, one Republican former law enforcement official offered this reminder: Trump has mulled firing both his attorney general and his deputy attorney general, only five months into his presidency."
"On yet another day when President Trump’s tweets are dominating the news, the top Republican and Democrat leading the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe said his tweets aren’t quite enough for them. In a statement Thursday, Rep. Mike Conaway,   and Rep. Adam Schiff,  . threatened a subpoena to ”ensure a satisfactory response” to the question of whether the White House has recordings, memos or other documents detailing meetings the president had with former FBI Director James Comey. The committee originally asked that question on June 9, in a letter to White House counsel Don McGahn. The White House responded to the request, also in a letter, by simply pointing to the president’s tweet in which he said he did not make and doesn’t possess any tapes. That response, Conaway and Schiff argue, wasn’t enough. ”The President’s statement on Twitter, and the White House’s letter referring to the President’s statement, were only partially responsive to the Committee’s request,” the statement said. ”By only referring to the President’s statement, the White House’s letter stops short of clarifying for the Committee whether the White House has any responsive recordings, memoranda, or other documents.” The statement concludes that the committee will consider ”using compulsory” action, or a subpoena, to make sure the White House responds ”fully.” The development comes as Politico reported this week that the Senate Intelligence Committee will have the first congressional look at memos Comey wrote about his meetings with the president. Here’s the full text of the statement from Conaway and Schiff: ”On Friday, June 23, the House Intelligence Committee received a letter from the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs responding to the Committee’s June 9 letter to the White House Counsel asking the White House to tell the Committee whether any recordings, memoranda, or other documents memorializing President Trump’s conversations with former FBI Director Comey exist or ever existed  —   and, if they did exist, to produce copies of such materials to the Committee.  ”The White House has responded by letter asking the Committee to refer to ’President Trump’s June 22, 2017, statement regarding this matter’ as its official response and quotes in full the President’s statement that was made in the form of successive tweets, in which the President stated that he has ’no idea whether there are ”tapes” or recordings’ of his conversations with James Comey and that the President ’did not make’ and does ’not have any such recordings.’ ”Today, the Committee has sent the White House a second letter urging the White House to appropriately and fully comply with the Committee’s June 9 request. The President’s statement on Twitter, and the White House’s letter referring to the President’s statement, were only partially responsive to the Committee’s request. By only referring to the President’s statement, the White House’s letter stops short of clarifying for the Committee whether the White House has any responsive recordings, memoranda, or other documents. Today’s letter from the Committee makes clear that should the White House not respond fully, the Committee will consider using compulsory process to ensure a satisfactory response.”"
"Three people in New Mexico caught the plague, according to health officials there, who reported the two most recent cases this week. Yes, this is the same illness that killed an estimated 50 million people across three continents in the 1300s, though these days common antibiotics will get rid of it. Once known as the Black Death, possibly for dark patches caused by bleeding under the skin, the plague swept Europe 700 years ago, killing a third of the population  —   an estimated 25 million. It wiped out millions in China and Hong Kong in the late 1800s before people put two and two together and started targeting rat populations. Centuries later, the plague periodically pops up in countries across the globe  —   though at minor levels compared to its medieval heyday. In 2015, the World Health Organization recorded 320 cases across the globe, including 77 deaths. A   bacterium, Yersinia pestis, causes the scourge. The U. S. tends to see between one and 17 human cases a year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease likely hitched a ride to the U. S. in 1900 on   rats, which had boarded steamships in Asia. Since then, infected fleas have taken up residence on rodents including chipmunks, squirrels and prairie dogs across the southwest. New Mexico and neighboring states are nearly   settings, with their buffet of possible rodent hosts. Last year, New Mexico state had four cases. The year before that, there were another four, including one death. This year, all three were hospitalized but are now recovering at home. The plague can persist in rodent populations, especially wild ones, for a long time without affecting humans. But it can  . As we’ve reported in previous posts, the bacteria will hook onto the lining of a flea’s gut and stomach, growing into a film that can clog the insect’s digestive passage. The next time the flea goes for a blood meal, it pukes into whatever animal it’s feeding on (usually a rodent) spreading the bacteria. Once a rodent is infected, the illness can spread to wild carnivores that eat it, or to cats, dogs and people that come within   range. Paul Ettestad, a public health veterinarian for the New Mexico state health department, says prairie dogs are particularly vulnerable to plague. If a whole colony gets the illness, the bacterium amplifies. ”It’s like putting a match to a grass prairie,” he says. ”Whoosh.” As their rodent hosts die off, fleas will seek a new one  —   typically the next animal to peer down the burrow hole, whether it’s a coyote or a house cat.  ”What we see in the West here is the fleas will crawl up to the entrance of the burrow and wait for a host to come by,” says Ken Gage, who studies   diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ”If they get on another rodent that they can live on, then they’ve been successful. But they can also jump on humans, or on dogs or coyotes or cats.” Sometimes, that new host can transport the fleas a few miles away and spread them to other animals. Cats and dogs can catch fleas while exploring outdoors, or they can drag infected rodents directly into the home. Sick cats, which are more susceptible to the disease than dogs, can also pass the infection to humans directly. The plague comes in three forms. If a person gets bitten by an infected flea, they’d most likely develop bubonic plague, named for the painful lumps, or ”buboes,” where the bacteria multiply. It can also get into the bloodstream, causing septicemic plague. If left untreated, the bacterium can eventually spread to the lungs, causing pneumonic plague, which the World Health Organization considers to be among the deadliest infectious diseases. Two of this year’s New Mexico cases were bubonic, and one was pneumonic, says Paul Ettestad. The patient with the pneumonic case is currently recovering from organ damage due to the illness. Because pneumonic plague can spread between people, health officials traced dozens of the patient’s contacts and gave them prophylactic antibiotics. That case likely started out as bubonic or septicemic, Ettestad says, but because the person didn’t seek medical care quickly enough, the bacterium was able to spread to the lungs. ”Sometimes people think they can tough it out at home and they’re gonna get better,” he says. ”What happens with plague is you kinda hang on, hang on, hang on and then suddenly the bacteria can spread into your bloodstream extremely quickly and it can overwhelm a person.” In 2015, a patient in New Mexico died after waiting too long to seek medical treatment. In places with poor access to health care, the illness can be deadly on a larger scale. Last fall, an outbreak started in a remote part of Madagascar that hadn’t seen the infection since 1950. According to WHO, more than 60 people were infected, and 26 died. Most cases were bubonic, though a few were pneumonic. Partially due to inaccessibility and security issues ”due to local banditry,” a WHO spokesman says that ”the real magnitude of the outbreak is still to be defined.”"
"Big as a Buick and with a buck like a bronco, the giant gray pig named Okja is a force to be reckoned with. She was born in a lab  —   well, two labs. In the context of Bong  ’s new film Okja, the pig belongs to a nightmarish food conglomerate, an obvious Monsanto   which ships her to a small family farm in South Korea as part of a calculated effort to make genetically modified food less scary to the public. If people empathize with their mutant pigs, the company reasons, they’ll eat them without questioning their origins. Of course, Okja is also the product of this movie’s   lab, which, like this fictional food giant, wants us to empathize with a mutant pig. And she’s something miraculous: A grunting, galloping creature of real soul, whose CGI hide looks to be as thick as that in any petting zoo. Pigs like Wilbur and Babe make for great movie heroes, perhaps because of their natural mix of intelligence and naivete. They are, after all, doomed to spend their lives outrunning the sausage machine. So what would seem to be bad for (agri) business is great for show business. Go ahead and put a lovable face on that meat. As a director, Bong has always been open to lab experimentation. He   the genes of the serial killer flick in Memories of Murder and the monster movie in The Host, creating haunting   hybrids that ensnared us in their extreme tonal shifts and grotesque visions of humanity. Here, with certified chronicler of fringe life Jon Ronson (author of The Men Who Stare At Goats and So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, among others) as his   Bong delivers the oddest   commercial in either the East or the West. And Netflix brings yet another layer of abnormality to the movie’s DNA, because the service’s plans to make Okja available for streaming on the same day as its (very limited) theatrical release prompted boos when the logo appeared at its Cannes Film Festival premiere. Honestly, though, a movie about the purity of food should be enjoyed on more than the cinematic equivalent of the microwave. We first meet Okja on that idyllic farm, nestled at the top of the mountains. She is under the care of a   teen named Mija (Ahn  ) who loves this beast with all her heart. In true Spielbergian fashion, Mija’s parents are dead she’s being raised by her simpleton grandfather (Byun  ) who tells her they’ve purchased Okja outright from the Mirando Corporation. It’s a lie, but Mija only discovers this when the company shows up to cart the swine away for their Best Pig Competition. (Soon we’ll see how futile it was to protect a young girl’s innocence in a world as demented  —   and profane  —   as this.) On the hunt for her best friend, the simple farm girl soon finds herself at odds with armies of violent, cynical   adults. Like Bong’s previous movie, Snowpiercer, Okja boasts a   cast  —   while the rest of Hollywood struggles to make movies that will appeal to every market, his approach is to simply bring nations together into one shared nightmare. Tilda Swinton had such a good time playing the face of corporate evil in Snowpiercer that she reprises the role twice, as   Mirando executives: the first vain and petty, the second ruthless. Mirando fights a    for Okja against a radical   group led by Paul Dano’s   rebel Jay, who stages a highway abduction of the pig in Seoul. The group pledges never to harm a living soul, so they refuse to ram a truck off the road until every passenger has secured their seatbelt. Snowpiercer was an actioner with real verve, a thrillingly linear journey from the caboose to the head of an apocalypse train. But even its biggest fans would concede that its class allegory was rather   . Well, check out the size of Okja’s snout. The film turns Big Ag into a funhouse carnival, complete with a   parade and little free sample bags of jerky. Lucy Mirando prances through business meetings in bright pink custom designer wear, ranting about press coverage and her father’s history with napalm, as her unflappable   man (Giancarlo Esposito) keeps the ship upright. Meanwhile, Jake Gyllenhaal is an infantile, Jack   TV wildlife personality in bulging khaki shorts, and he shrieks and squeals more than the pigs do. Don’t think the activists get let off the hook, either, just because this is clearly a    film: In an   gag, one of them passes out because he refuses to eat anything at all. (”The world’s smallest carbon footprint. ”) The film shares Bong’s casual   of tones, his fascination with picking at society’s many scabs, and the way his films frequently skid into violence and cruelty without warning. A climax in a slaughterhouse is so bleak, with blood dripping through the grates of the killing floor, that Bong seems to be setting up a Planet of the   overthrow. Elsewhere, the dark humor has a hint of Paul Verhoeven’s mischievousness: One Mirando employee shrugs his shoulders when Okja escapes, saying he doesn’t get workman’s comp. But Okja is less controlled than Bong’s earlier work. It seems determined to use every part of the proverbial animal, meaning a lot of the weird character traits it throws to us never have satisfying payoffs. And the oinker herself? She’s the real star, especially in the film’s early segments, when she gets to splash in streams and climb rocks. Of course she poops everywhere, too, and sneezes on Gyllenhaal as though he were the villain in an ’80s family comedy. Most impressively, Okja is a central player in action scenes that make urban chaos look smooth as butter. A centerpiece chase through the streets of Seoul, in which Mija and the massive animal plow through an underground shop, is Mad  . In the clever world of this film, genetic modification brings with it a touch of humanity, even as everyone surrounding it seems to have little recognizable human qualities. Some pig, indeed. Editor’s note: A previous version of this story mixed up the words ”empathize” and ”emphasize”  —   thanks to all the readers who caught it!"
"As it winds north through rural Thailand, Pop Aye makes only a brief stop at a Buddhist site. But there’s plenty of karma in   Kirsten Tan’s affecting   drama, beginning with its human protagonist’s quest to repay what he owes his elephant companion. For Thana (Thaneth Warakulnukroh) the animal is both a friend and a metaphor for loss  ” and not the biggest of the latter. Thana is a   architect who’s entering the twilight of his career. His looming obsolescence is symbolized by Gardenia Square, a large   project he designed, and which is about to be demolished. As he anticipates the destruction of his legacy, Thana also finds that he’s become less valued at work and at home. His wife (Penpak Sirikul) shows little interest in conversation, and appears to have replaced one part of their relationship with a   vibrator. Feeling old and unappreciated, Thana is understandably pleased to encounter an elephant he recognizes as Popeye, a childhood companion named for the animated sailor. (He hums the cartoon’s theme song, and the elephant responds.) The animal and his handler are eking out an existence on the streets of Bangkok. Thana impulsively buys his old pal, and soon decides to take him to his rustic hometown and entrust him to his uncle. As will eventually be revealed, Thana does not know much about the current state of either the hamlet or his relatives. But then the movie, shot in muted colors and often from an distance, doesn’t pretend to understand even its central duo all that well. Their journey is gently absurd, not revelatory. The trip proceeds mostly on foot, lumbering at a pace an unsympathetic cop calls ”elephant speed.” Some segments of the itinerary employ flatbed trucks large enough to haul an elephant. There are also a few excursions into the past, including a brief enchanted memory of Thana and Popeye as kids together. The   Thana and bedraggled Popeye have grown up to be outsiders, and along the way they encounter others of their nonconforming kind. These include a transgender woman (Yukontorn Sukkijja) who shares a duet with Thana at roadside karaoke bar, and an aging hippie (Chaiwat Khumdee) who lives in an abandoned gas station and anticipates his death because he ”read it in the stars.” Both become part of Thana and Popeye’s karmic circle in a story that’s loosely structured but not aimless. Director Tan is originally from Singapore and now lives in New York, hardly bucolic locales. But she spent a few years in Thailand, where she explored the country’s back roads. She’s also familiar enough with contemporary Thai art cinema to have hired editor Lee Chatametikool, known for his work with director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Pop Aye, her first feature, is much more straightforward than Weerasethakul’s work, but suggests his influence, notably in the   sequence, the movie’s most surreal (and raunchy) episode. Popeye, played by an elephant called Bong, is an engaging character. But this is not a   movie that treats animals as basically human. While Thana’s motivation ultimately becomes clear, Popeye’s goal appears to be simply to keep moving. Tethering him to, say, a shopping cart does not impede his progress. Animal lovers may wish the film offered a stronger resolution to the elephant’s saga. But at least Popeye is spared Thana’s fate: a vision of Bangkok’s future that looks to erase not only the architect’s accomplishments but nearly all of Thai culture. The logic of globalizing development promotes a world with no connections, karmic or otherwise."
"Among the photographs featured in the voluminous archive of photographer Elsa Dorfman, there’s a joyful selfie  —   taken in 1988 before either the word or the practice became a thing  —   of Dorfman and her frequent subject, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Arms linked and holding hands, the two friends stand side by side, grinning broadly in   camaraderie. Ginsberg is less known for his chipper outlook than for his sonorous meditations on lost America, and that goes double for filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line). But once you’ve seen The  : Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, Morris’s charming portrait of the portraitist, you’ll see that that photo tells us all we need to know about Dorfman’s approach to art and life. It has nothing to do with finding Ginsberg’s inner essence, or anyone else’s in her collection of luminaries and just plain folks. Dorfman is interested in surfaces, though not in a surface way. Clocking in at a trim 76 minutes, The   is as warmly affectionate as its subject, a close friend and neighbor of the director. Formally speaking it’s also unusually straightforward for Morris, a bold innovator and master of the   probing question. His noises off barely register here, and rightly so, for Dorfman, whom we see leafing through her collection in the Cambridge, Massachusetts backyard garage that serves as her studio, is easily set in motion. She proves a lively,   chatterbox on many subjects with the endlessly curious but practical intellect of the largely  . The   is about her evolving aesthetic, but it’s also the autobiography of a woman who invented herself outside the often censorious jurisdiction of the art world. Imagine the reaction on the   Manhattan gallery scene to this manifesto: ”I have this misguided idea that it will be my role in the universe to make people feel better.” Yes, she’s that rad. A sturdy, maternal, but cheeky figure in dirndl skirts and fun sneakers, Dorfman talks in the flat vowels of her native Boston, to which she fled in her late twenties after working as a secretary in New York. To hear Dorfman tell it, her rich professional life took shape through a series of mostly fortunate accidents. That’s true for most, but it takes a certain kind of openness and sense of adventure to spot and grab the opportunities that present themselves. This ”lucky little Jewish girl who escaped by the skin of her teeth” worked at Grove Press, where she was exposed to writers and artists on the fringe. At that time it was ”mortifying to be unmarried,” she says cheerfully. ”I had to have a thing.” Back in Massachusetts in 1980, that thing became the analog Polaroid camera on which Dorfman took her   pictures for 30 years until the company declared bankruptcy, forcing her too to contemplate retirement.   in Edwin Land’s workshop and weighing in at 200 pounds, the huge contraption, which has to be wheeled around on a dolly, is a monster of obsolescent beauty in today’s   and it’s charming to watch Dorfman and Morris coo over it as writers would over an ancient printing press. Hanging out in Cambridge’s famous Grolier bookshop, Dorfman photographed her share of bohemian celebs from Ginsberg to Juan Luis Borges to Audre Lorde to Bob Dylan, all looking a sight more relaxed than their reputations suggest, which may be what earned her early art world opprobrium for being ”too sunny.” Yet even in the commissioned portraits of regular individuals and families from which she made a living, she never airbrushed and always told her subjects that they, not she, had to set the tone. She admits to ”whipping up a certain energy” in the studio, and the pictures that she kept were the ” ” rejects that her clients chose not to take, deglamorized and full of life and mischief and affection. There’s nothing   or naïve about Dorfman. She’s acutely aware, as any photographer must be, of the relativities of perception and the suspect nature of imposed narrative. Closing in on 80 years old, she’s as lively as a cricket but sensitive to the precarious temporality of life and art, which is all about ”nailing down the now.” Her vivid Polaroids will erode, and she says she lacks the stamina to digitize her archive. So her work, which we see being packed away for storage, will fade, ironically, just as it has begun to attracted good notices. All of which she faces with the calm serenity of a woman who has spent her life doing the work she wanted to do. ”Everything I did made sense if you knew me,” she tells her friend. ”I feel proud and incredulous. But I don’t feel falsely modest.”"
"A new leader is set to temporarily take over the U. S. Census Bureau after Director John Thompson retires from the post on Friday. The Commerce Department, which is in charge of the bureau, has announced Ron Jarmin as the acting director. A career staffer who has spent 25 years at the Bureau, Jarmin currently serves as the associate director for economic programs. He is expected to oversee preparations for the 2020 Census and the Bureau’s other programs until the Senate confirms the Trump administration’s nominee for the next director, who has not been announced. The leadership transition comes more than two months after a surprise announcement that Thompson would leave the job in June rather than the end of the year. About a week before his retirement was announced, Thompson testified before a House committee about growing costs for the 2020 Census. The next decennial census has been added to the Government Accountability Office’s list of   government projects. The GAO cited declining response rates by mail as a key factor to higher costs. In addition, the 2020 Census is set to be the first one to rely heavily on online responses, which come with cyber security and fraud risks. Still, longtime Census watchers say they’re concerned that the bureau is not receiving enough funding to ensure an accurate count in 2020. That tally is used to determine how many seats in Congress each district in the country receives, as well as how hundreds of millions of government funds are distributed. Another issue facing the next Census Bureau director is the unresolved controversy over its decision to not add sexual orientation and gender identity as a proposed topic for the American Community Survey, despite requests for that data from multiple federal agencies. Thompson missed the June 19 deadline to provide an explanation to Democratic Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware and Kamala Harris of California, who sit on the Senate oversight committee for the Bureau."
"U. S.  forces have surrounded the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State group’s   capital, dealing a symbolic blow to the extremist group as it continues to lose territory. However, human rights advocates are sounding the alarm about civilians still inside the besieged city, which ISIS seized in 2014. U. N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said Wednesday that ”up to 100, 000 civilians are effectively trapped as the air and ground offensive intensifies.” The independent   Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported today that the U. S.  Syrian Democratic Forces have completely encircled the city after making gains south of Raqqa. ”IS has no other choice now but to surrender or fight to the end,” Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman told The Associated Press. The Observatory added that Islamic State militants launched a counteroffensive later in the day in a different part of the city, resulting in intense fighting and casualties on both sides. Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U. S.  coalition against ISIS, said in a tweet that the SDF ”now control all high speed avenues of approach into #Raqqah from the south.” The SDF, which is made up of Kurdish and Arab troops, initially focused on the north, east and west of the city, as we reported. Dillon said the Islamic State fighters, ”abandoned by their leadership, are being pressured by the #SDF from multiple axes around the city.” Hussein, the U. N. rights chief, said that the U. N. has documented at least 173 civilians killed in Raqqa this month  —   and he believes the actual toll ”may be much higher.” The SDF has encouraged civilians to flee from Raqqa. Many have. But the statement from Hussein’s office said that fleeing also has proved extremely dangerous: ”While some did manage to leave after paying large sums of money to smugglers, including smugglers affiliated with ISIL, reports continue to emerge of ISIL preventing civilians from fleeing. Those who attempt to flee also risk being killed by landmines or getting caught in the crossfire.” He added: ”Civilians must not be sacrificed for the sake of rapid military victories.” It’s not clear exactly how many ISIS fighters remain in the besieged city  —   the BBC reported that there were ”up to 4, 000” still there, while Col. Joe Scrocca from the U. S.  coalition put the number at about 2, 500, the Associated Press reported. The U. S.  troops have been fighting in nearby areas since November to try to isolate Raqqa. Earlier this month, they officially launched the operation to try to seize control of the city itself, aided by U. S.  air support and military advisers. In an interview with Morning Edition earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the commander of the operation against ISIS, said the coalition has destroyed all the bridges across the Euphrates River, which runs along the southern side of the city. ”Unless you can swim or make a raft, it’s really hard to get across the river in any significant numbers,” he said. The commander stressed that the forces fighting ISIS are likely to face obstacles as they push into the   city: ”This is their capital, and they’ve had better than three years to prepare the defenses of the city.”"
"Nearly three years to the day after the leader of ISIS declared the ”caliphate” of Iraq and Syria from the pulpit of Mosul’s Great Mosque of   the historic structure is back in Iraqi hands. A military spokesman announced Thursday that Iraqi troops successfully stormed the   religious landmark, reclaiming the ruins of a building destroyed by ISIS militants last week. ”Their fictitious state has fallen,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool told state TV, according to Reuters. The moment marks a major symbolic victory for an Iraqi military that watched in 2014 as ISIS leader Abu Bakr   ushered in a new, bloody era in the country, which was reeling from the Islamic State’s territorial gains. Since then, the Iraqi military has steadily pushed ISIS back, shrinking the territory it holds. Over the past eight months the military has clawed its way deeper into the country’s   city, which for years has served as one of the pillars of the Islamic State’s territorial claims. The battle for Mosul has reached what Iraqi authorities believe is the final push, as    fighting consumes the narrow, densely packed streets of the Old City  —   the last area of Mosul to be occupied by ISIS fighters. ”We will keep following Daesh until we kill and capture the last member in Iraq,” Prime Minister Haider   said in a statement, referring to ISIS by its acronym in Arabic. Still, a complete victory remains unfinished for Iraqi troops, which are getting air and logistical support from a U. S.  coalition. Reuters reports that ISIS militants control less than 1 percent of the city at this point, but reclaiming that area of the city could be difficult because of its layout. At the same time, an uncertain fate awaits the residents who have been displaced from the city. ”Many difficult months lie ahead for the more than 1 million people that were forced to flee their homes, as well as those that remained in Mosul, and survived ISIS brutality and the fight to retake the city,” Wendy Taeuber, Iraq country director for the International Rescue Committee, said in a statement. ”Despite the declaration, ISIS still controls some areas in the Old City of Mosul and ongoing fighting will continue to threaten the lives of civilians,” she said. Beyond the battle and even outside Mosul’s city limits, another challenge remains, according to West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. The organization released a study Thursday on ISIS’ ”  military activities in 16 cities” in Iraq and Syria  —   and it cautions that many of the factors that led to the extremist group’s rise persist in those two countries. ”This report is not intended to diminish the gains being won on the battlefield by mostly local forces, supported by a variety of external actors,” the research center says. ”What this report suggests is that pushing the Islamic State out as the formal governing party in a territory is not a sufficient development when it comes to ending the group’s ability to enact violence against individuals in Iraq and Syria,” the report adds. Despite the conclusive connotations of the term ”liberation,” the center says ISIS has demonstrated its ”intention and capability to carry out attacks” in liberated cities. Indeed, as NPR’s Alison Meuse reports, the group’s propaganda has undergone a marked shift in tone. ”The idea behind this messaging is two things,” Aymenn Jawad   a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, tells Alison. ”One is, ’We’ll still remain,’ and the second one [is] encouraging people to keep up the fight.”"
"Major League umpire John Tumpane is used to making quick calls under high pressure  —   about foul balls, strikes and home runs. But on Wednesday afternoon, the stakes were much higher when he saw a woman climb over the railing of Pittsburgh’s Roberto Clemente Bridge, far above the Allegheny River. Tumpane rushed toward the woman and hooked his arm around hers, according to The   Gazette. He told the newspaper that the woman said, ”I’m better off on this side. Just let me go.” Tumpane said he told her, ”I’m not going to let you go.” Tumpane got his other arm around the woman and held tight, even as she dangled both feet off the edge of the bridge. ”It was just kind of pure instinct,” Tumpane said at a press conference Wednesday. ”At times when she just wanted to go the other way, I just was like, ’Not on my watch. Please. ’” Other bystanders stepped in to help, The   reports. One man gripped an arm. Another pinned the woman’s ankles to the bridge. Tumpane and the others held tight until emergency workers arrived and got the woman back over the railing. But Tumpane still didn’t walk away. ”I went up to her, because, you know she said, ’You’ll just forget me after this.’ And I said, ’No, I’ll never forget you. ’” The woman was taken to the hospital with non   injuries. Tumpane, his arms shaking, called his wife, reports MLB. com. ”Not too many times you call your wife and say you helped save somebody’s life,” he recalled. After trying to rest for a while at his hotel, the    from Chicago headed off to work at PNC Park, where the Pittsburgh Pirates were taking on the Tampa Bay Rays. Tumpane was working behind home plate. After being touted as a hero for stepping up to help, Tumpane reflected on the incident. ”This isn’t about me,” he said at the press conference. ”This is just for her and that people care about her and I’m just glad that this is a positive story and not a sad story.”"
"A Russian jury found five men guilty on Thursday in the 2015 murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, The Associated Press reports. But questions remain about who ordered the killing. Nemtsov, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead late on the night of Feb. 27, while walking across a Moscow bridge, as The   reported. At the time of his death, he had been working on a report about Russia’s role in the Ukrainian conflict. The jury found former Chechen security officer Zaur Dadayev guilty of fatally shooting Nemtsov from a passing car. Dadayev worked in the security forces of Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, The other four men  —   also Chechens  —   were convicted as accomplices. Prosecutors said they helped obtain the murder weapon and get Dadayev to the scene, according to AP. The men were promised a bounty of 15 million rubles  —   or more than $200, 000  —   to kill Nemtsov, Reuters reports. But investigators said it’s still not clear who ordered the murder. Some Nemtsov supporters say that’s because the investigators did not try to find the answer. As AP reports: ”Nemtsov’s allies squarely blame the murder on Kadyrov, who has been accused of numerous human rights violations including torture and killings, saying that the officers could not possibly have acted without his explicit orders. Kadyrov denied any role in the assassination.” ”Kadyrov has called Russian opposition leaders ’enemies of the people’ and ’traitors,’” reports NPR’s Lucian Kim. On Thursday, Zhanna Nemtsova, Nemstov’s daughter, said no   Chechen officials have ever been questioned. She said in a Facebook post that despite the verdicts, the case remains unsolved. ”Investigators and the court clearly did not want to uncover the truth about this crime,” Nemstova said in Russian, AP reports. ”There was only one task: find the triggerman and hold a trial. They did just that. But we will continue to fight for the truth by any means we have.” The news service says prosecutors are expected to announce the sentences they are seeking from the judge at a hearing next week. At the time of his death,    Nemstov headed the opposition People’s Freedom Party. He had served as first deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and was in the running for the presidency before withdrawing in 2007. Putin won the race. Nemtsov is one of a number of Kremlin critics who have died in recent years under questionable circumstances. ”Political murders in Russia will continue if the masterminds of this attack are able to get away with this,” Nemtsov ally Ilya Yashin told AP."
"In the global debate over neonicotinoid pesticides, the company that makes most of them has relied on one primary argument to defend its product: The evidence that these chemicals, commonly called ”neonics,” are harmful to bees has been gathered in artificial conditions,   bees in the laboratory, rather than in the real world of farm fields. That company, Bayer, states on its website that ”no adverse effects to bee colonies were ever observed in field studies at   exposure conditions.” Bayer will have a harder time making that argument after today. (Although it still has another argument in its quiver. We’ll get to that later.) This week, the prestigious journal Science reveals results from the biggest field study ever conducted of bees and neonics, which are usually coated on seeds, like corn and soybean seeds, before planting. Scientists monitored bees  —   honeybees and two types of wild bees  —   at 33 sites across Europe, in the United Kingdom, Germany and Hungary. At each site, the bees were placed near large fields of canola. Some of the fields contained canola grown from seeds that were treated with neonicotinoid pesticides, along with a standard fungicide. Other fields were planted with canola treated only with fungicides. At most sites  —   specifically in Hungary and the United Kingdom  —   bees feeding on   canola fields generally fared worse than bees that got to live around untreated canola. When exposed to neonics, wild bees and honeybees had more difficulty reproducing, and fewer honeybee colonies survived the winter. The scientist who led the experiment, Richard Pywell, from the Centre for Ecology  Hydrology in the U. K. called the results ”cause for concern.” But the experiment also revealed a complicated picture, because results were very different in Germany. There, honeybee colonies seemed to prosper, whether or not they were living near canola fields treated with neonicotinoids. In fact, honeybee colonies near   fields produced more eggs, and more larvae. (Fewer colonies survived the winter, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant.) Pywell doesn’t seem bothered by this discrepancy. ”We think this is a really interesting result,” he says. ”We believe that this goes some way toward explaining the inconsistency of previous [research results].” Apparently, the local environment plays a big role in whether bees are harmed by neonics. ”We believe that other factors interact with neonicotinoid exposure to cause negative effects on honeybees and wild bees,” Pywell says. Pywell doesn’t know exactly what those ”other factors” might be  —   his experiment wasn’t set up to examine them. But it did yield some clues. Honeybees in Germany managed to find a much wider variety of flowers to feed on. In Hungary and the United Kingdom, 40 or 50 percent of the pollen collected by honeybees was from canola in Germany, it was only about 10 percent. In Hungary, Pywell says, the bees were surrounded by huge fields of canola, and in the U. K. ”because of modern farming, we’ve lost many of our wild flowers, so the crops are pretty much all that’s there in the springtime.” Also, honeybees in Germany were relatively free of parasites, compared to bees in the U. K. and Hungary. Pywell suspects that bees are particularly vulnerable to neonic exposure when they’re highly dependent on   crops for food, and when they already are weakened by disease. This is what Jeffrey Donald, a Bayer spokesman, highlighted in an email to The Salt. He wrote that ”the study shows that when hives are healthy and relatively disease free and when bees have access to diverse forage, neonics do not pose a danger to colony health.” Interestingly, this study was funded in part by Bayer and another neonic manufacturer, Syngenta, but Pywell says his team of researchers ”operated very independently.” In a separate field study, also published this week in Science, a team of Canadian researchers measured the levels of neonicotinoid pesticides that honeybees were exposed to at several sites in Ontario and Quebec. They compared colonies located close to corn fields with those that were farther away. ”The first surprise was that bees were bringing in pollen that was contaminated with neonicotinoids for most of the growing season  —   three or four months,” says Amro Zayed, a professor of biology at York University in Toronto. ”The next surprise was that most of the pollen, 99 percent of the pollen, was from wild plants. Not corn, and not soybeans.” Zayed says that apparently, neonic residues in farm fields get dissolved in groundwater, and some are taken up by the roots of wild plants. Zayed and his colleagues didn’t monitor bee health in the field, but they tried to replicate this field exposure to neonics in experiments with laboratory bees. What they found: Bees exposed to neonicotinoids didn’t keep their hives as clean and lost their queens more often. Nigel Raine, a specialist on bees at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, says that these experiments have helped to fill in details of a picture that scientist still don’t fully understand. ”The story for honeybees is complicated, but these two papers, taken together, are kind of the first   evidence that there can be measurable impacts on important aspects of colony development and colony survival in the field,” he says. The European study, he says, shows just how complicated the picture is. It shows that pesticides like neonicotinoids affect bees, but also reveals the importance of other factors, too. ”We shouldn’t just focus on insecticides. They’re part of the problem, but if we focus on that and then just say, ’OK, we understand that now, the problem’s fixed,’ I don’t think that’s right,” Raine says. ”We need to be clear about how we’re managing landscapes, both agricultural and urban and more natural landscapes, to support healthy biodiversity of pollinators,” he says. European regulators have imposed a partial moratorium on neonicotinoid use. In the U. S. the Environmental Protection Agency is taking a closer look at neonics, but it hasn’t proposed any new restrictions on them."
"The relationship between jazz and boxing goes back to the   rights era, when entertainment and sports were some of only professions in which African Americans could excel. Miles Davis paid tribute to the first   world heavyweight champion on his 1971 album, Jack Johnson. Now Steve Coleman has released his own musical tribute to boxing: an album called Morphogenesis. Coleman was into boxing before he was into music as a boy in Chicago, his father took him to watch fights at their local movie theater. After Coleman became a saxophonist and composer, he found a philosophical and physical connection between boxing and music: Musicians in his band would describe a rhythm as ”backpedaling,” when a player would move away from a shift in the music like a boxer retreating from an opponent. ”Morphogenesis” means ”the beginning of the shape,” and, true to the MacArthur Fellow’s style, this album is dense with layers and meaning. You’d need to be a serious fan of boxing and jazz to hear all its references, but even the most casual listener can probably feel boxing in the slipping, bobbing and weaving music here. (Coleman does sometimes practice his saxophone while watching boxing on TV with the sound off.) Morphogenesis is more than a soundtrack for a match: It’s a mapping of the sport, with Coleman putting the boxer’s movements directly into musical lines. And, because Coleman likes a challenge, when the drummer he wanted for this album wasn’t available, he decided to represent the rhythmic gestures of boxing without a trap set  —   mostly through precise arrangements of horns and strings. We may have to meet the music on Morphogenesis somewhere out on the edge of comprehension. But even if these aren’t dance tracks, music this connected to physical movement gets into our bodies somehow. We might even see boxing differently, thanks to Coleman’s imaginative composition."
"When Alika Kinan was a teenager in her native Argentina, she thought was going to go on a great adventure. A woman offered to buy the    a plane ticket to Ushuaia, a port city about 2, 000 miles away from her hometown. Kinan imagined she’d work at a shop in the bustling tourism or industrial district. Instead, she was trafficked  —   stripped of her travel documents and taken to a brothel, where she was expected to have sex with 15 to 30 men a day. It was nearly 20 years before she was rescued. She went on to become the first Argentine woman to sue her traffickers and the state, winning a total settlement of about $50, 000. Her years of activism against trafficking led her to the U. S. State Department this week, where Kinan, now 41, was one of eight international activists honored for their work at the unveiling of the 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report. ”It is our hope that the 21st century will be the last century of human trafficking,” said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to a room of diplomats and policymakers. When Kinan arrived at Ushuaia, she was taken to a brothel called ”Sheik.” Women in bathrobes explained how the job worked. Posters with rules on the wall reminded women to lay around in their beds until four in the afternoon so they would be alert all night. No one could make friends outside the brothel. The pimp and his clientele belittled and abused them. In an interview with NPR, Kinan spoke of how vulnerable she felt: naked, trapped between four walls with a stranger. ”You use alcohol, you use drugs, or anything that will help you disassociate from the situation you are in,” she says. In 2012, agents from PROTEX, the government’s   prosecutors office in Buenos Aires, rescued her. The organization reportedly got word of her brothel   which is illegal in Argentina  —   after another woman said she was forced into prostitution there. At first, Kinan wasn’t happy about it. In fact, she was angry  —   and she sympathized with her pimp. That’s not an unusual reaction. ”People shouldn’t expect a trafficking victim to behave in a certain way,” says Susan Coppedge, who leads the State Department’s efforts against human trafficking. ”Every person reacts differently to a situation.” As the years passed by and with therapy, Kinan began to understand what she’d been through. She realized that her rights had been violated. ”Her trafficker had not been prosecuted. So she took matters into her own hands,” says Coppedge. In June 2014, Kinan started a   organization for trafficked women, the Gender Institute of Sapa Kippa. The group helps women access services to rebuild their lives, like medical treatment, housing and job training. She also works at a university as a researcher on sex trafficking, while occasionally helping the Argentine government prosecute traffickers. In 2016, Kinan took her pimp, his wife, the brothel’s madam and the local government to court. A week before one of the trials, she received a fake video purporting to show her own daughter working as a prostitute  —   only it was another girl. With the help of PROTEX and her attorney, Kinan’s pimp was handed a   prison sentence and a fine of $4, 500 last November. The pimp’s wife and the madam received   prison sentences, and the municipality of Ushuaia was ordered to pay Kinan $45, 000. She is the first and only known trafficking survivor in the country to have filed a successful lawsuit.  After the verdict, Kinan vowed to turn her attention to traffickers across the country. ”Because of my experience, I have the will and the power to go after them,” she says. And she has inspired other women in the country to consider suing their own traffickers. According to the State Department report, Argentina continues to struggle with human trafficking. Not only are citizens recruited, but victims from other countries are sent there. Argentina is also a transit point in trafficking routes to other countries. In 2008, President Cristina Kirchner passed a law to prevent and criminalize human trafficking in Argentina. But the law is not enough, suggests Coppedge. ”Now we need to include law enforcement awareness and training to identify trafficking cases. And we need to train prosecutors to bring those cases, and judges to understand what that new law is,” says Coppedge. It’s critical, she says, to inform law enforcement officials around the world that trafficking victims are not themselves criminals. Kinan, a mom of six, is starting to share her story with her children. Her eldest daughter, who is 16 and also named Alika, is already fighting for women’s rights in Argentina. ”[My children] think I am some kind of superwoman because I do so many things,” Kinan says. ”And on top of everything, I bake pizza for them.” Veronica Barzelatto and Suzanne Kleis interpreted for Alika Kinan. Sasha Ingber is a multimedia journalist who covers science, culture and foreign affairs for such publications as National Geographic and Smithsonian. Contact her @SashaIngber"
"The risk of getting a deadly,   infection in a hospital or nursing home is dropping for the first time in decades, thanks to new guidelines on antibiotic use and stricter cleaning standards in care facilities. The rate of new Clostridium difficile or C. diff infections climbed year after year from 2000 to 2010, researchers found. But an early look at   data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infections Program suggests infection rates are improving. ”Preliminary analyses suggest a 9 to 15 percent decrease in health care [C. diff] incidence nationally,” says Dr. Alice Guh, a medical officer at the CDC. ”It’s very encouraging, but there’s still a lot to do.” C. diff infections can cause severe diarrhea and are extremely painful, as Ruth Zimmer, an    woman from Lexington, Ky. can attest. ”It was a lot of diarrhea,” she says. ”It was a gripping stomach pain. It was very nasty and debilitating, but I survived.” Not everyone is so lucky. In 2011, the CDC estimated C. diff claimed the lives of about 29, 000 people and caused nearly 500, 000 illnesses in the U. S. over three times the number in 2000. People most commonly come into contact with the bacterium in health care settings, where many patients are carriers. ”In a nursing home, 20 to 50 percent of residents are colonized with it at any point,” says Dr. John Haran, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In hospitals, it’s anywhere from 10 to 26 percent of patients, he says. Most of them carry the bacterium without experiencing any disease, because other bacteria living in the gut can help keep C. diff in check, Haran says. But certain antibiotics can exterminate large swaths of the natural human microbiome, clearing the way for remnant C. diff bacteria to take over and cause a dangerous infection. C. diff bacterium is hardy, too. It leaves the body in a spore form that can’t be killed with conventional cleaning techniques. These can linger on equipment and surfaces until another person picks them up and ingests them. ”You can recover spores months later if you don’t do a terminal clean with UV light or bleach or something,” says Dr. Dimitri Drekonja, an infectious disease physician at the Minneapolis VA hospital and the University of Minnesota. By 2011, C. diff had gained a lot of notoriety as a deadly and common hospital bug. ”It was estimated that C. diff infection was the most commonly reported infection [acquired in healthcare settings] nationally. That generated a lot of awareness,” Guh says. Alarmed by the rapid rise in C. diff infections, she says more hospitals introduced antimicrobial stewardship programs aimed at tackling the problem. The programs included guidelines to restrict unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, as well as aggressive new cleaning and infection control protocols. She thinks those changes may now be driving down the infection rate. One of the clearest examples of this is in the VA hospital system, which began an aggressive C. diff prevention program in 2012 that included restricting antibiotics closely associated with C. diff infections and meticulously disinfecting every spot in a room that held a patient with infectious diarrhea. ”It was things like making sure that patients identified with C. diff are identified with a sign and have appropriate precautions,” Drekonja says. ”We should always be washing our hands every time we see a patient, but a sign that says this person has infectious diarrhea helps.” In 2014, the VA issued a directive ordering all of its hospitals to implement antimicrobial stewardship programs, and last year, it reported that C. diff infections had dropped by about 15 percent from 2012 to 2015. The vigilance spawned from C. diff and other dangerous infections may have had some other positive impacts, too. New data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in June showed a decrease in all diarrheal disease deaths in the United States from 2010 to 2015. ”All the things you’re doing with hand hygiene and cleaning very well and reducing unnecessary antibiotic use  —   that will help not just with C. diff but with others,” including infections from MRSA and E. coli, Drekonja says. That’s given Drekonja some fragile optimism about the situation, but he says hospitals can never stop being vigilant against dangerous microbes. ”In all honesty, we will never beat them back. We’ll never eliminate antibiotic resistance. They have time and evolution on their side,” he says."
"Updated at 3:30 p. m. ET  President Trump unleashed one of the most vitriolic insults of his presidency Thursday morning, saying MSNBC Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski was ”bleeding badly from a  ” while at his Palm Beach, Fla. resort for New Year’s Eve. He also described her as ”low I. Q. Crazy Mika.” The president sent a pair of tweets aimed at Brzezinski and   Joe Scarborough, whom Trump called ”Psycho Joe,” apparently in response to Thursday morning’s episode (although he tweeted that he no longer watches the show). The tweets may have been in response to Thursday morning banter about the fake Time magazine covers in the president’s golf clubs. Backlash to the tweets has come from all angles. Susan Collins of Maine, one of four Republican women in the Senate, called for ”respect and civility” and said ”this has to stop.” Rep. Lynn Jenkins,  . pointed to what many see as inherent sexism in the comments. Sen. Lindsey Graham,  . C. who has never been shy in speaking out against Trump, said the tweet was ”beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” Sen. Ben Sasse,  . a frequent Trump critic, echoed that, calling the president’s comments ”beneath the dignity of your office.” In a press conference, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan,  . said he didn’t ”see that as an appropriate comment.” In response, MSNBC said, ”It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.” Brzezinski offered her own retort, poking fun at the size of the president’s hands. The Morning Joe   have had an    relationship, to say the least, with the president since his campaign. The show averages about a million viewers a day and recently set a quarterly audience record for MSNBC for the   a. m. time slot. As Trump’s campaign was ramping up, he would call into the morning show and banter with the pair. ”You guys have been supporters,” he said on the show in February 2016. ”And I really appreciate it. And not necessarily supporters, but at least believers. You said there’s some potential there.” But as Trump’s presidency has worn on, Brzezinski and Scarborough have turned into fierce critics. Trump claims he no longer watches the show, but deputy White House press secretary Sarah Sanders implied the president was responding to something from the show, saying he was fighting ”fire with fire.” ”I think the president has been attacked mercilessly on personal accounts by members on that program, and I think he’s been very clear that when he gets attacked, he’s going to hit back,” she said in a press briefing Thursday afternoon. ”I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody that he fights fire with fire.” That is similar to what first lady Melania Trump’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN: ”As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder.” That was despite Melania Trump’s focus on cyberbullying. The first lady’s website says: ”Mrs. Trump cares deeply about issues impacting women and children, and she has focused her platform as First Lady on the problem of cyber bullying among our youth.” Thursday’s tweets weren’t the only time Trump has gotten pushback for offensive remarks he has made about women. His tweet referencing ”bleeding” hearkens back to 2015, when he said Fox’s Megyn Kelly had blood ”coming out of her eyes, coming out of her wherever.” That came after tough questioning from Kelly during a GOP primary debate about Trump’s past offensive comments about women. It’s also not the first time the president’s unorthodox use of Twitter has been called into question. In an     poll released this week, just 21 percent of American adults find the president’s use of the social media platform ”effective and informative,” while 69 percent find it ”reckless and distracting.”"
"Religion has played an outsized role in U. S. history and politics, but it’s one that has often gone unrecognized in U. S. museums. ”As a focused subject area, it’s been neglected,” says Peter Manseau, a scholar and writer installed last year as the first   religion curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. America’s exceptional commitment to religious freedom stems from the diversity of its faith traditions. The rebellious attitudes prevalent in frontier settlements fostered the growth of evangelical movements. African slaves introduced Islam to America. The drive to abolish slavery was led largely by Christian preachers. ”We can’t tell the story of America without telling the story of religion,” Manseau says, ”and we can’t answer questions about the importance of religion today without going back to earlier generations.” Manseau’s appointment as curator and his inaugural Religion in Early America exhibit signal ”the beginning of a renewed engagement with the role of religion in American history,” according to John L. Gray, the museum director. Each of the objects in Manseau’s exhibit adds a special dimension to the larger narrative. The oldest item in the collection is the Bay Psalm Book, a translation of the Psalms assembled by a team of educated Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1640. The Puritans split from the Church of England, determined to purify the practice of their faith. The only songs they allowed in their worship were the Psalms, but they needed a Psalm book for their services. ”It’s a great example of the    approach to American religion that you see again and again,” says Manseau, who holds a Ph. D. in the history of religion from Georgetown University and is the author of several books. ”Separated from the cultures in which these traditions were born, there’s a need to improvise, a need to make things new, with the materials at hand.” The persecution that Puritans faced in England was a key factor driving them to the New World. So it also was with Quakers, Baptists, Shakers, Jews, and other religious minorities, all of whom saw America as a place they would finally be free to practice their faith. ”This country, somewhat uniquely, is a nation of transplanted religions,” Manseau says, ”interacting with the beliefs and practices that were here, but also with new traditions coming in, learning and needing to negotiate, to compromise, and finding ways to live together. The practical implication of this diversity was religious freedom and the disestablishment of any particular church.” The idea of rebelling against conventionally practiced religion is a big part of America’s faith history. George Whitefield, an Anglican minister from England, was such an outspoken and controversial preacher that he was not welcome in most churches, so he built his own pulpit and took it on the road, preaching outdoors to crowds that numbered in the thousands. Whitefield’s portable pulpit, about six feet tall, with hinged sides, is in the Smithsonian exhibit. ”You could fold it up and strap it to the side of a horse or throw it in the back of a cart,” Manseau notes. The itinerant preacher is believed to have used it about 2, 000 times, thus pioneering the great revival meetings that became a key feature of evangelical Christianity in the United States. Whitefield’s popular appeal demonstrated the deep religiosity of many Americans in the colonial era, but some of their founding fathers weren’t so devout. As a man of reason, Thomas Jefferson struggled with Christianity, trying to reconcile the teachings of Jesus with the ideals of the Enlightenment. His idea was to edit the Bible, literally. Working in the four languages familiar to him  —   English, French, Greek, and Latin  —   Jefferson went through several copies of the New Testament, following the scripture closely. ”With a pen knife, he would remove those sections that he agreed with and found useful, and then he glued them together in this   book,” Manseau says, pointing to a yellowing    Bible in a display case, ”one column for each language.” Jefferson called his version of the New Testament ”The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” The Smithsonian exhibit includes one of the Bibles that Jefferson cut apart, as well as the one he created from his pasted clippings. With his rendering, Jefferson offered a New Testament narrative he found preferable to the original. ”Jefferson saw himself as a Christian in what he thought was the truest sense, as one who saw Jesus as a moral exemplar and a teacher,” Manseau says. ”He didn’t have any use for miracles or the supernatural, which he took to be additions added to the story later on.” Notably, Jefferson’s version ends with Jesus being buried and does not include the Resurrection. Though America is often portrayed as a Christian nation, its religious history is more complex, as the exhibit makes clear. Many of the African slaves brought to America were Muslims. Some were literate in Arabic, and did their best to maintain their faith. One, a man named Bilali Muhammed, wrote a thirteen page text in Arabic, which has been preserved and is displayed in the exhibit. ”It is a very simple document,” Manseau says. ”It contains some basics of Islamic practice, [such as] ’These are the times at which we pray. This is why we wash our hands. This is why we wash our feet before we pray. ’” Manseau does not read Arabic, but scholars have told him the text includes only ”snatches” of quoted text from the Quran. ”The text appears to have been written by someone who was in the process of forgetting,” Manseau says, ”trying his best to hold on to what he once knew. There are basic ideas of, ’This is what I want to pass on to my children if they’re going to learn to be Muslims,’ as well as words of praise to Allah, despite the circumstances.” Religious faith, in fact, was key to the abolition of slavery. The Religion in Early America exhibit tells that story in part through a pair of saddlebags, once belonging to a former slaveholder named Freeborn Garretson, a plantation owner and man of wealth in Maryland. Garretson was also a religious man, and one Sunday morning, while reading the Bible, he was suddenly struck by a thought from above, which he interpreted as the voice of God, commanding him to let his slaves go free. From that day on, Garretson was a committed abolitionist and spent the rest of his days as an itinerant minister, traveling on horseback from plantation to plantation, preaching the evils of slavery and trying to convince other slaveowners that they were violating God’s will. Garretson’s saddlebags are on display in the exhibit as, in Manseau’s words, ”the iconic objects of itinerant preachers throughout early America. ” He says Garretson carried Christian tracts in the bags, as well as   writings which he shared with the people whose opinions he was hoping to change. The ”Religion in Early America” exhibits will continue at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for a full year."
"In late May, several senators went to the floor of the Senate to talk about people in their states who are affected by the opioid crisis. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito,  . Va. talked about Chelsea Carter. ”She told me her drug habit began when she was 12 years old,” said Capito. West Virginia has the unfortunate distinction of having the highest   death rate from opioids  —   36 out of every 100, 000 people died from overdoses on heroin, fentanyl and other opioids in 2015. But Chelsea Carter is one of the lucky ones. ”Her story  —   Chelsea’s story  —   is an example of the progress that can be made by fully committing to fighting the drug epidemic and that there are victories,” Capito said, ”that there are programs that work.” Carter has been in   recovery since September 2008. ”I’ve come a long way from where I was nine years ago sitting in a jail cell,” Carter said in a phone interview with NPR. She went from facing jail time to drug court, treatment, college and graduate school and is now the program director at Appalachian Health Services. All the while, the crisis in the state where she grew up only got worse. Carter estimates that about 90 percent of the people who come to her clinic for treatment for addiction are on Medicaid, the federal program for the poor that West Virginia chose to expand under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The Senate health care bill would phase out that expansion and, over time, make cuts to traditional Medicaid (as compared with the anticipated spending under current law). And so, Carter is watching the debate closely. ”We are losing people daily to this,” said Carter. ”I am treating generations of drug abuse, and with the people dying of opiate drug overdoses every day, I just don’t see how we could cut funding from something that’s saving lives.” On Tuesday, Capito announced that she opposes the health care bill in its current form. She cited cuts to Medicaid and concern about what the bill would mean for people dealing with opioid addiction. ”West Virginia has the largest Medicaid population in the country. I recognize that many West Virginians rely on health coverage and access to substance abuse treatment because of my state’s decision to expand coverage through Medicaid,” Capito said in a written statement released shortly after it was announced the health care vote wouldn’t happen this week. ”I have studied the draft legislation and CBO analysis to understand its impact on West Virginians. As drafted, this bill will not ensure access to affordable health care in West Virginia, does not do enough to combat the opioid epidemic that is devastating my state, cuts traditional Medicaid too deeply, and harms rural health care providers,” the statement continued. There is a pretty direct correlation between states with high overdose death rates and Republican senators expressing reservations with the bill. ”It doesn’t protect Nevadans on Medicaid and the most vulnerable Nevadans,” Sen. Dean Heller,  . said at a press conference announcing his opposition to the bill. ”On Medicaid expansion, probably half  —   half  —   the dollars that were spent on that were on mental health and opioid abuse.” Republican governors have also come out against it, including Charlie Baker from Massachusetts, Chris Sununu from New Hampshire, Brian Sandoval from Nevada and John Kasich from Ohio. All four states have expanded Medicaid and have high overdose death rates. Heller and others could still change their minds or be persuaded by changes to the bill. And one lever that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . could employ is increased funding in the bill for grants to help states respond to the opioid crisis. Currently, the bill would give states $2 billion to deal with opioids in 2018. Sen. Rob Portman from Ohio, another Republican who opposes the bill in its current form, is pushing for that fund to go up to $45 billion over the next decade. But even $45 billion wouldn’t be enough, says Richard Frank, a professor of health economics at Harvard Medical School who had served in the Obama administration. ”It is one part of trying to compensate from taking people’s insurance away, but it doesn’t cover nearly what the needs are from these populations,” said Frank. Additional needs often include treatment for hepatitis C or HIV as well as car accidents, coverage for emergency room visits and the provision of   rescue drugs, he said. ”My estimate is that we’re talking $180 billion over 10 years not $45 billion,” said Frank. A study by the Urban Institute released Wednesday found that ”between 2011 and 2016, spending on   prescriptions to treat opioid use disorder and overdoses increased 136 percent from $394 million to $930 million.” ”States with the highest overdose mortality rates in 2015  —   including Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, and West Virginia  —   have seen particularly fast growth in spending for OUD treatment over this period,” the study’s abstract also says. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in 2026, there would be 15 million fewer people covered by Medicaid than under current law. The White House and some congressional Republicans cast doubt on the estimates of the CBO. And supporters of the bill argue that states would have more flexibility to tailor Medicaid coverage to the needs of their populations. Michael Botticelli, the last drug czar under President Barack Obama, says love it or hate it, Obamacare did allow a lot more people to get treatment. ”It’s really hard to understate the dramatic increases we’re going to see in overdose deaths,” said Botticelli, who now heads the Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine at Boston Medical Center. In 2015, the last year for which data has been released, 34 percent of people receiving treatment for opioid addiction were covered by Medicaid, according to an analysis by Frank. ”You know, we’re in the greatest health crisis that we’ve had since the height of the AIDS epidemic and we’ve seen the dramatic gains that we’ve been able to make and that people are able to make with Medicaid coverage,” said Botticelli. Botticelli finds it hard to believe senators whom he worked with to combat the opioid epidemic would consider voting for the current version of the health care bill. And, at the moment, it’s still an open question as to whether they will."
"Three civil society groups in France have filed a lawsuit against French banking giant BNP Paribas, accusing it of complicity in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that killed more than 800, 000 people. The groups Sherpa, the Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda and Ibuka France said Thursday that the bank transferred $1. 3 million that was used to purchase weapons, in violation of a U. N. arms embargo. They say it’s the first lawsuit of its kind against a bank in France. The Rwandan genocide started after the plane of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was shot down. Hutu militias then massacred members of the minority Tutsi ethnic group over the course of 100 days. BNP Paribas has not addressed the allegations. ”We became aware of the complaint through media,” it said in an emailed statement to NPR. ”At the moment, we do not have enough information regarding the complaint to be able to comment on it.” The groups allege that one month after the U. N. implemented an arms embargo against Rwanda, the bank agreed to transfer the funds from the account of the National Rwandan Bank to a South African arms dealer’s Swiss bank account. They say the arms dealer then sold 80 tons of arms to Hutu Col. Theoneste Bagosora. Bagosora played a central role in the genocide and, in 2011, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The bank, according to the groups, would have known ”the destination of the funds and knew it could contribute to the ongoing genocide.” This is not the first time BNP Paribas has been accused of violating embargoes. In 2014, it pleaded guilty to evading U. S. trade embargoes in order to help clients in Sudan, Cuba and Iran, for which it agreed to pay a $9 billion penalty, as NPR’s Jim Zarroli reported. ”Over an   period, BNP Paribas helped its clients evade sanctions by covering up their names on transactions and replacing them with secret codes,” Jim wrote. At the time,  . S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that the bank ”continued for years despite repeated indications and warnings that the bank’s conduct violated United States embargoes.” In 1997, President Bill Clinton imposed a trade embargo on Sudan over its human rights abuses. Rwanda ”had strong ties with France until 1994,” Reuters reported, adding that the country ”opened an inquiry in November into the possible role of at least 20 French military and other officials” in the genocide."
"Generations have come and gone under its branches. Its leaves soaked up rays from the sun that shone on the American Colonies. But after an estimated 325 years of life, an oak tree in a residential neighborhood in Washington, D. C. has now fallen victim to time. Dana Ju, whose young family had been the latest to play under the tree’s broad canopy on Washington’s Floral Street, says they’re ”very sad about the tree but feel very fortunate we were not inside our home when it fell.” The red oak had grown to a height of 75 feet, and it seems that its size might have been its undoing. After a crack formed in its massive trunk, arborists determined there was no way to save the tree  —   and even before crews could begin dismantling it, part of the tree broke off. By then, Ju and her family had moved out temporarily, and neighbors had moved their cars as a precaution. The tree was removed from its spot between two houses in northwest D. C. this week, as member station WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle reports. ”Removing the damaged tree took eight hours and a crew of half a dozen, and involved a crane removing two upper sections that combined weighed over 30, 000 pounds,” Austermuhle says. Arborist John Anna, president of Adirondack Tree Experts, tells WAMU, ”This guy is an anomaly.” The tree’s age was estimated by counting the rings in its trunk and by comparing its   diameter to the average growth rates for red oaks. Here’s a sense of the span of time covered by the oak from when it first grew in what is now the Shepherd Park neighborhood: For centuries, the tree withstood weather and man. As Austermuhle notes, the oak on Floral Street kept on growing, despite Britain’s fiery attack on the White House in 1814 and the Confederate Army’s attack on Fort Stevens, only a mile south, in 1864."
"Gusty winds and soaring temperatures have spread wildfires in numerous states across the Southwest, forcing hundreds of residents from their homes. The National Interagency Fire Center said Thursday that six states including Arizona, California and New Mexico are dealing with ”multiple large fires,” with more than 8, 000 firefighters and support workers battling the blazes. The Interagency has raised the danger level, which helps mobilize additional resources. In Central Arizona’s Yavapai County, the Goodwin Fire  —   named for the area near where the fire started  —   has engulfed more than 20, 000 acres of mostly scrubland known locally as chaparral. The fire is also threatening several residential communities, spurring the evacuation of at least 1, 500 people, according to The Arizona Republic. Stina Sieg from member station KJZZ in Phoenix spoke to some residents forced from their homes and seeking refuge at a Red Cross shelter in Prescott Valley. Many had just a few minutes’ warning to grab what they could. Shauna Shoat told Sieg that she and her toddler son fled their home in Poland Junction, along with their four dogs, two ducks and a chicken. ”I can’t even tell you how I feel right now, just shocked, devastated and not knowing for sure if I’ve got a home to come to that’s still standing or not,” Shoat said. According to regional officials, the blaze was at just 1 percent containment on Thursday and the estimated containment date is July 4. It comes on the heels of a near   heat wave that settled over the Southwest earlier this month, bringing temperatures of up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The extreme heat ”is one of the factors that we are dealing with,” Tiffany Davila with the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management told NPR. And in the days ahead, Davila says, ”We are still going to see higher temperatures and windy conditions so all of that plays a part in how crews handle the fire.” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey declared a state of emergency Wednesday, directing $200, 000 of emergency funds and hundreds of emergency workers toward beating the Goodwin Fire. On Friday, a day before the Goodwin Fire ignited, Ducey had already declared a state of emergency to help with fire suppression after more than a dozen fires were sparked since April, ”aided by high temperatures, winds and available fuels.” Officials say lightning sparked the Frye Fire earlier this month. It continues to burn around 40, 000 acres of rugged terrain in Arizona’s Pinaleno Mountain Range. With more than 800 emergency workers battling it, the fire is at 45 percent containment. In neighboring Utah, a massive blaze in Brian Head is burning around 60, 000 acres, spurring evacuations. And in California, multiple wildfires have also triggered dozens of evacuations and burned homes and cars, reports The Los Angeles Times. On Thursday, the National Weather Service said hot and dry weather are continuing to linger across parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, leading to an elevated fire risk. CNN reports that fire officials are urging caution on Independence Day as fireworks combined with the conditions could lead to even more fires."
"Updated 4:55 p. m. ET, Bad news for history nerds everywhere: Apparently it’s not as popular as it used to be to visit living history museums like Colonial Williamsburg. The organization in eastern Virginia says it is cutting jobs and outsourcing multiple job categories in an effort to reduce hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. In an open letter to the community on Thursday, Colonial Williamsburg President and CEO Mitchell Reiss says the museum’s foundation has been losing millions of dollars a year and was more than $300 million in debt at the end of 2016. He says the organization will lay off some employees and will outsource operations of its retail stores and golf facilities, commercial real estate management and much of its maintenance in an effort to cut costs. Under the outsourcing agreements, Reiss says affected employees will be allowed to stay on for at least one year. A spokesman says that no costumed interpreter positions are being eliminated and that those who are leaving the museum will receive a severance package including one month of health insurance. Reiss told the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily that the move affects more than 300 employees at the museum, which features historic buildings and actors portraying 18th century American life. That includes 71 layoffs and amounts to about 16 percent of the workforce, the newspaper said. Reiss says foundation employees who lose their jobs will receive career counseling and other transition assistance from the human resources firm Lee Hecht Harrison. Reiss, who was hired to lead the organization in 2014, blames the losses on a combination of factors including past business decisions and declining attendance driven by ”changing times and tastes.” He says the museum now draws half the number visitors that it did 30 years ago. After the announcement, Colonial Williamsburg’s Twitter account tweeted a link to a letter written by members of the Rockefeller family who are current or former members of the Foundation Board of Trustees expressing support for the restructuring. Philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. helped lead and finance much of the restoration of Williamsburg."
"Police in the Australian state of Victoria have announced charges of sexual abuse against one of the Vatican’s most powerful cardinals. ”Cardinal Pell is facing multiple charges in respect of historic sexual offences and there are multiple complainants relating to those charges,” Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton told reporters on Thursday. Cardinal George Pell said he was ”innocent of the charges” and would be taking a leave of absence from the Vatican to clear his name in Australia, where he was a priest in the 1970s and ’80s. ”I am looking forward finally to having my day in court,” Pell said to reporters. ”The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me.” He is the   Vatican official to be charged in the church’s   sexual abuse scandal, according to The Associated Press. In 2014, Pope Francis named Pell prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, a   role intended to get the Vatican’s finances under control. The pope also installed Pell on his Council of Cardinals, a   group that is supposed to provide direction for overhauling the church globally, The Wall Street Journal reports. Pell said that he faced ”relentless character assassination” and that he had spoken with Francis about taking leave to return to Australia. ”Court proceedings now offer me an opportunity to clear my name and then return here back to Rome to work.” Police said he is summoned to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on July 18. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke spoke after Pell at Thursday’s press conference. ”The Holy See has learned with regret the news of charges filed against Cardinal George Pell for   actions that have been attributed to him,” he said, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ”The Holy See expresses its respect for the Australian justice system, which will have to decide the merits of the questions raised. At the same time, it is important to recall that Cardinal Pell has openly and repeatedly condemned as immoral and intolerable the acts of abuse committed against minors.” A major investigation by the Australian government released in February found that 7 percent of Catholic priests in the country between 1950 and 2010 sexually abused children. An Australian representative of the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called the charging of Pell ”probably the most significant action to be taken on behalf of survivors of clergy sexual abuse ever.” ”The Victoria and Melbourne law enforcement and investigative officers have shown the care, compassion, and allegiance to truth and duty that NONE of the ranking members and leaders of the Catholic Church has ever done,” SNAP Australia coordinator Steven Spaner said in a statement. ”It is no small factor that the indictment of the reportedly third ranking Vatican official brings the issue of Church responsibility and Church inaction to the Pope’s doorstep, indeed, to his inner most sacred and canonical chambers. In short, the Pope’s hand has been called.” Pell was born in 1941 in Ballarat, ”a deeply Catholic city” in Victoria, the AP reports. He became a priest in the Ballarat diocese in 1966 and was appointed archbishop of Melbourne in 1996 and then Sydney in 2001. Ballarat is now at the center of Australia’s clergy abuse crisis: The city has been ”devastated by disclosures of a huge number of church abuse victims, scores of whom killed themselves in an unprecedented cluster of   suicides,” according to the AP. At least 45 victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of clergy in Ballarat have killed themselves, an attorney representing victims told The Guardian. Francis formed a commission in 2014 to address clerical sex abuse, but it has been riddled with controversy, according to the Journal. ”One of the two   survivors on the panel was forced to take a leave of absence last year after criticizing Pope Francis’ record on sex abuse, and the other survivor resigned this year in protest over Vatican inaction on the problem.” The charges against Pell threaten to cast a shadow on Francis’ papacy. The pope has frequently called for welcome and mercy, but as the The New York Times reports, ”The pope also angered advocates of sex abuse victims in February when, in keeping with his vision for a more merciful church, he reduced sanctions against some priests convicted of pedophilia.” After Victoria’s police commissioner announced last year that Pell was under investigation, Francis told reporters that ”one cannot judge before the justice system,” the Guardian reported. ”Justice has to take its course and justice by the media or justice by rumor does not help. After the justice system speaks, I will speak.”"
"Wrestlers who embodied heroes and villains, writers who mastered comic fantasy and spare poetry,   in journalism and politics, sports heroes, and animal icons: Here are some of the notable deaths from the world of news, sports and books. For remembrances of the musicians who died in 2015  —   including B. B. King, Allen Toussaint, Scott Weiland and Jimmy Dickens  —   head over to NPR Music’s In Memoriam 2015. The first   popularly elected to the U. S. Senate, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, died at 95. He advocated against housing discrimination and   the Fair Housing Act, Scott Neuman reported. The leader of Saudi Arabia died at 90 after a long illness. ”Abdullah, who became king in 2005, had effectively ruled Saudi Arabia since 1995, when his predecessor, King Fahd, suffered a stroke. During his reign, he drafted a plan for peace with Israel, cracked down on   inside his country and weathered the Arab Spring that toppled   leaders across the region,” Krishnadev Calamur reported. ”Abdullah has been succeeded by Crown Prince Salman, his     . Little is expected to change in Saudi Arabia.” New York Times media critic David Carr died suddenly at the age of 58, and was mourned by journalists across America. A few remembrances are collected here. CBS News and 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon died at 73, in a car crash in New York City. He won 27 Emmys and four Peabody Awards, and was famous for reporting from   locations around the world, as Bill Chappell reported. The Pulitzer   poet and former U. S. poet laureate, who masterfully explored life on the factory floor and in everyday American homes, died at 87. Tom Vitale wrote a lovely remembrance. But here we’ll mark Levine’s passing with an excerpt from his poem ”Burial Rites”: . .. Whatever’s hereis just here, and nowhere else, so it’s right to end up besidethe woman who bore me, to shovelinto the dirt whatever’s leftand leave only a name for   who wants it. Think of it, my name, no longer a portionof me, no longer inflatedor bruised, no longer stewingin a rich compost of memoryor the simpler one of bone shards, dirt, kitty litter, wood ashes, the roots of the eucalyptusI planted in ’73, a tiny me taking nothing, giving nothing, and free at last. The actor best known and best loved for playing Spock on Star Trek died at 83. He had a complicated relationship with his defining role, as Neda Ulaby reported. He wrote a memoir called I Am Not Spock  —   and then a second called I Am Spock. ”Nimoy contained multitudes. He wrote a play based on the letters of Vincent van Gogh and published multiple books of poetry and photographs, including one that sensually depicted large women. And Nimoy felt a profound connection to his Jewish faith. He narrated a public radio series about Jewish music and starred in a TV movie about a   Auschwitz survivor who legally challenged Holocaust deniers in court,” Neda wrote. Don’t miss Eric Deggans’ appreciation of Spock’s struggle for acceptance, Steve Haruch’s personal essay on how Spock inspired as a   icon, and Alva Noe’s philosophical analysis of the character. Prolific, beloved fantasy author Terry Pratchett died at 66, after suffering from   Alzheimer’s disease. ”Pratchett was no stranger to death. The big guy with the scythe and the booming voice was a constant and vital presence in the Discworld books and their screen adaptations. ”HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING,” Death says in Pratchett’s 1996 book Hogfather, and while it’s Death speaking there in his characteristic capitals, that one sentence sums up what was marvelous about Pratchett: He found human beings so interesting,” Petra Mayer wrote in a remembrance. ”Few writers were as insightful and just plain good as Pratchett was at winkling out all the secret scraps of human nature and then disguising them as broad comic fantasy.” Nobel   author Günter Grass, who was also an artist and sculptor, died at 87. He had been a member of the Hitler Youth movement and the Nazi Party’s military police force, Tom Vitale wrote in a remembrance, and grappling with Germany’s atrocities was a central theme in Grass’ writing: ”It took Grass 60 years to confront his own role in the Nazi army. But at a New York Public Library event in 2007, Grass said when he became a writer, he knew right away he had to confront the sins of his country. ” ’I had to write about my time, what has happened to my generation, what has happened to my country,’ he says. ’I was confronted. There was no way out.’ ” Suspense writer Ruth Rendell died at 85. She wrote both under her own name and as Barbara Vine. ”What made Rendell extraordinary was her consummate simplicity,” wrote book critic Maureen Corrigan. ”As a writer, she was akin to the medieval artist Giotto  —   or at least to the apocryphal story about Giotto, who, when asked to submit a sample of his work to the pope, proceeded to dip a brush in red paint and draw a perfect circle freehand. Likewise, Rendell flawlessly executed the basic elements of the classic British detective novel.” The mathematician who revolutionized game theory, struggled with schizophrenia and inspired the film A Beautiful Mind died at 86. Sam Sanders had this remembrance: ”John Forbes Nash led a life that was equal parts groundbreaking, tragic and ultimately triumphant. . .. In 1959, he began battling schizophrenia. He was hospitalized multiple times and underwent electroshock therapy. Nash battled the illness for more than two decades. . .. ”By the ’90s, Nash had his schizophrenia under control and several colleagues began to push for greater recognition of his work. Nash won the Nobel Prize in 1994.” Vice President Joe Biden’s older son, Beau Biden, the former attorney general of Delaware and a veteran of the war in Iraq, died at 46 of brain cancer. At the funeral, President Obama said Beau Biden was ”an original. He was a good man. A man of character. A man who loved deeply and was loved in return. . .. He did in 46 years what most of us couldn’t do in 146. He left nothing in the tank.” One generation knew him as Dracula another, as Saruman in The Lord of the Rings, and Count Dooku in Star Wars.  Lee died at 93. The wrestler nicknamed ”The American Dream”  —   born Virgil Runnels  —   was ”often a   for the common man” in the WWE, Bill Chappell wrote. He was also known for his rhyming skills, Bill says, and his signature move was the Bionic Elbow. The    Galapagos tortoise with the ironic name died at the San Diego Zoo, after living there for more than eight decades. That reminded us of another Galapagos tortoise: Lonesome George, who died in 2012. Adam Cole wrote a musical remembrance for him. You might not know his name, but you’ve seen his legacy: Featherstone was the man who invented the pink plastic lawn flamingo. He and his wife also wore matching outfits for 35 years. Featherstone was proud of his work, as he told the Leominster Champion: ”I loved what I did, it’s all happy things. You have to figure, my creations were not things people needed in life, we had to make them want them. Things I did made people happy, and that’s what life is all about.” The Burt behind Burt’s Bees died at 80. The company  —   which parted ways with Shavitz years ago but continues to use his likeness on its products  —   remembered him as ”a   and   Maine man.” The   mustachioed heartthrob died at 83, after a long career as a movie star who played an astonishing range of roles and whose popularity crossed continents, as Selena   reported: ”While to Hollywood audiences it might have seemed that Sharif appeared out of nowhere, he had actually done more than 20    dramas in Cairo, the film capital of the Arab world. And even in his Arabic films, there’s a clue he was going for international appeal: his billing. ’Omar Sharif’ was not the name given to him by his    Catholic parents. ” ’My name was Michel,’ he told NPR in 2012. Michel Shalhoub, to be exact. In his memoir, he wrote about wanting an   name that was easy to pronounce in different languages  —   essential to a man who spoke not just Arabic, but also French and English. . ..” And don’t miss Eleanor Beardsley’s personal remembrance  —   of the dinner with her girlhood crush that she never got to have. Marlene Sanders was one of the first female reporters on television  —   an Emmy    . ”Whether they know it or not, every woman in broadcast news owes a debt to Marlene Sanders,” said Susan Stamberg. ”With intelligence and determination, Sanders broke into what had been an   profession. Before the 1970s, when women entered the workplace in large numbers, Sanders began a career which involved everything from war reporting to news management.” Sanders died at 84. As Lynn Neary noted in this remembrance, novelist E. L. Doctorow mixed fact and fiction together from his youth  —   including in a high school journalism class. ”As he told NPR back in 2003, he wrote a profile of a doorman at Carnegie Hall who was beloved by all the performers there. His teacher, apparently, loved the story so much, she wanted to publish the story in the school paper  —   so she told Doctorow to get a photo of the man. ”There was just one problem. ” ’I hadn’t expected that kind of enthusiasm,’ Doctorow recalled, ’and I said, well, ”Not exactly, there is no Carl.” I made him up.’ ”Doctorow, who died of complications from lung cancer . .. at the age of 84, was never meant to be the kind of guy who cared much for the old journalistic pillars of who, what, when, where, why and how. But he did love mixing some facts into his fiction. Known best for his historical novels, like Ragtime and Billy Bathgate, Doctorow often mingled fictional characters with figures from history books, in vivid and playful ways.” The      lion who was popular with visitors to Zimbabwe was shot and killed by an American dentist, sparking an uproar. On our 13. 7 blog, Barbara King defended the outcry over Cecil’s death against those who argued that energy spent mourning the lion would be better spent thinking about human suffering. ”Cecil was a lion beloved by tourists and tracked by scientists at Oxford University,” she wrote in part. ”His life as an individual animal was important, full stop.” NPR book critic Alan Cheuse, who was on the air nearly every week for decades, died after a car accident at 75. Susan Stamberg noted in a remembrance: ”Who ever read as much as Alan did? When he wasn’t reading, he was teaching. .. and when he wasn’t reading and teaching, he was writing. Five novels, novellas, short stories, textbooks. ”It’s a miracle that he found time for the solitude and concentration that writing demands: He was at the center of literary life in Washington, D. C. and a truly loving husband, father, and grandfather. But Alan did manage to do it all. . .. He was a wonderful, caring, funny friend, full of stories and totally apt literary quotations.” WWE star ”Rowdy” Roddy Piper died at 61. He was cast as a   villain, and famous for a feud with Hulk Hogan, as Christopher Dean Hopkins reported: ”Despite being born in Canada, he usually appeared in a kilt, and often played the bagpipes. ”He went on to star in John Carpenter horror film They Live, the AP notes, in which he delivered the classic line ’I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass  —   and I’m all out of bubblegum.’ ” As a medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey stood up to a massive drug company to block the approval of the drug thalidomide, saving children from devastating birth defects. She died at 101. Civil Rights activist and   campaigner Julian Bond died at 75. He played a major role in the 1963 March on Washington, among other historic civil rights protests, as Scott Neuman wrote. Debbie Elliot reported that Bond wasn’t just a historic figure: He was very much a part of the present  —   continuing to speak out against inequality, including bias based on sexual orientation. The beloved neurologist and author died at 82. His talent for writing opened many doors for him, as Jon Hamilton recounted: ”Both of his parents were doctors, and Sacks himself went to medical school at Oxford. But when results of the final anatomy exam were posted, Sacks saw he had scored near the bottom. ”So he went to a local pub. After four or five hard ciders, Sacks headed back to school and asked to take an optional essay exam to compete for the university prize in anatomy. By that time, the exam had already started. ” ’So Oliver literally staggered into this room with about 15 or 20 students busily writing into their blue books and asked the professor if he could take the essay exam,’ [Sacks’ colleague Orrin] Devinsky says. ’And the professor looked at him kind of like: Are you sure you are in the right place?’ ”He was. Even though Sacks arrived late and left early, his essay on brain structure and function won the university prize.” Don’t miss Fresh Air’s remembrance, or the tribute from Radiolab. The master of horror  —   with a deft comedic touch  —   died at 76. NPR’s Neda Ulaby reported on all the nightmares he provoked: ”He was called the Sultan of Shock and the Guru of Gore: Wes Craven, who died Sunday, directed dozens of   horror movies, including A Nightmare on Elm Street and all of the Scream films. . .. ”It was an improbable career for a guy born in Ohio to a family of fundamentalist Baptists, the kind that rejected popular culture  —   no comic books, no dancing and certainly no movies. Craven grew up to study philosophy, teach literature and eventually become enthralled by art house movies like those of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.” Yogi Berra was famous for his aphorisms: ”When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” ”It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” But beyond his folk wisdom, he was a spectacular baseball player, as Jim O’Grady recalled: ”Yogi Berra was a catcher. Baseball people call a catcher’s equipment  —   shin guards, chest protector and mask  —   the tools of ignorance. The implication is only dumb guys play the position, guys who get dumber with every foul ball that ricochets off their head. But former Yankees executive Marty Appel says when it comes to Yogi Berra, that just ain’t right. . .. ’In terms of baseball, he was a genius,’ [Appel said]. ”A catcher calls the pitches. A catcher controls the game. . .. Many observers of the game say Yogi is the best catcher in baseball history.” The   author died at 77 of breast cancer. ”Her books are orgies of sex and wealth and violence, but they’re also funny and transgressive and told a lot of girls that it’s OK to like sex,” Annalisa Quinn told Linda Wertheimer. ”Her motto was girls can do anything. And that didn’t just apply to sexual empowerment, but it also applied to being a mob boss or knowing how to shoot a gun.” ”In a lot of ways, Jackie Collins lived her life like a Jackie Collins heroine,” Annalisa said. The     Queen of Technicolor  —   star of The Quiet Man and How Green Was My Valley  —   died at the age of 95, as Jackie Lyden reported: ”Born Maureen FitzSimons in Dublin on August 17, 1920, she loved singing Irish songs and even helped write the lyrics to ’The Isle of Innisfree,’ the theme song from The Quiet Man, the film she was best known for. ”She had a way with Irish sayings, as well as a way with John Wayne, her most celebrated  .” He might not have been a household name for most of America, but for radio fans in Washington, D. C. he was a star  —   the host, for decades, of a Sunday night show featuring dramas from the golden age of radio. He signed off for the last time in October, and died just hours after his last broadcast aired. The   former chancellor of West Germany led his nation into economic prosperity  —   and along the way, helped shape modern Europe, as Bill Chappell explained: ”In response to the oil crisis of the early 1970s, Schmidt worked with French leaders to set into motion the monetary system that today unites the economies of the European Union.” As Neda Ulaby noted in her remembrance of the American artist, who died at the age of 92: ”He boiled shadows and shapes down into abstractions  —   monochromes, just one strong, pure, bright color. Kelly said that came from his boyhood in New Jersey surrounded by nature. ” ’I’ve always been a colorist,’ he said. ’I think I started when I was very young, being a birdwatcher fascinated by the bird colors.’ ”The way Kelly used colors made them feel almost alive. Just to face a giant red rectangle by Ellsworth Kelly is to come to red in a fresh and profound way.” This is only a sample of NPR’s remembrances from the year they are all compiled here."
"Many musical voices fell silent in 2015. We lost soul singers and opera stars, blues and folk guitarists, saxophonists and percussionists, plus composers, conductors, producers, and other visionaries. Explore their musical legacies here. Feb. 22, 1964  —   Oct. 28, 2015, Her name was not the stuff of bright marquees, but through the U. K.   explosion beginning in the 1990s, this   singer was the featured voice on massive club tracks and at live shows by the likes of Goldie, Moby and Satoshi Tomiie. Back To Top,  March 9, 1930  —   June 11, 2015, When he first showed up, he broke so many rules of jazz that people questioned his sanity. Slowly, as the beautiful, unbound melodies introduced by his   saxophone remained in liquid currency, we realized that he had rewritten the rulebook. Back To Top,  July 1, 1942  —   Jan. 8, 2015, With new gospel classics like ”Soon and Very Soon” and ”Through It All,” this singer, pianist and choir leader infused his compositions with the spirit of modern sounds, bringing gospel music into a new era  —   and influencing pop stars from Michael Jackson to Madonna. Back To Top,  Dec. 19, 1920  —   Jan. 2, 2015, He didn’t quite clear five feet, but this beloved mentor to both George Jones and Brad Paisley, known for comical songs and winning stagecraft, filled the Grand Ole Opry with charm, cheer and the shine of his   suits for more than six decades. Back To Top,  July 11, 1925  —   Dec. 8, 2015, As one of the first   to enjoy an international opera career, this coloratura from Atlanta, Ga. could spin   roulades with the best of them, in roles like Gilda in Rigoletto, with which she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1956. Back To Top,  June 2, 1930  —   July 26, 2015, He was a legendary percussionist at the Boston Symphony Orchestra  —   but Firth also became a household name to drummers around the globe. As an entrepreneur who made drumsticks, mallets brushes and other gear, he built a company whose equipment outfits performers like Charlie Watts and Questlove. Back To Top,  May 2, 1946  —   Feb. 16, 2015, Half a century before Beyoncé claimed the word ”feminist” as part of a pop star’s vocabulary, New Jersey native Gore taught teenagers about women’s liberation with her gutsy performance of the anthem ”You Don’t Own Me”  —   the crown jewel among her many hits, from ”It’s My Party” to ”Maybe I Know.” Back To Top,  March 2, 1923  —   March 1, 2015, A winner of four Grammys, this producer, essayist, album notes writer and journalist called himself a ”catalyst” for jazz artists  —   and his output as a producer included collaborations with Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Heath and scores of other jazz luminaries. Back To Top,  Dec. 24, 1945  —   Dec. 28, 2015, No one was or is or can be like Lemmy. His voice rattled like bullets in a barrel and his bass throttled     rock ’n’ roll. After a brief tenure in Hawkwind (including the band’s best album, Space Ritual) he founded Motörhead and gave us the outcast’s motto, permanently tattooed on our bodies and in our hearts: ”Born to Lose, Live to Win.” Back To Top,  Sept. 28, 1938  —   April 30, 2015, It’s inevitable that people will best remember King for ”Stand By Me,” his 1961 smash that became one of soul’s most popular secular spirituals. Yet he was also one of the lead singers of the great Drifters, with whom he entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Back To Top,  Sept. 16, 1925  —   May 14, 2015, He took the blues from his native Mississippi north to Chicago  —   and his smooth voice and keening guitar bridged generations and cultures. King was on a mission to make his music heard, and he kept performing almost to the end. Along the way, he helped renew interest in a vital American art form. Back To Top,  July 18, 1927  —   Dec. 19, 2015, When the New York Philharmonic needed a complete overhaul in the early 1990s, they called on an unlikely leader from East Germany: Masur. Best known for his command of canonical composers like Beethoven and Brahms, he also commissioned some 40 new works for the New Yorkers. Back To Top,  June 10, 1954  —   Nov. 1, 2015, This Bay Area conguero was one of a few who redefined the role of the congas when they were mixed with rock music in the early 1970s. And for almost 40 years, his sound and his   smile were an important part of the Santana band during countless shows around the globe. Back To Top,  Aug. 8, 1944  —   March 26, 2015, His playing stands out from the rest of the British guitarists who came to prominence in the 1960s. Classically trained, Renbourn took that study  —   and a love of Renaissance music  —   and applied it to the electric guitar he often played with Pentangle. But his solo acoustic work can make your jaw drop. Back To Top,  Jan. 12, 1944  —   Nov. 23, 2015, ”All the squares, go home!” That was the rallying cry of this trumpeter, singer and   of the pivotal funk band Sly  the Family Stone  —   a groundbreaking artist in an era when being a female, and   horn player in a major band was a singular achievement. Back To Top,  July 28, 1930  —   Aug. 19, 2015, This master drummer (once named a ”living human treasure” by UNESCO) sustained and nurtured local percussion traditions in his native Senegal  —   but also found common ground playing with such global talents as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Peter Gabriel and The Rolling Stones. Back To Top,  Nov. 22, 1925  —   June 21, 2015, He once said, ”I have simultaneously had seven   careers in music.” That just about sums up this Pulitzer   composer, conductor and educator who bridged classical music and jazz  —   and collaborated with colleagues ranging from Miles Davis to Frank Zappa. Back To Top,  Nov. 5, 1936  —   Aug. 4, 2015, When people talk about ”real” country music in 2015, they’re almost always invoking the sophisticated, emotionally nuanced hits this songwriter and producer devised, from Tammy Wynette’s ”Stand By Your Man” to George Jones’s ”The Grand Tour.” Nobody set heartache to strings with as much finesse. Back To Top,  Nov. 25, 1940  —   April 14, 2015, This Alabama native embodied the Muscle Shoals sound. His ability to blend pain and hope within one musical phrase  —   the quality that made his hit ”When a Man Loves a Woman” one of soul’s central texts  —   made his the ideal voice for the crossroads of country and soul. Back To Top,  Sept. 21, 1927  —   Jan. 19, 2015, Nonfiction wins again: A man named Swingle (pictured bottom left) married J. S. Bach with scat singing. He won five Grammys and inspired both a monument of postmodernism  —   Sinfonia, composer Luciano Berio’s mashup of Mahler and Samuel Beckett  —   and the sound of Glee. Back To Top,  Dec. 14, 1920  —   Feb. 21, 2015, One of the most beloved musicians in jazz, the trumpeter was also one of its most recorded, performing with the big bands of Basie, Ellington and the Tonight Show. Then teaching became his pride, and his joy attracted many disciples including Miles Davis, Quincy Jones and Wynton Marsalis. Back To Top,  Jan. 14, 1938  —   Nov. 9, 2015, Songwriter, pianist extraordinaire and generous raconteur, Toussaint was the true soul of New Orleans. His songs  —   ”It’s Raining,” ”Working In a Coal Mine,” ”Yes We Can Can,” ”Southern Nights” and dozens more  —   shaped the sound that brought the city into the modern era. Back To Top,  Oct. 29, 1926  —   July 10, 2015, With a penetrating fusion of steel and power, the Canadian tenor’s voice was often hailed as one of the greatest of the 20th century, delivering conspicuous intensity to Wagner’s heroes or misunderstood outsiders like Britten’s Peter Grimes. Back To Top,  Oct. 27, 1967  —   Dec. 3, 2015  Though he first came to prominence during grunge’s heyday as a member of Stone Temple Pilots, this charismatic lead singer, and one of American alternative rock’s few showmen, transcended the era. In the 21st century, he fronted the   supergroup Velvet Revolver and became a successful solo artist. Back To Top"
"As protests in Chicago continue against gun violence and police shootings, the city has released emails about the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, the black teenager shot 16 times by a white police officer. The Associated Press reports that the emails show ”the Chicago mayor’s office, police and the body that investigates police shootings closely coordinated their actions” following McDonald’s death. Activists are demanding that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel resign, as The   previously reported. He’s come under increasing pressure since the November release of dashcam video showing the officer shooting McDonald. Thousands of emails were released to AP and other outlets after an   request. Here are more details about what the emails say from the wire service: ”In May, mayoral spokesman Adam Collins complained to colleagues that the Independent Police Review Authority did not follow his recommendation on how to respond to a TV station about McDonald. ”Days before the video’s release, Collins wrote to police and law department representatives urging them to speak with ’one voice’ on the topic. ”Emanuel’s senior legal adviser, Stephen Patton, emailed Collins on Dec. 9, 2014, saying he told his staff to inform him ’immediately’ when a lawsuit in the case was filed. ”The emails also included messages in which officials asked how they should respond to demands for footage.” After the release of the emails, Adam Collins, a spokesman for the mayor, told The Chicago   that ”City Hall was never involved with [the Independent Police Review Authority’s] investigation of McDonald.” He says ”the mayor’s office obviously does not direct investigations, nor are any employees involved in those investigations.” NPR’s Cheryl Corley spoke to protester Mack Julion in Chicago, who says he doesn’t think Emanuel was trying to be open about what happened. ”I think those are all reactionary efforts that he’s making due that he’s in, to try to save his position.” Emanuel announced changes to police training on Wednesday, as we reported."
"Munich police say they have credible information about an impending terrorist attack and have evacuated two railway stations, NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports. The warning, posted on the official Munich Police Twitter account, also advised people to avoid gathering at the central train station or at Pasing train station. Soraya says no trains are being allowed to approach the two stations. This comes during New Year’s Eve celebrations. The police gave this warning less than an hour before midnight Munich local time."
"A series of house raids in Belgium have put six people in custody who are suspected of being involved with a plot to carry out a terrorist attack during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Brussels. The development comes days after police in Brussels arrested two people who were suspected of planning the New Year’s Eve attack despite those arrests, the city has canceled plans for its annual fireworks show. From Brussels, NPR’s Teri Schultz reports: ”Today’s searches in several different districts of Brussels did not turn up weapons or explosives, officials say, but along with the six people taken in for questioning were seized computer and data equipment, cellphones and materials used in a shooting game that uses replicas of   weapons.” The raids stem from an investigation into a gang called the Kamikaze Riders, according to Flanders News, which reports that some of the group’s members ”apparently sympathize with IS [or  ].” The authorities say that house raids in the Brussels area Wednesday also netted a man suspected of being linked to last month’s deadly attacks in Paris. The man is the 10th person to be held in Belgium over the attacks that killed 130 people a key suspect, Salah Abdeslam, remains at large. Teri reports that the man detained in the Paris case has been charged with ”terrorist murder.”"
"The latest batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server has arrived, just in time to usher in 2016. The   release from the State Department totaled 5, 500 pages but fell short of the   requirement to release 82 percent of the Democratic presidential candidate’s correspondence from her tenure as secretary of state by Dec. 31. Many of the new emails, which can be read here, don’t have fully completed data fields either, making them harder to search. ”We have worked diligently to come as close to the goal as possible, but with the large number of documents involved and the holiday schedule we have not met the goal this month. To narrow that gap, the State Department will make another production of former Secretary Clinton’s email sometime next week,” the State Department said in a statement. According to a State Department official, portions of 275 emails in the latest document dump have been upgraded to ”Confidential” classified status since the emails were sent. That brings the total number of emails which have been retroactively classified to 1, 274 since the monthly releases began in June. Two emails in Thursday’s batch were upgraded to ”Secret” classification. Republicans have criticized the Democratic presidential   for the use of a private email server instead of a   one during her time at State. She maintains that no classified material was sent at the time, but the retroactive classification has been a talking point for the GOP. ”With more than 1, 250 emails containing classified information now uncovered, Hillary Clinton’s decision to put secrecy over national security by exclusively operating off of a secret email server looks even more reckless,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. The emails so far have contained mainly regular,    correspondence along with some funny anecdotes. That’s to be expected given what’s being made public is what Clinton turned over to State. Here are some that stood out. ”I only know what I hear on NPR”  In response to what looks like a discussion of whether to issue a travel warning, Clinton says she gets her news from a reliable news source. Only ”tolerable” ambassadors allowed  Clinton aide Philippe Reines writes that it took him ”literally hours” to work on this massive flowchart  —   of whether an aide should be riding with Clinton in her Secret Service SUV or limo. But only ”tolerable” ambassadors were apparently allowed to ride with Clinton. ”Texts from Hillary” revealed! See how the viral moment happened in real time. According to top aide Cheryl Mills, Clinton looked ”cute” in it. Birthdays must be scheduled, You cannot truly celebrate your birthday until 11:30 a. m. sharp. And there’s no time to respond to birthday emails yourself, Here Clinton uses her favorite ”pls respond” delegation. Quit trying to make ”APECtastic” happen, That’s one way to try to make the annual   Economic Cooperation conference more fun. Squad goals, She’s just trying to ”balance the gender scales.” Correct the record, Clinton was eager to get a Washington Post column from former ”In The Loop” columnist Al Kamen corrected. Adviser Reines, who has had a very testy relationship with the media, promises he’ll fix it and it’s now ”my mission today to ram this down his throat.”"
"Bingeing has become many people’s favorite way to consume television. But   doesn’t just change how we watch, it also affects how we eat. While the culture of the Netflix   is relatively recent, researchers have been studying the links between TV viewing and mindless eating for years. And the news isn’t good for our waistlines. ”There’s convincing evidence in adults that the more television they watch, the more likely they are to gain weight or become overweight or obese,” says Lilian Cheung, director of health promotion and communication at Harvard School of Public Health and author of Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. She says the sedentary nature of prolonged viewing as just one contributing factor: ”TV viewing may also promote poor dietary behavior due to frequent exposure to unhealthy food and beverage marketing, as well as providing more opportunities for unhealthy snacking, and interfering with adequate sleep.”   Preliminary research has also suggested a connection between binge viewing and higher rates of depression and increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, among other concerns. University of Houston associate professor Temple Northup has looked at the relationship between food consumption and the number of hours spent in front of the television. Northup’s study, published in the January 2015 issue of The International Journal of Communication and Health, surveyed 591 undergraduate students on their viewing, eating and drinking habits. Consistent with past studies, he found that the more people watched TV, the more they engaged in unhealthy eating. ”The explanation is relatively straightforward  —   the act of watching TV is a sedentary activity that encourages snacking,” says Northup, the interim director of the university’s Jack J. Valenti School of Communication. Lots of research shows mindless eating plays a prominent role in how much we ingest while distracted with what is happening on screen. ”Watching TV while eating is also common behavior,” says Cheung. ”When we are distracted while eating, or eating mindlessly, we are not paying full attention to the food in front of us, and miss the satiety cues letting us know that we are full.” Overall viewing time is certainly a key factor. But the genre of what you are watching may also influence how much you munch. Researchers from Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab have found that action content (say, The Walking Dead) made subjects eat twice as much  —   98 percent more, to be exact  —   than their counterparts who watched a talk show. And sad content (like the   drama Solaris) made participants eat 55 percent more than those who watched more upbeat content, like the romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Researchers speculate that action and adventure shows may promote mindless eating because people consume more to keep up with the pace of the content. ”It might be the level of distraction  —   how engaging the content is,” says Aner Tal, a research associate at Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab. ”Another possibility is that it’s the feelings associated with what you are watching. Specifically, anything that involves a stress reaction enhances people’s levels of cortisol  —   and we know that leads to overeating.” With tearjerkers, the increase in snacking can be credited to stress responses but also to emotional eating, which compensates for sadness. ”It makes you feel temporarily better,” says Tal.   cues may also modify eating habits. A separate study from Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab found that   content on television makes those who are watching their diet (”restrained eaters”) eat more. Led by Food and Brand Lab Director Brian Wansink, the study found that, when subjects watched episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants in which the protagonist was selling chocolate bars, they ate more than their counterparts who watched an episode unrelated to food. But you don’t have to cancel Netflix and Hulu subscriptions to save your waistline. Cheung recommends separating food and television by unplugging while eating. ”To reduce mindless eating, one can practice mindful eating for more control over their relationship with food,” says Cheung. ”When eating, only eat. Turn off the television [and] computer, and put the cellphone away to refrain from checking messages. By removing these distractions, you can bring your full attention to the food in front of you, going beyond just taste and engaging all senses  —   including sight, smell, texture and the sound your food makes.” Tal, on the other hand, suggests you don’t have to banish snacking while viewing. He says just be aware how television influences what you put in your mouth, and plan accordingly. ”Monitor ahead of time what is there for you to eat. Put out healthier snacks on the table or not have snacks available,” says Tal. ”You can also substitute your snacks for healthier ones like vegetables.” Susmita Baral is a journalist based in New York City. She frequently writes about science, food and health. "
"President Obama is preparing to take executive action on guns soon, after being rebuffed by Congress in his effort to crack down on gun violence. Gun control advocates say the move could come as early as next week. ”The president has made clear he’s not satisfied with where we are and expects that work to be completed soon,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. Obama has been frustrated by his inability to push gun safety legislation through Congress, despite a major effort three years ago after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. which left 26 people dead including 20 children. After another deadly massacre in October at an Oregon community college, Obama asked his advisers to look again for actions he could take on his own. One idea that has been floated is designed to narrow the number of gun sales that take place without a background check. Federal law requires licensed gun dealers to conduct background checks on   buyers before selling firearms. But the rule doesn’t apply to some of those doing business at gun shows and online. ”That represents a huge loophole in the existing background check system, which otherwise is a very useful system for keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people,” said Ted Alcorn, research director for Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Gun safety proponents have urged the administration to tighten the rule governing which gun sellers must conduct background checks. They argue the current rule is too vague, allowing a small number of rogue dealers to skirt the law and sell a large number of guns to unscreened buyers. Gun rights advocates disagree, and they’ve promised to challenge any move by the president to rewrite the rules. ”We don’t have a king in America, but he’s acting like it,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights. Congress considered, but rejected, a bill to require universal background checks in 2013. Both the White House and gun safety advocates acknowledge the president has limited powers to combat gun violence on his own. ”This is not something I can do by myself,” Obama said after the community college shooting in October. ”I’ve got to have a Congress and I’ve got to have state legislatures and governors who are willing to work with me on this.”"
"At a New Year’s celebration in Kathmandu, people are munching water buffalo dumplings and sipping moonshine while looking back on a tough year. ”So many people died in the earthquake, so many houses went down,” says Dil Bahadur Gurung, 45, who ran a food stall at the Lhosar festival  —   the name of the Tibetan New Year. ”We were thinking not to celebrate this year,” says Dil Bahadur, whose village home was destroyed in the earthquake and who lost five of his neighbors. ”But we decided to because the government told us we have to. It brings positive energy and honors those who died.” Actually, there are a lot of New Years on the Nepalese calendar. The official New Year comes in April. There are Tibetan New Year dates as well. But the dance clubs and bars of Kathmandu will be filled with revelers ushering in the Western New Year tonight. Dil Bahadur’s attitude reflects the mood of the country. Twin earthquakes in April and May killed almost 10, 000 and wiped out half a million homes. The passing of the country’s   constitution in September should have been cause for celebration, but several groups felt left out of the   document. This continued a series of violence that has killed over 40, including security forces and a    child. For the past three months, unrest at the Indian border has caused an unofficial blockade and severe fuel crises, which many Nepalis believe are orchestrated by India to show political might. To top it all off, postearthquake reconstruction is painfully slow. The government has yet to release any of the $4 billion donated by the international community in the meantime, many quake survivors are spending the Himalayan winter in tents and tin shacks. Most of the celebrants are from Kathmandu’s Gurung ethnic group. They’re gathering at the city’s central parade grounds to bid a bittersweet goodbye to the year. The same spot hosted tents for the displaced until just a few months ago. The ground still dips from drainage canals dug by survivors. Gurungs make up about 3 percent of Nepal’s population and hail from some of the most   regions. Predominately Buddhist, they use the same   calendar common in Chinese tradition. Lhosar marks the change to a fresh (sar) year (Lho). As Gurungs ushered out the Year of the Goat, they welcomed the Year of the Monkey. Samir Gurung, 20, studies hotel management in Kathmandu and works part time at a bar in the tourist district. His family’s house was destroyed in the quake, and some of his relatives died. ”We lost everything: people, family, everything. But it’s OK, we’re happy. Next year we’re going to rebuild our house. We lost everything, but still we are fine.” Gauri Maya Gale, 40, worked as a subsistence farmer in her village at the earthquake’s epicenter until the quake took her house and destroyed her corn and millet fields. She has been in Kathmandu since and says her family has decided to relocate permanently to the capital. ”There’s nothing left. Our house is gone. Our land is unrecognizable. A lot of money came from donations, but we didn’t receive any. We don’t have anywhere to go so we are staying in Kathmandu. Even though life was hard [in the village] it’s even harder for us to survive here in Kathmandu because of the fuel crisis. In the village we were working very hard, but we didn’t have to worry about where we’d eat or sleep.” Alina Karki, 25, is just back in Kathmandu after eight years in London, where she finished a master’s in marketing. Alina is not Gurung but is celebrating nonetheless, along with a friend. ”I can realize it’s getting worse because of the pollution and the political situation, and because of the Indian government we are not getting fuel or cooking gas. Many people are cooking on wood fires. All the food, clothes, transportation is getting more expensive. Before, one cup of tea cost 5 rupees (5 cents) now it’s 30 to 40 (30 to 40 cents). So I don’t think I should [stay in Nepal]. I really wanted to do something for our nation, but look, there’s nothing here. We always have to hope positive things. Maybe we can produce our own fuel so we don’t have to beg from our neighbors.” Anusha Gurung, 18, came to participate in a Lhosar dance competition with her friend Illa Gurung, 22. The two will donate any prize money to an orphanage and believe it’s important to do social work in their own country. ”There are many problems, but also we are celebrating our culture. Despite the fuel scarcity, all these people came by foot. They could have celebrated at home, but it’s better to come together. 2015 was such a bad year. We are hoping 2016 will be a good year and the suffering will end. It’s my last year [in school] and I want to go abroad and study more, get a job over there. We are hoping for the best next year, but there is still fear.” Dawa Gyanchen Lama, 81, retired from his work as a monk in one of Kathmandu’s most prominent monasteries but still does astrology readings, which he offered to Lhosar celebrants. ”Whatever happened, happened in the goat year,” he says. ”Next year will be good. In the book [Buddhist text] it says the goat year will be bad, so I knew it was going to be a bad year. Most of the time the goat year is bad. But the monkey year will be better.”"
"A hotel in downtown Dubai erupted in flames on Thursday evening, just two hours before the city was due to celebrate New Year’s Eve with a massive fireworks display. At midnight local time, the celebration proceeded as planned  —   resulting in a jarring double display of light and smoke, as firefighters continued to battle the blaze at one skyscraper while fireworks were sent off from the nearby Burj Khalifa. Earlier in the evening, Dubai’s media office confirmed on Twitter that a fire had been reported at the Address Downtown Dubai hotel. The fire began outside the building, on the 20th floor, the media office tweeted, and firefighters worked to prevent it from spreading through the skyscraper’s interior. As of 2 p. m. ET (11 p. m. local time) the media office said firefighters had control of ”90 percent” of the fire. It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze, which the Associated Press reports affected at least 20 stories of the building. Burning debris was falling from the building, the AP noted. The   Address Downtown Dubai building was completed in 2008 and contains 196 luxury hotel rooms and more than 600 apartments, according to its website. By some counts, it’s one of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. It is in the same complex as the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper. Several spectators in Dubai recorded live video of the blaze on the Periscope app. The fire began shortly before 10 p. m. local time, or 1 p. m. ET. The government’s media office is reporting 16 injuries, including one case of cardiac arrest. As of midnight local time (3 p. m. ET) the fire had not been completely extinguished. The fireworks were set off from the nearby Burj Khalifa, as scheduled smoke from the Address Downtown continued to drift across the Dubai skyline. This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"At the end of It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey realizes he wants to live. And everyone from the mythical town of Bedford Falls comes barreling into his living room to tell him how much they love him and sing ”Auld Lang Syne.” But television ratings for It’s A Wonderful Life have been declining for 20 years. Still, you must know ”Auld Lang Syne” from other movies  —   or at least from New Year’s Eve? Even if you don’t know the words, you know it. Or. .. do you? Is the iconic holiday staple slipping away? I recently talked to students on three different college campuses near Boston. Again and again, ”Auld Lang Syne” didn’t register. ”I mean, I definitely recognize the tune, but I have no idea what words go with that,” Cathleen Nalezyty, a senior at MIT, says. Rachel Rubin is a professor of American studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She writes about popular music. And in recent decades, she says, we’ve lost a lot of it: sea shanties, farming tunes. ”Songs about working on the railroad, which, that used to be classic American stuff,” Rubin says. ”And that was interesting, because it was both a black and a white tradition.” But today, most people don’t work on railroads, making these songs less useful. ”And if ’Auld Lang Syne’  —   you know, which I love  —   is becoming less useful to a group of people, they’re not going to sing it,” she says. The question is, why? Especially given the song’s subject matter: ”Because it’s about drink. Because it’s about friendship. Because it’s about the past,” says Ruth Perry, a professor of literature at MIT. The words mean ”old long since”  —   effectively, ”old time’s sake.” Scottish poet Robert Burns collected the words in the 1780s from an old ballad, remade them, and the song caught on, in part, because of Burns’ popularity. But maybe Burns’ archaic language doesn’t mean much to young people today, in a more diverse society. Or maybe, Perry says, people don’t get together and sing anymore. ”We’ve got to revive this tradition,” Perry says. ”People have to learn to sing together again. I think it’s important. I really do. Because it’s bonding. Because it’s  . Because we don’t have enough such glue in our culture. It would be good to revive that which there is. It’s very good for people to feel that they’re part of something bigger than themselves.” On a recent evening in Somerville, Mass. I sought out exactly those kind of people at the Robert Burns Society. Technically, I’d botched the organization’s name when I knocked on the door. Folksinger Lynn Noel soon corrected me. ”We are known as the Serious Burns Unit,” Noel says. These are a handful Robert Burns enthusiasts. They know the man and his song, ”Auld Lang Syne.” They can sing it  —   a couple of different ways, actually, not that Noel is counting. ”We are not the ’Auld Lang Syne’ police,” Noel says, laughing. They’re just people who sing and wish others did, too, for at least one night of the year. This New Year’s, they say, go ahead and sing ”Auld Lang Syne” badly. Stumble over the words. Forget them entirely. None of it matters. As long as you’re singing out loud, and singing with friends."
"The topics range from knowing our bodies  —   exploring the mysteries of ”lost posture” and how well your ears can pick up audio quality  —   to stories of our times, such as   marriage and political paranoia. Along the way, we also looked at the lives of girls around the world and handicapped the odds of robots taking your job. Nearly 20 of the most popular stories on NPR’s website in 2015 were viewed a million times or more. Many were also widely shared and discussed on Facebook and elsewhere  —   and now, they give us a way to look back on what at times seemed like a uniquely unpredictable year. 1. Supreme Court Declares   Marriage Legal In All 50 States ”The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote after recounting the legal struggles faced by   partners.   by Bill Chappell, June 26, 2. Lost Posture: Why Some Indigenous Cultures May Not Have Back PainThere are a few populations in the world where back pain hardly exists. One woman thinks she has figured out why, and she’s sharing their secrets. Have Americans forgotten how to stand properly?   by Michaeleen Doucleff, June 8, 3. What Happened To The    Smoking In Mary Ellen Mark’s Photo? The photographer, who died in May, has a famous portfolio of arresting images. Among them is a shot of two children in 1990. One of them thought the photo shoot would change her life. It did not.   by Chris Benderev, June 27, 4. Trapped In His Body For 12 Years, A Man Breaks FreeMartin Pistorius spent more than a decade unable to move or communicate, fearing he would be alone, trapped, forever. NPR’s new show Invisibilia tells how his mind helped him create a new life.   by Lulu Miller, Jan. 9, 5. Texas Governor Deploys State Guard To Stave Off Obama TakeoverTexas’ GOP governor is sending the Texas State Guard to monitor a military training exercise after   militia alleged it’s just a cover for the president’s plan to put Texas under martial law.   by Wade Goodwyn, May 2, 6. Boy Says He Didn’t Go To Heaven Publisher Says It Will Pull BookThe young man at the center of The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, Alex Malarkey, said this week that the story behind the 2010 book was all made up.   by Bill Chappell, Jan. 15, 7. How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality? A   test for your ears (and your audio equipment): Listen to these songs and see if you can tell the difference between an MP3 and an uncompressed audio file.   by Jacob Ganz and Tyler Fisher, June 2, 8. Map: The Most Common* Job In Every State The jobs picture has changed profoundly since the 1970s. This map shows how those changes played out across the country.   by Quoctrung Bui, Feb. 5, 9. People Are Finally Talking About The Thing Nobody Wants To Talk AboutIt’s menstrual hygiene. The topic makes many folks uncomfortable. Yet in the developing world, it’s a problem that keeps girls from going to school and playing sports. Now things are changing.   by Nurith Aizenman, June 16, 10. Will Your Job Be Done By A Machine? Will your job be around in the future? We take a peek at the research.   by Quoctrung Bui, May 21, 11. Vatican Details Pope’s Meeting With Kentucky Clerk Kim DavisResponding to a flood of interest, the Vatican says the private meeting shouldn’t be seen as an endorsement of all of Davis’ views.   by Bill Chappell, Oct. 2, 12. A Black Mississippi Judge’s Breathtaking Speech To 3 White MurderersJudge Carlton Reeves sentenced three young white men in the murder of an innocent black man. But first, he had something to tell them.   Code Switch blog, Feb. 13, 13. South Korea? Trump’s ’Where Are You From’ MomentDonald Trump interrupted an   student this week to ask if he was from South Korea. ”I was born in Texas,” he responded.   by Asma Khalid, Oct. 15, 14. In Spain, Entire Villages Are Up For Sale  —   And They’re Going CheapAs Spaniards migrate from villages to cities for work, education and access to health care, rural hamlets are ending up on the auction block. Foreigners are in the market for these properties.   by Lauren Frayer, Aug. 23, 15. Babies On Display: When A Hospital Couldn’t Save Them, A Sideshow DidAmong Coney Island’s sideshows a century ago, one was different: an exhibit of premature infants. The show funded Dr. Martin Couney’s pioneering work  —   and saved thousands, including Lucille Horn.   StoryCorps, July 10, 16. Pain, But No Regrets: A Father Remembers His Adopted SonBill Jones is thought to have been the first single man to adopt a child in California, back in the 1960s. His son has since died, but despite the loss, Jones says he never regrets adopting his child.   StoryCorps, Feb. 20, 17. How Much (Or Little) The Middle Class Makes, In 30 U. S. CitiesWhat do families in the middle of the income distribution actually make in cities around the United States?   by Quoctrung Bui, March 19, 18. That Little Syrian Boy: Here’s Who He WasA photo of a drowned Syrian toddler on a Turkish beach sparked anguish and outrage over the handling of the world’s migration crisis.   by Hannah Bloch, Sept. 3, 19. Review: Mac Miller, ’GO:OD AM’The Pittsburgh rapper makes his major label debut and presents himself as a more balanced artist and human being.   by Timmhotep Aku, Sept. 14, 20. A Girl Gets Her Period And Is Banished To The Shed: #15GirlsWhen a teenage girl in rural Nepal gets her period, an ancient tradition may drive her to sleep outdoors. But one    is trying to break the taboos around menstruation.   by Michaeleen Doucleff, Oct. 17, 21. Paris Attacks: What We Know On SaturdayAs France copes with shocking violence, the death toll from Friday night’s attacks is not yet final, and details are beginning to emerge about the attackers.   by Christopher Dean Hopkins and Bill Chappell, Nov. 14, 22. 8 Obama Jokes That Stood Out From The White House Correspondents DinnerEvery year, the president sits down for dinner with Washington reporters and delivers a   routine. From his ”bucket list” to Hillary Clinton, here’s what he came up with this year.   by Domenico Montanaro, April 26, 23. 6 Clips Of Audio You Should Hear From The Planned Parenthood HearingThe congressional hearing was oftentimes contentious, with the head of Planned Parenthood defending her organization and explaining that it does not receive federal money for most abortions.   by Eyder Peralta, Sept. 29, 24. Rare And ’Horrific’: Frilled Shark Startles Fishermen In AustraliaThe frilled shark’s roots are traced to 80 million years ago. Its prehistoric origins are obvious in its primitive body nearly all of the rare animal’s closest relatives are long extinct.   by Bill Chappell, Jan. 21, 25. NASCAR’s Kurt Busch Testifies That   Is An AssassinThe race car driver and others told a Dover, Del. court this week that his former girlfriend, Patricia Driscoll, is an assassin. Driscoll did not deny the claims.   by Bill Chappell, Jan. 13, 26. 5 Things You Should Know About Hillary ClintonShe started out as a Republican and hasn’t driven a car since 1996. Here’s what you may not know or just may not remember about the former secretary of state and first lady.   by Tamara Keith, April 11, 27. Here’s What People Are Saying About The Waco Shootout And RacePeople are contrasting media and police reaction to the Texas shootout with their reaction to the recent protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo.   by Maanvi Singh, May 18, 28. Trevor Noah, Jon Stewart’s Replacement, Goes From Hero To Villain In 24 HoursSoon after it was announced that Noah will host The Daily Show, it emerged that some of his tweets mocked women and Jews  —   tweets that critics have called sexist and  .   by Krishnadev Calamur, March 31, 29. Take The ACE Quiz  —   And Learn What It Does And Doesn’t MeanFirst developed in the 1990s, the 10 questions of the Adverse Childhood Experiences test are designed to take a rough measure of a difficult childhood. Finding out your score is easy. Now what?   by Laura Starecheski, March 2, 30. Review: Cast Recording, ’Hamilton’Don’t call Hamilton unlikely:   Miranda’s lauded musical about the life of the Founding Father is Broadway crafted by an artist who knows rap to be our cultural lingua franca.   by Frannie Kelley, Sept. 21"
"It’s been another year of reporting on deadly diseases and   cures, girls and boys, changes in the cultural and physical climate, goats and sodas. And once again we find ourselves reflecting on what a wild, wonderful world we live in. Yes, we’ve seen the heartbreaking toll of disease and poverty. But we’ve also seen amazing resilience. We documented the decline of Ebola in West African countries, and through our #15Girls series we’ve profiled spirited young women across the globe. Here’s a look back at our most popular stories from 2015. Back Pain, Our No. 1 story on the blog was Michaeleen Doucleff’s piece exploring why back pain hardly exists in certain indigenous communities in India, Central America and West Africa. Here in the U. S. a sedentary lifestyle and lots and lots of time hunched over computer screens has many of us bent out of shape and in pain. But one acupuncturist found that for members of certain tribes, the discs in their backs showed few signs of degeneration as they aged. How come? Maybe because in those communities people tend to be more active  —   and therefore stronger and more muscular. Those buff bodies help them maintain good posture throughout their life. Periods, Menses And Visits From Aunt Flow  Pretty much half the world has had to deal with this monthly occurrence  —   but menstrual hygiene is not something many people talk about openly. Which is why, it seems, many readers appreciated our frank discussions about periods. Our second and third most popular stories this year were about how girls around the world manage their periods. Reporter Nurith Aizenman spoke with public health advocates who are working to improve girls’ access to clean toilets, running water and sanitary pads so they don’t have to skip school when they’re having their period. The first step, according to women’s groups, is to combat the squeamishness that everyone from teen girls to seasoned global development types feel over discussing menstruation. As part of our #15Girls series, NPR’s Jane Greenhalgh and Michaeleen Doucleff spoke with Kamala, a    in rural Nepal who, per local tradition, is banished to a shed while she’s menstruating. They also spoke with Prakriti, a    who lives in the capital city Kathmandu and is fighting norms by insisting: ”Menstruation is not a taboo, but a power for women.” Taylor Swift’s Very White Africa, Another popular piece touched on Taylor Swift and the colonial era in Africa. The music video for Swift’s ”Wildest Dreams” features   century costumes and shows off vast expanses of striking African landscapes. Nearly everyone in the video is white. Commentators Viviane Rutabingwa and James Kassaga Arinaitwe walked us through why they think this glamorous version of colonial days was a big problem: ”Colonialism was neither romantic nor beautiful. It was exploitative and brutal.” The Plight  —   and Pluckiness  —   of    Girls, As part of our #15Girls series, reporters Kelly McEvers and Jasmine Garsd told the stories of four girls in El Salvador whose lives have been deeply affected  —   or derailed  —   by gang violence. Marcela was killed by gang members, just like her boyfriend before her. To escape gang violence, another teen girl made a dangerous   journey to the U. S. border  —   only to get turned around by border patrol. And one studious girl, Aby, stopped going outside for good reason  —   her best friend disappeared after refusing to give a pencil to a  ’s sister. We also hear from Mimi, who has found a way to get out of the house while avoiding gangs. She works as a paramedic, she says, because ”it feels good to be somebody else’s shield.” Which Goats and Soda stories from this year made an impression on you? What do you want to read about in 2016? Let us know in the comments or tweet @NPRGoatsandSoda."
"More and more, I eschew      lists for the simple reason that they’re arbitrary and imply a comprehensiveness on which they can never deliver. What works for me is to compile a list that reflects some of the enormous gratitude I feel for getting to enjoy other people’s work and art  —   one that doesn’t even pretend to define what is best, but simply to share some of the abundant good stuff I run into. Keep in mind: these are cultural  —   mostly    —   things. These are not the best things in the world. Like yours, my actual list of wonderful things from the year, if I wrote it in a journal instead of for work, would be a list of people, of hugs, of dinners, of walks and experiences. And finally: There are things I really love that aren’t here because I’m too close to the people involved. In some cases, I found things I liked so much that I went out and drafted the people who made them into my universe of pals by any means necessary. Sorry, pals. Here we go. 1. The somewhat polarizing closing sequence of Trainwreck, the gender politics of which could be debated at length, but which ultimately was an effective summation of one of the things that movie is about: when you’re in love, you just have to do the best you can. 2. The final shots of Andrew Haigh’s deceptively quiet film 45 Years, as Charlotte Rampling, without speaking, demonstrates that while the story has seemed up to that point like it’s operating on an engine of wistful resilience, it has a sterner spine and a more complex view of the longevity of a marriage than it seemed to have only moments earlier. 3. The clever,   sequence in Star Wars: The Force Awakens in which the film takes aim at the trope of men pointlessly grabbing women’s hands before taking off running. (Bonus: the cast singing the theme music with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots.) 4. The startlingly graceful flexible poles used as critical fighting apparatuses in Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s true that the apocalyptic landscapes are gorgeous to look at, but throughout the film, new visual ideas appear by the minute, and it’s brilliant to offset the explosive, mechanical action of the vehicle chases with the smooth, rhythmic swaying of the poles. 5. The first musical number of the CW’s Crazy   in which star Rachel Bloom warbles the ditty ”West Covina.” It’s a confident, affable, wonderfully bent introduction. 6. Every scene between Melissa McCarthy and Allison Janney in Spy, a film that uses actor after actor (Rose Byrne, Jason Statham, Jude Law, Miranda Hart, Peter Serafinowicz, Bobby Cannavale, Morena Baccarin) to do something that’s different from what they usually do but somehow utterly perfect for them. 7. Bokeem Woodbine’s   role (an overused term, but fitting here) as Mike Milligan in the brilliant second season of FX’s Fargo. There’s so much great work in that season (Patrick Wilson would have been a perfectly good choice for this list, or Jean Smart, or Kirsten Dunst) but Woodbine was menacing, creepy and still sympathetic enough that his dreams were enough to constitute the stakes for the end of his story. 8. The end of the first season of Lifetime’s wonderful unREAL, in which Quinn (Constance Zimmer) and Rachel (Shiri Appleby) lay exhausted on their backs  —   reflecting the pose in which Rachel started the season  —   trying to process all they’d been through together and the bizarre, dysfunctional closeness that they both relied on. 9. The moment in Inside Out when Riley is finally able to talk to her parents about her sadness and her longing for Minnesota. The adorable emotions were the stars, but it’s Riley who’s really at stake, and to be comforted by her parents was her victory. 10. Perhaps the greatest terrible trailer in the history of humanity: the uproariously ridiculous tease for the Jennifer Lopez film The Boy Next Door. 11. The spare dialogue given to Matt Damon in Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard’s stellar (har) adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian. Damon doesn’t say much, since there’s no one to say it to, but that means that when he says, for instance, ”[Bleep] you, Mars,” you really hear it. 12. A scene from Hulu’s Casual in which freshly divorced Valerie (Michaela Watkins) finds herself on an elevator, contemplating a situation in which she never expected to end up. She glides through emotions in a way that transcends the usual comedic trope of laughing leading to crying, so that the questions are both independently interesting: why she’s laughing and why she’s crying. 13. The scene in Netflix’s Master Of None in which Dev, played by Aziz Ansari (who   with Alan Yang) first makes a serious approach to Rachel, the girl he likes, and learns that she has a boyfriend. There are a million ways to go with this conversation  —   he can be sad, rejected, angry, resentful, jealous,    —   and they just went the really honest route of stressing how bummed he is and how much he wishes they were in a different situation. It feels unexpectedly frank and fair, and in a way far more romantic than anything else he could have done. ”You’re so cool, there’s not a lot of cool people,” he says. Everybody’s been there, right? 14. The turn at the end of the fall finale of The Mindy Project, now living on Hulu. Mindy and Danny’s relationship didn’t suddenly get better when they had a baby and got engaged it got more complicated. And as Mindy measured her young son’s crib (a gesture for which   context had already been provided) the show made an unexpected but not unwelcome turn toward considering whether this relationship was really a good idea  —   a surprising move for a show so rooted to Mindy Kaling’s love of romantic comedy. 15. The combined impact of Rami Malek’s face as gorgeously presented by creator Sam Esmail and a team of directors across the first season of USA’s weird, uneven, ultimately transfixing Mr. Robot. 16. The scenes in David Simon’s Show Me A Hero that capture with just the right kind of intensity the emotion and cacophony of local politics. 17. The scene in Straight Outta Compton (caution: language) in which   learns to rap from Dr. Dre. Funny and surprising and providing a bit of balance to the image of the members of N. W. A. as supergeniuses, it has a gentle sense of humor and a humility that helps build the relationships between the characters. 18. The audaciously dorky but weirdly sexy   dance Richie performs in Magic Mike XXL. The film isn’t perfect, but it has a punchy, raunchy,   vibe that’s very hard to resist, nowhere more than in this    silly display that, like other items in the convenience store might advertise, is for her pleasure. 19. Sydney Lucas at the Tony Awards singing ”Ring Of Keys” from Fun Home. The best moments at the Tonys happen when one performance can take a show from a niche product to a pop culture phenomenon, and Lucas helped Fun Home make that leap without breaking a sweat. 20. The way the final chapters of Mad Men lingered on Peggy Olson, creating indelible images of her  —   particularly on roller skates and walking in shades with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth  —   that honestly dwarf the images of Don from the closing episodes. It wasn’t immediately evident at the time, but Peggy became more unforgettable, more special, more relevant, just as Don became more frozen, more confused, more back on his heels. 21. The cameos in the basement   in Pitch Perfect 2. It’s far from a perfect film, to say the least, but if you manage to make it to that   without knowing whom to expect, the incongruous nature of some of the contestants makes it worth your time. 22. The opening sequence of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. The entire show felt like something that only accidentally made it to viewers, and its weird, earwormy intro fit it perfectly. 23. The ESPN documentary I Hate Christian Laettner, which managed to make sense to both people who hated him and people who loved him, and which shed a lot of light on what sports ”hate” means and comes from. 24. Leslie Knope giving her friend Ron Swanson the ideal job at the end of Parks  Recreation. A lesser show would have forced Ron into growth more easily equated with change, where Parks was smart enough to know that the love that grew up between these very different people was based on their ability to accept each other as they were. ”Your job would be to walk around the land alone. You’d live in the same town you’ve always lived in you’d work outside you’d talk to bears.” She did know him after all. 25. The podcast Switched On Pop, from which many episodes could be chosen, but I’ll go with one of the first I heard: their investigation of Hozier’s ”Take Me To Church.” So good and sharp and fun. 26. Speaking of podcasts, the episode of Startup in which Gimlet Media investigated the issue of burnout in the company, which was not only great radio but public service for everyone who’s ever thought you could ask people for infinite investment without expecting some fallout. (Also their episode on diversity. It was a year of introspection.) 27. You can’t make your whole list out of Vines, but give me one: this is the one Vine that, for me, explained why Vine is sometimes the technology we’ve needed all our lives. 28. The wonderful, confessional, angry, humble, grateful piece that Lost writer Javier   wrote about the show’s complicated legacy, its relationship with its incredibly demanding fans, and the fundamental fact that, as a project of humans, it was doomed to imperfection. It’s one of the best reality checks that’s been written on the topic of fans who convince themselves they know how to write and make perfect television, if only someone would ask them. 29. Squeaking in at the end of the year: the New York Times review, sort of, of Senor Frog’s. There are times  —   as with an infamous review of all things Guy Fieri  —   when the Times’ forays into the culture of the masses feel like condescending class commentary, but somehow, in reviewing the bonkers world of Senor Frog’s in Times Square, writer Pete Wells steers clear of sneering at tourists and keeps in mind that one goes to different restaurants for different reasons, and one does not go to Senor Frog’s for the   cuisine. Most of all, though, it’s a constantly surprising, gorgeously witty, sparklingly written piece of helpless,    . 30. The episode of This American Life called ”If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say, Say It In ” in which writer Lindy West tracks down a troll, Ira Glass busts    for selectively disliking it in women, and more. 31. The movie dance compilation  —   no, hear me out!  —   that demonstrates that there is an art to the YouTube collage. Look at the uses of Omar Sy and Brad Pitt, for instance: work went into making sure those things worked flawlessly and seemed meant to be. There are a million videos that aspire to be this one, which makes it stand out all the more. (Seriously, there’s a lot going on: Dirty Dancing, Grease and Footloose all get important placements in the structure of the music  —   not an accident. The second use of West Side Story is genius, as is the Jon Cryer appearance.) 32. Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, a show from HBO that has figured out how to be hilarious but not glib while providing long, deeply researched segments on   topics like food waste and ones that have faded from headlines like TV preachers. For me this year, there was nothing more consistently satisfying and entertaining, not just on late night, but on television. 33. Aziz Ansari’s book Modern Romance, written with sociologist Eric Klinenberg. Particularly if you get your hands on the audiobook, it’s an intriguing mix of comedy and thoughtfulness and research, and while it’s mostly not   it’s intriguing. 34. The Mystery Show episode ”Belt Buckle.” You think you know how much punch the resolution is going to have, and then it has so much more than that. 35. The Another Round episode with Hillary Clinton. Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu ask Clinton questions that don’t typically get asked in ways that encourage other outlets to think about what they do and don’t ask, and why. 36. This stupid, irresistible YouTube video from the wonder that is IKEA. 37. The unexpected punch (sorry) of Creed, a film that could so easily have been lazy and obligatory and is instead vital, fun, and often moving. 38. Maris Kreizman’s generous, thoughtful, provocative book Slaughterhouse 90210, a project based on a Tumblr with a deceptively simple structure and a great deal to say. 39. The strong sophomore seasons currently in play from ABC’s family comedies Fresh Off The Boat and  . Yes, both are part of some increased diversity in family shows, but even were that not the case, they’d be great to behold based solely on how reliably funny and confident both have become. 40. Viola Davis’ brilliant speech upon winning her Emmy, which came close to justifying the existence of award shows. 41. Effie Brown of HBO’s Project Greenlight, a producer who gave voice to so many frustrations about impossible,   creatives that she needs her own podcast, preferably called ”Whatever,  .” 42. The tremendous piece Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur wrote after a particularly bizarre American League Championship Series game. Even for   fans, a delight. 43. Catastrophe, a UK romantic comedy brought to US viewers by Amazon, starring Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan as a couple whose path is most unexpected. Funny, odd, dirty, honest  —   just about all you can ask for from such a story. 44. Lily Tomlin’s performance in Grandma, as well as her sneakers. Highlights of an impeccably cast movie across the board. 45. Parul Sehgal’s essay for The New York Times Magazine about the word ”Flawless.” 46. The HBO series The Jinx  —   not for its more widely discussed bathroom mutterings, but for the discovery of the spelling error that, for me, is the actual moment the whole thing breaks open. 47. Ava DuVernay’s Barbie doll and all the   photos thereof. 48. What makes the podcast Judge John Hodgman so satisfying is that it’s really funny, but it’s also always really wise and really humane. In May, Hodgman took the case of a family where the father doesn’t want his young daughter to have birthday celebrations. As strange as that sounds, the judge found a lot to say about what was driving the father’s anxiety, what he owed to his family, and what he could and couldn’t expect from parenting. 49. As fashion and cultural commentary, Jazmine Hughes’ Cosmopolitan piece on dressing like Cookie from Empire for a week made me smile. 50. My favorite parody account in the history of Twitter, Emo Kylo Ren, created by The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri. (Contains intermittent Star Wars spoilers. Hilarious spoilers.) I have to tack on one quick thing that wasn’t from this year but that I found this year, which is a YouTube video in which user Bunan Tsokolatte paid gorgeous musical tribute to ”Sparks, Nevada,” a segment from The Thrilling Adventure Hour. For a bunch of reasons  —   how loving and clever and charming it is, how it salutes a great project that moved into new chapters this year, how unexpected it is  —   this was one of my real highlights, and I just couldn’t bear to leave it out for calendar reasons alone. And let me close with a few personal things that I enjoyed doing or working on in 2015: talking to Trevor Noah, talking to Judy Blume, hearing Audie Cornish talk to Shonda Rhimes, Chris Klimek’s review of San Andreas which was a delight to edit, multiple live shows, and more words about Cinderella than I ever thought I’d get to write. Thank you for listening and reading, and happy 2016."
"This story was updated at 3 p. m. ET  Two top staffers for Ben Carson’s presidential campaign have resigned, an ominous sign for the struggling Republican’s White House hopes just a month before voting begins. Campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts have both stepped down, something the campaign called ”enhancements” to ”shift the campaign into a higher gear.” Retired Army Major General Bob Dees will take over as campaign trail while Ed Brookover, former a senior strategists, will be the new campaign manager. ”As we enter a new phase of the campaign cycle, it is necessary to invigorate my campaign with a strategy that more aggressively shares my vision and   with the American people. I commend Barry Bennett and Doug Watts for their efforts to help me share my vision for America,” Carson said in a statement. The news comes after Carson himself promised a campaign   to right the   candidate’s ship. But according to the Washington Post’s Robert Costa, the exits were instigated by Bennett and Watts themselves, not Carson, after tensions with Armstrong Williams, the neurosurgeon’s longtime friend and business manager, reached a breaking point. In an interview with The Hill, Bennett blamed Williams for much of the campaign’s turmoil and predicted others would soon follow him. ”I called Ben this morning. ..and explained to him the root of the problem is that you told me Armstrong is not involved in the campaign but he clearly is,” Bennett said. ”My frustration level is boiling over so I told him I think it’s best that I leave.” But Williams played down his clashes with the top staffers in an interview with NPR and said that under the leadership of Bennett and Watts, Carson rose to nearly topple Donald Trump in the polls. ”I would never have characterized it as tension. I think in families, in corporations, in franchises sometimes we all have our perspectives from our experiences on how things should be set up and we always discuss those in very respectful manners, and at the end of the day we’re on the same page,” Williams said. ”Especially when you’re in an   political campaign with a presidential candidate, it is expected that there will be some tension, but that’s part of the process.” Williams was optimistic that the new changes could invigorate the Carson campaign heading into the final stretch, saying the Republican had already been showing a deeper depth on foreign policy and that voters were coming back around to his   demeanor. ”Sometimes people associate   with not the kind of leadership we need from someone in times of war. I think Dr. Carson is beginning to make people understand that just because he’s been   he is willing to show that he can be tough, he can be brutal, and he can if necessary, if you have to take people out and declare war on our enemies, he can do that.”"
"Tampon or pad? That’s all you get when you stroll through the feminine care aisle of any big supermarket chain. But times are a changin’. This year has been epic for menstruation, with news and social media catapulting the once   topic into the open. There’s the woman who ran the London marathon without using feminine hygiene products, and the #PeriodsAreNotAnInsult hashtag that erupted after presidential candidate Donald Trump referred to GOP debate moderator Megyn Kelly as having had ”blood coming out of her wherever.” Researchers say all the hullabaloo may help give women better and eventually more   options in menstrual care. ”For people like me who have been studying menstruation for decades, we’ve never enjoyed this kind of attention before,” says Chris Bobel, associate professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and president of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research. ”I wrote a book on menstrual activism five years ago that got no attention. But now it is.” Is it? Even though Cosmopolitan magazine says it’s ”the year the period went public,” we were skeptical. But social media’s been awash with the   and when we checked the number of times the word ”menstruation” was mentioned in five national news outlets, it more than tripled from 2010 to 2015, from 47 to 167. One big moment came in April, when Kiran Gandhi, a Los   musician and feminist, ran the London Marathon while on her period, without using any hygiene products. She wanted to let her blood flow freely to encourage women not to feel embarrassed about their periods. ”The fact that we’ve been able to talk about periods openly is the biggest step in the revolution,” says Gandhi, who finished the race with a blot of blood on the crotch of her neon orange leggings. ”So many people are weighing in about the problems they currently face with their periods. It makes people empowered to speak about their own bodies.” Then came the hashtag #PeriodsAreNotAnInsult. ”That was a huge watershed moment for me,” says Bobel of the online reaction to Trump’s comment after the GOP candidates’ debate in August. ”Women were refusing to take the bait that menstruation is a   or a silencer.” Indeed, when we looked on Twitter the other day, we found that women are still toying with Trump with statements like: ”It’s normal and natural. Let’s change the conversation. Let’s break the taboo.” So maybe in an odd way this controversial candidate will help improve the options we women have for absorbing our periods. ”In America we have a new iPhone every year, but in the past two centuries there have only been three innovations in menstrual care. It’s baffling,” says Gandhi. She’s talking about the disposable sanitary pad, which was first marketed in 1888 the tampon, which became commercially available in the 1930s and the menstrual cup, which has been around for decades but didn’t become popular until softer versions were developed in the 1980s. (The adhesive pad was introduced in the 1970s.) About   of American women use pads, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while   use tampons. Those proportions include women who use both. And while most women use conventional products, entrepreneurs are busy creating new options. ”The interest in alternatives is greater than ever before,” says Cynthia Pearson, executive director of the National Women’s Health Network. ”The number of questions we get about it  —   it seems like there’s a new surge in interest. More folks are questioning whether to use tampons or push for getting more info about what’s in them.” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, has been trying to find that out for almost 20 years. In April, she reintroduced legislation  —   for the ninth time since 1997  —   that would require manufacturers to label the fabrics, colorants, dyes and preservatives used in pads and tampons. Some women have expressed concern that trace amounts of the toxic chemical dioxin could be in tampons as a byproduct of rayon processing. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the manufacture of menstrual products, says changes in manufacturing processes intended to reduce dioxin pollution in the environment have made the materials in the products essentially free of dioxin. ”FDA’s risk assessment indicates that this exposure is many times less than normally present in the body from other environmental sources, so small that any risk of adverse health effects is considered negligible,” according to the agency’s website. And then there’s the question of the cost and environmental impact of using disposables. Women bought $3 billion of disposable sanitary products in 2014, according to the market analysis firm Euromonitor, a cost per woman of about $33 a year. Reusable products could cut into both purchase and disposal costs, and there are growing numbers on the market. In June, CVS started carrying the $40 DivaCup, a reusable menstrual cup made of health   silicone. Sales in dollars and units have been growing in   rates, says Daniela Masaro, brand marketing manager of Diva International, the product’s manufacturer. There are also Thinx, underpants that use patented technology that the company says absorbs up to two tampons’ worth of liquid while keeping women’s clothes dry. Since the startup launched in May with funding from a Kickstarter campaign, Thinx has sold 200, 000 pairs of thongs, boy shorts and panties, which sell for about $30 a pop on its website. Most of its customers are women ages 24 to 34. Women are also making their own reusable, washable pads, says Sharra Vostral, an associate professor of history at Purdue University and author of Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology. Indeed, a quick search on Etsy, the online marketplace for homemade goods, yields nearly 4, 500 results for an array of menstrual pads made out of fabrics like flannel and hemp. But supermarket pads and tampons aren’t going away anytime soon. The new reusable products haven’t solved all the hangups that come with being on your period. Women who have a heavier flow may need to use a backup tampon or pantyliner while wearing Thinx underwear, the company says. And women who use a menstrual cup may have to clean the device in the sink of a public bathroom, making it an awkward choice for work or school. The cup might also dislodge an IUD, the manufacturer says. Traditional menstrual care brands are trying to innovate, too. Procter and Gamble, the dominant force in the market with its Always and Tampax brands, pays close attention to the features its consumers want, says Laura Dressman, a company spokeswoman. In 2008, the company introduced the Always Infinity pad, a superthin foam pad that absorbs 10 times its weight. And in October, PG and    —   which together control the biggest segment of the $3 billion feminine care industry in the U. S.  —   decided to list ingredients for their pads and tampons. That was a big win for activists including Gandhi, who had traveled to PG’s headquarters in Cincinnati to take part in protests demanding disclosure. But for her, the fight won’t be over until society conquers the stigma of menstruation. ”What I’ve learned over the past few months is that taboo removes the vocabulary for people to talk about their own bodies,” she says. ”If you can’t talk about the problem, how can you talk about the solution?”"
"A new era in Saudi Arabia was demonstrated at gas stations across the country on Monday night: Long lines of cars stretched from the pumps, as drivers filled up to beat price hikes announced by the government earlier in the day. It was an unusual scene for the world’s largest oil producer, but underscored the economic impact of dramatically lower crude prices on a government budget that relies on it. The swift deadline to chop government subsides on gas, water and electricity surprised Saudis, and some stations ran out of gas and shut down in the storm of demand. But economists were not surprised by the nation’s historic deficit of more than $80 billion as oil prices collapsed this year, dropping to less than $40 per barrel from $100 just 18 months ago. The cuts unveiled Monday by government ministers represented a fundamental change in the country’s social compact, which has maintained Saudi royal family control for decades. No taxation and no representation has been the equation in a country with no income tax on individuals, free education and health care, and heavily subsidized utilities  —   but now part of the deal has been rolled back. The gas lines and an immediate reaction on social media demonstrated the risks of economic reforms. ”The views run the gamut from totally angry to extremely defensive to celebratory,” said one social media observer who followed the debate but didn’t want his name published. Social media hashtags on the budget trended on twitter as Saudis digested and debated the new reality. The fiscal 2016 budget announced in a   media event in the capital gave an unusually detailed picture of the proposed reforms. The government intends to narrow the huge deficit thru spending cuts, reforms to energy subsidies and a push to raise revenues from taxes and privatization. The changes signaled tougher times in the region. ”This is pretty new  —   let’s say hardcore  —   for a state budget to include all these things, ” says John Sfakianakis, a   economist who is a former government adviser. ”Over the next year or so, you will see the introduction of a sales tax  —   a VAT tax  —   eventually some form of income tax.” Even the price of tobacco and soft drinks could rise through new taxes.  ”The era of plenty has come to an end. This is it. The party is over,” he says, about a government that did not adequately address the challenge to diversify an   economy as long as prices were high. Now, the government is signaling that ”oil will be in the $ $40 range for some time.” This ”end of an era” moment in Saudi Arabia points to a new social experiment across the Gulf, as   monarchies grapple with lower state revenues.   across the   Gulf States already has begun, but Saudi Arabia, with the largest Arab economy, has gone further with measures that directly affect domestic prices. ”I think the tension is that a lot of people feel that ’the state is spending a lot, but I still don’t have a lot’  —   and it’s not going to get easier, and people know that,’ says Karen E. Young, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. The other Gulf monarchies will be watching Saudi citizens’ reactions for tremors. Will they accept a reduction in the generous welfare system that has been the bargain for social peace? In early responses from social media, government supporters aggressively defended the new measures  —   and the more extreme supporters attributed complaints about the budget to those serving Iranian interests and ”contributing to Safavid ambitions of hegemony,” which equated grousing to support for rival Iran. Middle class Saudis raised more pointed questions about royal prerogatives. ”Seems like normal people are the ones who have to pay for Saudi wars and royal luxury,” was one post on Facebook. ”In some ways, it’s a blessing,” says Khaled Almaeena, a veteran journalist and political analyst based in Jeddah. He watched the lines grow at the gas pumps and declared it ”crazy” to wait in line for gasoline that may have increased in price by 50 percent, but still costs less than a dollar a gallon. The new austerity plans ”will take us to fiscal responsibility and teach us to be responsible,” he says. It may also lead Saudi citizens to demand a bigger say in governance. ”That’s the very important and essential question,” says economist John Sfakianakis  —   ”whether the social contract will evolve and change when there is an income tax.”"
"Many Republicans may have sided with Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U. S. but his rival Jeb Bush predicts that the GOP faithful will eventually oppose the plan and see it his way. ”Trump clearly banning all Muslims would actually be so counterproductive in our efforts to destroy ISIS that it’s foolhardy,” the former Florida governor told NPR’s Steve Inskeep in an interview Wednesday in Boston. ”I mean, it’s beyond ridiculous it’s quite dangerous.” Earlier this month, in response to terrorist threats, Trump said there should be ”a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” The plan was renounced by many of his Republican rivals and GOP leaders Bush himself said Trump had become ”unhinged.” But polls showed a majority of Republican voters sided with Trump, and Trump’s poll numbers went up in the aftermath, too. But Bush believes that will change by the time actual voting rolls around in February. ”In a month from now they won’t [agree]. That’s the point,” Bush said. ”The point is that we’re living in this   kind of political environment, where [Trump] fills the space by saying outrageous things. People based on their emotions will express support for the sentiment, not necessarily the specifics, because there are none, and then he’ll backtrack. And he’ll move on to the next thing, and he fills the space.” ”I think the emotion of the here and now will subside,” Bush continued. ”Are people scared about the national security interests of our country being violated because of a lax immigration system or a visa waiver program that wasn’t designed for people being radicalized? Yes, they’re scared, and the job of a president  —   or a candidate, for that matter  —   isn’t to scare them more it’s to give them solutions, and that’s what I’m trying to do.” President Obama believes Trump is ”exploiting” the anxieties of   workers in his campaign, as Obama told Inskeep in a   interview at the White House this month. Bush said he didn’t exactly agree with the president’s characterization of the root of that frustration. ”[Obama’s] got this notion of what   white voters kind of think that’s so out of touch,” he said. ”People are legitimately angry with Washington, D. C. And, yes, Mr. President, they’re legitimately angry with you. You have divided the country up in all sorts of disparate parts.” That division in the country, Bush argued, has allowed for an unconventional candidate to rise. ”I would argue that Donald Trump is in fact a creature of Barack Obama,” he continued. ”But for Barack Obama, Donald Trump’s effect would not be nearly as strong as it is. We’re living in a divided country right now, and we need political leaders, rather than continuing to divide as both President Obama and Donald Trump [do] to unite us.” Trump continues to lead national polls, but he has seen a dip in some of the early states. Most surveys show Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rising in Iowa. Bush has largely put his hopes in New Hampshire  —   a state much friendlier to establishment candidates, with its large swath of more moderate Republicans and independents. Still, Bush is lagging there behind Trump and other rivals, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Later Wednesday, the Bush campaign signaled it would be shifting more resources to early states, but with a particular focus on New Hampshire. It canceled planned ad buys in Iowa and South Carolina, pointing out that the superPAC supporting the governor had bought a chunk of ad time there. Next month, the campaign’s efforts in the critical Granite State will double to more than 40 staffers. Talking to Inskeep, Bush dismissed the notion that he had to win an early state, New Hampshire included, to remain in the GOP primary fight. ”I don’t think I have to win any of them, because we’re organized in every state,” he explained. ”So depending on how it plays out, if someone rolled the table, then that would have an impact. Be hard for anybody else to  —   to overcome it.” ”The good news is, expectations are low for me, and I’m definitely gonna beat those,” he said. ”I feel really good about New Hampshire, to be honest with you. Just  —   just the way it  —   it feels.” On immigration, The proposal ought to be, for a conservative, for the people who are here illegally, a path to legal status, not a path to citizenship. But a path, out from the shadows, where you pay a fine. Where you learn English. Where you work. Where you don’t commit crimes. You don’t receive federal government assistance, and over an extended period of time you earn legal status. . .. People came here illegally 40 percent of the people that came here illegally, by the way, didn’t cross the border. They came with a legal visa and they overstayed. A great nation ought to be able to identify where these folks are for national security purposes alone, but for a lot of other reasons as well. Why should people gain citizenship by coming here illegally? I  —   I just  —   I don’t quite understand why that is such a compelling moral argument. On ISIS, If anybody doesn’t think that they would use whatever means possible to do us harm, I think they’re naive. . .. We can’t be paralyzed in place, and that’s where we are today. Whether or not ISIS is the greatest threat that we have in terms of the world, that’s debatable. I would say Iran empowered by an agreement that will allow them now to destabilize the region is a serious threat. I would say an unstable Pakistan is a threat. On Syrian refugees, When you have 4 million refugees in Syria  —   4 million in camps, literally, you know, millions at a time in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan  —   the destabilizing impact that has on those countries and the potential of a breeding ground for Islamic jihadist activity for  —   for a long, long while, that’s a serious threat. When you see the refugee challenges that partially created the tragedy in Paris, that’s a threat. I view it as a threat because it’s a   threat against Western civilization. They effectively have declared war on us. On the Bush ”brand” and legacy, It would be integrity. It would be having a servant’s heart. It would be patriotic, loving the country. And in my case, you know, look, I’m a conservative. But I believe that conservatism needs to be applied in a hopeful, optimistic way. And I think that’s another part of the Bush brand that I hope people will be reminded of  —   that it’s a hopeful, optimistic message, not a divisive one."
"This story is part of NPR’s series Journey Home. We’re going to the places presidential candidates call home and finding out what those places tell us about how they see the world.  There are three Republican candidates who ran   ads when they announced their presidential intentions  —   but only one was an Anglo. Jeb Bush not only speaks fluent Spanish, he has made his home by completely embracing Latino culture and putting down roots in South Florida. Ana Navarro, his former aide, tells a little story that shows just how much he’s adopted the culture: One day, she suggested something to Bush that he rejected because it was too expensive. Then, she said, he touched his elbow with his hand. ”That’s a very Hispanic gesture for meaning: ’Because I’m cheap, because I’m frugal,’ ” Navarro said. ”It means ’I walk with my elbows so as not to wear out my shoes.’ In Spanish, it would say, Yo camino con los codos. And it’s that kind of nuance that he fully understands.” To understand why Bush only   adopted the Twitter hashtag #honorarylatino, you have to understand the path he took to his current home in South Florida. Bush grew up in Midland, Texas, he summered in Maine and went to prep school in Andover, Mass. And it was in high school that his path home really began. He met his wife, Columba, on a high school exchange trip to Mexico. In college, he majored in Latin American Studies. He converted to Catholicism, and he worked briefly in Venezuala. But the place he chose to put down roots was Miami. ”It certainly did shape him,” said Tom Fiedler, the former political editor of the Miami Herald. ”The story of Miami since the Cuban exiles began coming has been one of being the new immigrant city.” Bush first came to Florida to organize his father’s campaign in the state for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination. Then he and Columba decided to stay. Jeb went into business  —   real estate  —   and the family business, party politics. At the same time, the Mariel boatlift brought thousands of new Cuban immigrants to Florida. As Fiedler remembers, the leaders of the Cuban community in Miami decided they needed to become active in U. S. politics  —   and the Republican party was their natural home ”because of the passion for President Reagan,” he said. ”They flocked to the Republican party, and Jeb was there to take advantage of that.” By then, Bush had three children  —   whom his father, George H. W. Bush, once referred to as ”little brown ones.” The young family settled into their new home near Miami, and in 1983 he became the chairman of the Dade County Republican Party. At that time, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in Dade County 3 to 2. Bush set out to change that, and he started with the Cubans. Local Cuban radio host Ninoska Perez watched as Bush became deeply connected to the Cuban community. Perez is a host at Radio Mambi in Coral Gables, where the Bushes now live. She met Bush early on and has interviewed him many times on her show. ”The problems of the Cuban community were like part of his own problems,” Perez says. ”If we were protesting for something, he was there.” By the   newspaper profiles in Miami referred to Bush as one of the most prominent members of the Hispanic community. So Perez isn’t surprised that Bush once mistakenly listed his ethnicity as Hispanic on a Florida voter registration form. ”Probably in his mind he’s thinking, ’Yes, I am,’ ” she says, ”because that’s how he was perceived. A lot of people were calling him ’Jebcito,’ like someone that was dear to them.” And it wasn’t just Cubans. Miami in the ’80s was also receiving waves of Nicaraguans fleeing upheaval in Central America. Navarro said that’s another way the melting pot of South Florida shaped Bush. It made him understand   culture. ”Jeb knows what chilaquiles is the same way he knows what Cuban picadillo is and can move effortlessly through the different Hispanic nationalities because of living in Miami,” Navarro said. Just a mile away from Radio Mambi’s offices in Coral Gables is Talavera, an upscale Mexican restaurant where Bush and his family like to eat. That’s where I meet Maria de la Milera. She was on the executive committee of the Dade County Republican Party when Jeb was the chairman. ”He had a plan for the party, and he carried it,” she said. Back when de la Milera met him, Jeb Bush was Republican royalty  —   the son of the man who rode on Air Force Two. but what impressed her most about Bush was his drive and work ethic. Bush has said that his father saw politics as public service, but he sees it as a mission, like a religion. Milera remembers that Bush’s goal as the Dade County GOP chairman was to register every newly naturalized Hispanic as a Republican. ”We did in one year 54, 000 applications. We filled out 54, 000 applications for citizens,” she said. As Bush and his family found their place in South Florida  —   with its vibrant mix of Latin American immigrants  —   Bush was building the vehicle for his own political ambitions. It paid off. Bush won the Hispanic vote twice in his races for governor. He once called himself the first ”Latino governor of the state of Florida.” Al Cardenas, who was the state GOP chairman in the ’80s, says that Bush’s connection to the Hispanic community is now his biggest asset as a presidential candidate. ”In our party, no one else seems to give the community the time share in their schedule that Democrats do,” he said. ”And so here comes Jeb Bush  —   his schedule is representative of the Hispanic community’s role in our country. That should be the rule, except that our party’s been slow to learn it.” Bush’s schedule has put him before Hispanic audiences in Puerto Rico and Texas, neither of which play much of a role in the GOP primary. But Bush has his sights firmly fixed on the general election, which he knows Republicans must do much better with Hispanics to win. ”I live in Miami. Trust me, I know the power of the immigrant experience, because I live it each and every day,” Bush said earlier this year on a trip to Puerto Rico. ”I know the immigrant experience, because I married a beautiful girl from Mexico. My children are bicultural and bilingual.” Bush even manages to slip in a reference to his hometown in South Florida when he campaigned in Iowa recently and answered a question about country of origin labeling for food imports. ”When I go to Publix in Coral Gables,” he said, ”after church to go prepare for Sunday Funday in my house . .. and I’ll probably make a really good guacamole and I want to know where that avocado is from and I want to know where the onions are from and the cilantro and all the secret stuff I put in it.” John Ellis Bush  —   son and brother of U. S. presidents, grandson of Connecticut Sen. Prescott Bush  —   can make a mean guacamole, if he does say so himself."
"Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush provoked much reaction on social media this morning with a theory of Donald Trump’s rise. Bush says President Obama paved the way for it. The former Florida governor made the remark in a   interview with NPR News. Bush is trying to recover after Trump knocked him out of   status in the drive for the party’s nomination. Trump, who publicly questioned the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate during the latest election, started his 2016 campaign by promising to deport 11 million immigrants who are in the U. S. illegally. More recently, Trump seized headlines by declaring there should be ”a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” He also showered insults on Bush, who has called for his party to become more tolerant and inclusive. In this bit of the interview, Bush aims to link Trump with Obama  —   which, if it were to work, is one of the most toxic things one Republican can do to another during a primary fight. Bush’s theory is that the president created an opening for a candidate such as Trump by making so many Republicans so enraged. His claim has provoked a lively online debate. Here’s how Bush puts it:"
"It all started with a question about food labeling at the Iowa Agriculture Summit earlier this year and Jeb Bush’s    brag: ”When I go to Publix in Coral Gables after church to go prepare for Sunday Funday in my house . .. I’ll probably make a really good guacamole and I want to know where that avocado is from and I want to know where the onions are from and the cilantro and all the secret stuff I put in it.” Then, Bush sold molcajetes (aka mortar and pestle)  —   stone devices used to crush or grind food  —   in his campaign shop. They’re listed as ”Guaca Bowles” and cost $75 (that’s even more than the Sur La Table molcajete shaped like a pig). Twitter had a field day with it. So did Stephen Colbert. ”Jeb and Columba love whipping up guacamole on Sunday Funday,” the page on his online shop reads. ”Now, you can get in on the act with this ’Guaca Bowle.’ Jeb’s secret guacamole recipe not included . .. yet.” Bush hadn’t given up that recipe . .. until now. In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep (the bulk of which was about the 2016 presidential campaign, national security and immigration) he said it’s the first time he’s shared the secret to his ”mighty fine” guac  —   though he added he ”didn’t give enough specifics” so ”it’s still secret squirrel enough.” If you’re settling in for a bowl game or cozy New Year’s Eve here it is: Avocados ”Make sure they’re not too ripe, but they gotta be ripe enough.” Cilantro, Onions, Jalapeño ”rather than chile serrano” Garlic ”not too much” Notes: No lemon and no tomatoes. And don’t go making this in a bowl. ”You gotta use a molcajete,” Bush said. One final note . .. judging from Obama’s preferred guacamole, it appears this recipe might include a pinch of bipartisanship:"
"They chat, they joke, they drive a classic 1963 Corvette. When President Obama appears on Jerry Seinfeld’s online show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, their conversation topics range from nothing to the sanity of world leaders and the merits of profanity. Much of the talk also centers on what it’s like for a guy to live in the Oval Office, the White House and a position of extreme power. A recurring theme: how a regular person adjusts to both the privilege and the stress that come with the presidency. ”Bad stuff, or stupid stuff, is happening constantly, right?” Obama says. ”Every day. So you have to be able to just make fun of a lot of that, like: ’That was even dumber and more annoying than usual.’ That’s when cursing is really useful.” The show streams on Crackle you can also watch the episode here. Some highlight questions: And some of Obama’s answers: When Seinfeld asks Obama, ”How many world leaders do you think are just completely out of their mind?” the president answers, ”A pretty sizable percent.” The pair were never allowed to leave the White House complex, although Obama did take a turn driving the Stingray  —   which bore a bumper sticker reading, ”My other car is a 5 ton bulletproof limousine.” As he did when he appeared on Zach Galifianakis’ show Between Two Ferns last year, Obama briefly broke off from the comedy bits to tout the merits of his health care plan  —   prompting Seinfeld to turn away from his coffee and urge his viewers, ”It’s a great thing. Please try Obamacare today.”"
"Time zone by time zone, the planet is saying goodbye to 2015. The end of the year is still hours away in the U. S. but Australia has already hailed the new year with fireworks like those (see above) in Sydney Harbour. In Japan’s capital, balloons were released from Tokyo Tower. A few highlights from other celebrations planned around the globe: In many cases, New Year’s Eve celebrations are taking place amid heightened security. Malaysia’s biggest city, Kuala Lumpur, and Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, are among the cities that have bolstered security after foiling various plans for Islamist militant attacks, according to authorities. About 60, 000 law enforcement and military personnel will be deployed across France on New Year’s Eve, reports The Associated Press, and Paris has canceled its customary fireworks display. Belgium also canceled planned fireworks in Brussels, after arresting several people for allegedly plotting a New Year’s Eve terrorist attack. In Turkey, where authorities similarly say they foiled a planned New Year’s Eve bombing, the celebrations are set to go ahead as planned."
"Editor’s note: This story was first published in December 2014. The first time I ever got tipsy was during a champagne toast at a cousin’s wedding reception. All was good, until the room started spinning  —   and the sight of my cousin’s bride dancing in her wedding dress was just a whirl of lace. Of course, if you’re an uninitiated teenager, any amount of alcohol can go straight to your head. But, decades later, bubbly wine still seems to hit me faster than, say, beer. It turns out there’s a reason. ”Some of the dizziness you can feel after champagne is due to both the brain getting [a little] less oxygen and also the [effects] of the alcohol at the same time,” explains researcher Boris Tabakoff at the University of Colorado, Boulder. All the bubbles in sparkling wine are carbon dioxide. The C02 competes with oxygen in our bloodstream, says Tabakoff, who studies the effects of alcohol on the body. And according to a Princeton University explainer on alcohol absorption, carbon dioxide ”increases the pressure in your stomach, forcing alcohol out through the lining of your stomach into the bloodstream.” That can speed up the rate of alcohol absorption  —   albeit temporarily. So if you want to stay steady on your feet, sip that bubbly slowly. And if you want to prevent a hangover, swap your next glass of bubbly for water. Alternating between alcoholic beverages and H20 can help prevent the dehydration that accompanies a night of drinking. ”What happens when you first start drinking,” Tabakoff explains, ”is that a hormone that controls your water balance, an   hormone, is suppressed.” And this leaves us heading for the ladies’ or men’s room  —   which can precipitate a pounding headache in the morning. But Tabakoff says dehydration is not the only reason we get a headache. ”High levels of alcohol in the brain have fairly recently been shown to cause   basically, inflammation in the brain,” he says. This is why taking aspirin or other   medicines, such as ibuprofen, can help us feel better. Now, alcohol isn’t the only   culprit in our drink glasses. Many alcoholic beverages, such as wines and beers, contain toxic byproducts of fermentation, such as aldehydes. And Tabakoff says if you drink too much, you can feel the effects. ”If these compounds accumulate in the body, ” explains Tabakoff, ”they can release your stress hormones, like epinephrine and norepinephrine, and as such can alter function in a stresslike way”  —   paving the way for a hangover. Tabakoff says distilled spirits contain fewer of these toxic compounds than other types of booze, which explains why some people report feeling fewer hangover effects if they stick with vodka or gin. Obviously, the only sure way to avoid a hangover is to not drink alcohol. But if you are going to indulge, Tabakoff says the    advice  —   eat something before you drink, and while you drink, makes good sense. ”Food is very good for the purpose of slowing the absorption of alcohol,” he says. Adding liquid calories to your cocktails  —   say, Coke, ginger ale or sugary punch as a mixer  —   is a good way to slow absorption, too. In fact, a study we reported on back in 2013 determined that a diet soda and rum will make you drunker than rum mixed with sugary Coke. Cecile Marczinski, a cognitive psychologist who authored that study, found that the average breath alcohol concentration was . 091 (at its peak) when subjects drank alcohol mixed with a diet drink. By comparison, BrAC was . 077 when the same subjects consumed the same amount of alcohol but with a sugary soda. ”I was a little surprised by the findings, since the 18 percent increase in [BrAC] was a fairly large difference,” Marczinski told us at the time. She says the difference would not likely have been as large if the subjects  —   who were all college age  —   had not been drinking on empty stomachs. And here’s another   tip when it comes to drinking: Pace yourself. ”We can get rid of most of the alcohol we drink if we [limit] drinking to one drink per hour,” Tabakofff says. This way, ”our blood alcohol levels don’t start accumulating.” One drink per hour is a rule of thumb, but that can vary depending on height or body size. Bigger people tend to be able to handle a little more alcohol, and smaller people a little less. And remember, Tabakoff says, a single drink is less than you might think. It’s 5 ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer, or a shot of liquor."
"In 2015, the selfie rage did not taper. And we learned something interesting about the ”art form,” as some might call it. It appears to be dominated, and shaped, by women. The five most popular people on Instagram are women. Kim Kardashian (ranked No. 2 after Taylor Swift) came out with the first book dedicated to selfies (hers). And a debate brewed over what the selfie says about females. ”I think girls, to be honest, they take a lot of nude selfies,” said Kim Kardashian, talking with Jimmy Kimmel, about her new book, Selfish (replete with boob and butt shots). ”Some of them, you know, I’ll look back and think ’Why did I complain about feeling fat? I liked the way I looked then.’ It’s taught me to be a little easier on myself.” Kardashian also came out endorsing the selfie stick, which, she argues, by taking pictures from farther away, makes you look skinnier. Comedian Amy Schumer trashed the stick. ”Selfie sticks are the most disgusting development that human beings have made in a long [time]. I’m so infuriated when I see someone with a selfie stick,” she told Vanity Fair. Schumer also released a music video and hashtag, #GirlYouDontNeedMakeUp, encouraging fans to post skin that’s bare in a different way. Another selfie campaign, #ILookLikeAnEngineer, encouraged young women in tech to show that there are . .. young women in tech. One of the most prominent public   moments, too, fell on women. At an Arizona Diamondbacks game, sportscasters Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly mocked a group of sorority sisters who were posing for pics instead of watching the game. The video got nearly 53 million views. In this uncut version of the video, however, you can see a key, but omitted, detail: Right before the sportscasters roasted the selfie sisters, fans were asked to take selfies as part of a commercial promotion. Even in academia, selfie mentions are on a steady uptick. About 2, 000 scholarly articles referenced the concept this year, according to Google Scholar, and many of the papers examine women’s   with titles like ”Virtual Lactivism:   Selfies and the Performance of Motherhood.” Really, Men Aren’t As Into It? And so the question arises: Are selfies really a woman thing, or do men do it, too  —   just without the same scrutiny? In November, some men weighed in. In a satirical video called ”Instagram Husbands,” they shared horror stories of being turned into human selfie sticks by wives or girlfriends. NPR tracked down the man behind this viral video, Jeff Houghton. And he says he limits himself to about five selfies a year. ”For me it just kind of feels weird to take pictures of myself,” Houghton says. But when asked to take out his phone and go through his photo gallery, the picture changes. It turns out he took a selfie with his son building a Lego tower just a couple of days ago. Then another, at a new boutique hotel, of himself in a bathroom, ”with good lighting,” he points out. Before that one, ”someone at work had a selfie stick and I took a picture.” As he keeps scrolling, the Instagram Husband comes to a realization: ”I bet I’m going over my five per year idea. . .. You busted me.” Terri Senft, a media scholar at New York University, says we still do not know, in any rigorous way, if selfies really are more of a woman thing. ”If you counted, for instance, every group party shot or every shot from a GoPro camera or every shot that includes some kind of extreme sports or guys playing instruments, I actually think you’d find a relative parity,” she says. Senft says it could be men and women are both into it  —   maybe just in different ways."
"Elephants’ ability to hear what is called infrasound  —   sound waves with frequencies too low for humans to hear  —   has been known about for years. But recently, a new twist in elephants’ infrasound detection was discovered  —   and now it has been caught on film. In a paper published in October 2014, researcher Michael Garstang and colleagues reported that African elephants fitted with GPS devices were found to move toward thunderstorms 150 miles away. Garstang, et al. concluded: ”We suggest that   sounds produced by rain storms represent a more plausible explanation of a detectable signal generated by a distant rain event. Not all rainstorms may generate infrasonic signals and not all elephants will exhibit a response to such sounds. Nevertheless, the response documented in this study suggests that the elephants of western Namibia change their movement behavior roughly coincident with a change in the seasonal rainfall climate of the region. This change in movement occurs well before (days to weeks) any rain actually falls in the elephants’ location.” Now, in an informal experiment using a customized computer playback system and a speaker, a small group of rescued African elephants is shown on film as they react visibly to infrasounds of a distant intense thunderstorm  —   even as the people nearby can hear nothing at all. Watch the   video of the experiment, airing on a BBC program, here. Elephants also listen with their feet to underground vibrations, so attending to seismic signals of thunder may be a factor as well in their travel decisions. We humans can’t enter fully into the perceptual worlds of elephants  —   or of many other animals for that matter. This fact, for me, makes the study of animal behavior only that much more thrilling. Certainly, we need to keep asking innovative questions that may reveal information about the intelligence and emotions of the remarkable elephants in our world. Barbara J. King, an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary, often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"The natural world is abuzz with the sound of animals communicating  —   crickets, birds, even grunting fish. But scientists learning to decode these sounds say the secret signals of African elephants  —   their deepest rumblings  —   are among the most intriguing calls any animal makes. Katy Payne, the same biologist who recognized song in the calls of humpback whales in the 1960s, went on to help create the Elephant Listening Project in the Central African Republic in the 1980s. At the time, Payne’s team was living in shacks in a dense jungle inhabited by hundreds of rare forest elephants. That’s where one of us  —   Bill McQuay  —   first encountered the roar of an elephant in 2002, while reporting a story for an   Geographic collaboration called Radio Expeditions. Here’s how Bill remembers that day in Africa: I was walking through this rainforest to an observation platform built up in a tree  —   out of the reach of the elephants. I climbed up onto the platform, a somewhat treacherous exercise with all my recording gear. Then I set up my recording equipment, put on the headphones, and started listening. That first elephant roar sounded close. But I was so focused on the settings on my recorder that I didn’t bother to look around. The second roar sounded a lot closer. I thought, this is so cool! What I didn’t realize was, there was this huge bull elephant standing right underneath me  —   pointing his trunk up at me, just a few feet away. Apparently he was making a ”dominance display.” The thing is, I was so busy listening, I never looked up. I never saw him. The scientists on the other platform saw the whole thing. They found it rather amusing. After all, they actually lived among the elephants, day in, day out  —   part of a listening culture that’s evolved among scientists over the last 60 years. They collect and interpret sound to understand how the natural world works. And they’ve come to realize that the sounds and sights they first encounter are often just a tease to what’s really going on beneath the surface. As a listening pioneer in this field of bioacoustics, Katy Payne had already shocked the scientific world 33 years earlier when she caught the music in whale song. But listening to elephants in Africa was an altogether different thing: You had to get much closer to study them. Payne recalls one of her own close encounters in the forest. ”We suddenly heard a tremendous roar and rumble,” she told NPR in 2002, ”really, really close to us. And there was this elephant  —   huger and bigger than life, with her ears flared  —   rumbling and roaring at us. And we climbed a tree quite quickly.” What Payne has been willing to risk her life to capture on tape is a mysterious kind of elephant sound that may have deeper meaning than much of what we can hear. This different kind of audio  —   infrasound  —   is transmitted at very low frequencies, almost like seismic waves. Payne was at a zoo in Portland, Ore. in 1984 when she first realized that elephants make these sounds. She was at the zoo to give a talk about whales, but took a little time off that day to hang out at the elephant enclosure, just for fun. ”I began to realize, every now and then, I was feeling a throbbing in the air,” she recalls. She says it reminded her of an experience she’d had singing the music of Bach in a large chorus, accompanied by a pipe organ. ”I realized that was the same feeling I got when I used to sing at Cornell in the Sage Chapel,” she says. ”It would go low, low, low. When the pipes go down, you begin to lose pitch  —   and pitch is replaced by feeling.” ”I thought, ’Maybe the elephants are making sounds too low for me to hear, but powerful enough to feel.’ ” She asked engineers at Cornell if they had equipment that could record that   sound. They said yes. But to actually hear it, they explained, you’d have to speed it up when you play it back  —   from about 10 or 12 Hertz or less to above 20 or 30 Hertz. So Payne went back to the zoo and recorded that throbbing. When she played the   recording, this is what she heard. That rumble occurred just as an old bull elephant was facing a female in the next enclosure. ”They were calling back and forth toward each other,” says Payne, but at a frequency below 20 Hertz  —   the lower limit of what humans can hear. To decode these deep signals of elephants in their natural environment, Payne flew to Africa. There she learned that the audible calls are just a fraction of the elephant vocabulary an elaborate infrasound conversation goes on among the animals as well. Payne wanted to build a dictionary of that conversation, and to do that, she needed to record both the elephant sounds and their behavior at the same time. So her team wired the forest with microphones like so many Christmas ornaments, next to a clearing where many elephants often congregated. Engineer Christopher Clark from Cornell University was with Payne, and says he had to harden the microphones by putting them in protective cases the elephants had a habit of smashing them. Being in the forest, Clark says, made him realize how useful infrasound is for elephants. The forest is a kind of muffling blanket  —   not just hard to see through, but hard to hear through, too, at least at the frequencies we’re used to hearing. ”What happens when the sound propagates through this dense forest,” Clark explains, ”is that the higher frequencies are lost, and it’s the very low part of the rumble that propagates.” The deepest rumbling is different from what we think of as sound, he says. It’s more like the feeling of a pulsing bass line at a rock concert. The elephants produce these rumbles via their flexible larynx, long, loose vocal cords, and the large resonating chamber created by the mouth and trunk. Clark wrote a computer program that could sift through   of recordings to find the infrasound calls. Then Payne could listen to them, and try to match the sound with field notes on the animals’ behavior. ”Sometimes you’ll see just one elephant come in and listen and listen and listen with ears flared and stiffened,’ Payne says. ”Moving the head from side to side  —   and you know she’s listening for a relative.” Eventually Payne could connect the sounds with specific behaviors. ”You watch them together, and then you get more rumbles and certain behaviors  —   great flappings of ears,” she says. ”And that’s a greeting. And then you can say those rumbles are ’greeting rumbles.’ ” Some scientists suggest that the bones and membranes in the human ear are tuned to detect the frequencies of human speech. An elephant, with its much longer ear canal,   bones of the middle ear, and bigger ear drum, can detect much lower frequencies than people can, and more clearly, researchers say. The listening project has begun to create a sort of infrasound dictionary for elephants  —   a large set of different rumbles. Males ready to mate have a particular rumble, the scientists now know a nursing female looking for its baby has a different one. And research has also shown that rumbles emanating from the mouth are different from those made by the end of the trunk  —   and may be different forms of communication. ”We realized that they may be coordinating the behavior of elephant populations over large areas,” Payne says, ”that they  —   the infrasound rumbles  —   were being used over long distances.” Only by listening more closely than ever before had the researchers discovered what’s essentially a rumbling telegraph system, used by a   community of animals roaming invisibly through the forest. This story is part of Morning Edition’s weekly series Close Listening: Decoding Nature Through Sound. The summer series is exploring the culture of listening that’s developed among scientists seeking to understand how animals communicate. Bill McQuay is an audio producer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Alison Richards, NPR’s senior editor for science, is the series’ editor."
"At the outset, biographer Sonia Purnell didn’t know much about Clementine Churchill. ”I confess, like millions of others, I had absolutely no idea who Winston Churchill’s wife was,” Purnell tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep. But then Purnell stumbled onto a letter from 1940, when Churchill had just become prime minister. It was the middle of World War II, and England was in a very bad state. ”She realized that he was in danger of losing support of the very people he needed most,” Purnell says. ”He was being brusque and rude and rather overbearing. So, she wrote him this letter. And it just tells him how he needs to bring people alongside him, to make them love him. His behavior changed as a result of this. And people changed their minds about him.” After reading that letter, Purnell had to find out more about the woman who influenced England  —   and her statesman husband  —   through two World Wars. The result is Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill. Purnell talks with Inskeep about Clementine Churchill’s background, her ambition, and what she’d be doing if she were alive today. On how hard she ”threw herself” into being Churchill’s wife, I think she realized she couldn’t be the ordinary wife. She would lose Winston. She would never see him. So really from very, very early on, she threw herself into making herself the right sort of woman for him. She wanted to prove that she was up to it. A lot of people thought she wasn’t when she first married him. She’d come from this rackety background. She was quite shy. And so she pushed herself to become this incredibly wise, measured, knowledgeable,   person. On her background, She was the granddaughter of a Scottish earl. But her mother was something of a Victorian wild child: Lady Blanche. She was married off and it was a pretty loveless match. He didn’t want children. She did. She went about this with some enthusiasm, shall we say . .. without him! . .. She had up to 10 lovers on the go at once. As a result of this, her mother was shunned by polite society, had very little money. They kept having to move house. Her putative father, [Sir Henry] Hozier, tried to kidnap her. She managed to escape. But none of this was the sort of life you would normally expect of the granddaughter of a Scottish earl. On what attracted Churchill to her, I think because of her rackety background, she had no money, she was making her own living. She wasn’t like the normal society women that he’d met who were interested in frocks and balls and not much else. So suddenly, here was a woman who was interested in what he had to say about all sorts of things and he found that thrilling. She found it rapturous that here was someone prepared to talk about great and exciting world events  —   events which she wished she could be a part of. On how Clementine Churchill helped her husband rebuild his career after some disastrous mistakes, I think he always wanted to be prime minister. She always wanted him to be prime minister, too. I think the difference she made was that earlier in his career, he made countless mistakes. Take the Dardanelles [and the Gallipoli Campaign] for instance, in the First World War  —   disastrous military campaign. . .. And for many Empire troops this was something that has, you know, stayed in history as a military disaster. You might argue it wasn’t really Churchill’s fault . .. you might argue it was. In any case, he got the blame. . .. His career was completely shot. And she saw that the way back  —   he had to redeem himself. And if by volunteering to fight in the trenches at the Western Front, he could show people that he wasn’t this hothead. He wasn’t just all about him. On how, when he went to fight with the British army on the Western Front, Clementine warned him not to come back too soon, Yes, can you imagine? . .. A wicked bullet could find him at any moment. But she wanted people to want him to come back. She knew that if he just came back, people would say, ”Oh, it’s the same old Winston. He’s not learned.” If he stayed out there long enough that people realize that he was needed, then that would be different. On how she took action on her own, She saw that all Britain had in   was a collective spirit, and that had to be fostered and nurtured and protected. And yet, people were discontented. The air raid shortages and the Blitz they were pretty horrible. They were cold they were dark they were scary. And so she went about ordering all the government ministers around: Please put heating in there. Please make sure there’s a fire exit there. Please manufacture two million new beds so people can sleep alongside their children during the raids to stop them from becoming too frightened. She saw that by dealing with these problems, you would foster that incredible Blitz spirit that people still talk about now. On how researching Clementine affected the way she views political couples today, Sometimes I look at some of the political spouses today and I wonder where their ambition is. I mean, obviously times are different now. But in Britain, you very rarely hear anything about the prime minister’s wife apart from what frock she’s wearing or where she went on holiday. I’m amazed, really, that we’re still in that position where we don’t celebrate the fact that in many ways we get two for the price of one, because with the Churchills, we did. On what Clementine might have done had she been born in a different time, She once said early in life she would have loved to have been a statesman in her own right if only she had been born with trousers rather than petticoats. I think if she were alive today, I suspect very much that she would be in the British Cabinet. She would certainly be an MP and maybe, who knows, she might’ve gone for the prime minister’s job herself."
"Health insurers in several big cities will take some pain out of doctor visits in 2016. The plans will offer free visits to primary care doctors in their networks. You read that right. Doctor visits without copays. Or coinsurance. And no expensive deductible to pay off first either. In Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and more than a dozen other markets, people seeking coverage through the insurance exchanges can choose health plans providing free doctor visits, a benefit once considered unthinkable. The change is rolling out in a limited number of plans following reports that high copays and deductibles have discouraged many Americans who signed up for private coverage the past two years from using their new insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Insurers say they hope encouraging visits to doctors will benefit members and their bottom lines by catching illnesses early before they become harder and more expensive to treat. For example, prescribing antibiotics promptly to a patient with pneumonia could avoid a lengthy hospitalization costing tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, the policy could also cut down on the use of more expensive urgent care centers and emergency rooms for cases that aren’t critical. In most states, Dec. 15 was the deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1, though people have until Jan. 31 to enroll for 2016. Two new health insurers, Harken Health, an independently operated affiliate of UnitedHealthcare, and Zoom+ are offering unlimited free primary care visits at   clinics. Harken operates in Chicago and Atlanta. Zoom+ is based in Portland, Ore. Down south, Florida Blue, the state’s largest insurer, has health plans in   and nine other counties where   members buying plans can also get two free primary care visits per year.   Molina Healthcare, is offering not only free primary care visits in some plans, but also free visits to specialists in Florida, Texas and five other states. The   visits go beyond the preventive services, such as immunizations and screenings, that all insurers must provide under Obamacare without charging a copay, even when a deductible hasn’t been met. Health policy experts say the new approach sets the insurers apart in crowded insurance markets and may attract younger, healthier people who don’t have relationships with doctors. ”This is a great development . .. and shows how the market is trying to innovate,” said Katherine Hempstead, director of coverage for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. ”Consumers should find this very appealing. . .. It might be like ’a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,’ ” she said, quoting a line from the Mary Poppins song. ”People are not going to grouse as much about cost sharing later if they are getting something free first.” Consumer advocates applaud the trend, which they say underscores why people need to look beyond the monthly premium when shopping for a plan. ”It’s a smart move to reduce financial barriers to basic outpatient care to help patients manage their health,” said Lydia Mitts, a senior policy analyst at Families USA. ”I hope other health plans will realize removing financial barriers to primary care doctors is a smart direction for patients and for the plans.” The health plans offering free doctor visits are typically among the   plans in many markets, according to a Kaiser Health News review of plans sold on the exchanges. Some insurers can offer free visits because they operate health clinics staffed by salaried physicians. That’s the case at Harken Health, which has four primary care clinics in Chicago and six in Atlanta for its members to use for unlimited visits. Harken also offers members access to a doctor by telephone and Internet. ”We are creating unfettered access between the care team and the patients,” said Tom Vanderheyden, CEO of Harken Health. ”We think it’s a significant differentiation.” Harken also offers free yoga and cooking classes. Patients with easy access to Harken’s clinics should be able to avoid trips to urgent care centers, retail clinics and emergency rooms, and develop a deeper relationship with their primary care doctor, Vanderheyden said. ”Better access . .. should mean better outcomes and happier people.” Dave Sanders, CEO of Zoom+ and a physician, said offering free doctor visits at its modern clinics, should help attract young enrollees. ”We are unabashedly focused on the millennial generation,” he said. To that end, Zoom+ lets members make appointments using a smartphone app. The company’s doctors emphasize changing diets before prescribing drugs. Zoom+ has run clinics in the Portland area for the past year, but it has never offered an insurance plan before. Members can get free care at the clinics or Zoom’s freestanding emergency room. Under the health law, marketplace plans must cover a certain percentage of a member’s health costs with the amount varying based on gold, silver or bronze tiers. ”What we have done is to spend the resources on primary care,” Sanders said. Zoom+ also offers free mental health visits and one free dental visit for a cleaning. Florida Blue, the state’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan, developed a new product for 2016 called myBlue which offers two free primary care doctor visits and then charges $1 a visit thereafter, $3 visits for specialists, free routine lab tests and free diabetic supplies. The myBlue plan was created to help people whose incomes qualify for the highest   subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. To offer such benefits, Florida Blue developed a smaller network of doctors, hospitals and pharmacies so it could better control costs. But to encourage enrollment in   County it recently partnered with three CliniSanitas medical clinics, which primarily serve the Hispanic audience in the area. The plan is also available across South Florida, and counties around Tampa and Orlando. Jon Urbanek, a senior vice president for Florida Blue, said the new plan is intended to increase the insurer’s market share. He said participating providers in the myBlue products are not necessarily paid less than other doctors but their pay is more closely tied to reaching certain quality targets such as cancer and cholesterol screenings. In 6 of 10 counties where it’s available, the myBlue product offers the lowest premium. ”We think our pricing positions us to do very well,” Urbanek said. Molina Healthcare is offering zero copays for unlimited primary care doctor visits for one of its   plans for 2016. Unlike Florida Blue, it says it offers free doctor visits in its plans without using a narrow network of doctors and hospitals. ”We really want folks to get value from their premium dollar and not have any barriers for care,” said Lisa Rubino, senior vice president at Molina. Molina offers the zero copay doctor plans in Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin. This story was produced through collaboration between NPR and Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization. Neither the foundation nor the news service is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente."
"How does a film conjure the unfathomable vastness of nature? How can it make moviegoers feel the harshness of a desolate place? These are some of the challenges director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman) faced in creating The Revenant, a revenge thriller that stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fur trapper who’s been left for dead. After a little while, like maybe 10 seconds into the trailer, you realize that there’s only so much a filmmaker can do to capture the scope of the forbidding American West in winter. The   mountains all look alike. The sweeping vistas in fading afternoon light all blend together. There’s a limit to the  . But cue up a low,   chordal drone, let it hang like an ominous gray cloud over a scene, and just like that you’ve summoned the profound disquiet of a desolate place. The bleakness of a landscape becomes suddenly vivid. Sound deepens the foreboding while adding a sense of psychoactive urgency. In the same way Antonio Sanchez’s sizzling drumming became a window into the interior life of Birdman’s main character, the score of The Revenant  —   which was mostly written and performed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, with additional music from The National’s Bryce Dessner and German electronic artist Alva Noto  —   provides the film with its emotional baseline. Brooding and expansive slowness (which feels breathy and natural even when synthesizers are involved) runs pretty much throughout the music. It amplifies the serenity of the calm scenes and then, with little change in the musical content, underscores the more terrifying fight scenes. The subliminal message: In this realm, tension is a constant, and it’s meted out in carefully calibrated degrees. No rattling drum marches are used to telegraph the drama. Sakamoto has long displayed mastery of the soundscape: Some of his most breathtaking albums are built on pristine, perfectly ornamented ambient drones. Here, he makes his   backdrops poignant by emulating the austerity of the film’s setting: The elegy ”Goodbye To Hawk” is rendered by a flitting,   synthesizer as it plays gorgeously sloping melodies every now and then  —   melodies that describe the graceful gestures of a bird in flight. A solo cello does similarly evocative swooping later on, in ”The Revenant Theme 2”  —   which, in one of the few moments of ”conventional” movie scoring, is anchored by typically melodramatic lilting piano chords. It’s also one of the few pieces, along with a pulsating chase scene and the percussive ”Final Fight,” to operate in a fixed tempo. Much of the music unfolds according to its own clock, moving (or, more accurately, not really moving) with a stately,   sense of majesty. In these audio tableaux, tiny shifts of texture and harmony can have brutal, seismic impact. Sakamoto successfully battled throat cancer during the making of The Revenant, but that’s just one reason a team of composers contributes to the score: The film is long, and Iñárritu wanted specific tonal colors he’d heard in a concert piece Dessner wrote for Kronos Quartet. Dessner created   scenes (”Imagining Buffalo” is one) for the film that operate on two levels at once  —   they’re seemingly placid on the surface, but with churning, fitful energy coursing underneath. In a few places, Dessner’s orchestrations were superimposed over a   demo created by Sakamoto on the ancient Prophet 5 synthesizer. You’d think the contrast between acoustic strings and synthesized elements would create a confused jumble within this kind of score, but the opposite is true: Sakamoto balances these devices masterfully, using them to conjure the breathtaking beauty of nature, the random terror of nature, and just about everything in between."
"An   director, a major star, a survival saga that makes Heart of Darkness look like a pleasure cruise. .. and all anyone wants to talk about is the bear attack. And in fact, it’s hard not to start there. It comes about comes 24 minutes in.   Hugh Glass, played by a hirsute,   Leonardo DiCaprio, has helped his fellow trappers escape a harrowing Arikara massacre. In most movies that would be the scene everyone’s talking about  —   arrows piercing vocal cords in   death raining down from trees. But a few men get away, and are hellbent on getting to the comparative safety of a   fort before winter hits. Glass, separated from the others, has spotted two bear cubs in the woods. He raises his rifle, then hears a loud snuffling behind him: Mama bear. ..who has correctly figured out what Glass has in mind for her cubs, charges before he can swing his rifle around. In one horrifying, continuous take, she knocks him down, claws, bites, stomps, and shakes his body, ripping his flesh, breaking his bones. Only when Glass is motionless after a long, long mauling does she pause in her attack  —   sizing him up, stepping on his head, sniffing his skin until the call of her cubs distracts her. And you think it’s over. And it’s not. By the time Glass’ son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) and the other trappers come upon him, Glass is barely clinging to life. Carrying him over rough terrain as winter approaches will doom them all, realizes Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson). He offers a bit of extra pay to two men who will stay to watch over him and then bury him when the time comes. A young trapper about Hawk’s age volunteers to stay, as does John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) who’s been grousing about Glass and his son (whose mother was Pawnee) since the Indian attack. Alas, Fitzgerald is not someone you want in your corner. Once the others have moved on, he stabs Hawk, all but buries Glass alive, then leaves them to the elements. At which point a   saga begins that’s every bit as breathtaking to behold as it is punishing to watch. Filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, fresh off the   Birdman, and working with the same cinematographer who made Birdman’s long continuous camera takes so fluid, spent eight winter months in the Canadian and Argentine wilderness with a cast that didn’t have to fake being freezing or exhausted. DiCaprio in particular, gets swept over waterfalls, rides his horse off cliffs, drags himself by his fingernails across icy landscapes, and endures Indian attacks, mostly in natural light, ice in his beard, the camera getting so close to him that his breath fogs the lens. What elevates this standard, if relentless, plot line is that The Revenant feels like   work without a net. Audiences have gotten used to seeing actors doing what look like dangerous things, but in the full knowledge that those actors are not actually in danger. ..that they’re on a soundstage somewhere in front of a green screen. To shoot The Revenant DiCaprio, aided by the occasional stuntman, actually dragged himself against genuinely frozen ground, and plunged into a raging river with ice in it, and I don’t care how advanced the wetsuit is that was hidden under his clothes, that makes a difference you can feel. He’s exposed, at the mercy of the elements in a cruelly brutal way, and so is the storytelling. Yes, there’s some digital work here. The filmmakers did not actually turn a grizzly loose on one of the most valuable talents in Hollywood. But the effects are used to make things more real, not more fantastic, and that, also makes a difference. The dictionary definition of ”revenant” is ”one who returns after death or a long absence.” Applies to the main character obviously. But watching The Revenant, you’re aware that a kind of filmmaking  —   raw and visceral  —   is returning after a long absence, too."
"It may be some sort of cosmic sign —  or maybe just cruel irony —  that only a few nights after a video clip of Aretha Franklin performing a rousing rendition of Carole King’s ”(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman” on CBS’ The Kennedy Center Honors broadcast went viral, Aretha’s closest artistic rival in the   Natalie Cole, has left this mortal sphere. And on New Year’s Day, no less. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, Aretha was the heavyweight champion of soul music: she undisputedly set the bar so high for artistic achievement that she won the Best RB Female Vocal Grammy award for eight consecutive years. Despite a bevy of worthwhile contenders to the throne bearing first names like Roberta, Chaka, Minnie and Mavis, it was actually Natalie Cole’s 1975 debut Inseparable that stormed the palace, broke Aretha’s Grammy streak and unseated the Queen. Wild tales of the two singers’ bitter hostility are now part of RB lore. But, while Natalie Cole’s early musical arrangements by underappreciated   duo Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy were clearly   by Franklin —  and while the two singers even covered some of the same songs —  Cole was a phenomenal singer, but hardly a groundbreaking,   one like Franklin. That’s in no way a slight. Natalie Cole took no prisoners in the studio or on stage. She was blessed with superior vocal range, solid phrasing and a workhorse ability to dramatically build a song into a powerful climax. Just listen to her stratospheric,   wailing in the final choruses of 1977’s ”I’ve Got Love on My Mind.” It’s like the earth itself opens up after the bridge. Then, take a listen to her quietude and interiority on   wedding ballad ”Inseparable.” Her vocal mastery was impressive then, and it’s impressive now. What did Natalie Cole and Aretha Franklin share? Unusual childhoods. As the daughter of famed preacher C. L. Franklin, Aretha learned to sing as iconic gospel singers like Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson visited her home Natalie Cole got her musical start meeting jazz icons in her father’s parlor. She also inherited his angel eyes and his   crossover sound. Cole’s polished, refined soprano has always sounded less Franklin and more like an amalgam of diverse types: I hear Diana Ross’ silken plaintiveness (especially on the halting Michael   ”Someone That I Used to Love” from 1980) I hear Streisand’s     and precise intonation and I hear gospel dynamo Tramaine Hawkins’   therapeutic clarion. Maybe the most fitting comparison is Nancy Wilson. Like Natalie Cole after her, Wilson moved freely and adeptly between jazz, RB and gospel, creating a seamless fusion approach all her own. Even in the   seventies, Natalie Cole was never really an album artist she also more or less sidestepped disco in its late ’70s heyday. All the more amazing, then, that her memorable catalog of singles has remained in steady circulation. Exuberant,     pop, 1975’s ”This Will Be” is her best work, and it still sounds like the musical equivalent of a sunshower (though it’s become annoyingly associated with eHarmony commercials). Natalie Cole could also branch out into slightly more experimental territory, like her   cover ”Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” or   jazz ”La Costa,” something of an early template for chillout and  . Natalie Cole was no slouch as a live performer, either. The 1978 version of ”I’m Catching Hell” from Natalie: Live remains a searing, sweaty soul masterclass, replete with its Lou   Jackson style monologue. For Cole, the titular catching of said hell was far from fictional: as she turned to drugs, her career fell into slump for much of the ’80s. When Cole got clean, she flirted with chart success once again, delivering   pop hits like the  ”Freeway of Love”  ”Pink Cadillac” and the Whitney   ”Miss You like Crazy.” But what really changed her orbit was 1991’s barnstorming Unforgettable. ..with Love, a pop standards cover album that featured Cole magically duetting with her late father on a clever   of his 1951 classic ”Unforgettable.” The song, which nabbed Grammys for Song and Record of the Year, was many things at once: a sentimental celebration of   love, a sonic bridge between disparate eras, an ambitious career rebranding for Cole herself and an uncanny demonstration of technological marvel that forecasted our current era of posthumous Tupac and Michael Jackson holograms. Natalie Cole’s move into jazz was a total boss move: by the ’90s, RB was becoming   and more   influenced (think Mary J. Blige) leaving considerably less space for the sentimental romantic balladry that had first made her popular in the ’70s. Given that Natalie Cole had neither the improv chops nor the artistic bohemianism of, say, jazz mavericks like Dianne Reeves or Cassandra Wilson, her jazz discography (including records like 1993’s Take a Look, 1996’s Stardust and 2008’s Still Unforgettable) is competent, genteel, tasteful, and respectable, but hardly transcendent. Still, her   approach to   fusion, not entirely dissimilar from artists like Brenda Russell and Oleta Adams, helped pave a path for future stars in the   field like Vanessa Williams, Queen Latifah and, I’d venture, even later mainstream acts ranging from Michael Bublé to   Rod Stewart. I met Ms. Cole on several occasions, often via our mutual colleague Denise Rich. In 2006, when she was crafting her album Leavin’ I suggested to her   director that she would sound great singing the saucy but      ’70s track by RB vocalist Ronnie Dyson called ”The More You Do It (the More I Like It Done to Me).” Imagine my surprise to see her throwback cover end up on the album itself the opportunity to hear Natalie Cole revisit her own origins was a potent reminder why so many of us fell in love with her sound in the first place. It’s understandable that Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin got the —  disproportionately —  lion’s share of the spotlight when it came to considerations of black female RB in the ’70s (not unlike the way Beyoncé receives such attention today). However, there is so much more we as audiences can and should say about the   and   queens (and kings) who are just as valuable to the dramatic game of thrones played in the royal court of RB. Just as we should talk more about the brilliance of acts like Natalie Cole, we should also talk more about the work of her peer acts like The Pointer Sisters and Minnie Riperton and a whole host of other talents who too often get pushed under the radar. We can extend that logic and say that in 2016, we owe it to ourselves to talk more about the brilliance of RB singers like Avery Sunshine, Jazmine Sullivan and Ledisi (to name a few). Our endless imperializing focus on who’s on top in RB —  that is to say, who’s the queen at any given moment —  obscures the rich bounty of soulful music that lies before us (and it often pits women against each other). Your music is everlasting, Ms. Cole: rest in peace."
"This was a   year for rooftop solar power. It’s booming across the country. But as more homeowners make their own power, electric utilities are making less money, and that’s shaking up their business model. Utilities in two states  —   California and Georgia  —   are handling the growth of solar in dramatically different ways. Matt Brown recently got solar panels on his Oakland, Calif. home, but it’s dark out right now  —   his panels aren’t working. So Brown’s appliances are running on electricity he’s buying from his utility, Pacific Gas  Electric. So even with solar panels, you might think his utility bill is pretty high. ”Right now we’re projected basically to have a zero bill,” he says. Zero dollars. That’s because during the day, when Brown’s panels are cranking out electricity, he sells the extra back to PGE. The power he sells cancels out the power he buys. That’s what makes solar so financially attractive  —   at least, for him. Less so for PGE. ”It is going to be a challenge for the utility,” says Aaron Johnson, a vice president at the utility. PGE is home to a quarter of all the rooftop solar systems in the country, and a new one comes online every seven minutes. To handle that, Johnson says, today’s electric grid needs an upgrade. ”As we begin to build that modern, 21st century grid, everyone’s going to have to contribute to that,” Johnson says. ”And we think solar customers need to contribute to that.” He’s saying with their low bills, solar customers aren’t pitching in enough. That’s creating a shortfall that PGE says will reach almost $3 billion a year within a decade. So California’s utilities want to pay new solar customers less for their extra electricity and to add new monthly fees. ”That argument can only come from a monopoly that is used to selling every electron to every customer for the past 100 years,” says Walker Wright at Sunrun, one of the largest solar companies in the country. ”What rooftop solar represents is the first true form of competition.” Wright sees the proposed fees as a direct attack on the solar industry. The same thing happened in Arizona, where a utility recently started charging its solar customers $50 a month. ”We saw a 95 percent drop in the applications for solar,” Wright says. ”We saw absolute devastation in the market, and it’s created a lot of anxiety.” That’s not something California wants to do, Wright argues, when the state has big renewable energy goals. Whatever California regulators decide, the state makes up more than 40 percent of the country’s solar market  —   so the precedent set here could spread nationwide, says Brian Chin, a utilities analyst with Merrill Lynch. ”A lot of times these states all kind of look at each other and go, well, if they can do that and it’s reasonable, then we can do it too,” he says. Chin says it just shows how solar is disrupting the way electric utilities do business. ”You look at the business model, and you can’t help but go: The business model has to change in the next 15 years in some way, shape or form,” he says. That’s why utilities in some other states are trying a different approach to solar. Georgia Power, that state’s biggest utility, is getting into the rooftop solar game itself. The company will evaluate your house, to see if you’re a good candidate for solar panels, and it will even get them installed for you. ”In case our customers do want to add rooftop solar, we want to be there to sell it to them,” says Jacob Hawkins, a spokesman for Georgia Power. The utility launched the rooftop part of its business about six months ago. But in general, unlike some other utilities, Georgia Power isn’t acting like rooftop solar panels are a threat. ”We look at it not as necessarily something brand new, but an evolution of something that we’ve always done,” Hawkins says. Now, there are a few important differences between Georgia and California when it comes to solar. Electricity costs less in Georgia, so it makes less financial sense for people to get rooftop solar panels. When residents do have solar panels on their roofs, the utility doesn’t pay as much to buy the extra energy generated, as it would in California. But solar is growing here. ”I believe Georgia Power’s made great strides,” says Jason Rooks, a lobbyist in Georgia for the Solar Energy Industries Association. He says just a few years ago, ”I remember, down at the capital, hearing that solar won’t work in Georgia because it’s too cloudy, too much humidity in Georgia, and then of course it was too expensive.” He says that mood started to shift thanks in part to the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities.  ”When I ran for office I promised to try solar myself,” says Tim Echols, one of the commissioners. He says that taught him a few things, ”with the first lesson being: Don’t put solar on a house in the shade.” Echols says the commission brought Georgia Power to the table and directed the company to add more solar power, especially with solar farms. But Echols wasn’t in any rush to do that. ”Our commission is all Republican, and we wanted to make sure this would work financially,” he says. That all means the state has been slow to adopt solar, especially rooftop solar. Jason Rooks, the solar industry lobbyist, says that’s not necessarily been a bad thing. ”In hindsight, there’s a benefit to that, even as a solar advocate, that we haven’t had the trial and error of early adoption,” he says. Solar is still pretty tiny in Georgia. It accounts for about 1 percent of all the energy generated in the state, and rooftop solar panels  —   as opposed to large solar farms  —   are only a tiny percentage of that. But there’s a lot of potential. And with the utility here embracing rooftop solar, it may be forging a different path than states like California. Lauren Sommer is a reporter with member station KQED Molly Samuel reports for member station WABE."
"Washington state has released an estimated 3, 200 convicted felons early  —   but not due to sentencing reform. State officials say the early releases have been happening by accident for more than 12 years because of a software glitch. ”Approximately 3 percent of all released inmates since 2002 were released earlier than allowed by law,” said Nick Brown, the governor’s general counsel, talking about a flaw in the software Washington state uses to calculate prison sentences. He said the problem was first flagged three years ago, when a crime victim’s family was notified the perpetrator was about to get out  —   early. ”The family did its own calculation, determined that the offender was getting out earlier than the court had ordered, and contacted the department to ask why this was happening,” Brown said. It turns out the department of correction’s software was improperly giving some inmates credit for good behavior. Even though the problem was discovered in 2012, the department repeatedly delayed fixing the software, until Gov. Jay Inslee says the problem finally came to his attention last month. He disclosed the problem to the media in a press conference shortly before Christmas. ”That this problem was allowed to continue to exist for 13 years is deeply disappointing, it is totally unacceptable, and frankly, it is maddening,” Inslee says. Washington state officials are now in full   mode. Until the software is fixed, they say no one will be released without a ” ” of the release date. They say convicts who got out early got out on average less than two months before the correct date. Still, Brown, the general counsel, acknowledged last week that some of those people probably committed crimes during that time they were supposed to be in prison. ”What we know is based on the law of averages,” he said. ”Approximately 10 percent of all inmates who are released from prison commit some new offense in the first year of their release.” And sure enough, since last week, the Washington state Department of Corrections has been collecting the bad news. One convict has been charged with committing vehicular homicide after his early release another is charged with   murder. In a conference call Thursday, Dan Pacholke, the state’s secretary of corrections, said the state is still digging into what crimes may have been committed by   in the period of time they should have still been in prison. ”I’m very concerned about what we will uncover as we move forward. There’s likely to be more crime that has been committed during that window, but I can’t really speculate on the numbers,” Pacholke said. ”But it concerns me deeply . .. the tragedy that is being produced based on early release.” The state is now rounding people up. Convicts who were mistakenly released years ago and have stayed out of trouble don’t have to worry about going back to prison, because the state will credit the days they’ve been out and on good behavior toward the unserved balance of their sentences. But people who’ve been released more recently and still owe time are being taken back into custody. A spokesman for the department of corrections says some of those people have voluntarily reported in those who aren’t immediately located will have warrants issued for their arrest. So far, 31 of the early released inmates have been taken back into custody. Most of those who’ve been taken back into custody have not been accused of committing new crimes while they were on the outside. For those who’ve been trying to hold on to jobs and restart their lives, this unexpected   comes as an unwelcome shock."
"When a poor country is hit with a sudden catastrophe  —   say, an earthquake or a tsunami  —   the world is quick to send aid. But a   disaster, the kind that unfolds over weeks or even months, is another story. There are no immediate, dramatic TV images, no screaming headlines. And that means it’s really tough for aid groups to raise the money needed. Just ask John Graham. He’s the head of the aid group Save the Children, and he’s watching a   disaster unfold in Ethiopia as the world remains largely oblivious. It started with last year’s winter rains  —   or rather, the lack thereof. They were barely a trickle. Then came spring. ”[Spring rains are] not terribly reliable, you see them fail fairly frequently,” says Graham. ”But this year they failed quite spectacularly.” Everyone hoped the summer rains would make up for it. But they were almost as disappointing due to this year’s El Nino, a periodic warming in the Pacific Ocean that plays havoc with weather systems worldwide. Pastoral regions where people raise cattle were among the worst hit. ”Animals died,” recalls Graham. ”People by tens of thousands had to trek into places where they could get water, get food. A lot of the children were severely malnourished.” By August, it had become official: Ethiopia is in the midst of its worst drought in decades. That’s devastating in a country where at least 80 percent of people live off the land. Graham didn’t need to wait for the harvest to know people were going to start running out of food pretty quickly. ”I began to think my goodness, ’The scale of this thing is going to be enormous,’” recalls Graham. ”How are all of us going to handle it?” So Graham’s group joined an effort led by the Ethiopian government and the United Nations to assess the need. In August they released a detailed plan for delivering emergency food assistance to 4. 5 million people. And they called on major donors such as the United States to help fund it. In October, as the situation worsened, they expanded the plan to cover more than 8 million people. Earlier this month they issued the latest appeal: for $1. 4 billion to feed and otherwise assist more than 10 million people through next June. Yet each time the donors have only come through with a portion of the funds. The shortfall in international aid now stands at $1. 2 billion. And given the long lead times for purchasing food and getting it to remote areas, says Graham, that money needs to be committed in a matter of weeks. ”We know what’s going to unfold here. But this just isn’t getting the visibility.” He thinks there’s a paradoxical explanation. So far, the relief effort has managed to limp along, in part thanks to an infusion of $200 million from the Ethiopian government. That arrangement can’t last, but for now we’re not seeing a lot of starving people in Ethiopia. And that, says Graham, makes his   efforts ”a lot harder.” He finds this maddening. ”Are we supposed to wait until we have these children suffering and malnourished, before people are going to respond?” That’s what happened during the horrific famine in the   that killed hundreds of thousands in Ethiopia. The world didn’t really step up until TV screens were filled with images of emaciated kids. ”This time we’re saying, ’We can just prevent all of that. But we can’t wait,’ says Graham. This type of situation is common in aid work, says Tom Kirsch, director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He says the world is just a lot more responsive to immediate disasters than it is to   ones. ”Where we have a very dramatic sudden event that causes widespread destruction and death it captures a lot of attention,” says Kirsch. By contrast, he adds, ”When you get to the cases where you can actually prevent a crisis like this  —   where we can intervene early and prevent widespread death  —   we don’t get the media attention. We don’t get the politicians falling over themselves to organize funds.” Kirsch says the irony is that   disasters often have more severe and lasting consequences. Droughts are only one example. There are refugee crises and   floods  —   like ones that devastated Pakistan in 2010, displacing millions. ”But because [the floods] were gradual onset over the course of weeks to months, they didn’t get the press and [Pakistan] didn’t get the recovery [dollars].” Jan Egeland, a former U. N. Emergency Relief Coordinator who now heads the aid group Norwegian Refugee Council, says there’s another urgent reason the world needs to start getting the response to these cases right. ”Climate change will make these kinds of slow, creeping tremendous disasters even more frequent.” As for Save the Children’s John Graham, he stresses it’s not too late for Ethiopia. He says, this doesn’t have to be yet another cautionary tale. ”This one, could just be a tremendous success story.”"
"Michael Oxley, a former Republican congressman from Ohio, died this morning at 71. His family says his death was the result of lung cancer  —   though they add that he was not a smoker. Rep. Oxley’s name is plenty familiar to anybody who works in finance. The   Act of 2002 governs almost every aspect of a company’s financial reporting and accounting practices, and people in the industry often complain about the cost of complying with all the reporting rules. Some say SOX  —   as the act Oxley   with Sen. Paul Sarbanes,  . is called inside the financial industry  —   is driving companies to the simpler regulatory climates of overseas markets. But what’s often forgotten is why   was passed. Before the financial crisis of 2008, there was the the   implosion of 2000, and the   fraud revealed by the collapse of Enron and the alleged complicity of its auditing company, the late Arthur Andersen. As Oxley recalled five years later, there was intense pressure on Congress to reform corporate accounting in America. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, he said he barely could risk walking onto the House floor, because he would be ”besieged” by colleagues who’d just come back from their districts, where their constituents had demanded reform. In retrospect, he came to believe that this ”  political response” was a result of the fact that Americans had spent the previous generation becoming a ”nation of investors,” as pensions were replaced by 401( k) retirement plans. ”Those people intuitively understood that that was their money,” he said. This ”democratization” of Wall Street was something the financial industry had long been pushing for  —   and it got what it wanted, as 401( k)s became the new normal. What Wall Street hadn’t bargained for  —   but Michael Oxley understood  —   was that with this democratization of the investment industry came a new obligation for companies to show their cards. It’s an obligation that many on Wall Street consider a burden to this day, as they complain about the pains of complying with  ."
"Last year, snowpack across the Sierra Nevada was just 5 percent of average. Up and down the West Coast in fact, the   season was marked by late openings, early closings and some resorts not opening at all. This year’s strong start will be good news for farms and cities down the mountain later, but it’s especially promising right now for people like Andy Wirth, the resort’s CEO. He took over in 2011, a record snowfall year, only to be followed by three dry years and then last year, the driest in 1, 200 years.  ”Mother Nature forced us to focus on every single element of our business, from the revenue perspective, from the cost structure perspective, from the service levels, you name it,” Wirth says. To cope, Wirth redirected $8 million into new, more efficient, automated   systems. The other big thing they did was pool together with other resorts around the country to sell a collective pass. That way when it was dry in California, Squaw could still make some money from sales elsewhere. ”The past four years has been really tough, yet, we’ve not only survived, because of our capital structure, because of our work, we’ve done quite well,” Wirth says.  Local season pass sales actually climbed during the drought. Yet Squaw still saw a pretty brutal 25 percent drop in overall business.   Climate Change, For a lot of people on this mountain, California’s historic drought has been a glimpse of what skiing might be like with climate change. Extreme snowboarders like Jeremy Jones began noticing the changes here as early as 2003. A few years later, he founded a group called ”Protect Our Winters,” where by professional skiers and riders like him lobby Congress on climate policy and try to raise public awareness about   climate change. ”If we do get to a point where we can’t operate a ski area, the least of our problems is gonna be us skiers and snowboarders riding down these mountains,” Jones says. Standing atop one of his favorite lines under the   lift, with the famous deep blue Lake Tahoe off in the distance, Jones is as excited as the next person about the good early season snow. But he’s worried for the future. A lower altitude mountain like this may have the toughest go in a warmer climate, he says. Things are already pretty fickle. ”It is all about feast or famine these days, it’s like, record breaking storm, record breaking lows, snowing in June, 70 degrees in January,” Jones says. ”You have to adapt and when the conditions do line up, take advantage of them.” Skiers As Eternal Optimists, Make no mistake, industry executives like Andy Wirth are counting on their customers being flexible in the years ahead. Wirth is a   environmentalist, a   firefighter and forest ranger even. His grandfather used to run the National Park Service. But he’s also in the business of making money from snow. It’s his job to be optimistic. ”There might be a year, where the skiing starts here,” he says from the resort’s   gondola. ”But there’s going to be years where it starts at lake level,   below us.” Wirth believes ski resorts can be profitable as the climate changes. Their business models just have to adapt to volatility. To that end, on a recent morning, he cut the ribbon on the resort’s new $7 million upgrade to its Siberia Express lift. It now carries six skiers per chair  —   from the previous four  —   up to the top of one of Squaw Valley’s most consistently snowy peaks. It’s also designed to keep running in high winds. After all, the higher reaches of the mountain might be where most of the skiing happens in the decades to come. For his part, Wirth is confident there will be skiing here in 50 years. He says he knows climate change is real and seasons will be volatile, but he doesn’t think it’s going to be as dramatic as no snow at all. ”It’s rhetoric that’s been used to bring attention to climate change, I get it and I support that,” Wirth says. ”But I have the obligation to run this business in a thoughtful and objective fashion and that doesn’t match with thoughtfulness, science and objectivity.” It’s a bet he and resorts like Squaw Valley are clearly hedging."
"The wastewater treatment plant in Grand Junction, Colo. takes in 8 million gallons of raw sewage  —   what’s flushed down the toilet and sinks. Processing this sewage produces a lot of methane, which the plant used to just burn off into the air. The process was ”not good for the environment and a waste of a wonderful resource,” says Dan Tonello, manager of the Persigo Wastewater Treatment Plant. Now, using more infrastructure, the facility refines the methane further to produce natural gas chemically identical to what’s drilled from underground. Grand Junction has been replacing an aging fleet of garbage trucks and buses with natural gas vehicles, fueled mostly by the   gas from the treatment plant. Tonello says Grand Junction is the first city in the nation to do that. ”We’re looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars a year being saved by implementing this process,” he says. Europe has been extracting natural gas from organic waste for about a decade, and now it’s starting to pick up in the U. S. Joanna Underwood, president of Energy Vision, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding the use of this renewable natural gas, or RNG, says Grand Junction is a model for small wastewater treatment plants around the country. It’s cleaner than diesel fuel, and puts emissions that were heading for the atmosphere anyway to good use. And there are other sources beyond human waste. Right now, for instance, food scraps are being collected from restaurant, grocery stores and large food manufacturers all over Colorado’s densely populated front range. In a few weeks, the collected waste will be shipped to northern Colorado, where the Heartland Biogas facility is in its final stages of construction. It’s much bigger than the Grand Junction treatment plant, one of the largest in North America, according to Bob Yost, whose company A1 Organics is partnering with the facility to coordinate the delivery of all that food. Yost estimates there could be 25 to 30 semi loads of food waste coming in per day, which is then mixed with manure from a local dairy farm. The best way to get the most natural gas from waste, according to Yost, is for a facility to have a balanced diet of both food scraps and manure. The RNG is then delivered by the same pipelines used to deliver fossil fuel natural gas. If all the organic waste in the country were gathered, current technologies could produce enough natural gas to replace about half of the diesel fuel used in U. S. transportation, says Energy Vision’s Underwood. ”For this sector, which in and of itself is big, it’s not a small piece,” she says. It’s not a replacement for the traditional oil and gas industry by a longshot. But, as Underwood argues, practical solutions to climate change have to be assembled piece by piece. This story was reported with Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focusing on America’s energy issues."
"A shooter has opened fire in downtown Tel Aviv, killing two Israelis and wounding others, hospital officials said. Daniel Estrin told our Newscast unit that police are searching for the gunman. Here’s more: ”Hospital officials say two Israelis died of their wounds, 2 are in serious condition and one is in light to moderate condition. The shooting took place at what is being described as a bar or restaurant in central Tel Aviv on a busy weekend afternoon. Israeli media are broadcasting footage of shattered windows and a pool of blood on the pavement. Police say the circumstances of the shooting are unclear   whether or not it is connected to the recent attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. Witness Nati Shakked, owner of a bar that was hit by gunfire, told Reuters that ”the assailant had waited on a bench outside before taking a   out of a bag and ’shooting in every direction. ’” We’ll update with more details as they become available."
"  popcorn oil is in high demand at Oasis Foods, a manufacturer of cooking oils, mayonnaise and other products that restaurants and distributors often purchase by the ton. ”We get a rush this time of year with all the   at the holidays,” says Duke Gillingham, president of Oasis, at his factory in Hillside, N. J. just west of Newark Liberty Airport. The company’s health insurance coverage is not as popular as its popcorn oil. Oasis offered health insurance to all employees for 2015, to comply with a new Affordable Care Act mandate. And while some employees did sign up for the insurance  —   the company doubled the number of people on its health plan over previous years  —   about   of the employees declined the coverage. With monthly premiums of roughly $350 for a family of four, and with a $2, 500 annual deductible, it was too expensive for factory workers, many of whom earn between $10 and $15 an hour. Gillingham says he hasn’t been able to find decent insurance much cheaper than that, and he cannot afford to significantly raise his employees’ wages. ”The sad fact is we’re in a very competitive business,” he says. ”We wish we could make [insurance] more affordable, but it’s essentially what the business can bear. If we don’t watch what we’re doing, we can be   and that doesn’t serve any of the employees well.” Companies Look To Avoid Penalties, Oasis Foods, a subsidiary of a Swedish food manufacturer, has about 180 workers. As of Jan. 1, smaller firms  —   those that employ between 51 and 100 workers  —   are being phased into the same mandate that Oasis faced in 2015. Companies must offer affordable coverage to all employees, and will be subject to a penalty if their workers instead turn to the health exchange to buy subsidized coverage. There’s no penalty for companies, it turns out, if workers qualify for Medicaid  —   though there could be controversy. At firms like Oasis,   workers are candidates more often for Medicaid than for the state or federal insurance exchange. To qualify for Medicaid, applicants may earn no more than 138 percent of the federal poverty level  —   or roughly $16, 000 for a single person and around $33, 000 for a household of four. Employers have not historically played a significant role in helping workers enroll in Medicaid. But Gillingham’s insurance broker told him about a startup called BeneStream, which is based in New York City and facilitates enrollment in the government program. Company Shifts Insurance Costs To The Government, Founded two years ago with seed money from the Ford Foundation, BeneStream now helps more than 6, 500 workers at 125 companies across the country get Medicaid. CEO Benjamin Geyerhahn says moving workers from private insurance to Medicaid helps firms shift their costs to the government. ”The savings is quite significant,” he says. ”Our average is about 250 percent  —   so about     times the money you spend on us comes back to you in the form of saved premium.” Geyerhahn says going onto Medicaid, which is nearly free for employees, is a good deal, though it lacks the generous benefits of more expensive plans. If employees make so little that they’re eligible for Medicaid, he says, they probably can’t afford regular insurance premiums, especially when combined with the high deductibles that undermine much of the benefit of insurance. ”Yes, this [level of coverage] is something that will help them if they get in a car accident or have a heart attack,” he says, ”but this isn’t something that’s going to help them manage their health over the course of the year.”   McDonald’s and some large companies have drawn fire for not providing employees with health insurance, but instead relying on taxpayers to fund workers’ health needs via Medicaid. Ken Jacobs, chair of the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center, says companies whose workers get Medicaid should bear some of the burden of the cost to taxpayers. Critics Think Employers Should Pay Bigger Share, ”Those employers should be paying more into the general pot that pays for health care, rather than putting those costs onto everyone else,” he says. California legislators considered imposing a state tax penalty for companies whose workers get Medicaid, but lawmakers ultimately rejected the proposal. Linda Blumberg, an economist at the Urban Institute, says that whether you are looking at a vast company like   or a   one like Oasis Foods, compensation is about  . The more you pay for people’s insurance, the less you have to put in their paychecks. ”When workers are ” Blumberg says, ”I would rather that we publicly finance their medical care, make it very accessible to them, have low   so that’s not a barrier to them getting necessary care, and let them have a little bit higher wages in order to compensate.” And even the large increases in the minimum wage currently being contemplated or phased in by several states and cities might still not be enough for those workers to afford most   insurance, given the high premiums and deductibles of such plans. At Oasis, Gillingham says his company pays a lot in taxes, so getting   health care for some workers amounts to a ”fair deal.” He contrasts this system to one he and his family of six experienced in England. ”My kids didn’t suffer from having a   or   checkup,” he says, compared with doctor visits in the United States  —   that may have been twice as long, and at much higher expense, but without any noticeable difference in results. ”We didn’t see any of the demons that people speak of when they talk about socialized medicine,” Gillingham says. ”There were no lines, no poor   .” But despite being relatively upbeat about government healthcare, he concedes that Oasis workers so far have given Medicaid mixed reviews. Some doctors and hospitals take the insurance, but many don’t. Still, that’s true of most health insurance, Gillingham says. A Gallup poll last month found that 67 percent of Americans, in general, are satisfied with the country’s health care system, compared with 75 percent of people who are on Medicaid. ”I think the system is evolving,” Gillingham says. ”I don’t know where it’s going to go, but I know it’s going to change, and we need to adapt and make use of the system in the best way possible.” This story was produced as part of NPR’s partnership with WNYC and Kaiser Health News."
"Claudio Sanchez is the senior member of the NPR Ed team, with more than 25 years on the education beat. We asked him for his list of the top stories he’ll be watching in 2016. 1. The New Federal Education Law, The long, grueling fight to overhaul the    No Child Left Behind law is over, but that’ll turn out to be the easy part. The new Every Student Succeeds Act returns most government oversight of schools back to states. But there are no guarantees that the states will do a better job than the federal government in two key areas: closing the achievement gap and raising the performance of the absolute worst schools. There will be some relief for students burdened by excessive testing. But for the most part states will continue to rely on test scores, using them to punish schools rather than for improving curriculum and instruction. Reading and math scores will drop for all kids on the new, tougher standardized tests linked to the Common Core. But the dismal performance of groups that struggle will trigger more scrutiny from civil rights groups in 2016. We’ll also see those groups pressure states to deal with teacher quality and funding. 2. Moving On From Common Core, The controversy over the   Common Core State Standards will diminish. States will continue their efforts to   or rename the standards, while for the most part following them. Despite the political controversy, the push for high academic standards will continue, and we’ll see little of the ”race to the bottom” that happened under NCLB. 3. Charter Schools Under A Microscope, The charter school movement will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2016. With 6, 700 schools and nearly 3million students across 43 states and the District of Columbia, charters are a powerful force. The federal government has poured billions of dollars into charters, and polling shows that a majority of Americans support them. But you can expect these publicly funded, privately run schools to face new scrutiny, and new criticism. We’ll see more scandals involving fraud, corruption and mismanagement, despite efforts to weed out ”bad actors” who’ve exploited weak charter laws in several states. As Joe Nathan, a senior fellow at the Center for School Change, who helped write charter school legislation in 32 states, puts it: ”We have not done enough to deal with the crooks and charlatans, of which we have our share.” Charters will also be one of the very few education issues to get any attention in the presidential campaign. 4. Dreamers Dreams Deferred, There will be an even stronger backlash against the push for greater access to college for undocumented students. Dreamers  —   students brought to the U. S. illegally as children  —   will face greater opposition because of the stalemate over immigration reform. The angry,   rhetoric from Republicans running for president will also shape this debate. Look for state lawmakers to consider even tougher measures to deny dreamers any benefits and push them deeper into a legal and educational limbo. 5. Goodbye   Admissions, Watch for the U. S. Supreme Court to ban race in college admissions, forcing institutions to abandon affirmative action policies. Schools will have to rethink how they recruit and enroll students in efforts to increase diversity. This will fuel an already tense situation on many campuses. Expect minority student protests and campus unrest to intensify. 6. Student Debt Takes Center Stage, Higher education leaders, or what presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio calls ”the   cartel,” effectively killed the Obama administration’s attempt to create a more transparent,   way for students and parents to rate colleges. But with many of the presidential candidates calling for   or   college, we’ll see these institutions undertake a more serious discussion about changing their pricing policies  —   largely out of fear that lawmakers in Washington will step in and do it for them."
"Oklahoma City residents woke early New Year’s Day to a magnitude 4. 2 quake. Earlier this week, a magnitude 4. 3 quake struck the same area. The state isn’t historically known for earthquakes, but NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce told our Newscast unit that Oklahoma ”has recently seen a dramatic rise in seismic activity.” Here’s more: ”If you think of a U. S. state associated with earthquakes, it’s probably California. But really, you should think Oklahoma. In 2015, Oklahoma hit an   high, with more than 800 quakes of magnitude 3 or greater. That busts the record set in 2014, which topped the previous record set the year before. State officials have said this rise is very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process. The concern is that these quakes may be linked to oil and gas drilling  —   specifically, the way wastewater produced by the drilling is pumped into deep underground disposal wells. Oklahoma is trying to address the issue. It has a coordinating council on seismic activity that includes regulators, scientists and industry representatives.” Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma further explained the connection between the oil and gas industry and the increasing number of quakes, on Weekend Edition Saturday in November: ”Oil and gas production creates a lot of toxic wastewater. To keep it from contaminating drinking water, oil companies inject the fluid into underground disposal wells. That can put pressure on faults, causing them to slip, which scientists say is responsible for Oklahoma’s massive earthquake spike.” And even as scientists blame the oil and gas industry for the new seismic activity, ”researchers say the earthquakes could compromise the economically vital energy hub.” StateImpact says the National Research Council advises ”investigating any potential site’s history of earthquakes and its proximity to fault lines.” Other scientists suggest ”that companies look for new ways of disposing of wastewater altogether.”"
"What’s the universe made of? It’s a question that’s been bothering scientists and philosophers for millennia, and has become even more vexing in recent decades, as physicists have become convinced that most of the universe is made of something we can’t see or touch or measure. At least not yet. Richard Gaitskell hopes to change that. He’s a physicist at Brown University, and the leader of a team that aims to be the first to describe this mysterious dark matter. So, if they can’t see or touch or measure dark matter, why are they so sure it exists? One reason is based on work done by astronomer Vera Rubin of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in the 1970s. She measured the rate at which galaxies rotate. ”If you look at a typical galaxy,” Gaitskell explained, ”and count up all the stars in the galaxy  —   which is perfectly possible for us to do this day  —   you find that the speed at which that galaxy rotates is simply too fast to be held together by the mass of those stars alone.” Without something providing the gravity to hold the stars in as the galaxy rotates, stars would fly outward into space, like a bunch of dishes flying off a spinning Lazy Susan. Gaitskell explained that if you calculate how much gravity is needed to hold a galaxy together, ”you find that 90 percent of the matter of that galaxy has to be some other dark material, which is why we don’t see it in our telescopes.” Once scientists were convinced dark matter had to exist, they realized it couldn’t be something conventional, like a cloud of interstellar soot. So they looked for evidence of something more exotic, using giant particle accelerators and sensitive detectors. They found . .. nothing. ”It cannot be a conventional particle that we already know about,” Gaitskell said. ”That, of course, makes it so fascinating, because it has to be new physics.” He said most scientists are now convinced that what makes dark matter so devilishly hard to pin down is that it doesn’t interact with anything  —   even though there’s an enormous amount of it all around us all the time. ”You’ve probably got a hundred million dark matter particles going through your hand every second,” Gaitskell said. And none of them will leave any trace. ”You could have your hand out for a century and not have a single dark matter particle interact with it,” he said. But theory predicts that at some point one of these particles will interact with something, he says. So the next question is, ”Can we build an instrument that is sensitive enough to actually get the first signal?” There are more than a dozen teams around the world trying to do just that. Gaitskell leads one of the efforts, called LUX  —   the Large Underground Xenon experiment. To search for dark matter, you need an environment that’s extremely ”quiet” in terms of energetic particles, Gaitskell said cosmic rays and other forms of radiation can give a spurious signal. Liquid xenon  —   within a tank deep beneath Earth’s surface  —   provides just such the right environment. About a mile deep, inside a former gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota, roughly 815 pounds of liquid xenon sits in a tank festooned with detectors. The LUX team has plans to build another detector, containing 20 times more liquid xenon, later this decade. So far, none of the world’s detectors have found anything definitive. I asked Gaitskell if it ever gets frustrating to keep coming up empty. Wouldn’t he prefer to work on something with a higher chance of success? No, he said. ”Even a small chance at ushering in this new generation of our understanding of both cosmology and fundamental particle physics  —   that’s too good an opportunity to pass up.” You can’t blame a guy for trying."
"The Great British Bake Off was the most popular program in Britain in 2015, and the show boasts a devout following in the U. S. [Ed. Note: If you’re part of that U. S. following, be warned: We’re about to discuss the most recent season, which hasn’t yet aired in the U. S.] The show’s latest winner, Nadiya Hussain, spent weeks whipping up traditional British pastries such as cream horns and iced buns, all while wearing a crisp white apron and a traditional black headscarf. ”Nadiya has brought something special to The Bake Off,” raved judge Paul Hollywood during the show’s October finale. ”Her ideas have flair. Her emotion, her passion were all in her bakes. She just nailed the whole final and that was the best tasting final we ever had.” Hussain’s win was widely seen as a triumph of British multiculturalism. And by regularly showing a   Muslim woman outside the context of hate crimes, terrorism or politics, The Bake Off is part of a small but significant shift in how   women were represented on TV in 2015. Across the Atlantic, Muslim women in headscarves competed on two American reality shows: Fox’s primetime series Home Free, in which contestants help build houses, and MasterChef. MasterChef contestant Amanda Saab is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants and wears a hijab. She didn’t take the MasterChef title, but she says her personal win was just getting a chance to be herself on national TV. She cracked jokes, showed her creative side and even cooked bacon as part of a breakfast challenge. ”And that wasn’t highlighted at all in that episode, but for me it was huge,” Saab says. ”I mean, for me it was the first time I cooked bacon.” Saab didn’t actually taste the bacon, even though she prepared it. She says she had decided to use any items thrown at her in a challenge, even ones Muslims are supposed to avoid, like pork and alcohol. Evelyn Alsultany, author of Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after   says   relatable people are far removed from the two kinds of   Muslim women usually depicted in scripted television. ”Terrorist or CIA agent,” she says ruefully. ”Usually, if there is a character wearing hijab, it’s one episode and you’ll blink and miss it.” But Alsultany has recently seen a few   characters who are featured supporting players  —  inevitably, both are in dark,   dramas. ABC’s Quantico has twin sister FBI recruits and the Showtime drama Homeland featured an analyst whose hijab made her boss suspicious. In a show that also portrays Muslims as the enemy, Alsultany says the Homeland role also lacked nuance. ”She is portrayed as a   woman,” she says, ”and that is her function.” Ultimately, Alsultany finds this   binary dehumanizing. ”It just also reveals how basic the level of conversation [about Muslims] is . .. in this country,” she says. But she also saw something new this year: a   character in a scripted drama that has nothing to do with Islamic extremism. Mr. Robot, on the USA Network, is about computer hackers, and one happens to be a young woman in a headscarf. Alsultany hopes 2016 will bring more   Muslim characters to our screens  —   including ones in headscarves."
"Iran appears to be racing toward a major milestone in the nuclear agreement reached this summer with six world powers: ”implementation day.” It’s a term with no fixed date, but it will be a big deal when it arrives. It’s the day when the United Nations Security Council lifts the financial and banking sanctions against Iran, and more than $100 billion in frozen assets will be freed up. But the day can only happen when international inspectors confirm that Iran has taken a number of steps to shrink and open up its nuclear program. All the signs suggest this is happening faster than many in the West expected. Iran and Russia recently announced that most of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium  —   more than 20, 000 pounds  —   had been loaded on a ship bound for Russia. Depending on how highly it is enriched, uranium can fuel either a nuclear power plant or a weapon of mass destruction. The shipping out of enriched uranium was unusually speedy for an   transaction, says Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director the American branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iran must still disable its   reactor at Arak, though that shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks once it begins, says Ali Vaez, who follows Iran for the International Crisis Group. That would close off the   ”plutonium pathway” to a weapon. The other big component everyone is watching is the removal of thousands of centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, and that seems to be speeding right along. One reason the centrifuges seem to be coming out faster than expected is that the Iranians were evidently not very cautious when it came to removing about 10, 000 older, inactive centrifuges, known as  . Fitzpatrick says Iran may have considered them all but unusable after sitting idle so long, so they just pulled them out relatively quickly. They have been taking more time with some of the other models, but Vaez says the remaining 1, 000 active   should be removed by the end of next week. Some more advanced models must also be dealt with. Fitzpatrick says there’s also a theory that not preserving the older centrifuges could give Iran a reason to keep technicians employed building new ones, to be used as replacements if anything breaks down. Rejoining The Global Financial System, Iranian negotiators originally predicted that completing its nuclear commitments it would only take two to three weeks, which was never seen as realistic in the West. But now even Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has to verify all these steps, says an implementation day by the end of January can’t be ruled out. Analyst Ali Vaez also thinks that’s possible, while Mark Fitzpatrick thinks early February may be more likely. When it happens, Iran will effectively rejoin the international banking system. In short, Iran will be more of a player in the region and beyond in 2016. Hardliners, including Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, became a major economic force in Iran during the years of sanctions, and an aggressive reaction has accompanied this push to implementation day. The backlash includes crackdowns on dissent and warning messages to businessmen, especially in the Iranian diaspora, who may be thinking of returning home to help rebuild the economy. Hardline pressure isn’t likely to die down soon, because there are important parliamentary elections coming up in March, and conservatives do not want President Hassan Rouhani and Iranian moderates to benefit politically from the lifting of sanctions. For the president and a faction of Iranian moderates and reformers who helped elect him in 2013, playing up implementation day and the economic benefits that will follow could provide an important political boost. However, Vaez notes that it’s already too late for those economic benefits to reach the Iranian street in a big way before voters head to the polls in March. Meanwhile, there are fights brewing over potential new sanctions involving a missile program that Iran argues isn’t part of the nuclear deal. U. S. conservatives will be watching for anything that looks like Iran isn’t living up to its commitments under the nuclear agreement."
"In 2014, Charlotte Wheelock and her husband, Nick Hodges, were hoping to find a new start. Struggling to raise their two young children, they left their home in Albuquerque, N. M. and struck out for Seattle to find better jobs. But before they could get established there, Nick was hospitalized with spinal stenosis  —   a condition that left him temporarily paralyzed below the waist. Soon, they found themselves without a place to live. ”I remember sleeping in the car while you’re in the emergency room,” Wheelock tells Hodges, on a recent visit with StoryCorps. ”The kids passed out in the back seat. We slept in the car outside, we slept in a parking garage.” ”I felt totally guilty,” Hodges answers, ”because I had a roof over my head, I was getting three meals a day, and I knew that you guys were out there struggling.” Wheelock recalls that, in those days, the two of them wouldn’t discuss her situation. She says she didn’t want to burden Hodges, who had his own struggle to deal with inside the hospital. When Wheelock and their kids came to visit, Hodges felt a wave of relief  —   and not just because he got to see his family again. It was also because he knew that, if only for the next few hours, they would be safe with him at the hospital. During those visits, while Hodges got a chance to watch the kids, Wheelock says she would dip away to the bathroom to cry. ”It’s a very thin line to walk when you’re trying to be normal for your kids but inside your head you’re scared to death,” Hodges says. It was only after Hodges was released from the hospital that things began to turn around. Wheelock recalls it was around that time that they discovered an apartment complex in the Seattle area for   people. Rent was set at 30 percent of family income. And out of 10 spaces available, Wheelock says, they managed to get one. ”It was just like so many doubts and worries just gone within a few seconds of hearing, ’Come get your keys,’ ” Hodges says. They got the keys to their apartment on New Year’s Eve one year ago. They moved their stuff in, shut the door behind them, locked it and kicked their shoes off. And it felt like home. ”At that point, we were homeless for 14 months, and I had almost forgotten what it’s like to have our own place,” Wheelock says. ”I’m just so ready to start making plans, and I’m so glad that we get to do it together.” These days, Wheelock works for a homeless shelter in Seattle  —   where her family once stayed themselves. ”I want to thank you,” Hodges says, ”for being strong and working so hard for all of us, so we could be whole again.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jud   and Eve Claxton. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"We get so many books in the mail  —   hundreds every week  —   that we can’t read them all, and sometimes all we can do with a book is say hey, that looks interesting, and file it away on the shelf. That’s what happened to Anita Anand’s book Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary, which was definitely the One That Got Away from me this year. I put it aside with vague good intentions, and then I forgot about it  —   until Princess Sophia ended up in the news. When the movie Suffragette came out in October, critics noticed something off: The film’s struggling women were all white. In fact, one of the most important women in the suffragette movement was an Indian princess, Sophia Duleep Singh. But she didn’t make an appearance in the movie. ”Suddenly there was this sort of tidal wave of outrage from people who were saying, why wasn’t she in the movie?” says Anand. ”So my first response was, why are you so angry? You hadn’t heard about her until fairly recently.” Anand herself knew nothing about Sophia until she saw an interesting face in an old magazine photo. ”It was black and white, but something about it just told me that this woman was as brown as I was,” she says. ”She had the same sort of features as one of my aunties, and I just thought, you know, I’ve been a political journalist for 20 years how is it that I don’t know about an Indian suffragette?” Here’s how the suffragette princess disappeared from history. Sophia Duleep Singh was named after her father, Duleep Singh, the last maharajah of the Sikh Empire. The British had forced him to give up his rich kingdom in Northern India  —   and his famous diamond, the     —   when he was just a child. Sophia grew up in England with Queen Victoria as her godmother. ”And then something changed,” Anand says. ”Something changed, to turn her into this harridan   who was out on the streets, embarrassing the throne, embarrassing the government, throwing herself at the police, campaigning for women’s rights. Her plummet from grace was just like a falling asteroid.” What changed? Sophia made a trip to India in 1903, to see the grand celebrations for the accession of King Edward VII as emperor of India. She was shocked by the deprivation and the brutality of life under British rule  —   and by the officials of the Raj, who treated her no better than any other brown face. ”So she returns from India suddenly with this sense of fire in her, that it is not right to have equals treated as underclasses, be they brown or be they female,” Anand says. Sophia wanted a cause to fight for, and she found several: better treatment of Indian soldiers and her lifelong passion, women’s rights. She threw herself into the struggle  —   grappling with police at protests, throwing herself at the prime minister’s car and selling suffragette newspapers outside her apartment at Hampton Court Palace. All of this enraged the British government. Sophia was constantly getting arrested. And while she was never behind bars for long  —   no one wanted to lock up or   Queen Victoria’s goddaughter  —   authorities found other ways to get to her. ”She was really punished for standing up to the British establishment, and as a result, more or less deleted from history,” Anand says. The government worked to keep Sophia’s name out of the headlines its refusal to throw her in prison meant that she was never truly famous among the suffragettes  —   and Sophia herself hated the spotlight. She died in 1948, essentially invisible. But now, almost 70 years later, this fascinating woman is finally getting her due."
"For three seasons on the CBS hit show M. A. S. H. Wayne Rogers played Army surgeon ”Trapper” John McIntyre alongside Alan Alda’s character, Benjamin ”Hawkeye” Pierce. Publicist Rona Menashe confirmed to wire services that Rogers died Thursday in Los Angeles of complications from pneumonia. He was 82. M. A. S. H. the popular Korean War television series about a mobile Army surgical hospital, debuted in 1972 and ran for 11 seasons. It was modeled after Robert Altman’s 1970 hit movie by the same name. In the film, Elliott Gould played the Trapper John character and Donald Sutherland was Hawkeye. After 74 episodes, Rogers left television’s M. A. S. H. over a contract dispute. He was replaced on the show by Mike Farrell who played B. J. Hunnicut, Hawkeye’s new tent mate. The show ran until 1983. Reuters quotes Rogers as saying that if he had known the show was going to last that long, he might have ”kept my mouth shut and stayed put.” After M. A. S. H. Rogers became a successful businessman, founding an investment strategy firm and a production company. He also was a financial commentator for Fox News Channel. Rogers was an Alabama native and graduated from Princeton University with a degree in history."
"One thing we’ve learned here at Goats and Soda is that the world of global health and development is swimming in acronyms. We try not to use them in the blog because let’s face it, dear readers, if you saw a story about NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) trying to improve BHS (basic health services) you’d probably click over to a video of RCC (really cute cats). Global health and development acronyms do have their defenders. They are a convenient shorthand for people who work in the field. Although not everyone is a fan. ”I can’t stand acronyms in general,” says William Savedoff, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (acronym: CGD). When a report comes with a    page list of all the acronyms a reader will encounter, he says, well maybe that’s just a few acronyms too many. Acronyms can also dehumanize. Health gurus worked hard to come up with a phrase to describe people who have AIDS. The phrase ”people living with  ” was used to get away from the stigma of calling them AIDS victims, says Savedoff. Then the phrase was turned it into an acronym: PLWHA. ”It seems so impersonal,” he says. Yet behind every acronym there is a story. So we thought, maybe it’d be enlightening to dive into a soup of acronyms that float about the world of GHD (oh, sorry, global health and development). Because once you understand what the acronyms mean, you do understand a bit more about the issues of the day. Here’s a sampling. Please, people of the GHD world, share with us your favorite (and unfavorite) acronyms. BRT: Bus rapid transit. In developing countries (as well as the rest of the world) the goal of BRT is to build urban bus systems that get people to stop driving cars. The result is less congestion and less pollution. But BRT doesn’t just mean putting a bunch of buses on the street. BRT aims to keep buses moving quickly and efficiently. To speed up the process, passengers pay their fare before boarding. Boarding platforms rise up to meet the bus so passengers don’t have to climb up stairs. And the city streets will be reallocated so the BRT buses have their own lanes and maybe even their own traffic lights. BRT started in Brazil in the 1970s and has spread to some 200 cities, carrying 33 million people a day. Daily ridership and kilometers of routes are tallied by country at brtdata. org, COD Aid: That’s ”cash on delivery” aid, in which the funds are handed over if a country can present independently verified proof of progress in achieving a goal  —   say, reduced infant mortality. The recipient country has the flexibility to figure out the best way to meet the goal. The concept was developed by CGD (the Center for Global Development, in case you’re not remembering what the acronym stands for) and is often used in the health sector  —   paying TB patients to stick with a drug program, for example, or paying parents to bring their kids to the doctor for checkups. ITN: It stands for ”  net,” which can ward off   mosquitoes. A better version of an ITN is an LLIN (    net) which some companies have developed. According to the CDC (sorry for the acronym  —   that’s the Centers for Disease Control) these nets can ”maintain effective levels of insecticide for at least 2 years, even after repeated washing.” LICs, LMICs, UMICs and HICs: These are the four World Bank categories for countries based on gross national income per person: $1, 045 or less for   countries (LICs) more than $1, 045 and less than $12, 736 for the middle, with $4, 125 the dividing point between   (LMICs) and   (UMICs) and $12, 736 or more for HICs,  :    tuberculosis is caused when patients don’t adhere to the strict   drug regimen normally used to treat the disease. In covering   for our blog, reporter Jason Beaubien wrote: ”It’s one of the most difficult diseases in the world to cure.” The antibiotics prescribed for   can bring on nausea, headaches and exhaustion and can destroy the patient’s hearing. Even more difficult to fight is   extensively drug resistant tuberculosis. NCDs:   diseases, like diabetes and heart disease. These two diseases are on the rise worldwide  —   and in the developing world. That’s partly because communicable diseases are declining there so people are living longer, partly because people are becoming more Westernized, which means they’re less physically active and their diets are changing for the worse. PEPFAR: The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, was initially a   $15 billion effort by the U. S. to saving the lives of   patients, especially in Africa and the Caribbean. President Bush called for action in 2003, the PEPFAR name was created in 2004. PEPFAR was reauthorized in 2008. In fiscal year 2015, PEPFAR’s accomplishments included   (aka ARV) drugs for 9. 5 million men, women and children and HIV testing and counseling for 68. 2 million. PPFP: Postpartum family planning. The goal is to help women who have had a child and wish to prevent unintended pregnancies in the year ahead or delay having more children. In some countries, PPFP counseling sessions are integrated into postpartum care, with the husband in attendance. PMTCT: Prevention of    transmission of HIV.    transmission is responsible for more than 90 percent of infections among infants and young children. The risk of transmission during pregnancy is 20 to 45 percent, but with   drugs the rate of transmission can be cut to less than 2 percent. VCCM: Voluntary male medical circumcision. It’s a term used in the effort to prevent HIV transmission. The risk of    sexual transmission is reduced by about 60 percent when men undergo VCCM. WHO (that’s the World Health Organization) recommends the procedure as a way of reducing HIV infections. A current goal is to hit 80 percent coverage among men in 14   countries, which could potentially prevent 3. 4 million HIV infections. A report issued by WHO this year cites a ”remarkable expansion” to nearly 9. 1 million VCCMs in these ”priority countries.”"
"With the New Year comes a long list of new laws taking effect across the country. In some cases, those laws show states moving in starkly different directions on polarizing issues  —   especially voting and gun rights. Here are four examples of controversial laws taking effect now that 2016 has arrived: Starting this week, North Carolinians are required to show photo ID at the polls. It’s the most controversial part of a set of changes to the state’s voter registration laws that were passed more than two years ago. Republican Gov. Pat McCrory tried to downplay the changes when he signed them back in 2013, calling them ”  reforms.” ”You need photo ID to board an airplane, to cash a check or even apply for most government benefits,” McCrory said. But critics of the law say fears of voter fraud are overstated. Rev. William Barber, the head of North Carolina’s NAACP, says the law’s real goal is to suppress turnout among core Democratic voters. He calls it ”the worst voter suppression law in the country  —   targeted in a way that it hurts   and women, and the poor.” NPR’s Ailsa Chang explored the objections to the law back in 2013. North Carolina passed language softening the photo ID requirement last summer. But that hasn’t satisfied the NAACP, which is still fighting the law in court. Across the country in Oregon, residents will now be automatically registered to vote when they get a driver’s license or state ID card. Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed that bill last March. ”Oregon is a true leader in accessibility to voting. And I challenge every other state in this nation to ensure that there are as few barriers as possible in the way of a citizen’s right to vote,” Brown said at the time. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro explored how the law works, and the debate over whether increasing voter registration will actually increase turnout: ” Go to renew your driver’s license in Oregon, and you will now be signed up to vote automatically. ”It’s the first state in the country with that sort of law, which is designed to make voting easier, and stands in contrast to the trend seen in the past several years in more conservative states. . .. ”In Oregon, the law could swell voter rolls by hundreds of thousands. If other states follow suit, it could have a dramatic effect on the U. S. voting process.” Restrictions on guns are getting tighter in California, where people can now ask a judge to temporarily seize weapons away from relatives who may pose a threat. Former state Assembly member Nancy Skinner, a Democrat, introduced the bill in 2014 after a disturbed man killed six people in Isla Vista. ”There are many emotionally charged circumstances that can cause people to be temporarily deranged,” Skinner said. ”Mix those emotionally charged circumstances with a gun and we have potential for lethal consequences.” Gun rights advocates say the law is a major overreach. Member station KPCC covered the debate in 2014: ”The bill does not single out the mentally ill, but rather focuses on the danger any person may pose for any reason. And that has helped earn it support from an unlikely ally: the Los   Mental Health Advocacy Services, a   group that promotes the legal rights of those with mental disabilities. . .. ”Still, some are worried about the potential for abuse. ” ’If we’re going to take away someone’s constitutional rights we can only do so if someone has some good reasons and good evidence to back it up,” [law professor Adam] Winkler says. ” In Texas, which already has some of the most permissive gun laws of any state, Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed a law making it legal for citizens with permits to openly carry handguns. ”I am proud to expand the rights of gun owners in the state of Texas,” he said, as he signed the law in 2015. Critics say the law will make Texans less safe, not more. But despite opposition from many of the state’s police chiefs, the open carry law passed easily. It’s long been legal in Texas to   long guns, like rifles and shotguns. (People exercising that right at armed gatherings in 2014 raised anxiety in some people, as NPR’s Wade Goodwyn reported). Member station KUT spoke with the Austin police department about what, exactly, the impact of the new law will be, including the fact that some specific locations will continue to have a prohibition on both   and   and private businesses can choose to bar firearms from their premises."
"Saudi Arabia executed 47 people convicted of terrorism Saturday, including prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr   prompting condemnation throughout the Middle East. Nimr has been an outspoken advocate for Shiite rights in Saudi Arabia he also supported opposition protests in the   Eastern Province, reports NPR’s Leila Fadel. Leila tells our Newscast unit: ”Amnesty International has said this case and the case of five other Shiite activists sentenced to death make it ’clear that the Saudi Arabian authorities are using the guise of   to settle political scores.’ They called the trials unfair.” Members of Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority say they’re treated as   citizens in the Sunni kingdom. Iran, which supports Shiite fighters in Yemen who are clashing with a   force there, strongly condemned the executions. According to   media, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari says the execution of Nimr, ”who had no tool but preaching his ideas to promote his political and religious objectives, proves nothing but the depth of irrationality and irresponsibility of the Saudi officials.” Ansari also said that Saudi Arabia will ”pay dearly” for it actions, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. Reporting on the wider reactions to the executions, NPR’s Peter Kenyon says: ”In Iraq, former prime minister Nouri   says ”the crime of executing Sheikh   will topple the Saudi government,” and a Shiite militia called on the Iraqi government to sever ties with Riyadh. ”In Lebanon, the Shiite Hezbollah calls the execution an assassination.”  The executions took place at a dozen prisons, according to Reuters, which says that in most locations, the prisoners were beheaded. Their bodies were then displayed ”in the most severe form of punishment available in the kingdom’s Sharia Islamic law,” the news agency says."
"Care to break the hearts of Game of Thrones fans everywhere? It might just take seven words: ”THE WINDS OF WINTER is not finished.” So wrote George R. R. Martin in a lengthy blog post published in the wee hours Saturday. The author had hoped to publish the sixth installment of his massively popular fantasy book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, early in 2016  —   which meant finishing and submitting the manuscript to his publishers before the end of 2015. But Martin says those hopes have been dashed. ”You’re disappointed, and you’re not alone. My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed,” Martin writes, ”but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me.” He notes that this was not the first deadline he has passed  —   Halloween holds that honor  —   but the New Year’s deadline may be the most consequential. Meeting it would have ensured that the manuscript cleared the necessary hurdles in time to be published before the end of March, he says  —   in other words, before the sixth season of Game of Thrones, the HBO television show based on the books, is set to air in April. ”That almost certainly means that no, THE WINDS OF WINTER will not be published before the sixth season of GAME OF THRONES premieres in April,” he writes. The question necessarily follows: Will the show get ahead of the notoriously   novels? ”Maybe. Yes and no,” Martin writes. ”For years my readers have been ahead of the viewers. This year, for some things, the reverse will be true.” Ambiguities aside, Martin pledged to keep writing, to finish the book only when he feels it’s ready and to dispense with all the deadlines. ”When delivery will be, I can’t say. I’m not going to set another deadline for myself to trip over,” he writes. ”The deadlines just stress me out.” That is one sentiment this journalist, at least, can certainly sympathize with."
"It’s getting harder and harder to find quality special education teachers, which is why 49 out of 50 states report shortages. Why? It’s a tough sell. Even if you’re up for the low pay and noisy classrooms, special education adds another challenge: crushing paperwork. This is something I understand first hand. You see, I was a special education teacher and I just couldn’t hack it. Though I’m somewhat ashamed to admit it, I only lasted a year in the classroom. I chose special education for what felt like the right reason. I wanted to help the students who struggle to learn. But I soon realized that was only a part of the job. The paperwork, the meetings, the accountability. Eventually it got to me. I couldn’t do it all and I got tired of showing up to a job I knew I couldn’t do. It’s that simple. So, as I’ve been looking into the teacher shortage it hasn’t felt like a revelation that people are leaving the profession. I get it. But I have been curious about my friends and colleagues who have stayed. Especially one colleague in particular: Stephanie Johnson. I know Stephanie from my college days. We were in the same special education program at Brigham Young University three years ago. But as a mother of three returning to school in her 40s, Stephanie wasn’t your typical student. She’s now going on her third year teaching eighth grade math and ninth grade English to students with a wide range of disabilities at Oak Canyon Junior High School in Lindon, Utah, which is about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. ’My Joy Is In The Classroom’ I visited Stephanie’s classroom during a math lesson. She was reviewing how to find the slope of a line, through word problems. You know,     type stuff. The students copied some problems from the board and got to work. The class was surprisingly quiet and focused. If I had been teaching I might have leaned back, put my feet up on the desk and enjoyed the moment. But not Stephanie. She weaved through the desks, kneeling beside each student and checking in. I could tell she was in her element. I checked in with a few students too. Each one had the same responses to my questions. Do you like math? No. Are you good at it? No. How are you doing in Mrs. Johnson’s class? Good. It makes sense when she explains it. ”My joy is in the classroom,” Stephanie told me afterwards. ”When they catch onto something and they have those ’ ’ moments.” Those ” ” moments are no small feat. Each of Stephanie’s students has some type of learning disability. Many have become accustomed to the feeling of being totally lost during their classes, especially math. But there they were, scribbling away with that scrunched concentration on their faces. None of them looked lost. This didn’t surprise me. Back in college it was obvious that Stephanie would be a dynamic teacher. For starters, she understood special education from a parent’s perspective. One of her sons, Alec, was in special education classes from second through ninth grade. She knows the heartache and worry that comes when a parent is told their child learns differently. ”Now as the teacher I can say, ’I know exactly how you feel, I’ve been there and it’s going to be OK,’ ” Stephanie says. She was also a teaching assistant in a special education classroom at a middle school for five years. And on top of that she was an extremely driven student. Because of all this, my classmates and I looked up to her. She was a kind of mentor to us. She helped us see the purpose in what we were preparing to do. ”I was really clear on why I was there,” Stephanie remembers. She pauses. ”I wish that was more clear now.” Not Enough Hours In The Week, From the outside, it looks like Stephanie has everything under control. But that’s now how she feels. ”I don’t know how to describe it,” she says. ”It’s just so much work.” She’s not talking about teaching or lesson planning or even working with disruptive students. She really likes those parts of the job. ”It’s all the other compliance and laws and paperwork.” All of that stuff can be summed up with three letters: IEP. That stands for Individualized Education Program. Each student in special education has one. It’s required by law. And each IEP requires hours and hours of upkeep. Forms need to be updated, data has to be tracked and there are additional meetings with parents and other staff. Multiply that by the 43 students Stephanie has, and there goes all of her free time. ”I stay at work hours typically every day,” Stephanie said. What she doesn’t finish, she takes home. In 2011, Donald Deshler, a professor of special education at the University of Kansas set out to examine just how many hours all that paperwork consumes. He and a doctoral student wanted to find out what the typical special education teacher’s workload looked like. They decided to observe a few teachers during their workday. ”We followed them everywhere, except the bathroom,” Deshler says. They then broke down the teacher’s typical work day into four main categories with the percentage of time spent on each: Of the 27 percent time spent teaching, only 21 percent was what Deshler considered ”specialized instruction,” meaning the teachers were using methods that were   and focused on students’ individual needs. ”  percent of their time is spent teaching the best of what we know. That roughly translates into one day a week,” Deshler explains. ”If we wonder why teachers are frustrated, this data sheds some light on it.” And that frustration leads good teachers like Stephanie to question whether or not they can stay in the profession. She admits she thinks about leaving all the time. ”Just because I’m exhausted,” she says. ”But I’m changing kids lives, I’m making a difference, so why would I want to walk away from that?” So, when it comes down to staying or leaving Stephanie feels stuck. It’s an extremely difficult decision for an extremely difficult job."
"Russians became enthusiastic travelers after the Soviet Union broke up, and two of their most cherished winter getaways were the sunny resorts of Egypt and Turkey. But those countries are now   and Russia’s sagging economy and sinking currency are also keeping many at home. Just a year ago, ads for vacation travel packages were everywhere on Russian television. Antalya, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, was a favorite spot for Russian tourists, with warm, sandy beaches of a kind that are hard to find in Russia. But after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the   border in November, Russia banned tourists from traveling there. Travel to Egypt was also banned, after terrorists blew up a Russian jetliner bringing tourists home from holidays on the Red Sea. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility in that case. That was a heavy blow for travel agencies, since nearly 3 million Russians visited Egypt just last year, says Andrey Gavrilov, president of the Alliance of Tour Agencies, an industry lobby group. ”Travel agencies tried to suggest different destinations, like [the United] Arab Emirates, like Israel, and other countries,” he says. Russian tourists also looked to resorts further afield, in Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia and Thailand, he adds. ”But for a shorter period of time and maybe a different category of hotels, I mean, four stars instead of five stars, in order to be closer to their budgets,” he notes. The devalued ruble, he says, has raised the cost of overseas travel by more than 30 percent. That makes domestic travel a lot more attractive. Staying Closer To Home, I went to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport to see where Russians are going to spend their New Year holidays, when much of the country shuts down for more than a week. A couple of young men with snowboards were checking in for a flight to Sochi, in southern Russia. Alexander Vasiliyev, 29, said they planned to spend New Year’s with friends at the new ski resort built for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Vasiliyev says they would have gone to Europe, but there’s not much snow this year, so Sochi is just as good and, he says, much cheaper. His buddy Anton Chernoyarov, 28, said they wouldn’t go to Turkey on principle they’re patriots and the Turks shot down their plane. Anna Kravchenko and Denis Belov were traveling on business, but said they’re thinking about where to spend their holidays. ”England or Europe,” says Belov. ”But it depends on the situation next year,” adds Kravchenko. She’s 32 and a homemaker. He’s a realtor, age 44. Turkey and Egypt are not great losses to them, because they’ve visited each several times. They’ve been to Europe, too, during their student days, but they’re feeling a certain urgency about going back. ”Europe is changing now, and we don’t know how it will be in five years, 10 years,” Belov says. ”I think Europe will change extremely.” Kravchenko says that’s because ”we have heard from the friends that the German cities, for example, Frankfurt, it’s changing because of people with another culture.” What they’re saying reflects what Russians are hearing on   television  —   that Europe is being degraded by the arrival of Muslim refugees. The official line promoted by Russia’s tourism chief, Oleg Safonov, is that foreign beach vacations are alien to Russian tradition. His assertion proved embarrassing when it emerged that Safonov himself had owned two houses in the Seychelles Islands, a sunny paradise in the Indian Ocean."
"Former Gov. Dale Bumpers, a veteran of the U. S. Senate who rose to national prominence in part because of his passionate defense of President Bill Clinton, has died. The Democrat from Arkansas was 90 years old. Bumpers died Friday night in Little Rock, according to a family statement published by the Arkansas  . The family said, in part: ”While most people knew him as a great governor, senator and public servant, we remember him best as a loving father and husband who gave us unconditional love and support and whose life provided wonderful guidance on how to be a compassionate and productive person.” Brent Bumpers also tells the newspaper that his father required surgery after breaking his hip in a fall three weeks ago. In 1999, Bumpers delivered a famous speech in which he urged his Senate colleagues not to undo a national election because Clinton had been unfaithful to his wife, citing the requirements of a crime against the state and repeatedly asking, ”What are we doing here?” In that closing argument, Bumpers also included several lighter observations  —   including one instance in which he paraphrased H. L. Mencken: ”When you hear somebody say, ’This is not about money, it’s about money.’ And when you hear somebody say, ’This is not about sex,’ it’s about sex.” After leaving the Senate, Bumpers wrote a memoir titled The Best Lawyer in a One Lawyer Town. In it, he described his early life in a small town in Arkansas, and serving in the Marines during World War II. His military service helped Bumpers go to law school at Northwestern University. After his parents were killed in a car crash in 1949, he returned to Charleston, Ark. to run the family business. Speaking to NPR’s Linda Wertheimer in 2003, Bumpers said that an early lesson from his father, who had taken him and his brother to see President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, stuck with him. Bumpers recalled his father explaining Roosevelt’s history with polio  —   and saying, ”You boys should take a lesson from that. If a man can be president and can’t even walk and has to wear 12 pounds of steel braces around his legs  —   you have good minds and good bodies. There isn’t any reason why you can’t be president.” In that interview with Linda, Bumpers also called the GI Bill, ”next to Social Security and Medicare, the greatest domestic accomplishment of the 20th century.”"
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. I was home in Denver when I saw this big feature story in The Denver Post. There have been so many stories about football players and concussions recently, but this one drew me in because it was not about concussions  —   but was instead about the other   effects of that kind of physical sport. Ryan Johanningmeier, the player profiled, had multiple problems with his back, and had struggled with injuries his whole career. He ended up having to take huge amounts of painkillers and ultimately died of an opioid overdose. He had played football at the University of Colorado, where football is a huge deal. His father and grandfather had both played football, and he told his mother, even after all the physical troubles, that if he had to do it over again  —   he would. This was a beautifully written and poignant story of one family’s struggles with the physical toll of football. And it reminds me that there’s great writing all over the country, in places that we don’t always look to for #NPRreads. There’s a few reasons this column is worth your time, and it’s mainly not the   football previews. I’m a regular reader of the Jamboroo, but I like when Will Leitch fills in once a year. He’s an insightful writer who weaves nuance and opinion seamlessly.  There’s four entries here, but they are all part of the same idea. The second is the section on whether or not we care if people lie: ”Now, I do not think it is news when a politician lies it’s not news when anyone does it, because everybody does it, all the time. ”But I am not used to people not caring.” The third: Just how do we react when what we hear is everybody, all the time? We generally curate to only serve our beliefs. ”It makes you wonder what the point of saying anything is. If no one is listening, if the nature of communication is just give but never to receive, if the camera is always pointing selfie, why wade into anything? Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong, none of that matters, not really. You can have every fact at your disposal and still be wrong if enough people believe you are wrong.” Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Eric Garner. They are part of my scroll of Africans Americans who have been killed by police officers in recent years. Their deaths have sent our country into sporadic convulsions of protests felt in places like New York City and Ferguson, Missouri and led to the formation of a new civil rights movement (Black Lives Matter). But. .. I want to believe that this didn’t have to happen. I want to believe that white police officers have the ability to see   as human beings who think, feel, love, cry, laugh and bleed. This is the reason why reading poet Claudia Rankine’s Guardian interview was a revelation to me. ’Blackness in the white imagination has nothing to do with black people.’ I revel in Rankine’s ability to tell major truths in her short interview. As a creative writer, I understand the great power of one’s imagination and I hope that we as a nation will be able to imagine our fellow countryman as   human beings."
"I’m often asked for medical advice by friends, family members, even new acquaintances: What about this diet? What should I do about this symptom? What about this medication? People are usually disappointed when I don’t share their enthusiasm about the latest health fads. Members of my family, in particular, are often underwhelmed by my medical advice. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always do a great job of conveying why I’m skeptical about the newest medical technology, reports of the latest health news and fashions and even people’s symptoms. Mostly it’s because in my experience, so much about health just isn’t that simple. Most symptoms, after all, aren’t explainable, at least to the level of detail we all seem to want. ”What’s causing my symptoms?” friends, family and patients ask me. Is it a virus? Bacteria? Arterial blockage? In spite of all the science and technology in medicine, what we doctors do is more about making educated guesses. Especially in primary care, it’s often a matter of playing the probabilities more than providing precise diagnostic information. But prevention is different. We know a lot about it, based on huge bodies of epidemiological research. Most of prevention is fairly straightforward. You’ve heard the advice again and again. In fact, the repetition may make it easy to tune out. I’ll risk it, though, and tell you again that there really aren’t shortcuts to health. Here’s what you need to do: Recently I’ve come across a couple of sources that do a good job of conveying these messages. One is a set of books and ideas about the world’s   Blue Zones. If you haven’t heard about them, Blue Zones are the places in the world where people both have the healthiest and longest lives. People in these communities often live well beyond 100 years: In these places, people have preventive medicine baked into their lives, mostly without even having to think about it. Their daily activities involve eating healthful diets rich in local plants, walking most places, and lots of intergenerational social interaction. Interestingly, folks in these communities generally do drink alcohol. But they limit it to one or two drinks a day. Also, they typically do eat meat  —   but not very often and in small portions. (Loma Linda may be a bit of an exception, with its large population of   Adventists.) One thing that probably won’t surprise you: Blue Zoners do not eat refined sugars. They skip the convenient packaged foods that we’re trained to eat because they’re cheap and widely available. Summarizing these themes visually in under two minutes is another gem from the idea lab of Dr. Mike Evans from Toronto. You’ve seen some of his other videos here. I love them. Just watch the one below, and follow his advice. That’s what I’m trying to do in my own life. John Henning Schumann is a writer and doctor in Tulsa, Okla. He serves as president of the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa. He also hosts Public Radio Tulsa’s Medical Matters. He’s on Twitter: @GlassHospital"
"Early one morning last weekend, Amrik Singh Bal, 68, was standing along a stretch of highway in Fresno, Calif. waiting for a ride to work. Two white men pulled up beside him, hollering obscenities out their window. The Fresno Bee reports that Bal, who is Sikh, has a white beard and was wearing a blue turban, tried crossing the street to get away when the men in the truck pulled a   and drove into him, knocking him to the ground. They got out, launched punches into Bal’s face and body, then sped off into the morning fog. Bal is one of dozens of Sikh Americans attacked in recent years. Some scholars estimate there are about 100, 000 Sikhs in the U. S. and 25 million worldwide. They have roots in the Punjab region of South Asia and practice a monotheistic religion based on the 15th century teachings of an Indian guru. The Sikh Coalition, a nonprofit legal group, has analyzed more than 140 actual or suspected hate crimes against Sikhs in the U. S. between 2001 and 2012. The group says that this past December alone, it received a surge of calls from Sikhs seeking legal help  —   three times as many as during the same time in 2014. The Washington Post’s Peter Holley details a long string of attacks following Sept. 11 when Sikhs in America were attacked because their assailants mistook them for Muslims: the shootings at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis. the beating of Inderjit Singh Mukker in a Chicago suburb after he was called ”bin Laden” the shooting of a Sikh store clerk in Grand Rapids, Mich. after he was accused of being a terrorist. But while Sikh Americans have come under increased scrutiny in recent years owing to the misconception that they follow Islam, the history of Sikhs in America coming under attack begins long before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The first documented attack on Sikhs in the U. S. took place on Sept. 4, 1907, in Bellingham, Wash. a coastal city less than two hours north of Seattle. Three decades before, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese citizens from coming to the U. S. and tension between whites and various other immigrant groups was mounting. (”Have We a Dusky Peril?” wondered the Puget Sound American the year before the Bellingham attack.) Just after midnight on Sept. 4, a mob of men descended upon the city’s ”Hindoo” immigrants, as some newspapers broadly referred to South Asians. (Newspapers of the day weren’t particularly great at parsing minority identities or ethnicity.) ”Religious Sikh men, who wore the dastar, a turban head covering that is a symbol of the Sikh faith, were especially targeted,” Erika Lee writes in her book The Making of Asian America. Most of the immigrants were Sikh men between ages 20 and 40 originally from Punjab. They had come to the States by way of Vancouver, B. C. traveling on British steamboats to Washington state to find work at lumber mills. The mob  —   some newspapers at the time reported nearly 500 people  —   broke into the boardinghouses where Sikh workers were staying, pulling them from their beds and into the streets to beat them. Some of the Sikh men were robbed of gold and clothing, worth as much as $4, 000 per man. The throng comprised white union men who worked in the lumber and milling industries and claimed the Sikhs were taking their jobs. The mob’s message was clear: Get out of town. Bellingham’s leaders and police stepped in and had the Sikh men corralled in a jail under City Hall for the night  —   for their own safety, it was said. No witnesses came forward, and no one was ever charged. At the time of the beatings, there were reportedly nine police present, according to a new documentary, titled We Are Not Strangers, produced by a Sikh temple near Bellingham. The Seattle Morning Times argued the incident was ”not a question of race, but of wages” and like many newspapers of that time, commiserated with the union members: ”When men who require meat to eat and real beds to sleep in are ousted from their employment to make room for vegetarians who can find the bliss of sleep in some filthy corner, it is rather difficult to say at what limit indignation ceases to be righteous.” And so, fearing for their lives, hundreds of Sikhs fled Bellingham. Many went by train south to Seattle and Oakland some, north to Vancouver, B. C. where similar riots awaited them. In fact, just three days after the Bellingham incident, Lee writes in her book, ”Vancouver was ripped apart by a related   riot that swept through the Chinese and Japanese quarters and left destruction in its wake.” In Seattle, a week after Bellingham, a wire report headlined ”Hindus Attempt to Slaughter Swedes” tells the story of a bizarre bar fight between ”20 Swedes and a hundred ’Hindus’ [who were] recently from Bellingham.” Midfight, the Swedes, joined by a policeman and a   man, barricaded themselves in a saloon until the   Hindus fled. News reports following these attacks elsewhere in the country were often gleeful. ”Every Hindu mill employee in the city has quit work, and nothing will persuade them to remain,” a wire service reported. ”They are fleeing to more congenial pastures of the North like flocks of sheep.” Decades later, those ”congenial pastures” remain elusive for Sikh Americans. From unnamed Sikhs who suffered attacks on ”Hindoos” to Inderjit Singh Mukker or Prakash Singh or Amrik Singh Bal, all attacked in recent years for being ”Muslim,” the justifications may have changed, but the violence is much the same."
"Famous names can be hard to live up to. Those who carry them are born with expectations, as well as advantages, and the sons and daughters of famous people have to make their mistakes and learn their lessons under a lot of watchful eyes. When we spoke with Natalie Cole in June of 2013 (you can listen to the entire interview below) she had just recorded an album of Spanish language music, as her father had, in the 1950s. Natalie Cole told us that when she started out on a singing career, she avoided any comparison to her father. COLE: Absolutely. No question. When I first started to sing, the last thing I wanted to do was sing my dad’s music. And, ironically, when I was signed to a label, it was Capitol Records, which I thought that they would be like, oh, you got to sing your dad’s music. But they. .. SIMON: He made Capitol Records. COLE: He certainly did. The house that Nat built. But they did not insist on that, whereas I went to two other labels and they said, well, are you going to sing your father’s music? And I said no. And it took 15 years into my career before I felt comfortable and confident enough to even attempt at singing my father’s music. Like a lot of famous fathers, Nat King Cole was often away from home. He died when Natalie was just 15. She had some rough times in the years that followed, sometimes making her own name in all the wrong ways, with drugs and drink. But she sought help, and she persisted, having her own RB hits in the 1970s before she recorded a 1991 duet with the recorded voice of her father that sold over seven million copies and won many Grammys. COLE: It was very, very difficult, very hard for me. Because I had never had the chance to really spend time working with him. The ”Unforgettable” record was done in tribute to my dad. It was my way of saying goodbye, because when he passed away, I was in school. I was actually on the East Coast in boarding school when he passed. So. .. SIMON: And he was astonishingly young   just 45. COLE:  . . .. COLE: I believe that, you know, he guides me. Dad led by example. You know, he was not a big talker of, ’You got to do this and you got to do that.’ That was not him. He led by example. And I watched. I was very observant. And I learned so much from my father. And he continues to be my number one inspiration. Natalie Cole, who died this week in Los Angeles after an illness. She was 65."
"Talking about grief and the loss of a loved one isn’t typically dinner conversation. Many people, even those struggling to cope with loss, will avoid talking about such heavy topics, especially over supper. But a fledgling nonprofit designs dinners specifically for young adults to get together and talk about their experiences with loss. In cities across the country, the group The Dinner Party advises   and   on how to arrange these gatherings. Some say it’s one of the new ways that young adults, often skeptical of organized religion, are connecting to find meaning in their lives. At a recent dinner in Boston, it first seemed like any other dinner party. Everyone was putting the   touches on the meal as they waited for all the guests to arrive. They talked easily, even though it was the first time they had met in person. Rosy Hosking was hosting the dinner in her Jamaica Plain apartment, where she set the table and prepared the main course for her guests. ”I have prepared a ratatouille. It’s very easy, and it’s also vegan,” she said. ”So it hits all the plus points of making dinner for people you don’t know very well.” The guests at this potluck dinner had never met in person before, yet they’d come together to talk about something that has profoundly affected each of them  —   the loss of a loved one. After a toast and the usual small talk about traffic or the food, the conversation quickly became deeper. Lennon Flowers, who started The Dinner Party group, was in town to talk with other Dinner Party hosts, as well as to attend a Harvard conference about these types of gatherings. At dinner, she began the conversation everyone was there to have. In her case, she wanted to talk about the death of her mother nearly nine years ago. ”I was asked the question last week: ’How long has it been?’ And I had to count on my fingers, and I realized that it will be nine years in February,” Flowers said. ”I’m just shocked by the passage of time. I just had this surge of missing the s —   out of my mom.” The four women at the meal  —   and 80 percent of the people who attend these dinners are women  —   had lost a parent. Alison Bard, 29, lost her mother six years ago. She says she often can’t talk about her loss with relatives, who may also be grieving, or friends who may find such conversations uncomfortable. She finds helpful to talk with others who are navigating early adulthood. ”I just started grad school, business school. My mom went to the same business school. This whole experience has been like, ’ Hey mom  —   mom what would you  —   tell me about this ! I’m feeling out of my element here,” Bard tells her fellow guests. The Dinner Party started  —   by accident  —   five years ago, when Flowers and a   arranged a dinner in Los Angeles for friends they knew who had lost a parent. Soon they were inundated with people asking how to hold their own. Now a formal nonprofit, The Dinner Party helps connect participants with tables across the country. The gatherings are not meant to offer professional grief support  —   but to pair young adults with others who can relate. Jessica Foley was 13 when her father died. ”I’ m volunteering at this camp for kids who’ve lost someone and that’s been really amazing   just feeling like in awe of that process,” she says. ”Like where the hell was camp when I was 13? . .. This venue is my camp  —   with wine,” she says of the dinner party. The Dinner Party was cited in a recent Harvard Divinity School study as an example of how millennials are gathering in new ways that are almost religious. But a Pew Research Center survey in May found that more than a third of millennials, defined as those born after 1980, do not affiliate with any religion. Flowers believes young adults are eager to create their own communities to help find meaning in their lives. ”As we have kind of abandoned institutions and sacred spaces,” Flowers says, ”we are still looking for spaces where we can talk about what we normally would have shared with a priest.” Dinner Parties are now being held in more than four dozen cities around the country."
"When East Cleveland’s emergency medical squad gets called to treat a man with a severe nosebleed, it’s a pretty     case. The patient walks woozily out to the ambulance from a tan house on a   street. Anthony Savoy, the head medic, calls ahead to University Hospitals, which has the closest emergency room. Savoy wants to make sure the ER has space for the patient. The man gets in that day, but it was by no means guaranteed. For years, it’s been common practice for University Hospitals to switch its status to diversion. That means when Savoy would call the hospital, people in the emergency department would say they didn’t have the room or the staff to handle the patient. The EMS team then would have to drive to another hospital  —   often the Cleveland Clinic  —   about a mile away.   ”If we get diverted and then we get a call while we’re at the hospital, our response time will be lengthened by maybe a minute, maybe two minutes,” Savoy says. A minute or two delay may not seem like much, but it can be crucial for some patients, says Dr. James Feldman, an emergency medicine doctor in Boston. ”We have strong evidence that people who have critical illness or injury who have a delayed time to treatment do worse,” he says. Patients who have had a stroke or a heart attack are prime examples. A study released earlier this year found that heart attack patients whose ambulances were diverted from crowded emergency rooms to hospitals farther away were more likely to be dead a year later. And before that study came out, the Institute of Medicine had taken a look at the increasing use of diversions by hospitals nationwide, and recommended against that sort of rerouting. Yet, emergency departments across the country, including those in Cleveland, continued to divert patients  —   often stepping up the frequency. Boston’s Feldman says hospitals across the country routinely operate with thin staffing and find themselves coping with too many patients. In Cleveland this year, University Hospitals temporarily closed its main campus emergency room to certain patients for more than 550 hours. Another large health system, MetroHealth, clocked more than 400 diversion hours. Jane Dus, chief nursing officer at University Hospitals, says an aging population and hospital closures have increased the demand on emergency departments. ”We’ve seen a 56 percent increase in our squad volume over five years,” she says. ”So we’re getting many more squads coming to us.” Dus recently joined   hospital leaders in negotiating an agreement to stop ER diversion. Indeed, all four major health systems in Cleveland say they will accept all ambulances starting Feb. 15. If the hospitals are successful, the region will join a select few that have tackled the issue. After years of trying, the Seattle area has stopped nearly all diversions. Under federal law, every hospital is required to evaluate patients who arrive in the ER, and stabilize them before transferring them elsewhere. But the law doesn’t cover patients in ambulances that are diverted before patients are ever seen. Massachusetts passed regulations in 2009 to ban ambulance diversions after voluntary attempts failed. Feldman says hospitals there had to reevaluate operations, in some cases urging doctors and patients to schedule elective surgeries closer to the weekends to free more hospital beds throughout the week. But changing the way an ER responds is complicated because emergency departments routinely operate with minimum staffing and beds, Feldman says. ”The staff are reasonably fearful that the next critical patient is going to push them over the brink of patient safety,” he says. ”They really can’t handle another patient.” Dr. Alfred Connors, MetroHealth’s chief clinical officer, says there are things the hospital can do to be better prepared. ”This does obligate us to take steps to correct problems that are correctable that will allow us not to go on diversion,” Connors says. ”It’s not just simply, ’We’re not going to go on diversion,’ and everybody just sits and hopes that everything will be better.” Adding bed capacity and refocusing on staff are part of the fix, he says. ”It’s an issue of, do we have enough beds open, do we have the proper staffing, do we have the capacity in the emergency room.” MetroHealth is frequently the busiest emergency department in the city, and the hospital has struggled with diversions before, logging nearly 1, 000 hours of diversion in 2013. Connors says the hospital worked to reduce that number, getting down to less than 150 hours of diversion status in 2014. But in 2015, diversions rose again. There are two hospitals in Cleveland that rarely if ever go on diversion: the Cleveland Clinic’s main campus and St. Vincent Charity Medical Center. The Cleveland Clinic’s main campus logged more than 500 hours of ambulance diversions in 2013, but reduced its diversions to two episodes lasting a total of about 10 hours in 2015. Dr. Stephen Meldon, a leader in the emergency department at the Cleveland Clinic, says change has to happen beyond the emergency department. The clinic has diversions at other regional hospitals in its system and will have to stop those as well, if it’s to meet the demands of the new ban. The ban will ”drive people to actually address efficiencies throughout the day,” Meldon says, ”and not use diversion as a crutch, to not be doing the work they should be doing.” The small St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in downtown Cleveland hasn’t gone on diversion since 2012. ”It’s a matter of working together as a team,” says Beverly Lozar, the hospital’s chief nursing executive. ”It starts every morning at 8:30. We have a huddle of all the nursing directors and all of the other clinical and support directors just to kind of review the day.” Still, Savoy is skeptical that University Hospitals and MetroHealth can end diversions. Just hours after Savoy dropped off his nosebleed patient, University Hospitals stopped taking all but the most critical injuries for nearly four hours. ”My concern is, all of a sudden you guys are willing to put this on paper and say that you’re going to do this,” he says. ”What was stopping you guys before? You know, why now?” Savoy and others on the squad are worried that the emergency departments will stay crowded. It’s something local leaders say they’ll work to avoid.  This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WCPN and Kaiser Health News."
"The question of assimilation has been on my mind a lot lately. Living in this great country where individuality is embraced, our current obsession with assimilation for those choosing the U. S. as their new home seems like a strange paradox. Consider the Russian composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff. When he moved to America in 1918 he could not let go of ties to his mother country. Even with the house he bought three years later in New York, he tried to recapture the spirit of a beloved country estate owned by his relatives. Does this constitute a rejecting of American values? I would propose just the opposite: The freedom afforded our newest citizens offers them the gift of safety and comfort to hold their traditions close, bringing a new richness to our American tapestry. Rachmaninoff’s Third and final symphony, from the   is a good example of Russian and American traditions rubbing elbows. While Rachmaninoff never wrote a film score, his compositions have been used in well over a hundred films and TV shows. His last symphony shares the sweeping, Romantic lyricism of many of his   works, some of which, you can argue, have influenced American composers (and a growing number of Russian and European expats) and helped define the sound of music in the burgeoning American film industry. In the opening of Rachmaninoff’s Third we hear music steeped in a faraway tradition. The modal nature of the beginning theme evokes a foreign place for me  —   foreign yet comforting, ringing some kind of archetypal bells. I hear the sounds of his grandmother’s Russian Orthodox Church, his obsession with death in the ancient Dies Irae tune and the brooding melancholy of a displaced soul, longing for home. This is music that captures life and sums up tradition  —   music that has heart and conveys soul, connecting us on a primal, human level. Through it all, Rachmaninoff was Russian to the core, born into an aristocratic family in northern Russia in 1873. That’s a long way from Beverly Hills, Calif. where he would live out the last years of his life. He died there on the morning of March 28, 1943. That night a Requiem Mass was held at the Los Angeles Russian Orthodox Church. In 2015, the Russian government requested that Rachmaninoff’s remains be returned, but so far his family has refused, saying that America was his chosen home he and his wife became citizens just weeks before he died. We are privileged to consider him our adopted son. The wealth that Rachmaninoff brought to America was not compromised or diminished by demands for him to assimilate. Instead, we embraced all that he brought to America and have enjoyed that wealth as our own. (Marin Alsop conducts Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Jan.   in Baltimore and North Bethesda, Md.)"
"You’re probably still digesting the best music of 2015, but now that the calendar has officially turned over, it’s time to look ahead. To provide a glimpse at some of the highlights 2016 will have to offer, NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson recently joined NPR’s Michel Martin to survey a few forthcoming albums."
"Washington state has released an estimated 3, 200 convicted felons early  —   but not due to sentencing reform. State officials say the early releases have been happening by accident for more than 12 years because of a software glitch. ”Approximately 3 percent of all released inmates since 2002 were released earlier than allowed by law,” said Nick Brown, the governor’s general counsel, talking about a flaw in the software Washington state uses to calculate prison sentences. He said the problem was first flagged three years ago, when a crime victim’s family was notified the perpetrator was about to get out  —   early. ”The family did its own calculation, determined that the offender was getting out earlier than the court had ordered, and contacted the department to ask why this was happening,” Brown said. It turns out the department of correction’s software was improperly giving some inmates credit for good behavior. Even though the problem was discovered in 2012, the department repeatedly delayed fixing the software, until Gov. Jay Inslee says the problem finally came to his attention last month. He disclosed the problem to the media in a press conference shortly before Christmas. ”That this problem was allowed to continue to exist for 13 years is deeply disappointing, it is totally unacceptable, and frankly, it is maddening,” Inslee says. Washington state officials are now in full   mode. Until the software is fixed, they say no one will be released without a ” ” of the release date. They say convicts who got out early got out on average less than two months before the correct date. Still, Brown, the general counsel, acknowledged last week that some of those people probably committed crimes during that time they were supposed to be in prison. ”What we know is based on the law of averages,” he said. ”Approximately 10 percent of all inmates who are released from prison commit some new offense in the first year of their release.” And sure enough, since last week, the Washington state Department of Corrections has been collecting the bad news. One convict has been charged with committing vehicular homicide after his early release another is charged with   murder. In a conference call Thursday, Dan Pacholke, the state’s secretary of corrections, said the state is still digging into what crimes may have been committed by   in the period of time they should have still been in prison. ”I’m very concerned about what we will uncover as we move forward. There’s likely to be more crime that has been committed during that window, but I can’t really speculate on the numbers,” Pacholke said. ”But it concerns me deeply . .. the tragedy that is being produced based on early release.” The state is now rounding people up. Convicts who were mistakenly released years ago and have stayed out of trouble don’t have to worry about going back to prison, because the state will credit the days they’ve been out and on good behavior toward the unserved balance of their sentences. But people who’ve been released more recently and still owe time are being taken back into custody. A spokesman for the department of corrections says some of those people have voluntarily reported in those who aren’t immediately located will have warrants issued for their arrest. So far, 31 of the early released inmates have been taken back into custody. Most of those who’ve been taken back into custody have not been accused of committing new crimes while they were on the outside. For those who’ve been trying to hold on to jobs and restart their lives, this unexpected   comes as an unwelcome shock."
"Harlan Ellison is America’s weird uncle. He’s the angry, elderly cousin at the table  —   the one who, for weeks before dinner, everyone asks about. Is he coming this year? Is Harlan gonna be there? They ask because they’re worried Harlan is always starting something. But they’d also be sad if he wasn’t there. Ellison is old now, but age hasn’t dimmed his anger or taken the edge off his humor. He’s our curmudgeon. He’s family. With a billion short stories to his credit, a million books and TV scripts and comics and stories, he’s as much a part of our combined American consciousness as air and water and death and taxes. Most important, he’s back. A new collection of shorts  —   annotated, as is his way, with little stories, forewords, afterwords, explanations and interstitial material  —   is on the shelves, bearing the odd (and oddly Ellisonian) title Can  Can’tankerous. He’s got a lot of stuff in here. A lot of rage, some sadness, more laughs. There’s the story (a bit famous now, called How Interesting: A Tiny Man) about the creation of a tiny, perfect man, humanity’s irrational fears, and how they can condense into a rain of hatred against anything different. About smallness of form and smallness of spirit both at the same time, but also about reader expectations  —   deliberately obscuring the color, sex and description of the main character. He does that again in Objects Of Desire In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, only revealing that the bitter, hardboiled cop protagonist is a woman halfway through because he thinks (and explains later) that everybody reads this sort of story in the voice of a man and wanted to subvert that assumption. The tiny man story also gets two endings, each grimmer (and more inevitable) than the last. But he follows them with Never Send To Know For Whom The Lettuce Wilts, which is the most   tale of the lot  —   goofy, but prescient, cruel and smart, having to do with a curious man, a fortune cookie, and an alien trying to conquer the world through small, demoralizing acts (like wilting lettuce, making nails bend, and inventing the English language). The funniest bit? The alien (small, gnomish and furious) wears a huge yellow button pinned to its breast that reads CONQUEROR. An award it gave to itself. There’s a magic shop story in here. A space opera (of sorts) that clocks in as the longest (and weirdest) of the tales. Again, because Ellison is Ellison, there are a bunch of little things, too  —   complete tales pumped out with superhuman speed and incomparable style. He fronts Weariness by telling the tale of running a workshop at a convention in Washington. A bunch of art pieces handed around as inspiration. A bunch of writers given one hour to compose a complete story. And then there’s Harlan, at the front of the room, with his portable Olympia typewriter, poking away at 120 words per minute (with two fingers and no typos, he brags) feeling sad and tired and coming up with a story about the heat death of the universe which begins: ”Very near the final thaw of the universe, the last of them left behind, the last three of the most perfect beings who had ever existed, stood waiting for the transitional moment. The neap tide of all time.” One draft. No idea where he was going with it. Just start hitting the keys and seeing what happens next. That’s how Ellison rolls. Tired, old, ornery  —   and yet kind, too. Generous. Giving us stories, and then stories about the stories. The lettuce story? Inspired by a Chinese dinner with Norman Spinrad in 1956, sold to Amazing Stories that same year for $49. 50, then remastered for this collection. Weariness is just a few hundred words long but his afterword is a kind of love letter to Ray Bradbury, and runs for five times the story’s length, maybe more. And it is beautiful. The best moments in all of Can  Can’tankerous are also the saddest, though. Between each story, Ellison has included a few italicized lines describing the stroke he suffered in 2014  —   the   to it, the moment of it, what came after. He does this because (like with the forewords, the afterwords, et cetera) he can’t not do it. His stories can’t exist without the framework of Harlan Ellison explaining why they exist  —   talking about dinner with Norman or a conversation with Ray or the sensation of one side of his body just quitting on him one day. He’s a man who literally can’t fall down without writing a story about it. And because he’s Harlan Ellison, the story of him falling down one day is the best, funniest, saddest, sweetest and truest tale of the bunch. Jason Sheehan is an   a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book."
"President Obama reading mean tweets about himself. The husband who surprised his wife by turning their home into a giant ball pit. The ”nae nae” dance. These are the videos that made Americans laugh, gawk and shake a leg in 2015. And what about the rest of the world? It’s much of the same  —   but with a global twist. Thanks to YouTube Rewind, an official list of the year’s most popular videos on YouTube, we know that in 2015, the Senegalese had their own dance craze: the ”na goore.” In Indonesia, Korean makeup was all the rage. And in South Africa, citizens were shocked by an eyewitness video of fake police attempting to hijack a woman’s car. Earlier this month, YouTube Rewind put together top 10 lists for more than 40 countries and regions, including one big global video that mashes up the year’s biggest memes, songs and viral moments. ”Trending videos are a reflection of the things that matter to us culturally,” says Kevin Allocca, head of culture and trends at YouTube. ”When I started out five years ago, viral videos were part of pop culture, but everyone knew they were part of an internet phenomenon. Now, it just feels like pop culture. The lines have blurred together in strange ways.” To come up with the lists, Allocca and his team rank videos by a mix of criteria like local viewership, shares, comments, likes and time spent watching the video. Here’s some of our favorite videos from YouTube Rewind. What do they say about the countries of origin? We’ll leave that up to you. Senegal, A  ’ dance craze called ”na goore” shook Senegal. A quick search on YouTube shows that in the past year, more than 1, 500 videos have been uploaded by people inspired to do the dance. Uganda, Comedians in Uganda do the ”Mariaroza,” another dance craze. This video got 3. 8 million views, and one commenter loved it so much he wished he could ”like” it 1, 000 times. South Africa, A group of fake policemen attempted to hijack a woman’s car in Pretoria  —   and an eyewitness gets the whole thing on tape. The video was reposted by the Rekord Pretoria, a local news outlet, and garnered 1. 2 million views. Nigeria, A local news show interviews people on the street about tattoos. Lagosians have mixed feelings  —   some think it’s   others think it’s indecent. The Middle East, In this video from Saudi Arabia (yes, it’s a high income country but the video was popular throughout the Middle East) two teens dare each other to eat barf and   jelly beans  —   and get 1. 8 million views. India, What if the participants in Indian weddings were all honest with each other? The All India Bakchod comedy collective goes through the whole routine, from meeting the future   to the wedding speeches. The Philippines, This   of a Nestle ad  —   centered on a grandmother’s love  —   was watched by 11. 2 million people. Indonesia, A Korean teen teaches Indonesian girls how to wear Korean makeup  —   and it’s a hit. Her first video has 1. 6 million views, encouraging her to do half a dozen more throughout the year. Share your thoughts: What was the most popular video in your country? Tell us in a comment below."
"A   militia in eastern Oregon grabbed national headlines Saturday when members broke into the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. There the armed group remains Sunday, occupying the federal building in protest of what it sees as government overreach on rangelands throughout the western United States. ”We stand in defense,” Ammon Bundy, the group’s apparent leader and spokesperson, told Oregon Public Broadcasting. ”And when the time is right we will begin to defend the people of Harney County, [Ore. ,] in using the land and the resources.” Ammon’s brother, Ryan, has reportedly used harsher rhetoric, saying members of the militia are willing to kill or be killed. Their last name may ring a bell. Ammon and Ryan Bundy are sons of rancher Cliven Bundy, who notably took part in an armed standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, in Nevada in 2014. Ammon Bundy now is part of a group of 15 to 150 people  —   depending on which source you believe  —   who are protesting the arson convictions of two Oregon ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven. But why exactly are a Nevada rancher’s son and his supporters taking up the cause of two guys from Oregon? What is the source of the continued friction between many ranchers and the federal government? What does a    terrorist attack in Oklahoma City have to do with all of it? The situation began, in some ways, in the decades following the Civil War. The 1862 Homestead Act granted 160 acres of land to the people willing to settle it. Ranchers in some regions needed far more land than that to be profitable. They eventually began to pay grazing fees for the right to lease federal land  —   if they agreed to federal oversight. ”When you are using somebody else’s land for your livelihood, that puts you in a very dependent relationship,” Paul Starrs, a geography professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, told NPR’s Ted Robbins in 2014. ”And livestock ranchers are, in my experience, pretty savvy people. And they don’t like that uncertainty. Nobody really likes uncertainty.” Some ranchers have strongly objected to the government’s management of federal lands, especially over issues of water or environmental conservation, and to the terms of their leases. Cliven Bundy, for his part, grazed his cattle on federal lands and refused to pay grazing fees. The government still hasn’t collected the more than $1 million he owes. The tension is heightened by how much land the federal government continues to own in the Western states. According to the Congressional Research Service, in Nevada the U. S. owned more than 81 percent of the land in the state in 2010. In Oregon, that number hovered right around half  —   53 percent of the land, more than 30 million acres of which were administered by either the BLM or the U. S. Forest Service. ”The fact is, it’s a paradox being a rugged individualist dependent on the government  —   unless you’re John Wayne,” Robbins says. It’s a paradox that Dwight and Steven Hammond chafed at for decades  —   and one that drew them off the ranch and into the courtroom. The animus harbored by the two Hammond men for federal land agencies dates back decades. Both reportedly were arrested for obstructing federal officials in 1994  —   in protest of which ”nearly 500 incensed ranchers showed up at a rally in Burns,” according to High Country News. But even before that, the Hammonds bristled at the authority of managers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. ”[Dwight] Hammond allegedly made death threats against previous managers in 1986 and 1988 and against [Forrest] Cameron, the current manager, in 1991 and again this year,” High Country News reported in 1994. The seeds of the current situation were sown in 2001 and 2006. In both those years, the U. S. government said the Hammonds set fires that spread onto land managed by the BLM. The 2001 blaze burned 139 acres of public land, according to court documents the 2006 fire  —   for which only Steven was convicted  —   burned an additional acre of public land. Arson convictions for both father and son were handed down in 2012. Much of the dispute in the years afterward  —   including, eventually, this weekend’s armed occupation  —   revolves around the sentencing. Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which increased the penalties for arson committed against federal property, the mandatory minimum punishment for such crimes was upped to five years in federal prison. The law, which was passed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, struck the judge presiding over the sentencing as too harsh  —   and   in this instance. ”It just would not be  —   would not meet any idea I have of justice, proportionality,” U. S. District Judge Michael R. Hogan said at the sentencing. ”I am not supposed to use the word ’fairness’ in criminal law. I know that I had a criminal law professor a long time ago yell at me for doing that. And I don’t do that. ”But this  —   it would be a sentence which would shock the conscience to me.” At the time, Hogan sentenced Dwight Hammond Jr. to three months of prison, and Steven Hammond to a year and one day. The federal government wanted the full five years, appealing the shorter sentences and eventually winning that appeal in 2014. ”Even a fire in a remote area has the potential to spread to more populated areas, threaten local property and residents, or endanger the firefighters called to battle the blaze,” District Judge Stephen J. Murphy wrote in the appellate court’s opinion. ”Given the seriousness of arson, a   sentence is not grossly disproportionate to the offense.” The original sentences were remanded, and the Hammonds were sentenced to five years in prison. The Hammonds are expected to report to prison Monday. Whatever their continued friction with federal officials, the Hammonds have not publicly condoned the   militia members who claim to be interceding on their behalf. ”The Hammonds’ attorney has previously stated the militiamen showing up in Burns do not represent the ranchers,” Oregon Public Broadcasting reports, noting that many locals in Burns have also received the    warily  —   with several ”Militia Go Home” fliers posted throughout the town. Even Cliven Bundy, Ammon’s father, expressed his hesitation over the protests. ”I don’t quite understand how much they’re going to accomplish,” Bundy told OPB. ”I think of it this way: What business does the Bundy family have in Harney County, Oregon?” Still, that has not dissuaded Ammon Bundy or the group with which he’s holed up in the Malheur refuge headquarters. At a press conference there, Bundy said his plan may take ”several months at the shortest to accomplish.” As of Sunday, law enforcement had not attempted to remove the armed group from the federal building, OPB reports."
"A small group of armed   occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Ore. on Saturday. Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that the men were apparently led by Ammon Bundy. He is the son of Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a   standoff with the federal government in Nevada over grazing rights. The day started off with a protest. Militia members marched in support of Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond, two ranchers who were convicted of setting federal lands on fire. OPB reports that as the sun set most of the hundreds of protesters left Burns but a group stayed to take over the refuge. OPB adds: ”A group of five men bundled in coats and scarves fed sagebrush branches into a campfire. Only Ammon spoke to the media, but a few of the men quietly identified themselves as longtime residents of the Burns area and supporters of the Hammonds. ”Asked how many militia members were at the headquarters, Bundy demurred. ’I will not disclose,’ he said. ’Operational security.’ . .. ”There was no sign of law enforcement near the entrance to the refuge, though an Oregon State Police patrol car idled by the side of the road just outside Burns. ” ’We are not hurting anybody or damaging any property. We would expect that they understand that we have given them no reason to use lethal force upon us or any other force,’ Bundy said.” On its Facebook page, the Bundy Ranch posted video of Ammon Bundy talking to the press: Bundy said the men were prepared to ”stay as long as it takes.” He said he wanted the federal government to end the restrictions it has placed on some federal lands. ”All comfort, all wealth . .. comes from the Earth, and we cannot have the government restricting the use of that to the point where it puts us in poverty,” Bundy said. OPB reports that the Hammonds plan to report to jail on Monday. They were sentenced to a year or less in prison in 2012 for arson. But federal prosecutors appealed that sentence, saying the two men should have ”received the mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison for burning federal property.” The government won that appeal in October, and the Hammonds were ordered to begin serving the rest of that   sentence on Monday. Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward told The Oregonian that multiple agencies are ”currently working on a solution” to the occupation. Update at 3:16 p. m. ET. Could Take Months:  During a press conference outside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge building, Bundy said his group had a plan and that it could take ”several months at the shortest to accomplish.” Bundy said this was a fight about the Constitution. The federal government, he said, has no right over these lands unless the states cede those rights to them. It’s worth noting that the Constitution gives the federal government full power to do what it wishes with lands owned by the United States. (Also, if you’re interested in the history of federal land ownership, the Congressional Research Service has a quick primer.) Ultimately, Bundy concluded, this occupation is intended to give ranchers back rights they believe they possess. For example, the Hammonds’ cows should be able to move and graze through the refuge’s land as they wish. ”I will say this refuge from its very inception has been a tool of tyranny,” Bundy said."
"DNA from a genetically modified goat, a spritz of perfume, sculptures so small you need a microscope to see them. They’re all headed for the moon. The MoonArk is a sort of    portrait of humanity, with more than 200 artists and designers contributing to it. There’s space reserved for it on one of the   Moon missions competing for the Google Lunar Xprize. Lowry Burgess, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the MoonArk project lead, holds up one of his contributions, a vial full of red liquid. A drop will go in the Ark. It’s human blood  —   ”all artists’ blood,” Burgess says.  Specifically, 33 artists’ blood, all mixed together. Some of the artists are pretty famous, he says, but he won’t namedrop. He’s doing the same thing with a mixture of water from some of the world’s rivers. All told, there are hundreds of items in the Ark. Burgess says each one is like a word in a poem. ”A poem is like a bell . .. every word in a poem rings and makes all the rest of the other words ring,” he says. ”So in this, everything that’s there is making something else ring. So the totality is meant to hum together.” You may have realized that this is conceptual art, where the idea is more important than any traditional aesthetic. Or you can think of it is as a time capsule, with its contents open to interpretation. Burgess sees it as a cultural outpost in space waiting to be discovered. ”We’re desperately hoping that whoever opens it is perhaps a little more evolved than we are,” he says. Unlike some earlier space art, like the Golden Records on the Voyager craft floating beyond the solar system, the Ark will stay in one place. But Mark Baskinger, one of the artists on the project, says the point is not to conquer. ”We think it should be different than sticking a flag in the soil and claiming territory . .. maybe we’re leaving breadcrumbs for someone else to find their way back here,” he says. ”It’s an attempt to communicate forward in time  —   it’s an attempt to communicate outward.” Other artists are just interested in the collaboration  —   some don’t even really care about space or who finds it. And while some of the artists are prone to intellectualizing, others will let themselves get a little emotional. Dylan Vitone’s contribution includes ordinary text messages between him and his wife. ”Cynical me is critiquing the way we broadcast our life. The sentimental me is kind of celebrating this thing that’s really important for me and trying to give it more meaning than it actually has,” he says. A copy of the Ark will stay here on Earth to be exhibited. But in space, weight is money, so the team has had to be innovative with materials. The Ark’s four chambers will weigh less than six ounces. I pick up one of the aluminum outer shells. It’s so light it almost feels flimsy, but it’s designed to last hundreds of years. ”It’s funny  —   you touch this and your fingerprints are on it,” Vitone says. ”Your fingerprints are going to the moon.” Suddenly, the moon is personal. My fingerprints are just a simpler form of   than the other items on the MoonArk."
"Updated 6:20 a. m. ET Sunday, Angry over the execution of Shiite cleric Sheik Nimr   by Saudi Arabia, protesters stormed parts of the Saudi embassy in Tehran Saturday night before being cleared out by security forces, NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports. Videos posted online appeared to show a Molotov cocktail being hurled through a window at the embassy and flames flaring up, Kenyon says. The Iranian foreign ministry called on people not to gather at Saudi diplomatic buildings, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the execution of the cleric Nimr   would bring ”divine vengeance” down on the Saudi rulers. Some protesters entered the building but were dispersed by police, ISNA reports, citing Iran’s top police official the agency also reports that some arrests were made. As NPR’s Leila Fadel reported on All Things Considered, the execution of 47 people in Saudi Arabia  —   including Sheikh Nimr   a top Shiite cleric, and three other Shiites  —   has also sparked protests in Bahrain and in the largely Shiite city of Qatif, Saudi Arabia. ”Shia Muslims are a minority in the Sunni Muslim country of Saudi Arabia,” Leila explains. ”And the battle for influence in the region between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran has inflamed sectarian tensions.” Sheikh Nimr al Nimr supported peaceful protests in Saudi Arabia in 2011, Leila notes: ”Saudi Arabia says the executions were to preserve the safety of the kingdom. Those executed were accused of radical ideology, terrorism or criminal plots. ”Besides the Shia Saudi citizens, a Saudi court convicted the 43 others on charges of working with Al Qaeda.” Iran’s government and Shiite clerics around the region have condemned the executions, as have human rights groups, Leila says."
"Back in 2012, President Obama took executive action to create a program for unauthorized immigrants who entered the U. S. as children before June of 2007, and who are currently younger than 34. That program has come to be known as DACA  —   Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals  —   and since it was instituted, it has temporarily protected almost 700, 000 people from deportation. How long the original DACA program lasts, though, will depend on who wins the 2016 presidential race. (There’s also a lawsuit against an expansion Obama planned to make to the DACA program that has been appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court.) By now, almost all of the Republicans running to replace Obama have been asked how they would handle the program as the next president. And just about all of them  —   including Gov. Chris Christie, Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio  —   have said they would get rid of DACA. That’s a scenario that immigrants like Valentina Garcia, a sophomore at Dartmouth College, are preparing for. ”I’m still trying to figure out if my major’s going to work out, if my plan to go to medical school is going to work out. It all really depends on DACA,” she says. Garcia was 6 years old when she and her family left Uruguay by plane on tourist visas. After those expired, they stayed in the U. S. In 2014, Garcia received DACA  —   and with it, a Social Security number. A Georgia resident, she was also able to apply for a driver’s license. ”We’ve moved about four times in the past two years, and I’ve been the one that’s been looking for houses. I’ve been the one that’s transferring the utilities,” Garcia says. ”I’m like the second dad, the second mom with my family.” Roberto Gonzales, a sociologist at Harvard University, has studied the lives of young immigrants without legal status. And according to his studies, Garcia is by no means the only one who has taken on more responsibility in the family since DACA. ”They’re playing greater roles within their family, within their community. And so an elimination of DACA would have ripple effects that extend far beyond these individuals,” Gonzales says. He notes that the temporary work permits they receive through DACA have allowed many to stop working under the table. ”These young people have taken giant steps towards the American Dream,” he adds. ”They now have new jobs. They’re getting healthcare. They’re building credit.” But they’re not on the path to citizenship  —   and their   future in the U. S. is still a big question mark. The Obama administration has put DACA recipients at the bottom of its priority list for deportation, but Victor Nieblas of the American Immigration Lawyers Association says that could change under a new administration. ”We have to be honest here,” Nieblas says, ”and we have to indicate that it really all depends on who wins the presidency and the immigration policies of this new president”  —   policies that could directly impact Jin Park, a    Harvard student who was one of the first to receive DACA in 2012. ”Somebody can drag me out of my chemistry class at 10 a. m. and deport me,” Park says. ”That is a real possibility, and it’s scary, you know.” Born in South Korea, Park was 7 when he took a plane to the U. S. with his parents. Like Garcia, Park and his family overstayed their tourist visas. Now, he says he’s paying close attention to the presidential race  —   ”All the debates, all the Republican debates, I really try to watch.” ”For me, surviving as a single mother with a child  —   you know, a     —   I definitely have to start thinking about savings,” says Antonia Rivera of Des Moines, Iowa, a    mother who is also preparing for the possible end to DACA. She walked across the border from Mexico illegally with her mother and younger sister when she was 6. ”I’m a survivor,” Rivera says. ”I know how to survive without any source of legal document that allows me to work and drive legally in this country. But I know it’s really, really hard to do.” It’s a challenge that more than a   DACA recipients may have to face when Obama leaves the White House."
"As part of a series called My Big Break, All Things Considered is collecting stories of triumph, big and small. These are the moments when everything seems to click, and people leap forward into their careers. Normally, Alex Honnold tries to avoid breaks of all kinds. As a professional rock climber, Honnold has made his name climbing some of the tallest, most difficult rock faces in the world, many of them without the safety of a rope  —   and entirely alone. The task is so dangerous that only 1 percent of climbers attempt it. So it’s crucial that the handholds he uses do not break beneath his grip. But he does credit one moment, happily, with being his big break. ”The first thing I think of is being featured on 60 Minutes. It’s probably the one thing that set me on the path to devoting my life to being a professional climber,” Honnold says. ”I was very much a dirtbag climber living in my van, and this producer from 60 Minutes approached me and said, ’This is going to change your life. This will be the biggest thing you’ve ever done.’ ” Ever since that 2011 appearance on 60 Minutes, Honnold has regularly been featured in the media spotlight, garnering the cover of National Geographic and getting sponsorships from major outdoor companies. ”I often joke that I’ve become a professional schmoozer,” he says. ”Like nobody really cares how well I can   anymore they just care how well I can schmooze.” But before the hype, Honnold was a college dropout, living out of his mother’s borrowed minivan, driving from climb to climb. And schmoozing hasn’t always come easily for him, either. As a kid growing up in Sacramento, Calif. he was too shy to approach strangers at the climbing gym. One side effect of this shyness was that he got used to rock climbing by himself, without a rope. ”I suppose being a bit of an antisocial weirdo definitely honed my skills as a soloist. It gave me a lot more opportunity to solo lots of easy routes, which in turn broadened my comfort zone quite a bit and has allowed me to climb the harder things without a rope that I’ve done now.” Honnold says the key to his success has come largely from avoiding big breaks  —   and the big risks they often entail  —   moving incrementally toward ever more audacious climbing feats. But there was one climb in particular that tested his limits and brought him to the attention of the climbing community, and eventually the wider world: when he decided to climb Half Dome in California’s Yosemite Valley. ”It’s a route that everybody aspires to and physically looks up to, because anywhere in Yosemite you look up at that wall.” After days spent deliberating how and when to tackle the wall, Honnold set out quietly one July morning to make rock climbing history. ”Basically I was able to climb the wall on autopilot. I’d already made all of the hard decisions,” Honnold says. ”But then, basically my autopilot started to run out by the time I got to the top, because I was just starting to get tired, and it was hard to maintain that focus.” Near the top of the wall, just 100 feet from safety, he heard the laughter of day hikers who had reached Half Dome’s peak on a far easier ascent. The sounds of others snapped Honnold out of his fade. ”I just took some deep breaths, and finally said ’This is what I have to do. I’m going to trust this foot,’ and then I just stood up on the foothold and that was that.” He completed the climb that day, eventually even walking among those same day hikers he’d heard while climbing. ”Nobody knew that I was even a climber nobody even asked what I had just done or where I had come from,” Honnold recalls. ”They just thought that I was some random guy hanging out on the side of the cliff. I had just done one of the most personally significant climbs of my life. I was like, ’Aw, nobody even noticed.’ ”That’s crazy.”"
"The beginning of a new year is a busy time for new singles. According to the websites Match. com and PlentyOfFish, Jan. 3 is the busiest day of the year for new signups to their sites. But those are just two in the plethora of dating apps and websites. There are big names like Tinder, OkCupid and Hinge. But there are lots of niche apps that target specific groups. For example, there’s JDate and JSwipe for Jews Tindog connects dogs and owners alike High There is for marijuana enthusiasts and of course there’s Sizzl, exclusively for bacon lovers. As people spend more time on their phones, much of the dating world has moved there with them. So what happened to meeting people in person? Lisa Bonos tried to find out. Bonos writes and edits pieces about single life and dating for The Washington Post’s   blog. She recently took a   break from dating apps and tried to meet people IRL. Bonos chronicled her app fast in a recent blog post and talked about what she learned with NPR’s Michel Martin. On how important the Internet is for modern dating, If you want to be meeting people and going on dates on a regular basis, yes, it’s important. If you want to go on one date a week, you are going to have to enlist the Internet, or all of your friends, to set you up. On the increased pressure she felt going offline, Anytime I was in a situation where there might be single people, like a bar or party, which did not happen every night, I would be like, ”Oh, my gosh, I’m in a situation where I could meet someone. I need to talk to more than one person.” In one situation I ended up talking to two people and cutting off a perfectly good conversation to go talk to somebody [else]. Turned out, he was married. On what she learned from the experience, My takeaway from the time away is that I might do it more often. Just take a breath when I’m feeling overwhelmed. I might not say, ”For three months I’m not going to use the apps.” But maybe two days or three days."
"About a decade ago, food writer Michael Pollan issued a call to action: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. As 2016 opens, it looks like many American cooks and diners are heeding that call. Vegetables have moved from the side to the center of the plate. And as another year begins, it appears that plants are the new meat. Bon Appetit magazine named AL’s Place in San Francisco the best new restaurant of 2015. Meats at AL’s Place are listed under ”sides.” The rest of the menu features   dishes sometimes featuring animal protein as an ingredient  —   pear curry, black lime yellowtail, persimmon, blistered squash. The hanger steak (with smoked salmon butter) however, is a side dish. This and other restaurants are also using the whole vegetable. What used to go in the compost heap is now fermented, roasted or smoked and used in other dishes. The    approach follows the example of    eating. WastED is a project that brings together chefs, farmers, fishermen and food purveyors to ”reconceive waste” in the food chain, according to the group’s website. The WastED salad has been available at Sweetgreen restaurants, making use of the restaurants scraps  —   broccoli leaves, carrot ribbons, roasted kale stems, romaine hearts, roasted cabbage cores, roasted broccoli stalks and roasted bread butts, all mixed with arugula, Parmesan, spicy sunflower seeds and pesto vinaigrette. Food waste has become a concern to the U. S. government as well as chefs. The U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency have set a goal to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2030, calling in a joint statement to ”feed people not landfills.” The statement says food loss and waste account for about 31 percent (133 billion pounds) of the nation’s food supply. The ascendance of vegetables has added a new word to the food lexicon: spiralizing. Piles of spiralized vegetables  —   produced with, yes, a spiralizer  —   are replacing pasta in some home and restaurant kitchens. Cookbooks, blogs and tools are available to help. Eaters in 2016 also are likely to see more dried beans, peas and lentils on their plates. The United Nations has declared this the International Year of Pulses to raise consumer awareness of the nutritional and environmental benefits of the edible dry seeds. Chickpeas seems to be the rising star of the pulse world. They’re not just for hummus anymore. The rise of vegetables and focus on food waste are the culmination of more than a decade’s worth of government, consumer and food and environmental activists’ concerns that have finally trickled into the mainstream. Sustainability issues are becoming particularly visible in the fish we’re eating. More overlooked fish and some invasive species are being offered to diners.   ”clean labels” are another expression of these concerns. Both consumers and food purveyors are focused on removing GMOs, artificial ingredients, preservatives, antibiotics and growth hormones from food. Even   outlets are using more eggs from   chickens and dumping ingredients that have been genetically modified. There are generational shifts, too, in the way we eat. Millenials  —   now more numerous than baby boomers  —   have a huge impact. The corporate food world is keenly interested in how and what this large group of consumers eats. And they do buy and eat differently from older generations. They order ingredients online, and learn to cook from YouTube as well as cookbooks and websites. They care about the environment, ethical treatment of animals, and community. They frequently use food delivery services rather than going to the supermarket, and order meal kits that deliver prepared ingredients. Whatever your age, expect 2016 to be the year not only of the vegetable, but of more awareness of what we spear with our forks."
"Rabbi Reuven Birmajer finished teaching his Talmud class at a religious seminary in Jerusalem last week, and then told his students he had to rush home. Deliverymen were bringing a new bed. ”He was afraid a Palestinian guy was going to deliver the bed, and his wife was going to be all alone,” explains student Chaim Zbar. But it was the rabbi who was killed in a Palestinian stabbing on his way home. Now Zbar avoids going out in the streets. For more than three months, Jerusalem has seen   Palestinian attacks on Israelis  —   shootings, rammings with cars and many stabbings. About 20 Israelis have died. More than 130 Palestinians have died. Israel says most were committing attacks others were killed during clashes with troops. Much of the violence has taken place in Jerusalem, and for residents like Zbar, the tensions are affecting daily routines. ”The thing I don’t like is I don’t consider [myself] to be a prejudiced person,” he says. ”But with all this happening, I see someone, I think, it’s a Palestinian. I think, he may harm me. But he may just be a normal guy  —   normal life, normal job  —   and he’s not trying to harm anyone. But I can’t assume that. I don’t know him. I have to be careful.” A short walk away,    Palestinian Amjad Karmi is also nervous. Karmi mans a hookah shop in the Old City. He’s worried  —   even though the violence is not as intense now as it was a few weeks ago. ”We don’t feel [it’s] that dangerous, like before, but we [are] afraid, still now, to go out,” he says. Karmi is afraid he could find himself at the scene of an attack and be mistaken for an assailant. He stopped going to an Israeli mall after drawing suspicious looks. ”Not like normal looking, you know?” he says. ”They checking you. They afraid [of] you. You know, the personal feeling, it’s bad.” Personal  —   that’s what many people say. It’s not the anonymous violence of a rocket or bomb: It’s the fear of the person next to you on the street. For some, it’s regret for suspecting an innocent person in the first place. Things could change if the violence escalates, but at the moment, people have mostly gotten used to the new normal in the city  —   the posters for   classes, the stores advertising pepper spray. Weeks ago, the streets often felt empty as fearful residents stayed inside. But not anymore. Lots of Israelis crowded on the street recently for a Middle Eastern music festival. One Israeli in the crowd, Avital Keslasi, said she just wants to live a little. ”There’s been violence here for a long time, years, right?” Keslasi said. ”Nonsense. It will pass.” The city has begun to install   concrete poles around bus stops to protect people against the kinds of   attacks that have killed a number of Israelis. But already, people seem to stare right through the concrete barriers, as if they’ve always been there."
"Food coloring, water, a preservative and a pound of morphine powder. These are the ingredients in Dr. Anne Merriman’s recipe for liquid morphine. ”It’s easier than making a cake,” says Merriman, a British palliative care specialist who founded Hospice Africa in Uganda in 1993 and helped design the formula that hospice workers in Uganda have used for 22 years to craft liquid morphine. The lightest dose, dyed green to indicate the strength and to make sure people don’t confuse it with water, costs about $2 per bottle to make. Stronger doses are dyed pink and blue. A   bottle is about a week’s supply for most patients. Those cheap bottles of green, pink and blue liquid morphine have changed the way people die in Uganda  —   and are a key reason why Uganda has the best quality of death among   countries, according to global Quality of Death Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Back in the 1990s, two of the biggest barriers to good death in Uganda were simple: not enough doctors and not enough morphine. Largely through Merriman’s drive, Hospice Africa Uganda developed professional education in palliative care that would spread the responsibility to nurses, rather than relying on doctors. They helped make it mandatory for medical students in Uganda to study pain management   —   before Germany did. And Hospice Africa Uganda made liquid morphine. ”I had been one of the doctors who had said to people, ’Sorry, there is no more we can do. You have to go home,’” says Merriman, of the time she spent working with cancer patients in Singapore starting in the 1960s. There, she says, ”I found that patients with cancer were getting every treatment possible with chemotherapy, and then when it didn’t work they were sent home and they were dying in agony.” So she sat down with a couple pharmacists from the National University Hospital and came up with a formula to make a liquid from pure morphine powder. Merriman would eventually be invited to Kenya to set up a hospice care program in Nairobi before founding her own organization in 1993, based in Uganda. At that time, palliative care in Africa only existed in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and the services, she says, were ”started out by whites for whites.” Medication was prohibitively expensive for most patients. ”The strongest they had there was codeine  —   if you had money. But if you didn’t have money, you only had aspirin and sometimes nothing at all,” says Merriman. Today, the organization’s three hospice centers serve some 2, 100 outpatients. ”It’s not always the pain that’s their greatest worry,” she says. ”It’s often ’What’s going to happen to my children when I die?’ It may be spiritual problems, it may be cultural  —   things they have to carry out before they die. We try to help with all those kinds of things.” Relieving pain is step one  —   and it has many benefits. Patients eat better, sleep better and live higher quality lives, even in their last days, says Merriman. Cost was one obstacle to pain management that Merriman had to address. Another, which persists in many countries, was a   fear of opioid painkillers. Though morphine is considered the gold standard in palliative care for pain management, in many parts of the world fear of opioid addiction and misuse is so rampant it has a name: opiophobia. Merriman ran up against opiophobia in Singapore and Uganda, where she says, people thought she was providing morphine so that patients could kill themselves. ”And morphine can kill,” she says. But with the right regulations in place, and the right explanation to the patient and their relatives, she says, ”it’s very safe.” For over a decade, the Ugandan government has provided morphine free to the patients of prescribers who are members of a special registry, all trained through Hospice Africa Uganda. ”You’ve got to be careful, everything has to be signed for and we have to follow the regulations,” she says. ”But for the last three years, we’ve been making morphine for the whole country.” Merriman says of the 24, 000 patients in total that they have prescribed oral morphine to, ”we’ve had no addiction, no diversions. And the patients keep the bottle at home.” In Uganda, she had to work hard to surmount the fear of opioids. For example, Hospice Africa Uganda worked with narcotics police, teaching them what morphine is and that it’s a legal medication. ”They need to understand that patients can take morphine and that they are not addicted, that it is handed to patients after careful assessment, and that it is a safe medication,” says Dr. Eddie Mwebesa, clinical director at Hospice Africa Uganda. Without police cooperation, he says, ”there will be a lot of trouble with patients having their morphine in the home” and in transporting the drug between hospices or patient homes. Clinicians prescribe the morphine and instruct patients to sip a dose from a marked cup. For adults, it’s usually about a teaspoon every 4 hours. Merriman says hospice workers frequently have to warn people about morphine  —   not because of the risk of addiction but to explain that it will not wipe out their illness. She says they feel so good after it, they often feel normal again. ”They think we’ve cured them,” she says. Even with the innovations in Uganda, there are still challenges. The organization estimates that only 10 percent of Ugandan patients in need of palliative care can access it. ”The biggest challenge we have right now is the sheer number of patients who need palliative care,” says Mwebesa  —   he puts the number at 250, 000 to 300, 000. But there is about one doctor for every 20, 000 Ugandans, he says. Mwebesa says palliative care can cost about $25 each week for one patient. ”It doesn’t sound like a lot,” he says, ”But actually most people can’t afford it.” Only 2 percent of Ugandans have health insurance, so many families have to pay    to care for sick relatives. Even though Uganda is far from perfect, it remains in many respects a model country for its neighbors. ”We had the minister of Swaziland visit Uganda to see how Uganda reconstitutes oral morphine and then when we went back, they started doing the same,” says Dr. Emmanuel Luyirika, executive director of the African Palliative Care Association. He says the same happened with Rwanda and Malawi. Merriman is now turning her attention to   countries in Africa. She says some countries in the region remind her a lot of Uganda back in the ’90s. ”They’ve got a fear of morphine. Doctors don’t want to prescribe it because they think if they prescribe it, they’ll be accused of being addicts themselves,” she says. World Bank data shows the region has the world’s highest maternal mortality and lowest national health budgets. And people there largely pay for health care   . ”If you haven’t got money,” says Merriman, ”you can’t even get an aspirin.” At age 80, she’s still determined to see that the dying don’t have to face such dilemmas when they seek relief from pain."
"Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is dismissing a terrorist propaganda video that uses part of one his stump speeches. ”They use other people,” he told CBS’ Face the Nation in an interview aired today. ”What am I going to do? I have to say what I have to say. And you know what I have to say, there’s a problem.” Of course, this comes after the Islamist group   released a recruitment video aimed at American Muslims. The video includes a clip of Trump calling for a ”total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The AP reports that the video goes on to tell American Muslims that the United States will always be biased against Muslims, so they should join jihadi movements to fight against the country. The AP adds: ”Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had earlier claimed that the Islamic State group, another extremist organization, was using such quotes to recruit followers, prompting Trump to call her a ”liar.” ”The quotes from Trump are bracketed by a recorded speech from   cleric Anwar   one of the most prominent   recruiters for   who was killed by a U. S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011, warning that the U. S. would turn against its Muslims. ”The video was released on Twitter Friday, according to the SITE Intel monitoring group and tells the story of several Americans from Minnesota that joined   and were killed in the fighting in Somalia, holding them up as examples to be followed.” Here’s a bit more of what Trump told CBS:"
"A year ago, NPR’s Weekend Edition met four Howard University seniors. Ariel Alford, Taylor Davis, Kevin Peterman and Leighton Watson gave us a peek into life on the precipice of adulthood. Now they’ve arrived. Alford has spent the past few months as a student teacher in Washington, D. C. finishing her final requirement before getting her degree. Davis stayed in Washington too. Watson moved just a couple hours away, to Richmond, Va. where he works in finance. Peterman moved up the East Coast to Princeton University, where he’s a graduate student in theology. He’s one of the younger people in his program. ”I forget that I’m . .. 22 because most of my classmates are much older than me,” he says. ”I’m engaging in conversations constantly about marriage, about Ph. D. work, about careers down the line, and I really do begin to forget, I just graduated from college.” Peterman is navigating an academic world that looks a lot different from Howard, one of the country’s elite historically black colleges where the student population is 85 percent  . The Princeton Theological Seminary is 63 percent white. ”One of the first lessons I learned in my first week at Princeton was that I was as much student as I am teacher,” he says. ”Many people who come to this institution have not been exposed to   and especially not   ministers or the   faith tradition. . .. Sometimes it can become frustrating” He says his four years at Howard made him feel more secure in who he is and what he believes. ”When I was applying to Princeton, I was nervous about leaving the historical black college space and coming to an Ivy League seminary,” Peterman says. ”It’s only until I got there that I realized that I had been prepared better than most of my fellow   students who had gone to predominantly white institutions,” he says. ”They had been in an environment where they themselves were trying to study this thing we call black theology, and this place that we call the black church, by themselves in a vacuum, whereas I had gone to a historically black college, where that was the center of our focus, where that was our context.” Taylor Davis also thinks Howard prepared her well  ” in a different way. She didn’t pass one of her nursing classes last year so she couldn’t graduate with her friends. ”I do think there is something to be said about being in a place where everyone looks like you, and everyone wants the best for you,” she says. ”Especially for undergrad.” At Howard, Davis learned how to fail and get back up again. She learned how to check her ego and do the work: She took the class again, and this time, she nailed it. ”When I got my scores back, when I tell you, I literally start screaming and I break out into praise and worship,” she says. Davis will travel before taking the nursing board exams this summer. She’s also considering other   options, possibly law school. ”I actually took my LSAT last year, so we’re going to see where it leads me,” she says. ”I mean, the power of possibilities, that’s been my mantra ever since I learned I was going to be in school an extra year. I feel like God gave that quote to me. There’s power in your possibilities. And for me what that means is you literally control your destiny and you have the ability to do great and miraculous things if only you would believe that.”"
"  challenge: Each of the following sentences has two blanks. The first word has the letter O somewhere in it. Double the O to get the second word, which completes the sentence. Example: In math class, my PROF asked me to find the shortest PROOF. 1. To get to an online article about the 31st U. S. president, you should ____________ your cursor over the name Herbert ____________. 2. On the team’s baseball ____________ was a player who perfectly imitated the crowing of a ____________. 3. To order craft stockings made in Indiana, I needed a ____________ who was a ____________. 4. Our instructor on whaling would always ____________ the need for the ____________ to be very, very sharp. [note: what goes in the first blank is two words] 5. When barbecuing spare ribs, you should ____________ them with a bourbon sauce to get a ____________ taste. 6. John’s wife stormed out of the disco after the ____________ dancer made ____________ eyes at her husband. [note: the first word has two O’s, both of which are doubled] Last week’s challenge: Name a famous actress who has four letters in her first name and four letters in her last name. Add one letter and rearrange the result to name an animal and the sound this animal makes. Who is the actress and what is the sound that the animal makes? Answer: Teri Garr  —  &gt tiger, roar, Winner: Dan Simmons of Salem, Ore. Next week’s challenge: This is a variation on the old word ladder puzzle. The object is to change WHOLE to HEART by either adding or subtracting one letter at a time, making a new, common, uncapitalized word at each step. For example, you can change RED to ROSE in five steps. Starting with RED, you could add a U, making RUED drop the D, leaving RUE add an S, making RUSE add an O, making ROUSE, and then drop the U, leaving ROSE. Changing or rearranging letters is not allowed, neither are plurals or verbs formed by adding  . No word in the chain can have fewer than three letters. How many steps are needed to change WHOLE to HEART? I have my best answer. We’ll compare results next week. Submit Your Answer, If you know the answer to next week’s challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the   puzzle. Important: Include a phone number at which we can reach you Thursday, Jan. 7, at 3 p. m. ET."
"In Spring Hill, Tenn. people often lurk outside the library on their laptops  —   before it opens and after it closes. Librarian Jennifer Urban says it’s not that they’re just mooching the free  . The cost may be one aspect, but this town of about 30, 000 people is also growing fast, she says, so fast that Internet providers can’t keep up with home construction. ”There are subdivisions here that no one in the subdivision has Internet access, for one reason or another,” she says. So the city decided to start offering something new: mobile   hot spots, for lease. Chicago does it, Seattle does it, New York City does it  —   and now, so does Spring Hill. The library has about 20 of these devices, and people check them out like a book, for a week at a time. Because hot spots create   connections using mobile data, the service is not cheap, coming up at $10, 000 per year in mobile data costs. But Urban argues it’s a good fit for the evolution of the library, while maintaining its purpose: to connect people to knowledge. And in their first year, the mobile hot spots have been the most popular item in the library  —   by far  —   with a regular waiting list of two dozen people. ”This, I can say, was about the only thing that I can remember that never got a single negative reaction,” says city spokesman Jamie Page about a Facebook post announcing the arrival of the hot spots. ”It truly was accepted and, you know, embraced with opens arms.” With this    Internet offering, libraries around the country are hoping to help connect those who might not be able to afford the service otherwise. But it can serve many purposes. Keith Morris, a library regular, was one of the first to hear about the new offering in Spring Hill. He checked out a hot spot for a family road trip to the West Coast. ”We got pretty good reception in Yellowstone, so that was kind of exciting,” he says. He used the hot spot to stay on top of his work email but also to post some of the videos his family recorded on the trip. The growing demand for these devices has librarians adjusting to provide more tech support, and Urban says there’s also an emerging discussion about how to handle what content gets accessed through the   that hot spots provide, given that libraries typically do put filters on their computers to block some content like pornography. ”Within the library world there’s a little bit of   as far as, you know, how will you regulate this?” she says. ”And what kind of limitations will you place on it?” But the bigger challenge, she says, has been a familiar one: getting hot spots returned on time. Morris says when he returned his hot spot, he wasn’t sure whether he could toss the hot spot in the return bin for the books. ”I might have got a late fee,” he says. ”I returned it after hours . .. but I secured it very well.” Urban says the library began putting stickers on the boxes, telling the patrons to return hot spots to the desk. She has also tripled the late fee to $3 per day. ”It’s a learning process for us as well as for everyone else,” Urban says. So far, two hot spots haven’t come back at all, so Urban had to shut off their service remotely. Though she’s holding out hope to see them again. ”You never know. Things show up,” she says. ”Books, other things, they can be lost  —   I’ve had things that are lost for five or six years that get returned.” A version of this story was first published by Nashville Public Radio."
"These are dark times our feeds are filled with news of shootings as well as the hateful speech that always results. Every year, writing this preview, I think of how poetry is one of our surest consolations. It can’t do much about the fear and violence running rampant in America right now, but in the books to be published in 2016 especially, poets are taking responsibility, speaking out, identifying themselves, speaking the truth. Honesty may be poetry’s best gift in the coming year, as these writers and others say what needs to be said about guns, anger, racism, family, and how we can think and feel more precisely and truthfully about one another. Also coming in 2016 is a shelf’s worth of collected and selected poems  —   mighty tomes by living greats and the Great Dead. Most monumental is The Collected Poems of Adrienne Rich, one of the major feminist pioneers of the second half of the 20th century Claudia Rankine was tapped to write the introduction. Another   is All The Poems of Stevie Smith, the newly edited complete works by the darkly whimsical   British poet. Among the living, we have collected volumes from Marie Ponsot, Rita Dove, Frank Bidart, and a selected volume from the prolific Kevin Young. Every year it happens that I’m excited about too many new books to fully preview here: Anne Carson will be back with a new book called Float National Book Award finalist Monica Youn brings out her third collection, Blackacre, which wrestles with the legal implications of places, and look out for new collections from C. Dale Young, Paisley Rekdal, Anna Moskovakis, and Patrick Rosal. While these books won’t solve our problems, they will be good company in the struggles ahead. As always, we need poetry now more than ever. Craig Morgan Teicher is a writer and editor, most recently of the collection, Once and for All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz, releasing April 2016."
"President Obama is announcing a series of executive actions intended to combat gun violence, including a regulatory change designed to make it harder for gun buyers to avoid background checks. Obama plans to detail the moves on Tuesday with a statement in the White House East Room. ”It will potentially save lives in this country and spare families the pain and the extraordinary loss that they’ve suffered as a consequence of a firearm being in the hands of the wrong people,” the president said Monday, after meeting privately to discuss the measures with the attorney general, the FBI director and the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF will play a central role in the administration’s move, by clarifying what it means to be ”engaged in the business” of selling guns. Until now, some collectors and hobbyists have been able to avoid that designation. As a result, they haven’t needed a federal license to sell and they haven’t been required to conduct background checks on their customers. The new guidance from that bureau is designed to require more such sellers to conduct background checks, even if they’re doing business only at gun shows or online. ”Let me be clear: It is not where you are located but what you are doing” that determines who must conduct background checks, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a conference call with reporters. The administration is also working to improve the quality of background checks by encouraging states and government agencies to share more information about criminal histories, domestic violence and mental illness that could disqualify a person from buying a gun. And the FBI is hiring 230 additional staff people to speed the processing of background checks. Under current law, a gun sale can go forward if a background check is not completed within three days. The White House conceded its moves are not a substitute for congressional action. Obama was stymied in his effort to promote gun control legislation three years ago in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Since then, the president has complained repeatedly that mass shootings and routine gun violence are much more prevalent in the U. S. than in other developed countries. ”Although we have a strong tradition of gun ownership in this country,” Obama said Monday, ”I want to make sure that the wrong people don’t have them for the wrong reasons.” The president’s actions are likely to face both political and legal challenges from gun rights advocates. Gun sellers say the threat of a government crackdown has already contributed to a surge in holiday gun sales."
"The Paris agreement to curb climate change calls for a dramatic shift away from fossil fuels and the greenhouse gasses they emit, especially carbon dioxide. Switching to renewable energy helps, but that won’t happen fast enough to keep temperatures from rising to dangerous levels. That’s why scientists and researchers all over the world also are working on new ways of keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. NPR’s Jeff Brady, KQED’s Lauren Sommer, Wyoming Public Radio’s Stephanie Joyce and Inside Energy’s Leigh Paterson tracked down a few examples of this in North America. The Cost Of Carbon In Alberta (From Jeff Brady) At an industrial site near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Royal Dutch Shell recently hosted a grand opening for its Quest carbon capture and storage project. It’s part of Shell’s oil sands business. Turning oil sands that are the consistency of sandy   into crude oil emits a lot of carbon dioxide. So Shell tries to capture some of that greenhouse gas before it escapes into the air. ”With heat, we flash off the CO2,” says Tim Wiwchar, Quest project manager, during a tour of the facility. After the carbon dioxide is compressed, he says, it’s piped 40 miles away down a   pipeline to three injection wells, where it gets stored 1. 4 miles underground. The technology in the Quest project has been around for a while, but it’s still expensive: The cost of building and operating this one plant over the next decade is about $970 million. For all that money, it captures only a third of the CO2 that’s produced here. For many companies, such a plant isn’t an attractive investment because it’s not profitable. ”It creates, maybe, societal value but it doesn’t create commercial value,” says Shell CEO Ben van Beurden. He says having a cost placed on carbon emissions could give oil companies the incentive to build more plants like Quest. Just such a program is in the works  —   announced in November by Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. According to the ”Climate Leadership Plan,” the province will phase in a $   economywide, carbon price. Shell supports this and says the price should be even higher. Why would an oil company want the government to increase its costs? The key is increasing costs the same for all oil companies, which would level the playing field so Shell isn’t the only one building plants like this. Van Beurden says he hopes other companies will follow  —   he’s even offering to share what Shell learned here. But so far, he says, there are no takers.   Carbon In Wyoming (From Leigh Paterson) Wyoming is a big coal state, so it has paid particular attention to figuring out how to turn captured carbon from a liability into an asset. In October, Gov. Matt Mead announced the location of a new   lab where CO2 would be ”” as he put it. The goal is to turn harmful CO2 emissions into building blocks for useful products. Captured CO2 already is sold to make fertilizer, dry ice and plastics. It can even be used to carbonate your soda. But the demand for this kind of carbon is still small. According to the International Energy Agency, the industrial market for captured CO2 is around 200 million tons per year  —   or about 175 times less than the amount of CO2 emitted globally from energy use in 2013. ”The willingness to pay for CO2 to use it in industry is really not stacking up in the current market context,” says Simon Bennett, an analyst in the IEA’s Energy Efficiency and Environment Division. Despite these odds, and a serious push from many nations to drastically cut down coal use,   economies all over the world are hoping that   technology will allow the world to keep burning coal for electricity. ”The real fly in the ointment is the technology gap between our desire to do that and our ability to do that,” says Mark Northam, director of the University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources. Bridging that gap will take time, money and government support  —   three huge obstacles to a   future. Price Struggles In California (From Lauren Sommer) California’s goal to cut carbon emissions has focused some of the attention on capturing and storing the carbon dioxide emitted from generating electricity. Six years ago, the company Clean Energy Systems was showing off a new kind of power plant that was meant to be a model project. It burns natural gas to make electricity, which creates carbon pollution. But the idea was to capture the carbon and put it back underground to permanently trap it in rock layers underneath a dusty lot in the Central Valley. ”This is about changing the way that power is produced,” company President and CEO Keith Pronske said in describing the project six years ago. ”If you bring the carbon up, use it and put it back.” This was meant to be a shining example of   energy. But the plant couldn’t find a utility to buy its electricity, because the power was more expensive thanks to the additional costs of burying the carbon. ”It’s been a bit of a wild ride and we’ve had a few bumps,” Pronske said last month. Other carbon capture projects in California aren’t faring any better. The federal government offered more than $3 billion in grants, but the projects are big and complicated, and also face resistance from skeptics who worry about environmental impacts. Many projects have been canceled altogether. ”The real issue is getting across the valley of death  —   of how do we get these first plants built?” Pronske says. Recovering More Oil In Wyoming (From Stephanie Joyce) In Wyoming, oil is big business and some want to put CO2 to work producing more of the oil through ”enhanced oil recovery.” Oil is hard to get out of the ground and producers often leave around half a reservoir’s contents behind, trapped in tiny pores in the rock. CO2 can help get it out. Injected underground, it bonds with the oil molecules trapped in the rock and acts like a detergent, washing the oil out. Some of the CO2 ends up trapped, or ”sequestered,” underground. And that means, profits can be made from sales of more oil. ”I think we are going to see more and more of these CO2 enhanced oil recovery projects go forward because there, there is an economic case to be made for that,” says Kipp Coddington, director of the University of Wyoming’s Carbon Management Institute. But there is a wrinkle. Unlike conventional capture and sequestration, in which carbon is just locked away instead of being reused, burning the oil produced through enhanced oil recovery can actually emit more carbon than gets sequestered underground. Even so, Coddington says it’s better than a regular barrel of oil. ”If you can produce a    oil and displace a    oil,” he says, ”why wouldn’t you do that?” Editor’s Note: This story is part of an NPR Energy  Environment collaboration with member stations."
"One of the great   success stories of the past couple of decades can be found in your cereal bowl. Since 1998, the Food and Drug Administration has required that breakfast cereals, breads, rice, pasta and other grain products made with enriched flour come fortified with folic acid. When consumed by women before and during early pregnancy, this B vitamin plays a critical role in preventing severe brain and spinal cord defects. Thanks to mandatory fortification, the number of babies born in the U. S. with neural tube defects has dropped by roughly 35 percent  —   or about 1, 300 babies a year  —   since the 1990s. ”The story of folic acid is one of the great public health stories of  —   ever,” says Dr. R. J. Berry, who works with the Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. But there’s one notable exception to this success story  —   Hispanic women  —   and researchers think the reason may lie in a staple of their diet: tortillas. Under current FDA rules, tortillas, corn chips and other foods made with corn masa flour can’t be fortified with folic acid. So a coalition of groups including the March of Dimes Foundation and the National Council of La Raza has petitioned the FDA to change its stance and allow corn masa flour to be fortified with folic acid. According to the March of Dimes, about 3, 000 pregnancies in the U. S. are affected by neural tube defects each year. The rates are highest among Hispanics: Latina women are roughly 20 percent more likely to have a baby with a neural tube defect compared to   white women. The exact cause of this discrepancy isn’t known. Researchers say there may be genetic factors that predispose the children of some Hispanic women to neural tube defects. But they suspect diet is also a factor: ”Part of the reason was that these groups just weren’t consuming the same level of wheat flour products. Instead, they were consuming corn masa flour products, because that was the staple grain in that diet,” says Cynthia Pellegrini, senior vice president of public policy and government affairs at the March of Dimes. Research has shown that women who consume at least 400 micrograms of folic acid daily have a significantly reduced risk of having a pregnancy affected by neural tube defects  —   including spina bifida, which can involve paralysis, and anencephaly, in which large parts of the brain are missing. The catch: Folic acid is only protective if consumed in the earliest weeks of pregnancy. ”Most women, by the time they know they’re pregnant, they’ve already passed that critical window,” says Dean Appling, a biochemistry professor at the University of Texas at Austin. ”If they had a problem with folic acid, it would be too late at that point to prevent the birth defect.” Mandating fortification helps ensure that women are getting enough folic acid even before they know they need it. And studies suggest that fortifying corn masa with folic acid could prevent an additional 40 to 120 cases of neural tube defects among babies born to Hispanic mothers each year. So why does the FDA currently ban dosing corn masa flour with folic acid? It all has to do with nixtamalization, the process by which tough corn kernels are softened by soaking in an alkaline solution, usually of slaked lime. The process, which hails from ancient Mesoamerica  —   what’s now Mexico and Central America  —   dates back thousands of years. It renders the corn more pliable for grinding into masa flour and gives the masa its distinctive aroma and flavor. But the FDA worries that this alkaline treatment could also ”affect the stability of added folic acid,” the agency told The Salt in a statement. ”The FDA is concerned that the breakdown of folic acid in corn masa flour could yield a substance that raises concerns about safety.” The March of Dimes and others first petitioned the FDA to allow added folic acid in corn flour masa in 2012. As part of its review, the FDA asked the petitioning groups to study whether folic acid would stay stable in corn masa flour. The petitioners filed the results of that study in October. Michael Dunn, the Brigham Young University food scientist who led the study, cannot comment on the test results while they’re under FDA review, but he has previously called them encouraging. As The Seattle Times has reported, Dunn’s early results suggested no loss of folic acid in fortified masa after three months of storage. The March of Dimes’ Pellegrini says she believes the FDA will respond to the results of Dunn’s study later this month. But the FDA might have more questions related to the study before making a final ruling."
"In a Middle East already aflame, a fresh feud between Saudi Arabia and Iran threatens to complicate almost every major issue from the Iranian nuclear deal to the Syrian civil war to global oil markets. These are all U. S. priorities, and the Obama administration finds itself staring at another Middle Eastern conundrum. White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday called on Iran and Saudi Arabia to exercise restraint and offered mild criticism of both. His language pointed to the difficult position facing the administration. If the U. S. sides openly with its longtime ally Saudi Arabia, it will antagonize Iran, where President Obama has sought to move past decades of relentless hostility. Yet if the White House opts for a balanced approach, Saudi Arabia could take it as an insult, feeling its close relationship with Washington is being sacrificed as part of U. S. outreach to Iran. Saudi Arabia sees itself as the   of Sunni Islam, and Iran regards itself as the defender of Shiite Muslims everywhere. Their sectarian competition has been a fundamental fault line in the Middle East for decades. In broad strokes, the rivalry ramped up dramatically after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and its efforts to export its brand of radical Islam among Shiites, a minority in the Muslim world that often feels oppressed by the far larger Sunni population. As Iran has sought greater influence, Sunnis have pushed back. The rivalry has only intensified during the Middle East uprisings of the past several years, with the Saudis and Iranians waging proxy battles on multiple fronts. The latest friction comes at a key moment for both states. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected in 2013 with a pledge to open up his country to the outside world, revive the economy and pursue at least limited social reforms. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman ascended the throne just last year and has shown signs of acting in a more decisive manner than his predecessors. His boldest move has been a bombing campaign in Yemen, where the Saudis and Iran are on opposite sides of that country’s war. Here are several other places where the   friction is likely to play out: Syria’s   Talks: This may be the most immediate casualty, with the already slim chances for a truce in Syria now facing even longer odds, according to Ali Ansari, a history professor specializing in Iran at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. The discussions set for Jan. 25 in Geneva are now likely to be ”delayed, if not shelved,” he said in an interview Monday. Just last month, the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers both took part in   talks in New York on the Syrian war, and U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry hailed it as an important step. But Iran and Saudi are on opposite sides in the Syrian war, one of their main battlegrounds, and will be less inclined to compromise in the current atmosphere. For Persian Iran, Syrian President Bashar Assad is their most important Arab ally, and they have propped him up since the uprising against him began nearly five years ago. Assad is an Alawite, which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The Saudis, in turn, believe their fellow Sunnis, who make up the majority in Syria, should run the country. The Saudis are part of the U. S.  coalition and have supported opposition factions in Syria throughout the war. The Oil Market: Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter and could cut production to push up prices that have fallen below $40 a barrel, down from more than $100 in the summer of 2014. But Saudi Arabia has made clear it’s willing to endure the pain of lower oil prices. Why? According to analysts, at least part of the Saudi calculation is that it doesn’t want to help Iran, which is anticipating the lifting of international sanctions that will allow it to resume as a major player in the oil market. The Saudis are betting that their large cash reserves will allow them to hold out longer and retain their current share of the market compared with Iran and other countries that have much weaker economies. If this analysis proves accurate, then oil production is likely to remain high and world prices low. But there’s always the risk that one of the Middle East’s many conflicts could disrupt the flow of oil, cutting supplies and pushing up prices. That hasn’t happened, but the Saudis and the Iranians both export through the crowded waterways of the Gulf. Iran Nuclear Deal: The early signs on the deal between Iran and six world powers have been mostly positive. Iran has been scaling back its nuclear program at a pace that exceeds what many expected. The country could meet the targets as soon as this month, which would trigger ”implementation day,” meaning many sanctions would be lifted and Iran would start to get some $100 billion in oil revenue that has been withheld. However, Iran has also staged ballistic missile tests, arguing this is not part of the nuclear deal. This has prompted critics of the nuclear pact to renew their objections. And Saudi Arabia has been the leading opponent of the deal, along with Israel’s government and conservatives in the U. S. They may not be in a position to derail it. But even if the agreement stays on track, it may not build confidence if other disputes in the region keep tensions running high. Many Iranians have high hopes that ending sanctions will improve their quality of life. But if that doesn’t happen, the deal could then be blamed for ongoing problems. Domestic Politics: The Saudi and Iranian actions can also be viewed through the lens of their own domestic politics. Saudi Arabia’s execution of 47 people on Saturday was, in many Saudi eyes, part of a crackdown on domestic extremists who could potentially threaten the monarchy. In Iran,   are preparing for parliamentary elections next month against moderates allied with President Hassan Rouhani. The   seized on the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite cleric, Nimr   as a way to whip up support among their supporters at home. ”The biggest losers in the last 24 hours are Rouhani and the moderate wing in Iran,” says Salman Shaikh, the former head of the Brookings Center in Doha, Qatar, who now runs a private consultancy.   are hoping to make big gains in the elections and block Rouhani and other moderates from promoting reforms, he added. Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Saudi Arabia’s execution of leading Shiite cleric Nimr   on Saturday sparked a violent protest at the Saudi Embassy in Iran’s capital, Tehran. Saudi Arabia then quickly severed ties with its longtime regional rival. As the broader Middle East reacts to the dramatic deterioration in relations between the two countries, which have long been strained, here’s a look at who Nimr was. The cleric was an outspoken critic of the Saudi government, calling for more rights for the country’s marginalized Shiite community. Saudi Arabian Shias say they’re treated like ”  citizens because they don’t conform to the strict Sunni interpretation of Islam that defines the nation,” as NPR’s Leila Fadel reported from a mostly Shiite province in Saudi Arabia last year. ”They can’t hold   government or military positions, and they can’t teach religion in public schools,” Leila said. ”From the day I was born and to this day, I’ve never felt safe or secure in this country,” Nimr said in a speech in 2011. ”We are not loyal to other countries or authorities, nor are we loyal to this country. What is this country? The regime that oppresses me? The regime that steals my money, sheds my blood, and violates my honor?” Leila says the Saudi government has portrayed Nimr as a violent radical loyal to Iran. Here’s more from Leila: ”He spent some 15 years in exile, returning in the  ’90s.  ”After that, he was in and out of prison for calling for free elections and at one point he suggested that the Shia majority eastern province, Qatif, secede from Saudi Arabia if demands weren’t met.” Nimr played a major role in demonstrations by Saudi’s Shias in the wake of the   Arab Spring. At a protest in July 2012, he was arrested after being shot in the leg by police. ”The cleric represents a more radical strain among Saudi Shiites, who feel the community’s established leaders have failed to make headway with ending what they see as systematic discrimination,” Reuters reported following Nimr’s arrest. According to a purported cable released by WikiLeaks, a State Department official met with Nimr in 2008 in his hometown of Awamiyya, where Nimr said he was ”against the idea that Saudi Shi’a should expect Iranian support based on some idea of sectarian unity that supersedes national politics.” Here’s more from the cable: ”  is currently gaining popularity locally, particularly with young people, as his words appeal to those disaffected by the general economic malaise experienced by Saudi Arabia’s lower classes and a perceived lack of sufficient [Saudi Arabian government] reform in relations with the Shi’a community. Meanwhile, at a national and international level, with everyone from Salafi sheikhs to regional intelligence agencies,  ’s words have gained him increased notoriety due to fears that his words will spark unrest and perhaps point to an Iranian hand in Saudi Arabia.” Years later, ”he would differ with Iran on the subject of Syria . .. [and] he denounced the oppression of the Syrian regime, even though it’s backed by Tehran,” Leila reported. Nimr was sentenced to death in a closed trial on charges such as being disloyal to the ruling family, using violence and seeking foreign meddling. The case was widely criticized by rights groups. As NPR’s Deborah Amos reported, Nimr’s execution ”came as a surprise to many in Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi leadership was well aware of likely turbulent reactions.” This is how one Gulf analyst described what motivated Saudi Arabia here: ”’Carrying out the death sentence on Nimr sends a strong message to Saudi Arabia’s aggrieved Shiite minority that Iran has no say in internal Saudi decisions and domestic dissent has limits.’ ” ’There is also a calculation,’ says the analyst, ’the Saudis want to consolidate their alliances in the region  —   that would lead to a stark choice between the two sides.’ ”"
"One day after Saudi Arabia’s embassy was set on fire in Tehran by protesters, Saudi ally Bahrain has cut ties with Iran and given Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country. It’s the latest development in a rift that deepened this weekend, after Saudi Arabia executed a leading Shiite cleric. Announcing the move, Bahrain’s state news agency says it’s responding to ”sinful cowardly attacks” on Saudi Arabia’s embassy and a consulate in Iran, saying that the situation ”confirms a determination to spread devastation and destruction.” Bahrain took action one day after Saudi Arabia officially severed diplomatic ties with Iran. Update at 8:10 a. m. ET: Sudan Follows Suit, In the latest sign of how things have changed, Iran’s former ally Sudan cut diplomatic ties with the country and expelled Tehran’s ambassador Monday, citing the attack on Saudi Arabia’s embassy. The move comes months after Sudan joined Saudi Arabia’s coalition fighting   rebels in Yemen. A fragile truce in the Yemen conflict was officially declared dead on Saturday, as the   coalition announced that the    —   which both sides had repeatedly violated  —   was over. Our original post continues: On Monday, the United Arab Emirates announced that it will ”downgrade the level of its diplomatic representation” in Iran, recalling its ambassador from Tehran. The step is seen as stopping short of a full severing of ties. Like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the UAE is  . The sectarian conflict gained new intensity Saturday, after Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric Nimr   a critic of the Sunni monarchy. The move was immediately condemned by Iran, which has also been supporting Shiite fighters who are clashing with a   coalition in Yemen. After the execution, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, said Saudi Arabia will ”pay dearly” for its actions. Protesters in Tehran then ransacked and firebombed the Saudi embassy  —   and on Sunday, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties. Calling the latest events ”a dangerous shift,” NPR’s Deb Amos describes the broader picture: ”As a more toxic sectarian confrontation engulfs the region, the losers are likely to be Syria and Yemen. Most regional analysts say the solution to these devastating proxy wars can be resolved only when there is some accommodation between Riyadh and Tehran.”"
"  militants continue to hold the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore. as law enforcement officials keep their distance. But they say they’re willing to leave if local residents ask them to, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports. For three days, this heavily armed group has occupied the federal building to support Dwight and Steven Hammond, who had been convicted of arson on federal lands and served short terms. Those sentences were extended by a judge who said they were too brief. The county sheriff says the Hammonds have turned themselves in to serve the extended sentences. A lawyer for the Hammonds was quoted on Monday as saying the ranchers will ask President Obama for clemency. Late Monday, the apparent leader of the armed occupiers, Ryan Bundy, told OPB reporters that the group  —   which has branded itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom  —   would respect the wishes of the local community. ”This is their county  —   we can’t be here and force this on them,” Bundy told OPB Monday. ”If they don’t want to retrieve their rights, and if the county people tell us to leave, we’ll leave.” Bundy tells OPB that he hopes to have a community meeting organized within the next day. Ryan’s brother, Ammon Bundy, accused multiple federal agencies of pursuing the Hammond family because they have refused to sell their ranch. The Hammonds ”have multiple times refused the purchase of it, and because of that, have been prosecuted for actions that ranchers have done for over 100 years in this country, and this valley.” NPR has not independently verified Bundy’s version of the events. This is their only demand, he says: ”All we have been asking from the very beginning is that they put together an evidential hearing board to look at the evidences, look at the accusations that are set forth, and to look at the abuses the Hammonds have been experiencing.” Harney County Sheriff David Ward accuses the armed men of having larger goals. ”These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States,” OPB reported. The   has gone into depth about the history of tension between the federal government and ranchers in the West. It’s important to note that the Hammond family has not said it is linked to the armed occupation claiming to support it. Susan Hammond, who is married to Dwight, told OPB that ”I don’t really know the purpose of the guys who are out there. . .. I kind of understand where they come from, as far as their priorities in life.” NPR’s Martin Kaste, who is at the scene, told our Newscast unit that it’s not clear how many people are occupying these buildings. Here’s more from Martin: ”People are calling this a standoff, but it isn’t, at least not at the moment. Really what we’re talking about here is maybe a handful, maybe more  —   men mainly, as far as I can tell  —   who have taken up residence at this National Wildlife Refuge, in some of the buildings here. There’s no law enforcement visible. In town, about 30 minutes away, there is an increased law enforcement presence. ”They say just to kind of show the fact that they’re around. But there certainly [aren’t] blockades, there isn’t any kind of a confrontation, at least nothing like that yet.”"
"At a warehouse near Dallas, a black Lab named Papi tugs on a rope to open a fridge and passes his trainer a plastic water bottle with his mouth. Service dogs are often trained to help veterans with physical disabilities. Now, a growing number are being trained to meet the demand from vets with   stress disorder and other mental health issues. Those dogs learn extra tricks  —   how to sweep a house for intruders, for example, so a veteran feels safe. ”We teach them something called perimeter, where they go into the house and they check, they just touch all the doors and all the windows,” says Cheryl Woolnough, training director at Patriot PAWS, a nonprofit in Rockwall, Texas, that provides service dogs. These dogs also learn how to create personal space for a veteran by stepping in front or behind the owner to block people from approaching. Most veterans who apply for a service dog have PTSD, often on top of physical disabilities, according to Terri Stringer, assistant executive director of Patriot PAWS. ”We have 100 veterans on our list waiting for dogs, so we have to get more dogs,” Stringer says. So far, though, the Department of Veterans Affairs won’t help pay for service dogs for PTSD, citing a lack of scientific evidence. But it’s launching a study to find out what effect specially trained service dogs can have on the lives of veterans with PTSD. Vets with PTSD who already rely on service dogs say the research should have been done years ago. The training process for these service dogs is complex. It starts with puppies  —   often Labs, poodles or Labradoodles. The little guys get their shots and learn simple commands first. Then they go either to a puppy raiser who teaches them to behave in public places or they go to prison, literally. Stringer calls it the ”big doghouse.” ”Prison is where they get their   training,” she says. ”They’re with the inmates 24 hours a day.” The inmates teach the dogs dozens of commands. Patriot PAWS relies on three Texas prisons for the type of intensive training the dogs need to be paired with veterans. It takes more than two years and costs about $30, 000 per dog. The few veterans lucky enough to make it to the top of the list each year get dogs at no charge. Jay Springstead, who lives outside Dallas, still has nightmares from combat in Vietnam 40 years ago. ”A service dog for   stress can actually help you get out into the public and regain some of that independence that you’ve lost,” he says. Springstead started volunteering at Patriot PAWS after his youngest son took his own life. ”Both my sons were Iraqi combat veterans my youngest one had severe   stress,” he says. ”So I’m familiar with the symptoms and I also know how important dogs are to anyone’s recovery.” Springstead and many others are frustrated that the VA is not providing financial assistance to veterans who use service dogs to cope with PTSD. It’s a complaint Patricia Dorn, director of the VA’s Rehabilitation Research and Development Service in Washington, D. C. has heard repeatedly. She says that while there is plenty of scientific evidence of the benefits of service dogs for people with physical disabilities, there’s little in the area of mental health. ”We understand, veterans are not happy with the agency in that we’re not just providing this benefit,” Dorn says. ”But for an agency with [over] 150 hospitals and millions of veterans we serve, we need to have the evidence base to make a determination.” That’s why the VA is conducting a randomized controlled trial on service dogs with 200 veterans with PTSD from Atlanta Iowa City, Iowa and Portland, Ore. Dorn says researchers will assess veterans’ quality of life over a   period. This isn’t the first time the VA has tried to study service dogs and PTSD. An earlier effort was halted in 2011 after two service dogs bit children in veterans’ homes. The current study, Dorn says, has stricter standards for dog training and a more rigorous study design. In the meantime, Springstead says veterans sometimes get tricked into buying dogs that aren’t properly trained. Patriot PAWS is one of a few dozen organizations in the country accredited through Assistance Dogs International, but there’s no standardized training specific to mental health."
"Several GOP presidential candidates are starting to lay out their closing messages in a new round of campaign ads airing in Iowa and New Hampshire this week. The ads come ahead of the early February primaries in those states. They strike a dark and fearful tone, with footage and news headlines highlighting the recent terror attacks in San Bernardino, Calif. and Paris.   Donald Trump’s campaign, in its first TV ad, begins with photos of President Obama and Hillary Clinton, followed by photos of the San Bernardino attackers laid over police lights. ”The politicians can pretend it’s something else, but Donald Trump calls it radical Islamic terrorism,” a narrator says. ”That’s why he’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what’s going on.” ”He’ll quickly cut the head off ISIS, and take their oil.” The ad also highlights Trump’s proposal to build a wall at the U. S.  border ”that Mexico will pay for,” over unidentified    footage of people running over a hill. (According to PolitiFact, the footage is from Morocco). Watch the ad here: Trump has so far relied on traditional media rather than TV ads, but the campaign will reportedly spend as much as $2 million per week on ads starting in the new year. The candidate himself says he’s not sure he needs it and that he’s ”probably wasting the money,” but he wants to ”be sure” in Iowa. ”I’m $35 million under budget,” Trump said on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday. ”Look, I was going to have 35 or 40 million spent by now. I haven’t spent anything. I almost feel guilty. I think if you want to know the truth, I’m doing the ads. I’m leading by, as you all say, a lot.” Jeb Bush and his superPAC, on the other hand, have spent $38 million in campaign ads this election cycle, according to a count by NBC News. That spending dwarfs all other candidates in the race, including Democrat Hillary Clinton, whose campaign has spent about $12 million. But all that ad money hasn’t helped Bush’s lagging poll numbers. Bush’s new ad hits a dark and fearful tone, similar to Trump’s. But he makes a    hit at the   as he attempts to portray himself as a more ”serious” leader who will be able to take on the threat of terrorism. The ad starts with a line from a recent speech: ”Serious times require serious leadership.” Bush’s voice is laid over scenes of ISIS fighters, holding large black flags, explosions and headlines of recent terror attacks: ”In the absence of American leadership, the United States should not delay in leading a global coalition to take out ISIS with overwhelming force,” Bush says. ”We are at war with radical Islamic terrorism. We have but one choice: to defeat it.” Rick Santorum, lagging even further behind than Bush, also put out an ad Monday. His is aimed at Ted Cruz, who is polling ahead of Trump in Iowa in several polls, and focuses on Santorum’s record in the Senate as well as the threat of ISIS. ”Ted Cruz is wonderful at reading children’s fairy tales on the Senate floor,” a narrator says, referring to the time Cruz read Green Eggs and Ham to his daughters during his   Obamacare filibuster in 2013. ”Rick Santorum spent his time in the Senate a little differently,” the narrator says, highlighting his time on the Senate Armed Services Committee, ”helping to modernize today’s Army to better be prepared for today’s threats.” The ad ends with a plea to voters strikingly similar to Bush’s: ”Serious times need serious people.”"
"Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is trying to play up his foreign policy credentials by ripping into some of his Republican rivals. He did not blast any of his opponents directly by name, but in a speech in Hooksett, N. H. Monday morning, Rubio took some veiled shots at Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Rubio questioned their national security qualifications, and he specifically took aim at Cruz for supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad. ”We do have some Republican candidates who propose that rulers like Assad and [Vladimir] Putin should be partners of the United States and who have voted with Barack Obama and Harry Reid, rather than our men and women in uniform,” he said. Rubio’s remarks came during his first major foreign policy speech since the Paris attacks and just weeks before   states start voting. Rubio has struggled to gain traction in a crowded GOP field, and during a   campaign swing through the Granite State, he tried to portray himself as the best candidate to tackle ISIS. He criticized some Republicans for talking ”tough” but not actually implementing tough laws. On the campaign trail, Cruz has mentioned the idea of ”carpet bombing” the Islamic State to see whether ”sand can glow in the dark.” On Monday, Rubio decried that idea. ”While some claim that they would destroy ISIS, that they would make the sands of the Middle East glow in the dark, my question is  —   with what?” Rubio asked. Rubio has criticized Cruz in the past for supporting cuts to the military, and he repeated that claim Monday. As Cruz has gained popularity in recent polling, Rubio has repeatedly accused the Texas senator of trying to weaken the United States’ ability to fight global terrorism by shrinking not only military efforts but also domestic surveillance programs. ”We have isolationist candidates who are apparently more passionate about weakening our military and intelligence capabilities than they are about destroying our enemies,” said Rubio. ”Words and political stunts cannot ensure our security. ISIS cannot be filibustered.” The ”filibuster” comment seemed like a disguised critique of Sen. Rand Paul, who in 2014 famously filibustered President Obama’s nomination of a judge who had written a memo authorizing the use of drones to execute terrorists overseas, including an American citizen. Rubio leveled another shot at Paul and his more libertarian foreign policy. ”If you’re an American who has committed the ultimate act of betrayal against our country, I will have no qualms about treating you like the enemy combatant you are,” he said. While Rubio was restrained in attacking his GOP rivals by name, he openly lashed out against the Obama administration for ”weakening” the United States. He listed a litany of global threats  —   China, North Korea, Russia, Iran and ISIS  —   and insisted the United States is facing far more complex and numerous dangers today because of President Obama."
"When she first heard that California’s new aid   law was signed, Dr. Carin van Zyl was relieved to hear that assisted death would be an option for her if she ever needed it herself. But as a palliative care doctor at the University Of Southern California Keck School Of Medicine, she’s worried the law might lead people to consider lethal medications over other options that may better accommodate their wishes. ”Patients feel as though their choices are between untreated suffering or   suicide,” she told NPR’s Renee Montagne. ”Palliative medicine, when it’s applied skillfully and at the right time, often relieves most of the suffering that prompts people to ask for [death] in the first place,” she says. But palliative care, which is focused on managing symptoms and relieving pain, isn’t available to everyone, van Zyl says. There are smaller hospitals that don’t have palliative medicine teams, and it may be hard to get treatment even in urban areas. Van Zyl thinks more work should be done to make palliative medicine more accessible. ”I worry that we make [lethal medication] available before we put the necessary effort forward,” she says. Not everyone can be helped with palliative care, van Zyl says, and some people truly would have benefited from the    law had it been passed earlier. ”I think about those patients all the time. I do recall a patient who understood that his death would be sudden and unpredictable and likely quite painful.” He had a cancer that had spread and become intractable. A tumor developed in his neck that was swelling into both an artery and his windpipe eventually it would connect the two. ”This gentleman with very little warning might have his airways flooded with blood, and he would drown,” van Zyl says. ”He asked if it would be possible to shorten his life before that.” The care team was able to administer pain medication that would ease his death when it happened, which worked, van Zyl says, but he wasn’t able to die in the way he wanted  ” at home, surrounded by his family. Aid in dying would have offered more control over his situation, van Zyl says. Still, the reasons why people choose aid in dying can be complicated. ”You’ll notice in the Oregon data, many people chose this option not because of physical suffering. It was the loss of dignity, control and independence,” she says. ”I would imagine writing a prescription for somebody for whom palliative sedation is not an option or would not relieve intolerable physical distress. I struggle with emotional and existential requests.” Times like that, van Zyl says she would rather administer palliative care. Choosing the best course of action is a conversation that van Zyl says she’ll continue to have with her patients. ”Palliative medicine discussions are about learning the story of the person, helping this patient navigate choices. If [death] is an option that gets them closest to the things they hold dearest, then we will explore those things honestly.”"
"Namala Mkopi always wanted to be a pediatrician. He doesn’t know exactly who or what inspired him. He just wanted ”to treat kids.” And nothing would stand in his way, not even biology. ”It wasn’t my thing,” he admits. ”I never really liked biology.” Today, at age 38, he is a pediatrician and an advocate for child health in his native Tanzania. The vice president of the Pediatric Association of Tanzania, he has led national campaigns to introduce childhood vaccines and has traveled to the United States to gain support for child and maternal health programs. One success story has been the 2013 introduction of the vaccine against rotavirus, the most common cause of diarrhea in infants and young children. ”Every child is now getting the vaccine,” Mkopi reports. He used to see 45 patients at a time in his hospital’s ward for children with diarrhea. Today, he says, ”we are seeing very few cases and most are older children who didn’t get the vaccine.” On a visit this past fall, Mkopi stopped by NPR headquarters to talk about his philosophy of   (which has changed now that he is a parent to Nolan, age 4) and why people need to pay more attention to a disease no one likes to talk about: diarrhea. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How do you like being a dad? It’s nice to have kids around. It gives you peace and understanding, and you treasure life so much. Has being a parent changed your views about raising kids? I appreciate what parents are going through, why they’re so worried, and [their] need of making sure their kids survive. Because I will do anything to make sure my child survives. At least your son has a doctor as a dad. When my child has the flu, I freak out. I actually don’t feel like I’m a doctor anymore. I feel like, ”Oh my goodness, I have to take my kid to a doctor.” When parents panic, I understand why they panic. I put myself in their shoes and I understand. Is panic a good parenting reaction or a bad one? A parent who panics and goes to the hospital early is a safer kind [of parent] than those who are, ”Everything will be OK, it’s just a cold, it’s just passing.” We have kids who are so very sick come into the hospital, because a parent was feeling, ”Everything is OK, nothing bad will happen.” But eventually bad things happen. It’s better for parents to panic and give kids the attention they need  —   even if you go to the hospital and they tell you it’s nothing, just a cold. It’s better than not knowing what’s going on with your child. Here in the West a lot of parents are overprotective  —   they won’t let their kids play on their own outside, for example. Are there overprotective parents in Tanzania? Overprotective parents? I guess that’s a disease of development. Because when I was a kid I was free to play with anybody, anywhere. I would just disappear the whole day, nobody would make any noises. I was just supposed to appear for meals. That [kind of life] still exists with   families but rich people are very overprotective with their kids. They do not play where we used to play, in the dust. What’s your preference: overprotected kids or   kids? I wish I could just let my son play with other kids. But at the same time I know the danger out there. People are now reckless, riding motorbikes like they are crazy, driving their cars with high speed. People are just so rough on the roads. It makes me feel like I have to comply with the disease of development  —   because just like that, something bad can happen. We are seeing a lot of kids rushed to the hospital because they’ve been knocked by motorbikes, knocked by cars. One disease that can take a toll is a disease that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the media: diarrhea. What’s the message you’d like people to get about diarrhea? The one key thing is that diarrheal disease kills if not attended. One should seek medical attention immediately. Do you have a story that illustrates the seriousness of diarrhea? One day my wife woke me up around 3 a. m. and told me somebody’s calling. I couldn’t hear the phone ringing  —   work that day was so much I was so wasted and tired. That person was crying. What I could hear was, ”My child is very sick, help me.” I told that lady, ”Go to the hospital, we will meet up there.” I live 8 kilometers from my hospital, so I drove like a zombie. She [turned out to be] my junior colleague, she’s a doctor as well. Her child was about 9 or 10 months and had a bout of diarrhea. The child was unconscious and in shock, severely dehydrated. We couldn’t find blood vessels to give fluid so I had to find access through the bone and push [in] some fluids. I asked, ”When did the child start having diarrhea?” It was less than 24 hours. The child survived. I left the hospital at 8, and I just went home and changed and came back to work. You must have still felt like a zombie. When the child survives you feel happy the whole day."
"Volkswagen’s use of a ”defeat device” to fool U. S. regulators has resulted in a federal lawsuit against the company. Volkswagen has acknowledged that millions of its diesel cars worldwide relied on a ruse to skirt emissions controls. The civil complaint was filed in federal court in Detroit, with the Department of Justice acting on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency  —   which says it hasn’t yet reached an acceptable agreement with Volkswagen over how to handle a recall. The carmakers’ vehicles were actually putting up to 40 times more pollution into the air than is allowable under U. S. standards, the EPA has said  —   despite the vehicles’ being awarded clean emissions credentials that triggered hefty federal tax credits. For instance, in 2009 (the first year covered by the EPA’s complaint) Americans who bought   VW Jettas earned a $1, 300 credit. Update at 1:40 p. m. ET: EPA Seeks ’An Acceptable Way Forward’ ”With today’s filing, we take an important step to protect public health by seeking to hold Volkswagen accountable for any unlawful air pollution, setting us on a path to resolution,” Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance at EPA, says in a news release about the lawsuit. Giles added, ”So far, recall discussions with the company have not produced an acceptable way forward. These discussions will continue in parallel with the federal court action.” Our original post continues: NPR’s Marilyn Geewax, a senior editor on the Business desk, passes along this summary of the newly filed complaint: ”The DOJ alleges that nearly 600, 000 diesel engine vehicles had illegal defeat devices installed that impair their emission control systems and cause emissions to exceed EPA’s standards, resulting in harmful air pollution. ”The complaint further alleges that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act by selling vehicles that were designed differently from what Volkswagen had stated in applications for certification to EPA and the California Air Resources Board.” The EPA’s claims shocked and angered many Volkswagen owners the case also led a House committee to call Michael Horn, the CEO of Volkswagen’s U. S. business, to testify on Capitol Hill. As we wrote at the time, when he was asked whether software that turned off vehicles’ emissions controls unless they were undergoing an official test was installed ”for the express purpose of beating tests,” Horn said that to his knowledge, ”It was installed for this purpose, yes.” The scandal resulted in the resignation of Volkswagen’s CEO, Martin Winterkorn, weeks after the EPA released its claims. Since then, the company’s stock price has taken a hit, and it faces billions of dollars in potential fines. Volkswagen has promised to retrofit cars with systems to limit emissions. News of the U. S. case against Volkswagen comes one day before the company’s executives are slated to unveil a new concept car at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in an appearance that’s meant to focus on the carmaker’s future plans."
"When you hear about rights abuses on the Korean peninsula, the conversation usually focuses on North Korea. But lately, the North’s democratic neighbor, South Korea, is also drawing international concern for how its government is dealing with dissent. In November, 60, 000 people showed up in downtown Seoul for a mass protest against President Park   raising ”a gamut of ongoing concerns about freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of peaceful, public protest,” says Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. Demonstrators opposed the government’s push to pass   labor laws, attempts to ban protests, jailing of journalists, use of a Cold   national security law to criminalize certain kinds of speech and a recent move to force schools to use   history textbooks. ”Every issue that we are facing violates the core principles of democracy,” says Ryu   a labor group representative. South Korea’s situation hardly rivals that in North Korea  —   which has long been accused of human rights abuses that include torture, killings and the jailing of thousands of dissidents. However, a wider international audience is now paying closer attention to President Park’s government and how it is handling dissent. ”South Korea doesn’t get a free pass just because it’s next to a very horrible,   neighbor,” Robertson says. ”We don’t take opinion left or right. We take the opinion that there shouldn’t be censorship. And the basic idea of disallowing a number of different points of view and there should only be one specific textbook, you know, raises some serious concerns.” When protesters highlighted those concerns in the street demonstrations, the national police force responded with tear gas and paint and water cannons so strong that one demonstrator remains hospitalized in critical condition. ”The police should use proportional force, not excessive force,” says T. Kumar, the international advocacy director for Amnesty International. ”The current president is going to fail if she tries to reverse the course toward democracy by using excuses to silence political critics.” A ’Cold War’ Environment, The president and her ruling Saenuri party counter that South Korea makes these moves because it’s in a unique security situation. ”South Korea is still at conflict with North Korea. We’re still living in the Cold War era,” says party spokesman Kim  . That’s one reason why the government wants to rewrite South Korea’s history textbooks, which it claims are too sympathetic to North Korea. Currently, schools can choose from dozens of texts written and distributed by commercial publishers. The books ”are written by a group of authors with ideologically biased views, who downplay the proud achievements of South Korea and instead glorify North Korea,” the president’s spokesperson, Chun   said in an email. The government’s rewriting of the books will ”rectify the problem” of ”misleading young students,” Chun said. When it comes to police tactics, the ruling party says it has to protect South Koreans from themselves. ”South Korea respects the freedom of citizens to express themselves and assemble,” says party spokesman Kim. ”But any activities that threaten the national security must be dealt with the National Security Law or else we may end up with very dangerous results.” Kim argues that suppressing protests is justified since demonstrators have been violent, wielding lead pipes and breaking barricades. And, he says, the government must protect itself from North Korean sympathizers within South Korea’s borders. ”They’re  . They praise North Korea and bring all sorts of political issues onto the table. These demonstrations don’t have a just cause and are impure,” he says. But who gets to decide which causes are just? South Korea’s politics and society are polarized along generational lines. A recent Gallup Korea poll shows President Park’s approval rating is 75 percent among voters over age 60  —   but only 16 percent among South Koreans under 30. International groups are calling for the country’s diplomatic allies, like the U. S. to raise rights issues with the Park government. But so far, the most stinging criticism of South Korea’s president is coming at home. Park is now being compared to her father  —   a military dictator who ruled South Korea with a heavy hand for nearly two decades. Haeryun Kang contributed to this story."
"Diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are up around 30 percent compared with 20 years ago. These days, if a    won’t sit still for circle time in preschool, she’s liable to be referred for evaluation, which can put her on track for early intervention and potentially a lifetime of medication. In an editorial just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, Dimitri Christakis argues that we’ve got this all wrong. He’s a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. Parents, schools and doctors, he says, should completely rethink this highly medicalized framework for attention difficulties. ”ADHD does a disservice to children as a diagnosis,” Christakis tells NPR Ed. Here’s why. Researchers are currently debating the nature of ADHD. They have found some genetic markers for it, but the recent rise in diagnoses is too swift to be explained by changes in our genes. Neuroscientists, too, are finding brain wiring patterns characteristic of the disorder. But the current process of diagnosis amounts to giving a questionnaire to parents and doctors. If they identify six out of nine specific behaviors, then the child officially has ADHD. ”If you fall on this side of the line, we label and medicate you,” says Christakis. ”But on the other side of the line, we do nothing.” This process is, necessarily, subjective. But there’s an awful lot of infrastructure and, frankly, money behind it, especially in our education system. A clinical diagnosis of ”chronic or acute” attentional difficulties gives public school students a legal right to special accommodations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. But a child who falls just short of that diagnosis is left without any right to extra support. Christakis says that, instead, we should be thinking more about a spectrum of ”attentional capacity” that varies from individual to individual and situation to situation. Think of it as a bell curve: On the far left would be someone like Thomas Edison, Mr. ”Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration,” laboring for weeks or months on a single problem. On the far right is someone with severe ADHD. Attentional capacity, Christakis says, is chief among a cluster of   skills that education researchers have recently become very excited about: executive functioning,   grit. Basically, these involve the ability to delay gratification, manage your time and attention and stay on a path toward a goal. Every child  —   every person  —   struggles with this sometimes. Reading to, singing and playing with young children, and making sure older children get a chance to move around, are interventions that can help all students to a lesser or greater extent. ”Our job is to have every child maximize attentional capacity,” Christakis explains. Mark Mahone, a pediatric neuropsychologist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute for children with special needs, agrees with Christakis’ concept of a spectrum for attentional disorder. ”The current thinking in the field is that attentional capacity and skills do occur on a continuum or spectrum.” He also says that in general, pediatrics is evolving toward the idea of proactively supporting attentional functioning in everyone. But, Mahone says, it doesn’t mean that diagnoses and medication aren’t helpful and appropriate in severe cases of ADHD. And, he says, there is strong, and growing, evidence of specific brain abnormalities associated with severe ADHD symptoms, which would lend support to the concept of ADHD as a brain disease."
"If you hail a ride using the   app Lyft, that car could one day be  . On Monday, Lyft announced a new partnership with General Motors, which is pumping half a billion dollars into the software startup and joining the board. One of the things they’re doing is planning to build an autonomous fleet. They haven’t released a specific timeline on when, though in the future, when you call the   car service, the vehicle likely won’t have a human driver. But it will have options, like   or TV. Lyft CEO John Zimmer explains: ”Maybe you’re with your family and you want to take a weekend trip. And you get a family Lyft, and you have the ability to watch a movie and relax, enjoy the time together with your family.” Aggressive Move to Win Drivers, Lyft and GM also announced that starting immediately, they’re rolling out a new service for the human Lyft drivers of today to rent vehicles, instead of use their own. Monday’s announcement is big for the young   industry, and the old   business. Lyft is the nation’s      app. Uber is the top, the household name. And the companies compete fiercely  —   for customers and for drivers. Many drivers buy a car, just to work for an   service. And many drivers lie to their insurance companies, claiming the car is for personal  —   not commercial  —   use. Now Lyft is reducing the burden. ”This rental hub is part of a theme that you’ve seen from Lyft,” says Zimmer, ”of doing things to improve the driver experience and to invest in drivers.” Last November, the company launched a feature called Express Pay, enabling drivers to get paid the same day instead of every two weeks. Community Cars, GM is in the business of selling cars to people. The partnership with Lyft is a radical departure from that business model. In the   GM will rent cars to drivers. In the   GM will build a   fleet in which cars are owned by a company  —   not bought by individual consumers. GM President Dan Amman says the move to step away from the   model is not cannibalizing his business. It’s growing in a new area: big cities, where people don’t want to deal with the headache of owning and parking cars. They want   access. The average American household spends more than $8, 500 every year to own and operate a vehicle, according to a AAA report, and often, say for commuting purposes, those cars are being used by just one person. ”We’re growing in places where we’ve been less strong historically, and putting ourselves right at the forefront of this change. Our view is the change is going to happen,” he says. ”We want to be driving it and leading it.” Although, when it comes to autonomous cars, Lyft and GM are not alone. Google and Ford will create a joint venture to build   vehicles, according Yahoo Autos. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says his company plans to have a   fleet by 2030."
"For now, they’re known by working names, like ununseptium and ununtrium  —   two of the four new chemical elements whose discovery has been officially verified. The elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 will get permanent names soon, according to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. With the discoveries now confirmed, ”The 7th period of the periodic table of elements is complete,” according to the IUPAC. The additions come nearly five years after elements 114 (flerovium, or Fl) and element 116 (livermorium or Lv) were added to the table. The elements were discovered in recent years by researchers in Japan, Russia and the United States. Element 113 was discovered by a group at the Riken Institute, which calls it ”the first element on the periodic table found in Asia.” Three other elements were discovered by a collaborative effort among the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. That collaboration has now discovered six new elements, including two that also involved the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Classified as ”superheavy”  —   the designation given to elements with more than 104 protons  —   the new elements were created by using particle accelerators to shoot beams of nuclei at other, heavier, target nuclei. The new elements’ existence was confirmed by further experiments that reproduced them  —   however briefly. Element 113, for instance, exists for less than a thousandth of a second. ”A particular difficulty in establishing these new elements is that they decay into hitherto unknown isotopes of slightly lighter elements that also need to be unequivocally identified,” said Paul Karol, chair of the IUPAC’s Joint Working Party, announcing the new elements. The working group includes members of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. The elements’ temporary names stem from their spot on the periodic table  —   for instance, ununseptium has 117 protons. Each of the discovering teams have now been asked to submit names for the new elements. With the additions, the bottom of the periodic table now looks like a bit like a completed crossword puzzle  —   and that led us to get in touch with Karol to ask about the next row, the eighth period. ”There are a couple of laboratories that have already taken shots at making elements 119 and 120 but with no evidence yet of success,” he said in an email. ”The eighth period should be very interesting because relativistic effects on electrons become significant and difficult to pinpoint. It is in the electron behavior, perhaps better called electron psychology, that the chemical behavior is embodied.” Karol says that researchers will continue seeking ”the alleged but highly probable ’island of stability’ at or near element 120 or perhaps 126,” where elements might be found to exist long enough to study their chemistry. International guidelines for choosing a name say that new elements ”can be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property or a scientist,” according to the IUPAC. In 2013, Swedish scientists confirmed the existence of the   ununpentium (atomic number 115). As the   described it, the element was produced by ”shooting a beam of calcium, which has 20 protons, into a thin film of americium, which has 95 protons. For less than a second, the new element had 115 protons.” While you’re not likely to run into the new elements anytime soon, they’re not the only ones with have short existences. Take, for instance, francium (atomic number 87) and astatine (atomic number 85). As Sam Kean, author of a book about the periodic table called The Disappearing Spoon, wrote of those elements: ”If you had a million atoms of the   type of astatine, half of them would disintegrate in 400 minutes. A similar sample of francium would hang on for 20 minutes. Francium is so fragile, it’s basically useless.” As for why scientists keep pursuing new and heavier elements, the answer, at least in part, is that they’re hoping to eventually find an element  —   or a series of elements  —   that are both stable and useful in practical applications. And along the way, they’re learning more and more about how atoms are held together."
"Losing your ability to think and remember is pretty scary. We know the risk of dementia increases with age. But if you have memory lapses, you probably needn’t worry. There are pretty clear differences between signs of dementia and   memory loss. After age 50, it’s quite common to have trouble remembering the names of people, places and things quickly, says Dr. Kirk Daffner, chief of the division of cognitive and behavioral neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The brain ages just like the rest of the body. Certain parts shrink, especially areas in the brain that are important to learning, memory and planning. Changes in brain cells can affect communication between different regions of the brain. And blood flow can be reduced as arteries narrow. Simply put, this exquisitely complex organ just isn’t functioning like it used to. Forgetting the name of an actor in a favorite movie, for example, is nothing to worry about. But if you forget the plot of the movie or don’t remember even seeing it, that’s far more concerning, Daffner says. When you forget entire experiences, he says, that’s ”a red flag that something more serious may be involved.” Forgetting how to operate a familiar object like a microwave oven or forgetting how to drive to the house of a friend you’ve visited many times before can also be signs something is wrong. But even then, Daffner says, people shouldn’t panic. There are many things that can cause confusion and memory loss, including health problems like sleep apnea, high blood pressure, or depression, as well as medications like antidepressants. Even    remedies like antihistamines can contribute to memory loss. You don’t have to figure this out on your own. Daffner suggests going to your doctor to check on medications, health problems and other issues that could be affecting memory. And the best defense against memory loss is to try to prevent it by building up your brain’s cognitive reserve, Daffner says. ”Read books, go to movies that challenge, take on new hobbies or activities that force one to think in novel ways,” he says. In other words, keep your brain busy and working. And get physically active, Daffner says, because exercise is a known brain booster."
"There’s growing evidence that a lack of sleep can leave the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease. ”Changes in sleep habits may actually be setting the stage” for dementia, says Jeffrey Iliff, a brain scientist at Oregon Health  Science University in Portland. The brain appears to clear out toxins linked to Alzheimer’s during sleep, Iliff explains. And, at least among research animals that don’t get enough solid   those toxins can build up and damage the brain. Iliff and other scientists at OHSU are about to launch a study of people that should clarify the link between sleep problems and Alzheimer’s disease in humans. It has been clear for decades that there is some sort of link. Sleep disorders are very common among people with Alzheimer’s disease. For a long time, researchers thought this was simply because the disease was ”taking out the centers of the brain that are responsible for regulating sleep,” Iliff says. But two recent discoveries have suggested the relationship may be more complicated. The first finding emerged in 2009, when researchers at Washington University in St. Louis showed that the sticky amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s develop more quickly in the brains of   mice. Then, in 2013, Iliff was a member of a team that discovered how a lack of sleep could be speeding the development of those Alzheimer’s plaques: A remarkable cleansing process takes place in the brain during deep sleep, at least in animals. What happens, Iliff says, is ”the fluid that’s normally on the outside of the brain, cerebrospinal fluid  —   it’s a clean, clear fluid  —   it actually begins to recirculate back into and through the brain along the outsides of blood vessels.” This process, via what’s known as the glymphatic system, allows the brain to clear out toxins, including the toxins that form Alzheimer’s plaques, Iliff says. ”That suggests at least one possible way that disruption in sleep may predispose toward Alzheimer’s disease,” he says. To know for sure, though, researchers will have to study this cleansing process in people, which won’t be easy. Iliff studied the glymphatic system in living mice by looking through a window created in the skull. The system also involved a powerful laser and     microscope. With people, ”we have to find a way to see the same sort of function, but in a way that is going to be reasonably noninvasive and safe,” he says. The solution may involve one of the world’s most powerful magnetic resonance imaging machines, which sits in a basement at OHSU. The MRI unit is so sensitive, it should be able to detect changes that indicate precisely when the glymphatic system gets switched on in a person’s brain, says Bill Rooney, who directs the university’s Advanced Imaging Research Center. When humans enter deep sleep, and toxin removal begins, there should be a particular change in the signal coming from certain salt molecules. That would indicate that fluid has begun moving freely through the brain. In young, healthy brains, the signal should be ”robust,” Rooney says, indicating that the toxin removal system is working well. In the brains of older people, and those who are likely to develop Alzheimer’s, the signal should be weaker. Rooney and Iliff have received funding from the Paul G. Allen Foundation to test their approach. They hope to begin scanning the brains of participants within a year. One challenge, though, will be finding people able to fall asleep in the cramped and noisy tunnel of the magnetic resonance machine. ”It’s a tricky thing because it’s a small space,” Rooney says. ”But we’ll make people as comfortable as possible, and we’ll just follow them as they go through these natural stages of sleep.” If Rooney and Iliff are right, the experiment will greatly strengthen the argument that a lack of sleep can lead to Alzheimer’s disease. It might also provide a way to identify people whose health is at risk because they aren’t getting enough deep sleep, and it could pave the way to new treatments. ”It could be anything from having people exercise more regularly, or new drugs,” Rooney says. ”A lot of the sleep aids don’t particularly focus on driving people to deep sleep stages.”"
"This weekend, Facebook’s ”Memories” reminded me of a post from Jan. 2, 2009: ”Tania Lombrozo is generating New Year’s resolutions. ..that look a lot like last year’s.” I could, unfortunately, post the same again today. In fact, one of my resolutions for 2015  —   to be smart about my smartphone  —   was shared here last year on 13. 7, and I can report pretty imperfect success. I’m surely not alone in failing to achieve my resolutions: How many people resolve to eat healthier diets and to exercise more regularly, year after year? It’s an unfortunate reality that good intentions aren’t enough to bring about good behavior, especially when that behavior is hard. But here’s a small nugget of hope, and it comes from rethinking the target of New Year’s resolutions entirely. Most people focus first on foremost on how they will change themselves. Wikipedia, for instance, defines a New Year’s resolution like this: ”[A] tradition, most common in the Western Hemisphere but also found in the Eastern Hemisphere, in which a person makes a promise to do an act of   or something slightly nice, such as opening doors for people beginning from New Year’s Day.” With   (or a small act of kindness) in mind, people focus on how they will change their attitudes, their intentions and their plans as a route to changing behavior. But one of the most effective ways to change behavior is to focus, instead, on how you can change your social and physical environment to help bring about the change you want to see in yourself. The ultimate goal is still about you and your behavior, but the target of immediate intervention becomes your environment instead. A nice article in The Atlantic makes the point succinctly in the context of dieting, quoting a University of Vermont scientist who studies   methods: ”Willpower,” he states, ”doesn’t work.” What does work is ”shaping behavior over time by giving feedback, and setting up environments where people aren’t stimulated to eat the wrong foods.” As an example, someone might alter her walk home to avoid the beckoning cinnamon roll shop  —   effectively removing the temptation from her environment. The lesson  —   that changes in behavior can be brought about by changes in the environment  —   has certainly made it to the world of management. Peter Bregman, writing at Harvard Business Review, offers examples of simple changes to physical space  —   the placement of a glass partition, the location of chairs  —   that can change interactions in reception rooms and classrooms. On Two Guys on Your Head, a podcast about psychology and human behavior, Dr. Art Markman applies this logic to New Year’s resolutions. ”If you’re going to successfully change,” he suggests, ”then that change has to start actually from the outside in, meaning you have to change the environment first, then let behavior follow.” So, by all means, resolve to be a better person this year. But if you hope to succeed in doing so, you might stop to ask: How can I change my environment to maximize the odds that I’ll act like the person I want to be? Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"One of the world’s most precious volumes starts a tour on Monday, in Norman, Okla. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C. is sending out William Shakespeare’s First Folio to all 50 states to mark the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death. Published seven years after he died, the First Folio is the first printed collection of all of Shakespeare’s plays. The Folger has 82 First Folios  —   the largest collection in the world. It’s located several stairways down, in a rare manuscript vault. To reach them, you first have to get through a fire door . .. (if a fire did threaten these priceless objects, it would be extinguished not with water  —   never water near priceless paper  —   but with a system that removes oxygen from the room). A massive safe door comes next  —   so heavy it takes two burly guards to open it, and then yet another door, which triggers a bell to alert librarians that someone has entered. After that, there’s yet another door and an elevator waaaay down to a vault that nearly spans the length of a city block, says Folger director Michael Witmore. This is where the library stores tens of thousands of pieces of paper  —   folios, plus half of everything printed in England from 1473 to 1660 and much more. And there, propped open on spongy wedges to protect the binding, is the First Folio. ”If you had to pick one book to represent Shakespeare, this is it,” Witmore says. Two of Shakespeare’s pals put it together in 1623, after he died. John Heminges and Henry Condell were fellow actors who felt the plays should be collected in a single large volume. They also added in 18 of Shakespeare’s plays that had never appeared in print, explains Witmore. ”Without this book we probably wouldn’t have . .. Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale . ..” It adds up to a total of 36 plays in the Folio. The others had been printed, as individual works in smaller format (quarto  —   single pages folded in four, and bound). Some of those were published in Shakespeare’s lifetime. Shakespeare didn’t spend much of his time coordinating or supervising the printing of his work. He really just wanted to write. He wrote on vellum, with a goose quill pen he cut himself, and ink he may have made. There was a ready audience for Shakespeare’s work, which was sold in bookseller shops and stalls in London. For 20 shillings ($200 in today’s money) you could buy loose sheets of paper and take them to your binder, who put them between hard covers. Of the approximately 750 copies of the First Folio that were printed, 233 survive. The book was so popular that more editions were printed and eventually there were four folios. Each time it was printed, someone made changes in the text  —   which has kept centuries of Shakespeare scholars busy! To scholars and actors, this 4 pound, 13 ounce volume is the paper equivalent of The Holy Grail. . .. read about everyday words and phrases commonly attributed to the Bard: ”I can’t think of another playwright with an output of this magnitude,” says Sarah Pretz, a graduate of the D. C. Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy of Classical Acting. Shakespeare’s works, she believes, changed ”the way people think about the world and the way people think about each other.” That is exactly why those two Shakespeare friends, the   wanted the plays preserved. Thomas Keegan, another graduate of the Shakespeare Theatre Academy, says if the folios hadn’t been made all those centuries ago, he probably wouldn’t have the opportunity to read and perform these works today. Eighteen of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s First Folios will be touring the country  —   six at a time for a year  —   to mark the 400th anniversary of the master’s death."
"North Korea announced on state television that it tested its first hydrogen bomb. The announcement followed a magnitude 5. 1 earthquake that shook near the rogue nation’s nuclear test site,   at 10 a. m. local time. The hydrogen bomb test was ”an act of self defense” against foreign threats, the announcement from the North said. ”We’ve joined the rank of nations with nuclear weapons. We won’t use the nuclear weapon as long as there’s no invasion of our autonomy.” If verified, this would be North Korea’s first nuclear test since 2013. It has staged two previous tests before that. Analysts who study satellite imagery had reported tunnel activity at the   test site as recently as last month. The nature of the bomb has not yet been confirmed independently, and international experts were skeptical in December when North Korea announced it had created a hydrogen bomb. A hydrogen bomb is an advanced kind of nuclear weapon that creates most of its explosive power through the fusion of hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen weapons (also called thermonuclear weapons) are much more powerful than ”standard” nuclear bombs made of uranium or plutonium. Only a few countries are known for sure to have hydrogen bombs: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. Some experts’ very early assessment was that North Korea’s device may not have been a true hydrogen bomb, and might instead have been a simpler fission device that had been ”boosted.” Regardless of the nature of the test, if confirmed it could strain North Korea’s relations with China, its closest ally. In September, the Chinese foreign minister urged the Pyongyang government not to do anything that could increase regional tensions."
"There’s something of a tactical vibe at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where a group of armed men have taken over buildings to protest federal control over public land in the West. The men who have blocked the driveway address each other on their radios with code names such as ”Infidel” and ”Rogue,” and talk about maintaining ”OPSEC”  —   or ”operational security.” One of the men, who won’t give his name, says if law enforcement shows up, it’ll show up big. ”You’ll know when it happens because you’ll hear the helicopters,” he says. But does he expect that kind of assault  —   with helicopters and guns? No, he says. ”At this point in time and juncture, nobody wants anything bad to happen on any side,” he says. And, in fact, that seems to be the growing consensus here  —   that law enforcement has decided to give this time. Shift In Balance After Waco And Ruby Ridge, Steve Ijames is a retired police chief who has decades of experience training SWAT teams and consulting on standoffs. He says the decision to raid a site isn’t tactical. ”There’s no doubt that the government would have the tactical ability to exert their will on those men,” Ijames says. ”The question is how willing are we, those making decisions, to accept potential negative outcomes?” Ijames says the balance shifted dramatically after deadly government raids of the 1990s, such as the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident in Idaho involving white separatist Randy Weaver, and a   standoff at David Koresh’s Branch Davidian community near Waco, Texas, in 1993. Now, there’s less appetite for force, especially in a situation like this one in Oregon  —   it’s a remote site, with no hostages, no children, and where the occupiers say they’re not even damaging government property. But he says sentiment could shift, depending on the labels that the media use to describe the occupiers. ”If we demonize them, if we make them domestic terrorists, then the political ability to deal with them harshly increases,” Ijames says. It also seems clear to him that federal authorities have made a strategic choice to stay behind the scenes. It’s their jurisdiction, but they’re also the political target in this: Federal authority is exactly what these armed men oppose. So the emphasis has been on local law enforcement. Sheriffs and their deputies have been flocking to the area from across Oregon to help. Right now, that help consists of more patrols in Burns, the town half an hour from the refuge. One visiting deputy told NPR that there’s a worry that some of the occupiers could come into town to cause trouble. They’re still free to come and go  —   law enforcement has not blocked any roads. That’s a strategic decision, too, to prevent creating the impression of a siege. But the policy could also change, if many new supporters head to the refuge to join the occupiers. That’s exactly what Ammon Bundy and his supporters out at the wildlife refuge are hoping for. A couple of pickup trucks pull up, and the drivers are greeted enthusiastically by Ryan Bundy, one of the leaders of the occupation. He says they’re local ranchers, come to support this movement. ”They’re just ranchers here, they’re neighbors,” Bundy says. ”They’re here to help us out.” Right now, law enforcement seems willing to let Bundy’s group wait in the cold and snow to see just how many supporters show up  —   to stay."
"Over the past few days, you’ve probably heard a lot about Cliven Bundy. His son is presently occupying a federal building with other armed individuals in Oregon. But Bundy first made national news in 2014 during a standoff with federal authorities at his ranch in Nevada. Bundy’s clash with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) dates back to the ’90s, when he stopped paying required fees for his cattle to graze on federal lands. In 1998, a court ordered him to remove his cattle from federal lands, but he has continued to let his cattle graze. In 2013, the U. S. District Court of Nevada gave federal authorities power to remove the animals from government property if Bundy didn’t move them. The BLM did just that in April 2014, and that’s when the armed standoff with the rancher and his militant supporters began. The BLM relented about a month later, giving Bundy back his cattle. That ended the standoff, but nothing has been resolved. As of today, the BLM tells us that Bundy still has not paid the more than $1 million in fees and fines he’s racked up and that his cattle continue to graze on federal lands. ”The Bureau of Land Management remains resolute in addressing issues involved in efforts to gather Mr. Bundy’s cattle and we are pursuing the matter through the legal system,” Thomas Gorey, a spokesman for the BLM said in a statement. ”The Department of Justice has the lead on any investigation of federal crimes that may have been committed. Our primary goal remains to resolve this matter safely and according to the rule of the law.” We asked Gorey what he meant when he said the BLM was pursuing the matter through the legal system. The U. S. District Court’s 2013 order has already given the U. S. government all the power it needs to enforce an injunction, and the court has also rejected appeals from Bundy because he failed to pay court filing fees. And there’s no appeal pending before another court. The civil case, in other words, is settled. Gorey said that he had nothing to add to the statement. The Justice Department could still bring criminal charges against Bundy and others for impeding federal authorities from removing the cattle, but Natalie Collins, a spokeswoman for the U. S. Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas, said she could not confirm nor deny that a criminal investigation is underway. NPR’s Kirk Siegler tells Morning Edition that the last time he visited Bundy’s ranch, he noticed that the BLM had ”completely pulled off.” Bundy told him that was a clear sign that his side had won. ”That’s what is concerning to a lot of retired federal land managers I’ve talked to who think the BLM’s reluctance to go after Bundy has bolstered this land takeover movement and even helped legitimize it, which might help explain the latest drama right now in Oregon,” Kirk reports. Bundy did not respond to multiple phone calls on Monday and Tuesday."
"A small group of men armed with rifles and pistols continues to occupy a federal wildlife refuge in remote southeast Oregon. In the nearby town of Burns, opinion over the situation is divided: Some people have welcomed the occupation and the attention it has brought to local frustration over the management of federal lands, while others reject the militants as outsiders. Right at the entrance to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, there’s a small RV park and store called the Narrows, which is run by Ron Gainer and his wife, Linda. On Saturday, when Ammon Bundy’s occupation started, a few of the men stopped by the store to buy ammunition and food. And Gainer packed up some leftovers for the occupiers. ”Chili and soup, I think. And some rolls,” he recalls. ”They’ll probably enjoy it, and that’s what we do here.” Gainer says he thinks the federal government is too involved in local affairs. ”I agree with a lot of this,” he says. ”I don’t know why the federal government has to be here in the numbers that they are.” Like many people in the area, Gainer is angry that Dwight and Steven Hammond, local ranchers convicted of arson, received two different sentences for their crime. The 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that their original sentence was too short because it violated a   mandatory minimum for arson on federal land. To Gainer, that made the government seem vindictive. ”They did their time, and now they’re back, and all of a sudden that wasn’t good enough, so the government went around for Round 2, to see if they can’t get more time,” he says. Harney County is one of the largest in Oregon, but fewer than 8, 000 people live scattered across it. The largest community, Burns, is a town of   wooden houses a   north of the wildlife refuge. Larry Northey, a former millworker and welder, is out in the snow working on his truck engine. ”I just don’t want to see no bloodshed,” he says. He’s worried police officers could get hurt. ”A lot of these officers here I know, I’m good friends with. I want them to come back safe,” Northey says. A few blocks away, Debbie Pfeiffer is walking her dog. ”I don’t like what’s going on at the refuge,” she says. ”It’s a little unsettling to have these outsiders come in and   the community and, you know, tell us what we should think.” Pfeiffer works part time for the local library. She has spent time at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. One of the occupied buildings is a museum she likes to visit. ”I am really hoping, crossing my fingers, hoping that none of that is getting destroyed,” she says. All of the schools in Harney County have been shut down for the week. Talia Ward’s children are at home. She says it’s hard to explain to them the very adult situation going on. At first she was fearful. ”I heard ’militia,’ and I think like a lot of other people in that town, I was terrified because I didn’t know anything about it,” Ward says. But she says her views have evolved as she has learned more. ”I sat and listened. I marched in the rally for the Hammonds. I support them with all my heart. And I want something done,” she says. Ward has lived in Burns her whole life. She says the town used to have a railroad and one of the largest sawmills in Oregon. That mill closed in the 1980s, and Ward blames the federal government and the Bureau of Land Management. ”It’s sad to be a citizen here and know that so many amenities have been shut down in Harney County, to sit and watch your friends move away, because they don’t have jobs here, unless you go to work for the BLM,” she says. Ward says she doesn’t think the armed occupation is right. But for the first time she feels like someone is standing up for her town."
"It was never going to be easy to work out a truce in Syria. And the latest escalation of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia is likely to spill over into the Syria talks, making prospects for a ceasefire even more remote, according to analysts who follow the region. Another potential loser in the feud is Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who’s been trying to open up his country to the world and is looking to gain additional allies in elections set for next month. But the latest events have played into the hands of his hardline opponents. These are just a couple examples of the potential fallout following Saudi Arabia’s execution of a   Shiite cleric, Sheik Nimr  . His beheading on Saturday ignited furious reactions in Shiite populations across the region, especially in Iran, where Saudi diplomatic buildings were stormed and partially burned. The response from the Saudis, cutting diplomatic ties with Iran, hardened the dispute along sectarian lines. Analyst Salman Shaikh, who formerly directed the Brookings Doha Center and now runs a private consultancy, notes that the   rift is just one of many factors working against a possible truce in Syria. ”The Russian engagement and attacks against moderate factions on the ground, as well as those of the Syrian regime, have actually, I think, taken us farther away from the peace process,” he says. Russia and the U. S. do deserve credit for getting Iran and Saudi Arabia to the table last month to discuss Syria’s future, says Shaikh. But, he adds, ”there was no meeting of minds, in my view, whatsoever.” A new round of talks is planned for Geneva on Jan. 25. Iranian President Condemns Attacks, The ransacking of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the Saudi consulate in Mashhad drew condemnation from around the world. Iran’s pragmatic president was quick to join in, saying those responsible must be prosecuted. But the damage was already done, says Iranian history professor Ali Ansari at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. ”All this actually is very bad news for Rouhani and his administration,” says Ansari. It’s not something Rouhani would have been likely to foresee, he says, ”but it was worrying (because it shows) his government doesn’t have much control over the security forces in Iran. I mean, it’s quite clear they stood back and watched it happen.” Ansari says the overreaction of Iranian hardliners to Nimr’s execution allowed the Saudis to change the debate. Very few people outside the region are now focused on the execution or the Saudi judicial system. But the cutting of diplomatic ties has shone a spotlight on Iran once again storming an embassy, reinforcing the image of the country as a revolutionary theocracy. ”And I think that’s something that Rouhani is acutely aware of, which is why he’s gone out of its way to condemn the attack on the embassy,” he says. If Rouhani wants diplomatic and economic   with the outside world, says Ansari, then ”Iran has to be very careful not to get a reputation for basically whenever it gets angry at a country of assaulting its embassy.” Analyst Salman Shaikh agrees that biggest losers in Iran from the spiking tensions are the moderate and pragmatic factions, including Rouhani. In late February, Iranians will elect a new consultative assembly, a kind of advisory parliament, says Shaikh. In additon, a new Assembly of Experts will also be chosen. That body is charged, among other things, with approving the selection of the next supreme leader. ”Now if things continue to heat up, I’m sure hardliners would find ways to make inroads on the political scene, especially after the setbacks they’ve felt over the last year or so,” he says."
"The notion of a gun smart enough to tell who’s holding it isn’t new. Since the 1990s, inventors have been developing firearms geared with technologies that can authenticate their users  —   for instance by recognizing the fingerprint, the grip or an RFID chip  —   and stop working if held by the wrong hands. Several manufacturers have tried to introduce Americans to the concept, but the market here has been less than friendly over concerns that they are unreliable and would lead to more gun control. Supporters now hope that President Obama’s new executive actions could turn things around. In a series of measures aimed at reducing gun violence, Obama directed the Departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security to ”conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology that would reduce the frequency of accidental discharge or unauthorized use of firearms, and improve the tracing of lost or stolen guns.” In an address at the White House on Tuesday, Obama added: ”If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint, why can’t we do the same thing for our guns? If there’s an app that can help us find a missing tablet . .. there’s no reason we can’t do it with a stolen gun. If a child can’t open a bottle of aspirin, we should make sure that they can’t pull a trigger on a gun.” But to Stephen Teret, longtime proponent of smarter guns and founder of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, this could be the key element: Obama also directs the agencies to ”explore potential ways to further” the use and development of smart gun technology as well as consult with other agencies that buy firearms to see if smart guns could be considered for acquisition and ”consistent with operational needs.” Teret says smart, or personalized, guns have faced a stalemated kind of  : Manufacturers   to make and market these new guns don’t want to go   on the idea without a reassurance of big orders, while no big buyer would put in such an order for an unestablished technology. In simplest terms, if federal law enforcement and the military start buying lots of smart guns  —   and that’s a big if  —   Teret thinks it would be just the incentive that manufacturers, venture capitalists and other investors need to consider such guns as a viable product. ”What today represents is blowing up the logjam that has been keeping us from moving forward,” Teret says. The impasse has a long history. A 2013 report from the Justice Department, solicited earlier by Obama, listed numerous corporate and research projects in the U. S. Europe and Australia that tried to develop smarter gun technology, including from established   like Colt’s Manufacturing and Smith  Wesson. Many of the projects fizzled out, facing numerous reservations both from gun control opponents and from proponents. Will It Make Us Safer? One of the biggest concerns from law enforcement officers cited by that 2013 DOJ report was reliability  —   the concern that a   or    gun wouldn’t fire when it should. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the main firearms industry trade association, in a statement, says it has never opposed development of smart gun technology, but adds: ”How additional government research into this technology would advance it is unclear.” And the industry’s big worry is that support for smart gun technology would turn into a mandate that all guns need to be smart. In fact, New Jersey’s 2002 ”Childproof Handgun Law” has spurred much of the outcry over attempts to sell smart guns in the U. S. because it said that once ”personalized handguns are available” anywhere in the country, all handguns sold in New Jersey must be smart guns within 30 months. The National Shooting Sports Foundation also says there are ”  existing methods to secure firearms” and that firearm accidents are at an   low. The National Rifle Association, in its statement criticizing Obama’s executive actions, didn’t comment on smart guns specifically but generally argued that the presidential action would not have prevented recent mass shootings. The Violence Policy Center, which advocates for gun control, also has no specific position on personalized guns but has argued that research dollars would be better spent on things that prevent gun violence, like better injury and death measurements, youth programs and public education about risks. Spokesman Avery Palmer referred NPR to the group’s 2013 fact sheet on smart guns, which runs through a variety of reservations about their effectiveness, including the possibility that it may attract more, not fewer, people to gun ownership. The fact sheet also says the group opposes the use of any federal tax dollars in support of smart gun research. Asked whether that meant the group also opposed Obama’s smart gun initiative, Palmer said the center didn’t yet have enough detail on the proposal to determine the group’s position. Teret at Johns Hopkins says that firearm accidents have indeed been declining and smart guns aren’t a panacea to gun violence. He compares his current advocacy to his earlier work to get air bags installed in cars, despite concerns about their risk and effectiveness. ”No one can tell you with any level of certainty how many of the   [annual] gun deaths will be avoided by personalized guns,” he says. ”But I certainly have absolute confidence that it will be enough deaths that will be avoided that makes this worth it.”"
"Saying that America faces a ”gun violence epidemic,” President Obama is taking ”a series of   executive actions” to reduce gun violence Tuesday, the White House says. First among the measures: tighter rules on background checks for gun buyers. President Obama made his case during a live address from the East Room of the White House Tuesday. We’ve updated this post with news from the president’s speech. ”We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency,” Obama said. ”It doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close.” The president invoked his own and gun owners’ views on constitutional rights  —   and he also invoked numerous mass shootings, including the one at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. in late 2012. He grew emotional at the end of his speech, at one point giving up attempts to wipe away tears from his eyes as he spoke. Obama’s executive actions were announced Monday afternoon, with the White House saying the steps were necessary because Congress has failed to take action. Update at 12:25 p. m. ET: A Heroic Example, President Obama tells the story of Zaevion Dobson, the    high school student who saved the lives of three girls when he dived on top of them during a shooting in December. ”An act of heroism a lot bigger than anything we should ever expect from a  ” Obama says. ”We are not asked to do what Zaevion Dobson did,” the president says. ”We’re not asked to have shoulders that big, a heart that strong, reactions that quick.” Concluding his speech, he adds that those who want to see change in America’s gun policies should work through obstacles, ”and do what a sensible country would do.” Update at 12:18 p. m. ET: ’The Rest Of Our Rights’ Saying that Second Amendment rights matter, President Obama states: ”There are other rights that we care about, as well, and we have to be able to balance them. Because our right to worship freely and safely  —   that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, S. C. and that was denied Jews in Kansas City and that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill, and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights, too.” He then says the right of peaceful assembly has been robbed in movie theaters in Colorado and Louisiana  —   and the pursuit of happiness and liberty has also been taken away in attacks on schools. ”Those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg, in Santa Barbara, and from   in Columbine, and from   in Newtown.” While applause had followed the president’s listing of those events, his final words about students were said after an emotional pause they were greeted with silence in the room. The president repeats: ” .” As he attempts to move on with his speech, Obama pauses to wipe a tear from his eye. ”Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,” he says, his eyes now wet with tears. ”And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.” Update at 12:15 p. m. ET: Role Of Technology, ”If a child can’t open a bottle of aspirin, we should make sure they can’t pull a trigger on a gun,” Obama says. He compares ”smart guns” to smartphones that require a fingerprint to unlock the device and mentions trackers that could help find a stolen gun. Update at 12:10 p. m. ET: The Plan, President Obama starts outlining the four steps he is taking via executive action, from closing the gun show loophole to expanding background checks to catch people trying to evade controls by making purchases through corporations or other entities. Improved mental health care is also in the plan. (We have put the four main points from the White House plan at the bottom of this post.) Update at 12:07 p. m. ET: ’That’s Not Right’ Obama faults Congress for making it more difficult to track and research gun violence in America, saying that public health experts now have more trouble collecting data and facts. He adds that people who can’t board a plane can still buy guns in America. ”That’s not right,” Obama says. ”That can’t be right.” He then says, ”The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now. But they cannot hold America hostage. We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom”  —   prompting a standing ovation from the audience. Update at 12:03 p. m. ET: ’We Can Save Some’ Victims, ”We maybe can’t save everybody, but we can save some,” Obama says, acknowledging that stopping every gun attack is likely an impossible goal. He says that in Connecticut, gun deaths dropped 40 percent after the state began requiring background checks and gun safety courses  —   while in Missouri, gun deaths rose to almost 50 percent above the national average after the state repealed gun control laws on background checks and permits. Update at 11:58 a. m. ET: ’Different Set Of Rules’ Obama says it’s time to end the system in which some gun buyers operate under a ”different set of rules” from others. Recalling the 2013 failure to approve gun control legislation in the Senate, Obama says it failed because of Republican resistance. ”How did this become such a partisan issue?” Obama asks, quoting calls for better background checks from former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain. Update at 11:55 a. m. ET: The Second Amendment, ”I taught constitutional law. I know a little about this,” Obama said, insisting on his belief in the protections for gun owners. He adds that he thinks the right should be balanced with other protections. And he says many gun owners agree with him. ”A majority of gun owners agree that we can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, lawbreaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale,” Obama says. He says there’s no ”slippery slope” to erode gun owners’ rights and confiscate guns. Update at 11:51 a. m. ET: Town Hall Meeting Thursday, The president says he’ll host a town hall meeting in Virginia to hear from both sides of the issue. Calling for a sense of urgency about the issue, Obama says it’s time ”not to debate the last mass shooting, but to try to prevent the next one.” Update at 11:48 a. m. ET: Giffords Acknowledged, Obama notes that former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in and barely survived a 2011 attack in Tucson, Ariz. is in attendance, setting off a wave of applause. ”I know the pain that she and her family have endured these past five years,” Obama says, noting the recovery efforts Giffords has undertaken. ”Every single year, more than 30, 000 Americans have their lives cut short by guns,” Obama says. He adds that there’s resilience in the room, along with heartache, among the survivors of gun violence. Update at 11:45 a. m. ET: Obama Speaks, The president is greeted with a loud and sustained ovation after he is introduced by Mark Barden, who lost his son in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. Obama recalls speaking with Barden after that tragedy. ”That changed me that day,” Obama says, adding that he hoped it would also change the country. The president then lists a string of shootings, in Aurora, Colo. the Navy Yard in Washington, D. C. and elsewhere. Our original post continues: ”We have tens of thousands of people every single year who are killed by guns,” Obama said Monday. ”We have suicides that are committed by firearms at a rate that far exceeds other countries. We have a frequency of mass shootings that far exceeds other countries.” In a public opinion poll from last August, 85 percent of Americans said they’re in favor of expanding background checks, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Those in support included 88 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of Republicans. The National Rifle Association has criticized Obama’s plan, calling it ”a political stunt.” In 2013, the group worked to block enhanced gun control legislation that was introduced in the aftermath of the elementary school shootings in Newtown, Conn. Today, President Obama was introduced by Mark Barden, who lost his son in that shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. The president’s plan rests on four main points: As NPR’s Scott Horsley reported Monday, ”ATF will play a central role in the administration’s move, by clarifying what it means to be ’engaged in the business’ of selling guns. Until now, some collectors and hobbyists have been able to avoid that designation.” Scott added, ”the FBI is hiring 230 additional staff people to speed the processing of background checks.” Gun sales have reportedly been up, as buyers worried it might become harder or impossible to purchase some weapons. Some of those buyers visited a gun store and shooting range in Lorton, Va. where customer Sherry Shoske told NPR’s Eyder Peralta on Monday that she recently bought an Uzi ”because I thought that [Obama] was going to be making changes, so I should buy any gun that I want to buy before he makes the changes.” Several customers at the store acknowledged that America has a problem with gun violence  —   and that some rules should change. But they also said the issue is too complex for quick fixes. One customer, Chris Harto, told Eyder, ”It’s easy to say if we didn’t have guns this wouldn’t happen. But the reality is, there’s over 300 million guns in this country, and they’re not going to go away.”"
"President Obama wept this afternoon as he remembered the children who were killed by a mass shooter in Newtown, Conn. Bill has the news on the executive actions Obama was detailing. But we wanted to call out the moment of the speech where the president became emotional. It came as he remembered the   victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. ”Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,” the president said, wiping away tears. ”And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.” Here’s video via CNN: And here’s a bit more of what followed: If you remember, President Obama also wiped away tears the day of the Sandy Hook shooting. ”The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and 10 years old,” Obama said, pausing to compose himself."
"On the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it was the car companies that got the spotlight. The convergence of the auto industry and tech world began decades ago. There are millions of lines of code in the average car on the road. A recent study shows that tech (Bluetooth, lane assistance, backup cameras) are the deciding factors in new car purchases. The reality is that our cars are the biggest, most important and most expensive gadget we own. While consumers love gadgets, they love cars even more. The industry sold more cars in 2015 than at any time in history  —   17. 5 million cars were sold, according to industry estimates. ”When you’ve made all that money with trucks, you can turn around and invest,” says Karl Brauer with Kelley Blue Book. The Announcement That Wasn’t, When Ford CEO Mark Fields took to the stage of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on Tuesday, the wisdom on the street said he would announce a partnership with Google around autonomous vehicles. That did not happen, and Fields dodged the questions, saying Ford ”will continue to pursue partnerships.” The reporter who broke the story insists a deal is on the way. What’s clear is that the big tech companies likely can’t build cars on their own and the car companies need help integrating technology with the automobile. What Ford did announce is its desire to become a transportation company, in Fields’ words to ”keep one foot in the present, one foot in the future.” That means among other things that Ford will partner with Amazon to allow customers to control devices in their home, from their car. Ford is also investing in technology to deploy drones from vehicles, something that could, for example, help first responders in disaster zones. And the automaker is expanding its move into   services. So, instead of focusing on manufacturing, the new focus of the company will be mobility. BMW, Toyota and General Motors all made their big tech announcements here at the show. General Motors announced a $500 million investment in Lyft. Toyota announced it will invest $1 billion in robotics and artificial intelligence. Ford announced its expansion into ride sharing and its desire to become a transportation company. How Is This Year Different? Consumers are demanding more technology in autos. ”We won’t just flip a switch and have   cars,” says Jeremy Carlson, an analyst with IHS Automotive. A new study by Autotrader shows 70 percent of shoppers prefer vehicles with autonomous features like park assist. Carlson, who looks specifically at autonomous driving, says consumers are demanding tech  —   not just technology but seamless technology. Bob Carter, a longtime Toyota executive, said the major shift in the car business is demographic. He says finally the industry has realized that ”the new customer is Generation X.” When asked if major disruption was headed toward the car industry, Carter laughed and said that’s why ”we’re all trying to stay ahead of the game.”"
"Federal immigration agents have initiated a controversial roundup of Central American families who were part of the border surge that began in 2014. They are mainly young mothers with children whose asylum claims have been rejected. The Homeland Security Department says 121 have been picked up out of more than 100, 000 immigrants who crossed the border illegally. At a shelter home in East Austin, the raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have terrified immigrants here who lost their cases and await deportation. Hilda Ramirez, a    Mayan mother from San Marcos, Guatemala, left Central America to flee her    son Ivan’s abusive grandparents. They crossed the Rio Grande in August 2014 and surrendered to the Border Patrol. They spent the next year and a half in an ICE detention center and here in this shelter home run by an Austin nonprofit. Both her and her son’s asylum requests were turned down. Ramirez wears an electronic ankle monitor, which is how ICE knows exactly where she is. ”Every time a car stops on the street,” she says tearfully, ”I think it’s them and they’ve come to take us away. I can’t sleep. I’m very afraid.” Ramirez has reason to be. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Monday that the roundup of Central American families has begun. Up until now, most of those returned had been single adults. ”I know there are many who loudly condemn our enforcement efforts as far too harsh, while there will be others who say the actions don’t go far enough,” Johnson says. After they’re picked up in the current raids, immigrant families are taken to a detention center in Dilley, Texas, to await deportation. Ana Urias is there now with her four children, ages 3 to 17. ”I was easy to find because of the electronic ankle monitor on my leg,” says Urias, from a phone inside the building. She’s a    mother from Usulután Province, El Salvador, who says she fled because murderous gangs threatened her family. Urias says ICE agents showed up at the door of her apartment in Atlanta at 11 a. m. Sunday, but she wouldn’t let them in. Then they called her and said they were actually there because her ankle monitor was broken. So she opened the door. Once inside, they told her to get her kids together and go with them. ”They were very angry,” she says. ”They didn’t give me a chance to do anything. I was in my pajamas and slippers. I said I wanted to call my lawyer. I didn’t even have a chance to brush my hair. It all happened so fast. They fingerprinted me and took us to the airport. ”When we got to the airplane, there were 20, 25 police waiting for four families,” Urias continues. ”Four women with our children. Why so much security? We’re deportable families, not criminals!” Immigrant advocates are furious with the government. Though both women in this story had lawyers and still lost their asylum claims, advocates say that most applicants don’t have representation and end up losing their cases. Cecilia Wang, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, calls the ICE sweeps an elaborate and unjust show. ”The federal government is going to engage in fear tactics, storming into people’s homes in early morning hours, in order to deter others,” she says. But the borders ”are not open to illegal immigration,” says Secretary Johnson. ”If you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values.”"
"The small eastern European nation of Slovakia has not exactly welcomed migrants. The prime minister, Robert Fico, opposes refugees under a European relocation plan and has even linked migration to terrorism. In one town, Gabcikovo, 97 percent of residents voted against accepting refugees. But a tiny migrant community has quietly lived and worked in Slovakia for decades, largely by staying under the radar. ”We keep to ourselves,” says Nguyen Kien Trung, 32, who was born in Vietnam and now lives in Bratislava. ”We don’t talk about our businesses. We don’t talk about ourselves, our traditions.” We’re driving along a street in a warehouse district of the Slovak capital, Bratislava, that’s lined with Vietnamese businesses and an unpretentious restaurant that specializes in the Vietnamese noodle soup called pho. He helps run the family textile business that’s on this street. His family has imported and sold   clothes in Slovakia for 18 years. We pull up at the family warehouse on a Sunday. His aunt and uncle are working and greet us in Vietnamese. Inside, the warehouse is filled with colorful sweaters and pajamas, mostly for women and children. ”The Slovak people perceive us as very, very hardworking people,” he says. ”We practically don’t have holidays.” Few Immigrants, His parents came to Slovakia about 30 years ago, when it was still part of Czechoslovakia. Like others from North Vietnam, they found opportunities in communist Eastern Europe. They did face racism and violence in some countries. But some established themselves as successful market vendors who especially flourished after the fall of communism. About 300, 000 Vietnamese, most of them from the north, now live in various Eastern European countries, mainly Russia and the Czech Republic. Only 3, 000 to 5, 000 live in Slovakia, which gained independence in 1993 and where just a little over 1 percent of the population is foreign born. I meet Claudia Tran, a    university student who also manages a nonprofit, at a hipster cafe in a cobblestoned section of old Bratislava. She was born and raised in Slovakia to Vietnamese parents who came to Eastern Europe as   students on university scholarships. ”And that’s why my dad ended up in Poland and my mom ended up in Slovakia,” she said. ”They’re both engineers.” They couldn’t find work in their field in Slovakia, where they settled. ”They sell clothing for children,” Tran says.   Vietnamese have better job opportunities, especially in Bratislava. ”Everyone in Bratislava has seen at least one Asian in the city,” she says. ”But if I compare it to Vienna, which is a short train ride away and a huge multicultural city, there’s a big difference.” In Bratislava, many Slovaks speak to her in English or assume she’s a tourist. And they stare. ”I don’t know if they stare because I’m a woman or is it because I’m an Asian,” she says. ”But still, they stare.” She’s having hot chocolate with Lani Willmar, a    university student from Corona, Calif. Willmar’s parents fled South Vietnam by boat and came as refugees to the U. S. Willmar is in Slovakia on a Fulbright, teaching English to Slovaks. One recent lesson was about multiculturalism, which every student in her class opposed. ”And I talked about how the U. S. is a multicultural society,” she says. ”And, yes, there are problems, yes there’s racism, but it doesn’t mean that you should write off multiculturalism completely. Because if that were the case, I wouldn’t be (in the United States) and my family wouldn’t be there, and life would be very different.” ’Quiet’ Migrants, Retired embryologist Eva Kellerova, like many Slovaks, is quick to point out that Slovakia  —   and Europe  —   are not like America. She’s aware of the Vietnamese community in Slovakia but says ”they came quietly,” unlike the migrants now arriving in Europe. She says her heart breaks watching TV footage of what looks like miles of exhausted families trudging through the mud and cold. ”But the situation is chaotic,” she says. ”I don’t think so many people can ever fit in here.” Her granddaughter, Daniela Kellerova, 23, translates. Slovakia recently allowed a small group of Iraqi Christians to resettle here but remains opposed to Muslim refugees. ”Slovaks are having an existential crisis,” she says. ”They worry that people will come here and build mosques and change life as they know it.” Daniela, like many bright young Slovaks, is studying abroad, in Scotland, and does not plan to come home anytime soon. She’s part of the brain drain that’s turning Slovakia into an aging society  —   a society that might benefit from an infusion of immigrants."
"At the kickoff of a   campaign swing through Iowa, there’s no mistaking which voters Ted Cruz is trying to reach  —   evangelicals. King’s Christian Bookstore in Boone was the first of 28 stops this week. Before he began his pitch, he cited Scripture he saw on the wall. ”I was looking up and seeing Joshua 24:15 on the wall: ’Choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ ” Cruz is campaigning across Iowa in a bus tour focused on organizing and inspiring the state’s influential evangelical voters. More than half of Iowa’s Republican caucusgoers are conservative Christians, and a Cruz victory here hinges on his ability to win their support. So Cruz is here asking Republicans to vote for him in the caucuses next month. And at each and every campaign stop he also asks them to pray. ”Just one minute each day to lift up in prayer this country that the awakening, that the spirit of revival that is sweeping this country that it continue and in particular that conservatives continue to unite,” he said at the bookstore. Cruz is campaigning hard to consolidate Iowa’s conservative Christian vote. The calculation is simple, says Bob Vander Plaats, the most prominent evangelical voice in Iowa politics. Cruz wins Iowa, he said, and then ”once we launch him out of Iowa, he’s not going to flame out. He’s actually going to propel further, and with the resources behind him he could be the nominee.” And that’s what Iowa’s evangelical voters want the most in 2016: a winner. They are tired of picking Christian conservative candidates who flame out in later contests, like Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012. Doc Ennenberg, a retired doctor, is 86 and has been a caucus organizer since 1964. He waited for Cruz Monday at a steakhouse in the town of Carroll to give him this warning: ”You better make it. . .. I don’t wanna die without seeing a damn conservative in the White House.” Cruz isn’t just asking for their votes. He’s trying to fire up evangelicals, first here in Iowa  —   but with an eye on upcoming states like South Carolina and the big block of Southern states that vote on March 1, Super Tuesday. Cruz says in recent elections, evangelicals haven’t done enough to propel a conservative like himself to the White House. ”Look, we allow nonbelievers to elect to our leaders. We shouldn’t be surprised when our government doesn’t reflect our values,” he said Monday night in Winterset. ”We have to bring back to the polls the millions of conservatives that stayed home. We have to awaken and energize the body of Christ.” His message worked for    Michele Jones. She sat in the front row, with her granddaughter on her lap, at a cafe in Guthrie. She first saw Cruz speak in Texas during his 2012 Senate campaign, and this is the first time she’s ever volunteered for any campaign. That 2012 speech, she said, ”inspired me.” ”I said, ’Someday this man is going to run for president and when he does I’m going to campaign.’ ” On stage in Winterset Monday night, where a Christian bluegrass band played, Cruz got a big public endorsement from the iconic Christian broadcaster James Dobson. Cruz may be inching ahead in the polls here but he’s taking nothing for granted. He has organized more than 6, 000   volunteers in Iowa. Asked how many he thought would turn out, veteran caucus organizer Ennenberg answered, ”God only knows.” For Cruz to win Iowa, it’s a question of organization  —   and faith."
"There will be a question from some about Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president. That’s because even though Cruz grew up in Texas, he was born in Canada. (He renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2013.) Democrats are sure to remind voters of Cruz’s Canadian birth since some on the right have questioned where President Obama was born. The president is a native of Hawaii. The U. S. Constitution says presidential candidates have to be ”  citizens.” But the Supreme Court has never weighed in with a definition, leaving it open to interpretation. It’s a question that has come up before. In 2008, senators passed a resolution, making it clear, for example, that John McCain was allowed to run given that he was born on a U. S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both senators then, voted for it. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee, was born in Arizona when it was a territory  —   not a state. And some questioned George Romney’s eligibility to run in 1968, because he was born in Mexico. Romney’s parents were U. S. residents. Cruz’s parents worked in the oil industry in Calgary, Canada, when he was born. His mother was born in the United States. His father was born in Cuba, but later became a U. S. resident. Cruz argues that because his mother was born in Delaware, he is, in fact, a ”  citizen.” And most legal scholars agree. In fact, two of the   Supreme Court lawyers  —   who are not normally on the same side  —   make the case that Cruz, as were McCain, George Romney and Goldwater, is eligible to run. Neal Katyal, who served as acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, and Paul Clement, who was solicitor general under George W. Bush, wrote earlier this month in the Harvard Law Review that ”there is no question” Cruz is eligible. They say that because Cruz’s mother was a U. S. citizen and his father was a U. S. resident, ”Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ’natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution” and the ”Naturalization Act of 1790.” They also point to British common law and enactments by the First Congress, both of which have been cited by the Supreme Court. ”Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase ’natural born Citizen’ includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent. As to the British practice, laws in force in the 1700s recognized that children born outside of the British Empire to subjects of the Crown were subjects themselves and explicitly used ’natural born’ to encompass such children. These statutes provided that children born abroad to subjects of the British Empire were ’  Subjects . .. to all Intents, Constructions, and Purposes whatsoever.’ ”The Framers, of course, would have been intimately familiar with these statutes and the way they used terms like ’natural born,’ since the statutes were binding law in the colonies before the Revolutionary War. They were also well documented in Blackstone’s Commentaries, a text widely circulated and read by the Framers and routinely invoked in interpreting the Constitution. ”No doubt informed by this longstanding tradition, just three years after the drafting of the Constitution, the First Congress established that children born abroad to U. S. citizens were U. S. citizens at birth, and explicitly recognized that such children were ’natural born Citizens.’ The Naturalization Act of 1790 provided that ’the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States. . ..’ ”The actions and understandings of the First Congress are particularly persuasive because so many of the Framers of the Constitution were also members of the First Congress. That is particularly true in this instance, as eight of the eleven members of the committee that proposed the natural born eligibility requirement to the Convention served in the First Congress and none objected to a definition of ’natural born Citizen’ that included persons born abroad to citizen parents.” Katyal and Clement conclude, ”There are plenty of serious issues to debate in the upcoming presidential election cycle. The less time spent dealing with specious objections to candidate eligibility, the better. Fortunately, the Constitution is refreshingly clear on these eligibility issues.”"
"First Donald Trump took aim at rival Ted Cruz’s evangelical credentials. Now he’s questioning whether the   Texas senator is even eligible for the White House. ”Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ’Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said of Cruz’s birthplace and citizenship in an interview with the Washington Post. ”It’d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.” The return to   ”birtherism” is nothing new for the real estate mogul, who’s currently atop the polls for the Republican nomination. Back in 2011, when Trump first floated a GOP presidential run, he famously questioned whether President Obama was actually born in Hawaii. Once the president did release the   version of his birth certificate, Trump boasted that he was ”proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something nobody has been able to accomplish.” After the   controversy over Obama’s birthplace, the question over Cruz’s was a natural one that’s already come up. Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, in 1970 while his parents were working in the oil industry. Though his dad is from Cuba, his mother was a U. S. citizen, having been born in Delaware. Cruz held dual U. S. and Canadian citizenship, though he renounced the latter in 2014. Here’s how NPR’s Domenico Montanaro explained the historical precedent that should give Cruz a pass back in March 2015: ”The U. S. Constitution says presidential candidates have to be ’  citizens.’ But the Supreme Court has never weighed in with a definition, leaving it open to interpretation. ”It’s a question that has come up before. In 2008, senators passed a resolution, making it clear, for example, that John McCain was allowed to run given that he was born on a U. S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both senators then, voted for it. ”Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee, was born in Arizona when it was a territory  —   not a state. And some questioned George Romney’s eligibility to run in 1968, because he was born in Mexico. Romney’s parents were U. S. residents.” Legal scholars have agreed that Cruz and the other candidates before him would indeed be eligible for the White House. Neal Katyal, who was acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, and Paul Clement, who was the solicitor general under George W. Bush, wrote in the Harvard Law Review that ”there is no question” Cruz is eligible and that ””Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ’natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution” and the ”Naturalization Act of 1790.” The possibility that Cruz may not be eligible for the White House is something that Trump himself even dismissed last fall. ”I hear it was checked out by every attorney and every which way, and I understand Ted is in fine shape,” Trump told ABC News last September of his rival’s constitutional eligibility because of his birthplace. Trump had questioned Cruz’s legal qualifications before, though. In December 2014, he also told ABC, ”I think he’s a really nice guy, I’ve gotten to know him a little bit, but I think if he’s born in Canada it’s a problem, no question about it.” But the latest reversal comes as Cruz is seriously threatening Trump’s lead in Iowa and elsewhere  —   especially with evangelical voters critical to winning the Hawkeye State’s caucuses on Feb. 1. And it was just the latest barb he’s leveled against the Texas senator, telling a crowd last week that, ”In all fairness, to the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, OK?” While Trump floated the birther question with both the Post and NH1 television ahead of his rally Tuesday night in Claremont, N. H. he didn’t raise his doubts with the crowd. In his typical stemwinder style, Trump boasted of his advantage in   polls, touted his intelligence and Ivy League education, bashed the press and took aim mostly at Democrat Hillary Clinton. Cruz responded on Twitter, saying that Trump had ”jumped the shark”  —   or is now on the faltering  —   by posting a famous Happy Days scene where Fonzie literally jumps a shark, a move seen as trying to revive the faltering series."
"German police are investigating reports of dozens of sexual assaults and muggings that occurred outside Cologne’s famous cathedral during a raucous celebration on New Year’s Eve. Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers told a news conference Tuesday afternoon the unidentified attackers were among a crowd of about 1, 000 men, ages 18 to 35, many of them drunk and shooting fireworks. What’s especially causing a stir in Germany is how Albers describes the suspects. He says they look ”Arab or North African.” Similar attacks on New Year’s Eve are being investigated in Hamburg and Stuttgart, and Albers says police are looking into whether the attacks and muggings were coordinated. His police department is under fire for failing to prevent the Cologne attacks, especially since criminal gangs who’d been pickpocketing and mugging people in the square near the cathedral were already under surveillance. Albers says his officers didn’t learn about the sexual assaults until the next day. One victim who spoke with German channel   accused police of keeping her and several female friends, who were also attacked, from seeking refuge inside the nearby main train station. The victim, whom the TV channel identified only by first name, Michelle, said police didn’t take her sexual assault claim seriously for several days and at first would only file a report about her cellphone being stolen. ”We ran but we couldn’t do anything,” she said of the attack, which she said was carried out by between 10 and 30 people. ”They attacked us from all sides and touched us everywhere, between our legs . .. and under our jackets. They tried to separate us.” Albers says police have not yet identified any suspects, but added that migrants who commit serious crimes should be deported. That demand was echoed by members of the Bavarian CSU party in Germany’s ruling coalition. But Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker, an independent, warned against drawing hasty conclusions about who the perpetrators are. ”It’s absolutely improper for us or for people who are judging this objectively to immediately link a group that appears to come from North Africa with refugees,” said Reker, a   politician who survived an assassination attempt last year by a man with   beliefs. Reker said her administration and city police are taking steps to ensure assaults like those on New Year’s Eve don’t happen again. The measures will include a   police presence and video surveillance during next month’s   celebration of Carnival, which attracts large numbers of revelers. Cologne Refugee Council Director   Proelss tells NPR he worries that the way police are handling this case will lead to a backlash against refugees across Germany. Alluding to the perpetrators as migrants is wrong, Proelss says, given that they could have just as easily been German citizens of North African descent or children of guest workers. He called for police to solve the crimes as quickly as possible. So did German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In a statement, her office called for the attackers to swiftly be brought to justice  —   regardless of their origin or background."
"Oh, the irony. Historically, when political tensions increased in the Middle East, the price of oil rose too. Buyers of oil worried that conflicts could interrupt drilling or interfere with   access to waterways. In theory, when risks rise, so do prices. But in recent days, even as tensions have been growing between two key oil producing nations  —   Iran and Saudi Arabia  —   oil prices have been falling. They slipped below $36 a barrel on Tuesday. Why? Experts explain it this way: The two countries are both in OPEC but now are on such bad terms that they’d be unlikely to agree on anything  —   including a plan to reduce drilling. OPEC members are supposed to reach a consensus before changing production policies, and right now, the OPEC policy is to maintain existing high levels of pumping. ”If they can’t agree on an output level and some way to control prices, then everybody will just keep   pumping and try to raise as much money as possible for their countries,” said Daniel Katzenberg, senior energy analyst at Robert W. Baird  Co. And there’s another big reason for the low global oil prices: America’s abundant supplies. On Tuesday, American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard, after delivering his annual State of American Energy address, told reporters that low oil prices reflect the new U. S. role in energy markets. These days, even when Middle Eastern supplies face possible disruptions, oil buyers don’t panic they know U. S. producers can fill any supply gaps, he said. ”The geopolitics of energy has changed significantly over the last decade,” Gerard said. ”The United States is now the world’s No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas.” Those U. S. oil supplies are ”taking out a lot of the risk that we have seen historically” in   energy markets, he said. ”Our production in the United States today is around 9 million barrels a day that’s almost doubled over the last five or six years,” Gerard said. ”So the global market today is very different.” All of that is good for U. S. consumers, he said, noting that the U. S. Energy Information Administration says the average U. S. household saved nearly $700 on cheaper gasoline last year, compared with 2014. And 2016 may be even better for household budgets. The nationwide average price for a gallon of regular is now $1. 99, according to AAA, the auto club. That’s 21 cents cheaper than a year ago. NPR correspondent John Ydstie contributed to this report."
"Last week, Israel transferred to Palestinian control the corpses of dozens of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during recent stabbings, shootings or car attacks against Israelis. Most had been held for weeks. The handling of remains in this   conflict is an emotional, political and strategic issue for both sides. The current surge of violence reveals the gruesome complexity. When two bodies arrived last week at the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah, in the West Bank, scores of young men gathered outside. A dozen armed Palestinian police were there, too. They allowed a few people at a time to enter the small morgue for a first glimpse at the bodies of friends or family. As a third corpse arrived, wrapped in black plastic and draped with a red and green blanket, the officers cordoned off a path to allow Palestinian men, chanting ”God is great,” to deliver it directly inside. This body, like the dozens now returned, had been transferred from an Israeli morgue to an Israeli ambulance, across a military checkpoint to a Palestinian ambulance in the West Bank. The remains are usually then taken to hospitals, often for autopsies before burial. They come cold. Inside the morgue, the cheeks of one young man were dotted with white frost. His black hair was damp and sticking to his forehead. A Palestinian visitor pulled down the black plastic body bag and a blue sheet wrapping another body to reveal three close bullet wounds in that young man’s chest. His mouth was open and he had blood on his chin. Getting bodies back is important to Palestinians, who honor their dead as martyrs in a   struggle. But early in the recent surge of violence, Israel said no bodies would be handed back, in part to deter attackers looking for glory. At that time, Cabinet member Yuval Steinitz said experience showed that Palestinian burials trigger more violence. ”What we discover is that any such burial became a ceremony praising the terrorist act and calling other people to imitate,” he says. ”And therefore, we decided not to return the bodies of dead terrorists until things calm down.” Attacks continue almost daily, but Israel has now returned almost all the remains of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks or alleged attacks against Israelis over the past three months. Israel’s security establishment has long been divided on a body strategy, says Ely Karmon, a senior research fellow at Israel’s International Institute for   in Herzliya. ”Some said it’s true that burials provoke incitement,” he says. ”But [to] not return the bodies is also a trigger. Many families are very angry and, you know, large families sometimes.” Israel often hands back bodies on the condition that funerals be quick, small and private. Many families hold large public processions anyway. Last week in Hebron, thousands attended a joint funeral for 14 Palestinians whose remains had just been returned. The body of    Anas Hammad was also returned last week. Israeli troops shot and killed him after he rammed his car into soldiers patrolling his West Bank town of Silwad, near Ramallah. Several Israeli soldiers were wounded. His mother, Halla Hammad, 38, wears a black sweatshirt with Anas’ photograph on it. She says she had been praying to get his body back and felt it was important to hold a public funeral. ”All martyrs are our children, children of Palestine,” she says. ”Anas is not only my son, he is the son of the entire village.” Beyond the current wave of violence, human rights groups say Israel still holds nearly 300 bodies gathered over decades. The names and photographs of Palestinians whose corpses remain in Israeli hands are displayed on posters in the Ramallah office of Salwa Hammad, who heads a Palestinian campaign to return all bodies, run by the Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights. Hammad says that early in 2015, after legal action, an agreement with Israel was reached to return many of those bodies. Now, she’s not sure. ”We hope the court will say they will return all the bodies,” she says. ”But we don’t know what will happen now, after this bad situation.” Some bodies are buried in cemeteries   to the public. One, in a military zone near the Jordanian border, marks graves with no names, just numbers, a few concrete blocks or sticks in the ground. A   fence surrounds the cemetery, but the gate stands open. A Hebrew sign calls it the ”Cemetery for Enemy Casualties.” Israeli David Elhayani, head of the regional council in the Jordan Valley, says officials removed at least one body as recently as a year ago. ”It’s a weird place,” he says. ”  percent of the general public don’t know this place exists.” Israel says it has been forced to keep some enemy remains for a long time to have bargaining power to recover Israelis who are captured  —   dead or alive  —   by the other side. Some of the enemy remains are not Palestinian, but casualties from battles with Hezbollah in Lebanon or Jordanian soldiers killed decades ago. The practice of keeping bodies started when Israel realized its enemies wanted to trade them for Israeli captives, says Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general. ”So slowly, slowly, there began to be some kind of ’bodies market’ in which we didn’t give back the bodies of killed terrorists, expecting that if they get one of our bodies, we will have enough to pay for that not by releasing live terrorists but by giving them back bodies,” he says. Israeli politicians can face pressure from Israeli families to not release Palestinian remains if their own loved ones are missing. Zehava Shaul’s son, Oron, a soldier, is believed to have been killed in Gaza during the 2014 war between Israel and the militant Islamist group Hamas. But no corpse was recovered. She watches Israel return Palestinian bodies now with sorrow. ”All of their dead, the army returns,” Shaul tells NPR. ”And I ask, what about our children? Where are they in this deal?” Meanwhile, in Gaza, a Palestinian mother, Ibtisam   is waiting for the body of her son. She says Israel has held his remains since he participated in a suicide attack almost eight years ago. She says not having a body to bury nearby is ”like a fire inside” that never goes out. ”To keep a dead body, why?” she asks. ”It is bones now.” Both mothers say all they can do is wait."
"Smoking is the #1 cause of premature death and preventable illness in the United States. And since   of Medicaid participants smoke, compared to 17 percent of the general population, you’d think the states would be all about helping people in their Medicaid programs to quit. But just 10 percent of Medicaid participants who smoke are getting medication to help them quit, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Health Affairs. That’s 830, 000 people in 2013. Treatments include    remedies like nicotine gum and patches, which Medicaid will pay for when a patient has a doctor’s prescription, as well as the prescription medications bupropion (Welbutrin) and varenicline (Chantix). Some states are doing a lot better than others at helping people quit. Massachusetts and Minnesota, which have gone out of their way to promote smoking cessation to Medicaid enrollees, have among the highest treatment rates among Medicaid participants, with more than 20 percent of smokers getting at least one prescription in 2013, the study found. But Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island and Texas had rates below 7 percent. ”The states that are doing less are also the states that have higher rates of smoking,” says Leighton Ku, lead author of the study and director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University. And that’s costing a lot. State and federal governments shell out about $70 billion a year to pay for   health costs through Medicaid, which insures people with  . But the program spent just $103 million on tobacco cessation medications in 2013, the study authors estimate. States that didn’t expand their Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act tend to have lower rates of medication use. And some states charge Medicaid participants copays for medication, which can discourage use. That’s not the case for people with private insurance or Medicare, which are required by the Affordable Care Act to cover prescription cessation meds without a copay. ”And finally, there have not been the kind of education programs saying, gee, this is something we can actually do something about,” Ku says. ”Everyone knows it’s hard to stop smoking,” Ku adds. ”I think that makes people reticent, knowing how hard it is.” But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a try. ”Even if you relapse, you’ve helped your health. You’ve helped your health because you’ve stopped for a while.”"
"Decades after they were tortured by Chicago police, 57 people have now received reparations totaling $5. 5 million from the city of Chicago. Sean Kennedy of member station WBEZ tells our Newscast unit that the city hopes the settlements can help mend relations between police and the community, especially in light of several recent   shootings of young black men. Sean reports that: ”The money was paid Monday to 57 victims of a police unit commanded by former officer Jon Burge. He led the Area 2 detectives from the 1970s through the early ’90s. ”Over decades, allegations surfaced that Burge and officers under his command had shocked, suffocated and beaten suspects into giving false confessions.” Chicago’s embattled mayor, Rahm Emanuel, supported the reparations package in April. Shortly after, it was approved by the City Council. ”Reparations is not a necessity. But it is a moral compunction and a moral reckoning to right a wrong. There is no statute of limitations on that,” Emanuel told the Chicago   after the city paid the reparations. ”In three years, we settled up legally, reparations and a verbal apology what hasn’t been done in three decades,” Emanuel told the newspaper. ”It does indicate that I [am] willing to be accountable and willing to be held responsible for the city and have the determination, the desire and the diligence to get it done.” Emanuel has come under pressure since the November release of police dashcam video showing an officer shooting a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, 16 times. Protesters have since demanded the mayor’s resignation. Thousands of emails released last week showed close communication between Emanuel’s office, the police and the organization that investigates the police in the aftermath of deadly force incidents. And Chicago’s police force is currently facing a Justice Department civil rights investigation. As Sean notes, it will be ”difficult for the   reparations to outweigh” McDonald’s death and other recent   police killings. The claims process for Burge’s victims took months, The Associated Press says, adding that ”the $5. 5 million adds to more than $100 million that has been paid in   judgments, settlements of lawsuits and legal fees  —   most of it spent by the financially strapped city of Chicago and some by Cook County  —   over the years related to the torture scandal.” One plaintiff’s attorney, Flint Taylor, tells the   that larger changes are needed: ”Reparations, although an historic accomplishment that recognizes that racist violence by the police is not a recent phenomenon, but rather spans many decades, cannot heal the city without fundamental, systemic changes within the Chicago Police Department, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Cook County criminal justice system.”"
"In the 10 years he spent driving an ambulance in Atlanta, former paramedic Kevin Hazzard rescued people from choking, overdoses, cardiac arrest, gunshot wounds and a host of other medical emergencies. He frequently found himself practicing medicine in unsafe settings, either along the side of a highway as cars whipped past, or at the scene of an assault, where either the patient or the spectators might have weapons. ”There are a lot of situations like that where it’s just not practical to wait for it to be completely safe and you gotta just try to weigh the odds,” Hazzard tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. In his new book, A Thousand Naked Strangers, Hazzard chronicles his experiences as a paramedic  —   and explains how it is that so many of his patients came to him partially clothed. ”There’s just the huge range of people for whatever reason  —   whether it’s mental illness or just had way too much fun last night  —   find themselves out in the street partially or completely naked and need to be dealt with in one way or another,” Hazzard says. But Hazzard says that even when he saved a life, his patients weren’t always grateful. ”Just as you’re expecting a   someone says, ’Hey, when you pulled me off that balcony that I was dangling from, you ripped my shirt!’ ” On why he always moves out of the way of ambulances  There’s a presumption that when you see an ambulance or a firetruck or a cop car that the person behind [the wheel] is a professional  —   they’ve been trained and they know. I received zero training. My first job was with a private ambulance service . .. taking people to and from appointments. There was no training program. There was really no hiring process. They never verified they actually had my EMT numbers. They asked. I said, ”Yes.” They believed me they gave me a job. . .. So I showed up that first morning, and my partner handed me the keys. I just assumed he was going to be driving. So we go to breakfast and within a few minutes we get a call, and the next thing I know I’m racing down the street and he’s like, ”Turn your lights on! Flip over! Cross the double yellow line! Switch back! Blow your horn!” My friends will tell you, I’m a horrible driver, so me behind this   ambulance screaming down the street, cars peeling out of the way, immediately removed all [my] confidence in people coming at me with sirens. I move now, really fast. On why respiratory calls can be the most rewarding  Respiratory calls are really, really common  —   which was great because there are few things that you can do outside of the hospital that take someone from near death to looking at you and saying, ”Do I still need to go?” And respiratory is one of those calls. We ran so many of them on everything from infants to the elderly, it was great. Everybody thinks shooting is exciting, ”Oh, man, I’m going to run to this shooting, and I’m on my way!” And it’s crazy. There are cops there and police helicopters and it’s madness, but there’s really nothing for you to do. That’s really a job for the surgeons. Whereas a respiratory call, that person is in acute distress and they are going to die, you can see it in their face, and they know it and you know it. And you just happen to have this bag full of tricks that you get to kneel on their floor and talk to them and calm them down and slowly begin to give them one medication after another. Sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes you throw the book at them and they’re still just about as dead as when you found them, but oftentimes you can make a huge difference in that person’s life, and it’s both rewarding and exciting because you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t want to open your bag and start throwing medicine at people. On treating ”speedball” overdoses, in which the patient has mixed heroin and cocaine, The one that can be the trickiest is the person who has overdosed. So you arrive, and they have all the signs of a heroin overdose, and so you have Narcan, which immediately reverses some of the effects, basically the central nervous system effects of the heroin. So, the heroin, when there’s too much of it, it essentially tells your brain, ”Hey, there’s no reason to breathe, just relax, you’re good.” And that’s how people die. So you show up, there’s a guy with needles, brown powdery substance, he’s blue, and you think, ”Oh, heroin overdose, this is no big deal, I’ve done this 10, 000 times.” And you give him some Narcan thinking, ”Hey, I’m just going to make him breathe.” Now the heroin’s gone and all that cocaine is still there, and he pops up and he’s like, ”Hey! What did you do to my heroin?” And now you’ve got this very large, very angry, very confused person running around with a head full of coke, and you’re usually in the backseat of a car or crammed into a tiny little bathroom, or a bathroom stall in a restaurant, and all of a sudden this person pops up, and invariably they’re bigger than you and stronger than you and they’re   and sweaty, so you can’t get a grip anyway. Those get ugly in a hurry. On    orders  If you think about it, [at] Thanksgiving you can’t even get all your family members to agree on whether they want fresh or canned cranberry sauce, right? I mean, the simplest decision in the world, and you will get four brothers who will fight to the death because they all have a different opinion, and then add to that, now, that decision is what to do if mom drops on the floor. A lot of times, it kind of depends on who the first person is to arrive. Does she live with one of the sons who wants her to be revived? Does she live with one of the children who doesn’t? Even if there’s a DNR that has been signed, oftentimes people can’t find it. So then you have to say, ”OK, we don’t have, technically speaking, a valid DNR, so we have no choice but to work,” and the family will get angry with you and say, ”No, no, no, that’s not what she wanted!” But you can’t prove to me that’s not what she wanted, and how do I know that you don’t have a sister who is on her way right now who knows that there’s no DNR and who is gonna come flying through that door and wonder why we’re not doing anything? On delivering babies, Delivering babies is a huge mess in an ambulance. Hospitals are really   for it. So it was such a tricky thing, because when you got one of those calls, your first reaction would sort of be dread: ”Oh, no, there’s so much I’m going to have to do here, this is such a circus.” Hopefully they were at least in an accessible place, not in a car on the highway, which just really complicates everything. It’s one of those things that it’s not good until it’s all over with. Don’t forget, these are people who are enduring a natural childbirth, so they aren’t happy to see us. There’s no joking with a woman who is way deep into a natural childbirth and is going to do it on the living room rug. She’s not in the mood to smile or necessarily even be cooperative. . .. All of a sudden there’s this child and everybody is smiling. . .. It wasn’t one you always looked forward to, but it was one in the end that everybody always seemed to enjoy. On how he knew it was time to retire from being a paramedic  There were a couple little hints and warning signs. I ran a shooting one day, and I got too close to the person and stepped on a piece of their skull. And I didn’t realize it until I got home the next morning, and it was stuck in the tread of my boot, and I thought it was a stone. And I pulled it out and it was skull fragment. I sort of laughed. My wife was horrified, and the look on her face let me know that, oh, wow, my outlook has swung in a weird direction and that’s troubling. Those things happen little by little over time, and I guess there are hints and warnings that, hey, you’re being a little too cavalier about what you’re doing. But the moment that it hit me . .. it was a woman who she was caught in bed with her    by her daughter, and the    jumped out, and the daughter beat the mother with a bat. And we got there and she was really badly injured, and she was on the floor at our feet, and this crazy scene is happening all around us  —   helicopters and cops and this patient who desperately needed our help  —   and I remember yawning, and it was probably 2 in the morning and I yawned. It wasn’t like I didn’t care whether or not good things happened to this woman. I had done it so many times that there was a certain   nature about it, and there can be nothing   about trying to save someone’s life. And when you begin to think, ”Well, I’ve done this before and I’ll just do it again and I’m just doing a job,” that’s when you make mistakes. And that was the first real indication to me that, man, I’ve been at this too long and I need to go ahead and get out."
"From the mundane to the bizarre, everything seemed to include a hashtag in global development this year. There was #EarthtoParis for the climate change meeting in Paris. There was #WorldToiletDay for you guessed it. And there was #MugabeFalls, which helped turn Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe into a cheeky meme after he literally fell on the red carpet during a rally. We combed through a year of #wordsstrungtogetherlikethis to find the hashtags that made a mark  —   and found a few trends: busting stereotypes in the developing world, championing big global campaigns, playing off the news and goofing around, too. A lot of the hashtags used photos to drive home the message. ”One thing that has been unique this year in hashtags is visual imagery,” says Jason Wojciechowski, creative director of Corelab, an agency that runs digital campaigns for global development organizations. ”For each hashtag, there’s been one or two photos that speak to what the issue is really all about  —   like the photo of Aylan Kurdi on the beach or the photo of Justin Trudeau greeting Syrian refugees to Canada for #RefugeesWelcome.” For Wojciechowski and his team, who have created social media strategies for the Malala Fund, the United Nations and Rock the Vote, hashtags create the biggest waves when they are authentic, simple and clear. He thinks there will be more of them this year  —   and he predicts that it’s not just a numbers game. ”You don’t need millions of people using a hashtag,” says Wojciechowski. ”You need the right people with the right message at the right time.” Here’s our list: #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou, Fed up with oversimplified stereotypes about Africa, people across the continent tweeted photos of beautiful landscapes, beaches and architecture to combat the images of drought, disease and disaster often featured in media stories about Africa. The hashtag, #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou, started trending in June and was tweeted nearly 45, 000 times in just a month. #BeingFemaleInNigeria, In June, members of a tiny book club in Abuja, Nigeria, started tweeting about sexist moments they’ve experienced, prompted by a discussion of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ”We Should All Be Feminists” TedTalk. Soon, thousands were tweeting about the big and small frustrations of #BeingFemaleInNigeria  —   as well as the strength of Nigerian women. #HappyToBleed, Many Hindu temples across India ask women to stay away while they’re menstruating. Then the new president of the Sabarimala temple in Kerala, which bans all women of reproductive age, said he’d consider allowing women if and when there’s a machine that can detect if they’re bleeding. Student activist Nikita Azad took a stand with the hashtag #HappyToBleed. Women in India and around the world started speaking out against menstrual taboos using the tag. Many changed their profile photos to depict sanitary napkins and tampons. #GlobalGoals, In September, the U. N. General Assembly passed its new Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty by 2030. But the public began hearing about the goals months before when the U. N. and its partners created the hashtag #GlobalGoals.   One Direction and celebrities like Mindy Kaling and John Legend lent their voices, along with a   directory of global nonprofits. #SelfieWithDaughter, To promote gender equality and girls’ education, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked Indian moms and dads to tweet photos of themselves with their daughters. The hashtag, part of Modi’s ”Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter) campaign, was an instant hit  —   and prompted thousands of submissions from celebrities, politicians and Indians the world over. #62MillionGirls, In September and October, first lady Michelle Obama rallied the public, nonprofits and celebs  —   including Beyonce, Misty Copeland and Kerry Washington  —   to use the hashtag #62milliongirls to raise awareness for the number of girls around the world who are not in school. It’s part of Let Girls Learn, her initiative with USAID. #147NotJustANumber, In April, Kenyan activist Ory Okolloh Mwangi started the hashtag #147NotJustANumber to put a human face on the terrorist attack that killed 148 people at the Garissa University College in eastern Kenya. People shared photos and biographical details of the students, ages 19 to 23, who were killed by   gunmen.   #RefugeesWelcome, In September, thousands of people used the hashtag #refugeeswelcome to tell their governments to open up their borders to Syrian refugees. This came after images of Syrian refugees trying to escape to Europe in overcrowded boats  —   and the image of    Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian refugee boy found drowned on a beach in Turkey. #IfAfricaWasABar  Taking a cue from a classic prompt to help overcome writer’s block, writer Siyanda Moutsiwa, from Botswana, asked this question on Twitter: ”If Africa was a bar, what would your country be  ?” Her tweet became one of the hippest   hashtags of the summer, fueling a feed of satirical quips and memes.  #NigeriansatHogwarts, Nigerians across the world imagine what it would be like if they went to Hogwarts, the wizardry school from the Harry Potter books. ”The #NigeriansAtHogwarts hashtag is EVERYTHING, throwing inside jokes, cultural stereotypes and our unfuggwitable humor into a giant bowl,” wrote blogger Luvvie Ajayi, who goes by ”Awesomely Luvvie.” What was your favorite hashtag in global development? Tell us in a comment below or tweet us @NPRGoatsandSoda. "
"Rapsody has waited patiently for her time to shine. Through seven solo projects, she’s grown as an MC, crafting her own style while developing her thesis in the rap game. True breakthroughs are commonly marked by a pivotal moment, and hers came when she provided the sole rap guest verse on the most   album of 2015, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Flanked by her mentor and label head, producer 9th Wonder, as well as The Storm Troopers, Rapsody recently stopped by the Tiny Desk to perform three songs from her album Beauty And The Beast. With charismatic authority, as well as copious shoutouts to the many Howard University students in the room, her performance combined vigorous wordplay with introspective storytelling. In 2015, Rapsody had her big moment. This year, she’s seizing it. Beauty And The Beast is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bobby Carter, Morgan Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Morgan Walker, Julia Reihs Production Assistant: Kate Drozynski Photo by Jun   For more Tiny Desk Concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"President Obama announced executive actions Tuesday, intended to curtail gun violence. But if history is any guide, the president’s effort may have the unintended effect of boosting gun sales  —   2015 was a banner year. ”After San Bernardino, our business went up probably 50 percent,” John Lamplugh, who has run gun shows in Maryland and Pennsylvania for more than three decades, said, referring to the recent shooting in California. ”It’s either two things: They’re scared and need to protect [themselves]. Or they’re afraid that [the government is] going to take it from them. There’s the two things that drive our business.” According to the Congressional Research Service, there are roughly twice as many guns per capita in the United States as there were in 1968: more than 300 million guns in all. Gun sales have increased in recent years. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U. S.   produced nearly 11 million guns in 2013, the year after the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre. That’s twice as many as they made in 2010. ”There’s a gun for every man, woman, and child, more or less,” says Deborah Azrael of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. But that doesn’t mean every man, woman and child has a gun. The number of armed households has actually declined to about 1 in 3. So an ever larger number of guns is concentrated in a shrinking number of homes: One of Obama’s executive actions would try to expand background checks and improve background check processing. According to the FBI, 23 million background checks were performed in 2015, nearly three times the 8. 5 million performed in 2000. Researchers say a decline in hunting is partly responsible for the shrinking number of households with a gun. Gun ownership rates remain higher in rural areas. And there is considerable variation from state to state. Fewer than 6 percent of households in Delaware and Rhode Island have guns, compared with more than 50 percent in Arkansas, West Virginia and Wyoming."
"Chipotle Mexican Grill is struggling to convince its customers it’s a safe place to eat, after several outbreaks of foodborne illnesses have sickened hundreds of its customers. But no one thinks the task is going to be easy. ”This is a fairly significant problem for Chipotle,” Timothy Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, tells us. While customers are often quick to forgive companies for transgressions, that may not be the case this time, he says. ”The difficult thing for Chipotle is that, it’s not that there was one incident. There have been a number of different incidents,” he says. ”And the problem with that is that it creates an overall perception, and it raises questions about safety.” The    restaurant chain has been hit with two separate outbreaks of E. coli over the past three months. The larger one sickened 52 people in October, mostly in Washington and Oregon, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A separate outbreak in November sickened five people in Kansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma, the agency said. In December, scores of students at Boston College fell ill after eating at a nearby Chipotle, an outbreak the company said was due to a norovirus, which causes vomiting, nausea and diarrhea. And in August, a salmonella outbreak in Minnesota sickened 64 people who had eaten at Chipotle. The state’s Department of Health later linked the illness to tomatoes served at the chain. Founded in Colorado more than two decades ago, Chipotle has enjoyed rapid growth by positioning itself as a healthy, fresh alternative to traditional   chains, a company that serves ”food with integrity.” ”To eat at Chipotle was sort of the ethically and ecologically right thing to do, which resonated with a great deal of customers,” says Andrew Alvarez, an analyst at IBISWorld, a market research firm. The multiple outbreaks of foodborne illnesses have struck at the very heart of that image, says John Stanton, professor of food marketing at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. ”They’ve kind of positioned themselves as a special company that caters to the fresh and delicious product, etc. and they’ve let people down. And when you let people down, they take that pretty seriously,” Stanton tells us. The bad publicity has taken a toll on the bottom line at the company, which has warned that its sales fell in the last quarter of 2015. Once a darling of Wall Street, Chipotle’s stock fell 30 percent last year, and the company says its sales have fallen by as much as 11 percent. Chipotle has responded by promising to become an ”industry leader in food safety.” A press release promised more stringent testing of produce, better training of employees and ”continuous improvements throughout its supply chain, using data from test results to enhance the ability to measure the performance of its vendors and suppliers.” The company’s founder and CEO, Steve Ells, also apologized for the outbreaks in a Dec. 10 interview on NBC’s Today show: ”It was a very unfortunate incident, and I’m deeply sorry this has happened, but the procedures we’re putting in place today are so above industry norms that we are going to be the safest place to eat.” But a message of contrition could be hard to sell to customers, Stanton says. ”I mean, my first question, as soon as they said that, was why didn’t they do that originally? I mean, they obviously weren’t doing all they could to make their products safe, and they’re now paying a price for it,” he says. Northwestern’s Calkins says companies can eventually recover from public relations disasters such as this one. Chipotle first has to discover the source of the recent outbreaks, he says. Once it does, Calkins says, ”they need to get out there and get people feeling good. They’ve got to invest a lot in advertising, so that when people think about Chipotle, they’re not thinking about food safety. They’re thinking about that great brand, and the food they love so much.” Calkins says other companies, such as Toyota, have come back from big public relations disasters, so it is possible. But he says it will take time for Chipotle to crawl out of the hole it has stumbled into."
"Yesterday the Library of Congress named graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang as its fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Here’s why that matters. Yang joins the handful of notable, and notably prolific, authors of books for children and young adults who have served   terms since the Ambassadorship was created in 2008: Jon Scieszka (The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, the   Trio series) Katherine Paterson (Bridge to Terabithia, Jacob Have I Loved, The Day of the Pelican) the late Walter Dean Myers (Scorpions, Fallen Angels, Monster) and Kate DiCamillo (Because of   Flora  Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken). At 42, he’s the youngest person to have yet received the honor. He’s also the first   to do so. (Paterson was born, and spent much of her childhood, in China. Thus the National Ambassadorship title has now been held by both a   American and by Yang, who wrote an autobiographical graphic novel called American Born Chinese. Break into response groups and discuss we’ll meet back here in 15.) But Yang is, as noted, the first author of comics and graphic novels to have been so honored. On the surface, it may not seem like a big deal. After all, every one of the previous Ambassadors has written children’s picture books, in which stories emerge from the interplay of text and image. Which, if you think about it, works as a perfectly serviceable definition of comics. So: what’s new here? Yang’s selection signals an important shift in a   war over the role of comics in education in general and literacy in particular. Every since the 1930s, when they first burst onto the American literary landscape in all their gleefully garish   glory, the battle lines over comics were clearly defined. Kids loved ’em teachers and parents hated ’em. (See also: television, rock and roll, rap, video games, emojis.) Comics: The Case( s) Against, The precise reasons educators cited were many, and they tended to shift to catch the cultural  . The most famous   scold of all time was Dr. Fredric Wertham. whose crusade in the ’40s and ’50s drove many comics publishers out of business and inspired the industry to create the   Comics Code Authority. Wertham focused on their putative moral turpitude (the violence, the racism, the sex). (About all of which he was not entirely wrong  —   but that is a topic for another day.) And in Joseph McCarthy’s America, he tested the air and appeared before Congress to dutifully invoke the twin red and lavender specters of Communism and Homosexuality, respectively. But Wertham also believed that the way sentences were rendered in comics  —   broken up to fit inside    —   severely hurt literacy, as did the practice of rendering all text in capital letters for legibility’s sake. For many years, Wertham’s campaign left a lasting mark on American educators. Then as now, many considered them disposable, meritless junk  —   but Wertham’s accusation that they harmed literacy soon festered into a widespread concern that underneath their blithely gaudy narrative excess lurked a more pervasive danger. It was thought that comics were the sugary candy that could somehow sate a hungry young reader’s mind, such that they would ultimately shun the more nutritious fare of ”real” books, and find their literary development arrested. Teachers’ groups warned of comics’ potential to distract kids from seeking out chapter books and novels that offered more nuanced conflicts, more esoteric pleasures. Chasing a New, Nerdier Audience, Yet at precisely the same cultural moment, comics readership was shrinking in size and increasing in age. By the 1970s, the comics industry was happily catering to these older, nerdier readers (a process that accelerated in the ’80s, and got pumped full of steroids in the ’90s). Call it the industry’s Great Inward Turn: a sustained effort to make comics that appealed not to kids, but to nerds  —   to the most obsessive, insular needs of obsessive, insular teenage and adult readers. Now comics offered acerbically grim and gritty takes on the very genre conventions that readers had grown up with  —   a move that was eagerly embraced as a source of pride, and that soon became the default storytelling mode. The simultaneous rise and unprecedented success of ” ” like Maus, Jimmy Corrigan and Ghost World created an environment where variations on the headline ”POW! ZAP! COMICS AREN’T JUST FOR KIDS ANYMORE!” sprouted repeatedly in newspaper Arts sections like an aggressively invasive and indefatigable crabgrass. But those headlines overlooked something important: the Great Inward Turn had done its work. The truth was, apart from a few tenacious holdouts like Archie, Casper and Uncle Scrooge, comics simply weren’t for kids anymore. Happily, this state of affairs didn’t last. Boom, Today, publishers of independent comics and children’s book publishers are pumping out a huge and varied number of comics, manga and graphic novels for young readers. Marvel and DC continue to cater to the adult nerd, and have yet to embrace the notion of ” ” comics as fully as their smaller competitors, but they do manage to keep their toes in this increasingly warm and inviting water. Where did it come from, this kids’ comics boom? Some of it emerged from children’s book publishing (the Scholastic imprint Graphix publishes Jeff Smith, Raina Telgemeier and many other graphic novelists) some from the   scene (James Kochalka creates both gleefully filthy comics for adults and quirky   comics like American Elf) some from indie comics (Image Comics’   by Chris Giarrusso, is a personal favorite) and many from the growth of webcomics (Faith Erin Hicks’ The Adventures of Superhero Girl, Adrian Ramos’ Count Your Sheep, among hundreds of others.) The rise of   YA books like Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid series and Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants books likely prepared the way for   kids comics and graphic novels. And certainly if it hadn’t been for the Great Inward Turn  —   an entire industry effectively abandoning the huge children’s audience  —   there’d have been no vacuum that needed filling. Today the sheer amount of comics for kids is hard to keep up with. Books like A Parent’s Guide to the Best Kids’ Comics and blogs like the sensibly named Good Comics for Kids offer practical,   guidance. And in fact, the surge in kids’ comics that’s occurred over the past decade has had as much to do with the creators producing it as it has with the educators now eagerly advocating for it. It took a new generation of teachers  —   and, especially, school librarians  —   to dispel the ghost of Wertham and recognize comics’ tremendous potential to engage young readers with a host of different kinds of stories and actually boost literacy. (Not for nothing, the aforementioned Good Comics for Kids is a blog on the School Library Journal website.) Organizations like Reading With Pictures go even further. Their mission, which would make the good Doctor Wertham drop his spectacles, is to help schools integrate comics into their curriculum. Which brings us back to Yang’s selection as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The Ambassadorship is tasked with advocating for reading in the nation’s schools he’ll be talking to kids, parents and teachers across the US. In this role he won’t be shilling for comics exclusively, of course  —   but his selection means they’ll be there in the mix on a national level in a way they’ve never been before. It’s a turn of events that could not have occurred at the dawn of the comic book, when comics were so ubiquitous they served only as cultural background noise. It couldn’t have happened in the Wertham era, when comics were considered a national scourge and corrupter of youth. It couldn’t have happened during the Great Inward Turn, when comics left the nations’ kids to fend for themselves. It could only have happened today, when a thriving and increasingly diverse kids’ comics scene is matched to an informed and enthusiastic community of educators. Comics: They’re For Kids Again!"
"Like cheap gasoline? Then you’re in luck. Experts say gas prices very likely will keep falling. That’s because a report released Wednesday showed a sharp increase in gasoline inventories. The U. S. Energy Information Administration said that last week, companies added another 10. 6 million barrels of gasoline, creating the biggest surge in supply since 1993. That added to fears that supplies will far outstrip demand for a long time. Such concerns helped send global oil prices to their lowest levels in years, with U. S. crude oil futures falling nearly 6 percent, to $33. 95 a barrel. That was the worst settle since the darkest days of the Great Recession. After the recession ended, oil prices recovered as global demand perked up. As recently as June 2014, oil was selling for about $115 a barrel. But since then, U. S. producers have been flooding the market with shale oil. And that in turn has prompted Saudi Arabia to pump even more to hold on to market share. Other OPEC members are doing the same. Meanwhile, China’s growth has cooled. Other countries have weakened, too, so there are fewer buyers for oil. And in 2016, Iran likely will add more oil to global markets as economic sanctions against it are lifted. So all of that adds up to less demand amid rising supplies. And this week brought another bearish factor: North Korea’s nuclear activity heightened global jitters. So just how low can prices go for oil and gasoline? ”I don’t think we have seen the bottom yet,” said Fadel Gheit, an oil expert at Oppenheimer  Co. The latest report from AAA, the auto club, shows the national average for a gallon of gasoline is $1. 99. But some experts are speculating that this winter, the national average could fall as low as $1. 75. Already, a few stations in Missouri are selling gas for around $1. 50, according to the GasBuddy website. Gheit said that after producers cut back on supplies, the price of oil probably will return to a more sustainable level of $60 to $75 a barrel. Evidence that supplies may shrink to better match demand appeared in the EIA data. The new report showed U. S. crude oil inventories eased down by 5. 1 million barrels last week, a significant pullback. NPR Correspondent John Ydstie contributed to this report."
"Jerry Spagnoli is a leading expert of the daguerreotype, the earliest form of photography dating back to 1839. His work adapting it to the digital age has earned him a spot among a group of artists dubbed the ”antiquarian  .” He has worked with Chuck Close on daguerreotype portraits and nudes, and exhibited his work around the world. One of Spagnoli’s passions is plants, and in the summer of 2000, he met the plant conservationist, gardener and author Amy Goldman. What began as an informal project of photographing Goldman’s harvests of heirloom fruits and vegetables on her farm in New York’s Hudson Valley blossomed into a   collaboration. The fruits of it now adorn the pages of Heirloom Harvest: Modern Daguerreotypes of Historic Garden Treasures, a book the two published in October featuring 175 daguerreotype images made on Goldman’s farm. Spagnoli says that as the project evolved, he saw an opportunity to create dignified portraits of vegetables and fruits with integrity  —   varieties like Christmas Pole lima beans, Purple Top White Globe turnips and Crown of Thorns gourds. ”In fact, [heirlooms] have always been grown in the ground and usually with a lot of care and attention,” he says. ”I think that these foodstuffs deserve respect, and respect for their integrity.” I recently caught up with Spagnoli to discuss this long and   project. Highlights from our conversation follow, edited for length and clarity. What is the process for creating a daguerreotype? A daguerreotype is a photograph image on a sheet of   copper. The process involves polishing that sliver surface to a mirror finish and then sensitizing it with iodine and bromine to make it  . Then that metal plate is put into a view camera  —   a type of camera that you see in pictures that has an accordion bellows. It’s a   camera. You make your exposure and then the image is processed and the remaining sensitive silver salts are removed. What’s left on the sheet of silver is a deposit of silver crystals, and those silver crystals are the image. To view the image, you have to put something dark in front of the mirror. So it’s a rather delicate operation to even view the image but that’s one of the charms of it, I think. How long does the process take from start to finish? Well, it depends on certain factors, but I think it’d be fair to say it takes about a half an hour. What drew you to this project? As a subject matter, these plants are very interesting, and I had always been interested in plant structures just for my own amusement. This gave me the opportunity to really do a comprehensive project. I thought that was very exciting. And they did render beautifully. Were there any specific challenges you faced when photographing the heirlooms? Early on, Amy would send me down samples from her harvest and, quite often, they would be things like squashes or tomatoes or fruits. Those would hold up very well coming down to my studio from her place, which is about two hours upstate New York. But some of the things, because of the length of the exposure that’d I’d be using, would actually begin to wilt during the exposure. So I would be there with, you know, in some cases a half an hour exposure, and I would end up with this trail of a wilting plant. So that was a problem. I surmounted that by resorting to making a large format negative of the image, which allowed me to make a much shorter exposure and then using that negative to produce the daguerreotype plate. Some of the photos in the book have tints of blue. Is this a technique that has been around or did you create it? Well, the blue is inherent in a daguerreotype. When you overexpose a daguerreotype it shifts blue. As I mentioned, the image itself is these little granules of silver and when you overexpose the plate, the granules of silver kind of mount up and then they refract light in a blue wavelength. So there’s no actual blue on the plate as if it were like a color per se. In the 19th century, that was actually considered to be a grievous flaw in a plate and a sign of incompetence because you’re supposed to be able to control those things. But I like the look. Do you have a favorite photo, or photos, from the book? Well one that seems to be popular just generally is one called a white currant it has some of that blue solarization in the background. That’s a particularly nice one. That one of the head of cabbage is fantastic. There’s one of the apple tree that’s at the beginning of Amy’s essay. It’s just this kind of abundance of apples in this bulging tree. It’s really quite extraordinary. What was the most surprising aspect of this project? The fact that it ended up being a book. When we started it, Amy just had this idea that she thought daguerreotypes were really nice and that she thought it would be interesting to have these images made. It would just be something for her to have  —   something for the house and to some extent for the legacy of the farm. And it wasn’t until, I don’t know, maybe three or four years ago that we realized that it needed to be a book and that we should aim for that. So we started being more attentive to a lot of the images that would help to tell the full story and not just photographing individual objects. What would you like people to take away from this book? I’d like to think that people would think about these heirloom vegetables as important to the history of mankind. We depend on these fruits and vegetables for our sustenance . .. and I like to think that the book represents a gesture of respect for that legacy. We should always be attentive to the fact that these are important for the survival of humanity and that it’s not something that should be taken lightly. These aren’t things that are produced in factories or are  . These are the organisms in their own right, and I think that coming to terms with that helps us come to terms with ourselves and our own place in nature."
"TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, is suing the U. S. government because President Obama struck down the next step in the pipeline plan in November. The company says Obama’s rejection exceeded his authority under the Constitution, NPR’s Jeff Brady reports. President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline in November, saying it would not serve U. S. interests. First proposed seven years ago, the project was designed to transport crude oil from Canada’s oil sands region down to refineries on the U. S. Gulf Coast. TransCanada’s lawsuit not only charges that Obama overstepped, but that he ”trampled on Congress’s right to regulate interstate and international commerce,” Jeff says. He adds: ”TransCanada also plans to file a $15 billion claim under the North American Free Trade Agreement, arguing it had every right to expect the Keystone XL would be approved because the U. S. had approved similar projects.” The company released the following statement: ”TransCanada’s legal actions challenge the foundation of the U. S. Administration’s decision to deny a Presidential border crossing permit for the project. In its decision, the U. S. State Department acknowledged the denial was not based on the merits of the project. Rather, it was a symbolic gesture based on speculation about the perceptions of the international community regarding the Administration’s leadership on climate change and the President’s assertion of unprecedented, independent powers.” Jason Kowalski, the policy director of 350. org, an environmental advocacy group, said this in a statement: ”This won’t actually help build the pipeline, too late for that” he said. ”It’s just a greedy and desperate move by TransCanada to try and salvage some of the money they wasted on this ridiculous boondoggle.”"
"North Korea was celebratory in its claims that it detonated its first hydrogen bomb on Wednesday. ”Through the test conducted with indigenous wisdom, technology and efforts [North Korea] fully proved that the technological specifications of the newly developed   for the purpose of test were accurate and scientifically verified the power of smaller ” the country’s official news agency reported. But the White House, along with many others, isn’t buying it. ”The initial analysis is not consistent with the North Korean claims of a successful hydrogen bomb test,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a briefing. South Korean officials have also questioned the North Korean claim. Independent experts share these doubts for one simple reason: The big bang from North Korea’s test just isn’t big enough. Nuclear weapons come in two varieties: fission weapons and fusion weapons. These days, the fission weapons are the ones that usually make the headlines. They get their explosive power from the splitting, or fission, of heavy elements like uranium and plutonium. The fission releases energy that can be used in a bomb. Fusion, on the other hand, gets its power from fusing light elements, such as hydrogen, together. The fusing of light atoms actually releases more energy than the splitting of heavy ones. So hydrogen bombs are far more powerful. Rough estimates of North Korea’s test on Wednesday range from a few kilotons of explosive power to a few tens of kilotons. By contrast, the first U. S. test of a hydrogen bomb in 1952 was 10. 4 megatons, roughly a thousand times as powerful. ”The apparent yield of the [North Korean] event is too small,” says Jeffrey Lewis, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. So what could North Korea have done instead? One possibility, suggests Lewis, is that it set off a ”boosted” fission bomb. Such a weapon uses a small amount of hydrogen gas at its core to enhance the explosion of the uranium or the plutonium in the weapon. Since boosting technically involves the fusion of hydrogen, North Korea could call this test a ”hydrogen bomb.” It may be possible to glean further clues about what exactly North Korea has done. The isolated nation is surrounded by International monitoring stations of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which seeks to track nuclear testing worldwide. Although the test was conducted underground, tiny quantities of radioactive xenon gas could be picked up by detectors hundreds or even thousands of miles away. The exact composition of the xenon could yield clues about what kind of bomb it was, says Anders Ringbom, research director of the Swedish Defence Research Agency in Stockholm. ”We believe in principle that it could be possible,” he says. Yet so far, he adds, the stations haven’t seen anything."
"With North Korea announcing it conducted a nuclear test of a hydrogen bomb, China, India, Russia and other nations are condemning the move. The U. S. says it has yet to verify the claim, but it also reiterated its stance that North Korea can’t be allowed to become a nuclear state. News of the test was announced via   Korean Central Television, which reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally ordered the test in December and gave final approval over the weekend. Last month, Kim said his country has developed a hydrogen bomb experts remain skeptical of that claim. In North Korea, the news was deemed vital enough to warrant bringing veteran news announcer Ri   famed for her proud and powerful delivery, out of retirement. Here’s a quick rundown of international reactions: UN Security Council President Elbio Rosselli of Uruguay says, ”The members of the Security Council strongly condemn this test, which is a clear violation of Security Council resolutions” from 2006, 2009, and 2013. Noting that the council had promised ”further significant measures” if another test were performed, Rosselli added that the member nations ”will begin to work immediately on such measures in a new Security Council resolution.” South Korea will ”make sure that North Korea pays the corresponding price for the nuclear test,” President Park   said in a National Security Council meeting Wednesday, according to Yonhap News. ”China ’firmly opposes’ the latest nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) according to a statement on Wednesday from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.”  —     Xinhua News. UN   Ban   says, ”I condemn it unequivocally.” The head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency says the test is ”deeply regrettable.” Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the test ”totally unacceptable,” saying it ”constitutes a grave threat to Japan’s security” and violates U. N. Security Council resolutions. A U. S. State Department spokesperson says this would be North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, adding, ”We have consistently made clear that we will not accept it as a nuclear state.” Russia’s foreign ministry says that if the test is confirmed, it would be a new step for Pyongyang and a ”flagrant violation of international law” that stand to aggravate tensions on the Korean peninsula. From India’s Ministry of External Affairs: ”It is a matter of deep concern that DPRK has again acted in violation of its international commitments in this regard. We call upon DPRK to refrain from such actions which adversely impact on peace and stability in the region. Our concerns about proliferation links between North East Asia and our neighbourhood are  .” European Union Commission Vice President Federica Mogherini says: ”If confirmed, this action would represent a grave violation of the DPRK’s international obligations not to produce or test nuclear weapons, as determined by several United Nations Security Council Resolutions, and a threat to the peace and security of the entire North East Asia region.” As NPR’s Elise Hu reported for the   Tuesday night: ”The announcement followed a magnitude 5. 1 earthquake that shook near the rogue nation’s nuclear test site,   at 10 a. m. local time. ”The hydrogen bomb test was ’an act of self defense’ against foreign threats, the announcement from the North said. ’We’ve joined the rank of nations with nuclear weapons. We won’t use the nuclear weapon as long as there’s no invasion of our autonomy.’ ”"
"Deciphering events in North Korea often seems more like   psychoanalysis than reporting. So it’s not surprising there’s a dearth of hard information about the country’s latest nuclear test. In a statement heavy on propaganda and light on details, North Korea claimed it successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test Wednesday morning. Outside nuclear experts immediately raised their collective eyebrows, noting the country’s past exaggerations of its nuclear program. Some details may firm up. But plenty of questions are likely to remain. Here are a few things we would like to know about the North Korean test: Was it actually a hydrogen bomb test? A successful hydrogen test would be a significant step forward for North Korea’s program, according to analysts. Only nine nations have nuclear weapons, and an even smaller number have hydrogen bomb capabilities, the analysts say. A hydrogen bomb, also known as a thermonuclear bomb, is far more powerful because it uses both nuclear fission and fusion, compared with a conventional nuclear bomb, which relies only on fission. But many doubt the North Korean claim: ”The yield on the detonation seems to be more in line with the nuclear tests it has conducted in the past and not with the hydrogen bomb,” Anna Fifield, the Tokyo bureau chief for The Washington Post, told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”But clearly the fact that they even conducted the nuclear test, the first in three years, is a big provocation.” The latest test produced a magnitude 5. 1 seismic event in the northeastern part of North Korea, where previous tests have taken place, according to the U. S. Geological Survey. This was similar to a 2013 atomic bomb test in the same region. Joe Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, a private U. S. group that monitors nuclear activity worldwide, said in a tweet: ”I doubt DPRK [North Korea] exploded a real  . More likely a ’boosted’ weapon with tritium added to increase the yield of a fission bomb.” Why now? Most people light candles for a birthday. Kim Jong Un may have lit up a nuclear test in advance of his 33rd birthday on Friday. This is just one of the theories. This was the fourth nuclear test North Korea has carried out in the past decade (2006, 2009 and 2013 were the previous ones) and the second one since Kim came to power following the death of his father in 2011. ”We can surmise that he’s trying to bolster his legitimacy as North Korea’s leader,” Fifield said. ”We think he’s probably trying to present himself as a strong, tough leader.” North Korea announced in   that it had developed a hydrogen bomb. But because of the scientific sophistication required to do so, most analysts  —   and the U. S. government  —   quickly dismissed the claim. That announcement came after   talks with South Korea ended in a stalemate. In keeping with North Korea’s history of unpredictability, Kim issued a New Year’s message promising to work for better relations with South Korea. ”South Korea should not do anything that could harm an atmosphere for talks,” Kim said on Jan. 1. As analysts were squinting in search of such signs, along came a nuclear test, keeping the outside world   and guessing about its motives. What does China really think about this? China is invariably described as the closest thing North Korea has to a friend and the country that can exert the most pressure or influence. China said it ”knew nothing” about the possible   test before it was announced and it immediately condemned it. ”China is steadfast in its position that the Korean Peninsula should be denuclearized and nuclear proliferation be prevented to maintain peace and stability in Northeast Asia,” said Hua Chunying, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, as reported by state media agency Xinhua. China’s top priority in North Korea is stability, noted Fifield. China ”does not want the collapse of North Korea, hungry refugees coming over the border, American troops right up to a unified Korean border with China,” she said. What’s the overall state of North Korea’s nuclear program? A lot of guesswork is involved, but the U. S. has estimated that North Korea has 10 to 16 nuclear warheads, according to media reports. What’s clear is that the program is active and appears to be making progress. Analysts believe the North Koreans are making plutonium, the fuel they need for the bombs. Prior to Wednesday’s nuclear test, the most recent one was three years ago and indicated a yield of about 10 kilotons. That’s in the neighborhood of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Initial estimates of Wednesday’s test show a similar yield, but it’s still early. While a bomb the size of Hiroshima may sound large, ”It’s like a firecracker compared to a hydrogen bomb,” says NPR’s resident physicist and science correspondent, Geoff Brumfiel. The other thing to know is that no outside monitors are permitted to check on the program’s progress, unlike Iran, where the International Atomic Energy Agency has broad access."
"It’s a hard life for Tanzanian public officials these days. No more driving your limousine to villages. No more flying first class to meetings in Europe. You can’t even send Christmas cards on the taxpayer’s dime. President John Magufuli, elected in October, has banned these things. He canceled the country’s Independence Day celebrations, saying it would be shameful to spend millions of dollars on fancy parties and military parades in a country battling cholera. And he even restricted the amount of refreshments allowed at official meetings. ”There will be only juices and water,” says Emmanuel Makundi, a journalist for Radio France’s International Swahili service in Dar es Salaam. ”And maybe some bananas. But the president says, you can take your breakfast at home!” The president’s love of austerity has even inspired a hashtag: #WhatWouldMagufuliDo, Tanzanians are posting photos of      measures: using office markers as a cheap   for eyeliner, replacing a broken iron with a hot water kettle to get the wrinkles out of a shirt, arming the military with bows and arrows. Saving money is just part of the    president’s agenda. The former teacher and chemist is also battling corruption and trying to improve services in Tanzania. Take health care, for example. Magufuli made a surprise visit to the   Muhimbili National Hospital and found patients sleeping on the floor. The hospital director was fired. Now doctors are noticeably more attentive. Doctors are hopeful they’ll see their salaries go up. Two years ago, they protested in the streets over their low pay. ”It has been a complaint for so long,” says Dr. Billy Haonga, president of the Tanzanian Medical Association, who says the average public doctor takes home $6, 000 a year. ”Doctors are paid very little. We expect that perhaps they’ll increase the budget next year.” That would mean Magufuli needs to increase tax collection in addition to shaving costs. What are his chances for success? In his previous government post as works minister, Magufuli was nicknamed the Bulldozer. And he clearly is pushing ahead. A few weeks ago, he arrested 20 officials who showed up late to a meeting. But reformers have come and gone in Tanzania before. The opposition party has already coined a phrase in Swahili for the presidential reforms: ”Nguvu ya soda.” That means ”the power of soda.” Opponents are betting that Magufuli’s reforming spirit will fizzle out like an open bottle of soda in the hot African sun."
"When President Obama announced new gun control measures on Tuesday, the White House said they were needed because Congress failed to address the problem of gun violence. Gun control advocates also are frustrated with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. That’s why they’ve been focused on changing state laws in recent years. And they’re succeeding. Oregon is one state where gun control advocates won last year with the passage of Senate Bill 941, which requires background checks for private party gun sales. At a   ceremony last May, Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, thanked the national gun control groups that campaigned for the law: Everytown For Gun Safety, Americans For Responsible Solutions and the Brady Campaign. Gun groups are starting to take notice of wins like this. ”Oregon has been a blue state for a long time but a blue state that has passed virtually no gun control,” says Kevin Starrett, executive director of the Oregon Firearms Federation. He says what changed is money  —   lots of it. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged to spend at least $50 million of his own money to get tougher gun laws across the country. Some of that cash went to the Everytown For Gun Safety Action Fund. The group spent almost $800, 000 on lobbying during Oregon’s 2015 legislative session, making it the biggest spender in the state last year. There were lots of television ads, too. ”When a New York billionaire comes to a state like Oregon with that much money, obviously it’s a game changer,” Starrett says. Gun control supporters celebrated victories in other states last year as well. In October, Delaware became the ninth state to pass a law designed to prevent domestic abusers from getting guns. There were plenty of setbacks, too. Texas passed an   law that allows handgun license holders to carry their guns in visible holsters. Gun control advocates say what’s important is that now they’re a force at state capitals that can begin to counter powerful groups like the National Rifle Association. ”We are going    with them. We are showing up at our state houses. We are pushing back against bad bills and supporting good bills,” says Shannon Watts, who founded the group Moms Demand Action, which is a part of Everytown for Gun Safety. Watts says her group has more than 3. 5 million members and chapters in every state. The NRA has said it has 5 million members. In her campaign for tougher gun laws, Watts sees a model in the battle for   marriage. ”This situation is very much like marriage equality in America. People felt like that happened overnight but really there were activists on the ground for decades,” Watts says. Then she says states started approving gay marriage and eventually it was made legal across the country. That prospect has groups like the NRA preparing for battle. The next big fight could be in Nevada. Gun control advocates gathered enough signatures to put an initiative on next November’s ballot that would require background checks for all gun sales in the state."
"On any given day, there are tens of thousands of guns listed for sale on the Internet. President Obama announced this week that he is expanding criminal background checks into the vibrant online market. The president’s supporters say his executive action will help close a major loophole in existing gun laws. But gun rights advocates called Obama’s move an overreach and questioned whether it would help prevent shootings. If you want to buy a gun online, it already takes a lot more than a single click. When licensed gun dealers sell online, they’re required to perform background checks. And they have to ship to another licensed dealer. But sales between individuals are treated differently. In more than 30 states, private sellers are not required to run background checks. ”You have to go meet them like you buy a dresser on Craigslist, and exchange the money,” says Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, a vice president at Third Way, a Washington, D. C. think tank, which studied the online gun market Armslist. com during the summer of 2013. Think Craigslist, but for guns. Hatalsky says there are licensed gun dealers on the site. But they’re far outnumbered by private sellers. ”There are people who are selling 20 guns at one particular moment in a state,” Hatalsky says, ”or people selling who were selling five guns, and then the next day would list more. There were are lot of folks who were clearly using this as a source of income, and a way to connect frequently with people they wanted to sell guns to.” The president’s executive action aims to force those people to register as gun dealers by clarifying the existing federal law about who exactly is ”engaged in the business” of selling firearms. ”It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing it over the Internet, or at a gun show,” Obama said Tuesday. ”It’s not where you do it, but what you do.” The president’s order may have limited impact in states that already require background checks for nearly all gun sales. That’s the case in New York. But Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance says the White House’s actions could help curb the flow of illegal guns into states like his. ”In New York state, for example, they are not going to have direct impact in any big sense,” says Vance, who is also   of the group Prosecutors Against Gun Violence. ”But the lax gun control and background checks from other states enables people to buy guns and then bring them to New York. Nine out of 10 guns that are involved in crimes of violence in New York come from out of state.” Still, gun rights advocates question whether expanded background checks would stop criminals from getting guns. Kim Stolfer, president of the group Firearms Owners Against Crime, in Western Pennsylvania, says the president’s order is more likely to hurt   gun owners. ”The average person that commits an unintentional violation, who decides to buy a gun, or to sell a firearm,” Stolfer says, ”and somebody says to him, ’Oh yeah, man, you can sell it online.’ He goes over and he does it. And it’s a sting operation.” In a statement, Jonathan Gibbon, the   of Armslist. com, called the president’s action ”  but ultimately ineffective.” But at least one of the site’s users says he is OK with more background checks. ”I think it’s crazy that a criminal can reply to an ad on Armslist and say, ’Hey, I’m interested in your gun.’ And they can walk away with a gun,” says Kyle Ecklund of Ohio. The    schoolteacher says he has bought and sold several guns on the site  —   always legally, to another Ohio resident, face to face. But without a background check. ”I think there should be a background check on every firearm transfer,” Ecklund told NPR. ”And I’m willing to compromise with people who want more gun control. I’m willing to compromise with them and say, ’OK, I agree that we should have that.’ ” The question is whether Washington is willing to make the same compromise."
"With the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon in its fifth day, a local Native American tribe says the militants are ”desecrating sacred property.” Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Amanda Peacher tells our Newscast unit that Burns Paiute tribal leaders denounced the militants and demanded that they leave. ”The   wildlife refuge is within Paiute ancestral lands,” Amanda says. Tribal Chairperson Charlotte Rodrique says that she is ”offended by occupiers’ statements about returning the land to its rightful owners,” Amanda reports. ”You know, who are the rightful owners?” says Rodrique. ”It just really rubs me the wrong way that we have a bunch of misinformed people in here  —   they’re not the original owners.” According to Paiute story and legend, the tribe has lived in this area since ”before the Cascade Mountains were formed.” Here’s more on the tribe’s long history with the land, from The Oregonian: ”The tribe once occupied a large swath of land that includes the Malheur National Wildlife refuge  —   archaeological evidence dates back 6, 000 years  —   but they were forced out in the late 1870s. Before settlers arrived, the tribe used it as a wintering ground, said Charlotte Rodrique, the tribal chair. ”In 1868, the tribe signed a treaty with the federal government that requires the government to protect natives’ safety. According to the tribe, the federal government promised to prosecute ’any crime or injury perpetrated by any white man upon the Indians.’ ”Rodrique said the tribe never ceded its rights to the land. It works with the U. S. Bureau of Land Management to preserve archaeological sites.” Rodrique told Amanda that she sees ”the federal refuge managers as partners in helping protect the tribe’s cultural artifacts.” The   militants say they are occupying the building in support of Dwight and Steven Hammond  —   two ranchers who were convicted of arson on federal lands. Those ranchers have not publicly supported the takeover and turned themselves in to serve their sentences on Monday. Ryan Bundy, one of the group’s leaders, had said Monday that they would leave if local residents asked them to. But on Tuesday, he reversed that stance to OPB, saying that ”the purpose of this whole thing is getting people excited. And [the people in Harney County] are excited that this is taking place.” Residents actually have mixed opinions about the armed occupation, as we heard on Morning Edition. The county sheriff says he will hold a community meeting to discuss the issue at 4 p. m. local time Wednesday, hoping to find a ”peaceful solution.”"
"Soon after many people fall asleep, they have trouble breathing. Their upper airway constricts and chokes them. They wake, startled, take a deep breath, and fall back to sleep. Then it happens again and again and again. This condition, obstructive sleep apnea, affects about a fifth of American adults and triples the risk for cardiovascular disease. How exactly has been unclear. Research published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine suggests that cholesterol, a common culprit in heart disease, plays a special role in raising risk for people with sleep apnea. The findings hint that commonly prescribed   drugs called statins could limit the damage sleep apnea does to blood vessels. In the past, doctors figured the cycle of breathing and choking that happens to sleep apnea patients must be responsible for the heightened risk of heart attack and high blood pressure. But Dr. Sanja Jelic, a physician at Columbia University, says there’s a conundrum: ”Why would such a relatively mild [but repetitive] decrease in oxygen cause cardiovascular disease in contrast to other lung diseases that cause more severe [loss of oxygen] but don’t increase risk for cardiovascular disease?” Jelic figured there might be something happening to the cells lining our blood vessels since they would be the first to experience the particular rise and fall in oxygen afflicting sleep apnea patients. And on the surface of those cells, Jelic says, ”We found a protein that protects cells against injury is decreased in obstructive sleep apnea patients.” But a small group of patients with sleep apnea had normal levels of this protein, called CD59. ”We noticed all of these patients were on statins for some other reason  —   usually to decrease cholesterol,” Jelic says. When Jelic put blood vessel cells into a chamber that alternated normal and low levels of oxygen, the cells started having trouble purging their insides of excess cholesterol. The cholesterol builds up inside the cells and prompts them to suck the CD59 protein off their membranes. The cells then lose CD59’s protective effect. Jelic thinks that’s the key to why sleep apnea causes heart attacks and strokes and other cardiovascular diseases and statins seem to help. Without enough CD59 protein on the surface of blood vessel cells, Jelic says, membrane damage will occur. The cells become inflamed and eventually die. Since statins lower cholesterol, Jelic says the drug would allow more CD59 protein to stay on the cell surface membranes, protecting it from injury. That, in turn, could be lowering harmful inflammation in blood vessels that can lead to cardiovascular diseases. The study begins to unravel the biology of sleep apnea, says Dr. Atul Malhotra, a heart and sleep medicine physician at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. ”It’s starting to uncover some of the mysteries of why sleep apnea causes heart attacks,” he says. ”It helps shed light on how sleep apnea can cause inflammation and how that can lead to cardiovascular risk.” One implication of the research is that statins could be useful in lowering the risk of strokes and heart attacks in people suffering from sleep apnea, says Dr. Klar Yaggi, a heart and sleep medicine physician at Yale School of Medicine. ”The investigators also saw statin treatment reversed that process,” he says. ”Statins might complement sleep apnea treatment and play a very important part in reducing cardiovascular risk in sleep apnea patients.” But Yaggi says there are other ways that sleep apnea could be bad for heart health. ”Sleep apnea causes these very transient awakenings, most of the time without the patients realizing they are being woken up. Each of those awakenings is like a jolt of adrenaline,” Yaggi says. Over time, those episodes can cause clots to form in blood vessels and lead to heart attacks. Taking statins won’t stop people from choking in their sleep. ”If you give somebody a statin to prevent sleep apnea complications, they’ll still have fragmented sleep, poor quality of life, and risk for motor vehicle accidents,” says UCSD’s Malhotra. Breathing machines are still an effective treatment for sleep apnea and should continue to be the standard of care, he says. Shedding excess weight can also help. Jelic says statins might still be useful for sleep apnea patients. She thinks they help patients who have not yet begun using a breathing machine or can’t tolerate using one at night. Or perhaps, she says, there could be an added benefit to using statins on top of the breathing machines. Follow Angus Chen on Twitter: @angrchen"
"Twitter wasn’t always the site where your posts were limited to 140 characters. It added the restriction early on to make sure that people who used the website through their phones would only have to deal with tweets that can fit within the standard length of a text message, which is 160 characters. (Extra space for usernames.) But over time, the character limit has become Twitter’s undeniable signature element, even as many more features and capabilities have been added over the years. The maximum length has been, well, restricting. The expectation has built for a while that the company would do away with the limit, partially in hopes of attracting new users. The latest reports came this week, in   and then across other media, that Twitter may experiment with expandable messages that would unfold into as many as 10, 000 words. The company isn’t confirming the plan, but CEO Jack Dorsey posted a long note on Twitter, as a screen shot, saying that ”the majority of tweets will always be short and sweet and conversational” but a searchable text has more ”utility and power”  —   exactly the qualities that the company won’t be shy to pursue. The possible loss of the refreshing brevity that set Twitter apart from Facebook has upset a lot of Twitter users. But to borrow the words of Gizmodo’s Adam Clark Estes: ”Either way, it’s just Twitter. . .. Everything is going to be okay.” In that spirit, we decided to instead revisit some of the creative ways that the   limit has forced us to be more creative with our expression as well as the new phenomena it spurred. Here are a few examples. Send us more in the comments or (you guessed it) on Twitter. ’Twitterature’ The term isn’t tremendously common, but it’s a fitting description: literary writing produced within Twitter’s limitations. There are Twitter essayists, like Jeet Heer of the New Republic (who ”strenuously opposes” the character limit increase): There are Twitter recipe writers, including Maureen Evans: There are even Twitter novels. In 2012, The Guardian challenged 21   writers to write   fiction, producing creations like this one from Ian Rankin: ”I opened the door to our flat and you were standing there, cleaver raised. Somehow you’d found out about the photos. My jaw hit the floor.” And there are some sagas told over multiple tweets that just grip the reader, for different reasons, like last year’s intense #TheStory of Zola or       Sh*t My Dad Says. Micropoetry, In a similar vein, poetry has thrived within Twitter’s   universe, particularly the haiku (or ”Twihaiku”? ). In fact, poet George Szirtes tweeted that he would leave the site if the maximum length goes up to 10, 000: ”I can read that anywhere. It’s the concision I like not the sprawl.” The ’Screenshort’ After Twitter started allowing users to post photos with tweets, it didn’t take long for people to find the system cheat in the notion of a text screen shot, or as BuzzFeed’s Mat Honan put it, a ”screenshort.” Part of what’s fueling the popularity of this is the fact that tweets with photos are believed to be far more likely to be read or shared. Abbreviations, Since its early days, Twitter has been rife with abbreviations to spare the space: RT for ”retweet,” MT for ”modified tweet,” DM for ”direct message,”   for ”hat tip,” ICYMI for ”in case you missed it,” OH for ”overheard,” etc. etc. etc. Many of the shorteners like   (”because”) and TBH (”to be honest”) migrated from the text message slang, but Twitter could take credit for making lots of shorthand references mainstream. Medium. com, This one is less obvious, but the creation of blogging platform Medium is in a sense a response to the limitations of Twitter as a publishing tool. Founded by Twitter creators Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Medium gets to the point pretty directly on its ”Welcome” page: ”Medium is a new place on the Internet where people share ideas and stories that are longer than 140 characters and not just for friends.” Do you have other thoughts? Write to us in the comments or find us on Twitter."
"Director Todd Haynes believes love can blossom in the most improbable circumstances. Take his new movie, Carol. The film tells the story of an affair between the title character, a married 1950s socialite (played by Cate Blanchett) and Therese, an aspiring young photographer (played by Rooney Mara) who is working in the toy section of a New York City department store. They meet while Carol is buying a Christmas present for her daughter. Haynes tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the connection the women make in the store is a ”curious leap” that takes them both ”out of their worlds.” ”I think there’s something so lovely about that being the way love often begins  —   in the most irrational, inexplicable sort of circumstances where you put yourself out there and you keep going, ’What am I doing? Why am I here?’ ” Haynes says. ”But you keep going back. Both women do it.” Phyllis Nagy adapted the screenplay for Carol from the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt. In her early 20s, Nagy met and befriended Highsmith, a lesbian writer who spent much of her adult life in Europe. Nagy says the story is extremely forward thinking, especially considering it was originally published in 1952. ”As far as I’m aware, it was the first relatively mainstream lesbian novel to be published that included not only a relatively happy ending, but it did not include the death of one of its lesbian heroines, or one of them going to an insane asylum or nunnery,” Nagy says. Nagy notes that Highsmith initially published The Price of Salt under a pseudonym, perhaps because the novel was so personal in nature. ”It was difficult for her to take ownership of it as a writer for many years,” Nagy says. ”I was never sure if that meant she just didn’t like it, or if she was so personally attached to the novel that she couldn’t afford psychically, or psychologically, to claim ownership of it until the late ’80s.” On Therese and Carol, Nagy: Therese Belivet . .. is at a stage in her life, early 20s, where she is searching for the keys to her future. She’s a bit reticent she’s immensely curious, a bit like a sponge, and responds to everything with an alarming honesty  —   much like Pat Highsmith herself, whom I knew. So Therese is her alter ego. Carol Aird is older, married . .. and she is a melancholy creature. She is not a    socialite. The circumstances of her life don’t sit well with her, or comfortably. On the elements of Highsmith’s novel that Nagy most wanted to keep in the screen adaptation  Nagy: Two things. One was the radical way in which Patricia Highsmith addressed the sexuality of the protagonists in the novel as natural, as breathing  —   no particular thought given to what sexuality means to these women  —   but also an insistence on ignoring, more or less, the naysayers, which was another aspect of the novel that was profoundly radical. The second part of the things that I think makes the novel really resonate even today is Highsmith’s particular view of motherhood and what makes a good mother. On how The Price of Salt was received compared to Highsmith’s other novels, Nagy: I think that Highsmith was very surprised by the impact that The Price of Salt had on publication. And even in the years, four or five years, following its publication, she would receive the most amazing letters from people  —   of course, they were addressed to [her pseudonym,] Claire Morgan  —   talking about how the book had touched them profoundly, changed their lives. She wasn’t used to that. Certainly no one was going to say that [her 1950 book] Strangers on a Train changed their lives in quite that way, or even [her 1955 book] The Talented Mr. Ripley. On what Nagy learned from Highsmith about being a lesbian in the ’50s, Nagy: I think what I learned from Pat about being gay in the ’50s, and from friends of hers that she introduced me to, it was a window on a very particular subset of lesbians. Pat herself, I always like to say, was like the studio boss of lesbians in that she was right there chasing women around couches and throwing them down onto beds. . .. I thought at first that she was probably just pumping up her own reputation as a lesbian stud, but, in fact, her peers  —   the women that she chased, many of whom actually did remain friendly with her  —   confirmed those stories. And these women were all vaguely of the Carol Aird set. So I felt as if I knew exactly who Carol Aird was. . .. I think the married women suited Patricia Highsmith, who famously did not like to live with people or have that kind of attachment that most reasonable people after a time expect. . .. With married women, that was rarely possible. So they were, I’d say, the  [equivalent] of wealthy, suburban, mostly married and secretive women who probably, in 1952, are on prototypes of antidepressants and drank a lot and smoked a lot, like Highsmith herself. On Highsmith trying to date men at one point  Nagy: The unwholesome truth about Pat is she was a lesbian who did not very much enjoy being around other women. So the attempt to dabble with one man seriously, and perhaps a few others along the way, was to just see if she could be into men in that way, because she so much more preferred their company. Pat would’ve been a great member of [Mad Men’s agency]   . .. and really, I think, that was the formative psychological trait . .. that she really didn’t like women. She liked to have sex with them and she liked them to go home and shut up, but she much preferred the company of males. On whether Haynes had reservations about being a man directing a movie about lesbians  Haynes: No, I did not. Or at least, what I felt was this was a tremendous, beautiful opportunity for me to explore this story as a gay man and as somebody who has been in love and who’s been in Therese’s shoes. . .. I felt like I had that common and universal and poignant experience in my own history and my own memory and that’s what’s so unsentimentally and beautifully described in the novel to begin with. . .. And I have to say, so many of my dearest, closest friends in the world are gay women and this, in many ways, was sort of like: ”This one’s for all those [women] who’ve meant so much in my life.”"
"Sixteen years ago All Songs Considered started as NPR’s first   program. This month we’re celebrating its sweet 16 birthday, and to mark the occasion on this week’s episode we’re counting down our favorite songs from each of the past 16 years. Hearing some of these cuts is a real trip down memory lane, from the dreamy synth sound of Moby’s ”Porcelain,” and Björk’s polyrhythmic ”Hidden Place,” to The Postal Service, Grizzly Bear and Kanye West’s brilliant and playful earworm ”Gold Digger.” If you’ve had a memorable moment with All Songs Considered, share your story in the comments section below. We love hearing from our listeners. And if you want to share your own list of number one songs from each of the past 16 years, well pass that along, too!"
"Laid off steelworker Siegfried Powell hefts cardboard boxes from a food pantry set up by his local United Steelworkers Union in Birmingham, Ala. ”Come on, sweetheart. Grab you a bag of potatoes,” Powell says as he takes a load of groceries to the car for a family trying to stretch unemployment benefits. About 1, 100 people lost their jobs when U. S. Steel decided to permanently close a blast furnace that had been the bedrock of Birmingham’s steel industry for nearly a century. Powell had worked at the Fairfield Works mill for 26 years his wife, Vanessa Powell, for 18. ”We all are used to living on 40 hours a week, so we’re having to make some adjustments,” Vanessa says. Working at the food pantry helps, she says. ”We’re giving to keep us from sitting at home stressing over what to do.” Siegfried figures that at 52, he needs more education to compete after so long in the same job. ”I’m going to upgrade a few skills,” he says. ”I’m not the No. 1 draft pick anymore.” Working at U. S. Steel has long been a source of pride in Birmingham. The Fairfield Works plant made steel used to build ships during World War II and since has produced steel for everything from bridge girders to railroads to household appliances. ”It’s the end of an era,” David Clark, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1013, says. ”Birmingham was founded on iron and steel industry. It was known for years as the Pittsburgh of the South.” Located in the Appalachian foothills, Birmingham has all the natural resources needed to make iron and steel  —   coal, limestone and iron ore. That led to a rich industrial heritage. And Karen Utz, curator of Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, says that for a long time, U. S. Steel was the major player. ”It was kind of the glue that held the city together for many, many years,” Utz says. She says U. S. Steel was once the largest employer in Alabama. The suburb of Fairfield was designed by the company in the early 1900s. ”It was the most elaborate company town in the United States,” Utz says. But with increased foreign competition, the iron and steel industry dwindled over the decades. Utz says smaller   have replaced the giant furnaces and smokestacks that once dominated the city’s skyline. ”It’s a different industry today,” she says. ”It’s probably not considered the heart and soul of Birmingham, Ala.” The University of Alabama, Birmingham, with its medical center and research spinoffs, now drives the city’s economy. At U. S. Steel, a pipe mill remains open. And the company plans to build a smaller arc furnace, which means a few hundred   workers could get called back. Clark says that still leaves a void where generations have long counted on U. S. Steel to provide. ”We had grandparents,   fathers, sons, daughters, wives that worked here in some capacity or another,” Clark says. ”At one time, there was no way you lived in the area and you did not know someone who worked at United States Steel.” The Kyzers are one such family  —   you could say U. S. Steel was a family affair. Debbie Kyzer’s brother, nephews and    all worked there. Her husband is retired from the mill. Now she’s laid off, and so is her    son, Jonathan. He was a ”steel mill child,” she says, who had aspirations to work there as early as elementary school. ”He wrote he wanted to work at U. S. Steel like his daddy, and those were some big shoes to fill,” she says. ”Growing up, for me, it was kind of a goal to get to,” says Jonathan Kyzer. He reached that goal when he was 21 and landed a job at the mill. ”So I kinda figured I had the next 30 or 40 years set.” Now, instead of an assured future, there’s uncertainty. ”Those times are gone,” Jonathan says. The union has been hosting job fairs, but to find jobs comparable to the ones at U. S. Steel, workers may have to leave the area for places like shipyards on the Gulf Coast, hours away. That’s a hard call for families who have been rooted in U. S. Steel. ”We all thought we would finish up and retire and leave from here,” says Debbie Kyzer. ”Not just be laid off and not know our future. The not knowing is what is so bad.” Donald Ferrell is also wondering what the future holds. He is president of the Steelworkers local office and technical group. He’s still working at U. S. Steel as an electric load dispatcher  —   basically the guy who keeps the lights on. ”There’s not as many lights and they cut more off every day,” Ferrell says. He says it’s a far cry from when he first started at the plant in the late 1970s, one of more than 12, 000 workers. ”Steel has always been an up and down business,” he says. ”You’d get layoffs but you know you were coming back. Now with this, you’re not coming back.” He puts the blame on trade agreements that allow cheaper imported steel into the U. S. ”Right now, because of all the foreign dumping that’s going on, it’s basically destroying the middle class here in this country,” says Ferrell. Steel is still an important business in Birmingham, but today it’s dominated by those   that employ hundreds, not the hulking blast furnaces that provided thousands of jobs for generations."
"Forget journeys into the stacks or stints at a library scanner: For more and more of the New York Public Library’s collections, access is just a click away. On Wednesday, the library released more than 180, 000 of its   items  —   including maps, posters, manuscripts, sheet music, drawings, photographs, letters, ancient texts  —   as   downloads, available to the public without restriction. It’s the latest push by NYPL Labs, the library’s   tech and outreach team, to make the library’s holdings more accessible to the public. Before the release, many of the items were available to view for free through the library’s Digital Collections site, and some could be downloaded at lower resolutions. But in most cases, for a   image, users would have to make a request and pay a processing fee, a library spokeswoman says. Now, in addition to the availability of   downloads, it’s simpler to identify which of the items in the library’s digital collections are in the public domain. The library also has made it easier for programmers to access and analyze those files in bulk. ”These changes are intended to facilitate sharing, research and reuse by scholars, artists, educators, technologists, publishers, and Internet users of all kinds,” the library says in a statement. ”All subsequently digitized public domain collections will be made available in the same way, joining a growing repository of open materials.” If it’s hard to conceptualize what 180, 000 items looks like, NYPL Labs also released a visualization of all the materials, sorted by date, genre, collection or even color. The documents include literary manuscripts, Farm Security Administration photographs, sheet music, papers from Founding Fathers,   art by   artists, the   Handscrolls of the Tales of Genji, illuminated manuscripts from the Medieval Ages and the Renaissance, maps and atlases, and stereoscopic views, the library says. The materials can all be viewed and downloaded through the Digital Collections site. In addition to making   files available for free, the library is actively encouraging people to come up with creative uses for the items. A ”remix residency” will offer funding, work space and promotion to people with novel ideas for reusing the library’s public domain materials. In need of inspiration? NYPL Labs’ designers came up with a few projects to get you started  —   a game based on   mansion floor plans, a comparison of 1911 street photos with 2015 Google Street View images and a trip planner based on a guide to where black visitors would be welcomed in the  ."
"Enrique Marquez, the    man accused of providing two guns used in the San Bernardino attack, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges. When he appeared Wednesday at his arraignment in federal court in Riverside, Calif. Marquez spoke only to briefly answer Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym’s questions, the Los Angeles Times reports. The newspaper adds: ”When she asked how he would plead, he said simply, ’Not guilty.’ ” Marquez faces five charges, including conspiracy to support terrorism. That charge stems from investigations dating back five years. Marquez was indicted by a federal grand jury, accused of conspiring with one of the two San Bernardino shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook, to provide material support  —   such as weapons and explosives  —   to terrorists in 2011 and 2012, though no attacks were carried out then. Marquez, who was once Farook’s neighbor, also is charged with making a false statement to investigators about the purchase of two   rifles that Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, used to kill 14 people on Dec. 2, 2015, at the Inland Regional Center. Both attackers were killed in a shootout with police. According to the criminal complaint, Marquez bought a Smith  Wesson rifle in November 2011 for about $740 and then purchased another rifle for about $760 three months later. He portrayed himself as the buyer when really the weapons were for Farook, the complaint says. Marquez was also indicted on charges of marriage fraud and making a false statement on immigration paperwork. Those charges relate to an alleged sham marriage to a member of Farook’s extended family. If convicted of all charges, Marquez faces up to 50 years in prison, according to The Associated Press, which says a trial has been set for Feb. 23."
"The chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court has ordered the state’s probate judges not to issue marriage license to   couples  —   despite a decision by the U. S. Supreme Court last year that legalized   marriage in America. Roy S. Moore, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, issued an administrative order Wednesday. He noted that the Supreme Court of Alabama had, in March of 2015, upheld the state’s ban on   marriage. Three months later, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled bans on   marriage unconstitutional, in Obergefell v. Hodges. ”Confusion and uncertainty exist among the probate judges of this State as to the effect of Obergefell on the ’existing orders’ ”  —   that is, the March 2015 instructions that bans on   marriage should be enforced, Moore wrote in his order. He also suggests that the Supreme Court decision invalidates the marriage bans in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee  —   that is, the specific laws named in Obergefell  —   but not necessarily in Alabama. ”I am not at liberty to provide any guidance to Alabama probate judges on the effect of Obergefell on the existing orders of the Alabama Supreme Court,” he wrote. ”That issue remains before the entire [Alabama Supreme] Court which continues to deliberate on the matter.” Instead, Moore argued that while the ”legal analysis is yet to be determined,” the ”confusion” over the law has an adverse effect on the administration of justice in Alabama. Based on that reasoning, he ordered that probate judges have ”a ministerial duty” not to issue marriage licenses to   couples  —   at least until the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled on the impact of the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision. Moore has a history of facing off with the federal courts over this issue. In January 2015, U. S. District Court Judge Ginny Granade ruled that the state’s marriage ban was unconstitutional. The next month, Moore instructed probate judges that they weren’t bound by Granade’s decision  —   leaving probate judges with two contradictory orders. Granade reaffirmed her rulings in May, and again after the Obergefell decision. The chief federal prosecutors in Alabama issued this statement: ”The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court has issued an administrative order, directing probate judges that they may not issue marriage licenses to   couples, despite the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision last year on marriage equality. We have grave concerns about this order, which directs Alabama probate judges to disobey the ruling of the Supreme Court,” said U. S. Attorneys Joyce White Vance of the Northern District of Alabama and Kenyen Brown of the Southern District of Alabama. ”Government officials are free to disagree with the law, but not to disobey it. This issue has been decided by the highest court in the land and Alabama must follow that law.” The Southern Poverty Law Center called Moore’s order a ”dead letter,” writing that ”in no way does his administrative order supersede Judge Granade’s federal injunction.” ”If probate judges violate the injunction, they can be held in contempt,” the SPLC said in a statement. ”This is Moore yet again confusing his role as chief justice with his personal   agenda.” Moore rose to prominence nearly 20 years ago, as the ”Ten Commandments” judge  —   he hung a plaque with the religious edicts in his courtroom, and later, as chief justice, he put a monument to the commandments in the state judicial building. He was removed from office in 2003, when he defied a federal order to take down the monument, as NPR’s Debbie Elliott reported last year. He was   as Alabama chief justice in 2012."
"Homelessness is hard enough, but being a young adult and homeless brings its own set of challenges. No longer eligible for family shelters,   to    can be targets of theft and assault by older homeless adults, experts say. In Boston, a new homeless shelter just opened  —   for young adults only. The night before the shelter opens, there is a celebratory dinner in the basement of the First Parish church in Harvard Square. The space has been through a $1. 3 million renovation, with funds coming from foundations, grants and donations. It looks like an upscale youth hostel. There’s bright wood paneling. Surfaces painted lime green.   beds decorate the far wall like an elaborate tree house. This is the new location of Y2Y  —   a shelter for young adults only. And now, it’s almost ready for business. One thing that makes Y2Y special is the staff  —   every one of them is a young adult, a lot of them Harvard University students and almost all of them volunteers, such as Needham Hurst and Ian Meyer, who are staffing the lottery line the morning before the shelter opens. All seven of the people who enter the lottery get beds. They’re just a handful of the hundreds of young adults in Boston who are homeless. It’s a need that Sarah Rosenkrantz and Sam Greenberg  —   the    Y2Y   and    —   are intent on addressing. ”Just telling our peers that we don’t believe they should be homeless, and we want to work together to fix this issue,” Rosenkrantz says. Greenberg adds that they have an obligation to ensure that all of their peers are safe, warm, welcomed and supported. Y2Y will offer other services as well. ”We have student case managers, we have volunteers who participate in legislative and public advocacy, we’ll have workshops  —   things like financial literacy, storytelling, poetry, like public speaking,” Greenberg says. The other thing that’s special about Y2Y is that at every turn, young adults who are or have been homeless have advised the shelter’s planning, as part of a youth advisory board. Ayala Livny consults on programs related to homelessness. ”I think that it’d be negligent to try and create a shelter for young adults without getting the actual input of young adults who are going to be staying at the shelter,” says Livny. Such as    Andrew Giampa, who serves on the youth advisory board. ”We’ve come up with pretty much all aspects around Y2Y between policies, furniture, regulations,” Giampa says. One of those policies is length of stay, which is up to 30 days. There’s also a drug and alcohol policy. And rules for whether you can have a pet. And it was this board that replaced a list of rules with a list of responsibilities, to allow young people to feel ownership over the space. But now, everyone’s focused on the opening, just moments away. There are   signs to post, and vegetables to chop for dinner. Finally the doors open. Twelve young people end up spending the night."
"It’s not just football players or troops who fought in the wars who suffer from brain injuries. Researchers estimate that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in the U. S. get potentially serious brain injuries every year, too. Yet they and even their doctors often don’t know it. One such doctor is Bryan Arling, an internist in Washington, D. C. His peers often vote to put him on those lists of ”top doctors,” published by glossy magazines. So it’s ironic that the brain injury he failed to diagnose was his own. And he could have died from it. Last spring, Arling went looking for some files in his   attic. It was jammed with boxes of Christmas tree ornaments, old clothes and other odds and ends that define decades of family life. After an hour of searching, he found the files in a box, grabbed the folders and stood up. He then felt a shooting pain in the center of his back. ”It’s a pain I’ve had before,” says Arling, who has battled back problems for years. ”But it was more intense than I’ve ever had it before.” He took painkillers and went back to work. Weeks went by, and his back was still hurting him. ”Then I began noticing that I was shuffling. I was so weak I couldn’t carry my plate out to the back deck. I would just drop things. And everybody commented on how I seemed different,” he says. And gradually, Arling says, his thinking seemed different, too. ”I could make sense of things, I could get things done, I could make decisions,” he says. ”But I was slower at what I did.” Arling thought he was having trouble focusing because his back pain was so intense. So a neurosurgeon, who had treated Arling’s back problems before, ordered an MRI of Arling’s spine  —   and also his brain. When the MRI technician saw Arling’s pictures taking shape on his screen, he called the radiologist and said, ”You need to see this right away.” The images showed a big, white,   shape where Arling’s brain should have been, inside the top right side of his skull. It was a pool of blood that was pushing down on the brain, causing it to shift from right to left. They sent Arling straight from the MRI to the emergency room at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. He says as they started prepping him for open brain surgery, the medical staff kept asking about his fall. ”And I said, ’I haven’t fallen,’ ” Arling says. Then, just as they were wheeling him into the operating room, Arling remembered: The day he stood up in the attic and threw out his back, he had forgotten he was under the eaves, and had knocked the top of his head against a wood beam. But he didn’t even get a cut, so he forgot about it. Everybody knows you can get hurt if you fall off a ladder, or slip and bash your head on the ice. But Arling got a kind of brain injury that’s usually more insidious  —   a subdural hematoma. A subdural hematoma is different from the typical blast injuries that affected hundreds of thousands of U. S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In those cases, shock waves rattled their brains and caused microscopic damage that’s hard or impossible to detect. It’s also different from the usual football concussions, in which blows to the head damage the brain’s electrical wiring. The main population at risk for a subdural hematoma is the elderly. To understand why, it helps to picture an aging brain. The brain is wrapped and protected by a membrane called the dura mater. Inside the dura, there’s a network of veins that connect it to the surface of the brain. Studies suggest that as you get older, your brain shrinks and pulls away from the dura, especially after you’re 60 or 70 years old. But the veins keep holding on to both the dura and the brain. So as your brain pulls away, some of those veins become more exposed and more vulnerable. Researchers say if you simply bump your head on the eaves of your attic, as Arling did, or if you simply start to fall and then catch yourself  —   so your head doesn’t strike anything, but it jerks in the air  —   that can be enough force to jostle your shrinking brain. ”And those veins stretch, and you’ll get tearing in those veins,” says Dr. David Cifu, who runs a joint research project studying brain injuries for the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. And because blood from veins tends to ooze, instead of pump as it does from arteries, Cifu says, ”when the veins tear, we get a very   ribbon of blood that’s layering on top of the surface of the brain.” As that blood starts to pool over days or weeks, it irritates the brain cells. And if the pool’s big enough, it presses on the brain and damages it, much like a tumor. Researchers studied the problem a few years ago at a sample of 20 percent of the nation’s hospitals. As they reported in the Journal of Neurosurgery, those hospitals alone diagnosed almost 44, 000 subdural hematomas in one year. So the researchers estimate there could be more than 200, 000 subdural hematoma injuries diagnosed annually at all the hospitals across the country. They say an unknown additional number of subdural hematomas are misdiagnosed, or simply missed: Half the patients studied have trouble remembering they hit their heads at all. Like Arling. And like Tom Feild, a retired computer systems analyst who used to work for the VA. Feild says his own medical mystery began with headaches. ”It wasn’t a constant headache  —   it was a   headache. But it wouldn’t go away,” he says. Then he was driving his wife on an errand, and he kept drifting across the yellow line. ”I said, ’Tom, you’re going on their side of the road.’ He said, ’I know . .. I can’t seem to help it,’ ” Jody Feild says.  Tom Feild made an appointment with his local doctor. And the next thing he knew, a helicopter was rushing him to Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond. Neurosurgeon Bill Broaddus drilled three holes into Feild’s skull and vacuumed out roughly 8 ounces of blood that had pooled since he developed a subdural hematoma.  Broaddus says before the surgery, he asked Feild what type of accident had injured his head. It took awhile before Feild could remember. He had put a sprinkler away under his porch two months earlier and bumped his head against the floorboards when he stood up before backing out all the way. ”We may see 50 to 100 [similar subdural hematomas] here at this institution every year,” says Broaddus. Brain specialists say it’s important to view these injuries in perspective: Most people who get a subdural hematoma will never know it. The brain will reabsorb the blood, the victim’s symptoms will disappear, and life will go on as normal. But for tens of thousands of others, it’s serious. Doctors say they often see families who think loved ones are getting dementia, and it turns out they hit their heads and have a bleed. Some victims die. Researchers like Cifu say you don’t need to consult a doctor the second you get a headache. But they say it’s sensible, and responsible, to follow some simple guidelines: Consult a physician as soon as possible if the headaches don’t go away, or if you begin to have trouble with your balance or feel weakness in your legs or arms. Also, if the way you think starts to seem ”different,” Cifu says. Internist Arling says even if it turns out that you do have a bleed, he’s living proof that these brain injuries can be cured if you catch them in time. ”It’s so easy to come away from a story like mine, and to feel fragile, and so to worry unnecessarily,” Arling says. ”The body is phenomenally   and it has a phenomenal ability to heal itself.”"
"Already reeling from a series of    outbreaks, Chipotle Mexican Grill now faces a federal criminal investigation, as well. The company says it has received a subpoena from a federal grand jury in connection with a norovirus outbreak last fall at one of its restaurants in Simi Valley, Calif. In August, 189 customers were sickened after visiting the restaurant, as well as 18 Chipotle employees, according to Doug Beach, manager of the Community Services Program at the Ventura County Environmental Health Department, in an interview with NPR. The restaurant was briefly closed by the company and then reopened after it had been ”washed down,” Beach said. Norovirus is a very common illness that causes stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting and is spread by casual contact or by eating contaminated food, according to the Centers for Disease Control And Prevention. The subpoena was disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It said the company has been required to produce ”a broad range of documents” in connection with the outbreak. County officials were also questioned in October by U. S. authorities, who asked ”very general questions about the case,” Beach said. He said he was not aware of any activities by Chipotle that might have led to a criminal investigation. Chiptole said it is cooperating fully with the investigation, which has been jointly carried out by the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California and the U. S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations. The significance of the subpoena is hard to gauge at this point, said Daniel C. Richman, professor law at Columbia University, in an interview with NPR: ”It’s never good news for a company when federal prosecutors open a grand jury investigation into its operations, but it’s far too early to tell how sustained that interest will be here and what, if any, criminal violations will come to light.” One of the most successful restaurant chains in the country, Chipotle has seen its revenue and stock price plunge in recent months. The company revealed today that its   sales fell 14. 6 percent during the fourth quarter of 2015, a bigger drop than anticipated. The decline followed a series of outbreaks of food illness that have sickened hundreds of people. As The Salt blog previously reported, these included two separate outbreaks of E. coli in the past several months: ”The larger one sickened 52 people in October, mostly in Washington and Oregon, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A separate outbreak in November sickened five people in Kansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma, the agency said. ”In December, scores of students at Boston College fell ill after eating at a nearby Chipotle, an outbreak the company said was due to a norovirus, which causes vomiting, nausea and diarrhea. ”And in August, a salmonella outbreak in Minnesota sickened 64 people who had eaten at Chipotle. The state’s Department of Health later linked the illness to tomatoes served at the chain.” Chipotle has apologized to its customers and closed restaurants where the illnesses occurred. It has also promised extensive changes to its   procedures and enhanced training of its employees in food safety."
"A black hole in a nearby galaxy has let out a couple of belches. Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra   Observatory say they’ve spotted two arcs of   emissions near a supermassive black hole, which they believe are fossils ”from two enormous blasts when the black hole expelled material outward into the galaxy.” This was observed in the Messier 51 galaxy system, which is 26 million   from Earth (pretty close, by galactic standards). It happened in a small galaxy that is in the process of merging with a larger one nicknamed ”The Whirlpool,” NASA says. ”For an analogy, astronomers often refer to black holes as ’eating’ stars and gas. Apparently, black holes can also burp after their meal,” Eric Schlegel of the University of Texas, San Antonio says in NASA’s press release. Schlegel, who led the study, says the observation ”is important because this behavior would likely happen very often in the early universe, altering the evolution of galaxies.” And significantly, ”this shows that black holes can create, not just destroy,” says   Marie Machacek of the   Center for Astrophysics. The scientists say that the hot gas is sweeping cooler hydrogen gas forward much like a snowplow  —   an example of a supermassive black hole ”affecting its host galaxy in a phenomenon known as feedback,” according to the NASA release. In an email exchange, Schlegel says the feedback can help regulate the size of a black hole by ”blowing gas back out through the central portion.” Otherwise, he says, a black hole that keeps eating and picking up matter ”could become large enough to engulf a galaxy.” And as the snowplow effect sweeps material away, Schlegel says, ”the expanding gas could also trigger star formation outside of the central volume.” The black hole’s burps are likely from a ”meal” that happened millions of years ago, The Washington Post reports: ”[T]he researchers spotted twin arcs of   emissions from the black hole in question, which they believe to be the aftereffects of a big meal that happened millions of years ago (the jets, they say, would have taken 1 million to 6 million years to reach their current positions).” It’s rare to actually see these emissions of hot gas from black holes. As the Post reported, ”it was only in late November that a research group claimed to have caught the entire process (the entire star meal, if you will) with belch included.” The black hole observed in November was much farther from Earth  —   300 million   away."
"Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor whose career spanned from the     War II era to the computer age, has died, according to the French culture ministry. He was 90. Boulez famously challenged his peers and his audience to rethink their ideas of sound and harmony. In his music, Boulez often created rich and contrasting layers that were built on musical traditions from Asia and Africa, and on the   technique pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg  —   as in his 1955 work, Le Marteau sans maître (The Hammer Without a Master). ”I see music as a kind of continuity, like a big tree,” Boulez told NPR in 2000. ”Of course there are many branches, many different directions. I think music is in constant evolution, and there is nothing absolutely fixed and rigidly determined.” NPR’s Tom Huizenga cited the quote in a piece last year examining the composer’s rebellious roots: Boulez once disrupted a Stravinsky concert, and later said that opera’s problems could be solved by blowing up opera houses. Boulez also had a knack for polemics  —   for instance, The Guardian referenced this quote: ”anyone who has not felt. .. the necessity of the dodecaphonic [ ] language is OF NO USE.” But the   idea that his music was centered in mathematics is a bit overblown, Boulez told Fresh Air host Terry Gross in 2005. Saying that a musical language always includes both rational and irrational parts, he noted, ”What I tried to find, that’s freedom  —   but a freedom which is based on discipline.” Boulez, who won 26 Grammy awards, had a prodigiously broad musical reach. In the 1970s, he founded the IRCAM music and science research center at the Pompidou Center in Paris. That’s where, in 1984, he conducted music from Frank Zappa’s album The Perfect Stranger. Born in 1925, Boulez studied at the Paris Conservatory under Olivier Messiaen and René Leibowitz, before embarking on a career that perpetually sought new and modern approaches to music. He emerged as a conductor in the late 1950s, and for a stretch of years in the 1970s, he served as both the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and as the music director of the New York Philharmonic. He also had a long relationship with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which in 2006 named him conductor emeritus. Discussing Boulez’s work on the podium back in 2010, Fresh Air’s Lloyd Schwartz wrote: ”Boulez is famous for his amazing ear. He lets you hear every detail. But there are two other Boulez qualities he isn’t often given credit for. One is his innate and effortless sense of the right style. In Boulez’s hands, Haydn’s symphony  —   for a change  —   actually sounds Viennese.” As for his famous statement that opera houses should be blown up, Boulez told Fresh Air in 2005 that he was only joking. The headlines that followed, he said, missed the humor in the statement. ”That was very funny to me,” Boulez said. ”A number of times I have heard this quote. I thought I would have said only one sentence in my life.”"
"Once there was a young firebrand whose revolutionary ideas forever changed the shape, feel and sound of classical music. No, we’re not talking about Beethoven. We’re talking about Boulez. Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor, turns 90 years old today. The young Boulez was a rebel, even a   right after World War II, both in his music and in his musical philosophy. ”I see music as a kind of continuity, like a big tree,” Boulez told NPR in 2000. ”Of course there are many branches, many different directions. I think music is in constant evolution, and there is nothing absolutely fixed and rigidly determined.” But there was one thing fixed in Boulez’s mind: the need to shake music up. Early on, he and some   buddies disrupted a Stravinsky concert, complaining about the composer’s neoclassical style. Later, Boulez declared that one solution to opera’s problems would be to blow up the opera houses. ”In Britain we had this phrase ’angry young man,’” says Paul Griffiths, author of the book Modern Music and After. ”Boulez was very decisive about how things should go for himself at a very early age and rejecting anything that stood in his way or that seemed to be backpedaling on the way to the future.” The young Boulez was disillusioned after the war. How could European culture spawn such carnage? Music, like Europe, Boulez thought, would have to be rebuilt. But first he had to tear it down. ”The only way to assert himself,” Griffiths says, ”was to be against everything else, to push through barriers and through destruction to bring about something new.” What Boulez created was a new emphasis on sound, color and the very building blocks of music. ”This music is as seductive as any on the planet,” says St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director David Robertson. The conductor spent most of the 1990s in Paris leading Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain. He’s quick to point out the sensual side of Boulez’s music, as in Notation No. 1 for orchestra, which began its life as a piano miniature in 1945. ”When Notation No. 1 enters,” Robertson notes, ”you have this different layering of the instruments between the harps and the violins in such a way that it’s almost as though we’re laying out different types of silk fabric that interweave. And they are not clearly folded. They are being draped on the musical landscape.” You may not be able to hum Notation No. 1, but Griffiths feels that’s not the point. ”You have to change your idea of what melody and harmony are,” Griffiths says. ”The thing is, we’re all brought up with this huge education in the harmonic system that governed Western music for so long. And that music has taught us how to listen to that music and it hasn’t taught us how to listen to other music.” Other music from other countries, for instance, or the   style of music developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s, which inspired Boulez. There’s a little of both, Griffiths says, in Boulez’s 1955 breakthrough Le Marteau sans maître (The Hammer Without a Master). ”He forms a completely new kind of chamber ensemble,” Griffiths says. ”It now sounds standard because it has become almost the norm. But then it was completely new.” Think of ensembles like eighth blackbird today. In Marteau there’s a singer and a percussionist, plus flute and viola. Then a guitar which hints at Spain, a vibraphone that evokes Indonesian music and a xylophone that conjures up African music. ”It’s a kind of world music long before we were talking about world music, but   in completely his own way,” Griffiths says. The piece was evocative, and even something of a hit for Boulez, but it was also complicated. Early on, the composer was the only one who understood his music well enough to conduct it. And that’s how Boulez backed into a second career as a conductor, leading major orchestras in London, New York, Chicago and Cleveland, conducting a width swath of classical music from Handel to the contemporary British composer George Benjamin (who has returned the favor). Hear key compositions by Pierre Boulez. By transforming himself into an   conductor, Boulez could cushion concerts with audience favorites while introducing contemporary pieces. It’s another Boulez innovation still influencing the concert experience today, according to Griffiths: ”The conductors from the next generation, and the generation after that, like   Salonen or Simon Rattle, are able to do a much wider repertoire with much more new music than was possible before Boulez was on the podium.” Over the years, the angry young man has mellowed a bit, but not completely. Boulez has harsh words for composers today who look only to the past and write pretty melodies. ”I find that’s lazy, especially,” Boulez says. ”They don’t try to revive anything. They just copy, and copy badly, and that’s really for me the worst of sins, when you’re not imaginative at all, when you are just complacent with yourself.” And when quizzed about the ferocity of his opinions, Boulez is still rapier quick: ”I’m not ferocious at all. I am defining what I think. If you call that ferocity, ferocity is a very cheap way of living.” But no one will accuse Boulez of living cheaply, especially Robertson. ”There is no B. S. in anything that he is doing,” Robertson says, ”either on the page or conducting.” At 90, Boulez remains a protean force for new music through his own compositions and institutions that he founded, the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the   experimental music lab, IRCAM, in Paris. And, for a younger generation of artists, such as Robertson, Boulez is still a beacon, a musical thinker, a provocateur, a pioneer charting new ground. ”It’s that real singular devotion to the music which I think will be his greatest legacy,” Robertson says. ”There are relatively few people who have this impact on the world, and Pierre is definitely up there among the major personalities of the 20th and 21st centuries.”"
"Tucked away in the archives of the Library of Congress is a curious set of photos from the first half of the 20th century  —   animals, mostly kittens and puppies, dressed as people and doing peopley things: baking a cake, holding a cello, getting married. Of the photos, the Atlantic proclaimed that ”their humor and appeal is timeless.” The photographer was Harry Whittier Frees. He has been hailed as ”the original LOLcat photographer.” But his life, as it turns out, was not all laughs. Eureka Moment, Born in Reading, Pa. in the spring of 1879, Harry Frees worked in that state most of his life. For the first half of the 20th century, he was an extremely famous photographer of cutesy animals. His ”eureka moment” came during a family birthday party. Folks were passing around, and trying on, a paper hat. Someone stuck it on the family cat and Frees snapped a picture. A postcard manufacturer liked the shot so much he used it, and the image was an instant success. Using live models and, reportedly, no photo trickery, the Frees frames became popular illustrations for novelty postcards, books, calendars and magazines. He published many books of his own work. ”He rents all models from neighbors, breeders or pet shops,” Life magazine explained in a March 1, 1937, profile. ”His only assistant is his housekeeper, Mrs. Annie Edelman, who sews all the costumes.” Getting pets in clothes to be still until he could take a photo ”was challenging,   and ” Mary L. Weigley writes in the spring 2014 Pennsylvania Heritage. ”It caused Frees so much anxiety that he photographed his furry subjects for only three months a year. To make the situation even more difficult for Frees, only about 30 negatives out of every 100 could be used. Consequently, he needed the remainder of the year to recuperate from exhaustion and formulate new ideas.” The website One More River posts a quote from Frees’ own book Animal Land on the Air in which he describes the challenges of getting animals to pose. ”Rabbits are the easiest to photograph in costume, but incapable of taking many ’human’ parts. Puppies are tractable when rightly understood, but the kitten is the most versatile animal actor, and possesses the greatest variety of appeal. The pig is the most difficult to deal with, but effective on occasion. The best period of young animal models is a short one, being when they are from six to ten weeks of age. An interesting fact is that a kitten’s attention is best held through the sense of sight, while that of a puppy is most influenced by sound, and equally readily distracted by it. The native reasoning powers of young animals are, moreover, quite as pronounced as those of the human species, and relatively far surer.” In Isolation, So where does Harry Whittier Frees place in the history of American photography? ”I would venture to say that he doesn’t even register in photo history or photo criticism circles,” says William B. Becker, creator of the online American Museum of Photography. He adds that Frees’ work reminded him of another set of anthropomorphic felines, the 1871   ”Kitty Series” by John P. Soule. But Frees was successful, Weigley points out, though he did not enjoy lifelong financial stability. ”He never married, devoting his life to his photography and caring for his parents,” she writes. ”After their deaths in the 1940s, Frees moved to Clearwater, Florida, where he lived in isolation.” At some point he was diagnosed with cancer. He died in March 1953. From an obituary in the St. Petersburg Times: ”Despondent over what he regarded as an incurable disease, Harry Whittier Frees, 74, of 709 Senaca Street, took his own life sometime Sunday by turning on the gas stove in the kitchen.” There was no mention of his amazing career. Follow me @NPRHistoryDept lead me by writing lweeks@npr. org"
"When Saudi Arabia executed 47 people last week, it marked an ominous start to surpassing the number of people it put to death last year. Human rights groups believe at least 150 people were executed in the kingdom in 2015. Most were beheaded, killed by firing squad or stoned to death. Although executions are now taking place in fewer and fewer countries, those that do execute prisoners tend to do it in a big way. Richard Clark, the founder of Capital Punishment U. K. which charts executions around the world, says there was a spike in the number of executions in a few countries last year, leading to a worldwide 70 percent rise over the number in 2014. ”Iran significantly increased the number of executions over 2014, roughly from about 480 to 750,” he says. ”Drug offenders account for the bulk of it.” Other human rights organizations say the number could be as high as 1, 000 people. It’s hard to know for sure, because Iran is one of the countries that doesn’t divulge much information about the death penalty. Another is China, which might be the leader in executions, says Maya Foa, with Reprieve, a human rights organization based in London. ”In China, executions are a state secret and so not only do they not publicly disclose where and when and how many executions take place, very often as we understand it they don’t even tell the family members,” she says. ”So it’s very, very hard to get accurate figures. We do know the numbers are in the thousands very often.” Executions in Pakistan are also on the rise. The country lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in December 2014, after a Taliban attack killed 148 people, mostly schoolchildren. Last year, it executed more than 300 people. Saroop Ijaz, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, says the government brought back executions as a way to fight terrorism. ”And as it turns out,” he says, ”out of the more than 300 people that Pakistan has executed, only a very small minority are people who have been convicted of terrorism offenses.” Ijaz says there are at least 27 offenses for which someone can be put to death in Pakistan, including murder, treason and blasphemy. He says the government is marketing the death penalty as a cure for the complex security situation that Pakistan faces. ”There is this national security state narrative that the Pakistan government has constructed, which is being tough and going to war  —   that entire rhetoric,” he says. Similarly, Saudi Arabia says most of the 47 people it executed last week were terrorists. But Clark, with Capital Punishment U. K. says that wasn’t the case last year. ”The Saudi executions were pretty normal  —   [for] drugs and murder or rape,” he says. For its part, the U. S. went the other way. Foa, with Reprieve, says last year, the U. S. executed 28 people, down from 35 the previous year. ”We had fewer executions in the U. S. than we’ve seen for the last 27 years,” she says, ”and that’s in large part because of issues with the lethal injection and manufacturers not wanting to sell medicines for the purpose of executions.” There were a few nations that decided last year to abolish the death penalty, including Madagascar, Fiji and Suriname."
"At the end of every year, U. S. meteorologists look back at what the nation’s weather was like, and what they saw in 2015 was weird. The year was hot and beset with all manner of extreme weather events that did a lot of expensive damage. December, in fact, was a fitting end. ”This is the first time in our   period of record that a month has been both the wettest and the warmest month on record,” says Jake Crouch, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The rest of the year was very wet and hot too, he says  ” the   period on record for the U. S. The cause: a warming climate and a superstrong El Nino. El Nino is a weather phenomenon out of the Pacific Ocean that hits every few years and affects weather globally. It starts with a large body of unusually warm weather in the western Pacific that sloshes eastward it changes wind and weather patterns as far away as the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Together, climate and a very strong El Nino pushed the average temperature in the U. S. up over its 20th century average by 2. 4 degrees Fahrenheit. And even when the atmosphere is only that much warmer, it holds more moisture, leading to record snows in the Northeast last February and March, and record rain in the South and Midwest. NOAA’S Deke Arndt says he and other climate scientists expect more of the same. ”The fact is, we live in a warming world,” Arndt says, ”and a warming world is bringing more big heat events and more big rain events to the United States.” All this weather led to 10 extreme events that each did at least $1 billion in damage. These events included drought, flooding, severe rainstorms, big wildfires and winter storms. That’s a wider variety of different types of $1   weather events than usual. Insurance companies are paying for most of the damage. Surprisingly, 2015 payouts were lower than the previous few years, though still high historically. That’s mostly due to luck, says Mark Bove, a meteorologist at Munich Reinsurance America, a firm that insures insurance companies for their losses. No serious hurricanes hit the U. S. in 2015, he explains. But that luck is not likely to last, Bove says. Moreover, he is noticing a trend that has been going on for years and is likely to continue: ”We seem to be seeing more extreme precipitation events,” Bove says. ”When it rains today, it seems to rain harder and heavier.” But even as the rain gets more intense, Bove says, people don’t seem to be taking notice. ”We tend not to build buildings to withstand the storms that we already see,” he says, ”let alone how they might change in the future.” That will mean higher costs in a future where weather becomes even less predictable."
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is beating the drum again: We’re consuming too much sodium and it’s a reason we have such high rates of hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Not me, you say? Well, chances are, yes, you. An analysis appearing in this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report reveals that 89 percent of U. S. adults were consuming more than the recommended 2, 300 milligrams of sodium a day in the years   according to National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, or NHANES. On average, men between the ages of   consumed about 4, 400 mg a day, while women were getting about 3, 100 mg a day, according to the CDC report. The numbers were slightly lower for adults 51 and over. Some 90 percent of U. S. children of all ages also far exceeded the recommended daily amounts for their age groups. For example, boys and girls ages   consumed about 3, 300 mg and 3, 000 mg respectively, well above the 2, 200 mg a day deemed healthful for them. Here’s what makes this problem so stubborn: Most of this sodium isn’t coming from the salt shaker, which is more or less easy to regulate on an individual basis. The vast majority of the sodium we consume comes from processed foods we buy and meals we eat in restaurants. We may not realize, or have any way to find out, how much is really in there. ”It’s very difficult for individuals to lower consumption on their own, because there’s so much sodium in everything they eat,” Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, tells us. Over the past several years, various food companies, through the National Sodium Reduction Initiative, have made commitments and met targets to lower sodium content for specific foods. My colleague Dan Charles, who looked at Mondelez International’s efforts to drop the sodium in Ritz crackers and salad dressing, has called it a ”giant   experiment.” But Frieden says it hasn’t been enough. ”Some companies have made significant progress, but across the whole industry we need to see steady reduction,” he says. ”The bottom line is we want to put choice into consumers’ hands about putting it in, since you can’t take it out once it’s in there.” According to data from the Institute of Medicine, the amount of sodium in foods has not, on the whole, changed over the past decade. The worst offenders? Bread, deli meats, pizza, poultry, soups, cheese, pasta dishes, meat mixed dishes and savory snacks like popcorn. As I noted back in 2012, the white bread on your turkey sandwich could be delivering up to 400 mg of sodium, almost as much as the turkey. While many food companies are dragging their feet on sodium, Frieden says widespread reductions are unlikely to hurt their sales. Research shows that people don’t tend to miss most of the excess sodium when it’s gone. ”When you take sodium out and offer people the shaker, they put back only a fraction of what was taken out you often really can’t tell,” he says. A 2014 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that 1 in 10 deaths from cardiovascular disease around the world can be attributed to sodium consumption. And that link is strongest when blood pressure is elevated. The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released Thursday, suggest 1, 500 mg a day of sodium for people with prehypertension and hypertension. So what to do in a   world? Read the label when it’s there. Be wary of foods like deli meats that might not be labeled. And if you’re in New York City, look sharp for the   warnings on certain menu items that became requisite for chain restaurants in December."
"With January comes lots of diet advice. And today comes the official advice from the U. S. government: The Obama administration has released its   update to the Dietary Guidelines. The guidelines, which are revised every five years, are based on evolving nutrition science and serve as the government’s official advice on what to eat. One concrete change: Americans are being told to limit sugar to no more than 10 percent of daily calories. As we’ve reported, lots of Americans consume up to 22 teaspoons a day. To meet the new 10 percent target, they’d need to cut their sugar intake by nearly half  —   to no more than 12 teaspoons a day on a   daily diet. Over the past five years, a growing body of evidence has linked high levels of sugar consumption to an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, even among Americans who are not overweight or obese. Much of the dietary advice included in the new guidelines will sound very familiar and remains unchanged from 2010. For instance, there’s a focus on consuming more fruits and vegetables, more fiber and whole grains, and less salt. Top administration officials within the U. S. departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, who were tasked with writing the guidelines, decided not to include some of the recommendations made by a Dietary Guidelines advisory panel that reviewed the latest nutrition science. For instance, the advisory committee had recommended including sustainability as a factor in making food choices. But administration officials nixed that idea. The committee had also advised telling Americans to cut back on red and processed meats. But that recommendation sparked a vigorous challenge from the meat industry, and the final dietary guidelines do not include any specific advice to cut back on these sources of protein. The recommendation ”was certainly controversial,” says Tom Brenna, a nutrition professor at Cornell University and member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. ”The red and processed meat recommendation, I think, has morphed a bit into a different kind of message,” Brenna tells us. ”A little bit like turning a coin over, in a sense, where if you eat less red meat, one is eating more of other protein foods.” Instead, the guidelines emphasize a ”shift towards other protein foods”  —   including more nuts and seeds and about 8 ounces of seafood per week, based on a     diet. The suggestion to limit meat intake comes in more subtle form. For instance, the guidelines point out that many teen boys and adult men consume more than the recommended 26 ounces a week of protein from animal sources, so they should ”reduce overall intake of protein foods by decreasing intakes of meat, poultry, and eggs.” There’s also an overall recommendation  —   unchanged from 2010  —   to reduce saturated fat intake to less than 10 percent of daily diet, a shift that could, in practice, require limiting intake of red meat. ”The message to eat more seafood, legumes and other protein foods really does mean substitute those for red meat,” Brenna says. ”So I think the message is more or less there, it’s just not as clear.” That message to cut the red meat should have been stated more directly, says Barry Popkin, a nutrition researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. ”I am disappointed that the USDA once again is cutting out recommendations to truly limit red meat intake,” he tells us in an email. The other major change to the government’s nutrition advice: dietary cholesterol. The new guidelines drop a longstanding recommendation to limit cholesterol from foods to 300 milligrams a day. As Alice Lichtenstein, vice chairwoman of the the expert panel that advised the government on the guidelines, told us last February, there isn’t strong evidence that limiting   foods lowers the amount of   LDL cholesterol that ends up in the blood. The guidelines also call on Americans to cut sodium to no more than 2, 300 milligrams per day. Most of us consume far more  —   about 3, 440 milligrams daily on average  —   much of it in the form of foods like pizzas, soups, breads and cured meats. The Dietary Guidelines have clear implications for federal nutrition policy, influencing everything from the national school lunch program to the advice you get at the doctor’s office. But they are written for nutrition professionals, not the general public. Indeed, one has to wonder whether most Americans are even listening. As the Dietary Guidelines report points out,   of Americans don’t eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. In some age groups (think teens) the percentage of people following the guidelines is in the single digits."
"  stock selling. Financial turmoil. Commodity price crashes. Layoffs. Sound familiar? Those were among the troubles piling up as the economy was tanking in 2008. And today, many of those same phrases are turning up in headlines: Stock prices are plunging China is devaluing its currency prices for oil and other commodities are tumbling and miners and drillers are losing jobs all over the world. Consider: On Thursday, the Dow industrial average dropped 392. 41 points, or 2. 3 percent, to 16514. 10. The SP 500 declined 2. 4 percent, and Brent crude futures fell 83 cents to $33. 40 a barrel. Those drops were all tied to the economic slowdown in China, where stocks plunged about 7 percent in 30 minutes before trading was halted for the day. When billionaire George Soros looks at what has been happening in the markets, he fears another global financial meltdown. At an economic forum in Sri Lanka on Thursday, Soros said the turmoil ”reminds me of the crisis we had in 2008,” according to Bloomberg’s account of his speech. In fact, the   trouble already is so bad that ”I would say it amounts to a crisis,” he said. Soros has made billions by correctly reading financial conditions. So is he right again? Maybe, but probably not, according to most mainstream economists. Soros’ skeptics note that the billionaire also warned in 2011 that the Greek debt crisis was ”more serious than the crisis of 2008.” Outside of Greece, it wasn’t. Still, one can see some parallels with 2008. Here are the cases for  —   and against  —   the comparison: YES  —   It’s a lot like 2008. NO  —   It’s not like 2008. "
"Many people have Neanderthal genes in their DNA that predispose them to allergies, two studies published Thursday have found. ”So I suppose that some of us can blame Neanderthals for our susceptibility to common allergies, like hay fever,” says Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who led one of the teams. Scientists once thought of Neanderthals as brutish creatures who had little in common with modern humans. But as more evidence turned up, researchers realized Neanderthals were more sophisticated than previously thought and sometimes mated with early Homo sapiens. ”When modern humans were coming out of Africa, they met the Neanderthals who were living at that time in Europe and western Asia, interbred with them and carried with them some of the Neanderthal DNA as they migrated out into wider parts of the continent,” Kelso says. So Kelso and her colleagues and a second team from the Pasteur Institute decided to search through human DNA collected by the 1, 000 Genomes Project for genes from Neanderthals and a third kind of early human  —   the Denisovans  —   that may be involved in regulating immunity. Both teams identified three genes from these two extinct groups that play a role today in controlling a part of the human immune system known as ”innate immunity.” ”When the body detects that there is some foreign substance in the body, these are the guys that react immediately,” Kelso says. ”It kind of calls in the big guns” by mobilizing key immune system cells to attack. They report the findings in two papers in the American Journal of Human Genetics. These genes would have helped enable early humans to survive new diseases encountered as they traveled throughout the world, Kelso says. ”It’s not surprising, right?” Kelso says. ”Neanderthals were living in Europe and western Asia for 200, 000 years before modern humans arrived on the scene. And that means that they’d had time to adapt to the local environment,” including pathogens. And when humans arrived and bred with the Neanderthals, it makes sense that evolutionary pressures would make it more likely that these ancestors of modern humans retained genes that allowed them to ”adapt quickly and rapidly to local pathogens,” Kelso says. But there appears to be a downside for people who still carry these particular genes today. The same bits of DNA make the immune system more likely to overreact to certain stimuli such as pollen and animal hair, and increase the risk of developing other sorts of allergies. ”This is a   of sorts,” Kelso says. It remains unclear whether those genes also are still protecting people from pathogens, she and other scientists say. ”That’s sort of the $1 million question,” says Lluis   with the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who led the second research team. ”What was good in the past may or may not be good for us today.” But it is clear that Neanderthal genes do more than just affect the immune system. Previous research found Neanderthal DNA seems to influence human hair and skin, for example. ”I think this is really just the tip of the iceberg about how mating with Neanderthals influences all sorts of traits today,” says Josh Akey, a professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington who studies Neanderthal and human DNA."
"At a time when regional tensions are running hot, Iran has taken the unusual step of displaying its missiles that are stored in a vast underground complex. The footage on Iranian television this week shows the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, visiting the subterranean compound. There appear to be   ballistic missiles, which United Nations experts say are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The location of the site was not disclosed. Iran’s nuclear deal with six world powers, reached last July, is still in its early stages, but appears to be on track so far. Iran could soon meet a number of key obligations and sanctions could be lifted soon, a milestone known as ”implementation day.” U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that there have been ”very significant results,” citing Iran’s shipment of its enriched uranium to Russia, among other moves. ”We are days away from implementation if all goes well,” Kerry said. However, Iran has also conducted two ballistic missile tests in recent months, saying this is outside the scope of the nuclear deal. The U. N. announced that this violated a separate U. N. Security Council resolution and Washington said it was preparing new sanctions. Iran has responded with defiance. President Hassan Rouhani, a supporter of the nuclear deal, ordered the military to accelerate planning for more missile production. And Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) invited the Iranian media to see one of its underground ”missile cities.” Western and regional concerns over Iran’s missile program were raised frequently by critics of last summer’s nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers that included the U. S. Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. One recurring question is whether the U. N. or the world powers might hesitate to sanction Iran for missile violations out of fear of endangering the nuclear deal? According to a U. N. panel of experts, a violation took place in October, and while Washington says new sanctions are under review, it’s not clear when or if they will be announced. Iran’s defiant stance on the missile program comes as it races to implement the nuclear deal in order to gain the lifting of financial and banking sanctions and to receive billions of dollars in frozen assets from overseas accounts. In another development, Iran and Saudi Arabia have cut diplomatic relations and have been trading recriminations in recent days. Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric on Saturday on terrorism charges. In Iran, which regards itself as the defender of Shiites everywhere, a mob ransacked and set alight the Saudi embassy and a consulate. However, Iran’s Rouhani, seen as a pragmatist, has condemned the ransacking of diplomatic missions. Senior military and police officials in Iran have also distanced themselves from such behavior. Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told NPR that Shiite Iran likes to push its influence in the region but is wary of    sectarian conflict with Sunni Muslim powers such as Saudi Arabia. ”Iran doesn’t benefit, necessarily, from a sectarian confrontation in the region because its sect of Islam is the minority sect,” Nasr says. ”(Iran) likes to gain influence on the back of secular issues like opposition to Israel or opposition to the U. S. It is the Saudis who see emphasizing Sunni identity as a way of limiting Iran’s ability to sway the Arab population in the region,” he adds."
"On Jan. 2 Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr   an outspoken Shiite cleric who had called for more rights for Saudi Arabia’s marginalized Shiite minority. In response, an Iranian mob attacked the Saudi Embassy in Iran. Saudi Arabia then broke off relations with Iran, and other countries in the region have been choosing sides between these two powerful rivals. Most nations in the region are led by Sunni Muslims, and a number have sided with Saudi Arabia.  Journalist Robin Wright, who has written about the Middle East since 1973, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the conflict between the countries comes at an especially sensitive time. ”The timing of this confrontation is really dangerous, because January was the month of important developments on four different peace initiatives that were really part of the international effort to prevent the Middle East from disintegrating completely,” Wright says. In particular, Wright says that upcoming Syrian peace talks have now been compromised: ”One of the great achievements by the United States was getting a   coalition together to talk about peace that included for the first time both foreign ministers from Iran and from Saudi Arabia, and now, of course, they’ve broken off relations.” Wright is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and a joint fellow at the U. S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center. She wrote about this showdown between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the current issue of The New Yorker. On why the Saudis executed a Shiite cleric on Jan. 2, Sheikh Nimr was a prominent critic of the monarchy. He was a leading cleric of the Shiite sect in Saudi Arabia. The Shiites make up between 10 and 15 percent of Saudi Arabia’s population, but they also live in the most important part of Saudi Arabia, which are the eastern oil fields. They . .. have long felt that they don’t reap the benefits or rewards of the resources on their own territory, whether it’s the financial benefits, the social infrastructure, health benefits or whether it’s a role in the political structure. . .. Sheikh Nimr was a critic, but he had not been involved physically in violence. He had sympathized with the people. He had used pretty tough language when it came to criticizing the monarchy he called it authoritarian and reactionary. . .. He became controversial in 2012 in the aftermath of a new round of protests in the kingdom that were spawned in large part by the Arab Spring, as protests began to spread across the entire Arab world, and he was arrested at that time. He was charged with a number of offenses, including the absence of loyalty to the ruler, fomenting dissent and inciting public violence. On the new king and new internal line of power in Saudi Arabia since King Abdullah died a year ago, There’s a whole new cast of political players inside Saudi Arabia, and the king did something quite startling in terms of the   Saudi politics: He fired the crown prince. He named a nephew as the crown prince and his own    son as both deputy crown prince and minister of defense  —   a person who had very limited government experience, was a largely unknown commodity inside the kingdom  —   and invested a huge amount of power, particularly, in his son. And many of the traditional players in the kingdom were pushed aside. What the king did, really, was carve out what amounts to a new royal family. . .. And there are questions about his frailty on a lot of different levels, and there are questions about how much he’s making a lot of the daily decisions. On the significance of Iran’s elections next month, These elections are among the most important since the revolution, because they will determine the future of the revolution at a very interesting juncture. For [decades]   in Iran have controlled the basic levers of power. That began to change in 2013 with the election of a centrist president, Hassan Rouhani. Iran’s election in February is for two things  —   first for Parliament, a second branch of government, as well as the Assembly of Experts. This is a group of people very much like the [Roman Catholic] College of Cardinals. There are 86 members they are religious clerics and scholars, and they are the ones who will pick the next supreme leader. The supreme leader in Iran is 76. He had prostate surgery 18 months ago. He’s comparatively sturdy, but the actuarial charts would indicate that this Assembly of Experts, which sits for eight years, may well pick the next supreme leader. . .. If the centrists, reformers, moderates in Iran win more seats in Parliament, playing off the gains of the nuclear deal, then you would see two of the three branches of government in the hands of centrists, moderates, reformers. That would be a huge power shift. On the younger generation in Iran, The young today don’t talk about the ideal Islamic government. They’re much more involved in new startups. I’ve been in Iran three times in the last 18 months, and I went to see the young twins who started up the equivalent of Amazon in Iran, and today it’s worth $150 million, and they sell everything from Steinway pianos and perfume to refrigerators and dishwashers, computers. This is a huge operation. I went to see the   old woman who started the Iranian equivalent of Groupon. And the young really have a different agenda. And that’s why the revolutionaries, now in their 60s, 70s, even 80s, realize that something different is happening, and that the numbers are against them."
"Three besieged towns in Syria will soon be receiving humanitarian assistance: The Syrian government said Thursday it will allow aid to enter the villages, after multiple organizations reported deaths from starvation. Bashar Assad’s government is permitting aid to Madaya, which has been under siege by the regime since July, as well as Foua and Kfraya, two villages adjacent to each other that have been besieged by   forces for more than a year, the Associated Press reports. There have been recent reports of deaths from starvation in both regions in recent weeks  —   but particularly horrifying dispatches from Madaya. ”While the   villages get sporadic airdrops, Madaya is cut off,” NPR’s Alison Meuse reported for our Newscast unit. Madaya, which is on the Lebanese border, has also been besieged by Hezbollah, Alison reports. The U. N. has received ”credible reports” of people dying of starvation in Madaya  —   or being killed when they attempt to leave. More than 40, 000 people are in the village, which last received food aid in October, the U. N. says. On Wednesday, The Guardian published accounts from residents of Madaya who described families eating leaves, grass and pets to survive. ” ’People are dying in slow motion,’ said Louay, a social worker from the town told the Guardian in a phone interview, his voice weakened by months of abject hunger. ’We had some flowers growing in pots at home. Yesterday, we picked the petals and ate them, but they were bitter, awful.’ . .. ”It was not possible to verify their claims because of the siege, but several independent accounts were consistent in describing life in a town desperately short of food, medicine and electricity.” The U. N. welcomed the news that aid will be permitted, saying in a statement the organization is preparing humanitarian assistance to be delivered in the next few days. Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, said that since Dec. 1, 23 people have died of starvation at an   facility in Madaya. ”Madaya is now effectively an   prison,” Brice de le Vingne, MSF director of operations, said in a statement. ”The medics we support report injuries and deaths by bullets and landmines among people that tried to leave Madaya.” Freezing temperatures and a lack of medicine are exacerbating the suffering from the siege, MSF says, calling for heating fuel and medical supplies to be included in aid to the village."
"”You have a minute to help that baby breathe,” says Dr. Mark Hathaway. He works as a senior adviser for family planning at USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program, and he is showing me how to get a newborn to take its first breath. And it has to happen now  —   during the ”golden minute” after a baby is born. That’s what the medical world calls the tiny window of time an infant must bring oxygen into its lungs. But I’m not a doctor or a nurse. I’m a reporter. So I am pretty clueless. I lift up the ”baby,” a mannequin called NeoNatalie. Filled with water and covered with soft plastic, it’s heavier than I expected  —   about 5 or 6 pounds, just like a real newborn. A wave of panic washes over me. I do what I remember seeing on TV shows. I lift the baby by its feet and slap its backside. ”Yeah, don’t do that,” says Hathaway. I have a lot of company in the club of clueless birth attendants. In the developing world, there’s a dire shortage of health care workers and nearly half of all births take place without a skilled birth attendant. A nonprofit called Seed Global Health is determined to change things. In 2012, Seed teamed up with the Peace Corps to create the Global Health Service Partnership, a volunteer program that sends U. S. doctors and nurses to Africa to train medical professionals in a variety of techniques, including how to resuscitate a newborn who’s not breathing. Seed Global Health has so far introduced the program in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and, most recently, Swaziland. In the past two years, 73 American volunteers have trained more than 7, 200 African faculty, residents and students. After my failed attempts to help my mannequin breathe, Hathaway shows me the proper procedures. He turns the doll to one side and begins vigorously drying its back and head with a towel to help the baby warm up. ”Sometimes that’s all that’s needed,” says Hathaway. If that doesn’t do the trick, he has all the tools ready for Plans B and C: a suction tool and a bag mask. The suction tool, which looks like a turkey baster, clears out a baby’s nasal passages by removing mucus and gunk from its nose. Using it once is usually enough to help a baby breathe. If 20 seconds go by and the baby still isn’t breathing, Hathaway would turn to the bag mask, which pumps oxygen from the air into the baby’s lung passages. Aliasgar Khaki, a      medical student from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, is one of the trainees. He was taught by Dr. Esther Johnston, a former Seed Global Health volunteer who is now the director of family medicine for the nonprofit. In Khaki’s country, roughly a quarter of newborn deaths are caused by birth asphyxia  —   a lack of oxygen to the lungs. But the university he attends didn’t have the resources to teach its students the proper techniques. ”They had a program, but the problem was that the equipment wasn’t there,” says Johnston. ”It’s hard to teach neonatal resuscitation without a mannequin. You can teach the principles, but if you don’t practice it, it doesn’t get into your muscle memory.” Inspired, Khaki started organizing trainings for other students, nurses and interns in the area, demonstrating with donated NeoNatalie dolls from global health groups like Jhpiego. The NeoNatalie set costs about $70 for nonprofits. Dr. Vanessa Kerry,   of Seed Global Health, hopes the trainees will now show others what they’ve learned. ”If we focused on teaching new doctors and nurses how to be great educators with the idea that one doctor could go on and teach 10, who could go on to teach 10 more, and so on, we could have this great force multiplying effect,” she says. For Hathaway, the future of Seed Global Health’s training program will ultimately rely on the power of the individual. ”What moves things forward is a champion,” he says. ”If you have someone in a health facility who really wants the infant mortality reduction to happen, that person will work hard to keep following through on things.” Since Khaki’s training with Seed Global Health, he’s had a chance to practice his neonatal resuscitation skills in real life. A week after his first training with Johnston, he visited a hospital with a relative. In the nursery ward, he saw a ”code blue” situation: a baby struggling to breathe. The nurse on duty didn’t know what to do. Khaki quickly stepped in and saved the baby’s life, using the    techniques he learned from his training (which is what Hathaway showed me in my  ). How did it make him feel? ”Every cartoon character has their own superhero outfit,” he says. ”Mine was my white lab coat.”"
"Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley announced Thursday that the state is suing the U. S. government over the settlement of Syrian refugees. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, accuses the Obama administration of violating the Refugee Act of 1980 by not consulting states on the placement of refugees. It is the second state to sue the federal government over the issue, NPR’s Debbie Elliott reports. Last month, Texas sued to stop the placement of Syrian refugees in the state. That state even filed a temporary restraining order to block the arrival of the refugees, though it was later withdrawn. Bentley and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott were among dozens of mostly Republican governors who said in November that they would bar Syrian refugees from entering their states, citing fears that the refugees might not have been thoroughly screened and could pose a security risk. ”My number one concern is the safety for the people of Alabama and making sure an outdated, archaic and dangerous process that excludes the states is eliminated,” Bentley said in a statement. The vetting process for Syrian refugees entering the United States and other countries is a lengthy, multistep system. Refugees are initially screened by the U. N. High Commission for Refugees. Then  —   if they are headed to the U. S.  —   NPR’s Brian Naylor says they must be vetted by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, and the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security. And there’s another layer of screening by U. S. officials to determine whether they are indeed refugees. In November, President Obama pushed back against the governors who would close their doors to Syrian refugees: ”These are the same folks, oftentimes, who suggest that they’re so tough that just talking to Putin or staring down ISIL or using some additional rhetoric somehow’s going to solve the problems out there. But apparently they’re scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America as part of our tradition of compassion.” Religious leaders in America have also urged political leaders to demonstrate leadership on the issue, as NPR’s Sarah McCammon has reported. Several leading evangelical Christian churches called on those in Congress to ”respond with compassion and hospitality to those fleeing violence and persecution.” Meanwhile, other governors have opened their doors to refugees. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has said he will welcome refugees, pointing out that they are already screened more closely than visitors in the U. S. on ”tourist visas.” Similarly, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has said his state ”will do all we can to ease their suffering without compromising public safety.”"
"A truck bomb exploded Thursday at a security training camp in the western Libyan city of Zliten, killing dozens of people and injuring more than 100 others. The U. N. special representative to Libya, Martin Kobler, described the bombing as a suicide attack. It’s one of the deadliest attacks in Libya since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Local and international news reports on the death toll varied, with some saying at least 47 people were killed and others putting the number at 65. ”Hours after the blast, rescue crews at the scene had only managed to extract 60 bodies out of the wreckage, said a hospital spokesman, Moamar Kaddi. Libyan officials said they believed there might be dozens more dead,” The Associated Press says. Two nearby hospitals put out urgent requests for blood donations, Libya’s LANA news wire reports. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, though AP says that ”a local Islamic State affiliate has been trying to gain a foothold in Zliten, spreading westward from its central stronghold of Sirte along the North African country’s coast.” NPR’s Leila Fadel reports that the explosion occurred amid intensified fighting at two oil terminals hundreds of miles to the east, ”as the Islamic State extremist group tries to take control of the area. At least seven oil tanks have been set on fire in the fighting.” Libya slid into chaos after Gadhafi was ousted. The country is divided, with an Islamist   government based in the country’s capital, Tripoli, and an internationally recognized government in eastern Libya. That chaos has benefited local affiliates of the Islamic State group. Western powers are pressing the two governments to unite. As Leila reports, ”In December, there was a U. N.  deal to form a unity government, but it has not been seated and was rejected by many Libyan officials on both sides of the aisle.” And because many stakeholders rejected that deal, some observers worried that it could actually create more chaos. But in a statement, Libya’s U. N. representative says Thursday’s attack makes forming a unity government all the more urgent. ”This heinous act once again shows that urgent progress is required toward the formation of the Government of National Accord and the activation and rebuilding of Libyan security forces,” Kobler said."
"Researchers have looked in the stomach of an ancient ice mummy and found the remains of the bacteria that lived in his gut. The results, published in the journal Science, suggest that the community of microbes living on and in humans has existed for millennia. Roughly 5, 300 years ago, this particular man was hiking across the Oetztal Alps between what’s now Italy and Austria when somebody shot him in the back with an arrow. The remains of the fellow, who came to be called Oetzi the Iceman, made headlines when discovered in 1991. ”He’s very  . You can see that all his tissues and also his skin is still preserved,” says Albert Zink, the head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy. Years of study revealed details about the iceman’s diet, health and genetic heritage. But there was one place researchers had yet to probe: his stomach. For a long time, they couldn’t even find it because it had shriveled up over the centuries. Then, about five years ago, a researcher finally spotted it, and saw it was full of material. The scientists wanted a sample, so they went in. During the procedure there were so many doctors in the room it actually felt like a surgery on a living person, Zink says. Inside they found the iceman’s last supper: meat from a deer and an alpine mountain goat. ”He obviously had a big meal before he died,” Zink says. Perhaps more interesting, the researchers found DNA from a type of bacteria that lived in his gut called Helicobacter pylori. Today, H. pylori can be found in about half of the world’s population, according to Martin Blaser a physician and microbiologist at New York University, who wasn’t associated with the study. ”In people who have it, it’s the dominant organism in their stomach,” he says. After it was identified in 1982, scientists pegged it as a harmful pathogen. Researchers have found it causes ulcers and stomach cancer. But more recent work by Blaser and others has shown it also seems to provide benefits. It can protect against some common illnesses, including acid reflux and asthma. ”The story is complicated,” Blaser says. ”And that actually fits in very nicely with this paper because it’s consistent with an organism that’s been around for a very long time in humans.” In fact, H. pylori is part of a much larger community of microbes that live on, and in, virtually every part of the body. Increasingly, researchers suspect this microbe influences our health in many different ways. Finding H. pylori in such an ancient specimen seems to confirm that it has been doing so for a very long time. ”It’s like finding a fossil,” he says. On the basis of genetic evidence, Blaser believes the H. pylori bacterium has been helping and hindering humans since way before the iceman. He thinks it has been passing from generation to generation for hundreds of thousands of years."
"Over 16 seasons and 368 episodes as prosecutor Jack McCoy on Law  Order, the workaday artistry of Sam Waterston was easy to take for granted, like the foundation to an especially durable piece of architecture. Such are the consequences of being part of ”What’s on?” for such a long stretch of his career. Yet in a different context, the same qualities Waterston brought to the role  —   that gentle (if occasionally righteous) vocal tone, a moral seriousness, a somewhat patrician East Coast air  —   can be better appreciated. The retiring professor he plays in Anesthesia isn’t exactly a stretch, but what depth this tidy    drama does possess comes mostly from his Gregory   authority in the lead role.    Tim Blake Nelson’s ensemble piece operates roughly like the solar system, with Waterston as the sun and the rest of the cast as planets orbiting at various distances around his gravitational center. The few closest to him get some heat, but the majority are left to drift in the cold and darkness, waiting for the Creator to acknowledge their presence. (Glenn Close, a big star with desolate screen time, would be the Jupiter of this metaphor.) Some of the actors are so marginalized that they risk becoming Pluto, such minuscule footnotes in the narrative that their very planethood comes under question. There’s order to Nelson’s universe, of course, as there is with all    movies, and it’s to his credit that Anesthesia is bound by less obvious themes than something like Crash. The Big Bang event finds Waterston’s Walter getting mugged after buying flowers for his wife (Close) at a neighborhood bodega. The matter of who’s doing the mugging is granted a continuance until the closing act, when Nelson finally makes all the relationships in the film clear. In the meantime, he flashes back to other key characters from a week earlier  —   some family members, many players to be named later. Chief among them is Walter’s beleaguered son (Nelson) whose wife (Jessica Hecht) is facing an ovarian cancer scare while their teenage children (Ben Konigsberg and Hannah Marks) are testing their boundaries. There are also seemingly unrelated threads like a suburban mom (Gretchen Mol) who suspects her husband of having an affair and a slick attorney (Michael K. Williams) who tries to save his childhood best friend (K. Todd Freeman) from drug addiction. As for Walter, he faces retirement with   grace while seizing the opportunity to package the film’s philosophy in a closing lecture. Kristen Stewart turns up as a lonely college student given to   but she too exists apart from the rest of the characters, leaving the audience to guess what relationship she has to them. This is a deliberate strategy on Nelson’s part, since Anesthesia is about the numbing disconnection of modern life, even among immediate family members and close friends who should know each other intimately but exist on a separate plane. Though film is a natural medium for dealing with alienation  —   speaking as it does with people sitting alone in the dark  —   a concept that abstract isn’t easy to communicate. Nelson handles his actors beautifully  —   to the point where we lament not seeing more of them  —   and the incident at the bodega is staged as an elegant mystery the film is patient to resolve. But the effect of keeping the various subplots apart for so long is enormously frustrating, because we don’t know what Mol’s frustrated suburbanite or Stewart’s morose student or Williams and Freeman’s strained friendship have to do with one another. They’re each like underwritten ballads in search of a common rhyme, compelling only once Nelson decides it’s time to harmonize them. By then, it’s too late."
"A few days back, All Tech got a question from an NPR listener that got us curious. Tim Callahan from Seattle wrote: ”A friend asked how texting  —   in all its forms (admittedly a squishy thing to corral)  —   is contributing to global warming? After saying, ’minimally. ..’ I thought about how to answer that question. Putting aside the sunk contribution caused by the manufacture and transport of the device you text with, how much does the battery emit   generate while a person does a typical or somehow average text? . .. Can you help quantify?” I tracked down someone who’d get us to the answer: greenhouse gas footprinting expert Mike  . Climate impact calculations are just the sort of thing he does for work at Small World Consulting at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. And estimating the impact of a text message is exactly the thing he did for his 2010 book How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint Of Everything. A carbon footprint, he explains, is a way of estimating the total climate change impact of something you do or buy  —   all along the supply chain, from manufacturing to delivery to use  —   with a metric called carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e, which translates all the different greenhouse gases into a comparable amount of CO2 by impact.   walks us through the impact of a text message, how it compares to emails and regular mail  —   and what happens if a text message itself is a heated one. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. To me, there are two questions in this: What is the carbon footprint of a text message, and how much could that footprint, multiplied by all the text messages around the world, contribute to climate change. Can you help me decipher that and get the answers? I’m finding myself speaking to the pages of my own book, which is a slightly strange experience. The book lists all these carbon footprints in order of magnitude, from very small to very large. The largest was burning all the world’s fossil fuels. And the smallest, the very first item in the book, is the carbon footprint of a text message. This is a little out of date, about five years ago. The technology has changed, somewhat  —   not massively, but somewhat  —   and the estimate I made at the time was 0. 014 grams of CO2e. Now for perspective, the average U. K. person has a carbon footprint of about 15 tons a year, which is something like 35 kilograms a day. So 0. 014 grams is a very small amount. The world’s carbon footprint is roughly 50 billion tons a year. That’s even harder to compare. We’re talking about a very big number against a very, very, very small number. So it’s tiny. All carbon footprints are about bang for buck. So it’s: How much does text messaging do for our lives? Against: What’s the impact? When we wrote this a few years ago, we estimated the carbon footprint of all the world’s text messages to be 32, 000 tons of CO2e per year. By now, it will have grown quite a bit, but 32, 000 tons is still a tiny figure for all the world’s text messaging. Just think of what text messaging does. It’s the way that I keep in contact with my kids when they go out at night. . .. There are whole communities in developing countries, where people are in contact with their friends, relatives, colleagues and so on  —   through text, in a way which they would not otherwise be in contact at all. What did you include in the estimate of the carbon footprint of a text message? We took into consideration the energy used by both the sending phone and the receiving phone, and a proportion for the embodied carbon in the manufacture of the phone, which is a bit of an unknown because you have to make an estimate about how many text messages that phone is going to (handle) over its lifetime. And also the network. So cell tower, data transfers, data centers? That’s right. In that sense, if we do what the reader asked us to do and set us aside the carbon footprint of manufacture and transport of the device, so that’s an even smaller portion of that already tiny amount. It’s really tiny. The other thing about texts is that they’re so simple and basic, aren’t they, all you’re doing is transmitting a very simple message, you’re not even putting any fonts on it or anything. But the minute you start doing things like, ”Oh, I’ll send a photograph while I’m at it,” that dramatically changes it. Suddenly you’re sending a lot more data  —   up goes the footprint. But what about emoji? Well, the emoji is all right, that’s just like a character. OK. Mike   says the emoji is all right. Exactly. The emoji is fine, we can relax about that. But when you start sending an   selfie, right, that’s changing it. How does it compare to an email? It depends on what kind of an email it is. It depends on how long it is, depends on what happens to it. . .. If you read it on a computer screen, then your computer is using energy all the time that you’re staring at the screen. If it’s a spam email, it’s actually got a smaller carbon footprint because chances are, it gets put in a spam folder and no human being ever wastes any time on it. But if it’s got a long, tiresome attachment on it, then it gets a lot bigger as well, just because the size of it is bigger. . .. The estimate we made for an email was about 4 grams (of CO2e). So we’re comparing 4 grams for an email and 0. 014 grams for a text message, so we’re talking about a factor of 300 between the two. How about a phone call? A phone call  —   well, a phone call is a lot less than a video call, for example. Which is a lot, lot less than traveling and meeting up   . It’s immeasurably less than getting on an airplane to meet somebody. Again, it goes back to, how much is it bringing into your life, how much is it helping you to live well and what’s it replacing? What about sending a letter by mail? An estimate for a letter is 140 grams of CO2e for a   letter made from recycled paper and when you receive it, you recycle it. That sounds like a lot of text messages. We can do the ratio here, how many text messages for a letter? It’s four orders of magnitude, factor of 10, 000  —   10, 000 texts for one letter. Does it make a difference, if they are really heated text messages? Well, it’s what people do! If it’s such a heated text message that it makes them get in a car and drive straight over to you at 110 miles an hour, then that’s high carbon footprint. So the big takeaway for this particular reader is that a text message is a pretty negligible amount. But is there something else to keep in mind for people who are asking these kinds of questions? The big message is: If you are trying to be a responsible person in carbon terms, you should pick your battles. It’s not about going around nagging yourself about everything you do. It’s about finding two or three important things that will make a significant difference that you’re able to change and ideally, in a way that would make your life better, not worse."
"More than two months after a natural gas storage well in Southern California began uncontrollably spewing methane gas, the governor of California has declared a state of emergency. The well at the Aliso Canyon storage facility, just north of Los Angeles, is releasing tens of thousands of kilograms of methane per hour. An analysis in November showed the well, over the course of a month, put out a quarter of the state’s total output of the potent greenhouse gas, reports NPR member station KPCC. The leak isn’t expected to be capped for months. It’s invisible to the naked eye but can be viewed with infrared cameras. Gov. Jerry Brown has declared the state of emergency based in part on the ”prolonged and continuing” nature of the massive blowout, he said in a statement. Brown has ordered the Southern California Gas Co. to identify a backup plan for stopping the leak if the current strategy  —   drilling relief wells, then filling the leak with mud and cement  —   doesn’t work. He promised that the state will ensure the gas company covers all the costs of addressing the leak, without passing the expense on to consumers. The governor is also initiating emergency regulations at gas storage facilities across the state, including regular inspection and testing and ongoing measurement of the gas flow within wells. As we’ve previously reported, the leak raises concerns about environmental impact  —   methane is a greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere far faster than carbon dioxide  —   as well as the health of residents at Porter Ranch, a nearby residential community. Residents have complained of headaches, nosebleeds and nausea, and two nearby elementary schools have shut down. SoCal Gas is being sued for not quickly informing nearby residents about the leak. The gas company, which acknowledges that the odorant in natural gas is ”unpleasant” but maintains that the leak ”does not pose an imminent threat to public safety,” has paid to relocate thousands of families living near the breached storage facility. Demand for rental properties in the area has skyrocketed, and member station KPCC has reported on potential  . Two weeks ago, Ingrid Lobet reported for NPR on how the leak was affecting local families  —   and why it’s so hard to shut down. The leak isn’t tidy, an expert explained to Lobet: The escaping gas can’t simply be siphoned off. And as the Los Angeles Times detailed earlier this week, the pressure of the escaping gas makes it impossible to stop the leak by filling the well from the top. A methane leak of this scale appears to be without precedent, representatives of both an environmental group and the gas company told Lobet."
"Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are battling it out for first place in the Iowa GOP caucuses next month. But beneath the battle for first place, two other   candidates are fighting hard here: Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. The two Florida Republicans have almost no shot at winning Iowa, but their respective superPACs and campaigns are duking it out on the airwaves. ”Over the last three years, Rubio has missed important national security hearings, and missed more total votes than any other senator,” says an ad airing this week in Iowa produced by a superPAC allied with Bush. ”Politics first, that’s the Rubio way.” And a superPAC for Rubio is pushing right back, in an ad calling Bush ”desperate” and defending the senator on national security. ”The fact: Rubio has attended more national security briefings than any other candidate.” So why are two Republicans, who are nearly certain to lose Iowa, battling it out here? ”If you come strong through Iowa in the top three or four, I think you really do have some momentum going on,” said Ken Anderson, a retiree and lifelong Republican who is still undecided. He attended a Rubio town hall in Marshalltown on Wednesday and said he gets why Bush and Rubio are going after each other even though they’re both running way behind. That’s it: momentum. A strong   showing for a candidate like Bush or Rubio could change the momentum for them going into New Hampshire, another critical early state with its primary just one week after Iowa. Even   Trump supporters, like retired veteran Larry Warnell, say a   victory could be a good thing in Iowa ”because in the last couple of elections, No. 1s never finished, I don’t think.” The last Republican candidate to win both the Iowa caucuses and the nomination was George W. Bush in 2000. While candidates like Trump and Cruz have established themselves as ”outsiders” in this race, the remaining candidates are still jockeying for support from more traditional Republican voters in Iowa, like    Justin Chappell. He’s a   owner who describes himself as a moderate. Chappell is still deciding among Bush, Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. ”It’ll be interesting to see who all of the   moderates, which one gets the most votes,” he said. J. Ann Selzer, the most respected pollster in Iowa, says the most important thing a candidate can still do is win. But if Cruz and Trump take first and second place, Selzer says, the   finisher can still be meaningful if  —   and only if  —   the rest of the pack is far behind. ”Who can be a substantial third place? Because if you’re just just 1 point ahead of the next person or the next person or the next person, then nobody gets that third ticket,” she said. ”There’s no third ticket out of Iowa. It’s a virtual tie.” No candidate would claim to be running for third place, but it may explain why candidates like Bush and Rubio have spent millions on the airwaves. And why they both plan to be back in Iowa next week."
"What if your friend bragged that she’d just bought a brand of jeans because she’d checked out the company’s practices and made sure they were ethical  —   no child labor, no polluting the environment by the manufacturer. Maybe you’d thank her for the info, even be inspired to change your own buying habits. But a study suggests a lot more of us would have an opposite reaction: ”Boy,” we’d think, ”that friend is ’preachy’ and ’less fashionable.’ ” The study, which will be published in the July edition of the Journal of Consumer Psychology but is already available online, builds on earlier research suggesting that most shoppers experience a kind of ethical dissonance: If we’re actually told that a specific product was produced in an unethical way, we won’t want to buy it. Yet given the choice, most of us would rather not know the backstory. We won’t make the effort to, say, download an app or check out a website that could give us ethical ratings of manufacturers. And the reason we avoid this extra   is at least partly that we’re unconsciously afraid of being upset by what we’ll discover. ”Anger is one of the emotions people most often feel if they find out a company is doing something unethical,” says Rebecca Reczek, a professor of marketing at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business. ”So choosing not to find out is a way to avoid that kind of negative emotion.” Reczek and several colleagues undertook the new study to explore this shopping dynamic further. Reczek noticed that the proliferation of social media and consumer review sites over the past decade has made it a lot easier to see how other people’s buying habits compare with our own. And we can tell not only what others are buying but why they’re buying it. Suddenly those few   who choose ethically made products can alert the rest of us. Reczek wondered how this new information might affect us. Among other experiments, the study asked several dozen undergraduate students to rate four brands of jeans that would differ along four measures  —   the style (boot cut or regular cut) the wash (regular or dark) the price and, lastly, whether the company used child labor. The participants were told that due to time constraints they could only view information about two of the four measures before coming up with their ranking. Not surprisingly, given the previous research, more than 85 percent of students did not opt to find out whether child labor was used. Then Reczek and her collaborators asked those   ”willfully ignorant” participants a new kind of question: What was their opinion of consumers who choose to research a clothing brand’s labor practices before making a purchase? The answers were scathing. The willfully ignorant participants tended to denigrate these ethical consumers  —   not just as preachy and unfashionable but as ”odd” and ”less sexy.” Why the hate? Further testing suggested that the willfully ignorant participants may have been unconsciously compensating for the guilt they felt when compared with ethical consumers. ”You feel badly that you were not ethical when someone else was,” says Reczek. ”It’s a threat to your sense of self, to your identity. So to recover from that, you put the other person down.” How did the researchers determine that this kind of subconscious   to guilt was likely at work? Among other things, as part of the experiment, the researchers gave a subset of participants the chance to donate to a charity  —   in effect, a chance to prove to themselves that they were an inherently good person  —   just before asking them to give their opinion of ethical consumers. In these instances, the willfully ignorant tended to judge ethical consumers somewhat less harshly. Perhaps most worrisome, says Reczek, the study found that when we belittle   consumers, the process may have lasting effects. In a related experiment, the researchers found that consumers who did not consider environmental concerns when choosing a backpack  —   and who denigrated those consumers who did  —   were later less likely to support an online pledge to support environmental sustainability. The takeaway for advocacy groups that want to encourage more responsible consumer habits is clear, says Reczek: ”To get people to be more ethical, do not ever present your message as, ’If you’re not doing this, you’re a bad person.’ All that’s going to do is to make the person reading the message say, ’You’re a lunatic and I’m ignoring you.’ ”"
"Poor bats. Already typecast as movie villains and Halloween bad guys, the persecuted creatures have also been pummeled recently by a rapidly spreading fungal disease. Now this. A new map published in the February edition of The American Naturalist highlights the hot spots where diseases are most likely to spill over from winged to bipedal mammals. The biggest hot spot is in   Africa, where people continue to hunt bats as bushmeat. Southeast Asia is another danger zone. A large swath of South America, meanwhile, emerged as a region where bats carry a particularly diverse array of viruses, although contact between bats and people there happens less frequently. By identifying areas where the variety of viruses is richest and the risk for transmission is highest, the team hopes to help focus resources on the most important targets for research and public health efforts. ”What we’re trying to do is point out these   areas so that we can find out why they’re high risk,” says Liam Brierley, a disease ecologist at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom and   of the article about zoonotic bat viruses that featured the map. Another hope is to stop diseases from spreading beyond bats in the first place. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, bats are particularly good at carrying diseases that also infect people. At his last count, Brierley says, the list of shared viruses totaled 33. Researchers now suspect that Ebola likely occurred in bats before infecting primates and then people. Bats have also been implicated in the spread of SARS, rabies and more. Previous studies have identified some hot spots where new diseases are most likely to spread from wild animals to people. To refine this geographic search for   zoonotic diseases with a specific focus on bats, Brierley and colleagues started with more than 100 years of data about which bat species carry which viruses. They turned those data into a map showing where the variety of diseases is expected to be greatest. Then they added layers of information about the kinds of situations that increase the risk for    disease transmission, such as the expansion of farmland and urban areas into bat habitats. The first identified outbreak of the Nipah virus (an often severe and frequently deadly disease that can cause brain inflammation) for example, occurred in the late ’90s and was linked to pig farms that bordered bat habitats in Malaysia. Bats very likely dropped fruit into pigpens, Brierley says. The pigs became infected with exposure to bat urine and saliva, and people became infected after close contact with infected pigs. Now people regularly spread the disease to other people in Bangladesh and India. Preventing disease transmission from bats is not a lost cause, says William Karesh, a zoonotic disease expert at EcoHealth Alliance, an international conservation organization in New York. One important strategy, he says, is to educate hunters about proper hygiene, like washing hands and avoiding direct contact with bat blood. Sometimes, prevention efforts are remarkably simple and cheap, he adds. One outbreak of Nipah virus in Bangladesh was traced to pots left out overnight to collect date palm sap from trees. Bats were contaminating the pots with feces and urine, which was spreading disease as people consumed the sap. All it took was covering the pots at night to keep people from getting sick. Another benefit of the new research is that it can give advance warning to the veterinarians and doctors who treat sick livestock and people about where they need to be most alert to the unexpected, Karesh says. Medical professionals in parts of Africa, Asia and South America, in particular, should be on the lookout for new diseases if tests for traditional diseases turn up negative. What the results don’t mean, Brierley says, is that people should fear bats. After all, there is plenty of good that bats do for us. They eat insects. And they pollinate some crops, including coffee. It’s not their fault that we keep encroaching on their habitat or that we share susceptibility to so many of the same viruses. ”We can’t expand into natural bat habitat,” Brierley says, ”and then blame the bats.”"
"The latest batch of emails released from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department contains more retroactively classified correspondence from her controversial private server. The newly public 3, 007 pages of emails include 66 documents with upgrades to ”Confidential” status, according to a State Department official. They were not classified at the time they were sent. The Democratic presidential candidate and her campaign have repeatedly stressed she never knowingly sent any classified information over her private server. The new emails came at nearly 2 a. m. ET Friday, hours after the State Department had initially promised the latest release. The new documents were an effort to comply with a court order to release 82 percent of Clinton’s correspondence by the end of 2015  —   a goal the agency fell short of last week. But the new material brings it to that goal, and 43, 148 pages have now been released since May. One particular email drew scrutiny Friday  —   a June 17, 2011, exchange between Clinton and adviser Jake Sullivan. In that email string, she tells Sullivan she did not receive the evening’s talking points  —   typically specifics used to speak to the press and for briefings. ”They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it,” he writes to Clinton. She responds, ”If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” Much of the email, including its subject line, were redacted, making it difficult to discern the topic and full context of the document. At Friday’s briefing, State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to talk about Clinton’s email practices specifically but said the State Department searched the system and ”could find no evidence and no indication that the talking points, the documents in question in that email was emailed to Secretary Clinton.” He also pointed out that it is not uncommon for unclassified documents to be created, edited and shared on a classified system. In other words, just because something is on a classified system doesn’t mean it was classified. White House press secretary Josh Earnest was also asked about the document, but he said he wasn’t familiar with the particulars and referred reporters to Clinton’s campaign. An NPR request to the Clinton campaign for comment has not yet been returned. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley,   said in a statement that the specific email ”raises a host of serious questions and underscores the importance of the various inquiries into the transmittal of classified information through her   email server.” Grassley asked, ”How long has the State Department been aware of this email? Why is it just now being released? Was her instruction actually carried out? If so, has the FBI opened a criminal inquiry into these circumstances? President Obama’s State and Justice Departments owe the American people swift and accurate answers to these questions. The former Secretary of State needs to finally come clean and be transparent about the email practices she used during her tenure at the department.” Clinton has defended her use of a private email server during her tenure at the State Department, but it has become a flashpoint in her presidential campaign and provided ammunition for her   GOP opponents. In another email released Friday, Clinton ironically commented on a State Department employee’s use of personal email for official business. ”I was surprised that he used personal email account if he is at State,” she replied when Sullivan forwarded her the staffer’s observations on Libya. The emails also included several from Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton friend and confidant who has been the subject of scrutiny into how much advice he provided to Clinton at State while he was working for the Clinton Foundation. Clinton told the Benghazi congressional committee last October that she ”did not ask [Blumenthal] to send me the information that he sent me.” But last year, when asked during a campaign event about her ”old friends,” she said she would continue talking to them. The new batch of documents includes many from Blumenthal on myriad topics, including Libya, Egypt, Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood. He cites his own ”sources with direct access” to   people. Clinton often passes them along and thanks Blumenthal for several. ”Best info yet,” she wrote to Sullivan about one. Some of her exchanges with Blumenthal are more lighthearted, in which she jokes that she can’t believe she has become a ”meme” after her infamous ”texting” photo went viral and spurred ”Texts from Hillary.” ”Better than a candidate,” Blumenthal writes in April 2012, and then gives her advice on how to handle the upcoming presidential election. ”Good not to campaign, good not to go to convention, good on revelations on Bin Laden raid, but should use speeches like VMI, Naval Academy to establish new pivot, new redefinition of U. S. strength in new era that also redefines the relative position of others,” he tells her. ”Should say there is a new ’metric’ of international affairs (lots of people like that word, as much as ’meme’). You’ve done ’smart power.’ . .. By establishing this metric, setting the standards for international conduct and behavior, you make another point: that you have reestablished U. S. leadership.” Another email also shows Clinton sending a note to daughter Chelsea  —   using Chelsea’s alias ”Diane Reynolds”  —   on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks in Libya that killed U. S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. ”Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al   group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow. Let’s try again later,” Clinton wrote. Ally Mutnick and Michele Kelemen contributed to this report. "
"Nearly six months after his most recent escape from a maximum security prison in Mexico, drug kingpin Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzmán has been caught, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced via Twitter. ”Mission accomplished: we got him,” Nieto wrote Friday afternoon, informing the public that El Chapo had been apprehended. Guzmán was captured at a motel on the outskirts of Los Mochis, Sinaloa, after a shootout with Mexican marines that left five people dead and one Mexican marine wounded, according to the Associated Press. Sinaloa, located on the country’s west coast, is Guzmán’s home state. The AP adds that authorities seized an arsenal of weapons in the raid to arrest the drug kingpin, including ”two armored vehicles, eight rifles, one handgun and a   grenade launcher.” U. S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch praised the government of Mexico and Mexican law enforcement, but she did not comment on the possibility of extradition to the U. S. ”Today’s capture of Joaquin ’Chapo’ Guzman Loera by Mexican authorities is a blow to the international   syndicate he is alleged to have led, a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States, and a vindication of the rule of law in our countries,” she said in a statement. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the Justice Department, confirmed that the U. S. seeks ”extradition whenever defendants subject to U. S. charges are apprehended in another country.” The U. S. has submitted extradition requests in the past. Guzmán, who leads the powerful Sinaloa cartel, narrowly escaped recapture in October, when Mexican marines located him in a remote mountainous area. Officials said that in that encounter, the drug trafficker suffered wounds to his face and a leg. The case has attracted wide attention  —   particularly after surveillance video shot by a security camera in Guzmán’s cell showed one of the world’s most notorious criminals pacing around before dropping behind a partition in the shower area of his cell. That cell was in the Altiplano prison, a maximum security facility about 55 miles from Mexico City. Guzmán spent less than 18 months there before his accomplices used a nearly   tunnel to ferry him to freedom. Before he was captured in February of 2014, Guzmán had been on the lam since 2001  —   when he escaped from another maximum security prison that was reportedly nearly identical to the one he broke out of last year. After visiting Guzmán’s recently vacated cell at Altiplano last year, NPR’s Carrie Kahn reported that the authorities believed that whoever built the tunnel must have used blueprints and a GPS to construct it. She added, ”Mexicans vacillate between disbelief and making jokes about the escape to outright anger over the spectacle, the embarrassment, and showing the world the great weaknesses in their institutions.”"
"Staff Sgt. Matthew McClintock died in Afghanistan this week. He was 30 and leaves a wife and infant son. McClintock was part of a training and advising mission. But he died fighting the Taliban along with Afghan troops. American forces are increasingly being drawn back into the fight, even though President Obama declared an end to the combat mission last fall. Last year, 22 American military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, half of the deaths classified as ”hostile.” McClintock, the first American to be killed this year, was with his fellow Green Berets when they went to Marjah, in Helmand province, a town grimly familiar to American troops. Dozens of Marines were killed there five years ago, and since then the Taliban have slipped back in. So the Americans once again came to help. In the gun battle that killed McClintock on Tuesday, two other Americans were wounded, along with three Afghan troops. ”They are forward deployed with Afghan commando units and they are very much in the thick of these fights,” says retired Lt. Gen. Dave Barno, who once led U. S. forces in Afghanistan and now teaches at American University. ”Special operations forces are going to be in the thick of this coming battle whether we want to talk about that or not.” But administration officials choose their words carefully when they talk about it. That’s because in October, President Obama insisted America’s combat mission was over and Afghan troops were now in the lead. ”Our forces therefore remain engaged in two narrow but critical missions,” he said, ”training Afghan forces and supporting a counterterrorism mission against the remnants of  .”    —   not the Taliban. But it appears that training mission is becoming more of a partnering effort with Afghan forces battling Taliban fighters. And that makes things more difficult for officials like Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook. When asked if the combat mission continues for American troops, he said they were in harm’s way. Two days later, he was asked again. ”This was clearly a combat situation,” he said, ”as we have seen painfully in this particular instance.” A ”combat situation”  —   not a mission. This week’s firefight by American and Afghan commandos was not the first. Back in October, American special operators headed to Kunduz, after the Taliban seized the northern city and scattered the police force. The Afghan troops needed American help once again. The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, described what happened next. Afghan commandos streamed into a police compound in Kunduz with American special operations forces. ”By the early morning hours of Oct. 3, U. S. [special operations forces] at the compound had been engaged in heavy fighting for five consecutive days and nights,” he said. Heavy fighting for five days and nights is not unusual. Throughout the country, the Taliban are gaining ground. Casualties are increasing by double digits among Afghan forces. Barno, the retired general, said it’s likely more American troops will be drawn into such battles. ”So I think the American people are grown up enough to accept this,” he says, ”if we’re willing to talk about this honestly by our political leadership. And that, unfortunately, has not been the case so far.” There’s still time for that talk. The traditional fighting season doesn’t even begin for three more months."
"West Indian manatees and some colonies of green sea turtles have been in danger of extinction for decades. But scientists have some good news about the   sea creatures, which both have their largest U. S. populations in Florida. The U. S Fish and Wildlife Service says the West Indian manatee should be reclassified from ”endangered” to the improved status of ”threatened.” The agency says threats to manatees are being addressed  —   and they are responding with major population growth. Conservation officials say they counted only 1, 267 manatees in Florida when aerial surveys began in 1991. Now, the state hosts more than 6, 300 manatees. The FWS puts the total worldwide population at 13, 000. ”The manatee is one of the most charismatic and instantly recognizable species,” said Michael Bean, principal deputy assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the Department of the Interior in a statement. ”It’s hard to imagine the waters of Florida without them, but that was the reality we were facing before manatees were listed under the Endangered Species Act. While there is still more work to be done to fully recover manatee populations, their numbers are climbing and the threats to the species’ survival are being reduced.” Now there’s a   comment period on the proposed change. Then FWS will review any new information and make its final decision about the manatee’s status. Federal protections and conservation efforts would not be cut off, the agency says. Even so, the move has critics, NPR member station WLRN reports. ”U. S. Rep. Vern Buchanan,   sent a letter Thursday to the Fish and Wildlife Service asking it to withdraw the proposed status change, calling the move ’misguided and premature’ and saying manatees face threats such as collisions with boats, habitat loss and red tide.” Meanwhile, 2015 has been a good year for another species in Florida  —   green sea turtles  —   as NPR reported on Morning Edition. At The Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, scientists counted 14, 152 nests last year. In 2001, there were 198. The species is generally classified as ”threatened,” but breeding colonies in Florida and the Pacific Coast of Mexico are listed as ”endangered.” Llew Ehrhart is a professor emeritus at the University of Central Florida, and he’s been working with sea turtles for more than 40 years. ”By all rights, and what we know about extinction vortex, they should have just slid into oblivion —   but they didn’t.” ”Here’s one example where we took action soon enough and the species responded,” Ehrhart says.   conservation efforts are finally working, he says. The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service is starting to consider upgrading these green sea turtles from ”endangered” to ”threatened,” like with the manatees. You can listen to the full story on green sea turtles here:"
"Top law enforcement and intelligence officials were in Silicon Valley on Friday to meet top brass at tech companies. The topic: counterterrorism. The government wants the biggest Internet brands to weed out ISIS recruitment online, and even help run advertising campaigns against ISIS. The meeting came as the Obama administration announced the creation of a task force of federal agencies to counter violent extremism. Media were not invited to the Silicon Valley meeting. NPR talked with spokespeople from several companies who were attending, and got a copy of the email invite. It’s a powerhouse list: White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and National Intelligence Director James Clapper. Apple CEO Tim Cook was there. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo were among the other companies that confirmed attendance. The word ”encryption” is mentioned in the invite. But companies who’d be very relevant to that conversation, like Cisco, were not invited. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said encryption was likely to come up at the meeting, but he described it as a ”thornier” issue. The agenda appeared to focus on social media. Specifically: how content that has terrorist overtones can be taken off the Internet and how Silicon Valley can be agents of the state, if you will, to use its creativity and tech prowess to come up with media campaigns against ISIS. A spokesperson from one company at the meeting, who didn’t want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issues involved, said it’s almost as if the administration wants a Madison Avenue ad campaign, only coming from tech geeks. Another criticized the event as a ”bait and switch.” Companies were told, more or less: ”Hey, the government wants to brainstorm with the very best engineers about how technology can help fight terrorism,” the second source said. It was similar in tone to the White House’s call for tech support after the massive failure of Healthcare. gov. But as the planning for Friday’s meeting evolved, so did the tone. And in the 11th hour, companies fought to bring their lawyers, because it’s clearly not just a technical conversation. Earnest, the White House spokesman, likened terrorism online to child pornography. But tech experts counter that it’s not a fair comparison. Child porn is mostly about images, typically ones in which a child is in a state of undress or duress. Terrorist content is far more complicated. It’s not just beheading videos (which are of course removed by websites). It can also be points of view or endorsements. If a person tweets in agreement with a sheikh who has called for violence but the tweet is not explicitly making such a call, should it be deleted or flagged? You can see where the lines get blurry on free speech. Reports of the meeting with tech leaders leaked Thursday. While the timing may seem abrupt, the meeting was the follow up to one speech by President Obama, and the prelude to another. In early December, in response to the San Bernardino killings, Obama urged the tech sector to step up, ”make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.” And of course next Tuesday, he delivers his final State of the Union address. Meanwhile in Congress, a Republican and Democrat have   to ask for more too, calling for a new national commission on security and technology. Rep Michael McCaul,   and Sen. Mark Warner,  . don’t specify what exactly that commission would do, but they describe the challenge in recent Washington Post  : ”The same tools that terrorists and criminals are using to hide their nefarious activities are those that everyday Americans rely on to safely shop online, communicate with friends and family, and run their businesses.” The president needs to say something, and Friday’s gathering was designed to consolidate ideas."
"Tucked inside the U. S. government’s latest update to its official eating advice is this recommendation: ”Drink water instead of sugary drinks”  —   aka soda. The bluntness of this statement is remarkable, in part, because the Dietary Guidelines released Thursday are, in other ways, anything but direct. For instance, as we’ve reported, instead of explicitly telling Americans to cut their intake of red and processed meats, as an advisory panel of nutrition experts had recommended, the final guidelines hint at meat reduction in subtle terms. That change in messaging may have been linked to pressure from the meat industry. By contrast, the government’s language on choosing water over sugary drinks is as clear as a glass of H2O. It is not, however, all that easy to find. We spotted it inside this MyPlate, My Wins tip sheet, part of a new campaign the U. S. Department of Agriculture also launched Thursday. MyPlate, if you recall, is the icon of a dinner plate divided into portions of fruits and vegetables, grains and proteins that replaced the food pyramid in 2011. Unlike the Dietary Guidelines, which are written for nutrition professionals, policymakers and the food industry, MyPlate is for the general public. It’s an image that ends up in nutrition education materials in doctor’s offices, textbooks, school cafeterias and lots of other places. Last year, as we reported, a coalition of nutrition scientists and public health advocates called on the government to add water to the ubiquitous MyPlate icon. Numerous studies have linked sugary drinks like soda to obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Adding some sort of water symbol to the MyPlate icon would really bring home the message that water, not soda, should be the beverage of choice, advocates argued. That didn’t happen, and, in fact, the USDA says it has no plans to alter the MyPlate icon, which the agency says will remain the visual centerpiece of its healthy eating messaging. Instead, we got the infographic above  —   what the USDA says is the first of several new tip sheets to be released. As you can see, the message to drink water, not sugary drinks, shows up there  —   in the very bottom,   corner. While the language is clear, the visuals around it are hardly compelling. ”Ideally, [the water symbol] would be part of the main MyPlate image. That’s the thing that’s going to get the most publicity,” says Michael Jacobson, executive director for the Center for Science in The Public Interest, who was among those who signed the letter calling for stronger language on water in the Dietary Guidelines. It’s also worth noting that, while 100 percent fruit juices also pack a sugary wallop, the MyPlate, MyWins tip sheet lists them as an acceptable form of getting your daily fruit intake. (The actual guidelines add more nuance, advising that people get at least half their recommended fruit intake from whole fruits.) For the record, William Dermody of the American Beverage Association tells us that ”moderation of beverages is something we’re in line with as well.” Overall, the new tip sheet’s messaging is confusing, says New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle, a noted critic of the influence industry exerts on government food policy. ”It’s ugly and it’s hard to read,” she tells us. In general, she wishes the government’s visual messaging on what Americans should and shouldn’t eat was much more explicit. Nestle points to guidelines from Brazil and Sweden (see below) which  —   as Julia Belluz has pointed out over at Vox  —   are breathtakingly easy to understand. Their virtue? Instead of talking about nutrients, they focus on what people really put in their mouths. ”They’re about real food,” Nestle says."
"After a week of gloomy news about China, the U. S. economy came shining through on Friday, offering a surprisingly bright jobs outlook for 2016. The U. S. economy is on track for ”higher productivity, good job gains  —   and the supply of potential workers expanding fast enough” to allow companies to grow in 2016, IHS Global Insight said in its analysis. ”Optimism is a good way to cap off a solid year and start a new one.” The jobs report was not enough to prop up the stock market, which had another bad day because of worries about China and collapsing oil prices. The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 1 percent, losing 167. 65, to 16, 346. 45. Other stock measures also lost about 1 percent. But while investors fret about hits to corporate profits from the Chinese slump, U. S. workers have reason to celebrate. The Labor Department said employers added 292, 000 jobs in December. That was far more than the 200, 000 jobs analysts had been predicting. ”The U. S. economy is heading into 2016 with domestic and international forces pulling in different directions,” according to the written assessment of HSBC Securities. As China was slowing and many developing countries lagging, the United States was seeing demand for goods and services ”growing at a good pace for the past year,” HSBC said. And that bodes well for job seekers in the new year. Friday’s jobs report ”signals a U. S. economy with remarkably strong momentum that’s likely to continue into 2016,” says Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for Glassdoor Economic Research. Not only did jobs increase by 2. 7 million in 2015, but hours worked and overtime paid showed enough momentum to boost hopes for decent raises in 2016. ”Workers saw average hourly wages grow by 2. 5 percent from one year ago —  still somewhat below average, but part of a broader rising trend toward wage acceleration as the economy nudges toward full employment,” Chamberlain said. In December 2014, the unemployment rate was 5. 4 percent. Last month, it held steady at 5 percent. The jobless rate was unchanged from November despite the hiring surge because 466, 000 workers returned to the labor force. That caused the participation rate to tick up a tenth of a point to 62. 6 percent. And the new jobs were spread across many industries. The biggest gains came in professional and business services, up by 73, 000 jobs, and health care, up 52, 600 jobs. Another strong category: construction, which added 45, 000 jobs. But evidence of China’s troubles showed up in the 8, 000 jobs lost in mining and logging. For years, U. S. producers of commodities have been counting on China’s explosive expansion to absorb raw materials, such as oil, iron ore, copper and timber. But as China’s demand cools, so do sales of bulk materials. And those commodities may be hurt even more in 2016, thanks to the rising value of the U. S. dollar. As the currency gains strength, it makes it harder to sell U. S. goods overseas. ”Headwinds from a strong dollar, sluggish global growth and weak oil prices will continue to weigh on mining and manufacturing employment,” Gregory Daco, economist with Oxford Economics, said in his analysis. But on the other hand, cheap oil will help U. S. consumers save money and a strong dollar will allow them to buy imports at low prices  —   keeping inflation at bay. All of that could help families pay down debt, buy new cars or make other purchases in 2016. Or as Michael Strain, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said in his report on the jobs data: ”All in all, a great end to the year.”"
"The U. S. economy added 292, 000 jobs in December while unemployment held steady at 5 percent, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of new jobs was higher than many economists had anticipated NPR’s John Ydstie says experts had expected about 200, 000 new jobs. In November, the BLS initially said the economy added 211, 000 jobs  —   a ”healthy pace,” as NPR’s Marilyn Geewax put it. That number has now been revised upward, to 252, 000. The job gains for October have also been revised up, from 298, 000 to 307, 000. With the revised numbers, the past three months have seen an average of 284, 000 new jobs each month. The unemployment rate has held at 5 percent all three months. Professional and business services, the restaurant industry, health care and construction showed some of the strongest job growth in December, the Bureau says, while mining jobs declined and manufacturing jobs stayed stagnant. The labor participation rate was little changed in December, and average wages fell by a penny. Over the year as a whole, average wages rose 2. 5 percent, the BLS says  —   the fastest rise since 2008. But a healthy growth rate for wages would be ”in the   percent range,” writes The Wall Street Journal. All told, employers created 2. 65 million new jobs last year  —   not as strong as 2014’s 3. 2 million total jobs, but enough to make 2015 the   year for U. S. job growth since 1999, The Associated Press reports. The news comes during a week of turmoil in the international stock markets. Chinese stocks plunged this week, while the SP 500 and Dow Jones Industrial average had their   start to a year. Last month, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in the U. S. by 0. 25 percentage point, signaling confidence in the American economy. It was the first change in the interest rate since 2008, and the first increase since 2006."
"French designer André Courrèges, whose futuristic dresses, bold glasses and   boots inspired a horde of imitators, has died at 92. Courrèges died after three decades of living with Parkinson’s disease, Vogue says. The designer studied engineering as a young man, before turning to fashion and textiles, the Victoria and Albert Museum writes. He worked at Balenciaga for a decade before launching his own fashion house, with the help of his wife and business partner, Coqueline Courrèges, a designer who was also mentored by Balenciaga. His company’s website provides a pithy rundown of his early accomplishments: ”Opens his couture house in 1961. Thanks to him, women discover pants in 1963. Revolution in 1965. Miniskirt.” Hyperbole aside, Courrèges certainly did help transform women’s pants from casual clothing to a haute couture item. And along with British designer Mary Quant, he is indeed widely credited with popularizing the miniskirt. Courrèges’ clothes had an ultramodern vibe to them  —   his 1964 line became known as the ”Space Age” or ”Moon Girl” collection. His trademark colors were white and silver his signature style, rigidly constructed clothes with sharp lines and trapezoidal shapes. At times, the master of Mod pushed the boundary between ”clothed” and ”naked,” with clothes featuring prominent cutouts and transparent materials in addition to   hemlines. He brought the world   boots when he began dressing his models in     white boots of vinyl or plastic. Pairing those boots with trapeze dresses, cropped jackets, goggles, helmets and gloves  —   and visual cues taken from space exploration  —   he crafted an instantly recognizable, and frequently copied, aesthetic. In 1999, Women’s Wear Daily collected some of Courrèges’ early comments on fashion. ”To make something that is true to life  —   that is what work is all about,” the designer said in 1963. ”I don’t care if I stay small or grow large, make money or not. That doesn’t matter. What matters is the truth to create a true thing.” Courrèges left fashion design in the ’90s, dedicating himself to painting and sculpture, Vogue says. He and his wife sold the Courrèges fashion house in 2011. Under a new generation of artistic directors, his signature aesthetic continues to appear on the world’s runways."
"After news emerged that a commonly used American missile wound up in Cuba following a training exercise in Europe, a U. S. official said the Hellfire missile is inert, lacking key components. The missile arrived in Cuba in 2014 since then, U. S. requests for its return have gone unheeded. It’s still a mystery as to how the missile reached Cuba, reports The Wall Street Journal, saying the incident has ”confounded investigators and experts who work in a regulatory system designed to prevent precisely such equipment from falling into the wrong hands.” A U. S. government official familiar with the situation calls it a ”dummy” missile that lacks a warhead or guidance system, NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports. Michele tells our Newscast unit: ”Lockheed Martin sent it to Europe for a NATO training exercise  —   and on its return, it ended up on a plane to Havana, where it was impounded. ”Since The Wall Street Journal first reported the story, Obama administration officials seem to be downplaying the incident. U. S. officials have talked with Cuba, though, trying to help Lockheed Martin get the dummy Hellfire missile back. ”A State Department spokesman says by law he can’t say much about defense trade licensing and compliance, adding that U. S. companies are responsible for documenting all shipping logistics and reporting any deviations.” According to the Journal, investigators have been trying to determine whether the incident was simply a boneheaded mistake or may be part of a criminal or clandestine plot. Originally designed to be launched from helicopters, Hellfire missiles have also been used to arm drone aircraft in recent years  —   one was credited with killing ”Jihadi John” in a U. S. operation last November. Since it was first developed in the 1970s, the Hellfire system has served as the basis for a string of variations, with a range of guidance systems and warheads. Update at 4:40 p. m. ET. Rubio ”demands answers”: Republican presidential candidate and U. S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida wrote to the State Department on Friday to say it ”apparently tried to withhold this information” (about the shipment of the missile) from Congress and the public. He called that ”disgraceful.” In a letter, Rubio tells Asst. Sec. Roberta Jackson that ”the fact that members of Congress are reading about Cuba’s possession of a U. S. missile in the newspaper rather than from you or other State Department officials is astounding and inexcusable.” Update at 4:35 p. m. ET. A statement from State Department spokesman John Kirby: ”I am restricted under federal law and regulations from commenting on specific defense trade licensing cases and compliance matters.  What I can say is that under the Arms Export Control Act the State Department licenses both permanent and temporary exports by U. S. companies of regulated defense articles. U. S. companies are responsible for documenting their proposed shipping logistics in the application of their export license as well as reporting any shipping deviations to the department as appropriate.” Editor’s note at 4:30 p. m. ET: The reference to a source who calls it a ”dummy” missile has been edited to make clear that official is familiar with what happened."
"A reprint of Adolf Hitler’s notorious autobiography, Mein Kampf, or ”My Struggle,” is for sale in German bookstores today for the first time in 70 years. The annotated edition is being published by the   Institute for Contemporary History, and its editors say the new version points out Hitler’s lies and errors and includes critical commentary on how the original version, published in the 1920s, influenced Nazi atrocities. Given its muted unveiling in Berlin, it’s hard to imagine the reprinted edition becoming a German   as it was during the Nazi era, when there were 12 million copies in print. By comparison, there are only a few thousand copies of the new edition. At Dussmann, the German capital’s largest bookstore, there was only one copy of the annotated reprint for sale on Friday. It was tucked onto a shelf on the back wall of the top floor, mixed in with other books on Nazism. The store said any additional copies would have to be ordered online. That any German bookstore would carry even a single copy of Mein Kampf  —   even a reprint peppered with criticism  —   irks Ulrich Ripke, a    teacher from Berlin. ”It’s simply rubbish,” he says. Annotated reprints ”should be done for books that are worth reading, and this one isn’t worth reading.” Another Dussmann customer,   Hesse, says he wouldn’t buy a copy, either. The    German transplant  —   he’s originally from Madison, Wis.  —   says as a freedom of speech issue, he’s OK with the manifesto being sold now that the ban on reprinting it has expired. The Bavarian government  —   which had been given the copyright by Allied forces in 1945, following World War II  —   had imposed the ban. ”This is a really bad analogy, but   is   whether you do it through a law or do it personally,” Hesse says. His German wife, Sieglind, shoots him a worried glance. ”We don’t plan to read it, right?” she asks, after grabbing his hand. Hesse assures her they won’t. In a statement Friday, World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder also dismissed the annotated reprint, saying Hitler’s autobiography belongs ”in the poison cabinet of history.” ”Mein Kampf should have been properly studied 90 years ago,” Lauder said. ”Hitler’s lies should have been rebutted back then. Alas, we all know that because that didn’t happen Hitler felt emboldened to embark on the biggest mass murder in the history of mankind.” Magnus Brechtken, deputy director of the Munich institute publishing the annotated reprint, says people shouldn’t be afraid of the new version. ”It was never a forbidden book,” he says. ”It was only forbidden to reprint it in German.” Even during the ban, Brechtken says, copies of Mein Kampf that survived the war were available in some German antique bookshops, which is where he found the edition that he used for his doctoral dissertation in the ’80s. The text can even be found online, he says. ”So what we are doing,” he says, ”is just giving anyone who is interested in Mein Kampf the necessary information to put this book into the correct historical context.” And to correct the errors. For example, Hitler claimed in the book that he became an   while he lived in Vienna between 1908 and 1913. But Brechtken says history shows the Fuehrer’s hatred for Jews didn’t develop until much later  —   while he was in   War I Munich. Another inaccuracy the reprint highlights is Hitler’s claim that the government of the Weimar Republic mistreated disabled World War I veterans. Brechtken says it was the Nazis who actually killed thousands of those veterans years later. Mein Kampf is the only book from the Nazi era for which there had been no German annotated version, because of the ban. ”And we are just filling this gap, so to speak, so there is [a] full overview on this historical text,” he says. Josef Schuster, who heads the Jewish Central Council in Germany, says he plans to read the annotated reprint. He’s read excerpts of Mein Kampf in the past. His father, who survived the Holocaust and moved to what was then Palestine, owned a copy. Schuster thinks it’s unlikely the reprint will find a big following. ”This version is no longer a   publication,” he says. ”On the contrary, it’s a book which shows what a botch job it is.” But the German Jewish leader warns that   factions that already embrace   and   views may try and use it to promote their agendas. In short, Mein Kampf may have long been available, but reprints make it more accessible, Schuster says. That worries Jeremy Adler of King’s College in London, too. In an interview aired Friday by German Public Radio, the British expert on German literature said: ”In principle, I am against reintroducing seditious, racist texts and spreading them around.” He said if the Munich institute wants to put out a critical edition of Mein Kampf, it should do so without the original text  —   rather than putting Hitler’s hateful manifesto back in German bookstores."
"It’s been more than 70 years since the end of the Holocaust, but by a fluke of fate  —   and international copyright law  —   two stark reminders of the genocide may be entering the public domain in Europe on Friday. Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s   manifesto, sees its European copyright expire after Dec. 31 so too for Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, according to several French activists. Each of the works is covered under European copyright law, which states that a book enters the public domain on the first day of January 70 years after its author’s death. Yet neither of the works is set to do so without a fair amount of controversy. Let’s start with Mein Kampf: The   autobiographical work, whose title translates to ”My Struggle,” was written during Hitler’s   prison sentence for a failed coup. In it, Hitler lays out his rationale for what would become the twin pillars of his fascist dictatorship just a decade later: lebensraum, or the German need for ”living room”  —   which he used to justify military aggression  —   and the   that undergirded the Holocaust. The German state of Bavaria has held its copyright since Hitler’s death in 1945, when it was obtained from the Allies since then, the state has prevented reprints of the book. With the expiration of the copyright, annotated copies of Mein Kampf are expected to return to German booksellers’ shelves on Jan. 8. Reuters reports that the first of these  —   a   behemoth published by Munich’s Institute for Contemporary History  —   bears some 3, 500 annotations, intended to lend criticism and context to the edition. While German public opinion on the ban has long been mixed, many Germans  —   including Joseph Schuster, head of the country’s Central Council of Jews  —   are embracing the reprints, albeit warily. ”We do not object to a critical edition, contrasting Hitler’s racial theories with scientific findings, to be at the disposal of research and teaching,” Schuster said in a statement released earlier this month. In France, where rights to Mein Kampf have long been held by the publishing house Les Nouvelles Editions Latines, the copyright’s expiration has inspired calls for caution  —   and further context. ”Mein Kampf is an important historical document and it should not be erased or forgotten, but it remains important to explain clearly what this work set out to achieve,” Philippe Coen, president of the European Company Lawyers Association, tells France 24. Toward that end, Coen is advocating for the inclusion of an updated introduction in every new edition  —   and in multiple languages  —   to situate the work not simply with respect to the Holocaust, but to today’s international politics, as well. In the United States, meanwhile, the copyright has been held since 1979 by Houghton Mifflin, which has told Mental Floss that it donates ”all royalties and profits from the book to organizations that promote diversity and   understanding. These have included The Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation and Facing History and Ourselves.” The case of The Diary of a Young Girl, written by Anne Frank while in hiding during World War II, is significantly more muddled  —   at least in terms of copyright law. Olivier Ertzscheid, a French researcher at the University of Nantes, has announced plans to publish the book online in its original Dutch on Friday, according to the Agence  . The news service reports that French member of parliament Isabelle Attard plans to do the same. Both Ertzscheid and Attard argue that, with Frank’s death in 1945, the   copyright is set to expire on Jan. 1. Anne Frank Fonds, the group founded Frank’s father in 1963, begs to differ. The charity holds the rights to the book, and AFP reports that it has threatened legal action, arguing that Otto Frank  —   not Anne  —   earned the copyright for his work on the book after his daughter’s death. In comments to The Guardian earlier this year, Yves Kugelmann, a member of the board of trustees, explained: ”After the war, Otto Frank merged, or compiled, the two versions of the diary that Anne Frank left, that were both incomplete and that partly overlapped, into one   version. He typed over Anne Frank’s manuscripts and with scissors and glue subsequently literally ’cut and pasted’ them into the version that was published in English from the early fifties. ”The book he created earns his own copyright. For the purposes of copyright, he is to be viewed as an ’author’ of that version. Please note, again, that this does not imply that he ’ ’ anything.” Otto Frank died in 1980. So by that rationale, the copyright to Anne Frank’s diary would not expire in Europe until 2050. Chances are, both parties will be finding out one way or the other much sooner than that."
"Promising workers lower health insurance premiums for losing weight did nothing to help them take off the pounds, a recent study found. At the end of a year, obese workers had lost less than 1. 5 pounds on average, statistically no different than the minute average gain of a tenth of a pound for workers who weren’t offered a financial incentive to lose weight. ”Our study highlights some of the weaknesses” of workplace wellness programs, said Dr. Mitesh Patel, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and the study’s lead author. The study, published in January’s issue of the journal Health Affairs, reported the results of a yearlong randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of financial incentives to encourage weight loss among 197 obese employees of the University of Pennsylvania health system. Participants were asked to lose 5 percent of their weight. Each was assigned to one of four study groups. The control group wasn’t offered any financial rewards. The three other groups were offered an incentive valued at $550. People in one group were told they would begin receiving health insurance premium discounts biweekly immediately after reaching their   goal. In another group, the people were told they would receive biweekly premium adjustments the following year if they reached their goal. Volunteers in the final group were eligible for a daily lottery payment if they met their daily weight loss goal and weighed in the previous day. At year’s end, no group had met the 5 percent   target. Participants’ average weight was virtually unchanged, whether or not they had a financial incentive to lose pounds. Nineteen percent of participants did meet the 5 percent target, but they weren’t concentrated in any particular group. The study was structured to reflect typical employer workplace wellness plans. ”Our study showed that the incentive is not what motivated people, at least in this design,” Patel said.   percent of employers with 200 or more workers that offer health insurance also offered weight loss, smoking cessation or lifestyle coaching programs, according to the 2015 employer health benefits survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust. About   of large companies offered workers cash or merchandise for participating in these programs, the survey found, with 34 percent offering lower premiums or cost sharing. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) The health law encourages wellness incentives by increasing the maximum reward for   wellness incentives from 20 to 30 percent of the cost of health coverage, and up to 50 percent if the program is aimed at reducing tobacco use. This study shows that how incentive programs are designed can make a big difference in how effective they are at changing behavior, Patel said. The incentives may have failed for a number of reasons, he said. The $550 premium discount may not have been large enough. Bundling the financial reward into the insurance premium on a paycheck rather than making a separate payment to the worker may have affected how it was perceived. Other details  —   such as the fact that participants weighed themselves at work rather than at home  —   may have been   to some participants. Patel also noted that many employer plans don’t pay workers anything until they reach their goal, a situation similar to this study. ”Someone should be encouraged along the way,” he said. ”We’ve found from studies that if you want to motivate people, they need regular feedback.” Please contact Kaiser Health News to send comments or ideas for future topics for the Insuring Your Health column."
"It was a memorable name: Thelonious Monk, like the jazz musician. And when Adam Marton read it, a   memory came flooding back. Marton is an editor at The Baltimore Sun. He was working on an infographic about the homicides in Baltimore in 2015  —   a record 344 deaths, most of them black men, most of them shot to death. Thelonious Monk was one of those victims. And years before, Marton says, Monk had stolen his car. ”I had dropped it off one evening and someone had fished the key out of a   at the auto body shop,” Marton told NPR’s Renee Montagne on Morning Edition. It was an inconvenience, that’s all. Marton and his wife got a loaner car from their insurance company and went on vacation. A few weeks later, he got a call  —   his car had been found. It was waiting for him at the Baltimore City impound lot. Marton went to pick it up. As he described on Facebook this week, what he saw in his vehicle has stuck with him ever since: ”Thelonious had installed a baby seat and a subwoofer and the car was strewn with job applications. It was and remains one of the most heartbreaking scenes of my life.” Marton read from his posting on Morning Edition, choking up as he commented on the differences between his life and Monk’s: ”Our lives crossed, however oddly and briefly, and I can’t help but think that Thelonious probably never had a chance. A chance to escape, a chance to succeed. The opportunities I have always enjoyed. I feel like maybe he was trying to use my car to make a break for it. I wish he had made it. ”Rest in peace, young man, I will never forget you.” ”What I saw in the car told me a story about this man’s life,” Marton told Renee. ”It seems at the time, it still seems today, that he took this car but he was kind of trying to make it his own car. ’I have this car now, now I can have a new life  —   I can go get a job, and drive my baby around, I can listen to music.’ ”I expected to see a crime scene, and what I saw instead was inside somebody’s life.” Marton doesn’t know many details about how Monk died  —   he was shot in the chest in southwest Baltimore and died at the hospital. But since posting on Facebook about the event, Marton says he’s heard from several of Monk’s family members. They remember him as someone who had ”a lifestyle that most people think is wrong,” Marton says, but was a good person. ”He was always trying to turn his life around,” Marton says. ”They talk about the great loss that they feel now that Thelonius is gone. And I think that’s really telling. Especially when all you have to look at is a criminal record  —   this was a loved person who was trying to make his life better.”"
"When Donald Trump met with a group of black ministers in New York City in November, Stephen Parson, a minister from Richmond, Va. was faithfully in attendance. Then, in December, when Trump spoke at a rally in Manassas, Va. Parson again stood by his side  —   this time giving him a ringing endorsement. Parson is an evangelist for Trump, and he’s also a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed Wednesday against members of the Virginia State Board of Elections over a new rule that requires GOP primary voters to sign a pledge. Two other plaintiffs  —   Leon Benjamin and Bruce L. Waller Sr.  —   are also named in the lawsuit. They want to vote in the Republican primary, but they don’t want to sign the ”loyalty oath.” Virginia has historically held an open primary  —   because there’s no party registration in the state, voters could choose either a Democratic or Republican ballot at the polls. But this year, anyone who opts for a GOP ballot must also sign a   statement that reads: ”my signature below indicates that I am a Republican.” In the lawsuit, the pastors claim the new rule is discriminatory it will lead to ”long lines” and deter minority voters from participating. ”I think that’s a clear violation of people who would otherwise expect to be equally protected,” said Chester Smith, the lawyer who represents the three   pastors. Smith argues that the new rule violates the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment and the Voting Rights Act. Given Virginia’s history of racial discrimination, the Trump supporters claim the new requirement will create a ”burden of fear” for black voters. In the lawsuit, they also say it has the potential to spark backlash in their communities ”if the Republican Party were to release the names of black voters who had publicly proclaimed that they ’are Republicans.’ ” But Rick Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at the University of California Irvine, is skeptical the lawsuit has any substantial legal muscle. ”I don’t that think having people sign the loyalty oath is any kind of legally binding requirement,” said Hasen. He also points out that a lot of states have closed primaries, where only registered members of the party can vote, and that system is entirely constitutional. Hasen says the real issue here seems political. ”It does sound like a kind of make way to try to use the Voting Rights Act as a tool to try to actually achieve a different goal,” Hasen said, ”which is to allow those people who don’t want to express loyalty to the Republican Party, but want to express loyalty to Donald Trump, to be able to vote in the election.” In a series of tweets in late December, Trump blasted the loyalty pledge, calling it a ”suicidal mistake” and saying the party needs to stop excluding new voters if it wants to win. The Virginia GOP declined to comment. But in an email to party officials obtained by NPR, Virginia GOP executive director John Findlay dismissed the idea that the pledge, which he described as a ”statement of affiliation” was an attack on Trump. ”Let me be very clear, the statement of affiliation is not designed to favor or hurt any candidate whatsoever,” Findlay wrote. The party put out a statement citing a similar pledge in the 2000 Republican primary. But Dan Tokaji, a professor at Ohio State University who focuses on election law, believes the politics in this skirmish are clear. ”I don’t think there’s much doubt that at least a part of the reason behind the Republican Party of Virginia’s decision is a desire to make it more difficult for Trump supporters to vote in the Republican primary,” said Tokaji. But, Tokaji adds that doesn’t mean the rule itself is illegal or unconstitutional. In fact, like Hasen, he thinks the lawsuit is weak. Still, he says it’s a sign  —   a warning of the growing battle between Trump and the GOP establishment. ”We can expect more of these disputes between Trump supporters and the Republican Party establishment to be emerging,” Tokaji said. ”I would not at all be surprised in other states to find other cases brought. Some of those claims may be stronger than the ones in the Virginia case appear to be.”"
"A    statue of Mao Zedong mysteriously cropped up in a remote field in China’s central Henan province, as we reported this week. But it seems the homage to the founder of Communist China didn’t have much time in the sun. The golden statue grabbed international headlines, sparking criticism and ridicule. Now, local residents and officials say the statue has been torn down, according to media reports. Images circulating on social media show the tribute to Mao with a black cloth draped over its head and missing parts of its legs and arms. ”Demolition teams arrived Thursday morning, villagers said, and by Friday morning only a pile of rubble remained,” The New York Times reports. Here’s more: ”Public Security officials and groups of unidentified men in olive green greatcoats brusquely turned away visitors and blocked road access to the site, outside the village of Zhushigang. ”Villagers said the guards had been sent by officials in Tongxu County, which includes Zhushigang. They said they believed the statue was torn down on orders from provincial officials.” It’s not immediately clear why the statue was destroyed. A local resident told The Guardian that he heard ”it was because it had occupied a farmer’s land.” The newspaper says local media reports that ”the statue had not gone through the correct ’approval process’ before construction.” The criticism and ridicule might have had something to do with it. As The   reported Tuesday, ”Henan province was one of the   areas of what has become known as the ’Great Famine’ during Mao’s rule, so a statue of Mao in the middle of farmland there might seem like a surprising choice.” The statue also garnered criticism for its steep price tag  —   about $460, 000  —   in the middle of what was once one of China’s most impoverished areas."
"A couple of years ago, University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack did an online video chat with personal finance writer Helaine Olen. The topic was how regular people get steered into bad investments by financial advisers. Pollack said that the best personal finance advice ”can fit on a    index card, and is available for free in the library  —   so if you’re paying someone for advice, almost by definition, you’re probably getting the wrong advice, because the correct advice is so straightforward.” After they posted the video, the emails started pouring in  —   people wanted to know, where could they get this index card? What was this fantastic yet simple advice for managing their money? ”Since I was speaking metaphorically, I was kind of stuck,” Pollack says. ”But I just took one of my daughter’s index cards and I scribbled a bunch of principles, and I took a picture with my iPhone and I posted it on the Web.” The index card got into Google’s news results. It got into big newspapers. Famous economists tweeted about it.   sites like Lifehacker mentioned it. In short, it went viral. The ideas on the index card weren’t new  —   pay off your credit cards, invest in   index funds, etc.  —   but there clearly was an appetite for this simple, good financial advice. So Pollack and Olen have now written a book (The Index Card) about it. Which  —   if the whole point is that this stuff is so simple you can fit it on an index card  —   might seem counterintuitive. ”Well, I would just say that, why do we need an entire Bible really? We have the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount,” Pollack says  —   adding that he does not mean to elevate his work to the level of scripture. The point is, sometimes you need more than the basics. ”We all know, for example, in tennis, how do you win a tennis match?” Pollack says. ”You hit the ball low. I could tell you that, but I haven’t told you how to do that.” And this actually gets at what many economists say is the reality with financial advice: Most of it is pretty simple. The rules on Pollack’s index card start with saving 10 to 20 percent of your income, maxing out your 401( k) not buying or selling individual stocks. But there also are more subtle points of advice  —   including whom you should bring on to help advise you. ”I’m struck by the number of my friends and relatives who believe that their financial adviser is free, and say things  —   ’Oh, the funds pay for that,’ ” Pollack says. ”I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t work for free. So you want to understand, how is this person being paid?” Rule No. 6 on the index card is to make your financial adviser commit to the Fiduciary Standard  —   meaning that your interests come first. But the regulations around that can be mushy. Some economists say an easier approach is to use what’s called a ” ” adviser, who can’t take commissions for steering you into overpriced mutual funds. If you have an adviser, Pollack and Olen say you need to talk about this stuff. ”It shouldn’t be awkward  —   if it’s awkward, there’s already a problem,” Olen says. ”If somebody is making you feel guilty for asking questions, you shouldn’t be there  —   period, full stop  —   no matter what standard they’re working to.” That said, both Pollack and Olen say a good, reasonably priced financial adviser can sometimes be helpful  —   especially when life gets too complicated to fit on an index card."
"”What are some of the things that the monsters like to eat in this story?” teacher Marisa McGee asks a trio of girls sitting at her table. McGee teaches kindergarten at Walker Jones Elementary in Washington, D. C. Today’s lesson: a close reading of the book What Do Monsters Eat? ”They like to eat cake,” says one girl. ”I noticed you answered in a complete sentence,” McGee says. ”Can you tell me something else?” ”Stinky socks!” McGee follows with a line you might not expect in a kindergarten class: ”Can you show me the page where you found that?” Textual evidence. Complete sentences. Welcome to kindergarten in 2016. It’s not quite what McGee, 29, says she was expecting when she started. ”When I came into kindergarten, down from first grade, I was like: Yes! What can I order for dramatic play?” McGee says. ”And I was told: Kindergartners don’t do dramatic play anymore.” If you have young kids in school, or talk with teachers of young children, you’ve likely heard the refrain  —   that something’s changed in the early grades. Schools seem to expect more of their youngest students academically, while giving them less time to spend in   and creative play. A big new study provides the first national, empirical data to back up the anecdotes. University of Virginia researchers Daphna Bassok, Scott Latham and Anna Rorem analyzed the U. S. Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which includes a nationally representative annual sample of roughly 2, 500 teachers of kindergarten and first grade who answer detailed questions. Their answers can tell us a lot about what they believe and expect of their students and what they actually do in their classrooms. The authors chose to compare teachers’ responses from two years, 1998 and 2010. Why 1998? Because the federal No Child Left Behind law hadn’t yet changed the school landscape with its annual tests and emphasis on the achievement gap. With the caveat that this is a sample, not a comprehensive survey, here’s what they found. Among the differences: Bassok was surprised by her results. ”We went into the study seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence” about the ratcheting up of expectations in kindergarten, she says. ”I thought part of this was a nostalgia for what we imagined kindergarten may have been. It’s pretty amazing to me that, over a   period, we see such drastic changes in teachers reporting what they expect and how they spend their time.” But what do these findings mean? And are they inherently bad? Sonja Santelises, vice president for   policy and practice at the Education Trust, which focuses on efforts to reduce the achievement gap, says rising expectations are a good thing, though ”rigid instruction” is not. ”The report clearly raises important questions about how we are teaching our youngest learners,” Santelises says. ”But we need to be careful that we’re not conflating the challenge of   engaging instruction and the actual target of learning to read.” Bassok agrees. ”The changes that seem potentially troubling are more around how kids are learning, not what kids should be learning,” she says. ”There are classrooms that are very   and allow kids to explore and also have terrific focus on math and are  . Those things don’t need to be at odds at all.” It’s easy to make this a story about teachers’ responses to   testing. Especially when you consider that, for every one of these indicators, the trend was even stronger in   classrooms and in schools with more nonwhite children  —   schools that no doubt felt accountability pressure under NCLB. However, the authors caution that there are lots of factors at play here. Since 1998, the number of children attending public preschool has jumped dramatically. There’s been an even bigger leap in students attending   versus   kindergarten, which gives teachers more time to cover every subject. Parents also appear to be spending more time reading to kids and otherwise introducing language and math. In short, it’s possible teachers’ academic expectations have risen, at least in part, because more kids are coming to kindergarten better prepared. Also, kindergartners are older than they used to be: 1 in 5 is 6 years old, in part due to the practice of ”redshirting.” It should be said: The data in this study are five years old. It doesn’t capture changes that may have taken place in schools since the adoption of the Common Core, for example. Kindergarten changed dramatically in just over a decade as policies continue to shift, so too could practice. For now, it’s less pretend time and more reading for the kids at Walker Jones Elementary."
"In an early scene in the deeply unsettling Lamb, protagonist Daniel Lamb phones a   he’s been having an affair with. ”My wife is downstairs,” he whispers. Not true —  he’s calling from a motel, where his wife has presumably banished him. ”I’m lying here naked,” he then purrs. Not true, either. Daniel has a propensity for fashioning his own truth out of whole cloth, which is not a quality likely to endear him to anyone. And after encountering a precocious adolescent girl in a parking lot, he pushes himself permanently out of the realm of sympathy. Daniel, whose father has recently died, is played by Ross Partridge (Baghead). His   looks and     demeanor are insidious enough to mask the danger this character poses  —   a danger he may not even be able to detect in himself. Partridge also wrote and directed Lamb, adapting the novel by Bonnie Nadzam, and exhibits great patience and control over his story, giving us a portrait of a troubling relationship that almost never clues us into what the guy in control is thinking. Instead, driving against a quiet backdrop of country roads, a strange girl in tow, the unlovable hero seems to silently attempt to exorcise . .. something from his consciousness. The girl, an    named Tommie (a magnetic Oona Laurence) first appears with a big pink purse and a pink tank top, swaying above her inappropriately high heels. She tries to bum a cigarette off Daniel, and their relationship doesn’t exactly start off promising when he suggests they scare her friends by staging a pretend kidnapping. Perhaps sensing she comes from a broken home, Daniel returns to visit her and quickly develops a bond, showering her with attention and advice, talking to her as an equal. But soon Daniel has coerced his lamb into joining him on a road trip to his country cabin, a   development in which he nevertheless takes strenuous care to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Even in the thick of Daniel’s deception and psychological manipulation, he still makes a show of everything being Tommie’s decision, as though she has the requisite maturity to make a judgment call: ”This will look a lot like a kidnapping to other people,” he cautions her. Ya think, buddy? Partridge never spells out exactly what Daniel wants out of Tommie, which is what lends the film its    menace. Sometimes he pretends to be her uncle, sometimes her father, and once, in a particularly disturbing passage, her younger brother. What’s most important to him is creating some kind of shared fantasy on the decaying foundation of his father’s house, a fantasy that he seems to perceive as innocent (he insists on standing outside their shared motel room while she changes). Tommie begins to feel sick midway through their time together, a physical expression of a mental discomfort she can’t find the words to articulate. Laurence’s face projects intensity, registering her character’s growing sense of awakening: her eager overtures toward adulthood clashing with a heartbreakingly naive trust in the nearest adult. The film shifts from Daniel’s to Tommie’s point of view in a remarkably subtle fashion, altering the makeup of the story and the ways we’re forced to wrestle with it. Never work with children or animals, the Hollywood saying goes. But there is no easier shortcut to generating concern in cinema than by putting children in peril. Just look at likely Oscar contender Room, which leaned heavily (probably too heavily) on the innocent, cherubic eyes of its    child star in order to tell the    horror story of his mother’s abduction and sexual slavery. There’s always a danger that these kinds of stories, which demand we focus so much of our energy on a youth’s safety, will reveal themselves as cloying and cheap. But Lamb uses real skill to draw our gasps early from only vague character sketches, and keeps us in bated breath throughout. We wonder what is in store for this girl and whether —  as she frolics through   fields —  she will have the wisdom to realize she shouldn’t be with this man. More than Room, Lamb calls to mind two of last year’s best films, The Diary Of A Teenage Girl and The Kindergarten Teacher. Both follow similarly precocious young characters as they develop wildly inappropriate relationships with the adults in their lives: the former sexual, the latter something far stranger. Lamb is the weakest of the three: Its edges are rough and amateurish, its dialogue clunky, and its late passages   particularly once Daniel’s romantic interest (Jess Weixler) arrives on the scene. But all three films find fascinating ways to provoke, to dare us to stare them down. They march their   waifs toward unconscionable destinations, until we feel just about ready to swear off adulthood for good."
"A good attorney in a   case needs to know how to change public opinion. Bill Cosby’s attorney Monique Pressley is trying to do just that. Under the glare of public scrutiny, she has been vehemently defending the beleaguered comedian, projecting poise under pressure. To watch Pressley on TV, you’d never know this is her first time defending a celebrity this big against charges of this magnitude. In broadcast and cable TV interviews, she is unflappable. Talking about Cosby’s defamation lawsuit against former model Beverly Johnson, she told MSNBC, ”What we’re doing now, in a court of law, is requiring people like Miss Johnson to actually prove what they’ve said. And I would assert to you today, as we did in the complaint, it cannot be done.” When attorney Gloria Allred  —   who is representing several alleged Cosby victims  —   challenged Pressley to a debate on MSNBC, Pressley’s response was almost scolding. ”We as attorneys do what attorneys do. We’re not in high school. We don’t debate. We’re not politicians running for office,” she told MSNBC host Thomas Roberts. Not long after she was hired by Cosby, Pressley talked to Tom Joyner on his   morning radio show. After she explained the ins and outs of the various complaints, allegations and legal charges, Joyner told her, ”You know, Monique Pressley, I never heard of you before this, but just listening to you just now, I think Bill Cosby has chosen a very good attorney because you broke that down.” Pressley is media savvy, according to Lolita Buckner Inniss, a former prosecutor and professor at   College of Law at Cleveland State University. ”Monique Pressley does a masterful job of turning the conversation to the message that she and the Cosby defense team want to deliver,” says Buckner Inniss. ’You Better Memorize Everything, Because She Already Has’ Pressley is from Galveston, Texas. In high school, she won honors on the debate team. She received her law degree from Howard University in 1997. Later, as an adjunct faculty member at Howard, Pressley helped make history. In 2005, she coached a team of Howard law students for a mock trial competition. The team won, beating 18 law schools, including the reigning champions from Harvard. The win was a first for a historically black law school. Atlanta attorney Chris Stewart was a member of the team. ”She was tough,” he laughs, remembering Pressley’s coaching technique. ”Who you are seeing on television is exactly who she is. She will talk to you the way she talks in those interviews: Firm. She’s not going to play around. She’s not going to let somebody misquote her or misquote her client. And you better memorize everything, because she already has,” says Stewart. Pressley was a public defender and an assistant attorney general for the District of Columbia. Religion’s Role In Her Law Practice, Today Pressley runs her own firm. Her personal website says she’s also an ordained minister. In 2013, she founded Monique Pressley Ministries. On her radio show, Breathe Through It, her guests have included the prominent religious figure Bishop T. D. Jakes and attorney Benjamin Crump, who represented the families of Trayvon Martin, who was killed in Florida, and Michael Brown, who was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. TV legal analyst Roland Martin, who has known Pressley for 30 years, says Pressley’s faith is deeply important to her. ”She comes from a strong faith background. Her godfather was a prominent Catholic priest. So it plays a tremendous role,” says Martin. Strategy In The Cosby Case, Pressley is a regular guest on Martin’s weekly legal segment on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. As Pressley tells it, one of Cosby’s ”loyal supporters” heard her talking about his case on the radio show and suggested he hire her. Martin says, for Pressley, ”there is no comfort zone” in this kind of   emotionally charged case being played out in the public arena. ”In some ways, Monique is on a lonely journey,” says Martin. The decision to hire her is also strategic, says Buckner Inniss. ”Her gender and her race matter, because Bill Cosby is being charged with sexual assault of several women. A large number of those women are white women. I think there’s a certain extent to which the idea of racial solidarity plays in here,” says Buckner Inniss. ”The idea that if an intelligent,   black woman stands with Bill Cosby on this, then perhaps some of those people who accuse Bill Cosby are lying.” Buckner Inniss urges people watching the Cosby coverage to be skeptical. She says there will be ”an epic demonstration of theatrics and legal performances” from both sides. Pressley declined to be interviewed for this profile. This week, Pressley and Cosby had some good news: The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges against him, though he still faces a criminal charge in Pennsylvania and multiple civil suits."
"The armed militants occupying Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon come from as far away as Texas and Montana. But they are hardly the refuge’s first    visitors. Malheur Lake is a regional hub for hundreds of thousands of migrating waterfowl. By some measures, it boasts the greatest diversity of bird species in the entire state. A century ago, that diversity attracted the attention of naturalist William Finley. He visited the lake in 1908 with his childhood friend and photography partner, Herman Bohlman. In an article in The Atlantic Monthly, Finley recalled: ”Here we were standing on the high   looking out over the land of our quest. Here spread at our feet was a domain for wild fowl unsurpassed in the United States.” Finley was so ecstatic that he fell out of his boat. The pair spent their days photographing birds. But Finley was disturbed by the notable absence of great egrets (then called white herons). ”I am satisfied that of the thousands of white herons formerly nesting on Malheur,” he reported, ”not a single pair of birds is left.” Plumed hats were all the rage at the turn of the century, and the birds had been killed for their feathers. When Finley returned to his home in Portland, he shared his photos (some colored by hand) with Theodore Roosevelt. He urged the president to protect the area. That same year, Roosevelt created the Lake Malheur Reservation ”as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds.” The land that Roosevelt set aside for the refuge was officially unclaimed federal land. But ranchers who had used that land for decades felt they had rights to it as well, setting the stage for a   battle. This ad ran way back in 1920 during a campaign to drain Malheur Lake and sell the land to farmers. That campaign failed. Fifteen years later, Franklin Roosevelt added an additional 65, 000 acres to the refuge. You can learn more about Malheur’s feathered residents on Twitter by following @NPRSkunkBear and the hashstag #FlockupyMalheur"
"One number has everybody’s attention this afternoon. But why stop at one? Here’s the prize jackpot, plus a few other lottery stats worth knowing: The     Powerball jackpot value, as of Saturday afternoon. If no one wins tonight, the jackpot could crack a billion. That’s based on a single winner selecting the annuity option, which pays out over three decades. Alternately . .. The cash payout that rarely gets the boldfaced headline treatment, but it’s the more likely winning amount. The vast majority of jackpot winners choose the cash payout, even though it’s always significantly smaller than the jackpot. You could hypothetically benefit from choosing the upfront payout  —   provided you invest the money instead of spending it. Which of course is exactly what you’d do, right? The tax man cometh. If you win and choose the   payment, expect to pay north of $200 million in federal taxes, at the 39. 6 percent top income bracket  —   not counting state income tax. One in 292 million. Those are your odds of winning the jackpot. Not one in a million, not one in 10 million . .. one in 292 million.  Are you channeling your inner Lloyd Christmas right now . .. ”So you’re telling me there’s a chance?” Here’s a way to more viscerally experience the long odds. The Los Angeles Times put together a demonstration of playing the Powerball odds, in chunks of $100 or $1, 000 or more  —   tallying up your total losses over time. You can plug in truly enormous amounts of money and watch probability at work all afternoon, if that sounds like fun. So far, this reporter is down 104 grand. That was the range, as of 2012, of total payouts by U. S. states, as Steve Tripoli reported for NPR in 2014. That is, of all the dollars paid for lottery tickets, that’s the percentage paid back to winners. West Virginia claimed the 15 percent, Massachusetts the 73 percent, while most states were in the 50 to 70 percent range. (You can look up your own state in our chart). For the record: Those are all abysmal rates by gambling standards. Most casino games pay back more than 90 percent, Tripoli says the house still wins, of course, but it doesn’t win by nearly as much as state lotteries do. The vast majority of American states offer a lottery these days. Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah and Mississippi are holdouts, refusing to participate in either Powerball or Mega Millions. Some states cite religious objections, while in Nevada, the powerful gambling industry views lotteries as competition. Residents of those states can still play the lottery  —   but they have to travel to a participating state to do it. (Puerto Rico has Powerball but not Mega Millions. Now you know.) That’s more than $70 billion  —   the total amount Americans spent on the lottery in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. CNN Money calculates that’s more than Americans spend on sports tickets, books, video games, movie theaters and recorded music, combined.  NASA’s annual budget, for comparison, is around $17 billion. Total U. S. foreign aid for next year: just shy of $38 billion. That’s the average per capita spending on lotteries in America, as calculated by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic last year. Of course, the cost isn’t distributed equally, he notes. There’s geographic variation  —   with annual spending north of $700 in Rhode Island, South Dakota and Massachusetts, based on state populations, while well under $100 per capita in other states. There’s also variation based on income. Study after study has found   communities spend more of their money on lotteries than   communities, Thompson writes. That economic variation is why people call state lotteries regressive taxes  —   that is, a way of funding the state that disproportionately takes money from the poor. On Saturday, Vox pointed out an intriguing   study suggesting that lotteries become less regressive as the jackpot size increases  —   that is, richer people are more likely to buy tickets for big prizes, lessening the disproportionate impact on the poor. Economist Emily Oster, then a graduate student at Harvard, suggested that a jackpot of $806 million would actually be progressive instead of regressive. At the time, that jackpot size was theoretical  —   but not any more. According to the lottery industry’s own trade magazine, for every dollar spent on the lottery, an average of 27 cents goes to the ”beneficiaries”  —   the   government spending programs supported by a lottery, usually in areas like education or recreation. A cut goes towards administering the lottery (which is far more expensive than collecting a tax  —   one analysis by a conservative think tank found lotteries are up to 50 times more costly than tax collection). A chunk, of course, goes towards the winners. Some goes to retailers, some to the companies that design and operate the lottery systems. What’s left goes into state coffers. The average might be 27 cents to state expenses, like the industry says, but it can be as low as 11 cents to the dollar, NBC News reports. That’s the impact of a lottery win on net happiness, at least at first. A famous 1978 study found that major lottery winners were no happier than ordinary folks, and actually got less joy from daily activities. A 2008 Dutch study found winning the lottery doesn’t make a household happier. Now, a caveat: Two studies out of England suggest that it is possible to win the lottery and be content  —   but only eventually. ”No researcher has ever found that people are happier in the first year after winning the lottery,” one of the researchers told The New York Times  And the Times’ social science reporter suggests that it might take longer and longer to find contentment the larger your win is. So, about that $900 million . .. OK, if you insist: You can’t increase your odds of winning the lottery, but you can increase the chance that  —   if you do win  —   you won’t have to split the jackpot. People tend to include birthdays and other dates in their lottery numbers, mathematician Aaron Abrams told NPR’s Robert Siegel in 2012, which means more numbers between 1 and 31. And people have a bias towards odd numbers. So, for best results: Even numbers higher than 31. But have we mentioned? One in 292, 201, 338."
"Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines. In 2005, Brad Duke of Star, Idaho, hit a huge jackpot: $220 million in the Powerball lottery. It took a couple days, even a couple of weeks, for the magnitude of his win to hit. He didn’t tell anyone, and went about his daily routines while he tried to figure out what he wanted to do next. As a regular lottery player, Duke had let himself fantasize about what it might be like to win thousands of dollars someday. As a cyclist, he’d always daydreamed about owning a   road bike and a   mountain bike, which his actual windfall would certainly cover. But Duke didn’t go on a spending spree. ”I stayed in my house, I drove a used car for up to three years afterwards,” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. ”The more I started to fantasize about what I could do with the money, the more I felt like I should try to keep my feet on the ground and change as little as I could.” Join Our Sunday Conversation, If you won the lottery, how do you think it would change you? Tell us on Weekend Edition’s Facebook page."
"Photographer Steve McCurry has been frequenting  —   and documenting  —   India since 1978. His new book, Steve McCurry: India highlights the extraordinary moments of ordinary, everyday life across the subcontinent. We caught up with the man most famous for his portrait of a fiery young girl in Afghanistan and asked him about some of the more colorful scenes  —   and colorful people  —   that caught his eye. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Is there a theme that ties the book together? This is sort of a diary  —   a poem about my time in India. I’m from Mumbai and I know how crazy chaotic Indian cities can be. How do you focus in and decide what to photograph? It’s a question of enjoying your day, your life and enjoying walking down the street observing, and being curious  —   until you see something that catches your eye. One photo that stuck a chord for me is the frail man, collapsed at a train station. That was disturbing because obviously this guy, he’s is not doing well. But people are just zooming by, seemingly oblivious or unaware of his plight. And this is something that happens not only in India but all over the world. People in cities everywhere, when they encounter a difficult situation, they tend to just walk by. How did witnessing that sort of urban indifference affect you? I do frequently try intervene in these situations, when there’s somebody on the street obviously in need. There’s times when I’ll buy someone a meal or give someone a ride. I bought a fellow a pair of shoes once. There are those little moments where you do whatever you can. Another really cool shot is the portrait of the little boy with a snake around his neck. Is that thing going to hurt him? No, no. That’s a pet snake, so it’s not particularly dangerous. That boy belonged to a caste of  . They would get money performing with these snakes on the street. And if there was a snake in somebody’s house, they would get paid to get rid of it. I noticed in a lot of your portraits, including the one one of this little boy  —   and your famous portrait of the Afghan girl  —   your subjects look directly into the camera.  It’s true. I think it helps viewers make that personal connection with the subject."
"Western music may have been changing the world in the 1950s, but if you happened to be in Russia you were out of luck. State censorship was in full effect in the Soviet Union, and sneaking in, say, an American rock record was close to impossible. But a few industrious music fans managed to find another way. Stephen Coates, the leader of a British band called The Real Tuesday Weld, happened on this secret history by accident. Several years ago on a tour stop in St. Petersburg, he was strolling through a flea market when a strange item caught his eye. ”I thought, ’Is that a record? Or is it an  ?’ I picked it up, and it seemed to be both,” he recounts. ”They guy whose stall it was was a bit dismissive  —   I think he wanted me to buy something else. But I brought it back to London, and I was fascinated by it. So I started to dig, and that has led me on a very strange journey.” Coates is now an obsessive of what is nicknamed ”bone music”  —   makeshift LPs etched into used   which were playable on a turntable and provided a fitting disguise for their contraband contents. He’s collected his findings in a new book called   Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone, and he joined NPR’s Michel Martin to talk about it. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below. Michel Martin: Describe to me what a bone record looks like. Were they cut round, like records are? Stephen Coates: So, they would start off with a square or rectangular   then probably put a plate on it, draw around it with a pen and cut it out by hand. I mean, often the circumference is quite ragged. How did it occur to you to play the one you found? If I came across a     in a flea market, I’m not sure that it would occur to me to play it as a record. Well, the thing is, it looks like a record. If you see these things, they’ve got a hole in the middle. They’ve got a groove on them it’s often very faint because it’s very shallow. It plays at 78 [RPM]  —   that was the first thing to find out  —   and it’s only   as well. I found all these things out by discovery, and went from there. What can you tell us about how they figured out how to do this, and how widespread this practice was? What happened was, it’s 1946 or so. The Second World War is over but a much colder war has begun, and in the Soviet Union a lot of culture was subject to a censor, whether it be art, paintings, architecture, film. In St. Petersburg  —   Leningrad, as it was then  —   a guy turned up, and he had a war trophy with him. That war trophy was what’s called a recording lathe: It’s like a gramophone in reverse, a device which you can use to write the grooves of music onto plastic. People who came into his shop observed what he was doing, and, as is the Russian way, they ”bootlegged” his machine and made their own machines. It was a bit like dealing or buying drugs, actually. These records were bought and sold on street corners, in dark alleyways, in the park. We did hear a funny thing, which was that if you asked for a particular song  —   say, ”Rock Around the Clock”  —   and the dealer didn’t have it, quite often they would say, ”Yeah, I’ve got that,” and they would go in the corner and write ”Rock Around the Clock” on one of their other records and give it to you. So there’s lots of stories about people buying these records, and they may not have even known what ”Rock Around the Clock” sounded like. They’d go home and put it on and it could have been anything, and they were like, ”Yeah, that’s Bill Haley. He’s great!” Listening to some of these, the quality’s actually not bad considering how they were made. I mean, they do vary in quality, hugely. Some were virtually unlistenable. But that didn’t seem to matter, in some ways. I mean, talking to people who bought these records when they were young  —   even the tiniest thread of melody, of this forbidden sound, was so exciting. And it led to a different world, really, a world of freedom, [even though the music was] not obviously  . You would think, ”Why would that mambo be regarded as something worth forbidding?” I was actually thinking that myself. It opens up all kinds of questions about what people think is dangerous, doesn’t it? It really does. And of course, in some [cases] it’s obvious: rock ’n’ roll, jazz, the music of America, the music of the UK. But with other stuff, it got very strange in the Soviet Union. Latin rhythms  —   the mambo, the tango  —   were forbidden because they were seen as being overly sensuous, if you like, encouraging the wrong sort of passions in young people. I mean, the saxophone became forbidden for a while. As a musician yourself, this must have made you think about just how important music is to people, that they would go to such lengths to hear it. For me, the thing that’s really poignant is that some of these people went to prison for doing this  —   they were punished quite severely for it. This was a time when music mattered so much that people would risk public censure, they would risk imprisonment. We live in a time when you can get anything you want immediately. Music is abundant, and that’s great, of course. But I wonder, as somebody who makes music, how much does music matter now? Does it matter as much as it used to? This was a time when it mattered immensely, and that’s food for thought, for all of us I think."
"As New Year’s resolutions go, cutting back on food and drink are right at the top of the list. And while those vowing to change their eating habits may cut the carbohydrates or say a sweet goodbye to sugar, for regular drinkers, the tradition may involve what’s known as a ”dry January”: giving up booze for a month. But could such a   breakup with alcohol really impart any measurable health benefits? The staff at the magazine New Scientist decided to find out, using themselves as guinea pigs. The findings of their small but intriguing experiment suggest the answer is a resounding yes. The magazine is based in the U. K. where the dry January concept has been gaining traction, thanks to an annual campaign by the charity Alcohol Concern. In late 2013, 14 healthy New Scientist employees filled out lifestyle questionnaires, underwent ultrasounds and gave blood samples. Then, 10 of them gave up alcohol for five weeks, while four of them continued drinking normally. ”Normal” drinking for the New Scientist group ranged from 10 units of alcohol per week  —   the equivalent of about eight   bottles of   beer  —   to 80 units, or 64 beers, per week. Those numbers may seem high, but in Britain, where drinking is a national pastime, the group’s supervising doctor told them none were problem drinkers. (Incidentally, Britain’s National Health Service recommends no more than 14 to 21 alcohol units per week.) The results of these changes were significant enough to make you put down your pint and take notice. Dr. Rajiv Jalan, a liver specialist at the Institute for Liver and Digestive Health at University College London, analyzed the findings. They revealed that among those in the study who gave up drinking, liver fat, a precursor to liver damage, fell by at least 15 percent. For some, it fell almost 20 percent. Abstainers also saw their blood glucose levels  —   a key factor in determining diabetes risk  —   fall by an average of 16 percent. It was the first study to show such an immediate drop from going dry, Dr. James Ferguson, a liver specialist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham in England, told us last year. Overall, the evidence is convincing but not all that surprising, said Ferguson, who was not involved in the experiment. ”If you take time off from alcohol, it’s going to be beneficial for your liver from the reduction of fat,” he told The Salt. ”People always forget the amount of calories in alcohol, so if you take a month off, and you usually consume 20 units, you’re going to lose weight and fat. It’s a massive reduction in calories. ” The main causes of excessive fat in the liver are obesity and excessive alcohol consumption. Alcohol changes the way the liver processes fat, resulting in more fat cells that can cause inflammation, leading to liver disease. But Ferguson warned that a dry January could trigger the same sort of negative boomerang effect as do restrictive diets: First you abstain, then you binge to make up for it. He questioned whether a dry January leads to a    February. Beyond that, there’s the question of whether and how much these improvements last in the long run. Ferguson offered a sobering view. ”I don’t think taking one month a year off alcohol makes any difference,” he says. ”It’s more important to cut back generally.” A version of this story was published Jan. 21, 2014. Amy Guttman is a freelance writer based in London."
"Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzmán had seen his name in headlines. He knew it graced the world’s Most Wanted lists. But it appears that the notorious drug kingpin wanted something more: He wanted his name in lights. Guzmán was recaptured by the Mexican government on Friday, and has been returned to the same prison he broke out of in July. Mexican authorities tracked him down in the seaside city of Los Mochis thanks in part to Guzmán’s desire to make a biopic about his life, Mexico’s attorney general says. The druglord had contacted actors and producers, Arely Gomez says, opening a line of investigation that helped Mexican marines ultimately capture the fugitive. Guzman’s life is certainly dramatic enough for the big screen. In fact, a film based on his story  —   Chapo: El Escape del Siglo, or Chapo: The Escape of the Century  —   is set to open in Mexico next week. And a less glamorous video of his July escape has already seized the attention of the world, as Bill and Laura reported yesterday: ”Surveillance video shot by a security camera in Guzmán’s cell showed one of the world’s most notorious criminals pacing around before dropping behind a partition in the shower area of his cell. ”That cell was in the Altiplano prison, a maximum security facility about 55 miles from Mexico City. Guzmán spent less than 18 months there before his accomplices used a nearly   tunnel to ferry him to freedom. ”Before he was captured in February of 2014, Guzmán had been on the lam since 2001  —   when he escaped from another maximum security prison that was reportedly nearly identical to the one he broke out of last year.” After his 2001 escape, the head of the Sinaloa Cartel ”managed to outmaneuver, outfight or   his rivals to stay at the top of the business for over a decade,” as Reuters put it. This time around, he had months, not years, of freedom. Mexican forces first located Guzmán in October, but he escaped in part because Mexican marines held their fire at the sight of two women and a child with him, Mexican attorney general Arely Gomez said Friday. Officials then tracked Guzmán to Los Mochis, with help from his   dreams and information from one of his tunnel builders, the Associated Press reports. They narrowed his location down to one house in an upscale neighborhood, and moved in early Friday, the wire service says: ”Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. One marine was injured. ” ’You could hear intense gunfire and a helicopter it was fierce,’ said a neighbor, adding that the battle raged for three hours, starting at 4 a. m. She refused to be quoted by name in fear for her own safety. ”Gomez said Guzman and his security chief, ’El Cholo’ Ivan Gastelum, were able to flee via storm drains and escape through a manhole cover to the street, where they commandeered getaway cars. Marines climbed into the drains in pursuit. They closed in on the two men based on reports of stolen vehicles and they were arrested on the highway.” Now Guzmán is back at the Altiplano   prison  —   the site of his July escape. The U. S. has a standing request for Guzmán to be transferred to the States, where he faces drug trafficking charges. Many are calling for that extradition to happen, and quickly. On Friday, Mexican authorities said nothing about extraditing the escape artist to America."
"When I met up with Palmer Luckey this week at CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, the founder of virtual reality company Oculus VR had some explaining to do. Oculus had just announced the price of its highly anticipated consumer model of the virtual reality headset Rift: $599. It sparked outrage from many fans who thought Luckey had promised them virtual reality for the masses, and at that price, the masses would have to skip car payments to afford it. Plus, the Rift requires a   computer that would run around $900, making the cost closer to $1, 500. About three years ago, Luckey’s introduction of the Rift he had created sparked a generation of people who had dreamed of immersive   reality to believe it had finally arrived. Here was a prototype for an affordable version of a product, whose prohibitive cost had confined it to government and university researchers. ”It is expensive,” admitted Luckey, 23. ”The Rift was designed to prioritize quality over cost. We wanted to make the Rift something that everybody would want before we make it something that everyone can afford.” And according to Luckey, Oculus (which is owned by Facebook) is not making money on Rift hardware. In a tweet, he even called the Rift ”obscenely cheap for what it is.” Luckey argues, people who want a cheaper VR experience can buy a Samsung Gear for $99. Though it requires a Samsung phone to work, it uses Oculus software. To Luckey, the Gear gives a sort of starter VR experience that he hopes will get people excited about the new medium. But will the Rift price tag doom the headset and perhaps even the   but    virtual reality revolution? If virtual reality is going to take off, the audience will have to be a lot bigger than the people who can afford to drop $1500 on an entertainment device. In defense of Luckey and Oculus, this is far from the first time a new class of computing technology started out with a high price tag. The original iPhone was $599 with a   contract. The first Kindle was $400. Over time, the prices decline. The latest iPhone still costs upward of $600, but you can get a   older model for a lot less. A new Kindle can now be had for as little as $79. 99. Still, it is possible to undermine a new product by charging too much. The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, Panasonic’s   game console, came out in 1993 with a price tag of $699. Time magazine named it ”1993 Product Of The Year.” Never heard of it? There’s a reason: its high price doomed it to failure. For his part, Luckey prefers to compare the Rift to PalmPilot, the personal digital assistant of the late 1990s. ”It was a very expensive device for most people,” he says. ”And most people couldn’t justify the cost of that device in their everyday life. But, everyone knew about it.” In its time, the PalmPilot was a success. And as Luckey sees it, the Palm marked the beginning of the mobile computing revolution that led to the iPhone and other smartphones in the same way that the Rift is the beginning of another revolution in computer communications. ”I don’t think Oculus will fail. But we have to have proper expectations,” says J. P. Gownder, an analyst with Forrester. He doesn’t think that 2016 is the year that virtual reality will go mainstream, but perhaps the year that modern VR ”was born.” The Rift is also not the only VR device scheduled to hit the market. Later this year, HTC will begin selling its Vive headset. It hasn’t announced a price, but some analysts think it may cost more than the Rift. Sony PlayStation VR is also hitting stores this year. Gownder believes Sony’s headset is likely to do best because it has the advantage of millions of PlayStation owners who are primed to be interested in games in virtual reality. Of course, no one knows for sure if consumers will take to virtual reality. Television makers spent a fortune developing and promoting   TVs and those never took off. But Luckey rightly points out that virtual reality  —   unlike the   TV experiment  —   came from the bottom up. The Oculus Rift was built with money from a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign. (The company is now promising free Rifts to its Kickstarter backers.) ”There were a ton of people willing to back a company with no track record, no history and one game because they really wanted to play virtual reality,” says Luckey. And there are also thousands of developers creating game, travel, music and educational experiences for VR. Though Luckey might want to think about comparing the Rift to the PalmPilot. Millions of people now own its descendants from the iPhone to the Galaxy Note. But Palm, the maker, is out of business."
"Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have spent most of the presidential race avoiding direct confrontations with each other. But the men are in first and second place in the polls, so that’s been straining the love. This week, as NPR Politics put it, Trump went ”birther” on his rival, questioning whether Cruz is even eligible for the White House because he was born in Canada. (Many legal scholars say he is.) But as the two candidates continue to lead GOP polls, some observers on the Republican side have expressed fear that either man  —   and Trump, in particular  —   will win the nomination. And that concern has not been limited to those in the party’s establishment. Cue Matt Kibbe, former head of the tea party group FreedomWorks. Kibbe  —   who left FreedomWorks to lead Concerned American Voters, a superPAC supporting Sen. Rand Paul  —   says that while Trump taps into some of the same anxiety shared by tea partiers over political dysfunction, the businessman’s rise also signifies something much more dire. ”I think if Donald Trump becomes the nominee, you’re almost guaranteed a   challenge, perhaps from the Republican side and the Democratic side,” Kibbe tells NPR’s Scott Simon. ”And it might also lead to the death of the Republican party.” On the future of the candidate he supports, Rand Paul, I think we would all be mistaken if we made any bold predictions about what’s going to happen in Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s a particularly tumultuous primary season, and if you go back and look at 2012, which was also pretty unpredictable, the people that were winning at this point ultimately did not win in Iowa. I think the ground game matters more than polling, and we’ll have to see what happens. On what’s behind Donald Trump’s rise, There’s two things going on. One is a clear sense of economic anxiety and the feeling amongst a lot of voters that the country’s headed in the wrong direction  —   combined with the sense that Washington doesn’t really give a damn. The other thing that’s going on, which I think is more fundamental, and I think both Republicans and Democrats are struggling to understand this, is a transformational moment in politics. It’s more disintermediated the party bosses no longer get to decide who the choice is. And both the RNC [Republican National Committee] and the DNC [Democratic National Committee] I think, are struggling with this new reality. With social media, with the ability to raise money online, with the ability to drive your own message and organize your own     machine without the party’s blessing, all sorts of candidates have become competitive. Donald Trump is definitely part of that, although he’s sort of the odd man out because he’s more of a cult of personality. On whether Trump is tapping into tea party sentiment, He’s definitely tapping into the anxiety that Washington is broken and that the economy is headed in the wrong direction. But the fundamental difference between the way I think about the tea party  —   and I’m a   member of the tea party  —   is that we talked about the rule of law and we worried that President Obama was very much overstepping the powers of the presidency. We wanted to see the power back in the hands of the people. And Donald Trump clearly doesn’t care about that stuff. He on a regular basis makes it very clear that as president he would do what’s necessary to get the job done. On what Trump’s rise says about the two major political parties, I think they’re sort of walking on eggshells right now, and it goes back to this question about disintermediation. The   system has very much been dependent on the ability of party bosses to control the message, to control the money, to control who the candidates are from the top down. And the party that best understands that that world is no longer there is best going to flourish in this new environment. I think in some ways Donald Trump is a creation of the Republican establishment’s unwillingness to accept this new world. On whether Trump has been a beneficiary of the tea party’s rise, I’ve looked at the data of this, and it depends on how you define the tea party. I talk to tea partiers every day, and he definitely has support from some of them and . .. some of his strongest opposition comes from the tea party. I think it gets to this question of executive power. But I also think that he’s drawing from a lot of Democrats, a lot of independents, a lot of people that have not been participating in the political process before. To me, that’s part of the interesting part of this new world. You know, can we actually enfranchise more voters, can we engage more people in this process? And I should say, we should mention that the same dynamic is happening on the Democratic side. Bernie Sanders is in large part tapping into some of those same anxieties. He has, oddly enough, some of the same positions as Donald Trump on key issues . .. on foreign policy, on immigration. Bernie Sanders has a history of being opposed to new immigration. It’s sort of that   view that our best days are behind us. And, of course, Bernie Sanders is giving Hillary fits in New Hampshire and Iowa."
"Update: Since this story aired, listeners have come forward with new information on the identity of ”Prince” Nazaroff  —   including some members of the musician’s family. Hear Jon Kalish’s   piece.]  Playing Yiddish music in public was once so common among Jewish immigrants who lived near the beaches in New York and Los Angeles that it came to be known as ”boardwalk music.” That’s where I found The Brothers Nazaroff: on the boardwalk at Coney Island, being filmed by a Hungarian director making a documentary about the klezmer group. ”Not everybody loves this, you know?” says the band’s accordion player, Daniel Kahn. ”And I don’t expect everybody to love it. This is for people who are willing to have a good time, people who understand it’s subversive to be joyous in public.” That’s an understandable attitude when you consider the band’s namesake. In 1954, Folkways Records released an album by a mysterious man known as ”Prince” Nazaroff. The   Jewish Freilach Songs sold so poorly that to date, the royalties total less than a thousand dollars. And yet, the recording has inspired several generations of musicians and writers since then. The Brothers Nazaroff are remaking the disc with a tribute release called The Happy Prince  —   though the group, which comprises klezmer musicians from three continents, is a lot more polished than their inspiration. Michael Wex, author of the   book Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods, says he was taken aback when when he heard the original 1954 recording. ”My my initial reaction to it was, ’How the hell did this get recorded? ’” he says. ”It sounds like the   janitor and a bunch of his friends at Folkways broke in one night, and just sort of seized the equipment and started playing songs.” Wex points out that Folkways Records head Moe Asch was the son of Sholem Asch, the most important Yiddish writer in America in the early 20th Century  —   so he was certainly plugged in to the Yiddish arts scene. But he thinks there may be another reason Asch put out the Nazaroff  . ”The Nazaroff stuff was recorded right after Asch had released Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music,” he says. ”It’s almost as if Asch wanted to do a kind of Yiddish pendant to Harry Smith’s anthology.” Hear Jon Kalish’s   story. Bob Cohen, the   mandolinist of The Brothers Nazaroff, concurs: ”It was a fluke that he was recorded. People recorded what would elevate the culture. They didn’t record what Jewish drunks did in the back room of a bar. But why were we in the back room of a bar?” Because that’s where this music was often played: in Yiddish bars. Daniel Kahn says his bandmates think of Prince Nazaroff as the wild grandfather they never met. ”His mandolin, it’s out of tune. The accordion’s out of tune. But nobody cares  —   they’re just playing as hard and as wild as possible,” Kahn says. ”The way he spits out his Yiddish lyrics has a kind of raw energy. Frankly, it’s the same raw energy that I hear in early punk rock.” Prince Nazaroff’s sole album of Yiddish music has brought together some of the biggest names in klezmer music today. In addition to Cohen and Kahn, The Brothers Nazaroff includes the fiddler Jake   Russian singer Psoy Korolenko and vocalist and guitarist Michael Alpert, who was named an NEA National Heritage Fellow this year. But as exuberant as the music is, many of the details of Prince Nazaroff’s life remain less clear. We do know that he was born in Russia in 1892, and that a man named Nicholas Nazaroff is listed in U. S. census records as having two children  —   but Kahn says no one in the band has been able to track them down. ”We have yet to hear from any of his relatives, nor have the people at Smithsonian,” Kahn says. ”He was buried in countless bargain record crates at the back room of many used record stores. That’s the only grave of his that we know of.” But Kahn and the rest of the Brothers Nazaroff have managed a kind of closure: Their new CD is out on the same label that released their namesake’s vinyl record more than 60 years ago. Jon Kalish is a New   reporter and writer."
"Listeners often write about spoiler alerts —  sometimes plot spoilers sneak through in reports on TV shows and movies, as careful as NPR’s reporters and hosts try to be. I heard from listeners about one such unfortunate lack of a heads’ up in a Morning Edition report on the ”The Great British Bake Off” (don’t click through the link if you don’t want to know the winner of season six in the U. K.) I’m sympathetic to the reporter the finale aired in Britain back in October and PBS is still several seasons behind, so it’s hard to say NPR shouldn’t have reported on this. But an   warning wouldn’t have hurt. On to more substantive matters. Listeners also had questions, or perhaps more accurately, complaints in the form of questions. One listener who gave no full name wanted to know about a story looking at the link between deep sleep and Alzheimer’s disease that ran Jan. 4 in on Morning Edition and on the Shots blog online. The   said: ”I must admit reading this article a few times because I didn’t quite understand the import of the article on first read. Was there a new finding? Was there a paper that I was missing the link to? No  —   the article is about two researchers getting a mundane research grant of a scale that happens literally every day dozens of times ($ ). What’s worse, the story seems to be about evidence about a link between sleep and Alzheimer’s, based on a terrific 2013 paper. But alas, 2013 produced thousands of excellent papers that don’t merit revisiting on a news program in 2016 apropos of nothing new happening in the field. I can’t help but feel like this is just clickbait pure and simple. Alzheimer’s and Sleep are super interesting topics worth discussing. The correlation between them is also really interesting. But nothing newsworthy or new was actually reported here. Biological hypotheses however are a dime a dozen and I don’t understand what the criterion was to merit broadcasting this. This journalism doubles as press release rehash, and I expect more of NPR.” Having not seen much of the previous reporting on the topic, I found the article interesting. But I asked Jon Hamilton, the reporter on the story, to respond. Hamilton had already reported in 2013 on the ”terrific paper,” as the reader called it. He wanted to follow up on that piece, he said, and also to explain why Alzheimer’s researchers have become so interested in sleep in the past few years, which he had touched on in an August story. The 2013 paper, he said: ”Got a huge amount of attention because it appears to answer one of the most basic questions in biology: why do mammals need sleep? The answer it offers is that deep sleep is when the brain clears out toxins that would otherwise cause dysfunction, disease, or even death. In the web version of my piece about the 2013 paper, I noted that the finding ’could help explain a mysterious association between sleep disorders and brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s.’ Since then, researchers have published dozens of papers showing how toxic, misfolded proteins in the brain appear to play a central role in a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, something I have reported on here, here, and here. Scientists have also been building a circumstantial case, described by two prominent neuroscientists here, that poor sleep can contribute the accumulation of these toxic proteins. The missing link, though, has been research on people to figure out whether disturbed sleep patterns really can lead to toxin accumulation and brain disease. So when I heard that the scientists at OHSU (one of whom was an author of the 2013 paper) planned to do this sort of research, I thought it merited a mention, even though results are a long way off. My story, like many science stories, revisits past research in order to show why the present research is significant. The material might have been familiar to a brain scientist, but I suspect it was new to most of our listeners and readers. I agree that biological hypotheses are a dime a dozen. Some, though, are still worth reporting.” NPR reporters are sometimes accused of not always following up on earlier stories. In this case, Hamilton seems to me be doing an admirable job of following the thread for listeners, with appropriate cautious language that is careful not to hype a hypothesis that is just that. My office also heard some harsh words over a Dec. 28 Morning Edition report that included interviews with Texas residents who were in the path of devastating tornadoes. This is just a portion of one letter: ”Ever since hearing the   story about the tornadoes in Texas on Morning Edition, I have been wondering why this quote was broadcast. .. ’SABRINA LOWE: We actually went outside and started commanding the winds because God had given us authority over the winds   the airways. And we just began to command this storm not to hit our area. We   we spoke to the storm and said, go to unpopulated places. It did exactly what we said to do because God gave us the authority to do that.’ It was startling and disappointing to hear such foolishness broadcast on NPR. What was the reasoning behind allowing such a strange statement to air?” The quote jumped out at me, too, when I heard it on the air. I asked the newsroom about it. Deputy managing editor Gerry Holmes edited the Morning Edition report, which came from Bill Zeeble at North Texas member station KERA. Whether to include the quote was discussed internally, Holmes said, adding: ”This story was about a population that had been devastated by mother nature and a discussion about what had happened and how residents dealt with this extreme weather. The reporter found a woman who lived through it and asked her to describe what she experienced and felt about what happened. Sabrina Lowe gave what our reporter felt was a strong statement based on her feelings and belief system. While it may sound strong, the reporter felt it well represented her view of what happened from her point of view through the prism of her own faith.” I’m going to treat as rhetorical a Facebook poster’s suggestion that NPR should have investigated Lowe’s claim for truth. NPR in my mind gives a fair amount of airtime (and sometimes too much) to evangelical Christian voices, particularly when reporting on politics, but listeners don’t often hear expressions of faith that take the form of Lowe’s. It’s a big country and people see the world through many lenses. I see no reason why NPR should not have broadcast Lowe’s view listeners are free to evaluate it for themselves. Editor’s note: With the new year it’s a good time to review the goals of this column, which are to give voice to listeners’ concerns, whether I agree or disagree, shed some light on the newsroom’s thinking, and speak out on issues involving ethics, fairness and good journalism. I speak only for myself, not NPR. Many, many more listener concerns are responded to by email you can reach us here or on Twitter, @ejensenNYC, although it is not always possible to address Twitter queries in 140 characters (and no, I do not look forward to the possibility that Twitter will soon lift that limit)."
"In the week since a group of armed individuals took over buildings on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon, there’s been a debate on social media and   pages about what to call them. They refer to themselves as a militia. They say they want states, not the federal government, to manage lands such as the Malheur refuge. They were among a larger group that showed up in Burns, Ore. to protest the convictions and jailing of an Oregon father and son who set   fires that spread on to federal land. Following the peaceful protest, the smaller group with guns broke off and moved into unoccupied buildings on the refuge. But are they ”protesters?” ”Patriots?” ”Criminals?” ”Terrorists?” ”Troublemakers?” Or are there other, better, ways to report about who they are and what they’re doing? The language guidance NPR journalists are following is posted here. The highlights and our reasoning:  —   The words ”militia” and ”militiamen” should not be used on their own. A ”militia” is organized to ”resemble an army” (Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition). At most, this group may be called a ” ” or ” ” militia. It doesn’t ”resemble an army.”  —   The word ”protesters” isn’t entirely adequate. They are not simply citizens peacefully expressing their opinions, which is how the word ”protesters” is more often used. ”Armed protesters” and ”armed occupiers” are better descriptions.  —   ”Militants” is a stronger, more accurate word than ”protesters.” A militant is ”ready and willing to fight,” according to Webster’s. These armed individuals say they are. The dictionary also says a militant is ”vigorous or aggressive in supporting or promoting a cause.” NPR has also referred to the men as ” ” to reflect their political views.  —   At least through the first week, this hasn’t been a ”standoff.” A standoff requires two participants. Right now, one group is occupying some lands and buildings while the other (the government) is holding back. There’s an ”occupation” and it may become a ”standoff,” but it’s not there yet. As for the word ”terrorists,” NPR journalists have not used it to describe the individuals in Oregon. Some writers, such as The Washington Post’s Janell Ross, speculate that if the occupiers in Oregon were black or Muslim instead of white, ”terrorists” is a word that would be heard. But ”terrorism,” as Webster’s defines it, is ”the use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate and subjugate esp. such use as a political weapon or policy.” The individuals in Oregon have pleased some people with their actions and angered others. So far the words ”demoralize, intimidate and subjugate” don’t fit the circumstances. No one has been hurt. No shots have been fired. At NPR, journalists weigh carefully when to use such words. As the news was coming in last year, for example, about the attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, there was a rush by some on social media and at news outlets to label it an act of terrorism and to call the gunmen ”terrorists.” It seems obvious in hindsight that those words applied, but NPR’s approach was to wait for the facts to come in. Running throughout discussions in the newsroom about whether one word or another should be used is this thought: It’s often best just to avoid labels such as ”protesters,” ”patriots” or ”terrorists.” Instead, journalists at NPR and other news outlets often lean on ”action words” that describe what a person or group has done without putting them into one category or another. In time, it will become clear whether any labels apply. Mark Memmott is NPR’s standards and practices editor. He   The Two Way from its launch in May 2009 through April 2014. Email him at wordmatters@npr. org."
"Here’s one topic Americans can bank on hearing about in next week’s State of the Union address: gun control. The reaction to President Obama’s announced   measures this week was swift and entirely as expected.   advocates and many Democrats applauded his efforts   groups and many Republicans loudly denounced the orders as executive overreach. Expanded background checks are central to the president’s proposals. His order doesn’t rewrite existing laws, but it would broaden the scope of who is in the   business. It would require more gun sellers online and at gun shows to be licensed (and perform checks) among other things. ”Let me be clear: It’s not where you are located but what you are doing that determines whether you are engaged in the business of dealing in firearms,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters this week. So would those extra checks bring down America’s high levels of gun deaths? Gun policy experts who spoke to NPR say it could, but if so, that it would only make a dent. Here’s a look at the evidence: What research says, Two recent studies provide evidence that background checks can significantly curb gun violence. In one, researchers found that a 1995 Connecticut law requiring gun buyers to get permits (which themselves required background checks) was associated with a 40 percent decline in gun homicides and a 15 percent drop in suicides. Similarly, when researchers studied Missouri’s 2007 repeal of its    law, they found an associated increase in gun homicides by 23 percent, as well as a   increase in suicides. Those are some huge results  —   one expert called the Missouri study ”the strongest evidence that background checks really matter,” as The New Republic reported  —   but as with lots of   research, there’s some fuzziness as to what the results mean. One caveat is that these studies aren’t about background checks alone. Instead, they’re about    laws, under which people had to go to local law enforcement to get a permit and, therefore, a background check. That difference might have impacted the results, explained Daniel Webster, a   on both studies. He said that being forced to get a permit from law enforcement might do more to deter a straw purchaser, for example, than getting a check at a nearby store. Furthermore, he added that because so many factors influence gun violence in different ways, it’s hard to say how much the effects seen in Connecticut and Missouri would also happen in other states. In addition, a stand your ground law enacted in Missouri in 2007 may have affected the results. Still, other academic research points to the laws’ effectiveness as well. In a 2015 analysis of studies published over the course of 15 years, Webster and   Garen Wintemute found that expanding background checks could ”have protective effects against lethal violence,” and that    laws in particular help curb murders and suicides. They also found that background checks help keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but that it’s less certain whether that in turn leads to less violence. There’s no perfect consensus on how well   laws work. A 2000 study found that the 1994 Brady Act  —   which instituted not only background checks but waiting periods at first  —   did not reduce either homicide or suicide rates. A CDC task force also found in a 2003 review ”inconsistent findings” as to whether restricting gun access through background checks works and insufficient evidence as to whether an array of other gun laws are effective. However, the CDC also said that its findings didn’t mean that gun laws don’t work rather, it said it needed to study the topic more.   researchers say they want to better study background checks (as well as many other policies) but a couple of hurdles stand in the way. Part of the problem is that good studies on the effectiveness of background checks are pretty rare, according to Webster. One reason is that it’s hard to find good test cases to study. ”There’s not a lot of change or variation [in laws] to study in recent times,” he said. ”The vast majority of these laws have been on the books for many, many decades.” Another expert blamed the federal government. ”One of the big problems is that the feds have not funded good research in this area,” said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and an expert on   injuries. He points to federal restrictions, passed in 1996, that said the Centers for Disease Control could not use its funding to ”advocate or promote gun control.” That caused the CDC to back away from gun research almost entirely. Outside organizations could pick up that slack, Hemenway added, but they have not done so. ”The foundations haven’t done a good job, because it’s such a controversial area,” he said. You don’t want to get involved. So we know some things, but we don’t know as well as you would hope, given the enormity of the problem.” What recent shootings tell us, While some scholarly evidence suggests that background checks reduce crime, seeing evidence in recent mass shootings is tougher. As the New York Times found in a December investigation, the guns used in many recent   shootings were purchased legally by people who passed background checks. Importantly, though, to the extent that   laws on the books might have prevented mass shootings, it’s impossible to compile similar lists of incidents that would have occurred, were it not for those laws. One other thing recent shootings say is that the current   system has some gaping holes in it. For example, FBI Director James Comey said in July 2015 that Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine at a South Carolina church last year, should not have passed a background check. Because information about his admission to a narcotics charge never reached an FBI examiner handling his check, as the Washington Post reported, Roof was able to buy his gun. In addition, some states are doing a poor job of submitting mental health records to NICS, as Politico’s Kevin Cirilli writes, allowing some sick people to obtain guns. Cirilli points to Virginia Tech shooter   Cho, who had a history of mental illness before he killed 32 people in 2007. As it stands, around 1. 6 percent of 148 million background checks (that is, more than 2 million) between 1994 and 2012 were denied, according to federal statistics. What the statistics say, One of the most important questions to this discussion is impossible to answer precisely: how many guns are obtained without background checks? While there aren’t exact numbers on this, the figure could still be substantial. Using 2004 data, around 18 percent of gun transactions involved private sellers, buyers’ family members or friends or ”other” sources, as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler found last year. A majority of those sources were not licensed dealers (and therefore were not required to conduct background checks). According to the figures cited by Kessler, 7 percent of guns were obtained from gun shows (and many of those sales probably underwent background checks). But data suggests that gun shows don’t directly supply many of the guns used in crimes. Spokespeople from the National Rifle Association and National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for gun sellers, both also pointed NPR to government data showing that less than 1 percent of prison inmates in 1997 said they got their guns from gun shows. Meanwhile, nearly 80 percent obtained their guns from friends, family or ”street” (illegal) sources. All of this very well may mean that, as   advocates like Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio often point out, criminals will simply obtain guns through some avenue other than stores. That would mean that background checks don’t deter those people, and, therefore, that expanding them to more online or private or gun show sales would do little. But there are other possible conclusions. A recent study of offenders in the Chicago area found most obtained their guns from ”personal connections, not from gun stores or by theft.” While that study suggested to some that background checks are ineffective, one of the authors, Duke University’s Philip Cook, disagrees. ”This research demonstrates that current federal and local regulations are having a big effect on the availability of guns to criminals in Chicago,” he said in a release. ”They can’t buy their guns from stores, the way most people do, and are instead largely constrained to making private deals with acquaintances, who may or may not be willing and able to provide what they want.” Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told NPR that ”the industry has always been supportive of the background check system,” though he also said he has doubts about how much good the new proposals will do. Researchers Hemenway and Webster both think the president’s executive actions could have a modest effect on gun violence. For his part, Hemenway thinks universal background checks would be an effective first step, but what he thinks would be more fruitful in the long term has more to do with innovation than legislative action. ”In the long run, we should be spending a lot of money on figuring out technological fixes,” he said. ”The easiest one is to make guns better for home protection and much, much less dangerous and less likely to be stolen.”"
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. Which camp are you in: Fearful of the coming robot apocalypse, or looking forward to the coming robot nirvana? Being human, I’m mostly on the fear side of this question. So I read with interest a Quartz post the other day that made clear a robot apocalypse for some is a robot nirvana for others. In this case, the losers are    starfish and the winners are the corals that make up Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The starfish are bad news for the corals. So researchers have developed an autonomous underwater killing machine, a robot that  —   they say  —   can identify its target 99. 4 percent of the time and deliver a lethal injection of bile salts. The Quartz description makes it sound a bit like the black, hovering orb that threatened an imprisoned Princess Leia in the original Star Wars movie. It sounds wonderful. It sounds scary. It sounds like the future. It’s usually Labor Day weekend when a piece like this rolls out. We journalists love holiday themes. Still, the timing of this   article this week from The Atlantic was apropos as Americans returned to work in a new year amid grim global economic news. (Thanks a lot, China, and your     economy). Just why do Americans work so much? Research by a Harvard economist cited in the piece offers several possibilities, including the obvious  —   stagnant wages make it difficult for working people to work less. Nearly a century ago, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that American productivity and the age of abundance would mean less toil for workers. And until the 1970s, the average workweek was shrinking. Not anymore. Most of us are working more. And another intriguing answer to the question why  —   and some of you may find this one difficult to believe  —   we may actually prefer being at work. Don’t buy it? Um, are you reading this at work? Sometimes, you can’t just talk it out. For veterans with   stress disorder, art may be more fruitful. Samantha Allen of The Daily Beast highlights a program at Walter Reed medical center that is teaching veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan how to make   masks. ”The results,” she writes, ”are stirring.” In the hundreds of masks that have been made, there are themes: cuts, embedded shrapnel, manipulated mouths and the ”split sense of self,” according to art therapist and program coordinator Melissa Walker. Drexel University in Philadelphia will be studying 400 of the masks to better understand service members’ experiences. ”A lot of research will tell you that when you’re in a traumatic experience, the part of the brain that controls speech shuts down,” said Dr. Girija Kaimal of Drexel tells The Daily Beast. ”So having a nonverbal way —  such as art —  to communicate is key to understanding what they’re going through.” What I find particularly interesting is that the veterans do many kinds of art projects, but Walker says the masks tend to get the most attention from people outside the program."
"Maine Gov. Paul LePage is responsible for this week’s meme. During a town hall in Bridgton, Maine, Wednesday night, he spoke about Maine’s drug problem, positing a theory on how some of the narcotics in the state make it in. He said the following: ”The traffickers  —   these aren’t people who take drugs. These are guys by the name   Smoothie, Shifty. These type of guys that come from Connecticut and New York. They come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave. Which is the real sad thing, because then we have another issue that we have to deal with down the road.” There’s a lot to unpack here. But what stood out the most online seemed to be the way LePage, the Republican governor of an overwhelmingly white state, used race  —   or at least alluded to it  —   to discuss Maine’s drug woes. Many thought the names ”” ”Smoothie” and ”Shifty” were meant to describe a particular type of black man. Online ridicule of the comments seemed to take two tracks  —   wondering what ”” ”Smoothie,” and ”Shifty” would actually look like: Or  —   mocking some of the ugly stereotypes about black men LePage seemed to allude to: LePage soon walked back the comments, saying they were a mistake. ”I was going impromptu, and my brain didn’t catch up to my mouth.” He continued, ”Instead of Maine women, I said white women. ... if you go to Maine, you can see it’s 95 percent white.” He said of journalists writing about the gaffe, ”If you want to make it racist, go ahead and do what you want.” Though it’s easy to dismiss LePage’s comments and quickly move on, they might reveal something deeper upon further reflection  —   the way race informs how America talks about drugs. So far in this presidential election, candidates on both sides of the aisle have been discussing drugs, frequently and sympathetically, particularly because of the addiction problem in one of Maine’s neighboring states  —   New Hampshire, which holds the first primary. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has written about his own daughter’s struggles with addiction. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s impassioned speech about addiction and how it’s hit people he knows went viral last year. And Hillary Clinton has proposed spending $10 billion over 10 years to fight    addiction. The conversation on addiction this election has focused more on treatment and compassion  —   and differs from the    rhetoric used previously in the war on drugs. Some say that’s because the face of addiction in America today, particularly when it comes to heroin, is increasingly white. NPR’s Tamara Keith has been reporting on the trend, which some have begun calling the ”gentrification of the drug crisis.” And at a recent New Hampshire forum on addiction, presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich said there may be a racial bias in the way the country is dealing with addiction. ”This disease knows no bounds, knows no income, knows no neighborhood it’s everywhere,” Kasich said. ”And sometimes I wonder how   must have felt when drugs were awash in their community and nobody watched. Now it’s in our communities, and now all of a sudden, we’ve got forums, and God bless us, but think about the struggles that other people had.” At the time LePage made his comments about ”” ”Smoothie” and ”Shifty,” he may not have been thinking about any of these larger issues and the complicated way race and drugs intersect. He may have also not known that the night before he spoke, the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency arrested three people in Maine and charged them with distributing heroin. They were white. And their names  —   James, Jody and Donna."
"In 1982, when I washed up on NPR’s doorstep looking for a job, I started a pickup basketball game. It endures to this day. That’s right, we are in our 33rd season, which makes me too old to still be playing . .. and yet, somehow, I still am. Every Wednesday night over the decades, a group of guys  —   including an array of NPR staffers  —   has come together to run full court in a rented gym. We’ve had journalists, carpenters, doctors, locksmiths, IT guys, military guys, lawyers, and at least one top White House staffer . .. this is D. C. after all. Often, we know little about each other’s personal lives and would never recognize each other with long pants on. One of the   is Bernard Ohanian, who characterizes the game this way: ”When it’s really clicking, it’s like a jazz symphony,” he says. ”And most of the time, it’s like a bad garage band.” Bernard says the game endures because everyone’s friendly and plays hard. ”There’s no jerks in the game,” he says. ”Anyone who’s ever played pickup basketball knows that’s not always the case. And the friendships and relationships you build up over a number of years, it just feels right, it feels part of my life.” NPR economics correspondent John Ydstie was an   player in high school and is one of the last original members of the group still playing. He has been part of my   life for a long, long time. ”I know your every move,” he tells me  —   including the fact that I can’t go left. John is a consistent threat from the outside and along the baseline. And it’s these moves that keep him coming back week after week. ”Every now and then, I do something that feels like it felt when I was 20 years old and it just feels so great. And you realize you were once really good at this thing. And I’m not very good at it anymore, but it’s still fun. It’s just great fun.” For Ohanian, long running games run in the family. His dad played with a bunch of friends from the time they were 15 until well into their golden years. According to Bernard, one of the regulars was a guy named Bob who had been fouling everyone since World War II. But he would never admit it. Well, during one game in the   Bernard was playing with the group when Bob hacked another old timer named Joe one time too many. ”And Joe says, ’foul,’ ” says Bernard. ”And Bob just looks incredulous and he says, ’Joe, I didn’t foul you.’ And you could see this stuff simmering in Joe like you’re holding it in all these years. And he slams the ball down on the floor and he says, ’Damn it, Bob, it was a foul in 1945 and it’s a foul today!’ ” When we first started playing, almost everybody was in their early 30s, but over the years, the original cast of characters dwindled. Some left town. Some were felled by torn ligaments. Others were pulled away by marriage and kids, and yet others just got too old and creaky. And most often, young guys, like newcomer Dan Blank, have taken their place. He was born in 1983, the year after the game started. I’m pretty sure I’m older than his parents. But Dan says that the   guys can keep up. ”A lot of guys out here have some very sneaky speed. Every now and then I think I can just jog down and keep pace and then they zoom right past me, so I don’t take anything for granted the way I did the first game,” he says. Dan is likely just being nice. And Bernard Ohanian says that’s one of the hallmarks of this game . .. especially when one of the seniors hits the deck. ”When any of us really older guys dives for a ball and we’re on the ground or we fall, the young guys are standing over us, ’You all right, you all right, you all right?’ I think they’re afraid we’re going to die on the court.” I guess that would be one of those, ”At least he died doing what he loved” moments. When talk turns to finally retiring from the game, John says, not yet. ”You know I keep thinking, I suppose there’s a time will come we have to hang it up. But it’s not next week. And I don’t think it’s next year. Yeah I don’t know. Just keep going until I can’t go anymore.” Over the years, I’ve broken my nose, cracked my ribs, torn muscles and sprained my ankles. My jump shot percentage is approaching that of   milk, and my reflexes have gone from catlike to  . And yet, I keep playing because the game I’ve practiced since I was 9 years old keeps toying with me. Just when it seems like I can’t raise the embarrassment bar any higher, I’ll have a great night. Or a least a great game. I’ll hit most of my shots, and maybe even a  . And then I know, I’ll be back next Wednesday night."
"The fight over genetically modified food, or GMOs, has long resembled battles on the Western Front in World War I.   and   forces have aimed plenty of heavy artillery at each other, but neither   side has given much ground. This week, though, for perhaps the first time, a major combatant switched sides on one hotly contested question: whether the government should require labels on genetically modified ingredients in food. The Campbell Soup Co. after years of staunch opposition to mandatory labels, now says that it ”will advocate for federal legislation that would require all foods and beverages regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to be clearly and simply labeled for GMOs.” In a letter to the company’s employees, posted on Campbell’s website, Campbell’s CEO Denise Morrison wrote that the company was responding to the desires of consumers, but it also wanted to avoid multiple and conflicting demands for GMO labeling by individual states. ”Printing a clear and simple statement on the label is the best solution for consumers and for Campbell,” Morrison wrote. Proponents of a labeling law, including the Environmental Working Group, the Just Label It campaign and US Right to Know, praised Campbell’s move. Most of the food industry, along with the FDA, has opposed mandatory labeling of GMOs. The FDA says that there’s no reason to require such labels because current GMO ingredients are identical, nutritionally, to conventional ingredients. In fact, if consumers react to it as a warning to avoid such ingredients, it would actually be misleading. The food industry’s opposition to GMO labels has partly been based on this fear that some people would avoid products with a GMO label. This assumption about consumer behavior has rarely been tested, and Campbell’s may be betting that most consumers of Campbell’s soups, Pepperidge Farms baked goods and Prego pasta sauces may not actually react to a GMO label. The company says that even if the government doesn’t require GMO labels, it will go ahead and label its products anyway. It posted a   of one possible label on a can of   with these words: ”Partially produced with genetic engineering.”"
"Vermont musician Jamie Masefield has been improvising on the jazz mandolin for decades. He’s recorded six albums, including one with Blue Note Records, and brings everything from folk and funk to the literature of Leo Tolstoy to the stage. But some years back, his eclectic creativity brought him to an unexpected second career. When I meet Masefield at work, he’s chipping away at some pinkish stone with a small hammer. ”In the industry we call it ’rainbow stone,’” he offers. ”It’s very nice to work with.” When he’s not making music, Masefield is a professional dry stone mason. This means he builds walls and foundations and sculptures that support themselves, without any concrete smooshed between the cracks. Today he’s building a retaining wall. ”The first concern is longevity,” he explains. ”We want to build something that lasts a long time, that has real functionality, that’s not just there to please a homeowner for 15 years.” Another word for this is stability  —   which is exactly what Masefield was looking for when he got into masonry. He’d been living on the road with his band, the Jazz Mandolin Project  —   ”driving around the country in a van, playing over 100 shows a year, sleeping in funky motels alongside the roaring highway,” as he describes it. He was ready for a change. ”I was feeling more of a need to have a vegetable garden and eat good food and be healthy and be outside,” Masefield says. ”And so I contacted an old friend of mine who had a   landscaping company, and the first day I went to work for him, he had me building the corner of a stone wall. And I loved it.” Andrew Louden, a master craftsman with the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain, says he’s not surprised that someone with Masefield’s background would find their way into his field. ”I think anybody who comes into dry stone walling, it’s helpful if you’ve got some sort of artistic leaning or background,” Louden says. ”Because unlike building in any other medium, the stone’s completely irregular.” It takes creativity and discipline. Louden’s association runs a series of tests to certify professional builders at different levels. He judged Masefield’s intermediate test, which ran seven hours. ”For me, the timed element’s one of the more important parts of the test, because the craftsman has to prove that he’s economically viable,” Louden says. Masefield passed. But because he also wants to stay musically viable, when he’s on the job site, he’s compulsive about protecting his hands. ”I wear gloves all the time when I’m working,” Masefield says. ”Going to the bank and saying, ’Yeah, this is on my business account I’m a stone mason,’ sometimes I walk away thinking, ’That guy doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t think I’m a stone mason. My hands are too soft because I’m wearing these gloves all the time. ’” ”He puts himself into whatever it is he’s doing pretty sincerely,” says Phish drummer Jon Fishman, who has played with Masefield on and off since the two were in college, most recently in an outfit called Masefield Perkins Fishman Bolles. From the beginning, Fishman says, he recognized a kindred spirit. ”Jamie was one of those people  —   like, ’Oh, this guy’s pretty dedicated.’ This is another human who it’s not just a hobby for,” Fishman says. ”And to be perfectly honest, when he started to go down the stone building route, I was actually a little jealous.” It’s tempting to think that Masefield inhabits two totally different creative worlds. However, he says jazz and masonry have something fundamental in common, and points to a musical practice known as ”playing changes.” ”When we’re playing changes, we’re soloing over those harmonic changes in that particular tune  —   and so you’re very quickly making decisions about what you’re going to play,” he says. ”When I’m doing stonework, I often feel like we’re in the midst of playing changes, because every stone you place needs some consideration. But you can’t dwell on it all day long.” Just like improvisation. And yet, he adds, both crafts are also about the pursuit of timelessness. ”At the end of every day of doing stonework, I can look back and hopefully say, ’That looks good, and that’s what we’ve done today, and that’s going to last a really long time.’ It’s similar in music. If you’re lucky enough to play some really great music one day, you can look back and say, ’Well, we’ve got that.’ That’s recorded, or the audience has heard that. Hopefully that’s had an effect on them in some way that they’re taking home with them. The task is monumental, so to speak: make something for this moment, and at the same time make something for the ages  —   for everyone. How many of us are trying to do that?"
"”Green things did not last long in the Scorched.” With simple yet foreboding lines like this, Megan E. O’Keefe paints a vivid portrait of a tough, bitter world in her debut   novel Steal the Sky. It takes place in the city of Aransa, a mining town on the Scorched Continent, a land whose ancient abundance long ago gave way to arid desolation. Selium is the commodity being mined in Aransa it’s a rare element that enables vast airships to sail the skies above and beyond the city. And with that scarcity comes a caste system, racial injustice and power struggles over who will control the production of selium. As cruel as Aransa can be, O’Keefe stocks her setting with a decidedly less grim cast of characters. Detan Honding is a con man and ne’   whose roguish charm keeps him and his sidekick Tibs out of jail, but only barely. His sparring partner is Ripka Leshe, a   who realizes she and Detan have a common goal  —   one that involves the city’s ongoing political machinations, particularly the rise of Thratia Ganal, a notorious military leader with a populist appeal. Forming an uneasy alliance, the crook and the cop begin to unearth deadly secrets in their perilous attempt to do right by their city (or just themselves, as the case may be). It’s serious business, but O’Keefe keeps the intricacies of her story relatively light, fleet and   even as deceits,   and bodies start to pile up. O’Keefe isn’t threatening to break any new ground with Steal the Sky, which is the first installment of her Scorched Continent Trilogy. She draws heavily from Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards  —   another series that deals in sly thieves and high politics  —   and there are obvious parallels between selium and melange, the spice that compels entire civilizations to clash in Frank Herbert’s Dune. As with melange, selium has its secrets, including its relationship to   those who have the genetic ability to sense and manipulate selium, and are both oppressed and vital to the workings of Aransa. That said, Steal the Sky doesn’t need an abundance of originality to work, and work well. Detan boils over with charisma and sharp   as he and Tibs skulk, scamper and scheme their way into the heart of Aransa’s deadliest secrets  —   not to mention a swashbuckling plan to swipe the Larkspur, the most magnificent airship in the Scorched  —   and O’Keefe’s plot is as swift as it is deceptively complex. It’s a buddy tale, a heist caper, a socioeconomic thriller and a   fantasia all at once. And it fires beautifully on all cylinders. If there’s another writer to whom O’Keefe owes a debt, it’s Joss Whedon. Hints of the Firefly creator’s trademark wit, poignancy and     banter abound in Steal the Sky. Those hints are more than welcome O’Keefe’s dialogue is as nimble as Detan’s thieving fingers, and his inevitable tragic secrets lend needed gravitas to his     persona. And in Pelkaia Teria  —   an older woman who, as a hated and feared doppel, possesses the ability to use selium to mask her appearance and take on the identity of others  —   the book rounds out its ensemble with emotional depth as well as an expansion of its already formidable  . Green things may not last long in the Scorched, but with Steal the Sky, O’Keefe has cultivated fertile ground for the next books in her promising trilogy to grow. Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A. V. Club, a Hugo   editor and author of the novel Taft 2012."
"After seeing exactly 662 bands in each 2013 and 2014, my concert attendance plummeted in 2015. This past year I saw only 506 bands take the stage, but I have an excuse. I wrote a book. So more than 100 times this year I opted to sit on my couch and write instead of running out to one of my fave D. C. concert hot spots. I love the participatory nature of concerts. There’s something about screaming approval at a show that makes it an active and communal form of entertainment. I don’t get that from movies and TV shows  —   in fact, I never made it to the theater in 2015 and Portlandia was the only series of which I can say I watched every episode. On the other hand, I did see 59 bands play at the 9:30 Club and 31 bands play at DC9, and also plenty of shows at the Black Cat, Comet Ping Pong, The Hamilton, The Lincoln Theater, Sixth and I Synagogue and Rock  Roll Hotel. D. C. is a good town for music. Venues care about the performers and the fans are the best of any city I’ve been to. It was a good year to be in a club. And though I prefer intimate spaces, two of my favorite shows  —   Glen Hansard and Sufjan Stevens  —   were both at one of my least favorite venues, DAR Constitution Hall. I also went to my first Phish show and grew a beard (not necessarily in that order). Below is a list of my top 10 shows, starting with the best concert I saw all year. Following that is handful of bonuses and a list of every concert I saw in 2015 (I count each band as a show or performance) in chronological order. All 506 of them. Dear bands: If I missed you last year, I’ll try to do better in 2016. I watched Robin Hilton weep and had a few tears of my own, in a space more hollow than holy. But Sufjan Stevens sung his songs of abandonment and forgiveness with visuals that were simple and symbolic. He turned Constitution Hall into a place of   and magic, with large screens resembling church windows and projections of oceans, landscapes and home movies. It all made for a pensive, reflective backdrop for his songs from Carrie and Lowell. My first encounter with Kate Tempest was at SXSW 2015. I hadn’t paid attention to her brilliant 2014 album Everybody Down. The British   poet and playwright is a master communicator. She’s able to sing and tell tales to a crowd and all the while, I felt her speaking directly to me. And her message was full of passion and love. One of the lines she repeated over and over to everybody, as she looked around the room, was, ”More empathy, less greed.” Live in the moment is her message, a pungent one in a distractible world. I’ve seen Courtney Barnett at least seven times in the past two years, and each time she and her band shine brighter and the songs get better. This year she debuted her first full length album at NPR Music’s SXSW showcase. Later, on two consecutive nights at the 9:30 Club, she played some of the finest rock and roll I’ve seen on a stage. Hers is music that’s thoughtful and unfastened at the same time it engages my brain with words and sets my body free with beats and a guitar barrage. I love the heart that Glen puts into his performance, but frankly, knowing that he was to perform at Constitution Hall, which seats around 3, 700 people, I figured it’d be a fine show but not a deeply moving experience. I was so, so wrong. At first I attributed my response to the fact that my seats were relatively close to the stage, but the more I looked around and saw the crowd, the more I knew that this show was transcendent. From a cappella songs performed sans microphone to a big and exceptional   band behind him, Glen created a tavern out of a hall. The stories flowed  —   confessional at times  —   through   songs and an encore that had him singing among the standing crowd with just a   Takamine guitar (once again without a mic). When he brought out the legendary Richard Thompson, the evening’s opener, and they proceeded to perform Sandy Denny’s ”Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” I cried. I saw Mackenzie Scott, a. k. a. Torres, at four venues not including my desk in 2015. And though the church show at SXSW was a perfect way to end a night, it was her show in the backyard of an Austin sports bar on a rainy afternoon that packed the punch. She was fierce, tossing a middle finger into the air while singing and sternly strumming, her voice a rasp as she sang the words to ”Strange Hellos”: ”I was all for being real, but if I don’t believe then no one will. What’s mine isn’t really yours, but I hope you find what you’re looking for.” I wouldn’t want to be the subject of that tale but thrilled to receive the wrath and brutal honesty from the music it inspired. Someone recently asked me if I get bored or jaded going out and hearing music five or so times a week. Then I think of walking into a club like DC9 to hear a band I know nothing about and walking out wearing a massive smile and sprinkled with a bit of glitter (or maybe, in this case, GLTTR). Bands like PWR BTTM are why I love to go to shows: seeing musicians fiercely in love with what they do. PWR BTTM is a queer duo from NYC with a penchant to perform and sing about boys or the lack thereof. They’re punk insofar as they’re loud, though they’re not angry. Guitarist Ben Hopkins and drummer Liv Bruce (who swap roles at times) are funny and lovable. Most importantly, they are a big wonderful surprise and in a single   minute set, they brought a group of strangers in a club together for something unforgettable. It’s the reason I go out. This comeback was triumphant because it wasn’t nostalgic.   came armed with new muscular songs, played to an audience at the 9:30 Club that included some who may have witnessed one of the band’s final shows at the same club in the summer of 2006 but also some eighteen year olds who were likely in fourth grade back then. The band felt vital: Corin Tucker sang like only Corin can sing, Carrie Brownstein owned the stage and Janet Weiss propelled her best friends forward with might and finesse. It was a thrilling sight and a feast for the ears. Another case of knowing next to nothing and experiencing talent and joy. The Suffers are a soulful   band punctuated by brilliant horns and led by an undeniable singer and   presence, Kam Franklin. Their Houston, Texas sound mixes RB with Cajun, country and more. It’s old school and new. They’ve still not put out their debut album, that will come very soon and I’m sure this will be the year you’ll experience Gulf Coast Soul. Remember that overwhelming sadness when a good relationship came to a painful end? Imagine being able to express those feelings to a friend or acquaintance so they feel connected to your feelings to the point of tears. Björk did that to me with song and sound at Carnegie Hall earlier this year. Armed with electronics by Arca, who worked with Björk to produce the   songs from Vulnicura, percussionist Manu Delago and a   string ensemble called Alarm Will Sound, she told the tale of her relationship’s demise. We’ve all heard a thousand songs of heartbreak, but nothing as touching as these. When I look geographically at the music I love, it tends to be based either on the East Coast, the south, the U. K. and Iceland. Geography is something that defines the sound of music and when I hear the Ukranian music of DakhaBrakha and hear their     harmonies and rhythms, I’m reminded how narrow the avenues of creation can be. DakhaBrakha simply touched my heart deeply when I heard them at GlobalFEST in 2014 and the group’s U. S. return, at the Sixth and I Synagogue this year, conjured emotions of longing and uncertainty with songs sung in a language I don’t understand but in ways music can universally convey. You can watch them play my desk or keep an eye for their 2016 return. There was plenty more live music worth highlighting  —   too much, in fact. Below, you’ll find the complete list of 506 sets I saw in 2015, but before that, here are a few more bands worth mentioning that didn’t make my top 10: One of the exciting things about seeing music nearly every night is discovering new bands. I was inspired to bring many of my favorite discoveries to the Tiny Desk (NPR Music hosted 84 Tiny Desk Concerts during 2015, but I didn’t count any of those in my concert tally). Kate Tempest, The Suffers, Christopher Paul Stelling, The Wild Reeds, Shakey Graves, Oh Pep! Girlpool, And The Kids, Land Lines, Car Seat Headrest, SOAK, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats and Wolf Alice are some that come to mind. There were groups who put their blood and beauty on display: The Golden Dawn Arkestra reminded me of Sun Ra Mucca Pazza was a carnival of fun complete with cheerleaders Thunderbitch had a   Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes entering the stage on a motorcycle and Downtown Boys set the crowd reeling with frenetic fervor, as did Diet Cig and my personal favorite, D. C.’s own Priests. Tanya Tagaq, an Inuk throat singer, was cathartic and orgasmic while Miya Folick was simply transcendent. And it was good to see old favorites get even better:   on a big big stage, Laura Marling at Newport, The Punch Brothers at the 9:30 Club and the grumpy and adorable Stephin Merritt in a synagogue. If you’re at a show in 2016 and see a guy in a Fedora style hat with a huge grin, come say hi and share a moment."
"Germany has started 2016 with a deep and bitter debate: How should the country respond to the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, in which mobs of men reportedly robbed and sexually assaulted women on the streets? Concrete information about the night is sparse, and competing narratives abound. ”A lot happened on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, much of it contradictory, much of it real, much of it imagined,” wrote the staff of Der Spiegel, who obtained an internal police document about the night’s events. ”Some was happenstance, some was exaggerated and much of it was horrifying.” This much is known: A group of men, reportedly numbering more than 1, 000, gathered at Cologne’s central train station late on New Year’s Eve. The station, by the city’s famous cathedral, was a central hub for people traveling between the city’s fireworks display and its nightclubs, the New York Times notes. In smaller groups, witnesses and authorities say, men surrounded women, groped them and stole their belongings. Cologne police are currently investigating 379 criminal complaints, about 40 percent involving allegations of sexual abuse, the Associated Press reports. The wire service earlier noted two allegations of rape. The Cologne police chief described the assailants as ”Arab or North African” in appearance. As a result, the outcry over the attacks has not only centered on victims and perpetrators: it’s extended to a broader national debate over migrants, multiculturalism and Germany’s   policy to asylum seekers. Rhetoric is running hot. The story currently dominates the German press, with headlines referencing the ”New Year’s Horror” or ”Night Of Shame.” Here are a few of the central questions dominating the conversation: Accounts of the assailants as Arab or North African in appearance have profoundly shaped the reaction to the night’s events. But it’s difficult for police to pinpoint exactly who was involved. A police report from that evening says police checked 71 IDs at the scene, Der Spiegel reports, most of which were   documents. And earlier this week, authorities identified 32 people suspected of being involved in the attacks, according to The Associated Press. Of those, 22 were  . Three German citizens and a U. S. citizen were also among the suspects. Many more men were alleged to have been involved in the attacks, but they’ll be hard to find. ”The police chief says that many victims can’t identify their attackers and don’t think they’ll be able to, even if they were arrested,” NPR’s Soraya   told Renee Montagne this week. Police have asked for videos of the event to help identify suspects, Soraya says. Multiple officials have called for the German public not to assume, based on a description of assailants’ appearances, that they were migrants or  . The Cologne Refugee Council Director noted to Soraya that Germans of North African descent, or the children of guest workers, could also fit witnesses’ descriptions. But the fact that the majority of current suspects are   has been taken by many as confirmation of their fears, even though it seems very few of the total alleged assailants have been identified. On Sunday, in an interview with the German tabloid Bild, Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas called for authorities to investigate any possible connection between the events in Cologne and incidents in other cities. ”All connections must be carefully checked,” Maas said, according to the AP. ”There is a suspicion that a particular date was chosen with expected crowds. That would then be a new dimension.” Maas also said, ”If such a horde gathers in order to commit crimes, that appears in some form to be planned.” His comments are the most recent suggestion of coordination, but far from the first. Police had been looking for possible connections already  —   smaller incidents in Hamberg and Stuttgart were identified earlier this week. New Year’s Eve assaults also occurred in cities in Sweden and Finland, the AP reports. Authorities haven’t announced any evidence of advance planning or coordination. Der Spiegel’s account of the night depicts a police force so overwhelmed that it couldn’t even protect a policewoman from being publicly groped. Officers at one point cleared out the square by the train station  —   then a number of them left the area, and the crowd began to return. The police were clearly unprepared, despite the fact that they were already monitoring criminal gangs active in the square. To make matters worse, the next morning they announced the night had been ”largely peaceful.” Earlier this week, Soraya reported on some of the apparent failings of the police force, led by Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers: ”Albers says his officers didn’t learn about the sexual assaults until the next day. ”One victim who spoke with German Channel   accused police of keeping her and several female friends, who were also attacked, from seeking refuge inside the nearby main train station. ”The victim, whom the TV channel identified only by first name, Michelle, said police didn’t take her sexual assault claim seriously for several days and at first would only file a report about her cellphone being stolen.” And why did it take days for the police to admit the scale of the crime and chaos? The police chief says victims were slow to file complaints, Soraya reported: but some victims, like Michelle, have accused the police of ignoring claims they filed. In addition to the police being slow to disclose the events, one prominent German media outlet, public broadcaster ZDF, was slow to cover them. That’s fueled both criticism and conspiracy theories, Der Spiegel reports: ”In Germany, there is a stable minority that is convinced that the country’s broadcasters, newspapers and magazines are controlled by dark powers and have agreed to suppress bad news about foreigners so as not to endanger the political project of welcoming refugees.” ZDF has apologized for the delay in reporting on the attacks. Is the ”Night of Shame” shocking in its nature, or simply in its scale? Many commentators have depicted the events as a horrifying deviation from normal life in Germany. The extent of the assaults and the ineffectiveness of the police presence were undeniably extraordinary. But some have argued that the elements of the incident weren’t new. The initial crowd of drunken men sending off barely controlled fireworks was ”engaging in hooliganism one sees in many German cities on New Year’s Eve” as Soraya put it. At least one tactic seen that night was familiar to Cologne, as The Guardian writes: ”Police have said the men appeared to have been coordinated, comparing their modus operandi to that of criminal gangs that have operated in strength for several years in the area and turning it into a place many Cologners avoid after dark. Known locally as antänzer( waltzers) the men snuggle up to their victims, often twisting a leg around them in an apparently playful fashion, which causes them to lose balance, whereupon the perpetrator uses the opportunity to whip a wallet or mobile phone from a pocket or bag.” And Stefanie Lohaus and Anne Wizorek in Vice address the frequency of assaults at public gatherings in Germany: ”Sexual assaults and even rape happen every year at big events like Oktoberfest. ’The way to the toilet alone is like running the gauntlet: within 50 feet, you can be sure to tally three hugs from drunken strangers, two pats on the ass, someone looking up your dirndl, and some beer purposely splashed right down your cleavage,’ wrote Karoline Beisel and Beate Wild in 2011, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. An average of ten reported rapes take place each year at Oktoberfest. The estimated number of unreported cases is 200.” Which brings us to another theme: This question was discussed on All Things Considered on Saturday, when Anne Wizorek, one of the authors of that Vice piece, spoke to Michel Martin about sexual violence in Germany. There’s the incident itself, with scores of women publicly assaulted. There’s the lack of police response  —   and the experiences of women who say police were interested in reports of thefts but not assault allegations. And then there’s also the question of popular response, and whether women’s experiences are being hijacked for political purposes. Wizorek started a campaign in 2013 to use the hashtag ”#aufschrei,” or outcry, for women to share their experiences with stalking, harassment, assault and rape. ”Back then when #Aufschrei was big in the media and people talked about it . .. a lot of people also tried to downplay the problems. They were saying, ’Well, but we’ve gotten so far and we have gender equity in Germany right now, we have a female chancellor, so what do you want?’ All that kind of argument was going on,” she told Michel. ”And those people are the ones who are now talking a lot about what has happened in Cologne. So they are using these stories and these experiences of the people who have been attacked in Cologne to only push forward with their racist agenda against migrants and refugees in Germany. And I think that’s a huge problem.” A protest Saturday by the   group PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, attracted 1, 700 people in Cologne, and was broken up by riot police, Reuters says: ”Demonstrators, some of whom bore tattoos with   symbols such as a skull in a German soldier’s helmet, had chanted ”Merkel must go” and ”this is the march of the national resistance.” ”Rapefugees not welcome,” one banner read. ” . .. Some in the crowd threw bottles and firecrackers at officers, and riot police used water cannons to disperse the protesters. ”Two people were injured in the clash, and police detained a number of demonstrators, a Reuters witness said.” The rising tide of   feeling has some observers concerned. But others say that looking at groups like PEGIDA with fear is looking in the wrong direction. Those 1, 700 protesters were met by an equal number of police officers  —   a far stronger showing by police than was found on the streets of Cologne on New Year’s Eve. A   with about 1, 300 people, protested both racism and violence against women. Angela Merkel’s welcoming policy toward refugees had divided public opinion in Germany even before events in Cologne. Germany accepted more than a million   in 2015. The most hostile critics of the policy point toward the attacks as confirmation of their longstanding fears: that refugees are dangerous and their presence will transform German life for the worse. More moderate critics see their fears confirmed as well: not that welcoming refugees is inherently wrong, but that Germany is not adequately prepared to manage the influx of people it has decided to accept. And supporters of refugees worry that the widespread anger about the incident in Cologne will hurt both refugees currently in Germany, and those who would come in the future. Merkel, for her part, is now pushing for a law that would make it easier to deport   who are convicted of crimes, while maintaining that Germany will be able to handle the planned volume of incoming refugees. There are multiple answers to every question, depending on whom you ask. Almost nothing in the narrative is widely agreed upon. Well, except for one thing. As Der Spiegel put it: ”As inexact and unclear as the facts from Cologne may be, they carry a clear message: Difficult days are ahead.”"
"On New Year’s Eve, a mob of young men assaulted and harassed dozens of women outside a busy train station in the German city of Cologne. Authorities and eyewitnesses differ on what motivated these attacks, but most accounts agree that many of those involved appeared to be North African or Arab. In the course of the investigation so far, 31 suspects have been taken in for questioning, more than half of whom were  . That has set off a national debate in Germany, which has taken the form of street demonstrations and protests on social and traditional media. The question at the heart of the conversation is whether the influx of refugees and migrants is changing Germany in unacceptable ways. But some, including writer and feminist activist Anne Wizorek, assert that the matter has roots that run much deeper than the newcomers. ”The problem of sexism and sexual violence, especially against women, has already been there and has nothing to do with any people who come here as refugees or are growing up as people of color in general,” Wizorek tells NPR’s Michel Martin. Wizorek, together with Stefanie Lohaus, penned a recent article in Vice arguing that the sexual assaults point to a much larger problem in the country: ”In fact, Germany’s rape culture is deeply rooted in our collective psyche,” they write. ”We have to address this problem finally,” Wizorek tells Martin. ”Because right now, we’re only focusing on sexism and sexual assault when it is perpetrated by men of color, and that sets a wrong focus on the problem that we actually have to talk about.” On what happened in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, Women have been touched and sometimes their clothes been torn apart. And they have been insulted and they have been surrounded by this group of men, attacking them. So this is of course a very gruesome situation. We just feel powerless, and just hope that it’s all over, basically, very soon. On the way Germany’s political leadership has responded, Heiko Maas, the minister of justice, was one of the first ones to respond to this and say that this is a kind of violence that will not be tolerated, of course. And now he’s also pushed to get the law changed that is addressing sexual violence and sexual assault. But I think the most important one was of course issued by Angela Merkel, our chancellor. She now wants to see if it’s possible to send the people who came here as   and who commit crimes like this back to their home countries, which of course is something that causes another debate on whether or not we should take this incident and change a whole law and a whole situation for so many more people. On #Aufschrei, a hashtag meaning ”Outcry,” which she initiated on Twitter, #Aufschrei was an ad hoc campaign, so it wasn’t really planned. We were just in this situation on Twitter where one of my friends started sharing her own experience with sexual assault and I just wanted to have something to make us all able to vent about this. So I suggested the hashtag. And then we started tweeting about everything from sexual remarks at the working place, from being stalked, from men following us home, touching us on public transport. People were also sharing their stories about how they have been raped by friends and family. So, already under the hashtag you saw the whole range of sexism and sexual violence happening. On why she believes public harassment is getting media attention now  Let’s just say it’s very astonishing to see the people who  —   back then when #Aufschrei was big in the media and people talked about it  —   that a lot of people also tried to downplay the problems. They were saying, ”Well, but we’ve gotten so far and we have gender equity in Germany right now, we have a female chancellor, so what do you want?” All that kind of argument was going on. And those people are the ones who are now talking a lot about what has happened in Cologne. So they are using these stories and these experiences of the people who have been attacked in Cologne to only push forward with their racist agenda against migrants and refugees in Germany. And I think that’s a huge problem."
"Time to get together the transcripts, the test scores and put the final touches on those personal essays. It’s college application season, again. To a lot of students, the process seems wrapped in a shroud of mystery. What exactly happens when you send your application out into the unknown only to. .. wait? Well, here’s a glimpse behind the curtain at one school: Inside a tiny conference room at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, the admissions committee is preparing to review 23 applications. They’ll spend about two minutes on each before deciding whether to accept or deny admission, or place the application on hold. To speed things along, the committee uses a lot of jargon, like ”  ” for late blooming boy, and ” ” for rejection. If it sounds like they’re cutting corners, know that before the committee meets around the table, each application gets a close look from two of the members. Then it’s condensed into a single   profile. The one for this student says he comes off just a bit arrogant in his essay and interview: ”Academically he has everything. I wonder if a counselor call might be enlightening?” asks one member of the committee. ”It sounds like maybe he could work on it and be cognizant of it. I mean, he’s strong academically,” says another. A third member chimes in, chuckling, ”I think his classmates could bring him down to reality.” Ann McDermott is director of admissions at Holy Cross. ”You have 13 people in a full committee room and 13 different perspectives so it can go any different way,” she says. And you hear from a lot of applicants at schools around the country that the admissions process can be frustrating. Disappointed applicants complain that when it comes to discerning between hundreds of students who seem to have the grades, teacher recommendations and test scores, the process comes down to luck. But is there a method to the madness? It, of course, varies from big state universities to small private colleges, like Holy Cross, which will admit 700 freshman this fall. McDermott says there’s no set formula. It’s both an art and a science. ”We balance our feelings with some facts.” Yes, feelings. That’s because sometimes the facts, like test scores and grades, don’t tell the whole story of the student. She offers some tips on application Dos and Don’ts for prospective applicants. Tip 1: Engage, Visiting the campus, having a Skype or phone interview with an admissions counselor, or sitting in on a class shows admissions counselors you’re interested in that particular school. It also gives the school a chance to get to know you better. ”Just like a teacher in the classroom wants a student engaged, we want students engaged in the process with us. I think it makes for better discernment of what a good fit is for both them and for us,” says McDermott. Tip 2: Don’t ”  ” When it comes to the application, admissions counselors say the biggest red flag is a sloppy,   essay. ”Or   the topics so much that it becomes awkward and doesn’t convey the student as it should,” McDermott adds. Tip 3: Take time to reflect, Taking time to think about the kind of college experience you want can help you narrow down your list to schools that suit your personal and career goals. While you’re making sure you’re a good fit for the school, make sure it’s also a good fit for you. McDermott’s last thought: ”I think [high school] students should spend a little of time thinking what they liked in high school, what they didn’t like, who they are, and not just going and rushing off and looking at schools and getting in the frenzy.” Kirk Carapezza is an alumnus of College of the Holy Cross and writes for WGBH’s blog, On Campus. Lydia Emmanouilidou contributed to this report."
"On Tuesday night, President Obama will give his final State of the Union address. It’s the last big speech many Americans will watch him deliver, and he wants to leave a good impression. Here are five things to watch for. 1. How different will this speech be from his past State of the Union addresses? White House aides are promising that this speech will be different. Instead of the usual laundry list of legislative proposals, the speech will be thematic and  . President Obama described what he wants the speech to focus on in a video the White House sent out previewing the speech. ”Not just the remarkable progress we’ve made, not just what I want to get done in the year ahead, but what we all need to do together in the years to come, the big things that will guarantee an even stronger, better, more prosperous America for our kids  —   the America we believe in. That’s what’s on my mind.” This makes sense. With attention turning to the race to succeed him, the window for passing major pieces of legislation through an oppositional Congress is closing fast. But there are still things the president wants Congress to do. 2. What are Obama’s legislative priorities?  The president will probably reiterate his call for a hike in the minimum wage, as well as tax reform that frees up money for infrastructure investment. But those are big reaches. More realistically, the White House is hopeful they can get Congress to approve the big   trade agreement and a bill overhauling the criminal justice system. Expect to hear Obama offer an olive branch to the Republicans on those potentially bipartisan issues. 3. How will the president try to shape his legacy? This is a valedictory speech, and Obama will try to frame his accomplishments in the most positive light. He’ll talk about the dramatic recovery of the auto industry, the improving employment situation and the initiatives he’s taken on his own to combat climate change, enact tougher gun background checks and reopen relations with Cuba. The White House announced over the weekend the guests who will join first lady Michelle Obama in the House chamber. Those selections nod to the arc of Obama’s presidency, and the president will no doubt nod to them on Tuesday night. They include Edith Childs, the South Carolina woman who inspired the ”Fired up! Ready to go!” chant during Obama’s first campaign, one of the first women to graduate from Army Ranger School, a DREAMer, the lead plaintiff in the historic Supreme Court ruling legalizing   marriage, an empty chair for victims of gun violence, a criminal justice reform advocate, an Affordable Care Act ”navigator” and many others. Of course, the best way for President Obama to cement his legacy is to help elect a successor from his own party. 4. How will Obama use the speech to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign? In his last State of the Union address, the president framed the coming election in terms of the economic debate. He talked about widely shared prosperity and focused on inclusive growth, not just redistribution. And that’s the frame Hillary Clinton has chosen for her campaign. Expect to hear more about that on Tuesday night. Also listen for how often the president touches on   issues that play well with the Democratic base, like climate change, gun control, immigration reform or gay rights. The White House promises this won’t be a ”political” speech, but the subtext will be clear: We’ve come a long way. We have a long way to go, so let’s not let the Republicans take us backward. 5. What effect will the speech have? Most State of the Union addresses have a very short shelf life. But a   SOTU can deliver a political boost. President Obama is hoping this one does. The best way a president can help elect a successor from his own party is to get his approval ratings up  —   above 50 percent, if possible. Obama has been stuck in the   for months, below the 50 percent that President Reagan enjoyed at this point in his second term or the 60 percent Bill Clinton had. If he can improve his standing, he could help Hillary Clinton and his own legacy."
"The Mexican government shocked the world Friday, revealing that it had caught drug kingpin Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzmán nearly six months after his second escape from prison. On Saturday night, it was Sean Penn’s turn to deliver a shock: In Rolling Stone, the actor revealed that he had spoken with the longtime head of the Sinaloa drug cartel during his time as a fugitive. ”This will be the first interview El Chapo had ever granted outside an interrogation room,” Penn writes, ”leaving me no precedent by which to measure the hazards.” And it’s the hazards of hunting down the interview, nearly as much as the interview itself, with which Penn concerns much of his piece. Connecting with Guzmán through intermediaries Kate del Castillo, a Mexican actress, and a mutual contact Penn only calls Espinoza, Penn set up an October meeting with the man in the remote jungle. ”I get out of the truck, search the faces of the crew for approval that I may walk to the trunk to secure my bag. Nods follow. I move,” Penn writes. ”And, when I do. ..there he is. Right beside the truck. The world’s most famous fugitive: El Chapo.” During what Penn says was a   conversation, held in a clearing over a bottle of tequila, Penn and Guzmán talked Hollywood, money laundering and even, Penn says, Guzmán’s illicit activities. ”I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world,” Guzmán says, according to Penn. ”I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.” In Penn’s telling, in both that meeting and   conversations, Guzmán is confident, comfortable and perfectly open about his involvement in a drug empire  —   perhaps one clue to how Guzmán was ultimately undone by his desire to have a biopic made about his life. On Saturday, the Mexican government signaled its willingness to consider two extradition requests from the U. S. for the   Guzmán. In a statement, the country’s attorney general’s office did not say when it would begin the legal procedures to complete the request. NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports: If that happens, it will be a major turnaround for the Mexican government, which previously balked at extraditing Guzmán. When Guzmán was captured back in February 2014, the   general said the cartel leader would not be extradited until after he faced justice and a lengthy prison sentence in Mexico. In the meantime, you can read Sean Penn’s full article  —   including a transcribed interview  —   here."
"In 10 months, Americans will go to the polls to pick the next U. S. president. When they cast their ballots, those votes will likely hinge on how they feel about the issues most important to them. But what are those issues? As a way of finding out, NPR’s Rachel Martin centered her focus on one community going through a lot of change: Mecklenburg County, N. C. The whole county  —   including its biggest city, Charlotte  —   has been enjoying an economic boom. It’s a major center for banking, there’s a growing tech sector, and immigrants have been coming to the county in growing numbers: In the 1990s, the number of Hispanics in Mecklenberg County increased by 400 percent. At the same time, a recent study out of the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard ranked Charlotte dead last when it comes to economic mobility compared with other major cities. Such changes in the county have led to debates over government overreach, income inequality and immigration  —   some of the same issues that are front and center in the presidential race. And that makes Mecklenburg County an interesting place to spend some time this election year. But to understand the voting population in Mecklenburg County, you have to understand how Charlotte and the surrounding suburbs have changed in the past several years. This week on For the Record: Mecklenburg County, N. C.   ”This whole area of town has really started development in the last four years,” says Dan Roselli, the founder of Packard Place in the center of Charlotte. His office is an old Packard Motor Cars showroom that’s now part startup incubator, part community center. When asked whom he likes in the presidential race, Roselli mentions Sen. Bernie Sanders  —   then Hillary Clinton, Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz. As indicated by his diverse list of preferences, Roselli is a registered independent. When it comes to politics, the businessman says his priority is economic growth, not social issues. ”Whenever I talk to political officials,” he says, ”the first thing I tell them is that there should be a political Hippocratic oath, which is: Your first job as a politician, when it comes to business, is do no harm.” Roselli is one of the entrepreneurs who are redefining Charlotte’s downtown area  —   but other parts of the city are changing, too. West End Entrepreneurs, Damian Johnson and his brother opened their first barbershop in Charlotte in 1997. Now, they’ve got a number of them, all going by the name No Grease, including a location on the city’s west side. All the barbers wear bow ties, and the place is decked out in midcentury modern furniture. It’s throwback and cutting edge at the same time. ”From my experience, the West End is the new frontier of Charlotte,” Johnson says. ”And so, when we say the West End, it’s like we’re rooting for the West End to take its rightful place in the development of Charlotte.” Barbershops have long been a place for political talk  —   especially in the black community  —   and it’s important to Johnson to keep that tradition alive. Asked whom he likes best in the presidential race, he says he hasn’t committed to any one candidate yet. ”I’ve taken none of them really seriously,” Johnson says. ”I’m going to listen closely to what Hillary is saying, but all the other candidates, it’s like courting and dating: I have to listen to you more.” Blue Island In A Red Sea, That was the case with most of the Democrats NPR spoke with in Charlotte. They’re just not animated by the primary race  —   which isn’t surprising, considering there are just three candidates compared with the 12 on the Republican side. Take for example the former Democratic mayor of Charlotte, Dan Clodfelter, who just left office recently. He says he hasn’t paid much attention to the primaries. ”I already have my candidate. I don’t really need to be sold,” Clodfelter says. His candidate is Hillary Clinton  —   ”always has been,” he says. Mecklenburg County is solidly Democrat. More than 60 percent of voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama in 2012 in the county, compared with 38 percent for Mitt Romney. But statewide, Romney won with 50. 6 percent, compared with Obama’s 48. 4 percent. Republicans have more than   of the seats in the state Senate and close to that in the state House of Representatives. North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory, is a Republican. And on the GOP side of Charlotte’s political spectrum, there is an impassioned debate happening over the very soul of the Republican Party. Immigration Dominates Republican Debates, One issue in particular is driving Republican discussions here. ”The word of God says, ’Be angry, but do not sin.’ I am angry, very angry, with the debate on immigration,” says Maudia Melendez, a local minister who’s lived in Charlotte since 1987. Her family is originally from Nicaragua. Recently, she’s been fighting the   state government to give undocumented immigrants special driving permits. It’s personal, because it’s her own party. ”Yes, I am a Republican, but I’m very sad how the Republicans are treating my people,” she says. She doesn’t like to brandish her party affiliation, because she works with a bipartisan nonprofit that tries to increase the low voter turnout rates among Hispanics in Charlotte. In the past 15 years, Mecklenburg County’s Hispanic population has grown from 6. 5 percent in 2000 to 12. 7 percent in 2014. And not surprisingly, immigration was a big issue for many of the people we spoke to. At a local Salvadoran restaurant, on the east side of town, Melendez gathers a small group of community leaders and friends, two of whom  —   Astrid Chirinos and Rafael Prieto  —   say that immigration reform is their foremost focus when it comes to thinking about presidential candidates. ”That’s part of the economic opportunity,” Chirinos says. ”You don’t have that, you’re not going to have progress. I mean, we’re going to go backwards.” Ron Cox, who is also at the table, is the only   in the group. Born and raised in Charlotte, Cox opened a landscaping business and has employed Hispanic immigrants for many years. ”I began to see so many of the injustices, and got to see a lot of them taken advantage of,” he says. ”It reached my core and my angst.” He says immigration reform is also a top issue for him, but he doesn’t see any of the candidates from either party proposing a real solution, because, he says, their motivations are different. Also at the table is Amelia Kennedy, who’s part of the Republican Party leadership in the neighboring county. She and Maudia Melendez have been reaching out directly to some Republican candidates to talk about immigration reform  —   including Ted Cruz, whom they say they had a conversation with several months ago. ”He wants to be president so bad that he has the same speech: ’We have to secure the border.’ And we ask, ’How is it that you’re going to secure the border? You have to have a plan,’ ” Melendez recalls. ”We spent like 40 minutes with him, and we didn’t get anything.” Stand On Principles, Even If You Lose, The next morning, another group of conservative voters is having a very different conversation at Skyland Family Restaurant. Don Reid, a former Charlotte City Council member, has been hosting a weekly Republican breakfast here for close to two decades. There are about 50 people in the back area of the restaurant, overwhelmingly white and male. They’re finishing up plates of bacon and eggs while Reid introduces some   questions about the future of their party. For him, it’s very clear. ”Republicans have been so concerned in the past about appealing to minorities, to Latinos and others, that they’ve forgotten their own principles,” Reid says. ”And now, they are out here saying again, ’We must have the big tent.’ No, that will not work. For the most part, minorities are not going to vote for Republicans. You can count on that.” Some people nod their heads in agreement, but John Powell, who ran for city council as a Republican last November, puts a different opinion to the room. ”I think if we go out and actually offer our hand and welcome them, and be able to supply with them a message of who we are, then that’s going to educate and have a better understanding of what the Republican Party’s all about,” Powell says. ”And what we can do to encourage everybody to be a part of the process.” But it’s clear the majority in the room are sick and tired of establishment Republicans and any thought of compromising on core conservative principles. Don Reid says he likes Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall at the U. S.  border, and in general he’s a Trump supporter. ”Would I or this crowd be happy with Cruz? Yep, I think so. Would we be happy with Jeb Bush? Nope. For the first time in my life, if it’s Jeb Bush or Hillary I don’t vote,” Reid says. ”I’m not supporting establishment Republicans anymore. I’m supporting almost a destruction of the current Republican Party. . .. Let them run on principle and either win or lose.” The differences between Maudia Melendez and Don Reid are sharp examples of this internal Republican rift, especially on the issue of immigration. The result of this struggle could determine the future of the GOP for several elections to come. Forcing A Conversation, ”This is extremely productive. Change only comes through pain,” says Republican strategist Larry Shaheen. ”And I have to admit, I think Donald Trump’s great for our party. Because he is forcing us to have this conversation.” Shaheen, a Charlotte native, says the Republican Party needs to broaden its base to attract minority voters  —   which means changing the way it talks about immigration reform. ”At some point we have to get over this ’we were here first’ idea. Because we weren’t. And we’re better as a society when we are able to find a way for rising tides to lift all boats, not just the boats that look like us,” he says. ”And we have to move from the party of opportunity for just a few to opportunity for all.” Opportunity for all is what Charlotte is all about. We heard that from Democrats, Republicans and independents. People here want to ride this economic wave as far as it will take them. For many here, that means welcoming anyone who wants to come and help make that happen. But neither party has won over the people we spoke to when it comes to immigration policy. We’ll be returning to Charlotte later in the year to check back in with some of the people you heard from today to see how their views on the election are evolving. Click the audio link above to hear the full piece. The following are some additional voices of other Mecklenburg County residents and their thoughts on the upcoming election. Education, Wes Lawson is the    campus director for The Iron Yard, a technology education business based at Packard Place. ”I’m not hearing enough about how we are actually going to improve access to quality education and funding,” Lawson says. ”I’m not a   voter, but I would put [education] as one of the top issues. For me, education is a workforce development necessity, it’s a national security necessity, it’s a    issue.” And like Dan Roselli, Lawson is not as concerned with social issues. ”[We] need a government that’s going to improve transportation, clean air, clean water. . .. I don’t need a moral voice of reason coming from an elected official,” he says. Children, Colette Forrest is the primary principal at People’s Voice Management Group, doing marketing and publicity for businesses. She’s a single mother and says she wants to hear some optimism for the future from candidates. She wants her    son to be able to ”further his education in an affordable school system for college and graduate school and doctorate. That he can find gainful employment after he’s finished. If he wants to be an entrepreneur, he can have opportunities that are boundless,” Forrest says. She says recent police shootings of unarmed black men have her thinking about her son’s safety. ”We’ve had those conversations.” She tells her son, ”Don’t do anything threatening, don’t be perceived as a threat, and most importantly keep quiet and tell them you need to call your mommy.” Forrest says no candidates are talking about that issue. The Right Message For The Right Audience, Vanessa Faura ran for Charlotte City Council   but lost. She now works as a consultant. When it comes to the issue of immigration and whether Republican candidates are offering solutions, Faura says they’re breaking down a complex issue for their varying audiences. ”Part of campaigning, I believe, is you’ve got to make yourself believable and likeable, and unfortunately in this world you’re not going to be likeable to everyone,” Faura says. She says candidates say what crowds want to hear, when the reality is more complicated. ”That’s why Donald Trump is saying what he’s saying. This is why Jeb Bush is saying the total opposite. At the end of the day, I know every single one of them on the Republican and Democratic side, they know it’s a lot more complex issue.”"
"More than a week has passed since armed men took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. The   militiamen are demanding that the federal government give up that land for people to use for ranching, mining and logging. But there’s another group with roots on that land: Native Americans, especially the Burns Paiute tribe. The wildlife refuge is part of the tribe’s ancestral lands. ”The tribe is very offended,” says Charlotte Rodrique, the chairperson of the Burns Paiute Tribal Council, in an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin. ”[The militants’] theme, of course, was that we’re going to give it back to the original owners, which were the ranchers. Of course, that rubbed me the wrong way because that’s our aboriginal territory.” And she says it’s not simply the tribe’s land they harbor a long history there, too. ”We do have burial sites, we have artifacts, we have petroglyphs, we have resources there that we utilize as a tribe,” she says. ”We take our children out to teach them traditional lifestyle. Identifying plants and medicines that are traditional to our people. In fact, our band of Paiute people is named after that seed that grows on the shores there at the marsh.” She says over the past 25 years, the tribe has had a good working relationship with people working at the wildlife refuge. Rodrique says she’s frustrated that the federal government hasn’t forced the occupiers out, and compares how law enforcement treats the   with how the U. S. historically treated native tribes. She says the occupiers are allowed to go into town to buy groceries and gas, then return to their armed occupation. ”They did disconnect their utilities and things like that, but it’s not really forcing them out,” Rodrique says. ”You know, in our history, that was how the military got us. They basically starved us into submission. And you could do the same thing with these occupiers.” Rodrique would like the FBI to remove the armed men, and she thinks the FBI’s inaction is a double standard. ”If I, as a native person, a person of color, were to go down there and do the same thing, they would have hit me on the forehead with a baton” and dragged her out, she says. But ”because they’re white people, I feel that they’re being treated differently.” Click the link above to hear the full interview."
"When Eric Weiner sat down to write his new book he had to tackle a big question first: How do you define genius? ”That’s not as easy as it sounds,” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. ”I have a slightly unusual definition . .. that a genius is someone we all agree on is a genius. It’s a social verdict.” Weiner traveled all over the world  —   to Greece, Italy, Scotland and Silicon Valley  —   to investigate how genius takes root and grows. His book The Geography of Genius is an exploration of how great thinkers are affected by the places and times in which they live. On whether a genius is born or made, Neither. Genius is grown, I believe. And I think we really are hung up on those first two theories. And we have really become to believe that. We really believe that if you look at, say, a Mozart who shows his prodigious talent at a young age, clearly there must be something genetic. It must be all genetic. And I really don’t think that’s true. Increasingly the evidence shows that genetics makes up a relatively small part of the genius puzzle. Geniuses are made, yes. Hard work matters. I don’t deny that some sweat is involved but, it doesn’t explain why you see genius clusters. Why would you see places like Renaissance Florence or Classical Athens or Silicon Valley today having such a concentration of geniuses? Are they all extra hard workers? I don’t think that explains it. I think there’s something in the soil. On the role competition plays, I think it’s important with the proviso that it has to be healthy competition. If you look at a place like Renaissance Florence, there was fierce competition. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci despised one another. They really couldn’t stand one another. But that brought out the best in both of them. And it turns out that the modern social science sort of backs up what I found on the ground. For instance, one study found that we tend to cooperate better with whom we once competed. And you see that time and again. Competitors turned into teammates.  On the ”sweet spot of friction”  Freud was an outsider, he was a Jew, he was an immigrant and there was real tension in Freud’s Vienna. His ideas were considered ”fairy tales.” And he had to really push against the system. But that’s almost always the case. In these genius clusters there’s friction. The genius fits, but it’s not a perfect fit. It’s an imperfect fit. And that sweet spot of friction, the right amount of friction is, I believe, what produces genius. . .. Someone who is fully invested in the status quo is not going to be a genius. I think that’s fair to say, because they’re not going to rock the boat. They’re almost always an outsider. But I want to say they’re not fully outsiders. They’re what I call  . Freud is a good example. He was not fully accepted. But he was accepted enough that people listened to his ideas, or we wouldn’t know the name Sigmund Freud today. On whether Steve Jobs was a genius  While I was researching this book, my sort of cocktail party question was to go into a room and say, ”So, was Steve Jobs a genius?” And in my experience, in this very unscientific survey, it was almost always split right down the middle,  . Some people would say, ”Oh, yes, absolutely he was a genius.” And they would usually whip out their iPhone 6s or whatever and say, ”Look at this thing, it’s amazing. It’s changed the world.” And other people would say, ”No, he wasn’t a genius. He didn’t really invent anything. He stole ideas from others. And he really doesn’t belong on the same pedestal with Aristotle and Einstein and Freud. On how genius is like fashion, I think if you go by what I call the ”fashionista theory” of genius . .. this idea that genius is a consensus, almost like fashion is a consensus  —   there’s no good fashion or bad fashion, there’s just what’s fashionable . .. you have to say that Steve Jobs is a genius because a lot of us, perhaps a majority, think that he was a genius. You know, we get the geniuses that we want and that we deserve. And this is what we care about we care about technology. On how geniuses are shaped by the time and culture in which they are born, Think about it: why are there no classical composers the likes of the Beethoven and Mozart out there today? There are very good ones, but we don’t think that there’s a Beethoven or a Mozart. It’s not that the talent pool is dried up or there’s been some weird genetic fluke that’s diminished the talent pool. It’s because if you’re a young, ambitious person, you’re more likely to head to Silicon Valley than to Vienna to study classical music. . .. During Mozart’s time, in Vienna, 18th century, he had an extremely receptive audience, he had a demanding audience, and his audience was almost a   with him. We tend to think that the genius produces this magnificence. And we, the audience, just passively receive it. I don’t think it works that way. Mozart was acutely aware of his audience and the demands that they had. And the audience appreciated his music, demanded better music from him  —   if more of us were like that today,    classical music, I think we would have more Mozarts."
"Hundreds of people were lined up when the gun show opened at the fairgrounds in Miami. It was mostly men, but there were quite a few women and even some kids. Winter is a busy time for gun sales in Florida. But this gun show was busier than usual. Even before President Obama announced actions aimed at tightening controls on gun purchases, sales were up  —   partly in reaction to terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernadino. Gun dealers say the president’s initiatives have also spurred sales. At the same time, polling shows more than   of Americans support the president’s proposals  —   including a majority of gun owners. Will Reynolds owns Leadfeather Guns and Archery. He had several tables in the middle of the exhibition hall, with an array of   handguns. He goes through some of his inventory. ”We primarily just specialize in firearms. We love Sig Sauer, we carry a lot of those,” Reynolds says. ”We have the FNX Tactical, Smith  Wesson, Ruger, Walther, all the quality stuff.” Reynolds says he hasn’t read through the president’s proposals but is leery some of the rules may put new burdens on federally licensed dealers like him. But, Reynolds says, Obama is good for business. ”Anytime he seems like he talks about firearms, attendance goes up. Anytime there’s a mishap or an accident or something like San Bernardino, people are scared, petrified and they want to protect themselves. At the same time, they feel like they don’t want to lose their rights,” Reynolds says. Among President Obama’s proposals this week were some aimed at closing what he called the ”gun show loophole.” Right now at gun shows,   firearms dealers like Reynolds conduct background checks on all sales. But looking around the hall, Reynolds says there are many here selling guns with few questions asked. ”There are people that are walking around here that can come in and pay the entry fee and sell three, five, six, 10 guns if they want to. And they’re not getting background checks. It happens right here. If you stand around long enough, you’ll see people doing cash transactions on this floor today,” he says. The president is proposing requiring many more people who sell guns to get federal licenses and conduct background checks. The rules still have to be written. The White House says they’re not aimed at collectors, but notes that even a few transactions combined with other evidence may qualify someone as a dealer. Alfredo del Portillo is a gun owner and collector who was walking around with three   rifles. He says the president’s comments have created uncertainty now about how informal sales and trading can be conducted. ”Some people are telling me that I got to go through a dealer right now,” del Portillo says. ”Other people are saying, ’No not yet.’ Nobody seems to know. Who says who’s a casual, occasional seller?” That’s a question even more important to the hobbyists and collectors who pay $100 to rent a table and buy, sell and trade at weekend gun shows  —   people like William McDowell. He says he’s not a   seller. ”Well, I’ve got an archery shop. But I do gun shows on the weekend. If we do sell a gun, by law right now, it’s not required that we do a background check,” McDowell says. McDowell says his customers  —   looking to buy, sell or trade vintage firearms  —   aren’t the ones likely to cause trouble. But if required to do background checks, ”I don’t have a problem with that,” he says. Another collector, Ron Wires, says he’s worried new federal regulations will make his hobby of trading in old guns and knives a lot more expensive. ”You take a private collector like me, I’m retired. I’m on Social Security, trying to make a couple of bucks. If I have to get licensed, how do I do a background check? Then it’s cost prohibitive. I can’t even collect anymore,” Wires says. With the high volume of sales at Miami’s gun show, customers were lined up waiting for clerks on computers to complete their background checks. Checks that should take a few minutes were taking an hour or more. But it didn’t seem to be hurting business."
"The Authors Guild has started the new year with a bang. First, the group, which represents the interests of writers, asked the Supreme Court to review an October appeals court ruling, which upheld Google’s right to digitize    books without an author’s permission. A few days later, the guild addressed a separate issue when it released a letter to publishers demanding better contract terms for authors. Both moves come as many writers find it harder and harder to make a living from their writing. Since 2009, the mean income for writers has gone down 30 percent, says the guild’s executive director, Mary Rasenberger. ”It’s alarming. Incomes are now down to unsustainable levels, and that means that even longtime authors  —   authors who have been writing for decades  —   are now being forced to seek other work,” she says. ”So, we are looking at this in a holistic way: Why this happening, and what can we do about it?” Rasenberger says the Google Books case addresses the issue of copyright protection the letter to the publishers takes on standard author contracts. Among other things, the guild says its writers should get a higher share of   income and authors should also be able to retain the rights to their own books. The standard contracts the guild is protesting have been part of the business for decades. ”These are the agreements that the unagented authors see  —   or those without powerful agents  —   where the terms tend to be much much worse,” Rasenberger says. But the guild faces a problem in dealing with publishers: Writers are not an easy group to organize. ”They’re all at very different levels,” says Porter Anderson, who writes about the publishing industry for The Bookseller, a British publication. ”They have different professional experience, they have different reasons for writing, they have different types of writing. There are factions within factions inside the author camp.” Writers also are known for working in isolation. But social media is changing that, Anderson says. ”Not only are authors able to talk to each other continually in real time, but they’re also in touch with their readers. This is new.” Anderson believes it’s significant that international writers organizations from Europe, Africa, Australia and Canada all signed on to the Authors Guild letter to publishers. ”If an international coalition can start communicating to readers all over the world: Look what your authors are going through  —   did you know this is the experience and the condition in which your favorite author is working? Something has changed. The publishers, then, are facing a new world in which a lot of questions can be asked in a lot of places in very loud voices,” Anderson says. The Authors Guild plans to meet with individual publishing companies to discuss their demands. ”Do we expect them to turn around tomorrow and create new agreements that meet all of our requests?” Rasenberger says. ”Probably not.” But, she says, the guild’s writers are hopeful."
"Eva Salina has Dutch and Jewish roots and hails from a quiet California beach town  —   but musically, she’s traveled a path far afield from her upbringing. The Santa Cruz native says she was headed in quite a different direction when she stumbled into a love for traditional Balkan vocal music. ”I was interested, always, in other cultures, and someone gave me a tape of some Yiddish songs,” she says. ”I was 7 years old, and I taught myself all of those songs. My parents, in their desire to encourage my interest, looked around for someone who might be able to teach me, and when the search for a Yiddish singing teacher came up dry, they stumbled upon a young woman who grew up in Hawaii and had been singing Balkan music for 15 years at that point.” Salina grew up into a modern interpreter of Balkan styles. Her new album, Lema Lema: Eva Salina Sings Saban Bajramovic, pays tribute to a late musician whose story is shrouded in mystery and urban legend. She joined NPR’s Rachel Martin to talk about it hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"Every January, as temperatures plummet, New York’s Public Theater opens its doors to Under the Radar, a festival that features   theater from around the world. Occasionally, these shows have moved onto the radar  —   like Gatz, an   adaptation of The Great Gatsby, which eventually had several runs at theaters across the country. Meiyin Wang and Mark Russell,   directors of Under the Radar, crisscross the globe every year trying to answer a single question. ”In this day,” Russell says, ”when there’s all sorts of great ways of telling stories and everyone’s got a camera . .. we’re looking at: Why do theater now?” Over 12 days, Russell and Wang present their answer to that question. It’s kind of like a film festival, where audiences can see three, four or five shows in a single day. ”I am trying to demystify this   thing,” Russell says. ”This is for everybody. All of these stories have an integrity of purpose everyone should be able to approach them without having to know anything about the history of   art.” This year, Under the Radar is presenting work from Chile, Japan, France, Canada, Rwanda  —   and Brooklyn, N. Y. In a rehearsal studio in the borough’s Park Slope neighborhood, a company called 600 HIGHWAYMEN is rehearsing its new show, Employee of the Year. The cast consists of five young girls, but the tale they’re telling is far beyond their years.   director Abigail Browde says it’s the life story of one woman. ”It’s like a contemporary journey myth,” she says. ”So it starts when she’s 3 years old, and it ends in her 80s.” Browde says the disconnect between the adult content and who’s delivering it is what makes the show work. ”The performance is most effective when . .. you get snapped back to reality and it’s like, ’Oh wait, I forgot she was 10,’ ” Browde says. ”So there’s actually a friction and a collision between where the story goes and who the messenger is.” The messenger in another Under the Radar work is also a   but she’s portrayed by   Dorothée Munyaneza. Samedi Détente is about Munyaneza’s    self trying to survive the 1994 Rwanda genocide. In a phone conversation from her home in France, Munyaneza says she started to work on the piece two years ago. ”Somehow, symbolically, it meant a lot to me to address my memory, my history, 20 years afterwards,” she says. ”And I chose to write and to create this choreographic, musical, historical storytelling piece.” Munyaneza begins the production in a blue dress that’s inspired by her school uniform. She’s crouched on top of a table, singing a song to the accompaniment of a man sharpening his machete. ”This object, which was normally used as a tool for cutting wood or killing animals for food, suddenly became this tool for killing,” Munyaneza says, ”and killing massively and killing people cruelly.” The song was written by Munyaneza and it’s based on a story her cousin told her about her aunt dying in a refugee camp. Munyaneza says she hopes to find some kind of peace through the work. ”I’m trying to share this story,” she says. ”I’m trying to leave something in the minds and hearts of people who will carry it. And it’s something I can only do through art.” And that’s just what Under the Radar’s artistic directors want: to present work that is urgent and relevant, and stories told in a surprising, accessible way."
"The West Bank city of Hebron is where Palestinians and Israeli settlers live within yards of each other  —   separated by Israeli barricades and soldiers. It’s long been a place filled with friction, and over the past three months, nearly one out of three Palestinian attacks have taken place here, according to the Israeli military.  It’s also the place where Palestinian activist Issa Amro is trying to preach nonviolence to Palestinians.  ”I studied all the international history of nonviolence,” he says. ”All of them,” he adds, from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi to Gene Sharp, an American professor known for his extensive writings on the topic.  Amro’s activism started in 2002, when he says Israeli troops closed his college campus. He organized a   and protests that he says pressured them to reopen classes.  ”From that time, I’m working hard to educate more and more Palestinians about how to have a massive nonviolence revolution in Palestine and reach civil disobedience against the occupation,” he says. Amro, 35, works with Palestinians to videotape what he says is settler harassment of Palestinians in the city. He flouts Israeli military restrictions by helping organize Palestinian marches down a main street closed to Palestinians, which the army says is closed to prevent attacks. He also organizes activities for youth in Hebron. Amro runs a youth center, called Youth Against Settlements, out of his home. He organizes English and Hebrew courses. He frequently works with Israeli peace activists. He even started a kindergarten nearby where an Israeli teaches Palestinian kids yoga. A Hard Sell, But nonviolence is hard to promote these days. When young Palestinians open their Facebook accounts, they see praise for their peers who Israel accused of attempted attacks and were killed by Israeli soldiers. Political factions put posters of them on the streets.  A few months ago, Amro got an urgent phone call from a neighbor who said there was an    Palestinian girl in a doorway, holding a knife, poised to stab the first Israeli who walked by. Amro says he went over to talk the girl out of it, saying she’d just get killed.  ”I told her, ’Why do you want to kill yourself first? ’” he recalls. ”She said, ’You know, this is the way I defend, I resist. Settlers are getting wild, because nobody (makes) them accountable.’ I told her, ’Listen, you know, we can make them accountable. We can work hard, you know. Come, we give you lessons and training about, you know, nonviolent resistance. ’”  After more than an hour, he convinced her not to go through with an attack, and Palestinian security officials took her into custody, he says. Amro wouldn’t provide the girl’s name but the neighbor backed up the story. And though Amro considers it a success, it’s a story he hesitated to share because it wouldn’t be viewed favorably by many Palestinians, and that he could be accused of aiding Israel. Samira Halayka, a Palestinian parliament member in Hebron, says she likes Amro’s group, but thinks people should focus on stopping the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, not stopping Palestinian attacks. She says the attacks are ”national acts” with broad Palestinian support, a position backed by a recent poll. Friction With Settlers, Amro faces other obstacles from Israelis. Hebron settler activist Baruch Marzel called Amro a ”provocateur,” saying his videotaping of Jewish settlers is a violation of their privacy. Marzel accused him of harboring Palestinian attackers in his home, which Amro denied. The Israeli army recently arrested Amro as he held a discussion group at his home that included a teenage boy the army accused of previously throwing a knife at soldiers. In a statement, the army said forces arrested Amro for hosting the suspect in his home. Both were eventually released and no charges were filed. The army declined comment. After the arrests, Jewish settlers camped out in front of Amro’s home. Amro said it was a pressure tactic against him. Settler activist Marzel declined comment. The army then added his home to a restricted area in the city where only residents are allowed to enter  —   keeping his youth out. The Israeli army said in a statement that the restriction on   in the area is to prevent attacks. Amro says all the restrictions on Palestinians in Hebron will do the opposite. ”If they continue like that, violence will be 10 times more than what is it now,” he says.  Now that his youth center is closed off, the youth meetings and the Hebrew classes are on hold. Amro says reaching out to the youth of Hebron is an uphill battle that has gotten even tougher."
"  challenge: Every answer this week is the name of an article of apparel  ” something to wear. Name the items from the anagram given. Example: LOOP  —  &gt POLO. Last week’s challenge: This was a variation on the old   puzzle. The object is to change WHOLE to HEART by either adding or subtracting one letter at a time, making a new, common, uncapitalized word at each step. For example, you can change RED to ROSE in five steps. Starting with RED, you could add a U, making RUED drop the D, leaving RUE add an S, making RUSE add an O, making ROUSE, and then drop the U, leaving ROSE. Changing or rearranging letters is not allowed, neither are plurals or verbs formed by adding  . No word in the chain can have fewer than three letters. How many steps are needed to change WHOLE to HEART? Answer: Here’s an example of one possible answer: WHOLE  —  &gt HOLE, HOE, HOPE, OPE, COPE, COP, COOP, COOPT, COOT, COT, COAT, CAT, CHAT, HAT, HEAT  —  &gt HEART. The randomly selected winning answer was done in six steps. WHOLE  —  &gt HOLE, HOE, HOER, HER, HEAR  —  &gt HEART. Winner: Melissa Goodwin of Munster, Ind. Next week’s challenge: This challenge comes from listener Sandy Weisz of Chicago, who runs The Mystery League, which conducts puzzle hunts. This challenge isn’t too hard. Name a unit of measurement. Remove two consecutive letters. The letters that remain can be rearranged to name what this measurement measures. What is it? Submit Your Answer, If you know the answer to next week’s challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the   puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you Thursday, Jan. 14, at 3 p. m. ET."
"When President Obama first took the oath of office seven years ago this month, the U. S. economy was so battered that many economists were pondering the possibility of another Great Depression. The fears were real: Employers were cutting 796, 000 jobs the auto industry was facing bankruptcy private foreclosures and public debts were soaring. So the new president’s rhetoric was somber. For millions of Americans, ”the state of our economy is a concern that rises above all others, and rightly so,” Obama said in his first address to a joint session of Congress. ”It’s the worry you wake up with and the source of sleepless nights.” Today, the U. S. economy is in far better shape  —   a message Obama will underscore Tuesday in his State of the Union address. He’ll have plenty of upbeat talking points to mention. For example, last month, employers added 292, 000 workers and the jobless rate held steady at 5 percent, down from 2009’s peak of 10 percent. Compared with January 2009, these are far better days for both workers and business owners. Still, serious challenges remain, and critics will have plenty of problems to point out. Here’s a quick look at the state of the economy as Obama enters the final year of his presidency. First, the good news: And here are some of the   problems:"
"I am a Bowie girl. Not literally: I’m a little too young to have swiped my face with glitter and run out in   platforms to see David Bowie storming through America in 1972 and 1973 with the Spiders from Mars, when he sent queer and alien dispatches across a heartland primed for them by Stonewall and women’s lib and the sexual revolution but also feeling the slap of the Silent Majority as the Nixon era lumbered on. On that tour, Bowie tangled into all kinds of strange positions with the guitarist Mick Ronson, being the freaky dream of the teens who had dyed their hair strawberry to look like him, the ones who heard him when he rode the   jump blues chord progression of his anthem, ”Changes,” to new heights, wailing, ”Turn and face the strange!” His fans were the strange, and Bowie had finally given them a way to show it. The press called them Bowie boys and Bowie girls because there was no other name for them yet: no pansexual, no   yes freak, but that felt like a hippie term and this wasn’t a hippie thing. ”I’m just a space cadet, he’s the commander,” one bubbled to a documentary filmmaker during that era, inching toward   inspired by the playful wink of her star. ”I guess I’m living my fantasy.” I was 10. My dreams were mostly shaped by Paul McCartney and The Partridge Family. That I could be plastic and fantastic hadn’t occurred to me yet. I became a Bowie girl in that way kids on the outskirts do, by buying an album: Diamond Dogs  —   released in 1974 but making it into my hands in more like 1978. By then Bowie had ditched the Spiders, given up glitter for zoot suits, done another American tour in which he floated in a   du Soleil contraption above the audience while singing ”Space Oddity,” made a Philadelphia soul album that introduced Luther Vandross to the world, and sung ”The Little Drummer Boy” with Bing Crosby on a Christmas special. (See, Mom, rock stars aren’t that bad!) But on the Diamond Dogs cover he was still a weirdo  —       in a creepy drawing by the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert, his gaze confrontational (my version had the genitalia airbrushed out, a sop to the American record label). The songs inside were partly inspired by George Orwell’s novel 1984, a fact that made me realize something central to my forming identity: It was possible to love, and gain inspiration from, both reading and rock ’n’ roll. And there was ”Rebel Rebel,” with its   riff that felt like the churning of my teenage body and its instructions for surviving the crush of conformity: You tacky thing, you put them on! To this day, my most immediate high school memory is of standing at the bus stop in the Seattle rain, trying to open up the gatefold to gaze at Bowie’s   body in full without getting it wet. I wanted the jocks waiting with me to see it, too. It was evidence that the strange was bigger and more powerful than what the arty kids at the far lunch table could articulate. By 1983, when I first saw Bowie perform, the Bowie girls and Bowie boys had been absorbed into the MTV era, the     they’d accomplished newly threatened by yuppieism and AIDS. Some of my friends thought Bowie had turned frivolous, with his platinum quiff and songs about dancing  —   he was trying to be New Wave, and we had actual New Wavers like Annie Lennox for that, not to mention the unkempt rockers of the emerging indie scene. Why couldn’t Bowie have just stayed in admirable exile in Berlin, making highbrow noise with Brian Eno? (We were too provincial to understand that by working with the great producer Nile Rodgers, Bowie was simply updating the   sound that had been his true love since his youthful days in Paris, before Ziggy was even a twinkle.) Basking in his   Elvis moves and the killer rhythm section of Tony Thompson and Carmine Rojas, though, I had no qualms. Bowie was showing me that pop, seemingly the opposite of freakiness with its   sensuality and embrace of the ephemeral and the easy, could convey crucial information about love and integrity and the grace that helps people survive ordinary days and nights. Later, music critics like myself would call this attitude toward the mainstream ”poptimism.” Bowie had a term for it, too: serious moonlight. At the time he told reporters that the phrase was meaningless  —   just ”an Americanism I liked”  —   but like so much of what Bowie offered, serious moonlight resonated in its very playfulness. ”There’s not a small amount of truth in cliches,” Bowie told the English critic David Thomas in 1983. ”They spring from some eternal truth.” He called hits like ”Let’s Dance”  —   the biggest of his career  —   ”helpful music.” Like its inspirations  —   big band jazz, the rock ’n’ roll Alan Freed played on the radio in the 1950s  —   this music tackled big, universal emotions in language and musical hooks that were more inclusive than confrontational. It was elegant. It placed Bowie within the orbit of more supposedly mainstream   like Michael Jackson, and set the stage for Madonna, who that same year would debut her own platinum sound and style, inheriting Bowie’s role as the principal rhetorician of our pleasures. I would see him perform again in the late 1980s with his band Tin Machine in the San Francisco club Slim’s, I rushed the stage, and couldn’t believe that there was this actual (not very tall!) human in front of me, sweating (not too much, though) and jumping around just as any local frontman I’d see on a typical Tuesday would do. By this time, Bowie had starred as a lavishly   goblin in Jim Hensen’s fantasy movie Labryinth, and a new generation of Bowie kids was coming up, perhaps getting their own first glimpse of gender rebellion in his wonderfully camp performance. Three decades later, Labryinth still offers its benign vision of a polymorphous world to children like my own daughter, who became a Bowie convert at 9, falling in love with his ”Magic Dance.” And then in the late 1990s, I watched Bowie move comfortably into the role of elder, collaborating with Trent Reznor on songs that proved just how much his younger champion owed him. Bowie took the risk of performing before teenage   dirtbags on a   tour with Nine Inch Nails, and I watched in horror as they streamed out after Reznor, who defined risk and freakiness for them the way Bowie had for me  —   and who had refused to headline over his own idol  —   ended his set. Bowie, of course, took it in stride. Before the tour had begun, he’d told Reznor that he intended to play his new electronic experiments from the album Earthling, and that meant he would probably lose the crowd. ”I want to be like that guy,” Reznor reportedly thought. Reznor is like that guy, and he’s not, just like all of us Bowie girls and Bowie boys. Nine Inch Nails would very likely never have recorded classics like ”Closer” if not for Bowie, just as Prince may have never taken (or been allowed to take) the risks he took as an androgynous funk rocker in black bikini briefs, or Michael Stipe wouldn’t have escaped the indie rock box by writing ”Crush With Eyeliner,” Kurt Cobain wouldn’t have dyed his own hair red, or My Chemical Romance wouldn’t have even existed. Would Rihanna and her collaborators had the vision that produced her Beautiful Nightmare tour? Would Katy Perry have kissed a girl in a video that was all   suburban glam? These matters, alongside assessments of Bowie’s prodigious acting career and his countless collaborations with peers and inheritors ranging from Lou Reed and Iggy Pop to the Pat Metheny Group, Maria Schneider and Arcade Fire, will be celebrated and debated in the weeks and months and years to come. ”Every morning, I wake up and I think, ’What would David Bowie do?’ ” Lady Gaga told an interviewer not long ago, invoking a cliche that, in truth, closely mirrors my own experience. This Bowie girl often awakens with one of his songs in my head, bouncing around like an affirmation I happily embrace. In my 20s, they were mostly somewhat petulant: Oh! You pretty things, don’t you know you’re driving your mamas and papas insane? Bowie gave me attitude. Then things got more complicated. We could be heroes, just for one day, its exhortation tethered to reality by an endlessly dropping guitar line  —   that crash of hope into reality defined my trip into full adulthood. Now, though, as I strive for balance and some semblance of maturity, it’s Bowie’s spoken introduction to ”Modern Love” that asserts itself most frequently. I know when to go out, and when to stay in. Get things done! He’s ready to focus  —   and ready to dance. It’s a life lesson about balance, the one Bowie offered us right to the end with his brilliantly realized last release, Blackstar, issued just two days before his death. After all the freakiness and excess, the recalibration and exile, the experimentation and returning to his roots, he took the time to remind us: Pursue joy and make room for contemplation, do the work and appreciate the pleasure, never stop unless you want to, the changes are everything, hang on to yourself."
"It’s been more than 40 years since David Bowie created the   Ziggy Stardust and released the   album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. With it, Bowie helped invent  . In conversation with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross from 2002, Bowie was in the midst of making the following year’s Reality, and here talks about leaving characters in his songs, his love of Tibetan horns, and his childhood desire to write musicals and play saxophone in Little Richard’s band. You can find the obituary version of this interview here. On performing  I’m not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it’s the recording or the performance side. . .. When I put the thing together, I don’t mind doing it for a few weeks, but then quite frankly I get incredibly bored, because I don’t see myself so much as a performer. I mean, I don’t live for the stage. I don’t live for an audience. . .. Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I’d be very happy. It’s not my favorite thing to do. As I said, I don’t mind trying it out and making sure something seems to work well, but I really do rather want to move on because I think it’s rather a waste of time, endlessly singing the same songs every night for a year, and it’s just not what I want to do. What I like doing is writing and recording  —   much more on, I guess, on that creative level. It’s fun interpreting songs and all that, but I wouldn’t like it as a living. On creating Ziggy Stardust  I guess the simple   is that myself and my mates and, I guess, a certain contingent of the musicians in London at the beginning of the ’70s were fed up with denim and the hippies, and I think we kind of wanted to go somewhere else. And some of us, I think, us more pompous arty ones, probably read too much George Steiner and kind of got the idea that we were entering this kind of   age, and that we better do something   quickly before somebody else did. On what inspired him to create his   persona in the early 1970s  There was a kind of a diffidence, an idea that really hadn’t been thought of before, that the history of rock could be recycled in a different way, and brought back into focus without the luggage that comes along with it. It was a very strong sense of irony. . .. I’m wary of the word ”glam,” because I think that became the   term for any bloke with lipstick on, which is fine, you know, and that’s what it is when it comes down to the public level. The public, obviously, they take things in a very simplistic fashion, and so they should that’s why we have such wonderful television. I guess it was that   kind of posturing that the Brits usually have, and it was, I guess, people like myself and Roxy Music that had a different agenda about taking up music. . .. Some of us were failed artists, or reluctant artists. The choices were either, for most Brit musicians at that point, painting or making music, and I think we opted for music. One, because it was more exciting, and two, because you can actually earn a living at it. But I think we brought a lot of our aesthetic sensibilities to it, in terms of we wanted to manufacture a new kind of vocabulary, a new kind of currency. And so, the   ”” the picking up of maybe aspects of the   and aspects, for me personally, things like the Kabuki theater in Japan, and German expressionist movies, and poetry by Baudelaire, and it’s so long ago now  —   everything from Presley to Edith Piaf went into this mix of this hybridization, this pluralism about what, in fact, rock music was and could become. . .. It was a pudding, you know? It really was a pudding. It was a pudding of new ideas, and we were terribly excited, and I think we took it on our shoulders that we were creating the 21st century in 1971. That was the idea. And we wanted to just blast everything in the past. On why he never wore   and jeans onstage  I never believed it. It always felt like you were trying too hard to look like the audience or something. That whole thing about the artistic integrity, which of course I’ve never bought into, with any artist, it’s just not a real thing. . .. I didn’t say that wearing a glamorization of the rock artist was any truer. . .. It’s all artifice. I think my main point is that the   and denims thing, in my mind, was also an artifice. I didn’t feel comfortable in that, because I didn’t feel like one of the working men. I mean, I could never be a blue   kind of   type artist because I don’t believe I am that, and I don’t believe I could ever represent that, and it is merely representation. On writing songs later in life, compared to when he first started  Having not really written any generational songs, I think maybe two or three of the songs that I’ve ever written have any bearing on the age of the listener. My stuff tends to be far more concerned with the spiritual, and with subjects like isolation and being miserable, so I think that sort of touches on really any age group. So in my terms, they’re just songs. The vehicle for those songs is a music that did indeed start as a   music, but it has aged well in itself and it has become a vast and complex thing now. There’s so many subdivisions and styles and variations. No, it’s just what I do. I wouldn’t know how to write and play any other kind of music, frankly."
"Legendary rock musician David Bowie, who influenced generations of musicians and fans, died on Sunday, two days after his 69th birthday. A statement posted on his Facebook page and confirmed by his publicist, Steve Martin, said Bowie died peacefully, ”surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer.” On Friday, his birthday, Bowie released an album, Blackstar, that he made in collaboration with a quintet of jazz musicians. The surreal music video for one song on the album, ”Lazarus,” is quintessential Bowie: It features a dead astronaut, creepy figures, strange religious overtones and Bowie singing  —   at first, blindfolded. Bowie’s work often addressed inner truths and existential questions. He was always morphing his sound and his look. He even changed the name he was born with: David Robert Jones. Born on Jan. 8, 1947, in South London, Bowie was the son of a waitress and a nightclub owner. In 2003, he told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that as a child, he wanted to be a baritone saxophone player in the Little Richard band. He talked about getting blinded in one eye when he was 13. ”My best friend hit me because I pulled his girlfriend. In his mind he had every right to do that. The best part of it, of course, is that we still remain very close friends,” he said. Bowie said he started playing in a rock band when he was a teenager. ”It was a real trip to have girls wave at you and smile and everything just because you opened your mouth and sang,” he recalled. ”But really, I guess, what I really wanted to do more than anything else was write musicals. But because I liked rock music, I kind of moved into that sphere, somehow thinking that somewhere along the line I’d be able to put the two together.” Mixing rock music and theatricality is what Bowie did throughout his musical career. In 1969, he released a hit song, ”Space Oddity,” about a fictional astronaut named Major Tom who is lost in space. In the early 1970s, Bowie was an icon of glam rock, wearing androgynous clothing and eye makeup, with chopped,   hair. He became known for creating alter egos such as Ziggy Stardust. He said that character defined him in many ways to some fans. ”That’s me in the American eye,” he said with a smile. ”But in fact in Europe I’m more, kind of, this bloke what writes lots of stuff. A greater number of 26 or so albums that I’ve made are [better] known in Europe than they are in America.” Bowie also had a successful acting career, including his role as an alien trying to help his dying planet in the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Bowie also played the Elephant Man on Broadway and Pontius Pilate in the movie The Last Temptation of Christ. Throughout the years, he continued to write songs about being an outsider, mixing rock, jazz, disco, pop, soul  —   whatever genre he could think of. In keeping with his multifaceted career, Bowie was set to be honored at a concert at Carnegie Hall. His musical Lazarus began an   run last month. Bowie’s songs were anthems for generations of fans who felt alienated or different. As many of them noted on social media after news of his death, the stars look very different today."
"David Bowie, who died Sunday at the age of 69, is   for his music  —   but he was also an actor of considerable gifts. When he fell to Earth in 1976, an extraterrestrial seeking water for a dying planet, Bowie was persuasively otherworldly. One eye blue, the other green, hair a flaming auburn, his     alien was the first glimpse movie audiences got of a rock star who had already been a ”Space Oddity,” sung about a Starman, and become internationally recognized as the   Ziggy Stardust. His casting by director Nicholas Roeg was regarded by many at the time as a stunt  —   it would be his look, his androgyny, his weirdness audiences would be coming for. But then they saw his Man Who Fell to Earth, struggling to appear normal, to not attract suspicion, and audiences realized this enigmatic, infinitely changeable musician had acting chops as well. Bowie, had, in fact, studied   theater and mime in the early 1960s before his music career took off. And as in his music, he was attracted to dramatic material that let him be a chameleon. Four years after appearing in The Man Who Fell To Earth, he stepped into the title role on Broadway of The Elephant Man, earning excellent reviews as Joseph Merrick, grotesque of body, eloquent of spirit. ”Sometimes I think my head is so big,” Bowie keened   ”because it is so full of dreams.” Bowie’s film choices inspired dreams. He was a vampire’s lover in The Hunger, both a prisoner of war and an object of desire in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, the prize catch in Marlene Dietrich’s stable of escorts in Just a Gigolo, the goblin king in Labyrinth, and a   Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. And if none of those roles required him to sing, he brought a knowing expertise to one role that did  —   a record exec grooming a young recording artist in Absolute Beginners. ”Why am I so exciting?” he sings. ”What makes me dramatic? Who better to ask those questions than this man who had made a career of reinvention: David Bowie, enigmatic artist who fell  —   all too briefly  —   to Earth."
"It could’ve gone so terribly wrong. According to Tony Visconti, David Bowie’s longtime producer and mouthpiece for the final few years of his life, the English expat wanted to embrace manifold styles for his 25th album, ★ aka Blackstar, released last Friday. Pop’s original chameleon had of course been doing that for   years, and so for this last time around, he aimed to omit the very music upon which he began. ”The goal, in many, many ways,” Visconti claims, ”was to avoid rock  roll.” There’s a lot of that going around: Check the latest Coachella lineup beyond Guns ’n Roses. But rather than revisiting his    ”Heroes”  trilogy like so many of his followers and he himself did on 2013’s The Next Day, Bowie turned to a nearly forgotten genre that hasn’t in decades attracted a superstar  —   jazz fusion. Having enlisted saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his trio  —   keyboardist Jason Lindner, bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Mark Guiliana  —   here augmented by another veteran on the NYC jazz scene, guitarist Ben Monder, Bowie updated the technical rigor and tonal fervor of ’70s Miles Davis with the kindred adventurousness of electronic music. The dexterity of the form set Bowie free to be as musically unconventional as he had so often been visually. McCaslin shares Bowie’s taste for hybrids he is perhaps the sole   jazz soloist to cite Aphex Twin. On his last solo jam, 2013’s Hydra, Monder conjures the   majesties of Yes at its most labyrinthine and sprawling. With seven songs totaling 41 minutes, Blackstar similarly stretches out sans compromise. Bowie’s leap into   jazz muso fantasia for his swan song may seem out of character unless you consider this: As much as he paved the way for punk,   and other   forms where passion triumphs over training, Bowie had long championed virtuosos: The three records most responsible for translating his overseas success to the U. S. ”Space Oddity,” Young Americans and Let’s Dance, featured, respectively, Rick Wakeman, Luther Vandross and Stevie Ray Vaughan  —   all of them years before they became stars. Along the way, he had worked with such diverse and distinctive players as Mick Ronson, David Sanborn, Earl Slick, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Roy Bittan, Nile Rodgers and Peter Frampton. Beyond that marquee, he employed such musician’s musicians as Mike Garson, Carlos Alomar, Lenny Pickett, Reeves Gabrels, Tony and Hunt Sales, Lester Bowie, Gail Ann Dorsey, Tony Levin and Sterling Campbell. And he often highlighted these heavyweight cats  —   sometimes to the detriment of his least composed, most overproduced efforts like Never Let Me Down and Tin Machine II. Although it also favors performance over melody, Blackstar is otherwise nothing like those. It’s not even akin to ”This Is Not America,” Bowie’s first jazz collaboration. That   1985 single with the Pat Metheny Group was Bowie’s most delicate, thoughtful, and   achievement during what he now refers to as his   ”Phil Collins years.” Blackstar, by contrast, is feral, instinctive, the most   dispatch from the guy who celebrated his 69th birthday last Friday and left this Earth on Sunday as rock’s most radical superstar. You could use it to end a party that’s gone on too long or impress a boomer neighbor whose taste hasn’t changed since the heyday of Mahavishnu Orchestra it’s that brutal and finessed. Bowie himself honked sax, and so it makes sense that he would choose a parallel player and his band to further the most fertile,   elements of The Next Day. As wise and   as only Bowie in his 60s could be, that album drew on his past, right down to its cover art, to unintentionally emphasize an unfortunate point: Bowie’s impossibly long plateau  —   when he set the standard for experimental pop during the ’70 and early ’80s while switching up his game like changing his costume  —   ended exactly when he became megafamous with 1983’s Let’s Dance. What makes Blackstar so startling is that it approaches the magnitude of Bowie’s golden years without reminding us that he stopped routinely pumping out   songs on the level of ”All the Young Dudes” and ”Heroes.” And it does that because Blackstar isn’t about songs at all. Sometimes it’s not even about David Bowie, except, when it is, undeniably, about David Bowie, like on the title track and ”Lazarus.” The latter is one of the new numbers mixed with the old in his current   musical of the same name, which every theater critic, even the bright ones, has deemed inscrutable. Blackstar resonates precisely because it favors emotion over meaning. Lyrically, it’s harder to follow than 1974’s famously obtuse Diamond Dogs, when Bowie first adopted William S. Burroughs’ random   approach and announced that his output wasn’t rock ’n’ roll but genocide. Having led the dystopian way for decades, Bowie had to go so far out on a nonsensical limb to invoke ineffectuality that on ”Girl Loves Me,” Lady Gaga’s dada mixed Polari  —     English    slang  —   with Nadsat, the fictional argot from A Clockwork Orange. Unlike Dogs, the result does indeed come across as gibberish except for a   squeal of ”Where the f*** did Monday go?” so   you can bet MCs will either soon be vying for sample rights or drop it in their mixtapes regardless. It’s catchy not because it’s written that way, but because Bowie here sounds utterly bonkers. That bit and its walloping,   beat suggest Visconti wasn’t just fishing for hipster cred when he told Rolling Stone, ”We were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar.”   DJs have long feasted on abandoned   joints the way archaeologists dig bones Bowie and Visconti returned the favor by generating their own 21st century    amalgam. It’s Lamar’s sense of freedom  —   as well as his willingness to kick against the pricks  —   that surely served as spark. When Bowie’s buzz began, his theatricality  —   rooted not in   signifiers of authenticity but in such unapologetically hammy and idiosyncratically English actors as Anthony Newley  —   so rankled many American critics that some argued Bowie couldn’t sing at all: They accused of him of being an impersonator of real vocalists and a faker of real feeling. But this same knack for transcending his   source material, imbuing it with pathos, and simultaneously playing it for   effect made him the first postmodern pop star an achievement for which he has long been revered. That turned out to be a huge weight to carry, much less translate for an audience that swelled for his ”plastic soul” when MTV, the ultimate platform for it, arrived. Blackstar disengages with all that while reflecting on it. Having secretly struggled with cancer for the past 18 months, Bowie couldn’t roar through the entire album while constantly generating his usual quotation marks. This didn’t entirely halt his thespian   which he reprised with aplomb on ”’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore.” Equipped with Eric   sax screams, it suggests Flying Lotus remixing The Threepenny Opera, right down to its   distancing effects of misogyny alternately colloquial and archaic: ”Black struck the kiss, she kept my cock   Smote the mistress, drifting on.” But he did cut back on his   enunciation, instead moaning in head tones the showboating licks he long belted from his gut and then flipped with a   flourish, like when he’d go toe to toe with Freddie Mercury or Mick Jagger. Age and illness gave Bowie’s voice gravity, and McCaslin’s sax wails when he could not, particularly on ”Lazarus,” which suggests the   sorrows of Joy Division crossed with Serge Gainsbourg’s   chamber music. ”I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen,” he knowingly boasts. ”Everybody knows me now.” Spectacle lingers, but it’s centered on disquieting, dizzying sleaze that spirals like sludge down a drain. Rather than celebrating the celebrity that entrapped him and compromised his art, he likened it to satanic ritual, spiritual emptiness, theoretical constructs of the solar system and, ultimately, racial disconnect. ”I’m not a white star   I’m a black star,” he canted on the title track. A man married to a   woman couldn’t sing those words and merely be evoking Major Tom one last time it’s likely he lied here to illustrate the uncomfortable truths of contemporary pop’s minstrelsy. Printed black on black lyric sheets, his words once again reveled in alienation from the norm, the sort of identification that endeared him to Soul Train’s audience the way Morrissey’s fixation on sweet and tender hooligans charms a   one. Males of alternate masculinities are their own minority here Bowie’s estrangement from his gender flashed with overt violence in his murder ode ”Sue (Or in a Season of Crime),” where Guiliana skewers jungle’s hyper funk with irregular beats and accents that emphasize ensemble performance, not   perfection. Bowie seethes with resentment in his downcast ”Dollar Days,” the closest this rigorously abstract album comes to a conventional ballad. ”I’m dying to push their backs against the grain   And fool them all again and again,” he daydreams as the band reigns in its fury and the key gently descends. Middle Eastern dissonance, Krautrock’s   anxiety, European art song,   dirge and black fusion groove from white jazzbos  —   they’re all here in Bowie’s polyglot funk farewell. Their darkness highlighted the rare moments when his tunes turned sweet, as they did in the lingering refrain of the culminating cut, ”I Can’t Give Everything Away.” ”Saying no but meaning yes   This is all I ever meant,” he confesses before McCaslin takes his most emancipated solo, one that Monder echoes with     flight in Blackstar’s closing moments. There’s always been joy caught up in Bowie’s paradox finally let loose here, it’s simply ravishing, regardless of his usual lyrical ambiguity. Was he trying to suggest that the antagonism of his stance elsewhere on the album  —   and, indeed, throughout so many highlights of his career  —   was always intended as love? Not the side effects of the cocaine? Either way, even while staring down death, Bowie here reversed his claim on ”Station to Station” so many years ago: It’s never too late to be grateful."
"The North American International Auto Show is a place where car industry gathers to celebrate  —   and in recent years to apologize. At this year’s show in Detroit, it was Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller’s turn to face the media. In a prepared statement, Mueller said of the   scandal, ”We all know that we have let down customers, authorities, regulators and the general public here in America, too.” He added, ”We are  —   I am  —   truly sorry for that. And I would like to apologize once again for what went wrong with Volkswagen.” Following his remarks, Mueller spoke briefly with NPR. He said Volkswagen did not lie to U. S. regulators about emissions problems with its diesel engines but chalked it up to a misunderstanding of U. S. law. Here’s the exchange Sunday night: NPR: You said this was a technical problem, but the American people feel this is not a technical problem, this is an ethical problem that’s deep inside the company. How do you change that perception in the U. S.? Matthias Mueller: Frankly spoken, it was a technical problem. We made a default, we had a . .. not the right interpretation of the American law. And we had some targets for our technical engineers, and they solved this problem and reached targets with some software solutions which haven’t been compatible to the American law. That is the thing. And the other question you mentioned  —   it was an ethical problem? I cannot understand why you say that. NPR: Because Volkswagen, in the U. S. intentionally lied to EPA regulators when they asked them about the problem before it came to light. Mueller: We didn’t lie. We didn’t understand the question first. And then we worked since 2014 to solve the problem. And we did it together and it was a default of VW that it needed such a long time. NPR: And how do you fix the perception that’s here in the U. S.  —   how do you change American thinking about Volkswagen . .. Mueller: We don’t want to change the American thinking. We have to make up our mind and we have to change our thinking. And we just do that. NPR: How do we know when it’s changed? How will we know when Volkswagen is different? Mueller: How? So . .. NPR: What’s the proof? Mueller: I’m CEO in three months, and I’m working day and night to make a change process within Volkswagen. We started this, and it needs some time. It needs, let me say, one year . .. one to three years. For example, we have installed new board member for integrity and  —   Ms. [Christine]   she came from Daimler with a lot of another solutions within our company. NPR: There were a lot of people in Congress and the [Obama] administration who are very angry with Volkswagen. What do you say to those people who are investigating and who feel like personally that the company lied to them? Mueller: First of all, I have to apologize on behalf of Volkswagen. Second, I have to promise  —   and we will do the pledge  —   that we deliver appropriate solutions for our customers. As soon as possible. NPR: How soon is soon? Mueller: We have to discuss it with the EPA on Wednesday, and then we will see whether the time schedule is OK or not. On Wednesday, Mueller is expected to present the Environmental Protection Agency with Volkswagen’s plan to fix the emissions problem. After a portion of this interview with Mueller aired Monday on Morning Edition, Volkswagen approached NPR, asking for a   of sorts, another conversation with the CEO. So we spoke with Mueller again. Here’s a portion of the   conversation.   Mueller: I have to apologize for yesterday evening because the situation was a little bit difficult for me to handle in front of all these colleagues of yours and everybody shouting. OK. Thank you very much for coming again and giving me the opportunity to say some words. NPR: When we talked yesterday, the key line seemed to be that this was a technical error. Which sounds to us in English, like, ”Oops.” When it wasn’t an oops. It was more than a technical error. It seemed to be intentional.  Mueller: Yeah, the situation is, first of all we fully accept the violation. There is no doubt about it. Second, we have to apologize on behalf of Volkswagen for that situation we have created in front of customers, in front of dealers and, of course, to the authorities. . .. NPR: People feel lied to, they feel like they’ve been had and all those things. There seems to be a difficulty in fixing that problem. How do you fix that problem? . .. Mueller: We have to accept that the problem was not created three months ago. It was created, let me say, 10 years ago. . .. We had the wrong reaction when we got information year by year from the EPA and from the [California Air Resources Board]. . .. We have to apologize for that, and we’ll do our utmost to do things right for the future. . .. NPR: It’s not a hill to climb you’ve got a mountain range and then another mountain range and then another mountain range. How are you going to do that? Mueller: We’re doing our utmost. We have worked night and day to find solutions. Not only technical solutions. It’s a lot of work for the lawyers and also for the press department."
"The mammography debate heated up once again in April 2015, when the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a draft of its latest breast cancer screening recommendations. Now, after the public had a chance to comment, the influential task force has finalized the advice, reiterating that women ages   ought to receive a screening mammogram every two years. The USPSTF says that women between 40 and 49 don’t get as much benefit from screening as do older women, so they should make an individual decision on when to start based on how they view the benefits and harms. (Women with a family history of breast cancer may benefit more from starting screening before age 50.) ”Our recommendations support the entire range of decisions available to women in their 40s,” Kirsten   a physician and vice chair of the USPSTF, told Shots. Some women may choose to begin at 40 or soon after, deciding they want to lower their cancer risk as much as possible and can handle the chance of false positive results or possible overdiagnosis, when cancer is discovered that never would have been harmful to health. Other women, she says, may opt to wait until later in their 40s or until they turn 50. The task force’s supporting materials include statistical models estimating the lifetime consequences of screening women from ages   and from  . For each 1, 000 women screened, the model finds that starting screening at 40 means an estimated one additional breast cancer death averted (deaths drop from eight to seven) with 576 additional false positive tests (1, 529 vs. 953) 58 extra benign biopsies (204 vs. 146) and two additional overdiagnosed cases of breast cancer (21 vs. 19). The task force also says there’s not enough evidence to say whether or not women 75 and older benefit from routine screening for breast cancer. The recommendations were published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Since the draft was made public last spring, the American Cancer Society changed its advice for breast cancer screening, saying that   women don’t need to begin annual mammograms until age 45 and can start screening every other year beginning at age 55. Other medical groups still recommend annual screening starting at 40. While mammography guidelines differ, ”it’s important for women and physicians to understand how much convergence there is,” says  . The groups agree that mammography has value as a screening tool, and that the value of screening generally rises with age. The Affordable Care Act guarantees private insurance coverage of preventive services without    costs for consumers if the evidence supporting the test has an A or B grade from the task force. But Congress requires full coverage of mammography in women in their 40s, despite the C grade, which indicates there is ”at least moderate certainty that the net benefit is small.” In an editorial, the task force says that ”coverage decisions are the domain of payers, regulators, and legislators” and that the group ”cannot exaggerate our interpretation of the science to ensure coverage for a service.” Just to be clear, this ongoing debate is over screening mammography, which means looking for signs of breast cancer in healthy women who have no symptoms of the disease. No matter your age, or whether or not you’ve started regular screening, if you have symptoms, you need to see a doctor. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson"
"If you’re confused about when to start getting mammograms and how often you should be getting them, you’re not alone. The very organizations that are responsible for telling us when and how often to get those screenings don’t agree. More than half of women 40 and older think they should be getting a mammogram every year, according to a recent   Health Analytics poll. That’s despite the fact that the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends getting one only every other year  —   and only after women turn 50. On Tuesday, the American Cancer Society updated its own guidelines. And though they’ve moved closer to the Task Force recommendation, they still differ. If the major organizations that give mammography recommendations can’t get on the same page, it’s not hard to see why women are confused, too. There are reasons for those differences, of course. Science is imperfect, and scientists can come to different conclusions when looking at the same data. And the guidelines reveal a fundamental disagreement over cancer screening. One side says it’s worth subjecting some healthy women to what may end up being unnecessary procedures in order to catch every possible cancer, while the other side says that the harm of overtreatment needs to be considered, too. So here’s where four major organizations stand on mammography. It’s not the clear guidance that women would hope for, but it’s what we have now. When should I start getting mammograms? How often should I get one? When should I stop?"
"The bananas you find in the average U. S. grocery store are pretty much the same: They’re the genetic variety known as Cavendish. In the market in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, though, you have choices. Brian Irish, a scientist who has been working at the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Tropical Agriculture Research Station in Mayagüez, points out our options. There are Cavendish bananas, to be sure, but also   varieties, miniature ones and others that seem extra plump. Shop owners are also here, buying their bananas from farms on the island. Irish buys a few of a popular variety called Manzano, or apple. ”Manzanos have a little acid, a little puckering of your mouth, especially if they’re not very ripe,” he says. I take a bite. It’s truly fabulous. Irish nods. ”Tasty!” he says. ”It’s one of my favorites, too. I really like it.” But whether you’re someplace that relies on just one kind of banana, or someplace like Puerto Rico with great banana diversity, this fruit is vulnerable everywhere. There’s a deadly fungus that attacks banana plants. In the past century, an earlier version of this fungus wiped out commercial plantings of a banana variety called Gros Michel that once dominated the global banana trade. Now history may be repeating itself. A new version of the fungus, called Tropical Race 4, is killing off the Cavendish variety. Tropical Race 4 has marched across China and Southeast Asia, laying waste to banana plantations. It’s killing bananas in Australia, and cases have been reported in southern Africa. So far, the fungus has not spread to Latin America, but it can travel on the smallest particle of soil, even on a pair of shoes. When Irish visited a banana plantation in Australia recently, he decided to leave his boots behind. ”It’s such a small sacrifice to make for such an important cause,” he says. Some people probably don’t take such precautions, though. ”I think it’s very realistic that the fungus will simply continue to spread,” says Gert Kema, an expert on tropical plant diseases at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Kema and other scientists are commencing the search for a banana that is immune to Tropical Race 4 and could replace Cavendish. The scientific sprint to beat the fungus relies on genetic diversity right here in Puerto Rico at the USDA’s tropical agriculture research station. It’s just one of many banana collections around the world that might just hold the key to stopping the fungus’s deadly reach. It’s a forest of banana diversity. Bunches of red fruit dangle from some of the tall stalks big green fruit from others. Some plants barely have any fruit at all. ”Many of them are wild,” says Irish, who’s been in charge of this collection for the past 11 years. ”They have very small fruit, with seeds in them.” He grabs one tiny yellow banana and splits it open. It’s full of black seeds, hard as rocks. ”And how many in this small fruit? Hundreds. It’s impossible to eat the pulp around these seeds,” he says. It may be useless to eat, but if this plant could withstand Tropical Race 4, it would be priceless. The only way to know is by exposing it to the disease. It would be crazy to do this in Puerto Rico, of course, where the fungus hasn’t yet spread. But Kema is doing such experiments in greenhouses at Wageningen University, which is one of Europe’s biggest centers of agricultural research. He has tested about 200 different banana plants so far. ”Less than 10 percent of what we’ve tested has been resistant to Tropical Race 4,” he says. But the plants that resist the disease, so far, are not candidates to replace Cavendish. Some are wild varieties, with fruit full of seeds. Others are plantains, starchier relatives of the dessert bananas that are so popular in North America and Europe. So it’s possible that this search will fail, and the fungus will slowly destroy   banana production around the globe. But there’s an optimistic scenario, too. Kema says plant breeders can take those few   bananas and mate them with others that taste good, creating offspring that might contain the best traits of both. There’s a special complication when breeding bananas. Breeders have to start with bananas that have seeds otherwise, there are no offspring. But eventually their efforts have to produce a variety with no seeds, so that people will eat it. It can be done, Kema says, and in the best of all worlds, this breeding effort would come up with multiple varieties, not just one. And then, if big plantations grow them for export, consumers here might actually get to see and taste the kind of banana diversity that you can find already in places like Puerto Rico."
"Melioidosis is a disease that strikes fear in those who’ve heard of it. Doctors in Southeast Asia and Northern Australia know it as a stubborn, potentially deadly infection that causes pneumonia, abscesses and, in the most severe cases, organ failure. Without treatment, it can kill within 48 hours. Military officials worry it could be converted into an agent of terror. But for decades, melioidosis seems to have lurked under the radar of global public health organizations. ”For everybody, it was a disease of southeastern Asia and Australia,” says Dr. Eric Bertherat of the World Health Organization. ”But we are discovering that this disease is present in many other regions worldwide.” A new study published Monday in Nature Microbiology says the bacterium causing melioidosis, Burkholderia pseudomallei, is living in the soil and water of 45 countries and is likely spread throughout another 34 countries, all wrapped around the tropics. ”[The work] demonstrates the potential burden of this disease is much bigger than what everybody expected: 165, 000 cases a year,” Bertherat says. ”It’s a big burden, equivalent to rabies, and that’s a severe disease.” And the death rate can be high  —   ”up to 70 percent,” says Bertherat. The study estimates there are about 90, 000 deaths each year from melioidosis, roughly the same as measles and several times that of dengue. For doctors in areas where the disease has long been common, the numbers are a grim confirmation of old suspicions. ”For us, we think it’s a reasonable number. In northeast Thailand, I see two to three patients die of this during the rainy season every day,” says Dr. Direk Limmathurotsakul, a microbiologist with the University of Oxford and Mahidol University in Bangkok and lead author on the study. ”When I went to Indonesia, every lab we looked, we found this disease. We feel this is a minimum number.” The disease has probably been killing people in these countries for years, but it’s often missed, says Dr. Bart Currie, a microbiologist at Menzies School of Health Research in Australia who did not work on the study. Because the symptoms are so nonspecific  —   abscesses and fever and sepsis can all occur in other bacterial infections  —   melioidosis earned the moniker ”the great mimicker.” ”This very potentially dangerous bacterium is even harder to diagnose than the standard bacterium,” Currie says. Misdiagnosis is a common problem in areas where the disease is not    —   and can be fatal, says Limmathurotsakul. ”It’s worrying for areas outside of our research center [in northeastern Thailand]. And we know that’s happening in many emerging areas  —   like India, Brazil, Indonesia,” he says. B. pseudomallei is naturally resistant to many commonly prescribed antibiotics. With good supporting care and access to proper medications, fatalities drop to around 1 in 10, and most healthy adults are able to survive an infection with good care. Otherwise, death sets in quickly. ”There are many who have been treated with ineffective antibiotics for a period,” says Limmathurotsakul. But by the time the disease is confirmed as melioidosis, he notes, ”most of the time, the patient has already passed away.” B. pseudomallei rarely spreads from person to person, but in some parts of the world it is extraordinarily ubiquitous. In parts of northeast Thailand, up to half of the population has been infected at some point, Currie says, and carry antibodies to the bacterium in their blood. Scientists believe the bacteria colonize the roots of certain plants and can feed off amoeba, though its natural history isn’t  . Limmathurotsakul’s model confines the bacteria’s range to the soil and water of warm, wet climates generally within the tropics. And B. pseudomallei is a tough thing. In 1993, Thai scientists mixed B. pseudomallei with pure, distilled water. Each year, for at least 16 years, Limmathurotsakul says, they tested the water and found the bacteria had survived without anything to sustain them. This organism’s hardiness and deadliness have earned it some infamy. ”In the United States, the disease has primarily been studied as a bioterrorism agent,” says Dr. Donald Woods, who studied B. pseudomallei for decades as a microbiologist at the University of Calgary and was not involved with the study. The U. S. government funds research on how to prevent or treat B. pseudomallei in several labs around the country. Although, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shut down studies on the bacterium at Tulane University National Primate Research Center last year after the bacteria breached containment and infected two   primates. Limmathurotsakul’s model predicts the bacteria could survive in southern Louisiana’s hot, wet terrain, but so far soil and water samples have turned up clean. Woods says B. pseudomallei would most likely be weaponized by an aerial route. ”The organism is much more dangerous when inhaled. The lethal dose drops dramatically if given by an aerosol route. So there are real concerns about bioterrorism use by an aerosol use,” Woods says. A close relative of the bacterium, B. mallei or glanders, was used in World War I and II originally to injure and kill horses and mules  —   and some human handlers fell ill as well. The name melioidosis  —   ”melis” means ”a distemper of asses” in Greek  —   refers to the bacteria’s ability to infect animals. Later in the century, B. mallei and B. pseudomallei were considered for bioweapons programs by the United States and likely the Soviet Union. But thus far, melioidosis has not been weaponized. The most common way to get infected is likely when a cut or scrape comes into contact with contaminated soil or water. Others might breathe the bacteria if exposed to typhoons and violent weather events that whip up dust and water. That makes the advice to avoid melioidosis simple, Limmathurotsakul says: Stay indoors during storms, and wear protective boots and gloves when working in fields. But the lack of awareness has been maddening. ”We should stop patients from getting the disease from the start. It could be done,” he says. ”But it’s not at all in the public health campaign. People still go into rice fields without protective gear and unaware they’re putting themselves at risk.”"
"Our cars are getting smarter and smarter: They may help you park or switch lanes, dictate directions if you need them, link up with your phone to play your calls and music or make sure you stop before it’s too late. As NPR’s Sonari Glinton has reported, an average car already has millions of lines of code, and some recent research has shown that the technological offerings are the deciding factors in new car purchases. A new study by Autotrader found that 70 percent of shoppers preferred vehicles with autonomous features like park assist, collision avoidance and automatic braking. This is a big shift in the industry and both the automakers and technology companies are racing to cash in. Companies like Google, Uber, Tesla, Ford, Lyft, Toyota, BMW and General Motors are striking partnerships and making plans to equip our cars with more autonomous features on the way toward a fully   vehicle. Regulators are trying to stay abreast. But what does the public think about autonomous cars? The University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute has been looking into this. In   researchers there conducted a survey of public opinions in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Project manager Brandon Schoettle spoke to NPR’s Ari Shapiro about the mixed messages that the public has been sending about   cars. You can listen to the audio above, and here are a few additional excerpts from their conversation. On whether people want to own a   car, We often get back a bit of a mixed message. In general, people are concerned about riding in these types of vehicles, but at the same time, they’re also very interested in riding in and possibly owning one of these vehicles. As much as they have concerns, there’s an interest there. On details of his survey findings, We tried to make it very simple and ask people very straightforward questions: Do you want a   vehicle do you want no   vehicle and if you want   do you want it to do all or partial? . .. The largest single answer we got was that people don’t want a   vehicle. However, when you combine the responses we got for partially   or completely   then a majority of people we talked to want some version of a   vehicle. However, the completely   type that would have no steering wheel, no gas or brake pedals was a much smaller percentage than either of the other two. So depending on how you look at it, you could say that the largest group don’t want   vehicles or, to put it another way, the majority do want a   vehicle of some kind. On the biggest concerns that people have, Of course, they’re concerned that the vehicle might not do as good a job of driving as your average human driver, for example that it might get confused in situations where a human driver might figure things out a little more easily. They’re also concerned about giving up control, every time you have to completely relinquish control to something like a   vehicle, it’s something that people aren’t always that keen to do. And of course, you have some of the   people who just simply like driving, has nothing to do whether or not the vehicle will drive better. They simply like driving their car and don’t want a computer doing it for them. On what automakers could do to get people more comfortable with   cars, It’s a matter of taking small steps and slowly proving what these vehicles can do, slowly introducing them to the public and giving the public a chance to not launch right into   use of these vehicles but slowly see what they’re capable of."
"To deliver a presidential address to a joint session of Congress is surely a high privilege, but to do so at the start of one’s eighth and final year in that office is a rare occasion indeed. The U. S. had 43 presidents before Barack Obama, but only five of them stood before the Congress as Obama will this Tuesday night  —   as   incumbents beginning their final year with a report on the State of the Union. Such reports in our time have become synonymous with speeches delivered before a packed House chamber, with the highest elected and appointed officials in Washington also on hand  —   from the Cabinet and Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Supreme Court. They have been broadcast on radio since the early 1920s and carried on television since the late 1940s. But for much of U. S. history, the ”State of the Union” was a written report sent to Capitol Hill by a president who did not deign to deliver it in person. It did not begin that way. The very first president, George Washington, began his final year in office in 1796 with a personal appearance before the assembled House and Senate. In those days the Congress did not meet in Washington, where construction of the Capitol was underway. Instead, the Congress met in Congress Hall in Philadelphia, the city that gave birth to the Constitution. But even far from his home in Virginia and past his personal prime, the first president seemed quite at home creating a tradition. Ever since,   reports on the State of the Union have carried a special portent, because presidents saw in them a unique opportunity to address their own record and the future of the country. Washington was a military man, surveyor and farmer, but not a speechmaker as a rule. He did not go out of his way to find speaking gigs. But he agreed to deliver his report on how the country was doing in person in Philadelphia in most of the years he was president, including at the beginning of the year he knew would be his last as the nation’s leader. Much of his speech cataloged negotiations underway with various European powers and American Indian tribes. Washington was not above using this personal appearance to lobby a bit for his priorities, a practice that his successors would make into a ritual. In 1796, Washington badly wanted Congress to start building a permanent Navy, saying: ”To an active external commerce the protection of a naval force is indispensable. This is manifest with regard to wars in which a State is itself a party. But besides this, it is in our own experience that the most sincere neutrality is not a sufficient guard against the depredations of nations at war.” Washington argued that sea power might even be a deterrent to actual war, an early appearance of the ”peace through strength” argument that has been popular ever since. He also wanted a military school to train Army officers and a ”national university” that would expand on the private seminaries and colleges that were springing up around the former Colonies. In the end, Congress would start a Navy and start a military academy at West Point. And two out of three is not bad  —   especially considering how well presidential proposals have fared since. The second president, John Adams, also delivered his SOTU reports in person. But after his four years in office, his successor, Thomas Jefferson, ended that practice. He apparently regarded it as a touch too imperial for his taste, and thereafter no president went to Capitol Hill to enunciate his message until Woodrow Wilson, who did not come along until 1912. Wilson served eight years but was not in good enough health to address Congress by the end. The next president to have an eighth year in office was Franklin D. Roosevelt, but unlike all other U. S. presidents before and since, FDR spent his eighth year in office seeking (and winning) a third term. So when he spoke to Congress at the beginning of 1940, he didn’t anticipate leaving anytime soon. But in 1960, with the   tradition restored by an amendment to the Constitution, Dwight D. Eisenhower went before Congress for a final SOTU speech knowing full well he would not be back. ”Ike,” as he was known since his days as the hero general of World War II, gave a profoundly serious speech that year, befitting the parlous days of the Cold War. Confrontations with the Soviet Union and Communist China were the uppermost concerns of the time, and Communism was on the march in Latin America and Southeast Asia as well. Eisenhower also found time in his speech to warn about bad   relations leading to too many strikes (a recent stoppage in steel production had been especially worrisome) and about the debilitating effects of inflation. Among the policy prescriptions he pushed was a government budget surplus  —   to be sought even at the expense of high taxes  —   so as to pay down a national debt Ike thought dangerously large. It was about $290 billion at the time today it is about 60 times higher in nominal dollars (unadjusted for inflation). Ike thought it was time to balance the budget, but not to cut defense or space spending. ”I shall present to the Congress for 1961 a balanced budget. In the area of defense, expenditures continue at the record   levels of the last several years. With a single exception, expenditures in every major category of Health, Education and Welfare will be equal or greater than last year. In Space expenditures the amounts are practically doubled.” Eisenhower also could not resist a shot at the Democrats who had stormed back into power in Congress during his tenure: ”I am not unique as a President in having worked with a Congress controlled by the opposition party —  except that no other President ever did it for quite so long! Yet in both personal and official relationships we have weathered the storms of the past five years. For this I am grateful.” Ike would give way in 1961 to John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, would have only a little over five years in office. He was followed by Richard M. Nixon, who resigned midway through his second term, and Gerald R. Ford, who served out the remainder of that term. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 but defeated for   in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan who brought some luster to the idea of a ”victory lap” in the president’s   State of the Union address. He felt quite sanguine about the judgment of history at the time, and reminded his hearers that inflation, high interest rates and unemployment had all been reduced during his two terms  —   in some cases dramatically: ”And as we have worked together to bring down spending, tax rates, and inflation, employment has climbed to record heights America has created more jobs and better, higher paying jobs family income has risen for 4 straight years, and America’s poor climbed out of poverty at the fastest rate in more than 10 years.” Reagan also praised the spirit of freedom that he said had advanced the cause of American interests and national security in foreign affairs  —   granting himself some of the credit by proxy. ”In international relations, too, there’s only one description for what, together, we have achieved: a complete turnabout, a revolution. Seven years ago, America was weak, and freedom everywhere was under siege. Today America is strong, and democracy is everywhere on the move.”  One of the achievements of Reagan’s presidency was handing the White House over to his vice president, George H. W. Bush. Though Bush did not claim to have Reagan’s gifts as a presenter, Bush gave four SOTU addresses that were generally  . He did not fare as well with the voters in 1992, however, and did not have a second term. Bill Clinton defeated Bush in 1992 and used his January addresses to joint sessions of Congress as showcases for his own communication skills. The   SOTU address was meant as a final showpiece in this series and set the record for such speeches at one hour and 29 minutes. Clinton, like Reagan and Eisenhower, dwelt primarily on improvements made in the economy during his administration, with an implicit sense of pride and even triumph in proclaiming the nation to be peaceful and prosperous: ”We are fortunate to be alive at this moment in history. Never before has our Nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats. Never before have we had such a blessed opportunity and, therefore, such a profound obligation to build the more perfect Union of our Founders’ dreams.” Clinton expected his record in office to boost the prospects of his vice president, Albert Gore Jr. who was expected to be the Democratic nominee for president. He even lent his   successor one of his best metaphors: ”My fellow Americans, we have crossed the bridge we built to the 21st century. Now, we must shape a 21st century American revolution of opportunity, responsibility, and community. We must be now, as we were in the beginning, a new nation.” Gore was reluctant to embrace the Clinton legacy, however, fearing he would be bogged down in Clinton’s impeachment history and personal peccadilloes. He came close to winning the presidency in his own right, losing by the narrowest margin in Electoral College history to George W. Bush, the son of the man Clinton had defeated eight years earlier. The history of the second President Bush would be longer but less happy than that of the first. By the time he became, in 2008, the fifth president to deliver an     SOTU address, Bush’s war against terrorism in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks had lost momentum in Afghanistan and Iraq. The latter war had proved especially frustrating, costly and counterproductive. Bush would spend much of his speech talking up the progress made in Iraq in the preceding year and promising more to come: ”Any further drawdown of U. S. troops will be based on conditions in Iraq and the recommendations of our commanders. General Petraeus has warned that too fast a drawdown could result in, quote, ”the disintegration of the Iraqi security forces, Al   regaining lost ground, and a marked increase in violence.” Members of Congress, having come so far and achieved so much, we must not allow this to happen.” That warning would prove prescient in the years to come as the goal of shoring up the regime in Baghdad proved elusive: ”In the coming year, we will work with Iraqi leaders as they build on the progress they’re making toward political reconciliation. At the local level, Sunnis, Shi’a, and Kurds are beginning to come together to reclaim their communities and rebuild their lives. Progress in the Provinces must be matched by progress in Baghdad. We’re seeing some encouraging signs.” Yet Bush devoted the early part of his 2008 speech to domestic priorities, including his unheeded calls for new immigration laws and restraints on the growth of   entitlement spending: ”There are two other pressing challenges that I’ve raised repeatedly before this body and that this body has failed to address: entitlement spending and immigration. Every Member in this Chamber knows that spending on entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is growing faster than we can afford. We all know the painful choices ahead if America stays on this path: massive tax increases, sudden and drastic cuts in benefits, or crippling deficits.” At the time of his last SOTU report, Bush could still take pride in a robust economic recovery from the rough years of 2001 and 2002. But the markets had turned shaky in the preceding fall, and the first signs of extensive problems with   securities were emerging. Some defenders had urged him to make more of the economic good news from his administration in his final SOTU, but such talk ceased when investment banks and insurance companies began failing that spring, summer and fall. The struggle to bail out the financial sector with public funds helped cripple the Republican nominee that next November, ushering in the   presidency of Barack Obama. This week, it will be Obama’s turn to see how a final SOTU report can encapsulate a presidency or pave the way for greater success before a given presidency ends. His chief of staff says the speech will be ”a big optimistic generous view of the future.”"
"Editor’s note: With news that   Donald Trump has selected Nikki Haley as U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, we are reprising this story, which was originally posted in January. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has a lot of qualities her party needs: She’s a rising star who is young, female and the daughter of Indian immigrants. That background could make her an ideal vice presidential candidate for a Republican Party that needs to diversify. And while she has had recent moments in the national spotlight in the aftermath of the Charleston church shooting, the choice of Haley to give the GOP address after President Obama’s final State of the Union speech is her biggest tryout yet. The plum spot is both a prime opportunity and a risky bet for Haley  —   some of the most recent speakers have been panned and mocked. A few have seen their White House dreams die. Republicans are promoting this as an ”address,” not a GOP response, in an effort to change the comparisons between their speech and bully pulpit Obama has. Here are five things you should know about Haley: 1. She broke barriers as the first female and first minority governor of South Carolina, Haley was born Nimrata Randhawa to Indian immigrants in Bamberg, S. C. A 2010 New York Times profile detailed how her parents ”entered Nikki and her sister in the Little Miss Bamberg pageant. The judges of the contest, one that crowned one black queen and one white queen, were so flummoxed that they simply disqualified Nikki and her sister, Simran  —   but not before Nikki, about 5, sang ’This Land Is Your Land.’ ” Haley’s parents ran a clothing store in the small town south of Columbia, and she began working there at age 13. She would go on to Clemson University to study accounting and met her husband, Michael, there. Haley was raised Sikh the two wed in both Sikh and Methodist ceremonies. Haley was baptized into the Methodist Church and now identifies as Christian. Elected to the state Legislature in 2004 and then winning a contentious governor’s race in 2010, she became not just the first female chief executive of the Palmetto State but also its first minority governor. And at age 43, she is also the youngest governor in the country. 2. A Hillary Clinton speech inspired her first run for office, Haley returned to work in her family’s clothing store after college. Her interest in finance, taxes and government spurred her interest in a run for office. When she heard a speech by Hillary Clinton at a local college, she made up her mind. ”She said there will be all of these reasons that people tell you [that] you can’t do it. She said that there’s only one reason for you to do it, and it’s because you know it’s the right thing. I walked out of there thinking, I’ve got to do this,” she told Vogue in 2012. 3. In her 2010 gubernatorial race, she was the Tea Party favorite, When Haley  —   seen as a protege of  . Mark Sanford, before his   ”hike on the Appalachian Trail”  —   threw her hat into the 2010 race, she faced some stiff competition: Attorney General Henry McMaster, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer and U. S. Rep. Gresham Barrett. Her   approach may have seemed out of place in the race initially, but with the rapid growth of the Tea Party in the midterm election that year, she began riding a wave that would take her all the way to the governor’s mansion by pulling out the primary upset. During that race, she had the endorsement of 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who had dubbed Haley one of her ”mama grizzlies.” But in    South Carolina politics, the contest was an ugly one, too, and she had to beat back what Winthrop University political scientist Scott Huffmon called ”slings and arrows” from both inside and outside her party. ”There were allegations of infidelity that had no credibility, or nothing really backing them up, when she was initially running. There were accusations of ethics violations from her time serving in the South Carolina Legislature, and nothing ever came from those, either,” Huffmon explained. ”Everywhere we’ve seen smoke, so far there has been no fire.” Haley has had to deal with other scandals and crises in the governor’s office too, after numerous children who were under the care of that state’s Department of Social Services died and when a massive data breach of the state Department of Revenue allowed hackers to steal many residents’ private information. Her approval ratings dipped during her first term in the aftermath of those controversies, but they rebounded and she handily won   in 2014. 4. She endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012, Because of South Carolina’s early status in the primary calendar, Haley was a   endorsement four years ago in the GOP presidential race, and she is yet again ahead of the state’s Feb. 20 vote. In late 2011, she threw her support behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a coup for the establishment favorite. Even though Romney would win the nomination, he lost the South Carolina primary to Newt Gingrich  —   the first blemish on the state’s    perfect record in picking the eventual nominee. She hasn’t picked a candidate yet this cycle, though she has good relationships with both former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. ”I plan to be a really sweet host to all,” Haley said as she was showing Bush around the state last May. ”I don’t know if I’ll endorse. . .. It’s not going to be anytime soon.” Now, her endorsement could be even more valuable if she has a strong performance Tuesday night. 5. She earned praise for the way she helped broker a compromise to bring down the controversial Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds, Tragic events put Haley in the national spotlight last June, after a    white man killed nine churchgoers at a Bible study at the historic black congregation in Charleston known as Mother Emanuel AME. The next day, on June 18, Haley stood in a makeshift briefing room near the Charleston waterfront and tried to give voice to what many in her state were feeling. ”We woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,” Haley said as she fought back tears. ”Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe. And that’s not something we ever thought we’d deal with.” The investigation into the murders in Charleston revealed that the alleged shooter had ties to white supremacist groups and proudly posed with a Confederate battle flag in photos online. Within days, Haley called a press conference at the State House in Columbia. ”We have stared evil in the eye and watched good, prayerful people killed in one of the most sacred of places,” she said, surrounded by black leaders, including Rep. Jim Clyburn and Sen. Tim Scott. Haley called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the State House  —   a move she had to know would prove controversial. After a fight in the state Legislature, the flag was was taken down in July. In a Winthrop University poll conducted two months later, Haley’s approval rating stood at 55 percent, with   of South Carolinians supporting the decision to remove the flag  —   including a majority of white residents."
"What do the United States, Suriname, Papua New Guinea and Tonga have in common? These countries are among the few worldwide that don’t offer paid maternity leave at the federal level for new mothers. Note that the United States is the only advanced economy to make the list most others offer at least 15 weeks. In a powerful new talk available at Ted. com, author Jessica Shortall makes the case for paid family leave  —   not only as a moral issue but as an economic one. According to Shortall, women make up 47 percent of the workforce, yet 88 percent of working women have no access to paid maternity leave. What does that mean for new mothers? Shortall offers stories from new moms  —   and they aren’t pretty. She argues that we need to drop the stock photo image of a working mom with perfectly coiffed hair and a cherubic infant on her lap, cooing happily as Mom works at her computer. Too often working moms are pumping milk in bathrooms (I’ve been there) making child care decisions driven by economic necessity (I’ve been there, too) and otherwise scrambling to combine the demands of work with those of having and raising babies. And what does this mean for babies and young children? That’s something we’re only beginning to understandi In a lovely short essay at Edge. org, psychology professor Linda Wilbrecht, a colleague at the University of California, Berkeley, highlights what we do  —   and don’t  —   yet know about the impacts of early life experiences on later development.   child care  —   whether it comes from Mom or other caregivers  —   and a rich, stable environment could have important downstream consequences for individuals and for society. Wilbrecht’s essay is worth a read, and Shortall’s talk is worth a look: Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Michigan officials are stepping up their efforts to address elevated lead levels in Flint’s water after residents accused them of responding too slowly to the crisis. Local officials are handing out water filters and jugs in the streets of Flint and have set up five new distribution centers for filters and testing kits. And as Michigan Radio reports, the coordinator of the state response to the crisis says ”social workers will make    visits to make sure homes have water filters correctly installed, and children are getting the services they need.” On Monday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder formed a committee made up of experts ”to work on   solutions to the Flint water situation and ongoing public health concerns affecting residents.” The elevated lead levels are widely blamed on the city’s water supply, as we previously reported. In April 2014, the city switched to getting its water from the Flint River. The new supply corroded the city’s pipes, leaching lead into the tap water. Even though the city switched back to its original source, the Detroit water system, Flint’s mayor says city tap water is still dangerous. The latest efforts come as the governor faced ”a growing crescendo of criticism over the weekend on the state’s handling of the crisis,” Michigan Radio reports. Snyder declared a state of emergency in Flint on Jan. 5, which ”triggered activation of the state’s emergency response center.” As Michigan Radio points out, ”that’s months after the Snyder administration acknowledged lead contamination of the city’s drinking water in September.” ”State and city leaders had largely dismissed residents’ complaints for months, assuring them that the water was safe and being tested regularly,” The New York Times reported. The impact of lead poisoning is irreversible, as we reported last month. Here’s more: ”High levels of lead are especially harmful to children and pregnant women, and can cause ’learning disabilities, behavioral problems and mental retardation,’ the World Health Organization says. ”A study conducted by a local medical center released in September showed that 2. 1% of children 5 and under had elevated blood lead levels before the switch to Flint River water, compared to 4. 0% after the switch.” Flint’s newly elected Mayor Karen Weaver told Morning Edition last month that the city needs money and resources to address the crisis. ”You know, it’s an infrastructure crisis for us, so we know that’s going to be a tremendous cost and burden on the city of Flint that we can’t handle by ourselves.”"
"Just because a toy’s packaging says it’s educational doesn’t make it so. That’s the finding from a new study in JAMA Pediatrics that found some toys being marketed as language promoters got in the way of learning. Research shows that for kids to understand, speak and eventually read or write a language, they need to hear it  —   lots of it. And it’s never too early for parents and caregivers to get talking. That explains the booming industry in talking electronic toys that claim to help kids learn language. The study focused on roughly   children between the ages of 10 and 16 months old. Researchers outfitted them with little microphones tucked into special vests or shirts that could record the infants playing at home with Mom or Dad. Professor Anna Sosa, of Northern Arizona University, led the study and says she gave families three different kinds of toys to play with: books, traditional toys like stacking blocks and a shape sorter, and electronic toys. ”We had a talking farm  —   animal names and things,” Sosa says of the electronic toys. ”We had a baby cellphone. And we had a baby laptop. So you actually open the cover and start pushing buttons, and it tells you things.” Things like this: Sosa says she picked those toys ”because they are advertised as   for babies in this age range.” The   couples were asked to play separately with each type of toy over the course of three days. To understand what researchers heard, it’s important to know what they were listening for. As we said above, babies learn language by hearing it. And research shows that interaction  —   the give and take between baby and parent  —   is key because early learning is intensely social. You can hear it in this tape of one mother enjoying a book with her baby: Compare that to the cut above, from the session with the electronic toy. Sosa says the difference isn’t in what you hear but what you don’t hear: Mom or baby. ”When there’s something else that’s doing some talking, the parents seem to be sitting on the sidelines and letting the toy talk for them and respond for them,” Sosa says. That’s bad because the best way a toy can promote language in infants and toddlers is by stimulating interaction between parent and child. There’s simply no evidence that a young child can learn language directly from a toy. It isn’t responsive enough. It isn’t social. As for the other toys, traditional blocks and puzzles stimulated more conversation than the electronic toys, and books outscored them all. But don’t underestimate the humble block. While traditional toys fell short of books in interaction quantity, Sosa notes, they kept pace in terms of quality. A few caveats: The research focused on a relatively small sample of families. Also, of the 26 parents included, almost all were women, white and  . Still, the data are clear: Electronic toys fell short. ”Personally, I think it’s quite problematic,” Heather Kirkorian says of the potentially misleading claims by toymakers. She studies child development at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and thinks Sosa has put her finger on a troubling trend. ”Toys and apps are particularly notorious for this,” Kirkorian says, ”making all sorts of grand claims about motor development, cognitive development and social development without having the research to back it up.” Kirkorian says technology can help teach older kids, but baby talk is best when it’s human to human."
"People who take certain popular medicines for heartburn, indigestion and acid reflux may want to proceed more cautiously, researchers reported Monday. The drugs, known as   inhibitors (PPIs) appear to significantly elevate the chances of developing chronic kidney disease, according to a study involving more than 250, 000 people. An estimated 15 million Americans use PPIs, which are sold by prescription and    under a variety of brand names, including Nexium, Prilosec and Prevacid. ”They’re very, very common medications,” says Morgan Grams, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health who led the research, being published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. When PPIs were first approved in the 1980s, the drugs appeared to be very safe. Since then, concerns have been rising about their safety. Evidence has emerged that the drugs may increase the risk for a variety of problems, including bone fractures, infections and possibly even heart problems. Grams and her colleagues decided to examine whether PPIs might increase the risk for chronic kidney disease. They examined the medical records of two groups of people: 10, 482 participants in the Artherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study and 248, 751 patients in the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania. Among the 322 people using PPIs in the ARIC study, the   estimated absolute risk for chronic kidney disease was 11. 8 percent, the researchers reported. The expected risk would have been 8. 5 percent. The   absolute risk among the 16, 900 patients using PPIs in the Geisinger Health System was 15. 6 percent, whereas 13. 9 percent would have been expected to develop chronic kidney disease. Grams said it isn’t possible from these data to determine who is at highest risk of developing kidney disease. The study looked only at whether someone had gotten a prescription for a PPI and did not look at how long someone may have been on the drug. Grams also stressed that her study does not prove that the drugs can cause chronic kidney disease. More research is needed to explore the association she found, she says. But the findings are worrying enough that people should use PPIs only when they really need them, she says. ”Given the fact that so many people use PPI medications, I think it is judicious to exercise some caution,” she says. Other experts agree. ”I think it’s a pretty big concern,” says Adam Schoenfeld, an internal medicine resident at the University of California, San Francisco, who   an editorial accompanying the study. Schoenfeld noted that other research has found that many prescriptions for PPIs are inappropriate. ”When they first came out they weren’t associated with side effects, or we didn’t think they were,” Schoenfeld says. ”So we put [people] on this medication thinking: ’It’s a quick fix and they’re very safe.’ But in actuality they’re associated with a range of side effects.” Schoenfeld says people should try other measures first to alleviate heartburn and indigestion. For example, people often feel better if they change their diet, stop smoking or reduce their alcohol consumption, he says. ”There’s other ways that people can feel better with indigestion or heartburn. They can change their diet,” he says. Shots queried several companies that sell PPIs, including AstraZeneca, which markets Nexium. In an email to Shots, Alicia Dunn, a spokesperson for AstraZeneca, wrote: ”Patient safety is an important priority for AstraZeneca and we believe all of our PPI medicines . .. are generally safe and effective when used in accordance with the label.” She added: ”We encourage patients to work with their health care provider to determine the most appropriate treatment approach based on their individual needs.”"
"The most prestigious prizes in American children’s books were given out this morning: the John Newbery Medal for literature and the Randolph Caldecott Medal for illustration. Matt de la Peña becomes the first Hispanic author to win the Newbery, for his book Last Stop on Market Street, illustrated by Christian Robinson. It’s the story of a young boy riding the city bus with his grandmother, and wondering why their family doesn’t have a car. ”The inclusion of diverse literature is so important to me,” he tells NPR’s Lynn Neary. ”I’ve been doing this for ten years, writing diverse characters, and I just want to honor every Hispanic writer who’s come before me.” The main characters in Last Stop on Market Street happen to be African American, but De La Peña says the book is not about race. It has a simple lesson: ”You can feel like you have been slighted if you are growing up without, if you have less money, or you can see the beauty in that. And I feel like the most important thing that’s ever happened to me is growing up without money. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of.” The Caldecott went to illustrator Sophie Blackall for Finding Winnie. Written by Lindsay Mattick, it’s the   story of a Canadian veterinarian on his way to fight in World War I who rescues a little black bear at a train depot and names her Winnie for his hometown of Winnipeg. Winnie eventually ended up in the London Zoo, where she became a favorite of author A. A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin  —   and the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh. It hasn’t been an easy year for Blackall, who came under fire for her depiction of smiling slaves in another children’s book, A Fine Dessert. But, she tells NPR, winning the Caldecott was a thrill  —   and Winnie the Pooh was one of her favorite books as a child. ”Ernest Shepherd, his illustrations were one of the very first things that made me think this might be something I wanted to do when I grew up,” she says. Other winners today include Rita   (a panelist for NPR’s Backseat 100 kids’ lit poll) who took home the Coretta Scott King author award for Gone Crazy in Alabama, the story of two sisters from Brooklyn who spend a   summer in the South. You can find video of the announcements and a full list of the winners here."
"When Sean Penn revealed in Rolling Stone that he’d secretly met with Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzmán  —   deep in the jungle in October, while the drug kingpin was still a fugitive  —   the news came as a shock to many. But it wasn’t long before the   actor’s article drew criticism from observers  —   including Sen. Marco Rubio, who told ABC on Sunday, ”I find it grotesque.” Perhaps the most vocal of Sean Penn’s critics, though, were those people who are also most familiar with his article’s subject: the Mexican and   journalists who regularly report on Guzmán. In a tweet Sunday, Alfredo Corchado, the former Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, came out strongly against the piece, saying that to describe Penn’s meeting with Guzmán as an interview ”is an epic insult to journalists who died in the name of truth.” Reached by NPR on Sunday night, Corchado says his reaction swung quickly upon reading the piece. ”My first reaction was, ’Wow, this is fascinating,’ ” says Corchado, who is now at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. ”Then you think about the scope of it, and you think about all of the Mexican journalists that have been killed.” Corchado takes issue foremost with Penn’s agreement to submit the piece for the subject’s approval before publication (though Rolling Stone says Guzmán did not request changes). Submitting the article for approval, Corchado says, invalidates the piece as a work of journalism. ”It’s not really journalism. It’s business, it’s Hollywood,” Corchado says. ”It’s more in the lines of what a public relations firm would do.” And Corchado says that does a disservice to journalists covering the drug trade in Mexico  —   which can be a very dangerous place to work. Since 1992, 35 journalists have been killed in the course of conducting their work in Mexico, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Still more have gone missing. Of those victims, the vast majority had been reporting on crime and corruption in the country. Others put the toll even higher  —   including Mexico’s special prosecutor for crimes against journalists, who, in 2012, said that 67 journalists had been killed and 14 disappeared since 2006. Of the 35 killings confirmed by the CPJ, more than 90 percent have not returned a murder conviction. And for Corchado, those statistics are personal. ”I know people who have been killed, who have disappeared, have been threatened,” Corchado says. ”I know colleagues who have been told to censor themselves.”"
"Right after Mexican authorities announced the third capture of Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzman, we heard the real shocker: Just months before, Sean Penn had ventured into the Mexican jungle and secretly met with the kingpin. The Academy   actor wrote an article for Rolling Stone about the encounter and he made it clear that it wouldn’t have happened without the help of a Mexican actress. Kate del Castillo, he wrote, ”was our ticket to El Chapo’s trust.” On screen, del Castillo was already playing the kinds of characters who may have had a relationship with El Chapo. Over the past decade, she moved from traditional   soap operas to the   genre. In Queen of the South she played a     in Spain. In Masters of Paradise she played a ruthless mob boss in 1970s Miami. And she stayed on that track when she crossed over into the   world and played a crime boss in the Showtime series Weeds. Her relationship with the real drug lord, however, began when she tweeted an open letter in 2012. It was a manifesto that touched on everything from love (she doesn’t believe in marriage nor monogamy) to religion (she doesn’t believe in the Church or any religion). But the paragraph that got her the most attention was when she wrote that she trusted El Chapo more than she did the Mexican government. ”Mr. Chapo, wouldn’t it be cool that you started trafficking with love? With cures for diseases, with food for the homeless children, with alcohol for the retirement homes that don’t let the elderly spend the rest of the days doing whatever the [expletive] they want,” she wrote. ”Imagine trafficking with corrupt politicians instead of women and children who end up as slaves. Why don’t you burn all those whorehouses where women are worth less than a pack of cigarettes. Without offer, there’s no demand. Come on, Don! You would be the hero of heroes. Let’s traffic with love.” At home in Mexico, she faced intense criticism. El Chapo is considered one of the most ruthless drug lords in the world. In the United States, for example, he is facing charges ranging from drug trafficking to murder. Late last year, however, del Castillo defended her tweet in an interview with CNN en Español. She said she was being facetious, but that she meant what she said about the Mexican government. ”At least with El Chapo, we know who he is,” she said. ”We know what he does. What’s his business. The government is many times just as criminal but we’re blind to it and it’s hidden.” In his article, Penn writes that El Chapo sent del Castillo flowers after the tweet. The connection was made and Penn writes that the two reportedly began discussing a biopic. Juan Carlos   who studies narco culture at San Diego Sate University, Imperial Valley Campus, said he was surprised by the stature of actors involved in the meeting. But, he said, the connection makes sense because drug lords and even military leaders have a long history of using artists to tell their stories in Mexico. In the narco world, big figures often pay musicians to write corridos or ballads and filmmakers to make movies. Early in the 1900s, the legendary Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa inked a deal with Hollywood producer D. W. Griffith. Mutual Film Co. would give him money to fund his guerrillas and he would let them film battles as they happened. ”Of course it makes sense, especially at what you perceive to be the end of your career to try to perpetuate a certain image of yourself,”   said. For del Castillo,   says the meeting will no doubt provide her with street credibility for future projects. The actress spoke to NPR back in 2011. Carrie Kahn asked her if she was worried about being typecast in the role of the criminal  . She said she enjoyed playing Teresa in Queen of the South. ”She makes the wrong decisions, she makes mistakes, she contradicts herself, she smokes pot, she sleeps around, she sleeps with married men, she drinks tequila and people love her,” she said, laughing. Perhaps the character was a bit like Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzman. He’s flawed but it’s hard not to be drawn to his story."
"The extradition of Mexican drug lord Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzmán to the U. S. will likely take at least a year, according to the head of Mexico’s extradition office, Miguel Merino. Speaking Monday on a Radio Formula program called Ciro Gómez Leyva por la Mañana, Merino said Mexico has begun processing two extradition requests from the U. S. but warned that Guzmán’s lawyers could pursue a number of possible legal appeals that could delay the drug kingpin’s extradition for four to six years. NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports that Interpol officers presented Guzmán with two U. S. arrest warrants this weekend. He has been ”indicted on drug and arms trafficking, money laundering and murder charges in at least six U. S. states,” she says. Mexico’s willingness to consider extradition marks a shift from the government’s previous position, Carrie reported Saturday. When Guzmán was captured in February 2014, Mexico said it would not extradite him until he had served a lengthy prison term in Mexico. Mexican marines recaptured Guzmán on Friday. He had been on the run for more than six months following his escape from a   prison through a   tunnel in July 2015. His recapture made headlines around the world, which were largely eclipsed the following day when Rolling Stone magazine published an October interview with Guzmán conducted by American actor Sean Penn and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo."
"The obvious candidates for word of the year are the labels of the year’s big stories  —   new words like ”microaggression” or resurgent ones like ”refugees.” But sometimes a big theme is captured in more subtle ways. So for my word of the year, I offer you the revival of ”gig” as the name for a new economic order. It’s the last chapter in the life of a little word that has tracked the rise and fall of the great American job. ”Gig” goes back more than a century as musicians’ slang for a date or engagement. Nobody’s sure where it originally came from, though there are lots of imaginative theories out there. But the word didn’t have any particular glamour until the 1950s, when the hipsters and the Beats adapted it to mean any job you took to keep body and soul together while your real life was elsewhere. The earliest example of that usage of the word that I’ve found is from a 1952 piece by Jack Kerouac, talking about his gig as a   brakeman for the Southern Pacific railroad in San Jose. For the hipsters, calling a job a gig was a way of saying it didn’t define you. A gig was a commitment you felt free to walk away from as soon as you had $50 in your pocket. That was the era when the ”real job”  —   permanent,   and with benefits  —   was enjoying its moment in the American sun, thanks to the New Deal programs, strong unions and the postwar boom. So to turn away from that security and comfort in search of something more meaningful seemed a daring and romantic gesture. When you read Kerouac now, it still does. ”Gig” was a natural for the hippies who succeeded the hipsters, who made the avoidance of regular work a condition of tribal membership. But the word’s more subversive overtones receded along with the counterculture. In recent decades, ”gig” has become just a hip term for any temporary job or stint, with the implication you’re not particularly invested in it. I think of the barista or bookstore clerk who responds to my questions with a look that says, ”Hey, man, it’s a gig. I don’t really DO this?” That tone of insouciance has made ”the gig economy” the predominant name for what’s being touted as the industrial revolution of our times. The lifetime job is history, we’re told, a victim of technology and the logic of the market. Instead, careers will be a patchwork of temporary projects and assignments, with the help of apps and platforms with perky names like FancyHands, Upwork and TaskRabbit. It has been called the   economy, the 1099 economy, the    economy, and freelance nation, among other things. But over the past year, investors, the business media and politicians seem to have settled on ”the gig economy.” It strikes just the right jaunty, carefree note. The Financial Times explains that in the future, work will be less secure but lots more exciting. We can make our own schedule and hours, pick the projects that interest us, work from anywhere and try our hands at different trades. The buzzwords fly thick and fast here  —   we’ll be ”solopreneurs” and ”free range humans” with ”portfolio careers.” As the head of a freelancers’ organization puts it, we’re no longer just lawyers, or photographers, or writers. Instead, we’re      photographers who write on the side. That’s the image that phrases like ”the gig economy” and ”freelance nation” bring to mind, an economy populated by professionals and creatives, typically single millennials  —   people who may be willing to trade some security for the opportunity to take a month or two off to visit Patagonia. But that language doesn’t get at most of the people who are cut loose in the new economy and who aren’t reveling in the independence it gives them  —   the   temps and contingent workers that some have called the ”precariat.” When you hear ”freelancer” you don’t think of the people cobbling together a livelihood cleaning apartments, delivering groceries and doing other people’s laundry. And not many of those people think of themselves as having gigs. Unless you’re a bass player, calling a job a gig is a luxury reserved for people who can pretend they don’t need one. There’s a kind of semantic shell game here, as the promoters of the new economy trade on the whisper of romance that still clings to ”gig.” For the hipsters and the Beats, the word evoked a fantasy of freedom and escape from the   routine of a permanent job. If you have a long cultural memory, it’s a bit jarring to hear those paeans to gig life coming from the venture capitalists and consultants who are hyping the new economic order. It’s as if the shade of Kerouac were still haunting the place that’s now called Silicon Valley, where he had his gig as a brakeman 65 years ago. But their logic sounds impeccable. If ”gig” suggests the independence you get when you’re not tied down to a steady lifetime job, then just think of the freedom we’ll all enjoy when the traditional job is consigned to the scrap heap of history, and the economy is just gigs all the way down. But the idea of a gig is only alluring if you know you can hit the road when it gets joyless. Otherwise it’s just an old word for a job you need that you can’t count on having tomorrow."
"Aid vehicles have simultaneously entered three villages in Syria, to the relief of civilians suffering from the effects of a   siege by the Syrian regime. The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is delivering ”food, medical items, blankets and other materials” to the villages of Madaya, Foua and Kefraya, in an operation likely to last several days. ”The operation has been brokered by the U. N. with the agreement of different parties on the ground,” the ICRC says in a statement. In an audio diary, ICRC Syria spokesperson Pawel Krysiek described a haunting scene upon his arrival Monday in Madaya: ”The first impression is really heartbreaking. You see a lot of people in the street, some of them smiling to us and waving to us but many just simply too weak with a very very bleak expression, very tired. Right now the trucks are offloading as we speak. . .. ”A while ago, I was just approached by a little girl, and her first question was ’Did you bring food? I hope that you brought food to Foua, Kefraya and to Madaya, because we are really hungry.’ ” NPR’s Alice Fordham tells our Newscast unit more about the three villages: ”Madaya has been surrounded by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar   for six months, and starvation is widespread. Foua and Kefraya are Assad supporter enclaves in an area held by rebels who have restricted aid.” As the   has reported, there have been recent reports of deaths in both regions. Foua and Kefraya have been getting ”sporadic airdrops” from the Assad regime during the siege. But in Madaya, food aid has been blocked since October. Doctors Without Borders said last week that 23 patients in its health centers have died of starvation since Dec. 1, including six under the age of 1. The nonprofit says that ”around 20, 000 residents of the town are facing   deprivation of the basics for survival” and that its medics have identified ”250 people with severe acute malnutrition.” Recent reports from Madaya say residents have been ”eating leaves, grass and pets to survive,” as we reported. Marianne Gasser, the head of ICRC’s delegation in Syria, called the aid distribution a positive development. ”But it must not be just a   distribution,” she says. ”To relieve the suffering of these tens of thousands of people, there has to be regular access to these areas.” Gasser says there are ”more than 400, 000 people living in besieged areas across Syria.”"
"  pain is very democratic in the people it strikes. ”It’s a universal experience. You’d be a really uncommon person never to have had an episode of back pain,” says Chris Maher, a physical therapist turned health researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia. ”It’s a common problem across the whole of the globe,” he says, whether it’s North America,   Africa or rural India. Bouts of   pain can last between days and years, and frequently hit again. All sorts of gizmos and treatments exist to alleviate the pain, from ergonomic chairs to special shoe inserts and Velcro back belts. According to Maher’s research, those don’t seem to do squat to prevent it. Maher and his colleagues in Australia and Brazil wanted to know if there were approaches that would reduce people’s risk of getting an episode of acute   pain. So they rounded up 21 studies done around the world, involving over 30, 000 participants in total, on how to treat and prevent   pain. While back belts and shoe insoles didn’t seem to offer a benefit, they determined, exercise reduced the risk of repeated   pain in the year following an episode between 25 and 40 percent. It didn’t really matter what kind of exercise  —   core strengthening, aerobic exercise, or flexibility and stretching. Their review was published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.  ”If there were a pill out there that could reduce your risk of future episodes of back pain by 30 percent, I’d probably be seeing ads on television every night,” says Dr. Tim Carey, an internist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who wrote an accompanying commentary in the journal. And yet, he says, health care providers don’t prescribe exercise nearly enough, given its effectiveness. Carey says fewer than half of patients participate in an exercise program, even if they have   back pain. In researching what docs do and don’t prescribe, Carey found that passive treatments were much more common, like ultrasound or traction treatments, back belts and orthotic insoles. ”Prescribing ineffective treatments for patients may actually distract them and give them a false sense of security away from treatments that are actually beneficial,” Carey says. The discrepancy between what’s most effective and what’s most prescribed highlights a bigger problem: The health industry is centered on sellable products, and exercise isn’t one. ”Why are we not prescribing an inexpensive, effective treatment? Some of it is, I think, we don’t think of exercise as being a treatment the way a tablet or a procedure or a physical therapy treatment might,” says Carey. ”We’re a fairly   society. Pills are easy to take, and as a doctor, pills are easy to prescribe,” he says. Maher agrees. ”We’ve got this perverse incentive in our health care system where we encourage people to innovate in terms of drugs, but we don’t have the same system to get people to innovate in terms of physical activity,” he says. Carey thinks the industry focus is one of the issues that hold back rational medical care  —   by failing to fund   trials on cheap interventions like physical activity. Most of the studies Maher reviewed involved relatively small numbers of subjects, which continues to prevent conclusive research on the effect of exercise and what kind in particular is needed, he says. ”That’s a problem, because physical activity can be incredibly cheap to provide to patients, whereas a lot of these drugs that are being developed are incredibly expensive,” says Maher. The result is massive costs  —   and likely a lot of avoidable back pain. By some estimates, in some years the country has spent about $80 billion on spine problems including lower back pain, money lost on treatments, imaging, surgery, pain medicines and the cost of missed work days. ”When you start packaging it all up, the costs around the world are horrendous in terms of how much   pain costs, and that’s why prevention is so important,” says Maher. What everyone can agree on is this: Above all, avoid rest. ”What we do understand about the back it that the more you use it, the more likely you are to keep it strong, fit and healthy,” says Maher. Education about   pain also helps, the study found. Oh, and another thing that helps prevent back pain  —   ditching cigarettes. Just as smoking tends to dry out the skin, it also dries out the   discs that act as the spine’s shock absorbers."
"When Jack O’Connor was 19, he was so desperate to beat his addictions to alcohol and opioids that he took a really rash step. He joined the Marines. ”This will fix me,” O’Connor thought as he went to boot camp. ”It better fix me or I’m screwed.” After 13 weeks of sobriety and exercise and discipline, O’Connor completed basic training, but he started using again immediately. ”Same thing,” he says. ”Percocet, like, off the street. Pills.” Percocet is the brand name for acetaminophen and oxycodone. Oxycodone is a powerful opioid. It’s one of the most commonly prescribed painkillers, and is a key factor in one of the country’s most pressing public health problems  —   an opioid addiction epidemic. It is a crisis that started, in part, from the overprescription of painkillers like Percocet, and then shifted to heroin as people addicted to prescription drugs looked for a cheaper high. O’Connor is one of an estimated 2. 5 million Americans addicted to opioids and heroin, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Over three years, he detoxed from prescription painkillers  —   and heroin  —   more than 20 times. Each time, he started using again. So why is it so hard for opioid addicts to quit? You can boil it down to two crucial bits of science: the powerful nature of opioids and the neuroscience behind how addiction hijacks the brain. ”The first recording of opioid use was 5, 000 years ago,” says Dr. Seddon Savage, an addiction and pain specialist at Dartmouth College. It was ”a picture of the opium poppy and the words ’the joy plant.’ ” ’It Ruined Me That Time. But I Loved It’ Jack O’Connor says he ended his freshman year of college as an alcoholic. He went home that summer desperate to replace alcohol with something else. And it was not hard to do. In 2012, 259 million opioid pain medication prescriptions were written  —   that’s enough painkillers for every American to have a bottle of the pills. O’Connor got his hands on some   Percocet. ”I ended up sniffing a whole one, and I blacked out, puking everywhere,” says O’Connor. ”I don’t remember anything. It ruined me that time. But I loved it.” Opioids got him higher faster than any drug he had tried. And even though different drugs produce different highs, they all involve the same pathway in the brain. Opioids increase the amount of dopamine in a part of the brain called the limbic reward system. Dopamine causes intense feelings of pleasure, which drives users to seek out the drug again and again. They trigger the release of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that causes intense pleasure in parts of the brain that include the limbic system, according to Savage. It links brain areas that control and regulate emotions such as the pleasures of eating, drinking and sex. ”This is a very ancient part of the human brain that’s necessary for survival,” says Savage. ”All drugs that people use to get high tickle this part of the brain.” People can become psychologically and physically dependent on opioids very quickly. Breaking the physical dependence involves a   nightmare called detox, when the body gets used to being without the drug. ”It is an amazing thing to see someone basically vibrating in their chair, feeling nauseated, looking like hell,” says Jeffrey Ferguson, a detox specialist at Serenity Place in Manchester, N. H. Jack O’Connor put himself through detox 20 times, but that didn’t stop his addiction. O’Connor’s limbic reward system had hijacked other systems in his brain  —   systems that drive judgment, planning and organization  —   driving them all to seek that pleasure of getting high. This process can go on during years of sobriety, according to Savage. ”Addiction recruits memory systems, motivational systems, impairs inhibitory systems and continues to stimulate the drive to use,” she says. O’Connor says all his decisions began to serve his addiction. When he was using, everything was about getting the next drink or drug. Over his years of addiction, O’Connor lied to his family and stole from his job  —   all while also trying to get sober. A little over a year ago, he put himself through a   detox clinic and managed to get through five more days in the real world sober. Then he couldn’t take it. One day he started obsessively searching his credit cards for drug residue. He found a bag of heroin in his wallet. ”Somebody’s telling me I need to get high,” he thought at the time. And that’s what he did. ’I Don’t Need It Anymore’ Feelings like joy and shame also play a role in drug dependence, and make it hard to quit. Practical issues are a challenge, too. ”Finding the job, saving money, finding a place to live,” says Ferguson. ”Maybe they have some felony convictions. It’s a lot.” And the country is facing a shortage of addiction treatment facilities and specialists the shortage ranges wildly from one state to another. Treatment for opioid addiction includes a variety of services: medication, talk therapy, job support, all stretched out over years. Detox isn’t enough. ”For people who don’t get intensive treatment, people who are just detoxified [from opioids],” says Savage, ”relapse rates can be above 90 percent.” O’Connor is now 23 and he’s finally sober  —   Jan. 11 is his   sobriety date. In that time he’s been in a nonmedical residential treatment program in Dover, N. H. where he lives and works. He has support  —   a girlfriend, his family, the Marines. And in the same way that he once replaced his coping skills with drugs, he has rebuilt his coping skills around quitting drugs. ”I don’t need it anymore,” he says. ”I literally, physically and emotionally don’t need it.” And as much as O’Connor loved the feeling of getting high on heroin, now there is something he loves more: ”I love the way I feel sober,” he says."
"Keeping honeybees healthy has become a challenge for beekeepers. One main reason is a threat that has been wiping out bees since the late 1980s: the varroa mite. ”It’s a parasitic mite that feeds on the blood of adult bees and on the brood. It also transmits virus, and it suppresses the immune system of the bees,” explains Penn State honeybee expert Maryann Frazier. It’s basically like having a   house cat attached to your side, sucking the life out of you. These mites wiped out colonies across the world. And treatments were, and still are, pretty limited. In fact, the way most beekeepers treat bees for mites sounds a little crazy: They actually spray bees  —   which are, of course, insects  —   with   insecticides. The hope is they’ll kill the mites, but not the bees. ”But you can imagine how difficult it is to control a mite on a bee with a pesticide,” Frazier says. Still, the strategy has worked well enough to at least give colonies a fighting chance. But a   of about 100 beekeepers stretching from Michigan to Tennessee is trying a different approach. On his farm near Slippery Rock in Western Pennsylvania, beekeeper Jeff Berta lights a smoker to check on one of his   queen bees. This queen, he says, could be the future of honeybees in Pennsylvania. ”No. 18, there,” Berta says, pointing to a queen with a little fluorescent yellow tag on it. ”That little disc there with the ’18’ on it, we call those our NASCAR bees because they have numbers on them.” No. 18 is bit of a science experiment, funded with money from the USDA. This queen’s mother is from a Vermont colony that survived disease and cold winters. And then Berta had her artificially inseminated by Purdue University scientists who were raising bees that demonstrated a unique,   grooming behavior. ”The bees will take the mite and they will bite the legs and will chew on the mite,” Berta says. ”And if they bite a leg off of the mite, the mite will bleed to death. So the bees are actually fighting back. That’s the type of genetic line we’re after right now.” So now with every egg No. 18 lays, she passes on those   behaviors  —   making a colony that can rid itself of mites naturally, with no help from pesticides. It’s a huge breakthrough. But the breeding project can’t end there. Because Berta can’t artificially inseminate every queen, any descendants of No. 18 that turn into queens themselves will most likely just fly off and mate with any old drones within a few miles. That means if Berta’s beekeeping neighbors don’t have strong bees, too, they can easily dilute his carefully selected lines. ”So you can’t produce a stock and say, ’Now I’m done! And that was it! Now we can sell it everywhere!’ ” says Penn State bee geneticist Christina Grozinger, who works with Berta. ”You have to constantly   and constantly have to have people very interested in working as part of this effort.” That’s why Berta and the   of beekeepers happily give eggs from their best colonies to their neighbors and swap queens to try out new genetics. It’s all part of shifting the paradigm from a system where beekeepers simply buy new bees every year to a lasting neighborhood of bees that can slowly create real survivors. ”There really isn’t any bee that laid the golden egg,” Berta says. ”Genetics with honeybees is more like a river, and the river is always changing.” Lou Blouin is a reporter for The Allegheny Front, a public radio program based in Pittsburgh that covers the environment."
"A new traffic law has some New Delhi residents wondering: ”How the heck do I get to work?” Following the lead of Beijing and Mexico City, the Delhi government put into effect an ” ” policy for cars starting Jan. 1. Residents can only drive their cars on either odd or even days, based on the last digit of their license plate numbers  —   though everyone gets a pass before 8 a. m. after 8 p. m. and on weekends. The policy is an attempt to address the rampant pollution in the city last year, the World Health Organization named Delhi the most polluted city in the world, even worse than Beijing. According to the Delhi police, there are nearly 10 million vehicles on its roads. The policy has drawn mixed reviews from Delhi residents, who are debating its merits on Twitter. The ban doesn’t apply to women (who may feel more safe driving than taking public transit) or to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers. Nor to Delhi’s massive fleet of   and taxis, as well as scooters and motorcyclists excluded from the ban  —   mostly to avoid overcrowding on metros and buses. Violators are being charged a fine of 2, 000 rupees (about $30). To account for the hundreds of thousands of Delhiites who will need to find a new way to get to work, the government has put an additional 3, 000 buses into circulation and scheduled the metro to make 70 extra trips each day. And of course, lots of residents are carpooling. There’s even an app now to help those with   license plates find carpool buddies with   plates. Some are realizing that the policy makes for a great pickup line. Others are thinking of creative ways to bypass the new law. The new policy will apply till Jan. 15  —   a   trial run to see if it works. The verdict, so far, is unclear: Critics are skeptical the policy will actually reduce pollution levels, particularly in January, when Delhi’s pollution is at its worst owing to the heavy fog. Plus, wealthier households with more than one car (and both odd and even license plate numbers) can easily bypass the ban. At best, the policy is a   fix, says Pankaj Bhatia, the deputy director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit research organization. ”It will not help to solve Delhi’s pollution problem without other more urgent and comprehensive policy measures,” he says, like setting higher fuel efficiency standards for all sorts of vehicles. For now, local news reports say that 1 million private cars have been pulled off the roads, making commutes quicker. And at the very least, the policy has got locals talking  —   and tweeting."
"On any given episode of East Los High, the highly addictive teen soap on Hulu that just got a fourth season, you’ll see love triangles and heartbreak, mean girls and bad boys, and some seriously skillful dancing. Think a Latino Degrassi meets Gossip Girl meets Glee. Clocking in at 20 minutes an episode with lots of online extras, the show is calibrated to get fans in their tweens, teens and 20s to inhale and then tweet things like ”Finished all 3 seasons of #EastLosHigh in a week and now I have no reason to live anymore,” and, ”OMFG! I want season four right now! !!!! !!” But it turns out the show, which is nearing its fourth season and follows a group of mostly Latino high schoolers in East Los Angeles, serves up more than cat fights and cute outfits  —   it’s also a science experiment, conducted by a team of social scientists and health workers in cahoots with screenwriters and studio executives. For the past three years, these unlikely collaborators have been folding information about sex and sexual health into the show’s frothy plot lines. Their mission: to make a hit show that also helps young Latinas make healthy life choices. It’s an audacious undertaking, says Suruchi Sood, a public health researcher at Drexel University. ”It’s rare for academics and Hollywood types to team up like this,” Sood says. She wasn’t involved in developing or studying East Los High, but she did tune in, along with her teenage son. ”It gave me the opportunity to ask about some of the things going on at his high school,” she says. ”It’s just so much fun to watch! And if it gives you important messages, all the better.” In the East Los High writers’ room,   Kathleen Bedoya says the idea is to get into the minds of real teenagers, and convincingly depict them making healthy choices in difficult situations. But there’s a cardinal rule: ”We really didn’t want to be preachy or moralistic.” For that to work, the educational stuff has to blend seamlessly into the storyline. Take this storyline from Season 1: popular girl Ceci  —   a fierce dancer who will ”beat skonkas”  —   gets pregnant (her shiftless boyfriend Abe doesn’t like to ”bag it”). To make things worse, Ceci’s parents live in Mexico, and the aunt she’s been staying with kicks her out. Ceci’s not sure she’s ready to be a parent, but she also doesn’t want to have an abortion or give the baby up for adoption (at least not ”to some white lady who probably can’t even dance”). But while Abe offers to let her crash at his place, he’s not the type to change diapers. Plus, Ceci is convinced Abe’s mom is some sort of bruja who’s trying to poison her. So, she moves into a local women’s center. ”Abe makes me so mad,” she tells the other moms. ”He cheats, he’s never around, he wouldn’t even take me to prom and he wouldn’t buy the baby a car seat.” ”Aren’t you sick of waiting for him?” asks another teen mom. When Ceci insists it’s ”not fair,” a social worker chimes in. ”So what are you going to do about it? Leave your baby at the hospital because Abe didn’t buy you a car seat?” That’s when Ceci starts rethinking her situation. We see her ignore Abe the next time he comes calling at the shelter. Later, she’s smiling to herself as she purchases a car seat with money she’s saved up from her shelter allowance and a new job as a janitor. ”She realizes, ’You know what? I can do this,’ ” Bedoya says. ”A lot of pregnant teens end up in similar situations  —   either their parents aren’t around, or they get kicked out. We took this as an opportunity to show that there are government resources and nongovernmental agencies that can help.” Not every lesson is so heavy. When Tiffany confides to Fili that she’s feeling uncomfortable down there  —   ”It’s like I’m peeing jalapenos!”  —   Fili recommends she get tested for STIs. Tiffany’s exasperated response: ”I don’t have an STI, I drive a Lexus!” So Fili has to patiently explain: ”No, mensa, an STI is a sexually transmitted infection.” It’s a hilarious scene. But does it work? Can a spoonful of sugar  —   or, in this case, a heaping of delectable drama  —   really help life lessons stick? Maybe. Researchers at Buffalo State and the University of Texas, El Paso have been studying the show’s effect on teens, and early results are promising. If further research confirms that ELH’s lessons really do change how its young fans approach tough life decisions, that success will have everything to do with the unusual way this show was conceived in the first place. The experiment started a few years ago when Katie Elmore Mota, the show’s executive producer, was thinking about the lack of diversity on TV. ”I come from an incredibly mixed family,” she says. ”One of my brothers is Honduran, another is Trinidadian, and I have a sister that’s Dominican.” But families like hers were never featured on TV. ”So we would make our own little films every summer.” Mota was working at the Population Media Center, a nonprofit that helps create educational TV and radio specials around the world, when she got the idea for East Los High. She started developing pitches for a scripted narrative show, but not without her public health sensibilities. She latched on to one statistic: The national teen pregnancy rate among Latinas was twice the rate among white women. So, she reached out to her public health network and nonprofits like the Ford Foundation. ”We got a small amount of money to create a show that would serve this very underserved audience, and would address issues like sex, sexual health and relationships,” says Mota. And to make sure the show was being sensitive and nonjudgmental about sex, she asked community health workers at organizations like Planned Parenthood and the National Domestic Abuse Hotline to weigh in. She also talked to social scientists around the country who study how to talk to teens about sexual health. As for bringing the drama, Mota reached out to writers Carlos Portugal and Kathleen Bedoya, who had worked on both telenovelas and American TV shows. She asked them to develop a juicy storyline that would draw in young viewers. Their target audience was Latinas in their late teens and early 20s, says Mota, but ”the basic storylines of love and betrayal are universal.” From there, they pitched the show to various networks. ”We thought Hulu would be the best fit, because that’s where kids are going to watch TV,” Mota says. ”They want to watch whatever they want, whenever they want.” Young Latinos in particular use smartphones more than other groups. ”We wanted to create a show that speaks to how people are consuming media these says.” The writers decided to set and shoot the series in the predominantly Latino Boyle Heights neighborhood in East LA. ”It’s right next to Hollywood, but we rarely see any shows shot there,” Bedoya says. Plus, public health officials in California have referred to the neighborhood as a teen pregnancy ”hot spot”  —   rates there are several times higher than in the rest of Los Angeles. ”With teen pregnancy, it’s so easy to get a character pregnant,” Bedoya says. ”What’s not so easy is how to represent the consequences of that, and to present the whole scenario in a way that isn’t black or white.” Same goes for other sexual health issues, or domestic violence. The writers ran their ideas by social workers and consulted with local teens to make sure they weren’t inadvertently reinforcing stereotypes. They also drew from their own experiences. Of course, East Los High has plenty of straightforward scandal to balance out the   lessons. Fili has a threesome on Valentine’s Day, and Santi is sleeping with pretty much everybody. Maya wants Jacob to move to Santa Fe with her, but he has a thing for Ceci. And on the show’s website, superfans can watch short extras  —   including makeup tutorials, character confessionals and a series called ”” in which one of the show’s main characters, Vanessa, discusses what it’s like to live and date with HIV. ”We wanted to make this a fun show to watch,” Bedoya says. ”Something to binge watch and discuss with friends.” There’s precedent for shows like East Los High effectively pushing social change around the world, says Arvind Singhal, who teaches health communication at the University of Texas in El Paso. In the 1970s, Mexican TV executive Miguel Sabido, the father of educational soaps, created the telenovela Ven Conmigo (”Come with Me”) about a teacher who goes to the countryside to teach adult literacy classes but gets sucked into a love triangle. It drew a huge audience, Singhal notes in his book   and Social Change, and new enrollments in adult literacy programs all over the country increased nine times over after the show’s debut. After one episode mentioned a national distribution center that provided free literacy booklets, 25, 000 people showed up the next day to get a copy. Sabido mainly worked on telenovelas in Mexico, but his work inspired soap operas and radio dramas around the world. After the radio series Twende na Wakati, or ”Let’s Go with the Times,” began airing in parts of Tanzania, condom use in those areas spiked. And a Nepalese sitcom called Ashal Logne, or ”Good Husband,” helped educate the public about maternal health. ”The U. S. has really lagged behind in this area,” adds Drexel’s Sood. Shows like Degrassi and My So Called Life touched on sexual health and sexuality, but not with specific public health goals in mind. Plus, like most American TV shows, these shows spoke to a largely white,    audience. East Los High is a rare, new beast on American TV, says Sood: equal parts public health intervention and soap, and designed for an audience that TV networks have traditionally ignored. Hulu doesn’t release viewership numbers, but a spokesperson for Hulu says East Los High is among the site’s most popular shows. And according to Hollywood Reporter, it was among the top five shows in the weeks after the latest season premiered. Its fans have been tweeting up a storm in anticipation of the fourth season, anxious to know what happens to Camila and whether Ceci ends up with Jacob. In other words, East Los High is capturing fans well beyond its target audience. Mota says about 60 percent of the audience is  . So, it seems viewers are devouring all the delicious drama that East Los High serves up, but are they also digesting the public health messages  —   the spinach, if you will? That’s what Singhal and Helen Wang at the University at Buffalo, are trying to figure out. Singhal has been researching how to meld education and entertainment for most of his career. He’s written what the social science community views as a definitive book on the topic. ”We often think of media people as peacocks  —   creative, flamboyant,” Singhal says. ”And the researchers are sort of looked upon as turtles  —   slow and proddy. What was exciting about East Los High is how the peacocks and the turtles came together.” Singhal has been researching how to nudge teens in El Paso’s largely Latino community toward healthy life choices since 2007. He’s discovered, for instance, that ”when moms talked to their teens about the importance of education and of graduating, rather than just telling them to not have sex, the teens were more likely to decide on their own to delay having sex, or do it safely,” he says. He’d also found that young women who grew up with supportive, encouraging male family members tended to have higher   overall, and were better at expressing their needs in romantic relationships. Executive producer Katie Mota approached Singhal way back when she was first developing the show for advice on how to talk to teens about sexual health. But as the show’s premiere date approached, Singhal and colleague Wang got in touch with Mota with an idea: Why not treat the show like a public health intervention, and see if the educational messages had lasting power? They applied for grant funding from education nonprofits, and once the show aired, they began tracking how viewers were engaging with the show. Wang, who specializes in using digital media to promote public health, looked at fans’ conversations about the show on social media and tracked how often fans were watching the video extras. ”In the surveys, fans would say things like ’East Los High changed my life!’ and, ’Finally, a show about Latinos  —   we need more of this,’ ” she says. To fully assess the show’s impact, Wang and Singhal designed a small study. They enlisted 136 Latino women in the El Paso area who were between the ages of 18 and 28 and had never seen East Los High. They surveyed how much the participants know about sexual health, then split them into groups. Everyone got the same information about sexual health, but each group was presented the information in a different format. One group read a fake news story, another read a short story version of the East Los High plot, another actually watched the show, and the rest both watched the show and looked at the East Los High website. Right after each group got through its material, the researchers surveyed everyone again  —   and once again after two weeks. It turned out that after the final survey, the groups that got fake news or plot synopses didn’t change enough to count. The group that watched the show had learned a bit more about condom use. But those who watched the show and looked at the online extras learned the most. ”That was the ideal result,” Wang says. ”It suggests that this could complement more traditional,   sex education programs.” It also told the researchers more about how platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook can keep reinforcing these messages outside the classroom. ”East Los High seems to really get the audience members hooked,” Singhal adds. ”People talk amongst each other, like, ’Gee, is she going to get together with this hunk of a man?’ and so on.” But as fans and friends reflect on the storylines, and discuss with friends   and offline, it ”leads them to start rethinking their ideas about safe sex or relationships.” Of course, this was a small, early study, says Drexel’s Sood, who isn’t involved with the show or this research. To fully test the show’s impact, researchers would have to track  —   on a large, national scale  —   whether the show’s lessons ultimately affect the decisions its viewers make in their own lives. But Wang and Singhal’s early findings are promising, Sood says. What’s more, they’re in line with what other studies have found: People absorb the most when they feel personally invested in a show’s plot, or when they develop what researchers call parasocial relationships with the characters on screen. ”They start to think, ’Maybe I can be like them,’ ” says Wang. ” ’Maybe I can apply the things they’re learning to my own life.’ ” Executive producer Mota hopes East Los High will also leave an imprint on the TV industry, and put to bed the idea that a mainstream drama means ”all the characters have to be rich, white teenagers.” So as researchers continue to track and tweak the public health messages on East Los High, Mota will keep delivering dancing, romance and betrayal. ”And if it’s able to take you deeper than you thought you were going to go, then all the better.”"
"Updated 5:20 a. m. ET Wednesday: Iranian state TV announced that all 10 U. S. sailors held since Tuesday in Iran have been freed. The Pentagon has confirmed the report, and says there are no indications that the sailors were harmed during their detention. Original Post: Ten sailors were detained by Iranian authorities on Tuesday as they sailed from Kuwait to Bahrain aboard two small riverine patrol boats. We still don’t know the reason why the boats were stopped, but Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook says the U. S. has been in touch with the Iranians. ”[Iranian authorities] have informed us of the safety and   of our personnel,” Cook said. ”We have received assurances the sailors will promptly be allowed to continue their journey.” NPR’s Tom Bowman reports that the State Department has taken the lead in negotiating with Tehran. Citing a Defense official with knowledge of the situation, Tom reports that Iran says it will release the sailors as day breaks. The State Department tells NPR’s Michele Kelemen that Secretary of State John Kerry has called Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss the issue."
"Every year some 2 million Americans get infections from   bacteria, and 23, 000 of them die from these superbugs. Superbugs are mostly a hospital problem: They’re where these pathogens are often born and spread, and where the infected come for help. But hospitals are not where the majority of antibiotics sold in the U. S. are used. Food and Drug Administration data show that 62 percent of antibiotics important for human health are sold to food animal producers and used on farms. And in December, the agency noted that antibiotics for use on the farm increased in 2014, including antibiotics important in human medicine. Concern about the livestock industry’s overuse of antibiotics has led a number of health care institutions to start choosing meat from animals raised without antibiotics whenever they can. According to Practice Greenhealth, a nonprofit that’s helping the health care industry on this issue, more than 400 U. S. hospitals are working toward a goal of making 20 percent of their meat purchases ” .” And around a dozen hospitals have already switched the majority of their chicken purchases to  . ”Health care is really voicing their demand for [  meat] products,” says Hillary Bisnett, a food expert for Practice Greenhealth and Health Care Without Harm. ”Hospitals understand antibiotic resistance, and they’re being asked to steward their own use of antibiotics. So it’s very easy for them to say, ’Livestock producers need to be doing their part, too.’ ” Is meat from animals raised without antibiotics really better? Public health groups who follow this issue, like the Pew Charitable Trusts, say it can be safer. Of greatest concern is that when chicken, hog or cattle farmers use drugs to promote growth or prevent disease in their animals, they’ll overuse the drugs and create resistant bacteria, like Salmonella and Campylobacter, that could make people sick. Various studies, including ones by George Washington University microbiologist Lance Price and advocacy groups like Consumer Reports and the Environmental Working Group, have found resistant bacteria on samples of beef, pork, turkey and chicken from supermarkets. If meat contaminated this way isn’t cooked properly, the resistant bacteria can infect humans. And if the pathogens are resistant to antibiotics designed to kill them, then doctors may have few tools to treat the infections. Among the hospitals that have made   meat a priority for their food services is Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. But according to Kyle Tafuri, senior sustainability adviser at the hospital, it wasn’t easy to figure out how to switch 100 percent of their chicken purchases to  . At first, the hospital’s distributor said it didn’t have enough   chicken to sell the hospital. But over the course of a few years, and after several meetings with the distributor and a group purchasing organization, they were able to find a way to make it work. Eventually, Tafuri says, the supplier, Perdue, agreed to specially ship the chicken up to the distributor’s warehouse just for the hospital. ”It took a lot of work to make this happen and a lot of pushing, but hospitals should be inclined to push the industry to make a change,” he says. His hospital pays 30 percent more for Perdue’s   chicken under its Harvestland brand, but Tafuri says it’s worth it to his institution to be able to offer a ”higher quality and healthier product.” He’s now working on sourcing more   pork and beef, but he says they’re dramatically more expensive, and more difficult to source. Chris Linamen, executive chef at Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, Wash. says he’s managed to find   sources for 79 percent of his total meat purchases. ”The biggest challenge is budget,” says Linamen. He’s also struggled to find   sources for specific items, like chicken strips, sausage patties, duck and lamb. Part of what explains Linamen and Tafuri’s success in getting more   meat on the plates they serve is the fact that neither of their institutions is locked into a contract with a big food service management company, like Aramark, Sodexo or Compass, says Bisnett of Practice Greenhealth. Many other hospitals tell her they would like to source more   meat but can’t, because their contracts do not allow them to. The biggest   management companies have very limited supply of these items. And the hospitals ”don’t have flexibility in changing vendors or supply,” says Bisnett. ”That’s why it’s really important that the food service sector get more involved with this issue, too, since one third of hospitals in the U. S. have food service managed by Sodexo, Compass or Aramark,” she says. Hospitals are far from the only big buyers to get interested in sourcing   meat and apply pressure to biggest meat producers, like Perdue, Tyson, JBS and Smithfield, to make more of it available. Several restaurant and retail chains in 2015 committed to sourcing more   meat, including McDonalds, Subway, Panera, CostCo and   . Some have committed to sourcing   poultry, while others have also given suppliers of beef and pork a mandatory timetable to go   as well."
"How close was notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzmán from pulling off another escape, right under the noses of Mexican authorities? According to a Tuesday interview with one of the marines involved in the raid that resulted in the kingpin’s recapture four days ago, Guzmán nearly slipped away again. In the interview with Mexican channel Televisa, the marine described how they swarmed Guzmán’s safe house in Los Mochis, Mexico, in an operation dubbed ”Black Swan.” He details how the world’s   drug kingpin almost wriggled out of reach yet again using a secret tunnel. The operation began early Friday. Televisa reported that law enforcement had been about 80 percent confident Guzmán was inside the house in the coastal city. Here’s a synopsis of how the marine described the raid: The elite group of 17 marines stormed the property, using a battering ram to break down the door. They immediately came under fire, and the marine said one of them was hit. The wounded marine waited outside as other marines continued inside with weapons drawn. After they secured the ground floor, the marines went upstairs. As they climbed the stairs, one marine saw a man standing at the top, preparing to fire a   grenade. The marine hit and disabled the weapon, and the marines continued to advance. Watch video of part of the raid here: While the gun battle between the marines and Guzmán’s men flared and subsided  —   the marine said the cartel members were also armed with .  sniper rifles  —   Guzmán and his security chief, Ivan ”El Cholo” Gastelum, disappeared. In 15 minutes, the marines had secured the house and taken stock of the casualties: Five of Guzmán’s men were dead, four people were detained (including two women) and one marine was injured. Guzmán was nowhere to be found. ”We carried out a systematic review of the place, completely reviewing furniture, spaces, holes, checking each and every one of the places,” the marine said in Spanish. It took 90 minutes for authorities to discover the entrance to the secret tunnel, hidden behind a mirror in a closet  —   a delay which gave Guzmán and Gastelum a valuable head start. The marines crossed the threshold and found themselves in a tunnel, about 6 feet tall, with a cement floor, wooden walls and lighting. They followed the tunnel, which led into the sewer, for 500 meters and then, realizing the passage continued on for much longer, decided to exit. According to Televisa’s report, Guzmán and Gastelum had been in the passage for hours when it began to rain. Fear of drowning reportedly forced them to surface, where they were seen on security camera footage climbing out of a manhole in an intersection in broad daylight. The armed men then stole a car, ran out of gas, stole another and made it to the highway outside town before finally being apprehended. Televisa reported that the head of the marine unit said he told Guzmán: ”Your   vacation is over.” The officer said Guzmán replied: ”Yes, my holiday is over.” El Chapo is now back in the same maximum security prison from which he escaped six months ago using a   tunnel."
"There was a time when actor Ray Liotta would never have considered taking a role on television. ”When I first started, television was kind of like the wasteland,” Liotta tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”It [was] like, ’Well, things are over now. Now you do television.’ ” But the Goodfellas and Field of Dreams actor acknowledges that times  —   and TV  —   have changed. ”Now television is very respected and people consider that when they’re casting for movies. . .. I thought, well maybe doing a show, a   type show, would be a smart move to make.” Liotta, who has a reputation for playing cops and criminals on the big screen, plays both in the new NBC drama series Shades of Blue. His character on the show, Matt Wozniak, is a corrupt New York City police lieutenant who runs a squad of detectives who take bribes, plant evidence and shake down drug dealers in their precinct, The actor, who turned 61 in December, says the role is an extension of a personal goal to keep growing and evolving as an actor. ”I really believe you never stop learning and you never really ever get there  —   just like in life,” he says. ”The older you get, you don’t arrive. . .. It just keeps going, you’re constantly learning things if you’re the type of person who stays open and current.” On the different kinds of roles he’s played, The first thing I ever did was a soap opera, and I played the nicest character in the world, Joey Perrini [in Another World]. . .. About six months out of college I got the soap. I did it for three years and then I came to LA and for five years nothing happened. Then the first thing I got was Something Wild, so that kind of put me on the map because that was kind of a crazed character. But then I waited about a year until I found something different, because I knew about the typecasting type of things that happen. Then I did Field of Dreams, where I was a nice guy in that, and then along came Goodfellas and maybe that kind of started it. But Henry Hill, the part I played [in Goodfellas] it wasn’t that violent  —   everybody else was kind of crazy around him. On listening to author Nicholas Pileggi’s tapes of mobster Henry Hill to prepare for Goodfellas  When he was writing the book . .. [Pileggi] talked to Henry for hours and once I got the film I went and talked to Nick to just to start doing my homework. And he said, ”Here, listen to these tapes.” I listened to the tapes of Henry and I listened to them every day  —   and that was back when everything was on cassette, so I just put it in my mother’s car and listened to Henry for hours. The problem was all he did was eat potato chips. And if you’ve ever listened to anybody eat potato chips  —   for like hours  —   as he’s talking, it’s an extremely annoying thing. But that’s basically what I did. That told me a lot about Henry  —   he was just going to do what he wanted to do. . .. The biggest thing that I learned from it was just how casual they were how casual Henry was about what happened. It was just like he was telling a story of what his kids were doing, how they played in a park, except they were talking about people getting killed or beaten. It was very, very casual. On meeting Hill in real life  I got a call from him after he saw the movie. [Director Martin Scorsese] didn’t want me to talk to him at all  —   ”We’re just going to go by the script.” I got a phone call that he wanted to meet me at a bowling alley . .. with his brother. I said, ”Oh boy, what the heck is this going to be?” So I went and he was there and I met him for the first time. He had just seen the movie and basically he says, ”I wanted to meet you. Thanks for making me not look like a scumbag,” to quote him. And I’m thinking, ”Oh my gosh, did you really watch the movie? You pretty much were a scumbag. You ratted on your friends, you’re doing all this blow, you’re beating people up.” . .. He had a rough life toward the end of his life and I would see him a lot of times in [Los Angeles] and he was just out of his mind. . .. I would see him leaning against trees or just sleeping on the beach and I would bump into him once in a while. On working on Goodfellas at the same time that his mother was dying, My mom passed away in the middle of the movie and they told me on a particular day, during a particular scene that I really had to get home that night because things took a turn for the worse. And I broke down. I went into my trailer, I had to get myself together, because we had to get ready and still do the movie and I had a scene to shoot. On how he started acting  I never, ever wanted to be an actor. It came time to go to college my dad said, ”Go wherever you want, take whatever you want.” He just really believed in getting out and being exposed to different things, and maybe it would help you decide what to do with your life. I applied, I got into the University of Miami. This was 1973 and at that time, basically, all you needed was a pulse to get in there. I got into the University of Miami. I had no idea what it was that I wanted to do, so I was just going to take liberal arts. I had no idea. . .. I got to the head of the line [to register for classes] and they said, ”Because you don’t know what it is that you want to do, you’re going to have to take math and history.” And I said, ”Oh my gosh, there’s no way. I don’t even want to be in college, I’m not going to take any math and history!” . .. Right next to the line that I was in was [the line] for the drama department. I said, ”Oh my gosh, I’ll be a drama major!” On the ups and downs of his career  My career has been up and down and I like it much better being up. And when it’s up, part of that is people coming up to you and saying things. I remember when I first started  —   ”I’m an actor. I don’t want that sort of thing. It’s all about the work,” and that’s just a bunch of BS. You want people to watch what you’re doing. What’s the point? There’s a personal side to me  —   of challenges as an actor that I like to take on myself. And I do certain things that maybe nobody else knows why I’m doing [them] but it all has to do with [wanting] to grow as an actor."
"The California Air Resources Board has rejected Volkswagen’s plan to recall cars with   diesel engines that trick emissions tests, saying the company’s plan is incomplete. The Environmental Protection Agency says it concurs. The move comes one week after the EPA filed a civil complaint against VW in federal court over the carmaker’s use of a defeat device to mislead customers and fool inspectors into thinking the vehicles complied with U. S. rules  —   when in fact the vehicles were putting out up to 40 times more pollution than is allowed under federal standards. The EPA says Volkswagen is responsible for nearly 600, 000   vehicles that are now producing harmful air pollution in the U. S. ”Volkswagen made a decision to cheat on emissions tests and then tried to cover it up,” says CARB chair Mary D. Nichols, announcing her agency’s rejection of VW’s plan Tuesday. ”They continued and compounded the lie and when they were caught they tried to deny it. The result is thousands of tons of nitrogen oxide that have harmed the health of Californians. They need to make it right. Today’s action is a step in the direction of assuring that will happen.” Those remarks echo ones from EPA assistant administrator Cynthia Giles, who said last week that the legal action would set the agency and Volkswagen ”on a path to resolution.” According to NPR’s John Ydstie, California regulators say VW’s recall plan fell short in several areas: The proposed plans contain gaps and lack sufficient detail, The descriptions of proposed repairs lack enough information for a technical evaluation, The proposals do not adequately address overall impacts on vehicle performance, emissions and safety. The California Air Resources Board says it has been conducting its own investigation into the vehicles’ diesel emissions, in parallel with a federal inquiry. Together, the agencies confronted Volkswagen in September with data that showed VW was using software to circumvent emissions standards. In November, Volkswagen acknowledged that the problems also exist in its   diesel engines. The rejection by CARB and the EPA also comes two days after Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller said of his company’s reaction to the EPA’s findings, ”We didn’t lie.” ”We had the wrong reaction when we got information year by year from the EPA and from the [California Air Resources Board],” Mueller said in an interview with NPR. He later added, ”We have to apologize for that, and we’ll do our utmost to do things right for the future.”"
"Here are a few safe bets for Tuesday’s State of the Union: There will be dozens of applause breaks, endless   moments and a laundry list of proposals (not to mention lots of reporters using the phrase ”laundry list” for the first  —   and maybe only  —   time this year). One more bet: Most of those proposals won’t be successful. Since 1965, 39. 4 percent of all State of the Union policy requests have been successful in some way (that is, Congress has passed legislation fulfilling some part of those requests). Over the course of seven addresses, President Obama has fallen short of that total, with a success rate of around 31 percent, according to data from Alison Howard, political science professor at Dominican University, and Donna Hoffman, political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa. Each year, the university tallies up presidents’ requests to Congress, as well as whether Congress fulfills those requests in the following year. It further breaks down the data into whether Congress ”fully” or ”partially” acquiesced. Here’s how presidents Johnson through Obama stand: The data reveal a few important, if obvious things: One is that a friendly Congress helps. Lyndon Johnson, for example, had a high success rate, managing to pass landmark policies like Medicare. He also had a Democratic Congress to work with throughout his presidency. Not only that, but Congress was less polarized back then. As congressional Republicans and Democrats have moved further and further apart ideologically, that may have helped bring down more recent presidents’ totals. There are a couple of revealing details buried in Obama’s data, however. One is that for Obama, success last year often amounted to Congress not taking action. In last year’s speech, Obama had ”full success” on eight measures, according to Hoffman and Howard’s data, but five of those eight consisted of things he asked Congress not to do: repeal   repeal the Affordable Care Act, impose new sanctions on Iran or shut down the government. He’s not unique in this  —   Bill Clinton also famously in 1996 asked Congress to ”never, ever” shut down the government again. But it’s just one sign of how the speech’s tone can shift during a time of divided government. Of course, there’s a lot the data can’t show, like the magnitude of what presidents have asked for. (Clinton asking Congress not to shut down again might be considered a smaller request than when he asked for health care reform, for example.) Moreover, the data don’t show what the president accomplished without Congress. While Obama has, over the years, asked for (and not received) action on a higher federal minimum wage, paid leave and stronger gun control, he has, in turn, made his own ( ) executive actions in those areas. Not only that, but State of the Union addresses are, of course, much more than   lists for Congress. ”Any State of the Union has multiple audiences,” said Mary Kate Cary, who worked as a speechwriter under George H. W. Bush (though she herself did not write any of his addresses). For example, she said, ”There was an Obama State of the Union where the larger audience he was talking to, he was encouraging them to sign up for Obamacare. And then, there was a smaller audience where he wanted the 535 members of Congress not to vote for sanctions against Iran.” Elsewhere, the speeches subtly set up   fights that will play out well after a president leaves office. ”They send a shot across the bow in a battle that may not be won for a couple of years,” said Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. ”In the case of [this year’s] speech, an   speech, the president will certainly be looking in some way to clarify the differences between the two parties,” albeit without being overtly partisan about it, he added. There’s no great way to measure the ”success” of one of these speeches, Shesol says. However, there’s one way in which few of these addresses succeed, says Cary: memorability. ”When was the last time somebody said, ’That [State of the Union] was the most brilliant speech I’ve ever heard’?” she said. ”There are very few lines from States of the Union that people can quote,” she added, ”because they’re kind of boring speeches.”"
"The Kentucky county clerk who went to jail over her refusal to issue marriage licenses to   couples will attend President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, a group supporting her announced. ”While the President will be extolling his ’accomplishments’ of the last seven years, Kim Davis and Mat Staver will be a visible reminder of the Administration’s attack on religious liberty and an encouragement for people of faith to stand,” the Liberty Counsel wrote in a press release. Staver is Davis’ attorney and the founder of the group. ”For seven years, people of faith have been in the crosshairs of the Obama Administration. The state of religious liberty is dire, but we cannot give up.” Also in attendance, as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama, will be Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff whose name appears on the landmark U. S. Supreme Court case that declared   marriage legal in June of last year. Davis went to jail for five days in September, held in contempt for defying court orders to issues    licenses. Davis’ release was met with a rally of supporters that included Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. Both have been angling for the support of the religious right. A spokeswoman for the Liberty Counsel said it would not say which member of Congress invited Davis. ”No, we are not releasing that information,” Charla Bansley told NPR. She noted, ”The focus we want to be on is why Kim is there, and Kim is there because she is standing for the many Americans who have not benefited under President Obama’s seven years, and specifically had their religious liberty trampled.” UPDATE: NPR’s Susan Davis reports that Kim Davis got a ticket through Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan’s office via the Family Research Council. ”Kim Davis used our ticket,” Jordan said. ”Our staff heard from the Family Research Council that Ms. Davis and her family hoped to attend the State of the Union address and so we offered a ticket.” Jordan is the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus."
"Republican Gov. Matt Bevin has notified the federal government that Kentucky will dismantle its state health insurance exchange, Kynect. The move will direct Kentuckians seeking health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, to use the federal health insurance site, HealthCare. gov. More than 500, 000 people have gotten health insurance through Kynect. Bevin spokeswoman Jessica Ditto called the program a ”redundancy,” in a statement from the governor’s office. ”The transition will have no impact on Kentuckians’ ability to obtain or continue health care coverage for the 2016 plan year.” Under the   exchange, Kentucky charges a 1 percent assessment on all insurance premiums to fund the program. Once Kynect is eliminated, the state’s 1 percent charge will be eliminated, but plans acquired through the federal exchange will be charged a 3. 5 percent assessment. Since 2014, health care coverage has been required in the U. S. Kentucky is one of 17 states that has a   health insurance exchange. The end of Kynect is paired with the governor’s intention to change the state’s approach to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to   residents. Bevin promised to take both actions during and soon after last year’s gubernatorial campaign. Late last year, Bevin announced that he would by 2017 ”transform” the state’s expanded Medicaid system into a model similar to Indiana’s, which still provides health insurance for those whose household income is up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Under a federal waiver, Indiana offers a complex variation on traditional Medicaid coverage. Among other things, the state’s plan offers less generous benefits to newly eligible people at or below the poverty line who don’t pay Medicaid premiums, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. People who do pay premiums get a richer package. More than 400, 000 Kentuckians have gotten health insurance through the state’s expanded Medicaid program. Under Bevin’s predecessor, Democrat Steve Beshear, Kynect also included a marketing campaign and funded workers to aid people in signing up for benefits. Bevin, a Republican who took office last month, has already ended marketing for Kynect. According to a Gallup Poll, Kentucky’s uninsured rate dropped from 20. 4 percent to 9 percent during the first two years of implementation. The repeal of Kynect is a ”big step backward,” said Jason Bailey, executive director of the think tank Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. ”We should be building on things like Kynect that are working so we can create a stronger Kentucky, not taking them apart.” Beshear’s administration has said it would cost at least $23 million to dismantle the system."
"In the summer of 2014, Natalie Merchant came to Washington, D. C. to perform her first album of   material in 13 years. She was supposed to play here at my desk the day after that evening’s performance. Instead, she fell ill, wound up in a D. C. hospital, and canceled her upcoming dates. Now, Merchant has rerecorded her first solo album Tigerlily, complete with strings and different instrumentation. That album is called Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings, and she recently came back to town to make a documentary film about that record. And so it was with abundant joy that Natalie Merchant finally made it to the NPR Music offices. This was truly one of the most warmhearted Tiny Desk performances I’ve ever seen. She sang the title track from 2001’s Motherland, ”Texas” from that   2014 release and something from Tigerlily, and then Merchant had the NPR audience join her for a beautiful hymn heard on The House Carpenter’s Daughter  —   so have a tissue handy. Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Morgan Walker, Julia Reihs, Nick Michael Production Assistant: Kate Drozynski photo by Jun   For more Tiny Desk Concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"There’s no medicine to treat diarrhea or patients with war injuries. Patients with cancer and hypertension are also not being treated because of a lack of supplies. That’s the situation in Taiz, Yemen’s third largest city, because of a blockade that began in   a tactic in the civil war that began in September 2014 and greatly accelerated last March, when neighboring Saudi Arabia began a campaign of heavy air strikes in support of the country’s recognized government. While the situation across the country is horrific  —   the U. N. estimates at least 6, 000 have been killed since the air raids began, Yemen’s infrastructure is in tatters and 80 percent of its nearly 25 million people require food aid  —   things are even worse in Taiz. The siege by rebel forces has left its 600, 000 residents with no outside lifelines. Now the World Health Organization (WHO) says that because of the blockade it cannot get five trucks loaded with medical and surgical supplies into to the city, which means that Taiz’s six hospitals are facing critical shortages of   treatments and equipment. ”We have been trying to get our trucks in really since December 14,” says Dr. Ahmed Shadoul, head of the WHO office in Yemen. Among the supplies sitting in idled trucks are medicines to treat diarrhea, trauma kits and 500 canisters of oxygen. The trauma kits and oxygen tanks are essential in for treating patients with war injuries or any patients requiring surgery, he says. Although all six hospitals remain open, the dwindling amount of supplies  —   the last time WHO was able to make deliveries was last September  —   has forced them to curtail some services. ”The hospitals are open but not fully functioning,” Shadoul says. ”The need for these supplies is growing.” Another issue caused by the siege: a shortage of fuel to run generators. So the hospitals are also dealing with a lack of electricity. Such shortages are also affecting hospitals across the country. While the situation is clearly bad across Yemen, he says, ”it is worse there [in Taiz] than elsewhere in the country,” because at least WHO has been able to continue to its deliveries of medical supplies to other cities and regions. The war in Yemen, which sits on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, began when its former president and forces loyal to him began backing Houthi rebels. By January 2015, the rebel coalition has gained control of much of the country’s western and northern regions, including the capital, Sana’a. The Houthis are Shia tribesmen  —   the country is around 35 percent Shia and 65 percent Sunni  —   and are backed by Iran, which is predominately Shia. Saudi Arabia, which is mainly Sunni, entered the fray on behalf of the government forces because it was alarmed at the prospect of having an Iranian puppet state on its southern border. Taiz is in the southwest, and although it’s in an area mainly controlled by the rebels, there are pockets of government resistance forces still operating in the city. Hence the blockade. Shadoul says that ”despite assurance from all relevant parties,” the trucks have not been allowed into Taiz. The rebel authorities in Sanaa give permission for the deliveries, he says, but local commanders on the ground refuse to yield. ”We are ready to cooperate with any partner who can enter Taiz.” Even before the siege, he says, the war was causing public health problems in the city. A few months ago there was an outbreak of dengue fever, but WHO doctors managed to get it under control. Meanwhile, the Saudi bombing campaign and other missile attacks have also damaged and destroyed several hospitals and clinics across the country. Last weekend a missile  —   it’s not clear if it came from a bomber or was    —   blasted a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Saada province, a Houthi stronghold. At least four people were killed and 10 injured, three critically. Bombs destroyed another MSF hospital in Sadaa last October, and a medical clinic in Taiz was bombed in December. Marta Canas, MSF deputy director of operations and based in Barcelona, says it was not clear if the hospitals were purposely hit. But Shadoul says, so far, ”there is no evidence that they’ve been targeted.” It appears, he says, they are collateral damage from strikes against nearby government and military facilities. How badly the most recently hit hospital was damaged and if it can be put back into operation is unclear, Canas says, because all patients and staff were evacuated, and it’s been too dangerous to send staff back to make assessments. MSF operates 11 hospitals and 18 health clinics across Yemen, and clearly they are already stretched to their limits. Says Canas: ”Since last March we have treated 20, 000   which is a huge number.” But sadly, back in Taiz, as the numbers of people injured or ailing continue to mount, treatments may no longer be an option."
"Veteran Dave Manning provided medical support during two combat deployments in Iraq. He’s also been the sole medical provider on a Navy ship with more than 100 people. And yet, after 20 years of service, he says, ”Nothing I’ve done really translates over [into civilian jobs] beyond basic EMT.” But that is about to change. Manning is in the inaugural class of a physician assistant training program launched by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that aims to recruit nontraditional students  —   specifically, veterans. UNC staff worked with Army officials at Fort Bragg to figure out how to turn troops’ medical experience into job skills. ”Trying to find something in the medical field without any credentials, without any licensure is tough,” says Manning, who is 43 and lives in Durham, N. C. ”There’s nothing out there.” Manning’s story is becoming more common as the U. S. winds down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some in the UNC medical community and at the state’s huge military bases saw highly trained talent going to waste. ”The medics and the corpsmen are often very skilled in acute medical care of younger people,” says Dr. Paul Chelminski, director of UNC’s new physician assistant program. ”They’re extremely skilled in trauma care if they’ve been deployed.” But, Chelminski says, there are gaps in their ability to diagnose and manage chronic illness, which is a large part of civilian health care. UNC’s program will fill in those missing pieces. Another part of the UNC program’s appeal is that it will accept some field experience as a prerequisite in lieu of other, more standard, training. Insurance company BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina is donating $1. 2 million to help launch it and provide scholarships. BlueCross CEO Brad Wilson says the graduates will help with a growing need for care in North Carolina, as more people get insurance through the Affordable Care Act. ”The customers who are accessing the health care system through the ACA are using more services than any other groups,” he says. ”Many are in need of primary care, and the physician assistant plays a key role in delivering     health care.” The first class, which started in January, will graduate in two years. Nine of the 20 students are veterans, but the program is open to students of all backgrounds. UNC research shows many veterans with medical training are more interested in becoming physician assistants than doctors. Physician assistants work under the supervision of doctors but still diagnose and treat patients. Chelminski says the first class comes in with an extraordinary amount of clinical experience compared with the national average. It’ll also be a few years older, with an average age of 33. Dave Manning explains why becoming a physician assistant feels right for him. ”As I was coming out of the military in my early 40s, I didn’t want to spend a decade training and being in school,” he says. ”I just wanted to get in and get out, and physician assistant is perfect for that.” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WFAE and Kaiser Health News."
"David Bowie’s death has a lot of communities mourning. Though his greatest success was in music, he was admired as a trailblazer in fashion, film, gender politics and, as it turns out, technology. Here are just a few of his early forays into digital media. In 1996, he released his single ”Telling Lies” online and got 300, 000 downloads at a time when most of the world barely understood what the Internet was. In 1997, Bowie did a ”cybercast” of his Earthling concert in Boston, though it was well before most people had a fast enough Internet connection to really experience it. Then, in 1998 he launched his own Internet service provider, BowieNet, which offered global   Internet service. (Well, high speed for its time.) More than that, it was an early fan community. According to a 1998 press release, the service included a personal email address (yourname@davidbowie. com) access to exclusive music from Rolling Stone and, of course, exclusive content from Bowie and his friends, including live chats with the artist. (BowieNet quietly shut down in 2006.) In 1999, Bowie made a foray into the video game world. He worked on the soundtrack for Omikron: The Nomad Soul with French game developer Quantic Dream and made an appearance in the game itself. Bowie’s endeavors proved ahead of their time. Though launching new Internet services may not have become commonplace for artists, the rest has: Musicians write music for video games,   concerts, share music digitally and engage with fans online. Bowie understood before most of his compatriots in the music business that the Internet would change everything. In an interview from late 1999, Bowie spouted off about the revolutionary qualities of the Internet to the largely skeptical BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman. Bowie told Paxman that if he were 19 at the time of their chat, he wouldn’t have gone into music, which he thought had lost its place as the   of rebellion. ”The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic,” Bowie said. What Bowie seemed to know in his gut was the Internet was fundamentally shifting the relationship between artist and audience. And while so many musicians and music business insiders reacted to the changes with fear, Bowie was filled with curiosity, inspired by technology. ”It’s becoming more about the audience,” he said. ”So from my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience. There is a breakdown.” Bowie cited rave culture ”where the audience is at least as important as whoever is playing at the rave,” as if the artist accompanies the audience. ”I don’t think we’ve seen the tip of the iceberg,” Bowie told Paxman. ”It’s almost if we’re on the cusp of something both exhilarating and terrifying.” Bowie mentioned the   artist Marcel Duchamp, whom he called prescient on the idea that a piece of work is not finished until the audience adds its interpretation  —   ”and what the piece of art is about is the gray space in the middle.” To Bowie, the 21st century was all going to be about the gray space in the middle. The place where artist and audience meet and improvise  —   a kind of ongoing live performance. With a little bit of irony, he called the Internet ”an alien life form.” Of course, some thought Bowie himself was a bit of an alien life form. His first starring film role was as an alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth. And it was one of so many roles he played on stage and on screen  —   Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, Jareth the Goblin King, Major Tom. Bowie was an explorer of what it meant to be human. He took us places with his music and creativity. And he was curious and interested to find out how new technology would shape him and us. Sadly, he won’t be here to help us continue this exploration of ”the gray space in the middle.” For my part, I say thank you, David Bowie, for helping to launch us into the 21st century. I have faith that your music will be very much alive online."
"Spain’s hilltop Royal Palace towers over working class barrios across the Manzanares River, on the west side of Madrid. The area is home to Magdalena and Margarita Rodriguez Prado, two sisters in their late 60s, who huddled under a   TV on Monday in their local chocolate and churros shop, glued to footage of Princess Cristina’s trial. Infanta Cristina de Borbón, 50, is one of King Felipe VI’s two older sisters. She went on trial Monday accused of tax fraud. ”I think she’s a good person, but my God! The mess she’s gotten herself into!” Margarita says. ”It’s such a shame!” Magdalena chimes in. ”I’d like to think she’s not guilty, because I love the royals and I love Spain. And we remember their beautiful wedding.” In 1997, Cristina married a dashing athlete  —   Iñaki Urdangarín, an Olympic bronze medalist in handball in 1996 and 2000  —   whom she’d met at the Summer Games in Atlanta a year earlier. The groom caressed the princess’s face at the altar of Barcelona’s cathedral. Spanish señoras of a certain age, like the Rodriguez Prado sisters, still swoon. But   nearly two decades and Cristina sits not on a throne but on a wooden bench in the defendant’s dock at a makeshift court. She and her husband are on trial with 16 other people, all accused of helping to embezzle $6. 5 million in public funds through a supposedly nonprofit sports foundation run by Urdangarín. The princess is charged with two counts of tax fraud and faces up to eight years in prison if convicted. For Urdangarín, it’s worse. He’s charged with more serious offenses, including   and forgery, and could go to prison for nearly 20 years. ”Normally, it’s very difficult to defend against a tax offense in Spain, and when it gets to this level [a trial] it’s because the case is difficult. They normally end up in convictions,” says attorney Ignacio Sanchez, a   crime expert at Hogan Lovells, a law firm with offices in Madrid. ”But there are a lot of settlements out of court  —   with the defendant admitting guilt, paying a fine, but avoiding prison time.” Cristina’s defense appears to be  : She denies knowledge of her husband’s business dealings and repeated the phrase ”I don’t know” 182 times in response to a judge’s questions at a February 2014 pretrial hearing, according to a transcript. Her lawyers also want her case dismissed because charges were brought by a private   group, not Spanish authorities. (A quirk of Spanish law allows this.) In fact, Spain’s tax authorities have sided with the princess, arguing for an administrative fine rather than criminal charges. But a lawyer for the private group, called Manos Limpias (”Clean Hands”) said Monday that letting Cristina off would ”prejudice Spanish justice and prejudice the crown.” Judges allowed the case to be brought to trial. The couple spent 13 hours in court Monday, the trial’s opening day. They sat apart from one another in the defendants’ section and did not address the proceedings. They smiled politely at a handful of   protesters chanting as they passed through a police cordon on their way out. Cristina’s lawyers asked the judge to eliminate her from the list of defendants. Another lawyer asked that King Felipe and his elderly father, Juan Carlos, be called to testify as witnesses. But another lawyer said that would turn the trial into a ”reality show.” Rulings are expected on those motions in February, when the trial resumes. Cristina is the first member of the Spanish royal family ever to face trial. Her fall from grace coincided with the economic crisis, and the rise of public resentment against the monarchy. ”My country is broke. Millions of people in the past years became jobless,” says Julia Mampaso, who lives in the shadow of the Royal Palace and is among the more than one in five Spaniards who’s still unemployed. She says the monarchy embodies the lavish lifestyle Spaniards romanticized during the economic boom years  —   but then found repugnant when they lost their jobs. ”I really think [the monarchy] is a joke. The image this gives!” Mampaso says. ”The law should be for all  —   and absolutely strict. It doesn’t matter who you are  —   a king or a princess. You’re still a human being, doing something wrong.” Cristina’s trial could be the biggest challenge to the Spanish monarchy’s legitimacy  —   even worse than her father Juan Carlos’ 2012 jaunt to shoot elephants in Africa, a luxury trip he took at a time when his subjects were suffering the worst economic crisis in a generation. His popularity plummeted, and he abdicated two years later. Spain’s economic crisis prompted tax authorities to redouble their efforts to go after fraudsters. There was so much public anger  —   and the government needed the money. ”The tax agency started to be more aggressive, prosecuting cases against soccer players and people who hid money in Swiss bank accounts,” says Sanchez, the   crime expert. ”There was a political decision to fight tax fraud.” And that’s what ensnared Cristina. Her trial is being held on the Spanish island of Mallorca  —   the source of some of the public funds that disappeared. The makeshift court, at a civil servants’ training center, sits a stone’s throw from one of the royal palaces where Cristina used to vacation  —   and from the local prison, where she could end up if convicted."
"The U. S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Florida’s process of allowing judges, not juries, to decide whether to impose the death penalty is unconstitutional. The   vote  —   Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenter  —   reverses a 2014 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the court’s opinion, writing: ”The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough.” Florida has nearly 400 prisoners on death row, the highest number of any state except California. It’s not clear how Tuesday’s decision will affect those Florida inmates, but it could lead to a number of death row cases being readjudicated. The ruling stems from the case of Timothy Lee Hurst, who was convicted in the 1998 murder of a   at a restaurant in Pensacola, Fla. as NPR’s Gregory Allen reports. ”After finding him guilty, the jury was divided   in favor of capital punishment,” Allen says. ”In Florida, it’s the judge, not the jury that decides whether to impose the death penalty, and the judge sentenced Hurst to death.” At the heart of the high court ruling was the fact that the judge, rather than the jury, was responsible for ”fact finding” that led to Hurst receiving the death penalty. Sotomayor summed up the proceedings in the opinion: ”A Florida jury convicted Timothy Lee Hurst of murdering his   Cynthia Harrison. A   jury recommended that Hurst’s judge impose a death sentence. Notwithstanding this recommendation, Florida law required the judge to hold a separate hearing and determine whether sufficient aggravating circumstances existed to justify imposing the death penalty. The judge so found and sentenced Hurst to death. We hold this sentencing scheme unconstitutional.” As the Miami Herald reports, ”In 27 of the 31 states that maintain the death penalty, the jury makes the final decision whether to impose the death penalty. Only Florida, Alabama, Delaware and Montana leave the final sentencing decision up to the trial judge.”"
"Nearly two weeks after members of a   militia occupied the remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in an apparent protest over how the U. S. government treats cattle ranchers in eastern Oregon, it appears things are no closer to a resolution. So far, there has been only one brief meeting between Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward and the armed occupation’s de facto leader, Ammon Bundy. That meeting last week led to little. And law enforcement still isn’t saying what, if any, action it might be planning to take against the militants, reports Amanda Peacher of Oregon Public Broadcasting. Photos taken by OPB from inside the refuge showing the occupiers sitting at government computers with the lights and apparently the heat turned on (the occupiers aren’t wearing coats) have created a growing outcry from former federal land managers. ”If I were the manager there, I’d turn off the heat and power and everything else and let them sit there in the cold and dark,” Rick Smith, a retired National Parks Service law enforcement official, recently told NPR. Why the government hasn’t just turned off the power at the building in Burns, Ore. is a question the U. S. Fish  Wildlife Service and local law enforcement officials have yet to answer. It’s also not clear exactly how much this occupation of government facilities by   militants is costing American taxpayers  —   though a Harney County judge told the New York Daily News he plans to ”bill” Ammon Bundy for all the unforeseen costs accrued by his county during the occupation. In a hotel NPR staffers stayed at in Burns, the majority of the guests appeared to be law enforcement officers stationed at the ready, some of them in uniform, others in plainclothes. But as you drive the 30 miles south on that reliably treacherous, icy, foggy road to the refuge, there continues to be no visible law enforcement presence. Instead, there’s only an armed militant watching over the improvised compound from atop an old wildfire lookout tower. One reason for the continued large law enforcement presence in town, anyway, according to Sheriff Ward, is that armed militants who’ve traveled to this remote corner of Oregon from around the U. S. continue to create anxiety for locals. Here’s an excerpt from his most recent statement, on Monday night: ”There are continual reports of law enforcement officers and community members being followed home of people sitting in cars outside their homes, observing their movements and those of their families and of people following them and their families as they move around the community.” Meanwhile, Bundy and his followers continue to make daily appearances at morning news conferences, even as the gaggle of national and international media starts to thin. Bundy has repeatedly described this as a   protest, one that splintered out of frustrations and anger during a planned public protest in support of two local ranchers in Burns on Jan. 2. But a report in The Oregonian says the takeover at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was hardly spontaneous. According to the newspaper, Bundy and   militiaman Ryan Payne of Montana had been coordinating and planning the occupation for months. Traveling in and around Burns and rural Harney County over the past week, it seems to be anybody’s guess when this will end. Two hours, two days, two months? No one really knows, or if they do they’re not saying. There’s a lot of speculation but not a lot of certainty, as each side seems to be waiting for the other to blink."
"Here’s something that never used to happen in Saudi Arabia: In the wake of the crisis with Iran, Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s deputy crown prince and defense minister, as well as King Salman’s favored son, gave a   interview to a reporter from The Economist, and the British news magazine published the entire transcript. This is a land where senior figures have rarely given    interviews. So it was striking that he had so much time to spend with a Western reporter at such a tense moment. Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric on Jan. 2. An Iranian mob then attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, which resulted in the Saudis breaking diplomatic relations with Iran. Also noteworthy, the reporter was shown in a picture that accompanied the interview. While The Economist does not give bylines, the photo showed a female reporter without head cover or abaya, an unusual break from the traditional Saudi dress code, particularly for an interview with someone as senior as the deputy crown prince. Mohammed, who is 30, sought to reassure. The crisis would not lead to a war with Iran, he said. Anyone pushing for that ”was not in his right mind,” he added. He was asked, ”Do you consider Iran to be your biggest enemy?” He answered, ”We hope not.” A Willingness To Take Risks, The more assertive public relations campaign says a lot about the new leadership in Saudi Arabia, where King Salman came to power in January 2015. While   inside the palace remains opaque, Salman’s son is the public face of a new interventionist foreign policy. The confrontation with Iran is the latest gamble, say regional analysts, and has taken place despite warnings from the Obama administration that this is a dangerous policy, inflaming sectarian tensions across the Middle East. It shows a new mentality in Riyadh, says Kristen Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Gulf Arab Institute in Washington. ”When you are in this fight over the future, the leadership is not looking at the costs,” she says. ”They are setting the groundwork for the battle they need to do now.” Many Saudis have applauded the tough stand toward Iran. ”It does seem popular here,” says one Saudi analyst, who offered comments anonymously to speak on a sensitive subject. On social media, which is huge in the kingdom, ordinary Saudis are backing the leadership in the confrontation with Iran and the bombing campaign in Yemen. The Iranian attack on the Saudi Embassy created an opportunity for the Saudi leadership to take a tough public stance against Iran and express the kingdom’s opposition to Washington’s improving relations with Iran that has come as part of last year’s historic nuclear deal. Saudi Arabia remains a key U. S. ally. But the Saudis strongly oppose the nuclear deal and fear that any improvement in U. S.  relations will come at the expense of the kingdom. Opposing Iran, Saudi Arabia’s recent moves are designed to show that the Saudis still view Iran as a destabilizing force, says Theodore Karasik, a political commentator based in the United Arab Emirates. ”It’s part of the Saudi strategy to force Iran to show its true colors,” he says. Many international sanctions against Iran are expected to be lifted in the coming weeks. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that Iran was ”days away” from complying with its obligations under the nuclear deal. Iran is hoping to expand its oil exports, though it will have to find international investment to rebuild its oil and gas industry. The diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia could complicate the equation for international companies trying to assess the risk of working in Iran, according to oil industry analysts. ”Iran is a big country. It’s a potentially rich country and a major competitor to Saudi Arabia. They don’t feel strong enough to be in a power relationship,” says   Seznec, a Middle East specialist at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. This past weekend, the Saudis stepped up the war of words at an Arab League emergency meeting, called by Riyadh. Arab foreign ministers issued a statement condemning Iran for ”meddling in Arab affairs.” The harsh declaration came despite Iran’s letter of apology to the United Nations for the attacks on Saudi diplomatic facilities."
"From 2009 to 2014, more than 73, 000 guns that were seized in Mexico were traced to the U. S. according to a new update on the effort to fight weapons trafficking along the U. S.  border. The figure, based on data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, represents about 70 percent of the 104, 850 firearms seized by Mexican authorities that were also submitted to U. S. authorities for tracing. The data was analyzed by the Government Accountability Office, which notes in its report that U. S. police agencies have acknowledged firearms smuggling is fueling violent crime in Mexico. ”Most of the firearms seized in Mexico that were traced and found to be of U. S. origin from 2009 to 2014 came from U. S. Southwest border states,” the GAO report says. ”While guns seized in Mexico of U. S. origin were traced to all of the 50 states, most came from Texas, California, and Arizona.” Many of those guns were bought legally in the U. S. and then smuggled over the border, according to the GAO. ”About half were long guns, such as the     preferred by cartel gunmen,” NPR’s John Burnett reports for our Newscast unit. ”Mexican drug traffickers continue to rely on straw purchasers who legally buy the weapons in the U. S. then transfer them to criminal gangs.” The GAO report paints a picture of the challenges officials face as they try to stop the flow of weapons from the U. S. into Mexico, where laws seek to strictly limit the availability of guns to the public. The report identifies a new wrinkle in the illegal gun trade, citing officials on both sides of the border who say they’re seeing instances of unfinished gun parts being transported into Mexico, where they’re used to assemble finished weapons. None of those unfinished parts  —   barrels and receivers pins and triggers grips and stocks  —   are covered by the U. S. Gun Control Act they’re also not subject to rules that require serial numbers, the GAO says. In another example, the report says the ATF has been able to trace the original purchasers of less than half of the 73, 684 guns that were seized and submitted for tracing. The GAO says the agency couldn’t figure out who bought 53 percent of the guns at retail ”because of factors such as incomplete identifying data on trace request forms, altered serial numbers, no response from the federal firearm licensee to ATF’s request for trace information, or incomplete or never received    licensee records.” Citing data from U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the GAO says, ”the agency seized 5, 951 firearms that were destined for Mexico in the last 6 years.” The new GAO report is an update of a 2009 study in which it found that the ATF and ICE were duplicating efforts and running into jurisdictional problems as they tried to fight arms trafficking. As it did in that report, the GAO also issued recommendations  —   including one that calls on Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to ensure there’s a way to monitor and support their agencies’ sharing of information. It also called on the Office of National Drug Control Policy to set up indicators to reflect progress made by the ATF and ICE."
"In the middle of the desert in Kenya, there’s a place with a population the size of Minneapolis, called Dadaab. It’s no ordinary city. This is the largest refugee camp in the world, home to nearly half a million people. Most came from Somalia, escaping the civil war that began in the early 1990s. Ben Rawlence spent years working in the camp  —   first with Human Rights Watch, then as a journalist. He just published a book called City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp. ”From the air, I suppose, it looks like Atlanta,” Rawlence said of Dadaad, in a conversation with NPR’s Ari Shapiro. ”It’s all these grids, and it’s got five different towns, all of which orbit the original settlement of Dadaab. And it’s all made of mud and sticks and plastic, so it looks, in a way, like some kind of giant slum, a bit like the planet of Tatooine in Star Wars.” Rawlence joined Shapiro for a discussion about his experiences and the book. So, people should envision something between Atlanta and Tatooine from Star Wars? Yeah. That pretty much gets it. Why did this camp come to exist in the first place? How did this enormous   refugee camp come to be established in the deserts of Kenya? Well, it started off quite small. American listeners will be familiar with Black Hawk Down, when the U. S. tried to intervene in the civil war in Somalia in 1993. Of course, they failed and withdrew, and Somalia’s been pretty much at civil war ever since. So, initially, there [were] around 90, 000 people who fled south into Kenya and established the camps. And, over time, the camp population has grown, and more and more refugees have come from Somalia, pushed out by successive waves of conflict. There’s a line in the opening pages of your book that really struck me. You write: ”Our myths and religions are steeped in the lore of exile, and yet, we fail to treat the living examples of that condition as fully human.” Why do you think that is? I think it’s because these people are far away, and we don’t see them. We don’t hear their stories. What we see is these images of refugee camps, of large hordes of people suffering or drowning in boats. And what I’ve tried to do with this book is to give you the   view of what it’s like through the eyes of these people. So I’ve hoped that the reader will fall in love with these characters and, possibly, they’ll also have their heart broken, perhaps, because when you see it from their eyes, you have a much deeper feeling for the situation. If I were to choose a neighborhood at random in this camp and just walk down one of these dirt roads, what would I see? The camp is arranged in blocks, and each block is divided into 10 or 20 houses. And those houses are basically a hut in a sandy compound. The sand is red, and the fence around the compound is made of thorns, because that’s the only real building material in the desert. And all around the camp, for around 100 kilometers, all the thorn trees have been cut down because people have used them for construction. And then, in the middle of each camp is a sort of informal market. The role of Kenya is very complicated here  —   providing this camp for hundreds of thousands of refugees while, at the same time, effectively trying to get rid of them and close the camp down. Kenya’s in a difficult position because, of course, legally, it’s obliged to offer asylum to people, as every country is under international law. But at the same time, there’s real pressures and tensions, incorporating such a large number of people into its population. So it has this encampment policy. It wants the refugees to stay in the camp. And they’ve become a very convenient scapegoat, because every time there’s an   attack in Kenya, the government’s very quick to point the finger at Dadaab even though there’s no demonstrated link between terrorism and the refugees. Nonetheless, the refugees have become a scapegoat, and that’s why we’ve seen Kenya repeatedly call to try and close the camp. It’s funny, because you write in the introduction to the book that as far as the U. S. government is concerned, if the people at the camp are not a threat, then it’s fine to ignore them. By ignoring them, they may someday well become a threat. Yeah. It’s very complicated. The relationship between extremism and marginalization is really very understudied. Nobody really knows what tips people over the edge into extremism. And what you see from the lives of the people in the book is how minor the radicalization questions are to their life. Their daily lives have nothing to do with terrorism at all. Starvation is the main factor in their lives. Yes, getting enough to eat. . .. Getting enough to eat is the main thing. What is the relationship like between U. N. workers who keep this camp running and the people living there? The U. N. has a very uneasy relationship [with the refugees]. I mean, on the one hand, people are very grateful. All of their needs are being met by the U. N. But at the same time, it’s very complicated because the Kenyan government doesn’t allow these people to work. But what the U. N. has negotiated is this internship program so refugees can volunteer. One of the girls in the book volunteers as a young teacher. And they’re paid $70 or $80 a month as a stipend, but they’re being asked to work alongside Kenyan teachers who are paid $1, 000. So there’s all sorts of tensions between the refugees, the Kenyan workers and also the U. N. staff. There are hundreds of thousands of people at this camp with very little hope of a future. Is that why, in just the last year or two, we have seen so many people from North Africa try to make the dangerous crossing across the Mediterranean to reach Europe? Definitely. This global refugee crisis is partly about the protracted refugees, so the people like those living in the camp who’ve been displaced for such a long time. And they’re finding out that these places are not temporary havens, a gateway to a life somewhere else. These places are actually a destination in themselves, and they’re becoming these kind of very unfair, poorly serviced cities. And people are leaving them. And I think certainly for the Syrians, they’re looking at the example of Dadaab and they’re realizing that it’s a waste of time going to a refugee camp. It’s: ”I’m better off getting my hands on some money and buying a way to Europe.” Dadaab was built as a temporary camp around 25 years ago. Do you think that if we were to talk to you in another 10, 20 years from now, the camp will still exist? I’m pretty confident that there will still be a city in the desert in that place. It’s possible that some people will have gone back to Somalia, because the situation in Somalia shows some signs of improving a little bit at the moment. But for many people, they’ve grown up their whole lives there. They’ve invested in businesses there. They’ve buried their relatives in the ground. They may also have savings buried in the ground. And for them, it is, for better or worse, home. And that’s one of the strangest things to come out of my time there, is that you could call this forsaken place home. But some do."
"Founded in 1991 as a temporary shelter for Somalis, the Dadaab complex in Kenya now houses nearly half a million refugees. Ben Rawlence profiles nine of its residents in his new book, City of Thorns."
"At least 10 people are dead and more than a dozen wounded after an explosion struck a historic district in Istanbul on Tuesday morning. Civilians and tourists are among the victims from what officials say was a suicide blast in Sultanahmet Square, site of the famed Blue Mosque. After the blast, speculation immediately began to fly over who might be responsible. Many fingers pointed at ISIS because of the apparent target  —   a historic cultural area that’s popular with tourists. Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan says police believe the explosion, which reportedly struck near where a    Egyptian Obelisk of Theodosius stands, was the work of a suicide bomber with ties to Syria. Erdogan delivered a lengthy televised address in the wake of the attack. Update at 12:50 p. m. ET: At Least 8 Germans Killed, Confirming and providing new detail about earlier reports, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says eight Germans are among the dead in Istanbul. Both Merkel and German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier spoke of the country’s losses today, saying that in addition to those killed, nine German nationals were severely injured, reports NPR’s Esme Nicholson. ”International terror changes the places of its attacks but its goal is always the same  —   it is our free life in free society,” Merkel said, according to the AP. ”The terrorists are the enemies of all free people, indeed, the enemies of all humanity, whether in Syria or Turkey, in France or Germany.” Update at 8:20 a. m. ET: Syrian National Is Identified  Most of the people killed were foreigners, says Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, who also said police had identified the bomber as a    Syrian national. Our original post continues: NPR’s Peter Kenyon, who’s based in Istanbul, says the blast was strong enough that he heard it from 3 miles away. Peter spoke to British photojournalist Johnny Green, who happened to be visiting the square at the time of the attack. Here’s how Green described the scene: ”We’d come out of the Blue Mosque and were just walking onto this boulevard. We were just in the corner, just out of sight. So we heard it, rather than saw. Then, people were just running in every direction. Some people were running towards the action, to help. And other people were just fleeing. ... We were very much caught between a rock and a hard place.” Tourists frequently visit the area of the blast, drawn by the green open space and a cluster of historic sites such as the Hagia Sophia and elements of the Hippodrome of Constantinople. Reporting on the nationality of some of the victims, Hurriyet Daily News reports, ”Six German citizens, one Norwegian and one Peruvian were among the . .. wounded people rushed to the Haseki Hospital, Doğan News Agency has reported.” The news outlet adds that in the mayhem that followed the attack, a police vehicle crashed and flipped on its side, its siren still blaring. Video from the scene shows a crowd of onlookers gathered to flip the vehicle back upright. Tuesday’s attack is the latest in a string of terrorist activity in Turkey. In October, some 100 people were killed in a double bombing in Ankara. In December, a blast at an Istanbul airport killed one person. And police said they foiled another double bombing in Ankara that was timed to strike on New Year’s Eve. ”Basically, folks here in Istanbul have been on edge for weeks,” Peter says, ”wondering if something was going to blow up here.”"
"Many Americans know Dame Maggie Smith as the elegant and formidable Dowager Countess of Grantham. But at 81, Smith is now starring in a role that’s a long way from Downton Abbey. In The Lady in the Van, Smith is Mary Shepherd  —   a homeless woman who lived in a derelict van parked in playwright Alan Bennett’s driveway for 15 years. ”She was quite happy on the street,” Smith tells NPR’s Renee Montagne. ”But I think Alan was so distressed watching her outside his window all the time that he thought he just had to help.” He never expected her to stay  —   but she did. And though Shepherd and Bennett didn’t become friends by any stretch, the playwright was ”obviously fascinated by her,” says Smith. Smith talks with Montagne about the characters she’s inhabited in her decades of acting, from 1960s Broadway to Downton Abbey. On getting the best lines in Downton Abbey  Well, I don’t know. They’re Julian Fellowes’ lines, who wrote it. . .. I think she stuck to her principles in the way she had lived. She could see what was going on more than a lot of other people. She was a wise old bird. She’d been there and done that and got the  . On whether there’s a link between Downton Abbey ending and Smith saying she would leave the show after its sixth season, No  —   this is absolutely not true. In fact, I phoned our dear producer Liz Trubridge the other day, and I said, ”Now, what is this? I’d heard that somebody had said . .. ”  —   it was the paper or something. And she said, ”No, that’s absolutely rubbish.” I mean, it’s come to its end. On how Downton Abbey made her a household name, I find it very odd to be recognized. I’ve spent a very long time without that happening to me. And it’s a very, very strange sensation. . .. Sometimes it’s very nice. But sometimes, you just would like to be on your own, to do things on your own, without thinking about whether you’re going to be stalked or asked to pose for one of those wretched cellphone things. [”A selfie?” Montagne clarifies] Well, I suppose, yes. On being described as ”an undeniable dish” in a review in the 1960s, and why she never embraced that characterization  —   but has heartily embraced older roles, That never was me. The ”dish” department didn’t apply. . .. I think it’s got something to do with one not being a ”dish” . .. because then you become a character actor and you have much more chance of developing and going on. I mean, God knows it must be lovely to be beautiful, but that’s a really difficult thing to lose. But if you’ve been into character acting really all your life, it’s an easy transition. You just go from one to the other and you suddenly realize, ”Oh, I see I’m somebody’s mother this time. And I’m somebody’s grandmother.” And so it goes on."
"In the Navajo culture, teachers are revered as ”wisdom keepers,” entrusted with the young to help them grow and learn. This is how Tia Tsosie Begay approaches her work as a   teacher at a small public school on the outskirts of Tucson, Ariz. For Navajos, says Begay, your identity is not just a name it ties you to your ancestors, which in turn defines you as a person. ”My maternal clan is ’water’s edge’ my paternal clan is ’water flows together,’ ” she explains. ”Our healing power is through humor and laughter, and I try to bring that to my classroom.” The day we first meet, Begay is wearing a smile    and a plastic toy crown. It’s ”King and Queen Day” at Los Ninos Elementary. The school serves mostly   and Native American  —   Yaqui and Tohono O’odham  —   families, as well as a few children from Somalia. This morning, though, Begay is worried. The parent she’s been trying to meet with is a   again. Begay desperately needs to talk to her about her little boy. He’s a smart child, ”but right now, he’s about a year behind,” she says. ”When I first met him, he was two years behind.” She suspects there are problems at home that are keeping him from doing well in school. He’s always late and has already missed too much school. By 8 a. m. kids are arriving, and Begay’s classroom quickly becomes a beehive of activity. It’s cluttered, but in a good way. Bookcases overflow with fiction and nonfiction books. One shelf is set aside for books about Komodo dragons, slugs and stink bugs, and a class favorite titled Why Do Animals Do That?   minutes into the class, the little boy Begay is so worried about finally walks in, shoulders slumped, head bowed. Rather than embarrassing him in front of the class, Begay welcomes him warmly. ”He already feels [down],” she tells me. ”He transitions quicker if I just say, ’I’m glad you’re here.’ ” Of the 25 children in her class, this particular boy is the one who’s testing Begay’s   conviction that no child is a lost cause, no matter how troubled he seems. It’s the unspoken pledge teachers start out with, says Begay. ”When you go into teaching, you go in  .” Back then, she says, she told herself, ”Oh, I’m going to make a difference, do amazing things, light their fire. Then you realize, [your] kids are two years below grade level and time is passing you by.” Teaching was not Begay’s first calling. When she left the Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona where she grew up, she thought about going to law school, or studying linguistics. She even considered politics, but none of it felt right. While still in college, Begay started mentoring kids. She thought she could give teaching a shot. After earning her master’s degree in education from the University of Arizona, Begay got married. She had two children, taught for six years, then spent another five training other teachers. Now, at 35, she’s doing what she loves most: watching the proverbial light bulb go on in her students’ heads. Like this morning, when one of her kids who has struggled with English blurted out, ”We need textual evidence!” ”I was very excited about that,” says Begay. ”I got goose bumps.” Begay wraps up the math, reading and writing exercises that have taken up most of the morning. It’s noon, time for lunch and the raucous pizza chant: ”With a pizza in my hand, I’m gonna be the pizza man.” The kids love it. During lunch I sit down with Begay’s students and ask them what they like about her. ”She never gets angry,” says one girl. A boy adds: ”She’s funny and likes telling jokes, like the one she told the other day. ’What do ghosts like to eat? Sbooghetti.’ ” Everyone laughs. I wince. Before we leave the table, the shy, quiet girl who’s been sitting next to me says almost in a whisper, ”She teaches me when I don’t want to learn.” Her comment stays with me. Later, when I share it with Begay, I tell her that I felt it was a very profound thing for a child to say. She agrees. ”They don’t verbalize that to me,” says Begay. ”But that’s what I strive for. I want them to enjoy school. I want them to feel like someone believes in them.” After lunch, Begay dismisses her students. Today is a   and teachers at Los Ninos Elementary have all scheduled   conferences for the rest of the afternoon. Begay walks her kids outside to dismiss them, but as they scatter, she realizes she forgot to hold on to that troubled boy in her class. She had planned to walk with him to meet his mom on the pedestrian bridge he crosses to get to school. But he’s gone. In the distance, she spots him in his little blue vest and paper crown, walking with his mother. Begay is really upset with herself. She knows this little boy needs help. ”Based on what I know about the family,” she says, ”within two to three years he’s going to drop out of school.” Its a terrible prediction. ”Why would anybody allow that to happen, to have a child fail?” I ask. ”I hope nobody would,” she responds. ”I want them to say, ’At least one person, Miss Begay, is there every day for me. Miss Begay is going to wonder where I am if I go missing. There will be one person looking out for me, and it’s Miss Begay.’ ” As we walk back to her classroom, Begay wipes away her tears and says she’ll be back tomorrow to try again. And if necessary, she’ll be there the next day, and the next, and the next."
"When the Great Earthquake hit San Francisco in 1906,    William Del Monte’s family fled the city on a   cart. Del Monte was the last known survivor of the 7.  quake and fires that killed some 3, 000 people and leveled much of the city. He died of natural causes Monday at a retirement home north of San Francisco. He was 109. Del Monte didn’t remember much about his family’s dramatic escape, but ”was told that his mother bundled him up after the shaking stopped and ran out to the street where his father commandeered the rig, which they rode down to the waterfront as flames licked at them from all sides,” The San Francisco Chronicle reports. ”We have not only lost a friend, but also a piece of living San Francisco history in his death, just 11 days before his 110th birthday,” San Francisco Mayor Edwin W. Lee said in a statement. ”After being forced out of his home in North Beach after the 1906 Great Earthquake and Fire as an infant, he ultimately witnessed our City’s rise from the ashes more than a century ago seeing it rebuilt better than ever,” Lee says. Del Monte’s nephew Ray Barroca told the Chronicle that his uncle had a great sense of humor and ”just embraced the changes in technology that he saw in his life from gas lamps and horses and buggies all the way through the development of electricity and jet travel to computers.” The newspaper adds that Del Monte worked as a stock market trader ”almost until the day he died.” After the earthquake struck on April 18, 1906, fires erupted and ”raged for almost four days, burning more than 28, 000 structures and leveling more than   of the city,” NPR reported for the quake centennial. ”Big buildings were crumbling as one might crush a biscuit in one’s hand” is how an eyewitness named P. Barrett described the quake. Survivor Rose Barreda described the scene in a letter to a friend at the time, as featured on Morning Edition in 2006: ”Many   people passed our house with bundles and ropes around their necks, dragging heavy trunks. From the moment they heard that fatal,   sound of the trumpet announcing their house would be burned or dynamited, they had to move on or be shot. As the sun set, the black cloud we watched all day became glaringly red, and indeed it was not the reflection of our   Golden Gate sunset.” Del Monte was actively involved in annual earthquake commemoration events. This year, San Francisco’s mayor says the city will dedicate the event to him. ”It is important, even when your last survivor goes, because, in the end, it is San Francisco that’s surviving,” organizer Lee Houskeeper told the Chronicle."
"Joe Moore stood near a sign reading: ”Authorized Personnel Only.” ”I used to be authorized,” he said. Moore is a coal miner. The sign was at the entrance to the mine that had laid him off the previous day. The Alliance Coal facility had closed  —   a symptom of the coal industry’s rapid decline. The industry is fading even as the rest of the economy grows. The Energy Information Administration estimates that nationwide coal production dropped by as much as 10 percent in 2015. Further declines are expected this year. This week Arch Coal, the nation’s   producer, filed for bankruptcy protection. Companies are squeezed between fierce competition and efforts to fight climate change. ’You Need To Find A Different Occupation’ It’s a historic challenge to a business, and a way of life, in places like Webster County, in the rolling countryside of western Kentucky. Spend time with miners there and you quickly understand how hard it is to give up an industry that has supported generations of miners since this country’s earliest days. As he drove away from the mine, Moore accidentally made a left turn  —   inadvertently following the route home from work that he had driven for years. The force of habit was hard to break. Moore, 57, worked in various mines for 39 years, despite a doctor’s advice received long ago. ”I had a chest cold,” he recalled. ”And I went to the doctor and they had you take your shirt off and my back was just all ripped up. Great big scratches in it.” The scratches came from the ceilings of mine tunnels, which are often too low to stand in. ”And he said, ’Who’s been beating you?’ And I said, that’s just from work. And he said, ’You need to find a different occupation.’ He said, ’You are damaging your body.’ And I said, ’Well, great. You want to adopt me? Because I don’t know of anything else I can do. ’” In exchange for long hours underground, which he often loved, Moore says he earned more than $100, 000 per year, including overtime pay. That level of compensation is not uncommon. When we toured a Webster County mine that is still open  —   the Dotiki mine, operational since 1967 and owned by Alliance Coal  —   our producer Ashley Westerman had a surprise. Westerman, who is from Webster County, discovered one of her elementary school classmates working underground as a foreman. She went off to an East Coast university he ended up in the mine. Depending on his overtime in a given year, it’s likely that he is the one who is paid more. ’I Still Get Excited Every Day’ Money aside, there is something alluring to many people about wandering a vast network of underground tunnels and operating massive   machinery. In the Dotiki mine, we saw men at work (coal miners in this area are mostly, though not entirely, men). One man had positioned a machine called a continuous miner up against a wall of coal. A roller turned. Teeth on the roller chewed up the wall. In 38 seconds, a conveyor belt dumped about 16 tons of glittering rock into a waiting truck. ”I still get excited every day,” said Gary Thweatt, the mine supervisor, who was showing us around. And if conditions are sometimes hard, many miners are accustomed because their ancestors mined before them. We had dinner at the home of a   family. The family patriarch and matriarch are Dan and Mary Harris, both in their 80s. Until he retired, Dan was a coal miner, like his father, and his father before that. ”He’s a workaholic,” Mary said of her husband. Dan described absurdly long days, entering the mine about 1:30 in the afternoon and continuing until the next morning, ”about 9:30 when they run me out.” Their daughter Zeean was married for a time to a coal miner. Zeean’s son initially went to college instead of the mines. ”He stayed two days,” Zeean said. Then he came home. Within a few months after that, he was mining coal. Webster County residents know fossil fuels are linked to climate change. Many do not deny the science  —   ”I know we’re not helping,” one miner said. But people do minimize coal’s role, and play up the industry’s importance. We saw a bumper sticker reading: ”If you don’t like coal, don’t use electricity.” It has been a winning argument, until now. ’I’m Just Caught Up In It’ ”For the first time in my career, I’ve actually questioned if I’ll be able to retire from coal in 20 years from now,” said Heath Lovell of Alliance Coal, who met us at Webster County’s last mine. ”Depending on what happens in November with the presidential election, I think that will go a long way to determining what does coal’s future look like in the next 10, 15, 20 years.” Alliance Coal blames President Obama for its trouble. Regulators cracked down on safety. And the president’s Clean Power Plan targets electricity generated with coal. In a December interview with NPR, the president said he understands why people think he’s waging war on coal. But he argued the industry’s real problem is competition. Surging natural gas production drove down energy prices. That is indeed part of Webster County’s story. Nearby power plants are switching from coal to gas. Having lost his job, miner Joe Moore is philosophical about President Obama, who got Moore’s vote in the first election, but not in the second. ”You know, I could sit here and [yell at him] but, you know, he’s done what he set out to do. I’m just caught up in it.” He’s caught up in epic economic change. Moore is following this year’s campaign. He’s interested in Democrat Bernie Sanders, and in Republican Ted Cruz. Each is cultivating   voters. Meanwhile, Moore has to work out his future. ”After 39 years of steady going I think I’m going to take a minute and figure some things out,” he said. He does have options. His termination came with an offer of assistance if he returns to school. Then again, he might try for a job in a mine that’s still open. It’s not easy to let go of coal."
"The 2016 Tiny Desk Contest is now open! We’re accepting your videos from now until Feb. 2, so get your friends together and send one our way. We’ll begin to share some of the more intriguing submissions in our weekly newsletter and on our Tumblr, so keep an eye out for exciting happenings across the Tiny Desk community. Here’s what you need to know if you’re an unsigned artist or band who’s thinking about entering: Make a new video that shows you playing an original song of yours at a desk, any desk. Then put that video up on YouTube and submit it through the entry form at npr.   by Feb. 2. Check out the Official Rules for all the details, and you can even take this quiz to help make sure your entry is eligible. If you win, you’ll come play a Tiny Desk show in our office, then go on a short tour with NPR Music and Lagunitas Brewing Company. Seeing the entries come in is my favorite part of the contest. NPR Music has always been about music discovery, first and foremost. But the contest is a rare thing. It gives us a snapshot of what undiscovered musicians all across the United States are doing all at once. As always, I trust you’ll blow us away. The important thing is to make something you’re proud of. And remember, this is a contest about the creativity in your music, not the polish of your video. Though we always enjoy a creative video, last year’s winning entry was shot on an iPad. As you can see from the making of this year’s announcement, we’re always fans of the DIY. Make friends, make music, be inspired, push yourself to do something great. We’re thrilled by the thought of what’s to come. And if you’re not planning on submitting, follow along anyway. You might just discover your next favorite musician."
"In just a few weeks, NPR Music will publish its 500th concert recorded live at the famed Tiny Desk  —   in fact, in 2015 alone, we’ve put out a whopping 84 of them. Winnowing those 84 down to the 15 you see here wasn’t easy, but we settled on an impressive array of highlights, from a   band to a lone guitarist to a massive, virtually indescribable dance party. For a full run of Tiny Desk videos, from this year all the way back to the series’ inception in 2008, click here. And if you’ve ever dreamed of playing at the Tiny Desk yourself, be sure to enter NPR Music’s   Tiny Desk Contest. Subscribe to the Tiny Desk podcast."
"Some offices have sandwich carts. We have live music. Almost every week here at NPR’s offices in Washington, D. C. someone performs in the NPR Music department  —   specifically, at the desk of Bob Boilen, host of All Songs Considered. He’s had big bands behind his desk that seem too big to possibly fit into an office cubicle. Big personalities like Adele and   have performed there, too. It’s a series we call Tiny Desk Concerts. Late last year, NPR Music launched a contest to give an undiscovered band a chance to play behind the Tiny Desk. On Thursday morning, the judges announced their winner, chosen from nearly 7, 000 entries. He calls himself Fantastic Negrito, and he joined NPR’s Rachel Martin from a studio in Oakland, Calif. to talk about his winning entry, an original song called ”Lost In A Crowd.” ”I like going out and looking at people, and they inspire me so much,” the musician says. ”I was at a store here in the Bay Area and I looked at the face of this cashier, and he just looked so distressed, and so tired and overworked . .. and that moment right there, I was like, ’whoa, that’s it!’ And then I went and ran to the parking lot and started writing these lyrics.” This isn’t Fantastic Negrito’s first act as a musician. Today, he’s unsigned  —   a requirement for contest entrants  —   but back in the   he led a band that scored a contract with the major label Interscope, which he says offered excitement and frustration in equal measure. ”The minute I signed that record deal, my  —   my creative life just ended,” he says. ”I really didn’t understand the business side of music, probably like a lot of artists, and it was pretty devastating to me.” That phase of his life ended with a car accident, which put him in a coma for several weeks and left him with lingering injuries. Years later, he has returned to music and adopted the name Fantastic Negrito  —   a phrase some will hear as a term of endearment, others as potentially offensive. The musician says it comes out of a love and fascination for black roots music of the early blues era. ”To me it’s a celebration of blackness,” he says. ” ’Fantastic’ is   you know? And the ’Negrito’ is a way to open up blackness to everyone  —   you know, make it playful, international. It’s extremely positive in my view it’s my affair with this music. And it’s like gold! I feel like it’s something that everyone should know about.” It’s safe to imagine a lot more people will know about Fantastic Negrito now. In describing how ”Lost In A Crowd” captured the attention of the contest judges, Bob Boilen invokes a specific quality: rawness. It’s a concept the musician is quite fond of. ”The idea of ’raw’ music, to me, is honesty: getting people to feel you with the least amount of production possible, the shortest distance traveled emotionally, sonically,” he says. ”When I started listening more to this music that influenced me, I felt the rawness. I could hear it in the music, and it’s something that I related to.”"
"Politics and science are two very different beasts. Science, at its best, tries to extract some measure of truth about the world from a combination of observation and theory. Politics, even at its best, may be more concerned with perception than truth, using the former as a means to advance policy goals. So, what happens when the two collide in addressing a possibly existential threat to global civilization? This is the question lying like a shadow over broader discussions about last month’s Paris climate conference and the agreement it produced. With this in mind, was the accord signed in Paris a milestone in the battle against climate change, or was it much ado about    —   and  ? It was only after a marathon of hard negotiating that almost 200 nations agreed to reduce greenhouse gases to levels yielding no more than 1. 5 to 2. 0 degrees of warming. Scientists are convinced that anything above the 2 degree mark locks in changes to the planetary climate beyond civilization’s adaptive capacity. As soon as it was announced, the agreement was hailed by many as a breakthrough. The Guardian, a newspaper that’s taken climate coverage very seriously, hailed it as ”The Worlds Greatest Diplomatic Success.” In The New York Times, Thomas Friedman called it a ”big big deal.” The Washington Post called it ”historic.” But for some climate activists, the accord was an exercise in empty,   promise making. For example, a group of climate scientists recently submitted a letter to The Independent calling the agreement ”false hope” and full of ”deadly flaws.” They cited the fact that the CO2 reduction commitments in the agreement don’t kick in until 2020. By that time, the scientists argue, so much more CO2 will have been pumped into the atmosphere that we may already be locked into warming pushing us above the 2 degree line. As the scientists put it: ”What people wanted to hear was that an agreement had been reached on climate change that would save the world while leaving lifestyles and aspirations unchanged. The solution it proposes is not to agree on an urgent mechanism to ensure immediate cuts in emissions, but to kick the can down the road.” (Note that in considering the range of opinions, we have not accounted for the U. S. climate denialists who appear to dominate one of our major political parties. Their persistence is something the rest of the world also finds difficult to account for.) So, who is right? The answer, I hope, tilts toward the optimists but for reasons that go beyond their optimism. Without doubt, the Paris agreement alone will barely get human society started on the road to dealing with climate change. The targets are too weak and the governance too uncertain. In that way, the critics are correct in their worries that the mere appearance of the agreement can lead to the perception that the problem has been solved. But, as I’ve been arguing here for some time, the climate change problem is about a whole lot more than climate change. It is actually humanity’s coming of age on a planetary scale. I’ve recently been doing research exploring how the alteration of climate (along with aspects of ”coupled planetary systems”) is likely to be the generic response of a planet to the development of an   civilization. Feedbacks of the kind we are driving may be inevitable. Thus a civilization’s ability to recognize its planetary feedback  —   and take corrective action  —   will determine whether or not its history continues, or if it ends up on the cosmic roster of losers. But that implies the response to climate change will be evolutionary. It will mean that   civilizations, like ours, will likely need to learn new behaviors. For example, the collective response required for a civilization to deal with its climate change might entail cooperation over length and   far longer than anything attempted before. That means new patterns of organization will have to be evolved to the point that they become standard. Depending on the details of their own histories (biological, social and technological) this will be easier for some than others. You can, for example, imagine a civilization composed of very   individuals for whom   plans pose little conceptual difficulty. The most important reality is that the collective behavioral toolbox a civilization is born with may not be up to the job once that civilization advances to the point where it can alter the world that gave it birth. So, as the saying goes, evolve or die. And that brings us back to Paris. While the new climate accord does not go far enough, was a first step in developing a new set of behaviors for human civilization. It was the first step, hopefully, into our evolution as a true planetary species. It’s important to also understand that through science, human civilization was forced to build up precedents for these changes over the last 100 years. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, telegraph and radio allowed people to bridge space and time creating the ”beta” version of a global, synchronized society. To make that work, international accords on time standards (among other things) had to be hammered out with great difficulty. And when it comes to climate, the famous Montreal protocol that banned the chemicals destroying the Earth’s protective ozone layer was signed back in 1987. So we can evolve. We can develop new ways of collectively living on a planet that sustains both its vital functions and our civilization. But the journey has only started  —   and it’s far from certain that we won’t be pulled back by our own, now useless, behaviors from earlier epochs. But maybe, just maybe, we can pull it off and join the roster of cosmic winners. That, more than anything, is why Paris was a big deal. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"On Nov. 30, 1999, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in downtown Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization conference being held at the city’s convention center. It didn’t take long for the situation to deteriorate after some protesters started smashing windows and occupying intersections, police officers began to use tear gas and pepper spray in an effort to disperse the crowd. The chaotic scene is the setting of Sunil Yapa’s debut novel, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. The book takes place entirely on that one afternoon, with the protesters sounding like ”fifty thousand desperate flies knocking against fifty thousand closed windows.” Yapa’s novel is definitely ambitious. The point of view switches among several characters, chief among them Victor, a teenager who tries to sell marijuana to the gathered activists, and his estranged stepfather, Bishop, the Seattle chief of police, who desperately and fruitlessly tries to keep order downtown. There are also two protesters, two police officers, and a delegate from Sri Lanka trying to make his way to the convention. Victor has returned to Seattle after years spent wandering the world he left his home after his mother died and his stepfather, enraged to discover Victor smoking pot, set fire to his most prized possessions  —   his late mother’s collection of books. Victor is homeless, hoping to make some money by selling pot to protesters, who he figures will be eager to snap it up. (They are not.) He abandons his plan suddenly  —   everything happens in this book suddenly, and frequently without any discernible reason  —   when he’s saved from arrest by a quicksilver protester named King, herself on the run from the law. Victor decides to join the protest and help block an intersection with another activist, John Henry, King’s lover. Victor’s transition from cynical   drug dealer (he was ”absolutely allergic to belief”) to righteous protester in the space of a few pages is abrupt and inexplicable, but it does move the plot along, which is something. As he readies himself for the inevitable confrontation with his father, the book also follows two police officers  —   both tough, both unremarkable  —   and the Sri Lankan delegate who somehow gets mistaken for a demonstrator and is abused by overzealous cops. Victor is the most   character here, and that’s not good. If he has real motivations, they’re lost in Yapa’s incessantly florid prose: ”. .. he could have said his heart was laced with anger, holey as Swiss cheese. His heart of hearts poisoned by a bitter, wounded hatred, a sickness of the soul. But he was too tired for that . .. He’d already been here too long. Time to go to go to go.” (You can tell when Yapa wants you to understand something, because he repeats it several times, several times, several times.) The rest of the characters are essentially   for ideals and emotions, or convenient foils for other characters. The two cops are tough but caring, and cruel but damaged, respectively, and the two main protesters are idealists whose thoughts and dialogue read like the bumper stickers on a VW in 1960s Berkeley. Yapa isn’t an untalented writer, but he lets his writing get away from him way too often. At one point, Victor recalls looking at factories with ”the smoke curling into the sky like a pencil drawing of a drowned woman’s hair,” which is a bizarrely tortured simile. Other times, Yapa descends into attempts at aphorism: ”Because how deep the darkness of the heart which longs for control,” for example, and ”What a violence of the spirit to not know the world.” After a while, it begins to feel like you’re getting lectured by a hippie professor who writes messages for fortune cookies on the side  —   or listening to a subpar emo band: ”John Henry imagined he could see into [King’s] lovely   interiors, her internal spaces, the places where she went alone to dream.” You have to give Yapa credit for his ambition, and it’s obvious that he’s a writer of great compassion. The concept behind Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is a good one, but the execution is, at best, amateurish. Yapa is undoubtedly intelligent, and he’s probably capable of writing a good book. This trainwreck of a novel, however, is not it."
"Want to launder $20 million in illicit drug money? Buy a fancy penthouse in Miami with cash. It turns out, secretively purchasing luxury real estate is a popular way for the world’s   to clean their dirty money. ”You can spend a lot of money to buy a house, and then you can sell that house a year later,” says Heather Lowe, a lawyer with Global Financial Integrity. ”And all of a sudden, all of that money is completely clean money.” Her group tracks the transfer of illicit money out of developing countries. The Treasury Department has a new approach to step up oversight of such cash sales. When drug kingpins from South America or organized crime figures from places like Russia buy these luxury properties with cash, they set up shell companies to purchase them. So nobody knows who is actually buying that penthouse overlooking Central Park in New York. ”That shell company might be owned by another shell company  —   might be a Panamanian shell company  —   which might be owned by a Singapore trust,” Lowe says. She adds that it’s often easy to conceal who is buying these properties. And, she says, ”That is a very common way to move illegal money and illegal assets around the world.” Now, at least in Manhattan and   County, Fla. during this temporary and exploratory phase of the program, the government will require that title insurance companies involved in real estate sales get the shell companies to reveal who are the actual owners of the shell companies. The title companies will then report that to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. That’s the plan. But will it work? ”Well, that’s what we’re going to find out through this process,” says Michelle Korsmo, the head of the American Land Title Association. She supports the effort. But she acknowledges that if a major drug kingpin is buying a mansion through a string of shell companies all over the world, that might be a bit much for a title insurance company to figure out. ”We’re not sure we’re going to be able to have access to enough information,” she says. ”But we’re going to give [the government] the information that we have.” Lowe says it would be a good thing if investigators get more information than they have now, even if it’s just loose bits that still need to be pieced together. For its part, the National Association of Realtors is supporting the move by the Treasury Department as a ”reasonable” approach to combat the problem of money laundering."
"Talk about belated recognition. At its meeting in Washington, D. C. on Jan. 7, the American Dialect Society voted to make the    pronoun ”they” their word of the year for 2015. Or more precisely, a particular use of that pronoun that grammarians call the singular ”they.” This is the ”they” that doesn’t care whether it’s referring to a male or female. As in ”If I get a call, tell them they can call me back.” Or ”Did someone leave their books here?” As ordinary as it is, that use of ”they” has always been a bit disreputable  —   you might say it, but you wouldn’t want to write it down. But now it’s a pronoun whose hour has come. A few months ago, the Washington Post style guide accepted it. And it’s been welcomed by people who identify as genderqueer and who feel that ”he” and ”she” don’t necessarily exhaust all the gender possibilities. Universities allow students to select it as their personal pronoun. And so does Facebook, so that your friends will get notices like ”Wish them a happy birthday.” This use of ”they” has been around for a long time. It shows up in Shakespeare, Dickens and George Bernard Shaw. Jane Austen was always saying things like ”everybody has their failing.” But the Victorian grammarians made it a matter of schoolroom dogma that one could only say ”Everybody has his failing,” with the understanding that ”he” stood in for both sexes. As their slogan had it, ”the masculine embraces the feminine.” That rule wasn’t really discredited until the 1970s, when the   feminists made the generic masculine the paradigm of sexism in language. Male critics ridiculed their complaints as a ”libspeak tantrum” and accused them of suffering from ”pronoun envy.” But most writers now realize that the     ”he” is anything but. Nobody would ever say, ”Every candidate thanked his spouse, including Hillary.” When you utter ”he,” you always bring a male to mind. But once the generic masculine fell out of favor, what were we going to replace it with? People weren’t about to adopt a     pronoun the way they were adopting   job descriptions. ”He or she” was impossibly clunky. It was time to restore singular ”they” to respectability. And that’s been happening, even in edited books and the media. But singular ”they” still has its critics, and they can get pretty lofty about it. One British grammarian calls it ”illiterate,” which always strikes me as something Diane would have said to Sam in Cheers. A lot of people tell you it sets their teeth on edge, but my guess is that they’re not listening to themselves very attentively. Everyone uses singular ”they,” whether they realize it or not. In an engaging recent book called Between You  Me, the New Yorker’s   comma queen Mary Norris says that that use of ”they” is ”just wrong.” But flip back a few pages and you find her writing ”Nobody wanted to think they were not essential.” If that sentence got by a New Yorker copy editor in her own book on grammar, what hope is there for anybody else? If you insist on coming down on singular ”they,” it’s best to be a bit ironic about it, since you’re almost certainly going to be making a hypocrite of yourself before the day is out. The only problem with singular ”they” is that some people still think there is one. But that’s reason enough for most grammar guides to advise their readers to write around it. It’s what I think of as the ”don’t make trouble” theory of English usage. The Chicago Manual of Style provides nine different strategies for achieving   without having to resort to using ”they”  —   change the subject to a plural, repeat the noun and so on. That can be prudent. Even when you know your sentence is fine as it is, you don’t want to make some pedant’s morning. But if I could have back all the time I’ve wasted writing my way around a perfectly grammatical singular ”they,” I could have added another book or two to my name. Everybody seems certain that singular ”they” will ultimately prevail, even the grammarians who disapprove of it. A lot of younger writers don’t think twice about using it, and the rest tend to think of it as a pretty venial sin  —   the grammatical equivalent of wearing white after Labor Day. But our pronoun controversies aren’t going to subside any time soon. English is never going to have a     pronoun the way Chinese and Finnish do. We’ve spent the last few hundred years struggling to get our unwieldy pronoun system to line up with our genders, and that was when everybody thought there were only two of them. Now some genderqueer people are taking ”they” into new grammatical territory, using it for alternative genders exactly the way you’d use a personal pronoun like ”he” or ”she.” So you could say, ”Pat shrugged their shoulders,” or ”Ronnie bit off more than they could chew.” That’s the usage that the American Dialect Society was focusing on when they made ”they” their word of the year. It takes quite a bit of getting used to, and it’s launched a whole new conversation. But that’s the advantage of having a messy pronoun system like ours  —   in every era we have to thrash things over again."
"The singer David Bowie, one of the most creative performers in rock ’n’ roll history, died of cancer at age 69 on Sunday  —   two days after releasing a new album. I remember going to a few of his concerts when I was a graduate student in London in the ’80s. One performance, at the satellite city of Milton Keynes, was particularly striking. There he was, incredibly elegant in a white linen suit, his androgynous face an enigma. He didn’t look quite human, then and always. If you don’t believe me, watch the video of Ashes to Ashes. Who better to play the part of the alien in the 1976 movie The Man Who Fell to Earth? Bowie is famous for many hits, but it is to space that we go with him. From ”Starman” (1972) to ”Life on Mars?” (1971) to ”Space Oddity” (1969) Bowie was in love with the space race, humans going out there, aliens coming here, a voice against our ineptitude to deal with misfits, from this world or others. Starman ”would like to come and meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds.” How right he was. ”Space Oddity” captures the awe and isolation of being in space, our smallness and fragility as we leave our home planet to float in a ”tin can, far above the world.” Astronaut Chris Hadfield created a beautiful rendition on board the International Space Station, lyrics adapted to his mission, guitar floating as the spaceship free falls in its orbit around Earth. This time, thankfully, Major Tom gets home. Bowie leaves us with a ”parting gift,” his new album Blackstar. According to BBC Radio presenter Bob Harris, the song Lazarus could be considered his epitaph. Bowie stays with us, resurrected every time we admire his art. ”Oh I’ll be free Just like that bluebird Oh I’ll be free Ain’t that just like me.” Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist  —   and professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the   of 13. 7, a prolific author of papers and essays, and active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser."
"Hillary Clinton wants you to know she has a new tax proposal. She also wants you to know that Bernie Sanders does not. Late Tuesday, Clinton released a plan aimed squarely at a specific subset of Americans: that is, the very rich. She also went on the attack against Sanders, who has yet to release his tax plan (and who has also spent his political career taking aim at the richest Americans). The Sanders camp says its plan is coming before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, at which point there will be comparisons aplenty between the ideas of the   Democratic Socialist senator and the former secretary of state with a reputation for methodical pragmatism. (Which plan is more populist? Who raises more revenue?) Until then, here’s what you need to know about Clinton’s new plan. What’s in the plan? Clinton’s plan has four major parts to it: A 4 percent surtax (the campaign calls it a ”Fair Share Surcharge”) which has been getting the most attention. It involves taxing all income (that is, not just wage and salary income) over $5 million. That’s what makes it a surcharge and not just the creation of a new   bracket. The Buffett Rule  —   She would require people earning more than $1 million annually to pay at least a 30 percent tax rate. Tightening loopholes that tend to be used by the wealthy. In particular, the Clinton camp points to what’s been dubbed the ”Romney loophole.” That refers to the practice of stashing millions of dollars in IRAs. They also highlight the ”Bermuda reinsurance loophole,” which has allowed some   managers reduce their taxes via insurance companies in Bermuda, as Bloomberg reported. Expanding the estate tax’s reach  —   Right now, the tax applies to estates worth more than roughly $5. 5 million. She would take that threshold down to $3. 5 million, where the level was in 2009 (but higher than the $2 million level that existed throughout the  ) and also raise the rate from the current 40 percent to 45, as the Wall Street Journal writes. To be clear, this isn’t a full tax plan in the same vein as the ones many Republican candidates released. While GOP candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio released more comprehensive plans covering things like estate, corporate, capital gains and income taxes at once, Clinton has released her ideas in pieces. For example, she also released a corporate tax plan in December and a capital gains plan in July. Whom would this new proposal affect? Probably not you. That’s because the elements in this plan focus on either the richest sliver of Americans making more than $5 million, the wealthy people taking advantage of specific tax breaks, or the relatively few people earning $1 million or more. The surcharge, firstly, would affect very, very few people. In 2013, about 34, 000 tax returns out of 147 million (or about 0. 02 percent) had an adjusted gross income of $5 million or more, per IRS statistics. Likewise, Clinton’s proposal says the estate tax expansion would affect 4 out of every 1, 000 estates. And the Romney loophole would similarly be limited in scope  —   as of 2011, 98. 5 percent of taxpayers with IRAs had balances of less than $1 million, as The Washington Post reported. In addition, only about 346, 000 returns listed incomes of $1 million or more in 2013  —   about 0. 2 percent of returns. So it won’t affect most people’s lives, and that’s kind of the point. Clinton’s plan over and over stresses that it’s aimed at the richest people, and it also provides numbers showing how limited the number affected will be. The underlying message is honed for the age of Piketty (as well as Clinton’s campaign against a populist opponent to her left). It sharpens the divide between the struggling American with stagnating income and the small number of people who are amassing more and more wealth. Would these be big tax hikes? The 4 percent surtax would be on top of the current top marginal tax rate of 39. 6 percent (so, 10 percent higher) and on top of the total 23. 8 percent paid on   capital gains right now (so, nearly 17 percent higher). From that perspective, those seem like sizable bumps, but in historical perspective, the rates still would be modest. Tax rates are much lower in these two areas than they have been in the past. Consider that in 1981, Ronald Reagan cut taxes from 70 percent to 50 percent, as Roberton Williams, fellow at the Tax Policy Center (a project of the   Brookings Institution and Urban Institute) tells NPR. (Meanwhile, this proposal would essentially raise the top marginal rate to nearly 44 percent.) Capital gains rates were also in the 30s in the 1970s. Moreover, it’s well below the top marginal rates proposed by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, who are famous for their work on inequality, as The Washington Post’s Jim Tankersley pointed out this week. They said the top rate could be as high as 83 percent, Tankersley writes. None of which is to say what an optimal rate looks like. Rather, it’s to say that what makes a tax hike look big or small is all relative. What’s the price tag? The two places that put out the most widely circulated numbers on candidate tax plans  —   the Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation  —   have yet to score this proposal. For its part, the Clinton camp says this plan will raise up to $500 billion in revenue over 10 years. That’s encouraging to Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington, D. C. organization that pushes for tighter fiscal policy. But what’s important to him is what Clinton will do with that   dollars. ”So far, Secretary Clinton wants to raise revenue,” he said, ”and we know she wants to use some of that new revenue for new spending. I don’t know how much she wants to use on deficit reduction.” Indeed, Clinton has said that making the wealthy ”pay their fair share” is how she will pay for her   plan, released last week. In comparison, Republican tax plans (which are, again, more comprehensive than this proposal) largely look like they’d grow the deficit, in many cases by trillions of dollars. But just as Clinton’s plan doesn’t explain exactly how the new revenue would be spent, it’s unclear exactly how those Republicans’ spending cuts would make up for the lower revenues. What would it do to the economy? The plan could reduce economic growth because it could cause wealthy Americans to invest less, says Kyle Pomerleau, director of federal projects at the   Tax Foundation. However, he said it would only be a ”minor” reduction to output. Williams believes there won’t be any effects for a couple of reasons. He pointed to a paper from the Brookings Institution’s William Gale, which found a weak relationship between tax changes and growth. He also said that wealthy Americans have been sitting on their cash lately (meaning new taxes wouldn’t reduce   investment levels, though if that changes, so could the effect of these taxes). Why a surtax? Clinton says the tax is to make sure the richest people pay higher tax rates than ”  families.” The campaign points to IRS data showing that the top 400 taxpayers, who had an average income of more than $260 million in 2013, also paid an effective income tax rate of 23 percent that year. But it also is yet another function for the tax code to perform. Tax code simplification is an obsession of Republican candidates this year, and President Obama has also promoted the idea. It’s debatable whether simplification is always good. But Williams argues that Clinton’s plan is needlessly complex. ”It’s a further complication to an already complicated tax system,” Williams said. ”If we don’t like the way the tax system collects money from people, change how the tax system works.” Pomerleau says the same thing of the Buffett Rule. ”If you’re concerned about low effective rates, why don’t you tackle the things that create low effective rates like itemized deductions?” he said. Williams also wonders about the $5 million threshold. ”Why not go for 100, 000 people or 200, 000 people and not 40, 000 people?” he said (rounding up from the roughly 34, 000 who earned over $5 million in 2013). ”Sometimes tax rules are picked because they have a revenue target. This doesn’t seem to be the case. This seems to be the case of, you have a nice round number it has an emotional appeal.” Would it pass Congress? It would be tough. Even if Clinton wins the presidency and, with her, Democrats sweep into the Senate, they have little chance of winning a   majority. Not only that, but the House will likely remain Republican."
"In the kitchen of a small eatery in Reyhanli, Turkey, Abu Mohammed took a break from deboning the flank of a freshly slaughtered lamb to opine on grave matters happening just across the border in Syria. ”This is what should be done to the Islamic State,” he says, jabbing and swiping the air with his knife as if he were eviscerating one of the extremist fighters. Having illustrated his disdain for ISIS, Mohammed laid down the knife on his butcher’s block and resumed tearing each rib away from the meat. He wasn’t always a restaurateur and purveyor of fine meats. Not long ago, Mohammed wielded an assault rifle in defense of his hometown, Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. But a bomb blast injured his right leg, prompting him to put down his weapon and join the millions of Syrians living in exile in Turkey. In Reyhanli, a small city with a rapidly growing Syrian population, he opened Sultan Kesap, an eatery and butcher shop that provides his displaced countrymen with culinary reminders of home during better days. Several new Syrian restaurants like his opened here in just the past year, catering both to new Syrian residents and to those Turks whose tastes are evolving thanks to the influence of Reyhanli’s newest residents. ”Even the Turkish people that come to my restaurant prefer my food to their traditional dishes,” Mohammed boasts. Based on his assertions of culinary superiority, photographer Nish Nalbandian and I asked for the works. We had come to his restaurant after a long day spent speaking with Syrian children, who had lost their fathers to the fighting, and the caregivers now looking after them. Mohammed prepared a selection of his finest dishes, including Kibbeh nayeh, raw lamb lightly spiced and mixed with bulgur wheat giving it an earthy flavor Lahmacun, lightly baked flatbread topped with ground meats and seasoning and Kofta, minced lamb   with pomegranate, which provides a subtle tang to the savory meat shaped into   and lightly fried. ”Where I’m from, they don’t even see meat anymore,” Mohammed told us while we indulged in heaping portions, albeit guiltily, aware that Syrians just a few miles away are making do with what little food is available to them. But on this side of the border, the Syrian food is plentiful and delectable. A few days later, we were at the popular restaurant Orijinal Halep Lokantasi, located in the ”Little Aleppo” neighborhood of Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey. We ate heaping bowls of fatteh, a popular Syrian staple made with the tangy yogurt sauce labneh, chickpeas, vegetables and fried pita, all mashed and stirred together and enjoyed with fresh pita. As if this   delight weren’t enough, we also munched on crispy falafel and freshly made hummus drizzled with locally produced olive oil. A favorite among the city’s Syrians, the restaurant is buzzing with families enjoying meals together at long tables, their infant children propped up next to the dishes and fed tiny morsels between thumb and forefinger. At another local favorite, Baba Amur, the owner  —   who simply goes by Nerses  —   served lamb kebabs and regaled us with stories from his hometown of Palmyra, the Syrian city   for Roman ruins that Islamic State fighters partially destroyed last year. While restaurants catering to their tastes are plentiful, not all Syrians go out to satiate their traditional food fix. Most still prepare meals at home. Those who came to Turkey with little more than the clothes on their backs and a few pots and pans are particularly ingenious in the kitchen. One evening, Nish and I traveled to Kilis, another Turkish city on the border, to have dinner with the family of his Syrian friend Saad, whom Nish met during his time covering the war inside Syria. ”He was my first introduction to real   Syrian food,” Nish told me as we took our seats on the floor among Saad’s family, including his    sister, Garam, and    grandmother, who sat   quietly eyeing us while smoking a cigarette. Laid out before us was a   feast prepared by his mother, Nour, over a single propane gas cylinder in lieu of a proper stove. Despite her lack of culinary tools, Nour’s dishes proved to be our favorite. Her   kebab  —   lamb off the skewer, roasted in a large pan reminiscent of a paella dish and covered with sliced potatoes and onions  —   was succulent on the inside, with a notable crispiness that sealed in the flavor. A close second was her Kebse,   rice cooked with raisins and carrots and seasoned with cardamon and cinnamon. As Nour insisted we have second and third helpings, we talked of our respective families back home in the States, and of the fighting that forced theirs to leave behind a country and home ravaged by war. They were your average   family from Aleppo when the violence began, forcing them to abandon the only life they knew. First Saad came to Turkey. The rest of his family joined him soon thereafter in Kilis. Life abroad as refugees was difficult for them. With little money to spend on housing, three generations lived in a garage rigged into an apartment, with a makeshift kitchen and a curtain separating the rest of the living space from the ”bathroom.” Just recently, they moved into the simple apartment, with few furnishings other than the carpets and pillows covering the floor, where we shared a meal. But compared with their previous abode, it was lavish. By the time we were sipping our   tea, the rumors and conspiracies born of war began to swirl. ”The Islamic State and the Syrian regime are working together!” asserted Bilal, a lifelong friend of Saad’s, who now lives with the family. Saad is currently in Europe  married and looking for work. Bilal was adamant that the opposite sides in the conflict are secretly collaborating against the various rebel groups  —   despite their sectarian differences. It’s a commonly held belief, in part because the Syrian government appears to fight with other opposition groups more than it does with Islamic State. The other family members nodded in agreement, while young Garam dozed on the rug. It seems even the best meals are but a temporary distraction from the harsh realities Syrians face, even when the dishes are empty and their stomachs full. Carmen Gentile is an international correspondent and author of Kissed By The Taliban. The forthcoming book is his account of surviving a   grenade that struck him in the face while he was embedded with U. S. troops in Afghanistan."
"Customers crowd into a bustling Budapest restaurant for dinner. They open their menus, expecting to read about stuffed paprikas and Hungarian goulash.   But instead they find . .. Eritrean sourdough pancake bread. Afghan pie. Syrian sweets.   ”It’s a little bit difficult, because not all the ingredients are available in Hungary. So a few of them are coming from Austria or other countries. But we can do it!” laughs Judit Peter, the bartender and director of special projects at Kisuzem, a trendy, bohemian bar in Budapest’s historic Jewish quarter. ”People really like it. We’ve served 80 portions a day  —   and that’s quite a lot for a small kitchen like ours.”   Kisuzem is one of 10 Budapest eateries that have been serving up food from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Somalia  —   in solidarity with migrants and refugees streaming into Hungary from those countries. It’s all part of the Körítés food festival, which aims to combat xenophobia through cuisine. This past week, migrant arrivals to Hungary so far this year surpassed the 300, 000 mark. But the   government in Budapest has taken a hard line against migrants, building fences along the country’s borders, and passing new laws that make it illegal to enter Hungary without a visa. Prime Minister Viktor Orban says mostly Muslim migrants threaten Hungary’s Christian character.   But a bunch of   foodies are hoping cuisine can heal prejudice. The name of the Körítés food festival is a play on the Hungarian words for ”fence” and ”side dish.” The week of foodie events  —   including special menus, cooking demonstrations, art projects for children, pub quizzes  —   ended Sunday, but organizers hope to raise funds to extend the festival, and expand it to other Hungarian cities.   ”If you don’t know something, you can be afraid of it,” Peter says. ”And if you do something which can make you closer to that culture, it can help you understand each other  —   and stop the fear, and make something new.”  At Kisuzem, a recently arrived refugee, Luwam Melake, hands out special menus printed with facts about food and culture in her native Eritrea.   ”Most of them [Hungarians] don’t know anything about Eritrea. They don’t even know the name Eritrea!” says Melake, who is 27. ”You can just see it on their faces. Because you’re an immigrant, they don’t accept you like someone normal. I haven’t had any bad comments, but the attitudes are there.”   As part of the festival, Melake and her cousin, Saba Tesfay, perform a traditional Eritrean coffee ceremony for curious Hungarian onlookers. They hunker on low stools on the floor of the restaurant, and roast green coffee beans over an open fire, jiggling the beans in a metal pan, so that they don’t burn.   ”And then I grind them, and eventually put them in these jebena  —   clay pots  —   which they use in Eritrea and Ethiopia,” Tesfay says. ”And then finally we drink the coffee.”   She shares tiny cups of thick Eritrean coffee with her new Hungarian friends. Then the restaurant’s cooks emerge with sizzling plates of injera, flat sourdough bread, piled with chickpea paste and meat stew. The chefs had a crash course in Eritrean cuisine last week, in preparation for the festival.   ”It’s my first time, and it’s great!” says Victoria Csorgo, a Hungarian customer. ”There is a sort of pancake, and it tastes a bit like rye bread,” she says of the Eritrean injera bread. ”On this pancake there are different stews made of beef and chicken. It’s very spicy.”   Another participating restaurant, Anker Klub, holds a pub quiz with questions about Syria. ”What is the internet suffix for webpages in Syria?” the MC asks. (Answer: . sy)  Körítés was organized by Hanna Mikes, with the Artemisszio Foundation, an NGO dedicated to intercultural dialogue and volunteerism in Hungary. She received a €5, 000 grant (about U. S. $5, 600) from Norway’s development agency to fund the food festival. ”To be honest, it’s not a political project, but on the other hand, everything is political when you’re talking about migrants and refugees,” Mikes says. ”The whole idea is from an initiative from the United States actually, called Conflict Kitchen, which serves food from countries with which the U. S. is in conflict. The whole idea is basically, how can we reach people to learn more about cultures through food?” At the Körítés food festival, the 10 participating restaurants foot the bill for their own ingredients. They had so many reservations during the weeklong festival that they’re clamoring to extend it. Mikes would also like to expand it to rural areas, where polls show xenophobia is strongest, and where most migrants and refugees actually enter the country.   ”We were thinking of moving it to the countryside. It would be lovely to take this to places where we have refugee camps,” Mikes says. ”Those people who live close to the refugee camps should know more about the people inside.” At the Budapest restaurant Manga Cowboy! owner Ivan Sandor says he couldn’t decide which of the four cuisines  —   Syrian, Afghani, Somali, Eritrean  —   he wanted to serve at his restaurant. So he chose them all. Each day, his lunchtime menu features dishes from all four countries: Somali fried bananas, bolani with fresh laban (an Afghan pie with fresh Syrian cream cheese) alicha birsen (Eritrean lentil curry) and kanafeh (Syrian sweet cheese pastry). ”The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Sandor says, chuckling. ”I hope that’s true for everybody.”"
"Hall of Fame center fielder Willie Mays was once quoted as saying, ”I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.” But when it came to life off the field, the legendary player credits his former teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Monte Irvin with being his teacher. Irvin died Monday at his home in Houston at the age of 96. Mays, now 84, spoke to NPR’s Kelly McEvers about the man he described as a father figure. ”He taught me a lot things about life,” Mays said. ”I already knew how to play the game, but sometimes you need a little more. You need to know how to treat people. You need to know how when you hit a home run, you run around the bases  —   you don’t stop and show anybody up. Thinking was more important to him than just playing the game.” For much of his career, Irvin played in the Negro Leagues with the Newark Eagles. When he finally reached Major League Baseball in 1949, two years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, he was already 30 years old. Still, his skill was undeniable. ”He had what I call a very good arm, ran very good, good hitter and most of all thinking,” Mays said. ”He was a good thinker in the outfield and that sometimes is overlooked.” When Mays entered MLB in 1951, he joined Irvin on the New York Giants, where, he said, the older man’s guidance was invaluable. ”When I came up in ’51, Monte taught me a lot of things about life in the big city  —   well, I call it the Big Apple, New York. I learned very quickly because I had to play the games in the Polo Grounds,” he said. ”So Monte was there playing alongside of me at all times, and it was just a wonderful feeling to have someone in the outfield with me to make sure I didn’t make a lot of mistakes out there.” Mays, Irvin and Hank Thompson went on to form the first   outfield in Game 1 of the 1951 World Series against the Yankees. It was a huge moment for baseball. For Mays? Not so much. ”To me it wasn’t, because I knew those guys . .. it wasn’t anything different. It made me proud to be a part of that particular unit at that particular time.” When Irvin was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1973 he acknowledged that he ”wasted [his] best years in the Negro Leagues.” But he added: ”I’m philosophical about it. There’s no point in being bitter. You’re not happy with the way things happen, but why make yourself sick inside? There were many guys who could really play who never got a chance at all.” It was this thoughtfulness that stuck with Mays. When asked about what he will miss about Irvin, Mays said simply, ”the man.” ”He was a guy that was sort of like my father. . .. There was a park by his house there, we would go out and just talk, nothing specific, just talk, mostly about life.”"
"So . .. have you bought a Powerball ticket? The jackpot is now at $1. 5 billion  —   the largest jackpot in world history. (Full disclosure: NPR is playing the odds. Our CEO bought every regular   employee a ticket.) And yes, $1. 5 billion is a lot of money. It’s a lot even if you take the smaller cash payout  —   $930 million  —   instead of the lifetime annual payments. It’s a lot even after you account for taxes: If you live in a state that doesn’t tax lottery winnings, once you pay Uncle Sam, you’ve got $561. 72 million. It’s a big chunk of change, for sure. But if you win, there are some things that will still be outside your budget. For instance, you could make a lot of political donations. But even if you picked the cash payout, paid your taxes and then dumped every single penny of your winnings into the 2016 campaign, still . .. Early last year, industrialists Charles and David Koch announced their network’s budget for the 2016 election cycle: $889 million. The mechanics of how exactly that money is being spent are secret, as NPR’s Peter Overby reported at the time. And since they are talking about an entire network of donors and organizations, it’s not accurate to say every penny of that $889 million is coming straight from a Koch pocket. (The Koch brothers have an estimated net worth of $41 billion each.) But no one said this   would be fair, and the fact is, unless you’ve invested a lot of time and energy into cultivating a network of   donors of your own, it’s your Powerball prize up against that Koch empire. And your $561. 72 mil  —   while impressive  —   doesn’t get you there. Want another letdown?  In 2015, the U. S. paid $218 billion in interest  —   less than expected, thanks to low inflation. That’s $597 million per day. How about some international comparisons?  Or Tonga ($434 million) or any of the six countries with GDPs beneath $400 million. Never heard of Comoros? It’s an island nation in the Indian Ocean with a population of fewer than a million people and a per capita GDP of about $816. And it’s out of your price range. Still, that’s eight countries whose GDPs fall short of your new net worth! But the richest people on Earth are in a whole ’nother league. Bill Gates, with an estimated net worth just shy of $80 billion, has more money in his pocket than 129 countries handle in a year, all the way up to Cuba and Sri Lanka. Mark Zuckerberg, who with his wife, Priscilla, plans to give away the vast majority of his fortune, could purchase the full economic activity of Bolivia with his $33 billion. Feel more like investing in property? The   expensive pushes you over the limit. Still, that’s enough luxury condos to have one for every day of the week, one for your   and one just for show. Antilia, the Mumbai residence of Mukesh and Nita Ambani, cost a cool billion to build. Want quantity over quality in your real estate purchases? All the houses in the suburb of Minneapolis, combined, would go for $559, 819, 936, according to Redfin in 2014. That would leave you nearly $2 million  —   for furniture, perhaps. At $561. 76 million total, the   town just outside D. C. is barely out of your price range. Meanwhile, the Walton family of   fame could buy every home in Seattle, Redfin says. Warren Buffett could snap up Charlotte, N. C. And Rupert Murdoch could purchase Peoria, Ariz. Want to move the needle on national security issues? The U. S. Department of Defense estimates the average cost of operations related to fighting the Islamic State has been $11 million a day since Aug. 8, 2014. Or . .. In late 2014, the Los Angeles Times wrote that maintaining the arsenal was set to cost $8. 3 billion in one year, or $22. 7 million a day. The total U. S. military budget is more than $600 billion per year. That’s $1. 6 billion per day. Your Powerball millions get you about eight hours of funding America’s military. Medically minded? The Peter G. Peterson foundation estimates the U. S. spends $8, 713 per capita on health care  —   twice as much as the average developed country. Not even close. At an estimated $750 billion of waste per year, your newfound wealth would cover about 6   hours. Space exploration more your style? Messenger cost NASA $446 million. Even accounting for inflation since 2004, that’s just within your budget. But if your sights are set farther away, it’ll be tough . .. The NASA probe that just flew by Pluto cost $700 million.  ? Jeff Bezos purchased it for $250 million in 2013. It’s valuation is well north of $1 billion. Fancy being the next   producer?  Episode VII cost around $200 million to make, and the next two were originally estimated to be in the same ballpark. But they could be significantly more expensive and still stay in your budget. On Stranger Tides was the most expensive movie ever made, north of $400 million by some estimates. At World’s End was $300 million. Together they price you out. On a more serious note, half a billion dollars is nowhere close to enough to address global climate change  —   you’d need trillions and trillions for that. But curious if you could help just one city grapple with the changing climate? The   city, already struggling with the impact of climate change, expects to spend $400  $500 million on a system of pumps to keep the streets passable and the properties livable, if only it can figure out the funding. But . .. If you’d like to use your Powerball cash to keep Miami Beach from drowning, and you’ve dropped a   dollars on powerful pumps, congratulations! You’ve just gotten started. The Miami Herald explains what it would take for the city to survive: ” . .. even Mayor Philip Levine, the biggest cheerleader of efforts to ’rise above’ sea level rise, would acknowledge that pumps alone represent a temporary fix  —   a   to   buffer. If future projections hold true, more roads will have to be raised  —   along with buildings  —   as the rising sea pushes up through the porous limestone sponge underlying much of South Florida. First floors might have to be vacated, rusting infrastructure replaced, codes and building elevations dramatically beefed up.” Your remaining $60  $160 million will be gone before you know it. The total price tag for keeping Miami Beach will be in the billions, the Miami Herald says. And that’s just the island of Miami Beach. Miami itself  —   and all of   county  —   is also in trouble. As Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker last month, estimates for   rise due to climate change range from ”more than 3 feet”  —   that’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s number  —   to up to 30 feet, according to the chairman of the University of Miami’s geological sciences department. The average elevation in   County, Kolbert notes, is 6 feet above sea level."
"The Powerball bonanza, which has touched an unprecedented $1. 5 billion, may be the largest jackpot in human history, but the frenzied ticket buying and wild hopes attending it are hardly new. Ask Charles Dickens. In  ’45, the novelist spent a year traveling though Italy with his family. In a series of vivid letters later collected into the travelogue Pictures from Italy, he recounted how he had been awestruck by the Coliseum, disappointed by the smallness of the tower of Pisa and left triumphant after climbing to the rim of Mount Vesuvius and looking down ”into the Hell of boiling fire below.” In the midst of all these exciting impressions, however, he devoted a curiously large amount of space to ”an extraordinary feature in the real life of Naples” that fascinated him: the lottery. While the lottery was popular across Italy, Dickens was amused by, but also appalled at, the hold it had in Naples, and the extremes to which Neapolitans went to choose a lucky number. Every news event, accident or untoward incident was interpreted as a sign. Priests with ”visions” were eagerly consulted, as were ”people who have a talent for dreaming fortunately.” The lottery office in Naples had a large book called the Universal Lottery Diviner, ”where every possible accident and circumstance is provided for, and has a number against it.” For instance, when a fire broke out at the king’s palace, there was such a run on numbers allotted to ”king,” ”palace” and ”fire” that the authorities had to hurriedly shut them down. Dickens heard of a man being thrown fatally from his horse, only to be pounced on by a punter  —   a person who places a wager  —   who begged him, ”If you have one gasp of breath left, mention your age for Heaven’s sake, that I may play that number in the lottery.” Even grislier was the sight of speculators at a public execution counting ”the gouts of blood that spirt out, here or there” in order to buy that number. Like the Powerball, the Naples lottery was held at a fixed time and place  —   at the Court of Justice, a musty room attached to the local jail. One Saturday afternoon, Dickens attended a draw. The officials were the local judges  —   then as now, the lottery was a   affair, except that in Naples, the church played an officiating role. Dickens, no fan of the Roman Catholic Church, could barely conceal his contempt as he described a ”grave priest” climbing into his vestments in order to sprinkle holy water over the box on which every eye in the room was fixed. This box contained 100 numbers from zero to 100, from which five would be drawn. Only if three or more numbers bought by a player matched the lucky five  —   and had enough staked on them  —   did he stand to make a killing. Since there were no computers, the numbers were drawn by a little boy dressed in a tight brown coat with no sleeve for the right arm. After waving his bare arm in the air and flexing his fingers like a magician to show there was nothing hidden between them, the boy would plunge his hand into the box and pull forth a number, which was read out to the waiting crowd. The boy was a mere functionary, but even he was turned into a talisman: ”People begin to inquire his age, with a view to the next lottery and the number of his brothers and sisters and the age of his father and mother and whether he has any moles or pimples upon him and where, and how many.” As Dickens left the dank little room, he noticed the palpable disappointment among those shuffling out and was filled with pity for the ignorant populace who looked ”as miserable as the prisoners in the gaol.” Clearly, Dickens disapproved of the lottery, and his reasons were similar to contemporary concerns that lotteries are a cynical and regressive tax on the poor  —   the ones most likely to buy lottery tickets with money they can ill afford. ”They bring an immense revenue to the Government and diffuse a taste for gambling among the poorest of the poor,” he wrote, ”which is very comfortable to the coffers of the State, and very ruinous to themselves.” But though the social critic in Dickens objected to the lottery, its central spirit, that an outrageous turn of luck can transform an ordinary life certainly imbued his novels. Orphans like Oliver Twist and Pip in Great Expectations did not need to buy tickets to win fortunes  —   not when they had an eternally optimistic creator named Charles Dickens, who had only to reach into his fertile imagination to help them win the lottery called life. Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"Secretary of State John Kerry says Iran reported to him that a key component of its plutonium nuclear reactor has been removed, as Iran nears the reduction of its nuclear program sufficient to trigger sanctions relief. Kerry tells reporters that Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif informed him that the reactor core, or calandria, will be filled with concrete and destroyed in the coming hours. This is purportedly happening at Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, where the removal of the calandria means that Iran will no longer be able to produce   plutonium  —   one of two main paths to a nuclear weapon. It comes just hours after Iran released 10 American sailors, as we reported. Kerry said in his remarks today that U. S. relationships with Iran, many developed during the nuclear talks, were important in getting the sailors back. ”These are already situations which, as everyone here knows. have the ability to, if not properly guided, to get out of control,” said Kerry, who contacted Zarif, his Iranian counterpart, after learning that the sailors were being held. As NPR’s Michele Kelemen notes, ”Iran clearly had reason to resolve this quickly.” That’s because Iran is going to hit a major milestone in the nuclear deal ”very soon, likely within the next coming days somewhere,” Kerry says. That milestone is being called Implementation Day, ”the day on which Iran proves it has sufficiently downsized its nuclear program and can begin to receive sanctions relief,” Kerry says. But first, the U. N. International Atomic Energy Agency must issue a report ”certifying that Iran has met its obligations under the deal,” Reuters reports. NPR’s Peter Kenyon explained more about that day and its significance on All Things Considered last weekend. In October, Peter spoke with Mark Fitzpatrick of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, who said removing the calandria from the Arak reactor ”is, for practical purposes, irreversible, given the scrutiny Iran will be under.” Here’s more from Fitzpatrick: ”Iran has no incentive at all to replace the calandria at Arak unless they were hellbent on having a plutonium path to nuclear weapons. . .. So it’s very good that they’ve agreed to have a different kind of reactor so that they can’t produce plutonium. It’s a very big nonproliferation step.” Regarding the other main type of nuclear fuel, uranium, Kerry says ”all of their enriched materials have been put on a ship, taken out and gone to Russia for processing.” He adds that the shipment ”more than tripled our previous timeline of two to three months for Iran to be able to acquire enough   uranium for one weapon.” You can watch his remarks on Iran and its nuclear program here:"
"Less than 24 hours after reports of their detention emerged, 10 U. S. Navy personnel have been freed by Iran. The sailors left an Iranian naval base on Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf on Wednesday morning, along with the boats they were operating when they were taken into custody. ”There are no indications that the sailors were harmed during their brief detention,” the Department of Defense says, confirming the release of nine men and one woman. The sailors had been aboard two riverine command boats  —   relatively small and fast attack craft  —   when they lost contact with the Navy, which has said the boats were transiting from Kuwait to Bahrain when they were detained. For hours after the detention, many details about the incident remained unknown. Today, Iran said a ”broken navigation system” caused the boats to enter Iranian territorial waters illegally, and that it has received an apology. The Pentagon said a video released by Iran of an apparent apology by one of the sailors seems to be authentic. A Defense Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said, ”Clearly this staged video exhibits a Sailor making an apology in an unknown context as an effort to defuse a tense situation and protect his crew.” After the sailors’ release, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said, ”I am pleased that 10 U. S. Navy sailors have departed Iran and are now back in U. S. hands.” Carter also thanked Secretary of State John Kerry ”for his diplomatic engagement with Iran to secure our sailors’ swift return.” As Eyder reported for the   last night, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the U. S. was in touch with the Iranians, who ”informed us of the safety and   of our personnel.” Photos posted online by the Iranian News Agency show the U. S. service members sitting shoeless on carpets in a room, leaning against cushions on a wall. Iran’s FARS news agency says their armed boats had been three nautical miles into Iranian territory when they were detained. Announcing the release of the Americans today, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps said, ”It became clear that the U. S. combat vessels’ illegal entry into the Islamic Republic of Iran’s waters was the result of an unpurposeful action and a mistake.” After their release, the sailors were airlifted ashore and replaced on the boats by other crews, according to the Pentagon. ”The Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the Sailors’ presence in Iran,” the Department of Defense says."
"The litigants in the U. S. Supreme Court Wednesday were a remarkable bunch: On one side, the Central Bank of Iran. On the other, the victims of   terrorist attacks going back three decades. The constitutional question: Whether Congress  —   in dealing with both  —   had infringed on the independence of the judiciary. In 2012, President Obama froze nearly $2 billion the Iranian central bank had concealed illegally in an account in New York. Congress then amended an existing   law to strengthen it. The new law specified those funds were to be used to pay off the court judgments that found Iran responsible for 19 separate terrorist attacks against Americans around the world. The first of those cases was brought on behalf of the families of 241 American servicemen killed in the 1983 bombing of the U. S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. ”  years ago I was a young,    marine . .. blown up in the building and buried for two hours,” said Paul Rivers, one of the 30 survivors of the attack. Now 53, he is frustrated by the   legal battle. ”This has been an emotional roller coaster ride for me, because my friends are gone.” Rivers said  —   adding that the world we live in today, with so many terrorist threats, began with the Beirut attack. Lynn Smith Derbyshire stood with Rivers, holding a photo of her brother, Capt. Vincent Smith, who was killed in Beirut. ”We need to send a message to terrorist nations that they have to pay for their crimes, ” she said. Inside the Supreme Court chamber, the debate was not about whether Iran should pay, but whether Congress had unconstitutionally infringed on the judiciary’s job by directing the outcome of particular cases, even listing the docket numbers of those cases in the legislation. Lawyer Jeffrey Lamken  —   representing Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of Iran  —   said it didn’t matter whether there was one case or 19: Congress had violated the Constitution by enacting a statute for one set of plaintiffs. Justice Antonin Scalia asked: ”Where do you get the notion that Congress can only act by generality? It acts all the time on individual matters.” Lamken insisted that this law is unique, contending that never before in the nation’s history has Congress passed such a statute. Congress crossed the line here, Lamken asserted, because there is a single defendant, the Central Bank of Iran. Justice Stephen Breyer wryly noted that this single defendant represents 100 million people. Justice Elena Kagan suggested that the political branches, the president and Congress deserve particular deference in matters of foreign affairs, especially when they act together. They don’t, said lawyer Lamken. If you uphold this law, he told the justices, ”the lesson it teaches . .. is, if you want to win your case in court, don’t hire a lawyer hire a lobbyist.” Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to have the same concern when former Solicitor General Ted Olson, whose own wife was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, took to the lectern. ”You know,” said the Chief Justice, ”there are places in the world where courts function just the way our courts do  —   except every now and then when there’s a case the strongman who runs the country is interested in . .. and he picks up the phone and he tells the court, ’you decide this case this way.’ ” Said Roberts: ”I’m not sure I see what the difference is here.” Olson contended that the lower courts had found Iran liable for damages for its role in these attacks. The only thing this law deals with, he asserted, is executing those judgements  —   actually getting the money damages. But, Roberts said, wouldn’t that argument mean Congress can tell the Supreme Court how to rule in a specific case? Justice Kagan picked up that thread when Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler rose to defend the statute. Since 1801, he told the justices, this vourt has said that Congress may amend the law and make it applicable to pending cases. But, asked Kagan, could Congress  —   without actually naming the winner  —   amend the law in such a way that it’s clear who actually will be the winner? ”If Congress is amending the law, it can do that,” Kneedler replied. Chief Justice Roberts replied caustically: ”You’re saying Congress has to be cute about it.” They can’t say that Smith wins his case in Smith v. Jones, but they can change the law to make sure Smith wins. Justice Breyer, borrowing some of the Chief Justice’s language, observed with a small smile that ”Congress has 4, 000 ways of being cute, and I can’t quite see this court trying to police those ways.”"
"Fair to say this was a brilliant day for Boston. General Electric Co. announced on Wednesday that it will be moving its headquarters from Fairfield, Conn. to Boston, starting this summer. That decision makes Boston the winner of an intense competition among dozens of cities  —   all hoping to become the hometown of one of the world’s largest companies. GE has been based on a   suburban campus in Fairfield since 1974. Its new home will be built in Boston’s Seaport District, with the full move to be completed by 2018. The $130 billion global industrial giant said it has been weighing a headquarters move for more than three years. That search may have become more urgent after a 2015 state budget raised taxes on corporations. GE settled on Boston after being offered a massive package of tax breaks and incentives. The deal included $120 million from the state through grants and other programs, and up to $25 million in property tax relief from the city, according to a joint statement from Gov. Charlie Baker and Mayor Marty Walsh’s offices. In exchange for incentives, the city will get an infusion of about 200 corporate staffers and 600 digital industrial product managers, designers and developers. Although the tax breaks are generous, they were not the key reasons for GE’s choice of Boston. GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said the company was looking for ”an ecosystem that shares our aspirations. Greater Boston is home to 55 colleges and universities. Massachusetts spends more on research  development than any other region in the world, and Boston attracts a diverse, technologically fluent workforce.” GE also said Boston offered ”connections with the world.” That can be read as: Logan International Airport. Unlike Fairfield, Boston offers nonstop flights to London, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich, Hong Kong, Dubai, Tokyo, Santiago and many other global destinations. New York officials had hoped to attract GE, but the company said it not only is pulling out of Connecticut but will be selling its offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan. Connecticut officials had hoped to avoid losing the headquarters of a major employer. But increasingly, suburban office parks are losing out to urban environments that are more attractive to young,   workers. Boston’s advantages showed up in another way on Wednesday. The Federal Reserve gave it a pat on the back in its Beige Book, an     report on growth. The Beige Book described Boston’s economic activity as ”upbeat.” Fed researchers concluded that while the New York and Kansas City regions were essentially flat, other parts of the country were reporting growth and Boston was particularly healthy. For example, the report said ”office leasing demand remains robust in Boston [but] weak in Hartford.” Ouch. Tough day for Connecticut. ”This hurts,” Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said at a news conference called to respond to the GE announcement. ”You win some and you lose some. Luckily we’ve won more than we’ve lost.” Malloy said the state plans to work harder to upgrade transportation infrastructure and the higher education system."
"”Messieurs, c’est les microbes qui auront le dernier mot.” ”Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.” That comment from 19th century disease fighter Louis Pasteur is not what you’d expect to see at the start of a report from some of the world’s top public health officials. But the report itself has a stinging message: We’re not prepared for the next coming plague or pandemic  —   or HIV 2. 0. That report, titled ”The Neglected Dimension of Global Security,” comes from a commission put together last year by the National Academy of Medicine. The commission says future pandemics have the potential to kill millions and cause economic losses in the trillions of dollars. ”Pandemics represent a real threat to human security,” says Peter Sands, the chair of the Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future. ”They will happen and we need to be able to contain them.” The report predicts that new diseases will emerge even faster in the 21st century than they did in the 19th. The commission of 17 public health officials from around the globe sums it up this way: ”A range of factors, including increasing population, economic globalization, environmental degradation and ever increasing human interaction around the globe are changing the dynamics of infectious disease.” Sands says the Ebola outbreak of   was a   call. It showed that the world is not prepared to deal with a rapidly spreading disease. ”The alerts were raised too slowly. Local health systems were quickly overwhelmed. The international response was slow and clumsy,” he says. ”We lacked many of the medical products we needed, either therapeutic or vaccination or indeed even effective diagnostics.” This report argues that the world needs to better position itself for the next pandemics. If the world were to invest roughly $4. 5 billion a year, the authors estimate economic losses of $60 billion a year from future pandemics could be avoided. The bulk of the money would go to bolster health care systems in   and   countries. An additional $1 billion would be poured into medical research for potentially dangerous diseases. If an outbreak like the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed more than 50 million, were to happen today, the economic damage would be in the trillions of dollars. And the psychological toll could make things worse. Sands says news of a deadly, highly contagious pathogen could prompt people all over the world to panic. ”We are much more connected not just physically but by media nowadays,” he says. ”Hearing about and seeing infectious disease outbreaks on TV can spread fear even more rapidly than the disease itself. That in turn can grow changes in behavior and policy which magnify the economic impact.” The commission argues that the world ignores the threat of future pandemics at its own peril. ”We need to step up our game,” as Sands puts it  —   just as Pasteur did when he invented the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax."
"When Ryan Green’s son Joel was 1 year old he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer. Over the next few years, he underwent rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, only to have the cancer return. Feeling helpless, Ryan turned to what he knew as a video game developer. He began working on a game as a way to understand and confront his son’s deteriorating health. He connected with the Kickstarter community, ultimately raising enough money to back the creation of the game, which made its debut Tuesday. It would have been Joel’s sixth birthday. The result is That Dragon, Cancer, a deeply intimate, immersive video game that follows Joel’s fight with cancer over four years. But it’s not your typical    type of game. ”You’re not trying to achieve a high score you’re not shooting cancer cells with big bazookas, that’s not what this is about,” Ryan says in the Kickstarter trailer. The game unfolds more like a diary, with the player catching glimpses of memories or snippets of disembodied voices. The player is left trying to make sense of the pieces. In one scene, Joel floats happily down a playground slide, giggling, and in another he cries uncontrollably while the player navigates an empty hospital crib. Ryan’s tired voice urges, ”It’s so late, Joel. Lay down . .. I can’t make you feel better.” It’s heartbreaking, and as a player, it’s not always clear what to do to save Joel’s life, or even to help him sleep. In 2014, the Green family relocated to San Francisco for experimental treatment, but it soon became apparent that it wouldn’t help. In March 2014, while the game was still being created, Joel passed away. Ryan used recordings of Joel’s laughter and other audio collected during his son’s short life in the game. His wife, Amy Green, a writer and standup comedian, also contributed her voice and writing to the project. It’s part of a growing trend of video games that focus on narrative storytelling. ”We hope that players walk away with a sense of the grace that we experienced and also what it was like to be with Joel and to love him,” Amy says. The Greens’ story also has been made into a documentary that will be released this year."
"The U. S. Department of Agriculture’s first stab at offering nutrition advice came in 1894, when W. O. Atwater, a chemist and pioneering nutrition investigator for the agency, published this warning in a Farmer’s Bulletin: ”Unless care is exercised in selecting food, a diet may result which is   or badly balanced. . .. The evils of overeating may not be felt at once, but sooner or later they are sure to appear. ..” Thus began the USDA’s long struggle to craft eating advice based on the latest scientific evidence. That science, of course, has evolved quite a bit since 1894  —   a time when micronutrients like vitamins hadn’t even been discovered. As the science changed, so did the USDA’s efforts to represent its best advice with visuals  —   sometimes, with amusing results to our modern eyes. Along with margarine, butter gets a conspicuous slot in this food wheel from 1943  —   when wartime butter shortages prompted many consumers to switch to margarine. It’s hard to imagine either one playing a starring role in today’s Dietary Guidelines, which still urge limits on saturated fats in foods like butter, and frown on margarine, which can be high in trans fats. At first blush, butter is as prominent as the vegetables next to it. But look closely and you’ll see fruits and vegetables in not one but three separate categories. While these guidelines were criticized at the time for lacking specific information on serving sizes, visually, at least, they seem to place a healthy emphasis on produce. In the 1950s, the USDA put the Basic 7 on a diet and slimmed it down to the Basic 4  —   which did offer recommended minimum servings. Widely used into the 1970s, this diet guide was designed to meet basic nutritional needs  —   the assumption was that Americans would eat more than what was laid out here. In the late 1970s, the focus of Uncle Sam’s guidelines shifted  —   from getting enough of the right nutrients, to avoiding the wrong ones  —   as concerns rose about the links between diet and disease. Though there weren’t a lot of data available, fat became a prime nutrient of concern. The Dietary Guidelines as we know them today were born of this era. First published in 1980, they were (and still are) supposed to be based on a review of the latest nutritional science. Back then, they emphasized a diet low in fat, saturated fat and cholesterol. First visualized as a food wheel, the guidelines later took the form of the food pyramid many of us grew up with. Carbs were the base of this pyramid, sending the message to eat all you want. And Americans did, gobbling up refined grains and processed snacks like SnackWell cookies  —   that staple of the   craze  —   in their quest to avoid the dreaded dietary fat. We know now that ”carbohydrates worsen glucose and insulin  —   they have negative effects on blood cholesterol levels,” as Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, told us back in 2014. In other words, he told us, replacing saturated fats with refined carbs ”has not been useful advice.” With the obesity epidemic in full swing, this update to the food pyramid tried to emphasize the importance of exercise along with a healthy diet. The vertical wedges were supposed to indicate how much to eat of each food groups, but visually, it’s a jumble: It looks like someone spilled the contents of a dinner table on the floor. Even worse was this   version of MyPyramid, which ditches the food images altogether. Without visual or written cues, just how are you supposed to know that blue is for milk? By comparison, MyPlate, the latest visualization of the food guide, is sleek and, while imperfect, it’s a step in the right direction. The plate makes it clear, for instance, that fruits and veggies should be half of each meal. Not that Americans are necessarily absorbing the message. According to USDA data, most of us don’t eat the daily recommended amount of produce."
"The first time I told a guy I’d met online that I didn’t want to see him again, my hands were actually trembling. I paced the room. I typed sentences only to erase them and retype them again. You’d think I was telling the guy I was pregnant, not passing on his offer to eat homemade linguine. Somehow, I’d made it to my late 30s without the ability to tell another human soul I wasn’t interested in dating him. I knew how to lie: I’m very busy right now. I’m sick with the flu. Lying had long been my preferred method of getting out of things, because it protected people’s feelings and allowed me to maintain an illusion of blanket likeability. And lying to men had, unfortunately, been a   habit: I have a headache. No, I don’t mind if you text during dinner. I’d love to talk about Star Wars right now. Early in my online dating experience, I’d told a guy I didn’t like that I was too busy to go out with him, and he came back the next week and asked me out again. How dare that man take me at my word? But then I began to think online dating might be a good excuse to start telling uncomfortable truths. Technology, after all, is a tool  —   we use it, not the other way around. Apparently there are men who can get lucky on Tinder using nothing but emoticons. If this is true, then surely a grown woman can find a way to say she isn’t interested. It’s not as though men were falling out of the trees to date me. In fact, my awkwardness was a result of being unaccustomed to such attention. I’d come of age in bars, where no one asked anything directly until last call. You just got drunk, went back to his place, and maybe a month later, you moved in together. Relationships were something that happened to me. But at 35, I’d quit drinking, taking a sledgehammer to my most reliable romantic strategy, and thus forcing me to learn a deliberateness to which I was wholly unaccustomed. Coffee dates. Movie dates. An invitation to enjoy homemade pasta at his place. I’d been on two dates with that guy. A lawyer, a sweet man, but no spark. Shouldn’t I be grateful for a nice lawyer’s attention? But chemistry is something you feel, not something you reason your way into, and the lawyer deserved to save his   skills for someone who genuinely liked him, not someone haunted by voices in her head saying she might die alone. Still, I was scared to hurt him, or make him mad. It’s crazy the contortions I could put myself through to avoid another person’s discomfort. I once read a Modern Love column in The New York Times about a woman who invented a story that she was moving to California just to avoid sleeping with this one guy again. I got it. At a time when random hookups have never been easier, the act of simple honesty can be so hard. There’s a reason ”ghosting” is such a common term in dating these days. Often the cleanest way to end a burgeoning relationship is to disappear. Stop responding to emails and texts. But if the Internet makes it easier to disappear on a person, then it must also be pointed out the Internet makes it easier to show up. I typed out a response in the comfort of my kitchen. It took way too long. The email said something hugely unoriginal like, ”I don’t think this is going to work.” My stomach plummeted as I hit ”send.” But not long afterward, I got a response back. He understood. He thanked me for letting him know. And that was . .. it? Yes! That was it! I was free! I didn’t have to pretend I’d moved to another state, or that I was dying of mad cow disease. Once I’d learned to turn down dates, it became much easier to say yes to them. It was just another human interaction, the act of figuring out what you wanted, and what you did not. If I decided not to see someone again, I sent a polite note, and the men were never crushed like I worried they’d be. They almost always wrote back warmly, and said good luck. And we all carried on, one more   step closer to the adults we hoped to be."
"  months of searching the seabed for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has so far turned up no sign of the missing plane. But the teams searching for MH370 have mapped new details about a   region of ocean floor, photographed an anchor and some   clumps of coal from a shipwreck  —   and now, discovered a second shipwreck, this time with the hull distinctly visible. The wreck was first detected on Dec. 19, according to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, the Australian agency established to coordinate the multinational search for the MH370 crash site. Based on the initial sonar contact, analysts suspected the object was   possibly a shipwreck. The search teams sent an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV  —   a robot that’s sort of like a small, unmanned submarine  —   for a closer look. ”On 2 January 2016, the AUV captured   sonar imagery of the contact, confirming that it was indeed the wreck of a ship,” JACC said in a statement. ”The Shipwreck Galleries of the Western Australian Museum has conducted a preliminary review of some sonar imagery and advised that the vessel is likely to be a   vessel dating from the turn of the 19th Century.” The discovery might be exciting for some history buffs  —   but it’s not the   news that the plane itself has been located. The plane disappeared on March 8, 2014, under circumstances that remain mysterious. It lost contact with air traffic control and, according to military radar, charted an altered course. Then it vanished without sending any distress signal. It’s believed to have crashed hundreds of miles off the Australian coast, killing all aboard, but the wreckage hasn’t been located. In July 2015, a wing fragment from the jet was found on the French island of La Réunion, in the Indian Ocean  —   more than 2, 000 miles from the area where the plane is believed to have gone down. An ocean circulation expert told NPR at the time that a piece of debris could readily travel that distance in eight to nine months, given the region’s ocean currents. Search crews face a daunting task. The ocean in the region is deep, and the floor uneven. ”It’s a bit rockier than the Rockies. It’s that sort of terrain,” oceanographer Simon Boxall told NPR’s Scott Simon in April 2014. ”The location they’re looking at is at the foot of a huge mountain. That mountain rises about 3   kilometers  —   that’s about 2 miles up from the sea floor.” Until the search mission began, that part of the sea floor had never been mapped. The investigation has revealed crevasses, ridges and   cliffs, JACC says. The international search teams have searched more than 80, 000 square kilometers (more than 30, 000 square miles) so far, and have committed to searching 120, 000 square kilometers total (more than 46, 000 square miles). They expect the search efforts to last an additional six months or so, until  . After that, if the full search region has been examined with no sign of the plane and no new information, JACC says there will be ”no further expansion of the search area.”"
"A photo of Ai Weiwei covered in Lego bricks was posted to his Instagram account. Lego says it is changing its guidelines for the purchase of large amounts of its iconic toy bricks, a policy that had generated a social media firestorm when used to block sales to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The company said in a statement that it will no longer ask people who want to buy the bricks in bulk what they’re using them for: ”Instead, the customers will be asked to make it clear  —   if they intend to display their LEGO creations in public  —   that the LEGO Group does not support or endorse the specific projects.” In October, Ai said Lego had refused to sell him the bricks he needed for an exhibition on free speech at Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria. He intended to use the bricks to create portraits of freedom advocates. A frequent critic of China who was imprisoned by the government, Ai accused the Danish company of censorship and said it was afraid to offend Beijing. After the company’s decision, supporters of Ai set up donation points around the world for people to donate used bricks. Ai also told NPR that he was flooded with messages of support on social media: ”They’re not necessarily museumgoers, but they understand what is the most important meaning of art, which is to really express yourself successfully and to really defend the essential values.” Ai said pressure from his supporters had pressured Lego to change its policy on bulk orders, and he told The Associated Press that it was a ”good move”: ”Lego is a language which everybody can appreciate and should be able to use . .. according to their will, and that’s what all freedom of expression is about.”"
"South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says she had Donald Trump in mind when she criticized the ”angriest voices” within the GOP in her State of the Union response. ”Mr. Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk,” as have others in the media, in her state and across the country, Haley said on NBC’s Today show Wednesday morning. During her GOP address Tuesday night, following President Obama’s final State of the Union address, Haley was quite critical of some of the current rhetoric in the Republican Party. She made what many saw as criticisms of the controversial GOP presidential candidate. ”Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation,” Haley said Tuesday evening. And given Trump’s proposal to stop Muslims from coming into the country, Haley noted she was the daughter of Indian immigrants and that the U. S. should welcome ”properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion. Just like we have for centuries.” Some of Trump’s staunchest defenders took shots at Haley over her criticisms though, notably conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. Trump responded to Haley’s comments Wednesday, calling in to Fox  Friends. ”She’s weak on illegal immigration, and she certainly has no trouble asking me for campaign contributions,” Trump said. ”I feel very strongly about illegal immigration. She doesn’t, and I think the people in her great state, I love her state, I’m there a lot, and by the way I have a massive lead in South Carolina. We have a massive lead. They’re incredible people, and they feel like I do. Believe me. Because they don’t like what’s happening in our country,” he continued. Haley’s response was widely praised, including by many Democrats, and her performance has only increased speculation that she would be a top pick to be the vice presidential nominee."
"This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the team dissects President Obama’s final State of the Union address. Was the president responding directly to some of the rhetoric on the campaign trail? Congressional reporter Susan Davis analyzes how the speech played with both Democrats and Republicans. NPR’s politics team also discusses the Republican address that followed the State of the Union address, delivered by GOP rising star Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina. On the podcast:"
"The Pritzker Architecture Prize is often called the Nobel for architects, and this year’s winner is    Chilean designer Alejandro Aravena. His prestige projects include the headquarters of a pharmaceutical company in China and a dormitory at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. But Aravena is known for socially conscious, sustainable design, often executed at staggering speed and on minuscule budgets. He pays careful attention to residents of the places where he builds. Aravena gave a TED Talk last year about redesigning the Chilean port city of Constitución  —   in just three months  —   after a devastating 2010 earthquake. It includes video footage of fraught town hall meetings, with upset people loudly yelling about their concerns. ”Participatory design is not a hippy, romantic, ’let’s all drink together about the future of the city’ kind of thing,” Aravena says in the talk, with a slight whiff of weariness. Participatory design and the future of cities are two of Aravena’s favorite topics. More than 2 billion new people will move into the world’s cities in the next 15 years, Aravena said, and that means getting serious about sustainability. ”Sustainability is nothing but the rigorous use of common sense,” he says from his office in Santiago. ”If you are rigorous with common sense and a reasonable approach, almost every single architecture would be sustainable.” Aravena’s common sense inspired his   method of designing houses for 100 Chilean families living in slums. He had enough money to buy land or build houses. Aravena’s solution? Buying the land and putting together frames with just a few livable rooms. ”He builds half a good house rather than building a whole, prepackaged crummy house,” says Richard Sennett, approvingly. Sennett teaches urban studies and design at the London School of Economics and at New York University. He pointed out that Aravena’s incremental houses gave people a chance to build out their frames according to their needs, and add extra rooms for lodgers or relatives. The   structures are basic and made of concrete. ”They’re not beautiful,” Sennett says. ”It’s a different kind of aesthetic than that. They’re clean. There’s no dramatic beauty in them. But when I look at the size of those rooms, I think  —   God, this is exactly right. It’s not decorator beauty. It’s deep beauty.” For his part, Aravena says Chile is short on beautiful, inspiring architecture. It didn’t have an ancient empire like the Incas in Peru, he says, and the colonial Spanish did not leave sophisticated buildings behind. At least none that survived. ”We were always at war for more than 300 years,” Aravena says. ”And then, finally, nature, earthquakes have made their work, too. Almost every single old thing has disappeared.” Clearly, this is not an architect terribly sentimental about the art of building. Sennett says Aravena’s selection as this year’s Pritzker winner signals a generational shift. ”It’s really a wonderful choice,” Sennett says, adding that he hopes it will inspire other architects to address pressing new design challenges, such as climate change. ”Architects are mostly out of it, which is terrible. This is the big environmental story of our time, and we need to get young architects as leaders.”"
"Goldman Sachs will pay about $5 billion to resolve state and federal investigations into its handling of   securities in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, the bank said today. The agreement will settle ”actual and potential civil claims” by the U. S. Justice Department and the attorneys general of New York and Illinois, as well as the Federal Home Loan Banks of Chicago and Seattle and the National Credit Union Administration, the firm said in a press release issued after the close of trading Thursday. ”We are pleased to have reached an agreement in principle to resolve these matters,” said Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive officer. The firm said it will pay a civil monetary penalty of $2. 385 billion, a cash payment of $875 million and $1. 8 billion in consumer relief: ”The consumer relief will be in the form of principal forgiveness for underwater homeowners and distressed borrowers financing for construction, rehabilitation and preservation of affordable housing and support for debt restructuring, foreclosure prevention and housing quality improvement programs, as well as land banks.” Goldman said the settlement, an agreement in principle, has not yet been finalized by the parties involved. If it is, it will reduce earnings for the last three months of 2013 by $1. 5 billion. Ever since the subprime mortgage crisis upended the global financial system, authorities have been investigating a number of large financial institutions and their sale of   securities. The investigations have centered on whether the banks misrepresented the real value of the assets. Regulators have already won large   settlements from several large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. Last May, Goldman announced it was negotiating with federal and state authorities to resolve claims against it."
"A   stellar explosion is baffling astronomers, who say this cosmic beast is so immensely powerful that no one’s sure exactly what made it go boom. The recently discovered inferno is about 200 times more powerful than a typical exploding star, or supernova, and 570 billion times brighter than our sun. It was first spotted in June by the   Automated Survey for Supernovae, nicknamed the ”Assassin” project, so it’s called  . Astronomers describe their finding in a study published Thursday in the journal Science.  Even though it’s the brightest supernova on record  —   if indeed it is a supernova  —   it can’t be seen with the naked eye from Earth, since it is 3. 8 billion   away. Even telescopes don’t help much. ”It looks like a little smudge,” says Subo Dong, an astronomer at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University. ”This is because it’s so far away. It doesn’t look so spectacular.” And if you could get into a spaceship and fly closer, you wouldn’t want to, says astronomer Ben Shappee, at the Carnegie Observatories. That’s because this monster puts out a lot of ultraviolet radiation, so if you actually got close enough to get a good look, ”you would be dead right away,” he points out. Initially, the scientists didn’t realize just how bright this beast was. ”We knew it was probably a supernova, but we didn’t know at that time how interesting or how important it is,” Dong recalls. But soon, more observations from a different telescope made him realize ”it was the most luminous supernova yet discovered.” Dong says he was so excited when he got the news by email one night at 2 a. m. he couldn’t go back to sleep at all. Supernovas have captured the imaginations of sky watchers since ancient times. The first one was observed nearly 2, 000 years ago. What’s more, you wouldn’t be here without them, because almost everything in your life is made up of the remnants of these violent stellar deaths. ”If you look around here on Earth, anything that’s not hydrogen or helium was actually made inside of a star,” explains Shappee. ”It actually has to go through a supernova explosion to be distributed across the galaxy.” This new one is more than twice as bright as the previous record holder. What’s powering it? ”Honestly, the answer is, ’We don’t know,’ ” says Dong. Astronomers will continue to watch it in the coming months with all kinds of telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope. Shappee says he is not sad that this explosion has already peaked and will slowly fade. ”We get more and more information  —   you see basically deeper and deeper into the supernova the longer you observe it,” he says. ”How it changes with time can give us additional information.” Edo Berger, an astronomer at Harvard University, says this find is exciting because ”it’s often, I think, the most extreme events that teach us the most about the range of possibilities that the universe comes up with, especially when it comes to exploding objects.” Most supernovas are the result of some sort of exploding star, says Berger. Superluminous supernovas are at least 10 times brighter than more   ones, and they’re rare. Scientists know only of about 30 of these more powerful explosions, and while they have theories about what drives them,   is so extreme that current models can’t explain it. ”The event itself seems to be coming from the center of the galaxy,” says Berger. ”And so I think that raises the possibility that it could be related to the supermassive black hole that resides in the center of a galaxy like that. And perhaps it is due to a very different mechanism than the explosion of a star.” Perhaps a star got too close to the black hole, which is now ripping it to shreds. ”It’s a story that continues to evolve. It will be interesting to see where we are a year from now,” says Berger. ”We might have a completely different version or story of what we think this object is.” Still, while this explosion is awesome, Berger says it’s not the biggest bang astronomers have seen. Gamma ray bursts, for example, are much more energetic and luminous. ”In the world of supernova explosions, if this is what this object really is, then it is currently the record holder,” says Berger. ”But relative to a gamma ray burst, in fact, this explosion is actually kind of puny.”"
"The secretive sale late last year of the Las Vegas   Nevada’s largest news organization, to the family of one of the wealthiest men in the country set off shock waves in that newsroom. The vast financial and political interests of the billionaire casino magnate and major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson raise nettlesome questions about how the paper can cover him. Yet some journalists say there is a more pointed problem: his sensitivity to what reporters actually do. His lawyers have filed three libel suits against journalists on his behalf, one of which is still ongoing. One of the people he sued went broke facing him in court. That reporter, John L. Smith, is among Adelson’s newest and most prominent employees. Smith writes a column five days a week for the  . And he has written frequently about Adelson, his industry competitors and his politics. ”Las Vegas looks one way to tourists and another way to locals,” Smith says. ”Locals, if they’re here long enough, view Las Vegas as a glitzy factory town. Much in the same way that the auto industry has been so big to Detroit, gaming and tourism is essential, really, to Las Vegas development and growth.” No one in Vegas eclipses the importance of Adelson, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp. ”There are companies with more casinos,” Smith says, ”but I think Sheldon’s personality  —   his dramatic, tremendous success in Macau, his obvious embrace of Republican Party politics and willingness to dump millions and millions of dollars into the presidential campaign  —   this makes him a   player.” Reporting On Newspaper’s New Owner, The Adelson family’s involvement was kept secret in December when the former owners, known as GateHouse Media, announced the sale. GateHouse Media continued to manage the paper. But after the change in ownership, the publisher, Jason Taylor, became involved in personally reviewing, delaying and at times changing the paper’s reporting. An executive brought in to oversee the transition told staffers they did not need to know the details of their new owners. He advised them just to do their jobs. The newsroom interpreted that literally, scrambling to confirm the Adelson family’s acquisition of the  . Mike Hengel was the  ’s editor until late December and oversaw that reporting. ”It takes a lot of courage on their part  —   not just skill but courage,” Hengel says. ”It would be easy to say, ’I don’t want to touch this. This is radioactive.’ But they went after it.” Hengel says he was compelled by his bosses to take a buyout after clashing with Taylor, the publisher, over coverage of the newspaper’s sale. Court Clash With Las Vegas Reporter, When John Smith’s writing vexed Adelson a decade ago, it had enduring consequences for him personally. This account is based on interviews with Smith and Smith’s current and former colleagues as well as a review of voluminous court records in state and federal courts and contemporaneous news reports. Adelson sued Smith over a 2005 book called Sharks in the Desert. Smith devoted a chapter to Adelson’s rise in the   neighborhood of Dorchester in south Boston. The passage sparking the lawsuit noted Adelson’s early investments in vending machines. It also explored organized crime’s presence in that trade, though it made no specific claims involving Adelson. Adelson alleged his reputation had been badly damaged. The billionaire sought $15 million. Smith already faced other pressing concerns. ”I was sued at a time when my daughter was in the hospital being treated for brain cancer,” Smith says. ”I thought it was particularly cruel, quite frankly.” Smith says his daughter, Amelia, survived surgery and repeated chemotherapy and radiation. To address Adelson’s objections, Smith and his book publisher issued some corrections for unsold copies and even offered to publish them in his   column to reach a wider audience. Adelson wanted something else. His team suggested a specific kind of apology to be made in court. The offer initially arrived, Smith says, through a rabbi. According to Smith, Adelson would drop the suit, if ”I would admit that I meant to malign him, and libel him, and paid a [one] dollar judgment, which would have ended my career.” ”And he of course knew that,” Smith says. Adelson’s representatives sweetened the deal: He would place $200, 000 in an account for the Smith family’s medical bills, Smith says, as long as the reporter did not tell his bosses. Instead, Smith filed for bankruptcy. In court documents, a judge cited more than $200, 000 in legal fees and medical bills that Smith could not pay. ”We just soldiered on,” Smith says. A spokesman for Adelson on newspaper issues referred questions to his corporate executives at Las Vegas Sands Corp. ”Las Vegas Sands operates in an extremely competitive and regulated industry, which requires complete transparency and the highest ethical standards,” says Ron Reese, senior vice president for global communications at Las Vegas Sands. ”In short, Mr. Adelson’s reputation means everything  —   especially in this business.” Adelson’s ownership of newspaper properties does not diminish the importance of that fact, Reese says. ”Whether it’s careless reporting or malicious political attacks that impugn his reputation, he frankly has an obligation to the company’s shareholders and the 50, 000 employees of this company to set the record straight.” After several years, Adelson dropped the libel suit against Smith. It was dismissed with prejudice, which means it cannot be revived. Smith emerged from bankruptcy in early 2011. He and his wife divorced several months later, and he subsequently wrote about his own treatment for cancer. In the years since, Smith has shared a few pictures of his daughter on his Twitter account. ”She is disabled today. She uses a wheelchair to get around. But she’s doing just great,” Smith says. ”She is working on life every day, as we all are.” Taking On Other Journalists In Court, In 2013, Adelson sued a Wall Street Journal reporter in Hong Kong, Kate O’Keeffe, for describing him as ” ” in an article about a lawsuit alleging corruption in his Macau casinos, one of the key drivers of his wealth. Though Adelson sued the reporter as an individual, and did not include her employer, the Journal defended her in court. In court filings, the Journal suggested an ”ulterior motive” of Adelson’s lawsuit was to get O’Keeffe pulled off the beat. The newspaper’s lawyers cited a telephone conversation in which Reese, the Sands executive, asked a Journal editor whether she would be reassigned. Reese tells NPR that he believes many   people would ask whether O’Keeffe now has a conflict of interest in covering the company. (The Columbia Journalism Review reached a different conclusion.) O’Keeffe and her attorney declined to comment for this story. Colleen Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones, says O’Keeffe has been kept on the beat throughout the proceedings and received a promotion, though she will soon move to the newspaper’s bureau in Washington, D. C. As a judge wrote in court, Adelson also won an apology and legal fees from Britain’s Daily Mail. Reach Of Adelson’s Interests, Adelson’s philanthropy and political interests span local, national and international affairs. In the 2012 election cycle, the investigative reporting organization ProPublica found that Adelson and his wife spent at least $98 million to aid various Republican candidates, especially political action committees favoring Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. The true figure may be far larger, ProPublica reported. Adelson also has been an advocate for Israel, especially the hawkish stance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Adelson created a free newspaper, Israel Hayom, which has become the largest circulating newspaper in Israel, sometimes called ”” a play on Netanyahu’s nickname and the Hebrew word for newspaper. ”It has not only had an impact stoking   politics, but also on media,” Jane Eisner,    of the Jewish publication The Forward, tells NPR in an email. ”It [poses] a direct economic challenge to other outlets, who after all, have to charge for their product.” Future Of The ’ ’ Former   editor Hengel says columnist Smith has always been fearless in the past  —   and remains so. Under the new ownership, Smith has weighed in several times about Adelson and his executives. Reese, the Sands executive, says Adelson’s ownership of newspaper properties does not color his drive to protect his reputation. Reese would not address what the future holds for the  . But, he adds, ”I know I saw a John L. Smith column in the newspaper yesterday, so I would just leave it at that.” Taylor, the   publisher, started to smooth the waters by naming a new acting editor, Glenn Cook. As the paper’s editorial page editor, Cook had written critically of the secrecy initially cloaking the paper’s purchase. Last week, Cook announced there would be money to rehire more reporters. After sessions with reporters, Cook unveiled a detailed policy spelling out exactly how the   will cover Adelson, with an emphasis on full disclosure of his interests. The paper will still be managed by its previous owners at GateHouse. Yet Smith acknowledges nervousness about having Adelson as his paper’s new owner. ”Giving him the benefit of the doubt going forward, I think, is important,” Smith says. ”But the bottom line is I don’t think he should own this or any newspaper.” For now, Smith says, he’s still paid to have opinions about greater Las Vegas. Even that one."
"Thursday’s main Republican debate airs on Fox Business Network beginning at 9 p. m. EST. It’s the home stretch in the presidential campaign before people actually start voting in less than three weeks  —   and that raises the stakes for Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate in Charleston, S. C. (After this debate, there will be just one more before the Iowa caucuses.) Donald Trump has been the great disruptor of the 2016 presidential campaign. He’s been the focus, whether Republicans have wanted him to be or not. And Thursday night, all the other candidates (except perhaps Ben Carson) will likely have him in their sights. That’s especially true after Trump and Ted Cruz finally dropped the niceties with each other. Trump continued to raise questions about Cruz’s eligibility to be president  —   even playing ”Born in the U. S. A.” at his rallies. (Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother.) Cruz hit back, saying Trump should play ”New York, New York” at his rallies because he ”embodies New York values.” Cruz accused Trump of being ”rattled.” In the past, Trump and Cruz have pulled their punches in these debates. After questioning Cruz’s temperament last month, Trump famously said, ”He’s just fine. Don’t worry about it,” at a debate in Las Vegas. That was enough for Cruz, who has cleverly, if not transparently, waited for Trump to implode while not offending him, aiming to inherit Trump’s supporters. The detente may be over. Or, who knows, maybe the alliance continues. But Trump vs. Cruz isn’t the only angling going on. It’s not even the most intense. Right now, arguably, that’s happening among the four Republicans aiming to win the establishment lane: Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich. All of them made the cut for the main debate. (Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul were all invited to debate in the earlier undercard. Paul declined the invitation and, on Wednesday, was still lobbying to get on the main stage because of a poll released Wednesday showing him in a better position.) There’s a battle royale going on among the establishment candidates, all trying to edge the other out, especially in New Hampshire. They believe whichever of them emerges in New Hampshire can consolidate enough support to defeat Trump. Christie got the brunt of the attacks last week then it was Rubio’s turn. Cruz will likely go after Rubio again on immigration, and a superPAC supporting Bush cut ads accusing Rubio of being squishy on the issues. One makes fun of boots Rubio was wearing and shows someone wearing a similar pair of ”flipping boots.” The other depicts Rubio as a weather vane on a barn, going whichever way the wind blows. The debate begins at 9 p. m. EST on Fox Business Network. (The undercard begins at 6 p. m. EST.) Trump will be center stage, flanked by Cruz and Rubio. The next wrung will be Carson and Christie, with Bush and Kasich on the ends. Here’s a look at what each candidate needs to do and needs to avoid: Need: Be on his game look like he’s enjoying himself be energetic (not ”low energy”) Avoid: Topics where he’s not   crossing the line, wherever that might be  —   if there is one, Need: If you come at the king, you best not miss. Cruz and Trump have taken the gloves off lately. If he goes after Trump, he’d better land it, because no one has fared well who’s gotten in the mud with Trump. Avoid: Losing    exchanges with Trump taking incoming from others, like Rubio fighting a   war with Trump and Rubio, Need: Not let this look like a   race, Avoid: Getting   on immigration again fading into the background, Need: Somehow show relevance again show facility of the issues, alertness and nimbleness, Avoid: Fumbling his message and looking disengaged, Need: Stand out as a leader. He’s best when he seems to take over the room and make a bigger point. Avoid: Sounding too much like a scold, getting into scuffles with   candidates (read: Kasich) which would make him look like a guy who barely made the cut looking like the moderate, Need: Appear at ease and in the mix for the entire two hours be prepared for the counterpunch, Avoid: Looking frustrated and annoyed, Need: Break out from the pack of the four vying for the establishment, Avoid: Being sidelined by Trump and the establishment types he’s running against, NPR’s Don Gonyea contributed to this report."
"Update at at 6:30 p. m. ET on Friday: Sen. Ted Cruz gave the Federal Election Commission an accounting of his campaign loans Thursday evening. The Cruz for Senate treasurer acknowledged in a letter that Cruz’s loans to the campaign were underwritten by a margin loan from Goldman Sachs, where his wife is a managing director, and a line of credit from Citibank. The letter repeated Cruz’s contention that the campaign loans were ”personal loans from Senator Ted Cruz.” It termed the Goldman and Citi funds ”underlying loans.” The letter was ”to supplement the public record,” it said. It did not include an FEC form to disclose ”loans and lines of credit from lending institutions.” That form requires details about guarantors, collateral and pledges, plus the signatures of the campaign treasurer and a representative of the lending institution. The original post follows: Ted Cruz charged into national politics in 2012, when he burst from the Tea Party right to take down a Texas establishment Republican in a Senate primary. His underdog campaign benefited from $1. 43 million in loans supplied by the candidate. Cruz was trailing badly, when he told his wife he wanted ”to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign,” he noted to The New York Times in 2013. ”What astonished me, then and now, was Heidi within 60 seconds said, ’Absolutely,’ with no hesitation.” It now appears they didn’t liquidate, but rather borrowed against their investments, with a margin loan from Goldman Sachs, where Heidi Cruz is a managing director. (She’s on leave for the campaign.) They also took a line of credit from Citibank. The story was broken by The New York Times a day before a pivotal Republican debate on Thursday and as Cruz finds himself the favorite in Iowa. The revelation has the potential to be damaging to Cruz, because it could undermine his Tea Party outsider,   Street narrative and credentials. If nothing else, it reminds voters  —   or tells ones who didn’t know  —   of his wife’s association with the major Wall Street firm. 1. Cruz had a legal obligation to disclose the loans, There are two disclosure requirements. He complied with one, reporting both the Goldman Sachs and Citibank deals in his personal financial reports as a candidate and newly elected senator. The campaign paid zero interest, the documents say. The personal financial disclosures also report Cruz’s   loans to the campaign. There’s no connection made between the two sets of transactions. The disclosures also don’t show any   of the couple’s financial investments. Cruz’s Senate campaign reported to the Federal Election Commission that Cruz made the loans there’s no mention of Goldman or Citi. This appears to be contrary to election law, which requires a candidate not only to report the amount, interest rate, terms and date but also to file the actual loan documents. That last is to thwart secret sweetheart deals. 2. Cruz says he didn’t hide anything, The candidate told CNN’s Dana Bash this morning, ”Those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings. If it was the case that they were not filed exactly as the FEC requires, then we’ll amend the filings.” In other words, no big deal. 3. Cruz’s filings failed to make complete disclosure, Candidates often take out second mortgages on their homes, which appear in FEC filings as bank loans to the candidate to benefit the campaign. The Cruz Senate campaign didn’t do this with the Goldman and Citi deals it just reported personal loans from Cruz. The two scenarios may not be exactly parallel  —   or they could conceal problems. Take joint ownership. Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the FEC, said that beyond the residence, a candidate usually cannot borrow against more than 50 percent of jointly owned assets. The spouse is restrained by the contribution limits for Heidi Cruz in 2012, that would have been $5, 000 total for the primary and general elections. Presidential candidates John Kerry,  . and John McCain,  . both married to wealthy women, ran into this situation. Questions like these are the reason loan documents themselves must be filed with the FEC, something the Cruz Senate campaign failed to do. Finally, there’s the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement role. It might be expected to investigate a   lapse in disclosing loans exceeding $1 million. Cruz could divert the case into a negotiated ”alternative dispute resolution.” Then again, if investigators want to dig into it, they would need permission from the six FEC commissioners. In any sort of big controversy, the commissioners usually split along party lines, which would shut down any inquiry. 4. The issues for Cruz aren’t just legal  —   they’re political, Cruz is deploying the ”keep moving, nothing to see here” strategy. He told Bash, ”All of the information has been public and transparent for many years. And that’s the end of that.” But news of Cruz’s financial relationships with Goldman and Citi runs   into his latest attack against rival Donald Trump: that the businessman ”embodies New York values,” while Cruz himself represents everyday American conservatives. Goldman Sachs has always been a tender subject in the Cruz organization. He doesn’t apologize for Heidi Cruz’s job there, but he attacks Goldman and other Wall Street financial firms as ”crony capitalists” with too much power in Washington. The day after announcing for president, he told Bloomberg News, ”Goldman is one of the biggest banks on Wall Street, and my criticism with Washington is they engage in crony capitalism. They give favors to Wall Street and big business, and that’s why I’ve been an outspoken opponent of crony capitalism, taking on leaders in both parties.” If there turns out to be some impropriety in the loans, the Cruz campaign could be grievously wounded. Even without that, deals with Goldman Sachs and Citibank could blur the   line Cruz has always drawn for himself. But by   Thursday, Cruz was actually fundraising off the controversy. A campaign email with his signature claimed media bias was to blame: ”The New York Times made the strategic decision to dictate the outcome of this election by launching an   assault on Heidi and me. I’m preparing to fight back like never before, but I cannot come up short if I am going to go up against The New York Times and win.”"
"Eating healthfully in America is hard. We have to contend with constant sugary and oily temptations, while pervasive ads coax us to eat these items day in and out. The public health community generally agrees that regulations and taxes could help remind us of the potential health toll of the unhealthiest items  —   like beverages high in sugar  —   and keep us from consuming too much of them. Lately, the idea of affixing a health warning label to sugary beverages also has been getting traction. So far, no city or state has been able to pass such a measure. But several are trying. California, New York and Baltimore all have legislation in the works requiring these labels on sugary drinks. Until now, the effectiveness of such a label has been presumptive, drawing from the large body of research showing that warning labels on tobacco and alcohol products work. But research appearing in the journal Pediatrics Thursday suggests that a warning label on sugary beverages might indeed deter people from buying the products. The study was an online survey of about 2, 400 parents from diverse backgrounds who were asked to choose a beverage for their child from an imaginary vending machine. The participants were randomly assigned one of six possible beverages: one with no label, one with a calorie label and four with different variations on a text warning label. The criteria for the (imaginary) beverages were drawn from proposed California legislation: any sweetened nonalcoholic drink with added sweeteners with 75 or more calories per 12 fluid ounces. According to the researchers, led by Christina Roberto, assistant professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, significantly fewer parents in the study chose   beverages if there was a warning label on it: just 40 percent, versus 60 percent who chose one with no label, and 53 percent who chose one with a calorie label. ”We were surprised that the warning labels had as big an impact as they did,” Roberto tells us. ”I think the study shows us that calorie labels aren’t terribly effective, and warning labels might have a bigger impact.” The impact was actually  : The labels educated consumers about the health harms of drinking sugary beverages and influenced their purchasing behavior as a result. But while promising, the study offers only a vague idea of how warning labels might work in the real world, if a city like Baltimore or a state like California were to implement them. Roberto says she suspects the effect wouldn’t be as strong. ”We certainly need more data to know for sure,” she says. On Monday, a Baltimore councilman introduced legislation that would require businesses ”that sell or advertise   sodas, energy drinks, sports drinks, juices, coffees and teas to post signs warning consumers that they contribute to tooth decay, obesity and diabetes,” the Baltimore Sun reported. Leana Wen is the city’s health commissioner, and she’s hearing a lot of support from physicians and parents in Baltimore for the proposed policy. ”Parents are telling us they would like information to level the playing field. They want to have accurate information for themselves and their children,” says Wen. ”The evidence tells us that [other kinds of] warning labels on tobacco and alcohol products do have an effect on parents and consumer choices.” But, Wen says, the beverage industry has been pushing back hard in Baltimore, lobbying legislators to reject the warning label policy and ”frightening our small businesses, telling them they’re going to be hurt by this and lose business.” It’s not clear whether the bill will make it out of committee. But Roberto says that her study revealed that support for such policies might be broad. Some 73 percent of the participants said they were in favor of a policy requiring a warning label on   beverages."
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering a travel warning for countries where Zika virus is circulating. The reason: growing concern among researchers that the virus could be causing babies in Brazil to be born with brain damage. The Zika virus is named after the Zika forest in Uganda, where it was first identified in the 1940s. For decades it was a rare disease, primarily popping up in Africa and occasionally in Southeast Asia. In 2007, there was a major Zika outbreak in Micronesia. Then in May of 2015 the virus turned up in Brazil. ”And within a year it has spread throughout the continent,” says Nikos Vasilakis, a professor in the department of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. ”The Brazilian Ministry of Health estimates that anywhere between a half a million to 1   million people may be infected,” he adds. Last month, the World Health Organization said Zika had spread to eight other countries in the hemisphere. This month, WHO upped that tally to 14 nations in the Americas. Usually the virus causes a mild cold. Now it appears that Zika may also be causing a birth defect called microcephaly: babies born with small heads and severe brain damage. Brazil has seen cases of microcephaly skyrocket from about 200 a year to more than 3, 000 in 2015. Vasilakis has been working in northeastern Brazil to set up monitoring systems for Zika. He believes these 3, 000 cases are just the tip of the iceberg. The babies being born now, he says, reflect damage that could have ”occurred about six or seven months ago during the first trimester of pregnancy.” That means there could be more babies on the way with this severe form of brain damage. The situation is so dire that some health officials in Brazil have suggested that women in places with high rates of Zika transmission should avoid getting pregnant. Dr. Lyle Petersen, who’s leading the CDC response to the Zika outbreak, says this virus poses a serious threat to travelers to countries where the virus is spreading, including much of Latin America and the Caribbean. ”Given the potential and increasingly strong association with these birth defects, this is a matter of some considerable concern,” says Petersen, who is the director of the Division of   Diseases. Petersen says travelers can protect themselves by taking steps to avoid mosquito bites. That’s always been an important strategy in the tropics, he says, even before Zika showed up. Any new travel warning could be devastating to local tourism industries. However, Vasilakis, at the University of Texas, says that given the damage this virus may cause to fetuses, a warning to pregnant women is prudent. ”If my wife was pregnant or planning to be pregnant I would not feel comfortable with her traveling to those areas,” he says. The CDC is expected to come out with new guidance for pregnant women about traveling to   countries soon."
"Note: This post was updated on February 5. As more information comes to light about Zika virus, there will be further updates. A once obscure disease is now making headlines. First identified in Africa in 1947, Zika virus came to the Americas for the first time in early 2015, in Brazil. That was the beginning of a large ongoing outbreak that quickly spread north and has now reached more than 20 countries. And a virus once thought to be not too serious has taken an alarming turn. This past fall, doctors in Brazil noticed a spike in the number of babies with a serious congenital brain deformity called microcephaly  —   when an infant is born with an underdeveloped brain and skull. Researchers believe the birth defect could be linked to cases of Zika contracted during pregnancy. Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued recommendations for pregnant women or women thinking about getting pregnant to avoid travel to countries where Zika virus is circulating. Here’s what we know about Zika  —   and what we’re trying to find out. What is it? Zika virus infection can cause Zika fever  —   an illness often accompanied by rash, fever, joint pain and conjunctivitis. It is spread by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, but primarily A. aegypti, the same mosquito species that carries the dengue and chikungunya viruses. Zika is usually a mild disease. Only 1 in 5 people infected experience symptoms. Those who do get sick report fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, and sometimes headaches, muscle pain and vomiting. The illness lasts about a week. Cases severe enough to require hospitalization are rare, and no deaths have been reported. But public health concerns have been raised because of the hypothesis that the virus may cause microcephaly if a pregnant woman becomes infected. The virus may also be linked to   syndrome in a small proportion of cases. Health authorities are investigating the exact relationship between Zika virus and these neurological conditions. ”We are still trying to understand the full spectrum of illness,” says Dr. Susan Hills of the Center for Disease Control’s Division of   Diseases. Where is it? After it was first identified in 1947 in Uganda, Zika virus sporadically infected people in Africa and parts of South and Southeast Asia. Then, in 2007 Zika virus was spotted for the first time outside Africa and Asia on Yap Island in the western Pacific Ocean, where it caused a large outbreak. The virus subsequently spread to other island nations in the Pacific, including French Polynesia, where it caused another widespread outbreak in 2014. Eventually, it landed in the Americas, in Brazil, in 2015. Since then, the virus has been   north. The pattern of spread has been similar to chikungunya, another   disease that’s recently fanned out across South and Central America. How is it spread? Zika virus is spread by several different species of Aedes mosquitoes, but primarily by A. aegypti. A mosquito that bites an infected person can pick up the virus and after an incubation period of about 10 days, that mosquito can spread the virus when it bites other people. There have been sporadic reports that Zika virus can be spread in other ways. Authorities worry that it might be spread via blood transfusions, during childbirth and possibly during sexual intercourse via male semen, though there is not enough evidence to properly evaluate these risks. The link to congenital microcephaly means pregnant mothers may be transmitting the virus to their fetuses, but researchers are still looking for definitive evidence of this. Mosquitoes, however, are by far the major avenue of spread and the focus of prevention strategies. Is an outbreak in North America likely? So far, several dozen cases of Zika among continental U. S. residents have been reported, all in travelers returning from countries with Zika outbreaks with one exception  —   in Texas, a person who’d contracted the Zika virus in another country transmitted it to another person through sexual contact. There are Aedes mosquitoes in parts of the United States, and small clusters of Zika may occur as they have with diseases like dengue, but the likelihood of a   outbreak like Brazil’s is low, according to most experts. A. aegypti, the mosquito most likely to spread Zika virus, is found mostly in southeast states along the Gulf Coast. Most people in those states have   and adequate window and door screens, measures that keep mosquitoes from biting people. How is the disease diagnosed in humans? Because Zika fever is so similar to diseases like dengue or chikungunya, lab tests are necessary to verify Zika infection. But that process can be tricky. First, there is no commercial test for Zika virus so blood or tissue samples must be sent to a public health laboratory with specialized testing capacity. Second, the virus is difficult to detect with existing lab tests. Within the first week, it is possible to detect evidence of circulating virus using a molecular testing technique called PCR. After a week, though, the virus is usually no longer in the body. But at this point, samples can be tested for Zika virus antibodies, though the test is not very precise and may detect dengue virus antibodies. Further   tests need to be done in order to distinguish between the two infections. The CDC is developing rapid laboratory tests that are specific to Zika virus, but it is unclear how long that will take.  Treatment and cure? There is no treatment for Zika virus infection. Painkillers and fever reducers help manage the symptoms until the infection clears, usually in about a week. President Obama has called for increased efforts to find treatments and develop a vaccine. Most estimates are that such treatment is at least three to five years off, although there are reports of a vaccine that could go into trials this year. How do we stop it? Keep the mosquito population in check by eliminating pools of standing water near dwellings, promote the use of window screens and bed nets, and prevent mosquito bites by wearing long sleeves and pants and using a repellent containing DEET, picaridin or oil of lemon eucalyptus. Our sources: Dr. Susan Hills of the Center for Disease Control’s Division of   Diseases, Nikos Vasilakis of the University of Texas Medical Branch, Brian Foy of Colorado State University. "
"The Episcopal Church has been disciplined by the Anglican Communion, the international faith fellowship of which the church is a part, over deep disagreements about homosexuality and   marriage. The church has not been removed from the communion. However, it will be barred from Anglican   for three years and will no longer represent the community in ecumenical or interfaith bodies, the Anglican organization has decided. The Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop in 2003. In 2012, the church voted to allow blessings over   unions, while not calling them identical to marriage. Then last year, the church’s highest body voted to formally approve Episcopalian   marriages.   churches within the international Anglican community disagree with those decisions. In a statement, coming near the end of a weeklong meeting of its leaders, the Anglican Communion called the Episcopal decisions on marriage ”a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching held by the majority of our Provinces.” The Anglican tradition defines marriage ”as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union,” the leaders said, calling the Episcopal Church’s decision to accept gay marriage a unilateral action that caused ”deep pain” in the community. The meeting of the Anglican Communion this week was called specifically to address the disagreements over marriage. The deep division in the faith over issues of sexuality reflects a geographic divide  —   Anglican churches in the global Southern Hemisphere generally have stricter views on the subject, as NPR’s Tom Gjelten reported on All Things Considered Wednesday: ”The differences are complicated by history. Anglicanism in the global south is an outgrowth of British colonialism. This week’s meeting was called by the Rev. Justin Welby, who, as the archbishop of Canterbury, is the global Anglican leader. ”Welby, who has traveled widely in Africa and elsewhere, told a Washington audience recently that he has found many Anglican leaders feeling like new moral values are being imposed on them by their old colonial masters. . .. ”One more consideration  —   Christians in the global south often compete with Muslims. Philip Jenkins, a religion historian at Baylor University, says their resistance to   marriage must be seen in that context: ’If they were ever to waver on these gay issues, they think that would just hand a massive propaganda victory to Muslims.’ ” In addition to sanctioning the Episcopal Church, the Anglican leadership will also establish a task force ”with the intention of restoration of relationship, the rebuilding of mutual trust, healing the legacy of hurt, recognising the extent of our commonality and exploring our deep differences, ensuring they are held between us in the love and grace of Christ,” the group says. The Episcopal Church is the only Anglican body to have fully endorsed gay marriage, The Associated Press notes, but Anglican churches in Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand and Scotland have moved to recognize   relationships. And Canada’s Anglican Church is scheduled to vote this year on whether to authorize gay marriage."
"Instead of the Summer Games, you might as well call these the gloomy games. Back when Rio de Janeiro was awarded the 2016 Summer Olympics, seven years ago, the country was on a high. The economy was growing, the middle class was expanding and the country seemed finally to be realizing its potential. Marcelo Barreto, a famous Brazilian TV sports journalist who has covered mega sporting events all over the world for two decades, recalls that electric atmosphere when his home city got the games in 2009. ”It was a very optimistic moment for Brazil, and I think the Olympics were another message that we were being accepted by the developed world,” Barreto says. ”It wasn’t about the events themselves it was about Brazil.” Things look very different now as Brazil prepares for the opening ceremony on Aug. 5. The economy is crashing. There’s a huge corruption scandal. Impeachment proceedings are underway against President Dilma Rousseff. There’s panic over a   virus linked to brain damage in infants. By the time August rolls around, Barreto believes ”we are going to deliver good games. We are happy when people come and we can share the moment.” There is a race, as always, to get things done in time. Things won’t work exactly as planned, but the games will go on, according to Barreto and others. But at present, ”I think there is a feeling of disappointment in the air, with Brazil itself,” he notes. ”People are concerned with more pressing, urgent things right now.” Health Care Shortages, Like a health care crisis in Rio. Rio’s state government gets much of its revenue from oil production. But the price of a barrel is very low, leaving the state practically bankrupt. The most visible sign of this has been at state hospitals. On a recent day, dozens of people were crowding the entrance of the Hospital Albert Schweitzer, creating a chaotic scene outside the hospital they could not enter. Cristiani Silva was waiting to see her husband, who was being treated inside. She says it’s a huge contradiction for Brazil to be hosting these games, spending money the country doesn’t have when there’s a health crisis. ”I was happy about the Olympics before,” she says. ”They said it was going to make our city better. But it was all a sham.” One woman recently gave birth on a sidewalk in Rio because a hospital wasn’t admitting patients owing to funding shortages. The main doctors union said this week that the health system in Rio isn’t capable of dealing with the influx of tourists for the games. ”The crisis has completely impacted the Olympic Games,” says Roberto Maltchik, the Olympics editor at Rio’s biggest daily, O Globo. ”They have no money. They can’t incur any   costs,” he says. Budgets have been slashed across the board. One of the Olympic stadiums just had its water and lights cut off because of unpaid bills. The builder for two other venues has had to lay off workers and hasn’t paid suppliers. Cutbacks All Around, Athletes are also feeling the crunch. Davilani Cruz, a member of Brazil’s national taekwondo team, says a monthly stipend provided by Brazil’s Ministry of Sport hasn’t been paid in five months. ”I think this isn’t something that should be happening in an Olympic year,” Cruz says. ”We athletes depend on the stipend to travel to competitions and we don’t have a lot of other support, so we end up lagging behind.” The overall costs are difficult to pin down, but Brazil budgeted around $13 billion and is expected to go well beyond that, according to one report. At an event this week marking the opening of the athletics stadium, Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, faced a barrage of questions about the hospital crisis and budget cuts. ”We have enough money to do everything that is supposed to be done, as you can see here,” he said. ”We are not China [which hosted the 2008 games] we are not England [which hosted the 2012 games]. We are not a rich country. So every time we can cut some of the budget of the Olympics, we will do it. This is not going to be an Olympics of wasting money.” So the mayor is selling the crisis as a good thing. Barreto, the sports journalist, says what’s happened to Brazil might serve as a lesson to other countries considering hosting the games. ”It’s too much money,” he says. ”If a Third World country could help deliver this message, I think it would be a positive role in the history of Olympics.”"
"The poet C. D. Wright died in her sleep on Tuesday night at the age of 67. She was a   writer, a winner of a MacArthur ”genius” grant, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a longtime teacher at Brown University. She’ll be grieved in the public ways   writers are, but within the poetry community  —   on Facebook, Twitter, via text and email and phone  —   a kind of keening wail has sounded since the news of her death began to spread. Wright was beloved to many of us, a model poet and person. She meant a great deal to me. Her writing has long been my favorite example of how a dedicated and constant practice can result in great art. And more personally, Wright did a deep kindness for my family when my son suffered a terrible birth injury, though she did not know us well. And amidst the outpouring of poets’ grief over her death, there has also been an outpouring of gratitude  —   Wright was deeply kind to many people. Born in Arkansas in 1949, Wright wrote over a dozen books of poetry and lyric prose. Her writing is fierce, funny, and as attuned to morality as a compass needle to the north. She was a pioneer of what can be described as ”documentary poetry.” Calling herself a ”humble factotum” she would alight on a subject and describe it as accurately as possible using the poet’s tools  —   tone, metaphor, music, voice  —   rather than the journalist’s, but the goal was essentially the same: to tell the Truth with a capital T. She was a believer in Emily Dickinson’s mandate to ”Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” Though by ”slant,” both Dickinson and Wright meant something other than the kind of bias that word summons now. They advocate looking at the world from viewpoints and angles most people don’t choose: Dickinson gets her eyes right into the grass to see her ”narrow fellow,” and Wright, too, walks right up to her subjects  —   such as the men and women in Louisiana prisons whose voices she channels in her masterful One Big Self (a collaboration with the photographer Deborah Luster) as well as civil rights activists in One With Others  —   and asks them to speak clearly into her poems. They speak for themselves, but their voices are wrapped, cradled by Wright’s ear and eye:   I won’t say I like being in prison, but I have, learned a lot, and I like experiences. The terriblest part is being away, from your families.  —  Juanita,   I miss my screenporch. I know every word to every song on Purple Rain.  —  Willie, And yet, I can think of no other poet with such steadfast commitment to accuracy  —   it’s a moral commitment for Wright she is almost averse to the imaginary  —   who was so relentlessly imaginative in her deployment of forms, tones, and sounds. Listen to this subtle song of ”S’s”: ”she had been thinking about what he    What has been said is said    Sifting for some interlinear significance.” Wright’s body of work (start with her 2002 new and selected poems Steal Away, which rounds up the best of her early and middle poetry, then read the two books I mention above) is an encyclopedia of poetic innovation, a parade of new ways a form can frame a subject. Many poets, I suppose, unknowingly write their own elegies, or at least write poems that, after the fact, help readers come to terms with their deaths, with death in general: ”Poetry is nothing if not equipped for crisis,” says Wright in her new book of prose about poetry, published just last week. Wright, whose death was sudden and unexpected, has such a poem in her upcoming collection, Shallcross, due out in April:   Widow Poem, he smiles as if but is not breathinga moment ago he was in his chairreading she was lighting the fireshe thought she heard a bookdrop to the floor he didn’t answerin an instant she sensed ita tangible space across an openingshe could neither enter nor fillas if his eye hit upon a passageelegant and cruel and true, Here Wright comes up with what is probably as precise a description of how death looks to the living as we’re likely to find: ”a tangible space across an   she could neither enter nor fill.” Wright, alas, has crossed that space and won’t come back. One of the quirks of literary criticism is the convention of referring, always, to the writing in the present tense, even if the writer must be referred to in the past. C. D. Wright, who is survived by her husband, the poet, novelist, and translator Forrest Gander, and their son, should have had many more books ahead of her I grieve the loss of those books, too. But I’m grateful that I get to continue to refer to her work in the present it will last. Wright left us not only a record of what she saw, but of her way of seeing, her slant, from which Truths will always be visible. Craig Morgan Teicher is a writer and editor, most recently of the collection, Once and for All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz, releasing April 2016."
"Millions of bats are dying due to a deadly disease sweeping across the United States, their tiny bodies strewn across cave floors. The northern   bat is one of the bat species that was hardest hit by the   syndrome, a deadly fungal disease. The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalized new regulations on Thursday to protect the species  —   but some environmentalists say the government should be doing more. The new regulations list the species as ”threatened.” Dan Ashe, director of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says biologists will now be able to do more to protect the caves where the bats hibernate and part of the forest where the bats live in summer. ”And then it allows us to provide protections to maternity trees, so protecting that vulnerable life stage when the bats are having pups and when the pups cannot fly,” Ashe says. Some environmentalists say Ashe’s agency should have gone further by adding these animals to the endangered species list  —   the highest protection allowed by federal law. ”The species, by any sensible measure, clearly deserves endangered status,” says Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity in Vermont. ”It’s dying at rates of 90 to 100 percent.” Vermont is where some of the biggest bat   have occurred. Matteson says these new regulations still allow risky development by wind farms, loggers and oil and gas companies. ”The Fish and Wildlife Service has now basically opened the door for any and all kinds of activity that may affect this bat and its habitat,” she says. Northern   bats were once one of the most common bats found in the country, living in states from North Carolina to Montana and Wyoming. The bats are voracious hunters and play a big role in controlling insects. The   syndrome was first identified in 2007, earning its name from white fungus found on infected bats’ faces. It has since spread to 26 states and is poised to turn up in Nebraska this winter. The spread of the disease isn’t expected to stop until it reaches the West Coast. Ashe thinks these regulations will prompt companies to work more cautiously in forests where northern   bats live, and biologists will monitor how well the new rules are protecting crucial habitat. ”Certainly in the future I could see a potential that its status would change to endangered. So in the meantime, people shouldn’t, you know, be relaxing,” he says. ”We should be working with the wind industry and the oil and gas industry and the utility industry and others to put in place durable protections.” It’s unclear just how effective regulations like this will be in saving northern   bats. After all, it’s that deadly fungal disease that’s pushing them to the brink and scientists still have no way of stopping it."
"”Look. Have you seen this?” asks    Emmanuel Kwame, who’s completely blind. We are standing in his vegetable garden in the village of Asubende in central Ghana. I do see what he’s pointing at, but I’m unclear what he ”sees.” He’s tapping his walking stick against a denuded stalk that used to be some sort of plant. ”This is palm nuts. It was growing, and some goats came to eat it.” In Asubende, goats are the bane of the blind. Goats are clever. They’re quick. They defy gravity and fencing. Despite the goats, Kwame keeps a small vegetable garden and a grove of 70 cashew trees. Kwame first started to get sick with onchocerciasis, commonly known as river blindness, when he was in his 20s. The disease is caused by a roundworm infection that’s spread by black flies. ”I started having nodules [lumps of worms just under the skin] and swelling all over my body,” he says. ”And then it would appear as if some worms were on my eyes. I would see them moving across my eyes and I realized my eyes were no good.” As the parasites reproduce, hundreds of thousands of larvae spread throughout the person’s body. Blindness is actually a late stage of the disease. The worms knot up under the skin. Most of the baby worms  —   hundreds of thousands of them  —   die just below the surface of the skin, which causes severe itching. Kwame says the discomfort was unbearable. ”You will scratch and scratch,” he says. ”If it were now, I couldn’t even talk to you because I’d be scratching all over.” The village of Asubende has been hard hit by onchocerciasis. Of Kwame’s 12 siblings, six lost their eyesight. But then in the late 1980s, Ghana began distributing ivermectin, a drug that kills the parasite that causes river blindness, to populations at risk. And rates began dropping. Three decades ago, more than 80 percent of the residents of Asubende were infected with the parasites. That number has dropped to just 3 percent today. Kwame’s generation appears to be the last stricken with the blindness. ”I cannot say the disease is totally gone,” he says. ”But since they started distributing the new drugs, I have not seen anyone becoming blind in this community.” Kwame is well aware his life would have been very different if these drugs had come earlier. He says the worst thing about onchocerciasis was that it hit him when he was in his 20s and robbed him of the chance to marry. Then he shrugs  —   as if to say, ”What are you going to do?”  —   and starts talking about how fishing is superior to farming. There’s the obvious benefit that goats take no interest in fishing. Plus, he earns more money selling fish than he can selling cashews. Kwame wants to show me the Pru River. The type of black fly that spreads onchocerciasis breeds in   rapidly flowing rivers like the Pru. It flows along the edge of Asubende. Young girls and women wash clothes along the banks. Boys collect water for drinking and washing. Kwame has a complicated relationship with this river. Decades ago it took away his eyesight, but throughout his life it’s been a source of income. As Kwame approaches the river, he walks hesitantly, tapping and probing at the ground in front of him with his stick. But when he steps into the river, something changes. He moves smoothly, confidently through the water.   in the rapids, he pulls out a fishing net about the size of a bedsheet. He runs his fingers over the line, searching for knots. He checks that the weights aren’t tangled, then flings the net across a section of the river where there aren’t rapids. After about a   he strides out of the water. ”I didn’t get anything,” he says. ”There’s no fish now.” Some days he catches fish some days he doesn’t. River blindness altered Kwame’s life but hasn’t hobbled him. ”I take care of myself,” he says defiantly. ”I earn my own living. I feed myself from the work that I do. Nobody helps me. I sleep and wake up on my own.” He even plans to expand his small farm. He’s building a pen to raise pigs. And he’s come up with a new tactic in his war with the goats. He wants to plant a line of thick bushes around his garden  —   bushes so thick that the goats will never be able to wiggle their way through. Want to know more about river blindness? Dr. Neeraj Mistry, the managing director of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, will be taking your questions on Twitter on Friday, Jan. 22, from 11 a. m. to 12 p. m. ET. Leave your questions in a comment below, or tweet them to @NPRGoatsandSoda with the hashtag #RiverBlindness."
"One of the problems with river blindness is that it doesn’t kill you. It’s a nasty disease that causes agonizing itching, disfigured skin and, in the worst cases, blindness. River blindness is a parasitic infection transmitted by black flies that breed in rapidly flowing bodies of water. The worms burrow under your skin and eventually wiggle across your pupils, destroying your vision. But because the disease usually isn’t fatal, health officials in   tropical countries have slotted it lower on their   lists than malaria, TB, cholera, AIDS and other   diseases. Indeed, the World Health Organization categorizes river blindness, also known as onchocerciasis, as a ”neglected tropical disease.” But over the past three decades, much of the world has made steady progress against the debilitating condition. And much of the credit for that progress is linked to ministries of health introducing the drug ivermectin. Mass distributions of ivermectin tablets have sent onchocerciasis rates plummeting. The village of Beposo 2 in central Ghana is one of those places. Local chief Bondi Sanbark says his village used to be full of blind men being led around by young boys. But that started changing after Ghana changed its strategy in the battle against the disease in the late 1980s. Up to that point, Ghana had been using insecticides to try to kill the black flies that carry the river blindness parasite. The new strategy goes after the parasites inside people. The government treats entire villages, every year, with a drug called ivermectin that kills the offspring of the parasites, which cause the blindness and also can infect others. The mass ivermectin campaigns are now treating roughly 4 million Ghanaians a year, or more than 15 percent of the population. And the strategy is paying off. No one has gone blind in Beposo 2 for years, says Sanbark. Beposo 2 was founded around the time of Ghana’s independence from Britain in 1957. The town is a  ’s drive from the Pru River, where the black flies that carry the river blindness parasite swarm. Its founders wanted to get away from the river and from onchocerciasis. But they couldn’t escape the reach of the flies. The situation was better here away from the river, but people got sick with what they refer to as ”oncho.” Since the introduction of ivermectin, onchocerciasis infections still occur in Beposo 2, but now they’re much milder than in the past. The disease has been sharply curtailed in many parts of Africa and is on the verge of elimination from the Americas. But even ivermectin isn’t perfect. Ivermectin doesn’t actually kill the roundworm parasites that cause onchocerciasis. The drug is only able to kill the offspring of the parasites, the baby larvae. It’s the spreading of hundreds of thousands of these immature worms through a person’s body that causes the disease. Unfortunately, the parasite can live in a person’s body for up to 15 years. So to suppress the spread of the parasites, entire villages have to be treated with ivermectin year after year in logistically complicated campaigns. The distribution campaigns require armies of volunteers. ”This job is soooo difficult,” says Albert Tamanja Bidim, the drug distribution volunteer in Beposo 2. Once a year he has to track down every resident of the village and give them the proper number of ivermectin tablets. He carries a long stick, a white bottle of pills and a handwritten ledger with all the villagers’ names in it. The markings on the stick indicate how many pills a person should get. Bidim holds it up next to a boy to determine what dosage to give him. Kids under 90 centimeters, roughly 3 feet tall, and pregnant women don’t get any out of safety concerns. The dose varies from one to four tablets, washed down at once, for taller kids and adults. Bidim doesn’t get paid for this work but takes the job very seriously. ”If the person is not here, and I know how many tablets the person will take, I will keep it for him,” Bidim says. ”Sometimes, maybe if he has traveled or went to the farm, I’ll keep the tablets until he gets back.” This process of volunteers pounding on doors and passing out ivermectin happens all across Ghana in villages prone to river blindness. ”We have about 5 million Ghanaians at risk of onchocerciasis,” says Dr.   Biritwum, who heads the neglected tropical disease program in the Ghana Ministry of Health. He says the annual distribution campaigns are a major undertaking. ”We go in with millions of tablets, every year, to treat every community.” Many of the villages hardest hit by river blindness are in remote, inaccessible parts. ”It takes a lot of work, a lot of resources,” Biritwum says. Onchocerciasis is less neglected than some other neglected tropical diseases in that a major pharmaceutical company has made it its cause celebre. For decades, Merck has made an unlimited amount of ivermectin available for free under the brand name Mectizan. International aid groups including the World Bank, Sightsavers and the Carter Center have helped fund the distributions. Ghana is seeing the results. Some villages have gone from having 70 to 80 percent of adults testing positive for onchocerciasis 25 years ago to just 2 to 3 percent today. Ghana is now talking about trying to wipe out the disease by 2020. Biritwum at the ministry of health says before the arrival of ivermectin, that never would have been possible. Ivermectin’s incredible impact on river blindness and other roundworm infections also caught the eye of the Nobel committee. The 2015 prize for medicine went to William Campbell of the U. S. and Satoshi Omura from Japan for discovering the drug (a third honoree did work on malaria). The Nobel committee said, ”This year’s Nobel Laureates have developed therapies that have revolutionized the treatment of some of the most devastating parasitic diseases.” And the impact of their work can be clearly seen in villages like Beposo 2 in Ghana. Want to know more about river blindness? Dr. Neeraj Mistry, the managing director of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, will be taking your questions on Twitter on Friday, Jan. 22, from 11 a. m. to 12 p. m. ET. Leave your questions in a comment below, or tweet them to @NPRGoatsandSoda with the hashtag #RiverBlindness. "
"In Fort Morgan, Colo. 150 Muslim workers were fired in late 2015 after a dispute over prayer breaks at a Cargill beef processing plant. In early 2016, the company changed its rehire policy to allow the fired employees to reapply for their jobs. But some community leaders say damage has already been done. The city’s residents of East African descent, some of whom still have their jobs, are now at odds with those who do not. And the relationships among Cargill and the refugee populations it relies on for labor are frayed. In early January, Nurto and Sadiyo Abdi enjoyed a midday cup of spiced tea with milk at their apartment in Fort Morgan. Normally, the   sisters would be spending this time preparing for their afternoon shift at the Cargill plant a short drive down the road. The sisters are refugees, finding their way to Fort Morgan five years ago after leaving their home country of Somalia. Five times a day the sisters stop to pray, an essential part of their Muslim faith, Nurto says. Praying at work involves leaving the cutting room floor, changing out of a   frock, and returning after five minutes. The timing of the prayer during the plant’s second shift can change with the seasons and requires some flexibility in the plant’s operations to accommodate. ”If I stop my prayer time, everything is hard for me,” Nurto says. After four years of work at Cargill, Sadiyo says, she became accustomed to taking these short breaks, with little to no pushback from management. In   the sisters say that changed. They say a shift supervisor told a group of 11 employees they could no longer leave their stations on the   line to pray. ”Four times we pray in our homes,” Nurto says. ”Only one time [per shift] we pray in Cargill. And they say we don’t have time to go to prayer time.” Although Cargill disputes this claim, the incident snowballed. The sisters joined with nearly 200 other workers, staying home to protest what they saw as a change in company policy. Until then, they say, they’d been allowed to take a short   break to pray. After three days of failing to show up, they were fired. The Council on   Relations, which represents some of the fired workers, says the company’s supervisors were sometimes hostile to prayer requests and that Cargill’s existing religious accommodation policy is vague and ambiguous. Cargill doesn’t see it that way. ”Nobody was ever told that prayer was abolished. Or that prayer could not be accommodated,” says Mike Martin, a Cargill spokesman. ”There are times, specific times, when because of staffing levels an individual request for prayer may not be granted at a specific time on a specific day.” During the past decade, America’s meatpacking plants have become increasingly diverse, with more immigrants from various cultural and religious backgrounds filling jobs to cut meat. Cargill has attempted to keep up, Martin says, installing reflection rooms for prayer in its facilities and being flexible with break times. Still,   misunderstanding and tension seem inevitable. ”It would be hard to go   without someone misperceiving something,” Martin says. ”But this seems to be on a different level.” Workplace disputes are difficult to discuss in abstract terms, says Rachel   director of the University of Denver’s workplace law program. They involve dynamic circumstances, complex relationships and   cases. And increasingly in the country’s meatpacking facilities, shifts are often staffed by a mix of workers who hold strong religious and cultural beliefs. ”The reality is that it’s not always clear what constitutes a reasonable accommodation, or an undue hardship,” says  . In a large slaughterhouse, for example, one person missing for 10 minutes can slow down an entire shift. If a religious accommodation, like a prayer break, imposes a significant cost on the employer, a company has the right to refuse the request,   says. ”The subtleties of what is required or what the employer permits, versus what a supervisor actually does, those can certainly get lost in any workplace, not even accounting for language and cultural differences,”   says. In a bid to compromise and give some workers a chance at getting their jobs back, Cargill is allowing the fired employees to reapply sooner rather than later. But Michaela Holdridge, executive director of One Morgan County, a nonprofit that focuses on diversity in Fort Morgan, says it might be too little too late. ”We already have word of about 20 families or so who have already left,” she says. Holdridge says the families are scattering across the Midwest and Great Plains, heading to Wyoming, Nebraska, Minnesota and Ohio to find jobs. ”If you don’t have your job here, there’s not much to stay for,” she adds. With a large number of workers leaving town, and their jobs, all at once, Holdridge says a new wave of immigrants with their own religious and cultural traditions could pursue the open jobs at the Cargill plant. Luke Runyon reports from Colorado for KUNC and Harvest Public Media, a public radio reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture and food production issues."
"Years before he led the Nazis in the genocide of 6 million European Jews, Adolf Hitler staged a coup and spent several months in prison. Though his attempt to overthrow the government was unsuccessful, his trial and subsequent time behind bars would be pivotal. Peter Ross Range, the author of 1924: The Year That Made Hitler, tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies that Hitler’s public trial for the   ”Beer Hall Putsch” was a   that allowed him to sharpen the speaking skills that would help him win the German chancellorship nine years later. Though sentenced to five years in prison for the coup, Hitler wound up serving less than one year. During that time, Range says, ”Hitler went into a period of reflection, and building his willpower and   or   and he came out of it in many ways a new man.” While incarcerated, Hitler also wrote Mein Kampf, a memoir and manifesto that outlines his political ideology. The reproduction of Mein Kampf had long been restricted by copyright laws, but on Jan. 1 those restrictions expired, and a new,   annotated version is being published. ”It’s an attempt to break down Mein Kampf sentence by sentence, almost word by word, and explain it historically, philosophically show the contradictions, show the lies and show the truths as well,” Range says. On what happened during Hitler’s Munich Beer Hall Putsch, in which he cornered local politicians in a beer hall and demanded that they support his coup, He kidnaps those leaders. He takes them hostage on the spot, fires his pistol into the ceiling to get control of the room, has a platoon of storm troopers with him, including a machine gun team, takes those leaders into a side room and tells them they have the choice of joining him in his plot to march to Berlin and start a national revolution, or to die with him. . .. He tells them that he is going to go back out into the beer hall and propose to the crowd what he’s trying to get them to do, which is to become part of his new government for Germany. He goes back out, he makes a speech, which according to an eyewitness, ”Turned the crowd   like a glove.” This was the best proof we’ve ever had really of Hitler’s extraordinary speaking and persuasive powers in a mass situation. And indeed, the people by the end of a very short speech were cheering and stomping and approving of his new plan. So after he has convinced the crowd that this national revolution is a great and good thing, he takes the three leaders back into the hall, everybody has an emotional moment of handshakes and deep looks in the eyes, and the whole event ends with the whole crowd singing ”Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” the   song of Germany. Hitler seems to have won. On how the Beer Hall Putsch ended, As [Hitler] and 2, 000 of his men marched through the center of Munich, they got a lot of cheers and support from the crowd, but as they emerged on the other side of downtown at the Odeon Square, they came up against a company of riflemen from the Bavarian state police who went into a kneeling and firing position and indeed fired on them. The putsch came to a very violent end. Hitler came within 24 inches, probably, of being shot dead. Sixteen people . .. were killed as well as four of the Bavarian state police troops. That ended the putsch and Hitler went down with a very badly dislocated shoulder, but he escaped and was caught two days later at a friend’s villa outside Munich. On Hitler’s trial for treason, The putsch had been a sensational event, even though Hitler had not been known nationally before then. . .. So many reporters showed up [to the trial that] they had to have an overflow room. At one point there were supposedly 50 foreign journalists present. . .. [At the trial,] he tells his life story, for one thing, and he gives his political worldview, for another thing. And he opens right up in the first paragraph by saying, ”I am an absolute, committed  .” He is baldfaced and clear about that and says that that’s what he became during his years as a    worker in Vienna before World War I. But he’s basically preaching his version of the salvation of Germany. He sees Germany as going to hell in a handbasket and suffering under the yoke of the Versailles Treaty, the French occupation and the very bad leadership [of the] . .. governments in Berlin. . .. The Hitler name was suddenly on the front pages all over the country and all sorts of people now knew about him. On Hitler’s time in prison  Initially he went into a deep, deep depression. He went into a hunger strike he basically tried to commit suicide by starvation. . .. It lasts eight or nine days until he’s finally talked out of it. He was in pretty bad shape and they were about to give him forced feeding. . .. That didn’t happen because he . .. gave up the hunger strike, but that was the starting point of this extraordinary comeback. On why he wrote Mein Kampf, He had to write a book. He had to talk. This was a guy who was obsessed with his own sense of mission, his belief that he was a man of destiny who had to save Germany from itself. And since he didn’t have beer hall podiums from which to speak and declaim and share with the world the urgently needed gospel that he had within him, he set it down in writing. He was able to get his hands on a small Remington portable typewriter, a brand new one, given to him by a rich friend, and started writing this book. Some people say he also did it for money, which I think is probably true, but in Hitler’s case, there was an obvious need to get his message out, and that’s why he wrote the book. On the many ”what ifs” of the Beer Hall Putsch story  What if Hitler had been struck by the bullet that hit the man next to him [during the putsch]? Or if his bodyguard had not protected him during the putsch? What if he had killed himself in the hunger strike, or in his suicide attempt just when he was being captured? What if he had gotten a serious trial with a serious sentence? And then finally, what if he had been deported [to Austria] as, in fact, the law stipulated?"
"The Ebola outbreak in West Africa may be officially over  —   the World Health Organization made that momentous announcement Thursday, but more cases are likely to crop up and crucial questions about the disease remain unanswered. We asked Dr. Daniel Bausch, an expert on Ebola who is now working with the World Health Organization, to list the top five mysteries researchers still need to clear up. How did the virus reach West Africa? For decades, Ebola disease was confined to remote regions of Central Africa  —   thousands of miles from Africa’s populous Western coast. Researchers were able to use genetic sequencing to determine that the earliest known case of Ebola in the West African outbreak was a young boy in Guinea who was infected in December of 2013. And they believe it’s likely he got the disease from a bat. This doesn’t necessarily mean that this one contaminated bat flew all the way from Central Africa, notes Bausch. You could have a bat that flies a couple of hundred miles to the northwest, then roosts with other bats, which, in turn, contract the virus. So over years or even decades the virus gets passed from one bat colony to another. Still, Bausch says, this whole theory is remarkably speculative. ”You know, we talk about bats. But no one has ever grown an Ebola virus from a bat.” In other words, scientists haven’t even established how exactly bats get contaminated and what precisely they’re contaminated with. And even if bats are to blame, he adds, we have no real understanding of how transmission to humans occurs. Then there’s the role of what Bausch terms ”bat ecology.” For instance, it’s possible that heavy rains can produce a lot of food for a bat population that harbors the virus, allowing the bats to reproduce to a degree that greatly increases their chance of coming into contact with humans. But very little is known about the particulars of this dynamic  —   what weather conditions create it and in which locations, for instance. ”Understanding that complex process is what’s going to enable us to predict where the next outbreak is going to happen,” says Bausch. Why do so many Ebola survivors experience health problems after they’ve recovered? There’s a grim list of challenges that many Ebola survivors are grappling with: severe eye inflammation that can lead to blindness, debilitating joint pain, hearing difficulties, erectile dysfunction, depression. That took researchers by surprise, says Bausch. ”The dogma prior to this outbreak was that survivors got better after a time. That even though they had been through hell, once they got better that was the end of it  —   they were OK. But now we’re recognizing that there are a lot of problems that can persist for a long time.” The first step has been trying to sort out which challenges are truly related to Ebola and which are issues the person would have experienced anyway. Bausch says the jury is still out when it comes to hearing loss, for instance. By contrast, the link between Ebola and subsequent eye inflammation seems strong. About   of Ebola survivors have developed these symptoms, says Bausch. Even here important questions remain. In some cases the patient actually has Ebola virus in their eye, suggesting that the inflammation is directly caused by the virus and   medication should be developed to treat it. But in others the virus is not present in the eye  —   suggesting that the cause might be some kind of problematic immune system response that developed as a result of the initial Ebola infection. ”It’s only once you understand why these things are occurring that you can start to develop therapies to treat them,” says Bausch. Could this kind of resurgence of the virus in a survivor spark a new outbreak? As far as researchers can tell, when Ebola virus flares up again in a survivor, the person doesn’t develop   Ebola. Instead, the virus causes problems in a particular part of their body. The most common seems to be that eye infection. And in those cases, the Ebola virus is basically trapped inside the eye, so it can’t be transmitted to other people. But that’s only one scenario. Consider Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey, who contracted Ebola while working at a treatment center in Sierra Leone. She survived, but months later, Ebola virus in her cerebral spinal fluid caused her to develop meningitis. And some Ebola virus did get back into her bloodstream. In such instances, says Bausch, there is a remote chance that the person could infect others who come into contact with bodily fluids that contain the virus. How common are cases such as Cafferkey’s? It’s yet another mystery. Health officials are not aware of any others. ”But we don’t know if that’s because hers is the only one we happened to be there to document or because it’s genuinely unusual in the population,” says Bausch. What happens when a pregnant woman contracts Ebola? There is much to learn, but what we do know is sobering. Bausch says that as far as researchers can tell, even if a pregnant woman who is infected with Ebola survives, the fetus will not. Often the woman will miscarry while she is still sick. But she may not actually lose the fetus until after she recovers. In those cases, the baby is stillborn. At that point while the woman no longer has Ebola virus in her blood, the stillborn child that she delivers will still have the virus in its blood  —   posing a risk to health care workers who assist with the delivery. In a few cases, workers are suspected to have been infected under these circumstances. The risk of a renewed outbreak of cases through this particular mechanism is small, says Bausch. And it will presumably vanish once every woman in West Africa who survived Ebola while pregnant concludes her pregnancy. Still, he says, ”it’s something we are really trying to get a handle on.” Did any of those experimental treatments that people were clamoring for during the outbreak  —   the ZMapp drug, the infusions of blood plasma from survivors  —   actually work?  Unfortunately, says Bausch, we still don’t really know. Research into a treatment for Ebola kicked into overdrive during the West Africa outbreak. Pharmaceutical companies mobilized with impressive speed to churn out sufficient quantities of promising drugs for testing. Regulators took unprecedented steps to smooth the way for clinical trials. All the same, ”by the time we were ready to do the trials, the bottom of the outbreak had dropped out and the cases started to fall away. Suddenly there were no patients,” he says. So while there’s reason to feel hopeful about some of the treatments  —   Bausch cites not just ZMapp but compounds from the companies Gilead Sciences and BioCryst  —   the data is still too limited. He’s also been underwhelmed by the findings regarding another treatment approach that was all the rage during the outbreak: transferring blood plasma (and the antibodies for Ebola therein) from an Ebola survivor into a sick person. Studies to date haven’t been able to prove the effectiveness of that strategy. Bausch concedes that this may be because the levels of antibodies in any given survivor’s plasma varies. ”It could be that not everyone got the good stuff, if you will. And if you did get the good stuff it did make a difference.” There is at least good news on the prevention front: A vaccine for Ebola has performed well in tests. Still, when it comes to treating patients, the bottom line, says Bausch, is ”we haven’t come out of this being able to say, ’This one is great. Now we have a treatment for Ebola. ’”"
"The World Health Organization announced Thursday that the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is over  —   for now. For the first time since the outbreak began in December 2013, all three of the   West African nations  —   Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone  —   have had zero reported cases of Ebola for 42 days in a row. That’s equal to two full incubation cycles of the virus. The most recent outbreak was in Liberia, which had previously been declared   in May and in September last year. Each time, at least one new case was later discovered. The last confirmed patient has now tested negative for the disease two times, the WHO says. The WHO emphasized that all three countries ”remain at high risk” of     of the disease. As NPR’s Goats and Soda blog reported in November, when the most recent   in Liberia began, researchers are continuing to learn about how survivors can and can’t pass the disease to others long after the standard incubation cycle is over. The Ebola virus can remain in semen for 9 months, for example, far longer than previously understood, raising the risk of sexual transmission of the disease once it has otherwise stopped spreading through a population. As NPR’s Nurith Aizenman reported on Morning Edition Thursday, some survivors of Ebola also wind up with the disease trapped inside their body  —   in an eye infection, for instance  —   and can get sick again from the same virus. ”Then there’s the risk of a totally new chain of infection,” Nurith says, noting that Ebola could be reintroduced to West Africa from wild animals, the same way the recent epidemic was believed to have started. With the risks and uncertainties in mind, WHO says the news that West Africa is   is cause to celebrate, but not to stop working. ”We are now at a critical period in the Ebola epidemic as we move from managing cases and patients to managing the residual risk of new infections,” Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s special representative for the Ebola response, said in a statement. ”The risk of reintroduction of infection is diminishing as the virus gradually clears from the survivor population, but we still anticipate more   and must be prepared for them,” he said. ”A massive effort is underway to ensure robust prevention, surveillance and response capacity across all three countries by the end of March.”"
"Over the past two weeks, the Defense Department has transferred 14 detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. That leaves 93 detainees at the military prison in Cuba  —   the first time the prison’s population has been below 100 since it opened in January 2002. The most recent release was announced Thursday by the Defense Department. ”Just last night, after a deliberate and careful review, we completed the transfer of 10 Yemenis  —   roughly 10 percent, that is, of the total remaining Gitmo population  —   to the government of Oman,” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was quoted as saying by Reuters. Four other detainees have been transferred since the start of the new year. Three more are expected to be moved out of the prison soon, for a total of 17 transfers in the first weeks of 2016. President Obama vowed to close Guantanamo Bay shortly after he took office in 2009 and has made it a point in nearly all of his State of the Union addresses, most recently in Tuesday night’s speech. Leadership depends on the power of example, the president said. ”That is why I will keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo: It’s expensive, it’s unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies.” Shuttering the facility has proved difficult for Obama. As The New York Times notes: ”His administration has stepped up efforts to find countries to take 48 detainees on a transfer list and moved to speed up the work of a   board that might approve the release of others who are currently recommended for indefinite detention. ”The   Congress, however, has shown little interest in lifting a ban on bringing any detainees to a prison inside the United States, which is Mr. Obama’s plan for those who are either facing trial or are deemed too dangerous to release.” Even detainees who have been recommended for transfer  —   meaning the Pentagon no longer believes the U. S. has a compelling reason to keep them in the military prison  —   can remain at Guantanamo for years while the U. S. negotiates a transfer. It’s been particularly challenging to transfer detainees who can’t be sent to their home countries, such as Yemen, because of active conflicts. Of the recent transfers, one was a Kuwaiti repatriated to Kuwait one was a Saudi, sent back to Saudi Arabia two were Yemenis transferred to Ghana and the 10 most recent were Yemeni detainees sent to Oman. None of the 14 detainees were ever charged with a crime, according to the Miami Herald and the Times. Of those 93 inmates who remain at the facility, 34 have been cleared for transfer. You can learn more about past and present detainees at the Times’ Guantanamo Docket."
"British actor Alan Rickman, a veteran of dozens of films, has died at age 69. Recently, Rickman was most   for portraying the complicated villain Severus Snape in the films based on J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. ”Rickman had been suffering from cancer,” The Guardian reports. Rickman appeared in an array of blockbuster films during his prolific career, from 1988’s Die Hard with Bruce Willis to 2003’s Love Actually and the Harry Potter films. ”There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman’s death,” Rowling said on Twitter today. ”He was a magnificent actor  a wonderful man.” Actor Helen Mirren, who met Rickman decades ago, told NPR’s Ari Shapiro that she was intimidated by him  —   at first. ”He played these very reserved, sometimes cold, sometimes threatening characters on the screen, but the reality of the man was incredible warmth and humor and generosity and a wicked fun,” she said. Rickman brought intelligence and humanity to a wide spectrum of roles, judiciously deploying what seemed to be a bottomless supply of frowns and smirks that endeared him to his fans. But it was his deep, rich voice that set him apart. ”That incredible voice,” Mirren said. ”That he could play like a sort of wonderful instrument, like a cello or something. He played his voice  —   he could be the most subtle of actors and he could also be quite a big actor. He could do the grandiose performances as well.” While his voice became something of a trademark, Rickman once said that he endured much criticism for it in drama school. One voice teacher, as he recalled in 2007, told Rickman that he sounded as if his voice was ”coming out of the back end of a drainpipe.” Explaining his own opinion of his voice, Rickman said, ”Well, it’s what I’m stuck with, so it’s not like I can go and get another one. And also, I don’t hear what anybody else hears. So it’s always a bit of a shock, you know. And it never goes away.” While he might be famous for playing villains, Rickman once told NPR that those roles are ”a very small part of whatever I’ve done. It’s like two or three parts, and they just happened to have big publicity budgets.” Rickman also directed films and theatrical works, and he acted in plays from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra to Noel Coward’s Private Lives. A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Rickman spoke to NPR in 2011 about his stage work in the U. S.: ”I love working in New York theater. . .. It is very demanding, but it’s good to be in a city where you feel that theater is actually part of the life of the city. You know, London is so sprawling, and you can sometimes forget that anybody else is on a stage anywhere else. But here, it’s, you know, your friends and neighbors.” Three films from the 1990s help describe Rickman’s range. In 1991, he turned in a memorable performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves  —   a film whose legacy these days isn’t helped by Kevin Costner’s hair, but which was the    film in theaters that year. In 1995, he appeared in director Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, playing Colonel Brandon opposite Kate Winslet’s Marianne Dashwood. And in 1999, he showed his willingness to camp it up   when he starred with Sigourney Weaver and Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest, a film that might best be described as a   romp."
"Today marks five years since a popular uprising ousted Tunisian President Zine   Ben Ali. Tunisia’s 2011 revolution inspired a wave of protests in the region that eventually pushed several dictators from power. And its subsequent transitional process is viewed as a rare bright spot in the region. There are concerns, however, that Tunisia could be backsliding on human rights. A new report from rights group Amnesty International says there’s evidence of deaths in custody and torture inside Tunisia’s prisons. The group says ”there have been at least six deaths in custody since 2011 in circumstances that have not been effectively investigated or where investigations have not resulted in criminal prosecution.” Here’s more from the report: ”Amnesty International also received information about the torture and   of detainees, including women, while in prison last year after their arrest on accusations of terrorism. ”According to some of the testimonies, detainees were subjected to electric shocks, including on the genitals, and a stress position known as the ”roasted chicken” whereby their hands and feet were cuffed to a stick. Some were also slapped, forced to undress and threats were made against their families in an effort to force them to sign a false confession.” This comes after two major militant attacks in Tunisia in the past year. At least 20 people were killed in March 2015 when gunmen stormed a museum in the capital, Tunis. And in June, an attack on a tourist hotel in the beachside resort of Sousse killed 37 people. Additionally, ”they’ve had a few thousand young Tunisian people go off to join extremist groups like the Islamic State,” NPR’s Leila Fadel reported Thursday on Morning Edition. In light of security concerns, she said, the Parliament passed a new   law in response to the attacks that can be used against demonstrators and gives security forces wider powers. The country also declared a state of emergency in November and arrested hundreds of people without warrants. ”The concern is that under the auspices of   people will be robbed of the same rights that they were protesting for in 2011,” Leila says. ”Torture and repression were hallmarks of former President Ben Ali’s regime they must not be allowed to become defining features of   Tunisia,” Amnesty’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Said Boumedouha says in a statement. Compared with other countries in the region, Tunisia looks quite rosy. Libya has two rival governments and a patchwork of militias fighting one another on the ground. Egypt’s military ousted the country’s first democratically elected leader. Syria and Yemen are being torn apart by bloody civil wars. A coalition of Tunisian civil society groups won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 for helping the country to navigate political divisions between Islamists and secularists that threatened to derail the transition process. Tunisia’s revolutionary anthem ”Rais Lebled” by rapper El Général, which was released during the 2011 uprising, criticizes police abuse under Ben Ali. Watch it here with English subtitles:"
"A debate is raging in France over whether Jewish men should avoid wearing the traditional yarmulke, so as not to identify themselves at a time of increasing violence by young radical Islamists. The proposal was put forth this week by a Jewish leader in Marseille, following a knife attack on a local Jewish teacher. Zvi Ammar, head of Marseille’s   Jewish community, suggested it might be better if Jews in Marseille stopped wearing the yarmulke, also known as a kippah. ”For the time being,” Ammar said, ”at least until these barbarians calm down.” He was referring to a Kurdish immigrant from Turkey, a high school student, who attacked a Jewish teacher with a butcher knife and claimed to be inspired by Islamic State. The assault on Monday in Marseille horrified the country. But there’s also been a strong reaction to Ammar’s proposal. France’s head rabbi, Haim Korsia, called it defeatist. ”To suggest this is like saying Jews bear some responsibility for being attacked,” said Korsia. ”This is the same kind of thinking as those who would say a woman is guilty of a sexual assault because her skirt wasn’t long enough.” French officials on the left and right have denounced the proposal for Jews to remove their yarmulkes. Parliamentarian Xavier Bertrand spoke about it on a popular radio show. ”If the Jews of Marseille don’t wear their kippahs, France is no longer France,” he said. ”Because it will mean letting those who want to change our way of living and values win. We can’t let that happen.” Several of the recent terrorist attacks in France have specifically targeted Jews. France, home to 600, 000 Jews, has Europe’s largest Jewish population and the third largest in the world, after Israel and the U. S. But in recent years, Jews have been leaving the country. The daily newspaper Le Parisien reports that not since 1948, the year Israel declared statehood, have so many Jews left France. Some have left for economic reasons some out of fear. National Jewish community leader Joel Mergui says Jews know that wearing the kippah could make them the target of young radicals. ”But we’re not going to stop going to sporting events at stadiums or to concerts or cafes,” he says. ”And so Jews will continue to wear the kippah.” After last year’s attacks on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, an Israeli journalist secretly filmed himself walking through some of Paris’ rougher immigrant and Muslim neighborhoods while wearing a kippah. Broadcast on French TV, the clip shows him drawing some unsavory comments. One group of young men wearing hoodies can be heard comparing him to a dog. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve is in Marseille, visiting the teacher who was attacked  —   said to be psychologically shaken but physically fine. Cazeneuve is also there to reassure the city’s Jewish community. Bertrand, the parliamentarian, said it is the French state’s job to protect its citizens  —   and it would protect French Jews. Ten thousand French soldiers are serving across the country, providing security along with police. Nowhere is their presence more visible than in the Marais, Paris’ traditional Jewish quarter, where soldiers with assault rifles patrol the streets and stand guard outside the synagogues. Clothing shop owner Stephan Levy says he feels safe, but things have changed in the past couple of years. ”Now I think it’s less risky sometimes to wear a baseball cap or a hat rather than a kippah, depending where you’re going,” he says. ”And not just in France, in other countries too. Because, let’s face it  —   these days, Jews are targeted.” Teacher Avraham Scharbit is wearing his kippah. So is his    son, who is buckled into a seat on the back of his father’s bike. ”Yeah, I sometimes wear a baseball cap instead of my kippah,” Scharbit says. ”The important thing is to keep your head covered. I do both. But it’s not a big deal.” Scharbit says he’s not afraid  —   and says France is a good place to raise his children."
"There’s been a lot of conversation lately about people of color dealing with ”only one in the room” syndrome in the workplace. But in 2016, it’s still remarkably easy to be the only person of color in any given social situation. My Code Switch teammate Gene Demby and I were talking about this yesterday. We’ve both been to parties in D. C. Philadelphia, LA  —   all majority nonwhite cities  —   where we at some point looked up and realized we were ”the only one in the room.” We live in Chocolate City, for goodness’ sake! How are we ending up at all these potlucks with nary another person of color around? Turns out, it’s pretty easy. As the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham put it, writing about a study on race and social circles released last year, ”the average black person’s friend network is eight percent white, but the average white person’s network is only one percent black. To put it another way: Blacks have ten times as many black friends as white friends. But white Americans have an astonishing 91 times as many white friends as black friends.” On Friday, Rajini Vaidyanathan of BBC News wrote about housing segregation in the United States. According to the Brookings Institution study that he references, ”more than half of blacks would have to move to achieve complete integration.” Predictably, housing segregation leads to racially distinct social spaces even in the nation’s most ostensibly diverse cities, and not just when it comes to schools or offices: ”In my reporting across the United States I’ve seen this first hand  —   from Louisiana to Kansas, Alabama to Wisconsin, Georgia to Nebraska. In so many of these places people of other races simply don’t mix, not through choice but circumstance. And if there’s no interaction between races, it’s harder for conversations on how to solve race problems to even begin.” This separation, Vaidyanathan says, isn’t an accident it’s the end result of decades of governmental discrimination from redlining, racial covenants and blockbusting. ”Decades on from the civil rights movement, many black and white Americans simply don’t mix,” he writes. ”And as the U. S. contends with race problems, getting to know each other better is one step in understanding and fixing some of those problems.” The consequences of housing segregation can be severe. Gene has written about the effects segregation can have on life expectancy, education and incarceration rates. They can also be intimate and nebulous, and pop up in the most unexpected places, like a holiday party or a Sunday brunch. Statistically speaking, this isn’t that surprising. Over at the Toast, Nicole Chung recently wrote about what it feels like to encounter casual racism in a room full of white friends and family members. Chung was at a   dinner at her  ’ when an acquaintance leaned over the dinner table to share her observation that Chung looks ”just like everyone on that show”  —   Fresh Off the Boat  —   leaving Chung grasping for words. She hoped that someone would step in and say something, and when no one did, she realized that the pressure to ”make sure everyone keeps having a good time” was on her: ”The social pressure on people of color to keep the peace, not get mad, just make sure everyone keeps having a nice time  —   even when we hear these remarks in public, at our workplaces and schools, in our own homes and from our friends’ mouths  —   can be overwhelming, bearing down on us in so many situations we do not see coming and therefore cannot avoid. What does our dignity matter, what do our feelings amount to, when we could embarrass white people we care about? When our white relatives or friends or colleagues might experience a moment’s discomfort, anxiety, or guilt?” Reading Chung’s piece reminded me of a potluck I was at in Philadelphia last summer with my   who is white, and his crew of white friends. I had gotten back from the beach a few days earlier and was several shades darker than usual. Everyone was busy gossiping about their summer adventures when one guy turned to me and asked, ”So, did he realize you were black when he started dating you?” In that moment, my instinct was to say something snarky (”Did he realize you were a doofus when he became your friend? ”). But like Chung, I didn’t want to ruin a good time. So I laughed, poured myself a drink, and let everyone move on. In the scheme of things, did I experience that socially awkward interaction as a trauma on the scale of    school budget shortages, or the   concentration of poverty in black neighborhoods? Of course not. But if we’re going to have conversations on the effects of housing segregation, it’s worth understanding how the accumulation of decades of racially driven policy may have leached into every aspect of our lives, and how a thorough scrubbing may be in store."
"Ring, ring. Hello? It’s reality calling. People are shallow, and life isn’t fair. In a new paper, a pair of researchers looked at the student records of tens of thousands of students at their university. They compared the students’ class grades to ratings of their physical attractiveness, as judged by outside observers from their student ID card photographs. The researchers found that the women judged as least attractive earned significantly lower grades, after controlling for their ACT scores. The   women earned higher grades. And male professors were more likely than female professors to give   women higher grades. But here’s what the study’s lead author, Rey   calls the ”key finding”: When these same exact students took online courses, where appearance is not an issue, the benefits of being pretty all but disappeared. ”The main results in our paper were not about whether there is a return to appearance, but whether it would be smaller in online environments, where the student is not seen,” he told NPR Ed. The study by   and Christina Peters, both professors of economics, took place at Metropolitan State University of Denver, a   university with a diverse student population. A large body of   research already supports the advantages of being really, really  .   people tend to make more money. They are more liked and trusted by others. They marry other   people who are also better educated than average. A classic study from the 1970s showed this effect holds true in academic settings as well. Given identical course transcripts, teachers judged prospective students to be more intelligent if they appeared more attractive in a photograph. Rachel Gordon, a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has published papers with similar conclusions to this latest one  —   although her work has shown that   men, as well as women, also receive a grade premium. That wasn’t the case in the Denver study. Gordon calls this idea of comparing the same students’ performance in both online and   courses an ”interesting and clever design.” Previous studies left unclear whether people are reacting to some relevant quality that goes along with looks, or merely looks alone. Maybe students are rated unattractive because they are ill or depressed, which also tends to hurt their course performance. Or maybe   students have more confidence and are more outgoing because they’re   and that leads to better performance. But if that’s the case, why don’t we see the same effects in online courses?   is the first to point out that the overall variation in grades on the basis of looks is small. Math class is not modeling school. But, he says, giving all students a chance to compete academically in an arena where looks don’t matter might allow more of them to shine."
"Many women in the U. S. are waiting longer than ever to have their first child. Fifteen years ago, the mean age of a woman when she first gave birth was 24. 9 years old. In 2014, that age had risen to 26. 3. ”It doesn’t sound like a big change,” says T. J. Mathews, a demographer at the National Center for Health Statistics and an author of the report published online Thursday. But, he says, the small shift underscores some important trends. First, the researchers found that an increase happened across all states and across all racial and ethnic categories, to one degree or another. The average age increased half a year for moms of Cuban descent, for example, while for   black moms it increased by about two years. Women of Asian and Pacific Islander descent continue to have the highest average age at first birth  —   close to 30 years old. Women who identify as American   Native or Mexican have the lowest average ages at first birth, at 23 and 24. The main force pulling the average age to the older end of the spectrum is a decrease in the number of teen moms, the researchers say. Over the past 15 years, the proportion of   mothers younger than 20 years old dropped from 23 percent to 13 percent. Bill Albert with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy calls the drop ”one of the nation’s great unheralded success stories of the past two decades.” Overall, he says the teen pregnancy rate has halved since its peak in 1990, declining in all 50 states and among all racial and ethnic groups. Why? The short answer, he tells Shots, is ”less sex and more contraception,” possibly due to a combination of factors including government investment in sex ed programs, a bump in the number of teens using   forms of birth control, and even MTV shows like 16  Pregnant and Teen Mom, which have demonstrated their potential to scare the bejesus out of young,   parents. The teen birth rate is not declining because of an uptick in teen abortions. That rate has also decreased since the 1990s. This shift in age among   mothers impacts public health, says Dr. Priya Rajan, a specialist in   medicine at Northwestern University. She says teen moms are at higher risk of serious medical complications like anemia and hypertension, and are more likely to give birth prematurely and to have small babies. On the other hand,   moms who are over 35 also have a    risk of pregnancy complications, and their numbers are growing in the U. S. Since 2000, the proportion of   births to women older than 30 and 35 each increased by a few percentage points. These older mothers contributed to the rise in the average age of   moms, the researchers say, but the decline in births to teen moms was more influential. Rajan says it’s ”an overall great thing” that improvements in contraception and in reproductive technology have offered women more flexibility in when to have kids. But, she adds, women should be aware that as they approach 40 they’re more likely to face risks during pregnancy. ”Sometimes there is a belief that there’s no limit to when people can bear children,” she says. In the last 45 years, the mean age of   moms has gone up by five years  —   from 21. 4 years old to 26. 3. If teen pregnancies continue to decline, Mathews says, and there’s no slowdown in first births to older moms, the trend will likely continue to climb. ” ’How much? Where? Among whom?’ Those questions remain unanswered,” says Mathews. The U. S. is far from the top when it comes to pushing the     limit. In some countries, the mean age of mothers when they start having kids is over 30."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. Barreling on after a   flurry of activity over the past eight years, Ty Segall is dropping his 10th solo album in the dead of winter, its cover depicting a Xeroxed baby head as it peers out of the fold amid a field of   gradients. Staring into that disquieting image is adequate preparation for Emotional Mugger, which feels as fractured and delirious as anything he’s recorded. Segall’s last solo album, Manipulator, showcased both polish and conceptual harmony that seemed inevitable, given the directions the   wunderkind was heading. But it would appear now that Segall wants to run screaming in the opposite direction, crawl directly into listener’s minds and do some rewiring. The pop hooks, fuzz guitar and Anglicized vocals fans expect are all here, but Segall seems indifferent to his own playbook, throwing in corkscrews of weirdness like elbows to the head whenever he feels like it. ”Squealer” changes fidelity midstream, while synthesized   draw tracers around the lopsided title track, all to a   thump that corrals the brightness of Segall’s earlier works into a medicated snarl. Recalling the heavier work of his band Fuzz, ”Diversion” pairs its catchiness with force engineered to blow your hair back Segall turns an unusually sweet corner with the aptly titled ”Candy Sam,” even employing a small children’s choir to sing the chorus. If you’ve ever wondered how Segall might channel the early,   triumphs of Beck, much of the evidence is right here. Throughout this reinvention, many signposts of compatriots’ work surface. The whole of Emotional Mugger seems closer to the paisley abandon of White Fence  —   and the bizarre, druggy pulse of Segall’s proteges in WAND  —   than even his own fractured earlier works might indicate. But Emotional Mugger exists more as a head trip than any stab at continuity and making friends. It’s a wild, twisted ride into and out of Segall’s psyche  —   the sound of a restless mind attempting to turn itself inside out."
"From McDonald’s to Costco, Big Food has been declaring a shift to buying only   eggs. Three more companies took the step this month: Denny’s, sandwich chain Quizno’s and Mondelez International, maker of Ritz crackers and Chips Ahoy cookies. Here at The Salt, we’ve been wondering how egg producers are reacting. So we called up the biggest name in chicken housing, the company Big Dutchman. It’s a German company, despite its name, and it operates globally, manufacturing housing for both chickens and pigs. Clovis Rayzel, president of Big Dutchman USA, says that the majority of American egg producers, when they order new chicken houses, now are choosing   systems. ”It’s a very interesting and very big change compared to some years ago, and it is even more interesting because here in this country, we are seeing this change based solely on the market,” Rayzel says. That is, no law has required farmers to do this. California’s voters did pass a measure, which came into effect at the beginning of 2015, requiring that   chickens have enough room to spread their wings and turn around. But farmers could satisfy that requirement simply by reducing the number of chickens in each cage. Some farmers are installing ”enriched” cages, also called colony cages, which offer more room, perches for chickens to sit on, and enclosed nest areas for them to lay their eggs. Many American egg producers had long argued that   eggs would inevitably be much more expensive than eggs from cage systems. But in recent years, European companies, such as Big Dutchman, have come up with designs for   housing that allow for efficient, mechanized handling of hens and their eggs. In a 2015   study carried out by researchers at Michigan State University and the University of California, Davis, eggs from a large   house cost about 15 cents more to produce, per dozen, than eggs from traditional cages. Many consumers appear willing to stomach that increase, and the   label has proved powerfully attractive. Rayzel says there’s now serious debate within the egg industry about whether   production will replace cages entirely in the future. Currently, only about 10 percent of chickens in the U. S. are being raised    —   one reason the food companies that are pledging a shift to eggs from chickens raised this way won’t be able to fulfill those pledges quickly. McDonald’s, for instance, says that the shift to   could take 10 years.   production is growing, but only as fast as older chicken houses wear out and need to be replaced. For his part, Rayzel thinks that for the foreseeable future, some portion of the industry will stick with cages to serve their most   consumers. ”I think that after 10 years, we will still have a significant portion that is not ” he says."
"Last year, there were emotional protests for and against a law that would allow Texans to walk around with pistols on their belts. It passed, and on Jan. 1, Texas became the 45th state in the union to allow the open carry of handguns. But in an unforeseen backlash, the new law may actually hurt the cause of handgun carriers. The   crowd says now people can better protect themselves, they don’t have to bother with concealing a gun and, anyway, it’s already legal in 44 other states, so why not in   Texas? For Michael Cargill and Trina Spells, handgun instructors and firearms enthusiasts who both openly carry handguns, they couldn’t wait to take advantage of the law. On a recent walkabout in an Austin   no one really seems to be paying attention to the guns on their hips. ”There are no issues whatsoever,” Cargill says. ”No one panicked. It’s not a problem.” As the     duo saunters out the exit doors, one shopper does a     but he doesn’t say anything. Yet even if the man had been bothered by a loaded handgun, Cargill shrugs it off. ”No, it’s not about what they feel. It’s not about what they think. The law says that I can   my handgun, and now, as of Jan. 1, 2016, it says I can openly carry that handgun. It’s all about personal safety,” Cargill says. Personal safety can cut both ways. Open carry is controversial among gun owners. Some say displaying a weapon in public discourages troublemakers. ”An armed society is a polite society,” they’re fond of saying. Others say it invites trouble. Say, for example, a bad guy walks into a convenience store where you’re in line. ”I would prefer concealed [carry] because I wouldn’t have a target necessarily automatically painted on my back,” says Sam Toups, a    tech company worker who just got his handgun license. ”Anybody with some working eyeballs can see, all right, that guy he has a gun and I need to take care of that first.” His girlfriend, Monica DeLeon, a    student, also just got her handgun license. ”You’re obviously just trying to get a rise out of someone. You’re obviously just trying to make other people feel uncomfortable. And to be honest, you probably have a really small d***,” DeLeon says. ”I automatically think you’re a stupid,    person because you need this big ole’ truck or you need this big ol’ gun to make you feel like a bigger person. I think it’s silly, and I don’t think it’s safe.” Nearly 1 million Texans have    permits  —   or about 3 percent of the state population. But in the past few weeks, the streets of Texas have not turned into the O. K. Corral. I’ve been quizzing acquaintances and strangers all around central Texas, and have spotted only a few people openly displaying handguns. Since the first of the year, some Texas businesses that formerly allowed concealed carry have now decided to ban every form of carry. ”What changed Jan. 1 was that my staff freaked out,” says Michael Portman,   of the Birds Barbershop chain in Austin. Before the law, he tacitly allowed concealed carry in his chain’s seven shops. Now he has prohibited all guns. ”And this is not a political issue for us as a business. It’s a matter of the comfort of our staff, and they’re not comfortable with guns in barber chairs  —   open carry or concealed. As they move around with scissors and reach over them with buzzers, it just doesn’t mix,” he says. One gun owner complained on a Web forum for Texas handgun license holders: ”The lid is off this can of worms and it will never go back. I hope the right to walk around looking like Wyatt Earp is worth it to the open carry folks, because a lot of us are losing our right to conceal carry.”"
"  will shut down 269 stores to focus on other aspects of the business, including online sales, the company announced Friday. Among the shuttered stores will be 154 in the U. S.   however, is not shrinking. In the same announcement, the company said it is planning to open 300 more stores globally next year. Because of this, NPR’s Chris Arnold described  ’s move as more of a ”repositioning” rather than scaling back. He said the company will also be more heavily focused on its   business, as online marketplaces like Amazon continue to flourish. Of the 154 U. S.   locations being closed, 102 of them are   Express stores, the company’s   stores that had been in the pilot stage since 2011. The   Express stores are almost exclusively located in Southern states, as shown on this map by Quartz. Instead,   said in a statement, it will focus on ”strengthening Supercenters, optimizing Neighborhood Markets, growing the   business and expanding Pickup services for customers.” The move to close the stores will eliminate about 16, 000 jobs  —   10, 000 of them in the U. S. The company acknowledged the difficulty in closing stores, saying it will take steps to help employees. ”More than 95 percent of the closed stores in the U. S. are within 10 miles on average of another Walmart, and the hope is that these associates will be placed in nearby locations,”   President and CEO Doug McMillon said in the statement. ”Domestically, Walmart intends to open 50 to 60 Supercenters and 85 to 95 Neighborhood Markets in Fiscal 2017, which begins Feb. 1,” the statement said.   which boasts nearly 11, 600 stores around the world, said the stores on the chopping block ”represent less than 1 percent of both global square footage and revenue.” The full list of stores to be closed can be found at the end of the company statement."
"A new method of delivering medication for opioid addicts gained approval from a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel this week. It’s a   insert designed to slip under the skin and release a drug over a period of months. Some physicians say the implant will be a useful addition to the currently short lineup of   treatment options. The rod is called Probuphine, developed by the companies Braeburn Pharmaceuticals and Titan Pharmaceuticals. It contains a medication called buprenorphine which the FDA approved for opioid addiction in 2002 and is currently widely in use. The FDA typically follows the advice of its advisory panels on approvals. This molecule binds to opioid receptors in the body, but doesn’t hit them as hard as something like heroin or morphine would. So it can reduce cravings without giving a full high. It’s often taken in combination with a medication called naloxone, which negates the effect of any additional opiates and acts as an antidote for overdoses. Right now, patients must hold a tablet or a film under their tongue or in their cheek until it dissolves every day. This gives a   implant a few advantages over oral daily doses. Probuphine lasts up to six months. So unless patients want to dig underneath their skin to tear the thing out, there’s no deviating from the treatment. ”With the Suboxone [a daily combination of buprenorphine and naloxone] you can go on these drug holidays,” says Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman and former opiate addict who urged the panel to approve Probuphine. ”If I knew I had access to another drug, OxyContin, I would just stop taking the Suboxone and  —   you know.” And with the oral medications, health providers worry that patients with a prescription might sell the medication illegally. Buprenorphine is commonly confiscated by the Drug Enforcement Agency, says Behshad Sheldon, president and CEO of Braeburn Pharmaceuticals. ”And sometimes it’s actually unfortunately accidentally ingested by children.” The Probuphine implant would reduce those incidents, she says. On top of that, Sheldon says the implant’s   nature will give patients peace of mind. ”They won’t have to think about where their medicine is or worry if it gets lost or stolen. One of the first things I’ve read [from patients] is ’I want the implant because if you go to jail, they can’t take it from you. ’” But it wouldn’t be for everybody. ”It’s really for those doing well on buprenorphine and don’t need a high dose,” says Dr. Adam Gordon, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and member of the advisory panel who voted in favor of approving Probuphine. With the insert, it would be difficult to change a patient’s dosing. Sometimes, within a few months patients need to go on a higher dose of buprenorphine, so Probuphine would be best for people who can get along with a low, constant level of medicine. For different people suffering with addiction, other treatments might be more appropriate. Right now, there are only two other chemicals for treating opioid addiction: methadone and naltrexone. In broad strokes, each is more suited to different patients and situations, but it’s not always   Gordon says. The entry of Probuphine as a potential treatment option has revived longstanding disagreement over how these medications should be administered. Some doctors think certain patients need to be on medicine forever. ”Will they need to be on it six more months, maybe many times over their entire life? When is a good time to stop treatment?” Gordon says. ”These are unanswered questions.” Some doctors think buprenorphine, including Probuphine, can be a stepping stone on a path to being  . ”Buprenorphine is a way to withdraw someone from opiates,” says Dr. David Pickar, a psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine on the advisory committee who also voted to approve. ”The idea of not having any opiates in your body is very disturbing to some. The buprenorphine will help bridge that. Then you give them naltrexone,” he says. Naltrexone works by blocking the effects of any opioid someone might try consuming. It prevents the high, potentially stopping a relapse. It’s most often taken as a monthly injection, and is likely best for people who haven’t recently been using heavily. Eventually, once someone has regained much of their normal life, Pickar says they might try going off the naltrexone. But sometimes naltrexone doesn’t work. Some patients never go back for their next dosage. The other option is methadone, which binds to opioid receptors in a way similar to buprenorphine. It’s good for those who used heavily, but it must be administered daily at methadone clinics. ”Let me tell you, that is a tough world,” Pickar says. Not everyone can or wants to go to a clinic every day. Pharma companies, including Sheldon’s, are looking to develop new medications and treatments. In the pipeline is a monthly or weekly injection of buprenorphine, which could be better for those who might still need to see a physician often but struggle to take a daily pill. Ultimately, Sheldon says, there need to be more treatments that can be better tailored to individual patients."
"Addicted to prescription painkillers after a   sports injury, Cameron Burke moved on to heroin, which was cheaper and more easily accessible. His parents tried everything, more than once sending him out of state for treatment. ”It was never enough,” Jennifer   of Albuquerque, N. M. told a local TV reporter last year. ”Thirty days here, 30 days there, maybe detox for five days. It was never   and that’s what he needed. Recovery from heroin addiction requires   treatment.” During the course of two years, Cameron would seem to recover, only to relapse. In 2011,   found him dead in his room.   turned her grief into action, lobbying for state legislation that would require all medical practitioners to complete a course in addiction and pain management when their licenses are renewed, and pushing for the creation of Serenity Mesa, a   treatment center for youths in Albuquerque that opened its doors last year. Although drug addiction was described as a disease as long ago as the 1700s, addiction medicine has been neglected by the medical system, according to a 2012 study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. ”While a wide range of   screening, intervention, treatment and disease management tools and practices exist, they are rarely employed,” the report found. Lack of effective treatment in the teen years can blight an entire life. ”When substance use disorders occur in adolescence, they affect key developmental and social transitions, and they can interfere with normal brain maturation,” the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in 2014. ”These potentially lifelong consequences make addressing adolescent drug use an urgent matter.” The first line of defense is primary health care, according to Dr. David E. Smith, an addiction medical specialist who founded the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics in San Francisco. To increase the number of physicians trained to diagnose and treat addiction and to recognize early signs of adolescent substance use disorder, Smith would like to see addiction medicine mandatory in medical school. ”Engaging people earlier in their addiction improves their chances of recovery and overall better health,” Smith said. ”Meanwhile, costs for the health care system are dramatically reduced.” Deaths from heroin overdose in all age groups doubled from 2010 to 2012, according to a 2014 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response, communities are seeking new strategies to treat addiction and speed access to care. That includes trying to meet the unique needs of youth after years of addiction treatments geared to adults. Serenity Mesa is one of those   efforts. Such programs offer   treatment, types of therapy that have shown scientifically validated results. They include: Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) a preventative protocol for early detection Motivational Interviewing, a counseling approach that guides individuals to set goals and Functional Family Therapy (FFT) which treats teens in a family setting. While public policy and social attitudes have begun to catch up with science, treatment for teens lags far behind. The 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 90 percent of   youth ages 12 to 17 get no treatment at all. ”Twenty years ago, we were just beginning to focus on   treatment for   youth,” says Dr. Holly Waldron, a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute who studies adolescent behavior. ”Historically, interventions for addictive behaviors have included confrontational approaches, but we’ve learned that confrontation does not produce effective change in   behavior.” Instead, Waldron and her colleagues favor   interventions including functional family therapy and cognitive behavioral treatments for adolescent substance abuse. ”We’re actively involved in taking these treatments to community settings,” she said. ”If we can connect kids to treatment, we know they’ll improve.” Most health insurers now require proof that addiction programs use   treatment, a sign of efficacy. And since the 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, more adolescents have better access to insurance coverage. Yet, teenagers rarely enter rehab voluntarily. ”Clinicians are dependent on systems like juvenile justice and the schools to get teens connected to treatment,” Waldron said. Some treatments for teens with substance use disorder engage the whole family. Functional Family Therapy uses a dozen or more   sessions to defuse negativity, then teach skills training in family communication, parenting, problem solving and conflict management. Later sessions strengthen a family’s capacity to navigate community resources, which can prevent relapse. Waldron is also testing the effectiveness of delivering therapy to New Mexico’s scattered rural population via videoconference. Privacy is one benefit of videoconferencing, Waldron noted. ”If you live in a small town and your car is parked in the lot at the mental health clinic, everybody knows that’s your car,” she says. ”In Native American communities, if you go to a tribal counselor, it’s more likely people will know your business.” So talking at home over the Internet offers greater confidentiality. ”That’s important to families.” Videoconference dynamics can be complicated, however. ”It’s harder to discern over a video stream how people are responding,” Waldron said. ”If they’re quiet, if they’re becoming emotional, we might not see cues.” To compensate, ”the therapist has to do verbal   with each member of the family,” Waldron explained. She posed an example, meant to invite participants to describe their feelings: ”I hear you being quiet. Does this topic hit close to home for you all?” The study ran through November, and Waldron said preliminary data shows the online treatment is as effective as treatment delivered    at home. If, as Waldron expects, the final data shows measurably improved outcomes such as a decline in drug use and better family dynamics, she hopes that the results can be reproduced elsewhere. ”It will mean that it’s possible to get the best treatment to kids who would never have access otherwise,” she said. At HealthRIGHT 360, a nonprofit in San Francisco created in 2011 when the   Clinic merged with the local residential center Walden House, treatment can include individual or group therapy, family therapy and mindfulness meditation. All can be used in combination with medications such as methadone. While methadone can be effective in addiction recovery for adults, it is not   for teens, according to Dr. Ako Jacintho, HealthRIGHT 360’s medical director. Methadone is highly regulated and can only be administered at methadone clinics. The drug must be taken daily, so trips to and from the clinic, often far from home and work, can be especially difficult for teens. And, Jacintho noted, teens may encounter other addicts at the clinic, as well as opportunities to buy drugs. The maintenance drug often prescribed for teens is Suboxone, a combination of buprenorphine, an opiate substitute that eliminates craving, and naloxone, which blocks euphoric effects. Suboxone doesn’t cause drowsiness, and, the equilibrium it provides can make it easier to identify and treat   disorders like depression or anxiety. The dosage is eventually tapered. A 2014 Yale School of Medicine study showed that ongoing maintenance treatment with Suboxone is more effective than detoxification and abstinence alone. ”There is strong data on Suboxone,” Jacintho said. When combined with behavioral therapy, he says, Suboxone can reduce relapses and promote recovery. And, it can be prescribed and given by a trained and certified primary care physician  ” in a doctor’s office, rather than a clinic, Jacintho noted. ”We get better outcomes when we change from methadone clinics to primary care.” As education and training around addiction improve, Smith hopes more attention will be paid to the people he calls ”role models of recovery.” Vitka Eisen, CEO of HealthRIGHT 360, is one of them. She was a heroin addict from age 19 to 25, until the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic and Walden House put her back on her feet. Three college degrees later, including a doctorate in education from Harvard University, she’s proud to call herself ”a 1987 Walden House graduate.” Having been homeless during periods of her addiction, Eisen knows the difficulties teenage addicts may face. ”It’s hard for these kids to get off heroin, because they lead such challenging lives. If a kid’s using heroin, there’s a high likelihood of trauma exposure” from school, work or family life, she said. ”Drugs may seem like the best thing in their life, the thing that helped them deal with how they experience the circumstances of their lives.” The most effective treatments for teens, she says, build on the individual’s strengths while empowering them to better handle stressful circumstances. And these treatments can gain in effectiveness when used in combination with medications such as Suboxone. Jacintho also says there soon will be greater acceptance of integrated treatment for teens. ”The data is going to show positive health outcomes,” he predicted. Smith is cautiously optimistic, too. ”Every interface with a health care professional should give a consistent message,” he said. ”We care.” This story was produced by Youth Today, the national news source for   professionals, including child welfare and juvenile justice, youth development and     programming."
"On Friday, Wall Street traders got the same treatment as the main character in The Revenant: A big fearsome bear attacked again and again. By the close, stock prices were badly mauled. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 2. 4 percent of its value, tumbling 391 points to close at 15, 988. The SP 500 index dropped 2. 16 percent to 1, 880 and the   Nasdaq composite index lost 2. 7 percent to 4, 488. Wall Street’s rough day started during the night, when investors in Asia and Europe began dumping shares. First, China’s Shanghai composite index plunged 3. 6 percent, falling into   territory  —   down 21 percent from a high in late December. Then Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 2. 8 percent. All of that selling was tied to the bad news for energy companies. Their troubles worsened as Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, fell to $29. 05 a barrel. West Texas crude closed at $29. 42. Those prices are stunning, considering that oil was selling for nearly $115 as recently as June 2014. Oil and other commodity prices have been falling amid fears that China’s growth is slowing dramatically. A few years ago, China was gobbling up raw materials, such as iron ore, copper and coal. Now, as that country’s growth cools, it is buying far less of everything. That’s hurting producer nations, especially in Africa, Latin America and even here in North America. So prices are way down for materials sold in bulk. And for oil, the problem has been made much worse by surging supplies. Iran is expected to soon flood the market with new oil exports. And then other bad news piled on. A new report on the U. S. producer price index showed wholesale prices decreased 0. 2 percent in December. And retail sales slipped 0. 1 percent last month. Intel Corp. added more gloom when it said its   sales would fall short of some forecasts. That knocked its stock price down 9 percent. Investors are looking around and seeing energy companies laying off workers and currencies from   countries in flux and questions being raised about weakness in manufacturing. Such factors added to the pessimism, and this did not help: The U. S. stock market will be closed Monday for Martin Luther King Day. Traders typically get more jittery when they can’t sell shares while other global markets are doing business. So people moved money away from stocks and into safer investments, such as U. S. Treasury securities. There were so many takers for the benchmark   Treasury note that its yield slipped to a   low of 2. 0295 percent. Analysts scrambled to remind average investors that markets are volatile and that the U. S. economy has lots of strengths, including robust job growth, cheap gasoline and an improving housing sector. Or as Hugh Glass, the   character put it in The Revenant: ”Don’t give up, as long as you’ve got a breath in you.”"
"Childbirth historically involved a support system of women who assisted a woman from her pregnancy through the birth and in the immediate postpartum period afterward. Today, obstetricians and midwives provide prenatal care and help a woman deliver her baby. Doulas continue to fulfill the historical role of emotionally supporting a pregnant woman through labor and childbirth, helping her advocate for herself and communicate with her caregivers. A study published online Thursday by the journal Birth suggests that offering women the support of a certified doula could save Medicaid and perhaps private insurers real money  —   nearly $1, 000 a birth  —   by reducing cesarean and preterm births. Previous research has shown lower rates of cesarean births, more satisfaction from mothers and better newborn Apgar scores  —   a measure of a baby’s condition at birth  —   among mothers who use doula care. In fact, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says in guidelines for safe prevention of cesarean births that doula care is ”probably underutilized.” This is the first study, however, to show a reduction in preterm births and a net savings for public insurance. Cesarean births  —   about a third of all U. S. births  —   cost about twice as much as vaginal births, and the 1 in 10 U. S. infants born preterm (before 37 weeks) incur medical costs 10 times greater than those of   infants. ”What is coming together now is a research consensus and a professional consensus of the benefits of doula care,” said lead author Katy Kozhimannil, an associate professor in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. ”The barriers to access are financial, cultural and geographic. The financial barrier ought to be the first to fall.” Her analysis compared 1, 935 women in Minnesota who accepted state doula services covered by Medicaid with 67, 147   women throughout the northern and midwestern U. S. who didn’t get help from doulas. The doulas visited with the mothers four times leading up to the birth, provided support during labor and delivery and made two postpartum visits to the women. In comparing the groups, 4. 7 percent of the women using doulas had preterm births compared with 6. 3 percent of the women who didn’t get doula help. Similarly, 20. 4 percent of   women had cesarean deliveries compared with 34. 2 percent of the women without doulas All told, an estimated $986 per birth would be saved if all the women received doula services, the analysis found. How doulas decrease the odds of a cesarean birth isn’t entirely clear. One way might be by reducing cesareans recommended out of convenience, such as during a more slowly progressing labor. ”One of the questions doulas are trained to help women remember to ask is, ’Is this an emergency or do I have time to think about it?’ ” Kozhimannil said. ”If it’s an emergency, it’s outside the doula’s scope of work. If it’s not, that’s an opportunity for the doula to help the woman come to a decision with her clinician.” However, there is a potential risk if inadequately trained doulas practice outside their scope of care, says Aaron Caughey, chair of the Department of Obstetrics  Gynecology at Oregon Health  Science University in Portland. ”I can’t think of a lot of negatives fundamentally in the routine use of doulas,” he said. ”But in my clinical experience, the one possible negative is that a lot of the time the individuals who use doulas have a certain mindset about birth, and the doula can sometimes serve to block the clinician from practicing in the way the clinician might wish.” For example, a doula might discourage a woman from agreeing to a rupture of membranes recommended by a clinician even if breaking her waters is medically indicated, he said. If physicians, midwives and doulas work together from the start, disputes over care are less likely. Why doula care might affect preterm birth is also uncertain but might partly result from a reduction in stress because of the support of a doula during prenatal care, Caughey said. Kozhimannil’s team analyzed preterm births and cesarean births separately, but another analysis that combined them revealed no reduction in cesareans among preterm births. She said that’s a good thing because it means the reduction occurs among healthy deliveries and not the complicated ones more likely to need a  . Although the researchers adjusted the analysis for mothers’ age and   and having high blood pressure or diabetes during pregnancy, the groups may still have been too different for adequate comparison, wrote Adam Powell, a health economist and president of Payer+Provider Syndicate, in an email. He pointed out that the larger control group may have included some   births, albeit a small number, but that the better health of the women in the doula group may not have been fully accounted for in the statistical adjustments. ”It is not surprising that the intervention group was in better health than the control group as the intervention group had to be proactive about their health in order to be included in the group,” he wrote since only 15 to 20 percent of the mothers eligible for   doula services used them. The study’s findings would be stronger if the women had been randomized through a lottery to receive doula support or not, Powell said. Even so, insurers can look through their own claims for answers. ”Medicaid programs and health care companies generally have the data to conduct these analyses with their own data,” Kozhimannil said. ”There is no reason they shouldn’t consider adding doula care or at least exploring that option.” She pointed out the importance of this study’s findings in terms of the racial disparities in poor birth outcomes in the U. S. ”It’s important in an equity context because preterm birth is so much more frequent among black women compared with white women and preterm birth is the largest contributor to infant death,” Kozhimannil said. ”The infant mortality rates and the disparities in infant mortality are something we’ve been reckoning with as a country for 100 years without good progress. Any identification of interventions that can help address issues related to preterm birth and especially disparities in preterm birth is urgently needed.” Tara Haelle is a freelance health and science writer based in Peoria, Ill. She’s on Twitter: @tarahaelle"
"Anders Kvernberg was deep in the vaults of the National Library of Norway when a beautiful atlas caught his eye. So, you know. ”It was an ordinary day at work,” he says. As a reference librarian, Kvernberg spends his days digging through the library’s collections to answer questions from the public  —   on absolutely any topic. Writing a history book and want to know when a train would run from city A to city B on a particular year? ”We find the old timetables,” he says. He was chasing down an unrelated request last month when he saw the atlas. He couldn’t read the title or any of the text, but he could make out the printing year, and could identify it as an Ottoman atlas  —   a very, very early Ottoman atlas. ”And on top of that it was a beautiful copy  —   it was   it had very nice printing, so it was fascinating,” he said. Kvernberg is a   map nerd. He’s also an avid contributor to Reddit, the   site with a community for nearly every imaginable interest. So he figured he’d scan a few pages from the atlas and upload them to     —   the subreddit for sharing striking images of maps. ”Ottoman world map, 1803”: People commented, Kvernberg got some upvotes. So far, so typical. But a few weeks later, Kvernberg was browsing    when he saw something familiar: a page from the same atlas he’d scanned, uploaded by someone else. And this time, one of the commenters had identified the title: the Cedid Atlas Tercumesi, one of the first printed atlases from the Muslim world. Only 50 copies had ever been printed, and only 14 were known to still exist. Kvernberg went back for a second look at his find, and then he posted on Reddit again. ”Wow,” he said. ”That number is now 15.” The Norwegian copy was inventoried in their card catalog, but not in their digital catalog, so no one outside the library knew it existed. And no one inside the library, apparently, knew it was so rare. ”I ran to my boss, of course,” Kvernberg says. That would be Benedicte Gamborg Briså, a research librarian and historian who’s the   expert on maps. ”This wasn’t the first time he came running with something and said, ’Ah, look at this!’ ” Briså says. ”So, I looked at it.” The paper, the marks from the printing plate and the binding all confirmed it was an original copy, not a later duplicate. So what was a rare      Ottoman atlas doing unnoticed in the vaults of the National Library of Norway? Fortunately, there was a reference librarian on hand to track down the details. ”There’s a name written inside, which is probably the previous owner. He was a textile importer from Oslo,” Kvernberg says. ”And I found out that he did travel in the Balkans in the late 1930s. He visited Albania and southern Yugoslavia . .. which were part of the Ottoman Empire at the time the book was printed.” They suspect he bought the atlas there  —   a stroke of luck for the book. ”It was in 1937  —   and this was just a couple of years before the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, which led to widespread material destruction throughout the country. So it’s possible that when this guy bought it and brought it out of the country, he may just have saved it from destruction.” It was probably donated to the library in the early 1950s  —   another lucky break, Kvernberg says. ”It ended up here 60 years ago. It went into a controlled environment where air and light, humidity, temperature, everything’s been specifically set for preserving paper. Had it ended up in a basement or something like that, it would probably have rotted away or somehow been destroyed by now. ”Fifty of them were printed, and this is the 15th known copy  —   so 35 of them were not so lucky.” Now the atlas is heading to the library’s preservationists. ”Most probably, when they’re done with it, we will digitize it and put it online for everyone to enjoy,” Kvernberg says. The National Library of Norway is currently immersed in a massive digitization project, pushing books and other library materials out onto the Internet. Kvernberg says the same philosophy is why he regularly takes time out of his day to scan pages and upload them to Reddit  —   not, in most cases, undiscovered treasures, but ”just ordinary stuff that’s beautiful or interesting.” ”I believe that we should show off the stuff that we have,” he says. ”Because we keep it locked up in vaults to preserve it, but that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t see it.”"
"For more than a quarter of people around the world, for as long as they’ve been alive, there’s always been Wikipedia. This week, the online   encyclopedia turns 15. It’s come a long way: With some 35 million articles, Wikipedia speaks hundreds of languages and cites 80, 000 volunteers around the world as editors. Its goals are lofty: to become a better Encyclopedia Britannica, a freely accessible ”sum of all human knowledge.” And arguably, it’s overcome the biggest hurdle. ”We’ve moved beyond the era when people would say to the kids, ’Don’t use Wikipedia, it’s not very good, it’s full of errors.’ And now we say, ’Here’s how to use Wikipedia,’ ” says   Jimmy Wales. Wales spoke with NPR on Wikipedia’s push for editors who are   geeks, its struggle to grow its female ranks, advice for cleaning up newspapers’ comment sections and the future of the organization. Below are some highlights of my interview with Wales as well as his conversation with NPR’s Scott Simon for Weekend Edition Saturday. On the gender skew of the Wikipedia community, I think 85 percent (of the community is male). . .. We don’t really have 100 percent reliable numbers, but we do know that it is the vast majority, and it is something that we consider a problem. One of the things we know is people tend to write about things that they’re really passionate about, things that we know about. And the fact that our community is largely made up of tech   men, means that there are a lot of types of entries that don’t get enough attention. As a parent, I know that our entries on early childhood education are not as good as they should be and one of the reasons is that your    single male tech geek doesn’t really know a lot about kids and doesn’t really have a lot of interest in it, and therefore, quite rightly they’re not at a point in life where they would consider working on that. And we really want to have more diversity in the community, because we believe that it brings more quality. On Wikipedia’s diversity goals, Five years ago, we set a goal of 25 percent of the editors being female within five years we have not met that goal. And that’s a pretty   goal to start with. So that’s pretty depressing. For me personally, I don’t have a set number, I just want to see that number moving in the right direction. On efforts to diversify the community, One of the things that has been pretty successful is we’ve been doing some   . Some of the most successful ones I’ve seen had to do with female scientists  —   realizing that our entries about female scientists could be improved and inviting people to come and edit those, and in particular inviting women to get involved. As an event, as an ongoing mechanism for piquing people’s interest, that’s done pretty well. Another thing that we’re doing  —   and I’m always very careful how I talk about this because I’m not saying girls aren’t good at computers  —   is that the editing interface is far too techy and we want to make it much more what people are used to, a word processing environment. My father doesn’t edit Wikipedia. He’s not a tech geek. And it’s a challenge for anybody who’s not a tech geek. And we know that one of the characteristics of our community is that they do tend to be quite techy, quite geeky, and therefore, comfortable with Wiki markup language. But that excludes a huge number of people who are, as I always say, geeks but not tech geeks. So people who have expertise, but their expertise doesn’t happen to be in programming or markup languages. So we want to make sure that the software isn’t an impediment to people. There’s just no excuse for that. On whether the new editing interface has resulted in any changes yet, So slight that I would have to say no, not in the sense that we’re disappointed or it’s not working  —   in a sense that we haven’t rolled it out to enough people to really know. And also our methods of measuring the demographics of our audience are quite limited and crude. So far I would say, my personal opinion is that in the past several years since we’ve been focusing on that, we’ve made less progress than I would have ever imagined. And I’m not really sure why that is. I have some ideas, but we’ll keep working on it. On how the Wikipedia model could help newspaper comment sections, If you go to any newspaper, doesn’t matter how quality the newspaper is. Very   newspapers suffer the same problem, that the commenters are terrible. The good voices get completely drowned out. You scroll down to the bottom of any news story and you sort of weep for the future of humanity, because you just think, ”What a world   of idiots.” And yet, we know from Wikipedia and that experience, that there are a lot of really smart, really great people who want to contribute in a meaningful, positive way, and there’s a lot of what could be learned about how Wikipedia lets the community control their own environment that can be applied in my opinion, to news comments. My view is, why don’t you just let the community be the moderators and expand that franchise to more people? Of course, I’ve been saying this for at least 10 years now and no newspaper has taken me up on it. On the democracy of truth, I’m really glad that we avoided the temptation in the early days of having some sort of     rating system that would cause things to rise to the top, because those systems can be gamed. And it’s such a human endeavor, editorial judgment involves weighing up a sophisticated, nuanced set of ideas. And if you can do that collaboratively, with a group of people working together, with kindness and a shared objective, you can do wonderful results. On what’s ahead for Wikipedia, I would say the future of Wikipedia is going to remain mainly about text and images, so I don’t think we’re going to become YouTube or a virtual reality site, or the next version of the World of Warcraft to being World of Wiki. . .. But I do think the editing environment should get easier, ways of participating should be easier. Obviously, mobile opens up a whole world of things. The ability to click in a mobile app to say, ”Show me articles about things near me,” is quite a fun thing. You could click and see, ”Oh, there’s a historical church just two blocks away that I didn’t even know existed. I think I’ll wander over on my lunch hour and take a look at it.” On a potential partnership with Yelp, We don’t really do commercial partnerships, but if Yelp wanted to take some Wikipedia content and   it and reuse it, we would very much welcome it. . ..   applications may say, ”Gosh, if only we had information about all these famous places in the world”  —   come and get it from us, we’re happy to help you with that. On selling ads on Wikipedia, We’ve never really considered it. People say, ”Do you ever think about it?” And I say, ”Only because reporters ask me all the time.” But in terms of our board meetings and things like that, it’s not even a topic that comes up. We’re very happy being who we are. The (Wikimedia Foundation) doesn’t care if you’re reading about a topic that doesn’t have good revenue associated with it. If we took ads, we might be very tempted to see if we could get you to read about Las Vegas more, because there’s good ad revenue if people are thinking of going to Las Vegas. If you want to read about ancient Chinese poetry, that’s fine with us, and I think that’s really important. On the race to be the new Encyclopedia Britannica, I think we’re possibly near there now. Whether we deserve to be there or not is a different question. We tend to be our own harshest critics. We’re aiming at Britannica or better quality, so that’s where we want things to get to. But of course, given our open editing model, there’s always going to be noise, there’s always going to be some problems here and there on Wikipedia, and that’s just how we work. But overall, we want to be really comprehensive, we want to be really trustworthy. We want to make it really easy for people who see a problem to correct that problem."
"Investigators discovered this month that United Nations peacekeepers in the Central African Republic were paying girls at a camp for the internally displaced less than a dollar for sex. It’s the latest of several such incidents plaguing the U. N. mission there  —   22 other cases of alleged sexual abuse or exploitation have been reported in the past 14 months. The new allegations have surfaced just weeks after a damning report found that ”gross institutional failures” in the U. N.’s handling of sexual abuse cases helped perpetuate the problem. The organization has been grappling with accusations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers for decades. When the first round of allegations in the Central African Republic came to light last year, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon referred to the issue as ”a cancer in our system.” Part of the issue has to do with the way the organization is structured. The high demand for U. N. peacekeepers means that the the organization is constantly scrambling for personnel  —   so training and oversight take a hit. And if peacekeepers engage in sexual abuse, the U. N. cannot punish them directly. They’re under the legal protection of their home countries, explains Sarah Taylor, a women’s rights advocate at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch.  So what will it take to cure this persistent cancer? We asked Taylor to explain barriers to overcoming it. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Why are sexual abuse and exploitation so common in these peacekeeping missions?  I can’t say exactly.  Yet clearly it is happening. It’s incredibly important to remember how vulnerable these communities are where the peacekeepers are stationed. Civilians and local populations have been subjected to all kinds of violence. There’s been a breakdown of local governance, there’s often food shortages. So there are all sorts of ways that these populations are vulnerable to abuse. It seems that another issue is the way the U. N. is structured.  Part of the challenge is that the U. N. is dependent on   countries for the staff that makes up these missions. And there is usually shortage of troops. So there’s no consequences for these countries [if their representatives commit abuse]  —   the U. N. doesn’t say, ”Until you get your house in order, we’re not going to accept your troops.” But the U. N. does have some leverage here  —   there’s money they’re providing to these countries for providing troops. Do peacekeepers who commit sexual abuse face any consequences? The U. N. itself has very limited ability to get judicial redress once these troops return to their home countries. It’s then up to the home governments to decide what to do. In Haiti a few years ago, Pakistani troops were accused of sexual abuse. So [the Pakistani government] actually created a military tribunal in Haiti to try two Pakistani soldiers who were then sent back to Pakistan to serve their sentences, in this case a year in prison with hard labor. That doesn’t usually happen. There is a very complex bureaucratic system of memorandums of understanding between the U. N. and those countries that provide troops. Within 10 days, member states are supposed to send in an update to say they’re investigating these cases or prosecuting the offenders. But there’s no consequences for countries that don’t provide this information  —   so half the time they don’t. It becomes extremely difficult to find out what happens to the troops once they’re repatriated into their countries. So what can the U. N. do? There are things: strong leadership within the U. N. to follow up on cases, regular reporting so we have a better idea of how many allegations there have been  —   and of course, providing support and counseling for the survivors. Because this absolutely needs to be about the survivors. They’re often left without medical services, they’re often left without   counseling. Are you optimistic that we’ll finally see some progress on this issue? This has been going on for such a long time. Since the 1990s, there’s been allegations of this sort of abuse from peacekeeping troops and staff in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Cambodia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Haiti, South Sudan, Central African Republic. And the troops that have been responsible  —   at least the ones we know of  —   have been from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and France. Now there’s finally a proposal in the U. N. that repeat offender countries will not be allowed to provide troops until they can demonstrate that they’ve addressed this issue. But we’ve yet to see if there’s going to be follow through and if that’s actually going to work."
"The company that owns the leaking natural gas well in Los Angeles understated the number of air samples showing    levels of benzene, The Associated Press reports. Adding to concerns over the disaster, efforts to stop the leak appear to have destabilized the well, the Los Angeles Times reports, raising the risk of a blowout. The leak at Porter Ranch, which recently prompted California to declare a state of emergency, has been spewing enormous quantities of the greenhouse gas methane into the air for months. It’s expected to take months more to fix. The disaster has been compared to the BP oil spill for its impact. The company that owns the leaking well, Southern California Gas Co. has been under fire for not quickly communicating to nearby residents when the leak (which is invisible to the naked eye) began. Now the AP says the utility has also been less than transparent about the results of its air tests. SoCalGas ”understated the number of times airborne levels of the   chemical benzene have spiked during the crisis,” the wire service reports.   air sample results have been posted online by the company. Summarizing the results, the company said benzene  —   which is known to cause leukemia and anemia  —   was detected at ”extremely low concentrations . .. consistent with the levels expected for the area.” The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s most recent report on air pollution notes that average levels of benzene across the LA area are less than 0. 5 parts per billion. But the company puts ”levels expected for the area” at up to 2 ppb. The AP reports says that: ”Apparently relying on that standard, SoCalGas originally said that benzene was found in amounts slightly higher than background levels in just two samples, both on Nov. 10. The suspect readings were 5. 6 parts per billion in one gated development about a mile from the well and 3. 7 parts per billion in the Porter Ranch Estates neighborhood of 1, 100 homes. ”However, a more detailed look at the data by the AP and outside experts showed at least 10 other instances over seven days in November when benzene exceeded 1 part per billion. ”In its update Thursday, SoCalGas said that nearly 1, 200 tests had found 14 instances where benzene exceeded 1 part per billion, including one time in December.” A SoCalGas spokeswoman called the omission of those readings from the summaries ”an oversight,” the AP says. The company maintains there’s no health risk posed by the leak. So how much benzene threatens human health? It depends on whom you ask. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that SoCalGas’ efforts to cap the well have actually increased the risk of a blowout. Seven attempts to plug the leak have made the area less stable, the paper reports: ”The chief deputy director of the [California Department of Conservation] Jason Marshall, and a senior oil and gas field regulator assigned to daily watch at Aliso Canyon, Scott McGurk, told The Times the site and wellhead were made more unstable by the gas company’s attempts to stop the leak by pumping a slurry directly into the well. ”The last of those efforts, which stretched over several days beginning Dec. 22, expanded a crater around the wellhead, state and gas company officials said. ”The crater is now 25 feet deep, 80 feet long and 30 feet wide, those officials said. The wellhead sits exposed within the cavernous space, held in place with cables attached after it wobbled during the plugging attempt, Marshall and McGurk said. The well pipe and its control valves are exposed and unsupported within that hole, atop a deep field of pressurized gas. . .. ” ’If the wellhead fails, the thing is just going to be full blast,’ said Gene Nelson, a physical sciences professor at Cuesta College. ”It will be a horrible, horrible problem. The leak rates would go way up.’ ” The newspaper also notes that even without a blowout, the leak could catch on fire. It quoted California Department of Conservation spokesman Don Drysdale as saying the possibility is ”a concern.” You can read the Times’ full report."
"If nothing else The Benefactor, an absorbing if uneven psychological drama from   Andrew Renzi, provides Richard Gere with a liberating opportunity to come on like Al Pacino. As Franny, a wealthy Philadelphia philanthropist without boundaries who gets his way through hysterical giving, Gere throws himself around with overbearing flamboyance, clearly relishing the chance to inhabit a man who’s always on but understands nothing. Renzi has said that he based Franny partly on the troubled heir John DuPont, so memorably rendered by Steve Carell in Foxcatcher. But this trust fund baby is nothing like Carell’s chilly manipulator. All bullying bonhomie, Franny’s a compulsive hugger who uses his physicality to control others. He’s a superb practitioner of what novelist Saul Bellow called ”potato love,” the imposition of a spurious intimacy, the better to   others into submission. As the movie opens, we learn that this apparently harmless habit played a direct part in killing Franny’s best (and probably only) friends (Dylan Baker and Cheryl Hines). Five years on, we find him chugging back   drinkies in a cavernous wing of the plush hotel he calls home. He’s also wearing a big beard and a wig that seems to have been worked up from a floor mop, which seems a bit much for a film that bills itself as an observational chamber piece. Then again, you might say that the guy can’t even be a hermit without grandstanding. Tragedy hasn’t taught Franny a thing, and when his dead friends’ grown daughter, Olivia (Dakota Fanning) returns to Philadelphia with her new husband, Luke (Divergent’s Theo James) he reverts to type and buys back Olivia’s childhood home for the couple to live in. Tellingly, he insists on calling Olivia by her pet name (don’t ask) and he uses the job he finagles for Luke at his charity (a children’s hospital, of course) to control the increasingly uneasy young man’s every move. The only thing Franny holds back from his new best friends is his role in the death of Olivia’s parents. Gere is an intensely physical actor who’s no stranger to playing extreme manipulators, but in dramatic roles he typically renders them with a panther’s stillness and taut control. What drives these men  —   the bent cop in Internal Affairs, the conniving   in Arbitrage, even the desperate homeless man in last year’s Time Out of Mind  —   is all in the watchful, swiveling eyes. Franny’s unraveling here is a   spectacle, exposing the   loneliness of an overgrown child who longs to connect but has no idea how, and so keeps upping the ante of his    beneficence until it bites him in the neck. Gere’s deft showboating, with Fanning   beautifully at the other end of the seesaw, is quite enough to carry a movie whose potency surely depends on not spelling things out. Like Franny, Renzi has yet to learn when enough is way too much. He litters the action with unnecessary signs and portents: that overgrown wig broadcasting Franny’s internal disarray, followed by copious shaving as he clears the emotional decks at least five shots too many of Franny furiously imbibing a soundtrack that’s almost as much of an emotional terrorist as Franny is and a screenplay that gives too much away. ”Do you ever get found?” asks a small boy with whom Franny ”bonds” at the hospital. ”Only when there’s someone looking,” says Franny, his face winking extravagant woe. Rehab of one sort or another may be inevitable. But if Renzi’s a little too handy with the reset button, to his great credit he doesn’t burden Franny with facile causes like the monster mom who ruined DuPont in Foxcatcher. Franny’s wealth alone isn’t trotted out to explain his inability at age 60 to get started on the business of life. Nor is he entirely deformed by guilt. We’re all difficult and hard to know in that way, and wisely, The Benefactor leaves the origin stories to us."
"”Money doesn’t talk,” said Bob Dylan. ”It swears.” This is almost literally true in the blizzard of books, movies and TV shows about our financial  . If our wolves of Wall Street love anything more than obscene wealth, it’s obscene language. These guys  —   and they are mainly guys  —   don’t trust anyone who’s shy about dropping  . Who’s effing who  —   and how  —   is one of the governing metaphors of Billions, a new Showtime series whose opening shot features one of its lead characters trussed up and awaiting a dominatrix. Though my heart sank when I saw this, such an image is truth in advertising. This is a show about power relationships, one that’s positively shameless in its desire to grab you. Billions is built around the collision of two megalomaniacal   both played by actors who specialize in characters you can’t trust. That Pavarotti of prickliness Paul Giamatti is Chuck Rhoades, a   U. S. Attorney with just enough conscience that he can’t completely enjoy his vaulting ambition. The calculating Rhoades dreams of being governor, which will be easier if he takes the scalp of a financial  . Enter Bobby ”Axe” Axelrod, played by   Damian Lewis, far different here than in Homeland. He’s a   maestro who presents himself as a regular guy, but is the kind of thug who remembers, and avenges, slights decades later. At first, Rhoades worries about going after Axe, who’s popular because of his casual dress,   origins and canny    donations. But when Axe courts bad publicity by deciding to buy a staggeringly expensive house, Rhoades thinks it safe to make his move. But there are complications. For starters, Rhoades’ psychologist wife, Wendy  —   niftily played by Maggie Siff  —   is a   life coach at Axelrod’s firm. And naturally Axe fights back. His personal fixer, played with a mortician’s sangfroid by Terry Kinney, instantly starts targeting Rhoades’ staff and family. Billions was created by the screenwriting team of Brian Koppelman and David Levien  —   who wrote Oceans Thirteen, among others  —   along with New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. Together they’ve come up with a plot that doesn’t even aspire to the earnestness of an   Hollywood morality play. The show’s basically a glossy melodrama. And it offers a melodrama’s pleasures. The action clips right along, with punchy dialogue, twists and machinations, gratuitous   nudity, and lots of prime acting moments  —   Lewis showing Axe’s affability melt into ruthlessness, Giamatti’s blend of righteousness and bullying when Rhoades yells at a stranger for not cleaning up after his dog. They’re really good. But their effing machismo lacks inner dimension and often feels generic. We’ve heard these alpha dogs bark many times before. The female roles feel fresher. Axe’s wife, Lara  —   played by Malin Ackerman  —   seems like a perky nice girl but she’s a smiler with a knife. The show’s juiciest and most original character is Wendy Rhoades, who hears everyone’s secret feelings. Loyal to both her husband and to Axe  —   to what extent we can’t be sure  —   this gifted psychologist plays the deepest game of all. Wendy uses her role as a   to nudge people into doing what she wants. She admits that such manipulation turns her on. It turns us on, too. The show perks up whenever she’s  . When I heard that Andrew Ross Sorkin was involved with Billions, I hoped he would use his inside knowledge to depict the workings of money and power with the same precision that David Simon brought to The Wire. In fact, the series doesn’t really care about such authenticity. In a way, this is hardly surprising. It’s hard to explain, for example, what hedge funds do without losing or boring the audience. The thing that’s done it best, The Big Short, jumped through all sorts of stylistic hoops to demystify the 2008   mortgage crisis and the financial instruments that helped spawn it. You’ll find none of those hoops here.  The show is so eager to keep us watching that it can’t be bothered to show us how the world actually works. An entertaining fantasy, Billions teaches you as much about the financial world as Empire teaches you about the music business or House of Cards does the road to the White House."
"Imagine Cinderella’s glass slipper scaled to about 100 times its original size and dropped on the coast of Taiwan. That’s the new church in Ocean View Park in Budai township. Looking like it was plucked from a distorted fairy tale, the glittering,   building is made up of about 320 tinted glass panels and stands 55 feet tall by 36 feet wide. It was reportedly constructed by the Southwest Coast National Scenic Area in an effort to attract female worshippers and tourists to the site. ”In our planning, we want to make it a blissful, romantic avenue,” Pan   the administration’s recreation section manager, told the BBC. But the inspiration behind the design  —   and, no, it’s not   commercialism  —   is anything but blissful. The BBC reports: ”The shoe was inspired by a local story. According to officials in the 1960s, a    girl surnamed Wang from the impoverished region suffered from Blackfoot disease. Both of her legs had to be amputated, leading to the cancellation of her wedding. She remained unmarried and spent the rest of her life at a church. ”The high heel is intended to honour her memory.” Just in case a giant high heel with a tragic back story isn’t enough to lure women to the new church, another local government official said the interior of the church, too, will cater to women’s apparently delicate inclinations. The Daily Mail, citing local media, quotes a spokesman for the Southwest Coast National Scenic Area as saying the church will have 100   features  —   maple leaves, chairs for lovers, biscuits and cakes. The building is set to open in time for the Chinese New Year, on Feb. 8. Pan told the BBC that the church, which took two months and cost about $686, 000 to build, will not be used for regular services but instead for weddings and   photo shoots. ”Every girl imagines how they will look like when they become the bride,” she said. Not every girl, apparently, swoons over glass slippers. People from all over the world took to social media to object to the idea that women would necessarily be drawn to a building shaped like a shoe. But as the BBC notes, Jessie Chou, writing on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo, might have said it best: ”I wear flip flops anyway.”"
"Citing concerns over pricing and pollution, the Obama administration on Friday unveiled a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands. The change won’t affect existing leases, which generated nearly $1. 3 billion for the government last year. The Department of the Interior says it wants to make sure the money it’s charging for coal leases takes into account both market prices and what’s often called the ”social costs” of coal  —   its impact on climate change and public health. The agency says federal lands account for roughly 40 percent of all U. S. coal production. NPR’s Jeff Brady reports: ”The moratorium will remain in place while the agency reviews whether fees charged to mining companies provides a fair return and considers coal’s effect on the environment. Leases already awarded are not affected.” Update at 10:50 a. m. ET: Two Reactions, As you would expect, there are vastly different reactions to the announcement. We’ll excerpt two here. First, from Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council: ”The president is right to stop this handout to big coal companies, which has cost American taxpayers more than $30 billion over the past three decades.” And from Rep. Rob Bishop,   Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources: ”This unprecedented action will completely shut down coal leasing on Federal lands and will disproportionately harm the poorest among us.” Our original post continues: The review process is expected to take about three years. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced the change in a conference call Friday morning. Before that call, an administration official confirmed details of the plan to Jeff. During what her agency is calling a ”pause” in issuing leases, Jewell said Friday, ”we’ll make accommodations in the event of emergency circumstances to ensure this pause will have no material impact on the nation’s ability to meet its power generation needs.” In addition to analyzing the return American taxpayers are earning on the use of natural resources, the Interior Department says it’ll also review coal’s public health impacts. The federal Bureau of Land Management handles coal leasing on the approximately 570 million acres of land. In 2014, 475, 171 of those acres were covered by leases, along with one sale. The federal shift on coal leases comes weeks after the BLM announced that in 2015, its coal program had taken in about $1. 29 billion in royalties, rents and bonuses. That’s from a release in which the agency celebrated ”major gains in 2015 ensuring safe and responsible energy development on public lands.” Last spring, Jewell called for a new discussion of the federal coal program, focusing on the fairness of prices charged for coal leases and other concerns at five public meetings. The U. S. government shares   revenue with the states where the land is located. In recent years, that has meant hundreds of millions of dollars for Wyoming, which accounts for the most acreage and leases in the federal system and is the nation’s leading coal producer. In 2014, the most recent year with complete data, Wyoming received more than $555 million in royalties and revenues, with more than 200, 000 acres covered by 102 federal leases. Colorado and Utah are the   participants, with more than 80, 000 acres."
"Donald Trump did not dominate the sixth debate among the most prominent Republican candidates for president, but he may have been its prime beneficiary. Trump held his own through an evening of challenges from the FOX Business Network moderators and from six rivals with him on stage. There were plenty of slings and arrows all around, yet Trump did nothing to discourage his fans while watching his main rivals carve each other up. He even had a moment of thoughtful connection while defending his ”New York values.” Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio slammed each other’s records and impugned each other’s integrity for one lengthy segment of the debate’s final hour, going    in a   that may not help either in the long run. The debate lasted nearly 2   hours, testing the seven men who still have significant standing in national or   polls. They were making their last   appeal until they meet in Iowa to debate just days before the caucuses in that state kick off the actual voting season on Feb. 1. Thursday’s debate was held in Charleston, S. C. in the state that will hold its own early primary on Feb. 20. The event was held before a large, lively crowd, like most of the other Republican debates, and featured considerable cheering and even catcalls and boos. At first the crowd seemed to be behind Cruz in his duel with Trump, but it later seemed to be with Rubio when he went after Cruz. Cruz was the man on camera most often through the evening. The hardliner from Texas showed a bit of why he has made few friends in the Senate yet become a hero to millions of conservatives. Cruz was on the spot early because Trump has recently questioned whether Cruz’s Canadian birth met the ”natural born citizen” qualification cited in the Constitution. Relying on his mother’s U. S. citizenship, Cruz usually dismisses such questions as a ”nonissue” or a matter of ”settled law.” But in this debate he raised a competing theory instead, saying ”the more extreme conspiracy theorists” thought someone had to be born in the U. S. to parents who were also both born in the U. S. (a standard raised by very few and never applied to presidential candidates in the past). Cruz pointed out that neither he, nor rival Marco Rubio, nor even Trump himself could meet that strenuous a test. (Trump’s mother was born in Scotland.) But by so doing, Cruz eluded the real question of whether he needed to have been born in the actual United States in order to be legally elected president. And once that issue had been raised by FOX Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo, Trump was more than willing to respond to Cruz’s attempts to sidestep it. ”That wouldn’t work,” he said. ”I was born here. Big difference.” This was not the only clash between the two men who are leading in Iowa polls as well as in national soundings of the GOP. The moderators also raised Cruz’s recent remarks about Trump having ”New York values,” which had been an applause line for him on the hustings. Cruz spoke of ”socially liberal” New York as a city obsessed with ”media and money.” Trump came back, not with his characteristic aggression or bluster, but with a measured answer about the values by which his native state and city had rebounded from the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. He said New Yorkers in those days and months earned the admiration of the world. Later, talking to reporters in what is called the ”spin room,” Trump said, ”I guess the bromance is over,” a reference to his falling out with Cruz after the two observed an uneasy truce in the earlier debates. Cruz had refused to join other candidates’ efforts to take down the national   and Trump had returned the favor by holding his fire. But as Cruz has moved up, and moved ahead in Iowa, Trump has countered with the questions about Cruz’s birthright eligibility. ”The Constitution hasn’t changed,” Cruz quipped. ”But the poll numbers have.” Rubio, pouncing on Cruz much later in the debate, unleashed a flurry of attacks on a range of issues. Cruz had harkened back to Rubio’s 2013 bill overhauling the immigration laws  —   a bill Cruz has called ”amnesty for illegals.” Rubio noted several issues on which Cruz had changed his views or his stance, including the availability of green cards and legal status for immigrants in the country illegally, Trade Promotion Authority for President Obama, military spending levels and even the status of whistleblower Edward Snowden. ”He called Snowden a public servant,” Rubio said. ”When I’m president if we can get our hands on him, Snowden will be prosecuted as a traitor.” Cruz had a chance to rebut what he called ”at least 11 attacks” from Rubio and said at least half of them were ”clearly false.” But he spent his time primarily on answering the assertion he had favored lower military spending. Also going after Rubio was Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, who at one point said he was going to answer a given issue because ”you had your chance Marco and you blew it.” Christie also reprised a popular thrust he had made in earlier debates by referring to the Washington way of debating issues on the floor of the Senate, contrasting it with a governor’s obligation to actually govern. Rubio had nettled Christie earlier by referring to issues on which he had supported Obama and for him ”sending a check to Planned Parenthood”  —   the women’s health organization that has been a target for the Republican candidates because it provides abortions. Christie flatly denied sending any money to Planned Parenthood, causing Twitter to come alive with reporters and others saying they had proof Christie did so in the 1990s. In response to a question from moderator Neil Cavuto about a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods entering the U. S. Trump said the quotation was wrong. ”It’s The New York Times, said Trump, ”they are always wrong.” Cruz had earlier denounced The Times for its ”hit piece” on the loan he received from the investment bank of Goldman Sachs at favorable terms to finance his bid for the U. S. Senate in 2012. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, worked for the bank at the time, and he has said they used their own retirement accounts to pay for the campaign. Cruz called it ”a paperwork error” that he reported the loan properly in one disclosure form but not another. Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, found several opportunities to assert himself, especially on the question of immigration. He went after Trump’s proposed exclusion of all Muslims, saying it made it impossible to recruit and retain allies in the international coalition against ISIS. In fact, he said, he made the case ISIS is trying to make against the U. S. Bush had earlier called Trump’s suggestion ”unhinged,” and he stood by that on Thursday night. Less noteworthy than in any debate since the campaign began was Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who surged to the upper ranks in the polls in the fall. Since the terror attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, however, as the campaign focus shifted to national security, Carson has faded. Recent turmoil in his campaign has included the resignation of his finance director, which was announced the day of the debate. The moderators turned to him last in the questioning sequence and Carson made a joke about needing to be awakened. Also somewhat marginalized was John Kasich who, like Christie, barely made the statistical cut to participate on the main stage. Four others who did not make the cut were invited to an earlier debate in the same location. Three participated: Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Carly Fiorina. A fourth, Rand Paul, declined the invitation. Kasich was given regular questions by the moderators but was not engaged by the other candidates as much as Trump, Cruz, Rubio and Christie. That meant he could not get response time, or get involved in the    that animated the evening. He spent his camera time reciting his accomplishments as a member of the House and as governor of Ohio since 2010."
"Former GOP presidential hopeful Linsdey Graham has announced his endorsement of Jeb Bush for president. Graham’s presidential campaign went nowhere, but as a senator from the early voting state of South Carolina he hopes to still have some clout. Graham praised Bush’s temperament Friday morning, following Thursday night’s GOP debate. ”He hasn’t tried to get ahead in a contested primary by embracing demagoguery . .. he’s not running to be    by running people down,” he said. That was clearly a reference to Donald Trump. Bush returned the admiration, calling Graham a ”patriot.” ”He loves this country. You just hear it how he spoke from his heart about what’s at stake here. What’s at stake is our way of life,” Bush said. Jeb Bush  —   still slumping in polls  —   has been looking for a way to   his campaign, but an endorsement from a former candidate who couldn’t break through either probably won’t give Bush the upswing he needs. With the Iowa caucuses fewer than three weeks away, he’s polling behind Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson both nationally and in Iowa. Bush was unable to stand out from the field once again at Thursday’s Republican presidential debate. And Bush’s donors are reportedly getting skittish, saying it’s only a matter of time before he drops out. Politico reported that several donors said they are now waiting for what one former George W. Bush administration appointee described as a ”family hall pass” to switch to another campaign after the New Hampshire primary."
"The sixth Republican debate began harmoniously. Every candidate on stage agreed on one thing: Obama is a terrible president. Then Ted Cruz’s citizenship issue came up and the gloves were off. Cruz was attacked much of the night, but never backed down. After explaining the Constitution to Donald Trump, the former solicitor general said: ”I’m not going to take legal advice from Donald Trump.” Trump doubled down on his   and    policies. And proudly professed: ”I will gladly accept the mantle of anger.” Marco Rubio seemed to look past his opponents on stage and attacked Clinton over and over. The   moments: That’s the quickie version of what happened in the sixth Republican presidential debate of the 2016 race Thursday night. The politics team has    coverage."
"Campaigning in Des Moines this week, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum took pains to regularly remind voters that he won Iowa’s 2012 caucuses. ”You did a great job in my opinion,” he told a crowd of about two dozen. ”You could have done a little better job in your math, but you did a great job otherwise.” Four years later, the Republican Party of Iowa is bringing in Microsoft to help with those math skills. Motivated partially by the 2012 caucuses’ reporting problems  —   it took about three weeks to figure out Santorum had topped former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in an especially tight contest  —   both Republicans and Democrats are updating their caucus night reporting process. The state parties, which fund and operate the Feb. 1 caucuses, are turning to a solution that many use to get better organized: a smartphone app. The app will record each precinct’s tally, and send the results to party headquarters in Des Moines. While the app itself is   and basic  —   it kind of looks like a calculator  —   it stands out in what will otherwise be a decidedly   affair. Republicans often cast their ballots on slips of paper, and Democrats count their support for candidates by grouping together in corners at caucus sites. Microsoft approached Iowa’s Republican and Democratic parties with the app idea. The software giant developed the program at no cost as a showcase for its   technology. Because the caucuses are   and aren’t technically government elections, this kind of technology shift can happen very quickly, compared with the lengthy legislative and legal processes surrounding updates to voting methods. Both parties were quick to sign up for the pitch. (Not all campaigns share the enthusiasm, though: The Bernie Sanders campaign will arm volunteers with its own   reporting app to independently keep tabs on results.) Each precinct will designate one person who will download the app to his or her phone and record the evening’s results. Those recording will need to be registered with either the Republican or Democratic Party beforehand, so they can be texted a   verification code on caucus night. On the Republican side, volunteers will enter the precincts’ total number of  . If each candidate’s vote totals don’t equal that figure, an error message will pop up and the results won’t be recorded. Democrats use a different,   counting method. Microsoft says the parties will also be able to guard against reporting errors. They’ll be able to set ”thresholds for each precinct. We didn’t expect a thousand people for this precinct, or we didn’t expect two people in this precinct,” said Stan Freck, senior director of campaign technology services. Those settings, Republicans and Microsoft argue, will safeguard against the types of recording errors that sometimes plagued the old system: a simple automated telephone hotline, which volunteers would call to punch in their sites’ totals. That phone hotline was ”liable to error  —   you don’t get to confirm anything,” said Ryan Frederick, Adair County’s Republican chair. ”It just goes off into the ether, and you watch the news to see if it was right.” Frederick will be tasked with reporting all the county’s precinct totals on Feb. 1. He seemed excited about the new app during a December training session. ”For those of you who remember the good old days, this is so much better,” he told the handful of precinct volunteers who were sitting around an insurance office. The caucus app makes complete sense to Frederick, who is in his 30s and uses his Android phone for just about everything. ”If it isn’t in this phone it doesn’t exist,” he said. But not everyone feels that way. Many caucus volunteers are less tech savvy, and Alex Latcham, who conducts caucus training sessions for the Republican Party, said he has spent a lot of training time just showing people how to download and install apps on their phones. Microsoft’s Freck said that has been the biggest hurdle during the   to the caucuses. ”It’s a fairly simple application,” he said in the company’s Washington, D. C. offices. ”But as always, people are involved. . .. There are over 1, 800 precincts. So we’re going to get precinct chairs and people who are involved that have all different levels of . .. tech comfort.” That’s a main reason why Microsoft and both parties are doing so many test runs before Feb. 1. As Frederick put it as Adair County’s training session wrapped up, ”With something like the future of the free world, you want to be sure you got it right.”"
"Take two    with equally stellar academic abilities. One comes from the socioeconomic bottom and one from the top. That   student is   as likely to enroll in a selective college. Often, when the media report on this phenomenon, known as undermatching, the focus is on the motivations of the students. Maybe   students think these schools are out of their league. In many cases, they fail to apply in the first place. But a new report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation takes a more pointed look at the other side of the table: the admissions policies of selective and elite colleges. (Note: The foundation is a supporter of NPR Ed.) ”Although neutral on its face,” the report concludes, ”the admissions process as it is implemented is actually skewed dramatically against the poor.” Among the examples cited in the report are: But here’s the factor that surprised me the most: 5. Athletic recruitment and scholarships. Recruited athletes are as much as four times as likely to be admitted to selective colleges as similarly qualified peers. Athletics are popularly thought of as the ticket to college for   and minority students. But the authors of this paper tell a different story: ”Many of these slots . .. go to wealthy, suburban, white students.” They don’t give hard numbers. But out of curiosity, I looked up the list of varsity sports teams at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and compared them with the athletics programs in the three biggest public school systems: Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago.  You’ll find the same marquee sports in all six places: baseball, basketball, football, soccer, swimming, track and field. Even sports stereotyped as preppy, like lacrosse, tennis and golf, are available in at least some urban schools. But kids growing up poor in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City have little or no access to several Ivy League sports: crew, sailing, diving, squash and hockey. At least not through the easiest route  —   their public schools. Chicago and LA Unified have no fencing, gymnastics, rugby or skiing either, and New York City has no water polo."
"When Super Bowl 50 is played early next month, it will easily be the most watched televised event of the year, with roughly a third of American households tuning in. It wasn’t always that way. After the first Super Bowl was played back in 1967, NBC and CBS, the networks that broadcast the game, erased the tapes. It was long thought that the game was lost forever  —   until now. Turns out the NFL’s own production unit was also filming that game. It has now stitched together that archival footage with NBC’s radio broadcast by Jim Simpson and George Ratterman. The entire game will air again Friday for the first time, on NFL Network. NFL Films senior producer David Plaut says they spent months scouring NFL archives looking for the footage, and then they had to put it all together. ”I likened it to a jigsaw puzzle,” Plaut says. It’s a puzzle with 145 pieces, one for each play between the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers and the American Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs. While pro football back then was way less popular than baseball, boxing and even college football, Plaut says the teams on the field were still pretty impressive. ”You had a game where you had 14 future Hall of Famers, two Hall of Fame coaches, a lot of great, immortal players who many people have never seen play, and at least for one evening, you’re going to see them come alive again,” he says. Plaut says fans watching Super Bowl I: The Lost Game will probably notice differences and also similarities between the game now and then. ”The athletes are not as big, they’re certainly not as fast, but the game is fundamentally played in the same way,” he says. ”Where the Super Bowl is different is in the way that it is presented. It is so much more of an event of entertainment and spectacle than it was.” Think about the halftime show. Back then, for example, it was less Beyonce and Coldplay and much more marching bands. Dave Robinson was a linebacker for Green Bay in that original Super Bowl. He says that walking into the stadium with legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi felt historic. ”Vince said, ’Man, football has come a long way from when I used to play in cow pastures,’ and I said, ’Well, you’re right, Coach.’ He thought that this was a long way, but if he could see the Super Bowl today, with all the grandeur,” he says, he probably wouldn’t believe it. Spoiler alert: The Packers won that first Super Bowl, beating the Chiefs  .  On Friday night, Robinson gets to relive that glory. ”I’ve always said, I wish they’d saved those tapes of Super Bowl I. Now I’m going to have my own copy, because I’m going to tape it,” Robinson says. ”I really can’t wait to see it.” His prediction for this year’s Super Bowl? ”Kansas City versus the Green Bay Packers. Wouldn’t it be phenomenal to have those two teams play Super Bowl 50, after having played Super Bowl I? The league would come full circle,” he says. Those two teams, while they’re low seeds, are both still in the playoffs, so it could happen."
"Just last month, polio experts were wondering if the tipping point for bringing an end to the crippling disease was near, with cases having further declined in the only two remaining countries not yet free of the infection, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But earlier this week, a suicide bomber’s blast outside a polio eradication center in Quetta, Pakistan, killed at least 15 people. According to reports, most of the dead were security personnel assigned to protect health workers as they began a planned      vaccination campaign. A   militant group called Jundullah, or Army of God, claims responsibility for the attack and has threatened more attacks on polio teams. And this is not the first time terrorist groups have targeted polio workers more than 60 workers have been killed in Pakistan since 2012. How come? We asked Joel Charny, who works on humanitarian aid policy at the nonprofit advocacy group InterAction, to explain. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Why target polio centers and workers for attacks?  There is a history of trying to disrupt polio campaigns. They are viewed by the Taliban as an intrusion into traditional society, and vaccination campaigns are fundamentally run and organized by central governments [as in Pakistan] that are contrary to the ideology of these militant groups. There is also suspicion of the vaccination itself as something from the outside. There are misinformed, nefarious beliefs that this is a medical plot by the West. This was compounded by the CIA’s actions five years ago [creating a fake hepatitis vaccination program to help locate Osama bin Laden]. Why this attack now?  I think why now is impossible to answer. There is nothing in particular in the environment that provoked the attack at this moment. This is something that has been ongoing sporadically  —   and I emphasize sporadically  —   by militant groups in Pakistan and northern Nigeria. Do you expect more attacks?  Because of the nature of global communications, the fact that this is taking place in Pakistan is known, and there might be copycats. I don’t mean to imply that something will happen tomorrow. But we know that similar attacks have taken place in northern Nigeria. In areas where there are militant organizations with similar ideologies, you might see more. What is the impact of such attacks on immunization efforts?  If you’re one of the vaccinators, there will be a natural sense to ask: Do I have the courage to go forward? And I would say that what is most striking is just the incredible will of the vaccinators and their determination to continue these campaigns, in spite of these attacks. If there is anything that should be highlighted, it is the determination and that courage that the local vaccinators have. They continue because they understand the importance of these campaigns, that to eradicate a disease you need 100 percent vaccination coverage. Most of the workers are going to be from the community  —   they know the risk, the dangers. They are the unsung heroes."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. Officially, Jet Plane And Oxbow is Shearwater’s ninth studio album, so it’s fair to expect a   of ideas at some point, to assume that   years of recording and touring would begin to drain the vitality from Jonathan Meiburg’s grandiose and ambitious compositions. After all, Meiburg has plenty of other creatively fulfilling projects to distract him, such as writing (he contributes to the literary magazine The Believer) and ornithology (his master’s thesis focused on a subspecies of falcons common to the Falkland Islands, which he says is also at least partially the subject of his upcoming book). So Meiburg could be forgiven for letting his busy mind wander. Yet he sounds as focused and intense as ever on Jet Plane And Oxbow, which is full of rock songs that churn and clatter with force, invention and mystery. Meiburg has always surrounded himself with impeccable collaborators, both within and outside Shearwater, and here he particularly benefits from the album’s percussionists: Drummer Cully Symington and   Brian Reitzell combine to lend Jet Plane And Oxbow much of its propulsive and discomfiting energy (check out the positively motorik ”Radio Silence”).   sounds abound  —   one track finds room for both synthesizer and dulcimer  —   which helps render Meiburg’s songs both unsettling and majestic. The terrific ”Quiet Americans” checks many of the band’s boxes right away, as the synths peal through static, while Meiburg’s vocals bark, swoop, soar and swoon in tune with the moment. From there, the palette expands and contracts to include booming,   urgency (”A Long Time Away”) a persistently rumbling, exploratory epic worthy of Wilco (”Filaments”) and a ballad that sneaks in some of Meiburg’s favorite themes (”Wildlife In America”). Of course, that big, elastic voice remains at the center of these songs, but so too does a mandate to fill the surrounding air with big, bold ideas. "
"Today marks a major milestone in the Iran nuclear deal. It’s known as Implementation Day, the day when the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, says that Iran has curbed its nuclear program enough to begin receiving relief on sanctions. The terms were laid out last July by Iran, the U. S. and five other world powers. ”Today marks the moment that the Iran nuclear agreement transitions from an ambitious set of promises on paper to measurable action in progress,” U. S Secretary of State John Kerry announced Saturday in Vienna. His statement comes directly on the heels of confirmation from IAEA   Yukiya Amano, who said that Iran has completed the necessary steps to begin implementation of the agreement. ”This paves the way for the IAEA to begin verifying and monitoring Iran’s   commitments under the agreement, as requested by the U. N. Security Council and authorised by the IAEA Board,” Amano said in the statement. In order to get to this stage, Iran first had to fulfill a number of steps to shrink its nuclear program and render it more transparent to outsiders. Under the agreement, Iran was required to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by about 98 percent, remove   of its centrifuges  —   leaving a total of 5, 060 centrifuges  —   and remove the core of its heavy water reactor at Arak. Now, Iran is set to receive billions of dollars when its assets are unfrozen. Estimates range from $55 billion to over $100 billion. Perhaps more significantly, the country ”will effectively rejoin the international banking system. In short, Iran will be more of a player in the region and beyond in 2016,” NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports. The lifting of sanctions will also impact the world oil market and Iran’s trading partners, according to the World Bank. ”Iran’s full return to the global market will eventually add about a million barrels of oil a day, lowering oil prices by US$10 per barrel next year,” the World Bank says, ”which also expects economic growth to surge to about 5% in 2016 from 3% this year.” It’s important to know that the U. S. is only lifting a portion of its sanctions on Iran. ”U. S. statutory sanctions focused on Iran’s support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and missile activities will remain in effect and continue to be enforced,” The White House says. And the U. S. will open up far less than the European Union in terms of trade and business with Iran. There’s a lot of uncertainty within the business community about what exactly will be allowed. NPR’s Michele Kelemen reported last month that ”the U. S. Treasury Department is issuing detailed guidance to explain to Americans what is possible and what remains  .” Broadly, the Treasury Department says the U. S. will allow ”the sale of U. S. origin aircraft, parts and services exclusively for commercial passenger aviation to Iran the import of   carpets and foodstuff and certain activities conducted by foreign subsidiaries of U. S. companies.” These are the exceptions. The U. S. Treasury says that ”the U. S. embargo will generally remain in place, even after Implementation Day, because of concerns outside of Iran’s nuclear program.” Another thorny issue: how this will work for multinational corporations. CNN Money takes Apple as an example: ”It can apply to Treasury for a waiver to ship iPads to Iran from the U. S. but its U. S. business can’t service the device or open a store in Iran. Apple could also face penalties if the iPad landed in the wrong hands. ”However, a European subsidiary of Apple could operate in Iran after Implementation Day. It just couldn’t talk to Apple HQ in California about the Iranian operations.” As CNN Money reports, ”It will still be almost impossible for most U. S. businesses to set up a physical presence in Iran or partner with Iranian companies.” While there are still many outstanding questions about how sanctions relief will play out, here’s a look at what happens in a number of sectors under the terms of the nuclear deal: The U. S. says that it will no longer sanction  . S. individuals who engage in financial transactions with the Iranian government, its central bank or financial institutions. That will make it much easier for Iran to reconnect with international banking systems. Money will be able to move between the European Union and Iran without special authorization or notification. The E. U. will allow Iranian banks to open offices in E. U. member states. The E. U. will allow member states to import and sell Iranian crude oil and gas. By contrast, the U. S. will cease efforts to reduce Iran’s crude oil sales and will no longer sanction  . S. citizens who are part of or engage in transactions with Iran’s energy sector. ”Most companies I speak with in the United States are shocked to learn that they will continue to be prohibited from doing business with Iran while their counterparts in Europe and Asia are currently sending business envoys to Tehran,” sanctions lawyer Kaveh Miremadi tells Platts, an energy information service. Another sanctions lawyer, Anthony Patten, told Platts, ”Even if you’re a   company that in principle can do business in Iran, structuring your deal in a way that complies with US export restrictions is still challenging.” Should you be a fan of Iranian pistachios, caviar, or carpets, you’re in luck  —   the deal lifts import bans on these signature Iranian products to the U. S. However, U. S. pistachio growers will be less lucky. As one nut expert told Slate, ”If they allow Iranian pistachios into the country it may take a real bite out of the domestic market as they are far superior.” The E. U. will allow for trade to Iran of naval equipment and technology for ship building. It’ll also allow cargo flights from Iran to access member state airports. The U. S. won’t sanction  . S. citizens who are part of the shipping sector in Iran or have financial dealings with it. This is the only sector in which the U. S. is truly able to do business in the Iranian market. U. S. companies will now be allowed to sell commercial aircraft and parts to Iran. As The Economist reported, ”Iranian airlines were forced into the black market when sourcing, and repairing, their planes” for decades. After the deal, ”as well as improving the lot of Iranian passengers, this could earn tens of billions of dollars for Western aircraft manufacturers, including American firms such as Boeing.” The E. U. will allow trading of gold and other precious metals, while the U. S. will no longer sanction  . S. citizens who are involved in trading gold or other precious metals with Iran. The U. S. will unblock the assets of dozens of Iranian individuals and entities who are currently flagged by the Treasury. It’ll also unblock property within U. S. jurisdiction for certain individuals. The E. U. is going to release all funds that have been frozen for numerous individuals and companies, including to the Central Bank of Iran, and is cancelling their visa bans. And what happens if Iran violates the terms of the nuclear agreement? NPR’s Michele Kelemen explains that: ”If U. S. officials believe Iran is violating the deal, they would bring the allegation to the Security Council. At that point, sanctions would be imposed automatically  —   the first unusual twist in the deal. If members of the Security Council  —   Russia, China or others  —   rise to Iran’s defense, they can block the new sanctions only by passing a new resolution. ”That could be stopped by a U. S. veto. The U. S. is one of five permanent council members  —   including Great Britain, France, Russia and China  —   with veto power.”"
"On Saturday, Iran released four detained   and the U. S. released or pardoned seven Iranians, and dropped extradition requests for 14 more, in a highly choreographed prisoner exchange. Iran also simultaneously released a fifth American detainee. The news comes as Iran is poised to celebrate ”Implementation Day,” marking the fulfillment of its obligations under the international nuclear pact, and the lifting of sanctions against the country. The prisoner list includes some   releases  —   and a few surprises. Jason Rezaian, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian is a native of California. In Iran, he was the Post’s Tehran bureau chief. (If you aren’t familiar with his work as a journalist, you might recognize him from his appearance on the Iranian episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown.) Along with his wife, Iranian journalist Yeganeh Salehi, Rezaian was detained by Iran in July 2014. She was later released, but Rezaian was kept in custody, and faced serious charges  —   from spying to supporting hostile governments. They’re allegations that his employer and his family have roundly rejected. ”He never had access to any kinds of private information or secret information,” Rezaian’s brother, Ali Rezaian, told Melissa Block in April 2015. The idea that he was doing anything other than being a journalist and living a normal life in Iran is just absurd.” Last month, after Rezaian’s imprisonment passed the   mark, Ali Rezaian spoke to NPR’s Steve Inskeep about his brother’s imprisonment: Amir Mirzei Hekmati, Amir Hekmati was born in Arizona and went to high school in Michigan. He served in the Marines as an Arabic translator. He was detained by Iran in 2011  —   which means he spent more time in Iranian custody than any of the other prisoners released by Iran today. His family says he was in Iran to visit his grandmothers when officials picked him up and accused him of spying for the CIA. ”The Iranian authorities are denying that Amir is a United States citizen, despite the fact he was born in Flagstaff, Arizona,” Hekmati’s mother, Behnaz, wrote in 2012. ” Amir did not engage in any acts of spying, or ’fighting against God,’ as the convicting Judge has claimed in his sentence. Amir is not a criminal. His very life is being exploited for political gain. ”A grave error has been committed.” Hekmati’s sister was in the audience for President Obama’s State of the Union address this past week. She told NPR’s Michele Kelemen it’s been emotional torture for her brother and her family to talk about his case. Saeed Abedini, Saeed Abedini, a pastor, converted from Islam to Christianity more than 15 years ago. He was visiting Iran in 2012 to build an orphanage, his wife says  —   ”and very unexpectedly, they put him under house arrest.” He was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of disturbing national security. Last year his wife, Naghmeh Abedini, testified to Congress that her husband had been told he wouldn’t be released from prison unless he converted back to Islam. ”Saeed has endured periods of solitary confinement, beatings, internal bleeding, death threats, and continued psychological torture, all because he would not deny his Christian faith,” she said in her testimony. In 2013, Naghmeh Abedini told NPR’s Rachel Martin about her family’s experience  —   and why her husband continued to proselytize to his fellow inmates. Nosratollah Khosravi, Little is known about the fourth prisoner being released as part of the exchange. A fifth prisoner is being released by Iran, separate from the prisoner exchange: Matt Trevithick, Trevithick’s imprisonment in Iran for 40 days was not widely reported. His release was simultaneous to, but not part of, the prisoner exchange. The U. S. Institute for Peace said in a statement that Matt Trevithick worked at the American University of Afghanistan and the American University of Iraq, and   a biweekly podcast called Sources and Methods. He was a research assistant at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a writer whose work was featured in The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal, among other outlets, and a rower. He coached the Iraqi and Afghan national rowing teams, the USIP says. ”We are profoundly grateful to all those who worked for his release and are happy for all the families whose loved ones are also heading home,” Trevithick’s family said in a statement. Siamak Namazi  Some early media reports indicated that Siamak Namazi, a businessman reportedly detained by Iran in October 2015, was included in the media release. Iranian media and U. S. officials have indicated that his release has not been negotiated. Robert Levinson  The whereabouts of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson are unknown. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 2007, after traveling to the Iranian island of Kish. The AP has reported he was working on an unauthorized CIA mission, a charge the White House has denied. His family received ”proof of life” videos and photos of him in 2010 and 2011. A U. S. official tells NPR’s Michele Kelemen that Iran has committed to cooperating with America to locate Levinson’s whereabouts. The seven Iranians and   who will be receiving clemency were at different stages in the U. S. justice system  —   some were convicted, some facing trial. Their offenses mostly involved sanctions violations. Iranian state media identify the seven men as: Nader Modanlo  Mondanlo was found guilty of violating the trade embargo to help launch the first Iranian satellite ever put into orbit. He was a mechanical engineer with degrees from George Washington University, who said in court he managed space and science programs for the Department of Defense and NASA, as well as corporations. For seven years, court documents allege, Mondanlo worked to circumvent the sanctions against Iran and assist Iran in striking a satellite agreement with Russia. He made $10 million for his efforts, the Justice Department says. Bahram Mekanik (or Mechanic) Bahram Mechanic is awaiting trial in Texas, charged with exporting millions of dollars worth of electronics to Iran. ”Mechanic, a dual citizen who has lived in America for more than 30 years, denies the charges,” Reuters writes. ”Attorneys for Mechanic said these components were widely available at U. S. retail stores. Prosecutors said some of the parts could have been used in missile targeting. But they said their sale even for civilian use broke the law under the sweeping trade embargo with Iran.” Khosrow Afghahi, Afghahi, a man in his early 70s,   Mechanic’s business and is accused of assisting in his sanction violations, according to an indictment. Tooraj Faridi, Faridi, 46, was an employee of Mechanic’s company and is accused of helping in the same sanction violations. Arash Ghahreman  Ghahreman, a nationalized U. S. citizen, was convicted of money laundering and trade embargo violations for attempting to export various navigation equipment and electronics to Iran. He earned a degree in maritime engineering in Iran, and worked at shipyards in the U. S. He was charged with acting as the ”face” of a front company, based in Dubai, that existed to shuttle goods from the U. S. to Iran. Prosecutors noted that some of the goods involved had potential military applications. Ghareman has said he did not know the goods were destined for Iran, Reuters reports, Nima Golestaneh  Golestaneh pleaded guilty last month to participating in a   attack in 2012. The target, a   software company, was a U. S. defense contractor, Reuters reports.  Ali Saboonchi, Ali Saboonchi, 34, was convicted of violating the trade embargo in 2014. A jury found him guilty of conspiracy and of exporting industrial products and services to Iran. The U. S. has also removed Interpol red notices and dismissed charges against 14 Iranians, none of whom are in U. S. custody, for whom the U. S. determined extradition requests were unlikely to succeed."
"Iran is releasing four   prisoners Saturday, as part of a prisoner swap with the U. S. The release, originally reported by Iranian state media, has been confirmed by U. S. officials. Iran is also releasing a fifth American detainee, separate from the exchange. The released prisoners include Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who was the newspaper’s Tehran bureau chief. He was arrested in 2014 and charged with spying, an allegation his paper strongly denies. His secretive trial attracted widespread attention and numerous calls for his release. Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini and Nosratollah Khosravi were the other three   prisoners released, according to Iranian media and U. S. officials. Hekmati is a former U. S. Marine whose family says he was visiting his grandmothers when he was arrested in 2011. Iran accused him of working for the CIA. Abedini is a convert to Christianity who, according to his wife, was working to build an orphanage in Iran when he was detained in 2012. Iran charged him with disrupting national security. You can read more about Hekmati and Abedini here. The release of the four   is part of a prisoner exchange, according to IRNA and U. S. sources. One U. S. source tells NPR’s Carrie Johnson that seven Iranians will be pardoned or win commuted sentences as part of the swap. U. S. officials also say charges will be dismissed against 14 Iranian fugitives. Apart from the prisoner exchange, Iran already released a fifth imprisoned American, Matthew Trevithick. Trevithick has worked at the American University of Afghanistan and the American University of Iraq, and is a writer and podcaster. The news came as Iran was on the verge of ”Implementation Day”  —   the benchmark Iran reached when it met its obligations under the international nuclear deal, and when many sanctions against the country are lifted. As part of the landmark deal, Iran agreed to reduce its stockpile of uranium, remove centrifuges and allow for more intrusive inspection, among other things. With the International Atomic Energy Agency’s verification that Iran has met the terms, billions of dollars of Iranian assets will be unfrozen and some limits on trade and banking with Iran will be lifted."
"Water contamination in Flint, Mich,  —   where the city switched water sources, causing pipe corrosion and ultimately filling the city’s water supply with high levels of lead  —   has prompted President Obama to declare a state of emergency. The move, which was requested by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, means FEMA is authorized to provide equipment and resources to the people affected. Federal funding will help cover the cost of providing water, water filters and other items. A state of emergency has been declared by Flint’s own mayor since  . Pediatrician Dr. Mona   who called attention to the elevated lead levels in Flint’s children, explained to NPR’s Michel Martin last month how the city’s water came to be contaminated: ”The city of Flint under   emergency management, almost bankrupt . .. switched their water source from Detroit, which was fresh Great Lakes water source, which we’ve been using for over 50 years, to the local Flint River to save money. ”And that local Flint River was innately more corrosive than the Great Lakes water source. And the critical corrosion inhibitor, which is mandatory for all drinking water systems to use . .. was not added to that water. ”So you had a more corrosive water source without the corrosion control added to it, going into an aging infrastructure with a lot of lead plumbing. That was a perfect storm for that lead to leach out of the pipes into the drinking water and into the bodies of children.” The switch began nearly two years ago, and Flint has since switched back to Detroit’s water supply. But the damage to the pipes has already been done, and the leaching of lead into tap water continues. The question of who knew about the danger  —   and when  —   has led to a political crisis in Flint, with protesters calling for the governor’s resignation. Concerns over Flint’s water were raised months before the state called a state of emergency or provided bottled water. ”Critics say the state’s response  —   in particular, the governor’s handling of the crisis  —   has been inadequate at best, criminal at worst,” Michigan Radio’s Steve Carmody reported for NPR earlier this week. ”Flint’s mayor estimates the cost of fixing the city’s water infrastructure at more than a billion dollars. There’s no estimate on the cost of the   health effects on Flint residents who drank   water for more than a year.”"
"This year, prepare to have your awareness raised. And raised. And raised. And then raised some more. At least, that’s the goal of the United Nations’ packed calendar of ”observances”  —   days, weeks, years and decades  —   dedicated to subjects deemed worthy of the world’s attention. But what was once just a few dates has now ballooned into a list that’s pretty much impossible to digest. Which is kind of funny, given that we’ve just kicked off the U. N.’s International Year of Pulses. (You know, leguminous crops like chickpeas and beans.) Adding up everything for 2016, the international organization will be marking 129 days, 10 weeks and eight decades. That’s way too much, says Thibault Devanlay, who has been a negotiator at the United Nations General Assembly for more than a dozen recently added observances. a diplomat who’s worked on many proclamations. ”It’s a wonderful thing to raise awareness. But the more international days, the more we lose the point,” he says. One example: March 21. That date is now shared by a whopping five international days  —   including three added since 2010. The latest is the International Day of Forests. (Devanlay points out that the declaration celebrates ”the importance of all types of forests and of trees outside forests” as a way to be inclusive of nations without, um, forests.) But Devanlay’s problem isn’t with the themes being highlighted, which are typically worthy issues related to health, the environment and equality. It’s the process that’s behind the   spree. ”Days are easy cookies,” he says. That’s because they are one of the few things a country can propose that doesn’t have financial strings attached. As long as the subject isn’t controversial, there’s no compelling reason for other members to oppose it, especially if the diplomats want to stay on cordial terms. ”Once a proposal is on the table, no one says no,” says Devanlay, who can only think of a couple that haven’t passed in the last few years. (Sorry, International Day of Telework. You were not to be.) This system, he says, has led to the creation of several days he finds questionable. There’s World Autism Awareness Day, April 2, which was championed by the Bangladesh delegation because the prime minister’s daughter  —   a child psychologist  —   specializes in the issue. ”Nothing against autism,” he says, but he wonders why that disorder deserves more attention than others. Devanlay has the same concerns about World Migratory Bird Day (May  ). ”Why not   birds? Why not migratory mammals? We need to protect wildlife. That makes sense,” he says. And that, of course, already has its own day on the calendar: March 3. All of this   day declaring is done without an overarching strategy or a way to remove or consolidate days over time. So the U. N. has ended up with some seemingly bizarre calendar entries, such as World Television Day, November 21. (The medium was recognized in 1996 for its importance to the freedom of information.) There are real consequences to this, Devanlay points out. The secretary general must make a declaration about every observance, every year, in perpetuity. So even if that’s the only effort expended, it adds up to time and money that could have been spent another way. Maher Nasser, director of the Outreach Division in the United Nations Department of Public Information, realizes that Devanlay isn’t the only person baffled by this state of affairs. ”There’s cynicism about the number of days,” he says. But, he adds, ”the U. N. is where everybody has a place,” and if people are passionate about an issue, he thinks it’s necessary to provide a platform to broadcast their views. That doesn’t mean his office treats all days equally. Some, he admits, ”just sit there on the calendar.” It’s easy to tell which ones haven’t seen much action lately. Each observance has a webpage with info on accompanying events, so you can see what, if anything, is really going on that day. It’s easy to tell which ones haven’t seen much action lately. A sampling: International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims (March 24) International Day of Human Space Flight (April 12) and International Widows’ Day (June 23). Other days, however, hold panels or other events each year. Observances such as the International Day of Peace (September 21) and the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (March 25) always generate discussions or other programs. That can make a real difference, Nasser says: ”It shames governments into doing more.” Having such a broad range of days also helps the U. N. tap into resources that wouldn’t otherwise be available, he adds. The International Day of Happiness (March 20) proclaimed in 2012 at the request of Bhutan, initially left some folks scratching their heads, he says. But the concept that happiness is an important public policy objective caught the attention of Universal Pictures last year. The studio was releasing the film Minions  —   the cartoon about little yellow creatures that like to dance to the Pharrell Williams song ”Happy.” So the U. N. partnered with Williams last March to promote a huge ”Happy” campaign in New York and online focused on climate change. ”Because if the future is at risk, then we can’t be happy,” Nasser notes. ”And through those media impressions, we reached billions.” Really, that’s the point of these days  —   effectively spreading a message. That’s why World Toilet Day (November 19) which Devanlay initially opposed because of his general opposition to new calendar days, is now one of his favorite examples of an observance that works. ”It makes people laugh at first, and gets their attention,” he says. And when the U. N. can raise awareness of the fact that more than two billion people don’t have access to proper sanitation, that’s a good day."
"If you thought your 2016 was looking busy, just be glad you’re not the United Nations. The organization will be marking 129 ”International Days”  —   not to mention assorted weeks, decades and a year. Looking over the list is overwhelming but also enlightening. It’s clear certain dates are more popular than others. The most extreme case is March 21, when five days share a spot on the calendar. That’s especially odd when you realize that there are huge gaps without any days. January has only one: the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. That’s on the 27th, which is also the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It’s common for dates to be chosen to connect with historical events. Others have been picked to line up with existing celebrations  —   that’s why April 22 is International Mother Earth Day. And you’ll notice a few don’t have exact dates. One example: World Habitat Today, which falls on the first Monday in October. None of the days would exist without the founding of the United Nations. That event spawned United Nations Day, which is held every October 24 and is one of the oldest on the list. As for the newest? Two days are making a 2016 debut: International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 11) and World Tsunami Awareness Day (November 5). Here’s the full list: International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, World Cancer Day, International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, International Day of Women and Girls in Science, 13 February, World Radio Day, World Day of Social Justice, International Mother Language Day, Zero Discrimination Day, World Wildlife Day, International Women’s Day, International Day of Happiness, International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, World Poetry Day, International Day of Nowruz, World Down Syndrome Day, International Day of Forests, World Water Day, World Meteorological Day, World Tuberculosis Day, International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims, International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 25 March, International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members, World Autism Awareness Day, International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda, World Health Day, International Day of Human Space Flight, International Mother Earth Day, World Book and Copyright Day, English Language Day, World Immunization Week, Note: Okay, technically it’s a ”week” but it’s included on the calendar of ”International Days” World Malaria Day, World Intellectual Property Day, World Day for Safety and Health at Work, Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare, International Jazz Day, World Press Freedom Day, Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives During the Second World War, World Migratory Bird Day, International Day of Families, World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, International Day for Biological Diversity, International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, International Day of UN Peacekeepers, 31 May, World   Day, Global Day of Parents, ”Vesak” the Day of the Full Moon, International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression, World Environment Day, Russian Language Day at the UN, World Oceans Day, World Day Against Child Labour, International Albinism Awareness Day, World Blood Donor Day, World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, World Refugee Day, International Day of Yoga, United Nations Public Service Day, International Widows’ Day, Day of the Seafarer, International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, International Day of Cooperatives, World Population Day, World Youth Skills Day, Nelson Mandela International Day, World Hepatitis Day, International Day of Friendship, World Day against Trafficking in Persons, International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, International Youth Day, World Humanitarian Day, International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition, 29 August, International Day against Nuclear Tests, 30 August, International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, International Day of Charity, International Literacy Day, United Nations Day for   Cooperation, International Day of Democracy, International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, International Day of Peace, World Maritime Day, International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, World Tourism Day, International Day of Older Persons, International Day of   World Teachers’ Day, World Habitat Day  World Post Day, World Mental Health Day, International Day of the Girl Child, International Day for Disaster Reduction, International Day of Rural Women, World Food Day, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, World Statistics Day, United Nations Day  World Development Information Day  World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, World Cities Day, International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, World Tsunami Awareness Day, International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict  World Science Day for Peace and Development, World Diabetes Day, World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, International Day for Tolerance, 19 November, World Toilet Day, World Philosophy Day, Africa Industrialization Day, Universal Children’s Day, World Television Day, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 29 November, International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, World AIDS Day, International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, International Day of Persons with Disabilities, International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, World Soil Day, International Civil Aviation Day, International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime, International   Day, Human Rights Day  International Mountain Day  International Migrants Day, International Human Solidarity Day"
"Five years ago, Ted Williams became famous. The Columbus Dispatch posted a video of Williams, panhandling on the side of the road, showing off a   announcer’s voice. The video went viral, and William’s striking baritone was heard around the world. Here on the   the story led one of our longer tags . .. ”Ted Williams, man with the golden voice.” Williams had once made a career out of his voice, but then alcohol and drugs brought him down, he explained. He appeared on talk shows, reunited with his mother, went to rehab, wrote a memoir. He was getting occasional gigs as a   artist. But a brush with fame doesn’t mean instant stability, as the Columbus Dispatch reports. In late 2014, Williams told the paper he had an apartment but no furniture, no car, and nothing left from the $395, 000 advance for his memoir. But now, the Dispatch reports, he’s got a new job: He’s   a radio show on Columbus’ ”The Praise,”  . The name of his daily talk show? ”The Golden Voice Show.” William’s new manager and   Scott Anthony, is playing a key role in William’s new start, the paper writes: ” ’He’s definitely changing he’s getting better,’ said Anthony, a producer and recording artist from the North Side. ’It’s still a journey to teach him to be a responsible person with his finances.’ . .. ”Williams said that he hasn’t used drugs since Aug. 6, 2011. ”Getting up for a job each morning has supplied some   normalcy: ’The sense of routine, the sense of belonging  —   all of that is coming back.’ ” The job at WVKO marks a return to Williams’ past. That’s the same station, the Dispatch reports, where Williams began his radio career in the 1980s. His new role is the first time he’s had a steady job of any kind since 1993, the paper says. The station’s general manager says it wasn’t a tough decision to bring Williams back on the job. ”We teach and preach about giving second chances,” he told the newspaper. You can read the whole story over at the Columbus Dispatch, where there’s also a video of Williams at work. And you can catch him every weekday from 6 to 10 a. m. ET on WVKO."
"The FBI will now track animal abuse the way it tracks arson or assault. This could help save more animals  —   and, perhaps, people: Research has shown that animal abuse is often a precursor to other acts of violence. And tracking acts of violence against animals may help law enforcement intervene before that develops into violence against people. John Thompson, deputy executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, has been instrumental in moving this idea forward. ”It’s data that gives that police chief and the sheriff valuable information to help them set up the way they police their community,” he tells NPR’s Scott Simon. On how police might use the data, Let’s say you have a specific area where . .. they’re finding dogs that are mutilated or something in one specific area. That’s a good indication we maybe have a dogfighting gang, or a dogfighting incident in that area. So now we can focus more law enforcement in that area to get it, whereas in the past, maybe, we didn’t do that. On the link between animal abuse and crimes against people, The research is very clear, and it’s been there for a long time, as I said earlier. Law enforcement just hasn’t got it yet. . .. If you look back at the Son of Sam and [Jeffrey] Dahmer and Ted Bundy in Florida, if you look at the serial killers, the majority of them that abused animals prior to turning on humans and even one admitted, ”I did it to see how the animal would die before I killed a human.” It’s amazing. The school shooters  —   Pearl, Miss. and Columbine  —   they all abused animals and killed animals prior to their shooting spree. The data’s there, and it’s not just guesswork, it’s actual documented data. On changing law enforcement attitudes, Law enforcement really hasn’t grasped this problem yet. If you look back in the early ’70s when domestic violence came up and how the laws changed and then law enforcement would go say, ”Well, if the woman’s getting beat, why is it she won’t leave the house?” Well, we didn’t understand. We didn’t understand the dynamics of domestic violence. And as that whole thing changed, it got better. And if you look at animal abuse right now, it’s going to follow the same timeline. You can always betcha it’s within years that it’s going to be the same timeline. . .. In order for this problem to be solved, you’re going to have to get the legislators to create the laws, you’re going to have to get law enforcement to enforce the laws, you’re going to have to get prosecutors to prosecute, and judges to convict."
"Depending on whom you ask, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s State of the Union response this week was either going to save the modern Republican Party or kill conservatism. This week, those differing responses evoked two different hashtags. Both, in some ways, were about Haley’s heritage, and they bring to light the tricky way she’ll have to navigate race should she take on a more prominent role in the 2016 election. #DeportNikkiHaley, After Haley gave the Republican response to President Obama’s seventh and final State of the Union address this week, some conservatives were not impressed. Haley said in her speech that fixing immigration ”means welcoming properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion. Just like we have for centuries.” She offered a tacit rebuke of Donald Trump when she said, ”During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation.” (She confirmed on NBC’s Today show the next day that she was, in fact, referring to Trump.) The response to those lines, and other conciliatory notes in Haley’s speech, was swift. And some of it was brutal. Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter probably went the farthest, writing, ”Donald Trump should deport Nikki Haley.” She was not alone. Conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham tweeted that Haley missed an opportunity to stand with ”working ppl who want borders enforced,” and ”criticizing the GOP candidates dominating polls.” On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said: ”. ..it’s almost absolute proof of what I have been saying for last couple years now, that the Republican Party’s trying to drive conservatives out of the party. But I think it’s more than that. It’s certainly that, but her speech last night sort of expanded the theme of who is and who isn’t qualified to be a Republican, and the Republican Party is still  .” But Coulter’s statement was the one that became a hashtag: #DeportNikkiHaley. This presents a problem for Haley, and perhaps the Republican Party. Haley is already on some   shortlists. That’s because, as some political watchers see it, Haley, as an   woman, could help the GOP begin shaking its image as a party that is older and whiter. (See this Gallup table for the differences in racial make up in party identification.) But it might be hard for Haley to become that   if she can’t shore up conservative Republican support. Some of the critique of Haley’s response from conservatives online seemed to have a racial tint: Haley wasn’t just wrong because of what she said she was more wrong, for some on Twitter, because she is  . #IndianAmericanSouthernGovernorName, Soon after Haley’s State of the Union response, writer Anand Giridharadas started the hashtag #IndianAmericanSouthernGovernorName. It was focusing on the fact that the name Haley uses now, Nikki, was not the one given to her at birth. (She was born Nimrata Randhawa) Anand tweeted, ”Do figures like @nikkihaley  @BobbyJindal help to euthanize or medicate the dying idea of   ?” Indian Americans used the #IndianAmericanSouthernGovernorName to highlight the way figures like Jindal and Haley, in their eyes, change who they are to be more appealing to white and conservative voters. (Although for more than a century, American immigrants have been changing their names to assimilate.) In some ways, Haley seems to face the same conundrum former Louisiana Gov. and failed Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal did  —   not seeming ”brown enough” for some voters of color, while being ”too brown” for others. (We won’t bore you with the details, or subject you to some of the graphic tweets, but just take a look at the #JindalSoWhite hashtag to see what we’re talking about.) Of course, Twitter is not exactly or entirely representative of the real world, and even thousands of tweets for or against Nikki Haley might not accurately depict actual support or disapproval of her. A September 2015 Winthrop poll found Haley’s approval rating among South Carolina voters was 55 percent. That number was similar before Haley gained praise for helping bring down the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse in the aftermath of a Charleston church shooting that killed nine black parishioners. But she did drop 10 points with Republicans. (By December, she was back up to 81 percent with Republicans.) Giridharadas in his New York Times article wasn’t just critical of Haley he said it was ”thrilling” to see Haley attempt to ”create a broader,   consensus on the simple, exceptional idea that an American is defined by shared hope, not shared blood.” But wherever you stand on Haley, her story speaks to a certain truth in politics: race is tricky  —   and there’s always going to be someone unhappy with how you talk about it. With Haley, we see a   (and, in fact, multicultural) tilt to America’s ongoing struggle with race. A dichotomy of just black and white isn’t big enough to comprehend or explain a Sikh   daughter of immigrants, who helped bring down what is, for many, a longstanding symbol of the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in America. Haley’s story has layers. It is nuanced. It is not simple. And maybe that’s how it should be."
"For years, Mrs. Sutton came to see me in the office every three months. Visiting the doctor quarterly was ”the right thing to do,” she told me, given the fact that she had both diabetes and high blood pressure. She always set the agenda at our visits. She brought lists of questions and requests that followed the recommendations of her fellow churchgoers and the health materials she had read. It came as no surprise to me when she asked to undergo a colonoscopy at age 68, in order to be screened for colon cancer. She had read that colon cancer was treatable if caught early, and several friends had told her that undergoing ”the scope” was the most comprehensive means of screening. I agreed that it was a good idea and dutifully made the referral to the gastroenterologist. When the report came back a few weeks later, I was pleased to learn there were no polyps found. When I mentioned the test to Mrs. Sutton at our next visit, I assumed she’d be as happy with the results as I had been. Instead, her reaction shocked me. ”How on earth could this cost so much?” she demanded of me. ”This is an outrageous bill!” she said, referring to both the colonoscopy charges and the facility fee, which totaled more than $5, 000. ”Yes, the prices of medical tests can be hard to believe, but you have Medicare” I told her. Because Mrs. Sutton had ’Medigap coverage,’ she owed nothing. The fact that her    costs were zero failed to sway her. It was the principle of the thing. She felt gouged by the price of a procedure which she valued at a few hundred dollars at most. Unfortunately, there was no turning back. The damage had been done. Mrs. Sutton made very clear to me that she’d never undergo a test that pricey again, even if insurance paid for it. Furthermore, she told me that she expected me to provide better information about what something might cost beforehand. Without realizing it, I had fallen into the abyss of medical prices —   a topic that still puzzles and enrages millions of Americans. Like many doctors, what little I know about medical pricing comes from a combination of what my patients tell me and what my family and I experience personally. There was no formal training in medical school about health care spending or the   of various tests and treatments. Instead, we were taught to ignore costs and focus on the best care and treatment we could provide. This was health care,  . No stone should go unturned in the pursuit of a diagnosis. Any and all resources should be brought to bear in treatment. Payment was almost never discussed in polite company. Fortunately, I think, doctors are warming to the idea that we must be better stewards of the resources we command. Pharmaceuticals were long an exception to the     rule. Orthodox medical teaching has always emphasized the principle that a     generic drug is as good as a more expensive   alternative. Yet evidence shows that in spite of mutual   desire to discuss drug costs, we docs usually shirk the duty. Diagnostic tests are an entirely different kettle of fish. Despite patient demand to know the cost of a test or procedure, it’s been very hard to get reliable price quotes. New entities have formed to try to solve this perennial puzzle: One company provides an app that links with insurers’ databases to accurately list contracted prices. Another provides incentives to patients to get tests   by offering discounts and sending patients a check for a small portion of the accrued savings. Which brings me back to Mrs. Sutton, who died before smartphones changed the way we live. Back when she confronted me about the cost of her colonoscopy, there was no app to help her shop around. Nor was there any resource for me to guide her to the most   alternative. All of my experience to that point had taught me that patients with insurance simply didn’t care about prices. Mrs. Sutton begged to differ. Her reaction taught me never to make that assumption again. John Henning Schumann is a writer and doctor in Tulsa, Okla. He serves as president of the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa. He also hosts Public Radio Tulsa’s Medical Matters. He’s on Twitter: @GlassHospital"
"New Hampshire Republicans have a track record of picking presidential candidates who often go on to win their party’s nomination. Usually, that means bolstering establishment candidates. But this year, billionaire Donald Trump is polling far ahead of the rest of the pack. That leaves his rivals fighting amongst themselves in the hope that one of them can take down Trump in the state that holds the first primary. There’s not much time left for establishment Republicans to settle on a favorite. And with no clear challenger to Trump’s dominance in New Hampshire, other candidates and their superPACs are lobbing attack ads at each other. One ad from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie opens with the words, ”Marco Rubio is attacking Gov. Chris Christie.” It’s a response to the Florida senator’s criticism of Christie’s record on a range of issues, including gun control. That back and forth continued on the campaign trail in New Hampshire on Friday. During a stop at a weapons factory in Newport, Rubio was presented with a hunting rifle before addressing a room full of plant workers. ”I’m gonna tell you what’s really important, that our nominee be someone who is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. And there are Republicans running who are not supporters of the Second Amendment, in the way you and I want them to be,” Rubio said. In addition to attacking Christie’s record on gun control, which evolved over time, Rubio has made an issue of Christie’s close working relationship with President Obama after Hurricane Sandy battered New Jersey. It’s all meant to question Christie’s conservative credentials. A few hours later in Hollis, N. H. Rubio himself was the target of attacks from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. ”The senators sometimes get off into their world, their little ecosystem of Washington, D. C. . I don’t know if you’ve noticed. It’s   actually,” Bush said. Bush joked that Rubio, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, live in an ”alternative universe.” He also took aim at Trump, after a member of the audience asked how Bush could distinguish himself in a year when voters seem to favor big personalities. Bush said he plans to stay the course, arguing that having the ideas and experience to be president should be enough. ”And if it isn’t, I’m not gonna change who I am. I’m just not gonna do it. I’m not gonna play the game. I’m not gonna insult someone just because I’m told that’s the way to connect with voters,” Bush said. ”Really? Really? I mean Trump does this, and it sets me off.” Afterward as the crowd thinned, Milt Janosky and Jim Polus, both of Hollis, stayed to chat about the race. Janosky said he likes Bush, but he’s also considering Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Janosky said he’s definitely not voting for Trump, calling him ”dangerous.” Polus is supporting Bush, but said there are a lot of good establishment choices. ”People like myself and Milt  —   we have three or four candidates that we think could be good. So that vote is being split four different ways,” he said. Janosky said those voters could easily defeat Trump  —   if they could just settle on one candidate they could all support."
"Republicans in Iowa are preparing to caucus in a little over two weeks  —   Feb. 1  —   and they’re wondering if this year is really going to be different because of Donald Trump.  On Monday night, the Osceola County Republican Committee met at the Pizza Ranch in Sibley, the county seat. Sibley is in western Iowa, the more socially conservative, more Republican part of this     caucus state. After the usual buffet supper of pizza and fried chicken, Kolby DeWitt from the state Republican Party was giving instructions for the upcoming caucuses. ”We’ll make it as quick and painless as possible,” he promised the county committee members. DeWitt handed out manuals for running precinct caucuses to local Republican leaders because, unlike a primary run by the state, caucuses are run by the state parties. Also, whereas voters participate in a primary by showing up to their usual polling place to cast a ballot at any time of day, caucuses require a higher level of commitment. They are meetings, held at libraries, churches, gyms and the like, with a time commitment. ”We have a lot of people that are going to be caucusing for the first time,” DeWitt said. ”Whether they’ve been a Democrat in the past, an independent, or never even registered to vote. Just make sure to let the people know that it’s not like a primary or a general. You show up at 7 o’clock. You’re going to be prepared to be there for a couple of hours because there’s a lot of other things than just a presidential vote.” For Iowans who have participated in the past, it may be routine. Four years ago approximately 120, 000 Iowa Republicans caucused. How many     are expected this year? ”Some are saying 15 percent higher some are saying 30 percent higher. But we’re estimating somewhere between 20 percent and 25 percent higher turnout than in 2012,” DeWitt said. The question is, what is going to draw so many people to the Republican caucuses. Traditionally, the way candidates win over Iowans is one small group at a time. Former   CEO Carly Fiorina was taking that approach this week at the Midwest Deli in another western Iowa county seat, Holstein. ”I know that you Iowans, I have come to learn, take your caucus responsibilities very seriously,” Fiorina told the crowd of some 50 adults and a small class of kindergartners.  ”So, maybe some of you have already made up your mind to support me or someone, or maybe most of you are still thinking about who you’re going to finally caucus for. But I will tell you this: In your heart of hearts, every single one of you cannot wait to see me debate Hillary Clinton,” Fiorina insisted to the approving crowd.  Fiorina  —   who is polling in single digits in Iowa  —   said she can beat Clinton, and, without naming them in this comment, said that Iowa   Ted Cruz and Donald Trump cannot. ”We’re not going to beat her with someone who divides this party. We’re not going to beat her with somebody who routinely insults women and everyone else,” Fiorina said. After speaking for about a   she took questions for another   including one from one of the kindergartners. ”My name is Carli. Can I be president, too?” a small girl said into the microphone. ”She wants to be president. Absolutely you can,” Fiorina responded. It’s a scene of retail,    politics. And it’s what voters are familiar with in Holstein, which is home to fewer than 2, 000 people. ”This is a great little town. We all know each other,” said Mark Leonard, who works in the cattle business and banking and is active in Republican politics. ”We probably know the party registration of everybody here. In a little town like this, nobody here uses the turn signals because everybody knows where you’re going anyway,” Leonard added.  When asked about the arithmetic of the kind of campaigning that Fiorina was employing  —   a half a day to reach 50 people, with not too many days left  —   Leonard explained that it reaches the most important voters. ”Do remember too, though, the population that will caucus is relatively a small group of people. And those people do go to these events,” he said.  Gretchen Cooney, a bereavement counselor, said that people like her, who show up at events like Fiorina’s, tell their friends. ”As we get word out of who [Fiorina] is and what she stands for, she may see 50 people here, but if each of us talk to so many, I mean it just grows and grows,” she said.  Ever since Democrat Jimmy Carter put the Iowa caucuses on the map 40 years ago by playing this kind of political small ball, and winning, this has been the Iowa way.  It’s the way Ted Cruz is campaigning, as he edges out Donald Trump in the polls in Iowa. In socially conservative Sioux City, the Woodbury County GOP Committee met Wednesday night to plan for its caucuses. Committee members don’t endorse candidates, but some, like Suzan Stewart, said they like the Cruz approach. ”Cruz just completed like a   tour of northwest Iowa. He’s the only one that’s done anything like that this time,” she said. The candidate who is certainly not doing anything like that is Donald Trump. On Tuesday, he held a huge rally in Cedar Falls, a city in eastern Iowa. Unlike Fiorina in the Midwest Deli, Trump took no questions. His policy statements are often  . ”That Iran deal is the dumbest deal I think I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that,” Trump told the capacity crowd of about 1, 000 that came to a college gym to see him. The message here, even before Trump got to the stage, was don’t just rally  —   caucus. Tana Goertz, his Iowa   who met Trump when he fired her on the TV show The Apprentice, urged supporters to bring friends and neighbors along. ”If you can fill your car with a carload of people, we would be grateful. For those of you that have minivans, we’re going to love you even more if you pack your minivan full of people who are going to go caucus for Donald Trump,” she said.  Iowa State Sen. Brad Zaun gave this exhortation: ”These rallies, and everybody that’s out there, it’s useless if you don’t go to the Iowa caucuses and caucus for Mr. Trump.” There are so many students here, including high school seniors, and so many untraditional Republican supporters, skeptics doubt they’ll show up promptly before 7 p. m. on Feb. 1. ”You know the theory is they’ll wait for five hours in a line,” Trump acknowledged on a night when people stood out in freezing cold temperatures to see him. ”But they won’t caucus. OK? I think they’re gonna caucus, but let’s see what happens.” People get tickets to Trump events online, so the campaign gathers contact information that way, and the Trump campaign has picked up some experienced Iowa campaign hands to work on getting out the vote.  If this mass movement approach works  —   inspire the crowd, get them to caucus like it’s a tailgate party  —   then a big turnout on Feb. 1 would spell a very strong Trump showing.  Traditional Republicans here may prize the process of caucus campaigning Trump, who devotes a serious chunk of his speech to citing poll results that he says show he is well ahead everywhere else, is all about winning. ”And if we win Iowa, I think we’re going to run the table,” Trump told the crowd."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. Think ”bike culture” means high speeds and spandex? Think again. The authors of this article biked in a number of North American cities and noticed that ”the slower the people on bikes were moving, the more mature the bicycle culture, and the better the conditions for cycling.” In cities that hadn’t prioritized bike infrastructure, cycling was seen as the province of men biking long distances at high speed. The marker of a place with a thriving bike culture is one where you see plenty of women, children, and seniors riding bikes. Many people won’t hop on a bike if they feel they have to pedal fast just to survive. And one benefit of slow cycling is you don’t get so sweaty  —   so you can dress for your destination, not your commute. I read this article just two days before I was hit by a car while I was biking here in DC  —   wearing normal clothes, at a slow speed. I’d add that another sign of a mature bike culture is one where drivers instinctively look for bicyclists before making sudden turns. I guess DC still has a little bit of growing up to do. There are few words that can immediately transport you to a distant time and place. Earlier this week, while reading Twitter, I came across one of those words: Pogs. Instantly, I was sitting on the carpeted floor of my parents house in the early ’90s, surrounded by hundreds of colorful cardboard discs, eagerly stacking them up and scattering them with the forceful impact of a thick, plastic disc called a Slammer. The Pog craze was unavoidable in the early ’90s. Pog designs varied widely, from cartoon characters to hologram designs. My most favorite Slammer, curiously, featured a mugshot of O. J. Simpson with the words ”OJ in the Slammer” on it. As a    I never cared to learn the origins of the game, but as an adult I was fascinated by this article. Who knew Pog was a company that manufactured a Hawaiian fruit juice? The rise  —   and fall  —   of Pogs also includes an important business lesson about the value of branding. With all the concern recently about trying to avoid concussions in sports  —   from the NFL to peewee soccer  —   Dan Barry’s piece ”A Fighter’s Hour of Need” lays bare the ugly side of a sport where concussions are the goal. Barry recreates the 60 minutes after Russian boxer Magomed Abdusalamov lost to Mike Perez in a heavyweight bout at Madison Square Garden in 2013. The fight left Abdusalamov, known as the ”Russian Tyson,” permanently   and staggering through the streets of Midtown trying to get a taxi to a hospital. The piece reads like a cross between a detective novel and an autopsy: ”(Abdusalamov) trudges toward his distant locker room, up two dozen steps and down backstage halls the hue of a yellowing bruise. His face is misshapen, his eyes swollen slits, his brain most likely bleeding.” Barry documents a side of boxing fans rarely see, the moments after the entertainment has been delivered on HBO. And it ain’t pretty."
"A quartet of siblings and assorted spouses, lovers and friends all spend a holiday in the English family summer house they’ll have to sell. Do you think everything will go just swell for those three weeks? Or will tensions simmer, and secrets break out of storage as quarrels, tears and fatal attractions roil the old house in the summer heat? Tessa Hadley’s novel The Past has already been praised in Britain, and now it’s out in the U. S. She tells NPR’s Scott Simon that she loves to set stories in old houses. ”A house is like a metaphor. Before you even start, you don’t even have to work on it. There is a building that’s had a family in it and they’ve been there for a couple of generations now and they gather in those rooms, and on the walls are certain pictures, and everything is sort of helping you to make your story.” On the differences between the siblings  —   Harriet, Alice, Fran and Roland, and how they drive the plotSpeaking as a writer, of course, if you gather four siblings  —   three sisters  —   in a house, and you want to do something with them, you’re going to be working with how different they are from one another, as well as working with what binds them. But everything interesting is in the difference, isn’t it? On whether her novels start with characters or storiesIt often starts with a scene, and it did. This one did  —   very, very vividly. And I’ve no idea what strange place in my subconscious this surfaced from. But I saw the scene where this slightly sad and solitary Harriet totally accidentally witnessed her brother making love to his new wife. I mean not quite literally witness, but a door is open, she catches sight of reflection, she can hear things. And she’s sort of excruciated, the way one is when those silly accidents happen. [Roland’s] a philosopher, and a bit of a man about the scene and a bit of a film critic, and he’s brought his very attractive, brand new wife to the house with him to meet his family. And she’s the catalyst that in a novel you drop into a steady scene to precipitate something completely new. On Roland’s thoughts about ”mutual incomprehension” being stimulating in a marriage. There’s another bit where I’m kind of on the same theme which really interests me, where I go back into the past and the grandparents of my four siblings are also having one of those moments. And it sort of says, ’the woman had thought that when she was married she would be intimately known to somebody and intimately know him.’ And actually, to save yourself inside a marriage, you need layers of guardedness, you need to keep yourself apart. And maybe that’s just me. But if I watch married couples, or study my own marriage, or study the marriage of those close to me, it seems to me that is a part of surviving it: being attracted to the unknown in the other person and not trying to colonize it or wanting be colonized, or sort of wanting to become one country, if you know what I mean. On knowing this family will be back together the next summer, I think that’s a good subject for writing about because, really, as many families work as don’t work. Or they don’t work some of the time but lots of the time they do. And I suppose the Western world went through a deep disenchantment with the family in the   century for very good reasons. You know, it can be an extremely oppressive institution. But actually, I think we’re probably in a period of recuperating it now. We love it. We know how it counts for our  . So I kind of love to write about families getting on together  —   but not blandly . .. we need it on record that people also love each other and then hate each other and then love each other again."
"When the Nobel for Medicine goes to two scientists who discovered a drug used to fight a variety of neglected diseases, how do you tell the story? NPR’s Jason Beaubien decided the best way was to go to one country where the drug  —   ivermectin  —   has made a major difference in people’s lives. That’s what took him to Ghana, where yearly doses of ivermectin have dramatically reduced the scourge of river blindness, a disease caused by parasitic worms that can rob people of their sight. So ivermectin is a versatile drug? It works on a bunch of different diseases. In addition to river blindness, the other main neglected tropical disease it’s used on is elephantiasis, that awful swelling of the legs. And my wife even uses it to rid our horses of worms. It’s effective against a large number of roundworm parasites. And why Ghana? I didn’t want to go somewhere where river blindness was almost entirely wiped out, which is the case in most of Latin America and some places in Africa. And I also didn’t want to go someplace like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there hasn’t been very much progress. I wanted to go somewhere where this drug was having an impact right now. Does river blindness always cause people to lose their sight? It does not. You can get a more mild form. Some people’s bodies do a better job of suppressing it. And more people end up with horrific itching all over their body and disfigured skin than   blindness. How awful is the itching? People say it’s just completely obsessive, they are seeking some way to tear their skin off. Some people would take a red hot poker out of the fire and push it onto their skin and just scratch to the point where their skin was completely raw. Does ivermectin help with the itching? Ivermectin does help, but in an awful twist of fate, it makes the itching incredibly worse right after you take the tablets. The itching comes from the baby worms dying underneath the skin. Ivermectin kills them, so someone who has a lot of parasites will go through a terrible phase of being incredibly itchy. But after a few days, the itching will go away. That initial increase in itchiness must have made people reluctant to take ivermectin. The drug initially had this reputation of being something of a problem, but people soon realized it made them feel a lot better. You interviewed Emmanuel Kwame, who lost his sight to river blindness when he was a young man and today, in his 60s, lives an independent life as a farmer and fisherman. He seems like an amazing individual. And not bitter. He has figured out how to live with this disability. And he still has things he wants to do. He wants to get some pigs, he thinks raising pigs would be good, he’d started building what’s going to be a pig pen. And he grows vegetables. How does he manage? I like to garden, and I asked him, ”How do you know what is a weed and what isn’t?” He said he puts little pegs in the ground in straight lines right next to where he puts the seeds. And anything that grows next to those pegs, he knows is the plant he wants. He weeds everything else. Do you tell your kids about the lives of people like Kwame? My kids have gotten a little sick of me telling them of how much better they have it than a lot of people in the world. But I’ll tell other people about this guy, especially his ability to fish without any eyesight. Any other details about river blindness you’d like to share? It’s been incredibly difficult to get accurate data about cases because the test for whether or not you’re infected has been this thing called the skin snip. Snip? Yeah, snip. To see whether people really have the parasites, the only test available has been this process where you cut off a sliver of skin in several parts of the body, usually someplace where the bone is close to the surface like the hip or the shoulder blade, and you throw that bit of flesh into salt water and you can see the parasites come out if they’re present. That has been the way to test for river blindness. I can only say: Oh my! Any new tests in the pipeline? Some people at PATH in Seattle  —   they develop new diagnostics  —   have come up with a single prick blood test. It’s not yet been rolled out in Ghana but people there are incredibly excited to have a simple test. So in this final push toward eradication, they’ll be able to monitor whether the village has gotten rid of river blindness or not. Because the skin snip is not practical  —   it’s too invasive, too difficult, too painful. Want to know more about river blindness? Dr. Neeraj Mistry, the managing director of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, will be taking your questions on Twitter on Friday, Jan. 22, from 11 a. m. to 12 p. m. ET. Leave your questions in a comment below, or tweet them to @NPRGoatsandSoda with the hashtag #RiverBlindness. "
"All over the United States, schools are scrambling to find qualified special education teachers. There just aren’t enough of them to fill every open position. That means schools must often settle for people who are   and inexperienced. Special ed is tough, and those who aren’t ready for the challenge may not make it past the first year or two. Really good teacher preparation might be the difference. At least, that’s what the Lee Pesky Learning Center believes. In partnership with Boise State University, this nonprofit is working to overcome the shortage in Idaho, not just by filling vacancies, but by creating special education teachers fully prepared for the demands  —   and the rewards  —   of working with   students. The Pesky Center is housed in a   building in an office park near the Boise airport. It seems almost clinical, like a dentist’s office, except instead of cavities and dentures, there are worksheets and flashcards. Any given day, students trickle in at the end of their school day. They work with an ”education specialist,” tackling anything from multiplication tables to paragraph structure. Helena (we’re using only her first name to protect her privacy) is one of 100 students here. She struggles to keep up with other kids in the 8th grade at her school, so she comes here once a week to work on her reading with a mentor. This    approach is the Pesky Center’s bread and butter. ”All of the attention is focused on the instructional component,” says Evelyn Johnson. She’s the executive director of the Pesky Center, as well as a professor of special education at Boise State. ”Like, what are we doing for this child and how are they responding and are they meeting their goals? Johnson says the Pesky Center, founded in 1997, was initially established with one goal in mind: to help students with learning disabilities. And right now, she says, one way they can do that is to address the teacher shortage. For example, the West Ada schools, a district of more than 37, 000 students just outside of Boise, had to replace nearly 20 percent of its special education staff last summer. That’s 37 new teachers that needed to come from somewhere. Often, hiring so many people quickly means settling for quantity over quality. And these quick hires are way more prone to leave the job after two or three years. And so, the Pesky Center has launched a new training program. Interested college graduates can apply to spend one year at the Center while also taking classes and earning a master’s in teaching through Boise State. The program is called the Special Education Collaborative, and all of it  —   the training and the classes  —   will be covered by a scholarship from Alan and Wendy Pesky, the founders of the learning center. It’s up and running with its first two students. Over the next few years, Johnson plans to accept up to 10. So, this approach won’t fix the larger problem any time soon. Classrooms need to be filled now. But educators here say it may be the start of a   solution."
"There’s a familiar kind of book. A white man  —   specifically a Briton  —   in Asia. You can already sense him aloof, condescending, assured. The world is his playground and he’s out to play. That kind of book has already been written. Lawrence Osborne’s Hunters in the Dark is not that book. Its white man, Robert Grieve, is some of the things above. But mostly he’s ”ignorant and innocent,” unaware of the world and its many cruelties. He is also ”drifting, and drifting consciously” from his boring teaching job back in England, a country whose ”fortunes were not going to recover for a very long time, perhaps centuries.” We meet Robert just after he’s crossed the border from Thailand to Cambodia. He’s a little down on his luck. But then, on a whim, he goes gambling, and wins what is surely, even in that part of the world, a very modest amount of money. And rather than spending it all right there and then or trying to find his way back home, Robert decides ”to hold on to it and plant it for a while and, if possible, make it flower.” Unfortunately, he is soon robbed of his small fortune  —   and not by a Cambodian, which would’ve been the trope. The antagonist in question is Simon, a man ”in elegant, summer whites, dark blond and incongruous and indifferent,” whom Robert initially sights on a trip to a temple ruin. Simon is a fellow ”barang,” an American his voice is ”aristocratic, New England, slightly clipped.” Penniless, Robert ends up in the capital, Phonm Phenh. Even as his luck changes, even as he soon finds a ”more confident stride,” (he is, after all, an Englishman in Asia) there’s a feeling that it’s not going to end too well. Osborne is a master at creating a subtle but unmistakable sense of impending doom he does it here through his metaphor of choice  —   Southeast Asia’s afternoon rain clouds: ”a great atomic cloud had formed, bright silver at the edges . .. the electricity which rippled through the air drew the eye to the   mushroom cloud and its impending crisis.” Osborne weaves in Cambodia’s history  —   relying on dark humor to capture the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s  —   and he has a masterful grasp on the present, and much to say about the East and the West. But it’s money more than history that drives this book. Small amounts, the dreams of bigger amounts, the lure of vast amounts  —   Hunters In the Dark is a small book with about a handful of characters, all ”hunters in the dark” looking for happiness  —   or at least, an edge up on everyone else. But here lies my first real niggle with the book: While Robert might be classified as a hunter, he is also strangely aimless nothing’s really propelling him forward. Does Robert care about or love anything  —   or anybody? He seems ambivalent about his past relationships, about his current Khmer girlfriend (and yes, he kind of ends up with one). Graham Greene, to whom Osborne has been compared  —   not unjustly  —   had characters who also often found themselves in strange lands, grappling with strange cultures. But they all  —   even the most distant, reclusive, lost  —   had beating hearts and messy, complicated lives. Osborne’s characters are distant, dispassionate human beings uninterested in much of anything  —   so when terrible things happen to them, it’s hard to sympathize. But that’s a relatively small quibble in what is otherwise an elegant, dark,   together novel. Perhaps too well put together, especially in its final third, where it feels a little packed with convenient coincidences. Nevertheless, the pace picks up towards the end and the book races towards a surprising ending  —   one that I did not see coming and one that was as refreshing as a rain shower after a stifling hot afternoon. Nishant Dahiya is NPR’s Asia Editor. He tweets at @nprnishant."
"Tennessee Ernie Ford was fed up with the trappings of fame and the demands of the music business. It was 1955 and his label, Capitol Records, had threatened to sue him if he didn’t make another record. He decided to fulfill his contract and leave. The song he ended up recording became a No. 1 hit, topping Billboard magazine’s pop and country charts. Ford was already popular, but his recording of ”Sixteen Tons” made him a huge star on radio and TV. He became even better known for his interpretations of gospel songs and hymns. Now, Ford’s earlier career in country and the roots of rock is getting a fresh look with Portrait of an American Singer, a   set whose expansive liner notes are nominated for a Grammy. Ernest Jennings Ford was born in Bristol, Tenn. in 1919 and began his career as a radio announcer at local station WOPI. During World War II, he served with the Army Air Corps as a bombardier trainer in California. After the war, Ford worked at stations in San Bernardino and Pasadena, where he hosted a popular country music program. ”He had this persona that he later developed called Tennessee Ernie Ford,” says Ted Olson, who is a professor in the Appalachian Studies program at East Tennessee State University and produced the new box set. ”It wasn’t uncommon for radio announcers to have a persona like that. He was just particularly good at it.” Ford’s radio program soon earned him a recording contract. But, unlike most country singers, he was not based in Nashville. Instead, he recorded in Hollywood, for Capitol Records. Olson says Capitol had a different approach, as exemplified with artists like Merle Travis in the 1940s and early ’50s. ”They would take an artist with strong roots in the Appalachian uplands,” Olson says, ”and take what had been folk music and encourage the artist to kind of revise it, or   it, or come up with a new interpretation and a fresh approach.” Ford went on to host several TV shows and often ended them with a religious song. When Ford’s 1956 album of hymns stayed on the Billboard charts for 277 consecutive weeks, Capitol turned him into a gospel singer. But his son, Buck Ford, wants his father to be remembered for more than just that. ”Ernie Ford was not a gospel singer,” he says. ”He was not a country singer. He was not a jazz singer. He was not a pop singer. He was not an opera singer. He was a singer, period. He could literally cross from genre to genre, and I mean literally from opera to pop, without blinking an eye.” Buck says his father made so many gospel records not because of the style’s popularity, but because Capitol saw Ernie Ford as a gospel singer, rather than a singer of American music. Ted Olson says Tennessee Ernie Ford was also one of the first artists to help bring the music of black Americans to the pop charts. ”People have focused on the Sun Studio role in popularizing Southern black music,” Olson says. ”They were, in some respects, students of people like Tennessee Ernie Ford, who were doing similar sorts of things earlier than that.” Olson points out that although Ford was a pioneer of early rock ’n’ roll music, he remains uncredited by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ford was, however, inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1994. The latter honor was posthumous Ford died in 1991."
"On a cold desert morning full of birdsong and smokers’ coughs, the head of Iraq’s special forces is holding court in the master bedroom of a commandeered family home, perched on the edge of a rumpled pink bed and lighting his first cigarettes of the day.  ”In Ramadi city, and Ramadi’s suburbs, ISIS is broken, they no longer exist,” declares Maj. Gen. Fadhil Barwari, blowing smoke over curlicued bedroom furniture.  American and Iraqi officials recently hailed a victory against the Islamic State in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province that’s just 70 miles west of Baghdad. ISIS had captured the city last May and retaking it was a top priority for the Iraqis.   But despite Prime Minister Haider  ’s visit to the city center, and Barwari’s boasts, the extremists are still holed up in the southeast of Ramadi, and progress there is being slowed by the presence of thousands of civilians.  ”When ISIS retreated from other districts, they took civilians with them as human shields,” says Barwari. He calls it a problem but says the ”cleaning” operations are ongoing and tells his men to take us from this improvised base to see for ourselves. The road winds past buildings with   roofs and crushed pillars. The small cinder block houses have holes blasted through the walls, which allowed ISIS fighters to run from house to house as they fought to defend the city. A pedestrian bridge, painted pink, is a collapsed heap. Humvees are crumpled masses of metal. No one is living here. Deeper in, it becomes clear fighting is still intense. Helicopters buzz overhead every few minutes, laying down covering fire. Frequent explosions rattle the windows of the empty houses. The soldiers say these bangs are airstrikes carried out by the U. S.  coalition. ”We are, inshallah, going to move into the Sofia area,” Sgt. Maj. Raed Mohammad tells me, standing in a street littered with shell casings and gesturing to the southeast. But, ”in this area, we are using different tactics, because there are so many civilians.” Earlier in the Ramadi battle, the Iraqi security forces and their allies, backed by coalition airstrikes, were able to push relatively fast into largely depopulated streets. Now, the front line is relatively static. On one side of a city street are Iraqi forces on the other is ISIS, with an estimated 1, 000 families they’ve dragged along with them as they’ve withdrawn into this holdout. If the soldiers push into the area, they risk accidentally killing civilians. And if those civilians rush toward the Iraqi troops, they could become easy targets for ISIS. ”We’re trying to rescue them,” Mohammad says. Every day, hundreds of civilians brave ISIS fire to come running across the front line, some waving white flags. Many die in the attempt, or are injured. Outside one of the city’s biggest mosques, there are an ambulance, stretchers and soldiers. The sound of weeping rises up above the din of aircraft and explosions. Four children, all about age 5, are lying on the stretchers. Counterterrorism forces are hastily applying iodine and bandages to their wounds. ”We came from Sofia,” a sobbing little boy tells a soldier. ”But another family came with us and they were hit by ISIS.” A    who gives her name only as Jinan says the militants told her ”they’d shoot anyone who tried to leave.” Today an airstrike hit near the house where they were sheltering  —   which is how the children were injured  —   but in the ensuing confusion, they seized the chance to flee. The soldiers tell us they take fleeing civilians to an improvised base on the southern edge of the city. They give medical aid, food and water and take the men away for questioning to see if they’re involved with ISIS. The women and children are gathered in another requisitioned house, a squat, gray building with the sound of weeping floating out of the broken windows. ”We ran away at dawn,” Hashima Khalil tells me. She’s 55 and ran 2 miles, barefoot. She can hardly stand up now. ”We’ve been drinking rainwater,” she says. Conditions in the city worsened during the seven months ISIS was in control, as security forces severed supply lines. Water, food and electricity have been cut off for three months. ”We were moved from place to place,” she says. The extremists forced families to move with them as they withdrew gradually in the face of ongoing assaults by the Iraqi military. They threatened to blow up the houses of civilians who didn’t comply, with the families inside. Nearby, Barwari is on a rooftop, overseeing the detonation of roadside bombs and booby traps left by ISIS. A   on the table next to him blasts the radio message of the militants. The operation, he says gloomily, is not going well. ”Right now, we can’t go inside Sofia,” he says. ”We worry that if they see us coming, they will rush to us and be hit.” Another officer says the operations will continue, but more slowly than they had hoped. Although victory is not complete, most of Ramadi is now held by Iraqi security forces, and U. S. and Iraqi officials are already talking about pushing ISIS out of other cities. Those cities, too, are crowded with civilians. The slow battle in Ramadi and the toll on its people seem likely to be replicated as the fight against ISIS in urban areas carries on in the months  —   and maybe years  —   ahead."
"There’s a house for sale in Los Angeles: 29 rooms, tennis court, swimming pool, and wine cellar, a guest house, game house, movie theater, and a grotto, which is not to be confused with any grotto you’ve read about in the Bible. The owner wants $200 million dollars. Local realtors say that’s optimistic which is often their way of saying, that’s ridiculous. But the house is Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion. At the age of 89, Hef may be downsizing. Insert the   of your choice here. But there is a catch: any buyer must permit Playboy’s founder to continue to live in the house until he  —    moves on.   rooms should afford privacy all around. But imagine padding down to the kitchen to find yourself walking on cracker crumbs, and dirty plates in the sink because some night snacker in black silk pajamas didn’t clean up, and downed the last sip of orange juice. ”Hef!” The man isn’t used to sharing. The Playboy Mansion is a year younger than its owner, and may be getting a little creaky  ” or worse. Izabella St. James, a former Playboy bunny who lived there from 2002 to 2004, says much of the furniture is old and ratty, the bedding is soiled and tatty, and the dogs who belonged to the bunnies who lived in the mansion relieve themselves on the curtains and carpets. That would be a lot to put up with in a budget motel, much less a $200 million mansion. Hugh Hefner has been married for three years to Crystal Hefner, who is his third wife and, for whatever it means, 60 years younger than Hef. He had spent many years sharing his residence with a changing cast of young women, but in 2005, he told Britain’s Telegraph, ”I thinned the herd a couple of years ago because there were some rivalries, some petty jealousies and I was trying to emphasize the quality.” There are some statements for which no truly clever response is possible. Anyone who wants to own Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion must know it comes with a history of     glitz, but also darker chapters of drug use and sexual assault at his celebrated parties. Recent reports say Mr. Hefner now fills his nights by slurping canned chicken noodle soup and chomping oatmeal and raisin cookies before he watches old movies with his younger brother and a few old friends. He sits    with his wife. They say good night at 9 p. m. Imagine spending millions to move into the Playboy mansion, and instead of rampant revelry, you find you have to get in line for the Early Bird Special."
"The Glory of the World is a new play that celebrates author and Catholic monk Thomas Merton  —   but it isn’t really about Merton. ”Everybody is far more complicated than that one simple line about being a great mystic, a great Buddhist, a great activist, whatever,” says playwright Charles Mee. And that’s exactly what Mee’s characters discuss. The play is directed by Les Waters of the Actor’s Theatre in Louisville, Ky. near where Merton lived at the Abbey of Gethsemani. Every morning on his walk to work, Waters says, ”I passed this plaque that says, ’On this site, Thomas Merton had a spiritual revelation.’ And it was an extraordinary thing to see on a plaque.” He got curious, started reading about Merton and got in touch with Charles Mee to see if he might want to do something for the monk’s 100th birthday in 2015. Mee grew up in a Catholic home with all of Merton’s books on the shelves, and nuns and priests in the family. He said yes, but with a caveat. ”I said, ’Well, you know, Les, I’m an   so I couldn’t write anything nice about him,’ ” Mee recalls. ” ’And probably what I would do would get you thrown out of Louisville.’ And Les said, ’That’s OK.’ ” What the pair came up with is less a traditional play than kind of a wacky birthday party for Merton. It features 17 actors, all men, and Merton never actually appears. Louisville   critic Elizabeth Kramer reviewed the play and says at times the action resembles the film comedy Animal House. ”There’s crazy parts where men start dancing a slow dance and then they kiss each other and make out,” she says. ”And then, later on, there’s this huge fight, where . .. one man brings out his fist, another brings out his knife, another comes onstage with a chainsaw.” But these raucous moments are bracketed by silence  —   a lot of it. At the beginning and end of the play, an actor sits onstage without speaking as his thoughts are projected on a screen. In Louisville, director Les Waters played that role. ”You can feel waves going in the house behind you,” Waters says, ”waves of indignation, waves of tension, waves of people thinking, ’What is going on?’ ” But critic Elizabeth Kramer says when that silence returns at the end of the play, the audience’s perceptions have shifted. ”It gave the middle of the play a stronger sense of itself of the argumentation that takes place, of the passions that people have about this man, Merton, and how they define him,” she says. ”And it also gives you, as an audience member, just some time to reflect on your own as you’re sitting in silence, but still drinking in what is happening on the stage as this one man sits in silence.” Playgoer and former Episcopal monk Roy Cockrum agrees. Before becoming a monk, Cockrum spent 20 years as a professional actor and stage manager. ”I understood it I understood what it meant,” he says. ”It made sense to me. I was known as Brother Roy for a number of years and wore a black habit and traveled all over the world doing spiritual retreats and silent retreats.” Cockrum saw The Glory of the World when it premiered at the Louisville Humana Festival last year. ”And when the houselights started coming up after the curtain call,” he recalls, ”I leaned over to my friend that I was sitting with and I said, ’If ever I’m going to be a commercial producer, this is going to be it.’ ” Cockrum wasn’t just daydreaming. In 2014, he won the $259 million Powerball lottery and set up a foundation to create and support new theater works. He used some of that money to bring the entire Louisville production  —   actors and sets  —   to New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music, where he hopes audiences will respond to the contradictions, chaos and silence in Mee’s play. Cockrum says, ”It’s that complex diversity of the human condition that is, in fact, the glory of the world.” The play opens Saturday in New York."
"Sunday night’s Democratic debate comes at a crucial moment. The two    —   Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders  —   are closer in the polls than ever, and the Iowa caucus is only two weeks away. Up until now, Clinton has done well in debates it’s a format that suits her. But Sanders’ message is breaking through, and he’s gaining in the polls nationally, leads in New Hampshire and is neck and neck with Clinton in Iowa. That means the pressure is on for both candidates Sunday night. The debate, taking place in Charleston, S. C. begins at 9 p. m. EST. The    Black Caucus Institute debate will air on NBC broadcast stations and livestreamed on NBC digital platforms, including its YouTube channel. Here’s what the candidates need to do  —   and avoid: Needs: Show why her plans are pragmatic solutions that work for the progressive base, while still respecting Sanders supporters. She’s gotten away from her answer in the first debate that she’s ”a progressive who likes to get things done.” Then again, it’s tough to make that argument to primary voters, Avoid: Lawyerly, unclear answers that play into an inauthentic narrative, especially paired against Sanders, whose authenticity has been key attacks that could be seen as cheap shots, like on health care, Needs: Convince Democratic voters, who are skeptical he’s presidential material, that he can win show a facility with issues beyond his core message, Avoid: Pulling punches like he’s done in past debates, Needs: Somehow appear relevant as it is, he barely made it onto the debate stage. His poll numbers had to be rounded up to qualify, Avoid: Being dismissed, especially after the question on the investigation into his discounted purchase of furniture from the governor’s office when he left. 1. Where does the race stand? Hillary Clinton seemed to have a comfortable lead on Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders last year, but that has slipped considerably and they are in a    race. Sanders has picked up momentum with his message and his passion  —   and Democratic voters like him. He continues to lead in New Hampshire, where he’s been in the top spot for the better part of the last five months. He’s also closing in Iowa, which is perhaps more surprising, but that’s a place where passion counts, because of how the caucuses are conducted. Beyond the first two states, Clinton still has leads with   voters, who are critical to Clinton’s ”firewall” in the South. But that firewall might not look as insurmountable if she loses one or both of these first crucial contests. 2. What about the issues  —   what’s dividing these two? Sanders has gained steam because of his clear message on Wall Street and income inequality. He’s tried to tie Clinton to big financial institutions, and Clinton has struggled in defending those ties, as Sanders has labeled her the ”status quo.” Lately, it’s been health care and guns. Sanders voted for Obamacare, but he prefers a   system Clinton wants more modest tweaks. It may have been a bad tactic for Clinton’s daughter Chelsea to try and go after Sanders from the left and accuse him of wanting to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Clinton stood by her daughter. Bigger picture: Clinton has criticized Sanders for how to pay all of the reforms he wants. Sanders has not been completely forthcoming on a financial and tax plan, though he promises to explain later. Clinton has harped on Sanders’ past support for more moderate gun measures, including his support for a 2005 law that protects gun manufacturers from liability if a gun made by one of them is used in a killing. On Saturday, the day before the debate, Sanders came out in favor of a measure to amend the law. 3. So, with these dividing lines, do they go negative in the debate? There’s a risk in going negative, but more so for Clinton. Sanders’ voters are very loyal. Clinton is losing ground and can’t afford to be completely positive. But how to attack Sanders in a way that resonates and seems authentic will be a challenge. Clinton’s making the case she’s the more electable  —   and certainly most Democratic voters would do anything to make sure a Republican isn’t elected, especially Ted Cruz or Donald Trump."
"Iran is open for business again as ten years of punishing international sanctions are lifted. President Hassan Rouhani declared the nuclear deal a ”golden page” in Iran’s history as he presented a new budget to parliament on Sunday. Economists call it the biggest windfall in history, with as much as an estimated $150 billion of Iran’s frozen assets being unlocked from banks across the globe. ”Implementation Day” was declared in Vienna on Saturday. The U. N.’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, certified Iran had fulfilled its obligations under a nuclear agreement with six world powers. ”This will turn Iran from the most sanctioned state to the country with the most monitored nuclear program in the world,” says Ali Vaez, a senior Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group. It’s the ”Big Bang,” he says. The agreement opens a way for Iran to transform its economy and reconnect its 80 million people to the global economy. ”After more than a decade, the race of sanctions against centrifuges, has finally ended,” he says. Saturday’s prisoner swap, The new era began with signals that the nuclear deal represents a change in relations between Tehran, the international community, and the United States. Especially striking   a prisoner swap that came hours before the main event in Vienna. Five Americans were released, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, held for more than a year on charges of spying. The U. S. granted clemency and released seven Iranians accused of violating U. S. sanction laws. ”This is a major victory for diplomacy, a victory for people who want to talk to Iran,” says Mohsen Milani, who heads the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of South Florida. Iran’s end of the bargain, While nuclear negotiations are also an example of ”talking to Iran,” it is an extremely technical agreement between diplomats and experts. ”Iranians put cement in a nuclear reactor,” says Milani, about a crucial step in the nuclear agreement when the core of the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor was removed and disabled. ”Ordinary Americans and Iranians don’t understand what that means,” he says. In December, Iran shipped out 25, 000 pounds of   uranium and dismantled more than 12, 000 centrifuges, also part of the deal. ”Iran has undertaken significant steps that many people  —   and I do mean many  —   doubted would ever come to pass,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in remarks in Vienna. But it was the release of five Americans held in Iran that captured American attention and overshadowed the landmark conclusions of the nuclear agreement. This was a tangible example of the new era, coupled with the quick release of captured U. S. sailors in the Persian Gulf last week. ”You are talking about actual people, not centrifuges,” says Milani about the emotional reactions. It also demonstrated a change in Iran. ”For me, it shows there are reasonable forces who don’t want to go back to the bad old days,” he says. Diplomacy and dialogue, Secret negotiations over Americans held in Iran began more than ”14 months ago and accelerated after the conclusion of the nuclear deal,” according to senior officials who briefed reporters after the swap was announced on Saturday. As the names reverberated on social media and TV news channels on Saturday, the swap was widely applauded in the U. S. despite charges by Republican presidential hopefuls that it showed the latest American ”weakness.” ”In terms of optics, it’s more powerful than ’Implementation Day,’” says Milani, in what appears to be a historic shift that has ”opened the door of communications,” after more than three decades of enmity. For the Obama administration, the prisoner swap and Iran’s swift compliance with the deal’s difficult measures is the triumph of diplomacy and dialogue over confrontation and public threats. Still, the opening to Iran is a gamble that historians will debate for years, citing key moments and motivations that led to successful negotiations. The deal took two years of formal negotiations between Iran and six powers, but the Obama administration reportedly reached out much earlier. The Wall Street Journal reported discreet exchanges that go back to 2009. President Obama sent another signal the same year. He was the first U. S. president to call the country ”The Islamic Republic of Iran” in a Persian New Year’s message to the Iranian people. Soon after, the U. S. and Iran opened secret   communications facilitated by the tiny Gulf state of Oman. ”A convergence of factors explains it,” says Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Based in the Gulf, he says the Obama administration saw Iran as a potential breakthrough as the aftermath of the Arab Spring convulsed the Arab world. ”With Iran, there was an opportunity for a deal. Iran looked cohesive, it has institutions,” even though Iran’s regional policies were often at odds with U. S. goals, he says. ”Iran was bad, but it was good at being bad. Iran is a competent actor.” Rouhani’s election sparked change, When President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013, the White House called his election ”an opportunity” for Tehran to resolve international concerns over its nuclear program. During his campaign, the moderate cleric pledged to open a new chapter with the West. More important for his country’s crippled economy, Rouhani promised to reintegrate Iran into the international economic system after decades of isolation. It was a high stakes gamble, linking the success of his presidency to success in complex nuclear talks with world powers. Both presidents faced domestic pressure to scuttle the deal. For the Obama administration, the opening to Iran was met with deep suspicion by congressional Republicans. Republican presidential hopefuls pledged to scrap it on the first day in office. America’s key allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are adamant that Iran is a destabilizing force likely to grow bolder with a huge injection of cash as sanctions are lifted. The objections are likely to grow louder as implementation gets underway, says Hokayem. ”Iran remains a very concerning actor, very confrontational. There is a long list of U. S. interests where Iran cannot be a net contributor.” In a sign of the tumult of the new era, on Sunday, the U. S. Treasury announced new sanctions against 11 entities and individuals involved in procurement on behalf of Iran’s ballistic missile program. ”There will be ups and downs in relations,” says Milani. ”You cannot change years of animosity and political war between two countries overnight.”"
"In the wake of this weekend’s prisoner exchange with Iran, a Twitter hashtag supporting Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian underwent a jubilant change: #FreeJason became #JasonIsFree. The family of Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran in 2007 and whose whereabouts remain unknown, started a frustrated hashtag of their own: #WhatAboutBob. Meanwhile, ”Implementation Day” arrived Saturday  —   that is, the day Iran fulfilled the requirements of the international nuclear pact and sanctions against the country were lifted. Like the prisoner exchange, the end of sanctions left some elated and others irate. Here are a few reactions to the weekend’s news out of Iran:"
"The country remembers the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday. More than four decades after his death, many people see the Black Lives Matter movement as the modern incarnation of the drive for human dignity and legal standing that Dr. King embodied. But others, including members of an earlier generation of activists, find fault with the group, seeing it as an aimless, formless group that still lacks direction and  . Meanwhile, younger activists sometimes see their seniors as too narrow in their focus and rigid in their methods. Others ask whether the mere fact that another protest movement has arisen is a sign that earlier efforts have fallen short. To delve into King’s legacy in modern activism, NPR’s Michel Martin turned to the Rev. William Barber II and Patrisse Cullors, two prominent activists. Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, is best known for leading Moral Monday protests across the state in 2013. Cullors, an artist from Los Angeles, is considered one of the   of Black Lives Matter movement. On Martin Luther King Jr. ’s legacy, Cullors: Part of our work in this generation has been about reclaiming MLK, and the ways that this government, in a lot of ways, has totally whitewashed his legacy. As a young kid growing up, what we were given was the ”[I Have A] Dream” speech. We weren’t given his grassroots organizing, we weren’t given that King was a local organizer. We weren’t given everything he did up until the Voting Rights Act. And when I joined this movement as a young person, I realized, oh, King is so much more. Barber: I see the legacy of Dr. King as even beyond the civil rights movement. I see the legacy connected to the Old Testament prophets who stood up for the marginalized and against injustice, to the social gospel movement that stood up and asked a question, ”What would Jesus do in the face of terrible economic inequities and damage to workers?” Right on through to the second Reconstruction, which I call the civil rights movement. You know, that intersectionality  —   fusion politics: bringing together blacks and whites and Latinos, and Jews and Christians and Muslims. But doing it in a way that takes race and class seriously and does not separate them. On Black Lives Matter addressing institutional change, Cullors: Folks have seen the protesting and the marching, the arrests. But folks haven’t actually sat down with movement leaders to say, ”And what else are you doing?” The negotiations with mayors, with chiefs of police, with county sheriffs  —   people are missing the negotiations because that’s not what gets highlighted in the media. And I think what we ask of folks is to be patient. Instead of heavily critiquing us, join us and help us strategize around what’s next and what’s possible. On the success and failure of historical movements, Barber: We are in a reality right now where we have less voting rights today than we had Aug. 6, 1965, after the Shelby decision and the inaction of the Congress. But that’s what movements do. This country is constantly going through reconstruction. And there are times when we have to do two things at the same time. We have to protect what was won and expand. So we have to fight in the courts, we have to fight in the street, we have to fight in the legislative halls, and we have to fight at the ballot box. Democracy is hard it is not easy. Cullors: I’m very grateful that I’m in this fight. And I’ve sat with civil rights leaders and I’ve sat with former [Black] Panthers who say, ”I’m sorry, we failed you.” And I say to them ”No, you didn’t. You’ve set the standard, and we are continuing to move that forward.” We can’t expect to undo 500 years. We just can’t expect to undo it in three or four decades. Barber: It says more about the failure of America, but it also says something about the greatness of movements and the seeds that were sown by Ella Baker and Dr. King and Rosa Parks. We are their children. . .. My mother said to me one day, ”Listen, we fought too hard for you to stop. You better fight, you better stand up.” That’s why our mantra is, no matter what they say to us, no matter how many death threats we get, no matter what politicians do, we are going forward together."
"On Wednesday night, All Songs Considered threw a Sweet 16 party for the ages, full of performances by some of our favorite musicians from the show’s history. We’re still recovering, but we couldn’t let the week end without sharing at least one highlight, so here’s a video of the brilliant Glen Hansard singing the heck out of ”When Your Mind’s Made Up,” a song from the Once soundtrack. Bob Boilen and I are in there too, talking about  —   and showing video from  —   the very first episode of All Songs. We’ll post more highlights from the Sweet 16 party in the coming days, including appearances by Dan Deacon, Kishi Bashi, Laura Gibson, The Suffers and Sharon Van Etten. Thanks to all the performers and fans who helped make it an unforgettable, joyful celebration."
"Late last year, it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security was going to step up pursuit of people with deportation orders. Arrests took place the first weekend of January DHS has confirmed that 121 people were detained in those operations. That may not sound like much compared to the estimated more than 11 million people living in the U. S. illegally. But the actions sent a chill through the immigrant community’s spine and started the rumor mill churning. One of those communities is Langley Park, Md. a hub for Central American immigrants. That’s where I met up with Giovanni, at the parking lot of a fast food joint. There, he shows me pictures of his two sons, both U. S. citizens. He says there’s a conversation he’s been having more frequently with his sister  —   a conversation about what he calls ”Plan B.” ”I have a little money saved,” he’s told her. ”The day I’m no longer here or something happens to me, I want you to give it to them.” Giovanni  —   who also goes by ”Chocolate,” a nickname he got back in Honduras  —   jokes that if he gets caught by immigration authorities, he might try to pass for  . He worries a lot more about getting picked up than he used to. He says he’s constantly keeping his ear to the ground. It started the weekend of Jan. 2, when DHS stepped up enforcement nationwide. Giovanni’s phone started blowing up with calls from worried friends. ”’Don’t come to Langley Park,’” he says they warned him. ”’They’re stopping people. They just have to see you looking Hispanic, and they’ll catch you and send you back. ’” DHS declined to be interviewed by NPR. In official statements, the agency says most of the arrests took place in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina. There haven’t been any confirmed arrests in Maryland. Still, a blanket of anxiety has fallen over this community. ”Obviously there is fear all over,” says George Escobar, one of the leaders at CASA of Maryland, an immigrant advocacy organization. On Jan. 1, the organization set up a hotline to field people’s concerns about immigration enforcement. He says CASA received as many as 150 calls a day at first. Many of those callers claimed they saw DHS officers in the area, and ”immigration officials knocking on people’s doors, entering into their buildings, immigration vehicles parked in very public spaces in the middle of the day.” On the local Spanish language radio station, El Zol, host Pedro Biaggi asks what’s on everyone’s mind: ”If the cops suspect someone with a deportation order is in the house, they can just come in, right?” ”No,” responds a CASA executive who is a guest on the program. In this country, he explains, authorities need a warrant. Giovanni has heard all this. He knows he is not a high priority for DHS deportations. DHS is looking for recent arrivals, criminals and people with deportation orders. Giovanni doesn’t fall into any of those categories. ”It’s still scary,” he says. ”Because I’ve heard of people getting picked up in Langley Park and taken. I’ve never seen an immigration police car or an immigration official. I’ve seen it on TV, but never live. I haven’t had the pleasure.” The deportations shouldn’t be surprising, said DHS secretary Jeh Johnson. ”I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed,” he said. But those ”priorities” will focus on ”convicted criminals and threats to public safety.” For many people like Giovanni, even if he is a low priority, the fear is still real."
"Florida’s Everglades is known for its alligators, and in recent years, pythons. Burmese pythons aren’t native to the Everglades. But over the last two decades, the snakes, which can grow up to 20 feet, have become established there and taken a big toll on native wildlife. With the pythons, there’s another new Florida species  —   the python hunter. They’ve been featured on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. And hunters are descending on the Everglades this month for a competition  —   the Python Challenge. Several hundred people have signed up to take part in the monthlong python hunt. This weekend, Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission held a kickoff event where it showed prospective hunters how best to corral a   long snake. While biologist Jenny Novack narrates, snake wrangler Jeff Fobb works to control and bag a Burmese python that weighs 50 pounds. ”Now this animal has gone into fight behavior. He knows that Jeff is there. He’s not happy about it. He’s hissing a little bit,” Novack says. She describes how Fobb controls the snake. ”Then he’s just going to grasp the animal right behind the head. He can feel the jawbones on his hand,” Novack says. In the last python challenge, three years ago, 1, 600 people took part, but they caught just 68 snakes. Researchers say there are tens of thousands of Burmese pythons in the Everglades. Catching them isn’t easy. Finding them is even harder. Veteran snake hunter Bill Booth says in the last python challenge, his team hunted seven days before finding their first snake. They ended up taking second place. ”We got six snakes, and one got away,” he says, laughing. ”We were being followed by National Geographic and they were filming a show. And they actually borrowed the snake from us to   one of the other hunters. And they came back and said the snake got away. So, we wanted to kill them.” Booth, a firefighter from the Tampa area, took a month off of work for this year’s challenge. He grew up in Miami and says he spent much of his childhood in the Everglades. Burmese pythons, Booth says, have had a dramatic impact on wildlife there. ”The thing is, you don’t see anything. It’s like a wasteland out there,” Booth says. ”I think in the 30 days that we spent on the last python challenge, I think we saw maybe one or two otters in 30 days. And rabbits and stuff like that, they’re just not around.” As preparations were underway for this year’s python challenge, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called on Florida to tell participants not to cut off the heads of pythons they capture. The animal rights group said when decapitated, pythons can remain alive and writhe in agony for hours. Ron Bergeron is a commission board member and a longtime snake hunter who says the best way to kill a snake is whatever works. ”You know, as an expert, I catch them alive. But we don’t really recommend that to the public,” he says. ”It can be dangerous. A snake can turn around and bite you.” Some Floridians are not just hunting invasive species  —   they’re eating them. At the kickoff to the python hunt, chef Jimmy Rodriguez was serving up samples of invasive species. There were no snakes. But he did have two marine species  —   snakeheads and lionfish, fried. Plus tacos made with   green iguana, an invasive species he says is taking over. ”We’re trying to educate the public on how gorgeous the texture of this meat is,” Rodriguez says. ”Not just the texture, the flavor.” With the extensive media coverage, Burmese pythons have become Florida’s   invasive species. The python challenge attracts people from across the country. Howard Hudson and his wife, Diana, came with their friend Chip Williamson from Cincinnati, Ohio, to join in what would be their first python hunt. ”This is also just an adventure. We’d love to be able to help protect the native wildlife from the invasive species,” Hudson says. ”We know that they’re really hard to find out there. But, I think we’ll have a ball.” I point out to the Hudsons and to Williamson that they’ll be up against some serious python hunters. Hudson says they’re not worried, they’re mostly there to have fun. ”We’re going to enjoy ourselves and have a good time,” he says. They could end up catching the biggest snake by chance. ”You never know,” he says. As for catching a python, the Ohioans say they think they know how to do it. They’ve seen it done on Animal Planet."
"Raising kids is rewarding and raising kids is hard. That work is compounded when you have a child with autism. And each of these families experiences the disorder differently. On Saturday, we heard four parents share the moment they learned their children had autism, and the signs that led them to seek a doctor’s opinion. Now, we learn their experience following the diagnoses, the resources they found and help they still need. Hear more from two of these parents about the trying journey that follows the diagnosis. This week on For the Record: caring for a child with autism. Quintin was diagnosed with autism when he was 2 years old. ”His name is Ronald Quintin Hampton,” Ron Hampton says. ”We call him Ron, we call him Quintin, we call him Boo. He has such a personality so, I think that’s why he has, these variety of names.” ”Francis is a sweet, loving kid,” says Christy Hammett. ”He is just awesome. He is a big boy and he is quite a lover.” She’s been learning how to navigate the behavioral challenges of autism for more than a decade now. Everyday Challenges, ”That’s terrible when they start taking off their clothes like in the middle of like the store or school or anything,” says Hammett. ”Francis’s biggest thing was the shoes. The shoes would come off and they’d get thrown across the classroom or thrown across daycare.” Ron Hampton’s son is 31 years old and things like this still happen. When Ron took Quintin to the ENT clinic recently, he needed to go to the bathroom, so he went in his diaper. ”The Depends caught most of it, but some of it came out, you know ran over, and so he was standing there once he realized and felt the wetness on his leg he took his stuff off,” he says. ”Fortunate, for me, there was a bathroom nearby so I rushed him into the bathroom wiped him up a little bit and I put the fresh stuff on him and then we went to our appointment.” Ron says he doesn’t get frustrated or embarrassed by his son’s behavior. It doesn’t help because it doesn’t change anything.  Beyond emotional pressures, the financial pressures are also very real. Christy had to leave her job for a while to cut costs. She carries a flip phone and for a while her family didn’t have Internet at home. Ron and his wife worked   while caring for Quintin. Finding A Routine, But both the Hampton and the Hammett families had to get outside help to deal with the pressure of the daily routine. It goes something like this. After Francis picks out his own clothes, Christy makes him breakfast. ”I make him a waffle, maybe sausage bacon salmon cakes, he likes to put it in his oatmeal sometimes,” she says. ”Usually the bus comes around 7: . So he goes to a service center so he’s not sitting in the house all day doing nothing. And then he’s usually home between 4 and 4:30. And then he’s ready for bed. So then we start all over again the next day.” Christy says it’s not easy for her and her husband to accept that her son may need this kind of supervised routine forever. ”I would hope that he could make it into a group home eventually and that he could be able to get a job, you know something that he would enjoy, maybe working at a pool because he likes water,” she says. ”I don’t know what else you know he could do.” These pressures have weighed on the Hammetts’ almost   marriage. ”[My husband and I] need each other and we depend on each other far more than I think we even realize,” Christy says. ”We’re getting through this, because this is what God has given us and we were designed to be Francis’s parents.” Another Perspective, Like Quintin and Francis, Savannah   now a social media contractor, struggled a lot as a child. But she didn’t get her diagnosis as quickly as they did. ”I would do things like charge at people, not intending to hurt them, but because I wanted to get past them,” she says. ”I would tap my head on walls, I would hide under things . .. I was what some parents describe as ’scary kids.’ ” While the signs were there, it took a while to figure out what was going on. ”They were changing mental health diagnoses about every six months,” she says. ”And it got to the point where I did not really feel attached to any specific diagnosis because I knew it would change. I was put on a lot of different psychotropic medications and that would change every three months.” With a lot of help, Savannah graduated from high school. She was eventually diagnosed with autism. She tried college, but it was too hard to be on her own and moved back home into her own place. Still, having her parents nearby is a big help. ”When I am not getting help, my kitchen becomes dangerous. There ends up being garbage everywhere, and dishes don’t get done,” she says. ”My family will come in and help clean and help organize things, they’ll make sure the garbage goes out, that sort of thing. My mom’s current husband actually manages my finances because it is not something that I am able to do.” She has some ideas in mind for her future, too. ”I know I want a big enough yard so I can have chickens,” she says. ”I hope that I can have a significant other who compliments me in ways so that I’d be able to have children someday, so I mean those are pretty vague goals for the most part but you know that’s what I want my future to be.” We’d like to hear about your experience with autism. If you’re willing to share, you can add it here."
"On a freezing June night,    Esme Grace huddles in her   bedroom as a shotgun’s blast reverberates over and over in the bowels of her family’s lopsided, isolated house. Afterwards, her three siblings and mother lie dead her father alive but damaged beyond speech and thought by a seemingly   gunshot wound Esme herself is physically unharmed but covered in her family’s blood. Soon after, her estranged aunt flies to her side, bundles her up, and takes her away from the tiny marsh village where her world has come apart. Thirteen years later, Esme goes by the name Alison, and lives a simple, nondescript life in London, far away from that hamlet that used to be her home and its strange, unhappy people. The only flame of pleasure in her life is a boyfriend, Paul, though she keeps him at arm’s length. But when Paul is invited to his  ’s wedding in her old hometown  —   and insists on bringing her along  —   Alison finds herself returning to a place she never thought she’d see again. Relocated, she begins a strange, unspooling effort to probe for the truth. Not just what happened to her family, but the organizing intelligence behind the death and sorrow that seems to permeate every local life  —   her father’s old drinking buddy, her former best friend, the police officer who questioned her after the murders, the older man she kissed as a young woman. With the wedding looming, the specters of the past and the broken people of the present are converging on Alison, reminding her that Esme has never really gone away. The Crooked House is a weird, excellent literary thriller, equal parts psychological profile and twisty, nasty plot. Its first   are subtle, heartbreaking, and grim the last third descends into the sort of suspenseful   that puts in the physical integrity of the novel’s spine at risk. The estuary where the majority of the novel is set is a moody and atmospheric place, and every sentence jangles with unspent violence. The nature of trauma even soaks into the prose structure: Alison often skips forward in time and then relates past details in fragments, a style that can be jarring and strange, but is effective and absolutely  . The novel is an exploration of the nature of tragedy how people try to find patterns in its randomness. ”Cells mutate accidents happen,” Alison tries to reason with herself. ”Every place had those tragedies, London must have a hundred million of them, people die wherever you go, for reasons just like this. No such thing as a cursed place.” And this is the ultimate question: if curses don’t really exist, why does tragedy pool and collect in certain places, among certain people? The cloistered community of Saltleigh and her   childhood home ache with dread and pain (”And for a moment the house looked like a crooked ugly lightening rod out on the marsh, hatred narrowing and finding its way like electricity to the battered boarded front door. ”) equal parts Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. What, this novel asks, does it mean for a place to be haunted, in a world where there’s no such thing as ghosts? Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, will be released in 2017. She has written for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta and elsewhere. "
"The Sesame Street of your childhood has changed. Elmo has moved into a new apartment, Big Bird has a new nest and Oscar the Grouch is hanging out in recycling and compost bins, alongside his usual trash can. But the biggest change may be how you watch Sesame Street. The 46th season of the classic children’s show premieres Saturday on HBO, the   network that’s home to provocative shows like Game of Thrones and Girls. New episodes of Sesame Street will air on its traditional home, PBS, nine months later. Sesame Workshop, the show’s production house, says the changes were made to ensure the survival of the show in a very different television environment than the one that existed when the show began. ”We certainly have had a complete renovation to our neighborhood. We took down buildings and put up trees,” the show’s executive producer,   Parente, tells NPR’s Michel Martin. ”It’s really more changes in Season 46 than we’ve ever had in one singular season.” The new HBO show will last 30 minutes, down from a full hour. Parente says they made the decision based on audience testing. They learned that ”kids could retain the information on one cohesive theme throughout a   more than an hour,” she says. ”We found an hour was cognitively dense.” Children have also gotten used to watching Sesame Street alone, rather than with their parents, a trend that’s been increasing for years, Parente says. ”Kids have access to tablets and mobile phones, and they’re making and selecting their content for themselves,” she says. ”And that’s a real   when it comes to thinking who your audience is.” Critics pounced when the deal was announced back in August, upset over the ”privatizing” of a ”national treasure.” But Parente calls HBO an ”amazing partner, because they really understood our mission to have Sesame Street in the hands of those kids who need it most, for free.” ”There’s no time when Sesame Street won’t be on the air,” Parente says. ”It really is the best arrangement for us. It’s like having your cake and eating it too, because we get the financial problems solved with HBO and the access for all on PBS.” Children don’t care very much about the   delay, she says. ”Kids just don’t pay attention to seasons of television the way adults do.” Parente adds: ”Kids turn on their content to have a playdate with Elmo, and they’ll always be able to do that, any day of the week.” Click the audio link above to hear the full interview with   Parente . .. and Elmo!"
"Shawn Amos had a Los Angeles childhood that was equal parts grit and glamor. He went to private schools and lived in a nice house, but it wasn’t exactly in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood. ”I grew up waiting for a carpool with hookers who knew me by name, drug dealers knew me by name,” Amos says. ”Across the street was an apartment complex that was home to a lot of     kinda guys.” Since then, he has worn a lot of hats in the music industry: singer, songwriter, producer. He started out in a   mode, but lately he’s been a vessel for the blues. His newest album, The Reverend Shawn Amos Loves You, was released last October. His father, Wally Amos, was a former Hollywood talent agent who had become a celebrity by creating Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. His mother, Shirlee Ellis, was a former nightclub singer who performed as   May. She was a great beauty, but she also suffered from schizoaffective disorder. ”My mother committed suicide in 2003,” Amos says. ”She was severely mentally ill all of my life  —   she’d given up her career before I was born  —   and so I never knew her as the   May of the clubs.” Amos tried to work his way through the hole his mother left by writing a tribute album to her, Thank You   May, which was released in 2005. Some songs were upbeat others had agony, and a little anger. Critics praised Amos’ maiden effort, but it didn’t sell  —   which crushed him. After a couple more albums suffered the same fate, he withdrew from performing. ”I sort of felt like, I can’t approach music like this anymore,” Amos says. ”I can’t go into making music just pulling my heart wide open. It was just too hard for me. And I didn’t know how else to approach music.” Amos decided to put his own songs aside and worked in the industry as an artists’ representative and a producer. He compiled the greatest hits of popular singers, alive and not, for Rhino Records and Shout! Factory. And he produced titles for the likes of Heart, Quincy Jones and the great RB man Solomon Burke. It was fulfilling work, and he was content doing it. Then, in 2013, he got an offer in 2013 to front a friend’s blues band for a weeklong tour in Italy. Amos says it changed his life. The music was loud and energetic  —   and, it was happy. For once, he wasn’t playing through pain or anxiety. ”I was just playing from a place of joy, and I just wanted to celebrate,” he says. He didn’t so much want to imitate classic Delta or Chicago blues he wanted something else. He wondered what a Muddy Waters record would sound like if it were made today, and asked himself, ”How would they take advantage of the technology that’s available, but not turn it into a   rock record?” Old school, new tools  —   that’s the guiding principle Shawn Amos applies as he plays around the country. There’s a good chance he might be coming to your town: He’s done 200 shows in the last two years. Each one is part of his mission. As he puts it, ”keepin’ the blues alive, one gig at a time.”"
"If you think it’s strange that we pay homage to David Bowie on Alt. Latino this week, think again. Bowie has had a tremendous fan base throughout Latin America, and he’s been a strong musical influence. His talent was so great, and his work so diverse, it left few musical genres untouched. Bowie means different things to different people. For Felix Contreras, growing up in the ’70s in California, Bowie was always playing in the background. But he says really became a fan when the singer started experimenting with RB and soul. I discovered Bowie through the film Labrynth, and later came across Earthlings and worked my way back. He became part of my everyday sonic landscape. Whatever rough adolescent territory I was navigating, I could pop on headphones and travel to Mars. For many friends who were discovering their own sexual identity as teenagers, early Bowie also offered a glimmer of hope that life could be fun and wild and filled with color. What many don’t know is that, if Latinos were tuning in to Bowie, he was also tuning in to us. One of Bowie’s favorite books was Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao. He was a fan of Brazilian singer Seu Jorge. In fact, he said Jorge’s covers of his music made him rediscover some of his own work. ”Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs in Portuguese,” he said, ”I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with.” This week on Alt. Latino, in addition to new music, we’re spinning some Latin Bowie tributes. We hope you’ll write in and share your own favorite Bowie memories and songs."
"President Obama took a moment in his final State of the Union Address Tuesday to voice optimism that people have the power to bring an end to the worldwide menace of malaria. ”Right now, we are on track to end the scourge of   and we have the capacity to accomplish the same thing with malaria  —   something I’ll be pushing this Congress to fund this year,” Obama said. That’s just the latest indication of the hope generated by progress made in the past decade in treating and preventing malaria. Since 2000, the rate of new malaria infections around the world has dropped by 37 percent  —   and death rates have fallen by 60 percent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Even better, last year the WHO reported that nine of the 97 countries where malaria once circulated have eliminated the disease, according to WHO. Even malaria’s heartland,   Africa, has seen a 66 percent decrease in malaria deaths since 2000, thanks largely to a combination of effective drugs and widespread use of   bed nets to keep   mosquitoes at bay. But there are discouraging signs in the global fight against malaria. ”There’s a lot of concern about how long those tools can continue to work,” says Dr. Patrick Duffy, chief of Laboratory and Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Newly reported cases of resistance to malaria drugs, and some signs that mosquitoes are becoming resistant to insecticides, are worrisome. If resistance spreads, it could derail more than a decade of improvement in controlling malaria. Some 3. 2 billion people live in parts of the world, many in   Africa, where malaria continues to be a threat, according to WHO. Last year, there were 215 million cases and 438, 000 deaths from the disease. Concerted efforts to fight the disease, such as Medicines for Malaria Venture, the Malaria Vaccine Initiative and the Innovative Vector Control Consortium, formed in the early years of this century as malaria deaths climbed, peaking in 2004 at more than 800, 000. Worldwide, malaria funding has increased almost tenfold since 2000, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested more than $2 billion in the fight against malaria since 2000. (Note: As readers of this blog may know, the Gates Foundation is also a funder of NPR.) But parasites and mosquitoes evolve in ways allowing them to fight back, developing resistance to some of the world’s most powerful medical tools. The most recent threat to progress was highlighted in a study, published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases last week, finding treatment failures in Cambodia because malaria parasites have developed resistance to the   treatment, a combination of the drugs artemisinin and piperaquine. ”This is quite alarming,” says Dr. Rick Fairhurst, chief of Malaria Pathogenesis and Human Immunity Unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and an author of the study on drug resistance in Cambodia. ”If artemisnin resistance spreads to Africa, there will be setbacks in reducing the number of deaths.” Drug resistance can develop when people are given improper doses of a drug, killing some parasites but allowing the growth and spread of resistant parasites. Southeast Asia is the focus of recent concern. ”Western Cambodia, where I work, is the epicenter of   resistant parasites,” Fairhurst says. In a clinical trial, researchers found that patients in three regions of Cambodia were returning after treatment with malaria still in their blood streams, continuing to have symptoms  —   and still able to transmit infection to others. When resistance to malaria drugs occurs in this region, Fairhurst says, it can spread quickly around the world. As a stopgap measure in the areas in Cambodia where drug resistance has appeared, researchers are trying a   regimen, adding mefloquine  —   a drug earlier paired with artemisnin until it, too, showed signs of resistance  —   to see if the three drugs together will be effective, Fairhurst says. As researchers try swapping in existing drugs to standard regimen to fight resistance, others are working on new   drugs but, says Fairhurst, those drugs are likely four to five years away from being available. It would be difficult to introduce new drug regimens to some of the world’s poorest countries, countries already struggling with scarce resources, if the   strain travels to   Africa, home to 89 percent of malaria cases. ”We know that if resistance spreads to India or Africa, it would have a very serious impact on our ability to treat malaria,” says David   senior advisor to the malaria program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The world health community knows the disastrous consequences of malaria drug resistance from past experience. In the 1960s, the drug chloroquine was used as the   treatment for the disease. Then resistance to the drug began to develop in Southeast Asia, and by the 1980s the resistant strain of the disease had spread across Africa. By the 1990s, the drug was no longer an effective treatment in Africa or most other countries plagued by malaria. ”We know that in the 1980s and 1990s, there was as much as a threefold increase in death rates,” says Fairhurst  —   the increase due to the failure of chloroquine as an effective treatment. It could happen again, he says, if the resistance emerging in Cambodia is unleashed on the rest of the world. On another front, mosquitoes themselves are showing signs of becoming resistant to the insecticides used to soak bed nets and spray on walls. The   mosquitoes in Africa commonly bite at night, and the nets keep them away when people sleep  —   or kill the bugs when they land on walls. Since 2010, according to WHO, 60 countries have reported resistance to at least one form of insecticide called pyrethroid. Innovative Vector Control, working with the Gates Foundation, is trying to move quickly to develop new insecticides in order to stay ahead of the problem. But the clock is ticking. ”The prediction is that widespread resistance to pyrethroids is likely to hit a crisis point around 2020,”   says. ”People are working very hard ensure that new insecticides are available by 2019.” As drug and insecticide research urgently moves forward, the holy grail of disease prevention  —   a vaccine that can permanently immunize populations against malaria  —   shows promise. ”The urgency for a vaccine mounts as concern in those other areas increases,” Duffy says. And, for the first time in the long fight against malaria, a vaccine has shown protective effects against the disease in clinical trials. The results have been modest, but its success may pave the way for improved vaccines, Duffy says. One promising candidate is RTS, S, or Mosquirix, a vaccine that aims to trigger the immune system and prevent the parasite from infecting the liver, where it matures, multiplies and   the blood stream, causing disease symptoms. Early trials showed it was safe for children and infants. Later trials, reported in July 2015 in The Lancet, found that three monthly doses in infancy and a booster at 20 months reduced the incidence of malaria in children by up to 36 percent over about four years. Those modest results will help pave the way for improved vaccines, Duffy says. With new reports of drug resistance, a tipping point looming for insecticide resistance, and vaccines so far showing only modest preventive effects, the ongoing fight against malaria is at a critical stage. The world must push ahead to find answers. ”I’ve been working with malaria for 40 years,”   says. ”I’m optimistic because of the changes I’ve seen in the past 10 years. We can do it.”"
"Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Jan. 17. ”We have a problem,” Belgian Muslim playwright Ismaël Saïdi said at the time, referring to the radicalization of young Muslims. In the wake of the Brussels bombing, we are republishing it now. Belgian playwright Ismaël Saïdi says he didn’t choose the title of his latest work, Djihad (the French spelling of ”jihad”) just to provoke people.   But he doesn’t mind if it does.  ”As an artist,” Saïdi says, ”it was important for me to say that we can use any word”  —   regardless of whether it is sacred for some.   As a leading Muslim voice advocating integration in a city that produced several perpetrators of the Nov. 13 Paris terror attacks, Saïdi knew exactly what he was doing.  As shocking as the title may seem, the play is a comedy. ”People were scared at the beginning,” he recalls. ”’Are they going to talk about terrorism? Bombs? ’” Before its premiere in December 2014, Djihad’s public relations director couldn’t even get journalists to answer the phone. ”They didn’t want to even write the name ’Djihad’ in their cultural [listings],” Lucile Poulain says. ”They thought we were a threat, actually.” The exodus of youth to join Islamist insurgents in the Middle East is an extremely sensitive topic in Belgium. The nation of just over 11 million people has seen more than 440 citizens travel to Syria to fight, the highest number per capita of all Western countries, according to King’s College International Center for the Study of Radicalization.   Saïdi says when he explained his play was actually a humorous look at three young Belgian Muslims who set off to fight a holy war, the response was even more dismayed. ”Are you crazy, man?” some exclaimed.  But ”crazy” has worked. Saïdi’s story of three hapless young men who find themselves launched from a park bench in Brussels to the killing fields of Syria has become a sensation, going from an initially scheduled five performances to more than 100 now, with dozens more planned. Once word got out that Djihad was actually an appeal against radicalization, the Belgian Education Ministry asked the troupe to continue performances  —   and paid for schools to bring their students. The play has been translated into Dutch and will go to Paris this spring.  Saïdi, 39, wrote and directed Djihad, and plays the lead. One of the other main characters, a dapper guy named Ben Hamidou, gets a lot of laughs as he secretly plays out his Elvis obsession, complete with hip gyrations, while his friends sleep.   As the audience claps and sings, cheering Hamidou on, people seem to forget he’s a radicalized foreign fighter, using a rifle as a microphone, standing guard over his fellow newly minted militants as they sleep in the Syrian desert. That’s exactly the reaction Saïdi wants. Saïdi’s lighthearted treatment of the subject is underpinned by serious concerns. Extremists tried unsuccessfully to recruit him to fight in Afghanistan when he was just 14, something he says would been applauded in his mosque in the Brussels neighborhood of Scharbeek. The same district hosted a suspected   hideout of the November Paris attackers. As a young man, Saïdi reacted to his neighborhood’s tensions by becoming a policeman  —   but many of his peers did go to Afghanistan. He hasn’t seen them since. Belgian society and government knew extremists were recruiting young Belgian Muslims back then, he says, but ”let them go because they saw it as a fight against the Russians” during the Cold War. And, he says, the same has been true more recently. As young Belgians have joined forces opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad, ”at the beginning, [authorities] knew it and they let them go to Syria, too. Everybody knows it.” He says Belgium only saw this as a real danger once the radicalized youth were ”coming back to kill here.”   European citizens are believed to be responsible for many, if not most, of the recent terror attacks and threats in Europe. Saïdi finds it essential to use culture to address these dangerous trends in both his own Muslim community and the rest of society. And he believes he’s found the secret for doing so effectively: ”What we are doing on stage is we are laughing about us first  —   us, the Muslims,” he says. ”I’m laughing about me. And then I’m laughing about society. I think we can laugh about anything if you begin with yourself.” Though the first audiences more than a year ago were heavily Muslim, its popularity soon spread. Saïdi estimates more than 41, 000 people of all religious and political persuasions have seen the play now. By portraying the characters as real people, not stereotypical terrorists, Saïdi draws the audience into empathizing with their feelings of isolation, hopelessness and confusion. The characters discuss various interpretations of Islam and reject the most dogmatic. The three friends end up befriending a Christian one decides to return to Belgium and pursue the love of his life, a   woman he’d abandoned at his mother’s insistence. ”If you have the ability to feel something about those guys,” Saïdi says, ”maybe everything’s not over.” The formula worked with students from the Collège Notre Dame de Bon Secours in Binche, Belgium, who saw the play earlier this month. Amandine Falcicchio, 17, said she already knew ”there’s an integration problem here in Belgium,” but the play helped her better understand those who actually experience it. Her classmate, Emma Innocente, said she’d gone to the performance unsure she would be able to laugh about something as serious as jihad. But she did. ”I hope we find a way not to forget what we saw,” Innocente said. Caroline Wallez, a teacher, said the school plans to incorporate the play’s messages into its programs. Following his collaboration with the education ministry, Saïdi published a book including the script of his play, plus a pedagogical section designed to help continue examination of the issues among students after the curtains close. Still, Saïdi maintains that the main responsibility for resolving young Muslims’ feelings of exclusion and disillusion lies within their own community. ”We have a problem,” he says. ”We as Muslims create the origin of what we call today as radicalization. We create it.” And, a year after journalists from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were killed for what was seen as their mockery of Islam, Poulain, the public relations director, says the Djihad team is aware of the risks they’re taking. Some theaters have canceled performances over security fears.   ”Of course, we are afraid ourselves,” Poulain says. ”But the comedians are very courageous, very brave. And they want to stand for something.” Something other than the applause they’re getting all over a country struggling to save its children from the other  —   very unfunny  —   version of jihad."
"At the end of December, as the world cleaned up wrapping paper and pine needles and prepared to say   to 2015, the romance community had its own bittersweet celebration: Kristan Higgins released Anything For You, the fifth and final title in her excellent and wildly popular Blue Heron series. The first book, The Best Man, introduced us to Faith Holland and her family, owners of the Blue Heron vineyard in fictional Manningsport, New York. Faith was jilted at the altar, then fled to the West Coast. When her family cajoles her into coming back to help with the harvest, she’s forced to establish new relationships with old friends, lovers and adversaries  —   including Levi Cooper, the best man at her   wedding  —   who may actually be her soul mate, if she can stop blaming him for ruining her life. As the series goes along, we end up highly invested in the whole Manningsport community  —   but especially the Holland and O’Rourke families. Faith’s siblings, her best friend Colleen O’Rourke, and Collen’s twin brother Connor all star in their own books (with Faith’s happily married sister Prudence providing comic relief with her running commentary on keeping the flame alive.) Higgins flirts with some beloved romance tropes in the series, though the stories are so layered and complex I hesitate to whittle them down to simple labels. The Best Man is an    storyline. Its sequel Waiting on You is definitely a   ”second chance at love” tale, while number four, The Perfect Match, is a modern    with a green card angle. And Anything For You has a bit of a Cinderella slant, but since Connor’s love story undulates across twenty years, it’s especially hard to reduce. Easily one of the most popular writers in romance, Higgins appeals to a broad spectrum of readers, since her novels contain a hugely satisfying romantic punch and skyrocketing sexual tension without graphic description (her books are the kind referred to as   romances) with humor that ranges from witty banter to slapstick physical comedy. But she truly shines in her ability to create warm,   characters who are perfectly imperfect  —   just right for each other, but unable to put the pieces together until the inevitably   denouement. Even the secondary cast leaps from the page: cranky octogenarians, villainous   backstabbing friends,    blind dates, and    womanizers. Higgins is a special writer at the top of her game. No other author manages to make us cry quite so achingly and laugh quite so hard, often within a few pages of each other. Higgins’ writing is so convincing and consummate that we are forced to react, to feel invested. And her keen observation of human nature renders her characters indelibly authentic  —   even when they’re doing things we hate, we understand why even when they’re unsympathetic or ridiculous, they’re credible. And that makes Blue Heron titles nearly impossible to put down, even to reach for a tissue or take a breath and rescue our aching ribs. Bobbi Dumas is a freelance writer based in Madison, Wis. She writes, blogs and reviews for Kirkus Media, and celebrates romance and women’s fiction on her website ReadARomanceMonth. com."
"Eat more when you’re stressed? You’re not alone. More than a third of the participants in a national survey conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health said they change their diets during stressful times. And many of us are quick to turn to either sugary foods or highly refined carbohydrates such as bagels or white pasta when the stress hits. ”There can be a bit of a vicious cycle,” says David Ludwig, a professor of pediatrics and nutrition at Harvard University and a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital. ”When we feel stressed we seek foods that are going to comfort us immediately, but often times those foods lead to surges and crashes in hormones and blood sugar that increase our susceptibility to new stresses.” Now, of course, we can’t control lots of the events and circumstances that lead to stress. But, Ludwig says, ”our body chemistry can very much affect how that stress gets to us.” He points to a study he and some colleagues published in the journal Pediatrics several years back. They gave teenage boys different types of breakfast meals. One included   eggs, while another meal included     oats. A third meal of instant oatmeal was highest on the glycemic index, a measure of how quickly sugar is absorbed and how soon a food is likely to make you hungry again. ”After the highly refined instant oatmeal, blood sugar soared but then crashed a few hours later,” Ludwig says. ”And when that happened the [stress] hormone adrenaline, or epinephrine, surged to very high levels.” Ludwig says the links between food and mood are complex. And just as there are individual differences in susceptibility to diseases, there are differences in response to food, too. Not all of us are equally sensitive to foods like instant oatmeal, high on the glycemic index. Given what we know about how different foods affect the risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, ”why should it be so surprising that the nature of the foods we eat can also affect our emotional and mental  ?” Ludwig says. So, if eating lots of refined carbs and sugar may exacerbate our responses to stress, are there other types of food that make us more resilient? Researcher Joe Hibbeln of the National Institutes of Health believes the answer is yes. ”I think there’s a very strong connection between what you eat and your mood,” Hibbeln says. He has spent the past two decades investigating links between the   fatty acids found in fish and emotional health. ”One of the most basic ways that   help to regulate mood is by quieting down the [body’s] response to inflammation,” Hibbeln says. When you get walloped by something, whether it’s a virus or an emotional stressor, you want to bounce back as quickly as possible, he notes. ”You can either be good at weathering stress or you can be brittle. And   make your stress system more flexible,” Hibbeln says. He points to studies showing that   can help protect neurons against the damage that can be done by chronic stress. He also points to clinical trials that have found that   may help control depressive symptoms. And a study of schoolchildren in England linked   to more   behavior. Hibbeln knows that some people shy away from fish due to the cost, so he points to affordable options such as canned light tuna and sardines, which are good sources of  . There are also   sources of   such as flaxseed and chia seeds. Now, clearly,   aren’t the only food that’s good for our emotional health. Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist at Columbia University and author of The Happiness Diet, says a   diet is best for beating stress. He points to his favorite   breakfast: scrambled eggs mixed with kale (or other greens) and topped with pumpkin seeds. With this meal, you’re covering all your bases, Ramsey says. The eggs are a good source of B vitamins and protein, which can be more satiating than a   breakfast. The greens are incredibly   and are a good source of vitamin A, vitamin K and potassium. And the pumpkin seeds are a good source of magnesium  —   which is thought to play a role in fending off anxiety  —   and zinc, which may help boost the immune system. For dessert, go for dark chocolate, which can have ”an acute affect on mood,” Ramsey says. He points to a study that found cocoa flavanols can help boost mood and sustain clear thinking among adults who are engaged in intense mental efforts  —   like students cramming, or journalists on deadline. In addition, dark chocolate has been shown to improve vascular health by increasing blood flow and reducing inflammation. The bottom line? The foods we choose can’t magic away stress. But Ramsey says he believes ”there is a very, very strong connection between food and mood.”"
"Turning 16 is considered a milestone. In many states, it means being able to drive, pay taxes and work like an adult. In Washington, D. C.    could soon take on another responsibility: the right to vote in a presidential election. Michelle Blackwell is helping lead the effort to enfranchise teenagers in the nation’s capital. But she’s not your typical Washington politico. In D. C. the    is better known as one of the top   singers around. ”  is one of the indigenous genres of music  —   born right in this city,” says Blackwell of the percussive brand of funk music that originated in Washington in the late 1960s. But off stage, she’s now helping lead the effort to make D. C. the first jurisdiction to let    vote in federal elections. ”A lot of young people feel very powerless and they don’t feel that their voice matters,” Blackwell says, ”and that’s part of the reason why there might be this absence of young participation as adults.” In the 2014 elections, voter turnout among people under age 30 hit its lowest level in 40 years, according to the Center for Information and Research on Learning and Engagement. Blackwell believes by lowering the voting age to 16  —   when young people are still in school and before they leave for college or the military  —   more of them will pick up the voting habit. After a deadly shooting in D. C. she went to a community meeting. It was then that she realized    should have a voice in political debates. ”When it came time for young people to speak, they actually had some really great ideas and some concerns that I felt were being dismissed,” she says. ”And at one point, one of the adults even took the microphone from one of the young people and started lecturing them.” That night Blackwell started researching the issue of    voting and within weeks, she was working with city lawmakers on a bill. D. C. Council member Charles Allen, the bill’s author, says the 26th Amendment, which lowered the federal voting age to 18, doesn’t prohibit    from voting  —   it simply states you can’t deny anyone over the age of 18 from voting. Law experts agree: ”If a state wants to enfranchise    it has the power to do so,” says Stanford Law professor Nate Persily. Just next door to D. C. in neighboring Takoma Park, Md.    can already vote in local elections. Cole Sebastian, a    high school student who voted in last year’s elections, called it a rite of passage. ”Voting is always considered as this adult thing, that only adults can do,” he says. ”And so I think people at my age, and me especially, are just more excited to grow up.” Sebastian is a strong supporter of lowering the voting age and wrote an   in his high school newspaper. ”It’s not just about having young people vote,” says Sebastian. ”It’s about creating a new generation of lifelong voters.” And the adults could probably learn from the    who voted at twice the rate as everyone else in last year’s Takoma Park election, according to city officials. Still, there are critics of a lower voting age. Some say    just aren’t ready. That’s why, for example, you have to be 18 to join the military or buy that Powerball ticket. And there’s also skepticism from an unlikely source: juvenile justice advocates. ”I’m not against    voting,” says Daniel Okonkwo, head of D. C. Lawyers For Youth. But he worries that opening up the ballot box to    could also make it easier for prosecutors to charge them as adults in court. ”There are often cries for ’Well, we have young people doing adult crimes, they should do adult time,’ ” says Okonkwo. ”And so if we’re going to give teenagers, give children more adult responsibilities, I think it’s a necessary to build in somehow some safeguards.” The D. C. bill enfranchising    was introduced in November but it hasn’t come up for a vote yet. In a city government dominated by Democrats, Michelle Blackwell says the measure wouldn’t change the political balance. ”It’s just really more about giving the young people representation because they have no real lobby,” she says. Until that happens, this unlikely lobbyist will continue pressing her case  —   both on and off the stage."
"Butte is an old mining town, tucked away in the southwest corner of Montana with a population of about 34, 000. Locals enjoy many things you can’t find elsewhere  —   campgrounds a quick drive from downtown and gorgeous mountain ranges nearby. But in Butte, as in much of rural America, advanced medical care is absent. People in Butte who experience serious trauma or need specialty care rely on air ambulance flights to get them the help they need. There were close to 3, 000 air ambulance flights in Montana in 2014, and Amy Thomson was on one of them, curled up among the medical bags in the back of the   plane. Her    daughter, Isla, had a failing heart, and the hospital that could help her was 600 miles away. ”They did such wonderful care of her, and they tried to take great care of me, but in that moment I couldn’t let go,” Thomson says. ”I was so afraid that if I closed my eyes that would be my last vision of her.” Thomson watched as Isla was placed in a small box strapped to a gurney inside the air ambulance flown by Airlift Northwest. Seattle Children’s Hospital saved Isla’s life. Her family’s health insurance took care of the costs beyond her deductible  —   except for that critical air ambulance ride to Seattle. The Thomsons read their insurance plan and interpreted it to mean that any emergency medical transportation was covered. But it turned out the air ambulance company was out of their network, and they got a bill for $56, 000. Thomson remembers looking at the bill and thinking, ” ’You’ve got to be kidding me!’ Here is the flight that ultimately saved Isla’s life by getting her to where she needs to be. And yet is going to put us potentially in financial ruin. Or at least kill our future dreams as a family.” When a patient needs an air ambulance, the first priority is getting needed care as fast as possible. Patients don’t always know who is going to pick them up or if the ambulance is an   provider. That can make a huge difference  —   and lead to huge bills. ”Of all the complaints we have received in our office, not one person was uninsured,” says Jesse Laslovich, legal counsel for Montana’s insurance commissioner. ”They’re all insured. And they are frustrated as heck that they’re still getting $  bills.” States can regulate some medical aspects of air ambulances, but federal laws prevent states from limiting aviation rates, routes and services. The cost of an air ambulance bill is split into two main parts, according to a study completed by the Montana Legislature. First, a liftoff fee, which ranges from $8, 500 to $15, 200 in Montana, plus a   charge for the flight, which ranges from $26 to $133 a mile. Some air ambulance companies offer membership programs as protection from big bills. For an annual fee of about $60 to $100, patients who use that company’s services face no cost beyond what their health insurance pays. But Laslovich says that doesn’t always work, because patients can’t always know who is coming to pick them up. ”You want to know what my personal opinion is about what the problem is?” Laslovich asks. ”It’s money.” There is a lack of understanding about the actual costs of running an air ambulance business, says Rick Sherlock, the president of the Association of Air Medical Services. The costs include specialized labor, training, equipment and fuel. ”So those cost drivers are there, and [it’s necessary] to maintain readiness to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” Sherlock says. He says some air ambulance companies remain out of insurance networks because they can’t always reach   deals that allow them to stay profitable. ”I think what you also have to look at is that negotiations between [air ambulance] companies and insurance companies take place when there’s good negotiations on both sides,” Sherlock says. ”In situations where there may be only one or two insurance options in an area, it’s harder and harder to negotiate on a level playing field.” There are only three health insurance companies operating in Montana, and at least 14 air ambulance providers. At the time of Isla’s trip to Seattle Children’s Hospital, the Thomsons’ insurer, PacificSource, had no   agreements with any air ambulance company in the family’s area. (PacificSource didn’t return calls seeking comment.) For people who think they are protected from crippling health care bills because they have insurance, the cost of an ambulance ride can be a shock. A Montana interim legislative committee is now investigating the wide range of pricing by air ambulance companies within the state. The state of Maryland has taken on a similar investigation. In North Dakota an air ambulance company is suing the state for adding regulations on the industry. Thomson ended up not having to pay for her flight, but only after repeated appeals. According to Thomson, on the same day they were arranging a time to meet with a lawyer, she was notified by her insurance company that it would pay an additional amount of about $30, 000, as well as the $13, 000    fee to the air ambulance company. The air ambulance firm waived the rest of its fee. Isla turned 2 in November. She’s a healthy child with big blue eyes, but at times her mother still worries. ”Nobody takes a life flight for a joy ride,” she says. ”You’re not going on Kayak. com and booking a life flight.” Thomson didn’t think the flight should be free but says the huge bill felt wrong. ”I ethically believe this is a part of health care,” she says. ”This is not some separate entity. There is something ethically wrong that these companies are profiteering off of people’s worst moments in their lives.” This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Montana Public Radio and Kaiser Health News. "
"Glenn Frey, 67, a founding member and guitarist of The Eagles, died on Monday in New York City of complications from rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia, according to a statement on the band’s official website: ”The Frey family would like to thank everyone who joined Glenn to fight this fight and hoped and prayed for his recovery. Words can neither describe our sorrow, nor our love and respect for all that he has given to us, his family, the music community  millions of fans worldwide.” Frey is credited with   many of The Eagles’   songs, including ”Hotel California,” ”Heartache Tonight” and ”One Of These Nights”  —   all No. 1 hits for the band. Don Henley, The Eagles’ lead singer and Frey’s   on many songs, remembered his band mate in a statement: ”Glenn was the one who started it all. He was the spark plug, the man with the plan. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and a work ethic that wouldn’t quit. He was funny, bullheaded, mercurial, generous, deeply talented and driven. He loved is wife and kids more than anything. We are all in a state of shock, disbelief and profound sorrow.” The Eagles’ manager, Irving Azoff, told the Los Angeles Times that Frey was as talented at the business of making music as he was at writing and playing songs: ”Glenn taught me as much about business as he taught me about music. He had incredible instincts. He and Henley and I would always plot what was coming next. He wasn’t just an incredible writer, singer and musicians, he also had incredibly good business instincts. I don’t know of a better family man, or father.” The Eagles, founded in 1971 in Los Angeles, is one of the   American rock bands of all time, notes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted The Eagles in 1998: ”The group’s first   collection, Their Greatest Hits   is among the   albums of all time, having sold more than 26 million copies. It was the first album to be certified platinum (1 million sold) by the Recording Industry Association of America, which introduced that classification in 1976. They released four consecutive No. 1 albums between 1975 and 1979. . .. They sold more albums in the ’70s than any other American band. Moreover, though the band was inactive in the Eighties, their back catalog steadily sold 1. 5 million copies a year.”"
"Separation of church and state? When it comes to fighting food waste, the U. S. government is looking to partner up with the faithful. The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday launched the Food Steward’s Pledge, an initiative to engage religious groups of all faiths to help redirect the food that ends up in landfills to hungry mouths. It’s one piece of the agency’s larger plan to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2030. ”We can make leaps and bounds in this process if we tackle this problem more systemically and bring a broader number of stakeholders to the table,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy tells us. By engaging religious communities, she says, ”we are tapping into incredibly motivated and dedicated people.” Food waste connects to the core values of many faith communities, particularly helping the poor and feeding the hungry, McCarthy notes. As we’ve reported, more than 1, 200 calories per American per day are wasted, according to U. S. government figures. Loss occurs on the farm, at the retail level and in homes. We consumers often toss out foods because they’ve passed their   date  —   but are still just fine to eat  —   or because we buy more than we can eat before it goes bad. As McCarthy notes, a lot of that is discarded but still edible and wholesome and could be used to feed some of the 48 million American who struggle to get enough to eat. At the consumer level, changing behavior is key, says EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus, and   groups can help make that happen in a variety of ways. For instance, when these organizations hold potlucks, the leftovers can go to the local food bank. EPA says groups can also work with local grocers, schools and restaurants to direct food to food banks and shelters that would otherwise be wasted. They can hold seminars for the faithful and the broader local community to teach them how to menu plan and shop their own refrigerators first to avoid buying excess food, and how to compost the leftover scraps. EPA has developed a toolkit with lots more suggestions for groups that sign its ”Food Steward’s Pledge.” ”Getting out the message  —   particular what individual families can do . .. local community leaders are critical in doing that,” Stanislaus tells us. And because   leaders are often trusted advisers in their communities, ”we thought they were a natural ally.” Food waste is closely tied to another growing concern for many   organizations: climate change, a problem that disproportionately affects the world’s poor. Food waste is the single biggest material in U. S. landfills, according to the U. S. Agricultural Department. As this waste decomposes, it releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Last summer, Pope Francis made headlines around the globe when he issued a papal encyclical urging action on climate change. That call helped energize new conversations throughout the Catholic church on environmental issues  —   including food waste, says Cecilia Calvo, who coordinates the environmental justice program for the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. She says more Catholics are asking, ”Rather than contributing to a culture of waste, how can we be conscious of our choices?” Many other   groups already have programs targeting food waste. For example, in the past year, the Evangelical Environmental Network, a policy and advocacy group, launched its own ”Joseph’s Pledge” program: It teaches churches how to minimize food waste through actions like donating to food banks, planting community gardens and composting. (The program’s name refers to the biblical Joseph, who helped guide ancient Egypt through seven years of famine.) About 200 churches have signed up so far, EEN President Mitch Hescox tells us. The goal is to reach 1, 000. ”Evangelicals are primarily conservative politically,” Hescox notes. ”They want to take action by themselves. And this is one step they can do themselves to help people to address the problem. And it’s a  . ” Shantha Ready Alonso, executive director of Creation Justice Ministries, an environmental justice group spun out of the National Council of Churches, says the 100, 000 congregations in her organization’s network, representing 45 million people, have a variety of programs to address food waste. She points to the Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center in Little Rock, Ark. Run by the Presbyterian Church, she says it’s a model program where 100 percent of food scraps get composted. She says some churches grow food in   gardens and direct it to the needy. And she notes that churches and individuals with gardens are also encouraged to donate to Ample Harvest, a nonprofit that connects gardeners to local food pantries. ”Good stewardship is part of our DNA,” she tells us. ”And the idea that 1 in [7] people in America are going hungry and yet we are wasting [so much] food is awful.” Hazon, a Jewish environmental organization, already has several programs focused on food and sustainability, says Becca Linden, the group’s associate program director. But ”this will be the year we make food waste a priority,” she says. Among other actions, she says Hazon will screen the food waste documentary Just Eat It, publish a compost guide and raise awareness that expiration dates don’t necessarily mean food is no longer fit to eat. Meanwhile, Muslims around the world have been calling attention to the food waste that occurs during Ramadan, a period when fasting is followed by feasting that can result in   of food. The Quran says Muslims should ”eat and drink: but waste not by excess, for Allah loveth not the wasters.” In the U. S. the group Green Muslims is trying to spread awareness of Islam’s environmental teachings. For instance, the group offers a guide to hosting a   iftar.  Of course, action on food waste transcends Abrahamic religions. One example: White Pony Express, a program in Contra Costa County, Calif. that rescues food from farms and farmers markets, grocers, restaurants and caterers. It was founded by the leader of Sufism Reoriented, an American spiritual order. Cecilia Calvo of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says there’s a growing recognition that protecting the environment is everyone’s moral duty. As Calvo notes, the question for many has become: ”What does it mean to care for our common home?”"
"Around the country Monday, hundreds of airport workers protested in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. From Newark, N. J. to Washington, D. C. to Chicago and Miami workers called for a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour. In Newark, workers carried picket signs of Martin Luther King through the airport. ”If Dr. King were alive today, he would be standing alongside of us,” said Kevin Brown, New Jersey’s state director of the local service employees union, 32BJ SEIU. Some in the crowd were between work shifts at the airport. But many had the day off from working as baggage handlers and airplane cabin cleaners, including    America Hernandez of Newark. Hernandez works for PrimeFlight, a contractor for United Airlines. She cleans about 20 airplane cabins, from 10 p. m. to 7:30 a. m. for $10. 10 an hour. Hernandez says her salary is enough to pay the bills for her and her four children, but what’s left over, she says, is not enough to even buy a piece of candy. ”We’re just tired of struggling just to get by. It’s too much living paycheck to paycheck,” says Raquel Brito, a baggage handler at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The    makes $11 an hour. That’s why, Brito says, she protested Monday outside United Airlines’ headquarters in Chicago. Fifteen dollars, she says, is a an hourly wage she can actually live on. United Airlines and PrimeFlight did not respond to NPR’s interview requests before broadcast. Today’s protests come during a national debate about minimum wage increases. Some economists say it’s not clear what the actual economic impact of an increase would be. ”We don’t really have any great confidence about what a $15 minimum wage would mean, whether across the board or for a particular set of workers,” says David Neumark, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine. In general, he says, raising the minimum wage for workers also raises prices of products and services. ”At some level, they increase prices,” he says. ”People buy less from those businesses, and those businesses use fewer workers. And that channel is arguably a lot weaker at airports.” Neumark argues that raising airport wages wouldn’t necessarily have a big impact on whether travelers buy plane tickets. ”People at airports aren’t poor on average,” he says. ”It’s a   segment of the population going through airports.” The wages of airport workers also don’t make up the bulk of what it costs to fly, according to Arin Dube, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. ”When you think about what goes into the cost of flying from, let’s say, Boston to San Francisco, the cost of baggage handlers and other   workers in wages, in determining the cost of flying, is very tiny,” Dube says. He argues that higher minimum wages could result in a benefit to airline companies. ”When you raise wages of   workers at the airport, you may also increase their productivity,” Dube says. Neumark though, isn’t convinced. He says having to pay more for   workers at airports may push companies to hire more   workers instead."
"Hundreds of thousands of people drive for Uber in the U. S. The   company has had   fights in courts and city halls over the status of these drivers: Are they employees or contractors? Can they unionize? A fight that’s gotten far less attention  —   one that may affect drivers far more  —   is the competition between Uber and its main rival, Lyft. Competition for drivers is so great that, about a year ago, Uber sent covert operatives into Lyft cars  —   to recruit. Isabella   was one of these covert operatives. ”I don’t really care Lyft versus Uber,” she says. ”But I had the chance to make money and I was getting free Lyft rides.” A Dramatic Tactic, In November 2014, a woman who worked for Uber told   she could make cash quick. They met at the Arbor Cafe in Oakland, Calif. ”She had a laptop, and then she had me sign some” papers,   says. By the end of 2014, Uber had hired hundreds of people across the country for this very   job. For its part, Lyft says it offers bonuses to current drivers who sign up new ones.   got Uber training on the spot. ”We took a couple of rides together, and she kind of showed me how to” get Lyft drivers to switch to Uber,   adds. The recruiter, who independently verified these details with NPR, gave   an iPhone. For two months,   would order Lyft cars, hop in and start chatting up the driver: How are you doing? How’s your day? ”Oh, where are you from? Asking   questions. Just being nice,”   says. And then, she’d casually slip in: ”Why’d you decide to drive for Lyft? Oh, yeah, that’s really interesting. Well, would you ever consider driving for Uber? Why did you decide Lyft over Uber?” At this point in the conversation,   would reveal that she’s an Uber ambassador, and if the driver signs up right now, they’ll each make hundreds of dollars. Interestingly, only one guy agreed.   says the big bonus wasn’t enough: ”A lot of people chose Lyft because of the morals of it versus Uber. It was more of a friendly company.” Drivers Compare The Services, Scott Christopherson drives for both Lyft and Uber. ”Yeah, I think that there is a difference in the relationship between passengers and drivers in the two platforms,” he says. NPR spoke with   people who decided to work for both companies. And consistently, these drivers say: In Lyft there are fewer expectations. It’s more  . Passengers are supposed to hop in the front seat and be friendly because, as the motto goes, the driver is ”your friend with a car.” ”I have very few problems with Lyft passengers,” Christopherson says. ”They’re generally very nice. Or if they’re not nice, they’re quiet.” Uber started as a luxury brand. Its motto is ”everyone’s private driver.” So, Christopherson says, for people like him  —   people who drive   time, who have other jobs  —   it’s not a great feeling when passengers expect a chauffeur. ”They don’t really kind of care about what you think of them. And so it’s a little more fraught,” he says. Driver Jennifer Rose agrees there’s a difference, but doesn’t think it’s a bad thing. On days when she’s high on life, has great news about her kids, she can really enjoy a chatty Lyft passenger. Other times, she likes the quiet. ”I can appreciate the person who wants to talk the whole trip or the person who just wants to sit there and take a ride,” she says. Financially, there are differences too. NPR examined drivers’ payment statements. Lyft takes 20 percent of fares. Uber takes 20 to 25 percent on the standard service, and 28 percent on the SUV service. Most drivers say these percentages are fairly comparable. It’s another line item that stands out: ”The one thing that Lyft does and Uber doesn’t is tipping! Did you notice that looking at the [statements]?” Christopherson says. Lyft says its drivers earned about $58 million last year  —   on top of fares  —   through tips. Lyft: Mission Is Different  Lyft Chief Marketing Officer Kira Wampler says the company is more focused on driver   than Uber is because Lyft has a different mission. While both companies want to improve transportation, Lyft explicitly has an environmental goal: having fewer cars on the road and filling empty seats. ”You can’t fill every seat in every car unless the people in each car treat each other well,” Wampler says. Uber declined an interview to discuss driver benefits. But in an email, Faryl Ury, a company spokeswoman, says it’s misleading to just say that Uber takes a bigger cut from drivers. Driver earnings depend a lot on how many rides they get, and in most markets Uber has more passengers calling. On tipping, Ury says, research shows tips are not really based on quality of service, so drivers could be rewarded or dinged unfairly. Ryder Pearce,   of Sherpashare, a site that tracks wages and expenses for   drivers, says competition is an ”enormous benefit” for workers. When Uber or Lyft announces a new perk, the other follows, thereby pushing up the floor. For example, both companies recently announced   car rentals for drivers who don’t have their own wheels or insurance. ”Uber and Lyft both recognize that if they don’t keep rates competitive, and add more driver perks  —   and both have very large teams working on this  —   they will lose out on drivers,” Pearce says. Sherpashare data indicate many drivers work for more than one service. Pearce says they don’t have a strong incentive to be loyal because the differences between companies are not that stark. Drivers’   concern: ”They just want to log in and have passengers to pick up,” he says. If one company won and got all the business, he says, drivers would lose out."
"On Friday, the   from Watkins Elementary School in Washington, D. C. gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to recite Martin Luther King Jr. ’s 1963 ”I Have a Dream” speech. Each student delivered one line at a small lectern, and then the class sang songs from the civil rights era. This is the 14th year of the celebration. Listen to a clip here:"
"It might seem unusual that a    Taiwanese pop starlet could motivate legions of youth to troop to the polls and vote for the island’s opposition party candidate. But she apparently did, and thereby helped Democratic Progressive Party leader Tsai   become Taiwan’s democratically first elected female leader. Chou   popularly known as Tzuyu, is usually pictured prancing, bopping and singing in her South Korean girl band Twice’s music videos. But in November, she made an apparently unpremeditated political statement by appearing on South Korean television, holding a Taiwanese national flag. Mainland Chinese Internet users immediately accused her of advocating formal independence for the   island. Mainland China’s government sees Taiwan as a province with no right to a national flag, and has threatened war if it declares formal independence. After being denounced by a   fellow Taiwanese artist,   made a somber videotaped apology the evening before the election, swapping her usual teenybopper attire for a black turtleneck sweater. ”I have always felt proud to be Chinese,” she says, looking chastened and bowing deeply in apology. While the incident may seem only tangential to the elections, the issue of identity  —   whether voters see themselves as more Taiwanese or Chinese  —   remains central to Taiwanese politics, and the defeated Nationalist Party is widely seen to have lost on this issue, and on its failure to appeal to the island’s youth. ”I was on a   train from Taipei back to my hometown of Taichung to vote,”   blogger and   editor Wen Li recalls in an interview. ”The whole train was packed, and everybody crowded aboard. Many of these passengers may not have intended to return home to vote. But because of this incident, people felt a crisis, they felt ’if I don’t vote, maybe I, my family or friends will be the next to have to apologize.’ ” Some commentators likened Chou  ’s apology to a hostage in an Islamic State video. Others blamed her South Korean management company for forcing her to apologize in order not to jeopardize the company’s mainland business interests. Over the past eight years, the ruling Nationalist Party has tried to strengthen trade, tourism and investment links between Taiwan and the mainland in order to jumpstart the island’s economy. The political precondition for this policy was a consensus that Taiwan and the mainland are both parts of the same China, while holding different interpretations of who are its legitimate rulers. ”But after eight years, we have found that this is useless,” blogger Wen Li laments. ”We’re still in the same situation, working to exhaustion without reaping any benefits.” ”Many people discovered through this [Chou  ] incident that what the Nationalist Party said was fake. The Mainland does not recognize our interpretation.” In the spring of 2014, student protesters occupied Taiwan’s legislature in opposition to a   trade pact, in a demonstration dubbed the ”Sunflower Revolution.” Tsai   does not recognize the ”one China” formula, although she also does not advocate provoking China. Mainland media on Monday warned her not to head down a ”dead end” of   policies. Beijing learned two decades ago that intervening in Taiwanese elections tends to backfire. In 1996, Beijing lobbed missiles into waters off Taiwan’s coast, in hopes of scuttling Lee  ’s presidential bid. This only enraged Taiwanese voters, and helped Lee to secure a majority of the vote. Last week, even   mainland pundits had to agree that the mainland fury over starlet Chou   appears to have boomeranged. Some tried to pin the blame on Tsai  . ”The Chou   incident was a ’Trojan Horse’ designed by Tsai ” argues commentator Wu Fatian in a microblog posting. ”The Nationalists bungled their response to it, and Tsai   was the only one to profit.”"
"The United States Central Command is releasing new details about how two American Riverine Command Boats with 10 American sailors ended up in Iranian waters last week. According to the account released by CENTCOM on Monday, one of the boats’ diesel engines began to have trouble while it traveled from Kuwait to Bahrain. The crew began troubleshooting and the second boat also stopped. Iranian authorities had said that a ”broken navigation system” had led the boats into Iranian waters, but this account contradicts that. ”This stop occurred in Iranian territorial waters, although it’s not clear the crew was aware of their exact location,” CENTCOM said in a press release. ”While the [U. S. boats] were stopped and the crew was attempting to evaluate the mechanical issue, Iranian boats approached the vessels.” The two sides traded words but not fire. Armed Iranian military personnel boarded the two American vessels while other Iranians kept watch behind machine guns mounted on their vessels. At gunpoint, the Americans were taken to a small port facility on Farsi Island. In a video released by Iranian state television, an American sailor is seen apologizing for the incursion. After about 15 hours of detention, the sailors were released. CENTCOM says there are no indications that the sailors were physically harmed by Iran and an inventory of the boats found that no weapons were missing but two SIM cards ”appear to have been removed from two handheld satellite phones.”"
"After a torrent of criticism, Scholastic has decided to stop distributing A Birthday Cake for George Washington, a picture book about one of George Washington’s slaves. The historical book tells the story of Hercules, a slave used by the president as his chef. It shows Hercules and his daughter Delia happy and taking pride in making Washington a birthday cake. Almost as soon as the book was released, it received withering criticism for whitewashing the history of slavery. And essay in Kirkus noted that the book contained images of smiling slaves in almost every page. But it cautioned that this was not the same kind of story that had played out just months before when A Fine Dessert, another story about happy slaves making sweet treats, was eviscerated by critics. A Fine Dessert, the review notes, was published by a totally white creative team. A Birthday Cake for George Washington was written, illustrated and edited by a diverse group of people of color, including editor Andrea Davis Pinkney, who is black and a winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. Pinkney, in fact, wrote a long essay in defense of the book. American history, she wrote, is a messy and nuanced affair and, yes, some slaves found happiness in some of their tasks. Pinkney writes: ”Hercules was well known throughout Philadelphia. He was a highly regarded chef and a dapper dresser, who insisted on perfection in his kitchen. George Washington depended on Hercules to make him the perfect birthday cake. Hercules is often thought of by culinary historians as the first celebrity chef in America. On each day of the year ― and especially on the president’s birthday ― Hercules ruled the kitchen. He was quite proud of his status in the Washington home, and he lived a life of  . But as the founding fathers knew (and as the author notes) being ’ ’ is not the same as being free. Hercules dreamed of his own liberty. ”Delia, Hercules’ daughter, often worked alongside her father, and was also keenly aware of her life as an enslaved person. In A Birthday Cake for George Washington, young Delia tells us the story of how her remarkable father does the impossible and makes a birthday cake for the most famous man in America —  without any sugar. The story illuminates Hercules’ purposeful work as a chef and the pride young Delia feels at the tremendous achievements of her father. The book concludes with Hercules’ whole story and what it means when you and your loved ones will never savor the sweet taste of freedom.”  Ramin Ganeshram, the author of the book who is of   descent, wrote her own defense in a post for the Children’s Book Council. She writes: ”It is the historical record —  not my opinion —  that shows that enslaved people who received ’status’ positions were proud of these positions —  and made use of the ’perks’ of those positions. It is what illustrator Vanessa   calls out in her artist’s note as informing her decision to depict those in A Birthday Cake For George Washington as happy and prideful people. ”In a modern sense, many of us don’t like to consider this, fearing that if we deviate from the narrative of   we diminish the horror of slavery. But if we chose to only focus on those who fit that singular viewpoint, we run the risk of erasing those, like Chef Hercules, who were remarkable, talented, and resourceful enough to use any and every skill to their own advantage.” Over at The Root, contributing editor Demetria Lucas D’Oyley dismissed those explanations. The book, she says, conveniently leaves out that Hercules escaped from Mount Vernon. ”Slaving, literally, over a hot 18th century stove to bake a cake for a man who has you and your child in bondage ain’t happiness or pride,” D’Oyley writes. ”It’s duty. It’s survival. It’s busy work to pass the time while you’re plotting your escape.” Eventually, Scholastic ended up agreeing with critics and pulled the book. In a statement it said it respected the ”integrity and scholarship of the author, illustrator, and editor” but without more context on the ”evils of slavery,” the book may leave kids with ”a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves.” The Kirkus essay notes one other thing the story leaves out, but addresses in an author’s note: Hercules did ultimately escape. But he also left his daughter Delia behind and she remained enslaved."
"Hillary Clinton encountered rougher seas Sunday night in her latest meeting with her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Both Sen. Bernard Sanders and former Gov. Martin O’Malley questioned her veracity and intensified their criticism of her policy positions and campaign financing. This was the last time these candidates will debate before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1. But the mood of this meeting was more portentous than those of their previous three debates, if only because Iowa no longer looks like an easy win for Clinton. She has seen almost all her polling advantage vanish in that state. She also continues to trail in polls in New Hampshire, which will hold a primary on Feb. 9. The Sunday night debate was held in Charleston, S. C. which will hold its Democratic primary on Feb. 27. The event was   by NBC, YouTube and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute. O’Malley was included despite his rather humble standing in national polling (an average of roughly 2 percent support among Democrats) because he did reach the 5 percent in Iowa. By the rules for inclusion, that was sufficient. All three candidates paid tribute to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by citing King’s influence on their lives. Issues of specific interest to   surfaced often through the nearly   event. All three candidates talked of inequities in the criminal justice system affecting black men in particular. Sanders generally agreed on these points and also said any death in police custody should automatically trigger an investigation by the Justice Department. Asked why he was trailing Clinton by more than   among black Democrats, Sanders replied with a recitation of how well he was doing in other polls and how far he had come.   he said, would come along once they got to know him and his issues. Among those issues was his repeated critique of Wall Street banks and of the campaign finance system, which he said perpetuated income inequality and other distortions of the nation’s economic life. ”When the   community becomes familiar with my congressional record,” said Sanders, ”and with our agenda, and with our views on the economy, and criminal justice  —   just as the general population has become more supportive, so will the   community, so will the Latino community.” Clinton, when asked what issue she wanted to talk about but had not been asked about, cited the lead poisoning crisis in Flint, Mich. an older industrial city with a largely   population. A recent decision to use river water there has led to widespread lead poisoning, including nearly all the city’s younger children. Sanders began the debate on the defensive regarding his past stands on gun rights and immunity for gun makers. ”He voted for immunity from gun makers and sellers which the NRA said was the most important piece of gun legislation in 20 years,” said Clinton. ”He voted to let guns go onto Amtrak, guns go into national parks. He voted against doing research to figure out how we can save lives.” Said Sanders in reply, ”I think Secretary Clinton knows that what she says is very disingenuous,” adding that he only had ”a   rating from the NRA” so he couldn’t be that good a friend. Sanders then took the fight to Clinton on a number of other issues  —   especially the regulation of Wall Street, her ties to Wall Street banks, including $600, 000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. Clinton at several points defended her stands by linking them to President Obama’s  —   an ironic tactic given her bitter fight with him over the 2008 nomination. ”The comments that Sen. Sanders has made,” said Clinton, ”[they] don’t just affect me, I can take that, but he’s criticized President Obama for taking donations from Wall Street, and President Obama has led our country out of the Great Recession.” And she did not leave it there. ”Sen. Sanders called [Obama] weak, disappointing,” Clinton said. ”He even, in 2011, publicly sought someone to run in a primary against President Obama.” She highlighted her work with Obama on foreign policy as his secretary of state ( ) and argued for maintaining and defending Obamacare rather than reaching for a   revision of the system that she said would ”force the country back into another contentious debate.” Sanders said he would be replacing existing government programs and private insurance with what Franklin D. Roosevelt had wanted: ”health care for every man, woman and child as a right.” To finance the government as the new ”single payer” for health care, Sanders would raise taxes substantially on higher incomes in the U. S. imposing rates of over 50 percent on the incomes of the wealthiest. Capital gains would also be taxed at the same rate as wages and other forms of income. The payroll tax that now covers Social Security and Medicare would also be enlarged and extended to more income that is currently exempt, were Sanders to prevail. ”It’s one thing to say I’m raising taxes,” said Sanders. ”It’s another thing to say that we are doing away with private health insurance premiums. So if I save you $10, 000 in private health insurance and you pay a little bit more in taxes in total, there are huge savings in what your family is spending.” Foreign affairs came up at several points but did not dominate the evening as in some of the Republican debates. The candidates noted that several individuals with dual   citizenship who faced prison terms in Iran had been released over the weekend after 14 months of negotiations between the two countries. The U. S. has also just lifted sanctions on that country pursuant to the larger agreement negotiated and completed in 2015. Those arrangements, and the easing of legal cases brought by the Justice Department against several Iranians, had been roundly criticized by several Republican candidates for president on Sunday. Clinton in particular praised her successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, for his efforts to free Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and the other detainees and for negotiating the recent nuclear agreement with Tehran. Much of the social media attention paid to the debate focused on the more aggressive tone and approach taken by all three contestants. Sanders had been urged to drive home his contrasts with Clinton to close the sale in Iowa and New Hampshire. He was expected to do that in part because the Clinton campaign had sharpened its own attacks on him in recent days. Chelsea Clinton had accused him of trying to ”dismantle” the existing health care system, and a superPAC run by a Clinton ally had run an ad asking whether Sanders, now 74, is healthy and vigorous enough to serve four or eight years in the Oval Office. The heightened tension also reflected the relatively unsettled state of the race. After months of seeming the clear favorite and likely nominee, Clinton has seen her national approval ratings fall in the past month. And while Sanders has not risen to a corresponding degree in national polls, he has improved his standing in both Iowa and New Hampshire. A resident of Vermont for nearly half a century, Sanders has always had a certain appeal to Democrats, especially the more liberal ones, in neighboring New Hampshire. But his ascent in Iowa, where he began with far less name recognition, has raised eyebrows throughout the political world. It was in Iowa that Barack Obama began his string of upset victories over Clinton in 2008, when she had once been thought nearly as inevitable as she seemed last fall. Hillary Clinton maintains leads in some national polls of Democrats and those who lean toward the Democrats. The latest reading by the respected tandem of NBC and The Wall Street Journal most recently found her ahead of Sanders by 25 points countrywide. But last week a CBS   York Times poll had her national edge at just 7 points. All agree that in Iowa and New Hampshire the race is too close to call. Clinton has a lead of four points when all Iowa polls are averaged, while Sanders has a   advantage by the same measure in New Hampshire. Sanders found a moment to crow about this: ”As Secretary Clinton well knows, when this campaign began she was 50 points ahead of me. We were all of three percentage points. Guess what? In Iowa, New Hampshire, the race is very, very close. Maybe we’re ahead [in] New Hampshire.” Clinton seems comfortably ahead in the next two states that also test party sentiment in February  —   Nevada and South Carolina. But such leads have melted away in the past when a frontrunner has failed to win in Iowa or New Hampshire. In 2008, the last time the Democrats had a contested nomination, Clinton saw her early polling dominance challenged when Obama, then a senator from Illinois, gained a solid win in Iowa. Even though Clinton recovered to win in New Hampshire the following week, her support declined in South Carolina and Nevada. This enabled Obama to gain the upper hand, fight her to a draw on the big primary day (Super Tuesday) and then outlast her through the spring. Could that happen to Clinton again this year? It seems less likely, as Sanders lacks Obama’s natural advantage among   and other minority voters in South Carolina and elsewhere. So even if he wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, he might still struggle in the later February states. Thereafter, as the contest move to other Southern states on March 1, black voters will continue to represent a larger portion of the Democratic turnout. O’Malley could also be a factor in the Iowa contest, which is conducted as an open caucus at the precinct level. At these events, caucus participants hold a preliminary vote, and candidates whose support falls short of a viability threshold are dropped. Their supporters are then free to support others in the final vote. So in those precincts where O’Malley has backers, but not enough to qualify for the final vote, the   preference of those backers could prove critically important. A similar dynamic has made a difference to the outcome in the Iowa caucuses in some recent cycles  —   notably 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004 and 2008."
"A feisty Bernie Sanders defended his positions on gun control and his newly released health care plan in Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate. Just two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the NBC News debate had a new urgency, with the Vermont senator closing the gap with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire. The two had mostly held their punches in their previous meetings, but much of their differences were laid bare during the   in Charleston, S. C. ”He has voted with the NRA and the gun lobby numerous times,” Clinton charged, citing Sanders’s past support for the Brady Bill, immunity for gun manufacturers and for the ”Charleston loophole” that allowed Dylann Roof to allegedly get a gun to kill nine   churchgoers down the street at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last June. Sanders announced Saturday evening he would now back a bill in Congress that would repeal that immunity for manufacturers, but Clinton argued it wasn’t enough. ”There’s no other industry in America that was given a total pass,” Clinton said. Sanders argued that his opponent’s argument was ”disingenuous,” pointing to his   rating from the NRA, and said all along he had said he would ” ” at the issue. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, still struggling to get momentum in the race and to jump into the skirmishes between the two frontrunners, argued he was the only one who had been consistent. ”I’ve never met a   hunter that needed an   to down a deer,” O’Malley said. Another flashpoint between Sanders and Clinton was on health care. Just two hours before Sunday’s debate, the progressive favorite released his ”  ” plan. The universal health care proposal  —   which would have no   or deductibles for patients  —   would be paid for with a new 2. 2 percent health care premium, a 6. 2 percent health care payroll tax paid for by employers, and an estate tax. It would also be funded by a change in federal tax brackets  —   individuals making $250, 000 to $500, 000 a year would be taxed at a rate of 37 percent. Those earning $10 million or more a year would be taxed at 52 percent  —   but would only include about 13, 000 households in the U. S. Clinton attacked the plan though, saying it would ”tear up” everything President Obama had accomplished with the Affordable Care Act, which should instead be improved upon. ”We finally have a path to universal health care. We have accomplished so much already. I do not want to see the Republicans repeal it and I do not want to start over again with another contentious debate,” Clinton said. Sanders shot back that her fears were ”nonsense” and that something had to be done about the 29 million people who still did not have health care. He blamed big money and lobbyists for blocking bigger reforms, saying blocking money in politics would help fix the problem. ”A little more in taxes, do away with private insurance premiums, it’s a pretty good deal,” Sanders argued, saying he didn’t want to do away with the president’s health care plan he had helped write. Clinton shot back that Sanders has been inconsistent on what he wants though, asking if he supported ”the plan you just introduced tonight or the plan you introduced nine times in the Congress.” In a city and a state that’s faced recent racial strife  —   from the Charleston shooting to the killing of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man who was shot by a police officer  —   all the candidates also tackled the issues of policing and racial justice. The debate was hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus and came on the eve of Martin Luther King Day. O’Malley defended his record as mayor of Baltimore, which has come under scrutiny in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody last year. Sanders said any death in police custody should automatically trigger a federal investigation. ”If a police officer breaks the law, like any public official, that person must be held accountable,” he proposed. But Sanders is losing   voters by a large margin, according to polls  —   one big reason he’s trailing Clinton in South Carolina where black voters dominate the primary. When pressed by moderator Lester Holt on his weakness, Sanders demurred, pointing to how far he had come from when he first entered the race. ”When the   community becomes familiar with my congressional record and with our agenda and with our views on the economy and criminal justice, just as the general population has become more supportive, so will the   community, so will the Latino community,” Sanders said. One demographic Sanders does have a commanding lead with is younger voters. In response to a YouTube question about how she’d work to win over millennials, Clinton pointed to her work on women’s issues and civil rights. But she also seemed to tacitly acknowledge her opponent’s strength with that bloc, saying she ”respected” his support there. Sanders frequently returned to one of his most salient attacks against Clinton  —   that she’s too cozy with big businesses and Wall Street. ”I don’t take money from the banks. I don’t take personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs,” Sanders said, slamming Clinton for the $600, 000 she took from the private corporate equity firm. Clinton jabbed back that there’s ”no daylight” between herself and Sanders on financial reform and took issue with Sanders criticizing the president’s leadership on banking reform. ”I’m going to defend   and I’m going to defend President Obama,” Clinton said. While the first hour of the debate focused on domestic policy, the trio of Democrats did tackle foreign policy in the second half  —   a stark departure from Republican debates, where national security has dominated. All three Democrats said they supported how Obama was handling tensions with Syria and the rise of ISIS in the region but none said they supported sending U. S. ground forces to assist. Sanders echoed calls to bring more allies into the fight against the terrorist organization. ”They have got to start putting some skin in the game, and not just ask the United States to do it,” he said. Sanders also said he was open to a ”warm up” of relations with Iran as the U. S. did with Cuba this year, but cautioned against moving too quickly. ”Can I tell that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don’t think we should,” he said. ”But I think the goal has go to be as we’ve done with Cuba, to move in warm relations with a very powerful and important country in this world.” Clinton also pointed to her experience as secretary of state, saying she was ”proud” of the Iran nuclear agreement” and ”was responsible for getting those sanctions imposed.” She also did little to distance herself from the president, even as Republicans have argued a Clinton presidency would be the same as a third term for Obama. ”I know a little bit about this,” she said when talking about Obama’s Syria policy, ”having spent many hours in the situation room, advising President Obama.”"
"The fourth Democratic debate was as raucous an event as we’ve seen from the Democrats. With Clinton’s lead narrowing in the polls, Sanders had the spotlight. He was energetic and quick to the draw offering unapologetic defenses of his policies: Break up the banks, kill superPACs, enact universal health care. Clinton played the realist, promising gradual work on health care and a continuation of the Obama administration. Sanders played the idealist promising a political revolution. He also produced a     when Clinton questioned his commitment to Obama. With little success, O’Malley tried to stay in the debate. The must watch moments: That’s the quickie version of what happened in the fourth Democratic presidential debate of the 2016 race Sunday night. The politics team has    coverage."
"Plenty of politicos and pundits have rationalized Donald Trump’s political ascent as the result of his enormous popularity among white   voters. No doubt Trump is   by many   Republicans, but his real strength is among those without a bachelor’s degree. In that demographic, most polls show the       is trouncing his Republican rivals. In fact, the main reason Trump is leading national polls is because he dominates the white   world. That got us thinking: How powerful are white voters who don’t have college degrees? And what role do they play in the GOP of today versus the GOP of yesterday? Reliably Republican  —   And Shrinking, In 1980, whites without a college degree made up almost   of the electorate (65 percent). Back then, both Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter relied heavily on white   voters  —   60 percent of Carter voters were whites without a college degree, compared to 70 percent of Reagan voters. Keep in mind, Reagan won that election in a landslide. Jump ahead a few decades, dig through exit polls, and you’ll find a very different political landscape. ”The electorate as a whole has gotten both more highly educated and also more diverse,” explained Jocelyn Kiley, a researcher who focuses on U. S. politics at the Pew Research Center, who helped us dig through the data. In the 2012 generational election, half of Mitt Romney’s supporters were whites without a college degree, compared to about a quarter of Obama voters. Yet Romney still lost the presidency  —   and by an Electoral College landslide. That’s because white   voters are a shrinking share of the voting pool. As their population shrinks, they’ve also become more faithfully Republican. ”My contention is that what Reagan did was he brought a new group of people into the Republican Party, and that has grown and has become more significant,” explained Democratic pollster Peter Hart. ”It is less establishment it is more what I call downscale,    .” Another way to think about this is that while white   voters are now only about a third of the overall electorate, they’re about half of the Republican electorate. ”They remain an important part of the GOP base,” Kiley said. ”And it’s a large part of why there’s been so much attention to them in the Republican primary.”   voters are still a bedrock of the GOP in two states candidates really want to win  —   Iowa and New Hampshire. They made up nearly half of Republicans in the 2012 Iowa caucus and 45 percent of voters in the 2012 New Hampshire primary. And so while mathematically a candidate can no longer win a general election with their support alone, it’s also nearly impossible for a Republican presidential candidate to win a GOP primary without them. The road to the GOP nomination travels through many white   neighborhoods. And that’s one reason it’s been difficult for the party to expand its base. New Factor: The   And The Educational Divide, White voters without college degrees are an important component of the GOP coalition, an   on them can be a crutch when   and nonwhite populations are growing  —   and becoming increasingly Democratic. In general, whites tend to vote Republican more than people of color across educational backgrounds. In 2012, just over half of Obama voters were white, while 89 percent of Romney voters were. So even among white college graduates, Republicans do better than Democrats, with one caveat  —   people with postgraduate degrees. ”Postgraduates today are overwhelmingly Democratic or lean Democratic in their partisan identification, to much a greater extent than they were 20 years ago,” said Kiley, who traced data back to 1988. In recent years, the correlation between party ID and educational attainment has grown. Essentially, the education gap has morphed into an education gulf. White women with advanced degrees are now one of the most faithful Democratic subgroups. According to data from the Pew Research Center, 62 percent are Democratic or lean Democratic. In the 2012 election, there was a   margin between how whites with a postgraduate degree voted compared to how whites with no college degrees voted. But a GOP voter today is more likely to be white and   than a Democratic voter  —   and they still hold more political power than   white voters. So the candidate who can connect with them has an edge in the GOP primary  —   even though it might hurt in a general election."
"When she was in fifth grade, Regina Mason received a school assignment that would change her life: to connect with her country of origin. That night, she went home and asked her mother where they were from. ”She told me about her grandfather who was a former slave,” Mason tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”And that blew me away, because I’m thinking, ’Slavery was like biblical times. It wasn’t just a few generations removed.’ ” But for Mason, slavery was a few generations removed. She would later learn that her     a man named William Grimes, had been a runaway slave, and that he had authored what is now considered to be the first fugitive slave narrative. ”William Grimes’ narrative is ” Mason says. ”[It] was published in 1825, and this was years before the abolitionist movement picked up slave narrative as a propaganda tool to end slavery. It sort of unwittingly paved the way for the American slave narrative to follow.” Grimes’ original narrative tells the story of his 30 years spent in captivity, followed by his escape in 1814 from Savannah, Ga. He describes how his former owner discovered his whereabouts after the escape and forced him to give up his house in exchange for his freedom. (An updated version, published in 1855, includes a chapter about Grimes’ later life in poverty.) Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave was again republished in 2008 by Oxford University Press. The latest edition was edited by Mason and William Andrews, a scholar of early   autobiography. Mason hopes the latest edition of her ancestor’s story helps keep alive the memory and stories of the millions of people who were enslaved in America. ”So often we’re told, ’Forget about slavery. That happened so long ago. Get over it,’ ” she says. ”But when you do a genealogy search . .. to find these people, to understand how they lived and how they died and how oppressed they were, the reality hits you.” On learning from her mother that her ancestors had been slaves, She talked about Grandpa Fuller, who was a mulatto slave. And I inquired about his parentage and she told me that his father, from what she knew, was a plantation owner, and his mother was an enslaved black woman. . .. And I’m asking, ”Well, that’s weird. Did his father own him?” . .. I mean, how do you explain . .. to children that slavery existed in   America, No. 1 and No. 2, how do you explain to a child about an enslaved heritage shrouded in miscegenation? It’s not an easy thing to do. On finding Grimes’ name listed in an old family Bible, confirming that he was her ancestor, There were pages tucked inside the Bible that had birth records, death records, marriage records. And I think the earliest inscription went to the late 1700s. But as I reviewed these records, there were names  —   and many of them familiar, and there were many unknown. And I remember skimming this one page in there this name William Grimes jumped out at me with the death record of Aug. 21, 1865. And I just completely lost it. . .. And all I could do was weep. It was amazing to see such old records where the pages had separated from the original spine of the book, where they were so discolored, fragile, blotted and stained. I mean it was a true testimony of a legacy in this country, and to connect myself to it made me realize how deep our roots went in America. On how the story of her enslaved ancestors fits in with Martin Luther King Jr. ’s message, What comes to mind for me is this: Dr. King’s dream, ”I Have a Dream.” And he talks about how he would love to see the day when the descendants of slave owners and those that were enslaved come together and talk about it. He talks about sitting down at the table of brotherhood and all of us, in my mind, sharing, with empathy, each other’s struggle. And then understanding in the struggle what our commonalities are and how we can move forward in building the true ideal of America."
"Biggest, fastest, highest, most  —   it’s hard to talk about The Force Awakens without superlatives. No question the Force is strong with this one at the box office. But would it surprise you to learn that despite all the records it’s been setting, The Force Awakens went into this holiday weekend as only the third biggest Star Wars movie in terms of attendance? Or as cute as that adorable soccer ball with personality   is, just as many millions of people have gone ”awwwww” at the puppies in 101 Dalmatians? The Force Awakens is big, make no mistake, but biggest? Well, certainly not yet. In attendance, according to boxofficemojo. com, it hasn’t even cracked the top 10 yet if you include the   of older films. And it’s had nothing like the same social impact. Lots of people talk about ”adjusting for inflation” when they compare box office figures, but forget about dollars. I’m talking butts in seats. Charlton Heston put roughly as many butts in seats racing chariots in  . And over time he put many, many more butts in seats parting the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments. Those seats were filled mostly in the 1950s, when the population of the U. S. was about half what it is now. So it was much tougher to rack up attendance numbers over a hundred million. Not to mention that Heston’s biblical epics played downtown for months in exclusive,   engagements before they ventured out to the places people actually lived. It was considered downright modern in the 1960s when movies opened right off the bat in the suburbs. When I went to Clark University, there were two  —   count ’em, TWO  —   movie screens anywhere near our campus in Worcester, Mass. and for very nearly my entire freshman year  —   and believe me, I remember this  —   one of them was playing Doctor Zhivago. The other was playing Sound of Music.  Different world, obviously. But note that even without the advantage of playing in thousands of multiplexes (which hadn’t been invented yet) both of those films  —   and again, we are talking multiple releases  —   were seen by tens of millions more people than have seen The Force Awakens so far. So were two films that scared baby boomers silly a decade later  —   Jaws and The Exorcist. Even after all that, when the original Star Wars came along, it opened on fewer than 50 screens nationwide. But it was such a huge hit that on its way to becoming the    film in U. S. history, it really did change the film industry  —   the way movies were released, and merchandised. It rewrote the rules. That’s not going to happen with The Force Awakens, which is just going to sell a lot of toys and make the Disney organization a pile of cash. It is going to do that reeeeeally fast. That’s the big change this time. In 1977 the original Star Wars stayed in theaters all summer, churning out practically the same numbers every weekend. This one’s dropping 30 to 40 percent each week. It’s still huge  —   approaching 100 million admissions  —   but it’s going to play itself out a lot faster. Which means, if I can do a little   gazing, that it will not  —   not even with a couple of   in a few years  —   match the granddaddy of all blockbusters. Gone With the Wind has sold more than 200 million tickets in its many releases. And it sold most of them back when there were far fewer people on the planet. In 1939, the city fathers of Atlanta welcomed Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh to Gone with the Wind’s world premiere with a parade that reportedly attracted 1. 5 million spectators. For the record, the population of Atlanta back then was barely   of that. Disney, by comparison, threw a block party for a few thousand invited guests when it premiered The Force Awakens. Might want to keep that in mind as the media reports on the   return of the Star Wars franchise.  History, it seems, is also a Force to be reckoned with. May the hype be with you."
"Space is hard. We were reminded of that yesterday when SpaceX tried to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the Pacific. If you remember, SpaceX made history when another Falcon 9 successfully launched a satellite into orbit and then navigated back down to Earth, landing safely on solid ground. SpaceX had tried once before to land a rocket on a platform in the ocean but that failed pretty spectacularly. On Sunday, the Falcon 9 delivered a satellite into orbit and it came super close to sticking the landing on water. Here’s video: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explained what happened and added a bit of humor:"
"Updated on Jan. 27 to add video of speech: Idris Elba is expected to make a speech about a lack of diversity on British television before members of Parliament and senior TV executives on Monday, according to The Guardian. Elba gained popularity after his breakout role as Stringer Bell on HBO’s The Wire, won a Golden Globe award for his lead role on the BBC series Luther and is a current Screen Actors Guild Award nominee for his stint as Commandant in Beasts of No Nation. The London native is expected to point to his own experience having to move to the U. S. to land roles before being able to get a lead role in his home country, according to The Guardian, which has excerpts of his speech. ”I knew I wasn’t going to land a lead role. I knew there wasn’t enough imagination in the industry for me to be seen as a lead. In other words, if I wanted to star in a British drama like Luther, then I’d have to go to a country like America. And the other thing was, because I never saw myself on TV, I stopped watching TV. Instead I decided to just go out and become TV.” Elba will tell the audience that without going to the U. S. he would have remained the ”best friend” and ”cop sidekick,” adding: ”But when you don’t reflect the real world, too much talent gets trashed. Thrown on the scrapheap. Talent is everywhere, opportunity isn’t. And talent can’t reach opportunity.” Elba is not the first British actor of color to make these observations. Late last year, David Oyelowo, who starred as Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, said he also felt ”pushed out of the U. K. because of the glass ceiling” that prevented actors of color from landing lead roles in his home country. ”I could see that actors, my peers, those who had a similar trajectory to me were going on to do movies, to play leads. I started to feel I was going to go round in circles. Nice TV, back to the theatre, nice TV . .. but I wasn’t going to be James McAvoy, I wasn’t going to be Benedict Cumberbatch.” Sophie Okonedo, who snagged a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for Hotel Rwanda in 2004, and won a Tony award for A Raisin in the Sun, told The Guardian in 2014 she was ”still struggling [in the U. K.] in a way that my white counterparts at the same level wouldn’t have quite the same struggle. People who started with me would have their own series by now, and I’m still fighting to get the second lead or whatever. I think I’m at a certain level and have a good range, so why isn’t my inbox of English scripts busting at the seams in the same way as my American one is? There’s something amiss there.”"
"When Cathy Fields was in her late 50s, she noticed she was having trouble following conversations with friends. ”I could sense something was wrong with me,” she says. ”I couldn’t focus. I could not follow.” Fields was worried she had suffered a stroke or was showing signs of early dementia. Instead she found out she had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Fields is now 66 years old and lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. She’s a former secretary and mother of two grown children. Fields was diagnosed with ADHD about eight years ago. Her doctor ruled out any physical problems and suggested she see a psychiatrist. She went to Dr. David Goodman at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who by chance specializes in ADHD. Goodman asked Fields a number of questions about focus, attention and completing tasks. He asked her about her childhood and how she did in school. Since ADHD begins in childhood, it’s important for mental health professionals to understand these childhood experiences in order to make an accurate diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood. Online screening tests are available, too, so you can try it yourself. Goodman decided that Fields most definitely had ADHD. She’s not alone. Goodman says he’s seeing more and more adults over the age of 50 newly diagnosed with ADHD. The disorder occurs as the brain is developing, and symptoms generally appear around age 7. But symptoms can last a lifetime. For adults, the problem is not disruptive behavior or keeping up in school. It’s an inability to focus, which can mean inconsistency, being late to meetings or just having problems managing    tasks. Adults with ADHD are more likely than others to lose a job or file for bankruptcy, Goodman says. They may overpay bills, or underpay them. They may pay bills late, or not at all. For Cathy Fields, the more she thought about it, the more she realized distraction and the inability to focus was the story of her life. It was also the story of her mother’s life. Her mother ”never got things done,” Fields says. This is typical, according to Goodman ADHD often runs in families. According to Children and Adults with    Disorder, or CHADD, an advocacy group, the disorder can be inherited. If a parent has ADHD, the child has more than a 50 percent chance of also having it. If a twin has ADHD, the other twin has up to an 80 percent chance of having the disorder. But because many of today’s older adults grew up during the 1950s and ’60s when there wasn’t much awareness of ADHD, many were never diagnosed. And increasingly, Goodman says, he’s seeing more and more patients who are concerned about dementia but who actually have ADHD  —   just like Cathy Fields. Goodman also sees patients who are diagnosed after their child or grandchild gets a diagnosis. ”That’s the genetic link,” says Goodman, ”from Grandmom to Mom to daughter.” About 60 percent of children with ADHD go on to become adults with ADHD, says Dr. Lenard Adler, a professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. As these older adults weren’t diagnosed, they learned to work around the problem, Adler says. They developed coping systems to deal with their inability to focus or pay attention. That was the case with    Kathleen Brown, a retired nurse who lives in Maryland. She was never diagnosed as a child, but she ”knew something was wrong,” she says. Brown didn’t learn to read until she was 12. And, she says, she had to work a lot harder in school than other kids did for the same grades. When she went to nursing school, Brown made sure she sat in the first row during lectures so she wouldn’t miss anything or be distracted. And when it came to testing, she says, she literally set her desk up in the back of the class, facing a corner. When she finally got diagnosed and prescribed medication, Brown says, the change was ”stupendous.” She’s not scattered, and can start projects and finish them. ”I wish I had it when I went to school 25 years ago,” Brown says. ”It would have helped me for sure.” Like children with the disorder, adults with ADHD are treated with medication, psychotherapy, or a combination of treatments. ADHD medication works just as well for adults as it does for children, but there is a word of caution. Older adults often have other health problems, like high blood pressure and heart disease. So doctors need to be careful when prescribing ADHD medications, which are typically stimulants like Adderall or Ritalin. For older patients, an ADHD diagnosis can be a huge relief. If you’ve spent your whole life with a disorder for which people said you were lazy, stupid, incompetent, says Goodman, ”It’s liberating to realize the impairments are the result of a treatable disorder and not a character weakness or intellectual inadequacy.” So for older people with memory and focus problems, Goodman says, it’s important for doctors to check for ADHD. While it could be cognitive decline, there’s growing awareness that it could also simply be the symptoms of a lifelong childhood disorder. "
"When I kick back to watch a show, I tell myself I’m just going to watch one episode. But 45 minutes later, I’m watching another. And then another. For the rest of the day. There are a lot of things that TV and chilling can lead to, but among the less fun? Maybe more cognitive decline over time. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco checked in with 3, 247 people for 25 years, starting when they were young adults. Every five years, they asked participants to estimate how much TV they watched daily. Every two to five years, the researchers looked at how much physical exercise people got. At the end of the 25 years, when the participants were in their 40s and 50s, they all took three tests that measured their memory, focus, and mental and physical quickness. People who got little exercise or watched at least three hours of TV a day did worse on tests measuring cognitive focus and speed than those who got more exercise or watched less TV, according to the study, published in JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday. ”Then people who had both low physical activity and high TV had even worse performance. It was an even bigger effect,” says Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a psychiatrist at UCSF and senior author on the study. Some of that loss of brain power could be because just sitting around motionless isn’t very good for us. Scientists have known that lack of physical exercise could be a big risk factor in cognitive decline, says Marcus Richards, a psychologist at the University College London who was not involved in the study. ”But we don’t know much about sedentary behavior [and cognition] right now,” he says. If people who spend a lot of time   TV are doing so   on a cushion, they might not be doing their brain any favors. Or perhaps it’s something about TV watching itself, Yaffe thinks. ”Is it because by watching a lot of TV, you’re not challenging your brain?” Yaffe’s team didn’t look at whether people were watching smart, intellectual documentaries or   shows like The Bachelor or The Apprentice for over three hours daily. ”Some TV shows can be cognitively stimulating, and there’s some evidence that cognitively stimulating activities can be protective and beneficial,” says Margie Lachman, a psychologist at Brandeis University who was not involved in the study. Perhaps some content is better for your brain than others. The study wasn’t able to test the participant’s cognitive function when they were young adults, either. It’s possible that people who score lower on the tests are more likely to watch more TV than the other way around. ”People with low cognitive function perhaps are less likely to engage in physical activity, and maybe more likely to engage in sedentary behaviors,” Lachman says. Similarly, other studies have found that   TV is more common among depressed people, but that doesn’t mean it causes depression. In either case, Yaffe says the decline in people’s cognition speed and focus, while significant, wasn’t huge  —   certainly not enough to affect someone’s daily life. ”The question is what does it mean if you’re 50 and you’ve got these slight changes? Does it mean you’re on a path to greater changes down the line or does not make a difference? I don’t think we really know the answer to that.” But Richards says it’s reasonable to think the gap in cognitive function between   TV watchers and infrequent watchers might widen over the years. For some, the early decline in cognitive functioning could become serious later in life. ”As the cohort ages, you would expect that rate of decline to become rather more rapid, with some people moving into clinical outcomes like dementia,” he says. In the past, researchers have noticed that physical exercise might help protect against Alzheimer’s or dementia later in life. Perhaps exercise could counteract all that TV, too. But if you’re watching something trashy and can’t get off the couch, maybe just, you know, go read a book."
"There’s a new deli in rural Maine with a hotshot chef behind the counter. Foodies may know Matthew Secich’s name from stints and stars earned at Charlie Trotter’s, The Oval Room in Washington, D. C. and The Alpenhof Lodge in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Recently, Secich joined an Amish community and moved his family and his kitchen off the grid. His new spot, Charcuterie, is a converted cabin tucked away in a pine forest in Unity, Maine, population 2, 000. You have to drive down a long, snowy track to get there, and you can smell the smokehouse before you can see it. If you’ve followed your nose this far, inside, you’ll see ropes of andouille, kielbasa and sweet beef bologna hanging from hooks above the counter. There are no Slim Jims here, but rather handmade meat sticks, fat as cigars, sitting in a jar by a   register. Mainers are beginning to discover this unique gourmet haven in the woods. ”It’s a little of everything it’s handmade,” says Mark Warren, who has driven an hour in the snow to buy the sausages, smoked hams and cheeses. ”You can’t get anything any better. Pretty amazing what he can do from scratch.” That’s the kind of review a diner might have given Secich 10 years ago, after forking over $350 for a single meal he cooked at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago. Secich studied cuisine at Johnson and Wales University and then crossed the pond to learn French techniques. Julia Child herself taught him how to make an omelet at the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia. ”From there it was a wild tale of chasing . .. the   holy grail of the cuisine world, working for great chefs to someday be great,” says Secich, who worked at restaurants all over the country. But Secich and his family have now chosen to settle in Unity. It has a growing Amish community, where he and his family have joined the church and embraced all that goes with it. In the corner of the dimly lit room, a wood stove provides the only heat. When the winter light fades in the afternoon, oil lamps will light the shop. A pine plank cold room with 79 tons of   ice harvested from a local lake will keep the ingredients chilled. All the meat must be ground by hand. The family has also adopted the simple dress of the Amish, and Secich is now sporting a beard that falls past his chest. It’s a radical departure from the path Secich was on 25 years ago as a military man serving in the Persian Gulf, or even 10 years ago, when he brought that military manner into the kitchen at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, now closed. ”I thought I was on top of the world and I had the best job that you could have working for one of the best restaurants in the world,” says Secich. Back then, he says, he commanded a sizable brigade. ”I think we had 35 young people I tortured on a daily basis.” That’s an assessment his former sous chef, Sean Fowler, now chef and owner of Mandolin in Raleigh, N. C. agrees with. ”Yeah, berating of waitstaff, berating of fellow cooks. I saw pans thrown and     temper tantrums,” says Fowler, who describes those years cooking with Secich as the ”best of times and the worst of times” with an insanely passionate man. ”Matthew is   and   in equal measure.” Secich is the first to admit that he demanded a perhaps unattainable level of perfection from everyone in the kitchen, including himself. ”Yeah, I was kinda crazy.” And he wasn’t happy. Something was missing, and Secich says he didn’t find what he was looking for until he adopted a traditionalist Christian faith and started to homestead. Happiness now, he says, is living off the grid, Amish. Everyone in his family has had to adapt. His kids now take a pony to school instead of the bus. His wife, Crystal, stays home to care for the family. And whether Charcuterie thrives as a business remains to be seen. ”We probably only have very small sales these days,” says Secich, ”but I trust that God’s going to provide for us exactly what we need to get by.” But whatever happens, Secich says he won’t ever be reaching for the Michelin stars again."
"At one high school in Maryland, fears of deportation are playing out in the classroom. In Prince George’s County, a suburb of Washington, D. C. about 70 percent of the students at High Point High School are Latino. It’s a student population that’s prompted the school’s principal, Sandra Jimenez, to term it ”Central American Ellis Island.” Principal Jimenez says the fear of deportation raids is making many immigrant students scared to come to school, despite assurances from government officials that there are no raids happening at schools. It’s a concern that was echoed in a statement by Dr. Kevin Maxwell, CEO of Prince George’s County Public Schools in an open letter to DHS. ”I am deeply troubled by the fear and uncertainty that exists in so many of our school communities as a result of the actions of the Department of Homeland Security,” he wrote. ”We urge federal authorities to see schools and other public gathering places as areas where no enforcement activities should take place and ask them to strongly consider the devastating impacts of their actions on the academic, social and emotional   of all of our students.” DHS declined an interview request from NPR, but said in a statement that the agency ”does not conduct ’raids.’ ICE focuses on those who have been issued a final order of removal from a judge.” Jimenez joined NPR’s Michel Martin to discuss the drama that is playing out on her campus. Click the audio link above to hear the full interview."
"For months, FBI Director James Comey has been warning about a troubling spike in homicides in some of America’s biggest cities. On Tuesday, the bureau released preliminary crime statistics that back up some of his concerns. The FBI reported that violent crime rose in the first six months of 2015, with murders increasing by more than 6 percent over that same stretch the year before. Preliminary FBI data indicated rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults also grew from January to June 2015. The greatest increase happened in cities with between 250, 000 and 499, 999 people. The data come from voluntary reports by more than 12, 800 police departments and law enforcement agencies across the United States. Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said in a prepared statement that ”it is too early to draw any   conclusions” and ”overall violent crime rates remain historically low.” Still, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and her deputy, Sally Yates, are intensifying their work to identify and fight violent crime. Next month, the spokesman said, DOJ leaders will bring together federal prosecutors and other law enforcement officials for training in   strategies."
"Updated at 8:30 p. m. ET, Tea Party darling Sarah Palin threw her support behind Donald Trump in a raucous speech Tuesday night, a blow to a surging Ted Cruz with less than two weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses. Trump is ”perfectly positioned to let you make America great again. Are you ready for that, Iowa?” Palin told a crowd in Ames, standing beside Trump. ”No more pussyfooting around.” It was all classic Palin  —   rambling, unpredictable and taking aim at the GOP establishment. She said Trump would ”kick ISIS’ ass.” She slammed President Obama as ” .” And, using one of her signature phrases, she praised Trump for ”going rogue left and right.” ”We need someone new,” Palin said, ”who can bust up that establishment that can make things great again.” Trump promised that they were ”gonna give ’em hell” and said he was ”honored” by her endorsement. The announcement of her endorsement earlier that day and her appearance Tuesday evening alongside the GOP candidate capped off a day of rampant speculation that the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee was set to endorse the Republican presidential   after Trump teased a ”major announcement.” The two have long been complimentary of one another. Last fall she was floated as a possible energy secretary for Trump. And Palin praised Trump late last year on Fox News, calling him ”the best thing to happen to the permanent political class since, oh I guess, the beauty of the Tea Party genuine movement rose up and shined a light on crony capitalism and then pulled the rug right out from under status quo politicians who just kind of embraced that political class.” Their new alliance comes as the onetime detente between Trump and Cruz, the two top outsider candidates in the crowded race, has come to an end. In last week’s debate, Cruz attacked Trump over his liberal ”New York values.” And Cruz’s campaign has been pushing clips of Trump previously stating his support for   abortion and gay marriage. Meanwhile, Trump has been raising doubts about the   Republican’s eligibility. Cruz has surged ahead of Trump in some polls in the Hawkeye State, and the timing of the Palin endorsement seems designed to blunt that momentum. Palin still has a loyal following among conservatives and Tea Party voters she has visited Iowa many times since her national run and has cultivated relationships in the state. Her endorsement of   Sen. Joni Ernst in a crowded 2014 GOP Senate primary was credited with helping lift the  . S. senator to victory. Palin is expected to be an important surrogate for Trump and will campaign with him Wednesday in Iowa and Oklahoma. The Texas senator and his campaign had already sought to downplay the impact of a Palin endorsement of Trump on Tuesday. ”I think it [would] be a blow to Sarah Palin, because Sarah Palin has been a champion for the conservative cause. And if she was going to endorse Donald Trump, sadly, she would be endorsing someone who’s held progressive views all their life on the sanctity of life, on marriage, on   abortion,” Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said on CNN. But that only seemed to inflame Palin allies. Her daughter Bristol wrote on the website Patheos, in a blog post titled ”Is THIS Why People Don’t like Cruz?” that ”after hearing what Cruz is now saying about my mom, in a negative   reaction, makes me hope my mom does endorse Trump.” And Trump’s campaign highlighted Cruz’s own words on the impact a Palin endorsement can have. ”I would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin. .. She can pick winners,” Cruz previously said of her endorsement in his uphill 2012 Senate primary. Losing Palin’s support wasn’t the only blow Cruz suffered on Tuesday. Longtime Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad said he would like to see the Texas senator lose, citing his opposition to the Renewable Fuel Standard  —   important to the state’s ethanol industry. ”Ted Cruz is ahead right now. What we’re trying to do is educate the people in the state of Iowa. He is the biggest opponent of renewable fuels. He actually introduced a bill in 2013 to immediately eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard. He’s heavily financed by Big Oil. So we think once Iowans realize that fact, they might find other things attractive but he could be very damaging to our state,” Branstad said at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit Tuesday, according to the Des Moines Register."
"The presidential primary has now reached the final   stretch before Iowans meet to caucus on Feb. 1, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is spending some of those precious final days making a swing through New Hampshire. Unlike Iowa, where Cruz is neck and neck with Donald Trump, New Hampshire is a state where Trump dominates, leading the rest of the pack by nearly 20 points in recent polls. But Cruz said he believes the campaign is entering a ”different phase,” where voters will take a closer look at candidates’ records  —   particularly Trump’s. ”And as much as I like Donald Trump personally, there is a marked difference between his record and my record,” Cruz said. On the campaign trail in New Hampshire this week, Cruz has stressed that he ”likes” Trump, while also raising questions about his resume, temperament and conservative credentials. Aboard his campaign bus Monday evening, Cruz told NPR that voters want ”someone they can trust  —   not someone who, on any given day, they don’t know what he’s likely to do.” He continued, ”I think the American people want a steady hand at the helm. They want someone they know and trust. They don’t want to wake up every day wondering if the latest polls might set off the commander in chief into a frenzy of tweets.” Despite the fact that New Hampshire is a more challenging state for a very conservative Republican like Cruz, he said the push in this state is part of his campaign’s strategy to make a strong showing in all of the early voting states. Cruz said he is ”all in” in each of the states that vote in February: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. ”We are very much running a national campaign,” Cruz said. ”Unlike a number of candidates in the field, we don’t view any of these one states as a   for us.” Cruz is also looking ahead to Super Tuesday on March 1, also nicknamed the ”SEC Primary” after the   conference, when voters in several Southern states, including Cruz’s home state of Texas, go to the polls. Cruz’s campaign has been building a   network and recently made a campaign swing through March 1 states, including Alabama, Georgia and Virginia. ”So, we believe we’re positioned to do well in the first four states,” Cruz said, ”and we believe Super Tuesday’s going to be a tremendous day for us.” Trump was in the Super Tuesday state of Virginia on Monday. During a speech at the conservative Christian Liberty University, Trump promised to ”protect Christianity.” Cruz said he’s ”very glad” to hear that pledge but suggested it’s an easy one to make. ”Every Republican in this race has at one time or another promised to defend religious liberty,” Cruz said. ”Why? That’s what you do when you’re running in a Republican primary. The voters are looking for a proven record and not just campaign promises.” Defending religious liberty has been a rallying cry for Cruz’s campaign. He’s used it to pull together massive rallies in early primary states, as his campaign has bolstered its   organizing and fundraising operations with evangelical supporters. In New Hampshire, Cruz is trying to convince voters that he can be trusted to keep his campaign promises  —   even if other politicians have disappointed them."
"With the historic nuclear deal finally taking effect, a   Iran can now get back to doing what it has excelled at for centuries: trade. Because of Iran’s strategic position on the Silk Road, that ancient highway that snaked from China to Europe, the caravans of tea, spice and silk passing through it also carried a weightless but imperishable cargo to foreign shores: Persian culture. In the past decade, the rhetoric around Iran has been so dominated by the enrichment of uranium that it has all but eclipsed the numerous ways in which Persia  —   the name Iran was known by before 1935  —   has enriched the world and been enriched by it. There’s no better evidence of this than the imprimatur of Persian on the nomenclature of food. Not just food with an obviously Eastern pedigree, like saffron, naan, tandoori chicken, samosa, kebab and pilaf, but everyday,   food names such as lemon, tamarind, pistachio and jujube  —   all names with Persian roots. Fascinating though these etymologies are, they lie buried deep inside dictionaries. One woman who has worked hard to unearth them is the chef and cookbook writer Najmieh Batmanglij, known as the Julia Child of Persian cooking. ”The reason I wrote five cookbooks over the past 35 years was to bring about awareness among Americans and make     proud of their ancient heritage,” Batmanglij tells us. She grew up in Tehran but has lived in Washington for the past three decades. ”The Persian kings had royal kitchens with butlers, sommeliers and pastry chefs,” she says. ”Iran was the first home of many commonly used herbs, from basil to cilantro, and to scores of familiar preparations, including sweet and sour sauces and almond pastries. We know that quinces, pomegranates, almonds, fenugreek (despite its name) cumin, coriander and mustard seeds went from Iran to the West. I want to tell my readers  —   you know more about Persian food than you might think.” Batmanglij’s assertion is validated by this quick question: How are Halloween, Popeye and the Kentucky Derby connected to Iran? The short answer is that ”candy” is derived from the Persian qand, meaning sugar cube. The Sailor Man’s   biofuel, spinach, is from the Persian aspanakh. And as for the Kentucky Derby, can one even imagine it without mint julep? And thereby hangs a rosy tale. ”Julep is a classic example,” says Arthur Dudney, a researcher in Asian and Middle Eastern studies at Cambridge University. ”It started as Persian   (rose water) then entered Arabic as julāb . .. and from there entered a number of European languages (Latin, Provençal, Spanish, Portuguese, and French) with the ’b’ softened into a ’p’ (e. g. julapium in Latin). And from French it entered English in the 15th century. The   Kentucky Derby mint julep tastes nothing like the Persian   drink, but the name is from Persia.” Another word that has been through a complex series of linguistic hops is sherbet. For American kids, sherbet is a frozen desert, while in England it’s a fizzy drink. Fans of the English children’s author Enid Blyton might remember that exquisite confection called the Google bun  —   yes, Google  —   stuffed with very large currant, which features in her Faraway Tree series. When you bit into the bun, ”sherbet frothed out and filled your mouth with fine bubbles that tasted delicious.” ”Sherbet or sorbet is from sharbat, a sweet iced juice drink,” says Dudney. ”It likely came through Turkey, even though it was known in   India and Iran. In any case, the name in Persian and Turkish comes from shariba, the Arabic verb to drink.” ”Sharbat’s basis was the ice and snow that ancient Iranians had learned to preserve during the hot summer months in spectacular domed ice wells on the edges of towns and along caravan routes,” writes Batmanglij in Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey. ”The flavorings were syrups, made by combining fruit or vegetable juice with honey, sugar or date or grape molasses and boiling the mixture down to intensify the flavor. Sipped through a mound of crushed ice or snow, the syrup became a delightful drink.” Even foods that didn’t originate in Persia got Persian names, since Persia was responsible for their spread westward. Batmanglij makes this point in her   book Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies. ”Peaches, for instance, originated in China, but as they were taken from Iran to the West, they became known as the Persian apple,” she says. Orange, adds Dudney, comes to English via Spanish from the Persian nārang, which comes from a Sanskrit word that probably had a Dravidian origin. Aubergine (eggplant) too, has a Sanskrit root, but gets its name from the Persian bādinjān. Apart from trade, Persian words traveled in other ways as well. Conquerors proved to be excellent couriers. Alexander the Great, the Crusaders, the Mongols, and especially the British  —   who colonized India, where Persian was the court language of the Mughal emperors  —   all had a role to play. ”The British picked up Persian words that were common in India, and these words became popular in the West,” says Dudney, who explores this transference in his book Delhi: Pages From A Forgotten History. ”A lot of foods traditionally associated with India have a Persian connection. Biryani comes from Persian biryān, which means fried or roasted. And though garam masala is a spice mixture inescapably identified with Indian cooking, its name comes from Persian garm (hot) + masālih (spices, medicines).” But culinary and linguistic influence is a   street, and Iran, too, has absorbed influences from other countries, such as rice from China. Fruits and vegetables imported into Iran several centuries ago are still tagged with the word farangi (foreign) as a marker of their exotic provenance, points out Sina Negahban, a     who blogs at The Unmanly Chef. So in Farsi ”the tomato is still called gojeh farangi, meaning European plum strawberries are tut farangi (European berry) and green peas are nukhud farangi (European pea).” But more modern food imports, he says, are simply known by their original names, albeit with a Persianized twang. ”So cutlet is kotlet, schnitzel shennycell, and macaroni is mākāruni.” Russia, Iran’s   and   ally, has had a distinctive influence. ”In Iran the word for sausage is kalbas from the Russian kolbasa,” says Negahban, ”and the traditional mayonnaise Russian Olivier Salad is a national favorite in Iran and is called Salad Olivieh.” Interestingly, it was a Belgian chef, Lucien Olivier, who made this salad at a Moscow restaurant  —   another example of the layered origins of food. But the kiwi fruit is plain old kiwi. ”This is a good thing,” Negahban says with a grin. ”Because when it first appeared in the bazaars, it was called    or gorilla testicles. Luckily, as far as I know, no one calls it that anymore.” Despite the   ban on U. S. food chains and   sloganeering against the ”Great Satan,” American fast foods are enormously popular in Iran. ”All you need to do is ask for a ’sundivich’ a ’peetZah’ or ’hambaregare,’ ” says Negahban. ”And if you want Kentucky Fried Chicken, look for Kabooki Fried Chicken. In 1973, Colonel Sanders and his wife came to Iran to open the first KFC. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the franchise ended, so the name was quickly changed to Kabooki Fried Chicken.” You can also find Mash Donald’s, Burger House, and Pizza Hat: names that are a legacy of a bitter economic detente between the U. S. and Iran, but also a cheeky testimony to the borderless appeal of food. Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"Embattled Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said Tuesday of the water contamination crisis in the city of Flint, ”I am sorry we will fix this.” Snyder addressed the debacle in his State of the State address. Snyder is facing calls for his resignation over claims that he mishandled the crisis, in which pipe corrosion from a new water source resulted in high levels of lead in the water, poisoning residents. He told the people of Flint, ”You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here, with me. Most of all, you deserve to know the truth.” Snyder said he will release his emails from 2014 and 2015. The decision comes after the Detroit Free Press editorial board wrote: ”Snyder, whose administration is now embroiled in a scandal emanating from the   that led to water poisoning in Flint and the inexplicably slow response, owes all of us better than what the law calls for. He owes us full transparency, and explication.” How The Water Crisis Developed, Michigan Public Radio’s Rick Pluta explained the water contamination problem on Morning Edition: ”A   manager was in charge when the decision was made that Flint was going to stop using water from the city of Detroit system, where it was buying it and it was considered too expensive, and start drawing water from the Flint River at least on an interim basis. And it turned out that the water was very corrosive, so corrosive in fact that General Motors had a car plant nearby and wouldn’t use it. ”And what that did was it caused lead in some water pipes leading into homes to leach into the water. And now we have a lot of kids in Flint who have elevated lead levels, and the fear is all the attendant health problems that go along with it.” Though complaints and questions about the water arose not long after the city began using the new source in April 2014, Snyder denied there was a problem. Despite efforts by local activists, researchers and a pediatrician from Flint to point out the dangers, Snyder didn’t declare an emergency in the city until Jan. 5, 2016, nearly a month after the mayor of Flint implemented a state of a emergency. Then on Jan. 16, President Obama declared an emergency, meaning federal funds will be used to help pay for bottled water and filters for city residents. Snyder Says Detroit Schools Also Need Action, On another priority issue, the governor said: ”Detroit schools are in a crisis. Detroit schools are in need of a transformational change.” He called for legislative action, saying the ”time to act is now.” Snyder said he had commissioned new studies to help figure out how to improve schools. Snyder did not mention teachers’ strikes or school conditions. Teachers in Detroit are protesting poor public school conditions, including black mold and collapsing ceilings, by calling in sick. Last week, some schools in Detroit were closed for three consecutive days as a result of the ”sickouts.”"
"The village of Madaya, where civilians died of starvation during months of siege by government forces, isn’t the only place in Syria where people can’t get enough food. Before aid convoys arrived in Madaya on Jan. 11, at least 23 people in clinics died of starvation, Doctors Without Borders reported. The village, which is near Syria’s border with Lebanon, had been surrounded by gunmen loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad for six months, and food aid was blocked from October until the aid convoys arrived. Madaya is an extreme example of a widespread problem inside Syria: food insecurity. Supply lines are cut because of fighting or siege, agriculture is impacted by the war, and the cost of food has soared. Even after aid convoys arrived in Madaya earlier this month, five people died from malnutrition, the United Nations reports. Now, ”dozens of individuals need immediate specialized care outside of Madaya if they are to survive,” the U. N. says. ”In weeks preceding the initial humanitarian convoy, many essential food items were either unavailable or unaffordable because of inflated prices,” community members told the U. N. Here is a list of prices inside Madaya before the U. N. convoy arrived (converted from kilograms to pounds): Wheat flour: Unavailable, 1 pound of sugar: $93, 1 pound of wheat: $93, 1 pound of bulgur: $87, 1 pound of beans: $116, 1 pound of hummus: $87, 1 pound of rice: $93, Biscuits (per piece): $15, As NPR’s Alison Meuse reports to our Newscast unit, ”Photos posted online by activists show residents offering their cars in exchange for baby milk.” Siege is being used as a weapon of war by multiple parties to the Syrian conflict. Another siege, this time by ISIS militants, is raising concerns about starvation. Some 200, 000 people  —   70 percent of them women and children  —   are trapped in the western side of Deir   close to the Iraqi border, according to a U. N. report. The U. N. says it received unverified reports that   people in Deir   died from starvation in 2015. ”While government stocks continue to provide bread, there are very limited supplies in the city as there has been almost no humanitarian or commercial access to the city,” a U. N. report says. Supply disruptions are driving up prices in many places. For example, rice was reportedly selling for $93 per pound in Madaya before aid arrived. By comparison, the latest World Food Programme report said rice was selling for 31 cents per pound in Syria’s capital, Damascus. These price maps, broken down by region, show the impact of cut supply lines and siege on the cost of basic goods. Across the country, prices of staple goods have soared since the start of the war. As the World Food Programme reports, ”compared to   . .. the price of wheat flour and rice rose by 388 percent and 723 percent respectively.” One in three Syrians ”do not have adequate access to food,” the World Food Programme said in a 2015 report. It’s been nearly five years since the conflict began in Syria. A 2014 report by REACH, a humanitarian analysis group, said the most common coping strategy was using savings or borrowing money to buy basic food items. But that can only last for so long. ”Unemployment and rapidly rising inflation make food significantly less affordable, even when it is available,” the World Food Programme says. And because of the fighting, it’s difficult to transport food from where it is grown to market. For example, the World Food Programme says: ”In some cases, substantial amounts of wheat (the main staple of the Syrian diet) have had to be stockpiled, because farmers have not been able to sell or transport them. That means that markets in parts of the country will not have sufficient stocks to meet demand, consumers will not have sufficient access to the wheat they require to feed their families, and both rural and urban livelihoods will be further stressed.”"
"In January 2015, at a private conference in Palm Springs, Calif. the political network led by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch announced plans to spend $889 million in the 2016 elections. The organization consists almost entirely of groups that don’t register under the campaign finance laws and therefore don’t publicly identify their donors. Journalist Jane Mayer traces the growing influence of the Koch brothers and other wealthy conservative donors in her new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. According to Mayer, the Kochs and other conservatives have created philanthropic entities that enable them to aggressively pursue a libertarian agenda of lower taxes, deregulation of business and the denial of climate change. Because they are considered charities, the philanthropic groups ”don’t need to disclose the names of their donors,” Mayer tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies. ”These are the groups that are called ’dark money groups,’ and they thus become kind of secret banks that affect American politics in a huge way without most people understanding who is behind them.” Mayer warns that such influence and secrecy undermines democracy: ”It’s very worrisome to many Americans to think that the whole ideal of one man, one vote might be overwhelmed by 400 of the richest people of any political persuasion picking the next leader for them. That’s just not how democracy is supposed to work.” On the Kochs’ secret,   seminars, They’ve been so careful about the secrecy at these meetings, which take place twice a year in resorts, that at one point they even went to the trouble to erect white noise machines that would create static facing the outside, so that nobody could eavesdrop on them. They routinely refuse to disclose the names of the donors who come to these events, but at one point a guest list got left behind, which has provided the one full guest list of one of these events. What you can see from it is that there are about somewhere between 400 and 450 of the wealthiest conservatives in America getting together to plan how to use their fortunes to influence American politics. . .. I think the genius of the Kochs is the magic trick that they’ve really figured out, which is that it’s not just their money funding this they’ve created a consortium. It’s a club where you’ve got maybe 400 people who are cumulatively enormously wealthy. I tried to figure out at one point how many billionaires were involved just in the first term of Obama’s presidency, because they were funding so much of the opposition to Obama, and I got to a count of 18 billionaires who are known and whose net worth put together was $214 billion. Now, obviously they’re not spending all of it on politics, but it gives you a sense of the   of this tiny, concentrated group of people. On how the Koch brothers’ father built oil refineries for Hitler and Stalin, Fred Koch, the patriarch of the family, was an expert in building oil refineries, and he and a friend named William Rhodes Davis proposed building one in Germany during 1934, ’35, that period in there. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich in Germany, so this meant working under the Third Reich. And in order to get permission, they actually had to go to Hitler himself, and William Rhodes Davis did the ”Heil Hitler” to greet Hitler, and finally they got Hitler to greenlight this proposal so that they could build an oil refinery in Hamburg. And the Hamburg Oil Refinery, built by the   Co. became key, according to several German historians I talked to, to Hitler’s war efforts. By the time they built it, it was already clear that Hitler had very major military ambitions, but one of the things he was unable to do was to refine   oil for warplanes. What this plant did was create that capacity, and it eventually supplied much of the fuel that was needed for Hitler’s Luftwaffe. He was not a Nazi, and I certainly don’t suggest that in the book, but what he was was an American businessman looking for a good deal, and he was looking all over the world to see how he could make some money. Oddly, and what’s been known before, is before working under Hitler’s Third Reich, Fred Koch had worked for Stalin, where  —   under Stalin’s first   plan  —   Fred Koch helped build up the Russian, the Soviet oil refineries and really gave huge muscle to the oil industry in the Soviet Union. On the four Koch brothers’ upbringing  I think their parents seem to have cared quite a bit about them, but they were the kinds of parents who were gone much of the time. The father was gone doing business, and the mother was a very active socialite and was gone much of the time, and so she and the father placed the child rearing in the hands of a hired nanny. Here again, you get this strange recurrence of a kind of little touch of Nazi Germany, because . .. Charles and Frederick, the oldest sons, were put in the hands of a German nanny who was described by other family members as just a fervid Nazi. She was so devout a supporter of Hitler that finally, after five years working for the family, she left of her own volition in 1940 when Hitler entered France because she wanted to celebrate with the Fuehrer. On three of the brothers attempting to blackmail the eldest, Frederick, when they suspected he was gay  You have to remember this was a very long time ago, when the idea of being gay was considered scandalous in a family, particularly a family of rough,   oil men out in Wichita, Kan. It was considered a dark secret that   son Frederick might have been gay. At some point, when Frederick was in his 20s, all four of the sons by then had shares in the family company. And what the three other brothers did was they created a kind of kangaroo court . .. so that [Frederick] walked into a room, found his three other brothers sitting there in chairs facing him, and they confronted him and conducted an inquisition to see if he was gay. And they then said that if he was, they were going to tell their father unless he handed over his share in the company. . .. It’s been rumored about for years in other   about the Kochs, and there have been various descriptions of people denying it, but I actually got a hold of a sealed deposition in which one of the brothers, Bill Koch, describes the whole thing as it unfolded. The brother who they were accusing  —   Frederick, who was the eldest  —   stood up, looked at them, said, ”I never want to hear about this again,” and walked out of the room. It didn’t work. But as a ploy, I think it gives you an idea of a family that is not the usual cozy,   family. On the family company, Koch Industries, being investigated for pocketing millions in oil from Indian reservations, It was in the 1990s. Koch Industries was dragged in front of the U. S. Senate. There was a committee investigating the company, looking into accusations that it had stolen oil from Indian reservations by purposefully   it and had pocketed millions and millions of dollars of extra money by doing so. The company didn’t deny it at the time. . .. They said it had happened, but they said it was an accident. But if you take a look at the Senate report, what you see is that other companies that were operating around the same time in that same oil patch didn’t have this problem. They’ve raised eyebrows in pushing the limits of what a company can get away with for decades during this period, and to some extent it was in harmony with Charles Koch’s   libertarian views, that the government just should not interfere with private enterprise."
"You know his voice, playing the title roles on the animated TV series Bob’s Burgers and Archer, not to mention a can of vegetables in the movie Wet Hot American Summer. But none of that is why the   comedy veteran Jon Benjamin spoke with All Things Considered. Instead, it was for the most ”public radio” of reasons: He has recorded an experimental jazz album. Benjamin’s album  —   his first jazz release  —   includes several tracks titled ”I Can’t Play Piano.” You can hear his conversation with NPR’s Robert Siegel (and some of Benjamin’s music) at the audio link, and read the conversation below. Robert Siegel: It’s obvious: You can’t play piano! Jon Benjamin: I really can’t, and it really shows. And yet here you are, playing with some guys who seem to know what they’re doing. They were very accomplished jazz musicians that I played with. And me. The name of this album is Well, I Should Have. ..* subtitled Learned How To Play Piano. Yeah, it’s very literal. Now, you’re playing with professional jazz musicians: Scott Kreitzer on sax, David Finck on bass, and Jonathan Peretz is playing drums. Was this an act of friendship, or just a measure of the jazz economy  —   that you gotta do whatever gig comes along? They were very nice to do it, and I’m not sure they realized what they were doing until we got there. And then they were mad. But not mad enough to stop altogether. So they went through with it, and they were great. [Robert Siegel and Jon Benjamin listen to ”I Can’t Play Piano, Pt. 1”] That is real untapped  . [About saxophonist Scott Kreitzer] He’s good. Yeah! He knows what he’s doing. He really does. But that’s just not as interesting. Do you think it lacks the complete sense of   surprise that you’re after? He’s not taking any risks. He just knows how to do it. How safe, to actually —   [Laughs.] I feel bad for people like that. Are you going to do any live performances to promote this? It’s funny  —   I’ve been asked a couple times. But I’m not sure I want to do that. I’m really going to dedicate myself to learning how to play. Maybe by my next album, I’ll be decent. Is that right? Are you trying to learn to play? I’ve started taking lessons, so. .. I see. You’re sort of charting a reverse career, which begins with the recording contract. .. It’s a real insult to people who try. . ..and then eventually makes its way to actual lessons on the instrument. I mean, look, there’s a distinct possibility that I’ll be very good. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I just started doing the lessons, so I might be incredibly good."
"The Supreme court has once again stepped into the fire of   political issues. The court said Tuesday it would rule by summer on the legality of President Obama’s executive action granting temporary legal status to as many as 4. 5 million people who entered the U. S. illegally. Fourteen months ago, Obama, frustrated by Congress’ inability to act on immigration reform, issued an order expanding temporary legal status for some adults who entered the U. S. illegally. The new order granted temporary legal status and work permits to illegal adult immigrants who had been in the U. S. for five years and who have children who are American citizens or lawful permanent residents. In addition, applicants had to register, pass a criminal background check, and prove they had paid their taxes. If they met all these criteria, they would be granted legal status and temporary work permits for three years. The president said this change in immigration regulations would allow people to ”come out of the shadows and get right with the law.” The president’s action followed a similar temporary reprieve from deportation that he issued in 2012 for children age 15 and under brought to the U. S. illegally. Court challenges to that order failed. Although many Republicans objected to the 2012 action for children, opposition was relatively muted. The most recent temporary reprieve for adults, however, infuriated the GOP. Republicans blasted the president’s action as ”lawless,” and a coalition of 26 states led by Texas challenged the executive action in court, contending that the president had exceeded his authority. A year ago a federal judge blocked implementation of the new regime and a federal appeals court panel, by a   vote subsequently upheld the injunction on broader grounds. The Obama administration then asked the Supreme Court to review the case, and on Tuesday the justices said they would hear arguments in April, with a decision expected by late June. If the court had refused to hear the case, the appeals court ruling would have stood, and the president’s program would have been dead in the water. But there is no assurance of how the court will rule. Indeed, the justices broadened the scope of the case, asking the two sides to address an additional, and fundamental question: whether the president’s action violates the Constitution’s requirement that the president ”shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The addition of that question is seen as ”a good omen” by many conservatives, like Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. ”I think the adding of that question . .. helps those of us that are concerned that the president overreached here,” Sekulow said. He is filing a brief opposing the president’s action on behalf of 88 congressmen and 25 senators, including the two Texas senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. Dozens of other groups, on both sides, are expected to weigh in. Marielena Hincapié, of the National Immigration Law Center notes, for instance, that President Obama’s immigration action is similar to those ”used by every administration, both Republican and Democrat, since President Eisenhower. Duquesne Law School Dean Kenneth Gormley, author of a new history of presidential power, observes that ”There have been battles over these issues dating back to George Washington.” In this case, he views the states’ case as ”particularly weak” because in general the Constitution leaves questions of immigration and naturalization to the federal government so that the nation has a uniform system. Gormley sees ”the real battle lines” in the case as ”between President Obama and Congress” and the critical question as whether the President exceeded his power under congressional enacted statutes. For those charged with carrying out immigration laws  —   many of which are in fact presidential actions  —   the critical question may be the first one presented in the case: whether Texas has the legal standing to sue in the first place. In order to have such standing, a state has to show that it would be injured in a concrete way if the president’s action were to be carried out. Texas asserts, and the appeals court agreed, that it would be injured because it would have to spend millions of dollars to provide drivers’ licenses for immigrants with temporary legal status as a result of the federal program. The Obama administration counters that there is no requirement that Texas provide licenses at a financial loss and that the state is free to charge the full cost of the license. It may seem like nitpicking to some, but Stephen Legomsky, a former top immigration official, says that if any state can challenge an executive action on immigration, ”the result would be that practically any favorable decision by the federal government on an immigration matter would give rise to lengthy lawsuits.” That, he said, would be ”a recipe for a government paralysis.” The addition of the U. S. v. Texas case to the Supreme Court docket this term means that just as the two political parties are about to choose their presidential nominees, the High Court will be deciding cases involving race and affirmative action, abortion, birth control, and now, immigration."
"”This is all still surreal,” says Amir Hekmati, a former U. S. Marine who’s one of four Americans released by Iran this past weekend. Freed after more than four years of imprisonment, Hekmati says he feels like he’s been born again. Speaking from Landstuhl, Germany, Hekmati also thanked those who had helped him get through his ordeal. Here’s some of what he had to say: ”I feel extremely lucky  —   alive for the first time in a long time, and very humbled at everybody’s support, from the president to Congress to my fellow Marines, and especially my family who have really gone through so much throughout this time.” Hekmati, 32, added that he plans to tell more of his story in the future: ”There is a lot that I have to say about the experience, and what happened, and I hope to bring that to the American people and the world.” The freed American was reunited with members of his family at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where he has been undergoing medical and psychological evaluations. When asked how he feels now, Hekmati said: ”It feels great. I feel very lucky . ... It’s like being born again, and I just really feel proud to be an American.” As for his treatment in prison, he said, ”Well, it wasn’t good.” Hekmati went on to say that he had reached a point in his captivity where he had resigned himself to spending 10 years in prison. And he said there wasn’t a big   to his release: ”They just came one morning and said, ’Pack your things. ’” He added that he didn’t really believe what was happening until he was out of Iranian airspace. Asked how he coped with his time in captivity, Hekmati said, ”I didn’t want to let any of my fellow Marines down, and the reputation of the Marine Corps. So, I tried my best to keep my head up and withstand all the pressures that were put upon me  —   some of which were very inhumane and unjust.” As NPR reported last week, Hekmati’s sister attended President Obama’s recent State of the Union address. Hekmati’s release comes four years after an Iranian court sentenced him to death that verdict was later overturned. Authorities in Iran had accused the former Marine translator of working for the CIA. Hekmati and his family have insisted that he had traveled to Iran to visit his grandmother."
"Last Thursday, the World Health Organization declared the end to two horrific years of the West African Ebola epidemic. Later on the same day, the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone announced that a patient with Ebola died in the Tonkilli region of that country. Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the new case in Sierra Leone was not that it occurred so soon after WHO’s proclamation, but that Ebola wasn’t diagnosed until after the patient died. The patient was a young woman who developed symptoms at the beginning of the year after traveling to an area in that country that was one of the last hotspots to be declared  . When she came to a local hospital for care, she had classic symptoms of Ebola, such as vomiting and diarrhea. Yet she was not diagnosed with the disease. What’s more, the health care worker who drew her blood did not wear the appropriate personal protective equipment and the woman’s blood sample may not even have been tested for Ebola. She was eventually discharged to die at home rather than being isolated, and dozens of other people have been exposed. Currently, some 100 people who may have had contact with her are under quarantine. The juxtaposition of the upbeat announcement and the sad news is a reminder of how difficult it is to bring an epidemic to an end  —   and what we need to keep in mind about this particular epidemic and any future outbreaks of other diseases. How and why do human epidemics end? There are several reasons. Cases drop when there are no more susceptible humans left to infect, when we get better at controlling the spread, when the organism that causes the disease mutates to be less lethal, or when one of the conditions that allowed the disease to survive in nature changed  —   perhaps an animal that carries the disease moved or died off or there was a change in weather conditions that had been favorable to the spread. In most cases, a combination of these factors plays a role. So predicting the end of an epidemic can be a difficult endeavor because it requires perfect knowledge of all of the above factors. That’s simply not possible. Hence, the best public health officials can say is that there is no more evident    transmission noted. And to be fair, this has been WHO’s message after each country ends its surveillance period. Some scientists believe the end of the   epidemic marks the beginning of recurrent small groups of cases in this region for months and potentially years. The virus can take months to clear completely from the body of a survivor. There are nearly 17, 000 Ebola survivors in West Africa. They can transmit the infection to those around them  —   although the frequency of such transmission is low. The transmission may be possible with sexual contact. It can also occur if the patient’s immune system is depressed for other reasons, and dormant Ebola virus is able to start replicating more actively. To halt future cases, health workers must provide care, counseling and surveillance of symptoms that may represent Ebola reactivation among survivors. How long should such surveillance continue  —   in other words, how long will it take for the immune system to clear out the last remnants of the virus? The answer is we don’t know. The leading theory suggests this should be in the order of months rather than years. There are, however, other reasons for continued concern about Ebola in West Africa. The conditions that allowed this virus to jump to the human population and spread so quickly have not all changed. We have not run out of people who are susceptible to being infected, although the pool is smaller after accounting for those who developed immunity to the virus naturally after contracting the disease. We have also made strides to shrink this pool even further with the success of one of the Ebola vaccine candidates, Merck’s  . Given immediately after exposure, it was shown to all but remove the chances of developing Ebola. We have still not definitively proved where this virus lives in nature when it is not infecting humans. Fruit bats are the leading contenders, but more research and surveillance of the natural world are needed. More research is also needed to understand what exact conditions allow the virus to jump from animals to humans. Hence we are a long way from being able to prevent these phenomena from happening. And the case in Sierra Leone last week brings up another point: The systemic weaknesses in public health infrastructure that allowed the virus to spread like wildfire still exist. If we were able to stop this epidemic, it was not because we rebuilt the public health systems in West Africa but because massive resources were poured into immediate response and heightened surveillance, with an immense amount of education and policies that echoed wartime precautions, like roadblocks that restricted the movement of entire countries. Having worked for months in Sierra Leone over the past two years, I can bear witness to the toll this epidemic has taken on affected communities. Nothing could be more tempting than to put this behind us. Despite WHO’s caution that there could be   the declaration of the end to the epidemic may signal that the behavioral changes and the heightened surveillance in West Africa are no longer necessary. This is particularly true when the entire enterprise was built on sheer will and very little permanent scaffolding to ensure that positive changes to the health care system stick. So it is important to have continued vigilance in West Africa. But that is not the only lesson to come out of this Ebola outbreak. By focusing on the end of the epidemic, we miss the larger point. We cannot live as a world that moves from responding to one epidemic after another. Rather than thinking of beginnings and ends, we need continuous surveillance for threatening infectious diseases that are both known and yet to be discovered. We need to move from a culture of outbreak response to one that focuses on prevention. Small clusters of infectious disease cases are inevitable, but outbreaks and epidemics are preventable. A stitch in time, though, is a hard sell. This past week also marked the release of a National Academy of Medicine sponsored commission’s report on the Global Health Risk Framework, which addressed why epidemics are an immense and inevitable threat to our global security. The report outlined the responsibility of individual nations and the global community to invest in systems that can rapidly pick up new threats and be nimble enough to respond to them quickly. Per the report, it would take a $4. 5 billion annual commitment to make these changes a reality. Although a daunting number, this investment is nowhere near close to the expected $60 billion in annual losses from pandemics. At the launch event for the report, the economist and president emeritus of Harvard University Larry Summers noted that the 1918 flu pandemic affected 7, 000 times more people than the recent Ebola outbreak, striking a third of the world’s population and killing 50 million to 100 million people  —   3 to 5 percent of everyone on earth. We have made significant scientific advancements since 1918, but we also now live in a world where contagions move at the speed of modern travel and trade. And there are billions more of us, living in large crowded cities. In a study by Dr. Larry Brilliant, the epidemiologist and director of Skoll Global Threats Fund, 90 percent of epidemiologists polled said they expect a large pandemic in their children or grandchildren’s lifetime, one that could affect over a billion people and cause global recession. In many ways, how we handled the Ebola crisis was a litmus test for our response to a large flu pandemic. And keep in mind that Ebola is much harder to spread over large geographical areas than respiratory viruses are. WHO has a difficult balance to strike between celebrating the hard work of stopping Ebola and continuing to urge a need for vigilance. As Albert Camus said in the novel The Plague, ”There have been as many plagues as wars in history yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” The best way to keep new cases of infectious diseases from causing epidemics is to expect them and to invest in public health and research during ”peace time” as much as we do during an outbreak. Nahid Bhadelia is an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center and the director of Infection Control at National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory."
"I am an infectious disease (ID) physician at Boston Medical Center, and I serve as the Director of Infection Control at National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory, helping design medical response programs to potential exposures to viruses that cause viral hemorrhagic fevers. This summer I spent 12 days in Sierra Leone, serving as part of a team treating patients at Kenema Government Hospital’s Ebola treatment center. The center was supported by the World Health Organization with guidance, logistics and clinicians. My colleagues and I were recruited through the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, a network that WHO hosts. I traveled with Dr. George Risi, a fellow ID doc, and Kate Hurley, RN, MSN, from St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula, which provides medical backup to Rocky Mountain Laboratories.  My journey to Sierra Leone and Kenema Hospital to serve as a physician in the Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) started more than a month before I actually traveled there. It is as much a mental journey as a physical one. What was once a textbook understanding of the virus quickly became an intimate experience of losing many around me to the disease. Before I left, traveling to West Africa to take care of these patients was an abstract humanitarian imperative for me. Now that I’m back, having seen what I have seen, I could never forgive myself if I did not make another trip. The first day in Sierra Leone, the day of arrival, all of the flight attendants put on gloves shortly before we landed. As I walked out into the customs halls in Lungi Airport in Freetown, every wall was plastered with posters providing information about Ebola. We were asked to complete a health questionnaire and fever check  —   one of dozens I would receive during my time in the country. In the dark rainy night, the water taxi that carried us from Lungi airport to Freetown seemed otherworldly. Seeing my   who had arrived a few hours before me, at the hotel was a big step in helping me reorient to the purpose of my journey. George, Kate and I needed to make it to Kenema in time to overlap with the outgoing team. It’s a three and a half hour trip from Freetown. On the way, we saw many children on the streets. It was a weekday. We wondered why they were not in school. Our driver told us school had been canceled because of Ebola. In fact, there were no weddings, no baptisms. People had stopped gathering. In between small villages, the lush green landscape was dotted with occasional burned buildings, remnants of the civil war. We arrived in Kenema and met the outgoing group at dinner. Their camaraderie was palpable. I could see how these relationships were critical. In this environment, you depend on the people you work with for your safety. It was hard not to feel like the new kid. We were somber at hearing about the continued dearth of healthcare workers and the patient load. On the first day at the treatment unit, we followed a clinician who’d been there for a while, learning about the available resources and the patients currently receiving treatment. Every thing I did that first day took a moment of reflection. OK, I am entering an ETU for the first time I am now seeing and caring for an Ebola patient for the first time. I am carefully coming out of my personal protective equipment (PPE) for the first time in the field  —   a time I am statistically most likely to infect myself. But after every first time, anxiety turned into resolve, and practice made the process routine. The following days were a blur. Hard work, the smell of chlorine, the heat. Each day started with a group breakfast, then the   drive to the hospital, a rush to get all the information, including overnight deaths, transfers, lab results. Although being inside the PPE was physically unbearable because of the heat, I felt a sense of urgency every morning to get into the unit. At the hospital, we each collected our PPE. We counted out the six items every day, a trick to develop muscle memory: gloves, tyvek suit, hood, face shield, mask, rubber boots. It was our shield as we walked into battle. Or so it felt. In pairs or as a team, we entered the   area. Sullivan, the man at the entrance, always had a ready smile as he sprayed down our rubber boots with bleach solution. We entered the donning tent. I saw so many people in that tent and early on wondered who they were. They were porters, hygienists, food servers. In the donning tent, we put on the equipment, checked each other out to check the suit for gaps and tears. I soon came to realize that you can spend an entire day with someone in PPE and not know what they look like. It’s why we put our names on our aprons, the top layer of the PPE, so we’d know each other’s identity. And then we entered the   zone. First it was the suspect wards, for patients who fit the case definition of Ebola and were waiting for a test to confirm the diagnosis. We called it the ”Annex.” which housed both those who will test positive and those who had symptoms similar to Ebola but may turn out to have another disease, like malaria. It was our daily challenge to separate the sick from those who are less symptomatic. The minute we entered the   zone, people were waiting on the landing of the ward entrance to ask what their test results were. Beyond the Annex were the confirmed ward and recovery wards. In the confirmed ward, the healing and the dying mingled. The hallways were filled with people at varying stages of their disease, from those on the road to recovery to those in the throes of their illness, coming to terms with the gravity of their situation. Many of these patients had already seen family members going through this and in some cases die. They were dehydrated, confused, looking at you, looking past you, too weak, bed bound, barely able to use the waste bucket next to their bed. Every day, it felt like you were putting out fires, trying to address the most urgent needs before your own resolve started to fade, your face shield fogged up, your mask was so filled with sweat you couldn’t breathe. In the ward, the patients whose tests shows they have recovered from Ebola have to be discharged so that we can make room for the new patients who have positive tests. Suspect patients who don’t have the disease have to be quickly discharged so they do not contract the infection while in the ETU. By the time you got out in the afternoon, wondering where the past few hours had gone, you were spent. On a typical day, I’d do either three   shifts in the suit, or two   shifts. The other six hours of the day I’d deal with case management and collect data to help with clinical care and keep tabs on this epidemic. And recover from the stress of being in the Ebola ward. After getting out of the PPE, I would hydrate like a marathoner. The idea that I’d put my body through that again, let alone later that afternoon, seemed unreal. But then my mind started to equilibriate with the return of the fluid and the electrolytes and I’d became strong enough to ignore the complaints of my body. Midday, we’d regroup and have lunch and share information about this patient or that. Some days I felt good coming out after a morning in the ward, as if I had made a difference and put things in order. Then three hours later I’d go back in and faced chaos. It’s as if fate was laughing at me. New patients had arrived who had not been tested some were deathly ill. Patients who looked good only a few hours ago had taken a turn for the worst. Some even died in the interim. The whole process started again: helping one human at a time and providing for immediate needs, while trying to keep my mind focused through the constant, ”Doctor, doctor” requests coming from all directions. One of the largest ethical dilemmas working in this environment was striking a balance between personal safety and patient survival. At times I’d have to leave the ward because the electricity was out and it was unsafe to continue working. It didn’t matter that I had a child in my hands who needed my help. Logically, healthcare worker safety is paramount because loss of workers will further stymie the response to the epidemic. But in reality, in that moment, as the provider for that patient, it will be the hardest choice you will make. At night, after our   days, we tried to spend some time with each other, decompressing. We tried to keep the mood light, joked, shared stories from home. We wondered if any of us could truly explain to others back home what this experience is really like. I tried to talk to family but exhaustion, and fear of revealing my own anxieties about contracting the disease, made me keep the conversations short. And then I’d do something silly, something that went against all logical understanding of this disease. I cleaned all major surfaces in my room with bleach wipes as if I was creating an invisible fortress of cleanliness, leaving the day behind me, and got into bed to fall asleep. If there are things that I wish I could share with others about my experience, they would be: 1) Most people can survive this disease. In the patients who presented to us in time, and who stayed hydrated before and during treatment, the mortality was under 40 percent. This is despite the lack of human resources and medical and lab supplies. My favorite days were days when we discharged patients from the recovery ward. One of my   asked the children in recovery to come up with a ”recovery song,” a celebration in anticipation of when their tests will turn negative and they will leave this place for home. The children would greet him every time he returned with the song. After a couple of days it was clear the adults also were partaking in this ritual. It was the most powerful thing I have ever witnessed, sometimes sitting outside the unit, hearing songs from the recovery ward. We can improve the mortality rate by just improving the number of hands helping and by giving patients the best basic supportive care. The early and continued provision of oral rehydration solution can help as well. 2) Every day I was there someone thanked me, thanked me for taking care of these patients. This encouragement was so important. I have provided care to patients in setting with limited resources, but generally as providers, we don’t have to worry about our own safety. We place an artificial barrier between ourselves and the patients, as if we are somehow immune to the diseases around us. It is an important part of being able to provide care. That façade is harder in this setting, knowing how many healthcare workers have died before us and seeing so many young people present with minimal symptoms and full faculties, and then watching them become so debilitated that they cannot get out of bed to defecate. Then to see that a hundred times over breaks the most stoic of dispositions. The words of encouragement were so important in light of the loss inside the unit. 3) Inside this ward is a microcosm of humanity and almost all of it is kindness and selflessness. A sick patient one bed over might offer to translate your words if the person you are interviewing doesn’t speak English. Healthier patients advocate for those who have taken a turn for the worst. Women adopted orphans and cared for them if the children’s own mother had died. People gave each other encouragement from across large ward rooms. Inside the wards, you found some of the most committed nurses from the local staff. Despite losing so many of their own, having their morale decimated, nurses like French, who became the head nurse at Kenema ETU, spent hours upon hours, day after day providing compassionate care. On one of my last days at Kenema, I found an old man in a triage tent who was extremely ill. I was giving him oral rehydration and kept asking him his name: ”Sir, tell me your name so I can see if you have been tested already.” He kept mumbling and when I could finally hear what he was saying repeatedly, it was, ”I am nobody. I am nobody.” I will never forget that moment. This epidemic is not one of nameless, faceless individuals living far away. It is a story of family members who expressed love and grief at losing their loved ones. It’s about strangers who provide kindness at the right time to others. It’s about children who wandered alone through the halls of illness but then made it out and survived. It’s about those who died in my hands despite all my efforts. It’s about the healthcare workers who buried their own and are continuing to work. It’s about entire communities that have been debilitated by this epidemic and about countries that will see an entire generation affected by it. It’s about putting your fear aside and doing what you know is needed in that moment. It’s about you and me and what we do next to eradicate the epidemic."
"The last few weeks have seen a remarkable series of iconoclastic musician deaths. Although Clarence Reid, better known by his sometime   Blowfly, who died of liver cancer in a South Florida hospice facility on January 17th 2016 at the age of 76, may not seem as epochal as David Bowie,   Pierre Boulez, jazz piano eminence Paul Bley or Lemmy Kilmister, he was the dominant exponent of a uniquely American idiom. Blowfly was the ne plus ultra of raunchy   parodies, writing profane lyrics to existing songs, which he then   and performed live. Many compared him to ”Weird Al” Yankovic, but his records are the shadowy id to the   accordionist’s super ego. Speaking to the German magazine Exberliner in 2008, Reid was clear: ”Weird Al has said ’Blowfly is an   Weird Al.’ Wrong. I was writing parodies when Weird Al was in diapers. He’s a   version of Blowfly.” Vinyl   knew Clarence Reid as an   songwriter, producer and a major figure in Miami’s soul and RB independent music business. And the hours following Reid’s death saw encomia from   Snoop Dogg and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, each paying tribute to not only his   versions of RB classics, but also the  ’  ’80s   he transitioned towards. Blowfly’s works presage the gleeful filth of fellow Miami residents 2 Live Crew, with only country singer David Allan Coe’s   contemporaneous lewd (and racist) recordings and Millie Jackson’s similarly ribald RB looming as large in the pantheons of dirty music. And if Blowfly took a cue or two from ’50s   smut peddlers Doug Clark and His Hot Nuts, the overwhelming majority of current   and RB artists owe Blowfly for their frank representations of unadulterated carnality and drug use. Needless to say, radio wouldn’t go anywhere near him. The recorded legacy of Blowfly is replete with often sly, inventive references to every known sexual and scatological practice, featuring slurs regarding ethnicity, body type and sexual preference, delivered with the glee of a fifth grader  —  or perhaps of individuals willing to access a fifth grader’s mindset. And yet it worked. For you see, Blowfly is really really funny. The shock of defiling soul standards with nasty talk is powerful fans of original, bighearted songs like Brook Benton’s ”Rainy Night In Georgia” may resent the effrontery of ”Spermy Night In Georgia,” but go with it and see where it takes you. As he told the Miami New Times in 1991, ”When Frank Sinatra sings, ’When you love somebody   It’s no good unless he loves you   All the way,’ what’s he really saying? It’s about sex.” Reid was born on February 14, 1939 in rural Cochran, Ga. his family was poor and he liked to claim that he had little in the way of a formal education. ”’Blowfly was invented when I was seven years old in the fields in Georgia,” he told the Exberliner. ”I had to quit school to work the farms. I was a mean little f***** so I turned hillbilly songs like ’Walkin’ the Floor Over You’ to ’J*****’ My Dick Over You.’ The white people loved it and gave me money when I’d sing the songs to them. My grandmamma thought I stole the money, and when I told her how I earned it, she said I was a disgrace to the black race and no better than an old Blowfly. But a little white girl told me blowflies lay eggs on dead things and that without them, the world would be consumed by germs.” He made his way to South Florida in the early ’60s and cut a number of soul singles for regional labels with the original,   1964 version of ”Blowfly’s Rapp” laying credible claim as the first rap record, Reid having claimed that his delivery therein was influenced by the patter of southern DJs. That recording remains rare. Reid eventually met Miami record impresario Henry Stone, and began writing songs for artists on his many labels, including Betty Wright. Her huge 1972 hit ”Clean Up Woman” is one of the many songs of empowerment that Reid wrote (and produced) for women. (Wright’s ”Girls Can’t Do What The Guys Do,” which would be sampled for Beyonce’s ”Upgrade U,” is another.) They are striking for the level of empathy Reid deployed with respect to the romantic and professional travails that women have endured since antiquity  —   and in light of the recordings his alter ego would soon be notorious for. Reid became a bedrock of Stone’s TK Records, a key Miami label behind George McCrae’s oddly wistful early disco benchmark ”Rock Your Baby,” working with artists such as Gwen McRae and Timmy Thomas, among many others, and making key contributions to the early, defining hits by KC and the Sunshine Band. All the while, Reid entertained fellow musicians and friends with dirty versions of the RB hits of the late ’60s and ’70s,  —   ”S***ing On The Dock of the Bay.” was an early standout. Stone encouraged him to record these and then released and marketed them in the guise of underground ”party records” from ”Blowfly.” His first album as such, 1971’s Weird World Of Blowfly, is presented as a live show (crowd noise was edited in) comprised of repurposed soul gems. When that record and subsequent efforts such as  1977’s Blowfly’s Disco gathered steam,  Reid became concerned that their reputation would besmirch his standing as a songwriter, so he took to donning a sequined hood and top and a pair of   booty shorts for album covers and appearances. He even recorded ”Nobody’s Butt But Yours Babe,” reworking Clarence Reid’s   ”Nobody But You Babe.” His adoption of an alter ego did not stop Stanley Adams, the president of ASCAP at the time, from suing Reid for befouling his composition ”What A Difference A Day Makes” as ”What A Difference A Lay Makes.” His marriage of the time produced two children, including 1998 WNBA Rookie of the Year, Tracy Reid. Once   emerged, in 1980 Reid recut ”Blowfly’s Rapp,” the first of a series of tall tales delivered via the nascent form. Dipping a toe into the period’s CB radio craze (the   Blowfly consistently responded to technological and cultural trends) the new ”Rapp” spun the tale of a   encounter with Ku Klux   truck drivers to light funk backing ”The Incredible Fulk” found our hero undergoing an experiment that makes his manhood so big that it ascends into the sky and ”planes had to   themselves” while 1981’s ”Convoy” again found him behind the wheel (and also included an ”argument” between ”Blowfly” and ”Reid”). He adopted what would now be understood as a tag: almost every song from this era features a sinister bellowing laugh, redolent of a twirly mustached villain: ”      ! !!!” At Blowfly’s creative height, he was as agile and resourceful a singer as any he mocked, occasionally ascending into a keening falsetto few could achieve. After TK Records collapsed in 1980, he recorded for Bo Crane’s Pandisc, a label that would become a cornerstone of the Miami Bass sound. Released in 1984, ”Electronic P**** Sucker” drew on the emerging synthetic ”electro” movement by sampling Cybotron’s ”Clear,” and is one of the genre’s cult classics (its narrative finds Blowfly encountering a rogue horny robot at a computer store, with Reid voicing the robot via a sinister vocoder treatment). That election year also saw the release of ”First Black President,” with Blowfly becoming POTUS and the song running over with sex, drugs and racially stereotypical imagery. (He later   it in 1988.) His cuts, either very popular or obscure, would be sampled by the likes of Warren G. Jurassic Five, DJ Quik, the Avalanches, and the Ol Dirty Bastard. From the ’90s onwards, Reid was chiefly championed by  the bearded and tattooed set. His records had long since stopped selling via traditional channels, and mounting debt and unpaid bills saw him sell the rights to his catalog in 2003 he ceded all future royalties for a nominal sum and had to scramble for the rest of his life, according to the 2010 documentary, The Weird World Of Blowfly. For the past decade, he has worked on the punk rock circuit with his   hand man ”Uncle” Tom Bowker. Blowfly’s Punk Rock  Party was released in 2006 on Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles: the Dead Kennedys takeoff ”R. Kelly In Cambodia” not only reflects his intended audience’s interests, but also indicates his own alienation towards black audiences. The Weird World documentary, which is largely concerned with the drudgery of his touring life in the late 2000s, saw Reid expressing contempt for other African Americans in terms similar to the extreme respectability politics diatribes of black conservatives like Shelby Steele. Yet Reid was consistently less interested in the ”respectable” long view of 50 years of nasty song parodies. ”Blowfly has never ’developed,’” he told the Exberliner. ”Blowfly is still the same mean, perverted little bastard he was back in Georgia in the ’40s. That’s why I still eat pizza and honey like a little kid and watch cartoons every day. I live in my own Weird World.” Additional reporting by D. Strauss."
"For decades, Alaska has relied on oil to pay its bills. In recent years, up to 90 percent of state spending came from oil revenue. With crude prices at a   low, the state faces at least a $3. 5 billion deficit  —   or   of its budget. Lawmakers gathering in Juneau on Tuesday face some unpopular choices, including the first income tax in decades. To understand why Alaska has a budget problem, stop by any gas station. In Anchorage, gas sells for $2. 30 a gallon. A year and a half ago, people here were shelling out more than $4 a gallon. And that’s the problem. Tour guide Lynne Jablonski stopped to fill up her car. ”It’s a mixed feeling, right? Because it’s a great thing when I look at my credit card bill, but it’s not so good for the state that the oil prices are so low,” Jablonski says. As crude prices have dropped, the state’s budget has tanked. So America’s most   state is trying to figure out what to do. Alaska always knew this day would come. When companies struck oil in Prudhoe Bay in 1968, leaders worried how to manage the windfall. ”You’ve got to remove the money. Put it behind a rope where you cannot utilize it for flamboyant expenditures,” says Jay Hammond, Alaska’s governor, speaking in 1980. Hammond helped create the Permanent Fund. Call it Alaska’s retirement account. Each year, a share of oil money is set aside. The fund has grown to about $50 billion  —   and the state isn’t allowed to touch it, just the earnings. Hammond saw it as a source of income for when oil ran out. In the past 40 years, those earnings have been used for pretty much just one thing: Everyone in the state receives an annual share. Last year’s check was more than $2, 000. If the state wants to use the fund’s earnings to cover the deficit, it will reduce that dividend. Back at the gas station, Dave Niebert filled up his tank. He puts his daughter’s check each year into a college fund. ”I’m a   Alaskan, been here my whole life, and I’ve gotten every one of the Permanent Fund checks, so I think they can look elsewhere,” Niebert says. There aren’t many places to look. Alaska remains the only state without either an income or a sales tax. Even if it had both, the tax base isn’t big enough. Only about 740, 000 people live here. With oil down, earnings on the state’s savings are now the single largest source of income. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker wants to turn those savings into a kind of endowment, to generate a fixed income. ”It basically puts Alaska on an allowance, and so we stop making our    decisions in government based upon the price of oil,” he says. The plan wouldn’t solve all the budget problems. So Walker has proposed new taxes, including the first income tax since 1980. That’s a tall order anytime  —   and this is an election year. The Legislature’s Republican majority opposes new taxes and wants deep cuts first. Democrats, like Sen. Bill Wielechowski, argue that before the state goes after Alaskans’ PFD  —   or Permanent Fund dividend  —   it should demand more of its biggest industry. ”I have a hard time going back to my constituents and saying, ’Yeah, I’m sorry, I have to take your PFD so I can continue to give tax credits to the largest, wealthiest corporations in the history of the world.’ That’s not going to fly in my district,” he says. It’s not clear it will fly anywhere. But if it does, the last frontier could find its fate a little less tied to the price at the pump."
"Editor’s note: It’s National Popcorn Day! We’re celebrating by bringing back this tale, first published in 2014, about the history of the beloved snack. Popcorn is a truly ancient snack. Archaeologists have uncovered popcorn kernels that are 4, 000 years old. They were so   they could still pop. Dolores Piperno, a paleobotanist with the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Insitute, says corn, and specifically popcorn, helped lay the foundations for the Aztec Empire. ”When you have a very highly productive crop like corn, that makes the rise of high civilizations possible,” she says. Piperno grows the wild,   of modern corn  —   a weird grain called teosinte. It has just a few kernels on each stalk, and they’re too hard to eat or to grind into flour. But teosinte has a special property that almost makes up for these shortcomings: It can pop. ”All early corns were popcorns,” Piperno says. ”They were around for millennia before these other forms of corn.” After a couple of thousand years, the Mesoamericans managed to cultivate varieties of corn that were good for flour, but they still ate popcorn. The Aztec language even has a word for the sound of many kernels popping at once  —   totopoca. After the Spanish invaded, popcorn spread around the world, and soon people began to figure out how popcorn actually works. It turns out that   kernel  —   the thing that makes teosinte and popcorn impossible to eat raw  —   is the key. ”It acts as a pressure cooker,” says David Jackson, a food scientist at the University of Nebraska. He says the durable kernel keeps water and starch sealed inside. When a kernel is heated, the starch liquefies and the pressure builds until the seed coat breaks. ”The pressure cooker essentially fails, and it explodes outward into a popped kernel,” Jackson says. The liquefied starch froths outward, cooling and solidifying in a fraction of a second. If you look at a popped kernel under the microscope, you can actually see the bubbles that were formed by the expanding steam. That’s why popcorn is so light and fluffy  —   it’s made of bubbles. There’s something to think about next time you’re stuck watching a bad movie."
"No. 5 seed Rafael Nadal lost in the first round of the Australian Open to fellow Spaniard Fernando Verdasco in a   thriller on Tuesday. It’s only the second   loss in a major tournament for the former world No. 1, and the upset was the headline of the tournament so far  —   or, at least, it would have been. On Sunday, the BBC and BuzzFeed published an investigative report alleging widespread   and corruption in tennis that is reverberating around the world. The report  —   based on information from a ”cache of leaked documents” from a 2008 probe commissioned by tennis authorities, the statistical analysis of 26, 000 tennis matches and betting information from 2009 through 2015  —   alleges that some players were paid to throw matches and that tennis officials did not act on the findings. The report says there is evidence that ”winners of singles and doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments are among [a] core group of 16 players who have repeatedly been reported for losing games when highly suspicious bets have been placed against them.” The report also accuses the Tennis Integrity Unit, which was created following the 2008 probe, of not sufficiently pursuing and prosecuting allegations of  . Top tennis officials have categorically denied this. ”The Tennis Integrity Unit and tennis authorities absolutely reject any suggestion that evidence of   has been suppressed for any reason or isn’t being thoroughly investigated,” ATP Chairman Chris Kermode said at a news conference Monday, according to The Associated Press. The report, which also alleges that one   player competing in the Australian Open is suspected of ”repeatedly fixing his first set,” did not name the implicated players, saying it couldn’t definitively prove they were involved in illegal activities. John Templon, the BuzzFeed reporter who collaborated on the report, told NPR’s All Things Considered that the exposé was meant to serve as a call to action for tennis authorities to crack down on   and betting in the sport. World. No. 3 Roger Federer, however, said the names needed to be released in order for the sport to move forward. ”I mean, it’s, like, who, what? It’s, like, thrown around. It’s so easy to do that,” Federer said according to The Guardian. ”I would love to hear names. Then at least it’s concrete stuff and you can actually debate about it. Was it the player? Was it the support team? Who was it? Was it before? Was it a doubles player, a singles player? Which slam? It’s so all over the place. It’s nonsense to answer something that is pure speculation.” The No. 2 player in the world, Andy Murray, said he would not be surprised if   was happening, even at the sport’s elite levels. He said: ”I’ve been aware of it since I was quite young and I think when people come with big sums of money when you’re at that age, some people can make mistakes.” At a press conference, the current top player in the world, Novak Djokovic, said he was approached to throw a match in 2007. He said someone propositioned a member of his team, offering $200, 000 if Djokovic lost a match at the St. Petersburg Open in Russia. Djokovic said the offer was rejected and that he didn’t even play in the tournament. He went on to say that the sport has come a long way since 2007 and that he doesn’t think that   is a problem at the top levels of tennis. Serena Williams, too, dismissed the allegations. ”I play very hard and every player that I play plays very hard,” she said at a press conference. ”If that’s going on, I don’t know about it.” Paul Scotney, the director of Sports Integrity Services, was one of the lead investigators during the probe into tennis   back in 2008. He told NPR’s Morning Edition that the investigation uncovered a number of suspicious bets. He also said that tennis is ”one of the three top sports for betting,” along with horse racing and soccer, and that that’s not going to change. ”So the facts are, it’s a   sport and will continue to be a   sport, and authorities need to understand that and work closely with the betting operators because of that,” Scotney said."
"Univision Communications Inc. the parent company to the nation’s leading   broadcast channel, has acquired a controlling stake in the satirical news site The Onion, NPR has learned. The agreement between two seemingly disparate media outfits was described to NPR by a person with direct involvement in the negotiations. A second person who was briefed on the deal by Univision executives also confirmed its broad strokes. The amount of money involved in the deal was not disclosed. NPR has also obtained a memo from the CEO of The Onion announcing the deal to staffers. This account is in many ways reliant upon the information provided by those two people. NPR sought comment Monday from corporate officials and spokespersons for Univision and The Onion about the deal, as well as from Fusion and ABC about elements of this story involving them. None of those messages by voice mail or email were returned. Univision will acquire a 40 percent, controlling stake in The Onion, which includes the site, its influential sister   outfit The A. V. Club, the social media satire site Clickhole, and various book and video projects. Univision also will have the right to buy the humor company outright. The move comes at a time of transition and change for both organizations. Univision’s dominance in Spanish language television has been based on a loyal but aging population. Latinos born in this country  —   a quickly growing segment of the population  —   are much more likely to consume media in English. Univision launched the   Fusion network in concert with Disney’s ABC network to reach   Latinos, a venture that soon pivoted to reach millennials more generally. Last spring, Univision also acquired The Root, an online site geared toward   readers that was founded by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. Randy Falco, Univision’s CEO, and Isaac Lee, its president of news and digital, have concluded that humor is a key ingredient to appeal to the millennial palate. They hope to build on The Onion’s traffic for their existing digital sites, which are experiencing marked growth but not yet enjoying much in the way of profits. The Onion has undergone major shifts as well. Born as a printed newspaper in the late 1980s in the undergraduate humor culture in Madison, Wis. it moved to New York in 2001 to tap into the energy and comedy scene. A steep drop in revenue after the global financial crisis, however, led to a move to Chicago, which triggered a diaspora among many of the editors and writers of that time. The Onion will remain based in Chicago under the terms of the new ownership structure. Like some of the journals it parodied, as its metabolism accelerated to keep pace with the frenetic media age, The Onion abandoned print. It published its final printed editions in December 2013. Much of The Onion’s profits arrive from Onion Labs, its division that makes ”sponsored content” videos  —   comedic in effect but intended to reinforce a brand’s underlying advertising message or qualities. Past sponsors include   the PC manufacturer Lenovo, and Illinois’ health care exchange. The Onion had been bought by a group led by financial investor David Schafer in 2001. It publicly acknowledged seeking bids in fall 2014 and was reportedly in at least informal talks twice in the past decade about a possible sale to Viacom. In a memo to staff obtained by NPR, Onion CEO Mike McAvoy told staff that Fusion would play a key role in the site’s future. McAvoy wrote: ”So what does this mean for us as a company? Good things. Univision is excited to help Onion Inc. grow, and to provide the resources to both support our   mission and fund new initiatives. They’ll help us keep the foundation strong and to build great new things on top of it. As an independent media company, we’ve always been forced to run a tight financial ship, which has made us smart and lean, but not always ready to invest in the great new ideas that we come up with.” Univision’s Fusion network appears to be a key element in the acquisition. Fusion has been a project of formidable  —   but in many ways unrealized  —   aspirations the parent company realizes a profit on the television portion of Fusion only because its   offerings have been cut back sharply in favor of programs by outside contractors. Univision anchor Jorge Ramos’ hourlong   newscast remains. Fusion’s bosses have taken great heart in recent months from the role Ramos has played in the presidential primaries, particularly in tangling with Republican candidate Donald Trump. They have also been buoyed of late both by the network’s broadcast of the Democratic Brown  Black Presidential Forum in Iowa last week and by the news that Sean Penn and the drug lord Joaquin Guzman joked about a Fusion documentary about him during their now infamous Rolling Stone interview. The network’s aggressive digital hirings, including such social media savants as Anna Holmes, Alexis Madrigal and Felix Salmon, have seemed incongruous to some critics except as part of Fusion’s bid to appeal to younger audiences. The Fusion television network is now available in 40 million households   of Univision’s major contracts with cable providers Comcast and Time Warner Cable in the next two years could add tens of millions more. The network already has partnered with others in the world of comedy for programming: One show is produced in partnership with Funny or Die, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s comedy site. Another project relayed former Daily Show correspondent and comedian Al Madrigal’s travels as he seeks to understand his Mexican heritage better. Univision and ABC are now in the process of unraveling their joint venture in Fusion, which will remain in Miami as part of Univision. And Univision, which is privately held, is now weighing an initial public offering  —   that is, whether to issue public stock."
"Mardi Gras was still close to three weeks away. But on Saturday afternoon, Jan. 16, the French Quarter was gridlocked with costumed frolickers, a massive, glittery throng radiating out through the narrow streets from the historic   venue Preservation Hall. The occasion? A parade in memory of David Bowie, led by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Bowie fandom would be rampant in a city for which flamboyant,   dressing up, not to mention music, is a way of life. That, combined with a perfectly warm and sunny afternoon, the beginning of the Carnival season and, certainly, interest in the parade’s   Win Butler and Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire, who have lived in New Orleans for about two years, drew multiple thousands of fans downtown  —   so many that the blocks outside the hall and the parade’s end point, the rock club One Eyed Jacks, were almost impassable. The band, led by Butler, who sang through a small red megaphone, and Chassagne, who played a keytar, left Preservation Hall and gamely shoved its way through the mass toward the Mississippi River and then back, along a route about a   blocks long, playing Bowie songs arranged for parading brass. Bowie was an ardent fan of Arcade Fire. In 2005, they recorded a live EP together eight years later, he contributed backing vocals to the band’s album Reflektor. Standing on Preservation Hall’s balcony with Chassagne and Ben Jaffe, the hall’s creative director, Butler spoke briefly about the shock of his friend’s death. ”It felt like a planet exploded,” he said. He opened a bottle of wine and poured a splash onto the crowd. Chassagne and Butler have been spending a lot of time with the hall band since relocating. In December, they joined the group on a weeklong trip to Cuba. Just before leaving, Jaffe said later, they had begun rehearsing Bowie’s ”Modern Love,” with its ebullient horn bursts, together. (When the parade and its aftermath were done and the huge crowd dispersed, the band members returned to Preservation Hall to play the night’s three regular   sets. The couple joined them onstage to close the first one with ”Modern Love. ”) Since his death, an avalanche of keen appreciations has been written on the multiple layers and levels of Bowie’s omnivorous musical appetite, including his   forays into funk and disco. Bowie, whose first instrument was the saxophone, would very likely been pleased or at least entertained to hear ”Modern Love” and ”Fame” arranged for strutting, with sousaphone thump and trumpet blasts, as well as explosively brassy, rumbling versions of ”Suffragette City” and ”Heroes.” Blackstar, his sweeping, atmospheric final testament, was another showcase for his ongoing interest in jazz, employing the   Donny McCaslin Quartet as backing band. And not for nothing, Bowie had cited as a powerful influence and inspiration Little Richard, who honed his own wild sound (and look) in    ’50s sessions at Cosimo Matassa’s JM Studio in the Quarter. Second lines come from the older jazz funeral custom in New Orleans, the structured ritual of accompanying a body from the site of a memorial service to the site of burial. The ”first line” comprises the casket, family and close friends and a band with    —   that is, portable  —   instrumentation: bass and snare drums and horns. The second line is the group of onlookers that follows, walking first to the somber rhythm of a dirge, and then, after the body is ”cut loose” at the cemetery, dancing to a joyous, upbeat   whomp. (The dirge that began Preservation Hall’s parade was ”Oh! You Pretty Things,” played at a solemn tempo.) Late in the 19th century, social aid and pleasure clubs  —   community groups that are exactly what they sound like, cooperating to help members in need and to have fun  —   began presenting   parades with brass bands out of pure celebration. Most New Orleans weekends, except during the hottest summer months, deliver at least one such parade. Both expressions of the second line are deeply New Orleanian practices, invested with history and meaning. After the event, as Butler DJed Bowie songs on the club’s balcony while Chassagne and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s Walter Harris drummed along, Jaffe, who also plays bass and sousaphone in the hall band, pointed out that he had been careful to bill it as a memorial parade. ”The idea of a second line is so sacred,” he said. ”Not a lot of people from outside of New Orleans have been honored with that.” (The only one most people I asked could remember, in recent history, was a massive second line in memory of Michael Jackson organized by the Revolution Social Aid and Pleasure Club in June 2009, a week after Jackson’s death.) Jaffe took over management of the venue and band shortly after graduating from Oberlin College’s conservatory in the early ’90s. His parents, Allan and Sandra Jaffe, had run the place since 1961, hiring players who remembered the earliest days of jazz and creating a gathering spot  —   often racially integrated, flouting Jim Crow  —   for French Quarter bohemians and fans of traditional jazz, whose popularity had been on the wane. Preservation Hall still presents three traditional sets nightly, in a    showroom that hasn’t changed much in   years. The audience sits on wooden benches or on the floor, quite literally at the band’s feet there’s no bar or restroom access. But over the course of the younger Jaffe’s tenure, the hall has also carefully expanded its purview to present or record with an eclectic list of collaborators. John Oates, Jimmy Buffett (who began his career busking on the streets of the Quarter in the ’60s, as Preservation Hall was starting its own) Bombino, the Alabama Shakes, and Shovels and Rope have all played the hall in the past three years. Tom Waits, Ani DiFranco, Merle Haggard, Jim James and Jason Isbell, among others, have all also recently recorded with the hall band, which is an active host to its performing guests. During those special live performances, the band doesn’t cede the stage it actively backs the featured act. Those new experiments are arguably helped along by the fact that many members of its current   band are younger, more connected to pop, RB and even   as well as traditional jazz. Last year, the hall band shared the stage with local   icon DJ Jubilee as well as with the rappers Fiend, who frequently collaborates with Curren$y, and Nesby Phips, a   of Mahalia Jackson who has worked with Juvenile and Lil Wayne. There’s also the natural hybridity of music in South Louisiana, where brass bands and zydeco musicians have regularly adopted elements of funk, soul, pop and   for decades. A parade for Bowie fits not unreasonably into the evolving hall. It surely fits into New Orleans, a city that believes so strongly in the transformative power of masking that its calendar includes a season  —   and since 1875, a legal holiday  —   during which obscuring your identity and trying on new ones is the rule. The French Quarter teemed with Ziggy Stardusts, Goblin Kings and creepy clowns but also with people in sundry unrelated wigs, masks, tutus, boas, hats, suits, ties, gowns and other regalia following, arguably, one of the great directives of Bowie: Feel beautiful, being yourself. Or being somebody else. Among the costumed revelers in their freaky best were several sporting copies of the gauzy blindfold Bowie wore in the video for the Blackstar single ”Lazarus,” which was released three days before his death and is now, of course, widely read as a work of art about it. In the video, with the fabric around his eyes, he clutches the blanket of a narrow hospital bed as the camera closes in on the veins that stand out on his bony hands and throat, and the deep wrinkles around his mouth. He’s made himself into a grim specter of mortality, a vision of death  —   or of a strange zone after life but before death, where the light is gray and the shadows get longer. A lot of traditional masking groups take to the streets on Mardi Gras, including Mardi Gras Indians, in their elaborately beaded and feathered suits, and Baby Dolls, women in poofy bloomers and frilly hats whose practice dates to black Storyville, at the beginning of the 20th century. One of those, thought to be about as old, is the North Side Skull and Bones Gang. At the crack of dawn, carrying sticks and wearing handmade skeleton suits, they start to knock on doors in the Treme neighborhood. Most wear   skull masks and aprons   with messages like ”The End Is Near,” ”Too Late” or ominously, ”You Next.” They kick off the last day of Carnival, the literal farewell to the flesh, as visions of death come knocking, a stark reminder that all flesh really is temporary. In an entry on jazz funerals and   parades for Knowla. org, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ encyclopedia of all things   Tulane music professor Matt Sakakeeny wrote that the jazz funeral ”celebrates life at the moment of death.” The Carnival season and its aftermath, Lent and Easter, are similar, a cycle of life, death and rebirth marked by ceremony. So much of the strange and elegant Blackstar resonates now as a graceful final testament, a sort of ceremonial exit    —   especially ”Lazarus”  —   with awareness of mortality. Like the Skull and Bones gangs or the Lazarus maskers, it was a reminder of death during the celebration of life, and like a jazz funeral, a burst of vitality in the midst of mourning  —   an escort from the world of the living to whatever comes after, a celebration of life at the moment of death, the last great transformation."
"”I am an academy member and it doesn’t reflect me,” actor David Oyelowo said last night, rebuking the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for again failing to nominate black performers. Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award Gala in Los Angeles, Oyelowo asked those present to pray for the academy’s president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, saying she needs their support. ”The academy has a problem,” Oyelowo said, according to the Hollywood Reporter. ”It’s a problem that needs to be solved.” He also criticized the slow pace of change in Hollywood, comparing it unfavorably with the U. S. passage of civil rights legislation 50 years ago. The lack of diversity in the Oscar nominations announced Thursday quickly set off a wave of criticism. Over the weekend, filmmaker Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith both said they won’t attend the ceremony. Boone Isaacs, who was elected the academy’s first black president in 2013, was present for Oyelowo’s speech  —   she was being presented with the Rosa Parks Humanitarian Award when Oyelowo diverted from his prepared text, according to the Reporter. The academy president aired her own thoughts on diversity last night, issuing a statement via the Oscars site that reads in part: ”While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes. The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership.” Those steps center on recruitment, Boone Isaacs said, noting that in the 1960s and ’70s, the organization had sought younger members ”to stay vital and relevant.” As we reported Thursday, ”for the second year in a row, no black actor or actress was nominated for an Oscar. And unlike last year, when Selma competed for best picture, no black faces are featured in what the academy is calling the top films of 2015.” One day after the nominations were announced, Chris Rock, who’s hosting next month’s awards ceremony, tweeted, ”The #Oscars. The White BET Awards.” Saying via a video posted to Facebook that she won’t be attending, Pinkett Smith said, ”The academy has the right to acknowledge whomever they choose, to invite whomever they choose.” She added, ”Begging for acknowledgement  —   or even asking  —   diminishes dignity. It diminishes power.” Announcing his decision via Instagram, Spike Lee said, ”As I see it, the Academy Awards is not where the ’real’ battle is. It’s in the executive office of the Hollywood studios and TV and cable networks. . .. People, the truth is we ain’t in those rooms and until minorities are, the Oscar nominees will remain  .” Lee also thanked Boone Isaacs and the academy for awarding him an honorary Oscar in November. But he said of the upcoming ceremony, ”We cannot support it.” Last year, Oyelowo’s portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma was widely expected to garner an Oscar nomination. On Monday, he said that after the snub, Boone Isaacs ”invited me to her office to talk about what went wrong.” He added, ”For 20 opportunities to celebrate actors of color, actresses of color, to be missed last year is one thing for that to happen again this year is unforgivable.” Referring to black performers’ prominent roles in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and other successful films, Oyelowo stated, ”This institution doesn’t reflect its president and it doesn’t reflect this room. I am an academy member, and it doesn’t reflect me and it doesn’t reflect this nation.” This year, Pinkett Smith’s husband, Will Smith, did not receive a nomination for his work in Concussion. Neither did Idris Elba, despite winning acclaim for his part in Beasts of No Nation. Both actors were nominated for Golden Globes. Within the strong criticism that has met this year’s Oscar nominations, there’s also disagreement over who should have been recognized. In response to Pinkett Smith’s video, actress Janet Hubert, who portrayed Will Smith’s Aunt Viv on the 1990s TV show Fresh Prince of   released a video of her own in which she told the couple, ”Y’all need to get over yourselves.” After saying she felt Elba and others deserved recognition, Hubert addressed her former  : ”I didn’t think, frankly, you deserved a Golden Globe nomination with that accent, but you got one. And just because the world doesn’t go the way you want it to go doesn’t mean that you can go out and then you start asking people to stand up and sing ’We Shall Overcome’ for you.” For his part, Elba, who, like Oyewolo, grew up in London, gave his own speech yesterday ”about a lack of diversity on British television,” as NPR’s Tanya Ballard Brown reported. In it, he told members of Parliament and senior TV executives about hitting a point in his acting career when he realized he would only be seen as either a best friend or a gang leader. ”I knew I wasn’t going to land a lead role,” Elba said. ”I knew there wasn’t enough imagination in the industry for me to be seen as a lead.” In his speech Monday night, Oyelowo said performers dream of being accepted by the academy ”because it is the height of excellence.” He added, ”I would like to walk away and say it doesn’t matter, but it does, because that acknowledgement changes the trajectory of your life, your career and the culture of the world we live in.”"
"Last week saw the unhappy reprise of #OscarSoWhite, a Twitter hashtag that’s becoming something of an annual tradition skewering the lack of diversity in nominations for the Academy Awards. Many fans and critics are frustrated  —   to say the least  —   that all of this year’s nominees in acting categories are white, citing Michael B. Jordan’s performance in Creed as one of a handful of expected   for recognition. Now, thousands are pledging to boycott watching the awards ceremony on television, and Jada   and Spike Lee have publicly stated that they will not attend. We’ve rounded up some of the most thoughtful responses to #OscarsSoWhite, shedding light on the history of race in Hollywood, how Oscars voting actually works, and how the academy could respond to the backlash. Eliza Berman of Time says actors of color seem to be receiving deserved recognition from everywhere but the academy: ”If this year’s field feels like déjà vu all over again, that’s because there’s virtually no improvement to speak of. The lack of nods to actors of color  —   and stories about people of color  —   comes despite Golden Globe nominations for Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) and Will Smith (Concussion) despite the critical success of Beasts of No Nation, Straight Outta Compton and Creed, not to mention widespread accolades calling the latter’s director, Ryan Coogler, one of the most promising new talents in the industry.” Todd VanDerWerff at Vox delves into the context of diversity within the movie industry: ”Diversity, in short, isn’t about simply including as many nonwhite men as possible. It’s about acknowledging that white men don’t have a lock on good stories, and letting others’ stories be told as well as possible. The Oscars improve at this conversation in fits and starts with every year. This year was much better in terms of recognizing films about women than the past several years have been, for instance. But the awards still have a long way to go. And as the film industry’s most prestigious prize, simply bestowing their stamp upon a film automatically makes it more viable.” Filmmaker Spike Lee shared his views on the roots of the issue, as reported by Brandon Griggs of CNN: ”Lee said the ’real’ battle’ over racism in Hollywood is not with the Academy Awards but in ’the executive offices of the Hollywood studios and TV and cable networks,’ where gatekeepers decide which projects get made and which don’t. ” ’People, the truth is we ain’t in those rooms, and until minorities are, the Oscar nominees will remain lily white,’ he wrote [on his Instagram].” The academy did, in fact, try to broaden its voting membership in 2015. Rebecca Keegan and Steven Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times write about the new changes that took place within the academy. Not only did the academy invite over 300 new members but it also launched A2020, a new initiative designed to promote inclusion within the organization. However, Steve Pond at The Wrap questions the feasibility of the changes: ”[It] raises the question of whether an organization the size of the Academy can be changed significantly just through an influx of new members. Many   have suggested that any real Academy makeover would have to also include purging the voting rolls of older members who have not worked in the movie industry in years or even decades. That, however, would be a huge step that would likely anger an enormous number of members, and one that [academy President Cheryl Boone] Isaacs’ statement does not address.” Tim Gray at Variety explains how A2020, which was launched in November 2015 to help the academy and studio executives expand their thinking when hiring and mentoring new talent, might work (or not): ”For pessimists, a   plan is too slow. But the harsh reality is that the film industry works at a glacial pace, locking in stars, writers and directors several years in advance. So even though studios and agencies may say they want immediate change, it’s a   how realistic that is an overhaul was not evident in this year’s nominations, and it may not be apparent next year either.” This is an issue Isaacs, who is   expressed in a statement released on Twitter on Sunday, saying she is ”heartbroken and frustrated by the lack of inclusion”: ”As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly. ”This isn’t unprecedented for the Academy. In the ’60s and ’70s it was about recruiting younger members to stay vital and relevant. In 2016, the mandate is inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. We recognize the very real concerns of our community, and I so appreciate all of you who have reached out to me in our effort to move forward together.” While criticism of Isaacs and the academy abounds, David Oyelowo, who played Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, addressed this issue in a gala honoring Isaacs, according to Refinery29 and The Hollywood Reporter: ”Oyelowo said: ’This institution doesn’t reflect its president and it doesn’t reflect this room. I am an Academy member and it doesn’t reflect me, and it doesn’t reflect this nation.’ Still, he offered his ’support’ for Isaacs. ’The Academy is an institution in which they all say radical and timely change cannot happen quickly,’ Oyelowo said, per THR. ’It better happen quickly. The law of this country can change in a matter of months. It better come on. The Oscars is on February 28. Cheryl needs us to pray that by that date, change is going to come. We need to pray for Cheryl, we need to support Cheryl, we need to love Cheryl. We cannot afford to get bitter, we cannot afford to get negative. But we must make our voice heard.’ ”"
"If you fall off a curb, bop your head and go to the ER to make sure you’re OK, there’s a good chance you’ll be trundled off for a CT scan. That might sound comforting, but people with injuries minor enough that they get sent home are increasingly being given computed tomography scans, a study finds. That’s despite efforts to reduce the unnecessary use of CTs, which use radiation and increase the lifetime risk of cancer. There’s been a lot of focus on excess use of CTs in children, but much less on adults who go to the emergency department for things that turn out to be no big deal. So researchers at the University of California, San Francisco looked at data on every single emergency department visit in the state from 2005 through 2013. They looked at people who had relatively minor injuries, focusing only on those who were sent home after being evaluated and treated. That could include people with fractures, sprains and strains. Out of those 8, 535, 831 people with injuries that didn’t appear to be serious, 5. 9 percent got at least one CT scan while they were in the emergency department. That number rose over time, from 3. 51 percent in 2005 to 7. 17 percent in 2013. The study was published Monday in the Journal of Surgical Research. ”There is a lot of awareness about overuse of CTs,” says Renee Hsia, a professor of emergency medicine and health policy at UCSF who was the senior author of the study. But patients and doctors both have reasons for wanting a scan. ”Patients tend to want to be safe, which is not a bad thing,” Hsia says, ”but sometimes they want more rather than less. It’s a very American thing. Also doctors don’t want to miss anything.” But safety comes with a price. The 72 million CT scans that Americans got in 2007 will cause 29, 000 excess cancers, according to a 2009 study from the National Cancer Institute. Nearly 15, 000 of those cancers could be fatal. Efforts to get doctors to cut back on use of CTs may have caused the little downward blip in Hsia’s data from 2009 to 2011, but the numbers then continued to rise. CTs of the head were most popular. The pelvis and abdomen was the only body area that got scanned less often. People who went to Level I and II trauma centers were more likely to get CTs, the authors found, which may reflect the culture of institutions used to dealing with severely injured patients. As a practicing ED doctor, Hsia says there’s a lot pressure to scan patients and get them out the door rather than keep them in the hospital overnight for observation, as they would have done in the past. ”There’s a lot of pressure for earlier and earlier diagnosis,” she says. ”And there are consequences.”"
"Things to know about Stephen Ritz, one of NPR’s 50 Great Teachers: He and his students made bow ties out of Scrabble tiles. His Bronx classroom, a refurbished school library, has more plants than desks. He calls the room his National Health, Wellness and Learning Center. It’s got tower gardens, gleaming cabinets and counters, an industrial sink and a new, mobile cooking station. ”In this class, we go from seed to tower to table to plate in 20 feet,” Ritz says. ”What we’re seeing is kids coming in here, getting excited about healthy food  —   about vegetables. About beans. Who knew beans could be so exciting, but they are!” Ritz founded the nonprofit Green Bronx Machine, planting community gardens all over the Bronx. Though he’s often at school six days a week, he’s paid for just one. He says it’s his wife who makes ends meet. Ritz teaches science in the nation’s poorest congressional district, at Community School 55 in the South Bronx. The neighborhood is a food desert, where Ritz says it’s easier to buy liquor than lettuce. He calls the food options a M. E. S. S.  —   ”a manufactured, edible synthetic substance that comes in a Ziploc, hermetically sealed bag with infinite shelf life.” Ritz’s goal: send students home with 100 bags of fresh,   fruits and vegetables a week, 50 weeks a year. In the afternoon, Ritz hosts a   cooking class. On the menu: vegetarian chili. Everyone gets a cooking hat, though not like Mister Ritz’s (he wears the cheesehead as a   ”cheeseball”). The kids are told to hold a knife like they’re shaking a hand, and hold the pepper with their fingers curled into a bear claw.   Ernest Fields calls Ritz ”Father Nature.” At CS55, Ritz helps other teachers, too. He pops into one classroom for a quick science lesson on owl pellets. ”You’re gonna take apart this mouth poop,” Ritz asks the class, feigning disgust, ”and put it back together again and make real skeletons?” On his way out, he asks: ”How many of you like science?” When they all raise their hands, ”I love it,” he says, ”more nerds.” The kids chant: After school, Ritz hosts another cooking class, for kids and their parents. Jeffrey Haywood (far left) brings his grandson, Cori (far right) a  . Haywood says he can’t believe what Ritz is trying to do here. When he was a kid, Haywood says, ”we didn’t have no plants growing in no schools. If anything, we was trying to get into the schools.” Ritz got his green thumb many years ago while teaching at a Bronx high school. Someone sent him a box of daffodil bulbs. Not knowing what to do with them, he stashed them behind a radiator. A few weeks later, a fight broke out. Ritz says one student ran to the radiator because, he assumed, the boy had hidden a weapon there. Instead, he found ”hundreds of flowers busting out of this box. And the kid, instead of coming out to beat someone’s behind, came out with a box of flowers. The class burst out laughing.” Ritz says he had an epiphany. He and his students went on to plant some 20, 000 bulbs across New York that year. The lesson, Ritz says, is that a seed   can grow into something beautiful anywhere."
"It happens almost like clockwork, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton casts her gaze out over the crowd at her town hall style event looking for someone to call on, and then she spots cuteness. Clinton’s stump speech has changed from the summer when she was seen as the prohibitive front runner, to the fall when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders started gaining on her, to today with Sanders leading in New Hampshire and quite possibly in Iowa too. But one part of her campaign has not  ” her habit of calling on kids at her town hall style events. Her campaign says she has called on more than 500 people since she started running for president last spring, and child questioners make up only a small share of that total (she was asked at least 29 questions by kids since July). But they are by far the most memorable, and a couple have wound up in campaign ads and videos. Critics, including Jeff Bechdel from the Republican opposition research firm America Rising, say these questions are all too convenient. They are either softballs that allow the candidate a chance for a cute interaction or they are just a little bit too   to seem authentic, questions about ”things that are maybe not discussed on the playground,” said Bechdel. Questions about gender pay equity, gun control and mental health and bullying on the day GOP candidate Donald Trump started attacking Clinton also led quite a few people including Trump to speculate that the questions must be planted. Clinton’s campaign communications director Brian Fallon insists they are ”absolutely not” planted. ”Some of the most unscripted questions come from the kids,” said Fallon. We’ll let you decide for yourselves. Here are some of them: Sports and equal pay: ”Will more jobs in sports be open to women and will they get equal pay?” (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Dog or cat? ”Do you have a dog or cat?” (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Had to ask: ”Can I have a picture with you?” (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Mental health and guns: ”When you become president, what is your plan to connect mental health problems and guns to make sure me, my brother and my friends are safe from violence at school?” (Portsmouth, N. H) Equal pay: ”I think my mother is working much harder . .. than my father and she deserves to get more money than my father. I just don’t think it’s fair.” (Portsmouth, N. H) Vision for America: ”What is your vision for America in 2024?” (Mason City, Iowa) Addiction and foster care: ”I want to know how you would help the children of parents doing the overdoses?” (Windham, N. H.) Girl Scouts: ”You mentioned you were a Girl Scout. What character traits did you learn while scouting that you would use to be a successful president?” (Orangeburg, S. C.)"
"The U. S. Supreme Court tackles a case on Tuesday that can fairly be described as weird. The consequences, however, could be significant. The Supreme Court has long held that the government cannot retaliate against its employees for exercising their First Amendment right of free speech or association. But what if the employee is mistakenly perceived as taking a political position, when in fact he was doing nothing of the sort? That’s what happened to Jeffrey Heffernan. After 20 years on the Paterson, N. J. police force, he was promoted to detective and given a plum assignment in the police chief’s office. Then one day during the 2006 mayoral election campaign, his mother’s yard sign supporting the mayor’s opponent was stolen. ”So she called me up and said, ’Listen, can you pick me up another sign?’ ” he recalls. Heffernan promised he would get the sign, and while he was   he went to the challenger’s campaign office there the police officer was seen holding the sign and chatting with campaign workers. When he got back home, he says, ”my phone rang, and I was told that I was . .. being demoted and I was gonna go on a walking squad for 12 hours a day.” Heffernan says he tried in vain to explain that he was just picking up the sign for his bedridden mother, and that he was not active in the campaign, nor could he even vote in Paterson since he didn’t live there. ”They said to me that ’the mayor wants you out of the office the mayor calls the shots, and you’re out,’ ” he says. The police chief later admitted he simply assumed that since Heffernan was seen holding the sign, he supported the candidate running against the mayor. For Heffernan, who eventually retired, the demotion was a huge blow. He made more money as a detective, he says, and working in the chief’s office meant fewer hours, and weekends and holidays off  —   not to mention the pension consequences of being busted down to walking patrol. He sued, contending his First Amendment rights were violated, and a jury awarded him a total of $105, 000 in compensatory and punitive damages. But the trial judge subsequently recused himself, and the verdict was set aside. On a second   the newly assigned judge threw the case out, declaring that since Heffernan was not in fact campaigning for the mayor’s opponent, he was not exercising his right of free speech and association. Therefore, no constitutional right had been violated. A federal appeals court agreed, and Heffernan appealed to the Supreme Court, where his case is to be argued on Tuesday. Heffernan’s lawyer, Mark Frost, will argue, ”You have the right to be involved or not be involved. That’s part of your First Amendment right, and the fact that here they were mistaken as to what he was actually doing, doesn’t matter.” In evaluating retaliation cases, Frost says, courts should look at motive, and here the motive was to punish Heffernan’s perceived speech. Motive is irrelevant, counters lawyer Tom Goldstein, representing the city of Paterson. He concedes that if Heffernan had in fact been supporting the mayor’s opponent, his right to do so would have been constitutionally protected. But Goldstein explains: ”The Constitution always requires . .. that you actually be exercising the right, not that the government’s motive was bad. . .. If you aren’t exercising your constitutional rights, we haven’t violated your constitutional rights.” Goldstein contends that Heffernan might have had a legitimate lawsuit under state civil service or civil rights laws, but not under the Constitution. Both sides see the consequences of this case as potentially enormous. Heffernan’s lawyer says if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the city, government employees at every level will constantly be looking over their shoulders for fear of a mistaken impression. Citizens working for government ”would have to think twice before they do something, or say something, or before they associate with somebody,” Frost says. The federal government, the largest public employer in the country, agrees, and has filed a brief supporting Officer Heffernan’s position. But lawyer Goldstein, representing the city, counters that a decision supporting Heffernan would lead to thousands of aggrieved public employees suing their bosses based on little more than a suspicion of a bad motive. That, he says, would throw a huge monkey wrench into the ability of supervisors to manage public employees. A decision in the case is expected by summer."
"The International Monetary Fund has once again pared its forecast for global growth, warning that emerging markets face steeper economic challenges in the year to come. A report issued today says world economic output will grow by 3. 4 percent in 2016 and 3. 6 percent next year, a decline of 0. 2 percent from the agency’s previous forecast, in October. While advanced economies such as the United States continue to enjoy a ”modest recovery,” the world as a whole is plagued by ”weak and uneven growth,” said Maurice Obstfeld, IMF economic counselor and director of research. He added: ”This coming year is going to be a year of great challenges, and policymakers should be thinking about   resilience and the ways they can bolster it, but also about the   growth prospects.” The world faces such risks as a ”  ” slowdown in China, geopolitical tensions and ”risk aversion” among investors, according to the IMF report. The stronger U. S. currency is also a potential problem for some countries that have ”high dollar exposure.” For instance, countries that have borrowed heavily in U. S. dollars will now have more trouble paying it off. The higher dollar will also hurt exporters in the United States, where growth is expected to be 2. 6 percent in both 2016 and 2017, a slight reduction from previous estimates. The report sees especially slower growth in the Middle East and Latin America. Brazil’s economy is now expected to shrink by 3. 5 percent this year and to flatten out in 2017. But other parts of the developing world, such as ”India and parts of emerging Asia are bright spots, projected to grow at a robust pace,” the report said. The IMF forecast made clear that a sharp slowdown in oil prices has hurt countries such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Russia. The global decline in the price of oil and other commodities is ”worsening the outlook for already fragile commodity producers,” the report said. ”All in all, there is a lot of uncertainty out there, and I think that contributes to the volatility,” Obstfeld said. ”We may be in for a bumpy ride this year, especially in the emerging and developing world.” The report noted that ”structural reforms” are critical to stimulating growth. These include efforts to raise labor force participation in Japan and the Euro area, as well as reduce private debt overhangs. ”Those   actions will actually have positive effects in the short run by increasing confidence and increasing people’s faith in the future,” Obstfeld said. In emerging markets, policymakers need to ”redirect economies to redirect activity to new sources of growth”: ”These economies also need to press on with structural reforms to remove infrastructure bottlenecks, facilitate a dynamic and   business environment, and bolster human capital through reforms to education, labor, and product markets.”"
"Not since China faced international sanctions over the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has its economy grown at such a slow pace: just below 7 percent last year. Investors had expected the results, and now they’re looking to Chinese policymakers to enact a stimulus plan. China’s growth dipped to 6. 8 percent in the last quarter of 2015, dragging down annual growth to 6. 9 percent. The prospect of new support from the central bank led shares in both the Shanghai and Shenzhen composite indexes to rise by more than 3 percent Tuesday. China’s gross domestic product was 67. 67 trillion yuan  —   nearly $10. 3 trillion  —   in 2015, reports the Xinhua state news agency, which adds that for the first time, the service sector accounted for more than half of the GDP, at 50. 5 percent. Annual growth of 6. 9 percent would be welcomed by many nations  —   but in China’s case, it’s seen as another sign that the world’s   economy is struggling to cope with debt levels at the same time that it’s looking for new growth. From Shanghai, NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports for our Newscast unit: ”The old traditional drivers of China’s growth, such as manufacturing and housing, are struggling as the country tries to transition to a more service sector and   economy. ”The country’s usually   technocrats have stumbled in the past six months as their efforts to manage China’s stock markets and currency have rattled markets around the globe.” From Beijing, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports that China’s statistics bureau says the economy is restructuring away from industry and toward services. For now, Anthony says, ”The result is a mixed bag of figures. Housing starts, energy generation and exports are in negative territory. But retail sales,   and wages are all showing brisk growth.” Xinhua quotes National Bureau of Statistics chief Wang Baoan saying that China now ”faces a daunting task in deepening reforms on all fronts.” On a national level, the NBS report says that per capita disposable income grew at nearly 9 percent, to 21, 966 yuan  —   around $3, 341, at today’s exchange rate. That represents a gain of 7. 4 percent after accounting for price changes, the agency says. The statistics bureau also released its new count of the population of mainland China, saying it grew by 6. 8 million people last year, to ”1, 374. 62 million.” We’re not sure how to account for that decimal point if any statisticians or demographers are reading, please enlighten the rest of us."
"A new U. N. report says that nearly 20, 000 civilians were killed during Iraq’s bloody conflict between January 2014 and October 2015. And that number might be significantly higher. ”Despite their steady losses to   forces, the scourge of [ISIS] continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering,” U. N. special representative Ján Kubiš says in a statement. Here’s a look at the numbers in the U. N. report: At least 18, 802: Number of civilians killed between Jan. 1, 2014, and Oct. 31, 2015, 36, 245: Number of civilians wounded during that same time period. 3, 855: Number of civilians killed between May 1 and Oct. 31, 2015. Baghdad governorate had the highest number, at 1, 875. 1, 717: Number of civilians killed by improvised explosive devices between May 1 and Oct 31, 2015. 3. 2 million: Number of people inside Iraq who have been forced to flee their homes from January 2014 through September of last year. More than 1 million: Number of   children forced from their homes during that same time period. Between 800 and 900: Number of children abducted from the Iraqi city of Mosul by the   Islamic State for ”religious education and military training.” Approximately 3, 500: People from the Yezidi religious minority and other ethnic and religious minorities enslaved by ISIS. ”Those being held are predominantly women and children,” the report says. The report says ISIS often targeted civilians. Here’s more: ”During the reporting period, ISIL killed and abducted scores of civilians, often in a targeted manner. Victims include those perceived to be opposed to ISIL ideology and rule persons affiliated with the Government, such as former Iraqi security forces (ISF) police officers, former public officials and electoral workers professionals, such as doctors and lawyers journalists and tribal and religious leaders.” And though the U. N. report blames the majority of the deaths on ISIS, it says that   forces also conducted reprisal attacks and at times prevented civilians fleeing violence from accessing safe areas."
"As the third open enrollment period winds down on the health insurance marketplaces, one thing hasn’t changed much since the online exchanges opened: It’s still often hard to find out whether a plan covers abortion services. The health law requires insurers to say one way or the other, and they have gotten better about reporting abortion coverage details this year, advocates on both sides agree. But the federal government has yet to put out final instructions on how insurers should handle the issue on their Summary of Benefits and Coverage overview. Lacking specific instructions about what to say and where to say it, many insurers have simply left the information out of the summary, advocates say. That leaves consumers in a bind. ”It’s not easy to figure out whether a plan covers abortion and if it does, to what extent,” said Kinsey Hasstedt, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization that supports abortion rights. The health law lets states decide whether marketplace plans can cover abortion services. Half of states ban abortion coverage to some extent, often limiting it to cases of rape, incest or if the mother’s life is endangered, the standard the federal government uses for coverage in its employees’ plans and for health care programs, such as Medicaid. However, even in states that permit insurers to cover abortion beyond the limited exceptions, marketplace plans may not have that benefit. The lack of easily accessible information makes it hard to know whether the number of plans that provide abortion services on the exchanges is increasing or decreasing. Advocates on both sides of the issue have their eyes on multistate plans. To encourage competition, the health law called for at least two multistate plans to be offered on every state marketplace by 2017, at least one of which excluded abortion services. In subsequent guidance, the Office of Personnel Management, which administers the multistate program, said that multistate insurers had to offer at least one   and one   plan that exclude abortion coverage starting this year. But the number of states offering multistate plans dropped to 32 plus the District of Columbia in 2016, down from 35 last year. In those states, most multistate plans don’t cover abortion, and the coverage information is easy to find, said Genevieve Plaster, a researcher at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which opposes abortion rights. Of the 261 multistate plans available in 2016, just four plans in two states  —   Connecticut and Alaska  —   cover abortion services, according to OPM. However, abortion opponents said that because multistate plans aren’t yet available in every state, there’s no guarantee consumers can find a plan that doesn’t cover abortion, if that is their priority. In two states, Hawaii and Vermont, for example, all plans available cover abortion. Neither state has multistate plans. Abortion rights supporters have a different beef with the multistate plan program. They say it’s not fair to require the marketplace to offer plans that exclude abortion without also requiring plans that include abortion coverage. They also take issue with OPM’s decision that insurers must offer two multistate plans that exclude abortion coverage, instead of the single one that the law requires. OPM isn’t considering any changes to the program at this time, a spokesman said. In the meantime, advocates on both sides hope that the final instructions for the coverage summaries will make it easier for consumers to learn whether plans cover abortion. Questions remain about where in the   summary of benefits and coverage the information appears: Some advocates want it near the section that describes covered services ”if you are pregnant,” rather than under ”excluded services and other covered services,” as the federal government has proposed. And advocates on all sides agree that the language describing abortion services needs to be clear and consistent rather than the mishmash of descriptions that appear in current documents, where it may be called ”interruption of pregnancy” or ”elective termination of a normal pregnancy,” among other terms. In a final regulation released in June (see page  ) federal regulators said they would clarify requirements for the language and placement of abortion services in the coverage summary in the final template, which is scheduled to be finished in January. ”We’re still waiting for that,” said Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services didn’t respond to a request for information about when the new template would be released. The 2016 enrollment ends Jan. 31. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter: @mandrews110."
"In California’s Nevada County, an unusual explorer with an unusual name  —   Amigo Bob Cantisano  —   hunts for remnants of the Gold Rush, just not the kind you might expect. The treasures Cantisano seeks are trees: the fruits and nuts planted at homesteads and stagecoach stops in the late 1800s. Despite decades of neglect, many are still highly productive and could prove valuable at a time when California faces drought and the effects of climate change. Cantisano and two partners run a nonprofit organization, the Felix Gillet Institute. They find, identify and propagate heirloom fruits and nuts. At his home outside Nevada City, in the northeastern part of California, Cantisano (the ”Amigo” was a high school nickname that stuck) walks around his garden and nursery, pointing to a plant he calls the Kate Wolf lilac. The folk   spent summers nearby at an old mining camp and, decades ago, she told Cantisano the backstory of her song ”The Lilac and the Apple.” ”Kate wrote the song about walking into an old homestead, with the house no longer there, and finding this apple and lilac growing on a hill,” planted by miners and mill workers, he says. ”After she passed away, I started wondering about where that was,” he says. After years of searching, Cantisano acted on a lead, walking for hours in a forest when, bingo: The lilac and the apple were still growing. He took cuttings, and he’s been nurturing them in his nursery ever since. Driving through Gold Rush country, Cantisano points out a    pear tree standing tall between a community hall and a gas station. ”It’s thrown huge crops every year in the drought. It doesn’t get diseases, it doesn’t get insects. Nobody prunes it, nobody waters it, nobody fertilizes it, and it is just prolific as heck. I’ve picked over 500 pounds of pears off of it,” he says. He says these resilient heirloom trees have lessons for today’s California growers, where highly tended crops face drought, pests and disease. ”If we can figure out how to take those characteristics and meld them into modern agriculture, we’re going to have a more sustainable agriculture,” he says. With a name like Amigo, dreadlocks down to his waist, and a   outfit of shorts and   Cantisano has had plenty of people write him off over the years. ”I’m a hippie, OK!” he says with a laugh. He’s also an influential founding figure in California’s organic agriculture movement. He was practically born into this work, crawling around his grandmother’s organic garden before anyone used the term. Living in San Francisco communes as a teenager, Cantisano provided food by gardening. At the first Earth Day in 1970, he heard about pesticide hazards. ”A light bulb went on, as they say,” he recalls. Eventually he moved to Nevada County, where he ran an organic garden supply store. That’s when he learned about Felix Gillet, the Frenchman who opened a nursery in Nevada City in the late 1800s. ”Gillet had plants from almost 35 countries. He was a plant maniac,” says Cantisano. He believes many of the trees still growing in the Sierra originated in Gillet’s nursery. Tom Gradziel, of the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis, says a lot of California agriculture was built on the expertise of nurserymen like Gillet. ”Now we can just go to the grocery store, and there are only one or two varieties of any given fruit or nut,” he says. ”Nurserymen like Gillet would be appalled.” Lack of diversity in varieties isn’t only dull for our taste buds, he says  —   it makes crops vulnerable to being wiped out. ”The more diverse material we have in both commercial fields and in the backyard, the more resilience there’ll be to better contain disease and pests,” he says. While one variety might perish, another might survive. As a breeder, Gradziel says maintaining diverse varieties is crucial: ”The more we find with proven adaptability  —   and the stuff Bob’s finding has proven itself in adaptability  —   the better.” When Cantisano drives up to a property filled with mature trees, he sees Gillet’s living legacy. ”This homestead clearly has Gillet vibe all through it,” he says. He and homeowner Sidonie Christian, a longtime friend, rake the   pods of chestnuts that have fallen to the ground, then peel and toss them in a basket. Of the 100 chestnuts he and his partners have tested, Cantisano says these are the best. ”We believe it’s called the Marron de Lyon, which means it’s from Lyon, France,” Cantisano says. ”Judging from the leaf shape, the size of the nut and the structure of the plant, it looks like it’s a European chestnut.” The University of Pennsylvania is testing this chestnut’s DNA to find out for certain. As they harvest, Christian tells Cantisano about county workers who were doing maintenance nearby and almost ran a beloved apple tree through a chipper. So, what’s the impact of losing a   heritage tree? ”If we lose a tree like this chestnut, we lose the genetics of a particularly hearty, productive,   plant. You can’t find those everywhere,” Cantisano says. But these trees are important for people and neighborhoods, too, says Christian, as she points around. ”Generations of kids have eaten apples off that tree. Lots of people put chestnuts off this tree into their Thanksgiving stuffing and have done for years,” Christian says. For Cantisano, this work connects human and botanical history. He says he’ll often stand in front of an old tree ”and just stop and try and feel the vibe of the person who planted it.” He realizes it sounds a little odd, but ”I’ve had trees talk to me, like, ’Thank you. You’re taking care of me again. I’ve been alone,’ ” not picked for decades. ”There is a spirit in those plants,” he says. A spirit he’s trying to keep alive. This story first aired on KQED’s The California Report as part of Lisa Morehouse’s ’s series California Foodways. It was produced in partnership with the Food and Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit investigative news organization."
"Islamabad can seem a dull place, full of retired civil servants sipping tea in villas, and with a night scene that’s about as lively as lawn bowls. But you can at least get a good sleep. While other Asian cities gossip, munch and rattle through the night, a hush descends on this modern government town. In my neighborhood, dusk creeps in to a chorus of birdsong. Dawn is heralded by the rich and multilayered cadences of the call to prayer from the nearby mosques. The hours in between are filled with silence, interrupted occasionally by lonely dogs and the quiet rumbling of generators that kick in with every power outage. This is a fine place for a foreign correspondent to catch up on sleep lost on airplanes or in cars lurching across the benighted landscape toward yet another trouble spot. At least, it usually is. Every now and then, this soothing soundtrack is broken by a strange sound that seems entirely out of place in this orderly metropolis. It’s the sudden wail of   car engines echoing over the rooftops and bouncing off the Margalla Hills that form Islamabad’s backdrop. This doesn’t last long. It’s often at weekends. It’s always in the wee hours. It wakes me with a jolt, a surge of irritation  —   and a head full of questions. Who’s doing it? Why? How are they getting away with it? Pakistan is an unstable nation, blighted by insurgents. A multitude of policemen guard the capital. There are cameras, checkpoints and trucks packed with     cops, slowly patrolling the streets. Could it be that, despite this, some motorheads have concluded that Islamabad’s big, wide avenues are just too tempting to resist? Are there people out there defiantly gunning it through the seat of government? The other night, I decided to find out. I left NPR’s bureau at 1 a. m.  —   recorder, camera and pen at the ready  —   and cruised the empty streets, listening intently, under a moonlit sky. We pulled over and asked some sweepers sprucing up Islamabad’s new Metro Bus stations. Yes, they had seen cars whizzing past. Yes, these were racing. But, no, they’d seen nothing tonight. Taxi drivers, napping at the roadside in their battered cars, said the same. They’d seen the racers many times. ”They go like a bullet,” said one driver, Khawar Abassi. We got nowhere that night. However, after rummaging around the Internet, we have finally solved the mystery. The answer to my questions is Route 66. We arranged to meet the lads from Route 66, named after the famous U. S. highway, by what they call their ”track”  —   400 yards of concrete, as wide and straight as a runway. To everyone else, this is Seventh Avenue, one of Islamabad’s most prestigious highways. Parliament, the Supreme Court and the prime minister’s residence are just 10 minutes away  —   or two, if you travel at the speed of the Route 66 boys. The ”crew”  —   that’s what they call themselves  —   turn out to be six   young men, united by a passion for fast cars and a willingness to break the law to feed their addiction. ”It’s [the] adrenaline,” explains their founder, Sheikh Rahim, a    student. ”It gives us a buzz and makes us happy.” Rahim climbs into his Suzuki Swift, turns on the engine and pumps the accelerator with an air of deep satisfaction. His is a small car with an exhaust system   to make a big sound  —   a throaty,     roar. Rahim says there are at least three other crews of illegal drag racers in Islamabad  —   ”the Bulls, the Mob, the Street Kings”  —   and more in Pakistan’s other big cities. He describes how the police sometimes show up and give chase, compelling the Route 66 crew to speed off and seek refuge in one of their hiding places around town. If you’re caught, there’s a fine (usually around $10) and your wheels might be impounded for a couple of days, explains Rahim. The only sanction that seems to worry him is the fact that, when they catch racers, the cops tell their parents. And that means Route 66 is grounded for a while. I ask Rahim if Islamabad’s residents ever complain about the noise. ”They do!” he replies. ”They are too lazy to [ask us] ’What are you guys doing?’ They just call up the police and police shows up.” He adds, smiling: ”These are the elite class of Islamabad,  !” Rahim wants drag racing to be legalized. He and his crew say Pakistan needs a proper track for people like them. Theirs is a legitimate hobby, they say. They post videos of their races on Facebook for other speed fiends to enjoy. For now, though, they remain creatures of the night. What they do is noisy and probably rather dangerous. Yet it is very hard to dislike these gregarious, young enthusiasts. So I guess I’ll just have to buy earplugs."
"As the issue of immigration  —   legal or otherwise  —   gains traction in the 2016 presidential race, there’s more evidence that illegal immigration is not only declining, but it’s been on a   downward trend. ”The undocumented population has essentially reached zero growth, ” said Robert Warren, the author of a new report published by the New   Center for Migration Studies. ”The population has stopped growing because slightly more people are leaving than are coming in from Mexico.” In fact, the number of unauthorized immigrants is about 10. 9 million, the lowest since 2003, according to Warren. That’s partly explained by the steady decline among the   people living in the U. S. without permission, which has fallen by more than a million since 2008. Warren has been crunching immigration numbers for more than four decades, including 35 years at the U. S. Census Bureau and what used to be called the Immigration and Naturalization Service. His findings are consistent with the conclusions of other researchers. Among his other findings, Warren said that California, New York, and Illinois saw the greatest declines between 2010 and 2014. Of the 10 states with the highest populations of people immigrating illegally  —   California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Virginia  —   only Texas and Virginia gained such residents between 2010 and 2014. And while so much of the current debate in Washington and around the country is focused on illegal immigration, Warren found that legal immigration is equally notable. ”From 1980 to 2014, the legally resident population from Mexico grew faster than the Mexican undocumented population,” he wrote. In an interview, Warren told NPR that the naturalized population  —   people who have become citizens  —   has been increasing by at least 10 percent in every state for the last eight years. Still, it’s illegal immigration that gets all of the attention, said Warren even though he thinks the net zero growth in the unauthorized population will be a   trend given the tough security measures at the U. S.  border and the health of the Mexican economy."
"The astronomer whose work helped kick Pluto out of the pantheon of planets says he has good reason to believe there’s an undiscovered planet bigger than Earth lurking in the distant reaches of our solar system. That’s quite a claim, because Mike Brown of Caltech is no stranger to this part of our cosmic neighborhood. After all, he discovered Eris, an icy world more massive than Pluto that proved our old friend wasn’t special enough to be considered a   planet. He also introduced the world to Sedna, a     dwarf planet that’s so far out there, its region of space was long thought to be an empty no man’s land. Now Brown has teamed up with Caltech colleague Konstantin Batygin to do a new analysis of oddities in the orbits of small, icy bodies out beyond Neptune. In their report published Wednesday in The Astronomical Journal, the researchers say it looks like the orbits are all being affected by the presence of an unseen planet that’s about 10 times more massive than Earth  —   the size astronomers refer to as a  . ”I’m willing to take bets on anyone who’s not a believer,” says Brown. He thinks existing telescopes have a shot at spotting this mystery planet in just a few years, since this new study points to a band of sky where astronomers should look. The first suggestion that something big might be affecting the orbits of distant, icy bodies came in 2014. An international team of astronomers announced that they’d discovered a new dwarf planet, nicknamed Biden, that stays even farther out than Sedna. They also noted a strange clustering in the orbits of these objects, and in the orbits of about a dozen others. Perhaps, they hypothesized, the gravity of some unseen planet was acting as a shepherd. ”They were pointing out that there was something funny going on in the outer solar system, but nobody could really understand what it was,” says Brown. ”Ever since they pointed it out we’ve been scratching our heads.” The idea of a huge, hidden planet seemed kind of crazy. ”No one really took it very seriously,” says Brown. ”It was ignored more than you might guess.” But he walked a few doors down to meet with Batygin and suggested they take this on. As they studied the freaky way that these objects lined up in space, Brown says, they realized that ”the only way to get these objects to line up in one direction is to have a massive planet lined up in the other direction.” What’s more, this planet naturally explains why the dwarf planets Sedna and Biden have weird orbits that never let them come in close to the solar system. ”This wasn’t something we were setting out to explain,” says Brown. ”This is something that just popped out of the theory.” But there was one moment that turned Brown into a believer. Their computer simulations predicted that if this hypothetical planet existed, it would twist the orbits of other small bodies in a certain way. So Brown looked through some old data to see if any icy bodies had been discovered with those kinds of orbits  —   and, lo and behold, he found five of them. ”They’re objects that nobody has really explained or tried to explain before,” says Brown. ”My jaw hit the floor. That just came out of the blue. Being able to make a prediction and having it come true in five minutes is about as fun as it gets in science.” Their work suggests how big the planet must be, and more or less where it could be found. Brown has already started looking. He hopes other scientists will too. ”I want to know what it’s like. I want to see that it’s really there,” says Brown. ”It will hurt when somebody finds it and it’s not me  —   but I assume it’s going to happen, and I’m willing to feel that pain.” It may be hard to believe that something so big would not have been seen before now. But Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science explains that for us to see it, sunlight has to travel all the way out there, bounce off the object, then travel all the way back. ”Objects get very faint very fast,” says Sheppard. ”If you do the math, if you move something twice as far away from the sun, it gets 16 times fainter.” Sheppard is one of the researchers who, after discovering Biden and the strange orbits, suggested a large planet might be the culprit. ”What we published was a very basic analysis of this clustering of objects in the outer solar system,” he says. ”We just did some basic stuff.” The new analysis, he says, has gone much deeper and has more rigor. ”It leaves me thinking that the possibility of there being this   or   out there is more and more real now,” says Sheppard. Still, he’s not completely convinced. ”We really need to find more of these objects  —   more of these small objects that can lead us to the bigger object,” Sheppard says. ”I think it’s still a tossup if it’s really out there or not. I think we just need more data. Hopefully within the next few years we’ll really be able to nail this down.” Dwarf planets like Sedna and Biden are not exactly household names. But Sheppard says if the solar system indeed has an    ninth planet  —   a distant, giant planet that’s bigger than Earth  —   ”that, I think, is something that would blow the mind of anyone here on Earth.”"
"Today we got news that scientists have evidence that points to a   way out beyond Neptune. If telescopes can verify its existence, it would become a brand new planet in our solar system. Scientists are, for now, referring to it as Planet Nine. We know we’re getting ahead of ourselves, but we think it deserves a better name. Should it be Plutoo? Or Plutwo? Yeah, we know you can do better. Gives us some suggestions  —   along with an explanation if it’s super cerebral  —   in the comments. We’ll pick the top five and put them up for a vote tomorrow."
"A few months ago, Code Switch lead blogger Gene Demby turned to Twitter in an attempt to   a solution to a problem he’d been having. Gene had begun watching Premier League soccer but couldn’t settle on a rooting interest, so he asked the league’s fans to convince him to root for one team or another. In this episode of The Giant Foam Finger  —   our occasional   offshoot of Pop Culture Happy Hour  —   I open by asking Gene for an update on his Premier League search. But then we move on to a   discussion of why we might root for one team or another in any sport, for reasons ranging from geography to friendship, familial bonds, favorite individual athletes,   and even good   spite. Naturally, given the theme of   we’d love to hear what listeners think. What made you choose your favorite teams? And, given the inspiration for this discussion, we’d love to hear more arguments for why Gene and I should root for your favorite Premier League team. So have at it in the comments, or on Twitter or Facebook."
"Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz had a logistical dilemma in Iowa: how to house dozens of volunteers from across the country for a month. The solution: a   unused business college dormitory in Des Moines that sleeps up to 100, also known as ”Camp Cruz.” The campaign is in the process of opening a second dorm to house even more volunteers. ”We had so many volunteers that wanted to come in from out of state, the idea of trying to find a way to house them in a hotel was going to be ” said Bryan English, Cruz’s Iowa State director. Cruz, who is locked in a struggle with Donald Trump to win the Iowa caucus, is betting that his campaign’s   volunteers will tip the outcome in the state. Camp Cruz houses volunteers from Florida, Tennessee and of course Texas, where Cruz is the junior senator. Jerry Dunleavy was among the pack of tired Cruz volunteers returning to their temporary home on a Monday evening. Dunleavy had never been involved in politics but says Cruz is different  —   different enough for him to leave everything behind in Cleveland. ”Yeah, quit my job and came out here and nothing lined up after so it’s all about helping Cruz win in Iowa and then we go from there,” said Dunleavy. For the role of managing the dorm  —   or RA if you will  —   English wanted someone like a camp counselor to pump up Camp Cruz every morning. He found a wiry    named Ken Brolin from Long Island, N. Y. who fit the bill. ”I’m banging on the doors at quarter of 8. And I usually scream something like, ’Who’s going to be the next president of the United States? !’ And you hear the roof lift off,” said Brolin. ”Then I ask them why are we here and they say, ’To go out and get undecided voters!’ And then we open the doors and go get ’em!” While the dorm may have been built to house students, some of the Cruz volunteers are considerably older. ”I retired in May and I had some time on my hands and I saw the volunteer . .. [a] ’be a volunteer for Ted Cruz’ message came in the email and I said well, I think I’ll go do that,” said Alan Drennan of Grapevine, Texas. The hallways are filled with pictures of Cruz and red, white and blue streamers. Many of the dorm rooms are pretty bare, although Maggie Wright’s room has plenty of Cruz signs and a picture of him hugging her taped to the door. Wright, who is from Texas, supported Cruz as far back as when he was Texas solicitor general and running for the Senate. She says she and other volunteers are ”ready  —   all in, any expense,” to make the final push for Cruz in Iowa."
"For years, Americans cycled through one   diet after another, each promising a sure method to lose weight. Along the way, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisine made fortunes off their     diet programs and products. But it seems those days are over, according to industry analysts and nutritionists. ”Dieting is not a fashionable word these days,” says Susan Roberts, a professor of nutrition and psychiatry at Tufts University. ”[Consumers] equate the word diet with deprivation, and they know deprivation doesn’t work.” According to Mintel, a market research firm, few people are purchasing diet products anymore. A survey of 2, 000 people released by the firm in October found that 94 percent of respondents no longer saw themselves as dieters. They were also disillusioned with the industry: 77 percent of the consumers surveyed said that diet products are not as healthy as they claim to be, and 61 percent said most diets are not actually healthy. ”Consumers are not dieting in the traditional sense anymore  —   being on programs or buying foods specific to programs,” says Marissa Gilbert, an analyst from Mintel who worked on the report. ”And there’s greater societal acceptance of different body sizes.” That’s really hurt the dieting industry, Gilbert says. From summer 2014 to summer 2015, Lean Cuisine’s frozen meal sales dropped from around $700 million to about $600 million, or about 15 percent. Weight Watchers, Medifast and Jenny Craig have also seen revenues wither over the past few years. Sales of diet pills have dropped 20 percent in the last year, according to the Mintel report. Roberts says it’s likely because many people who wanted to lose weight tried these diets and programs but weren’t successful. ”They’ve tried Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and books and things of their own design,” she says. ”It didn’t work.” As Jean Fain, a Harvard Medical   psychotherapist and author, has noted, programs like Weight Watchers typically are just ”a   fix and conditional support for   eating issues” and can even exacerbate them. With each subsequent failure, people become more skeptical about the products. Some give up on losing weight altogether, Roberts adds. But many people do still want to lose weight, and increasingly they’re hoping good nutrition and ”healthy eating” will get them there, says R. J. Hottovy, a senior equity analyst with market research firm Morningstar. ”Consumers are looking for a more holistic, more health and wellness approach,” he says. ”The shift in food trends is toward fresher and more natural ingredients.” The problem is there’s a lot of disagreement over what a healthy,   meal looks like. Half of the people in Mintel’s survey said they didn’t know what to think about nutrition and wellness information. As we’ve reported, even the federal government isn’t sure what ”natural” means. And increasingly consumers have to contend with terms like   vegan and   in the grocery store. These and other restrictive notions of eating have been quick to catch on, but often don’t have consistent scientific evidence backing them up as healthful or effective for weight loss. Roberts, who also founded a weight loss   called iDiet but says she doesn’t currently make money from it, observes that food companies are taking advantage of the chaos. ”Companies are bombarding [consumers] with       and it’s got us to a very bad place because people don’t know what to think anymore,” she says. ”I think what [consumers] want to do is lose weight by eating sensibly. That’s the holy grail of weight loss, and the companies say, ’We’ll lock into that.’ ” And while Weight Watchers’ point system emphasizes ”natural” fare and   meals, it’s still manufacturing processed,     products. According to Julie Lehman, marketing director for Lean Cuisine, the company, which is owned by Nestle, has put new labels on products that were already   or   without changing their formulations. ”Lean Cuisine is an emblem of the diet culture that we’ve all grown up with. We know that and we want to walk away from that and focus on eating well and eating healthy,” she says. The brand has added ”No Preservatives” and ” ” and ” ” labels and a new line of frozen meals, certified organic by the nonprofit Oregon Tilth. ”Consumers are demanding some of these things, and we want to offer it to them,” Lehman says. Roberts is unconvinced. She doesn’t see the products getting any healthier. ”They can relabel them, but the meals are not any different. If you open a box of Lean Cuisine or something like that, you’ll see about a quarter cup of veggies in there. Is that an outstandingly healthy meal? By my standards, it’s not.” People will still be hungry and still feel deprived, and may ultimately not meet weight loss goals, she says. ”They’ll give healthy eating a bad name just as they gave dieting a bad name.” Meanwhile, the evidence suggests that a variety of different strategies may help individuals lose weight. For some people, a pattern of eating like DASH might be best. Others are arguing for low glycemic foods and eating slowly. Financial incentives like a wager on weight seem to work, too. Still others see hope in mindfulness strategies and intermittent minifasting. But if there’s a consensus, it’s that     products are out."
"It may seem like déjà vu for Hillary Clinton  —   an insurgent candidate has erased her   lead in Iowa just days before the Democratic caucuses. That’s what happened in 2008, when she finished a disappointing third behind Barack Obama and John Edwards. Now, it’s Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has closed the gap in the Hawkeye State. ”This feels like 2008 all over again,” Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer said back in August after her survey showed Clinton up just 7 points back then. It’s even closer now. And Sanders holds a lead in New Hampshire. Despite the similarities, the former secretary of state told NPR’s Ari Shapiro in an interview Wednesday morning in San Antonio that she remained confident about her chances in the Feb. 1 caucuses. ”I feel very positive about the organization we’ve built, the enthusiasm and energy of the people who are literally showing up in   temperatures to canvass for me,” Clinton said. ”My precinct captains, my precinct teams are really all so focused on doing well in the caucus.” But, she argued, she always believed the race would tighten. ”We’re going to have to work hard, though. I always thought that would be the case,” Clinton said. ”And that’s part of the job you’ve got to work hard as president  —   nobody is giving the job away. You’ve got to get out there and earn it, and that’s what I try to do every single day.” Clinton said she has learned from 2008, not just tactically, but about herself. She said she sees differences between the type of candidate she was then versus now  —   and she hopes voters do, too. ”Having served for four years as secretary of state has given me the kind of perspective that really fuels my understanding, my proposals about how we keep us safe at home,” she said, ”and how we work with our friends and allies to try to keep the world more peaceful, secure and hopefully prosperous.” Questioning Sanders’ readiness to lead as president, That experience, especially on foreign policy, is a contrast she’s increasingly trying to draw with Sanders with less than two weeks before voting begins. On Tuesday, Clinton’s campaign released a statement with former top diplomats questioning the Vermont senator’s preparedness to handle ISIS, Iran and other national security concerns. Clinton defended raising such questions. ”In a campaign that is as spirited as ours,” she said, ”we owe it to voters to draw contrasts. Certainly, Sen. Sanders has been drawing lots of contrast for quite some time  —   which it won’t surprise you to hear me say, I think are not particularly   but nevertheless, that’s his right.” She pointed to his comments that he would like to see Iranian troops on the ground to help fight ISIS as one such area of concern. ”I think that would be a terrible mistake,” Clinton said. ”Syria is on the doorstep of Israel  —   just among one of the things why it would be. He has said he wants to see Saudi Arabia and Iran work together in a coalition to defeat ISIS. Well, you know, we’re having a very big flare up of tension between two   adversaries, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Either he didn’t understand that, or thought that he could get away with saying what he said.” And she called Sanders’ statement in Sunday night’s debate  —   that he favors normalizing relations with Iran  —   ”a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to do the patient diplomacy that I have experience in to be able to continue to change behavior, or at least to mitigate against behavior by Iran.” She pointed to her experience at the State Department as one reason she’s more qualified than Sanders on how to handle the region. ”I know something about this,” Clinton said. ”I led the efforts to put together the coalition to impose very tough sanctions on Iran, which enabled us to get to the negotiating table to get the Iran agreement to put a lid on their nuclear weapons program. So, I’m immersed in what it will take for us, going forward, to manage this challenging relationship.” What gets her angry? Things like Flint, Clinton also argued she had shown leadership in taking a stand on the situation in Flint, Mich. where the city of more than 100, 000 faces an ongoing   crisis due to dangerously high levels of lead in the drinking water. Clinton took to television last Thursday to criticize Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s handling of the issue in the aftermath, but defended a decision not to go to the city. ”You know, I didn’t want to go off ” she said. ”I wanted to know what was happening and what the facts were. And so, I sent two of my trusted aides to go, meet with the mayor, meet with others to begin talking with the senators, the congressman who represents the area.” She said that after she said Snyder needed to ask for federal help, ”Within two hours, he did. I think that’s a pretty good track record.” Sanders has gone even further, calling for Snyder to resign, but Clinton suggested Snyder responded immediately to pressure she applied. ”Well, you know, I lived a lot of years in Arkansas,” she began, ”and one of my favorite sayings I learned is, ’If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by accident. ’”"
"Hillary Clinton walks a daily tightrope between attacking Republicans and trumpeting her ability to work with them. Republicans ”seem to be very fact averse,” she told me in an interview, shortly after saying ”I’m interested in us solving problems together.”  I met the Democratic presidential candidate in San Antonio, Texas, for a   conversation before a campaign   at a fancy hotel. We talked about immigration, the private email server she used as secretary of State, Iran, the upcoming Iowa caucuses, and many other subjects. You can dig into the meat of our conversation here.   But the biggest bipartisan embrace she offered was not in the meat. It was in the vegetables. (Ok, technically avocados are a fruit. I don’t want to call down the wrath of the   here.)   Clinton has said that the way she stays healthy on the campaign trail is by eating fresh jalapeño peppers every day. As our conversation was wrapping up, I asked where she picked up the hot pepper practice. She told me it was during her husband’s first presidential campaign in 1992. ”I read an article about the special   characteristics of hot peppers,” she recalled. ”I thought, that’s interesting because, you know, campaigning is pretty demanding.” ”I’d always liked hot food  —   Mexican, Indian, Thai  —   but I started adding hot peppers, and then I got into eating them raw, whereever they weren’t really, really too hot,” she said, adding with a laugh that the peppers are ”maybe . .. one of the reasons I’m so healthy and I have so much stamina and endurance out there today.” Clinton said she used to carry a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce, and but graduated to the ”real   hot peppers.” ”But, I can’t do them all. So if you’re out there listening, don’t meet me with a raw habanero and say ’OK, take a bite. ’”   While my producer packed away his audio gear and our photographer snapped Clinton’s portrait, I mentioned that Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush revealed his guacamole recipe to us, which includes jalapeños. ”Oh?” Clinton said, ”Will you share it?”  I explained that the recipe is a bit divisive  —   no citrus, no tomatoes. Just avocados, cilantro, onion, garlic, salt, and of course jalapeños. Full disclosure  —   this is not how I make my guacamole. But I’m a journalist, not here to express my opinions. And I grew up in Oregon, so what do I know about guacamole. The former secretary of State, on the other hand,   embraced the former Florida governor’s recipe.   She explained that Jeb Bush’s recipe is actually much more traditional. (She might have said purist. Or authentic. We weren’t recording at this point.) If you make guacamole without citrus and tomatoes, she told me, then you can mix the guacamole with salsa and get a perfect balance of acidity and sweetness. She nodded her head approvingly.   Hillary Clinton endorsing Jeb Bush? Not exactly. But I can confirm that at least she endorsed his guacamole."
"Hillary Clinton dismissed a report that emails she sent on her private email server contained a high level of classified material. Speaking to NPR’s Ari Shapiro in San Antonio on Wednesday, the Democratic presidential candidate continued to maintain that she ”never sent or received any material marked classified” while at the State Department ”and that hasn’t changed in all of these months.” According to a Fox News report Tuesday, more emails that went through Clinton’s private email server than previously reported were classified beyond the ”Top Secret” classification level, according to a letter sent to lawmakers from the Intelligence Community inspector general. The former secretary of state said the claim was a ”continuation of an interagency dispute that has been going on now for some months.” ”As the State Department has confirmed, I never sent or received any material marked classified, and that hasn’t changed in all of these months,” she maintained. ”This, seems to me, to be, you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign. It’s another leak.” In response to the earlier Fox News report, the Republican National Committee said Clinton’s email server issue ”has taken on an entirely new level of recklessness.” ”The revelation that Clinton exposed intelligence from our most secretive and highly classified programs raises serious legal questions given the fact she signed   agreements obligating her to protect classified information regardless of whether it was marked,” said RNC spokesman Michael Short. Clinton added, ”I’m just going to leave it up to the professionals at the Justice Department, because nothing that this says changes the fact that I never sent or received material marked classified.” She said ”the best we can determine” is that the emails in question were a forward of a New York Times article on a classified drone program and that they had likely been retroactively classified. ”How a New York Times public article that goes around the world could be in any way viewed as classified, or the fact that it would be sent to other people off of the New York Times site, I think, is one of the difficulties that people have in understanding what this is about,” Clinton said. Though the drone program was classified at the time, it was being written about publicly, which Clinton said, ”strikes me as somewhat strange that there would be a  —   an effort by those who are leaking this  —   and obviously that’s what’s happening  —   to try to raise concerns and doubts about information in the public sector.” She added, ”But even if they have retroactive concerns and doubts, that doesn’t change the fact that these were not marked classified at the time they were sent or received.”"
"Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro in San Antonio. The transcript below has been edited for clarity. Ari Shapiro: I want to begin with the latest news about the private email server that you used as secretary of state, and a letter from the inspector general for the intelligence agencies saying that there was material in some of these emails that exceeded top secret classification. Can you give us any more details about how many emails there were, what they were about, whether they were sent or received by you? Hillary Clinton: Well, first, let me say that this is the continuation of an interagency dispute that has been going on now for some months. As the State Department has confirmed, I never sent or received any material marked classified, and that hasn’t changed in all of these months. And the Department of Justice is doing an inquiry to determine whether there were any issues around the email uses that I had. This seems to me to be  —   you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign. It’s another leak. I’m just gonna leave it up to the professionals at the Justice Department, because nothing that this says changes the fact that I never sent or received material marked classified. Just so listeners can understand, then, you’re saying that the designation above top secret was applied after you sent or received these emails, or . .. Well, it’s difficult to know, because the best we can determine  —   and I know my campaign has made this point  —   is that it’s likely what they are referring to is the forwarding of a New York Times article. How a New York Times public article that goes around the world could be in any way viewed as classified, or the fact that it would be sent to other people off of the New York Times site, I think, is one of the difficulties that people have in understanding what this is about. So again, I just reiterate  —   I never sent or received anything marked classified. I did, perhaps, receive some New York Times articles. And just to clarify for listeners, it’s been reported that these were articles about the drone program, which at the time was classified, but was also being written about publicly. It certainly was being written about publicly, and it strikes me as somewhat strange that there would be a  —   an effort by those who are leaking this  —   and obviously that’s what’s happening  —   to try to raise concerns and doubts about information in the public sector. But even if they have retroactive concerns and doubts, that doesn’t change the fact that these were not marked classified at the time they were sent or received. Let’s talk about the Supreme Court and the court’s announcement yesterday that it will review President Obama’s executive action on immigration, which would suspend deportation for millions of people. Now, you’ve said that you would like to go further than the Obama administration. If the Supreme Court strikes down this program as overreach, as president, what would your next step be? Well, first, Ari, let me say that I believe the president has acted within his legal authority, and I think that’s a very important point to make to your listeners. We have a long tradition of giving the executive branch the discretion to make decisions about everything from criminal justice, who to prosecute, who not to prosecute, to immigration, detention and extradition and deportation. So what the president basically has said is rather than having just blanket rules where we’re going to be deporting on the same basis a young person brought here as a toddler who is now in high school wanting to go to college, has lived his or her whole life here  —   one of the DREAMers or those DREAMers’ parents [referring to the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act]  —   we’re going to focus on the felons, the violent criminals, the people who should be deported. And I think the president has the authority to do that. I think there is precedent because other presidents have also exercised discretion. And if the Supreme Court disagrees and you become president, what is your next step? Well, it would depend upon what the Supreme Court says as to what basis they might disagree. I am one who  —   you know, I’m a recovering lawyer. [LAUGHTER] I taught law and I practiced law. I believe that there’s even a strong argument this case doesn’t have what’s called standing under the law. But in any event, we would, of course, look at what the Supreme Court said, and then I would get to work on trying to figure out what it actually meant and how it would be applied in practice. And I would still be committed to doing everything I could to protect those hardworking immigrants who are here making a contribution to our country, making an economic contribution as well. So I would be very open to seeing what more could be done to make it clear that until we get comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship  —   which is what I support  —   we’re not going to be breaking up families, raiding people in the middle of the night, and, you know, just taking them away from their children and their communities and sending them back where, in many cases, they never really lived as a conscious person or haven’t been there in many years. Now, by the time the next president takes office, there will be three Supreme Court justices in their 80s. What criteria would you use if you have the opportunity to choose Supreme Court justices? Bernie Sanders [Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate] has said he would have a litmus test. Anybody he would nominate would have to commit to overturning the Citizens United campaign finance decision. Would you have a litmus test? What would your criteria be? Well, I believe strongly that we need Supreme Court justices who truly understand the impact of their decisions, and I think some of the recent decisions  —   Citizens United being one, voting rights being others, the extension of more and more rights to corporations    real people  —   I think has created some unintended consequences. So I would want somebody who understands when you blow open the door and say money is speech and you have a, in my view, somewhat misguided hope that all of the money that would then be pouring into our political system would be disclosed in real time  —   which, of course, it is not and in some instances never is  —   that you would have someone who has . .. experience as a lawyer, as a judge in the real world who would say, hey wait a minute, that really undermines and corrupts our political system. So is that ”yes” to a Citizens United litmus test . .. ? Absolutely, but it’s broader than that. It’s not just Citizens United, Ari. Let’s take voting rights. I was in the Senate when we voted 98 to nothing to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. President George W. Bush signed it. And we did that because there was substantial evidence that a lot of the discrimination that, unfortunately, was part of our voting system that we addressed with the Voting Rights Act in the ’60s was still a problem in some parts of our country. The folks who didn’t agree with that appealed it, took a challenge to it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court really gutted the Voting Rights Act. And their argument, again, in my view, was fundamentally naive. And that’s the best I can say about it, which was, ”You know, we really don’t need all of this now. Everybody can kind of stand up for themselves.” And look at what has happened. We have had a rash of efforts in states to try to suppress and undermine the vote. So, I’m looking for people who understand the way the real world works, our political system when it comes to money, like Citizens United our voting rights system our economics system where, if you keep enhancing the powers of corporation    unions,    you know, individuals, you’re not going to have the kind of balanced economy that produced the middle class. Secretary Clinton, we’re talking to you 12 days before the Iowa caucuses, where the polls are much closer than your campaign would prefer. [LAUGHTER] That is always true if you’re in a  —   a very competitive race. And your campaign has started waging some very pointed attacks on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Yesterday, a group of national security veterans  —   former national security officials put out a letter attacking Sanders on foreign policy, and specifically on Iran. Part of the letter says, ”We need a    who knows how to protect America and our allies, and advance our interest and values around the world.” Are you suggesting that Sanders is not qualified to be commander in chief? Well, Ari, in a campaign that is as spirited as ours, we owe it to voters to draw contrasts. Certainly, Sen. Sanders has been drawing lots of contrast for quite some time  —   which it won’t surprise you to hear me say, I think are not particularly   but nevertheless, that’s his right. I will ask you about those in a moment, but . .. That is his right. But from my perspective, you are, if you’re in Iowa looking toward the caucus, then on to New Hampshire and Nevada, South Carolina, you are picking a president and a commander in chief. And in some of the comments that Sen. Sanders has been making, there is room for disagreement, even concern. Take his comments about Iran. I know something about this I led the efforts to put together the coalition to impose very tough sanctions on Iran, which enabled us to get to the negotiating table to get the Iran agreement to put a lid on their nuclear weapons program. So, I’m immersed in what it will take for us, going forward, to manage this challenging relationship. Sen. Sanders has said he would like to see Iranian troops in Syria. I think that would be a terrible mistake Syria is on the doorstep of Israel, just among one of the reasons why it would be. He has said he wants to see Saudi Arabia and Iran work together in a coalition to defeat ISIS. Well, you know, we’re having a very big   of tension between two longtime adversaries, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Either he didn’t understand that, or thought that he could get away with saying what he said. And, and . .. And thirdly, let me say this. I think that  —   when he said in the debate the other night that he wouldn’t, uh, would favor normalizing relations with Iran, that, too, was a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to do the patient diplomacy that I have experience in to be able to continue to change behavior, or at least to mitigate against behavior by Iran. President Obama doesn’t believe we should be moving to normalize relations with Iran neither do I. On foreign policy, President Obama’s approval ratings are in the 30s. You were the face of Obama foreign policy for four years. Don’t those numbers suggest that people, in fact, want a change from the foreign policies that you represent? Well, I don’t agree with that. I think that people are rightly concerned about ISIS. I’m the only candidate on either side in this race who has put forth a comprehensive plan about what we need to do to deprive them of territory on the ground through air support of fighters  —   not Americans, but Arab and Kurdish fighters what we need to do to go after their foreign funding, foreign fighter flow, take them on online. And how we keep America safe  —   and first and foremost, it’s not by demonizing Muslims, and particularly American Muslims. So I have a very clear set of proposals. I’ve given major speeches, I’ve been vetted on them and I think what you were referring to  —   there is a concern on the part of experts  —   national security practitioners that we need to make it clear, these are complicated problems. We need a very steady hand, we need to have people who understand the complexity of the problems because we have to make some hard choices going forward. Sen. Sanders suggested yesterday that your experience is not enough and that there’s a difference between experience and judgment. Part of what he said was Dick Cheney had a lot of experience, George W. Bush’s vice president, of course. A whole lot of people have experience, but do not necessarily have the right judgment. How do you feel about being compared to Dick Cheney? [LAUGHTER] Well, since I spent eight years in the Senate fighting against a lot of what he represented and four years as secretary of state cleaning up the mess that he left, I think it’s, you know, fairly far out there. But it is fair to say OK, let’s compare experience. Let’s compare what we know and what our track record is. And certainly, President Obama, when he was elected, immediately turned to me. He trusted my experience and my judgment, despite a very   campaign, to be his secretary of state because we inherited so many problems from the kind of attitude and actions that were manifest in the   administration. And I really did have to get around the world reassuring people that the United States would conduct ourselves in accordance with our values. Yes, we would pursue our interest, but we wanted to do so in concert with others. That’s why when I negotiated the sanctions against Iran, I had to get countries as difficult as Russia and China on board, and then I had to go convince countries that felt like you know, that’s a long way away, we want to keep buying their oil and their gas why that was not in their interests, in order to advance global security. So I think that I’ve been in a lot of situation room conversations, been on the line about making recommendations as to what we do, whether or not to go after Osama bin Laden or how to negotiate a   with Hamas through the Muslim Brotherhood president in Cairo, President Morsi, on behalf of Israel. And so I have a  —   a very clear idea of what we need to do and I know it goes beyond sloganeering and political  . Let’s talk a little about partisanship. If you are president, you will likely work with House Speaker Paul Ryan. What’s your relationship with him like? Well, I can’t claim to know him well, but of course I know him because we have had occasion to be at some of the same events. And I have watched him with some interest. I’ve said the other day, I think he would be certainly a worthy opponent because of the views that he represents in the Republican Party. Would you say ”opponent”  —   as president and speaker of the House are opponents by nature? No. I think in the campaign, you know, in the campaign, he would be someone who is going to prosecute the Republican case. That’s what happens in a campaign. And then once it’s over, you have to get to work. And I think he would be an honest broker in working with me. I saw that when he was the head of the Budget Committee and, you know, the Congress, instigated by Ted Cruz, shut our government down in the fall of 2013, which was a terrible, irresponsible thing to do. And it was Paul Ryan for the Republicans in the House, and my good friend Sen. Patty Murray, who was the chair at that time of the Budget Committee, who went to bat to try to work out an agreement. And they didn’t get everything each of them wanted. They had to work really hard to come up with a solution that could pass through the Congress. That’s good,   legislating. That’s what you have to do. And you can never give up on it. People come with different experiences, different pressures on them, different ideologies and worldviews. So what you have to do is get up every day, build those relationships, work to find common ground  —   something I did as first lady, as senator, as secretary of state. And you know, it’s very amusing to me, Ari. When I’m not actually running for something, when I’m in a position and I’m working on behalf of these concerns that I think are important to be addressed, the Republicans say the nicest things about me. So, I’m going to just make it clear, I will work every day to find common ground. Well, as you talk about finding common ground, is there any policy proposal that you have heard from a Republican candidate this election cycle, in debate or on the stump, that you thought, ”Yeah, that’s a really good idea I could get behind that”? You know, I haven’t heard them so much from Republican candidates because I think they’ve all been in a rush to appeal to the most extreme parts of the Republican base. But I have heard them from Republican officeholders, from Republican governors, from . .. Can you give an example? Well, from Republicans in the Congress. Well, it was great that at the end of last year when the Congress had to come together around a budget going forward, a   omnibus, you had   legislating. And you had Republicans joining with Democrats to say, ”Look, we need to keep supporting renewable energy.” So, some tax benefits called the production tax credit and the investment tax credit were continued. You also had a compromise to continue to support the earned income tax credit. Now, the Republicans also got some things. You know, they wanted to lift the ban on exporting oil. That’s not my preference. I would prefer that we have a different approach to energy. But in a Congress, in a legislative environment, everybody has to give a little. And I worry about people who run for office, whether it be in the Congress or for the White House, who are so sure of their ideological positions that they’re going to throw us into more gridlock. I’m interested in us solving problems together. I’m interested in finding good ideas whether they’re from Republicans or Democrats, getting people around the table, and trying to make progress on behalf of our country. So the first votes are being cast in Iowa in just over a week. And pollster J. Ann Selzer with The Des Moines Register said that it feels like 2008 all over again. Are you having flashbacks? No, I’m really not. I feel very positive about the organization we’ve built, the enthusiasm and energy of the people who are literally showing up in   temperatures to canvass for me  —   my precinct captains, my precinct teams are really all so focused on doing well in the caucus. We’re going to have to work hard, though. I always thought that would be the case. And that’s part of the job you’ve got to work hard as president  —   nobody is giving the job away. You’ve got to get out there and earn it, and that’s what I try to do every single day. What, apart from  —   apart from the changes in your ground game, which you have talked about changing since 2008, the infrastructure. What have you learned since your 2008 defeat about the American voter, the Democratic primary voter that has changed your approach this time? Well, I have to say, Ari, I think perhaps I’ve changed more. Having served for four years as secretary of state has given me the kind of perspective that really fuels my understanding, my proposals about how we keep us safe at home, and how we work with our friends and allies to try to keep the world more peaceful, secure, and hopefully prosperous. So, I bring a different perspective to the campaign this time. And I also have a long experience  —   going back to my first job with the Children’s Defense Fund  —   about what we have to do to make things happen. And when I make a proposal about building on the Affordable Care Act, I’m doing it because we are now slightly over 90 percent who have health care. That is a huge accomplishment for our country. I don’t want to rip that up and start over again. So, I am trying to level with the voters, I’m trying to tell people, here’s what I will do. You can look at my record of fighting for results, whether it’s the Children’s Health Insurance program, or getting a nuclear weapons reduction with Russia through the Senate with   majority. You can look at what I’ve accomplished, and you can know that when I say, ”I will fight for you,” that’s exactly what I mean. And that’s my  —   you know, that’s what motivates me every day. One of the things that seem to appeal to voters so much about Bernie Sanders and about Donald Trump is their visceral anger that they convey on the stump. What makes you really angry? Well, lots of things do. Most recently what happened in Flint, Mich. makes me really angry. The idea that you would have a community in the United States of America of nearly 100, 000 people who were drinking and bathing in   water infuriates me. And that is a fundamental failure of government to protect the very people we represent. So, I understand why people get angry. They’re angry about the Great Recession, which so knocked everybody flat. They’re angry about the failures of, you know, our government and the powerful interest  —   it’s not only Wall Street, it’s the gun lobby, the prescription drug lobby, the insurance lobby and so many others. Let’s talk about Big Oil. I understand that, but I also know that, once you’ve vented your anger, once you have gotten out there and roused all of those really strong passions, you’ve got to do something. But to take Flint, Mich. as an example. You talked about this on Sunday night at the debate. And you said, ”I was angry about Flint, Mich. so I went on TV and talked about, and I sent an aide and I put out a statement.” And a lot of people said, if you were so angry, why didn’t you go [there]? You know, you’re pinballing all over the country. If this is something that really gets you in the gut, why not go there? Well, I think that’s really unfair. No. 1, as soon as I heard about it, I sent my aides. You know, I didn’t want to go off  . I wanted to know what was happening and what the facts were. And so, I sent two of my trusted aides to go, meet with the mayor, meet with others to begin talking with the senators, the congressman who represents the area. Let’s get the facts first. You know, I am not someone who goes off  . I’d like to actually know what the facts are. I know that puts me at odds with some people these days in our political environment, including . .. Are you referring to Sen. Sanders? Well, I’m referring mostly to the Republicans, who seem to be very  . So what I did was to gather the information, then I immediately called for action. And I thought the action would be forthcoming, because, clearly, if I had been in a position of responsibility, it would have been. But then, it was clear, unless the governor asked the president to make the order, it couldn’t happen. So I then, as you know, went on Rachel Maddow and said, ”the governor needs to ask for the help that is required to help the people he represents.” Within two hours, he did. I think that’s a pretty good track record. Do you think he did it because you went on Rachel Maddow and said he needs to do this? Well, you know, I lived a lot of years in Arkansas, and one of my favorite sayings I learned is, ”if you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by accident.” I think it was quite telling that the governor made his decision two hours after I really challenged him to do so, and I’m thrilled that the mayor of Flint has endorsed me, because I’m the only person who has been reaching out and trying to learn what is going on, and then making proposals that will actually help to deal with what the terrible potential problems are, especially with children’s learning and brain development. Well, Secretary Clinton, I know we have to wrap up, but the last question I wanted to ask you  —   you have been open about the fact that you maintain your health on the campaign trail by eating raw jalapeno peppers. It’s true. Where did that practice come from? Where did you get that? Well, I don’t want everybody listening to think this is a good idea, because they may have a different constitution than I have. But back when  —   you know, my husband was running in ’92, I read an article about the special   characteristics of hot peppers. And I thought, ”well, that’s interesting,” because  —   you know, campaigning is pretty demanding, and so I started  —   I’d always liked hot food  —   Mexican, Indian, Thai. But I started adding hot peppers, and then I got into eating them raw, wherever they weren’t really, really too hot. And all I can tell you, knock on wood, is that maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m so healthy and I have so much stamina and endurance out there today. Is it true that you give some of your staffers a hard time when they can’t take the heat . .. Well . .. . .. of a raw jalapeno? . .. Yes. If we  —   let’s qualify it to jalapeno. Yes. We do have a running joke about that. And I used to carry  —   you know, a little tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce to spice up the foods. I’ve  —   you know, now gotten into the real   hot peppers. But I can’t do them all, so if you’re out there listening, don’t meet me with a raw habanero and say, ”OK, take a bite.” Secretary Clinton, thank you very much for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you so much."
"A nearly unanimous Supreme Court Wednesday reinstated death sentences for three convicted Kansas murderers. The decision cast doubt on the impression that a majority of the justices might now be willing to strike down capital punishment in its entirety. Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia described the gruesome details of the   2000 Wichita Massacre, in which two brothers broke into a home at Christmastime, tortured five young men and women, raped them repeatedly, forced them to commit sexual acts on one another, then drove them, naked, to a snowy field and shot them in the head  . Incredibly, one of the young women survived after a hair clip she was wearing deflected the bullet. She ran through the snow to a nearby house and lived to testify against the men. The Kansas Supreme Court reversed the brothers’ death sentences, plus another one, on grounds that the trial judge’s instructions to the jury had failed to make clear that jurors did not have to find mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt. In restoring the death sentences Wednesday, the court said that the Constitution does not require such an instruction. On a second question, whether the brothers had to be sentenced in separate proceedings before separate juries, the court answered with an unequivocal ”No.” All that is required, the court said, is to clearly instruct the jury to consider each defendant individually, as the trial judge did here. Summing up from the bench Wednesday morning, Justice Scalia said that given the ”overhwelming evidence” of the two brothers’ ”cruelty and depravity,” only the most ”extravagant speculation” would lead one to conclude that the joint sentencing proceedings unfairly disadvantaged either of the brothers. All but Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined Scalia’s opinion in full. And even Sotomayor did not dispute much of what Scalia said. Rather, she said the court should not have even heard the case because it was based in large part on state law. Just a week ago, the court reached a very different conclusion, also by an   vote, ruling Florida’s death penalty system unconstitutional because it charged the judge, not the jury, with making the decision on sentencing in capital cases. So in two weeks there have been two death penalty decisions, going in opposite directions, and sending potentially opposite signals about whether there are five justices now willing to reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty. ”I would say it gives everyone pause,” says professor Evan Mandery of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a death penalty opponent. ”Clearly this is the sort of issue you at most get a     shot at,” he said. And yet, as Mandery points out, the Florida and Kansas cases are procedural in nature neither presented a frontal assault on the death penalty."
"The U. S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death sentencing system as unconstitutional on Tuesday, casting doubt on the status of all the state’s death sentences. Florida ranks second in the nation in the number of death row inmates, with 390 men and women currently awaiting execution. Florida law allows juries in capital cases to recommend a sentence of death, or life in prison without parole  —   but it is the judge who is charged with finding facts, and judges can and do frequently disregard the jury’s recommendation. Indeed, since the state death penalty law was enacted in 1972, judges have disregarded the jury’s advisory on some 300 occasions, imposing either the harsher penalty of death or the lesser penalty of life. In declaring that system unconstitutional, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the court majority, said that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial ”requires a jury and not a judge to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death.” A jury’s ”mere recommendation is not enough,” she said. The vote was   with Justice Samuel Alito the lone dissenter. The decision came in the case of Timothy Lee Hurst, convicted of the brutal stabbing murder of a  . A jury recommended a death sentence by a   vote, but without any finding of facts that justified the sentence and no way to know whether even those seven recommending death agreed on a single aggravating factor or justification. The Florida system was actually upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1980s, a fact the justices acknowledged on Tuesday. But the court went on to say that it was explicitly reversing those earlier decisions because, it said, ”the underpinnings” of those rulings have been ”eroded by time and subsequent developments in constitutional law.” Since 2000, the court has issued a series of decisions requiring juries, not judges, to make critical fact finding judgments, and in 2002 it struck down an Arizona death penalty statute similar to Florida’s. The court would later say that its decision was not retroactive  —   that it did not apply to those Arizona sentences that had already worked their way through the appeals process in 2002. But retroactivity is a question that depends in part at least on state law, and the Florida Supreme Court has given greater leeway for retroactivity claims than most other states, according to criminal law specialists. Michael Radelet, an expert on the Florida death penalty, said the bottom line after Tuesday’s ruling is uncertainty. ”The Florida Supreme Court has a dozen different directions that it can go in and the only certain thing is that this is going to be litigated for a long time,” he said. Radelet, now a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said he expects the Florida Supreme Court will at least temporarily block all future executions. ”The next execution is scheduled for Feb. 11 so we’ll find out what happens pretty quickly,” he added. Following the ruling, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement saying existing death sentences would be examined on a ”   basis”: ”In light of today’s United States Supreme Court decision holding Florida’s capital sentencing procedure unconstitutional, the state will need to make changes to its   statutes. . .. The impact of the Court’s ruling on existing death sentences will need to be evaluated on a    basis.” The Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision leaves Alabama the last state where a judge can override a jury recommendation to impose a death sentence. There are currently 187 death row inmates in Alabama, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Well over half of those, 101, were sentenced by such    judicial overrides."
"As Iran prepares to pump even more oil into an already glutted market, that oversupply isn’t just making gas cheaper for your car  —   it’s also causing jet fuel prices to go down sharply. And that’s now pushing airfares down, too. ”We’re seeing about 14 to 15 percent lower this year than we have in the past,” says Patrick Surry of Hopper, a popular travel smartphone app. Hopper, a startup in Cambridge, Mass. collects data on the    prices that airlines are offering on their tickets and helps consumers, Surry says, ”understand when the best time is to buy their ticket.” He says he’s not looking at   business travel, but rather prices everyday people pay to, say, book a vacation in advance. The federal government just released data on international travel also showing a 15 percent drop, the biggest calendar year decline in fares since the index was first published in 1987. On more competitive routes with discount airlines such as JetBlue, Spirit and Southwest in the game, the price drops are bigger. George Hobica, who runs airfarewatchdog. com, says he’s seen some very low fares recently. ”Dallas to almost anywhere in the United States you can fly on certain days for $40 each way,” he says. There are fares from San Francisco to Las Vegas for $67 round trip, he says. ”And the reason they can afford to do that is because oil prices are going down.” Still, based on the math of how much jet fuel prices have dropped, Surry says airlines could still be passing on more savings to customers. But he says companies are keeping some of those profits for themselves. And actually that’s a good thing, at least according to the industry. ”In this industry, given its history of boom and bust, if you have one very good year, you really need to take advantage of it and get your house in order,” says John Heimlich, chief economist with the trade group Airlines For America. Heimlich says the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and then the Great Recession, coupled with high fuel prices up until recent years, pummeled the airlines. Many were losing billions of dollars. So they’ve needed those extra profits to dig out of a really big hole. ”Ten airlines combined including their merged partners over the last almost six years paid down $52. 5 billion in debt,” Heimlich says. Meanwhile, he says, the airlines have been hiring more people, buying more planes and upgrading airport lounges, baggage handling systems  —   things they’d had to put off for years. But for most people, the big question might still be this: If you want to take a vacation somewhere, say to Hawaii, is now the right time to buy tickets? Using Hopper, Dara Continenza, who helps build the company’s customer base, pulls up a price projection chart for a plane ticket from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Hopper’s computers are taking those billions of data points from recent years to predict whether fares like this one will go up or down. ”Right now we’re showing about $680, and we think that they’re going to fall about $200 less than what we’re showing now,” Continenza says. So Hopper’s app is telling people, at least on this fare, now is a good time to play that game of chicken with the airlines and wait for the price to drop before you buy."
"The turmoil on Wall Street showed no signs of letting up today, as fears about the slowing global economy once again sent oil and stock prices tumbling. The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 500 points, a drop of 3. 5 percent, at a little after noon ET, though it later rebounded somewhat and ended the day down 249 points. Meanwhile, oil fell below $27 a barrel, a   low. Both the Dow and the Standard  Poor’s 500 index have now lost more than 10 percent of their value since the start of the year. Globally, the stock markets have lost $3. 6 trillion in value, according to The Wall Street Journal. The SP even fell below the lows it reached last August, following China’s decision to devalue its currency. Among the biggest losers was IBM, which fell nearly 5 percent after a disappointing earnings report. On the whole, however, there didn’t seem to be any immediate cause for the latest plunge, just a continuation of the fears and anxiety that have gripped investors for weeks. ”There are economic factors, but today doesn’t feel like it’s economic. It feels emotional,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, in an interview with NPR. He called the   ”cathartic.” Zandi added: ”I think investors have seen the declines and they’ve gotten to the point where they’re just nervous, maybe a bit panicked, and you get this   selling. It’s very uncomfortable, but it happens. The markets at times are wildly euphoric and other times they’re taken over by abject pessimism. ”This is one of those days when people say, ’I want out’ and they’re getting out. And it doesn’t really matter what they own and what the   fundamentals are and how good those companies are or what their prospects are. That’s totally irrelevant on a day like today. It’s just, ’I want out. I’ve seen my portfolio fall 10, 15 percent in value. It’s time for me to cash in my chips.’ And this is the day they’re cashing in.” Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, told Bloomberg News that ”there are a lot of things behind the selloff.” ”You have economic things such as the slowing of the U. S. economy, which has been pretty gradual,” he says. ”You’ve got energy going down so quickly that you can almost get windburn. You’ve got China as an issue which is probably overdone. So when you put those factors together you have an unattractive brew along with the concern the Federal Reserve will raise rates and slow the economy further.” As stock prices tumbled, investors put their money in the usual safe havens, buying gold, the Japanese yen and U. S. Treasury debt. The yield on the   Treasury note fell below 2 percent, which is generally considered a key psychological milestone for investors."
"A 2014 report by the United Nations estimates that tens of millions of people in the world are currently enslaved. Most of them are in the developing world, where they work in mines, quarries or shrimp farms for no money and without hope of escape. ”Slavery is the complete control of one person by another, and violence is used to maintain that control in all forms of slavery,” author Kevin Bales explains to Fresh Air’s Dave Davies. ”The adults in that situation know that if they attempt to leave, they may be killed.” Bales is the   and former president of the organization Free the Slaves. His new book, Blood and Earth, chronicles the lives of people living in bondage and the environmental devastation he says the practice of slavery causes. From the mineral mines of eastern Congo to the tidal mangrove forests of Bangladesh and India, Bales says that slavery and environmental degradation are often linked. ”Every place I was finding slaves I was finding them in situations in which the local environment . .. been destroyed,” he says. Bales spent seven years researching his book, during which time he visited slaves in a number of countries. He acknowledges that his work is often   but adds: ”It’s kind of hard to describe how powerful job satisfaction can be when you know if you put in a good week, some people have come out of slavery. That in a sense is the tonic, it’s the balance, it’s what allows me to keep going in those areas where I see the horror, but I also see the triumph of freedom and that’s just worth it.” On the generations of slaves who work in the quarries of northern India  They’re in hereditary slavery, and that means the people in that quarry have never known freedom. They were born into slavery, and when you’ve never known freedom, when you’ve never been outside the quarry, you’ve never been to another village, you’ve never seen a school, you’ve never had a doctor’s appointment, you’ve never seen a newspaper, all the lists of all the things we expect in freedom don’t apply to these people. And they simply say, if you talk to them, ”My family has always belonged to that family and this is where we are and this is what we do.” On why slavery still exists in the Congo, In the eastern part of Congo we’ve got two key problems: The first is that it’s a war zone and one of the first casualties of war is always the rule of law. So to say ”What is law doing about this?” when the rule of law is, in fact, absent or disintegrated, it answers its own question pretty well. But the second part . .. is that the Congolese government [and] army has had its own problems with corruption and lawlessness. So it’s very difficult at times to get any sort of enforcement. Now it is true that after the United States passed the   Act and put embargoes on conflict minerals from Eastern Congo, the government had to step in and start working at the local level to stop government officials and Congolese army officials from taking bribes and enslaving people themselves. So there’s been a diminution of the problem over the time, but that’s a work in progress, I have to say. On the slaves at Bisie, a mine in Eastern Congo that provides minerals for cellphones and other electronics  They do the washing and preparing of the minerals. A lot of them, as I say, are living and sleeping in tunnels, which they’ve been digging through the mountains and so forth, and then there are a few structures, but those structures are controlled by the armed gangs that control the mines and enslave all the people in the mines . ... The jobs that they’re doing are divided up in two or three categories. One is simply the digging  —   digging into the side of mountain or digging down from the top  —   and you’re just hammering away with hammers and chisels and shovels to pull these minerals out. Another job will be hauling those minerals on your back out of the tunnels and out of the holes to take them down to the river, where they’ll be handed over to more women workers who will then wash the minerals to get a lot of the clay and other dirt off them. They just put them in giant tin cans with lots of holes poked in the can to shake around in the water and clean them up a little bit. Then there’ll be people who put those [minerals] into bags and then those people who carry those bags and stack them up and store them. And then, ultimately, there will be people who are enslaved whose job it will be to put those bags on their back and walk for 20, 30, 40, 50 miles to get them out of there and into the supply chain that brings them to our cellphones. On common diseases and injuries at Bisie in Congo   You can imagine that if you have people with no medical care and no opportunity to even bathe what happens when . .. those people sleep together in big piles in tunnels. So there’s all the types of injuries that you can get in mining, so broken bones and being smashed with hammers and shovels and picks and pikes and holes put in you. There’s what happens when the tunnels collapse, which happens often because this isn’t industrial mining with careful supports and hardhats or anything like that, so people are crushed to death or desperately injured or a big rock falls on your head. There are scabies and other infectious diseases that sweep through the camp. Occasionally something like cholera will break out and it means that there’ll be a very intense spike of deaths from that cholera. And then there are the sexually transmitted diseases, because the women on the camp really have no control over their bodies whatsoever. Once they’ve come there, perhaps even hoping to find real work or honest work, they discover that they’ve been caught in a web of slavery as well, and really any member of the armed gang that controls that mine can take any woman and do anything he likes. On the connection between modern slavery and environmental damage, This whole book for me is about exploring and illuminating that relationship between slavery, environmental destruction and climate change. . .. I was amazed to discover the role that slavery plays in CO2 emissions and in the simple and basic fact of how global warming takes place . ... When we calculated up, very conservatively, how much CO2 is coming from slavery, it worked out like this: That if slavery were a country it would have the population of Canada, but it would be the   emitter of CO2 after China and the United States . ... I can point to . .. the gigantic mangrove forests at the bottom of Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Burma that’s called the Sundarbans forest, and it’s the largest carbon sink in Asia, in other words, a place where carbon is taken out of the air and sequestered by the trees, both into the sea and into the trees themselves, so this is a very important forest for removing atmospheric carbon. This is also a place where slaveholders are using slaves to clear cut these mangrove forests, to put in shrimp farms, to put in rice paddies, to burn the wood, to do a lot of different things with it, but it’s almost all   deforestation. On slavery in the U. S.  You will find people in slavery in lots of places where you don’t expect it in the United States. Sexual exploitation is probably the highest, but the second is domestic servants that we find particularly in the richer cities. After that, lots of people are enslaved in agriculture. Often these are migrants, whether legal or undocumented, but you can find people enslaved in   studios and massage parlors, and it sort of goes on and on. On how consumers can be more informed about the products they buy, At the moment, if we were only able to use just the minerals or just the foodstuffs or materials that we know are absolutely clean, we would all be sort of short on cellphones and clothes and food, because a lot of it is still rather murky. I spend some time in the book walking through the supply chain that leads to our cellphones and our laptops and trying to point to who are the criminals and who are the accomplices and who are the people who are deeply and certainly responsible, and at what level that responsibility lies. Of course, the ultimate responsibility on the ultimate end of the supply chain rests with us. And we’re responsible for what we buy and what we use, but we’re not as responsible as the people who sell it to us, and we’re certainly not as responsible as the people who make the phones, because this is their business, they should be clean about what they do."
"At first blush, the FBI’s national crime numbers for the first half of 2015 seem like bad news: Violent crime is up 1. 7 percent over the same period last year. With crime numbers, though, you have to look at the bigger context. Last year’s increase was geographically uneven. The spikes have been higher in certain big cities, such as Los Angeles, but also, unexpectedly, in small towns and rural areas. In fact, murders were up 17 percent in communities with fewer than 10, 000 people. Violent crime went up in all regions, with the exception of the Northeast. But those who think criminality in general is on the rise should keep in mind the fact that property crime is down  —   burglary by 10 percent, larceny by 3 percent. In the past, broad increases in crime rates were driven by big factors such as demographic changes and  —   to a lesser degree  —   economic conditions, and sustained increases in violent crime were usually accompanied by simultaneous growth in property crime. There’s no sign of that in last year’s statistics. It’s also important to keep things in a historical context. A jump of 1. 7 percent in violent crime is a lot less worrisome when you remember that crime rates have been bumping along at   lows  —   America’s violent crime rate is still roughly half what it was two decades ago. But people live in the now, especially when it comes to their perception of crime. If you live in Chicago and feel unsafe, it’s cold comfort to be reminded that twice as many people were killed in the city in 1992. The police chief of Huntington Beach, Calif. tells NPR that people are used to the new normal of lower crime rates, something he believes was achieved with the ”Broken Windows” approach to policing. ”[W]e evolved to that because that’s what society wanted. They didn’t want to deal with all those crimes anymore,” Chief Robert Handy says. And this is where even a small increase in crime rates quickly gets political. Handy and some other police chiefs in California are unhappy with a 2014 state ballot measure that reduced penalties for   crimes. A year into that change, police point to localized spikes in crime as an argument against the reform. In Los Angeles County, the Association of Deputy District Attorneys posted an opinion piece earlier this month titled, ”Is Prison Overcrowding Actually a Bad Thing?” The recent bipartisan movement to shrink America’s prison population is keenly aware that any increase in the national crime rate  —   or even the impression of an increase  —   could threaten their efforts. A newly formed group of police executives was quite deliberate when it named itself ”Law Enforcement Leaders To Reduce Crime  Incarceration.” The assumption is that there won’t be political support for reducing the latter without continuing reductions in the former. But given how low crime rates already are, that might be a tall order. Revamping the justice system will be messy, and even the reformers admit in private that it might be hard to avoid localized, passing spikes in the crime rate and that even a number as small as 1. 7 percent could endanger their mission to cut a much larger figure: the 2. 2 million people currently behind bars."
"The   prime number has been discovered in Central Missouri  —   and oh, what a number it is. The record number, nicknamed M74207281, has more than 20 million digits. That’s nearly 5 million digits longer than the previous record. If you printed each digit 1 mm wide, the number would stretch for more than a half marathon’s 13. 2 miles. Or as standupmaths reports, we’re talking about 2, 567 killer whales stretched out   . So how can a number be ”discovered”? It happens when a human notices. We’ve known for 2, 000 years that there are infinitely many prime numbers (numbers divisible only by 1 and themselves). The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (known as GIMPS) has thousands of volunteers running searches on their computers, looking for rare, large prime numbers. The volunteers, who join by downloading and running free software, can also win a cash prize for any discovery. GIMPS has been working since 1996, and has discovered 15 rare prime numbers called ”Mersenne primes.” These are primes that can be reached by the formula ”” and they have been ”central to number theory since they were first discussed by Euclid about 350 BC,” GIMPS says. And what do you do with one when you find it? Generally, these volunteers are looking for prime numbers because they are the ”key” to certain kinds of cryptography  —   referred to as   encryption. If you want to dive into the math behind primes and encryption, the University of California, Berkeley’s math department explains it in detail here. Generally speaking, this encryption scheme works because it is easy to multiply two prime numbers together  —   but if you’re a hacker, it’s much more difficult and time consuming to work backward and find what those two numbers were. However, GIMPS acknowledges that the record prime ”is too large to currently be of practical value.” The number was discovered by Curtis Cooper, a professor at the University of Central Missouri, and then independently verified. It’s the fourth time Cooper has discovered a record prime  —   but he says the magic hasn’t worn off. ”I think I still have the same excitement as when we were lucky enough to find the first one,” he tells standupmaths. The big discovery almost slipped through the cracks, he says. The machine is supposed to automatically notify the team when it finds a new prime  —   but that email never came. The number was found during routine database maintenance, nearly four months later. Curiously, Cooper says that the computer’s notification system also failed the four other times it found a record number."
"Among the 30 victims of Friday’s   attack on a hotel and restaurant in Burkina Faso was Leila Alaoui, a   photographer known best for her powerful portraits of Moroccans and intimate, sensitive images of migrants and the displaced. She and her driver, Mahamadi Ouedraogo, were shot outside a restaurant in the capital, Ouagadougou. Alaoui, 33, was based in Marrakech, Morocco, and Beirut and had traveled to Burkina Faso, a country in West Africa, for an assignment covering women’s rights for Amnesty International.  She studied photography at the City University of New York and exhibited her work in Europe, the U. S. Buenos Aires and the Middle East. One exhibition, ”Les Marocains” [the Moroccans] was in its final days at the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris at the time of the attack. The director of that center,   Monterosso, and Jack Lang, France’s former culture minister, paid tribute to Alaoui as ”a radiant artist. She led a fight to give life to the forgotten of society, the homeless, migrants, armed only with photography. She was a correspondent of peace.” For ”The Moroccans,” Alaoui drove around Morocco with a portable studio. ”I set up my studio outside, during market days,” she told the French news channel France 24. ”The people passed by and those who wanted, stopped to have their photo taken. The only thing I asked of them was to face me.” Describing the project, Alaoui wrote: Inspired by Robert Frank’s The Americans, and Richard Avedon’s In the American West, I embarked on a road trip across the country to photograph men, women and children of all ages, from diverse ethnic and tribal groups, Arabs and Berbers, in various urban and rural regions of Morocco. I encountered many difficulties shooting portraits in a land where people have superstitious apprehensions towards the camera, and often see photography as a tool that steals the soul of people. Since many Moroccans have rarely been photographed in this manner, no direction was needed as they naturally strike the same straightforward pose, looking intensely into the camera. Intimidated by the burst of the flash, they automatically step out of the studio after the first click, leaving me only with a one shot opportunity. For another series, titled ”No Pasara” and commissioned by the European Union in 2008, Alaoui focused on the lives of young Moroccan migrants ”who dream of a better future on the other side of the Mediterranean.” ”She always wanted to work on important human dignity stories, guided by her brave, courageous spirit,” Elie Domit, director of Dubai’s East Wing gallery, which exhibited Alaoui’s work, tells NPR. ”We are all so, so demolished with her loss.”"
"As the Democratic race in Iowa tightens, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is stepping up his political game  —   with a swanky campaign bus, a newfound eagerness to recite poll numbers, and an increasing tendency to throw political punches at Hillary Clinton. On Tuesday, he crisscrossed the   roads of western Iowa in an intense   bus tour. Yes, Sanders now has a campaign bus  —   it’s blue, emblazoned with his slogan, ”A Future to Believe in.” In smaller print, it notes that it was paid for by Bernie 2016, ”not the billionaires.” ”We got this bus here, as you can see,” Sanders told reporters on a   afternoon, outside his third campaign stop. ”And that bus is gonna be taking me all over the state.” Tuesday’s events were somewhat   bringing out smaller crowds than the rallies Sanders is known to hold. But after a strong weekend debate performance, Sanders’ tone was perhaps more aggressive than ever before. At all of his campaign stops, Sanders delivered his usual economic prescriptions: universal health care, a higher minimum wage, and campaign finance reform. But he also knocked Hillary Clinton. ”Nine months have come and gone, and the candidate who everybody thought was inevitable appears today not to be quite so inevitable,” said Sanders. He criticized Clinton, albeit not by name, for forming a superPAC and accepting speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. He also blasted her foreign policy record. ”Not only did I vote against the war in Iraq, I helped lead the opposition to the war in Iraq,” Sanders said. ”Hillary Clinton, who was very, very experienced . .. she voted for the war in Iraq  —   the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States of America.” Sanders told the crowds that the media initially thought of him as nothing more than a ”fringe” candidate. He dismissed questions about his electability and repeatedly referenced poll numbers that show his strength against possible GOP opponents. ”I think what polls are showing is that here in Iowa we are closing the gap, maybe even a little ahead,” Sanders said. When one reporter asked if Clinton should be nervous, Sanders responded bluntly: ”If I were Secretary Clinton, and I had started this campaign as the inevitable,    candidate of the Democratic Party and I started 50 points up, and today I’m struggling to win in Iowa, struggling to win in New Hampshire . .. yeah, I would be nervous.” At his final stop  —   a historic 1920s theater in Sioux City, lit up in orange and white lights to announce the ”main attraction” of the evening  —   the senator reiterated some of the same Clinton criticisms, and threw in an additional jab. ”One of the funny things about this campaign, every day, Secretary Clinton is rolling out some other mayor or governor or senator who supports [her] and, yet we’re rolling out the names of hundreds of thousands of working people who support us with individual contributions,” he said. Sanders has said that a higher turnout will improve his odds of winning Iowa. So he concluded his passionate,   swing through the state with a plea to participate. ”On Feb. 1, caucus night, the eyes of the country will be on Iowa,” said Sanders. ”And I hope that at the end of that night, what people all across this country will see is the people of Iowa saying: ’Yes, we are part of the political revolution.’ ”"
"It’s not rare for a year to break record temperatures. But it’s now happened two years in a row  —   and 2015 was ”very, very clearly the warmest year by a long chalk,” says Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. NASA is presenting the annual review of global average temperatures in conjunction with NOAA, which says that not only did 2015 finish as the warmest year on record, but it did so by the widest margin ever  —   nearly a third of 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer than 2014’s average. In 2015, the average temperature on land and ocean surfaces around the world was ”1. 62° F (0. 90° C) above the 20th century average,” according to NOAA. That makes 2015 the hottest since instrument records began being kept in 1880, beating the record set in 2014 by 0. 29° F (0. 16° C). The Northern Hemisphere saw the biggest rise in land temperatures, finishing 2. 59° F hotter than the 20th century average. As for the United States, NOAA released that data last week, saying that for the 19th consecutive year, the annual average temperature for the continental U. S. was hotter than the 20th century average. The agency reported, ”The last year with a   temperature was 1996.” Globally, 10 months in 2015 tied or broke monthly temperature records, culminating in a December that was more than half a degree Fahrenheit warmer than its predecessor in 2014  —   a record margin, NOAA says. ”This record year really is just emphasizing the fact that there is a very, very strong   trend in temperature that we have associated very strongly with the human emissions of greenhouse gases,” Schmidt says. Concerns over Earth’s changing climate resulted in nearly 200 nations adopting a global climate agreement last month, which sets a goal of holding the world’s rise in average temperature to ”well below 2 degrees Celsius [3. 6° F] above   levels.” Most of the numbers we’ve cited above represent world averages. Separately, NOAA says, land and ocean temperatures also easily set new records in 2015. On land, average surface temperature was 2. 39° F (1. 33° C) above the 20th century average  —   surpassing the previous record set in 2007 by 0. 45° F (0. 25° C). ”This is the largest margin by which the annual global land temperature has been broken,” the agency says. The globally averaged sea surface temperature was 1. 33° F (0. 74° C) above the 20th century average  —   a rise of more than 1 degree from last year’s record rise by 0. 20° F (0. 11° C). While a warming El Nino trend likely played a role in 2015 setting the new record, Schmidt says, ”it is the cumulative effect of the   trend that has resulted in the record warming that we are seeing.” Also, Schmidt reminds us, even incremental changes of one degree can have an impact on weather and ecosystems, noting that in many places around the world, glaciers are retreating. The warming trend is likely to continue, he says: ”We actually anticipate that 2016 might also be a   year, and that will be the first time that we’ve had three   years in a row in the whole record.” Offering a recent historical context for climate change, Schmidt says: ”When NASA first started talking about global warming, it was in 1988. 1988 was also a record year. But with the record in now for 2015, 1988 is not even in the top 20 of warmest years.”"
"The Senate Agriculture Committee has voted in support of a compromise plan that will preserve key school nutrition standards enacted after the passage of the Healthy,   Kids Act in 2010. Yep, that’s the law that requires schools to serve up more fruits, vegetables and whole grains. It also paved the way for major reductions in salt. These stricter standards have led to more healthful meals. A study published in JAMA Pediatrics earlier this month concluded that the nutritional quality of school meals has increased by about 30 percent, as children consume more vitamins and fiber and slightly fewer calories. An analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documents improvements, too. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing. As we’ve reported, the School Nutrition Association  —   which represents school cafeteria administrators (or meal program operators)  —   has lobbied Congress to relax some standards. The group says many cafeterias have lost money, as stricter standards have made it tougher to keep students who pay in the lunch line. Now, it seems a compromise is within reach. The bill the Senate committee passed Wednesday will give schools much of the flexibility they’ve been asking for. For instance, schools will get more leeway in transitioning to whole grain products. The compromise stipulates that 20 percent of grains served can fall short of the   standard. This means schools can still occasionally serve old favorites such as white tortillas or biscuits. Also, schools will get more time (two additional years) to meet new   targets. When the School Nutrition Association began asking Congress to relax the rules, it sparked a food fight. Public health advocates fought back. James Perrin, who was serving as the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, spoke out, saying, ”Rolling back the standards is the wrong choice for children.” First lady Michelle Obama spoke out in opposition, too. But with the new compromise in reach, this fight is fizzling out. ”Given the politics around school lunch, this bill is a sensible compromise that preserves most of the school nutrition standards,” says Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has been a central player in fighting to keep the standards intact. Given that the bill passed the Senate committee unanimously, ”it suggests the bill has a good chance of passing out of the full Senate,” says Wootan. And the School Nutrition Association has signaled its support as well. ”This agreement eases operational challenges and provides school meal programs critical flexibility to help them plan healthy school meals that appeal to students,” writes Jean Ronnei, president of the SNA, in a release about the agreement. The SNA had asked for more federal funding to offset the costs of serving more healthful school meals, but increased funding is not part of the deal. The SNA had also asked to soften the fruit and vegetable requirement, but lawmakers didn’t budge on this key tenet of the standards. To address food waste in schools, the agreement calls for the USDA and the CDC to establish new guidance that would encourage the use of salad bars and   share tables, where students can place a fruit or vegetable they don’t want to eat rather than tossing it away. Currently, according to the CDC, approximately   of schools offer salad bars. But many   advocates would like to see this number increase. ”Salad bars are a terrific way to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. It gives them more choice and more control,” says the CSPI’s Wootan. Schools say   concerns are one reason they don’t offer salad bars, in addition to the extra labor involved. The compromise bill also calls for the formation of an advisory group to examine Smart Snack rules. These are the standards for a la carte foods sold outside the breakfast and lunch programs. The rules also govern foods sold in school vending machines. The advisory group will develop policy recommendations. ”We are pleased the Senate is making bipartisan progress to reauthorize critical child nutrition programs, ” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack wrote in a release. ”The bill is consistent with the approach taken at USDA all along, which is to provide reasonable flexibility for schools as they continue transitioning to the updated standards  —   an approach that is working,” wrote Vilsack."
"Some 700 American troops on a   deployment could be in danger of an attack by extremists affiliated with the Islamic State, the Pentagon worries, but it may not be able to get them out anytime soon. U. S. military commanders fear the soldiers deployed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and charged with keeping the peace between Egypt and Israel, are becoming an irresistible target for Islamist fighters concentrating nearby. The Wilayat Sinai group has pledged allegiance to ISIS, attacked Egyptian troops and planted roadside bombs. They have called the peacekeepers a ”crusader force.” The group dramatically raised its profile last November when it claimed responsibility for downing a Russian civilian plane filled with tourists over the Sinai, killing all 224 on board. In the Sinai, American soldiers are closer to ISIS than anywhere else in the world, one military official said. The official and others who talked with NPR asked not to be identified since the Defense Department hasn’t decided officially whether to try to withdraw the troops from the Sinai. The U. S. troops are posted to two desert camps, part of an observer force in the Sinai created by the 1979 Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt, which was brokered by President Carter. The peace treaty has held and the international detachment has had relatively little to do over the years in their desert outposts. There are just over 700 U. S. troops in the Sinai force, out of a total of more than 1, 680 from 12 nations. The countries also include Australia, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Fiji, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. They rotate their troops in and out of Egypt for the mission. A Recent Attack, Since September, six troops  —   including four Americans  —   have been wounded during patrols. That month, the command removed personnel from a remote checkpoint three miles from a main base, saying it could not ”safely resupply” the site and continue to conduct the mission. Over the past several months, the U. S. has beefed up security at the North Camp, which is squarely in the middle of the insurgency. Occasional rockets and mortars come into the camp, and there are fears the resupply aircraft could be under threat. Last fall, the Pentagon sent in more troops, armored vehicles, artillery and cameras mounted on aerostat balloons. Those are only defense measures, however. Outside the gate, in the Sinai itself, security is handled by the Egyptian military. An Egyptian tank outside the North Camp gate occasionally fires a tank round in response to fire by militants, U. S. officials say. If the Egyptians do go after the militants, these officials say, it often involves punishing attacks. But the Egyptians lack programs, like jobs or assistance, that could provide avenues to a better life and potentially blunt the insurgency. Back in November, U. S. officials tried to downsize the force during a meeting in Rome, where the peacekeeping force is headquartered. The U. S. delegates wanted to reduce the force by 20 percent and replace it with a variety of surveillance equipment. Both Egypt and Israel balked. For Israel, the U. S.  force provides a certain comfort level, particularly at a time of rising tensions throughout the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, was elected in Egypt in 2012, but was overthrown a year later by the current leader, President Abdel Fattah  . The Egyptian president and Israel share a strong opposition to Islamist groups. Using Technology To Monitor, Daniel Byman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said replacing U. S. troops with technology that could monitor the area is ”eminently sensible” since it reduces risk. ”You’re able to sustain the mission better if there’s less risk,” he said. This isn’t the first time grumblings about the Sinai mission have bubbled up out of the Pentagon. Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld twice tried to cut the deployments a decade ago, citing an overburdened military, but was rebuffed by both Egypt and Israel. The peacekeeping force, officially known as the Multinational Force and Observers, is just one of the ways the U. S. provides security assistance to Egypt. The overall package comes to $1. 3 billion annually. The camps for the peacekeepers, one located in northern Sinai and another in the south near the resort town of Sharm   employ some 400 Sinai residents. David M. Satterfield, who oversees the Multinational Force and Observers, is a retired career Foreign Service officer who served in Iraq and was U. S. ambassador to Lebanon. He was appointed as director general of the MFO by Egypt and Israel back in 2009. Satterfield’s spokesman, Brad Lynch, declined to address the possibility of reducing the U. S. troop presence. ”It hasn’t been our policy for a long time to make comments on our peacekeeping force,” Lynch said. Lynch referred all questions to the MFO headquarters in Rome. Officials did not respond to a request for comment. Geoffrey Aronson, an analyst with the Middle East Institute in Washington, wrote about the growing dangers in the Sinai on the institute’s website last month. ”The (Multinational Force and Observers) and in particular the United States, must now confront the unwelcome prospect of a kinetic engagement with ISIS in Sinai,” he worte. ”The Obama administration, thus, finds its options narrowed by the demands of its allies, increasing rather than reducing the number of boots on the ground, and hoping it will not be drawn into another open front with ISIS.”"
"New satellite images of St. Elijah’s Monastery, located in the   city of Mosul, no longer show a neatly chiseled, square parcel of land, complete with walls and buildings built into a hill. All that can be seen of the Christian monastery, parts of which are 1, 400 years old, is a dusty field of rubble. It was apparently razed by ISIS in its quest to destroy religious or historical artifacts deemed heretical. ”Satellite images suggest ISIS destroyed it in the fall of 2014,” NPR’s Alice Fordham reports, adding that this timeline was corroborated by Father Najeeb Mikhael, a priest who fled Mosul to the nearby city of Irbil. ”Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of   dust. They destroyed it completely,” imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, told The Associated Press, which had asked the satellite imagery company DigitalGlobe to take photos of the site. Before it was pulverized, the monastery was a    stone and mortar building with 26 rooms, including a sanctuary and chapel, the AP reports. Alice says St. Elijah’s, also called Dair Mar Elia, was a site of annual pilgrimage by the Christian community in Mosul, and that most recently, the ruin was incorporated into a U. S. base, where troops with carpentry skills were working to restore it. As NPR’s Eric Westervelt reported in 2008, some of the damage the troops were working to repair was inflicted by U. S. forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He said: ”The tow missile that crashed into the ancient chapel’s wall could be chalked up to the fog of combat. But the same can’t be said for the sophomoric graffiti scrawled around the place and the big ’Screaming Eagles’ logo painted above the chapel’s door. [. ..] Some of the damage U. S. forces did here can’t be undone. But U. S. military chaplains are trying to protect the site as best they can during wartime.” Then in June 2014, ISIS claimed control of Mosul and historical scholars and preservationists had been fearing the worst about the monastery’s fate ever since. ISIS has killed thousands of people in the past two years as it fights for land and control in Syria and Iraq. Along the way, the group has also destroyed more than 100 religious and historical sites, including mosques, churches and shrines, that it considers incompatible with its version of Islam. Most notably, ISIS destroyed large swaths of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. As fighting between Syrian government troops and ISIS near Palmyra raged in May 2015, the UNESCO World Heritage Foundation pleaded with ”all parties” to save the cultural treasure. ISIS captured Palmyra, and the requests were ignored. Militants took sledgehammers to statues and blew up temples. They also beheaded a renowned,    Syrian archaeologist, Khaled   who refused to divulge the location of valuable antiquities  —   and then hung his body from one of the town’s Roman columns. For a look at some of the other sites and artifacts destroyed by ISIS, check out this National Geographic article."
"It’s our first show with new music in 2016! After nearly two months of  ’s, holiday and Sweet 16 specials, we get back to doing what we do best and love most: playing great new music. On this week’s All Songs Considered, we share a new song by Tiny Desk alum AURORA, one of Bob’s favorite discoveries from CMJ 2014. In a departure from the soft, whispered folk sounds of her early recordings, we showcase a song from Laura Gibson’s upcoming, electrified record Empire Builder. In fact, many of the songs picked this week by hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton showcase the evolution and musical   of some of our favorite artists. Lucius took the experiences of its last two years on the road and channeled them into a massive pop sound for its record Good Grief. Thao  the Get Down Stay Down also trades in its playful folk for a     sound. The new year, and what the year has brought thus far, also weighed in on our hosts’ minds. The week’s opening cut, a   and staggeringly beautiful take on David Bowie’s ”Ashes to Ashes” performed by Glen Hansard, set another thread for the conversation: renewal. Hansard breathed new life into Bowie’s synth pop ode to oddity. Laura Gibson found tragedy and rebirth in her move from Portland to the Big Apple. And we premiered an inspired new song from Ray LaMontagne’s upcoming LP Ouroboros, a reference to a symbol for destruction and renewal."
"The publication of a new history of autism called In a Different Key, by John Donvan and Caren Zucker, has reopened an unsettling question about the pioneering Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger: Was he a Nazi sympathizer, or a man who paid lip service to his bosses’ murderous ideology in order to save the lives of as many of his young patients as possible? The implications of this question are   because Asperger’s work on autism at the University of Vienna in the 1930s was ignored for decades after the war. That had a catastrophic impact on autistic people and their families, and on the course of autism research. The controversy also gets to the heart of the difficulty of accurately judging the behavior of people living under brutal regimes, particularly decades after the fact. In Donvan and Zucker’s view, Asperger was an ambitious opportunist who uncritically spouted Nazi ideology in his first public lecture on autism in 1938, and enthusiastically signed letters ”Heil Hitler!” Most devastatingly, he signed a letter of referral effectively condemning a little girl with encephalitis named Herta Schreiber to death in a Vienna rehab facility that had been converted into a killing center by Asperger’s former colleague, Erwin Jekelius. Donvan and Zucker base their conclusions on documents allegedly uncovered by a Holocaust scholar in Vienna named Herwig Czech, whose grandfather was a Nazi. Czech has made a career of documenting the horrific crimes of the medical establishment under the Third Reich, while ”outing” secret Nazis like neurologist Walther Birkmayer, who pioneered the use of a drug called   to treat Parkinson’s disease but was a member of the dreaded SS. While researching my own history of autism, NeuroTribes, published in 2015, I ultimately came to take a more nuanced view of Asperger as a compassionate clinician and educator working under the most difficult possible circumstances as Hitler and his henchmen rose to power. My book explores the historical background of the Nazis’ attempt to wipe disabled people off the face of the earth, including the fact that the Third Reich’s genocidal policies were inspired by eugenics research originally conducted in America under the auspices of mainstream scientific organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute. I also made clear that once the Nazis marched into Austria to annex the country for the fatherland in 1938, nearly all of Asperger’s colleagues became fervent members of the Nazi party, while his Jewish colleagues were purged from the faculty at the University of Vienna and forced to flee the country or face death in a concentration camp. Many chose to commit suicide instead. I focused primarily on the years leading up to World War II and on the crucial work that Asperger and his colleagues did at the Children’s Clinic at the university, before the Nazis took over and transformed the once hallowed institution of learning into a center for the study of ”racial hygiene” staffed by bumbling fanatics. What I found led me to conclude that Asperger was the true discoverer of what we now call the autism spectrum  —   a lifelong condition with a broad and strikingly heterogeneous range of clinical presentations. To come to that conclusion, I drew on the first case history of autism, written at the Children’s Clinic in 1935 by Asperger’s colleague psychologist Anni Weiss, which had been overlooked for 80 years. Weiss evaluated a boy named Gottfried who exhibited many traits now considered classic manifestations of autism  —   including difficulty in relating to his peers, which made him a frequent target of bullying, heightened sensitivity to sound, and a rigidly logical cast of mind. After having Gottfried take an intelligence test, one that he undertook with great difficulty, Weiss came to an astonishingly prescient conclusion. Instead of presuming that the shy, awkward boy was feebleminded, as many of his teachers had done, Weiss noticed that Gottfried was acutely anxious about violating the rules of the test, which hampered his performance. She concluded that in fact he was highly intelligent, but in a way that couldn’t be captured by the usual standardized tests. I discovered another forgotten paper written by an American psychiatrist named Joseph Michaels, who visited Asperger’s clinic before the war. At first skeptical about the lack of psychoanalytical frameworks guiding the staff, Michaels was eventually converted by what he called the clinic’s ”highly personal” approach, which viewed eccentric behavior as problematic only if it created problems for the child. ”Fundamentally there appears to be no special interest in the differences between normal and abnormal,” Michaels wrote, ”as it is felt that theoretically this is unclear, and practically it is of no great importance . .. great value is placed on intuition gained . .. while working, or better, while living with the children.” Asperger and his colleagues would eventually examine more than 200 children with autism at all levels of ability  —   from nonspeaking children who would always require assistance in their daily lives to a young man who became an assistant professor of astronomy after detecting an error in one of Isaac Newton’s proofs. Asperger noted the prevalence of autistic traits among ”distinguished scientists,” and went so far as to say, ”It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential . .. the necessary ingredient may be an ability to turn away from the everyday world, from the simply practical, an ability to rethink a subject with originality so as to create in new untrodden ways.” In his first talk on autism in 1938, which Donvan and Zucker put forth as evidence of Nazi sympathies, Asperger may well have emphasized his ”most promising cases” to his Nazi bosses in part because newly passed eugenics laws in Austria targeted more impaired children for extermination. This tactic inadvertently led to one of the most pernicious myths about Asperger’s legacy: that he only saw   children, when he made clear in his published work that he saw children from all points on the spectrum. Donvan and Zucker’s account of that lecture omits any reference to the most radical statement Asperger made that day: his observation that his patients’ impairments were inextricable from their special gifts, forming ”natural, necessary, interconnected aspects of one   harmonious personality.” Later, he would make the prescient suggestion that the enhanced   abilities of his autistic patients would make them valuable   for the Reich. This view was completely at odds with the eugenicists’ core belief that humanity could only thrive by shedding the ”burden” of providing disabled people with the support they need, while they make contributions that only they can. In this belief, Asperger anticipated the development of the modern neurodiversity movement, which views conditions like autism, dyslexia and ADHD as profound disabilities that can also convey striking gifts in the presence of adequate accommodations and educational resources. As a clinician who worked with children with many types of hereditary disabilities, Asperger was in an acutely perilous position  —   particularly because the man who originally assigned him to work in the Children’s Clinic, an infectious disease specialist named Franz Hamburger, became one of the most prominent Nazis in Austria. Hamburger portrayed the Fuehrer as a grand physician, opening up ”new avenues of health for the 80 million folk of Germany.” Under the influence of fanatics like Hamburger, the distinction between normal and abnormal behavior became a litmus test that meant the difference between life and death. The Nazis embarked on a series of euthanasia campaigns to murder disabled children and adults in large numbers, which effectively became practice runs for the Holocaust. Doctors were required to report disabled children in their care, medical students were trained to administer lethal injections while filling out fictitious death certificates, and clinics and hospitals became factories of death  —   including the former rehab facility in Vienna called Am Spiegelgrund that became the primary killing center for all of Austria under the supervision of Erwin Jekelius. Dissent in the ranks was punished harshly. A prominent bishop who objected to the mass murder of disabled children on religious grounds was quickly dispatched to a camp. Medical students at the University of Munich who opposed euthanasia were arrested, convicted of treason by a people’s court and publicly beheaded. Asperger found himself in what he later described as a ”truly dangerous situation.” According to Adam Feinstein, author of A History of Autism, the Gestapo came to the clinic twice to arrest Asperger  —   and both times, Hamburger was able to send them away. In order to retain his position at the university, the   Asperger would have been required at the very least to take a loyalty oath to Hitler. After giving another talk in 1940, Asperger was chided by his colleague Josef Feldner for paying lip service to the Fuehrer, which, Feldner advised him, was ”a bit too Nazistic for your reputation.” Though nearly all of Asperger’s colleagues eventually joined the Nazi party, Asperger never did. Understanding the terrible historical forces that Asperger was up against makes sense of the oddly strident note he struck in his   paper, filed to Hamburger in 1943. ”The example of autism shows particularly well how even abnormal personalities can be capable of development and adjustment,” Asperger wrote. ”This knowledge . .. gives us the right and the duty to speak out for these children with the whole force of our personality.” Ultimately, Asperger’s insights would inspire the British psychiatrist Lorna Wing to conceive of autism as a broad and inclusive spectrum instead of a rare, narrowly defined form of childhood psychosis  —   allegedly caused by unloving ”refrigerator” parents  —   that was described by Leo Kanner, the child psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital who took sole credit for discovering the condition in 1943. The real story was much more complicated than that. In fact, it was Kanner who rescued Georg Frankl and dozens of other Jewish clinicians from the gathering storm leading up to the Holocaust, reaping the benefits of Frankl’s expertise by having him evaluate Kanner’s first autistic patients. Kanner would go on to become the world’s leading authority on autism, while mentioning Asperger’s work only once in print, dismissively, much later in his career. Rumors that Asperger was more compliant with his Nazi bosses than he himself suggested after the war have circulated for decades. As Donvan and Zucker point out, Eric Schopler, the founder of TEACCH  —   a pioneering autism education and research program in North Carolina  —   objected to Lorna Wing’s coinage of the term ”Asperger syndrome” for this reason, preferring the term ”  autism.” But In a Different Key raises the speculation about Asperger’s character to a new level. Again citing Czech’s research, the authors claim that Asperger served on a committee that decided which children should live and which should die, though they do not explore the possibility that Asperger could have used that position to save as many children as possible. Czech has never made his information available to me, despite numerous requests of increasing urgency over the years, even after his allegations appeared in a review of my book in The Spectator by autism researcher Simon  . But I was able to find support for his claim that Asperger signed the letter of referral sending Herta Schreiber to Am Spiegelgrund in the work of another scholar named Waltraud Hauepl, whose sister also perished there. I have amended the text of future editions of my book to reflect this darkest episode in Asperger’s career. It would be unfortunate if Donvan and Zucker’s revelations are used to discredit the work of Asperger and his colleagues Georg Frankl and Anni Weiss. As filmmaker Saskia Baron points out in her review of In a Different Key in The Guardian, ”Whether Asperger was a saint or a sinner should not dominate the discourse around autism.” (She probed the ethical dimensions of the Third Reich’s medical crimes in her documentary Science and the Swastika: Hitler’s Biological Soldiers.) What matters is focusing on the availability of services and support for autistic people and their families  —   a population that has been drastically underestimated in history, primarily because Asperger’s work was not made widely available in English until 1991. Without her serendipitous discovery of Asperger’s work when it was still being overlooked, the British psychiatrist Lorna Wing would never have been inspired to broaden the diagnostic criteria for autism into a spectrum that included what she called Asperger’s syndrome, making support services available to a wide range of people  —   including teenagers and adults  —   who had been excluded from a diagnosis before. The reframing of autism as a spectrum in the 1990s also made possible marvelous things that Asperger himself could never have predicted, such as the emergence of a vibrant autistic culture (embodied in books like The Real Experts: Readings for Parents of Autistic Children) and the proliferation of   organizations like the Autistic   Network, which are demanding a place at the table when public policy that impacts autistic people and their families is formulated. Asperger’s daughter, Maria Asperger Felder, a pediatrician and psychiatrist in Vienna, told me recently that she is carrying on her father’s work to this day, seeing autistic patients from age 5 to age 60. She also says that after the war, Georg Frankl immediately   contact with her father, and the two men maintained a lively correspondence about the progress of their patients, as they had done in the years before darkness fell in Austria. They also visited one another cordially in their respective home countries, which one wouldn’t expect if Frankl believed that Asperger was a Nazi monster who had enthusiastically sent his young patients to their deaths. I look forward to Herwig Czech finally making his research available to other scholars. But if Donvan and Zucker’s allegations turn out to be true, the most important lesson of this tragic chapter in history is not that Asperger’s work should be ignored, as it was in most of the world until developmental psychologist Uta Frith finally made it available in English. The most important lesson is not that brutal regimes like the Third Reich enable evil men to do evil, but that they are able to compel even   people to do monstrous things. Steve Silberman is author of NeuroTribes, a New York Times   history of autism and the neurodiversity movement. "
"In their book published this month, In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, journalists John Donvan and Caren Zucker delve into the history of the good and bad intentions, sometimes wrongheaded science and shifting definitions that can cloud our understanding of what has come to be called the autism spectrum. In their Tuesday conversation with NPR’s Robert Siegel, host of All Things Considered, Donvan and Zucker tell of a particularly dark period in the 1940s when psychiatrists blamed autistic behavior on ”refrigerator mothers”  —   emotionally distant women who, supposedly, didn’t love their children enough. ”This was a very, very poisonous idea,” says Donvan. And it wasn’t the last flawed notion about autism’s roots. Highlights of the interview follow, edited for space and clarity. Siegel: How would you define autism? Zucker: Well it depends who you are actually, because autism is now seen as a spectrum, and the spectrum is so broad right now that there are people on one end of it that are severely, severely disabled and you can’t help but call it a disability because people are literally injuring themselves  —   they can’t communicate, they can’t do things by themselves. On the other extreme end of the spectrum are people who can speak for themselves, they can manage their lives they do not see autism as a disability but just as a different fabric in humanity. Donvan: Because this condition is not one that has a biological marker, you cannot identify autism by a cheek swab or a blood test, but you identify it by looking at people’s behaviors. That has allowed, over decades, for so many various interpretations of those key traits that the definition itself has moved again and again. Siegel: The book describes how autism was first diagnosed, how it was named and explained. I want you to describe this: For years, there was a psychoanalytic approach that dominated the understanding of autism, and the cause was really held to be bad parenting. Donvan: It was called the refrigerator mother theory, and the idea was that children were somehow insulted  —   psychologically insulted  —   by their mothers, who, for some reason, signaled that they didn’t love their children enough. And, as a defense mechanism, the children were said to have withdrawn into their own world. So this was a very, very poisonous idea. Siegel: Much of the story of autism is frankly about parents and about what parents have done to bring attention to the condition of their children  —   very often for the good. [But] sometimes  —   in the case of advocating a vaccine theory as the cause of autism  —   not for the good. Zucker: Well, in our book, we really see the parent as unsung heroes. They literally change the world for children with autism. I mean, parents were told to put their children into institutions, and that was what the norm was 50 years ago. And they opened up the schools for them. [Before parents insisted on a change in policy] the schools were allowed to not have children with autism in them. So without parents, we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today. Siegel: On the other hand, parents did lend their voices to, well, to the vaccine theory. And the fact that there are many voices saying something doesn’t make it scientifically true. Donvan: Absolutely not. The story of autism has very often been the story of bad science, many, many times. In the case of the vaccine issue, yes, 15 years ago, when the question had not been investigated, it made sense to ask it it was not a ridiculous question. But it was asked it was answered, and the science settled it. Vaccines don’t cause autism. Siegel: By the year 2000, the rise in the number of autism diagnoses became the subject of congressional concern. In hearings that year, Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana said, ”The rates of autism have escalated dramatically in the last few years. What used to be considered a rare disorder has become a near epidemic.” Has there been an autism epidemic? Donvan: The truth is that we don’t really know whether there has been an epidemic. And I know that sounds strange to people, because they hear so much more about autism now than they ever have before, but what we think is that there has been an explosion in autism diagnoses, which is different from there being more autism. We started looking for autism, so found it. Also, at the same time, what we call autism became a much, much broader spectrum, and the definition kept changing over time. Siegel: Toward the very end of your book, you acknowledge the ”neurodiversity movement.” These would be people who are on the spectrum and who say, ”Look, this isn’t an illness. We don’t want to be cured. This is a different way of being wired, a different way of your brain working.” And there’s an exchange between an activist of that sort with a mother whose son has autism. Describe what goes on between them. Donvan: It’s a conversation between Ari Ne’eman, who is a very, very prominent and successful activist for the concept of neurodiversity. And Ari Ne’eman, whom we have a lot of respect for, has been very, very successful in promulgating the idea that people with autism should be accepted as they are. And he had a conversation with a mother named Liz Bell. Liz Bell is the mother of a young man named Tyler. In his mom’s opinion, Tyler’s experience of autism is very, very limiting in his life and his ability to dress himself, to shave himself, to feed himself, to go out the front door by himself and not run into traffic. And these are two very, very different views of what autism represents that come down to the fact that the spectrum is so broad that there is room for an Ari Ne’eman on it and there is room for a Tyler Bell on it. And the basic disagreement between them is whether autism is something that should be cured  —   whether the traits that limit Tyler’s ability to be independent in life should be treated to make those traits go away. On one side, Ari is saying that it’s suppressing who he actually is and his identity on the other side is Tyler’s mother saying that to treat him, and even cure him, of his autism would be to liberate who he is. Siegel: But it does pose a question: Since there is no biological test  —   as you say, ”no cheek swab that defines someone’s condition as being autism”  —   are we really clear that Ari and Tyler have the same condition, and that we should group them together on this spectrum? Or does the spectrum inevitably include everybody in the world? Donvan: Boy, that is the question of the moment in the autism conversation. How big is the umbrella under which we want to include people who have autistic traits? We don’t look at the spectrum concept as necessarily the last word. We may end up splitting the spectrum again into different parts. And this tension between lumping together or splitting apart has been repeated again and again through the history of autism. We happen to be in what’s called in the field a ”lumper moment” in that the spectrum idea is dominant, popular  —   it makes a lot of sense to a lot of people. Siegel: Caren Zucker, is it any easier to be the parent of someone with autism today than it was, say, 15 or 20 years ago? Zucker: Absolutely. I have a    son [with autism] and when I was trying to get services for my son, I was making it up, or I was on a list for 300 people to try to get into a program that could actually help him. And if you look back at how far we’ve come in 15 years, it’s remarkable in terms of awareness, in terms of education. We have figured out what to do, to a very large extent, with the kids. But we have not gotten to the adults. And part of that is because adults weren’t around, you know, 50 years ago  —   they were mostly in institutions. So that’s really the heart of where we’re also trying to go with our book  —   for people to see: Look how far we’ve come. Look at what these parents and advocates have done. But look how far we still have to go."
"Being in Kaikoura, New Zealand, for what is allegedly the first astrobiology workshop here, it’s a good time to go back to the basics and reflect on what we know of the complicated question of the origin of life on Earth  —   and the possibility of life elsewhere. I will do this, here at 13. 7, in installments during the next few weeks. When it comes to life in the universe, we have only one undisputed sample point  —   Earth. For this reason, scientists trying to understand the origin of life focus on what can be reconstructed of life’s early steps here as a laboratory to understand life elsewhere. This approach, of course, makes a fundamental assumption: that finding life elsewhere is easier when we follow what we know. This is a reasonable approach. Otherwise, we are out there in speculation land, without much to follow or to base our searches on. So, life is   and  . There are three essential questions we may ask, none with a simple answer: When did life originate? Where did life originate? How did life originate? Each involves disputes between different groups, but the ”how” question is surely the toughest: How does a mix of nonliving chemicals become living? Clearly, to get to an answer the term ”living” needs to be defined, at least operationally. This is already a complex problem, as no accepted universal definition of life exists. In fact, some argue that defining life may be a mistake, given that a definition is a limitation, bracketing the possibilities that life may surprise us in ways we can’t even conceive at the moment. Wittgenstein argued similarly for ”game.” It’s easier to understand what a game is than to define it absolutely. We tend to understand what a game is by comparison with games we know. All three questions are, of course, related, and it may be naïve to treat them separately. However, from a scientific perspective, we may find clues for how life may have originated by finding the oldest signs of life possible. ”Possible” is an essential qualification here. We can’t ever be sure that what we find is the oldest life on Earth. All we can do is search for possible biomarkers in the oldest rocks around, hoping that if they aren’t the oldest, they are at least close to the oldest. We do know that for the first 600 million years or so of its existence, Earth was not a safe environment for life. Conditions were quite hellish, literally, as high temperatures and violent tides combined with ferocious volcanic activity and meteoritic bombardment to create a caldron of boiling chemicals unable to bind to form the more complicated, stable structures needed for life. Around 3. 9 billion years ago, things quieted down, after what is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. If living creatures existed before then, they were quite possibly destroyed. Asking astrobiologists what they think is the oldest solid evidence for life is an interesting exercise. Opinions vary, especially at the fringes, that is, the claims for the oldest,   life. There aren’t fossils preserved from 3. 9 billion years ago. Scientists look for biotic materials, materials derived from living organisms, as they decompose and affect the rocks around them, or from the chemical reactions from their metabolism. Early life gets mineralized, and it is the chemistry from this mineralization process that gives clues for life. One of the oldest pieces of accepted evidence for life dates from 3. 25    hydrothermal vent deposits at Pilbara Craton in Australia. The dates there can be pushed to 3. 48 billion years ago. How do scientists date such old rocks? Using   radioactive decay techniques based on unstable isotopes found on the site. (In other words, they look for radioactive minerals near the old life sites and date them together.) Interestingly, chemical fingerprints from the mineralization process show that those living creatures had already a complex metabolism, indicating that earlier, simpler life existed. Another old life comes from 3. 3    microbial biofilms in hydrothermal shallow sediments found in Barbeton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. Earlier clues from Greenland rocks, dating to as early as 4. 1 billion years ago, remain controversial. It would be quite amazing if life indeed existed that early. The idea is that the earlier life emerged on Earth, the ”easier” it is for it to emerge in general. That being the case, life shouldn’t be hard to find in other planets or moons out there, including Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, or Enceladus, belonging to Saturn. Both have oceans of liquid water under a thick icy crust and show promising signs of hydrothermal vent activity. Hydrothermal vents show how resilient and creative living creatures can be, using unusual chemicals such as sulfur, methane and hydrogen compounds to fuel their metabolisms. Geologically young New Zealand has modern extreme environments that are mineralizing. Scientists such as Kathy Campbell from the University of Auckland use these as laboratories for what happens in deep time, in particular studying how biological signatures are preserved. The best evidence comes from processes leading to quick solidification of the biotic material. Presumably, the same happened with the evidence found in Australia and South Africa  —   and possibly others not found yet. However old first life was, we know that living creatures with sophisticated metabolisms were moving about and reproducing at least 400 million years after the Late Heavy Bombardment, a blink of an eye in geological time. If anything, this tells us that whatever that early life was, it took advantage of the primal Earth environment to blossom. And, since then, it never stopped  —   at least on this planet. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist  —   and professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the   of 13. 7, a prolific author of papers and essays, and active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser."
"High lead levels in Flint, Mich. ’s water has led President Obama to declare a state of emergency, as criticism mounts that the problem has not been handled promptly. ”The people weren’t put first, the health of the people was not put before profit and money,” Flint Mayor Karen Weaver says in an interview with Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered. The problem started when Flint switched its water source to the Flint River in April 2014. The new supply was harder water, which corroded the city’s pipes and leached lead into the tap water. Residents quickly started complaining about the water. General Motors stopped using it in October 2014 because it was corroding machinery. Even though the city switched back to its original supply in October 2015, the damaged pipes continue to contaminate the water. Weaver says Flint residents don’t know when the city’s water will be safe to drink again  —   even though they’re still paying for it. The lead levels and complaints about how the problem is being handled have led to the resignation Thursday of Susan Hedman, the regional director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Also Thursday, the head of the EPA issued an emergency order directing state and city officials to take actions to protect public health. President Obama’s declaration of a state of emergency last week freed up $5 million in federal aid for the city. Weaver was not in office when this started. She was elected in November after vowing to address the city’s water problems, and as Michigan Radio’s Lindsey Smith reports, ”one of the first things she did was to declare an emergency in the city.” Flint residents have consistently voiced frustration over the time it has taken for officials to acknowledge this crisis and respond to it. Flint is a   city, and 40 percent of people live below the poverty line. Weaver tells Ari that she thinks race and poverty ”had a lot to do with the response.” On meeting President Obama, Weaver met the president and some of his senior advisers earlier this week to discuss Flint’s crisis. ”[H]e has pledged to do everything that he can at the federal level and has, in fact, sent people to Flint to get started on this, past the FEMA [assistance] that has already been in place. One of the things he stressed is that he was going to be meeting with the governor the very next day, because the state has such a big role to play in this and we know the state has money. They have a   fund, a surplus between $500 and $600 million, and Flint needs to be the priority for receiving those funds.” On 274 pages of emails about Flint released by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Snyder made the emails public on Wednesday following widespread criticism. He said he was releasing them ”so that you have answers to your questions about what we’ve done and what we’re doing to make this right for the families of Flint.” Here’s what Weaver had to say: ”I haven’t seen what’s in those emails but I will tell you this  —   it’s something that he needed to do because one of the issues we’ve been dealing with is broken trust. And we’ve been kept in the dark regarding some information regarding our water. We’ve been given misinformation about the water, and the only way the governor can  —   if he can  —   rebuild trust, is to start doing that. So it’s a start for him, I suppose.” On calls for Snyder to resign, ”You know what, I’m glad those   figures are out there, and they’re putting the pressure on the governor and holding him accountable for some things. What I’ve said is, we have an investigation going on and I can’t wait to hear the results of that investigation because everybody that should be held accountable needs to be held accountable. We want to know who knew what and when they knew it. And that’s from the governor, all the way down to if it includes local officials. We want everyone to be held accountable and if it means they have to be removed, so be it.” On   solutions, Weaver says the city is receiving badly needed bottled water and filters  —   but these are only temporary answers for the larger problem. ”The other thing we need to do is start looking at infrastructure. Because even though we’ve switched back to Lake Huron water through Detroit, those lead service lines are the issue. And how long are we supposed to wait for biofilm to build back up? Nobody can tell us how long that can take. And we need to be able to drink our water.” On her hopes for Flint’s future, ”You know, it’s a terrible thing, no community should ever have to go through what Flint has gone through, but I’m also looking at the possibility of what can come out of this. And I’ve always believed in Flint, I’m excited about the potential, and you know, we’ve got to get this fixed. But there is a lot to look forward to in the city of Flint. And you’re going to have me back, because I’m going to be telling the second part of this story.”"
"Pedrito Martinez is a     percussionist  —   a rumbero called upon by many jazz and pop stars when they need hand drumming, as well as a   singing bandleader in his own right. He’s also a Santería priest. Those two aspects of Martinez’s life are inextricably connected. In 2014, when we documented the new suite of music that Wynton Marsalis had written to feature Martinez and Cuban piano virtuoso Chucho Valdés, we spoke with Martinez about his practice of the   religion, and followed him to a private ceremony in The Bronx. ”What made me love the religion was the music,” he told us. Here, Jazz Night In America presents a short look at Pedrito Martinez, santero."
"Building on the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s recent trip to Cuba, managing and artistic director Wynton Marsalis presents his newest   work: Ochas, a suite for big band and   percussion. He calls upon young superstar Pedrito Martinez, who brought along a trio of fellow hand percussionists, to execute the chants and rhythms of the batá drums specific to Santería religious practice. And he called upon virtuoso Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés to ignite the proceedings. The performance launches Jazz at Lincoln Center’s   calendar and highlights its   theme ”Jazz Across The Americas.” All compositions by Wynton Marsalis. Wynton Marsalis,   director Pedrito Martinez,   Chucho Valdés, piano. With the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra: Kenny Rampton, trumpet Marcus Printup, trumpet Greg Gisbert, trumpet Vincent Gardner, trombone Chris Crenshaw, trombone Elliot Mason, trombone Sherman Irby, alto saxophone Ted Nash, alto saxophone Victor Goines, tenor saxophone Walter Blanding, tenor saxophone Paul Nedzela, baritone saxophone Dan Nimmer, piano Carlos Henriquez, bass Ali Jackson, drums. Featuring Román Diaz,   Clemente Medina,   Dreiser Durruthy Bambolé, dance Yesenia Fernandez Selier, dance Denise DeJean, vocals Amma Dawn McKen, vocals."
"Florida’s Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys was a horror tale come to life. ”There’s just too many stories,” Roger Kiser, who was at the school in the 1950s, told NPR in 2012. ”I know of one [boy] that I personally saw die in the bathtub that had been beaten half to death. I thought he’d been mauled by the dogs because I thought he had ran. I never did find out the true story on that. There was the boy I saw who was dead who came out of the dryer. They put him in one of those large dryers.” Closed since 2011, the reform school was located in the small panhandle town of Marianna, Fla. and served as a bleak destination for troublemakers, rule breakers and delinquents. In the 1900s, hundreds of boys were sent to the school  —   some never left. Historical records show that nearly 100 boys ages 6 to 18 died at the school between 1900 and 1973. Many are not identified and were buried in unmarked locations. Researchers from University of South Florida, led by forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle, have spent the past three years exhuming human remains from the school’s land, ultimately discovering 51 sets of remains. The final report released Thursday says ”in total, 55 burials were located . .. at the former reform school.” It says that 13 of the graves were located in the school’s cemetery and ”the rest of the graves were outside this area in the woods, including under a roadway, brush, and a large mulberry tree.” The researchers also announced that ”seven positive DNA matches and 14 presumptive identifications have been made,” noting that two of the DNA matches had not been released previously. The new report is the latest development in a   process to identify the remains and reunite them with surviving family members. Many of the remains, however, are still unidentified. ”Kimmerle says her team is committed to working with the families to identify the rest of the remains if possible and the work will continue,” NPR’s Greg Allen tells All Things Considered. Greg, who has reported extensively on the murky history of the reform school, said some of the details surrounding the boys’ deaths are ”sketchy.” In 2012, Greg spoke to men who were sent to the school as children in the 1950s and 1960s. ”A lot of orphans were there that did not have places at times and they were sent to Marianna. They weren’t there for any crime whatsoever,” said Jerry Cooper, who was sent to the school in 1961 when he was 16. ”But we had many, many boys who [were] there for smoking in school, that were incorrigible. We weren’t bad kids. We might have needed help in some respect. But that wasn’t the place to find it, I’ll tell you that right now.” Nicknamed the ”White House Boys” after a small but infamous building on school property, called the White House, where violent punishments were meted out, the men described vicious beatings and mistreatment at the hands of school administrators. In 2008, Florida’s former Gov. Charlie Crist ordered state investigators to look into the allegations of abuse, torture and deaths at the school. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement interviewed the White House Boys and former school staff but said it couldn’t find enough evidence to support the accusations. The release of the new report isn’t likely to change that. The report does not weigh in on whether anything criminal occurred, saying its stated mission was to identify remains. But some of the details have raised new concerns. The report says a small lead ball ”consistent with [a] Buck size shot pellet” was found in one grave, indicating a possible bullet wound. It also highlights disparities in treatment between black boys and white boys. The school’s demographic was predominantly   and more   boys died. But as the report lays out,   boys were three times as likely to be unnamed in historical records and buried in unmarked locations. As for the   remains, their reinterment is something of a sticking point. ”The White House Boys are adamant that the remains should be reinterred far from the old Dozier school and not in the the nearby town of Marianna or even in that county there,” Greg said. ”Many feel the town was complicit in the mistreatment of boys who were held at the school.” He added, ”Some officials and business leaders from Marianna . .. were on hand today here today in Tallahassee to express interest in the future of the   property. One that I talked to said the town was willing to acknowledge its past, to apologize and to move on. Some of the White House Boys told me that they’re now ready to do the same.”"
"You’ve never seen a sports team like this one. Dotted across a dusty rectangle of dirt in the Kenyan savanna,   Maasai men in traditional clothing  —   plaid red fabrics and colorful accessories made of feathers and beads  —   are playing a sport known for its stiff whites: cricket. But winning isn’t the team’s No. 1 goal. It’s putting the practice of female genital mutilation, which has affected girls as young as six in the community, into a permanent  . The Maasai Cricket Warriors, as they’re called, are the subject of Warriors, a documentary film by British director Barney Douglas. It follows the Maasai players from their village of Il Polei all the way to London for their first cricket championship. The film, which comes out on DVD this month, premiered in Los Angeles last September and has been shown in the U. K. South Africa and Kenya.   percent of the profits will go toward creating a community youth center in Il Polei. Even before cricket came to town, the village knew what FGM meant for Maasai girls. Sonyanga Ole Ngais, one of the stars of Warriors and the team captain, witnessed three of his sisters undergo the pain of ”the cut.” Once they were circumcised, they were considered ready for marriage and were quickly married off. Their education ended abruptly. Ngais and the younger generation of Maasai men in the village know the power of an educated female. In the movie, they tell how she can help the men and raise up the community as a whole. But to encourage this behavior, the men know they have to speak up, too. ”In their society, men are dominant,” says Douglas. ”So for this reason, it’s partly the young men’s responsibility to stand up and say, ’FGM is not right. It’s unacceptable. We want our young women to go to school.’ ” And how did cricket come into the picture? Aliya Bauer introduced cricket to the area in 2007 during a   research trip on baboons for the University of California. The South African thought it might be fun, plus she missed playing the sport. Bauer shipped in some equipment, contacted the local chief for his support and taught the villagers how to play. They were hooked  —   the Maasai found the movements of the game similar to hunting and   a big part of their culture. In 2009, a group of six or seven young men in their teens and early 20s decided to start an official team, the Maasai Cricket Warriors, with Bauer as their coach. But they didn’t just want to play. They wanted to use their growing popularity as a cricket team to champion their opposition to FGM. The men hoped that by banding together as a sports team, they could gain the clout needed in Maasai society to stand up to the elders against FGM  —   and get them to reconsider the tradition’s importance. The Warriors also wanted to inspire youth. They taught children how to play cricket and traveled to schools to speak to students about FGM, gender equality and   a disease that has affected the Maasai community. They led by example, vowing not to marry any woman who has undergone the cut. ”If you want to join the team, you have to subscribe to the objective of ending FGM,” says Douglas. ”And you have to practice what you preach.” The elders were skeptical that cricket could make any real impact against FGM in Il Polei. ”We have not yet seen the fruits that this cricket team has brought to the community,” says one village elder early in the film. In 2013, when the team decided to compete in the Last Man Stands amateur cricket championship in London, things started to change. The community was buzzing with excitement over the team’s trip. Children were clamoring to play cricket. The adults were proud. ”Their journey to London greatly enhanced their status and allowed them to question their elders,” says Douglas. ”This is something a warrior should never do.”  Warriors climaxes with a conversation between the village elders and the players. Perched on a flat rock and staring out into the vast Kenyan savannah, members of the old generation and the new engage in a civil debate about the tradition of FGM. ”This is your time, this is your life,” says one village elder in the scene. ”We old people are through. We need to ask the [young men what they think about FGM]. .. it is you guys who will marry.” The elders give the young men their blessing to stop marrying girls who have been circumcised, which could then discourage families from enforcing the practice. Today, the Maasai Cricket Warriors has grown to more than 25 members. A girls’ team has formed. Both teams travel to schools in and around the area to teach children how to play cricket and encourage young people to speak out against FGM. Ngais, the team captain, now studies communications and electronic media at Daystar University in Nairobi. He hopes to work in the film industry when he graduates. ”What I hope comes across is that young people can affect change,” says Douglas. ”Young people can get a bad reputation sometimes. But the Warriors did it with the right intentions. It’s an inspiring message.” "
"Danny Bowien, the founder of the Mission Chinese Food restaurants, didn’t grow up cooking Chinese cuisine. Born in South Korea, then adopted by a family in Oklahoma, Bowien was already an adult living in San Francisco when he decided to learn how to cook Sichuanese fare, known for its bold, pungent, spicy flavors. Burned out from working in fine dining establishments, Bowien considered applying to work in a Sichuanese restaurant as a line cook. But since he couldn’t speak Chinese, he realized he would have a hard time. Plus, many of the restaurant owners he approached viewed him with suspicion. ”They thought I was crazy,” Bowien tells Fresh Air’s Sam Briger. ”They thought I was trying to steal recipes.” Ultimately, Bowien wound up teaching himself how to cook Chinese food. Later, he opened the first Mission Chinese Food  —   a   restaurant with a   DIY attitude. Located inside an existing Chinese restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District, it was a     takeout joint that drew long lines and rave reviews: Both Bon Appetit and GQ magazines named it one of the best new restaurants of 2001. Looking back at his efforts to master his own brand of Chinese cooking, Bowien says, ”It [was] audacious, but at the same time, the whole feeling behind what we were doing just felt very organic, and for me there was no risk.” Bowien took that audacious attitude with him when he opened the first Mission Chinese in New York City in a tiny space in the Lower East Side. It, too, earned accolades  —   one reviewer said Bowien did to Chinese food what Led Zeppelin had done to the blues. But it broke too many rules: In 2013, the New York restaurant was shut down for various violations. Bowien describes it as a devastating blow. But he recovered. Indeed, later that same year, the James Beard Foundation bestowed Bowien with its prestigious Rising Star Chef award. And last year, Bowien reopened Mission Chinese Food in a new New York location. Bowien is now the   with Chris Ying, of The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook. Highlights from his Fresh Air interview are below. On the allure of Sichuanese cuisine, and what drove him to learn to cook it  Sichuanese cuisine was something crazy for me, out of left field, because some of the traits and characteristics of that are like flavor profiles, such as numbing. Like, you eat Sichuan peppercorns and Sichuan peppercorn oil, which causes your mouth to literally  —   your tongue goes numb, it almost tastes like you’ve licked a battery. Which doesn’t sound pleasant, but it really is. It’s really interesting how that combines with the dry heat in Sichuan cooking. . .. As a cook who thought I knew everything at the time, I never experienced that flavor profile. A lot of   flavor profiles . .. are really popular now in fine dining. But at the time, eating a piece of tofu that had been fermented for a couple of months was really crazy for me. I hadn’t seen that. So I think very pungent, very spicy, very numbing, really loud flavors are what Sichuanese cooking [was] to me. When I first discovered it, I thought that was what the backbone of it was. And the more I dove into Sichuanese cooking, it’s really about balance and restraint and not having things be    spicy, which I learned after my first trip to Chengdu, to the Sichuan province. On how the original Mission Chinese Food started in San Francisco  It was just a   inside of Lung Shan, and then it slowly took over, over time. You could order off two menus  —   I loved that about it  —   but the problem was that we’d be running our menu alongside their menu, and their chef was responsible for cooking 154 dishes off their takeout menu, just one guy on this little station. If they got really busy for delivery, which they would, and someone ordered something from their menu, I didn’t know how to make their food. . .. Then eventually, I think they saw Mission Chinese Food, which was becoming very popular, and we were running out of storage space for two   menus. So they actually were the ones that said, ”Look, we’re just going to change it and you guys just do everything, and our chef will work for you and we’ll make your food. Just show them how to do it.” On opening a Mission Chinese Food in New York that closed  —   despite its many accolades  —   because of structural issues and a sanitary violation  In retrospect, should we have [had] a structural engineer go through the building with us and everything else? Yeah, probably. We just let our emotions get the best of us. We felt an energy in that space when we walked through it. . .. It wasn’t legally supposed to even be a restaurant. . .. The basement wasn’t even legally zoned to be used for any sort of kitchen prep or preparation at all it was supposed to be a cellar. We opened the restaurant three months after we moved here. . .. We didn’t do any major construction, nothing structural  —   we just opened. . .. We didn’t even have time to actually reflect on and really appreciate all the accolades we had gotten, because when you’re working that much, things are just flying back. I didn’t even know what ”Restaurant of the Year” meant. I didn’t even know there was an end of the year, restaurant of the year section in The New York Times. So when people said, ”You won this ’Restaurant of the Year’ thing,” I was like, ”That’s amazing! What does that even mean?” And then I kept cooking. . .. [Then] all of the sudden it came to a complete halt, a screeching halt. The restaurant closed. We could’ve tried to reopen it again, but we knew just as much as everyone else did, we looked into doing it the right way, ”OK, how much would it cost to level the whole entire [building] structurally rebuild it to where it is zoned [so] it will actually pass inspection and be up to code?” And that costs like   of a million dollars for a    space. It just didn’t make sense. On a bad experience he had working at an upscale   restaurant  It was like a hazing period that never ended. . .. There was a lot of physical abuse. There were pans thrown at my head while I was working. I had to dodge that. . .. They would hit me. They would force me to do   in the basement while sitting on my back. . .. [The chef and  ] would be doing massive amounts of cocaine and drinking beer the whole time. And I was just trying my hardest to keep up with these amazing cooks that were highly stimulated and drunk and super obnoxious. That, to me, was really a proving ground for myself. I was like, ”Gosh, is this really what I’m going to be doing?” I wanted to get better. It made me better in a sense of knowing how far I could be pushed. . .. That experience, for me, taught me, really, mostly how not to treat other people."
"The Obama administration is implementing changes  —   voted into law by Congress late last year  —   that tighten the visa waiver program, specifically targeting Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. But the administration is reserving the right to make exceptions on a    basis. Under the visa waiver program, or VWP, residents of 38 countries can visit the U. S. without a visa. Some 20 million people visited the U. S. in 2014 under the program, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Now, under changes to the program that were voted into law as part of the omnibus budget bill last month, some individuals who would otherwise be eligible for the program will instead be required to apply for a visa. That includes anyone who has visited Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria since March 1, 2011, with some exceptions. Controversially, the changes also apply to   individuals, who are citizens of both a VWP country and one of the four targeted countries. The ACLU has objected to that provision, noting that some   citizens  —   of Syria, for instance  —   may have that status through their parents and never have visited the country in question themselves. ”It is wrong and   to punish groups without reason solely based on their nationality, national origin, religion, gender, or other protected grounds,” the ACLU wrote in a letter to Congress in December. Being removed from the VWP doesn’t mean a person is banned from traveling to the U. S. that person will have to apply for a visa, like residents of   countries. The Obama administration also says that the Secretary of Homeland Security can choose to waive the new restrictions on a    basis. Those who have traveled to the restricted countries for government business, on behalf of a humanitarian NGO, as a journalist or for certain business activities might be eligible for waivers, the administration says in a statement. ”In addition, we will continue to explore whether and how the waivers can be used for dual nationals of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Sudan,” the statement reads. That has raised the ire of several supporters of the original legislation. The author of the bill, Rep. Candice Miller,  . along with House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul,   has accused the Obama administration of violating the law by allowing for exceptions. ”All waivers announced by the White House were explicitly rejected by Congress during our negotiations with the Administration,” they said in a statement. ”This is not a difference of opinion over statutory interpretation, it is a clear contradiction of the law.” The Obama administration says the changes to the waiver program are in effect as of Jan 21. But an   British reporter, the BBC’s Rana Rahimpour, says she was blocked from flying to the U. S. on Jan. 19 and told she was prevented from traveling because of the new rules."
"Britain says the circumstantial evidence points to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the poisoning death of an   security agent who died after drinking   tea at a London hotel. So what’s Britain going to do about it? Not very much. And that’s largely in keeping with the West’s response to Putin’s many controversial actions throughout his 16 years in power. ”We have a pretty difficult relationship with the Russians in any event,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said. ”But do we at some level have to go on having some sort of relationship with them because we need a solution to the Syria crisis? Yes, we do, but we do it with clear eyes and a very cold heart.” Alexander Litvinenko, the security agent who died back in 2006, is one of several   critics of Putin who have been murdered or perished in mysterious circumstances during his tenure. The reality is that most Western leaders tend to echo Cameron’s statements, saying they feel the need to engage with Russia on a host of matters rather than opt for a   confrontation. Putin, meanwhile, seems to thrive on criticism from the West. He uses it to boost his popularity at home and bolster his claim that the West is working to weaken Russia on multiple fronts that range from expanding NATO to sanctioning Russia’s economy to shrinking Moscow’s role on the international stage. The Kremlin dismissed the British report, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying it could ”only further poison the atmosphere of our bilateral relations.” Britain and Russia have strong financial ties, and many European states have extensive trade with Russia. The U. S. and Europe did impose sanctions after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014, and those punitive measures have had some bite, especially when combined with the crashing oil prices that have plunged Russia’s economy into recession. Yet the Obama administration also cites the need for Russian cooperation. Moscow was seen as crucial to the nuclear deal that six world powers reached with Iran last July. As part of that deal, Iran recently shipped 98 percent of its enriched uranium to Russia. Russia is also an important player in Syria, where it staunchly supports President Bashar Assad and has been waging airstrikes on his behalf. The West has been sharply critical of Russia’s military role but acknowledges that Moscow has leverage with Assad. And while Russia and the West disagree on whether Assad should stay or go, they share an opposition to the Islamic State. But critics challenge the notion that the West needs Russia as much as it seems to think it does. They argue that Putin has proved an unreliable partner time and again and the West has little to show for the times it has tried to work with him. ”Confrontation with Putin is inevitable as long as he stays in office,” Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion from Russia, and a fierce critic of Putin’s, said in an interview Wednesday with Reuters. Kasparov, who has a home in New York and now lives outside Russia, also said: ”We don’t know what Putin will do when he gets desperate. He is in a very difficult situation. Oil, you know, is sliding down. If oil gets to 20 [dollars a barrel] Putin’s Russia is bankrupt. Who knows what he will do? In the last few years, we could see his response to economic challenges was always the same  —   to create more tensions outside of Russia.” Putin and Litvinenko had a personal dispute dating to the 1990s, when Putin was the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, where Litvinenko worked, according to the British report. The feud escalated when Litvinenko fled his homeland for asylum in Britain in 2000 with his wife and child. He worked with British intelligence and criticized Putin. Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, praised Thursday’s report by a British judge and called for Britain to expel ”all Russian intelligence operatives,” though there was no indication Britain would take such a step. Britain has issued arrest warrants for two Russian suspects, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, but they remain free in Russia. Britain said it would freeze the assets of the two men, though it was not clear what assets, if any, the two have in Britain. Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1"
"Nearly 10 years after Kremlin critic and former spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with a rare radioactive element and died in London, a retired British judge has issued a report concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin ”probably” approved a plan by Russia’s security service to kill the former FSB agent. The Kremlin has long denied any involvement in Litvinenko’s death. The two men who are accused of poisoning Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, have suggested he might have poisoned himself, either intentionally or accidentally. But the British findings dismiss that possibility, along with the idea that the situation was some sort of elaborate ruse. The report released today by Sir Robert Owen, chairman of the British inquiry into Litvinenko’s murder, concludes that ”the FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev, then head of the FSB, and also by President Putin. Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, speaking Thursday outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, welcomed the report by saying, ”The words my husband spoke on his deathbed, when he accused Mr. Putin of his murder, have been proved true in an English court.” She also urged Prime Minister David Cameron to take action against Putin and Russia. ”I am calling immediately for the expulsion from the U. K. of all Russian intelligence operatives,” Litvinenko said, ”whether from the FSB who murdered Sasha or from other Russian agencies based in the London embassy.” Responding to the report, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, ”We regret that the purely criminal case has been politicized and has marred the entire atmosphere of bilateral relations.” As writer Will Storr told NPR in 2013, ”This has been written about as the   successful nuclear attack on the West by Russia. It’s a major situation.” The report recounts how the spy came to be in London: In 2000, six years before Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned, he arrived in the city with his wife and son, Anatoly, and made a declaration to a police officer: ”I am a KGB officer and I’m asking for political asylum.” Litvinenko was 44 when he died in 2006 of cardiac arrest brought on by acute radiation syndrome. The report says he was poisoned twice  —   the first time coming just days after he and his family were granted British citizenship on Oct. 13, 2006. From the report: ”The evidence establishes that Mr. Litvinenko ingested the fatal dose whilst drinking tea from a teapot contaminated with   in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in the West End of London in the afternoon of 1 November in the company of Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun. I am sure that Mr. Lugovoy and Mr. Kovtun placed the   into the teapot at the Pine Bar and did so with the intention of poisoning Mr. Litvinenko.” That fatal encounter came weeks after Lugovoy and Kovtun had attempted to administer   to Litvinenko, Owen says. Judge Owen adds that there’s no sign of a possible personal motive for Lugovoy and Kovtun, and that all the evidence in the case ”points in one direction”  —   to Moscow. Litvinenko died on Nov. 23, 2006. As a former Soviet intelligence officer wrote for The Telegraph in 2009, Litvinenko’s clashes with Putin extend at least back to 1998, when he blew the whistle on orders from the FSB to murder a politician in Russia. At the time, Putin had been in charge of the FSB for a matter of months Litvinenko was arrested and placed under scrutiny until he managed to reach London. The material that killed Litvinenko has a   of just 138 days it also leaves a faint blue glow that helped forensic investigators track the  ’s trail through London. As for the alleged perpetrators, the report states, ”Warrants were in due course issued for their arrest, and the Crown Prosecution Service sought unsuccessfully to extradite them from the Russian Federation to stand trial for murder.” The report had been delayed by several factors, from the complicated nature of the police investigation to frustrated attempts to question, and perhaps prosecute, the Russian men who are accused of carrying out the order. Owen was appointed to the case in August of 2012."
"The aptly titled Sweat is all about work  —   and the fear of losing it. In the new play by Pulitzer   writer Lynn Nottage, change is coming for workers at a steel tubing plant. ”They’ve got buttons now that can replace all of us,” one character says. Sure enough, the company is about to move production to Mexico and ask longtime union workers to accept lower wages. They refuse, and end up locked out and replaced by immigrant labor. It’s a scenario that has played out many times over decades in cities like Reading, Pa. where Sweat takes place. In 2011, Nottage was commissioned to write a play for ”American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle,” a series of plays produced by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Nottage says she wanted to write about ”how poverty and economic stagnation were shifting the American narrative.” At the time, Reading had been named the poorest city in the country by the Census Bureau. Nottage  —   who’s known for deep investigations into her subjects  —   spent more than two years visiting Reading and getting to know the people there. She says she met families where parents and children alike had factory jobs and union cards. ”Two generations of people had worked in the same factory . ..” she explains. ”One card was passed from father to son or mother to daughter. That’s just the way it functioned. These were very good jobs. People were making livable wages. People had bought homes and had really established roots in a city like Reading because there was work  —   and there was decent work.” Nottage met factory workers, business leaders, public officials, teachers, social workers and artists. She got to know a local union leader, Dean Showers, who worked at a steel tubing plant for 38 years. Just like in the play, Showers and about 50 other workers have been locked out of their plant for almost five years. Sweat goes back and forth in time  —   between 2000 and 2008  —   before and after an act of violence we don’t see until the end. There aren’t really any good guys. Workers gripe about the union, complain about the physical labor, and are hardly a united front. Those who are happy with the status quo are bitter toward those who hope to one day get off the factory floor. Showers attended a preview of Sweat at Arena Stage in Washington, D. C. and says the characters ring true. He started working in the steel tubing plant when he was 18. He went to college but dropped out. Now he’s 62 and locked out of his job. ”I was making really great money for a single, young teenager who didn’t know what he wanted to do,” Showers says. ”Yeah, there’s a lot of regret to that. . .. The only thing that’s good is I can be a better adviser to my daughter. And I’ve told her, ’Don’t make the mistakes that I made. ’” That’s tough to do in a town like Reading, where so much pride is tied up in the past. Nottage says whenever she met someone in Reading, she always asked them: How would you describe your city? ”People always said ’Reading was . ..’ and no one ever spoke of their city in present tense  —   they always spoke of it in past tense,” Nottage says. ”And that really broke my heart. . .. When I pushed them further people spoke a great deal about feeling invisible: We feel as though our city government doesn’t see us. We feel as though the rest of the country doesn’t see it.” Nottage says she expected her research in Reading would result in a play about ”the resilience of working people.” Sweat is not that. Rather, it’s a gripping narrative about how people adapt to change  —   or don’t."
"Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who was found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting multiple women while on his beat, was sentenced to 263 years in prison. Holtzclaw’s sentencing Thursday was temporarily delayed, after his attorney requested a new trial. Holtzclaw claimed there was evidence that hadn’t been presented at trial. The judge rejected the request, and sentenced Holtzclaw to 263 years in prison, to be served consecutively. That’s the maximum sentence, and the one which had been recommended by a jury last month. As we reported at the time, the jury found Holtzclaw guilty of rapes and sexual assaults against eight women  —   in total, half of the 36 charges brought against him. He’s expected to appeal the conviction. The trial had raised concerns of potential racial bias: the jury was entirely white. Holtzclaw is   and   the Associated Press reports, while his victims were all black. In the end, the jurors, the judge and the district attorney all agreed that Holtzclaw should spend the rest of his life in jail. Hotlzclaw’s case led to a yearlong Associated Press investigation into sexual misconduct and sexual crimes by police. One of the reporters behind that investigation, Nomaan Merchant, explained the back story on NPR’s Here  Now: ”Daniel Holtzclaw’s case is what inspired our investigation into police sexual misconduct. He was arrested [in 2014] after a grandmother in her 50s came forward and said that an officer had pulled her over and forced her to perform oral sex. Police began investigating the officer who she accused and found eventually a dozen of other women who came forward and said that they had been victimized by Daniel Holtzclaw, either in searches or traffic stops. . .. ”Police say that Holtzclaw was able to prey on women in a minority,   neighborhood in northeast Oklahoma City. He specifically targeted women with drug addictions, and one case involving a woman who was a prostitute on the street who he picked up and drove home and then raped her in her house. He was able to target marginalized women who believed they wouldn’t be believed if they went to the police. One woman testified when asked why she didn’t call the police herself at first, she said ’who are you going to call on the police?’ ” Inspired by Holtzclaw’s case, the AP uncovered about 1, 000 instances of police sexual misconduct."
"Hillary Clinton has a vision, which some would call a fantasy, of Washington working again the way it once did. ”I’m interested in us solving problems together,” said Clinton, speaking Wednesday to NPR’s Ari Shapiro. ”I’m interested in finding good ideas whether they’re from Republicans or Democrats, getting people around the table, and trying to make progress on behalf of our country.” Shapiro sounded properly skeptical. How can you govern in such a fashion in such divisive times? ”People come with different experiences, different pressures on them, different ideologies and world views,” Clinton said. ”So what you have to do is get up every day, build those relationships, work to find common ground.” It was a stock politician’s answer, perhaps. But it was also what many a weary voter wants to hear. The idea of another eight years of government shutdowns and shout shows is dispiriting, to say the least. Clinton seemed to channel some of that in her interview with NPR. ”I worry about people who run for office, whether it be in the Congress or for the White House, who are so sure of their ideological positions that they’re going to throw us into more gridlock.” Shapiro asked whether Clinton could point to any examples of the kind of cooperation she was envisioning. She offered several from the most recent budget deal that funded the federal government through September of 2016. She called it ”good   legislating.” ”You had Republicans joining with Democrats to say, ’Look, we need to keep supporting renewable energy. ’” So, some tax benefits called the production tax credit and the investment tax credit were continued. ”You also had a compromise to continue to support the earned income tax credit. Now, the Republicans also got some things. You know, they wanted to lift the ban on exporting oil. That’s not my preference . .. but in a Congress, in a legislative environment, everybody has to give a little.” Shapiro picked up on Clinton at one point referring to new House Speaker Paul Ryan as ”a worthy opponent.” Are the president and the speaker opponents by nature, if they represent opposing parties? Clinton said in the campaign mode, yes, in the governing mode, no. ”In the campaign, he would be someone who is going to prosecute the Republican case. That’s what happens in a campaign. And then once it’s over, you have to get to work. And I think he would be an honest broker in working with me,” she said. Clinton saw a side of Ryan she could work with when he was chairman of the House Budget Committee in the fall of 2013. At the time, Ryan’s House colleagues had voted for a budget confrontation with President Obama that put the federal government on partial shutdown for weeks. Ryan devoted long hours to   negotiation with the Senate budget chair, Patty Murray of Washington state. ”And they didn’t get everything each of them wanted,” Clinton noted. ”They had to work really hard to come up with a solution that could pass through the Congress. That’s good,   legislating. That’s what you have to do. And you can never give up on it.” Talk of peace between the parties will not appeal to everyone, especially not in this year of the angry activist. The primary battles on either side have been dominated by those who are intent on prevailing over the other party, pressing for every item on the agenda and pushing every issue to the max. Clinton is no stranger to the more ideological elements of her party. As a young lawyer she worked on the staff of the Watergate impeachment committee that pushed Richard Nixon out of the White House in 1974. And she has been in town for all of the ugliest partisan wars of the past two decades, including the impeachment of her husband in 1998. But Clinton has also seen moments of compromise and achievement. Those included the budget negotiations of her husband’s second term, when Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. Those negotiations produced a budget that was projected to produce a surplus after the year 2000. In that spirit, Clinton can imagine the parties returning to something closer to the wary but workable détente with which they have functioned through 70 years of divided power in postwar America. And that remains her hope, even with all the personal criticism she faces in this campaign year. ”When I’m not actually running for something, when I’m in a position and I’m working on behalf of these concerns that I think are important to be addressed, the Republicans say the nicest things about me.” She already knows she will not be the first choice of the   in her party. She hopes to weather that storm in the Democratic primaries, survive to win the nomination, and face someone in November who was the choice of the hardest of the hardcore in the other party. Then, if the dynamic of past presidential cycles holds, Clinton would get a chance to test her vision or fantasy of a more productive relationship between the White House and the Capitol."
"Editors’ note, Feb. 1, 2016: On Jan. 20, we reported on a statement from the American Psychological Association that a research paper, ”Chronic Adolescent Marijuana Use as a Risk Factor for Physical and Mental Health Problems in Young Adult Men,” had a statistical error. The APA now says that statement, which was titled ”APA Corrects Article Regarding Teen Marijuana Use,” should not have said there was an error in the paper. Jim Sliwa, a spokesman for the APA, told NPR: ”There was no error. The original release was labeled a correction but it should have been a clarification.” According to the APA, another researcher had asked the APA for a supplemental analysis of the data, which the study researchers supplied. That supplemental analysis did find a slightly higher probability of meeting criteria for a psychotic diagnosis in frequent marijuana users, but it did not significantly change the conclusions of the study data. Earlier versions of this article, including the headline, referred to errors in the paper’s statistical analysis. We have removed those references to make it clear that the paper was not in error. Updated Jan. 22. 3:49 pm ET: The American Psychological Association emailed us to say that the correction it issued on Thursday was incorrect. The email says in part: I am afraid that the correction we put out regarding the teen marijuana study was not accurate. We are in the process of placing this more accurate editor’s note on the release on our website. The original correction issued on Thursday by the APA said: The study, published online Aug. 3 in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, has been corrected because of a statistical error that affected some of the findings. An excerpt from the updated correction posted on the APA website now reads: Although these supplemental analyses indicated that teens who engaged in frequent marijuana use had a higher probability of meeting criteria for a psychotic disorder than   by their 30s, this difference did not reach statistical significance using a   test (p=. 09). We contacted the lead author of the study, Jordan Bechtold at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In response, she writes to Shots in an email: ”There were no errors in the original analysis. The analysis in the supplemental paper was slightly different than the original analysis. The goals in producing the commentary were to supplement the original paper with a new set of analyses, and to provide a word of caution regarding the interpretation of the results, particularly the psychosis findings.” The analysis used in the original study is called a   test. This looks for an effect in two directions. For example, it could test whether marijuana increases the risk for psychosis and if marijuana reduces the risk. A   test would look at only one of those possibilities. Here’s the updated original post: A study published last August found no connection between male teens’ marijuana use and increased risk of psychotic disorders provided a new analysis of the data. When the results were published last August in a journal of the American Psychological Association, even the researchers said their findings were surprising. Over the past couple of decades, there have been at least 10 different epidemiological studies that found smoking marijuana increases risk for developing psychosis later in life. The APA released a statement saying that the ”results from this study generated considerable controversy, including requests for supplemental analyses” because most previous studies have found that chronic teen cannabis users might be more prone to health problems, including mental illnesses and physical illnesses like respiratory problems. This study, published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, originally found no connection between physical and mental problems in adults and smoking marijuana in their teen years. Once the researchers reanalyzed their data, they found that the three groups of men in the study who smoked weed more frequently as youngsters were more likely to have psychotic disorders, compared with the one group that never smoked or smoked infrequently. The additional analysis found that 5 percent of the more frequent users met lifetime criteria for psychotic disorders compared with 2 percent of infrequent or nonusers. That difference was close to being labeled ”significant” using commonly accepted scientific standards. Most of the studies on mental illness and weed, including this one, don’t perfectly tease apart whether young adult cannabis use causes things like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or if it’s the other way around, says Krista Lisdahl, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee who was not involved in the study. As we’ve written in Shots before, people with emerging psychotic disorders could be more likely to use weed than others. ”Still, controlling for risk factors, marijuana does seem to increase the risk for psychotic disorders,” Lisdahl says. It is curious that the researchers still didn’t find a link between depression and weed smoking. This, too, has been connected in previous studies. If people with emerging psychotic disorders are more likely to use weed because they’re trying to   then you might imagine people with depression might do the same thing. But Lisdahl says it’s really important to remember this study had about 400 men and no women. ”It’s really important to not generalize this to female,” she says. ”In my studies, the female marijuana users are the ones that really show increased depression and anxiety symptoms.” So there are a few things that this study didn’t examine, as the authors noted both in the original study and the clarification: ”The sample included young men who were using marijuana in the late 1990s and early 2000s and THC content has risen recently data were obtained from   [statistical] power was low.” The clarification also says: ”The group difference on psychotic disorder approached statistical significance and would have been significant if a more liberal test (i. e.  ) was utilized.”"
"A pregnant woman with her hands and feet bound. A man with an obsidian blade embedded in his skull. Men and women with arrow wounds to the head and neck. That’s the grisly scene archaeologists describe at Nataruk, in   Kenya, where they say they’ve uncovered unique evidence of violence in prehistoric, nomadic   communities. The massacre they’ve uncovered is striking, they say, because it pushes back against a theory that warfare didn’t become a feature of human culture until communities settled down. Archaeologists from Cambridge University excavated the remains of 27 people, including at least eight women and six children, in a region that was once the edge of a lagoon, near   Lake Turkana. The remains included 12 skeletons that were fairly complete, ”preserved by the particular conditions of the lagoon,” the researchers write in Nature this week. They all appeared to have died at the same time, 10, 000 years ago or so. The researchers focused on the 12 skeletons  —   10 showed evidence of fatal injuries, including   and   trauma, and several had blades or projectiles embedded in them. Two of the skeletons  —   including a woman who either was in the late stages of pregnancy or was holding a newborn baby  —   showed no evidence of trauma, but their hands were in a position suggesting they might have been bound. The bodies did not appear to have been carefully or ritually buried. The site of the massacre suggests something more than an interpersonal conflict, the researchers say. There’s plenty of evidence for violence between nomadic individuals, but prehistoric violence between two or more large groups is harder to identify. As a result, ”the origins of war are controversial,” the researchers write. Were humans waging war as nomadic   or did communities only engage in warfare once they’d established agriculture and permanent settlements? The oldest known evidence of warfare  —   the Jebel Sahaba graveyard, in   northern Sudan  —   is estimated to date to around 13, 000 years ago. It contains the remains of bodies killed in violent skirmishes, but the use of the cemetery suggests the community was fairly settled. The bodies in Nataruk, in contrast, appeared to be part of a nomadic band of  . The archaeologists suggest two interpretations of their find. One was that the lakeshore area of West Turkana was so fertile and productive 10, 000 years ago that it sustained a high population of   who were less nomadic and more materially wealthy than many such foraging groups. That would suggest warfare could still be a hallmark of fairly settled communities, but that   communities could be more sedentary and populous than previously understood. Alternately, they say, the discovery could indicate that warfare was a part of life for nomadic    —   that violent conflict between such groups might have been ”ephemeral, but perhaps not unusual.” In that case, war wouldn’t be a side effect of human settlement, but potentially a far older facet of human culture. Study   Robert Foley said that doesn’t have to be a wholly grim idea. ”I’ve no doubt it is in our biology to be aggressive and lethal, just as it is to be deeply caring and loving,” he said in a University of Cambridge statement. ”A lot of what we understand about human evolutionary biology suggests these are two sides of the same coin.”"
"Pete Wells has a job that most people can only dream of. As restaurant critic for The New York Times, he gets paid to eat out four or five nights a week  —   often at quite pricey places  —   on someone else’s dime. But for Wells, going out for drinks and delectable meals is still work. He tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies that coming up with words to describe flavors is something he ”wrestles with all the time.” ”I find that the   route is to try to describe what’s going on in your mouth,” he says. ”If you say, ’Oh, there was a little bit of acidity from the lime juice on the left side of my tongue, and then this beautiful, smooth pureed potato with some crunchy shallots on top, and it all came together,’ you never will get out of that sentence alive.” Instead, Wells likes to describe a food’s presentation in a way that gives the reader a feel for what it is like to eat: ”My feeling is, if I can describe the way a steak looks on the plate, when it’s just kind of juices are coming out, and it’s almost alive, and just wants to be eaten, I hope that people will feel it, more than they will feel me describing the tangy minerality of the   beef between my teeth.” On beginning his very critical review of one of New York City’s most expensive restaurants, Per Se, by describing the poor service as ”the slow creep of mediocrity”  There is often with restaurant reviews in particular, I think, this kind of impulse to be deferential and bow down to the greatness of the restaurant and the greatness of the chef, and then with great regret to say, ”And yet, all is not as it should be in the kingdom,” and I didn’t want to do any of that. I just think that we show an awful lot of deference to chefs in our culture and maybe not enough deference to customers, and I wanted this review to come out and say, ”Yes, this is a very respected chef, but are the people at the table being respected in the same way?” On his infamous takedown of Guy Fieri’s restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen  Bar, in Times Square, I wanted to like the restaurant. I wanted the restaurant to be the same kind of celebration of grease on your elbows and grease on your ears and grease on your nose, Americans wallowing in unhealthy, unwholesome joy. . .. It’s flashy and   and it seems like it’s going to be this wild, crazy party. And then the food arrives and it’s no party at all. At all. All of the promises of the restaurant kind of die on the plate . .. [like] these nachos that had this kind of gray turkey pulp on them. I don’t think I’ve ever met nachos that I didn’t like before. It’s almost inconceivable that nachos can be bad. It makes no sense. On the reaction to his brutally negative review of Fieri’s restaurant, A lot of people rejoiced and thought that I was putting this interloper from television back in his place, which was not my intention. And then a lot of people thought I was being a snobby East Coast elitist who was belittling the common people and making fun of their tastes, which was not my intention at all. I wanted to say, ”This can be great food, this should be great food, why isn’t it great food?” But it was wild. It was really wild. I try to respond to emails that people send me after reviews come out, and that was the one time when I just absolutely could not. I couldn’t keep up. There were so many and all over the place, positive and negative. After a few days, the really nasty ones started to come in, which really surprised me, because the review had been out for three or four days and then all of a sudden I started to get these really profane and vicious emails, one after another. Somebody wished that my kids would get cancer and I thought, ”What have I done here?” On his joyous review of Señor Frog, a    restaurant in Times Square, where he danced in a conga line wearing a    crown of yellow and orange balloons and drank a margarita out of a   glass, The reason I wanted to write about it was because  —   it’s not the most sophisticated fun in the world, it’s maybe not even my kind of fun, but it was fun. And I was really struck by how solemn so many of the restaurants I review have become. As I said in the review, it’s become like going to church. Everybody used to say going to restaurants . .. is like theater, there’s stage sets, there’s drama, there’s play acting and you watch the show. And now, boy, everything’s just become so serious. And you sit at the counter and the chef comes out and tells you what he did to the Brussels sprouts leaves and no, there’s not a lot of dancing."
"German ire about illegal immigration is focused on North African asylum seekers these days, as police investigate dozens of suspects from that region in mass incidents of groping and theft and several cases of rape that occurred on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other cities. Members of Germany’s ruling coalition have vowed to speed up the review of North Africans’ asylum applications, especially since the number of migrants from that region is rising. North African countries account for a relatively small percentage of the more than 1 million migrants registered in Germany last year, nearly half of whom were from Syria. The Interior Ministry says the combined number of migrants from Algeria and Morocco was less than 1, 000 in June, but in December, there were more than 5, 000. The government is expected to add those countries and Tunisia to the list of ”safe” countries whose citizens don’t qualify as refugees under German law. Germany already rejects most asylum applicants from Balkan countries, also designated safe. And Chancellor Angela Merkel warned recently that even some Afghans expecting asylum should expect instead to be sent back home. For a variety of legal and logistical reasons, kicking anyone out of the country is something German politicians talk about more than they actually do. German police, on the other hand, are detaining more and more North Africans lately. Authorities arrested a    Algerian asylum seeker in a refugee shelter near Cologne and charged him with groping and the theft of a phone. He was the first suspect to be arrested in connection with the city’s New Year’s Eve attacks. In the nearby city of Duesseldorf, 300 police officers conducted a raid Saturday in the city’s   ”Maghreb Quarter”  —   named for the northwestern region of Africa that includes Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. ”Operation Casablanca” was part of an investigation that had been underway for several years into gangs whose members were stealing and pickpocketing near the city’s main train station, police spokesman Andreas Czogalla says. More recently, these groups came under investigation for groping incidents and other sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve. Last weekend’s   raid led to the arrests of 40 people, most on suspicion of being in Germany illegally. Most turned out to be asylum seekers, and once they showed their documents, they were released. Within this largely Moroccan neighborhood, many longtime residents say they feel their reputations were destroyed in one night. One of them is Husaian Fannoua, a    travel agency owner and community elder who boasts of having a good relationship with local police. But the Moroccan native  —   who immigrated to Germany 57 years ago and whose children and grandchildren were born here  —   says the raid was badly handled and tarnished his community. ”They pulled people out of cafes or stores like animals and made such a scene,” he says. ”It was so bad. What are our German neighbors going to think about us?” As for the German politicians who speak critically of North Africans, Fannoua says, ”They forget most of us here are German citizens who can vote.” At the neighborhood’s popular La Grilladine restaurant,   owner Badr Haddad says he also is feeling the backlash. Haddad, 32, who moved here 13 years ago from the Moroccan city of Fez to attend university, says he was out last weekend at a bar in the city’s old town, where he began chatting with a young German woman. She asked him where he was from and when he told her, Haddad says she became frightened and stepped back. ”And I told her, ’Listen, that’s just not acceptable,’” he said. ” ’I’m a Moroccan and I’m proud of that and I love my country. I support Germany in every way imaginable.’ ” The worry about stigma has led Maghreb Quarter’s business owners and community leaders to make an extra effort to reach out to city and police officials as well as the German media to change their approach. The community is also planning to set up a booth in the neighborhood this weekend to teach foreign newcomers about German culture and laws  —   especially how to interact with women. ”It’s normal for a German woman and Moroccan like me to stand together and just talk,” Haddad says. ”But there are boundaries, and some of the new migrants unfortunately don’t get that you don’t grab and touch.” Birgit Kessel,   of a volunteer network called Refugees Welcome in Duesseldorf, whose office is next to the Maghreb Quarter, says she sympathizes with the North African community. ”I know their neighborhood, which is great for shopping,” she says. ”It has a great fish store and a great fruit store and I shop there.” She predicts business could suffer because of last weekend’s raid and the resulting media coverage. Beyond this, she says the irrational fear of migrants has held   volunteers back. Despite the neighborhood’s outrage, Duesseldorf police defend their tough approach. Czogalla, the spokesman, says 69 women came forward to accuse men they described as looking North African of groping them here on New Year’s Eve. But Haddad, the restaurant owner says, ”What a few bad apples do shouldn’t taint the whole North African community.”"
"For nearly 150 years, a bizarre tree frog species in India was believed to be extinct. Now, scientists have found the elusive Frankixalus jerdonii in India’s West Bengal state, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Last seen in the wild in 1870, the frogs were rediscovered by accident during a 2007 expedition led by Indian biologist Sathyabhama Das Biju. ”We heard a full musical orchestra coming from the tree tops. It was magical. Of course we had to investigate,” he told the BBC. What’s more, a subsequent study published this week by Biju and a team of researchers looks at the frog’s ”enigmatic lineage,” and concludes that the amphibian represents an entirely new genus. The study’s   Ines Van Bocxlaer tells National Geographic that ”the frog’s DNA, odd feeding behavior and anatomy shows the species ’represents a deep evolutionary split in tree frog evolution.’ ” That led scientists to change the frog’s name from the original, Polypedates jerdonii, to Frankixalus jerdonii to reflect the new genus. ”Most tadpoles of other frog species eat plant material,” National Geographic says. Not the Frankixalus jerdonii. Here’s how National Geographic describes what happens after the female lays eggs inside tree holes: ”Females attach their eggs to the insides of tree hollows, which hold pools of water. When the tadpoles hatch, they fall in the water, where the females feed them unfertilized eggs until they turn into froglets.” The tadpoles each had ”  eggs in their intestines,” the study says. And unusually, these tadpoles do not have tooth rows, which differentiates it from similar species. There are a few theories about how the tree frogs stayed hidden for nearly 150 years, the BBC reports. ”The golf   frog lives in tree holes up to 6m (19 feet) above ground, which may have helped it stay undiscovered,” the BBC says, ”although other scientists have suggested it may have gone unnoticed simply because there are so few scientists working in the remote region.” But its survival is uncertain. Citing ”alarming” threats, the study says that multiple areas where the species is believed to live are disturbed by    deforestation."
"In his new book, The Big Question: Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Science, Faith and God, Alister McGrath argues that ”we need more than science to satisfy our deep yearnings and intuitions.” That something more for McGrath is God, specifically, the Christian God. As he develops this argument, again and again McGrath characterizes atheists who embrace science but not God as stuck in a place devoid of full understanding or meaning. There’s a ”richness” in the Christian engagement with nature that atheists miss, for example. McGrath understands the foundational atheist perspective to be this: ”Since science discloses no meaning to the universe, the only reasonable conclusion is that there is no meaning to find.” Here, yet again, is the unkillable myth, the persistent blind spot about atheism that apparently no amount of explaining can make go away. No matter how lucidly atheists explain in books, essays and blog posts that, yes, life can and does for us have meaning without God, the tsunami of claims about atheists’ arid existence rolls on and on. Where does this persistent (is it also willful?) misunderstanding come from? McGrath offers some quotes from atheists that may seem, at first glance, to support his stance, as in this excerpted passage from The Atheist’s Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg: ”What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto.” Yet, to conclude from these lines that atheists’ lives suffer from a lack of meaning amounts to conflating two very different things. First is the understanding, emergent from evolutionary theory, that neither the universe as a whole, nor we humans within it, have evolved according to some plan of design. Cosmic evolution and human evolution unfold with no guiding hand or specific goals. Most atheists do accept this, I think. Second is to embrace as a logical next step the idea that our own individual lives have no purpose or meaning. Do you know of any atheists who believe this? I don’t. Nor do I recognize the scientific communities of which I am a part  —   both online and offline  —   in McGrath’s insistence that a ”sense of cosmic pointlessness haunts many today, particularly within the scientific community.” An anthropological perspective teaches us that we humans are a quintessentially   species. We create love and kindness (hate and violence, too) and also work that matters. We recognize and protect (or, too often, harm) our sense of connection to other animals, to plants and trees, to all of nature’s landscapes. What are those acts if not ones of meaning and purpose? Another new book, this one published just last week, takes up questions of meaning and purpose. Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir by a physician confronting, at age 36, a diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer, made all the more poignant because we readers know at the outset that Kalanithi died at age 37, before he could fully complete the book. Lurking within passages that speak to creating meaning in the face of death  —   passages beautiful enough to cause me to recommend the book to anyone and everyone  —   is a version of the unkillable myth. Kalanithi writes: ”To make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning  —   to consider a world that is   not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life doesn’t have any.” Kalanithi describes the ”sacredness” of his work as a neurosurgeon, the burdens that make medicine ”holy.” His view, though powerful and rewarding to read about, doesn’t render his equation  —   science provides no basis for God = life has no meaning  —   into a truth. Let’s return to McGrath. His central theme in The Big Question revolves around ”the ultimate coherence of science and faith.” I’d like to say that open dialogue about the interweaving of scientific and religious narratives that McGrath champions  —   dialogue asking if that interweaving is really a possible, or even a desirable, goal  —   is the way forward. At the same time, I find intriguing and persuasive the perspective of physicist Sean Carroll, who explains why he takes no money from the John Templeton Foundation by saying it is because its underlying goal is to further this very notion of consilience. It’s a real irony that McGrath spills a lot of ink in his book railing against Richard Dawkins’ reductive judgments about people of faith  —   which I, too, have questioned  —   while McGrath himself makes reductive judgments about atheists. I’m yet another atheist voice chiming in to say that my life, thanks very much, is full of meaning. Now, how to make this unkillable myth about atheism into a moribund myth? Barbara J. King, an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary, often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"When the first Mac computer came out in 1984, it cost nearly $2, 500 and had a floppy drive for storage. In 2016, a spate of computers with a price as low as $5 and a lot more storage are hitting the market, and they may be opening up a new era of experimentation. Recently, I got a look at one of these   computers  —   the $9 CHIP, which has 4 gigabytes of storage. It is very basic. It fits in the palm of my hand and has various electronic components soldered on. Frankly, it looks like something I’d find in a repair shop. But it’s actually easy to set up. It can connect to  . It has Bluetooth. Dave Rauchwerk, the CEO of Next Thing Co. which makes the CHIP, showed me his   computer. ”When you take it out of the box you can connect a keyboard, Bluetooth and mouse really easily,” he says. ”It also has a USB port so if you wanted to, you could plug into any old keyboard you can find.” The keyboard, mouse and screen are not included, so that would add to the price. But getting those on the cheap is pretty easy these days. CHIP’s Kickstarter campaign got the backing of nearly 40, 000 people and raised $2 million. One pledge of $150 came from a teacher at the Nelson County Area Technology Center, a technical high school in Kentucky. Its principal, Jeremy Booher, says cost has always gotten in the way of giving computers to all of his 400 or so students. ”Any of my programs, it’s ’That costs too much. You can’t buy it,’ ” he says. ”But with a $9 price point it almost virtually eliminates that excuse.” And CHIP is easy to use, says    student Jacob Smith. ”With a normal computer we have to pull the case apart and work around all these big pieces,” he says. ”So this has just been much easier to learn and work off of.” Smith’s class got to see CHIP before most people because his teacher helped back the Kickstarter. The class took apart a Star Wars toy  —   the Millennium Falcon  —   and wired it with LED lights using CHIP. Booher says what’s great is that the students can learn something while they’re having fun. ”And this is one way to do it, by intriguing their interest and seeing what’s on the cutting edge of technology,” Booher says. ”If we were still using typewriters and using Microsoft DOS, then obviously people come in and fall asleep.” And unlike Microsoft products, CHIP has both   software (Linux) and hardware. And students are just the start of the groups who might be excited by this cheap little computer. The CHIP is one of several very   basic computers  —   under $100  —   that have hit the market in the past year or will be on the market in the coming year. Most can be purchased online. There’s the BeagleBone, the Endless Mini and the Raspberry Pi Zero. All this is possible because the prices of microprocessors and other computer components have fallen. Tom Petrocelli, an analyst with Neuralytix, an IT market research firm, says we are at a moment similar to the one that happened about three decades ago with software. ”When software became a more open endeavor, when anyone could afford to buy a PC and write code in their basement or in their den, we saw all kinds of software come out. All kinds of applications,” he says. Petrocelli predicts that cheap hardware will spark a similar era in the U. S. and around the world for inventors and tinkerers to find uses we can’t even imagine. Some of them could even come from that group of students in Kentucky."
"Kevin Schiller had no idea what hit him. With 21 years on the job, the building engineer for Macy’s department stores had been in and out of every nook and cranny of many of the retail giant’s Texas stores, including the storage room in the Macy’s in Denton, Texas. One minute, the stocky,    Schiller was searching there for a floor drain. The next, he was sprawled on the floor, stunned, confused and bleeding slightly. ”All I heard was a loud crack and I found myself looking up on people looking down on me,” Schiller recalls more than five years later. ”They saw the mannequin hit me in the head and it drove my head into a shelf and then after that my head hit the cement.” The mannequin fell 12 feet from the highest shelf. Schiller has hardly worked since, given persistent headaches, memory loss, disorientation and extreme sensitivity to bright light and loud sound. He now has to post notes on the front door and refrigerator of his apartment, reminding him to take medications and keep appointments. In case he is stopped by police, he carries a letter from his doctor that says he may appear drunk owing to a head injury. ”I’m next to poverty,” Schiller says. ”I sit in a dark room. I watch TV like an old   or    person.” Schiller, 54, is among 1. 5 million workers in Texas and Oklahoma who don’t have   workers’ compensation to turn to when they’re injured on the job. Millions more may join them as more states consider giving employers the right to opt out of state workers’ comp systems. As NPR and ProPublica have reported, many employers prefer this   alternative to workers’ comp, because the state systems, employers claim, result in expensive and   benefits, costly litigation and delays in treatment of injured workers. When employers opt out, they avoid state regulation and write their own workplace injury plans, which make it easier to deny and cut benefits, control medical care and limit appeals of their decisions. But don’t worry, employers contend, injured workers are still protected by a federal law  —   the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA. The 1974 law initially applied to pension plans but has evolved to include health care and other workplace benefits. ”ERISA . .. says the benefits must be administered in the best interests of employees,” says Dallas lawyer Bill Minick, who leads the movement in Texas and Oklahoma to get employers to opt out of state workers’ comp and shift to federal authority. Minick and his company, PartnerSource, dominate a cottage industry, writing and supporting    injury plans and lobbying for   legislation in other states. ERISA is key to their sales pitch. ”There are very detailed claims procedures that must be followed to make sure the employee gets a full and fair review of their claim, including opportunity to appeal any denial of benefits and then access to state and federal courts,” Minick adds. But ERISA didn’t do much for Schiller, and NPR found the law doesn’t provide the protections promised by   promoters. ”I was getting no help and no doctors would answer me,” Schiller says. ”And they kept on sending me out the door instead of sending me to a hospital. They’d tell me   ’We’re here to observe you, not treat you.’ ” Macy’s did not respond to NPR’s multiple requests for comment about Schiller’s case. Legal documents, including witness statements, medical records, depositions and internal emails, show Macy’s was skeptical of Schiller’s injury from the very beginning. The company sent Schiller to doctors who concluded he was psychosomatic. One said he was faking. In legal filings, Macy’s claimed the accident never happened and implied it was staged. The company cut off all benefits for medical care and lost pay. ”Why would anybody set that up and put themselves through freaking hell?” Schiller asks. Unable to work and cut off from benefits, he lost his pickup and house. ”I had made $80, 000 a year at times and I’m going to give that up to be on Social Security and food stamps?” Schiller says. ”Who would want the life that I’ve got now?” Schiller sought treatment from specialists at his own expense  —   about $90, 000. They diagnosed a traumatic brain injury. A Social Security judge declared him disabled. If Macy’s had stayed in the state workers’ comp system, Schiller could have appealed the company’s denial of benefits to the Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation and to state courts, where he would have expected an independent review of his case. ERISA blocks state action ”because this is a federal question,” says Richard Faulkner, an arbitrator and attorney in Texas who advised Schiller’s attorneys. ”ERISA says we’re the federal law. We’re superior. State law, you’re irrelevant.” Schiller was turned away by the state workers’ comp agency and a state court, which cited a mandatory arbitration agreement in the Macy’s   plan. Most of the 50 Texas plans obtained by NPR and ProPublica contain mandatory arbitration clauses. So Schiller first went through an internal appeals process at Macy’s, which is typical of   plans in Texas and Oklahoma. People paid by employers decide whether employers are fair. Macy’s rejected Schiller’s appeals. ”There is no unbiased arbiter, so there can never be any true fairness,” says Bob Burke, a former Oklahoma commerce secretary who leads legal challenges to Oklahoma’s   law. Workers theoretically have an easier time taking their cases to federal court. But federal judges, under ERISA, must first determine whether employer decisions are ”arbitrary and capricious” and can only reject benefits decisions if employers were unreasonable or did not adhere to their plans. ”You really have to show that [benefits decisions are] irrational or contrary to the terms of the plan,” says Karen Handorf, a private ERISA attorney who spent 25 years enforcing ERISA at the Labor Department. So as long as employers follow their plans, they are likely to prevail. It doesn’t matter how unfair the plans or decisions may be. Even if injured workers win in federal court, they get only the benefits they were denied. There are no   awards for pain and suffering. And if workers lose, they can be forced to pay the legal expenses of their employers. ”Consequently, you have to think long and hard about what exposures you may be generating for a client if you attempt some of these ERISA remedies,” says Faulkner. ”ERISA can be incredibly dangerous for . .. an injured worker.” Schiller’s attorneys decided a federal court appeal was too risky. These hurdles to going to court may explain why many employers include in their plans provisions that directly violate ERISA, according to Handorf. In Oklahoma, almost every   plan includes mandatory settlements. Employers alone decide when to cut off benefits and pay   settlements. They also decide how much to pay. And if workers refuse to accept, they lose all their benefits. Injured workers also lose benefits in many plans in both Texas and Oklahoma if they don’t report injuries by the end of their shifts or within 24 hours, even if supervisors are witnesses or the injuries initially don’t seem serious. These provisions are ”an impediment to bringing claims and really isn’t what ERISA is designed to do,” says Handorf. ”ERISA is based on the idea that you get your right to make the best claim you can for benefits.” There’s also some question about whether ERISA governs   plans. The federal law explicitly states that it does not apply to plans ”maintained solely for the purpose of complying” with state workers’ comp law. So Minick and PartnerSource added a strategic benefit to 90 percent of the   plans in Oklahoma. It pays $1, 000 for deaths that have nothing to do with work. ”That’s the magic language to have ERISA apply,” Minick argues, because the plans then don’t ”solely” exist to provide workplace injury benefits or comply with state law. Minick says that any misuse or violations of ERISA will be addressed by federal regulators. ”The U. S. Department of Labor has enforcement authority,” Minick says. ”So there are a variety of checks and balances in the process.” But Faulkner says the agency isn’t paying attention. ”The Department of Labor has civil and criminal authority that if it chooses to exercise it can go in, look at these things and stop it.” Labor Department officials declined multiple requests for interviews. Spokesman Michael Trupo says the agency ”is aware of, and studying, the issues you note.” Trupo also says the agency has never litigated a single case involving possible misuse or violation of the law by employers who have opted out of state workers’ comp. The agency has not received a single complaint, Trupo adds, which ”may be due, in part, to workers not knowing their rights under [ERISA].” ERISA requires employers to inform workers of those rights and of the process for filing complaints. Plans reviewed by NPR and ProPublica typically contain that information, but most are more than 50 pages long. ”ERISA’s been turned on its head, really . .. because initially it was passed for the protection of workers,” says Jeffrey Dahl, an ERISA attorney in San Antonio who represents injured workers. ”But it in fact has become a shield for employers that operate these plans.” When Schiller’s case went to mandatory arbitration, his lawyers worried about a process they consider  . Arbitration resulted in a mixed decision for Schiller and Macy’s. Arbitrator John Allen Chalk Sr. concluded the incident actually happened and resulted from Macy’s negligence. Schiller, Chalk ruled, suffered a ”mild” traumatic brain injury and was subjected to ”scattered, intermittent [and]  ” medical treatment. Chalk also said medical records failed to show ”any serious attempts to thoroughly examine, diagnose, and treat Mr. Schiller’s   injury.” But Schiller would likely recover within five years, Chalk ruled. Schiller received $713, 000. Ted Lyon, Schiller’s attorney, believes his client would have done far better if the case had gone to state court. Schiller ”would have worked until he was 65, so that’s a million and a half dollars at least,” Lyon says. ”In addition to that, [given] pain and suffering damages and the egregious way that they treated him, I could have easily gotten $5 million from a jury in this case.” And if Schiller’s case had gone to court, every detail would be public. The mandatory arbitration clauses in   plans impose secrecy. Arbitration hides cases like Schiller’s and shields employers like Macy’s. We know the details of Schiller’s case because he decided to talk about it. He wants others to know what can happen to injured workers, despite the promised protections of ERISA. ”I’m just getting by,” he says. ”Thank God for Social Security Disability. And . .. after dealing with the whole process I went through and nowhere to go . .. I mean I’ve gotten no, no justice.” Most of the arbitration award paid legal fees, arbitration costs and existing medical bills. The rest is in a trust that pays ongoing living and medical expenses. And most of the award is gone. Schiller says he’ll run out of money before he runs out of time."
"Gentle warning: This is a big story about a big nation. My beloved editor, Scott, suggests it can be read as a story   used as a   resource. Americans are doers. In the United States today, history is an action word. This is, after all, a participatory democracy, and people are participating in its history by volunteering, crafting, interpreting,     and exploring the old  —   anew. ”For me, the doing is essential to learning,” says food historian Paula Marcoux, who has led culinary workshops at Monticello, President Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia. Back in November when NPR asked people What Do We Do Now In America The Same Way We Did It 100 Years Ago? the number and range of the responses were overwhelming. More than 600 people from around the country sent in   ideas of American history in action. Several hundred more commented on Facebook. As the crowd of sources points out in this crowdsourced story, a fair number of our   neighbors in the United States dwell in the past  —   hunting or gathering or going through days (or parts of days) as their ancestors did. They dress up in vintage clothes, speak in distant syntax, use their hands and brains like citizens of yore. Teachers and interpreters demonstrate and explain antiquated activities. Growers adhere to   methods. Makers shape things using the tools and materials of years past. Sellers hawk products today that were available 100 years ago and more. Companies continue to create   wares. Throughout the country, countless Americans live and work in the same ways people have for generations. Many, many Native Americans ”maintain traditions of food growing, harvesting, preservation and preparation that go back a lot more than 100 years,” explains Dawn Hill Adams of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. In pockets of the country, various groups revere traditional life. ”Amish country,” says Tara Yoder, ”is a great place to see things done the old fashioned way, from making bread and jams and pastries, to handwashing clothes and hanging them to dry  —   even in winter.” Communities of Amish folks and other Plain People are found in Pennsylvania, Indiana and other states. ”People in Hawaii still dig pits and cook whole pigs in an ’imu’ as done for hundreds of years,” writes Susanna Cheng of Hawaii. ”Japanese Americans in Hawaii still pound mochi  —   sticky rice ’cakes’  —   as done for hundreds of years in Japan.” Some Americans choose to live historically to honor the past others to avoid the present. Some have no choice at all, of course. And parts of our history are, tragically, not worthy of reliving. Some history lovers believe life was simpler long ago still others have discovered it was actually pretty complicated. ”I am trying to build a small cabin using an ax and a cross saw. It is a steep learning curve,” says Jason Walsh in Alaska. ”We tend to get kind of nostalgic for a slower, simpler time period and think fondly of life when our great and   grandparents were alive,” writes Melissa Harris. ”They were looking forward to a time where there was more ease and more   devices.” Based on the thoughtful suggestions of hundreds of contributors (many of whom are listed at the end of this story) here is a glimpse of  —   and homage to  —   the vast number of people in this variegated country who are honoring the past by living in it in one way or another. History Channelers, ”Many hobbies and crafts are largely unchanged. ... flyfishing, canoeing, knitting, swimming,     making, lost wax casting, pottery, painting. ..” suggests Pete Glass of Colorado. He sends a link to his own love of luthiery  —   the making of stringed instruments. Leeann Tourtillott of Washington tells us: ”My children grew up with their meat grown on site, butchered on site. We made cheese, butter and yogurt from the milk that we milked from our own goats. We made juice from our grapes, dinner could be chicken we raised with potatoes we raised, salad from the garden, sour dough bread I baked, and [dessert] baked apples from our trees with honey from our hives.” And there are scads of people in every place  —      maker Bruce Graham in New Hampshire blacksmiths Lewis Meyer in Kentucky, David Osmundsen in Wyoming and Mike Hensley in North Carolina leather worker Cliff Pequet in Indiana chair caner Cathryn Peters in Minnesota textile evangelist Abby Franquemont and decoy carver Laurel Dabbs in Ohio   maker Russ Filbeck, farrier Erin Simmons, winemaker Kat McDonald and invitation designer Kari Dias in California   John Potter, the book preservationists at Eidolon House and bookbinder H. DeLea Sayers in Texas potter Reggie Britton Delarm and   Sister Noella Marcellino in Connecticut potters Brenda Hornsby Heindl in North Carolina and my cousins Dale and Brin Baucum in Tennessee schooner chef Anna Miller in Maine silhouette snipper Lauren Muney in Maryland cooper Marshall Scheetz in Virginia photographers Charles Trentelman in Utah, Jen Jansen in Illinois, Mark and France Scully Osterman in New York and Wendell Decker in Tennessee   maker Jim Van Hoven apple grower Ken Weston and metalworkers Thomas and Catherine Latane in Wisconsin the hand weavers of Tierra Wools in New Mexico baker Evrim Dogu in Virginia glassblowers like Blenko in West Virginia and Charlie Jenkins in Maine and quilters at the Vermont Quilt Festival scrimshaw artist Tina White, ax crafter Kyle Leslie and the flint knappers of Puget Sound Knappers in Washington Southern chef Benjamin Dennis in South Carolina   Mark Richardson in Washington and Virginia Taylor of the Farm at Frost Corner in Virginia  —   who swear by particular techniques, ingredients, materials of yesteryear. All across America people are doing it the   way  —   painting murals in New York, making lace in Rhode Island, producing books in Kentucky . .. Some people are pushing for a return to using draft animals others are dancing like veritable Victorians. ”At Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, formerly the plantation of Lee’s     —   and adopted son of George Washington  —   volunteers formed a Victorian dance group, which became an interpretive program. We dance the way Robert and Mary Lee danced prior to leaving the home at the beginning of the Civil War,” writes Amy Delery. ”It is 1910 at my farmstead,” says Susan Odom, who runs Hillside Homestead in Michigan. A food historian, Odom routinely serves ”    fare” such as escalloped eggs and graham gems. Amanda’s Bequest is another historic farm stay in Michigan. History Hot Spots, Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia is a hallmark for many Americans with a hankering to experience the past. ”When we were down there last January,” writes Alicia Newcomb, ”we were able to speak to some of the actors one on one. Most of them are actually historians or certified in some other way. .. I’ve been going there since I was a little girl.” Williamsburg is but one historical wormhole that leads to the past. Time and again we are told about the glories of Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford museum in Michigan. Joseph Boggs of Ohio says: ”As an American history teacher and a history enthusiast, my favorite place in the world is the Greenfield Village . .. because of its commitment to history in action.” Of Greenfield Village, Lisa Pierce of the University of Arizona’s School of Theatre, Film  Television, adds: ”From       blacksmithing, and more, people dress in period costumes from the 18th  19th centuries and   the jobs that were done in those times.” Sarah Jensen and others especially recommend the Eagle Tavern there. At Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, ”I saw a cooper make a barrel, a cobbler make shoes, and workers performed both hand milking and hearth baking,” writes Al Ross. ”They do everything the way it was done before electricity.” And Robin Todd writes of Living History Farms in Iowa, ”I’ve been there too many times to count. They plant food, harvest, shoe horses, make brooms, build outbuildings. They live exactly as they would have in their time period.” Old Salem in North Carolina is another living history museum. Kyle Denlinger tells us about a   there who crafts 18th century long rifles by hand: ”The gunsmith at Old Salem always likes to point out that his rifles would have cost a person half of a year’s wages, but it was a necessary investment. They provided food, protection, and, if you were a soldier, an income. Personally, I could get behind the idea of guns being similarly expensive today.” And at Old World Wisconsin, ”they have brought together buildings from actual homesteads in Wisconsin from the various ethnic groups that settled there  —   Norwegian, German, Swedish, et al.  —   and have docents acting out the lives of the families,” says Diane Scholten. Sometimes it seems like you can’t open your carriage door without bumping into a living museum, many of which belong to the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums. Many museums, historic farms and interpretive centers conduct demonstrations, and some places and people allow folks to witness timeless traditions, such as the Cherokee Heritage Center in Oklahoma Fort Ticonderoga in New York Shaker Village in Kentucky Homestead Heritage in Central Texas the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair  Market in Arizona the Old Stone House in Pennsylvania Furnace Town Living Heritage Village and the National Colonial Farm in Maryland The Homeplace 1850 at Land Between The Lakes in Tennessee Sauder Village and Slate Run Historical Farm in Ohio Conner Prairie, Squire Boone Caverns and Metamora in Indiana the Marshfield School of Weaving in Vermont Barberville Pioneer Settlement in Florida Burritt on the Mountain in Georgia Historic Richmond Town and Genesee Country Village in New York the Plymouth Cordage Company in Connecticut Riley’s Farm, the Gold   town of Columbia, the Antique Gas  Steam Museum and Ardenwood Historic Farm in California Old Aurora Colony in Oregon the State Railroad Museum in Nevada the Ozark Folk Center in Arkansas Museum of Early Trades and Crafts in New Jersey the nascent Hermann Farm in Missouri Baldwin County Heritage Museum in Alabama Prairie Village in South Dakota the Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum and the   House in Louisiana the Delta Blues Museum  —   brainchild of my late friend Sid Graves  —   in Mississippi Fort Delaware State Park in Delaware Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts Coggeshall Farm Museum in Rhode Island the Maine Forest and Logging Museum the Naper Settlement, Historic Nauvoo and Lincoln’s New Salem in Illinois Native American powwows in Montana the Village of Yesteryear in North Carolina George Washington’s distillery at Mount Vernon the Frontier Culture Museum and Claude Moore Colonial Farm in Virginia an old Dutch mill and Fort Scott National Historic Site in Kansas the Calypso Farm  Ecology Center in Alaska the Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota and the William Harris Homestead in Georgia. Jim Corless sends along a list of other National Park Service spots that feature historic demonstrations: In Pennsylvania, Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site ”produces charcoal in the same manner as colliers at this iron plantation did up through the 1880s” and Independence National Historical Park ”prints publications using a late 18th century press and binds these using 18th century methods.” Fort Frederica National Monument in Georgia ”once a year creates and burns a   lime kiln to make lime for preservation work of the tabby structures at the site.” Last winter ”my husband and I took our daughter to a soccer tournament in Little Rock, Arkansas. We ended up staying in downtown Little Rock and stumbled upon the Historic Arkansas Museum. It was an enclosed area that included four historic buildings from the 1800s on their original site,” says Natalie Cagle. ”The grounds included a real working garden that they apparently had researched to determine what the owners in the 1800s had grown. They used the garden and other 1800 devices to cook meals in old cast iron pots right there on the hearth in the detached kitchen. The day we were there they had just baked fresh bread and offered us a piece. It was pretty cool.” To boot, each year communities host meaningful multicultural celebrations to honor the rich, robust history of the United States. The grandparent of festivals is the midsummer Smithsonian Folklife Festival in the District of Columbia. You should also check out scores of others, including the UNDIA Wacipi in North Dakota the Apple Butter Festival in West Virginia several festivals at Joanna Furnace in Pennsylvania the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon in Indiana Atascadero Colony Days in California the Shepherds Harvest Festival and a passel of public events sponsored by the Pond Dakota Heritage Society in Minnesota. History Media, Some contributors aim us toward history websites, blogs and videos: Woodworker Thom Strizek cites Shannon Rogers and Renaissance Woodworker, a site that showcases hand tools. Kristi Wenrich tells us about Throwback at Trapper Creek, a chronicle of homesteading on an 1881 farm in the Pacific Northwest. Todd Trepke sings the praises of woodworker and Lost Art Press blogger Christopher Schwarz. Khrista Tabak touts the Itinerant Printer  —   a look at letterpress print shops  —   and Carl Neu refers us to The History Girl, which explores historical places in New Jersey.   knitters and crocheters point to Ravelry. Michael W. Twitty, says Ellery E. Foutch, ”is doing a lot of foodways research  —   and cooking  —   in keeping with the practices of 19th century kitchens run by enslaved people. He has an awesome blog: Afroculinaria.” Jaimie Brunet tips us off to Four Pounds Flour, a   site. The creator, Sarah Lohman, ”explores historical recipes and recreates them. ..she’s popular enough that once she was discussing a recipe using bear meat and a follower who hunts shipped some to her.” Barbara Rust Brown of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia says that Frank Clark, a master of Historic Foodways, has created a noteworthy recipe blog offering 18th century recipes for 21st century kitchens. Nancy Ellis recommends Eric Gorges in A Craftsman’s Legacy on PBS. And for a historic nightcap, Nicholas K. Johnson passes along a YouTube video. It features Louisiana bartender Chris McMillian, a shaker and mover in the vintage cocktail movement. Johnson says that McMillian concocts cocktails ”as they were made a century or more ago. This is a rapidly growing scene and many mixologists emphasize using recipes from   bartending manuals.” We will drink to that. The Practice Of History, In the Chesapeake Bay area, says Kate Livie of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, ”we harvest and consume oysters. We still have a sailing dredging fleet of skipjacks  —   less than 10  —   but we have them . .. They still harvest wild oysters by dredge  —   an older, 18th century technology.” Annamarie Fadorsen writes: ”I am a volunteer at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago. I’m one of a handful of taxidermy volunteers that sits at an open desk in the museum and taxidermies critters and chats with visitors. The technique hasn’t changed since the museum was founded in 1857, and when I’m sitting at the desk I’m a few feet from specimens preserved by the museum founders.” English paper piecing and hand quilting ”are very much alive. Indeed you will find that for all the ooohs and aaahhs longarm quilting gets, it’s the hand done quilts that are the most highly prized,” writes Emily Hull. ”We’re making them right here in Indianapolis, Indiana.” She sends along a link to the American Quilter’s Society. The Stuff Of History, America is a living, breathing,   museum with a   gift shop. In this room you can find folks from The Woodwright’s School in North Carolina making wooden bowls using a 16th   German springpole lathe. In that room, leather belts from California and Woodford Reserve Bourbon from Kentucky. Over there, handcrafted brooms from Frankllin Broom Works in Iowa Moravian Sugar Cake from North Carolina and bound books from the Colonial Printer. Renaissance Leather in Colorado makes waist cinchers and J. C. Newman Cigar Co. in Florida turns out   cigars. An artisan group in California called the Porcelain Garden, says Richard Pelosi, ”makes   night lights. A friend just gave me one as a gift and, on the box, it reads: ’This light is hand made in the USA using techniques from a lost art of the 1800s called ’Lithophanes’. Light shining through the varied thicknesses of thin porcelain causes a beautiful image to appear in the lit porcelain.” ”I reenact 1850’s soapmaking using homemade lye from woodashes and fat rendered from farm animals over an open fire,” says Karin McGilvery, owner of Abundance Soaps in Ohio. ”My whole family is involved. My 18 year old son flintknapps arrows and skins deer and raccoons . .. My daughter spins wool that we knit into clothes. It’s important that we keep this connection to our heritage.” Michelle Beekman, of Beekman’s Homemade Ice Cream in Iowa, says, ”We use antique gas engines to turn old fashioned ice cream makers when we make homemade ice cream.” According to our crowd of sources, this country is, in fact,    with contemporary companies that in one way or another cling to the distant past, such as Hornstra Farms and Tremont Nail in Massachusetts Frederick Duckloe  Bros.   in Pennsylvania the Brass Rooster Hat Co. in Wisconsin Kokomo Opalescent Glass and the Thomas Family Winery in Indiana Louis’ Lunch in Connecticut Raye’s Mustard in Maine   makers in Louisiana Mt. Devon Farm and Fiber, W. F. Norman tin ceilings and Red Guitar Bread in Missouri Palace Shoe Service and Lyon  Healy   in Illinois Type High letterpress shop and Williams Mug Shaving Soap in New York Blue Ox Millworks, Judson Studios stained glass and the San Francisco Fire Department Ladder Shop in California Russell Pope’s   hardware in New Hampshire Elderhorst Bells and Hoffman’s Forge in Pennsylvania Lehman’s hardware store in Ohio and the Vermont Country Store in, well, Vermont Standard Hat Works and Restaurant Gwendolyn in Texas Montana Rio, makers of Buckaroo hats, in Wyoming Doumar’s and their waffle cones in Virginia Burns Saddlery in Utah Illahe Vineyards in Oregon Legends Steakhouse in South Dakota Glur’s Tavern in Nebraska Duluth Pack, Nomadic Letter Press and Pioneer Power Sawmill in Minnesota B. F. Clyde’s Cider Mill in Connecticut and the Fly Creek Cider Mill in New York. A Million Mills, To hear people tell it, there must be a million mills in America that whir away just like in the olden days. Textile operations such as Faribault Woolen Mill in Minnesota, ”which has been in operation . .. since 1865,” writes Liz Pearson. From the northwestern Catskill Mountains of New York, Peg Odell of Hanford Mills shoots us an email: ”There has been a   mill on this site since 1846. As a Museum we generate power using water in all three states, just as it was done 100 years ago. We operate a sawmill, gristmill, and woodworking shop using water power and steam power. .. And, about that third state of water? Ice! Before refrigeration, ice was harvested each winter so it could be used in the warmer months to keep food and agricultural products cool. We recreate this community tradition each year on the first Saturday in February. Using historic tools, kids and adults cut blocks of ice from the frozen mill pond, and then transfer it by sled to the ice house. The ice is packed in sawdust and will last through the summer and into the fall. We use the ice on July 4th to make ice cream on a   churn.” And mills of other sorts. The volunteers who run the Wye Grist Mill  —   circa 1682  —   in Maryland, notes Steve Hamblin, ”grind corn, wheat and buckwheat every year from April to October using a Fitz overshot waterwheel to turn millstones from the Civil War era.” In South Carolina, Anson Mills ”has recultivated the Carolina Gold Rice from seeds added to a bank” decades ago, says Kelly Jones. Other folks tout Kenyon’s Grist Mill in Rhode Island Gwynn Valley gristmill in North Carolina Cedar Creek Grist Mill in Washington Bob’s Red Mill and Butte Creek Mill in Oregon and Hodgson Mill in Missouri. The gristmill at Plimouth Plantation in Massachusetts is a reproduction of the original, but it still makes cornmeal. Atkinson Milling Co. in North Carolina, with a   gristmill, has been in the   business since 1757, Sunny Franklin points out. Historic Yates Mill, also in North Carolina, has been restored. And Bear’s Mill in Ohio was built in 1849. Stephen Golobic, the assistant miller at Colvin Run Mill in Virginia, says, ”We are a   gristmill that was built in 1810. We still grind wheat and corn into flour and cornmeal using millstones. We sell what we produce in the form of wheat flour, cornmeal and grits.” The Mill at Anselma in Pennsylvania, which was erected in 1747, ”is a National Historic Landmark that is still producing bread flour, pastry flour, dark roasted cornmeal,” says Neil Hobbins. And War Eagle Mill in Arkansas has stood on the same site since 1832, says Eileen Oldag, ”although it has burned and been rebuilt . .. and I better mention floods that have swept it away in the past, too.” Candy Land, Since before George Washington lost his teeth, Americans have had a sweet tooth  —   and candy purveyors that provide sugar highs. Candy lovers mention Lofty Pursuits in Florida the Idaho Candy Co. in Idaho and Schimpff’s Confectionery in Indiana. Warren and Jill Schimpff make cinnamon red hot drops the same way they were made by the family in the 19th century, says Luanne Mattson. ”Although I expect this is probably the same as most anywhere that maple syrup  —   or sirup  —   is produced from the sap of maple trees,” observes Troy Semple, ”here’s a little spot in central Illinois, along the old Route 66    no less, that still does it pretty much the same as always.”   Lessons, While most schools in America prepare people for the future, some teach skills from the past. ”All our students, from urban youth to suburban families, school children to veterans, are taught the time honored and ancient techniques of foraging wild edibles, carving, tool making, shelter building, tracking, hide tanning, flint knapping, friction   fire cooking, story telling, aidless navigation and more,” says Lindsay A. Cray of Earthworks Institute in New York. At the Wilderness Awareness School in Washington, says 2010 graduate Liz Crain, students are taught to connect ancient ways to the present, and the whole educational process is grounded ”in the continual complexity of the natural world.” Life learners also speak of experiencing history lessons at folk schools, such as the Fairbanks Folk School in Alaska and the Wild Lore Folk School and North House Folk School in Minnesota. An overriding lesson for all of us, of course, comes from William Faulkner, who reminds us that the past is not past. The past is alive. Active participants in the   pageant of America’s history understand a little of what Faulkner was driving at . .. ”When we sit onstage for a concert of that gorgeous orchestral classical music, a lot is exactly the same as it was 100 years ago,” says Diane McElfish Helle, a violinist with the Grand Rapids Symphony in Michigan. ”There is, usually, still a conductor moving and cuing in a way that’s been passed down from teacher to student through the years. There are still the same kinds and numbers of instruments  —   meaning whatever the composer calls for  —   and we still make the music happen live, right on the spot in real time with the audience as our partner.” She adds, ”It is the liveness of the experience in a time when so much is electronic and on a tiny screen that makes it so special. And  .” Contributors: Justin Lewis Pete Glass Sherial Valencia Stephen Berer Catherine Shreve Eva Stettner Diane Scholten Mark Richardson Diane McElfish Helle Sarah Michlin Rob Smith Rick Pace Albert M. Ross Gary Hatch Jerry Massie Troy Semple Todd Trepke Andi Parrish DeAnna Burghart Kerry Mower Jen   Devin Ferguson Linda Prior Tara Yoder RB Fast Allison Whatley Damien Daville Becky McMahan Eric Johnson Wildbear Sarah MacDonald Jennifer A. Jordan Kathleen Stimely Nancy Brown Kara Anderson Stewart Nadina Pustarfi Matt Gillard Patricia Tate Karen Sandler Leisha Stelken Kim Lacey Hannah Nester Colleen Isabelle Josh O’Quin Eric Shoen Stephen Canham Michelle Teheux Abigail Nourse Van Meter Robin Todd Emily Kendall Joan Bradley Alex Carlson Emily Gerger Lori Pelliccia Shannon Bardole Justine Zimmerman David Schroeder Cassandra Johnson Michael Wright Catherine Ross Stephenie Foster Yvonne Tessman John Hunter Dory Piccard Dickson Karen Garren Elaina Carlisle Osca Brambila Cathy Day Rebecca Bowen Jacquie Smith Kyle Leslie Stephanie Galvan Anna Miller Stewart Nelson Adam Black H. DeLea Sayers Lindsay M. Rowe Nicole Stacy Jennifer Cannon Matthew D. Manhire Sara Toombs Neil Hobbins Emily Hull Patrick o’Sullivan Jennifer Lawhead Michelle M. Drummey Amanda   Susan Odom the Novaks Alan Curboy Svend Jansen Clifford Yeary Tracey Zaleski Sandra Polaski Laurinda Porter Elizabeth Coleman Dan Clark Leslie Sullivan Rebecca M. Townsend Michael Rogak Denise Williams Eileen Oldag Marc W. Mengel Patricia J. Knobloch   Jensen Rachel Van Patten J. B. Smith Jamene   Yoshita Patel Hosking Ryan Beckman Trish Boyd John Williamson Deb Cohen Jason Walsh Jennifer M. Lopez DiAnn Service Shar Carkson Jen Knapp Kathleen A. Crippen Jim and Gloria Kirsch Mary Rohrer Becky Bingham Andrew Cosby Becky Leclair Laura Brubaker Erickson Adam Abby Lynch Alicia Newcomb Arnold Reinhold Katherine Kamin Robin Crouch Fred Roberts Kelly Jones Steve Hamblin Kathryn Lush Fausel Liz Pearson William Morton Jim Corless Sunny Franklin Loretta Wray Peg Odell Rebeccah J. W. Cope Mystie Adams Patty Johnson Mike Hensley Robert Bittner Alice Fredlund Becky Faust McMahan Sarah Lipuma Jean Hartley Kate Friesen Jessica Vellenga Shannon Bardole Janice Zindel Mari Balestrazzi H. DeLea Sayers Lisa Malick Connie Bone Julie Fromer Adam Black Paige Bassett Liz Burt Joanne Kearney Lisa Czech Rod Dismukes Eliza Porter Alyce Green Erika Keller Alisa Herr Annamarie Fadorsen Samantha Collins Rebecca Shriberg Roger Harmony Lee Grant Mamie Matassa Debra Willson Kim Kieffer Erika Phillipsen Turner Hayley Enoch Rene Michel Beth Colley John Lebsack Betsey Kelly Carrie Black Suzanne LeSar Leslie Wannamaker Sarah Woods Tsasa West Kristin Rutkowski Jaimie Brunet Kristi Wenrich Meg Anderson Beth Neff Lisa Perez Maggie Strickland Dawn Hill Adams Jacqui Lewnes Rachel Purget Chrissy Vance Robert Chester Jennifer Yueill Judy Thomas Tovah Close Ellery E. Foutch Kyle Denlinger Thom Strizek Shanna Gorrell Lauren Muney Barbara Johnston Barbara Rust Brown George Rollow Tina Kelly Lisa Simon Allison O’Connor Marilyn Lee Moria Bergeron Karin McGilvery Sandeep Ghaey Jason Thompson Daniel Hewlette Brenda Hornsby Heindl Jessa Brookshire Brandy Wallace Heidi Sherman Mathew Schreiber Theresa A. Kempker Emily Pate Khrista Tabak Lisa Doran Sam Perkins Bruce de Terra Charlie Jenkins Christine Serbun Katie Knobbe Steve Gotwols Bonnie Zoehrer Will Cheryl Driggs Steve Jordan Mike Biros Lia Paradis Cathy Hatcher Clay Gibson Terri Mando Bobby Hsu John Sanderson Karen Russell Patricia Painter Annie Grace Samantha Watson Christa Dunn Deborah Schlick Emery Younger Linda Elderhorst Metzger Janet Elling Steve Cuddy Melinda Carriker Reid Fisher Lauren Thomas Carol Applegate Liz Crain Trey King Brittany Brown Natalie Cagle Abigail Brinkmeier Patricia Kenyon Quiara M. Hazlewood Barb Perrotta Kristen Anthony Brady Pisha Christine Heinrichs Dee Shively Kat McDonald Kari Dias Molly Burmester  Caroline Reynolds Laura Birek Birgitt Evans Kate Buike Otto Pebworth Adam Watson Spencer Perkins Leeann Tourtillott Rachel Norman Joe Boggs Steve McPhail Steve Lastovica Lilla Clark Marilyn Lee Jacob Kohut Luanne Mattson Floyd Merritt Jane Gilchrist Nicholas Sprague Allan Morrison Ashley Robertson Noelia Valdez John Forti Paula Murphy Jennifer Tibbetts Courtney DeStefano Valerie Gillies Thaumas Ehr Alix   Micheal A. Hudson Deb Fuller S. J. Wolfe Cathryn Blackwell Cole Hankins Michael Koerner Nancy Ellis Cheryl Goyer Catherine Ross Jim Mackay Paula Marcoux Amy Rice Tyler Severson Bill Franz Aaron Andrews Jane Radocchia Harry Clayton Deidra   Emma Grady Joan Brockett Liz Lowery Nicholas K. Johnson Sarah Skreko Lisa Pierce Jennifer Kryzak Jess Engle Laura Miller Terri Klear Maureen Gilmore Nicoline Smits Kathryn Townsend  Terri Guerette Carol Cyran Chrissy Houtz Kathleen Cason Celeste Suter Valerie Hanson Sandi Hemmerlein Carolyn Herriott Philippe Habib Patricia Anderson David Meistrich Bonnie McPherson Amy Johnson Chelsea Rhodes Lisa Petersen Marcie Poulson Chris Hill Kimberly Pratt Aruna Mani Jeanne Palermo Tammy Maynard Diana Guillermo Jon Craig Sam Flakus Matthew Frazier Jan Van Hoven Wendi Tibbets Kathy Traylor Nate Morris Joel Paradis Kate Livie John Reese Kay Demlow Rikki Nyman Missy Duer Tina White Robin Simonson Andy LePere Lara Manzanares Morgan Wallace Gilbert Suzi Smith Kelly Brown Terence Guerrero Kevin Ponton Jacyra Guard Melody Walker Eric Precht Kari Vanhoozer Andy Tangborn Lindsay Burke Heather Collins Michelle Martin Jessica Sharrer BC Sewell Nikki Kasmai Paul McGarvey Sarah Jensen Lindsay A. Cray Melinda Lee Susanna Cheng Jennifer Duff Susan Cain Heidi Glatfelter Schlag Eric Colleary Aleatha Isaacs Dustin Bardon Dan Baish Chris Hancock Dan Beirne Erin O’Donnell Scott E Richert Richard Pelosi Michele L. Savor Steve and Elizabeth Thomas Tim Tolbert Aaron Dotter Kel Szydagis Bruce Graham Shorty Robbins Mike Foster Samuel Dawson Karen Vaina Jen Bidwell Meyer Melissa Leitch Molly Rumery Scott Marmitt Robert Chester Joan Treis Charlie Alvey Paul Gibbs Nicole Formisano Cate Ward Marcia Matz Terri Savoie Laura Williams Floyd Merritt Nicole Sowerby Kristopher Shultz Cindi Foreman Ros Nelson Melissa Harris Tammy Kinney Carl Neu Lynn Masimore Samantha Taylor Gay Lynne Longhurst Laurel Dabbs Amy Delery Reggie Britton Delarm Katherine Prince Christine Barensfeld Galen Kreiser Thomas Latane Nelson Haynes Doug Smith Christine Piatko Helene Doughty Nich Dillingham Mark P. Wickham Margaret Lillard Michael Arnum Jessica M. Rivas and Jan Taylor Weeks. Follow me @NPRHistoryDept lead me by writing lweeks@npr. org"
"Maybe it was last January’s big measles outbreak at Disneyland that scared more California parents into getting their kids vaccinated. Or maybe health campaigns have become more persuasive. Or maybe schools getting stricter about requiring shots for entry made a difference. Whatever the reasons, childhood vaccination rates last fall went up in 49 of 58 counties in California, according to data released Tuesday by state health officials. The California Department of Public Health annually reports vaccination data for kindergartners from nearly all public and private schools statewide. For the   school year, 92. 9 percent of kindergartners were    on their shots  —   an increase of 2. 5 percentage points from the previous term. In California, as in the rest of the nation, 2015 was a year of heated debate around vaccines. It started last January with the first reports of a measles outbreak tied to Disneyland. Then, in early February, state lawmakers introduced a bill to eliminate the personal belief exemption, which has allowed California parents to easily refuse vaccines on behalf of their children. The repeal of that exemption became law, to take effect in July 2016. But the percentage of parents citing personal belief exemptions is already declining in California, the newly released data show  —   from 2. 54 percent of incoming kindergartners in   to 2. 38 percent this year. In addition, the percent of children receiving both doses of the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella  —   or MMR  —   has increased from 92. 55 percent to 94. 59 percent statewide. ”I can only assume that this is in part a response to . .. the measles outbreak and the publicity that that received,” says Dr. Art Reingold, head of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. ”It’s unfortunate that fear or outbreaks of disease are necessary to get people to do what we’d like them to do, but I think that’s human nature.” Even Marin County, a hotbed for the   movement, saw its personal exemption claims drop  —   from 6. 45 percent last year to 5. 97 percent this year. The county’s public health officer, Dr. Matt Willis, calls the decline in Marin’s rate ”great news,” and notes that this is the third year in a row of increasing vaccination rates. ”We haven’t seen this many children vaccinated in Marin County since 2007,” he says. Still, a decline in the number of parents formally refusing to vaccinate their kids isn’t the only reason for the statewide improvement in vaccination rates, according to James Watt, chief of the division of communicable diseases in the state’s department of public health. Another big factor, Watts says, is a decline in what are known as ”conditional admissions” to schools. These are kids who show up on their first day of school having received some  —   but not all  —   of the required immunizations. Often, schools go ahead and allow these children to start class, with the understanding that their parents will make sure the students get the remaining shots as soon as possible. But that’s not what the law demands. ”If those children could get a dose ’today,’ they’re not supposed to be admitted to school,” Watt says. The problem, he explains, is that lots of kids have been enrolling with ”conditional entry” who don’t go on to get the rest of their shots. By working with parents and school districts to explain and enforce the rules  —   and vaccinate more kids  —   the state was able to reduce the overall number of conditional admissions from 6. 9 percent of all enrolled kindergartners in   to 4. 4 percent this year. ”The outbreak of measles was a real   call for all of us around this issue,” Willis says. ”It gave us a chance to speak openly as a community about what vaccination does for us. It gave us a chance to understand vaccination as a matter of community responsibility.” Dr. Olivia Lang, a Berkeley pediatrician, said she’s seen a change in her practice, too. ”There were a lot of families who had been waffling on vaccines, but perhaps were not strong believers in   ideals,” she says. ”But now they’re saying, ’Well, I guess we’re going to have to do it,’ ” and so they are getting their children vaccinated. Starting with the   school year, all kindergartners and   in California will need to be    on their immunizations to enter school. Only those children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons will be exempt. A version of this story first appeared on KQED’s State of Health blog."
"   Batoul has large cheeks and   eyes that dart from side to side while she and the other Syrian children perform songs in Arabic and English.   She’s learning from caregivers while living in an orphanage known as Bayti (”home” in Arabic) in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, where the Syrian refugee population has topped tens of thousands in the past few years.   The classrooms on the first floor are colorfully decorated and the dormitories upstairs are neat. From the upstairs window at Bayti, the children can see the nearby Atmeh Refugee Camp on the Syrian side of the border, where some of them were living before they came here. Both the orphanage and some projects in the refugee camp are funded by the Maram Foundation, a U. S.  aid group founded by  .   Currently there are about eight orphanages in Reyhanli, but that’s not nearly enough, said one of the home’s directors, Nihad Abdi.   ”There are so many children that need our help. But we can’t take anymore,” said Abdi, herself a Syrian refugee.   In its fifth year, the fighting in Syria has made orphans out of legions of children.   Of the more than 4 million Syrians who have fled their homeland, more than half are age 17 or younger, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.   Some were fortunate enough to be accompanied in flight by both parents. Many lost their fathers to the violence that has killed more than 250, 000 Syrians since the fighting began in 2011. Still others are without any immediate family to look after them.  The children living at Bayti range from toddlers to young teens. All have lost their fathers and some have lost their mothers as well, said Abdi. Some of the mothers are still alive, but can’t afford to keep their children at home as they try to find work in and around Reyhanli.   ”Most of them can remember clearly how their fathers used to hug them and kissed them,” said Abdi. ”And some of them remember how their fathers were killed in front of them.”  One child watches a video on YouTube of the death of his father over and over again just so he can continue to remember him, Abdi said.   Abdi said the children at Bayti were doing well, for the most part. But it hasn’t been easy. Even here, where they are nurtured and cared for in relative safety from the fighting in Syria, they struggle with the horrors they witnessed. ”It takes a lot of effort to adapt to a new life,” she said. ”They have endured hard times. Leaving Syria and moving to a new place has not been easy for them.”   Those children who have a hard time coping receive counseling. Fellow Syrian refugee Beshr   Hussain, originally from Damascus, is a psychotherapist who works with children from Bayti and elsewhere in Reyhanli to help them develop coping skills.   Hussain said that one of the adverse results of war is all the downtime children have when schools are destroyed or shuttered. According to the humanitarian group World Vision, some 5, 000 schools in Syria are closed, leaving an entire generation of young people uneducated and with little to do.   ”During war, there is a lot of empty time and that could be a dangerous thing,” said Hussain. ”Any kind of routine helps children cope.”    stress among children usually manifests as aggression and other antisocial behavior, he said. Many learned such behavior growing up amid the violence in Syria, he said.  Treatment includes therapy sessions and signed agreements between caregivers and children that reward younger ones for meeting certain behavioral requirements.  This kind of therapy is most effective for children ages 6 to 13, Hussain said. Older children are much harder to treat because of the amount of trauma they’ve endured. The oldest children in Bayti are around 13.  A group home for teenagers is being planned. Right now, Bayti doesn’t have enough room for the high   children who need help. Directors are uncertain what will happen to the older children who are still too young to care for themselves.  Some of those who age out of Bayti are moving on to lives even farther from the violence in Syria.  Ruba Shaleesh, 12, is among a handful of children from Bayti who were accepted at a boarding school in Italy. She leaves for her new school and life in Europe this spring.   The perpetually smiling Ruba says in   English that she will ”miss her teachers and friends” at Bayti.   ”At first it will be difficult,” she said. ”But later, I’m sure it will be good.”"
"The Buffalo Bills announced Wednesday that Kathryn Smith has been hired as the organization’s quality   teams coach, making her the first woman to hold a   coaching position in the NFL. Smith spent last season as administrative assistant to the Bills’ head coach, Rex Ryan, and prior to that spent 12 years working for the New York Jets, also with Ryan, who was that team’s coach until 2015. Smith started as an intern with the Jets in 2003. In a statement on the team’s website, Ryan said Smith ”has proven that she’s ready for the next step” and added: ”Kathryn Smith has done an outstanding job in the seven years that she has worked with our staff,” said Bills Head Coach Rex Ryan. ”She certainly deserves this promotion based on her knowledge and strong commitment, just to name a couple of her outstanding qualities, and I just know she’s going to do a great job serving in the role of Quality   Teams.” Ryan said the decision to promote Smith was inspired in part by the San Antonio Spurs’s move to appoint the first   female assistant coach in the NBA. Becky Hammon, a former WNBA player, was hired by the Spurs in 2014. ESPN reporter Howard Bryant talked to NPR’s Weekend Edition after Hammon’s appointment: ”Becky Hammon is a great coach. She’s a very knowledgeable player and I think the players are going to learn a lot from her. And I think they’re going to have a lot of different voices. And this opens the door for the next thing  —   if you get an assistant coach on the bench in the NBA, why not a head coach?” In 2015, Nancy Lieberman became the NBA’s second female coach when she was hired by the Sacramento Kings. ”You can see the success some of these young ladies are having in the coaching profession . .. and realize how exciting this is for women like Kathryn Smith as well as the Bills organization,” Ryan said in the statement."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. They start them young in bluegrass, grooming   to master their instruments and study the standards of the bluegrass jam repertoire: all those   instrumental romps and    odes to idealized cabin homes. Just about every kid picker wants to get to the point where she can jump in on familiar tunes and keep up with the old hands, maybe even eventually land an   pro gig  —   often viewed as a sort of apprenticeship  —   touring in a string band behind a veteran leader. This trusty path is about more than paying dues. Learning to play a tasteful role in any given ensemble lies at the heart of a bluegrass musician’s identity. Maturity means knowing your place in the group. Midway through the previous decade, Sierra Hull emerged as one of bluegrass’ most celebrated prodigies, a teenaged mandolin virtuoso who was also developing skills as a writer and vocalist. She found a champion in the genre’s biggest crossover star, Alison Krauss, and a home at Rounder, its leading label, in addition to receiving elite schooling on a Presidential Scholarship to Berklee College of Music. The pair of albums Hull released through that period, while tentative showcases of her talents, proved that she had a great grasp on what it takes to be a     contemporary bluegrass artist, should that be where she chose to aim her creative energy for the long haul. But Hull’s ultimate direction began to seem far from settled, as the gap between albums widened to nearly five years. In the liner notes of her new collection, Weighted Mind, the mandolinist explains that she proceeded in fits and starts, cutting half a dozen songs in 2013, only to scrap the results. ”It was a frustrating and somewhat difficult musical period for me,” she writes, ”but out of it has come a new discovery of myself as a musician and I wouldn’t change a thing.” Now 24, Hull has emerged an altogether different creature: a   performing apart from a band, exquisitely pensive even in her approach to her instrument. Her only accompanists are double bassist Ethan Jodziewicz and, in a couple of tracks, banjo giant Bela Fleck, who produced the album with her. There’s not a lot here that you could call   bluegrass if anything, the shifting rhythmic pulses of ”The ” ”Choices And Changes” and ”Queen Of   Tea” dexterously deconstruct bluegrass templates. With such a lean lineup, Hull’s arrangements and playing feel nimble and capricious, animating her introspection with   melodic details and pinprick exactness, and she makes the most of her airy voice with clean, emotionally present phrasing. As the album cover suggests, with its image of Hull struggling to tow an oversized version of her head behind her, these are the meditations of a burdened mind. More than once, Hull articulates her version of millennial uncertainty. ”Dear 22, I’m stranded here,” she sings during the orchestral   ”Stranded.” ”The  ” finds her ruminating on being ”22 years with so much to learn   Too young to crash, but not to get burned.” Elsewhere, she depicts something like a   existential crisis. ”My skin is old I need to shed it,” she sings in ”Compass,” growing more insistent with the next lines: ”’Cause there’s more to me   I have to let it out.” For comfort, she turns to a Psalm about boundless divine presence (”Wings Of The Dawn”) and asks that her mother soothe her with a hymn (”Lullaby”) but the title track expresses ambivalence toward certitude of belief. It’s not a huge leap to imagine the pointed ultimatum she delivers in ”Choices And Changes” being aimed at someone from whom her musical or spiritual paths have diverged: ”If you won’t go where I’m goin’   then I’ll have to go alone.” Song by song, Hull summons the pain of losing her sense of stability of having to renegotiate her relationship to seemingly everything and everyone of caring so deeply about choosing well. As blunt a writing tool as doubt can be, in her hands it’s a precision instrument. Like her contemporary Sarah Jarosz, Hull has joined the rarefied company of Nickel Creek expats Chris Thile, Sara Watkins and Sean Watkins, pedigreed virtuosos whose youthful, searching musical minds have taken them into postmodern   territory and beyond. Most of all, though, Hull’s made a stunning    album and arrived at a new beginning in the process."
"The snow will glow white on the mountains tonight  —   the Appalachians, that is, from North Carolina through Pennsylvania. The wind is howling  —   gusts over 60 miles per hour in some areas, the National Weather Service reports  —   as this swirling storm moves up the coast. And if you had any hopes of seeing a play in New York City or flying through D. C. well, let it go. The winter storm that started dumping snow Friday on the East Coast has entered into its second day. It’s anticipated to carry on through Sunday in some regions. It has already brought life to a standstill in many parts of the East Coast, including Washington, D. C. and New York City. Roads are inaccessible, public transit is shut down and in New York City, a   travel ban has gone into effect. New York was originally predicted to see significantly less snowfall than many other affected areas, but the NWS has revised predicted snow totals up several times since the storm began. Now it’s anticipating   inches for parts of the city. The uptick in intensity has thrown the city into high alert. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for New York City on Saturday, joining multiple numerous states and cities farther south. Bus service in New York was suspended at noon, but transit workers are trying to keep the underground sections of the subway running. Gov. Cuomo is also instituting a travel ban in the city, which took effect between 2:30 p. m. ET and 7 a. m. on Sunday. Drivers out on the road for   during that time could be arrested. Broadway shows on Saturday have all been canceled, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has strongly urged any restaurants planning to stay open through the storm to shut down and send their employees home. The D. C. area, where the entire public transit system is shut down all weekend, is expecting   feet of snow. Philadelphia is expecting up to 2 feet. You can see reported accumulations so far on the NWS site. And you can watch the storm’s progress thanks to our friends at WNYC. At least 10, 000 flights have been canceled on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, FlightAware reports. United Airlines has canceled all of its Sunday flights at the two major airports in D. C.  —   and will have only very limited flights at Newark and other New York City airports. The major airports in the New York metro area remain open, but all flights there have been canceled. The impact of so many cancellations stretches far beyond the storm’s direct reach. On Friday, San Francisco had 15 percent of its flights canceled, and Detroit, Chicago and Orlando saw 10 percent of their flights drop off the boards. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost power  —   particularly in the Carolinas, where the storm dropped large quantities of ice as well as snow. In New Jersey alone, WHYY’s Bobby Allyn reports that more than 40, 000 people are without power. Authorities continue to ask residents in   areas to stay home and stay off the roads. Driving is perilous in many areas: The Virginia Highway Patrol says they responded to nearly a thousand car crashes Friday night. At least 18 people have died due to the weather across the affected area, the AP reports. In Kentucky, meanwhile, drivers on a stretch of Interstate 75 were stranded overnight as crashes shut down the roadway. The Kentucky State Police said on Twitter late Friday that the Red Cross set up shelters for motorists stranded by the interstate closure. Early Saturday morning, the police tweeted that police officers and the National Guard were moving cars ”one at a time,” and that emergency crews were bringing food, water and fuel to motorists trapped in their cars. A local TV reporter was stranded on the interstate in her news van, The Associated Press reports. ”Every time it looks like there’s light at the end of the tunnel, more accidents and   are occurring,” Caitlin Centner said, according to the wire service. One traveling band  —   stuck on   for 11   hours, according to their Twitter feed  —   sang through their woes. The interstate has now been reopened, an official tells the AP, and no injuries were reported. Motorists on the Pennsylvania turnpike were also stuck, with some unable to move well into Saturday. The National Guard was called out to provide food and water to those motorists as well. ”Gov. Tom Wolf’s office said the problems in Somerset County began after westbound   were unable to climb a hill,” the AP reports. ”As traffic backed up behind them, more trucks also became unable to go up the hill, backing up all vehicles and preventing emergency crews from getting   tow trucks to the scene and road crews from being able to clear the snow, officials said.” The AP spoke to a gymnastics team and a church group stuck on the turnpike, and both reported high spirits. The team noted that being stuck in cramped conditions wasn’t too much of a challenge, since they were gymnasts, after all the church group, returning to Indiana from an   protest in D. C. told the wire service they were on a pilgrimage and ”there’s going to be some suffering with that.” But the Duquesne men’s basketball team, also trapped on the turnpike, was less sanguine. The coach told the AP the players were running out of leftover pizza. Meanwhile, as the storm is capturing the attention of millions of people, there isn’t exactly agreement on what to call it. Hurricanes are named by the National Hurricane Center, but there’s no equivalent body for blizzards and snowstorms. The Weather Channel  —   which has been naming winter storms since 2012  —   dubbed the storm Jonas. (The name comes from a list recommended by a Latin club at a high school in Montana. The students are partial to mythology, and want you to know that if the Weather Channel ever gets to winter storm ”Yolo,” that was not their idea.) But not everybody is a fan of the Weather Channel’s  : as NPR’s Elise Hu wrote in 2013, it can easily be part of a ”hype cycle” that doesn’t serve the public interest. Identifying which winter storm systems are major events is also more subjective than identifying a hurricane. So the National Weather Center has ignored the use of the name Jonas and is marking its tweets with the rather straightforward hashtag #WinterStorm. The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang, for its part, asked its readers to vote on the storm’s name. Blizzard of 2016? (Not popular.) Snowtastrophe? (Meh, readers said.) Snownino? (Getting closer. ..) The readership went with the Trumpian ”Make Winter Great Again,” by a pretty wide margin. But the Post’s meteorologists overruled democracy. ”We’ve thought about it long and hard this morning and although Make Winter Great Again has the most votes  —   and is certainly hilarious  —   it doesn’t make for a good name, or a good hashtag,” they wrote. So they opted for the   Snowzilla. Whatever you call it, this storm looks pretty dramatic from space."
"Here at Goats and Soda headquarters, we were discussing the huge snowstorm expected to hit D. C. this weekend when we remembered the one thing you won’t find in much of the developing world (or the ”Global South,” as some call it): snow. When my family first moved to the U. S. from Mumbai, India, the whole concept of snow boggled my    mind. Little bits of ice falling from the sky? Would it feel like fluffy cotton or like sharp chips of shaved ice? The first time I got to touch snow in Lake Tahoe, Calif.  —   it was pure glee. That brings us to this joyous video of a Syrian family tobogganing after finding refuge in Canada. The clip was uploaded by David McNab  —   one of the   of the Syrian family in Petersborough, Canada  —   and it’s going viral, with more than 100, 000 views. McNab, his wife, Kristy Hiltz, and 12 other Canadians pooled their resources to bring Amal Alkhalaf and her children Dalya, 8, Ansam, 13, and Ibrahim, 10, to Petersborough. This month, Maclean’s magazine profiled the family and its Canadian sponsors. The kids had never touched snow until they arrived in Petersborough last month. If so, tell us what it felt like the first time you saw snow. Share your experience on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, with the hashtag #SnowOuttaMyElement by Monday, 9 a. m. ET, and we’ll feature our favorites in a photo roundup on this blog next week. If you have a photo of your first time in the snow, share that, too! Or, use a smartphone app or another device to record a voice memo and send it to nprcrowdsource@npr. org with the subject line ”#SnowOuttaMyElement.” Include your full name, age and hometown in the email. Your story could feature  ! P. S.: For iPhone users, WNYC provides this great    guide on how to record and send a voice memo  —   just remember to send your recording to nprcrowdsource@npr. org."
"Editor’s note: A version of this post first appeared in January 2015.  Many people will see the snow currently blanketing much of the U. S. Eastern Seaboard as a nuisance coating sidewalks and roads. Others are celebrating it as an excuse to spend the day swooshing down a hill. As for me, I like to think of snow as food. Growing up in Missouri, I consumed as much snow ice cream as possible from November to March. Each time the winter sky let loose, I caught a bowl of fresh flakes. My grandmother mixed raw eggs, cream and sugar and poured it over top. Snow is one of the first ”wild” foods small humans learn to forage. And this time of year it’s both free and plentiful to many. But is snow a magical, local and seasonal specialty, or is it an adventure in extreme eating? As with many wild foods, it can be a bit of both. I asked Jeff S. Gaffney, a professor of chemistry at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, if we were to package snow and put it on grocery store shelves, what would we have to put on the ingredient list? ”Primarily water,” he says, but also ”various and sundry things depending on where it [comes from]”  —   things like sulfates, nitrates, formaldehyde or mercury. As it falls through the sky, snow, with its intricate latticework, forms a sort of net for catching pollutants that may be in the atmosphere. The most common is black carbon, or soot, released by   plants and   stoves. That’s why John Pomeroy, a researcher who studies water resources and climate change at the University of Saskatchewan, suggests it’s better to wait until a few hours into the snowfall to gather your fresh catch. Snow acts like a kind of atmospheric ”scrubbing brush,” he explains. The longer the snow falls, the lower the pollution levels in the air, and thus in the snow. But even if you start to collect as soon as it begins to flurry, Gaffney reassures me that contaminants in snow are ”all at levels well below toxic.”   pesticides might also show up in snow in some places, according to Staci Simonich, a professor of environmental and toxic ecology at Oregon State University. She found pesticides that were 30, 40 and 50 years old in high elevations in several U. S. national parks (including Olympic in Washington, Denali in Alaska and Sequoia in California). But the levels were 100 times lower than what’s deemed safe for drinking water. And what about in urban and suburban areas, where most of us harvest our snow? Simonich says that pesticide concentrations are likely higher in backyard snow. ”That being said, I would not hesitate for my children to have the joy of eating a handful of fresh fallen snow from my backyard. . .. Because the pesticide concentrations are low and the amount of snow eaten in a handful is small, so the   dose is very low and not a risk to health.” But if it’s windy, take heed, says Sarah Doherty, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington. She recently discovered that dirt can mix in with snow as it falls  —   especially in places like the northern Great Plains, where there are lots of open fields and dirt roads. That’s where Doherty took samples of freshly fallen snow in   to   winds. ”The snow comes out of the cloud,” she explains, ”and when it gets within a few meters of the ground, it gets mixed with soil that’s blowing around.” Whether that makes the snow unsafe to eat depends entirely on what’s in the soil, says Doherty. Just as you’d want to avoid the yellow snow, if you’ve just had a load of manure delivered in advance of spring planting and suddenly a blizzard whips through, a strong wind can quickly ruin the fresh snowball you’d planned to devour. And ”never eat snow that’s been plowed,” advises Mark Williams of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado. It’s likely to contain sand and chemicals such as magnesium chloride. ”All this gets incorporated into the plowed snow and is bad for you.” But even though they note that pollutants like sulfates, mercury and DDT could appear in low levels in snow, almost all the researchers The Salt spoke with said they would still eat it, and even savor it. According to Pomeroy, ”It is   amongst snow chemists that fresh Arctic snow goes very well with    single malt whisky.” Of course, not everyone is so sanguine about what we unwittingly may be scooping up with snow. ”As a mother who is an atmospheric physical chemist, I definitely do not suggest my young kids to eat snow in urban areas in general,” Parisa Ariya of Canada’s McGill University recently told the Huffington Post. She was the lead researcher on a 2016 paper that found falling snow can soak up unsavory chemicals from gasoline exhaust in the air, like toluene, xylenes and benzene, a known carcinogen. Researchers are generally less concerned about what’s in the snow than the fact that climate change may be causing it to rapidly disappear, especially in Western regions of the U. S. ”Enjoy it now, because there’s a whole lot less of it,” says Anne Nolin, a hydroclimatologist at Oregon State University. Anne Bramley is the author of Eat Feed Autumn Winter and the host of the Eat Feed podcast. Twitter: @annebramley"
"From the way we speak to the things we do, few things spark cliches like the threat of a winter storm. For days now, we’ve been talking about Jack Frost’s plans. And as people hunker down, staples like bread, milk and toilet paper have been flying off store shelves. Many of us are already sick of hearing about the white stuff  —   and we haven’t even felt the wrath of Ol’ Man Winter yet. (Side note: What did we ever do to this man to make him so vengeful?) This isn’t to say big storms like the one hitting a large part of the eastern U. S. Friday aren’t dangerous. They can cause perilous road conditions and   power outages. And in many ways, the seriousness of these storms is what triggers the cliches. How else to respond to something that has a total lack of nuance? It’s not just the mass media that are susceptible. Photos of grocers’ empty meat and bread sections status updates on booze and sleds plans for organized snowball fights and DIY tips on making an emergency heater  —   if you were on social media this week, you might have seen them all. Right now on Twitter, people are using two hashtags  —   #snOMG and #snowmaggedon2016  —   to share everything from practical advice and interesting photos to signs of both trouble and overreaction. For days now, this blizzard has been predicted to be both powerful and disruptive. By Thursday, TV professionals were not only using cliches   some were also taking to Twitter to vent their distaste for the most overused terms. ”1. The white stuff 2. Braving the elements 3. Winter wonderland 4. Arctic blast”  —   that’s the list of things anchor Fred Cunningham of WSPA TV in South Carolina’s upstate has promised never to say. That led Lauren Lowrey of Indianapolis to respond, ”Snow My God.” Jeff Butera, a news anchor in Florida and an author of the book Write Like You Talk, is urging journalists to avoid referring to a ”winter wallop” of ”wicked weather.” The wait for the storm even led Zachery Lashway of Philadelphia’s PHL17 TV to ask how many times the phrase ”calm before the storm” would be repeated in the next day. If you want to follow some of those conversations, check out the Tired TV Terms feed on Twitter. Here at NPR, our editors have also been on the lookout for cliches  —   the definition for which, we remind you, centers on predictability and a lack of originality. They urged us to avoid many of the cliches mentioned in this post, along with others, such as snowpocalypse and deep freeze. If there are winter cliches that drive you crazy, feel free to add them in the comments section."
"At $1. 22 a gallon, a gas station on Columbus, Ohio’s southwest side is drawing customers from all parts of the city. Stan Cartwright drove there from across town. ”I came for the gas price. I live on the East Side, and so, you know, I had to make a little bit of a commute, but it was worth it,” he says. The bargains aren’t just in Columbus drivers all around the state are saving money. ”Prices in Ohio tend to be very, very competitive,” says GasBuddy. com petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan. He says demand is weak because, well, it’s winter  —   think snowstorms. And Canada, just on the other side of Lake Erie, has dirt cheap crude oil. ”The region’s refineries have been doing a very good job at processing. Some of the Canadian varieties of crude oil that are being processed cost today as little as $11 to $12 a barrel and that is incentivizing them to process as much as possible, thereby increasing gasoline supply which is, yes, weighing on prices,” DeHaan says. So what are the upsides for Columbus? For one thing, consumers have more to spend, like Scott Stewart, who also was buying gas the other day. He hopes to use his savings to spread more money around at other businesses. ”Going out to dinner with my family, even if it’s just ordering pizza, or if we’re going to the movies I’ll spend it,” Stewart says. And it’s not just consumers who are saving. Bill LaFayette, owner of Regionomics, a Columbus economic analysis firm, says the cheap gas has lowered costs for grocery stores, distributors and warehouse companies. ”That means that your profits go up, and you might be able to pass those savings along to your customers and attract more of them,” he says. But not everyone here is thrilled to see cheap gas. ”Low gas prices are a   sword aren’t they?” says Cleve Ricksecker, directs two Downtown Columbus Special Improvement Districts. ”People love saving money, but low energy prices, low gas prices are a nightmare for cities,” he says. Columbus has made great strides in recent years in attracting more residents and businesses downtown. Now Ricksecker fears a reversal. ”With the fall of gas prices, in a place like Columbus and most Midwestern cities, it really is going to encourage more sprawl,” he says. Sprawl can mean more traffic jams and air pollution. But he says only a spike in the price of gas would change the equation when people are making decisions about where to live and work. ”It needs to be a lot higher than it is right now to influence decisions people make,” Ricksecker says. And at least for now, expensive gas seems a long way off."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. My first memory of celebrating M. L. King Day was during my elementary years in an    Catholic school in Cincinnati where we cheerfully sang Stevie Wonder’s hit song, ”Happy Birthday.” King’s holiday means many things to different people: for some it’s a day off work, for others it’s a day of volunteering or gathering with others to celebrate Dr. King’s work towards bringing racial equality to America and to renew the call to continue his legacy. In the journalism world, King’s day is usually marked with a flush of stories focused on people upholding his quest to make America a fairer place. This year The New York Times changed the game. Instead of another profile of a   the gray lady dipped into her archives and gathered the obituaries of eight prominent   including Dr. King, to give us a retrospective on how they were regarded at the time of their deaths. As I read them, I marveled that W. E. B. Dubois was regarded as a ”controversial leader” during his lifetime. I was emboldened by Shirley Chisholm’s courage to run for New York State Assembly in 1964 because ”the people wanted me (to).” I learned about Samuel J. Battle, the son of formerly enslaved Africans who became the first   to be appointed to New York City’s police force in 1911. This was the first time that I truly understood that an obituary could be more than a summary of events in a person’s life. I hope to live my life in a way that my obituary reads of a life filled with good deeds, adventure and art. It is rarely, if ever, disputed that photography is important in journalism. What is often at issue for organizations, however, is when an image goes too far. This happens most often with photographs related to war, violence and conflict, when the decision to not show something can contrast with the reality of the written words. Writer and photographer Teju Cole’s essay ”Against Neutrality” makes a case for how the proper (or improper) use of photos  —   attempting to spare our own sensitivities and pursuing ”a blinkered neutrality at the expense of real fairness” can do more harm than good. He writes: ”When the tragedy or suffering of only certain people in certain places is made visible, the boundaries of good taste are not really transgressed at all.” It’s no secret that football is a dangerous sport. The evidence linking concussions to brain damage continues to mount, and the sport’s physical toll on athletes’ bodies is steep. Even so, I was surprised by the vehemence with which former NFL player Antwaan Randle El expressed regret for playing football in a Pittsburgh   article this week. The    former Steelers’ wide receiver, known for throwing the   touchdown pass in Super Bowl XL in 2006, said, ”If I could go back, I wouldn’t [play football].” The   star says he’s forgetful, has trouble going down stairs and worries about being able to see his kids grow up. He warns parents against letting their children play the sport, saying: ”It just comes down to it’s a physically violent game.” As I settle in to watch the NFL playoff games this weekend, his words will be ringing in my head. The sport is inherently violent, and if the NFL is serious about eliminating the resulting casualties, it’s going to have to drastically alter the game. But if football were to undergo a radical change  —   if it did away with helmets and pads, for example  —   would anyone watch? Maybe that’s what Randle El meant when he said, ”I wouldn’t be surprised if football isn’t around in 20, 25 years.”"
"On Sunday, the FBI’s Fox Mulder and Dana Scully will once again start taking on unsolved cases of the paranormal kind. That’s right: The   is back. Actors Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny are reprising their roles of Scully and Mulder in six new episodes. The show is being revived under the helm of its original creator, Chris Carter. Duchovny and Anderson tell NPR’s Scott Simon how their characters have changed in the years between the original   and this reboot. On why it’s a good time for an   reboot, Gillian Anderson: I think it’s the right time in terms of political climate. But I also think that people are ready for this. And the only way that David and I were able to make it happen was if it was going to be in a short amount of episodes, and networks have only just in the past couple of years become willing and able to do shorter stacks. David Duchovny: When the show was ending back in the early 2000s, it was right after Sept. 11 and I do believe that, even though that’s still ripe for conspiracies, I think it was all too real at that point. And now, you know, somewhat removed from that, I think in a way we’re back to a time where there’s a lot of speculation over world events. But I think that’s just in human nature to be drawn to conspiracies. People want answers. Sometimes things happen without a reason sometimes chaos happens  —   that’s not satisfying to people. People want a villain. They want a reason they want a cabal they want a conspiracy. On what Mulder is like now, years after he and Scully parted ways  Duchovny: He’s not in the FBI he’s not working he’s not gainfully employed. All his leads seem to have dried up whatever he once believed seems to have been proved false. And he’s a man without a mission, also without Scully. So you know, where we find him is where you want to start . .. a journey, which is near or at the bottom. On what Scully is like now, Anderson: I think she has refocused herself and her wants and her desires. . .. She is tired of hearing the same things over and over again and chasing things that never seem to pan out or materialize. And she has seen Mulder become extremely impassioned and risk his life and risk their lives and I think that she’s decided that she can’t do that anymore. And even though she’s kind of getting on with getting on, there’s a certain sadness there. When we used to see Scully in her apartment and she was reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s or whatever, there was a sense that she was OK, that she was fine with her alone time. . .. You kind of get the sense from her now that as she goes about her life that there is a hole there. And so I think there’s a certain sadness. On what it’s like to revisit the role of Mulder years later  Duchovny: It’s daunting at first, but then when Gillian and I kind of started working together just on that first day, it’s really something that is kind of unspoken and unconscious and intuitive in many ways. We did it for so long that there is something that just kicks in. I wouldn’t know how to define it in any other way but just to say it’s almost like instinct at this point. As well as the fact that we are older than when we started, and that we get to play with as well. That’s an interesting thing for us, as actors, to play these same characters but in a much later part of their lives, which you don’t normally get to do as an actor. It’s very, very rare.   On how the show changed over time, Duchovny: The frame of The   which started out as a pretty much      genre   show, kind of started to mold and get more flexible as writers like Glen Morgan and James Wong and then Vince [Gilligan] and then Darin Morgan took it into a more comedic area, sometimes into a more horror area. And the show started to bend and it never broke, and I think that’s a testament to the vision that [showrunner Chris Carter] had in the beginning, which I don’t think he had consciously. But he created a show that could bend and could grow, and he had the luck or the foresight to hire writers that were going to take his baby and turn it into something else from time to time. On the romantic tension between Mulder and Scully, and how it isn’t really what the show is about, Duchovny: I think [Carter] made two characters who were complementary to one another, and kind of completed one another in the romantic comedy sense. You know, they had aspects of a personality that the other was lacking, and I think because it took so long for them to be physical in any way there was a certain ache to the show. . .. That wasn’t what the show was about. The show was about the cases the show was about the quest. Whatever the show was about, it wasn’t about this relationship. That’s kind of, I think, the magic of the relationship and the show, is that it was never the point of the show  —   it always happened in the spaces of the show."
"You know the   theme. For nine years, that music had an almost Pavlovian effect on TV junkies addicted to the paranormal adventures of FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. But in the beginning, it was just a job for composer Mark Snow. ”So I get the assignment: ’You’re doing The ’” Snow says. ”I said, ’Fine,’ you know? It was just another pilot.” Snow was already an old pro when   creator Chris Carter first approached him back in 1993. ”I was looking for something that boy scouts could hum at the campfire, as a scary song,” Carter says. ”You know, something akin to The Twilight Zone.” Snow had previously scored detective shows, drama series, comedies and TV movies. He was born Martin Fulterman in Brooklyn just after World War II, and graduated from Juilliard. There, the young drummer   a band with his friend and fellow composer Michael Kamen called New York Rock  Roll Ensemble. But none of Snow’s previous experiences had quite prepared him for The  . Chris Carter says finding the right theme music took a few tries: ”Mark would send me things, and I’d say, ’Not quite.’ I said to him, ’You know, there’s a song that I love  —   I just love these guitars. Listen to this song, and see if it inspires something. ’” The song was ”How Soon Is Now?” the Smiths track anchored by Johnny Marr’s swampy tremolo. Snow listened to everything Carter sent him, but eventually he had more luck just monkeying around. One day, he set his elbow down on his keyboard while an echo delay effect was on  —   and he liked how it sounded. ”So I thought, well, that’s a nice little accompaniment figure,” he says. ”What could be the other parts of it?” For the melody itself, he tried synthesized violin, flute and piano, but none of them were right. Then, he found a whistle sound  —   an old sample from the Proteus line of synth products called ”Whistling Joe.” Snow says when his wife, Glynn, asked about the whistle sound, he told her he was just fooling around with the new theme. She found it interesting. ”She said, ’You know, I’m a good whistler too,’” Snow remembers. ”’Maybe I could beef it up a little bit. ’” Snow got her in front of the microphone, and the sound that made it to the final theme was half Glynn, half machine. All of this wasn’t exactly what Chris Carter had anticipated for one thing, it lacked what he liked from ”How Soon Is Now?” ”It has none of those guitars in it,” Carter says. ”But what it has in it is that signature whistle.” When Fox ordered six new episodes of The   for 2016, Carter had Snow on   for the music. ”I said, ’Do we need to talk about this? ’” Snow recalls. ”And [Carter] said, ’No. Just do what you think is right. You’ve been doing it for a long time. ’” Snow says his idea was to incorporate some of the more classic sounds from the original theme  —   sounds that fans might recognize  —   but add in updated sounds and samples. He didn’t want to stray too far from the synthetic ’90s sound that was such an integral part of the show’s original   episodes and two feature films. Carter agrees that sound was key. ”Oftentimes what scares you most on The   is not what you see  —   it’s what you hear,” Carter says. ”And Mark helps to build those moments. He helps to, of course, emphasize the drama, set the mood and tone. But it really is essential to the scariness of the show.” And the show itself has been just as essential to Mark Snow’s creative work. ”Other TV series I’ve done, it’s basically the same thing every week, same kind of sound,” Snow says. ”And those are certainly good gigs. [But] the wonderful,   creative world of The   for me has been, and hopefully continues to be, just pure magic.” Maybe the truth  —   to paraphrase a line from the show  —   is in the music."
"When The   appeared on TV in the 1990s, there really hadn’t been anything quite like it on TV for a long time. The Twilight Zone, with its monsters and flying saucers and   mentality, was an obvious inspiration and precursor. But investigations of unusual or unearthly phenomena, dramatized in a weekly series in ways that could be scary or funny, or both? As TV shows go, that’s about as rare a sighting as Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. The closest thing to The   before The   was a   TV series from the   ’70s called Kolchak: The Night Stalker. In it, Darren McGavin played an   newspaper reporter  —   so   he wore a   seersucker jacket. He chased down vampires and zombies and witches and things, only to have his stories spiked or censored by the government or his own editors. It was a clever show  —   sometimes creepy, sometimes comical  —   and when Chris Carter created The   he cited Kolchak as a key influence. The   though, has enjoyed its own dynamic from the start, thanks to the chemistry between David Duchovny, as FBI agent and conspiracy theorist Fox Mulder, and Gillian Anderson, as FBI medical expert Dana Scully. Scully was paired with Mulder by her superiors and asked to report back on him and his theories. The very first time Scully visits Mulder’s cramped basement office, where he sits surrounded by his unexplained case folders and his ”I Want to Believe” UFO poster, you can tell the tension between them is going to be very dynamic indeed. The first time around, The   lasted for nine seasons  —   the last few of them without Scully and Mulder, which was a mistake. There also were spinoffs, including a pair of   movies, released 10 years apart  —   the first in 1998, the second 10 years later, long after the TV series The   was over. And now it’s back. Again. For six episodes, this time, with the possibility that all involved  —   Duchovny, Anderson, and series creator Carter  —   may want to keep reuniting down the road for more   short bursts of shows, just like the cast and crew of Sherlock.  I’ve previewed three of the six episodes about to arrive  —   the first airs Sunday night, the second in the show’s regular Monday time slot  —   and I think they’re good enough, and entertaining enough, that I hope more episodes of The   will be produced. To quote Mulder’s poster: ”I want to believe.” The original   as it developed, was divided loosely into three types of shows. Some were devoted to the ongoing story of Mulder and Scully’s investigation into UFOs and government conspiracies  —   the show’s   ”mythology” episodes. Others were ”monster of the week” episodes, similar to the structure of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. And still others were just   weird and fun  —   usually the ones written by Darin Morgan, like ”Humbug” and ”Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.” All three of those   of The   are represented in these six new hours, which also bring back such familiar faces (to fans of the old series) as Skinner, the Cigarette Smoking Man and the Lone Gunmen. There’s even a new lighthearted episode written by Morgan, which features a creature of the week who, when he’s in human mode, dresses in the same seersucker jacket as Carl Kolchak. Coincidence? In the world of The   there are no coincidences. But what if you’re not familiar with that world? The   left TV nearly 14 years ago  —   an eternity, in TV time  —   and shouldn’t expect viewers, especially younger ones, to know, remember or care about this show’s long, extremely complicated past. The good news is, it doesn’t. Instead, it serves up a helpful recap via Duchovny’s opening narration as Mulder, which kicks off Sunday’s new premiere episode. The smartest thing this new   does is to establish instantly that Mulder and Scully became a couple and broke up in the years we haven’t been watching them. So now there’s no ”will they or won’t they?” tension  —   they did, then they stopped and now they’re in a whole new place. The premiere features Joel McHale in a    serious role as a conspiracy theorist with a popular TV show  —   but other than that, I’ll let you discover the enjoyment of this new   series for yourself. Watch for it this weekend. The truth  —   and the show  —   is out there."
"January is supposed to be a slow month for sea crossings. With rough waters whipped up by high winds, rubber rafts capsize, wooden boats sink  —   and it’s cold. You could freeze in the water. But on Wednesday morning last week, Vassilis Hantzopoulos has already seen 15 boats filled with asylum seekers on a tiny strip of sea separating Turkey from Greece and the rest of the European Union. Hantzopoulos, a   volunteer   with the underfunded Hellenic Red Cross, stands on a cliff and scans the sea with binoculars. ”The boats launch from five or six points from the Turkish side,” he says. ”We can see really well where the boats are coming from. And we can figure out where they will land.” Hantzopoulos reached the shore in time to help a young Afghan mother and her infant daughter off a rubber raft that’s full of   also from Afghanistan. The mother, who’s lost both of her shoes in the sea journey, shivers. She’s soaking wet. Her baby girl, also wet, wails. On the horizon, a rubber dinghy is stalled and taking in water. By the time a rescue team reaches it, a    Syrian boy has frozen to death. On Friday, there are more deaths. At least 45 people, including 17 children, drowned around two tiny Greek islands, Farmakonissi and Kalolimnos, in the southern Aegean Sea. Lina Mustafa from Aleppo, Syria gasps when she hears the news. Her eyes, brown and intense, flash with anger and grief. ”They were running away from war,” she says. ”All of us are.” Mustafa is at a transit camp on Lesbos where asylum seekers are fingerprinted and registered. She explains that she and her husband fled Aleppo four years ago, a year after the Syrian war began. ”We tried to live in Turkey,” she says. ”We told ourselves that we would find work until we could go back home again. But the Turks treated us like animals. They didn’t want us there.” Her husband found work as a mechanic. ”He worked every day,” she says, ”but he rarely got paid.” Unable to make a living, they joined more than 36, 000 asylum seekers who crossed from Turkey to Greece this month. But last January, just 752 people crossed. Mohammad Adoud, a    who’s also from Aleppo, says during the winter, smugglers offer passage for half price to desperate refugees. ”They don’t have much money, and in winter the trip is cheaper,” he says. He says he paid $900, while in the winter ”it’s maybe $2, 000.” Firas Hassan   decided to take the risk. A stocky, curly haired barber from Baghdad, he explains that militants burned his shop down. Iraq is ”  chaos,” he says. He’s and his wife, Mithaq, both 40, call their    daughter, Nargis, their little miracle. ”We had to get out for her,” Mithaq says. ”We must give her a chance.” Nargis, in a pink fleece onesie and a Hello Kitty hoodie, giggles. Her father tickles her chubby cheeks. He had slipped a tiny, but still   life vest on her and then zipped her inside his waterproof parka for the boat trip. ”It was raining, and it was cold,”   says. ”The waves were 5 feet high. Water was getting in the boat. And I prayed to God for help.” His eyes fill with tears as he thinks about the fathers who lost their children on Friday. He and his family are trying to reach Germany. So is Lina Mustafa, who just found out she’s pregnant. (”If she’s a girl, I’m going to name the baby Angela, after Angela Merkel,” she says.) But the road to Western Europe is getting tougher and borders  —   and hearts  —   are closing. Yet thousands of   continue to arrive on Greek shores. Many may be soon be trapped in Greece, which is still in the throes of an economic depression, as the European Union continues to fumble its response to the crisis. Back on the shore, Vassilis Hantzopoulos and his team from the Hellenic Red Cross suit up and jump into their Jeep. They’ve gotten word that more boats are coming.   clouds roll in as they speed off on a muddy dirt road and try to reach the shore."
"Something new  —   and quite frightening  —   appears to be happening with the Zika virus. For decades Zika was a virus that turned up in monkeys and occasionally in humans in Africa and Southeast Asia. Its symptoms were mild and the number of confirmed human cases was low. The first big outbreak was on the island of Yap in Micronesia. Three quarters of the island’s population were infected  —   about 5, 000 people. But few of them reported any symptoms. Things began to change last year. The virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, turned up in Brazil. There have been at least half a million cases there and the virus has appeared in many other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Why is this virus spreading so rapidly? ”We do still know so little about this virus and the harm that it can cause,” says Albert Ko, an epidemiologist from Yale who has been working with the Brazilian Ministry of Health to investigate the Zika outbreak. ”This is really a relatively new pathogen.” Indeed, the virus was first identified in 1947 in a rhesus monkey in Uganda’s Zika forest (which gave the disease its name). Ko says it may be that the Americas are fertile ground for the virus  —   this hemisphere has the right type of mosquitoes to transmit Zika and people have no immunity to it. Or it may be that the virus has mutated. ”This may be a new strain that’s traveling very quickly but we really don’t know,” says Ko. And along with the increase in numbers has come a disturbing development. In October, Brazilian health authorities noticed a surge in the number of babies born with a birth defect called microcephaly, characterized by smaller than normal heads and severe brain damage. Could the birth defect be linked to instances of Zika in the mother when she was pregnant? The link between Zika and microcephaly, the condition where a baby’s brain and head don’t fully develop, still hasn’t been proved definitely. But health officials are operating under the assumption that there is one. Brazil reported only 150 cases of microcephaly in 2014 before the virus arrived yet has recorded nearly 4, 000 cases of the birth defect since October. Officials in Brazil and Colombia have taken the extraordinary step of asking women to not get pregnant. The risk to pregnant women is thought to be greatest if she contracts the virus during the first trimester of pregnancy. Marcie Treadwell is a fetal medicine physician at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She says it’s possible that in many more babies the virus is causing less severe forms of brain damage that will only become apparent later: ”We don’t know the full range of the impact of the virus.” Indeed, there are many unanswered questions. Since many people who get infected with Zika don’t get sick at all, she says, ”there may be a whole host of women who have had the virus while pregnant who have kids who are completely normal  —   or [who may] appear completely normal [but will] develop mental issues as these kids get older. We just don’t know.” Currently there’s no treatment for Zika. Nor is there a vaccine. All the experts can say is that pregnant women should avoid mosquitoes, says Dr. Denise Jamieson, a medical officer with the CDC in Atlanta. She adds: ”There’s no intervention that we have to prevent the development of microcephaly.” About a   cases of Zika have turned up in the U. S. over the past two weeks  —   all in travelers returning from parts of Latin America and the Caribbean where the outbreak is raging. CDC officials predict any outbreaks in the U. S. mainland will be localized and relatively small because Americans have better access to screens and   to protect themselves from mosquitoes. On Tuesday, Jan. 26 at 11 a. m. ET, NPR’s Goats and Soda blog will host a live video QA on the Zika virus with NPR correspondents Lourdes   and Jason Beaubien. Submit your questions about the disease in a comment below, or use the hashtag #ZikaQA, and our correspondents will answer a few in our live Web stream."
"UPDATE January 26, 11:52 a. m.: This live QA has ended. Watch a recorded version in the player above.  In the past year, Zika virus has emerged as a serious health risk, linked to severe birth defects in Brazil. NPR’s South America Correspondent Lourdes   and Global Health Correspondent Jason Beaubien answered your questions on this   disease in a live YouTube web stream on Tuesday, January 26, 11 a. m. ET.   Last week,   reported on one of the mothers who herself had Zika virus and whose baby was born with microcephaly. Beaubien talked to specialists for a report on what we do and don’t yet know about the disease. Submit your question in a comment below or tweet them to us using the hashtag #ZikaQA. We’ll consider these questions for our correspondents to answer in real time."
"Julia has a gift  —   or is it? Ingrid Betancourt’s new novel, The Blue Line, is about a woman in 1970s Argentina who can see the world through the eyes of others. Usually what she sees are terrible events, and that makes her different from the millions of Argentines who say they don’t know about the detentions, disappearances, tortures and murders by which Argentina’s military government ruled and quashed dissent in what is known as The Dirty War. Betancourt grew up in a Colombian political family and was running for president when she was kidnapped by revolutionaries in 2002. She was held in captivity for more than six years before Colombian security forces rescued her, along with 14 other hostages, in 2008. Betancourt’s memoir about her experience was a   around the world. The Blue Line is her first novel. She tells NPR’s Scott Simon about the parallels between her story and that of Julia, who also becomes a captive. On how Julia’s story compares to her own, Certainly there are influences of things that I have lived. But actually it’s like a reverse biography, because this girl  —   she is a leftist kind of revolutionary that’s going to be abducted, or disappeared, by a dictatorship, a military dictatorship. In my case, it was the opposite: I was a Colombian presidential candidate and I was abducted by a communist guerilla group. On Julia’s lover, Theo, a revolutionary who is also detained, I think that what is interesting in the character of Theo is that [he is] a young man, very bright, very intelligent and with lots of character and wit and who believed he was this kind of leader. And so he saw himself as some kind of a hero, in a way. But when confronted [with] torture, he came to discover that he was frail and that he couldn’t cope. On how Julia and Theo approach life after captivity, In the case of Julia and Theo, it’s two ways. It’s a parallel kind of motion. Julia will dig into what’s important for her  —   her son, the love she has for Theo  —   and she will be always walking to the future. She has her path in the future, so she has hope. Theo is anchored in his hate, in his thirst [for] revenge. He cannot forget and he’s drawn to the past. But I think that it’s also what he chose. And the choices we make define ourselves. On her special insight when it comes to writing about detention and torture, I think that, you know, human suffering is something that we share. It’s easy when you have suffered to feel the link with what others have gone through. That’s my case. But what I wanted to narrate and to relive through my novel was the very dire and barbarian abuse and torture that many young people in Latin America suffered during the ’70s. And I say this with lots of caution because this is something that we are living today. Before, in the ’70s, it was the fear of communism. Today we have another   which is extremist, Islamic extremism. . .. It’s like history repeating itself. On her life after captivity, I’m doing fine. These years after my liberation were years of reconstruction and I think I made the right decisions. . .. I mean, I lost everything: my life my father died I didn’t know anything about my children. And when I was in this jungle alone and thinking of my life and trying to summarize the good and the bad, I thought the only thing that is important in my life that I don’t want to lose are my children. I mean, I want to be a mom again if I have the opportunity. So when I came back, that’s what I did. And my reconstruction has been first and above everything reconstructing the link, the relationship, the love  —   but more than the love, the intimacy and the proximity with my two children. And I’m very, very lucky because after seven years I think that’s something we all have achieved and it makes us strong. On why she wrote the novel, You know, a novel  —   it’s also a way of attacking subjects that you cannot confront in the eye. . .. Sometimes you need other people to embody situations so that you can talk about things that for you are important. And I think that being able to hope for the future is what builds in us the strength to just get rid of things that, in the past, can hurt."
"When Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president this week, it was a surprise move, but one that seemed perfectly logical. In fact, Donald Trump’s rise can be seen as a natural extension of the kind of politics that Palin herself embraced after her unsuccessful run for vice president  —   combining populism, rage and celebrity. Eight years ago, Sarah Palin was still unknown to the vast majority of Americans outside of her home state. But when Republican presidential nominee John McCain plucked the Alaska governor from obscurity to be his running mate in 2008, a force of nature in Republican politics was unleashed. From her very first moments on the national stage, it was clear that Sarah Palin was not your typical politician. Despite a relative lack of experience, she delivered a blockbuster performance in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in September of 2008. Some of her best lines were   including her shoutout to hockey moms like herself all across the country. ”I love those hockey moms,” she said. ”You know they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.” Even her detractors had to admit is was a great moment. A conservative superstar was born. The final months of the presidential campaign that year would provide glimpses of the vice presidential candidate’s future as a political   who wouldn’t shy away from controversy or hardball rhetoric. She keyed in on Barack Obama’s association with Chicago college professor William Ayers, who was a founder of the radical organization the Weather Underground in the 1960s. The group carried out bombings of government buildings as protests against the Vietnam War, which they say were targeted to avoid injury. On the stump in 2008, Palin said, ”Our opponent is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Obama handily defeated the   ticket, but in many ways that gave birth to the Tea Party. And Palin was exactly what the movement needed. She was the keynote speaker at a National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tenn. in early 2010, urging attendees to shake things up. ”The Tea Party is not a   operation,” she told the crowd. ”It’s a   call to action that is forcing both parties to change the way they’re doing business, and that’s beautiful.” She was greeted with cheers and chants of ”Run Sarah, Run.” Activist William Temple was certainly enamored. ”She’s the strongest man in the Republican Party,” he told NPR that day. ”If I can get close enough, I’ll give her a kiss.” Meanwhile, Donald Trump watched Palin’s rise as she channeled  —   and fueled  —   the anger felt by many voters toward Washington. Many of these voters described President Obama as a socialist, a Muslim or not American. On that last point, Trump was relentless. He repeatedly doubted that Obama was born in the U. S. He questioned documents showing that the president was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Trump asserted in a 2011 interview with NBC that Obama ”doesn’t have a birth certificate or he hasn’t shown it. He has what’s called a certificate of live birth,” and for Trump that wasn’t proof enough. As Trump promoted the   ”birther” movement, Palin cheered him on, telling Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, ”I respect what he’s doing in putting his money where his mouth is. He’s actually investigating his speculation there on Obama’s birth certificate.” But Palin saw an opportunity for Trump to do more. She urged him to speak out on other topics. ”Right now he’s got the spotlight, he’s got the megaphone. Now is his opportunity to really force a shift in debate and discussion in this country,” she said in that 2010 Fox News interview. In 2011, Trump and Palin had a very high profile meeting in New York City, creating quite a stir at a time when the 2012 presidential race was just taking shape, and a bus tour that the former Alaska governor was taking along the East Coast raised questioned about her intentions. They shared lunch  —   New   pizza. Talking to reporters afterward, Trump was asked if he thought Palin should run. He said, ”I’d love her to run.” Palin, meanwhile, was asked what she and Trump have in common. She replied, ”A love for this country and a desire to see this economy get back on track.” Hearing Palin’s speeches over the years and listening to Trump on the campaign trail now, you have two people speaking to the same audience, while hitting the same notes: Obamacare, radical Islamic terrorism, Obama’s weak foreign policy, his poor treatment of veterans and, of course, immigration. The language is always proudly politically incorrect. Trump shouts at rallies that he’ll ”bomb the s*** out of ISIS,” or that Mexico is sending ”rapists” across the border, or that Muslims should be barred from entering the U. S. Even Trump’s ”make America great again” catchphrase echoes Palin’s standard rallying cry to ”take our country back.” And both love to attack what Palin has labeled ”the   media.” At his campaign events, Trump points to the press section and calls reporters ”dishonest” and ”treacherous.” When Palin endorsed Trump in Ames, Iowa, this week and once again grabbed the national spotlight, she gleefully opened her remarks by saying, ”Mr. Trump, you’re right. Look, back there in the press box. Heads are spinning. Media heads are spinning. This is going to be so much fun!” The endorsement seemed to come out of nowhere, but on so many levels it also seemed to make so much sense."
"In just about every stump speech he gives these days, businessman turned presidential candidate Donald Trump can’t stop using the phrase ”silent majority.” Sometimes he’ll ask the audience members if they’ve heard it before and point out that it’s been around for a while. And then he’ll say that the silent majority feels abused, or forgotten, or mistreated. And usually, toward the end of his speech, Trump says that the silent majority is back. He rarely spends too much time explicitly defining this group, but at a recent Trump rally in Clear Lake, Iowa, several attendees still had working definitions. ”The people that mind their own business, don’t depend on anyone else,” said Patty Hughes of Indianola, Iowa, when asked to describe silent majority. ”[They] don’t expect anything from anybody, and they’re kind of quiet. They don’t go around bragging. They’re not activists.” Her husband, Larry, said, ”They expect a dollar work for a dollar pay. They don’t want anything free, but they don’t want stuff taken away from them either. And that’s happening to us out here in the cheap seats.” Others said the silent majority is defined by fiscal conservatism, or disapproval of things like Planned Parenthood, or anger with government gridlock. Dan Fix of Mason City, Iowa, said the quintessential member of the silent majority would be Joe the Plumber, or in Iowa’s case, he pointed out, Joe the Farmer. Though Trump may have brought the idea of the silent majority to the forefront this election season, it actually has a long history. It’s been around for some time, at least since Richard Nixon made the term what it is in the modern era. ”It comes deeply from Richard Nixon’s basic political orientation,” said Rick Perlstein, a historian who has written multiple books on conservatism and the Nixon era, including Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America and The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. Perlstein points to a speech Nixon gave on Nov. 3, 1969, defending the unpopular Vietnam War, at a time when   fervor was mounting. ”On Oct. 15, 1969, there was a massive   demonstration,” he said. ”Two million Americans of every walk of life  —   from small towns, from big towns, young people, old people  —   basically took off work or school in a moratorium against the Vietnam War. And it really looked like the movement against Vietnam, after a grace period or a honeymoon that Richard Nixon enjoyed, it entered the mainstream of American politics, and Richard Nixon and his White House immediately went to work to try and discredit that massive outpouring of mainstream support for the   movement as somehow not quite American.” In one line of that November speech, Nixon called them out directly, speaking of protesters in San Francisco carrying signs that read ”Lose in Vietnam. Bring the boys home.” ”As president of the United States,” Nixon said, ”I would be untrue to my oath of office if I allowed the policy of this nation to be dictated by the minority who holds that point of view and who try to impose it on the nation by mounting demonstrations in the street.” And later in the speech, it came: ”And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority, my fellow Americans, I ask for your support.” Perlstein said the speech, and the language of the silent majority, was a distillation of Nixon’s political philosophy, ”the idea that there are two kinds of Americans  —   the ordinary   folks with the white picket fence who play by the rules and pay their taxes and don’t protest and the people who basically come from the left.” And over time, the term silent majority was used to exclude more than just   protesters. The ”noisy minority,” as Perlstein called it, was fairly large. ”It was black civil rights militants,” he said. ”It was feminists who were supposedly burning their bras. It was students who were smoking drugs. It was rock ’n’ roll bands. It was everything that threatened that kind of 1950s Leave It to Beaver vision of what America was like before everything literally and figuratively went to pot.” A recent Hoover Institution study found that just over a third of Donald Trump supporters are over 65 years old, so a good portion of people hearing him speak of the silent majority might remember that time well. Perlstein also pointed out that, in some ways, the phrase was racially coded. ”To say majority is to say minority, and everyone knows who minorities are. They are people in America who are not white,” he said. Of course, in many ways, 2016 is not the 1960s, and multiple Trump supporters have told NPR that they don’t think the term ”silent majority” has a racial connotation. ”I don’t think that’s true at all now,” said George Davey of West Des Moines. ”You can look at Trump, [and the] people he hires. I’m sure he has a lot of people of various ethnic backgrounds in his companies.” Davey has a photo of Trump that’s several feet tall looming over the fence of his backyard, looking onto a busy street. He says he is a big Trump fan, but he didn’t want to share whom he plans to caucus for just yet. To Davey, the silent majority today is all about opposition to the rise of what he calls ”PC culture.” ”The reason why we’re silent is because we’re not allowed to talk,” he said. ”My favorite thing about Trump is that he wants to get rid of political correctness. It all started out as   where all of a sudden you can’t say certain things because you’re bullying them.” But Davey said it has snowballed, and now, he thinks people can get fired from their jobs, or sued, just for saying the wrong thing. ”That is against the Constitution.” Whether Davey’s opposition to political correctness perfectly matches Nixon’s modern definition of the silent majority or not, historian Perlstein says it really doesn’t matter. ”The silent majority is always going to be a state of mind,” he said. ”It’s a feeling. It’s a feeling of dispossession. And that feeling of dispossession can come about most dramatically in times when things seem to be changing, when all that’s solid melts into air.”"
"Anger seems to be the dominant emotion during this presidential campaign. The angriest seem to be Republicans  —   upset with everything from illegal immigration to ISIS to President Obama. Donald Trump has said he is proud to carry that mantle.  But on the left, there’s a different kind of frustration, disappointment and dissatisfaction with the political climate that is driving many to Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.  Recently at the Salem, N. H. field office for the Sanders campaign, volunteers busily worked the phones, contacting registered Democrats and asking whom they intend to support in next month’s primary. Carol Couch, a volunteer for the Sanders campaign, has made many phone calls (”People are tired of them in New Hampshire”) and done a lot of walking, going door to door in this southern New Hampshire town. She says she follows her granddaughter’s advice when canvassing, ”Always say you like their dog.” She says she likes Sanders because he talks about issues important to her  —   like fairness, or rather, the lack of it. Couch said she is troubled by the ”rampant cheating and not caring about other people” that she believes is too prevalent in the nation. ”That doesn’t sit well with me, because we’re all in this together, and that’s what Bernie epitomizes to me.”  Couch said there might be some anger among Democrats about fairness, and how the deck has been stacked in favor of the 1 percent, but she adds that it’s nothing like she has seen from the Republican candidates and their supporters. ”There isn’t the vitriol, there isn’t the hatred and that I think is frightening,” she said. ”You don’t have any of that from any of the great people I’ve met volunteering, and certainly not from the senator.” In his stump speech, Sanders addresses the anger among voters. He explains it and says he understands it in a very clear way. It’s what’s helped him break through against his chief rival, Hillary Clinton.  At a stop in Wolfeboro, N. H. Thursday, Sanders tried to explain that anger. ”Why people are so angry is, they’re working harder and harder [and] many of them are slipping into poverty. Everyone is worried about the future of their kids.” Sanders says, ”People are asking, ’What’s going on?’ ” Susan Bartlett, who works for the state humanities council, says she has gone back and forth between supporting Sanders and Hillary Clinton. She brought her two   kids to hear Sanders speak. She said she is not ”angry so much as disappointed and concerned . .. for the future for our children and grandchildren, in terms of the income disparity.” Bartlett says she is also troubled by racial tensions, which she says ”are very much   as well as   racial issues.” Wolfeboro resident Doug Smithwood says what he feels this primary season is frustration at the officeholders who can’t or won’t find solutions to the nation’s problems.  ”I think everyone’s just sick of squabbling,” he said. ”Nothing gets done, there’s so much middle ground for compromise but it’s just not in . .. politicians’ capabilities to compromise. I don’t think the American public overall thinks they need to get everything their way.” And that’s a lot different than what you hear on the Republican side. That might largely be because there has been a Democrat in control of the White House for the past seven years. So while there is no talk of taking the country back, Democrats have concerns and frustrations, too. And Sanders argues that’s something only a political revolution will address."
"Following criticism over the lack of diversity in this year’s Oscar nominations, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has voted to approve changes aimed at doubling the number of women and people of color in its membership by 2020. The board of governors unanimously approved a series of changes to ”make the Academy’s membership, its governing bodies, and its voting members significantly more diverse,” the organization said in a statement. NPR’s Neda Ulaby reports that the academy called an emergency meeting on Thursday night in response to threats of boycotts against this year’s awards ceremony. ”It pledged to not only recruit but double the number of women and people of color in membership over the next four years and to make changes in its current membership” to promote diversity. The announcement came after the organization was blasted for having no nonwhite nominees for the 20 acting awards  —   for the second year in a row. The movies Creed, Straight Outta Compton and Concussion  —   all of which feature black characters in key roles  —   were also snubbed. The nominations prompted the revival of #OscarsSoWhite on social media, which pointedly called out the homogeneity of the Academy Awards. The lack of diversity among nominees wasn’t surprising to Darnell Hunt, director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. ”Were talking about an academy that’s overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male,” he told All Things Considered. ”93 percent white, 76 percent male, average age 63. People are voting for things that resonate with their experiences and unfortunately it’s too narrow a slice.” The changes not only expand diversity of future membership but change the demographic of current members. As it stands now, many voting members have not been active in the industry for decades. Under the new rules, they will have to be active to vote, although there are some exceptions, including for previous Oscar winners."
"Just say the name  —   his one name  —   and you know we’re talking about one of the most popular recording artists ever. Yanni’s resume includes more than 40 platinum and gold albums since the 1980s and epic concerts from some of the world’s most historic sites, including The Forbidden City, the Taj Mahal, the Kremlin, and the Pyramids. Along the way, he may well have raised more money for PBS than Oscar the Grouch. Yanni’s new album, true to form, is called Sensuous Chill. He spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon about how he’s maintained his own chill for so long, and why the term ”new age” continues to baffle him. Hear the radio version at the audio link and read their conversation below. Scott Simon: What is a sensuous chill? Yanni: It was a concept I’ve had it for quite some time. I wanted it to create an environment for the listener that was a sensuous environment, a melodious environment and a sexy environment at the same time. Excuse me, I think I’m getting a sensuous chill! [Laughs] [Laughs] They didn’t tell me you’re funny! I’m in trouble now. No, nobody really thinks that. But I’m glad you and I can. So, it has taken me five years to create something like that. It didn’t come easy. And I took a long, long time figuring out which songs to pick and which order to present them in. So it is meant to be: You put it on your CD player or whatever else you have, put it on repeat and forget about it. It’s not a demanding album. Someone is not going to jump out in the middle of the album and pull your shirt and say, ”Listen to me, I’m doing a guitar solo,” or, ”Listen to me, I’m doing a violin solo.” It’s not the idea. The idea is to put you in a mood that’s consistent, that is enjoyable, and keep you there. Some of this music has been kind of inspired by your travels around the world. Of course. Everything is inspired by my life experiences. Everything I have been through, every country I have been through, everything that I have felt, emotionally, is the inspiration for writing music. I guess that’s true of all art  —   but maybe we just hear it a little more in music sometimes? You definitely hear it a lot more in music. Especially the type of music that I write, which is with no lyrics  —   I merely describe emotion. I go directly for the emotion. And emotion translates from culture to culture, unharmed, untouched. You know, a Chinese grandfather feels the same way about his grandson as an American grandfather feels towards his grandson. The emotions are very similar around the planet, in my experience. We are more alike than people realize. Do I have this right: You taught yourself how to play the piano? Yes, you do have this right. I was very stubborn when I was a kid  —   I refused to take lessons. At the beginning it made it extremely difficult, because I climbed up on the piano when I was 6 years old and started banging away at the notes, not realizing what I was doing. But in the process, I created something that’s called ”perfect pitch.” Which  —   a lot of people know what it is, but what it really means is that any note, or chord, or anything I hear, is an open book to me. Notes are not merely pitches that go low, high, medium  —   they are words. Each note is like a word, like somebody is talking to me. How do you feel about the term ”new age”? I don’t! I don’t even know what it is. What is new age? Well, that’s where Billboard puts your music. I mean, I can see it now. Somebody in Los Angeles in some little office sat around going, ”What are we going to do with a guy named Yanni? He’s playing classical music, he’s playing rock and roll, he’s playing jazz, he’s got this, he’s got that, he’s playing Chinese music, Middle Eastern music  —   he’s doing whatever the hell he wants.” I can see the guy standing up and going, ”How about we call it ’new age’?” Well, new age becomes old age very quickly. [Laughs] I got stuck with that, and then it became a   category. Anyone who didn’t fit in the main categories of music became a new age artist. There’s a track on this album called ”Whispers in the Dark.” It sounds to me like a nice kind of darkness: You’re with someone you care for and you’re confiding in each other. Absolutely. The reason that I connect with all these different cultures around the planet is, there is optimism inside me. And that has been put in me from my father and my mother, and the way I was raised. I was lucky that I was raised in a very beautiful environment with a lot of hope, and a lot of love. That has grown inside me, so when I write music it comes out. You can’t help it! It’s part of your psyche. It’s not that I don’t feel pain or anger. I feel everything that everybody else feels, I promise you. But there is no reason for me to write music out of anger or frustration, or anything that is negative. I wait until I learn from my mistakes, from my difficult times, and I like to write music about the lessons that I learned while I was going through the tough times. So there is always a resolution in my songs. It is not out of ignorance, it is out of knowledge. And I think that’s what the public gets, and that’s why they like to listen."
"The Larry   rantings of @berniethoughts may be the very incarnation of vacuum pennies. The mockery is all in fun and admiration, said    writer Spencer Madsen, who created the parody Twitter account chronicling the supposed inner thoughts of the surging Democratic presidential candidate. It’s ”a very loving portrayal of an imaginary Bernie Sanders in some parallel universe where he has an obsession with food and animals and a sort of childlike inability to discern fiction from reality,” explained Madsen. ”He’s sort of easily confused and easily frustrated.” It’s almost as though the infamous Saturday Night Live portrayal of the Vermont senator has come to life in @berniethoughts. But there’s a big part of Madsen’s own life in the parody account too. ”You don’t start a parody Twitter account when everything’s going well in your life,” he told NPR. ”For me it was a kind of grasping at straws sort of thing.” Madsen, a writer, said he had just moved back to New York from Los Angeles when he started @berniethoughts, in November of last year. He was living with his parents while looking for a job and was just ”trying to put something out there into the world.” Madsen said the only thing that was really clicking for him was tweeting about Sanders, which he had started doing from his personal Twitter account during campaign debates. From there, @berniethoughts was born. ”I’d been kind of growing sick of hearing myself write about the same old things,” Madsen said. ”So giving myself a character actually felt good and new.” @berniethoughts may be new  —   already with 36, 400 followers and counting  —   but it is also very strange. The tweets are in all caps. Most of them are about food. Some offer thoughts on his Democratic rivals for the White House, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley. Many of them are completely nonsensical. But Madsen has a reason for it all. ”I kind of feel like Bernie speaks in all caps,” Madsen said. ”Whenever you see him at a debate and his hands are kind of, you know, flailing and, you know, you can sense his frustration with everything that’s wrong in his eyes. .. He’s kind of an all caps kind of guy.” As for all the food references in the @berniethoughts tweets, there’s a reason for that, too. ”I am sitting at home at my parents’ place and the TV is on all day and it just plays Food Network,” Madsen said. ”I’m just watching Food Network and Travel Channel. .. Anthony Bourdain left and right. And all I’m thinking about is. .. all the free food that is in the kitchen that my parents pay for, and it just becomes my consciousness. Food and @berniethoughts is all I got right now.” Madsen does admit he is a fan of the Vermont senator. ”I love Bernie,” he told NPR. ”I do this as kind of a political way of expressing my love for him.” The respect of mutual  —   a staffer from the Sanders campaign sent him a Twitter direct message, saying, ”Hey, the whole team here loves you.” Madsen followed up  —   he asked for a job with the campaign nothing has come through yet. In spite of all this love for @berniethoughts from Sanders supporters, Madsen points out that it wasn’t always that way. ”A lot of the early champions of this Twitter account that were kind of retweeting it and responsible for gaining a lot of followers early on were actually conservative reporters for various conservative news outlets. .. a lot of these people followed the account because they don’t like Bernie,” he said. ”I would say that the viewership is split down the middle. It’s kind of a bipartisan portrayal of Bernie.” ”I think the   Twitter followers love it because, you know, what I tweet from Bernie thoughts is outlandish,” Madsen guessed. ”It’s not something that he would ever tweet. But they view Bernie as being of such an outrageous communist trying to destroy America that that level of bizarre behavior to them resonates as true.” The love from the liberal audience comes because ”they feel so comfortable with Bernie,” Madsen said. ”I think they feel like he really represents them. And so they feel comfortable laughing at him in a loving way because they love Bernie.” Still, the ”parody” part has been lost on some. Madsen says there have been some ”confused old white guys on Twitter who think that I’m actually Bernie Sanders.” ”[They] will kind of tweet at me with insults because I’m ’destroying America’ and they just don’t really understand how Twitter works,” he laughed. In that varied reception, perhaps @berniethoughts captures a lot about this presidential race  —   lines between mockery and adoration, humor and ridicule, love and hate, wry awareness and confusion have been blurred."
"On the surface, Flint, Mich. and Kabwe, Zambia, don’t seem to have a lot in common. They’re half a world away from each other. One is a city of 99, 000 in one of the richest countries in the world. The other is a city of 203, 000 in a    country. But there are a few threads of connection. Both were once bustling, industrial hubs, one dependent on the auto industry, the other on mining. Both were abandoned by the industry that once sustained them. ”With declining industry in both communities, there was a series of bad decisions, a lack of attention, and environmental injustice,” says Richard Fuller, president of Pure Earth, an organization that identifies and helps clean up poor communities with high levels of environmental toxins. Now, both Flint and Kabwe need the world’s attention to clean up a mess. And in each community, the mess is caused by lead poisoning. Lead contamination in the U. S. has dropped dramatically since the 1978 ban on   paint in housing and on leaded gasoline in 1996. But it is still a problem in some of the country’s poorest neighborhoods. In 2014, about   of 1 percent of American children under 6 had worrisome levels of lead in their blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The crisis in Flint, in which health officials found that city residents had been exposed to lead in their drinking water since April 2014, is a reminder that lead is a global problem that each year kills 143, 000 people and is responsible for 600, 000 new cases of children with intellectual disabilities. ”Flint is an example of a contaminated site,” says Fuller. ”But there are places hundreds of times worse, in thousands of places in the world. And that’s not an exaggeration.” One of those places is Kabwe. The lead contamination began in the early 20th century. The town is located in Zambia on land rich in lead ore. ”The town formed around a smelter that ran without any pollution controls,” says Fuller. When the ore ran out, owners abandoned the smelter. ”But the whole town became massively contaminated with lead. That smelter had a smokestack blowing every which way all the time. It’s a very dry place, so dust was deposited everywhere.” In 100 years, the toxic lead has not gone away. Children play in the dust, walk in it, have it blown in their faces and on their hands, and lick their fingers. In a report published Nov. 7, 2014, in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, researchers measured soil lead concentrations in various neighborhoods in Kabwe. They found soil concentrations of lead an average of three times higher than the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency standard, and in the most toxic areas, more than 1, 000 times higher than the EPA standard. And when they measured lead levels in the blood of children, they found the levels literally off the charts  —   levels in children from some neighborhoods so high that they surpassed the level the instruments could measure. The CDC uses a reference level of 5 micrograms per deciliter to identify children with abnormally high lead levels. The lowest blood level in the children measured was 13. 6 micrograms per deciliter the average was 48. 3 and the highest couldn’t be measured because more than 25 percent of the children had levels higher than the 65 micrograms per deciliter the instruments could measure. In a neighborhood called Chowa, closest to the old smelter, ”almost every single child is suffering from lead poisoning,” says Fuller. When it comes to lead, health officials are most concerned about children because, as everyone knows, they can’t keep their hands out of their mouths, even if they’ve just been playing in the dirt. And their brains are still works in progress, developing new neural connections every day with each new learning experience. ”Lead interferes with neural connections,” says Dr. Jack Caravanos, professor of environmental health at the City University of New York, School of Public Health, a technical adviser to Pure Earth and an author of the MMWR report. When lead enters the brain, he says, ”there is a reduction in and disruption of those connections. It’s generally considered irreversible.” Lead can harm adults, too, causing high blood pressure and kidney damage. In pregnant women, it can cause miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births. In the neighborhood of Chowa, work has started to clean up the lead mess. ”It’s a huge project. Lead is an element, you can’t destroy an element, but we’ve got to stop it from getting into the kids,” says Fuller. His organization has begun literally moving the dirt with highest levels of contamination to encapsulate in landfills, then cover what’s left behind with a permeable membrane. Workers cover the membrane with layers of clean soil. ”We tamp it all down and stop the dirty stuff from rising,” says Fuller. Local officials have been trained in the cleanup method and have tackled one neighborhood of 80 homes. There are thousands of homes yet to be cleaned up. The problem of lead in the environment goes beyond industries leaving behind toxic messes. Some underground entrepreneurs are making their own   messes by recycling old car batteries in unregulated, unsafe ways. Those batteries contain a large amount of lead, and recycling them is a thriving, informal business in many parts of the world, says Fuller. ”People might take them to a river bank, break them down with an ax, let acid pour on the ground,” says Fuller. ”They’re looking to create an ingot they can sell. It’s a toxic and dirty method, and it spreads through the community through the river, or the air from burning. Every urban center in the developing world has these sites.” In 2008, for example, 18 children in Senegal died of lead poisoning after they accompanied their mothers who took apart old batteries and melted them down for scrap lead."
"Monkeys are clever and cute  —   or so the conventional wisdom in China has it. And therefore people see the Year of the Monkey, which begins on Feb. 8, as an auspicious time for making babies. The Year of the Goat, however, which is now coming to an end, has the opposite reputation. ”Nine out of 10 babies born in the Year of the Goat are unlucky,” goes an old Chinese saying. (While some translations have it as ”goat,” others render it as ”sheep” or ”ram. ”) This week, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission cited these folk beliefs as part of an explanation for a decline in births in 2015. According to the latest statistics, 16. 5 million babies were born in China last year, some 320, 000 fewer than in 2014. The commission’s reasoning: People decided not to have babies because ”Year of the Goat” babies are linked to bad luck. Some observers don’t know what’s worse, the ”monkey business” or the ”scapegoating.” ”Such a creative use of superstition,” sniped an editorial in the official   China Daily newspaper, ”neither helps [people] understand the real demographic challenges nor adds credibility to the estimate for population growth.” ”A more thorough and serious review of the latest population changes is needed,” the editorial continued, ”to allow the country to respond appropriately to prevent a demographic crisis from happening.” The Beijing Times newspaper added that official statistics clearly show that the decline in births is due not to zodiac signs but to a decrease in the number of Chinese women of childbearing age. This past October, China officially scrapped its     policy, allowing most families to now have two children. Many population experts say the change is too late to prevent a labor shortage and aging crisis. They see the change as a   measure by bureaucrats who are unwilling to admit that the   policy was unnecessary in the first place and that all remaining population controls should be scrapped. Adding to concerns are statistics that China’s economy last year grew at its slowest annual pace in 25 years. And China’s   population registered a   decline of nearly 5 million people in 2015. China’s family planning bureaucracy has always argued that the country’s population controls, which began in 1980, helped reduce the number of mouths to feed and thereby sped up the country’s development. They predicted that there would be more births last year, because in 2013, family planning policies were amended to allow couples to have a second child if either parent was a second child. But these estimates, it turned out, were off the mark. The commission predicts that the number of newborns will climb to between 17. 5 and 21 million annually for the next five years. China’s population is expected to peak in 2025 at around 1. 4 billion, and then decline."
"The shelves and desks at Teaching for Change in Washington, D. C. are full of picture books. For years, the nonprofit, which advocates for a more inclusive curriculum in public schools, has been keeping track of what it considers to be some of the best  —   and worst  —   multicultural children’s books out there. Allyson Criner Brown, Teaching for Change’s associate director, says they keep the bad ones because ”there’s so much to learn from them.” A Birthday Cake for George Washington was just put on the bad shelf. Over the weekend, the publisher Scholastic announced it would stop distributing the children’s picture book after public outcry. Even though it was created by a multicultural team, the book came under heavy criticism for whitewashing the history of slavery. Just a few months ago, another children’s book, A Fine Dessert, drew similar criticism. It also raised questions about the diversity of the publishing industry and especially about the struggle parents, teachers and authors face when presenting such sensitive topics to young children. A Birthday Cake for George Washington tells the story of Hercules, a slave Washington used as a chef. It’s a book full of smiles, as Hercules and his daughter, Delia, take pride in baking for the president. But the story glosses over the fact that Hercules and Delia are in bondage. And it’s only in a note following the story that the author writes that Hercules escaped, leaving his daughter behind. ”It’s almost as if the book presents that because he had moments of happiness and because he took pride and joy in his work that outweighs the fact that he was enslaved,” Brown said. ”And that cannot ever be a part of telling any story about somebody who was held in bondage.” Brown said that kind of simplistic, idealized narrative in a picture book is just a reflection of the adult world. This is a country, she said, that wants to believe that the United States started as the land of the free and the home of the brave. ”The nation didn’t start like that for everyone,” she said. ”So, as much as we struggle with it, how to then have these difficult conversations with our children with things that we’re wrestling with ourselves, I think is very tough for a lot of people.” But Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, said children are not waiting around for adults. Thomas studies how schools approach touchy subjects like slavery, and she spent time with students at a Philadelphia middle school. ”I found out that kids are not only ready to discuss these topics, but they are already discussing these topics with their friends,” Thomas said. At the time of her research, the students were reading Elijah of Buxton, a book about a runaway slave in Canada. Thomas said the kids were making sophisticated connections between the historical fiction and the realities of the Black Lives Matter movement today. So the reality is that while kids are already grappling with some of the world’s ugliness, she said, adults are still clinging to a Victorian ideal of an innocent child. Adults are thinking ”the innocence of the ideal child must be protected at all costs,” she said. ”We must keep the dirty secrets of our society away from those kids. And I think that kids are seeing those contradictions.” That protection instinct is familiar to writer Matt de la Peña  —   especially because he’s a new father. ”I have a    daughter,” he said. ”And you really just want to protect your daughter so much from the sadness. And you feel like, she’s gonna see it eventually on her own. But then you have to take a step back and say my need to protect isn’t as important as for her to see the truth.” The truth is something de la Peña thinks about a lot. His books for young adults often deal with the harsh realities of crime and violence. That honesty, he said, is valuable to kids. ”Young readers have a chance to experience very scary and sad and dark things in books,” he said. ”It’s kind of the safest way to experience these things for the first time.” De la Peña just won a Newbery Medal for his book Last Stop on Market Street. It’s about CJ, a black kid taking a bus ride to the soup kitchen with his grandma. At one point CJ asks why the poor neighborhood is always so dirty. ”Sometimes when you’re surrounded by dirt,” the wise grandma responds, ”you’re a better witness for what’s beautiful.”"
"As researchers have searched for ways to explain the childhood obesity epidemic in the U. S. many have posited that a child’s race or ethnicity alone can put them at greater risk of becoming overweight or obese. Kim Eagle, a professor of internal medicine and health management and policy at the University of Michigan, was skeptical of this thinking. His hunch was that poverty was a much more important part of the equation. And he saw an opportunity to parse the connections between childhood obesity, poverty and race in Massachusetts, where public health officials have been collecting race, body mass index and other data on about 112, 000 students from about 70 of the state’s school districts. Eagle and colleagues decided to compare those data to students’ eligibility for free school lunch programs, an indicator of poverty, to find out what predicts whether a child might become overweight or obese. ”At first glance it looked like childhood obesity was more common among   or Hispanics,” Eagle says. When they accounted for poverty, though, the trend vanished. What his findings, which appeared in December in the journal Childhood Obesity, show is that ”[obesity] is not about our race or ethnicity at all  —   it’s about resources,” he says. It’s far from the first study to reach this conclusion. A 2012 paper published in the American Heart Journal that also looked at kids in Massachusetts found that prevalence of obesity and overweight in children rose in communities with lower household income. While not entirely surprising, this is an important insight for our understanding of attitudes about childhood obesity. ”When you have particular groups with higher rates of a problem, people start to think that they’re doing something wrong that’s specific to them,” says Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. ”This [finding] helps fight against that bias.” For Eagle and his colleagues, understanding that it’s poverty, not race, that can help explain obesity rates is also useful for addressing the crisis. Viewed through the lens of genetics or culture, the issue can feel intractable, Eagle says, but reframing it as a matter of resources points toward tangible solutions. ”This is something communities can wrap their arms around,” he says. ”It’s not something a child is born with.” In 2004, Eagle founded Project Healthy Schools, a   program aimed at curbing obesity in middle schoolers. Kids learn about nutrition, but they also get healthier options at school: Eagle’s team has taken on vending machines and cafeteria menus  —   nixing    hot dog days and   for breakfast. They also work on sports programs and school gardens. Eagle says students at first complained about salad carts and yogurt in the cafeteria, but over time, they’ve turned out to be hugely popular. ”It’s not that students want to eat unhealthfully,” he says. ”A lot of times [unhealthy food is] all they have.” The program is now at more than 50 middle schools in Michigan. Eagle says while most kids of all income levels benefit within three months, he sees the most dramatic improvements in   students. And, he says, being vulnerable doesn’t mean you’re destined to be overweight and in poor health  —   if you intervene in communities with few resources, health outcomes can improve."
"For many immigrants, coming to America is full of the unfamiliar  —   from the language to the food. In Philadelphia, a program aims to help these arrivals settle into their new country by folding English lessons into a cooking class. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, 20 recent immigrants and refugees to the United States streamed into a shiny   kitchen on the fourth floor of the Free Library of Philadelphia’s central branch. They were here to partake in the library’s take on teaching English as a second language. The program, dubbed Edible Alphabet, is run through the library and Nationalities Service Center, an organization that helps settle refugees when they arrive in Philadelphia. By offering English instruction in the form of a cooking lesson, organizers hope to provide a familiar setting for the students  —   who hail from over 10 different countries  —   to connect to each other. ”It’s been great for us to sort of connect over, ’Here’s a can of chickpeas. What do you use chickpeas for in your meals? How would you do this differently at home?’ ” says the library’s program administrator, Liz Fitzgerald. Each class is helmed by both a chef and an      instructor. The class starts off with an English lesson focusing on the day’s ingredients. Today, the students are spelling and sounding out words like onion, garlic, tomato and jalapeno. After the language lesson is over, they’ll set out to make chana masala and roti together. ESL instructor Jillian Gierke says the class is about much more than just learning English. ”This is about welcoming new Philadelphians to the city,” she says. ”There is no better way to do that than to share a meal together.” Student Jules Ntikarahava says the class is helping him adjust to life in America. He moved to Philadelphia from Burundi two months ago. ”I like class because it helps me about to learning very well English,” he says. ”Yes, I’m trying my best.” ”I am happy too much,” Ntikarahava says about life in America. ”There is peace. More than where I am coming from in Africa.” For    Dua’a Saleh, who came here from Eritrea, the class is a welcoming space where she can meet friends. She said she isn’t too interested in cooking, but likes learning the English words for ingredients she recognizes. While fellow students rolled out roti and chopped vegetables, Saleh was carefully documenting each step on Snapchat to send to her friends back home. ”I’m making a lot of friends because I am sociable,” she says, adding that it’s fun to share her new life with her old friends over social media. All the recipes used in the class are pulled from the cookbook ”Good and Cheap,” which focuses on meals that are affordable for someone on SNAP benefits (what used to be called food stamps). Fitzgerald says learning how to navigate an American grocery store on limited means is an important part of the class. Strawberries, for example, are available in America   but will cost more and won’t taste as good in January. ”One of the things we are trying to do is teach people about seasonality and getting the most bang for their buck,” says Fitzgerald. It’s the third time the class has been taught. And along the way, the instructors say they’ve learned some lessons of their own. For instance, Fitzgerald says in the first round of classes, they started off by teaching recipes like quinoa salad. But, they quickly realized the students weren’t digging the flavors. ”They weren’t coming up for seconds,” she says. That’s when they started teaching recipes that used flavors and ingredients more familiar to the students, who mostly come from Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In addition to today’s chana masala, the students will go over how to make pancakes, dumplings, empanadas and savory cobblers during the course. ”They all knew ginger, they knew garlic, they knew onions,” says Juliane Ramic of Nationalities Service Center. ”Food is warmth, it’s comfort, it breaks down those barriers.” Galeb Salman left his native Iraq 25 years ago and most recently lived in Thailand. He says he savors the choices and freedom he feels since arriving here in September with his wife and five kids. ”When I think I want to learn, I want to study, I can. When I want to work, I can,” he says. ”I feel we have good life now. . ..This is my new life.” And he’s already found some new favorite foods. ”I like pizza,” he says. ”And what are you calling [it] in Philadelphia? Cheesesteaks.” Neema Roshania is an associate editor with NPR member station WHYY in Philadelphia, where a version of this story first ran."
"Forgive us if you’ve heard this (and heard it, and heard it) already: The East Coast is getting its fair share of snow this weekend. If you have, chances are you’ve also heard another little anecdote. When folks get snowed in for a couple of days  —   the urban legend goes  —   the population in that area is likely to see a boost in births just nine months later. In other words: Blizzards might be prime   time. Well, it turns out there’s some truth to that  —   and the phenomenon may not be limited just to snow storms. ”With     storm advisories, we actually found an uptick in births nine months later. So, it was about a 2 percent increase with tropical storm watches,” Richard Evans, a professor of economics at Brigham Young University, tells NPR’s Michel Martin. In 2008, together with Yingyao Hu and Zhong Zhao, Evans published what’s considered the most definitive study yet on how catastrophic events affect birth rates. Prompted by anecdotal evidence around catastrophies  —   from the New York City blackout of 1965 to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing  —   they decided to conduct broader, more substantive research into the phenomenon. They compared storm advisory data with fertility data on the East Coast and regions of the Gulf Coast, looking especially at differences in severity. And those differences in severity impacted their results. The bump in births didn’t hold true across the board. ”The other thing we found  —   that is also intuitive, but no one had ever detected this before  —   was that, with the most severe storm warnings . .. you get almost an equal decrease in births nine months later,” Evans says. ”And the story there is if you’re running for your life, you can’t make babies.” Still, Evans says this snow storm in particular may be of the   variety. ”I think the blizzard that’s hitting the East Coast right now is more like a   storm advisory  —   in the sense that, for the most part, people are not being asked to evacuate, they’re not running,” he says. ”They’re just told to hunker down in their houses for the duration of the storm until everything can get plowed and back to normal.” And as the danger diminishes, what else remains? ”If the lights go out and there’s no TV, it kind of sets the table for romance, and you get births nine months later.” There’s also been another funny effect of all this. Since he published the report, Evans has found himself typecast as that one guy who published a report on storms and fertility. And that’s made him awfully popular among the major media organizations  —   especially for a scholar who usually focuses on macroeconomics and tax policy. ”I have other things that people really want to talk to me about, but this is one that keeps coming back and I can’t get away from. It’s a result of some really good datawork  —   testing an effect that was interesting  —   but then, it’s just this topic that’s irresistible by the press,” he says. ”You get hurricanes and sex, and I am the guy for that  —   either fortunately or unfortunately.”"
"The massive winter storm working its way up the East Coast has caused lots of headaches for humans  —   from impassable roadways to canceled flights to   travel shutdowns. But it’s brought nothing but delight to Tian Tian, the male giant panda at the National Zoo in Washington, D. C. The zoo posted a video on Saturday of Tian Tian making the most of his snow day. If you’re concerned that he might be cold, zookeepers would like you to know that giant pandas have thick fur, and their native habitat in China features cold and snowy winters. If you’re just concerned about how many ways you can share this video with every   person you know, the National Zoo also tweeted out the footage. Dedicated   will remember that last year, the zoo posted video of Bao Bao, Tian Tian’s daughter, experiencing snow for the first time. And this year, a few days before the big storm hit, Tian Tian’s son Bei Bei saw his first flakes. Bei Bei, the newest panda cub at the zoo, was less exuberant than his big sister and his father. ”Keepers said he wasn’t quite sure what to make of the powdery snow,” the zoo writes. The zoo shared a photo of the moment on Flickr."
"A divorced New York businessman billionaire with a mixed political history and knack for controversy and grabbing the spotlight might run for president. Another one. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is again weighing a possible independent bid for the White House after seeing an opening in a chaotic and unpredictable 2016 race. The Democrat turned Republican turned independent is actively exploring a run, hiring consultants and commissioning a poll last month aimed at seeing whether there is an appetite for a   candidate, a source familiar with Bloomberg’s plans told NPR. Bloomberg plans to survey the race after next month’s New Hampshire primary and is willing to spend up to $1 billion of his own money on such an effort. He has proved he is willing to spend money to win elections. He has spent more than $300 million between his three mayoral runs and his   political projects. The $250 million he spent on his mayoral races is the most anyone has ever spent on his or her own elections in U. S. history. He can afford it  —   Bloomberg is the   man in America and estimated to be worth some $36 billion, according to Forbes’ 2015 list of billionaires. To put that in context, Donald Trump claims to be worth almost $10 billion. (His wealth has been estimated at lower than that, somewhere between $2 billion and $5 billion, according to various counts.) Because of deadlines to get on a   ballot, he will make a decision one way or another by March, sources close to the former New York mayor told NPR and WNYC. This isn’t the first time the former mayor and media mogul has flirted with a presidential bid, but the unique dynamics of the 2016 race make it more likely than ever he could actually pull the trigger this time. According to the New York Times, which first reported Bloomberg’s interest, he is more likely to run if Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wins the GOP nomination and if Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders topples former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race. ”If Hillary wins the nomination, Hillary is mainstream enough that Mike would have no chance, and Mike’s not going to go on a suicide mission,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton ally and friend to Bloomberg, told the Times. The problem that timeline presents for Bloomberg is that neither primary contest is likely to be decided in March. The    Bloomberg has remained active in politics since leaving office in 2013, most notably advocating for stricter gun control measures across the country through his ”Everytown for Gun Safety” group, which spent nearly $400, 000 on elections in 2014 with mixed results. Even though Bloomberg first won office in 2001 as a Republican, he holds some very liberal positions. He is outspoken on climate change, is   rights and supports   marriage, and his crackdown on trans fats along with his other healthful eating requirements in New York City drew backlash from many conservatives. But his cozy relationship with Wall Street and    union efforts in New York City could similarly alienate liberals who might agree with him on social policy. There’s no telling how exactly Bloomberg could affect a general election featuring Trump and Sanders, but the race would feature two New York billionaires against an avowed socialist whose core message has been   Street and the wealthy class."
"With a little more than a week to go until the Iowa caucuses, the Des Moines Register endorsed Democratic former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio in the 2016 presidential race. The Hawkeye state’s largest paper tweeted its choices Saturday night. The paper’s editorial board focused on Clinton’s resume in its endorsement, highlighting her experience, knowledge and skills as reasons why she is the ”one outstanding candidate deserving of [Democrats’] support. ”No other candidate can match the depth or breadth of her knowledge and experience,” it wrote. However, they also criticized her on several counts, including how she handled questions over her private email server. On the Republican side, the board praised Rubio as ”” framing him as the choice for voters who want to see the GOP be ”the party of opportunity and optimism.” But they also seemed to imply that he was the choice, in part, because the party had drifted too far from the mainstream. ”We endorse him,” the paper said, ”because he represents his party’s best hope.” Though the Register chose those two candidates, it still made a point of praising other candidates in the race. For example, the editorial board praised Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders as ”a man of courage and principle who has the ability to rally others to his cause”  —   though they also pointed out that his policies are unlikely to pass Congress. ”A successful Sanders presidency would hinge on his ability to remake Washington in his own image,” it wrote. ”It’s almost inconceivable that such a transformation would take place.” The Register likewise praised three other Republican establishment candidates  —   former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich  —   for their ”executive experience, pragmatism and thoughtful policies.” Meanwhile, there was no mention of the two GOP candidates leading in Iowa polls by a long shot, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Both of those candidates are framing themselves as   figures in this race. The paper said its picks are ”not predictions, but recommendations.” Indeed, the Register has in recent years ended up choosing candidates who didn’t go on to win. Since its first endorsement in 1988, the Register has never endorsed a Democrat who has gone on to win the caucus or become the party’s nominee. On the Republican side, the paper last endorsed the caucus winner with George W. Bush in 2000 and the   with Romney in 2012. It’s not clear how much sway the Register’s endorsements hold among Iowans. But this year, Iowa’s caucusgoers could very well choose a winner different from the paper’s picks. Rubio is in third place in Iowa right now, firmly behind Cruz and Trump, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average. (Though third for Rubio would be a solid result for him.) Sanders, meanwhile, is within striking distance of Clinton in recent polls."
"On campuses across the country, millions of students have an app called Yik Yak on their phones. It’s like an anonymous version of Twitter. But because it’s anonymous, it can get ugly and be a breeding ground for hate speech. Black student leaders across the country have held   and protests asking college officials to block the app. Yik Yak, an   social media app, has a presence on more than 2, 000 college campuses. Users of the app post comments anonymously, and anyone within a radius of a few miles can see, share and rate the comment. Nikolai Yudin, a freshman at Atlanta’s Emory University, describes it this way: ”It’s a forum for people to post anonymous thoughts and some of those thoughts are potentially offensive to others but at the same time, I mean, not that I’ve ever seen anything groundbreaking, like wow, what a great share, but sometimes some things are funny.” Mostly, users post innocent jokes about bad breakups or awful dining hall food. But students have targeted minorities and made death threats. At Western Washington University, there were calls to lynch the black student body president. At the University of Missouri, students threatened to shoot all black students. It’s not just students of color: Posts also have threatened lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. At Kenyon College in Ohio, an anonymous commenter proposed a gang rape at the school’s women’s center. And in October, a student at Emory’s Oxford College campus was arrested after she posted a message on the app threatening to shoot everyone. At least half a dozen universities have blocked the app on their   networks. Now, some students at Emory are calling for more: blocking Yik Yak completely, even for people who access it via a cellphone. ”For a while it was just kind of a lighthearted app,” says Kaya Ruffin, a sophomore at Emory. But then some users took it to the extreme. It became ”a medium for a lot of hate that’s very   and very   so it’s just kind of a downer,” Ruffin says. ”So I just avoid it.” Black students like Manzi Ngaiza say they feel targeted. ”It’s not like this is some kid on a YouTube channel,” Ngaiza says. ”It’s someone in your geographical area, so you know the fact that you’re in class with someone who really feels that they need to share this sentiment of like ’Black kids at Emory need to go back to Africa.’ It’s not a good feeling obviously.” Some students want Yik Yak to set up a ”geofence” around the zip codes of Emory University to block the app. Jason Wong of Gartner Research is an expert who helps businesses develop mobile apps. ”They call it fencing because it implies a boundary of some sort that’s based on location and whether you’re in the boundary or outside that boundary, you get a different experience,” he explains. Geofencing often uses technology much more sophisticated than just GPS coordinates. Advertisers use it inside stores  —   for instance, promoting bananas on customers’ cellphones when they’re in the produce aisle, and nudging them to buy deodorant when they’re in the health and beauty aisle. One way Yik Yak uses geofences is to block the app entirely at middle and high schools. That’s because it’s meant for users over the age of 17. Still, Wong says, there are always workarounds. ”I think it’s a much better policy to explore why people are using an application and maybe explain to people why they shouldn’t be using it as opposed to just simply blocking it,” he says. Blocking Yik Yak from Emory is kind of like shooting the messenger. Senior Manik Soi says students can still post offensive comments elsewhere. ”There are other things like Emory Secrets where people post such hateful stuff as well. I don’t see the college banning that, right?” Soi says. Emory University says it doesn’t have a position on Yik Yak, but administrators say they will speak with black student leaders and set up a task force on the possibility of a geofence. Yik Yak declined to comment for this story."
"My    patient grabbed my hand and told me that he was going to die. Just seconds before, the nurse had wheeled him into the resuscitation room. His blood pressure and heart rate were more than twice the normal levels. He was pale, clammy and gasping for breath. The nurses and doctors with me in the ER worked to stabilize him. We put an oxygen mask on his face. We inserted two IVs and began pumping fluids into his body. When his oxygen level dropped, we inserted a breathing tube. In the meantime, we observed that there was no sign of trauma or active infection. The electrocardiogram showed that this wasn’t a heart attack. His blood tests were unrevealing. What was causing his symptoms? It was his friends who told us what happened. They were experimenting with what they said they thought were ”totally safe” and ”natural” drugs  —   substances called Spice or K2 that are often referred to as synthetic marijuana. In the past, the drugs had given the teenagers a quick high. This time, they experienced hallucinations. Some threw up. My patient was the one who got the sickest. This would be a frightening scenario for any friend or family member, but what makes it worse is that this isn’t an isolated incident. In the past two years, cities across the U. S. have seen surges in ER visits and hospitalizations tied to an evolving category of chemical substances known as synthetic drugs. In Baltimore, where I serve as the health commissioner, we have seen a marked increase in the use of these drugs, along with a spike in adolescents seeking urgent medical care. Patients present with a range of symptoms, from agitation, hallucinations and psychosis to dangerously high blood pressure and seizures. Most recover with supportive therapy. Some, however, experience irreversible heart, brain and kidney damage. A few die. How is it that these dangerous drugs can be so widely accessible? One reason is that they encompass a large of number of compounds. Some are similar to amphetamines others have ingredients similar to cannabinoids (the active ingredients in marijuana) and are referred to as synthetic marijuana. Since the Drug Enforcement Administration’s first ban on some synthetic drugs in 2011, more than 250 similar compounds have surfaced in their place. Another reason is misleading advertising. Sold in gas stations, corner stores and online, these drugs are marketed as room fresheners, herbal incense, bath salts or potpourri. In fact, they consist of chemicals sprayed onto dried plants and are intended solely for human consumption. Many young people falsely believe that these synthetic drugs provide a safe and legal alternative with the same high as illicit drugs. However, some synthetic cannabinoids can be up to 100 times more potent than marijuana. Moreover, users don’t know which of thousands of chemical combinations they may be taking. Scientists have equated taking synthetic drugs with a game of Russian roulette. If federal regulation of these substances is so challenging, what can be done to reduce the harmful effects on our youth? First, local legislative efforts can be effective. New York City and Washington, D. C. are among major cities that passed legislation in 2015 to ban the sale of synthetic drugs. In Baltimore, we introduced a bill to impose civil as well as criminal penalties to sellers. It also allows inspectors to remove these drugs from stores at time of discovery, and provides a mechanism for citizens to anonymously report stores selling these substances. Second, businesses themselves can take action. After we sent 1, 300 letters to local stores, many have posted ”Not a Drug Dealer” signs in their windows. Some have voluntarily reported distributors that are illegally selling synthetic drugs. Third, parents, teachers, pediatricians and others who work with teens should be aware of the dangers of synthetic drugs and speak with children and adolescents. In Baltimore, we launched a public education campaign called ”Don’t Roll the Dice With Spice.” Similar efforts exist in Minnesota, New York City and Washington, D. C. My    patient regained consciousness and recovered without   damage. He said that he had no idea that what he took would make him so sick. I hope that other young people will not require a   experience to prompt them to avoid these dangerous synthetic drugs. Dr. Leana Wen is the Baltimore City Health Commissioner. Follow her on Twitter: @DrLeanaWen and also @BMore_Healthy."
"The Los Angeles Unified School District welcomed a new superintendent who represents a first for the nation’s   school district on Jan. 11. Michelle King is the first   woman chosen for the job, heading more than 900 schools in the district. She is also an insider  —   she has worked in the system for three decades  —   unlike the string of outsiders who held the job before her. But she has largely stayed out of the spotlight, working behind the scenes from her various positions ranging from a classroom teacher to the    in the district. To her former colleagues, however, she is a superstar. ”Everybody has this sense that she cares about them,” says Fran Rose, who worked with King when she was a principal at Hamilton High School ten years ago, a school of about 2, 500 students on the Westside of Los Angeles for eight years. ”Boy, does she listen,” says Rosemarie Bernier, the Hamilton High School librarian when King was her supervisor. Bernier says that when she got her national board certification, she shared the news with King. ”You know what she did? She grabbed my hands and we jumped up and down together,” Bernier says. ”Because she was thrilled for me and she was thrilled for the kids.” King’s ”heart and soul passion” were one of the reasons she was chosen for the position, the school board president said. Now the district is counting on King to turn her passion into tangible results. She has a tough job ahead: The district is facing a huge budget deficit, declining enrollment and drops in student achievement. ”One of the primary reasons I sought this job is because I wanted to create new pathways for all students and give them the tools they need to succeed,” King said in a press conference just after her appointment. ”I know that as positive as my experience with L. A. Unified has been, not everyone has been as fortunate. I take the struggles of our families to heart.” She laid out her broad goals to increase parent engagement, equity and college preparedness. While her passion may have been one of her winning points, some see the decision to pick an insider to lead the system as an advantage. King was preceded by outsiders: A former governor, a Navy admiral,   education reformers, and more recently, John Deasy, who resigned in the midst of controversy in 2014. ”Most urban districts across the country are challenged and struggling,” says UCLA education professor Pedro Noguera. ”But you have to have some continuity in leadership in order to be able to solve these complex problems.” King’s experience in leading Hamilton High School might help. She became principal there in 2002 after spending five years as assistant principal. Before she took over, the school  —   not unlike the district now  —   was going through a tumultuous time. ”My hope is that she’ll last, that she’ll get the help she needs so that she can make some real headway and progress in the system,” Noguera says. Rose, who coordinates Hamilton High’s school humanities magnet program, says King was the key to getting the school back on track, ”After the upheaval, she was the calming influence and I think really turned things round at this school,” he says. ”I’m hoping she does the same thing with the district.” For now, that’s King’s task: To multiply her legacy at Hamilton across all of the Los Angeles Unified School District."
"It’s easy to get cynical about the presidential campaign, especially so close to the first round of voting, when many candidates are on the attack. But see it up close and personal, and the process can feel a bit more charming. That’s what a class from Indiana’s Manchester University found as it traveled across Iowa last week, taking in the caucuses. Instead of spending their winter break relaxing or earning some cash, 11 students from the small liberal arts school opted into a January course, piled into a red van with suspect heating, and braved the Iowa cold to experience the caucuses  . They spent a week driving across Iowa, catching events held by Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Donald Trump, and Rick Santorum. They even stood on stage behind Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. As sophomore Tate Wooding put it, ”we got a great view of his head.” One of the most surprising things for students who are used to watching politics on the news: how up close and personal the whole thing is. ”The candidates are actually people, and they will actually sit and talk to you and be with you if they have time for it,” said Kathryn Hickman. It’s one thing to see a candidate on a stage. It’s another to watch them hang out with voters in a bar, answering every question that comes their way. ”It makes politics seem more real here,” said Ashlyn Leamon. ”Because it’s not just on a TV screen. You can actually see them and be with them. The realization that, hey, one of these people will be the next president of the United States, ”kind of encourages, like, oh yeah I’ve got to get a selfie just in case,” Leamon said. Some of the candidates impressed more than others, when it came to the   politics. Many in the class were blown away by how much detail and attention New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie provided to every questioner in his town halls. ”I actually cried at his event because it was really personal,” said Hickman. Christie has made    politicking a hallmark of his late push in Iowa. Several students said that Florida Senator Marco Rubio, on the other hand, mostly repeated answers they had already heard in his debate appearances. And many were surprised to see that   Donald Trump mostly talked about poll numbers during his event. Every four years, there’s a lot of talk about whether Iowa should be the first state to have its say in the electoral process. After spending a week here, many of the Manchester University students all believe Iowa deserves it. They were all struck by how much Iowans care about the process  —   how early they arrive at events, how focused they were on the details when asking questions. ”When we were at Chris [Christie’s event] there was a kid that asked a question,” said Danielle Robertson. ”It was a really good policy question that most kids in other states would have no clue what to do with.” Matt Pritz, a recent convert to political junkiedom, was thrilled to see how politics permeates so many conversations. ”In Iowa, it’s common. And you see it each and every day  —   people talking about their candidates. Who they’re going to caucus for. Stuff like that. But in Indiana, you don’t tell people who you’re going to vote for. That’s more private.” Of course, only a small percentage of Iowans typically show up on caucus night. Still, Pritz said all that   access to candidates aside, it’s the people at the rallies who will really stick with him. ”To see kind of the guts ot the campaign, that kind of gave me butterflies,” he said. The spring semester will have resumed by the time Iowans vote February 1 but according to their professor, Leonard Williams, they’re planning to all get together to watch the caucus results come in."
"While not everyone has seen Groucho Marx’s films, many people would still recognize the comedian. His bushy black eyebrows, thick mustache and   cigar have long been iconic. Marx was known for frequently taking aim at the rich and powerful in his comedies  —   but a new biography suggests a more sinister side to Julius ”Groucho” Marx. ”The conventional image of Groucho was that he was on the side of the little guy, and he spoke defiantly and insolently to powerful people and wealthy people,” Lee Siegel, the author of Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence, tells NPR’s Michel Martin. ”But my feeling is that Groucho was out to deflate everybody  —   that he was a thoroughgoing misanthrope.” Siegel says his work aimed to get behind the comic’s commonly accepted image  —   and find the man behind the icon. ”I wanted to get at the roots of his humor, and I wanted to get at what made him an icon,” Siegel says. ”You know, I just don’t like the word ’icon,’ because it dries up all the energies that made the icon in the first place.” On Marx’s famous line, ”I would never want to be part of a club that would have me as a member” Woody Allen presents the line as sort of the epitome of Jewish  . But that’s not what the line means at all. Groucho wrote that line in a famous resignation letter to a club that he felt superior to. He was inducted into a club in Beverly Hills, and he arrived at this club thinking that he was going to talk with other illustrious figures about all the greats of literature. He wanted to be a writer and a serious literary man, Groucho, all his life. So he felt that he could talk about Chaucer and Milton and Shakespeare. Instead, he gets there and they’re all drinking and playing cards, and as he puts it, they’re on the phone with each others’ wives. On Marx’s attitude toward women, His misogyny is relentless and thoroughgoing, and it’s very hard to tolerate. His attacks on Margaret Dumont almost always take the form of attacking her status as a woman. And it’s very odd that he keeps attacking her, because of course she might be wealthy and she might be somewhat clueless and she might be puffed up with her own virtue  —   but she’s actually fairly kind, and a harmless person who just wants to help out these impostors Groucho is inhabiting. But he keeps insulting her for being a woman. And you don’t find the same thing in Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy or W. C. Fields, but with the Marx Brothers, yeah, they took woman hatred to a whole new level. It’s difficult to watch. On why Marx is relevant today, Well, in terms of comedy you can draw a straight line from Groucho to comics like Amy Schumer and Tig Notaro, for all Groucho’s  . These are people who are very funny, but they’re not always funny. And sometimes they’ll say something that simply is shocking, and the only biological response that’s available to you is laughter. It’s the same thing with Groucho. What he is, is shocking. He presents the spectacle, he and his brothers, of people behaving in public as if they were in private. They are saying things to the audience that normally people only say to their closest friends or their therapists. And the Marx Brothers were the first ones to do that. If he still likes Marx, after his work on the biography, I guess the way I feel about it is, I have two children and I love them no matter what they do. But I don’t always love other people’s kids. So sometimes the Marx Brothers are my children and sometimes they’re other people’s kids. I guess that’s the way I feel about them. Click the audio link above to hear the full interview."
"”  may be too young to die,” muses Tim Sunblade, the narrator of Elliott Chaze’s Black Wings Has My Angel. ”But it isn’t too young to die like a man.” Tim has death on his mind frequently  —   he’s an escaped prisoner determined to do whatever it takes to stay out of jail. He’ll kill if he has to, and he’d much rather wind up in a coffin than in a prison cell. This, of course, makes him very, very dangerous. Tim, as terrifying as he is fascinating, is the unforgettable antihero at the center of Black Wings Has My Angel. Originally published in 1953 by Gold Medal Books  —   known for their original crime fiction paperbacks with memorably lurid covers  —   Chaze’s novel has been reprinted by New York Review Books Classics, allowing a new generation of readers to discover this underappreciated   masterpiece. The novel opens with Tim relaxing in a hotel room, having just completed a stint as a roughneck on a drilling rig on the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana. He’s asked the bellhop to locate him some female companionship for the night, and he’s pleasantly surprised when the porter shows up with beautiful Virginia, a blonde with lavender eyes and a sassy attitude. ”God only knew why she bothered to hang around a little fishing village on the Atchafayala when she could be in New Orleans or Memphis or anywhere,” thinks Tim, ”what with her legs and manners and all.” (It just wouldn’t be a noir novel without a description of a gorgeous woman’s legs.) Tim and Virginia decide to ditch the small town and go west. It turns out the two have a lot of common, include a love of money. ”There’s no bad money,” Virginia tells Tim. ”But, darling, you’ve got to have drifts of it, lumps of it, and little piles of it only make you sick and petty.” Tim has money on his mind, too  —   he’s planning to execute a daring heist, and he doesn’t want Virginia in his way. ”But I still planned to leave her in the ladies john of some filling station,” he explains. ”Because you can’t kiss your way out of prison and I knew that for sure. For dead sure.” But he just can’t quit Virginia, and he needs a partner for his heist. So the two make their way to Colorado, first camping by an abandoned mineshaft, then pretending to be a married couple in suburban Denver while Tim plans his ambitious theft. And that’s when the fun  —   so to speak  —   begins. It doesn’t take too long for things to go south and the blood to start spilling. Black Wings Has My Angel is sometimes shockingly violent there’s one torture scene that’s almost unbearable to read. Chaze never romanticizes the violence per se, but he doesn’t shy away from intensely graphic descriptions. The novel features everything we’ve come to love about noir crime fiction. The dialogue is crackling, stylized and often funny. Here’s Tim on Virginia: ”She was a lousy little tramp. God knows I’m an authority on tramps.” And Virginia to Tim: ”You move around like a damned tormented tomcat and your eyes aren’t right. You’re just about perfect. And you’re just about horrible.” Chaze’s characters are more memorable than you often find in   fiction. Tim isn’t cartoonishly evil, exactly, though no one would mistake him for good  —   he’s haunted by a man he stabs to death, and he sometimes shows pangs of conscience. Virginia, who’s been keeping a secret of her own, is a wild card, unpredictable and impulsive. (This is a pulp fiction novel from 1953, so you can expect some, uh, slightly outdated views on gender equality.) What makes Black Wings Has My Angel truly great is Chaze’s writing, which is simple but elegant. ”When a rich man dies it is more complex than when a poor man dies,” Tim explains at one point. ”A rich man doesn’t simply quit living. He quits being rich, too. Of course a poor man quits being poor when he dies, but that is not a thing to lament.” Chaze’s gift with words, combined with a plot that moves quickly toward its brutal, startling conclusion, makes Black Wings Has My Angel a trip worth taking for anybody with a taste for the darker side of crime fiction."
"Have you spent most of this election cycle trying to ignore it? We don’t blame you. But with primary voting now well under way, it might be time. NPR’s campaign reporters have spent months on the trail listening to and analyzing the candidates’ movements, speeches and policy. But you don’t need months, because three of those reporters  —   Tamara Keith, Don Gonyea and Sarah McCammon  —   have distilled what you need to know to just 100 words and 60 seconds. Click above or read  —   and listen  —   on: Dr. Ben Carson is a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon who performed historic surgery separating conjoined twins. Carson runs on that resume  —   an outsider who can pull together smart people to solve difficult problems. He rose in politics after criticizing President Obama’s policies in a 2013 speech, with Obama two seats away. Carson’s   manner and Christian faith won him the admiration of many evangelicals. He rose as a prime challenger to Donald Trump in the fall and fell back when his lack of foreign policy experience became a vulnerability. Some advisers were quoted expressing concern about his mastery of the subject.  —   NPR’s Sarah McCammon,  Ted Cruz is known for fiery rhetoric in the U. S. Senate and on the campaign trail. He is famously unpopular in Washington, but that’s an asset this year, helping to boost Cruz to the top of the race. The Texan, born in Canada, campaigns as an outsider taking on Washington from the inside. Cruz claimed the mantle of religious liberty, and his evangelical following has been a source of strong fundraising and ground organization  —   especially in Iowa. Cruz’s hawkish foreign policy message often focuses on a strong rebuke of President Obama for avoiding the phrase ”radical Islamic terrorism.”  —   NPR’s Sarah McCammon,  Ohio Gov. John Kasich can be brusque with voters and reporters, but he’s very popular at home. He has overseen Ohio’s economic recovery, pledging to bring job growth nationwide with reduced regulations and taxes. Kasich was the House budget chair in the   and talks of balancing the federal budget with Bill Clinton. An establishment Republican, he has aggressively criticized Donald Trump. Kasich frequently notes that no Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, a place where he has always won. But Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare and support of Common Core education standards as governor are nonstarters with conservatives.  —   NPR’s Don Gonyea,  Marco Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants and the youngest candidate. He was elected to the Senate from Florida as a Tea Party favorite in 2010. He talks about building a 21st century economy to compete with China and aggressively argues that President Obama has been weak in fighting ISIS. A favorite of establishment Republicans for his potential to compete with Hillary Clinton, Rubio often promises to repeal Obama’s executive orders and enforce the nation’s immigration laws. But his role in crafting a 2013 immigration bill that included a path to citizenship is unacceptable to many conservatives.  —   NPR’s Sarah McCammon,  Billionaire businessman Donald Trump’s brand includes reality TV (The Apprentice, Miss Universe) and books (The Art of the Deal). He mixes bluntness with unapologetic bravado. After toying with a run for years, he now promises to ”Make America Great Again.” He’s the   nonpolitician since Eisenhower to seek the GOP nomination. A surprisingly skillful campaigner who ignores political decorum, Trump’s rhetoric on immigration (”deport them all”) and terrorism (”bomb the s*** out of” ISIS and ban Muslims from entering the U. S.) draws fierce criticism while channeling the anger of his backers. It makes for a formidable, unpredictable candidate.  —   NPR’s Don Gonyea,  A former secretary of state, New York senator and first lady, Hillary Clinton has been a polarizing figure since she entered the national stage in 1991. Supporters praise her experience, intelligence and longtime focus on women and girls detractors question her accomplishments and exclusive use of a private email server for official business. Also, #Benghazi. Clinton ran for president in 2008, losing to Barack Obama in the primary. She went on to join Obama’s administration and was in the situation room during the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. Clinton is a policy wonk who says her campaign will focus on fighting for   families.  —   NPR’s Tamara Keith,  Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says he is leading a   political revolution funded with   donations. His supporters say they #feelthebern. A   democratic socialist, Sanders made his name over 40 years in public life with a speech penned on a yellow legal pad about income inequality, the billionaire class and health care access. As Burlington mayor from 1981 to 1989, he prided himself on keeping streets  . In the U. S. House, and later the Senate, Sanders has advocated breaking up big banks, providing Medicare for all and free public college. Critics say Sanders’ agenda would be impractical and prohibitively expensive.  —   NPR’s Tamara Keith,  Jeb Bush would be the third member of his family to become president. That helps with organization and fundraising, but can be a burden given George W. Bush’s legacy in Iraq and the 2008 economic crisis. It all makes him the classic ”establishment Republican” just as ”outsiders” are suddenly surging. Bush stresses his decades in private business and two terms as Florida governor, featuring job growth, tax cuts and education reforms. He highlights his conservative record as a governor who could get things done, but Bush’s support for immigration reform and Common Core education standards is loathed by conservative activists.  —   NPR’s Don Gonyea,  Chris Christie,   in the blue state of New Jersey, boasts that as governor he has been accountable for results. He took on teachers unions and starred in YouTube videos of his combative town halls. An    success story was beset by scandal. Traffic lanes on a bridge into New York were closed in an apparent act of retaliation against a local mayor. Christie wasn’t implicated, but his presidential cachet was tarnished. Christie promises to provide strong, decisive leadership that he says President Obama lacks. A contender in New Hampshire, Christie is seen by many conservatives as too moderate.  —   NPR’s Don Gonyea,  Former   CEO Carly Fiorina is the only woman running for the Republican nomination. She has been casting herself as a conservative alternative to Democrat Hillary Clinton, often drawing applause for telling audiences how much she’d love to debate Clinton. Fiorina is running as an experienced business leader who will take on Washington from the outside. She presents herself as hawkish on foreign policy and talks about meeting many world leaders during her time in the business world. Her record at HP has drawn scrutiny, particularly the tens of thousands of layoffs that occurred on her watch.  —  NPR’s Sarah McCammon,  Mike Huckabee is the    politician to come from tiny Hope, Ark. That’s hardly faint praise considering that the titleholder is Bill Clinton. Huckabee’s resume is as impressive as it is unusual: radio DJ (at age 14) Baptist preacher, lieutenant governor and governor of Arkansas, rock ’n’ roll musician,   author, presidential candidate, 2008 Iowa caucus winner, syndicated radio talk show host and anchor of Fox News program Huckabee. Now 60 years old and making his second presidential run, Huckabee mixes economic populism that often breaks with GOP orthodoxy and with conservative Christian views on social issues.  —   NPR’s Don Gonyea,  Like many in 2016, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul runs against Washington. Paul advocates shrinking the federal government and says his career as an ophthalmologist shows he’s not a career politician. He hoped to unite the libertarian wing of the GOP with other factions and build on the success of his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul. But Paul upset many libertarians by supporting increases in military spending as a senator. On the other hand, his foreign policy is also out of step with many GOP voters in the age of ISIS. He’s had to shake the label of isolationist.  —   NPR’s Sarah McCammon,  Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum likes being the underdog. In 2012, a late surge gave him a victory in Iowa, making him a contender against Mitt Romney. So he can say he fought the GOP establishment, despite a long career in Washington. A strong social conservative, Santorum’s   economic pitch calls for protecting U. S. manufacturing. Santorum often cites his Italian immigrant father as having come to the U. S. ”the right way” while railing against illegal immigration. He claims the strongest foreign policy credentials in the race from his time in the Senate, urging a fight against ”radical Islam.”  —   NPR’s Don Gonyea, Former   Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has struggled to gain traction with voters. His pitch focuses on his relative youth, progressive policy positions and long record of executive experience. O’Malley was mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007, instituting    policies some see as the root of today’s problematic relationship between the city’s residents and police. O’Malley is proudly   and plays guitar (often in a sleeveless  ) with a folk rock band. In   shirtsleeves at   events, O’Malley hopes to replicate the surprise 1984 surge of his old boss Gary Hart in New Hampshire.  —   NPR’s Tamara Keith, NPR’s Will Huntsberry contributed to this report."
"Michael Oreskes joined NPR as its head of news at the end of April 2015. Since then, he has overseen extensive changes on air, as well as behind the scenes in the newsroom. He has also given a   to NPR’s previously stuttering collaboration efforts with local member stations, and led the newsroom during a number of major news events, including the Charleston church shooting, the Supreme Court’s ruling on   marriage, the European refugee and migrant crisis, the Paris attacks and the San Bernardino shooting. It’s been a big year for NPR, as well as in the news. Election campaigning is also well underway, and before the frenzy kicks off for good I asked Oreskes to talk about some of the changes at NPR, as well as NPR’s priorities for the year ahead. On Monday, Jan. 25, Oreskes said Morning Edition listeners will hear the pilot for what may become a regular   feature on NPR. Collaborating with local member stations, NPR wants to create what he is calling a ”national conversation” examining what is behind the anxiety and anger that so many voters are expressing during this election cycle. The experiment will launch with a story by political correspondent Mara Liasson. Afterward, more than two dozen stations so far have signed on to carry the conversation forward on their local news and talk programs over the week. On the following Friday, Jan. 29, Morning Edition will circle back with another news story that incorporates some of the responses generated at the member stations. PBS NewsHour, which is sharing some election content with NPR this year, will also broadcast a story on the topic next week. The project unites what Oreskes called NPR’s   domestic story for the coming year (the election,  ) with his own biggest priority for NPR: forging a closer reporting bond with member stations, to ”build a really integrated news network that takes advantage of both NPR’s global reach and the deep community engagement of the member stations, and to really use that as a news organization.” NPR will likely have more election coverage this year than ever before, he said. The goal of the specific experiment ”is to see if we can use the assets of public media to create a different kind of conversation that supplements our regular news coverage,” he said, and engage with voters who see the election season as a time to set an agenda for the country, not as a horse race, a slugfest or debate ratings. Public media’s role, he said, should be to help ”people think about and talk about what the election is about.” (As an aside, Oreskes points to a couple recent stories where he feels NPR has recently successfully married the local and national resources to provide important public service journalism, including a report with Colorado Public Radio about how the Army is treating some veterans with mental health issues and the creation with KPCC of a database of recent shootings by law enforcement officers in Los Angeles County.) While Oreskes puts the election at the top of the list for NPR’s coverage priorities this year, he notes that global terrorism is close behind, as well as its domestic U. S. component. ”We clearly want to do both as well as we can,” he said. To those coverage priorities he adds the global economy and ”the slightly puzzling state of the American economy.” Climate change —  a topic I hear about from many listeners —  is high on the list too, he said, although ”it’s a harder story to cover.” On the continuum of stories about ”things that blow up” and ”stories that ooze,” he said, journalism is better suited to deal with the former ”and not as well constructed to deal with things that occur over periods of time,” such as climate change. NPR, he said, will look continue to look for ways to cover the topic ”that don’t revolve around events,” including the discussion that will inevitably take place in the presidential race. I asked Oreskes to talk about some of the   changes at NPR that have prompted many listener emails, including a number complaining that NPR content is becoming frothier. Oreskes rejects the premise that there has been a shift in the content: ”We certainly have not adopted a conscious strategy to be less substantial. We think that respect for our audience is actually a central component of what we are,” he said. My guess is that listeners are reacting, at least in part, to changes NPR made in late 2014 to its internal newsmagazine clocks that govern when the breaks happen, including for music, newscasts, underwriting credits and local news. The changes —  most notably having Morning Edition newscasts at 20 and 40 minutes past the hour instead of on the   —  give the shows a faster feel. Oreskes said, ”I don’t believe that length is always a direct indicator of depth. Sometimes a story can be perfectly well told in     minutes. Not every story needs to be 15 minutes long. And I do think we are consciously trying to be more aware of the proper length of something.” If NPR is making things ”too light,” by adding in more stories of different lengths, he said, ”We need to go back and look at that.” My office also hears from a good number of listeners who believe NPR has made a conscious decision in recent months to focus on race, ethnicity and gender —  and these listeners are not necessarily happy about it. That focus is indeed a reality, driven in part by the news cycle but also because NPR, which has a number of journalists deeply immersed in the topic, is making it a priority. ”It’s not just that the specific news events are driving it although there have been quite a number of them in the last year,” Oreskes said. ”It’s the intersection of the news events and our belief that the changing nature of the American population, the clear problem of violence and police and communities of color these are real issues and we think they are important to put a focus on.” That will continue during the upcoming election coverage, he said, as the country’s changing demographics drive the conversation. Finally, Oreskes addressed what has been a hot topic in the public media world: whether NPR is moving quickly enough to embrace the digital reality. NPR One, a mobile app that users can personalize, will be a high priority in the coming year, he said, with one big move just announced: NPR has hired Tamar Charney, from Michigan Radio, to push forward the integration of more local content. It may sound like inside NPR baseball, but that’s important because of the tension in recent years between NPR and its local stations, which have expressed concerns that digital listeners would lose that local connection. Integrating the local news into NPR One, Oreskes said, means that, ”If you love public radio and you love your local station but you don’t want to listen on a radio anymore, you want to listen on your phone, you’ve got a solution. It holds the network together while moving into the digital age.” I’ll have more on NPR One in an upcoming column. The growth of digital —  in particular the recent explosion in both commercial and   podcasting —  has led to a fair amount of angst in journalism circles about whether there is a public radio ”brain drain.” Oreskes’ take? ”Welcome to the real world. NPR is in an extremely competitive environment. People skilled in audio, people strong in journalism, people talented at storytelling: They are all in great demand. That’s a new experience for NPR,” he said, adding, ”Once we get used to it and learn how to let it energize us, it’s a good thing. Not everybody should stay in a place for their whole lives. I’m always sorry to see good people leave but we’re not going to hang on to every single good person. We’re going to lose some good people and hire some other good people.” He also pushed back at the notion that podcasting is somehow eclipsing more traditional radio. ”Producing a two hour radio magazine show is very hard work” and the weekly and weekend versions of Morning Edition and All Things Considered ”still have huge audiences. They are still very important in terms of the public conversation,” he said, adding, ”and yet, I think, to some people and maybe particularly to some of our younger people, they feel   so they’d much rather be making a podcast.” NPR needs to be in both worlds, he said (and is, in fact, experimenting with a slew of new podcasts). Part of the agenda in the coming year, he added, is to take what NPR is learning from podcasting back to its newsmagazines. Listeners are already hearing that with some of the newer newsmagazine hosts such as Ari Shapiro, Kelly McEvers and Rachel Martin, who ”are less formal than some previous hosts,” he said. ”It’s clear that younger audiences are more comfortable with something conversational,” he added. While NPR is ”not looking to make anyone uncomfortable,” he said, ”We’re trying to find the right mix of things.” These are big challenges: balancing the imperatives of ” ” journalism and the rapid advances in technology and figuring out how to satisfy listeners who have been with NPR since the beginning and those who are looking for a less traditional style. NPR does not always get it right, but I have been impressed, so far, with Oreskes’ willingness to try new things, while keeping journalistic values at the forefront."
"When John Peel died in October 2004 at age 65, the British radio host was known as one of the most voracious listeners in the world. But it was hard to know him well in the U. S. Tapes of his BBC broadcasts made their way to collectors hooked on his crisp, wry, delighted intros and outros and his boundless enthusiasm for all kinds of music. Peel’s role in boosting young talents that became global superstars  —   the short list includes Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Marc Bolan, Joy Division, New Order, The Jam, The Smiths, Nirvana and The White Stripes  —   gave him a certain instant iconic tinge as well, and fans of bands like Wire and Gang of Four often preferred the raw, quick recordings they did for Peel’s show to the studio versions. But tracking his impact in    terms has been much more     for a Yank. That’s why David Cavanagh’s Good Night and Good Riddance is a gift. A history of Peel’s career as a BBC Radio 1 DJ through the lens of 265 shows he hosted between 1967 and 2003, the book’s format allows Cavanagh  —   the author of My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For the Prize, an enormous history of Creation Records, the U. K. label that brought us Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and Oasis  —   to be encyclopedic and marginal in the same entry, and it gives the book an enormous speed that belies its size (over 600 pages). It functions not only as the story of one DJ’s amazing career, but that of the   but   sensibility Peel epitomized. Though he began his BBC career playing   rock  —   like the   freeform U. S. stations taking root around the time he began broadcasting on U. K. pirate radio  —   by the early eighties he was, Cavanagh writes, ”the acknowledged champion of all new music” for whom ”genre juxtaposition was a prerequisite, a sine qua non and a     imperative. You like [Merseyside absurdists] Half Man Half Biscuit? Then here’s some Goa trance. You collect singles on the [twee  ] Sarah label? Then you’re sure to love these fiddle players from Alabama.” This is the part of Peel’s history, and appeal, that largely eludes Americans  —   as does Peel generally. He’d long been a cult favorite of anglophiles and punk fans, thanks in large part to the Peel Sessions  —     BBC studio tapings made by a plethora of bands for broadcast on his show, recordings of which regularly traded hands prior to 1991, the year the U. K. label Strange Fruit began issuing official EPs and albums of the   sessions by The Smiths, New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure, for starters. The same year another of Peel’s pet sounds broke through,   and unexpectedly, in the U. S. By June 1989, Cavanagh writes, ”There are nights when a soldier listening to John Peel’s Music on BFBS [British Forces Broadcasting Service] is as   about the Seattle sound as any reader of the weekly music papers.” After Nevermind’s September 1991 release, grunge was no longer a specialist style. But Peel’s early championing boosted his visibility Stateside in 1993, he gamely hosted a   U. S. syndicated   show, Peel Out in the States, whose   episodes can be found in better   bins, two   per disc. While acknowledging that Peel would be playing ”alternative music such as grindcore, acid house, rap, and world music,” a Billboard story about the show’s launch emphasized his connection with ”alternative” in the U. S. marketing sense  —   not to mention demonstrating the American information gap about Peel by referring to his BBC show as Top Gear, a title he’d abandoned in 1975. Peel Out lasted only a year  —   as Cavanagh notes, there was something halfhearted about it. Even though Peel had formed much of his initial style in the States, Americans didn’t figure into his thinking as a broadcaster. He was English to his whiskers that’s what people liked about him, there and here. Not to mention that ”alternative” as a marketing term was beginning to become formularized. Peel was too adventurous for a format growing ever more rigid, even at only thirty minutes a week. Peel began his career in America, by accident. The son of a   cotton dealer, he was born John Ravenscroft, and in 1960, at twenty years old, his father sent him to the U. S. to learn the family trade. Instead, John   between fruitless jobs until he offered a Dallas radio DJ some rare records to play on his blues show. Playing on his Liverpool background, Peel fibbed that he knew The Beatles soon he was hosting his own programs, first in Texas, then Oklahoma. By   Peel was in California, managing rock bands as well as hosting a radio show, as well as meeting The Byrds, whose thrusting ambition and snide demeanor put him off American rock    on the whole. When Peel returned to England in early 1967, his Top 40 training put him in good position to join the U. K. pirate Radio London, which broadcast from an offshore ship and operated on the same       principle. (The Who Sell Out, from that year, is a direct tribute.) But Peel was ahead of the game: His   show, The Perfumed Garden, was more along the lines of the emerging American freeform FM style, full of stoned raps and entire album sides. By 1968, Radio London was shut down by authorities and Peel, among other pirate DJs, was brought onto the BBC’s new pop station, Radio 1, where he began hosting Top Gear. This is when the Peel Sessions began. Back then, the BBC had a limit on how much airtime could be given to commercially released music, so bands would come into the studio and lay down a handful of tracks in a short time, generally three or four hours. The sessions allowed Peel to spotlight    acts before they signed label deals. One was David Bowie, who testified for Peel’s appearance on This Is Your Life: ”I remember around 1965 I did an audition for the BBC and I failed, and the report said, ’This vocalist is devoid of personality and sings all the wrong notes.’ So in your inimitable manner and with tremendous enthusiasm you got me back on for another audition, which I passed the second time around, which gave me freewheeling access to a lifetime of singing all the wrong notes.” For his first decade at the BBC, Peel more or less toed the rock and roll party line  —   though he had little taste for arena   like Yes and ELP (loved Genesis, though) and in an early sign of his taste for terminal novelty he programmed lots of Sha Na Na’s godawful   shtick, he gave most of the era’s   dinosaurs ample airtime. One week in   yielded playlists that included Elvin Bishop, Peter Frampton, Steve Miller and Eagles. But Cavanagh also notes signs of restlessness. As time went on, Peel played more and more fifties and sixties sides, and in 1972, he immediately began airing tracks from Lenny Kaye’s epochal   compilation Nuggets, complaining a year later, writes Cavanagh, ”of ’the hideous people’ who are ’busy working on their fifth and sixth LPs’ oblivious to the fact that they should have vacated the stage after their first or second.” So Peel was right there and ready for punk rock  —   jumping on the first Ramones album, inviting several of the early U. K. punk bands to record sessions (not The Clash or Sex Pistols, alas a selection can be heard on EMI’s superb 2011   Movement: BBC Radio 1 Peel Sessions,  ) and declaring The Undertones’ 1978 ”Teenage Kicks”  —   a song the Irish band first recorded at a Peel Session  —   the greatest record ever made. Moreover, the punk insurgency led to scads of DIY activity that, in turn, made Peel recalibrate his programming. He began airing new bands’ demos  —   The Undertones’ had been one of the first  —   and by the summer of 1979 had a shelf of 1, 500     tapes. As Ken Garner, author of the book The Peel Sessions, put it: ”[T]he Peel Sessions of   permanently changed bands’ perspective on worthwhile musical ambitions. From now on, a Peel Session became as much a career ambition in itself as a means to advancement.” Many of these came from bands in small towns by late 1978, Cavanagh writes, Peel had the power to ”spark an entire regional scene merely by playing one song.” This approach couldn’t have been further from typical American rock radio of the period, which was mired in torpor, with AOR stations growing increasingly narrower in scope: ”Heartland rockers” like Boston and Journey, stuff the British largely made fun of, was the staple diet, while punk or new wave, aside from Blondie or The Pretenders, was ignored. In 1983, the program director for   New York City’s biggest FM rock station in the 1970s, explained   that three years earlier, ”something called new wave began to happen.” Peel would have had a good chuckle at that one  —   and gasped when the PD admitted that until recently, the average year of release for a track on the station’s playlist was 1971. Peel had many affinities with punk music, but he differed sharply from punk orthodoxy  —   he loved bands like The Motors, who were, writes Cavanagh, ”seen by some critics as uninvited guests at the 1977 party, more of a     band than a true punk one . .. Peel is largely unaffected by any concerns of hipness, though he’s usually conscious of the latest trends.” Not to mention well ahead of them: In March 1980, he played The Cure’s ”A Forest,” which ”graduate[d] with honors” to Top of the Pops,  ’s weekly chart show, a month later. Punk loosened Peel’s relationship with not just rock but also with all music outside the mainstream. By early 1982, writes Cavanagh, Peel’s shows began to ”have an urgent wanderlust, jetting off from Britain (which has been his primary focus for the last four years) to different parts of America, to Africa, to Australia and New Zealand, to West Germany, Belgium and Holland. Peel is no longer a   DJ, unless you accept that ’ ’ is a temporal term, not a musical one, and includes anything new happening in any part of the globe.” That spirit led Peel to expect a similarly widescreen appreciation from his listeners  —   and to his   irritation when they didn’t, which was most of the time. Nowhere was this more manifest than Peel’s annual Festive 50, for which listeners sent the DJ postcards with their three favorite songs of the year. Peel found the 1991 edition so dispiritingly predictable (number one was Nirvana’s ”Smells Like Teen Spirit”) that he refused to air it, finally playing one track per week in 1993. Such context flew right by Americans who knew him more from his   legend than his everything   current playlists. And as Cavanagh points out, Peel’s bellyaching over his listeners’ predilection for   guitar bands came in large part from Peel’s own relentless programming of them. His two favorite bands were The Fall and the Wedding Present. Peel championed The Smiths so early and ardently (he’d played the session version of ”This Charming Man” three time before the commercial recording was issued) that he became central to the band’s narrative. In 2000, while at a Holland music festival, he purchased a White Stripes LP on a hunch  —   ”I just liked the look of it,” he would later explain  —   and became their loudest early champion, eventually cultivating a friendship with Jack White. Peel’s plaintive, don’     quality and his insistence that appreciating indie guitar rock meant more in concert with African music,   (Peel was as likely to play something from Def Jam in the late eighties as he was Sub Pop) and the plethora of   dance styles, would eventually make him the BBC’s beloved    hosting the family show Home Truths starting in 1998 and staying   until his death. This makes the week Peel filled in for afternoon host Jakki Brambles in April 1993 the most telling, and painful,   of Cavanagh’s book. Peel’s loose, unformatted style contrasted sharply with his surroundings and the daytime listenership: ”Peel’s album chart countdown (’At number 5, Unplugged, Eric Clapton  —   if only’) risks riling people who don’t see Clapton as a villain, and his comment about throwing a Chris Isaak CD across the studio . .. will simply bewilder pop fans who don’t understand why a man they don’t know is getting so wound up about music.” Maybe it was, however well hidden, a sense of propriety. Cavanagh makes a strong case that Peel’s impact is so widespread that modern pop would be impossible without him."
"It was a tale of two defenses  —   and two very divergent outcomes  —   in the NFL’s conference championship games Sunday. In the NFC, the Carolina Panthers stormed their way to a commanding victory over the Arizona Cardinals. Earlier in the day, in the AFC, the Denver Broncos narrowly survived a   push from the New England Patriots to emerge with a win. The victories mean conference titles for the Panthers and the Broncos  —   and, more importantly, a trip to the Super Bowl for both teams. For the Panthers, who were playing at home in Charlotte, that win was never in doubt. By the end of the first quarter, Carolina had piled on a   lead, and the team’s   defense kept feeding quarterback Cam Newton the ball. Newton, for his part, converted those opportunities into four touchdowns  —   two through the air and two rushing scores. Along the way, Newton set a Panthers postseason record for passing yards. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that ESPN’s David Newton reported chants of ”MVP” from the Panthers’ hometown crowd. The Panthers claimed a   victory at game’s end, but the win was all but assured well before that. In Denver, where the Broncos eked out a   win over the defending champion Patriots, the course of the game was a far different story. The AFC championship game had been billed as a clash of the titans, the renewal of a rivalry between the Broncos’ Peyton Manning and the Patriots’ Tom Brady. It was the fourth time the quarterbacks faced off in a conference championship game  —   more than any other quarterback   in NFL history, according to ESPN. But in the end, the game was less about the future Hall of Famers under center, and more about one dominating defense. Before the fireworks even got started, the Broncos were ready with the cold water. The squad harried Brady early and often, sacking him twice and intercepting him twice in the first half alone. Then, as time wound down, the team survived a last gasp from the Patriots. Brady led a final drive, completing a touchdown pass to tight end Rob Gronkowski with just 12 seconds left to play  —   but the Patriots didn’t manage the   conversion necessary to tie it and put the game into overtime. The Broncos’ defensive performance  —   coupled with a big play or two from running back C. J. Anderson  —   meant Manning didn’t have to do too much more than steer the ship. And he did so ably, avoiding turnovers and tossing two touchdown passes. The rest of Denver’s points came from the leg of kicker Brandon McManus, who kicked two field goals. The Denver Broncos will play the Carolina Panthers in the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Calif. on Feb. 7."
"Shovelful by shovelful, snowplow by snowplow, the East Coast is digging its way out from underneath an enormous winter storm that blanketed much of the region with up to 3 feet of snow. And as high winds and 36 hours of snow give way to clear skies and sunshine, some people are taking to the wintry landscape with glee. More and more streets are becoming passable, as snow crews clear the roads  —   although authorities in many regions still urge caution from drivers. New York City’s transportation systems are back up and running, for the most part, and a citywide travel ban was lifted at 7 a. m. on Sunday. Broadway shows have resumed. The New York Stock Exchange plans to open on Monday as normal. Still, the effects of the storm are far from finished. Flights are still being canceled, with the impact stretching into Monday, and some local governments and schools are planning to stay shut one extra day. Some legislators, meanwhile, are getting a whole week off. The U. S. House of Representatives  —   which has been adjourned for more than a week, and was due to take up votes again on Tuesday  —   has canceled votes until Feb. 1 because of the weather, Reuters reports. The storm had many serious consequences  —   from impaired travel to casualties to the    cost of coastal flooding. But it also brought delight: not just to the National Zoo’s giant panda but to snow lovers across the region. The fun started even before the snow stopped  —   whether it was a pickup game of snow football with D. C. police . .. . ..   kids burning off their cabin fever with some (now legal!) sledding on Capitol Hill . .. . .. Casey Neistat defying the travel ban in New York City to chase some thrills on a snowboard (with another surprising police appearance) . .. . .. or a kayak zooming down a road in West Virginia. This volume of snow is rare for most of the millions of people affected by this storm. That it arrived on a weekend  —   when even people who don’t normally get snow days can enjoy it  —   is an added perk. And since the sun came out, the occasion has been marked with snowball fights, skiing and sledding up and down the coast."
"A massive snowstorm that affected most of the East Coast finally ended Sunday morning, leaving in its wake   feet of snow over major cities, at least 18   casualties and severe coastal flooding. While the snow has stopped, the weather warnings continue. High winds will create blowing and drifting snow in some areas, the National Weather Service warns. And while New York City lifted a   travel ban on Sunday morning, many authorities are asking citizens to refrain from driving for another day as efforts to clear off the roads continue. The snowfall totals were striking, setting records in some jurisdictions. At the D. C. National Zoo, 22 inches of snow fell at JFK airport in New York City, 30 inches in the western suburbs of D. C. 36 inches were recorded in Shepherdstown, W. V. more than 40 inches. The 26. 8 inches recorded in New York’s Central Park is the   total ever recorded  —   falling short of the record by just 0. 1 inches, CBS reports. Farther south, the storm’s greatest impact wasn’t in inches of snowfall but   of ice. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power as ice and high winds combined to rip down power lines, and many roads were made perilous by the icy conditions. At least 29 deaths have been attributed to the storm by the Associated Press, including a Kentucky transportation worker who died while plowing highways, a teenager who was hit by a truck while sledding behind an   vehicle and two people who died of hypothermia in Virginia. Most of the deaths were from car crashes on snowy or icy roads. Four were caused by overexertion while shoveling snow. If you or someone you know is shoveling snow on Sunday, the National Safety Council has some tips on how to do so safely, including taking it slow and pushing, not lifting, the snow. Moving snow is serious physical exertion and people who don’t do it frequently  —   no matter how healthy they are  —   can easily overexert themselves, the NSC says. ”A clear driveway is not worth your life,” they note. In addition to bringing large volumes of snow, the storm raised floodwaters along the coast. Roads have been closed and some areas have been evacuated, the Associated Press reports. The National Weather Service had warned that the storm surge accompanying the snowstorm could be extremely damaging. Officials from North Carolina to New York are concerned about the impact of the floods, the AP reports: ”In Delaware, flooding closed a popular route to the state’s beaches and forced about a dozen people to leave the   community of Oak Orchard. In Ocean City, Maryland, Delmarva Power cut electricity to hundreds of customers as storm surge flooding submerged equipment used to power the downtown area.” In some areas, the flooding has risen even higher than it did during Hurricane Sandy three years ago, Reuters reports. Record flooding has been recorded along the Jersey Shore and Delaware Coast, according to an NWS meteorologist."
"Tracing your genealogy has become a popular hobby in the United States. More than 1 million people around the country have taken these tests. Shows like PBS’s Finding Your Roots have shown the public how much information you can find out about your family tree with a simple DNA test. It might be surprising that genetic sleuthing has become part of pop culture, but it probably isn’t so shocking that this has become particularly important to one demographic.   of all different backgrounds were intentionally divorced from their ancestral stories by the slave trade and all that followed. Author and Columbia sociology professor Alondra Nelson’s new book The Social Life Of DNA looks at the interest in genetic ancestry tracing from the   community. In an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin, Nelson considers how this technology is changing the way many   see themselves and their place in the American story. Interview highlights below contain some   answers. Click the audio link above to hear the whole interview.  On  ’ skepticism of medical testing, How does a community that had really been the object of scientific and medical scrutiny for generations  —   with really negative outcomes  —   come to see science and technology as a positive thing, or something that can be used for   and liberation? That was a question for me as well. And what I discovered over the course of this decade of research is that people find the stakes are really high, but they also find that the benefits are really high for communities. . .. Many people talk to me about living their whole lives wanting to know who they were, in the sense of who they were before the slave trade, who they were with regards to African ancestry. And to have this as a prevailing question for your whole life means that if you can find something that might help you answer that question, that it might be worth making the leap, despite that history. On using the DNA technology for those seeking reparations for slavery, This is a moment where genetic technology is being used for an endeavor that many   had tried to accomplish for decades and generations: reparations. And they’re using genetic technology which has not always historically been a friend to black communities if we think about the legacy of eugenics for example. And they’re using this to try to get freedom and restitution for black people. So it’s an interesting case in that it’s  —   to the best that I could discern  —   it’s the first time that genetic ancestry testing is introduced in a civil case. . .. It continues the long drumbeat for reparations in American society by generations of people  —   a drumbeat that comes again in 2014 with the publication of   Coates essay in The Atlantic. And because genetics is thought here to pose a new answer to a very old and longstanding question in black political culture. On her own test results, Part of what I learned in the course of doing the research is that I am an outlier in this regard. Many of the people I spoke to  —   whether they were 25 or 65, had lived their whole lives wanting to know where in Africa their ancestors were from. . .. I was well aware of the ritual and performance of the reveal. So I thought to myself if I’m gonna do this I’m gonna do it in a big public way  —   in a reveal. . .. When the chief science officer of the African Ancestry Company announced my results as being an inference to the Bamileke people at Cameroon, things just sort of went from there. I didn’t have to perform so much because everyone was just so happy and enthused about the results for me. It was a very emotional experience. How she felt when learning about her heritage, I had no idea what the result was going to be. I found it informative and interesting. So it was a bit surreal, and it was fun. But it was actually more meaningful to my mother, who right away  —   like so many of the people that I interviewed in my book  —   within I would say, within a couple of weeks my mother calls and says ”I met a lady from Cameroon at church and she’s Bamileke,” and then she was at the dinner table  —   this was a few years ago. And this past Thanksgiving she was at our table with her husband and her son, she’s part of our family now. On the future of genetic testing  The industry is continuing to grow, it shows no signs of stemming. I think this will continue to happen as people will continue to make meaning and stories and relationships and new connections out of the evidence. I think that that space that you describe as on the one hand being knowledgeable about the technology or science at times being the enemy of black communities. On the other hand, being a friend. So friend or foe. I think that’s actually not a bad place to be. I think that’s our contemporary modern condition for all of us. You see it with the Black Lives Matter movement. The very technology that’s used to surveil young activists, has also been turned against police authorities and the state to advance that political agenda. So we’re living in a moment that is the social life of DNA and is the social life of technology. It’s very much the driver of who we are and what we do. I think having that critical, nuanced perspective that maybe we could say is particular to or comes out or has a particular inspiration in the experiences of black people who come to often science and technology with this critical perspective, is I think not a bad place to be in this historical moment."
"On Friday, Puerto Rico suffered the latest setback in the island’s ongoing debt crisis. Talks on restructuring the nearly $9 billion debt of its power company, a   utility, reached an impasse. While the utility, PREPA, said Sunday that it had reached a forbearance agreement with lenders, negotiations on its debt restructuring still have not reached a resolution since the last deal expired Friday night. Power company officials have warned that failure to make payments on that debt could lead to delays in fuel shipments and blackouts across the island, which is home to more than 3 million people. It’s just one financial problem of many for the U. S. territory, where government agencies have amassed a debt of $72 billion. ”This financial crisis is just an expression of a deeper crisis, which is the collapse of the economic structure,” says Rosario Rivera, an economist and professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey. Rivera tells NPR’s Michel Martin that the island has been in a recession since 2006. Puerto Rico’s Constitution requires the government to present a balanced budget at the end of every fiscal year. But reports indicate that the island has masked the problem in the past by using loans to balance the budget. Rivera says deficits could be covered by raising taxes, cutting spending or issuing debt. ”What has been happening for the past maybe 20 years is that we have been covering those deficits strictly with debt,” she says. ”And it just hits us in the face that all the debt we have accumulated is bigger than our capacity to raise taxes.” In December, the government made headlines by spending $120 million to pay Christmas bonuses to public employees. ”We can no longer do those things because those are politically motivated decisions,” Rivera says. ”It’s those kinds of decisions that have brought us here.” Puerto Rico’s fate is controlled by Congress, and Republicans and Democrats there have offered competing ideas on how to solve the debt crisis. Republicans generally favor having the federal government take over Puerto Rico’s finances, while Democrats want to allow the island to restructure and shed some of its debt through bankruptcy, which federal law currently prohibits. ”The scenario of bankruptcy is considered more appealing to us, because it might make us able to pay attention to the economy,” Rivera says. The other option ”would mean that we are basically not able to dictate public policy anymore.” In the meantime, the crisis has weighed heavily on Puerto Rico’s residents, Rivera says. ”It’s very difficult because the weight of the tax system is only on the shoulders of the working class. And that is a shrinking class. So it’s very hard on us.” Click the audio link above to hear the full interview."
"In recent weeks, as controversy has embroiled the Oscar nominations, one hashtag has surfaced again as a vehicle for those displeased with the lack of diversity among the academy’s selections: #OscarsSoWhite. The hashtag has gathered momentum once more online, even as criticism of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences escalated  —   to the point where, on Friday, the academy announced unprecedented changes to its membership and voting rules. The goal, according to a statement, was to ”make the Academy’s membership, its governing bodies, and its voting members significantly more diverse.” But #OscarsSoWhite isn’t simply a hashtag  —   it’s part of a broader social media movement started in 2015 by April Reign, managing editor of BroadwayBlack. com. Reign spoke with me about her reaction to the academy’s changes and what more still needs to be done to increase diversity in the film industry. The conversation was edited for length and clarity. What’s known as ”hashtag activism” has been criticized as not being enough to create change outside of the online space. Did you ever imagine #OscarsSoWhite would become what it is? There was no way for me to know that a single tweet that I made from my family room in January of 2015 would have the impact that it has. And I’m not sure that anyone ever really knows what hashtag is going to become viral until it does. The very first tweet was ”#OscarsSoWhite they asked to touch my hair,” and I was just being sort of cheeky and frustrated with what I was watching on the Oscar nominations and it just took off from there. And so there were a lot of discussions, and we saw last year that Cheryl Boone Issacs, the president of the academy, invited 300 new members to the academy in an attempt to increase its diversity, but then the nominations were announced this year, 2016, and there was no change. In fact, it may have actually gotten worse. And so the hashtag unfortunately was still very relevant and experienced a resurgence. Many creators in the digital space are unable to hold on to ownership of their creations once they go viral. Was that something that worried you at all? It happened somewhat, and I have to credit other people who are Twitter friends of mine who will take journalists and other organizations to task for saying something like ”Twitter created the hashtag”  —   or something passive like ”the hashtag was created by Twitter,” or ”it just took off”  —   without saying, well, ”Here’s the person who actually did it.” There’s a real person. It’s in my bio. It’s not very hard to track down. There were countless articles from last year and this year that named me directly or it’s easy enough to figure out who I am. There was also a question about, I’m speaking about the erasure of people of color in marginalized communities in film, and yet I am being erased because they’re not actually acknowledging the person who created the hashtag. . .. I appreciated every time someone reached out and said, ”Is it you? We want to interview you directly, because you actually started it.” But overall, it’s not about me. I don’t need the credit. What I want to see acknowledged is a change that everyone, or so many people, were asking for. So, make more diverse films, change the structure of the academy, change the way that votes are cast by academy members. That’s what’s important when all is said and done. If you remember that I had something to do with that, even better  —   but it’s not imperative. Was the announcement that the academy made on Friday on par with what you were hoping for? Were they missing anything? I think it’s a really good first step. I am very encouraged by the fact that the vote that the board of governors took was unanimous to make these changes. Some of the things that they are doing now, I specifically suggested in interviews, so I am gratified that the academy and President Cheryl Boone Isaacs were listening. Have you heard from Isaacs or anyone on the organization’s governing board? No. I would imagine that if they were going to reach out they would have done if before they decided to make the changes, but again, it’s not about me. They were able to make sweeping changes: I mean, to my knowledge, these are the first substantive changes that they’ve made to the voting structure in the over   history of the academy. They didn’t need to reach out to me. . .. I think what they’ve done will go a long way to increasing the diversity of the academy. I would like to see the academy now put the onus on Hollywood studios to make more diverse and inclusive films, to give the academy something on which they can vote that doesn’t look as homogeneous as what we currently have. On that note, what do you say to people who argue that this energy is being spent on the wrong fight, and that focus should actually be put on encouraging diversity among studio executives, production companies and writers’ rooms? I think that this is an issue that can be addressed on many fronts. There was a need for the academy to be more diverse and for them to represent the people who watch the films that they nominate and that they support. There’s also a need for Hollywood and the studio heads and those who greenlight the films to make substantial changes to their thought processes and perspectives. They need to broaden their perspectives with respect to who can play particular roles and how stories can be told effectively. I don’t know that this is a     issue and that we should have pressured Hollywood before we pressured the academy. I think this is the way that it turned out, I think the changes are a good start, but I think there is more work to be done. Director Spike Lee and actors Will Smith and Jada   have called out the Oscars in recent weeks, saying they won’t be attending, which many are calling a boycott. On the other hand, Whoopi Goldberg said on The View that refusing to tune in or not attending is a ”slap in the face” to host Chris Rock. What do you make of their stances? ”Boycott” is a word that was sort of thrust into the mix. Spike is saying that he’s not actually boycotting, they’re just not attending. Jada and Will won’t be attending. We engaged in counterprogramming last year. We tweeted Coming to America during the Oscar’s presentation and that movie was chosen very deliberately. We will be doing something on an even bigger scale this year. So, if you want to call it a boycott that’s fine that’s not really a word I’m comfortable with. What I’m saying is that if you have issues with the way the academy has been up until yesterday, if you want to see yourself, your perspective or someone else’s perspective, something different from the academy, then don’t watch on Feb. 28. Turn off your TV, express your concern and your disappointment with your dollars. Not only with your dollars at the movie theater in choosing very thoughtfully which films you will support, but also with your viewership. What we know  —   based in part on the conversations emanating from the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag last year and our   during the telecast of something other than the Oscars  —   [is] that the Oscars show had its lowest ratings of the last six years. As I say, [what] we’ll be doing this year, we’re not ready to announce just what yet, but it’ll be on an even grander scale because there’s still work to be done. I’m very gratified with the announcement that the academy made, because I think the changes they will be making are important. But that doesn’t speak to this year. So, we’re going to continue with our original plan. While some actors and filmmakers have come out in support of the call for more diversity, there have also been actors who have faced backlash for their comments about the situation. Actress Charlotte Rampling, who is nominated this year in the best actress category for her role in the film 45 Years, said in an interview on a French radio program that the uproar is ”racist against whites.” She later released a statement saying she regretted her comments. British actor Michael Caine has also spoken out, saying in an interview with BBC Radio 4 that actors of color should just ”be patient.” How do you respond to their comments? I found them very disappointing, because I think that Michael Caine is a fine actor. And to tell people of color they need to be patient when we have been for over 80 years is frustrating. You cannot say that there are not qualified film creatives both in front of and behind the screen  —   directors and cinematographers and screenwriters, in addition to actors and actresses. I found his comments disappointing, because I think that unfortunately . .. he may be expressing what perhaps some of the academy members think, as well. Change is hard, and I would hope that he will see the light and embrace opportunities for everyone, including himself. You mentioned a ”we” when talking about planning for the #OscarsSoWhite counterprogramming during this year’s ceremony. Are you talking about your followers or do you have some sort of dedicated team for the logistics? There’s no team it’s just me and people who feel like me. So, it is my followers who retweet what I say, and articles and interviews on the subject. They tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on. I definitely could not have done this alone. This happened because there are millions of people around the world who want to see films that are more representative. They spoke out and changed with me, so I am very humbled by the support I’ve recieved and the support that the hashtag got as well. Is there anything you’d like to add? I’d like to thank academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, because I know that this was not easy for her. She has been speaking out about these issues for a while, and she could not have made these changes alone. The academy is over 6, 000 members strong, and she appeared to have been very vigilant in wanting these changes made. Again, while I think there’s more that needs to be done, I appreciate her work on this issue, especially in the last couple of months."
"We’re still thinking today about that record Powerball jackpot, as the winners are still coming forward. For the record, we are not among them  —   and yes, we’ve moved on! We’re letting our dreams of being besties with Oprah go by the wayside, but that’s OK. We will be fine. Before we let the whole thing go, though, there were a couple of interesting things that got our attention. First thing: When producer Alexi Horowitz and I first went out to get some    interviews with people buying Powerball tickets, not a single white person would talk to us about what they would do if they won. Now, that could be for a lot of reasons. For one thing, there are a lot of law enforcement agencies near our D. C. office maybe everybody we approached just happened to be deep undercover  —   who knows? But the second thing we noticed was that a lot of   would talk with us. When we asked them what they would do with the money, they said very similar things. Almost to a person, they said they would help family, give to a church or charity  —   and get investment advice. Family. Community. Investment advice. It was that last item that got me thinking about a report I read recently in the New York Times by ProPublica’s Paul Kiel and Annie Waldman. It explains why, they say, if you are black, you are more likely than a white person to see your electricity cut, to be sued over a debt and to land in jail because of a small matter like a parking ticket. It’s not unreasonable that some of the difference could be discrimination, the authors said. But there is no doubt that the lack of a financial cushion is a key reason why small financial problems  —   like an unpaid parking or speeding ticket  —   are far more likely to have devastating consequences for black people than for white people. The numbers are startling: According to an analysis of a 2013 federal survey, the difference in net worth between the typical white family and typical black family was about $131, 000. And even more distressing, a different survey by Pew Charitable Trusts reported that a quarter of   families had less than $5 in reserves if they somehow liquidated all of their financial assets. Hispanics had about $200, while white people in the bottom 25 percent of income still had about $3, 000  —   which is surely not a fortune, but enough to keep you out of jail for a parking ticket. The ProPublica authors point out that this comes in an era when many localities are turning to aggressive private debt collection agencies to make people pony up. Now, how did this come about? It doesn’t seem unreasonable that   discriminatory practices  —   like redlining  —   play a role. So do housing and employment discrimination, which deprived black people of the ability to create wealth on equal terms with white people. If you’ve ever seen the classic Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, or read   Coates’ work about redlining in The Atlantic, then you know what this is about. The recent housing crisis and the recession surely have worsened the problem, and so have aggressive policing strategies that involve heavy fines for small infractions. In the Justice Department report about the conditions in Ferguson, Mo. after the riots in 2014, investigators point out that a key source of the resentment toward police lay in the fines imposed for things like ”manner of walking” and uncut grass. These fines were more likely to be imposed on black citizens, who were also more likely to have their household budgets destroyed by those unexpected expenses. And they are more likely to get locked up when they cannot pay. People who have lived this know all this  —   which may be one reason why the   we spoke with were so pressed to learn how to protect their wealth if they ever managed to get their hands on any. But I think it is also true that people who haven’t lived so close to the bone have a hard time imagining why a ticket for uncut grass or an unshoveled walkway, or for driving 10 miles over the speed limit, can be more than an inconvenience  —   and come close to a tragedy. That’s why I think our    interviews were so skewed. Winning Powerball is a fantasy for everybody. For some, it’s a fantasy about a life of luxury  —   and for others, achieving financial security is fantasy enough."
"North Carolina is one of the country’s largest poultry producers  —   and getting bigger.   chicken farms are spreading across the state. Government regulations have allowed these farms to get much closer to where people live. That’s not just a nuisance. Neighbors say it’s also a potential health hazard. Craig Watts is an industrial chicken farmer in Fairmont, N. C. He contracts with Perdue and has raised birds for more than 20 years. Still, he says sometimes it’s a struggle to meet the demands of the industry. ”They don’t have to spend   with that chicken and have to deal with its waste. I deal with it and that kind of stuff. It’s a good situation for them,” Watts says. His birds produce 700 tons of poultry waste each year, and he’s responsible for it. It’s spread in nearby fields and sold to farmers for fertilizer. Watts’ operation is one of thousands of confined animal feeding operations in the state. These   chicken farms are popping up near residential areas in western North Carolina, especially in Surry County. That worries residents Terry and Mary Marshall. ”Your throat starts to hurt  —   you know you are in it,” Terry says. ”It smells like a lot of ammonia, and sometimes, just dead rotting meat.” The waste is a combination of manure, feed and carcasses  —   which can cause harmful gas emissions. Mary says there are dust particles in the air and it can be hard to breathe. ”We had some friends over to the house,” she says, ”several people one night, and it was so bad, they had flashlights out in the front yard and you could see” the particles. Environmental groups are concerned, too. Will Scott with the Yadkin Riverkeeper says chicken farms aren’t under the same scrutiny as other industries. These   poultry operations are exempt from state odor ordinances, and federal regulators don’t monitor their air emissions. ”I think what you are seeing here is the influence of a very powerful industry over state legislatures and over the federal government,” Scott says. ”To the point where even the Environmental Protection Agency has not stepped up to regulate these facilities, despite the fact that we know they are polluting waterways across the country.” The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t see it that way. Allison Wiedeman of the EPA’s Water Permits Division says water quality regulations have been in place for years, and states can enforce additional requirements on poultry producers. ”We see that it’s working,” she says. ”We know that these facilities have to have permits if they discharge, and so all I can tell you right now is that the process is working.” Just how much waste is produced is unknown. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality says it doesn’t have a system to track these dry litter systems. Bob Ford with the North Carolina Poultry Federation says more regulation would hurt the industry, which is worth $34 billion to the state economy. He adds odor and other issues are the farmer’s responsibility, but he acknowledges companies could be more involved. ”There’s always room for improvement on anything what we do out here,” Ford says. ”Maybe we can try to use more buffer zones or tree planting to reduce the impact.” Tyson and Perdue, two major companies that contract with independent farmers, both declined interviews for this story. They did release statements that said their farmers are required to follow the law. But the laws don’t offer any protections for Terry and Mary Marshall. Mary says it’s already too late for her neighborhood. ”I have to hold myself together all of the time,” she says. ”I knew it was going to be bad, but I had no idea it was going to be this bad.” Mary is lobbying state lawmakers and says she wants future chicken farms away from residential areas, and something to control the odor and pollution, which she says will get worse in the hot North Carolina summers. Keri Brown reports for member station WFDD in   N. C."
"The latest films in the Star Wars and Hunger Games franchises were not just box office smashes. They also shared something else in common: Both tapped into a widespread debate about casting. Some fans of each of those films disputed casting decisions that put people of color into roles that weren’t originally drawn or envisioned that way  —   at least by some onlookers. In the case of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, star John Boyega responded to the criticism with a succinct reply on Instagram: ”Get used to it.” That may well be Ariell Johnson’s message, as well. Johnson opened Amalgam Comics  Coffeehouse in Philadelphia last month with the goal of presenting diverse comics, creators and characters alongside the ones people already know and love. The   comic book store owner tells NPR’s Michel Martin about why she decided to start the shop  —   and what she thinks about diversity in blockbuster casting. On why she became interested in comics, I have always liked the supernatural, superpowers, things like that. I specifically got into comics as a result of the Fox television show   that came on in the ’90s. That was a pivotal moment for me, because it had one of the main characters, Storm. That was the first time that I had seen a black woman as a leader, as a superhero, as a powerhouse. She is strong and a leader and all that. It was just really exciting for me and kind of changed the way I viewed those types of things. Even though I always enjoyed them I didn’t necessarily imagine myself a part of them. But after seeing her, I wanted to be a superhero. And so that just kind of stuck with me. On the inspiration for Amalgam Comics  Coffeehouse, What if there was a place where you could buy your comic books, but you didn’t have to leave immediately after? You could get a drink, you could sit down and just kind of hang out. Maybe get into some conversations. You know, generally in comic book stores there are always conversations happening, but the environment isn’t conducive to that. There’s usually no seating, or you’re holding your bags, or you’re standing around. It’s just not comfortable. So creating that comfortable space. On why people are responding to her business, I think the fact that I am a black woman opening up a comic book store, so I’m existing in this space that generally you don’t see people that look like me  . For me to, in a way, be in the forefront  —   you know, this is my store and I’m choosing what we have in there and making it a place where we are being proactively representative of other people. It’s not something that’s an afterthought. [It’s not like someone who says,] ”Oh yeah we should probably have a Black History Month display or something like that.” We are actively thinking, how can we be more diverse? How can we show different kinds of people in this genre? On diversity in big superhero movies, I understand why it’s done. It’s almost like I’m coming from two different angles. On one aspect, I understand why you’re doing it, I think that’s important again to have a diverse cast. If you make a movie and it’s just white men up there, that is a problem. But I think you also have to be careful, because when you do that, you’re doing a disservice to the diverse character, whatever that is, because they’re always going to be compared to their predecessor. So in addition to diversifying established names, you also have to be mindful to create new characters, so that characters of color, characters that are LGBTQ, or who are Muslim or whatever. So that they are existing in their own right, and there’s no one to compare them to, only themselves."
"The Old Vic Theatre in Bristol, England, is spending this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. And they’re doing something pretty dramatic. They’re taking a cue from their predecessors, by reviving some of the antique ways of producing sound effects for the stage. For this summer’s production of King Lear, the theater is using technology from the 18th century to create effects for rain, wind and thunder. Using   wooden wheels, wooden gutters and wooden balls, they can recreate the sounds of a thunderstorm. It starts with wind. ”It’s like a wooden wheel and a handle on the side of it,” says the theater’s artistic director, Tom Morris. ”That’s     sound technology,” Morris says. Next is rain. It ”bizarrely looks like a sort of enormous, ancient,   airplane wheel made entirely of wood,” he says. But the   is way up in the rafters, above the stage. There’s an attic space that looks like an ancient barn. A gutter system in the roof runs the length of the audience, about 25 yards across. It’s made of a single plank on all three of its sides, built from 1766 pitch pine. They call it the Thunder Run. James Molineux, the    at The Old Vic, is the man who gives the Thunder Run its rumble. He shows off a small wooden ball. ”It’s made out of beech. It’s about six inch in diameter,” Molineux says. ”And we have a   one, probably about three inch in diameter that we stagger. So we’re staggering the release of these balls down the wooden chute.” Morris describes how they get a variety of sounds. ”There are slats of wood which act as retainers for the balls. So as Jim lifts up one of the slats, the balls are released and they run down. And he can vary the shape of the sound by letting them all go at once or letting a few little ones go first, then some medium, then some big in order to create a different style of thunder.” Phil Dunster, an actor at The Old Vic, says having stagehands create these sounds helps personify the elements. ”I can talk to the person that’s up there in the attic dropping the thunder balls. And it just creates this incredible relationship with the elements and with the machines that are doing it,” he says. ”That was really special, that was a real treat.” And the final product. Here is what some of the effects would sound like with Dunster during the play. If you’re now sold on the idea of a trip to the U. K. to see all this in person, The Old Vic Theatre will mount its production of King Lear  —   complete with the Thunder Run  —   this summer."
"Let’s start on the front line of every faltering economy: the grocery store. In a Baghdad shop lined with baskets of spices and rose petal tea, owner Osama   is measuring out roasted, salted beans.  ”Is that enough?” he says to a customer. It’s not very much. The customer says he’ll actually take a bit less. And the shopkeeper complains that this is the situation now. He says he used to have 30 workers in his store and now he has only two. Business has been down for months. His customers are squeezed and worried  ”My salary was cut 10 percent,” says Alaa Aziz, a university professor. His wife, a schoolteacher, also had her salary cut. They’re just   for now, nothing drastic. But they think it’s going to get worse  —   and they’re probably right. Everything seems to be working against the Iraqi economy. The government is waging a costly war with the Islamic State while dealing with falling oil prices, millions of displaced citizens and staggering costs for reconstruction of cities ruined by fighting. Dependent On Oil, Muzher Mohammad Saleh, top economic adviser to Prime Minister Haider   says Iraq is operating under extremely difficult conditions.   ”As you know Iraq [is] under two constraints now, the constraint of war and the cost of war, and the cost of oil, because Iraq depends entirely on oil revenue,” he says.   The International Monetary Fund calls this a double shock. In 2014 Iraq lost a lot of its territory to ISIS and had to start fighting back and looking after millions of civilians driven from their homes in the north and the west of the country.   At the same time, oil prices started to fall. Oil is now going for around $30 a barrel, down from about $100 when the prices began to crash in the summer of 2014. Basically, all Iraq’s government income comes from oil.  To help pay for the war, the U. S. has offered loans to cover defense equipment, but it doesn’t cover salaries  —   either for soldiers or for the millions of Iraqis on the government payroll for jobs or pensions. About 4. 5 million workers are on the government payroll, with 3. 7 million more receiving pensions. And people have come to expect other benefits like food rations and cheap gas. Looking To The Government  Saleh, the adviser, says people are used to depending on the government.  ”This is oil country, OK. A tax holiday, free lunch, everything free  —   even the electricity for free,” he says. ”This is the mentality of the Iraqi people at this moment. Believe me, it’s very difficult to change them. We need time to educate them.” For now, the government is doing a complicated shuffle with money, essentially eating into its reserves of foreign currency just to keep paying those salaries. But Iraq will run out of savings by sometime next year at this rate.  Experts say Iraq needs reforms that would include large numbers of workers moving from the government payroll to the private sector. But Iraqis don’t see it that way.  At a recent demonstration in Baghdad, protesters chanted against corruption. They say the country’s economic problems aren’t due to low oil prices but because the political class is made up of thieves. Kadhim Faraj, a retired teacher, is asked what will happen if the government cuts salaries.  ”I think that the demonstrations will continue and the government will be in a corner very tight,” he says."
"In front of one of the colleges at Oxford University, a statue of Cecil Rhodes stands overlooking the campus. Rhodes, a South African businessman, started the De Beers diamond company and went on to become the namesake of the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. He was also a colonialist who believed in the superiority of   and he enforced a policy of racial segregation in South Africa. Now, because of that history, a growing number of students at Oxford say it’s time to take down the statue of Rhodes. ”We understood that he came and plundered the land, as many colonizers did, and that a lot of people died from what he did. And there’s a lot of structural injustice that resulted from the acts that Rhodes committed,” says Tadiwa Madenga, a student at Oxford and an organizer with the Rhodes Must Fall campaign. She tells NPR’s Rachel Martin that the campaign is working to make the school confront a history it might not otherwise. ”When I look at the statue, I know of that legacy, but I also see the way Oxford wants to imagine itself today,” Madenga says. ”It is only now that we have made them engage with this history, that they have decided that perhaps they don’t condone his actions.” On the defense of the statue voiced by Oxford Chancellor Chris Patten: ”People have to face up to facts in history which they don’t like and talk about them and debate them” We think that debating means really seriously engaging with issues of colonial legacies and taking action to make sure that the university is not institutionally racist, as opposed to just discussing over tea what our opinions are. And so [the chancellor’s] comments, to me, just show this entitlement that certain people in administration have, where if you disagree with them specifically, they feel like you should leave. On creating debate, First, I want to say that, once again, the university was not confronting this history prior to the movement. We want to say, ”What is a public space, and what are statues for?” Statues are there to commemorate and to honor particular people. We do not put up statues of people we demonize for the sake of thinking of history or just debating. And so we are saying that you can remove the statue, you can put it in a museum where you can continue to discuss and debate. But where it is, at the entrance of Oriel College, at the very highest position above kings and provosts, is just ridiculous. It is not appropriate. On her experience as a student of color, I think that it’s been shocking in terms of how much people in England really truly believe that colonization was a good thing. . .. I think part of the problem in England is that a lot of people, maybe, who haven’t traveled outside of England have not seen the consequences and the legacies of colonialism. So, for some of us students who come from southern Africa, who still know about the racial inequality from particular economic structures, find this shocking when we come to England and people are not aware of the other side of colonization. On why the movement is happening now, All movements started with different types of protests happening. So, you had the Black Lives Matter movement coming up, you had the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa. And we see these connections, and we say this is also connected to how people look at history. So, the fact that the university cares more about Rhodes being a benefactor as opposed to the lives that were lost because of his actions, shows the way that people don’t care about black lives. And I think globally there has been a movement to kind of reveal this uncritical way of looking at history and the way that this uncritical reflection of history has led to some of the situations we have now, where black people are still dying over institutional oppression."
"There’s a dietary disaster developing down under: Australia is running low on avocados. Demand for avocados has been rising in Australia, and supply is struggling to keep up. Heavy rains have interfered with the harvest in Western Australia and New Zealand, the main sources of avocados in the region at this time of year. Fires in Western Australia have only made the situation worse. As a result, supply is down. Prices have spiked. One food truck in Sydney has resorted to using frozen avocado. You might remember a few times when the threat of an avocado shortage has caused consternation in America  —   usually framed as a panic about the guacamole supply. But that’s not what’s preoccupying most Australian diners right now. The uproar over avocados is all about breakfast. Toast, to be precise. Smashed avocado on toast, a staple dish in Australian coffeeshops. You may know avotoast as a   trend in the States, but the Australian avocation for avocado toast extends beyond the   set. Many Aussies also believe their nation invented the food. A profile of the dish by The Australian first described it in glowing terms  —   as ”a glimmering heap of mashed avocado, flecked with salt and spices, atop a plank of rustic bread” and ”the emblematic food of our times”  —   then got down to the question of origin. ”You have to remember that Australia was founded as a nation by convicts, so we have this great tradition of simply claiming things as our own,” chef and television personality Curtis Stone told the newspaper. ”I’m not sure whether avocado toast is actually ours to stake claim to, but we really take it on.” Anyway, back to the crisis. An orchard owner told The Guardian he found the price of Australian avocados ”a bit embarrassing” right now  —   like avocados selling for $4. 98 (about $3. 50 in American dollars). The average price per avocado in America is about a dollar. But Russell Delroy explained the rain and fire were only worsening a deeper problem: ”He said 12 years ago, Australians ate about 1. 4kg [3. 3 lb] of the fruit per person each year, which has risen to 3. 2 kg [7 lb]. The industry was aiming to boost that to 5kg [11 lb] within the next decade, he said. ”. .. ’At the moment, we’re just not producing enough for summer demand, but a lot of planting is going on currently to prepare for the future,’ Delroy said. ”But it takes at least six years to get young trees into decent production.’ ” So true avocado stability for Australia is still years away. The current shortage should be resolved in February, when the crop out of Queensland starts to arrive. ”You’ve just got to ride the wave,” a produce wholesaler told delicious. com. au, ”Be patient and wait until the end of February.” It’s not clear how patient Australian avo fans are prepared to be. Sample responses to the shortage on social media include ”I don’t want to live anymore” and #trulytheraptureisuponus. One pop culture expert, interviewed by news. com. au, truly believes the nation can do it. ”We lived through the banana crisis and we are resilient people when it comes to cafe calamities,” Dr. Lauren Rosewarne told the site. ”We will survive but we may have to change our order.” She recommended beans on toast."
"If you had to name a state where Donald Trump’s political rise has caused the greatest disruption, New Hampshire would be a good pick. Trump has led every poll taken there since June  —   while tearing up the traditional Republican playbook for winning in New Hampshire. Trump has avoided the retail politicking that most other campaigns view as a   in favor of large rallies. He has never even spent two days back to back in the state campaigning. And then there’s Trump’s open disdain for some of the state’s traditional Republican power brokers, including the New Hampshire Union Leader, the only statewide paper   for its blistering   conservative editorials. The hostility is mutual, especially since the paper endorsed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Trump’s been a regular target in the paper’s editorial pages and branded a bully by publisher Joe McQuaid. Trump has called McQuaid a ”lowlife” and made his paper stump speech fodder during campaign stops in the state. ”The famous paper, right? You know, your little paper, the Union Leader. It’s really a dishonest paper, it’s terrible. It’s a rag,” Trump said at a recent rally in New Hampshire. ”In matters large and small about the Union Leader, he lies through his teeth,” said McQuaid. Whatever the case may be, Trump’s spat with the paper hasn’t hurt him. Polls show Trump getting approximately   of the vote in New Hampshire, far ahead of the   candidate. For Karl Zahn, a longtime watcher of New Hampshire politics who backs Trump, the whole thing  —   a Republican candidate taking the fight to the Union Leader and possibly winning, seems almost surreal. ”We were at the thing in Nashua a couple of weeks ago, and he spent 20 minutes just excoriating Joe McQuaid, and I turned to a friend of mine and said, ’Pinch me, this is like an Ambien dream I’m having here. It’s crazy,’” said Zahn. The Union Leader is just one of Trump’s   targets in New Hampshire. There’s also former Gov. John Sununu, a White House chief of staff to President George H. W. Bush, and a top adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012. He is also the patriarch of what is probably New Hampshire’s most prominent Republican family. One of Sununu’s sons was a U. S. senator, and another is running for governor. Sununu has criticized Trump in print and on television, and Trump has gleefully returned fire. ”John H. Sununu has been known  —   he was fired by Bush. He was fired like a dog. He was fired viciously, and he’s such a dumb guy that he doesn’t even know he was fired,” Trump said at a rally. During a recent appearance on Bloomberg TV, Sununu warned that nominating Trump would doom local Republicans in November. ”Here in New Hampshire, if Donald Trump is the nominee, we will not get a Republican governor. We will lose the New Hampshire state Senate, and we could lose the New Hampshire state House. It is that bad, and we could lose Sen. [Kelly] Ayotte,” said Sununu. If those Republicans running for office here share that view, they aren’t letting on. When asked about Trump, Ayotte, who’s being challenged by Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, offered a practiced response and the sense she’d rather talk about something else. ”Well, listen. I mean, I think it’s a favorite question of the press to ask all of us what we think about Trump. I plan to support our Republican nominee, but I think there’s a long way to go until that decision is made,” said Ayotte. Chris Sununu, the Sununu hoping to be governor, claims he’s not paying attention to his father’s spat with Donald Trump or what Trump’s style of politics might mean for Republicans  . ”Donald Trump, as far as I’m concerned, is just another candidate. I don’t worry about it too much because I try to control the things I can control,” said Sununu."
"With less than two weeks to go until the Iowa caucus, Donald Trump remains characteristically confident about his chances. In fact, the Republican   is so confident, he says his supporters would stay loyal even if he happened to commit a capital offense. ”I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. ”It’s, like, incredible.” The businessman, whose Trump Tower stands on the major Manhattan thoroughfare, cracked the joke Saturday to a receptive audience at the Christian college. Reached by CNN immediately after the event, Trump declined to clarify the statement. On Twitter, he remarked on the rally, saying, ”Just left Sioux Center, Iowa. My speech was very well received. Truly great people! Packed house  —   overflow!” NPR’s Don Gonyea reports that so far, the reaction to Trump’s remarks has followed a familiar pattern. ”His audiences love it. His opponents try to use it against him  —   but so far, to no avail,” Gonyea reports. ”I talked to some of his supporters and they say, ’Yeah, sometimes he makes me cringe, but I still like him and I still think he’s the right thing for America.’ ” One supporter, who spoke to ABC News, said he found Trump’s point clear  —   but mentioned Trump could have articulated it differently. ”He probably could’ve worded it a little bit better,” campaign volunteer Brandon Fokkema said. It was the first of two planned events in Iowa on Saturday for the presidential hopeful. The state’s     caucuses pick their preferred nominees from both parties on Feb. 1."
"When you think of Iowa, you probably think  —   lots of white people. And, that’s true, but the state is also home to a growing number of Latinos. Hispanics now make up 5. 6 percent of the state’s population, according to 2014 estimates from the Census Bureau. To put that in perspective, that means the Hispanic community in Iowa these days is twice the size it was during the 2000 caucuses. And, this year, for the first time, Latinos in Iowa are trying to systematically organize themselves to caucus. It’s a challenge. The League of United Latin American Citizens, also known as LULAC, has a goal of trying to persuade at least 10, 000 Latino Iowans to caucus. The group estimates just about 1, 000 participated in 2012. And, so LULAC members have been knocking on doors, handing out flyers, and organizing training sessions. ”We want to bring out all the Latino voters, as many as possible we want to flex our political muscle” explained Maria Bribiesco, LULAC’s deputy state director. Bribiesco was speaking at a caucus training in Iowa City where a couple dozen Latinos had gathered to learn the system. They were participating in a mock caucus  —   presidential candidates were replaced by bean dishes from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Colombia. The goal of the mock caucus was to make an arcane system relatable to new people, like Manuel Galvez, who moved to Iowa 11 years ago from Mexico, but has never caucused before. ”In the past, there were just few Latinos in Iowa,” Galvez said. But, now, he says Latinos have the numbers to send a message . .. if they get involved. ”The Latinos they don’t participate. Nobody pay attention to them   no Democratic party, no Republican party,” said Galvez. ”We believe we can be heard if we mobilize ourselves.” And, so he plans to caucus for the first time on February 1. Part of the challenge in mobilizing Iowa’s Latinos is that they are incredibly diverse   there are families that immigrated from Mexico generations ago, new immigrants moving for   jobs, and   millennials coming from other states, like Vitalina Nova, 30, who moved to Iowa in September to work as a librarian at the University of Iowa. ”When I found out that there are   towns in Iowa, I thought that’s really unique   how are they being represented?” asked Nova, who grew up in Boston. ”And, how come it seems to me that a lot of the white population doesn’t know about this.” One of those   town is West Liberty in eastern Iowa. It’s part of Muscatine County  —   where the Latino population essentially mirrors the country’s demographics  —   comprising 17. 2 percent of the population. (In the country as a whole, Latinos make up 17. 4 percent of the population.) But, numbers don’t equal political power. And, despite the changing demographics in Muscatine County, there are many Latinos like Karina Beltran. Beltran says she has voted in previous presidential elections, and she would be open to caucusing, but she doesn’t know how it works or where to go. ”I haven’t heard anything about political caucus or whatever,” she said. Talking to some folks in Muscatine County, you realize how difficult it may be to get 10, 000 Latinos to participate on Feb. 1. Down the road at a Mexican restaurant, Yaridia Sosa says she’s familiar with the word, ”caucus,” but doesn’t know much beyond that. And, even if someone explained the process to her, she’s skeptical she would go because it’s a   time commitment on a Monday evening. ”I work here all day, so I don’t have any time to go, I don’t have no one to cover for me,” she adds. Sosa says she’s not very political, but then, in passing, she mentions that her college daughter was going to see Hillary Clinton speak in person. That   generational divide may be a sign. Because regardless of whether 10, 000 Latinos caucus on February 1, the Hispanic community in Iowa is young, which suggests numerically Latinos will likely be a force in campaigns to come."
"One of the world’s most inventive guitarists and composers has recorded a tribute to some of his favorite music from TV and film. Bill Frisell’s When You Wish Upon a Star covers the screen from Bonanza to The Godfather to the poignant themes of To Kill a Mockingbird. He joined NPR’s Rachel Martin to talk about how the music first came to him, and what it is about a   theme that can make it stick with you forever. Rachel Martin: Did you grow up watching a lot of TV? And movies, for that matter. Bill Frisell: Yeah. I mean, I think there was no escaping it. Growing up in the ’50s  —   I was born in 1951  —   you know, I still remember vividly when my father brought home this big box and opened it up, and there was a TV in there. And I was like, ”Wow.” I couldn’t believe it. So even when you were young, was it the soundtracks to these shows that stood out to you? Maybe it was more subliminal or something. It’s not just the film or the TV show  —   there’s all these memories associated. I remember getting my driver’s license, and on one of my first dates, driving my parents’ car to go see a James Bond movie. So when I hear that James Bond theme, it brings back all kinds of things. Let’s talk about that cut on the album, because it’s a cool one  —   the theme from You Only Live Twice. You have a pretty awesome vocalist on this: Petra Haden, one of the daughters of the late, great bassist Charlie Haden. I will cop to not knowing which film this was! Who was the James Bond in this movie? It was Sean Connery. Who, for me, is still the real one  —   sorry. You’re not a Daniel Craig guy? I like him, too, but there’s something about those first ones. That’s the stuff for me. Is there a song on here that really resonates with you? That actually conjures up some kind of specific childhood memory? There’s a great combo here: ”When You Wish Upon a Star” and ”Bonanza.” One of my real strong memories is, when I was a kid, my best friend who lived across the street, he had a guitar over there  —   that was, I think, the first time I tried to pick up a guitar  —   but his family also had a big color television set. So, Sunday evening, it was sort of a routine that I would go over to his house and his mom would cook dinner, and then Disney’s Wonderful World of Color would come on. I remember it starting off with Jiminy Cricket singing ”When You Wish Upon a Star”  —   I guess it was sort of the theme music. And so, that’s just way, way back in my DNA. Then, right after that, Bonanza would come on  —   and it was like, ”Man.” How many times have I heard that theme? But I didn’t actually try to play it until just in the last couple years. Is it hard? It is! For me. It sounds like you’re at a particularly reflective moment  —   where you’re kind of looking back, trying to figure out how you became who you are, making the kind of music that you make. What have you found out? Well, it’s not like I want to go backwards, so much. I’m also looking for, maybe, some keys to some mystery about the first time you hear something extraordinary, the first time you hear something new or something amazing. What made that thing work?"
"Musician Brooke Waggoner was on a 6 a. m. coffee run when she got a worrisome text from a friend, whose husband was apparently dealing with a   heart problem. The news gave her a shiver  —   and an idea. ”I don’t know if it was the early morning, the kind of fumes of   mind games,” she says, ”But that inspired the song. I went back to my studio immediately and started, started fleshing it out.” Waggoner’s friend’s husband survived, but the momentary scare was reborn as a dense, eerie track called ”Widow Maker.” She spoke to Weekend Edition Sunday about how the song came together hear her breakdown at the audio link."
"You arrive in England confident. Why shouldn’t you be? You speak the language, you’ve seen Downton Abbey, and as a teenager you nurtured an inexplicable but ardent crush on Tony Blair. It will be like America, but quainter. It’s only after a few months that the strangeness begins to sink in. The way you prepare your tea, it turns out, indicates your exact level of class and education. You discover that Britons think America is a kind of large food court in a mall where everyone possesses heavy artillery and an undying interest in the doings of the royal family. You find that you have been speaking, for months, unacceptably loudly. Bill Bryson has been chronicling these transatlantic frictions with great wit and flair for decades: In 1995, his Notes From A Small Island explored odd English place names (Chew Magna, Nether Wallop, Helions Bumpstead) the intricacies of aristocratic titles, the wild loveliness of the countryside and the strange English compulsion to put jam on cake. In his sequel, The Road To Little Dribbling, Bryson  —   who’s American  —   takes a bounding route through the island nation with the encomiastic zest of a tour guide and the gentle classism of a real Englishman. Britain, Bryson writes, may be ”a rainy island adrift on a cold gray sea,” but it has ”the most superlatively   landscapes, the most orderly cities, the handsomest provincial towns, the jauntiest seaside resorts, the stateliest homes, the most                     sublimely decorated 50, 318 square miles the world has ever known.” At its best, The Road To Little Dribbling is a funny and pleasant travelogue. Bryson can capture a place memorably with just a sharp phrase or two, and he is full of the gentle and reassuring variety of humor often deployed by uncles: ”Cornwall . .. isn’t a county at all but a duchy  —   a distinction the Cornish are very sensitive about. (You could say that it is a touchy duchy. )” At its worst, it’s a long and grumpy Yelp review  —   Bryson may describe the countryside with rapture, but he devotes almost equal time to railing against the incompetencies of various service workers, the ignominies of the Internet age, the traffic, the placement of garbage cans, the scarcity of garbage cans and the misuse of garbage cans. At one point he pauses in the middle of a rant about celebrity culture (”I hate to sound like an old man, but why are these people famous? ”) to address the subject of young men with baggy pants and oversize hats: ”If you took all the young men in Southern England with those caps and that slouch and collected them all together in one room, you still wouldn’t have enough IQ points to make a halfwit.” Little Dribbling’s central thesis is this: ”In countless small ways the world around us grows gradually [lousier].” If you happen to agree with this glum assessment, you will not find a more wry and winning champion. And, to be fair, Bryson’s grumpiness is   and  : He shouts at a Marks  Spencer employee who can’t tell him where the food hall is, only to discover he is in HM. Wandering around Dartmouth with a bunch of other people ”of about my age and socioeconomic background,” he notes: ”This, I realized, is my future: a dotage spent mooching around places like Dartmouth, visiting shops and tearooms, and bitching about crowds and costly, inconvenient    schemes.”   should not absolve him, however. The grumpiness is endearing to a point  —   yes, traffic is annoying  —   but it just isn’t pleasant to read about someone being mean to a hapless McDonald’s server, however charmingly   Bryson is in describing it. On a road trip, Bryson is pleased to find no one cuts him in traffic. It is, he writes, ”like the England that used to exist everywhere, in which you considered the needs of others along with your own on the assumption that they would do likewise with you.” That fictional former England  —   all rose gardens and tea with Mr. Tumnus  —   sounds nice and all, but I prefer the new England, the one that’s given up its colonies and started letting women into universities. Bryson’s not always a cheerful travel companion, and he’d probably be embarrassing to take places (you really can’t refer to Caitlyn Jenner as ”Bruce Jenner in drag”) but all the complaints about tourists and litter do make a serious point about the conservation of this lovely little island. The British countryside is ”the world’s . .. most perfect accidental garden,” he says. ”All Britain has to do now is look after it.” Even if euthanasia for litterers, as he suggests, might be a bit much. Annalisa Quinn is a freelance journalist and critic covering books and culture."
"In the middle of Johanna Sinisalo’s novel The Core of the Sun, the reader is interrupted by an ad. It’s for Fresh Scent, a personal fragrance available from the State Cosmetics Corporation of Finland. It’s marketed to woman, although ”marketed” is an understatement. In Sinisalo’s nightmarish,   vision of her homeland, a tyrannical patriarchy splits women into two classes  —   docile ”eloi” and undesirable ”morlocks,” terms cheekily drawn from H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine  —   as part of an oppressive national health scheme that crosses insidiously over into eugenics. The ad for Fresh Scent is just one of the novel’s many fragmentary asides. In additional to its more conventional narrative, which centers on Vanna, a woman with an addiction to chili peppers (it makes sense a skewed sort of sense, really) The Core of the Sun is made up of epistolary passages, dictionary entries, article excerpts, transcripts of hearings, scripts for instructional films, homework assignments, folk songs, and even fairytales that exist only in Sinisalo’s twisted version of the world. Chillingly, one passage concerning the social benefits of human sterilization is taken from a   source, a Finnish magazine article from 1935. There’s a streak of scathing satire to the book’s fragmentary science fiction, and in that sense it sits somewhere between Margaret Atwood and Kurt Vonnegut  —   but Sinisalo crafts a funny, unsettling, emotionally charged apparition of the present that’s all her own. The Core of the Sun comes out in the United States this month, three years after its release in Finland. Considering how startling and moving the book is, that lag is a shame  —   yet Sinisalo is lucky. Precious few Finnish authors of speculative fiction receive such a boon as widespread American exposure, despite the fact that Finland  —   like so many countries around the globe  —   has a thriving   scene whose best writers rival those of the   world. The reasons behind this are as mundane as they are frustrating: A lack of recognition, the cost of translation, and the American   public’s hesitation in general to dive too deeply into the vast pool of books written in a language other than English. Exceptions abound, of course  —   The Core of the Sun obviously included, although it remains to be seen if Sinisalo’s brilliance catches on in America  —   but they often require a champion in the U. S. publishing industry to step up and put some muscle behind them. For the Finnish   author Leena Krohn, that champion is Jeff VanderMeer. In December, VanderMeer  —   whose New York   The Southern Reach Trilogy came out in 2014  —   published a massive tome of Krohn’s work titled Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction via his imprint Cheeky Frawg (  by his wife and editing partner Ann VanderMeer). Cheeky Frawg may be a small, independent publisher, but Collected Fiction is a coup for Krohn, whose stunning body of work over the past few decades has been largely overlooked in the U. S. Collected Fiction gathers many of Krohn’s   novels and short stories, but its centerpiece is 1985’s Tainaron, Mail from Another City, a breathtaking tale told in letters home from a city called Tainaron. It’s an unmappable,   sprawl of allegorical weirdness and symbolic wonder, an   metropolis that wouldn’t feel out of place in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities or, more recently, the philosophical genre fiction of David Mitchell and China Miéville. Krohn and Sinisalo are far from Finland’s only   authors of note. In just the past three years, a handful of     anthologies such as It Came from the North (published by Cheeky Frawg and edited by Desirina Boskovich) and The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy (edited by Sinisalo) have helped raise awareness of the wealth of Finnish fantasists from the past hundred years like Olli Jalonen, Jyrki Vainonen, Aino Kallas, and Arto Paasilinna. Even the legendary Tove Jansson, best known worldwide for her Moomin children’s series, is represented in The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy  —   in her case by ”Shopping,” a decidedly adult,   story about a   couple forced to scavenge for survival. Finnish Weird and Finnish Weird 2: Children of the Weird are two additional anthologies  —   available as free downloads  —   that have been gathered as a way of promoting and disseminating the rich variety of fiction currently hailing from the country. It’s tempting to search for a common theme or thread that ties Finnish   together, but really, the stories of Sinisalo, Krohn, and so many others span a myriad styles and ideas, from futuristic hallucinations of encroaching technology to   folktales derived from Scandinavian myth  —   when they’re not a dizzying mixture of all of them. Tropes are disregarded genres are transcended. After much impassioned lobbying, Finland’s capital of Helsinki is going to host the World Science Fiction Convention in 2017, which will draw thousands of readers, writers, and industry professionals from around the world. If the astonishing quality and vision of Finland’s recent   push is any indication, they’ll have quite a welcoming committee there to greet them. Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A. V. Club, a Hugo   editor and author of the novel Taft 2012."
"Pittsburgh is being lauded for its resurgence and livability, but not all of the city’s neighborhoods are reaping the benefits of this revival. Homewood has the city’s highest murder rate it’s an impoverished neighborhood, where a third of the houses are blighted. But there’s also hope, in no small part because of artist Vanessa German. German recently presided over a housewarming for Homewood’s new Art House  —   a place where neighborhood kids go to become artists. German used to make sculptures on her porch. Kids noticed her covered in plaster and paint, and asked if they could help. She gave them brushes and told them to make their own art. ”I experience such joy and a sense of deep rightness and completeness when I’m making things,” German says. ”Like when I’m deciding how I’m going to engineer some sculpture to stand so it looks like it’s defying gravity, and I’m using my brain, and I’m moving around, and I feel like giving myself a   and I was like  —   why wouldn’t kids feel that too! ?” Before long, there were more kids than could fit on the porch, so a neighbor lent German a house where she could host her young artists. They used that for a couple years until moving into this house. Shay Clifford, 14, has been making art with German since the beginning. Today, she’s pressing pastels to paper. ”It helped me a lot because there’s a lot of violence here,” she says. ”So when you write and you draw and stuff you can express your feelings  —   how you feel living here and just put it on paper . .. draw and paint about how you feel.” In the years since, German’s popularity in the art world has grown. Now 39, she’s has solo shows around the country, has won awards and her sculptures, complex black Madonnas assembled of found objects, sell handily. She was able to use her art world earnings toward invest in buying this house. Though the Art House may be a refuge for kids, German says, it doesn’t negate what it means to live in a place plagued by violence. ”It’s hard when kids get killed  —   when anybody gets killed,” she says. ”It’s hard and I don’t think that I could survive if there wasn’t more momentum on the side of good and hope.” That hope comes alive at the art house. Stephanie Littlejohn  —   whose grandchildren are dancing in an impromptu talent show  —   says the block still has plenty of crime, prostitution and drug dealing  —   but German’s presence has changed its tone. ”It’s like things have lightened up so much,” Littlejohn says. Towards the end of the housewarming, the crowd spills out into a side lot. Often when she’s out there, German is cleaning up drug paraphernalia  —   but tonight it’s different. The parents light a paper lantern and the kids spread out underneath. ”When we let it go, you better make a wish!” German tells the kids. As the lantern lifts up into the air kids yell out their wishes to the night sky."
"A Texas grand jury investigating Planned Parenthood took no action against the abortion provider, but it indicted two   activists involved in making covert videos of the organization. According to a statement from Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, the 232nd Grand Jury extensively reviewed the joint investigation into allegations of misconduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast for more than two months and cleared the organization of breaking the law. However, the grand jury did hand up indictments for two individuals who were involved in making the allegations against Planned Parenthood using covert recordings. The investigation stemmed from an undercover video released last summer, in which the activists, posing as potential buyers for a human biologics company, talk with a Planned Parenthood executive about how the organization provides human tissue for research. The video sparked outrage among Republican leaders and   groups nationwide. The video, which alleged Planned Parenthood was illegally profiting from the donated tissue, prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to call for an investigation into Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston. But instead of finding evidence of wrongdoing by the organization, the grand jury returned indictments against   activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. They were both indicted for tampering with a governmental record, which is a felony, and Daleiden was also indicted on a misdemeanor charge of illegally offering to purchase human organs in the video recording, Houston Public Media reports. ”It affirms 100 percent what we have said from the very beginning, and that is that Planned Parenthood follows local, state and federal laws and extremely high medical standards, and our first priority is patient care,” said Rochelle Tafolla, with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, according to Houston Public Media. ”These individuals broke the law and committed fraud in order to spread lies about Planned Parenthood and today they’re going to be held accountable for breaking those laws.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a brief statement following the indictments: ”The fact remains that the videos exposed the horrific nature of abortion and the shameful disregard for human life of the abortion industry. The state’s investigation of Planned Parenthood is ongoing.” Earlier this month, NPR’s Jennifer Ludden reported that Planned Parenthood filed a civil lawsuit against the   group with which the activists were affiliated  —   called the Center for Medical Progress  —   accusing it of conspiracy and fraud."
"If you took a map of Chicago and put down a tack for each person shot last year, you’d need nearly 3, 000 tacks. Of those, 101 would be clustered in the neighborhood of East Garfield Park. That’s where    Jim   lives. ”To be honest, I really don’t like it,”   says. ”Every time you look up somebody else is getting killed, and I never know if it’s me or somebody I am really close to.” For kids in some Chicago neighborhoods, walking up and down the same street where there was a beating or a shooting or a body is just part of life  —   one that isn’t always talked about. That’s something the Urban Warriors program is trying to change. The YMCA of Metro Chicago project connects kids like   who live in   neighborhoods, with veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan and who might understand what they’re going through. The program is built on the idea that these kids are experiencing trauma and need to process it, and that witnessing or experiencing violence can affect how they behave at home, react at school, or lead them to commit violence themselves. The man behind the program is Eddie Bocanegra. Today he’s the   director of youth safety and violence prevention programs at the YMCA. But 20 years ago, he was a    gang member serving prison time on felony murder charges. Bocanegra traces the idea for Urban Warriors back to a conversation he had while he was in prison. It was during a visit from his brother, Gabriel Bocanegra, a decorated Army veteran who had done two tours of duty in Iraq. Fresh from therapy, Gabriel told his brother stories about struggling with   stress disorder  —   and how he thought Eddie was also dealing with the effects of trauma. Eddie was skeptical, but his brother pressed him, recalling the violence of their childhood  —   black eyes, stab wounds,   with the police. The trauma was ongoing, his brother said. ”’Every time that I come and visit you, what you talk to me about is prison assaults, you talk about people who commit suicide. . .. You talk about it as if it was just normal,’” Eddie remembers his brother telling him. ”And he was explaining to me, ’Like, Eddie, actually this does something to you. And the reason why you’re pretty upset most of the time, or you’re not sleeping well, is because of what you’ve been through. ’” Eddie says he was in denial. ”I have never been to war,” he thought. ”This is normal, this is nothing, compared to what I know (my brother has) gone through.” His brother urged Eddie to see a therapist when he got out of prison. When he was released, he did eventually. He also returned to the Chicago neighborhoods where he was once a gang member and worked for an   program. Many of the gang members Bocanegra met had witnessed violence or been victims as kids. He wanted to get to them sooner, using people they respect as mentors. He gave the kids a list of potential role models from the neighborhood they liked the idea of veterans. ”Kids identify themselves as soldiers, because they live in war zone communities,” Bocanegra says. ”They make the parallels between, veterans, you know, carry guns, we carry guns. They got ranks, we got ranks. They got their Army uniforms, we got our gang colors. And the list went on and on.” For the past two years, he has put this idea into practice with the Urban Warriors program. On a Saturday morning late last year at Chicago’s Kelly Hall YMCA, seven veterans  —   a mix of black, white and Latino men, some of whom grew up in the same neighborhoods as the teens  —   sit in a circle. The dozen or so boys shuffle in one by one. Some are cheerful, some sullen with sweatshirt hoods and baseball caps pulled low. They grab granola bars and take a seat. Mikhail Dasovich is a    Marine Corps veteran helping to lead the session. He joined Urban Warriors after seeing a flier about the program at his therapist’s office where he was getting help for PTSD. The tough stories started from the very first meeting, Dasovich recalls. ”I was very, very nervous, and all of the youth were looking at me. And everyone’s clowning, everyone’s joking,” he says. ”And one of the youth . .. he says to me like, ’Hey, you ever seen someone get shot in front of you?’ And the whole room went silent, and I was like ’Oh man, like, this quick, huh? ’” Dasovich told the group about watching his platoon sergeant get shot, right in front of him, during the war. ”I went into detail, what seeing my father figure getting tore up by rifle bullets, what that did to me emotionally,” Dasovich says. Immediately, the teen who asked the question then offered up his story. ”Right from my answer [he] goes in to describe how he had to watch his two cousins get gunned down right in front of him.” Dasovich says. ”And that was something I had never felt before, to have such a young man so effortlessly describe the execution of his family members.” ”These kids, before they’re 16, have, in essence, really been to combat,” he says. Dasovich says he sees the effects of neighborhood violence on some of the teenagers and recognizes some of the same habits he picked up serving in combat. ”I see the same levels of   with these kids when we’re outside, just seeing how they’re looking around,” he says. ”It piques up right in me, remembering just having to check my sectors, always feeling like I had to check my back when I came home from the war.” Being alert is just a way of life for most of these boys.    Noel Melecio brings up a few recent attacks in his neighborhood, Logan Square. He says he thinks the same thing almost happened to him. ”Me and my friend were walking, and I look back and I see there’s one group of kids behind me, which is like two or three kids and then across the street I see another group of kids,” he says. ”I think they’re trying to wrap around so they can get in front of us, so I tell my friend, ’Start running.’ And we start running and they start chasing us.” Melecio got away, and later shared the story with the vets and kids in the group. For Urban Warriors that’s the idea: The teens talk about what they’re going through, the veterans help them figure out how to process it. But getting them to open up takes time. Over the program’s 16 weeks, the veterans build trust through team building, talking and sometimes just playing. At the recent Saturday session, that included a rowdy race through a makeshift obstacle course of folding chairs and lunch tables. The catch: a blindfolded member on each team and a   mandate that no one is left behind. Eventually they break into small groups  —   three or four kids for each veteran. And that’s where they get at the most difficult subjects: suicide, loss, grief. They might have endured the deaths of family or friends, witnessed assaults or other violence. Melecio says it wasn’t easy for him to share at first. ”It was like, all we do is just come here and sit here and just talk about feelings,” he says. ”I can do that anywhere else.” The program is voluntary and some kids do drop out. Melecio says the veterans are what got him to stay. ”Anywhere else anybody would just tell you, ’Oh, you’ll be OK,’ or they’ll pat you on the back or something. But them, they like get into your feelings and help you sort them out,” he says. But just sticking it out isn’t a measure of success. In fact, people around the country are weighing this idea  —   that neighborhood violence can cause trauma that should be treated. In California, a handful of families sued the Compton school district arguing that trauma is a disability that schools should accommodate. Baltimore is putting workers, citywide, through training to detect and understand trauma in the communities they serve. The Urban Warriors program raises many questions: How do you know if a kid is coping better? What about the vets? Does mentoring help them deal with PTSD? Researchers from the University of Chicago have begun studying the kids who have completed the program  —   currently about 80  —   in order to start answering those questions. In the meantime, Jim   the teenager wondering whether he’d be the next shooting victim in his neighborhood, is unequivocal. He says Urban Warriors has changed the way he thinks about his future. ”The past week, I was just thinking about dropping out of school,” he says. ”Until today. And I see that it’s a lot of stuff that I can accomplish if I stay in school, by looking at the veterans. Like I’m not sure if I want to go to college, but I might want to join the police academy or just go to the Navy or something.” For   and the veterans of Urban Warriors, that’s a start."
"Denmark is expected to adopt a law on Tuesday requiring police to seize cash and other valuables from some asylum seekers as they enter the country. The seizures, which would go toward defraying the cost of refugee care, are being widely criticized as a violation of human rights. In Elsinore, the eastern Danish city where Shakespeare’s Hamlet is set, asylum seekers at a Red Cross center learn rudimentary Danish as they wait to hear whether they will be allowed to stay in Denmark. But the lesson is hardly as interesting to residents as telling journalists about the proposed law authorizing seizures and other restrictions on new asylum seekers. Mehran Ziai, a Kurd, claims Hungarian border guards stole his phone, his new clothes and about $130 in cash, so Danish authorities couldn’t confiscate anything from him anyway. But he says if he’d known about the proposed law when he came from northern Iraq five months ago, he might have gone elsewhere. ”I had no choice but to come to Europe,” he says, ”but maybe I wouldn’t have come to Denmark, because I see now they don’t like refugees here. Maybe I would have gone to Sweden or Norway or another country.” Such   is exactly what the   government in Copenhagen is looking for, especially by refugees who are thinking about coming to Denmark. Officials say they’ve been overwhelmed by the 20, 000 asylum seekers who came last year, even though that number pales in comparison to what neighboring countries have taken in. ”As you know, we are a very small country of just 5 million people with a very, very generous welfare system, which makes us one of the most attractive destinations in Europe and we’ve received numbers that we are finding difficult to integrate,” says Marcus Knuth, a Danish Parliament member and spokesman for his government on immigration and integration issues. ”We need to take measures to basically make Denmark a little bit less attractive compared to the other European countries that people seek asylum in.” The Danish politician rejects criticism of the law, saying Switzerland and some German states already take harsher measures. Nor would police be taking wedding rings or other sentimental belongings, as some media have claimed, Knuth says. Even so, some Danish supporters of   laws say the proposed seizures of cash and belongings of asylum seekers who bring in more than $1, 450 per person to Denmark would be symbolic at best. One such asylum critic is journalist Mikkel Andersson, who writes for several publications, including the satirical Danish equivalent of The Onion. ”People are traveling to Denmark to make a permanent home here,” he says. ”I completely understand that. If I were living in Iraq, I would probably attempt to do the same thing. But what the result is, is that Denmark is spending a huge amount of money on helping a few people.” Andersson says   asylum seekers are more likely to be deterred by provisions in the Danish draft legislation to limit asylum to one year at a time and bar refugees from bringing their families to the country for at least three years  —   even if they are living in war zones. Back at the Elsinore asylum center, most residents NPR interviewed predict the new law won’t make a difference. ”Even if all of Europe tries to make things harder, people will still come,” says Loghman Rezaie, an Iranian Kurd. ”The Danish government can also pressure people who are already here to return. But where are we supposed to go?”"
"For many people struggling with opioid use, a key to success in recovery is having support. Some are getting that support from an unlikely place: their health insurer. Amanda Jean Andrade, who lives west of Boston in a halfway house for addiction recovery, has been   and   since October. It’s the longest she’s been off such substances in a decade. She gives a lot of the credit for that to her case manager, Will  —   who works for her insurance company. ”Having Will is the best thing in the world for me,” Andrade says. ”Because if I have the slightest issue with anything to do with my insurance that includes, like, prescriptions  —   even when I had a court issue  —   I know that I can call him.” Andrade’s insurer is CeltiCare Health Plan, one of several health insurance companies in Massachusetts taking aggressive new steps to deal with the growing opioid epidemic. CeltiCare has about 50, 000 members in the state, and mostly manages care for patients on Medicaid. Insurers typically cover some inpatient substance use treatment and detox, says CeltiCare’s president and CEO Jay Gonzalez, but those are only   solutions. After a patient is discharged, relapse  —   and readmission  —   are likely without   support. That’s why CeltiCare assigns social workers to some of the people it insures. ”This is the biggest potential solution to this problem, I think, because at the end of the day we have to find the members who are or could be in trouble, and we need them to be invested in addressing their issues,” Gonzalez says. For CeltiCare, the costs related to the opioid epidemic are huge: Nearly a quarter of its hospital admissions are related to substance use, Gonzalez says. The insurer spent more than 10 percent of its budget last year on Suboxone, a medication to treat addiction to narcotics. That’s more than it spent on any other drug. Gonzalez believes that investing in the extra attention to patients like Andrade will eventually pay off, by helping them stay sober for good. ”At the end of the day, we think it’s going to cost a lot less, Gonzalez says. ”They’re going to be healthier they’re not going to be showing up in the emergency room. We have people who show up in the emergency room 50 to 100 times a year. That’s very expensive, and it’s not good for the member.” CeltiCare is also training some of these members and their families in how to use Narcan, the drug that reverses an opioid overdose. And the firm is putting tighter limits on the initial prescription of opioid painkillers it permits for each patient. Right now patients initially can be prescribed no more than a   supply of the pain pills CeltiCare plans to reduce that to a   supply as of February. (Prescribing doctors will be permitted, of course, to renew the prescription as they see fit, when pain warrants it.) CeltiCare isn’t the only health insurer looking for new ways to deal with the opioid problem in Massachusetts. For the past three years, the state’s largest insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, also has been limiting the supply of opioids it allows patients in an initial prescription. Dr. Tony Dodek, associate chief medical officer for the company, says about 11, 000 of the insurer’s more than 2 million members were treated for a substance use problem in the past year. Federal numbers show that most misused controlled substances originate as legal prescriptions, so he sees limiting prescriptions as one simple and straightforward way to deal with the problem. ”We decreased the number of doses in circulation  —   when you compare the   period after implementation to the prior period  —   by over 21 million doses,” Dodek says. What’s not so easy is finding ways to keep patients out of the hospital. Between 1993 and 2012, the rate of inpatient hospital stays related to opioid use went up 150 percent across the country, according to data from the Association of Community Affiliated Plans, a group of 60    health plans in   states. In response, several of the association’s members across the country are now taking steps that include screening those they insure for substance abuse, using social workers to help keep them in treatment, and improving the use of medications like Suboxone. Neighborhood Health Plan in Boston is one of those plans. Its chief medical officer, Dr. Paul Mendis, says the insurer has developed algorithms to identify who is at risk for relapsing after drug abuse treatment, and has hired social workers to reach out to those members. Mendis says they look for members who have a traditional medical diagnosis as well as a substance use issue. ”You actually have to, in many cases, reach out using their other medical diagnosis as the reason for the outreach,” Mendis says. ”If you just call somebody cold and say, ’We found you,’ I don’t think those calls would be  .” The health insurer is also piloting a program in which a recovery coach is assigned to members who land in the hospital after an overdose. For any such program to work, the person with the drug problem has to trust the insurer’s recovery coach, social worker or case manager. Andrade says she quickly came to trust her case manager, even though many other people in her life have let her down along the way. She started using drugs as a teenager, she says, after both her parents left home and she was essentially homeless. She temporarily stayed in foster care and with various family members or boyfriends  —   some of them abusive. Her son was born six years ago, but she lost custody and her drug use spiraled. The case manager from CeltiCare is now working on helping her find a job and more permanent housing, she says. And he and others are holding her accountable in ways she believes will help keep her on track in her recovery. ”I have, in one of my poems,” Andrade says, ” ’Don’t let anyone diminish your   your pride. If you feel something, it means that you tried.’ I at least want to try for all the people that tried for me.” A version of this story ran on WBUR’s blog CommonHealth, where you can find more coverage of the opioid addiction crisis in Massachusetts."
"This is a guest post from WNYC’s Note to Self podcast, which explores effects of technology on our lives. Its ”Infomagical” challenge will launch on Feb. 1, and you can sign up on the WNYC website. Ever feel like you can’t handle all the information pouring out from all the screens? But you keep reading and watching anyway? This   experiment from WNYC may just be for you. You probably know what ”infomania” feels like. The problem grows in step with the number of gadgets we use and the number of publishers pushing content onto them. By now there is even an official definition in the Oxford English dictionary: It’s ”the compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information.” That said, we still don’t know exactly where infomania comes from or what we can do about it. And  —   ironically  —   sifting through the theories, anecdotes and think pieces about our digital stressors usually just makes us feel more overwhelmed. We at WNYC’s Note to Self podcast decided to see if it’s even possible to get a grip on the phenomenon of information overload. Working with neuroscientists, behavioral engineers and social psychologists we have developed a weeklong, interactive project we’re calling ”Infomagical.” These are the key highlights of what we’ve found. 1. Information overload is real. Dimitrios Tsivrikos, consumer psychologist at the University College London, confirms that it is not, in fact, possible to process more than a certain amount of information in a day. And he has a term for the people who try: ”digital junkies.” ”They’re starving for information. They’re craving for information because they feel that level of information will make them better informed. They’re keeping up with friends and family. They’re keeping up because they want to be educated. In reality, what a digital junkie is actually doing is overindulging in information, and information that’s not actually being stored or said in a meaningful way, that can’t actually mean something [or] contribute to their level of general knowledge.” Businesses talk about the phenomenon in terms of ”cutting through the noise.” New York University’s Clay Shirky famously named it ”filter failure.” Note to Self listener Gena Conn calls it ”FOMO tailspin.” 2. The concept of ”information overload” itself isn’t new, but the scope is. Scholars, clerics and academics from as far back as the 13th century often complained about having an overwhelming wealth of things to read. New printing technologies brought ancient Greek texts to the Christian West for the first time  —   a phenomenon that was terribly exciting, but, in historian Ann Blair’s words, marked ”a first moment of overload.” ”One of the big differences between now and then . .. is that everybody today perceives and articulates this sense of overload. Whereas in the 16th century it’s mainly the educated who will, sometimes not necessarily in Latin, but in Italian or French, will talk about the abundance of books, the ’multitudo librorum.’ ” As you might imagine, the problem has grown since the time of the early printing press. In 2011, scientists figured out that Americans take in five times as much information every day as they did in 1986. As of 2011, the majority of Americans were absorbing the equivalent of 174 newspapers every single day. Every day, the average adult consumes 15. 5 hours’  —   15. 5 hours’!  —   worth of media. And it’s starting to cost us as a society. American knowledge workers  —   people whose jobs involve dealing with information  —   waste a quarter of their time dealing with huge data streams, costing the economy $997 billion annually, according to The Information Overload Research Group. 3. Information overload makes us stressed out, but we don’t stop. In a survey of 1, 800 Note to Self listeners earlier this month, nearly 80 percent of respondents told us that sometimes they get headaches, insomnia or eye twitches as a result of information overload  —   but they still continue consuming more. Gloria Mark, informatics professor at the University of California, Irvine, has found that the habit is a   cycle. She uses sensors  —     ”” lightweight cameras, heart rate monitors and regular ”probes”  —   to measure how our bodies and emotions react when we spend time online. And her lab’s findings have been fairly consistent: Interruptions stress us out and keep us from properly concentrating, which stresses us out further, disrupting our concentration further, and on and on. And at one point, the distractions can become almost a default. ”People get into a habit  —   or they’re even conditioned, if you will  —   to be interrupted so that their attention can’t last for any particular length of time,” Mark says. ”If they’re not interrupted by an external source, then they  .” 4. Overload makes us worse at processing information. Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin says our brains ”have trouble separating the trivial from the important, and all this information processing makes us tired.” In fact, one of the side effects of being overwhelmed by information is having a harder time processing text. And so we look for shortcuts: infographics, listicles and even the emoticons of the world. Tsivrikos says his research has already started to document the extent to which younger people really prefer to communicate through emoji. ”People do want to communicate more visually,” he says. ”It’s a lot easier.” It’s like skimming for the pictures in a textbook, but on a huge, cultural scale. 5. The implications are just starting to settle in on a mass cultural level. Genevieve Bell, chief anthropologist at Intel, says our rising concern about excessive information consumption is a natural outcome of our relatively new love affair with technology. ”One of the challenges is [that] the same pipes that bring us information are also enmeshed in the rest of our lives,” she says. ”It’s where we go to make a living, manage our private relationships, find entertainment. It’s hard to tease them apart.” And now, in essence, the novelty of the devices and the media we consume on them is just starting to wear out. Levitin argues that we have to come up with a new, realistic system of prioritization: ”We need to   and filter and allow in the information that’s meaningful to us and important to us, and then maybe let in a trickle of stuff that’s just, you know, whimsical or fanciful. Like, what George Clooney wore at his wedding,” Levitin says. 6. But! There are things we can do in the meantime. Anthropologists would remind us that the status quo is always changing. ”There’s no guarantee that where we sit at the end of 2015 going into 2016 is our destiny,” Bell says. ”It is in fact a moment in time.” Scientists say there a few basic principles that may help us readjust our information intake to sustainable levels: We have to set information goals we have to write them down and we have to be reminded of those goals  —   or ”probed”  —   at opportune moments throughout our day. Do you want to try? We’ve worked with a group of neuroscientists, behavioral engineers and social psychologists to synthesize what’s known about information overload into a week of experiments. We think they’ll help. But we won’t know until we try  —   actually, until you try! Sign up for a week of challenges to test it out with us. It’s   it’ll fit into your daily life, and . .. yes, it will even be fun."
"If you are getting spooked by plunging stock prices, you may be trying to figure out where the economy is heading. Here’s one new sign that better days are coming: In the latest survey of business economists, most  —   58 percent  —   say their companies plan to raise workers’ wages this winter. That’s the most upbeat wage outlook since   according to the quarterly survey done by the National Association for Business Economics. Combine those coming raises with Americans’ savings from cheap gasoline and lower home heating bills and you must have a formula for a brighter U. S. economy. Or so you would think. Unfortunately, Monday also brought another big drop on Wall Street, leaving stock prices on track for their worst January since 2009. On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 208 points, or 1. 3 percent, to 15, 885. The SP 500 and the Nasdaq Composite each fell 1. 6 percent. Most analysts are tying the stock market’s swan dive to oil prices, which have been running at about $30 a barrel, roughly a quarter of what they were as recently as June 2014. The huge decline in oil has led to energy stocks getting crushed, oil field workers being laid off and inflation estimates getting thrown out of windows. All of that has been troubling Wall Street. And now there’s a hint of rising pessimism in the broader economy, as reflected in the business economists’ survey, released Monday. Just 47 percent of the economists reported rising sales at their companies during the fourth quarter of 2015, down from 51 percent who had seen improving sales in the October 2015 survey. For the first time in three years, more than a quarter of those surveyed expect real gross domestic product to rise by only 2 percent or less in the coming year. So yes, the survey found more gloom among a minority of economists. But most economists continue to point to the upside of cheap energy. The share of NABE respondents who say their companies enjoyed cost declines bounced up to 28 percent this month, compared with 22 percent in October. That means those companies can better afford to give out raises and continue hiring. Let’s boil it down. Here’s the optimists’ take: Workers are getting raises at a time of robust hiring and bargains at the gas station. Meanwhile, most companies are benefiting from lower costs, which will allow them to upgrade their workforces. ”If your input costs are going down, you can afford to pay up to either keep people or attract more talented ones,” said Jim Smith, chief economist at Parsec Financial in Asheville, N. C. and one of the economists on a NABE teleconference Monday. And here’s the pessimists’ view: More oil comes from U. S. producers. In the past, cheaper oil hit harder at producers in the Middle East and elsewhere. Now that the United States is such a huge producer of oil, lower prices hurt U. S. oil field workers and investments. The stock market turmoil reflects ”the fact that the United States is a net producer in oil now versus a net consumer,” James Stanley, currency analyst at DailyFX, said. Another problem is that supercheap energy is making inflation so low that it’s throwing off predictions about what the Federal Reserve will be doing next. Last month, the Fed took steps to nudge up   interest rates to tamp down inflation. But not much inflation is materializing, and interest rates on many securities are staying low. For example, on Monday, yields on   Treasury notes fell three basis points to 2. 02 percent. That’s adding to a sense of uncertainty at a time when China is experiencing slowing growth and currency turmoil. Later this week, economists and investors may get a better sense of who’s placing smarter bets, the optimists or the pessimists. This week brings the government’s first estimate of   U. S. growth as well as scores of earnings reports from companies in the SP. And the Fed’s policymakers start their   meeting on Tuesday."
"As the old saying goes, the stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions. In other words, sharply falling stock markets are crying wolf about half the time. Dyke Messinger, who runs a small manufacturing company in Salisbury, N. C. thinks stock investors have been overreacting during this  . ”It is bizarre to me when we see what we believe is good core strength in the U. S. market,” he says. Messinger’s market is the construction industry. His company, Power Curbers, manufactures machines that contractors use to build curbs and gutters for housing developments and commercial buildings. ”Everybody is a bit on pins and needles due to the changing world economy, but there’s still   demand for housing and commercial construction,” he says. Those sectors performed weakly in the U. S. coming out of the recession but are doing much better now. Messinger’s business is actually a good reflection of the situation many U. S. manufacturers face. He exports a lot of his machines. About 30 percent of his sales are to international customers, including oil producing countries in the Middle East. The plunge in oil prices has hurt his business his international sales have fallen sharply. So he knows the global economy can hurt U. S. growth. ”I know a lot of what happens in the United States depends upon what’s going on in China and other countries, but if I had some spare money, I think I’d be buying U. S. stocks,” Messinger says. He says for his company, growth in the U. S. economy will more than offset lost business abroad. Economist Sara Johnson also believes the U. S. stock market is not accurately predicting the U. S. economy in 2016. ”I think financial markets have overreacted,” she says. Johnson, senior research director for global economics at IHS, points to strong U. S. job growth as evidence the domestic economy remains on track despite global weakness. And she says concerns that the U. S. is vulnerable to the slowdown in Chinese growth are overblown. ”While it certainly is creating some turmoil in financial markets, the real economic consequences for the U. S. are limited,” she says. For one reason, total exports represent only about   of the U. S. economy, and less than 10 percent of those exports go to China. So the vast majority of U. S. economic activity is generated inside U. S. borders. And Johnson sees a positive picture for this year, helped by the deep decline in oil prices. She acknowledges that plummeting oil prices hurt the U. S. economy last year, decimating energy companies and sparking huge layoffs. But, she says, 2016 will be different. ”The U. S. is a net importer of crude oil, so the drop in prices is a substantial gain to U. S. consumers,” she says. That’s been the conventional wisdom, but some economists have begun to doubt that low oil prices are a net positive for the U. S. economy. After all, because of the shale revolution, the U. S. has become the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. That means energy price drops have a bigger negative impact on American companies and workers than before. In fact, Goldman Sachs now predicts that those negatives will offset the benefit to U. S. consumers, so lower oil prices won’t be a boost to the economy this year."
"On this day five years ago, tens of thousands of Egyptians flooded into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. It was the start of an uprising that would unseat Egypt’s longtime dictator, Hosni Mubarak, 18 days later. Police initially allowed protesters leeway but then cracked down with tear gas and water cannons. Here’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson’s dispatch from the streets of Cairo on that first day: Soraya spoke with a protester who, like many others, came out to demonstrate for the first time hoping for political and economic freedom. Eighteen days later, and after more than 800 people died in bloody battles with police and Mubarak supporters, Egypt’s military assumed control of the country. NPR’s Lourdes   filed this report on the scenes of jubilation from Tahrir Square: ”Every Egyptian feels that the country really belongs to them. The country is back,” one protester told Lourdes. It felt like a new beginning for Egypt. Hopes were   that this marked a turning point, where the revolution’s demands of ”bread, freedom and social justice” could be fulfilled. In reality, it was the beginning of a tumultuous transitional period. Activists continued to protest, concerned the military would refuse to loosen its grip on power even after elections. Egypt’s   political force, the Muslim Brotherhood, won the most seats in Parliament in the first   vote. And in   the Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohammed Morsi, narrowly beat out a candidate from the previous regime. Morsi’s rule was divisive  —   and the military pushed him from power a year later in July 2013, following mass demonstrations against his rule. What followed was a sweeping crackdown on dissent against Morsi’s allies and other political opponents of the regime. Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of Morsi’s supporters when they forcibly cleared two encampments in August 2014. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood was branded a terrorist organization and excluded from the political process. Military leader Abdel Fattah   who led the coup against Morsi, would go on to win the presidential election in 2014 with 96 percent of the vote. Rights groups say human rights violations now are worse than they were under Mubarak. The government has outlawed all protests not   by the government. Security forces have arrested tens of thousands of political opponents. As Egyptian security forces face a burgeoning insurgency and increasingly sophisticated militant attacks, the government has justified the crackdown by saying it is fighting terrorism. ”Anyone, from wearing a   condemning torture to expressing their views on TV, on university campuses, can and will be detained,” Rabab   of The American University in Cairo said on Morning Edition. ”This is the most repressive moment that we have seen in the past 40 years in Egypt.” This is what Tahrir Square looked like today: Ahead of the anniversary, police reportedly targeted activists in the area and carried out mass raids of nearby apartments. ””We have taken several measures to ensure activists don’t have breathing space and are unable to gather, and several cafes and other meeting places have been closed, while some have been arrested in order to scare the rest,” an Egyptian security official told Reuters. There were about 300 people demonstrating in Tahrir Square on Monday, Reuters reported, ”not to celebrate the instigators of revolution . .. but to praise the police who tried to stop them.” Now, many of the 2011 uprising’s most prominent faces sit in prison. Others have fled Egypt or have gone silent. One of Egypt’s   activists, Alaa   published a letter from a Cairo prison where he is serving a   sentence for protesting. ”The only words I can write are about losing my words,” he writes in The Guardian. He adds: ”It has been months since I wrote a letter and more than a year since I’ve written an article. I have nothing to say: no hopes, no dreams, no fears, no warnings, no insights nothing, absolutely nothing. ..I try to remember what it was like when tomorrow seemed so full of possibility and my words seemed to have the power to influence (if only slightly) what that tomorrow would look like. ”I can’t really remember that. Now tomorrow will be exactly like today and yesterday and all the days preceding and all the days following, I have no influence over anything. ”But one thing I do remember, one thing I know: the sense of possibility was real. It may have been naive to believe our dream could come true, but it was not foolish to believe that another world was possible. It really was. Or at least that’s how I remember it.”"
"The World Health Organization says it expects the Zika virus to spread to every country in the Western Hemisphere except Canada. It says the virus has already ”spread to 21 countries and territories of the Americas.” ”Canada is off the list simply because it’s too cold for the type of mosquito that transmits the Zika virus,” NPR’s Jason Beaubien reports to our Newscast unit. The illness caused by the virus has been blamed for birth defects. The WHO’s regional office  —   the Pan American Health Organization  —   says the type of mosquito provides one explanation for the virus’s rapid spread. The virus ”will likely reach all countries and territories where Aedes mosquitoes are found,” PAHO says in a statement. The organization attributes another factor to the spread of the virus: ”The population of the Americas had not previously been exposed to Zika and therefore lacks immunity.” Additionally, some epidemiologists think the virus may have mutated. ”This may be a new strain that’s traveling very quickly but we really don’t know,” Yale epidemiologist Albert Ko tells Jason. Jason says the virus was first identified in Brazil in May 2015 and ”coincided with a marked spike in severe birth defects, and possibly other neurological problems.” PAHO recommends trying to reduce mosquito populations and avoid bites."
"With financial sanctions against Iran falling away, President Hassan Rouhani is wasting no time in seeking new business opportunities for a country that’s long been isolated. The Iranian leader was in Italy on Monday, a stopover that may also include a meeting with Pope Francis, according to media reports. Rouhani also planned to visit France as part of the first European tour by an Iranian president since 1999. Iran appears poised to announce the purchase of more than 100   Airbus planes in what would be the country’s first major commercial deal since punitive measures were lifted this month. And Rouhani hosted China’s President Xi Jinping on Saturday in Tehran, where they announced plans to expand economic ties. ”We should take advantage of the   climate to develop the country and create jobs,” Rouhani said, according to Iran’s Fars news agency. The president’s entourage includes more than 120 businessmen and government officials. Iran’s economy has been constrained for decades due to international sanctions, and the toughest measures were imposed in recent years in response to the country’s nuclear program. But the nuclear sanctions were lifted on Jan. 16 after Iran met its obligations under the deal it reached last summer with six world powers. That has freed up tens of billions of dollars that were frozen in international banks by the sanctions. Most of the money is owed to Iran for oil sales to Asian countries in recent years. Various estimates have put the amount now available to Iran at $50 billion to $100 billion, or even higher. A top Iranian priority is new civilian planes to replace the country’s aging fleet, among the oldest in the world. Iran bought its aircraft from Boeing when the U. S. and Iran had close ties before the 1979 Islamic revolution. But since then, Iran has struggled to obtain spare parts and buy new planes. The country now looks likely to turn to Airbus. ”We have been negotiating for 10 months” for the Airbus planes but ”there was no way to pay for them because of banking sanctions,” Iran’s Transportation Minister Abbas Akhoundi was quoted as saying by the Iranian media. Airbus has not commented on the reports. Europe was Iran’s largest trading partner before the sanctions began to bite, and European countries have been eager to redevelop those ties, with many sending delegations to investigate business opportunities. Iran, for example, was a large market for French Peugeot cars before sanctions. The U. S. still maintains many sanctions on Iran linked to human rights and terrorism. As a result, U. S. businesses still face a host of restrictions and American companies are not expected to enter the Iranian market in a major way. Most of the initial Western business dealings with Iran are expected to involve the sale of products, rather than   investments that require establishing operations inside Iran."
"The ”fetal heartbeat” law  —   a North Dakota ban on many abortions that was the toughest in the nation when it was enacted  —   has been blocked permanently, after the U. S. Supreme Court refused to review a lower court’s ruling that overturned the law. The measure banned abortions as soon as a heartbeat is detected in the fetus  —   as early as six weeks into pregnancy. NPRs Jennifer Ludden reports: ”North Dakota’s 2013 law would have banned abortions before many women even realize they’re pregnant. Lower court judges blocked it, saying the Supreme Court has made clear that abortions are allowed until a fetus is viable  —   around 23 or 24 weeks. But some of those judges also suggested the high court reconsider the concept of viability, given medical advances. ”North Dakota had argued viability begins at conception, since embryos can be kept alive outside the womb, in a lab. The high court did not go there. Last week, it also rejected Arkansas’ effort to ban abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy.” Reacting to the Supreme Court’s ruling, North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said he knew the bid to revive the law was a long shot, with the Bismarck Tribune quoting him saying, ”This is the end of what we can do.” The Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, the sole abortion provider in North Dakota, challenged the measure shortly after the Legislature approved it. Their suit had the backing of the Center for Reproductive Rights, whose president and CEO, Nancy Northup, said Monday, ”Whether in North Dakota, Arkansas, or Texas, politicians simply cannot rob women of their constitutional rights.” In November, the Supreme Court said it would hear a challenge to ”a 2013 Texas law that has already forced the closure of more than half of the state’s 40 clinics that perform abortions,” as Laura Wagner reported for the  . That came months after a federal appeals court blocked Arkansas’ ban on abortion after 12 weeks of gestation. When U. S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland rejected North Dakota’s justification for the law, he cited the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, saying ”no state may deprive a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy at a point prior to viability.”"
"The Supreme Court has ruled that a previous decision that put an end to automatic life sentences without parole for juveniles should be retroactive. The   ruling means that some 2, 100 juvenile murders will now have the possibility of parole. As NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported, this case was a ”procedural spiderweb.” But the implications of it were easy to understand: At issue was whether a previous ruling by the high court applied to Henry Montgomery, who killed a police officer in 1963 when he was   . Montgomery was sentenced to life in prison without parole. But back in 2012, the Supreme Court decided that sentencing youth to life without parole amounted to cruel and usual punishment. That rule obviously applied to all future cases, but what about past cases? The Supreme Court resolved today that it did indeed have jurisdiction to review this case and that its previous ruling was substantial enough that it should apply retroactively. Here’s how Justice Anthony Kennedy concluded the majority opinion: ”Henry Montgomery has spent each day of the past 46 years knowing he was condemned to die in prison. Per haps it can be established that, due to exceptional circumstances, this fate was a just and proportionate punishment for the crime he committed as a    boy. In light of what this Court has said in Roper, Graham, and Miller about how children are constitutionally different from adults in their level of culpability, however, prisoners like Montgomery must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption and, if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored.”"
"There’s a small corner of the restaurant world where food is art and the plate is just as exquisite as the mouthful. In this world, chefs are constantly looking for new creative materials for the next stunning presentation. The tiny community of farmers who grow vegetables for the elite chefs prize creativity, too, not just in what they grow but in how they grow it. They’re seeking perfection, in vegetable form and flavor, like this tiny cucumber that looks like a watermelon  —   called a cucamelon. The Chef’s Garden is a specialty vegetable farm in Huron, Ohio, about an hour west of Cleveland. It’s a family farm, where three generations of the Jones family work side by side with about 175 employees. It’s a place where vegetables are scrupulously selected and then painstakingly coaxed from the ground. This farm produces an extraordinary selection of vegetable varieties, ranging from the familiar to the exotic, like the cucamelon. In the summer, they can offer chefs 80 varieties of tomatoes. Through the year, they’re growing more than a dozen kinds of lettuce of different textures and colors, like Merlot, in their greenhouses. When Lee Jones (who wears this ensemble of blue overalls, white shirt and red bow tie every single day) was a teenager, his family grew ordinary vegetables for the wholesale market, like a lot of their neighbors. Then in 1983, the Joneses went bankrupt and lost almost all their land. All they could do with the few acres that were left was supply a small stand at local farmers markets. One of their customers was a food writer in Cleveland desperate to find the squash blossoms she’d tasted in France and couldn’t find in America. So they went back to the zucchini patch and picked some for her. She was ecstatic, and they began to realize there were unmet needs in the world of fine dining. It wasn’t too long before the Joneses began to get connected to chefs around the country  —   people like Alain Ducasse, Daniel Boulud, Charlie Trotter and Thomas Keller. The great French chef   Palladin at the Watergate in Washington, D. C. told them, ” ’Your food is s*** in America,’ ” Lee recalls. In particular, he was talking about the vegetables. And he told them they could seize the opportunity to grow vegetables to the standards of chefs like him. The farm covers 300 acres and supplies chefs all year round, with the help of greenhouses and hoop houses that can be moved from plot to plot in the winter. The Joneses say they need to always have something new to offer the chefs. So they have a ”secret” experimental garden and greenhouse where they test new varieties. Visitors are not allowed inside. Attention to detail flows through every step of the farming, harvesting and shipping process. And it all starts with the soil. The soil on this farm gets remarkably special treatment. The Joneses are fortunate that their farm is located just a few miles inland from Lake Erie. That means they started with some of the richest sandy loam soil in the world, formed from thousands of years of deposits from the lake bottom. But they’ve dedicated themselves to improving it by resting the soil and adding nutrients to deepen the layer of topsoil year after year. The way they do that is by planting only   of their land (100 acres) with vegetables at any one time. The remaining 200 acres are sown with cover crops like Sudan grass, oats and clover that return nitrogen and other nutrients that the vegetables take out. Rotating crops and cover cropping this way is one of the secrets to the vegetables’ distinctive flavor, Bob says. The Joneses, like the chefs, are always looking for surprising new varieties. Lee tries out the latest seeds from plant breeders and combs through dusty agricultural books. Another thing the Joneses try to tightly control is the seeds they put in the ground. If you buy thousands of them in bulk the way they do, many are bound to fail. They check every batch for their germination rate to try to ensure they’re putting only the seeds most likely to succeed in the ground. They also have a machine to sort seeds for size and weight to help them eliminate the weakest ones. The goal is to guarantee chefs a consistent product every time they need it. There’s a whole lab at Chef’s Garden with a small staff dedicated to monitoring and measuring the seeds and the soil. It’s just one branch of Chef’s Garden’s highly specialized staff, focused on different aspects of quality control. All together, they give this farm an unusual ratio of workers to acres: about one person per  . About 25 of the 178 employees are temporary workers who come mostly from the Aguascalientes region of Mexico to work nine months a year. These workers pick everything to order  —   from the microgreens to the tiny eggplants and cucamelons. Chefs ask for miniature versions of their favorites because when they’re small, they pack more flavor and make for stunning garnishes. And picking these crops is  . But if a chef wants 100 nasturtium flowers the size of a dime, Lee is happy to oblige  —   in part because he has the manpower to pick them. Since there are so many stages in a plant’s life, the farm has developed an   patented set of sizes, including micro, petite, young, flowering and seeded. Some vegetables come in every single size. The precise moment the crops are picked also matters if they’re going to be perfect. Take, for example, the squash blossoms, which are harvested during a narrow     window in the early morning. The same goes for the lettuce, which is harvested at dawn, when the air, the ground and the plants are coolest. The goal, particularly in the summer, is to harvest them at the lowest possible temperature so they can stay fresh longer. By the time the vegetables reach the packing room, they’re treated like jewels. Bob Jones Jr. Lee’s brother, oversees this stage, where lettuce rosettes are carefully packed with insulation. If the box is filled with tomatoes, it’s fitted with foam padding. In the summer, ice packs go into the boxes to keep the vegetables cold if they’re headed to hot locales. Nearly all the vegetables that leave here by truck or airplane reach kitchens within a day of coming out of the ground. Shipping vegetables from Ohio to California or New York or Florida means these vegetables most certainly won’t be local once they reach diners. They’ll have quite a few additional greenhouse gas emissions attached to them, too. And if you’re buying this precious produce, it will, of course, cost you. The Joneses say their costs are probably 2. 5 times as great as a regular production system’s, where every acre is farmed every year. A   box of lettuce from Chef’s Garden goes for about $24. But chefs will pay top dollar for these exquisite vegetables. Chef’s Garden is starting to sell directly to consumers via mail order. And Lee is hopeful about this new frontier for the business. This has been a special multimedia project of NPR’s food blog, The Salt. "
"This week, NPR and some member stations will be taking the temperature of the electorate in communities around the country. You can follow those stations, via Twitter, here. The mood of the voters is one of the most important political factors in an election year. This year voters are anxious, frightened and angry. Candidates in both parties are trying to show they get it. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders’ angry tirades against Wall Street have found a receptive audience (more on that from NPR’s Brian Naylor here). Hillary Clinton often talks about the fears and insecurities of ordinary voters. And on the Republican side, no one has identified with or stoked voters’ anger better than Donald Trump. In the latest Republican debate, Trump declared, ”I will gladly accept the mantle of anger.” There are a lot of good reasons voters are ticked off this year. Here are some: Stalled economic progress, No. 1 is the absence of the kind of broadly shared economic growth that makes the American dream possible. ”When you consider the fact that household incomes are still thousands of dollars below where they were at the end of the Clinton Administration,” explained Bill Galston, a former Clinton White House aide, ”people have gone a long time without making a lot of progress. They know it, they’re feeling it, and they’re not very happy about it.” Terrorism, Whether or not you think ISIS poses an existential threat to the United States, after December’s attack in San Bernardino, Calif. there was no question that the war on terrorism has come back home. And that’s scary. Demographic change, Then there’s demographic change: 2014 was the first year the majority of American kindergartners were minorities, Harvard political scientist Danielle Allen points out. ”We’re only a dozen years away from   voting cohorts entering into our voting ranks,” said Allen. ”In some parts of the country, there’s just a sort of incredibly durable tradition of white political and social control, and that demographic transition is forcing to a head the question: ’What happens now?’ ” Immigration, This is why immigration has become such a flash point  —   particularly in the Republican primaries. ”One of the most illustrative things that has happened this year was in the way that Donald Trump switched from Mexicans to Muslims almost instantaneously,” said professor Roberto Suro, an immigration expert at the University of Southern California. ”It was a simple pivot after San Bernardino. Terrorism and labor migration became one thing.” According to Suro, it’s not specific immigrants, or even immigration itself that voters are angry about. Instead, he said, immigration has become a vehicle to touch people’s anxieties about a whole bunch of other matters, such as jobs, terrorism and the failure of government to perform basic functions  —   like policing the border. Dysfunctional politics, Exacerbating all these   factors is a gridlocked political system that can’t seem to solve big problems, no matter which party has control. And here Republicans are angry at their own party’s leaders in Washington in a way Democrats just aren’t, says conservative analyst Henry Olsen, author of The Four Faces of the Republican Party. ”They’ve been listening to politicians who’ve been telling them for decades now that government can and ought to shrink quickly,” he said. ”And they think that when Republicans get elected that that’s what Republicans got elected on. So they are angry for things they’ve been told they can have but most people in politics know they really can’t.” Voters in both parties are angry at elites. But just like everything else this year, says Galston, Democratic and Republican populists are pointing their pitchforks at two very different targets. ”For the Republicans, the   focus is on government and professional experts of all kinds,” Galston said. ”And for the Democrats, and especially for the more   Democrats, the focus is on economic and financial elites.” It’s not clear which candidates will benefit most from all that angry   when voters finally start going to the primary polls next month. One of the functions of elections is to hold up a mirror to society and to reflect what voters are feeling and what they want through the electoral process. And those feelings of anger and anxiety coming to the surface are defining the 2016 elections."
"Last summer, cases of a particular strain of Listeria started popping up in six states in the Northeast and Midwest United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says since July 2015, 12 people have been sickened and one person from Michigan has died in this outbreak. And the agency recently confirmed that five of the people who got sick reported eating packaged salad. Two of them specified that they ate Dole brand packaged salad. Why are investigators only connecting the dots between the outbreak and its source? Well, it wasn’t until last week that DNA ”fingerprinting” tests on a bag of salad greens packaged at a Dole facility in Springfield, Ohio conducted by the Ohio Department of Agriculture came back. The lab tests ”showed that the Listeria isolate from the packaged salad was highly related genetically to isolates from ill people,” according to a CDC release. Dole Fresh Vegetables told the Food and Drug Administration on Friday it was temporarily suspending operations at the Springfield processing facility. The company also voluntarily withdrew from the market all of its   and private label packaged salads processed at that location. (They include Fresh Selections, Simple Truth, Marketside, The Little Salad Bar and President’s Choice Organics brands.) Each year in the U. S. the CDC estimates that 1, 600 people get sick from Listeria infections and 260 people die. And, as the CDC notes, pregnant women, elderly people and those with compromised immune systems are most at risk. The CDC says at least 90 percent of people sickened by Listeria infections are in one of these   categories. In this outbreak, the mean age of the people who got sick is 66. Meanwhile, some healthy people who are exposed to the bacteria never end up getting sick  —   or have just minor symptoms. So, how do the guts of healthy people help fend off dangerous bacteria such as Listeria? As we reported a few years back, the immune system of healthy people can protect against this pathogen. Soon after Listeria invade our gut, white blood cells are dispatched to the scene. Each one acts as a little foot soldier battling it out with the bacteria. For those who are infected, symptoms may include a fever, muscle aches and a stiff neck."
"I ate a lot of cantaloupe in the weeks before a listeria outbreak led to a recall in September. And probably like many of you out there, I found myself wondering: Is there any chance that I ate some of the contaminated melons? ”Probably a lot of people ate this cantaloupe,” Don Schaffner, a food scientist with Rutgers University, told me. ”And a lot of people probably ate lots of (bacterial cells of) listeria.” Though thousands were likely exposed to listeria, the number of reported illnesses is significantly lower  —   109 confirmed sicknesses and 21 deaths, according to the latest CDC count. The median age of the cantaloupe victims who were hospitalized was 79. There were also a few pregnant women. But younger, healthier people seemed to have been spared. One explanation? Experts point to what’s happening in our stomachs. Ideally, we have lots of acid in our stomachs. And when cells of bacteria enter the stomach, they don’t find the environment too hospitable.  ”The bacteria come in and in many cases, they’ll die in the stomach,” says Schaffner. But when acid in the stomach is altered, studies find that people seem to be more susceptible. For instance, taking medicines to reduce acid reflux appears to increase the risk of stomach bugs. ”We do know that people who eat a lot of antacids or who are taking proton pump inhibitors are at higher risk of food poisoning,” says Schaffner. There’s another way the immune system of healthy people can protect against   pathogens. Soon after bacteria  —   such as virulent strains of listeria  —   invade our gut, white blood cells are sent to the scene. Each one acts as a little foot soldier battling it out with the cells of listeria. ”The job of that white blood cell is to turn itself into its own killing machine,” says Ross Kedl, an associate professor of immunology at National Jewish Health in Denver. The white blood cells help grind up the bacteria that get inside the cell. But as we age, our immune systems don’t seem to mount this response as quickly, Kedl says. There are many other factors that may increase our susceptibility to   illness  —   for instance, when we’re fighting a common cold. ”Viruses alter immune response,” explains Erwin Gelfand of National Jewish Health. And when we’re sick, we may not be able to handle the additional attack of pathogens as well. Gelfand says conditions such as Vitamin D deficiencies and stress may play a role, too. Finally, there’s the business of eating habits. Rutger’s Don Schaffner says when you buy cantaloupes and other fresh food, don’t wait too long to eat it. ”One of the interesting things about listeria,” says Schaffner, ”is that even in the refrigerator, the organism will grow and multiply.”"
"In a blazing display of physical efficiency and analytical speed that’s likely to infuriate anyone who’s ever struggled to solve a Rubik’s Cube puzzle, two guys in Kansas City, Mo. have built a robot that can solve the cube in an amazing 1. 2 seconds. Actually, some of the robot’s times are under 1. 2 seconds. A video on YouTube posted by software engineer Jay Flatland shows the robot  —   a collection of motors, webcams and   parts  —   whizzing to a solution in 1. 196 seconds. One time recorded in the video was even quicker: 1. 04 seconds. That came after Flatland covered the robot’s cameras with a piece of paper and scrambled the cube by hand before replacing it in the frame. The robot uses a specially prepared cube with small holes drilled into each side, allowing it to grip the cube securely. Describing the robot in the video, Flatland says information from four USB webcams is fed into a computer that uses a   algorithm called Kociemba, which then ”determines a set of moves to solve the cube very rapidly.” The robot’s time is several seconds faster than the fastest human time of 4. 904 seconds, which was set in November by    Lucas Etter of Lexington, Ky. It’s also two seconds quicker than the time of 3. 253 seconds that has been the robot record for solving a Rubik’s Cube since March of 2014. The Kansas City team of Flatland and fellow engineer Paul Rose hopes to have the record certified by the folks at Guinness World Records next week, Flatland tells NPR editor Avie Schneider. The robot’s times are impressive, but it has a ways to go if it wants to match the reaction to Etter’s feat. Check it out:"
"Today, we celebrate the release of our 500th Tiny Desk concert. It’s amazing that something that started as a bit of a wisecrack has been so widely embraced by artists and fans. In 2008 at SXSW in Austin, NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson and I met up to see singer Laura Gibson. Laura was so quiet, and the crowd was so loud and rude  —   something about a March basketball game  —   that Stephen jokingly asked her to come play at my desk so we could hear her. My lightbulbs went off, and a month later, Laura came to D. C. I was ready with a couple of cameras, a microphone, my desk and a chair. In the years since, we’ve had the privilege of enjoying intimate moments with Adele, Tom Jones,   The Tallest Man On Earth, Mavis Staples, Phoenix, Reggie Watts, Andrew W. K. Kacey Musgraves, John Legend, Ralph Stanley, Sylvan Esso, Lianne La Havas and 486 more. It’s a list that includes opera singers, Romanian brass bands, legendary bluegrass singers and pickers, a Colombian jazz harpist, a bagpiper, legends of country, jazz, rock, RB. .. and, most importantly, artists unknown. This Tiny Desk Concert with The Arcs is a perfect intersection of the known and the unknown. The band is headed by Dan Auerbach, whom we know from The Black Keys. It’s also fronted by Richard Swift, one of the best modern producers of intriguing pop music he can be found on drums in The Arcs alongside a contemporary RB drumming legend in Homer Steinweiss, known for his work in The   and with Amy Winehouse. It’s a bundle of talent that also includes the Mariachi band Flor de Toloache, which provides backing vocals and plays violin, trumpet and guitar. The songs from The Arcs’ album Yours, Dreamily provide a finely crafted blend of soul and pop, with enough playfulness to keep it fun, not perfect. That’s the spirit of the Tiny Desk: It’s casual, with a mix of artistry and adventure that’s different from hearing a record or seeing a band on a big stage. It’s a tiny window that’s both intimate and a bit awkward  —   and always revealing and entertaining. Yours, Dreamily is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Morgan Walker, Julia Reihs, Nick Michael Editor: Niki Walker Production Assistant: Jillian Beytin Photo: Jessica Mowery, For more Tiny Desk Concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The   organization PEN American Center says it is giving its 2016   award to author J. K. Rowling. The prize honors ”a critically acclaimed author whose work embodies its mission to oppose repression in any form and to champion the best of humanity.” In particular, the award recognizes Rowling’s two charitable foundations  —   Volant, which works to alleviate poverty and social deprivation, especially among women and children, and Lumos, which helps institutionalized children return to family life. Rowling is a frequent target of censorship. In 2006, the American Library Association named her the most challenged author of the 21st century. ”I’m deeply honored to receive this award and humbled that my work has been recognized as having moral value by an organization I so admire,” Rowling told The Associated Press. ”Through her writing, Rowling engenders imagination, empathy, humor, and a love of reading, along the way revealing moral choices that help us better understand ourselves,” PEN American President Andrew Solomon said in a statement. ”Through their experiences with Rowling both on and off the page, countless children have learned not only the power of speaking their own minds, but the critical importance of hearing others.” Past winners include Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood. PEN is also honoring Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch. Pietsch joined with several other publishers last year in an informal pledge to combat censorship of translated books in China. Hachette imprint Little, Brown also published the posthumous manifesto Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression by Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, who died in the terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine last year. Both prizes will be handed out at PEN’s annual literary gala in May. Last year, six authors withdrew from the gala and more than 150 signed an open letter of protest after PEN gave Charlie Hebdo its annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award."
"A drop in the number of   diabetes cases is good public health news. But for the Type 1 diabetes community it’s a source of frustration, because the numbers hide their story. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that new cases of diagnosed diabetes among adults in the U. S. had finally dropped after decades of growth, from 1. 7 million in 2008 to 1. 4 million in 2014. The decline in new cases gives ”confidence that our diabetes prevention efforts are working and we are moving in the right direction,” CDC officials said via email to Shots. ”We know that   lifestyle changes in those at high risk are critical to prevent Type 2 diabetes and maintain this progress.” While it’s certainly the right direction for the more common Type 2 diabetes, the findings don’t apply to Type 1, a different condition that appears to be on the rise and that is not caused by obesity or lifestyle factors. Rather, Type 1 diabetes results from an autoimmune destruction of the   cells of the pancreas. And while Type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity and can typically be managed with diet, physical activity, and various medications including insulin for some, Type 1 always requires insulin treatment, either with multiple daily injections or an infusion pump, and is far more   to manage. Type 1 is believed to make up roughly 5 percent of the total 29 million adults and children in the U. S. who currently live with diabetes, or about 1. 5 million people. But, the actual number isn’t really known, and some surveys have suggested there may be twice that many. The new CDC numbers came from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) which asked adult respondents whether a health professional had ever told them they have diabetes. The survey doesn’t ask what type. This is a problem, according to officials with the T1D Exchange, a nonprofit organization that includes a clinic network, registry, biorepository, and online patient community. In an open letter to the CDC, the Exchange’s executive director Dana Ball and chief medical officer Dr. Henry Anhalt called for clarification of the announced decrease in new diabetes cases. ”Comingling of the data, particularly from the leading national public health institute of the United States, perpetuates the myth that diabetes is one disease sharing a name, while the reality is that Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are actually two different diseases in the diabetes family,” Ball and Anhalt wrote. One concern, Anhalt told Shots, is that scientists seeking funding for research into Type 1 diabetes might be turned down if the condition is perceived to be on the decline, when in fact the opposite appears to be the case. Most of the available data on Type 1 diabetes are in children, even though a large proportion of people with the condition are adults who developed it either as children or in adulthood. In a large multisite study called SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth that is jointly funded by the CDC and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, there was a 21 percent increase in the number of new cases of Type 1 diabetes in children between 2001 and 2009. Increases were seen in kids of all ages, as well as in ethnic or racial minority groups that are more commonly associated with Type 2. And according to the International Diabetes Federation’s Seventh Atlas  released in 2015, the number of kids with Type 1 diabetes worldwide had risen 9 percent since the Sixth Atlas, from 2013. Researchers don’t know why Type 1 diabetes is rising, and it’s important to find out, Anhalt said. ”The call to action was not necessarily to say CDC is bad. But if you don’t have a way to do it, find one, because obtaining those data is vital.” But that’s not so easy, says Edward Gregg, chief of the Epidemiology and Statistics Branch in the CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation. ”Our national survey data unfortunately don’t have the detail necessary to accurately distinguish diabetes types,” he told Shots. For one thing, while the majority of adults with diabetes in the U. S. have   Type 2, many aren’t familiar with the terminology or are confused about it. Because T1 used to be called ” ” diabetes, some people still mistakenly believe that anyone treated with insulin has Type 1. In fact, between a quarter and a third of people with Type 2 are treated with insulin, typically after they’ve had the condition for several years. And the former terms ”juvenile” and ” ” diabetes persist despite having been officially changed to Types 1  2 nearly 20 years ago, after it became clear that adults could develop the ”juvenile” type. And Type 2 is now appearing in some overweight and obese children, particularly among   Hispanic or Native American teenagers. ”When you survey people in the population you could ask them their type, but it would not be a   way of determining the prevalence,” Gregg noted. Health care providers are confused too. Some will simply diagnose all   diabetes in adults as Type 2, since it wasn’t appreciated until recently that Type 1 can and often does first appear in adults in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and even older. (Because Type 1 onset tends to be slower in adults, it’s often called ”latent autoimmune diabetes of adulthood,” or ”LADA. ”) And for pediatricians, it may be difficult to tell which diabetes type an overweight or obese child or teenager has. Indeed, the overall rise in obesity has furthered the diagnostic confusion. People with Type 1 were generally thin in the past, but today that’s no longer the case (in the developed world, anyway). Although obesity isn’t the driver of Type 1 diabetes as it is in Type 2, people with Type 1 diabetes today are at least as likely to be overweight or obese as the general population. And with that, they may also display similar heart disease risk profiles as do people with Type 2 diabetes  —   in fact, heart disease is believed to be the number one killer of people with Type 1 diabetes, as it is for Type 2. Adding to the confusion, there are other genetic types of diabetes that are also commonly misdiagnosed as either Type 1 or Type 2. Some of those people are put on insulin unnecessarily, making them vulnerable to weight gain and potentially dangerous low blood sugar episodes. While some laboratory tests can help determine diabetes type, none are perfect and the most accurate one  —   checking for antibodies associated with Type 1 diabetes  —   is not routine and can be costly. (The genetic tests are even more expensive.) Endocrinologist M. Sue Kirkman, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, doesn’t ask diabetes patients about their type. Instead, she asks about factors such as their age and symptoms at diagnosis, medication history and family history of diabetes. ”There’s a lot of confusion, Kirkman says. ”It’s not infrequent to see medical records that say Type 2 diabetes, but when we ask the patient some of those questions it’s clearly Type 1.” And if the type still isn’t clear, she’ll order an antibody test. While some argue that knowing the type may not matter as long as the person’s blood sugars are     can have serious consequences. For example, in adult hospital settings, where Type 2 diabetes is extremely common, the fact that insulin can’t be withheld for long periods of time  —   such as for a surgical procedure   in Type 1 patients may be overlooked, Kirkman notes. Besides, she says, ”I actually think it’s important for people to understand what kind of diabetes they have, even if [their current treatment] is working. I think it’s important to be educated about what’s wrong with your body.” Kirkman agrees with the T1D Exchange that CDC should work to improve its data gathering. ”I hope the CDC can in the future distinguish better, because I think it’s really important to know what’s going on with one and the other.” In fact, Gregg says, CDC is addressing the issue in several ways. His team has developed new questions for the NHIS aimed at better distinguishing between the diabetes types, including the age at diagnosis, the interval between diagnosis and starting insulin (a short time would suggest Type 1) and whether insulin use was ever stopped (a long period without insulin would suggest Type 2). Those questions are being field tested, he said, noting that ”we’d be getting a better estimation of proportion of Type 1 versus Type 2, although it won’t be perfect.” And, in addition to   the SEARCH study, which looks at both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes in youth, CDC has also recently issued a request for applications for research specifically to investigate rates of Type 1 diabetes in young adults, with a due date of February 23rd. ”That would also hopefully fill this data gap,” Gregg said. Meanwhile, some diabetes experts say that it’s time for a complete overhaul of the way diabetes is classified by basing it on underlying causes rather than potentially misleading descriptive characteristics. In a perspective published last week in the American Diabetes Association journal Diabetes Care, the authors wrote, ”The current classification system presents challenges to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with diabetes. .. in part due to its conflicting and confounding definitions of Type 1, Type 2, and [LADA]. ..We urge that the time is right to convene a committee of diabetes community leaders and researchers to reevaluate the current outmoded [diabetes] classification system.” Miriam E. Tucker is a freelance journalist specializing in medicine and health. You can follow her on Twitter @MiriamETucker."
"He traveled more than 900 miles across the Antarctic, attempting a solo trek that would also boost a British charity that aids wounded veterans. But explorer Henry Worsley was halted by exhaustion and dehydration that turned out to be fatal. Worsley, 55, had been attempting to complete the   solo and unassisted crossing of the Antarctic landmass, timing the venture to coincide with the centenary of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1915 attempt. But when treacherous conditions and deteriorating health confined Worsley to his tent at more than 9, 000 feet, he was forced to abandon the attempt, calling for an airlift. After spending 70 days alone in some of the harshest conditions our planet has to offer, he was taken to a hospital in Chile, where he was diagnosed with bacterial peritonitis. Today, his family announced his death. A Twitter feed that had been updating his progress shows Worsley had in recent days been facing whiteout conditions and soft snow  —   a ”hellish surface” that made it hard to ski (and pull a small sleigh). Worsley had been filing audio postcards from each day of his journey. In one of the last, he announced, ”My journey is at an end. I have run out of time and physical endurance  —   and the simple, sheer inability to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal.” ”I spent 70 days all alone in a place I love,” he said, adding that the generosity of those who supported his charity efforts would help him cope with his disappointment of stopping short. Upon his return to civilization, Worsley said, ”The first thing I’ll do: get a hot cup of tea, perhaps with cake.” A married father of two, Worsley had previously completed two other Antarctic treks: one in   and another in  . Those trips commemorated South Pole expeditions by Shackleton, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen. The Endeavour Fund, the charity Worsley was affiliated with, passes along a statement from Worsley’s wife, Joanna: ”It is with heartbroken sadness I let you know that my husband Henry Worsley has died following complete organ failure despite all efforts of ALE and medical staff at the Clinica Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile. ”Henry achieved his Shackleton Solo goals: of raising over £100, 000 for the Endeavour Fund, to help his wounded colleagues, and so nearly completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass. A crossing made, under exceptionally difficult weather conditions, to mark the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition  —   his lifelong hero. ”On behalf of myself and family I wish to thank the many hundreds of you who have shown unfailing support to Henry throughout his courageous final challenge and great generosity to the Endeavour Fund. Donations now total over £106, 773.”"
"Picture your favorite college professor. Here are some adjectives that might come to mind: Wise. Funny. Caring. Prompt. Passionate. Organized. Tough but fair. Now, are you thinking of a man or a woman? A new study argues that student evaluations are systematically biased against women  —   so much so, in fact, that they’re better mirrors of gender bias than of what they are supposed to be measuring: teaching quality. Anne Boring, an economist and the lead author of the paper, was hired by her university in Paris, Sciences Po, to conduct quantitative analysis of gender bias. Through her conversations with instructors and students, she became suspicious of what she calls ”double standards” applying to male and female instructors. Philip Stark, associate dean of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, is a   of the paper along with Kellie Ottoboni. Stark has a longstanding research interest in  —   some might say a vendetta against  —   course evaluations. We’ve reported on his work previously. In this paper, the team ran a series of statistical tests on two different data sets, of French and U. S. university students. The French students were, in effect, randomly assigned to either male or female section leaders in a wide range of required courses. In this case, the study authors found, male French students rated male instructors more highly across the board. Is it bias? Or were the male instructors, maybe, actually, on average, better teachers? (It’s science we have to ask the uncomfortable questions.) Well, turns out that, at this university, all students across all sections of a course take the same, anonymously graded final exam, regardless of which instructor they have. This offers the chance to look at one dimension of actual instructor quality: Presumably better section leaders would help students get better grades on the same exam. In fact, they found, the students of male instructors on average did slightly worse on the final. Overall, there was no correlation between students rating their instructors more highly and those students actually learning more. The American case was a little bit different. Here, the authors performed a new analysis of a clever experiment published in 2014. Students were taking a single online class with either a male or female instructor. In half the cases, the instructors agreed to dress in virtual drag: The men used the women’s names and vice versa. Here, it was the female students, not the males, who rated the instructors they believed to be male more highly across the board. That’s right: The same instructor, with all the same comments, all the same interactions with the class, received higher ratings if he was called Paul than if she was called Paula. And that higher rating even applied to a seemingly objective question: Did this teacher return assignments on time? (The online system made it possible to ensure that promptness was identical in every case.) The paper is one more depressing entry in the growing scientific literature documenting how racial, gender and other forms of bias play out in and around the classroom. What to make of the fact that the bias was wielded primarily by men in France and by women in the U. S.? ”That the situation is Really Complicated,” Philip Stark writes in an email to NPR Ed, and, he adds, it won’t be easy to correct for it. In fact, the authors titled their paper ”Student Evaluations of Teaching (Mostly) Do Not Measure Teaching Effectiveness.” These results seem pretty damning, but not everyone is convinced. Michael Grant is the vice provost and associate vice chancellor for undergraduate education at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He says there’s a lot of research supporting the effectiveness and usefulness of student evaluations. ”There are multiple,   thoughtfully conducted studies that clearly contradict this very weakly designed study,” he says, citing this study from 2000 and this study conducted at his own university. His personal review of student ratings from one department at CU Boulder over nine years did find a bias in favor of men, he says, but it was very small  —   averaging 0. 13 on a   scale. At Sciences Po, educators are taking steps to try to reduce gender bias in    evaluations, beginning with informing students about that bias. However, both Boring and Stark seem ready to write off Student Evaluations of Teaching, or SET, as pretty much useless. ”Trying to adjust for the bias to make SET ’fair’ is hopeless,” says Stark, ”(even if they measured effectiveness, and there’s lots of evidence that they don’t).” Boring acknowledges that ”SETs can contain some information that can be valuable.” But, she adds, they are too biased to be used in a   way as a measure of teacher effectiveness."
"This week, NASA is set to reach a milestone on one of its most ambitious projects. If all goes to plan, workers will finish assembling the huge mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope  —   an $8 billion successor to the famous Hubble telescope. ”So far, everything  —   knock on wood  —   is going quite well,” says Bill Ochs, the telescope’s project manager at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The massive mirror is being built in a facility that’s essentially a giant,   gymnasium. NPR can’t go inside for risk of contamination, but I meet crew chief Dave Sime at an observation deck where we can see the mirror below. Sime works for the contractor Harris Corp. and he’s normally in there assembling it. When he is, he has to wear a white suit that covers every inch of his body. ”The only thing exposed is your eyes,” he says. (Spacecraft assembly pro tip, he adds: To use your cellphone in the clean area, try a Bluetooth headset under your protective clothing.) For months now, he’s been working   shifts. His job is to take 18 hexagonal mirror segments, each about the size of a coffee table, and attach them to the telescope’s cobweb frame using glue and screws. When everything is done, the mirror will look like a giant, golden satellite dish, two stories high. The assembly process is precise, and more difficult than even an Ikea wardrobe. Sime points to a table covered in books filled with instructions: ”Each one of those notebooks is for one mirror,” he says. Everything has to be by the book. The Webb telescope will be one of the most expensive things NASA has ever built. Its segmented mirror is so big that, once it’s in space, it will have to unfold like an elaborate piece of origami. And to make observations, it will need to be a million miles from Earth, so far that no astronauts could fix it if it breaks. But the Webb will be able to do things no other telescope can. It is designed to capture light from the first stars and galaxies, which has been traveling billions of years across the universe to reach our solar system. It will probe the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets outside the solar system. Astronomer John Mather is the telescope’s project scientist at NASA, and he is pretty sure it’s going to do other things too: ”Every time we build bigger or better pieces of equipment, we find something astonishing,” he says. The Webb is currently scheduled for launch in 2018."
"Suppose you’re a    woman living in the U. S. You have no history of breast cancer, nor worrisome symptoms. Should you have a mammogram? If you follow the American Cancer Society’s recommendation, the answer is ”yes”: You should begin routine mammography screening for breast cancer at age 45. But if you follow the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation, the answer is ”no”: You should probably wait another 5 years. Which recommendation is right? Answering this question goes well beyond the evidence. It’s not just that the evidence is imperfect (though it always is). Rather, it’s that turning evidence into policy requires more than empirical facts it also depends on values. In this case, recommendations could differ depending on how much value is placed on avoiding ”false alarms”  —   cases in which a mammogram leads to subsequent tests or treatments that are ultimately unnecessary  —   versus the value of preventing ”misses,” or cases in which a cancer that could have been caught by routine mammography slips by. Christie Aschwanden discusses this example in a nice post at FiveThirtyEight. The headline summarizes the key lesson: ”Science Won’t Settle The Mammogram Debate.” But the lesson is a much more general one: Science can (and should) inform most policy decisions, but science, on its own, won’t settle policy. The need to trade off different kinds of errors is one pervasive reason why. Science can quantify the relative risks, but it can’t ultimately answer the question of how much we value avoiding a false alarm relative to preventing a miss. Consider an example from another domain: eyewitness identification. You unwittingly observe a crime, and you get a fleeting glimpse of the perpetrator. The police later show you a photograph of a suspect: Is it the person you saw? There are two different ways you might go wrong. First, you could wrongly say ”yes,” because the person in the photograph is not the one you saw. If you make this kind of error  —   a false alarm  —   you risk contributing to the conviction of an innocent person. But if you wrongly say ”no”  —   a miss  —   a dangerous criminal could go free. How confident do you need to be in your judgment before you’re willing to say ”yes”? The answer depends not only on the quality of your memory, but also on how you weight the risk of a false alarm against the hazards of a miss. Decisions about how to weight these errors of eyewitness identification arise at a policy level as well, not only for individuals tasked with making identifications. For instance, there’s currently some debate about whether it’s best to present eyewitnesses with a lineup, in which several individuals are visible simultaneously, or to have them make   decisions about individuals sequentially. Although eyewitnesses’ total accuracy is likely similar across these presentation modes, the kinds of errors they’re more likely to make may differ. If that’s right, policy decisions about which presentation style to adopt will implicitly value one type of   over the other. More mundane examples abound. The weather forecast on Monday morning predicts a 20 percent chance of rain. Do you take an umbrella? Avery, who hates to carry an umbrella unnecessarily and who doesn’t really mind getting wet, doesn’t bother. Blake, who loves accessories and dry clothes, opts for an umbrella and a raincoat. Avery and Blake don’t disagree about the probability of rain instead, they weight the costs of different errors differently. Carter and Dakota decide to bake chocolate chip cookies. When the timer goes off after a few minutes, they peer at the cookies uncertainly. Should they pull them out now and risk having a batch of   cookies? Or wait another five minutes and, instead, risk a batch of   cookies? Carter, who hates cookies to be doughy, opts for waiting. Dakota, who hates cookies that are dry, wants to take them out now. They don’t disagree about the relative risks they disagree about which risk  —     or    —   is more grievous. A final example comes from science itself. When scientists test hypotheses using statistical tests, they typically decide on some value beyond which a test is considered statistically ”significant.” For instance, the norm in psychology is to consider a statistical test significant when it yields a   below 0. 05, which means that the probability of seeing results at least as extreme due to chance is less than 5 percent. Psychology could become more conservative, however, by lowering this critical threshold, making it less likely that the field reports false alarms: ”significant” results that are just statistical flukes. But doing so would also increase the probability of misses: failures to recognize real effects. Scientific ”policies”  —   just like policies in other domains  —   effectively value some kinds of   over others. Recognizing that science can’t settle policy doesn’t open the floodgates to skepticism or radical relativism. It doesn’t mean we should give up on   policy, or that ”anything goes.” Instead, it invites us to recognize our values and subject them to scrutiny. It’s not enough to have solid evidence we also need solid values. And that requires careful science, but also careful thought. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"To be a girl in the Viwandani slum of Nairobi, Kenya, means sleeping in a   shack with as many as eight members of your family. It means convincing your parents that your monthly school fees are worth struggling to save for. It means scrounging for rags or old mattress stuffing to fashion a sanitary pad so you can go to school during that time of the month. And for too many, it means ignorance about reproductive health. I am a health care educator who has spent a decade working with women and families in the slums of Nairobi. When I meet with adolescents, as I did recently with a group of 75 in Viwandani, I talk about how to manage menstrual periods and the benefits of delaying pregnancy. On this particular visit, I was also there to deliver   sanitary pads donated by girls’ schools in the   area. As I began talking with the girls, ages 11 to 15, they explained they already knew how to avoid getting pregnant. No, their strategies didn’t involve abstaining from sex or using condoms. Here’s what they said would prevent pregnancy: taking a hot bath, drinking hot water, jumping vigorously after sex, having sex in a standing position, or having sex when it is raining or in a swimming pool. Their answers saddened me. But I probably shouldn’t have been shocked. According to the 2014 Kenya Demographic Health Survey, the rate of contraceptive use is lowest among women ages 15 to 19, and 15 percent of them have already given birth. These numbers have contributed to alarming rates of maternal mortality: Globally, complications related to pregnancy and childbirth are leading causes of death among girls ages 15 to 19. When asked why they and their friends engage in sex at an early age, the girls explained their beliefs that sex reduces pains from their period and that a girl is able to dance well if she’s had sex. They also mentioned hunger as a reason. When parents are not able to provide food or clothing, the girls can get these items from men in exchange for sex. This is not just a Kenya problem. This week, health leaders from around the world are meeting in Indonesia for the International Conference on Family Planning. One key part of the agenda is addressing youth reproductive health. As the program notes, there are more than 2 million adolescents with HIV, and one in 10 worldwide births is to a girl age 15 to 19. Of course, many devoted people and organizations are already on a mission to address these issues. But there are still girls out there, like the ones at my meeting in Nairobi, who don’t even think of contraceptives as a way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Once I told them about those options, however, they were receptive to them. So there is still a need to better understand what drives pregnancy among adolescents and come up with targeted interventions. One avenue of opportunity is in the classroom. When I meet with girls in Nairobi, I find they are hungry for the knowledge and skills that will lead to a bright future. The best way to achieve this is to prevent them from dropping out of school. Studies have shown that staying in school reduces the chances of girls getting pregnant or marrying early, lowers rates of HIV infection and puts them on track to acquire a career. We also need parents, churches and other community structures to share reproductive health information with the adolescents. It’s time that this education becomes part of the curriculum in schools globally. That way, to be a girl in the Viwandani slum of Nairobi, Kenya, can mean earning a degree and going on to enjoy a productive life. Jane Otai is an Aspen fellow and a community health educator working in Kenya for Jhpiego, an international health nonprofit organization and an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University."
"On the drive to Fairview Cemetery in the Boston neighborhood of Hyde Park, six seniors from Roxbury Latin boys’ school sit in silent reflection. Mike Pojman, the school’s assistant headmaster and senior adviser, says the trip is a massive contrast to the rest of their school day, and to their lives as a whole right now. Today the teens have volunteered to be pallbearers for a man who died alone in September, and for whom no next of kin was found. He’s being buried in a grave with no tombstone, in a city cemetery. ”To reflect on the fact that there are people, like this gentleman, who probably knew hundreds or thousands of people through his life, and at the end of it there’s nobody there  —   I think that gets to all of them,” Pojman says. ”Some have said, ’I just gotta make sure that never happens to me.’ ” The students, dressed in jackets and ties, carry the plain wooden coffin, and take part in a short memorial. They read together, as a group: ”Dear Lord, thank you for opening our hearts and minds to this corporal work of mercy. We are here to bear witness to the life and passing of Nicholas Miller. ”He died alone with no family to comfort him. ”But today we are his family, we are here as his sons, ”We are honored to stand together before him now, to commemorate his life, and to remember him in death, as we commend his soul to his eternal rest.” Each of the young men in turn read a poem, verse of scripture, or passage about death. Emmett Dalton, 18, reads ”A Reflection On An Autumn Day,” which ends ”death can take away what we have, but it cannot rob us of who we are.” After the ceremony, the seniors share their thoughts about an experience —   in the middle of a school day  —   that has hit them hard. ”I know I’m going back, and I’m going to go to school and take another quiz,” says    Brendan McInerney, ”but all that work, you can get caught up in it. . .. When you kind of get out of that bubble that you can kind of stuck in, you get perspective on what’s really important in life.” Mike Pojman was inspired to start bringing students to these funerals by a similar program at his alma mater, St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland. He turned to local funeral home Lawler and Crosby  —   which, by coincidence, is one of the very few funeral homes in the state that steps in to help with these kind of burials. ”It’s the right thing to do,” says funeral director Robert Lawler. ”You know, you can’t leave these poor people lying there forever.” When there are no family members or volunteers available, it’s just Lawler by himself, saying a prayer at graveside. After doing this for 42 years, he appreciates the effect it has on people like    Roxbury Latin senior Noah Piou. Today’s ceremony for Nicholas Miller was the first funeral he’s attended. ”That’s my first real moment presented with some form of death before me, and I was kind of at a loss for words at the time,” he says. ”I’ve never met Mr. Miller before, but even within that I kind of had a connection with him, and I could feel that.” After the brief ceremony the students laid flowers. Then they piled back into the van, driving back to school in time for their next lesson."
"The outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil and other countries has raised concern that the pathogen could start spreading widely in the United States, as well. But federal health officials and other infectious disease specialists say so far that seems unlikely. ”Based on what we know right now, we don’t think that widespread transmission in the United States is likely,” says Dr. Beth Bell, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are several reasons for Bell’s cautious optimism that isolated cases that show up in the U. S. could be contained. The first is that the two species of mosquitoes that could be capable of transmitting the virus, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, live mostly in the southern, more tropical parts of the U. S. That makes it likely that transmission would be limited primarily to these areas. And for various reasons, the chain of events and conditions the virus needs in order to spread is more easily disrupted in the U. S. than elsewhere. For example, many people in the U. S. have air conditioning in the summer, so aren’t as likely to leave windows open at the times of day when mosquitoes are especially active. Open windows also tend to have screens. And many counties and other municipalities spray to kill mosquitoes and are vigilant in trying to eliminate pools of standing water where the insects can breed. ”These are all conditions that make it less likely for ongoing,   spread to occur,” Bell says. Still, travelers who have gotten infected with the Zika virus in other countries have already arrived in the U. S. and more are expected, raising the possibility that the virus could spread a bit beyond those cases, Bell says. ”There certainly is the possibility for transmission,” Bell says. And since the virus is new to the U. S. most people have no immunity to it. But even if that occurs, Bell and the CDC predict that any outbreaks would likely be very small. That’s been the case so far with two similar viruses that have spread rapidly throughout Latin America and the Caribbean in recent years: dengue and chikungunya. ”What we saw with chikungunya, and what we’ve seen with dengue,” Bell says, ”is some small situations with localized spread in southern parts of the United States, but with very limited transmission.” Bell says she doubts Zika would fan out across the U. S. in the way that West Nile virus has spread. For one thing, West Nile is primarily transmitted by a different type of mosquito  ” one that is found throughout the country. Also, birds can be infected with West Nile and carry it from place to place. That doesn’t happen with Zika virus, which has no known bird or animal reservoir. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease, says he agrees that it’s unlikely that the U. S. will see a widespread outbreak of Zika. ”If you look at historically what we’ve seen, I think we can say that it’s a remote possibility and unlikely to happen,” Fauci says. Nevertheless, Bell acknowledged that experts can ” ’never say never,’ ” and Fauci agrees anything is possible. There are still many uncertainties, including exactly what Zika is doing to pregnant women and their babies, what other complications the virus may cause and why it has suddenly taken off in parts of Brazil and elsewhere. Those unknowns mean ”there is a risk” to some people, says Dr. Albert Ko of the Yale School of Public Health, who’s been studying the outbreak in Brazil. ”We don’t know how big that risk is. It seems low. But we know not that much about this disease at this moment.” Ko and other experts say they are rushing to learn more about the Zika virus and are on the lookout for disturbing surprises."
"The rapid spread of the Zika virus has raised interest in a British company that has developed a genetically modified mosquito. Oxitec has produced a genetically engineered line of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the mosquito that carries dengue fever and chikungunya. Those tropical diseases have become common in Latin America and are now showing up in Florida. Aedes aegypti also carries Zika, a disease whose symptoms include fever, like dengue. It has also been linked to a birth defect, microcephaly in children born to women infected with Zika. In Brazil, in the wake of mounting concern over Zika, Oxitec has announced it is expanding a program to release genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Piracicaba, a city about 100 miles northwest of Sao Paulo. The company breeds and releases into the wild male mosquitoes that don’t produce viable offspring. When females mate with the GMO males, they lay eggs that hatch but the larvae die before adulthood. Oxitec says trials conducted in Brazil and other countries over the past decade show releasing bioengineered male mosquitoes can reduce the wild Aedes aegypti population by 90 percent. In Piracicaba, the company says trials that started in April have reduced wild mosquito larvae by 82 percent. Oxitec has signed an agreement with the city to build a new mosquito production facility in the city and expand the trials to cover an area with up to 60, 000 residents. In this country, Oxitec is currently awaiting FDA approval to conduct trials of its genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. After an outbreak of dengue fever in Key West several years ago, county officials and Oxitec agreed to see if releasing the genetically modified mosquitoes here can help control the Aedes aegypti population. Many local residents have expressed concerns about the consequences of releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into the environment.  There have been a handful of Zika cases reported in the U. S. including three in Florida. So far, none were contracted locally. All were recently returned travelers believed to have contracted Zika overseas. But there are concerns that Zika, like dengue and chikungunya, could spread to warm climes in the U. S. like South Florida. The good news is that although there have been sporadic local outbreaks of dengue fever in the U. S. it hasn’t become widespread. One reason, health officials say, may be because of good local mosquito control programs."
"When people had trouble paying the rent in the early 1900s, they might hold a party in their homes, with music and dancing, and sell tickets at the door. Now, a nonprofit group is holding a   version of the rent party to shine a light on the growing lack of affordable housing. The new parties aren’t exactly like the old ones, which were mostly held in Harlem. There’s no dancing, food or tickets. But there is music, as was the case recently in Annapolis, Md. where about 20 people gathered in Tom Wall’s small apartment to help him, and others like him, pay the rent. Wall, 67, used to be a lawyer in the housing and finance industry. He had to quit when he had a stroke in 2011. But then he and his wife couldn’t pay the mortgage on their house, and the lender moved to foreclose. The couple moved to the apartment last summer. But Wall’s wife, Peggy, died three weeks later of cancer. He now lives on $2, 300 a month from Social Security, but his $   rent eats up more than  . Wall is like a record number of American families  —   11. 4 million  —   that spend over half of their incomes on rent. It’s especially difficult for   families, who have little left over for food and other necessities. Wall used to be well off. Now, he’s barely making it. ”Stuff happens,” Wall says. ”Nobody plans to fail. But sometimes circumstances beyond your control happen in life, and you’re challenged with what are you going to do about it.” So recently he hosted a concert in his living room by classical violinist Tim Fain, who played music in the movies Black Swan and Twelve Years A Slave. The nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners coordinated the concert as part of its campaign, called Make Room. The event is being filmed and will be posted online, along with several other concerts highlighting families with similar housing problems. (You can watch some of the concerts here.) Fain, who had just flown in from appearing with the Pittsburgh Symphony, told Wall’s guests  —   seated on folding chairs and two small couches  —   that he appreciates how scary it is not knowing when the next check will arrive. ”I think about this,” Fain said. ”Being a   artist, nobody’s looking out for me really.” Housing experts say it doesn’t take much to get in a bind. Almost 2 million Americans who pay more than half their incomes on rent are seniors, often with fixed incomes. Others are workers whose wages have gone down over the past decade while rents keep going up. In the audience was Donnie Lehman, who lost his masonry job in 2010 and has been unemployed ever since. ”I lost my house [and] found myself literally homeless,” Lehman said. Then Wall invited him to crash at his place. Wall has been trying to make ends meet by bringing in roommates when he can, although Lehman has no money right now. Everyone in Wall’s apartment appeared captivated as Fain played. No one passed the hat. Instead, there’s an online fundraising campaign to help Wall and the others with their rent. The real goal is to get people talking more about what can be done to address the lack of affordable housing, whether it’s more public aid, tax incentives for developers or higher wages. Fain ended to loud applause. And Wall is thankful for the support. But he says he isn’t sure the campaign will make all that much difference in the long run. ”I have to say that, by and large, I think it’s going to fall on deaf ears,” he said. Wall notes that the federal government has been cutting back on housing aid in recent years, and state and local governments are also strapped for cash. So, as he nears 70, he is looking for some   work to avoid eviction. Two friends have also offered to let him live with them for free. But he says he is not ready yet to admit defeat."
"Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is on a goodwill tour through Italy and France this week, trying to drum up investment for his country’s   economy. But Iran still faces challenges that make it hard for companies to do business with Tehran. In a move that was loudly celebrated in Iran, the United States and other countries earlier this month agreed to lift an economic embargo that had been imposed in 2012 in an effort to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The move means that companies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere are free to invest in and trade with Iran. And many seem interested in doing so. ”What we know is that there are many firms in Europe that are eager to enter into Iranian markets,” says Nader Habibi, a professor of Middle East economics at Brandeis University. ”There is no shortage of those. Many of them have already made initial trips to prepare the ground for partnership or investment in Iran.” But doing business in Iran presents special challenges, and the reasons have to do with U. S. policy. While the U. S. government has agreed to lift the nuclear sanctions against Iran, it continues to impose other sanctions over Iran’s human rights policies and support for terrorism. These sanctions bar American citizens and companies from most forms of investment or trade with the country. In theory, those sanctions should affect only U. S. companies  —   but in reality, the law’s reach goes well beyond U. S. borders, Habibi says. The U. S. financial sanctions ”can still cause some problems and make some of the European businesses and banks subject to U. S. economic punishment,” he says. The Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Assets Control ”has made it very clear that no payments linked to Iran may be processed through the U. S. financial system,” says Julia Pfeil, senior associate at the Baker  McKenzie law firm in Frankfurt, Germany. ”So if you receive money from Iran as a bank or a company,” she says, ”you must make sure that this money does not then go to the U. S. or to a U. S. bank or to your U. S. subsidiary.” That means foreign financial institutions doing business in the United States  —   and almost any bank of any consequence has substantial U. S. operations  —   must somehow segregate any Iranian money they hold from their U. S. assets. That’s difficult to do, Pfeil says. There’s no easy way to isolate Iranian money from the rest of the bank’s holdings. ”In a bank, you don’t have separate financial streams,” she says. ”You have the money that goes more or less into a big pool. Of course, it is possible to find out which payment has gone where. But ultimately controlling so that, say, 20 euros that have come from Iran do not end up in the U. S.  —   that is a very big problem for banks.” Beyond this, says Jimmy Gurule, a former Treasury Department official who now teaches at Notre Dame Law School, ”Foreign financial institutions need to be very careful [because] while they may not be running afoul of the nuclear sanctions because they’ve been lifted, doing business with Iran in a particular set of transactions may run afoul of the counterterrorism sanctions.” Foreign banks are especially nervous about violating U. S. sanctions laws because they have sometimes been hit with hefty fines for doing so. In 2014, France’s largest bank, BNP Paribas, agreed to pay a $9 billion penalty for helping clients in Sudan, Cuba and Iran evade sanctions. ”So what we are hearing from Europe is that although European sanctions are lifted, the banks, especially major banks which transact with the United States, are very cautious,” Habibi says. Companies that want to do business in Iran have to first find banks that will work with them, Pfeil says. That means using small banks with no significant operations in the U. S. or even Iranian banks. Still, Gurule believes the Iranian market will ultimately prove irresistible to some businesses. ”I think the economic incentive may just be too great an allure for the counterterrorism sanctions to have a chilling effect and prohibit them from doing business with Iran altogether,” he says. But these companies will first have to decide whether the allure of Iran is worth the risks they’ll face when they do business there."
"Pope Francis met Tuesday with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, the latest sign of Iran’s improving ties in the West as years of sanctions fall away. The two said they discussed the problems in the region, a reference to the wars in Iraq and Syria. The pope has made pleas for peace in both conflicts, while Iran is deeply involved in supporting the embattled governments in both countries. This was the first meeting between a pope and an Iranian head of state since 1999, which was the last time an Iranian leader toured Europe. Iran was increasingly sanctioned by the West over its nuclear program, but many of those restrictions fell away on Jan. 16 under the terms of the nuclear deal Iran signed last year with six world powers. NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports: The meeting lasted 40 minutes  —   long by Vatican standards  —   and a Holy See statement described it as cordial. It said the pope and Rouhani spoke of their common spiritual values and the good relations between the Holy See and Iran. They discussed the deal Tehran reached with world powers to limit its nuclear activities in exchange for an end to economic sanctions. And the statement stressed what it called the relevant role Iran is called on to play to promote suitable political solutions to the problems afflicting the Middle East, to counter the spread of terrorism and arms trafficking. As he left, Rouhani borrowed from the pope one of his signature remarks, asking him, ”Please pray for me.” Francis thanked him for the visit and said, ”I hope for peace.” The Vatican has had diplomatic ties with Tehran from before the 1979 Islamic revolution. They’ve grown even stronger under Francis, who is keen on conflict resolution and mediation. Rouhani’s European trip will also include a visit to France and a batch of commercial deals, now that Iran has access to tens of billions of dollars that were frozen under the sanctions. Most of that money is owed to Iran for oil sales to Asian countries in recent years. ”Iran is the safest, the most stable country in the entire region,” Rouhani told Italian and Iranian business leaders before meeting the pope on Tuesday. ”Now we have created the conditions for investment and for the transfer of  .” A tweet on Rouhani’s official Twitter account said Iran signed 14 economic and cooperation agreements in Italy and that a ”new chapter in economic ties    exchange has begun.”"
"So, a Twitter spat between astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and rapper B. o. B over the flat Earth theory has turned into a   rap battle (and it’s way better than Drake vs. Meek Mill). B. o. B, whom you might know from his hits ”Airplanes,” ”Nothin’ On You” and ”Strange Clouds,” kicked things off Monday when he started tweeting about how he believes the Earth is flat. He also tweeted about why he believes NASA is hiding the truth about the edge of the world. And he shared several meaningless diagrams about the planet including one about flight routes. The rapper fired off more than 50 tweets, saying things like ”I’m going up against the greatest liars in history . .. you’ve been tremendously deceived,” before Tyson took to Twitter to respond. In a short series of tweets, Tyson explained why the Earth was round. He tweeted: ”Earth’s curve indeed blocks 150 (not 170) ft of Manhattan. But most buildings in midtown are waaay taller than that.” ”Polaris is gone by 1. 5 deg S. Latitude. You’ve never been south of Earth’s Equator, or if so, you’ve never looked up.” ”Flat Earth is a problem only when people in charge think that way. No law stops you from regressively basking in it.” Tyson’s last tweet to B. o. B was, ”Duude  —   to be clear: Being five centuries regressed in your reasoning doesn’t mean we all can’t still like your music.” So, naturally, B. o. B whipped up a song about the why the Earth is flat, called ”Flatline,” that expanded on the theory, called out Tyson by name and also   David Irving, a renowned Holocaust denier. Here’s one line: ”Aye, Neil Tyson need to loosen up his vest   They’ll probably write that man one hell of a check.” Here’s another: ”I see only good things on the horizon   That’s probably why the horizon is always rising   Indoctrinated in a cult called science   And graduated to a club full of liars.” You can read the full lyrics on Gawker. That was Monday night. Tuesday afternoon, Tyson dropped his own dis track, called ”Flat To Fact,” written and rapped by his nephew, Stephen Tyson. He tweeted: ”As an astrophysicist I don’t rap, but I know people who do. This one has my back.” Here’s a sample: ”Very important that I clear this up   You say that Neil’s vest is what he needs to loosen up?   The ignorance you’re spinning helps to keep people enslaved, I mean mentally.” And Tyson’s rap didn’t pull any punches: ”All those strange clouds must be messing with your brain.” ”I think it’s very clear that Bobby didn’t read enough   And he’s believing all this conspiracy theory stuff.” You have to hear it to believe it. Alarmingly, B. O. B isn’t the first celebrity flat Earth truther. Earlier this month, Tila Tequila, of MTV fame, fired off a series of tweets demanding proof the Earth was round. Hopefully, Tyson’s track is the last word, or rap, on the matter."
"In a high school theater in Arcadia, Calif. Amber Zhang and the rest of the teenage cast of a production of Molière’s comedic play The Miser gather in a tight circle. ”Everyone say, ’Hey, hey, hey!’ ” bellows   Bermejo, an instructor at Arroyo Pacific Academy. ”Helloooo!” Zhang, cast as a spunky ingénue, throws her body  —   and pipes  —   into the exercise. ”In China, if we have class, for sure we sit down on a chair,” says Zhang, 17, who grew up in Guangzhou. She’s an only child whose parents, both doctors, sent her to the U. S. for high school. Back home, there was ”not a lot of time to have fun like this.” Zhang belongs to a growing population of Chinese teens leaving the     world of schools back home for the U. S.  —   more than 23, 000 at last count, according to the Institute of International Education. Their goal is to better their children’s chances of getting into an American college a degree earned in the U. S. carries a lot of weight. At the same time, these students  —   often called ”parachute kids”  —   enjoy the looser contours of an American education, one that students like Zhang say lets them be more creative and independent. It’s a trend that immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea popularized in the 1980s. The numbers of students from China have grown fast because of the sheer size of its population and the rise of a wealthy class buoyed by years of economic growth. So many high schoolers have come that they’ve helped to tilt the overall age of Chinese immigrants in the U. S. downward, according to the Census Bureau. Among the age groups of Chinese immigrants seeing the biggest growth was the 15 to 19 crowd. Many live with host families and attend private schools like Arroyo Pacific. U. S. immigration law gives them little choice: International students can attend public schools for only one year and must reimburse the school district. California is a top destination for these students, and the Los Angeles suburbs in the San Gabriel Valley, home to one of the world’s largest Chinese diasporas, are particularly popular. That’s where Arroyo Pacific is located. During lunch, the sound of Mandarin fills the hallways, with accents originating from all over China  —   Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou. In a matter of six years, Chinese students have transformed Arroyo Pacific’s student body. Where there were just a handful of Chinese students before, the school is now more than 70 percent Chinese, said Robert Nguyen, the school’s director of admissions. He said many students are learning about the school by   . ”Being a small school with small class sizes, we can pretty much tailor our program to suit the students pretty well,” Nguyen says. Students here work hard, going to teachers after school, or hopping into an Uber to study at the nearby Starbucks with friends. But they say the workload is considerably more manageable than in China, where high schoolers are expected to prepare for China’s national   exam gaokao, which means ”high test.” It’s given just once a year and takes nine hours to complete. Senior Jesse Chou said when he was in China, he used to stay at school until 10 p. m. doing test prep. Failure was not an option. ”That means your life is done. Most people think that,” Chou says. Now, he has free time to go skateboarding. It’s understandable that Chinese students feel so much pressure, said Yong Zhao, a professor at the University of Oregon who wrote Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World. He said where students go to school decides what jobs they get, and the pressure to do well can therefore be fierce. He says Chinese employers have been known to say that ”those who are not graduates of top elite universities need not to apply.” Coming to the U. S. does get Chinese students out of gaokao, but they’re still expected to aim for the best universities in the U. S. At Platinum Academy, a tutoring center in Temple City, Calif. students’ drawings of university logos line the walls. ”You’ve got Harvard, you’ve got Princeton and Yale  —   the big three,” says David Ho, who founded the center.   Tutoring lessons are just one of the many expenses that go into educating a Chinese teen in the U. S. Factor in homestays and private school tuition, and the bill soars above $45, 000 a year. But money’s not a barrier for many families. What can be tough is separation from parents. Arianna Sun, a student at Platinum Academy whose parents own a spa and resort in China, dreads each time she has to say goodbye to her family. ”I will feel very terrible for about two weeks, or more than two weeks,” Sun says. Sociologists say loneliness can be a problem for ”parachute kids,” with some retreating from classmates and teachers. Others lash out. In a notorious case last year, a group of Chinese teens, some of them enrolled at a private school in Rowland Heights, attacked another Chinese teen. Three of the assailants pleaded no contest to charges of kidnapping and assault and are serving prison time. ”If kids are going abroad too young without their parents, they could be at risk of not having the proper supervision,” says UCLA sociologist Min Zhou. Amber Zhang said none of her classmates would ever act out violently. But she said some do ignore homework, preferring to play and spend their parents’ money on luxury brands. But Zhang is the granddaughter of farmers and steelworkers, and her doctor parents don’t let her forget that. ”My parents were born poor and they work hard,” Zhang says. ”So since I grow up, they always tell me, ’You need to try hard. ’” That doesn’t mean she’s bound to follow in her parents’ footsteps. She said she dreams of going to UCLA’s film school and making movies."
"Tea is often referred to one of the world’s oldest beverages. But just how old is it? A Chinese document from 59 B. C. refers to a drink that might be tea, but scholars cannot be certain. Now, a new analysis proves that plant remains found in tombs 2, 100 years old  —   about 100 years before that document  —   definitely are tea, the oldest physical evidence for the drink. And the buried tea was   stuff, fit for an emperor. That’s no surprise, because one of the tombs, the Han Yangling Mausoleum in Xi’an in western China, was built for the Jing Emperor Liu Qi, who died in 141 B. C. The other tomb is the slightly younger Gurgyam Cemetery (maybe A. D. 200) in Ngari district, western Tibet. In both, archeologists found remains of millets, rice and a kind of spinach. They also found tiny leaf buds that bore an uncanny resemblance to the finest tea. While those buds did look like tea, there was a chance they could be some other plant. To confirm their suspicions, the researchers compared the chemistry of the leaves with modern samples of tea. The ancient leaves contained unmistakable traces of caffeine, present in tea and also in a few other plants. The clincher was equally unmistakable traces of theanine, a chemical found only in plants of the tea family, with especially high levels in tea itself. Crystals found on the surface of the leaves also matched crystals on modern tea leaves. Tea does not grow in the area of the tombs, so the evidence shows not only that it was present and valued enough to be buried with important people, but also that it was being imported to Xi’an at least 141 years B. C. and westwards into Tibet by the second century. Gurgyam Cemetery also yielded woven silk cloth, metal bowls and a gold mask, further supporting the idea that luxury goods were already moving along early tracks of the Silk Road 2, 000 years ago. It was Emperor Jing’s son, Emperor Wu, who really promoted the development of trade along what became the Silk Road. Dorian Fuller, professor of archaeobotany at University College, London, and a member of the research team, says he’s pleased that modern science is able to provide details of ancient Chinese culture. ”The identification of the tea found in the emperor’s tomb complex gives us a rare glimpse into very ancient traditions which shed light on the origins of one of the world’s favorite beverages,” he tells us. Other scholars wonder whether the emperor was drinking tea as we know it, despite the apparent   buds. James Benn, professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at McMaster University in Canada and author of the recent book Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History, agrees that tea was consumed ”in some form” 2, 100 years ago. ”But,” he adds, ”I’m not convinced that this is a discovery of ’tea drinking’ as it was later understood. It could have been used along with other ingredients in a medicinal soup, for example.” The remains from Gurgyam Cemetery in Tibet may support this view. They contained barley and other plants mixed with the tea. As the researchers write in the online Nature journal Scientific Reports, this offers the intriguing possibility that the plants ”were consumed in a form similar to traditionally prepared butter tea, in which tea is mixed with salt, tsampa (roasted barley flour)   ginger in the cold mountain areas of central Asia.” No matter how it was being used, this research pushes back the verified history of tea in China and Tibet. Tradition says that tea came to Tibet as part of the Chinese princess Wencheng’s dowry on her betrothal to the Tibetan Songtsen Gambo, around 640 A. D. The tea found in Gurgyam Cemetery is some 450 years older than that. Tea Tuesdays is an occasional series exploring the science, history, culture and economics of this ancient brewed beverage. Jeremy Cherfas is a biologist and science journalist based in Rome."
"Abe Vigoda, the   character actor known for playing the treacherous Mafia boss Tessio in The Godfather and Detective Phil Fish in the TV series Barney Miller, died Tuesday at age 94. Vigoda’s daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, confirmed that he died Tuesday morning in his sleep at her home in Woodland Park, N. J. Vigoda was a stage actor for years before he got his big break as Tessio in the 1972   movie The Godfather. He told Vanity Fair about the role in 2009. ”I’m really not a Mafia person,” he said. ”I’m an actor who spent his life in the theater. But Francis [the director] said, ’I want to look at the Mafia not as thugs and gangsters but like royalty in Rome.’ And he saw something in me that fit Tessio as one would look at the classics in Rome.” The role was a springboard to a number of others, including his turn as Detective Phil Fish in the 1970s comedic series Barney Miller, which gained him widespread recognition. According to The Associated Press, he liked to tell the story of how he got the role: ”An exercise enthusiast, Vigoda had just returned from a   jog when his agent called and told him to report immediately to the office of Danny Arnold, who was producing a pilot for a police station comedy. ”Arnold remarked that Vigoda looked tired, and the actor explained about his jog. ’You know, you look like you might have hemorrhoids,’ Arnold said. ’What are you  —   a doctor or a producer?’ Vigoda asked. He was cast on the spot.” In 1982, Vigoda’s death was erroneously reported by People magazine. The New York Times says Vigoda responded by ”placing an ad in Variety with a photo showing him sitting up in a coffin and holding a copy of the offending issue of the magazine.” As his ”death” became a running joke, a website called abevigoda. com was created to keep tabs on whether he was still alive, and late night comedians invited him on their shows to prove he was still living. He appeared on David Letterman’s show in 1988."
"Standing on the bank of the Passaic River where it meets the Newark Bay in New Jersey, Oswaldo Avad reels in a small bluefish and a piece of a grocery bag. ”One piece plastic and one fish,” Avad says in broken English.  According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, children, pregnant women and women who might one day want to be pregnant should not eat any fish from most of the waters in New Jersey. It’s safe for men to eat a small amount: about one catfish or one eel per year.   But the authorities advise against anyone eating fish from the Lower Passaic River because of the toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange, that have been dumped there over the years. The fish contaminated with the waste could cause cancer, liver damage, birth defects and reproductive issues in people who eat them, an advisory from the DEP and the New Jersey Department of Health warns. Still, Avad does it all the time he says he knows he’s eating contaminated fish, but he doesn’t have any health problems, so he’ll take the risk.   ”I wash them, salt them, cover them in garlic, fry them,” he says. ”Or I make a soup.”   of the companies who may be responsible for polluting the Passaic  —   including Pfizer, Rubbermaid and Tiffany  Co.  —   are now funding a fish exchange program aimed at protecting the health of fishermen like Avad who eat fish out of the river. To participate, residents can bring their contaminated catch to a tent in Lyndhurst, N. J. and swap it for clean, healthy tilapia being raised in a greenhouse in Newark. But the program has hit a number of snags. In 2015, none of their 300 tilapia reached harvest size, so the organizers handed out frozen tilapia fillets from Costco instead. And they’re not sure how to dispose of the contaminated eel, carp, perch and crab they’ve collected.   ”It will be years before the fish can be consumed safely,” says Jonathan Jaffe, a spokesperson for the polluters. ”So until that time we are trying to reduce risks to the most vulnerable in our community.”  The Passaic River is one of the most contaminated bodies of water in the country. More than 100 companies are potentially responsible for dumping toxic byproducts from the manufacture of compounds like Agent Orange and hydraulic fluid in it for decades before that was outlawed. The 54 companies, which joined together to form the Lower Passaic River Study Area Cooperating Parties Group, have spent $1. 1 million voluntarily funding the fish exchange and greenhouse project. The waste produced by the fish is used to grow lettuce and herbs for a local food bank. Since June, the polluters have prevented just 170 contaminated fish from being eaten. Opponents say they’ve hardly made a dent. And the 170 contaminated fish they’ve collected are now sitting in a freezer in Newark with no disposal plan.  ”They could just go to a landfill,” says Amy Rowe, an environmental chemist at Rutgers University who oversees the fish exchange for the polluters. ”They could be buried somewhere in New Mexico. There are all kinds of ways to get it out of Newark.” Legally, Rowe says the contaminated fish can go in the trash where they would end up being burned. But environmental justice advocates warn contaminated fish better not end up in their incinerator. ”You breathe in what comes out of the smokestack,” says Molly Greenberg, the environmental justice coordinator with Newark’s Ironbound Community Corporation. ”If it’s toxic when you eat it, it’s toxic when you breathe it.” Advocates think the fish exchange is a diversionary tactic to avoid cleaning up the Passaic. But the polluters and Walter Mugdan with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 2 office agree the fish swap is not a solution. ”It’s not something that we’ve proposed nor is it something that we endorsed,” Mugdan says. ”It’s certainly no substitute for cleaning up the river and getting the fish to be cleaned in the first place.” The EPA wants the polluters to replace two feet of toxic mud from the river bottom with clean rocks, sand and gravel. It’s a $1. 7 billion cleanup  —   one of the largest proposed sediment removals in the history of the EPA’s Superfund program. The polluters want to fund a cheaper, targeted cleanup that spokesperson Jonathan Jaffe calls ”a sensible alternative” that would ”use science to direct the remediation.” Jaffe says that the EPA’s proposal is, ”destined for years of conflict and litigation.” But the EPA says the polluters don’t get a say in how to clean the river. ”We make the decision,” Mugdan says. ”That’s not something that we negotiate.” Meanwhile, it could be decades before the fish is safe to eat again. And residents like Oswaldo Avad may continue to dismiss the potential health risks. ”I’ve been eating this fish for eight years,” Avad says. ”I feel fine.”"
"Every four years, Iowans are deluged with the talking points, the stump speeches, the polls and, of course, the ads. They also hear that they shouldn’t be first. Iowans are too white, too old and too few to merit     status, say the critics. But if Iowa shouldn’t be first, who should be? For more than a century, reformers have been proposing ideas for how to change the primary system. And they’ve been failing. And they’ll probably continue to fail. No one is going to persuade state and party machinery to change the current primary system anytime soon. However, these ideas can at least help show what works (and what doesn’t) about the way things are now. Here are just a few of the ideas people have proposed over the years: The gist, Just what it sounds like: let someone else go before Iowa and New Hampshire. Who has promoted it, Someone new every cycle. Time and the Washington Post’s The Fix blog (twice!) have weighed in in the past year, as has this thread of redditors. (NPR’s own Asma Khalid will have her own    analysis coming out soon.) Pros, People generally have two big criticisms of Iowa’s     status (and New Hampshire’s, as well): (1) that the states are not representative of the rest of the country, and (2) that they’re too tiny. Were a state like California or Texas or Florida or New York first, a much bigger share of the U. S. population would get a shot at shaping the presidential race early. And with any of those states (and plenty of others) you get more diversity Iowa and New Hampshire are two of the whitest states in the country, as well as two of the most rural. Cons, Iowa’s smallness is in some ways a feature, not a bug, in that it allows less well funded candidates a fair shot (see: Rick Santorum, 2012, and Mike Huckabee, 2008). The state’s caucus ”ensures that there is at least one place where a candidate with a compelling message has a shot at winning, regardless of money or national fame,” as the Des Moines Register’s Kathy O’Bradovich argued in October. There’s also more to being representative than race and ethnicity. A 2009 paper by the University of Iowa’s Michael   and Missouri’s Peverill Squire found that Iowa was the most representative state economically at the time, as well as relatively representative (12th out of 50 states) when a broad range of social, demographic and economic factors were included. In addition, simply picking a new state wouldn’t solve all of the problems with the current system. In 2008, the scramble to hold early caucuses and primaries led to a massively   calendar. Scrambling the states into a new order wouldn’t have stopped that struggle from happening. The gist, Let people nationwide cast their primary ballots all at once. Who has promoted it, Rep. Richard Hobson in 1911 and a lot more people since then. Well over 100 bills and resolutions have been introduced in Congress since then to try to create a national primary. Pros, A national primary would eliminate worries about one or two states having outsize sway by virtue of voting super early. Not only that, but it would make a complicated calendar way less complex and stop the constant shifting of dates. And by eliminating a bunch of confusion, it might make primaries ”more accessible to the average voter,” which could in turn make for ”more moderate candidates who are more representative of their constituents,” as Pacific Standard’s Shanna   wrote in 2014. Cons, It would make money and name recognition even more important than they already are. Instead of having to focus early on buying ads in Iowa (or whichever state might otherwise go first) a candidate would have a whole nation of media markets to try to hit. That means a less well funded candidate who currently can stand a chance in the small early states right now would be at a huge disadvantage. It could also disadvantage a    candidate like Bernie Sanders. The Vermont independent leads or is closely matched with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the two early states of Iowa and New Hampshire this year, but he trails by double digits in most national polls. In addition, this kind of plan could mean that candidates would focus only on the   states, leaving smaller and largely rural states without many cities  —   and therefore fewer delegates  —   all but abandoned. That’s what Alabama’s   of State Beth Chapman wrote at U. S. News in 2012. The gist, Don’t want to give a couple of states all the   power, every single election? A rotating regional primary would break up the U. S. into a few segments and let each take a turn going first. Under perhaps the   rotating primary plan, put forward by the National Association of Secretaries of State in 2008, there would be four regions (East, Midwest, South and West) with each taking one primary slot (in March, April, May or June). The order of regions would then rotate in each election cycle. Who has promoted it, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, the National Association of Secretaries of State, the National Lieutenant Governors Association and plenty of others. Pros, A scheduled system like this would get rid of the   that led to a superearly nominating season in 2008. This is the first reason that the secretaries of state association gave in its 2008 proposal, pointing out that 37 states voted before Feb. 29 that year, while only nine did so in 2000. It also could give voters more time to get to know the candidates and give more informed votes, not to mention potentially giving more voters a say in who eventually gets nominated, the group argued. Finally, it could make campaigning more efficient  —   no longer would candidates have to hop from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina for a few months. And as the University of Arizona’s Barbara Norrander has argued, it would make campaign ads more efficient. (Consider the   Minnesotans and Illinoisans currently being subjected to Iowa’s campaign ads). Cons, Here’s one weird twist: The secretaries of state proposal still puts Iowa and New Hampshire first, ”based upon their tradition of promoting retail politics.” That defeats the purpose of reforming the system to some degree, keeping those two demographically unrepresentative states at the front of the calendar. But leaving that aside, there are other potential problems with rotating regional primaries. While the plan seeks to equalize states’ participation in primaries, whichever region goes last in any given cycle runs the risk of being meaningless it’s possible the winners will already be apparent by the time the final contest rolls around. Certain candidates would also probably benefit more in any given election based on which region goes first, as political scientists Steven Smith and Melanie Springer wrote in 2009. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, could potentially benefit far more if this primary season started with South, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders could get a big initial boost from a Northeastern primary. Not only that, but knowing that her or his region would be first in the next election, a strong candidate in one region could ”block out a strong candidate from another region,” as former Ohio GOP Chairman Bob Bennett argued. And maybe taking things a few states at a time isn’t such a bad idea, argues Norrander. ”Most would agree that    meetings between the candidates and real voters are a good component of the current system,” she writes. ”Because of the large size of each region, candidate strategy will consist of television advertising and tarmac campaigning.” The gist, Let the little states go first. The Delaware Plan separates states into four groups, each with 12 or 13 states, as explained by   advocacy group FairVote. Group 1, consisting of the   states and territories, votes first, followed by Group 2 one month later, and so on. Who has promoted it, Most notably, the RNC considered the Delaware Plan in 2000. Pros, The point of the Delaware Plan was to keep the nomination season from growing shorter and shorter, as states fought to go earlier and earlier, as USA Today reported in 2000. That year, the season was so short that   of the states ended up ”without a voice,” the paper reported. The Delaware Plan tries to equalize states: Smaller states naturally have a smaller voice, but they’d get amplified by being earlier. Meanwhile, the powerful larger states’ voices would be turned down a bit by being later. And because a candidate couldn’t win the nomination very early, it would prolong the primary season, giving people longer to learn about the candidate and make their decisions. In addition, it could equalize candidates to some degree  —   candidates with lots of   support could likewise gain ground in the small states and potentially then be able to compete in the bigger states, as FairVote argues. Cons, Smaller states tend to be less urban than the rest of the country, not to mention whiter, as Smith and Springer wrote  —   meaning this plan wouldn’t exactly solve the issue of early states not being representative. They also add that starting with 12 states that aren’t geographically grouped would create some   campaigns, as opposed to the way that a regional plan might make campaigning easier. In addition, starting off with so many states at once could still favor   candidates, Norrander points out. The gist  This is a sort of compromise between the Delaware Plan and the rotating regional plan. The Ohio Plan would have let four current early states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada) go first, followed by a group of 15 small states and territories. After that, three bigger groups of states would take turns holding their primaries. Each of those groups would have had at least one   ”anchor state,” as Brookings’ Elaine Kamarck explains. Who has promoted it, The Ohio Plan was proposed by Bob Bennett, the   of the Ohio GOP, before the 2008 election. Pros, Bennett argued that his plan would be more acceptable to big states than the Delaware Plan while maintaining the kind of retail politics influence that small states  —   and the current early states  —   allow. In addition, keeping South Carolina and Nevada early would add more diversity early in the process than the Delaware Plan. Cons, The plan would still maintain some of the cons of the secretaries of states’ and Delaware plans  —   despite the early participation of South Carolina and Nevada, there are still a lot of very white states with early influence. In addition, candidates would have to hit a lot of geographically   states at once. The gist, It’s a little like the Delaware Plan in the sense that smaller states would go first. However, it’s way more complicated. So here goes: There would be 10 caucus periods, each lasting two weeks. States with fewer congressional districts would go first, followed by states with a few more in the next period and so on. This would be according to a particular formula: States with a total of eight districts would go first, with the states being randomly selected. So, for example, Kansas and Mississippi, which each have four districts, might be in the first round. The next round, the number of districts would total 16. The next, 24. But after that, the numbers get less straightforward. To keep the biggest states like New York and California from always going nearly last, the plan allows for some bigger district totals to go earlier. The order for all 10 caucus rounds would be eight, 16, 24, 56, 32, 64, 40, 72, 48 and then 80 districts, according to FairVote. Who has promoted it, The Democratic National Committee considered it in 2005, and FairVote has advocated for it as well. Pros, It maintains many of the benefits of the Delaware Plan, potentially making the primary season longer (and therefore, potentially more informative) and giving more states the opportunity to have a say  —   all without leaving all the biggest states for last. Cons, Once again, there’s the potential for some really inefficient campaigning. Imagine candidates having to hop from Alaska to Idaho to West Virginia to Rhode Island for the first round of caucuses. That could give   candidates a leg up. Also, it’s complicated  —   but compared with what? As Smith and Springer wrote, the American Plan ”surely would be no more complicated than the current schedule.”"
"A   Beatrix Potter book, The Tale of    is set to be released this fall, 150 years after the beloved author’s birth. The tale about a sharply dressed feline has ”all the hallmarks of Potter’s best works,” editor Jo Hanks, who stumbled upon the story, says in an interview with Penguin U. K. which will publish the book. At the time Potter was writing    in 1914, she told her publisher that the story was centered on ”a   prime black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life.” Hanks says she ”stumbled on an    collection of her writings” and saw that reference to the story in a letter from Potter to her publisher. This led her to the publisher’s archive, where she says she found ”three manuscripts, two handwritten in children’s school notebooks and one typeset and laid out in a dummy book one rough colour sketch of    and a pencil rough of our favourite   Mr Tod.” The tale features a favorite Potter character  —   Peter Rabbit  —   ”albeit older, slower and portlier,” Hanks says. Potter told her publisher in letters that the story went unfinished because of ”interruptions”  —   including the start of World War I and her marriage. And because Potter finished only one drawing for the book, it will be illustrated by Quentin Blake, who is   for his art in many of Roald Dahl’s books. ”Quentin revels in rebellious characters and humorous stories with spiky edge to them he’s brought anarchic energy to the character of Kitty and embellished her already endearingly flawed character with his trademark wit and charm,” Hanks says. The news about Blake’s illustration has delighted many Potter fans. Others are more skeptical about the pairing. Here’s an excerpt from the story released by Penguin, with a cliffhanger ending: ”Once upon a time there was a serious,   young black cat. ”It belonged to a kind old lady who assured me that no other cat could compare with Kitty. ”She lived in constant fear that Kitty might be stolen  —   ’I hear there is a shocking fashion for black   muffs wherever is Kitty gone to? Kitty! Kitty!’ ”She called it ’Kitty’ but Kitty called herself ’Miss Catherine St. Quintin’ ”Cheesebox called her ’Q’ and Winkiepeeps called her ’Squintums’. They were very common cats. The old lady would have been shocked had she known of the acquaintance. ”And she would have been painfully surprised had she ever seen Miss Kitty in a gentleman’s Norfolk jacket, and little   boots. ”Now most cats love the moonlight and staying out at nights it was curious how willingly Miss Kitty went to bed. And although the   where she slept  —   locked in  —   was always very clean, upon some mornings Kitty was let out with a black chin. And on other mornings her tail seemed thicker, and she scratched. ”It puzzled me. It was a long time before I guessed there were in fact two black cats!” You’ll have to wait until the book is published in September to find out what happens next."
"Pregnant women and new mothers need more attention when it comes to screening for depression, according to recommendations issued Tuesday by the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force. That came as part of the panel’s recommendation that all adults should be screened, in a situation where they can be provided treatment or get a referral if they are clinically depressed. The announcement follows similar recommendations in 2002 and 2009. What’s new this time is the special   for pregnant women and new moms. They need special recognition, the task force says, because of evidence showing that they can be accurately diagnosed and successfully treated, and because untreated depression harms not only the mother, but her child as well. Depression is the leading cause of   disability in women around the world. Nine percent of pregnant women and 10 percent of new moms will go through a major depressive episode, according to evidence cited by the task force. And studies have shown that babies and toddlers with depressed moms are subject to lots of problems. They may be more difficult to console, be less likely to interact or have more sleeping problems. The independent panel’s recommendations are influential  —   many health insurers and health systems follow their suggestions. But the announcements often come with controversy. Recent and recurring recommendations against automatic annual mammograms for women in their 40s have generated multiple headlines. But concerns among mental health researchers who got an early glimpse of the advice about testing for depression have been mild  —   mostly questions about the best depression screening test to use and the importance of emphasizing more research on treatments. There’s no argument about the task force’s call for recognizing the needs of pregnant women and new moms. ”Historically, depression in these populations has been underrecognized and undertreated,” says Evette Ludman, a clinical psychologist who studies behavioral science for Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. Most important, she says, is the recommendation that there be access to some sort of effective care when someone is diagnosed. Heidi Koss got no screening with the birth of her first child 20 years ago, not even an open ear when she mentioned symptoms of depression to her obstetrician at her   checkup. ”He said ’Oh, this is typical of a lot of moms perhaps you should get out more, maybe buy a new dress.’ ” ”It just added to a sense of helplessness, hopelessness and isolation,” she says now. In 2011, she told NPR about several attempts to commit suicide before finally finding a sympathetic mental health counselor about a year after her first child was born. Her experience with postpartum depression inspired Koss to get a degree in counseling. She now practices in Kirkland, Wash. and is the Washington state coordinator of a nonprofit education group, Postpartum Support International. ”Pregnancy is not from the neck down,” she says, pointing to studies that show that more women suffer from mental illness during pregnancy and after pregnancy than develop gestational diabetes or   or go into preterm labor. And she singles out a small British study done in the late 1990s that claimed that psychiatric disorders, and suicide in particular, were the leading cause of maternal death. The task force report notes that one of the biggest challenges is treatment. ”Because hopelessness and inertia are often part and parcel of depression, it can be challenging for persons living with depression to keep at it until finding the treatment that is right for them,” says Ludman of Group Health Research Institute. The task force notes that talk therapy (specifically a kind called cognitive behavioral therapy) drug therapy or a combination of medication and therapy may be necessary. But the group backs off on recommending drug treatment for pregnant women with depression because of the possibility of problems associated with certain drugs called SSRIs. Some studies have shown a small risk of increased problems that include miscarriage and preterm birth. Instead, the suggestion for pregnant or breastfeeding women is for cognitive behavioral therapy or some form of counseling. The task force’s recommendations for   and   moms appear in the current issue of JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. They track with advice from other groups, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Legislation introduced in Congress last July would authorize the federal government to fund screening and treatment for pregnant women or women who have given birth within the past year. Joanne Silberner, a former health policy correspondent for NPR, is an artist in residence at the University of Washington’s department of communication. "
"While researching the book Cure, science writer Jo Marchant wanted to understand how distraction could be used to nullify pain, so she participated in a virtual reality experiment. During the first part of the experiment, Marchant sat, without distraction, with her foot in a box of unbearably hot water. ”It felt like a very intense burning pain on my foot when I just experienced it on its own,” Marchant tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. But then Marchant put on   headphones and began to play a     immersive video game that had been developed specifically for burn patients. This time, when the researcher applied the same burning pain to her foot, she barely noticed it. ”The researchers explained it as our brains only have a certain capacity for attention,” Marchant says. ”If you’ve got something that’s really commanding your attention, there’s less attention left over for experiencing the pain.” During the course of her research, Marchant also investigated the science behind the placebo effect, hypnosis, meditation, prayer and conditioning. She says that the healing power of the brain could offer a powerful complement to modern medicine. ”That’s a whole different approach to pain that I think tells us that drugs aren’t the only answer,” she says. On harnessing the placebo effect to feel better, One thing that people often don’t realize about the placebo effect is there isn’t just one placebo effect. There are many, depending on what we think a treatment is going to do for us. So, for example, if you take a fake painkiller, that actually reduces   activity in the brain and the spinal cord and it causes the release of natural painkillers in the brain called endorphins. And these are actually the painkillers that opioid painkillers are designed to mimic, so it’s working through the same biochemical pathway that a painkiller would work through. But if a patient with Parkinson’s takes a placebo that they think is their Parkinson’s drug, they get a flood of dopamine in the brain, which is exactly what you would see with the real drug. Even with altitude sickness, for example, if somebody at altitude takes fake oxygen, you see a reduction in . .. prostaglandins. . .. These actually work to dilate blood vessels and they cause many of the symptoms of altitude sickness. So what you see in all these different conditions is that taking a placebo, or, to be more accurate about it, our response to that placebo, can cause biological changes in the brain that actually ease our symptoms, and that’s not something that’s imaginary that’s something that’s underpinned by these biological changes that are very similar to the biological changes you get when we take drugs. On possible explanations for why the placebo effect sometimes works, Some of it seems to have to do with stress and anxiety  —   if we feel that we are in danger or under threat, the brain raises its sensitivity to symptoms like pain. . .. Whereas, on the other hand, if we feel that we are safe and cared for and things are going to get better soon, we can kind of relax, we don’t need to be so alert to these symptoms. So that’s one thing that might be at play. There are also physiological mechanisms for example, conditioning. . .. If listeners are familiar with Pavlov’s dogs, so this is the idea that a physiologist called Ivan Pavlov conditions dogs so that whenever he gave them their food he would make a noise, like ring a bell for example, and eventually they came to associate the bell with their food and they would salivate just to the sound of the bell. He didn’t need the food anymore. We can all be conditioned to have different physiological responses to a stimulus like that, and that works not just for salivation, but for things like immune responses. So, for example, if you take a pill that suppresses your immune system, later on, if you take a similar looking placebo pill, even if there’s no actual active drug in there, your body will mimic that same response. Your body has learned that response and that just happens automatically it doesn’t matter what you believe about the pill. On making sense of placebo responses, I don’t think we should be giving people fake pills. I think, first of all, there is some evidence that honest placebos still work, so there are studies in various conditions, for example  —   irritable bowel syndrome, headaches, hyperactivity disorder  —   where patients have received placebos but they knew they were placebos and still got a benefit from that. And that’s probably all down to things like just being in a trial, the feeling that you’re being helped can have those effects on the brain. So you don’t necessarily have to lie to people, but beyond that, I think what we need to do is try and understand what are the active ingredients of placebo responses  —   whether that’s expectation, which is then influenced by all different things, such as your previous experiences with treatment, what you’re told about a treatment, how sympathetic your physician is. There’s all sorts of things that are feeding into how you’ll respond to that treatment. So I think we need to try and understand those things and think how we can incorporate those elements into medical care routinely, rather than, for example, relying on fake pills. On how meditation and mindfulness can affect health, The basic idea [of mindful meditation] is that you try to focus on the present moment rather than worrying about the past or the future. . .. There have been hundreds of studies on mindfulness now, and there’s very good evidence that it reduces stress and anxiety, and that it reduces symptoms such as chronic pain and fatigue. So that’s very well shown now in the analysis of lots of different studies, and that’s in healthy people but also in people with depression or people with serious illness. What there’s less research on is whether that feeds through into benefits for the immune system and sort of more physical health benefits, if you like. There is some evidence suggesting that mindfulness meditation can make us more resistant to infection and that’s everything from winter colds to slowing the progression of HIV and that it gives people a better response, for example, than flu vaccine. There was another study suggesting that people with psoriasis responded better to their medication when they also had mindfulness training. . .. But the studies so far are quite small, so it would be great to see more research on that. On why slow, measured breathing helps with stress, With a stress response, the brain and the body are influencing each other in both directions, so if we see a danger then that’s going to make us feel stressed and one of the   from that is that our breathing is going to speed up. If you were to speed up your breathing on your own, you’d probably start to feel a bit more aroused and on edge. And, equally, if you calm the breathing down, you’re kind of forcing your body into a more relaxed state and you will then experience probably fewer negative thoughts as a result. When we’re stressed, our brains almost come up with negative thoughts to try and explain why we’re stressed, if you like, if you’re kind of anxious or worried about something, all sorts of negative thoughts are going to pop into your head, but if you can just calm that down, then that’s going to have a beneficial effect on your mental state as well. On how how stress can rewire the brain  —   and creates more stress, Your brain reflects the way that you think throughout your life. You kind of shape it by your thoughts and your behaviors. If you play violin for eight hours a day, then the parts of the brain responsible for helping you to play the violin will get larger. If you’re thinking stressful thoughts for the whole day then those parts of the brain are going to get larger and other parts of the brain will deteriorate. It’s kind of an irony because then the very brain circuits that we would need to try and counter that are no longer working as well as they should, so that’s why something like meditation can be helpful because just simply saying, ”Oh, I’m going to change how I think now. I’m not going to be as stressed now,” doesn’t really work you have to change your brain over a long period of time."
"Medical editors don’t usually attract much attention. They perform their daily duties evaluating submissions and producing articles that, on good days, influence practice and policy. But last Wednesday, the editors of the leading medical journals around the world made a proposal that could change medical science forever. They said that researchers would have to publicly share the data gathered in their clinical studies as a condition of publishing the results in the journals. This idea is now out for public comment. As it stands now, medical scientists can publish their findings without ever making available the data upon which their conclusions were based. Only some of the top journals, such as The BMJ, have tried to make data sharing a condition of publication. But authors who didn’t want to comply could just go elsewhere. Think about it. The scientists who generate the data, with the participation of the people being studied and often with public funding, control it and most often don’t share. By holding the data tight, researchers who ran a study are the only ones who can conduct additional analysis and studies. If the proposed change is adopted, as I hope it will be, it would make sharing more compelling. Inaccessible data is a problem rife throughout medical science. Industry traditionally held its data close  —   but so did academics. These researchers have felt that they deserved the right to future papers for all their hard work gathering the original data. And maybe they didn’t want others examining their work. But this practice shields data from scrutiny. It forgoes an opportunity to crowdsource knowledge from scientists who weren’t associated with the original study. It also violates the sensible practice of showing your work, not just the presumed answer. Some skeptics contend that those who pore over data generated elsewhere are nothing more than ”research parasites.” But that disparaging term neglects the key role that independent scientists can play in bringing new insights and also in validating the quality of the data that were collected. Access is also central to the scientific method and the idea of replication to establish the truth. The editors who made the proposal sought to be sensitive to the rights of researchers, funders and participants. But their intent is clear: It’s time to share. The past culture has impeded science. For example, many times in my career as a heart disease researcher, I respectfully requested access to clinical trial data held by others. The response was no  —   regardless of the merit of the request  —   and most often from other academics. It is a behavior that would be hard to imagine in other fields, like physics or astronomy. The data from clinical trials have the potential to provide additional knowledge that often goes untapped. There were times my research group was able to gain access to data through the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which promotes sharing of trials it funds, or through litigation. We uncovered insights that weren’t in the original articles. Our work produced papers that found their way into the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. The findings have since been cited by thousands of other papers, incorporated in treatment guidelines for doctors and patients. In several cases our results upended the original conclusions. Others have also used trial data to replicate and extend findings from the initial studies and made critically important contributions. In recent years the momentum for open science has grown rapidly. This action by the editors follows directly from guidance in 2015 from the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) a body of the nation’s top medical experts, that said clearly it is time for the culture of medical research to change. Companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson  Johnson and Medtronic have led the way in sharing their trial data. Our group at the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation started the Yale Open Data Access Project to promote data sharing and was an early advocate for open science. We are showing the feasibility of establishing partnerships with industry and acting as a trusted intermediary. Visit the site, and you can see a variety of trials from Johnson  Johnson that are available to scientists around the world. With sharing, the sky hasn’t fallen and worthwhile independent projects that could not have been done otherwise are proceeding. Many academics and companies are lagging, however. As a result, the data from a large number of trials remain  . Amid the progress, there has been a lack of consequences for not sharing. Even as the benefits from sharing are manifold, to be honest, it’s easier not to share. Why expose your data to others? Why compromise your ability to publish more at your own pace? Why risk the possibility that someone could find an error? Why let others benefit from your hard work? Why spend the money to do it? The absence of an incentive to share seems about to change. The proposal by the medical editors outlines an approach that would require: a   policy when the study is started a commitment to share within six months of publication and that those who use the data acknowledge those who produced it. The data should be down to the level of the individual patient (identifying information will be removed) rather than just summary data, an important detail that will allow rigorous science to proceed. Among the first things we learn in school are to share and to show our work. This lesson has been lost on medicine for many years. The medical editors are reminding us that we scientists have a principal responsibility to society and to those who agreed to participate in our studies. There are many details to resolve. How will sharing work? Who will pay for it? How will the researchers who produced the work get credit in the subsequent analyses? All good and difficult questions, but it is high time to find solutions. For now, this proposal is out for public comment. It is likely that mostly scientists will weigh in on how the change would affect their work. It would be great, in my view, if the general public participated too. Do people want to see scientific data exposed to the light, available to advance knowledge for generations? The public stands to benefit the most. I hope that voices other than those of my colleagues will be heard. Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist and the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. He directs the   Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation and is a   of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program. To comment on the proposal described above, you can go to www. icmje. org."
"As a master of the eccentric metaphor, the great   novelist Vladimir Nabokov used food to fine effect in his writing. There was, for instance, that one word he used to capture the texture, tinge and luster of his watery green eyes  —   ”oysterous.” And that icky image in Lolita, of motel floors burnished with the ”  glaze of   bones,” that somehow made those shiny floors complicit in the squalor of pedophilia. But when it came to eating, he really couldn’t be bothered. Nabokov’s paradoxical relationship with food  —   his sumptuous use of it as a writer and his serene indifference to it as an eater  —   is vividly apparent in the recently published Letters to Véra, a collection of the missives he wrote to his beloved wife over   years. Almost every letter in this enchanting and mischievous collection is a passionate love letter addressed to his darling Mothikins, Mousie, Poochums,   Kidlet and a torrent of other endearments he conjured up. Véra was her husband’s first reader, editor, typist, agent, archivist, muse, protector (she carried a pistol in her handbag) chauffeur and gofer. But cooking wasn’t part of this accomplished arsenal. Campbell’s soup was often supper at the Nabokov house. Not that anyone was complaining. As Nabokov told fellow novelist James Salter, he didn’t attach ”too much importance to food and wine.” This is comically evident in the letters he wrote to Véra in the summer of 1926, when, a year after they were married, Véra, suffering from depression, weight loss and anxiety, was admitted to a sanatorium in Switzerland. Over the next two months, Nabokov kept his promise of sending her a daily bulletin, which included a scrupulous itemization of his meals. Listing every meal he ate was clearly a drudgery, but he hurried on with it by squashing the menu between parentheses: ”(A couple of meatballs  —     sausage, radishes)” ”(  fried eggs, a cold meatball)” or ”(liver and gooseberry jelly  —   a sort of frog caviar).” Occasionally, there was a dry barb: ”incomprehensible meat,” and more rarely, a stab of praise, ”magnificent blueberry soup.” But mostly it was a boring plod of cold cuts and compotes. Once, he reported with relish, ”I bought and ate a large, warty, crooked pickle,” but this active seeking out of food was rare. ”It’s not that Nabokov wasn’t interested in food,” Brian Boyd, the eminent Nabokov scholar who   the Letters, told The Salt. ”But in his letters to Véra he was reporting dutifully on what he ate, and since his German boardinghouse fare appealed very little, his descriptions, as it were, quickly scrape the plate into the receptacle of the day’s letter.” When Nabokov isn’t listing his meals at gunpoint, his letters gleam with gorgeous, witty food metaphors. Such as his droll report of a Basque vendor on the beach selling ”huge waffles, like corsets.” Or his careful account of a morning Berlin sky: ”dullish, but warm, a   sky, with skin  —   but if you pushed it aside with a teaspoon, the sun was really nice.” This consummate ability to beguile with imagery of subjects he knew little about was a Nabokovian hallmark, says Boyd. ”Just as he couldn’t drive a car, but offers priceless descriptions [in Lolita] of traveling America by road, Nabokov could write about food without knowing how to prepare a meal any more complicated than a boiled egg,” he says. Nabokov fans will enjoy unearthing links between his letters and fiction. For instance, his ardent declaration to Véra, ”I have eaten a lot of apricots, and I love you very, very, very much,” sounds like a charming non sequitur. But link it to the profusion of references to Lolita’s ”apricot midriff,” ”adorable apricot shoulder blades” and ”  limbs,” and one gets the distinct feeling that the fruit’s downy goldiness held an erotic charge for him. Or take that image from a 1924 letter of the streetlamps in Prague burning ”with a warm and sweet luster, like   punch lollipops.” That ” ”  —   an exquisite touch evoking the sticky fuzz of lamplight  —   would be recycled years later to evoke Lolita’s ”red as licked red candy” lips.  The acoustic affinity between lollipop and Lolita isn’t a coincidence, either. As Nabokov grumbled, Americans mispronounced Lolita ”   with a heavy, clammy ’L’ and a long ’o’,” when in fact, ”the first syllable should be as in ’lollipop’ the ’L’ liquid and delicate, the ’lee’ not too sharp.” In Invitation To A Beheading, a novel Nabokov wrote when Hitler and Stalin were on the rise in Europe, food becomes a vehicle of moral revulsion in the scene where the prison director avidly consumes the prisoner’s final meal that the prisoner himself can’t bear to touch. When the condemned man asks how long he has left before his beheading, the jailor replies, ”Excellent sabayon!” ”Sabayon or zabaglione is made from eggs, sugar and scented wine or fruit juice beaten over hot water until thick and light, and served warm or cold in a glass,” says Boyd. ”The surreal luxury of the meal that the prisoner spurns and the director scoffs, the false or inverted civility of every process in this condemned cell, encapsulates the weird discords and distortions of the novel.” But this is tame compared to what Nabokov does with food in Ada, his longest and most complex novel, whose plot is coiled around incest and cruelty. Decadence is embodied in the last supper a besotted Lucette shares with her   Van Veen aboard a cruise liner. They eat roast bearlet (bear cub) and grugru shrimp, which is the plump yellow larvae of the palm weevil, followed by ”sweet, thick Turkish coffee.” Shortly after this grotesque repast, a despairing Lucette vomits out a ”pink pudding” of vodka cocktails and jumps into the ocean, drowning even as she ”heaved with   nausea.” Contrast this gastronomic hell with that poignant scene from Nabokov’s short story Signs and Symbols, of an old couple seeking solace over cups of midnight tea. It has been a hard day for them. They have been unable to give their son, who is in a mental institution, his birthday gift of ”ten different fruit jellies in ten little jars,” because he has had tried to kill himself. Awakened by telephone calls (it’s a wrong number) they decide to have some tea: ”They sat down to their unexpected, festive midnight tea. He sipped noisily his face was flushed every now and then he raised his glass with a circular motion, so as to make the sugar dissolve more thoroughly. The vein on the side of his bald head stood out conspicuously, and silvery bristles showed on his chin. The birthday present stood on the table. While she poured him another glass of tea, he put on his spectacles and reexamined with pleasure the luminous yellow, green, and red little jars. His clumsy, moist lips spelled out their eloquent labels  —   apricot, grape, beach plum, quince. He had got to crab apple when the telephone rang again.” Who could it be? We aren’t told, but sense, sinkingly, that the bejeweled scene with hot tea and rainbow jellies can only be a   for doom. Nabokov and Véra, too, loved miniature assorted jellies, and ate them straight from the jars with a spoon  —   just one more comfortable idiosyncrasy of a happy marriage. Nina Martyris is a literary journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"The state of New Jersey has been trying to help jurors better assess the reliability of eyewitness testimony, but a recent study suggests that the effort may be having unintended consequences. That’s because a new set of instructions read to jurors by a judge seems to make them skeptical of all eyewitness testimony  —   even testimony that should be considered reasonably reliable. Back in 2012, New Jersey’s Supreme Court did something groundbreaking. It said that in cases that involve eyewitness testimony, judges must give jurors a special set of instructions. The instructions are basically a tutorial on what scientific research has learned about eyewitness testimony and the factors that can make it more dependable or less so. ”The hope with this was that jurors would then be able to tell what eyewitness testimony was trustworthy, what sort wasn’t, and at the end of the day it would lead to better decisions, better court outcomes, better justice,” says psychologist David Yokum. Yokum was a graduate student at the University of Arizona, doing research on   when he and two colleagues, Athan Papailiou and Christopher Robertson, decided to test the effect of these new jury instructions, using videos of a mock trial that they showed to volunteers. The fictional trial involved a robbery and murder at a convenience store. Actors played all the roles, including an eyewitness. And the researchers made two versions of this trial that differed only in the quality of the eyewitness testimony. One had testimony that would be considered strong, according to the New Jersey instructions. The other had eyewitness testimony that was much more sketchy. ”Imagine a   and a   scenario,” explains Yokum. ”We deliberately designed the video that way.” For example, police departments frequently ask eyewitnesses to identify a suspect using a photo lineup. The New Jersey instructions say it is best if the photos are shown to the witness by a police officer who doesn’t know which one is the suspect. ”The concern there is that if an officer knows who is in the photo lineup, they might accidentally give some sort of hint to the person about who it is,” says Yokum. So, in their video with the strong eyewitness testimony, the officer didn’t know who was who. But in the video with the weaker testimony, he did. There were other differences as well, such as the number of photos in the lineup. After watching one of these videos, volunteer jurors either did or did not hear the long New Jersey instructions. And then the juror had to decide. Guilty as charged? ”We found that the instruction had an effect,” says Yokum. People who heard about the science of eyewitness testimony were much less likely to convict the defendant. That was true regardless of whether the eyewitness testimony was   or   says Yokum, suggesting that the instructions simply made the jurors suspicious of all such testimony. The researchers recently published their research in the journal PLOS ONE. ”Whether this is a good or bad thing relative to not having the New Jersey instruction, I think, is kind of an open question,” Yokum notes. Alan Zegas, a criminal defense attorney who handled one of the cases that led to the New Jersey instructions, thinks the finding is definitely a good thing. ”Our criminal justice system, our Constitution, has at its foundation the notion that it is better to let a thousand guilty people go free than to convict an innocent person,” says Zegas. Just look at all the people who have been identified by eyewitnesses and later exonerated through DNA testing, he says, adding that ”there should be skepticism of eyewitness testimony.” It’s impossible to know what the   effect of these instructions has been so far, Zegas says. After all, most cases involve various kinds of evidence, not just identification from an eyewitness. But for those rare cases that really do hinge on eyewitness testimony, he thinks the New Jersey instructions could make a huge difference."
"Gary Snyder has holes in his garden fence. That’s not normally the kind of oversight you’d find in a   British garden in a market town like Chipping Norton, 75 miles northwest of London. But the holes are there for a reason: hedgehogs. Snyder’s backyard is now one small rest stop on what conservationists hope will be a network of hedgehog superhighways crisscrossing Britain. Snyder says at first he didn’t even know he had hedgehogs coming through  —   they’re nocturnal, hibernating during the winter months. But one night he was in bed with his wife. ”We heard this funny grunting noise,” Snyder says. ”And we looked out our bedroom window and we saw  —   there were two hedgehogs actually in the back yard, and it was a courting process.” When he went outside, Snyder realized the wonderful thing about hedgehogs: they aren’t scared of humans. The noisy little things just rolled up into a ball, spikes out, and Snyder could pick them up. If you tickle the spines, he says, they open right up. Snyder did some research and found out that hedgehogs are   commuters, wandering as much as a couple of kilometers a night. That can lead them right into Snyder’s housing development, where his sturdy British fence was trapping them. So he made a small hole, and another. And convinced his neighbors to do it. And so on through the neighborhood. The British Hedgehog Preservation Society has been encouraging people throughout Britain to do the same thing, calling it the Hedgehog Street project. A couple of inches of clearance means that hedgehogs can truck right through suburbia as if it didn’t exist. Of course, this does lead to other problems. Hedgehogs are perfectly designed to fend off predators, but those spikes are terrible when it comes to human trash. Rubber bands dropped by British mail carriers get stuck around hedgehogs and can create infections, and hedgehogs can get their little spiny heads stuck in cups thrown by the side of the road. The Hedgehog Preservation Society has been working on more awareness around product design to help keep the creatures safe. Hugh Warwick, an ecologist who works with the society, estimates that the number of hedgehogs in Britain has dropped by 30 percent in the past ten years. All the little things like hedgehog highways and beverage cup redesign can help, but he says there is a bigger issue: Britain’s small farms are disappearing, becoming industrial agriculture plots and housing developments, which is forcing hedgehogs into the human world more often. A hedgehog superhighway is great, Warwick says  —   but saving their homes would be even better."
"If you’ve been digging out of snowbanks lately, as many people in the East have been after a   blizzard, blame the oceans. Scientists have been doing some forensic work to figure out what set this megastorm in motion. And they think they’ve found a trail that starts with the weather pattern called El Niño. El Niño starts in the tropical Pacific. Every few years, the ocean there gets unusually warm. This year is one of the biggest El Niños ever. Heat and moisture from it have been swept up into the tropical jet stream and carried eastward. Climate scientist Michael Mann at Penn State says that warm wet air was carried through the atmosphere like a wave when you shake a rope. ”If you flick it like El Niño is doing in the Pacific,” Mann says, ”you are going to generate this long wave disturbance that can have impacts way downstream.” The subtropical jet stream, in fact, carried El Niño’s hot, wet air to the Southern tier of the U. S. Normally that would mean wet, warm weather. But we got a blizzard instead. Why? Jeff Weber, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, says what happened was this: Last December, just southwest of Alaska  —   admittedly a long way from the Eastern Seaboard  —   a big   system formed in the upper atmosphere. And that formation acted sort of like a rock thrown into the polar jet stream, which is another big stream of   air blowing toward the East. ”This kind of buckled the polar jet,” Weber explains. And when the polar jet buckles, he says, ”instead of keeping all that cold air locked up to the north, it starts being able to bring that colder air farther down south. And that’s exactly what happened for this storm.” To make matters worse, that cold Northern air also encountered some very moist air from the Atlantic Ocean, which also has been especially warm this year. So cold air slammed into warm, wet air, and the result was the massive blizzard that swept the East. The thinking so far is that El Niño got this thing rolling. Will it do something like this again in future years? Climate scientists can’t say for sure. Mann says a lot depends on the oceans, which are changing. ”A lot of climate change is actually going into the oceans,” he says. He means the oceans are absorbing a lot of the extra heat from the atmosphere. That can alter their circulation, and where and when they release that heat back into the atmosphere. ”It’s changing the behavior of the oceans in a way that affects weather patterns around the globe,” Mann says. The leading edge of climate research now, he says, is figuring out the details of how a warming climate is changing weather, and especially whether it’s doing so by altering El Niño’s strength and behavior. If ocean waters are getting warmer  —   and they are  —   and El Niño is created by unusually warm waters, it makes sense that we could see more of these big El Niños. Climate scientist Heidi Cullen, at the research organization Climate Central, says that’s a good hypothesis, but it’s too soon to be sure that will happen. And even if they do get stronger, El Niños are only one part of a very complex weather world. ”It’s never just an El Niño signature that we experience when we experience any individual winter or any individual weather event,” Cullen says. How each El Niño plays out, whether it’s a big one or not, depends on so many other things  —   like the appearance of a low pressure system off the west coast of Alaska. So yes, scientists say, a warming climate makes some things more likely  —   such as heat waves, droughts, or monster blizzards. But when it comes to your local weather, the deck is still full of wild cards."
"As researchers have come to understand how poverty and its stresses influence children’s brain development, they’ve begun untangling how that can lead to increased behavior problems and learning difficulties for disadvantaged kids. Rather than trying to treat those problems, NYU child development specialists Adriana Weisleder and Alan Mendelsohn want to head them off. They say they’ve found a way: Working with   parents when they bring babies and young children to the pediatrician. They’ve been able to reduce key obstacles to learning like hyperactivity and difficulty paying attention, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics. The researchers recruited mothers with newborns to participate in the study and divided them into three groups. One group received standard pediatric care, which includes some basic coaching on reading to kids. The second went home with books, toys and informational pamphlets, and the third worked with a trained child development professional for about 30 minutes before or after each checkup. The specialist filmed each mother and child reading or playing together for a few minutes, talked to the mother about the positive things she did with her child and sent her home with the video. At 3 years old, 50 percent fewer children in the video interaction group who were most at risk showed signs of hyperactivity compared with those who got standard pediatric care. The results were positive, though less remarkable, for the video group as a whole. Improving a child’s ability to focus, regulate behavior and cooperate with other kids can help a child learn. ”If [children are] controlling their behavior, not overreacting and paying attention, they will be taking in more information from learning activities,” says early childhood expert Susan Landry, director of the Children’s Learning Institute, who wasn’t involved in the study. ”All those things help in the classroom to be a better student.” The results show that a relatively cheap form of intervention works, the researchers say, and could be used to reach a big swath of the population, including families who are often hard to reach because parents work multiple jobs or phones get disconnected. By using pediatric checkups as a way to engage parents, the researchers say they could reach every child without burdening parents with additional transportation or logistical demands. ”We’re leveraging the relationship they already have with the pediatric clinic,” Weisleder says. While home visits to provide this sort of    behavioral training can cost between $1, 500 and $10, 000 per child per year (models vary widely) the video program costs around $200. David Willis, director of the federal Health Resources and Services Administration’s Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, notes that the home visit program is far more intensive than the NYU video method, with families getting between 25 and 30 visits per year. Each lasts at least an hour. ”The families we serve are some of the most challenged families in the country,” Willis says. Home visits are an important resource for them, but he estimates the program reaches only 1 to 3 percent of families who could benefit from it. ”To simultaneously have this [video interaction] program that’s likewise focused on promoting positive parenting and brain development in the youngest families is really significant,” he says. Landry thinks the video intervention could be embedded into almost any type of pediatric setting for very little cost. ”That’s something all of us have been searching for, ”she says. Her team at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston is working to make home visits by child development specialists more affordable by giving parents iPads so they can work remotely with experts. The findings don’t just apply to disadvantaged families. As a pediatrician, the first advice Mendelsohn gives families when kids have behavior problems is to think not about discipline but rather positive steps. ”Can you start to pay attention to your child when your child is being good?” he asks. Negative interactions can turn into a cascade, he says, in which parents feel worse about themselves, which influences kids negatively, which ultimately makes things even harder for parents. ”Kids misbehave because it’s their job,” he says. ”It’s our job to be able to help them learn and regulate their behavior.”"
"The City of Ferguson, Mo. and the Justice Department have released a draft of the consent decree that they have negotiated. The   proposed agreement creates guidelines for training police officers on issues like when they should use force and how they can ”reorient Ferguson’s    policies toward   and avoiding force.” The agreement also requires   cameras and an overhaul of the municipal court system. Importantly, as with other agreements in the past, it requires the selection and appointment of an independent monitor. If you remember, an investigation by the Justice Department found that the Ferguson Police Department engaged in a pattern and practice of violating the constitutional rights of its citizens.   for example, were disproportionately stopped and arrested by police. Blacks were also disproportionately ticketed, and the laws were then overwhelmingly enforced against  . Since the report was issued, the city and Justice began negotiating an agreement to avoid a lawsuit. The consent decree must now be approved by the Ferguson City Council. The council is waiting for public comment but expects to vote on the agreement by Feb. 9. ”We remain hopeful that the City Council will approve the Agreement on that date, and that we will not have to resort to contested litigation, given that this would delay implementation of much needed police and court reform, and divert substantial resources away from the reform effort,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta told the council in a letter. The Justice Department launched an investigation into the police department in September 2014, about a month after violent protests erupted in the streets of Ferguson following the shooting death of    Michael Brown."
"  marriage or civil unions are legal throughout Western Europe, including many traditionally Catholic countries. The last holdout is Italy, where the Senate is about to take up a bill on Thursday that would legalize civil unions  —   though it would not authorize gay marriage.   Tens of thousands of Italians took to the streets last weekend in some 100 cities demanding legalization of civil unions, including those of gay and lesbian couples. ”Italy, it’s time to wake up,” they shouted. The rallies were organized by LGBT activists and their supporters, who said they have grown impatient as they watched their European neighbors legalize   marriage or civil unions. Carlo Terriaca, whose son is gay, attended the Rome rally. After retiring from his job as a bank manager, Terriaca became president of an association of parents of LGBT children.   ”I think in the last 10 years, Italian society has been deeply changing, particularly the new generation, you have quite a different feeling about this,” he said. One of those young people is Alessandro Piavani, 22, who sees the civil unions bill as a crucial human rights issue for the entire society. ”Because it’s a sign of modernity and [a move] forward in the right direction to rights for all, not just for bisexual, homosexual people. But for all,” he said. Polls Show Support, Polls show large numbers of Italians approve granting homosexual couples inheritance and pension rights, as well as the right to make medical decisions for a partner who is hospitalized. But there’s much greater division over a provision in the bill that would allow the adoption of a gay partner’s biological children. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is a strong supporter of the bill, but there’s division within his own government. ”We say no to marriages by whatever name, and no to stepchild adoption,” said Maurizio Sacconi, who belongs to a small party in the prime minister’s coalition. Opponents insist that stepchild adoption will encourage gay couples to go abroad and turn to surrogate mothers  —   a practice banned in Italy.  Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the president of the Italian Bishops Conference, which has traditionally made itself heard in Italian politics, waded into the debate this week, saying it’s up to lay people to ”inscribe divine law into earthly life.” ”The welfare of children must prevail over everything,” he said. ”They are not a right. . .. They have a right to security and stability.”  But LGBT activists say that surrogacy has nothing to do with the civil unions bill. ”Our children are citizens who must be safeguarded. The way they came into this world is not important,” said Marilena Grassadonia, president of the Rainbow Families Association. ”I have duties toward my three children, whether I’m their biological mother or their other mother.”  Ivan Scalfarotto, the undersecretary for relations with Parliament and first openly gay member in government, believes opposition to the bill is based on an unwillingness to accept the concept of equality.  ”The underlying text is a gay or lesbian couple is worth less than a straight couple, they are not equal,” he said. Opponents of the bill are staging a ”family day” rally Saturday at Rome’s ancient Circus Maximus, the biggest arena in the city."
"In a sign the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge may be winding down, the FBI announced late Wednesday that eight people had left the compound. Five were released and three arrested. The FBI said in a statement: ”All [three] were in contact with the FBI, and each chose to turn himself into [sic] agents at a checkpoint outside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The arrests were without incident. ”Each man faces one federal felony count of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation, or threats. ..  ”The FBI and our partners continue to work around the clock to empty the refuge of the armed occupiers in the safest way possible.” The three men arrested Wednesday were identified by the FBI as Duane Leo Ehmer, age 45, of Irrigon, Ore. Dylan Wade Anderson, age 34, of Provo, Utah and Jason S. Patrick, age 43, of Bonaire, Ga. Earlier Wednesday, rancher Ammon Bundy, who had led the   armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge near Burns, Ore. released a statement calling for the remaining militants to ”stand down.” Bundy was arrested Tuesday. In his statement, Bundy praised LaVoy Finicum, an occupier who was shot and killed during a confrontation with police on Tuesday. He called Finicum ”one of the greatest men and greatest patriots I have ever seen.” The rest of the statement, issued through Bundy’s lawyer, read: ”We will have more to say later but right now I am asking the federal government to allow the people at the refuge to go home without being prosecuted. ”To those remaining at the refuge, I love you. Let us take this fight from here. Please stand down. Go home and hug your families. This fight is ours for now in the courts. Please go home. ”Being in the system, we are going to take this opportunity to answer the questions on Art. 1, Section 8, Cause [sic] 17 of the United States Constitution regarding rights of statehood and the limits on federal property ownership. Thank you and god [sic] bless America.” Bundy and seven other militants were arrested Tuesday. They also face felony charges of interfering with federal employees’ official duties. Late Wednesday the FBI told Oregon Public Broadcasting that it was actively negotiating with the remaining militants at the refuge, but one of the militants still there was defiant. ”David Fry said five people remained in the occupied refuge. He said that he personally had no plans to leave at this time. ”When asked about Bundy’s call to leave the refuge, Fry simply said, ’We have new leaders now and new plans.’ ” As we reported, five of the seven militants arrested in Oregon were apprehended at a traffic stop while en route to a community meeting. One member of the group was shot and killed during that operation. Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said he was ”disappointed” that the   traffic stop that was meant to bring a peaceful resolution to the   occupation ”ended badly.” Ward was emotional when he called for an end to the occupation, saying the stress from the situation hasn’t been confined to the refuge. ”This has been tearing our community apart,” Ward said. ”It’s time for everyone in this illegal occupation to move on. It doesn’t have to be bloodshed in our community. If we have issues with the way things are going in our government, we have a responsibility as citizens to act on them in an appropriate manner. We don’t arm up and rebel. We work through the appropriate channels.” Ward paused and shook his head before continuing: ”This can’t happen anymore. This can’t happen in America, and it can’t happen in Harney County.”"
"Editor’s note: The web version of this story was first published on Shots in January. Next week, come back to Shots as we explore how Rachel Star Withers’ YouTube channel has affected other people who have schizophrenia or have a loved one who does. When she was 22, Rachel Star Withers uploaded a video to YouTube called ”Normal: Living With Schizophrenia.” It starts with her striding across her family’s property in Fort Mill, S. C. She looks across the rolling grounds, unsmiling. Her eyes are narrow and grim. She sits down in front of a deserted white cottage and starts sharing. ”I see monsters. I see myself chopped up and bloody a lot. Sometimes I’ll be walking, and the whole room will just tilt. Like this,” she grasps the camera and jerks the frame crooked. She surfaces a fleeting grin. ”Try and imagine walking.” She becomes serious again. ”I’m making this because I don’t want you to feel alone, whether you’re struggling with any kind of mental illness or just struggling.” At the time, 2008, there were very few people who had done anything like this online. ”As I got diagnosed [with schizophrenia] I started researching everything. The only stuff I could find was like every horror movie,” she says. ”I felt so alone for years.” She decided that schizophrenia was really not that scary. ”I want people to find me and see a real person.” Over the past eight years, she has made 53 videos documenting her journey with schizophrenia and depression, and her therapy. And she is not the only one. There are hundreds of videos online of people publicly sharing their experiences with mental illness. In her early videos, Withers glowers. She tried to give off an aura of toughness befitting the daughter of a Hells Angels biker. But there’s also a sense that terror is a deep undercurrent in her life. ”All right, let’s go,” she says in the video ”Watch If You Forget,” where she documents getting electroconvulsive therapy for depression. Then, in the next few seconds, ”I’m about to start the electroshock therapy and, yeah, I’m pretty nervous.” Things have changed a lot since then. Now, almost all her videos open with Withers flicking her black curls, arms raised with swagger: ”Hey, what’s up! I’m Rachel Star!” That public sharing of mental illness might be making a huge impact on the way our society views these disorders, especially for those of us who are digital natives. Millennials tend to be more comfortable talking about mental health issues, according to a poll released Jan. 14 by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, along with two national suicide prevention foundations. When it came to seeing a mental health professional, for instance, 48 percent of survey respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 said that it was a sign of strength. About 35 percent of all prior generations felt the same way. ”Our young people are accepting that mental health problems exist, and they want help for it, and they are not looking at these things as something to be ashamed of,” says Anne Marie Albano, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University who is on the board for the ADAA. She thinks that social media and videos like Withers’ have helped lower stigma around mental illnesses. ”Young people take advantage of this,” Albano says. ”It gives the opportunity for people to tell their stories and post images. This allows them to feel more hope than prior generations.” There might be other reasons young people are less concerned about stigma surrounding mental illness. Perhaps as you age, your outlook becomes more pessimistic, says John Naslund, a Ph. D. candidate at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice who studies social media and mental health. He notes that the ADAA poll found that a higher percentage of older adults than young people didn’t believe that something like suicide could be prevented. ”Maybe they’ve been through this before and have had people close to them take their own lives.” He hopes things really are getting better. ”It’s very possible. That would be a very exciting change in the way society views mental illness,” Naslund says. But the problem has not been solved. Even if information moves quickly, change is slow. ”It’s really important to acknowledge that people who have a serious mental disorder still face a lot of stigma,” he says. When she was younger, Withers struggled with a lot of shame and humiliation over her disorders. ”For so many years, I felt like a freak,” she says. Part of that was the religious community she had joined. ”Think militant Christian. Like a militaristic type,” she says. When she was 17, she graduated from high school early to attend the former Teen Mania Ministries Honor Academy in Dallas. ”I honestly thought that’s what God wanted me to do.” At the same time, her mental condition was deteriorating. She says her schizophrenia was starting to emerge and transform into something unmanageable. The counselor at Honor Academy diagnosed her with depression and prescribed pills. They didn’t help. Eventually she told them about her hallucinations. ”This being a Christian place, they decided I was possessed by demons.” For three days, Withers fasted. Each morning, she met three of the school’s spiritual advisers, and they spent the day performing an exorcism in a closed room. They read Bible verses, and Withers confessed to everything she could think of that might be construed as a sin  —   even watching   TV shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer. At the end of the crucible, Withers was on the floor, exhausted. ”I was young and here are these people who, you know, I’m told are close to God. I was like . .. OK. It must be right,” she says. ”Surprise! It didn’t work. I spent six more months there as an outcast.” Reducing this kind of stigma is a fundamental reason Withers continues making videos. She wants others to see those struggling with mental disorders with more compassion, and she wants people with a mental diagnosis to see themselves more positively. After she posted her first video, Withers says, ”People just come out of the woodwork emailing me, messaging me. The friends I’ve had the longest time, even people I’ve never met in real life with schizophrenia and like disorders. We just started talking.” She got invited to mental health forums and to mental health support groups on Facebook. ”Thank you for these videos. They really help me to better understand my sister,” YouTube user Kathryn Hatzenbuhler posted under one video. These online communities are an important part of Withers’ life now. ”Whenever I’m posting on Twitter, I’ll put #schizophrenia and #schizophrenic. I’m hoping to find other people who are having problems,” she says. Withers ended up making a coloring book for kids with schizophrenia, and she shares ways she has figured out to deal with her visions and voices. Via webcam, she showed me two askew mirrors in her room that can be angled away from the viewer. ”People with mental disorders don’t do well with mirrors. I just start hallucinating,” she says. ”It’s real hard putting on makeup, you have to imagine. Having the mirrors at an angle helps.” In one video, she talks about walking up to one of her hallucinations to touch it, and that alone took away some of the fear. ”It’s kind of something to help you get used to your hallucinations, so you know how to respond, because the voices are always horrible. The voices are never like, ’Oh my God, you look so good today.’ ” There’s no hiding her disorder from anybody on Facebook, so people she knew in real life started finding out. It caused her pain at some jobs (”This one girl was like, ’Oh she’s crazy. I’m not working with her.’ ”) but it also led some people to talk about their own or their family’s experiences with mental disorder. ”They’ll be like, ’So . .. I saw your post, Rachel. I had a question.’ ” Researchers think there’s a potential gold mine of mental health benefits in exchanging messages and encouragement online like this. ”Social support is always the No. 1 variable that predicts a better prognosis and better care management of anyone’s illness,” Albano says. It’s a small leap from there to think that participating in mental   communities on YouTube and Facebook might actually be making people healthier and preventing suicides. ”That’s probably absolutely correct,” says Patrick Corrigan, a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. But scientists are only just now beginning to measure the effect social media might have on clinical outcomes. ”It’s quite a new area of thinking, online    support for mental illness,” Naslund says. But there’s an obvious downside to being public on social media about mental health problems. ”Say I have a network of friends and I have a breakdown one day. It will spread through social media, maybe in negative ways,” says Michael Lindsey, a professor of social work at New York University. That could be through someone’s real social groups, like at work or school, or it could be anonymous, via Internet trolls. For those already depressed, anxious or paranoid, cruel comments and messages could have a terrible impact. But in Naslund’s research, he says that problems with online attacks have been extraordinarily rare. ”If someone did post a derogatory comment, seemed a little harmful, other people would come to the defense and say, ’Don’t listen to that,’ ” he says. ”[Social media are] way more supportive than we imagined.” According to Naslund, the benefits seem to vastly outweigh the harms. ”That’s clear in the literature,” he says. And Withers agrees. She doesn’t think that people with mental health problems usually go on social media and spiral out of control even more. ”I’m sure it happens somewhere on some area of the Internet,” she says. ”But I think usually when I’m feeling depressed and stuff, but then I see someone else thinking of hurting themselves, the opposite kicks in. It’s like, no. You have so much to live for. You’re able to pull yourself out in a way to help someone else.” When Withers does get trolls, she blocks them. ”Anything remotely violent towards me gets blocked,” she says. ”Like  —   I’m not going to respond to that. Don’t call me that word.” Still, she cautions others to think carefully before coming out to the world about their mental illness. It can be dangerous, she admits. She says she gets phone stalkers and death threats. But she is still glad that she did it. It’s uncomfortable for her to think what might have happened if she never went online about her depression and schizophrenia. ”I see myself being a lot more closed off,” she says. ”I hope I would have found other people’s videos.” Withers attributes a lot of her transformation to electroconvulsive therapy. She says it knocked out a lot of her deep depression. And Withers thinks sharing on the Internet has also helped. ”It helps me to vocalize it and put it all out there,” she says, and it makes her feel like she is less ”broken and sick” when other users empathize with her online. Recently, she posted a video to YouTube called ”There Will Be Beautiful Days.” It’s short, reaching just past a minute long. Withers smiles and says she knows things are hard now. Maybe harder than they’ve ever been. But it’s going to be OK. And at some point, you’ll have some good days. Maybe even just one great day, but it’ll be enough. It will make life worth fighting for. For more on WNYC’s Only Human podcast series on mental health, check here. You can stay in touch with @OnlyHuman on Twitter and @Only Human on Facebook. WNYC and NPR recently asked listeners: Have you ever had a hard time talking openly about your mental health? We’ll be posting some of these responses on Facebook throughout the series."
"Ray’s Sporting Goods in Dallas’ Oak Cliff is a neighborhood firearm dreamland. It’s stocked with the latest pistols, shotguns and     rifles. Chuck Payne, the store’s manager, says he has sold to a lot more women recently. ”A lot of married ladies with their husbands, some without, but they’ve decided that their husband’s not home, they need to be able to do something and they need a different gun than what their husband had,” Payne says. And with that different gun, they often want different accessories. At Ray’s, there are purses with hidden pockets, bright pink tool kits with tiny screws for gun maintenance, and fruit   magazine loaders  —   so women ”don’t break off their fingernails and make their fingers sore,” Payne explains. Here’s the thing: Since Jan. 1, Payne hasn’t seen one woman come in carrying openly. That’s when Texas’   law went into effect, meaning that gun owners with   licenses in Texas no longer have to hide their guns. More than 800, 000 people in Texas have a license to carry a gun, but many have chosen to keep their guns concealed  —   including many women. As a result, there’s a growing accessory industry to meet their gun fashion needs. There’s no accurate count of female gun owners, but a 2015 report from the National Sporting Goods Association found that 5. 4 million women said they went target shooting. That’s up 60 percent since 2001. There are several reasons women don’t openly carry. Many of them simply don’t want to draw attention to themselves. Then there’s the logistics of actually wearing the gun. ”Most   and   holsters are made for men,” says Carrie Lightfoot, CEO of The   Woman, an online store based in Arizona. She says a woman’s body shape and size are important considerations when it comes to open or concealed carry. ”For example, a 32A bust could not conceal a Glock 19 very well  —   nor would a 42DD or a larger tummy allow for effective   carry,” she says. Lightfoot sells bra holsters, concealment leggings, lace waistbands and leopard print gun holders for cars. She says sales are up 130 percent since the summer. Still, the vast majority of women don’t openly carry. And that means one of the hottest accessories is the   purse, which is Kate Woolstenhulme’s business. In her Plano, Texas, home office, Woolstenhulme unpacks one of her newest designs: a black leather purse with a herringbone embossed pattern. She introduced her first line of   bags in 2009, after failing to track down a handbag that was both safe and fashionable for her 9 mm Beretta Nano handgun. ”I was interested in making something that really functioned and yet still making sure that it looked as if that woman had walked into Nordstrom’s or Neiman’s or Marshalls or whatever they shop at,” Woolstenhulme says. The ostrich and   handbags sell for thousands of dollars. Others are a few hundred. Many of the bags have exterior holster pockets  —   all of them have locking devices. The National Sporting Goods Association report found that women who bought a gun in the last year spent on average $870 on firearms and more than $400 on accessories. Both Woolstenhulme and Lightfoot warn women to choose new holsters and bags wisely  —   just because it’s made in pink doesn’t guarantee it was designed for a woman’s body."
"As the Islamic State uses social media and the Internet to recruit followers, a group of American Muslim millennials are also using the same tools to clear up misconceptions. Tired of being called a terrorist, Ranny Badreddine, a youth from Evansville, Ind. joined other young teens to create World Changers, an initiative that uses the cyberspace to combat misconceptions about Islam. ”Kids have to be worried about. ..going outside and being scared that someone is going to beat them up because they’re Muslim,” Badreddine says. ”As a    kid, I don’t want to live my life being scared of Americans trying to hurt me because of what I am and my religion.” Many younger American Muslims say their parents and grandparents have long been reluctant to speak out and risk drawing attention to themselves. But Badreddine and his peers want to take a different approach. They want to use technology to push back against what they see as false portrayals of Islam. The group is a branch organization of Reclamation Studios, another media initiative that aims to counter the Islamic State group’s propaganda online. World Changers currently works with Reclamation Studios to spread their message and answer questions about Islam online. They also work with other nonprofits to organize public forums. Romaze Akhram, one of the members, says this battle for the hearts and minds of Americans is not just about religion. For him, it is far more personal. ”The problem is, when they talk about Islamic terrorism, people aren’t necessarily seeing ISIS and  . They’re seeing me,” Akhram says. ” And they’re seeing the kids that are with us today, you know, and we’re working towards positive things but they’re going to see us as Islamic terrorists.” Muslim activist Humera Khan says religion is not the only or even the main reason driving the atrocities around the world. ”And so if we want to deal with the issue of ISIS, we must deal with the political reality as well,” she says. ”I don’t think what ISIS is doing is at all Islam. They use some of the language but their objectives are extremely political.” While that is true, many American Muslims still say they have to constantly deal with the perception that Islam is behind these atrocities. Mohammed Hussain, a pediatrician in Evansville, says this tech savvy generation is smart enough to use the same online strategies as the radicals. He supports their effort to call out what they see as false Islam. ”We have all realized ISIS has people who are adapted, are using the media, and they have been using it very effectively,” he says. ”So we have to convey the right message in the same matter so that it can get across.” The battle that these young American Muslims are joining is not a new one.    Hani Yousef says he’s often asked if it is fair to expect the younger generation to fight a war that they did not start. ”I think it might be beyond the point if it’s fair or not,” Yousef says. ”The situation is that people are taking the name Islam and using it in a derogatory way, and what’s really the problem that we need to focus on is not if it’s fair or not, but how to combat it in a way that obviously is nonviolent and aligns with the ways or our religion.”"
"President Obama and Vice President Biden ”have tried to be fair and  ” in the primary process, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Wednesday following a meeting with the president at the White House. Calling the meeting ”constructive and productive,” Sanders cautiously praised the Obama administration’s economic work, saying there is still work to be done. The two also talked talked about foreign and domestic policy and ”a little bit of politics,” according to Sanders, who spoke to reporters after the meeting. The meeting came after Obama made comments that were seen as favoring Sanders’ Democratic primary opponent, Hillary Clinton. ”[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” Obama told Politico earlier this week, a dig at Sanders’   message on income inequality. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the meeting was first discussed last December at the congressional holiday ball. Sanders added that he was grateful that Obama campaigned for him years ago and vice versa, but that didn’t mean they didn’t also have their differences. Sanders also discussed Monday’s Iowa caucuses, saying his campaign is ”feeling really good about where we are,” but that in the end ”what the Iowa campaign ends up being about is one word, and that is turnout.” ”I’m not saying we can do what Barack Obama did in 2008  —   I wish we could  —   but I don’t think we can. If there is a large turnout, I think we win. If not, I think we’ll be struggling.”"
"Ever since a tense, armed standoff near Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch in 2014, a vast and sensitive piece of federal public land adjacent to the Grand Canyon has gone unmanaged and unpatrolled. It’s safe to travel into the area called Gold Butte so long as you’re not in a federal vehicle, according to Jaina Moan of Friends of Gold Butte, which wants to see the area federally protected. The last time there was any known federal presence was last summer, when scientists under contract with the Bureau of Land Management were camped here, gathering field research. ”Unfortunately that also was canceled after shots were fired at one of the contract crews,” Moan says. Gold Butte, roughly the size of Los Angeles County, is basically lawless right now. Trash is dumped here and there. Some of the BLM’s route markers are torn down. Illegal   tracks from ATVs lead into the desert. Some pioneer gravesites were even dug up, bones scattered everywhere. If no one is patrolling it, who’s going to deter vandals? That’s a question Moan and William Anderson, the former chairman of the local Moapa Band of Paiutes, who consider this desert sacred, are asking more and more as the dispute between Bundy and the government drags on. The occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon has renewed attention to the federal government’s case against Bundy in Nevada. The government’s inaction against him is often cited as emboldening his sons to storm the refuge this month. In southern Nevada, meanwhile, scores of the family’s cattle continue to graze illegally in and around Gold Butte. William Anderson watches with frustration as a   group of them crosses a    road in the heart of Gold Butte. He considers the cattle a threat to desert grasses and plants that his people have gathered and used out here for generations. ”[The cattle are] out here just roaming the area and they are stepping on areas that are culturally sensitive to our people,” he says. No one knows for sure how many cows are roaming here since federal agencies pulled out of the area shortly after the standoff. The Nevada state director of the BLM, John Ruhs, defends the agency’s decision to keep field staff away. He says there are still threats and intimidation tactics directed toward his employees there. ”When it comes to having employees on the ground doing things like monitoring or restoration work, it’s just not getting done because of the safety concerns we have for our employees,” Ruhs told NPR. Ruhs would not discuss the government’s case against Bundy, and neither would the Department of Justice. But Ruhs did say that he now requires his staff doing fieldwork elsewhere in Nevada to go out in teams, never alone. It’s a frustrating climate, he says. The BLM’s mission is to manage public lands for all sorts of uses by everyone, not just cattle ranchers. ”We don’t do anything on our own as personal individuals,” Ruhs says. ”We do things that are mandated from Congress, and we follow the laws that are given to us, and we try to enforce them appropriately.” Nevada has a long and troubled history with these sorts of domestic insurgencies. In the 1990s, bombs were placed on U. S. Forest Service property and the BLM’s state headquarters in Reno. The case against Bundy and his unpaid grazing fees goes back some 20 years, too. Land managers in the late 1990s also planned to round up some of his cows that crossed into the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Alan O’Neill, who was superintendent there at the time and is now retired, recalls that at the last minute, the federal prosecutor stopped it, worrying of a   situation. ”When people break the law and there’s no penalty, it just emboldens them to continue to do that,” O’Neill says. Bundy and his supporters have told NPR in recent interviews that their fight is about a lot more than cows. Like a lot of the mountain west, rural Nevada’s economy has struggled and Bundy is one of the last ranchers in this corner of the state. Many were forced out or bought out over the years as Las Vegas expanded and federal environmental laws got tougher. Still, the current movement to take back federal land that the Bundys and others have led is infuriating to people like William Anderson of the local tribe. ”They can get in line  —   we’re saying the same thing about our people, too,” Anderson says. Back in Gold Butte, Anderson points out a petroglyph panel on a red rock slope. Two of the ancient drawings have recent bullet holes. ”It’s really hard to even believe that somebody would come in and try to destroy it, or remove it,” he says. ”It’s something that’s been here forever.” Anderson says Gold Butte should be protected and managed by the local tribes."
"Where a mainstream fashion magazine might do a special ”black issue,” like Italian Vogue back in 2008, or a black lifestyle magazine might run a queer feature, the perspective of queer black folks tends to occupy occasional outskirts in fashion and lifestyle glossies, never the mainstay. The Tenth, a new print magazine by and for queer black men, now on its third issue, wants to help change that, at least from the POV of its founders. Its name is inspired by two sources: W. E. B. DuBois’ early   concept of the Talented Tenth, a vanguard group of exceptionally gifted black people who would elevate the community as a whole, and the voguing practice of ”getting your tens”  —   earning a perfect score from the judges at a ballroom competition. Like its inspirations, The Tenth shows off queer black greatness across a wide variety of fields, ranging from interviews with new literary lions like Saeed Jones and Brontez Purnell to   but influential historical figures like photographer Alvin Baltrop and musician Robert Brewster. The magazine began as a personal project between Khary Septh and Kyle Banks, who are boyfriends in real life. They wanted to create a photographic collage of a group of their queer black friends, all creative professionals working in various industries around New York City whose aesthetic influence, The Tenth’s founders say, can be found everywhere from Beyonce’s looks to FK Twig’s moves. Septh and Banks wanted their collage to spotlight individuals whose influence is almost always behind the scenes, but they never thought it would go beyond the walls of their Brooklyn loft. ”But people were like, ’We’ve never experienced anything like this before,’ so we were hoodwinked into starting [the magazine] from there,” Banks recalled. It wasn’t just about recognizing the individual work the people they photographed had done. It was about connecting them into a community. Soon, Septh and Banks asked Andre Verdun Jones, a longtime friend of Septh’s, to join them. All three had years of working as cultural creators under their belts: Banks as a stage actor (most recently in The Lion King, both touring and on Broadway) Septh as a fashion designer and commercial art director, and Jones as a producer and filmmaker. But they wanted to do something that would put their talents to use in service of their community and their ideals. The world of the magazine is not limited to queer black men. Septh says they want it to reflect ”the multiplicity of our identities, the layers of our lives.” You’ll find stories and images of straight people, white people, trans people, and queer black women in its pages, like a feature called ”Detroit Is the New Black” that anchors the current issue, which explores Detroit through the eyes of four young queer black women who are giving ”Rock City” a renaissance made in their own image. It might seem surprising that such an endeavor would begin in print, and indeed, Mused Magazine, another newer publication aimed at black gay men, is  . But a few other     queer men’s print magazines have debuted in the last few years, like Gayletter and Cakeboy. Although all three take a more intersectional approach than most   gay men’s mags, The Tenth is the only one explicitly by and for people of color. Yet despite the similarity of their projects, The Tenth has been unable to match its peers in one crucial aspect: Advertising dollars. ”As soon as we knock on the door, no one’s home,” said Jones, recalling fruitless attempts to convince fashion and lifestyle brands to invest in The Tenth. The magazine is produced largely as a labor of love, with a   budget raised from small events and the    sales of their first two issues, which are $40 each. ”We were speaking with this hedge fund investor who just adores The Tenth, and he didn’t understand why it was so hard to raise money for a print run,” Banks said with a rueful laugh. ”Twenty minutes into the conversation, I asked about being connected to some of his investors and his response was, ’Oh, they wouldn’t get you. ’” Gayletter’s Abiezer Benitez recalled similar experiences when he worked as art director at Uptown, a black women’s magazine. ”Every single woman was wearing designers every single day. A Vuitton bag and a Vuitton heel,” Benitez said. Yet in his experience, the idea of getting those kinds of   advertisers in the magazine was a  . ”They think it’s a ’misrepresentation’ of their brands,” Benitez said. So far, for The Tenth, the one exception has been the   hospitality brand Ace Hotel, whose Los Angeles venue hosted the January launch event for the new issue. ”Those guys have really shown up for us,” Septh said. But even if it means funding their project solely from   sales, he added, ”We’re never going to change our conversation, we’re never going to humble ourselves, and we’re never going to misrepresent our radical subversive philosophy.”"
"For women who are pregnant, or hope to be, the news about the Zika virus can be terrifying. The   pathogen is being linked to a significant increase in Brazil of a rare birth defect called microcephaly. The virus has already spread to 22 countries in the Americas. That’s led four countries, Ecuador, El Salvador, Jamaica and Colombia, to recommend that women delay their pregnancies. It’s a strategy that is being criticized by some. Monica Roa, programs director of Women’s Link Worldwide, an organization devoted to the human rights of women and girls, spoke to NPR’s Renee Montagne about the issue. Roa, who is based in Madrid, discussed how realistic these recommendations are, especially because they don’t account for victims of rape or sexual violence. She also talks about the option of abortion for pregnant women infected with Zika, which is illegal in some countries in Latin America. Here are excerpts from Roa’s interview, edited for length and clarity. Some countries are recommending that women delay getting pregnant. Is that a realistic recommendation in Latin America and the Caribbean? More than 50 percent of pregnancies in Latin America aren’t planned. That’s why these recommendations [to delay pregnancy] are both naive and ineffective. They fail to take into account the prevalence of rape and sexual violence in the region, which accounts for many of these unplanned pregnancies. In countries where abortion and emergency contraception is illegal, what options do women have if they have been exposed to Zika? That’s why the debate should be on the table. In countries like Colombia, women have the option of using emergency contraception or interrupting the pregnancy legally if they are infected with the Zika virus. However, most women  —   especially those in the most affected areas  —   do not have clarity over these laws. There is a lack of information and access to these services. And that is for the countries where these kinds of reproductive health services are legal. In some other countries, like El Salvador, these kinds of reproductive rights are illegal. This might lead to women getting more unsafe abortions, and putting their health and life at risk. What support could governments in the region give to help women reduce their risk of becoming pregnant in the first place? These recommendations must be accompanied by massive campaigns, informing both men and women about the access to and use of contraceptives. [That access] is lacking throughout the region. Women who are pregnant should have information about the possibility of interrupting the pregnancy if the law allows it in that country. In the countries where the law doesn’t allow for [abortion] I think the debate [about reproductive rights] should be on the table and discussed in the context [of Zika virus infections]. The health system should [also] be prepared to give all the attention that these babies [born with microcephaly] and their families are going to need in the best possible way."
"What do you want to know about the Zika virus? We asked our audience, and on Jan. 26 we posed their questions to NPR global health correspondent Jason Beaubien and South America correspondent Lourdes   in a live video QA, moderated by Goats and Soda editor Malaka Gharib.   participated from Rio de Janeiro. Beaubien and   are covering the disease for NPR. More than 100 people submitted questions via social media and the hashtag #ZikaQA on a range of topics, including the possibility that a severe birth defect is linked to instances of Zika in the mother when she was pregnant. Here are excerpts from their conversation, edited for length and clarity. Watch the full QA in the player above. How concerned should people be about the virus? Beaubien: I started asking researchers, ”Would you be concerned if you were pregnant, going to some of these places?” Almost across the board they said yes, they would be very concerned. There’s so little known about how you can protect yourself. Keeping away from mosquitoes is very difficult. There’s no vaccine there’s no treatment.  : One of the researchers in Brazil said this is even more of a concern than Ebola in certain ways. With Zika, 1 in 5 people will show symptoms, but the majority will be asymptomatic. So a woman who is pregnant might not know that she has the virus. Whom does the virus affect? How does it affect them?  : The Zika virus can affect anyone, humans of any stripe or gender or age. When it was first detected in Brazil, it was seen as a benign illness. You get sick for a few days, you might have a rash, you might get conjunctivitis, you have achy bones like you have a flu  —   but it didn’t seem to have any lingering effects. It was only when we started to see these cases of microcephaly [in babies born to women who had contracted the virus] that researchers started to look at other things. Now there is a [possible] link to not only microcephaly but also   syndrome, which causes paralysis. How does the virus spread? Beaubien: It’s a   virus. Let’s say a person who is infected with the virus is bitten by a mosquito. That mosquito can then transmit the virus to someone else. This is what’s happening: People who are infected but may not know it are getting on planes, flying to a new place and carrying that virus with them. In these new areas, if the same mosquitoes that carry the virus, the Aedes aegypti, are there, they too can start spreading the virus.  : There is some suspicion that it could actually be sexually transmitted. They have found high levels of Zika virus in men’s semen, so that is an added worry. How widespread is the virus now?  : Brazil is the epicenter. It has the most cases. So researchers are trying to figure out why this is happening. Every day we’re hearing new cases from different parts of the Americas. Zika is moving extremely rapidly and affecting most of Latin America at the moment. Is there a vaccine in the works? What’s next in terms of research? Beaubien: Vaccines are definitely on the list, but it’s going to be at least two to three years before a vaccine is available. There also needs to be research to make sure that these birth defects are coming from a Zika infection. There is probably going to be more research in what can be done about eradicating mosquitoes. There’s been talk about using genetically engineered mosquitoes.  : We have a test area here in Brazil of genetically engineered mosquitoes that has had very promising results. But to use that   would be extremely expensive and quite difficult. Watch the full QA with Beaubien and   in the player above, and follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #ZikaQA."
"No country is free of public corruption, a scourge that has   effects on the lives of billions of people. But in 2015, more countries saw drops in corruption than those that saw gains, according to the new Corruption Perceptions Index. The United States lost three points from its 2014 score, but the country kept its No. 16 ranking, tied with Austria and just ahead of Hong Kong. The top spot went to Denmark, followed by Finland. North Korea and Somalia tied for last place  —   a spot they shared in last year’s index, as well. Despite improvements in some countries, the index finds that 68 percent of the world’s countries have ”a serious corruption problem. Half of the G20 are among them.” ”To stamp out the abuse of power, bribery and shed light on secret deals, citizens must together tell their governments they have had enough,” said José Ugaz, Chair of Transparency International, the group which released the annual index Wednesday. Here are 10 countries that the index found to be the least corrupt: 1. Denmark 2. Finland 3. Sweden 4. New Zealand 5. Netherlands 5. Norway 7. Switzerland 8. Singapore 9. Canada 10. Germany, A map shows countries with the most corrupt public sectors in dark red, followed by orange and yellow  —   which ”are perceived as cleaner, but not perfect,” according to the group. Brazil, which is preparing to host the Olympics this summer, saw the biggest decline, dropping seven spots to No. 76 after losing 5 points from the previous year. Some of the gains in 2015, Ugaz says, came because citizens used street demonstrations to protest corruption. But even with those improvements,   of the 168 countries in the index still scored below 50, on a scale where a score of 0 means a country is perceived to be highly corrupt and a score of 100 is for countries that are perceived to be very clean. A widely cited indicator of corruption, the index from is built using surveys and assessments of corruption that were collected by institutions. The scores reflect conditions within countries’ borders Transparency International notes that even   countries can be linked to corruption overseas. The group cited a study that found ”half of all OECD countries are violating their international obligations to crack down on bribery by their companies abroad.” The OECD, we’ll remind you, is the Organization for Economic   and Development."
"On a typical day at the Capitoline Museum in Rome, a visitor might expect to see classical nude statues like this: But this was the scene before Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani held a news conference this week at the museum: Out of apparent concern about offending Rouhani, white wooden boxes covered up many of the collection’s ancient nudes. It’s a mystery who made the decision to cover up the art. As NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli tells our Newscast unit, ”The question everyone’s asking is, on whose orders?” ”Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said neither he nor Renzi authorized the   which he called ’incomprehensible,’ ” Sylvia adds. Citing local media, Reuters reports that ”the Iranian embassy had asked for the statues to be covered and officials in Renzi’s office had agreed without consulting their bosses.” But Sylvia says that ”Rouhani denied that specific requests had been made.” ”I know that Italians are a very hospitable people, a people who try to do the most to put their guests at ease, and I thank you for this,” Rouhani said during his trip, according to The Associated Press. The visit comes days after the European Union and the United States lifted an array of sanctions against Iran, after Tehran reached certain benchmarks on shrinking its nuclear program. The art   is drawing outrage and ridicule from local publications. Here’s what   daily La Repubblica had to say, according to Reuters: ”Covering those nudes . .. meant covering ourselves. Was it worth it, in order not to offend the Iranian president, to offend ourselves?” The BBC says Italy also opted to not serve wine at official meals because of Iranian laws regarding the consumption of alcohol  —   ”a gesture France, where Mr. Rouhani travels next, has refused to copy.”"
"A computer has bested humanity at one of the most complex strategy games ever devised. Researchers at Google have developed a program that can excel at the game of ”go,” which originated in China and is considered a tougher problem for a machine than other strategy games such as chess. The program has defeated the European champion of the game. Now its developers say the same technology may be used to conquer problems in everything from medicine to climate modelling. A paper describing the program appears today in the journal Nature. The game of go began in China more than 2, 500 years ago. Players use white or black stones to attempt to fence off territory. Players win by both cordoning off the largest area and encircling the maximum number of their opponent’s stones. ”It’s a very beautiful game with extremely simple rules that lead to profound complexity,” says Demis Hassabis, a researcher with Google Deep Mind, which developed the new program. The number of possible board positions is far greater than chess. ”The strongest go programs until now have only been as good as amateur players,” he says. Enter AlphaGo, an   (AI) computer program designed by Hassabis and his colleagues. AlphaGo is programmed using     networks, which are inspired by biological brains. The networks have millions of   connections that AlphaGo can rearrange as it plays. In essence, the program reprograms itself in order to ”learn” the optimum strategy. Similar networks have proven remarkably effective in recent years at learning tasks such as recognizing objects in photos. AlphaGo is actually comprised of two neural networks. The first network searches for possible moves. The second network then evaluates each move under consideration to determine whether it will give AlphaGo the upper hand later in the game. Unlike   algorithms, the AlphaGo program doesn’t crunch through every possible permutation of the game, it just gets a sense of which move provides it the upper hand. ”This approach makes AlphaGo’s search much more humanlike than previous approaches,” says David Silver, another Google researcher. At first, AlphaGo was terrible. But after reviewing 30 million moves from human players and playing millions more games against itself, it caught on. The researchers first tried it against other   computer programs, and it whomped them. ”In fact, AlphaGo even beat those programs after giving them four free moves of head start at the beginning of each game,” Silver says. In October, the program was put up against the European go champion, Fan Hui. Only a few spectators were in the room as the game unfolded. ”It was very thrilling actually,” Silver says. In the end, AlphaGo emerged victorious. For now, the program is restricted to playing go, but Hassabis says that Google is hopeful it could quickly learn many other tasks: everything from restaurant recommendations to diagnosing medical images. The program is great but probably has limits, says Gary Marcus, the CEO of Geometric Intelligence, which seeks to bring concepts from cognitive science to machine learning. ”It remains to be seen what it can and can’t learn,” he says. ”There is a very long history of extravagant claims for AI, and a long history of AI programs that are actually fairly narrow [in what they can do].” For now, Hassabis says the AlphaGo team remains focused on the game at hand. In March, the program will play legendary player Lee Sedol in a series of five matches in South Korea."
"After centuries of neglect, the world’s largest fortification, the Great Wall of China, has a band of   defenders who are drawing up plans to protect and maintain the vast structure. They’re not a minute too soon: Roughly a third of the wall’s 12, 000 miles has crumbled to dust, and saving what’s left of it may be the world’s greatest challenge in cultural preservation. Qiao Guohua is on the front line of this battle. He lives in the village of Jielingkou, not far from where the eastern end of the Great Wall runs into the Yellow Sea. During the Ming Dynasty ( ) Jielingkou was a walled garrison for soldiers guarding the wall at a strategic pass. It’s now a simple farming village of some 800 residents. Other sections of the Great Wall were built during the Qin Dynasty (  B. C.) or earlier. When not tending his crops, Qiao patrols a   stretch of the wall, looking for and reporting to the government sections in danger of collapsing  —   and tourists who might want to make off with a brick or two as a souvenir. ”Every stretch of this wall was built with the blood and sweat of the working people,” he says. ”After I tell folks how many people died building it, they begin to get in the habit of protecting the wall.” Qiao says he’s certainly not doing this for the money  —   the local government pays him a mostly symbolic sum of $150 a year for his labors. Just recently it also issued him an imitation military jacket that says ”antiquities protector” on the back in Chinese  —   and ”U. S. Army” on the front. He walks along his section of the wall in all four seasons. He knows intimately every feature: all 10 towers that rise above the wall, and the snakes, hares and other wildlife that inhabit the area. For nearly two millennia, until the 1600s, the wall marked the frontier separating the   civilization of China from the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe, including the Mongols, Manchus and Xiongnu. The wall was designed not so much to keep the peoples apart as to regulate their commerce and interactions. Qiao says the wall is still a sort of internal dividing line. He points to the north. ”On that side is a Manchu autonomous county,” he says. ”On this side are ethnic Han people. Over there, they bury their dead. On this side, we cremate ours. The policies are different.” As an ethnic minority, Qiao adds, the Manchus are exempted from the family planning policies that the Han face. Qiao says that when he was a child, the wall’s towers and battlements, made of brick more than 400 years ago, were still in excellent condition. But during the 1970s, under Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution, officials encouraged people to dismantle the wall and use the bricks to build their own homes. Qiao points to a large stone built into the wall of one village home. ”You don’t see these stones anywhere else,” he says. ”It’s ancient. See that? That piece was taken from the wall.” In another village not far away lives a man named Xu Guohua. He grew up playing on the Great Wall. A few years ago, he discovered more than 200 large kilns in which bricks that were used to make the Great Wall were baked. Xu has opened a museum full of Great Wall artifacts he’s discovered. And he’s found something else: a personal connection to the Great Wall. One summer not long ago, a stretch of the wall near his home collapsed. In the rubble, Xu found a stone tablet. He uses a towel to wipe dust off the      slab, revealing several carved Chinese characters. Xu says the tablet confirms what is written in his family’s genealogy: that a 17th century ancestor was an official who helped build this section of the wall. ”After four centuries, we descendants are still connected to him,” Xu says. ”We are still watching over the Great Wall and protecting it.” Standing on the Great Wall above Xu’s museum, I talk to Dong Yaohui, vice chairman of a civic group called the China Great Wall Society. He has just finished a multivolume compendium of local histories of the Great Wall. The section of the wall we’re on is in comparatively good condition, its parapets and towers largely intact. Dong says that roughly 10 percent of the wall is  . But he estimates that a third has vanished completely, and that the remaining 60 percent is in various degrees of disrepair. Most of that is from natural erosion, but development projects also have damaged the wall, or even replaced parts of it with   replicas. The job of saving what remains of the wall is too big a task for China’s government alone, Dong says. China has enacted regulations to protect the wall, but many local governments are in impoverished areas and can’t pay to maintain it. Dong’s plan is to get companies and individuals to sponsor sections of the wall. ”See these bricks in the wall? Each one is very ordinary, but together in large numbers, they make a magnificent wall,” he says. ”Protecting the wall is the same idea. Each person or company we get to contribute to the effort is like a brick.” Dong recently launched pilot sponsorship programs the money will be used to pay local communities and governments to patrol and repair the wall. He envisions planting markers along the wall with information about each particular section’s history and sponsors, and is pressing China’s national government to adopt his sponsorship plan nationwide. In the 1980s, Dong and two companions became the first Chinese to walk a   Ming dynasty section of the Great Wall, east to west, using more than 500 days to document its condition and the landscapes and communities along it. ”The Great Wall was constructed and defended in separate sections,” he notes. ”Nobody has left his or her footprints across the whole thing. I thought it would be a very exciting thing to be the first human being to do this.” Three decades after his own trek, Dong encourages students to follow in his footsteps, embarking on journeys of discovery and learning along the Great Wall."
"Clay Hull has a stubborn sense of justice. After an improvised explosive device blast in Iraq ended his time in the military, he fought the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs over the amount of compensation they awarded him for his injuries. ”If I’m in the wrong, I’ll admit it. But I’m not going to let somebody just push me around, especially the VA,” he says. It was complicated and drawn out, but Hull now gets the maximum the VA pays for disability. The money pays for his mortgage, support for his young son and feed for the livestock on Hull’s 3 acres in south central Washington  —   2   hours from Seattle. He has a day job as a shipping clerk and then comes home to work on his place. He’s currently fixing a fence that runs along his property line. Four years after he moved in, Hull went to prison on a weapons charge. Hull notified the VA he was in prison. The VA was supposed to review Hull’s disability payments to see if they should be reduced until he got out. But during Hull’s entire 18 months in prison, the full VA payments kept coming. In February 2014, when Hull was settling back into normal life, he received a letter from the VA: The agency wanted all the money back. ”  grand and they were wanting it in a lump sum payment,” Hull says. ”There was no negotiating with them. They would just shut off all benefits until they were repaid.” Hull couldn’t pay. While in prison he had spent the money on his mortgage and child support for his son. He says he had done his part by filing the right paperwork. Now the VA was threatening him. ”After the stress they caused, I’m sorry to have ever been a vet or served this country,” he says. Hull took his paperwork to Leo Flor, an attorney and veteran who served eight years in the Army. At the time, Flor worked for the Northwest Justice Project, a publicly funded legal aid program in Washington state. The first thing he had to do in Hull’s case was deal with the threat to cut off his benefits. ”This is the money they use to buy groceries this is the money they use to put gas in their cars,” Flor says. He won that round, but getting Hull’s benefits restarted was only the beginning. Flor, who has worked with a lot of vets in this situation, had to prove that Hull’s overpayment was the VA’s mistake. In 2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs says it overpaid 2, 200 incarcerated vets more than $24 million. Money it then tried to get back. The VA puts the burden on veterans. Vets are expected to file all the right paperwork  —   and do it from behind bars. ”It’s not a system that’s designed to be used while you’re incarcerated and have your ability to speak by phone and have your ability to use the Internet gone,” Flor says. When Hull was in prison he was obsessive about keeping track of his correspondence with the VA. He made copies of every note he mailed them. In those letters he told them he was in prison and explained why he needed the benefits to support his family. He even kept receipts for money he withdrew to buy the stamps. ”You’re always afraid you’re going to lose an important piece of paper. And you have duplicates of so many things in so many different areas you end up with a stockpile of paper. I’ve honestly gone through at least a case of printing paper just making copies of things,” he says. All that paper meant Hull had a chance. And so he appealed. The VA benefits system is set up to accommodate incarcerated veterans who have financial responsibilities. If it had worked, it’s possible Hull would have been granted an exception to pay for his mortgage and his child support. That request was never addressed, leaving Hull with a debt. On March 5, 2014, Flor sent the VA all of Hull’s records. Then on Dec. 18, 2014, the VA sent Hull another notice of intent to collect the debt. Flor was incredulous. It was as if the VA hadn’t read anything he’d sent. On Dec. 23, 2014, Flor sent the entire package of records to the VA again. Eventually, Hull received a short letter in the mail. ”June 4, 2015  —   that’s when they sent it,” Flor says. ”It says, ’This is to inform you that your request for waiver of your compensation pension debt has been approved by the committee on waivers and compensations.’ ” Finally, after a year and a half, Hull’s $38, 000 debt was erased. The VA says it knows this is an issue. ”Without a doubt, we need to do a better job making sure that doesn’t happen,” says Dave McLenachen, the VA’s acting deputy undersecretary for disability assistance. He says the VA is swamped. The agency settled 3 million claims for benefits adjustments just last year. ”The month after we get the notice, we should be doing it quickly and doing the benefit adjustment to keep any debt as small as possible,” says McLenachen. ”There’s no disagreement here. But given the resources available to us, we get to them as quickly as possible.” That still leaves many veterans like Hull on the hook to prove their case and win, or forfeit their benefits to pay back the debt. Hull kept his home, but he’s still angry over what he views as a betrayal of a promise by the VA. ”I’d worked awful hard, you know this place is paid for with blood money, my blood. Trying to get a future for him,” he says, indicating his son, ”and these a******* at the VA were gonna wipe that out in one fell swoop, because they didn’t open up my mail, didn’t read it, or just lost it, or just didn’t care, and then thought they had an easy target.” The VA says it’s working with the Social Security Administration to help better identify incarcerated veterans who are receiving disability payments. Hull still has one more battle to fight. He’s in court trying to overturn the weapons charge that landed him in prison in the first place. This story is part of a project we’re calling ”Back at Base,” in which NPR  —   along with seven public radio stations around the country  —   is chronicling the lives of America’s troops where they live."
"On Sunday, Jan. 17, globalFEST, one of America’s premiere showcases of musical talent from around the world, once again took over the three stages at Manhattan’s Webster Hall. The   festival has few American rivals in the way it simultaneously expands and condenses musical perspectives. The performances here move naturally between those that are heady and   and those that are rhythmically sumptuous and  . Sometimes the shift from, say, Eastern European folk theater to   party music to Parisian   to Bhangra drums creates deep, wonderful contexts about the world we live in at others, it is jarring. Which is what makes the whole thing such a hoot. To discuss the evening’s performances and insights, All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen is joined by NPR Music’s Piotr Orlov, NPR contributor and Afropop. org senior editor Banning Eyre and Rob Weisberg of WQXR (who also hosts WFMU’s Transpacific Sound Paradise). In this week’s podcast, above, they revisit some of the highlights and favorite discoveries from this year’s globalFEST. You can also listen to some spotlight performances from Webster Hall, featured below."
"Get Caught Up: Our NPR Politics team  —   here in Washington, D. C. and in Iowa and New Hampshire  —   kept you updated on everything happening tonight, so get caught up even more below. Welcome to The Stream. Trump still did best Thursday night on one of his favorite social media platforms: Twitter. According to data from Twitter, Trump still picked up the most followers. Here are the rankings: 1. @RealDonaldTrump, 2. @MarcoRubio, 3. @TedCruz, 4. @RandPaul, 5. @ChrisChristie, And who was Twitter talking the most about? Still Trump.  @RealDonaldTrump 36%  @TedCruz 16%  @MarcoRubio 13%   Taylor, political reporter, 12 a. m. As the organizers gathered up the bingo cards and pens, the New Hampshire GOP voters put on their winter coats to head back into the chilly Manchester night. Ultimately, the sparing may not have moved the needle  —   most of the undecided voters here said they were still undecided after watching the debate. ”This was kind of aimed at Iowa,” one undecided voter said. ”They talked a lot about faith and ethanol. New Hampshire is a more libertarian, economic state.” One undecided     voter said his key takeaway was ”There’s signs of life in the Jeb Bush campaign.” Another millennial voter said she’s torn between the two Floridians: Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. ”I think Bush was less flustered than I’ve seen him,” she said. But, then she added, ”I think Rubio might be more electable in a general election.” An undecided baby boomer sitting by himself with a cell phone at an adjacent table said Bush is the one candidate on the stage he’s not excited about. ”I just think he’s the establishment pick” he said. He said he’s seen every presidential candidate, with the exception of John Kasich, in person this campaign season, and, he would be okay with any of them, even Donald Trump, because all the Republicans are better than Hillary Clinton.  —  Asma Khalid, campaign reporter, Candidates made their closing statements as the Fox News Iowa Republican debate wrapped. Here’s a quick summary of their closing statements: After days in which friction matured into outright hostility, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes spoke three times with Donald Trump on Thursday to try to see if he could be coaxed into participating in the network’s Republican presidential debate. Among other gibes, Ailes suggested that Trump would fill his White House cabinet with his twitter followers   an unprecedented ridiculing of a major party   by a leading news organization. Fox’s emergence as a ratings leader and dominance in cable news   reliant on a large niche   was built on the conceit the rest of the news media is misleading the public. Trump has cast the network as unfair and biased, turning the network’s formula on its head and categorizing it as part of the mainstream media unpopular with many Republican primary voters.  —   David Folkenflik, media correspondent, 11:00 p. m. Again and again (and in debate after debate before) Christie has managed to turn almost every question he’s asked back around to a hit against Hillary Clinton. This time, he’s asked about his own Bridgegate scandal and reiterates he did nothing wrong  —   but that Clinton did with her private email server while at State. And that Republicans need a prosecutor (he’s a former U. S. attorney) to take on Clinton, not another Washington politician.   Taylor, political reporter, 10:38 p. m.  Rubio was asked about his past support for a    program to curb carbon emissions. Rubio said he was ”the first person out of the box” to oppose an effort by   Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to implement a    system in Florida. Rubio called Crist a ”liberal governor of Florida who claimed he was a Republican.” (Crist later ran against him for Senate as an independent and later became a Democrat.) Rubio said he’s never supported cap and trade, but he did urge the legislature to ”get out in front” of the issue. It’s a subject that has come up before in this campaign. Interestingly, the    concept had early GOP support as a   solution to climate change. It’s now largely fallen out of favor among Republicans.  —   Sarah McCammon, campaign reporter, 10:32 p. m.  Many people predicted early on that with Trump off the stage, elbows would be thrown between Rubio and Cruz, and that held true. It was instigated though by Fox News, who in a new and enterprising move, pressed both the men on their past support of immigration reform not just by citing their own words, but showing clips. It was essentially forcing them to watch and then respond to an attack ad. For Rubio, it showed clips of him during his 2010 Senate campaign saying he would oppose legalization for illegal immigrants and then was an architect of the Senate immigration reform bill. And then clips of Cruz showed him arguing for a Senate amendment saying he would support legalization. Cruz said it was simply a ”poison pill” designed to kill the larger bill, but his bumbled defense of it is the subject of a Trump attack ad airing against him. Jeb Bush also saw an opening, attacking his onetime protege of being inauthentic for changing his views Rubio shot back that Bush had evolved too in his book. Overall though, the fact Republicans are attacking each other on the important issue only helps Trump in absentia with his greatest argument  —   immigration enforcement and building a wall. Trump, meanwhile, held his own event a few miles away, touting the money he had raised to support veterans (though it’s not clear which groups). Trump said he donated $1 million himself, and claimed they’ve raised $5 million total. Fellow candidates Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee came to Trump’s event after participating in the undercard debate. They each took the lectern and joked about Trump and veterans issues.  —  Jessica Taylor, political reporter, 10:30 p. m.  It must be said, the absence of Donald Trump enables other candidates to scrap with each other and enliven the evening as best they can. But none of them is quite as good at electrifying the proceedings. Does that make this debate less meaningful than the six predecessors, or more meaningful for voters still open to persuasion? The best example of candidates engaging at length with sharp points without Trump: Rubio and Bush tussling about how they both changed from supporting a path to citizenship to opposing it. Two Floridians, squaring off at a few paces, not unlike Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton in another era.  —   Ron Elving, senior editor, 10:25 p. m.  John Kasich is appealing in an almost puppyish way, but his efforts to make the debate about the actual job of being a practical, pragmatic administrator of government is wildly out of sync with the mood of the debate and the mood of the moment. Ben Carson, while as charming as ever, seems more remote from the substance of the campaign with every succeeding debate.  —   Ron Elving, senior editor, 10:20 p. m.  About three dozen Republicans met a country club in Manchester, N. H. to watch the GOP debate. (Many had gathered here earlier in the evening to celebrate the New Hampshire primary’s 100th birthday). A mix of millennials and baby boomers watched the live stream on a projector screen  —   some played Bingo with cards that listed words like ” ” or ”taxes.” A number of these New Hampshire voters say they’re still undecided. But, some seemed definite about one thing  —   their dislike for Ted Cruz. Applause erupted when Cruz said he might have to walk off the debate stage if the mean questions continued. One undecided   old voter said he’s leaning toward Marco Rubio  —   he likes his ”temperament.” He says the Florida senator always seems to make a ”substantive” argument. A    undecided voter interrupted him to point out that Rubio ”hasn’t done anything.” He, instead, wants someone with more experience and is considering Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich (in that order).  —   Asma Khalid, campaign reporter, 10:00 p. m. Even without Trump in the room, Google Trends is reporting that Trump is still the number one candidate being searched tonight. I’m watching a    stream in the media filing center in Des Moines, and   search status has been rotating between several of the other candidates, including Cruz, Rubio, Carson, and Kasich.  —   Sarah McCammon, campaign reporter, 9:55 p. m.  Trump just introduced two other candidates in the audience, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who came here after their participation in the earlier   debate ”Hey fellas, come on up here,” he said as they joined him onstage. ”How did they do at the early debate?” Trump asked. ”They probably did OK or they wouldn’t be here.” Santorum spoke first: ”I’m standing off to the side so I’m not photographed with a Trump sign!” He also joked that, ”I’m supporting a different candidate for president,” and then switched to the topic of the night, improving care for veterans. Huckabee stepped to the lectern with TRUMP on the front, and laughed ”I figured you’re gonna get the photo anyway, so I’ll just stand here.” Huckabee thanked Trump for asking him and Santorum to take part in the event. ”Bigger than even the election is that we wouldn’t have free elections in this country if it weren’t for the people that stood between bullets and bombs for our freedom.”  —  Don Gonyea, national political correspondent, 9:50 p. m.  At his event just miles away, Trump says he’s here and not at the   debate because when you’re treated badly ”you have to stick up for your rights.” Trump then quickly segued into how the country needs to do that do, complaining about the bad deal with Iran. It’s a sharp turn from personal grudge into policy, but this is a Trump event. He added that he started his event 15 minutes after the debate began because Fox hadn’t been nice to him. He also boasted that he has more cameras at his event: ”It’s just like the Academy Awards!” This is a Trump campaign speech, with a little less volume. He’s talking about vets, but still working in other topics that he always covers in his speeches  —   negotiating better deals with China, why he’s   his own campaign, how incredible his Iowa and national supporters are.  —  Don Gonyea, national political correspondent, 9:47 p. m.  The early prediction was that Ted Cruz would get most of the incoming fire with Trump not on stage, and so far that’s proven true. Rubio attacked him over foreign policy, and the Fox News moderators have tried to goad other rivals into engaging him Chris Christie didn’t take the bait, and attacked Hillary Clinton instead. Cruz’s    response? ””If you ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage.” Rubio joked next, ”Don’t worry, I’m not leaving the stage no matter what you ask me.”  —  Jessica Taylor, political reporter, 9:45 p. m.  Donald Trump isn’t on the Fox News Iowa GOP debate stage, but he’s still making plenty of news even as it’s going on. In an interview with CNN just ahead of the start, Trump said someone Fox News called him and apologized (he wouldn’t say who). He’s still upset about a sarcastic press release the network put out Tuesday mocking his objections to moderator Megyn Kelly. He might have decided to go to the debate, he said, but now he was already committed to his own event. Fox News recounted it differently, saying in a statement that chairman Roger Ailes had brief conversations, not ”multiple calls,” with Trump but that there was no apology. And that Trump had said he would attend the debate, but only if Fox gave $5 million to his charities. ”We explained that was not possible and we could not engage in a quid pro quo, nor could any money change hands for any reason. In the last 48 hours, we’ve kept two issues at the forefront  —   we would never compromise our journalistic standards and we would always stand by our journalist, Megyn Kelly,” a Fox News spokesperson said.  —  Jessica Taylor, political reporter, 9:40 p. m.  On stage at his own event, Donald Trump began by reading a list of donations that he says will go to support veterans: Trump himself will donate $1 million another ”rich guy from New York,” who wished to remain anonymous, donated another million and the CEO of Marvel Ike Perlmutter has also donated $1 million, and he claims they’ve raised $6 million total already. Trump directed his supporters to donaldtrumpforvets. com, where they could also donate. The website says that more than $430, 000 have been raised today and at the bottom of the page, it appears to say that the money is going to the Donald J. Trump Foundation.  —   Eyder Peralta, reporter, 9:35 p. m.  Ted Cruz pledges that if elected president he will finally enact a controversial proposal to audit the Federal Reserve. But recent history suggests that will be tough even if Republicans control all levers of government come 2017. The U. S. House has passed audit legislation on several occasions, but the Senate as recently as this month again failed to muster the 60 votes they’d need to pass a Fed audit bill authored by Sen. Rand Paul,  . It fell seven votes short. Cruz missed the vote. Supporters would either need a Senate GOP   or new allies in the Democratic Party to make it happen, and neither political reality is on the horizon.  —   Susan Davis, congressional reporter, 9:30 p. m. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was asked if his campaign should have more aggressively embraced the legacy of his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Four years ago, Ron Paul’s libertarian message energized many young voters, helping to propel him to a   finish in the Iowa caucuses. His supporters went on to temporarily take control of much of the state’s GOP machinery. Early on in the   to the 2016 race, Rand Paul was seen as having a leg up in the field, and as someone who could unite   Republicans with other factions like Christian conservatives and the Tea Party movement. Paul responded to the question by saying he thinks he will do well with the liberty movement in Iowa, prompting cheers from the audience.  —  Sarah McCammon, campaign reporter, 9:20 p. m.  On the campaign trail in both Iowa and New Hampshire in recent days, Ted Cruz has been promising, as he just did on the debate stage, not to ”respond in kind” to Donald Trump’s attacks. But he’s also been stepping up his criticism of Trump, casting doubt on his conservative credentials by questioning his record on issues like abortion and   marriage. Cruz is also raising questions about Trump’s temperament. He’s compared Trump’s decision to skip the final debate before the Iowa Caucuses to skipping a job interview.  —  Sarah McCammon, campaign reporter, 9:15 p. m.  The first question to Ted Cruz, now at center stage with Trump gone, is of course about the billionaire businessman. Cruz first emphasizes how much he loves Iowa  —   his family’s been everywhere, his father has preached in its churches and promises that if he’s president Iowa won’t be ”flyover country.” But as to Trump, Cruz gets this off his chest: ”I’m a maniac, and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and Ben [Carson] you’re a terrible surgeon. Now that we’ve got the Donald Trump portion of out of the way. ...” Marco Rubio concedes that Trump is ”the most entertaining guy on Earth” but the election is about much more than that. And Jeb Bush  —   who has gotten the brunt of Trump’s criticism by calling him ”low energy”  —   jokes that ”I kind of miss Donald Trump  —   he was a little teddy bear to me.” But he also makes a swipe at his rivals for not being critical enough of Trump, saying ”Everybody else was in the witness protections program when I went after him.”  —  Jessica Taylor, political reporter, 9:07 p. m.  Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum says he was invited to attend Donald Trump’s rally for veterans in Des Moines  —   not the other way around. Donald Trump had tweeted earlier that he received calls from two candidates wanting to attend the event. ”I got a phone call inviting me to the event, and that’s what I responded to,” Santorum told reporters after the undercard debate. ”Maybe this is just showing that things aren’t as   as some would suggest, that we can actually take a pause (and) do something that’s positive for our nation’s veterans.” Santorum says he will ”take any opportunity to talk to Iowans” and plans to ask attendees at the rally to caucus for him instead of Trump.  —  Sarah McCammon, campaign reporter, 9:00 p. m.  At Trump’s competing event across Des Moines at Drake University, the stage is adorned far more simply than at a typical Trump rally. The nearly empty stage at the intimate Sheslow Auditorium on campus has one medium sized flag on the back wall  —   suspended between the still partially closed curtains. There’s a lectern with a small ”TRUMP” campaign sign affixed to the front. A simple black leather chair and simple wooden end table a few feet behind and to the left of the lectern. Finally, there are six American flags  —   three on one side, three on the other  —   on standing flag poles, each with the gold eagle on top. Opening speakers are taking turns before the candidate takes the stage. No explanation just yet how this event actually raises money for veterans organizations.  —   Don Gonyea, national political correspondent. 8:40 p. m. In the earlier undercard debate, Mike Huckabee said it’s ”stupid” to suggest that people want to be poor. That’s a theme that a growing number of Republicans have been stressing, most visibly at a poverty forum in South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier this month. Some leading Republicans are advocating a fresh and more empathetic approach to poverty, focused on promoting conservative solutions. They say the party needs to convince voters it’s sympathetic to their economic struggles or the GOP will become, as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush put it, ”a minority party.” Several presidential hopefuls talked about how their own experiences shaped their understanding of poverty. However, two leading figures in the GOP race did not attend   Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.  —   Sarah McCammon, campaign reporter, 8:30 p. m.  Making his reappearance for the first time since August to the debate stage was former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore  —   he’s an asterisk in the polls and hasn’t even made the cut for the undercard debate. But for his new debut, Gilmore did quite well and was pretty lively at times. And Google, which is   debate, picked up on the upward trend for Gilmore. In the first 20 minutes of the undercard debate, Google searches for his name spiked 700 percent according to Google Trends. That’s a big spike, but not really a surprise, given how little Gilmore has campaigned. He had nowhere to go but up. But, Gilmore’s focus isn’t on Iowa he noted  —   he’s looking toward New Hampshire, he admitted in the debate.  —   Sarah McCammon and Jessica Taylor, political reporters, 8:25 p. m.  The ”undercard” debate that just finished  —   featuring former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore  —   could be the final one of this cycle. The Feb. 6 New Hampshire debate, broadcast by ABC News, is set to only have one debate, featuring the top finishers in Iowa and top polling candidates in New Hampshire. It was make or break time for some of the candidates, and the Fox News moderators weren’t hiding the fact these candidates had a long way to go  —   including Santorum and Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2012 and 2008, respectively. They defended their candidates and bashed the media for not covering them enough  —   including Fox News, something that’s still a bit jarring coming from Republicans, but it’s a trickle down effect from Trump’s bombast against the conservative network. Both of them will appear later at Trump’s counter event for veterans. Fiorina, who had a brief bump in the polls that had her in the main debate, was ready with plenty of quips, mainly against Hillary Clinton, for what could be her last stand. She jabbed that the Democratic candidate had ”escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo” and that ”if my husband did what Bill Clinton did, I would have left him long ago.”  —   Jessica Taylor, political reporter, 8:15 p. m. "
"A   principle of U. S. politics, that voters prefer candidates with strong faith beliefs, has been called into question in the 2016 presidential campaign. Recent opinion surveys suggest that voters don’t see either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders as very religious, but that perception does not seem to be damaging their political prospects. Two trends are evident from new surveys by the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute: Trump scores lowest of the candidates on religiosity, Just 30 percent of U. S. adults view Trump as even ”somewhat” religious, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center. No other candidate, Republican or Democrat, scores lower. More than half of Republican voters nevertheless say Trump would be a ”good” or ”great” president, including a majority (52 percent) of white evangelical voters. A new PRRI survey, meanwhile, shows a majority (53 percent) of white evangelical Protestants have a favorable opinion of Trump. Clinton seen as more religious than Sanders, Trump, In the Pew survey, just 40 percent of voters rate Bernie Sanders as religious, compared with 48 percent for Hillary Clinton. Both candidates are strong, however, among religiously unaffiliated voters.   percent of those say Sanders would be a successful president, with Clinton judged as potentially ”good” or ”great” by 42 percent of that group. Those nonreligious groups are clearly a growing segment of the voting public. Another recent Pew survey showed nearly a 7 percent increase since 2007 in the number of Americans who say they are atheists, agnostic or ”nothing in particular.” That trend is supported by a new PRRI report on the religious landscape in Iowa, where the first 2016 presidential contest will take place next week. The PRRI survey shows a significant jump in the religiously unaffiliated population, from 15 percent in 2007 to 24 percent in 2015. Other surveys show that being an atheist is still a major liability for a politician, but a 2014 Pew survey showed that the share of American adults who say they would be less likely to vote for an atheist candidate is declining."
"If Donald Trump keeps his promise not to appear at Thursday night’s Fox News debate, it will be the first time in recent history that a top candidate, let alone the   will skip such a   event so close to Election Day. But, if anyone can pull off such a stunt and still come out on top, it’s probably Trump. He’s been breaking all the usual political rules this cycle. ”It’s totally unprecedented. Candidates die to be on the stage,” said Iowa State University political science professor Steffen Schmidt. ”The ones that are at the loser table are dying to be on the main debate. For a candidate to walk away from that is crazy  —   but crazy like a fox.” And he just might be. Trump will hold a ”Special Event to Benefit Veterans Organizations” at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, at the same time, daring viewers to watch on competing networks against the Fox News debate. Late Wednesday night, the flamboyant reality TV star, and billionaire   mogul, showed no signs of backing down. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, reiterated that the network hadn’t treated Trump fairly, and the campaign would be having its own counterprogramming. It’s a maneuver that probably only works for someone like Trump  —   who can command media attention at will and stir reporters into a frenzy with a single tweet. And it’s one that would only work in a   news cycle, social media saturated environment. The perfect storm. The last time a candidate tried to skip the final debate in Iowa, it didn’t work out so well, at least in the short run. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was the national   and thought skipping the Des Moines Register debate  —   the first televised GOP presidential debate ever  —   wouldn’t hurt him. But George H. W. Bush had a standout performance Reagan took heat in the state for his absence, and it was Bush who went on to narrowly win Iowa. Even Reagan’s former staff members admit that was a mistake, giving Bush new momentum. ”We blew Iowa, and I take responsibility for that, because I should have insisted on having him in there more,” said Charlie Black, a veteran GOP campaign operative who was Reagan’s Midwest political director. It was a mistake Reagan wouldn’t make again. And later in New Hampshire, it was Reagan who insisted on having more candidates included in the Nashua Telegraph debate so he wouldn’t be facing Bush solo  —   so much that he eventually funded the debate himself, leading to his memorable, ”I paid for this microphone” moment. Reagan won the Granite State, and, of course, the nomination and presidency. Reagan’s initial skip was more a political calculation  —   and one he likely wouldn’t have made in the current media environment. Trump’s move is different. ”I guess he feels he’s still going to be the center of attention, but actually this reinforces some of the worst parts of his character,” said Black, who was also a senior adviser for John McCain’s presidential bids. ”A lot of people like him, but the people who don’t think he’s arrogant. It’s all about him, and he’d rather fight than participate.” McCain also seriously threatened to skip one of the presidential debates after the 2008 economic collapse. But that also reinforced a narrative about McCain that Barack Obama’s campaign was willing to push  —   that he couldn’t handle doing more than one thing at a time, a    dig at McCain’s age. Televised presidential debates didn’t begin until 1960  —   where the infamous   between Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon reinforced stereotypes that would define the race. The young, telegenic Kennedy shone on TV compared to a harried, sweating and older Nixon. Kennedy would win the general. Four years later, though, President Lyndon B. Johnson, who took office after Kennedy was assassinated, was leading in the polls and feared a debate could actually damage him, so he refused to debate Republican nominee Barry Goldwater. In 1968, Democrat Hubert Humphrey wanted to debate Nixon, but still smarting from his poor performance against Kennedy, the GOP nominee refused. In his 1972   race, Nixon again wouldn’t debate Democrat George McGovern. In 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter and GOP President Gerald Ford would finally meet on the televised debate stage. And, for the most part, they’ve been a political mainstay each four years. In 1980, Carter wouldn’t debate Reagan initially, because independent John Anderson was allowed in. But later, only the two major party candidates would meet. In both parties’ primary debates, sometimes candidates have skipped in the past  —   or weren’t invited, as was the case with some GOP hopefuls this year with such a large field. In 2011, with GOP primary debates beginning earlier than ever, eventual nominee Mitt Romney skipped the cycle’s first debate in South Carolina, but he hadn’t officially announced for president yet. Coming less than a week before Iowa though, Trump’s boycott is different, and could also be perceived differently by voters. ”People who are supporting him already, they’re not going to move that much. But if you have an individual who may be on the edge of going with him, they might be turned off in a certain extent,” predicted University of Arkansas professor Patrick Stewart, who has been studying this cycle’s GOP presidential debates. The decision gives his rivals free shots to attack the absent Trump  —   depriving him of a chance to defend himself on stage. ”For someone who relies on a very forceful argument, this could be problematic, especially because of the fact he looks like he’s running away from the debate,” Stewart said. ”It opens up the opportunity for other candidates to take potshots at him, and he can’t respond. One of his greatest strengths has been his ability to respond quickly.” But Schmidt, the Iowa political science professor, said it won’t change much on the ground  —   because Trump has been rewriting the rules all along. ”Trump combines two things  —   feeding to people’s anger and anxiety, and he also feeds to people’s desire for entertainment,” Schmidt said. ”It’s bread and circuses.”"
"Donald Trump said this week if he went out on Fifth Avenue in New York and shot someone, he probably wouldn’t lose any votes. He chose a pretty big someone  —   Fox News (whose offices are one block over from Fifth). Tune in to Thursday night’s Republican debate on Fox (9 p. m. EST) in Iowa, the last one before Monday’s caucuses, and you’ll notice one very big elephant not in the room  —   Trump. The man who helped Fox to a record 24 million viewers in the first primary debate of this campaign season won’t be there. He pulled out of the debate after getting into (what   Sarah Palin might call) a ”squirmish” with Fox over its insistence on keeping anchor Megyn Kelly as a moderator. Trump thought Kelly treated him ”unfairly” in the first debate. Fox didn’t budge, and then mocked Trump, saying in a statement the network had ”learned from a back channel” that Iran’s and Russia’s leaders were intent on treating Trump ”unfairly” if he became president, and that Trump was planning on using ”his Twitter followers to see if he should” go to Cabinet meetings. That was enough for Trump. He bailed, but upped the showmanship. He’s holding his own alternative event  —   at the same time and just 3 miles away  —   a benefit for veterans. So, while Fox News hosts its debate, every other cable news network  —   which won’t have broadcasting rights to the debate  —   will probably be airing the Trump event. No, this is not an ”Ambien Dream,” as Karl Zahn, a New Hampshire   comic (and Trump supporter) wondered aloud to New Hampshire Public Radio’s Josh Rogers this week of Trump’s campaign. This is very much real life. Here are some questions ahead of tonight’s   ”Squirmish”: 1. How much does Trump talk about the debate, Fox News and the GOP? This isn’t what the Republican Party wanted when it began sanctioning and limiting debates following the 2012 presidential election. And it certainly didn’t expect a   like this with Fox News, of all the networks. The Republican National Committee wanted to control the message and protect its candidates (and brand) but that hasn’t worked out so well. Trump, as it turns out, has been a bigger force and commands a louder megaphone than anyone else in the party. Just how much will he use it Thursday night at his veterans event? 2. Who exactly will Trump’s event benefit  —   and how much will be raised? Charity events like this aren’t exactly things that can be slapped together in 24 to 48 hours very efficiently. What will the energy be like? And who exactly will the money be going to? Trump has said maybe it should go to ”Wounded Warriors” (the Wounded Warrior Project  —   the subject of controversy over its spending habits) but the press release just said a ”Special Event to Benefit Veterans Organizations.” 3. What about the debate  —   how much will Trump come up? Trump won’t even be at the debate, but he’s already the dominant topic. There are two sides to this  —   the moderators and the candidates. You’d have to guess the moderators would have to say something about Trump’s absence. (And no, there won’t be an empty lectern, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said on CNN Wednesday). And certainly a few candidates would like a free shot at Trump, especially his closest rival, Ted Cruz. The Texas senator even challenged Trump to a debate at a college in western Iowa on Saturday evening. And you know what they say about candidates who are asking for debates. (Hint: It comes as Cruz’s poll numbers are slipping in the Hawkeye State.) 4. Who grabs the spotlight instead? There are still lots of storylines to play out at this debate. Cruz will now be in the center of the stage, and that means he might be the one everyone winds up going after. In earlier debates, Cruz held back. In the last debate, he showed why he was a champion college debater. But who’s his foil without Trump on the stage? Others need to break through, too. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has quietly remained in third in Iowa and in the top three in New Hampshire, but his path is still hard to see. Rubio has had plenty of differences on these stages with other candidates (Cruz, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for example). Can he show why Democrats seem to fear a Rubio nomination more than any other candidate? 5. Can a mainstream, traditional, aka ”establishment” Republican break through? This has been an election dominated by the outsiders, thanks to more   conservatives fed up with the system. In years past, the party has gotten that out of its system in Iowa and establishment picks have eventually emerged. This year is pointing in a different direction, but there are still others trying to be viable in that ”establishment” lane:  —   Ohio Gov. John Kasich is the latest to have some momentum in New Hampshire. This debate may be in Iowa, but it’s being broadcast to a national audience. And you can bet Kasich’s target will be some 1, 300 miles east. On caucus night, he’ll already be in the Granite State, not Iowa.  —   Bush has been on his last legs for a while, but he was more relaxed in the last debate. He has certainly taken on Trump, and he’ll likely do so again, even if Trump’s not on the stage.  —   Christie had a solid performance in his last debate. He’ll probably mix it up again. 6. Is Trump really the ”Teflon Don” of this race? There’s some risk for Trump in not going to the debate. He can look presumptuous, entitled and untouchable. Maybe he really is the ”Teflon Don” of this race. It’s certainly not what a typical   would do. That candidate would play it safe, have a good debate and position himself to win the first two contests. But that’s not Trump’s style. He doesn’t just play it big. He plays it HUGE. And that’s what he’s doing again. So, will Iowans feel snubbed? Or more precisely, will Iowans who have been supporting him to big numbers suddenly start to peel off? That’s pretty unlikely. He can argue he’s not snubbing Iowa he’s snubbing Fox, which in and of itself is pretty remarkable considering the role Fox plays in Republican politics and conservative circles. Some candidate might figure out a way to use Trump’s absence as an opportunity. But the likelihood, again, is Trump will spin this into a win, as the other candidates are forced to participate in a game without the star player whom everyone came to see."
"Thirty years ago, as the nation mourned the loss of seven astronauts on the space shuttle Challenger, Bob Ebeling was steeped in his own deep grief. The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol had tried to stop the launch. Their managers and NASA overruled them. That night, he told his wife, Darlene, ”It’s going to blow up.” When Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, Ebeling and his colleagues sat stunned in a conference room at Thiokol’s headquarters outside Brigham City, Utah. They watched the spacecraft explode on a giant television screen and they knew exactly what had happened. Three weeks later, Ebeling and another engineer separately and anonymously detailed to NPR the first account of that contentious   meeting. Both were despondent and in tears as they described hours of data review and arguments. The data showed that the rubber seals on the shuttle’s booster rockets wouldn’t seal properly in cold temperatures and this would be the coldest launch ever. Ebeling, now 89, decided to let NPR identify him this time, on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger explosion. ”I was one of the few that was really close to the situation,” Ebeling recalls. ”Had they listened to me and wait[ed] for a weather change, it might have been a completely different outcome.” We spoke in the same house, kitchen and living room that we spoke in 30 years ago, when Ebeling didn’t want his name used or his voice recorded. He was afraid he would lose his job. ”I think the truth has to come out,” he says about the decision to speak privately then. ”NASA ruled the launch,” he explains. ”They had their mind set on going up and proving to the world they were right and they knew what they were doing. But they didn’t.” A presidential commission found flaws in the space agency’s   process. But it’s still not clear why NASA was so anxious to launch without delay. The space shuttle program had an ambitious launch schedule that year and NASA wanted to show it could launch regularly and reliably. President Ronald Reagan was also set to deliver the State of the Union address that evening and reportedly planned to tout the Challenger launch. Whatever the reason, Ebeling says it didn’t justify the risk. ”There was more than enough [NASA officials and Thiokol managers] there to say, ’Hey, let’s give it another day or two,’ ” Ebeling recalls. ”But no one did.” Ebeling retired soon after Challenger. He suffered deep depression and has never been able to lift the burden of guilt. In 1986, as he watched that haunting image again on a television screen, he said, ”I could have done more. I should have done more.” He says the same thing today, sitting in a big easy chair in the same living room, his eyes watery and his face grave. The data he and his fellow engineers presented, and their persistent and sometimes angry arguments, weren’t enough to sway Thiokol managers and NASA officials. Ebeling concludes he was inadequate. He didn’t argue the data well enough. A religious man, this is something he has prayed about for the past 30 years. ”I think that was one of the mistakes that God made,” Ebeling says softly. ”He shouldn’t have picked me for the job. But next time I talk to him, I’m gonna ask him, ’Why me. You picked a loser.’ ” I reminded him of something his late colleague and friend Roger Boisjoly once told me. Boisjoly was the other Thiokol engineer who spoke anonymously with NPR 30 years ago. He came to believe that he and Ebeling and their colleagues did all they could. ”We were talking to the right people,” Boisjoly told me. ”We were talking to the people who had the power to stop that launch.” ”Maybe,” Ebeling says with a weak wave as I leave. ”Maybe Roger’s right.”"
"The rise of ISIS and other Muslim extremist groups in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia has brought horrific persecution of    ” Christians, Jews and other religious minorities. Now, a group of Islamic scholars, Muslim leaders and government ministers from   countries has promised to work together to protect those minorities, saying Islam forbids religious persecution. More than 100 countries were represented at the gathering of Muslim leaders in Marrakech this week, sponsored by the Moroccan government and the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, an organization led by Islamic scholar Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah. One of the organizers, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf from the United States, says the meeting had one focus: the plight of religious minorities in Muslim lands. ”We have people being enslaved into sexual slavery,” he told NPR from Marrakech. ”We have Christian churches that have been there for long before Islam was in these lands, that are being destroyed. And we have Jews in Yemen, one of the oldest Jewish communities, now the very existence of which is threatened.” While some prominent Muslim leaders belittle the plight of   in their countries, those who came to this meeting heard testimony from other faith leaders about the conditions in their countries. Sheikh Sattar Jabbar Hilu, speaking on behalf of his Sabian sect in Iraq, said they and other minorities face killing and deportations, and the situation is getting worse. The message from this meeting: Such persecution is  . Nearly 1, 400 years ago, the Prophet Muhammad directed the preparation of a governing outline for an Islamic state, the Charter of Medina. It was named for the city in Arabia where Muhammad had taken refuge. At the time, Medina was inhabited by various tribes and religious groups, and the charter mandated peaceful coexistence and religious freedom for all. ”Today we need to   this document,” says Recep Senturk, an Islamic scholar from Istanbul’s Fatih University, who was among those in Morocco. ”Especially when we see that the minority rights are violated. Those people who are involved in terror activities, they are misusing the name of Islam and misusing the name of the Prophet Muhammad to justify their evil actions.” A declaration coming out of this week’s meeting in Morocco calls on Muslim intellectuals to develop a more inclusive concept of citizenship. Education authorities are urged to identify curricular material ”that instigates aggression and extremism, leads to war and chaos, and results in the destruction of our shared societies.” Religious leaders are told to address the ”amnesia” of their followers that blocks memories of the centuries of interfaith coexistence on their lands. ”It is unconscionable to employ religion for the purpose of aggressing upon the rights of religious minorities in Muslim countries,” the declaration concludes. Yusuf, who founded a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, Calif. says the purpose of this week’s meeting was to counter the extremist ideology that fuels groups like ISIS. ”We don’t have any power other than our intellect and our hearts,” he says. ”And that’s what we’re fighting with. Ideas must counter ideas. You can drop all the bombs you want, but if you don’t pull up weeds by their roots, they just grow back.” But this is not the first time mainstream Islamic scholars and Muslim government officials have tried to challenge extremism in the name of Islam. Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution studies extremist movements. And he worries efforts by these traditional Muslim scholars may not reach the right people. ”One of the audiences you’re trying to persuade here are those who are on the fence, young, angry Arabs and Muslims who are looking for something to believe in,” Hamid says. ”The problem with these kinds of status quo scholars and governments is that they are seen as illegitimate and not credible. ”If you want to convince people who are predisposed to radicalism,” he says, ”you have to provide voices that they’re going to see as legitimate. You don’t come with these   clerics, who are very much part of the ruling establishment in the Middle East, which itself has been a big part of the problem.”"
"Actor Richard Dreyfuss has played a variety of roles  —   from the bubbling teen in American Graffiti to a man lured by aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now, in a new ABC miniseries, he plays Bernie Madoff, the former Nasdaq chairman who orchestrated a Ponzi scheme considered to be one of the largest financial frauds in American history. ”Madoff is universally despised, as well he should be,” Dreyfuss tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. But Dreyfuss believes there’s a bit of Madoff in everyone: ”All you have to do is find that part of you that has been despicable, and you can find it if you look hard enough,” he says. The fraud Madoff perpetrated brought financial disaster to the people who trusted his fabricated investments. Madoff wound up in prison, his family was destroyed, and one of his sons committed suicide. Dreyfuss talked with Siegel about what it was like to portray such a despised character. On whether viewers can sympathize with Madoff, If you know the story, you can’t really pull for him. If you don’t know the whole story, you’re taken by his charm. He has to be a guy who you really like or else he wouldn’t have been successful, you know, taking your money. Everyone liked him . .. until they hated him. That’s one thing that actors sometimes make a mistake  —   where they wink at the audience and say, ”I’m not gonna be fool enough to play him so that you always like him.” Well, if you didn’t always like him, you wouldn’t have given him your money. So I play him as likable as possible. Once you read about him, you can never empathize with him again, and you do want to ride back and forth over his inert body. I mean, he was a completely despicable human being, but in order to achieve that he had to be lovable. On taking on this role as a Jewish actor, I had gone through that when I did The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz when I was 25. A lot of famous Jewish people in LA and Montreal said, ”Oh, you’re washing our dirty linen in public.” And I said, ”Well let me do it louder then so we can get a bigger audience.” There’s nothing wrong with washing your dirty linen in public. I gave the script to an unnamed    and this person came back with, ”I wouldn’t do that because he was such a shame on our people.” And I said back, ”Well, wouldn’t you have liked to have had a hand in how the world looked at him?” In my mind, I participated in this thing because I am very, very proud of being Jewish  —   although there are limits, I suppose  —   and I did not want my being Jewish to interfere or get in the way. I felt I was strangely equipped to tell this story. On whether Madoff had an addiction, I think he was addicted in the same way that Iago was addicted. There’s a point in Othello where Iago turns and says either to the gods or to the audience: I am really good at this, and I’m going to keep doing it until I’m dead  —   and he didn’t care who he took down with them. And in a way, Bernie never once said to himself, ”Well, I’ll take $10 million and put it aside and create an exit strategy.” He never did that he just kept going. I personally think you can call that an addiction  —   or you can call that sociopathology. He didn’t care whether he was caught or not. He was just so good at what he did that he had a great sense of pride, and he said so. I mean, basically he said, ”No one is going to ever be better than me at doing this.”"
"Ancient Babylonian astronomers tracked the motion of Jupiter using a technique that historians had thought was invented some 1, 400 years later, in Europe. That’s according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science by Mathieu Ossendrijver of Humboldt University in Berlin. He has a Ph. D. in astrophysics, but instead of studying the stars, Ossendrijver spends his days poring over crumbling clay tablets, covered with the tiny scrawls of   Babylonian priests. The Babylonians lived before the birth of Christ in what is now Iraq. And they were obsessed with trying to predict the future by watching the stars and planets. In fact, they came up with the idea of astrology as we know it today ”with horoscopes, and with the zodiacal signs  —   the 12 signs,” says Ossendrijver. ”That was invented in Babylonia.” Ossendrijver has been doing a close study of a few hundred cuneiform tablets that deal with the   mathematics of Babylonian astronomy. They date from 400 B. C. to 50 B. C. and they’re filled with numbers and arithmetic  —   except for four mysterious tablets that are different. ”Nobody understood what they are about, including me,” says Ossendrijver. ”I didn’t know it until very recently.” These tablets talk about a shape: a trapezoid, which is a rectangle with a slanted top. The tablets don’t have an actual drawing of a trapezoid, they just talk about its sides and its area, and dividing the area into parts. What exactly were the ancient astronomers doing? Last year, Ossendrijver made a breakthrough. ”I found, so to speak, the key to understanding these weird texts that deal with trapezoids,” he says. The key was another clay tablet that describes how the planet Jupiter moves across the sky. He noticed that the numbers on this tablet matched the numbers on those strange trapezoid tablets. ”So, that was like the ’aha!’ moment,” he says. Ossendrijver realized that the Babylonian astronomers were using the tools of geometry to deal with a very abstract concept  —   how the velocity of Jupiter changes over time. Now, historians knew that Babylonians used geometry to work with physical objects  —   a plot of land, say, or a building. But this is way more sophisticated and modern. In fact, historians had thought this method was invented in 14th century Europe. The discovery has wowed scholars like Alexander Jones at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. ”It’s a kind of a tour de force, teasing out the meaning from these sources,” says Jones, ”and what he’s found is really quite remarkable.” The person reading the tablet to make astronomical calculations is supposed to imagine a figure in which one dimension is distance traveled per day and the other dimension is time, says Jones. ”I’m quite surprised,” Jones says, but then added, ”I’m not surprised that this is coming out of Babylonia, because these   of the last five centuries B. C. or so really were amazing.” Noel Swerdlow, a researcher at Caltech who studies the history of astronomy, says the analysis of these tablets appears to be correct. But he also wasn’t at all surprised to learn that the Babylonians could do this. ”They were very, very smart, and the more we learn of what they did, the more impressive, the more remarkable it becomes,” Swerdlow told NPR by email. Of course these priests wanted to track Jupiter to understand the will of their god Marduk, to be able to do things like predict future grain harvests. Nonetheless, says Jones, they had the insight to see that the same math used for working with mundane stuff like land use could be applied to the motions of celestial objects. ”They’re in a way like modern scientists and in a way they’re very different,” says Jones. ”But they’re still coming up with things that we can recognize as being like what we value as mathematics and science.”"
"Once again this week, an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s alleged sale of fetal tissue came up empty. A grand jury in Harris County, Texas, voted to indict in a state investigation of Planned Parenthood. But it didn’t indict the reproductive rights organization. In an unexpected turn, the grand jury indicted two   activists from the Center for Medical Progress. That is the organization that famously last year released videos that it said depicted Planned Parenthood illegally trying to sell fetal body parts. The videos served as a major rallying point for Americans opposed to abortion. They fueled a threat to shut down the government as well as a push in several states to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. They also inspired a wave of investigations. After the videos’ release last summer, a number of states quickly decided to look into whether the tissue sale the videos purported to show was happening within their borders. Despite all the worry, state investigations have yet to find any evidence that Planned Parenthood was selling or profiting off fetal tissue. Twelve states have completed investigations into Planned Parenthood following the videos’ release, according to the organization. Here’s what happened in each of those cases: Florida  In July 2015, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott ordered a state investigation to see whether Planned Parenthood was ”selling body parts,” Politico Florida reported at the time. On Aug. 5, the agency investigating the clinics released its findings, saying that none of the state’s Planned Parenthood sites had been selling tissue or body parts. However, the investigation did find that one clinic out of Florida’s 16 wasn’t correctly keeping its records of fetal remains. In addition, three were found to have been performing   abortions while only being licensed to perform abortions in the first trimester, according to Politico. Planned Parenthood disputed this, arguing that the state had changed the rules on how it measured the first trimester, as Reuters reported. Though it briefly looked like the state and Planned Parenthood agreed on the issue, Politico reported, the organization was fined in September 2015. Georgia, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal on July 16, 2015, asked the state’s Departments of Community Health and Public Health to investigate whether Planned Parenthood was engaging in the ”horrific practice” that the CMP’s videos claimed to depict. On Aug. 13, the Department of Public Health reported that all five of the clinics had ”proper procedures in place for burial or internment of [fetal] remains,” as NPR member station WABE reported. Indiana, In July 2015, Republican Gov. Mike Pence asked the state Department of Health to investigate the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics, to see whether they were engaging in any sale of fetal tissue, local TV station WTHR reported. Weeks later, the department said it had ”concluded there was no evidence of this type of activity” at three Planned Parenthood facilities in the state, as the Indianapolis Star reported. Kansas, On July 21, 2015, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback asked his state’s Board of Healing Arts ”to address the issue of sale of tissue and organs from the unborn” at Planned Parenthood facilities, the Topeka   reported. This month, the board said it had ”determined no further action would be taken at this time,” per the Associated Press. Massachusetts, On July 17, 2015, Republican state Rep. James Lyons sent a letter to Democratic state Attorney General Maura Healey, asking her to launch an investigation into whether Planned Parenthood was participating in fetal tissue sales like those the CMP video purported to show, as the Boston Herald reported. On July 29, Healey responded in a statement that the state’s Planned Parenthood sites were ”fully compliant with state and federal laws regarding the disposition of fetal tissue” and were not participating in any fetal tissue donation, though it is legal in that state, as the Boston Globe reported. Michigan, On July 16, 2015, Republican state Sen. Phil Pavlov asked the state to investigate ”to determine whether or not any   facilities have participated in the horrifying sale of babies’ body parts,” MLive reported. In October, the two departments handling the investigations issued a statement, saying that ”there is no evidence to date that illegal practices are occurring,” MLive reported. Missouri, On July 21, 2015, Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster started an investigation, saying that ”the questions raised by [CMP’s] videos require careful review,” local TV station KMBC reported. In September, a release from Koster’s office said the investigation turned up no ”irregularities involving the transmission, examination, or disposal of the fetal organs and tissue” from abortions at the state’s one clinic that performed surgical abortions, as the New York Times reported. Nevada  In September 2015, Nevada Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt sent a letter to Nevada Planned Parenthood facilities. Mentioning the videos, the letter asked the sites about their abortion procedures and also asked if they donate fetal tissue, as the AP reported. In December 2015, his office closed the investigation, saying that the facilities weren’t performing surgical abortions and that there also wasn’t evidence of tissue donation, according to the AP. Ohio  In   2015, Ohio Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine announced that he was launching an investigation into whether any Planned Parenthood clinics in the state were selling fetal parts, according to Cleveland. com. In December, the state released the investigation, revealing that there was no evidence of any such sales. However, investigators did find that fetal remains were disposed of via incinerators or landfills, which, while not illegal, DeWine claimed ”violate[d] Ohio administrative code,” as Cleveland. com reported. (An Ohio Planned Parenthood official disputed his claim.) Pennsylvania, In July, two Republican state legislators asked the state attorney general to investigate whether Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania was selling fetal tissue, Philly. com reported. In August, state Health Secretary Karen Murphy responded in a letter that there was no evidence that any Pennsylvania facilities were buying, selling or donating fetal tissue, as The Hill reports. South Dakota, In July 2015, Republican state Attorney General Marty Jackley instructed the state Health Department to investigate whether fetal tissue sales were occurring at Planned Parenthood, the AP reported. On Aug. 11, 2015, Jackley told the Associated Press that ”there are no reports, complaints or inspection records that would demonstrate any evidence (of) illegal activity in South Dakota at this time.” Washington  In late July 2015, 34 Republican lawmakers wrote a letter asking Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson to investigate whether the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics were selling fetal parts, the Seattle Times reported. In November, Ferguson reported that the state had found no evidence that the state’s affiliates were selling fetal tissue. Washington is home to one of only two clinics (the other being in California) that Planned Parenthood says currently donate any fetal tissue to researchers. In addition, eight states (California, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia) decided not to pursue investigations into the videos’ allegations. Investigations Still Ongoing, Not that the investigations are over  —   Arizona and Louisiana, for example, still have investigations in progress, according to Planned Parenthood. And in Texas, Abbott likewise said after this week’s indictment that a state investigation into Planned Parenthood will continue. ”The Health and Human Service Commission’s inspector general and the attorney general’s office have an ongoing investigation into Planned Parenthood’s actions,” Abbott said. ”Nothing about today’s announcement in Harris County impacts the state’s ongoing investigation.” In addition, the Ohio Senate this week voted to block government funding to Planned Parenthood. CMP’s videos factored heavily into the debate over that bill, which will go to Republican Gov. John Kasich, who is firmly   and is expected to sign it. Jennifer Ludden contributed to this report."
"For the past five years, the Texas Legislature has done everything in its power to defund Planned Parenthood. But it’s not so easy to target that organization without hurting family planning clinics around the state generally. Of the 82 clinics that have closed, only a third were Planned Parenthood. Midland Community Healthcare Services Clinic in West Texas is open, and every day it’s three lines deep as women file in for treatment. The clinic’s 15 examination rooms go full throttle all day but can’t come close to satisfying demand. The numbers are harsh. In Texas, just 22 percent of   women who qualify for subsidized preventive health care treatment actually get it. The latest family planning predicament began in 2011 when the   Legislature decided it was done, once and for all, funding Planned Parenthood. It eliminated funding for any clinic associated with an abortion provider even if the clinic itself didn’t perform abortions. In the process, the Legislature ended up slashing the state’s family planning budget by  . ”And that turned everything on its head,” says Dr. Moss Hampton, a district chairman for the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a professor at the University Health Sciences Center in Midland. Hampton says the Legislature’s target was abortion, but the unintended consequence was that family planning clinics that had nothing to do with abortion, especially rural clinics, ran out of money. ”So you had programs that would help patients pay for physician visits, obstetrical care, gynecological care, Pap smears. When all of that funding was removed and cut, a large number of women didn’t have the means to pay for access to those services,” Hampton says. The Effects Of Closing Clinics, By 2014, 82 family planning clinics across the state had closed. The consequence was calamitous. In Midland, for example, when the Planned Parenthood clinic closed, there were two aftereffects: 8, 000   appointments a year vanished, and so did the last place a woman could get an abortion between Fort Worth and El Paso. The University of Texas’ Texas Policy Evaluation Project has been investigating the statewide effects of the Legislature’s family planning cuts. ”Teens obviously, when they lose access, they don’t have a lot of financial resources to go elsewhere for care so they may go without,” says Kari White, one of the lead researchers. ”Women who are not legal residents are in disadvantaged positions in multiple ways, and even women who are making just a little bit over the cutoff for the women’s health program, $50 is still a lot of money out of your budget.” The researchers found that two years after the cuts, Texas’ women’s health program managed to serve fewer than half the number of women it had before. The Legislature’s own researchers predicted that more than 20, 000 resulting unplanned births would cost taxpayers more than a quarter of a billion dollars in federal and state Medicaid support. White says that as the state has worked to rebuild its shattered network, the new providers don’t necessarily have the same capacity to do cancer screenings and IUD insertions and birth control implants. ”A lot of the funding that has been allocated has gone to organizations that do not necessarily have the expertise or the necessary training to provide the types of family planning, contraceptive, preventive reproductive health care that the Planned Parenthood clinics provided,” White says. The political backlash to the funding cuts was stout. So in 2013, the Legislature essentially restored the money. But finding new providers, especially in the countryside, has been slow and difficult. ”The Legislature wanted to make sure that . .. even if [women] were accustomed to going to a certain provider that was no longer a part of the state plan, that there was another provider that was willing and able to take and serve women. So that’s never an overnight process,” says Lesley French, the Texas Health and Human Services commissioner, who runs the women’s health services program. French says the state program is approaching the number of providers it had back in 2010. But in many regions of the state, there’s been little or no decrease in the level of unserved need. Texas continues to grow vigorously, and a statewide doctor shortage compounds the problem. It’s not like already inundated medical practices are champing at the bit to take on thousands of orphaned Medicaid patients. French says they’re doing the best they can under the circumstances. ”I’m very cognizant [that] the needs [of] one area of the state are not what the needs are in another area of the state. So what works in Houston, what works in Dallas, doesn’t work for Midland,” French says. ”I’m really trying to recruit providers who can meet the people that we’re trying to serve.” Aubrey’s Story, The state’s newest rendition of its women’s health program debuts July 1. In the meantime, rural Texans still scramble to find family planning services  —   and not just poor women. Aubrey, a student at Texas Tech, doesn’t want her last name used for reasons we’ll explain in a moment. But last year, her senior year, her life changed. ”Yes, I’d met a boy. I decided to go and seek out getting on birth control,” she says. About to become sexually active for the first time, Aubrey did not want her birth control showing up on her parents’ insurance, so she went to the student health clinic. But the doctor there was difficult. ”I just wanted to talk to her and get some ideas on what would be best for me. And she was telling me that I needed to get on a certain one because that was my only option,” she says. ”It didn’t really make sense. There wasn’t a health issue, and it was kind of odd she was fighting me on this.” The doctor told Aubrey it would take several weeks before she could get her birth control. When the young woman asked why, the doctor suggested Aubrey was lacking in moral fiber. ”She actually asked me if I was in that big of a hurry to become sexually active,” she says. Furious and humiliated, Aubrey left. And she says this is where things got difficult. The Planned Parenthood clinics in Lubbock had recently closed. When she telephoned the county clinic, she discovered the next available appointment was in April. It was January. Determined, she next called Fort Worth, 4   hours away. ”Planned Parenthood really changed my life. Quite honestly, I don’t know where I’d be right now, if I hadn’t been able to get in at Fort Worth,” she says. ”And so I’m glad I have the peace of mind now that I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant when I’m not ready.” And this is why Aubrey doesn’t want her last name used  —   because she’s a Planned Parenthood supporter living in West Texas. It hadn’t been a problem until three months ago when a gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo. a few hours to the northwest. A police officer and two Planned Parenthood clients were killed. In Texas, the Legislature seems determined that its robust   politics will not further damage the state’s women’s health programs. But its battle against Planned Parenthood continues unabated. The state has ousted the organization from its cancer screening program, stripped it of state Medicaid money and is ending   subsidies. Texas is becoming the model for other conservative states that would like to defund all family planning clinics associated with abortion providers."
"A wave of violence in Burundi last December resulted in the deaths of scores of people. Now Amnesty International says satellite images and video footage indicate that dozens of people killed by police were buried in mass graves. ”These images suggest a deliberate effort by the authorities to cover up the extent of the killings by their security forces,” Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, said, according to an an Amnesty statement. The satellite images (which you can view on an interactive map) show mass graves in Buringa, on the outskirts of Bujumbura, where residents say at least 21 people were killed on December 11. The human rights group says they also have credible reports of mass graves in Mpanda with at least 25 bodies, and Kanyosha with 28 bodies, killed on the same day. ”It is not known how many bodies might be found at other sites,” the group says. The organization’s statement describes bodies disappearing after scenes of carnage: ”Amnesty International researchers were in Bujumbura when the killings occurred and visited affected neighborhoods, including Nyakabiga, the next morning. Residents described how the bodies of at least 21 men were left in the streets, homes and drainage ditches. Researchers found large pools of blood where some of the victims had been killed but the bodies had been removed. ”Witnesses described how police and local officials scoured Nyakabiga and other neighborhoods to retrieve the bodies of those who were killed and took them to undisclosed locations. ”The mother of a    boy who was shot in the head as he ran to take refuge in an outhouse in the Musaga neighborhood, told Amnesty International that a pickup truck from the mayor’s office retrieved her son’s body. The men that took him refused to tell her where the body was being taken. ’I don’t know where he is or if he’s been buried,’ she said.” The week after the attacks, NPR’s Gregory Warner described the violence on Morning Edition. He said that on Dec. 11, gunmen attacked three military bases in Burundi’s capital. Police responded by indiscriminately targeting Burundians who were not    —   pulling scores of people from their houses and shooting them. Conflict has been escalating in the central African nation since last spring, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he would seek a third term, despite the constitution’s   limit. He then survived a coup attempt, and won a disputed election. The rising tensions led more than 100, 000 people to flee Burundi and raised fears about the nation’s future, as Gregory reported last summer. Burundi is an   nation a civil war between the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority ended in 2005. But the recent violence is different, Gregory says. Both Nkurunziza and his opponents are Hutu, he explained on Morning Edition in December: ”The lines of division right now are really not ethnic they are political. And what is going on is that you have an elected president that’s done precious little for his country  —   the president cares more about the building his soccer team than jobs or healthcare  —   and the president has now seized a third term in power, really rigging the court to absolve him of constitutional   limits. He’s cracked down brutally on peaceful expressions of dissent, and that dissent has now become armed. It’s become violent.” He also analyzed the possible repercussions outside of Burundi  —   and one explanation for why authorities might have tried to minimize the apparent scale of the killings. ”Thousands of Burundian troops are serving as peacekeepers in Somalia and other African hotspots . .. A crisis in this tiny country of Burundi can actually affect international security and troop deployment in the war on terror. And yet even in this interconnected world, Burundi’s leadership is still acting like they’re too tiny, too strategically unimportant to be noticed. And the government’s approach seems to be that they can just keep the death toll low enough  —   they can avoid that G word, genocide  —   then no one will stand in their way.”"
"Brittany Howard, the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist with Alabama Shakes, says she still remembers the day she decided to start a band. She was 11 or 12 and attending a concert in her school gym put on by some classmates (including future Alabama Shakes guitarist Heath Fogg). ”Probably about 45, 50 kids showed up that night, and we watched them play and . .. it was like having a double life. It was like watching a James Bond film. I didn’t know these kids had these talents,” Howard tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”I was like, ’That is what I want to do,’ because I was so amazed.” Howard’s family’s house was in the middle of a junkyard they owned in the small town of Athens, Ala. Her older sister died of cancer and her family home burned down after being struck by lightning, but Howard says, ”I didn’t feel sorry for us, because that’s just the way life was.” Before she died at 13, Howard’s sister taught her how to write poetry and play the piano Howard learned guitar, bass and drums on her own. Eventually, she joined together with other musicians from her town to form Alabama Shakes. Sound  Color, the band’s second record, has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year and Best Alternative Music Album. The songs on Sound  Color draw from rock, RB and psychedelic sounds  —   a blend Howard says was intentional. ”I wanted to explore songwriting and what you can do when you don’t pay attention to genre boundaries or anything like that,” she says. ”I just wanted to be free to do what I want to do as a musician.” On trying out a new sound on Sound  Color  I wanted to try everything, because we finally had the opportunity, and it was also an exciting prospect that people were going to hear it. For some people, that would be a lot of pressure, but I was really excited about it. Because there were so many ideas I had and so many things I wanted to try  —   not only musically, but also with my voice, with my instrument, and I knew I could do a lot more things. The first record was recorded hastily but written really slowly  —   because, as they say, you have all the time in the world to write your first record, and we did. We went in and recorded it in probably about a week or so, and this time was different. This time, I could really think about what I wanted to say and how we wanted to express it, and also . .. the more music I was listening to since the first record, the more I appreciated space and the ability to let the listener have time to think about what you’re doing, and not just being bombarded by all of the instruments. On getting into music as a teenager, I remember when and where I was when I first heard Pink Floyd. I was 14 years old and I was getting a ride from school, from a senior, back to my house. And they started playing Pink Floyd and I was like, ”What is this?” and they explained it to me, and I had never heard any music like that. It wasn’t one genre or another it was just whatever they wanted to create, and I thought it was so interesting. And I started getting into music around that time, like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath I started getting into that kind of music, and I thought, ”I been missing everything!” It was like having blinders on. I started really diving into the history of music when I was around 14 years old. On growing up in her family’s junkyard, We lived down a long gravel driveway, and you’re driving through these woods and then you cross a bridge over a creek. And then you keep going up this hill, and on either side of you it just starts filling in with junk cars, newer cars, boats, motorcycles, a shop. It’s all around you. And then you get to the top of the hill and that’s where, um. .. we grew up in a little trailer, but it was really nice. My mom was really good at making our home  —   no matter what our situation was  —   always felt like a home, always felt really nice. And I played with our animals. We had a lot of different kinds of animals. I grew up on a farm in a sense, but it was always a junkyard. So it was a really interesting way to grow up, because I would be playing on all of these   cars, which is   but then I’d also go run around the woods with my dog, and go play in the creek. . .. The way I think of it is, you’re surrounded by the junkyard. Think of it like a hurricane, and you’re in the eye of it. The little patch of grass that has the animals and the little trailer and then the rest was, to me, was like a labyrinth. It was an amusement park. On her sister’s death at 13 from retinal cancer, Being a kid, it’s just how life is. Never did I feel bad for myself. I didn’t know any better. I thought, ”OK, I have this sister, she’s sick,” but in my mind I was like, ”Everything is going to be fine. We go to the doctor. The doctor’s going to take care of everything.” And really, we just found out, how do we live life? How do I play with my sister? Because she was blind. So we made games. We played. She taught me how to draw, even though she was blind. She taught me how to write poetry. She taught me how to play piano. It was just life. On her first tour and leaving the South for the first time, I had never seen any real mountains. I had never seen an ocean outside of the gulf. I had never seen   mountains or ice and snow on the side of the road. I had never really felt really cold wind. I had never seen the desert. I had never seen what the sky looks like in the West. Everything I saw was new, and I got to experience it with the guys."
"A human study of Zika virus vaccine could begin as early as this year, U. S. health officials told reporters Thursday. But the officials cautioned that it could be years before the vaccine is available for wide use. The news came as the Zika virus continues to spread through the Americas. Still, a large outbreak is seen as unlikely in the U. S. ”There’s still a lot we don’t know, so we have to be very careful about making any absolute predictions,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In a briefing for reporters, he added that ”we still feel it’s unlikely . .. we’ll see   outbreaks.” That’s because the U. S. has seen only limited spread of two similar viruses, dengue and chikungunya, which are also carried by mosquitoes. They have spread widely in nearby countries but mostly appear sporadically in the U. S. mainly when travelers get them abroad and return home. Nevertheless, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are launching an intense effort to combat Zika, officials said. The CDC is now requiring all states to report any travelers who bring the virus into the country, says Dr. Anne Schuchat, the agency’s principal deputy director. So far, 31 such cases have been reported in 11 states and the District of Columbia. None of these people is known to have spread the virus. But 19 cases of the virus have been confirmed in Puerto Rico, Schuchat says, and some of those people had not traveled to countries that have Zika outbreaks. One case has also been confirmed in the U. S. Virgin Islands. Schuchat acknowledged that ”it’s possible  —   even likely  —   we will see limited Zika transmission in the United States,” but she agrees with Fauci that   outbreaks are unlikely in the U. S. The main reason is that the mosquitoes that spread the virus are primarily found only in Southern states, and the U. S. does a much better job of protecting people from mosquitoes than do other countries, Schuchat said. That said, the agency would ”remain vigilant” for any sustained transmission. ”This is a rapidly changing situation,” she said. So CDC is collaborating with the NIH to develop better tests for the virus. The NIH has also issued a call for researchers already receiving funding for work on viruses like Zika to do more research to better understand it. Work is also underway to try to develop treatments, and the NIH is pursuing two possible strategies for developing a vaccine, Fauci said. One involves creating a vaccine from a live, but harmless form of the virus. The other, which is probably more promising, involves using DNA from the virus to formulate a vaccine, he said. That approach produced encouraging early results in the creation of a vaccine against the West Nile virus, Fauci said. He predicted the work could create a vaccine that might be ready for early testing sometime this year. But, he added, ”we will not have a vaccine this year or probably in the next few years.” Nevertheless, the NIH has already started talking with drug companies to help develop a vaccine. ”Things are moving rapidly,” Fauci said. At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration has started taking steps to protect the blood supply against the virus, CDC’s Schuchat said. The virus seems to remain in the bloodstream ”very briefly,” she said, perhaps for only about a week. ”FDA is diligently working with its federal partners and with stakeholders, including blood collection establishments and industry organizations, to rapidly implement appropriate donor deferral measures for travelers who have visited affected regions in order to protect the blood supply,” FDA spokeswoman Tara Goodin said in an email. ”FDA will also put in place recommendations to help maintain a safe blood supply in United States territories where the virus is present,” Goodin wrote. ”We cannot speculate on specific implementation timing at this point.”"
"In her first major address on the Zika outbreak, the head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, said the   virus has gone from being ”a mild threat to one of alarming proportions.” Chan spoke Thursday in Geneva. The apparent link between Zika and severe birth defects in children in Brazil still hasn’t been definitively proven but Chan says the threat is so high that she’s calling for an emergency committee to advise her on ”the appropriate level of international concern and for recommended measures that should be undertaken in affected countries and elsewhere.” There’s no vaccine or treatment for Zika. Chan says eliminating mosquito breeding grounds is one of the most important defenses against the disease. ”We really need to concentrate on mosquito control,” Chan said in a briefing to the Executive Committee of the WHO. The Zika virus was first detected in the Americas in May 2015 in Brazil. It has since spread in Chan’s words ”explosively” to 22 countries and territories in the hemisphere. There have also been a handful of cases in the mainland United States, but all of those have been in people who recently returned from   areas. ”Arrival of the virus in some places,” Chan says, ”has been associated with a steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads and in cases of   syndrome [a neurological condition].” Another top official at the briefing, Dr. Marcos Espinal, the director of Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis at the WHO’s Pan American Health Organization, noted that those neurological conditions have so far only been found in Brazil. Espinal said this raises the possibility that other factors in addition to Zika may be causing the severe health problems. Some researchers have wondered whether someone who gets infected with Zika and dengue at the same time, for instance, may suffer worse effects. Chan and WHO were sharply criticized for moving too slowly to address the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Some public health experts say the world’s health agency has not been moving fast enough on Zika. Georgetown professors Lawrence Gostin and Daniel Lucy, writing this week in JAMA, said, ”WHO headquarters has thus far not been proactive, given potentially serious ramifications.” Chan’s emergency committee is meeting on Monday to determine what measures should be taken both in the affected countries and elsewhere to address the outbreak. Dr. Espinal said the virus is expected to spread to other parts of the world where dengue  —   which is spread by the same mosquito  —   is also present. He added that he expects this outbreak to grow from the current estimate of 1 million cases to 3 to 4 million cases before it’s brought under control. Because symptoms are typically mild, the severity of the threat has not been established. But as Chan said in the briefing in Geneva: ”Questions abound. We need to get some answers quickly.”"
"Flip through the pages of Mi Comida Latina and you may quickly fall under its spell. The pages of this cookbook beckon with vibrant watercolor illustrations and recipes written in the kind of delicate hand lettering that make us mourn penmanship as a dying art. The end result combines the charm of a children’s book, the promise of a tasty meal and the intimacy of a journal. Which makes sense, because the book was inspired by the sketchbooks that author and illustrator Marcella Kriebel kept starting in 2004, when she took her first of many trips to Latin American countries. She started going to improve her Spanish, but kept returning after she fell in love with the cultures she encountered. And for her, food became an important way to connect with those cultures. As she watched family cooks prepare meals in their homes, she jotted down notes and illustrations. ”Once I got there, I became incredibly inspired by the warmth of the people . .. and the vibrancy of the cultures [that] can be found in many different things  —   the visuals and the smells and the cuisine itself,” she says. Those journals might have remained private had Kriebel not lost her job as an art installation technician in a D. C. museum in 2012. That provided the catalyst for her to transform her travel notes into a cookbook, published last year.  The pages of Mi Comida Latina document recipes from her travels throughout much of Latin America, including Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Mexico, to name a few, along with recipes from family and friends in the United States. Kriebel  —   who is not Latin American  —   hopes readers who pick up the book will see food as she does: as an invitation to explore the world. I recently chatted with Kriebel. Highlights from our conversation follow, edited for length and clarity. What is your most vivid   memory from your travels? Well there’s one that I’m reminded of every time I cut an onion. One of my host parents in Quito, Ecuador, his name was Marco Fiallo, he taught me an efficient way to cut an onion, and it’s a skill that I use all the time. So the memory is that, you know, I wasn’t cutting an onion correctly, or so he said, so he took the knife from my hand and showed me this sequence of steps. And it was kind of that magic moment, that, ”Aha! Here’s how easy it can be” moment. That memory in particular is something that is really important for me, because it’s a skill I use [practically] every day. Do you have a favorite recipe from the book? They’re all my favorite recipes because they’re in the book, you know. . .. All of them are things I make here on a regular basis. But one thing in particular that I think is pretty distinctive and is really colorful and beautiful is llapingacho. That is [an Ecuadorian] potato pancake that’s fried, and there’s cheese in the middle and it melts, and then it’s served with a fried egg on top with a marinated beet salad, hot sauce and avocado. It’s also often accompanied by a sausage. Why the decision to do all the hand lettering and hand illustration? I imagine that was pretty labor intensive. I think it’s because it started as a journal project. I think it’s pretty accurate that it’s really a refined version of this sketchbook journal experience. So I wanted to retain that level of authenticity and   [point of view]. But as you can imagine, it was an incredible task to hand write a whole book, and the editing really was a meticulous task. I mean, it’s very much equal parts art project and cookbook. As a person who is first and foremost an artist, and someone that loves to cook and loves to share recipes, it really is a very special thing for me to share with the world. What do you want readers to take away from the book? I want them to be inspired to travel and to try new foods. I hope that people realize that with Latin American cooking, it’s not as absolute in terms of the portions of salt and spice. So I want to inspire people to get in the kitchen and experiment and try new things. There’s a whole world out there, and it’s exciting that food can kind of be a motivator to experience the world and learn about people. Food is a lens to experience culture. Are there any other   projects that you’re working on? I just signed a contract to do another book, and I’m doing lots of research right now. I’m going to do a book about Cuba. I’ve never been to Cuba and I’m set to go in March. It’s actually going to be a collaboration between Maria Gonzalez and myself. She is a   who will be doing the technical writing of all of the signature dishes of Cuba. And so it’ll be still through my lens, but I’m excited to bring on Maria to kind of illuminate all of these classic Cuban dishes. It will be heavily illustrated, watercolor and all about Cuba."
"Some octopuses intimidate their neighbors by turning black, standing tall and looming over them threateningly, like an   Dracula. That’s according to a study published Thursday that helps show that octopuses aren’t loners, contrary to what scientists long thought some of the invertebrates have an exciting social life. The study, in the journal Current Biology, focuses on one species, known as Octopus tetricus  —   the gloomy octopus  —   which gathers to munch on tasty scallops in the shallows of Jervis Bay, Australia. ”There can be over a dozen octopuses or more at this site,” says David Scheel of Alaska Pacific University. ”Generally, during the Australian summer there are more and we see a lot of activity then.” A local diver, Matthew Lawrence, first noticed there was a lot of octopus interaction going on there. His observations piqued the interest of Scheel, who is a marine biologist, and Peter   a philosopher who had been thinking about octopus consciousness. The research team eventually recorded 52 hours of underwater video, showing 186 octopus interactions. ”I took a look fairly early on at one sequence in which one octopus approaches another in a fairly menacing way,” recalls Scheel. ”He gets all dark, stands up very tall, and the other octopus crouches down and turns very pale. And then, when the approaching octopus persists, the other one flees. And this is immediately followed by the first octopus approaching a third octopus that’s nearby. And the third octopus turns dark and doesn’t crouch down. He just stays where he is, holds his ground.” It looked like they were signaling to each other, says Scheel. That was surprising, because the changing color patterns on an octopus’s body are generally just associated with camouflage from predators. As the researchers watched more video, they became convinced. ”The dark color and some of the behaviors that go with it are associated with aggression, or at least approach,” Scheel says. ”The paler colors signify that the octopus is not going to stand its ground  —   that it’s going to retreat or withdraw.” An aggressive octopus would stretch out the web of its tentacles very wide, to look as big as possible. ”And, of course, it’s got these scalloped edges between each arm,” says Scheel, adding that the octopus would also stand very tall and turn black. ”It looked to me, for all the world, like Dracula approaching his prey,” he says. ”In my early notes I was calling this the Nosferatu display.” Sometimes an octopus will even do this while standing on the highest available ground, he adds  —   a piece of junk that’s sticking up out of the seafloor. Until about 15 years ago, scientists believed that octopuses were pretty much asocial. ”When they interacted, they either mated or ate each other,” says Crissy Huffard, a senior research technician at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. ”That was the overriding idea.” But Huffard has done research on another octopus species that shows males display a    striped pattern when they’re in the presence of another individual. ”And that tends to send the signal, ’I’m male,’ ” she says. If the other octopus displays a similar body pattern, the male will be aggressive and fight. If not, then he’ll try to mate. She was interested in the threatening body posture that researchers observed in Australia. ”That’s very cool to see,” she says. ”Octopuses are probably not as completely asocial as originally assumed. Their communication system reflects the fact that they’re interacting on a fairly regular basis.”"
"You know it in your heart. You might not keep your New Year’s resolutions. Your good intentions might fall on hard times. The plot might twist. You have no crystal ball. Emily Dickinson noted it  —   the inscrutability of what’s to come. ”The Future —  never spoke —  Nor will He —  like the Dumb —  Reveal by sign —  a syllableOf His Profound To Come —  ” Vladimir Nabokov novelized it, with a narrator declaring tomorrow not just mysterious, but essentially imaginary: ”Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive. . .. But the future has no such reality (as the pictured past and the perceived present possess) the future is but a figure of speech, a specter of thought.” Southern California Gas Co. has a few words on the subject, too. As we’ve reported, SoCalGas owns a natural gas storage well that has been spewing massive quantities of methane into the air near Porter Ranch, Los Angeles. The ongoing disaster has resulted in the evacuation of thousands of people, the declaration of a state of emergency by California’s governor and the launch of multiple lawsuits against SoCalGas. The company is currently working to drill a relief well and stop the leak. As it updates the public about its progress, each press release carries some cautionary text  —   the business equivalent of noting that the future is a figure of speech. We should note that it is standard practice for a company to add a disclaimer to its press releases. There’s nothing unusual about noting that ”  statements are not guarantees of performance,” or naming specific risk factors that might change a company’s plans. But to our eyes, SoCalGas’ disclaimer is striking in its length (one press release featured 465 words on the situation, 90 words on the company and 618 words of disclaimer). And in its attempt to encompass every possible eventuality, the disclaimer verges on the philosophical. Look for yourself: This press release contains statements that are not historical fact and constitute   statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements can be identified by words like ”believes,” ”expects,” ”anticipates,” ”plans,” ”estimates,” ”projects,” ”forecasts,” ”contemplates,” ”intends,” ”depends,” ”should,” ”could,” ”would,” ”will,” ”confident,” ”may,” ”potential,” ”possible,” ”proposed,” ”target,” ”pursue,” ”goals,” ”outlook,” ”maintain” or similar expressions, or discussions of guidance, strategies, plans, goals, opportunities, projections, initiatives, objectives or intentions.   statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Future results may differ materially from those expressed in the   statements.   statements are necessarily based upon various assumptions involving judgments with respect to the future and other risks, including, among others: local, regional, national and international economic, competitive, political, legislative and regulatory conditions and developments actions and the timing of actions, including issuances of permits to construct and licenses for operation, by the California Public Utilities Commission, California State Legislature, U. S. Department of Energy, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, California Energy Commission, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Air Resources Board, and other regulatory, governmental and environmental bodies in the United States the timing and success of business development efforts and construction, maintenance and capital projects, including risks in obtaining, maintaining or extending permits, licenses, certificates and other authorizations on a timely basis and risks in obtaining adequate and competitive financing for such projects energy markets, including the timing and extent of changes and volatility in commodity prices, and the impact of any protracted reduction in oil and natural gas prices from historical averages the impact on the value of our natural gas storage assets from low natural gas prices, low volatility of natural gas prices and the inability to procure favorable   contracts for natural gas storage services delays in the timing of costs incurred and the timing of the regulatory agency authorization to recover such costs in rates from customers deviations from regulatory precedent or practice that result in a reallocation of benefits or burdens among shareholders and ratepayers capital markets conditions, including the availability of credit and the liquidity of our investments inflation and interest rates the availability of electric power and natural gas, and natural gas pipeline and storage capacity, including disruptions caused by failures in the North American transmission grid, pipeline explosions and equipment failures cybersecurity threats to the energy grid, natural gas storage and pipeline infrastructure, the information and systems used to operate our businesses and the confidentiality of our proprietary information and the personal information of our customers, terrorist attacks that threaten system operations and critical infrastructure, and wars weather conditions, conservation efforts, natural disasters, catastrophic accidents, and other events that may disrupt our operations, damage our facilities and systems, and subject us to   liability for property damage or personal injuries some of which may or may not be covered by insurance risks that our partners or counterparties will be unable or unwilling to fulfill their contractual commitmentsbusiness, regulatory, environmental and legal decisions and requirements the inability or determination not to enter into   supply and sales agreements or   firm capacity agreements due to insufficient market interest, unattractive pricing or other factors the resolution of litigation and other uncertainties, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties are further discussed in the reports that the company has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These reports are available through the EDGAR system    on the SEC’s website, www. sec. gov. Investors should not rely unduly on any   statements. These   statements speak only as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forecasts or projections or other   statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The future never spoke, indeed. * Or it might not. After all, words like ”might” are not guarantees of future performance."
"Tickets to the most popular concerts and other live events are often hard to find because of abusive practices by vendors who illegally use computer programs called bots to grab them up, according to a report released by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. In some cases, tickets to live events sell out within minutes, only to appear right away at enormous markups on sites such as StubHub, according to the report, which calls for major reform to the ticketing process. ”The problem is not simply that demand for prime seats exceeds supply, especially for the most   events. Ticketing, to put it bluntly, is a fixed game,” the report read. In one case, a single vendor was able to buy 1, 012 tickets to a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden just one minute after they went on sale, even though the venue supposedly limited sales to four tickets per customer. Even tickets to free events, such as Pope Francis’ appearance in Central Park last September, are quickly acquired and resold at high prices on such sites, the report said. Vendors can acquire large numbers of tickets quickly by using multiple IP addresses and special software called ticket bots. Such software, which is illegal in New York state, can bypass the   platforms’ security measures, such as CAPTCHA. ”The average fan vying to purchase a ticket to a popular concert has little hope of competing against brokers, many of whom use illegal and unfair means to purchase tickets,” the report said. One bot acquired 520 tickets to an August 2013 Beyonce concert at the Barclays Center in New York in just three minutes. Another bought 522 tickets to a June 2012 concert by One Direction at Jones Beach within just five minutes. Such sales can be enormously profitable. The report cited one unlicensed ticket vendor who sold nearly $31 million worth of tickets on StubHub alone in 2013, netting a profit of $16 million. The report said acquiring tickets is made even more difficult because of the industry practice of setting aside large numbers of tickets to industry insiders and special promotional groups, such as credit card holders. To address the problem,   platforms such as StubHub and TicketsNow must ensure that vendors comply with the law, the report said. It also said the platforms should make it easier for vendors to disclose the face value of the tickets they sell. The industry must also make the   process more transparent and enforce limits on the number of tickets sold to customers, according to the report. The report also called for an end to New York’s ban on nontransferable ”paperless” tickets, which require the user to present an ID or credit card at an event’s gate: ”As such, it is harder for paperless tickets to be transferred or resold, given the need to present the purchasing credit card.” The report noted that such tickets can be inconvenient to use and are therefore unpopular with some customers. But it noted: ”At the same time, paperless tickets appear to be one of the few measures to have any clear effect in reducing the excessive prices charged on the secondary markets and increasing the odds of fans buying tickets at face value.” Finally, the report said, ticket vendors must address ”the Bot epidemic”: ”A   solution must include improvements in Bot detection and prevention methods. While the industry works on   technological solutions, steps can be taken to reduce Bot use in the near term.” Ticketmaster failed to respond to requests by NPR for comment but did comment to The New York Times: ”In a statement, Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation Entertainment, said that it cooperated with the investigation and that the company supported the attorney general’s efforts to manage bots and the elimination of the paperless ticketing ban.” Update at 4 p. m. ET: StubHub’s Response, StubHub issued a statement following the release of the report: ”StubHub believes that a fair, secure and open ticket marketplace supports fans. Consumers should be protected from unfair and deceptive practices that make it harder for fans to buy and use event tickets in an open market. We are strongly committed to partnering with industry, public policy and other leaders to achieve this goal.”"
"The Eagle Huntress, a documentary film set in Mongolia directed by Otto Bell and starring teenager Aisholpan Nurgaiv, debuted Sunday at Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. With its focus on a charismatic girl who has accomplished something other women have not in 2, 000 years  —   she hunts on horseback with the help of a golden eagle  —   the film has earned standing ovations. Aisholpan’s family members are nomadic Kazakh herders of the Altai mountains region who base their subsistence economy on herding cattle and goats. An essential supplement to the herders’ livelihood comes from the practice of training   chicks to become their close partners in the hunting of foxes and other small mammals used for food and clothing. This specialized hunting practice  —   woven into the fabric of everyday life and celebrated at regional competitions  —   has been an entirely male endeavor throughout its history, passed down in families from generation to generation. Now, just as climate change threatens this way of life and as only 250 eagle hunters remain in Mongolia, Aisholpan is coming to the world’s attention as the first woman eagle huntress. I sat down at Sundance for a   conversation with Aisholpan her father, Nurgaiv Rys her mother, Alma Dalaykan and also Otto Bell. Aisholpan’s cousin, Baldygryn Baidola, translated. As a young child, Nurgaiv told me, Aisholpan helped him care for his own eagle even then he could see that she was doing things ”accurately” and with intense interest. A   eagle hunter, Nurgaiv soon encouraged his daughter to become his apprentice  —   a noteworthy act in a culture where such a thing had simply never happened before. The Eagle Huntress opens not with Aisholpan but with Nurgaiv, who is in the process of releasing his eagle back into the wild after a   hunting partnership. This release is part of the herders’ tradition, too: Chicks are taken away from the maternal nest at a young age, but no person is thought to own an eagle. At the eagle’s maturity (anywhere between ages 4 and 7) the right thing to do is to let the bird fly free, tradition says. At this point, the hunter begins training all over again with a new chick. The scene in which Nurgaiv releases his eagle is a moving one. First, he strokes the bird with apparent emotion, then he offers the eagle a meal of a sacrificed sheep. This act carries profound meaning in this culture: It’s an offering made only to family members at their point of departure (whether departure through death or simply moving away). As we talk, it’s clear that Aisholpan does feel that her eagle, named White Wings  —   the movie shows the bird’s capture by Aisholpan herself, working together with her father on a very precarious cliff face  —   is a new member of her family. White Wings lives inside the family’s house. Aisholpan enjoys it most, she told me, when the bird is calm with her, as is often the case only sometimes, she says, is the eagle unhappy or angry. The two hunters are closely connected emotionally  —   anyone who meets her (or sees the film) can read the joy and love on Aisholpan’s face when she is with White Wings or talking about her. Bell, Nurgaiv and Baldygryn explained the broader situation with eagle hunting and climate change that Aisholpan’s family, and many other herders in western Mongolia, now face. The winters are becoming harsher  —   so much so that a new word in Kazakh has been created (zud) to describe them. At times, the winter’s severity is such that whole herds are wiped out this situation is only made worse because summer rainfall is decreasing. This means less grass is available to fatten the herd animals up enough to help them survive the difficult winters. Sometimes, if the following year is better, the family can recover and continue on living in the traditional way: Other times, a migration to Mongolia’s capital city, Ulan Bator, becomes the only recourse. As Bell put it, ”There’s no recompense for these families.” Former herders sometimes have to take up taxi driving or similar jobs in the capital in order to survive. I asked Bell why the film is drawing such strong responses. It embodies, he said, universal themes  —   a girl who won’t be held back by   tradition a   relationship that blossoms  —   and, besides that, he adds, it’s not about a victim. It’s not that he dismisses such films, rather he just feels there’s room in the world for celebrations, too. And this celebratory journey unfolded right before his eyes. ”I don’t feel that I directed this film,” he said. Instead, ”this very visual way of life went on in front of me.” The pressing worry now is what may happen to the hunting tradition and, indeed, to the herding families themselves going forward, in this time of accelerating environmental change. In the meantime, The Eagle Huntress is a film in search of a distributor. My best guess is that Otto Bell will succeed in finding one. I hope so, because Aisholpan and her family have remarkable things to tell us. Barbara J. King, an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary, often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"In families where biological parents are of different races and ethnicities, daughters are more likely to   as ”multiracial” than sons, according to a new study in the February issue of the American Sociological Review. This is especially true in families with one black parent and one white parent. ”It would seem that, for biracial women, looking racially ambiguous is tied to racial stereotypes surrounding femininity and beauty,” said Lauren Davenport, assistant professor at Stanford University and author of the study. She suggests it may be easier for women to identify with multiple racial groups because they are ”cast as a mysterious, intriguing ’racial other’” as opposed to men, who are more likely to be seen as a ”person of color.” Davenport’s study was based on a sample of more than 37, 000 incoming college freshmen across the county who fit into one of three mixed backgrounds  —       and  . Using data from 2001 to 2003, Davenport looked at how these individuals chose to identify themselves. She found that a higher percentage of women than men   as multiracial across all three groups. Among   76 percent of women identified as multiracial, compared to 64 percent of men in that group.   percent of   women classified as multiracial, as opposed to 50 percent of   men. And 40 percent of   women   as multiracial in comparison to 32 percent of those men. In addition to gender, Davenport looked at how religion and class affect the way people identify. Multiracial people who don’t have strong religious ties were more likely to identify as multiracial, as well as those from highly affluent neighborhoods. Overall, those with black and white parents were the most likely to identify as multiracial, and the least likely to describe themselves as white only.   percent of   study participants identified as multiracial, while only 54 percent of   and 37 percent of   participants opted for the same label. In the paper, Davenport attributed this tendency among people with black and white parents to the ”  rule,” more formally known as hypodescent, which structured how   individuals were once legally and socially identified in the United States: Because people in this group have so strongly been expected to identify as black, they are choosing to assert a new identity, one that incorporates both their black and white heritages. It is also likely that, for some, a multiracial label reflects a desire to socially distance and distinguish oneself from blacks. Davenport says understanding the way people identity themselves racially is crucial for its political consequences. Not only does   shape the American racial landscape, but it also impacts the enforcement of laws, implementation of affirmative action, and allocation of political resources. But studying multiracial identity can be tricky. The Pew Research Center spent a lot of time last year researching the mixed population of America. Not only did they find that many   Americans changed how they viewed their racial identity over the course of their lifetimes, but also that   was highly dependent on situational circumstances, others’ perceptions, and personal upbringing. So does this mean we’ll all start to subconsciously assume that all wealthy biracial women with zero religious affiliations are mixed? Probably not. But if the projection that one in five Americans will be of mixed race by 2050 bears out, we’re going to need to keep understanding how people relate to being multiracial."
"Just 1 percent of doctors are linked to nearly   of all paid malpractice claims, an analysis by researchers at Stanford finds. And the physicians who account for an outsize share of the claims have a set of distinctive characteristics. The researchers said that the   physicians were disproportionately male (82 percent) and were older, rather than younger. More than half the claims were by doctors in four areas: internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery and general   medicine. But the biggest predictor of all for   doctors was whether they’d had a prior claim. ”Compared to physicians with only one previous claim,” Studdert said, ”a physician who has had three previous claims is three times as likely to have another one,” said lead author David Studdert, a professor of medicine and law at Stanford. ”A physician who has had four is four times more likely and so on.” In the study, published in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers looked at more than 66, 000 malpractice claims paid against 54, 000 physicians nationwide between 2005 and 2014. The researchers focused on paid, rather than unpaid, claims, because those are markers for substandard care. About 1 in 3 malpractice claims is ultimately paid. In the claims the researchers reviewed,   resulted in patient death and another 54 percent in serious injury. The study noted that only 6 percent of doctors had any paid claims over the   period studied. In the study the researchers are clear that they have identified risk factors but that it’s up to health care systems, hospital and malpractice insurers to identify and work with these doctors. ”This problem of physicians who accumulate multiple claims and continue to practice . .. is a significant policy problem and one that we need to address,” Studert said. But he and his colleagues noted that few of these organizations do. ”With notable exceptions,” the researchers write, ”fewer still systematically identify and intervene with practitioners who are at high risk for future claims.” The authors of the paper call for further investigation into predicting which doctors are at risk and then implementing interventions such as training and supervision to improve their quality of care. In California, patients can look up their doctor on the state’s medical board website. Depending on the type of malpractice settlement, it will be part of the public record if the doctor has had either three or four settlements within a   period. Other information is also available, including whether your doctor has had a felony conviction or is on probation. Patients can use the website simply to determine that a doctor’s license is valid. But advocates like Lisa McGiffert, with Consumers Union’s Safe Patient Project, say that’s not enough. They have been pushing the Medical Board of California to require that doctors placed on probation notify their patients. The board has resisted taking this step. While probation and multiple malpractice claims are not necessarily linked, McGiffert says she hopes doctors will pay attention to this study. ”I have this sense that doctors as a group protect other doctors who are on probation or get in trouble because they think it might happen to them,” she said. But since this study demonstrates that a small percentage of doctors are responsible for a disproportionate number of claims, it should be reassuring to physicians. ”This study is one more piece of information that regulators can use in determining their strategy in addressing the small percentage of doctors who have problems in their treatment of patients,” McGiffert said. A version of this story first appeared on KQED’s State of Health blog."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. KING excels at setting a mood. The group’s music conjures an   dreamy, Utopian vibe, rather than a mad dash to assemble a who’  of writers and producers. From the   KING’s instant fan base embraced that approach, and that’s where the   demand for We Are KING took hold. The trio  —   Anita Bias and twin sisters Amber and Paris Strother  —   is a   creative shop, producing, arranging and performing all of KING’s music at their L. A. home studio. They also put it out themselves, and only when it’s ready. In 2011, KING wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming response to its debut EP, The Story. The three tracks were the first the women had ever recorded together. The group’s unveiling played like the ultimate game of telephone, with heavy hitters like Prince, Erykah Badu and Questlove passing the word along. Between touring, sporadic singles and guest slots, the public just had to wait for more. After five years of wondering and wishing and maybe even doubting, We Are KING picks up exactly where The Story left off  —   at times literally. The album’s sound is an outright extension of its predecessor, and all three of the EP’s songs are reprised here in extended versions. ”The Right One” kicks off the proceedings with a   testimonial about the lasting power of love, setting the album’s tone (messages of love being the dominant force) and displaying everything KING does best. Paris Strother’s   synths and fine percussion are indicative of her Minneapolis roots those elements jell perfectly with the   harmonies of her bandmates to create a running formula that works. Though We Are KING maintains a steady tone, Paris Strother injects jolts of musical energy, peppering the arrangements with cosmic effects. The chord progressions of ”Love Song” and ”Oh Please,” the latter reminiscent of Babyface’s ”Whip Appeal,” are simply magical. Anita Bias and Amber Strother’s contrasting tones shine brightest in the album’s finale, ”Native Land,” wherein Strother returns frequently a line that perfectly describes KING’s journey thus far: ”Steady along the way,” she sings. ”Arrival awaits.”"
"Since 1972, Iowa has held the first presidential nominating contests in the country. Over the years, the Iowa caucuses have grown in size, scope and importance, sometimes launching underdogs to the presidency or upsetting established political juggernauts. It’s easy to accept Iowa’s role in presidential elections for what it is. But in some ways, Iowa should be questioned. The     caucus state is whiter and more rural than the rest of the country it doesn’t really represent America in some fundamental ways. Knowing that, why is Iowa first? And is that fair? But first: ”A caucus  —   it’s a neighborhood meeting,” said David Yepsen, former political writer at the Des Moines Register and an Iowa politico of note. ”In fact, the term caucus is thought to be a Native American term  —   an Algonquin term for meeting of tribal leaders.” A caucus is more than just a vote like Yepsen said, it’s a meeting. On caucus night, people gather at hundreds of sites across the state and talk about why they’re supporting a candidate. Speeches are made on candidates’ behalf, and there’s jockeying to persuade other people to support their candidate. The process can sometimes take hours. For Democrats in Iowa, caucusgoers publicly show support for their candidates after the speeches by moving to designated spaces in the space they’ve gathered. If a candidate does not get at least 15 percent of the room backing him or her, those supporters must go support another, viable candidate. For Republicans, after the speeches, there’s a secret ballot, no head counts. ”The really important thing to remember about Iowa is not that it’s first because it’s important. Iowa is important because it’s first,” said Kathy O’Bradovich, political columnist for the Des Moines Register. She acknowledges that Iowa didn’t really happen on purpose. ”It happened after the 1968 Democratic National Convention,” she said, which was marred by violence over the Vietnam War and racial tension. ”The Democratic Party nationally and in Iowa decided they wanted to change their process to make it more inclusive.” Part of that meant spreading the presidential nominating schedule out in each state. Because Iowa has one of the more complex processes  —   precinct caucuses, county conventions, district conventions, followed by a state convention  —   it had to start really early. (The Democratic Party held Iowa caucuses first in the nation in 1972 the GOP followed suit in 1976.) And once a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter rode an Iowa caucus win all the way to the White House, Iowa suddenly became a thing. Just a warning, there’s probably no consensus for this. But here’s how Jim Jacobson, a voter from Iowa City, rationalized it: ”Is it fair that Iowa goes first? What’s fair in politics? I mean, seriously. Yeah, OK, we’re like 97 percent white, and we’re really rural, and we don’t look like a microcosm of America. But so what?” Let’s take that first thing he points out, Iowa’s whiteness. Officially,   whites make up 87. 1 percent of Iowa’s population according to the most recent census data. But J. Ann Selzer, the top pollster in the state, says that’s actually kind of OK. ”The idea that because Iowans are white and older, they’re going to vote for older white people is not borne out,” she said. ”In both parties, candidates of color have often done quite well in Iowa. Look at Barack Obama. Jesse Jackson did well. Alan Keyes did well on the Republican side.” Even Jeff Kaufmann, the head of the Iowa Republican Party, kind of says the same thing. ”This is going to be awfully odd, to have a Republican chair suggest you look at what Barack Obama has to say about Iowa,” he said. ”But I’m guessing Barack Obama has no problem with the diversity that we reflect. And I’m guessing if you talk to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, my guess is that they’re not going to have a problem.” But there’s another issue of race  —   not just who Iowans are voting for, but which Iowans are voting. Both parties say they’re reaching out more to Latinos, Iowa’s   racial group. But in West Liberty, Iowa, a town that is majority Latino, NPR spoke with several residents who had no idea what a caucus is, had no intention to vote, and said no one had ever talked to them about any of it. One man thought we were asking him about a cactus. ”Nobody says anything, and nobody talks about it,” West Liberty resident Maria Luna said. ”And we see nothing, then we’re not going to be nothing  —   and do nothing.” FiveThirtyEight. com found that Latinos make up about 3 percent of Iowa’s electorate. The state doesn’t track the race of caucusgoers, but in the last general election, Latino turnout was quote low: 25 percent. Several advocacy groups say they plan to change that, however, particularly the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC. But the Iowa Caucus Project points out that in general, caucus participation, regardless of race, is usually relatively low. ”With the exception, then, of the extraordinary Democratic caucus year in 2008,” wrote Dennis J. Goldford, ”we can see from these numbers that in the last two Iowa caucus cycles, not unlike earlier cycles, only roughly 20 percent of eligible   actually turn out to participate on caucus night.” So, low turnout in an already small state Iowa has a population of about 3 million people. And Iowa is very rural, at a time when an increasing amount of American voters these days live in or around big, urban areas. ”When we get to the general election next November, about 45 percent of the vote is going to come from places that I call big cities or urban suburbs,” said Dante Chinni, director of the American Communities Project at American University. ”That’s a lot of the vote. There are none of those [major cities] in Iowa.” Given those numbers, he says, a state like Georgia might be more ideal. ”First of all, you have diversity, a much more diverse state [in Georgia]. The other thing that Georgia has is  —   it has Atlanta.” When you look at states that have that mix  —   more racial diversity and a mix of rural and urban, there are actually a few options. ”Pennsylvania is a very good option. Colorado is an interesting state. My home state of Michigan Ohio’s a really good one,” Chinni says. NPR’s Asma Khalid analyzed and indexed the demographics of each of the 50 states compared with the national averages and found that Illinois might be more appropriate based on factors like race and income. But if you look to bigger states for more diversity, you could end up with a caucus state that’s actually too big. Iowa is small enough for every candidate to make his or her way all across the state and advertise on the cheap. Small candidates can compete with the big dogs in Iowa from Day 1. It would have been much harder for Carter to win a California caucus than one in Iowa. Over time, one of the reasons people have come to support Iowa being first has come to be the people of Iowa themselves. ”The real reason we’re first in the nation now is because of what we do. We take this real seriously,” says Andy McGuire, head of the Iowa state Democratic Party. She says Iowans contest a candidate like no one else and that they’ve had literally decades of experience in figuring out how to grill candidates one on one. ”You know, we ask really good questions. We ask   questions,” she said. ”We look them in the eye like I am you right now. It’s real. It’s    vetting of candidates. Are you for real? Not a TV spot, not money  —   what’s in your heart?” Whether you believe that Iowa voters are better at this or that they deserve the privilege more, it probably doesn’t even matter. Yepsen says we’re stuck with Iowa. ”Iowa’s first because of inertia,” he said, laughing. ”Most people in the country don’t like this process.” But he says no one can agree on what else to do. Should the first nominating contest move to another state, the same questions raised about Iowa would just be shifted there. And when you’re trying to find the state that’s the most representative, you could fall down a rabbit hole: Which state has the most diversity of industry? Which state has education levels that most mirror the country? Which state has the most reflective ratio of things like union membership, or church attendance? You could go on . .. Others have proposed alternative primary systems (which Danielle Kurtzleben broke down here). And say both parties agree on a viable alternative to Iowa, or even a different system altogether (  national primary?) Iowa might fight like hell to keep its favored spot. Being first gives Iowa lots of attention to issues Iowans care about, and it’s a really, really big boost to the economy to have hordes of campaign reporters and campaign staffers staying in your hotels, eating at your restaurants, and buying ads on your television stations. With all of this, though, it’s important to put Iowa in perspective. Iowa is first, and in some ways, yes  —   you could see that as problematic. But as several experts pointed out to NPR, Iowa doesn’t actually pick the president. And it’s not supposed to on its own. They all said that Iowa’s role is that of a winnower it’s there to start narrowing the field of presidential candidates. And if you look at it that way, maybe it all seems a little more fair. Iowa is not the be all, end all. Iowa alone is not a kingmaker. Iowa is only the start of a long journey. Iowa is just first."
"This year, just in time for the New Hampshire primary, NPR’s political team has a gift for you: everything you need to know about the caucuses and this election season in one handy PDF. We’re giving you    access to the network’s 2016 New Hampshire and Iowa Briefing Book. Inside you’ll find everything you need to get ready for Tuesday. Starting with: When are polls open? How many delegates are at stake? And what could turnout look like? And remember on Tuesday, you can catch NPR’s politics team on your local NPR station, at NPR. org and on Facebook and Twitter. (New Hampshire section begins on pg. 30. You can also view the book below). Written by Political Editor Domenico Montanaro and designed by Meg Kelly, with research from Barbara Sprunt."
"Recent government sanctions against predatory   colleges that preyed on veterans by using inflated job promises have opened the window on the wider challenges of helping veterans transition from service to higher education. This week, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against DeVry University claiming the   deceived students with claims that its graduates make more money and that 90 percent of its graduates seeking work found jobs in their field within six months of graduation. In a statement DeVry vowed to ”vigorously contest” the suit it calls baseless. More than 1 million veterans and their families are taking advantage of the    GI Bill to attend college. But thousands are still attracted to   schools. Are they aiming high enough? Are   really the best fit for those who served? The   sector has marketed aggressively to members of the military and even enrolls them online while they’re stationed overseas. A 2014 Senate report shows that eight   college companies got about a quarter of all the funds spent on GI Bill benefits in  . The report also says, on average,   schools cost twice as much as educating veterans at public colleges. One reason these schools target vets is that GI Bill funds help them comply with a federal rule that states that at least 10 percent of revenue for   colleges must come from outside the Department of Education’s Title IV financial aid programs. Some critics says this is a loophole and are calling for lawmakers to close it. But others say traditional colleges and universities, as well, should be doing much more to reach out to help those who served reach their education goals. And that vets themselves need to shake off some education myths. I reached out to former Army Capt. Tim Hsia to dig deeper. Hsia   the group Service to School, which assists vets transitioning to higher ed with free application and school counseling help. He is a West Point and Stanford graduate who served two infantry combat tours in Iraq, including in Mosul and volatile Diyala province during the pivotal ”surge” near the end of the American occupation. Tim, the data show that there’s a dearth of U. S. veterans enrolled, not just in Ivy League schools but really the top echelon of America’s undergraduate colleges and universities. Is it fair to say that myth No. 1 might be veterans’ own perceptions that they won’t get into these top schools, in part because of their own lowered expectations?  There is definitely an aspect of where veterans are not setting their goals high enough. But there is also a lack of awareness of what they can reach if they strive and work hard. The VA has published data on veterans transitioning out. More than half of them will be   college students. Many of them see the schools available to them as   schools because they are the schools that most aggressively target them. There is no training or coaching for these veterans on what’s best for them and how to make that transition. That gets to another misconception that’s hopefully changing following the scandal at Corinthian Colleges, once the nation’s largest chain of   schools, and at other   institutions. That is the idea that these are the best fit for veterans. It’s a myriad of factors which are driving veterans to   schools. One is   marketing to them and [the second] is service members’ own, perhaps lowered, expectations. A third factor is that the top schools could do a much better job of reaching out to veterans. In my mind it’s   given how vets come with the    GI Bill benefits. So their education, for the most part, is heavily subsidized if not fully covered by the government. Do veterans have the academic excellence to get into those programs? Some veterans do. And the DOD and the VA do not offer many resources for vets in transition. There was a Rand report that said there really is limited support for veterans who want to pursue higher ed, while there are a lot of resources and nonprofits trying to help veterans get jobs. The last thing I think anyone wants is a veteran who is doing a job below their real potential. The scandal at Corinthian got a lot of coverage. The issue of some of America’s top, say, 100 schools, and the Ivy League not doing enough to actively recruit veterans less so. There’s a lot more that America’s top 100 schools can do for veterans, and many like our VetLink schools are taking a big step in that direction by actively working with us to recruit, source, identify and admit qualified veteran applicants. Veterans have to be academically qualified for these top 100 schools. Full stop. We also think schools could take a more holistic approach to veterans because right now the veteran perception is that getting into these top schools is unattainable and so uncertain. Schools can do more by leaning forward and taking a little bit more risk on student veteran applicants, meaning boosting enrollment and working with organizations in this space like us and Warrior Scholar Project to further attract veterans and educate them that they are  . These vets are often labeled ”nontraditional” students. And many are. Soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen and Coast Guard vets often come out of their service time with powerful and unique skill sets. Technical as well as leadership and organizational. Some of those are skills top schools should want in their undergraduates, no? Totally. It’s a win for the school. They get these veterans with leadership and who have this incredible experience who want to give back to their community and to the nation writ large. Yet many vets are still attracted to   colleges. Where is that disconnect, that cognitive dissonance coming from? If you’re a veteran, you’re 24 or 25 maybe and married with a kid and maybe another on the way. If you’re transitioning out you don’t have much time to think, ”What am I going to do 12 months from now?” You get out and you have barely a month to think about what’s next. The last thing you want is to go back to your hometown and be that veteran who doesn’t have a game plan. So you say, ”OK, I’m going to get a job or I’m going to go to school.” Most schools don’t have admission cycles to accept veterans. Whereas these   schools, it’s turnkey. It’s easy. They set it up that way. It’s smart of them. For some veterans it can be helpful. And many veterans don’t have that    mentality. And some   schools are preying on that time crunch? It’s not just Corinthian Colleges. I think focusing on   misses the wider context. There are others who can do more for veterans and veterans to do more for themselves to prepare themselves not to go to  . Other schools in their marketing need to make it clear veterans are welcomed and accepted. It’s also the VA and [Department of Defense] doing more. It’s the nonprofits doing more. That’s why Service to School and programs such as Warrior Scholar exist. You raise a good point. Many from the Pentagon to higher ed need to do more to come up with plans and programs to advocate and attract veterans. Totally. They need and can do more. As with every major social problem it’s not just one, simple solution: ”OK, we knock out the   schools what’s next?” For some veterans,   might be a good alternative. For some. I think it’s a very, very small minority. As you say, a   school might be the right fit for some veterans. Do you and would you at Service to School recommend that route? We have never endorsed or recommended an applicant to proceed with that route because we believe there are better alternatives. For example, if a veteran needs to beef up their academic credentials, then attending a community college is a great steppingstone that expands their academic horizons. Many of the veterans that we have placed into top undergrad schools have gone through a community college program. . .. For people staying in the military, though,   can be the easiest and most efficient way for people to get promoted in the military. The DOD, like other government agencies, doesn’t distinguish between Yale and University of Phoenix when checking off the degree box. But it is a rude awakening for some veterans when they later transition out and realize that they often don’t get academic credit for those   classes when they’re applying to nonprofit colleges, and that those   degrees often don’t count when applying to selective graduate schools. You’ve mentioned a lack of   role models for some service men and women. Aren’t officer leaders in the field across the services role models? I’m an officer. But I’ll be candid. It’s just a different mindset. For a junior officer who’s gone to West Point or an ROTC program, that transition to higher education is very easy. They’ve got their service academy network, role models, they’ve got a   path. But if you’re an E5 sergeant from the Marine Corps or Army transitioning out, there’s no model of, ”How do I make a successful switch?” There’s not a community, a program, a network to assist you with that transition. Compounding that is you’re probably the first person in your family applying to schools. What more, concretely, can the DOD, the VA and colleges do institutionally to help those enlisted men and women transition?  For the longest time the transition program for the military was centered on just getting them jobs. It really ignored the vast majority of veterans who were thinking of utilizing their GI Bill benefits. So providing more guidance and knowledge on how to make that transition is crucial: When you need to apply. What kind of credentials schools are looking for. How to package yourself as an applicant. Just a little bit of investment there, in the long run, will save taxpayer money. In terms of the schools, it’s outreach and getting them to be as aggressive as   schools are in telling them how good of a program they have. That’s part of what we do at Service to School. We partner with eight schools, some of the top schools in the nation, to help increase the number of veterans admitted. To society it looks very homogeneous: a veteran’s a veteran. But it’s very hard for admissions officers to pierce through that military veil. How do they efficiently, and at scale, reach out to veterans who are in Germany, Japan, the National Guard, Army Reserve, deployed veterans, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Navy, etc.? It’s a very fractured and heterogeneous demographic. And there’s also a different vocabulary and culture we come from. If schools did a better job of getting more vets into college, might it help lessen the  . 11 civilian military divide in America today?  That   divide is very real. It’s especially real in an academic setting. Some of it goes back to the Vietnam era when a lot of the top schools decided not to have ROTC programs there. There’s been a whole generation of veterans not at these campuses. Some colleges want to address that. And I think that would be great for the schools and for society."
"Dr. João Ricardo de Almeida is part of a team in Brazil that’s investigating the cases of microcephaly  —   brain damage in infants born to mothers who contracted Zika virus during their pregnancy. He’s examined dozens of brain scans, and he says that the scans are ”very scary to look at.” ”You see very profound abnormalities,” says the  . ”Usually it’s striking.” And they’re notably different than scans of other babies born with the birth defect. That’s one of the disturbing findings in a   study of the babies born with microcephaly. A team of doctors  —   from a   to an ophthalmologist  —   have taken a good look at dozens of affected infants. They’re conducting the study at Roberto Santos General Hospital in the city of Salvador in Bahia. One goal is to establish whether the Zika virus is in fact the cause of the thousands of cases of microcephaly in babies born since the fall. ”Of course the evidence is mounting but we need to prove,” says Dr. Antonio Raimundo de Almeida, director of the hospital, which is in the city of Salvador in the state of Bahia. (He is a cousin of the other Dr. de Almeida.) This week, 16 mothers and their microcephalic babies came to the hospital for a battery of tests. ”We do a full history, we do a blood test, everything,” hospital director de Almeida says. In the waiting room, the mothers cradle their infants, who all have the small cranium that is typical of microcephaly. Microcephaly itself is not a disease. It’s a condition caused by the failure of a fetus’s brain to develop in the mother’s womb. There can be a number of causes, including toxoplasmosis, cytomegalovirus, syphilis, rubella and genetic abnormalities. So first, the researchers need to rule out these causes out. In their research, the doctors have made some startling discoveries: There are some unique markers in the infants who have suspected cases of   microcephaly. In one of the rooms, Dr. Adriana Mattos examines    Barbara Antonia. Her mother, Ana Claudia Teixera, caught Zika when she was four months pregnant. Dr. Mattos flips the child so she’s lying on her chest. The doctor points out that in these   cases, the muscles in the upper body and neck are unusually stiff. And that’s very different from cases of microcephaly caused by other infections. Dr. João Ricardo de Almeida says the infants born to mothers who were infected in the first trimester seem to suffer the most brain damage. And that kind of damage also appears to be different than what you would see with microcephaly caused by other types of infections. ”Regarding Zika there seems to be some particular abnormalities that we do not see in [microcephaly cases caused by] toxoplasmosis or cytomegalovirus or rubella.” A normal brain has ridges like coral. The brains of these babies look ”like a smooth rock,” he says. He says the degree of brain damage he is seeing will probably mean that rehabilitation will be very difficult. ”They are not going to be functional,” he says of the babies he has examined. ”They’ll need care for the rest of their lives.” Dr. Albert Ko from Yale University has been collaborating with the study in Bahia. He says that while the cases of microcephaly are getting all the attention, the Zika virus could be having a wider range of effects on the development of a fetus. ”We are seeing cases in the hospital of children who have normal size heads but are having neurological lesions and eye lesions,” he says. ”And we are extremely concerned . .. this might suggest that [the microcephaly cases] are just the tip of the iceberg.” In other words, even children who appear normal may suffer from a range of developmental delays. So the deeper the investigation goes into this outbreak, the more worrying it becomes. Valdemar Geo contributed to this report."
"The spread of the Zika virus is raising concerns about the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which are only 189 days away. NPR’s Lourdes   reports that the International Olympic Committee is sending an advisory about the   virus to competitors. Here’s more from Lourdes: ”The IOC says it will send advice on how to deal with the Zika virus to all the national committees. . .. There is concern that the virus  —   which is spreading rapidly in the region and is possibly linked to brain damage in infants  —   could effect both athletes and visitors. . .. ”The government is also doing daily inspections of Olympic facilities here. This is only the latest bad news for the Games, which have already seen huge budget cuts because of the economic crisis in Brazil.” Rio de Janeiro’s mayor says there is no cause for concern. That’s because, as Lourdes reports, ”the games will be held in the cooler and drier winter months when the mosquito population is naturally lower.” And the IOC’s medical commission says, ”We remain confident that there will be a safe environment for successful and enjoyable Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero.” Reuters adds that: ”Some 10, 000 athletes will be competing at the Aug.   Games with tens of thousands more staff, officials and media attending the world’s biggest sporting event, apart from the hundreds of thousands of spectators and visitors in the Brazilian city. ” ’A plan has already been put in place for the Games venues in the   to and at Games time, which will see them inspected on a daily basis in order to ensure that any puddles of stagnant water  —   where the mosquitoes breed  —   are removed, therefore minimising the risk of athletes and visitors coming into contact with mosquitoes,’ the IOC said.” Ticket sales have been slow so far, and ”organizers are scaling back everywhere, cutting about $500 million in expenses to balance the operating budget of 7. 4 billion reals ($1. 85 billion),” the AP reported this month. The Zika virus, which has symptoms that are typically mild, may be linked to birth defects, including microcephaly. Researchers are trying to determine the extent that a major international event such as the Olympics could contribute to the spread of the virus. That’s because ”the virus can be carried in a person’s blood to a new country, then passed along to others by mosquito bites,” The New York Times reports. Visitors from the Northern Hemisphere will be returning to their home countries in the summer months, when mosquito populations are largest. ”There have been no discussions about canceling the games or moving them to another city because of Zika,” a spokesman for the Rio Olympics organizing committee tells the Times."
"This post was updated at 4:45 p. m. ET  Controversy grew on Friday over emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server she used while at the State Department, with the agency announcing several documents would be withheld because they had been deemed top secret. ”We can confirm that later today, as part of our monthly FOIA productions of former Secretary Clinton’s emails, the State Department will be denying in full seven email chains, found in 22 documents representing 37 pages. The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. ”These documents were not marked classified at the time they were sent.” Kirby reiterated that he would not comment on the content or subject of the blocked documents. The new revelations come at a particularly politically damaging time  —   just days before the Iowa caucuses on Monday, where the former secretary of state is neck and neck with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Clinton’s campaign responded that the new roadblock ”appears to be overclassification run amok” and that it will ”pursue all appropriate avenues to see that her emails are released in a manner consistent with her call last year.” ”After a process that has been dominated by bureaucratic infighting that has too often played out in public view, the loudest and leakiest participants in this interagency dispute have now prevailed in blocking any release of these emails. This flies in the face of the fact that these emails were unmarked at the time they were sent, and have been called ’innocuous’ by certain intelligence officials,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said. ”We understand that these emails were likely originated on the State Department’s unclassified system before they were ever shared with Secretary Clinton, and they have remained on the department’s unclassified system for years. And, in at least one case, the emails appear to involve information from a published news article.” Clinton told NPR’s Ari Shapiro last week that was the case in at least one instance, following an initial report that some of the emails had been marked top secret. ”As the State Department has confirmed, I never sent or received any material marked classified, and that hasn’t changed in all of these months,” Clinton maintained. ”This seems to me to be, you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign. It’s another leak.” An additional 18 emails, including eight distinct email chains, between Clinton and President Obama will also be withheld under executive privilege. They are not classified, Kirby said, and will eventually be released under the Presidential Records Act. The announcement of the top secret emails comes as the agency is already behind on its monthly production of emails. The State Department has already made public 43, 000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails, and 1, 000 more pages are supposed to come out Friday evening. In a   court filing this week, authorities said about 7, 000 more pages are not yet ready for release. ”State has moved diligently to process the documents and send them to the appropriate agencies for review, a process that was interrupted by the blizzard that struck Washington, D. C.,” the court filing said. That means at least one more Clinton email dump is coming, after primary voting is underway in several states. And Clinton also fighting multiple investigations into her decision to use a private email server as secretary of state. The FBI investigation into Clinton’s email has been underway for months now. And while the Justice Department and FBI have been keeping a close hold on information, the probe appears to involve whether any government secrets were compromised and how that came to happen. The inquiry involves not just Clinton, but some of her close aides who sent her messages. Clinton recently told reporters that she has not been interviewed by federal agents, but that is something that typically occurs near the end of an investigation. Republicans quickly seized on the revelation of the new top secret emails, saying they ”once again raise serious legal questions given the fact Hillary Clinton signed a legally binding agreement obligating her to protect classified material regardless of whether it was marked.” ”With even more emails on her secret server found to contain ’Top Secret’ information, Hillary Clinton has removed all doubt she cannot be trusted with the presidency,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. ”Hillary Clinton’s attempt to skirt government transparency laws by relying exclusively on an unsecure email server in her basement put our national security and diplomatic efforts at risk. And rather tell the American people the truth, Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and her friends in the Obama Administration have obfuscated and misled at every available opportunity. If this isn’t disqualifying I don’t know what is.” Earlier this week, Clinton told the Quad City Times that her use of a private email server had become a distraction. ”It was a mistake because who wants to put people through all of this?” Clinton said. ”I don’t want to go through it I don’t want to put a lot of my friends through it. So it was a mistake.” Clinton has said she never sent or received any messages marked classified. That FBI investigation is far from the only scrutiny the Clinton emails are getting. Reporters and conservative public interest groups have filed federal lawsuits to get copies of those messages. And Republicans are taking notice. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey  —   who served in the George W. Bush administration  —   published an   accusing Clinton of mishandling classified information, a violation of the law. Presidential candidate and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio brought up the issue Thursday at the Fox News Channel debate. ”Hillary Clinton is disqualified from being the commander in chief of the United States,” Rubio said. ”In fact one of her first acts as president may well be to pardon herself. That’s because Hillary Clinton stored classified information on her private server.” The email issue is on the agenda in Congress as well. Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who leads the Judiciary Committee, has sent two binders full of letters to Clinton, the State Department and the Justice Department. He wants to know what the FBI is doing, whether it is going to grant immunity from prosecution to the information technology aide who helped set up Clinton’s private server, and whether federal agents are investigating dealings between the State Department and donors to the Clinton foundation."
"Macklemore knows what you think of him. The Seattle rapper born Ben Haggerty told me that he spent the first few days following the release of his new song, ”White Privilege II,” reading the thinkpieces that greeted  —   or bemoaned  —   its arrival. And then he had to take a break, take Twitter off his phone. Not a surprise given the subject matter  —   or the fact that the song landed on the Internet exactly as a snowstorm bore down on the East Coast, giving ”White Privilege II” the feel of a storm of its own, to be handled with equal parts hype and snark. Before Macklemore arrived at NPR’s Washington, D. C. headquarters, we chose a smaller studio than we normally would for this conversation, because it felt like one we didn’t want to conduct across a large table. He introduced himself as Ben. He and Jamila Woods, a poet and singer from Chicago who sings the song’s final lines, each took their place at a microphone. We spent the next hour getting into how the song came to be, what it was like writing it, what they think of the response, how Macklemore has internalized some of the criticism he has earned in the years since his breakthrough album, The Heist, made him a pop star and how that affects his work. What aired on All Things Considered was a sliver of that discussion  —   so much so that we are posting this transcript of the longer conversation. It’s been edited for clarity and gets more deeply into many of the questions that have been raised by and about the song since its release  —   but also the concept of white privilege as it’s understood by Macklemore, who has been thinking, and rapping, about it for a decade. Audie Cornish: Ben, this is your second song on this subject. The first time you did a song called ”White Privilege,” in 2005, it was really from the position from within   as a fan, right? Talk a little bit about that. Ben  : Yeah. It was, at the time, an observation: I was observing the cultural shift of   music in terms of who was going to the shows, who was making the music, who was kind of at the forefront in terms of sales and in terms of touring. And I was observing it from a place of, ”This is very different from when I first started to attend   shows. This is very different than the music that I grew up listening to. It has changed drastically.” And I wrote the song from that perspective. And since then, we have seen the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the incidents that sparked it. ”White Privilege II” actually starts with someone joining a procession of marches, at what I assume is a Black Lives Matter protest. I don’t know if this is something you actually experienced? Haggerty: Yeah, it was. It was the night of the Darren Wilson  . We were in the office huddled around the computer screen, and I remember feeling extremely frustrated and angered, that feeling of ”How is this happening again?” and not really knowing what to do. I ended up driving to a meeting, [but] I sat down in the meeting and immediately felt this restless, ”I need to do something. I should go back.” I left the studio and drove by the police precinct, and there were people assembled outside. And where were you?  Haggerty: I was in Seattle. And it starts there. It starts with that moment of observing police brutality happening, again, with no accountability  —   and me stepping into a protest with a lot of baggage, feeling out of protest shape, when there’s this moment of injustice and I am feeling so compelled that I need to do something, yet also stepping into that space in my own head of, ”Should be here? Is there something that I’m going to get called out for, being here? Am I going to distract more than actually do any good by being present here?” And all of these questions that I had. Jamila, you were nodding there. I don’t know if you’ve been a part of these protests, where you are in Chicago. But is this an idea that you’ve ever considered  —   like, for a white person coming to this protest, how do they participate? What would be constructive? Jamila Woods: Yeah, I think hearing that verse was one of the most intriguing parts of the song to me. The protests I’ve attended, I’ve seen and experienced some tension between white activists, or even [just] white people attending protests, who don’t necessarily have a moment of introspection  —   who maybe are just taking up airtime, you know, destroying things or just doing things that are distracting from what the protest is actually for. To me, I feel like it’s an important thing not to just consider yourself an ally by showing up, but to really investigate what your role can be in a productive way. And that comes from authentically engaging with the people  —   the black people  —   who are leading the protest. Now, you guys didn’t really know each other before this, and having any kind of   discussion is hard for most people in their regular life. Jamila, when you were first invited to collaborate, what were your initial concerns? Woods: One of my initial concerns was understanding that the song was intended to reach the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis fan base  —   majority white audience. I don’t typically think about addressing a white audience with my work, and so, trying to think about an authentic way to engage in that and not have it come off as always people of color having the burden to explain issues of race to white people  —   I really kind of struggled with that at first. Ben, for you, what were some of your trepidations in jumping into a song like this and bringing in another voice? Haggerty: I don’t think I had any trepidations about bringing in another voice. I think it was imperative to have a sense of community, in terms of creating this song. But just to  —   I want to pull it away from this language, because I feel like we’re very academic right now. Jamila said something interesting here: She’s thinking of your fan base, which she’s describing as white. For you, was there a concern of, ”How do I talk about this? How do I bring in a person of color without turning them into a mascot? What am I doing here?” Haggerty: Absolutely. Well, I think it was . .. to start the song, I’m just going to start talking. It started with being silent, for a long time, around these issues  —   in a social setting, not wanting to mess up. And realizing that I can do a tweet, I can do an interview, but the greatest tool that I have as an artist is to make a song. That is where my platform extends the longest. So, in making a song about race, or about police brutality, or about white privilege or white supremacy or cultural appropriation, where do you start? And I wanted to start with me showing up at a protest in a place of fear, thinking about myself too much, not knowing if it was OK to say ”Black Lives Matter” at that exact moment. That’s where this record came from: ”How can I engage in this discussion knowing that I will benefit, knowing that this is   but [that] I still want to say something?” Inherently, the system in which the song operates is flawed. Inherently, my place in talking about this is going to have contradictions. How do I do this from an authentic place, knowing that it should be called out, knowing that it is never going to be perfect, but knowing that, at the end of the day, it’s more important for me to say something than to remain silent? OK, so you sit down to start to write. And from the opening of the song, people know they’re getting something different: slow saxophone, moaning in the background  —   you kind of took it there right away. There are critics of the song who are like, ”This song is not fun.” Was there ever a moment when you thought, ”I need a little sugar to make this medicine go down. I need to make this a ’Thrift Shop’ in order to sell this particular message”? Or was it more a sense of, ”You know what? Here we are.” Haggerty: No, no  —   purposefully, this song is uncomfortable. The music is uncomfortable. We approached this record like a play. I don’t think it was our intention to make it uncomfortable  —   I just don’t think that there was a space to start from where we were like, ”Yo, we’re trying to make this appeal to the masses. Let’s make this a      song and try to get it on the radio.” That was never the point. We wanted to make a play. We wanted to show different perspectives through the music, and have almost different acts. But if you’re trying to reach the widest audience, could that have been the call? There’s a part in the song where you describe a mother approaching you and saying, ”You’re the only   that I let my kids listen to.” Did you feel like you needed to reach that crowd? Haggerty: I don’t think that this subject matter is built for easy listening. Or accessibility, in terms of playback value. I think that that would be disingenuous to the content of the record if we tried to make some sparkly pop record out of a song about police brutality, that would have been  . Halfway through the song, Ben, you note the   argument that white pop stars borrow heavily from black artists  —   and you mention Elvis, Miley Cyrus and Iggy Azalea by name. I know that there has been a lot of    about that online do you regret using names? Has that distracted from the message? Haggerty: I think it has distracted from the message. We live in a world where things move very quickly on the Internet, and I watched the conversation shift from white privilege to, ”Did he dis Iggy Azalea?” I think it’s a lot easier and a lot more comfortable for mass media to grab onto something like a potential dis or someone calling somebody out, versus the issues that I was trying to get at in this record. And it’s a deflection. It’s a distraction. We should say, Iggy Azalea tweeted over the weekend that rap is global, that she makes  . And she was kind of dismissive of this argument that she had to essentially be an activist to work in the genre. What’s your response to that? I think there are probably rappers, black and white, who feel that way, to some extent  —   that they make pop. Woods: Yeah, I don’t think it’s necessary to call yourself an activist or to go to protests in order to be considered a part of  . But participating in   culture, you have to understand the history of   and how it was created as a way for people of color who were living in a disenfranchised community to have a voice and to really empower themselves. And so there’s a way in which, as a white artist in   in the system that’s created to have white people feel comfortable or relatable, there’s erasure of the history of what comes with  . So it’s not necessarily that you have to be an activist, but just to be mindful of the broader culture that   is and how to remain authentically engaged in that.   is also about talking about where you come from, and kind of being authentically you, and so I think that’s the most important thing. Ben, what’s your response to that idea? Haggerty: I think that Iggy Azalea, like myself, has used   to her benefit. And that is her right, and that is my right, to be able to make art that speaks to us. But it is important, as Jamila said, to understand the history, and to come from a point of view that is true to who you are. You don’t need to be an activist, but I do think that it is important to realize how whiteness operates in terms of pop culture: the immediate platform that we are given as white artists, whether it be on the radio, or with program directors, or people that are buying our music, or people that are coming to our shows. It is important to realize that we immediately have privilege in those spaces that people of color don’t have access to immediately, and to educate oneself about the systemic, the systemic reasons behind that. And that’s not to say that Iggy Azaela shouldn’t rap, or that I shouldn’t rap, but there’s a certain amount of accountability that I think is important if you are going to participate in the culture. You guys are very calm in this room, but the creative process is a journey. What were the moments of the song that you clashed, that you had to push back and say, well, look, I really want to get this particular phrase or message out? Woods: [The song is] kind of set up as a journey: It starts out with a lot of introspection and a lot about Ben, and kind of moves towards community and asking bigger questions about white supremacy and white privilege. In terms of the question of where would I sing, where would I write something and also what parts of the song were necessary, I had to kind of push back at points, wondering, ”Is it necessary to go through all of the internal thinking?” And I think what I came to understand through talking with Ben and Ryan was that there was a goal of not alienating listeners  —   so, trying to kind of be vulnerable and trying speak to feelings of discomfort or being unsure what white people might feel, and kind of using that as a way to get people. So you don’t just start out by saying ”white supremacy,” laying it all out, and then maybe losing people. But I think it’s funny, the question you’re asking is almost like a literal moment of a very   which is: ”Is this about you, Ben Haggerty? Like, where do I, the black voice, fall in this song about white privilege?” Were there moments where you really weren’t on the same page? Haggerty: I mean, it’s the creative process. I don’t think that there was one definitive [conflict] like, ”Oh we really beefed over this bar,” or something like that. I think that what we strived to do with this song is workshop it  —   have conversations around each bar, and everyone had a pen. I’d write stuff that would get scratched out. We would keep working until we felt good about where the piece was at. What’s the intention of the song, at the end of the day? Haggerty: The intention of the song, at the end of the day, is to start a conversation. And to utilize the platform that we have as artists, the reach that we have, to engage our audience in a conversation about race. One that can be uncomfortable, that comes with a lot of fear of not wanting to mess up, of not wanting to say the wrong thing, but just stepping into the space and learning. Woods: I think, for me, the intention was for listeners of the song to feel something, to feel moved by the end. That’s something I feel like you can’t really get all the time from reading an article or watching a video. At least for myself, looking at what’s happening, it’s a constant state of emotional distress and trauma and almost like a saturation, to the point where, in order to act, you have to kind of stop engaging. So, just trying to use that as an entry point to motivate people to action through an emotional sphere, versus a cerebral one. Haggerty: Can I say something? I’m just kind of having this thought and I don’t know if it’s fully formed it’s probably not. That’s the best kind. Haggerty: You know, in terms of the white rapper conversation  —   I think that there is this want or desire, as a white rapper, to just be classified as a rapper. Like, ”I don’t want to be a ’white rapper’  —   I’m a good rapper, period.” And this perspective from certain people of, like, ”Race shouldn’t matter I should just be judged on my raps and that should be the end of it.” And I think that that’s not the world that we live in. The fan base that I have access to, the resources, having equipment to record with in the first place  —   all of these things go back to the inherent privilege that I had because of the color of my skin. It’s really easy for white people in society to be like, ”We’re   we’re past that, we have a black president,” or, ”I have black friends,” or, you know, ”I’m a good rapper”  —   whatever it is, to discard the fact that race is a factor in my career, or in somebody else’s career. That’s a conversation that I see often, that race shouldn’t matter in this, but it completely does. And I think that it’s negligent for a white artist participating in this culture to say that their race doesn’t give them a certain set of advantages. I guess the question would be, then, is the best way to use your platform to do a song like this  —   which at the end of the day, people could interpret as more being about you  —   than to do something with your platform? Which would be to, say, have a label and bring on more artists of color, whom you think should be given a chance? Have you created another scenario where people can basically say, ”It’s all about you”? Haggerty: Right. Maybe. Maybe. I think that what is going to determine if this was all about me, or if this is bigger, is the conversations that come next, and highlighting other artists and using our resources and our fan base to shed light on not only people in the movement that are active and engaging in this   work, but also artists that might not have the same opportunities that I had. This song is a very preliminary step in what I am hoping will be lifelong work. And that’s personal accountability, and accountability to the community. That, to me, is what is going to determine whether or not this song is inevitably about me or something bigger. But, that’s one that I have to keep coming back to. And we were talking last night about not wanting to make this, like, a press run. Like the minute that this becomes, ”Oh, now I am the expert, and now I’m talking about Black Lives Matter,” or ”Now I’m the expert on white privilege.” . .. I am the complete opposite. I’m stepping into the conversation, I’m learning, I’m trying to read, I’m trying to engage. I’m going to make mistakes along the way, and I don’t want to be like, ”Let me hog up as much space as possible now that I’ve made this song.” That would be counterproductive. I think it’s speaking about the song, getting some of the intentions out, and then going back and creating a curriculum, figuring out how to get into a room with young people to have a discourse. The action is the next piece of this song."
"So. Macklemore. I suppose we have to talk about Macklemore. By now you’ve heard  —   or heard about  —   the white Seattle rapper’s   song ”White Privilege II,” about his tricky relationship with   and black protest movements. It’s typical Macklemore  —   earnest, more than a little hamfisted  —   and it’s terrain he’s trod in prior interviews and on 2005’s ”White Privilege.” (Sample lyric from the ’05 track: ”Where’s my place in a music that’s been taken by my race? ”) He is your woke  . My colleague Audie Cornish at NPR’s All Things Considered talked to Macklemore and Jamila Woods, a young black woman he collaborated with on the new song, on Wednesday. (You can check out their conversation on Friday’s broadcast.) I watched the interview and got the sense that the meta stuff surrounding that conversation was more fruitful ground for inquiry than the song itself  —   like, say the dynamics between the   white celebrity and the   black female singer brought in to lend her talents, her thoughts, and yeah, her blackness, to what will inevitably be seen as his project. Macklemore and Woods didn’t know each other before working together on the song, and they recalled to Cornish some pretty intense exchanges over the lyrics and the point of view. There’s no evidence of that heat or messiness in the resulting song, though. Ultimately, what you think about ”White Privilege II” will probably have as much to do with your already calcified opinion of Macklemore as it will with your thoughts about the song’s premise  —   that whiteness confers a constellation of both quantifiable and quieter advantages in American life. Macklemore knows that people think he’s part of the problem, and we know he knows, and he knows we know he knows, ad infinitum. That’s part of what’s tricky in engaging with this song, and what you pick up on hearing Macklemore talk about it. He’s at ease with the argot of social justice, which, like all jargon, can be obfuscatory and insulating. In the song and in interviews promoting it, he never ambles too far from his vetted set of talking points. But I came away from the interview with Cornish feeling like he’s genuinely trying to work all this stuff out while also gingerly avoiding landmines. Outside of the catharsis for Macklemore, though, it’s not clear just who the song is for. Assume that it was meant to convince the many people who reject the entire notion of white privilege. Is there any chance those people are going to sit down with a     song called ”White Privilege II”? Perhaps ”White Privilege II” is meant for young people who are just starting to try on these ideas about relative   for size, the kids who are coming to their political awakening in a   world. It’s not clear that a   treatise that works better as a thinkpiece than it does as a song is the best delivery mechanism for that, but it’s certainly not counterproductive. (But surely Macklemore was going for more than ”not counterproductive. ”) I’m not so sure Macklemore knows who this song is for, either. Prior to the song’s launch, his press people repeatedly reached out to me and a few other folks in ”the race space,” urging us to cover it. His PR folks felt a little thirsty for coverage  —   as is the wont of press flacks  —   but given the subject matter, it all seemed a bit short on  . Hey, black people who write about race stuff all day! Macklemore’s got some incisive thoughts on white privilege, and you’re gonna want to hear them! (Their entreaties came precariously close in tone to Macklemore’s infamous text to Kendrick Lamar after beating him out for a Grammy in 2013 his people really want you to get how much he Gets It.) It’s worth noting that Deray McKesson, one of the faces of the Black Lives Matter movement, has argued that this song does exactly what lots of people say they want more of in conversations about race  —   that is, it would be great if more white folks actively engaged in uncomfortable conversations about race with each other. McKesson’s note was ostensibly an endorsement, but it’s also an acknowledgement that this song is not really meant for people of color. That would seem to underscore Macklemore’s larger existential dilemma regarding his relationship to black audiences: He really seems to want to be talking to us, but he’s not saying anything we don’t already know."
"Schizophrenia might be linked to a gene that tells the immune system to destroy too many connections in the brain, according to the results from a massive   research effort. Scientists at Harvard University and the Broad Institute studied the genomes of 64, 785 people around the world and found that those with the debilitating psychiatric disease were much more likely to possess mutations of a common gene, according to the findings published this Wednesday in the journal Nature. People with schizophrenia  —   more than 21 million worldwide  —   tend to have less gray matter and fewer connections in their brain than healthy peers. But scientists aren’t sure why. The research, for the first time, suggests that variations in a gene called complement component 4, or C4, for short, could be important. The gene had previously been known to help the immune system target infections. A mutant form of the gene makes proteins that tag an excess number of brain synapses for destruction. This explanation meshes neatly with the tendency of schizophrenia to arise during adolescence, a period during which even healthy brains are busy pruning lots of connections. Today schizophrenia patients are treated with antipsychotics, which can help reduce some symptoms but don’t address the underlying disease or its related cognitive impairment. But the identification of a key genetic factor, may help the search for therapies. Of course, the path from a gene to an effective drug is long and not guaranteed. Neuroscientist Beth Stevens, one of the authors on the new paper, is an associate professor of neurology at Harvard and a 2015 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation ”genius grant.” I talked with Stevens about the work. Here are highlights from our conversation, edited for length and clarity. What has made the search for the causes of schizophrenia so challenging? We knew about the region for a long time based on   studies. But there are a lot of genes there, and no one gene had been identified as explaining this risk before. When [ ] Steve [McCarroll] came to me with preliminary data to support the genetic link with C4, I was very excited because my lab had been studying the role of other   proteins in brain development —  in particular synaptic pruning. We had made some progress in understanding what proteins do in normal development. And given that schizophrenia is thought to be a neurodevelopmental disorder, this is really exciting. With the evidence that there was some synaptic loss, it led to the hypothesis that maybe this genetic link could be related to pruning. We were also fortunate enough to bring in a third lab, Michael Carroll, who is an immunologist who has been studying C4. So to really make progress in a question like this, it takes that kind of an interdisciplinary approach. Is C4 involved in normal, healthy synapse pruning as well? We know it’s necessary for pruning the developing mouse brain. But we do not know [about its role in humans] like we know for the mouse. With the involvement of the immune system in this synapse pruning, could schizophrenia be classified as an autoimmune disease?  No, this is not autoimmune. What this is showing us is that a gene that happens to be an immune system gene is involved. The last decade has shown that there are a lot of   genes that are expressed in the normal healthy brain. They’re repurposed in the brain to do important things —  during development especially. And we have evidence that this is a gene and a pathway that is expressed in the brain and is playing a normal role in the brain. What do these findings suggest for new treatment possibilities for schizophrenia?  Understanding how this pathway normally works in the developing brain will give us new insights into developing therapies. You have to be able to manipulate things in a specific way, in the right place —  and that’s not an easy thing to do, especially during development. Are there drugs that could be applied or reworked to treat schizophrenia on this genetic level? Emerging work from my lab and others is suggesting that this pruning pathway may be a more general process that could lead to synaptic dysfunction and loss in other diseases. The hope is if we understand its role in schizophrenia, it could provide insights into other diseases. For example, in other neurodegenerative diseases there may be some common pathways. Do you think that some day, knowing about this aspect of schizophrenia, the disease could even be prevented?  There’s a clear need for biomarkers in schizophrenia and other diseases. You really want to catch them early and think about early treatments. We’re looking into ways to find biomarkers. That’s something that I think will make a huge impact. Katherine Harmon Courage is a contributing editor for Scientific American and a freelance journalist. Her next book, Cultured (Penguin Random House, 2016) is about the microbiome and diet. Follow her on Twitter: @KHCourage."
"Given the recent expression of anger about the lack of racial diversity in American cinema, it’s nice to be able to tell you about Jay Dockendorf’s very fine indie feature Naz  Maalik, in which the title characters are   teenage boys who also happen to be devout Muslims who also happen to be gay. That’s three outsider perspectives, which is a lot even for an indie. But the point is not representation for its own sake. The triple layer of alienation from mainstream culture makes for an excitingly fresh slant. Dockendorf isn’t black, but he wrote the script based on interviews with gay,   Muslims, and the movie has a layered,   texture. The first thing you’ll notice is that while Naz and Maalik have stable homes, they live much of their lives on the streets of Brooklyn. They buy lottery tickets in bulk and hawk them on sidewalks for a big  . They sell exotic fragrances. On the single day the movie takes place, they also sell colorful trading cards depicting Christian icons that Naz bought because he found them beautiful. It’s a public life, a life in the open. And the open is where they’re incredibly vulnerable. I don’t need to tell you that traditional Muslims condemn homosexuality, but Naz and Maalik steal kisses in alleys when they can. They’re young enough to get away with rolling around on the ground  —   what we used to call horseplay. They take long, winding walks through the park. Naz, played by Kerwin Johnson, Jr. wears a kufi cap  —   a religious prayer hat  —   and seems more thoughtful and political than the raw, impulsive Maalik, played by Curtiss Cook, Jr. He wrestles with the tension between his sexual identity, his faith and his family, but there’s an even more serious threat than family and community rejection. An undercover cop the teens encounter fingers them as suspicious to a roving FBI agent played by Annie Grier. The scenes in which she tails the boys, waylays them and grills them on their whereabouts aren’t particularly subtle, but they do make us feel  —   viscerally  —   the effect of so much intense scrutiny. Naz and Maalik are still kids, really, still unformed, and they don’t have what kids need most: to feel free to make choices. Dockendorf’s direction, though, is  : He finds the right balance between easy naturalism and something more heightened. The movie has spacious, kinetic cinematography by Jake McGee and offbeat editing by Andrew Hafitz. Their Brooklyn is a cauldron  —   full of ranters, homeless people, the poor and the affluent side by side. All these disparate cultures are difficult to reconcile, which adds to the excitement, the unpredictability of life, but also the jitteriness. At times the movie seems a little cautious, as if Dockendorf, an outsider to this community, didn’t want to be caught sensationalizing his characters’ lives. And though the actors are all good  —   especially Ashleigh Awusie as Naz’s disapproving younger sister  —   no one really breaks out. But there’s a strange,   rooftop climax that takes Naz  Maalik to a more surreal level  —   an attempt to kill a chicken for dinner that leads to something hilarious and then horrible. The movie ends on the downbeat, but you’re left with a feeling of empathy that is, in its way, exhilarating. Here is one more piece of the puzzle that is American life  —   a piece that has never made it to the screen before. You wonder how many others are missing."
"When Elizabeth Estes’s dog, Ollie, started coughing last year, she didn’t think he was seriously ill at first. But then the    Jack   mix got much worse. ”All of a sudden, he couldn’t breathe and he was coughing. It was so brutal,” says Estes, who lives in Chicago. ”The dog couldn’t breathe. I mean, could not breathe  —   just kept coughing and coughing and coughing and gasping for air.” Ollie, it turned out, had caught a strain of dog flu that’s relatively new to the U. S  —   canine influenza H3N2. The virus arrived from Korea last spring and has since caused flu outbreaks among dogs in 26 states throughout the nation. No cases of human infections with the virus have ever been recorded, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And H3N2 causes no symptoms or only mild illness in most dogs. But it is triggering some severe cases of canine pneumonia. The night Ollie got so sick, Estes spent the night on the floor of her steam shower with the dog, and rushed him to a veterinarian as soon as she could the next morning. ”They said, ’When you get to the front of the building, call us because you can’t bring the dog in through the lobby. You have to come in through the back door. It’s that contagious,’ ” she says. ”So I realized at that point: ’Wait a minute. This is something a little bit more serious than I thought it was.’ ” The vet rushed the dog into intensive care. ”I was petrified we were going to lose him, and pretty upset,” Estes says. After four days of intravenous fluids, help breathing and antibiotics to prevent complications, Ollie recovered. ”He’s perfectly fine now. But it was a scary and expensive endeavor  —   but mostly scary,” she says. Two different strains of dog flu are known to be circulating in the United States canine influenza H3N2 is believed to have first arrived about a year ago, where it triggered an outbreak of illness among pets in Chicago. The virus apparently was brought into the country through O’Hare International Airport by an infected dog from South Korea. ”Dogs, like people, move all around the world.” says Joseph Kinnarney, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association. H3N2 has since spread to probably thousands of dogs in a number of areas throughout the U. S, Kinnarney says. Most have no symptoms. There have been reports of cats also getting sick from the infection in Korea, but so far that hasn’t been reported in the United States. The virus seems to be spreading much more easily than H3N8, a canine flu strain that has been in the U. S. longer. One reason is that dogs infected with H3N2 remain contagious for about three weeks, even if they have no symptoms that’s about a week longer than usual. Also, Kinnarney says, because the strain is new to the continent, U. S. dogs lack immunity to it. Mild symptoms of the illness include a cough, loss of appetite and fatigue  —   these dogs recover on their own. Symptoms of severe illness  —   more likely in very old or very young dogs, or in dogs with other health problems  —   include high fevers, breathing problems and complications such as pneumonia. Dogs that spend time around other dogs are the most likely to catch it, Kinnarney says, so pets that spend most of their time at home and rarely interact with other dogs are at low risk. He recommends that dogs that frequently come in contact with other dogs get immunized  —   two vaccines against H3N2 became available late last fall. ”If your dog goes to doggy day care, if your dog goes to a dog park, if your dog is traveling with you, you should get the vaccine,” he says. ”It’s just not worth the risk.” The American Veterinary Medical Association gets funding for its educational meetings from companies that make the vaccines, but no specific products are promoted at those meetings, an association spokesperson says. Other virologists and veterinarians say many dogs probably don’t need the vaccine, especially animals that live where the virus is not circulating widely. You can check with your vet to see if there have been outbreaks in your area. ”You shouldn’t be any more worried [about this strain of dog flu] than any other upper respiratory infection,” says Ashley Gallagher, a veterinarian at the Friendship Heights Animal Hospital in Washington, D. C. ”It’s essentially just another   disease.” Though there’s no evidence so far that people can catch the virus from the dogs, there’s always a chance the virus could mutate and become even more of a threat to dogs, says Edward Dubovi, a veterinary virologist at Cornell University who is tracking the virus. Like any flu virus, ”it keeps changing,” Dubovi says."
"Consider these facts, culled from writings here: And then, there’s this tidbit, courtesy of Mark G. Thomas and his friends at University College London: It can be demonstrated that 5, 000 years ago everybody alive was either the common ancestor of everyone alive today, or the common ancestor of no one. Thomas captures the startling upshot of this fact: ”At this point in history we all share exactly the same set of ancestors.” What can we learn from this? This is a question I hope to explore with you in coming months. A couple of things seem reasonably clear. We care about family and we care about our family history. Millions of us watch Henry Louis Gates Jr. ’s Finding Your Roots on PBS with fascination. And when Jimmy Kimmel or Shonda Rhimes weeps in the face of information about the trials and accomplishments of      we get it. These stories matter. Here’s something else that’s pretty clear: These are potentially unsettling stories. I get why Ben Affleck didn’t want to the world to know that he descended from slaveholders. He didn’t want to know himself. How would you feel to learn that one of your parent’s parent’s parents had done something really bad? How should you feel? But the really interesting upshot of the facts mentioned above seems to be that family and family history are one thing, and   ancestry is another. You just can’t map these beautiful, defining, important family stories onto a DNA tree. The facts above seem to show that you literally can’t. DNA draws the boundaries in the wrong place. According to some estimates, after all, as recently as 3, 500 years ago a person lived who is the common genetic ancestor of everyone alive now. This is salutary. As a culture, we like simple solutions. And the idea that who, and what, we really are is written in the language of the genome, that it is inside us  —   and that we need only send away to have it decoded  —   is almost irresistible. But to judge by the example of Gates’ television show, the stories that matter, the ones that bring his guests and his viewers to tears, are sagas of marriage and migration, of childrearing, hard work and love. It is family that matters  —   and family is relationship, not DNA. Family is not to be found inside us. The DNA story is a good one, and no doubt important for certain purposes, e. g. medical. But when what we want to know is who we are, it won’t deliver the answers. This, at least, is Thomas’ view. He attacks the consumer DNA ancestry industry as peddling   stories and serving up ”genetic astrology.” For a detailed statement of his view, and a nice tutorial on genetics and ancestral analysis, listen to this lecture that he delivered last April at the genealogy enthusiasts conference Who Do You Think You Are Live in Birmingham, England. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Every year, millions of kids and teenagers die around the world, often from preventable and treatable conditions. It is a troubling statistic. But if you look beneath the surface numbers, you’ll find signs of hope, says Theo Vos, a professor of global health at the University of Washington in Seattle. Although progress is slow in some countries, he says, the data show rapid improvements in many others. ”I always fight with my public health colleagues because I have found they are eternal pessimists,” Vos says. ”They always like to talk about public health problems. Whereas, there are a whole lot of good news stories as well. The sorts of changes we’ve seen in child mortality are pretty spectacular.” Every year since 1990, in an effort funded mostly by the Gates Foundation, researchers have compiled a massive amount of mortality data from around the globe. Using sophisticated statistical techniques, they can then assess trends across time and place. (Note: The Gates Foundation is also a funder of NPR.) In one of the latest analyses of data on deaths and disability from more than 300 diseases in 188 countries in 2013, Vos and colleagues report this week in JAMA Pediatrics that deaths among young people up to age 19 totaled 7. 7 million. More than 80 percent of those were kids age 5 and younger. The report offers lots of details about what kills kids most and where. Among the findings: While all of that sounds depressing, Vos also found reason to be hopeful. In many places, including Bangladesh, China and Iran, rates of death among kids are dropping by as much as six percent per year. The biggest improvements, Vos says, show up in statistics for infectious diseases, like diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia. An intensive program in Zambia to provide drugs and bed nets, for example, led to declines in deaths from malaria. But when funding for that program dried up for a year and a half, rates of death increased rapidly. ”Those are the sort of anecdotes,” Vos says, ”where you say, ’Hey, this investment of resources is paying off. ’” Data can help guide policy changes, he says. In Rwanda, the minister of health noticed high rates of illness from air pollution in her country, then rolled out a program to distribute efficient cook stoves. Still, some places are not doing so well. In 2013, according to the report, 12 percent of the deaths from lower respiratory tract infections occurred in Nigeria, which also accounted for 38 percent of global deaths from malaria. A third of the world’s deaths from neonatal encephalopathy happened in India. Kids are particularly vulnerable to death in countries that are undergoing chronic civil unrest and political instability, wrote two Stanford University researchers in an accompanying editorial. But the commenters warned against putting too much trust in the numbers because reporting may be incomplete. They also stressed the importance of pushing for better accounting. ”There is something deeply troubling about a death that goes unnoticed,” they wrote."
"In 1928, Alexander Fleming, a British bacteriologist, escaped the London smog to take a family vacation in Suffolk. When he got back to his lab, he discovered he had forgotten to sterilize his petri dishes. They were covered with bacteria. A few even had mold. As he was cleaning up, Fleming noticed that there was a   ring around the mold colonies. He had just discovered penicillin, the makings of an antibiotic that would go on to save millions of lives. This is one of the most famous examples of serendipity in science  —   and we’re looking for modern examples. They don’t have to be as revolutionary as Fleming’s dirty dishes. They just need to demonstrate how mistakes, surprises and coincidences can turn into valuable insights in the mind of a curious scientist. So, submit your stories here! The deadline is Feb. 5. We’ll feature the top nominees, and one ( ) scientist will go home with a trophy  —   The Golden Mole Award for Accidental Brilliance. You can hear the explanation of the award’s rather odd name in this video."
"The Obama administration is proposing a new rule to address unequal pay practices by requiring companies with more than 100 employees to submit salary data by race, gender and ethnicity. The announcement comes seven years after President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act  —   his first piece of legislation as president  —   which makes it easier for women to challenge discriminatory pay in court. But a stubborn, substantial pay gap between men and women persists, and it affects black and Latina women the most, Obama said Friday as he introduced the proposal. The president said he would continue to work to reduce the gap as long as he was in office. ”Social change never happens overnight,” he said. ”It is a slog and there are times when you just have to chip away and chip away. . .. It’s reliant on all of us to keep pushing that boulder up the hill.” Collecting more data would assist in enforcing equal pay laws, the administration says, and ”provide better insight” into the gender pay gap across industries and occupations. The proposed pay data reporting requirement would cover more than 63 million employees, according to the administration. It’s expected to be finalized by September, with the first reports due in the fall of 2017. NPR’s Scott Horsley explained to our Newscast unit that the proposed rule is an expansion of both existing   laws and a previous equal pay proposition: ”The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission already collects data from big employers about the ethnic, racial and gender makeup of their workforce. Now, the EEOC wants employers to add pay information as well. . .. The proposed EEOC rule is more expansive than an earlier proposal that would have applied only to federal contractors.” Obama is also once again calling for Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would protect women from retaliation when they seek equal pay. Democrats have repeatedly introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act during the current administration, but it has always been defeated. The White House also called for states and employers to take action on their own to promote equal pay. Last year, for instance, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed an equal pay law that puts the burden of proof on an employer to prove a wage gap between a male and female employee is justified by seniority or merit. It requires companies to pay the same rate for ”substantially similar” work, such as janitorial work and housekeeping. In repeating the call for equal pay, the White House noted that the median wage of   female workers in America is 79 percent of a man’s median earnings. That’s a slight bump up from the      statistic, based on older numbers, that the White House has often alluded to before. The comparison of median earnings is sometimes criticized as a crude metric for the gender pay gap. Economists have found that if you control for a host of factors, the pay gap is smaller  —   but persistent. The gap varies widely based on a woman’s age and her race. It also shifts depending which industry you look at. Requiring large employers to report their pay data, the administration argues, would allow ”better insight” into exactly how the pay gap is influenced by industry and occupation. Lilly Ledbetter, the namesake of the law signed seven years ago, introduced Obama on Friday and praised him for ”not resting on his Ledbetter laurels.” Ledbetter sued her employer, Goodyear, over the difference between her pay and her male colleagues’ pay. ”Almost two decades into my Goodyear career, I learned from an anonymous note that I had been earning thousands of dollars less than my male   who were doing the same job as me,” she said Friday. ”Nobody wants to be the poster child for unequal pay for equal work, but spurred on by that note, that’s exactly what happened to me,” she said. Her suit against Goodyear made it all the way to the Supreme Court  —   where it was rejected because she didn’t report the discrimination when it began, even though she didn’t know about the disparity when it started. That was the impetus for the law that bears her name, which allows employees receiving unfair pay more time to bring a lawsuit. ”I may have lost my personal battle, but I will not lose this war,” Ledbetter said Friday."
"Pop Culture Happy Hour entered this week juggling a couple of problems. For one, a gigantic blizzard had just dumped roughly two feet of snow on the D. C. area, making transportation virtually impossible and, it turns out, stranding Glen Weldon in a Virginia cabin for much of the week. Getting the gang together would be no easy task. Then there’s the matter of a little backlog we’d had lying around, in the form of two Linda Holmes interviews  —   one onstage with Fred Armisen at our live Halloween show, and one a few nights later at D. C.’s Sixth  I synagogue, where she’d interviewed two of the the brains behind the podcast Welcome To Night Vale back in November. You can probably guess where this is going: Two birds, one stone, etc. etc. So this week’s episode starts with Linda talking to Armisen onstage at D. C.’s Howard Theater. Given how prolific Armisen has been in recent years, they can’t possibly get to everything, but they do cover quite a bit, from Documentary Now! to Armisen’s work as Seth Meyers’ bandleader to saying yes to as many things as possible. Then Linda joins Welcome To Night Vale creators Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor  —   at one of their events, not one of ours  —   to discuss their show’s concept, continuity, origins, themes, success, plans, process and place in the world of podcasting. Along the way, they dispense a few recommendations (for this podcast, and this one, and this one, and this one, as well as the Charles   episodes of this one). Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: the show, Linda, me, Glen, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus Mike."
"Farm workers in two of the nation’s most important agricultural counties joined other   food sector workers on Wednesday, demanding better wages with a new Bill of Rights. The thrust of the bill, which is aimed at workers in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in California, is to establish a ”rule of law” in the fields, observers say. ”There are rampant violations of farm workers rights in agriculture,” says Bruce Goldstein, executive director of Farmworker Justice, a national advocacy group supporting the effort. ”A lot of this is that a lot of employers feel like it’s not likely they’re going to get caught [breaking laws] and that if they get caught the cost is not that much  —  so they might as well take the risk.” That’s particularly true because so many farm workers  —   an estimated 40 to 50 percent  —   are undocumented. Many are afraid that if they report labor abuse they’ll be deported, says Goldstein. More than 80 groups back the list of demands in the bill, says Lucas Zucker, policy director for Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, one of the groups leading the charge. The movement has garnered support from the United Farm Workers, Planned Parenthood and Maria Echaveste, who formerly headed up the federal Department of Labor’s wage and hour division. The bill’s organizers say they’ve been inspired by watching other   workers, particularly those in the food industry, make gains. Major cities like San Francisco and New York have passed ordinances raising wages to $15 an hour. Meanwhile, restaurateur Danny Meyer in New York has banned tipping in part to stabilize restaurant wages. ”There have been lots of kind of explosions of the last couple years of cities trying to move minimum wages, maternity leave, wage theft ordinances,” says Zucker. ”But that’s really been concentrated in urban areas. There’s been essentially nothing like this in a rural areas. We think this can set precedent for other counties to set stronger labor conditions for farm workers.” The two counties the bill of rights would affect, Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, are immediately north of Los Angeles. Combined, they are home to roughly 40, 000 farm workers or roughly 1 in every 10 farm workers in the state. And because the U. S. holds roughly 1 million farm workers total, a bill of rights in those counties would cover about 4 percent of all farm workers in the country, organizers say. Many of the bill’s items  —   which are grouped into wage theft, safety and health, and overwork  —   simply demand that existing laws be enforced, like respecting required rest breaks and penalizing employers who steal wages. It also calls for educating farm workers on their rights and establishing a complaint hotline. But a few items are arguably more ambitious, such as a request to hold jobs for pregnant women who choose to avoid pesticide exposure by not working in fields and technical assistance for growers to reduce dependency on dangerous pesticides. The bill also calls for the creation of a position in local government to address extensive sexual harassment and violence against women in the fields. Though framed as a bill of rights, the organizers will need to shore up   political support for the enforcement efforts, government funding and new public offices. Zucker says his group hopes to gain traction on the bill quickly, and get some of the demands written into county ordinances before the end of the year. If farm workers can catch the momentum created by other efforts to improve working conditions, says Goldstein, they can set the stage for bigger changes down the road. ”There’s a lot of gridlock in Congress on many labor and immigration and occupational safety and health issues,” says Goldstein. But local initiatives are often more progressive than federal ones. And when those initiatives succeed locally, he says, ”changes at the local and state levels can bubble up to the national level.” Tracie McMillan is the author of The American Way of Eating, a New York Timesbestseller, and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. You can follow her on Twitter @tmmcmillan."
"Defense Secretary Ash Carter says he’s hoping this year to drive the Islamic State out of the two largest and most important cities in its   caliphate, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. In an interview with NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep, Carter offered a broad assessment of U. S. military operations, saying the U. S. was winding down in Afghanistan, while looking to step up the tempo in Syria and Iraq. ”In Syria and Iraq, we’re looking to do more because we need to accelerate the defeat of ISIL,” Carter said in reference to the Islamic State. ”The president has instructed us to do that and has indicated that he’s willing to consider proposals to do more and we’ve given him proposals to do more and he’s granted every proposal we’ve asked.” Carter did not provide specifics, though the U. S. effort has centered almost entirely on an air campaign against the Islamic State since it was launched in the summer of 2014. While the extremist group has lost some ground in both Syria and Iraq, it remains in firm control of Raqqa, in north central Syria, which effectively serves as its headquarters, and Mosul, in northern Iraq, that country’s second largest city. The Islamic State says ”they have the state established in Syria and Iraq,” Carter said. ”That’s why it’s so important for us to take Raqqa away from ISIL and restore it to the people who live there, and to take Mosul in Iraq.” Driving ISIL out would have great significance ”so it’s plain to all there’s not going to be a country called the Islamic State with that kind of ideology, and that’s the first step toward defeating them worldwide,” Carter said. Asked if he wanted to do this in 2016, Carter said: ”We certainly want to do that and we’re formulating our plans and gathering capabilities in order to do that. We want to retake Raqqa, retake Mosul, and destroy ISIL in Iraq and Syria as soon as possible.” With the U. S. in its 15th year of war, and with the Obama administration in its final year, Carter was asked whether he would be handing over to his successor a country in a permanent state of war. Carter said: ”With respect to Afghanistan . .. we’re winding down our involvement there and successfully transferring security to the Afghan security forces. We obviously have enormous work to do in Syria and Iraq. Is there any shortage of challenges in the future? No, but we’re up to it and basically optimistic about our security future. I think it means a state of permanent vigilance, at a minimum, and that’s why we need to keep our force at the cutting edge and we continue to have real challenges ahead, Syria and Iraq and ISIL being just one of them.” You can hear the full interview at the audio link at the top of this page."
"Andy Goodling met his boyfriend, Bryan, at college in Pennsylvania. Six years ago, they started dating  —   but for years, they kept their relationship hidden. ”Bryan was my best friend, but we were both very much in the closet,” Goodling tells his father, Scott, on a recent visit with StoryCorps. ”You know, we knew who we were. We just didn’t want to actually say it.” Indoors, at Goodling’s house, they were boyfriends. They would spend time together in private, express their love for one another  —   then, when they stepped back into public, they’d put their hats back on and assume a familiar act, ”trying to be straight,” Goodling says. He even changed Bryan’s name in his phone to a woman’s name, just in case someone happened to be looking over his shoulder when he received a text. ”Any possible way to show that I wasn’t gay I would do it.” Goodling says they’d decided finally to tell their families about the relationship while on a trip to Florida. When they said goodbye to each other at the airport, Goodling was so nervous he was scared to hug and kiss Bryan, for fear of someone seeing them. It was the last time Goodling saw Bryan. In April 2014, Bryan died suddenly from pneumonia. And Goodling was left with the lingering memory of that abrupt farewell. ”I will always be upset that I couldn’t have said a proper goodbye,” Goodling says. Still, he summoned the courage to tell his father about their relationship. ”You called me roughly 3 p. m. and I knew immediately from your tone of voice, something was really wrong,” his father, Scott, recalls. The elder Goodling listened as his son explained that Bryan wasn’t just a friend, that Bryan had been his boyfriend for four years. Even now, it remains something Goodling feels uncomfortable admitting to his father. ”I’m afraid of disappointing you,” he tells his dad. ”I’m afraid it doesn’t fulfill the life that you probably intended for me to have. And I also didn’t want to change our relationship.” His father’s response? ”I’ve never had any of those thoughts about planning a life for you,” he tells his son. ”Whatever it means for you to be happy, that’s all I care. I told you, right after Bryan died, anybody that’s that important to you is that important to me.” At Bryan’s funeral, his cousins approached some of the girls both he and Goodling knew. They asked around, trying to find out which of them was Bryan’s girlfriend. All the while, Goodling stood by and watched. ”This is not the time to say it,” Goodling recalls thinking to himself at the time, ”but you really don’t know who Bryan was.” Partly to help with that, to draw back the curtain Bryan had kept over his secrets, Goodling says he wrote Bryan’s parents a letter  —   ”because I think they should know that he was loved and that he was in love.” They haven’t responded. And while Goodling harbors hopes, he says he doesn’t know if they ever will. ”But I want them to know that Bryan was my everything,” he says. ”And we had an amazing future planned.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Von Diaz.  StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"I’m comfortable to talk about anything, Bob Woodruff says. I’m lucky to be alive. In January 2006, Woodruff stood on the precipice of stardom as the new   together with Elizabeth Vargas, of ABC’s World News Tonight, the heir in many ways to the legendary globetrotting anchor Peter Jennings, who had died of cancer the previous summer. Woodruff had brought viewers stories from the ”hermit kingdom” of North Korea and from conflict zones including the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. In that first month as   it made sense for him to venture once more to Iraq. ”I never wanted to sit at that desk and be trapped there in any way. Peter Jennings was just, you know, a hero to many of us,” Woodruff said in an interview. ”And he really loved to be out in the field. In many ways that’s what I wanted to do.” Everything changed in a blast and a flash for Woodruff near Taji, north of Baghdad, a decade ago today. He was struck by a roadside bomb lobbed at the Iraqi armored vehicle he was traveling in, casting his survival in doubt. After   care at military hospitals in Iraq, Germany and the U. S. he would beat even steeper odds to return as a reporter after a long and wrenching recovery. But even then, Woodruff knew he could never anchor again, never quite reach those lofty heights. ”I do think about that every once in awhile. I certainly did back then,” Woodruff tells NPR in an interview. ”People fight to get back what they [had] and they have anger” when they fail to attain it, he said. ”There’s no secret I had the same,” he said. ”In that sense, that’s why I relate so well to those who’ve been wounded in the wars.” Vargas would last only a few months in the new   role, ultimately assigned to host the news magazine   once more. What could be a grim anniversary of a dark period is celebrated instead by Woodruff’s family, colleagues and friends as his 10th ”alive day”  —   a recognition that he has cheated death. For some of the nation’s most prominent broadcast journalists, Iraq served as a defining period. Richard Engel made a name for himself with daring coverage, first for ABC and then for NBC. NBC’s David Bloom lost his life, killed by a pulmonary embolism suffered while traveling in an armored vehicle with the U. S. Army. Brian Williams sabotaged his career by exaggerating the risks he faced there. And then there’s Woodruff, who rerouted his life’s path and found meaning along the way. A Lawyer Turned Journalist, Journalism had been an accidental calling for Woodruff. Bored by corporate law, Woodruff took a leave as a young associate at a nationally renowned law firm to teach in Beijing in 1989. He served as an interpreter for Dan Rather and the late Bob Simon of CBS News during the Tiananmen Square crackdown. The seed was planted. With the support of his wife, Lee, Woodruff took jobs in local TV news. That led to a job with ABC in the   covering the Justice Department. But he itched to head abroad. ”Bob was the first one wanting to be out on the front lines of any breaking news story,” said David Westin, who became president of ABC News in 1997. ”That was his first instinct.” Woodruff says he was dismissive of any risks he might be taking, at worst thinking he might be shot in the hand or break a foot. He says his denial matched that of the soldiers he was covering: Someone else might get badly hurt, but not them. Woodruff and an ABC team traveled with a U. S. Army unit. Along with cameraman Doug Vogt, Woodruff clambered into the back of an Iraqi armored vehicle. They soon decided to tape a report standing up out of a top hatch to show viewers their surroundings. The first attempt was too noisy for him to be heard. Woodruff tried again, only to be warned by the Iraqi driver to get back inside. A few seconds later, Woodruff was later told, an IED explosion went off to the left of the tank. ”Metal and sand and pebbles and rocks all shattered the left part of my face and my jaw,” Woodruff recounts. ”Some of these little rocks went all the way through my neck  —   past the veins and the arteries  —   and ended up in the artery on the right side of my neck. [They] went past the esophagus, the trachea and didn’t actually kill me.” Vogt was out of danger relatively quickly, but a series of near miracles had to occur for Woodruff to live. Soldiers and others scrambled to help despite the threat from insurgents. An interpreter pressed his hand over Woodruff’s neck to quell the bleeding. Later on, military surgeons had to remove a chunk of skull to accommodate his swelling brain. Within a few days, Woodruff says, he was back stateside, receiving expert care while in a medically induced coma that lasted five weeks. Colleagues, including Westin and   reporter Martha Raddatz, swung into action to monitor Woodruff’s care in military hands and ensure its quality. Was that story worth all the risk? ”I asked myself that  —   starting on that Sunday,” says former ABC News President David Westin, now an anchor for Bloomberg TV. ”I had said repeatedly, ’No story is worth dying for.’ ” But Westin says in retrospect he may have been a bit flip about that. ”I said that to mean, ’Let’s be careful. Let’s use some judgment. Let’s not be rash,’ ” Westin says. ”Because if no story truly is worth dying for, I should have kept him back in New York.” Westin concluded the shifts in Iraq needed to be covered  —   with care and caution. An Incomplete Recovery, When Woodruff awoke he embarked upon a long course of physical and cognitive therapy. Among other things, Woodruff says, he suffered from aphasia, caused by the damage to the left lobe of his brain. Woodruff says he found it harder to find the right words. ”You know, I can always make my points, there’s no question about it,” Woodruff says. ”Sometimes it’s names that are really hard for me to remember, because there’s only one of them. There’s no synonym for a name.” The University of Michigan law graduate pegs his mental capacity at about 90 percent of what it once was. Woodruff says he could not have anchored nor covered a presidential campaign, the meat and potatoes of a network reporter’s life. Yet his passion for reporting persisted. With the support of his wife and his colleagues, Woodruff sought to return to the air. A year after nearly dying, Bob Woodruff returned to the air to cover severely wounded veterans. Under tightly controlled conditions, he even went back once to Iraq, accompanying Adm. Michael Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Woodruff also undertook   projects with other outlets, including the Discovery Channel and PBS. He provided a special focus on the care troops receive as they return home. While he was recuperating at what was then the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Woodruff’s wife Lee learned that many families of severely wounded troops could not afford to take time off from jobs to be with them during extended recoveries. Together they set up the Bob Woodruff Foundation, built in part on a yearly concert, called ”Stand Up for Heroes,” with performers such as John Oliver and Bruce Springsteen. The foundation has given away more than $30 million in grants for programs aiding service members and their families. (A foundation spokesman says it gave away 87 percent of the money it received last year and public tax records show grants of more than $3 million annually.) Last year, Woodruff returned to China as ABC’s new Beijing correspondent. He’ll spend six months or so in Asia a year, and the rest at home in the U. S. Among his stories: a piece on the country’s epic pollution, a   interview with Defense Secretary Ash Carter on U. S. policy in Asia and a deep dive into the brutal treatment of the Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar. It may take him a little more effort than the typical reporter to turn a story. He’s OK with that. Woodruff says the lessons he shares with wounded troops apply to him, too. ”You’ve got to at some point just stop dreaming of being exactly the way that you were,” Woodruff says. ”A lot of moments in your life  —   or things that you’re doing in your life  —   will be better than they were before. The work that we’ve done with our foundation. I think, is the most satisfying, fulfilling thing I’ve ever done in my life.”"
"Nine months ago, the only way into Tikrit was to roll along dirt roads recently cleared of ISIS explosives. You also had to avoid celebratory gunfire as Iraqi security forces and their allies wildly announced their victory over the extremist group. The city, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, was deserted at the time. After months of ISIS occupation followed by heavy fighting, houses were shattered, public buildings were burned and there was no electricity or water. Informal Shiite forces, who had fought alongside the Iraqi army, hoisted their flags in the city center, just a smidgen higher than the Iraqi flag. It was an open question whether Sunni Muslims, who accounted for the vast majority of the city’s population, would be willing or able to come home. In several places in Iraq, Shiite forces known as the Popular Mobilization had helped oust the Sunni fighters of ISIS. And in each place there were reports of mass destruction, and of Shiite fighters preventing Sunnis from returning to their homes. But on a recent visit, it seemed Tikrit had confounded expectations. The city center is bustling with life. A central market is full of food and clothes, with families shopping busily. The signs of war are everywhere  —   one shop had a row of shirts hanging up from a charred beam. Residents say there’s now some electricity and water, some schools are open and the security is, by Iraqi standards, decent. ”As long as the Iraqi security forces are here, I feel safe,” says Masoud   a pharmacist whose shelves were neatly stacked with perfumes and soaps. The flags of the Shiite groups, with their red, yellow and green symbols and slogans, are still all over the city, though. And the Shiite forces still control a huge palace compound that dates to Saddam Hussein’s time. The former Iraqi dictator was from Tikrit and bestowed favors on his city before he was ousted in 2003.   Cooperation, Sheikh Jassim   the head of the provincial council’s security committee, is Sunni. Like many Sunnis in Iraq, he fought against the Sunni extremists of ISIS and he says he was glad to have the help of the Shiite fighters of the Popular Mobilization, a movement that began in 2014 as a volunteer force when Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali   called for resistance against ISIS. ”There are many people living in Tikrit now,” Jabara says proudly, ”and life is better than it was before ISIS came.” Estimates on the number of returnees vary from about 70 percent to as much as 90 percent of Tikrit’s inhabitants, who numbered more than 200, 000 before the fighting began. Jabara says the Shiite forces have helped bolster local Sunni forces that now number in the thousands. The presence of this Sunni force is designed to reassure people that they won’t be targeted for their sect. And, he says, ”of course, [the Shiite forces] won’t be here forever.” He acknowledges there have been a few problems with the Shiite forces, but says they are relatively rare. ”You can count them on your fingers,” he says. After the city was retaken, rights groups and residents accused some of the Shiite groups of abducting young men and looting houses. Signs Of Friction, Off the record, several residents and provincial officials say there are occasional instances of kidnapping and theft. Some people suspected of collaborating with ISIS while the group occupied Tikrit, or having family members who did, aren’t allowed back to their homes. There are other worrying signs that the reconciliation between Iraq’s Sunni minority and Shiite majority remains elusive. In Salahaddin, the province of which Tikrit is the capital, officials say there are about 120, 000 Sunnis not allowed back to the Shiite areas where their homes are. There’s an elaborate, though not yet complete plan for tribal compensation to those who lost families and property when ISIS was in control. However, it would only benefit Shiite tribes, although many Sunnis were targeted by ISIS too. Moeen   a leader of the Badr organization, one of the largest of the Shiite Popular Mobilization forces, said his men are needed in Tikrit. He said their role is not just to retake cities from ISIS, but to hold them too. Iraqi government reports found the weakness of the Iraqi army was in large part responsible for the huge gains ISIS made in 2014. ”The Iraqi army cannot hold the ground,” Kadhimi said in an interview in Baghdad. ”We are afraid that if we leave, the army might retreat as they have before, and ISIS could come back.” He added that the presidential compound in Tikrit was used as a mass grave for some of more than 1, 500 military cadets killed by ISIS at the Speicher Air Base in June 2014. A survivor of that event previously told NPR that some local people participated in the killing, and that only Shiites were killed. The event is seared into the memory of Iraq’s Shiites. ”We need to protect the site as a crime scene investigation,” said Kadhimi. ”Because of the size of the tragedy, we will not let it go.” The U. S. has condemned several of the Shiite groups. Some, like Kataib Hezbollah, are even classified as terrorists. They are backed by Iran. The head of the provincial council of Salahaddin, Ahmed al Kareem, a Sunni, is pragmatic, rather than thrilled, about the presence of Shiite fighters in Tikrit. He says they were needed to get rid of ISIS. He even suggests that if the U. S. didn’t want the   forces to gain ground, there should have been stronger American involvement in the fight against ISIS. ”The coalition forces were not serious in helping us liberate our cities,” he said. ”So it opened the gap for Iranian interference in Iraq.” When he sees advisers from Iran on the battlefield, he shakes their hands, because they’re fighting against ISIS and that means his people can go home."
"In the winter of 1987, music producer Todd Lockwood was on the lookout for a hot new project to grow his label. Lockwood owned the White Crow recording studio in Burlington, Vt.  —   and he didn’t have to look far to find his bold idea. That idea? Get Bernie Sanders  —   then the longtime mayor of Burlington  —   into the studio to record a few of his favorite songs. ”We had this intriguing mayor, a guy who was absolutely on a mission with everything he did,” Lockwood recalls. ”He was charismatic and had a powerful public image. But people didn’t really know that much about what his personal life was like. So I thought, well, here’s an opportunity to see the man behind the curtain.” The result ultimately became We Shall Overcome, the Bernie Sanders folk album. But it all started with a letter to the mayor, and a meeting face to face. ”The very first thing he said when I sat down in his office was, ’I have to admit to you, right up front, that this appeals to my ego’  —   and we both laughed,” Lockwood says. ”I mean, that was a pretty honest thing to say, under the circumstances.” Once Sanders was on board, the next step was to figure out what this thing would sound like. Just a few years before that, Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie had brought together a vast cast of musicians for We Are the World. The album’s only single, under the same title, had recently gone multiplatinum. That album made for easy inspiration for Lockwood  —   with one big exception. ”Where Michael had a roomful of superstars, we were going to have a roomful of Vermonters,” Lockwood says. He enlisted 30 singers and musicians to help flesh out Sanders’ handpicked list. But when he finally got Sanders behind the microphone, Lockwood noticed he had a problem. ”I realized pretty early on that Bernie is not a singer. That became pretty apparent right off the bat,” he says. ”You know, there are certain tricks you can do to correct people’s pitch being off and stuff, but I was going, ’This is not really the road we want to go down.’ ” So, they decided to take a different tack: a ”  approach,” which Lockwood says suited Sanders better. Sanders himself, however, isn’t so sure. ”If people are thinking of voting for me for my musical capabilities  —   not the right reason,” Sanders told NBC’s Lester Holt earlier this week. ”I have other attributes. Carrying a tune is not one of them.” Lockwood is more optimistic about the presidential candidate’s music career. ”This is someone who absolutely believes, with all of his heart, in what he’s saying,” he says. ”I fully expect that if he becomes president, we will see a gold or platinum record hanging on the wall.”"
"Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump lead narrowly just two days before the Iowa caucuses in the final Des Moines   poll, considered the ”gold standard” of Iowa polling. But Clinton’s   lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is within the margin of error. Trump leads Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by 5 points, but pollster J. Ann Selzer noted that if evangelicals turn out in similar percentages to years past, Trump’s lead shrinks to 1, though he still leads. What’s more, Trump appears to have very little room for growth. While he gets 28 percent for first place overall, just 7 percent say he’s their second choice. Cruz, on the other hand, gets 23 percent overall, and an additional 17 percent say he’s their second choice. It could also be interpreted as good news for someone like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. He comes in third currently with 15 percent, but he pops in the   question. He leads as the top   pick with 20 percent. But Des Moines Register political reporter Jennifer Jacobs pointed out that Rubio’s support declined on each day of polling  —   not a good sign. There is, however, good reason for Trump’s lead in this poll. He beat his rivals on several leadership questions and, notably:  —   35 percent said he can win general election, and,  —   50 percent said he’s the candidate other countries would most fear, The GOP race is still very fluid with 45 percent saying they are persuadable. All that points to a very close caucus night on both sides with a lot more change possible for Republicans. On the Democratic side, there are two good signs for Clinton:  —   One, 83 percent of Clinton supporters say their minds are made up, while 69 percent of Sanders supporters say so,  —   Two, as compared to 2008, there are fewer   caucusgoers. Just 34 percent in this poll said this would be their first Democratic caucus, as compared to 60 percent who said so in 2008. Still, as noted above, the Democratic race is a    race. And there are a couple of reasons for that:  —   Sanders’ message has been resonating. That is evidenced by his    percent lead on the question of who most cares about people like you,  —   And there’s a big generational divide. Sanders has whopping leads with voters under 45, including women under 45, while Clinton leads big with older women. The poll was conducted from Jan 26 to 29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent."
"At least 37 migrants have drowned after a ship sank in the Aegean Sea on the way to Greece, the Turkish Coast Guard says. The coast guard was able to save 75 people and continues to look for more survivors. At least 10 children were among the dead, including four toddlers or infants, The Associated Press reports. The victims were mostly Syrians. ”The Turkish coast guard said three ships, a helicopter and team of divers were searching the partially submerged craft and surrounding seas for more bodies as police on shore placed bodies, among them at least five children, in black bags,” the AP writes. ”Journalists at the scene tried to interview some of the 75 survivors, but police took them away in buses, some bound for a local hospital to be treated for hypothermia and other injuries, others into police custody for questioning.” Photos of the scene show the bodies of young children and at least one woman lying on the rocky shore of the coastline, partially covered by life jackets, as other corpses are carried away in body bags. The deputy governor for Turkey’s Canakkale province, Saim Eskioglu, told   that officials believe there may be more bodies inside the submerged boat, the AP reports. The   boat, packed with more than 100 migrants, ”hit rocks shortly after it left the coast and, unfortunately, it sank,” the deputy governor said, according to the AP. The boat was headed from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos, just a few miles away, on a day with mild weather. More than 250 migrants have drowned so far this month attempting the passage to Greece, the AP reports."
"For decades, Diane Rehm has hosted her own daily talk show. The Peabody Award winner first took over as host of the midday show for NPR member station WAMU in 1979 only late last year, Rehm announced that she plans to retire sometime after the 2016 presidential election. That decision, in part, stems from her experiences with the death of her husband, a story she chronicles in her new memoir, On My Own. In a conversation, Rehm speaks with NPR’s Scott Simon about the pain of her husband’s passing  —   and how it led to her activism for assisted suicide. Listen to the full interview at the audio link above. Below, you can listen to Diane Rehm reading from On My Own, describing her struggle to move to the center of the bed after her husband’s death. Audio excerpted courtesy Penguin Random House Audio from On My Own, narrated by Diane Rehm."
"What does The Internet call a woman who scares Donald Trump out of a presidential debate? a) Bitchb) Slutc) Whored) Bimboe) Megyn Kellyf) All of the above, This week, the answer was F. Let us explain. On Tuesday, presidential candidate and New York billionaire Donald Trump pulled out of a Fox News GOP presidential debate, the last before the Iowa caucuses. Trump complained that he was treated ”unfairly” by Fox anchor Megyn Kelly in the first debate. Kelly was set to be one of the moderators of this latest debate. After a sarcastic statement from Fox, saying that it had information that Iran’s and Russia’s leaders were going to treat him unfairly, Trump bolted. Some background: In that first GOP presidential debate, Kelly pointedly questioned Trump on his record, in particular, with women, repeating several offensive comments he’s made about women over the years. And since then, for months, there’s been a feud. Trump versus Kelly. Trump versus Fox. Trump supporters versus Kelly, etc. But this week, it all reached a nasty, fever pitch. With a mix of   political ”slut shaming” and   level ”girls are stupid” jokes, Kelly suffered jabs and taunts all over Twitter for days. Vocativ tabulated which offensive names Kelly got called the most: bitch, bimbo, blonde and whore topped the list. In just 24 hours, Vocativ found, Kelly was called a ”bitch” more than 400 times on Twitter. One tweet showed an image of Kelly as a rabid, barking dog, on a leash held by a cartoon Jeb Bush, labeled as, ”Neocons.” Others ridiculed Kelly for a GQ photo shoot in which she dared to look. .. attractive. Trump even retweeted one that called Kelly a ”bimbo.” Trump did also tweet that he wouldn’t call her a bimbo because that would not be ”politically correct.” It was all a jarring reminder of how hard it can be to just be a woman in the spotlight. So often, women are still judged not based on substance but rather are ranked, sorted and ridiculed because of how they look. For what it’s worth, Kelly and Fox News stood their ground. Kelly moderated the Fox News GOP debate Thursday night. Most think she did quite well, tough as usual."
"Great teachers have two things in common: an exceptional level of devotion to their students, and the drive to inspire each one to learn and succeed. At NPR Ed we’re just about halfway through our 50 Great Teachers project. We’ve profiled teachers at all levels, in all subjects, from all over the country and overseas too. The series has taken us from rural Drumright, Okla. to a mountaintop in Israel. From a jazz class in New Orleans to a Boy Scout troop in South Central LA to the lost world of ancient Greece. And so we’ve taken a moment here to pull from those stories some of the thoughts and lessons from those teachers that have stuck with us. Together, they almost make a   for teachers. 1. Realize Teaching Is A Learned Skill, ”I’m really trying hard to dispel this idea that teaching is this thing you’re born to do and it’s somehow natural to everyday life. I don’t think either of those things is true.” Deborah Ball, dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan. 2. Get To The Truth, ”I’ll tell you the truth, you tell me the truth. The rest is commentary.” Molly Pollak,   veteran middle and high school English teacher, New York City, 3. Build Trust, ”Swimming is the easy part. It’s the trust part that’s the most difficult for them.” Conrad Cooper, swim teacher, Los Angeles, 4. Assume a Secret Identity, ”Giving myself a name, Mr. Spider, gave me an out. It gave me a way to express a side of me I musta had but never took out.” Mathias Schergen, ”Mr. Spider,” elementary school art teacher, Chicago, 5. Be A Sparring Partner, ”All these students around me, they can easily come, and they can challenge me. They can reject me. They can oppose me. They can laugh with me. Sometimes they can even laugh at me. They can!” Aziz Royesh, teacher, Afghanistan, 6. Be Someone To Watch Over Them, ”I want them to say, ’At least one person, Miss Begay, is there every day for me. Miss Begay is going to wonder where I am if I go missing. There will be one person looking out for me, and it’s Miss Begay.’ ” Tia Tsosie Begay, a 4th grade teacher in Arizona. 7. Be A Teacher, Not A Friend, ”It’s important to support them. It’s important to respect them. It’s important to nurture them. But, a friend? No.” Nick Haley, rowing coach in Portland, Ore. 8. Believe In Their Success, ”The same tools the schools use to show they cannot succeed, we use them in opposite way.” Ali Shalalha, principal, Beit Jann Comprehensive School, Israel, 9. Recognize It Takes Vulnerability To Learn, ”It takes a lot for any student, especially for a student who is learning English as their new language, to feel confident enough to say, ’I don’t know, but I want to know.’ ” Thomas Whaley, 2nd grade teacher, Patchogue, N. Y. 10. Look For The Success Stories, ”I know that you cannot save everybody. But if one of them could just go along, complete his education, go to college, and I see him in the future doing something positive with his life, that makes me think that what I was doing is all worthwhile.” Rodney Carey, high school equivalency teacher, New Orleans, 11. Blow Off Steam, But Remember Why You’re Here, ”Yeah, there’s days where I complain. And the people I complain to think I’m insane because I haven’t left this place. But these kids deserve better.” Sarah Hagan, high school math teacher, Drumright, Okla. 12. Be Grateful To Your Own Teachers, ”I am the product of great teachers. They can show you something that you have never seen before. And awaken that little something inside of you that you’ve never seen before.” Ainissa Ramirez, mechanical engineering and materials science professor, and science evangelist"
"Don’t get bitten by mosquitoes. That’s the advice offered to the public in virtually every article on the rapidly spreading,   Zika virus. There’s no arguing with the advice. Zika, once considered a relatively mild   illness, has now been linked to a surge in severe birth defects in Brazil and possibly to cases of paralysis. But anyone who is a mosquito magnet must be asking: Can humans really keep the bloodsucking bugs at bay? To find out how people can best protect themselves. NPR talked with researchers, many of whom spend lots of time in   jungles, marshes and tropical areas. ”DEET” is the immediate   answer from Dr. William Reisen, professor emeritus at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis and editor of the Journal of Medical Entomology. ”DEET is the standard,” agrees Dr. Mustapha Debboun, director of the mosquito control division of Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services in Houston. ”All the repellents being tested are tested to see if they beat DEET.” DEET is shorthand for the chemical name    . It’s the active ingredient in many insect repellents, which don’t kill mosquitoes but keep them away. Dr. Dan Strickman agrees that DEET is tried and true. Strickman is with the Global Health Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a funder of NPR) and author of Prevention of Bug Bites, Stings, and Disease.  DEET appeared on store shelves in 1957. There was some early concern about its safety  —   speculation that it was linked to neurological problems. But recent reviews, for example a study published in June 2014 in the journal Parasites and Vectors, says, ”Animal testing, observational studies and intervention trials have found no evidence of severe adverse events associated with recommended DEET use.” Other repellents work to prevent mosquitoes from biting as well. But DEET isn’t the only weapon. Products containing the active ingredients picaridin and IR 3535 are as effective, says Strickman. And repellents with any of those active ingredients are recommended as safe and effective by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They are widely available around the world. Actually, Strickman gives the edge to picardin. ”Picaridin is a little more effective than DEET and seems to keep mosquitoes at a greater distance,” he says. When people use DEET, mosquitoes may land on them but not bite. When they use a product containing picaridin, mosquitoes are less likely to even land. Repellents with IR 3535 are slightly less effective, Strickman says, but they don’t have the strong smell of other products. Then there is oil of lemon eucalyptus, or PMD, a natural oil extracted from the leaves and twigs of the   gum eucalyptus plant, also recommended by the CDC. PMD is the ingredient in the oil that makes it repellent to insects. When researchers from New Mexico State University tested a variety of commercial products for their ability to repel mosquitoes, they found that a product containing lemon eucalyptus oil was about as effective and as long lasting as products containing DEET. ”For some people, there’s a stigma to using chemicals on their skin. They prefer a more natural product,” says Stacey Rodriguez, an author of the study published on Oct. 5, 2015, in the Journal of Insect Science. Not all products deliver what they promise. ”We tested a vitamin B1 skin patch,” says Dr. Immo Hansen, professor at the Institute of Applied Biosciences at New Mexico State University and also an author of the study comparing repellents. ”We didn’t find any evidence that it has any effect on mosquitoes.” One surprising finding was that a perfume, Victoria’s Secret Bombshell, was a pretty good repellent. Hansen and Rodriguez said they added it to the products they tested as a positive control, believing its floral scent would attract mosquitoes. It turned out bugs hated the smell. But in addition to the problem that few people would want to douse all their exposed skin in perfume, there is another impediment to researching many cosmetics: The ingredients are secret. ”It’s probably composed of dozens of secret ingredients, and maybe one or two of them are repellents,” says Rodriguez. ”We don’t know what the active agent is.” Generally, it’s a good bet to follow the manufacturer’s instructions, experts said. People who will be outside for an hour or two hour should be protected with, say, a product that contains a lower concentration of DEET (about 10 percent  —   identified on the label). Those who will be out in the woods, or jungle or marshland, should use a higher concentration of 20 to 25 percent, and refresh every four hours or so, says Dr. Jorge Rey, interim director of the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory in Vero Beach. ”The higher the concentration, the longer it lasts,” says Rey. And again, follow manufacturer’s directions on the amount used. ”A lot of people think that if a little is good, a lot is better,” says Reisen. ”You don’t have to take a bath in the stuff.” When Rey goes on research trips to highly infested areas, like the Florida Everglades, he suits up. ”We wear long pants and   shirts,” he says. ”If it’s particularly bad, we use hats with nets coming down over the face. And we depend on repellent on exposed areas.” That could mean hands, neck and face. But don’t spray the face, experts say. To avoid irritating the eyes, put the repellent on hands and rub it on the face. And don’t forget the feet. Mosquitoes have quirky olfactory preferences. Many of them, especially the Aedes variety that transmits the Zika virus, love the smell of feet. ”Wearing sandals isn’t a good idea,” says Rodriguez. Shoes and socks are called for, and tucking pants into socks or shoes helps keep mosquitoes from getting inside clothing. She wears long pants when outdoors in mosquito territory  —   and definitely not yoga pants. ”Spandex is very mosquito friendly. They bite through it. I wear baggier pants and long sleeved shirts, doused in DEET.” Reisen adds   boots and often work gloves to the mosquito prevention outfit. ”Since I’m bald as a cucumber, I also wear a hat. I wear glasses, so more and more of me is getting covered.” Strickman lived in Thailand for a while, and he would start his day armed with a spray bottle of repellent. ”I’d spray my socks, the lower part of my trousers and the upper part of my shoes,” he says. ”The mosquito that transmits Zika has a strong tendency to bite parts of the body that are near the ground.” Mosquitoes can bite at any time of day, but the one that transmits Zika prefers midmorning and early evening, says Strickman. If possible, stay indoors in   or   buildings during those times. Since these particular mosquitoes breed in standing water in containers like plant pots, old tires, buckets and trash cans, people should rid their immediate area of things that can collect water. ”Swimming pools, unless they’re abandoned, are OK,” says Rey. The chemicals used to keep pools safe for swimming also keep mosquitoes away. It takes some close looking to find every possible breeding ground for mosquitoes. ”I’ve seen some developing in a film of water next to a sink, or in the bottom of a glass people use to brush their teeth,” says Strickman. Cleaning up all those areas of standing water can greatly reduce the number of mosquitoes. ”It’s up to individuals to make their own backyards safe,” says Rey. And their front yards and as much of their surrounding environment as possible. The more people do that kind of basic cleanup, the fewer mosquitoes there will be. ”It may not be perfect, but you’ll lower the number of mosquitoes tremendously,” says Strickman. ”There’s no way you’re going to prevent all the mosquitoes from biting, but you can reduce your chances of getting bitten,” says Rodriguez. And Rey is deeply concerned about Zika because of all that science doesn’t yet know about the virus. So he stresses how important it is to use the preventive efforts we have available. ”Your chances of getting infected with some   illness are never zero,” he says. ”You don’t change your lifestyle. But you take precautions.” For continuing coverage of Zika virus, check out our Zika Virus: What Happened When timeline."
"The World Health Organization has described the advance of the Zika virus as ”explosive.” It was first detected in Brazil in 2015 and has spread to at least 22 countries since. The   virus has been associated with severe birth defects in babies born to infected mothers. Officials have said an outbreak in the U. S. is unlikely, and might be contained in the more tropical regions. So far Puerto Rico has been the most affected, with 19 confirmed cases. Dr. Brenda   the territorial epidemiologist with the Department of Health in Puerto Rico, joined NPR’s Michel Martin to talk about how the virus is affecting the island. When Zika cases arrived in Puerto Rico, When Zika hit, it hit the major metropolitan areas and it spread really quickly. And within basically two months we had positive cases in at least every municipality of the island. And so far, we have been fortunate in the sense that we’ve just come out of a severe drought, so there’s very little vector activity at this moment. However, we’re starting to see a little bit of more rain and this situation might quickly change. On concerns about the virus’ spread on the island, We’re very concerned. We know that   control is extremely difficult and diseases transmitted by mosquitoes are more so. So it’s critical that the population do everything in their power to eliminate breeding sites around their homes. Because we know Aedes aegypti, it’s a very urban mosquito, it likes to dwell inside your home. So you have to do everything possible to eliminate breeding sites within your home. Can Puerto Rico afford to take necessary measures? We need to remember, some of the efforts that are more visible and might present some calming influence on the citizenship basically are spraying. And we know that residual spraying is not an effective mode of vector control  . It basically attacks the adults and it has an approximately 5 percent reduction in transmission. The most effective way is actually being able to get rid of any potential breeding sites  —   any garbage or materials that accumulate on the sides of the roads or near community centers. Places where people actually are participating in daily activities. It’s being done and it’s being done mostly by the municipalities at a very local level. And the key issue for us, at the state level, is to make sure that we have enough resources to do surveillance and to follow the spread of the disease. And to be able to document and follow those potentially infected pregnant women, or women of childbearing age, and follow them throughout their pregnancy. On governments asking women to delay potential pregnancies, It all depends, what are the resources available for prenatal care? What’s the access to various services? And how the population behaves, as far as vector control. In Puerto Rico, what we’re recommending is for people to take this seriously, to consider. We’re not ordering or requesting or making a strong recommendation to avoid pregnancy. However, if they are women who do have   conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes, or you have other risk factors for having a child with microcephaly, then you should seriously consider this. And if you’re in an area where it’s difficult to do vector control activities, then you should seriously consider this, discuss it within the nucleus of your family, talk to your physician, and make the best decision for you. On the potential for spread within the U. S. mainland, I would say this would be similar to what we saw with chikungunya. With chikungunya it certainly spread through our population like wildfire. And there were several introductions into the U. S. They were controlled. The risk is always people traveling back to the States. However, we still need to consider that Puerto Rico wasn’t the biggest importer of cases. We were among the top five. But certainly there are other regions in the area that have a higher risk and have less than adequate surveillance systems to monitor and track the development of the disease."
"There’s football season, hunting season, and the holiday season. Overlapping all of these is something decidedly less fun and sexy: open enrollment season for health insurance. ”We’ve been busy this past month,” says Iris Galvez, a health insurance navigator with the Houston social services agency Change Happens! Galvez helps people navigate the Healthcare. gov website and enroll in health plans offered through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. ”It’s the holidays, that makes it hard. Because people are like ’Well, we’ll just put it off,’ ” Galvez says with a laugh. ”But now we’re getting very busy.” Earlier this month, Galvez helped Elisia and Cipriano Saenz, a couple from north Houston, select a plan with Molina. ”You’ll have to pay this much per month to Molina,” Galvez explains in Spanish, before handing over a summary sheet listing the couple’s monthly premium payment ($363) the federal subsidy ($691) deductible ($2, 000) and copays ($20 for the primary care doctor, $55 for a specialist). ”They’re pretty good, reasonable,” Saenz says of the amounts. ”We’ll be able to afford it.” Elisia Saenz thanks Galvez for her assistance. ”You made our day,” she says. ”Because we were having a hard time getting in to it.” Last year, her husband Cipriano Saenz did try to sign the couple up, but he was confused, and then suspicious when a government worker requested more paperwork and asked him to confirm his Social Security number. ”Sometimes we have to be careful who we talk to, give our Social Security, ID number,” Saenz explains. ”He told them ’I’m very sorry. I can’t give my information to you all through phone.’ ” Elisia Saenz says he never followed up, and the insurance lapsed. ”Something had gone wrong, or maybe he didn’t understand,” she says. Signing up can be a chore. You need to gather financial documents and set aside money for the monthly premium. Not only that, it’s just unpleasant to think about risk and injury and disease. Galvez noted that some of her returning clients were angry this year because the insurance networks had become narrower. Almost all the coverage plans on the exchange in Houston are now HMOs. ”This year they have taken away the PPO. So a lot of people are not pleased with that,” Galvez said. That means they have fewer choices of doctors and hospitals. Still, she tries to focus on the positives  —   not only avoiding the federal tax penalty for not being covered (which is either $695 for each adult without coverage or 2. 5% of household income) but also the peace of mind that insurance will bring. ”You never know, you know? You fall and slip and break your leg, that’s a big bill from the hospital,” she says. Elisia Saenz is 56 and Cipriano Saenz is 62. They work as janitors at a charter school, where Elisia also works in the kitchen. She says they can’t afford the insurance offered at the school. ”It’s been years that I haven’t been to a doctor,” Elisia says. ”Thank God that I haven’t gotten sick. Now I can just go and get a whole physical, and he can do the same. So we’re happy that we got this.” The Obama administration has increased its outreach this year to Hispanics, running special ads and targeting cities like Houston, Miami and Dallas with big Hispanic populations. Across the country, 20. 9 percent of Hispanics are uninsured in the U. S. compared to 12. 7 percent of blacks and 9. 1 percent of whites, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. There are lots of reasons why. Hispanics are more likely to work in jobs that don’t offer health benefits. Many are ineligible for the Affordable Care Act, or just don’t know about the options available. Of the three states with the biggest Hispanic populations, only one, California, has chosen to expand Medicaid to   uninsured adults. Florida and Texas have not expanded Medicaid, and that’s affected many   Hispanic adults. In surveys, Hispanics explain the main reason they are uninsured is cost. Health coverage just seems too expensive to fit into a budget. ”They don’t make enough money where they work, or they work   cutting yards and stuff,” says Elisia Saenz, describing some of her neighbors. ”Sometimes they can barely, probably make it to pay the rent, feed their kids, clothe them. I know it’s kind of hard for them, if it’s just one person working in the household.” Federal officials counter that’s an outdated perception for some Hispanics  —   because under the new law, many would qualify for subsidies to buy insurance, just like the Saenzs did. Enrollment in most states for 2016 ends Sunday. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Houston Public Media and Kaiser Health News."
"Ohio Gov. John Kasich is campaigning in New Hampshire today in advance of that state’s     presidential primary, which will be held one week from Tuesday. While most presidential candidates are spending this weekend in Iowa, Kasich is hoping to break out of the crowded Republican field in the Granite State, and said today if he doesn’t, it may be the end of the road for his candidacy. ”If I get snuffed out, I go home  —   end of story,” Kasich said while urging voters to support him. Kasich held his final event in Iowa on Friday. Reaching out to independent voters, who can easily vote in New Hampshire’s Feb. 9 primary, Kasich called himself ”an independent guy. The Republican party has been my vehicle, but has never been my master.” Kasich won the endorsement of The New York Times on Saturday morning. The Times, which endorsed Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, said Kasich ”is no moderate.” But the paper said ”he has been capable of compromise, and believes in the ability of government to improve lives.” Asked how much the paper’s endorsement will help him with GOP voters, Kasich said, ”When somebody says something nice to you, thank them.” Kasich noted that he had also won endorsements from several newspapers in New Hampshire, as well as The Boston Globe. Speaking at a town hall meeting in Merrimack, N. H. Kasich gave an optimistic and upbeat assessment of the nation. Kasich said he understands the anxieties people have about losing their jobs or going bankrupt if they get sick, ”but as troubling as those things are they’re fixable.” ”We’re fine,” he said, ”we have our problems and our challenges but these things can all be fixed.” Kasich added, ”we need to have somebody who can pull everybody together.” Kasich stands out from most of the rest of the GOP pack, telling voters here he believes humans have influenced climate change. He also stands out from many other politicians when speaking of his faith, telling one voter, ”I’m a failure, man. I just wish I could be better.” While polling has shown Donald Trump leading the Republican pack in New Hampshire by nearly 20 points, several of the other contenders are bunched together, seemingly in battle for second place. Kasich is banking that his combination of government experience and a less extreme version of conservatism may be a good fit with the New Hampshire’s more moderate GOP primary voters."
"Readers have waited almost 15 years for a second novel from the acclaimed Alexander Chee, following the   Edinburgh. The wait is over. The Queen Of The Night is sprawling, soaring, bawdy and plotted like a fine embroidery. Lilliet Berne is the most famous soprano in the French opera. She is offered the role of a lifetime: an original part written for her. But then she sees that the opera must be based on a part of her life she’s kept under wraps. Who would so precisely, exquisitely and cruelly use her past against her? Lilliet Berne’s journey to discover that, and herself, propels a story of the Second French Empire featuring a number of characters also drawn from history. In an interview with Scott Simon, Chee discusses the inspiration for his protagonist, opera singer Jenny Lind, and his connections to a character who, on the surface, comes from a very different background and place in history. Scott Simon: Did this story begin for you with a photo of a woman in a cape? Alexander Chee: In a way it did. That was one of the elements that was the most powerful draw, I suppose  —   there were a number of things. Back when I began this novel I had a writing exercise I would give my students where I would ask them to take photos that they found particularly compelling, a group of them, and kind of arrange them in an order and make a story out of them. And I suppose I did something of the same. I found this one from the Minneapolis Ice Festival in 1882: a picture of a woman wearing a fur cloak inside of a castle made entirely of ice, holding a torch, and I couldn’t quite see her face in the picture and I just, I just kept looking at it. SS: You spent your childhood in South Korea, Kauai, Truk, Guam and Maine. Does that variety in your background give you some sense of identity with your character? AC: I think in writing her, I was writing about a certain sense of   of feeling like I was not from any particular place. SS: A lot of people believe that [Edinburgh] had to have autobiographical themes. This novel doesn’t have such obvious similarities  —   or am I missing something? AC: I have joked that it is yet another autobiographical novel from Alexander Chee. But I think the autobiography in this  —   to the extent that there is any in this  —   is in things like: When you are a   singer in a boys choir, you are very aware that there is a time limit on your voice. And I think it was then that I began to become fascinated with women sopranos who seemed to have less of a limit because I loved my voice so much as a child and I couldn’t imagine myself, once I could sing with it, I couldn’t imagine who I would be without it and so that is very much in this book. SS: We encounter Lilliet in so many different incarnations. Is there something about her that is always true or does she shape shift within our imaginations? AC: That’s a very good question. I think one of the things that I always loved about her was her fierce will to live and to have a destiny that she could believe in, in a sense. And so through all of her reversals of fortune, all of her adventures, all of the disguises  —   that remains. But all of it, in a sense, is done to protect that will that remains. Even, in a sense, when she at one point seems to give up on it. That she has some urge to survive that’s larger than herself."
"Every four years when the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary roll around, the critics and cynics question why such unrepresentative patches of America get to vote first in presidential nominating contests. Why is so much political power, they complain, given to states that are more white and more rural than the rest of the country? So, we attempted to quantitatively evaluate the critique  —   and try to come up with which states actually were the most representative of the average of the entire country, in what we’re calling the Perfect State Index. In creating the PSI, we looked at five categories race, education, age, income and religion. (We explain the methodology, how we arrived there and analyze each category in detail further down.) Below is an interactive table, which you can sort the results by category. So, which states came out on top? The Overall Winner: IllinoisRace: IllinoisEducation: DelawareAge: VirginiaIncome: PennsylvaniaReligion: (tie) Florida, Indiana, Iowa, North Dakota, Methodology  —   why we chose these five factors? It’s complicated, and, true, our metrics, are somewhat arbitrary. There are a dozen ways (or more) you could slice and dice Census data to decide which demographic factors are most important. But, we felt that in terms of understanding political behavior  —   these five indicators were the most important. We ran the data by Bill Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, and he insisted that of all the factors we were considering, race was by far the most important indicator of political behavior. ”Race is one where there’s a sharp divide between how whites vote and how most minorities vote,” Frey said. ”The race classification . .. is a really good indicator to understand something about how elections are going to turn out.” And, Frey encouraged us to place a higher priority on race, because it often correlates with income, education, and, perhaps even religion. ”By that I mean  —   in a state like Mississippi, which has a relatively high black population, that may also have some bearing on Mississippi’s income rank, and on its education rank,” Frey explained. (Mississippi has the lowest median household income in the country, as you can see from our table.) So, with Frey’s guidance, we decided to give a little more power to the ”race” category. (All the other categories are not weighted). For each of our five indicators, we compared every state in the country to either the U. S. median value or the percentage of the national population. That allowed us to see how far each state diverged from the quintessential American ”middle.” So, for example, in the map below you’ll notice that both California (38. 5 percent white) and Maine (93. 8 percent white) fared poorly on the race index, but for obviously different reasons. Our index looks at the absolute value  —   it doesn’t matter whether a state is better or worse than the U. S. average it matters how much a state differs from ”mainstream” America. For each category, every state received a ranking from 1 to 50. We then added the individual rankings together to give each state a final score. Below, you’ll see which state ranked the highest in the five individual categories. Race, We analyzed 2014 U. S. Census data to compare the racial   of each state to the country as a whole. We included all the categories the Census uses: black or   American Indian or Alaska Native   Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Two or More Races Hispanic or Latino and White Alone Not Hispanic or Latino. And, the reason we used the Census subcategories is that it gives us a more accurate racial portrait of each state. If we had only looked at ”minorities” compared to ”whites,” we would have gotten a skewed picture. For example, had we ranked solely based on ”minority” population, combining all the racial subgroups, Alaska would have ranked near the top. But it has a disproportionately large Native American population, a group which has a relatively minor voting effect on American politics at a national level. We wanted to find a state that more closely mirrors the country’s racial portrait  —   and Illinois does that, almost perfectly. If you look at every group: Latinos, Asians, blacks  —   Illinois’ respective populations are nearly identical to the country’s at large. That doesn’t surprise Frey from Brookings. He points out that Illinois has mirrored the country’s historical mass migrations. First, white ethnic immigrant groups, such as those from Polish and Italian ancestry moved to the state. Then, during the Great Migration of the early 20th century,   from the South settled in Chicago. And, then, in the last 30 to 40 years, thousands of Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, moved to the city. ”And, all of that is due to that fact that Chicago has been this kind of central place that has been emblematic of these different kinds of movements,” Frey explained. ”I don’t think there’s any other metropolitan area, or any other state really, that has all of these elements. . .. Different parts of the country have had pieces of these things. But, Chicago has had them all in different sequences. And, so right now, we have a snapshot of a metropolitan area that’s a lot like the U. S. population.” And, as blacks, Latinos and Asians diversified the city, Frey said, old urban white ethnics moved to the suburbs and the rural farmlands. He added that the mix of urban and rural coupled with white suburbanization makes Illinois a good bellwether of what’s gone on in the United States as a whole in recent decades. Education, We looked at the percent of the population that was older than 25 in each state with a bachelor’s degree or higher, as tracked by Census data between 2010 and 2014. Minorities of all educational levels tend to vote Democratic, but, as we’ve written elsewhere, there seems to be a growing political educational divide within the white population. In Delaware, 29. 4 percent of the total population has graduated with bachelor’s degree or higher. (In the U. S. as a whole, 29. 3 percent has at least a bachelor’s degree). Frey said Delaware’s   of education may be due to its geography. ”It’s an important state, but it is considered to be kind of a suburb of Philadelphia writ large,” he said, ”and increasingly college graduates have been living and moving to the suburbs, and that’s part of what Delaware is as well.” He was, perhaps, more intrigued by the next few highly ranked states. ”You also see in this list states you might not have expected to see there  —   Montana, Nebraska, Oregon,” Frey said. ”It shows this median level of education is pretty pervasive in all different parts of the country, not just concentrated in a few places.” Age, We used 2014 Census data to compare the median age in each state to the U. S. median age of 37. 7. ”It’s good to know that Virginia is in the middle,” said Frey, but he’s skeptical that it means much, because there are a clump of states that roughly reflect the U. S. median age. What’s more important are the states toward the bottom of the list. ”What you want to look at  —   is states that are kind of on the extremes,” Frey added. ”And, when you’re thinking of the extremes, you’re thinking of some of the New England states, Pennsylvania, West Virginia  —   those are states that a lot of the young people have left over the years.” And that brings us to New Hampshire. The early voting state is one of the oldest in the country (tied with Vermont for 47th on the age index). In fact, the aging population has even become a concern for voters in the state. At a recent campaign event, one woman described New Hampshire as going through a ”silver tsunami.” For election purposes, Frey says the 65 and older population is key. ”Those are the kinds of populations,” he noted, ”at least in recent elections [that] have tended to veer more toward Republican candidates in presidential elections.” And they vote. Frey added that a state’s median age is often indicative of recent regional migration patterns. ”A lot of immigrants have come to parts of the country and made their populations younger,” he said, ”a lot of it is in the South and the West.” And, indeed, immigration may help explain why Virginia did so well in the age category when its neighbor West Virginia did so poorly. Income, There are lots of different economic indicators we could have used to measure the ”wealth” of a state: the unemployment rate, the percent of people who own houses, or median household income. With the advice of our economics editor Marilyn Geewax, we opted to go with the 2010 to 2014 median household income (in 2014 dollars). For the country at large, that is $53, 482. Income is a tough measure, because the cost of living differs wildly from Mississippi to Manhattan. But, it’s also an important metric, because the economy is so often the most important issue for voters. Pennsylvania’s income levels are so incredibly average that it differed from the U. S. median by less than a percent. Frey points to Pennsylvania’s geography and mix of urban, suburban, rural communities as a possible explanation for economic diversity. ”Pennsylvania . .. has the average of those urban areas like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh,” Frey said. ”And then [in] the inner part of the state, it’s a little more rural.” Interestingly, the first nominating state of Iowa also ranked high on the   calculator, coming in third. But Frey thinks Iowa fared well for different reasons  —   partly because it’s an overwhelmingly white state and partly because it’s in the middle of the country with an average cost of living. The states that did poorly also tell us something important. New Jersey and Maryland were 49th and 50th, respectively. Both states are wealthier and largely overgrown suburbs of New York and Philadelphia (in New Jersey’s case) and Washington, D. C. when it comes to the population center of   Maryland. ”It’s suburban New York and suburban D. C. and some pretty rich suburbs,” Frey said. ”Some of the richest suburban counties in the country are in New Jersey and Maryland.” And so, even though New Jersey and Maryland did well on other metrics, such as race or age, they didn’t do well in the overall PSI because of income. Religion, There was a   tie for first place in the religion index. And, that’s partly because the data isn’t as nuanced. Statistics for all the other categories were collected and compiled through the Census Bureau. But, the Census doesn’t ask Americans about religion. Given the central role of religion in campaign politics, and the degree to which religiosity predicts political behavior, we thought it was an important metric to include. To assess ”religiosity,” which can often be an amorphous attitude in itself, we used data from the 2014 Religious Landscape Study, a comprehensive survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, which interviewed more than 35, 000 Americans from all 50 states. We looked at a one specific aspect of this study: the percent of adults in each state who said religion was ”very important” in their lives. In the U. S. as a whole, and in Iowa in particular, 53 percent of adults said religion was ”very important” in their lives. As Iowa prays, so prays the country . .. apparently. Iowa’s mainstream status on the religious index might seem surprising given the extent to which the white, Christian conservative vote is courted by GOP presidential candidates there. But, there two things to keep in mind: So while people might think of Iowa as a religious state, it’s only actually, as a whole, as religious as the country. In fact, there are many other states that are far more religious. Think: Alabama, where 77 percent of people said religion was ”very important” in their lives. New Hampshire, on the other hand, is far more secular. New Hampshire came in 46th in the category of people saying that religion was ”very important” to them. Just 33 percent of adults in New Hampshire said religion was ”very important” to them. And, 36 percent described themselves as ”religiously unaffiliated,” which means they don’t identify with any organized religion. It’s one of the least religious states in the country, second only to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont. Illinois  —   perfectly average  Illinois borders a traditional   divide in the country  —   the Mississippi River. It snakes across the state’s western edge, separating it from Iowa. And it’s a microcosm of the country in nearly ever category. Specifically, it ranked in the top 10 for race, age, and religion. It’s almost comical that the most perfectly average state neighbors Iowa, the state that gets to go first in presidential nominating contests. In many ways, Illinois is geographically and demographically similar to Iowa, particularly in the southern and western regions of the state. The major difference is Chicago  —   an urban core the kind Iowa just doesn’t have. ”It’s as diverse as the country, but not overly diverse,” Frey said. ”It’s probably a little more urban than the country as a whole because of the greater Chicago metropolitan area, but a lot of that is the suburbs and the suburbs are representative of much of America.” Plus, he added, Illinois also has a ”rural component, which is important.” ”[Illinois] . .. may not be a swing state,” Frey said, ”but in terms of its demographics, I think people would do well to look at how the voting goes there to get a better understanding of what’s going on in the country as a whole.” And, while people might think of Illinois as a blue state, it currently has a Republican governor and a Republican senator, albeit one who will be in a tough   fight in a presidential year. Also, it’s only fairly recently, since 1992, that the state started voting reliably for Democrats in presidential years. From 1968 to 1988, Illinois voted consistently Republican. In fact, Illinois’ record is more accurate, than partisan. Throughout the 20th century, Illinois voted for the winner in every presidential election, with the exception of two: Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Jimmy Carter in 1976. If anything, Frey, says perhaps Illinois is a racial bellwether. In 2014, the country’s    population became   and so, in years to come, Frey said the racial makeup of the rest of the country is likely going to look more similar to Illinois. A reality check on Iowa and New Hampshire? Iowa, the state that goes first in our current political system, according to the PSI, came in 16th place overall. That’s not too bad, considering it could have been worse. New Hampshire, for example, was 49th, nearly dead last. To be fair, Iowa is representative of the country on most of our metrics, with the exception of race. A number of states East Coasters derisively refer to as ”flyover states”  —   Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri  —   actually all fared quite well on the PSI, especially if race was excluded. So, in some ways, it seems the heartland is a fairly accurate portrait of average America, if it was more racially diverse. But, race is such an important factor that Frey thinks it outweighs Iowa’s advantages. In the race category, Iowa was in the bottom 10, finishing 40th, with just a 3. 4 percent black population and a 5. 6 percent Hispanic population. New Hampshire, though, is even more of an outlier. The only state that fared worse overall was West Virginia. By every measure, New Hampshire is horribly unrepresentative of the country  —   people make too much money, they’re graying,   overwhelmingly white and not nearly religious enough. The question, of course, is whether these two states should continue to serve as litmus tests for candidates. ”It’s for the parties to decide,” Frey said, ”but I have to say as a demographer, the more stock you put into these two states, as we become more diverse as a country, the more we’ll be out of touch with what the rest of the country’s going to be voting like.”"
"With the Iowa caucuses just days away, the NPR Politics Podcast team is joined by special guest Clay Masters, the host of Morning Edition on Iowa Public Radio. Clay, who’s covering the presidential campaign, talks about his experience knocking on doors with both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns. The team also looks at big moments from the latest,   Republican debate and gets into the latest evolution of social media in politics  —   the negative Snapchat filter. Also, the results of our call for your best ”2 Corinthians walk into a bar. ..” jokes. On the podcast:"
"There are different ways to reach voters. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders delivers fiery speeches that fill concert halls and arenas. But generally speaking, people don’t leave Hillary Clinton events ready to start a political revolution. Big speeches and soaring rhetoric really aren’t her thing. Instead, the former secretary of state is trying to win voters over by being a wonk who delivers page after page of policy white papers. As Clinton makes her closing argument in Iowa, ”in my plan” has to be the most oft repeated phrase in her stump speech. Autism is not the kind of thing that dominates televised debates or tops polls as a leading issue facing the nation. But Hillary Clinton has a white paper on it, the ”Plan To Support Children, Youth and Adults Living With Autism, and Their Families.” She’s also got plans for Alzheimer’s, drug addiction and elder care. In total, the Clinton campaign has more than two dozen policy papers  —   more than 50, 000 words of them, many heavy on footnotes. For Clinton campaign volunteer Abby Walker, 19, the autism plan was a big deal. That’s because her older brother has autism. ”So when Hillary came out with her plan, I just saw this and I just knew right away I needed to keep knocking on doors even more,” Walker said. Walker goes to college in Missouri, but drives more than an hour home to Ottomwu, Iowa, to persuade others to caucus for Clinton. ”Ever since I got back to school, I’ve been going home like pretty much every weekend because I’ve just realized how important it is once she released her autism plan,” Walker said. Walker and her mom attended one of Clinton’s small listening tour events during the summer. According to Walker, her mother talked to Clinton about autism. ”My mom just told her a little bit about my brother and how much he needs, services and stuff like that,” Walker said. When Clinton’s plan was released, Walker’s mother posted it on Facebook. And she wasn’t alone. The plan showed up in the Facebook feeds of people and organizations who don’t typically talk about presidential politics. That includes the Autistic Self Advocacy Network run by Ari Ne’eman, one of many advocates Clinton’s policy team consulted. Ne’eman said his group would likely not even be talking about the presidential candidate without this plan and hopes to get all the presidential candidates to develop similar autism plans. ”Certainly not to the same degree and certainly not in the same way,” Ne’eman said. ”It resonates and it reaches. The fact that it’s done in a   way and the fact that it’s done by consulting with autistic adults ourselves really matters.” Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon said when voters have shared their concerns with Clinton, she wants to be able to offer proposals to address those issues. ”It is Hillary Clinton’s idea of fun to take a thick briefing binder home at night to her hotel, if she is on the road, and study it and to give feedback to the staff that is providing her with a menu of options for different policy prescriptions on any given issue. She loves to engage on that,” Fallon said. But is being a wonk in a time when voters feel uneasy and even angry really a recipe for victory? It’s certainly a way to   voters and meet them where they live. Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster at Purple Strategies, says many of Clinton’s proposals fall into the category of caregiving. ”Those are huge issues facing a lot of every day Americans in their daily life, far more I might add than the things we talk about a lot in Washington. The enormous amount of pressure that women feel caring for everyone in their family, it can really not be overstated,” Omero said. The question is whether Clinton’s many plans to address these concerns will drive the people who care passionately about them to caucus Feb 1."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. I have a soft spot in my heart for the New Hampshire primary. (I’m writing this from my Manchester hotel room.) McCarthy’s unexpected strong showing here in 1968 convinced President Lyndon Johnson not to run for  . Chasing down candidates over snowy roads during the first primary I covered some years later remains a favorite memory. Part of it is the winter beauty of birch trees, and picturesque New England villages, but most of it is the seriousness of purpose New Hampshire voters take their obligations in one of the most democratic (small d) of states. Veteran journalist David Shribman clearly has a similar high regard for the quirks and customs of the    primary in this piece from the Boston Globe. This weekend political junkies will be checking their phones obsessively on Saturday night for one reason  —   the final survey from ”Iowa’s polling queen” Ann Selzer. There’s been a lot of debate this cycle over the accuracy of polls and how much they matter. But time and time again, Selzer has nailed the    Hawkeye State caucuses. In 2008, she befuddled many when she predicted a surge of new voters would lift Barack Obama in the closing days  —   and she was right. And in 2012, she saw the unlikely Rick Santorum rise coming as well. In this fascinating FiveThirtyEight profile, she explains why her methods are different but ultimately have proven more accurate. She’s not some    pollster swooping in  —   she has the pulse on the heart of the heartland, and in polling, maybe location and relationships matter alongside cold, hard date. And once again, we’ll be looking to Selzer’s numbers ahead of Monday’s Iowa caucuses  —   and seeing if her pristine record holds up. What draws voters to candidates? Is it policies and ideas, or do they connect with us on a personal level? How do campaigns reach out to underserved audiences? This VICE column about the differences in Sanders’ and Clinton’s use of and support by   artists was telling. ”Clinton, like most successful presidential candidates, is all about controlling the narrative. But her attempts to package herself as the candidate of the Young and Cool have mostly succeeded in making her look craven and out of touch. Sanders, meanwhile, has genuinely become the candidate of the young and cool simply by virtue of not trying to be anything other than himself. Nowhere is this contrast more apparent than in his relationship with Killer Mike. Because despite the obvious cool factor that the rapper adds to Sanders’ campaign, their budding political bromance has always been exactly what it looks like: A    Democratic Socialist from Vermont sitting down with a   gangster rapper from Atlanta, and listening.” An unanswered question: do endorsements actually work? Do the attempts to be hip to younger and different audiences work? If so, why? And if not, why do candidates continue to employ them in their campaigns? I’ve got to admit I’m no connoisseur of   Spanish dictionaries. And considering my feeble memories of high school Spanish class, it might be a miracle I’m recommending this piece at all. But there’s something profoundly weird and lovely lurking in Janet Hendrickson’s translation of a   dictionary by Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco. When I stumbled upon it  —   first in The Guardian, then in Asymptote, the journal that originally posted it  —   I found myself caught in its pendulum swing: from the strange to the funny, from the sacred to the simply wise. And that’s just the A’s. Here, have a sample: ”Abismo (Abyss): Infinite congregation of water depths of the deepest valleys, where vision fades when gazed at from above. Acá (Here): Where I am. Alba (Dawn): What is that? Nothing but the dawn as it walks among the cabbages. Algo (Something): We ask, ’Is it something?’ We answer, ’It is nothing.’ A term that comprehends all that can be. Ateo (Atheist): He is ungrateful.” There are startlingly direct expressions of the day’s ideology (see ”atheist”). There are turns of phrase so deft and surreal they may as well have come from the pen of a poet like Rimbaud. And then, there’s the unbearable sorrow of celery. (That’s Apio: ”the symbol of sadness and weeping. ”) Through it all, there’s the thread of surprise  —   that our words could have had so many lives before we met them."
"Most of the time when we talk about homelessness, big cities come to mind. But about seven percent of homeless people live in rural areas, where access to help is much harder to come by. Flagstaff, Ariz. is one of those places. While city officials work to find solutions, one woman has taken an old motel and turned it into transitional housing. Route 66 runs through Flagstaff. And a lot of old rundown motels from its heyday still stand  ” empty shells from a more prosperous time. ”The Mother Road,” as it’s known, has long been an American emblem of change. People who want to remake their lives:   Dust Bowl refugees to   War II travelers dreaming of leisure and adventure. That same story of transformation is still being told in the old 66 Motel. ”The motel with a smile,” is what Lori Barlow calls it. She’s a former financial planner who’s giving the old motel new life. Barlow gave up a   salary and a home on the California coast to help people. But she wasn’t sure how to go about it, until one night inspiration struck. ”I think it was 3:36 actually,” Barlow recalls. ”I woke up and sat up in my bed and this clear message just came and said, ’You need to go take over distressed motels and turn them into transitional housing to help the poor.’ I just thought, ’OK, what do I do with that? ’” Barlow made some calls and leased a motel, and suddenly realized she might be in over her head. ”Now I was coming in going, ’holy moly,’” Barlow says. ”It was pretty bad, the ceiling was caving in and the insulation was hanging out of it. There was a lot of evidence of mice. I just looked at it and thought, ’OK, I’m not going to let my kids come up and see me where I’m living. ’” The floors slope. The walls are uneven. Even the fixtures are crooked in some units. ”The toilet seat is at an angle because it’s too small,” Barlow says. ”You couldn’t sit down and close the door.” One of the people helping to fix these problems is William Fulton, a former engineer. He lived in a van before he moved into the motel. Then he became the     man. Fulton says Barlow is letting him stay in the hotel in exchange for helping with remodeling. ”The plumbing’s been the worst, so basically it’s getting that fixed up and the flooring,” Fulton says. ”The old wood rotted, leaky plumbing smell, so we dried them out, redid some of the floors. It’s like a new building after we get done with it.” One of the current residents, Julie Bowman, says there were a lot of shady characters when she moved in. ”One lady was selling drugs out her back window,” Bowman says. ”These people were literally using this for a  . And they would walk by her window and she would hand it out. This was going on all night.” Back when she leased the motel, Barlow painted the phrase ”ANEW Living Community” below the old neon sign. A lot of the residents are making a new go of it. She helps them with budgeting and provides a computer room and a list of community resources. Residents have two years to pull their lives together. Click here to read next about how the residents are trying to make the near impossible leap from shelter to home."
"Imagine if you could kill God. Literally just roll right up on him and shoot him in the face. Now imagine that it’s gods, plural. And while putting them down isn’t by any means easy, it is possible. You can kill them. All of them. And free the world from their dominion, their miracles, their slavery and oppression. Kill the gods and the world is   sans divinity, sans magic. The playing field, once mountainous with privilege and lack, is now level. Just so long as those gods stay dead. This is the world of Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities series. The first book, City Of Stairs, came out last year and was a dense readfull of worldbuilding and mythology, long,   passages and expositionbut also had assassinations, an airship battle, and a couple of great characters (Shara, a spy, and Sigrud, her giant   bodyguard) who kept things jumping even through those sections where Bennett went deep into the bloody, weird and imaginary history of his   world. City Of Stairs worked, primarily, for one big reason: The world Bennett had created was just awesome. You could hear it and feel it and taste it on your tongue, and as a reader, you found yourself invested in what happened next in a way that’s rare in all but the best epic fantasy. City Of Blades is the second book in the cycle, and in it, Bennett does something stupid and brave. Actually, he does several stupid and brave things, but they all sort of add up to one: He takes the things that people loved about City Of Stairs and changes pretty much all of them. Rather than the decimated capital city of Bulikov, he moves the action to   Voortyashtana, a haunted,   port city once the home of the god of war and death, now a blasted, isolated ruin under military occupation and torn by ritual murders and guerilla insurgencies. For those of you who loved Shara and Sigrud, sorry. He lets go of them (though not, it’s important to say, completely) and pulls up a supporting character from Stairs to be his new protagonist. Now granted, Turyin Mulaghesh was a pretty solid extra in the first book (a     uncompromising soldier in the mold of every   battlefield sergeant ever committed to page or screen) but that’s still a ballsy move when the mains from book 1 were so  . Plus, he bumps the timeline forward by a couple decades, which essentially means that everyone has grown old in the interim. Shara is now the Prime Minister. The Voortyashtan harbor is being dredged in a massive civil engineering project that is led by Sigrud’s highly technological daughter, Signe. And his narrator (now General Mulaghesh, uncomfortably retired, but called back to action for that perennial One Last Job) is a   woman, an angry drunk, a veteran disabled by the loss of one hand and coming to painful terms with all the bodies and blood she’s left in her wake. We meet her in her retirementa   officer just trying to run out the time on her pension. At Shara’s request, she goes to Voortyashtan, under cover, to investigate the disappearance of another officer. There are murders and assassinations, and a dead god of death and war who maybe isn’t quite so dead as everyone thinks. One of Bennett’s oddest talents is for building reality through politics, infrastructure and the minutiae of what amount to rather violent city council meetings. He experimented with it (not entirely successfully) in Stairs. Here, he does it better, and links it more subtly and neatly to a single defining question that underpins his stories of soldiers and spies: Kill the gods and what happens next? When men and women are simply left with the world as it is, with no miracles to sustain them, what does the world become? Unlike Stairs, this book doesn’t drag doesn’t bow under the weight of exposition. It feels no less rich, no less realized, but just . .. streamlined. Blades is being pitched as both a sequel and a   volume, and this is one of those rare cases where both of those things are true. And I would actually suggest that Blades is the better entry point into the seriesread this one first and then, if you fall just as hard for the world as I have, go back and read Stairs to get your fill of all the strangeness and wonderment of the world in the days when the gods still walked tall upon it. Jason Sheehan is an   a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book."
"For more than a decade, Anderson . Paak has been developing a kaleidoscopic mix of ’60s funk, ’70s soul,   RB, electronic music, and rock ’n’ roll. When he appeared on Dr. Dre’s surprise 2015 album Compton, . Paak’s profile skyrocketed  —   and, some say, stole the show. Anderson . Paak recently spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon about his new album Malibu, attending a black Baptist church for the first time as a child, and how he works things out in his music. Why is it important that your last name is written ”. Paak?” The dot stands for ”detail”  —   always be paying attention to detail. I feel that people take you as serious as you take yourself. I spent a lot of time working on my craft, developing my style, and after I came out of my little incubation I promised that I would pay attention to detail. And on top of that, I want to make sure that dot is always there to remind me and to remind others. We mentioned that you worked with Dr. Dre and you were featured as a rapper on six of the tracks on the album released last summer. What was it like to watch him at work? Because you’re also a producer. What did you see? What did you learn? The first thing that I noticed is that he definitely mans the ship, and he’s the captain when he’s in the production chair. But he’s definitely open to our ideas and interested in finding something. He’s not set on just having it his way. I was just kind of amazed that someone of his stature and success level is still really, really into the music. He had this excitement to him. It seemed like it was new to him, or at least when I came in. There was this vibe where he felt like he was so excited of what was to come and the things we were about to make. And you want to spend hours finding the right phrase and finding the right sounds. It was just inspiring to see that. You started drumming in church? Yeah, I started playing drums in church in Oxnard, a church called St. Paul’s Baptist Church. My godsister invited me to church when I was about 11 years old after I had learned to play a couple beats. She was like, ”You should come to the church. You gotta see the choir and you gotta see the church band.” I went, and I saw the choir and the church band and I was hooked. I’d never seen any kind of playing  —   I’d never been in a black Baptist church before that. I was just in love with the energy. Well, explain: You’re from a mixed ethnic background, too. Yeah, my mom was born in Korea  —   Seoul, Korea during the ’50s, ’51. She was abandoned her and my uncle were abandoned. My grandfather was a Seabee and adopted my mom and my uncle, and brought them to Compton in the ’50s. That’s where she was raised. Farmers, right? Yeah. My mom eventually got out to Oxnard and started a produce company and was in the strawberry business. My pops was out of the picture by the time I was 7. He ended up getting really addicted to drugs and alcohol. Up until that point, he was doing really good  —   the drugs got a hold of him. He went to prison for about 14 years for assault. My pops ended up joining the military really, really early. Eventually, he was dishonorably discharged because of weed, I think. My mom tells me that when he got discharged, he went into a depression after that, because he really liked being in the service. After that, just a downhill spiral. Pretty rough, bro. Pretty rough. It’s almost a shame to talk about music now, but I also think your music is wound up with that.  Yeah, yeah, that’s the light, you know? Thank God for the music, you know? Do you work things out in the music? Yeah, I do, and try not to have too much compromise or try not to get too heady with it. I just try to express the art and work to get better, to learn more, and get sharper and inspire and put things out that people are going to feel good about  —   feel good and sexy, and the things I feel when I’m making it."
"Harry Rubenstein is deep in a thought about a log cabin when he pauses,   and disappears down a corridor. He returns a moment later brandishing a large wooden ax. Rubenstein is the chair of the political history division at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and he’s standing in a room that’s packed with about 100, 000 items from previous presidential elections. The collection, he says, ranges ”from a little bit before the American Revolution, to probably last week.” From his vantage point in this locked, windowless room in the Smithsonian, Rubenstein is able to draw parallels between signs, hats and other tchotchkes crafted decades  —   even centuries  —   apart. The cabin? It’s from the original 1840 ”log cabin campaign”  —   an attempt by William Henry Harrison’s supporters to paint their candidate as a regular American with humble beginnings. ”This is really the beginning of trying to create some sort of simple identity for candidates,” Rubenstein says. That’s why he goes and grabs the ax. It’s from another, more consequential election 20 years later, when the newly formed Republican Party was pushing a   narrative, as well. Its candidate: the ”” Abe Lincoln. ”Fear not,” the ax reads. ”Old Abe is ours.” ”This has become a real staple of campaigning, and you can see that being played out in contemporary campaigns today,” Rubenstein says. Candidates may no longer grow up in log cabins or split firewood, but Republican presidential hopefuls like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz talk up their parents’ immigrant roots, and Hillary Clinton reminds voters of the struggles her mother went through growing up in a neglected household. Today’s Tchotchkes, Tomorrow’s Exhibits, That continuity is why Rubenstein is preparing to send a team of curators to Iowa and New Hampshire over the next couple of weeks. They’ll scour the early primary and caucus states for artifacts that help tell the story of the 2016 campaign to future generations, and then bring them back to the museum. This year’s memorabilia will join an impressive collection. On a table in the room, there are jacket buttons commemorating George Washington’s inauguration. A   elephant featuring a picture of William Howard Taft. From more recent campaigns, there are John Kerry   Republicans used to taunt the 2004 Democratic nominee, as well as ”Deanie Babies” boosting Howard Dean. That’s right. Today’s ”Make America Great Again” hat could be tomorrow’s   ax. Curators   Graddy and Jon Grinspan will visit campaign headquarters and attend rallies. Later this year, they’ll hunt for artifacts at party conventions. ”We know that we’re going to try and get the standard materials that each campaign is putting out,” Graddy says. ”The signs, posters, the bumper strickers, the buttons.” They’ll also be looking for homemade items that supporters bring with them. ”We’re the most brazen people on earth,” says Graddy. ”Hi, I’m  . I’m with the Smithsonian Institution. I love that shirt you’re wearing. Can you tell me why you have it? I don’t suppose you’d want to give it to me, would you?” She says that on that last question, the answer is usually a no  —   at least right there in the moment. ”If it’s something that’s meaningful to you right now, you might not want to give it to us right in the moment. Because one, you’re still using it. I’m still at this rally. I still have this sign. I still have my shirt on.” ”We distribute a lot of business cards,” she adds. 228 Years Of History . .. And Continuity, But as more and more of the political process shifts to the digital space, the Smithsonian has made a decision not to curate the images, memes and hashtags that increasingly define the campaign conversation. ”This is a debate, and I’m sure that our future curators might curse some of us of the past” for not doing so, concedes Rubenstein. But, he argues, the Smithsonian is seeing other institutions create that digital archive, ”and so we decided we would focus, in a sense, on our strength, which are strange pins and funny hats and signs of all shapes and forms.” ”These are the things that make you know that history’s real,” says Graddy. ”It happened. We touched it. We used it. We wore it. These are the things that memories are really made of.” And those items, all together, also tell the story of American politics. For all the changes that have happened since the country first elected a president, Rubenstein says he’s struck by how much remains the same. The form itself may shift  —   a brass elephant from 1912 morphs into a plush George W. Bush elephant in 2000  —   but, he says, the main idea remains the same. ”It gets embellished and changed but the continuity is still there.” So far, 2016 has stood out as an especially angry election. I ask if there’s anything in the collection that typifies the personal vitriol of some of America’s early elections. Graddy smiles. ”Should we show them the banner?” she asks. Rubenstein disappears, and comes back with a large   folder. He clears some space and unveils a banner from Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 inauguration. Jefferson’s victory against incumbent President John Adams was a   that was so close it served as one of the first tests of the country’s new Constitution. Jefferson supporters have drawn an image of their candidate. Next to it, an eagle holds a sign proclaiming Jefferson as the new president. Its second line, however, reads: ”John Adams is no more.” As Graddy puts it, ”gloating is also an American tradition.”"
"Iowa’s process of picking its choice for president is complicated. We try to demystify it in this space. Here are the basics: The word ”caucus” is thought to come from an Algonquin Indian word  —   cau´  ´u, meaning ”one who advises, urges, encourages” and ”to talk to . .. give counsel, advise, encourage, and to urge, promote, incite to action.” The short answer, It’s essentially a neighborhood meeting of sorts  —   for politically active,   people. Unlike the kind of voting most people are used to  —   which takes only a few minutes and involves pushing a button or pulling a lever in the secrecy of a voting booth  —   Iowans have to devote an hour or so of their evenings to the process. The caucuses on the Democratic side are also much more out in the open  —   everyone knows whom you voted for and possibly why. This is why ardency of support is important. In Democratic caucuses, you don’t vote with your fingers you vote with your feet. (More on that in our long answer below.) For Republicans in Iowa, the process is much simpler and more orderly. Someone from the campaigns might speak for a particular candidate, but then voting happens by an informal secret ballot. Think:   pieces of paper passed in and collected. The long answer, Democrats: 1, 683 Democratic caucuses will be held at more than 1, 000 locations. They start at 8 p. m. ET and can last an hour or more. There are 44 delegates to the national convention that can be won through this process, which takes months. None are assigned on caucus night. Note: Eight more unpledged party leaders and elected officials get to go straight to the national convention from Iowa. They don’t have to go through the state’s complicated delegate selection process  —   and they can vote for whichever candidate they want at the convention. Because of that power, they’re colloquially referred to as ”superdelegates.” Here’s what happens on caucus night: For a quick explainer of what happens on the Democratic side (using Legos) check out this video from our friends at Vermont Public Radio: Iowa’s 52 total delegates to the national convention represent just a tiny fraction (about 2 percent) of the 2, 382 delegates needed to become the Democratic nominee. If it’s such a small percentage, then why all the attention? This is all about momentum. For perspective on how vital these early contests can be, just one person in the past 40 years  —   on either side  —   has lost both Iowa and New Hampshire and gone on to be president: Bill Clinton. You won’t see actual raw vote totals or raw vote percentages on election night. To make matters even more confusing, when you see the reported percentages of who won and lost, what you’re actually looking at are what’s known as ”state delegate equivalents.” That’s a complicated phrase for the number of delegates sent to the next round (to those county conventions) and tallied up with those   app. What does this mean in practice? It can give candidates whose vote share isn’t concentrated in population centers an advantage. That’s a potential problem for Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, who is drawing big crowds from college towns. It’s why the Sanders campaign has encouraged those college kids to go back home and caucus to spread out the vote. Republicans: GOP caucuses will be held at about 700 locations. They also start at 8 p. m. ET and last about an hour. Thirty delegates are at stake of the 1, 236 needed to be the GOP nominee. Here’s what happens on caucus night:"
"Iowa and New Hampshire get a lot of attention, but their records in picking presidents, let alone nominees, is spotty (as you can see from the chart above). But that doesn’t mean the states don’t matter. They have been effective at weeding the field of candidates, and they’re about momentum for those later states. Plus, in the last 40 years, just one person has gone on to win the presidency after losing both Iowa and New Hampshire  —   Bill Clinton. Here’s how the predictability of the states breaks down by party: New Hampshire has been better at picking nominees for Republicans. Since 1976:  —   Five eventual nominees won the Granite State . ..  —   Two became president: Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Iowa, on the other hand, has picked:  —   Three eventual GOP nominees, but . ..  —   Just one president: George W. Bush, Here’s the thing, though: No Republican has become the nominee in the last 40 years without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire. Iowa has been slightly better than New Hampshire at picking nominees on Democratic side. In fact, since 1976:  —   A whopping six eventual nominees have won Iowa, including the last three (Barack Obama, John Kerry and Al Gore).  —   Two Iowa Democratic winners have become president  —   Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. New Hampshire has picked:  —   Five nominees over that same time . ..  —   Just one became president  —   Carter.  —   Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan all lost Iowa but went on to win the presidency.  —   Bill Clinton didn’t win either Iowa or New Hampshire in 1992, but was still declared ”The Comeback Kid” after his   finish in the New Hampshire.  —   The person who led the longest in Iowa in the crowded Republican field in 2015, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, was . .. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. He led for six months, from February to August, before dropping out of the race after a series of missteps.  —   If Donald Trump wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, it would be the first time a   Republican has done so in 40 years."
"Donald Trump has not only caused deep divisions in the GOP establishment, but he’s also exposed a stark divide within the evangelical community. On one side, the bombastic billionaire has Jerry Falwell Jr. the son of the famed televangelist and Moral Majority founder, in his corner. An official endorsement came after the Liberty University president heaped praised on Trump during his appearance at the Christian college in Virginia. At that event, Falwell called Trump someone who ”lives a life of loving and helping others, as Jesus taught in the New Testament” and ”one of the greatest visionaries of our time.” Campaigning with Trump in Iowa on Saturday, just ahead of Monday’s vote, the scion of one of the   known families of the Religious Right admitted his blessing may seem strange to some, given Trump’s past. Trump was once a supporter of abortion rights, has been divorced twice, admitted to multiple affairs and has a history of vulgar language, including on the campaign trail. ”It’s just like when you have a sick child,” Falwell argued. ”You look for the best doctor you can find. It may not be a doctor who goes to your church, but it’s the one who has best experience with that particular illness. We need a businessman.” But for other religious leaders, such as Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and a frequent critic of Trump, such rationale is almost heretical. ”You have someone who has reaffirmed that he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, for which he needs to seek forgiveness,” Moore told NPR just after Trump’s talk at Liberty. ”Despite the fact that you have a train wreck of activity over many years, culminating in this presidential campaign. And there’s nothing but bragging and boasting about it.” But it’s exactly that strong man approach that Trump provides  —   unapologetically promising to ”Make America Great Again” and to win so much against world leaders and in creating jobs here at home ”you’ll get bored of winning”  —   that has an appeal to religious voters who feel they’ve been abandoned by the Republican Party. His blunt talk went even further last month when he called for a ban on Muslims coming into the U. S. amid concerns of terrorism. Many Christian leaders were aghast at what they saw as an affront to religious liberty with his singling out an entire faith group. But other big names such as Franklin Graham, son of the famed evangelist and presidential counselor Billy Graham, supported Trump on it. While Graham has not endorsed Trump, he has spoken favorably toward him. Still, the fact that Trump’s rhetoric has won over religious voters and leaders shouldn’t be that shocking, according to John C. Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron who studies religious trends and American evangelicals. ”For a number of these leaders that have spoken out recently, there’s an argument that Trump is a strong leader and will be effective,” Green said. ”It shows a real dissatisfaction with the leadership of the mainstream Republican Party. They say, ’Our community has supported you election after election, and nothing seems to get done on our agenda. ’” At the heart of the schism is that evangelicals, contrary to popular stereotypes, are not a monolithic voting group. For more conservative voters, social issues such as abortion and gay marriage may be deal breakers. But for more moderate, often younger, evangelicals, ”they care about a mix of issues,” Green said. ”It’s not just a concern for a social issues  —   they’re also interested in economic questions and are concerned about the environment.” So while these fault lines within the evangelical community are nothing new and are something widening between generations, they just haven’t been this exposed before in recent history. And probably only such a radical candidate like Trump could do so. Even though previous GOP nominees who weren’t completely satiable to the most conservative evangelicals  —   for example, Mitt Romney was Mormon and viewed skeptically by many in the church  —   his personal life and the core of his political beliefs didn’t completely alienate influential leaders. Trump, on the other hand, has done just that. What’s more, it’s Trump’s insistence that he is one of them  —   and the lack of any rebuke from Christians leaders who embrace Trump  —   that has completely rattled people like Moore. ”I think presenting Donald Trump as though he were a Christian is dangerous to the mission of the church and then glossing over real character issues,” he said, ”when evangelicals have been very clear about character issues when it comes to politicians with whom we disagree on multiple issues. That’s sending a signal that, I think, hurts our witness.” And on core issues that remain important to evangelicals, many say Trump is still just paying lip service. A group of conservative,   female leaders released a letter this week blasting Trump on abortion  —   even before he brushed aside specific questions on the trail about his past support for   abortion and wouldn’t even answer whether he supported Plan B, the     pill. The first test to see which way actual voters will come down is Monday evening when Iowa’s sizable evangelical population heads to the polls. Will they put their faith in Trump or turn out in big numbers for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s positioned himself as the top alternative."
"Ted Cruz has one of the most overtly religious stump speeches on the Iowa campaign trail. In Emmetsburg, Iowa, Friday the Texas senator quoted the Bible and exhorted his supporters to pray ”each and every day” until Election Day. ”He’s real,” said Bobbie Clark, a Cruz supporter from Algona. ”There’s something there. There’s substance behind it. It’s not just talk.” There’s a big reason Cruz and others are making that kind of pitch here days before the first votes cast in this presidential campaign season  —   Iowa’s ”evangelical voters” have carved a   path for past Iowa winners. Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008, for example, won them over and won the caucuses. As with the fractured 2012 field, it’s not at all clear who will win this year’s Iowa GOP caucuses. But it seems to be a   race  —   between Cruz and Donald Trump. In the final Des Moines   Iowa poll before the caucuses, Trump leads Cruz 28 to 23 percent overall. But Cruz leads with evangelicals, 33 to 19 percent. That could bode well for Cruz Monday night, if those evangelical voters turn out in high numbers like in year’s past. But while Cruz is ahead with those voters, he doesn’t have the kind of dominant lead with the group that can ensure victory. J. Ann Selzer, the pollster who conducted the poll, said Trump’s lead shrinks to 1 point over Cruz if religious conservatives match 2012’s turnout of 55 percent of the electorate. In that sense, this year’s race is looking more like 2012 than 2008. In 2012, Iowa evangelicals’ support was relatively divided. Entrance polls showed Santorum with 32 percent of evangelicals’ support, compared with Ron Paul’s 18 percent (remarkably close to the   split that this latest poll shows). Three other candidates each took 14 percent. Santorum went on to win the caucuses by just 34 votes over Mitt Romney. Paul finished a strong third. Meanwhile, in 2008, Huckabee had a far more commanding lead with these voters. He took 46 percent to Romney’s 19 percent  —   and they made up 60 percent of the electorate. All that added up to a solid   win for Huckabee over Romney. While all of the Republican candidates are Christians, some, like Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, have made their faith a more central part of their message than others. At the Cruz event in Emmetsburg, his supporters said they appreciate his faithcentric campaign. But while faith plays a part in how many voters choose a candidate, some say they feel manipulated by blunt appeals to their Christian identity. ”I think sometimes they’re just giving me lip service,” said Dave Mouw before a Jeb Bush campaign event in Sioux Center, Iowa. ”They’re telling me what I want to hear. You can usually tell by a guy if he means it or not.” As of Friday, Mouw was torn between a few candidates  —   Bush, John Kasich, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. Meanwhile, Mouw said, there’s one candidate who is not winning him over. ”I don’t need Donald Trump reading me a Bible verse,” Mouw said. Other voters echoed that ambivalence toward religious appeals. ”I don’t give support simply by quoting the Bible. I want to see it lived out in the policy,” said John Lee, a pastor in Sioux Center. ”I’m not electing a pastor in chief. I’m electing a commander in chief.” Lee doesn’t know whom he will vote for in Monday’s caucus, but he knows whom he won’t be supporting: Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Lee said his Christian beliefs led him to oppose their   immigration stances  —   policies that are part of what he labels ”callous conservatism.” Sioux Center, where Lee and Mouw came out to see Bush speak on Friday, is in the heart of Iowa’s conservative Christian northwest corner, which helped push to victory Huckabee in 2008 and Santorum in 2012. For context on just how conservative Sioux County is  —   in the 2012 general election, around 47 percent of Iowans voted for Romney, but nearly 84 percent of Sioux County did. Though Lee acknowledges he is not intimately familiar with his congregation’s political views, he said his ”unofficial sense” is that they are divided among several candidates, especially Rubio, Santorum, Carson and Cruz. Meanwhile, of the 600 to 700 people who attend on Sundays, he knows of only one who supports Trump. So while candidates may make religious references and show off their family Bibles to win over Iowa’s Christian vote, that approach can go only so far. Many evangelical voters simply aren’t first and foremost religious voters. Nancy Van Roekel from Hinton said her faith ”definitely” plays into her decision to support Bush but that his main appeal comes from his consistency and experience. Indeed a big (huge, even) part of Trump’s appeal stems from his ”outsider” status, with his promises to drastically change Washington. In fact, many white,   evangelicals support Trump despite also not seeing him as very religious, as NPR’s Tom Gjelten reported. Trump’s message has driven him to the top of the Iowa polls, and some are predicting it could push droves of   caucusgoers out the door on Monday night. Lee is one such person. He has never caucused before  —   caucusing requires choosing a party, and as he put it, ”I don’t think God belongs to either party.” But Trump has inspired him  —   albeit not in the way Trump might hope. ”This year I will [caucus],” Lee said, adding, ”With Trump leading in the polls, I feel like it’s a status confessionis time,” Lee said, using a term referring to a point when the church has to take a position on an issue. ”I have to, as a pastor, say, ’This is not who we are.’ Otherwise I sit them out.”"
"Donald Trump said a final word to evangelical voters on Saturday by showing them the Word of God. In a Facebook video, the real estate mogul opens his Bible to thank ”the evangelicals” for the support they’ve shown him in polls. ”My mother gave me this Bible, this very Bible, many years ago,” Trump says. ”In fact, it’s her writing, right here. She wrote the name, and my address, and it’s just very special to me.” He closes this way: ”I want to thank the evangelicals,” he says. ”I will never let you down.” It’s been surprising to many that the   casino mogul has done so well with religious voters, who are so crucial in Iowa especially. On the trail he’s seemed uncomfortable using religious language, and here again his approach seems stilted. Last week, at Liberty University, he mangled the name of a book of the Bible and swore twice at the Christian school. But he still picked up the endorsement of the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr. Trump is in a dead heat with rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for evangelical support. And the final Des Moines   Iowa Poll released Saturday night showed Monday’s caucus result could come down to that very subgroup. Trump leads Cruz by 5 points overall in the poll, but the outcome would tighten to just a   advantage for the businessman if evangelical turnout reaches the level it did four years ago. Still, Cruz’s support has dropped 12 points since last month with evangelicals in the state, according to the survey."
"On a little patch of grass outside a police station in the small town of Rubayda in northern Iraq, a   women with small children sit on a rug, with a   group of men nearby, eager to talk about how they walked here. ”Day and night, for 48 hours, without food or water or sleep,” says Khalaf Hussein Karam, a former soldier with a deeply lined face. He escaped from his town in the Islamic   area around the city of Hawija. With numerous relatives including women and children, he crossed the Hamrin mountain range. ”At the last stage, we had to cross the frontlines between the Iraqi army and ISIS brigades,” he says. At one point, the group got lost and tried to go back home  —   but when ISIS saw them approaching they shot and killed some of them. So the survivors had no choice but to find their way to the   area. ”We slept in the open, in the cold,” he says, saying five days on, his body was still aching. But finally, the exhausted walkers reached the Iraqi security forces. ”They received us with open arms,” says Khalaf. ”They treated us in a good way.” That might seem like an extraordinary journey. But officials and police say about 20, 000 people have walked over those mountains to escape ISIS in the last few months. The U. S.  coalition against ISIS has tightened the noose around the extremists in the last few months. Supply lines and revenue sources have been cut off. The U. S. military says all this is weakening the group militarily. But it’s also affecting civilians in the areas ISIS controls. Captain Dhiaa Abdullah Mohammad is the commander of what he calls the mountain unit of the police. He says families make the perilous journey on a daily basis. ”They come because of hunger, because they have no money and a lot of pressure from ISIS,” he says. The escaped families say they hated the brutal rule of ISIS. They speak of beatings for women who weren’t totally covered, or men caught smoking. The militants were extra suspicious of anyone who had been in the security forces. They also talk of growing hardship in the area controlled by the extremists. ”We were dying,” says Wijdan Taha Hussein, clustered on the rug with other women and   children, including two of her own. ”There were shortages of water, electricity, fuel,” she says. Food was scarce and expensive. Islamic State tries to block information from getting out of its areas. Aid agencies aren’t sure exactly how civilians are faring in regions under the group’s control. But there is growing anecdotal suggestion that shortages of the basics of life there are becoming chronic. Seven months ago, Iraq’s government decided to stop paying salaries to the government workers in ISIS areas. Those salaries had been taxed by ISIS, and Iraqi officials say they didn’t want to give the extremists the cash. But that’s likely left hundreds of thousands of families without an income. Plus, the U. S.  coalition has cut off roads that are crucial supply routes, particularly a road between the ISIS Syrian stronghold of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul. In Baghdad, U. S. Captain Chance McCraw acknowledges it’s been tough on civilians, but it’s taking a toll on ISIS, which he calls by their Arabic nickname Daesh. ”We know life is not good underneath Daesh by any means,” he says, adding that life’s not as prosperous as it is in areas under government control. McCraw says there are shortages of fuel and electricity. He also points to a number of battles ISIS has lost recently, in which the group has been short on heavy weapons and vehicles. McCraw also says ISIS is losing so many fighters in fighting that they can’t spare so many men to stop civilians from escaping. And that could mean even more families like the ones fleeing, night by freezing night, over the Hamrin mountains."
"Three explosions near a shrine revered by Shiite Muslims in Damascus have killed at least 45 people, according to reports from Syrian media and human rights monitors. NPR’s Alison Meuse, reporting from Beirut for our Newscast unit, says the Islamic State has claimed responsibility through its media outlets. She continues: ”State media say the first blast was caused by a car bomb at a local bus station. Then, as people rushed to help the wounded, two suicide bombers with explosive belts detonated themselves in the crowd. Photos and videos posted online by activists show burned out cars and plumes of smoke rising into the sky. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 100 people are wounded. ”The area targeted, Sayyida Zeinab, is home to one of the holiest shrines in Islam, but which is especially revered by Shiite Muslims. Shiite militant groups allied with Bashar  ’s forces often use the defense of the shrine as a rallying cry for recruits.” The explosions came two days after Syrian peace talks in Geneva began. The talks  —   which involve the Syrian government and some opposition groups meeting with the U. N. but not directly with each other  —   had a rocky start, with opposition groups initially refusing to attend and many involved in the conflict feeling alienated by the U. N.’s announcement of the talk’s beginning. The opposition delegates have agreed to meet with the U. N. mediator but say they won’t negotiate until they’ve seen evidence of good faith from the Syrian government  —   like the lifting of sieges and an end to bombings of   areas, The Associated Press reports. The Islamic State is not included in the peace talks."
"”Full employment” is a phrase economists use to explain how the job market recovers from a recession. We’ll be hearing this phrase a lot as the Labor Department releases the latest jobs data on Friday. It’s expected to show that employers added even more workers in January. But the phrase doesn’t tell the full story for millions of Americans either still out of work or who are looking for something better than   work. What is full employment and what does it mean? To economists, it’s when the number of people seeking jobs is roughly in balance with the number of openings. It doesn’t mean the unemployment rate is zero because that’s not realistic. There will always be some unemployment. Companies have to close down obsolete operations, individuals have to quit their jobs to move with a spouse, or they might move to look for something better with higher pay. If the economists don’t mean zero unemployment when they use the phrase ”full employment,” what do they mean? Economists say a healthy job market has an unemployment rate somewhere between 4. 6 percent and 5 percent. Some people are quitting, some people are getting hired  ” there’s churn but no despair. In December, the national rate was 5 percent and now many predictions have the rate gliding down to 4. 6 percent by July. So bingo, we’re basically there at full employment. If all goes as expected in 2016, people who want jobs will be able to find them, and employers who need workers will be able to attract them. Is it really fair to use the term ”full employment” when that doesn’t seem to match the reality that a lot of people are experiencing? Those words can hit hard and they can hurt because it sounds like you must be doing something wrong. But really, unemployment is very regional. In West Virginia, there are counties today with unemployment rates of 12 percent or even 13 percent. But in California’s Silicon Valley, the rate is virtually zero, with companies battling each other for workers. So geography matters! And there are big differences based on age. For black teenagers nationwide, the unemployment rate is 21 percent. For women of any color, if you’re 50, studies show you have a tough time getting back to the workforce. You become   unemployed. Besides age and location, more than anything, education determines your unemployment rate. For college graduates, it’s 2. 3 percent unemployment for high school dropouts, 7 percent. Is ”full employment” something that a lot of Americans are still going to experience as something very unsatisfying? If you’re a    with a college degree and a   you’re all set, you can find jobs. If you want to go to night school and you want to move, you can be part of that full employment economy. But the reality for a lot of people is that it is very hard. About 7. 9 million people remain unemployed because they may not fit that demographic description. Like women in their 50s who may actually be at the center of a whole financial and emotional ecosystem, taking care of aging parents, as well as children and grandchildren, it can be very hard to move. Is this sort of a new normal in that what we call ”full employment” is really not at all ”full” but very uneven? Yes, we can say now that for younger,     people, jobs abound. The recession truly is over. And 2016 should be a great year for job hunting. But for people in their 50s with rusty skills or teenagers with relatively little education, the phrase ”full employment” is a painful taunt."
"One month down, two to go. For unemployed adults in 22 states, that’s how long they can count on help with the grocery bills: Starting this January, they have three months to find a job or lose their food assistance. SNAP benefits  —   formerly known as food stamps  —   have been tied to employment for two decades. Unless they are caring for children or unable to work, adults need to have a job to receive more than three months of benefits. But after the recession began, that   cap was waived in many areas, as state and federal governments acknowledged that jobs were hard to come by. Now, as the economy is improving, the time limits are being reimposed  —   by federal policy in some areas, by state legislators in others. For 22 states, the time limit returned in some or all of the state at the beginning of this year. It’s the largest reinstatement of the   cap since the recession, The Associated Press reports. A Million SNAP Recipients Affected, The   time limit applies to people ages 18 to 50 who aren’t caring for a child or other dependent, aren’t pregnant and aren’t disabled or otherwise prevented from working. After their three months are up, such recipients must be working or in a training program at least   (80 hours a month) to receive SNAP benefits. States are encouraged to offer job training, worker placement and work programs for   receiving SNAP benefits, but they are not required to. In order to waive the time limit, states generally need to prove a region has an unemployment rate above 10 percent, a surplus of workers as acknowledged by the Department of Labor or unemployment rate 20 percent higher than the national average for two years in a row. A region that qualifies for extended unemployment benefits can also waive the time limit. Even when the time limit is waived, the overall work requirements attached to SNAP benefits still stand: Recipients need to demonstrate that they are looking for a job, and need to take any reasonable job that is offered to them. Once the time limit kicks in,   childless and unemployed adults are limited to three months of food aid every three years, even if they are actively looking for a job and have not been offered one. More than a million current SNAP recipients are affected by this month’s reinstatement of the time limit, according to an AP tally: ”Federal figures show that many in this category are single adults, with slightly more men than women. Case studies have shown they are less likely than the general population to have high school diplomas and valid driver’s licenses. Advocates say some are homeless, recently released from prison or dealing with trauma from military service, abuse or violence in their communities  —   all of which can make it harder to get a job.” Communities Affected In 22 States  This January, six states reimposed the time limit on all their SNAP recipients: Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey and Tennessee went from statewide waivers to no waivers at all. Sixteen others had a statewide waiver last year and are now enforcing the time limit in some areas: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia. In most cases, the time limit is returning because the states were no longer eligible for a waiver. But Mississippi, New Mexico and West Virginia are eligible for a statewide waiver based on their unemployment rates and are choosing not to implement it, reports the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank. The number of SNAP recipients governed by the time limit will soon rise again. South Carolina, which is currently covered by a statewide waiver, has only requested it through March, Pew reports."
"Over the past 25 years, there’s been no more prominent name in gospel music than Kirk Franklin. In that time, the singer has been no stranger to controversy. By merging   with gospel, he brought the stars and sound of the club scene into the church  —   and not everyone in the church has been comfortable with that. Franklin continues to challenge audiences with his latest album, titled Losing My Religion. He spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about pursuing faith without dogma, and why he wants to make God a cultural celebrity. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more from their conversation below. Michel Martin: So we have to get right to the title track. It’s a lengthy   piece, and it concludes with, ”I’m losing my religion, Thank God   Helping you lose yours is my job.” What was the inspiration, and what was your message here? Kirk Franklin: Well, I feel that the pursuit of trying to know who God is, and trying to be known by God, can be lost in religion. Because religion, all that it is, is man’s attempt to try to put a definition on something that is very hard to define. We haven’t seen God with a physical eye, so we’re trying to understand him  —   sometimes from an academic approach, from a scientific approach, from a literal approach. We end up missing the incredible story  —   God made man, man rejected God, and God won’t stop chasing man until he wins him back. And that’s the simple story of God. Religion can create so much of a dogma and so much of a cloud to that simple story that people don’t want to know God. They see God as someone with the big belt, that’s gonna whoop you every time you do wrong. For centuries, people have been debating this question of whether our structures get in the way of our faith. And I just wondered, was there an epiphany for you? Did you have kind of a moment on the road to Damascus where something struck you? Or has this been something that’s been churning for some time? Yes, I think there’s something that has kind of been part of my psyche for many years. I mean, even in the song that I wrote years ago called ”Revolution,” back in ’98 when I was 28 years old, there’s a line I said about, ”sick and tired of the Church talkin’ religion.” I’ve always seen that framework as challenging. Because I don’t see people that have fallen in love with God through religion. I’ve seen people fall in love with God, or come to see God loving them, through a relationship. Well tell me about the closing line, then: ”I’m losing my religion.” What is that a call for? Rules without relationship leads to rebellion. So, what I want to be able to do is to not let rules be the premise that drives us to God, because rules will never drive us to God  —   rules will drive us away from God. My job on Earth, the reason why Kirk is created, is to make God famous. I just want God to be  . And I think it’s created a dialogue  —   I think it’s opened up conversation, and people have started to talk about what religion is to them. The big hit on the album is a song called ”Wanna Be Happy?” And again, I’m sure people are going to hear it in different ways. What was your inspiration for this song? You know, my job is try to also create a horizontal Jesus. Most gospel music is very vertical. And there’s nothing wrong with that  —   there’s nothing wrong with, you know, ”God, we praise you,” and ”hallelujah.” Those songs are very important. But I also like to do songs that are very horizontal, that kind of fit within the fabric of people’s everyday life. Wanting to be happy is something that every human being aspires to have. That’s a conversation that anybody can have at any time. But what I’m saying is that happiness is not something that you wish for  —   happiness is something that you work for. On that point, about kind of meeting people where they are: ”True Story” is a piece that really struck me. There are no easy answers in it. Traditionally, people think of gospel music as comforting  —   it’s something that gives you comfort in a time of pain and tells you everything’s going to be all right. This song really doesn’t do that. No, no, no. When you read stories in the Bible  —   you know, Samson or the story of David or the story of Moses  —   there’s conflict on the way to the victory. When you have this very   faith presentation, of everybody smiling like they just got their teeth cleaned? That’s not where real people live! Real people live with being Christians with cancer, Christians with AIDS, Christians coming back home with limbs missing from war, Christians being evicted and Christians losing their homes. If you don’t paint that picture, too, then I think that you are misrepresenting what the faith really can look like. The faith is not always sunny days. If we don’t do that, then I think that we are selling the wrong message."
"Living on the streets is tough enough in a city. But when you’re homeless in rural America, it’s even harder to pull yourself out of poverty. In the small town of Flagstaff, Ariz. one woman tried to make a difference, and flipped an old motel into transitional housing. When former financial planner Lori Barlow moved to Flagstaff, she volunteered at the emergency shelter. She was overwhelmed by the number of people stuck in poverty. ”I was surprised we had people staying there that had jobs,” Barlow says. ”And that just amazed me. What’s happening to these people that are trying?” Barlow now houses about 50 of those people at the old 66 Motel, now called ”ANEW Living Community.” Many work seasonal jobs or rely on Social Security or disability checks to pay the rent  —   people like Hans Pap, who moved here from Baltimore after he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. ”It was one of my dreams to come out West,” he says. ”So I figure before I die I’d at least come out here and see the West.” Being homeless in Flagstaff was harder than Pap expected. He says there were few places to go to escape the cold. Things are a little better now that he has a key to a room at ”ANEW Living Community.” ”That’s a propane camping stove I use to cook with . .. usually hamburger, chicken, cheap stuff,” says Pap, showing us his room. A few doors down, William Fulton works on one of the old motel rooms. Fulton had more than three decades of experience as an engineer, but then he was injured on the job. ”[I] just fell into a state of depression, not been able to get steady work,” Fulton says. At 58, he says many people think he’s too old. ”Right after the housing bust, the economy went down,” he says. ”Everybody’s just trying to survive. And so I got into the handyman service. I didn’t really like the title handyman because I’m an engineer, I’ve done so much.” Out of work and living in a van, Fulton met Barlow. ”She asked, ’You want to come in here and fix these rooms up in exchange for rent to help you get back on your feet? ’” Fulton says. ”And I said, ’Yeah!’ So yeah, sorry, I’m getting choked up.” Julie Bowman, whose friends call her Red, crashed a motorcycle 20 years ago. Red’s a   biker chick who used to be a bartender. ”I broke my back, smashed my face, I flew off a bike at like 80 miles an hour, face first 100 feet,” Bowman says. ”It was really cool.” But the accident left her broke, partially deaf and no longer able to lift cases of beer. Now she takes community college courses online. Bowman says everybody at the motel looks after each other. ”That older lady, she told me a couple days ago she’s usually broke by the end of the month and doesn’t have much food,” Bowman says. ”She told me that and I about came unglued. And I’ve taken her dinner every single night since she told me that.” Bowman says that’s the way she was raised. And she’s got a lot of grit. ”All I’ve ever wanted is a house of my own  —   and not to worry about whether I’m gonna pay my electric bill,” Bowman says. ”I see myself not giving up until I get it.” That kind of determination is the spirit that drew people to Route 66. A lot of people still move along the old Mother Road and wind up in small towns, where you can find people who may have lost hope before they found each other."
"As many know, parenting isn’t an easy job. It can be hugely frustrating and even lonely trying to figure out what’s best for your kid. Should you be a taskmaster or a best friend? Is there a middle ground? The pressures of   work and    activities can make that question even more challenging to tackle. Dr. Leonard Sax has experience in guiding these relationships as a family physician and psychologist in Pennsylvania. His new book, The Collapse Of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown Ups is informed Sax’s personal and professional observations. ”That’s what motivated it, but this is not a rant. It’s not a sermon,” he says, adding that his book is grounded in more than 400 studies. In an interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin, Dr. Sax discusses what he sees as a widespread trend of dissolving healthy relationships between kids and their parents. On the meaning of the book’s title, The point of the book is, look, you need to give kids choices in some domains but not in others. I’m seeing a lot of parents who are really confused about in what domain is it appropriate to give kids a choice. For example, is it OK for your    to take their cell phone to bed with them? My answer is no. But so many parents think it is their job to be their child’s best friend. That’s not your job. Your job is to keep your child safe, make sure they get a good night’s sleep and give them a grounding and confidence and help them to know who they are as human beings. On the problems with   relationships he’s seen over the years, So many kids today care so much more about the opinions of other kids than they do about their parents’. And that’s really harmful because the regard of your peers, if you’re an    or    that can change overnight. So if you’re concerned first and foremost about what your peers think, you’re gonna be anxious. And we’ve seen a 400 percent explosion in anxiety among American kids in the United States over the last 30 years. An American kid in the United States is now 14 times more likely to be on medication for ADD compared to a kid in the United Kingdom. On the correlation between medication and the collapse of parenting, I can tell you exactly how it happens. Here’s a typical story: This boy tells his parents that he’s having trouble concentrating and focusing and they take him to a   child psychiatrist. And the child psychiatrist says, ”Ah, sounds like maybe ADHD, let’s try Adderall or Vyvanse and see if it helps.” And oh my gosh, what a difference  —   medication helps enormously. The child, the teacher, the parent and even the prescribing physician saying, ”Hey this medication was prescribed for ADD, it’s clearly been helpful, therefore this kid must have ADD.” But he doesn’t. The parents bring him to me for a second opinion and I ask some questions like, ”What do you do in the evening?” and the parents have no idea, he’s in his bedroom with the door closed so his parents don’t know what’s going on and they think he’s asleep but he’s not. He’s staying up ’til 1 or 2 in the morning playing video games night after night. He’s  . And if you’re   you’re not gonna be able to pay attention and all the standard questionnaires, Conners Scales, etc. cannot distinguish whether you’re not paying attention because you’re   or because you truly have ADD. On the challenges that will come with altering parenting style, It depends on how you’ve been parenting so far. And the earlier the child, the easier it is to make a change. If you’ve been the permissive parent who lets kids take their phones and their devices into their bedrooms with them, lets kids decide what’s for supper, it’s gonna be a challenge. And I recommend that you sit down with your child and say, ”Hey, there’s gonna be some changes here.” So, for example, one mom took the cell phone away because her daughter’s spending all her time texting and Snapchatting. And the daughter didn’t push back. And her friends were like ”Oh, you know her mom’s the weird mom who took her phone away.” The real push back  —   and this is what surprised this mom  —   came from the parents of her daughter’s friends, who really got on her case and said, ”How can you do this?” and this mom told me that she thinks the other parents are uncertain, unsure of what they should be doing and so that’s why they’re lashing out at her  —   the one mom who has the strength to take a stand."
"Monday’s Iowa caucuses are being billed, as they are every election season, as ”a fight for the soul of the Party,” both Democratic and Republican. Yes, it’s a   cliché, but especially on the Republican side this year, it’s a real battle. For some insight into the race and the state of the GOP, we’ve turned to some young Republicans: Chelsi Henry, 27, was the youngest elected woman in the history of Jacksonville, Fla. Will Estrada, 32, works as an advocate for a   nonprofit in Northern Virginia. And Margaret Hoover, 38, is a political strategist and author whose   was President Herbert Hoover. We started with the man who’s grown to dominate the GOP. Will Estrada: Donald Trump talks a good talk but when you look at where he stands on, there’s nothing to base it on. While I like that he’s talking a conservative talk, I prefer candidates who have a background in it  —   there’s evidence that you can look back and say they’ve fought, they’ve been in the trenches, they’re trying to lower our taxes, reduce the size of the federal government rather than just say the right things. But he talks as a conservative and so you have the top two candidates in the polls both making a very strong push for the conservative movement as opposed to the establishment movement. I actually must say, I’m very optimistic. As a young Republican, I think tomorrow Ted Cruz is gonna win Iowa. I think it’s gonna basically deflate Donald Trump and I think this race  —   my crystal ball is a little foggy but I think it’s gonna come down to the two Cubans, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and I think one of them will be our nominee this summer. And as a young, Latino conservative, I’m very, very excited about that. Chelsi Henry: I think that Will made a great point in terms of Mr. Trump is and I think about this all the time, where does he really stand. I mean, he was a Democrat, now he’s a Republican  —   which, that happens, but I think there’s been many things that he’s   on and so I really wanna see someone who’s gonna go in, stand to their platform, stand to their promises and most importantly stand to their values and implement those for all Americans. . .. Jeb Bush. I’m a Florida girl so I’ve seen how the policies and principles  —   from job creation to education  —   when it comes to looking at all areas of government, looking at all areas where there’s need from criminal justice reform, education, health care, the policies that the governor has put out are ones that I support. Margaret Hoover: I would say I was optimistic before Donald Trump got in. now that Trump’s gotten in, and it is just Trump versus Cruz, the narrative, the tone, the quality of the conversations  —   we’re not talking about policy, we’re not talking about how to do the kinds of things that people like Paul Ryan are talking about: how to alleviate poverty, how is the Republican Party, the conservative movement going to make America better, fix sort of this economic stagnation that the middle class have been in for a decade or more? We’re not talking about any of the real problems. This has just become a reality TV food fight that frankly, not only is not good for the country, it’s really terrible for the Republican Party as well. So quite frankly, I’m hesitant to say, it’s quite terrifying as a young Republican. RM: Why is Donald Trump leading in the polls so dramatically then? CH: He’s the one that’s saying, no more political correctness, I’m going to say what’s on my mind, I’m a person just like you, I have these really strong feelings, that sometimes, those who are trying to be politically correct don’t share. So I think just his style has allowed people to feel like, ”Oh my gosh, we can take back control, of the government.” But it doesn’t address the policy concerns, that myself as a young   attorney, activist feels needs to be addressed. MH: It’s more than that though Chelsi . .. We talk about and you’re talking about the fight for the soul of the Republican Party. This is also the fight for the soul of the conservative movement in many ways because the conservative movement has counted on many of these individuals who are finding affinity with Trump. And you see National Review, the really primary publication of the really modern American conservative movement, coming out against Trump. But many of their readers are angry. Many of FOX News viewers are angry. They support Donald Trump. And what he’s tapped into is an economic populism and what I think is really more of a European style xenophobic nationalism that is a very, very strong feeling out there and he’s riding that wave. RM: What do you think about the rhetoric surrounding immigration policies and the influx of Syrian refugees and some of the language and rhetoric that’s been used by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump? WE: As an evangelical Christian, we see in the bible that we’re all created equal in the image of God and a lot of the rhetoric that is used in modern American politics detracts from that. We need to be caring for the poor and the vulnerable. . .. But having said that it also starts with we’ve got to protect our citizens, we’ve got to protect men, women, children here in America. And I’m very concerned, Rachel, and I think a lot of Americans are concerned when we see young men of military age coming over from   countries, who we don’t know and we can’t verify. I always think, what would happen  —   that movie Red Dawn that came out in the 80s  —   what would happen if our country were attacked? Would we be fleeing or would we be fighting for our country? RM: But Red Dawn is a fictionalized account that stirs up fear and paranoia. WE: It also, though, kind of strikes to the soul of what we’ve always said in America  —   that we will fight for our land. And I think a lot of Americans, myself included, are saying we should let the women and children in. But why are letting in people who should be fighting for their own country, frankly. RM: Margaret, you’ve done a lot of work as an advocate for same sex marriage, worked to get   republicans elected to Congress. This is obviously still a very divisive issue in the GOP. Who’s your candidate if that’s an issue that’s important to you, how does that weigh into your calculus when looking at the field? MH: I believe that better government is less government. I also believe in equal opportunity as every American does. But I think that where we come down differently in terms of the political spectrum is, on the right we tend to think that the government’s job is to stay out of the way and at the very minimum, enforce a level playing field to make sure that everybody does actually get a fair shot. And LGBT rights and freedoms is one area where government very clearly isn’t giving Americans a fair shot because LGBT Americans don’t have the same rights, they don’t have all the same freedoms. Even post marriage, there are 30 states where you can just be fired for being gay, at cause. Nobody knows this. Republicans especially don’t realize this. But there are Republicans who have taken strong positions on LGBT freedom. . .. I thought it was a great moment in one of the first debates where John Kasich came out and said I’ve been to a gay wedding and I was for traditional marriage but I went to a gay wedding and it reflected that people are open to changing and the Party isn’t a Party of bigots. I mean, that has been the false caricature, I think. RM: Explain what change, if any, you’d like to see in the GOP in the next few years? WE: I would love to see us talking more about policy. We do a good job about it but we need to do it more. And I think it gets to what Chelsi said of reaching out into minority communities. They want strong families they’re   many of them in the Latino community. Many of the   communities are again of a very strong, civil society and faith. And we need to go out and talk with them, we need to say the conservative, Republican message is one that empowers you  —   one that will protect you and your faith and your religious freedom and your family and your job and we need to go into these communities and just say you should be a Republican, you should vote with us because of these big policy issues. CH: One, I think that we should hold true to our values and our principles. I am a Republican because of the values and principles of the Party align with my personal values. Yet, with that, I think that we have to be better messengers to all communities. We have to be better messengers of how our conservative policies will directly affect the lives of people when they’re sitting down sat their kitchen table every month to pay bills, how it’s going to affect their bottom line. And from that, I think we also have to grow in our diversity. So, my hope’s, being optimistic because I happen to be a conservative, is that in 10 years we’ll look around and those who are helping make decisions, those who are helping candidates get elected, they will be a diverse group of people who represent the demographics of America. MH: I’d like for us to be a Party that’s known for standing what we are for  —   not what we’re against. And this is I think what Paul Ryan and the speakership is trying to do, is set an agenda of what we’re for so the country knows that the Republican Party is for. Nikki Haley is trying to do this too. We are for a stable Middle East, we are for a   health care system, we are for social mobility and getting people out of poverty. And people will know how we’re for those things. And I think as young Republicans, the principles are there, but we need to adjust them and message them in order to really connect to a new generation."
"The armed standoff between   militants and law enforcement in Oregon has lasted more than four weeks. After the arrest of 11 people last week, it was expected that the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge would come to an end, but the killing of the group’s spokesman in an encounter with police has   protesters. We have been here before. Back in the 1990s, there were several showdowns between armed   extremists and the federal government. One of the longest standoffs involved the Freemen of Montana in 1996, who held out for 81 days before surrendering peacefully to law enforcement. It was a different story in 1993, when the standoff with the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, ended with the deaths of at least 75 people  —   many of whom were children  —   in a fire. But it was the events at Ruby Ridge in Idaho that would become the symbol of government overreach. This week on For the Record: the lessons of Ruby Ridge. ”Ruby Ridge is a complex case,” says Jess Walter, author of the book Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family. In 1992 he was a cub reporter for the   in Spokane, Wash. ”It’s one of the reasons when it first unfolded in 1992, it slipped beneath the radar of the national media and the public.” As he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin, the story begins with Randy Weaver and his family. ”He lost his job at a tractor farm in Iowa, and they made their way west,” Walter says. ”They were apocalyptic Christians who believed the world was about to end. And they began practicing a form of religion called Christian identity, which is the religion of skinheads and white supremacists.” One summer, Weaver took his family to a camp run by the Aryan Nations. He sold two   shotguns to a man he met at that gathering, but that man turned out to be a federal informant. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms planned to use the illegal weapons sale to recruit Weaver as an informant, as well. As Walter tells it, the ATF approached Weaver and threatened him with prison time and the loss of his farm. But Weaver, who believed that the world would end because of government treachery, took the threat ”almost as a declaration of war,” Walter says. For the next year, Weaver and his family holed up in their cabin on Ruby Ridge, refusing to appear in court to face the gun charges. Federal agents kept them under surveillance. Everything culminated on Aug. 21, 1992, with six U. S. marshals on the ridge outside the Weaver compound. ”It was very, very thick foliage,” remembers Arthur Roderick, who was one of the marshals. ”I mean, it was August on a mountaintop. You could barely see your hand in front of your face.” As Roderick describes it, the Weavers’ family dog saw him and his partners in the woods and started barking. Roderick says the Weavers’    son Sam and family friend Kevin Harris started chasing them. Both Sam Weaver and Kevin Harris were armed. Roderick was carrying an M4 assault rifle. Another marshal, Bill Degan, told them to stop, Roderick says. Degan announced that they were U. S. marshals. ”This was all happening very quickly  —   within seconds, you know,” Roderick says. ”The dog stopped, turned around, looked at me. And then I fired a shot at the dog, which killed the dog right there. And then it was just gunfire for about 20 to 25 minutes.” One of Randy Weaver’s daughters, Sara, was 16 at the time. ”I do  —   I remember hearing the gunshots,” she recalls. ”I remember being very upset when I heard the gunshot because I wasn’t expecting that. I’ll never forget feeling panicked and helpless that I wasn’t there to protect [Sam].” When the firefight was over, both the marshal Bill Degan and Sam Weaver were dead. ”I think our family was still holding out hope at that point, that because Sam had died, someone would try and verbally contact us to talk about what had happened or how to resolve the situation,” Sara Weaver says. But journalist Jess Walter says poor communication between federal agencies had been making the situation worse. ”The FBI is getting information on this case from the marshals. They aren’t told Weaver’s son has been killed. They aren’t told there’s some question about who fired first. They’re only told that some marshals were in the woods surveying Randy Weaver, possibly to arrest him, when he and his family attacked them and killed a U. S. marshal,” Walter says. The FBI flew in a hostage rescue team, but the agency had suspended the normal rules of engagement, Walter says. As he recounts, the FBI told their agents they were going into an active firefight, authorizing them to open fire without warning if they saw an armed adult. Meanwhile, the Weavers and Harris had put Sam Weaver’s body in an outbuilding. ”They go to check on the body. And as Randy Weaver reaches up to open the shed door, a shot rings out from the woods, and he’s shot in the shoulder,” Walter says. ”And the family run back to the cabin. His wife, Vicki, holding their baby, throws the door open, screams ’Get back in the cabin.’ And the FBI agent fires again. And this shot hits Vicki Weaver in the face and kills her.” Randy Weaver, daughters Sara and Rachel, baby Elisheba and Harris holed up in the cabin for the next 10 days, scared that if they left the cabin, they would be shot. ”I was so drowning in grief,” Sara Weaver remembers. ”I pretty much felt that I didn’t have a chance of coming out alive.” She had lost her brother and her mom  —   but after a harrowing 11 days, the standoff finally ended and Sara Weaver did come out alive, along with her two siblings, their father and Harris. Ultimately, Randy Weaver was acquitted of every major charge because the jury ruled that the original weapons charge against him had been entrapment. Walter says the fallout from the incident derailed the careers of several federal agents. There were congressional hearings and government reports examining what went wrong. ”It really changed how law enforcement dealt with groups like this,” says Walter. Arthur Roderick retired from the U. S. Marshals Service in 2008. He says he thinks of the experience often, but not the Weaver family. ”I try not to think about them at all,” Roderick says. ”I mean, all they had to do was show up at court. Very simply, that’s all they had to do. I think again more about Bill Degan and his family, his two boys, his widow. You know, his mom and dad. That’s who I think about.” Sara Weaver lives in Montana now. She works as an advocate for trauma victims and is raising a teenage son. ”There’s a lot about him that is so fun and reminds me a lot of my little brother,” she says. ”I lost him when he was 14. My son is at that    age mark. It’s been so healing to have that   relationship with him like I had with my little brother. [I] have a chance to be the best mom I can be for him.” Sara Weaver says she’s been thinking a lot about Ruby Ridge these last couple weeks as the standoff in Oregon has unfolded. ”This situation is very, very different in many, many ways. But at the same time, I can relate to much of the emotion surrounding it. It brings back my own emotions surrounding it. I just don’t want to see people hurt. I know what it feels like, it’s devastating  —   on both sides,” she says. ”Nobody wins.”"
"Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing their country by boat. That’s Syria today. It’s also Vietnam in 1979.   Võ left Vietnam more than a decade after that, and under far different circumstances: She was already an   musician, bound for Carnegie Hall. But the plight of her countrymen, and that of today’s refugees, has inspired her to create a new concert piece that will be touring the country. Võ grew up in Hanoi, living with the legacy of the Vietnam war. Her family’s washbasin was an old artillery shell. Her school bell was a piece of an American   bomber she says her teacher would bang on it to signal recess. Võ left her homeland in 1995, after the United States normalized relations with Vietnam. She wound up in Fremont, Calif. near the large Vietnamese American community in San Jose. ”After having food, after having fun, we all end up talking how we came here,” she says of her friends. Võ learned that many of her friends in the United States were ”boat people.” When the war ended, ethnic hostilities forced hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, most of Chinese descent, to flee on overcrowded boats. Many died on the South China Sea. ”I wonder how they can find the strength,” she says, ”and how they can find hope.” The more she heard about their stories, she says, the more she wanted to share them  —   especially after the news turned to people fleeing Syria in boats. So Võ has written The Odyssey: From Vietnam to America,” a   multimedia piece about the boat people. Võ’s father played guitar in the North Vietnamese army during the war. Võ herself has won awards for her skill with traditional instruments, like the   dan bau, the bamboo xylophone, and especially the Vietnamese zither, the dan tranh. ”That’s the power and my luck and my fortune,” she says, ”of learning traditional music.” Since arriving in the United States, Võ has made strong musical connections. She has performed and recorded with Kronos Quartet and toured the country playing and singing her own compositions, which blend Vietnamese and Western traditions. When she was ready to tell the story of the Vietnamese boat people, Võ didn’t feel comfortable going to her friends. So she approached   for Community Involvement in nearby Santa Clara. The organization was founded in 1979 to help Vietnamese refugees president Michele Lew says the group doesn’t usually work with artists, but that storytelling can be helpful. ”We have found that storytelling . .. is a powerful hook to talk about health and wellness issues, such as the refugee experience,” she says. Lew’s organization helped Võ connect with almost 60 boat people, whom the musician then interviewed. She weaves audio and video from her conversations with them into The Odyssey. During the performance, a video screen shows what could be the sail of a boat, plus Võ’s group: Japanese taiko drum, electric cello, accordion, and Võ singing and playing traditional instruments. The aim is to   the journey of the boat people, including the sound of the ocean carrying them from Vietnam. One person Võ interviewed for The Odyssey is software engineer Mai Bui. Sitting in the living room of her Bay Area home, Bui recalls how she and her brother spent days on a crowded boat, without food or water, until a Thai merchant ship towed them into Bangkok. They ran at night to avoid pirates. ”The ocean sound is really romantic,” she says, ”but at that time, it’s scary.” She says she still cannot look at the ocean at night without thinking of her journey. This isn’t the only memory of the Vietnam War that Võ is addressing through music this year. She’s performing a new work called My Lai, by Jonathan Berger, with Kronos Quartet. She’s also taking The Odyssey on the road for performances in places with large   populations, including Washington, D. C. southern California’s Orange County, and Houston, Texas. Võ says The Odyssey is a plea on behalf of all refugees, and against the wars that divide us."
"Can drone racing be the next NASCAR? That’s what Nick Horbaczewski is banking on. He is the CEO of the Drone Racing League, and he has lined up millions in venture capital to bring his vision to reality. Using   quadcopters with onboard cameras and virtual reality goggles, pilots race the drones through complicated courses with hairpin turns, obstacles and precipitous drops. The   perspective lets spectators watching the race videos online feel as if they are in the cockpit too, racing at dizzying speeds of 80 mph or more. The pilots are from around the world and race under names like KittyCopter, Legacy, Steele and UmmaGawd  —   and, like so many athletes, participate in the drone racing version of trash talk. So far, the races have been filmed and posted online. The league is working toward live events and live broadcasts. More than a dozen drone pilots are lined up for the 2016 race season, which kicks off next month at Sun Life Stadium, home of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. ”It’s a whole new world  —   it’s right on the borderline between the digital and the real,” Horbaczewski tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. On the type of drone used, These are small, quadcopter drones, and they go very, very fast. . .. Same concept [as the hobbyist version] but ours are sleek carbon fiber, very powerful, and they go north of 80 miles an hour. These are serious pieces of equipment, and they have a little camera on them that feeds a video signal back to the pilots. So the pilots are wearing these goggles that see what the drone sees, basically, so it’s like sitting in the cockpit of the drone. And they fly it with the remote control through complex   racecourses that we set up in interesting and unique venues, like NFL stadiums and abandoned buildings all over the world. On the first race of 2016 in Miami, The course wraps around the [Sun Life Stadium’s] bowl, through the concourses, down through the people movers. These are actual drones flying through a real space. . .. It’s a new sport and you have this   course. . .. We have these gates that [the drones] fly through that we light up in bright lights so that they can see them and the audience can see them, and the drones have to pass through them and follow a particular path through the space. On turning a   dizzying race into a watchable sport, It takes a little bit of getting used to. . .. It’s like sitting in the cockpit of a drone going 80 miles an hour through a hallway. . .. One of the things that both pilots and spectators love about this sport: When you put on the goggles and you’re getting that feed or you’re watching it on a screen, you get the sensation of flight. This thing goes up in the air and takes a flip, and your stomach drops a little bit because your mind is thinking, ”I’m that drone  —   I’m going that fast.” We call it immersive. . .. It’s an immersive sport because it pulls you in and it lets you feel like you’re riding on the drone. . .. It’s a whole new world. It’s . .. right on the borderline between the digital and the real, ’cause it’s sort of like a   video game. On drone ”pit crews” At the Drone Racing League, we design and build all of the drones that are used in our events. So we’re bringing over a hundred drones to an event, so it’s a sizable team of people that are drone engineers and fleet managers that keep all those drones in pristine working order. On creating drama and spontaneity, There are tons of unknowns in our [videos]. . .. There’s drama, there’s moments of disappointment, there’s ties, there’s   there’s heartbreak and the thrill of victory. It’s all in there. This is racing. It’s got all the elements of car racing but mixed with   flight. We bring all those stories out, we tell you who the pilots are, we tell you what’s happening. On the Drone Racing League’s target audience, We’ve launched some of the content over the last few days, and we’ve been surprised. A lot of it is what you’d expect  —   millennials who like interesting,   content, the digital, and love drones and technology. But there’s also a huge interest from race fans, the traditional racing fans, people who love car races and speed sports, motorcycle racing. They love the speed, they love the thrill, they love the crashes. . .. On those crashes, Oh, there are lots of crashes. Crashing is a part of the sport of drone racing. You’re flying very   craft through narrow spaces, and pilots will occasionally miss a turn and they hit a wall, and these drones disintegrate, because they’re flying so fast and they have so much energy. But it’s part of the fun. It’s a drone. When that happens, we get a new drone, and pilots get a new one in the next race. And no one gets hurt."
"There is a joke circulating in San Salvador these days: ”Instead of using a condom, use a mosquito net! That should at least keep the mosquitoes from biting your privates.” The joke is a dig at the unusual suggestion made by the governments of El Salvador and various other Latin American countries. Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador (as well as Jamaica) have advised that women hold off on getting pregnant. El Salvador went as far as to urge women to hold back on having children until 2018. The suggestion, which might be unprecedented in human history, is in response to the outbreak of Zika, a   virus associated with serious brain damage in newborns. The virus came to the Americas in 2015, hitting Brazil first, and has so far spread to more than 20 countries in the Americas. Reproductive rights activists are outraged that the Salvadoran government would make this recommendation in country where women have no legal options to terminate a pregnancy if they are concerned about birth defects. That’s because the law recognizes a fetus as a human being from the moment of conception. At Ilopango prison for women, there are 17 inmates who said they had miscarriages but were accused by the courts of having abortions. They were sentenced for up to 40 years for aggravated homicide. Salvadoran law ”criminalizes abortion on all grounds, including when the mother’s life or health is in danger, and in cases of rape,” wrote Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, in a New York Times  . ”Women and girls cannot access an abortion even if continuing their pregnancy will kill them, or if their fetuses are not viable.” It’s a position not limited to El Salvador. The Honduran Supreme Court prohibits abortion and the   pill. Guatemalan law allows abortions only if the mother’s health is at risk but not in cases of rape. The matter is raised every so often in Salvadoran media. But Zika might be a watershed moment in how reproductive rights are perceived in the country  —   and the entire region. It would not be the first time a viral epidemic changes a society’s feelings on abortion. In the 1960s, abortion was illegal in the United States. But an outbreak of rubella (commonly known as German measles or   measles) brought the issue of abortion up for public debate. As a result of the national conversations, more Americans came to empathize with those mothers who had an illicit abortion. That was nearly a decade before Roe v. Wade ushered in the era of legal abortions. Rubella was linked to congenital rubella syndrome in fetuses, which causes deafness, sight problems, heart problems and microcephaly, to name a few medical issues. The severity of the effects of rubella virus on the fetus depends largely on the time when the fetus is infected:   percent of fetuses infected in the first trimester of pregnancy were likely to be affected. Between 1964 and 1965, there were an estimated 12. 5 million rubella cases in the U. S. resulting in 2, 000 newborn deaths and 20, 000 babies with congenital rubella syndrome.  And that’s where the story of Dolores Stonebreaker comes in. In 1965, she was happy to learn that she was pregnant. Then she found out she had contracted rubella from her    son. She was told there was a   chance that her baby would be born with congenital rubella syndrome. Even though abortion was against U. S. law, illicit abortions were practiced at the time. And according to the CDC, cases of rubella ”result[ed] in 11, 250 therapeutic or spontaneous abortions.” (A therapeutic abortion is generally one in which the mother’s health is in danger.) William G. Stonebreaker urged his wife to terminate the pregnancy. Dolores, who unlike her husband was a Roman Catholic, approached her priest, who told her in no uncertain terms not to do it. She was torn. And she made an unusual decision: She went public with her dilemma, allowing a reporter for Life magazine to tell the story of how she chose to abort.  ”We learned that reputable hospitals on the West Coast were performing therapeutic abortions on mothers who had been infected,” wrote the editor of Life. Reporter Bob Liang and photographer Co Rentmeeser were assigned to interview Dolores. There was a race and class component to the abortion debate. Professor Leslie J. Reagan, the author of Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, And Abortion in America, has studied the history of how epidemics shape the way we see birth control. She says the women who were talking about having abortions were white and stood for the ”  married mother who is speaking about an unborn child she wants to have, but has discovered she had German measles. It’s the definition of respectability in that time period, a   mother. Who talks about why she has to have an abortion.” And clearly, Americans were ready to talk about abortion. Mrs. Robert Raffaele, from Michigan, wrote to Life magazine to say ”the truly courageous ones are those who choose to accept their child as it may be.” One Barbara Sesputowski wrote in from New Jersey: ”As a Catholic mother with two   children, I certainly understand how Mrs. Stonebreaker feels. I believe she did what she had to do and did not commit a sin in God’s eyes.” Others were not so sure. Walter L. Harrison from Delaware wrote ”issues such as this have been hidden in   privacy too long.” In 1967, the Therapeutic Abortion Act made California one of the first states to legalize abortion. The procedure could only be performed in a hospital, after a committee had determined that the pregnancy would put a woman’s health at risk. Several years later, the rubella vaccine was created. In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the U. S. Much like the U. S. when Stonebreaker faced her dilemma, El Salvador sees plenty of illegal abortions. Salvadoran abortion rights activist Ángela Rivas warns that Zika will lead to ”more clandestine abortions and a higher number of women being sent to jail.” Rivas think now is the moment to talk: ”Once more we must debate the issue of decriminalizing abortion,” she urges. Many others disagree, but it seems as if there will be a reckoning. If it happens, it could be because of a mosquito."
"Before the Zika virus outbreak, which appears to be associated with serious birth defects in babies in Brazil, there was rubella, also known as German measles, which terrified the pregnant women of my mother’s generation. In the   rubella pandemic, an estimated 50, 000 pregnant women in the United States were exposed to rubella in pregnancy, resulting in miscarriages, stillbirths, and 20, 000 babies born with congenital rubella syndrome, which caused blindness, deafness, brain and heart damage. At the height of the pandemic, an estimated 1 of every 100 babies born in Philadelphia was afflicted. A vaccine for rubella was introduced in the 1970s, so parents no longer have to live in fear. But I still remember David, my   friend Kathy’s little brother. Kathy’s mom came down with rubella while pregnant and David was born mentally retarded. He never learned to speak, but would flap his hands and burble excitedly in the doorway when Kathy and I were playing Barbies, then flit away. As an adult, I met Kathy again. She told me David died and her face crumpled. So far the link between Zika virus, brain damage and microcephaly is suspected, not proven. But because Zika appears to be one of the few viruses that can be transmitted from a pregnant woman to a fetus, scientists are looking at what we already know about other viruses that pass the placental barrier as well, including rubella and cytomegalovirus (CMV) to see if it can be used to help combat Zika. ”That is why I’m interested in joining the effort in finding out if Zika is truly the cause of these effects,” says Dr. Sallie Permar, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute who studies these viruses. I talked with Permar about what’s known about rubella, Zika and the other viruses. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. How did scientists figure out that rubella was causing miscarriages and birth defects?  Rubella virus was early on recognized to cause fetal disease. Often there were outbreaks of rubella virus in the summer months. The waves of rubella epidemics were followed by the birth of children with   neurological deficits. I can imagine it was very terrifying to be pregnant when it spiked. How do the viruses pass from the mother to the developing fetus? Exactly how these viruses cross the   barrier is still not yet understood. There are very few viruses that are known to cause congenital infections. Although we think of the immune system as usually blocking viruses, there have been some hypotheses that the mother’s antibody response may actually work in opposite ways that if the antibody does not fully neutralize the virus it may actually help in carrying the virus across the placental barrier. Do these viruses pass from mother to child in the same way?  They have similarities and they have differences. The modes of transmission of HIV and cytomegalovirus are similar so that they can be passed to the fetus during pregnancy, during delivery, when the baby is exposed to the virus in the birth canal or through breast milk. One thing that is very different between HIV and CMV, we know that any time an infant gets HIV, that’s a pathogenic infection. If a fetus becomes infected with CMV during pregnancy, it can lead to neurologic deficits. However, if a baby gets infected during delivery or after birth via breast milk feeding, that is usually totally asymptomatic. Does it matter when a woman gets infected?  We often don’t know when congenital infections are transmitted. Likely when the mother is infected could affect transmission, but it is going to be different with every pathogen. Some neonatal pathogens hit hardest around delivery. Why is everyone routinely given the vaccine for rubella? In adults and children, rubella causes fever, maybe some rash it really was the sort of a childhood illness that was mild and would go away on its own. So the vaccine was not introduced to stop the mild febrile illness but to interrupt the congenital transmission. It’s an altruistic vaccine. You are protecting the mother to protect the fetus. What people say is when the rubella vaccine came out, schools for the deaf and blind had to close because there weren’t enough children to attend them. It really is a story of such success. We’ve sort of forgotten why vaccines are so important. Wendy Wolfson is a science writer in Orange County, Calif. "
"Imagine that, while traveling, you find yourself in a new city and decide to go to the zoo. After looking around for a while, you notice something odd. All of the animals you see come in three sexes. There is the usual male and female  —   and there’s also a third sex called zplif. Male, female and zplif. That would pretty weird, right? You’d have a lot of questions about zplifs. What are they like? How does, you know, it all work? And, most of all, how come you didn’t know about this before? Why aren’t there zplifs in the zoo in your city? Why are we so boring while everyone has something interesting going on? Well, as strange as it might seem, that is kind of the situation astronomers find themselves in now. That’s because during the last five years they’ve discovered that the galaxy is teeming with a new and different class of planet relative to what we know in our solar system. To see why this discovery is such big deal, let’s go back to when you were just a kid in grade school. Remember those diagrams of the solar system with the planets arranged on nice, color coded orbits around the sun? Let’s start there. In the inner part of the solar system you have Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. These are the   terrestrial worlds. They’re small and they are made of rock. Some are also covered by a pretty thin layer of atmosphere. It’s worth noting that Earth is the most massive of the terrestrial worlds. In the outer solar system you have the giant planets. These are huge balls of gas and ice. Jupiter, the biggest, is over 300 times more massive than the Earth. At the low end of the giants we have Uranus, only 15 or so times as big as Earth. Now, keep in mind that giant planets and rocky planets are really different. For example, astronomers are pretty sure life’s never going to form on a giant planet. There’s a laundry list of reasons for this conclusion, chief among them that gas giants don’t really even have a surface. So, there it is. You’ve got your giant   planets, and you’ve got your small, rocky terrestrial planets. In our solar system, that’s it. That’s all she wrote. And what about planets that are two or five or 10 Earth masses? Sorry pal, we don’t have ’em here. Move along. But just because these kinds of planets don’t show up in our solar system doesn’t mean they don’t exist in other parts the universe. In fact, this other kind of planet is everywhere. Astronomers call the class of worlds between Earth and Uranus    —   and they’re popping up in planet surveys like weeds. Based on what we’ve learned over the last 20 years, we know that every star you see in the night sky has at least one planet. And from work done over the last 10 years, it has become clear that, for stars like the sun, there are two to three times more   than   planets. This is equivalent to finding animals of a third sex  —   the zplifs  —   as the majority population everywhere except in your own city. But here is the really freaky thing about  : We really don’t know yet what kind of planet they constitute. The physics of planets with two or five or 10 Earth masses can be hard to pin down. That’s because mass and size are not all that matter for the kind of world you end up with. Composition  —   meaning what elements a planet is made of  —   also determines its properties. That means some of these planets may be just   of Uranus. On the other hand, some of these   could be ocean planets. That means they have so much water they’re covered in oceans hundreds of miles deep (the deepest part of the Earth’s ocean is just six miles). Other kinds of   may be even better places for life to form than worlds like our own. Being bigger and more massive may give more rocky   a better chance of holding on to their internal heat. That could lead to more plate tectonics and volcanoes, which is actually good thing. Volcanism can lead to a planetary feedback where greenhouse gases are cycled through the atmosphere, keeping the planet toasty warm and habitable for billions of years. So, clearly,   are important? But then why don’t we have them? Why have we been left out of the party? Remarkably, the answer to this question of the planets we don’t have may already have been found. Last week, astronomers announced they had discovered evidence of a true ninth planet in our solar system. Orbiting the sun far beyond Neptune, this new potential planet may have formed in the inner solar system and been kicked out into the depths of space by encounters with other solar system bodies. And what mass do scientists predict for this new world? The estimate is about 10 Earth masses. So if it’s real, our ninth planet might be our very own  . So maybe, just maybe, we aren’t such planetary losers after all. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"North Korea is a mysterious place  —   even to South Koreans. Curiosity about life in the north has sparked a slew of new South Korean TV shows. There is the Amazing   program, in which North Korean women are paired up with South Korean men to take on various challenges, like trudging through mud carrying a bucket of water on their heads. There are the talk shows, featuring panels of North Korean defectors talking about their dangerous escapes and difficult lives. And then there are the dating shows, in which North Korean women are matched up with eligible South Korean bachelors. It’s all part of an emerging genre on South Korean television: The defector reality show. ”I do think that it’s a new approach,” says Sokeel Park, research director for Liberty in North Korea, an international nonprofit that helps North Korean refugees resettle. Where people from the North were previously seen only on the news or documentaries here, now they’re part of a softer, more   mass media south of the border. Park says the shows are, ”for the first time, exposing South Korean audiences at a mass scale” to North Koreans who aren’t their infamous political leaders. People like Han Seohee. A former singer in Pyongyang, she’s a regular on the talk show Moranbong Club. ”There’s a lot of prejudice toward North Korean defectors in South Korea,” Han says. ”So I wanted to show South Koreans that we’re living here and trying the best we can.” On a typical episode, she’ll field questions from hosts about North Korean culture  —   its bands, its music offerings. And what it was like performing in the military’s singing troupe. But the topics really vary. ”They’re talking about the growth of markets and new technologies in North Korea,” Park says. ”So gradually, the South Korean audiences are getting exposed to new kinds of stories or new characters from North Korea that previously there was just widespread ignorance of.” Park says the programs are helping South Koreans get a better sense of the North Korean experience. But they’re also controversial. If you watch enough of these, you’ll notice a familiar pattern: They tend to feature young North Korean women paired with South Korean men. The gender dynamic shows up in research on these programs. Lee Yunso watched a month’s worth of North Korean defector shows for her media watchdog group, Womenlink. ”By casting defectors in their twenties, the TV shows emphasize North Korean women’s innocence, and how little they know. They are used to portray[ing] submissive women inside the patriarchy,” Lee says. She  —   and defectors like Han  —   also say the programs lack nuance on the differences between North and South. On the talk shows, life in the North is usually presented as uniformly bad, while life in the south is unquestionably good  —   ignoring difficulties for defectors in South Korean society. ”We need to show how North Korean defectors really live in South Korea, and try to show North Korea without any of the prejudices in our minds,” Lee says. ”We need a process of gaining more understanding between each other.” Haeryun Kang contributed to this story. For a    look at our reporting in East Asia, check out Elise Goes East."
"Was Andy Warhol a collector of beautiful and mundane things, or was he a   hoarder? Did Abraham Lincoln suffer from melancholia, or was he clinically depressed? Did Albert Einstein have autism? These are the questions journalist Claudia Kalb seeks to answer in her new book, Andy Warhol Was A Hoarder: Inside The Minds Of History’s Great Personalities. Kalb tells NPR’s Rachel Martin how she went about diagnosing the historic figures she talks about in her book. On what makes her believe Andy Warhol was a hoarder  Warhol had this intense desire to shop and collect. And it started fairly early in his life and as he moved to New York and became a working artist in the city, he would shop daily at everywhere from a    store to an upscale boutique. The other big thing about Warhol was his time capsules, where he had about 600 boxes, cardboard boxes, where he put everything into them. He swept stuff off his desk. He put old receipts, he put bills he had not yet paid, he put junk mail, even [an] old pizza crust  —   threw it into these boxes. . .. [He] put dates on them. He anticipated at some point potentially selling them. He thought maybe these would be sort of a collection of artifacts that people would be interested in. After all, it’s Warhol. At the same time, he had such a difficulty getting rid of anything. He said in his journals and in his writings, ”I can’t throw anything out.” And he even said, ”I’d love to have a really clean space.” But he never could do it. On her process of diagnosing a figure like Charles Darwin with anxiety  It was a wonderful task of looking both at biographical material as well as medical journals. So for Darwin, for example, his letters and journals are online. It’s an amazing resource. . .. You can look at what he was writing, what he was saying, how he was expressing his anxiety and the physical symptoms he suffered. And then at the same time, looking at the medical literature that has been published. There are hundreds of studies about what ailed Darwin. What was wrong with him? Why did he have these stomach aches, this dizziness, these headaches? . .. And then the third component was interviewing   mental health experts to talk to them about these conditions and to assess how the symptoms of these particular historical figures lined up with   diagnoses. On what she hopes to accomplish by highlighting the mental disorders people like Warhol and Darwin may have had, I think ultimately, while writing it and thinking about it and talking about it, my overarching goal was to lay this all out for people in a way that they could look at it and say, ”This looks like my friend, or my family member or a little bit like me.” . .. My goal, I hope, is that by reading about these people, there’ll be some less stigmatization of mental health disorders. We all struggle with all sorts . .. of things in our mind[s]. I found this a way to maybe relieve people a little bit  —   that if they are struggling, they are not alone."
"In Flint, Mich. families are using bottled water to do everything  —   from cooking to bathing. The tap water is still unsafe to drink after government officials allowed corroded lead pipes to poison the water. People in Flint have lots of questions for those officials. Perhaps the biggest is the one Hattie Collins has. ”When are you gonna fix it? And I mean fix it right,” she says. On a recent day, Collins is distributing bottled water at Triumph Church in Flint. A massive   is parked in front of the church. It’s from Columbus, Ohio. Two more trucks are arriving later in the day. These trucks are all full of donated water bottles. Collins is overseeing a team of church volunteers that hands out literally thousands of bottles each day. And they’ll continue doing it, she says, as long as the water comes. To figure out just how long there will be a need for bottled water, experts need to start by measuring the scale of the problem. Flint has nearly 100, 000 people. How many of those people have lead pipes leading to their homes? Marty Kaufman, a professor of earth and resource science at the University of Michigan, Flint, set out to answer that question. For a couple of weeks now, Kaufman has been officially contracted to work with the city. But in October, he went to the city and requested the records showing which homes have lead pipes. ”We were taken aback when they showed us a big file drawer that had 45, 000 cards,” he recalls. He’s talking about, literally, 45, 000 index cards, noting which pipes were lead, which were copper and so on. ”One of the big problems is they were written in pencil, so they were smeared quite a bit too,” he says. Kaufman realized a bunch of handwritten notes in smeared pencil would never work. So he went back to city officials to see if there was another source for this information. It turned out, there was: parcel maps from the city water department, showing city blocks divided into little squares of property, with a code that indicated which type of service line was running into each house. The city scanned 240 of these maps into a computer, and Kaufman’s team methodically pieced them together, inputting the data about what the pipes are made of in each place. As of last week, they were just completing the project. But this is just one step. The information in these maps is from the 1980s. Nobody knows how accurate they are. And they have big, blank areas. ”Ultimately any time you make a map,” Kaufman says, ”you have to   your information.” In other words, compare the map with the real world. After defining the scope of the problem comes the next challenge: fixing the corroded pipes. Over time, the inside of the corroded lead pipes will rebuild a protective film, says Laura Sullivan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Kettering University in Flint. That will make the water safer  —   but it’s not a   solution. And nobody actually knows how long the film will take to rebuild. ”We’ve never encountered a situation where the pipes in a city are corroded to the extent these are,” she says. Sullivan has worked on clean water projects all over the world, from South America to   Africa. Suddenly, her expertise is needed here in her hometown of Flint. The state appointed her to a committee that is trying to fix the water. Sullivan says it’s tricky because trying to fix the pipes could knock off the protective film that’s starting to rebuild. But the reality is that all of the pipes will need to be replaced  —   and that can’t happen in two weeks, or even in a month. And that, she says, is a process that shouldn’t be rushed. Although Sullivan isn’t able to give a timeline for when the work will be complete, she says she believes there is momentum for change. ”What I can tell you is I firmly believe that the light is shining so brightly on the city of Flint right now, that if there were any entity that had any negative or malicious reason to slow things down, there’s no way they could do that,” Sullivan says. ”And if there’s any entity that has the ability to make things right, they’re being empowered to do that.” Sullivan understands how frustrated people are not to know when they’ll have clean water again. That’s why she says she is committed to making sure ”nobody’s in the dark going forward.” And she hopes that the recovery process will create jobs for people in Flint who need work. ”What we plan on doing is taking care of this as quickly as possible and involving Flint in taking care of Flint,” she says. ”We’re not saying, ’Oh it’s your problem, you have to take care of it,’ but saying, ’Everything you need to take care of it, we’ll provide, but this is your city and you have the control of this city and we’re done having emergency managers telling you what to do. We’re gonna help you heal your city.’ ” After working on these issues all over the developing world, Sullivan pauses to consider what it means to fight for clean water here in her hometown. ”In this situation, I was meeting people I’d never met before, from walks of life I would never have crossed, but they were really very much like me, and so this is more like fighting for my family than it is trying to help people that deserve something better,” Sullivan says. ”This is more like feeling horribly hurt, because the people who I’ve been standing with are horribly hurt.”"
"Stephanie Hundley is an enthusiastic Bernie Sanders supporter. The    from Waterloo is also enthusiastic about the fact that she’s not going to vote for Hillary Clinton just because she’s a woman. ”I don’t think she’s the woman to be representative of women,” Hundley said. She ticked off a list of Clinton criticisms: the ”damn emails,” the ”” her vote to go to war in Iraq. Citing Sanders’ record of supporting women’s rights, Hundley said his overall views embody hers more than Clinton’s do. ”It’s weird that an old, white guy would represent women better than an actual woman.” Many millennial women, like Hundley, want to deal a repeat upset to Clinton in the Hawkeye State. Eight years ago, Clinton lost the women’s vote in Iowa to another candidate promising change in Washington. Entrance polls showed that the only group who favored her were the oldest women  —   those over 65. A similar pattern could emerge again this year. Iowa women do prefer Clinton, according to the final Des Moines Register poll before the Iowa caucuses, but that support is strongest among women over 45. The split has exposed a fault line around feminism in America, between women who grew up in an era when they weren’t allowed to wear pants to work, for example  —   and young women who have never known the kind of discrimination and stereotypes their mothers faced. A recent poll even found that young women supported Sanders in greater numbers than young men. A January online survey of young voters from USA Today and Rock the Vote showed that women under 35 supported Sanders by an almost   margin, compared to men’s   margin. Dueling Identities: ’Young’ Vs. ’Woman’ Katherine Hillicker is a freshman at Michigan State who came down to Iowa to canvass for Sanders. She sees   support for Sanders among their peers at Michigan State, and she thinks she knows why. Young people, she said, ”have grown up in this situation where the economy has been crap, and we’re going to college, and it’s costing a ton of money.” She and her friend, fellow Michigan State student Mackenzie Pollick, say they think Sanders appeals more to young people on those economic issues. As for gender? It was an afterthought for them. ”I think you need to care more about the issues than the gender,” Hillicker said. Pollick added, ”As much as I’d love a woman to be president, it doesn’t affect my views much.” The age gap is stark. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that Sanders bests Clinton among   to    78 percent to 21 percent. But support for Clinton seems to grow with age: 53 percent of   to    chose her, along with 71 percent of people 65 and older. Both Clinton and Sanders have made a point of appealing to both women, on issues of reproductive rights and equal pay, as well as young voters, on student debt. However, the Sanders campaign’s promises of sweeping change seems to have helped him win over Iowa’s youngest voters, and he’s doing everything he can to capitalize on that popularity. In addition to hitting young people’s economic worries hard in his speeches, the Sanders campaign has also been working to mobilize the youngest Iowa voters on caucus night. In its ”Go Home for Bernie” push, the campaign is driving young people away from college towns, like Ames and Iowa City, to their smaller Iowa hometowns, to better spread his support all over the state. That’s important in a caucus state that won’t report raw vote, but shares of delegates. ’There’s Going Go Be A Lot More Elections In Our Lifetime’ Some young voters say it would be nice to have the first female president  —   but that’s about as excited as they get. ”We’re still young,” said Olivia Vogel, an Iowa State student, ”and there’s going to be a lot more elections in our lifetime, that right now I wouldn’t choose just because she’s a woman.” Vogel attended a Clinton rally in Ames on Saturday, but isn’t supporting a candidate yet. ”I feel like I grew up in a pretty equitable society where I think men and women are based fairly,” said Vogel’s friend Julia Zappa, a sophomore at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. Though she was at the Clinton event, she said she supports Republican Chris Christie. ”I think for a younger generation, we don’t need to rush for a woman to become president, because I feel like it’ll happen, so I don’t want to rush.” The long string of presidential elections ahead of them is full of the possibility  —   or even the probability, as Zappa sees it  —   of a female president. That means other issues feel much more pressing right now. ”I don’t think voting for a woman is particularly novel for them,” said Dianne Bystrom, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. ”The fact that the nation elected its first   candidate in 2008, it’s kind of taken the edge out of those narrow parameters of who can be president.” If that’s true, the gender card  —   which Clinton is playing more forcefully this year than in 2008  —   may be less effective now for some young voters. But their minds may change as they age. ”I think younger women will face some discrimination in their lives, but when they’re young, they probably haven’t,” Bystrom said. Older women, meanwhile, ”feel that it’s about time to have a woman president,” she added. Of course, the reasons anyone supports Clinton (or Sanders) are far more nuanced than voting for a gender. Many women  —   old or young, supporting Clinton or Sanders  —   say that gender isn’t a factor at all in choosing a candidate. And some   women say they considered the draw of caucusing for a woman, but it ultimately couldn’t sway them. Likewise, for many Clinton supporters, who are drawn in by her gender, it’s simply one of many reasons. However, it is a reason that amps up their enthusiasm. ”It’s about time we caught up with the rest of the civilized world,” said Maureen Ekeland of West Des Moines, who attended a Clinton speech in Ames with her daughter and granddaughter. All three are Clinton supporters. ”It’s don’t think it’s the only thing, and it might not be the main thing. But absolutely  —   it would be an amazing thing,” said Jennifer Ruggle of Waukee, Ekeland’s daughter. For Older Women, The Time For A Female President Is Now, At the other end of the spectrum from the college students attending the event, who feel they have a lifetime to put a woman in the White House, there are the women who say time is running out. One Clinton volunteer said those women motivate her. ”There are so many children that need to grow up in a situation where it’s normal to have a female president,” said Kim Frederick of Houston. Frederick told NPR’s Tamara Keith the story of an elderly woman she met at a Clinton rally in 2008, when Frederick was also a volunteer. ”And she said, ’Please, I’m 94 years old,’ ” Frederick said. ”I can’t get out there and volunteer. Can you please make this happen? And I promised her I would. And it didn’t happen in 2008, and she’s probably not around anymore, but there’s another    woman in a wheelchair that I have to do that for this time. And we’re going to make it happen.” Gender Matters In The General, Importantly, it’s not that supporting Sanders means rejecting Clinton. Many female Sanders supporters who spoke to NPR said they’d support Clinton as a   candidate (and many of her supporters say the same of Sanders). And general elections make it clear that it doesn’t make sense to talk about the ”woman voter,” as the Atlantic reported in 2012. While it’s true that women tended to support Obama in the past two presidential elections, there are factors beyond gender at work here. Single and minority women have tended to support Obama, for example, while white and married women went for Mitt Romney. Once the Democratic candidate is chosen, that’s when the battle for women’s votes will get even more important, Bystrom pointed out. ”I think gender always factors into elections and typically for the Democrats,” she said. ”For a Democrat to be president, there has to be a large number of women” who turn out."
"As presidential candidates crisscrossed Iowa just before caucus day, their campaign committees and friendly superPACs disclosed how much they raised and spent in 2015. The reports included the first disclosure of big money from Republican   Donald Trump  —   $12. 6 million  —   and the precarious state of Jeb Bush’s White House bid: his campaign finished the year with $7. 6 million in the bank, while the superPAC Right To Rise USA had raised $118. 3 million but burned through more than half of it. Bush spokeswoman Allie Brandenberger said the campaign committee has ”the resources needed to fund our     ground operation and paid voter contact efforts” in the primary states. But the superPAC has been striking for its lack of success. Dan Backer, a conservative campaign finance lawyer, said Right To Rise is run by ”  pros,” but ”no matter how much money you throw behind a candidate, people just aren’t going to vote for a guy they don’t want to vote for. ” All together, the Republican candidates raised a total exceeding $227 million. Anthony Corrado, a Colby College political scientist who specializes in studying political money, noted that it’s significantly less than the $264. 6 million raised by the GOP field in 2011. But then there are superPACs. With the ability to raise unlimited contributions, they are far better funded than they were four years ago. A network of superPACs supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had $30 million in the bank, roughly 50 percent more than Cruz’s own campaign committee. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio finished the year with $10. 4 million, his nearby superPAC with $13. 9 million. There seems to be more money out there. ”Rubio has gotten a little more support for his superPAC, certainly Cruz has gotten a little more support,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the foundation New America. ”But there’s still a lot of big money waiting to pick a horse in the Republican field.” Among the wealthy conservative donors who aren’t backing any presidential candidate yet: Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who spent heavily on behalf of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich four years ago, and billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, who have avoided presidential primaries up till now. Freedom Partners Action Fund, a superPAC in the political network built by the Kochs, reported it received $3 million from Charles Koch via a personal trust. Among Democrats, big donors seem less hesitant. ”It looks like the big money in the Democratic field has picked its horse, and the horse’s name is Hillary Clinton,” Drutman said. Clinton is backed by Priorities USA Action, a superPAC created to help President Obama in 2012. It raised $41 million last year, spent less than $6 million and ended the year with $35. 8 million available. Among its   donors, financier George Soros gave $7 million. Clinton, meanwhile, raised $110. 2 million for her campaign committee  —   of which $19 million was in contributions of $200 or less. Only two Republicans did better with small donors: Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. But Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s chief rival, pulled in more small contributions than any of them: $54. 1 million of his total $73. 5 million. Sanders has adamantly refused to raise money for a superPAC  although several outside groups are supporting him. As of Jan. 1, Clinton’s bank account was not much fatter than Sanders’s. She had $38 million on hand, Sanders $28. 3 million."
"The Iowa caucuses are known for hoisting the   hopeful to glory. But for each skyrocket that actually launched here, many more have fizzled on the pad. The slick talkers auditioning for media gigs. The household name whose prominence fails to translate. The ambitious    seeking name recognition for the future. The nonpolitician who strikes a nerve the year before the election year. After Iowa, the bell tolls for these. For every Obama . .. When you think about Barack Obama breaking out in Iowa in 2008, think also of the candidates whose bids broke down: Sen. Joe Biden,  . Gov. Bill Richardson,  . M. Sen. Chris Dodd,  . And that’s not to mention John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, who fought on but never quite overcame what happened in Iowa. You may recall that John Kerry caught the brass ring by winning the Iowa caucuses in 2004 and marching on to the Democratic nomination. Among others reaching for that ring that time were Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, Dennis Kucinich, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton. Do not expect a parade of   trudging to microphones to quit the very next day. There may be a few ”no mas” moments this week, but there will be more the following week, after New Hampshire concurs (more or less) with the caucuses. Still others may wait to hear a third strike called in South Carolina later in the month. It doesn’t matter. The die will have been cast. Iowa does not so much kill candidacies outright as weaken them to the point of being on life support. So who will be the first to acknowledge it? The Democrats are momentarily exempt here. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton will likely continue regardless of the results in Iowa and New Hampshire. (Martin O’Malley may decide to stick it out, especially with more debates on the horizon. He has never been an actual factor in the contest and can probably stay in the race as long as he can endure the  .) Clinton would suffer a huge blow if she loses Iowa badly. A close loss or virtual tie in Iowa, coupled with an expected defeat in New Hampshire, would still be survivable given her national numbers and standing in other states. Sanders can easily survive a disappointment in Iowa, where he never expected to win. So who will be first to go in the GOP? The ”Undercard” Players: In this cycle, with such a welter of notable hopefuls, the Republicans tried a   approach. They allowed most of the candidates to debate each other but created an undercard or ”cocktail hour” debate for those at the   of the polls. A dubious solution from the start, the ”kiddie table” began to seem like CPR for the barely breathing campaigns. ABC News has said there will not be an undercard at the Feb. 6 debate in New Hampshire, and that could be the end of it. Carly Fiorina: While the undercard lived, it provided a brief boost to Fiorina, whose early performance there was enough to move her to the main stage. It was not enough to keep her there, however, and she has slumped to low single digits in national polls. Will she drop out? Given the key role the debates have played in her strategy, the end of the undercard augurs an end to her viability. But she will not be alone. Rick Santorum will also lose his main purchase on public attention. Santorum actually won Iowa in 2012 and has spent plenty of time there since. But all that time has availed him little. Assuming he is an afterthought Monday night, he will be gone tomorrow. (See the New Hampshire proviso above.) Mike Huckabee, who won Iowa in 2008 and stuck around longer than any of nominee John McCain’s other rivals, has done a little better in Iowa than Santorum thus far. But he has never been a threat to the top four. He has little visibility in New Hampshire, but he may wish to plow on into South Carolina, where his team still blames Fred Thompson for costing him the Palmetto State in 2008. Jim Gilmore, who did not even make it to the kiddie table through most of debate season, may remain an official candidate but will matter less than ever. If he drops out, don’t look for it on Page 1.  Rand Paul: It seems hard to remember now, but when Paul declared for president last year, he had already been on the cover of Time magazine several times since his first Senate election in 2010. He was, as Time put it, the new face of the Grand Old Party. Paul was, at first, regarded as a   contender, yet by year’s end he had been dropped from the main stage debate and had refused to participate in the undercard. Last year, Paul persuaded legislators to change Kentucky law to allow him to seek the White House and   to the Senate. The latter race will need his immediate attention after Iowa and New Hampshire. Ben Carson: A respected brain surgeon and successful inspirational speaker, Carson overcame a faltering start as a candidate to become the early leader in Iowa polls. His career story, mild demeanor and clear commitment to his faith appealed to the evangelical voters who have often dominated GOP caucuses there. But late in the fall, terrorist massacres in Paris and Southern California refocused voter concerns. Carson seemed lost in the new landscape, and his support decayed. His campaign infrastructure teetered on collapse, and his debate performances faded even more. In Iowa, his voters largely decamped to Cruz. Carson has no prospects in New Hampshire, but might stick around for South Carolina. Chris Christie: The New Jersey governor entered this cycle with known problems back home, including the   affair and various state fiscal woes. But his worst problem was that Donald Trump utterly expropriated the bombastic   style that is Christie’s stock in trade. He has always had his eye on New Hampshire, so losing Iowa won’t be fatal. But the lack of any bump out of Iowa will mean Christie is back in the pack, battling three or four others for second place in New Hampshire. If he’s second in the Granite State, or third after Cruz, he stands a chance of becoming the candidate the   forces rally behind.  John Kasich: Another governor who fit the profile of past Republican winners well was Kasich, the current and popular governor of pivotal swing state Ohio. Kasich has not caught on with Iowans, however, and needs to survive a low finish there to break through in New Hampshire. Like Christie, he has his hopes pinned to a   finish there, and he has had a good January in that state. If it doesn’t work out that way, the next question is how long Kasich should stick around if he wants to be vice president. Why wouldn’t he want to be vice president? After Marco Rubio, Kasich offers the most as a running mate for any of the remaining prospective nominees.  Jeb Bush: The former Florida governor and dynastic insider may be the ultimate case of a   who never really got out front (and took a long time to start really running). Bush still hopes the fierce rivalry of Cruz and Rubio will weaken both, and Trump will somehow disqualify himself. If those things happen, Bush may still be the most logical choice for establishment Republicans, officeholders and major donors to fall back on. The first President Bush survived a   embarrassment in Iowa in 1988, and the younger George Bush got past a disastrous showing in New Hampshire in 2000. So there is resilience built in this campaign. The Bushes will battle on at least through February. The Super Tuesday primaries on March 1 could mean rebirth  ” or the end of the road. In any event, like Christie and Kasich, Bush is loath to leave the field and concede the contest to Trump and the two sons of Cuban emigres arguing about who’s toughest on immigration."
"Finally, after more than 10 months of campaigning from more than a dozen presidential candidates, voters get to weigh in. Iowa Republicans and Democrats will caucus Monday night, and the results could at long last provide some clarity to the Republican and Democratic nominating contests  —   or not. Here are five things we’re watching: How many voters show up Monday night makes a difference. Voting in a caucus is harder than voting in a primary. Iowans have to show up at their caucus site at a specific time and in some cases stay there for a couple of hours. Most analysts and campaign operatives agree that a big turnout benefits the two outsiders  —   Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Lower turnout helps Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. Both Trump and Sanders have been trying to expand the universe of Iowa voters by bringing in people who have never caucused before. Trump has a great following with   white,   voters, while Sanders has been reaching out to young voters. Both men lead by double digits with people who tell pollsters they will be participating in their first caucus. But the big question is how many of those   Trump and Sanders voters will actually turn out? The previous turnout record for Republicans was 122, 000 votes, set in 2012. If Trump gets a lot of the people who stand in line for hours to get into his rallies to the caucus sites Monday night, that number should be much higher  —   maybe as high as 150, 000. In 2008, Barack Obama shattered all Iowa records and helped Iowa Democratic turnout reach 240, 000. No one is expecting that big a turnout tonight, but Bernie Sanders needs the number to be above the 124, 000 that turned out in 2004. The weather will also be a factor. There’s a winter storm predicted to start Tuesday, but it could hit parts of Iowa on Monday night, and that could depress turnout. The state is   for Ted Cruz, with lots of conservative evangelical voters. He needs to win it  —   if he comes in second to Trump, he will have a much harder path to the nomination. And that’s why Cruz has been telling his supporters that if Trump wins Iowa, he will be unstoppable. That’s because although Trump doesn’t need to win Iowa to get the nomination, if he does win, he will have tremendous momentum. He’s already ahead    in New Hampshire polls and has leads in all the other early states. Marco Rubio has a    strategy: Come in third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire and then win  —   somewhere. But where? South Carolina? Nevada? Rubio needs a strong third in Iowa to convince his donors that he has a clear path to the nomination. The Republican establishment would like to coalesce around Rubio as an alternative to Trump or Cruz, but they’ve been holding back. A    finish in Iowa would help him consolidate the  mainstream wing of the GOP. If Rubio manages to surge past Cruz and place second in Iowa, he’ll be set up to place second to Trump in New Hampshire and become the clear establishment alternative. This is the big question on the Democratic side. Hillary Clinton, stung by her   finish eight years ago, built a formidable     operation. But organization doesn’t work without enthusiasm. And the enthusiasm gap favors Sanders, who has excited Democrats with his calls to break up the big banks and make college and health care free. But Sanders started organizing late in Iowa, and he, like Cruz, really needs to win Iowa. If he beats Clinton in Iowa, it would be an upset, and he’d head into New Hampshire with even more momentum. He already has a big lead there, as   candidates usually do (Sanders is from Vermont). A win in both Iowa and New Hampshire for Sanders could change the dynamic in the South, where Clinton has built a firewall based on her support among   Democrats. This matters for Democrats. Unlike the Republican caucuses, Democrats report delegate totals, not vote totals. And delegates are awarded through a formula based on how candidates do in precincts all over the state. Sanders could be at a disadvantage here because his support has been heavily concentrated in college towns and urban areas, although the Sanders campaign has been trying to expand its reach to rural areas. Clinton’s team is filled with Obama   veterans who have built an organization for Clinton that reaches all of Iowa’s 99 counties and 1, 683 precincts. Want more? You can download NPR’s Iowa briefing book here. On Monday night, you can catch NPR’s politics team on your local NPR station, at NPR. org and on Facebook and Twitter."
"The first real votes of the 2016 presidential election will be cast at the Iowa caucuses tonight, starting at 8 p. m. ET. And that means there are a lot of questions in the air. Will Donald Trump’s lead in the polls translate to dominance in the caucus rooms? Will Iowa voters feel the Bern? What’s the mood like on the ground? (You’ll find answers at NPR Politics, with a wide range of reporting and analysis on the candidates, the voters and what it all means.) What’s going on right now? (Head over to the Politics site, which will offer friendly, helpful and     information on what’s happening ahead of the caucuses and as the results roll in.) And hey, how does a caucus work, anyway? (It’s a neighborhood meeting of sorts, as Domenico Montanaro explains.) While we’re at it, why does Iowa get to go first? (It wasn’t really on purpose, Sam Sanders says, at least not at first. Iowa has a complicated process, so they needed more time.) And going big picture here: Just how good are the   states at predicting the ultimate candidate? (For Republicans, New Hampshire is a better indicator for Democrats, Iowa is slightly better. Domenico breaks it down.) Have even more questions? Take a look at NPR’s 2016 Iowa Briefing Book  —   the collection of facts, figures and context that those of us here in the newsroom are using to navigate the caucuses. But if you’re all out of questions and just dying to see some Iowa caucus results, well, we can tide you over. While you wait to see who takes Iowa, and hear all the speculation about what that means for the race, let’s take a trip back in time to see who has won the caucuses in the past . .. and how well that worked out for them."
"The World Health Organization has declared the cluster of microcephaly associated with the spread of the Zika virus to be a public health emergency of international concern  —   a designation reserved for an”extraordinary event” that is ”serious, unusual or unexpected.” Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO’s   said during a press briefing Monday that an international coordinated response was needed to improve mosquito control as well as to expedite the development of tests that detect the Zika virus. The declaration is chiefly important to intensify the efforts to prove that the Zika virus is causing microcephaly, a birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads. Essentially, Chan said, if the Zika virus was not thought to be causing these problems in newborns, it would not be a ”clinically serious condition.” Dr. David L. Heymann, assistant   of the WHO, said that it was unclear how long it would take to definitively link the Zika virus to microcephaly in children. ”The lack of vaccines and reliable diagnostics tests and the absence of population immunity in newly affected countries were cited as further cases for concern,” Chan said. She added that pregnant women can consider delaying travel to countries affected by the Zika virus, but the most important precautionary measure is to control mosquitos and to protect themselves against bites by using mosquito repellent and long clothing."
"Starting in 2016, the federal health law requires small employers to offer their   workers health insurance. In anticipation of the change, some   restaurants looked to get around the law by making more workers part time. Now some owners are rethinking that approach. At a Burger King off Highway 99 in California’s Central Valley, a   workers in black uniforms scurry around, grabbing packets of ketchup and stuffing paper bags with french fries. Tiana Mua has worked here part time for almost a year. She’d like to be full time, but at this Burger King only the managers are full time. (The company didn’t respond to an interview request.) Mua says that’s the situation at   joints all over town. ”They’re cutting back on all the jobs, and a lot of people have been let go and everything already,” Mua says. One reason: The local economy is bad. People aren’t eating out as much, and sales are down. But there’s another reason that might explain why   employees aren’t getting more hours: Obamacare. Starting Jan. 1, businesses with 50 or more   employees must offer health insurance to all   staff or pay a hefty fine. Employers with 100 or more workers had to start offering coverage last year. But smaller businesses that operate on lower margins, especially restaurants, complained loudly about the cost. And some   franchise owners figured out a way to avoid paying for coverage: Just make as many workers as possible part time. A U. S. Chamber of Commerce survey found nearly 60 percent of small franchise businesses said they would make personnel changes like this. ”The ones that did it successfully did it three or four years ago,” says Kaya Bromley, an attorney who helps employers comply with the Affordable Care Act. But, Bromley says, some of the restaurant owners who cut hours to sidestep the health law now regret it. ”A lot of the   franchisees that did this,” she says, ”are now coming back and saying, ’it was a great idea for reducing the number of people that I have to offer benefits, but now I can’t run my restaurants.’ ” They tell her it has been a nightmare trying to manage a   staff. ”Because you’ve got people who are less loyal, you’ve got people who are less skilled  —   who don’t understand the business,” she says. There’s also more employee turnover. Bromley has seen many of those restaurants reverse course. ”Employers think that there’s a shortcut here or there, and then they realize, yeah, that shortcut really hurt me more than it helped me,” she says. The people hurt most by all the workforce management gymnastics are the people at the bottom of the restaurant pecking order who want to advance, but can’t, says Angelo Amador, vice president of labor and workforce policy for the National Restaurant Association. ”Someone who’s working part time, but wants more hours so they can move up the ladder, they can’t get the hours,” he says. ”It ends up taking out that middle rung of employees.” Obamacare has made restaurants less flexible, he says, mainly because it defines   work as 30 hours a week or more. Amador says most other laws restaurants have to comply with, like overtime pay, define full time as 40 hours. He thinks the Affordable Care Act should be changed for consistency. ”It would be much easier if we could have one definition of full time,” he says. At the Carl’s Junior in Chowchilla, Calif. manager Silvia Campos tries to keep as many workers full time as possible. She says it makes her job easier. ”It’s a small town,” she says. ”For me, it’s hard to find a really good employee.” But some workers don’t want more hours. Their   salary is low enough that they’re eligible for government coverage in California through Medicaid. Some workers say they’re better off making less money and getting their coverage free from the state. This story comes from a reporting partnership of NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News."
"Farm subsidies don’t lack for critics.   conservatives and welfare   liberals alike have called for deep cuts in these payments to farmers. After all, farmers, as a group, are wealthier than the average American. Why should they get tens of billions of dollars each year in federal aid? Two years ago, when the most recent Farm Bill emerged from Congress, the measure’s authors proudly announced what sounded like bold cuts in these controversial programs. The Senate Agriculture Committee noted in a press release that the new law would eliminate one big subsidy altogether and save taxpayers a total of $23. 3 billion over the following 10 years. Those projected savings, it turns out, were a mirage. According new estimates for Farm Bill spending over the next few years released by the Congressional Budget Office, total government aid to farmers will swell to $23. 9 billion in 2017. ”What happened to the savings taxpayers were promised?” says Colin O’Neil, from the Environmental Working Group, a   opponent of farm subsidies. Actually, many opponents of government subsidies saw this coming. ”Cynics like me fully expected this to work out the way it has,” says Bruce Babcock, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. ”Farm policy isn’t really about policy. It’s about farmers getting their money. And the agriculture committees in Congress are there to make sure that farmers get their money.” Over the decades, Congress has periodically changed the way these programs work. This latest Farm Bill ditched a politically unpopular subsidy program that wrote checks to farmers simply based on the number of acres they owned. In its place, the law set up new programs that pay farmers when commodity prices fall. And indeed they have been falling since the last Farm Bill. Many observers, in fact, expected corn and soybean prices to fall, because they had been extraordinarily high in recent years. ”Farmers made a gamble,” says David Orden, an agricultural economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute. ”They were gambling that if prices came down, they’d get more money this way.” That gamble, it seems, paid off. If prices stay low, or rebound, spending under some of these new programs should decline, but only gradually  ” and within a few years Congress will once again revise the Farm Bill. Orden does believe that over the long term, there has been progress in abolishing some of the most wasteful farm subsidies. ”We used to do all sorts of things to maintain high market prices for farmers,” he says. For example, the government used to buy up large amounts of agricultural commodities and either store them or export them at much lower prices. It also paid farmers to take vast amounts of land out of production. Those programs, Orden says, were probably more damaging to the overall economy than the payments and crop insurance payouts that farmers get today."
"Four U. S. senators are calling on the Army to stop kicking out soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and have been diagnosed with mental health problems or traumatic brain injuries  —   effective immediately. The senators say they’re motivated by an investigation by NPR and Colorado Public Radio that revealed the Army has continued to discharge troubled troops for misconduct, even though the Army’s   Secretary Eric Fanning promised late last year to investigate whether the practice is unfair. We found that since 2009, the Army has kicked out more than 22, 000 mentally wounded combat troops on the grounds of misconduct, and taken away their benefits, instead of helping them. As a result of that report, 12 Senate Democrats sent a letter demanding an investigation to Fanning and the general who, working together, run the Army. Developments since then raise questions about the Army’s investigation. For instance, Fanning appointed Debra Wada, the Army’s assistant secretary in charge of Manpower and Reserve Affairs, to lead the review. Two weeks after she was named, Wada signed a document ordering commanders to dismiss Larry Morrison, a highly decorated combat soldier who was diagnosed with   stress disorder. He was one of the soldiers profiled in the original report by NPR and CPR. ”It’s puzzling and troubling,” says David Sonenshine, a former military prosecutor who now works with the National Veterans Legal Services Program. He says that because ”the person who’s in charge of the investigation is also the same person who ultimately reviews some of these administrative separations, [it] creates the picture that there’s just something unfair or unobjective about the process.” Morrison’s Army records suggest he’s the kind of soldier whom senators say the Army should help, not punish. He’s a   veteran. He fought four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the Army awarded him a Bronze Star. After Morrison came home to Fort Carson, in Colorado, he was diagnosed with chronic   stress disorder. He pleaded guilty to drunken and reckless driving. Commanders at Fort Carson also alleged he belonged to a ”criminal” motorcycle gang  —   something Morrison denies. They asked top Army officials for clearance to kick him out for misconduct. Now that Wada has signed the order, Morrison won’t be able to receive a combat soldier’s usual benefits, including free health care. ”I’ve given them all of my youthful years I’m 42 years old,” Morrison says. ”And now they want to put me out with no benefits. They want to give me an ’other than honorable’ discharge, so I can’t get a job, I can’t go to school, and [they’re going to] take my   retirement away. So they want to put me on the streets with nothing.” Four senators tell NPR and CPR they want the Army to stop dismissing soldiers diagnosed with mental health problems until the Army finishes its investigation. ”The Army needs to halt the discharge process,” says Sen. Jon Tester,  . ”What it does, it stops any kind of wrongdoing from going forward.” ”It seems to me to be common sense that the Army would impose a moratorium on taking disciplinary actions against soldiers while they undergo this review,” says Sen. Chris Murphy,  . ”If something is concerning enough to investigate, common sense says that you wait until the results of that investigation before you take further action,” says Sen. Ron Wyden,  . ”And I think that’s just garden variety fairness.” Sen. Barbara Boxer,  . also tells NPR and CPR that she wants the Army to impose a temporary moratorium on discharging combat troops for misconduct if they’ve been diagnosed with mental health problems or brain injuries. Army officials declined to say whether they’ll comply with the senators’ requests for a moratorium. They also declined our requests for an interview. ”The review is ongoing, so it would be premature for us to comment on any aspect of it at this time,” Jennifer Johnson, an Army spokesperson, tells NPR in a written statement. Meanwhile, Morrison just got his final orders. The Army will kick him out Thursday."
"When some Western musicians picture life in India, they seem to think you can’t turn a corner without someone blasting you in the face with brightly colored powder. Like, you get a knock on the door, and it’s the delivery guy, but he can’t just hand you your bag of food and be done with it. First, it’s two fistfuls of mustard yellow to the head and chest area, and then a little peacock green down your shirt ’cause you didn’t tip. Or your friend meets you at the movies, and it’s like, ”Hey, Sangeeta, you are looking nice, how was your weekend, also BOOM HERE IS A   OF MAGENTA POWDER UPSIDE THE HEAD.” And then you finally hit the hay at night, after a long day of dodging Lisa Frank dust bombs at the call center, and right before you plug in your phone and switch off the light, you take a big fistful of    powder, screw your eyes shut and let it rip. Sweet dreams, dustheads! Yes, this is about the new   music video for ”Hymn for the Weekend,” which also features levitating sadhus, a child painted blue to resemble Hindu gods, Beyoncé’s henna’ed palms doing swirly ”Indian hands,” and  . The video’s release over the weekend unleashed predictable waves of   across social media and blogs, with many groaning over the propensity of American and British bands to film Indians throwing powder and colored water at each other in a semblance of holi, the ”festival of colors.” If you learn nothing else from the backlash, let it be this: Understand that holi is not some sort of   game of modified paintball raging   in the streets of Mumbai. It’s a specific event that occurs at the same time every year, and for a lot of Indians, it’s just not that big a deal. Let me put it this way: Imagine if when Indians closed their eyes and pictured America, they saw giant nightmare knots of red and green Christmas lights strung up everywhere,   hanging off trees and pooling on the sidewalks, swallowing people whole in line at Chipotle. We’d make fun of them, and think they were hopelessly provincial and more than a little clueless. Lots of smart things have been said about other aspects of the video, from charges of cultural appropriation to the suggestion that Chris Martin should have known better, having actually spent time in India, to Bollywood’s own terrible track record when it comes to depicting other cultures. ”The India of ’HFTW’ is an India that bears very little relation to the real India, which is complex beyond belief,” writes   Elias over at Teen Vogue, about the video. ”In the real India, Bollywood is a   industry that is better signified by glossy studio banners than decaying projectors or peeling movie posters. In the real India, many of the holy men are hustlers and the poverty isn’t necessarily picturesque. But it’s so much easier, so much simpler to talk about India as an exotic land where sadhus do the Great Indian Rope Trick, because that’s what white people are comfortable with.” I fully get that music videos are largely about escapism, and celebrities dressing up in fabulous clothes, and dreamy landscapes, and that’s all fine. Just understand that in the age of Twitter and think pieces, the days in which white musicians could use black and brown people as props without expecting widespread scrutiny, mockery or pushback are rapidly drawing to a close."
"Back in the early 1960s, Philip Roth wrote a famous essay declaring that modern American life had gotten so delirious that it dwarfed fiction’s ability to match it. Never did his words seem truer than in 1994, when O. J. Simpson  —   football god, mediocre movie actor and amiable pitchman for Hertz  —   was charged with butchering his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. From the discovery of the bodies in   Brentwood to the rapid verdict of ”not guilty”  —   which flabbergasted white America  —   the   saga was an explosion of tabloid surrealism in which horror played hopscotch with hilarity. The Trial of the Century, as it was known, comes to enthralling life in The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, an irresistible   FX series that marks a new high for its creator, Ryan Murphy. Adapted by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski from Jeffrey Toobin’s nonfiction book, The Run of His Life, this fictionalized show is bursting with sharp scenes, pungent performances and a sense of America running amok. It could easily be titled   a Murderer. Every single episode is an embarrassment of tawdry riches. There’s the legendary Bronco chase, which is broadcast on every network and cheered on by   onlookers. There’s O. J.’s goofball houseguest Kato Kaelin and Nicole’s   friend Faye Resnick who sells her out in a   book. There’s Simpson’s ”Dream Team” of lawyers, a sniping troop of backstabbers that includes his loyal pal Robert Kardashian  —   that’s David Schwimmer  —   the sardonically vainglorious F. Lee Bailey  —   amusingly played by Nathan Lane  —   and celebrity attorney Robert Shapiro, who, in John Travolta’s overripe performance seems like a preening, corrupt mortician. You’ve also got the prosecuting team led by Marcia Clark, her spiky vulnerability perfectly caught by   Sarah Paulson. She and sidekick Christopher Darden  —   that’s Sterling K. Brown  —   are destined to become sitting ducks for O. J.’s lead attorney, Johnnie Cochran, played with brainy panache by Courtney B. Vance. Cochran was often mocked as a flashy civil rights shyster when, in fact, he was usually the smartest man in the room, the one who knew best how people and society actually tick. It was no accident that he turned ”If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” into a national catchphrase. At the peak of O. J. mania, many   journalists sniffed that the whole circus was trashy and trivial  —   not ”serious” like, say, the war in Bosnia. As this show understands, the whole tale wasn’t just fascinating, but transformational. The trial was a cultural cassoulet in which sex, violence, race, class, gender and celebrity were mixed up in a media   that was just discovering the rush of   coverage.   Reality became our future. Indeed, Kardashian’s young daughters, whom we see in the series, have since become world famous by treating the Simpson case as a kind of education in how to use notoriety, interracial relationships and shameless   to get to the top of the heap. Kim is both literally and figuratively O. J.’s goddaughter. Murphy begins the series with footage of the Rodney King beating and the subsequent LA riots. He’s absolutely right to do so. The whole Simpson saga was charged with race, be it O. J. and Nicole’s marriage, the   spouting bigotry of Detective Mark Fuhrman, Simpson’s belief he’s somehow transcended ethnicity  —   ”I’m not black,” he insists. ”I’m O. J.”  —   the accusations that Cochran ”played the race card,” or black jurors’   mistrust of the LAPD that led them to believe the cops could have framed even The Juice. Every bit of this resounds with undiminished force today, in the era of Black Lives Matter. And what of O. J. himself? While Murphy and Company pretty clearly believe he was guilty, they don’t pretend to understand him. As played by Cuba Gooding Jr. he remains the series’ unfathomable void, less a centered individual  —   he often speaks of himself in third person  —   than a pile of psychological fragments he can’t make whole. Depending on the moment, The Juice is a loyal friend, a whining prisoner, an admired brand, an abuser of women, a grieving widower, a man of uncontrollable rages or a striving   who escaped into the white world and doesn’t intend to get pulled back. Watching The People v. O. J. Simpson, you never know what’s really going on in O. J.’s head, and you suspect that he remained an enigma to himself, too."
"About three months ago, Bill Nelson got an unusual phone call. Nelson oversees data and assessment for the Agua Fria Union High School District in southwest Phoenix, Ariz. The call was from a former student, who left the district back in 2011. He was ”not quite a graduate,” Nelson recalls. At the time, the young man had failed part of Arizona’s high school exit exam, called the AIMS. But in 2015, Arizona rescinded the AIMS requirement, and made that retroactive. So this former student was in luck. After Nelson looked up his records, he was able to issue a new transcript and diploma, making the young man eligible for a steady, relatively   job as a miner in Colorado. ”He was really very happy,” Nelson says. Which raises a question NPR Ed has been exploring for some time: What does it mean to graduate from high school? The answer used to be fairly straightforward: Pass a given number of classes in a few core subjects, and you’re good. Or if you didn’t make it, you could take a test called the GED for a second chance. That simplicity has more recently been replaced by a whole lot of confusion. The GED has two competing high school equivalency tests now, for example. And in the past decade, high school exit exams have passed quickly in and out of vogue. Half of states required them in 2012. This year? Only 13. As Education Week reported last week, when states get rid of these exams, the question naturally arises: Why leave students without a diploma, when the test they failed is no longer required? The newspaper reported that Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, California and Alaska, along with Arizona, have so far passed laws to allow students who failed some of these tests to get their diplomas anyway. The change could profoundly affect the lives of tens of thousands of people. The difference between a high school graduate and a high school dropout is a 37 percent increase in weekly earnings on average. But making the switch is  . In Georgia, some of these students should have graduated up to 20 years ago. In California, reports say, schools and districts are responding unevenly to the  logistical nightmare of tracking down former students who have long since gone on with their lives. In Texas, the state education agency had to rule on the eligibility of just one student. In Agua Fria, Bill Nelson set up a hotline for students to call and dug into student records going back five years. He did it all on his own initiative, with no extra resources from the state. He mailed 40 diplomas out just three months after the change in the law. The issue is clearly complicated. As we’ve reported, increasing high school graduation rates is a national priority, reinforced by federal law. At the same time, the Common Core is supposed to be enforcing higher ”college and career ready” standards. But constantly changing requirements make it harder to believe that any consistent standard is being maintained. ”The requirements for a high school diploma vary from state to state and even from district to district,” says Russell Rumberger, a professor of education at UC Santa Barbara who has studied the high school diploma extensively. ”This means that the knowledge and skills students possess when graduating, and hence their level of preparedness for college and careers, also vary.”"
"Last October, China ended its    policy of restricting most urban families to one child. Commonly referred to as the ” ” policy, the restrictions were actually a collection of rules that governed how many children married couples could have. ”The basic idea was to encourage everybody, by coercion if necessary, to keep to . .. one child,” journalist Mei Fong tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. Fong explores the   impact of what she calls the world’s ”most radical experiment” in her new book, One Child. She says that among the policy’s unintended consequences is an acute gender imbalance. ”When you create a system where you would shrink the size of a family and people would have to choose, then people would . .. choose sons,” Fong says. ”Now China has 30 million more men than women, 30 million bachelors who cannot find brides. . .. They call them guang guan, ’broken branches,’ that’s the name in Chinese. They are the biological dead ends of their family.” Fong says the policy also led to forced abortions and the confiscation of children by the authorities. Looking ahead, China is also facing a shortage of workers who can support its aging population. ”Right now China has a dependency ratio of about five working adults to support one retiree. That’s pretty good, that’s a very healthy ratio. In about 20 years that’s going to jump to about 1. 6 working adults to support one retiree,” Fong says. ”The   policy drastically reshaped the composition of China’s people. So now they have a population that’s basically too old and too male and, down the line, maybe too few.” On the economic and cultural implications of losing your only child in China  It means a lot, economically speaking, because a lot of families still don’t have any kind of a financial security, so losing one child is basically a pension plan, so that’s one thing. For the Chinese, culturally speaking, the continuance of the family line was very important, so when you die without any issue you are basically violating all sorts of duties to your ancestors, which is very important. . .. Chinese society is still very   even if it’s just a small family size, you’re not considered fully an adult until you are married, and you’re not considered complete until you have a child, and when you lose that child, you fall quite far down the societal totem pole. So, for example, this family that I covered that had lost their only child [in an earthquake] they lost a lot of status in their village. They said that their neighbors were avoiding them and shunning them, basically, that they were worried that this childless couple would now be   clinging onto them, borrowing money, not having any sort of protection  —   so that’s what losing your one child means. Today in Chinese context there’s a name for these people who have lost their only child, it’s called shidu, and it means, ”parents who’ve lost their only child.” And for parents who are shidu, some of them find it hard to get admitted into nursing homes. Some nursing homes won’t take them. They say, ”You have no progeny to authorize treatments or payments or anything, so we’d prefer not to admit you.” They also have difficulty buying funeral plots for the same reason. Who is going to service the maintenance costs of your cemetery down the line? So these are very sad issues. On exceptions to the   policy  They would have some certain exceptions, because they found that they could not make everybody keep to that   rule without allowing for certain exceptions. So you could technically have a second child if you had a certain job that was hazardous, like if you were a coal miner or a fisherman. You could also have a second child maybe if you were one of China’s minority tribes or if you lived in a rural area and your first child was a girl and they recognize that a lot of people want to try for sons. But the end result was that with all of these exceptions coming down the line, a lot of people didn’t really necessarily know what the rules were, so it was very easy to contravene them and be fined for them. On how the   policy was enforced  If [a woman] lived in a small village, for example, she would probably be scrutinized by a group, she would probably be grouped together with a set of households and come under what they call a cluster leader, somebody who sort of monitors the progress and fertility rights of a certain set of households. . .. So if this woman . .. fell pregnant then most likely this cluster leader would know about it very quickly and then she would report to higher up. . .. Probably at first a village leader would show up at their doorstep and say, ”You know very well you should not have this you could have all sorts of problem with this. You may have to pay a fine.” I’ve met enforcers who have gone to these houses and say, ”We used to take away something valuable to show that we mean business.” . .. Like a television set, for example, or a pig, or sometimes if the household was a very poor household they’ll take away homespun cloth or grain or something, something that had to make it hurt, basically  —   that was in a village setting, of course. In a city setting they could maybe, if you worked for a [civil  ] job they might threaten to fire you. . .. This is for having a child. If you went for a termination, all of this would go away. But, of course, then there were people who really wanted the child and then they would try and evade the whole process of being taken away for a forced abortion, because here’s the thing: Between your conception and your delivery date, all bets are off  —   they can make you. On the aging population in China  The   policy drastically reshaped the composition of China’s people. So now they have a population that’s basically too old and too male and down the line, maybe too few. So the too old issue is that right now China has a dependency ratio of about five working adults to support one retiree. That’s pretty good, that’s a very healthy ratio. In about 20 years that’s going to jump to about 1. 6 working adults to support one retiree, and that’s because that big population boom that we talked about, that big cohort of people are all living longer and getting older and therefore hitting their 70s, 80s and 90s, so by the time 2050 comes around one in four Chinese people will be a retiree. The entire population of retirees in China would be the third largest nation in this world, if they were to form their own country. So that has nothing to do with the   policy, that’s just a function of people living longer and growing older, but the problem is then you have this very small working cohort to support that, and that has everything to do with the   policy. You just drastically shrank the number of working adults who support this huge, aging tsunami and that’s the problem going ahead. On technology allowing parents to know the sex of the fetus  In the beginning when the policy came around in 1980, at that time they did not have scanning machines that could determine the gender of the fetus at an early stage, so people who delivered girls, for example, and wanted to keep their quota for that one boy  —   because if you used up your quota for a girl and then you gave birth to another girl and you would lose that  —   so people would either abandon their daughters or there would be infanticide, or they would give them away, which is part of the reason why we saw so many adoptions of Chinese babies, mostly girls, in the West. But later in the 1990s, technology made it easier for people to do all these scans and companies like General Electric made these scanning machines that were portable and small enough that you could go from village to village and you could determine the sex of your fetus . .. for as little as $10 or $20, so people would just have an abortion instead of carrying a child to full term. . .. The Nobel economist Amartya Sen estimated there were about 100 million missing women, women that were never born or killed or aborted across Asia. On a generation of women being more educated and professionally successful because of the   policy  Let’s say you were born after 1980 in a big city, chances are you probably don’t have a sibling. And if you’re a girl and you don’t have a sibling, you don’t have to fight with your sibling for resources. So your parents will want to send you to college. They won’t be debating a question of whether they should spend the money on your brother or yourself it’s all for you. So imagine this scenario replicated a million times over and the end result is urban women born after 1980 achieved way more than any other generation before them."
"Praying for rain? You’ll get (slightly) less when the moon is very high, a new study finds. Scientists at the University of Washington say the moon’s position impacts the amount of rainfall on Earth. ”As far as I know, this is the first study to convincingly connect the tidal force of the moon with rainfall,” researcher Tsubasa Kohyama says in a press release from the university. Kohyama and John Wallace,   of the study published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, based their conclusions on 15 years’ worth of data from NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite. An area sees higher air pressure  —   and therefore less rain  —   when the moon is overhead or underfoot (meaning high overhead on the other side of the Earth) the scientists say. This is how it works, according to the press release: ”When the moon is overhead, its gravity causes Earth’s atmosphere to bulge toward it, so the pressure or weight of the atmosphere on that side of the planet goes up. Higher pressure increases the temperature of air parcels below. Since warmer air can hold more moisture, the same air parcels are now farther from their moisture capacity.” We’re talking about a very small change here  —   ”only about 1 percent of the total rainfall variation,” the university notes. ”No one should carry an umbrella just because the moon is rising,” Kohyama says. While we won’t be able to perceive the moon’s impact on rainfall, the data could be helpful for researchers making climate models, ”to check if their physics is good enough to reproduce how the pull of the moon eventually leads to less rain,” the press release states. The moon’s impact on ocean tides is well known. In a previous paper, the two scientists connected   changes to the position of the moon."
"If the advice to eat more fiber seems easy to ignore, you’re not alone. Most Americans don’t get the 25 to 38 grams a day that’s recommended, depending on age and gender. But if you’re skimping on fiber, the health stakes are high, especially if you’re a teenage girl. A study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics concludes that eating lots of   foods during high school years may significantly reduce a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer. The findings are based on a   study of 44, 000 women who were surveyed about their eating habits in high school. The women also completed detailed questionnaires about their dietary habits every four years. The researchers found that women who consumed high levels of fiber (28 grams per day, on average) had a 24 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer before menopause, compared with women who ate low levels of fiber (14 grams per day, on average). For the women on the   diet, the lifetime risk of developing breast cancer was also cut by 16 percent. Of course, the idea that   diets can help keep us healthy is not new. It’s   that fiber can prevent constipation and keep the bowel moving by making stools bulkier and absorbing water. Prior studies have shown dietary fiber can protect against colorectal cancer and may lower the risks of diabetes and heart disease. There’s also a growing body of evidence linking fiber to weight management. This new study provides some evidence of yet another potential benefit. ”This is a really important study . .. [suggesting] that the more fiber you eat during your high school years, the lower your risk is in developing breast cancer,” says Kimberly Blackwell, a breast cancer specialist at the Duke Cancer Center. In a commentary accompanying the study in Pediatrics, Blackwell writes, ”There is longstanding evidence that dietary fibers may reduce circulating estrogen levels.” And this may help explain the reduced risk of breast cancer. The authors point to other possible explanations, too. For instance,   diets may reduce the risk of breast cancer by improving insulin sensitivity, since fiber can slow down the absorption of sugars and help keep blood sugar levels more stable. Maryam Farvid, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health who is lead author of the study, says the influence of fiber on cancer risk may be  . Adolescence is ”a period when breast cancer risk factors appear to be particularly important,” she says. One limitation of this new study is that it relies on data from women who had to recall what they ate during high school. They were in their 30s and 40 when asked, so there could be ”recall bias”  ” the women’s memories may be foggy. ”The recollection of dietary habits more than a decade earlier must be questioned,” writes Blackwell. On the other hand, she says, ”people’s dietary habits don’t really change a lot. . .. In general, what you eat as a teenager is really formative as to what you eat later in life.” So, how might the message of this new study linking   diets to a lower risk of breast cancer be communicated to teenagers? This is a question Kristi King, a dietitian at Texas Children’s Hospital, has thought about a lot. She says it can be hard to get the attention of teenagers about healthy eating. ”Unfortunately for teenagers, they’re [into] instant gratification,” and they’re not necessarily focused on how their actions today will influence their future health, she says. But, she says, explaining that dietary choices may influence their risk of breast cancer may grab their attention. ”Most teenage girls do know someone that has been affected by breast cancer,” says King. ”So I feel like that touches a nerve with them.” Given the known benefits of   diets and the growing evidence that fiber may play a role in preventing disease, the government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans also say most people need to consume more. Women are advised to consume 25 grams a day. Men are advised to consume 38 grams a day. So, how best to reach these targets? ”Add fiber at each meal,” says King, in the form of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts or seeds. Pears are a great bet with 7 grams of fiber apiece. And check out   snacks, like popcorn and edamame."
"When the NHL’s   extravaganza began, John Scott was worried about whether his teammates would accept him, a journeyman enforcer who was voted in by the fans and is now on an AHL team. When it ended, he worried the NHL’s elite might drop him when they lifted him onto their shoulders. ”I was nervous, scared,” Scott said. ”I am not a very light guy  —   I’m almost 275 pounds, when I’m soaking wet I’m about 300 pounds. It was  . . .. I thought they were going to drop me on my head.” To take his mind off that worry, Scott, 33, could listen to the fans cheering for him and chanting ”MVP!” And for the record, his teammates didn’t keep him in the air for very long. To put it floridly, the Internet ached with the desire for Scott to be named MVP of the NHL’s   Game Sunday night. Stars like Henrik Lundqvist chimed in even the official Twitter accounts of many NHL teams took up the call. And it was finally requited: Scott, whose   trip had once been blocked, scored two goals to help the Pacific team win the      tournament (and a $1 million prize). The first of those goals set off a standing ovation in Nashville, Tenn. where fans had cheered for Scott all weekend. Through a sequence of events that ”unlikely” only begins to describe, the     Scott scored on a breakaway, engaged in a mock brawl and was lifted onto his teammates’ shoulders Sunday night as they celebrated the people’s champ. ”It’s just another one on the list of stuff I cannot believe is happening,” Scott said after the game. ”I never in a million years would have believed that I was in an   Game, and have the fans get behind me like that. To score two goals in the game is just . .. you can’t put it into words. You can’t write this stuff. It’s unbelievable how it happened.” It was the fans who voted Scott onto the   team they also voted him the game’s MVP, even though he wasn’t on the NHL’s ballot. Through it all, Scott showed himself to have character and humor that   sports leagues dream about: Sunday night, he was already applauding the   MVP before he realized his name had been called at one point, he left the ice to give a (very large) hug to Chris Sutter, the son of his   squad’s coach, Darryl. For weeks, Scott’s story played out like a surreal remake of Rollerball: an athlete’s fortitude and his fans’ intensity are tested but ultimately prevail, despite intricate mechanisms that seem intent on subverting them. Scott’s supporters often mention his likability, his   status and his commitment to his family  —   he has two daughters who are often seen at his games, and his wife, Danielle, is nine months pregnant with twins. Their devotion deepened further two weeks ago, when Scott and his family were forced to move from Phoenix to Newfoundland, the result of a trade and assignment to the minors that many saw as a ploy to keep him out of the   Game after he refused to remove himself from consideration. Both Danielle and John Scott have said they were surprised and excited by the campaign to get him into the   Game and that they’re happy and relieved he was finally deemed eligible to play. ”We’ve just been so overwhelmed by so much support,” Danielle Scott said after Sunday night’s game. She added, ”I’m going to tear up, even talking about it. I’m so pregnant and emotional.” At the   weekend’s skills competition, Scott took the ice alongside the NHL’s top players, including his fellow captains such as Jaromir Jagr and Patrick Kane (Alex Ovechkin did not attend). While the other players wore their home team’s jersey, Scott dressed in a black   jersey  —   after the NHL reportedly vetoed his plan to wear the one from his current team, the AHL’s Saint John’s IceCaps. His   candidacy may have started as a joke, a way for fans to poke fun at the NHL and start a debate about who belongs in the league’s showcase game. But it grew more serious when Scott was traded, and deepened further when he published an essay last Thursday in which he said the NHL had tried to persuade him not to go to the   game in Nashville, telling him, ”This is not a game for you, John.” The essay was titled ”A Guy Like Me.” In it, Scott explained how he used hockey to help him get a degree in engineering at Michigan Tech, on the assumption that he had no future in the sport. He explained how hard he had worked to have a career, and to be an NHL player. Here’s an excerpt: ”But I’m one of them. And that means a lot to me. ”It means a lot to my family. ”So when someone from the NHL calls me and says, ’Do you think this is something your kids would be proud of?’ ”. .. That’s when they lost me. ”That was it, right there. That was the moment. ”Because, while I may not deserve to be an NHL   I know I deserve to be the judge of what my kids will  —   and won’t  —   be proud of me for.” His daughters have his jerseys from all five teams he has played for, Scott wrote. Sunday night in Nashville, the girls were once again with him on the ice, wearing small versions of his jersey. On the back it read, simply, ”Daddy.”"
"Babies get a lot from their mothers. But babies born by cesarean section don’t pass through the birth canal and miss out on the benefits from picking up Mom’s microbes on the way out. Researchers studying the human microbiome have asked: Could there be a way to fix that? If so, it might help restore the microbes a baby naturally gets that help fight off disease and foster normal development. A small study published Monday in Nature Medicine provides tantalizing evidence that it may be possible. How? By slathering babies just after birth with a gauze pad that soaked up the microbes in their mothers’ birth canal right before birth. ”These results show that we can partially restore and normalize the microbial assembly that takes place naturally in babies,” says Maria   an associate professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, who led the study. ”We normalize their microbiome.”   and her colleagues stress that they need to test their approach on many more babies to really know if it works. Scientists also need to follow the children for years to see if the intervention makes any difference to their health. In the meantime, they emphasize that women shouldn’t attempt this on their own because there is a risk they could inadvertently transmit dangerous bacteria to their newborns. ”Don’t do this at home,” says Jose Clemente, an assistant professor of genetics and genomic sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who helped conduct the study. The women participating in the study were screened for known pathogens ahead of time and also given antibiotics as a precaution. When a woman is pregnant, the composition of microbes in her birth canal starts to change. ”Babies pick up these microbes. And by time the baby’s born, the baby’s heavily colonized by these microbes that have found the right place to grow,” says  . Babies who are delivered with a   don’t go through the birth canal, so they don’t get these microbes. That might help explain why babies born by   appear to have a higher risk for a variety of diseases, she says. ”We think that the epidemic increase in asthma, allergies, Type 1 diabetes, Celiac disease, obesity are related to disturbances in the microbiome,” she says. The hypothesis is that microbes help train the immune system. The link to obesity may stem from microbes helping to regulate normal metabolism. So   and her colleagues wondered whether they could somehow give   babies their mothers’ microbes. ”We are testing the hypothesis that if a baby born by   is exposed to vaginal fluids of his or her mom, then those bacteria that the baby should have seen naturally will find and grow in the appropriate niche of the body,” she says. Other researchers say the results represent a promising first step. ”It’s a very important study,” says Juliette Madan, who studies babies’ microbiomes at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine and who isn’t involved in this study. ”It’s showing that this is a possible intervention that might restore a   microbiome and lead to improved health outcomes for life,” Madan says. For the study, which is ongoing, researchers ask doctors to put a piece of gauze inside the birth canal of women giving birth by   before delivery to soak up their microbes, and then take out the gauze just before the baby is born. As soon as the baby is born, the doctors swab the baby with the specially prepared gauze, focusing on the mouth and face before moving onto the rest of their body. The researchers then repeatedly sample and analyze the babies’ microbes. The results released Monday focus on the first four   babies they tried this on, during the first month of life. The researchers compared their microbes to those of seven   babies who weren’t swabbed and seven who were born vaginally. All together, the scientists collected and analyzed more than 1, 500 microbial samples. The mouth, gut and skin microbes of the   babies who were slathered looked much more similar to those of babies delivered vaginally than those who weren’t swabbed in their first month of life, the researchers reported. For example, the swabbed babies had greater quantities of two types of bacteria believed to be helpful, known as Lactobacillus and Bacteroides. The swabbing didn’t completely   the combination of microbes present in babies delivered vaginally, however. The researchers have performed the procedure on more babies but haven’t yet completed the same analysis. The group is seeking funding to continue and expand the study to try to determine how well the approach works and whether it improves health, which is the ultimate goal. ”Obviously, the final study  —   the most important one  —   is to follow babies for three or five or seven years and determine if this restoration decreases the risk for some of the diseases that we know are associated with having been born by ”   says. If that turns out to be the case, the researchers said, they would try to develop a probiotic that contains the specific microbes that babies need. That would eliminate the risk of transferring any harmful microbes to the babies."
"Egypt has an unusual law known as the ”seasonal marriage” law, and the government says it’s aimed at helping the many poor families who resort to selling their daughters into temporary or   marriages with wealthy, older foreign men to support themselves. Egypt’s Justice Ministry says it will begin strictly enforcing that law, which requires foreign men  —   usually from Gulf countries  —   to pay to marry women 25 years or more their junior. And it’s increasing the amount the men must pay. All this, it says, is to protect Egyptian women. Human rights groups say the law formalizes sex trafficking and bolsters a business that preys on the poor and the vulnerable. People like Hind. Hind is 27 years old. She is ashamed. And because of that, she asks me to use only her first name when she recounts her story. Two years ago, a marriage broker came to the   apartment that she, her four sisters, her invalid father and her ailing mother shared. Hind worked different jobs, mostly in retail, to support them all on less than $100 a month. Hind says the broker spoke to her father. After he left, her father explained that there was a    Saudi man who wanted to marry a young Egyptian woman. He’d pay about $2, 000 to marry Hind for two months while he was visiting Egypt. Her father said, ”Hind, you see the life that we’re living and what this money will do for us,” she recalls. ”I said, ’OK, I will do it.’ ” Her mother pleaded with her not to. Hind’s mother said she’d rather beg than sell her daughter. But Hind thought the money could go to medicine for her sick mom and to help her sisters. She quickly realized she’d made a mistake. ”I was disgusted by him. I was with a man older than my father,” she says. ”But it didn’t matter. I’d already sold myself, sacrificed myself to rescue my family.” She cries often during our conversation. A few weeks after the marriage, her mother died  —   of sadness, Hind believes. When the   two months were over, she moved back in with her family. Now they’re in a slightly bigger apartment in a new neighborhood, where people won’t know her story. ”I was an innocent girl who believed in love and marriage,” Hind says. ”Now I hate the word ’marriage.’ ” She wishes her parents had thought before having so many children with so little money to support them. She wishes there were a welfare system in the state to help people like her family. She wishes she could’ve made a different decision. Last month, when Egypt’s justice minister said authorities would start strictly enforcing the law, it increased the amount from about $5, 100 to the equivalent of just under $6, 400, to be invested in an Egyptian bank in the woman’s name. The law originally banned marriages between foreign men and women who were 25 years or more younger unless special exceptions were made. But in 1993 the government began requiring foreign men to pay for the right to marry much younger Egyptian women. Over the years the amount has increased and so has the practice. And while there are no hard numbers on how many Egyptian women are married off to much older foreign men, human rights groups say it’s a thriving business, and in parts of the country, whole villages resort to selling their daughters to support the family. Although it’s billed as protective, rights advocates say this is helping the practice thrive. The money formalizes sex trafficking and forced marriages, they say. ”It is an industry, especially in the north of the country, whereby you have kind of tourism marriage,” said Amr Abdel Rahman, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. What he calls ”tourism marriage” is basically sex trafficking. Older men, usually from wealthy Arab Gulf countries, typically with wives already at home, come to Egypt to buy a wife  —   often temporarily. Sometimes they take them outside the country. The practice peaks in the summer. In a country where more than a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, Abdel Rahman says there are whole villages where poor families sell their daughters simply to keep themselves fed. The amended law will benefit those hired to seek out poor families for the marriages. With the government enforcing the regulation and increasing the amount paid, he says, the brokers’ business will become even more profitable. They’ll get more money, and so will Egyptian banks. ”Those brokers, their business will flourish in light of that decision,” Abdel Rahman says. ”It’s basically making everyone profit without providing any protection to the girls,” he says. ”These girls need medical protection. These girls need a social safety network. These are not there. They were not there before the decision and they will continue being absent after the decision.” One marriage broker whom NPR spoke to says she expects little to change. She asks us not to use her name because she arranges marriages off the books and the men don’t pay the required government fees. Her business is small. She brokers a deal every couple of months. But there are whole offices dedicated to finding young brides for older foreign men, she says. ”I’ve seen fathers force their daughters into the marriages because they have nothing, not even a bed to sleep on,” she says. She does the work for the same reason: to support her family."
"About 40 years ago, when she was 24, Consuelo Hermosillo had an emergency caesarean section at Los Angeles   Medical Center. In the new documentary No Más Bebés, she recalls asking her doctor what type of birth control she should use going forward. ”He goes, ’You don’t need anything. We cut your tubes,’” Hermosillo says in the film. ”And I said, ’Why?’ And he said, ’Well you signed for it.’ And I said, ’Me? ’” No Más Bebés (No More Babies) which airs on PBS on Feb. 1, tells the story of how 10 immigrant Mexican women, Hermosillo included, sued LA County doctors, the state and the U. S. government in 1975 for allegedly violating their civil rights. The women’s cases were similar. Each had an emergency cesarean section and each said she was either unaware that she signed for a tubal ligation or was told by a medical professional that not signing for one could mean death for her and her unborn child. No Más Bebés examines how the lawsuit, Madrigal v. Quilligan, came to be, how questions of informed consent  —   or lack thereof  —   and coercion played into the case, and how the collision of various societal issues resulted in stories like Hermosillo’s. ”When you’re a filmmaker, the easiest thing to do is make a film about the good guys and the bad guys, the heroes and the villains,” says No Más Bebés director Renee  .   says she and   Virginia Espino, a historian who wrote her dissertation on the case, wanted to tell a multilayered story, one that revealed how even the best intentions could do harm.   and Espino explore the roles played by federally funded   programs a growing popular movement to curb population growth that attracted both environmentalists and   proponents doctors fresh out of medical school working in   maternity wards cultural misunderstandings and the popular belief that poor women who need public assistance should abstain from having children. Taken together, these factors created what   calls a ”perfect storm” resulting in the sterilization of thousands of vulnerable women across the country in the late ’60s and early 1970s. She and Espino say their goal was to document a history that continues to repeat itself  —   they point to nearly 150 women sterilized in California prisons between 2006 and 2010 as the most recent example. In telling this history, the film highlights the role played by the Family Planning and Population Research Act, which Congress passed in 1970 allocating millions for   purposes. That money went to fund contraceptives, education, research and training. ”You’ve got money for family planning programs, which were good programs and provided contraceptives for women who couldn’t afford it,” says  . Congress also lifted a ban on federal funding for sterilization, so hospitals that provided the indigent with medical care, like Los Angeles County General Hospital, could apply for government money to perform tubal ligations. Meanwhile, lobbying efforts in Washington, fueled by a fear of overpopulation gripping the nation, led to yet more funding for family planning programs. Inspired by the popularity of biologist Paul Ehrlich’s   1968 book, The Population Bomb, which predicted that at some point in the 1980s, overpopulation would make it impossible for the planet to support humanity, members of the ”zero population movement” worked to convince the public that having children was a very bad idea. Some went so far as promoting the sterilization of women deemed to have had too many. (They also called for a dramatic reduction to immigration.) Then, there were divisions within the feminist movement on how sterilization fit into the bigger picture of reproductive rights. Mainstream white feminists marched for ”the right to choose,” including unfettered access to sterilizations, contraception and abortions. Feminists of color also called for abortion rights and easy access to contraception, but broke with white feminists on the issue of sterilization, arguing that for women of color, sterilization was not always a matter of choice. They called for waiting periods before tubal ligation procedures, and Latina activists called for   consent forms. In No Más Bebés, California politician Gloria Molina, who was active in the Chicana feminist movement in the 1970s, says the idea of a waiting period was ”totally offensive” to white feminists, who, she says, pushed for sterilization upon demand. ”They weren’t taking into account that if you were   and if you don’t speak English, you were being denied a right, totally,” Molina says in the film. And then there was the   stance, still popular today, that poor women should not have children they can’t afford to support, especially poor women of color. For decades, Puerto Rican women had been subjected to sterilizations at various points as a way to combat astronomical unemployment and poverty on the island a 1965 survey found that a third of Puerto Rican mothers living on the island at the time had been sterilized. Native American women were sterilized at the hands of the Indian Health Service in the 1970s. Poor   women on government assistance were also sterilized across the country during that time period. A particularly damning case, brought two years before Madrigal v. Quilligan, involved two black sisters sterilized at ages 14 and 12 in Alabama. So, to recap: You had a surge of federal money for sterilizations, mainstream feminists calling for easier access to them, a fear that overpopulation would soon destroy the planet and the fear that poor women were burdening the country with children whom taxpayers would need to feed, clothe and educate. This nexus of events  —   and the consequences, intended and unintended, that followed  —   is the knot that No Más Bebés tries to untie. ”Why were they doing it?” Consuelo Hermosillo, one of the 10 plaintiffs in Madrigal v. Quilligan, asks on camera at one point in the film, nearly 40 years after her sterilization at LA County General. ”I always keep these questions with me, and I never get those answers,” she says."
"Any day now, Ben Lecomte will plunge into the Pacific Ocean off a Tokyo beach toward San Francisco. He wants to become the first person to swim across the Pacific. He’s already the first person to free swim across the Atlantic Ocean, without a kickboard. No one knows how the physical feat of swimming 5, 500 miles will affect Lecomte’s heart, but cardiologists are anxious to find out. His swim offers a rare opportunity to study whether extreme athletic performance has a harmful effect on the heart. After he completed the swim across the Atlantic in 1998, the first words out of Ben Lecomte’s mouth were ”never again.” Now this      American is about to embark on a swim expected to take five to six months. ”I’m not a fast swimmer,” Lecomte says. But boy is he dedicated. ”Swimming is a passion,” he says. ”You cannot just push it away.” Lecomte, who lives in Austin, Texas, is diving back into the ocean to focus attention on environmental problems. He’s worried about the future for his kids. During the swim, he will collect data on the Pacific, including the microbes and trash he encounters. People can follow along on his Facebook page, The Longest Swim. He will also collect data on himself, including how his heart holds up for eight hours of freestyle every single day. This data will go to Benjamin Levine, a cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center and director of the Institute of Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Resources. ”My question has always been, how much exercise do you need to do to injure the heart?” Levine says. ”Since Ben was planning to swim across the Pacific Ocean, we thought, hey, this might be a good opportunity.” After all, we’re told more exercise is better  —   and generally, it is. Yet several studies of extreme endurance athletes have called that idea into question. People who run marathons or do triathlons can have some scarring or fibrosis in the center of the heart, says Paul Thompson, chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut. ”Right where the two sides of the heart join each other  —   the septum.” This scarring at the septum is worrisome, Thompson says, particularly for people who have an underlying genetic condition that weakens the heart muscle. And there’s a second area of concern. ”It’s been shown in a couple of studies now that people who are lifelong endurance athletes have more coronary artery calcification than you would expect for their risk factors,” Thompson says. Calcification, meaning a buildup of calcium in the heart, is not something you’d expect to find in people swimming long distances, running ultramarathons or tackling Ironman competitions. There could be a genetic explanation to both the calcium issue and the scarring, Thompson says. So he advises people to study up on their family history and see if there have been cases of sudden death, then weigh the benefits and risks of extreme exercise. ”We don’t think that   exercise is dangerous, because   endurance athletes live longer than other people,” Thompson says. But Thompson does want to figure out what’s going on. Which brings us back to Ben Lecomte and the tricky task of monitoring his heart from the middle of the ocean. Using technology that NASA uses for monitoring astronauts on the International Space Station, UT Southwestern’s Levine will be able to monitor Lecomte’s heart during his swim. It’s a small echo machine, like an ultrasound for the heart, that will be on the support boat traveling with Lecomte. Once a month, while resting on the boat, Lecomte will turn the machine on and use a satellite phone to call the Johnson Space Center. Someone there will tell Lecomte how to position the probe to give himself an echocardiogram. From his desk in Dallas, Levine will see images of how fast Lecomte’s heart is contracting, how quickly the blood flows in and out of the valves, and any stress where the two sides of the heart meet. His prediction? ”I think when he comes back he’ll have signs of a little inflammation or irritation right where the right and left ventricle connect,” Levine says. ”That’s what we see in some other of these elite   athletes, and I think that’s what we’ll see in Ben.” For most people this inflammation is really of no consequence, Levine says. But for some people  —   for example, those who have pulmonary hypertension or other kinds of heart disease  —   it could cause problems. He hopes studying Lecomte’s heart will help reveal why extreme exercise changes the heart and determine whether there’s a limit to how much exercise the human heart can handle. Ben Lecomte is not worried. He thinks his heart can handle the enormous ocean, some    waves and the occasional shark."
"The question of who is represented and who is left out is rocking the country these days, from Hollywood to politics. And, in Venice, Calif. representation is at the heart 19 dramatic portraits, now on display at the L. A. Louver. The paintings are of talented female artists, all working right now in Los Angeles. Campbell felt women artists are   not getting shown in museums and galleries, becoming invisible. ”I thought, well, what I can do is I make pictures,” Campbell explains. ”I made it so that they didn’t disappear, by making pictures of them.” There are 19 so far in this   project. The women are of different ages and races, but what ties them together is the fact that they all make art. Campbell isn’t after precise representation in these portraits. ”You’re trying to say something about this person, the personal history,” she says. ”But you’re trying to do it with [a] vocabulary of marks and tones and textures . .. in my language.” In bold, confident strokes with a brush or palette knife, in black, white and a salmon pink she mixes by hand, Campbell captures the essence of her subject. Alexandra Grant is one of the artists included in the series. In the painting, as in life, Grant has long hair, steady eyes and a slight smile. ”What Rebecca’s doing in a very beautiful, subtle way is saying: Look, here’s all these artists who are working right now in Los Angeles,” says Grant. ”Do you know them? They want to meet you. They want their work to be known in the public realm and considered on equal footing with male peers.” Campbell’s women are painters, sculptors, photographers and dancers. Mpambo Wina trained and performed at the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She’s small and elegant, with vivid red lipstick and braided hair. She remembers when she sat for the photograph that Campbell would use to paint her portrait. ”You arrive at her studio and you sit,” Wina says. ”I started to pose . .. and then she started talking to me and I dropped the armor.” The conversation swirled between them. ”You talk about life or literature, architecture, traveling, and she’s taking you in, bit by bit,” Wina recalls. Campbell started clicking her camera while they talked. Suddenly she stopped and said: ”I have it.” From that photo, Campbell created a painting that shows Wina in a white   a bright cross on her necklace. Her face is open, thoughtful, engaged. She looks right at us  —   all the women in this series do. ”I think with each one of these portraits, that the gaze of someone looking back at you  —   confident, contemplative, and holding their space  —   that’s a really important position for a woman artist to be in,” Alexandra Grant says. Wina says as a model, there was even more to it than that: ”You feel seen,” she says. At the show’s crowded opening reception, Grant felt community among the women on the walls and in the gallery, admiring Cambell’s work. ”She is creating an index that will serve as a record of this moment in time in Los Angeles art history,” Grant says. ”And this is pretty funny  —   I had a number of people ask me: How do I get painted?” The show  —   called ”You Are Here”  —   is up at L. A. Louver Gallery in Venice until Feb. 13. Campbell writes this about what painting means to her: ”It’s about tracking ghosts,” she says. ”It’s about selling diamonds to poets. It’s about that slippery little idea of a connection that is deeper than butter and as long as water.”"
"How much harm can the Zika virus do? That’s the question that is bedeviling researchers in Brazil. It’s not just the matter of a possible link to brain damage in babies born to mothers who contracted the virus during pregnancy. There have also been suspected cases of adult patients who suffered temporary hearing loss. Researchers are trying to make sense of it all, and yet they lack very basic information. Even the number of cases and the degree to which it has spread are unknown. That makes it hard to figure out the true impact of Zika. One reason that it’s hard to know whether there’s a link between Zika and reports of brain damage is that it’s hard to know whether a pregnant woman actually had the virus. Doctors in Brazil say the most important thing they need to have as quickly as possible is a reliable and fast way to test for the virus. ”The big difficulty right now is really to be able to test with certainty if someone had Zika or some other infection, like dengue, which is very similar,” says Dr. Rafael Franza, an immunologist in the city of Recife, the epicenter of the outbreak. Franza heads a team working with Glasgow University to develop a rapid test. At the moment, he says, the only way to determine whether you have been infected is to do a blood test within five days of the infection. The first problem: Most cases are asymptomatic, so you may not know you have Zika at all. The second problem: resources. He says only 16 public labs in Brazil are equipped to test for the virus, which requires a molecular study of the sample. Brazil’s Ministry of Health has announced it is sending out equipment so that a total of 27 labs will be able to do the blood tests. Brazil is also making it mandatory starting next week for hospitals to report how many suspected cases of Zika they are dealing with. This lack of testing ability affects the ability of doctors to determine how often cases of brain damage in infants are linked to Zika, says Dr. Manoel Barral. He is the director in Bahia of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a Brazilian medical research behemoth. In Bahia, doctors are also focusing on what happens to adults who caught Zika. ”The initial manifestations are kind of mild, like [a] rash, but if it’s severe enough to cause microcephaly and brain damage, what else can be attributed to [the virus]? We have to investigate more,” he says. Indeed, there are indications that Zika in adults can have lingering neurological effects. ”The problem may be worse than we think,” says Barral. ”After Zika they started with some symptoms like vertigo or dizziness and hearing loss and tinnitus [ringing in the ears],” says Dr. Viviane Boaventura, an ear, nose and throat specialist who works with Barral. She is studying 10 patients who are suspected of having had Zika. Up to two months after contracting the virus, Boaventura reports, the 10 patients suffered measurable and significant hearing loss as well as lightheadedness. She has been monitoring these patients since May. The symptoms require further investigation, she says, emphasizing that these effects seem temporary and almost all of the 10 patients have recovered fully. ”We are just starting,” she says. ”And we don’t have a lot of patients to tell you if [the damage] will be reversible or it will be permanent.” Other questions are looming. If you’ve had the virus once, does that make you immune? Doctors assume so but don’t know for sure. Can it be sexually transmitted? There are several cases that indicate it’s possible. With doctors now focusing on the virus, the hope is there will be answers in the weeks and months to come."
"Health officials have confirmed that someone in Dallas County, Texas, contracted the Zika virus through sexual contact. It’s the first U. S. case related to the recent Western Hemisphere outbreak to be acquired through sex. Until now, experts have focused on transmission of the virus through mosquito bites. Dallas County Health and Human Services says the patient, who remains anonymous, became infected after having sexual contact with someone who was ill and had returned from a country where the Zika virus is present. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released this statement: ”CDC has confirmed through laboratory testing the first U. S. case of Zika virus infection in a   in the continental United States. According to a Dallas County Health Department investigation, a person who recently traveled to an area with Zika virus transmission returned to the United States and developed   symptoms. The person later tested positive for Zika, along with their sexual partner, who had not traveled to the area. In this instance there was no risk to a developing fetus. ”Based on what we know now, the best way to avoid Zika virus infection is to prevent mosquito bites. We do not have definitive information on the infectious time period, and will provide more guidance for individuals and clinicians as we learn more. Sexual partners can protect themselves by using condoms to prevent spreading sexually transmitted infections. People who have Zika virus infection can protect others by preventing additional mosquito bites.” In 2008, a Colorado researcher reportedly caught the virus overseas and may have spread it to his wife when he returned to the U. S."
"The current Zika outbreak got its start in Brazil, and that country is still the epicenter of the outbreak. But could the situation in neighboring Venezuela be nearly as bad? That’s the charge being made by some doctors’ groups, who claim the Venezuelan government is vastly underestimating the number of cases. The government estimates that around 3, 700 people have likely been infected with Zika since the outbreak began last year. These doctors believe the number is closer to 400, 000  —   and that estimate only covers people who showed symptoms of infection. Since Zika cases are generally mild and often free of any symptoms, the group says the true number of infections to date could be up to 1 million. ”The government has been completely opaque on this. They are keeping information from both the public and from the professionals,” says Dr. Jose Oletta, who was a minister of health in Venezuela before current President Nicolas Maduro’s political party  —   then led by the late Hugo Chavez  —   took power in 1999. Even before the Zika outbreak, the Maduro administration had been criticized for lack of transparency on public health. Among the complaints: More than a year ago it ceased publishing weekly epidemiological bulletins reporting infection rates for a range of diseases including malaria, dengue and chikungunya. Oletta says the government’s communication strategy on Zika is just the latest example of this pattern. While the virus may have been circulating in Venezuela since at least this past summer, authorities apparently only confirmed transmission of Zika in their country in late November. But Oletta notes that rather than announcing this publicly, officials first sent word to the World Health Organization. It wasn’t until Dec. 3, through an announcement by the WHO, that Venezuelans were informed that the virus was in their midst. And for weeks thereafter the government declined to release any estimates of the number of potential cases. In the absence of official statistics, a private association of prominent public health professionals to which Oletta belongs  —   called the Network to Defend National Epidemiology  —   started doing its own research and statistical modeling. They came up with their estimate of about 400, 000 cases and released it late last month. Among other data, says Oletta, ”we looked at the number of reported cases of acute fever that health workers did not believe were explained by other diseases, such as dengue and chikungunya.” Oletta’s group then compared that number against the typical number of unexplained acute fever cases in any given year. The excess case load was counted as potential Zika infections. Oletta says all this data came from official health reports that aren’t being made public. How did Oletta’s group obtain the reports? He gets a little coy. ”Look, just like for a journalist protecting your confidential sources is a fundamental principle of the profession, I have to protect my sources. It’s an issue of people’s security,” he says. ”But these are the official technical reports directly from the ministry of health. We have chosen to make them public because they shouldn’t be kept private. This information belongs to the public. It’s in the public interest to make it available.” The government did little to mollify its critics, when, last week it finally unveiled its own estimate of potential cases and put the number at as many as 4, 700. ”That’s almost 100 times lower than our estimate,” says Oletta. ”It’s like there are two parallel realities in Venezuela right now. The   one and the actual situation. It’s absurd. It’s not possible to have this   in a civilized society.” The prospect of a massive upswell in cases in Venezuela is troubling because Zika has been linked to serious complications in the country that has so far seen the largest number of reported cases: Brazil. Based on the experience there, researchers believe that pregnant women who get the disease may give birth to babies with microcephaly, a birth defect characterized by abnormally small heads and brain damage. So far no such cases have been reported in Venezuela. But officials said there are as many as 255 patients with another problem possibly linked to Zika:   syndrome, a type of paralysis that can be   without expensive treatment. To make matters worse, all this comes as Venezuela is in the grips of an economic crisis that has created shortages of everything from toilet paper to deodorant  —   let alone sophisticated medicines. Huniades Urbina, a pediatrician at the J. M. De Los Rios Hospitals in Caracas  —   one of the country’s main children’s hospitals  —   says even basic painkillers like paracetamol (a common brand in the United States is Tylenol) are hard to come by. ”The same way there are long lines to buy food, there are incredible lines to buy medicine. People have to go to four or five pharmacies to find the most basic items.” In the last several years there has also been an exodus of thousands of doctors, leaving medical centers chronically understaffed and intensive care units short of beds. And when it comes to Zika, Urbina describes an atmosphere of desperation among his patients. Mothers are asking how to prevent infection with the   Zika virus, he notes. ”And the answer is, ’Don’t keep standing water around your house [in which mosquitoes could breed]. Well, there’s a massive water shortage across the country. In a lot of places you can only get water every week or two weeks,” says Urbina, who is president of the Venezuelan Society of Childcare and Pediatrics. ”So of course everyone is keeping buckets of water in their homes.” Or he says, ”people are told, ’use mosquito repellent.’ But there’s no mosquito repellent in the stores. It appears one day and the next it’s gone. You hear of people trying to get it sent to them by relatives in Miami.” Although the government has launched a nationwide campaign to spray against mosquitoes, Urbina says what he’s seen appears to be too little too late. To make do, says Urbina, people are resorting to dubious home remedies. ”There’s this idea that if you spread coffee grounds on the dirt it will suppress mosquitoes  —   so people are trying that.” As a doctor, he says, ”you feel so much frustration. It’s like we’ve reverted to the 19th century.”"
"It’s been a month since armed militants took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, and even though the leaders of that occupation have been arrested, the community of Harney County finds itself deeply divided. That anger erupted on Monday in the form of a huge shouting match on the steps of the county courthouse in Burns, Ore. It’s a small town of about 2, 700 people, so it’s not every day that you see 400 or 500 people out on the street, screaming at each other. Here’s what led up to the scene: A week ago, the FBI made its move against the leaders of the occupation, arresting them out on a stretch of lonely highway. During that operation, law enforcement shot and killed a militant named LaVoy Finicum, causing outrage among sympathizers all across the West. So they started flocking to Burns to show their displeasure with the FBI. They planned a big rally outside the courthouse, but when they got there, they came up against a wall of local people. ”Go home! Go home! Go home!” the locals chanted. It wasn’t the reception Barbara Berg expected. She is an   protester from Nevada, who until this moment believed most of the community supported the militants. ”I . .. want to know how many of them live here, how many are paid actors,” Berg says. The   ”patriot” groups regrouped and got out their bullhorn. ”We are all Americans! We’re all Americans here!” shouted B. J. Soper, one of the leaders of a group called the Pacific Patriots Network. He tried to explain to the locals that his organization just wants to rein in an overly aggressive government. ”We want your community and the people accountable for the death of LaVoy Finicum held accountable because they are as guilty as the FBI that pulled the trigger!” Now, people in Burns agree with a lot of what these groups have to say. Locals are tired of the heavy police and FBI presence since the takeover at the refuge, and most people here do think the federal government overreaches, especially when it comes to environmental rules and land use. But they’re also sick of outsiders hanging around, trying to start a movement. ”I don’t know who to wave to anymore,” says local resident Nancy Fine. ”You have to kind of look and say, ’Is that a friend or is that someone who doesn’t belong or doesn’t live here and has come here to make trouble?’ ” Fine says one sure way of identifying an outsider is a prominently displayed sidearm. She shoots a scornful glance at a trio of men standing in front of her, their arms crossed, their holsters hanging out. ”We all have guns but none of us wear them on our hip and kind of flaunt them around. We consider that extremely rude and ungentlemanly at best,” Fine says. To many here, flaunted guns represent a deeper shift. There’s always been tension over the role of the federal government, just as in the rest of the rural West. But the tensions didn’t seem extreme. In fact, locals thought they had made progress, hammering out compromises with federal agencies. But now there’s a harder edge to things, according to Leon Pielstick. ”I was having kind of a heated discussion with a good friend of mine. We had to stop and get back on . .. the same footing because you can’t have those kind of arguments. You can’t be tearing the community apart,” Pielstick says. Pielstick carries a sign that says ”  Harney County.” Two women nearby aren’t sure that’s possible anymore. One says the community has been flooded in ”testosterone,” as she puts it, and the other, Donna Clark, says the effects of that will linger. ”We need the outside people to go home so we can start to heal. It’s going to be a long, hard process,” Clark says."
"Emad, a Damascus native, says he is starting to feel at home in the northwestern Dutch city of Haarlem. The    comes on foot to meet me at the city’s train station, where I traveled from Paris to meet him in November. ”It’s fascinating, it reminds me a lot of Damascus,” he says. ”Because it has the old city, then it goes modern and it goes to old buildings [again]. So it gives me a warm feeling to be here.” Despite winter cold, tens of thousands of migrants continue to arrive on the European continent. Undertaking perilous journeys across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece, they make their way slowly up the continent to countries such as Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, in search of better lives. Some 55, 000 refugees arrived in the Netherlands between January and November of last year, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Emad and his wife, Lena, 25, undertook their journey five months ago. They arrived in Haarlem in September. The couple says they are excited to make the Netherlands their new home. They don’t want to use their last names because they fear for the safety of family members back in Syria. We walk a few blocks to their temporary home  —   a former prison, built in the 19th century, that has become a refugee center. Inside the domed brick building, hundreds of prison cells open onto a central recreation area with a basketball court and soccer pitch. The sound reverberates inside the building as if in an echo chamber. We climb a metal spiral staircase to the fourth floor, where Lena is waiting. Their cell is tiny, with bunk beds and two chairs. There’s a separate space with a toilet and a sink and drawings on the walls from former Dutch inmates. But the room is warm and clean, and Emad says they’re being well looked after while they wait for the asylum process. ”They are doing their best they are really doing a great job  —   we have too much food!” he says, laughing as he shows a stockpile of tiny milk cartons. ”The Dutch drink a lot more milk than we Syrians,” he says. Emad and Lena say volunteer organizations are helping fill their time as they wait for their asylum applications to be processed, coming to give them Dutch lessons several times a week. The Netherlands has always accepted refugees, but because of the large numbers in the last year, the asylum process has slowed to months instead of weeks. Emad says they are anxious to get going with their lives. It took the couple a month to reach the Netherlands from Syria. Like thousands of others, they struggled to cross the Balkans. But they have no horror stories, and they even laugh as they reminisce about some of the filthy, crowded and chaotic camps along the way. ”It’s very nice,” Lena says with a laugh. ”Really! This trip is a very big adventure. I loved this.” Though she left her whole family behind, Lena doesn’t think she’ll ever return to live in Syria. She says she’s ready to start all over in the Netherlands, ”just like a baby.” Emad says they had to get out. His father, brother and sister, suspected of supporting   rebels, were all killed by the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. ”So I had to flee, because I was next on the list,” Emad says. ”You could know that because there is so much corruption inside the Assad system. I paid money so I could know. And I was told, ’They want you next. You’re on the waiting list. ’” I ask if Lena’s family was also under threat. Emad pauses. ”Even when you’re not directly under threat, you’re threatened,” he says. ”Because when she passes by the army checkpoints, they could take her and she could get kidnapped. And mortars were always coming into the neighborhood where we lived. There were 10 to 20 a day.” The couple first headed to Germany, but wanted to break away from the crowds. That’s when they discovered the Netherlands. Now they’re learning a language they didn’t even know existed a few months ago. Emad says he wants to get a master’s degree in international law. ”They have the international law court here, in the Hague,” he says. ”So I’m going to get a new life. I’m aiming that by the time I get to my asylum procedure interview, I’m going to be speaking fluent Dutch to them. I’m going to surprise them!” The couple often walks the city’s cobbled streets, holding hands and talking easily with local residents. They say they’re sure they can build a new life here. Lena says the Netherlands is small, and the Dutch, like the Syrians, like to gossip. ”It’s a lot like Syria,” she says. ”Only without Assad.”"
"Last month’s dramatic arrest of El Chapo, the world’s most powerful drug trafficker, brought to mind one of the most gruesome stories in the history of smuggling  —   one that involved not cocaine, but a substance equally light and easy to transport: tea. In 18th century England, tea smuggling was a thriving enterprise. Steep taxes on tea made it unaffordable to the ordinary farm hand and factory worker, who craved a cuppa as much as an aristocrat did. A number of smuggling networks offered them a steady and cheap supply of tea. And the group that dominated the southern part of England was the notorious Hawkhurst Gang. The Hawkhurst Gang and El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel, though separated by centuries and countries, are similar in their reliance on a canny mix of popular support and fear. Named after the regions from which they sprang  —   Hawkhurst is a village in Kent, Sinaloa a coastal state in Mexico  —   these gangs have been seen as grassroots   offering   employment not provided by the government. If a few laws  —   and bones  —   were broken along the way, many locals either overlooked it or were too frightened to speak up. If the Sinaloa Cartel is valorized in   for defying a corrupt system, the Hawkhurst gang members were always welcome at the local pub. That is, until the events of 1747, whose brutality and sadism shook the conscience of the nation, and turned years of local loyalty into outright revulsion. On the night of Sept. 22, 1747, customs officers waylaid a smuggler’s ship off the coast of Dorset and, after confiscating its haul of rum, brandy and two tons of tea wrapped in oilskin, impounded these goods in the King’s Custom House at Poole. But the Hawkhurst Gang had no intention of letting His Majesty get his royal hands on their contraband. Two weeks later, in a daring midnight raid, 60 men from the gang rode into Poole, stormed the customs house with crowbars and pickaxes, packed their saddlebags with tea, left behind the cumbersome casks of brandy and rum, and coolly rode away. So brazen was the raid that no one stopped them. As the gangsters rode nonchalantly through the villages, locals gathered to watch, among them a shoemaker named Daniel Chater, who had worked with one of the gang leaders, John Diamond, during the harvest. Diamond, in a cocky,   mood, tossed his old mate a small bag of tea. That gesture would have the most dreadful consequences imaginable. Word got around that the shoemaker knew the gang leaders. Months later, when Diamond was picked up on grounds of suspicion, and the authorities needed someone to identify him, they had just the man. On Valentine’s Day 1748, a terrified Chater and an elderly customs officer named William Galley set out for Chichester, where Diamond was being held. On the way, they stopped at the White Hart Inn, whose landlady had two smuggler sons. Suspicious of the strangers, she summoned a few gang members, who, after plying Galley and Chater with drink, went through their luggage and read the incriminating documents they carried. ”Hang the dogs,” the smugglers’ wives declared, according to popular accounts. ”They came here to hang us.” What followed over the next weeks would shock even the most hardened criminals. The men were awakened from their drunken sleep by a smuggler who jumped on the bed and drove his spurs into their foreheads. Galley and Chater were flogged till they bled, mounted on one horse with their legs tied under the horse’s belly, and whipped through several villages on a   northward journey. ”The couple turned upside down several times, so that the horse’s hooves repeatedly struck their faces,” writes Roy Moxham in Tea: Addiction, Exploitation And Empire. ”Occasionally, one of the smugglers would crush the customs officer’s testicles.” Unbelievably, the two men survived the journey. When the gang reached the Red Lion pub at Rake  —   once again, they had a friend in the landlord  —   they chained Chater in a small shed outside. Then, in a foxhole, where smugglers stored bags of tea, they buried the customs officer, after first flogging him unconscious. But when Galley’s body was disinterred, he was found sitting upright, his hands before his eyes. ”He had been buried alive,” writes Moxham. Chater was next on the list. Death by bullet was too slight a retribution for this rat, the gang decided. So he was starved and beaten, and finally taken to a nearby well. As he knelt down to pray, a gang member hacked his nose off with a clasp knife. The bleeding Chater tried to fling himself into the well, but was held back. Five men tried to hang him on a noose they had rigged up. When this rough mechanism failed, they cut him loose and dropped him   into the well. When he continued to groan, they flung rocks and gateposts on him to finish the job. ”Even by the standards of the time, all this was considered too barbaric,” writes Moxham. That an old customs officer had been tortured and buried alive shocked people to the core. And the shoemaker, too, was after all a local. The mood began to turn. The Hawkhurst Gang went from heroes to monsters. People came forward with information. The authorities, outraged as much by the storming of the King’s Customs House as the vicious way in which Galley and Chater had been murdered, offered large rewards for the capture of the gang members. It didn’t take long for 11 ringleaders to be captured and executed. Of them, those treated as accessories got away lightly  —   which meant they were hanged and buried. Those convicted of murder faced what was perhaps the most feared punishment of the age: They were hanged, and their bodies hung in chains and left to rot in the open, as a warning to all. Cutting these bodies down was illegal. The Hawkhurst Gang did not survive this infamous affair. In any case, it had been losing popular support. As the gang grew more powerful, its members had begun to terrorize the local population. The men of one village had even formed a militia to oppose the gang’s abusive ways and constant demands for horses, money and food. With this final act of criminality, local sanctuary and intelligence were withdrawn. And yet  —   and this indicates how entrenched tea drinking had become in England  —   the smuggling went on for decades. Fear of neither the noose nor gibbet deterred smugglers. It was only in 1784, when the    Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger boldly slashed the tea tax  —   from 119 percent to 12. 5 percent  —   that the smugglers finally lost their market. Tea Tuesdays is an occasional series exploring the science, history, culture and economics of this ancient brewed beverage. Nina Martyris is a literary journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"Hillary Clinton got lucky Monday night. Very lucky. But not for the reasons some are alleging. Some have attributed her squeaker of a victory over Bernie Sanders in the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses to an improbable lucky streak of tiebreaking coin tosses. It’s been reported that there were as many as six sites where ties were decided by the flip of a coin  —   and Clinton won every single one. The odds of that happening are 1 in 64, or less than 2 percent. What’s more, that gave her just slightly more than her margin of victory over Sanders  —   four delegates. Things that make you go hmm. Indeed. Here’s proof: Watch one of these   tiebreakers in this video, taken by Univision reporter Fernando Peinado at a caucus precinct: Except that doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact, there were at least a dozen tiebreakers  —   and ”Sen. Sanders won at least a handful,” an Iowa Democratic Party official told NPR. Gone unmentioned so far is that even if Clinton won that Miracle Six  —   and there were no other coin tosses  —   it would make little difference in the outcome. That is, in part, because of the complicated way Iowa Democrats allocate their delegates  —   and what was being reported on election night and what wasn’t. Let’s step back and explain that for a second and this is tricky, so stay with us. First, understand that the state party reported a grand total of 171, 508 caucusgoers, the   turnout in Iowa caucus history behind 2008. And no raw vote was  —   or is ever  —   broken out by candidate and recorded at the Democratic caucuses. That’s because in Iowa, it’s a delegate game. Iowa has a multistep process for picking delegates. Monday night was just Step 1. Here’s how it works: 1. There were 1, 683 precinct caucuses on Iowa caucus night. 2. Those precinct caucuses elected 11, 065 delegates to the county conventions, which take place March 12. 3. That universe of 11, 065 delegates is whittled down to 1, 406 who will attend congressional district (April 30) and state conventions (June 18). 4. And here’s the root of what’s causing all the confusion: The breakdown of those 11, 065 is not reported on caucus night. 5. What IS reported, what Clinton’s 49. 9 to 49. 6 percent    lead is based on, is ”state delegate equivalents.” 6. Those are ESTIMATES of how many of those 11, 065 will attend the congressional district and state conventions. So . .. when those coin tosses are happening, they are elected delegates in that larger universe. That means, for Clinton to have picked up the four delegates, she would have had to have won not six in a row, but more like 47. A coin flip? Really? Yes, Iowa  —   and it’s not alone  —   uses coin tosses to break ties in precincts that award an odd number of delegates. For example: Let’s say five delegates are set to be awarded in Precinct 1. There are 30 people for Clinton and 30 people for Sanders  —   and no one on either side can be swayed. The result: Clinton and Sanders get two delegates apiece. What happens to the final delegate? The caucuses revert to, you guessed, it, a coin toss. Does this happen often? It’s pretty rare in a normal race, but this was no normal race. Clinton and Sanders were separated by a   0. 3 percentage point, or four ”state delegate equivalents”  —   701 for Clinton, 697 for Sanders and eight for Martin O’Malley. It was the closest result in 40 years of the Iowa Democratic caucus. What was that about 60 missing caucusgoers and a coin flip?  As NPR’s Jessica Taylor reports, the Des Moines Register explained how a tie happened at one precinct: After 60 registered caucusgoers were missing since the initial tally, and O’Malley’s supporters had been redistributed, Clinton was assigned four delegates and Sanders got three. But one remained unassigned based on the initial count: ”Unable to account for that numerical discrepancy and the orphan delegate it produced, the Sanders campaign challenged the results and precinct leaders called a Democratic Party hot line set up to advise on such situations. ”Party officials recommended they settle the dispute with a coin toss. A Clinton supporter correctly called ’heads’ on a quarter flipped in the air, and Clinton received a fifth delegate.” Could this happen again this year? It’s pretty unlikely, but not impossible. Again, as Taylor reports, seemingly unusual tiebreak methods are not new in politics. According to the National Council of State Legislatures, Wyoming uses coin tosses to break ties. Last year in Mississippi, the winner of a seat in the state Legislature was determined by drawing straws. Brett Neely also contributed to this report."
"Donald Trump thought he could upend Iowa caucus traditions. The gamble didn’t pay off. Hillary Clinton hoped she could wipe away her campaign nightmares of eight years ago by posting a solid win over an insurgent Bernie Sanders. Instead, her margin of victory over Sanders was vanishingly small. Those were just some of the surprise twists from Monday night’s results. Here’s what the numbers and results tell us about how and why they happened, according to our analysis of the   polling and the    results. 1. Huge turnout didn’t just benefit Trump  —   it also helped Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. The conventional wisdom before Monday night was that a surge in new voters would benefit Trump, who was working to attract   caucusgoers and nonconventional voters. Indeed, a record 186, 000 Republicans caucused Monday night. But the   bump from four years ago didn’t translate into a Trump victory. According to entrance polls, 45 percent of GOP voters said this was their first caucus, and of those, 30 percent voted for Trump. But an even larger chunk ended up splitting between Cruz (23 percent) and Rubio (22 percent). 2. On the GOP side, it was a   race for evangelical voters. The bombastic billionaire had proclaimed for weeks that ”the evangelicals” loved him and that he’d triumph with religious voters. Hoping to solidify support in Christian conservative country, he campaigned with Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. in the northwest part of the state in the closing days. But to Cruz’s advantage, the number of voters identifying themselves as   Christians jumped 7 points since four years ago, from 57 percent to 64 percent. And of those voters, Cruz captured 34 percent. Trump was just narrowly their second choice with 22 percent. But it was Rubio who performed much better than expected to get 21 percent of the evangelical vote. So for all the predictions that it was a   battle for evangelical support, the Florida senator  —   who was stressing his own faith in last week’s debate and on the trail in the final stretch  —   was just as much in the hunt and made it a   contest. 3. Ground games and retail politics still matter. Both Cruz and Rubio ran conventional Iowa campaigns  —   you go to coffee shops, Pizza Ranch restaurants and county meetings, press the flesh and woo voters over to your side. They spent days in the state, on bus tours and retail campaign stops. Both senators touted their sophisticated     operations, with modeling and targeting. Cruz even brought in so many volunteers to the state, they rented out dorms they dubbed ”Camp Cruz.” And Rubio took to the air in the final days, running a   version of his stump speech statewide. Trump, meanwhile, kept trying to fend off questions about his ground operation and whether the huge crowds the   star drew would translate into enough votes for him to win. He only recently started running television ads, relied largely on free media and flouted traditional rules by not going to the final Iowa debate. In the end, the gamble and his approach didn’t pay off. 4. Rubio peaked late at just the right time. The Florida senator had a strong debate last week, especially without Trump on stage after Trump boycotted the debate due to his feud with Fox News. Meanwhile, Cruz was the target of his rivals in Trump’s absence. That equation contributed to Rubio’s peak at just the right time. Of the 35 percent of voters who said they’d decided in the last few days, 30 percent of those went with Rubio, 25 percent decided to caucus for Cruz, and Trump got just 14 percent. Among the 64 percent who had made up their minds much earlier, Trump and Cruz got 30 percent each. Rubio also performed well in the suburbs  —   racking up big margins in the counties around Des Moines and around Davenport in the eastern part of the state, strongholds of Mitt Romney’s four years ago. 5. Sanders couldn’t replicate Barack Obama’s 2008 youth coalition. The Vermont senator just couldn’t match the strength of the youth vote that Obama marshaled in 2008. Just 18 percent of the vote came from   to     —   down from a 22 percent share eight years ago. Among those, Sanders dominated, winning 84 percent to Clinton’s 14 percent. The good news for Clinton was that 60 percent of caucusgoers were over the age of 45  —   and she carried them easily. Among voters 65 and older, Clinton had a more than    advantage. Most Democratic voters had attended the caucuses before, too. Just 44 percent said this was their first time caucusing, down from 57 percent eight years ago. Among those voters, Sanders had a   advantage. Clinton, meanwhile, won the 56 percent who said they were returning caucusgoers by a   edge. 6. Clinton still has a problem with liberals and progressives. But what Sanders did do was bring in more liberal voters to buoy him.   percent of voters described themselves as very liberal  —   a   jump from 2008. Sanders won those voters by 19 points. Clinton had a   edge with the 40 percent of voters who described themselves as somewhat liberal. Her real strength was with     Democrats  —   but unfortunately for her, that share had significantly dropped. This year, just 28 percent of voters identified themselves as moderates, down 12 points from 2008. She had a   edge over Sanders with that bloc, though."
"Coin tosses, a squeaker of a win and, perhaps even more surprising, humility. That’s what marked Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, the first votes cast in the 2016 presidential election. The presidential candidates are now focused on New Hampshire, where polls put Bernie Sanders ahead of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ahead of Ted Cruz, the Union Leader reports. The New Hampshire primaries will be held next Tuesday, Feb. 9. Here’s a roundup of headlines from the morning after the Iowa campaign. Cruz Wins Iowa GOP Race Clinton, Sanders Very Close In Dem Contest  —   Iowa Public Radio, An excerpt: ”Cruz received nearly 28 percent of the vote, decisively ahead of the crowded GOP field. His closest competition was billionaire Donald Trump, who got 24 percent of the vote, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who got 23 percent. ”Just a few days before the caucuses, the final Des Moines Register Iowa Poll had Cruz trailing Trump by five points. Last night, Cruz told supporters his victory shows the next president will not be chosen by the media, by Washington insiders or by lobbyists.” Iowans didn’t just vote for Cruz, they denied Donald Trump  —   The New York Post, An excerpt: ”Perhaps, in the Iowa results, we saw the first real effects of Trump’s unpopularity with Republicans  —   that he may be generating actual negative turnout of the sort pollsters find difficult to measure. People may not have crawled through glass to vote for him. They may have crawled through glass to tell Trump to take a   hike.” . .. ”Oh, and one last thing. In Iowa, among an   Republican electorate, 60 percent of the vote last night was cast for two Cubans and an  .” Clinton wins at least six Iowa precincts by coin flip  —   The Washington Post, An excerpt: ”It’s an actual tie,” Benjamin O’Keefe said. ”You can’t even write this.” Then, the caucus got down to business. It had split,   Clinton was awarded two delegates, and Sanders was awarded two. What would become of the fifth delegate? Enter coin. Tails  —   Clinton won. ”What?” O’Keefe said. ”. .. Can you explain this to us?” Someone did, adding insult to injury by saying ”Touchdown Seahawks!”  —   a reference to a 2012 NFL controversy over what many consider to be a terribly random call. ’Honored’ Donald Trump takes second in Iowa  —   Des Moines Register, ” ’I was told by everybody, ”Do not go to Iowa. You could never finish even in the top 10,” ’ Trump said. ’They said, ”Don’t do it.” I said, ”I have to do it.” And we finished second. And I want to tell you something, I’m just honored.’ ” When Trump launched his campaign in June, few had high hopes for his candidacy. A May poll of Iowans showed just 4 percent of Republicans would have considered Trump their top choice for president. ”But after Trump announced, that support ballooned to 23 percent in August.” Marco Rubio comes 3rd in Iowa. He declares victory.  —   Mashable, An excerpt: ”With nearly all precincts reporting, Rubio held the   spot behind Trump, having won a little more than 23. 1% percent of the vote against Cruz’s 27. 6% and Trump’s 24. 3%. ”By exceeding expectations, Rubio now heads to New Hampshire’s Feb. 9 primary with some momentum. ”Meanwhile, other Republicans candidates such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are facing some serious hurdles in New Hampshire after taking less than 3% of the vote each.” Tight Democratic Race in Iowa Unnerves Clinton Campaign  —   The New York Times, An excerpt: ”The outcome in Iowa  —   effectively a tie with a far left senator from a small New England state  —   dealt a jolting psychological blow to the Clinton campaign, leaving volunteers, donors and aides confused throughout the night, and then crestfallen. They had hoped that the former secretary of state would garner a decisive victory here and put to rest any doubts about her strength as a candidate. . .. ”Even before Mrs. Clinton finished her brief remarks to her supporters late Monday night, discussions were underway among her outside advisers and donors about the need to bring in longtime Clinton aides and diminish the role of Robby Mook, her young   campaign manager. Asked about such discussions, Nick Merrill, a spokesman for the campaign, grew irritated. ’Are you serious?’ he said tersely to a reporter.”"
"Scientists still can’t predict an earthquake. The U. S. government, however, has a warning system in the works that it hopes could quickly send out a widespread alarm before most people feel a rumble  —   and save lives when seconds count. The recently upgraded network of seismometers and computers, known as ShakeAlert, is advancing through the   stage, Sally Jewell, secretary of the U. S. Department of the Interior, said at a news conference Tuesday. When fully operational, she said, ShakeAlert will have ”the ability to provide notice to people before that earthquake strikes.” Getting to that point will still take a lot of work  according to Peggy Hellweg, one of the system’s creators and a seismologist at the University of California, Berkeley, in the heart of quake country. The goal is to send an alert almost instantly. Up until now the system has simply been too slow  —   ”not good enough to do the job for all of the earthquakes that we expect in California and the Pacific Northwest,” Hellweg told me when I called. When a quake hits, the first of many seismic waves that rocket through the Earth is called a P wave. It doesn’t do the major damage  —   that comes from later waves. But it carries information about the quake. Seismic sensors can detect that P wave and relay the information to computers. The computers calculate where the quake hit and how big it is. Then they send out warnings. Unfortunately, all this can take up to dozens of seconds, losing valuable time for people to duck, cover and hold on before the later, damaging waves  —   S waves  —   get to where the people are. ”We want to be able to tell people, ’There’s this big earthquake, it’s happening, and it’s going to affect your area,’ ” Hellweg said. That’s what ShakeAlert is all about. Federal officials say the upgraded system  —   with more sensors and more, faster computers  —   should cut that processing time to just a few seconds, at most. That’s how Japan’s system works. I saw it in action after the quake in 2011 near Fukushima. I was doing an interview in Tokyo, and suddenly my translator grabbed his cellphone, which was squealing in an odd way. ”I think this is an earthquake  —   an earthquake in Fukushima,” he told me. We waited, rather nervously, and in about 10 seconds, we felt the rumble in the Earth  —   it was an aftershock of the big one that had hit days earlier. I should confess that even though we got a warning, we didn’t react the way we should have. ”Did you all drop, cover and hold on?” Hellweg asked me when I told her of my experience in Japan. ”Uh, frankly we did not,” I admitted. ShakeAlert eventually will link to smartphones in the U. S. But the warnings won’t work unless people react the way they’re supposed to. And, among other things, that requires faith that the warnings are accurate. John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Washington and head of a local seismic network in the Northwest, is helping to create ShakeAlert. He said it needs two more years of work to build reliability. ”We don’t really want to send it out until we have enough confidence that it won’t misfire,” he said. False alerts happen, even in Japan. Officials there recently warned of a big quake that didn’t happen they had to go on TV and apologize."
"Breaking the fourth wall is like putting gold leaf on a dessert: good for a quick jolt of surprise and superficial specialness, but the more common it becomes in the culture, the less impressive its deployment by any particular creator. We are in a    moment, particularly in matters of elite corruption. House Of Cards has relied heavily on Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) addressing the camera, The Big Short has characters (particularly Ryan Gosling’s character, Jared Vennett) and interstitial narrators turning directly to the audience to explain complicated financial concepts, and now, ABC’s miniseries Madoff has Richard Dreyfuss gazing right into the lens as well. Madoff, which will air as two   blocks on Wednesday and Thursday nights, presents Bernie Madoff as a man with a brazen scheme to fleece rich people and charitable foundations by simply taking their money and never investing it  —   instead, he just kept and spent it, after distributing some to previous ”investors” as imaginary profits. Madoff is making all this money in the   to the 2008 financial crisis  —   while the protagonists of The Big Short are waiting to make theirs. In Adam McKay’s   film about the men who correctly bet against the housing market, the challenge is getting people to understand an incredibly complex set of financial structures that could be manipulated by people who knew how. In Madoff, though, the challenge is getting people to understand how very simple Madoff’s approach really was. There comes a depressing point where you realize that he has, in fact, explained what he did, and you just may not have caught it, because films like The Big Short have prepared you for something more complicated. McKay’s guys navigated a system so confusing most people didn’t understand it even as they made (or lost) money in it. Madoff cashed checks that were handed over to him voluntarily. But they’re both, in different ways, efforts to explain the same moment when shocking levels of instability became evident. It’s hard to make a good movie about something like the financial crisis, because storytelling is best at its most specific, and the behaviors that precipitate systemic dysfunction are often diffuse, spread out over many, many people, none of whom believe that they, individually, are doing anything all that bad. It’s not unlike trying to create a dramatic narrative about what causes racism or climate change: you can examine the history and you can choose representative stories, but you can’t actually explain all the forces that got you in such trouble through one   tale. Dreyfuss, as Madoff, is playing one of the few people who can  —   as the character himself acknowledges  —   be legitimately singled out as a bad guy. But in part because he looks at the camera, he’s also your guide to his own story: he conspiratorially meets your eye and tells you directly what he did. So: Frank Underwood, The Big Short’s Jared Vennett, Bernie Madoff . .. all   . All men whose task it is to help you understand a structural problem through the lens of an individual wrongdoer. And it wasn’t until I read this piece by Tom Bond that I remembered that, of course, The Wolf Of Wall Street had a con man who loved gazing into the camera  —   as did Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. So what is it with con men, or at least operators? Bond argues that in The Big Short, at least, the function of the    is both to educate from a position of authority and power (Ferris being the same) and ultimately to indict the audience  —   to bring them in on the distribution of blame. In Madoff, though, it seems to serve a slightly different function: it stresses the personal nature of the story, which is what gives it meaning. Without Dreyfuss’ powerful central performance, there’s surprisingly little to the story of Madoff if you talk about him rather than about the people whose money he took. By his own description late in the film, even from prison Dreyfuss’ Madoff regrets little other than the effect of his crimes on his own family. The families of others, the foundations, the people he worked with from whom he demanded loyalty who wound up ensnared in the scandal? He spares them no thought at all. If there is an arc in the film’s telling of Madoff’s story, it is simply that of a man more bold than he is inventive, who simply does something, learns it works, and keeps doing it as hard as he can until he learns it’s over, at which point he effectively shrugs and retires to prison. While looking at the camera does, as Bond says, suggest authority and control, it also, in a simpler way, creates intimacy. As Madoff’s victims  —   not only his ”investors,” but the members of his family and staff who are implicated and imperiled  —   accumulate, he seems to feel nothing, which would probably be difficult to convey without him looking directly at you and telling you so. It’s his affect, or his lack thereof (Dreyfuss recently acknowledged to Robert Siegel on All Things Considered that he considers Madoff a sociopath) that makes him compelling. The film is otherwise unremarkable, really, but because Dreyfuss is given an exceptional tool with which to pound the sincerity of his remorselessness, it elevates what could be facile villainy to something more indelible."
"On this week’s All Songs Considered, we’ve got several new favorites including Bob Boilen’s No. 1 discovery of 2016 so far, Lucy Dacus. Robin Hilton shares songs by several artists he thinks are about to release their best albums yet, including Santigold and Ane Brun. Also on the show: Iggy Pop brings back his   swagger with help from Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, French musicians Adan Jodorowsky  Xavi Polycarpe channeled their recent breakups into a big ’  pop song, PJ Harvey returns to her original rock sound and electronic artist Ital Tek reflects on his love of guitar drones and distorted electronics. Plus, rapper Macklemore asks a lot of difficult questions about race and responsibility in the song ”White Privilege II.”"
"Twenty years ago, when the O. J. Simpson verdict was delivered, actor Courtney B. Vance says he celebrated  —   but he wasn’t exactly cheering for the former NFL player. ”I cheered for Emmett Till,”  —   the   teenager lynched in Mississippi in 1955  —   he says. ”I cheered for all the strange fruit that hung on the trees for three centuries.” For a long time, he says, black people had nowhere to go for justice. And that’s why he cheered for Simpson’s lawyer, Johnnie Cochran. ”Finally, on the biggest stage, a black man worked the system and got another black man off.” Vance plays Cochran in American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson, premiering Feb. 2 on FX. It’s about what happened in that Los Angeles courtroom when a beloved football hero and black celebrity went on trial charged with murdering his   and her friend. The show makes the trial feel relevant again  —   especially when it talks about race, the police and the judicial system. Cochran, who died in 2005, was a hero to many  . ”In a real sense, there’s a void when he passed away,” says Vance. ”I mean, if Johnnie was here, he’d be leading the charge in all of these cases. You know, all the chokeholds, and the Fergusons . .. all of them.” On his reaction to the Simpson   verdict, You look at the Emmett Till case . .. it was cut and dry: Those two guys [Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam] did it, they admitted they did it, and then an   jury got them off. . .. Now, was [Simpson] guilty? We don’t know. But that wasn’t his job, Johnnie Cochran. His job was to poke holes in the prosecution and it was on the prosecution to prove his guilt. So Johnnie Cochran  —   we celebrate him doing his job. On how Cochran fought to have race discussed during the Simpson trial, despite Simpson famously saying, ”I’m not black, I’m O. J.” He just said: ”Can we just talk about it? Is it a crime to talk about? Can we do that?” As attorneys, everything introduced is important and certain things you want to block from being discussed. . .. You’ve got a black man married to a white woman, living the American dream lifestyle . .. but does not think he’s black, doesn’t want to be associated with black people  —   but gets in trouble. And with a black jury, Johnnie Cochran knew that in order for the black man  —   who thought he wasn’t black  —   in order for him to get off, he needed to all of the sudden to be black. On how trials are opportunities for dialogue, [The racial divide] is so deep that it’s going to take everyone just putting their gloves aside and letting it be talked out. You’re not all going to understand it today, not tomorrow. But that’s why I said to myself: ”Please let the Ferguson grand jury have a trial. Please let them talk it out. Let the yearlong process go through.” And let it not be like the O. J. trial where after the trial people just . .. go back to their corners. Let there be a town meeting. It was a perfect opportunity to be what needed to be done  —   to talk it through."
"In a recent Skype call with a Dutch friend, we discussed her kids and their college experience. Apparently, there had been protests on campus about costs and payments. ”How much are they paying now?” I asked, gritting my teeth in preparation for the answer. ”Well,” she said, ”it’s now about 1, 800 euro a year.” Wow. My friend’s kids are going to some of the best universities in the world and, in the end, that education will cost them less than $8, 000. Compare that to the U. S. where the average cost of a higher education is more than $128, 000 at a private school, $96, 000 for    residents attending public universities and about $40, 000 for   residents at those same public universities. These numbers were key data points I held in my mind as I addressed a group of parents and students last week in a talk titled ”The Value of a Liberal Arts Education.” While liberal arts is defined to include some of the sciences, sometimes the term is used to contrast an education focusing on the arts and humanities (English, history, philosophy, etc.) with one focusing on technical subjects that include engineering. In spite of being a scientist, I strongly believe an education that fails to place a heavy emphasis on the humanities is a missed opportunity. Without a base in humanities, both the students  —   and the democratic society these students must enter as informed citizens  —   are denied a full view of the heritage and critical habits of mind that make civilization worth the effort. There is, of course, another way to view the question of whether a liberal arts education has value. It can be seen as posing the question as to whether college should be seen as some kind of higher vocational training, instead: a place to go to for a specific certification for a specific job. Here, too, I would push back strongly. For those who go to college, the four years spent there are often the sole chance we give ourselves to think deeply and broadly about our place in the world. To turn college into nothing more than job training (emphasizing only those jobs that pay well) represents another missed opportunity for students and the society that needs them. So, these are my traditional answers to the traditional questions about the value of humanities and arts education vs. science and engineering. From my standpoint as a scholar, I’ll stand by them and defend what they represent to the last breath. But the world has changed and, I believe, these answers are no longer enough. It’s not just the high cost of college that alters the equation. It’s also vast changes that have swept through society with the advent of a world run on information (i. e. on data). So, with that in mind, here is my updated  —   beyond the traditional  —   response to the value of the humanities in education: The key is balance. It is no longer enough for students to focus on either   or the  . During the course of their lives, students today can expect to move through multiple career phases requiring a wide range of skills. A kid who wants to write screenplays may find she must learn how to build Web content for a   app. That effort is likely to include getting her hands dirty with the technology of protocols and system architecture. Likewise, a kid who started out in programming may find himself working for a video game company that puts a high value on storytelling. Doing his job well may require him to understand more deeply how Norse mythologies represented the relationship between human and animal realms. The point: The old barriers between the humanities and technology are falling. Historians now use   techniques to ask their   questions. Engineers use the same methods  —   but with an emphasis on human interfaces  —   to answer their own   questions. These changes, combined with the   price of college, mean that students  —   and their parents  —   must strive for clarity and honesty as they make their choices. They should not fall into the easy traps of educational consumerism  —   thinking that only a ”status” school will give them the opportunities they hope for to grow. There are many, many excellent schools out there. Students should be very careful about getting into debt and be clear about what the expected outcomes will be for their choices. If you long to become a poet or study Roman history, then, by all means, pursue those passions. But be realistic about what will happen when you graduate. Be prepared. And if the cost of education is an issue, make choices about those costs  —   and which school is right for you  —   wisely. This means students must find a balance between the real pressure to find a job and the understanding that they will not get this chance to grow intellectually, morally and spiritually again. In dealing with this dilemma, I would argue that everyone should have a Plan B. One path toward a viable Plan B is a double major (or at least a minor) that spans the divide between what C. P Snow called the ”Two Cultures.” Along these lines, everyone, and I mean everyone, should come out of college knowing how to program a computer. This can be everything from coding in C to being proficient in database programing to knowing how to work with geographical information services (GIS). In a changing world, the question is no longer merely technical subjects vs. the humanities. Instead, students must understand that the world they are emerging into is rife with new challenges. Addressing those issues will require understanding both the pervasive technological and scientific foundation of our society, as well as the human beings who populate it. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"A landmark deal 10 years in the making will protect 9. 1 millions acres of Canadian rain forest on the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. The protected area in the Great Bear Rainforest is about half the size of Ireland. The new   order  —   reached between aboriginal groups known as First Nations, environmental groups and logging companies  —   designates 85 percent of the forest land as permanently protected from logging. The remaining 15 percent of the forest will be ”available for logging, supporting local jobs,” a press statement from the British Columbia government says. The CBC says logging will be permitted there ”only under conditions described as the most stringent in North America.” The Great Bear Rainforest ”represents the largest tracts of intact temperate rainforest on Earth,” according to CBC. The Canadian broadcaster describes how Monday’s agreement arose out of conflict: ”The agreement to protect the region was first announced 10 years ago, following a period of deep conflict between First Nations and timber firms over old growth logging that made headlines worldwide, and led to commercial pressure to avoid products sourced in the area. ”A coalition between forestry companies and environmental groups was formed in 2000 in an attempt to resolve the conflict, with both logging and boycott campaigns suspended voluntarily in 2001. At the same time, parallel talks were taking place between the province and indigenous leaders. ”An agreement between all parties to protect the forest was announced in 2006, leading to a decade of discussions and negotiations before that agreement could be fulfilled.” There are 26 First Nations in the forest area, the Globe and Mail reports. Chief Marilyn Slett is the leader of one such group, which she says has lived in the Great Bear Rainforest for more than 10, 000 years. Here’s her reaction, in the British Columbia government press release: ”Today we celebrate the restoration and implementation of responsible land, water and resource management approaches in the Great Bear Rainforest.   management is the modern term which describes what we have always believed and practised: If we use our traditional knowledge to take care of our lands, waters and resources they will take care of us. Our vision for the future is one where ecosystems and potential developments in the Great Bear Rainforest are in balance.” In reaction to the decision, Jens Wieting of the Sierra Club British Columbia called the rain forest ”a landscape where economic activity will again begin to align with nature’s limits.” The forest is home to a rare variant of black bear that has   fur, known as a spirit bear. As National Geographic reports, ”it’s found almost exclusively here in the Great Bear Rainforest.” Also here in this ”spooky, wild, mysterious place”: ”Grizzlies, black bears, wolves, wolverines, humpback whales, and orcas.” I’ll leave you with this happy video of a young spirit bear learning how to fish:"
"The Super Bowl is still five days away, but for advertisers the game is already in full swing. Once upon a time, companies that shelled out for a coveted Super Bowl ad jealously guarded their commercials until they aired during the big game. Nowadays, it works a little differently. Companies have realized the value of releasing teaser commercials or even full advertisements before Super Bowl Sunday, trading the element of surprise for the possibility of having their ad go viral. As the Los Angeles Times reported last year, some experts say this all started when Volkswagen released its 2011 Super Bowl ad in the days leading up to the game. You probably remember the commercial: As the Star Wars theme song plays, a little kid dressed in full Darth Vader regalia attempts to use ”the Force” on all manner of things, including a baby doll, an unimpressed dog, and an exasperated mom. Thwarted, the child tries his or her luck on the dad’s Volkswagen. To  ’s surprise  —   and thanks to Dad’s operation of the car’s keyless start capability  —   the car jumps to life. The ad went viral, racking up 11 million views online by the Saturday before the Super Bowl. Five years later it has nearly 64 million views on YouTube, cementing advertisers’ belief in the power of Internet virality. Many of the ads that will air during Super Bowl 50 were released this week and a few are generating a lot of buzz. Without further ado, here are five commercials already getting attention online. 1. Budweiser  —   This year, the beer company eschewed adorable puppies in favor of a spiny    speech delivered by British actress Helen Mirren. The Washington Post wrote an article about it, headlined: ”Helen Mirren elegantly eviscerates drunk drivers in Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad.” 2.    —   How do you get people talking about your product? Try incorporating one of the most talked about music videos of the year into your commercial.   even got Drake to play along. 3. Pokemon  —   Millennials, this ad is for you. Celebrating two decades of the Pokemon franchise, the commercial features favorites like Charizard and Pikachu, as well as ”trainers” from around the world. The ad is the first part in a yearlong campaign to celebrate 20 years of Pokemon, the company said in a statement. 4. Hyundai  —   Ryan Reynolds riding a bike, Ryan Reynolds as a police officer, Ryan Reynolds with a jackhammer, Ryan Reynolds playing football, Ryan Reynolds walking dogs. You get the idea. 5. Heinz  —   Puppies. Budweiser dropped ’em, but Heinz won’t leave you hanging. Watch a herd of adorable dachshunds dressed like hot dogs frolic in a field in slow motion. Bet you can’t watch without smiling."
"Saru Jayaraman may be restaurant obsessed, but don’t call her a foodie. She’s the founding director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a national organization that advocates for better wages and working conditions for restaurant workers. She’s also published several studies in legal and policy journals as director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of  . The combination of grassroots and ivory tower makes Jayaraman arguably one of the country’s leading experts on what it’s like to live as a restaurant worker in America. She’s someone celebrity restaurateur Danny Meyer turned to as he decided to banish tipping at some of his restaurants to try and close the pay gap between what his servers and dishwashers make. Jayaraman’s second book, Forked: A New Standard for American Dining, published Feb. 1, features 14 case studies and rankings of the working conditions at eateries ranging from greasy spoon diners to coffee shops, white tablecloth places to national chains like Olive Garden. On one end, workers get a wage as low as $2. 13 an hour (the federal minimum for employees who earn tips) unpaid sick days, no opportunity for mobility and may experience sexual harassment from customers. That, writes Jayaraman, is the ”low road.” But, as Jayaraman argues in her profiles of ” ” employers, restaurants can be both profitable and good places to work, too. We spoke to her about what she’s learned in her deep dive into the industry. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. When most people think about restaurants, they think about food. Why focus on the workers?  So many reasons! We spend more on eating out than in the home. The industry is enormous: [it’s] the second largest employer and growing faster than any other. One in 12 working Americans work in this industry, [and] 1 in 2 Americans have worked in [a restaurant] in their lifetime. But it has continued to be one of the absolute lowest paying employers in the U. S. For every year that the Department of Labor lists the 10 worst paid jobs, seven are, every year, restaurant jobs. One of your critiques of the U. S. is that it’s the only Western nation that has a tipped minimum wage. What’s so bad about tipping? It’s not tipping per se that’s the problem, it’s the tipped minimum wage, which hasn’t gone up in a quarter century. [ROC has] members whose mothers worked at the same wage they do: $2. 13 an hour. It’s a legacy of slavery it comes from not wanting to pay black workers, former slaves, anything at all. That means we as consumers are doubly subsidizing billion dollar corporations [like Darden, which owns Olive Garden]: We’re paying worker wages entirely through our tips, and subsidizing their survival through taxpayer funded public assistance. The other problem is 70 percent of tipped workers are women, and [some] suffer from the absolute worst sexual harassment. When you rely on customer tips, you are then subject to tolerate however [a customer] might touch you or talk to you, because the customer is paying your bills. What do you see as the biggest problems facing restaurant workers in America today?  No. 1 is poverty wages, both tipped and untipped. No. 2 is benefits, [especially] the lack of paid sick days.   [of restaurant workers] report working while they are ill, with everything from H1N1 to typhoid fever. And then the third major problem we hear is discrimination and harassment on basis of race and gender. There are livable wage jobs in this industry, about 20 percent of them. They are fine dining servers and bartenders, and the problem is that those jobs are held almost exclusively by white men. People of color, women and immigrants often can’t get to those best jobs [they] get stuck in lower level segments, like fast food, and positions like bussers, runners and dishwashers. OK, but if a worker doesn’t want that kind of job, can’t they just find another one? Why is restaurant workers’ job quality a problem for diners?  You can’t say to workers, ”go find another job,” because someone’s always going to fill those jobs. If you want to be treated well, served well, given quality food, then you have to care about how these workers are treated. All of our ” ” employers are able to point to the fact that you get better service, better food, better environment, a better experience if workers are treated well and paid well. If the working conditions are so bad, why hasn’t there been more of a movement to improve them?  It all points back to the money, power and influence of a trade lobby called the National Restaurant Association. It’s the 10th most powerful lobbying group in Congress, [and] the most powerful voice in every state legislature on work conditions. They have wielded enormous power over legislators, to the point where [I have] heard people talking about, ”We can only raise the minimum wage if we leave out the tipped workers because the Restaurant Association won’t let us raise the minimum wage unless we leave out those tipped workers.” Editor’s note: We asked the National Restaurant Association to respond to Jayaraman. Spokesperson Christin Fernandez tells us that the association does actively lobby against increases to both the minimum and tipped minimum wages, including New York State Governor Cuomo’s current efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. But Fernandez questions Jayaraman’s characterization of the group’s power: ”It’s flattering that she thinks we are this   lobby, but it’s only a fraction of what we do,” she says. Your book, Forked, divides its rankings by type of restaurant: burgers, diners, sandwich shops, coffee shops, fine dining. But if there’s any indicator of best practices, it seems to be that smaller, independent restaurants are more likely to boost wages and working conditions than big chains. Have decent labor practices become artisanal?  When we think about local, sustainable, organic [food trends] it was small, independent restaurants that started them, and then the big chains picked them up. I definitely wouldn’t say . .. only go to an independent, small restaurant, because the vast majority of all restaurants, including small independent restaurants, exploit their workers. But [some of] the small independents are able to pioneer a different way of doing business, a different business model, a different way of thinking, and then the chains often follow. Won’t making restaurant jobs better mean restaurant prices will go up, and some restaurants will be driven out of business? The places that have raised the minimum wage in this industry are not just surviving, but thriving. The seven states that have the highest wages and don’t allow a lower wage for tipped workers, are actually faring better, on every measure, than the 43 states with lower wages for tipped workers. Those seven states have higher restaurant sales per capita, higher job growth in the restaurant industry, higher job growth among tipped workers. On the whole, workers are doing better, employers are doing better. How can diners find out if restaurant workers at their favorite local restaurant are being treated well? If they’re not, what can diners do to make things better? We have a Diner’s Guide app. It rates the most popular chains and 150 ” ” companies on wages, benefits and mobility for workers. It also notes if they are part of an alternative restaurant association we started, called RAISE, of ” ” employers. [But] the most important thing we’d like you do is communicate that you support ” ” practices to the owner or manager. Tracie McMillan is the author of The American Way of Eating, a New York Timesbestseller, and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. You can follow her on Twitter @tmmcmillan."
"Writer Yann Martel is best known for his 2001 book Life of Pi, about a teenage boy adrift at sea with a Bengal tiger. Now Martel has a new novel called The High Mountains of Portugal. It’s made up of three interlocking stories that cover almost a century. Like Life of Pi, The High Mountains of Portugal is about journeys and it also features an animal (this time a chimpanzee). Martel tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro that his new novel continues an exploration of faith that began with Life of Pi. ”In both Life of Pi and in this one . .. it happens to be religious faith,” Martel says, ”but I mean faith in a broader sense, too  —   any kind of faith, whether it’s in a person, in a political movement, even a sports team, whatever. That deeply unreasonable phenomenon intrigues me. . .. We are so moved to be rational. Faith, whether it’s falling in love with someone or falling in love with a god, doesn’t have that immediate cause and effect.” On why he uses animals in his stories, I find animals interesting in many ways. I use them in my writing more for technical reasons. They’re marvelous vehicles, I find, for stories, because animals are what they are  —   a gnu, a wildebeest, a tiger, a chimpanzee  —   but they’re also something we project a lot onto. We tend to project a lot onto wild animals. You know, tigers are beautiful hyenas are cowardly chimpanzees are clever  —   we project all of these human qualities onto them. So the animal is both itself and something else, a kind of canvas. And that’s very useful for a writer to have a character that can be so mutable, so I just find them wonderful vehicles for telling my stories. And I also happen to be interested in animals. You know, we share the planet with them and they have, some of them, very curious habits, some of which mirror us in some ways and some of which radically don’t. On why he chose to focus his book on a particular region of Portugal, There is a province, a region, of the northeast of Portugal called    which means beyond the mountains, beyond or behind the mountains. And it’s very curious because there are no mountains. . .. It made me think that [what] we call places  —   toponymy, the naming of places  —   is a kind of storytelling. We name places to start creating a story of why we’re there. You know, a very obvious example: the United States of America. America is a continent the United States is a statement about unity of different people, but they’re united. In naming a place, we’re saying something about who we are and why we are. So the high mountains, even though there are no mountains, in my mind, it’s a sort of a rarified, mythical place where we all have to go if we want to let go  —   to be home, in a sense. On the character Tomás, who has lost family members to diphtheria and copes by walking backwards everywhere, I’ve always been interested in grief and loss  —   not because I’ve suffered any, but through art. I’ve always been struck by grief, not just in its emotive impact  —   like when you’re grieving, you cry  —   but beyond that, what do you do with it? The day after, the week after, the month after the loss when it’s starting to become normal  —   what do you do with that grief? Where do you go from there? . .. [Tomás] turns his back not only to the world that didn’t help him  —   but what could the world do?  —   but also to God. It’s an act of rebellion an act of remembrance for him. It marks that he’s objecting. That’s what [he] says to his uncle in the novel. He says, ”I’m not necessarily grieving when I do that, I’m objecting. This happened to me. It shouldn’t have happened, therefore I’m going to object and I’m going to turn my back to the world.” And so, yeah, he walks [backwards] wherever he goes. On this quote from the book and how it reflects his own thoughts about faith: ”[Tomás] realized that this matter of faith was either radically to be taken seriously or radically not to be taken seriously.” Most people are not radical either way. They just sort of sit in this middle on this fence most of their lives. And I think important matters like religion  —   you have to decide one way or the other . .. because it makes a big difference. Either there’s nothing  —   we’re just the result of chemical good luck, you know, this soup on Earth that yielded life somehow mysteriously. And that’s fine, and you just deal with that  —   that life is a lucky,   thing. Or it does somehow mean something. And if it does, then what does it mean? . .. I’m not at all a defender of organized religion or any kind of evangelism, but I’m just saying either life means something or it doesn’t. Because life is about making choices, so either you throw yourself at it and believe there is something  —   then what is there?  —   or you don’t and say there’s nothing and so we just have to make life good right now. On the importance of stories, I believe that we are nothing without the stories that we read and that we tell ourselves. I think in a large part, our identity as human beings is the result of narration, of constructing things that have a beginning, a middle and an end, that have development. I’ve always been struck how religions, unlike science, religion is profoundly narrative. All religions convey stories and I think that speaks to who we are as a species. Our understanding comes through stories, [is] exemplified through stories, [is] understood through stories."
"Tech companies and privacy advocates have been in a stalemate with government officials over how encrypted communication affects the ability of federal investigators to monitor terrorists and other criminals. A new study by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society convened experts from all sides to put the issue in context. The report concluded that information from some apps and devices like smartphones may be harder for government investigators to intercept because of stronger encryption. But, it said, we are connecting so many more things to the Internet (light bulbs, door locks, watches, toasters) that they could create new surveillance channels. According to the report: ”The increased availability of encryption technologies certainly impedes government surveillance under certain circumstances, and in this sense, the government is losing some surveillance opportunities. However, we concluded that the combination of technological developments and market forces is likely to fill some of these gaps and, more broadly, to ensure that the government will gain new opportunities to gather critical information from surveillance.” The encryption debate has reheated recently following the attacks in Paris and to some extent San Bernardino, Calif. with CIA and FBI officials warning about their investigation channels ”going dark” because of the stronger encryption placed on communications tools like WhatsApp or FaceTime. (The distinction is this: With things like emails, Web searches, photos or social network posts, information typically gets encrypted on your phone or laptop and then decrypted and stored on a big corporate data server, where law enforcement officials have the technical and legal ability to get access to the content, for instance, with a subpoena. But with messages that are encrypted    data gets encrypted on one device and only gets decrypted when it reaches the recipient’s device, making it inaccessible even with a subpoena.) The agencies have asked for ”back doors” into these technologies, though the Obama administration cooled off its push for related legislation late last year over concerns that such security loopholes would also attract hackers and other governments. But the Harvard report (which was funded by the Hewlett Foundation) argues that ”going dark” is a faulty metaphor for the surveillance of the future, thanks to the raft of new technologies that are and likely will remain unencrypted  —   all the   home appliances and consumer electronics that sometimes get dubbed the Internet of Things. Some of the ways the data used to be accessed will undoubtedly become unavailable to investigators, says Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who was one of the authors. ”But the overall landscape is getting brighter and brighter as there are so many more paths by which to achieve surveillance,” he says. ”If you have data flowing or at rest somewhere and it’s held by somebody that can be under the jurisdiction of not just one but multiple governments, those governments at some point or another are going to get around to asking for the data,” he says. The study team is notable for including technical experts and civil liberties advocates alongside current and former National Security Agency, Defense Department and Justice Department officials. Another chief author was Matthew Olsen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center and NSA general counsel. Though not all 14 core members had to agree to every word of the report, they had to approve of the thrust of its findings  —   with the exception of current NSA officials John DeLong and Anne Neuberger, whose jobs prevented them from signing onto the report (and Zittrain says nothing should be inferred about their views). The results of the report are a bit ironic: It tries to close one can of worms (the debate over encryption hurting surveillance) but opens another one (the concerns about privacy in the future of   everything). ”When you look at it over the long term,” says Zittrain, ”with the breadth of ways in which stuff that used to be ephemeral is now becoming digital and stored, the opportunities for surveillance are quite bright, possibly even worryingly so.”"
"A memo from congressional investigators sheds new light on the inner workings of Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals after the company jacked up the prices of a   drug used to treat AIDS patients. The House Committee on Oversight and Investigations is looking into Turing and other drug companies’ price increases. This memo, released Tuesday, includes excerpts from the company’s internal documents and emails. It paints a picture of the   ”pharma bro” Martin Shkreli giddily rubbing his palms together at the prospect of all the money Daraprim will generate for his fledgling company. The drug is the only cure for toxoplasmosis, a disease that strikes people, including AIDS and cancer patients, whose immune systems are suppressed. Turing bought Daraprim last year and jacked up the price 5, 000 percent, from $13. 50 to $750 a pill. Here are a few highlights from the data dump. When Turing agreed to buy Daraprim, company officials went into celebration mode: ”Very good. Nice work as usual. $1bn here we come.”  —   Turing Chairman Ron Tilles email dated May 27, 2015. ”I think it will be huge. We raised the price from $1, 700 per bottle to $75, 000. . .. So 5, 000 paying bottles at the new price is $375, 000, 000   almost all of it is profit and I think we will get 3 years of that or more. Should be a very handsome investment for all of us.”  —   Martin Shkreli email dated Aug. 27, 2015. ”Another $7. 2 million. Pow!”  —   Tina Ghorban, senior director of business analytics, reacting to a purchase order for 96 bottles at $75, 000 a bottle, on Sept. 17. The company thought it could handle blowback from AIDS activists and doctors, which it addressed in these presentations: ”HIV patient advocacy may react to price increase . .. we still come out ahead if we can frame this issue within the   community as a fight between a drug company and insurance companies. As long as everyone who needs Daraprim can get it as soon as they need it, regardless of ability to pay, the community should have no issue. There is no love lost between   activists and insurance companies, and they certainly don’t want to be manipulated by them to fight on their behalf.” ”Cost and coverage are not obstacles to treatment today . .. physicians do not report high    costs, required prior authorizations, or other access barriers to toxo medications.” They were wrong: ”Given your company’s recent move to raise the price of pyrimethamine over 5, 000% to an incredible $750 a pill, I have decided not to meet with representatives from Turing. . .. I am also urging my colleagues here at UNC, as well as at Duke, ECU, Wake Forest and other clinical centers across our state to do likewise, until Turing announces a reasonable and ethical reduction in the price of this important medication  —   a drug we rely on most to treat toxoplasmosis.”  —   Associate professor at University of North Carolina, Oct. 1. ”After over a week of trying to secure Daraprim for an uninsured patient requiring Daraprim at Massachusetts General Hospital, I need immediate assistance with expediting this case. . .. We have been provided with   information by the dedicated Daraprim Team. . .. This is a critical matter, visible at the highest levels of our Infectious Disease Department.”  —   Doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, Oct. 8. So Turing went into crisis mode, trying out discount programs and struggling with PR: ”I think we are acting a little like a deer in the headlights, and need to take some action steps now. If a hospital like Mass General is having issues we are in trouble.”  —   Ed Painter, head of investor relations, Oct. 8. ”Is there an annual price reduction commitment that would discourage generics from entering the market? What if we headlined . .. Turing Pharmaceuticals commits to an    cost to individuals of less than $20.”  —   Painter, Sept. 26. ”I don’t think so. Re reductions  —   Think it’s best we don’t PR something like that unless its something we’re willing to commit to doing.”  —   Patrick Crutcher, director of business development, Sept. 26. ”FYI, we are ’blowing through’ copay dollars very fast. . .. My opinion is that with the current state of affairs that we should continue to provide to patients, but we’ll need to ultimately evaluate this program and understand the effect on margin.”  —   Jon Haas, director of patient access, Sept. 29. ”As early as next week, the Board should remove Martin as CEO. . .. the price drop has to be significant and tied to something. . .. This cannot be seen as something that appears to be as arbitrary as the price hike in the first place.”  —   Outside PR consultant, Oct. 8. On Dec. 16, Shkreli was arrested on securities fraud charges related to his tenure at another firm. He resigned the following day. ”I am confident I will prevail,” Shkreli wrote on Twitter on Dec. 19. ”The allegations against me are baseless and without merit.”"
"Patients suffered no additional harm when doctors training to be surgeons were allowed to work longer shifts, a study published Tuesday concludes. The findings provide fresh evidence for medical educators looking to relax the strictest limits on resident hours. The study in the New England Journal of Medicine comes as the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education is reassessing requirements that prevent residents from working extremely long stretches or    shifts. Those rules were enacted in 2003 and strengthened in 2011 amid concerns that   residents were more likely to make serious errors. Since then there has been pushback from residency program directors concerned that the rules created new dangers for patients by abruptly forcing interns to leave in the middle of treating a patient or performing surgery. They also complain the rules interfere with resident education because it is harder for trainees to follow their patients. The study released Tuesday conducted a direct experiment by tracking patient outcomes after loosening the rules for doctors in 58 surgical residency programs. It found that their patients didn’t die or suffer complications any more often than at 59 residency programs that stuck with the current rules. ”We believe the trial results say it’s safe to provide some flexibility in duty hours,” said Dr. Karl Bilimoria, the main author and a professor of surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. Some previous studies had come to similar conclusions, but this one has been anticipated because of its more rigorous methods. The trial has drawn protests from Public Citizen and the American Medical Student Association, which said researchers put patients and residents at risk by waiving the rules. The groups assert that the experiment, funded by the American Board of Surgery, the American College of Surgeons and the accreditation council, was never likely to find a significant difference in patient outcomes, since most elements of patient care  —   the physicians, specialists, nurses and other clinical workers  —   remained unchanged. ”Research on the deleterious effects of chronic sleep deprivation is just overwhelming,” said Dr. Deborah Hall, president of the medical student association. ”I’m concerned we’re going to walk away from a lot of progress that’s been made without overwhelming data [showing] that residents aren’t subject to the ordinary limits of human neurobiology.” In an editorial also published in the journal, Dr. John Birkmeyer, chief academic officer at   a health system in New Hampshire, came to a different conclusion than Bilimoria. Birkmeyer wrote that the experiment ”effectively debunks concerns that patients will suffer as a result of increased handoffs and breaks in continuity of care.” Rather than roll back the rules on duty hours, he argued that surgeons should find safer ways to treat patients without relying on ”overworked” residents. ”To many current residents and medical students,   (or even  ) workweeks and   shifts probably seem long enough,” Birkmeyer wrote. ”Although few surgical residents would ever acknowledge this publicly, I’m sure that many would love to hear, ’We can take care of this without you. Go home, see your family, and come in fresh tomorrow.’ ” The research was conducted in the academic year that began in the fall of 2014. One group of residency programs followed the existing rules, while the other programs were allowed to remove several strictures. Residents in the experimental group could stay at the hospital longer than 28 hours in a row, the current maximum. They did not have to be given at least eight hours off between shifts. Residents who worked a   shift no longer had to wait 14 hours before returning to the hospital. And   residents could work more than 16 hours in a row, a limit set in 2011. After analyzing medical records for 65, 849 patients in the control group and 72, 842 in the experimental group, the researchers found no significant difference in death or complication rates. They also surveyed 4, 330 general surgery residents and found that those with the more flexible schedules rated their overall   and morale no different than did those with strict rules. ”We’re very encouraged by the findings,” said Dr. Maya Babu, a neurological surgery resident at the Mayo Clinic and president of the Resident and Associate Society of the American College of Surgeons. ”We feel very strongly that flexibility is important to provide opportunities to learn and to have patient ownership, to see patients from the time they’re admitted through surgery the next day.” Seven percent of residents exempted from the duty limitations said they left during an operation at least once a month, while 13 percent of those following the rules said they left. Thirty percent of the experimental group said they missed an operation at least once a month, while 42 percent of those with standard rules said they missed one. A third of the test group said they turned a patient over to another doctor in the middle of dealing with them, while nearly half of the control group recalled doing so. Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, a patient safety advocacy organization, said the study should have objectively assessed the hours residents worked and the effects on their health and patients, rather than rely on surveys. He said the study also didn’t track whether residents in the control group adhered to the stricter limits on how long they could work. ”The study didn’t collect any meaningful data on resident health outcomes,” Carome said. The most major restrictions on resident duty hours put into place in 2003, such as a maximum workweek of 80 hours a week and a minimum of one day off every seven, were not tested in the study and are expected to remain in place. The paper was scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the Academic Surgical Congress in Jacksonville, Fla. A similar experiment, looking at internal medicine residents, is still in progress. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Jordan Rau is on Twitter: @jordanrau."
"As recreational use of drones around the world continues to soar, authorities have been forced to get creative with how they deal with drones that fly into restricted airspace. In December, Tokyo police launched a drone designed to take out other drones with a net. In October, British tech companies unveiled a drone ”death ray” that can disable drones in midflight. Now, police in the Netherlands are turning to nature for another possible solution: eagles. The birds of prey are a ”  solution to a   problem,” a police spokesman told Reuters. The news service reports that the   raptor security firm Guard From Above is working in conjunction with police to train the eagles. The eagles can be seen in action in a video released by Dutch police. It shows two eagles in a warehouse with their handlers, taking out drones in the air. The drones are slightly smaller than the birds, and the birds are able to grasp them with their talons and bring them to the ground. ”These birds are used to meeting resistance from animals they hunt in the wild, and they don’t seem to have much trouble with the drones,” Sjoerd Hoogendoorn of Guard From Above told Reuters. But he said the birds must first be trained to recognize drones as prey. Another issue: Are there potential adverse consequences for the birds? A separate scientific research group is doing research to determine whether the birds’   could affect their welfare. Geoff LeBaron of the National Audubon Society, however, told The Guardian that the eagles’ sharp eyesight and sense of timing likely protect them from harm: ”What I find fascinating is that birds can hit the drone in such a way that they don’t get injured by the rotors. They seem to be whacking the drone right in the centre so they don’t get hit they have incredible visual acuity and they can probably actually see the rotors.” The real setback is replacing drones after they’re destroyed by eagles. ”It’s a major cost of testing,” Hoogendoorn said, per Reuters. Dutch police expect to make a decision on whether to move forward with the   eagle force by the end of the year. Amateur drone usage has prompted concern in places around the world about the devices flying into   air space, such as around airports and public events. As The   has previously reported, drone flights at sporting events have caused varying levels of disruption in the past few years: ”In September, a student flew a drone over the University of Kentucky’s packed football stadium and crashed it into the stands. No one was injured. Just a few days before that, a New York City teacher was arrested after a drone flew into a stadium during a tennis match at the U. S. Open. ”While those incidents were ultimately harmless, drone usage is becoming increasingly problematic. Last year a drone incident sparked a riot at a soccer game between Serbia and Albania. In that instance, a drone carrying an Albanian nationalist banner landed on the field, fanning ethnic and nationalist tensions and provoking a fight between both the players and people in the stands.”"
"A few weeks ago, I ate three pieces of cake on a single day. All in the name of research, of course. You see, it was Jan. 6, otherwise known as Epiphany or Kings Day  —   and in New Orleans, that signals the start of Carnival season. And that means we eat king cake. Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is, of course, a single day: Feb. 9 this year. But in New Orleans, Carnival is a season that starts with Kings Day and ends in ashes  —   on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 10). In between, the entire city is gripped with king cake madness, its diet and culture dominated by the colorful cakes. King cakes are most prominently featured in a kind of ritual exchange tradition in workplaces. One person brings a cake to the office to start off the cycle. The cakes are supposed to come with a plastic figure hidden in them (usually a plastic baby, but sometimes it’s a bean or some other figure). The person who finds the hidden figurine in a slice must bring the next cake to the office. This exchange goes on until Mardi Gras, after which the cakes disappear for another year. New Orleans’ king cake tradition is clearly related to practices in France, Spain, Italy and other countries. Long before I lived here, I was introduced to the French galette des rois. The French version I am most familiar with is a puff pastry filled with almond cream that has a little figurine hidden inside. It’s most often consumed on Epiphany, although bakeries make them available for a few weeks before and after. The person (usually a child) who ends up with the figurine also gets a paper crown. There are several varieties of king cake found in different parts of Europe, as well as in Central and South America. Like other globalized foods and traditions, each place makes the practice its own. New Orleans’ king cakes are usually made with a Danish or brioche pastry, unlike the French ones, and are, at a minimum, decorated with purple, green and gold sugar, the colors of Mardi Gras. People bring them just about everywhere: The number and variety of cakes on display at even small gatherings appear to increase geometrically as we approach Mardi Gras itself. Sometimes, it seems like the entire repertoire of New Orleans cuisine is reduced to king cake and beer during Mardi Gras season  —   especially for any event involving float decorating,   and parade preparation. (For many, Popeye’s fried chicken adds   variety to the typical Carnival diet.) And, of course, king cake and beer is probably the breakfast combo of choice for many on Mardi Gras day (one may replace the beer with a Bloody Mary). King cake consumption really comes to stand for the entire Carnival season, as this advertisement from one local bakery (which I am not endorsing, but it does make very pretty cakes) illustrates with an impressive array of iconic Mardi Gras types. When I moved to New Orleans, the first king cakes I ate came from McKenzie’s, a now defunct chain of local bakeries. Natives of New Orleans of a certain age can be deeply emotional about the loss of McKenzie’s, which they see as a sign of the passing of those things that made the city unique. The store’s king cake, which I remember as a dry brioche with a modest amount of sugaring in Mardi Gras colors, was relatively austere. (My wife, who remembers these cakes fondly, tells me I am being too harsh.) King cakes in this style can still be found around town, and many of my native friends and colleagues claim to prefer them to the    garish cakes that have come to dominate the market in recent years. Despite such protests, king cakes filled with everything from cream cheese to bananas and peanut butter are ubiquitous  —   and very popular. The amount of decorative sugar involved is rivaled only by the amount of glitter people in New Orleans use each year on their costumes. These cakes are a long way from the French galette des rois. And they make people very happy. Around here, people are obsessive about the king cake tradition. There are annual evaluations of the best king cakes by our leading food writers. There are stories about the evolution of the cakes, about the entry of different ethnic groups into the tradition, about the ways in which innovative pastry chefs create cakes that are ever more dazzling. There are strange variations on the king cake theme, including king cake vodka (I really don’t think this is a good idea) and the king cake smoothie. There is, of course, a king cake festival and competition, held this past weekend. If you prefer your cakes a little less ostentatious, you can get   galette des rois around town, too. You can now order king cakes to be delivered by Uber, and if you don’t live here, bakeries will be happy to FedEx one to you. There is even king cake satire, including a series of advertisements from the fake Ragusa Brothers Bakery, done in perfect   New Orleans ”Yat” accents, that skewer king cakes and a whole lot more. The madness will last one more week. Until next year, that is. David Beriss is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Orleans. A version of this story first appeared on FoodAnthro. com."
"If you’ve ever gotten a glimpse inside a high schooler’s backpack or locker, you know organization doesn’t always come naturally to teens. Being scatterbrained in school can make make it tough to stay focused and do well. That was the case when Lilli Stordeur was about halfway through her freshman year of high school in Northampton, Mass. She felt totally overwhelmed. ”I was being tutored for the classes I was having trouble in,” she says, ”but I would be having a hard time organizing my binders, and notebooks and stuff, and knowing when to hand things in.” To help Lilli get stuff done, her parents hired Melissa   a former tutor and   teacher, to work with Lilli on something called executive function. Executive functions are categories of skills the brain uses for general organization and judgment. They include attention and focus, working memory, impulse control and  . ”When I did tutoring, it was working on helping the student do these sets of math problems, or write this essay,” says   who works for the academic coaching company Beyond BookSmart. In this job, though, she helps Lilli arrange her notes, prepare for teacher meetings and prioritize assignments. On one afternoon they strategize on how to get Lilli caught up on assigned reading. They agree she’ll have to sacrifice time to read after school on Friday. Executive function coaching has emerged from a booming interest in all things neuroscience, especially in education. But no one is policing claims of the field or setting standards for what individual coaches do. And not everyone who’s tried executive function coaching is feeling the love. ”She did a lot of acronyms,” says high school sophomore Peter Curran. ”I don’t remember most of them.” Peter got an executive function coach last year when his grades started to drop. He says his coach showed him how to download calendar software and study guides, but by the end of the year, Peter decided he’d be better off with a regular tutor. ”I felt like she didn’t really help me anymore,” he says. ”It just felt like it was a tedious thing to do.” That was a disappointment to his family, who paid $1, 800 a month to bring in his coach. Those costs are typical for this kind of coaching. The founder of Beyond BookSmart, Michael Delman, says his company charges up to $180 an hour, including   between sessions. (Note, traditional tutoring is often less expensive.) Overall, ”We tell parents to expect it’s going to cost $5, 000 or 6, 000,” says Delman. ”We’re always looking for the panacea,” says Robin Jacob, an education researcher at the University of Michigan who published an overview of 67 studies on executive function training. ”We move from fad to fad, and I feel like executive function is sort of the fad of the day.” She says while her research showed there was a connection between executive function skills and academic achievement, the studies did not show that working on those skills leads to achievement. ”We should be cautious before we invest a lot of money in such interventions,” she says, ”before we really have the solid evidence base to show that it works.” Jacob says tutoring in math or English might actually improve executive functions more than the other way around. Lilli Stordeur, now a   senior, says her habits and organization have improved since working with her coach. ”I think having the routine of meeting once a week is helpful to know that I have a point where I stop what I’m doing and kind of figure out if I’m on the right track,” she says. That’s something many educators and psychologists say can come from less expensive forms of help  —   or, in an ideal world, for free in the public schools."
"The history of science is full of happy accidents  —   most folks have heard that penicillin was discovered in 1928, when a few mold spores landed on some neglected petri dishes in a London lab. But sometimes serendipity’s role is a bit less . .. mainstream. Hennig Brand was a German alchemist in the 1660s. I’m not saying he was a gold digger  —   but he did marry first one rich lady, and then, after her death, a second rich lady. And he used their money to literally try to make gold. Back then, a lot of people thought you could change worthless materials into precious metals. And Brand was convinced he could distill gold from a golden substance that he encountered every day: human urine. He used his wife’s money to build a basement laboratory and employed his stepson as a lab assistant. Then, he started collecting. Accounts from the time don’t go into detail about where Brand got his raw material, or what his basement smelled like, or what the stepson thought of his new dad. But they do suggest that Brand stockpiled something like 1, 500 gallons of urine. Then he set to work. One of the surviving accounts of the process begins: Take a good large Quantity of   Urine of   and evaporate it gently to the consistency of honey. I’ll spare you the rest  —   it involved lots of boiling and cooking and waiting. In the end, Brand’s persistence paid off. He didn’t make gold, but he did end up with a white, waxy substance that glowed in the dark. He had stumbled upon the element phosphorus. The name, appropriately, starts with ”p.” Phosphorus, it turns out, is an incredibly powerful element. It has been used in deadly explosives and in the synthetic fertilizers that help feed the world. Throughout history, curious minds have turned mistakes, coincidences and surprises like the discovery of phosphorus into important scientific insights. Now NPR’s science blog Skunk Bear is looking for modern examples  —   we’d like you to send us your stories of happy accidents in the lab and in the field that led to interesting discoveries. Or maybe such stories from your friends or professors or students or colleagues  —   or just modern cases of scientific luck you’ve heard about. Our favorite stories will be honored in an awards show later this month, and one   scientist will receive a trophy from Skunk Bear  —   The Golden Mole Award For Accidental Brilliance. Please hurry  —   we need your nominations by the end of this week, Feb. 5."
"”If you are a woman who is pregnant living in the U. S. there’s one really important thing you need to know: You shouldn’t go to a place that has Zika spreading.” That’s the strongly worded advice from Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. It’s a marked contrast to the suggestion made by Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the World Health Organization, earlier this week: A pregnant woman could safely travel to affected countries, Chan said, if she wore long sleeves to ward off bugs and used mosquito repellent. Frieden’s statement is a sign of just how seriously the CDC is taking the Zika outbreak, which has been linked to a surge in birth defects in Brazil. CDC is one of the lead global agencies in the battle against this virus, and officials there say the outbreak is far from over, with major challenges ahead. Indeed, Zika now dominates the agenda at the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center. Giant video monitors in the front of the room track reports of Zika cases around the globe. A huge picture of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads Zika, sits next to a grainy photo of the virus taken through a microscope. As you’d expect, the CDC is keeping tabs on Zika cases imported into the U. S. But it’s doing far more than that, reaching out to help countries throughout Latin America test for the virus and attack the mosquitoes that carry it. The CDC is working with researchers in Brazil to try to verify whether Zika truly is responsible for thousands of cases of microcephaly  —   a condition in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and possible brain damage. Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the division of vector borne disease and the head of the CDC’s Zika response, worries that microcephaly might not be the only potentially serious health risk from what has typically been regarded as a mild virus. Zika may be causing other neurological problems as it spreads through Latin America, he says. ”So that’s one of the things we want to find out,” says Petersen. ”We also want to figure out how we can best protect pregnant women from getting infected. That is the top priority.” The additional problems include cases of   syndrome popping up in countries soon after the arrival of Zika.   is a temporary but at times debilitating neurological disorder that can cause mild tingling and weakness  —   or that can paralyze. Researchers saw an increase in   Barre cases during earlier Zika outbreaks in Micronesia and French Polynesia. The CDC’s Leonard Peruski, with its global disease detection branch, sees a similar pattern: ”a spike in   cases most notably in El Salvador and Colombia. There have been some sporadic reports in Honduras.” In its latest figures, the Pan American Health Organization says that El Salvador reported 46 cases of   in December. Two of the patients died.   which can have various causes, is fairly rare the 46 cases in El Salvador are more than three times what that country normally reports monthly. A direct link, however, between   and Zika has not been proved. Until last week, Peruski was heading up the CDC’s regional disease detection center in Guatemala. He watched as Zika spread across the region. ”It was much faster than we expected,” he says. ”We were doing some very simplistic models down there. We expected it to emerge probably this spring throughout Central America and we were surprised at how quickly it did spread. Again, this indicates that diseases don’t respect borders.” The concern about this outbreak isn’t limited to this hemisphere. ”This morning I was on a conference call with India,” says Peruski. ”They want to get testing set up. We have a request from Bangladesh. We have requests from Kenya, from China, from all over the globe, about how to get Zika diagnostics in place.” Besides testing, mosquito control is the other big issue CDC is trying to help with on the Zika outbreak. The mosquitoes that spread Zika have been developing resistance to the most common insecticides. Researchers at the CDC’s labs in Atlanta are studying patterns of resistance and trying to figure out how to overcome them. ”These are mosquitoes that are really difficult to control. They can breed in a bottle cap,” says Frieden. That’s all the water they need  —   just a capful. And that makes them a daunting foe."
"A patient acquired Zika virus in the U. S. through sex with a person who had traveled to a place where the virus is circulating, Dallas County, Texas, health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. This is not the first time that the virus has been sexually transmitted, and it most likely isn’t the first time it’s been sexually transmitted in the U. S. In 2008, two scientists returned to Colorado after months of field work in Senegal, where they’d been bitten by Aedes aegypti, the species of mosquito that transmits Zika virus. One of them ended up passing the virus to his wife, most likely during intercourse. The couple noticed that the husband’s semen had been bloody for a few days before the wife felt sick. She later tested positive for Zika, even though she had not left the U. S. in years. The pair   a paper on their case, which has been called the first documented case of sexual transmission of an   disease. During a Zika virus outbreak in French Polynesia in 2013, the virus was isolated from the bloody semen of a man in Tahiti. This was a few weeks after he had symptoms, and while his blood no longer contained traces of the virus, his urine did, and his semen contained live virus capable of replicating. The authors speculate that the virus may have replicated in the man’s genital tract. Similarly, Japanese researchers studying boars infected with a virus in the same family as Zika isolated virus from the urine and semen of boars that was capable of infecting a female through artificial insemination. Is sexual transmission definitely possible? ”Well, it sounds like it,” says Dr. Robert Tesh, a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch who studies emerging infectious diseases. But if it is, it’s probably quite rare. ”I know it’s sexy, talking about sexual transmission, but it’s still the mosquito that’s the important vector,” says Tesh, who   the case report from Colorado. The silver lining is that both the Colorado case and the Texas case happened in the winter, when it’s too cold out for the species of mosquito that transmits the virus to be out and about. So Zika couldn’t have spread to other people by mosquito. Though the virus has been connected with birth defects in Brazil, in adults the symptoms, if any appear, are often mild and  : rash, joint pain, conjunctivitis and slight fever. The CDC is trying to figure out if an uptick in cases of   syndrome, a neurological disorder, that was reported by the Brazil Ministry of Health is connected to Zika. Research on a 2013 outbreak in French Polynesia, the largest known, has yielded the most information on which bodily fluids Zika hangs out in, and when. One study found signs of the virus in the saliva of patients shortly after the onset of symptoms. A small study in New Caledonia detected it in patients’ urine more than 10 days after their first symptoms, and more than a week after it became undetectable in blood. A third study found the virus in the breast milk of infected mothers, and concluded that two babies who tested positive for Zika virus within days of birth possibly acquired it from their mothers’ bodily fluids during pregnancy or birth. Tesh says it’s unclear how the virus remains in bodily fluids, but hypothesizes that the virus could hide in white blood cells."
"Ismael Fernandez is about as polished as his black leather shoes. His hair is neatly trimmed and combed to the side. He moves his hands when he speaks, purposefully punctuating his points. And he says things like this: ”There needs to be change in Wilder, and just in politics in general. We need to have younger people coming in, so that’s why I decided to run.” Fernandez is not your typical   . He’s a freshman at the College of Idaho, studying Spanish and history, and he is one of youngest elected politicians in Idaho history. In November, Fernandez was elected to sit on the City Council of his hometown, Wilder, Idaho. He was one of four Latinos elected, making Wilder, with its roughly 1, 500 citizens, the first city in the state of Idaho to elect an   city council. In the same election, it even elected a Latina mayor to boot. They were all sworn in  . ”I’m very excited and very proud to be part of that,” Fernandez said on a gray November winter day. ”The Latino generation that I’m part of, we’re kind of activists and all about empowerment and I think it’s very empowering to the Latino community.” Fernandez is giving me an unofficial walking tour of Wilder, from First Street to Fifth Street, Avenue A to Avenue D. He kicks loose the gravel underfoot as he points out stops along the way: the   trailer that serves as the city’s library Rosa’s and Alejandra’s Mexican restaurants the new elementary school. The tour takes about 20 minutes there’s not much to see. ”You don’t have to give out addresses in Wilder,” Fernandez says. ”If somebody wants to find you, they already know where you live.” The town is especially quiet this time of year. It’s a farming town, bordered by fields of tall wooden poles that in the spring are covered in green hops, giving the town a skunky smell. Wilder sits in the state’s Treasure Valley, near the   border. It’s one of the biggest hop production areas in the country. Those hops bring immigrant workers to the area some of whom decide to stay. ”My family started out as migrant workers out of Missouri,” says the city’s outgoing mayor, John Bechtel. ”We came here for the crops.” We run into Bechtel at City Hall, a white brick building that serves not only as the mayor’s office but also the council chambers and police station. Historic pictures of the town are framed along one wall, in black and white and sepia. Much of it looks the same today. Bechtel has been involved with city government here in Wilder for more than 30 years, most of them as mayor. He has watched the city change along with the demographics of immigrant labor, from mostly families of European descent like his to families with Mexican and Central American ancestry. Today, more than 75 percent of Wilder is Latino or Hispanic. And Bechtel has tried to change with the times. ”Any new Hispanic family in town, I’d introduce myself as ’Juan Pelon,’ which means John Bald,” he says, gesturing to his bald head. ”Once you break the ice, you got a new friend. My philosophy is Will Rogers: A stranger is only a friend I’ve never met.” Bechtel says he has long advocated for the demographics of the city’s leadership to change with the times. ”I’ve told people for years, if the Hispanic community will just pull together, you could control any office in the city  —   school board, City Council, whatever,” he says. This November, residents of Wilder took that to heart, filling the town’s City Council and mayor’s office with Latinos. Bechtel calls it a historic moment that he is proud to be a part of. And one that he hopes will have a   effect. He’s not alone in that. The ’Little House On The Prairie’ Is Changing, Fast, Latino advocates in Idaho and across the country hope what’s happening in Wilder can be a model for other rural,   towns, where   populations are pushing for a more representative government. ”I think that now that they can actually see a community that’s done it, they’re going to start to really begin to be able to see themselves doing the same thing,” says Margie Gonzalez, executive director for the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs. Gonzalez works in Boise, the state capital, about an hour’s drive from Wilder. She says most people don’t think of Idaho as a place with a lot of Latinos. Her own friends picture the state ”like Little House on the Prairie,” she says. But the numbers show that’s not the case. Latest census data show that 12 percent of Idaho is Hispanic or Latino. Latinos are also the state’s   racial group by far, doubling the growth percentage of the state’s white population. That growth, Gonzalez says, is what’s kept a lot of rural Idaho towns, like Wilder, populated and afloat in recent years. The demographics of the state’s elected officials have started to reflect that change, but, Gonzalez says, ”Considering the percentage, we really should have better representation.” In ’Emerging’ Latino Areas, Lots More To Be Done, The issue of representative government is not limited to Idaho. ”Many rural cities with large shares of Latino population that have had a significant growth of Latinos in their cities haven’t necessarily achieved what folks in Wilder were able to achieve,” says Erica   the deputy executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. In some bigger cities and areas where Latino populations have been established longer, like California, there’s better representation. In ”emerging” rural areas like Idaho, Washington and Oregon, it hasn’t yet translated into political change. There are a lot of reasons for that. Latino voter turnout isn’t always high in those places, in part because people say they feel disenfranchised when their representatives look nothing like them. And there are limited resources for outreach and education of new voters. ”When people feel that in fact their leaders or the people who are running for office care about the same issues that they care about, they’re much more likely to turn up to vote and to be engaged,” says  . Perhaps even more important, she says, every election like the one in Wilder gives Latinos the platform to demonstrate their ability to lead diverse communities, which would go a long way toward addressing one of the biggest issues facing potential Latino leaders in conservative places like Idaho: the fact that some people just don’t want to see change. Amid Fears of Change, A Note of Reassurance, There’s some of that resistance to change and fear of the unknown in Wilder. Fernandez has heard the whispers. Are they all citizens? Are they all legal? I hope they’re assimilated. I hope they’re patriots. Fernandez says he just brushes it off, as best as he can. He knows he is just as American as everybody else here. The city’s   Alicia Almazan, feels the same way. Almazan has lived in Wilder nearly her entire life and has gotten to know just about everyone in town, growing up there and working in her adulthood as a hairdresser and at the city’s school. She says that she knows some people might take the election the wrong way that some people might see it as a ”Mexican takeover,” but she says that’s not the case. ”Things are not going to change,” she says. ”Everything I do, I’m going to say it in English and in Spanish. I’m going to treat everyone with respect. I don’t care who you are.” She and the City Council were elected by all of Wilder, Almazan says, so that is whom they will represent."
"Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum ended his White House campaign on Wednesday and threw his support behind Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. ”We are suspending our campaign as of this moment,” Santorum said on Fox News Channel’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. Santorum said that after much prayer, he had decided that he was suspending his campaign. After talking to Rubio for more than an hour on Tuesday, Santorum said, he decided to back him, calling him the best person to continue the message of fighting ISIS and defending ”the central role of the family.” ”He is the new generation, and someone who can bring this country together, not just moderates and conservatives, but young and old,” Santorum said. In an email to his supporters, Santorum told them it was ”time to coalesce around the strongest candidate who will stand up for conservative values, be a statesman on the world stage, and has the ability to win a general election.” Four years ago, Santorum had an improbable rise after a narrow victory in the Iowa caucuses, though he was not officially declared the winner until weeks later thanks to reporting glitches. Still, he became the choice for many conservative and evangelical voters against Mitt Romney and was the last remaining candidate in the race until he dropped out in April. But this year, the conservative former senator never caught fire amid a more crowded field filled with flashier, outsider candidates. Mired in the low single digits in polling, Santorum never made a main stage debate either, repeatedly relegated to the undercard."
"Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is suspending his campaign for president after a disappointing finish in Iowa, turning his focus now to his Senate   bid. ”Across the country thousands upon thousands of young people flocked to our message of limited government, privacy, criminal justice reform and a reasonable foreign policy. Brushfires of Liberty were ignited, and those will carry on, as will I,” the Republican said in a statement. ”Although, today I will suspend my campaign for President, the fight is far from over,” he continued. ”I will continue to carry the torch for Liberty in the United States Senate and I look forward to earning the privilege to represent the people of Kentucky for another term.” The   senator finished a distant fifth in the Hawkeye State on Monday evening, unable to replicate the strong coalition that his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, had built there four years ago. His prospects were similarly bleak both in national polling and in New Hampshire, which is up next Tuesday. Left off the main debate stage last month for his poor standing in surveys (he instead boycotted the   undercard debate) Paul faced being passed over again at Saturday’s GOP debate. His     campaign finance report showed a depleted bank account, too, with just $1. 3 million remaining. And Paul, unlike his rivals, had another campaign he was running simultaneously to worry about  —   his Senate   bid. Though the   senator starts with the advantage in the   state, he drew a strong Democratic challenger last month in Lexington Mayor Jim Gray. Paul had to jump through hoops just to be able to run for both Senate and president at the same time. Last year he persuaded the state party to hold a March caucus instead of a May primary so he could legally be on both ballots. That political insurance policy he won’t need anymore was costly  —   he had promised he would pay for the change, which could be upwards of $500, 000."
"Famous for its high peaks and   prayer flags,   Nepal used to be a nation unreached by Christianity. Now the country has one of the   Christian populations in the world, according to the World Christian Database, which tracks global trends in Christianity. Bishwa Mani Pokharel, news chief at Nepal’s Nagarik newspaper, pulls out copies of the census to show the statistical gallop of Christianity across Nepal. It listed no Christians in 1951 and just 458 in 1961. By 2001, there were nearly 102, 000. A decade later that number had more than tripled to more than 375, 000. Pokharel and others think the increase is really much higher but inaccurately reported. ”Before, when the Christians had a party, they slaughtered a chicken. Now, they slaughter a goat,” says Pokharel, who has been reporting on the conversions. That extra meat, he explains, is necessary to feed all of the new people who’ve joined the guest list. Much of this growth can be attributed to Nepal’s internal changes. Before 1950, Nepal was closed to foreigners. Mountain climbing changed that. And starting with the Maoist Civil War of the 1990s and culminating with the end of the monarchy in 2008, the country has transitioned from a Hindu kingdom to a   secular republic with greater freedom of religion. Encouraging someone to convert to another religion was always illegal, but as Nepal eased away from its official Hindu status, the rules lightened up. Churches now mushroom throughout the Kathmandu Valley and across the terraced hills. Proselytizing remains illegal, but with political instability and weak law enforcement, that doesn’t stop it from happening. Meanwhile, the earthquake last year may have strengthened the Christian surge. Where the government  —   long mired in political instability  —   has failed to help poor villagers, aid groups have trickled in to fill gaps, some of them carrying a message of salvation. Climbing for Christ (C4C) an evangelical group based in Rochester, N. Y. is one. Pledging to bring the Gospel ”where others cannot or will not go,” the group began its ”Mission: Nepal” in 2008. In 2011, it dedicated the first church in the village of Dapcha, 25 miles east of Kathmandu. Today, Dapcha  —   with a population of just 1, 000 families  —   is home to three churches. ”They found some sick people and broken families and talked to them and prayed for them, and miraculously these people were convinced and began to follow Christ,” said Tej Rokka, pastor of the C4C partner ministry, Savior Alone Redeems Asians. ”They distributed some food for the people, and clothes. Because of that, people began to listen to them.” After the earthquake, C4C sent relief materials such as tents and money for food and   items to congregants in Dapcha and other affected areas. Gary Fallesen, C4C’s founder and president, and a team were also in Nepal in October helping rebuild the   house that belongs to the family of Sumitra Pariyar, a young woman who believes she was healed from paralysis and seizures by her acceptance of Christ. Lauren Leve, a professor in the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is researching women who have converted to Christianity in Nepal. She found that as in the case of Pariyar, many of these conversions were related to illness. Others point to the Hindu caste system as an impetus. Though outlawed in 2001, caste discrimination is still widely practiced, particularly in rural Nepal, where people on the lower rungs suffer systematic abuse passed on between generations. Many converts come from these lower castes, and missionaries point to Christianity as a way to escape. ”It’s the only way out,” says Fallesen. ”Socially there’s nothing they can do to change that and then we come along and we share about Jesus and the love he has for them.” The system still exists, Fallesen says, but no longer has power over them. Nepali leaders aren’t happy about the Christianity boom. Before the release of the country’s first constitution this September, debates swelled over whether to scrap secularism and go back to an official Hindu designation. While Christians and other religious minorities feared a clampdown on religious freedom, the Hindu right insisted secularism would allow Christianity to take over. The British ambassador in Nepal ran afoul of this sentiment in 2014 after telling Parliament the right to change religions should be included in the constitution.   groups accused him of supporting proselytizing and called for his resignation. When lawmakers did ensure secularism in the constitution, police needed water cannons and tear gas to dispel angry Hindu protesters. Leve thinks laws against proselytizing aren’t the best way for the Nepali government to keep conversions down. ”What it needs to do is ramp up the public health and social support infrastructure so that its citizens are getting what they need from the state,” she says. ”When public hospitals start to provide effective health services, when there’s a social safety net in place   or any other time, you will see fewer people expressing any interest in Christianity.” For Fallesen, this need for material goods can be a foot in the door to a conversation about Jesus. He said his team starts by building relationships with villagers to find out what their problems are. ”Usually the solution to those needs is to share about Jesus,” he says. Rokka, the Nepali pastor who is also C4C’s country representative, shows off the audio Bibles the team uses to minister to the illiterate in Nepal. People think the local language recordings of the New Testament are cellphones or MP3 players, he explained. He said that even when they find out what the gadget is, they’re still excited to get a new device. Few avenues exist here for the rural poor to better their situation. For more than a decade, many parents have sent their children to ”orphanages” in Kathmandu, where they hope they’ll get better resources and education than what’s available in their villages. The problem of false orphanages has grown so out of control that the U. S. and other countries banned international adoptions from Nepal in 2010. There were simply too many ”orphans” with parents. C4C supports an orphanage, too. Not all the kids are orphans in the western sense, Fallesen explained, but they come from families that don’t have the ability to properly care for them. How do these families feel about their kids getting baptized? ”Some are happy, some are not. Some now want to take them out from the home,” said Rokka, whose ministry runs the orphanage. But the parents don’t typically act on their concerns, he added. ”They have no way to help them. Anyway [the children] are getting help here, so [the parents] think, OK, let it be.” Rokka came to the faith as a child after his mother died. He says some people convinced his father to send him and his brother to an orphanage run by an Indian missionary. Rokka estimates that 90 percent of the children he grew up with have since started their own ministries. Sitting outside their Dapcha house, an elderly couple expresses disdain for the churches popping up around them. ”We don’t go there,” the woman says, waving her hand dismissively and mimicking someone in Christian prayer. She then pretends to handle Buddhist prayer beads. ”We say ’om mani padme om,’” she says, using the Buddhist mantra to declare her faith. To Christian relief workers like Fallesen, the importance of bringing Nepalis to Christianity outweighs the concerns expressed by nonbelievers. ”If I have a choice between possibly offending you or saying OK, whatever you believe is fine, but I believe in my heart if you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re going to go to hell, well, then I’m going to take the risk of offending you,” he says. So C4C has its sights on more remote areas of Nepal. Land was just purchased for its newest church in the    far west district of Humla, where Fallesen says the Nepali population of seven Christian men has grown to 150 men and women. The church will be strategically placed at the point where Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims begin the trek to Mount Kailash, a holy site for both religions."
"Previously, on Serial . ..  ”All this time I thought the courts proved it was Adnan that killed her. I thought he was where he deserved to be. Now I’m not so sure.” That’s an email from Asia McLean to host Sarah Koenig, as read on the very first episode of Serial, the podcast sensation produced by the creators of This American Life. Today McLean was in court, giving testimony that could convince a judge to order a new trial for Syed. Andrea Seabrook was in the courtroom, reporting for NPR. ”Today the judge heard testimony from Asia McLean. Serial listeners will probably remember that name,” Seabrook said on All Things Considered. ”She is the one who says she saw Adnan Syed in the library at the exact same time that the state said he was out committing a murder.” Seabrook reports that McLean brought notes and cell phone data that contradict what prosecutors have said in past proceedings. ”What’s fascinating about her is she didn’t even know how important she was to the case until she heard about it on Serial,” Seabrook says. Many of the people in the courtroom were Serial podcast listeners, Seabrook said, adding that members of Syed’s family were also present. After the day’s hearing concluded, the family of Hae Min Lee, who Syed was convicted of murdering in 1999 released the following statement: ”Our family has lived without a heart for over 17 years. And we continue to grieve every day in private. ”The immediate family members have decided not to attend this hearing. But we are grateful to all the people who are there and will be there to support us and to give Hae a voice. She is the true victim. ”Although this has made us relive a nightmare we thought was behind us, we thank the State for standing up for us and continuing to seek justice. We believe justice was done when Adnan was convicted in 2000, and we look forward to bringing this chapter to an end so we can celebrate the memory of Hae instead of celebrating the man who killed her. ”We ask that you keep Hae in your thoughts and prayers.” The judge will hear testimony Thursday and Friday, but it is unclear when he will make a decision. Our original post continues: If you’re just catching up, each season of Serial follows a single true story, told episode by episode. The first season investigated the case of Adnan Syed, who was convicted of murdering his   more than 15 years ago. Host Sarah Koenig and her team uncovered inconsistencies in his case  —   including the fact that Asia McLean was an alibi witness. She said she’d seen Syed at the time Hae Min Lee’s murder occurred, but that testimony was never brought forth in court. The podcast became the   of all time, fascinating more than a million listeners and inspiring passionate communities of amateur sleuths and Adnan obsessives. Now Syed is back in court  —   at a hearing that offers a chance at a second trial. As Seabrook reported on Morning Edition, it’s a surprising development for a case like this. ”Syed was convicted. He’s been in prison for more than 15 years  —   he’s 35 now,” she says. ”It’s remarkable that he is getting a hearing now.” He was convicted in 2000 of the murder of Hae Min Lee in 1999. Syed’s new defense attorney, C. Justin Brown, says he’ll be presenting witnesses and exhibits, Seabrook reports. ”We’re confident that after we have entered all the evidence that the judge is going to carefully consider it and it’s going to win Adnan Syed a new trial,” Brown says. As Seabrook notes, there’s no guarantee of redemption here. Even Koenig, after researching Syed’s case for a year, wasn’t entirely convinced he was innocent. But she did conclude, as she said on All Things Considered, that ”something went wrong with this case.” It’s not the first time Syed has requested a new trial. The Baltimore Sun reports that his most recent attempt, in 2012, was denied ”in a sparsely attended hearing.”"
"A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that a sexual assault case against Bill Cosby, in which the comedian is accused of drugging and assaulting former Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004, will go to trial. Judge Steven O’Neill refused to throw out the case, rejecting a former district attorney’s claim that he granted the comedian immunity from prosecution a decade ago. The decision largely hinged on the judge’s view of former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor’s statements about whether Cosby should face charges, according to The Associated Press. Castor had said that he gave an unwritten promise of immunity for Cosby to his   lawyer, contending that Constand’s lawyers wanted the agreement so Cosby would be free to testify in her civil suit. Now the case moves to a preliminary hearing to determine whether prosecutors have enough evidence to prove Cosby assaulted Constand."
"The government of Luxembourg announced Wednesday that the country will be investing in the    industry of asteroid mining. The tiny European country will be funding research into the extraction of minerals from objects in space, working on legal and regulatory frameworks to govern such activities and, potentially, directly investing in companies active in the field. The nation’s ministry of the economy says in a statement that the measures are meant ”to position Luxembourg as a European hub in the exploration and use of space resources.” It’s a futuristic move, but not a wholly startling one. Luxembourg is already home to SES, a satellite operator, and has previously moved to boost its international   profile. Exploiting the natural resources of asteroids and other   objects (NEOs) has long been a dream of investors, inventors and futurists (not to mention   authors). Some technologists believe it’s only a matter of time before   shifts from idea to industry. There are numerous minerals found on asteroids that might profitably be mined. Eric Anderson,   of Planetary Resources, told Ira Flatow in 2012 that some asteroids are rich in nickel and iron others in methane, better known as natural gas. Some contain large amounts of water, which, while not profitable to return to Earth, could be useful for supplying rockets that are already in space with hydrogen and oxygen. But there are a few issues. First, of course, there are technical challenges involved in finding promising targets, sending unmanned spacecraft to mine them and returning those resources safely to Earth. Humans have yet to successfully collect even a    asteroid sample. A decade ago, Japan’s space agency sent a missile on an   mission, but the craft   on the asteroid and couldn’t collect samples as planned. It did, however, return to Earth with a small sample of the asteroid that apparently lodged in the craft during the crash. Japan has a   sampling mission that is currently en route to an asteroid, and private companies and NASA are working on their own plans for   probes. To help asteroid mining become a practical possibility, Luxembourg plans to fund research and development and potentially invest in individual companies, using money dedicated to the national space budget. The second issue is a legal one. Asteroids are governed by the Outer Space Treaty, nearly 50 years old now, which says space and space objects don’t belong to any individual nation. What that means for mining activities has never been tested in international courts because, well, nobody’s managed to mine an asteroid yet. But there’s a fair amount of uncertainty, as Joanne Gabrynowicz, a director at the International Institute of Space Law, told NPR’s Here  Now last February. ”Anybody who wants to go to an asteroid now and extract a resource is facing a large legal open question,” she said. The U. S. passed a law near the end of last year, the Space Act of 2015, which says American companies are permitted to harvest resources from outer space. The law asserts that extracting minerals from an extraterrestrial object isn’t a declaration of sovereignty. But it’s not clear what happens if another country passes a contradictory law, or if treaties are arranged that cover extraction of minerals from space. Luxembourg hopes to address this issue, too, with a formal legal framework of its own  —   possibly constructed with international input  —   to ensure that those who harvest minerals can be confident that they’ll own what they bring home. ”The aim is to stimulate economic growth on Earth and offer new horizons in space exploration,” Luxembourg’s ministry of the economy writes. Investing in space innovation  —   whether or not asteroid mining pans out  —   might be valuable for a small nation looking to raise its profile. And if asteroid mines become a reality, the profits could be enormous. The nation’s deputy prime minister also notes that mining on ”lifeless rocks” in space, as opposed to mining on Earth, doesn’t damage natural habitats."
"For some, photography is a vocation. For Catherine Opie, it’s also a social liability. ”Staring at people’s faces is a problem with me,” the artist admits. ”I mean, my wife is constantly saying, ’You’re staring at that person.’ And I’m just like, ’I’m really sorry. I’m making a picture.’ And I do like to stare.” Opie is a stocky, affable presence with graying brown hair tucked under a black baseball cap. The    has made it a lifelong project to document all kinds of American identities and landscapes, but she caught the art world’s attention with a 1994   that still affects how she’s perceived today. ”I mean, I’ve had so many people tell me, ’Oh my God, I was so afraid to meet you,’” she says, shrugging with disbelief. ”Why would you be afraid to meet me? Like, I’m just a nice girl who lived across a cornfield in Ohio.” From those cornfields, Opie moved to San Francisco to join a queer scene that was fighting against AIDS and for gay and lesbian visibility. But mainstream gay politics shunned Opie’s community of leather folks and fans of SM, so she responded with a photograph showing the word ”pervert” cut across her bare chest in florid cursive. The   is disturbing  —   Opie says it’s hard for her to look at, even today. (You can see the image, which contains nudity, here.)    showed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1995 and helped launch a career that has included major solo shows in New York, Boston and Chicago. Now, three of Los Angeles’ most prominent contemporary art museums have dedicated simultaneous shows to Opie’s photography. ”It was really a happy accident,” says Connie Butler, curator of the Hammer Museum’s Opie show. ”She’s having a moment.” According to Butler, Opie is admired for a generous and technically brilliant exploration of American communities and citizenship, including Tea Party rallies, President Barack Obama’s inauguration, surfers, high school football players and lesbian families across the country. She’s also acclaimed for her landscapes, including a series of Los Angles   shot at dawn in   black and white, and the stark architecture of Los Angeles freeways. Opie has generally avoided commercial photography, so she isn’t as famous as Richard Avedon or Annie Leibovitz. But Connie Butler is convinced that her photos will become   classic reflections of American identity. She points to an Opie   from 2004 in which the photographer is shown nursing her baby son. Opie is in her 40s, and she’s butch, topless and tattooed. You can still see the faintest outline of that old scar on her chest. ”That’s an incredibly powerful picture of what motherhood is and what we now know it is in this contemporary moment,” Butler says. ”you know, images like that will linger.” Opie sees that photograph as a formal response to the saintly    images of Western art history  —   a response that continued in a 2012 portrait of her daughter’s boyfriend cradling Opie’s grandson. ”I think she is an extraordinary chronicler of America in the late 20th and early 21st century,” says Helen Molesworth, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Molesworth’s Opie show opened in January. It’s called ”700 Nimes Road,” after the address of Elizabeth Taylor’s Bel Air, Calif. estate. ”Opie was allowed in the house,” Molesworth explains. ”She was allowed to take whatever photographs she wanted.” Opie never met Taylor, who was then still alive, but she wanted to make a portrait of the star through her things: handbags aligned in   rows of pink, yellow, black and red brocade and sequined coat sleeves sumptuously pressed up against each other Taylor’s famous diamonds and the slightly tattered boxes they’re stored in. Molesworth says the shocking intimacy of these photos makes them fit right in with the rest of Opie’s work. ”I think Opie is a fetishist,” she says. ”We know that from the carving of ’pervert’ into her chest. Opie is like a small kid running her hand over every texture and every surface in this house, and treating her camera as an extension of her hands.” A more gothic portrait at the Hammer Museum features a pair of sisters known for designing   fashion. Kate and Laura Mulleavy founded the Rodarte label and designed the costumes for the movie Black Swan. Opie’s portrait shows them in long dresses, embroidering what looks like blood. The photographer says it’s an allegory for something almost as culturally scary as SM: women and aging. ”They’re stitching the blood drip that I no longer have, so it’s a   world for me,” Opie observes. ”Blood has always been a medium that I personally have really valued, and it’s really interesting when blood really leaves your life, even in that way that’s on a monthly basis, where it’s just like, ’Oh, that substance is gone.’ ” The Mulleavy portrait is part of a larger project of photographing artists, writers and other people in Opie’s immediate circle  —   people like the novelist Jonathan Franzen and   Miranda July. Opie was originally inspired by social documentary photographers like Lewis Hine, but outside of photojournalism, there aren’t a lot of contemporary artists looking at the world the way Hine did. ”That photography isn’t very popular right now,” she says. ”There’s very few people who look at the world anymore. I mean, they look at the world of what they’re eating and they post it on Facebook.” Opie is more interested in how people exist in the world than how they see themselves in it. Her photos are like maps, finding points of empathy."
"Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron promised back in 2010 to bring net migration down to 100, 000 people a year. Six years later, it’s more than three times that number. That’s one reason the government’s Home Office decided that   on skilled worker visas  —   known as Tier 2 visas  —   are not welcome to stay unless they are making at least 35, 000 British pounds (about $50, 000 a year). The message is aimed at slashing migration to Britain and goes into effect in April. But critics call the new rule discriminatory and say it will strip Britain of   artists, health care workers and tradespeople. ”The estimates put the GDP loss at 181 million [pounds, equivalent to $264 million] to 761 million [pounds, equivalent to $1. 1 billion] so that’s a massive blow in the first year alone, for starters,” Joshua Harbord says. Harbord, who rattles off facts and figures about why he thinks this move will hurt Britain, might sound like an expert on immigration. But he’s not. Harbord performs at kids’ birthday parties as a pirate. And when he heard his friend Shannon Harmon might be forced to leave, he got angry. ”It was scaring Shannon and everybody it was affecting, and it felt like a massively mean policy that was apparently convincing my friends that they were worthless and unwanted,” Harbord says. Since no one else was doing anything about it, Harbord started a petition, Stop 35K, to try to change the government’s mind. Harmon, who is from Chicago, has a work visa and has been in the U. K. more than seven years. But she makes less than the amount needed to stay under the new rules. ”It feels pretty horrible and unfair that’s why we’re trying to fight it,” she says. ”I don’t think we should be valued on an arbitrary number that they’ve made up. I mean, not that many people make that much money.” Harmon works for a nonprofit and says charity workers, who aren’t paid well, contribute more than those in the finance industry. The changed rules will also affect health care workers, public transport workers and the many artists, musicians and actors who are drawn to London as a cultural hub. ”It’s just going to make places like London less dynamic, less cultural it’s just going to change the whole atmosphere,” Harmon says. Come April, she will very likely have to leave her British life partner, her career and the U. K. ”I leave everything, my whole life,” she says. Harbord and Harmon spend their nights brainstorming, working on their website and checking on the electronic petition. Every few minutes, the signatures increase. They are approaching the 100, 000 they need for Parliament to consider debating the issue. At present, immigration is a   issue in Britain. There is another petition calling on the government to completely close the U. K.’s borders. And last weekend, rival protests supporting and opposing immigration turned violent. David Metcalfe, chairman of a committee that advises the government on immigration, recommended the plan that is scheduled to take effect in April.  ”It seems to me absolutely right,” he says. ”They’ve been here five years. If they’re going to settle, they should be making a proper contribution in terms of productivity, which will be reflected in their pay.” Asked about critics who say it’s an arbitrary measure that values money over other contributions to British society, he says: ”Pay, in my view, is the best measure of skill and contribution, but you are right, it’s not a perfect measure.” Metcalfe says there will be temporary exceptions for people with skills such as nursing, because there is a shortage in the U. K. Susan Cueva, however, has been trying to stop the new rules. She works with UNISON, a trade union that represents the public sector  —   people who work in education, health care and transport. ”It’s a policy that is not really based on sound judgment,” Cueva says. ”I think from our point of view as a union, we always look at migrant workers as an asset and a resource in the country.” She says migrant workers make up at least 15 percent of the public sector workforce. And without them, she says, services will decline."
"With New Hampshire’s     primary less than a week away, the publisher of the state’s largest paper, the Union Leader, told NPR’s Robert Siegel his assessment of how the Republican presidential race has played out thus far in a single word: ”Extraordinary.” And the reason he describes the GOP campaign that way boils down to Donald Trump, who, despite coming in second in the Iowa caucuses this week, enjoys a   advantage in most New Hampshire polls. ”It’s extraordinary, because of the Trump factor and the other candidates trying to vie against Trump,” said Joe McQuaid, who has worked at the Union Leader for a half century. ”Trump has overturned the table,” he added. McQuaid’s dealings with the billionaire businessman have been toxic. In an editorial in December, McQuaid compared Trump to the bully ”Biff” from the movie Back to the Future. New Hampshire Public Radio’s Josh Rogers last month described the feud this way: ”The hostility is mutual, especially since the paper endorsed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Trump’s been a regular target in the paper’s editorial pages and branded a bully by publisher Joe McQuaid. Trump has called McQuaid a ’lowlife’ and made his paper stump speech fodder during campaign stops in the state. ” ’The famous paper, right? You know, your little paper, the Union Leader. It’s really a dishonest paper, it’s terrible. It’s a rag,’ Trump said at a recent rally in New Hampshire.” ”It’s interesting,” McQuaid told NPR. ”I expected after the Christie endorsement to be flamed on the Twitterverse by Trump, but it wasn’t until I called him out in a   editorial that it made a difference to him.” McQuaid also lamented the outsize impact money has had on the New Hampshire primary. ”There is still the smallest of chances that a   candidate, like McCain in 2008, when he was    can come set up camp in New Hampshire and try his case before the people,” McQuaid said. ”But it is more and more being drowned out by TV and Internet commercials. In Trump’s case, by the free media that the media give Trump and then express surprise at how well Trump does in the polls. It’s nonstop.” McQuaid said he hopes to be ”pleasantly surprised” and see another candidate come in ”second to Trump” Tuesday in New Hampshire. He names Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as possible challengers. ”One of those guys,” McQuaid said, ”I hope, will finish strong enough to carry the fight on, and beat Trump down South.”"
"Two days after finishing second in Iowa, Donald Trump is now alleging that winner Ted Cruz cheated and is threatening to sue over the results. The confrontational billionaire made his complaints known in his usual way  —   a series of tweets. The crux of his complaint: the Texas senator’s campaign committed ”fraud” when it informed caucusgoers of a CNN report that rival Ben Carson was leaving the campaign trail to head home to Florida after the Iowa caucuses, which many speculated meant he might drop out. Carson’s campaign put out an unusual statement during the caucuses that he wasn’t quitting but simply ”needs to go home and get a fresh set of clothes” at his house in Florida. Cruz’s campaign told its precinct captains to inform voters about that, suggesting Carson would no longer be in the race soon. Carson accused Cruz of ”dirty tricks” the day after the caucuses, and Cruz later apologized to Carson for it. The normally   retired neurosurgeon said that ”whoever is responsible for blatant lying should be dismissed.” But Wednesday, Cruz defended his team’s actions, saying he would not throw staff under the bus and questioned whether ”passing on a true and accurate news story” was a dirty trick. The CNN story Cruz was referring to only noted that Carson was going home to Florida, not that he was ”making a big announcement” in addition, which is what the Cruz campaign sent out to precinct captains. On Wednesday, Trump seemed to take Carson’s side, saying on Boston Herald radio that the Cruz campaign’s response was ”one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen” and that he ”probably will” sue over the results. ”What he did is unthinkable,” Trump continued. ”He said the man has left the race, and he said it during the caucus. And then when the clarification was put out by Ben Carson saying it’s untrue, they got the statement, and they didn’t put it out.” The GOP caucuses are not run by the state and are instead put on by each political party. Carson finished a distant fourth Monday night, with 9 percent of the vote. Cruz took 28 percent, followed by Trump at 24 percent. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was a surprisingly strong third with 23. 1 percent. Carson  —   who has still not been to New Hampshire since Iowa  —   hastily called a press conference Wednesday afternoon to presumably criticize Cruz. But when pressed by reporters, he wouldn’t directly take on Cruz. That’s despite a press release before the news conference that cited Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as evidence that ”how a person conducts his life or campaign is an indication of who he is.” ”I’m saying that evangelical voters, just like everybody else, should listen to what I just said,” Carson said at the news conference. ”Evaluate people on what they do, how they treat other people.” Speaking about making the trek to Florida, Carson asked this rhetorical question: ”Is it wrong to go home and get a change of clothes after being on the road for several weeks? Or does that make me an evil, horrible person?” Cruz responded to Trump’s threats and complaints, calling the complaints a ”Trumpertantrum.” ”My girls are 5 and 7, and I gotta tell you, Caroline and Catherine are   than a presidential candidate,” Cruz said campaigning in New Hampshire. ”We need a commander in chief, not a   in chief.”"
"It’s halftime and the Warriors are leading the Nighthawks by a touchdown in the championship football game. Inside the locker room, wide receiver Chris Gardner from Minnesota urges everyone to stay cool. ”Do not sink to their level,” Gardner says of the Warriors’ crosstown rival. ”They are losing. They are angry.” ”They’ve got more injured players,” says Owen Yan, the Warriors’    defensive end. ”They are more nervous than we are. Don’t let them provoke you.” This sort of scene plays out every year in thousands of stadiums across America. But this isn’t America. It’s Shanghai. And Yan is speaking Mandarin, translating for his teammates, most of whom are Chinese. The Nighthawks and the Warriors are part of the American Football League of China, a fledgling group of 10   teams that have been playing for three seasons in a country with practically no history of the sport. Like pro teams in the United States, some here have colorful names, such as the Combat Orcas and the Chengdu Pandamen. The players, all of whom have day jobs, learned about football by watching Hollywood movies, such as Adam Sandler’s The Waterboy, as well as NFL games online. When Yan, a    pharmaceutical salesman, first saw football videos, it was a revelation. ”I was like, ’Wow! This is a game I want to play,’ ” he says. ”It’s exciting. It feels like the team is a family.” Some of China’s most popular sports are individual ones that don’t involve physical contact, like pingpong and badminton. Chinese players say football provides an opportunity to release their aggression. Yan wears jersey number 75, which is symbolic. ”My favorite, 75, Deacon Jones,” he says, brimming with admiration. Deacon Jones was one of the great NFL defensive players of the 1960s and 1970s. He played for the the Los Angeles Rams, San Diego Chargers and Washington Redskins. He also coined the term ”sack”  —   as in leveling a quarterback. When an American friend showed Yan videos of Jones in his prime, he thought, ”This old guy was amazing.” That a Shanghai salesman is trying to model himself after an   Hall of Famer is a measure of globalization these days, as well as a sign of the increasing freedom Chinese have to define themselves in what not so long ago was a very conformist society. Yan’s parents have flown in for today’s game from Chengdu, a city more than 1, 200 miles away in southwest China. When he first told his folks he was playing football, they naturally worried. ”At the beginning, they felt this is dangerous, ’Don’t hurt yourself,’ ” Yan recalls as he walks back to the field for the second half. ”But after the first time they watched the game, ’Just go, boy! Just go! Keep fighting.’ ” Not all players who come out for football teams here are as dedicated as Yan. Vladimir Emilien, a former safety at the University of Michigan, coached the Beijing Iron Brothers this season. Emilien, who came here on a fellowship that combines coaching and business internships, says some players joined his football team just to stand out from mainstream Chinese society and buff their image on WeChat, China’s biggest social media platform. ”I had the positive guys who are very interested, but there are guys there who would possibly come just to try to take pictures and just to show it off,” he says, roaming the sidelines of today’s game in a hoodie and shorts. ”They weren’t interested in playing. They were just interested in the social media aspect of the game.” Of the more than 3, 000 fans who have come out to watch on this smoggy afternoon, not all are sold on the sport. A civil servant named Zhang has brought his    son, Ziyan, who has been reluctant to try the game. ”Most kids in China are single children, so they resist team sports or sports that are physical and aggressive,” says Zhang. ”When we went to the first football class, he didn’t even want to experience it with other kids.” Zhang doesn’t expect football to catch on here, because it doesn’t fit the Chinese temperament. Football, he says, emphasizes physical force in a sports culture that puts more emphasis on skill and finesse. But, Zhang says, the game could help toughen up Chinese boys. ”Today’s boys aren’t manly,” says Zhang. ”They should have a pioneering spirit and drive.” It’s now late in the fourth quarter and time is running down in an exciting game that has featured breakaway runs and big pass plays. The Warriors are up by a touchdown. The Nighthawks have the ball in their own territory. As the final seconds tick away, the Nighthawks’ quarterback launches a Hail Mary  —   right into the hands of a Warrior defender, who runs it back nearly 50 yards before being tackled. It’s an appropriate finish to a wild game. Yan, the Warriors defensive end, rushes to the end zone with his teammates. They fall onto their backs and soak in the victory. After three seasons, the Warriors are league champs. ”Best day of my life,” Owen says. ”Best day of my life.”"
"Morris Robinson has the kind of bass voice that reverberates so strongly, you feel it in your concert seat. Listening to it, you assume he’s been singing all of his life. And he has  —   but not opera. Robinson grew up in Atlanta, the son of a Baptist minister and a mother who spent a lot of time making sure her children played musical instruments and did well in school. His earliest memory of singing was being ”in the kiddie choir,” standing on a chair in church and singing the hymn ”Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus.” He got a lot of applause. ”Then I realized I wanted to play the drums, which is a lot more exciting than singing. So I ended up being the church drummer.” For a long time as a youth, Morris Robinson says, ”singing was just something to do. Nobody thought of it as a viable profession.” Aiming For One Goal . .. What he really wanted to do was play football. And he did, but soon he grew too big to play in his division in the youth leagues, so reluctantly, he turned to music. He sang in the Atlanta Boys’ Choir and in the chorus at his performing arts high school, where he also played football. ”When you’re a big black guy down south in Georgia,” he grins, ”you play ball. It’s like a rite of passage.” Chorus was fun, but football was cool. And cool counts a lot in high school. His prowess on the field got him to the Citadel, the military college in Charleston, S. C. where he played ball and soloed in the schools’ venerated Christmas concert with an ”O Holy Night” people still remember. An offensive lineman, Robinson was voted   three times  —   but it wasn’t enough to get him a much   spot with the NFL. He was, ironically, too small. ”At 6 feet 2   inches, 290 pounds, I’d be blocking someone 6 feet 6 inches, 300 pounds,” he says. ”Would somebody pay me millions of dollars to protect their quarterback? Probably not.” . .. Working On Another  After graduation, he got a job in corporate sales and moved around the country as he got better offers and promotions. Along the way, he married Denise Wright, an attractive flight attendant he met en route to a sales conference. Their son Miles is 10 years old. Sometimes Robinson sang for his former teammates when they got married. He missed music and began to wonder if he might be able to do something more than weddings. While working in Boston, he applied to Boston University’s Opera Institute and was accepted with a full scholarship and stipend. It was a chance to become an opera professional, but that meant giving up a lucrative job: ”company car, expense account, office at home, 401( k)  —   quit.” Denise encouraged him. They both saw it as an investment in Robinson’s career. He promised to give it his all for two years to try to make it work. ”If it doesn’t,” he promised, ”I’ll go back to work.” He didn’t have to. Robinson was cast regularly from the start. His first role was with the Boston Lyric Opera as the king in Aida. One role led to another, work was steady  —   so steady, ”I had to cut back on my   work at Best Buy to put some change in my pocket, I was singing so much.” At the same time, he was learning a lot: ”So much is coming at me: languages, style, stage combat, stage position, vocal production. . .. It was like drinking out of a fire hydrant!” But the doggedness and discipline he’d learned on the football field stood Robinson in good stead. He’s sung with opera companies from St. Louis to Sydney, from Atlanta to   . In 2013, he starred as Joe in the Houston Grand Opera’s production of Show Boat his ”Ol’ Man River” brought down the house. ’It Is Changing’  —   Somewhat, As an   opera singer, Robinson is still something of a rarity, but less rare than he once was. Racial barriers are not as high as they were when Marian Anderson and William Warfield sang onstage. ”I will say it is changing,” he says carefully. ”Exposure has reached out and brought in more   singers represented on stage, in concert halls and opera houses.” But change is relative. ”There are still very few of us,” he admits. And diversifying opera’s audience is still challenging. Robinson says he’s lucky: He’s sung most of the roles he’s wanted in many of the places he’s wanted to sing them. But over the years, he has steadfastly refused to consider one role: the title role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess. Robinson thought he knew what people were thinking when they asked: ”I’m a big, black opera singer I should be singing Porgy and Bess.” And he was having none of it: ”I didn’t want to be typecast that early in my career.” Now, firmly established after 17 years of singing mostly Italian and German works, Robinson is ready. This fall, he’ll be singing Porgy at Milan’s iconic opera house, La Scala. And seats will rumble."
"President Obama delivered remarks at a mosque in Baltimore on Wednesday afternoon, in the first visit to an American mosque he’s made during his presidency. His visit, which also included a roundtable with Muslim community members, ws intended to ”reaffirm the importance of religious freedom” to life in America, the White House says. He opened by thanking   for their service to their communities, before declaring the importance of religious tolerance in America. ”None of us can be silent. We can’t be bystanders to bigotry,” the president said in his speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. ”And together, we’ve got to show that America truly protects all faiths.” And he spoke directly to young Muslims: ”If you’re ever wondering whether you fit in here, let me say it as clearly as I can, as President of the United States: You fit in here  —   right here.” The president has visited mosques in other countries, but had not previously visited any in the U. S. The Associated Press reports. The wire service notes that Wednesday’s speech is one of several religiously themed visits he’s making this winter. ”He is set to speak to the nation’s Christian leaders at the annual National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, and last week warned against the rise of religious intolerance during a ceremony at the Israeli Embassy,” the AP writes. Visiting a mosque to reiterate America’s commitment to religious tolerance has a noteworthy precedent. Days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,   George W. Bush visited the Islamic Center in Washington, D. C. to say that the intimidation of Muslims ”should not and will not stand in America.” ”The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam,” Bush said. ”That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.” Obama’s visit to the mosque in Baltimore comes amid heated rhetoric over Islam in America. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for a ban on Muslims entering the U. S. which was denounced by some Republican leaders. Even setting aside such extreme proposals, many prominent Republicans and Democrats have very different approaches to rhetoric about Islam and terrorism. As NPR political reporter Jessica Taylor explained last November, Obama and the Democratic candidates all avoid referring to ”radical Islam” or ”Islamic extremism” when they’re denouncing terrorism, preferring to call terrorists ”extremists” or ”jihadists.” It’s a careful tactic to draw a line between the religion of Islam and the actions of terrorists. Republicans such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have criticized that linguistic choice, and called on the president to denounce ”radical Islam.” A Pew report released today suggests Americans in general are deeply divided on the issue and, like their leaders, are split along political lines.   of Republicans and   poll respondents said the next president should ”speak bluntly, even if critical of Islam as a whole.” Seventy percent of Democrats and   respondents said the next president should ”be careful not to criticize Islam as a whole.” Overall, more people would like the next president to avoid criticizing Islam in general  —   50 percent are so inclined, while 40 percent overall would prefer bluntness even if it involves criticism. Approximately half of the 2, 009 respondents said they personally know a Muslim. Pew has previously estimated there are about 2. 75 million Muslims in the U. S. or less than 1 percent of the population. A majority of those polled by Pew said U. S. Muslims face a lot of discrimination: 59 percent agreed with that statement, and even more, 76 percent, said that discrimination against Muslims is on the rise."
"The Justice Department has named a veteran prosecutor from Philadelphia as the new leader of its pardon office, which is trying to review more than 9, 000 petitions in the final year of the Obama presidency. Robert Zauzmer, 55, has worked since 1990 at the U. S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Justice Department leaders said Zauzmer represented a ”natural choice” for the pardon job, in part because of his experience training prosecutors all over the country in how to evaluate prisoners’ requests for early release. ”There were many occasions over the years where I saw these sentences of 20, 30 years, life imprisonment imposed on   offenders based on mandatory sentencing laws that troubled me,” Zauzmer told NPR in an interview this week. ”Prosecutors are very knowledgeable about these cases and about the laws and about the need to do justice,” he added. ”They are passionate about this, and they are dedicated to doing the right thing and correcting any erroneous sentences that need to be corrected, and I am equally passionate about it.” His first task? Making sure that thousands of prisoner petitions are reviewed and worthy candidates are forwarded to the White House for action before the end of the Obama presidency, whether the applications come from trained lawyers or from inmates themselves. ”We’re going to consider every petition,” he said. Zauzmer declined to offer a deadline but said stacks of petitions are ”not going to be left on my table.” ”I need to make sure that every system is in place that’s necessary to review every case and make sure everybody gets a fair shake,” Zauzmer said. ”There’s a lot to do, but we have an excellent staff there, and I’m going to give it everything I have.” Zauzmer inherits an office that has been plagued by challenges with resources, at a sensitive time toward the end of a presidency. His predecessor as pardon attorney, Deborah Leff, resigned last month. Leff said in a written statement at the time that the process ”can change the lives of a great many deserving people” and that ”it is essential that this ground breaking effort move ahead expeditiously and expand.” Four sources familiar with her departure said Leff had repeatedly advocated for better staffing for the office, which currently employs a dozen lawyers. Leff had asked department leaders to move more lawyers to help with an influx of inmate applications, but she felt she had made little headway since her start in April 2014. Her appointment back then coincided with the launch of an Obama administration effort to   punitive sentences for drug criminals who had served at least 10 years in prison and had an otherwise clean record. At the time,   Attorney General James Cole said he would be ”personally involved in ensuring the pardon attorney’s office has the resources needed to make timely and effective recommendations to the president.” Spokeswoman Emily Pierce said the Justice Department had dedicated ”significant resources to the Office of Pardon Attorney and the president’s clemency priorities.” Department leaders recently told Congress they want to use some federal money to double the staff. ”These are not easy questions that are being addressed, and because of that it does take an investment of time and resources,” said University of St. Thomas law professor Mark Osler. ”It’s not the person it’s the process, and this administration has to realize that.” Osler, who studies clemency, said a   effort under President Gerald Ford to examine the cases of   draft dodgers at its peak employed 600 people to analyze cases. More than 14, 000 applications were ultimately granted back then, Osler said. But the   initiative to revisit drug crime sentences under President Obama is on track to yield just a tiny fraction of those numbers, he added. ”Right now we have far fewer people, working in a much less efficient process,” Osler said. Three of the sources said another factor in Leff’s departure was a clash over whether the White House would receive information about the views of career lawyers in the Justice Department pardon office. The process works like this: Under the rules, all of the pardon attorney recommendations are passed to the deputy attorney general, who makes her own call. The petitions then go on to the White House for final review and action. ”I think the White House and the president are very committed to commutations,” said Julie Stewart, who argues for sentencing reductions at the nonprofit Families Against Mandatory Minimums. ”I worry they’re not getting as many as they’d like to and they hoped they would when they launched this initiative.” She added: ”I do believe the White House should have the final say and the greatest impact on whether or not someone gets out and I don’t know that that’s happening right now.” Advocates who closely follow the clemency process said it will need to kick into overdrive soon, lest some inmates applying under the program for drug criminals, and many others who argue they deserve to leave prison early, be left on the table for the next administration to consider. With the clock ticking, the advocates say, the White House should consider a ”mass clemency” for the approximately 4, 800 people convicted of crack cocaine offenses who would be punished far less harshly than the laws on the books today. ”After World War I, after World War II, after the Korean War, and what President Ford did, after the Vietnam War, was categorically address people who had been oversentenced,” Osler said. ”That is a part of our history and the same thing should be done after this war, the war on drugs.” But in the interview, the new acting pardon attorney cast some doubt on the idea of a mass clemency. ”So I don’t think we will ever get to a point where we will say, let’s just take this basket of people and do mass clemency,” Zauzmer said. ”We will look at these cases individually to make sure that we’re not creating an undue risk to public safety, and that requires an individual assessment.” And Zauzmer pointed out that he is quite familiar with those    looks. He said the White House had already shortened the prison terms of six inmates from his district in Pennsylvania, including the case of David Padilla, who had been serving life behind bars. ”He was a classic example of someone who committed crimes, did bad things, admits it, has served almost 20 years in prison and should not be serving a life sentence,” he said. ”A life sentence does not possibly match the kind of criminal conduct that he was involved in.” Brett Sweitzer, Zauzmer’s counterpart in the federal defender’s office in Philadelphia, called Zauzmer ”smart and tireless” and said he has managerial skills that will come in handy in the new role. ”I’ve been told there’s interest in speeding up the clemency initiative and making sure nobody is left behind who should be in the boat,” Sweitzer said. ”Now, how big the administration’s boat is? I can’t speak to that. But I think Bob will be dedicated to carrying out the vision that the administration is setting.”"
"Editor’s note: This post was updated Feb. 3, 2016, at 12:25 pm to include a statement from the Food and Drug Administration and a comment from Mark Sauer.  Would it be ethical for scientists to try to create babies that have genetic material from three different people? An influential panel of experts has concluded the answer could be yes. The   panel, assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released a   report Wednesday outlining a plan for how scientists could ethically pursue the controversial research. ”The committee concludes that it is ethically permissible” to conduct such experiments, the report says, but then goes on to detail a long list of conditions that would have to be met first. For example, scientists would have to perform extensive preliminary research in the laboratory and with animals to try to make sure it is safe. And then researchers should initially try to make only male babies, because they would be incapable of passing their unusual amalgamation of DNA on to future generations. ”Minimizing risk to future children should be of highest priority,” the committee writes. The report was requested by the Food and Drug Administration in response to applications by two groups of scientists in New York and Oregon to conduct the experiments. Their goal is to help women have healthy babies even though they come from families plagued by genetic disorders. A statement issued by the FDA immediately after the report’s release raised questions about whether the FDA would permit the research to move forward. The FDA email praised the ”thoughtful work” of the panel and said the agency would be ”reviewing” the recommendations. But it noted that the latest federal budget ”prevents the FDA from using funds to review applications in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include” changes that could be passed down to future generations. As a result, the email says, any such research ”cannot be performed in the United States” at this time. The researchers pursuing these experiments welcomed the panel’s conclusions. ”I think it’s a great step in the right direction,” Mark Sauer, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University who is a member of one of the teams, said of the National Academies report in an interview before the FDA issued its statement. Sauer called the report more of a ”yellow light” than a ”green light,” because of the long list of caveats and cautions. But that is ”better than a red light,” he says. ”Most importantly to us is that it allows the work to continue to hopefully produce children without these disorders,” Sauer says. But Sauer said he was disappointed when he learned of the FDA’s response. ”Politics as usual often gets in way of progress,” Sauer said in a subsequent email. While the FDA statement would cause ”undue delays” in his research, he added that he hoped it wouldn’t permanently ”necessarily halt the efforts.” Critics of the research, meanwhile, say the number of women who could benefit from the experiments is so small that it’s not worth crossing a line that’s long been considered    —   making genetic changes that could be passed down for generations. ”The possibility of what you could call ’mission creep’ is very real,” says Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a watchdog group based in Berkeley, Calif. ”People are talking about going forward not just with this but with the kind of genetic engineering that will produce outright genetically modified human beings.” Once that happens, Darnovsky says, ”I think you get into a situation of where some people are genetically enhanced and other people are the regular old variety of human being. And I don’t think that’s a world we want to live in.” The goal of the research is to help women carrying diseases known as mitochondrial disorders, which are only passed down by women through defects in the genetic material in their eggs. Specifically, the defects are in a type of genetic material known as mitochondrial DNA. Unlike the DNA that most people are familiar with  —   the 23 pairs of human chromosomes that program most of our body processes and traits  —   mitochondrial DNA consists of just 37 genes inside mitochondria, which are structures inside cells that provide their energy. Mitochondrial disorders range from mild to severe. In many cases there is no treatment, and the affected child dies early in life after suffering progressive, debilitating symptoms. Scientists want to create eggs free of mitochondrial defects by removing the defective mitochondrial DNA. It would be replaced with healthy mitochondrial DNA from eggs donated by other women. The British government recently approved such experiments in that country. But this remains controversial, not only due to the fact that the resulting children would have DNA from three people. Because the transplanted DNA could be passed down for generations, critics fear it could accidentally introduce errors into the human gene pool that could create new diseases. They also worry it would set a precedent that could open the door to creating designer babies, in which parents can pick and chose the traits of their children. Because of such concerns, making any change in DNA that could be passed down for generations has long been considered  . The committee report acknowledged that making babies with DNA from three different people could have ”psychological and social effects” on the offspring, including issues about their ”conception of identity.” In addition, the committee acknowledged the possibility that it could lead to attempts at genetic ”enhancements.” Such work would raise thorny regulatory issues, the committee noted. For example, the federal government is prohibited from funding research that involves destroying human embryos. As a result, ”even an agency request” for data from such research in support of FDA approval ”could well be controversial,” the report says. Nevertheless, the committee says the potential benefits make the work worth pursuing with careful oversight. Moreover, the FDA could at some point even consider letting experiments proceed to try to create female babies if certain criteria are met, the report said, including the production of ”clear evidence of safety and efficacy from male” experiments and signs that it would be publicly acceptable."
"The Russian punk band Pussy Riot has just released a new music video lampooning the country’s   Yuri Chaika.  The   who is supposed to be one of Russia’s top crime fighters, has been accused of massive corruption. The song revels in it. The video opens with a woman in a prosecutor’s uniform gorging on a roast turkey, which she tears apart with her bare hands. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the founders of the Pussy Riot protest collective, raps a kind of Russian primer for how to get ahead via corruption: ”Be humble, learn to obey, don’t worry about material stuff,” she says. ”Be loyal to those in power, ’cause power is a gift from God, son.” Then, after prancing in front of a group of hanged, hooded figures, she and a line of uniformed dancers show how to get rid of the competition. ”First, the cops will pull you in for questioning,” she raps while another dancer wraps duct tape around a hooded figure in a chair. ”Then it’ll look like an accident. You’ll be fed to the fish.” Chaika’s name is the Russian word for seagull, and the video rubs it in with winglike gestures, a female prosecutor figure wearing a seagull mask and a giant,   seagull emblem that mimics Russia’s iconic   eagle. The accusations against Chaika erupted last month in a lengthy documentary by opposition blogger and   activist Alexei Navalny, who accused the   of using his power to enrich his sons and cover up their connections to underworld figures. The documentary has garnered more than 4. 5 million views on YouTube. Chaika angrily denies the allegations, saying that they were instigated by Western intelligence agencies and William Browder, an American financier. Browder, who claims that his Russian assets were stolen in a tax scam by government officials, was instrumental in getting U. S. sanctions imposed on top Russian officials as part of the Magnitsky Act. Browder’s lawyer in the tax case was Russian attorney Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested on tax fraud charges and died in prison in 2009, allegedly after being beaten and denied medical treatment. A top Kremlin spokesman has said that the Russian government isn’t interested in the accusations against Chaika’s sons. Earlier this week, the government announced that the   himself would be in charge of investigating the allegations. According to Time magazine, the new Pussy Riot video was stealthily filmed at locations around Moscow, and in one case, the collective convinced the owners of a venue that they were part of a   convention. It’s not clear whether the music video will provoke any official reaction. Tolokonnikova and her colleague Maria Alyokhina already served nearly two years in prison for a previous protest. They were convicted of ”hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for filming in a Moscow cathedral as part of a 2012 music video critical of President Vladimir Putin. As part of the chorus in the new video, Tolokonnikova  —   channeling Chaika  —   sings: ”I love Russia. I am a patriot.” In today’s Russia, that’s become a common refrain from those accused of crimes."
"For the first time, top Army and Marine Corps leaders have testified that they think women should register for the draft. ”I think that all eligible and qualified men and women should register for the draft,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Both Milley and Marine Gen. Robert Neller said women, like men, should be required to register for the Selective Service at age 18. Tuesday’s hearing centered on the implementation of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s recent decision to open up all military positions to women, including   combat roles. Other military leaders at the hearing did not immediately endorse the idea. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said, ”This needs to be looked at as part of a national debate, given the changed circumstances.” Army Acting Secretary Patrick Murphy also called for a debate about women and the draft. The comments from Neller and Milley supporting women registering for the Selective Service ”are a first in the Defense Department,” The Washington Post reported. The Selective Service says that nearly all ”male U. S. citizens born after Dec. 31, 1959, who are 18 but not yet 26 years old” are required to register. Men in that age group who are immigrants residing in the U. S. also must sign up, with the exception of those on visas. A banner on the Selective System System website reads: ”REGISTER: It’s What a Man’s Got to Do. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s the Law.” Right underneath the banner is this message: ”FEMALES  REGISTRATION: While there has been talk recently about women in combat, there has been NO decision to require females to register with Selective Service, or be subject to a future military draft. Selective Service continues to register only men, ages 18 through 25.” It’s worth noting that while people are still required to register, the draft was ended in 1973 and the military became an   force. Tuesday’s Senate committee hearing underscored divisions over how the military should proceed following Carter’s landmark announcement in December that all combat roles are now open. That decision dramatically expanded the roles women can take in military operations. ”They’ll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars, lead infantry soldiers into combat. They’ll be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force Parajumpers and everything else that was previously open only to men,” Carter said at the time. The decision was opposed by the Marines, citing a   study they conducted that found ”  units were slower, less lethal and more prone to injury than   units,” NPR’s Tom Bowman reported. At the hearing, military leaders said that ”it will take up to three years to fully integrate women into all combat jobs,” The Associated Press reports. The issues of women in combat and registering for the draft also have a legal connection. The Supreme Court ruled in Rostker v. Goldberg in 1981 that it was constitutional to draft only men into the military because women were excluded from combat roles. But ”things have changed,” a federal judge in California said during a December hearing over a lawsuit arguing that an   draft is unconstitutional, as the   reported. As NPR’s David Welna noted after Carter’s decision, ”Congress seems to have lost its   rationale for limiting Selective Service registration to males only.”"
"Maurice White, the founder of Earth, Wind  Fire, the band known for hits like ”Shining Star and ”Boogie Wonderland,” died in his sleep overnight. He was 74. Verdine White posted the following message on the group’s Facebook page: ”My brother, hero and best friend Maurice White passed away peacefully last night in his sleep. While the world has lost another great musician and legend, our family asks that our privacy is respected as we start what will be a very difficult and life changing transition in our lives. Thank you for your prayers and well wishes.” White founded the   band in the late 1960s. ”The group went on to sell more than 90 million albums worldwide, displaying a flashy and eclectic musical style that incorporated his influences from growing up in Memphis, Tennessee,” The Associated Press reports. One of the Earth, Wind  Fire’s most famous songs was ”September,” a song that’s a   at wedding receptions everywhere. NPR Music wrote about the origins of the song in 2014. ”The story of the song begins in 1978. Allee Willis was a struggling songwriter in LA  —   until the night she got a call from Maurice White, the leader of Earth, Wind  Fire. White offered her the chance of a lifetime: to   the band’s next album. Willis arrived at the studio the next day hoping it wasn’t some kind of cosmic joke.” It wasn’t a joke, and over the next month, the group wrote one of the   songs ever. ”The trigger for that yearning feeling, Peretz says, is the opening line. White asks, ”Do you remember?” and we supply the memories. It’s a song that can bring all of the generations together, which makes it perfect for family gatherings. The true meaning is up to us  —   including, Allee Willis says, that strangely specific date. ”’We went through all the dates: ’Do you remember the first, the second, the third, the fourth . .. ’ and the one that just felt the best was the 21st,’ Willis explains. ’I constantly have people coming up to me and they get so excited to know what the significance was. And there is no significance beyond it just sang better than any of the other dates. So . .. sorry!’ ”That’s OK, Allee. Maurice was right. It doesn’t matter what it means. When we hear it, it’s September 21st, and we are dancing again with our family, in a song that never really ends.”"
"For Republicans who aren’t named Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, the goal in New Hampshire’s upcoming primary is to finish second  —   at best. That’s the best outcome the establishment Republican contenders can hope for following this week’s Iowa caucuses, where Cruz and Trump topped the field in a tight   race with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. It’s a far cry from the beginning of this campaign cycle, when Jeb Bush was the acknowledged Republican   and had the backing of what was presumed to be a source of power within the GOP, the Republican establishment. Now, the power of the establishment is in question, and when Bush campaigns, he acknowledges membership in that class with some good humor. It’s a matter of pedigree. ”I’m part of the establishment because I am Barbara Bush’s son,” he said at a recent town hall meeting in Manchester, N. H. ”Well, I’m not worried about that.” For Bush, and at least two other GOP contenders, it’s also about having been a governor, and about having had to solve problems rather than advance an ideology. At the gathering at Manchester’s Alpine Club, where Bush fielded questions from voters, he also advanced an establishment outlook: Republicans are about governing well  —   not just expressing anger. ”Here’s how we win: We persuade people that the conservative cause will lift them up  —   that it’s not an angry, reactionary philosophy it’s a welcoming, hopeful, optimistic philosophy,” he said. Fergus Cullen is a former chairman of the New Hampshire State Republican Party and the author of Granite Steps, a book about the New Hampshire primary. He considers himself an establishment Republican, although he prefers the label ”mainstream.” ”There is a mainstream, traditional Republican, and even in this Obama era, this Tea Party era, I think it still is some half of the Republican base,” Cullen says. ”We don’t get as much attention, we don’t make as much noise as other parts of the Republican coalition, but we do still exist.” Nothing bespeaks ”establishment” more than a dynasty. And when Bush spoke at the Alpine Club, among those introducing him was Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire senator and governor whose father was also governor. New Hampshire State Senate President Chuck Morse, another Bush supporter, resists the idea of an establishment, but he admits that there are strong connections among   Republicans. ”People like Sen. Gregg and myself  —   yes, of course,” Morse says. ”But I honestly believe that just creates relationships which is what I think politics is all about.” Those relationships are fine  —   until people get angry and say that none of it works and that the people in charge are responsible, a point that Morse concedes. ”You’re right about that,” Morse says. ”I think the one thing that the Republicans have to do at this point is start pointing that arrow at the right person.” And by that, he means President Obama. For now, though, the archers must point their arrows at one another. To make a good showing, Bush has to compete for votes with the two sitting governors in the race: John Kasich of Ohio and Chris Christie of New Jersey. In Iowa, where evangelical Republicans are more numerous, the three governors polled a combined 6. 5 percent. The polls in New Hampshire show all the governors far behind Trump. And many mainstream Republicans, like former state party Chairman Cullen, figure their numbers are  . Come next week, Cullen says, the pressure will be on to consolidate establishment support behind one candidate to stop Trump. ”And I think that ’stop Trump’ movement will be very strong in the wake of what happens in both Iowa and New Hampshire,” he says. As for the other candidates, Cullen says he and others are concerned that Cruz can’t carry swing Republican states. ”To my view, there are only a couple of candidates who make [New Hampshire] and other swing states competitive,” Cullen says. ”I’ve got my doubts that Ted Cruz can do that.” He thinks Kasich and Christie could do it  —   but not Bush. Voters, Cullen says, have already made up their minds about Bush. The most intriguing candidate of the moment is neither a sitting governor  —   like these three  —   nor a political bomb thrower like Trump or Cruz. It’s Marco Rubio. Tuesday night, fresh from his   finish in Iowa, Rubio packed the town hall in Exeter, N. H. The room was filled with 700 people  —   and some genuine electricity. People cheered Rubio’s arrival. They chanted his name. They laughed at his jokes. They applauded at his applause lines. ”When I am president, if we don’t know who you are, and we don’t know why you’re coming, you are not getting in the United States of America,” he said to applause and cheers. When the Florida senator hit the national political stage six years ago, he was the darling of the newborn Tea Party. He challenged the Republican governor for the Senate nomination and won. Once in the Senate, though, Rubio worked with Democrats on a plan for immigration reform, a plan he later walked away from. Is he an acceptable mainstream Republican to New Hampshire primary voters? Cullen says that’s a big question facing Rubio this week. ”Well, he’s making the argument here in New Hampshire that he can unite the party, that he can appeal to Tea Party conservatives, liberty conservatives, traditional Republicans,” Cullen says. ”I don’t think he’s the only candidate who’s making that argument or could do it, but the other candidates maybe are more easily identified as traditional mainstream Republicans.” Ellen Hyatt and Mary Sue Sanderson, both from Hampton, N. H. and both of whom identify themselves primarily as moms, were among those at the Rubio rally. Hyatt said the two of them have been mulling over the primary race. ”We were talking Cruz versus Rubio. And much of what they say is very similar but we really are debating very hard about what the differences are,” Hyatt said. To Sanderson, the fact that Rubio is already in D. C. and a part of the Republican establishment, is a strength. ”He knows what’s going on, and I think that knowing what’s going on is actually a big help when you’re faced with crisis decisions that need to be made,” she says. In the past few days, some of the Republicans who have failed to attract support this cycle have dropped out. But for a ”Stop Trump, Stop Cruz” movement to gain traction, some of the mainstream Republican contenders will have to drop out, too. That’s tough. For one thing, as Cullen, the former state GOP official, says, these are not people accustomed to folding their tents. ”Almost all of these candidates have never lost an election. They aren’t used to losing. They aren’t used to being defeated,” Cullen says. ”And for them to accept defeat is really hard.” And there’s another obstacle to winnowing the establishment field: Money isn’t necessarily a problem. The campaign finance rules make it possible to keep running with just one supporter  —   provided he’s a generous billionaire."
"For the first few minutes of his appearance on Capitol Hill Thursday morning, pharma bad boy Martin Shkreli was the soul of decorum. He sat placidly, hands clasped, a polite smile fixed upon his face, as members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee fired questions at him. And to every question he gave the same answer: ”On the advice of counsel, I invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against   and respectfully decline to answer your question.” As the questions dragged on, growing ever more pointed and harsh, Shkreli’s fixed smile turned into a kind of incredulous smirk. When Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina encouraged him to talk, Shkreli replied, ”I intend to follow the advice of my counsel, and not yours.” By the time the hearing ended, the polite facade had pretty much cracked, judging by this tweet to his 53, 500 followers: Shkreli, 32, gained notoriety last year after the company he founded, Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased a lifesaving drug called Daraprim, which is used to treat HIV patients and others with suppressed immune systems, and immediately raised the price by 5, 000 percent. To say the move made Shkreli unpopular is a huge understatement: News outlets dubbed him the most hated man in America. In December, FBI agents showed up at his Manhattan apartment to arrest the   executive on unrelated securities charges. The   Shkreli was accused of cheating investors in a pair of hedge funds he operated by lying to them about the value of assets he managed. He was released on $5 million bail. Most people, faced with daunting legal problems, disappear quietly to await the resolution of their cases. Not Shkreli. In the weeks to come, he gave several media interviews, tweeted voluminously and spent hours on a live stream feed of his life. The feed shows him ambling around his apartment in sweatpants and stubble, playing video games, idly strumming a guitar and rating girls on OKCupid. While Shkreli usually stopped short of talking about the fraud charges against him, he made clear he sees himself as the deeply misunderstood victim of overzealous prosecutors and media. In an era when the corporate apology has become an art form, Shkreli used his social media forum to lash back at his critics and settle scores. Shkreli’s other claim to fame was as the man who spent $2 million to buy the lone copy of a   Clan album. When one of the group’s members, Ghostface Killah, heard about the Daraprim controversy, he called Shkreli an   word that can’t be reprinted here. Not long afterward, Shkreli appeared on video surrounded by three masked figures he called his goons and addressed the rapper directly. ”Most people don’t try to beef with me. You know why? Nobody’s that dumb,” he said. On Jan. 21, someone on Shkreli’s live stream asked whether coming off like such a jerk was a good idea, given the legal charges he faced. Speaking out against unfair attacks was a matter of personal integrity, Shkreli replied. He was being true to himself. ”In many ways, I think we all have choices to make and when it comes to me, I sort of tend to prefer authenticity than to manufacture a personality that is fake,” he said. Two days ago, Shkreli announced he had fired his lawyer and replaced him with Benjamin Brafman, best known for representing famous rappers. Brafman laid down one condition: No more media interviews. Shkreli announced several days ago that he would be pleading the Fifth at today’s hearing, but the questions Thursday appeared to test his  . At one point, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the decision to jack up the price of Daraprim was ”blood money.” ”I know you are smiling, but I am very serious, sir,” Cummings told him. Later, Shkreli retweeted dozens of messages from his followers offering support and criticizing the committee members. ”He meant no disrespect, but in truth, statements made by some of the members of the committee were wrong, unfair and difficult to listen to without responding,” Brafman said."
"Members of Congress at a Thursday hearing wrestled with questions about why the prices of some old drugs are rising so fast. Much of the session held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was dominated by Martin Shkreli, the   former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who earned notoriety by raising the price 5, 000 percent for the drug Daraprim, a treatment for toxoplasmosis. Shkreli  —   who has been indicted on unrelated securities charges and pleaded not guilty  —   invoked his Fifth Amendment right against   and refused to answer questions. As the hearing went on, he smirked, rolled his eyes and chuckled. Afterward, he insulted the committee members on Twitter. Committee member Rep. Ted Lieu,  . tweeted back. Once Shkreli left Thursday’s hearing, lawmakers grilled other witnesses about rising drug prices. The seemingly simple question about how much Daraprim costs in the real world proved pretty tricky to pin down. Listen for yourself as Rep. Peter Welch,  . asked Turing’s Chief Commercial Officer Nancy Retzlaff how much Daraprim costs. The response is enough to make us feel like imbeciles."
"For the past two years, Joseph Richardson has been trying to figure out how to keep young black men with knife and gunshot wounds from turning up again with similar injuries at Prince George’s Hospital Trauma Center outside Washington, D. C. Richardson is director of the Violence Intervention Research Project at the trauma center. When these men are admitted, he shows up at their rooms to ask them to take part in his ongoing study on risk factors for repeat violent injuries. Sometimes he finds them handcuffed to a hospital bed, guarded by a police officer or two. Richardson has to walk away. The patients are under arrest and   to him. Richardson is also a criminologist and associate professor at the University of Maryland. And recently, in the context of a national discussion about police violence, he got to thinking about the lack of access that kept him from asking these men what happened. How many of those handcuffed shooting victims had taken a bullet from a cop, he wondered? With scant data on how many people are shot by police across the country every year, Richardson sees potential in hospital emergency departments. As a researcher he might not have direct access to patients under arrest, but the doctors and nurses certainly do. He’s proposing that emergency departments step in and capitalize on that unique access to compile an alternative data source. Doctors And Nurses Could Ask: ’Who Shot You?’ Richardson views police violence as a public health issue and believes health care providers have a role to play in addressing it. The concept seems simple: At some point during a patient’s visit, emergency department staffers ask patients who shot them, record their answers and report the information to state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He’s not suggesting doctors and nurses investigate their patients’ claims, or that this   data would even be completely accurate. After all, in quite a few cases it could be impossible to know who shot you. Even so, Richardson says that some data are better than none.   numbers along with those recorded by police and media outlets could help define the true scope of police shootings. In December, around the time Richardson floated his idea in the Journal of Urban Health, the FBI announced plans to expand its database on violent police encounters. For the first time, the agency will collect information on serious injuries, not just fatalities. But it will continue to lean on voluntary reports by local police departments. Richardson is skeptical that the federal government can solve the data problem. ”There has to be a more pioneering, innovative approach to doing it,” he says. That’s what he’s trying to figure out. He notes that information about people who survive police shootings is especially elusive. ”The only way we would know that is either the police would have to report that or the hospitals would have to,” he says. ”Up to this point, neither entity has done it.” Richardson points to a 2009 survey of academic emergency physicians that found that almost all of them believed they’d seen cases of excessive use of force by police but had largely failed to report them. In interviews with the emergency department staff at Prince George’s, he found that the overwhelming majority said the hospital has an ethical responsibility to record and report   shootings. But doctors and nurses raised concerns about the logistics and consequences. Some said it would be difficult to put into practice a standardized approach to collecting the information. Others felt patients weren’t likely to open up to trauma staff  —   especially given the presence of police anytime a victim is under arrest. Still others worried they’d be dragged into court to testify if they implicated the police. Can Hospitals Balance Care And Reporting On Shootings? Logistics aside, what looms over Richardson’s proposal is a philosophical divide over the role of the hospital and its staff. As American College of Emergency Physicians board member James Augustine sees it, muddling a hospital’s mission is bad for patients. ”The hospital is not a good place for legal and law enforcement activities to infringe on people’s rights for health care,” says the veteran emergency medicine doctor. ”In the emergency setting, this is not a priority.” But he doesn’t dismiss the idea outright. The health care system plays a vital role in amassing data, he says. In fact, many trauma centers already collect reams of information and submit it to the National Trauma Data Bank. Stripped of names, it’s used to track everything from auto accidents to   burns. It might be feasible to add information about violent police encounters to those data collection efforts, Augustine says. David Livingston, chief of trauma at University Hospital in Newark, agrees that when it comes to collecting information, hospitals could help. ”Emergency departments are the canary in the coal mine of health in our communities,” he says. ”They’re a unique public health resource to gather data.” But there are serious limitations. Two years ago, Livingston and his colleagues analyzed more than 6, 000 gunshot wounds treated at his hospital and found that his own trauma unit’s database didn’t account for nearly 20 percent of them. It turned out the emergency department, not trauma, had handled these relatively minor injuries and Livingston and his   only discovered them when they scoured that department’s billing records. As for Richardson’s proposal, Livingston says it could work in theory. ”Is it economically and logistically feasible?” he asks. ”We’d like to think it is, but I have my doubts.” Getting detailed information would probably require dedicated staff, he says, and that’s expensive. But he’s quick to point out that similar data on cancer, heart disease, smoking, obesity and other conditions has been collected, with the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation footing the bill. ”In that respect,” he says, ”Dr. Richardson’s contention to put this on trauma centers is shirking the government’s responsibility.” Still, Richardson suggests a place to start:   violence intervention programs. Only about 30 hospitals in the U. S. have these special programs aimed at curbing readmission for violent crimes, but Richardson sees them as prime candidates for pilot projects.  For University of California, San Francisco trauma surgeon Rochelle Dicker, who heads up the violence intervention program at San Francisco General Hospital, keeping tabs on police violence seems like a natural extension of the work her team already does. ”Part of our responsibility as physicians is to not just to do the traditional ’treat and street,’ but to really get to the issues at hand and address violence in a more comprehensive way.” In order to do that, she says, accurate information is key. ”The work is provocative,” she says of Richardson’s proposal, and it will get people talking. ”I applaud the author for taking that first step and opening the door.”"
"Morocco has officially turned on a massive solar power plant in the Sahara Desert, kicking off the first phase of a planned project to provide renewable energy to more than a million Moroccans. The Noor I power plant is located near the town of Ouarzazate, on the edge of the Sahara. It’s capable of generating up to 160 megawatts of power and covers thousands of acres of desert, making the first stage alone one of the world’s biggest solar thermal power plants. When the next two phases, Noor II and Noor III, are finished, the plant will be the single largest solar power production facility in the world, The Guardian says. Morocco currently relies on imported sources for 97 percent of its energy consumption, according to the World Bank, which helped fund the Noor power plant project. Investing in renewable energy will make Morocco less reliant on those imports as well as reduce the nation’s   carbon emissions by millions of tons. The plant is similar to   plants located in the Mohave Desert in the U. S. Solar thermal power plants capture the sun’s energy as heat, then convert water into steam and turn turbines. As NASA explained last month: ”The system at Ouarzazate uses    [  ] parabolic mirrors to focus energy onto a   pipeline,” NASA’s Kathryn Hansen wrote. ”The pipeline’s hot fluid  —   393 degrees Celsius (739 degrees Fahrenheit)  —   is the heat source used to warm the water and make steam. The plant doesn’t stop delivering energy at nighttime or when clouds obscure the sun heat from the fluid can be stored in a tank of molten salts.” (Why was NASA chiming in? Well, because the power plant is large enough that  —   even with only one stage completed  —   it’s visible from space.) The ability to store the heat to make energy when the sun is not immediately shining is a major advantage of solar thermal power (also called concentrated solar power or concentrating solar power). Unlike photovoltaic systems, thermal systems don’t suddenly drop in output when a cloud passes over the sun, and you don’t need batteries to store some energy for nighttime use. In Morocco, as the BBC notes, the first stage of the power plant will generate electricity for three hours after nightfall, and the full complex is meant to produce power 20 hours a day. The Guardian, writing about the project in October, noted that the technology is more expensive and less widely used than photovoltaic panels like you might see on residential roofs, but is   for harnessing the desert’s solar energy: ”The potential for solar power from the desert has been known for decades. In the days after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 the German particle physicist Gerhard Knies, calculated that the world’s deserts receive enough energy in a few hours to provide for humanity’s power needs for a whole year. The challenge though, has been capturing that energy and transporting it to the population centres where it is required. ”As engineers put the finishing touches to Noor 1, its 500, 000   solar mirrors glitter across the desert skyline. The 800 rows follow the sun as it tracks across the heavens, whirring quietly every few minutes as their shadows slip further east.” They’ll soon be joined by hundreds of thousands more mirrors: As Morocco’s King Mohammed VI commissioned Noor I, he also officially launched the construction of Noor II and Noor III."
"Hail, Caesar! the 17th feature from indefatigable screenwriting, directing and ( ) editing brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, is rated   for ”suggestive content and smoking.” But save for one word  —   sodomy  —   and a few less clinical terms that have long been allowed on network TV, this genial farce set in 1950s Hollywood could’ve almost passed muster under the Hays Code. It follows a frantic couple of days in the life of Eddie Mannix, head of Physical Production for Capitol Pictures. Any resemblance between this character and the historical Eddie Mannix, a legendary ”fixer” for MGM Studios during Hollywood’s Golden Age, is purely . .. well, the Coens would prefer you not ask such boring questions. But for what it’s worth,  ’s boss also shares his name with a   showbiz mogul of antiquity, Nick Schenck. While biographers and historians have linked the real Mannix to any number of dark deeds, his Hail, Caesar! alter ego is, surprisingly, not such a bad guy. As embodied by Josh Brolin, a leading man’s man whose rugged charm was on full display in the Coens’ 2007 best   No Country for Old Men, Eddie is wily enough to succeed in pictures, but decent so far as it goes: hardworking, fair to his employees, warm and respectful with his wife, a pragmatist with a conscience. (He’s availing himself of the Catholic sacrament of penance when we meet him, in point of fact.) But he’s no pushover: He keeps Capitol Pictures pictures on schedule and on budget, and Capitol Pictures stars out of jail and out of the papers. If that means manipulating reporters, or making the occasional    cash contribution to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, well, that’s life in the Dream Factory. Eddie finds his considerable   acumen tested when Baird Whitlock (game George Clooney, in his fourth Coen Bros. joint) the    star of Capitol’s   religious epic Hail, Caesar! is kidnapped. (Yes, Raising Arizona, Fargo and The Big Lebowski all turned on kidnappings, too. One suspects that both Coens carry ransom insurance.) While Eddie hustles to recover his actor and to keep the incident under wraps, other production emergencies vie for his attention. For one thing, DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johnansson) the star of family ”aquatic pictures” featuring Busby   choreography, is   and the mother of a child by a third man  —   which means Eddie needs her to choose a spouse, pronto, for   purposes. (After she’s pried out of her mermaid prosthetic, she gripes, ”I don’t think I’m gonna fit back in that fish ass again. ”) Then there’s the matter of British director Laurence Laurentz  —   played by Ralph Fiennes, whose walkabout into comedy in recent years is a boon to all humankind. Eddie has forced Laurentz to cast singing cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich, holding his own among much more famous company) in his Noel   Broadway adaptation Merrily We Dance. Turns out Hobie isn’t nearly as comfortable gliding across a drawing room in a tuxedo as he is performing stunts on horseback. While fighting all these fires, Eddie is also mulling a generous job offer from Lockheed Aircraft. More money, saner hours and, says the headhunter, a piece of the future. After all, who’s going to keep going to the pictures once every American home has a television set? This frantic action pauses from time to time to allow the Coens to clear their throats on subjects that only filmmakers as frugal and revered as these two may touch: Whitlock soaks up his captors’ lectures on Marxism like a sponge  —   they’re a cabal of disgruntled screenwriters, naturally  —   while Eddie wrangles the panel of clerics and rabbis he’s convened to reassure him that Hail, Caesar! will not offend any person of faith with its depiction of Jesus Christ. (Whether the extras hanging on crucifixes are entitled to hardship pay is the kind of matter Eddie can resolve himself.) But whatever point the Coens are trying to make about the pageantry of belief systems, they never sacrifice buoyancy to make it. Appropriately for a yarn about The Industry, some of the best scenes hail from the films within the film. The best of these is No Dames! a     musical starring Bert Gurney (Channing Tatum, who is really a pretty good dancer. Who knew? ). This long segment is even more homoerotic than the excerpts from Hail, Caesar!  —   the Capitol Pictures Bible epic, I mean  —   and is easily the most delightful production number in a major motion picture since the Coens’ lifelong pal Sam Raimi shoehorned one into   3. It’ll also make you miss the days long before the Age of Ultron, when movie titles had exclamation points instead of colons. Hail, Caesar! doesn’t have the weirdness of its authors’ other Old Hollywood film, 1991’s Barton Fink (which also concerned the fictitious Capitol Pictures) or the weary soul of their prior feature, 2013’s haunting Inside Llewyn Davis. Its pleasures are piecemeal and peculiar, like the way Sir Michael Gambon, the film’s narrator, elongates the phrase ”in Westerly Malibu.” Or the way Tilda Swinton plays a pair of identical  —   and fiercely competitive  —   twin gossip columnists. Or the way that a work print of Hail, Caesar! includes a title card reading DIVINE PRESENCE TO BE SHOT. They’re not the types to go fumbling for profundity, those Coens. Profoundly funny will do."
"Employers are pushing workers to get in shape and become more fit through workplace wellness programs. But if employers use body mass index as a yardstick for health, then that could unfairly penalize millions of Americans, a study finds. Doctors contend that BMI’s usefulness ends at a rough indication that a patient should be checked for things like high blood pressure or cholesterol. ”It’s a preliminary screening tool. Higher BMI is associated with higher health risk, but it’s not a health state,” says Dr. Deborah Burnet, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago who didn’t work on the study. Pro athletes often have BMIs that could get them in trouble with a workplace wellness plan. Their muscle mass can boost them into the obese range, even though they’re healthy and physically fit. Based on players’ height and weight on the NFL website, there is no Denver Broncos player with a normal BMI, calculated at 18. 5 to 24. 9. On average, the Broncos’ BMIs fall into the obese range, at 30 or greater. Panthers players may want to avoid getting tackled by Sylvester Williams in the Super Bowl. At 6 foot 2 and 313 pounds, he has a BMI of 40. And that mismatch between BMI and health is true not just for athletes, according to the study, published on Thursday in the International Journal of Obesity. It looked at the proportion of healthy individuals by BMI and six other heart and metabolic measures like blood pressure, cholesterol and insulin resistance. Out of a national database of more than 40, 000 people, about 70 percent of people with   BMIs were in the healthy range for all the other measures. So were 47 percent of people with an overweight BMI, 30 percent of those considered obese, and 16 percent of those labeled extremely obese. Of course, if 30 percent of people considered obese are healthy, it also means that 70 percent of these individuals are not. Burnet says BMI is still useful as a quick and dirty way of giving doctors a   on who might be at extra risk for health problems. Indeed, the BMI was first invented in the early 19th century an an economic tool, not as individual health metric. Mathematics professor Keith Devlin, writing for NPR in 2009, called it ”a    hack.” Some provisions of the Affordable Care Act and rules proposed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would allow employers to charge unhealthy employees up to 30 percent of health care costs based on conditions like being overweight or obese. Doctors don’t use BMI to determine healthiness, so the EEOC’s proposed rules shouldn’t either, says Janet Tomiyama, a health psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles and lead author on the study. ”We’re finding a lot of people who are overweight or obese by BMI, 54 million Americans, who are healthy. They would be penalized unfairly.” Burnet agrees it would be foolish to use body weight as a metric for workplace wellness programs, and says it’s also unethical. ”[The rules] are a terrible idea. You’re charging [people with a high BMI] more, like charging people with diabetes more, and that’s wrong,” Burnet says. ”That’s a significant misuse of BMI.” Across racial, ethnic and socioeconomic lines, the prevalence of overweight or obese individuals changes dramatically. ”There are higher rates of obesity among   than among white people in the U. S. Some studies show that an   person may have less body fat than a white person of the same BMI,” Burnet says. ”[The rules] would disproportionately burden that group of people.” And rates of   obesity are also higher among   people, Burnet says. If the EEOC’s proposal becomes codified, punitive workplace wellness programs based on BMI could financially drain an already financially stressed population. As the rules are currently written, Burnet says it would be up to the discretion of the employer to implement punitive incentives as it sees fit. ”The guidelines should be written in a different way,” she says. ”It’s bad for health insurance, for financial reasons and for stigma.” The EEOC says BMI as a health metric comes from language in the Affordable Care Act. ”It’s not really in our rule to say what is an appropriate health metric,” says Chris Kuczynski, legal counsel for the EEOC. But he says the commission is discussing whether it will define what is medically and scientifically sound for a health program. The solution, Tomiyama thinks, is simply follow science as closely as possible. Other measures, such as cholesterol level, blood pressure, or insulin resistance, are far more accurate indicators of poor health than BMI. ”We have this laser focus on weight, when this measure of body size doesn’t get under the skin of what healthy markers are,” she says. ”We need to focus on actual health markers, rather than this outdated, very broad measure called BMI.”"
"Editor’s Note: Some may find the graphic descriptions in this post disturbing.  When I walked into my first virtual reality experience last week at Sundance Film Festival, there was no movie theater or screening room to enter. It consisted only of a single, rotating desk chair and a virtual reality (VR) headset sitting on a table. I settled into the chair and, with the help of Sharon Nunez and Jose Valle of the organization Animal Equality, strapped on the headset. For the next 12 minutes, I immersed myself in the world of iAnimal, a   VR presentation   by Animal Equality and Condition One that’s focused on a factory farm and pig slaughterhouse in Mexico. When I emerged, I found I couldn’t get words out to ask the questions I had prepared. My throat felt thick, stopping my voice, as tears welled. I hadn’t known what to expect. At first, I flubbed it: I sat facing forward, looking at images of pigs, rows and rows of pigs, confined in tight stalls on a factory farm. The scene was disturbing but familiar. What I was seeing felt like a traditional documentary film. Then I heard Sharon’s voice at my shoulder: ”Feel free to move around, Barbara.” And it finally clicked: I was meant to use the chair to pan the   arc from my left to my right to take in the screen images fully. Suddenly, it wasn’t a traditional film experience anymore. As I watched and twisted slowly back and forth, two pigs were driven roughly up a chute, where they stood against a barrier, side by side. A slaughterhouse worker drove a metal bolt stunner into their skulls. Both pigs went rigid and slumped. I had just witnessed the moment of their deaths, I thought. But I was wrong. The pigs soon regained some degree of consciousness. Their limbs in spasm, their bodies jerking on and on and on, they were bled out slowly on the slaughterhouse floor. In VR, you are there with them, at no remove, with no distancing mechanism available. You can’t avoid what comes next, when the next pair of pigs is forced up the slope. Trapped there, the other pigs lock eyes on what is happening so near them, to others just like them. I can’t responsibly suggest that pigs anticipate their own deaths but, based on the science of pig intelligence, I do think that the pigs in this situation feel an extreme fear  —   taken from the sights and sounds and smells assailing them  —   that something terrible is about to happen to them. Valle appears in iAnimal, both at the beginning and the end of the film. He asks us not to turn away from the animal suffering and he praises the ”courageous” act of those viewers who stick it out the whole 12 minutes. I’m glad Valle acknowledges how hard it is to watch  —   and I should mention that both he and Nunez were incredibly kind to me when the presentation ended. But I didn’t feel courageous. I felt disoriented and stupid. I have watched, read and taught about animal suffering in factory farms before. I knew it was bad in factory farms in the U. S. England, Europe, China and Latin America. Yet, something   comes across in VR. The heightened visual closeness brings about heightened emotional attunement and, thus, the true extent of the cruelty to individual, sentient animals. I’m not claiming here, nor is Animal Equality claiming in the presentation, that all pigs suffer in precisely the way that those two in the film did. Valle estimates that, based on his personal experiences filming undercover in 14 slaughterhouses, the stunning procedure may fail in about half the cases, leaving a pig conscious until it finally dies. When, in 2012, the organization Mercy for Animals filmed undercover in a factory farm in Manitoba, Canada, they reported on ”workers firing metal bolts into the skulls of pigs, leaving many still conscious and blinking.” That fits with what I saw in iAnimal. (The Mercy for Animals video that resulted from the Manitoba investigation is available to see, but a warning: It’s tough going.) Paul McCartney’s famous comment goes like this: ”If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.” The   point here, though, doesn’t have to do with exactly how many of us would go vegetarian or vegan if we could see inside a slaughterhouse  —   or view iAnimal  —   any more than it has to do with exactly how many pigs remain conscious after they are stunned. It’s that we need to see and stop what we’re doing to other animals  —   and not only in the last few moments of their lives. As The New York Times editorial board wrote in a   piece published Monday, ”Factory farm operators believe that the less Americans know about what goes on behind their closed doors, the better for the industry.” But aided by film, and especially by VR, we do know. And, so, we can refuse to buy meat from factory farms. We can, as Valle says, ”make compassionate choices, either opting for a   diet or reducing [our] consumption of meat.” The VR images, a week later, linger behind my eyes. How could they not? Barbara J. King retired from her post as anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary at the end of 2015. She often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"Jazz Night In America’s regular host, Christian McBride, happens to be a   bassist and composer, but he forbade us to feature him unless it was for something special. It so happens that he’s written a special work: Teaming with choral director JD Steele, he’s composed a bluesy and soulful oratorio for big band, gospel choir with soloists, and four speakers who represent great figures of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s called The Movement Revisited, and is inspired by the written words and speeches of Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama. Jazz Night In America follows McBride around his own hometown of Philadelphia, as he speaks with the people who raised him at home and in the music, and features a performance of The Movement Revisited from the Kimmel Center in downtown Philly. NPR’s Audie Cornish   this episode, featuring the Christian McBride Big Band, the Philadelphia Heritage Chorale, and orators Sonia Sanchez, Rev. Alyn Waller, Dion Graham and Samuel Stricklen. The Christian McBride Big Band: Christian McBride,   Nabate Isles, trumpet Brandon Lee, trumpet Frank Greene, trumpet Benny Benack III, trumpet Jeffery Miller, trombone Steve Davis, trombone Joseph McDonough, trombone Douglas Purviance, bass trombone Steve Wilson, alto sax Ron Blake, tenor sax Todd Bashore, alto sax Dan Pratt, tenor sax Lauren Sevian, baritone sax Joel Ross, vibes Geoffrey Keezer, piano Terreon Gully, drums. The Philadelphia Heritage Chorale: JD Steele, choral   soloist J. Donald Dumpson, musical director. With Waverly Alston Jr. Melvin Berrian, Eric Cook Jr. Andrew Lawson, Garrick V. Morgan, Tyree Miller, Cali Graver,   Reid, Kimberly Quarles, Shavonne Edwards, Tiffany Godette, A. China Guess, Carrie Walker Lessene, Hope McDowell, Tia McNeil, Tyrre Miller, Janine Momasso, Melanie Richardson, Lauren Robinson, Sue E. Spencer (featured in ”Sister Rosa”) Maria Caldwell Stoddard, Cyrile Trawick, Monica Underwood, Philis E. Williams. With Sonia Sanchez as Rosa Parks, Rev. Alyn Waller as Martin Luther King Jr. Dion Graham as Muhammad Ali, and Samuel Stricklen as Malcolm X."
"For Carnival in Brazil, lots of women don giant feather headdresses and skimpy bikinis. But for a   event, Elaine Cuoto is dressed as a mosquito  —   complete with a long proboscis and gossamer wings. She is part of a group of health workers dancing by a metro station in a   neighborhood of Rio’s north zone. A few others are wearing mosquito costumes as well. And they’re singing a catchy tune: ”If Zika attacks, use this number to report it,   . Pay attention!” By putting the number to music, public health educators hope it will stick in commuters’ minds. These dancing, singing mosquitoes are just one sign of the national mood on the eve of Carnival, which runs from Feb.  . Brazil is in the midst of a Zika virus outbreak. The government estimates that there have been at least half a million cases since last spring. And researchers are concerned that the virus could be linked to the 4, 074 suspected or confirmed cases of microcephaly  —   brain damage in infants born during the current outbreak. So pregnant women are being warned to use repellent and take precautions to avoid being bitten. For Amanda Fonseca, that means leaving the city during Carnival. At 33, she is seven months pregnant with her second son. She’s afraid of the Zika virus. One of her pregnant friends contracted the infection, and she doesn’t want the same to happen to her. She is doing everything she can to keep mosquitoes away  —   even switching from regular body lotion to   insect repellent. She has devised an elaborate system of making sure she is protected. She showers three times a day, then applies the repellent. So far, she says, no bites. But it’s a race to the finish, her against the Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries the Zika virus and other diseases. It’s not only pregnant women who are being encouraged to think about protection. At the same metro stop, a group of teenagers is handing out condoms to passersby. Condoms are free as part of Brazil’s robust sexual health program, developed in response to HIV and AIDS. Now there’s a new reason to use protection. This week, a person in Texas was found to have contracted Zika through sexual contact with someone who had returned from a country where Zika has spread. Lia Peixinho, 17, is carrying a big basket of brightly wrapped condoms. She says people are very sexually active during Carnival and have unprotected sex. Now that we know there can be sexual transmission of Zika, condoms are even more important, she says. Like the health workers in mosquito costumes, the condom group has a song. The teens snap their fingers and rap, ”Remember to always use a condom, no skin on skin . ..” Despite the worries, Carnival will go on. Only one city  —   Maranguape, in the north  —   canceled the celebration because of the virus, choosing to use the money on mosquito eradication instead. The recession here has had a far bigger impact on the festivities, cutting down the size of some celebrations. Still, for most of Brazil, the party will go on. As a saying here goes, Carnival is a time to forget your troubles and let it all hang out. This year, though, people might be a bit more covered up."
"In my house growing up, the walls of every room  —   including the bathroom  —   were decorated with several calendars. (Is this a   thing? An immigrant family thing? I’ve always wondered.) Subject matter didn’t matter. My mom tacked up the glossy freebies mailed to us by various insurance companies, featuring flowery landscapes and vintage muscle cars. These hung next to the calendars handed out to customers at the 99 Ranch grocery checkout line, which featured the same image all year long: the Chinese character Fu  —   ”luck”  —   rendered in brush calligraphy and gold foil on crimson card stock. These days, I rely on a digital calendar synced to my email and smartphone I couldn’t tell you the last time I consulted a paper calendar hanging anywhere, least of all the bathroom (though at my mom’s house, that decorating choice still persists). But I recently came across a tweet from Phil Yu, the Angry Asian Man blogger, about an intriguing new Kickstarter campaign: the Haikus with Hotties 2016 calendar. Now, if the producer of  ’s   news and pop culture site deems something #veryimportant, I of course have to click to find out more. Also  —   OK, fine  —   maybe it had something to do with the picture attached to the tweet: two shirtless men lounging at the beach with neon floaties hugging their tanned, chiseled abs. The ”hotties” in question were Yoshi Sudarso and Peter Adrian Sudarso,   actors who also make comedy videos on YouTube. In August, the Sudarso brothers appeared in Audrey Magazine, the   women’s lifestyle publication, as a part of ”Haikus with Hotties,” a    series that runs in every issue. Interview questions are posed in the     haiku verse scheme, and must be answered in form. One choice poetic exchange from Audrey’s collaboration with the Sudarsos: Audrey: Does good emoting, come from the heart, the soul or, those hot pink swim trunks? Yoshi and Peter: It comes from long hours, Spent on selfies on our phones, But the trunks did help! Ada Tseng, a former contributing editor at Audrey, conceived of ”Haikus with Hotties” back in 2013 when the magazine assigned her to interview Godfrey Gao, the     named ”the world’s first Asian male supermodel” after appearing in an ad campaign for the luxury brand Louis Vuitton. ”It was going to be an email interview,” Tseng explains, and she wanted to find a way to have fun with it. Gao agreed to the idea of writing haiku, and the series was born. Since her interview with Gao, Tseng has exchanged poetry with several Asian and   men of aesthetically pleasing genetic dispositions   physical prowess for the magazine, including comedic actor Randall Park (Fresh Off the Boat, The Interview) and Yen Chen, the piano prodigy turned American Ninja Warrior   competitor. Last summer, Tseng and Audrey decided to mount a Kickstarter campaign to collect the magazine’s photo series into a   wall calendar for 2016, adding six more   ”hotties” to round out the year, plus a cover model (that honor went to Shannon Kook, a hapa Chinese actor from South Africa). A freelance journalist and editor, Tseng is a longtime contributor to Asia Pacific Arts and Xfinity Asia and is the host and producer of Bullet Train, a podcast on   culture and arts. When we chatted about the calendar and her work for Audrey and other culturally specific media outlets, Tseng could be wryly facetious  —   ”Maybe some people supported the calendar because they think there isn’t enough representation of   men in Hollywood . .. but really, it’s probably just people who think these guys are hot, right?”  —   and then absolutely sincere about her belief in the power and influence of diversity in pop culture and media representation. ”You see the statistics, for example, of how with online dating,   men are the least desirable,” she says. ”For me, that’s so strange. I’ve been covering Asian and   pop culture for so long. If you watch Korean dramas, or Bollywood films, how could you not find the men attractive?” There’s been a lot of discussion lately on how race and ethnicity affect success in romantic matches. An OkCupid report surveying data from 25 million accounts from   revealed that   men were consistently rated the least attractive (in comparison with black, Latino and white men) by   women. Racial Preferences in Dating, a 2008 Columbia University study of more than 400 individuals in   sessions, found that while women of all races expressed a higher preference for dating a man of their same race,   women were up to 65 percent less likely to indicate interest in seeing an   man again after the   speed date, the highest rate of rejection across the board. Of the 14 men featured in the Haikus with Hotties calendar, 13 are pursuing careers as entertainers (the sole exception being Mr. December, Viet Pham, a chef from Utah who bested Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America) including several viral video producers, a   comic, a reality TV star, and actors with credits in film and television. ”There was a political angle to the calendar, that there should be more hot Asian men in Hollywood,” says Tseng. ”I would guess that most of the guys, if not all, in the calendar have been asked about this issue at some point in their careers.” Tseng launched the Kickstarter with a modest goal of raising just $1, 000 to prove there was interest in such a project. One of the pledge levels, ”Be The Change You Want To See,” promised backers that in addition to getting a calendar of one’s own, a second would be shipped to a Hollywood casting agency ”with a note telling them to cast these hot   male actors in their upcoming projects.” Within three days, the project was fully funded by nearly 100 backers who more than doubled the original goal. ”I didn’t know who would be interested in this,” Tseng says with a laugh. ”My guess was that it would be people like me, other   women, people who read Audrey.” She discovered, however, that the Kickstarter backers weren’t entirely Asian, at least going by their last names. ”It seems much more diverse,” she says. As for Twitter feedback, Tseng says, ”We got a mix of both men and women, and LGBTQ supporters of the calendar.” A quick search for the hashtag #HaikusWithhotties turns up pages and pages of exuberant fans, many of them tweeting selfies with their calendars and tagging their favorite calendar models. One poetry enthusiast recently brought hers to be autographed at a comedy show with comedian Hari Kondabolu, the calendar’s Mr. October. Last year, on the heels of the ”Haikus with Hotties” success, Audrey announced that after 12 years as an independent publication, the magazine had been acquired by investors (along with sister publication KoreAm Journal) and would no longer be producing print issues. Tseng, along with the rest of the editorial staff, was laid off. Because the magazine’s future is unclear  —   it may continue in a   format  —   the 2016 Haikus with Hotties calendar may become a    collector’s item after this year. ”I would love for there to be a 2017 calendar, but there are no plans right now,” Tseng says. ”But if anyone wants to sponsor it . .. ” Jean Ho is a writer in Los Angeles. She is currently a doctoral candidate in USC’s Creative Writing and Literature Ph. D. program."
"For the past 40 years, New Hampshire’s     primary status has been vigorously defended by one man: Secretary of State Bill Gardner. He is the nation’s   secretary of state, taking office in 1976, one year before New Hampshire lawmakers mandated that the Granite State go first in primary voting. Gardner’s   office in New Hampshire’s   (of course) State House is like a walk through the state’s political history. It’s filled with stacks of official forms, political paraphernalia  —   and lots of photographs of presidential candidates on the stump. There’s Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee senator and former governor, in his trademark flannel shirt. Ronald Reagan and Democrat Gary Hart, too. Gardner points to a picture of a   Barack Obama, taken at the Manchester Airport. ”These were the first steps that Barack Obama took in New Hampshire,” Gardner notes. ”He had never been in New Hampshire before. You see he’s coming in carrying his two bags.” Gardner has four decades of memories. There’s the blizzard that occurred on primary day in 1984: ”The plow trucks were doing triple shifts to keep everything open.” And there are the many  —   many  —   candidates coming through his office, filing their papers to get on the primary ballot. It’s surprisingly easy to run for president in the New Hampshire primary, assuming you meet the constitutional requirements. All you need is $1, 000 to get a spot on the ballot, and if you can’t swing that, well, 100 signatures on a petition will work too. ”This primary is really about the little guy,” Gardner said. ”It was created to give the average person a chance to be part of it, and it was created to be inclusive, so anyone who wants to have a chance to run for president can have a chance here and try.” And while some candidates have dropped out since the Iowa caucuses, there remain the names of 28 Democrats on this year’s New Hampshire ballot, and 30 Republicans, who are giving it a go. Going first is ”part of the DNA,” ”culture” New Hampshire has not always had the first presidential primary, but as other states ended theirs or changed their dates, New Hampshire found itself all alone at the beginning. Now, Gardner said, it’s part of the state’s very essence. ”We’re not smarter than any others,” he said. ”It’s just part of the DNA of the state it’s part of our political heritage, our culture.” But some outside New Hampshire, mostly Democrats, have questioned whether the state, with its small and overwhelmingly white population, is representative enough of the nation’s electorate to play such an oversize role in presidential politics. In September, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said no state should get ”too comfortable.” ”I don’t think that there should ever be any sacred cows as to the primary process or the order,” Priebus said. That was met with a swift rebuke from Gardner. ”[A]s I have said over the years, this primary won’t be taken away from us by external forces,” he told local TV station WMUR back then. ”It will only change when the will of the people want it to change, and that’s pretty unlikely.” There have been efforts over the years to change the nominating calendar to put other states first. Gardner, backed by state law, which stipulates New Hampshire must hold its primary at least seven days before any similar election, has swatted them away. He recalls the time back in 1983 when Nancy Pelosi came to his office. The next year’s Democratic convention was in San Francisco, and Pelosi, who was not yet in Congress, appealed to Gardner to allow California to go first that year. Gardner demurred. ”She said, ’Well, you’re going to have to change it,’ ” he remembers, ” ’because New Hampshire won’t be part of the convention, you’re not gonna be invited.’ ” Gardner refused to back down. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who finished second in New Hampshire in the 2004 primary, also tried to get the state to change its date when he became head of the Democratic National Committee. He, too, failed. As recently as this past October, Dean told Concord News Radio that Gardner was hurting the state. ”You guys need a new secretary of state, ” Dean said. ”Get rid of Gardner and get somebody else in there. Gardner’s been in there too long. He’s become autocratic the candidates don’t like him.” Shrugging off the critics paving the way for Jackie Robinson? The    Gardner, who was a Democratic state representative before taking this job, laughs off Dean’s criticism. He was   last year by state lawmakers without opposition. And he’s got plenty of supporters in the state, like former Republican Sen. John Sununu. ”Bill Gardner has been essential in helping to promote the primary and doing that not just by keeping it first but by making sure it works,” Sununu said. ”We have an incredibly high turnout in New Hampshire, but we’ve never had scandals, problems, some of the issues that unfortunately still plague polling places across the country.” Gardner, though, acknowledges concerns over New Hampshire’s lack of diversity. ”It’s a fair question to ask,” he said. In response, he cites instances where New Hampshire has shown tolerance for outsiders. In 1946, for example, he noted, Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey assigned two black baseball players, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, to the Nashua, N. H. Dodgers, a   team. It was the year before Jackie Robinson, then a   player in Montreal, broke Major League Baseball’s color line. According to Gardner, Rickey told Newcombe and Campanella, ” ’If you guys could make it the way you did in New Hampshire, he’s going to make it here,’ so in the spring that next year, he brought Jackie Robinson down.” Gardner said New Hampshire residents know their     primary is a privilege, as well as a tradition. It’s something, he said, that ”grew because there was fertile ground.”"
"”Squat! Squat! Squat! Higher! Faster!” In the basement of the Duane Physics and Astrophysics building at the University of Colorado Boulder, a science demonstration is going on, but it looks more like a vaudeville act. One by one, students balance precariously on a rotating platform. Then they are handed what looks like a spinning bicycle wheel, holding it by two handles that stick out from either side of what would be the hub of the wheel. When you flip the wheel over, like a pizza, your body starts rotating in the opposite direction. The principle at work is called angular momentum, explains Katie Dudley: ”You can move or stop yourself by changing what you do to the wheel.” Dudley is a blonde    junior with glasses, an aerospace engineering major. She’s in charge of today’s session, tutoring a roomful of students who are her own age or even a bit older. She’s a learning assistant  —   an undergraduate trained and paid to help teach fellow students. Most science and engineering classes around the country are a lot less interactive, a lot more intimidating, and daresay it, a lot less fun than this one. CU Boulder has started a movement to improve the quality of science education around the country, not only on campuses but in   classrooms. And the LAs, as they’re called, are at the center of this work. The efforts here began with professors like Steven Pollock, who   the Physics 1110 course where Dudley is an LA. As we sit upstairs in his office, he tells me that about 15 years ago, he switched his research specialty from nuclear physics to the teaching of physics. ”I just sort of saw myself in 2000 looking forward 20 or 30 years to retirement,” he explains. ”I could either have learned a little bit more about the strange quark content of the proton, or how people learn physics and how to teach it better. And it seemed like that was way more important to the world.” Not everyone agreed. When Pollock came up for tenure here, the department was split in half, for and against. Since then, he has been named a national Professor of the Year. His former colleague Carl Wieman, who earned the Nobel Prize in physics in 1995, has carried on similar research at Stanford. Pollock and Wieman are both leading colleagues, across disciplines from astronomy to physics, in researching how people learn science, and then applying that knowledge in the classroom. (Watch out for an upcoming piece on Wieman as part of our 50 Great Teachers series!) One major point that the studies have proved is something you might already guess: Lectures don’t really work. They leave most people without a solid grasp of even basic concepts, Pollock says. ”If you just teach by standing at the blackboard and try to transmit your understanding of physics just by words, then even a minimal standard typically is not reached,” he explains. ”Students aren’t learning that stuff.” CU Boulder still has big lectures, but science and engineering classes also feature weekly small group discussions, labs and demonstrations facilitated by the LAs, sometimes under the supervision of grad students. The LAs take a course on pedagogy that emphasizes the use of   questions and other   teaching techniques. As a side effect, these bright young scientific minds get curious about the process of teaching and learning itself. ”I use my engineering thought with students, to figure out what they already know and are good at,” Dudley says. ”I have to figure out where they are, where we need to get them, and what steps might work best with each individual student. So every student is like a new engineering challenge to solve.” With the help of the LAs, ”We can use pedagogy that is very effective, but needs a good   ratio,” Pollock says. ”We’ve got lots of people here in the room to help out.” The program has a ”sneaky”   angle as well, Pollock adds. That’s because, in order to take advantage of the LAs’ help, professors have to shake up their old passive,   teaching methods. In weekly training sessions, instead of asking   questions, the LAs are likely to ask professors about common student misconceptions or other pedagogical matters. ”It improves our own teaching when we have to think about teaching with these undergrads,” Pollock explains. The department’s own research shows that use of LAs improves students’ understanding of science concepts in physics, astronomy and biology. Students who take   courses are more engaged in their studies and up to 10 percent more likely to graduate. The students in the basement demo session report the same thing. ”Katie’s the best,” says Brenda Ortiz, a junior studying psychology and education. ”I feel supercomfortable asking her questions. If you don’t get it one way, she has multiple ways of explaining it to you.” Evan Dong, a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering who’s sitting at Brenda’s table, admits he’s actually here just ”for fun.” His own section of this course was earlier in the afternoon, but he often shows up at Katie’s section, also: ”I’ve been riding on that wheel for the past two hours. It makes me dizzy, but that’s part of the fun!” Broader Applications, The LA program is shifting the momentum at another level, too. There’s a lot of talk about the importance of STEM  —   Science, Technology, Engineering and Math  —   for America’s future competitiveness. But across the country, very few undergraduate math and science majors go on to become classroom teachers. ”One a year  —   that’s a   institution,” explains Valerie Otero, referring specifically to physics majors going into the   classroom. Otero helped start up the LA program soon after she came to CU Boulder’s School of Education in 2003. The lack of teachers with science backgrounds means that most students get their first introduction to STEM disciplines from teachers who are less familiar with the subjects  —   and who may even be intimidated by them. This ”math anxiety” gets transferred to students, research says. Even at the middle school level, about a third of math and science teachers nationwide either did not major in the field or are not certified to teach it. With the introduction of the Learning Assistant Program, today about 16 to 20 LAs every year at CU Boulder get their teaching certificates while they’re still undergraduates. The number is small in absolute terms, but it means a lot for access to quality science and math teaching. Especially in places like the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where Ian Her Many Horses, a Ph. D. student in computer science, is planning to return to teach. ”Coming out of the College of Engineering, I would not have had access to becoming a teacher,” he says. ”This was a way for me to get my foot in the door.” In the meantime, he’s teaching the pedagogy course to other LAs, keeping his teaching skills sharp. Otero says their research  —   following former LAs into the classroom  —   shows that they continue to be more likely to use more   teaching techniques, like group discussions. This effect on the STEM teacher pipeline is a big reason the LA program is now being copied at 88 universities around the country. ”It’s spreading like wildfire,” says Otero, who has set up a website sharing their training materials. The program leaders often travel to teach and speak about the model. Nationwide there are about 3, 000 LAs right now, and all told they’re working with tens of thousands of students. Katie Dudley is one LA who plans to go into teaching, even though she could make a lot more money in an engineering job. I asked her if she ever gets pushback from people, even family members, who feel like she should be taking some other, more lucrative career path. ”All the time,” she says. Carissa Marsh, a former LA, is working at CU Boulder toward a certificate to teach high school. She admits that changing the image of science education is part of the challenge of the LA program. ”When I tell somebody that I’m going into education but I studied biology, their first response is, ’Why aren’t you becoming a doctor?’ or ’You’re too smart to go into education!’ or ’There’s no money in education. ’” Those comments ”grate on me every single time,” she says. ”This is my passion. I don’t think anybody can be too smart for education. I want my kids to have   teachers who know the science and aren’t going into it as a backup plan. I wish that more people could see education the way I see education.”"
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. Just before The Suffers’ members begin performing, you’ll see 20 arms stretched in the air   followed by 10 voices. The first counts off, 1 to 10, then shouts long and hard at full lung capacity. That’s just the warmup. What you get from this Houston band is soul, straight from horn to heart. I’ve witnessed The Suffers’ magnificence on a tiny stage in a D. C. nightclub, on a big stage at the Newport Folk Festival, and behind my Tiny Desk. What happens on the band’s first album is something that rarely happens on debuts: This band is on fire when it’s in front of an audience, sure, but the intensity of its shows is also captured in the studio. The Suffers’ sound is steeped in what the band calls ”Gulf Coast Soul,” as well as elements of ska, Southern   classic soul, rock ’n’ roll and especially reggae. In fact, the group’s name comes from a line in a famous  ’70s reggae film called Rockers. What helps set The Suffers apart from most is the band’s sweet style of playing: No one is vying to show off, and everyone serves the song. It helps that singer Kam Franklin is at center stage  ” powerful and lovable and, like her band, careful not to overdo it. She seems to understand that there’s power in holding back or waiting for the perfect moment to let go. ”Midtown” is a good example the whole band at the end of ”Better” is another. There will be many new artists to discover in 2016, with lots of debuts. I suggest you start with The Suffers."
"Food writer Bee Wilson has a message of hope for parents struggling to get their children to eat their veggies: ”As parents, we have a far greater power than we think we have to form children’s tastes,” Wilson tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. In her new book, First Bite, Wilson examines how genetics, culture, memory and early feeding patterns contribute to our food preferences. She says that a child’s palate can be formed even before birth. And this insight can be helpful for parents who want their children to eat well and healthfully. ”One of the main things we know about taste is that liking is a consequence of familiarity, so the things that our mothers eat, even before we’re born, affect the way we’ll respond to those flavors when we later encounter them because they seem familiar,” Wilson says. A mother of three, Wilson notes that babies are most open to trying new flavors between the ages of 4 and 7 months. But, Wilson adds, even if parents miss introducing a food during the   ”flavor window,” all hope is not lost. ”It’s not that the flavor window then flips shut . .. and we can never learn to love bitter green vegetables. Humans can learn to love new flavors at any age,” Wilson says. ”One of the amazing things about our relationship with food is how malleable it is, how plastic it is. But we don’t usually as adults give ourselves an opportunity to change.” On the ”flavor window” that occurs between 4 and 7 months  Researchers I’ve spoken to [about] the question of how you get children to be less picky eaters [and] how you get them to try more different vegetables say that the World Health Organization advice, which currently says you should keep them on an exclusive milk diet up to 6 months, is wrong. It’s not that a child necessarily needs any nutrition besides milk before 6 months, it’s that you’re missing an opportunity to introduce them to all of these flavors which they would likely accept at this age. Then, having accepted them, they would seem familiar when they encounter them again as toddlers. On how our palates are formed while we’re still in the womb  [Our palate is] formed [before  ]  —   it’s formed when our mothers are expecting us. There have been remarkable studies done showing that if someone eats a lot of garlic when they’re pregnant, their amniotic fluid will taste and smell garlicky. So imagine swimming around in that for 9 months. . .. That baby will grow up to love garlic. . .. It feels like home, it tastes like home. One of the main things we know about taste is that liking is a consequence of familiarity. So the things that our mothers eat, even before we’re born, affect the way we’ll respond to those flavors when we later encounter them because they seem familiar. The flavor of milk is then hugely important as well. With mothers who   there was a study done showing that if they drank a lot of carrot juice, when those babies first tasted solid food, they preferred cereal that was flavored with carrot juice. So the flavor of carrots goes into the [breast milk] the babies experience it, and then they have all of these wonderful, positive feelings about carrot. This is getting replicated many, many times. In most cases it’s not something like carrot or broccoli. There have been studies done with rats who are fed on a junk food diet and their babies gravitate towards junk food rat chow. On how   formula can also affect taste   Breast milk has varied flavors, whereas formula milk has a single flavor, depending on which brand you pick. But even with   babies there are some interesting things that have come out of scientific experiments. There’s a type of formula called hydrolysate, which is designed for babies who can’t tolerate regular cow’s milk, and to adults it has a really offensive, horrible,   musty aroma. But to the babies who’ve been reared on it, it’s like nectar. One study showed that these children, when they were older, when they’re aged 4, gravitated towards sour flavors. So it was if they were imprinted with the flavor of this nasty formula milk. But, again, it’s a really useful case of how powerful these early tastes can be. As parents, we have a far greater power than we think we have to form children’s tastes. On how we are   to love sweetness, All human beings are   to love sweetness. This is a   phenomenon  —   it’s been seen in babies in every continent of the world, that they smile if you offer them a little taste of something sweet. Equally, we all are born with a mild aversion to bitterness. And curiously, with salt, we have no feelings at all about salt when we’re born. And then [by age] 4 months we get switched onto it and develop a salt preference, and nobody really knows why that’s true. But with the sweetness thing  —   so, we’re   to love sweetness. Many people have interpreted this to mean that we’re doomed to grow up and love junk food. . .. All of our specific tastes for particular flavors are learned. As omnivores, this has to be the case because human beings are forced to eat in such different food environments. So the fact that we love sweetness as a baby doesn’t mean that we’re going to love nothing but chocolate we could get that sweetness in the form of corn on the cob, or caramelized fennel. All of our flavor preferences are ones that we learn over the course of a lifetime. The trouble is that most of us don’t see it that way. On how children’s food has changed since World War II  If you look to previous generations, before the second world war, and indeed afterwards a bit, there was a nursery food mentality. So the idea was it was safest to give children foods that they didn’t actually like, which were very plain but very nourishing. Then, in the postwar years, partly fueled by a transformation of the food supply, much greater industrialization, we went to a completely opposite view of what children’s food should be. It was that it should be sweet and palatable and designed to make children smile. We all know that the kid’s breakfast cereals are the ones which are highest in sugar in the whole of the cereal aisle. And it’s really curious that we should’ve swung in this way from one extreme to another  —   from food which was nourishing but unpleasant, to food which was too pleasant and deeply  . The ideal way to feed children would be somewhere in the middle. And actually, the ideal way to feed children would be to give them food that’s not that dissimilar from an adult diet. On authoritative, authoritarian and indulgent styles of feeding, An authoritative feeder would place high demands on the child to eat well. In other words, you wouldn’t be stocking your house with loads of junk food. You’d make sure there were nutritious,   meals on the table, but equally you would be highly responsive to the child and their needs, and you would be respectful when they say ”no.” . .. On the one hand, there are authoritarian forms of feeding. . ..   would be an extreme example, but also just any form of saying, ”I demand that you eat this.” . .. ”I want a clean plate.” . .. That style of feeding . .. creates an unpleasant atmosphere at the dinner table, but, interestingly, research shows it also seems to result in children who are actually less responsive to their own hunger cues, so they’re more likely to end up overweight, paradoxically. The parent who thinks that they’re doing the right thing by insisting that you finish this nourishing meal is not allowing the child to develop their own skills, their own judgment about when they stop and when they start eating. The other style of parenting, or feeding, would be indulgent. And there are signs that this is becoming one of the most common ways of feeding a child, and as with so much of what we do as parents, it comes with the most loving intentions. To feed a child in an indulgent way would be to be highly responsive to them as a person, what they love, what they seem to need, the foods they crave, the foods they demand, but the indulgent style would place no demands on them to eat well, or fewer demands. There’d be no sense of, ”Are you really hungry?” There’d be no sense of, ”Well, I only want you to have these foods because they’re the ones that’ll do you good.” Again, there are studies done showing indulgent parenting is strongly correlated with higher child obesity. . .. It’s such a wonderful feeling to see the treat disappear and to see the happy face. Feeding, no less than eating, is a learned behavior, and we learn to feed through our parents, who probably themselves rewarded us with food. Food and love are so bound up, it’s sometimes hard to see where the sugar ends and the love begins."
"The world of haute cuisine lost one of its brightest stars over the weekend. Benoit Violier, a French Swiss chef who many said was the best in the world, died in his home in Switzerland in what appears to have been a suicide. He was 44. Violier owned the Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville in Crissier, near Lausanne. It’s one of the few restaurants in the world to be awarded three Michelin stars. There has been some speculation that the pressure that comes with operating a restaurant at that level may have had something to do with Violier’s death. As chef Eric Ziebold tells Morning Edition’s Renee Montagne, the world of elite restaurants is notoriously intense. ”In the kitchen there’s an incredible physical pressure it’s not uncommon for it to be an   day,” says Ziebold, a Washington, D. C.  restaurateur who for years was chef de cuisine at Thomas Keller’s Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry, which has three Michelin stars. ”Outside of that, you get into the pressure of everything that it means to be operating a restaurant that isn’t just at the highest level, but a restaurant that is chasing an ideal,” he says. Ziebold is currently chef and   of Kinship and Métier, which will open in the coming weeks. He spoke to NPR about the pressure in the kitchen and the office. Ziebold hasn’t yet received any Michelin stars at his own establishments, but he says he’s striving to offer his guests a ”flawless” luxury experience. He says he tries to anticipate his guests’ needs. For example, he keeps a supply of pashminas in the restaurant to offer to guests if they’re cold. ”Hopefully, you have a color that will go with their outfit,” he says. It’s a luxury experience, and, Ziebold says, ”when you get to that point of Michelin three stars, it’s an experience worth building a trip around.” At this level, he says chefs also become hypercritical of every detail. ”For me personally, [the death of Violier] . .. has been reflective for me in trying to make sure that what we do is sustainable, that we’re not going to be just a flash in the pan, but we’re going to be able to carry out and chase our vision.”"
"Americans are obsessed with celebrity chefs. We talk about them, tweet about them and try to eat like them. But could we learn something more from them than recipes and technique? According to Marketdata Enterprises, Americans spend nearly $10 billion a year on   and personal organization products. The market is huge, partly because most colleges and grad schools don’t teach basic organization. But culinary schools and professional kitchens do. Perhaps the principles of culinary organization can be extended to help even those of us who aren’t top chefs. The system that makes kitchens go is called    or, literally, ”put in place.” It’s a French phrase that means to gather and arrange the ingredients and tools needed for cooking. But for many culinary professionals, the phrase connotes something deeper. Some cooks call it their religion. It helps them coordinate vast amounts of labor and material, and transforms the lives of its practitioners through focus and  . ”I know people that have it tattooed on them,” says Melissa Gray, a senior at the Culinary Institute of America. ”It really is a way of life . .. it’s a way of concentrating your mind to only focus on the aspects that you need to be working on at that moment, to kind of rid yourself of distractions.” And it’s a habit that some culinary students carry with them even when they’re not in the kitchen. ”You    your life. You set up your books for class, you set up your chef whites, your shoes are shined, you know everything that you need every step of the day,” says Alexandra Tibbats, another student at the CIA. Gray says that she now arranges her home office as she would her   . ”My desk is specifically organized based off of where I reach for things the most. [It’s] being so methodical to the point that you continually put your pen back in one specific place.” Ok, so how does one attain this level of organization? ”It starts with your list,” says Wylie Dufresne, the James Beard   chef and owner of New York restaurants wd~50 and Alder. ”What I used to do is, let’s say I had 23 items of    I had to do every day. So I’d take a pad and I’d write them all down on the way home. And then I would crumple the list up and throw it out,” he says. ”On my way to work I’d write the list again. And you become one with your list. You and the list are the same, because the list is scorched into your head.” But the key to    is not so much the list, but the mindset. Cooks can easily do six hours of prep for a   dinner shift.    forces cooks to account for every minute of their time and, says chef Dwayne Lipuma, every movement. ”Every component of one single dish is in one single corner so their hand literally moves inches,” explains Lipuma, an instructor at the CIA. ”Once [students] set up their station I should be able to blindfold them and tell them . .. and they should know that their tongs are always here, their oil is always right here, their salt and pepper is always right here. ” That way, chefs are always ready to go, Lipuma says. ”They always have one foot pivoted just like a basketball player.” At Esca, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan’s theater district,   Greg Barr describes what is perhaps the central tenet of   : working clean. ”It’s like a very . ..   thing,” he says. ”All my knives are clean. Clean cutting board. Clear space to work. Clear mind.” Working clean in the kitchen is paramount because unclean food is dangerous. If chefs don’t work clean, people can get sick. And it’s also important to clean as you go, says Dufresne. ”Oh my God! If you don’t clean as you go it is a mess!” he says. ”And that’s another thing you people at home could do: Because isn’t the worst thing at the end of a successful dinner party doing a whole bunch of dishes? Wouldn’t you rather break them all and buy new ones? It actually saves time if you clean as you go. It makes life so much easier.” Across town at Telepan, chef and owner Bill Telepan explains another principle of   : slow down to speed up. ”I always say, ’Look, I’d rather you take an extra minute or two and slow up service to get it right.’ Because the one minute behind you are now is going to become six minutes behind because we’re going to have to redo the plate.” Upstairs in the kitchen, this issue plays out as Telepan coaches a new chef on how to make, of all things, a grilled cheese sandwich: ”That’s not done fire another one,” he says. ”Be patient. I know it’s a grilled cheese sandwich but it’s gotta be a [expletive] great grilled cheese sandwich, you know what I mean?” Some chefs say that    is nothing more than a kitchen version of good   military discipline. After all, the rigid culinary hierarchy codified in the 19th century by   Escoffier is called the ”brigade system.” ”A chef, because of    he’s always on time,” says Andre Soltner, dean of the International Culinary Center in New York City. He demands the same kind of efficiency outside his kitchen. ”If I go to the doctor, and if he’s not ready, I leave. And that’s because of   .” Other chefs  —   like Ari Bokovza of New York’s The Harrison  —   admit that this can make domestic life a little intense: ”The way we are at work starts to translate into the way we are at home. You wish that you could switch it off. If you asked my girl, you know, ’How is Ari at home?’ She’ll tell you, ’He’s a [expletive] nut job! He can’t sit still!’ ” But practiced at its highest level,    says that time is precious. Resources are precious. Space is precious. Your   and the respect of others are precious. Use them wisely. Isn’t that a philosophy for our time? ”The world is a giant gerbil wheel right now,” Lipuma at the CIA says. ”I think if we just became a little bit more organized, a little bit more    [understand] what we really need and only do what we really need, I think we’ll have more time”  —   time for what’s important, he says. ”You’ll be able to sit down at the table with your kids and actually cook a meal. Get up a little bit earlier so you could breathe. You want to greet the day.”"
"News services say at least 14 people, including a baby and a    man, have been killed in an earthquake in Taiwan. A magnitude 6. 4 quake shook the southern city of Tainan just before 4 a. m. local time Saturday. The shallow quake caused severe damage to several large structures, including one residential building where authorities say hundreds live. NPR’s Elise Hu, in Taiwan, tells All Things Considered that residential building was 17 stories tall but collapsed down to the height of about four stories. Authorities in Tainan say more than 150 people are being treated for injuries. Teams have rescued at least 221 people from the rubble. The government has mobilized the army to help with those efforts. President Ma Ying Jeou and   Tsai Ing Wen have both cancelled Lunar New Year plans to head to Tainan. ”The timing is unfortunate because so many people were asleep in the [residences] that collapsed,” Elise says. She reports that news footage shows people escaping damaged buildings in their pajamas. The transportation agency in Taiwan announced immediately that the trains in southern Taiwan would not be running. Elise notes that the halted trains will affect New Year holiday travel. She adds that power is out to about 120, 000 people in southern Taiwan. According to the U. S. Geological Survey, the earthquake was about 14 miles deep and light tremors were felt along the island’s entire west coast, up to the northern city of Taipei."
"There aren’t a lot of people who have dined on meat from the Pleistocene, prehistoric humans notwithstanding. That’s why accounts of the 1951 Annual Dinner of the Explorers Club, a society of scientific adventurers, all agree that the organizer of the night, Wendell Phillips Dodge, threw the dinner party of the century. Legend has it that Dodge served the meat of a woolly mammoth. Or was it an extinct giant ground sloth? Reports were inconsistent as to which prehistoric animal Dodge procured for the reception. ”Some people said they ate sloth, and some people said they ate mammoth,” says Jessica Glass, a doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology at Yale. In a letter to Dodge, John     of the Explorers Club, wrote, ”I am still holding my query as to what the material was that you had at the dinner.” Yeah. So just what in the last epoch did the 1951 Explorers Club eat that night? As luck would have it, a single morsel of the allegedly prehistoric dish survived in a jar bearing the label ”Megatherium (Extinct Sloth),” written in Dodge’s own hand. He had preserved the sliver of the meat for a naturalist named Paul Howes, the curator of a natural history museum, who was unable to attend the dinner. In doing so, Dodge inadvertently opened the door for two graduate students armed with DNA sequencing technology to unravel his hoax. The jar eventually ended up in the Yale Peabody Museum, where it sat for decades. Then, a few years ago, Yale mammologist Eric Sargis came across the label and realized something didn’t add up. This type of giant ground sloth, Megatherium, has only ever been found in South America. And yet, Dodge had claimed that the specimen came from Alaska. If the meat really came from a Megatherium corpse on Akutan Island, this little chunk of 1950s stew could help rewrite the history of   giant sloths. ”It could add a lot of valuable information to paleontology,” Glass says. ”And if it were mammoth, it’s actually kind of rare to have that from the Aleutian Islands or Akutan Island.” So, in 2014, Sargis persuaded two of his students to start digging into the specimen. Matt Davis, a doctoral candidate in geology, knew that according to Explorers Club lore, the jar should contain meat from a woolly mammoth. ”People point to a tusk in [the club headquarters in New York] and say, ’That came from the mammoth they ate at the dinner,’ ” Davis tells us. So he began sifting through club and university archives for clues that might reveal whether the meat was sloth or woolly mammoth. Davis found an editorial by Dodge in a 1951 issue of The Explorers Journal, a club publication, where Dodge attempts to address some of the confusion. ”Early on, he says ’IT IS SLOTH’ in all capital letters. He types in Megatherium, and I turned to the archivist, and I said, ’Wow. I guess our work is done. It’s a sloth.’ But then I kept reading and getting more and more worried,” Davis says. In the editorial, Dodge describes the giant sloth specimen. He references ”the prehistoric sloths that fed on Pteropods, little swimming snails known as ’Sea Butterflies,’ ” and writes that this particular animal ”must be MEGATHERIUM, large wild beast.” At this point, Davis says Dodge’s writings became nonsensical. For starters, it would have been almost impossible for giant sloths to eat Pteropods. ”As a paleontologist, I just knew something was wrong,” Davis says. Then, toward the end of the editorial, Dodge writes a veiled confession, referring to himself in the third person, ”Could it be that the Annual Dinner Chairman discovered a potion by means of which he could change [green sea turtle] into Giant Sloth?” While Davis dug through the archives, Glass began the painstaking work of drawing usable DNA from the specimen. ”We were really skeptical from the start that we’d be able to extract anything at all. We assumed it was something ancient,” she says. But they were in luck. ”We got a sequence of the mitochondrial genome,” she says. She ran the sequence through an online database to look for matches. When the results came back, she and Davis opened them together. ”It was like a 99 percent match for a green sea turtle,” Glass says. She and Davis published their findings in PLOS ONE on Wednesday. And with that, a   deception unraveled. Dodge was not a paleontologist. He was a theater impresario and notorious showman who loved fostering shock and awe. And in promoting the dinner, he had claimed that the sloth had been excavated by two famed explorers: the Rev. Bernard Hubbard, a geologist known as ”the glacial priest,” and Capt. George Kosco of the United States Navy. Neither attended the dinner, so Dodge was free to fashion the ”sloth’s” origin story as he saw fit. He wanted to impress people, so he decided to pass off carved turtle meat as prehistoric game. ”As far as we know, Dodge was working alone on this,” Davis says. And he couldn’t find any records indicating that either Kosco or Hubbard had ever found a giant sloth or woolly mammoth on Akutan Island. By some accounts, diners who partook of the turtle turned sloth meat at the Explorers Club said it tasted like veal  —   which is how people have often characterized the taste of turtle meat. But other reports described the meat as tough, stringy and tasteless. (If you’re wondering, real mammoth tastes just dreadful, according to Russian scientist Alexei Tikhonov. Once, after a few shots of vodka, Tikhonov took a bite of a woolly beast that had been dug out of the Siberian tundra  —   as Richard Stone recounted in his 2002 book Mammoth.) Davis says he thinks Dodge would have been delighted to hear the dinner became this legend that everyone has long accepted at face value. ”In a way, this was his greatest production,” Davis says. ”Nobody remembers Dodge the explorer or Dodge the impresario. But people remember this.”"
"In a year where so many Republican voters are angry at Washington, it can be tough to have two former presidents in your family. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has struggled with that dynamic his entire campaign  —   sometimes embracing the Bush legacy, and sometimes holding it at arm’s length. (The campaign logo is Jeb! not Bush!) Bush has now decided to fully lean into his family’s 12 years in the White House. Former President George W. Bush just cut an ad for a   superPAC. On Thursday night in Derry, N. H. former first lady Barbara Bush joined Jeb on the campaign trail. Barbara Bush spoke only for about a minute and a half, but she lavished praise on a son who seems like he could use it. Bush is lagging in the polls, his   mentee Marco Rubio is surging and Republican voters just don’t seem that interested in government experience this year. ”I didn’t really plan on this,” Barbara Bush said. ”But Jeb is the nicest, wisest, most caring, loyal, disciplined,” she said, adding, ”Not by me!” when the audience laughed. ”But he’s not a bragger,” she said. ”We don’t allow that.” ”He’s decent and honest. He’s everything we need as a president,” she said. ”His dad and I are very, very proud of him.” Bush has hovered around 10 percent in New Hampshire polls, in a clump alongside Govs. John Kasich and Chris Christie, as well as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Like his father and brother before him, he’s had his spell of campaign trail gaffes, including a moment this week when he implored a silent audience to applaud. Thursday night’s overflow crowd clearly energized Bush and his campaign. Staffers were gushing to each other about the turnout before the event began, and Bush spoke and answered questions for more than an hour. ”Mom, my crowd sizes aren’t normally this large,” Bush quipped. ”I wonder why.” But while the audience was quick to heap applause on Barbara Bush, several Republicans in the crowd seemed wary of a fourth Bush term. ”I’ve supported his father I supported George twice,” said Bill Manning. ”And, you know, it’s probably just a name  —   I’m not going to support the Bushes  —   I don’t think I’m going to support the Bushes anymore.” Manning says he’s specifically looking for a nonestablishment candidate this year. ”Listen, I’m 73,” he said. ”I’ve been voting for a long time. I’ve listened to their promises for years and years,” he said, and then seen the same problems crop up again in the next election. Manning is thinking about voting for Donald Trump, though he says he’s turned off by ”his bellicose attitude, his smirky attitude and his  .” Bush has to walk a tricky line with voters like Manning. He owns up to the ”establishment” label at every campaign event now, saying it comes with the territory of being ”Barbara Bush’s son.” ”I’m proud of my dad. I’m proud of my brother. I’m proud of being a Bush,” he told the Derry crowd. ”But like all families, we’re a little different, each one of us. I don’t think  —   if you have a sister or a brother you’re probably not the same. We’re all a little different.”"
"There are plenty of political punches being thrown around the GOP field these days. Christie knocks Bush. Bush knocks Trump. Trump knocks Cruz . .. you get the point. But this past week, they’ve homed in on one particular punching bag: Marco Rubio. It’s one side effect of his      finish in Iowa and subsequent growth spurt in New Hampshire. As NPR’s Scott Detrow recently reported, there is   in the Granite State  —   something a flurry of new polling data support. The punches are varied  —   some say the   Florida senator is inexperienced. Some say he’s inconsistent. And others question how his loss in Iowa is being spun into a  . Even though New Hampshire is a key state for any traditionally moderate candidate, Rubio has arguably become the most popular candidate to criticize. That’s partly because Rubio is trying to portray himself as a candidate for all Republicans  —   a possible bridge builder who could coalesce Tea Party and traditional establishment support around him. At campaign events, you meet people torn between Rubio and Ted Cruz, but, just as often, you meet people torn between Rubio and John Kasich. So Rubio’s rivals (both insiders and outsiders) feel universally threatened by the   ’s potential. Here’s how the fight has played out this week. Before the results for the Iowa caucuses were even tallied, Rubio’s fellow Floridian had already begun launching attacks. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told a crowd Monday evening that Rubio (and Cruz) were ”backbenchers” who had ”never done anything of consequence” in their lives. He described them as talented speakers, but not leaders. Then, on Tuesday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie joined the chorus. ”We know who the boy in the bubble is up here who never answers your questions, who’s constantly scripted and controlled because he can’t answer your questions,” Christie said. ”So when Sen. Rubio gets here, when the boy in the bubble gets here, I hope you ask him some questions.” Donald Trump  —   who has essentially led every New Hampshire poll for months  —   seemed less threatened and more perturbed by the newfound Rubio attention when he spoke to thousands at an indoor tennis club Tuesday night. He described Rubio as a ”nice guy” but then questioned the media’s narrative out of Iowa. Trump’s main complaint centered on optics he didn’t appreciate being dubbed a ”loser,” while the candidate who finished behind him (Rubio) was dubbed a ”winner.” ”The headlines were ’Trump comes in second. He’s humiliated.’ I come in second, I’m not humiliated,” Trump said. Cruz, the man who actually won the Iowa caucuses, began his   tour with nuanced   attacks. He questioned, for example, Rubio’s immigration position. ”Marco made the decision, the conscious deliberate decision to go and stand with Barack Obama, and Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid and to lead the fight for amnesty,” Cruz told voters at a small church in New Hampshire Tuesday. But his tone quickly changed. And the attacks morphed from policy issues to personal issues. ”You know, we’ve been joking  —   [that] in the media world that bronze is the new gold,” Cruz told Fox’s Sean Hannity late Tuesday. ”They’re going to push the candidates that they want to push, and the Washington cartel has its favorite candidates.” By midweek, Christie was ready with more intense insults. The New Jersey governor suggested Rubio was unfairly benefiting from a media bump in the aftermath of the Iowa caucuses. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with The Washington Post: ” ’It’s like you’re writing Rubio press releases,’ he said. ’Seriously. The guy was predicted to come in third, and he came in third. So what was the great shock? I said all along I felt it would be   . It was   . Yawn.’ ”Christie added: ’All of a sudden, he’s now the consensus nominee? Come on. It’s silly. . .. After 180, 000 people in Iowa voted?’ ” And in an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Christie’s attacks grew more personal. ”The problem is with someone like Marco Rubio, who quite frankly hasn’t proven that he can get anything done except to get up in the morning, you know, fix his hair, smile and give the same speech he’s given for the last six years,” Christie said. ”I don’t understand how that’s a qualification for president of the United States.” New Hampshire is a key state for Christie, who skipped the Iowa caucus celebrations Monday evening in the state. Christie has said he needs to beat both Bush and Kasich to sustain his campaign. And now he sees Rubio potentially peeling away voters crucial to his strategy. That’s why Christie’s campaign is going on the offense, ripping into Rubio with such a vengeance. In addition to the jabs above, Christie also mocked a somewhat awkward moment in a Morning Joe interview when former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who is now endorsing Rubio, struggled to list one concrete accomplishment of Rubio’s in the Senate. Reluctant To Fight Back, As Rubio crisscrossed New Hampshire, holding    town halls, he seemed reluctant to fight back, although the superPAC supporting his campaign has not shown the same reluctance. Conservative Solutions PAC recently released a negative ad that takes aim at Bush’s sputtering campaign. Rubio, though, is hesitant to engage the critics these days. He is riding high after Iowa. And with a telegenic face, a wide smile and a    immigrant story, Rubio is attracting hundreds of people to town halls across New Hampshire. At two events Thursday, he needed an overflow room for the crowds. At most of his pit stops, Rubio delivers essentially the same stump speech he has given for months. He never acknowledges the attacks, let alone his GOP rivals. Instead, he focuses on the Democrats, presenting himself as the party’s best choice to beat Hillary Clinton. ”I will unite the conservative movement and the Republican Party,” Rubio told a crowd in the traditionally Democratic city of Portsmouth, along the New Hampshire coast. ”I will grow the conservative movement and the Republican Party. And, if we do that, we will win. The Democrats do not want to run against me. Consistently, they attack me more than any other candidate in the field because they do not want to run against me.” It’s a tactic that allows him to seem above the infighting and focus on a general election strategy, even though he still has an uphill climb to capture the GOP nomination. When reporters asked Rubio Thursday to respond to his critics, he hedged. ”I think it’s silly,” Rubio said. ”Look, when people are having a tough time in a campaign, especially near the end, you see some desperation set in.” Rubio is trying to stay on message. ”I know this about politics  —   when everyone’s attacking you, you must be doing something right,” Rubio told reporters in Manchester. But whether Rubio can remain aloof and ignore the critics through primary day on Tuesday isn’t clear. After all, he will face his rivals    in a debate Saturday. And it’s much harder to dodge the blows when everyone will be in the same boxing ring. Plus, it’s worth remembering, although many candidates in the GOP race are focused on Rubio at the moment, the man still leading every New Hampshire poll is Donald Trump."
"With the Iowa caucuses in the books, the focus of the political world has shifted to the      state, New Hampshire. New Hampshire voters, with their contrarian reputation, head to the polls Tuesday. Expect the unexpected. Here are five things to know about how it all works: 1. Voting is straightforward, Kudos to those of you who mastered the complex caucus system that Iowa uses to pick its presidential nominees. But now you can breathe a sigh of relief. In New Hampshire, it is much more straightforward. Anonymous ballots are cast at regular voting locations. Also, the election is run by the New Hampshire secretary of state’s office and not by the individual political parties. That means an actual vote that’s able to be recounted, if necessary (though there are complicated rules for that check in with us if that becomes relevant). 2. Midnight voting  —   and lots of varied   times, That doesn’t mean the primary isn’t without its quirks. One of those quirks is midnight voting  —   at least in some places. Each town in New Hampshire sets its own time for when the polls open. Three tiny towns  —   Dixville Notch, Hart’s Location and Millsfield  —   choose to cast their votes just after midnight Tuesday morning. How small are these places? Dixville Notch’s population is just 12 Millsfield, 23 and by comparison, Hart’s Location is a veritable metropolis with 41 residents, according to the 2010 census, anyway. Most polls in the state are open from 7 a. m. to 7 p. m. ET. Polls in Manchester, the state’s largest city with about 110, 000 people, are open from 6 a. m. to 7 p. m. ET. 3. It’s really easy to get on the ballot, New Hampshire is a small state  —   both geographically and  . And its politics have a very local feel, unlike in big states such as, say, California, Texas or Florida. Voters love town halls so they can kick the tires and look under the hoods of candidates. They ask probing, sometimes blunt questions at town halls, and they want to look a candidate in the eye. Out of this culture comes the ease by which candidates can get on the ballot. All it takes is $1, 000 or, if that’s too much, just 100 signatures will do. That means on this year’s presidential ballot, there will be 58 (yes, 58!) people  —   30 on the Republican side and 28 for the Democrats. 4. A state known for its high voter participation and independent streak, New Hampshire voters are used to voting. Their governors have the shortest terms in the country, elected every two years. Because of that, in part, New Hampshire has had among the highest primary voter turnout rates in the country. In 2012, for example, 31. 1 percent of all eligible voters showed up to the polls despite the Democratic side not being competitive. (Who was first? North Carolina, actually, with 31. 5 percent, according to the U. S. Elections Project, maintained by Michael McDonald at the University of Florida.) It is expected to soar much higher than that this year with both sides being competitive. New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner is predicting a   turnout in 2016 of 550, 000 votes cast, or 63 percent of all registered voters. (That would break the total   record in the state of 527, 349.) Gardner also said he thinks more Republicans (about 282, 000) will come out to vote, given the historically large field of candidates, than Democrats (about 268, 000). For Republicans, that would break the 2012 total turnout primary record in the state of 248, 475. It would fall short of the 287, 556 Democrats who showed up in 2008. And a lot of those voters are independents or undeclared  —   roughly 44 percent. Not surprising for a place whose state motto is ”Live Free or Die.” And, unlike in many other states, those independents can vote here in either the Republican or the Democratic primary. That’s important because in an open presidential election, with the kind of interest that has been drummed up by this election on both sides, which way those indies go could sway the outcome. That might be thought to help someone like Hillary Clinton, who is seen as more centrist than Bernie Sanders, but it’s Sanders who has been winning independents in the state, while Clinton does best with   Democrats. By the way, if, after voting, those independents want to remain undeclared, they have to fill out a form saying so before leaving the voting location. That might be seen as a sneaky way to register voters in most other states, but, see above: New Hampshire is used to this. 5. New Hampshire has had a better track record of picking GOP nominees in recent years, New Hampshire voters like to say they pick presidents while Iowa picks corn. So how true is that? Since 1976, in competitive presidential primaries, New Hampshire has selected 10 eventual nominees (five Democrats, five Republicans). That includes the last two Republicans  —   Mitt Romney and John McCain. The last Democrat it picked right for the nomination was John Kerry in 2004. (Obama narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2008 despite leading in the polls heading into voting.) That’s only about a Hillary    win better than New Hampshire’s rival first state. (Iowa has picked nine nominees in that same time frame.) OK, but the point here was about picking presidents. So is New Hampshire good at that? The truth is, neither Iowa nor New Hampshire is that great at it. They’ve picked three presidents each. And New Hampshire has struggled in the past few decades at picking presidents, honestly. Consider:  —   No Democrat who has won the New Hampshire primary has won the presidency since Jimmy Carter in 1976.  —   And no Republican has done it since George H. W. Bush in 1988. The New Hampshire primary, though, goes further back than Iowa  —   all the way to 1916, actually (though back then they were voting for delegates to the national conventions, not directly for candidates). And the record holder for the most New Hampshire primary wins  —   three  —   is Richard Nixon. The Big Questions, Republicans,  —   Can billionaire businessman Donald Trump rebound from a stinging   finish in Iowa last week? —   Will Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Iowa winner, turn his victory into momentum in a state that is far less religious?  —   Who, if anyone, will emerge as a strong establishment candidate to challenge the two aforementioned outsider candidates? (Is ” ” real?) Democrats,  —   After narrowly losing Iowa by a few tenths of a percentage point, can Sanders make New Hampshire his launching pad? Expectations may have gotten too high for him in New Hampshire, with some polls showing him as far ahead as 20 points. What’s his margin on primary night? He needs momentum to swing him into more diverse states and the caches of delegates available on Super Tuesday, March 1.  —   Can Clinton repeat a    victory, as in 2008 (or at least    finish) in the state, and then ride that momentum to South Carolina, where she enjoys a sizable lead in polls, because of deep ties to the black community? New Hampshire Republicans Typically Crown An Establishment Candidate, Just three men have led the Republican polls in New Hampshire since the 2016 cycle began in earnest last year. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was an early favorite, as he was nationally, only to see his poll numbers   after stumbles and the emergence of Trump. Then there was the     presidential run of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker that lasted a mere 71 days. Since then, only one person has sat atop GOP polls in the state: Trump. The former reality TV star has led, in an average of the polls, according to RealClearPolitics, since July 29  —   six straight months. He still leads, but he had some of his air of inevitability punctured by last week’s loss in Iowa, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has been climbing. The true test on Tuesday may be who finishes second. For the establishment Republicans, like Bush, Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio, this may be    time for their candidacies. Christie received the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s largest newspaper. It probably doesn’t hurt Christie’s case that the newspaper’s publisher, Joe McQuaid, has had a very public and toxic feud with Trump for months now. Kasich got the Boston Globe (and the New York Times) behind him. He kept a light footprint in Iowa and is virtually putting all his marbles into the New Hampshire basket, spending more than $10 million on TV ads here. Meanwhile, Bush has spent the most on ads and has more staff on the ground there than any other campaign. If he can’t muster a strong finish, it’s difficult to see a path forward for him. Democrats Are ’Feeling The Bern’ This Year, But New Hampshire Has Been Good To The Clintons, Too, If recent polling holds true to form, New Hampshire may not be much of a contest on the Democratic side. Bernie Sanders, the   bespectacled septuagenarian with a sledgehammer of a message, holds a commanding   lead there, according to an average of the polls. Make no mistake  —   Sen. Sanders, who represents neighboring Vermont, needs a win here. His campaign believes if he can pull off a strong victory, it can raise along the lines of $30 million to $40 million within days. That’s cash it needs to compete with the Clinton juggernaut in the race for delegates and to spread his appealing message across the country, especially with minority voters. Nonwhites, after all, make up about 40 percent of the Democratic Party, but Iowa and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly white. His campaign will almost certainly be propelled by his narrow loss in Iowa. The Sanders camp is calling for the Democratic National Committee to release   totals from Iowa, and there are reports that the Sanders campaign is preparing to challenge the caucus results. As WBUR’s Steve Koczela puts it: ”But both primaries tend to be dominated by white, liberal voters, which is Sanders’ best demographic group. Sanders’ Achilles heel has always been his support among nonwhite voters. . .. As the primary moves into more diverse states, he will need to expand his reach, or will stand little chance of making the race competitive in the long term.” New Hampshire, though, has been kind to the Clintons in the past. In 2008, Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary by slightly more than 2 percentage points, after losing in Iowa to  . Barack Obama. When her husband, Bill, ran in 1992, he earned the nickname of ”The Comeback Kid” there even though he came in second to Paul Tsongas. A   finish for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, though, would most likely not yield a similar moniker."
"Which beer goes with guacamole? And which brew adds a nice clean, crisp finish to spicy wings? Those are burning questions for anyone who wants to take his snack game to the next level this Super Bowl weekend. And two craft beer experts who wrote the book on pairing have the answers. Beer and food have loads of flavors in common, and they can complement each other beautifully. But most of us are just swigging and chewing mindlessly, missing an opportunity to appreciate interactions between the two, according to Julia Herz and Gwen Conley, authors of Beer Pairing: The Essential Guide From The Pairing Pros, published in December. ”We want you to think about what the elements of beer are before tasting the food,” Conley tells us. ”In the same vein, when you taste your food, do that exact same process: Be involved in it, be a participant instead of just being unconscious about it.” Herz is the craft beer program director of the Brewers Association Conley is a former microbiologist who is now the director of production and quality assurance at Port   Lost Abbey in San Marcos, Calif. They teamed up for the book after years of running public beer and food tastings together. Their guide includes everything from how to structure a tasting session to how aromas play into interactions between beer and food. ”Trying to describe pairing is like describing color to a blind person. How can a blind person know what you’re talking about if they have no reference to that color? So if I’m pairing and enjoying food and drink as art forms, then I want to be able to articulate what I’m getting,” Herz says. ”The interactions and the concepts in this book  —   a lot of people have never seen them documented in a way that allows them to verbalize it, because the terminology is all over the board. [We wanted to] finally provide some lexicon.” But you shouldn’t just throw any beer at any Super Bowl snack and expect a touchdown. We asked Conley and Herz to tell us which beer styles would go well with quintessential Super Bowl menu items. Here’s the rundown: Beef Chili + Imperial Double IPA, The pale malt in the beer goes with browned meat hops add herb notes that enhance the chili’s flavor. Guacamole + Hoppy American Pale Ale, Citrus notes in the pale ale go with lime in the guacamole, and toasted malt matches up with corn chips. Buffalo Wings +   Pilsner, Hops in the beer cut the grease in the wings. The beer’s slight sweetness also cuts the heat in wings and offers a crisp, clean finish. Cool Ranch Doritos + Imperial Red Ale  Caramel malt in the beer brings out the chips’ sweetness. Hops in the beer can also help enhance herb notes in the chips. Pizza +   Pilsner  The beer’s bitterness goes with the gooey cheese, and the   flavor of the malt pairs with the pizza crust. Most beer and food pairings go one of three ways, Herz and Conley write. There’s the home run (”one plus one doesn’t just equal three  —   it equals five”) the     matchup (”not going to be remembered and talked about”) and the train wreck (”one plus one equals . .. negative one”). One example of the home run, they say, is the classic matchup of a Belgian dubbel ale with barbecue. As for a train wreck, Conley says she recently tried dark   pumpkin seeds with an imperial stout. ”The roasted, bitter characteristics of the chocolate clashed so bad [with the stout] and created an ashtray, burnt characteristic,” says Conley. Another wreck: a saison running into Wensleydale cheese with cranberries. Conley explains, ”That can create a massive soapy taste  —   a terrible train wreck in your mouth.” But Conley and Herz also urge tasters not to fear train wrecks. Such unfortunate pairings, they write, ”can be amazing learning experiences.” Some More Tips, To get the most out of your pairings, Herz and Conley say, you’ll need to cover some basics: The important thing, Herz and Conley say, is to focus on the process of tasting both your beer and your food. Analyze their color and intensity, savor the aroma and name the flavors you’re experiencing. Give yourself time between each bite or sip to pick up any lingering flavors. ”It really is a very zen thing,” says Conley. ”You are concentrating on what you’re doing, tasting and smelling.” Seeking that ideal, and meditating on the interplay of flavors, might end up being even more rewarding than watching the game. Like they say about sports, it’s all about how you play."
"When the Carolina Panthers play the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50, Panthers coach Ron Rivera will become the second Latino head coach in Super Bowl history. And he’s one reason why many in Charlotte’s Latino community have become so enthusiastic about American football. Rivera says his interest in football started early. ”Growing up, one of my role models was my uncle, who’s half Mexican and half Filipino,” he says. ”Culturally, to be accepted, my uncles all grew up playing football and baseball and basketball.” His father is Puerto Rican and his mother is Mexican. And Rivera is now part of an exhibit detailing how Latinos are changing the South, and vice versa. It’s on display at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte through October 2016. In a museum video, Rivera says he loved football. He played in college and the pros. In 2011, the Carolina Panthers made him the third Latino head coach in NFL history. Rivera has a chance to become the second Latino head coach to win a Super Bowl, following Tom Flores’ victory in Super Bowl XVIII with the Los Angeles Raiders. Oliver Merino, the Latino New South Coordinator at Levine Museum, says Rivera’s story shows how the country is changing. ”You have people that are coming from very different places and finding themselves here in the U. S.,” he says. ”[They’re] incorporating their culture and their traditions and also embracing new ones.” Hola Noticias, a local newspaper for the Hispanic community, has stepped up football coverage. Journalist Cesar Hurtado says as the Panthers pile up wins, more fans gravitate toward football. ”Our community starts to understand the game, understand the players and start to love them. It’s growing,” he says. You can hear it too on Charlotte’s   radio stations. In years past, most callers wanted to talk soccer. With the Panthers’ success, almost everyone now calls about football. Luis Moreno Sr. talks frequently about the Panthers on his daily sports show. ”There’s some people that they just like soccer, say you talk too much about football,” he says. ”I said well football is what it is right now, you know?” Jaime Moreno, Luis’ brother, is a legendary Latino voice in Charlotte. He’s the    announcer for the Panthers’   broadcast crew. And Luis’s son, Luis Moreno Jr. is the color commentator. They call games with the   attack passion of World Cup soccer. In Ecuador, their broadcasts are how J. C. Alvarado’s nephew follows the team. Alvarado is a local business owner and big Panthers fan. He’s from Ecuador originally. When his nephew visited Charlotte in 2014, they went to Panthers practice. ”Ron Rivera came out, and I just shouted, ’Hey Ron! I have an international visitor here for you! ’” Alvarado says. ”He actually stopped and came to us. We were like shocked. I didn’t know what to say!” Alvarado says Rivera is a key reason why the Panthers are popular among Latinos. ”I think he’s a role model, not only for the Hispanic community, but for pretty much every person that wants to aspire to be somebody,” Alvarado says. The way Rivera puts it, he’s happy to let people know who he is and where he comes from. ”I see myself as Latino. And I’m very proud of that fact,” Rivera says. ”And it’s funny because people say you’re a minority, you’ve gotten opportunities because you’re a minority. I don’t believe that for one second. I don’t that believe you hire people because of their ethnicity. You hire people because they’re the best.” Sunday night, Rivera and the Panthers will be trying their hardest to take that title  ” the NFL’s best."
"On Friday’s All Things Considered, I have a story about how a recent federal court ruling is restricting when police may use Tasers in the five Southeastern states covered by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. In a nutshell, police there may no longer shock a nonviolent, noncooperative suspect with a Taser stun gun —   even if he is trying to escape custody. But the ruling isn’t only about Tasers. It has deeper implications for police use of force, generally speaking. What surprised the experts are the reasons the judges gave in the ruling. At one point, they say the officers weren’t following ”best practices” for Taser use, established by groups such as the Police Executive Research Forum. Federal courts traditionally have avoided setting    rules for what makes use of force legal. Instead, they’ve set broad standards  —   for instance, the Supreme Court said in 1989 that police use of force must be ”objectively reasonable” (Graham v. Connor) but it left it to lower courts to hash out what that means in practice, case by case. So when this panel of judges in the 4th Circuit starts citing specific ”best practices” as a measure for lawful Taser use, it gets the attention of people such as Seth Stoughton. ”This is potentially a really big deal,” says Stoughton, a former police officer who is now an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina, where he specializes in police use of force. ”It could actually draw some lines for officers to follow, rather than what is  —   in my view  —   this nebulous to the point of meaningless standard of, ’Just be objectively reasonable.’ ”   legal experts agree that this ruling is unusually specific  —   and they see that as a problem. Police generally like the ”objective reasonableness” standard because it makes it easier to judge a cop’s use of force by the real,    circumstances, which can be   and chaotic. They worry that if the courts become too proscriptive, officers will be hampered by rigid rules, and may hesitate to act in moments of danger. Even Stoughton, who supports the idea of more specific rules, admits he is surprised this   panel broke with tradition. He doesn’t know why it did so, but suspects it may have something to do with the   moment in America. ”Federal judges and everyone else  —   we’re simply more aware of policing . .. and that’s been true for more than a year and a half,” he says. ”That can’t help but affect judges in some way.”"
"The Jordanian movie Theeb has been nominated for a best foreign language film Oscar. It’s a beautiful, sweeping story set in 1916 in an area of western Saudi Arabia then known as the Hejaz. The film’s director, Naji Abu Nowar, says Theeb covers a pivotal moment in the region’s history. ”The First World War is kicking off . .. and the war is coming toward this area of Hejaz,” he tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. ”The British are . .. inciting the Arab tribes to revolt against the Ottoman imperialists. And so you’re on the brink of a massive change.” The fall of the Ottoman Empire led to the borders of today’s Middle East being drawn. But rather than look at that moment from the perspective of Lawrence of Arabia, who famously helped organize the Arab revolt, or a grown Arab fighter, the film follows a young Arab boy. He’s the title character, Theeb and like many in Hejaz at that time, he’s a Bedouin, or nomad. One day a British soldier comes to Theeb’s family tent looking for a guide to a well, and Theeb joins the trip across the desert. On telling the story of World War I from a Bedouin perspective, If they remember a time, it’s ”Oh, the time when it snowed,” or, ”The time when that famous sheikh died.” So for me I thought: Wow, if I could put the audience in their shoes whereby you don’t know what year it is, you don’t know what’s going on, you’re just living your normal life and then suddenly this stranger appears from nowhere and this story begins and you don’t know what an Englishman is, you don’t know there’s a First World War going on. So what would that feel like? And that was really the directorial emphasis on the film. . .. Let’s put the audience in this boy’s shoes and have him really experience what it must have been like  —   how strange and surreal it must have been. On a scene in which Theeb and a character called ”The Stranger” encounter the Hejaz Railway, They’re looking at the railway and Theeb is seeing the railway for the very first time. He’s never seen it before and this stranger is telling him, ”That’s what’s destroyed us. . .. We used to guide the pilgrims to . .. Mecca, and we could do that in a month. But now this iron donkey takes them in a week, so no one wants to come with us.” It’s what the Bedouin call The Dark Times. I simplified it for the film to just talk about the pilgrims’ route . .. to Mecca, but also it’s trade. You know, you’re talking about part of the famous Silk Road  —   one of the most ancient trade routes in human history  —   and the Bedouin  —   before religion, before civilization  —   were guarding those trade routes. And when the railway was built, all of a sudden they began intertribal raiding, which became very bloody, and they called it The Dark Times. On casting Bedouins in the film, We looked around for a year to find the right tribe to make the film with. And we chose this tribe because they were the last tribe to be settled, so all the adult men had grown up as nomads at some point throughout their life. So that was an incredible experience. We went down there, we lived with them for a year in the desert region of Wadi Rum in Jordan. . .. We wanted the film to be [as] authentic as possible because the Bedouin have a very specific culture, specific dialect, so we wanted to use them as actors. So we actually cast the entire film from the tribe using nonprofessional actors and workshopping them for eight months to prepare them to act in the film. On casting the lead role of Theeb, We had to shoot a mood board. . .. It’s just like a little kind of trailer to show what the film would be, and then we take it to investors and try and raise the money that way. And we found the guy that we thought had the qualities to be like a Bedouin producer, so we asked him to find us a boy to play this role in this mood board and his son [Jacir Eid] turned up. And I’d known Jacir for a long time because I was living with them for the first month I was there before I kind of found my own place. And, you know, he was so shy. And I thought this will be a disaster because I didn’t think he had any ability to act and I thought he was going to ruin the whole thing. And then it’s that magical thing, you know, you put him in front of a camera and he just lit up the screen. . .. Instantly just the way he moved, he started improvising dialogue and he was just a star. On why he thinks audiences have responded to the film, I think the main reason why that is is because the majority of Arab cinema that gets released is often dealing with political subjects, because the people that fund these films, they only want political subject matters. For me, I’m about cinema. I love film and that’s why I’m doing what I do. I couldn’t care less about politics. And I think that the audience has responded to that because it’s not about trying to lecture them on an issue or trying to be political. And I think  —   especially in the region where really it’s been such a horrible couple of years with everything that’s going on  —   that people want to escape to the cinema. On the reaction in Jordan to Theeb being nominated for an Oscar, It’s the first time in Jordan’s history, so everyone in the country  —   it’s like we’ve won the World Cup, everyone’s going crazy, you know, and everyone’s celebrating. It’s an amazing experience for us, you know. It’s obviously been a very tough year across the Middle East and I often get people coming up to me saying, you know, ”Finally we’ve got something positive to root for, something good going on.”"
"The Zika virus has gone from an obscure disease to an international public health emergency. Researchers have been able to trace the gradual spread of Zika  —   slowly for decades and then, in the words of World Health Organization head Dr. Margaret Chan, ”explosively” since 2015, when it was first detected in Brazil. Now the virus has reached more than 20 countries and territories in the Americas. In Brazil, there have been   cases. Thousands of babies have been born in   regions with the birth defect microcephaly (although a causal relationship has not yet been scientifically established). Whether there is a link to microcephaly is one of many unanswered questions about this outbreak. But one thing is certain  —   the emergence of Zika, as seen on these maps, reflects the shrinking world we live in. ”Individuals can get on a plane and cross great distances in a short period of time,” says Dr. Nikos Vasilakis, a professor in the department of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. And when they harbor diseases, a   virus can suddenly turn into a global concern."
"U. S. health experts cautioned Friday that the apparent discovery of the Zika virus in saliva and urine from people in Brazil does not necessarily mean the virus can be spread by more casual contact with infected people, such as through kissing. ”I think we need to be careful that don’t we jump to any conclusions about transmissibility,” Anthony Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition. ”When you find a virus or fingerprints of a virus in a body secretion, it absolutely does not mean that it is transmitted that way,” Fauci said. The virus may be present in a form that is incapable of spreading, or in such low levels that transmission is impossible or unlikely, several scientists said. There also could be substances present in saliva that prevent the virus from spreading. More research will be needed to determine what role, if any, the presence of the virus in saliva plays in the spread of the Zika virus, the scientists said. ”The important thing is now to determine whether the virus in saliva and urine can transmit the virus to others. We’ll just have to wait and see,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease researcher at Vanderbilt University. While other viruses can be found in saliva, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) it is not spread that way, Fauci noted. Mosquitoes clearly remain the main way the Zika virus is transmitted, says Thomas Frieden, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ”I think it’s important to step back and emphasize that Zika is a   virus and the overwhelming majority of cases are spread by mosquitoes,” Frieden told reporters during a briefing Friday morning. The CDC did, however, issue new guidelines for how pregnant women should protect themselves from getting infected, following a report out of Dallas this week that Zika had been spread through sexual contact in one case. The CDC recommends that pregnant women whose sexual partners live in or have traveled to places where the virus is spreading should either abstain from sexual activity or ”consistently and correctly” use condoms during vaginal, oral or anal sex. Women who are not pregnant should consider doing the same if they are ”concerned about sexual transmission,” according to the guidelines. The Zika virus is spreading rapidly through many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. Concern has spiked because the virus is apparently causing some babies in Brazil to be born with microcephaly, a condition marked by small heads and brains. It has also been linked to   syndrome, which can cause paralysis. Mosquitoes that can transmit the Zika virus are found in the U. S. but so far aside from the Dallas sexual transmission case all the infections reported in the continental United States have been among travelers who got infected elsewhere. The CDC said there have been 50 such cases so far. While officials say mosquitoes could spread the virus in the U. S. they are optimistic there will not be widespread transmission because of several factors, most notably good   efforts. But Frieden stressed that there is a lot that remains unknown about Zika. ”The situation is evolving rapidly, and as we learn more we’ll share more so Americans can best decide how to protect their health,” Frieden says."
"The new movie, Rams, has absolutely nothing to do with Peyton Manning. It’s a story from Iceland that involves sheep, snow, a   virus called scrapie and sufficient sibling rivalry to power a Greek tragedy. We’re introduced to   brothers Gummi and Kiddi Bodvarsson on their neighboring farms in a remote Icelandic valley. Their barns are less than 100 yards apart. Their flocks are bred from the same,   stock. And while tending them, the   brothers are all but indistinguishable, with shaggy, nearly identical    beards and thick, nearly identical    sweaters. Cut from the same cloth, you might say, except that Gummi and Kiddi have not spoken to each other for four decades. The film doesn’t explain why, it just shows the result: two men, both popular with their neighbors, but with the understanding that they must be dealt with separately. So when a local ”best ram” competition ends in a virtual tie, and Gummi’s ram takes second place, while Kiddi’s takes first, there is some hard feeling. And when Gummi voices suspicions a few days later that his brother’s winning ram has ”scrapie”  —   an incurable   virus that’s the sheep equivalent of   disease  —   there is harder feeling that’s expressed with a rifle shot through a window in the middle of the night. Up to this point, director Grímur Hákonarson has been playing quite a bit of the sibling rivalry side of the story for comedy. When communication between brothers is absolutely necessary, they send insulting notes to each other via   dog, and there are running jokes  —   Kiddi forever being rescued in a drunken stupor from a snowbank, Gummi being interrupted every time he starts to relax in a bath. But things turn darker when it turns out Gummi is right. The local vet confirms that Kiddi’s ram is, indeed, infected, and because the virus is both contagious and fatal, the authorities decree that all the sheep in both their herds  —   in fact, all the sheep in the valley  —   must be slaughtered. This is a tragedy for these men. They love their herds, and come up with differently sneaky ways to try to avoid that edict, one of which provides the film with a conclusion that might have been imported from Norse legend. Director Hákonarson, who has mostly made documentaries before Rams, is working with two of Iceland’s most distinguished actors here  —   Sigurdur Sigurjónsson and Theodór Júlíusson  —   who are, ironically, so persuasive as   it feels at times as if Rams is, itself, a documentary rather than a spare, simply shot drama. A drama that offers a portrait of dedication and alienation, as well as of an unspoken,      bond between brothers who’ve spent a lifetime butting heads near the top of the world."
"All that is solid melts in the presence of funk. Maurice White  —   the prolific songwriter, singer, producer, arranger, bandleader, organizer and conceptualist at the helm of   act Earth, Wind  Fire who transitioned on Thursday at 74 after a   struggle with Parkinson’s Disease  —   gifted us with years of optimistic, exuberant music that could instantly evaporate your frown into thin air. Made up of   musicians like White, guitarist Al McKay, percussionist Ralph Johnson and keyboardist Larry Dunn, Earth, Wind  Fire (EWF) is the black music ensemble as a constellation of individual shining stars, each grooving together in the worshipful service of happy feeling. I’ve always thought of EWF as more than just a musical act  —   it’s the concept of a band as a sensual rhythm machine. When brawny jams like ”Sing a Song,” ”Getaway” or ”Mighty Mighty” come blasting through the speakers, who among us is truly powerful enough to resist tapping our toes, snapping our fingers, bobbing our necks, launching into the electric slide or just straight up losing our minds altogether on the nearest dance floor? Even EWF’s dulcet, Fender   ballads like 1974’s ”Devotion” and 1975’s ”That’s The Way of the World” and ”Reasons”  —   staples of the Quiet Storm radio format  —   sound like wistful, optimistic calls to liberation and convivial good feeling, like listening to birds sweetly chirping at dawn. EWF envisioned polyrhythmic pop as a musical antidepressant: there are times when I feel better just thinking about EWF. As a teenager in the late 1950s and early ’60s,   White had a coveted stint as staff drummer at Chess Records working with heavyweight acts like Etta James, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and The Impressions. He then graduated to the role of timekeeper for Ramsey Lewis’       trio. Contributing to tracks like Lewis’   1966 ”Hold It Right There,” White learned plenty about how a soul, jazz and pop mélange  —   even if it was unrelated to the exact musical sound he’d later pursue with EWF  —   could begin to cross over beyond a core black audience. In 1969, White took up jingle writing, and formed a trio called The Salty Peppers that despite a Capitol Records recording contract, never really caught on with a wider audience. In search of bigger fortunes, Maurice White ventured out to La La Land where his trio ballooned into a larger ensemble (including his flamboyantly fierce bassist brother Verdine). Signing up with Warner, the band made waves as a tight prog soul outfit with records like Earth, Wind  Fire and The Need of Love (both 1971) and contributed soundtrack sounds for iconoclast film director Melvin van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song sleeper. By 1973 they migrated to Columbia Records, then helmed by Clive Davis, where they hit their stride with accomplished albums like Last Days and Time and Head to the Sky. EWF is arguably the most influential funk band in recorded music history, alongside Sly and the Family Stone and  . On   tunes like 1974’s   ”Shining Star,” EWF strove for an effervescent rhythm and blues that was a clever combination of Vietnam     Black Arts   Afrocentricity and Holiness Church messianism. Maurice White garnered an impressive reputation for   sweetly melodious hooks and for his tastefully manicured arrangements, and EWF took things up a notch a year later by augmenting their     with the resplendent Phenix Horns. Maurice White’s understated tenor perfectly complemented Philip Bailey’s    and the band’s choral backgrounds are among the most accomplished in soul music. For their efforts over time, EWF took home six Grammys even by the end of the ’70s, they’d sold tens of millions of albums. Maurice White, who’d taken an early interest in astrology and mysticism, deserves credit for helping to Africanize the Top 40 through his willful introduction of Egyptian symbols like the Ankh and the Eye of the Horus in the band’s visual imagery, as well as his pursuit of themes and lyrics mining Egyptology and other aspects of African spirituality. White also broke ground by introducing quirky African instrumentation like the kalimba (thumb piano) and complex African and Latin percussion into pop songs  —   see 1973’s ”Zanzibar,” for instance  —   a gesture which remains as meaningful to a certain cadre of black folks as the Beatles’ introduction of the tambura into ’60s rock with Revolver was to other people. Especially given their pursuit of Brazilian bliss on songs like the sublimely sunny ”Brazilian Rhyme (Beijo)” and Ramsey Lewis’ ”Sun Goddess,” we might begin to revisit EWF as the quintessential proto world music act of the ’70s. With lyrics like ”you will find peace of mind if you look way down in your heart and soul,” EWF could admittedly come off as preachy. Still, White’s dogged Afrocentric Christianity never drove audiences away, and his secular sermonizing never seemed to conflict with his crossover ambition. A friend once hyperbolically suggested to me that back in the late ’70s she and her friends were so mesmerized and swept up in rapture watching EWF perform in concert that they would have jumped off a bridge or done anything lead singer Philip Bailey encouraged them to do. In their pursuit of musical universalism, EWF transcended organized religion to become a kind of religion unto themselves: the thrill of EWF is hearing Maurice White and his bandmates preach the gospel of   multicultural funk as the path to supreme glory. In the 21st Century, the pop culture landscape has become increasingly defined by   brutalism as evidenced by the way cinematic vengeance fantasies like The Revenant take home major film prizes. In that context, EWF’s inextinguishable positivity vibe might today seem passé. But even in its  ’70s heyday, EWF’s music served a powerful social purpose. White concocted music that meant to shield us from a world constantly threatening to harden us and turn our hearts cold  —   a   rights America defined by the Nixon administration’s terror tactics against   activists, by the devastating influx of heroin in inner cities and by the ugliness of organized white resistance to busing. In retrospect, Maurice White’s clever idea in forming EWF was to power forward with an ethical black music that could force us to keep our heads up to the sky when it mattered most. It was as if through the EWF concept he wanted to offer a therapeutic public sphere, where we could all find collective peace of mind, where we could ward off the evil running through our brains. Today, the violence inflicted on black lives and trans lives and women’s lives and Syrian lives forces us to question whether all lives really do matter to all of us as a result, EWF’s most politically explicit songs, like 1987’s ”System of Survival” are relevant as ever. Like most pop visionaries, from Sinatra to Jagger to Jackson, Maurice White was as much a figure driven by inspiration as he was a calculated professional drawing on perspiration to produce hits. With their pre Cirque du Soleil live show  —   replete with   dancers, Doug   magic tricks, laser light shows and an   cast of eccentric stage characters  —   EWF helped realize the idea of stadium soul in the ’70s. Naysayers found their predilection for theatrical spectacle corny others (including me) remain floored by the astonishing vitality of their live act. By 1979 EWF jumped headlong into disco: ”Boogie Wonderland” is a gloriously campy gem in an already exponentially campy genre. That same year, they landed in Adult Contemporary heaven with the stately David Foster   ”After the Love Has Gone” and by the early ’80s, EWF made it safely out of disco by emphasizing synth bass and vocorder on the irrepressible ”Let’s Groove.” White’s lyrics, sometimes couched in aphorisms that would later morph into the   lingo of the ’80s, were not always coherent and were occasionally less than transcendent. What exactly does it mean to ”share the spice of life,” anyways? Maybe Maurice White never managed to gain the sort of widespread name recognition afforded to James Brown or George Clinton because there were plenty of other cooks in the EWF kitchen. At its heart, the band was less the vision of a single auteur than it was a collaborative endeavor made possible by a range of human resources including underappreciated early   and   Charles Stepney (who died in 1976). In search of hits, White was wise enough to recruit gifted scribes like Skip Scarborough (”Can’t Hide Love”) and Alee Willis (  on wedding band favorite ”September. ”) Still, some band members resented White’s willingness to take all the credit as the band’s chief executive. Phil Bailey once remarked in an interview: ”EWF in the ’70s was like a Super Bowl team. Maurice was a great visionary, a great coach, but he wasn’t like a Stevie Wonder or a Prince. We had great arrangers, producers, different writers, and the misperception came about when Maurice thought he was all of it. We did countless records where we were little more than sidemen. It became like work, and the magic went away.” These routine band politics, however, cannot diminish the boundless briliance Maurice White helped created both in and out of the studio. A skillful creative entrepreneur, he never failed to capitalize on business opportunities. In the  ’70s, White and Stepney   Kalimba Productions, and brought us Deniece William’s brimming, haunting slow jam ”Free.” White also   and produced The Emotions’ ”Best of My Love,” an ebullient firestorm that deserves an automatic place in anybody’s desert island dance music playlist. Those two standouts don’t even scratch the surface of White’s expansive discography. As Maurice White became reclusive in the ’90s due to failing health, the EWF catalogue became busy work for successive generations of artists, from   superstar MC Hammer to Italo disco unit Black Box to   romeo D’Angelo to troubled   Tupac to British retro act Jamiroquai to cosmopolitan Nuyorican house remixers Masters at Work. For years music supervisors have made liberal use of EWF classics, licensing them for commercials and films too numerous to name. Like Queen and E. L. O and a few other rarefied bands, EWF have become so ubiquitous that it sometimes seems their recordings have sublimated into the ether their artistic contributions seem to be everywhere and all around us, pouring forth from every supermarket speaker and car radio, simply a part of the DNA of modern living. Turn on the radio today and you’ll hear   tropical house and retro grooves and trap music of every style all of this rhythmic music owes some sort of debt to EWF’s soulful funk pop concept, even if the latter was driven by the sort of unimpeachable musicianship we hear less and less today on the charts. Though we are in a different era and time marked by different priorities and politics, how many young artists today are making the difficult choice to evoke the ethical stance that EWF took in their music? How many make the risky choice to reject pessimism, cynicism and nihilism the way Maurice White did, time and again, in his music? (I don’t think EWF ever wrote a single ironic lyric). To be fair, the current crop of teen and   pop and soul aspirants have years to grow into the mature, seasoned   that EWF represent. But how many young artists right now are writing lyrics that capture the deeply spiritual precincts that underwrite romantic tunes like ”Reasons?” How many young artists force us to consider, by way of inspirational messages, what it means to be conscious, to be alive, and to be a planetary citizen? In an age in which we’re preoccupied by celebrity squabbles on social media and the physiology of all manner of resting b**** faces, which current pop star is insisting, as Maurice White did, that a smiling face is in itself a form of power, a weapon against the threat of evil? On a ship called Fantasii, Maurice White took us on so many marvelous musical getaways, encouraging us to dream of benevolent alien nations residing on planets like Jupiter. During those fantastical rides in the sky, when we found ourselves wishing upon dreams of better lives, we learned that striving to become our best, highest shining selves  —   no matter who you are or from where you start  —   is always a worthwhile struggle. If we now live in sorrowful days  —   sometimes it seems that the cold world in which we live is no more than a hopeless masquerade  —   Maurice White’s prophetic music tells us we are a mighty people of the sun who have the inherent capacity to one day open our eyes. And in that fateful moment when all of us choose to recognize our capacity to pursue love rather than fear or hate, we may finally reach the glorious promised land that Maurice White, in his unmitigated genius, sought to illuminate through decades of ever wonderful music."
"If you’ve ever been to a wedding reception in the U. S. you know there’s one question that can get a whole family on the dance floor: ”Do you remember the 21st night of September?” Earth, Wind  Fire’s ”September” even shows up at fictional weddings, as in the opening of the 1997 movie Soul Food. It’s made its way into TV shows, commercials, sporting events and video games. HBO named a movie after the song. In 2008, it played at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions. The story of the song begins in 1978. Allee Willis was a struggling songwriter in LA  —   until the night she got a call from Maurice White, the leader of Earth, Wind  Fire. White offered her the chance of a lifetime: to   the band’s next album. Willis arrived at the studio the next day hoping it wasn’t some kind of cosmic joke. ”As I open the door, they had just written the intro to ’September.’ And I just thought, ’Dear God, let this be what they want me to write!’ Cause it was obviously the   song in the world,” Willis says. Using a progression composed by Earth, Wind  Fire guitarist Al McKay, White and Willis wrote the song over the course of a month, conjuring images of clear skies and dancing under the stars. Willis says she likes songs that tell stories, and that at a certain point, she feared the lyrics to ”September” were starting to sound simplistic. One nonsense phrase bugged her in particular. ”The, kind of,   phrase that Maurice used in every song he wrote was ’ ’ ” she says. ”So right from the beginning he was singing, ’   say, do you remember      dancing in September.’ And I said, ’We are going to change ’  ’ to real words, right?’ ” Wrong. Willis says that at the final vocal session she got desperate and begged White to rewrite the part. ”And finally, when it was so obvious that he was not going to do it, I just said, ’What the       does ’  ’ mean?’ And he essentially said, ’Who the       cares? ’” she says. ”I learned my greatest lesson ever in songwriting from him, which was never let the lyric get in the way of the groove.” I asked Jeffrey Peretz, a professor of music theory at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute, what makes that groove so powerful. He says a lot of it has to do with how the music unfolds. The song’s very structure is an endless cycle that keeps us dancing and wanting more. ”There’s four chords in the chorus that just keep moving forward and never seem to land anywhere  —   much like the four seasons,” he says. ”It’s the end of summer, it’s the beginning of fall, it’s that Indian summertime, it’s the transition from warm to cool.” The trigger for that yearning feeling, Peretz says, is the opening line. White asks, ”Do you remember?” and we supply the memories. It’s a song that can bring all of the generations together, which makes it perfect for family gatherings. The true meaning is up to us  —   including, Allee Willis says, that strangely specific date. ”We went through all the dates: ’Do you remember the first, the second, the third, the fourth . .. ’ and the one that just felt the best was the 21st,” Willis explains. ”I constantly have people coming up to me and they get so excited to know what the significance was. And there is no significance beyond it just sang better than any of the other dates. So . .. sorry!” That’s OK, Allee. Maurice was right. It doesn’t matter what it means. When we hear it, it’s September 21st, and we are dancing again with our family, in a song that never really ends."
"Take a look at this question: How do modern novels represent the characteristics of humanity? If you were tasked with answering it, what would your first step be? Would you scribble down your thoughts  —   or would you Google it? Terry Heick, a former English teacher in Kentucky, had a surprising revelation when his   and   students quickly turned to Google. ”What they would do is they would start Googling the question, ’How does a novel represent humanity?’ ” Heick says. ”That was a real   to me.” For those of us who grew up with search engines, especially Google, at our fingertips  —   looking at all of you millennials and    —   this might seem intuitive. We grew up having our questions instantly answered as long as we had access to the Internet. Now, with the advent of personal assistants like Siri and Google Now that aim to serve up information before you even know you need it, you don’t even need to type the questions. Just say the words and you’ll have your answer. But with so much information easily available, does it make us smarter? Compared to the generations before who had to adapt to the Internet, how are those who grew up using the Internet  —   the   ”Google generation”  —   different? Heick had intended for his students to take a moment to think, figure out what type of information they needed, how to evaluate the data and how to reconcile conflicting viewpoints. He did not intend for them to immediately Google the question, word by word  —   eliminating the process of critical thinking. More Space To Think Or Less Time To Think? There is a relative lack of research available examining the effect of search engines on our brains even as the technology is rapidly dominating our lives. Of the studies available, the answers are sometimes unclear. Some argue that with easy access to information, we have more space in our brain to engage in creative activities, as humans have in the past. Whenever new technology emerges  —   including newspapers and television  —   discussions about how it will threaten our brainpower always crops up, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker wrote in a 2010   in The New York Times. Instead of making us stupid, he wrote, the Internet and technology ”are the only things that will keep us smart.” Daphne Bavelier, a professor at the University of Geneva, wrote in 2011 that we may have lost the ability for oral memorization valued by the Greeks when writing was invented, but we gained additional skills of reading and text analysis. Writer Nicholas Carr contends that the Internet will take away our ability for contemplation due to the plasticity of our brains. He wrote about the subject in a 2008 article for The Atlantic titled ”Is Google Making Us Stupid.”  ”. .. what the [Internet] seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation,” Carr wrote. The few studies available, however, do not seem to bode well for the Google generation. A 2008 study commissioned by the British Library found that young people go through information online very quickly without evaluating it for accuracy. A 2011 study in the journal Science showed that when people know they have future access to information, they tend to have a better memory of how and where to find the information  —   instead of recalling the information itself. That phenomenon is similar to not remembering your friend’s birthday because you know you can find it on Facebook. When we know that we can access this information whenever we want, we are not motivated to remember it. ’I’m Always On My Computer’ Michele Nelson, an art teacher at Estes Hills Elementary School in Chapel Hill, N. C. seems to share Carr’s concerns. Nelson, who has been teaching for more than nine years, says it was obvious with her middle school students and even her    daughter that they are unable to read long texts anymore. ”They just had a really hard time comprehending if they went to a website that had a lot of information,” Nelson says. ”They couldn’t grasp it, they couldn’t figure out what the important thing was.” Nelson says she struggles with the same problem. ”I’m always on my computer. . .. I don’t read books as much as I used to,” she says. ”It’s a lot harder for my brain to get to a place where I can follow and enjoy the reading, and I get distracted very easily.” The bright side lies in a 2009 study conducted by Gary Small, the director of University of California Los Angeles’ Longevity Center, that explored brain activity when older adults used search engines. He found that among older people who have experience using the Internet, their brains are two times more active than those who don’t when conducting Internet searches. Internet searching, Small says, is like a brain exercise that can be good for our mental health. ”If somebody has normal memory when they’re older, I always encourage them to use the computer,” he says. ”It enhances our lives.” For Small, the problem for younger people is the overuse of the technology that leads to distraction. Otherwise, he is excited for the new innovations in technology. ”We tend to be economical in terms of how we use our brain, so if you know you don’t have to memorize the directions to a certain place because you have a GPS in your car, you’re not going to bother with that,” Small says. ”You’re going to use your mind to remember other kinds of information.” How To Teach Digital Natives? Heick has since left teaching to start TeachThought, a company that produces content to support teachers in ”innovation in teaching and learning for a 21st century audience.” To him, the Internet holds great potential for education  —   but curriculum must change accordingly. Since content is so readily available, teachers should not merely dole out information and instead focus on cultivating critical thinking, he says. ”Classroom walls and school building walls are transparent, with technology essentially bringing the outside world to the classroom and vice versa,” he says. Heick says his company recently started working with schools and organizations in a few states, including North Carolina, Texas and New York, to develop lesson plans. ”Google really lubricates that access to information and while that is fantastic, it makes us have to change a bit the way we think about things,” Heick says. ”Because we’re so busy, we have this false security that we understand something because we Googled it. Now we’re moving on to the next thing instead of really rolling around with this idea and trying to understand it.” One of his recommendations is to make questions ” .” ”Design it so that Google is crucial to creating a response rather than finding one,” he writes in his company’s blog. ”If students can Google answers  —   stumble on (what) you want them to remember in a few clicks  —   there’s a problem with the instructional design.” Meanwhile, teenagers are also aware of how the Internet is taking ahold of their lives. Caitlyn Nelson, teacher Michele Nelson’s daughter, finds it hard to focus when she is forced to do readings or even exams online. Like most teenagers, sometimes she finds herself surfing the Web when she’s supposed to be reading PowerPoint slides in class. Caitlyn talks about a video they watched in English class about the impact of technology. ”We talked about how technology is changing . .. how most people are basically becoming zombies and slaves to the Internet because that’s all we can do,” she says. ”I feel really bad that I’m connected to my phone all the time instead of talking to my mom. But she’s also addicted to her phone.” Zhai Yun Tan is a digital news intern."
"The cystic fibrosis drug Orkambi can help people with specific genetic mutations breathe better, but treatment with the pill comes with a hefty sticker price  —   $259, 000 a year. Orkambi, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last July, is expected to take almost $36 million from California’s general fund this fiscal year and next. That cost estimate doesn’t include any discounts the state may receive from drug manufacturers.   Californians with health coverage under the Department of Health Care Services are expected to receive the drug in the current fiscal year. In the next one, 220 people are expected to get it, some of whom may be the same patients as this year. Orkambi is listed on the specialty tier of drug categories in some private health plans. That category is typically reserved for   drugs or, in the federal government’s view, for drugs that cost more than $600 a month and are used by a small proportion of patients. Specialty drugs are already proving to be a financial burden on one California agency, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which purchases health benefits for active and retired state workers. CalPERS says that specialty drugs made up less than 1 percent of all prescriptions for its members but accounted for 30 percent of the total drug costs in 2014. Drugmakers say the health benefits from specialty drugs justify their cost. ”Patients are gaining access to medicines that are better treating their diseases or frankly even curing them,” said Priscilla VanderVeer, deputy vice president of communications at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. ”Patients are now healthier. They’re more productive. They’re functioning.” VanderVeer said companies price drugs not just on the cost of production, but on the value the industry believes the drug brings to the health care system, such as efficacy, improvements in quality of life or length of life and the extent to which the medical need for a drug has gone unmet. The price of the drug also accounts for the cost of developing other drugs and the high risk that a particular drug won’t make it to market, VanderVeer said. Only 12 percent of drugs that go through clinical trials get approved, according to PhRMA. Finally, she said, the sticker price doesn’t reflect the final price paid for the drug, which can be heavily discounted through negotiations or because of mandated rebates for Medicaid programs. Drugmakers are following the money, said Joel Hay, professor of pharmaceutical economics and policy at University of Southern California. Companies invest in specialty drugs that target a small population because their high price tags can be spread over a large insurance pool, he said. Even though specialty drugs are ”ridiculously expensive per treatment episode,” Hay said, the cost for each member in a health plan is ”just a few cents.” Raising the price 10 cents on a diabetes drug, for example, would have a bigger budget impact, he said, because more people have diabetes than cystic fibrosis. Hay says manufacturers are now less inclined to invest in drugs that treat millions of people, because there is more pushback on price. ”Drug companies are   companies obligated to make money for their stockholders,” Hay said. ”They’re not virtuous charitable organizations.” Drugmakers are also investing more in treating uncommon illnesses because there is less competition and therefore more opportunity for profit, said Dr. Helene Lipton, professor of health policy at the School of Pharmacy and Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. The high price of the drugs affects patients, she noted, because health plans put controls on the drugs so that they’re used as a last resort. ”That may mean going through two or more rounds of care with other medications before being able to use the specialty drug,” Lipton said. Still, it’s not just specialty drugs that are straining health plans’ budgets, said Steve Miller, chief medical officer at Express Scripts, a pharmaceutical benefits manager that negotiates drug coverage for 7. 5 million Californians. ”The price of drugs is just continuing to go up,” said Miller, explaining that the trend is due to both new   drugs coming on the market, and   of old drugs. There has been an explosion of drugs costing $100, 000 a year over the past decade, for things like cystic fibrosis and cancer, Miller said. And there was a 127 percent price increase of branded drugs that had been on the market between 2008 and 2014, he says. A California ballot initiative scheduled to go before voters this November aims to rein in drug costs by limiting the amount the state pays for a drug to no more than the lowest price paid for the same drug by the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs. A version of this story appeared first on KQED’s State of Health blog. CALmatters is a nonprofit journalism venture dedicated to explaining state policies and politics. Pauline Bartolone wrote this article while participating in the California Data Fellowship, a program of the Center for Health Journalism at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism. Barolone will be exploring how the cost of specialty drugs’ affects patient access. If you are a chronic disease patient who is either taking a specialty drug or having difficulty getting the right one, she would like to hear from you. Reach her on Twitter @pbartolone or pauline@calmatters. org."
"Tonight, Showtime presents a new documentary on the late pop star Michael Jackson, called Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall. Director Spike Lee explores his journey from child prodigy to recording his   1979 album. It’s the second in what Lee hopes will be a trilogy of films dedicated to Jackson’s musical legacy. Off the Wall was Michael Jackson’s first solo album as an adult. ”That’s the first time we heard that iconic yell,” says musician Questlove. ”That’s his ’Free at   free at last.’ ” Questlove is one of many who reflect on Jackson’s hit dance songs and RB ballads from that album. Spike Lee’s documentary traces Jackson’s journey from being a child star with the Jackson 5 at Motown to becoming a superstar solo act with Epic Records. Michael Jackson’s evolution to being the confident    heard in Off the Wall is all here in the film. It includes archival recordings from TV shows and private interviews with the   star at his home. Jackson is shown learning from his idols: Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr. Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. There’s rarely seen footage of Jackson tap dancing with the legendary Nicholas brothers. And a host of people, from actress Rosie Perez to basketball star Kobe Bryant, talk about how Jackson’s perfectionism inspired them. Michael Jackson died after an overdose, just before he turned 51, on the eve of his ”This Is It” tour. With this film, his estate is preserving his legacy, says   John Branca. ”We are approached constantly from all over the world, from people wanting to do Michael Jackson projects,” Branca says. ”But it’s more important to say no than it is to say yes. We just want to be very selective. We thought Spike was the ideal choice for director. He’s very passionate.” The estate first hired Spike Lee to direct a documentary on Jackson’s album Bad. A few weeks ago, before the Sundance Film festival premiere of this new film, Lee said he didn’t want to touch on anything negative surrounding Jackson’s life or death. ”I told them from the ” Lee says, ”we were going to focus on the music: his genius, the dance, the songwriting. All that other stuff, we’re not dealing with. That’s for somebody else to do. Not me. I’m not doing it.” Lee directed Jackson’s music videos for his 1996 song ”They Don’t Care About Us.” And he’s hosted several block parties in Brooklyn to celebrate the King of Pop. ”Michael is alive, because his music is still here,” Lee says. ”And every year a new generation is introduced to MJ.” Every time Michael Jackson sang the song ”She’s Out of My Life,” he cried, Quincy Jones recalls in the documentary. He produced Off the Wall. Three years later, in 1983, Jackson recorded Thriller, which won eight Grammys and remains the   album of all time. Spike Lee says he hopes to be able to chronicle that in his third Michael Jackson documentary."
"Didi points to where he was standing when the terrorists arrived the night of Nov. 13, when he was on duty as a security guard outside the Bataclan concert hall. The gunmen massacred 90 people that night, in a killing spree that lasted nearly two hours. They were ”shooting when they arrived,” Didi says. ”There was nothing you could do,” he says. ”I told myself, I’ve got to quickly get as many people out of there as possible because these terrorists have come to kill as many people as they can.” Didi, 35, doesn’t want to give his last name for fear that someone involved in the attacks may try to find him. He is a Muslim of North African origin who grew up in a gritty neighborhood outside Paris. Most of the killers that night came from similar backgrounds. But Didi says a twisted ideology, and not their backgrounds, turned those men into killers. ”We all work and have good lives,” he says. ”Nobody understands why they did what they did.” He says he followed the gunmen inside the Bataclan and began trying to open doors so people could escape. One of the side doors he opened still has bullet holes through the steel. When he saw the crowds trying to push through, he realized he needed to open more emergency exits. So he went back inside the Bataclan. This time he became trapped and found himself lying on the floor with everyone else, while the gunmen fired into the audience. Didi says he was close enough to hear them shouting about President Francois Hollande and Syria. But as soon as the gunmen stopped to reload, Didi jumped up and yelled for people to follow him. The coordinated attacks on cafes, a stadium and the Bataclan took place nearly three months ago, but Didi’s heroic actions have only recently become known. He initially shunned the limelight. But after scores of the people he saved sought him out, Didi was identified and came forward. ”I heard somebody scream, ’Get out, get out, get out!’ very loud. And of course now I realize that was Didi already,” says Myriam, a    mother of an    baby. She doesn’t want her last name known. Thanks to Didi, Myriam made it out of the club. ”I ended up in the street and I thought I was kind of safe,” she recalls. ”At least safer. And then I heard the same voice again screaming, ’They’re shooting in the street, they’re shooting in the street! Run, run, run, come here.’ ” Myriam says that’s when she first got a look at Didi. He led her to an apartment building across the street from the theater, where dozens of people were taking refuge. A video taken from a nearby rooftop that night shows people pouring out of the concert hall into gunfire on the street beside the Bataclan. Myriam says Didi continued to cross back and forth across that street, between the Bataclan and the apartment building, bringing more people and helping the wounded. ”He was calm and in charge,” she says. ”We felt secure and knew we’d be saved with him.” Myriam says Didi tried to bar the front door of the building  —   because at that point, no one knew if the terrorists would pursue them. ”As security at the Bataclan, his job was to get drunks out of the club and things like that,” she says. ”But he was so brave. He knew the exits. He could’ve run. Everyone was running for their lives. But he didn’t. He took care of us.” Emmanuel Domenach escaped through a door behind the stage. He says he would have never known the door existed if it hadn’t been for Didi. ”I was falling down in the street,” says Emmanuel. ”I lost my glasses and I started to search for them because I am really blind without them. I saw a lot of blood around me, and there was someone lying there who was dead or gravely wounded. And at this time, I heard this man shouting at me and telling me, ’What are you doing?! They are shooting at you.’ ” Emmanuel says Didi took him to the building where Myriam and many others were hiding. She and Emmanuel estimate Didi’s actions that night saved 400 or 500 people, maybe even more. In the midst of such horror, Didi says, he had no time to think. Instinct just took over. But today, he is still shaken. He has flashbacks. And trouble sleeping. He doesn’t know if he will be able to return to work at the Bataclan when it reopens. Didi says the friendship and gratitude of people like Myriam and Emmanuel warm his heart and are helping him to recover. As for Myriam and Emmanuel, whenever they feel depressed or in despair, they think about Didi. They say he gives them hope for humanity. Myriam says they’ve started a petition to nominate Didi for France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor. ”My life will never be long enough to thank him for what he did,” she says. ”And thanks to him, my baby has a mother. We saw the worst things that night, the worst human beings ever. And then we saw the best thing.”"
"The decision by Hillary Clinton to use a private email server as secretary of state has spawned an FBI investigation, multiple congressional inquiries and dozens of private lawsuits that demand copies of her messages. It’s also become an issue in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Republicans on the campaign trail have raised the prospect that Clinton could be charged with a crime  —   even as she downplays the FBI probe and asserts she wants voters to be able to see all of her messages from that time. In Thursday’s debate in New Hampshire, Clinton said she is ”100 percent confident” the email probe will not turn into a legal quagmire. ”I have absolutely no concerns about it whatsoever,” she told debate moderators on MSNBC. ”We’ve got to get to the bottom of what’s going on here,” Clinton added. In that spirit, here’s our attempt to set out the key questions and answers so far. The Justice Department and the FBI have not publicly confirmed the scope of their investigation. U. S. government sources tell NPR it involves possible mishandling of government secrets that appeared in Clinton’s email messages while she worked as secretary of state. The State Department said last month it would not release 22 emails, or 37 pages in total, from Clinton’s private server at the request of the intelligence community because ”they contain a category of top secret information.” State Department spokesman John Kirby would not describe the substance of the emails. But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, and a political ally of Clinton, said that none of the email chains deemed top secret ”originated with Secretary Clinton” and ”it has never made sense to me that Secretary Clinton can be held responsible for email exchanges that originated with someone else.” In an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, Clinton told host David Greene she was ”absolutely not” putting top secret information at risk with her private email setup. ”I took the handling of classified materials very seriously,” Clinton said. ”The emails that I received were not marked classified. Now there are disagreements among agencies on what should have been perhaps classified retroactively, but at the time that doesn’t change the fact that they were not marked classified.” Clinton’s press secretary has said the real problem is a dispute among Obama administration agencies over what should be considered secret, a phenomenon he calls ”overclassification run amok.” Her campaign team went on the offensive Thursday after NBC News reported that State Department investigators had found some secret material in the email accounts of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and of aides to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Powell told Politico that he had been interviewed by the FBI about it. But Powell also said he considered the issue an ”absurdity” because the material in question involved harmless conversations among diplomats. The candidate appears to reject that proposition out of hand  —   and she cast the controversy as part of a   political effort to undo her. ”No absolutely not, I mean I can’t prevent it from being a political case, which seems to be the motivation behind selective leaking and anonymous sourcing and the kinds of things that seem to be going on,” Clinton told Morning Edition recently. ”But it’s like Benghazi, I’m just very concerned that the timing here is interesting and misinformation in concert with Republican members of Congress has been consistently leaked as we’ve gotten closer to Iowa and other primary elections, but it does not change the facts.” For months, Clinton has defended herself by arguing that none of the material on her server had been marked ”classified,” which lawyers say could help her advance the idea that she never intended to break the law. She did, however, sign paperwork at the State Department that said she understood that information could be classified even if it weren’t marked that way. And if she did not originate top secret email chains, as her political allies suggest, that could mean the aides who sent her the material would be in more legal jeopardy than she. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who worked in the George W. Bush administration, recently wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that some form of a criminal charge, even if based on negligence, rather than intentional wrongdoing, is justified. Clinton told a CNN interviewer last month that she had not yet been interviewed by FBI agents. That step typically comes near the end of an investigation. And U. S. sources tell NPR no recommendation from the FBI has been shared with the attorney general, who would make the final call on any such prosecution. Federal authorities have offered no public timetable for their investigation. Typically, the Justice Department tries to avoid bringing charges too close to an election lest it influence the outcome of a political race. FBI Director James Comey has promised lawmakers he will conduct the probe quickly and independently. ”We don’t give a rip about politics,” Comey said. He also told Republican senators that the FBI was not briefing the White House about the status of the Clinton email investigation. A federal judge in Washington, D. C. will hold a hearing Feb. 9, the same day as the New Hampshire primaries, on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Vice News, seeking the release of Clinton emails. The State Department also has to turn over at least one more batch of her messages, a step that could come shortly before the Super Tuesday votes."
"New editions of textbooks in France will look a little different. References to onions? You’ll see the word ognon rather than oignon. A tale about a centipede? The   insect will be known as a millepattes, no longer a  . And most controversially, France is removing the   accent known as a circumflex in some cases. For example: the word for ”to train” will be spelled s’entraine, and not the circumflexed s’entraîner.  The spelling changes apply to around 2, 400 French words, and The Guardian reports they’re mean to ”simplify them for schoolchildren.” But the move has ”brought accusations the country’s Socialist government is dumbing down the language.” French headlines quickly picked this up: ”The Death of the Circumflex” and ”Farewell to the Circumflex, Spelling Reform Will Be Applied in September,” to name a few. Social media users launched an angry campaign using the hashtag of #JeSuisCirconflexe (”I am circumflex”) a nod to the #JeSuisCharlie campaign following the deadly shootings at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris last year. But France is not completely hanging up its circumflex chapeau. As the BBC reported, ”France’s education minister has said the changes will not culminate in the end of the circumflex, and that old and new spellings will both remain correct.” The   accent will be optional on the ”i” and ”u” but will generally remain atop the ”a” and ”o” as well as in several other uses, France’s Le Monde reports. The spelling changes were approved by the Académie Française in 1990 and then generally ignored, as The Guardian reported: ”In 2008, advice from the education ministry suggested the new spelling rules were ’the reference’ to be used, but it appears few people took notice. Last November, the changes were mentioned again in another ministry document about ’texts following the spelling changes . .. approved by the Académie Française and published in the French Republic Official Journal on 6 December 1990.’ Again, the news went unremarked.” The difference now is that the changes will actually appear in school books, which was first reported by France’s TF1. Here are a few other words that are changing in the new textbooks, via TF1: Nénuphar will become nénufar (waterlily) Maîtresse will become maitresse (mistress) Coût will become cout (cost) Paraître will become paraitre (to appear)   will become weekend (weekend)   will become portemonnaie (purse, wallet) Des   will become des   (afternoons)"
"Genetics researchers often discover certain snips and pieces of the human genome that are important for health and development, such as the genetic mutations that cause cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia. And scientists noticed that genetic variants are more common in some races, which makes it seem like race is important in genetics research. But some researchers say that we’ve taken the concept too far. To find out what that means, we’ve talked to two of the authors of an article published Thursday in the journal Science. Sarah Tishkoff is a human population geneticist and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Dorothy Roberts is a legal scholar, sociologist and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Africana Studies department. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How do geneticists use race now, and how does that cause problems for science? Sarah Tishkoff: We know people don’t group according to so called races based purely on genetic data. Whenever the topic comes up, we have to address, how are we going to define race? I have never ever seen anybody come to a consensus at any of these human genetics meetings. Dorothy Roberts: That’s because race is based on cultural, legal, social and political determinations, and those groupings have changed over time. As a social scientist, looking at biologists treating these groupings as if they were determined by innate genetic distinctions, I’m dumbfounded. There’s so much evidence that they’re invented social categories. How you can say this is a biological race is just absurd. It’s absurd. It violates the scientific evidence about human beings. Tishkoff: But I as a human geneticist wouldn’t want to imply that there are no differences  —   but among different ethnic groups, not racial classifications. For example, I’m Ashkenazi Jewish. I have a much higher risk of getting certain genetic diseases that are common in certain Ashkenazi Jewish populations. That was an important question when I was having children. There was a drug, called BiDil, that somebody claimed is more effective with   than other races  —   which was not true. But there are genes that play a role in drug metabolism. So if a doctor was prescribing drug treatment based on her identification of race she’d say, ”You should use drug A because that’s better for people of European descent.” But the patient might not carry the right gene. That might have negative consequences. That might be the wrong treatment for her. Roberts: Race isn’t a good category to use to understand those differences or the commonalities. It in many cases leads researchers down the wrong path and leads to harmful results for patients. For example, black patients who have the symptoms of cystic fibrosis aren’t diagnosed because doctors see it as a white disease. So part of the problem is that when we see a high frequency of a medically relevant gene in one racial population, we start to assume that all members of that race have that gene? Tishkoff: Yeah, I think that’s right. Roberts: People take what’s a difference in [gene] frequency and turn it into a categorical difference that interprets it as if one race has one gene and another race doesn’t have the gene. You can’t reach the conclusion that because you know someone’s race you know what their genes are. It’s not the case that there are populations where 100 percent, everyone, has those genes and nobody in other populations have those genes. It’s a crude way and unhelpful way of figuring out what the disease risk is. Tishkoff: That’s not to say that genetic risk in disease isn’t important. I do think geography is important, and I think that people historically during evolutionary history have adapted to different environments. Is it that the science of genetics and the science of human populations are racist? Or is it that the numbers are there and, as a society, we’re interpreting these things in a racist way? Roberts: There is a long history of justifying the subordination of different groups and social groupings based on myths about their biologic or genetic predispositions. It’s not only that there’s scientific evidence that humans aren’t divided into discrete biological categories we’d call races. But there’s also evidence of the harm these biological meanings of race have caused for centuries. It’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult for human geneticists today to grapple with the meaning of race. You can’t talk about race without also considering the history of racism. Tishkoff: But modern human geneticists, we’re not trying to say they have a racist agenda. It’s a positive thing to try and increase studies of genetic diversity that may differ across different ethnicities or ancestries. Roberts: Yes. I’m not trying to say anything about the motivations or what scientists are trying now to do. Our paper is a call for scientists to come up with better ways of understanding human genetic diversity without relying on this antiquated concept of race There is a failure of imagination for people to think, what is there something better that we can use? Let’s develop that. Is it that difficult, though? What are the things holding scientists back from developing something better? Tishkoff: If I want a grant from the National Institutes of Health, I am required to check off the racial classification according to the U. S. government’s census categories. I study very diverse people from all over Africa, but I believe the classification is African American or Black. I always feel awkward. Roberts: The NIH guidelines require the use of race in recruiting research subjects. There’s a history of advocating for that in order to increase the participation of minorities in clinical research. Then it gets confusing, because the researchers continue to use these categories in conducting the research. Scientists must conform their research to these admittedly social categories of race. Tishkoff: One also has to take into account that you need a way to identify your study population. Ideally you want ethnically diverse populations, so obviously you have to have some way of identifying research subjects. And that’s fine. But they don’t need to say based on race. The language and terminology does matter. Roberts: Except if the research question has to do with investigating the effects of racism  —   race as a social category that does affect people’s lives and health and future because of the impact of social inequality. I often get the justification from doctors that ”I know it’s crude but it’s the best we have given the limited resources.” Tishkoff: To some extent I think that’s true. If a doctor doesn’t have a readily available genetic test to look at ancestry or to look at individual genotypes of that person, race will be their best proxy. But the language matters. We need to move away from racial terminology, particularly in the field of medical genetics. That should just be eliminated. It reinforces the notion that there’s a genetic basis to this classification system. We as scientists have to set an example."
"The imminent release of The Lumineers’ second album, Cleopatra, warrants the cliche ” .” It isn’t simply the fact that the   debut by the unassuming Denver trio came out almost four years ago (April 2012) but because it was the rare case of a new   artist making a major impact. The Lumineers went on to sell over 3. 5 million copies worldwide, catapulting the band from small clubs to festival main stages in short measure. ”Ho Hey,” the album’s stomping   hit, became nearly unavoidable. It’s hard to overstate the unorthodox song’s impact. Radio loved it  —   No. 1 at Rock and Alternative, but also on Adult Pop and Adult Contemporary charts  —   as did the folks who license music for commercials, TV shows and films. What was success like for the band? As lead singer Wesley Schultz confessed in our recent conversation, ”When you play a song thousands of times over  —   sometimes, dozens of times a day  —   [it can be] a little hard to feel connected. You feel like you are covering someone else’s song.” Schultz detailed the impact of the hit machine on himself, drummer Jeremiah Fraites and cellist Neyla Pekarek: ”I think it would mess with anybody pretty good. You feel like people are trying to form and shape you as you grow in size and scale. They really don’t tell you how to do it. So we just tried to keep to ourselves throughout the process.” A hit song brings lots of expectations, so the band took its time making Cleopatra: six months of writing in a small Denver house at the beginning of 2015, and two more recording in New York’s Catskill Mountains with Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers) whom Schultz referred to as ”our shaman.” The singer sums up the experience that led to Cleopatra starkly: ”Dealing with success was actually a lot harder than dealing with failure. Jeremiah and I just drove ourselves a little crazy but came out with something we think is pretty special.” He describes ”Ophelia,” the first single from Cleopatra, as ”a long, ominous march forward in step with ’Ho Hey.’ ” (Though he is quick to add, ”The album is sonically pretty different from the first one. The common thread is a lot of the percussion has remained. ”) ”Ophelia” is Schultz’s message about the whole experience of becoming stars, beginning, as it does, with the lyric, ”When I was young I should have known better.” Ultimately the singer feels no reason for remorse. Like ”Ho Hey,” the new song is plenty percussive, full of repeated vowels and a driving piano part. We’ll see if it becomes the   karaoke hit of 2016. Cleopatra is out on April 8 on Dualtone Records."
"State TV announced North Korea successfully launched a   rocket Sunday morning local time, and says the North plans to launch more satellites in the future. Pyongyang had informed the United Nations International Maritime Organization that it planned to fire a rocket into orbit sometime between February 7 and 14. The South Korean defense ministry says the rocket was fired from North Korea’s Sohae launch site. So far, there has been no damage to boats or planes, according to South Korea’s Oceans and Fisheries and Land and Transport ministries. ”We condemn today’s launch and North Korea’s determination to prioritize its missile and nuclear weapons programs over the   of its people, whose struggles only intensify with North Korea’s diversion of scarce resources to such destabilizing activities,” U. S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said in a statement. She called the launch a ”flagrant violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions.” North Korea describes the launch as part of its space program: a rocket carrying an earth observation satellite into orbit. But many governments regard the launch as a concealed   ballistic missile test. The U. S. Japan and South Korea have requested an emergency meeting of the U. N. Security Council on Sunday. In addition, the South Korean defense ministry said on Sunday they will begin talks with the U. S. about possibly deploying a missile defense system in North Korea in response to what many nations see as a rising threat of North Korea’s weapon technologies. U. S. military officials have discussed the need for an advanced defense system in South Korea, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) according to The Associated Press: ”If THAAD is deployed to the Korean peninsula, it will be only operated against North Korea,” Yoo   a senior official at the South Korean defence ministry said in a joint news conference with Thomas S. Vandal, commander of the Eighth U. S. Army based in South Korea. The launch follows a Jan. 6 nuclear test that violated U. N. Security Council resolutions. That test  —   which North Korea called a ”hydrogen bomb” test, a claim experts are skeptical of  —   raised tensions in the region and prompted widespread criticism from the international community. ”But now nearly a month later, disagreement between China and the U. S. has held up a U. N. resolution to condemn the January test,” Elise says. North Korea managed to launch a rocket into orbit in 2012  —   after several attempts failed. At the time, NPR’s Scott Neuman explained that the successful test indicated North Korea was closer to possessing a nuclear missile that could threaten large swathes of the world, but didn’t mean Pyongyang was all the way there: ”North Korea’s successful rocket launch may conjure up visions of nuclear missiles in the hands of one of the planet’s least predictable regimes. But building a satellite launch vehicle doesn’t directly translate into an ability to rain warheads on distant enemies. ”Pyongyang still faces major obstacles before it can claim to possess reliable,   intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting its Asian neighborhood and much of the Pacific basin, including Alaska. . .. While North Korea might have the reach, it still faces the problem of perfecting a nuclear warhead  —   a much larger obstacle than simply exploding a nuclear device.” But while the engineering challenges are substantial, several experts told NPR it was a mistake to underestimate the potential threat posed by North Korean technology. ”Relying on them to fail is not a great plan,” defense expert Thomas Donnelly told NPR in in 2012. ”They are trodding a path that many nations have trod before.”"
"Saturday’s GOP debate was the final one before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. Here were five key moments: One key thing has to happen before the debate starts: the candidates have to take the stage. That proved more complicated than usual on Saturday night, as the ABC News Republican debate began with Ben Carson refusing to walk out to his podium, even after the moderators called his name. Called second, Carson stood and waited, allowing Ted Cruz to go out after him. Making matters weirder: Donald Trump then stopped to stand beside Carson, rather than walking out himself. Jeb Bush walked past them as he took the stage. After the moderators (again) called Carson, they also ”lastly” called out Donald Trump  —   only to then to (seemingly) realize they still had to call out Kasich. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasted no time in taking shots at Sen. Marco Rubio on Saturday night. When asked early on to list his accomplishments, Rubio listed policies he has supported, then turned to attacking President Obama: ”Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he said. ”He knows exactly what he’s doing,” Rubio said, by trying to make the U. S. like the rest of the world with policies like Obamacare. That line would pop up again and again  —   and Christie noticed. In the heated exchange that followed, Christie said that being governor meant more accountability than being a senator, saying that he had to make tougher and more important decisions than Rubio has had to as a senator. He also attacked Rubio’s pattern of missing votes in the Senate, a criticism that has dogged Rubio throughout this nomination contest. Rubio attacked Christie on his response to a recent snowstorm that hit New Jersey, but then pivoted again to the line about how Obama ”knows exactly what he’s doing.” Christie hit back. ”There it is. There it is. The memorized   speech. There it is, everybody,” he said. Rubio repeated some variation of the line several times during the night. Trump leads in recent New Hampshire polls by 10 to 20 points, but Rubio has become the candidate to beat for the   ”establishment” candidates, like Christie, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. Those three are fighting for survival in New Hampshire, while Rubio’s numbers have surged there in the last few days. Even though Trump skipped the last debate, some commentators nevertheless decided that he won. In bowing out, he garnered massive media attention, and he also avoided tough questions like those Cruz and Rubio fielded on their past immigration positions. This debate, he showed up, and he had (what was for Trump) an unremarkable performance. He stuck to typical Trump talking points  —   on topics like China, job losses and America not winning anymore  —   and had few major tangles with his opponents. When he did argue with Jeb Bush on a question about eminent domain and subsequently commanded Bush to be ”quiet” while he answered  —   the crowd booed Trump. But then, Trump is far ahead in New Hampshire while the   ”establishment” candidates battle it out. And while Saturday’s performance may not have rocketed him further ahead, it also could help hold him in first place through Tuesday’s primary vote. In a line of questioning about ISIS and foreign policy, moderator David Muir turned the conversation to an issue many Americans first encountered more than a decade ago. Pointing out that Cruz has in the past said that ”torture is wrong, unambiguously, period,” Muir asked, ”Senator Cruz, is waterboarding torture?” Cruz responded that ”under the definition of torture, it’s not.” But he was ambiguous when Muir followed up by asking if he would bring the practice back as president: ”I would not bring it back in any sort of widespread use,” he said. Trump, meanwhile, was more forceful. Referencing ”people chopping the heads off Christians,” he said waterboarding (and then some) would be justified. ”I would bring back waterboarding, and I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” he said. Bush, who as Muir pointed out has in the past has said he ”you won’t rule waterboarding out,” seemed to rule it out this time, saying he wouldn’t bring the practice back. Instead, he said, ”what we need to do is to make sure that we expand our intelligence capabilities.” Muir finally turned to Rubio. Noting that Rubio has said that he didn’t want to ”want to telegraph to the enemy” his tactics as    Muir asked Rubio if waterboarding is torture. Rubio never directly answered the question, but instead repeated that he didn’t want to give away to the U. S.’s enemies what he’d want to do. ”It is true, we should not be discussing in a widespread way the exact tactics that we’re going to use, because that allows terrorist to know to practice how to evade us,” he said. He then pivoted to attacking President Obama’s plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Cruz, fresh off a strong victory in Iowa, found himself on the defensive immediately in Saturday night’s Republican debate in Manchester, N. H. First, he was asked to answer his comments that Donald Trump does not have the temperament to be president. Cruz demurred, saying that was for the voters to decide. Then, moderators asked him to answer for voicemails, emails, and text messages that his campaign sent out on the night of the Iowa caucuses, reporting that Ben Carson was suspending his campaign. Cruz, whose campaign has confirmed that it sent the messages, explained that it was based on a CNN report that Carson was ”taking a break” after Iowa, as Cruz said, adding that CNN said it was a ”highly unusual” move. Earlier in the week, CNN said that Cruz’s characterizations of the network’s reports this past week were ”false.” And Saturday night, CNN posted a story with the headline, ”Ted Cruz is wrong about CNN’s reporting.” The network explained that CNN reporter Chris Moody tweeted on the night of the caucuses that Carson was going home to Florida, but then shortly thereafter added that Carson was not suspending the campaign. Cruz apologized on stage to Carson. For his part, Carson had said the incident was indicative of Cruz’s ”DC values.” ”Washington ethics basically says, ’If it’s legal you do what you need to do in order to win,’” Carson said at the debate. ”That’s not my ethics. My ethics say you do what’s right.”"
"When seven of the nine remaining Republican candidates meet Saturday for their final debate before the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, several of them will be facing their last chance to stay in the race. Here are three things to watch for at 8 p. m. ET when Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump appear on stage at the ABC News debate in Manchester, N. H. Which Donald Trump will show up? Will it be the chastened Trump of his concession speech in Iowa who showed a flicker of humility? Or the sore loser Trump who, the day after, claimed that Ted Cruz ”illegally” stole the Iowa caucuses? Will Trump have what Ted Cruz is calling a ”Trumpertantrum”? (Trump says he likes the term so much that he might copyright it.) And who will Trump go after on Saturday? He still has a   lead in this primary, so maybe he feels so comfortable that he’ll decide to keep the insults and outbursts to a minimum. But if not, it’s unclear which candidate Trump thinks is his biggest obstacle in New Hampshire and beyond. Does he continue his relentless attacks on Ted Cruz whom he has called a Canadian anchor baby? Or does he turn his fire on Marco Rubio, who almost surged past Trump for second place in Iowa? Who will gang up on Marco Rubio? The three governors  —   Ohio’s John Kasich, New Jersey’s Chris Christie and former Florida governor Jeb Bush  —   have been attacking Rubio. Bush and Christie’s superPACs have been spending millions to stop Rubio from gaining any more momentum after his strong   finish in Iowa. Bush and Christie strategists have been coordinating their attacks, comparing Rubio to another young, relatively inexperienced but charismatic   senator who became president  —   the most unflattering comparison any Republican can make. ”Why do we think it will be any different with a   U. S. senator from Florida who, quite frankly, doesn’t show up to work anymore?” Christie said Thursday on MSNBC’s ”Morning Joe.” ”We’ve had seven years with a guy who was gifted, who could give a great speech,” Bush told NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell, ”but he’s divided the country. He has no leadership skills” Watch to see which of Rubio’s opponents points out that Rick Santorum, who dropped out of the race and endorsed Rubio, was unable to name a single accomplishment of Rubio’s when pressed repeatedly by Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough. And watch to see if John Kasich (who has promised to ”stay positive”) joins in or pulls his punches, perhaps hoping to maintain his viability for the vice presidential slot with Rubio  —   or whoever becomes the nominee. If the governors finish well behind the top three   expect tremendous pressure on all three to drop out. John Kasich already has said he’ll go home right away if he gets ”smoked.” What does Rubio do? Rubio has continued to move up in the polls since his strong third place finish in Iowa, and is now in second place in New Hampshire. That means expectations for him have grown, and it’s getting very hard for his campaign to maintain that a ”win” for him is merely staying in the top three. Rubio has followed a careful, cautious strategy, trying not to peak too soon or pick fights before it’s absolutely necessary. On Saturday, we’ll see if Rubio sticks to his polished talking points and stays above the fray  —   wearing the attacks from his opponents like a badge of honor  —   or if he chooses to hit back against the governors. Rubio is emerging as the establishment alternative to either Trump or Cruz. Rubio will have to confront one of them at some point  —   but hopes that will not be Saturday night, but down the road as the primary battle moves into the South and Midwest."
"Nearly six years after its enactment, the Affordable Care Act remains a hot issue in the presidential race  —   in both parties. ”Our health care is a horror show,” said GOP candidate Donald Trump at the Republican debate in South Carolina in December. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, winner of the Iowa caucuses, said at the debate in Des Moines that the health law has been ”a disaster,” adding it’s ”the biggest   in our country.” Democrats largely support the law, but even they can’t agree on how to fix its problems. Hillary Clinton said at the Jan. 25 town hall on CNN that she wants to ”build on the ACA. Get costs down, but improve it, get to 100 percent coverage.” Clinton’s rival for the nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, acknowledged that ”the Affordable Care Act has done a lot of good things” but added that ”the United States today is the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people as a right.” Sanders is pushing a   ”Medicare for All” plan instead. In some cases candidates are bending the truth. But praise and criticisms of the law can be accurate. That’s because the health law is so big and sweeping that it has had effects both positive and negative. Here is a brief guide to some things the health law has  —   and has not  —   accomplished since it was signed by President Obama in 2010. CLAIM: The law has increased the number of people with health insurance coverage. This is true, no matter what measure you use. The Census Bureau and polling firm Gallup both found substantial drops in the percentage of people without health insurance after the majority of the law’s coverage expansions took effect in 2014. COUNTERCLAIM: There are still millions of Americans who don’t have insurance. This is also true. Even though approximately 90 percent of Americans now have insurance, that remaining 10 percent amounts to more than 30 million people. Millions aren’t eligible for coverage under the law because they’re not in the U. S. legally. An additional 3 million are in the   Medicaid gap, meaning they would be eligible for Medicaid under the ACA except their states opted not to accept the expansion after the Supreme Court effectively ruled the expansion optional. Still others are eligible to purchase coverage on a health insurance exchange but either can’t afford it, don’t think the insurance available offers a good value, or don’t know they are legally required to obtain it. An estimated 7. 5 million Americans paid a fine to the IRS for failing to get covered in 2014 millions more were exempt from the requirement and didn’t have coverage. In recognition of the fact that enrollment has been smaller than expected, the Congressional Budget Office recently lowered its projections for those who will buy insurance under the law from 21 million to 13 million in 2016. CLAIM: The ACA has fixed the dysfunctional individual insurance market. Prior to the passage of the health law, millions of people who didn’t have   or government coverage were shut out of buying their own insurance because they had been sick or because the coverage offered did not cover the services they needed. The law aimed to address the problems in the individual market in several ways, including requiring insurers to sell to those with   conditions at the same price as healthier people standardizing the benefits package and limiting the size of deductibles. Tax credits were made available to help people afford coverage. And the law created insurance exchanges intended to help consumers compare, choose, sign up and pay for health insurance. How well these changes succeeded in stabilizing the market isn’t clear. What is clear is that more people are now insured through the market. COUNTERCLAIM: The ACA has made the individual market worse. All is not well in the individual market. Even with help paying premiums, many   Americans are finding that their deductibles and copayments are so high they cannot afford to use their insurance. In other cases, individuals can get insurance they can afford to use, but it doesn’t include their regular doctors and hospitals. In fact, plans that do offer coverage outside the insurer’s network are becoming harder to find and more expensive. That change affected Cruz, who initially claimed his private insurance had been canceled. In fact, his insurer had stopped offering his   plan and automatically transferred him to a   product. CLAIM: The ACA has improved the Medicare program. While most of the law was aimed at those without insurance, lawmakers also took the opportunity to beef up some benefits for the 55 million Americans in the Medicare program. Medicare enrollees got new coverage for preventive services and annual checkups, and those with high prescription drug expenses got help to fill the ”doughnut hole” gap left by the 2003 Medicare drug program. Over the longer term, the law created several payment experiments intended to improve the quality of care Medicare patients receive and lower costs. These include efforts to prevent patients from going back to the hospital after they’ve been discharged. COUNTERCLAIM: The ACA has not saved money for Medicare. The rate of increase in Medicare spending has slowed since the health law was passed in 2010. But it’s not clear how much of that can be attributed to the law, aside from some provisions that actually cut payments to hospitals and other health providers. And some of the most highly anticipated projects, including accountable care organizations that are paid bonuses for keeping Medicare patients healthy and lowering spending, have not so far shown very good results. CLAIM: The ACA has killed jobs. One of Republicans’ favorite talking points  —   that the health law would depress employment  —   has turned out not to be the case. An analysis in 2015 by the Urban Institute found that the health law ”had virtually no adverse effect on labor force participation employment the probability of   work and hours worked per week by nonelderly adults.” While there would be fewer people in the workforce owing to the law, the Congressional Budget Office found in 2014 that ”almost entirely” stems from voluntary actions by workers who could quit because they no longer depended on their jobs for insurance  —   now they could buy it on their own. CLAIM: The ACA has slowed overall health spending. The White House trumpeted the fact that health spending grew at its slowest rates ever between 2010 and 2013. But health policy analysts are still engaged in a lively debate about how much of the slowdown was attributable to the recession, to the health law and to other changes in the health care system.  Meanwhile, the rate of spending has begun to accelerate again, jumping from a 2. 9 percent increase in 2013 to 5. 3 percent in 2014. That has occurred as millions more Americans gained access to health care through the law. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Julie Rovner is on Twitter: @jrovner"
"Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has said he is a different kind of candidate running a different kind of campaign. He doesn’t have a SuperPAC and he doesn’t want one. One of the things his supporters say they like about him is Sanders isn’t a typical politician. Sanders is like the rare punk rocker who never sold out, never signed with a big label and doesn’t see why you’d want to buy designer jeans when thrift store Levis fit just fine and are less than $10. Also, he still has a flip phone. But as the campaign has progressed, and Sanders’ political revolution has gained steam, Sanders and his campaign have begun doing and saying things that look an awful lot like a traditional campaign. (This isn’t to say Hillary Clinton isn’t doing some of these same things, like flying in a charter jet and spending lots of money on polling. She is. But Clinton is a professional politician and owns it.) For Sanders, this campaign is an unfamiliar foray into the more conventional kind of big stakes politics. The fiercely independent Vermont Senator has had to identify as a ’big D’ Democrat in order to be an official candidate for that party’s presidential nomination. Isn’t that kind of like signing with a major label? All The Trappings Of A Professional Political Operation: At first Sanders resisted polling. It took him a long time to start running television ads. And there were stories about how he wasn’t doing the classic debate preparations  —   like staging practice sessions with staff impersonating the other candidates. That has all changed. His   Federal Elections Commission filing shows the Sanders campaign spent about $250, 000 on polling. And the New York Times reported Sanders prepared for recent debates with his senate chief of staff standing in for Hillary Clinton. Air Bernie:  Contrary to the hashtag #bernieonaplane, Sanders has traded in his usual   commercial flights for charter planes, a necessity if he is to meet the demands of a presidential campaign schedule. On a recent flight from Des Moines to Manchester, Sanders milled about on the plane, chatting with reporters who had hitched a ride. The   FEC report indicates Sanders spent nearly $185, 000 on charter flights. Sanders also has a campaign bus he was riding around Iowa, much as big name rock and country stars have done for decades. Sanders’ was emblazoned with his campaign’s slogan: A Future to Believe In. Walking The Line On The Positive Campaign Pledge:  Sanders has honored his vow not to run negative campaign ads, but some of his ads have a message tantamount to a   that get a certain message across. The ads say bad things about Wall Street’s influence and Goldman Sachs paying hefty speaking fees. The ads never directly mention Clinton by name, but few could doubt he’s talking about Hillary Clinton, who made more than $600, 000 speaking at Goldman Sachs events. On a number of recent occasions, Sanders has brought up the controversy over Clinton’s emails by saying he won’t make a big deal out of them  —   but Republicans will. This allows Sanders to raise the email issue and the concerns about trustworthiness that come along with it, while still maintaining the appearance that he’s taking the high road. It’s not unlike the way Donald Trump initially raised the issue of Ted Cruz being born in Canada, saying it didn’t bother him, personally, but that Democrats would make an issue of it later. Sanders and his supporters point out that his criticisms of Clinton in debates and on the stump generally stick to the issues  —   her positions on trade, social security and the Keystone XL pipeline, for instance  —   and are not the kinds of personal smears that would truly constitute negative campaigning. But Clinton and her supporters see Sanders as subtly and not so subtly trying to impugn her credibility. The Sketchy Stuff:  There has been a   of reporting about Sanders’ campaign doing things that would typically be described as dirty politics. If any other campaign were accused of these tactics, it would be pilloried for ”politics as usual.” But given Sanders’ high tone and squeaky clean image, criticism has been muted  —   and even the media seem unable to work up much outrage.   The DNC Data Breach: Sanders campaign rapidly did a Jedi mind trick on this one, convincing supporters it was actually the DNC that was doing something unethical. Still, the Sanders campaign fired its top voter data staffer after Sanders staffers had accessed sensitive voter files belonging to the Clinton campaign when a technical glitch dropped an internal firewall.   The campaign fliers: The League of Conservation Voters complained about Sanders using its logo in a mailer. ”In this case, LCV Action Fund has endorsed Hillary Clinton, not Senator Sanders,” said a press release from the League of Conservation Voters. ”In the presidential race, only Clinton has permission to use LCV’s logo. It was inappropriate and potentially misleading for the Sanders Campaign to use it in mail.” The AARP also complained about Sanders using its logo. That seniors’ group hasn’t endorsed a candidate.   Campaigning in Disguise: The legendary Nevada political correspondent Jon Ralston reported that Sanders campaign workers had been disguising themselves as union members to campaign in a   area.   The Endorsement Ads: In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders campaign ads implied Sanders had been endorsed by newspapers that had actually endorsed Clinton. Politifact determined the ad called ”Endorsed” to be false. Sanders campaign has since revised the ad. Sanders was asked about it in Thursday’s democratic debate and his response has been criticized for mischaracterizing the ad. Sanders was asked about these things during Thursday’s MSNBC Democratic debate. Here’s the full transcript of the exchange: MADDOW: Senator Sanders, thank you. Senator, in December, one of your campaign staffers was fired from your campaign for taking voter data essentially from the Clinton campaign. You apologized for that when the incident was made public. Your campaign has now been criticized for its operatives essentially impersonating culinary union members wearing union pins in Nevada, and the Nashua Telegraph has complained recently that you falsely implied in an advertisement that they had endorsed you when they did not. None of these issues obviously is the end of the world, but they all are of a piece. Are you in some sense losing control of your campaign? SANDERS: Not losing control of our campaign. You know, we have hired a whole lot of people in a rapid way and I am familiar with the first two instances and they are unacceptable, and we have apologized and dealt with that. In terms of the last one, as I understand it, we did not suggest that we had the endorsement of a newspaper. Newspapers who make endorsements also say positive things about other candidates, and to the best of my knowledge, that is what we did. So we never said, never said that somebody, a newspaper endorsed us that did not. What we did say is blah blah blah blah was said by the newspaper. MADDOW: Just to follow up on that, the title of the ad in question was Endorsement. SANDERS: But that was only for  —   that was not to be on television. That’s an important point. That was just something  —   as the secretary knows, you put titles on ads and you send them out, but there was no word in that ad, none, that said that those newspapers had endorsed us. MADDOW: Secretary Clinton, do you want 30 seconds on that issue? CLINTON: No. There are still plenty of stories about Sanders refusing to bow to convention. But, if Bernie Sanders buys some new sweaters or starts wearing tailored suits, or runs a more overtly negative ad, will it damage his     image? Surely for those feeling the Bern, such thoughts are remote. So far, at least, they are with him, regardless. In other words, he still rocks, even if he does it on a major label."
"With the assistance of Russian airstrikes, President Bashar Assad’s forces are pressing ahead with a major offensive around the northern city of Aleppo, a development that has sent another wave of Syrian civilians seeking refugee in neighboring Turkey. Aleppo was Syria’s largest city and an economic hub before the war, though many civilians have fled as it has become one of the most contested battlegrounds. For the past several years, government troops have controlled the western part and a patchwork of rebel forces have held the east. The government forces began their push in recent months after Russia’s military intervened on Assad’s behalf. The Syrian army has cut a crucial rebel supply line to Turkey. This has stoked fears that the army is looking to surround the rebels and impose a siege on them and the hundreds of thousands of civilians in that part of the city. The Aleppo fighting also contributed to suspension of Syrian peace talks in Geneva on Thursday. The Assad government has little incentive to negotiate at a time when it’s making gains on the battlefield, and the rebels argue that Assad is not serious about negotiations. The government’s battlefield momentum elated its supporters. Residents in the towns of Nubol and Zahraa, near Aleppo, rejoiced as Syrian troops entered. The two Shiite towns were long cut off from other government territories. They had survived a siege that lasted three years, depending on government airdrops of food and supplies and rare transactions with a neighboring Kurdish enclave. The Syrian government pointed to conditions in these areas as a motivation for the current offensive. But those on the losing side have begun to flee. A video posted by the Shahba Press Agency, which is aligned with the opposition, showed what aid agencies numbered at thousands of men, women, children and elderly massing at the Turkish border, some still running with their possessions. Local journalists say most of the families had already been displaced by government bombardments, and for years had been living in camps near the northern border. Activists say those camps were long considered a safe zone for their proximity to Turkey, and to its Patriot missile systems deployed by NATO allies in 2013. Last year, the US and Germany decided to pull their Patriot systems from Turkey. Since then, hostilities have increased along the border. In late November 2015, Turkey’s air force shot down a Russian jet, one of two crafts which it said violated its airspace. Moscow denies the planes crossed into Turkey or were given warnings. And this week, activists published photos showing displaced persons’ camps that had been abandoned in northern Syria. Cushions were scattered and tents were still smoldering in the wake of alleged government and Russian bombardments. The United Nations condemned the airstrikes north of Aleppo and called for safe passage for civilians and aid workers. Turkey, under pressure to stem the flow of migrants to Europe, has kept its border shut in the face of the growing crowds. Aid agencies say the loss of the main   route has severely hampered aid deliveries to   parts of Aleppo and surrounding areas. Mercy Corps says its operations in northern Syria have effectively been cut in half, leaving hundreds of thousands of people cut off from food aid. A rebel offensive in Aleppo in the summer of 2012 split the city in half. The government responded with airstrikes and crude barrel bombs. The   side in the west comes under fire from mortars and improvised rockets. Residents on both sides face regular power and water shortages. Aleppo’s rebel half in the east is not fully encircled  ” so far. Residents still have a path to Turkey through Idlib province to the west. But that is also under threat. Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights say that government forces and allied Shiite militiamen overran two more towns north of Aleppo in the past two days. Those forces are edging closer to squeezing off the rebels’ last lifeline in and out of Aleppo. Aleppo journalist Mohammed   told NPR that rebel reinforcements have begun shoring up defenses of the last outlet to Turkey. But he offered a sober assessment of the future. ”The rebels have light weapons and they are facing literal armies: Iran, Russia, the [Syrian] regime, Hezbollah . .. ISIS,” he said. ”They’re up against warplanes and    missiles. And meanwhile Turkey won’t even let in the refugees. How do you think it’s going to go?”"
"Here’s what we know: Coldplay and Beyoncé will perform at Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime. The duo just released a song called ”Hymn for the Weekend.” But they won’t be performing it  —   because it’s too new, according to the band. ”I don’t think it would be quite right,” said frontman Chris Martin, according to The Associated Press. The decision comes as the song’s music video has ignited a heated debate about cultural appropriation. The video, which uses India as a backdrop, has drawn a focus on where where we draw the line between what’s acceptable and what’s offensive. Recently, the debate over cultural appropriation hasn’t been very hard to find. Just look at the top of the pop charts, right now. At No. 2 on the Hot 100 is Justin Bieber’s ”Sorry,” a song that takes inspiration from   reggaeton. Bieber dropped that single in October, and just as quickly  —   and thousands of miles away in Chile  —   a blogger called him out on it. ”The new single by Bieber is a tutorial from Skrillex on how to make reggaeton for white people,” Maximiliano Jimenez wrote. Jimenez runs a runs the pop culture site Pousta and he said the song is a type of cultural colonialism. ”The music business sees Latin America and this kind of music as an inspiration to make more money,” he said. Greg Tate, a musician who wrote a book about appropriation titled Everything But the Burden, says it’s more complicated than that. He says there is a key tension in any conversation about appropriation: First there is an artists’ desire to receive credit for their work  —   whether monetarily or artistically  —   and then there’s the fundamental relationship between art and theft. ”Your training as an artist is essentially about impersonation, imitation,” he said. ”You learn to get better by kind of borrowing or adapting or training yourself in the way of the people who came before you.” In a lot of ways, that’s why we keep having this conversation. We had it in the ’60s when George Harrison included a sitar in Norwegian Wood. And then 20 years later, Paul Simon released Graceland, a lush album in which Simon reworked South African songs. In an interview with World Cafe in 2012, Simon said that his intention wasn’t to document the plight of black South Africans suffering under the oppression of Apartheid. It wasn’t even to bring their music to the Western world. Instead, he said, wanted to make a good album. ”My idea was, they play their best, I’m going to play my best,” he said. ”And that was my way of saying that I thought that they were extraordinary.” At the time many of the black musicians who played and sang on the album said they were happy with the collaboration in part because it had brought South African music to the global stage. The legendary South African musician Jonas Gwangwa was one of the few dissenters. As The Guardian tells it, when he heard someone praise Simon for shining a spotlight on South African music he replied: ”So, it has taken another white man to discover my people.” Since then, there have been many more examples. From the obvious: Katy Perry in cornrows and a Taylor Swift video filmed in an entirely white Africa. To the more complicated: Shakira, a Latina of Arabic descent, belly dancing and Macklemore acknowledging the theft of black culture in a   song that exploits the very thing he’s railing against. Nitasha Tamar Sharma, a professor at Northwestern University who studies   says she’s not that interested in talking about when appropriation is right or wrong. She’s not really interested in talking about why Eminem is controversial but Adele, who borrows from the tradition of soul, is not. She said ultimately what she thinks is important is the effect that thoughtless appropriation  —   perpetrated by anyone regardless of color  —   has beyond culture. When we’re presented with caricatures of other cultures, she says, it’s easier for people to view them as  . It’s easier to pass unfair economic policies, for example, or even to start a war. ”I think when people of color and dominated groups just become a backdrop with no voice and context, no humanity,” she said, ”I think that’s the problem.” That’s what the video that goes along with Bieber track accomplishes she said. ”For the most part, [the women] are just props: scores and scores of generally undifferentiated women,” she said. The message he’s sending is that ”he is drawing from Black and Brown cultural formation (with the track and the dances) absent the full presence of Black and Brown people and can do it just as good as they can.” Sharma said the same can be said of the Coldplay and Beyoncé song. Indian culture, she said, is presented with the same old stereotypes and it is relegated to a background. Tate, the musician, has a much similar criticism of the song. ”It’s just seems so damn corporate,” he said. ”Something that a Duran Duran might’ve done in 1985 and that just makes it mediocre.” However, Tate said, the discussion on appropriation is necessarily subjective, so he chooses to subscribe to the wise words of Public Enemy’s Hank Schocklee. ”He said the only question that matters is whether or not it’s dope,” Tate said. ”They may be offended but at the same time, they’ll just have to admit you made something that works.” The bottom line, he said, is that the   collaboration is not dope."
"With February comes Black History Month in the U. S. a time designated to reflect on the history and contributions of people of African descent in this country. And while the month may invite debate among some, one thing rarely does in the U. S.: the idea of calling oneself, or being described as, black or  . In Mexico, however, it is unusual  —   so unusual, in fact, that up until now, Mexican citizens were unable to officially recognize themselves as ” ” on national censuses. That is set to change in the upcoming 2020 census, though. Already, a preliminary 2015 survey  —   conducted in preparation for the 2020 census  —   found that some 1. 4 million people identify as  . To learn more about what this might mean  —   and why these changes are only happening now  —   NPR’s Michel Martin spoke with Luisa Ortiz, CEO of Nova Mexico, a nonprofit organization that works with minorities communities. NPR also spoke with people of mixed Mexican and African descent their takes on race and identity can be found on the right side. On the history of people of African descent in Mexico, You could say there are actually two big waves of arrival of people of African descent. One of them would definitely be the 16th century, and there is definitely a second wave  —   and that is in the 1950s and ’60s, after the independence of several nations in Africa. Many people arrived in the region and they arrived to Mexico, probably on their way to the United States or not. But some of them stayed. And I would probably even think now there could be a third wave of people of African descent arriving, coming from Haiti, coming from Cuba, coming from Venezuela or even from Colombia. On why Mexico is adding the category ” ” to the census only now, There has never been that option. The last time people of African descent were counted was in the 19th century. The Mexican federal government is arriving late to the party. I believe that this is the result of a   movement. Many, many organizations for years now have worked with communities in the coast, and organizations that are mostly international found out, and they saw that people happen to be of African descent. So this is the result of many, many years of philanthropy that bring to the fore organizations that today are becoming politically very active. I think that the government, the federal government, is reacting to the politicization of civil society that happens to be of African descent. On whether   feel as if they’ve faced discrimination, Absolutely  —   and they even feel discrimination from their indigenous brothers and sisters. It is not easy it is not an easy debate. Until last year, until 2015, black Mexicans requested to be identified as indigenous because there was no category in the census, and they were asked if they spoke an indigenous language and they would have to say yes. But when they would have to clarify which language it was, you would come to interesting results  —   such as, ”We speak some patois, some Haitian, a form of French, some Yoruba” or else. On what she thinks will result from allowing this designation, I envision, on the positive side, a lot of young men and young woment who are feeling comfortable with who they are. And definitely there is some sense of pride in seeing somebody you actually look like making it big, making a movie, winning an Oscar, being president of a country, a senator. So, on the one hand, the result is that people globally are recognizing with pride and dignity who they are and what they can achieve. On the not so positive side, I believe this is definitely a political maneuver. Black Mexicans live in territories where there’s politics and the acceptance of their ethnicity could probably pigeonhole them to be members of different political parties in the coming elections. So I don’t think it is so romantic. It is definitely far more nuanced and complex."
"For lots of people Super Bowl Sunday isn’t even about the football, it’s about the commercials. Over the years, advertising spots during the Super Bowl have become more elaborate, more talked about and more expensive than ever. CBS, which is airing Super Bowl 50 this Sunday, is charging advertisers between $4. 8 and $5 million for a   spot. That’s up from a $4. 4 million average cost last year, and $2. 5 million a decade ago, according to Kantar Media. Last year’s game drew a record 114. 4 million viewers, with even more expected this year. With the hefty price tag for television time, advertisers are integrating social media and online advertising to try to maximize exposure. And companies are even putting the ads on YouTube in advance of the Big Game. So what should we expect this year? ”Compared to last year we’re really seeing much more fun,” says Jeanine Poggi, who covers the TV industry for Advertising Age. This year’s Super Bowl will be ”a lot more ” she told NPR’s Michel Martin. Poggi says this year’s ads include about 40 celebrities, up from about 28 last year. In this ad for Bud Light, Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen say America’s shared love of beer will bring the country together: If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to see Jeff Goldblum sing and play a piano as it goes up the side of an apartment building, here’s your chance: Christopher Walken says socks can be exciting, and so can the Kia Optima: This is after last year, when most of the   ads took a serious tone. ”We actually were kind of dubbing it the ’Somber Bowl,’” Poggi says. ”There was cyber bullying, domestic abuse.” This Nationwide commercial from last year about a boy who got killed from preventable household accidents got a lot of backlash: ”That’s just depressing,” says Poggi, who says that serious ads do tend to outperform humorous ones. ”But, if you have a Super Bowl filled with these depressing, sad [ads] none of them stand out from each other.” The Super Bowl is one of the few times advertisers can get a massive audience in the age of Netflix and hundreds of cable channels. And how do the modern ads stack up against some old favorites? Michael Hiltzik argued in the Los Angeles Times that no Super Bowl ad will ever top the 1984 Apple ad for the Macintosh computer, which set the standard that Super Bowl ads should be different: Some lists put this 1979 Mean Joe Greene ad for   as one of the best, maybe because many people still remember it: The Budweiser frogs ad from 1995 was a simple concept. But at least you remember what it was for: And USA Today puts this McDonald’s ad with Larry Bird and Michael Jordan at the top of its list:"
"Anybody can promise to wear the opponent’s jersey should their own team fall short. As far as friendly wagers go, that’s pretty pedestrian (I’m looking at you, Denver and Charlotte mayors). But a few of the bets placed on Super Bowl 50 have at least a little bit more skin in the game. Govs. Pat McRory of North Carolina and John Hickenlooper of Colorado have dueling donation pledges, with the loser supporting the other state’s needy. If the Panthers win, a North Carolina shelter will get 50 backpacks with school supplies and a food bank will get Coloradan cuisine: 50 cases of salsa, 500 boxes of crackers and 500 packages of sausages. If the Broncos emerge victorious, a Colorado food bank will get 50 cases of turkey burgers and 50 cases of turkey sausages from North Carolina’s Butterball. Meanwhile the states’ senators  —   Republicans Thom Tillis and Richard Burr from North Carolina, and Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat Michael Bennet from Colorado  —   have wagered a speech. The freshman senator from the losing state  —   that is, Tillis or Gardner  —   will congratulate the winning team and state, in great detail, on the Senate floor. And the symphony orchestras in both cities have  —   what else?  —   music on the line. In CSO vs. CSO (that’s the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra) the Coloradans have pledged to play Sweet Caroline if the Panthers win, and the North Carolinians will perform   from Aaron Copland’s Rodeo.  The symphonies announced the wager in a video that features two conductors named Christopher, inexplicable,    British accents, Denver musicians chomping down on Fig Newtons (Newtons, get it?) Carolina orchestra members mocking Peyton Manning’s Nationwide ads and a very determined trumpet player wielding his instrument with a giant Panthers paw on. And an entire symphony orchestra doing the dab, of course. Then there are a truly impressive number of   wagers: And there are plenty of charitable ”wagers” where no matter who wins, nonprofits in both cities get a boost. The local United Way charities are holding book drives where, they say, ”our communities’ kids come out as the champs.” The Catholic charities from the two cities are holding a fundraising competition, with a target of $50, 000 for Super Bowl 50. Rabbis in both cities are holding an online fundraiser, with   of proceeds to the victor’s charity of choice and the rest to the loser’s pick. They’ve dubbed it ”Super Mitzvah 50,” and released competing hype videos. ”These are days when we celebrate God’s chosen team  —   the Carolina Panthers,” Rabbi Judy Schindler says. Temple Emanuel Denver went with a movie trailer approach, for a film called . .. Broncos Vs. Kitty Cats. Wondering if the local public radio stations got into the spirit? Charlotte’s WFAE was game for it, but Colorado Public Radio says they’re ”not the betting type.”"
"As part of a series called My Big Break, All Things Considered is collecting stories of triumph, big and small. These are the moments when everything seems to click, and people leap forward into their careers. All football players know they’re one big hit away from the end of their career. Delvin Breaux was a high school senior with a scholarship on the line when he took one of those hits. It broke his neck. But, nine years later, he has become one of the NFL’s top young defenders with the New Orleans Saints. How did he manage such a feat? Well, Breaux says it’s a long story  —   one that began when he started playing football at age 4. ”Every day I used to wake up, I used to be like, ’Hey, man, I’m gonna be in the NFL one day,’ ” he says. ”You know, just watching the guys play on TV. It was just something that I always dreamed of.” In high school, college coaches came in to recruit for schools all over the country  —   UCLA, USC, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Ohio State, Michigan. But Breaux says LSU  —   his ”hometown team”  —   was the only school he wanted to attend. Before he even got there, his life changed. ”The day I got seriously injured was Oct. 27, 2006,” Breaux recalls. ”I shot down the left side of the field, just went in there and made the tackle. And next thing you know I was on the ground and everything just went dark. ”I couldn’t move or nothing, then I heard my teammates: ’D Breaux, get up! We need you, man, get up!’ ” he says. ”And I’m like, ’I would but I can’t move.’ Then two or three seconds after I say that, a bright, white light just . .. appeared!” He was able to open his eyes and stand up. Breaux started walking back to the sideline, getting ready to go back in. ”That’s when the sharp pain came and shot up the back of my neck. And I went to the sideline and told my dad that my neck’s hurting, and he was like, ’Take some ibuprofen.’ And I couldn’t swallow the pills because my disc slipped out my esophagus.” It turned out he had broken his C4, C5 and C6 vertebrae. Doctors put in screws, pins and rods to secure his neck, and there’s a scar in the front part of his esophagus where doctors put a plate in. After that, the college teams stopped calling with offers. ”I was just so frustrated,” Breaux says. ”I was like, ’Man, my career’s over with. Can’t play ball no more, can’t pursue my dream. What am I gonna do next?’ And that’s all I kept thinking while I was in the hospital for that month.” Luckily, he had committed early to play for LSU. The school kept him on scholarship, even though he was injured. But LSU would never clear him to play. He ended up getting cleared by his own doctors, though. ”I went back home and told my wife, ’Baby, I’m cleared to play football again.’ She said, ’No, you’re lying.’ And I was like, ’No, baby, look at the papers!’ Everything was cleared and there was no restrictions,” Breaux says. ”And she was like, ’Alright, well get your butt back on out there. It’s time to go play!’ ” In 2012  —   for the first time in six years  —   he was back playing football, with the semipro Louisiana Bayou Vipers. He didn’t know what to expect after being out of it for so long. ”Am I gonna be rusty? Am I gonna be great?” he wondered. Breaux remembers it all coming down to one play. ”I think it was like the second play of the game. They ran the ball and they came my way. And I’m sitting up there like, ’Man, I’ve got to make this tackle. They’re coming right to me. I’ve got to make this tackle. Please!’ And I went in and I made the tackle, and I jumped up and I’m like, ’Man, I’m not dead. I’m not dead.’ ” His confidence regained, Breaux quickly started playing better. ”I started ballin’ out,” he says. ”I had an interception, I had two more tackles. I just started enjoying it. This is it  —   I’m back playing football again, I’m doing what I love, and now it’s time to get to the NFL.” It wasn’t straight to the NFL, though. His next step was playing with the New Orleans VooDoo, an arena football team. After several months, he was recruited by the Hamilton Tiger Cats in Ontario, part of the Canadian Football League. ”My big break came after my CFL season. Recruiting felt like college all over again,” Breaux says. ”I had a lot of teams wanting me  —   I would say 28 of the 32 NFL teams they had, I had workouts. Ended up signing with the Saints. I went through the physical process, and they were like, ’You’re good to go!’ I’ve been pumped ever since.” Despite the difficulties along the way, he never considered giving up football. People even told him to quit. But ”that did nothing but add fuel to the fire,” Breaux says. ”It made me want to go hard and work out extra hard. I was trying to show people that I’m not out of it, I’m still in it. ”My motivation and dedication and determination just wouldn’t let me quit,” he says. ”It was always: Let’s do one more rep, let’s do one more set, you can make it, you’re gonna make it, just continue to keep believing.”"
"”Wait for the next one!” a teenager yells, perched on a shaded rock with a group of his friends. ”That’s it, that’s it!” cries another, gesturing toward a swelling wave that’s gathering speed as it heads toward a surfer about 25 yards offshore. When he lets the wave pass him by, bobbing over its crest on a scuffed board, the group laughs. ”Look at him, he’s scared.” It’s a hot Saturday afternoon in Robertsport, a sleepy fishing town a few hours’ drive up the coast from Monrovia, Liberia, and the boys are watching their peers compete in the town’s annual surfing championship. About 50 locals have shown up to watch the show. When the surfer finally finds a wave he likes and rides it along the coastline, the crowd cheers and throws sand in the air. It’s a far cry from a year ago, when the Ebola crisis brought the country to a near standstill. By last January, Ebola cases in Monrovia had begun to fall, but the area around Robertsport had become the site of a renewed outbreak. The surfing competition was canceled for the first time in five years. A few of the surfers competing in this competition, held on Jan. 30, had to be quarantined when a member of their household fell ill with the virus. Thankfully, none of them caught the disease, and the family member made a full recovery. ”Ebola isn’t around, so we aren’t all panicking here anymore,” says Peter Swenn Jr. the winner of the 2014 ”senior’ category,” who’s in his late 20s. In between ”heats”  —     runs where three surfers compete to ride the longest wave as stylishly as they can  —   poppy Afrobeats music plays from speakers on the beach as people gather to hear who advanced to the finals. Those too young to surf are wrestling in the sand and running behind the older boys on their way into the water. Surfing first arrived in Robertsport via white Land Cruisers emblazoned with aid organization logos. The aid workers would hit the waves while local kids hung out on the beach and watched. The beach is known as one of the best in the region for surfing, and eventually the foreigners started taking the kids out in the water. After a photographer from San Diego opened a surf lodge in Robertsport and started lending his spare boards to the aspiring local surfers, they were in the water constantly. For Liberians who don’t have access to much cash, surfing is the perfect sport. All you need is a board and the right wave. With the singlemindedness bordering on obsession that kids across the world devote to sport, the fledgling surfers were, in a few short years, eager to compete against each other. Kent Bubbs, an American aid worker volunteering as a judge for this year’s competition, watched as the sport caught on in Robertsport. ”When I first started surfing here nine years ago, there was one [Liberian] surfer. That turned into two, and now there’s over a dozen. In today’s competition we have 18.” One is Elijah Brown, a popular    with a streak of orange dye in his hair. He won 2014’s ”junior” category. When he surfs, people on the beach yell, ”Bravo! Bravo!”  —   a reference to his favorite soccer player, Claudio Bravo, the goalkeeper for FC Barcelona. Brown got his start when an aid worker gave him a lesson and promised to buy him a board if he kept at it. The worker followed through on the promise, and Brown came down to the beach every day to practice. ”I have a lot of style,” Brown says. ”Whenever I see girls on the beach I go in the water.” In the last competition, held before the Ebola outbreak in early 2014, he won by pulling off a ”” where the surfer looks as if he’s going to fall, then steadies himself. ”I have to battle my friends before I become the winner,” he says, smiling. ”I’m sure that I can make it.” The boys are competitive  —   everyone wants to win  —   but they’re also friends. When one of them wins his heat, the others lift him up and carry him down the beach, cheering. ”This is the first year that the competition’s been 100 percent organized by Liberians,” says Bubbs. ”It’s a big milestone.” At the end of the final heat, a man in his early 20s blows a whistle and waves a red flag. The crowd gathers in a shaded area, awaiting the results. One of the judges makes his announcement: Elijah has won the ”junior” category again, and Benjamin McCrumade the ”senior.” Their friends embrace the two winners as the crowd applauds and music floods the beach. The celebration is a welcome sight. Scars from the outbreak remain, but like the waves being drawn back into the sea, Ebola has receded from Liberia. ”We can’t let people say, ’Oh, y’all got good waves in Liberia but you don’t surf them,’ ” McCrumade says. ”I’m going to surf and enjoy my waves because it’s my country’s nature. That’s what I love about surfing.”"
"Can a kid succeed in school with only a mobile device for Internet access at home? Lorena Uribe doesn’t have to think about that one: ”Absolutely not,” she says. When her old computer broke down several years ago, she and her teenage daughter found themselves in a bind for about five months: homework to do and no computer or broadband access at home. ”I would take her to the mall and have her sit in Panera so she could use the   on her iPad from school,” Uribe says. Now, the Internet connection at their home near San Diego is a cord in the wall, attached to a desktop that they bought through a discount program at school. Uribe says sometimes Web pages take a while to load and it can get annoying  —   but it works. ”You have Internet you have a computer. What more do you really, really need?” she says. Researchers from Rutgers University and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop collected dozens of stories like Uribe’s for a new study focused specifically on   families with   children. They surveyed nearly 1, 200 parents with kids between 6 and 13 years old, whose income is below the national median for families with children. They found that even among the poorest households, 9 in 10 families do have some access to the Internet, but in many cases that means   or a mobile data plan. ”Our data is one of the first, if not the first time that we can really comprehensively look at whether or not having   access  —   meaning that you don’t have it through a computer or a desktop  —   whether or not it’s equivalent. And what our findings show is that it is not,” says   Vikki Katz. The study puts in a new light the important progress that smartphones brought to many disconnected households. As early as in 2013, the U. S. Census Bureau reported that phones were reducing historic Internet use disparities among different racial and ethnic groups. Similarly, smartphones became the gateway to the Internet for many less wealthy Americans, and surveys like Pew still find people with lower incomes to be more heavily dependent on their smartphones for Web access. What that has produced, however, is a quarter of   families with kids in school having only a mobile device for Internet access. Among families living below the poverty level, the proportion rises to a third. And it’s highest at 41 percent among immigrant Hispanic families in particular. Can You Do Homework On A Phone? For children, that means they’re less likely to use the Internet on a daily basis, according to the study. And that charts a far harder road for a kid to become a digitally savvy student and worker. Katz says that also makes it hard for children to explore topics and ideas that interest them personally  —   what educators sometimes call   learning  —   which can prevent them from cementing, say, an interest in a musical instrument or developing another expertise. ”These are important factors in thinking about how the homework gap is much broader than just homework,” she says. And even for regular homework, limited technology at home can be a setback. ”It could be, in a general term, a question of what is the homework that’s being asked of the child,” says Ernesto Villanueva, an executive director and former teacher and principal at Chula Vista Elementary School District in San Diego County. ”And now we find . .. we are in a place where we want students to be creative, to be artistic, to demonstrate the skill sets that aren’t only about reading something or watching a video but also doing something with that.” In that sense, it can be a matter of a small screen and lack of keyboard, making even a tablet an upgrade as a device. (And it’s important to note that a ”mobile device” in the   study did account for tablets as well.) But if there’s no   at home, a tablet would have to rely on a mobile data plan, posing its own challenges like data caps, weak connections or shared access with multiple family members. ”If we’re asking kids to go home and watch a video and Mom and Dad are on a measured plan, well that’s going to pose a problem,” Villanueva says, ”because Mom can’t have you watch three of those   videos and then she no longer has access for the rest of the month.” Discount Internet Programs Don’t Reach, As expected, the main reason   families reported a lack of   Internet access at home was cost. ”It’s not that they don’t understand the importance of this for their kids’ education,” says Katz’s   Victoria Rideout. ”It’s not that they don’t desire it. It’s not that they don’t feel confident using the Internet. It’s that they don’t have the financial resources to be as connected as they want to be.” Various Internet service providers do have discount programs targeted at   Americans, like Comcast’s ”Internet Essentials,” but the study found they weren’t reaching many of the families surveyed. Of the families who would generally be eligible by income level, only 6 percent said they’ve ever signed up for such discount programs, according to the report. Why aren’t more families using the programs? ”There’s a few problems, but one of them is that they presume that these families are still on the ’wrong’ side of a digital divide, meaning that they have little to no technology in their homes,” says Katz. ”And we can see from [the survey] and from the interviews, that that’s not true.” For instance, some of the programs only offer wired Ethernet connections, which are restricting for a household with several children or only accept homes that have not had any Internet service for several months, which means eligible families who previously signed up for a   service have to go without Internet to qualify for the discounted service. Some shifts are starting to happen. The Obama administration has been working to reshuffle some of its funding to focus on connectivity. The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote this year to begin restructuring its old telephone subsidy called Lifeline to also cover broadband. And digital equity experts say the most important thing will be changing the way we think about the issue: no longer the question of if there’s access, but what the quality is."
"It’s not simply Flint that has bad water. The Michigan city, which has grabbed headlines recently for its rampant water contamination, is joined in that dubious distinction by another town, much farther south: St. Joseph, La. ”It’s just a given fact that at some point during the week, you’re going to have brown or yellow water,” says resident Garrett Boyte. Boyte says there have been problems with the water there for a decade, but it’s only in the past few weeks that St. Joseph has gotten any media attention. ”What’s happening here in St. Joseph got the attention it’s gotten because Flint has made water a public issue,” he says. ”And what I try to tell people is, this isn’t just happening in St. Joseph or in Flint. It’s happening in Louisiana, it’s happening in Kentucky and Tennessee and Mississippi and in areas of poor and disenfranchised communities across the country.” The cause of the dark water in St. Joseph seems to be a broken pipe in the community’s aging system. While local officials have said it’s not dangerous, the break in the pipe could be a warning. ”Most of their issues seem to be around pipes that are 90 years old and are constantly being repaired,” says Jimmy Guidry, Louisiana’s state health officer. He tells NPR’s Scott Simon that work has been done to plan a replacement for the broken pipe, but that such fixes can be costly  ” especially in such a small community. ”Like most small water systems, when you don’t have many customers, it’s very expensive and it’s not affordable,” Guidry says. ”But they have to do so because right now there’s risk of worse things than color.” And the aging water system has been an issue not just in St. Joseph, according to Guidry, but in other communities throughout Louisiana and other states, as well. He says it’s ” ” for small communities to address the mandates from the Environmental Protection Agency on water standards. ”If you have enough customers, you tend to replace infrastructure over time, because you have a funding source. But when you don’t have a funding source, you’re looking for a   loan if you can afford it or you’re looking for a grant, which there aren’t many of those around,” Guidry says. ”It’s very difficult for them to meet the standards that are required and then give them the quality of water that they want.” As the pipes have degraded over time, that difficulty has only escalated. ”It could take years,” he says. ”It’s the kind of thing, which if you don’t maintain it along the way, you’re going to have to take care of it when it gets in trouble, and now it’s in serious trouble. And it’s going to be very costly to take care of those issues.” For the time being, though, Guidry says he agrees with St. Joseph residents: He wouldn’t drink the water, either. Though it’s not so much from safety concerns as an even simpler reason: It looks disgusting. ”It’s not that I don’t think it’s safe from the standpoint that we measure the bacteria, we measure all the chemicals that make it safe. But when you look at it, it looks like sludge,” he says. ”It doesn’t look like something you want to put in your body.”"
"High levels of lead in their drinking water have Flint, Mich. residents relying on cases of bottled water for just about everything. So it may come as no surprise that thousands of them have stopped paying their water bills. Lynna Kaucheck of the    group Food and Water Watch delivered 21, 000 signatures to the Flint mayor’s office last week calling for a moratorium on drinking water bills. ”All of this is a lot for people to handle, and enough is enough,” she said. ”Flint residents need relief.” More than a quarter of Flint water customers stopped paying their water bills last fall after it was confirmed that their drinking water was contaminated with lead. That’s cost the city millions of dollars. As a result, the city may not have enough money in the future to pay for repairing broken water mains and replacing sewer lines. Gov. Rick Snyder,  . who has come under withering criticism for the state’s role in the crisis, agrees that Flint residents shouldn’t have to pay for tainted drinking water. He is asking the state Legislature to give $30 million to Flint to cover the cost of water. But he says residents should still pay the part of their bill that supports the water and sewer system. The governor’s plan would provide credit for water bills dating back to April 2014, when the city’s tap water source was switched to the Flint River. It was the failure to properly treat the river water that damaged the city’s pipes, which continue to leach lead into the drinking water. Snyder says he and city officials still have to figure out exactly how to credit Flint water customers for the tainted water they already paid for. A federal   lawsuit on behalf of Flint water customers is seeking $150 million in refunds and damages. Attorney Billy Murphy says the lawsuit he filed this week will compensate Flint residents for paying for water that he calls ”incredibly dangerous.” ”The city, the state, the local government officials, the governor, all know that this was catastrophically wrong,” Murphy said. ”The citizens should not be made to add insult to injury by having to pay for dangerous, dirty,     water.” Flint residents still receive a monthly bill for water they can’t drink, at rates about eight times the national average."
"Emily Martin created a    map of the gender wage gap in the United States. She calculated: Washington, D. C. has the smallest wage gap where women average nearly 90 cents to a man’s dollar Louisiana has the largest gap  —   women there earn just 65 percent of what men do. Nationally, women earn an average 79 cents for every dollar men do. The gender wage gap is even wider for black and Hispanic women. Martin is the vice president and general counsel of the National Women’s Law Center. The gender wage gap that she reported is not a new issue. It was President Obama’s priority from the start, and the first piece of legislation he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009. On the seventh anniversary of the signing last month, he again made headlines by announcing new rules that would require companies to disclose pay data. But the issue has gone nowhere in Congress. There are lots of reasons for the gender gap, but Martin says a stubborn, small part is still discrimination. ”There’s really disturbing social science studies out there that show that supervisors, male and female alike, without realizing it, will recommend lower salaries for women with equivalent qualifications to men,” she says. Facing pressure from a growing number of activists  —   who point out that more women than ever are primary breadwinners for their families  —   states are forging ahead on their own efforts. They have passed a string of equal pay laws in recent years, and more proposals have been introduced in two dozen states so far this year. A Patchwork Of State Laws, The measures take a variety of approaches. At least five states have banned companies from retaliating if workers talk about their pay and compare notes. Some have made it easier for workers to sue over pay, while others have made it harder for companies to justify paying men more because of a ”factor other than sex.” Martin says some courts have interpreted that to mean just about anything. A few proposals would bar employers from asking job applicants up front or in an interview about their pay history. ”Because often your pay is set with some reference to how much you made at your last job,” Martin says, ”the impact of pay discrimination can follow people through their careers.” Another trend is moving beyond equal pay simply for the exact same job title. Nick Rathod heads the State Innovation Exchange, a network of progressive lawmakers. He says a law passed last year in California requires companies to offer similar pay for ”substantially similar” jobs, such as a housekeeper and a janitor. ”They’ll do   evaluation on things like their skill, their effort, their experience, that type of thing,” Rathod says. Opposition Remains Despite Bipartisan Support, Although it is mostly Democrats proposing these measures, Rathod says an equal pay bill recently passed the Massachusetts Senate unanimously with the support of the local Chamber of Commerce. ”It is a bipartisan issue,” he says. ”And I think it’s hard to be on the side of arguing that mothers and daughters should be paid less than men.” But that doesn’t mean there isn’t opposition. ”When we look at each one of these bills, I’m not sure if they’re accomplishing the end goal,” says Loren Furman, chief lobbyist with the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry. She finds the newly proposed legislation redundant given all the other regulations that are already in place. ”We have a state wage act,” she says. ”We have an   act. We have the federal NLRB (National Labor Relations) Act.” Furman says companies worry more laws could mean more lawsuits. She says they also worry about a Colorado measure that would ban them from asking job candidates up front about their pay history. Employers tell her they need that to know who is serious about a particular job, and who may be looking for anything they can get. ”The worst thing for an employer is to hire somebody and then lose that person because they ultimately wanted (for example) $100, 000,” she says. Whatever laws are enacted, states will be looking to see if they have any impact on a gender wage gap that has hardly budged for a decade."
"The jobs numbers are in: 150, 000 jobs were added to the economy in January. That’s fewer than expected, though the unemployment rate fell to an   low. President Obama took the opportunity this morning to take a shot at some of his more vocal opponents. ”The United States of America, right now, has strongest, most durable economy in the world,” he said. ”I know that’s still inconvenient for GOP stump speeches, as their ’Doom And Despair’ tour plays in New Hampshire  —   I guess you cannot please everybody.” There was a lot of good news in the report: It wasn’t just hours worked that went up, pay went up too  —   and that hasn’t happened in years. But those things aren’t true for everyone. ”One of the problems is that we continue to have a tale of two economies,” says Imara Jones is a economist and writer. ”[The improvement] is mostly true for people who are white, have good educations, and are tied to those sectors that are flourishing in the global economy. And then we have the economy of everyone else that has been left out and left behind” One of the groups left behind is  . Their unemployment rate, 8. 8 percent, is more than double the rate for whites, 4. 3 percent, and is actually closer to the 9 percent unemployment rates whites experienced in the depths of the recession. And for blacks, the rate actually went up last month. Lowell Blackmon, 20, is working on getting a GED  —   and on getting a job. ”Right now, any type of job that, you know  —   that can pay me,” he says. ”I’m good with my hands, so I like to work a lot. They got a lot of jobs out here, you just gotta have your stuff to be able to do it.” Valerie Wilson, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, says part of the reason the unemployment rate for blacks may have gone up is because more were looking for work. ”Perhaps people who were previously unemployed were encouraged by last month’s numbers and are now looking for employment,” she says, adding that while there’s good news for everyone in this months’ report, ”we still maintain that roughly    ratio between black and white unemployment.” ”That disparity is very persistent,” Wilson says, ”and it’s present whether we’re in a recession or in a recovery. It’s present at all levels of education.” Gwendolyn Cole hopes she’s one of the workers headed in the right direction  —   she’s been out of a job for two years, but just got an interview with the utility company Pepco. ”I’m so happy about it, ’cause I did 15 years with D. C. Public Schools, and then I turned around and did 15 years as home child care provider,” she says. ”So I went into electronics, and it’s a wonderful field, because it’s more data entry, customer service.” Cole’s work history shows why many   are struggling to make their way out of the last recession, says Imara Jones.   are more likely to be teachers and firefighters and police than their white counterparts  —   in part because of the strong   laws that exist for government jobs that you don’t have in the private sector,” he says. ”And of course during the Great Recession, one of the greatest lagging sectors in jobs was that  —   in government.” Jones says though there is a still a lot of good news, but a lot of people especially    —   don’t feel like they’re benefiting from it yet. ”Once you have labor force participation going up, unemployment coming down, wages going up and hours going up, that’s the sign of a recovery  —   but we’re not there yet,” he says. But economists Jones and Wilson do say we’re getting closer  —   one little step at a time."
"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders both pledged their allegiance Thursday to the cause of campaign finance reform during the final Democratic presidential debate before the New Hampshire primary. Polls show that many Americans agree: Too much money comes from too few donors. The candidates’ solutions, predictably, were somewhat less certain. SuperPACs, Sanders: ”What we should do, and one of the things we should do is not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. I am very proud to be the only candidate up here who does not have a superPAC and special interests.” Clinton: ”Today, you’ve got hedge fund billionaires aligned with Karl Rove, running ads against me to try to get Democrats to vote for you. I know this game. I’m going to stop this game.” SuperPACs came into existence in 2010, after Citizens United and another court ruling. Unlike regular political action committees, they can raise unlimited money from corporations, unions and the wealthy. They’re supposed to be independent players, not coordinating with candidates or party committees. But this year, every major presidential candidate except Sanders has at least one ”independent” superPAC on his or her team. Republican Ted Cruz has five. Sanders may not have a superPAC near at hand, but the union National Nurses United is pretty close. It endorsed him this summer, and its political arm sends nurses to knock on doors and to trail his campaign bus in one of their own. NNU has spent more than $1 million so far. Friends of the Earth’s superPAC has run   TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire, and four other progressive groups have made smaller efforts. Conservative superPACS have already poured more than $5 million into attacks on Clinton, according to the   Sunlight Foundation. They include American Crossroads, guided by GOP consultant Karl Rove Freedom Partners Action Fund, part of the Koch brothers network and Keep the Promise I, a   superPAC. None of these groups supports Sanders. Clinton gets support from unions and superPACs representing the National Education Association, Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood, among others. But the superPAC aligned with her campaign, Priorities USA Action, is saving its money for the general election. As of Dec. 31, it had $35. 8 million on hand and had spent just $5. 7 million  —   less than $400, 000 of it for Clinton. And finally, Sanders is drawing some superPAC attacks too. Ending Spending Action Fund, has spent $774, 321 against Sanders, according to Sunlight. Citizens United, Clinton: ”I want to reverse Citizens United.” Sanders: ”No nominee of mine, if I’m elected president, to the United States Supreme Court will get that nomination unless he or she is loud and clear, and says they will vote to overturn Citizens United.” Attacking this 2010 Supreme Court ruling, which let corporations and unions spend freely to promote or attack candidates, is a sure applause line at Democratic rallies. Actually doing something about it is much harder. To get a Supreme Court that would reverse the decision requires changes on the Court. That could happen over the next four years, when four of the nine justices will be 80 or older. Both Sanders and Clinton promise to put forward nominees who oppose the legal theory underlying Citizens United  —   just the kind of litmus test that liberals criticized in less partisan times. To circumvent the courts, some reform advocates call for a constitutional amendment. Both Sanders and Clinton endorse the idea. But it would amount to amending the First Amendment, something other reformers are wary of. It’s also hard, requiring approval by   of each chamber of Congress, or of a constitutional convention, plus ratification by   of the 50 state legislatures. Congress has even refused to pass legislation to fulfill a section of the Citizens United ruling that calls for immediate disclosure of corporate political spending. These have been largely   votes. Public Financing, MSNBC moderator Chuck Todd asked Sanders why he isn’t seeking public financing, a system that was used by the winners of every Democratic and Republican nominating contest from 1976 to 1996. Sanders: ”It is a public financing system that everybody knows is antiquated. It no longer works. Nobody can become president based on that system.” He’s right. The public financing system badly needs updating. As it is, candidates get too little, too late, compared to what’s being spent in modern campaigns. A   candidate can spend up to $48. 1 million in the primaries. Both Clinton and Sanders have already raised more than twice that much. One 2016 candidate did apply for public financing: Democrat Martin O’Malley. He qualified to get $846, 365. 09 (money supplied by the $3   checkoff on income tax forms). The Treasury sent him the first $100, 000 on Jan. 4. O’Malley finished a distant third in the Iowa caucuses Feb. 1 and dropped out that night. Clinton and Sanders both say the system needs fixing, and some sort of public financing should be available for House and Senate candidates. With Republicans likely to keep their House majority in November, public financing, like other big changes in the campaign finance system, seems like a long shot."
"You could think of this week’s meme as the Rorschach test of the Democratic base. Depending on who you ask, it’s either   and fun, or a symbol of gender bias and discrimination. It’s called Bernie or Hillary (or Bernie vs Hillary) and it started on a Tumblr called Obvious Plant, made by Jeff Wysaski. It’s moved to Twitter, too, where people have made all kinds of versions of the originals. At first glance, it seems funny enough. A series of fake campaign posters, with fictitious quotes from Vermont Sec. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on issues like sleeping (depicting him as energized, her as a robot) Harry Potter, and wolves. Some of them you just can’t help but laugh about. But some Hillary Clinton supporters called out the Bernie vs. Hillary meme as sexist. Some say it plays into insidious stereotypes about women: that they can’t be funny, that they are calculating, stiff and that they are inherently unlikable. At snarky pop culture site pajiba. com, Courtney Enlow wrote, in an epic   rant, that the meme was just another sign of the double standard women encounter every day: ”THIS IS BASICALLY TWITTER RIGHT NOW: Hillary: College should be affordable. Twitter: Establishment puppet, no better than GOP. Bernie: College should be affordable. Twitter: DAD, AND THE THING IS —  I LIKE BERNIE! EVERYONE LIKES BERNIE! BECAUSE CRAZY GRANDPA IS TOTALLY ELECTABLE BUT CRAZY GRANDMA NEVER COULD BE. BUT WHY DO WE HAVE TO HATE HER TO SHOW HOW MUCH WE LOVE HIM?” It’s important to point out that the person that created this meme, Wysaski, is a man. And the person who recently started the Twitter account collecting and sharing the best ”Bernie vs. Hillary” images is also a man. Both say the meme is not sexist. Wysaski told NPR in an email: ”The goal of the post was to poke fun at the foibles of both Bernie and Hillary. Believe me, if Bernie had tried to dance the Nae Nae with Ellen Degeneres on tv, I would 100% be making fun of him for trying too hard to be hip. This is not a comment on women in general, it is a comment on Hillary Clinton.” This conversation happening now on the left around how to talk about Clinton feels similar to the conversation Democratic primary voters had about the way Clinton supporters talked about Barack Obama in 2008. Only then, the accusations were that some of the language towards President Obama from Hillary supporters was racist. Whether this meme is sexist, just funny, or something   remains open to interpretation. But it does raise one lingering question we try to get at every week: When is a meme more than just a meme? Or, when is it not?"
"As the U. S. presidential campaign moves into primary season, America’s allies and rivals are starting to pay a lot closer attention to the candidates. That includes Russia, whose relations with the U. S. are at their lowest levels since the Cold War. So here’s a look at the U. S. campaign through the eyes of a couple of   analysts: First of all, do Russians see the current elections as a possibility for improving relations? Russian government adviser Sergei Markov says no. ”Russians believe that it doesn’t matter who is American president,” the former lawmaker says. ”The real policymaker in United States is oligarchy groups and U. S. bureaucracy.” Markov reflects Kremlin thinking that American foreign policy decisions are made by wealthy corporate interests and an implacably   faction in the State Department. To give you an idea of where he’s coming from, Markov is convinced that State Department officials instigated the 2014 revolution in Ukraine as part of a strategy for containing Russia. Analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky sees both Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio as the establishment candidates for their respective parties  —   and as proponents of a belligerent, interventionist foreign policy in which ”the United States is the only superpower and should be aggressively suppressing everything that could possibly emerge.” Drobnitsky, who writes for leading Russian newspapers and journals, says Clinton and Rubio espouse almost the same foreign policy  —   and it’s aimed at containing Russia. Rubio, he says, is under the spell of Republican ”neocons.” Clinton is a leader of Democratic ”liberal interventionists.” Drobnitsky sees the ”big intrigue” of this presidential election as the question of whether the ”interventionists” from either party will succeed in regaining power that they lost after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the Kremlin, then, the best hope would seem to lie with a candidate like Donald Trump, who portrays himself as ” .” ”Because Trump is ” Markov says, ”he more carefully listens to   ’silent majority’ of the American nation, who don’t want conflict with Russia, and who demand to stop the hybrid war against Russia.” By hybrid war, Markov is referring to the common Kremlin charge that the United States is attacking Russia with propaganda and subversion. Those are the very charges that the United States and its allies level against Russia. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have already exchanged compliments. Trump said in October he would ”probably get along with [Putin] very well.” The Russian leader responded in December that Trump is ”a bright personality, a talented person, no doubt. He says that he wants to move to a different level of relations, to a closer, deeper one, with Russia. How can we not welcome that?” Dmitry Drobnitsky says one thing that resonates with the Kremlin is Trump’s portrayal of himself not as a politician, but a successful businessman. ”Probably the main chemistry between Trump and Putin,” he says, ”is because Putin considers himself also as an effective manager or even a crisis manager.” Drobnitsky says his second choice among the current candidates would be Ted Cruz, because he believes Cruz represents the values of heartland America. Neither analyst mentioned Cruz’ views on bombing ISIS. Markov also sees Cruz as a good second choice, saying his religious values would be a hedge against corruption. But neither analyst thinks Cruz can win this time around. The same, they say, goes for Bernie Sanders. But they think Sanders’ candidacy may lay the foundation for a new socialist movement in America’s future."
"Squeamish about contemporary classical music? Meet Barbara Hannigan. With more than 80 world premieres to her credit, she has a knack for making modern music sound effortless and approachable. The intrepid soprano is unafraid to outfit herself as a dominatrix or a schoolgirl while singing, conducting and acting  —   all at the same time. Hannigan has been the   singer for many top composers, from George Benjamin and Gerald Barry today to Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti and Henri Dutilleux. She’s also a favorite of conductors, like the Berlin Philharmonic’s Simon Rattle. During the filming of a documentary released last year about Hannigan, Rattle reminded the director just whom they were dealing with. ”You tend to forget what an extraordinary musician this is,” Rattle said. ”You can ask her basically anything. She’s fearless and she has technique and brains to burn. So, we’re just lucky to have her on the same planet at the same time.” Hannigan began her life on this planet in a tiny town in Nova Scotia. Around the house she heard her mother play arrangements of Handel’s Water Music on the piano. There were albums by John Denver and The Carpenters. At 17, she says, she moved to Toronto to study. ”And when I was 19,” Hannigan says, ”I remember the ’aha moment’ that I knew that I was going to devote a large part of my life to the music of our time. I realized that the passion that I felt when I was singing new music  —   I thought at first everyone felt like that.” They don’t. Even some of Hannigan’s fellow musicians don’t know quite what to make of her. ”I remember the first time I sang with the Berlin Philharmonic,” Hannigan says. ”The woodwind section came to me after the rehearsal and they said, ’You’re like a strange bird that we’ve never heard before. ’” Hannigan convinced the Berlin Philharmonic to commission a new song cycle, let me tell you, by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen. The piece won the 2016 Grawemeyer Award. Before Abrahamsen wrote a single note, Hannigan gave him a   crash course in the history of vocal music. ”She gave me a lesson in how to write for voice,” he says. ”She told me about how to use the vowels and she showed me some characteristics of her voice. And somehow I found a language for music.” Months later, he sent her what he had written. ”I just started to weep because I couldn’t believe that he got it,” Hannigan recalls. He got it and he got me, he got my voice.” One special quality of her voice that Abrahamsen says he exploited is its otherworldly high register: ”It’s most clear in the very last song where she comes in on a high C from nothing and comes out of the orchestra and goes down.” Hannigan is singing let me tell you this weekend with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons, who conducted the premier recording, released last month. He says Hannigan’s voice is so versatile it can fool you. ”It’s a huge range of things she does,” Nelsons says. ”And the sounds and the colors she makes with the voice, sometime you can’t tell what instrument is playing. Is it a voice? Is it a kind of instrumental, mystic kind of sound?” Many sounds emanate from Hannigan when she performs Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, one of her signature pieces. The music, drawn from Ligeti’s opera Le Grande Macabre, may sound thorny, but Hannigan has made it popular with audiences. She draws them in by dressing up to play the part of a paranoid police inspector, while at the same time singing and conducting the work from memory. ”It’s about a control freak, and so the first while that I was performing it I had this kind of dominatrix outfit,” she says. ”Recently, I did another costume in London which became kind of a hit on YouTube. Dramatically, emotionally, intellectually, there was just everything I wanted to be challenged by in that piece.” And Hannigan loves challenges. It’s like a sense of duty for her. ”I have an obligation,” she says. ”Because it is not only satisfying to me but it also serves the composers and serves the music. And they need it.” She’ll sing another world premiere this fall when the Los Angeles Philharmonic produces a new opera by Barry, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. And this spring she conducts and sings music by Berg, Haydn and Stravinsky in Sweden and Germany. But beyond her new music mission, there’s also a practical side to the   . ”We all know that singers have a ’best before’ date stamped on their forehead, you know we can’t sing forever,” she says. ”Eventually, I will lose elasticity and I will lose the beauty of sound. I’ve got another good 10 years, I would say. But I can conduct forever, until I’m an old woman on the podium. I think it’s a very exciting future ahead.” Listeners on both sides of the podium might agree."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. Writing about music is hard. Whether the topic is good or bad, you always have to think that the reader would just rather hear the song than read words about it. In this ESPN Magazine piece looking back on Whitney Houston’s iconic national anthem performance at the 1991 Super Bowl, you get to do both. Because her rendition of ”The Star Spangled Banner” is so etched in the national consciousness, you hear it as you read and watch the author, Danyel Smith, connect the dots between Whitney and that song, and black pain, and the war on terror, and just about everything else. It’s all quite a feat, and it easily could have failed. Can one song, one performance, really mean so much? In short  —   for this song and that singer and this author  —   yes. We’re often told by parents and teachers that we can ”be whatever we want to be when we grow up.” Compulsive con man Jeremy Wilson  —   at least that’s the name he is currently charged under, but still might not be his real identity  —   seems to have taken that idea and just run with it. The New York Times story of Wilson’s 25 years spent making up lives  —   from a veteran of Afghanistan to a   thespian  —   is an engrossing tale of fraud and deception. Wilson has spent so long molding and shaping himself into different characters that even his sister says, ”He doesn’t know where the lies stop and the truth starts anymore.” After reading the story, you wonder about the idea of identity itself. Is it who we think we are, who we pretend to be or simply who a collection of official documents say we are? I’ve long been fascinated by the work of the Army’s food scientists, who are always on the cutting edge. Four years ago, I wrote about a sandwich the Army invented that can stay fresh for two years. This Tech Insider piece intrigued me because it described a new Army project that marries two emerging trends  —   personalized nutrition and   food printing: ”By 2025, soldiers will likely be wearing a device to measure their physiological or nutritional status. The wearable may be inside the experimental ”Iron Man suit” or something else, but the idea is that it would send personal data back about the soldier. ”Once the data reaches back to a base camp or field kitchen, it might show a soldier hasn’t eaten enough protein today, or that they’ve been awake for quite a while and could use some extra caffeine. This is where the   printer works its magic.” This is not an easy story to read. Even I, an   journalist, turned away. It was my first instinct when I heard that a    physiotherapist had been brutally   and murdered in Delhi. I wasn’t ready for the details. Soon people began taking to the streets. India and the world could no longer look away. Nine months after the 2012 attack, The Guardian’s Jason Burke chronicled the events of that evening and what followed. By the third paragraph he gutted me, describing the assailants: ”These were not serial sex criminals, psychopaths or brutalised men from the margins of society. Their backgrounds were, perhaps more worryingly, like those of tens of millions of Indian men.” (Pause.) (Take a breath. )(Continue reading.) By the end of Burke’s reporting, you’ll feel the grief and anger of a nation struggling to make sense of a senseless crime. And while debates over sexism and patriarchal attitudes flare and fade, Burke leaves us with a scene inside the victims’ family home  —   a home given to them by the Delhi authorities. ”I console myself by saying she was a good soul, set free in death,” her father said. Burke just left his post in India  —   he has covered south Asia for six years. All that’s left to say is thank you."
"Abdulnasser Gharem doesn’t have the background you might expect for a successful artist  —   let alone one famous for edgy work from Saudi Arabia. He was once a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi army. He went to high school with two of the   hijackers. But his first major art work sold for a whopping $842, 500 at a Christie’s auction in Dubai. It’s a glittering dome symbolizing the Dome of the Rock, set on its edge, capturing a dove. In Saudi Arabia, a new generation of artists is pushing boundaries amid a growing art scene. Art galleries and daring visual artists, all unheard of just a few years ago, are thriving. Contemporary artists like Gharem have become a critical voice in the conservative kingdom, where open calls for reform are a criminal offense. Gharem says he doesn’t care about fame. ”I must focus on my own mission,” he says with an exasperated laugh at the suggestion that he is the highest selling artist in the region. ”I want to play my own role in the society, which will make me happy, and I can see the result.” In his busy Riyadh workshop, musicians play traditional music in the kitchen a photographer is arranging images on a white wall in the next room. Here, Gharem, 41, gives young artists the help and guidance he never got. ”When I was struggling as a kid, I want[ed] to see the museum, I want to see the real paintings, I want to talk to the artists, how they are thinking,” he says. The Internet opened him to the larger art world as a young artist. He started an art foundation in 2013 with the money he earned from his first sale. Gharem took more than a dozen young artists to London last year to display their work, and this year, he and a group of young Saudi artists will launch an art tour across the U. S. There is plenty of talent in Saudi Arabia, he says. ”But the problem is they don’t know how to deal with it. They don’t have a strategy, they don’t have even the guidance, what to do? So, that’s my mission, you know.” He aims to show Saudis how to see and how to think critically. He knows the dangers of extremism firsthand because of his high school classmates turned terrorists. He insists art is an answer, a way to pose sensitive questions about ideology and religion. ”If you’ll give them a space where at least they can speak freely  —   that’s the beginning, and I think that’s what’s missing in this country,” he says. ”If you go to school, you cannot say what you want. If you go to mosque, you cannot say what you want [because of] family pressure, society pressure.” In a free space, an artistic space, he says, ”You will see how they became different.” The art produced here is different. It’s a daring visual critique of Saudi culture. Performance videos play on a TV at the workshop. One is a satire of Saudi Arabia’s   culture, in which sketching human figures is forbidden: A group of solemn Saudi men sketch a plastic mannequin, a nude female. This act is so taboo in Saudi Arabia that the mannequin had to be shipped from Dubai and cut up into numbered pieces to get past Saudi customs officials. The one woman at the workshop is Njoud Alanbari. Her art focuses on problems in female education. The   posters found in public schools, which are mostly in pink, inspire her work. But the messages are harsh. ”The colors are so twisted,” she says. The posters list ”proper” behavior and include a long list of no’s. ”No music, no pornography, don’t travel,” Alanbari says, and raises an eyebrow. ”Actually, as a kid, I didn’t know what pornography is.” The posters are in every public school. ”It’s so intense,” she says. ”It’s everywhere.” A drawing of a sword underlines every ”no.” Alanbari plays with these official images  —   in one instance, replacing a female silhouette with a monkey’s head, forcing a viewer to take a fresh look. ”You need someone to come and tell you, ’Look at this,’” she says. ”Because people are so used to it, it’s now common.” Another performance video called ”Traditional Pain Treatment” shows a fellow artist with a map of the Middle East inked across his back enduring traditional bloodletting via cupping, with glass cups that are heated and placed on his skin. ”So we said, we need to take the bad blood from all the countries  —   the bad ideology, the bad politics, the bad economics. Everywhere.” Conceptual art is new in Saudi Arabia  —   a visual language that is easily understood by a young generation steeped in Internet culture, but flies just as easily past Saudi censors. Gharem and his band of young artists push the boundaries of critical speech now, not with words but with images. ”Visually, you can say it, because no one can accuse you with an image,” says Gharem. ”But if you are going to write or text or say something, it’s easy to accuse you.” With a picture, he says, ”If you don’t like it, you can put it down.”"
"The band School of Seven Bells wrote its final album together in 2012, but it’s only now being released. They didn’t know it at the time, but one of the band’s two members, Benjamin Curtis, was about to be diagnosed with cancer. He died the following year at the age of 35. His bandmate Alejandra Deheza was left to finish the recordings on her own. SVIIB comes out Feb. 26, and Deheza joined NPR’s Scott Simon from Los Angeles to talk about working in the shadow of loss, and how she came back to songwriting after a year away from music. Scott Simon: How are you doing? Did making this album help things? Or aggravate them? Alejandra Deheza: It’s a mixture of things. I think it hits every color on the spectrum for me. When we were recording the record, there was just so much joy, so I’m glad that I get to revisit that. But along with that goes with everything that followed. This album traces your entire relationship, doesn’t it? It was a friendship that became a romance, and then not. But I gather it continued as a kind of musical romance. Yeah, that’s actually the perfect way to put it. It was kind of impossible to just stay a friendship in the beginning, so it kind of went   into romance, for five years, but also making music that entire time. And then, musical romance from then on. That part never stopped. When you wrote most of these songs, did you know about Ben’s health? We had no idea  —   there was no sign, no indicator, nothing. The one song that we did write during his treatment was ”Confusion.” And that was one of the few times that he was able to leave the hospital, for maybe like a few days. We wrote that without, really, any plans to write anything  —   we just went into the studio as usual, because he was pretty much unstoppable that way. It’s crazy, because I wish I knew that it was the last time that we would be writing a song together. Did you stay away from music for a while? Yeah, it was while before I could even listen to School of Seven Bells stuff, or music in general. Writing just escaped me for about a year. And then what happened, do you think? I moved to LA. I just knew that in New York, it was impossible to hear those songs outside of that context and outside of all that noise. Everywhere that I went reminded me of something, so I needed to be somewhere where I could hear the music for what it was  —   just pure sound, pure melody. That was the only way I was able to work on it. What do you want to do now? Music. More music. When you write with someone for 10 years, you become one body of music  —   and it’s been a trip trying to figure out what I sound like. [But] I’ve been writing songs ever since I moved here. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life."
"You wouldn’t think of calling a mosquito ”man’s best friend.” But that’s the nickname that biologist Denise Valle uses for Aedes aegypti, the species that’s been spreading the Zika virus in Brazil and many other countries in Latin America. I think ”man’s best enemy” might be better. The thing is, this mosquito likes to live near humans. Aedes aegypti breeds in shaded wet places  —   so cities are an ideal habitat  —   and feeds on us. It’s the female that bites us and uses our blood to produce eggs. And the mosquito is not just a carrier for Zika virus. It also carries dengue fever and chikungunya, The big question: How does Brazil control its mosquito population? Aedes aegypti is one of the most difficult mosquitoes to eradicate in Brazil, Valle says. It’s very inventive about finding wet spots to lay its eggs  —   open barrels, buckets, holes in the ground. And the mother mosquito is a brilliant strategist. ”The Aedes aegypti likes to lay its eggs in several places, giving its offspring a better chance to survive, and those eggs can stay viable for an incredible 450 days, in a kind of suspended animation,” Valle says. ”And they hatch in minutes once the rains come.” Which brings us, she says to Brazil’s failure so far to control the mosquito. Yes, it’s hard, she says, but both the authorities and Brazilians are to blame for the situation. She says in the rainy season  —   roughly December through February  —   everyone is combating the mosquito and talking about it. Come the dry months, and everyone forgets about it. But that’s the best time to get rid of the breeding grounds. She says the mosquito needs to be constantly battled. But the average Brazilian, in my experience, isn’t out there fighting mosquito wars. Many people don’t use repellent, they don’t have screens on their doors they don’t have screens on their windows. I ask Valle, ”Why is that?” She tells me that’s part of the culture that needs to change. She believes that the government’s   patrols have made people passive. They think it’s the responsibility of health inspectors who do home visits to ’save’ them from infestations. I ask about reports I’ve read in the newspaper that the government might try to kill the mosquito with nuclear radiation. Valle shrugs. They come up with something new every summer, she says. Some people have talked about using lasers to zap mosquitoes in midflight others talk about using genetically modified mosquitoes. She doesn’t think any of the ideas are cost effective and practical for Brazil’s megacities. Her advice is simple. Think like a mosquito  —   and hunt it in the places where it likes to live."
"Peyton Manning is once more on top of the world. The Denver Broncos quarterback  —   a future Hall of Famer in what may be his final season  —   is once more a Super Bowl champion. The Broncos have beaten the Carolina Panthers,  . The game fell well short of a quarterback duel, though. Again, it was the Denver defense that led the way, harassing Cam Newton, forcing turnover after turnover and even tacking on a score of their own. It was sloppy, it was often ugly, but it was, without a doubt, the biggest game of the year. Naturally, we decided to cover it with the littlest poems we could think of: haiku. With a hat tip to our colleagues at WBUR’s Only a Game, where they’ve long been asking listeners for haiku, we decided it was time for us to try our hand at the art form: a   poem, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five again in the third. (And yes,   we know the poems are supposed to be about nature, too. But give us some leeway here.) Think of it as a    . We tweeted our updates in haiku as the game went on, retweeting your contributions and doing it all using the hashtag #SuperBowlHaiku. You can find all the tweets above. Now, you might be asking yourself why, exactly, we covered the big game with all these tiny poems. Good question. That’s because  —   well, because this is NPR."
"Sometimes it takes a Sunday morning to see how much damage was done Saturday night. So it was this weekend, in New Hampshire and in the broader national conversation about the 2016 presidential race. On Saturday night, many observers seized on the meatiest moment from the GOP debate staged here  —   perhaps the most salient moment of all the debates so far. It was the clash between Chris Christie and Marco Rubio that turned into a stunning exposé of Rubio’s technique. Still fixed on the mind’s eye was the image of the young Florida senator repeating a single sentence almost verbatim, not once but several times  —   each time as if it had just popped into his head. Christie, the New Jersey governor, who needs a breakthrough in New Hampshire to keep his flagging hopes alive, seemed to have drawn blood in a big way. But in the new dawn, given the reality of the debates’ limited audience and the general competition for voters’ attention, the exact extent of the damage was less clear. Rubio’s first event of the day drew overflow crowds showing both interest and enthusiasm. And he himself told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week that he would pay the networks to show his repetitious sound bites again and again. ”I would pay for them to keep running that clip, because that’s what I believe passionately,” Rubio said. ”It’s one of the reasons why I’m not running for   to the Senate, and I’m running for president.” That line he’d pay to rebroadcast? In response to accusations that he lacked the depth of experience to be president and resembled the   senator who was elected in 2008, Rubio had said, ”Let’s dispel this notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing he knows exactly what he’s doing.” Rubio defended himself on ABC, saying that if ”someone like that were elected for the next four years, it might be too late to turn America around.” At the opposite extreme of the issue was Christie, telling Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union that ”the whole race changed last night” and that now Republicans ”can’t trust Marco Rubio to be the nominee of this party.” Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida who functioned as Christie’s   partner against Rubio on Saturday, told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that Rubio’s deficits had been exposed. ”He’s a great speaker,” Bush said, ”but he’s never had a chance to actually make a tough decision, like governors do.” But the rest of the candidates, who populated the Sunday news and talk shows, had other fish to fry  —   mostly having to do with their own campaign messages. John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, who has invested his time in this state, gladly grabbed the share of the spotlight he had after the debate. Speaking to Tapper on CNN, Kasich asserted his conservative credentials. ”There’s nobody who’s balanced as many budgets as I have,” Kasich said. He added that people saw him as moderate only because he had been willing to work with opponents in office. Donald Trump appeared yet again with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, reinforcing many of the points he had made just hours earlier on the debate stage. He again said waterboarding should not be proscribed for   interrogators given that ISIS ”chops people’s heads off.” In the debate, he had said he’d do ”a hell of a lot worse” to prevent a terrorist attack. Trump also asserted that torturing subjects for information ”works . .. believe me.” Trump also repeated his view that he had not lost the Iowa caucuses, really, given the   tactics of the Ted Cruz campaign. Texas Sen. Cruz, who escaped the line of fire through most the latest debate, did not appear on any national news or talk shows on Sunday. Ben Carson spoke to Maria Bartiromo on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures and expressed dismay with the last debate. Noting he had far less speaking time than the others (less than half as much as Rubio and Cruz) Carson said the format favors candidates who are mentioned by other candidates (giving them an opportunity to respond). Carson said he would have liked a chance to explain his definition of conservatism. He also explained that he had stood in the wings for a while after being introduced because he had not heard his name called. One other thing about the   media attention was that the GOP contenders had to share it with their counterparts on the Democratic side. Bernie Sanders continued his run in the media sun, following up his cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live. The humor was left behind, as Sanders sparred with Tapper on CNN and later with Todd on NBC. He said he was not overly reliant on polls that show him as much as 20 to 30 points ahead in New Hampshire (though others have shown a tighter race in recent days). Sanders said his lack of investment in foreign affairs was less important than the judgment he showed in opposing the Iraq War more than a dozen years ago. For her part, a remarkably cheerful Hillary Clinton made the rounds on the Sunday shows, chatting with Stephanopoulos, Todd and John Dickerson on CBS’s Face the Nation about her expectations for Tuesday’s primary, her superior preparation on foreign policy and her reaction to male commentators who say she shouts too much. She also made the remarkable claim that her plan for regulating the financial industry made her tougher on Wall Street than Sanders, whose call to break up the big investment banks is the hallmark of his campaign."
"Everyone knows the GOP is the party of small government and low taxes. At Saturday night’s debate, the 2016 Republican presidential candidates sparred over who had the best fiscal conservatism cred. We decided to look at how well candidates told the truth on a few of these claims in our latest debate  . ”After New Jersey raised taxes on millionaires, we lost, in the next four years, $70 billion in wealth [that] left our state.”  —   New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, It’s not that simple. He seems to be talking about New Jersey’s   millionaire’s tax that was instituted in 2004  —   well before Christie took office  —   upping the tax rates of   people. Christie’s number most likely comes from a 2010 study from Boston College that found an outflow of $70 billion in wealth from the state between 2004 and 2008. (Christie vetoed another ”millionaire’s tax” last year before announcing his candidacy.) But as is usually the case with economic causes and effects, things are more complicated than that. For one thing, the study’s author later cautioned that taxes were ”just one possibility” for wealth fleeing the state, as he told NJ. com. And another 2011 study, from researchers at Stanford and Princeton, found that ”the policy effect [of the tax increase] is close to zero” in terms of driving millionaires out of the state, as the Wall Street Journal reported. So Christie is using a number that represents his position well, but there’s context and other evidence he is not mentioning here. ”Under Chris Christie’s governorship of New Jersey, they’ve been downgraded nine times in their credit rating.”  —   Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, That’s true, but Christie may not be totally to blame. Rubio is referring to credit rating agencies’ grades that they assign to states. These ratings are considered measures of states’ financial and economic  . Three agencies tend to get the most attention: Fitch, Moody’s, and Standard  Poor’s. So to be clear, it wasn’t that one agency downgraded New Jersey nine times. Rather, those three agencies did it three times each. For all of the candidates who have served as governors, NPR looked into their states’ credit rating records last year and found that Christie’s New Jersey had the worst record of all. Sometimes when a rating agency downgrades a state, it does mention a governor specifically. In a downgrade in 2014, for example, SP called Christie out for delaying pension payments. But it’s not all in governors’ hands. Rating agencies are trying to take ”a fairly   view” in estimating a state’s fiscal health, as Don Boyd, director of fiscal studies at the Rockefeller Institute, explained to NPR last year. That view extends beyond even when the current governor is in office. Not only that, but governors can’t really directly control a state’s economy, he added. (Interestingly, two governors who did pretty well on this measure  —   former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal  —   are no longer in the presidential race.) ”Right now, we’re the   country in the world.”  —   Donald Trump, That’s not true. When it comes to individual income tax rates, the U. S. is about middle of the pack among its peers. As of 2014, the U. S. had the   top statutory individual tax rate out of 34 countries, according to the OECD, a group of mostly advanced economies. And when it comes to total tax revenue, the U. S. is close to the back of that pack. U. S. tax revenue in 2014 equaled 26 percent of its GDP in 2014. The OECD average share that year, by comparison, was 34. 4, and at the opposite end of the spectrum, Denmark’s figure is nearly 51 percent  —   a far cry from U. S. revenues. But then, Trump did go on to mention corporate taxes in his next few sentences. And if he was trying to refer to corporate tax rates, he’s much closer to correct. In 2015, the Tax Foundation, a   tax policy think tank, found that the U. S. had the   corporate tax rate in the entire world, behind Chad and the United Arab Emirates."
"This post is about to recommend that you read two fairly long stories about Polish politics. It’s worth it, I promise. They offer twin views on a story that’s not just important geopolitically  —   it’s fascinating on a human level. Here’s how The Guardian opens its examination of the mysterious crash that has reshaped the Polish psyche  —   not to mention Poland’s government: ”The tips of the birch trees barely pierced the fog. The aerial visibility on the approach to Smolensk in western Russia was just 200 metres. On its final approach, the Tupolev’s warning system repeatedly sounded: ’Pull up, pull up.’ But the crew of the aircraft appeared to react too late. At 10. 41am on 10 April 2010, it crashed a few hundred metres short of the runway, killing all 96 people aboard.” That plane, you may recall, was carrying Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski, as well as dozens of other prominent members of the government and military. The crash threw Poland into mourning. Investigators found it to be the result of human error. But there’s an alternate narrative in Poland  —   one that holds it was sabotage, a Russian plot, concealed by Kremlin interference with the investigations. The ruling Law and Justice party has now launched a new inquiry that will undoubtedly reopen   wounds . .. and raise tensions with Russia at a time when Poland is also straining its political bonds with Europe. Not interested yet? Here’s The Associated Press on the man who pulls the strings in Poland today, a man obsessed with the idea of Russian sabotage, a man who was once prime minister but currently holds no office, a man who has worn only black since 2010 . .. when his twin brother, the president of Poland, died in a plane crash: ”When Hungary’s prime minister had a secret   meeting in a secluded mountain resort with the most powerful person in Poland, he didn’t convene with his counterpart or the Polish president. ”Instead he spoke with Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling party, a man who has no official government position. . .. Observers say Jaroslaw Kaczynski changed dramatically after the death of his twin. ”He hardened. He is a lonely man and this is very visible in the way he does politics. He wants to rule with a strong hand,” . .. says Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, who was prime minister in a Law and Justice government in  . The Kaczynski twins were once child stars  —   acting in a famous Polish film together. They joined Lech Walesa’s   movement in the ’80s. And they were impossible to tell apart, The Guardian writes, ”except for the cat hairs that could sometimes be spotted on Jarosław’s dark clothes.” ”Of the two, Lech was the more likable, with a sense of humour and fun, and a successful marriage,” the newspaper continues. ”Jarosław cannot drive or use a computer, seems to live as a recluse and is an eternal bachelor. But he was always politically more astute than his brother. They needed one another. ” ’In the past, it was very easy to ridicule the Kaczyńskis . .. ’ says [the president of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw, Jacek] Kucharczyk. ’Now Jarosław is dangerous. He seems to be using his brother’s memory, and he may be vengeful.’ ” In short, the death of Lech Kaczynski didn’t just throw his nation into a tailspin  —   it tore at his powerful brother, too, which may have repercussions not just for the country but for all of Europe. The Guardian has the full story about the crash, the sabotage theories and how feeding the national obsession with the president’s death could promote Polish nationalism and imperil European stability. And the Associated Press has a close look at Jaroslaw Kaczynski and how profoundly he was affected by his brother’s death  —   including the fact that he spent months crafting an elaborate lie to convince his mother that his twin was still alive  —   as well as why many fear that Kaczynski’s party is threatening Polish democracy."
"The buzz built all week. And rumors that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David would appear on Saturday Night Live  —   together  —   were finally confirmed just before the weekend. But if you started watching SNL looking to #FeelTheBern, you might have had a moment of worry, at least at first. The Vermont senator did not appear in the show’s cold open. He did not come on stage during David’s monologue. He didn’t even appear in a   sketch all about him, called ”Bern Your Enthusiasm,” where David, playing Sanders, loses the Iowa caucuses by annoying just enough voters in the way only Larry David (or Bernie Sanders, or Larry David  —   we’re confused) can. It was smart, and with a cameo by a coughing,    Leslie Jones, it touched on Sanders’ lingering inability to attract widespread support from black voters. But Sanders finally did appear, in a skit where he and David play two men on a distressed ship headed to America, arguing over who gets into lifeboats first during a storm. Sanders’ character, Bernie Sanderswitzky, rails against Larry David’s character when he tries to get preferential treatment because he’s rich. ”I’m so sick of the 1 percent getting this preferential treatment,” Sanders says, alluding to one of his central campaign messages. David says that all sounds like socialism. Sanders corrects David, and replies, ”democratic socialism.” In the bit, Sanders’ character also makes light of his Jewish heritage, joking that he’d change his last name, Sanderswitzky, when he gets to America, ”so it doesn’t sound so Jewish.” Sanders’ campaign played up the senator’s appearance on Twitter. Near the start of the show, he tweeted out a fundraising appeal, with a Curb Your Enthusiasm reference: ”We need your vacuum pennies. Chip in a few,” read the tweet, with a link to donate. Overall, there wasn’t a lot of Sanders’ performance to judge. His cameo was definitely shorter than Donald Trump’s a few months ago, and seemed to have even fewer lines than Hillary Clinton as Val back in October. After his appearance in the steamship skit, Sanders did return to the stage as David introduced musical guest The 1975. ”It’s pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good,” Sanders said when David asked how his campaign is going. And at the end of the show, when the band plays and all the cast hugs and shakes hands, Sanders appeared again, soaking it all in, smiling. No curmudgeonly ”Bern Your Enthusiasm” Sanders present at all."
"The  .4 earthquake has left 26 people dead. Camila had the news in an earlier post. Here is the story in photographs, which tell stories of life and death, destruction and hope in the quake’s aftermath:"
"In 2009, one of the founders of the online eyeglass maker Warby Parker approached management consultant Adam Grant about becoming an early investor. Grant says he declined because the company’s founders weren’t working at their startup full time he also says it was the worst financial decision he’s ever made. ”I thought to be an entrepreneur you have to be a   and you have to be all in,” Grant tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. ”And what I didn’t realize at the time was, first of all, successful entrepreneurs are much more likely to play it safe and have   plans than failed entrepreneurs and secondly, all of the time they spent working on other things was giving them the freedom to do something really original. If they had just gone in and started the company, they would have felt the pressure to release their product immediately. Instead, they had the time to figure out that they needed a home   program to get people to make the leap and order glasses online.” Today Grant teaches at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and he spends his days looking at who and what make businesses successful. His new book is called Originals: How   Move the World. On what a person’s Internet browser says about their level of nonconformity, I love this study. So I’m sitting at a conference one day and this economist, Mike Housman, presents a study showing that we can predict your job performance and your commitment at work just by knowing what Web browser you use. And I was stunned to find out that people who use Chrome and Firefox  —   this is in customer service and call center jobs  —   were better performers on the job. They also, on average, stayed around in those jobs 15 percent longer than their poor Internet Explorer and Safari peers. And a lot of people hear this study and think: Well, great, if I want to get better at my job I should just download a new browser. Not quite the point, right? The point is: What browser you use signals something about the way that you tend to live your life. If you use Firefox or Chrome, you have to download those browsers whereas Safari and Internet Explorer  —   they come   on your computer, they’re the default. And if you’re the kind of person who just accepts the default, you tend not to take as many original steps as the rest of us. If you’re somebody who had that instinct to say, you know, ”I wonder if there’s a better browser out there,” that’s just a tiny clue that you might be the kind of person who’s willing to reject other defaults in your life too. On his advice for making a job more satisfying, It’s called job crafting. A couple colleagues and I studied this at Google and we found that there were all sorts of ways that they could make modifications to their own jobs that made them more meaningful, more motivating, and still allowed them to be very effective. There was one person who really, really hated working on spreadsheets and she found someone else on her team who loved spreadsheets. And they were able to do a little bit of a task swap and everyone was a bit more efficient and more effective. . .. You have to earn status before you can exercise that kind of power. So what that means is you have to demonstrate that you’re excelling in your job at first, and then what most managers do is they give leeway. It’s called idiosyncrasy credits  —   basically the freedom to deviate. You get that if you’ve ended up being a star performer. On why experience isn’t necessarily a good thing when you’re trying to cultivate creativity, I think this happens to all of us: The more familiar you become with a domain, the more you tend to see things just like everyone else and get stuck or entrenched in one particular way of doing things. So if you study, for example, fashion designers, the most original fashion collections come from the designers who have not only traveled abroad, but who have spent the most time working abroad in countries that are maximally different from their own. And they’re able to   all sorts of new insights from different cultures to create different designs. Of course, not everyone is going to go and work abroad, but is there a chance to rotate to a different job and gain a little bit of familiarity with a skill that you haven’t tested before? That’s the kind of stretching that helps people ultimately become more original. . .. Practice makes perfect unfortunately, though, it doesn’t make new. On the importance of having artistic hobbies, If you study Nobel   scientists, one of the things that differentiates them from their peers is that they’re way more likely to have artistic hobbies. Galileo is one of my favorite examples of this. One of his great discoveries was he was the first to spot mountains on the moon. And he was looking through a telescope at an image that many of his peers had seen as well. The only reason he spotted it was because he was trained in a particular drawing technique that led him to recognize some of the patterns as mountains. And I think there are all kinds of connections we can draw between artistic engagements in our hobbies and in our leisure time and the actual work we do if only we paid attention to them."
"Beyoncé is one of a kind  —   the kind of star who can drop a surprise music video and see much of the Internet and social media instantly explode. ”Formation,” released Saturday, has already racked up more than 7 million views on YouTube. It’s full of implicit and explicit commentary on subjects like being black in America, Hurricane Katrina and Black Lives Matter. And the Internet responded swiftly. The video is a ”powerful proclamation of being a proud, powerful black woman,” writes Margaret E. Jacobsen on Romper. Jacobsen connects the imagery of the video to #BlackGirlMagic, a hashtag used to celebrate   women on Twitter. The song is ”an anthem for black women,” writes Jacobsen. ”And the response has been amazing. Following the video’s release, we’re talking about the blood that runs through our veins and the hoods we grew up in. We’re holding all of those in our black communities who came before us up high. We’re wearing every little thing that’s contributed to our blackness proudly. We’re letting our black girl magic shine.” At The Root, Danielle C. Belton says the video is ”black”  —   ”cornbread and collard greens black. ’Hot sauce in my bag’ black. Southern black. Dirty South black. Your grandma telling you to go cut down a switch black,” she writes. ”Did you know Beyoncé was black?” The video focuses on New Orleans, in particular, opening and closing with Beyoncé atop a New Orleans police car, with a background reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina. The reference to the hurricane of a decade ago still resonates, says Regina N. Bradley on Red Clay Scholar. ”Katrina is not just a historical event,” she writes. ”It is a springboard for   southern trauma and its association with blackness. Trauma is the spring board of southern blackness. But its foundation is resilience and creativity.” The video also mixes in footage of New Orleans taken from the 2013 documentary That B. E. A. T. (which filmmakers initially said was used without permission). ”She wants us to know  —   more than ever  —   that she’s still grounded, she’s paying attention and still a little hood,” writes Jenna Wortham in The New York Times. ”I think she wants us to know that even though she’s headlining a mainstream event like the Super Bowl, she has opinions and isn’t afraid to share them, nor is she afraid to do it on a national and global scale.” The video is political. A boy dances in front of a line of police officers in riot gear. He raises his hands  —   but so does the line of cops. Graffiti on the wall reads ”Stop shooting us,” echoing the principal demand from Black Lives Matter activists for reform in policing and criminal justice. As The Daily Beast noted, Beyoncé and husband   have paid to bail out protesters in Baltimore and Ferguson. And Tidal, a music service that   started and Beyoncé partly owns, announced a $1. 5 million donation to the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice groups. Beyoncé was always political, because she had to be, says The Root’s Belton. ”What if I told you that to be black in a public space, with all eyes on you and choosing carefully how to handle that spotlight is a form of politics, a negotiation between the self and the world that all black people must make?” The video ends with the police car sinking into the water, Beyoncé lying on top. That ending is a ”celebration of the margins,” writes Zandria F. Robinson on New South Negress. ”Black bodies in motion, women’s voices centered, black queer voices centered  —   is what ultimately vanquishes the state, represented by a NOPD car. Beyoncé as the conjured     slays atop the car and uses the weight of her body to finish it off, sacrificing herself in the process.” The timing of the song’s release, just before her performance at the Super Bowl, is also ”not insignificant,” writes The New York Times’ Wortham. ”She’s electing to parade her substantial wealth and ability to outearn most men in the music industry (including her husband, Jay Z) during the Super Bowl  —   the flagship event of male virility and violence in this country.”"
"Among the countless ads airing during Super Bowl 50, there will be an   violence spot from the group No More. It’s the second consecutive year the organization’s public service announcements air during the big game. Domestic violence and the NFL have been unhappily coupled more than a few times in recent years, perhaps no more prominently than in 2014. That’s when a troubling video from a hotel elevator’s security camera showed Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out his   Janay Palmer during an argument. They married soon after, but the Ravens cut Rice and the NFL suspended him indefinitely. He’s since been reinstated but has not signed anywhere. That video put domestic violence on the league’s and the nation’s front burner, if only for a moment. Kim Gandy is president and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and worked with the NFL to help shape its revised policy. She’s not surprised that the nation’s attention has shifted. ”You go all the way back to. ..OJ Simpson had domestic violence in the news for awhile and it shined a strong spotlight on the issue, but then it faded,” Gandy says. Diana Moskovitz has steadily covered the NFL’s domestic violence problem for Deadspin, including explosive allegations against Dallas Cowboys player Greg Hardy. She argues that the NFL had the capacity to discipline abusers even before the Rice fiasco and the new, tougher rules. ”They already had pretty broad latitude to punish players severely for it,” Moskovitz says, ”they just weren’t because it wasn’t seen as that big a deal from their vantage point.” Now the NFL says it’s a very big deal. The league ramped up its punishment for domestic violence infractions steeply, and got   from the players’ union for unilaterally changing the rules. ”I understand the union’s perspective around due process,” says Cynthia Hogan, who handles public policy issues for the NFL, ”but honestly, I felt that  —  and I think the Commissioner felt —   it was most important to let people know how we perceived this conduct.” Some players had been involved in domestic violence education way before the League was, including William Gay of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Gay’s stepfather killed his mother when he was 8 he’s used his fame as a platform for domestic violence awareness, and he’s been active in the NFL’s campaign. Now a year after the first Super Bowl PSA, is there a way to measure if it’s working? Confidentiality rules prevent the NFL from revealing whether team wives and girlfriends are reporting abuse. But it’s logical to think that some may fear personal retaliation or the loss of their partner’s job. NFL director of Social Responsibility Anna Isaacson explains ”we get it we understand how difficult it is to report. That issue is not unique to the NFL.” But the NFL has unique visibility. Hogan says the league has made a   commitment to combat domestic violence and sexual assault and will continue to educate the NFL family and the general public on ways to identify signs of trouble. And the NFL is committing $5 million a year for five years to the National Domestic Violence Hotline so more women can be served. Isaacson believes the hotline is making a difference in the Washington, D. C. area, one of the places that’s received funding. ”Over the first six months of 2015, they answered more than 50, 000 more calls than they were able to answer in the year before,” she says, ”and those calls keep going up now that we’re in 2016.” Gandy says most people now know domestic violence is wrong, and that the next challenge is getting those people to ”identify it in other people, in people that you love,” and take action to stop it."
"A professor at an evangelical Christian college who was suspended for saying Christians and Muslims worship the same God will no longer be teaching at the school. As we’ve reported, Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science who had tenure at Wheaton College in Illinois, was suspended from her job in December. She was put on paid administrative leave after vowing to wear a hijab for Advent in solidarity with Muslims  —   not because of the headscarf, but because of a Facebook post about her decision where she wrote about the relationship between Islam and Christianity and said, ”as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.” Wheaton administrators said they were concerned that post contradicted the school’s statement of faith. Hawkins faced the possibility of being terminated from her job. But before her scheduled hearing, she and the school announced they had agreed to part ways  —   and wish the best for one another. In an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin last month, Hawkins stood by her statement, saying, first of all, it was primarily an expression of solidarity  —   not an attempt to challenge any theology. But she also said that saying Christians and Muslims are people of the book, with a shared God, doesn’t contradict evangelical faith. She was never denying differences between the two faiths, she says. ”They’re two different religions. And we diverge on questions of salvation, soteriology  —   how do you get to God?  —   and also on questions of Christology  —   who is Christ?” Hawkins said. ”I can’t intuit . .. how they deem me inconsistent with the statement of faith . .. when Wheaton College[’s] president and provost and an adjunct faculty member in 2007 signed a statement saying exactly what I said  —   that Muslims and Christians are people of the book, we worship the God of Abraham.” (As NPR’s Tom Gjelten reported in December, the Catholic Church and most mainstream Muslims agree that Christians and Muslims share the same God. But evangelicals are divided on the question.) In her interview with Michel Martin, Hawkins said she wanted to remain at Wheaton. ”I have spent most of my adult career committed to being a professor, a scholar and doing so in a Christian context, where I can live out my beliefs but continue to push my students towards rigorous scholarship in this evangelical environment,” Hawkins told Martin. ”And so I’m known on campus for challenging people to think outside of the box, and presumably that’s why Wheaton wanted me.” She was originally scheduled for a hearing late next week to determine whether she would be terminated. Instead, on Saturday night the professor and the college released a joint statement saying they have ”found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation” and ”reached a confidential agreement under which they will part ways.”"
"”Irresponsible,” ”senseless,” ”deplorable,” ”destabilizing,” ”totally unacceptable.” North Korea’s launch of a   rocket has filled the isolated nation with pride  —   and sparked fierce censure from the rest of the world. As we reported yesterday, the launch on Sunday morning local time arrives just a month after a nuclear test that had already raised tensions in the area: ”North Korea describes the launch as part of its space program: a rocket carrying an earth observation satellite into orbit. But many governments regard the launch as a concealed   ballistic missile test. ”The U. S. Japan and South Korea have requested an emergency meeting of the U. N. Security Council on Sunday. ”In addition, the South Korean defense ministry said on Sunday they will begin talks with the U. S. about possibly deploying a missile defense system in North Korea in response to what many nations see as a rising threat of North Korea’s weapon technologies.” The launch was a proud moment for Kim Jong Un and his nation, the Associated Press reports: ”North Korea’s most famous and venerated TV newscaster, dressed in a traditional pink gown, proudly announced on the TV bulletin  —   reserved for extremely important events  —   that the Earth observation satellite   had been successfully put into orbit early Sunday morning. She called it an ”epochal” moment. ”The satellite’s name means Shining Star. . .. ”As the news aired, crowds in Pyongyang cheered and applauded as they watched the news of the launch, which was displayed on large screens at different places around the capital.” The rest of the world has quickly denounced the rocket launch. U. S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice called it ”yet another destabilizing and provocative action” and ”a flagrant violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions.” ”We condemn today’s launch and North Korea’s determination to prioritize its missile and nuclear weapons programs over the   of its people, whose struggles only intensify with North Korea’s diversion of scarce resources to such destabilizing activities,” she said in a statement. Secretary of State John Kerry said it represented ”an unacceptable challenge to our common peace and security.” United Nations   Ban   called the launch a ”deeply deplorable” use of ballistic missile technology. German Foreign Minister   Steinmeier called the launch an ”irresponsible provocation,” the AP writes, and French President Francois Hollande called it a ”senseless provocation.” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the launch ”totally unacceptable.” North Korea’s traditional allies, Russia and China, were also critical of the launch. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called it ”a dramatic aggravation of the situation in the Korean Peninsula” that damages, above all, the security of North Korea itself. China expressed regret over the launch, citing the universal opposition of the international community. A Chinese diplomat had traveled to Pyongyang last week specifically to try to stop the launch from happening, NPR’s Elise Hu reports. But what happens next? The U. N. Security Council hasn’t yet passed a resolution to condemn North Korea for its Jan. 6 nuclear test  —   which was also ”a slap in the face to the international community,” Elise says. The Security Council has been stymied by disagreements between the U. S. and China  —   who have both condemned the test  —   over how to respond. ”The U. S. and China are at loggerheads over how stringent any potential new sanctions on North Korea should be. China’s position has been that talks should resume with both North Korea and the U. S. at the table,” Elise explains. And without the support of China, North Korea’s economic lifeline and diplomatic protector, further sanctions on North Korea will be less effective, Elise says."
"Americans have about $1. 3 trillion in student loan debt. And there’s yet another survey out that shows students in this country are confused about their loans, in the dark when it comes to knowing what they’ve borrowed, uncertain about how to pay them back. I’ve written before about how I was one of those people. My federal student loans were a constant source of stress, and after doing the math I figured I was paying more than 30 percent of my income every month in loan payments. And because of high interest rates, I was deeper in debt than when I graduated. And then came my epiphany, courtesy of President Obama and his 2014 State of the Union address: ”We’re offering millions the opportunity to cap their monthly student loan payments to 10 percent of their income,” the President said. That opened my eyes to the opportunities out there, and to the importance of keeping informed about your rights and options. Loan servicers, the companies that manage student loans for the Department of Education, don’t have a mandate or incentive to tell borrowers about these programs. And borrowers don’t get to choose their servicers, either. And so, with that in mind, here are three of the best sources for information that can help if you’re having trouble paying your loans, or you’re just confused about how the process works. Did you know that different loans have different grace periods, or that there are opportunities  —   in some cases  —   for loan forgiveness? No? Well, the Institute for College Access  Success has a tip sheet for recent grads to explain these and other key points that can help you make good decisions. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has built a    tool for getting you more familiar with your loans and understanding how you can pay them off. That’s no matter if your loans are federal  —   through the government  —   or private through a bank. Studentloans. gov has a helpful payment estimator to figure out which of the (many) repayment plans might be best for you. Enter your annual income, your remaining loan balance, your interest rate, and let the machine do its magic. These are just estimates, but can be very helpful. As we’ve pointed out before on NPR Ed, there are five   repayment plans from the Department of Education  —   most of which come with a chance for loan forgiveness. Recent findings show that, often, when borrowers do manage to find out about these plans, figuring out how to get into and stay in the programs can be another headache. That conclusion is from the CFPB, which asked for comments from the public last year. It was the first time borrowers had a place to report their experiences with their loans and their servicers. And they had a lot to say: The bureau got more than 30, 000 comments. Borrowers reported ”a wide range of sloppy, patchwork practices that can create obstacles for repayment,” the bureau said. Many people reported that their records were lost, or customer service didn’t have the latest information. That’s just the beginning. The bureau suspects that problems with servicers have left borrowers vulnerable to scams. Reading through the comments, it seems all too familiar. I’m one of the 10 million borrowers who have seen their servicer change in the past five years. Mine changed without notice when I tried to enroll in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Then my records were lost and my payments more than doubled. Every time I spoke to someone in customer service, they had a different idea of how to fix the situation. But I’ve been diligent. I’ve lowered my payments and I’m on the road to loan forgiveness. While I once wondered if taking on so much debt to work at a nonprofit news network was worth it, I now think it was."
"Late 2012 was a difficult time for Norwegian singer Ane Brun: Health problems related to lupus landed her in the hospital, forcing her to cancel a North American tour with Peter Gabriel. But as she tells Weekend Edition Sunday, the break from the rigors of the road led to a burst of creativity. The result is her latest album, When I’m Free, which comes just a little ahead of her 40th birthday. Brun says she’s been thinking a lot about what that milestone means for her as an artist. ”Of course I can get some panic, sometimes, but I think that the panic is just society’s expectations,” she says. ”I fill my life with things that matter to me, and I am true to myself. I don’t really mind that time passes by. So I guess that’s what my goal is: to keep on being true to myself, and keep developing my music. And that’s what I did on this album. I felt I really was playing around with it, and just pressing my limits and seeing what happens.” Ane Brun is now visiting the US, and spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin about   how to dance, writing an homage to feminism and letting go of fear. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"You might call composer Carter Burwell the third Coen brother. His work isn’t as   as the     soundtrack albums for O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis, but he has been part of Joel and Ethan Coen’s creative team ever since their   debut, Blood Simple, in 1984. Burwell says he didn’t intend to be a film composer, or even a professional musician.” It is, in fact, just an accident of the way that Blood Simple was received, frankly,” he says. ”Other people started calling me and asking me to do film scores. So, yes, it’s entirely their fault.” And the Coen brothers don’t make it easy. In their latest, Hail, Caesar! which satirizes Hollywood’s golden age, there are several films being shot at the same time on the sound stages of the fictional Capitol Pictures. The Coens asked Burwell to score each of them: from the Roman epic that gives the film its title, to the corny Western comedy being shot next door. ”A lot of film music is putting on a hat and being like an actor,” Burwell says. ”In this case, I had to put on lots of different hats. But I love a challenge.” Carter Burwell studied animation and computers at Harvard, and put that education to use at the New York Institute of Technology. At night, he moonlighted as a keyboardist in various punk bands. That’s how the two brothers from Minnesota found him and offered him his very first scoring assignment. Despite Burwell’s lack of formal training, Joel Coen says the brothers have always felt like they were in good musical hands. ”Carter is so good at sort of moving into these different kinds of storytelling,” he says, ”and understanding what the sort of imperatives of the movie are, and what it needs musically.” That’s good, because the Coens don’t like to give Burwell too much instruction up front. Burwell says they discuss all the practicalities, but he can’t necessarily ask what a scene is really about. ”You ask them that, they go ’ummmm,’ ’uhhh’. .. and then they start pacing,” Burwell says. ”And then that’s kind of the end of the meeting.” But Ethan Coen says too much communication isn’t necessary. ”We don’t actually have to talk to him a lot,” he says. ”As with actors, you know? Generally, if they really understand, you don’t have to talk to them much.” Burwell says he’s certainly seen that relationship play out. ”I think the classic example is Gabriel Byrne asking them what the meaning of his hat was in Miller’s Crossing  —   why the hat is blowing away, and why he has a dream about a hat,” he says. ”And they were at a loss for words. I think their answer was, ’Well . .. it’s his hat. ’” Even though Burwell’s music has been integral in the Coen brothers’ filmography, he got his first ever Oscar nomination this year, working for a different filmmaker. His score for Todd Haynes’ Carol, about   lovers in 1950s America, plays a crucial role, often expressing what the characters cannot. Burwell says it put him a little closer to center stage than he usually prefers. ”I’m a bit more of a quieter person,” he says, ”and often the music is more behind what’s going on. Whereas in this film, it’s really like a member of the cast.” Carol is the third project Burwell has scored for Haynes, after Velvet Goldmine and the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce. The director says there’s a personal quality to Burwell’s work  —   and that when the composer read the Carol script, he told Haynes it reminded him of his mother and what her experience may have been like. ”He’s a very curious, obviously incredibly gifted and sensitive and aware person,” Haynes says. ”And so he brings all of that to the process.” Unlike the Coens, Burwell says, Haynes loves to dig into the subtext and meaning of the music. ”Not everyone, including musicians, is good at discussing music in verbal terms  —   but Todd is.” Burwell says. ”He’s actually very good at listening to a piece of music and saying in words what that music is doing to the scene, or to the characters, or to the film.” For Carol, Burwell and Haynes agreed that even though the music was critical in communicating those unexpressed feelings and desires, less was more. Burwell brought in a batch of different melodies and sketches of themes, and they tried them against the scenes to see how they played. ”And I think we both really felt that the quieter ones summoned the most power,” Haynes says, ”and sort of elicited the most in the viewer.” Burwell says he tries to work with people who understand the virtue of withholding information or leaving the audience uninformed and even confused. ”It’s hard to sell discomfort to a studio executive as a feature of a film,” he says. ”But, in fact, a lot of the films I like, that’s one of the main qualities they have. They leave you uncomfortable, and uncertain. And I think that’s a valuable feeling.” So is there anything Carter Burwell can’t do? Maybe one, Ethan Coen says: ”There’s a showtune in the movie,” he explains with a chuckle, ”and Carter said, ’I don’t know if I can do this.’ . .. And he was kind of right.” Nobody’s perfect."
"If you’ve been following the news about the spread of the Zika virus throughout Latin America, you’ve probably gotten lost in the jargon once or twice. What’s a vector? A reservoir? What’s local transmission  —   the opposite of express transmission? So we went to the experts to help us wade through all this murky language. And they were helpful  —   sort of. Because it turns out that even the experts don’t agree 100 percent on the definitions. ”Well the first thing to keep in mind with this sort of terminology is it’s all in the eye of the beholder, to a certain extent,” says Dr. Arnold Monto, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Technically, an outbreak and an epidemic mean the same thing, Monto says. Both refer to a sudden increase in the number of cases of a disease. Generally an outbreak is used to describe the spread of a disease in a smaller geographic area, whereas an epidemic may describe the spead of disease through several communities or cities. But the key difference is that the word ”outbreak” sounds relatively innocuous whereas ”epidemic” carries a bit more weight, Monto notes. ”So choosing which word to use is not pure science,” he says. Public health officials may choose to use one or the other depending on the sort of message they want to put out. ”With Zika, I think calling it an epidemic is a way to bring attention to it and mobilize resources,” he says. Since Zika has spread to South and Central American countries where it has never been identified before, and since scientists suspect a link between the virus and neurological problems in newborns and adults, Monto understands why health officials are using the more weighty ”epidemic” while discussing Zika. The words endemic and pandemic have more precise definitions. The former is used to describe ”the baseline . .. level of the disease,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So there’d be an endemic level  —   or expected number  —   of flu cases in the U. S. each year. The latter refers to multiple outbreaks happening across the globe at the same time. ”Pandemic has been used to describe outbreaks of cholera occurring in various countries,” Monto says. In the 1960s, for example, an outbreak of cholera in Indonesia quickly spread across Asia, Europe, Africa  —   by the early 1990s, it had made its way to Latin America. A pandemic affects communities all over the world, Monto says. It’s a public health issue of international concern. Now let’s turn to another set of words used to describe the mechanics of an outbreak like Zika. Like, what the heck is a disease reservoir if not a terribly disgusting lake? ”It’s any environment where an infectious agent can live and multiply,” says Allison Aiello, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It could be one or more insects, animals, even soil  —   ”anywhere these   viruses or microbes can live and thrive.” But typically, the word refers to animals who can carry a disease,” Monto says. Say that Zika can make both monkeys and humans sick  —   monkeys infected with Zika would be considered the reservoir. ”We don’t generally use the term reservoir for humans,” Monto notes. That’s because ”even if we eradicate the disease among humans, we’d want to pay attention to the animal reservoirs to make sure a monkey doesn’t reintroduce the disease and cause it to come back.” Then there’s the term vector. ”A vector is anything that can pass on an infection to another organism,” says Aiello. So a mosquito is definitely a vector. Its root is a Latin word that means ”to carry.” But what about humans: Can we humans be vectors? Technically, sure, says Aiello. But Monto says he probably wouldn’t use the word to refer to humans. ”To me vector is usually an arthropod [insects and other animals with exoskeletons],” Monto says. ”Like a mosquito or a tick.” So the Aedes aegypti mosquito, whose bite transmits Zika, is a vector for the disease. When public health folk talk about ”vector control” they’re usually thinking about calling in the entomologists or deploying health workers to fumigate the swampy,   neighborhoods. ”So you see, we use specific words to mobilize specific sectors within the public health community.” Ultimately, it’s a matter of preference. Got it. And what’s local transmission? That’s when a vector transmits a virus to a human in a certain place. ”To have local transmission you’ve got to have the vector and the virus present in the same place  —   that’s when the disease can really start to spread.” How do people in the public health world keep all this straight? ”Honestly, when talking to a general audience, I try to avoid using any of this kind of language,” Monta says. ”And when talking with colleagues in my field, we just focus on the facts and statistics!”"
"Reading The Tale of Tales, Giambattisa Basile’s   book of fairy stories, is both exhilarating and exhausting. If that sounds like a warning, it is. If that sounds like a promise, well, good news. Perhaps most importantly, the book’s an erstwhile history course, and for those who enjoy a sense of research alongside their Cinderella, this edition, translated by Nancy L. Canepa, is invaluable. Basile wrote for the courtiers who patronized him  —   a savvy and demanding audience  —   and in the Neapolitan dialect rather than ’modern’ Italian. It’s no surprise, then, that the writing has the manic,   energy of a work meant to be read aloud, with every Baroque flourish imaginable. Every declaration of love reads like Singin’ in the Rain’s   love scene, and as far as Basile’s concerned, if one insult’s funny, a string of ten is better. It’s the kind of writing that threatens, at times, to leave you behind. Luckily, Canepa’s footnotes are at hand, explaining everything from   story types to historical trivia about Spanish swords. But they’re at their most interesting when they reveal the intricacies and occasional impossibilities of translation from Basile’s slangy, inventive use of an obscure dialect. A mourner’s grief is described in the story itself as ”ranting and raving,” but the footnote breaks down the Neapolitan punning involved it provides a much sharper sense of disdain for his laments, and reminds us about the strange combination of archaeology and poetry that goes into such an intricate translation. Some are even wry asides that give personality to the research: when noting the first appearance of an overblown celestial metaphor, Canepa wryly warns us it’s ”the first of hundreds.” She is not wrong. This sense of history leaches into the tales themselves, as the footnotes illuminate contemporary customs and attitudes. Occasionally, it’s noteworthy trivia: glass balls rolled across the forehead as an   device,   Spanish swords and Turkish customs from international trade. Occasionally, you run across the usual unfortunate prejudices one girds oneself to encounter when tackling folklore  —     and sexism among them  —   all given suitable context in the footnotes. Fair warning: Even given the attitudes of the day, the frame story that surrounds the storytelling contest in The Tale of Tales is pointedly, almost exuberantly racist  —   replacing the   troll of the ”supplanted bride” story with a caricature of a vindictive ”Moorish slave” who wrangles the prince out from under our heroine and plays the villain of the piece. The good news is that most of the 50 tales themselves are slightly safer territory, and both formally and in their narratives, they offer some bawdy, pointed spin on the classics. Basile’s    atittude bursts from every page, from biting social commentary to endless fart jokes, but there’s also a sort of narrative ruthlessness that cuts through these stories. Kings and their grotesques live side by side (as with the king who fed a flea until it grew as big as he was) and the romances share a certain sense of wickedness (the young girl who dislikes her evil stepmother conspires to kill her rather than wait for a handsome prince) enchanted snakes turn into handsome men and then doves (naturally) and the body count is so high that it’s lucky our dimwitted heroes and goodhearted fairies always seem to have convenient potions on hand to paste everyone’s heads back on. There’s even a sense of psychological weight amid the absurdities one of the benefits of Baroque description is that sooner or later a list becomes a portrait. The Tale of Tales, with this     translation, makes a unique entry amid the recent crop of    fairy tale translations that have made a welcome return to the folktale canon. It’s not a quick read (as with last year’s Turnip Princess by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth) nor is it a poetic one (as with Tales of the Marvellous translated by Malcolm C. Lyons). It’s something more manic, more subversive  —   and at times, the casual prejudice is more unsettling than any fantastic beasts. But though these tales demand a painstaking journey, for those with a historical appetite, it’s a vivid and fascinating one. Genevieve Valentine’s latest novel is Persona."
"Primary season has officially begun. And as the presidential candidates campaign ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, both Republicans and Democrats are making big arguments in response to some big questions about their party’s future. Is there such a thing as an ”establishment lane” that can win the GOP contest? Can a Democrat be both moderate and a progressive? Is it better to be pragmatic or idealistic? Last week, NPR’s Rachel Martin talked with some young Republicans for their insights on the contest. This week, NPR spoke with two young Democratic activists about what’s at stake for them. Atima Omara, 34, is a political strategist and the former president of Young Democrats of America. She supports Hillary Clinton and works on women’s rights issues. Nicole Castillo, 32, backs Bernie Sanders now, but supported Hillary Clinton in 2008, saying Clinton was ”the most prepared for the job.” She serves as national advisor to millennial issues at BeVisible Latina, a career social network for Latinas. On supporting Bernie Sanders, Nicole Castillo: I think it was through my own journey of trying to figure out how to make systems change that I started to experience frustration with the system. Is the system working for my community? And so, as I come to [Clinton’s] campaign now, I think about, is the system the only way in which we can make change? And might another narrative, perhaps the narrative of Bernie Sanders be one that would be more empowering to my community? [Sanders] is driving a   campaign. I think especially if you look at millennials and Latinos, we don’t have exactly the best track record for voting. And I think that’s often because we see the system isn’t for us. And so, his narrative is one that [says] ”Yes we are going to make system change, but it’s going to take all of us.” On supporting Hillary Clinton, Atima Omara: She has been working in politics for a very long time she’s an advocate on the issues that I very much care about: paid family leave, she’s introduced equal pay legislation. She came out first in repealing the Hyde Amendment, something that will actually benefit   women who have not had access to abortion on   healthcare. She’s very pragmatic. She does understand the way Congress has sort of devolved to disarray. I think it takes somebody who can be really creative and innovative about getting stuff done as president, who has to deal with Congress. On whether or not Hillary Clinton is part of the establishment, Omara: I don’t think she’s an establishment candidate. To say that she’s an establishment candidate is sort of ridiculous when you look at the fact that Sen. Sanders has been in Congress for 30 years. I mean, he’s establishment, because he’s been in politics for a very long time. So I think they both just have very different ways of viewing things and that’s fine. Both of their voting records are both pretty liberal. Castillo: What people mean by [establishment] is more than having a career in politics. I think specifically they’re referring to the amount of corporate money that she’s receiving. On Clinton giving paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, Omara: There are many candidates who run for public office who’ve taken money for speeches. . .. I could understand why some people would be concerned about that, but she took it to make a speech, as opposed to [Wall Street] donating $645, 000 to your campaign so that you can be better on initiatives concerning Wall Street. That’s the difference. On the importance of Hillary Clinton being a woman, Omara: Being the child of immigrants, knowing that Obama’s father was an African, there is definitely an emotional impact to that. You look at Obama and you can see what’s possible. And I think that is the same for Hillary Clinton. I think people can look at her and see what’s possible for women in politics. Castillo: I think because of my experience working with Latinas Represent, you definitely see the way in which women are unfairly told to tone it down. She’s really had to  —   through her entire career  —   navigate how she’s going to comport herself. If you follow Twitter you can see it happening. When she raises her voice, people are like, ”This is intolerable, we just can’t even handle this.” Whereas, it’s a little bit more of a generous chiding [for] Bernie Sanders. It’s like he’s your grandfather yelling at you. It’s absolutely a different tone. On whether they would support the other candidate if she or he wins the nomination, Castillo: Obviously I would want to do the best for our party and make sure that we’re mobilizing the vote. But I think it will be challenging to want to put the level of energy towards her campaign, especially given my prior experience. Omara: I imagine myself doing what I can to make sure that a Democrat is elected. The Supreme Court’s at stake. We’ve got a couple [justices] are who definitely getting up there in years. I’m very concerned about where we’re going politically in the country. And that is not a direction I want to see under Ted Cruz or Donald Trump or any of them. So whoever is the Democratic nominee  —   and in this case the only other person would be Bernie Sanders  —   I will be supporting and voting for him."
"At midnight Tuesday the residents of tiny Dixville Notch, N. H. will welcome camera crews for the quadrennial ritual of casting the first votes in the nation’s first presidential primary. The remote town near the Canadian border is so small that it has only a roomful of registered voters and zero racial diversity. Its votes in recent cycles have been unreliable indicators of who will win the primary. But the cameras will be there, nonetheless, because it is first, and because it is a tradition. Dixville, in its quaint way, is just the New Hampshire primary writ small  —   or in this case, smaller. You have to wonder why it gets so much attention. But the answer, of course, is that it is first, and the other answer is that it has been first for a long, long time. So long, in fact, that many of us have simply become fond of it all. As Daniel Webster famously said of New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College: ”Yes, it is a small school, but there are those of us who love it.” New Hampshire started loving it back in 1916, which makes this the 100th anniversary. But don’t expect to hear that proclaimed from the rooftops in New Hampshire. It’s no secret, and it is readily acknowledged. But there is also a certain sense of New England reticence about it. Perhaps this is because so many other states have long envied this     status. More to the point, other states have long coveted the political clout, media attention and economic injection that accompany that status. And every now and then one state or another takes a serious run at displacing the Granite State. Not in this cycle, as it happens, but there is no sense in waking a sleeping dog. Why did New Hampshire decide back in 1916 that it should have a presidential primary? The idea was a product of the progressive movement of the turn of the century. In states such as Wisconsin, where progressive Republican administrations were in flower, primaries were established for state office. In 1910, Oregon added a presidential primary to direct the votes of its delegates at the next nominating conventions. By the election of 1912, a dozen states were using primaries either to choose delegates or to express a presidential preference. New Hampshire was part of a subsequent surge that raised the number of primaries to a score by 1920. The wrinkle New Hampshire added was the idea of having a primary very early, before anyone else. This was a gamble. Most primaries accompanied the spring thaw or the approach of summer. Would candidates even countenance the idea of traipsing through the snow? It turned out that quite a few would. New Hampshire started having its primary in March. Since then, as other states encroached with   events, New Hampshire has gone as early as Jan. 8. And state law requires that the event be held at least a week before ”any similar vote” in another state. When the first primaries began, presidential candidates were chosen at national conventions of the major parties, much as they are now. But the delegates to those conventions were not chosen by popular vote or open caucuses. Instead, the delegate slots were filled by each party’s officeholders and other officials, power brokers and other inside players. This allowed the state party leaders to hold their state’s votes as a bloc and deliver them at the convention, often in exchange for pledges of one kind or another from the candidates. That remained the case for most states until the 1970s. But primaries and caucuses grew in popularity in the decades after World War II. And as the media coverage of presidential campaigns expanded to include not only newspapers and magazines, but also radio and television and the digital world, the demand for reportable events and metrics grew exponentially. The first state to really feel this postwar shift was good old New Hampshire with its     status. The state had reformed its ballot access in 1949 to generate more participation in the quadrennial event, and sure enough, the people came out in 1952 and the people shook things up. That year’s primary put a torpedo in the hull of incumbent Harry S. Truman, who was serving his elected term as president after serving nearly all of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth term. Truman was still undecided about formally seeking a second term in his own right, but after New Hampshire voted for Estes Kefauver, a senator from Tennessee, Truman decided not to run. On the Republican side that year, the fix was thought to be in for the party’s Senate leader, Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the son of President William H. Taft. But the voters preferred the war hero Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, and that trend would continue to the convention that summer. That established the state as a giant killer, of sorts, and there have been other memorable moments of truth. Many recall that President Lyndon B. Johnson was humbled by the New Hampshire results in 1968. While LBJ won that primary, a peace candidate named Eugene McCarthy attracted a youthful army of supporters and got 42 percent of the vote. Within a few weeks, Johnson had announced he would not run for  . New Hampshire has long prided itself not only on its iconoclastic tendencies but on its prescience about presidential timber. Until 1992, every elected president in both parties since 1916 had won the New Hampshire primary along the way. Even the breaking of that skein by Bill Clinton had an asterisk, because Clinton finished a surprisingly strong second in New Hampshire that year to popular Sen. Paul Tsongas of neighboring Massachusetts. Doing so enabled Clinton to call himself ”the comeback kid.” Since then the state’s reputation for picking the president has been battered, as neither of Clinton’s successors won here. George W. Bush lost badly in 2000 to John McCain, and Barack Obama fell to Hillary Clinton in 2008. But as the primary celebrates its centennial this year, its role and importance in the presidential nominating process are as great as ever  —   perhaps greater. The 2016 reiteration features competitive contests in both parties, and the fields of candidates are wider and more diverse than ever before. It scarcely rates a mention any longer that this year’s hopefuls include five who would be the first woman, first Jew or first Hispanic to win the White House. Four of those five are polling far better than Jeb Bush, whose father and brother both won this primary and became presidents of the United States."
"For more than two decades, New Hampshire has been a place of redemption for the Clintons. That could come to an end Tuesday night. The Granite State revived Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign after a devastating Iowa loss to Barack Obama. That victory helped her become the new ”Comeback Kid”  —   the same moniker her husband claimed after his strong finish in the state in 1992   his road to the Democratic nomination. But now it’s Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders who has the momentum going into Election Day. The senator for neighboring Vermont leads the former secretary of state by double digits in polls here  —   erasing her more than   advantage since last summer and outspending her on the airwaves. Clinton seemed to feel a renewed urgency and was certainly conceding nothing as she rallied volunteers and supporters Saturday afternoon at a middle school gym in Concord. There, she debuted a thoroughly revamped stump speech after her   Iowa win that strikes a more populist tone. ”I am committed to doing everything I can as your president to make sure our country rises but also to remove the barriers that stand in the way of any person rising,” she thundered, promising to fight Wall Street. The noticeable shift to one of Sanders’ key messages  —   inequality and the lack of upward mobility in the country  —   isn’t an accident. As her opponent’s themes have gripped the liberal base in the state, many voters are wondering whether they should go with their heart in following Sanders’ uplifting message or their head in prioritizing Clinton’s experience. Donna Manion of Bow came to Clinton’s nearby Concord rally still trying to make up her mind. Even though she likes Clinton and voted for her in the 2008 primary, Manion said there’s just something special about the    Sanders that reminds her of a young John F. Kennedy. ”I can, in my mind, think I’m   all the way, and then Bernie Sanders’ ideas that he exposes me to really cause me to think in ways I hadn’t thought before,” she admitted. ”I think in terms of ’us’ a lot when I listen to Bernie talk. Whereas, when I listen to Hillary, even though I respect so much of what she has done and the person that she is, I hear the word ’I,’ ’I, ’I’ a lot.” While Manion is still making up her mind, her husband is Sanders all the way. ”He has tapped into something that is fundamentally wrong and concerning about this country, and that is why so many people are feeling the fervor, are embracing the movement and understand that it’s time to take the country back,” Patrick Manion said. Bill Clinton was also feeling the pressure in the final hours of the New Hampshire race to try to stop the narrative that Sanders represents change, throwing cold water Sunday on the idea that Sanders could actually enact some of his ambitious proposals. Deriding Sanders’ health care plan, which would raise taxes in order to scrap premiums, the former president said the state he once ”campaigned in really cared that you knew what you were doing, and how it was paid for.” ”The New Hampshire I knew would not have voted for me if I had done that,” he declared at a     rally in Milford. Bill Clinton has made more subtle jabs at Sanders before, and the campaign has repeatedly noted that Sanders has a proximity advantage. No neighboring candidate has ever lost the primary here in an open seat race, and even Bill Clinton placed second to former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas in 1992. But his remarks on Sunday indicate the Clintons aren’t ready to cede the Granite State. And Bill Clinton isn’t the only surrogate who’s stepped up rhetoric in the closing days. When former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright introduced Hillary Clinton on Sunday, she repeated a line she’s often used before, but this time it had a particular bite to it given the fight between Sanders and Clinton. ”There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” the first woman to be America’s top diplomat proclaimed to applause. For some of the many still undecided voters, particularly   and older women, that message could have sway. Mary Fagan of Bow attended a Sanders rally in Portsmouth on Sunday afternoon after seeing Clinton in Concord on Saturday. And while Fagan said she likes Sanders’ messages on climate change and taking on the banks, she is still undecided and feels a pull toward Clinton. ”I love Bernie and I also really like Hillary. I respect all the work she’s done as well as the experience she has,” Fagan said. ”A lot of people say you shouldn’t count it for or against her that she’s a woman, but she’s had it count against her her whole life.” Other female voters are unmoved by that argument. Sanders, Diane Meagher of Keene said, represents the type of change from politics as usual that she’s looking for  —   something she just doesn’t see in Clinton. ”If Hillary is the nominee, I won’t vote for her,” said Meagher, an independent. ”It’s a trust factor. I’m actually excited about the Bernie campaign. It’s a   movement. It feels like this is who individuals want as a candidate, not just people who have money and corporations.”"
"A lot of Republicans will head to the polls in New Hampshire on Tuesday, motivated to vote against Donald Trump. But because of a quirk in how the state party allocates delegates and how fractured the ”establishment” field is, it could mean that an   vote will actually be a vote for the New York billionaire. Here’s how: The state party awards delegates on a proportional basis to presidential candidates based on their vote statewide and by congressional district. But it also has a 10 percent threshold. What does that mean? It means that if a candidate does not get 10 percent of the vote, he gets no delegates. (And this is a hard threshold  —   no rounding.) What’s more, not only do those underperforming candidates get no delegates, but whatever delegates they could have gotten based on their vote share go to the winner of the primary (! ). And, right now, the favorite is Trump. Trump, after all, has been leading in the polls in New Hampshire by double digits for six straight months. Meanwhile, the   ”establishment” candidates  —   the kind of mainstream Republicans that usually prevail in New Hampshire  —   are split. And after Saturday night’s debate, with Marco Rubio’s lackluster performance, that establishment vote could be fractured even further. There are 20 delegates at stake in New Hampshire on primary night. Here’s a look at how the candidates are performing in the polls currently, what that could translate to   and how the 10 percent threshold could affect things. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, here’s the order of the candidates (with a line inserted to represent the 10 percent cutoff):  —   Trump 31 percent  —   6 delegates —   Rubio 16 percent  —   3 delegates —   John Kasich 12 percent  —   2 delegates —   Ted Cruz 12 percent  —   2 delegates,  —   Jeb Bush 9 percent —   Chris Christie 5 percent —   Carly Fiorina 5 percent —   Ben Carson 3 percent, So let’s do some math: Everyone below the 10 percent threshold  —   Bush, Christie, Fiorina and Carson  —   add up to 22 percent. So 22 percent of 20 is 4. 4. Round down, and that means, roughly, another four delegates would be added to Trump’s total. Instead of a   delegate win, Trump would get 10. Thought about another way: Some 40 percent of Trump’s delegates could be coming from people who cast their votes explicitly in opposition to him  —   or at least for candidates running very different campaigns. And, by the way, those delegates are bound to vote for Trump at the Republican National Convention in July, because of changes to the Republican National Committee’s rules  —   that all states that hold their nominating contests before March 15 must award their delegates on a proportional basis, and they must be bound to the candidates."
"The Stream is your source for news, photos and analysis from NPR’s political team on the ground in New Hampshire. For more coverage and analysis visit NPR Politics or elections. npr. org."
"The problems with high lead levels in Flint, Mich. ’s water started in April 2014, when the city switched water sources and began drawing its supply from the Flint River. The new water was harder, and government officials allowed it to corrode the city’s pipes, leaching lead and other toxins into the tap water. Even though the city switched back to its original supply in October 2015, the damaged pipes continue to contaminate the water, and Flint’s nearly 100, 000 residents don’t know when the water will be safe to drink again  —   even though they’re still paying for it. Jeneyah McDonald and her family are among those who are affected. All Things Considered met them on a recent reporting trip and will follow up with them in the months and years to come. It’s early in the afternoon on a cold, wintry day, and Jeneyah McDonald is preparing a dinner of baked chicken with baby lima beans and rice for her family. The Flint resident moves smoothly around her small kitchen, able to cook without even thinking  —   except when she finds herself reaching for the kitchen faucet to turn on the tap water. The small habit she once took for granted could now be dangerous. Her    son, Justice, plays nearby. ”What did I tell you about that water?” she asks. ”It’s poison,” he answers. Government negligence allowed lead and other poisons to get into the water. Now, nobody knows how long it will take until it will be safe to drink from the tap again. For families like the McDonalds, giving up tap water means changing even the smallest of their routines. So Jeneyah, a substitute teacher, taught her son that the water is poison because, she says, ”I don’t know any way to explain to a    why you can’t take a bath anymore every day, why you can’t help Mommy wash the dishes anymore . .. and that way he’ll know I’m serious, don’t play with it, even if I’m not looking.” Jeneyah’s dinner recipes all have a new ingredient these days. She says she has been using bottled water so long, she knows how many it takes to fill each of her pots. For the small one she is using to boil the lima beans: two. For a bigger pot, like the one to make spaghetti: seven. Twisting open the bottle caps is   and sometimes painful for her arthritic hands. But she doesn’t trust the   water filter for her kitchen faucet, so she puts up with the pain to ensure her two sons are drinking uncontaminated water. As she waits for the water to boil,    Jeneyah recalls her childhood, when bottled water was a luxury and she could drink straight from the water hose. She doesn’t think that will ever happen in Flint again, not for her anyway. ”I will never trust this water ever again,” she says, shaking her head. ”My boys will never experience the childhood I experienced in Flint, drinking water out of a water hose.” It all started two years ago, when the city switched its water supply. Jeneyah, like many of Flint’s residents, immediately knew something was wrong. The water was a funny beige color and smelled like sewage one day, like a swimming pool the next. Eventually, she started buying bottled water, on top of paying a water bill every month. It was expensive. At the time, Jeneyah was working at a homeless shelter. Her husband,    Earl, was unable to work owing to a disability. ”My food bill for a week would be upwards of $250 to $300, and at least $100 of that was water,” Jeneyah says. ”No food stamps, no assistance, just having to do what I have to do because I have to keep my boys safe.” The family practically went broke buying cases of bottled water, she says, and even that wasn’t enough to protect her and her family. After weeks of showering in the tap water, Jeneyah found her hair coming out in clumps. She used to be known for her long, flowing hair. ”It’s gone,” she says. ”That was part of me.” Now, she has a short bob. Even so, she doesn’t worry so much about her hair. What she really worries about is the damage to her sons.    Justice has eczema, dark rashes on his wrists and chin where he says ”maybe a bear scratched me.” His doctor has prescribed him medicated creams and ointments, but none of them seem to be working. The rashes persist. In Flint, there’s no way to know whether the eczema or the hair loss comes from the water or something else.    Josiah has problems, too. Lead poisoning can lower young children’s IQ and slow their development, something that’s constantly on Jeneyah’s mind. She remembers filling his baby bottles with formula made with water from the tap, and she feels guilty, as if she should have done something sooner. ”Even now, I can see slower developments in Josiah. And, you know, who’s to say it’s not from the water?” she asks. So in an effort to keep the water from harming her boys more, her and her husband’s daily routines now include rounds of water pickups. On this afternoon, Jeneyah finishes seasoning her chicken, covers it with foil and puts it in the oven. With the lima beans on the stove to cook, and the rice ready to go after, she puts on her boots and coat and heads to her truck. Her first stop is Triumph Church. She likes coming here because they give based on how much each family thinks it needs. A church volunteer approaches Jeneyah’s window, and asks how much water she wants. ”How many can I have?” Jeneyah asks. ”About five or six of them?” ”Sounds good to me!” the volunteer responds. Other volunteers load the bed of the truck with six cases of water, each containing a couple of dozen   bottles, donated from people all over the country, as far away as California. ”That’s amazing,” Jeneyah says. ”I’m proud of us, human beings. I was not liking humans for a while there!” Next stop is a firehouse, where National Guard troops in their camouflage fatigues stand in front of large pallets of bottled water. Here, the water comes from the government  —   and the troops limit the amount each person can pick up. Two cases at one firehouse, a couple of gallons at another. It’s not enough, Jeneyah says, not for a family of four. She also likes to keep a small stockpile of water, just in case. If one of her children spills something or has another accident, it can take as many as seven cases for a bath. If a snowstorm hits or she’s unable to make her rounds, her family needs enough backup to get through a few days. It takes her about an hour to hit all the stops each day, and she has no idea how many weeks or months this daily routine will have to continue. ”Is this America?” she asks. ”I am stupefied that I’m not in, like, Ethiopia or somewhere. You’re talking about clean water.” Back at home, she unloads the cases of water and opens another two bottles to boil some rice, the smell of baked chicken pungent in the air. Her sons play in the other room, a children’s television show in the background. She worries that the donations will stop coming as people pay less attention to Flint, that government help for the boys will stop once the immediate crisis subsides. ”They look OK today. What will they look like in five years? In 10 years?” she wonders. ”And, at that point, where will all of these government officials be then, when I am dealing with the repercussions of that water?”"
"The wife of a dead ISIS leader has been charged with having a ”role in a conspiracy that resulted in the death of American citizen Kayla Mueller in February 2015,” Justice Department documents say. Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar, also known as Umm Sayyaf, is an Iraqi citizen and was the wife of ISIS leader Abu Sayyaf before he was killed in a U. S. military operation last year. Sayyaf, 25, is charged with conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS in connection with the captivity and death of Mueller, who was an aid worker in Syria when she was taken hostage in August 2013. Mueller’s death was confirmed in February 2015. Though the terrorist group said Mueller was killed in a Jordanian airstrike, U. S. officials have maintained that there is no indication of how she died. Sayyaf has admitted holding Mueller and other captives hostage for ISIS, according to the documents. ”Sayyaf is currently in Iraqi custody for her   activities. We fully support the Iraqi prosecution of Sayyaf and will continue to work with the authorities there to pursue our shared goal of holding Sayyaf accountable for her crimes,” Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said. According to the affidavit, ISIS leader Abu Bakr   ”owned” Mueller while she was in captivity. Sayyaf admitted ”ownership” was the equivalent of slavery and knew that   had repeatedly raped Mueller. According to the affidavit, ”the Sayyaf residences featured ISIL flags and other   items, and often had numerous firearms open and visible to captives.” If convicted, Sayyaf faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, but as NPR’s Carrie Johnson notes, it’s not clear that Sayyaf will be transferred to the United States to face the charges."
"In 1999, Jhumpa Lahiri won a Pulitzer Prize for her very first book, Interpreter of Maladies. Her 2003 novel, Namesake, was turned into a movie, and she went on to publish Unaccustomed Earth and The Lowland. But Lahiri wasn’t satisfied. ”I’ve always been searching to arrive at a certain voice that will probably elude me forever,” she tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro. So Lahiri is trying something new  —   very new. She wrote her new memoir, In Other Words, in Italian. ”One week after moving to Rome I started writing in my diary in Italian. That was the first step I took on this road, and I haven’t really stopped yet,” she says. Lahiri’s parents are from India, and she spoke Bengali until she was 4. She learned to read and write English, but she says neither of these linguistic identities ever felt fully her own. And so when Lahiri set out to find her true voice, writing in a different language ”just happened.” ”I had studied Italian for many years  —   simply for the love of it,” she says. But she also studied the language ”for another kind of need, I suppose  —   a more irrational, emotional need.” Italian, she says, offers a different path with respect to writing and success. She writes, ”I’m bound to fail when I write in Italian, but, unlike my sense of failure in the past, this doesn’t torment or grieve me.” On feeling the need to ”demolish” and ”reconstruct” herself as a writer, Well, I think that’s what we are doing all the time, even if we write in one language. I think that’s part of the creative impulse. On using Italian to escape pressures and expectations, I think, like any artist or any writer, I just want to have that pure freedom of expression and of thought  —   the freedom to explore and move in unexpected ways. . .. With recognition, with publication, with readership come certain things. You know, on the one hand you have a sense that what you’re doing is worthwhile, but it does also create a series of expectations. I’m a person who has never known life without answering to expectations from others  —   from myself most of all  —   and I think what is so attractive to me about this path in Italian is that no one expected me to do it. On the contradiction of finding freedom in a language that is less familiar to her, An interesting contradiction, absolutely. But everything about this process, this project, is my choice. And it’s the first time that I really feel the freedom to express myself as I want to. On being unsatisfied with what many would identify as a very successful authorial voice  Well, I’ve always been searching to arrive at a certain voice that will probably elude me forever in fact, it will. So it’s the search for that voice, that for me, drives the whole thing forward. I wrote my first book and I thought, ”Well, OK, how can I express myself more clearly in a way that’s more true and more satisfying?” So then I write another, and then I write another, and then I write another, and I don’t feel any satisfaction in the end. On the voice she’s looking for, I just want it to be true, and I want it to be strong, and I want it to be pure. But these are lofty ideals, and language is a very messy thing it’s a very complicated thing. And that’s why I say that that voice is an illusion, it’s an ideal that I’m moving toward. You know, the closer you get, the farther away it gets. But I think, isn’t that the point of creativity, to keep searching?"
"If you pay attention to way Republican presidential candidates are talking about drug abuse, it seems vastly different from the way the party leaders of the past talked about the issue. Perhaps the new, more compassionate stance was synthesized best by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during Saturday’s GOP debate. Christie touted his record of keeping drug abusers out of jails. ”This is a disease. It’s not a moral failing,” Christie said. Before we get to what it means, here are some videos for you to compare and contrast: Gov. Chris Christie, Feb. 6, 2016: ”   heroin addicted drug girl on the floor of the county lockup  —   I’m   for her life.” President Ronald Reagan, Aug. 4, 1986: ”We will refuse to let drug users blame their behavior on others.” Gov. Jeb Bush, Jan. 5, 2016: ”We need to eliminate the stigmas and the barriers. .. where they’re not embarrassed to say that I have an illness that I am now on the road to recovery on.” President George W. Bush, Feb. 12, 2002: ”Make no mistake about it, if you’re buying illegal drugs in America, it is likely that money is going to end up in the hands of terrorist organizations.” Carly Fiorina, Sept. 16, 2015: ”We do need criminal justice reform. .. It’s clearly not working.” President George H. W. Bush, Sept. 5, 1989: ”We need more prisons, more jails, more courts, more prosecutors.” The big question is, of course, whether the rhetorical shift will translate into action on the policy front. It’s worth noting that this shift started years ago. In 2012, for example, the war on drugs was mentioned only in passing in the party platform. In 2008, it was given a whole section. Mark Kleiman, a professor at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University who has written books about the war on drugs, said he believes the change in tone ”is at least partly genuine.” ”It matches a broader change in public attitudes, [thought it’s] hard to guess how much impact it will have on policy,” Kleiman said. ”Republicans in Congress continue to block even minor sentencing reforms, and [Republican Sen. Ted] Cruz in particular turned   on that issue after he announced for President. It’s a safe bet that in practice Republicans overall will remain more wedded to harsh policies than Democrats.” Marc Levin, the policy director for Right on Crime, a conservative justice reform project that has advocated for treatment instead of jail time for drug users, said they have been ”very gratified” with the talk from GOP candidates. ”We believe in personal responsibility, but we also believe in redemption,” he said. ”Thus, it is not inconsistent to believe that the use of illegal drugs is destructive and should be discouraged, but at the same time prison is generally not the answer.” Curtis Marez, who has studied the racial dimensions of the issue at UC San Diego, told us via email that he doesn’t see a broad shift here. He explains that the Republican candidates are looking toward New Hampshire, which is currently in the middle of a heroin addiction epidemic, so most of the calls for a different approach have centered on that drug and ”not on the criminalization of marijuana and cocaine, which has disproportionately affected communities of color.” In other words, this has become a white issue. Also, Marez said, this talk of redemption and second chances ”fits right in with conservative narratives of sin and redemption.” He wrote: ”Recall how George W. Bush’s stories about overcoming alcohol abuse with the help of God endeared him to his base Bush also supported   drug and alcohol treatment programs. This suggests a conservative model of treatment couched in terms of sin and salvation rather diseases and cures —  which is in keeping with certain conservative ideas about religion and individual responsibility. From that perspective, drug abuse remains a moral failing but one that can be better addressed in treatment than in prison. But again the key point is that so far, such a model of drug treatment has been more inclined to find possibilities for redemption among white drug users than among drug users of color.”"
"When Jackie Zanfagna died last year at 25 years old, her parents did something bold. In the first sentence of her obituary they acknowledge what killed her: an accidental overdose of heroin. Now her mom Anne Marie Zanfagna is pouring her grief out onto canvas and in the process helping other parents who have experienced the same loss. Zanfagna is an artist. But, she says, for six months after her daughter died she was too devastated to pick up a paint brush. ”I didn’t want to shower,” Zanfagna said. ”All kinds of things. You just don’t want to do anything. But I figured I have to start doing something. And then I decided that I wanted to paint a picture of Jacqueline.” It is an oil portrait on canvas in bright purple, pink and black. In it, Jackie looks out, a soft smile on her lips. But Anne Marie Zanfagna didn’t stop there. Zanfagna has started painting portraits of other young people killed by overdoses. State health officials in New Hampshire are projecting 400 deaths this year from overdose deaths from heroin and other opioids. That’s about   000 people in this small state and double what it was two years ago. It is a crisis affecting every part of the New Hampshire, people from all backgrounds and financial means. Because of New Hampshire’s     primary, the crisis has become a    campaign issue for candidates on both sides of the aisle and came up in the most recent Democratic debate. A recent WMUR Granite State poll found drug abuse ranked at the top of the list of most important issues facing the state. Once a month, she and her husband, Jim, attend a   service at the First Baptist Church of Plaistow. ”Addiction has touched your family in some way or your friends or maybe yourself in some way. That’s why you choose to be here tonight,” pastor Aaron Goodro said to open up the service on the Sunday before Christmas. It’s a unique gathering for those in this small community who have lost loved ones, or are recovering from addiction. Some weeks, as many as 80 people attend, filling the pews. At a recent service, Goodro called Zanfagna up to the alter. ”Anne Marie, our artist friend, would you show us some of your latest work?” Goodro said. Jim Zanfagna held the picture of Jackie. Then, the pastor called up the parents of other young adults Zanfagna painted. The faces all smile through bold bright colors. After the service, Diane Yelle thanked Zanfagna for painting her son. ”Oh my God, I am in love with this picture,” said Yelle at a potluck dinner after the service. ”I really appreciate it. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.” Zanfagna told Yelle she’s glad. ”It’s very healing for me too,” Zanfagna said, ”because I know how you feel.” Yelle’s son Shawn died of an overdose in September of this year. He was 30. As she looks at the painting she describes it. ”I feel like he’s looking at me,” Yelle said. ”Those eyes. They kill me, because they’re smiling and all we did was laugh together. You know, it’s a nice way to remember him.” Another mom struggling to deal with the loss of her son is Amanda Jordan. Her son Christopher died of an overdose in September. ”It just captured him,” she said of the portrait. ”I mean, she captured the smile, and I just feel like he’s alive in that picture. That’s Christopher. Not the sad you know, ’I can’t do today’ or ’I have to have something to get me through today.’ That smile is what he always had.” Zanfagna is working on another portrait now and will do as many as she can. She wants to show them in the local public library. But Jordan hopes she aims higher  —   an exhibit in the New Hampshire statehouse. ”The statehouse would be great,” Jordan said. ”America needs to know that there’s a problem. An absolute huge huge problem.”"
"The Gulf of Mexico is now open for commercial fish farming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last month that, for the first time in the U. S. companies can apply to set up fish farms in federal waters. The idea is to compete with    foreign imports. But opening the Gulf to aquaculture won’t be cheap, and it could pose environmental problems. Harlon Pearce, the owner of Harlon’s Louisiana Fish, which supplies restaurants and groceries across the South, says he welcomes the change. Around this time of year, his refrigerated warehouse outside New Orleans is stocked with catch. ”You’ve got 30, 000 pounds of fish right here, or more,” he says. He’s freezing a lot of it to keep up with   demand. He says he’d like to sell nationwide, to big chains like Red Lobster, but ”we never have enough fish to supply the markets. Never,” he says. That’s true for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the seafood industry in the Gulf still hasn’t bounced back from the 2010 BP oil spill. Secondly, the industry has always fluctuated, because of hurricanes and pollution. Pearce, who is on the board of the Gulf Seafood Institute, says aquaculture could solve that. The rest of the world is already heavily invested in farming fish. According to NOAA, 90 percent of fish in the U. S. comes from abroad and half of this is farmed. While fish farms exist in the U. S. the industry has yet to really take off. And, until now, federal waters had been off limits. The U. S. government says that opening up the Gulf to fish farms would reduce American dependence on foreign food and improve security. ”We see it as another important step in building the resiliency of our oceans and fishing communities,” says NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan. ”This starts with the Gulf but actually opens the door for other regions to follow suit.” In the coming years, NOAA will issue   permits to companies that want to set up shop in federal waters, generally 3 miles offshore. The farms, which look like giant floating pens, are allowed to raise fish native to the area only. In the Gulf, that means species like red drum and cobia  —   not salmon or tilapia. Some say the farms will hurt struggling fishermen. ”These systems will take up real space in the ocean and displace fishermen. In fact, there are going to be buffer zones around these facilities where fishermen can’t go,” says Marianne Cufone, an adjunct professor at the environmental law clinic at Loyola University. And she says the farms run the risk of large fish escapes, which might wreak havoc on the local ecology. ”There have been millions of fish that have escaped all over the world and are causing problems  —   not just genetic problems, but things like spreading diseases between captive fish and wild fish,” Cufone says. Fish food and waste could also fall out of the pens and affect other marine life. NOAA officials say they took all of this into account already by weighing thousands of public comments and enforcing certain environmental safeguards, like constant monitoring of cages. Raising fish in the ocean won’t be quick or easy, says Rusty Gaude, a fisheries expert with Louisiana State University. He notes that NOAA is setting a lot of environmental rules, which can be burdensome. And then there’s the threat that hurricanes pose to floating fish farms. ”These initial efforts may go through some rather painful growing pains,” he says. But he thinks the plan will become a reality. ”Eventually, the world and the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana will see aquaculture here in the Gulf of Mexico,” he says. NOAA and other federal agencies say the first permits could be approved in two years."
"George Miller’s latest Mad Max film, Fury Road, has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, but the director still isn’t sure how the movie will hold up over time. Miller, who directed the first Mad Max film in 1979, says that a film’s reception changes with time. ”First of all, people write about it in reviews and . .. [then] after a while the audience starts to tell you what your film is,” Miller tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies. ”But . .. it will be a few years before I or anyone else will have any idea as to whether [Mad Max: Fury Road] really stuck.” On the surface, it seems as if Mad Max: Fury Road has ”stuck.” The film, which tells the story of a   road warrior (played by Charlize Theron) on a mission to liberate the wives of a tyrannical warlord, recently won a Screen Actor’s Guild Award for its stunt work and is in the running for the Academy Award for best picture. Still, Miller says he feels ”quite taken aback” when Fury Road fans stop him to show him tattoos inspired by the film. ”I’m thinking, ”Oh, tattoos are permanent and I hope the film sort of endures in some way so that they don’t have to get them removed so painfully later on,’ ” Miller says. On filming the stunts in an ”old school” way, It’s a film in which we don’t defy the laws of physics. It’s real people in a real desert there’s no men in capes flying around or space vehicles and so on, so it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to shoot it all digitally, or a large part of it, because it would lose a lot of authenticity. . .. Despite the amazing advances in 15 to 20 years of the digital world in filmmaking, it’s still very difficult to make something feel really authentic. So we chose to do it old school and that means going out to a remote location with endless deserts and have real vehicles and human beings in that landscape. On shooting stunts safely  With a film like this where it’s a long shoot, it’s 120 days out there, every day is a big stunt day, so you have to be almost fanatical about preparation and safety, otherwise things could go horribly wrong. So everything was very well rehearsed, very well prepared, and we had a wonderful stunt crew and rigging crew and effects crew out there and it got to the point where, with proper preparation, you’re able to sort of get the actors who  —   all of them are pretty physical, athletic people in a lot of the shots. There’s a moment when you see Max hanging upside down between the wheels of this war rig inches off the ground, while it’s moving, it’s going fairly fast, well that’s Tom Hardy there, but he has two very, very secure harnesses supporting him and also nowadays you can erase [the harnesses] very easily, whereas in the past you couldn’t. On casting Charlize Theron as Furiosa  Charlize, actually, was the only actor I thought about for this role. She’s somebody who’s got a lot of stature physically and in her spirit, and she’s pretty uncompromising. She shaved her hair, she said Furiosa would not worry about hair in the heat and the dust, and it required a bit of immersion from the actors and Charlize is one of those people who was able to do that. On whether he sees Mad Max: Fury Road as a feminist story  Not overtly. I was very interested in the character and in the way that the Max stories are told  —   basically they’re allegorical stories in the same way that the classic Western was that. Max is a character who gets swept up into this story who is that sort of wanderer in the wasteland, looking for some sense of meaning in a very stark world and he gets caught up in their story and because ”the MacGuffin,” as Hitchcock used to say, the thing that’s in conflict is human and female, it just evolved  —   the characters go, they take you along in the story and that’s sort of the sense that she was somehow a really interesting action hero female just arose organically out of the story. The feminist notions of the movie were the same, it was never the first agenda of the film, it was always   and the rest followed. On inviting Vagina Monologues playwright and feminist Eve Ensler to do workshops with the actors, It occurred to me that we needed somebody to really help the female actors find a way into their characters and their world, because everybody in this story, except Immortan Joe, is in some way a commodity. . .. As it happened, I was listening to the radio down in Australia and Eve [Ensler] who is extraordinary in the work she does for human rights in Africa . .. she just happened to be in the Republic of Congo around about the time we were in Namibia while we were preparing to shoot the movie. And she gave us a week in the middle of a very busy schedule and she came down and she ran wonderful workshops  —   a lot of them were quite intimate with just the five girls, and by osmosis it crept into the movie. I’m quite certain of that. . .. A sense that this story is one that has been fairly constant throughout history, meaning that women and indeed other human beings, have been basically the goods and chattels of the powerful. On directing both the Mad Max series and the family movies Babe and Happy Feet, People do look at me weirdly. Even my mother said, ”When you started making the Babes and Happy Feets I thought you were calming down, in some way, but then she saw the latest, Fury Road, she said, ”Sometimes I wonder what goes on in your head.”"
"In what’s become her modus operandi, Beyonce dropped not only a new song, but also a provocative video for ”Formation” on Saturday, just ahead of her performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. Set in New Orleans, the video conjures images of Hurricane Katrina, Mardi Gras and the Black South. There’s natural hair and   swag and a young black boy dancing in front of police officers. Hands are held up before we see the words, ”Stop shooting us.” Needless to say, the Internet responded in kind. In an   report for All Things Considered, NPR’s Mandalit del Barco highlights reactions to the video, including thoughts from filmmaker and writer dream hampton. (hampton has a   professional relationship with Beyonce’s husband, Jay Z.) Below is an edited transcript of their full conversation, where hampton gives context to the images and timing of ”Formation.” ”It’s about a black future [where] we are imagining ourselves having power and magic,” she says, ”and I think it’s beautiful.” I wanted to talk to you about the new Beyonce video ”Formation.” Maybe first your initial thoughts about it  —   well, you’ve seen this video.  Yes, like the rest of the world! She  —   I’m not even on the Internet and she broke my Internet. [Laughs.] I’ve been off social media for a while, and it was, of course, amazing to have this Super Bowl Sunday surprise. But more importantly, she dropped it very intentionally on a weekend that means something to the current movement. It is, of course, Black History Month, February, but that was Trayvon Martin’s birthday, and the day before Sandra Bland’s [birthday]. I mean, this is a generation that was kind of woke up by the Trayvon Martin killing, in terms of activism, in terms of being kind of nudged out of their   slumber. And I think it was really significant that she dropped the video on Trayvon’s day. And what about the video itself? Can you talk about the images and the lyrics, both? Well, the images are very much an homage to the black South, which is often forgotten, you know, in movements. And I don’t know why, because we keep having to return to the black South, you know, as we should. It’s very important that this film is not only located  —    well, I say ”film,” it feels like . .. an   feature  —   but it’s very important that it’s located visually and actually in Louisiana, which, of course . .. is the site of this other trauma, and a kind of freedom and resistance also. It’s longstanding trauma. Louisiana is this famous slave port, where so many cultures came together and mixed, but also she references the site of Katrina, where this horrible crime was committed against black people where its nation didn’t show up for us and where this generation is having to learn that its nation continues to not show up for us. And in that, she’s both centering black women  —   her formation is one of black women, who are proudly wearing their natural hair, and she makes a circle amongst her daughter and three girls, which is a little bit of magic and conjuring. But there’s also, you know, the centering of queer folks and trans folk, and both by the vocals that we hear and of what we visually see. And that has very much been an intentional thing that’s been happening in this new Black Lives Matter movement. From the very outset, there was real messaging that talked about centering queer folks and black women in leadership. So it’s really amazing to see all of that reflected back to us in a Beyonce video. Some people are talking about the hot sauce in her bag. [Laughs.] Right, I think that she’s trying  —   kind of like a gun in your bag, right? [Laughs.] It’s a cultural weapon, her hot sauce in her bag. I mean, there are a lot of just throwaway lines about how country she is, and I don’t think that that’s a new thing. . .. That’s been a part of her identity from the outset, since Destiny’s Child. I mean, this is very much who she is. She’s always represented Texas. Again, her mother is from Louisiana, as she let us know in the song. This has always been a big part of her identity it’s not one that the mainstream focus is on. People talk about her not centering it. I saw an article that talked about her keeping that identity at the margins, but I feel like it’s always been central to who she is  —   this kind of unapologetic blackness. What about the image of the little boy in front of the cop, or her on top of the police car? I think that the image with the boy who’s basically conducting a police lineup is magic. This is about them being in a trance, and them having to do what they usually try to make him do, which is put their hands up. The next cut about ”Stop shooting us,” it’s not the black power moment that we got in the late ’60s and ’70s, which she referenced on the actual Super Bowl day, with the Black Panther beret, but it is absolutely a message that comes straight out of Ferguson: ”Hands up, don’t shoot.” I think it was incredibly powerful. I think it was also a nod to Tamir Rice, you know. It’s about a black visionary, a black future [where] we are imagining ourselves having power, and magic. And I think it’s beautiful. There was a big New York Times article about her being an activist. Is this something new for her? I know you talked about questions over centering her identity as a black woman, but in terms of being an activist  —   is this anything new, or is this a continuation? I think it’s a stretch to call Beyonce an activist. And I don’t know that activist is such a compliment. What we need out here is organizers. No, what she is is a cultural force and artist and icon. She might be her own goddess, might have her own little Orisha power, but she’s not an activist. I think that she’s someone who is paying attention like anyone her age to what is going on. This is her generation’s movement she’s absolutely a millennial, and she’s tuned in to what’s happening like we all are. So she doesn’t live on some other planet, which I think we tend to think of pop stars, and Beyonce in particular. [Laughs.] She’s very much in this world, paying attention to what’s happening, and affected by it. You know, she’s raising a daughter. She showed up to the Trayvon Martin rally and met his parents, but that was disastrous for she and her husband. All of the eyes, which should have been on the dais, and they were all looking at Jay and Bey, who were kind of standing to the side of the stage. They understand what a distraction they can be. But this is all value add this video ”Formation” is not a distraction. It is a beautiful centering and a beautiful conjuring. Do you think it’s going to make a difference?  Well, what artists can do is provide narrative shifts. That is absolutely their responsibility, in fact. Nina Simone gave that charge decades ago, like, ”What are you doing if you’re not reflecting the times? How can you even call yourself an artist?” So in my mind, what’s been happening is there’s been this slumber  —   particularly unfortunately amongst black artists  —   for a long time, and now they’re realizing that they can’t not reflect back what their very audience is showing them. Beyonce took that a step further she really did. I mean, she created an anthem, a visual anthem in every way. And that’s been beautiful to see. And it’s been beautiful to see other artists kind of wake up around this and realize that this isn’t going to cost them to put this kind of messaging forward that it’s actually going to benefit them."
"If you watched Sunday’s Super Bowl, how did you get it? Over cable? Rabbit ears? (Yes, those still work.) Or did you stream it online? CBS put the big game on the Internet and for the first time, streamed the commercials online as well. According to Nielsen’s national ratings, with 111. 9 million viewers, the game was the third   broadcast in American TV history (behind two other recent Super Bowls). And despite reported troubles streaming the game on Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast, CBS also says the online stream had a record audience of almost 4 million unique viewers or an average of 1. 4 million viewers per minute. But Dan Rayburn was unimpressed. With the complicated nature of estimating the size and impact of online streaming, Rayburn, executive vice president at StreamingMedia. com and principal analyst at Frost  Sullivan, tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers it may not be the future of live sports. On what CBS garnering a ”record audience” for the online stream really means, Doesn’t mean much, to be honest with you. There’s way too much hype over something like putting a live sporting event online, because we’ve been doing this for 20 years. And yes, the traffic we get to events like this [is] larger but it’s typical of an event after this, like we saw with CBS, they come out and pat themselves on the back and say it’s a record and then they give us no data or numbers as to what that actually means. If we compare it to last year, last year they had a little over 1 million simultaneous streams at the same time, watching the Super Bowl online. But keep in mind that’s not a million simultaneous people, because someone like me is watching six or seven streams at a time. . .. A million is not a big deal when you’re talking about there’s roughly 100 million pay TV subscribers just in the U. S. alone. You’re talking about 1 percent of the whole market. On the significance of the popular commercials being streamed as well, The significance there is just in terms of some of the   technology. It’s actually easier for them to put the ads online than to take them out. There’s something in the industry that’s called stream stitching, which is how you stitch live ads into a stream . .. . But since we get no metrics or demographics afterwards of who watched what for how long or how much money they made from the ads. We don’t even know if this was a   thing for them online. Which it probably was not. They probably lost money. On whether streaming is the future, The problem you have is the fragmentation in the market. So for instance, if you wanted to watch it on mobile yesterday, you could only do so if you were a Verizon customer. So this is not the future for   live events. The problem we have in the industry is many people think that one technology replaces another, when typically it’s a complement to it. So the Internet broadcast that we see, whether it’s live or   that can’t replace TV distribution at the same quality, the same scale and the same reliability. The technology just doesn’t support it."
"Sometimes it’s better to leave more to the imagination. That’s the thought I’m left with after watching all of the ads that aired in CBS’ Super Bowl broadcast Sunday night. It may be an accepted truism that the commercials are often more exciting than the game. But this year, viewers watching for the ads sat through an uneven collection of spots  —   of which many of the best moments had already been revealed days earlier. In years past, commercials like the Snickers spot inserting Willem Dafoe into Marilyn Monroe’s wardrobe malfunction in the Seven Year Itch or the ad with Jeff Goldblum serenading George Washington and Lil’ Wayne for Apartments. com would have been standouts. But these spots had already been featured in televised roundups and online platforms like YouTube days before the game. The media coverage may have spread word about the spots, but they also robbed viewers of the thrill that comes from being surprised by an inventive ad in the moment. Here’s my list of the best and worst commercial moments from the big game: Best use of animals in a Super Bowl ad: Heinz ”Weiner Stampede” and Honda ”A New Truck to Love” My two favorite ads of the evening both featured animals in cool ways. Heinz had dogs dressed like hot dogs romping through a field to lick the faces of people dressed like a ”family” of condiment bottles (kudos to whoever came up with using the soft rock hit Without You to ramp up the sentiment). Honda also hit the cute animal chord with a spot featuring sheep singing Queen’s hit Somebody to Love they learned it courtesy of the farmer’s Ridgeline truck, which has a sound system in the rear bed blasting the song. Ample proof that ’70s rock paired with cute animals equals Super Bowl advertising gold. Best ad to turn a massive mistake into promotional success:   ”Drop the Balls” When Steve Harvey announced the wrong winner in the Miss Universe contest, he was lampooned so mercilessly it looked like a serious setback. But he’s rebounded with a Super Bowl commercial that features him ”admitting” a different mistake: alleging Verizon used old data to misrepresent  . It was the best    transition since, well, Harvey made fun of himself by wishing fans on Instagram a Merry Easter . .. on Christmas Day. Best use of former cast members of The Wire: Toyota Prius ”The Longest Chase” and ”Hunters” Toyota already had a winning concept when it aired two Super Bowl ads Sunday showing bank robbers successfully eluding police in a speeding Prius, until the cops gave up and turned a Prius of their own into a patrol car (take that, everyone who thinks hybrid cars are slow and can’t manage sharp turns). But   pop   fans could recognize three of the actors playing bank robbers  —   Chris Bauer, Pablo Schreiber and James Ransone  —   as the guys who played members of the   Sobotka family in the second season of HBO’s classic crime drama The Wire. Which adds an extra dose of TV cool to an already fun commercial. Best way to introduce a bunch of new car features: Hyundai, The carmaker used different ads strung throughout the Super Bowl to promote different features. For its Genesis sedan, an ad with comic Kevin Hart following his daughter on a date highlighted the ”car finder” tracking feature the Elantra’s remote start was featured in a spot with campers chased by bears. Another ad promoting the Elantra’s emergency braking system featured women driving through a neighborhood where everyone looked like film hunk Ryan Reynolds. It was an impressive stretch of spots, given that many advertisers couldn’t make even one Super Bowl commercial work. Worst use of an earworm: Mountain Dew ”Puppymonkeybaby.” It was a bizarre, unfunny and nonsensical ad promoting a drink that combines Mountain Dew, fruit juice and caffeine called Kickstart. But the worst thing about this ad is the horrific character that stars in the spot an   creature that has a dog’s face, monkey’s tail and baby feet. It leads the guys in the commercial in a conga line set to a bouncing beat while it says the phrase ”puppy monkey baby” over and over. Frankly, it’s the kind of nightmare you might expect to have after one too many cans of Mountain Dew Kickstart. Worst reference to bodily functions: Xifaxan, OICisDifferent. com, Jublia, The Super Bowl is known for inspiring lots of eating and lavish spreads of food. So why would advertisers pay millions to air ads focusing on constipation, irritable bowel syndrome and toe fungus? OICisDifferent. com had a commercial on   constipation, while the diarrhea relief medication Xifaxan created a spot with a pink intestine made of clay cheering in a stadium. And the toe fungus medication Jublia somehow convinced former NFL greats Howie Long, Deion Sanders and Phil Simms to appear in its ad. There may never be a great time to air ads like this, but to broadcast such spots in an event where viewers are eating stuff like guacamole dip and pizza surely is the worst. Worst unintentional reference to the housing bubble and Great Recession: Quicken Loans, It’s a commercial that makes a powerful point, touting Quicken Loans Rocket Mortgage app as a way to make getting a home mortgage less intimidating and easier. But since the financial meltdown of the late 2000s involved the collapse of a housing market filled with too many questionable mortgages, the spot also has an uncomfortable resonance. And the commercial’s vision of a world made better through a rush of consumerism sparked by widespread homebuying was also a little  ."
"Kung Fu Panda slurps noodles. An   ”  ” toddles into a living room. Kevin Hart stalks his daughter and her date to an amusement park via helicopter. Just three moments that various brands paid $5 million per 30 seconds to parade in front of Super Bowl viewers Sunday night. Victor Vardanyan, 14, isn’t having any of it. ”The commercials control your mind with sound, pictures, emotions,” he says. ”You see the people dancing in that Mountain Dew commercial, and you start thinking it’s going to refresh you. Is it true? No.” The freshman at the United Nations International School in New York City has gathered on Sunday night with a dozen other teens in the library at Khalil Gibran International Academy, a public school in Brooklyn, for the fifth annual Break the Super Bowl. The event is held by The LAMP, or Learning About Multimedia Project, a New York   nonprofit that ”empowers youth to talk back to media.” Founded in 2007, it focuses on ”teaching people to think critically about media content.” It offers programming to teens in all kinds of settings: public schools, charter schools, other community organizations, libraries. The students aren’t really here for the game the ones who are into sports say that they prefer soccer. But they all have smartphones and like to watch Netflix, and some, like Victor, are budding video editors. The LAMP’s mission is to educate young people growing up in an incredibly   world. By the most recent numbers, teenagers imbibe nearly 11 hours a day of media content, when multitasking is considered. Along with that immersion in pixels come perennial concerns about exposure to sex and sexism, violence, racism, excessive consumerism, ads for unhealthy food and alcohol. But is it possible to inoculate young people against all this digital junk food? The LAMP is trying. Staff member Alan Berry starts off the night by quizzing the students. ”Do you pay money for Facebook?” he asks. ”No? Why do you think they give it to you for free?” He’s guiding them to think about how social media is set up to profit from advertising to them, aka the coveted youth demographic. Then he shows a print ad featuring Beyonce, photographed to invoke the curves of a   bottle. ”Why are they showing Beyonce? Do you hear her singing? Do you see her dancing?” ”No,” chorus the students. ”You see somebody fine, you’re going to look!” calls out Fatii Koureichi, 15, a student at Khalil Gibran. ”They’re using her body to sell it.” Then the staffers hand out bingo cards. The students watch the big game’s top commercials, looking out for examples of ageism, racial stereotyping and other hidden messages. The prize? Ironically, free movie tickets. The other free incentives on offer also overlap with the brands they’re critiquing: Doritos, Pepsi. In a time when educators in New York City, and nationally, are focusing on exposing students to coding and software, The LAMP has an unusual take on 21st century skills. ”Not every kid is going to go into coding or media production, but they are all going to be consumers,” says Emily Long, the group’s director of communication and development. ”Everyone needs to know how to be critical consumers.” The LAMP says it’s building future Jon Stewarts, not future Steve Jobses. Did it work? Certainly the program got the students thinking about the master manipulators who create these ads. ”I was about to tear up,” at the Audi commercial, where grandpa relives his glory days as an astronaut,” avows Nazarin Nazari, 15. ”Certain commercials make me emotional. I’m serious.”"
"Forget about the conventional wisdom that female genital mutilation, or FGM, rarely takes place outside of Africa and the Middle East. Recalibrate that to 30 countries on several continents, according to a new statistical analysis by UNICEF that calculates that at least 200 million females today have undergone some form of the procedure. About 60 million of affected females come from one country: Indonesia, where about half of the girls age 11 and below have undergone the practice. Yet this is the first time that Indonesia has been included in UNICEF data. We asked Tanya Sukhija, program officer with Equality Now, an organization that supports the rights of women and girls, about FGM in Indonesia and around the world. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. In light of the high numbers in Indonesia, why wasn’t it included before?  The Population Council [a research and programmatic group] had conducted a study in Indonesia in 2003, but that is outdated. This is the first time the government collected the information. I think they are seeing a lot of international pressure to take the issue seriously. Collecting the data is a great step forward in Indonesia and around the world. What do the numbers  —   70 million more worldwide in 2016 than in 2014  —   tell us?  The data shows that this really is a huge problem and action is needed to curtail it. Beyond the 60 million added from Indonesia, the additional 10 million comes from population growth. Growing populations mean that if we do not do more to end the practice, the numbers will also grow. Is FGM ongoing in other countries not accounted for in the latest UNICEF report? There are many other places where the data is not robust. There is one particular community in India, the Dawoodi Bohra, that does practice FGM  —   but without the data we don’t know the extent. This is just one example. There have been reports in Europe, Australia, North America, South America. This is really a global issue. Does the FGM practice in Indonesia differ from elsewhere?  There are definitely variations in the way it is performed among and within countries. But regardless of the type, it is all considered female genital mutilation. It can result in being more susceptible to infections after the procedure, to obstetrical complications, pain during intercourse and childbirth and mental health consequences. What needs to be done to stop the practice?  We need laws in place anywhere that girls are affected. Law is the foundation for protection of any human rights of women and girls. In Indonesia, we are working with our partner there, Kalyanamitra calling for a clear law criminalizing FGM and also anyone who practices it. Medicalization of the procedure [allowing medical personnel to perform it] is also problematic. It lends it legitimacy. In 2010, the Indonesia government authorized medical personnel to do this. Under international pressure the [government] revoked that in 2014. The new regulation says instead that the procedure should be done with regard to the health and safety of the girl. It isn’t much better but it shows that they are making changes, even though they are not going far enough. Are there programs that have succeeded in other countries?  I would point to Kenya as an example: They have a law banning FGM, and they are also doing a lot to implement it. They have an   board, a government body charged with making sure the law is followed, and with education and raising awareness [of the issue]. They also have a special unit in their public prosecutions office to investigate and prosecute FGM cases, and prosecutors who are specially trained to pursue such cases. There are also a number of organizations in Kenya helping girls trying to escape FGM, by providing shelters, for instance, and working with local, traditional and religious leaders. People also use alternative rites of passage ceremonies, celebrating reaching puberty not with cutting but with rituals. This highlights the need for having a law as well as other mechanisms to support the law. The bottom line is that we need laws in place anywhere that girls are affected, as well as support and education. FGM is not just an African problem. This is an international issue."
"For a singer who’s sought privacy in the parking lot of a Target so he could record vocals in the backseat of his car, Will Toledo hasn’t been shy about sharing his work. By age 23, he’d already released a dozen albums. Toledo, who records under the name Car Seat Headrest, is prolific but never conventional. He performed this Tiny Desk Concert mostly solo  —   with occasional input from his nearby Leesburg, Va. friends and Seattle bandmates  —   for a set that represents only a tiny sliver of what you’ll find on a Car Seat Headrest album. Those records can be filled with rich textures, chaos and harmony, sometimes in the same few minutes. But what you’re about to discover here is a wordsmith with a vision, wrapping his faults and frailties in a DIY sound that’s still finely crafted. Teens Of Style is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List,  Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Walker, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Morgan Walker, Niki Walker, Julia Reihs Photo: Jun   For more Tiny Desk Concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The two hottest candidates heading into the New Hampshire primary Tuesday are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. On the face of it, the candidates and their messages couldn’t be more different. One is a billionaire businessman the other, a career politician who rails against billionaires. But Sanders and Trump actually have more in common than you might think. First, there are are the obvious similarities. They both have trademark hair and were raised in New York City. And then there’s the way they say ”huge”: But there’s more. Here are five ways the candidates sound similar. Trump and Sanders are both channeling anger from people who feel the American dream is no longer within reach: This message is working for both candidates, generating excitement among people, many of whom haven’t been in engaged in the political process before. They are filling concert halls and sports arenas all over the country. Among the people in those crowds, there’s a feeling that the political system is rigged, there’s so much money in politics. Sanders and Trump both speak to that in the way they’ve run their campaigns. Trump, who is funding his campaign with his own money and   contributions, decries the influence of   donors and superPACs. So does Sanders, who is funding his campaign with more than 3. 5 million individual, mostly   contributions: When it comes to policy, there are huge differences on taxes, immigration and social issues. But there are also times when these two candidates may as well be speaking from the same script: On a handful of key issues that affect the economic security of working families, the similarities are striking. Take trade, for example: And while many Republicans talk about privatizing Social Security, and some Democrats have looked at changing the way cost of living is adjusted, Sanders and Trump like it just the way it is or want to make Social Security even more generous. All these issues where Trump and Sanders overlap speak to the insecurity Americans feel about their futures and their disgust with the current system. Of course, there’s one more thing Trump and Sanders have in common  —   both say they would love to meet on the ballot in November."
"Egyptian President     rolled up with his motorcade over a massive red carpet to the opening of a social housing project, sparking outrage about apparent wastefulness in a country suffering from high levels of poverty. According to local media reports, the red carpet was rolled out in 6th of October City, a suburb of Egypt’s capital Cairo. Egyptian media, which is largely supportive of the president, was unusually critical of the entrance. ”What is this?” says talk show host Youssef Hosseini, sounding shocked. ”It’s not the responsibility of Sissi  —   the red carpet  —   but who was the one responsible? . .. Why did they do it and on what basis?” You can see the scale of the massive red carpet starting at 0:38 of this video from Hosseini’s show on the independent,   ONTV channel. The carpet weaves through the suburb’s streets and even appears to wrap through a sporting club. At a time when Sissi’s human rights record is under fire, his use of the red carpet drew uncomfortable comparisons to prominent dictators. ”The Sultan [of Brunei] doesn’t even drive in a car on a red carpet,” Hosseini says, suggesting that buying blankets for the poor would be a better use for this money. And in a cartoon by Andeel on the independent news website Mada Masr, a speech bubble from under a red carpet saying ”At least we are not like Syria and I. ..,” which abruptly stops as a car rolls over it. Since he came to power in 2014, the former military leader has staked his reputation on reforming Egypt’s ailing economy, which was   by years of unrest following the ouster of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011. More than 1 in 4 Egyptians lives below the poverty line, according to government figures. Quickly after taking office, Sissi slashed Egypt’s bloated fuel subsidy system  —   a move that economists said was necessary but that previous leaders had been either unable or unwilling to do. Sissi’s flashy entrance on Saturday stood in stark contrast to his remarks at the inauguration ceremony  —   in which he called for Egyptians to ”contribute to combating ongoing challenges through rationalizing consumption rates,” according to a statement from his office. He ”noted the importance of raising the citizens’ awareness of the challenges that the state faces as well as of the cost of services they are offered, which exceeds the value of what they pay for.” Sissi also suggested that the state may need to make cuts to its funding for clean water, The Associated Press reports. ”He said the state spends around 40 million pounds ($5. 1 million) a day to provide clean water, with only part of the cost passed on to consumers. ” ’One (cubic) meter of water that reaches you costs me this much, and you are taking it by that much, and the state is unable to continue this way,’   said in a televised conference.” The news service says Brig. Gen. Ehab   appeared on several talk shows following widespread criticism about the red carpet, saying ”that the carpet was not purchased by  ’s administration and had been used for more than three years on similar occasions.”"
"Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg may have taken an extended paternity leave after the birth of his daughter, but generally, American men do not take more than a few days.   percent of American men are back to work within two weeks of a baby’s birth. ”There might be some stigma attached,” says Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. ” ’What if I take paternity leave, will I not get the next promotion? Or will people think I’m not as connected to the workplace? Am I kind of signaling that I don’t care about work enough?’ ” Dahl studied leave policies in Norway, where a generation ago men took long paternity leave at the same rate as American men. Then, in 1993, Norway changed the law. After every birth, working parents still got eight months of paid leave to split among themselves, but four weeks were added just for dad.  ”Overnight, paternity leave   went from about 3 percent to 35 percent of fathers,” Dahl says.  It was a nice boost, mostly among men working union and government jobs. What puzzled Dahl was the change that he saw over the next two decades. ”This is where the story gets more interesting, because over time, it gradually crept up to about 70 percent of fathers taking leave,” Dahl says. He found the secret was seeing a dad come back to his job, especially in the private sector, without any problems. ”If you had a   take leave, then you’re 11 percentage points more likely to take leave yourself when you have your child. If you have a brother who took leave, you’re 15 percentage points more likely to take leave,” Dahl says. ”These are not small effects. These are big increases in how many people are willing to take leave.” Something similar may be brewing in California, where paid leave has been available to working parents since 2004. Consider Facebook. A combination of factors is tipping the culture there toward men actually taking their paternity leave. Tom Stocky, a vice president, had a daughter in 2012 and took the full four months that Facebook offers new parents. ”Most of my friends were really surprised and had a lot of questions about what happened when you were away, and what did the rest of your team do, and things like that,” Stocky says. Three years later, Stocky believes the leave he took is having a big impact. The men he manages are much more likely to inquire about and take a long leave. ”I probably meet with a new dad every month or two. And it seems like there’s kind of a peer group now that is encouraging and supporting each other, and more people are taking it now as a result,” Stocky says. Among them is Tom Whitnah, an engineering manager at Facebook. ”I saw Tom Stocky taking his leave right as I joined the search team, and it just was really clear that it was something that he thought was really important,” Whitnah says.  Whitnah’s two kids arrived 17 months apart, and he took full leave with each one. ”I had just become a new manager, and I felt like I wasn’t sure how a team goes without their manager for one or for three months, and he made it really clear this is something that we accommodate. Just made me feel so much less nervous,” he says.  The number of California dads taking a break from work to spend time with a new child is beginning to pick up. Seventeen percent of men in California took leave the first year it was offered 26 percent did five years later. Stocky is now taking another long parental leave. He begins three months of caring full time for his son, at the same time that his boss, Mark Zuckerberg, comes back to work from paternity leave. Does what happens at Facebook have anything to do with the rest of the country? Maybe. But if there’s one thing that the folks at Facebook understand, it’s the power of friends."
"At 46 years old, Oliver Bogler’s reaction to a suspicious lump in his chest might seem typical for a man. He ignored it for three to four months, maybe longer. ”I couldn’t really imagine I would have this disease,” Bogler says. But when he finally ”grew up” and went to the doctor, he was pretty quickly diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. Now what’s interesting here is that Bogler is a cancer biologist who regularly works with cancer cells, as senior vice president of academic affairs at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Even so, he figured the lump was a benign swelling of breast tissue. He had good reason to think so. Breast cancer is rare among men. Only 1 percent of all breast cancer cases are in men. Still, that means about 2, 600 men receive a diagnosis of breast cancer every year. But men typically don’t think they are at risk, says Dr. Sharon Giordano, an oncologist who also works at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. ”Men don’t think of themselves as having breasts,” Giordano says. ”They don’t realize that all men have some residual breast tissue.” So it’s not unusual to see male patients like Bogler who come to her with more advanced breast cancer than the typical female patient. This could be one reason why men have a lower life expectancy after a breast cancer diagnosis. According to a study published in 2012, in the Annals of Surgical Oncology, men with early breast cancer had a 74 percent survival rate five years after their diagnosis compared to women, whose survival rate was 83 percent. And men not only can get breast cancer, they can also inherit the BRCA1 and 2 genetic mutations that place them at greater risk. Like women, they can pass that mutation on to their children, who have a 50 percent chance of inheriting a parent’s mutation. Once men are diagnosed, their treatment is pretty much the same as it is for women  —   typically surgery to remove the cancer followed by chemotherapy, radiation and hormone suppressing medication like tamoxifen. That was the case for Bogler, but with one big difference  —   he had a mastectomy. Most women choose lumpectomies followed by radiation. This is often not an option for men, Giordano says, because their tumors are most commonly right behind the nipple, where there’s not a lot of breast tissue to remove. Unlike women, most men don’t have reconstructive surgery. That’s probably because they don’t even know it’s an option, says Giordano. A lot of male patients would probably be interested in having nipple reconstructive surgery, Giordano says, ”So when they are out swimming, or playing basketball and have their shirt off, the surgical changes aren’t quite so obvious.” And because breast cancer is so much more common among women, men with the disease can experience something of a ”gender misfit.” Bogler wrote about his experience in a personal blog he called Entering a World of Pink. Breast cancer clinics are often decorated in lots of pink, and support systems are designed with women in mind. Giordano recalls one male patient who, after a biopsy, was given a pink floral ice pack that came with instructions to ”place it inside your bra.” When Edward Smith was diagnosed about four years ago, he went online to look for information and emotional support. The first couple of chat rooms he joined were not helpful, he says, when the participants found out he was a man. ”They weren’t outright nasty or anything, but you could just feel that they were pulling back in terms of the conversation that was going on at the time,” he says. Eventually Smith found a site that was welcoming  —   Living Beyond Breast Cancer. The women in this group were helpful, compassionate and willing to talk, Smith says. This was important because he was feeling a bit uncomfortable at work. Colleagues were just ”stupefied,” he says, ”because most people have never encountered a male who had breast cancer.” The website recently published a guide for men, which Smith found particularly helpful. The medical information isn’t so different from women, says Jean Sachs, executive director of Living Beyond Breast Cancer, but the experience is very different. ”It’s hard to get men to talk about it,” she says. The guide provides a list of men, including Smith, who are willing to talk to other men about their experience. It’s also important, Sachs says, for men who test positive for the BRACA genetic mutations to understand that they can pass those mutations on to their children, which may encourage newly diagnosed patients to get tested. The lack of awareness, even among doctors, oncologist Giordano says, means less money for needed research to figure out how breast cancer in men differs from women especially when it comes to life saving treatment. Treatments for men are based on evidence from research trials with women. Giordano’s now heading up research to better understand the biology of the disease in men and to try to figure out the most effective hormone therapy for men with breast cancer."
"Comedy and race will meet   at this year’s Academy Awards on Feb. 28. Amid calls to boycott the Oscars over its lack of diversity, the host is one of today’s most provocative black comedians. You can just feel the audacious Chris Rock rubbing his hands together in excitement. The first time Rock hosted the Oscars, in 2005, there were four black nominees. Rock called it ”kind of like the Def Oscar Jam.” But even then, he noted complaints that ”Hollywood is out of touch with the rest of the country.” To prove just how much, Rock went to the Magic Johnson Theaters in Los Angeles to see if he could find any black moviegoers who’d seen any of that year’s   films. In an amusing, revelatory segment that aired during the telecast, none had. One of Rock’s writers for that year’s Academy Awards, Ali LeRoi, says, ”That audience wasn’t aware of most of the Oscar . .. films that were being held in high esteem.” LeRoi has worked with Chris Rock for years. He and Rock   the TV show Everybody Hates Chris, which ran from 2005 to 2009. LeRoi expects Rock will return fully loaded at this year’s ceremony. Even though Rock signed on long before the nominations were announced, LeRoi says the controversy makes him an even better choice. ”If this was Neil Patrick Harris,” he says, ”it would be two minutes of ’   ’ jokes. But everybody’s going, ’Oh my God, it’s Chris Rock. What’s he gonna do? ’” LeRoi says Rock has ”extra weight to come in and be the guy that can say anything that nobody else can say.” For any awards show emcee, prodding the stars is a big part of the job. When Rock hosted the BET Awards in 2014, The Butler was one of the nominees. He joked that Oprah Winfrey should’ve received an Oscar for her performance as the White House butler’s wife. ”That acting job was amazing,” he enthused, ”’cause she had to act like she was poor.” The topic of race can be a minefield. For Rock, it’s a deep well of material for some of his most piercing jokes. At the BET Awards, he joked that the ”real reason” the TV series Scandal was a hit was because ”every Thursday at 10 o’clock, there’s a white president. White people get to tune in and feel good. Like, for one hour, it’s back to normal.” Robin Thede, a writer for The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, was on Rock’s writing team for that BET telecast. She says his writers’ room is always interesting. ”He always brings together the most amazing groups of comedians. He loves getting voices from all walks of life,” says Thede. If Thede were on Rock’s writing staff for the Oscars, she knows exactly what she’d want him to do. ”I would love to see him just bring out every actor who should have been nominated and wasn’t,” she says. ”All the actors from Straight Outta Compton, F. Gary Gray, Ice Cube . ..” Even though Viola Davis was doing TV last year, bring her out, too, says Thede. ”Who cares? Just bring them out. Sit them on stage and make the audience stare at them.” The optics would force the audience to face the fact that the Oscars are, indeed, really white this year. All 20 of the actors nominated for leading and supporting roles are white. Even the single nominations for Creed and Straight Outta Compton went to white people (Creed’s Sylvester Stallone for Supporting Actor and the writers of Compton for Original Screenplay). But for all of the outrage, there’s at least one person who is not thrilled with calls for a boycott over diversity. Sterlin Harjo, a filmmaker and member of the Native American comedy group the 1491s, says it’s a big deal that best picture nominee The Revenant cast Native performers. ”We have to wait like once every 20 years to even end up at the Oscar dinner table. We’re usually not even invited to the party,” says Harjo. ”And here we are. We have our adopted brother, Leo DiCaprio, is about to get an Oscar for a film that had Native people in it, actually speaking Native languages, and now there’s a call for boycott. Come on. Just give us this one.” If The Revenant does win an Oscar, Harjo believes it’ll be an opportunity for whoever accepts the award to speak out, as DiCaprio did accepting his Golden Globe. At the end of his speech, DiCaprio said he wanted to ”share the award with all the First Nations people represented in this film. And all the indigenous communities around the world.” DiCaprio continued, ”It’s time that we heard your voice and protected this planet for future generations.” Whether DiCaprio gets to repeat the performance on Feb. 28 is up to the voters in the Academy. But Chris Rock’s presence on stage is a given. And as he’s shown so many times before, he’s not one to squander an opportunity to talk about race. ”Racism everywhere. Everybody pissed off. Black people yelling ’Racism.’ White people yelling ’Reverse racism,’” Rock clamored in his 1999 comedy special Bigger and Blacker. ”So everybody bitch about how bad their people got it. Nobody got it worse than the American Indian. Everybody need to calm the f —    down. Indians got it bad. Indians got it the worst.” What Chris Rock does on Oscar night might turn out to be more exciting than who wins."
"Who will drop out after losing in New Hampshire? Possibly no one. (On to South Carolina! This race is still wide open! We can win this thing!) We’ll consider the real reasons to stick around in a moment. But for several candidates, whether they make it official or not, the Granite State will be the rock on which their ships ran aground. Their campaigns may stagger on into a zombie phase, but it will not affect the outcome of further proceedings. On the Democratic side, both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton will continue on to the Nevada caucuses of Feb. 20, regardless of the outcome or the margins in New Hampshire. Sanders and Clinton will meet in Milwaukee for a debate on PBS Thursday night. Their erstwhile third wheel, Martin O’Malley, already suspended his bid after the Iowa caucuses, and two other long shots (Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee) quit last year. The reaper is nearer in the Republican field. The end of the dream may come for any of six candidates who desperately need at least a respectable finish in New Hampshire. That is a hefty majority of the nine remaining Republican candidates who have appeared in at least one of the   televised debates. For those Republicans who qualify for Saturday night’s debate in South Carolina (which will air on CBS News) there is always a chance of turning things around in that state’s vote on the following Saturday. In any event, there is a chance of being seen one more time. (If that is not enough incentive to stay in, candidates facing the prospect of campaign debt know they can raise money more readily while still running than after they strike the tent.) Not everyone may make it onto the CBS stage, of course, and some might scarcely be missed. Jim Gilmore, the former Virginia governor, has been in and out of the TV debates, and his campaign appearances have been limited. Having barely registered in Iowa, he has had little visibility in New Hampshire. He may think this will change south of the   Line, but evidence for this is scant at best. Gilmore is more likely to join the ranks of Republicans who hung it up after Iowa: Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul. (It is worth remembering, too, that Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki all dropped out back in 2015.) But several other contenders who have been far more important to the real discussion may also be seeing the checkered flag signaling their final lap. Carly Fiorina, the firebrand former corporate executive, flirted with   status in the early going and battled her way onto the main stage of the debates. But her    claims about Planned Parenthood, never substantiated, tied her to an issue that was losing altitude by the month. Fiorina tried to compensate with increasingly personal attacks on Hillary Clinton. Surefire applause lines in the debates, these sorties did not reverse her decline in the polls. She was excluded from the ABC debate the weekend before New Hampshire, and she is not expected to rise above single digits in Tuesday’s vote. Ben Carson, the pediatric neurosurgeon, has also been losing ground in recent weeks. His share of time in the debates has dwindled as his poll numbers have drifted downward, generally since the Paris attacks on Nov. 13 shifted the issue mix to emphasize national security. In the last debate, Carson had less camera time than anyone on stage, less than half as much as the leaders. He also suffered some embarrassment when he could not hear his name called and failed to come on stage when introduced. The famous physician from Baltimore may look past a poor showing here to pin his hopes on South Carolina. Or he may bow to what looks inevitable. Chris Christie has been a major factor in New Hampshire, and it will be ironic if he fails to reach double digits or finishes below the top five in New Hampshire. Christie had his best debate of the whole   season last Saturday night, skewering rival Marco Rubio as a robotic speechmaker who had never made any real executive decisions. If Rubio’s rapid rise hits an air pocket in New Hampshire, it will be because of that    strike from former prosecutor Christie. But it is entirely possible the benefit of that will go to other candidates, such as John Kasich or Jeb Bush, who had been polling closer to Rubio than Christie. Christie worked this state more than any other. He won the endorsement of the Manchester Union Leader and other   but relatively little support in the polls. Without a competitive finish here in the north, it is hard to see how he revives his fortunes in the less friendly confines of the first Southern primary. Gilmore, Fiorina, Carson and Christie all seem to be ”on the bubble” as the actual primary voting begins. But there also exists the possibility that one or two other Republicans will hit a pot hole at just the wrong time. John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, has campaigned in the Granite State as much as or more than any other 2016 hopeful. He has clearly found an audience here, and he has won some editorial backing as well. Late polls showed him making a move. If he were the only option aside from Donald Trump or Ted Cruz  —   or even aside from Trump, Cruz and Rubio  —   Kasich might well be in the sweet spot. But he is splitting that ”mainstream Republican” role with several others, including two other relatively pragmatic governor types from the Eastern seaboard. Kasich may do well enough to stake a strong claim on the vice presidential nod. If he does not do well, such as in challenging for second place, New Hampshire may well be the end of his formal campaign for the top spot on the ticket. Jeb Bush might once have expected to have this day be a blazing victory, compensating for a lackluster showing in Iowa. But his finish in Iowa was less than lackluster, and his prospects here, while better, are far from blazing. As the scion of America’s   Republican dynasty, Bush’s realistic hopes of the Oval Office will not survive a second setback. A loss seems inevitable, but the actual percentage and place in the finishing order will matter a great deal. The first President Bush won here in 1988 and 1992, but the latter year saw him share the primary vote with his upstart   challenger, Pat Buchanan. The second President Bush was embarrassed here in 2000, losing to Sen. John McCain by 20 points. But the other ”Bush Boys” moved on in every case to a solid win in South Carolina, thus setting a sure course to the nomination. A win in South Carolina now seems well out of reach for Jeb Bush, who is not polling in the top three there. The last several days have been a kind of family reunion for the Bush clan in New Hampshire.  Bush has had his mother and brother here to campaign for him. The Bushes have also welcomed many veterans of previous Bush administrations as   sensible surrogates. Older, more traditional New England conservatives may still feel more comfortable with a Bush than with Trump or the Tea Party heroes of the new Republican wave. But that alone may not be enough to lift Bush much past New Hampshire’s threshold of 10 percent. Bush has vowed to press on to South Carolina regardless of the results here. But one has to wonder if this vow will hold if he fails to crack the top three or four in New Hampshire. Rumors have swirled of a reassessment coming after today’s results are in. Trailing as he has in South Carolina, it is not clear where Bush would get his candidacy back on track before the Florida primary on March 15. And even that home field advantage may not be enough against whichever candidate is leading at that time, especially if it turns out to be Rubio, the Florida senator who was once regarded as Bush’s protégé."
"New Hampshire voters go to the polls Tuesday, and they will resolve a lot of questions. Here are four things the     primary will tell us: 1. How much damage did the last debate do to Marco Rubio? Rubio came into New Hampshire with a head of steam. He quickly moved into second place in the polls, and there was even some hope he could overtake Donald Trump in the Granite State. But then, the needle got stuck on his talking points in the ABC debate on Saturday, earning him the worst reviews of his  —   until now  —   charmed presidential run. Eager to dispel the perception that he’s ”a broken record in an empty suit,” Rubio’s campaign has been denying the debate was a disaster  —   and lowering expectations. In an interview with NBC on Monday, Rubio seemed to be giving up on his hope of becoming the clear establishment alternative to Trump and Cruz after New Hampshire, saying the race was going to go for a while longer. Few tracking polls were in the field after Saturday’s debate, so it’s hard to measure whether Rubio’s shaky performance hurt him with voters. We’ll find out tonight. 2. Does Donald trump need a ground game? He certainly did in Iowa, where his lead disappeared at the end. Trump has said he wasn’t even familiar with the term ”ground game,” but has now invested more in     infrastructure in New Hampshire. Still, he is relying most on his own popularity  —   he’s called himself ”the product”  —   and his commanding lead in the polls. No poll has shown Trump’s big lead in New Hampshire sliding, but New Hampshire voters are famous for making fools of pollsters  —   and  . 3. How badly wounded is Hillary Clinton? Clinton expects to lose to Bernie Sanders. Tomorrow’s results will tell us by how much. Margins matter. Her minuscule victory in Iowa gave her no momentum at all in New Hampshire. So a big,   win for Sanders would give him a huge boost heading into next week’s Nevada caucuses, where the Clinton campaign is hoping its   ”firewall” is still strong. If she can close the gap in New Hampshire  —   even by a little  —   and hold Sanders’ lead to single digits, she will be able to boast that she pulled off a little bit of yet another Clinton comeback. 4. How much (or how little) will the GOP field shrink? Before Saturday’s debate, many people were expecting the GOP field   Hampshire to be a   race  —   Trump, Ted Cruz and Rubio. But if one or more of the governors place in the top three, or even four, they may refuse to drop out until after South Carolina. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey’s Chris Christie all say they are going on to South Carolina, but if they don’t place in the top tier, their fundraising will evaporate, and there will be tremendous pressure on them to get out. New Hampshire voters could decide how big the GOP field is going forward."
"Before Zika swept across most of Latin America and the Caribbean, the largest outbreak ever recorded had been in French Polynesia. Between 2013 and early 2014, researchers estimate nearly 20, 000 people on the cluster of islands in the South Pacific were infected with the virus. French Polynesia’s brush with Zika underscores fears that the   virus could cause devastating neurological problems but it also offers insights into the disease  —   and hope that Zika can be contained. Dr.     at the Institut Louis Malarde on the island of Tahiti says in 2013 it seemed like this nation of 270, 000 people was getting hit with a dengue outbreak. But something didn’t make sense. ”You know, Tahiti is a small island,”   says. ”So in the lab we had relatives, family and friends who were getting sick who we know had already had dengue several times.” Once you’ve had dengue, it’s unlikely that you’ll get a mild form of it again. But that’s what seemed to be happening. ”We were suspicious of this being dengue because all these people already had dengue.”   and her colleagues at the Institut Louis Malarde, the government infectious disease lab, happened to be part of a program to monitor for   viruses in the Pacific. While Zika had never been detected in French Polynesia before, there had been an outbreak 5, 000 miles to the west on Yap Island. In 2007,   of the roughly 7, 000 residents got infected with the virus. Because of that Yap outbreak Institut Louis Malarde was already set up to test for Zika and, sure enough, Zika was running rampant in Tahiti. ”Then it spread very quickly. Very quickly we had reports of Zika virus infection occurring all across the islands of French Polynesia,” says  . But it was difficult at times to diagnose. Doctors found that the levels of Zika virus in people’s blood dropped off quickly even while the patients were still sick. ”So you do not see the virus in blood and what we started to do is looking for Zika virus in saliva,” says Dr.  . ”Using saliva we were able to confirm a lot of Zika virus infections.” They were only testing for the presence of the virus. She says it’s not clear whether the virus they were finding in saliva was capable of reproducing or being spread to other people. In addition to   fever, rash and body aches, the French Polynesian doctors noticed another symptom that could be linked to Zika and that hasn’t been reported elsewhere: mouth ulcers. ”A lot of people were complaining about mouth ulcers,” she says. And then about five weeks after the Zika outbreak started, doctors in Tahiti started seeing a rise in cases of   syndrome  —   a neurological condition that can cause temporary paralysis. During the   Zika outbreak the number of   cases in French Polynesia jumped from an average of two a year to 42. The possible link between the Zika virus and birth defects only emerged last year after health officials in Brazil reported hundreds of thousands of Zika cases. Those reports out of Brazil prompted researchers in French Polynesia to do a retrospective investigation to search for congenital abnormalities that may have been caused by the virus.   says they found a disturbingly high number of birth defects. ”We had 17 cases of the central nervous system malformations in either fetuses [examined after a miscarriage] or babies from mothers who had been exposed to Zika during the outbreak.” She says those cases are still being investigated. The birth defects may have been caused by something else. They still don’t know. The good news is that as quickly as Zika arrived, it seemed to disappear. There hasn’t been a laboratory confirmed case in French Polynesia since April of 2014. But Zika might still be circulating,   says. Perhaps it isn’t making people so sick that they show up at the doctor, she says. And at the moment, another virus is getting the island’s attention. The archipelago got slammed with a chikungunya outbreak right after the Zika outbreak, and researchers have been consumed with that ever since."
"Summarizing his annual assessment of the threats facing the United States, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ”unpredictable instability has become the new normal.” That’s a trend that will continue, he said. Clapper’s testimony Tuesday covered a wide array of threats, from cybersecurity to drugs to the Islamic State to space. At one point during the hearing, Clapper referred to this year’s report as a ”litany of doom.” ”Violent extremists are operationally active in about 40 countries seven countries are experiencing a collapse of central government authority 14 others face   or violent instability or both another 59 countries face a significant risk of instability through 2016,” he told the Senate panel. Here are some of the highlights, by topic: In this year’s full report, Clapper wrote that ”homegrown violent extremists” will very likely pose ”the most significant Sunni terrorist threat to the US homeland in 2016.” This is likely to be confined to people inspired by the militant group rather than people with direct guidance from its leaders. At Tuesday’s hearing, Clapper described ISIL as ”the   global terrorist threat,” adding that the group’s ”estimated strength worldwide exceeds that of  .” He told the panel that ”in 2014, the FBI arrested nine ISIL supporters  —   in 2015, that number increased over  .” The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, who was also testifying, said, ”ISIL will probably attempt to conduct additional attacks in Europe and attempt to direct attacks on the U. S. homeland in 2016.” In the Middle East, Stewart said that ”in 2016, the growing number of   forces and the emerging resource shortfalls will probably challenge ISIL’s ability to govern in Iraq and Syria.” However, he noted that the group will very likely maintain control of the Sunni Arab urban centers it currently occupies. Both Clapper and Stewart described increasing competition in space, especially from Russia and China. ”About 80 countries are now engaged in the space domain,” Clapper said. ”Russia and China understand how our military fights and how heavily we rely on space.” Stewart went further: ”China and Russia increasingly recognize the strategic value of space and are focused on diminishing our advantage with the intent of denying the U. S. the use of space in the event of conflict. Both countries are conducting   research and developing   weapons, making the space domain increasingly competitive, contested, and congested.” Clapper’s annual report states that the more aggressive push from Russia and China may threaten U. S. use of ”military, civil, and commercial space systems.” Heroin seizures at the Southern U. S. border ”have doubled since 2010,” Clapper said. Here’s more: ”Over 10, 000 people died of heroin overdoses in 2014, much of it laced with fentanyl, which is 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin. In that same year, more than 20, 000 died from opioid overdoses. And cocaine production in Colombia, where most U. S. supply originates, has increased significantly.” Following last month’s Implementation Day milestone, Clapper testified that the U. S. intelligence community is in a ”distrust and verify mode” to ensure that Iran complies with the nuclear deal. ”There are half a dozen or so ambiguities  —   maybe others  —   but certainly half a dozen or so ambiguities in the agreement that we have identified and we’re going to be very vigilant about reining in compliance,” he said. Later in the hearing, Clapper added, ”We have no evidence thus far that they’re moving towards a violation.” Increasing use of ”smart” devices and artificial intelligence has major implications for security, Clapper said both in testimony and in the annual report. While the benefits are clear, the report states that ”devices, designed and fielded with minimal security requirements and testing, and an   complexity of networks could lead to widespread vulnerabilities in civilian infrastructure and US Government systems.” State and   actors are trying to take advantage of any vulnerabilities, he told the Senate panel. Here’s more from Clapper: ”The threat from foreign intelligence entities, both state and   is persistent, complex and evolving. Targeting a collection of U. S. political, military, economic and technical information by foreign intelligence services continues unabated. Russia and China pose the greatest threat, followed by Iran and Cuba on a lesser scale.” When asked by Arizona Sen. John McCain about whether he had ever seen such diverse challenges to security, Clapper replied, ”It’s kind of a cliche, but it’s actually true  —   in my   years in the intelligence business, I cannot recall a more diverse array of challenges and crises that we confront as we do today.”"
"When the video dropped on Saturday, we galvanized. Cleared our schedules, watched on repeat till our eyes turned red. Got into screaming matches with loved ones about what kind of hot sauce belongs in a #swagbag. Even made preemptive Valentine’s Day reservations at Red Lobster, because you never know. Then came Sunday’s performance. You thought the Broncos won the Super Bowl? Not so much. Beyoncé stepped onto the field and annihilated, and we were all left in the wreckage, paper fans limply hanging from our wrists, trying to make sense of it all. Now it’s Day 3 of this  ”Formation” world, and it’s time to dust ourselves off, sort through the emotional rubble, and begin the rebuilding process. We’ve fired up Tweetdeck, blinked to let our eyes readjust, and stepped gingerly into the information phase. It’s time for links. To begin with, we wanted to better understand why this video feels so important. What is it, precisely, that makes these visuals so compelling, so urgent, so politically now? We came across a fabulous essay from Zandaria Robinson of New South Negress that helps set the scene: ”Bodies are quiet, awaiting animation, and then they pulsate, loudly: in parking lots, in drained swimming pools, in streets, atop horses, in front of a police line, in a church, in a second line, in a parlor, in mirrors. Beyoncé places her own reckless, country blackness  —   one of afros, cornrows, and negro noses, brown liquor and brown girls, hot sauce, and of brown boys and cheddar bay biscuits  —   in conversation with and as descended from a broader southern blackness that is frequently obscured and unseen in national discourses, save for as (dying, lynched, grotesque, excessive) spectacle. Through this reckless country blackness, she becomes every black southern woman possible for her to reasonably inhabit, moving through time, class, and space.” The video itself would have been enough, but seeing Beyoncé and her crew perform the unapologetic black anthem at the Super Bowl was something else entirely. In a way, we marveled at her ability to get away with it. Carrie Battan of The New Yorker had some insight: ”[Beyoncé] did not dilute ”Formation” like she could have, belting some of its most forceful lines with glee: ”My daddy Alabama   Mama Louisiana   You mix that Negro with that Creole, make a Texas BAMA!” And yet the performance didn’t feel purely like an act of subversion. Part of Beyoncé’s gift  —   and what has been necessary for her total dominance in the mainstream  —   is her ability to float provocative themes on giant platforms while retaining her megawatt   appeal. This is a political song, yes. Beyoncé’s backup dancers were sporting outfits that made reference to the Black Panthers. But it was performed with such showmanship that I’m sure many American   viewers, those who were not paying obsessive attention to the ”Formation” video, were none the wiser.” The timing of the debut was obviously no accident, but it wasn’t just about the Super Bowl. Writer and filmmaker dream hampton explains in an interview with NPR’s Mandalit del Barco: ”[Beyonce] dropped [”Formation”] very intentionally on a weekend that means something to the current movement. It is, of course, Black History Month, February, but that was Trayvon Martin’s birthday, and the day before Sandra Bland’s [birthday]. I mean, this is a generation that was kind of woke up by the Trayvon Martin killing, in terms of activism, in terms of being kind of nudged out of their   slumber. And I think it was really significant that she dropped the video on Trayvon’s day.” We were feeling pretty good about all this, when some disturbing comments made their way into our newsfeeds. Apparently, some people weren’t all that pleased with ”Formation.” They thought it was too combative, too political, too black. Folks on Twitter called Beyoncé racist for not including white backup dancers in her Super Bowl lineup. Rep. Pete King, a Republican congressman from New York, got in line, citing the video’s depictions of police in riot gear and the outfits on display at the Super Bowl: ”Beyoncé may be a gifted entertainer but no one should really care what she thinks about any serious issue confronting our nation. But the mainstream media’s acceptance of her   Panther and   video ”Formation” and her Super Bowl appearance is just one more example of how acceptable it has become to be   when it is the men and women in blue who put their lives on the line for all of us and deserve our strong support.” Bitter Gertrude blogger Melissa Hillman had a powerful response to this line of thinking in a post titled White People: Shut Up About Beyoncé: ”In this cultural moment where powerful, mainstream Black artists like Beyoncé are telling their stories on their own terms, the white people who controlled the narrative  —   including how and when Black stories have been told  —   for the past 400 years need to sit back, shut up, and listen, listen, listen. You don’t like how white people are being portrayed? Spend some time thinking about why Black artists are portraying white people that way instead of demanding they adjust their stories to conform to your   as ”the good guy.” We are not the heroes in these stories. We are not the intended audience. We are irrelevant, and there’s nothing people in power hate more than to be made irrelevant, but the fact remains that these are Black stories, by, for, and about Black people. You don’t like it? Don’t watch. But I recommend that you do, and give it some real thought. This is their truth. You do not get to dictate how Black artists see or portray their own lives.” We would be remiss not to place ”Formation” within the larger conversations about Beyoncé, and her music, in recent days. Janell Hobson of Ms. Magazine reminds us that just days ago, many of us were calling out Beyoncé for cultural appropriation in her Coldplay collaboration ”Hymn for the Weekend.” Where does that fit in? ”It would be a mistake to view ”Formation” as somehow more authentic than her performance as a Bollywood star in the recent video for Coldplay’s   ”Hymn for the Weekend.” Accusations of cultural appropriation tend to be superficial since they do not capture the nuances, complexities and messiness of how art encounters, collapses and syncretizes the cultural differences that confront a multiracial world. Not to mention how, in ”Formation,” Beyoncé suggests that blackness is itself performative, as represented by Mardi Gras costumes on display. There are layers to masking and unmasking. However, in a year that has witnessed #OscarsSoWhite, in which actors, screenwriters and filmmakers of color are often ignored or whose stories are whitewashed, the question of who has access to larger cultural platforms matters. The local artists featured in Beyoncé’s new video could not reach the Super Bowl audience without her intervention. And in a world that continues to decry women’s power or black power, being able to boldly claim ”I slay” is a radical form of resistance. Even more radical is her willingness to move towards an old    tradition of ”lifting as we climb”: ”Now we gon’ slay.” Beyoncé may have traveled the world and tried on different costumes of appropriation, but here in this moment, she has come back ”home” to conjure up some magic in reclaiming all black souls and all black lives.” And at the end of the day, we’re all in on this meditation by Marquita Harris at Refinery 29, who sums up why Beyoncé’s performance is such a source of awe, even for people who might not like it: ”Beyoncé’s cocky, unabashed declaration of   in her music is not to be taken lightly. Love her or hate her, in an environment that constantly tells women what they can and cannot do, how they should and shouldn’t act, seeing one of our own beat the odds  —   over and over and over  —   is forever inspiring. And actually seeing a Black woman peacock for the world? It’s beyond inspiring.” Still have questions after reading through all of this? Feel free to watch the video a few hundred more times. It’s not going anywhere:"
"By more than a   ratio, lawmakers in West Virginia’s House of Delegates have approved a bill that would allow gun owners to carry concealed handguns without a permit. The only   permits would be for people who are   years old. Urging her colleagues to approve the bill, its    sponsor, Delegate Saira Blair, said that while she was frightened by death threats she had received, she would feel more secure knowing she could protect herself. Both chambers of West Virginia’s Legislature approved a similar measure last year, but it was vetoed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who cited concerns raised by law enforcement officers. On Monday, Tomblin, a Democrat who’s not eligible to run for   this fall because of term limits, said via Twitter that he will ”veto any concealed carry bill that does not take into consideration the concerns of law enforcement for the safety of our officers.” Blair, a Republican who at 19 is the youngest member of the House, was the lead sponsor of the bill, which was approved in a   vote. Here’s part of her speech to the Legislature, as quoted by West Virginia Public Broadcasting: ”I’m the only person standing in this chamber in the 18 to 21 year old age period. I can currently not get a permit to carry, and I’ll tell you right now, I am scared. I’ve received multiple death threats in the past year. I am scared. I’m not going to stop what I do on a daily basis I’m not going to stop going to the mall, I’m not going to stop going to the movies, and I’m not going to stop going to church because of it, but I would feel safer as a law abiding citizen if I knew that I was able to protect myself.” The bill raised safety concerns for other delegates, who offered amendments that would have: maintained training requirements reserved   only for state residents toughened penalties for breaking gun laws and required casualty insurance for those carrying concealed guns. All of those measures were turned away. The bill passed after hours of debate in the final tally, more than 10 members of each party broke ranks to vote with the other side. Much of the debate was over the 12 amendments that were put forth the sole change that was adopted guarantees a tax credit for any permit costs. Delegates approved the bill despite a recent poll that found ”84 percent of likely state voters and 87 percent of gun owners support or strongly support the existing law requiring a state permit and gun safety training to carry concealed firearms,” according to the Charleston  . That poll was commissioned by Everytown for Gun Safety and the West Virginia chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the newspaper says, adding that one of the bill’s supporters, Delegate Patrick Lane, responded to the poll results by saying, ”The whole point of the Bill of Rights is to protect the minority from the majority.” If the bill were to pass, West Virginia would join a handful of states  —   such as Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Montana, Wyoming and Vermont  —   where gun owners don’t need a special permit to carry concealed weapons in most or all areas of the state. Kansas is the most recent member of that group, having enacted a   law last year. Utah is considering a bill similar to the one in West Virginia’s Legislature, according to the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action in Virginia, the   Senate narrowly rejected its own version of the bill last week. After passage, West Virginia’s bill was sent to the Senate, where it was introduced Tuesday and referred to the Judiciary Committee."
"There’s never a shortage of questions about the twists and turns of health coverage. Here are answers to recent questions from readers about premium tax credit repayments for marketplace plans,    emergency care and nursing home bills. While doing my taxes I discovered that I made more money in 2015 than I anticipated. I was forced to take money out of my 401( k) to make ends meet during the year and that raised my income level. Now I face having to pay back $1, 500 for premium tax credits I received to subsidize my marketplace plan’s premiums. What am I supposed to do? It’s not uncommon for people to fail to count   income bumps from retirement savings or other sources when they’re estimating their annual income to qualify for advance premium tax credits for marketplace coverage, said Tara Straw, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In the case of retirement savings, ”they’re not thinking of it as income because it’s their own money,” she said. But since retirement money is generally deposited on a pretax basis, it counts as income when it’s withdrawn and can affect how much people qualify for in premium tax credits. It’s important to go back to the marketplace and report any income changes, including   changes, as soon as they occur to minimize repayment problems down the road, Straw said. About half of people who received advance premium tax credits in 2014 got too much, the Internal Revenue Service reported, based on the tax forms people filed to reconcile how much they received against how much they should have gotten. The amount that people have to repay is capped for those whose income is less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $47, 000 for one person). ”The repayment caps are really helpful in cases like this when something unexpected occurs or where an error was made,” Straw said. However, taxpayers can still be on the hook for significant amounts, up to $1, 250 for single taxpayers and $2, 500 for couples and families, she said. If you can’t pay what you owe right away, the IRS will allow you to pay in installments, but there may be additional fees and interest charges. I had an incident where a big metal trash can lid fell on my hand. I thought it was broken. I went to the nearest hospital emergency room, and they took an  . I just had a bad bruise. They sent me home, and later I got a bill of more than $800. My insurance company had covered some of the costs but I was responsible for the rest because I was ”out of network”! How can this happen with emergency care? Federal law prohibits emergency departments from turning anyone away, but that doesn’t mean your insurer will pick up the whole tab for your care, especially if the hospital isn’t in your insurance network.   The health law helps prevent you from getting stuck with a big bill for    emergency care by prohibiting insurers from charging you higher copays or coinsurance for care received at an    emergency department than the rates you would pay for   emergency care. But the law doesn’t prohibit hospitals and doctors from billing patients for amounts that the insurer doesn’t pay. These ”balance bills” are not uncommon when people get    care because there’s no contract in place that spells out how much the providers agree to accept as payment in full from the insurer. If that’s the case, you can ask the hospital to accept the amount that it’s already been paid by the insurer as payment in full, said Dr. Jeffrey Bettinger, chair of the task force on alternative payment models at the American College of Emergency Physicians. ”Many hospitals or provider groups will make an allowance for something like that,” Bettinger said. That may not solve your problem, however. If your plan has a big deductible that you haven’t met for the year, you may still have to pay up to that out of pocket. ”Whether it’s in network or out of network, if you have a $3, 000 deductible you may have to pay that bill,” Bettinger said. Should we receive a detailed list of services from our nursing home when we receive our bill each month? Or should we accept the flat fee we are charged without any itemized listing?   nursing home patients typically pay a monthly charge, and if something is required outside that charge the resident may get an itemized bill, said Judi Lund Person, vice president for regulatory matters and compliance at the National Hospice And Palliative Care Organization. If the nursing home charges a flat fee and you’re unclear whether it includes ancillary services and equipment such as walkers or oxygen, check the agreement that you signed when you placed your parent or loved one in the facility, said Gary Kelso, president and CEO of Mission Health Services, a chain of eight nonprofit nursing homes in Utah and Wyoming. It should be spelled out there. ”Everyone signs an agreement that has a list of things that are included and those that are excluded,” Kelso said. If the facility provides an   bill, you may not be able to get a   of specific services or supplies, Kelso said, because the nursing home may not track those items individually. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Email questions for future columns: KHNHelp@KFF. org. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter: @mandrews110."
"With the announcement of new coaching hires, the Miami Jackson High School football team is making news months before the season even starts. On Monday, the school named Lakatriona ”Bernice” Brunson, 38, head coach of the football program. According to the Miami Herald, Brunson, who was working as a physical education teacher at the high school, is the first female high school football head coach in the state. But she’s not just any female coach  —   she’s the         character on the truTV show South Beach Tow, which follows the confrontations and mishaps that arise between tow truck drivers from Tremont Towing and drivers of offending vehicles. Brunson’s TV character is grumpily    and not hesitant to give orders it seems she’ll bring this same   approach to the football field. ”I’m ready for whatever comes my way. I’m ready to fight, ready to get these guys prepared and ready to win,” she said at the news conference to announce her hiring, according to ESPNW. At the presser, Brunson  —   who played football for the Miami Fury in the Independent Women’s Football League and was also a standout high school and college athlete  —   was joined by two of the Miami Jackson team’s players: offensive lineman Donte Morris and senior defensive tackle Javon Hunt. ”[Brunson] shows tough love, wants you to work hard, not doubt yourself, give 100 percent effort,” Hunt said, according to the Herald. The school also hired former 2 Live Crew rapper Luther Campbell as defensive coordinator. Despite the new hires’ high profiles, Brunson made it clear what came first: ”We’re not here to talk about music or reality TV,” said Brunson, who will also coach the Miami Jackson girls’ flag football team this spring. ”We’re here to talk about football only.” Campbell, who gained music fame in the 1980s and in recent years has found success on the coaching staffs of other Florida high school football teams, concurred. ”At first I thought ’this [expletive] might be crazy because I take football real serious,’ ” Campbell said, according to the Herald. ”But after a conversation with [Brunson] I said, ’Naw, she knows her football. She’s on point.’ I don’t take this as a joke. I didn’t want to be a part of no circus.” Although Miami Jackson last made it to the state championship semifinal in 2012, the program has yet to capture the title. The Herald says that’s partly because it has had to compete with South Florida football powerhouses such as Central, Booker T. Washington, Northwestern, Plantation American Heritage and Hallandale. Brunson replaces former University of Miami and NFL player Earl Little, and she’s confident in her abilities. ”We’re just here to change the atmosphere at Miami Jackson and get some W’s on the board,” Brunson said at the press conference. ”I know I can do it. . .. Watch what we’re going to do. It’s some big things coming up.”"
"Iraq’s war against the Islamic State is gaining momentum. Intensified U. S. airstrikes and more than a year of U. S. training of Iraqi soldiers seem to be paying off. ISIS supply lines have been cut and its access to oil has been reduced. When Iraqi forces with coalition airstrikes retook the western city of Ramadi, it was the latest in a series of successes. But ISIS is just one of many groups trying to carve out power for itself in a country where the central government is looking ever weaker. An example is the road from Baghdad to Ramadi, which is just 60 miles to the west. Iraqi counterterrorism forces have been leading the fight against ISIS in Ramadi, and let journalists tag along on nightly supply convoys. To avoid ISIS, the Iraqi forces have to drive a circuitous route. As they pass through an area called Jarf   the whole convoy gets stopped at a checkpoint. Immediately, the Iraqi security forces get out of their vehicles and light up cigarettes, and as they stamp their feet to keep warm they complain bitterly about the men at the checkpoint. One Iraqi soldier says if he were the commanding officer, he’d arrest them. That’s because it’s not Iraqi security forces manning it, it’s a Shiite armed group called Kataib Hezbollah. Everyone knows they’re in control in Jarf   and to drive the point home, their large yellow flags fly overhead. Many Paramilitary Forces, Kataib Hezbollah is one of an array of Shiite paramilitary forces that fights alongside Iraq’s   government army against the Sunnis of ISIS. Kataib Hezbollah has been around longer than ISIS. They used to attack American soldiers in Iraq, and they’re designated a terror organization by the U. S. The operational commander of these Shiite paramilitaries, which number in the hundreds, is a man known as Abu Mehdi   who the U. S. and Kuwait say participated in the bombing of Western embassies in Kuwait. The Shiite paramilitaries are funded by the Iraqi government, but that doesn’t mean they work harmoniously with the official institutions, as was in evidence at the checkpoint in Jarf  . The Shiite groups are not the only ones who seem to be exploiting the fact that the government needs them in the war against ISIS. A recent Amnesty International report documented many cases of forces in northern Iraq, most of them   Kurdish fighters, battling to push ISIS out of certain areas  —   and then hanging onto that territory afterward. In numerous instances, civilian homes were destroyed or Sunni Arabs not allowed back to their houses. Kurdish officials say the tactics are needed to stop ISIS from returning to these areas. But the alleged land grabs are in areas that have been violently disputed between Arabs and Kurds for decades. Shortly after the northern town of Sinjar was retaken from ISIS by a coalition of Kurdish and minority Yezidi fighters  —   some from Iraq and some from Turkey  —   many of the Kurds insisted that Arabs would never be allowed back. In the south of Iraq, the security is better. But politically, it’s restive. Demonstrations spread from the capital and across the south, especially in the port city of Basra, last summer calling for better services. Prime Minister Haider   promised reforms to Iraq’s government, which is plagued by corruption, but his own parliament blocked his proposals. Now an opposition group in Basra meets regularly and calls for the fall of the government, while other groups want decentralization in a way that usually means Basra would keep more of its vast oil wealth and send less of it to Baghdad. Less Oil Money, Oil money has allowed the Baghdad government to pay salaries and keep the country going with benefits like food rations. But with oil prices hovering around $30 a barrel, the government has far less money and thus far less leverage. The U. S. is offering loans for the government to buy weapons to keep the fight against ISIS going, but the United Nations says international donations for the humanitarian needs have dwindled. The fighting appears certain to continue. ISIS still controls the cities of Fallujah in the west and Mosul in the north. Arguments are already raging about who will fight to take them back and who will control them afterward. The U. S. and its coalition partners are active in training and planning for the battles to come. From the outside, the world is focused on Iraq’s war against ISIS. But from inside Iraq, it can feel like the   struggle is further fracturing the country, creating a morass of competing factions."
"Erika Christakis’ new book, The Importance of Being Little, is an impassioned plea for educators and parents to put down the worksheets and flash cards, ditch the tired craft projects (yes, you, Thanksgiving Handprint Turkey) and exotic vocabulary lessons, and   on one, simple word: Play. That’s because, she writes, ”the distinction between early education and official school seems to be disappearing.” If kindergarten is the new first grade, Christakis argues, preschool is quickly becoming the new kindergarten. And that is ”a real threat to our society’s future.” If the name sounds familiar, that’s likely because Christakis made headlines last October, writing an email that stirred angry protests at Yale, where she is a lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center. When a campus committee sent students a memo urging restraint in choosing Halloween costumes and asking them to avoid anything that ”disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression,” Christakis wrote a memo of her own. She lauded the committee’s goals of trying to encourage tolerance and foster community but wondered if the responsibility of deciding what is offensive should fall to students, not their administrators. ”Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity  —   in your capacity  —   to exercise   through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?” Christakis wrote. Many Yale students accused Christakis of being racially insensitive and called for her ouster. In December, she stepped down from her teaching duties, telling The Washington Post, ”I worry that the current climate at Yale is not, in my view, conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems.” What does Christakis’ role in the heated debate over racial insensitivity and free speech on campus have to do with her views on preschool? Surprisingly, a lot. I spoke with Christakis about her new book and the turmoil at Yale. Here’s an edited version of our conversation. What is this phenomenon that you call ”the preschool paradox”? It is the reality that science is confirming on a daily basis: that children are hardwired to learn in many settings and are really very capable, very strong, very intelligent on the one hand. On the other hand, the paradox is that many young children are doing poorly in our early education settings. We’ve got a growing problem of preschool expulsions, a growing problem of children being medicated   for attention problems. We have a lot of anecdotal evidence that parents are frustrated and feeling overburdened. So that’s what interests me: What is going on? We have very crammed [preschool] schedules with rapid transitions. We have tons of clutter on classroom walls. We have kids moving quickly from one activity to another. We ask them to sit in long and often boring meetings. Logistically and practically, lives are quite taxing for little kids because they’re actually living in an   world. On the other hand, curriculum is often very boring. A staple of early childhood curriculum is the daily tracking of the calendar. And this is one of those absolute classic mismatches, because one study showed that, after a whole year of this calendar work where kids sit in a circle and talk about what day they’re on, half the kids still didn’t know what day they were on. It’s a mismatch because it’s both really hard and frankly very stupid. We’re underestimating kids in terms of their enormous capacity to be thoughtful and reflective, and, I would argue, that’s because we’re not giving them enough time to play and to be in relationships with others. Why do you think so many educators and policymakers have come to see play and learning as mutually exclusive? Yeah, it’s incredibly weird  —   this fake dichotomy. The science is so persuasive on this topic. There’s all kinds of research coming not only from early childhood but animal research looking at mammals and how they use play for learning. I think there are two answers. There really has been tremendous anxiety about closing achievement gaps between advantaged and less advantaged children. You know, we’re always as a society looking for quick fixes that might close those gaps. Unfortunately, it’s had downstream consequences for early learning, where we’re going for superficial measures of learning. I think the other problem is that the rich,   play that we know results in learning  —   it’s not as easy to accomplish as people think. And that’s because, while the impulse to play is natural, what I call the play   really depends on a culture that values play, that gives kids the time and space to learn through play. What does playful learning look like? Playful learning is embedded in relationships and in things that are meaningful to children. I use the example of the iconic [handprint] Thanksgiving turkey. When you really get into what’s behind those cutesy crafts, a lot of curriculum is organized around these traditions, things around the calendar, things that are done because they’ve always been done. When you look at how kids learn, they learn when something is meaningful to them, when they have a chance to learn through relationships  —   and that, of course, happens through play. But a lot of our curriculum is organized around different principles. It’s organized around the comfort and benefit of adults and also reflexive: ”This is cute,” or, ”We’ve always done this.” A lot of the time, as parents, we are trained to expect products, cute projects. And I like to say that the role of art in preschool or kindergarten curriculum should be to make meaning, not necessarily things. But it’s hard to get parents to buy into this idea that their kids may not come home with the refrigerator art because maybe they spent a week messing around in the mud. Preschool teachers are very interested in fine motor skills, and so often they think that these tracing and cutting activities [are important]. I would argue that those are not the most important skills that we need to foster. What are the most important skills we need to foster? I think the No. 1 thing is that children need to feel secure in their relationships because, again, we’re social animals. And children learn through others. So I think the No. 1 thing is for kids to have a chance to play, to make friends, to learn limits, to learn to take their turn. You’re talking about soft skills,   skills . .. I actually won’t accept the term   skills.   skills? I would say   skills. But, again, there’s a kind of simplistic notion that there’s   skills on the one hand . .. And academics on the other . .. Right, and I would argue that many   academic skills are very   and very uncognitive. Whereas I think a lot of the   skills are very much linked to learning. I think the biggest one is the use of language. When kids are speaking to one another and listening to one another, they’re learning   they’re learning vocabulary, they’re learning to think out loud. And these are highly cognitive skills. But we’ve bought into this dichotomy again. I would say ”complex skills” versus ”superficial” or ”  skills.” To give you an example, watching kids build a fort is going to activate more cognitive learning domains than doing a worksheet where you’re sitting at a table. The worksheet has a little pile of pennies on one side and some numbers on the other, and you have to connect them with your pencil. That’s a very   way of teaching skills. Whereas, if you’re building a fort with your peers, you’re talking, using   language structures in play than you would be if you’re sitting at a table. You’re doing math skills, you’re doing physics measurement, engineering  —   but also doing the    of, ”How do I get along? How do I have a conversation? What am I learning from this other person?” And that’s very powerful. What is   preschool to you? The research base is pretty clear. I’ll start by telling you what it isn’t. We start by looking at two variables. One set are called ”structural variables”  —   things like class size,   ratios, or even the   of the classroom and what kinds of materials are in the classroom. And then there are   process variables, which are different. They tend to be more about teaching style. Is the teacher a responsive teacher? Does she use a responsive, warm, empathic teaching style? And then the other key process variable is: Does the teacher have knowledge of child development? And is that teacher able to translate that child development knowledge into the curriculum? Which seems like a hard thing to measure. It’s actually not. And there are many good measures  —   things like: Is the teacher on the floor with the child? Is the teacher asking   questions? You know: ”Tell me about your picture” versus ”Oh, cute house, Bobby.” It’s actually not that hard to measure. But here’s the thing. The structural variables are easier to regulate. And, if you have a workforce problem where you’re not paying teachers well and a pipeline problem where there aren’t good career paths to get into teaching, it’s much easier for us to focus on the structural variables when those have an indirect effect only. The direct effect is the process variables. My colleague Walter Gilliam at Yale has come up with this wonderful mental health classroom climate scale, which really looks at these process variables in very granular detail  —   so, not only looking at the interactions between the teachers and the children but how the teachers are interacting with each other. You mount a spirited defense of unscheduled kid time [at home]. Less shuttling to and from sports practice, dance practice, swim lessons. Be sure, you say, to give your child time to sit on the floor and stare at the ceiling if that’s what they want to do. I know a lot of parents who would find that view heretical. That’s because we don’t have faith in young children. And we don’t really have faith in ourselves. And we’ve been programmed to believe that the more enrichments we can add on [the better]. I think boredom can be a friend to the imagination. Sometimes when kids appear to be bored, actually they haven’t had enough time to engage in something. We quickly whisk it away and move them along to the next thing. And that’s when you say, ”How can I help the child to look at this in a new way? To try something new, to be patient.” You’ve really kind of adultified childhood so kids really don’t have those long, uninterrupted stretches of time to engage in fantasy play. And because we’ve kind of despoiled the habitat of early childhood, a lot of times they don’t know what to do when given that time. So we kind of have to coach them. I think there’s a little bit of a repair process that we need to engage in. Because if you’ve got a kid who’s used to going to a million lessons and only uses toys that have one way of using them and then, suddenly, you put them in a room with a bunch of boxes and blocks and say, ”Have fun!” the kid’s gonna say, ”Are you kidding me? What? !” I want to transition to Yale now. You were talking about creating a safe space earlier  —   for preschoolers. In a video taken of Yale students responding angrily to your Halloween email, one   woman berates your husband, who   a residential college with you. She yells, ”It is your job to create a place of comfort and home for your students, and you have not done that.” Is it possible to create a space that is intellectually safe, where free speech prevails, that is also comfortable? I guess the question would be, ”Is comfort the goal?” My hope is that young people of all ages could feel safe in a community where dialogue is welcome. That doesn’t mean you get to scream at people and throw things at them. I would like to see people feel safe in a community where they could have different ideas. We had at Yale a representative from Planned Parenthood come to speak. I think it would be really great if we also had an alternative view, and that people could listen and say, ”You know what? I really disagree with that, but this does not threaten me to my core. I can disagree. Maybe I can even hone my argument better by hearing an alternative view.” I think we can have a safe community, but does that mean that we’re always comfortable? Well, I think that’s very unrealistic and probably not a good idea to aspire to being comfortable all the time. You wrote in your email: ”Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity  —   in your capacity  —   to exercise   through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?” The   lodged by many Yale students, is that some things  —   including Halloween costumes  —   are simply so offensive, culturally, that not only can they not be ignored, they shouldn’t be allowed in the first place. What do you make of that argument? I want to be clear that I would probably agree with the vast majority of things that my critics find offensive. So I think I have been very misunderstood. Yes, there are things that are horrible. There are things that offend all of us and hurt our feelings. I also would argue that much of it is  . As I heard from many students after the fact, people have really different ideas of what is hurtful. And there were things in the [Yale committee’s] email that didn’t address some people’s hurts. For example, costumes about disability. I think my point was, because context matters and because the world is full of injury and there is no question that some people bear a disproportionate burden  —   I accept that  —   we can’t really create a world where administrators, teachers or parents can insulate people from these kinds of things. Now, I do want to be clear: There are all kinds of ways to respond to being hurt, including filing a police report, reporting to your supervisor or professor or RA in a dorm, talking with your friends, ignoring. To me, I think the social norming piece is really important because I believe we put way too much faith in these administrative guidelines, ”suggestions.” Is that really how behavior change happens? I don’t know. I think for some things, absolutely, legal recourse makes a difference. But for other things, I think, peer norming is highly effective, and to me, Halloween costumes would be in that category. We can’t really predict people’s intent. Often people use Halloween as an expression of satire, biting humor, and so we don’t know. In fact, we had an amazing conversation with David Simon [creator of HBO’s The Wire]. He came to speak to our students, and he was really pushing them. If you go to a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, you know, you’re gonna see things that would strike the average Yale student as offensive. But if you understand the history and the context, then there’s a different interpretation. As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown more confident in young people to have these conversations, to fight for their rights, to sometimes ignore things. They have a whole toolkit of strategies, and we have to start at a really young age, giving kids the space to talk to each other, to get to know each other, to listen to each other. That’s linking back to my book. I think the habitat has to be one that prizes dialogue and talking and listening skills. We have an opportunity right now to do that for a whole generation. We’re kidding ourselves  —   like with the [preschool] worksheets  —   there is no limit to the number of suggestions and guidelines we can offer to students, but if they don’t understand each other and are not willing to talk to each other and listen to each other, I think that’s going to have limited impact. Halloween costumes are sometimes indicative of a long and tortured past of institutional racism and oppression, and it seems what the students were arguing for here was institutional protection  —   an expectation that, ”Why can’t the institution just protect us from this craziness?” And how well has that worked out [historically]? Not very. I don’t mean to be callous. I have great empathy, and I think my teaching and my syllabus reflect that. I’m on the side of young people. But I’m more of an   lefty. I think it’s very important for us to question establishment responses to things. Sometimes it’s very important to have an establishment response, and other times I think it’s less helpful. And I would say, proactively trying to manage Halloween costumes, however gently worded, I think there’s a downside. Or, at least, let’s talk about the potential downside. And I think it might be an erosion of the faith in young people to influence one another and to listen to one another and learn from one another. Why did you resign your teaching post? I have great respect and affection for my students, but I’m worried that the climate of civil dialogue and openness  —   I’m not sure we’re there yet. I have a lot of faith in students. And I think time is a great healer of wounds."
"President Obama unveils his 2017 budget proposal today. It’s an aspirational blueprint that details how he would set priorities if he controlled the government’s checkbook . .. which he doesn’t. ”This budget is not about looking back at the road we have traveled,” Obama said. ”It is about looking forward.” But congressional Republicans are looking past the president. House Speaker Paul Ryan dismissed the budget as ”a progressive manual for growing the federal government at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Here are five big things you need to know about Obama’s eighth budget blueprint. 1. It’s his last . .. and least influential, The president’s budget is invariably described as ”dead on arrival” when it reaches Capitol Hill. This one got that label weeks earlier. Republican leaders of the House and Senate Budget Committees don’t even plan to hold a token hearing on the $4 trillion White House spending plan. Obama will be out of office less than four months into the budget year. And the   of the budget itself is overshadowed by the New Hampshire primary. 2. More red ink, President Obama boasted in his State of the Union address of cutting the deficit as a share of the economy by   during his time in office. This year, however, the deficit is creeping up again  —   largely as a result of tax breaks extended by Congress at the end of 2015. The president’s budget projects that deficits will remain in a manageable range  —   less than 3 percent of GDP  —   for the next decade. That includes some rosy assumptions, though, about tax revenues, health care savings and immigration reform. 3. Domestic shots across the bow, The president’s budget includes a variety of proposals designed to provoke a debate with Republicans. On the revenue side, these include a new $  tax on crude oil which would add up to 24 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline, higher taxes on capital gains, and a renewed push to close what the White House calls the ”trust fund loophole.” On the spending side, the president has proposed more investments in clean energy, mass transit, summertime meal subsidies for poor children, and expanded unemployment insurance. 4. Security spending, on the ground and online, Obama is seeking $11 billion for the battle against ISIS, $3. 4 billion to shore up European defenses and discourage Russian aggression, and $19 billion to enhance the nation’s cybersecurity. 5. A few nods to bipartisanship, While the overall budget is going nowhere, a few of its more modest ideas may have legs. The White House notes there’s bipartisan support for accelerating cancer research, offering more treatment to people addicted to heroin and prescription pain medication, and expanding a tax credit to help   workers who don’t have children."
"Law enforcement officials would love to have a clear way to tell when a driver is too drugged to drive. But the decades of experience the country has in setting limits for alcohol have turned out to be rather useless so far because the   compound in cannabis, THC, dissolves in fat, whereas alcohol dissolves in water. And that changes everything. ”It’s really difficult to document drugged driving in a relevant way,” says Margaret Haney, a neurobiologist at Columbia University, ”[because of] the simple fact that THC is fat soluble. That makes it absorbed in a very different way and much more difficult to relate behavior to, say, [blood] levels of THC or develop a breathalyzer.” When you drink, alcohol spreads through your saliva and breath. It evenly saturates your lungs and blood. Measuring the volume of alcohol in one part of your body can predictably tell you how much is in any other part of your body  —   like how much is affecting your brain at any given time. That made it possible to do the science on alcohol and crash risk back in the   century. Eventually, decades of study helped formulate the 0. 08 blood alcohol limit as too drunk to drive safely. ”The 0. 08 standard in alcohol is from decades of careful epidemiological research,” says Andrea Roth, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. But marijuana isn’t like that. The height of your intoxication isn’t at the moment when blood THC levels peak, and the high doesn’t rise and fall uniformly based on how much THC leaves and enters your bodily fluids, says Marilyn Huestis, who headed the chemistry and drug metabolism section at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Because THC is fat soluble, it moves readily from water environments, like blood, to fatty environments. Fatty tissues act like sponges for the THC, Huestis says. ”And the brain is a very fatty tissue. It’s been proven you can still measure THC in the brain even if it’s no longer measurable in the blood.” From her research, Huestis found that THC rapidly clears out of the blood in occasional users within a couple of hours. While they’re still high, a trickle of THC leaches out of their brains and other fatty tissues back into the blood until it’s all gone. That means a lab test would only find a trace amount of THC in the blood of occasional smokers after a few hours. ”You could have smoked a good amount, just waited two hours, still be pretty intoxicated and yet pass the drug test [for driving],” says Haney. And if you eat the weed instead of smoking it, Haney says, your blood never carries that much THC. ”With oral THC, it takes several hours for [blood THC] to peak, but it remains very low compared to the smoked route, even though they’re very high. It’s a hundredfold difference,” she says. But daily users are different. Huestis says that heavy smokers build up so much THC in their body fat that it could continue leaching out for weeks after they last smoked. These chronic, frequent users will also experience a rapid loss of THC from their blood after smoking, but they will also have a constant, moderate level of blood THC even when they’re not high, Huestis says. It gets trickier when you try to factor in the chronic effect of smoking weed, Huestis says. ”We found [chronic, frequent smokers’] brains had changed and reduced the density of cannabinoid receptors,” she says. They were cognitively impaired for up to 28 days after their last use, and their driving might also still be impaired for that long. ”It’s pretty scary,” she says. The attitude difference between stoned drivers and alcohol drivers seems clear, Huestis says. Pot smokers, she says, ”tend to be more aware they’re impaired than alcohol users.” Drunk drivers are more aggressive, and high drivers are slower. But in her studies, she found that being blazed enough, as when a smoker’s blood THC level peaks at 13 nanograms per milliliter, could be just as a dangerous as driving drunk. The marijuana advocacy group NORML emphasizes that driving high can be dangerous, and advises people to drive sober. This all translates into a colossal headache for researchers and lawmakers alike. While scientists continue to bang their heads over how to draw up a biological measurement for marijuana intoxication, legislators want a way to quickly identify and penalize people who are too high to drive. The instinct, Huestis says, is to come up with a law that parallels the 0. 08 BAC standard for alcohol. ”Everyone is looking for one number,” she says. ”And it’s almost impossible to come up with one number. Occasional users can be very impaired at one microgram per liter, and chronic, frequent smokers will be over one microgram per liter maybe for weeks.” The shaky science around relating blood THC to driving impairment is unfair for people living in   states that have absolute blood THC limits for driving, says Andrea Roth, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. In states like Washington, if a driver is found to have over 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter in their blood, they automatically get a  . ”If we are going to criminalize DUI marijuana, we need to take information from scientific studies and use it to decide if that risk is sufficiently high to be so morally blameworthy that we call it a crime. But we don’t, so picking 5 nanograms per milliliter is arbitrary,” Roth says. The complicated biology of THC makes current DUI cases very tricky. ”Blood isn’t taken in the U. S. until 1. 5 to four hours after the [traffic] incident,” Huestis says. By then, THC levels would have fallen significantly, and these people might have been impaired but passed the test. At the same time, a heavy user living in a state like Washington would get a DUI even if she or he hadn’t smoked in weeks. As a result, it gets difficult to even understand how risky blazed driving is. Traffic studies that rely on blood THC measures could also be inaccurate if blood is drawn too late and THC has already left the system. And some state traffic databases, including Colorado’s, according to state traffic officials, link accidents to      a byproduct of marijuana metabolism that marks only recent exposure and not intoxication. That might result in an overestimation of   accidents. In the meantime, Haney says, the challenge shouldn’t deter people from trying to find a marijuana DUI solution. People are working on breath tests, saliva, other blood markers and behavioral tests, just nothing that so far has stuck, she says. ”We need something, because it’s an important public health issue. But how we’re going to get there? I just don’t know.”"
"Moses riding a giant eagle. Rats running out of a bank vault. And those were just the floats. It’s Carnival in Brazil, and for Rio de Janeiro’s huge Samba Parade, the city’s 12 main samba schools pulled out all the stops on Monday  —   including having a man parachute into the Sambadrome  . Add to that thousands of dancers and drummers dressed in elaborate costumes that sparkle and glow, all cheered on by tens of thousands of spectators, plus a national TV audience  —   and you have an incredibly watchable spectacle. It’s even more amazing to be able to participate. Except if your pants fall down in  . Which mine did. More about that in a minute. I joined Vila Isabel Samba School this year. It’s one of the most venerable schools in Rio. Every year, 12   samba schools compete for two days during Carnival to be crowned the winner. It’s a huge deal. Vila Isabel won in 2013, but in the past two years, it finished at the bottom after underwhelming parades. So a lot was riding on Monday’s performance. To understand how much, you have to visit the communities where these schools are based. Most are in poor areas, and the schools actually provide not only a fun way to participate in the yearly celebration, but also money and jobs. Vila Isabel’s parade theme this year was an ode to Brazil’s northern state of Pernambuco, one of the hardest hit by the Zika virus, so it had an extra poignancy. It costs millions to put on an   show. There are    floats, plus the costumes for thousands of dancers and drummers. Everything is made in massive warehouses that employ tailors, designers, sculptors and artists, among many others. Brazil’s economic crisis hasn’t helped. Vila Isabel’s director told Bloomberg News that private sponsorship has dried up. That has left the bigger schools even more financially beholden to murkier financing many samba schools are reputedly supported by bicheros or gambling kingpins. My costume was ready only hours before the parade  —   thanks to what I was told was a   infusion of cash from a private benefactor. The schools also give their communities a sense of   pride. Young girls start training really young to participate in the parades. I met    Maraia Zanzoni at one of the rehearsals, which take place on the streets of the neighborhood as members of the community watch and wear jerseys with the school’s colors.  She had been going to dance school twice a week since she was 4 years old so she could finally become a passista  —   one of the main dancers wearing the famous, tiny samba costumes. ”Samba is my life and my passion,” she told me. ”And my whole family is involved in the samba school  —   parents, aunts, uncles. And if I have kids, they will become part of Vila Isabel because it’s part of our tradition.” Drummer Mateus Ventura was in the batteria  —   the huge drum section that gives the parade its beat. ”The parade raises the   of the whole neighborhood, and it shows people that we are able to mount big events that the world watches,” he told me. These people are the heart and soul of the samba parades. I was just an interloper  —   but a committed one. When the big day arrived, my husband and I, with friends from London, donned our costumes. I was wearing a huge globe on my head and a map of what was supposed to be the geography of northern Brazil on a kind of large breastplate. My friend Tommy Evans  —   wearing a massive yellow feathered headdress and gold lamé pants  —   quipped that he looked ”like Big Bird going to Studio 54.” His girlfriend, Justine Redman, said she felt like ”an Inca goddess made in China.” Basically, the costumes were amazing. That said, these outfits are really elaborate and difficult to put on. I was so focused on the glittery bits that I didn’t think about the fundamentals. The moment finally came to enter the Sambadrome, and it is overwhelming  —   so many lights and people singing and cheering, judges and cameras focusing on your every move, and the need to keep moving at all costs. I was giving it my best shot, when I noticed I was having trouble moving my legs and there was an unnatural breeze on my backside. I bent over so suddenly that my husband thought I was having bowel issues. My pants had fallen to my knees. In my rush to get all the other parts of my costume ready, I had neglected to   possibly the most basic part of my outfit. Luckily, I fixed it fast and I spent the next 80 minutes dancing and singing. For the record, I acknowledge I am a terrible samba dancer. But I loved it. Vila Isabel won’t know how it did until the official results on Wednesday, though local press coverage gave us favorable reviews. The competition was stiff, with samba school Portela, especially, putting on a dazzling display. This is the third Carnival I’ve covered in Brazil, but the first where I’ve really understood what the celebration is all about. There is something magical about dancing and singing simply for the pure joy of the moment, letting go of your inhibitions and letting the craziness of Carnival take you away."
"The day David Daleiden turned himself in at the Harris County courthouse, the throng of media there was a good indication of just how much this indictment means to both sides of the abortion debate. Daleiden’s attorney Jared Woodfill took full opportunity to express his indignation. ”It’s outrageous that it’s David that has to come and present himself to the court when it’s Planned Parenthood who should be on trial today,” Woodfill said. ”The reality is David is a   hero. He has exposed the wrongdoing that’s been occurring in abortion clinics all across this country.” Daleiden faces charges that he tampered with a government record and attempted to purchase human organs. Houston prosecutors have offered him a deal for probation, which would expunge the charges if he stays out of trouble. But that was no sale for Daleiden’s team of lawyers, including Terry Yates. ”The only thing we’re going to accept right now is an apology,” Yates says. Yates feels confident the judge will drop the charges before trial. ”All hat, no cattle  —   that’s what we believe these indictments are. There’s not much to ’em,” he says, ”and we believe after the court entertains our motions, hears the facts in this case, these indictments will be quashed.” Daleiden’s lawyers will argue that although their client admits to using a fake California driver’s license, it’s not a crime because he did so in the cause of investigative journalism. They’ll argue the same First Amendment protection applies to the charges connected to Daleiden’s email offer to buy fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood. But University of Texas law professor David Anderson says the courts have ruled on this defense. ”The Supreme Court and the lower courts have been perfectly clear that what the First Amendment protects is publication or disclosure of information. The First Amendment does not protect crimes committed in the course of newsgathering. Period,” Anderson says. The Houston grand jury’s decisions have, for the moment, stopped the   movement’s political momentum against Planned Parenthood in its tracks. When they debuted, Daleiden’s videos empowered Republican officeholders around the country to call for criminal investigations. That also happened in Texas when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked fellow Republican District Attorney Devon Anderson to open a criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood in Houston. The clinic had been featured in Daleiden’s videos. ”It became crystal clear that we needed to get to the table with the prosecutors and the law enforcement agents before anybody else beat us there,” says Josh Schaffer, Planned Parenthood’s defense lawyer in Houston. Instead of acting like the DA’s office was the enemy, Schaffer threw open Planned Parenthood’s doors and file cabinets to the police and Texas Rangers. And he urged them to acquire all the video that the young activist had shot and compare it to the final product. ”Well, they showed Mr. Daleiden attempting to bait the employee during the course of their meeting into being willing to do things that the law does not permit and that Planned Parenthood does not do,” Schaffer says. ”At the time he appeared green, naïve, about research protocol and regulations, but we know now that he was trying to scam them.” Republican Devon Anderson has become the   community’s Benedict Arnold. They accuse her of betraying her own   convictions because of campaign contributions from abortion rights supporters. ”I think that she has shown that her biases have prevented her from being able to execute her duties in a proper way, and that’s why we’re calling for her resignation,” says Cheryl Sullenger, senior vice president at Operation Rescue. In her own defense, Anderson says the surprise indictments are nothing more than the grand jury following the trail of evidence uncovered by law enforcement. But for abortion opponents, the allegation that Planned Parenthood is selling fetal tissue for profit is indisputable fact. They’re calling for Texas to appoint a special prosecutor and for a new investigation to proceed. Those cries are falling on sympathetic ears. Texas’ governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general have all stated that the Houston grand jury’s decisions will have no impact on the state’s three ongoing investigations of Planned Parenthood."
"Obamacare is putting the agricultural industry in a tizzy. Many contractors who provide farm labor and must now offer workers health insurance are complaining loudly about the cost in their already   business. Some are also concerned that the forms they must file with the federal government under the Affordable Care Act will bring immigration problems to the fore. About half of the farm labor workforce in the U. S. is undocumented. ”There’s definitely going to be some repercussions to it,” says Jesse Sandoval, a farm labor contractor based in Stockton, Calif. ”I think there’s going to be some things that cannot be ignored.” Sandoval came to an educational conference for farm labor contractors  —   essentially staffing agencies for field workers  —   held at the San Joaquin County Agricultural Center in Stockton in the fall. Men with broad shoulders, wearing denim jackets and cowboy hats, sat in the audience, listening to lectures on a litany of laws and rules regulating their industry, including Obamacare’s employer mandate. Last year, employers with 100 or more   employees had to offer health insurance to their workers or pay a stiff penalty. This year, employers with 50 to 99   employees must comply. Sandoval has about 100 workers on his payroll. When farmers need a crew to pick cherries, pumpkins or asparagus, they call him to send the workers. He has to offer them insurance this year, and he’s smarting over the price tag. At $300 a month per employee, he’s looking at a $30, 000 monthly bill. Sandoval says he can’t absorb the hit. ”The numbers aren’t there,” he says. ”My margin is 10 percent, and I have to increase expenses 10 percent? Well, that doesn’t work.” So, like a lot of contractors, he’s passing the bill on to the farmers, who in turn are passing the bill on to the farm workers. Under the Affordable Care Act, employees can be asked to contribute 9. 5 percent of their income toward health premiums. But for farm workers who pick oranges or peaches for $10 an hour, that’s still too much. Agostin Garcia of Fresno, Calif. says the two contractors he works for near Fresno, Calif. offered him insurance directly. But when he saw the price tag, he turned them both down. ”For me, I’m the only one in my house who works,” he says. ”There’s five of us in the family. It just wouldn’t work. Either I pay for health insurance, or I pay the rent and utilities.” Garcia says only a fraction of his   have signed up for coverage. He says when farm labor contractors hand out packets explaining the coverage, the page where workers reject it is right on top. ”I think they do it intentionally,” Garcia says. ”They comply with the laws by saying, ’I offered.’ But they know that nobody’s going to accept it, they know that nobody’s going to pay those amounts.” The cost isn’t the only thing about Obamacare stressing people out in the ag industry. Some are worried about immigration problems. Employers have to file new health care forms with the IRS for all their workers, whether or not they accept the insurance. Attorney Kaya Bromley says this will make it harder for some contractors to turn a blind eye when workers give them fraudulent documents. ”Now that there’s more transparency because of all of the reporting, I think we’re going to have a lot more data on how many illegal or undocumented workers we have,” she says. Bromley says among the contractors for whom she consults, she has seen a range of   and even illegal strategies to sidestep the health law. ”I have heard of employees who are choosing to opt out because they want to fly under the radar. I have also heard of employers who are urging the   or at least encouraging it,” she says. ”And I warn all of them that they are going to be in big trouble.” Farm labor contractors say they’re stuck in a  . Technically, immigrants who are in the U. S. illegally aren’t eligible for Obamacare benefits. But employers can’t admit that any of their employees may be working illegally, so they have to offer the insurance or face stiff fines from the IRS, maybe even a discrimination claim. ”It’s huge. And no one’s talking about the enormity of it,” Bromley says. ”When it plays out, and the penalties start getting assessed, that’s when people will start having religion about it.” Golinda Vela Chavez helps run a contracting company in Salinas, Calif. For her, talk of Obamacare mainly brings up frustration with the country’s complicated immigration system. She says the U. S. doesn’t enforce the borders, but then doesn’t let people work. ”And suddenly the employer is evil,” she says. Contractors wonder how they’re supposed to comply with the health care law when there’s still so much contradiction in the immigration system. ”Our government, all they do is talk about it, they don’t fix anything, they make everything worse,” says Chavez. The Affordable Care Act is a cookie cutter, she says, and the complexities of the farming industry just don’t fit. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News."
"Fans of author Yann Martel’s immensely popular Life of Pi, or of the film adapted from the novel 11 years later, will understand my eager anticipation of his new novel, The High Mountains of Portugal, released last week. Martel’s storytelling is fabulous, both literally  —   he blurs real worlds and dream worlds, human lives and lives of other animals  —   and figuratively. He lights up the page. The High Mountains of Portugal consists of three linked sections called Homeless, Homeward and Home. Spread across the 20th century, these stories link up by their common setting in Portugal, by entangled family histories, by freshly felt grief, and by the strangely compelling presence of chimpanzees. (I purposefully avoid spoilers in my account here this review provides a fuller description.) In Homeless, a     museum worker, still in mourning from three great losses, sets out from Lisbon on a quest to find a highly unusual religious object in the distant region of his country called the high mountains, where, as it turns out, there aren’t mountains at all. From this geographical surprise, we know right away that things aren’t always what they seem. The role of the chimpanzee in this story is as shocking as it is fleeting, and the same could be said regarding what happens in Homeward, when a 1930s pathologist, also grieving, makes a surprising discovery inside a body that he opens up for autopsy. Throughout these first two sections of the book, the world is just as dreamy as I’d come to expect from Martel: Ghosts and   memories drift in and out of the narrative. This gauzy surreality vanishes in Home, when for the first time an ape roars to life as a full participant in the story. Odo the chimpanzee is rescued from miserable caged conditions by a visiting Canadian politician. Odo had been in ”a dark and dank underworld,” at the Institute for Primate Studies in Norman, Okla. run by an unsavory scientist named Bill Lemnon. Reading this plot turn, my eyes snapped open wide: There was an Institute of Primate Studies in Norman, where in the 1980s, as a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma, I met the chimpanzees held captive there by scientist Bill Lemmon. (Note the change of a single letter from the fictional to the living man. If you’ve seen the   documentary film Project Nim, you’ve seen in its opening sequences how the chimpanzees at the real IPS were treated by Lemmon). Peter Tovy, the rescuing politician from Canada  —   at this point in the book we expect him to be in mourning and indeed he is  —   meets Odo and can’t forget him. ”The ape remains a luminous secret in his heart,” Martel writes. Quite suddenly, Peter sheds the shackles of his life, buys Odo, and escapes to Portugal with him. Man and ape find their way to a place of mutual respect and stillness together, punctuated by bursts of frenzied exploration and play. Odo has rescued Peter, too. Is chimpanzee fiction a recognized genre? It should be. In the most wonderful recent examples  —   in my estimation, Benjamin Hale’s The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, and Colin McAdam’s A Beautiful Truth  —   we meet chimpanzees who are fully involved with humans, sometimes so intimately it’s startling. Odo is different. He takes joy in Peter, but he’s profoundly himself. Helped along by those spoilers I won’t give away, we come to understand that Peter’s ”curious love” for Odo is in large part because Odo isn’t changed as a result of their emerging relationship as much as he is an agent for Peter’s own change: ”The members of his own species now bring on a feeling of weariness in him [Peter]. They are too noisy, too fractious, too arrogant, too unreliable. He much prefers the intense silence of Odo’s presence, his pensive slowness in whatever he does, the profound simplicity of his means and aims.” The idea, of course, isn’t to read fiction for scientific accuracy. Hale’s Bruno spouts Shakespeare Martel’s Odo displays none of the   aggression of many male chimpanzees. If I were to sit down with Martel, I might ask him why he thinks that apes live so much in the present when, in fact, feats of memory and planning ahead are among chimpanzees’   capacities. But neither that discussion  —   nor the knowledge that chimpanzee   is a terrible ethical wrong  —   have any bearing on the wonder of Martel’s art. In scientific discourse, it’s debatable whether we humans are apes or not. In The High Mountains of Portugal, it’s not about what kind of primates we are as much as about linking our past, present and future together via the stories we tell ourselves about who we may become. Sometimes it’s our animal kin who show us the way. We are invited by them to make that slight turn of the kaleidoscope, view our lives in novel arrangement, and seize a new moment for ourselves. Barbara J. King retired from her post as anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary at the end of 2015. She often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape"
"When Yann Martel gave us the international sensation Life of Pi in 2001, readers discovered a   capable of spinning gold out of improbable characters and anomalous scenarios. A tiger and a teenager awash together on the deep blue sea for 227 days? Only Martel could charm us into that suspension of disbelief, making the unlikely tale into fable rather than fluff. In his new novel, The High Mountains of Portugal, the   Canadian author works in a different setting  —   or three settings, actually, since he offers a series of three interlocking tales. The whole is more than the sum of the parts here, since each section picks up power from the others. Three makes one, as in the Trinity. In     century Lisbon we meet a young man named Tomas, whose life lies in ruins after the death of his beloved wife and young son. Tomas has discovered an ancient diary that sends him on a quest for a lost treasure in the mountains of the book’s title, a geographically obscure realm that actually contains no mountains at all, but simply low, nondescript hills and bluffs. These Tomas transverses in one of the first European motorcars, in search of an artifact he believes will shock the world: a carved wooden crucifix displaying a chimpanzee as the Christ figure. ”With this object,” he says, ”I’ll give God his comeuppance for what he did to the ones I love.” Readers will know they are in   when they discover that the hero proceeds backward whenever and wherever he walks, miraculously,   with nary a trip or fall.   35 years, as a Portuguese pathologist and Agatha Christie devotee unlocks a mystery of his own. This doctor, too, mourns the loss of his drowned wife  —   who’s dead but not gone, since she appears as a gabby ghost. During an autopsy on an elderly man’s corpse, the doctor exhumes a marvelous series of fantastic objects, including a figure of a chimp embracing a bear cub. (A measure of Martel’s magic is that the procedure seems bizarre yet believable.) In the third and most affecting part of the book, Martel again jumps decades forward, to give us a Canadian politician named Peter Tovy. He, also, has suffered the anguish of losing a spouse. In a spasm of   whimsy, Tovy adopts an ape from a rundown animal preserve. The poet Rilke once wrote a simple but timeless exhortation of  : ”You must change your life.” Senator Tovy does just that, leaving friends, job and home to spirit the chimp to Tuizelo, his family’s ancestral home in those same High Mountains. The site has become the locus of meaning for every piece of the puzzle in this strange and wonderful novel  —   and those pieces come together in a masterful ending, the kind that sends you back to the start to begin all over again. Martel most definitely has his quirks. There are some odd turns of phrase in The High Mountains: ”. .. the road continues nearly villagelessly,” he writes of a barren stretch of landscape. A flock of animals is ”a creamy billow of fluffy sheepdom.” But the exuberant wordplay enhances the equally vivid storytelling. I took away indelible images from High Mountains, enchanting and disturbing at the same time: the motorcar hitting obstacle after obstacle as it gradually, comically falls to pieces (as does its driver) or the ape as he swings his way across the rooftops of a Portuguese village. As whimsical as Martel’s magic realism can be, grief informs every step of the book’s three journeys. In the course of the novel we burrow ever further into the heart of an ape, pure and threatening at once, our precursor, ourselves. You must change your life. Jean Zimmerman’s latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin."
"In January 1997, the poet Miller Williams stood on the steps of the Capitol at President Bill Clinton’s second inauguration and read a poem he’d written about our country: We have memorized America, how it was born and who we have been and where. In ceremonies and silence we say the words, telling the stories, singing the old songs. We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. Williams’ daughter has taken us places and told stories as an Americana singer. Her name is Lucinda Williams. The place she takes us on her new album is the South, where as a girl she traveled around with her poet father. ”We were very close,” Williams tells NPR’s David Greene, ”and the literary world and the music world were part of my psyche at a very young age.” She says she loved watching her dad operate. He was known for plainspoken poetry, and he socialized openly with   in a time and place where that was frowned upon. He also hung out with iconic writers like Flannery O’Connor, and was proud of his Southern roots. ”I remember him kind of not really being accepted by the New York poetry world, or what have you,” she says. ”It wasn’t cool to be from the South back then, like it is now. . .. I grew up being very aware of my Southern roots.” Lucinda Williams’ dad encouraged her to write music, often editing her lyrics. Her music can be dark, feisty and full of heartbreak, and she sings from personal experience. ”I was involved with a few guys who were quite a bit younger than I was,” she says. ”Like, I would be 40 or 41, they would be 21. Oh, my god, isn’t that shocking?! . .. They didn’t know how old I was. You know, they wouldn’t know until later.” Williams searched for love for a long time, and she has found it. She’s married to her manager, Tom Overby. At 63, she’s churning out songs that critics say are up there with some of her best. And while she has seen other musicians lose their inspiration after finding happiness, she says she doesn’t let herself become comfortable. ”You know, I have my moments of being comfortable, but I’m driven,” she says, ”and I have pain, I have sadness. And, of course, the older you get, the more loss you experience. The more loss and pain you experience, the more you need your art.” Williams recently experienced the kind of loss of which she speaks: About a year ago, her father died. In his final months, he suffered from Alzheimer’s. One song on The Ghosts of Highway 20, ”My Love Could Kill,” addresses the disease. ”I was so angry, and so I personified the disease in this song,” she says. As Lucinda Williams searched for a way to say goodbye to her dad, she began turning his poems into music. In Arkansas, not long before his death, they gathered friends together and her dad did a reading of his poem ”Compassion,” which they recorded. Later, Williams herself sang a version of the poem. She became even more determined to honor her dad’s work after he told her how much the disease had taken from him. She recalls a day when her father explained that he had lost his ability to write poetry. ”I couldn’t believe what I’d heard,” Williams says. ”And I just started sobbing and sobbing. It was as if he’d said, ’I can’t see anymore.’ It just shattered me.” Poetry, she says, was such a central piece of her father’s identity. ”That’s why it’s such a horrible disease,” she says. ”Because it kills people slowly like that. It just takes pieces of them and kills them off bit by bit by bit. And it seems to attack the most brilliant, creative minds.”"
"She came to the Tiny Desk a little unsure, and left singing ”West Memphis” with intensity and passion. Lucinda Williams has a voice like no other, and it shines in these intimate moments. Williams is on a roll with a new double album, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, which is filled with fresh and beautiful songs  —   all this from a songwriter known for working at a deliberate pace. Hearing her perform these new songs with her brilliant band was a rare and exciting treat. Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Maggie Starbard Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait Videographers: Colin Marshall, Maggie Starbard Assistant Producer: Susan Hale Thomas photo by Susan Hale  "
"The best thing Luke Skywalker had going for him in the original trilogy was that he never had to worry about who was going to feed the war orphans left behind by the rebellion, or rebuild trashed moisture farms. No, if you’re Luke, all you gotta do is show up every once in a while, blow up a Death Star or have a lightsaber duel with your weird dad. He got to be the clean and bright hero, never having to face the ugly realities of upsetting a massive bureaucracy, destroying vital infrastructure and all the other petty inconveniences that come with a war. But Darrow, the hero of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy doesn’t get that hall pass. No, he sees all of it. And that’s impressive. Keeping together all the details of a massive,   war with dozens of competing factions isn’t impossible, it’s just very, very hard. And Brown’s commitment to showing it all is both one of the beautiful strengths and most annoying failures of the third and final book in the series, Morning Star. It starts badly by almost any measure: Betrayed at the end of the last book, Golden Son, and with all his victories turned to ash, Darrow begins Morning Star imprisoned. He’s been beaten, tortured, revealed as an impostor in his   world and then thrown into solitary, in a hole so small that he can do nothing but curl into a ball, talk to himself and weep. Conveniently, most of what he talks about are the events of the past two books  —   which, as a writer, is precisely why you throw your main man into solitary in the first place. Roger Zelazny did it right in the middle of the first half of his Amber decalogy (the only half that matters) blinding his narrator and throwing him into a cell where he could think back on all that had led him to this sorry state. But while Zelazny somehow made that prison cell one of the best parts of the series, Brown . .. does not. Darrow is broken. He lies there like a lump feeling sorry for himself, remembering the good ol’ days and everyone who done him wrong. And while he might think his end has finally come, we, as readers, know that rescue must be on its way. You know, eventually. And, eventually, it does come. There’s a prison break, a rescue, joyous reunions. But Morning Star is still suffering from a bit of   at this point, in that it sometimes seems like every other sentence is Darrow recalling some past character that we need to get caught up with, all of which end up reading like ”. .. and then I saw Cleetus the Mighty, who wore the Trousers of Calamity when last we battled on the slopes of Mt. Exposition.” And really? I’m just waiting for the Howlers to come back. For the   and scarred teenager, Sevro au Barca (Darrow’s best friend, leader of the rebellion, a   Gold gone bad) and his personal army of insane, drunken malcontents to roar back onto the page with their rocket boots and blow stuff up. It is Sevro (more than Darrow, more than anyone) that is Pierce Brown’s true muse the gasoline on his writer fire. And the Howlers are like nerdy frat boys with access to automatic weapons and high explosives. They are the counterweight (both literal and figurative) to all the aforementioned busywork of managing a rebellion. Darrow was the one who was always good at bringing people together. And in his absence, Sevro and the Howlers have been waging the war the only way they know how: By killing pretty much everything they see, as loudly and dramatically as possible. So after   pages of moping and angst. what follows are several hundred pages of action with occasional inspirational speeches thrown in. Yes, there is horror. Yes, there is want and tragedy. Brown doesn’t short the scope or repercussions of war on a massive scale. But there is also satisfying revenge and daring,     escapes. And there is no one writing today who does shameless, Michael   action set pieces the way Brown does. The battle scenes are kinetic, bloody, breathless, crazy. Everything is on fire all the time. As to whether or not Brown sticks his landing? That’s depends on whether you’ve fallen for Darrow the warrior or Darrow the messiah. ”I am and always have been a man who is made complete by the people around him,” Darrow says (awkwardly) of himself early on in Morning Star  —   he’s neither completely a man of war or a man of joy. And while Brown has spent three books detailing destruction, he, too, is a creature of strange balance. A writer who gets the ”opera” part of space opera. Who doesn’t hesitate to murder his way through a thousand and a half pages. But who also understands when rewards are due. Jason Sheehan is an   a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book."
"The company that built a   apartment building that collapsed during Saturday’s earthquake in Taiwan no longer exists, but three of its former executives have been arrested as prosecutors look into allegations of shoddy building practices. So far, 39 of the more than 40 people who died in the quake were residents of the Golden Dragon apartment building in the city of Tainan. Those figures are expected to rise, as more than 100 people are still believed to be trapped inside the building, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency. On Tuesday, prosecutors ordered the arrest of the former chairman of the   Weiguan company as well as two other executives on charges of professional negligence. Lin   and two associates were detained, the Taiwan News site reports. It adds: ”The Tainan District Prosecutors Office made the decision to take them into custody after prosecutors found that Lin, with the help of his partners, had started another company under a different business entity after filing for bankruptcy upon completion of the [Golden Dragon] apartment several years ago.” The Golden Dragon building was reportedly completed in 1994 as we reported Monday, many observers were shocked to see photos of blue cans embedded in its concrete pillars, where they had seemingly been used as filler."
"Two passenger trains crashed in southern Germany on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 80  —   17 of them critically. According to Bavarian police, one person is still missing. The accident in Bavaria happened shortly before 7:00 a. m. local time. Rescue and salvage crews have been working at the site of the crash near the town of Bad Aibling, roughly 40 miles southeast of Munich. Authorities are trying to figure out what caused the deadly collision. The trains’ drivers and conductors are believed to be among the dead, according to local broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk. NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports: ”The   crash occurred during the morning rush hour on a remote stretch of track in Bavaria. Rescue workers struggled to get to trapped passengers in the gnarled wreckage on the mountainside. ”Investigators are unclear how the crash could have happened given safety measures that are supposed to prevent trains moving in opposite directions from traveling on the same track.” The trains that collided bear the numbers 79505 and 79506, the company says. Some of the cars derailed during the crash, which happened on a curved portion of track in a wooded area alongside the Mangfall River  —   conditions that have led to theories that the two drivers couldn’t see one another. When they crashed, the trains had been traveling at speeds up to 100 km per hour  —   or around 62 mph, reports Deutsche Welle, citing Germany’s minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Alexander Dobrindt. Dobrindt also says that two ”black box” recorders have been recovered from the trains. ”The accident was a huge shock to us,” says Bernd Rosenbusch, managing director of Bavarian Oberland Bahn GmbH, the parent company to regional train service Meridian."
"The U. S. Department of Justice is suing the city of Ferguson, Mo. for unjust policing that violates the civil and constitutional rights of citizens, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Wednesday. The lawsuit came one day after the Ferguson City Council voted to change a proposed consent decree to reform the police and courts. The council said the package, which had been negotiated between the DOJ and city officials, cost too much. In a news conference, Lynch said the DOJ was sensitive to the city’s cost concerns throughout the   negotiation. She also said, ”There is no price for constitutional policing.” Lynch was adamant that the council’s move to amend the agreement constituted a rejection. ”A few weeks ago, the Department of Justice and Ferguson’s own negotiators came to an agreement that was both fair and    —   and that would provide all the residents of Ferguson the constitutional and effective policing and court practices guaranteed to all Americans. As agreed, it was presented to the Ferguson City Council for approval or rejection. And last night, the city council rejected the consent decree approved by their own negotiators. Their decision leaves us no further choice.” She also said she was disappointed that Ferguson had not approved the deal, as the goal of the negotiation was to avoid litigation. A year after the DOJ announced the findings of its investigation into the Ferguson Police Department, Lynch said the people of Ferguson should not have to wait any longer for ”their city to adopt an agreement that would protect their rights and keep them safe.” She said the violations by the police and courts in Ferguson ”were not only egregious  —   they were routine.” The lawsuit alleges a ”pattern or practice of law enforcement conduct that violates the First, Fourth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution and federal civil rights laws,” Lynch said. ”We intend to aggressively prosecute this case and I have no doubt that we will prevail.”"
"Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who has been embroiled in a scandal involving reports of prisoner abuse and an alleged conspiracy to cover it up, has pleaded guilty to making false statements, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday. The single count against him relates to statements made regarding a federal investigation into corruption and violence at LA County jails. Baca has confessed to lying multiple times when he said he did not know about the actions of those within his department. He was still serving as sheriff at the time. The plea deal calls for no more than six months in prison, U. S. Attorney Eileen Decker said at a news conference in Los Angeles. As we’ve previously reported, the FBI has spent years investigating the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over allegations of widespread abuse of inmates’ civil rights. Among other things, Baca’s lieutenants and deputies were accused of unprovoked assaults on unresisting inmates. ”Volunteers, including two chaplains, filed sworn affidavits they witnessed subdued inmates being beaten,” NPR’s Carrie Kahn reported in 2011. ”A top ranked rookie deputy reportedly quit after refusing orders to beat a mentally ill inmate.” Baca said in 2013 that the alleged assaults were the acts of a few bad apples, and ”there is no institutional problem.” But he stepped down as sheriff in 2014, citing the ”negative perception” his bid for   would bring to the sheriff’s office. The charges against Baca  —   and additional charges against many of his subordinates  —   are not directly related to the purported abuse in the jails. Instead, they stem from an alleged plot to block the investigation that could have revealed such abuse. An inmate at a Los Angeles jail had agreed to cooperate with the FBI and pass them information. But when the sheriff’s deputies learned about the operation, the informant ”was essentially made to disappear within the jail system,” Decker said. The inmate was jailed under fake names, the LA Times reports, and officials from the sheriff’s office actively worked to prevent him from making contact with the FBI. Sheriff’s deputies are also accused of confronting an FBI agent at her home and attempting to intimidate her. Baca admitted in the plea deal that he was lying when he told the Justice Department he didn’t know anything about these efforts to block the investigation. Last year, Baca’s second in command, Paul Tanaka, was indicted for condoning the beating of inmates and obstructing the FBI’s investigation. His trial is scheduled for next month."
"A massive gas leak in the Los Angeles area that was first announced in October is still leaking. The company that operates the storage facility where the leak happened says the leak could be capped as early as the end of the week. Most of the leaking gas is the greenhouse gas methane, which is harmful to the environment. But how harmful is it? Every week for the past few months, University of California, Davis researcher Stephen Conley has been flying a small, specially equipped plane into a huge plume of methane to measure the gas that has been leaking uncontrollably into the atmosphere. Conley flies over natural gas storage facilities all the time. And he always sees small gas leaks. But when he was first asked to fly over this big leak in November, he was shocked by what he found. ”I’d never seen measurements like that before,” he says. ”So my first reaction was crap, what just happened? Did I hit too much turbulence and some laser got out of alignment? So my first question was that something was wrong . .. .” The readings were so high, he thought it was a mistake. But when he landed he saw that two different instruments were each showing 50 or 60 parts of methane per million. The normal level in Los Angeles is around 2 parts per million. In Conley’s next two flights, the numbers he measured went up. Since late November, the levels have steadily been going down, but Conley says the amount of methane that’s leaking out of the facility is enormous. Once the company that runs the storage facility, Southern California Gas, thinks the well has been capped, Conley will run a test flight to confirm that the leak has stopped. The company has depressurized the storage facility, which means it’s leaking less gas than it was at the peak in November. But again, there’s still a lot of gas. Given those readings, we wanted to know how harmful all that methane is to the atmosphere in California and beyond. We put that question to Rob Jackson, an environmental scientist at Stanford University. ”Methane is far more potent, molecule for molecule, than carbon dioxide is  —   the gas that people are used to thinking about in terms of climate change. On a   time scale methane is 80 or 90 times more potent, molecule for molecule, than carbon dioxide. And even at a century time scale, it’s 30 or 40 times. That’s the reason that we care so much about methane in the atmosphere,” he says. So how big a deal is this gas leak? ”It really depends on the scale that you look. The amount of methane leaking out on a    basis is comparable to whole countries. If you look in Europe, for instance, countries like Belgium and Austria produce about this much methane on a    basis from human activities. So it’s really big,” Jackson says. ”If you look globally, you’re not going to see a massive spike when you look back at 2015 and 2016. It’s not that huge. It’s a huge leak in human terms, but it’s not big enough that it will affect the global methane cycle so much that this will be some kind of bellwether year. It’s really pretty small in the global scheme of things. ”The issue is more one on a local scale, on a regional scale. It’s also a symbol of our reliance on fossil fuels” at a time when California is trying to reduce greenhouse emissions, Jackson says. ”People have been spending millions and millions of dollars to dial back methane leaks around the U. S. and around the world. And one mistake like this comes along and can offset all of that, at least temporarily. ”Long term, those efforts to cut leaks really pay off,” Jackson says. ”But in the short term, this one mistake kind of offsets all of that. It’s a little discouraging. ”The question is will this be some kind of turning point? Will this be a symbol that people use to drive a change, a transformation toward renewables? Or in six months will everybody have forgotten about what’s happened? We don’t know yet, but I think people will remember this.”"
"Comedian Samantha Bee made her name on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and now her name is on her own show. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee is a weekly,   show that riffs on the news. It premiered Monday on TBS. Bee is currently the only late night TV host who’s a woman, something the show took on from the very beginning: Jo Miller is the showrunner of Full Frontal, and a former writer for The Daily Show. She tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers about her dreams for the show and what makes it different from other late night offerings. On whether she thinks of Full Frontal as a feminist show, It’s a feminist show because we are all feminists. I mean all the men and women here are feminists, so everything is through the lens of our opinion and our take on life. But it’s not a show about women stuff. We have stories about women we also have stories about refugees and men and mental health and prison and all kinds of things. You know, as women, we’re also worried about the economy and climate change, not because of our vaginas but because we like living on the planet. On the hiring process for the show’s writing staff, which is 50 percent female and 30 percent nonwhite, All the shows in the Daily Show family have always done blind submissions  —   it’s the only way to be fair. And all the shows do active outreach to try and get women and people of color to apply. I would never have been a writer if The Daily Show hadn’t told their staff, ”Hey, go find your funny female friends and make them apply.” Like, I had to be kind of   into applying because I didn’t think I was good enough. And we can do better. I consider our outreach sort of a failure. You know, I really tried to get people of color to apply we had less than 10 percent applicants were people of color. We have to do better. On how Full Frontal is different from other late night shows, What’s different with us is Sam’s voice and Sam’s point of view. It’s called Full Frontal. She does not pull any punches about her genuine emotions. Some of the lines in the show that I can’t repeat on the air were straight from her heart in rehearsal, and we’re like, ”Well, you have to say that in the show because that’s genuine. That’s how you feel.” . .. She’s not at a desk. We don’t have guests because we only have 30 minutes a week minus commercials, so we really wanted to fill it with comedy. And also if you have guests, you kind of have to worry about will people come on my show after we’ve said horrible things about them on the air? So we don’t have that worry. On what she hopes the show will become, I just want to keep doing this and keep getting better at it. We’re brand new. You know, I was at The Daily Show for six years and we kept raising the bar and getting better. Jon was never satisfied and he always raised the bar and wanted to do better shows and dive deeper and hit harder and be funnier. And I hope we’re two years funnier in two years."
"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has suspended his campaign for president. ”And while running for president I tried to reinforce what I have always believed  —   that speaking your mind matters, that experience matters, that competence matters and that it will always matter in leading our nation,” said Christie in a post on Facebook. The decision comes after a   finish in New Hampshire, where Christie had banked so much of his political capital. It was the second disappointing finish in a row for Christie. Unlike John Kasich and Jeb Bush  —   the governor and former governor who he was often grouped with  —   Christie had campaigned hard in Iowa. He spent more than 40 days in the state, according to member station WNYC, despite a moderate resume that history suggested wouldn’t appeal to conservative caucusgoers. Christie ended up with less than 2 percent of the vote. But for Christie, New Hampshire had been the    state. And after winning less than 7 percent of the vote there, he’s calling it quits. Of all the ”what ifs” in the Republican presidential campaign, Christie’s is perhaps the most alluring. What if he had run for president in 2012, instead of 2016? Many Republicans were dissatisfied with eventual nominee Mitt Romney that year, and Christie carried on a long flirtation with entering the race himself before deciding not to. Although Christie faced the biggest challenge of his gubernatorial tenure that fall, when Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey, he would never again hold the popular appeal that he did with his party before 2012. He angered many Republicans by publicly embracing President Obama during a disaster tour days before the election. And one year later, Christie was dragged into what became known as ”Bridgegate,” when some of his top aides created several days of gridlock in the New York City suburb of Fort Lee, N. J. as an alleged act of political retribution. While Christie never broke from the pack, he still made a lasting mark on the New Hampshire primary, knocking the surging Marco Rubio off his game at Saturday’s debate by berating Rubio for repeating the same talking point over and over. Rubio ended up finishing fifth, but as WNYC’s Matt Katz put it, the move may have ultimately cost Christie votes, too. ”Christie didn’t really attack like he knows how to attack until last Saturday night, when he knocked out Rubio at the debate,” Katz wrote. ”That was apparently a   because while Rubio’s reputation was gravely damaged, Christie didn’t help himself.” Christie’s departure, along with the recently announced exit of Carly Fiorina, leaves seven major Republican candidates in the race."
"Carly Fiorina is exiting the Republican presidential race after a   showing in last night’s New Hampshire primary. ”While I suspend my candidacy today, I will continue to travel this country and fight for those Americans who refuse to settle for the way things are and a status quo that no longer works for them,” said Fiorina in a statement. Fiorina was an unconventional candidate. Her only previous political effort had been a   loss in a race for U. S. Senate in California, and her tenure at   was most notable for her being fired by the board of directors after an unsuccessful merger with Compaq. Still, Fiorina struck a chord with many Republican voters, many of whom were especially drawn to her fierce   viewpoints and spirited appearances on the campaign trail and in debates. Fiorina, the only female candidate on the Republican side, devoted a considerable amount of time to attacking Hillary Clinton, whom she criticized for reducing her campaign to an appeal for a female president. ”How often does she talk to us about the historic nature of her candidacy?” Fiorina told NPR in January. ”Every single time she’s on the stump. I don’t talk about that. I talk about why I’m the most qualified candidate to win this job and to do this job. Hillary Clinton cannot talk about the historic nature of her candidacy if she faces me.” Fiorina stood out in the initial ”undercard” debate in August and rode a wave of attention and improved poll numbers to participate in several of the main debates. But her momentum stalled, and not only was Fiorina relegated to several undercard debates, she was excluded altogether from ABC’s Saturday night Republican debate."
"It took Sen. Ted Cruz to finally persuade me to answer a riddle that’s bothered me for years. Suppose somebody yanked away the law that currently props up the nation’s ethanol industry, as Cruz has proposed. What would actually happen? Before we get to the answer, let me mention why it’s important, and why I’m writing about it here in The Salt. The gasoline that fuels your car is actually 10 percent ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, and that fact has had a profound impact on America’s farming landscape. As ethanol use increased over the past 15 years, dozens of giant distilleries  —   known, more respectably, as ethanol plants  —   appeared in the country’s corn belt. Feeding those distilleries is now a   job for roughly 35 million acres, or 55, 000 square miles, of corn fields. Offhand, I can’t think of a single agricultural product that exceeds the scale of ethanol. Corn farmers love the ethanol boom, the way any manufacturer loves a big customer. Many environmentalists, on the other hand, despise it. Ethanol is often called a renewable fuel, because you can grow that corn year after year, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air in the process. But growing all that corn for fuel also means more soil erosion, more water pollution, and it can even force the clearing of more land to grow things that people actually eat. This argument over the virtues and evils of ethanol focuses on one particular law: the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) which requires that gasoline manufacturers purchase large and, until this year,   amounts of ethanol, which they then blend into the nation’s fuel supply. (True insiders will protest that gas companies can buy renewable fuel credits, called RINs, instead of ethanol, but the   effect is the same in either case. So we’ll stay away from that rabbit hole.) As you might expect, corn farmers and ethanol producers helped push this law through Congress. If you oppose government interventions in the free market, as Cruz does, the RFS is an outrage. ”End the Ethanol ” wrote author Robert Bryce in The New York Times last year. He pointed out that a gallon of ethanol delivers only   as much energy as a gallon of pure   gasoline, and as a result, we’re paying about twice as much for that ethanol, per unit of energy, as for   gasoline. The loser, he says, is the American consumer, to the tune of about $10 billion each year. This view of the RFS is widely shared across the political spectrum, including, for instance, the editorial board of The Washington Post. Groups hurt by high corn prices, including hog farmers and the fast food industry, are on record calling for the abolition or relaxation of the ethanol mandate. In fact, even ethanol’s backers, in their fierce defense of the RFS, appear to believe that it is essential for the survival of their industry. But is that really true? It took   Ted Cruz’s victory in   Iowa’s Republican presidential primary to finally persuade me to hit the phones and figure this out. I found two experts who’ve examined this question in great detail: Paul Niznik, an analyst at Stratas Advisors, an energy consulting business in Houston, and Scott Irwin, an economist who teaches at the University of Illinois. And here’s their bottom line: If the law changed tomorrow and gasoline companies were free to ignore ethanol, they’d almost certainly keep right on blending ethanol into their fuel. Got that? The ethanol mandate requires gasoline companies to do something that, at the moment, they’d do anyway. The reason, in a word, is octane. Octane is a measure of gasoline’s tendency to ignite under pressure. If it’s too low, the   mixture in an engine’s cylinders will burn too soon, creating damaging ”knocking.” The industry standard for gasoline is 87. But getting gasoline’s octane rating up to that standard costs money. It means more refining of the petroleum, or using   compounds in your gasoline formula, such as  —   you guessed it  —   ethanol. So gasoline companies aren’t using ethanol for its energy  —   they’re buying it for its high octane rating. There are other compounds that you can add to boost octane levels, but many, like alkylate or   are generally more expensive than ethanol. Another additive that is widely used globally, called MTBE, has such a bad reputation for polluting the environment that many states have passed regulations that make it difficult to use. ”As of today, the alternative sources of octane are more expensive,” says Irwin, who just updated his calculations on demand for ethanol last week. Niznik, from Stratas Advisors, says that when corn prices hit a peak in 2012, because of a drought in the Midwest, there were bitter complaints about the ethanol mandate among farmers and people in the food industry who wanted that corn to be used for animal feed. ”They were assuming that if we used less ethanol, the price of corn would go down,” he says. ”The truth is,” Niznik continues, ”the [petroleum] refining folks knew in their hearts that if the [ethanol mandate] went away for a while, ethanol use wouldn’t drop much. They were looking around at the octane replacements, and knew that those things were really expensive.” Niznik says removing ethanol also would have forced gasoline companies to disrupt their refinery operations. If this is true, though, and the ethanol industry doesn’t really need the law that requires ethanol in gasoline, why does it defend that law so fiercely? ”Without the RFS, it’s a riskier world” for the ethanol industry, Irwin replies. The RFS was, in fact, necessary to get the ethanol industry off the ground, and even though gasoline companies profit from its   qualities, the petroleum industry has always opposed the law. Ethanol companies ”believe that they are in a political death match, and that the petroleum industry wants to kill ethanol,” Irwin ways. According to Niznik, there may be some justification for that fear. ”Refiners are looking strategically up the road,” he says. ”They’re looking at forecasts of shrinking gasoline demand. They could say to themselves, ’Why should I be giving 10 percent away? I want to sell product that’s mine!’ ” Switching to   octane boosters such as alkylate would not be easy, though. In the short term, Niznik says, it would be  . Oil companies are competing against each other to make cheap gas, and ”the guy with ethanol is probably going to win.” But those other sources of octane are getting cheaper, Niznik says, and in the long run, they might be just as cheap as ethanol. In 10 years, he says, the business case for using ethanol could disappear. But even that might not be enough. There’s a complex set of local, state and federal regulations that also tend to favor ethanol. A few states require a 10 percent blend of ethanol. Others, like California, have air quality regulations that make it very difficult to replace ethanol. ”It would be very hard to unravel things like that,” Niznik says. ”It’s like the tax code. Lots of things are tied into it, and that makes it very hard to change.” But he also expects debate over the ethanol mandate to continue, because ”it’s a great political football.” By defending the Renewable Fuel Standard, or attacking it, politicians define themselves, and their supporters."
"A new novel takes young readers inside the mind of a    fox. Abandoned as a kit, Pax is taken in by Peter, a boy whose mother has died. When Peter’s dad joins the military, Peter is forced to send Pax into the wild for the first time. The story  —   set during wartime in an unidentified time and place  —   is told from both Peter and Pax’s perspectives. While Pax is a particularly bright fox, author Sara Pennypacker says she made an effort not to stray too far from the facts. ”I worked with a red fox expert and there’s really nothing in it that isn’t documented behavior and within their capabilities,” Pennypacker tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. Pennypacker, who is best known for her ”Clementine” series, talks about the research she did for this book, the relationship between children and animals, and a mantra that helps her while she writes. On consulting with a fox expert  Matt Walker . .. he vetted the book is what he did. I spoke with him a few times in the beginning to get a feeling and he sent me some reference material so I learned what I could learn. Then I wrote the story which travels a very specific path, and there’s just no way that you could research and say, ”Well how’s a fox going to deal with this?” Because I’m making up this stuff. So what he did was he took the book afterward and vetted it, and every time I said, you know, ”The fox laid his ears back,” or something like that, he would correct me and just make sure that everything is correct. On foxes listening to and deciphering the calls of crows, I thought [Walker] was going to tell me, ”No, they’re not going to be able to translate the crows’ communication.” And in fact that’s been proven. In fact, they’ve been able to translate communication from a dozen different species. They’re brilliant. Foxes are so brilliant. On the relationship between kids and animals, I wanted to, on the one hand, celebrate this extraordinary sense of no boundaries  —   it’s kind of a boundary issue where kids don’t realize there are boundaries and I love that! They’re right, they’re correct! Why can’t they love an animal, a wild animal or a pet? Why can’t they? Humans sort of get narrow as they age and I think the older we get, the less we’re able to see we can have real relationships with more of life. You know, Vola, one of the characters in the book, calls it ”Two but not two,” which is a Buddhist idea about   that kids sort of understand better. Like, ”Of course I can connect to this wild elephant I just found in the jungle.” I can relate on some level to it, and adults don’t do that and I wanted to celebrate that. On the difference between this book and her ”Clementine” series, All of my books are different from each other, and in fact, each Clementine book feels very different to me from each other. I feel like every time I start a book I think, ”Well now I need to learn to write all over again,” because it’s so different. . .. I have a sign over my desk, only one, that says, ”The story is the boss.” It comes from Stephen King’s book on writing and for me it’s a Zen koan because it just keeps explaining to me what I’m supposed to do, no matter what problem comes up for me. The story is the boss. . .. So I always let the story itself tell me how to serve it and what tone is deserved. On establishing points of view in the book, Many of the things in the book could have been told from either point of view, and every single time I would stop and I’d say, ”Nope, this is more poignant, this is better told from the fox,” or, ”This is better told from Peter’s point of view,” and sometimes, for the most fun of all, I had something told from both points of view so we can see that mistakes have been made. For instance, the time when Peter has sort of always wondered why his counselor  —   he went to a grief counselor after his mom died  —   why she let him walk away . .. (she said, ”Do you get angry?” and he gets up and walks away). He’s haunted by the fact that he was a little boy and the counselor never came after him. Only Pax is able to tell the reader the counselor came after him the counselor came into the house begging to see him and the father pushed her away  —   I was able to tell the story from the fox’s point of view. On what she’ll do next, I told myself after Pax I was going to stop, I was not going to go through another novel for a few years. I don’t know why, but a new one has come to me  —   and you can’t deny it and say to yourself, ”Oh, I won’t think about that.” I think about it all the time now, how this novel would work."
"Humans have long turned to the dog for its nose, especially in its ability to hunt, track missing people and search for drugs. But there is a new challenge:   dogs have to now learn to find the increasingly common improvised explosive devices (IED) that can be assembled from ingredients that are not dangerous by themselves. ”So we’re now asking dogs not just to find a needle in a haystack, now the problem is more like saying to the dog ’we need you to find any sharp object in the haystack,’ ” says Clive Wynne, a professor at Arizona State University. Wynne directs a study funded by the Office of Naval Research that develops methods to train dogs to identify a wide variety of ingredients that could be used to make bombs. The dogs not only have to detect whether explosive ingredients are present  —   they also have to determine whether the agents they smell could combine to form an explosive mixture. Rohan, a small, black and brown shelter dog with perky ears and intent eyes, is one of the canine trainees at the Canine Science Lab on the campus of Arizona State University. For training, Rohan puts his pointy, black nose into a machine called an olfactometer that can present thousands of scent mixtures  —   everything from vanilla to ammonium nitrate. As he keeps his nose in the olfactometer, a computer directs scents to an odor port where he can sniff them. If he smells the target odor, he keeps his nose in. If he doesn’t, he takes his nose out. ”He’s keeping his nose in and he gets food for that. That was a correct hit. That was a hit response. The odor was there, he made the correct indication,” says researcher Nathan Hall as he watches Rohan go through the process. Hall is part of the research team. Wynne says history shows that some of those ingredients don’t seem dangerous at all. ”I grew up in Britain, and when I was a child there was a series of terrorist attacks on Britain and I only recently learned that the critical explosive fuel was confectioner’s sugar,” Wynne says. ”Now, would there be a purpose in training dogs to find confectioner’s sugar? Obviously not.” But Wynne says the dogs need to learn that when combined with other elements, even sugar could be used in a bomb. ”We want the dogs to grasp the concept of, ’this might go bang.’ And we do that not by showing the dog one explosive and one nonexplosive smell, but by showing the dog thousands of different explosive smells and thousands of different nonexplosive smells,” he says. It’s a much different approach than just teaching dogs to detect explosives like C4 or TNT. Joong Kim is a program manager with the Office of Naval Research. He says dogs used by the Marines are having a difficult time finding roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. ”Their components can be in a different ratio, a different quality and that does seem to have some effect on the performance of the canine,” Kim says. ”That variation is actually the challenging part of being able to identify and locate those threats.” He says the big problem is that IEDs are just that  —   improvised and completely inconsistent. Wynne says Rohan’s nose is more than a thousand times more powerful than a human’s nose. ”In the United States, defense research agencies spent billions of dollars over the last 15 years trying to create a technical replacement for the nose of the dog, and at the end of all that they just had to admit ’No, we cannot get close,’” Wynne says. He thinks his team can develop   dogs that can detect IEDs at a fraction of that price. All it takes, he says, is patience and a little positive reinforcement."
"Today, Cabin in the Sky is best remembered as a 1943 movie starring Ethel Waters, Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong  —   but it started as a hit Broadway musical, most of whose original music didn’t make it to the screen. When producer Jack Viertel began thinking about a revival of the stage show, all he had to go on were a few period recordings, a script and a handwritten   score. ”The score is so sophisticated and so fascinating,” Viertel says, ”and so steeped in the kind of jazz that Duke Ellington was beginning to write  —   not minstrel show jazz, so to speak. And I felt like, we simply have to expose this. It’s too good.” Now, those forgotten songs are being resurrected in a series of concert performances, beginning tonight at New York City Center.  Viertel brought in orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, who has worked on most of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals, to reconstruct the original songs by Vladimir Dukelsky, better known as Vernon Duke. Tunick is also a jazz guy  —   and he says the classically trained Russian composer could definitely swing. ”He became sort of a protégé of Gershwin,” Tunick says, ”who suggested that he change his name and concentrate on writing popular songs  —   which he became really quite good at.” Think ”April in Paris”  —   or the Cabin song ”Taking a Chance on Love,” which Ethel Waters performed in both the film and stage version. For the concert performances, Tony   actress LaChanze is stepping into Waters’ shoes. She plays Petunia, the religious woman who loves her morally challenged husband unconditionally. ”My challenge was not playing the style of the period,” LaChanze says, ”as much as I wanted to play the truth of a woman who’s just in love. And so that’s how I approach this role, because no matter what decade you’re in, women falling in love with bad guys happens every hour.” Cabin in the Sky is kind of a folk tale about representatives from heaven and hell battling for the soul of a gambler. The story contains more than a whiff of paternalism, if not outright racism. But Viertel says he learned some important lessons in his years working with legendary   playwright August Wilson. ”The culture, he believed  —   and I think he’s right  —   is richer for recognizing this material and examining it and putting it out in the world,” he says, ”rather than hiding from the more unpleasant aspects of its innate racism.” Cabin in the Sky was originally written and produced by white men. So after making some edits himself, Viertel brought in Ruben   not only to direct the show, but work on the text.   says Viertel took the obvious things out. ”It’s easy for people that aren’t in my culture to see the things that are offensive or sketchy,”   says. ”It’s hard, unless you really know the culture, to know the little things that are very important. And so all the little nuance and little things  —   little words like ’wretched’ or ’lazy’ that have been linked to   people since we were thrown on the soil here  —   those things are gone.” That’s not to say that the original Broadway cast  —   which included singer Todd Duncan and   Katherine Dunham, in addition to Ethel Waters  —   didn’t make their opinions known to director George Balanchine. ”Balanchine said, ’Okay, you guys do you. Show me what is important to you and then I’ll make sure it’s staged right,’”   says. ”He didn’t come in and tell black people how to be black people.” Ruben   says while there are problematic aspects to Cabin in the Sky, the music is worth resurrecting, and the story is still worth telling. ”These stories have been told forever: about temptation, good and evil, making choices,” he says. ”It’s what they teach us on church on Sunday. And then our mothers and fathers teach us to make good choices, the right choices, according to what they think life should be . ..That’s what this play is about. And love.”"
"Aedes aegypti is the dog of the mosquito world. It acts as if it’s man’s best friend. ”It’s been with us for a long time, probably for at least 5, 000 years when we started keeping water next to our homes [ideal for laying eggs] and it’s adapted to people,” says Marten Edwards, an entomologist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. ”It loves us. It loves our cities. It loves our blood. It functions very well with us.” There’s just one problem. This mosquito makes us sick. Aedes aegypti is the primary mosquito responsible for spreading the Zika virus that’s sweeping through Latin America and the Caribbean. For a long time it was known as the ”Yellow Fever” mosquito because it’s the primary vector for the virus that causes yellow fever. Aedes aegypti also spreads dengue and chikungunya. A promotional press release amid the media frenzy over Zika called Aedes aegypti ”a   missile of disease.” While the tiny bug might not be able to blow anything up, it is very efficient at delivering viruses from one person to another. ”It’s not like a mosquito can just suck up a virus and immediately inject into somebody else,” says Marten. ”The biology of the virus is connected to the biology of the mosquito.” The stomach of Aedes aegypti is a fertile place for the Zika virus to reproduce. ”This doesn’t happen in the vast majority of mosquitoes,” he says. ”So that’s what makes the Aedes aegypti unusual.” The mosquito’s feeding habits are another boon for virus spreading. In general, female mosquitoes bite people or other   creatures because they need the blood to hatch their eggs. Most mosquitoes get some blood in one bite and get on with reproduction. But Aedes aegypti is what’s known as a ”sip feeder.” It takes lots of little sips of blood from lots of people. So once an Aedes aegypti mosquito is infected with a virus, it’s able to spread it multiple times in its   to   life. That’s partly why Zika has spread ”explosively,” as the World Health Organization head Margaret Chan characterized it, in the Americas. Globally there are thousands of different types of mosquitoes. Aedes aegypti primarily is found in the tropics. Entomologists say its habitat is expanding but currently its range extends from the southern United States to northern Argentina in the Americas. It prospers across   Africa, in India and in warmer, wetter parts of Southeast Asia. Basically Aedes aegypti hangs out in a wide band around the equator. And it likes cities. ”This is an urban mosquito,” says Audrey Lenhart, an entomologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. ”It tends to breed in close proximity to human habitations.” Trash is a favorite breeding site. So are abandoned tires because of the water trapped inside. Other mosquitoes, by contrast, breed in swamps and feed off deer. Lenhart is now part of the CDC’s emergency response to the Zika outbreak. Her earlier work looked at how Aedes aegypti spreads dengue in Latin America and what can be done to control it. ”It’s a tricky mosquito to control. It doesn’t bite at night like the mosquitoes that transmit malaria, so bed nets are not necessarily useful. They rest both inside and outside houses so there’s not an easy way to target the adult mosquito [with pesticide].” ”It’s domesticated,” says Rebekah Kading, an entomologist at Colorado State University. She reiterates that Aedes aegypti has developed a lot of habits that make it really good at spreading disease. ”It’s feeding on people almost exclusively. It doesn’t fly very far so it’s just circulating virus in an area.” Its flight span is about a quarter of a mile, according to one study. How do we get rid of this unwanted friend? The researchers interviewed for this story said that people need to make their homes and neighborhoods less friendly to mosquitoes. For example, dump out any containers with even a little standing water in the bottom  —   Aedes aegypti’s larvae can develop in even a bottle cap full of water. And even without water, the eggs can survive for months, until the rains arrive. As with any complex,   relationship, breaking up with Aedes aegypti may be hard for humans to do."
"Editor’s note: As of Oct. 1, we’re no longer updating this timeline.  Since it was first discovered in Uganda in 1947, Zika virus was known mostly as a   and mild illness. In 2015, that all changed. An outbreak in Brazil has been linked to cases of a serious birth defect, microcephaly, and a potentially crippling disease,   syndrome. As the   illness spreads across the Americas, scientists are trying to figure out which illnesses the virus is truly responsible for and why more people are getting sick. We’ve put together a timeline to track the global response to Zika virus and scientists’ understanding of how it affects people, with the most recent events at the top. (Find NPR’s ongoing coverage here.) Check back, as we’re regularly updating this list."
"This post was updated at 4:50 p. m. ET to reflect revised delegate counts, Bernie Sanders delivered the   rout in New Hampshire Democratic primary history last night, besting Hillary Clinton by 22 percentage points. That’s important, because it hands him a crushing victory, lots of momentum and money to help him staff up for a potentially long fight against Clinton. And with that huge win, one might think that Sanders would end up with the majority of delegates. But Clinton may very well wind up with more of them (or at least be closer in the delegate count than the proportion of the vote total). Here’s why: There were 24 delegates to be allocated out of the New Hampshire Democratic primary, based on the vote statewide and by congressional district. Sanders, obviously, won more of those, 15 to her 9. And yet . .. Add in the ”superdelegates” who have already committed to a candidate, and Clinton moves into the delegate lead. Six of the state’s eight superdelegates have publicly said they will vote for Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in July. (Two are uncommitted.) That brings the delegate total out of Tuesday night to a 15 to 15 tie. This is what makes Clinton so powerful in the Democratic race  —   even while she and Sanders battle it out among    voters, she has a massive lead among superdelegates. Altogether, she already has 394 delegates and superdelegates to Sanders’ 44  —   a nearly ninefold lead. And as NPR reported last year, a Democratic candidate needs 2, 382 total delegates (super or not) to win the nomination. Of those, 712 are superdelegates. OK, but backing up: Who are these superdelegates and why do they get to pick whomever they please, regardless of what the voters want? Superdelegates are party insiders of all sorts  —   they include state and national elected officials, as well as Democratic National Committee members. So a   DNC committee member might be a superdelegate, as well as former President Bill Clinton. And while state primary results help apportion the   delegates, the superdelegates get to pick whom they want. But why? Electability, writes University of Georgia lecturer Josh Putnam, in a 2009 entry on his blog, Frontloading HQ. ”The reason superdelegates came into being in the interim period between the 1980 and 1984 elections was to allow the party establishment an increased voice in the nomination process,” he wrote. That gives the party some space to overrule primary and caucus voters. The goal wasn’t to shut voters out, Putnam adds. Rather, the Democratic Party wanted to make sure it nominated someone the party believed could win in a general election, as the party feared primary voters might choose a candidate that’s too extreme. And when those superdelegates pick a candidate, those endorsements matter. The endorsements a candidate racks up in the   invisible primary have in the past been a strong indicator of who will eventually win the nomination, political scientists have found. As we wrote back in November, it’s all a combination of the Clintons’ being longtime Democrats who once occupied the White House while Sanders is not a Democratic senator and has never been a Democrat. But just as they can pick whom they want, superdelegates can also change their minds. Indeed, a few Sanders supporters appear to be banking on that. As of 3:30 Wednesday afternoon, 1, 556 Sanders supporters had signed a MoveOn. org petition asking the six New Hampshire superdelegates who have pledged to support Clinton to change their minds."
"Here’s a question for New Hampshire voters. Would you have voted for Jeb Bush if he’d given you $1, 086? Bush didn’t offer that, obviously. But that’s the amount his campaign and superPAC spent on TV ads in New Hampshire for each vote Bush received in the primary on Tuesday. The former Florida governor had 31, 309 votes in New Hampshire, and his campaign and superPAC spent a combined $34 million on TV ads targeting the state. That left him edging out Sen. Marco Rubio ($556 per vote) for fourth place. They trailed Sen. Ted Cruz ($11) Ohio Gov. John Kasich ($273) and the winner, businessman Donald Trump ($31). Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’s campaign  —   he has no superPAC exclusively promoting his candidacy  —   poured $9. 1 million on New Hampshire TV, versus $4. 9 million from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a token amount from her superPAC. That comes out to $60 per vote for Sanders, $52 for Clinton. These calculations are based on tallies from the Associated Press with all 300 precincts in New Hampshire reporting and TV advertising data compiled by media company SMG Delta for NBC News. A possible   for Democrats is the   superPAC, Priorities USA Action. As of Jan. 1, it had reserves of $35. 8 million. Its strategy was to focus on attacking Republicans. Today Priorities put up a video, ”Trump’s America,” with a   tagline. NPR asked this morning if Priorities now might start attacking Sanders. Spokesman Justin Barasky responded in an   that the group will defend Clinton from attacks by GOP candidates and ensure that ”as many voters as possible know she’s the only candidate strong enough to beat the Republicans.” The candidates can be thankful for one thing: New Hampshire at least came cheaper than Iowa. International Business Times reported last week that    for TV there was (in descending order of finishing) $119 for Cruz, $74 for Trump and, in sixth place, $2, 888 for Bush. Next up are relatively inexpensive South Carolina, Nevada with its one major TV market  —   and then Florida, a state that can absorb any amount of media money in its 10 metro markets."
"One of the many curiosities of the 2016 presidential field is how hard it has been for a popular, swing state governor with a long track record of accomplishments to gain traction in this race. But John Kasich’s   showing in New Hampshire’s primary has suddenly jolted his   candidacy. With the race pivoting to South Carolina, the Ohio governor is getting a second look from Republicans still seeking an alternative to   Donald Trump. Kasich has stood out in the 2016 presidential field for a message that is rooted in the ”compassionate conservative” ethos, which helped propel George W. Bush to the White House. In an ABC interview Wednesday morning, Kasich again struck a tone that is a stark contrast to Trump’s   style. ”And when we (grow the economy) we make sure we leave no one behind: the mentally ill, the drug addicted, working poor, everybody has a right to rise in America and to restore the spirit of this country,” Kasich said. While Kasich’s compassionate message may seem like it could appeal across the swath of upcoming Southern states with decisive blocs of Christian voters, Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have been dominating in polls across the South. In South Carolina, Kasich has barely registered in polls to date. His New Hampshire victory could shake up that reality, particularly as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has stumbled following his poor debate performance. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s   campaign is unlikely to pose a threat to Kasich at the ballot box, but attack ads from Bush’s   allies could weigh Kasich down. The March 1 contests also present a huge hurdle for Kasich. Ten of the 13 states holding ”Super Tuesday” contests have minimum thresholds to quality for delegates. Cruz’s home state of Texas, for instance, has a 20 percent threshold. So do Georgia and Tennessee. Kasich’s 16 percent New Hampshire finish wouldn’t be good enough to nab him a single delegate in any of those states. Kasich suggested to ABC that he would remain in the race after Super Tuesday, at least through   when more moderate states like Michigan, Illinois and his home state of Ohio cast their votes. The challenge for Kasich  —   and for that matter, Rubio and Bush  —   is whether they can make it past March 1 without winning a single state and still be viewed as viable candidates for the nomination."
"In 1996, when Dominque Dawes became the first black woman to win an individual gymnastics medal at the Atlanta Summer Olympics, critics said her look wasn’t quite right. In 2012, Gabby Douglas became the first black woman to win the title of individual   champion at the London Summer Olympics. She was then asked again and again to comment on critiques about her hair. In 2013, Simone Biles became the first black woman to be world   champion at the gymnastics World Championship. Following her win, Italian Gymnastics Federation official David Ciaralli said there was ”a trend in gymnastics at this moment, which is going towards a technique that opens up new chances to athletes of colour (  for power) while penalising the more artistic Eastern European style that allowed Russians and Romanians to dominate the sport for years.” Ciarelli also said black people were unsuited to be field managers, general managers, or swimmers. Black female athletes, especially the ones who make it to the very top, have faced a history of being criticized for their bodies, their hair and their strength. In performative sports, like gymnastics, figure skating and ballet, they’re often subject to more elusive critiques about style and grace. The exact meaning of these comments can be hard to pin down, but they still send a clear message: This is not a black woman’s sport. Black women don’t belong here. Which is part of what makes a video that went viral this weekend so exciting. It shows a young woman named Sophina DeJesus, a senior on the gymnastics team at UCLA who identifies as   and Puerto Rican, incorporating dance moves into her Saturday floor routine that are strongly rooted in blackness. She whips, nae naes, and hits the quan while also expertly landing difficult tumbling sequences. The routine earned her a 9. 925 from the judges, but the crowd was screaming for a 10. On Facebook, the video has been watched over 26 million times. DeJesus’ routine doesn’t show an athlete dominating at a traditionally white sport despite her race. It was an athlete celebrating her race in the context of a traditionally white sport. In under two minutes, DeJesus  —   blue hair,   beats and all  —   showed that black bodies and black culture belong in gymnastics. Nevertheless, that sensibility probably won’t carry over to   competitions, at least for now. In an interview with the New York Times, former Olympic silver medalist and Bruin Samantha Peszek said that ”international judges seem to appreciate more traditional style of floor choreography” and that the strict Olympic requirements don’t allow much room for ”elaborate choreography.” But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to get your fix of    backflips. DeJesus’ UCLA team competes again on Feb. 13 and every weekend after that until  ."
"Call it a happy ending to a     story. Today, a     fiberglass shark cast from the same mold as the iconic, mechanical sharks used in the 1975 classic movie, Jaws, is leaving home. After more than 25 years keeping watch over Aadlen Brothers Auto Wrecking, a junkyard in Sun Valley, Calif. the shark known as Bruce is headed to a museum. This matters to me. Because the shark and I have a past. Like many people, I used to be afraid to go in the ocean because of Jaws. Unlike most people, I began a journey to cure myself of that fear  —   by trying to find and touch one of the movie’s fake sharks. As I chronicled in this story from 2010, that proved difficult. For filming, three sharks were made and hauled to Martha’s Vineyard. But, in the salt water, they broke so often that the movie ran over schedule and over budget. ”We were in deep trouble,” says production designer Joe Alves, who helped create the sharks. ”The studio was reluctant in the first place to make the movie. When we came back, they just dumped the sharks in the back lot, and they just rotted away.” The movie opened in the summer of 1975 and broke box office records. At some point that year, the studio, Universal, used Alves’ original mold to make one more shark, which hung by its tail for studio visitors until around 1990. By then, both the shark and the franchise were showing their age (nice try, Michael Caine) so the studio scrapped Bruce, along with a pile of old stunt cars, and sold them to Sam Adlen, an enterprising junkyard owner. Adlen had the flair of a showman. He wanted to make his junkyard, well, more than just a junkyard. Memorable. Not only did Adlen mount the shark in a prime spot overlooking the yard beneath it he kept chickens, a cow and, at one point, a bull (all real, by the way). To get a leg up in phone book searches (back when good placement meant good business) Adlen even added an extra ”a” to the company’s name. Were it not for Sam Adlen, the fourth Jaws shark would have no doubt rotted away, just like the others. ”You know, it’s just amazing what good shape he’s in for having been outside for so many years,” says Sam’s son, Nathan Adlen, who inherited the junkyard and the shark when his father died. Not long ago, Nathan sold the yard and just about everything in it. But not the shark  —   though he’d gotten plenty of offers. Instead, Adlen donated Bruce to a new movie museum in Los Angeles being built by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  —   the folks behind the Oscars. Sonja Wong manages new items that come into the museum. What did she say when she was told they were getting the shark? ”Well, I think it was more the face that I made,” she says. ”You know, it’s a challenge because it’s so large. It’s kind of an awkward shape too.” How large and how awkward? Wong says it’s 25 feet long, 12. 5 feet wide, and 8 feet high. How do you move an awkward,     artifact that’s at least 40 years old? A sling, of course. Wong says workers plan to cut the two, metal poles holding Bruce up and use the sling  —   and a crane  —   to lift him into a special crate on the back of a very big truck. The shark will spend the next few years in cushy,   storage while the academy figures out (a) how to conserve it and (b) how to display it. As for where  —   exactly  —   Bruce is being kept, Wong won’t say. The location is . .. ”Secure, undisclosed  —   but thankfully not my house.” Turns out, sharks have made her afraid of the water, too. ”I’m sure I’ll go back in again,” Wong says rather sheepishly. ”It’s just, I know the logic behind it isn’t very good but . ..” I tell her, she should try touching the shark. It worked for me. And I have the beach vacation photos to prove it."
"There’s been a male tilt to biomedical research for a long time. The National Institutes of Health is trying to change that and is looking to bring gender balance all the way down to the earliest stages of research. As a condition of NIH funding, researchers will now have to include female and male animals in their biomedical studies. As late as the 1990s, researchers worried that testing drugs in women who could be pregnant or become pregnant might lead to birth defects, so experimental drugs were mainly tested in men. Research in animals followed the same pattern. ”There was not the understanding that it really isn’t scientifically appropriate to study men and apply your findings to women. We just didn’t know that back then,” says Dr. Janine Clayton, director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the NIH. When the drugs this way finally went to market and women took them, sometimes things went wrong. To try to fix the problem, the NIH and Congress required that women and men be included in research involving human subjects.   Now, there are more women than men participating in clinical trials, at least in studies funded by the NIH. But there’s still a mystery: Why do women still report many more bad reactions to medications than men do? ”Men and women respond to medications differently. In fact, one study looked at the drugs that have been taken off the market and 8 of the 10 drugs taken off the market in that particular time period had more severe effects in women,” says Clayton. She thinks the problems that women experience when they take medications could stem from how biomedical research is conducted at the earliest stages  —   in animals. ”Eighty percent of drug studies that are done in mice are done in male mice,” says Clayton. Studies in mice are important because the results often inform what will be tested in humans. It’s not as if people are ignoring female animals because they’re chauvinists. Some researchers say females have been excluded from studies because their hormone cycles can confound the experiments, though the actual variability that the estrus cycle introduces is debatable. And in some cases, research has been skewed the other way. Male animals are sometimes excluded from studies because they fight with each other, which can complicate results, and because the males sometimes have to be caged separately, which can drive up costs in   labs. In other cases, studies are done on both male and female animals, but the data on each sex don’t get reported separately. All in all, Clayton says, researchers are missing indicators early on about how different bodies would respond to medications. ”We’re learning late,” she says. ”That’s not the best way to do this. We need to study both sexes throughout the entire research spectrum.” So, Clayton and her colleagues drew up a policy starting Jan. 25 that applies to   biomedical research starting January 25 on out involving animals with spines. ”We’re asking scientists to think about sex, to study both male and female animals in their preclinical research so that we can learn more about both male and female biology,” says Clayton. When the policy was first announced, people were pumped about it, says Sarah Richardson, a professor at Harvard who studies the history and philosophy of science. ”People were like ’Absolutely, that’s terrible. Why aren’t they studying female mice?’ That was my response, too,” she says. ”It was seen as just a straightforward obvious corrective that we have to do.” But she and other researchers maintain that if the goal is to address women’s health inequities, the policy on animal research isn’t likely to be effective by itself. Mice aren’t people. Richardson also says the focus on animals could distract scientists from the big picture: what happens in real living humans. ”Women on average, in North America at least, take more prescription drugs than men do,” she says. ”Women also go to the doctor more. We all know this  —   we cannot get the men in our lives to go to the doctor. They are also for whatever reason more likely to be sensitive to and prone to report feelings of discomfort,” she says. ”So, what we thought when we reviewed this literature is, OK, if the NIH is really wanting to address this, we need tons more studies of just those kinds of factors,” says Richardson. The NIH put $10 million toward helping labs add sex and gender to their projects. But if they want to figure out health differences between men and women, Richardson says, they need to also put money towards understanding what drives differences in human behavior. It’s not always simple to account for sex and gender in research projects, says Stacey Ritz, an immunologist at McMaster University in Canada who wrote a guide on how to do so. ”I’ve really struggled with it for many years,” she says. She says in most cases it’s pretty straightforward to do a   comparison. But there’s a danger in assuming that a difference noticed between male and female animals stems from a difference in their basic biology, rather than because of something else, like how the male animals might have been housed alone while the female animals were housed in groups. ”That’s one of the things that concern me,” says Ritz. ”A lot of times the questions around social dynamics and gender get glossed over and it’s assumed  —   especially with animals  —   that differences you see between male and female are purely biologically driven,” says Ritz. Neurologist Rhonda Voskuhl, at UCLA, agrees that mice aren’t going to reveal all the intricacies of why human men and women can have different health outcomes. ”There’s no perfect model for the human except for the human,” says Voskuhl. But in many cases, she says, animal studies can uncover important findings that can make a difference for people. Voskuhl has seen that firsthand. She directs UCLA’s research program on multiple sclerosis. She says for quite a while, researchers didn’t report the sex of animals they studied, though many studied mainly male rats. When they started looking more closely at female animals, they realized the disease progressed differently in them. That knowledge has led to findings about how to treat multiple sclerosis in women, including the idea that a pregnancy hormone could relieve symptoms, an approach that’s in clinical trials. ”The point of the story is, you may not think there’s anything there until you study it,” says Voskuhl. She says research on animals and humans goes hand in hand. If researchers study and report data for both sexes, that may well dredge up new treatment possibilities in people. A similar case came up in Jeff Mogil’s work studying pain at McGill University in Canada. He says a few decades ago, people primarily studied male animals, which they’d order from a company. The lab he worked in studied both. ”And because of that I’ve been in a position to see sex differences where other people in my field haven’t simply because they never had female mice lying around,” says Mogil.  By studying both sexes, Mogil and his colleagues found that different cells communicate pain in female and male animals. ”They experienced pain in the exact same way and to exactly the same degree, but the pain is produced and modulated using different circuits,” Mogil says. If the same is true in people, that difference could have big implications for a class of painkillers meant to work by blocking the cells that are more active in men. ”The prediction would be those drugs simply won’t work at all in women. It’s not that they’ll work better in women and worse in men. It’s that they won’t work in women period,” he says. And, he says, if people running clinical trials on that drug didn’t know that it only worked in men, they might look at the trial data, see that it only worked in half the participants, and just ditch it entirely."
"Talking to some Hong Kong residents, you might think their territory was under siege. Their press is censoring itself. Its judiciary is required to be ”patriotic.” Even their mother tongue, Cantonese, is under assault, some believe, from Mandarin speakers to the north. Now add academic freedom to that list, as   and   camps have rushed to take sides in an ongoing battle over leadership of the territory’s oldest institution of higher learning, the University of Hong Kong. The dispute came to a climax on the night of Jan. 26, when students surrounded a meeting of the university’s governing council. ”Dialogue, dialogue,” they shouted, jostling with police and demanding to speak to newly appointed council chairman Arthur Li. He refused. ”Mr. Arthur Li was protected by the police and sneaked away,” says student leader Yvonne Leung. ”So we could feel that he is not that sincere to have a talk with the students.” Leung opposes the appointment of Li, who is   and led students in a   boycott of classes starting Jan. 20, to push for more democratic university governance. In 2014, she was a student leader in the Umbrella Movement,   protests that occupied key streets in Hong Kong for nearly three months. Li chastised the students and said they were acting irrationally. ”Sadly, these small number of students are rather like someone who has taken drugs, who’s been poisoned by drugs,” he told reporters at a Jan. 28 news conference. ”And they’ve been manipulated.” They were manipulated, Li alleged, by Hong Kong’s liberal opposition parties, which want more democracy and less interference from Beijing. Li singled out Leung for criticism, pointing out that she was previously an intern with the leader of the opposition Civic Party. Links To Beijing, In an interview at the student union, Leung points out that Li is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) the   government’s top advisory body. ”You can see the one who is politically controlled,” she says. ”It must be him and not the students.” Li, 70, is the   heir of the founder of the Bank of East Asia, Hong Kong’s   bank. In addition to chairing the Hong Kong University governing council and sitting on the CPPCC, he also sits on Hong Kong’s Cabinet. His critics accuse him of a   management style, for which they have dubbed him ”King Arthur.” Li is a political ally of Hong Kong’s top leader, Chief Executive C. Y. Leung, who appointed Li to his job leading the university governing council. Leung, in turn, was selected by a   electoral college of Hong Kong elites. As Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung serves as the ex officio chancellor of every university in the territory and has the power to appoint the members of governing councils that make university policy. The system is a vestige of British colonial rule. Timothy O’Leary, a university governing council member and humanities professor, is pushing to change this arrangement. ”At the very least, it leaves them open to the appearance of political interference,” he says. ”And even the appearance is bad, because that does cause people to begin to engage in  .” Critics howled political interference back in September, when Li helped block human rights scholar and law faculty head Johannes Chan from a top university management post because of Chan’s ties to Benny Tai, a fellow law professor and a leader of the 2014 Umbrella Movement.   newspapers in Hong Kong published a slew of articles declaring Chan a ”mediocre scholar” who was unfit to lead. Threats To Hong Kong’s Freedoms, O’Leary says the debate about university autonomy comes amid fears that Hong Kong’s basic freedoms, including freedom of the press and judicial independence, are under threat. ”Those different kinds of freedom are all connected,” he says. ”If you lose one, you’re going to lose them all. ’Academic freedom,’ people will say, ’we haven’t yet lost it, so what are you worried about?’ The point is it’s under threat.” Hong Kong citizens have successfully organized and resisted measures that Beijing and Hong Kong’s government have tried to impose on them, O’Leary says. They were able to stop a draconian security law in 2003 and a 2012 school curriculum that some critics considered  . But the biggest protest of all, the Umbrella Movement, failed to win Hong Kong people the right to elect their own leaders or nominate political candidates. And that may be fueling   activists’ feeling of urgency now about the University of Hong Kong. The school’s governing council has said it will form a panel to discuss reforming its governance structure. The students want a clear timetable, but O’Leary urges them to give the panel time to work. For now, the students and council chairman Li are deadlocked and have failed to agree on terms to meet with each other."
"Attention, Harry Potter fans. This is not a drill. A new Harry Potter book will be published this summer. The book, called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, picks up the story of Harry, Ron and Hermione where the epilogue left off, according to author J. K. Rowling’s website, Pottermore. The book is the script of a play by the same name opening this summer in London. As you no doubt vividly remember, the series’ final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, closes on a scene that takes place 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts and Voldemort’s downfall. The postscript brings the epic story full circle, depicting the beloved characters standing on Platform Nine and   with their families. Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione wave nostalgic goodbyes as their children board the Hogwarts Express and head to wizarding school. The book ends with a reference to the series’ most famous symbol: ”The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.” From its title, the Cursed Child certainly hints that Harry’s peace and parental bliss have been disrupted, but not much is known about the plot beyond the official synopsis, released in October 2015. It reads: ”It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three   children. ”While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.” The script of the play opening this summer, which Pottermore bills as ”officially the eighth story in Harry Potter canon,” is a new tale by Rowling, playwright Jack Thorne and theater director John Tiffany. The U. K. publisher Little Brown says the book will be released on July 31, after the play’s official premiere, which is set for July 30. Scholastic will release the book at the same time in the U. S. For a generation of readers, Wednesday’s book announcement recalls feverish anticipation, endless speculation and early morning   in bookstore parking lots waiting to snag a copy of the newest Harry Potter installment. This time around, digital editions of the Cursed Child will be published simultaneously with print copies, so   stakeouts won’t be necessary. For avid fans, who  —   like Harry and Co.  —   are now adults, that’s probably just fine. It means more energy for the anticipation and speculation."
"Before he arrived in Omaha as a doctoral student in computer science, Jason Jie Xiong says, ”I didn’t even know there was a state called Nebraska.” Jie Xiong, 29, who hails from a small city outside Shanghai, had landed a full scholarship at the University of Nebraska to teach and do research. He says he only knew ”more famous states like California and New York.” He admits he found the program initially ”by randomly checking information,” but he’s quick to add that he’s happy there. It’s an irony of our digital flat world: Even though online college enrollment is growing, more students than ever are eager to board planes and cross oceans to study in physical classrooms in the United States. Nearly a million students from overseas are heading to U. S. colleges and universities each fall. That number is up 58 percent from a decade ago, driven by a massive increase in Chinese students. International students are worth a lot to colleges because most of them aren’t eligible for financial aid and pay full tuition. Along with this growth, though, have come growing pains. Many colleges have raised concerns about overseas applicants. Their English skills may not be up to snuff or they may have falsifications or discrepancies on their applications. They worry that many students are heavily coached through the   process in particular, by companies that specialize in this service. ”These consulting companies can charge 5, 000 U. S. dollars,” says Jie Xiong, who didn’t want to spend that kind of money. ”I wanted to do it myself.” For their own part, international students have concerns, too: They may not fully understand how large the United States is, or how to compare public, private and   institutions that have similar names. It can be a drag to end up spending four years at the State University of New York in snowy Buffalo, if you were dreaming of the Big Apple, or Miami University in Ohio if you wanted a sunny beach. Two new companies, Kira Academic and YouVisit, market novel applications of technology to colleges that want to find the best overseas students and vice versa. Kira Academic is a   real time admissions platform that works like a virtual interviewing tool. It was founded three years ago, initially aimed at corporate recruiters. Then about a year and a half ago the company ”happened to land a couple of university clients,” says   Emilie Cushman. ”They weren’t using any kind of process to test for things like fit, even though they all said it was really important.” The company saw the potential market in higher education, and it now works with 140 universities around the world. Kira works with colleges to come up with a specific battery of questions. These are designed to get at various underlying characteristics or ”competencies” that might make students successful at that college, such as willpower or the ability to collaborate. ”A lot of schools ask the same, very generic questions. And we saw that as a missed opportunity,” Cushman says. Kira’s pitch is that it can help colleges find applicants who are the best fit on these soft skills. But, says Nikki Lemley of the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, the ”primary reason” they use Kira is simpler: to make sure prospective students are fluent in English. Olin gets about 2, 500 applications each season for 190 seats in its   master’s programs. An estimated 90 percent come from overseas, primarily China. ”With the written essay, our hope is that the student has written it themselves, but there’s no guarantee,” says Lemley, the school’s associate directorof specialized master’s programs. The video is much more effective, she adds, for judging English communication skills. The technology is designed to foil rehearsed answers. An admissions officer or other administrator records each question as a video prompt. A random prompt is shown to the applicant, who gets 30 seconds or so to think about it. Then the camera on their laptop comes to life and it’s time to talk. Using Virtual Reality, If Kira Academic is letting colleges take an advance peek at students, Abi Mandelbaum at YouVisit has turned the camera the other way around  —   literally. YouVisit produces   virtual reality ”tours” of hotels, travel destinations and colleges, including Harvard and Yale. Shot in   video, the VR tours give students the opportunity to explore a campus while feeling as if they’re really there. You can turn your head and look in all directions and roam different parts of a campus almost at will. The video experiences are a draw for any student, but especially valuable for students from overseas, says Mandelbaum, who   the company with two classmates from Brandeis University, Endri Tolka and Taher Baderkhan. ”I’m from Colombia,” Mandelbaum explains. ”One of my other founders is from Jordan and the third is from Albania.” The three met on the first day of college as part of an international student event and have been friends ever since. ”We wanted to come to the U. S. but selecting from the thousands of colleges, it’s a daunting experience,” he says. ”We had friends who came and didn’t end up with a right fit. They ended up transferring.” Colleges like the Savannah College of Art and Design have mailed out   Google Cardboard headsets to accepted students. They also purchase more expensive headsets to show off their ”tours” at fairs and recruiting visits. The company has added gamelike mechanics to some of its tours. For example, you might approach a piece of equipment in a lab, and it becomes a ”hot spot” that pops up to reveal more information. While admitting that VR is in its infancy, Mandelbaum is among many who imagine different ways that the technology might be used for education. For example, one of their VR tours  —   of the Peruvian ruins of Machu Picchu  —   has already been used in some classrooms to engage students. And one day, VR might enable students and professors to ”join” each other in real time, even if they occupy different sides of the globe in reality. But for students like Jie Xiong, there’s no place like Omaha. ”There’s lots of good universities in the United States, even though they’re not ranked,” he says. ”China can’t compare.”"
"Growing up in the 1980s, brothers Jay and Mark Duplass weren’t into typical family movies. Their friends were enthralled by Star Wars, but Jay tells Fresh Air’s Ann Marie Baldonado that he and his brother were more interested in ”whatever showed up on HBO,” including Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie’s Choice and Hannah and Her Sisters. ”I think if you cornered me and Jay somewhere around 1983 and said, ’Would you like to go see The Empire Strikes Back with us?’ We would say something like, ’Why do we need a light saber when we have this wealth of early 40s adult divorce malaise coming through the TV on HBO?’ ” Mark jokes. Using their father’s VHS camera, the brothers began to create their own movies together. Now, decades later, they have written and directed five feature films, including Jeff, Who Lives at Home and Cyrus. Their latest project, the HBO series Togetherness, is about four people in their late 30s who live in Los Angeles. Two are single, looking for love and careers the other two are married and coping with their relationship, the stresses of parenthood and work. All four struggle with a general sense of feeling lost. Mark describes it as a ”deeply personal television show” that draws from real life. ”Mark and I both have kids the same age  —   they’re now roughly 7 and 3,” Jay says. ”There’s something really amazing about when that last baby starts sleeping where you come out of this fugue state of parenting.” In Jay’s case, and in the case of the family on Togetherness, getting out of the ”fugue state” took seven years. The end of that stage felt wonderful, he says, but: ”Now it’s been seven years. I don’t really know who I am. And you’re looking at your spouse and you’re like, I don’t know who you are. I don’t really know what I like any more because all of my needs have been subjugated for the good of these babies and our family unit. And you kind of have to   everything out. ” Interview Highlights, On why they wanted to make Togetherness   Mark Duplass: Our first feature we made was called The Puffy Chair, and it was sort of about what our life really felt like in our 20s when we were all kind of dating people for a year or two. And when we came to make Togetherness we thought, ”We’re hearing lots of conversations about people who are either in their late 30s and married, and they’re just an inch from drowning in the sea of their children and their jobs and make everything work. Or they haven’t found that person yet. Or haven’t even found that traction in their work life. On their relationship to each other growing up, Mark: I was extremely dependent on Jay. He was my spiritual leader. He was my god. He was everything to me. And he was sweet enough to let me play with him, because what brother who has a four years . .. younger little brother wants to hang out with him? I was really lucky to have that, and we would spend the night in the same bed together. I was scared of the dark. Jay would hang out with me. We would talk about how when we grew up we were going to get a house together and kind of thought that our wives would just move into the house with us, which is emotionally still how it kind of is to a certain degree. And then something really interesting happened, which was when I was, like, 14 and Jay was 18, he went to college and had a really hard year and felt very disconnected from home. And then the tables kind of shifted a little bit, where I was able for the first time to be strong for Jay and exhibit some level of leadership by just being young and naive enough to just say: ”It’s going to be OK. You’re awesome. It’s going to be OK.” And then we built, during those years I think, a truly impenetrable bond. On Jay deciding to be in front of the camera as Josh Pfefferman in Transparent, Jay: I wasn’t necessarily reluctant to be an actor, it just never occurred to me, honestly. . .. I was our primary camera operator on everything that we’ve made except for Togetherness.  And so I basically met Jill Soloway [creator of Transparent] at a party for directors . .. [and] she was telling me that she had this TV show ready to go and she had the whole family, but she couldn’t find the son. It was really troubling her. She needed a   wildly   Jewish guy, and I was like, ”Oh man, those are all Mark’s and my friends. We know all the actors in town who fit that bill.” And I went through a laundry list of guys and she had considered them all and she stopped me after about a half an hour of talking and she said, ”It’s you. I think you’re him and I would like you to come in and read.” On the sibling dynamic on Transparent  Jay: One thing that you do with your siblings when you love them more than life itself is your cruelty can often come from trying to force them to be who they truly are. Sometimes that’s nefarious because you may be mistaken about who they are, but you also want them to be the best version of themselves and so that drives a lot. So I think particularly for Josh, a lot of his difficulty and confusion in life comes from the fact that he did come up in a household full of incredibly strong women, and I think it was hard for him to find his identity. But also it’s probably why he has so much trouble dating is that he holds everyone to the candle of his sisters who he worships."
"If you can’t figure out what the establishment is, the political philosopher Jack Black has a good definition. ”You don’t know the man? Oh, well, he’s everywhere. In the White House, down the hall,” he rants in the movie School of Rock. He adds, ”And there used to be a way to stick it to the man. It was called rock ’n’ roll.” This idea is at the core of what establishment means in the 2016 presidential race, according to one (actual) political analyst. ”It’s kind of what we used to call ’The Man,’ when you are against The Man,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of the Rothenberg and Gonzales Political Report. ”The establishment has become ’The Man. ’” No one wants to be the square who hates rock ’n’ roll. And no one wants to be ”establishment” in the 2016 presidential race. Hillary Clinton quickly distanced herself from the label when Bernie Sanders used it against her in the last presidential debate. Republican Jeb Bush only grudgingly accepted the label. ”Fine, I’ll take it,” he said. That’s too bad for him. As political strategist Mark McKinnon told NPR, this is the most   race he has ever seen. In fact, here’s how he defined ”establishment”: ”The measles. A disease. A political disease.” A 2016 Phenomenon, Talking about the establishment and who is in it seems to be all anyone cares about this election. We tried to track how much the party ”establishments” were talked about in major newspapers. In the month before the Iowa caucuses this year, the establishment was mentioned 128 times in the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, by our count. In 2012, it was 45 times. (For more on how we counted this, see the note appended to the chart.) To be clear, this isn’t exactly a scientific study  —   it’s a sample of only four newspapers. (We didn’t count blogs and other Web content because of the explosion in those things over this period). And it’s also true that in two of the elections we looked at, only one party was nominating a candidate. But the data is evidence that, for whatever reason, the ”establishment” (whatever it is) is everywhere right now. Google Trends data likewise suggests a sizable spike for the search terms ”Republican establishment” and ”political establishment” (just searching ”the establishment” may be too vague, as it also relates to searches of the Establishment clause of the Constitution). The 1960s Rise (Or Maybe Fall) Of The Establishment, In a 1968 New Yorker article, British journalist Henry Fairlie claimed credit for inventing the term ”establishment” in the modern, political sense. (However, he traced usage of the term back to Ralph Waldo Emerson, in an 1841 speech called ”The Conservative. ”) Writing in 1955 about the disappearance of two U. K. Foreign Officers, Fairlie used the term to describe the powerful people, who, among other things, defended the officers’ families from the press. Fairlie had a definition that was simultaneously specific and amorphous. He said he wasn’t referring just to ”centres of official power” like the prime minister, but rather to a variety of other powerful people, including the head of the BBC and the Times Literary Supplement’s editor. Even in 1968, there was frustration over the word’s meaning. Writing 13 years later, Fairlie observed that his idea had grown in popularity and spread across the Atlantic  —   and he mourned that it had, in his opinion, lost its meaning, thanks to weekend columnists who decided to ”abandon ’the solid and the concrete’” that grounded weekday journalism. ”’[T]he Establishment’ . .. precisely because of its vagueness and its shapelessness, can be used in almost any country about almost any thing,” he wrote. Interestingly, journalist David Halberstam has since put the establishment’s ”  mark” in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected president. This may also be when the explosion in the term’s usage began. According to data from Google, usage of the terms ”Republican establishment” and ”Democratic establishment” in books skyrocketed around 1960. (Once again, NGrams isn’t a perfect tool, so this should be taken as just a loose indicator. For example, there are some results mixed in that discuss other countries, but a scan through the results also shows that a majority of the mentions since the 1960s seem to refer to American politics.) So what was happening in the 1960s? One thing was that the parties were loosening their grip on one of their major functions: nominating candidates. Primaries existed then, but before the 1960s, delegates would go to the national party conventions without knowing exactly who would be the nominee. It wasn’t the coronation ceremony it is today. Frustrated with this system, Phyllis Schlafly lambasted the establishment in A Choice Not An Echo, as Dave Weigel wrote at the Washington Post earlier this year in his own dissection of the term. Schlafly uses a series of anecdotes to show how groups of ”kingmakers,” including businessmen and ambassadors, chose moderate candidates that went against what she thought were the GOP’s interests. To Schlafly, the establishment was a conspiracy. She described it as ”a few secret kingmakers based in New York [who] selected every Republican presidential nominee from 1936 through 1960.” How did they do it? By ”using hidden persuaders and psychological warfare techniques,” with which they ”manipulated the Republican National Convention.” But then, Schlafly was fighting for Barry Goldwater, the outsider,   candidate who was running for president. And she got her wish in 1964, when the Republican Party nominated Goldwater. Though he was soundly defeated in the general election, his nomination was the start of a political shift in the GOP. ”Goldwater’s candidacy was sort of the beginning of the end for the Eastern establishment,” said Marty Cohen,   of The Party Decides, a 2008 book that argues that political insiders still play a huge part in selecting a party nominee. The ”Eastern establishment” is a popular variant of the term, one that carries with it not only geographic connotations, but in Halberstam’s telling, also the trappings of Ivy League educations and old money. This vague combination of party elites and wealthy ”kingmakers” (for example, the Rockefeller family) who supposedly ran the show, began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s, writes Halberstam. His reasons: Vietnam proved that the establishment could make bad decisions, and, as more Americans attended college on the G. I. Bill, the ”hungry, driven children of the meritocracy” were able to surpass the scions of wealthy families. And not everyone was convinced that the ”establishment” existed. Writing in 1967, the New York Times’ James Reston wrote that this hypothetical group should have been trying to find a candidate to ”stop Nixon” in the 1968 presidential race. ”Besides,” he wrote, ”there never was a Republican ’Eastern Establishment’ which could control Presidential nominations by raising or withholding campaign funds, though there were powerful and progressive Republicans” who had been ”influential” in nominating past candidates. What The Establishment Was  —   And Wasn’t, To read news stories about the establishment over the decades is to see the group described in the same       ’   terms as today. For example, Schlafly and Reston both seemed to agree  —   albeit to vastly differing degrees  —   that influential and moderate people were calling at least some of the shots. The establishment was also not  . ”The key to next November lies in the real fears and deep resentments which are beginning to agitate the working and   classes of white America,” wrote Andrew Hackman in a 1967 review of Stephen Hess and David Broder’s The Republican Establishment. Who would best capture that vote? The ” ” Ronald Reagan, he wrote  —   a man who failed in 1968 but would eventually win the White House. It wasn’t young: In 1971, the New York Times wondered how      with their fresh right to vote, might upset the political establishment in the 1972 election. And in 1978, Broder wrote about how a ”youth movement” into the Senate might upset the establishment. It wasn’t terribly interested in making deals: ”In the old days, the political establishment  —   the ’bosses,’ the big contributors, the party’s leading politicians  —   generally decided the party nominee,” wrote Richard Strout in the Christian Science Monitor in 1980. ”The new system favors a new kind of candidate  —   not one schooled in compromise, in party unity, in consensus seeking like Lyndon Johnson, but one who is independent, strongly committed, and perhaps an outsider type.” It wasn’t the common man: ”The last member of the eastern establishment to win the presidency, George Bush, was not   precisely because people thought he had lost touch with the average man,” wrote the Baltimore Sun’s Ronald Dworkin in 1999. ”This disconnection with the common man is most glaringly obvious in the way many members of the eastern establishment view social conservatives and devout Christians.” Powerful, rich, old, out of touch, secretive, moderate  —   these are how the establishment has been painted over the years. The players may have changed, but those connotations have stuck around for decades. What Does Establishment Mean Now? So why has establishment taken off now? Because people hate the establishment right now. But before we can get to why, let’s back up and try to find a simple definition. ”I tend to think of the establishment as a group of people that is consistently involved in party politics, whether they be elected officials, whether they be interest group leaders, whether they be radio personalities,” Cohen said, ”people who have consistently been involved in shaping the party.” They may not choose candidates in   convention rooms, but they have their own way of pushing particular candidates. (Limiting the number of primary debates or deliberately putting them on    nights are a couple of examples Cohen cites.) But a much more important way the establishment functions is by making endorsements. ”It’s sort of a coordination game that takes place, mostly during the invisible primary, around this broadly acceptable candidate  —   one that doesn’t rankle any one particular faction too much,” he added. When a governor says he likes Marco Rubio or doesn’t like Ted Cruz, it’s not just a signal to the voters it’s a signal to other   politicians who themselves will give endorsements. And this may be the easiest shorthand for what it means to be establishment: who leads in endorsements? The top   on the Republican side (who are still in the race, that is) have been Rubio, Bush and John Kasich. On the Democratic side, it’s Clinton, by a gargantuan margin. Not coincidentally, those people are often linked with the ”establishment” in news stories. But then, anyone who reads those stories knows that ”establishment” has also become shorthand (well, technically, longhand) for ”moderate,” not to mention for people who have spent long years in Washington  —   or who have connections to it. And it’s easy to see where these additional definitions came from. If the establishment is choosing candidates who are known quantities and who don’t ”rankle any one particular faction” too much, as Cohen said, it’s easy to see how those would be people who have spent time in power and who are moderate. These aren’t hard and fast, though outlets from the liberal ThinkProgress to conservative radio   host Rush Limbaugh, are making the argument that Rubio is not moderate. Likewise, if ”establishment” refers to spending time among Washington’s political elite, then Cruz  —   former clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, policy adviser to George W. Bush and a former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning  —   would have to be ”establishment.” But because of how Cruz acts toward the powers that be in Washington, no one uses ”establishment” to describe Cruz. It’s Easy To ’Stick It To The Man’ In 2016, If being moderate and powerful are markers of being establishment, it’s no wonder American voters are revolting against it. After all, Americans are running away from the middle. The Pew Research Center has found that Americans are more ideologically polarized. Perhaps more startlingly, Pew also found that people not only dislike the other party more and more, but they also in large numbers see the opposite party as a threat. When a candidate looks even remotely like someone who might compromise, that could easily scare off lots of voters (though this is more true on the Republican side). Not only that, but people distrust the government at   levels, according to Pew data. It’s easy to see how distrust  —   or, at the very least, a sense of powerlessness  —   might fuel discussion of the establishment. Fairlie hinted at it way back in 1968. ”The success of the term is, in part, a response to a desire to explain our politics in terms of conspiracy,” he wrote. And this brings us to one big reason why the term has taken off. To use the term is to point the finger. It happens when politicians define some dangerous ”other,” whether it’s Sanders’ ”millionaire and billionaire class” or Donald Trump’s Washington that refuses to ”win” anymore. If that’s true, it implies that the word ”establishment” will become more popular when the establishment is threatened  —   when the   voices get the loudest. Of course, if hatred of the government started the   fire this cycle, other factors stoked it. After the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, any candidate can more easily seek out wealthy donors to essentially fund her or his rise. And this is a threat to parties: the Koch brothers’ political operation, for example, now rivals the Republican National Committee in size, as Politico pointed out in December. Technology also is helping flatten political participation, allowing ” ” candidates like Sanders, who do not have huge lists of major donors to reach out to and mobilize big networks of supporters. And, of course, other factors have probably contributed to the new wave of ”establishment” coverage: The huge population of candidates could be creating more content, for example. And then the biggest   candidate of them all, Trump, is a click machine on any news website. For a candidate, maybe the biggest benefit of weaponizing the term ”establishment” is that it defines both your opponent and you. When you can say you’re sticking it to The Man, you get to be the   the little guy. The unspoken message is that there are rock ’n’ roll things you’d like to do (  health care, instituting a   tax) but that some stuffy group of squares is keeping you down. But then, there have been upstarts for as long as there has been government. And, every so often, an outsider wins and has to figure out how to operate in the ultimate insider position. ”Thus, it will be observed, do the moderns of one day become the safe establishments of the next,” novelist Rose Macauley observed nearly 100 years ago. After all, once a Trump or a Cruz or a Sanders is in the White House, he’d be The Man."
"When    David Fry, the last remaining militant occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore. surrendered to the FBI on Thursday after hours of intense negotiations, the   illegal armed occupation of federal land finally came to an end. People all over the country who were watching Fry’s live stream of the negotiations  —   in which he at times expressed suicidal intentions  —   heaved sighs of relief when law enforcement took him into custody peacefully. Now, the FBI, along with a number of other local and federal agencies will comb the property, checking for explosives, gathering evidence, evaluating damage to Burns Paiute tribal grounds and removing the occupiers’ campsites, FBI Special Agent In Charge Greg Bretzing said in a press conference. ”There is a significant amount of cleanup that will have to happen after we process the crime scene,” Bretzing said. But the wildlife refuge isn’t the only place that needs to be put back in order. As Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said, the community has been torn apart by the unrest and disagreements sown by the occupiers. He urged residents to talk to each other and work out their differences. Apologizing at times for being emotional, Ward said, ”I’m proud of this community and I’m proud of my friends and neighbors. I’m proud of the way they stood up to this stuff.” ”I’ve seen division in this community, division in friends and families,” he said. ”A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Ward called on residents to ”get off Facebook” and sit down with each other over a cup of coffee to talk about their disagreements. He reiterated his love for both his community and the country. ”We can work through these things,” he said of the divisions in Harney County. ”If we can’t work through the differences that we found in our little community right here, how can we expect the rest of the nation to work through the division that we face.” Meanwhile, Bretzing said the four militants cleared from the refuge today will likely go before an Oregon judge tomorrow. The full list of people charged in the occupation is here. As The   reported earlier today, the surrender was negotiated with the help of Nevada state Assemblywoman Michele Fiore and evangelical leader Franklin Graham. NPR’s Camila Domonoske wrote: ”The deal was arranged in a series of calls that were   online Wednesday night and Thursday morning, with tens of thousands of people tuning in. ”On the calls, Fiore expressed support for the occupiers but urged calm and called for peace. She also checked in to make sure the militants had eaten breakfast, had coffee and water, used the bathroom. ’It could be a long day today,’ she said early Thursday. ”The occupiers repeatedly indicated they thought they might be killed by the FBI. At times, they indicated it would be the best thing that could happen for their cause. ’Kill me. Get it over with,’ Fry said on Wednesday night. ”On Thursday morning, Fiore exhorted them to lead by example and said they needed to stay alive to tell their stories. ”’A dead man can’t talk and a dead man can’t write,’ Fiore said. ’We have to stay together and stay alive. ’”"
"After 41 days, the Oregon occupation is over: All four militants who remained at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge have surrendered to the FBI. David Fry, Jeff Banta, Sean Anderson and Sandy Anderson were the last four militants left at the wildlife refuge near Burns, Ore. on Thursday morning. A group of armed   had taken over the refuge in early January, saying they were protesting the convictions of two Oregon ranchers on arson charges. Banta and the Andersons left their weapons behind and walked into FBI custody on Thursday morning. More than an hour later, Fry followed them. ”No one was injured, and no shots were fired,” the FBI said in a statement. CONTENT ADVISORY: This audio contains profanity. After the other three occupiers left, Fry initially said he wouldn’t surrender. ”I will die a free man,” he said in a phone call with political activist Gavin Seim that was   online. Fry said the government was refusing to listen to his grievances, which include the fact that he believes his tax dollars are funding abortions. At one point he said he had a gun to his head and was feeling suicidal at other times, he said he needed promises of protection, and a way to control how his tax dollars were spent, before he turned himself in. ”If they attack me, I have to defend myself,” Fry said. ”I’m a man, I’m taking a stand. . .. A stand means you’re willing to risk your life.” ”Man wasn’t made to be put behind bars for standing up for his own rights,” he said later. After a tense conversation with activists and with the FBI, Fry finally asked the FBI if they’d shout ”Hallelujah” and told the activists he was handing himself in. ”I’m gonna grab one more cookie,” he said, ”one more cigarette. Alrighty then.” After audible shouts of ”Hallelujah” and Fry saying he was walking toward the FBI, his audio then cut out. Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that Fry was friends with LaVoy Finicum, the refuge occupier who was shot and killed by law enforcement at the end of January. The Thursday morning surrender  —   which was supposed to include all four occupiers  —   was negotiated with the help of Nevada state Assemblywoman Michele Fiore and evangelical leader Franklin Graham. (You may know Fiore for her guncentric family photos and calendars The Washington Post has a profile. The Rev. Franklin Graham is the son of televangelist Billy Graham.) The deal was arranged in a series of calls that were   online Wednesday night and Thursday morning, with tens of thousands of people tuning in. On the calls, Fiore expressed support for the occupiers but urged calm and called for peace. She also checked in to make sure the militants had eaten breakfast, had coffee and water, used the bathroom. ”It could be a long day today,” she said early Thursday. The occupiers repeatedly indicated they thought they might be killed by the FBI. At times, they indicated it would be the best thing that could happen for their cause. ”Kill me. Get it over with,” Fry said on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, Fiore exhorted them to lead by example and said they needed to stay alive to tell their stories. ”A dead man can’t talk and a dead man can’t write,” Fiore said. ”We have to stay together and stay alive.” Fry described in the   how the other three occupiers left their guns behind and gave themselves up to the FBI. Once they had left, he said he had no intentions of following them. Some people involved in the negotiation had been concerned the deal might not go through at all because Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy was arrested Wednesday night. Original plans had included Bundy’s presence at the surrender, OPB’s John Sepulvado says. Bundy was charged with conspiracy and assault on a federal officer over his 2014 standoff with federal agents at his Nevada ranch, The Associated Press reported Thursday. ”Cliven Bundy was traveling to Oregon to raise support for his sons and four militants still holding out at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge when FBI agents arrested him at the Portland airport,” Sepulvado reported for our Newscast unit. ”Bundy’s daughter, Bailey Bundy, said her father was indicted on conspiracy charges,” Sepulvado says. ”Before departing from Nevada, Cliven Bundy had called for supporters to come to Burns, Ore. He said in a statement, ’Gather as many people as possible, and go now.’ ” But while supporters might have been nearby, inside the refuge, Fry appeared to feel alone. KrisAnne Hall, an activist on the call who was trying to persuade Fry to leave, told him the country is filled with people who share his goals. ”You’re not the only one that is fighting,” she said. ”Well, I’m the only one who’s still here,” Fry responded."
"Don’t get pregnant. That’s the advice given to women by the governments of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and El Salvador in light of a possible link between the Zika virus, which is spreading in those countries, and a birth defect called microcephaly, which results in an abnormally small head and possible brain damage. Brazil has reported thousands of cases of microcephaly since the outbreak began there last spring researchers are trying to determine whether the virus is the cause. One thing is certain: The outbreak has sparked a public debate about issues of contraception and abortion. More than half of pregnancies in Latin America are not planned. In this heavily Roman Catholic part of the world, women don’t always have access to modern methods of contraception, and abortion may be restricted (see chart). But even if abortion is a legal option in a   country, it’s not always possible for a pregnant woman to know whether the fetus is affected. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, microcephaly ”might be detected as early as 18 to 20 weeks” into a pregnancy by ultrasound but ”can be challenging” to detect. Some individuals and groups argue that a pregnant woman should have the right to abort a pregnancy if she is worried about the possible link to microcephaly. Violeta Menjivar, the minister of health in El Salvador, suggested this month that the country might consider legalizing abortion in response to the Zika crisis. In an essay for Time magazine, Jon O’Brien, head of Catholics for Choice, calls on Pope Francis to ”lift abortion bans” as well as restrictions on modern contraceptive methods. Those opposed to abortion believe it would not be appropriate to make any changes in abortion law. ”Abortion is a tragedy,” says Dr. Danelia Cardona, a psychiatrist and the director of the Department for the Promotion and Defense of Life at the Catholic Bishops Conference of Colombia. ”Using Zika virus as the leeway to allow for abortion is to compound one tragedy with another.” In Colombia, abortion is only permitted in cases of rape or risk to the mother’s health. Cardona told NPR that the government must ”put in place policies that will offer real options to eradicating the virus”  ” for example, getting rid of reservoirs of standing water that are ”perfect breeding” places for the mosquitoes that spread Zika. Delaying pregnancy as a response ”doesn’t solve the problem,” she adds. The Kaiser Family Foundation has compiled a chart that looks at abortion laws as well as the use of contraception in many of the countries affected by Zika. The foundation uses the terms ”banned,” ”highly restrictive,” ”restrictive” and ”some restrictions” to characterize abortion laws. See the notes in the chart for further explanation. The chart uses data from the U. N. Population Division, which relies on surveys from the various countries. Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, notes that the contraception statistic may ”mask what are large disparities between rural and urban areas and across different income classes. Poor rural women have the least access to contraception.”"
"(Note: Tonight’s debate, moderated by PBS NewsHour anchors Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff, will be simulcast on CNN and NPR and streamed live on NPR. org. NPR’s Tamara Keith will be part of the debate broadcast, providing analysis during and after the event.) Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton meet Thursday night on a debate stage in Milwaukee. It’s their first    matchup since Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary where Sanders beat Clinton by more than 20 points. Sanders raised more than $5 million in just 18 hours after polls closed (average contribution, according to his campaign: $34) giving his campaign a rocket boost of money to match the energy of his supporters. Clinton is hoping to slow his momentum, and her campaign is working to shore up support among black and Latino voters in Nevada, South Carolina and beyond. So, let’s just say the stakes are high in tonight’s debate, especially for Clinton. Here are four things to watch for tonight: Clinton and her supporters maintain Sanders has gotten a pass from reporters and Republicans (who have attacked her relentlessly while gleefully playing up Sanders’ triumphs). Clinton’s campaign is already starting to draw sharper contrasts with the Vermont senator. But she’s under pressure to find a way to slow Sanders down, and the first chance she’ll get is tonight’s debate. In past debates, Sanders has avoided attacking Clinton directly on her ”damned” emails and her   speaking fees while effectively tying her to Wall Street and corporate interests. This line of attack (or whatever you want to call it) has hurt Clinton. In exit polls on Tuesday, 91 percent of Democrats who said having a candidate who is ”honest and trustworthy” was a top priority voted for Sanders. Many voters NPR interviewed said money in politics and Wall Street ties are what tipped them away from Clinton and toward Sanders. Will he keep it up or add new, more direct lines of attack? The first two states to vote were overwhelmingly white. That dynamic shifts significantly in Nevada, South Carolina and Super Tuesday states  —   all of which have more   and Latino voters. Watch for the candidates to shift the suite of issues they emphasize to speak more directly to those voters. Expect to hear more about the Flint water crisis, criminal justice reform, voting rights and immigration reform. Meanwhile, Clinton recognized in her concession speech Tuesday night that she needs to improve how she communicates with young voters, who overwhelmingly support Sanders. This will be the first chance for viewers to see how she is retooling her message following the vote in New Hampshire. When Clinton started her campaign, her message was more general election than primary. Now she is running in a tough primary against a democratic socialist who beat her in New Hampshire. Sanders has given her a real race, and she’s hitting increasingly populist tones. It may not have been his goal, but Sanders has pulled Clinton to the left. The question now is how far they will go. Debates are always an opportunity for candidates to test each other, and that can sometimes mean saying or agreeing to positions that will give the other party fodder in the general election. How far left will the Democratic Party go to settle the nomination, and what does that mean for the general election? PBS is a noncommercial network that doesn’t live and die by ratings quite the way CNN and NBC do. NewsHour, anchored by Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff, is known for lengthy, thoughtful interviews and stories that dig deep. It seems quite likely that sensibility will change the types of questions that are asked. This could be good news for Democratic voters who haven’t yet seen the candidates get beyond soundbite answers in debates on issues like criminal justice reform and immigration."
"The odds of getting Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia are declining for people who are more educated and avoiding heart disease, a study finds. The results suggest that people may have some control over their risk of dementia as they age. This isn’t the first study to find that the incidence of dementia is waning, but it may be the best so far. Researchers looked at 30 years of records from more than 5, 000 people in the famed Framingham Heart Study, which has closely tracked the health of volunteers in Framingham, Mass. They found that the incidence of dementia declined about 20 percent per decade starting in the 1970s  —   but only in people who had at least a high school education. The decline in people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s wasn’t statistically significant, but there were fewer people with Alzheimer’s, which could have affected that result. The study, which was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, also looked at risk factors for heart disease and stroke, including smoking, obesity and high blood pressure. They found that the people who had better markers for cardiovascular health, such as normal blood pressure, were also less likely to develop dementia. ”That’s telling us that perhaps better management of cardiovascular disease could potentially help in the reduction of dementia,” says Claudia Satizabal, an author of the study and an instructor in neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine. To figure out what this all means, we called Dr. Kenneth Langa, a professor at the University of Michigan who also studies trends in dementia. Here are highlights from the conversation edited for length and clarity. One of the very confusing things about this is that even though an individual may be less likely to get dementia than they were 40 years ago, the number of people with dementia is going up. Why is that? It’s an interesting and sometimes complicated concept. The number of cases in the population could still be going up in the future because of the larger number of adults. It’s very easy to get your wires crossed when you think of ”what’s my own individual risk” versus the number of people in the population. It’s certain that we’ll have significantly more older people in the United States and around the world, so now the big question is  —   on an individual level, what’s going on with the risk? Does a    today have the same risk as one 20 years ago? And you’re finding a trend similar to what the researchers reported this week  —   a declining risk of dementia in the United States.  We’ve been looking at data from the Health and Retirement Study, large study funded by the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration. We’ve been collecting data on older folks in the United States since 1992. We’re finding a decline in the prevalence of dementia and cognitive decline very much in line with the Framingham Study report. You also are finding that a person’s level of education is a key driver in dementia risk. Is that because education makes your brain stronger, or that educated people are healthier overall?  That’s a big question, and one I’ll be focusing on for the rest of my career. I’ll give you my usual researcher    answer: I think it’s a bit of both. I do think there is a direct biological effect of using your brain and having it interact with the world. You may have heard the term cognitive reserve, which means your brain gets wired up differently if it’s challenged. I’m a believer that there is a causal effect of education on how your brain is challenged. But I definitely would agree that that’s not the only pathway. Education sets you off on a different path in your life it sends you into different occupations. You may live in different neighborhoods, have less stress, have more money. That gives you access to better health care and social networks. But still, if I do my 12 years or 14 years or 16 years of school, I don’t think that 100 percent determines your risk of dementia. You’ve also found that our parents’ level of education may affect dementia risk. It’s very intriguing a mother’s education may be more important than a father’s education. Again there are lots of complicated pathways you can talk about, but one that we and other researchers are trying to follow up on is whether a more educated mom may interact with a child in ways that are more beneficial to the developing brain of a child. How your brain is nurtured throughout life is a really fascinating part of this story. The study published this week didn’t look explicitly at exercise, but that does affect cardiovascular health. Could it help prevent dementia? The evidence both from animals in the cage and epidemiological studies shows that physical activity seems quite important for keeping your blood vessels healthy, and probably some specific growth factors that help the neurons in the brain. The general point that was brought out in the Framingham study is that cardiovascular fitness is very important. You and other researchers have pointed out that the trend toward more obesity and diabetes in the United States could threaten this more hopeful trend toward lower risk of dementia. When might that happen? The short answer is I think we don’t know. Again, there are so many complicated interacting pathways going on here we can’t really be sure what will happen. Even though the number of people with diabetes has really skyrocketed in the past 20 or 30 years, it also seems to be that having diabetes doesn’t have as many bad complications as it did 20 or 30 years ago. There’s been a decline in things like heart attacks and amputations due to vascular complications. More aggressive treatment of diabetes and high blood pressure and cholesterol is probably one of the factors that’s caused this decline in complications. We’re all terrified of getting Alzheimer’s. Given that being heart healthy seems to reduce that risk, why aren’t we all exercising like crazy?  It’s still complicated, I think. Part of it is that it’s a benefit that’s going to come to you 20 or 25 years later it’s not easy to motivate people even with something as feared as Alzheimer’s disease. I’m an internist. I see   people with diabetes and hypertension and tell them about these findings. But it can be tough to motivate people. What else can people do to reduce the risk?  These findings are optimistic it’s not a done deal. But there do seem to be things we can do not only from an individual perspective but from a public policy perspective, for instance, making education as available as possible to people in the United States and other countries. I tell my patients, ”You can do everything right and still get Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.” It’s a question of trying to change your risk to make it as low as possible. The research that is ongoing to find medical interventions to affect the trajectory of the disease are still important to do also."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. Throughout his career, Bryan J. Sledge has kept good company. Over the last decade and a half, under his stage name BJ The Chicago Kid, the RB   has amassed an impressive discography, lending his vocal and writing talents to a who’  of   RB and gospel acts (including, among others, Shirley Caesar, Kendrick Lamar, Chance The Rapper and Kehlani) and releasing a handful of projects of his own. In My Mind, his   debut on Motown, is evidence of why some of music’s best and brightest are aligned with the versatile artist. In My Mind is a soul record, though not ”soul” in the throwback sense we’ve come to expect. Informed by decades of influence, it is inspired by tradition, not mired in it. BJ’s brand of rhythm and blues is an amalgam of the history of black music: Gospel, blues, pop and jazz and, of course,   are all represented. Thematically, he covers familiar territory with songs about love, sensuality and infidelity, yet his approach is all his own. BJ juxtaposes the sacred and profane to illustrate a timeless tug of war  —   between faith and higher ideals on one side, and carnal needs and worldly pleasures on the other. ”She say she wanna drink, have sex and do drugs tonight . .. but I’ve got church in the morning,” he sings, ultimately giving in to temptation in the aptly titled ”Church”  —   but not before praying for salvation. He revels in depicting the imperfections of a man and the powerful emotions that arise when those flaws are exposed (see: ”Fall On My Face”). In ”Wait Til The Morning,” he pleads with his lover, not in an attempt to win her back, but to implore that she not to call his wife and reveal the adultery. As earnest as he is messy, the song’s philandering protagonist just wants to spend one last night at home before his infidelity ruins it all. BJ has as much flair for the romantic as he does for the dramatic. In ”Resume,” he seduces, using a job as metaphor for the ”work” he’ll put in on the focus of his affection, while a looping backdrop of keyboards, finger snaps and   vocals gives him a chance to coo like Ron Isley. That falsetto is also used to great effect in ”The New Cupid,” which features a sample of Raphael Saadiq’s ”Oh Girl” as part of a song about music where emotion has been replaced by bravado and bottle service BJ figures, ”Cupid’s too busy at the club,” so he takes it upon himself to bring love back. It’s a goal he fully accomplishes in the stirring ballad ”Shine,” a tender moment that’s also great   material. Yes, In My Mind is a soul record with all the ingredients that make RB great: emotion, sex appeal, spirituality, vulnerability. The kid from Chicago is all right."
"Hollywood producer Ross Putman says he’s read thousands of scripts during his time working in the film industry in Los Angeles, and over the years, he began to find one pattern particularly problematic: the way female characters are introduced. Here’s a sampling: leggy, attractive, blonde, beautiful, hot, gorgeous, pretty, sexy. ”I used to post my gripes to Facebook because I have a lot of friends in the business that I thought could connect to it,” Putman tells NPR. ”Not just the way women were treated  —   it was bad writing and cliches, too. But the way women were being introduced in scripts was so egregious it was becoming a pattern, not an outlier.” One example: ”Sexy” is one of the most common adjectives that crop up in Putman’s collection of female character introductions.  ”These descriptions aren’t valuable to the basic purpose of a script. Describing how a woman looks wouldn’t help the actress figure out how to play the part.” So three months ago, at his wife’s suggestion, Putman began compiling female character intros. On Tuesday, he posted some of them to his Twitter account, with the handle ”Fem Script Intros.” By Thursday afternoon, he had tweeted 26 times and had already amassed nearly 45, 000 followers. Putman says he is protecting script writers by changing all of the characters’ names to JANE in his tweets, also symbolizing how female characters and women in Hollywood are often treated as interchangeable. ”I figured that my friends in the film business would follow it,” Putman says. ”But people who aren’t even in the business are latching on to it, and that’s really cool because that’s the point.” Putman says the easiest character intros to make fun of are those that ”sound like they’re from a pornographic novel.” But he thinks the subtly sexist descriptions are more insidious. ”Like ’attractive’ and ’intelligent,’ ” he says. ”Introducing your character in that kind of way sends a message: A woman is attractive first and intelligent second.” Putman says male characters are much more likely to be described in ways that clue the reader in to the character’s personality, not just their appearance. ”This is a systemic problem, it’s not about individual writers,” he says, noting that the scripts come from writers of all backgrounds, both professional and amateur. As for the reaction to his project, Putman says he has been overwhelmed by the positive response and is glad to be a part of the current discussion surrounding equality in Hollywood. He cites groups such as Femme Fatale, which helps promote women in the film industry, and The Black List, which nurtures new writers, as among those working to change the Hollywood culture. So far, he hasn’t heard from any writers who might have recognized their work in his tweets. ”I still kind of expect someone to call me and scream at me.” Putman says between 70 percent and 80 percent of all the scripts he reads are written by men. More than anything, he hopes the Fem Script Intros account highlights that discrepancy. ”If this thing runs its course in a week, that’s fine,” he says. ”Hopefully, it got people thinking and raised awareness about the need for more female writers.”"
"For the Midwesterner who likes to eat local, this time of year is a challenge. Browse the produce shelves in middle America  —   or any place where snow falls in winter  —   and you’ll find carrots from Mexico and peppers from Peru. Some visionaries think greenhouses could help meet demand for   local produce. But there’s a problem with greenhouses: They can be energy guzzlers, typically lit and heated by burning fossil fuels. ”It might actually,   make more sense to ship from faraway distances, because we do have a lot of   ways to ship, including trains, barges and such,” says Dawn Thilmany, who studies the local food system at Colorado State University. But if you can cut out those   heat sources, growing local greens in greenhouses starts to make sense, she says. In the Midwest, some creative growers have been tackling that problem by tapping into the Earth’s own internal heat to warm and cool greenhouses. You’ll find one of these geothermal greenhouses high on the Nebraska plains near the town of Alliance. Inside, there’s a citrus grove with trees holding up a canopy of lemons,   oranges, green figs and bunches of grapes. Russ Finch, a former mail carrier and farmer, designed the structure, which he calls the Greenhouse in the Snow. The original, which he built more than 20 years ago, is connected to his home. You don’t often see orange trees in Nebraska, but Finch says growing citrus was a way of showing that his geothermal greenhouse could work. ”Any type of plant we saw, we would put it in and see what it could do. We didn’t baby anything,” Finch says. ”We just put it in and if it died, it died. But most everything really grows well. We can grow practically any tropical plant.” The greenhouse design is a take on a walipini, or pit greenhouse. The floor is dug down, 4 feet below the surface. The roof is slanted toward the south to catch as much sun as possible. During the day it can reach well into the 80s inside the greenhouse, but at night the temperature plummets. That’s when Finch draws on geothermal heat. No propane or electric heaters here. Instead, warm air is taken from perforated plastic tubing that is buried underground. The plastic tubes go out one end of the greenhouse and run a loop to the opposite end. A single fan circulates air through those tubes. As the air moves through, Finch says it picks up enough heat from the soil to keep his oranges out of danger. ”All we try to do is keep it above 28 degrees in the winter,” Finch says. ”We have no backup system for heat. The only heat source is the Earth’s heat, at 52 degrees at   deep.” The greenhouse uses very little energy, almost entirely pushing fossil fuels out of the picture, and keeping energy costs down to about $1 a day, Finch says. Energy costs can make or break a greenhouse in parts of the country with cold winters. ”There have been hardly any successful   greenhouses on the northern High Plains because of the weather,” Finch says. ”The cost of energy is too high for it. But by tapping into the Earth’s heat, we’ve been able to drastically reduce the cost.” Finch grows a few hundred pounds of fruit each year to sell at local farmers markets, but his main business is selling the design for his greenhouse in the snow. A new greenhouse costs $22, 000 to build. So far, he says, 17 of them have been built in the U. S. and Canada. That includes one at a high school in nearby Alliance, Neb. where students grow tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables to serve in school lunches. And there are other designs for   greenhouses out there. Some use a kind of thermal banking or solar battery, where they store solar heat during the day to release it through the night. Some move hot air or heated water under the floor of the greenhouse to provide heat from the bottom up. These greenhouses in Colorado use black barrels filled with water to radiate residual heat they soak up from the sun. These   greenhouse designs aren’t necessarily new, but interest in local, sustainable food is driving more interest in incorporating these ideas, says Stacy Adams, a horticulture and greenhouse management instructor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. He says all these methods have the same goal: to find a sustainable way to grow produce through the cold winter nights. Adams says geothermal greenhouses can work, but there are limitations to that kind of   system. For instance, he says they’re   for cold crops like kale, cabbage or lettuce. ”When we start getting to the   crops like tomatoes, which everyone loves, or cucumbers and squash, then we’re talking about greenhouses that need to be much warmer,” Adams says. He says it’s actually easier to grow oranges in a cold greenhouse than tomatoes. And, he says, a   greenhouse is most efficient if it’s relatively small. Russ Finch’s original greenhouse design is about 1, 200 square feet, which means it might supply a farmers market, but probably not a supermarket. To grow more, you’ll need more energy. Perhaps fossil fuels. But that’s where Adams says people should think outside the box. Imagine using heat from the wastewater at a factory  —   like a slaughterhouse or an ethanol plant. He says manure from dairy barns or beef feedlots could generate methane to heat a greenhouse. He says any method that incorporates renewable energy sources would improve the footprint of local food grown in a greenhouse when compared to the shipments brought in from California or Mexico. And that could help give winter more of a local flavor."
"On Feb. 10, 2015, Summer Hamad remembers sitting in her family room in Raleigh, N. C. It was late, a kind of humdrum night when the phone rang. It was her oldest daughter. ”Mom,” she said, her voice cracking. ”Deah’s dead.” Hamad’s face turned white. She had just seen Deah Barakat, a    with an electric smile and calming presence, at a community fundraiser not too long before. She remembers pointing at him, jokingly telling her    daughter, Marjan, that he’s cute. ”He’s taken, Mom,” she responded. Barakat had just gotten hitched to Yusor   a woman he had known since elementary school, in a glowing ceremony. That night, they were celebrating news of Yusor’s acceptance into   Hill’s dental school, where Barakat was a student. Yusor’s younger sister, Razan   who was a student of design and art at N. C. State University, was joining them for dinner. That’s when their neighbor, Craig Hicks, knocked on the door and shot all three of them multiple times. Chapel Hill police initially said the shootings were triggered by a parking dispute, but for many people around the world and in the community, it felt and looked like a hate crime. Hicks, who openly bashed religion on social media, confessed shortly after the act and is facing the death penalty. Choosing To Be Visible And Vocal, As Summer and Marjan Hamad grieved publicly with the local   community, they began a different conversation in their home about how to respond. It was about wearing the hijab. For years, they had flirted with the idea, but they never felt ready. After the shooting, Marjan remembers thinking ”What am I waiting for?” Her mom agreed, so they decided they’d do it together. Coincidentally, they circled the same start date on their calendars. ”For me, as a mom, I wanted to show you that it’s OK to be Muslim,” Summer says. ”This happened, but it can’t stop us from being who we are, from practicing our faith . .. because it’s beautiful, it’s peaceful.” As someone who could pass as white and   without the hijab, Summer says it was important to her to be noticeably Muslim around her community. ”If I was doing something good like volunteering, which we do a lot, I wanted people to know that we’re also Muslim.” ’The Timing Will Never Be Right’ When Summer Hamad and Marjan Hamad chose to wear the hijab together, they felt assured and proud with their decision, despite some hesitation from their family on whether the timing was right. ”By the way the media is going, the timing will never be right,” Summer explained to them. Summer wasn’t necessarily fearful for her own safety, but admits she had some hesitations for her daughter. She’d say to Marjan: ”Always travel with a friend, don’t walk late at night by yourself.” ”And I would hear myself say that and think ’I don’t want to instill that fear in you if you don’t have it,’” Summer tells her daughter. Marjan responds that she’s not scared, but has become more aware of her personal surroundings since wearing the hijab. Her mom says she hates that her daughter has to live in a world like that. ”Even without the hijab sometimes that can happen,” she tells her daughter. ”It’s mostly uneducated people who don’t know who we are.” In the year since the shootings, many local Muslims  —   like the Hamads  —   have chosen to be more visible in their communities. They’ve become more proactive about sharing their faith, engaging with their communities and trying to create a collective embrace. For some, that has taken the form of wearing the hijab, making art or publicly writing about their relationship with Islam. In remembrance of the three victims, family and community members have also been building a community center that  —   among other goals  —   aims to help educate people about Islam. ”We’ve opened our homes, we’ve opened our hearts, we’ve stood out: proud as Americans, proud as human beings, proud as Muslims,” says Omid Safi, professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University and a friend of the victims’ families. Using Art As A Channel, Mohammad Moussa, who knew Barakat from college, began writing shortly after his friend’s funeral. It led to a   spoken word performance called ”Shattered Glass” that honors the three victims, who were loved for their spirit of service and community building. ”It’s very important for me as an American Muslim to promote and project the true image of Islam,” he says, ”and what more of a powerful example can you give than through these lives that were taken tragically?” Moussa says storytelling is especially important for minority communities. He explains that no one will ever understand a community’s histories, struggles or principles if they don’t share their own stories. ”Or even worse, someone will tell your story on your behalf, someone will define you, someone will misunderstand you and spread that misunderstanding.” That idea is one of the reasons why Shereen Elgamal and her    daughter Amena Saad from Cary, N. C. started a blog together to reflect on their faith and share it with others. ”Everybody’s talking about Muslims, except Muslims,” Elgamal says. She and her daughter began the blog late last year after the Chapel Hill shootings. They’ve also shared their reactions on what they see as the country’s growing   sentiment and rhetoric which has only intensified this last year, especially in the heat of the presidential race. ”I’ve never liked the way Muslims are represented in the media and it’s always been something I wish I could change,” Saad explains. ”And I think the only we can change is to show people that we are not different and that we have a lot in common.” Reema Khrais is a reporter for member station WUNC in Chapel Hill, N. C."
"Marvel’s new superhero movie Deadpool stars Ryan Reynolds, a fact that, up to now, would likely not have been considered much of a selling point. This is not, after all, Reynolds’ first stint as a superhero. There was that catastrophic Green Lantern movie, his animated supersnail in Turbo, and he played this character very briefly in what’s arguably the least of the   movies. So it’s sort of a relief to be able to report that Reynolds is finally coming into his own in Deadpool, which has the singular virtue of being funnier than we’ve been led to believe a superhero film can be. It’s also violent to point of sadism, explicit both visually and in terms of language. A   splatterfest, in fact  —   but a funny one. In short, it’s not for kids, though it’s hard to imagine the    who won’t be trying to sneak in this weekend. Marvel has perfected the superhero screenplay for the   crowd. Here the brand is venturing deep into R territory, pretty much from the opening credits where the camera zips through one of those     car crashes as cheeky generics stand in for names. Featured actors include ”Hot Chick,” ”Some Idiot,” ”Moody Teen” and ”British Villain.” The director is listed as ”Overpaid Tool,” and there’s one really good joke: screenplay written by ”The Real Heroes Here.” And the    doesn’t stop with the credits. ”She’s gonna do a superhero landing, wait for it,” Deadpool says, grinning, as an opponent leaps from on high into a crouch. ”Really hard on your knees,” he adds. ”Totally impractical. They all do it.” The plot centers on a good guy who’s also a bad guy  —   special forces op turned mercenary Wade Wilson, played by Ryan Reynolds, who undergoes a rogue medical procedure that gives him superfast healing powers but also leaves him looking  —   in one of the kinder phrases   T. J. Miller offers  —   ”like a testicle with teeth.” The rest  —   in more or less typical, though   superhero fashion  —   is our wisecracking antihero exacting revenge on Ajax (Ed Skrein) the snarling sadist who did this to him, while rescuing girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) who asserts repeatedly that damsel in distress is not a comfortable role for her, though she is eventually reduced to one. Have we been here before? Well, yeah, though mostly in pieces. Deadpool’s deadpan owes a little something to Robert Downey Jr. ’s Iron Man the    violence, we’ve seen in Kill Bill and Watchmen. The    thing was done in  . Even that     thing director Tim Miller keeps returning to has been done recently in an   flick. Oh, I should’ve mentioned, there are a couple of   here, too  —   Deadpool’s buddy Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) who gets his chromed head handed to him, and a youngster who fully lives up to her name: Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand). Miller, who is directing his very first feature here, after mostly serving up visual effects and animated credit sequences elsewhere (including the spectacular credits to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) seems to be having plenty of fun mixing the clatter with patter and splatter as his writers keep the   Hollywood references coming  —   to Reynolds’ ”Sexiest Man Alive” People magazine cover, to Liam Neeson’s Taken movies, to how a buxom Bernadette Peters fueled the    Wade Wilson’s fantasies. All of which is designed to make Deadpool appeal to the cynical, rebellious    in everyone. Whether you want to unleash that   ? . .. that’s up to you."
"Far from our galaxy, in the vast darkness of space, two massive black holes merged into a single, larger hole. And now researchers say they have detected rumblings from that cataclysmic collision as ripples in the very fabric of   itself. The discovery comes a century after Albert Einstein first predicted such ripples should exist. ”It’s a really big event,” says Saul Teukolsky, a theoretical astrophysicist at Cornell University. ”This is probably the most exciting episode of my professional career.” Einstein predicted the existence of such ripples, known officially as gravitational waves, in 1916, as part of his general theory of relativity. General relativity   the gravitational pull between heavy objects like Earth and the sun as a ”warping” of space and time. When very heavy objects such as black holes are involved, the theory predicts that gravitational waves will emerge and ripple across the entire universe. That’s the idea. But in practice, seeing such gravitational waves has been nearly impossible. To make detectable waves, massive objects must be moving quickly. Researchers predicted a collision between two black holes would do the trick. But nobody knew how often that might happen. Nevertheless, scientists built two massive detectors to take a look. Known collectively as the Laser Interferometer   Observatory (LIGO) the detectors are located in Washington state and Louisiana. They are separated by thousands of miles in order to detect ripples coming in from deep space as they pass through Earth. Each detector looks like a big L, made up of two tunnels 2. 5 miles long. It’s designed so that if a gravitational wave passes by, it will stretch space along one direction of the tunnel and squish space along the direction of the other. The stretching and squishing changes the tunnels’ lengths by a tiny amount, and that change can be detected by lasers. Although LIGO was completed in 1999, it took more than a decade for it to see anything. The detectors had to be made incredibly sensitive to pick up the tiny waves. But they were so touchy, they were set off by everything from minute shifts in Earth’s core to traffic entering the parking lot. And even after researchers got rid of all the terrestrial jiggles, LIGO still wasn’t quite good enough to see gravitational waves. All that changed after a major upgrade in 2014. Better vibrational isolation and upgrades to lasers and mirrors dramatically boosted the instrument’s power. And the black hole collision was seen almost as soon as the team began observing again in the fall of 2015. On Sept. 14 at 5:51 a. m. the waves passed through both of the detectors. According to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the two black holes were each roughly 30 times the mass of the sun. They merged some 1. 3 billion light years from Earth. The waves were generated in the final moments before the black holes merged. The signal was brief but definitive. The measurements are dramatic proof that gravitational waves exist. The signal in the detector matches well with what’s predicted by Einstein’s original theory, according to Teukolsky, who was briefed on the results. It matches predictions of the ripples produced by two large black holes, in the final moments before they merge, swirling together at an enormous speed. This is, arguably, the most direct observation of black holes ever made. Because black holes are (as their name implies) ”black” they can’t be seen with ordinary telescopes. Up until now, their existence has been inferred by looking at the stars and gas swirling around them. This gravitational signal comes directly from the holes, and it is virtually incontrovertible proof that the holes are out there. ”If black holes didn’t really exist, you couldn’t explain these waves,” he says. Other researchers believe that the gravitational waves could tell us even more about our cosmos. ”It’s like looking at the universe with new eyes  —   the amount of information that’s there is going to be amazing,” says Mina Arvanitaki, a theorist at the Perimeter Institute of Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. Arvanitaki will use LIGO’s data to probe for undiscovered fundamental particles that might only exist in the warped space around black holes. Teukolsky says the discovery shows just how extraordinary the natural world can be. ”The universe is stranger than any kind of fiction we could imagine,” he says. ”I mean, it’s preposterous.”"
"I wrote this with the expectation that today, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, the biggest science story since the discovery of the Higgs particle would be all over the news. With that in mind, please allow me to recount my own personal history that led to this moment: I think you get the picture. All my professional life I have been sitting in scientific talks about detecting  —   directly ”seeing”  —   the vibrations of space and time called gravitational waves. At some point, after all those years, I began to think: ”Hey, maybe this isn’t going to work. Maybe it’s just too hard or too subtle.” It is a beautiful thing to find out I was wrong. The long, long wait to get to a direct detection tells us a lot about why gravitational waves are so important and why the announcement will be such a triumph. Einstein’s vision that space and time are really a single flexible, stretchable fabric is just as stunning an idea today as it was when he first proposed it 100 years ago. Soon after he first announced his theory, he published another paper showing that any movement of matter  —   even wiggling your hands back and forth  —   would produce traveling ripples in this   fabric. Just like water waves disturb the surface of a pond after a rock is dropped into it, these gravitational waves distort   causing distances to shorten and lengthen as they pass. But these changes in space and time are so utterly tiny that they’re extremely hard to detect. Only the most violent and cataclysmic events, like two black holes eating other, will produce gravitational waves strong enough that we could even hope to see them. The reason for this is that   may be a fabric  —   but it’s a pretty stiff one. That is why it took so long to make a working gravitational wave detector. Only by using crossed lasers running through   tubes could we get the   sensitivity yardsticks needed to see waves squeezing and stretching space. The effort required an army of smart, dedicated women and men working tirelessly for decades to refine LIGO and develop the understanding of Einstein’s grand theory required to make it usable. It took that long and required that much effort to show us something remarkable  —   reality itself is ringing like a bell. But now, we are told, we can finally see gravitational waves directly. This is like someone who is blind to the color red  —   and all things red  —   suddenly waking up to a world with apples and roses and Valentine’s Day cards. This would mean that, using LIGO as a gravitational wave telescope, we’ve just opened up an entirely new window on a universe of black holes, neutron stars and, perhaps, even the Big Bang itself. That is why today’s announcement matters. It’s about patience and effort in the service of that most precious of human experiences: wonder. Today we can be proud to be part of a species that has gained such an understanding of the world. We can also be proud to be part of a nation that is willing to spend some of its hard earned treasure just to gain that understanding. But, most of all, we can look out at the night sky and just be filled with wonder. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"A federal grand jury is said to have begun hearing evidence in the case of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died after he was placed in a chokehold by a white police officer, NPR’s Joel Rose reports, citing two sources familiar with the investigation. The grand jury is determining whether Officer Daniel Pantaleo violated Garner’s civil rights as he moved to arrest him for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. If you remember, a New York grand jury declined to bring charges against Pantaleo back in December. Protestors took to the streets and in Washington, the Justice Department announced that it would launch a civil rights investigation into the case. The Garner case first gained national attention in part because because of video captured by a bystander. It showed Garner in headlock repeatedly telling Pantaleo that he could not breathe. The New York Daily News, which first reported the federal grand jury story, says that the Justice Department brought in Forrest Christian, a veteran civil rights division prosecutor, to handle the case. The newspaper adds: ”The convening of the grand jury is a monumental step in the federal investigation that was launched in December 2014 immediately after a state grand jury declined to prosecute Pantaleo. It is unclear whether Pantaleo will testify before the federal grand jury, but federal prosecutors can use his testimony before the state grand jury. ”Christian is considered a rock star in the Justice Department. He received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service for the successful prosecution of 10 New Orleans police officers convicted of fatally shooting innocent citizens on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina.” Last summer, New York City reached a $5. 9 million settlement with Garner’s family. During a press conference, the family said they wanted Pantaleo to face federal charges. ”They deserve to be prosecuted. They treated my husband like an animal,” said Garner’s widow, Esaw Garner. It’s important to note that empaneling a grand jury does not guarantee that charges will follow."
"In the summer of 2014, a    pregnant woman entered the military hospital at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan with a cut on her left cheek. The wound had been stitched up elsewhere, but she still wasn’t quite right. She said she’d been hit in the face by a ricochet back in her home village. What hit her exactly, she couldn’t say for sure. She was upset, though, because the vision was bad in her left eye, even though there had been no apparent trauma to it. ”That was the only   we had that something else was going on,” says Dr. Travis Newberry, a head and neck surgeon and U. S. Air Force major who is now based at the San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas. Right away, he ordered a CT scan. ”I wasn’t expecting to see much at all,” he says. But as the image slowly loaded, line by line, he realized that something big  —   a   wide, and 2 inches long  —   was lodged vertically inside her head. ”It was extending from just above her teeth through the base of the skull, touching the brain,” says Newberry. It would have to be surgically removed, but he and his colleagues couldn’t tell what the object was. ”It was awfully large and it wasn’t a fragmented bullet, which is what we usually see,” he says. ”You could see the projectile, which was shaped like a bullet, but you could also see kind of a rim around it,” says Newberry. Was it just a large bullet, or was it a large bullet packed with explosives that could still detonate? The second option was worrisome. An operation could cause the object to explode in the patient’s head, killing her and endangering the   fetus she was carrying. An explosion could also injure the surgical team, especially if the blast ignited flammable materials in the operating room. An explosives expert gave the team samples of bullets that were common in Afghanistan. The surgical team compared radiological images of them with ones they had of the object in the woman’s skull. They concluded that it looked like a nonexplosive, but they couldn’t be sure. They prepared for the worst. The surgical team wore protective helmets and goggles and put flak vests over their scrubs. They skipped the usual   air supply for the patient during surgery, to minimize the risk from fire. Likewise, they avoided an electrocautery device that controls bleeding by burning the edges of blood vessels, because of the possibility the device could set off an explosion. After all the preparation, the   moment came when Newberry had to pull the object out. ”I put graspers on it and squeezed it hard,” he says. ”That was the point where everything was exposed and I was exposed, so I guess during the whole case that was the scariest portion.” He extracted the object, handing it over to the explosives expert. It turned out to be a metal bullet. The team removed their protective gear, brought everyone back in,   and starting reconstructing the woman’s face. She left the hospital five days later. During a   visit a few months later, her pregnancy was still progressing normally, but she hadn’t recovered vision in her left eye from nerve damage caused by the injury. Newberry and his colleagues published an account of the case Feb. 2 in the Journal of Neurosurgery. Even for surgical teams in the military, it’s rare to encounter patients who might also be weapons, says Dr. Michael Wirt, a colonel and commander of the U. S. Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio. Since World War II, there have been only about 40 reported such cases in U. S. military data, all successfully extracted, he says. But the risks to medical teams are high enough that the Army has a   guide on removing ”unexploded ordnance” inside the human body. ”We’ll have maybe a single general surgeon or a single orthopedic surgeon at the site,” says Wirt. ”The result of not recognizing it places the entire surgical team and the hospital in danger.” Revised Army guidelines for removing unexploded ordnance from patients are set to come out in February. Dr. John Oh, a colonel with the U. S. Army Medical Corps, was involved in a case that put his training to the test. He remembers a simulation before he deployed to Afghanistan, in which Nerf balls stood in for   grenades. A mock patient had one in his abdomen, so Oh decided to help him. ”This guy is impaled with a rocket so let’s take him in for [surgery],” he remembers saying at the time. The lights shut off and the drill ended. Oh was told that he had failed the test. In a mass casualty situation, Oh learned, he was supposed to let the man die. ”Because if the thing exploded, you destroy your entire surgical facility and the only surgeon,” he says. Oh brushed the moment off. ”When we did the training I was like, ’Well, this is never going to happen, so I don’t need to worry about this,’ ” he says. A few months later, he was in Afghanistan working out of a shed turned operating room at 7, 000 feet altitude. Outside, he says, it was just dirt and sand. A patient came in with a serious wound in his abdomen. He was bleeding a lot, even through many layers of gauze, and was in hemorrhagic shock. When Oh started removing the dressings, he realized he was looking at the tail fins of a   grenade. ”It went clear across his pelvis,” Oh says. Oh was the only general surgeon there. He and his colleagues were still figuring out what to do when the sedative they’d used to help put in a breathing tube made the patient’s heart stop. ”At that point, we literally had to make a life or death situation. Either we let him die right now or we go to the operating room and see what we can do,” says Oh. Oh made the same decision that had failed him in the training drill  —   operate. ”The first cut I made was over the tip of the rocket,” he says. An   showed that the warhead, the most dangerous part of the rocket, had broken off. ”But the fuel and the detonator might still be in the rocket,” says Oh, ”The big unknown was still whether or not there was a part of it that would explode while we were still doing the surgery itself.” The surgical team managed to carefully remove the device and handed it over to an explosives expert, who detonated it outside. The case involving Pvt. Channing Moss drew worldwide attention. He recovered eventually and learned to walk again. ”Up to this point in the war in Afghanistan, there had been no accounts of victims who had survived being impaled with an RPG,” Oh wrote in a chapter on how to remove unexploded devices from patients in a textbook on disaster surgery. ”I didn’t make a logical choice,” says Oh. ”The whole time I’m doing this   analysis in my head, but the one outcome I knew would happen is that if we didn’t do anything he would die.” The medical teams who operated on the 40 or so patients containing potentially unexploded devices made decisions that could be considered rare and reckless, says John Harris, a professor of science ethics at the University of Manchester. But, if you zoom way out, he says, ”Our health care systems are just a dimension of the Rule of Rescue,” the drive to save others from avoidable death. ”Think of people who expose themselves to Ebola or to other infectious and very deadly diseases when nursing patients,” says Harris, who wrote a book on medical ethics. Newberry and Oh faced acute versions of the same decision. As for the training intended to teach people to leave unusually dangerous patients behind, Harris says, it’s difficult for people to comply. ”Most doctors are not trained in that way,” he says. ”And most health care professionals are not trained in that way. And, indeed, most human beings are not trained, by our peer groups, our parents, our schooling and so on in that way  —   to abandon people in danger.”"
"After a   victory in the Iowa caucuses, and a   loss to Bernie Sanders in the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton is looking to South Carolina for a big win later this month. And she’s counting on strong black support in that state to give her a definitive victory. Most polls suggest she’ll get that support by some estimates, she could garner 80 percent of South Carolina’s black vote in the Feb. 27 primary. Previously, even Bernie Sanders himself admitted as much. But there may be a hitch. Increasingly, young, black   voters are turning lukewarm on Clinton. At a gathering of University of South Carolina College Democrats this week, a group watching the results come in from New Hampshire was split fairly evenly between Sanders and Clinton supporters. Only one USC student didn’t raise his hand for either candidate  —   Michael Cauthen, a junior studying political science. He told NPR he was undecided. But upon further reflection, that changed. ”I feel like both of the candidates have pretty similar past platforms,” Cauthen said. ”I think when Bernie Sanders entered the race, he definitely pulled Hillary to the left . .. which I think is a good thing.” And then, he said, ”ultimately I’m leaning Hillary. I do like Bernie and I think his policies are interesting. I don’t know whether they’re pragmatic.” Cauthen, who is black, told NPR he’d vote for Clinton in the South Carolina primary and in the general election, should she be her party’s nominee. But, Cauthen was slow, if not afraid, to admit it. He said he still has reservations about some of Clinton’s past positions, like her shift on a 2002 bankruptcy bill. Earlier this week at Claflin University, a historically black college in Orangeburg, student Jessica Tolbert wavered in her support of Clinton as well, just before attending a   rally on campus. ”I’m probably gonna vote for Hillary,” Tolbert said at first. But the more she talked, the more she wavered. ”Consistency is key for me,” Tolbert said. ”And I think on certain things, I hear her say one thing and then I hear her say something else.” Eventually, when asked how she’d vote if the election were held right then, she said, ”If I could vote today, maybe it would go to Bernie.” Tolbert, whose top issue this election is health care, said that Sanders just feels more consistent, though she couldn’t exactly put her finger on why. It could be in part because he’s newer to her, she said. ”I don’t know. . .. Maybe he’s a fresh face. We’ve seen Hillary.” And that’s the thing  —   young black voters in South Carolina who spoke with NPR say when they look into Clinton’s record, they don’t like all they’ve seen. At another Clinton rally featuring campaign surrogate Angela Bassett, this time at South Carolina State University, student Taylor Honore had some tough questions on Clinton’s record. ”I did my background research on what Hillary has really done for the black community,” Honore told NPR, ”and it kind of concerned me.” After students got through initial questions for Bassett (star of films like Waiting to Exhale and the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It) about acting and what it’s like to star in American Horror Story alongside Lady Gaga, the actress took a tough question from Honore: ”What makes her [Clinton] good for black people now?” Honore pressed Bassett on Bill Clinton’s   ”crime bill,” the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, which experts claim greatly increased the number of blacks in prisons throughout the country. (Bernie Sanders voted for that bill, too.) Just after that, another student asked about Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform measures and the harm they caused to black families, asking Bassett, ”As a black woman with two sons, why do you advocate on Ms. Clinton’s behalf?” Bassett said Clinton does care about black families, pointing to her work with the Children’s Defense Fund and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The actress also said Clinton is ready to have conversations about incarceration and the role of the government pertaining to black families. But there was a theme to the students’ questions: A lot of these young black students’ ambivalence toward Hillary Clinton was a reaction not just to her, but also to her husband’s policies. And the questions seemed to contradict the belief in Clinton’s campaign that black and Latino voters will help her win the Democratic nomination. Critics are saying Clinton is unfairly counting on those votes to serve as a firewall of sorts  —   after seeing a plan that was spelled out in a memo from campaign manager Robby Mook earlier this week. Clinton’s campaign seems to be aware of increasing criticism from some young black voters. On Wednesday, her staff organized a conference call featuring black state legislators and NAACP members, to ”Discuss Clinton’s and Sanders’ Records on Behalf of the African American Community.” In the call, those surrogates said Sanders has been absent on issues affecting black America. With all the scrambling for black votes ahead of South Carolina’s primary, it’s important to keep in mind that young black voters in South Carolina aren’t all black voters in South Carolina. Jaime Harrison, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, says they may not even be the majority. ”In 2008, 56 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary was    —   more than half,” he said. Of that demographic, Harrison says, black women were the most powerful, but not young black women. ”It’s sort of our mothers’ ages . .. I would say . .. 35 to 60  —   that age is the sweet spot. So, Bernie Sanders has to figure out how do you communicate and talk to those folks.” And right now, Harrison says, with those older black voters  —   men and women  —   they’re still leaning toward Clinton. The mood on college campuses, he said, ”is very different from what I see in the churches and the barbershops with older  .” It is not yet clear whether Sanders can change those older black voters’ minds. But one candidate, eight years ago, did just that. ”What he [Sanders] could do . .. and this is something that Barack Obama was very effective in doing, was mobilizing his young people to convince their parents  —   and to convince their grandparents  —   to support him.” And that may be the big question in South Carolina’s Democratic primary later this month, and perhaps throughout the rest of the country as well: How well can 2016 Bernie Sanders channel 2008 Barack Obama?"
"The morning after his New Hampshire primary victory, Bernie Sanders made a highly publicized visit to Harlem to dine with Al Sharpton, one of America’s most prominent civil rights activists and media personalities. The two dined at Sylvia’s, the same New York City restaurant where Sharpton huddled with Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign. Wednesday’s meeting was a    recognition of Sanders’ pivot to South Carolina and Sanders’ effort to broaden his appeal to the state’s decisive   voters. Hillary Clinton has been heavily favored in polls to date to win South Carolina, in part due to Clinton support among   voters. But Sanders’ strong finish in New Hampshire and fresh appeal to younger voters will further test Clinton’s perceived strength in the Feb. 27 primary. More than half of South Carolina’s primary voters were black in the 2008 contest pitting Clinton against Obama, the first competitive black candidate for president. She lost by a 29 percentage point margin. Now facing a white liberal from Vermont in 2016, Clinton has led by   in South Carolina polls. But Sanders has 17 days to close that gap. Clinton’s strength among black and Latino voters is critical to her electability argument. ”It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for a Democrat to win the nomination without strong levels of support among African American and Hispanic voters,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, wrote in a Tuesday memo to reporters. Speaking to reporters after breakfast, Sharpton said he also plans to meet with Clinton next week. An endorsement in the race would likely come after that, he said. Sanders did not take questions from reporters waiting for him outside the restaurant."
"Multitasking is a myth, says Daniel Levitin. This was the premise underlying the first of the tasks posed by WNYC’s Note to Self podcast. I had signed up for their   set of challenges in hopes of decluttering my brain of the uselessly consumed Internet detritus to get a boost of creative energy. And now my first elimination target was multitasking. Levitin is a neuroscientist. He should know. But it’s 8:30 a. m. and I’ve got 16 Internet tabs on my computer, three more tabs on my phone, two opened emails, a pending phone call and a scrolling Twitter timeline. And I’m doing perfectly well. I’m clearly an exception. Of course, I am not. As Levitin put it to Note to Self, ”You’re not actually doing four or five things at once, because the brain doesn’t work that way.” Instead, ”you’re rapidly shifting from one thing to the next, depleting neural resources as you go.” In fact, the onslaught of online content has us shifting among online and offline activities a lot  —   really a lot. Our attention switches every 45 seconds, according to Gloria Mark, informatics professor at the University of California, Irvine. By 9 a. m. I had more tabs, emails, calls, plans, lists  —   while also listening to a story and taking a survey. I was caught up in the process of consuming. ”Information overload is not something new,” Note to Self host Manoush Zomorodi tells NPR. ”It has been dated to the 13th century. But what is new is the pace. And what we’re finding is loss of focus.” To get a grip on that focus, All Tech invited you to participate in the Note to Self ”Infomagical” challenge. It involved five daily challenges: spend a day focused on one task at a time, tidy up your app collection, avoid meaningless memes and trending topics, discuss something for at least seven minutes and set a   resolution or ”mantra.” Several of us at NPR tried the challenge  —   and a challenge it really was. For starters, most of us chose the goal of ”being more creative” (the challenge begins with a choice of an information goal) and then struggled to evaluate ourselves against    thresholds for improvements in creativity. Secondly, unplugging and avoiding memes or trends in many instances cut contrary to the requirements of our jobs. But we had our takeaways. The day of   proved the most powerful for me and Malaka Gharib, editor over at Goats and Soda. Malaka reported feeling more mindful of her distractions (”I had to repeat the word ’focus’ in my head to keep going with the task,” she says) more appreciative of her analog experiences (eating without looking at her phone helped her better appreciate the work and care her husband put into making her lunch). She also felt more aware and thereby more victorious about finishing tasks. ”  made me feel like I had more time to complete tasks and I didn’t feel so rushed,” she writes. ”My greatest creative victory of the week went into doing some nail art I wanted to try out (three stripes of different shades of purple nail polish). I felt like I could do it because I didn’t feel so frantic.” I didn’t fare so well. I struggled to prioritize my tasks and then, like Malaka, had to remind myself to focus. With the short attention span of an expert digital consumer, I launched into things with curiosity and optimism only to move on, with false satisfaction of   before finishing. (For context, it took me overcoming more than a dozen distractions today to get to this line of the story.) Malaka and editor Carol Ritchie also found gratification in the process of clearing their phones from unused or, by tidying guru Marie Kondo’s standards, less   apps. Carol organized her apps into eight folders on the second screen and found the difference stunning. ”No more scanning around for something that just might need doing or checking,” she says. ”I go where I intend, do what I want, and then I click off. Now I can’t believe I put up with all that clutter on the one device that is most important to me.” Carol also recounts her experience going social   at a concert: ”As it started, I saw screens light up all around me, but by sheer force of will resisted the pull of my phone. After the first minute, I forgot about it. Maybe  —   who knows?  —   enjoyed the performance a little bit more for it.” Over several similar challenges (like this failed ambition to disconnect over last Thanksgiving) I know that   is not for me. Wasteful clicking is part of the habit, sure, but like Matthew Malady over at The New Yorker, I love the thrill of constant learning (though he goes as far as calling it the ”useless agony” of going offline). ”Infomagical” results show that by the end of the challenge, 71 percent of participants felt less overloaded by information. And I realized that maybe I wasn’t overloaded to begin with, but not selective enough, getting enthralled with the process of opening, starting, thinking up and launching. Now it’s time to focus on seeing things through  —   like this article."
"Sure, people fight about superhero movies and   movies and who was the best James Bond. But if you want to see some deeply felt disagreement, get in a fight about romantic comedies. Or, if you don’t care to, just enjoy this Twitter debate I had a couple of weeks ago with actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who has almost as many opinions about such things as I do. (Almost. And I really do think we should have a podcast called ”Isn’t It Romantic?” where we fight about this weekly, because I think it would take a long time to run out of ideas.) Part of what animates these discussions is that what you think of a particular movie often springs from what you consider romantic in the first place  —   and, maybe, from your sense of who deserves a happy ending. If you ask Kumail, the answer is ”not Julia Roberts in Notting Hill.” If you ask me, the answer is ”not whoever wrote Winona Ryder as a dying hat designer in Autumn In New York.” And there’s no doubt that some romantic comedies are . .. not very romantic. Let us take a tour. The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996). One reason for some of the bad romantic comedy product of the 1990s was sheer volume. There was a time in the late ’80s and ’90s when experimentation with basic romcoms was so extensive that almost everybody was doing it, in all kinds of combinations. The   When Harry Met   In  ’ve Got Mail trio may be the best remembered, and that’s when Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts started cranking it out, too. But the whole genre was really busting out all over for a while there. Who can forget Geena Davis and Michael Keaton as dueling speechwriters in Speechless? Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins in the (entirely imaginary) story of Albert Einstein’s niece falling in love with an auto mechanic in I. Q.?* Jennifer Aniston and Jay Mohr (! !) in the   caper Picture Perfect? And did you know that Gillian Anderson and Jon Stewart (! !!) are one of several couples in Playing By Heart, a   1998 film that also matches Angelina Jolie with Ryan Phillippe? It seems like more people should know that, doesn’t it? Scully and Jon Stewart? Anyway, during this period, even Barbra Streisand (who had done both romances and comedies, obviously, but perhaps not so many archetypal romcoms) wound up in this very strange 1996 film in which she plays a professor who is chosen for marriage by a man who only likes her because she’s not attractive. He thinks attraction is complicated, so he picks a lady he isn’t attracted to, and because she lacks confidence and doesn’t want to die alone and disappoint her mother (Lauren Bacall!) she settles for this terrible, demeaning offer. Later, she gets a makeover and he has to learn to love her even though now she’s conventionally attractive, which he learns to do because he’s a hero. Even worse than the normal makeover plot in which being attractive is enough to land your fella is this twisty version where being attractive is both necessary and almost insufficient. They called it The Mirror Has Two Faces, but Can’t Win For Losing would also work. Sabrina (1995). Smack in the middle of those overcrowded ’90s came the remake of Sabrina, which had been filmed in 1954 with Audrey Hepburn falling in love with Humphrey Bogart (who was 30 years older than she was) and was updated to feature Julia Ormond falling in love with Harrison Ford (who was a mere 23 years older than she was). But the age difference isn’t really why the thing isn’t romantic  —   age is just a number, especially if you are Harrison Ford. It’s not even that it isn’t romantic just because Greg Kinnear is so charming as the wrong guy for her that you kiiiiind of wonder whether he really is the wrong guy. That’s a casting issue. ** No, the reason it isn’t romantic is that they don’t go to the slightest effort to explain why this is a good deal for Sabrina. There’s a nice story about how Linus (Ford) is learning to be 10 percent less of a heartless, angry mope, but that doesn’t translate into ”kiss him, hug him, marry him.” What you want at the end of a romantic storyline is to feel that now, these people will be happy together. What you do not want is to feel that now, they will be in therapy for a very long time until he masters the skill of smiling at other humans. In truth, the only reason to watch this movie is for a single line reading by the great Dana Ivey, who tells her grumpy boss that she helped pack a bag for him so he could go on a romantic quest: ”We were up to our elbows in your underwear drawer it was like touching the Shroud of Turin.” It is legitimately one of my favorite comedy deliveries of all time. The Wedding Planner (2001). After the Age Of Ubiquity in the ’90s, the next romcom phase was perhaps the Matthew McConaughassic Era, beginning with The Wedding Planner in 2001. While later, this span would cross over with the Age Of Kate Hudsonnocence, it started here with Jennifer Lopez. This is a movie that posits that a romantic way to meet a guy is when you’re planning his wedding to someone else, which is a little like positing that a romantic way to meet a guy is when you’re repossessing his car: no matter what a good person he is, the context suggests you might be better off maintaining a certain professional distance. (NOT THE CUSTOMERS, GENIUS!) This movie also features Justin Chambers, who plays Karev on Grey’s Anatomy, doing a comically disastrous Italian accent, and there’s no bad romantic comedy that isn’t worsened by bad accent work. The Ugly Truth (2009). If we ever do start the podcast ”Isn’t It Romantic,” we will have to do a miniseries on the Katherine Heigl situation that took place between about 2007 and 2011. And right in the middle is The Ugly Truth, which features Gerard Butler playing a monstrous, sexist jerk who somehow persuades Heigl’s morning show producer that she can’t do better and ends with them making out during  —   and Wikipedia backs me up here, though I thought I might be misremembering  —   a ”hot air balloon festival.” Which is a real thing, sure, but so is a chocolate bunny manufacturing facility, and it would still be a pretty corny setting for your climactic romantic scene. ”The one where she and Josh Duhamel inherit a baby is much better” is a statement that is both depressing and, I assure you, 100 percent accurate. (Don’t come at me with 27 Dresses. 27 Dresses is actually a pretty cute movie. I will fight you.) The Bachelor (1999). Oh, this horror show. See, before The Bachelor was the title of a   pileup of a television show, it was the title of a movie in which Jimmie (Chris O’Donnell) has to get married in one day or lose a $100 million inheritance. He alienates his girlfriend (Renee Zellweger) so he goes and visits all his previous girlfriends, who turn out to be . .. crazy monsters! Oh no! And when his buddy resorts to an ad in the paper to recruit convenient, presumably disposable   Jimmie finds himself literally attacked by a mob of (wait for it) crazy monsters who have shown up in wedding dresses. The women willing to get married for $100 million are revolting, you see, while Jimmie, who is willing to get married for $100 million, is just an average Joe with a dream. A dream, more specifically, of getting $100 million. Fortunately for him, his girlfriend (for some utterly baffling reason) comes back to him, so he can marry someone he knows. Whew! This movie is not romantic. Don’t make me explain it. *If you don’t remember this movie, you might remember the trailer, in which Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein uttered the line, ”I’m steering za boooat.” **Somewhere in an alternate   timeline, Greg Kinnear became a huge romantic comedy lead. Watch him in this movie and in You’ve Got Mail, playing the    guy both times. He’s great. Coulda been."
"Tiny eggs have started hatching this week at the San Diego Zoo, and scientists there are celebrating the arrival of baby tree lobsters. It’s all part of a conservation effort for the Lord Howe Island stick insect. The huge, black, shiny creature, also known as a tree lobster, is a superstar of the entomological world, because its history is such a strange saga of passion and commitment. ”It’s a very emotional story about an animal that most people don’t get emotional about,” says Paige Howorth, the San Diego Zoo’s curator of entomology. The Lord Howe Island stick insect once thrived in only one place  —   Lord Howe Island, near Australia. But in 1918, a ship ran aground and the island got overrun by hungry rats. Soon, the island’s famous insect was extinct. Or so everyone thought. Decades later, in the 1960s, a few dead ones turned up on Ball’s Pyramid, a jagged mountain of rock that sticks straight up out of the South Pacific Ocean, about a dozen miles from Lord Howe Island. ”Ball’s Pyramid is a very inhospitable place,” says Howorth. ”There’s no free water on the rock. Really, not much grows there.” It seemed like an unlikely refuge for a   insect. But in 2001, a few guys went out there to find out once and for all if this really was the creature’s last redoubt. High above the shoreline, they spotted insect droppings beneath a shrub growing in a rocky crevice. They went back that night and, lo and behold  —   there were a couple dozen of the giant bugs. The rediscovery made headlines around the world. ”It was a massive, massive P. R. event for insects,” Howorth says, ”especially an insect like this, which is not one you would deem charismatic, you know, for the most part.” Two years later, on Valentine’s Day in 2003, climbers went back to Ball’s Pyramid and retrieved two male tree lobsters and two females. The Melbourne Zoo now has a breeding program and hundreds of the insects. Zookeeper Rohan Cleave takes care of them there, and thinks it’s amazing how this species really, sort of, came back from the dead. ”It’s a very romantic story,” he says, ”in that there’s always that hope that one day, they may go home.” But before the insects ever could be released back into the wild on Lord Howe Island, the island would have to get rid of the rats  —   which the residents are now trying to do. In the meantime, there are some tree lobsters living on the island in captivity, at a museum and a school. And Melbourne Zoo wants to establish other colonies, says Howorth, ”so that if something catastrophic happened to the population at Melbourne, there would be something to fall back on for this species.” The San Diego Zoo tried to breed this insect a few years ago, but it was a failure. Howorth says they decided that if they were going to try again, they’d need to get a hold of the two main plants that the insects feed on in Melbourne. ”And they aren’t available in the States,” she notes. The zoo had to get clippings from Australia and grow a bunch of these bushes. Finally, they were ready. Howorth flew to Melbourne last month and brought back 300 eggs, which have just started hatching. ”The nymphs seem to emerge from the egg overnight or in the very early morning hours,” Howorth says. ”Most mornings since Saturday have included one or two little green surprises. We couldn’t be happier!” She says the little ones appear to be munching on the plants. ”The nymph that comes out of the egg is about three times the size of the egg itself,” says Howorth. ”It’s just folded up in there like an origami piece or something  —   it’s amazing.” More eggs should keep hatching over the next few months, she says, since they are of staggered ages. ”Zoos have an opportunity to conserve the broad,   of biodiversity, not just the pandas and the polar bears and the tigers. And it’s exciting to see this actually happening with the Lord Howe Island stick insect,” says Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. He says other insects, like the American burying beetle, have been reintroduced to other locations. ”But these island systems are uniquely difficult when you end up with a rat on the island,” he notes. ”And you really have to control it before you put these animals back in.” The huge, black tree lobster may look intimidating, but temperamentally it is fairly docile, Howorth says. And its mouthparts can’t bite people. It has been claimed that the males and females snooze together, cuddled up in pairs, with the male wrapping his six legs protectively around the female. But Howorth says assuming that the sleep position connotes affection would be premature. ”I don’t know if it means he loves her,” she says, laughing. ”I’m not willing to say that.”"
"No, this isn’t a   place. It’s real. They call it ”Ball’s Pyramid.” It’s what’s left of an old volcano that emerged from the sea about 7 million years ago. A British naval officer named Ball was the first European to see it in 1788. It sits off Australia, in the South Pacific. It is extremely narrow, 1, 844 feet high, and it sits alone. What’s more, for years this place had a secret. At 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don’t know. Here’s the story: About 13 miles from this spindle of rock, there’s a bigger island, called Lord Howe Island. On Lord Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It’s a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large  —   as big as a human hand  —   that the Europeans labeled it a ”tree lobster” because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fishermen used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait. Then one day in 1918, a supply ship, the S. S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone. Totally gone. After 1920, there wasn’t a single sighting. By 1960, the Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis, was presumed extinct. There was a rumor, though. Some climbers scaling Ball’s Pyramid in the 1960s said they’d seen a few stick insect corpses lying on the rocks that looked ”recently dead.” But the species is nocturnal, and nobody wanted to scale the spire hunting for bugs in the dark. Climbing The Pyramid, Fast forward to 2001, when two Australian scientists, David Priddel and Nicholas Carlile, with two assistants, decided to take a closer look. From the water, they’d seen a few patches of vegetation that just might support walking sticks. So, they boated over. (”Swimming would have been much easier,” Carlile said, ”but there are too many sharks. ”) They crawled up the vertical rock face to about 500 feet, where they found a few crickets, nothing special. But on their way down, on a precarious, unstable rock surface, they saw a single melaleuca bush peeping out of a crack and, underneath, what looked like fresh droppings of some large insect. Where, they wondered, did that poop come from? The only thing to do was to go back up after dark, with flashlights and cameras, to see if the pooper would be out taking a nighttime walk. Nick Carlile and a local ranger, Dean Hiscox, agreed to make the climb. And with flashlights, they scaled the wall till they reached the plant, and there, spread out on the bushy surface, were two enormous, shiny,   bodies. And below those two, slithering into the muck, were more, and more . .. 24 in all. All gathered near this one plant. They were alive and, to Nick Carlile’s eye, enormous. Looking at them, he said, ”It felt like stepping back into the Jurassic age, when insects ruled the world.” They were Dryococelus australis. A search the next morning, and two years later, concluded these are the only ones on Ball’s Pyramid, the last ones. They live there, and, as best we know, nowhere else. How they got there is a mystery. Maybe they hitchhiked on birds, or traveled with fishermen, and how they survived for so long on just a single patch of plants, nobody knows either. The important thing, the scientists thought, was to get a few of these insects protected and into a breeding program. That wasn’t so easy. The Australian government didn’t know if the animals on Ball’s Pyramid could or should be moved. There were meetings, studies, two years passed, and finally officials agreed to allow four animals to be retrieved. Just four. When the team went back to collect them, it turned out there had been a rock slide on the mountain, and at first they feared that the whole population had been wiped out. But when they got back up to the site, on Valentine’s Day 2003, the animals were still there, sitting on and around their bush. The plan was to take one pair and give it to a man who was very familiar with mainland walking stick insects, a private breeder living in Sydney. He got his pair, but within two weeks, they died. Adam And Eve And Patrick, That left the other two. They were named ”Adam” and ”Eve,” taken to the Melbourne Zoo and placed with Patrick Honan, of the zoo’s invertebrate conservation breeding group. At first, everything went well. Eve began laying little   eggs, exactly as hoped. But then she got sick. According to biologist Jane Goodall, writing for Discover Magazine: ”Eve became very, very sick. Patrick . .. worked every night for a month desperately trying to cure her. . .. Eventually, based on gut instinct, Patrick concocted a mixture that included calcium and nectar and fed it to his patient, drop by drop, as she lay curled up in his hand.” Her recovery was almost instant. Patrick told the Australian Broadcasting Company, ”She went from being on her back curled up in my hand, almost as good as dead, to being up and walking around within a couple of hours.” Eve’s eggs were harvested, incubated (though it turns out only the first 30 were fertile) and became the foundation of the zoo’s new population of walking sticks. When Jane Goodall visited in 2008, Patrick showed her rows and rows of incubating eggs: 11, 376 at that time, with about 700 adults in the captive population. Lord Howe Island walking sticks seem to pair off  —   an unusual insect behavior  —   and Goodall says Patrick ”showed me photos of how they sleep at night, in pairs, the male with three of his legs protectively over the female beside him.” Now comes the question that bedevils all such conservation rescue stories. Once a rare animal is safe at the zoo, when can we release it back to the wild? On Lord Howe Island, their former habitat, the     of those original black rats are still out and about, presumably hungry and still a problem. Step one, therefore, would be to mount an intensive (and expensive) rat annihilation program. Residents would, no doubt, be happy to go   but not every Lord Howe islander wants to make the neighborhood safe for gigantic,   crawling insects. So the Melbourne Museum is mulling over a public relations campaign to make these insects more . .. well, adorable, or noble, or whatever it takes. They recently made a video, with strumming guitars, featuring a brand new baby emerging from its egg. The newborn is emerald green, squirmy and so long, it just keeps coming and coming from an impossibly small container. Will this soften the hearts of Lord Howe islanders? I dunno. It’s so . .. so . .. big. But, hey, why don’t you look for yourself? What happens next? The story is simple: A bunch of black rats almost wiped out a bunch of gigantic bugs on a little island far, far away from most of us. A few dedicated scientists, passionate about biological diversity, risked their lives to keep the bugs going. For the bugs to get their homes and their future back doesn’t depend on scientists anymore. They’ve done their job. Now it’s up to the folks on Lord Howe Island. Will ordinary Janes and Joes, going about their days, agree to spend a little extra effort and money to preserve an animal that isn’t what most of us would call beautiful? Its main attraction is that it has lived on the planet for a long time, and we have the power to keep it around. I don’t know if it will work, but in the end, that’s the walking stick’s best argument: I’m still here. Don’t let me go."
"The Justice Department slapped the city of Ferguson, Mo. with a civil rights lawsuit this week after the City Council voted to change a proposed settlement agreement to reform the police and courts. When Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the suit on Wednesday, she said Ferguson police disproportionately targeted black people for traffic stops, use of force and jail sentences. ”These violations were not only egregious, they were routine,” Lynch said. ”They were encouraged by the city in the interest of raising revenue. They were driven at least in part by racial bias, and they occurred disproportionately against   residents of Ferguson. And they were profoundly and fundamentally unconstitutional.” The Justice Department investigation into the city came after a white police officer shot and killed    Michael Brown in 2014. Ferguson Mayor James Knowles told All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro that the Justice Department refused to negotiate with the city further after Ferguson presented a comprehensive cost analysis on the terms of the settlement. The mayor also said the city never came to a final agreement with the Justice Department. On why the City Council proposed changes after agreeing to the deal, Trust me, we brought many, many issues to the table during these negotiations, not least of which was the issue of cost and how much it would take for the city of Ferguson to comply with all of these points that were contained in the report. By the time our staff had a comprehensive cost analysis done on this, we did not have an opportunity to go back and have a negotiation with the Department of Justice. They did not want to have further negotiations. They wanted us to either accept it or decline it. On the confusion over the settlement agreement, Let me be very clear about this. There was no agreement. The only agreement was that we would take it before the people, that we would take it before the entire council for consideration. Now the Department of Justice asked us to sign an agreement before we took it public and we refused. On the Justice Department’s claim that unconstitutional policing practices were used to generate revenue, Well if [Attorney General Loretta Lynch] forces us to raise our expenses, I mean, that would force us to go find new revenue. The point is our revenues have fallen. Obviously, we don’t pull over people at the rate we used to pull people over. We don’t issue tickets like we used to issue tickets. Property values have fallen. Revenues from sales tax has fallen. So she’s complaining about the way we used to generate revenue, which we don’t anymore, but now wants to tack on a huge amount of expenses to us. I mean, that’s completely counterproductive. On whether Ferguson and the Justice Department perceive different realities about a pattern and practice of discrimination, I don’t know if that would be a proper characterization of this because of everything that started in April of 2014. The city of Ferguson began looking at both its core practices and its police practices, and immediately, we began changing things in our courts, which we felt were onerous, which were probably burdensome on the people who are going through our court system. We started removing fines and fees from our court systems in September of 2014 that’s long before the March 2015 report from the Department of Justice. We also began changing the way we do things in our police department once these things came to light. I think it’s very important to recognize that the city of Ferguson has taken an affirmative approach to ensuring that those things which the Department of Justice alleges does not occur in Ferguson going forward. On whether Ferguson is putting a dollar amount on constitutional rights, We don’t believe the Department of Justice should tell us how much we have to pay our city staff. I don’t know anywhere in the Constitution of the United States where it says in order to have a constitutional policing police department, you must be paid among the highest in the area. The issue was raised in the negotiations with the Department of Justice. But ultimately it’s something that they refused to relent on."
"As the Republican primary moves to South Carolina, political observers are predicting that the race could get nasty in the state that historically plays a major role in choosing the party’s nominee. ”South Carolina is brutal. It’s  . It is the toughest of tough political environments to play in,” says Hogan Gidley, a former director of the South Carolina Republican Party. South Carolina was put on the map as an important presidential primary by Lee Atwater, a famously ruthless GOP operative. It’s the state where a whisper campaign in 2000 accused John McCain of illegitimately fathering a black child, who was in fact the daughter he and his wife adopted from Bangladesh. Gidley says Southern charm is no match for gritty South Carolina politics. ”I think the difference between here and other places is we do it with a smile, and with a phrase like, ’Bless your heart,’ so you think it’s all nice  —   but we’re really screwing you and you just don’t know it,” he says. Part of the reason the stakes are so high is that South Carolina is known for picking winners. Until Newt Gingrich four years ago, the winner of South Carolina’s Republican primary had gone on to be the party’s nominee in every election since Ronald Reagan won in 1980.  Republicans argue that’s because the state’s party does a good job of mirroring the concerns of the GOP as a whole. Katon Dawson, a former state party chairman and national committeeman, says the state is like ”three different countries”  —   made up of key constituencies within the Republican Party. First, there’s the upstate: reliably Republican, heavily industrial and home to the conservative Christian Bob Jones University. It’s ripe for candidates like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who often talks about his faith.  In the midlands, there’s state government and the establishment hub in Columbia, with more moderate Republicans. Finally, the low country and coast are home to lots of retirees from the North. Dawson says many come from states like New York and New Jersey, and those transplants tend to be fiscally conservative but ”socially different.” Throughout the state, Donald Trump has strong support. But there are opportunities for other candidates. Especially along the coast, where military bases make up another important constituency for Republicans. Observers say Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is popular with the military  —   and so is his brother. Former President George W. Bush is featured in a Jeb Bush campaign ad airing on the radio here, and he’ll visit the state next week on his brother’s behalf. For Jeb Bush, the objective is to lock down support from the party’s establishment, which is still scrambling to find a favorite after mixed results in Iowa and New Hampshire. Dawson says South Carolina will give just a few candidates momentum going into Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen mostly Southern states hold primaries. ”There’ll be three tickets  —   three serious tickets punched out of South Carolina. And then this race is gonna focus a little more,” he says. Hogan Gidley also says there will be ”three tickets punched” after the South Carolina Republican primary. But first, he says, expect the Republican candidates to throw a lot of punches at each other."
"Chances are you’ve heard at least one song written by Diane Warren: ”Rhythm of the Night,” ”Don’t Turn Around,” ”Unbreak My Heart” and ”If I Could Turn Back Time” are just a handful of her 70 or so Top 10 hits. Warren has penned hundreds of heartbreaking songs about intimacy and romance for Whitney Houston, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Gloria Estefan and many, many more. But she’s long sworn that she does not do romance in real life. When I met her at her LA offices and wondered about what it’s like to write about things she doesn’t experience herself, Warren immediately jumped in. ”Like love?” she asked. ”You know, I haven’t been in love the way most people have been in love. But I know what love feels like. I love my cat.” She’s serious, and she should be. To explain her engagement with these intense emotions, Warren points to a song she wrote for Aerosmith  —   which happens to be the band’s first ever No. 1 hit. ”You know, when I wrote ’I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing’  —   I’m probably not going to ’stay awake just to hear you breathing.’ I don’t want you in my bed, because I like sleeping by myself,” she says. ”But I have a good imagination and I really believe it when I’m writing it.” Warren didn’t need to use her imagination for a recent song she wrote with Lady Gaga. ”Til It Happens to You,” which is nominated for a Grammy and an Oscar for Best Song, appears on the soundtrack of a documentary about rape on college campuses called The Hunting Ground. Warren is candid about how the topic intersects with her own life. ”Look, I was molested,” she says. ”I never told my mom  —   well, I told her later in life. My mom goes, ’Why didn’t you tell your dad?’ I don’t know. I felt weird. Maybe you feel it’s a little bit your fault or something . .. I was, like, 12 years old. What did I know?” Warren’s experience puts her among the approximately one in five American women who have survived some form of sexual assault. She approached Gaga partly because she knew the singer had also been sexually assaulted  —   as a teenager, by a music producer. As a songwriter, Warren says she hasn’t had to withstand the level of objectification and harassment faced by female performers  —   but that rape culture stretches through American life, from college campuses to the music industry. She told me a story I couldn’t put on the air about going to a meeting as a young songwriter, trying to get a foothold in the business, where an engineer openly masturbated in front of her. ”It was really weird,” she says. ”I never told that to anyone.” She’s understated, dry, wry, and still quietly angry. The Hunting Ground has drawn some criticism for its reliance on questionable data and a lack of  . ”Til It Happens to You,” however, has taken on a life of its own  —   partly because the music video, directed by Catherine Hardwicke of Twilight, doubles as a public service announcement. The song became a Top 10 hit, and club remixes took it to No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance chart. It works because it’s scary, says Robin James, a philosophy professor who blogs about music at It’s Her Factory. ”Til it happens to you’  —   that’s sort of chilling,” James says. ”You feel it in the pit of your stomach.” Perhaps it takes the chops of a Diane Warren to write a mainstream pop anthem about rape. She says the assault she endured affects her to this day: ”It’s maybe why I don’t get close to people,” she says quietly. ”It’s maybe why I don’t have relationships.” But writing and talking about this song, Warren says, has been unexpectedly healing. ”I’m good,” she says. ”Everything, even the bad stuff, makes you who you are.”"
"On Thursday, researchers announced the discovery of gravitational waves  —  wrinkles in the very fabric of  . But behind the headlines and news conferences were decades of hard work, hundreds of scientists and more than a billion dollars in taxpayer funds. ”It’s profoundly satisfying that it came out the way that we intended, we’d hoped, we’d dreamed,” says Kip Thorne, a gravitational theorist at Caltech who   the project. The idea of gravitational waves started 100 years ago, when Albert Einstein revolutionized physics with a theory of gravity called general relativity  —   which reimagined the force of gravity as a warping of dimensions of space and time. The theory made a lot of startling predictions. One of them was that very heavy objects such as black holes should produce ripples in   itself. The ripples stayed in the realm of theory until the 1960s, when a researcher named Joseph Weber began working on ways to actually detect them. At the time, another researcher named Rainer Weiss was teaching at MIT and some of his students started asking him about Weber’s work. ”That was the beginning for me,” Weiss says. Catching a wave is a tough problem. Gravitational waves bend space only a tiny, tiny amount  —   a small fraction of the diameter of a  . Weiss and other researchers spent more than a decade just tinkering, trying to figure out how to do it. Eventually, they came up with a plan. The idea was to build a giant laser and place it between   precision mirrors set in an  . Bouncing light off the mirrors, each of which would be miles away, would provide a stunningly accurate measure of distance. On paper at least, it could detect the stretching and squishing of space by gravitational waves. But the giant lasers and long tunnels needed would be enormously expensive. Weiss and his colleagues went to the National Science Foundation for money. There were doubts, in part because other scientists recalled Weber’s failed attempts decades earlier. But eventually, a panel of eminent scientists endorsed the project. ”They said, ’Hey this is a great idea. You should do it. It’s risky, but it’s exactly what the country needs,’ ” Weiss recalls. His MIT group joined forces with a team from Caltech. Using NSF funding, they built two detectors, one in Louisiana and the other thousands of miles away in Washington state. Known as the Laser Interferometer   Observatory (LIGO) the machines began to search. Throughout the 2000s, their highly sensitive lasers registered trees being logged in Louisiana and earthquakes in rural Washington. But they failed to detect gravitational waves. The scientists were undaunted. ”It was always exciting,” says Gabriela González, a researcher at Louisiana State University and spokesperson of the LIGO scientific collaboration. ”Just working on such a   instrument was what I always liked.” NSF approved an upgrade to LIGO in 2004, and four years later, researchers got to work on the enhancements. They completely overhauled the lasers and mirrors and turned on Advanced LIGO in 2015. All told, the U. S. and other nations invested $1. 5 billion into the esoteric project, according to NSF Director France Córdova. It was the riskiest thing the NSF had ever done. So she was more than a little relieved when one of her deputies burst into her office last fall with the latest on LIGO. ”He said, ’France, you want to hear some good news for a change?’ ” Córdova says, chuckling. The gamble had worked. On Sept. 14, 2015, at 5:51 a. m. ET, an alarm went off in Louisiana. Researchers in Germany, who were already analyzing the data, quickly identified a possible wave. The Washington state detector had seen it, too. The distortion in space was just 000 the diameter of a proton, but it was there. ”I felt disbelief,” Weiss says. ”Until we really did the checks, and then little by little, all of us began to believe.” It was the collision of two black holes, each about 30 times the mass of the sun. They had smashed together far outside our galaxy, some 1. 3 billion   away. The researchers spent months making sure, but in the end, there was no doubt. The signal was real. For Weiss, who’d started working on the project five decades before, there was joy, but also relief. ”A monkey came off my back,” he says."
"I’m not sure there’s ever been a record release as confounding as the one for Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo. He’s changed its title and track listing several times in as many weeks, and even up until the very moment I’m writing this, it’s not 100 percent certain what will be on that final album, whenever and wherever it comes out. Meanwhile, West has apparently turned his Twitter account over to his unleashed id, meaning that we’ve gotten a few days’ worth of astoundingly   remarks, including proclamations of Bill Cosby’s innocence and an insistence that when he calls Taylor Swift a ”bitch” on the new record, it’s really meant as a term of endearment. We say we want our artists unfiltered, but sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for. Maybe this is all part of some   piece we’ve been unwittingly sucked into, as West plays the puppet master who’s gleefully pulling on our strings. .. and it seems to be working. No doubt, dozens of my professional peers stayed up late last night to bang out a review of an unfinished album that we probably couldn’t have listened to more than a couple times. We did it because the ”news cycle” demanded that we do. I did it and then I woke up today and realized the folly in it all. We’re scrambling to digest whatever meager scraps Kanye is willing to throw us. Sure, it’s kind of fun to get caught up in the fervor, but ultimately, trying to think through an album on a few hours’ notice doesn’t serve anyone well: not the artist, not the listener and surely not the writer. There are those of us who yearn for the days when albums were reviewed after weeks of listening, but for the big pop releases, this is the new normal. Snap judgments are the only judgments we get to render. And normally, that system works well enough where we pretend not to notice its failings, but this week, Kanye West  —   whether intentionally or not  —   has exposed how ridiculous it can all seem. He’s taken the lens we typically scrutinize him under and turned it into a   mirror for staring at ourselves."
"Tell her how you really feel: Dr. Julie Holland is asking women to embrace their inner ”moody bitches.” Let me back up. The   psychiatrist has noticed a shift in her female patients. Twenty years ago, when Holland started her practice, she says, patients came to her because they were having trouble sleeping, were crying frequently or generally not feeling well  —   ”but not really understanding what was going on with them and not really knowing what to do about it.” Nowadays, with heavier advertising by pharmaceutical companies and with more women taking psychoactive medication, they ask: ”Which one of these medications should I take?” Not ”if,” but ”which.” In her book Moody Bitches, Holland discusses the hormonal cycles that alter women’s moods throughout the month and during key transitions in their lives. Women shouldn’t automatically medicate away these changes, she writes: They should accept and maybe even respect them instead. ”Sometimes it’s OK to feel anxious or to feel sad, and it’s going to go away,” she says. ”Not every emotion has to be treated as a symptom that needs to be eradicated.” The book, published last year and recently out in paperback, has been criticized for a few things. Among them: It undercuts efforts to destigmatize mental health care the message is jumbled the science is squishy. For one, there’s the assertion that oral birth control can hurt your libido, which she calls the pills’ ”dirty little secret” in the book. Overall, the research is mixed on this, as BuzzFeed has pointed out. (You can read more about the side effects of oral contraceptives on Bedsider, a website about birth control.) Holland says she encourages her patients to use   birth control to maintain their natural hormone fluctuations. On a related note, Holland told me she did wish she hadn’t given so much weight to some preliminary research on the supposed differences between men’s and women’s brains. I’ll throw in another potential pitfall: The experiences described in the book aren’t particularly diverse. Holland’s patients are women in their 30s and 40s in New York who can afford to see her (she says she doesn’t take insurance). While the book doesn’t explicitly narrow in on those patients, it does focus almost exclusively on straight women, and talks a lot about forming a family. The sections on menopause and alternatives to pharmaceuticals could have wider appeal, though. Beyond these points, it’s interesting to think about how women’s emotions are perceived by society and by women themselves. I was surprised to hear that of the two provocative words in Holland’s book title, ”moody” was the one that caused the biggest stir. ”Women hate to be called moody,” Holland says. ”Women hate to be accused of being hysterical, being emotional. It’s disempowering.” On second thought, it’s not that surprising. Holland says she first used the phrase ”moody bitches” because she found it amusing. It also hits a nerve, apparently. Women have been getting the message that moodiness is weakness for quite some time (did you know the word ”hysteria” stems from the Greek word for uterus? ). Holland counters that assumption by suggesting that any extra sensitivity during menstruation can make women more perceptive, and that a bit of anxiety may make people better at their jobs. There are plenty of us who would benefit from a walk in the park  —   and maybe smoking some pot  —   before taking prescription medication, she says: ”Just being in your body, being present with your environment, not multitasking so much, is a way to sort of calm your whole system down and to feel better.” Yes, some women do need medication for mood disorders. Holland doesn’t argue that. She does agree that women who don’t necessarily need medication are getting it, while women who could really use it might not be. ”There’s a little bit of an unequal distribution of medical attention, and that’s  —   that’s America,” she says. ”I mean, we’ve got real socioeconomic differences that drive a lot of our health care discrepancies.” Wherever you fall, can we at least agree not to feel bad about feeling bad  —   or about feeling good, for that matter?"
"Jim Gilmore’s quixotic presidential campaign came to a surreptitious end Friday. His resume reads like someone who should have been a   candidate  —   former governor of   Virginia, a former Republican National Committee chairman, and the only military veteran in a primary campaign where national security is a top concern among voters. Instead, Gilmore got just 12 votes in Iowa. In New Hampshire  —   the state where he repeatedly said would really begin his campaign  —   he ended up with only 134 votes. Multiple candidates who had dropped out  —   Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul  —   ended up with more support. Andy Martin, a perennial candidate and ”birther” from Manchester, got 202 votes. While most candidates held crowded rallies and town halls or heralded retail stops in the closing days, NPR caught up with Gilmore Sunday as he slipped unassumingly into a bar in Nashua, N. H. Patrons were here to watch the Super Bowl, which was about to begin. Gilmore shook each and every hand in the room. ”I’m Jim Gilmore, and I’m running for president,” he said as he approached the first table, where two   girls were sipping beers. ”You are?” one exclaimed. ”Well, good for you.” Gilmore gave them his quick elevator pitch of why they should vote for him  —   he’s the only veteran in the race and will reform the VA he has the best national security experience and he’ll protect Second Amendment rights. They’re registered to vote, they said, but haven’t followed the race closely and aren’t sure who they’ll vote for. After the former governor headed on to the next table, they admitted they had never heard of him. At the next table, they had received his direct mail the day before, so they did actually know who he is. One patron asked why Gilmore wasn’t in the previous night’s debate  —   Gilmore made only two undercard debates this cycle. ”They just picked polling that prevented me from being on there,” he explained. ”But I was in the one in Des Moines, and won that debate, by all accounts.” ”I have a question,” one man at the table asked, as Gilmore perked up. ”We’re going to be driving through Virginia next week  —   where should we go?” Gilmore suggested they stop at Mount Vernon, Monticello and Williamsburg if they have time. After playing travel agent Gilmore turned back to his own message: ”Look, I’ve got five votes here. You all know another 25 people you could choose to talk to. Just tell ’em you met me, I’ve got the credentials, and I’m running.” ”Hey, I heard about you,” a waiter told him. ”Anybody who’s not Donald Trump! You shake all the hands, kiss all the babies here you need.” ”My slogan is, ’I’m a mainstream conservative, and I ain’t crazy!’ ” Gilmore boasted. As he finished his rounds, Gilmore met a familiar face. Steve Dolan and his two sons, Joe and Greg, live in Nashua now, but are from Alexandria, Va. ”I voted for you” when you ran for governor, Steve told him. ”I’m a realist. You’re working real hard, and I wish you could win. I don’t think they’re going to win.” ”I can win,” Gilmore argued passionately. ”I don’t have to win the whole thing here. I just don’t want to get shut out so I can move on to South Carolina. Every vote counts for Gilmore.” ”Nice man,” Steve said. ”I’m gonna vote for Mr. Gilmore. I really am. Let’s see what happens.” In a race where he was overshadowed by flashier candidates, including Trump, and   candidates, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Gilmore bemoaned in an interview with NPR the narrative that already seems to have been written about him, ”I haven’t been in office for eight years, so I had to come into the race and make a name for myself,” Gilmore said over a plate of wings. ”The only way really to be on a level playing field is for the press to treat me the same way they’ve treated other candidates, and they have not. My experience and competence is real  —   I’m actually an inclusive person, and the press thought it was really entertaining to have these ’radicals’ on the Republican side be featured.” ”Every time they give Donald Trump 33 minutes on MSNBC, it’s like giving him $1 million. It’s wrong,” Gilmore said, pounding the table as his voice rose. ”They’re shaping the race, they’re favoring candidates, and it’s been very detrimental to my campaign.” ”I have no intention of getting out,” Gilmore maintained that Sunday, saying he already was planning his trip to South Carolina. He wouldn’t define what success was for him on Tuesday night, but it’s clear that the 134 votes he got in New Hampshire didn’t hand him the validation he needed. That hour spent shaking hands in Nashua wasn’t all lost  —   he persuaded one voter. When NPR told him Steve Dolan had promised he’d vote for him, Gilmore started to grin. ”Well, how about that.” But for Gilmore, it wouldn’t be nearly enough."
"On Sunday, John Oliver returns to HBO with the latest season of Last Week Tonight. The satirical current events show doesn’t shy away from complex topics  —   drones, net neutrality, the NSA Oliver even landed an interview with Edward Snowden last year. Facts are always the backbone of the show, Oliver tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. After sorting through lots of pitches, stories are aggressively researched. ”You can’t build jokes on sand,” Oliver says. ”You can’t be wrong about something  —   otherwise that joke just disintegrates. . .. You try to be as rigorous as you can in terms of   because your responsibility is to make sure that your joke is structurally sound.” That’s a lesson Oliver says he learned while working as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. It was Oliver’s stint in the host chair  —   while Jon Stewart was away for the summer  —   that was a trial run for Last Week Tonight. Oliver talks with McEvers about the kinds of topics he tackles on the show, casting dogs as Supreme Court justices, and his aspirations for next season. On what Last Week, Tonight does differently from The Daily Show, There were a couple of stories that we did that were slightly different than what we would normally do at the Daily Show. . .. We liked the idea of using the skills that we had learned from working with Jon Stewart for so long to some   stories  —   things where we’re not reacting so much to the news cycle and we were more looking at single issue stuff. On the episode that made fun of televangelists, Televangelism feels like a relic of the   1980s. . .. There’s also this concept of ”seed faith” which has been misinterpreted by some of these preachers and pastors to basically mean that they can offer an investment scheme whereby you send money to them and they promise that you are ”seeding” the ground and will receive riches in the future. Which you would think is dancing pretty close to the legal line . .. but you can absolutely do that. You can promise that  —   and not only that  —   but you can operate without any tax liabilities. . .. It’s like  —   it’s one thing to, in theory, say to people you can make these promises and you can take people’s money and there are no consequences to that. But we wanted to show that in practice you can actually do it. So we could on TV say: Give us your money, you will get more money in return, and we could take people’s money and not be taxed on it and it was like showing the proof of concept really that this seems to be a problem. On creating a church, We created a church  —   it was called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption. And my wife,   who was played by Rachel Dratch, she and I each week screamed at people to give us their seed . .. and they did, to the tune of $70, 000 in single dollar bills. . .. We took it  —   which we’re allowed to do  —   and then we asked for more, and then we got more and then we kept asking for more. And all of this is inexplicably OK. On what they ultimately did with the money, We gave it to Doctors Without Borders. . .. The church, I guess, is lying dormant until we decide to pick it up again. So I think if we ever want another $70, 000 we can just start asking for money. On whether his show is investigative journalism, No. There’s a pretty simple answer to that. No, it is not. No, we are a comedy show so everything we do is in pursuit of comedy. . .. It’s confusing to me somehow the fact that this is often the line of questioning. . .. It almost makes me feel like, when people say: ”This is journalism,” it almost makes me feel like: Am I a terrible comedian? . .. Is it like looking at a sculptor and saying: ”Well it’s not art, so are you trying to build a wall? What exactly are you working on here?” On what makes the best stories for the show, I don’t know. We’re two years in now, so we’re about to start a third year and we’re still changing our process. The scope of what our production is capable of has started to be really exciting so from the very silly examples such as making an entire miniature Supreme Court with dogs as the justices  —   it’s just an amazing waste of HBO’s resources  —   or trying to get an effective interview with Edward Snowden about incredibly complicated things  —   both of which we did last year and both of which are kind of equally fun in different ways and equally challenging. On how he’s going to approach next season, [We’re] going after the things that seem most complicated  —   whether that is trying to explain some of the NSA’s detailed programs, or whether that’s putting a cowboy hat on a cat."
"The Danish entry in the foreign language Oscar sweepstakes, A War, begins in Afghanistan, deep in Taliban territory. A Danish patrol is walking single file across a field. Each man steps where the previous man stepped . .. alas, to no avail. A land mine explodes, killing the   last soldier in the line. Back at the squad’s fortified HQ, Claus, their   commanding officer, decides he will not send his men out again without being there himself, a decision that will later have repercussions. He’s a decent man  —   a father, a caring officer, proud of the role his soldiers play in protecting civilians. This war, though, turns such considerations on their heads. Help an Afghan family, and the Taliban is apt to target that family, which is how Claus later finds himself with his squad in an ambush. One of his men  —   a soldier who was traumatized in the first incident to the point that Claus almost had to send him home  —   is hit and will die without assistance. The rest are pinned down, unable to tell where shots are coming from. Claus calls in an airstrike on a nearby compound, not quite sure that that’s where the shots are coming from, but it turns out he was right. His action saves his men. But a few days later, he is called in for an inquiry. There were civilians in the compound, too. After a debriefing, he is sent back to his wife and kids in Copenhagen, charged with war crimes. And the complications are just beginning. The first half of A War was shot in Turkey, and nearly all the roles in that   setting were cast with nonactors  —   Afghan refugees, Danish    —   which helped filmmaker Tobias Lindholm achieve a   realism there. In the scenes at Claus’ home and in the courtroom, the director relies more on leading man Pilou Asbaek, who has a solemn, brooding manner that is likely to serve him well in a substantial role he has landed in the coming season of Game of Thrones. Lindholm has said in interviews that just as films about the Vietnam War gave the American public a way to process a national trauma, he hopes his film can do that for a Danish public that has been sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan for much of the past decade and a half. And indeed, he has freighted A War with many of the same moral quandaries, impossible choices, terrible consequences. In Afghanistan, Claus’ soldiers are tense, their foothold insecure, the civilians they’re protecting anxious. He returns to find his home tense, his children insecure, his wife anxious. If what he did in the war zone to save his men was criminal, what should he do at home? In the courtroom, with his attorney staring down the prosecutor, the battle lines seem so clear. In his own mind, they’re less clear. What do you do when there’s no right move? A War brings that question home."
"Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill came face to face Friday in Havana  —   the first time leaders of the two churches have met since a schism 1, 000 years ago divided Christianity. The religious leaders ”embraced and kissed one another three times on the cheek as they met in a   VIP room at the Havana airport,” The Associated Press reports. The news service adds that Francis said, ”Finally!” when he embraced Kirill, and ”We are brothers.” Through an interpreter, Kirill told the pope, ”Now things are easier.” After the meeting, Francis and Kirill signed a joint declaration on religious unity that calls for an end to violent conflicts, notably in Syria and Iraq. One part of the   declaration read: ”Thousands of victims have already been claimed in the violence in Syria and Iraq, which has left many other millions without a home or means of sustenance. We urge the international community to seek an end to the violence and terrorism and, at the same time, to contribute through dialogue to a swift return to civil peace. Large —  scale humanitarian aid must be assured to the afflicted populations and to the many refugees seeking safety in neighbouring lands.” As we reported last week, the historic meeting is the result of an ”intersection of the itineraries,” as both leaders will be visiting Latin America next week. The meeting at José Martí International Airport came just before Francis is scheduled to visit Mexico and meet with victims of drug violence and human trafficking in some of the country’s poorest, most violent regions. Kirill is in Cuba to visit President Raul Castro. In a joint statement, The Holy See and the Moscow Patriarchate called the meeting an ”important stage in relations between the two churches. The Holy See and the Moscow Patriarchate hope that it will also be a sign of hope for all people of goodwill. They invite all Christians to pray fervently for God to bless this meeting, that it may bear good fruits.”"
"Exactly 15 months after it completed a seemingly impossible journey to land on the surface of a comet, the Philae lander now faces ”eternal hibernation,” as officials at the European Space Agency say the craft doesn’t get enough sunlight to power its batteries. ”The chances for Philae to contact our team . .. are unfortunately getting close to zero,” says Stephan Ulamec, Philae project manager at the German Aerospace Center, DLR. He added, ”We are not sending commands any more, and it would be very surprising if we were to receive a signal again.” Philae is the lander from the Rosetta spacecraft, which for months now has been orbiting Comet   —  Gerasimenko and listening for signs of activity from its companion craft. But after an encouraging period of contact last summer, Philae has been silent since July 9. A tweet issued Friday from the ESA’s Rosetta Mission Twitter account includes an artist’s rendering of the current situation. But instead of an airbrushed space scene, this one is a cartoon showing Rosetta thinking about its little lander taking a nap on the comet’s cold surface. On Nov. 12, 2014, Philae captured the attention of people around the world when it landed on 67P, hundreds of millions of miles away from Earth, prompting Ulamec to declare, ”We are on the comet.” In an ESA video recap of the 67P mission that was released Friday, Ulamec says that measurements of physical and chemical conditions and other data provided by Philae have ”revolutionized our understanding of comets.” Before it shut down, the lander was able to send all the data it had collected  —   over the course of more than 60 hours of research  —   back to Earth. Ulamec says that the European teams working on the project had expected ”some interest” in the comet landing, ”but this   immense and continued enthusiasm surprised me in an extremely positive way,” he says. He added that while the lander was operational, researchers worked even longer hours than they had expected, trying to adjust to problems like an inability to drill into the comet’s surface  —   and a final landing spot that was more than a kilometer away from the intended target. ”After touching down Philae bounced several times and completed 80 percent of its planned first science sequence before falling into hibernation,” the ESA says. It was that bouncing around that limited Philae’s   prospects. According to analysis by the ESA, the lander failed to fire harpoons that would have anchored its legs onto the comet’s surface in a sunny spot. Instead, it tumbled around before settling in at least partial shade on the comet’s craggy surface. In addition to being unable to charge its secondary batteries, Philae would also have trouble functioning   on a comet where nighttime temperatures reach minus 180 degrees Celsius, researchers at Germany’s space agency say. The next big event for the space agency’s historic mission to explore a comet will come in late September, when Rosetta will join Philae on the surface after being sent down for a ”controlled impact.” Together, Rosetta and Philae traveled for 10 years to reach their rendezvous point with Comet   —  Gerasimenko."
"One of the world’s most famous and oldest spacecraft is revealing some of its past. Apollo 11 was the first mission to land humans on the moon. As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface, Michael Collins circled above in the command module called Columbia. Columbia is where the three astronauts lived during most of the   mission in July 1969. It’s the only part of the spacecraft that returned to Earth, and it’s been at the Smithsonian since 1970 and at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. since it opened in 1976. Museum guests are able to peer inside the windows of the cramped,       capsule and look at the flight controls, navigation equipment and the three   seats. What they haven’t been able to see are markings hidden from view for the past 47 years. Workers at the Air and Space Museum have been scanning the spacecraft for a   digitization project. Once inside, they found writing on the interior walls of the command module. ”They can be seen by the human eye if you were to go into the Command Module, which of course no one can normally do. We were able to take these photos because we allowed one of our conservators to go in, very strategically and carefully,” Alison Mitchell of the Air and Space Museum told NPR in an email. In both pen and pencil, the astronauts scribbled down flight plans, a series of numbers and notations from mission control, and a calendar. Each day of the Apollo 11 mission is crossed out except for the final day, July 24, when Columbia returned to Earth. Curators are now studying the text and   flight transcripts to get a more complete account and understanding of the lunar mission. They’re still not sure what the markings were all for or which astronauts wrote them. The Smithsonian   scanning project will give researchers and the public a   and interactive model of the Apollo 11 spacecraft when it’s completed this June."
"In India, Facebook has a program to give people free Internet access  —   just to use Facebook and a handful of other services. Earlier this week, regulators in that country ruled that the program is discriminatory to other websites and is illegal. A Facebook board member took to Twitter to criticize the ruling. And in so doing, he sparked a global controversy. It got ugly. Marc Andreessen  —   Facebook board member and celebrated venture capitalist  —   started by tweeting: it is ”morally wrong” to deny the ”world’s poorest free partial Internet connectivity.” He then called India’s decision ”another in a long line of economically suicidal decisions made by the Indian government against its own citizens.” And then came this tweet: ”  has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?” His tweetstorm quickly drew fire from across the Web, including the tech community in India. The country is Facebook’s   market and could rise to be the largest by next year, according to eMarketer. Andreessen soon withdrew his controversial tweets and apologized, but the colonialism remarks left many people scrutinizing Facebook’s intentions for India. ”Does he really think this way? Does he really believe that colonialism is a good thing for a lot of countries in the emerging markets?” asks Mukund Mohan, director of strategy at Microsoft. ”Or did he just say that as a comment that was uninformed and off the cuff on Twitter?” Mohan, who splits his time between Seattle and Bangalore, says these are questions he was getting from his investor friends in India. He says that as U. S. companies seek to appeal to the everyday consumer abroad, they need perspective: ”Most people, I would say the world over, don’t think that colonialism was a good thing.” Political correctness varies country by country. According to Mohan, Indians can be more racist and open to jokes about skin color than Americans, but Indians are far more sensitive to being depicted as backward  —   a land of snake charmers and child brides. Mohan believes Andreessen has never visited India, and that could be why he underestimated the sensitivity of the topic. ”I don’t necessarily think he thinks that, but there are enough people asking that question,” Mohan says. Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm that Andreessen   declined to comment on whether Andreessen has traveled to India or on the Twitter maelstrom. Andreessen has now tweeted: ”To be clear, I am 100% opposed to colonialism, and 100% in favor of independence and freedom, in every country, including India.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has chastised his board member in a Facebook post. For months, Zuckerberg has been trying his hand at diplomacy: hosting India’s prime minister at Facebook headquarters, lobbying in India for the free Facebook plan, writing an   and placing ads in newspapers (not just on his platform). Facebook presents its restricted free Internet program, called Free Basics, as connecting the poor. The company will not disclose how many new Internet users have joined Free Basics. Its telecommunications partner, Reliance Communications, has told The Times of India that 1 million people signed up. But another news report says, of those new subscribers, only 20 percent had not been previously active on mobile phones, meaning 800, 000 were not new to the Internet. Sumanth Raghavendra, a startup founder in India, says they’re people who ”were just looking to sort of scrimp on their data plan and get to surf a bit without having to pay for it.” Facebook doesn’t pay for the data plan either. The company has persuaded telecom providers to give it away. And Raghavendra worries the American tech giant is sending the wrong signal to Asian telecom companies  —   saying it’s OK for them to pick and choose what content they’re willing to stream online. ”Everybody who comes in through a particular telco basically gets to see a different part of the Internet and that’s all he gets to see when he first comes on board,” Raghavendra says. And Mohan notes, Facebook isn’t the only game in town. Other companies, including Google, are also launching programs to expand Internet access, most recently in Indian train stations. But they don’t limit users to Google or other preferred parts of the Web. ”I’m still shocked and I’m not able to understand why Facebook didn’t follow that same plan,” Mohan says. To Raghavendra, setting aside the drama of Andreessen’s   tweets, what really deserves scrutiny are the facts about Facebook’s plans for India. ”It is about control, and it’s especially about controlling it on their terms.”"
"A candlelit dinner, a bottle of bubbly Champagne and a beautiful date. You tear your gaze away for a second to glance at the check your waiter just gave you. Your heart skips a beat at the sight of the   number. But never mind, the stunning smile across the table is worth it. Right? Relationships come with sweet romance and accelerating heartbeats, but money, unfortunately, is often a crucial ingredient in the mix as well. Think about it: Weekly date nights, vacations, wedding, honeymoon and even divorce ring up bills of all sorts. Here are some fun facts on the modern economics of relationships: The average cost of dating is highest in Austin, Texas, at $81. 42 and lowest in Portland, Ore. at $43. 53. New York comes second at $76. 15 and Miami third at $73. 34. Over half of men spend more than $50 on a date, while women are three times more likely to spend $25 or less  —   but 65 percent of women spend more than $50 preparing for the date by buying new outfits or grooming. For Valentine’s Day this year, consumers are projected to spend an average of $146. 84 on gifts, up from $142. 31 last year and the most since the survey began in 2007. Candy is the top Valentine’s Day gift. The average cost of a wedding in 2014 was at a record high of $31, 213. But it also depends on where you live  —   New Yorkers’ wedding bills were triple those in Kansas City, Mo. The overall wedding budget has climbed while the average number of guests has decreased. The most expensive cost of throwing a wedding is booking a reception venue at an average of $14, 006, followed by the engagement ring and reception band. The average prices of the groom’s attire and the wedding dress are $254 and $1, 357, respectively. Twenty percent of annual flower sales are around Valentine’s Day and 250 million roses are produced for the day. As for relationship financial advice, maybe Destiny’s Child can offer you some inspiration with Bills, Bills, Bills: ”Do you pay my automo’ bills? If you did then maybe we could chill.” Or The Beatles can speak truth to you through Can’t Buy Me Love: ”But what I’ve got I’ll give to you, I don’t care too much for money.” Otherwise, you can just pay for a couples’ financial counselor. What is love compared to bills? That all depends on you. Zhai Yun Tan is a digital news intern. "
"Like many romance readers, I have a list of authors whose new releases are always on my shopping list. But this winter I’ve been looking for new (to me) novels that reflect the people I see around me. I wanted to read books by authors of color. I also looked for interracial relationships, protagonists from different cultures, and class differences without power imbalances (the Women of Color in Romance website was a great resource). Here are a few that I found. Hidden Impact (A Safeguard Novel) by Piper J. Drake is a suspense novel. Its heroine, Maylin Cheng, is searching for her younger sister  —   an expert in gene therapy who disappeared in China, where she was supposed to speak at a conference. Maylin tries going through official channels but no one seems interested in helping her locate her sister. As a last resort, she hires Gabriel, who works for a private military company. Drake’s characters and the world she built worked for me. Maylin is first generation  . She’s bilingual, owns a   catering company and has lived a sheltered existence. Gabriel is former military, the leader of a small team who has spent much of his life in dangerous situations. I loved the way their rescue attempt brought these very different people together. I stayed in the world of suspense novels with Killer Curves (Guarding Her Body) by Naima Simone. This one is about Sloane Barrett, who we learn early on, is a misfit. Her curvy body and interest in teaching make her ”the failure” of her   family. But that’s not Sloane’s only problem  —   she’s also dealing with an increasingly scary stalker. Eventually, Sloane goes to a security company where she meets Ciaran Ross, who is able to help her. It wasn’t the romance though, that resonated with me. Instead it was the family dynamics, especially the relationship between Sloane and her sister that caught my attention. Sloane’s feelings of mistreatment by her family are so ingrained, that it takes her by surprise when her sister comes through for her. The novel made the point that people change, and the labels we assign, even to ourselves, need to be constantly  . Beastly Passions (The Verochka Pride Book 2) by Nikki Winter is a paranormal romance: Asha Shankur isn’t satisfied with the role of women in her Tiger Pride, which is to live in the shadows and marry whomever her father chooses. She tries to make herself too indispensable for marriage by delving into the worlds of diplomacy and trade agreements only to discover her father has promised her to a man known for bloody brutality. Beastly Passions is fun to read, but I also loved its powerful heroine. The story moves between India and Siberia, and the landscapes act as a counterweight to Asha’s growth. Winter’s descriptions of India are lush and full of color, but Asha lives a quiet life there. Against Siberia’s neutral palette, however, she grows angry and expressive, becoming a leader, and defending herself from her father’s unscrupulous plot. Through Asha, Winter shows what is possible for women when they reject the rules. Ericka Brooks reviews books at thebookpushers. com as well as scifiromancequarterly. org. You can find her on Twitter, talking about books, food and her cats."
"If you follow the vast world of fermented grapes, you may have noticed an influx of   natural wines. I fell under their spell a few years ago. Apparently, I’m not alone. There’s something of a natural wine cult blooming in shops, bars and restaurants around the U. S. Natural wines can be mystifying: The first time you drink them, they may be   and  . Some (especially the whites and roses) can be darker than usual, a little fizzy, cloudy or with   clumps of yeast floating about. They’re often rough, which some people find charming. Others think they’re unsophisticated. This quirky style of wine is quietly trending. So I reached out to a few experts to compile a primer of sorts. Defining Natural Wine, ”This is the most interesting thing happening in wine right now,” says Stephen Meuse. He’s the senior wine buyer at Formaggio Kitchen, a specialty food shop in Cambridge, Mass. Meuse also blogs, contributes to America’s Test Kitchen Radio and was a Boston Globe wine columnist for 15 years. He says natural wine is hard to define. ”In theory, it’s taking fruit that is grown at least organically, then taking it into the cellar and adding nothing, while also not taking anything away.” But to really understand natural wine, Meuse says you first need to understand how most modern wine is made. Natural Wine Vs. Modern Wine, Most winemakers use additives to create consistent outcomes. For instance, carefully chosen, cultured yeasts are routinely relied on for fermentation. This gives the vintners the ability to control the process and customize flavor profiles. Those   notes you can find in a Beaujolais Nouveau? Specific yeasts help produce them. Modern winemakers also make generous use of sulfur dioxide to prevent oxidation and bacterial growth. It also helps wine keep its brightness and snap, Meuse says. By some accounts, sulfur dioxide has been used in winemaking since the 15th century. As for the naturalist winemakers, ”On one end, you have people trying to edge themselves toward fewer additives, no additives, organic fruit  —   but then [they] will rely on a little sulfur or added yeast to correct problems,” Meuse says. ”And then, way out on the extreme end, are people who farm organically and then insist on letting the wine completely take its own direction. They’re OK with organic matter in the bottle. And their wines take on different flavors. . .. tangy, cloudy, yeasty.” In the most extreme examples, Meuse adds, ”you get wines that can remind you more of cider than wine.” Natural, unfiltered wines are still alive and can exhibit yeasty, microbial action. It’s fun to observe their character changing as it sits in your glass. ’Organic’ Does Not Mean Natural, But not all wine that’s labeled organic would be considered ”natural,” says Philippe Essome, who goes by the name Fe Fe. He opened Passage de la Fleur, a natural wine shop in New York, about three years ago. And here’s how he defines the difference: ”Organic wine is wine made without any chemicals in the vineyard. Then the issue is that after vinification [the conversion of fruit into fermented wine] the makers have no limitation.” For instance, organic winemakers can add sugar and clarifiers (aka fining agents) made with fish and animal products, including egg whites, Essome says. In his view, natural wine must be unadulterated. But Essome says there isn’t much of a way to verify what’s behind an organic or natural wine label. While a rigorous certification process exists for labeling organic food, that’s ”not something that’s happening yet in the wine business,” he says, adding, ”People are trying to fight for that.” That’s why he calls the natural wine business something of a Wild West. ”Natural wine is about 1 percent of the wine produced in the world,” Essome says, ”so it’s a fairly big amount. It involves thousands of people, but it’s still a work in progress.” A ’ ’ Natural Wine, Some vintners take a more hardcore view of how a natural wine should be made. Brian Smith founded Oyster River Winegrowers, a ”  vineyard” in Maine. He calls his natural wine a ”  wine” and explains his approach. ”  wine[making] to me, is making wines with the same tools as were used in   times,” he says, continuing, ”No tractors, locally available,   teas sprayed for pest control and fertilization, no temperature control, no    no fining, native yeasts where they make sense, no filtering, and bottling with little or no SO2 (sulfur dioxide) additions.” Smith works in a   heated with wood harvested from the farm and hauled by the same horses that plow the vineyards. Oyster River currently produces about 1, 200 cases of wine and cider per year. As for the natural wine trend, Smith says, ”The marketplace is definitely interested. It is niche right now, and maybe it always will be. But increasingly, people are becoming more aware and caring about what is in their food. Wine, because there are no ingredient labeling requirements, seems to be one of the final frontiers.” Learning To Love Natural Wines? Orenda Hale and her husband, Peter, include some Oyster River Winegrowers products in their portfolio of 350 natural wines at Maine  Loire, their shop in Portland, Maine. Before venturing to Maine, the Hales worked in New York City, where Orenda says natural wine’s fan base continues to grow.  She says the key to helping people appreciate natural wines is to provide customers with the proper context and help them get in tune with their palate. ”We want the shop to feel kind of like a record store, with a dialogue that expands and deepens,” she says. But not all natural wines are worth knowing, says Dave Saul, the wine manager at The Spirited Gourmet in Belmont, Mass. He says plenty of vintners ”use natural wine as an excuse for inconsistent, faulty wine.” The   approach can yield inconsistent, volatile results, he says. ”But when it’s great, there’s nothing better than natural wine.” Consumers aren’t always keen to familiarize themselves with this unusual style of wine. Stephen Meuse told me he’s offered a few natural wine   at Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge. ”They didn’t sell, and I had to cancel,” he recalls. While Meuse believes natural wine is titillating to many, he acknowledges there’s a steep learning curve  —   ”for winemakers for sure, and there’s a steep appreciation curve for customers.” Natural wines can come across as faulty, Meuse adds. He says they can be full of aldehydes  —   chemical compounds formed by oxidation, which can be desirable or faulty, depending on the style of wine. These wines ”can be dark, oxidized, flat on the fruit, broad in texture.” ”But it’s a different way of doing it,” he notes. ”It’s like people looking at a Picasso and saying, ’This guy can’t draw.’ ” Andrea Shea is arts and culture reporter for WBUR in Boston and was a professional brewer for two years in the 1990s."
"On last year’s Abyss, Chelsea Wolfe explicitly rendered the metallic tendencies that have always existed just below the surface of her music. Wolfe’s soulful howl found its bite in gigantic riffs and devastating volume that suited some of her most significant songwriting yet. But at the Tiny Desk, Wolfe took her songs back to their primal form with just her voice, a muffled electric guitar and a loop pedal. Removed from thunderous distortion, the ghostly ”Maw” becomes a nightmare in broad daylight, as Wolfe details ”shattered teeth under a dripping tongue” just waiting ”in this silence while you’re sleeping.” ”Crazy Love,” a love song that’s dangerous in its desperation, sounds no less chilling. But it’s ”Iron Moon,” inspired by the poetry of a Chinese factory worker who took his own life, that’s the most stripped of its metal. Wolfe’s guitar sounds muddy and dank as she sings, ”My heart is an empty tomb   My heart is an empty room,” recalling the lonesome wail of Kitty Wells shot through the darkness. Abyss is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Walker, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Morgan Walker, Ariel Zambelich Production Assistant: Rachel Horn Photo: Ariel  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the leading voice of uncompromising conservatism on the nation’s highest court, was found dead Saturday, Chief Justice John Roberts has confirmed. Scalia, who had been staying at a luxury ranch in West Texas, was 79 years old. ”On behalf of the Court and retired Justices, I am saddened to report that our colleague Justice Antonin Scalia has passed away,” Roberts said in a statement. ”He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues. His passing is a great loss to the Court and the country he so loyally served.” In his 29 years on the court, Scalia achieved almost a cult following for his acerbic dissents, which in many ways shaped the ongoing legal debate over how courts should interpret the Constitution. For decades Scalia railed against the Supreme Court’s rulings on abortion, affirmative action, gay rights and religion. He lived to see many of the decisions he so reviled trimmed and even overturned after President George W. Bush replaced two conservative justices with even more conservative justices. But Scalia remained impatient with the pace of change. His influence continued, not by brokering consensus, but by goading his colleagues with biting dissents. He was a fundamentalist in both his faith and his constitutional interpretation, according to former Solicitor General Paul Clement, a onetime clerk to Scalia. ”I think that he looks for bright lines in the Constitution wherever he can. I think he thinks that his faith provides him clear answers,” Clement said, ”and I think that’s sufficient unto him in most areas.” A fine example of that was Scalia’s landmark 2008 decision declaring that the Constitution confers on individuals a right to own a gun. The decision was greeted with cheers by gun enthusiasts, but denounced by police chiefs and big city mayors. ”We hold that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to have and use arms for self defense in the home,” Scalia said in striking down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. Unanimous Confirmation, Scalia was born in 1936, the only child of a Sicilian immigrant and a     mother. Scalia, whose parents were both teachers, was educated largely at Catholic schools until he went to Harvard Law School, where he became editor of the law review. At Harvard, he met Maureen McCarthy, a feisty Radcliffe student with views as conservative as his. The two married and had nine children. In the years after law school, Scalia at first practiced law, then taught it. But his love was politics and government, and he soon became a force to be reckoned with in Republican administrations. Shortly after President Nixon resigned in the Watergate scandal, President Ford assigned   Attorney General Scalia the task of determining who owned the infamous Nixon tapes and papers. Scalia decided in favor of Nixon, a reflection of his belief in a strong executive. But the Supreme Court ruled otherwise, and by a unanimous vote declared that the tapes and papers belonged to the government and the public. Scalia returned to academic life when Democrat Jimmy Carter won the presidency, but when Republican Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter, Scalia was appointed first to the federal appeals court in Washington, and four years later, he was appointed to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by William Rehnquist, who was being promoted to chief justice. That pairing turned out to be a lucky break for the   conservative. Democrats, in the minority in the Senate, could fight only one battle. Rehnquist’s conservative judicial record was well known, while Scalia had only a   record, not to mention the fact that   were ecstatic about their first Supreme Court nominee. So opposition focused on Rehnquist, and Scalia skated to confirmation by a unanimous vote. Once on the Supreme Court, Scalia almost immediately began pounding the table far more forcefully than the very conservative Chief Justice Rehnquist, particularly on the   social questions. While Rehnquist, for example, consistently sought to overturn Roe v. Wade, the court’s abortion decision, he sided with those who sought a buffer zone at abortion clinics to protect women from being harassed. Scalia vehemently disagreed. ”Does the deck seem stacked? You bet,” he thundered. ”The decision in the present case is not an isolated distortion of our traditional constitutional principles, but is merely the latest of many aggressively   novelties announced by the court in recent years.” A ’Great Writer’ Scalia was a staunch advocate of free speech in general, surprising many when he provided the fifth vote to strike down laws banning flag burning. Over the years he wrote many important majority decisions on the First Amendment and other topics  —   from property rights to environmental questions, gun control and states rights. But, as legal scholar Cass Sunstein observes, like the great Oliver Wendell Holmes, Scalia will likely be remembered most for his dissents. ”The thing to remember about Scalia is he was one of the great writers in the court’s history,” he said. And he didn’t pull his punches. When the court struck down a state law that made private homosexual conduct a crime, Scalia was outraged. ”It is clear from this that the court has taken sides in the culture war, and in particular in that battle of the culture war that concerns whether there should be any moral opprobrium attached to homosexual conduct,” he said. Sunstein says dissents like this one are illustrative of Scalia’s Achilles’ heel: ”He was a hysteric in cases he cared about most.” And yet, as it turned out, Scalia was more right than his critics foresaw on one point. He was dismissive of the majority opinion’s denial that it was supporting   marriage. A decade later,   marriage had been legalized in 13 states. And the Supreme Court, with Scalia in loud dissent, struck down a federal law that had denied federal benefits to legally married   couples. Scalia wrote with a sure pen. When the court, for instance, upheld the independent counsel law, Scalia alone dissented, declaring that the law would lead to unrestrained and politically driven prosecutions, a prediction that both Democrats and Republicans came to agree with when they refused to renew the law after the impeachment of President Clinton. Constitutional Interpretation, On questions of separation of church and state, Scalia was a consistent voice for accommodation between the two, and against erecting a high wall of separation. When the court, by a    vote, struck down a Louisiana law that mandated the teaching of creationism in school if evolution is taught, Scalia was dismissive of evolution, calling it merely a ”guess, and a very bad guess at that.” And when the court struck down a spoken prayer at a public school graduation, Scalia angrily dissented. The Founding Fathers, he said, viewed nonsectarian public prayers like this one as a mechanism for breeding tolerance and unifying people of diverse religious backgrounds. ”To deprive our society of that important unifying mechanism in order to spare the nonbeliever what seems to me the minimal inconvenience of standing or even sitting in respectful nonparticipation is as senseless in policy as it is unsupported in law,” he said. On death penalty questions, Scalia consistently dissented from decisions limiting its use, as he did when the court ruled unconstitutional the execution of the ”retarded.” ”The principle question,” he said, ”is who is to decide whether execution of the retarded is permissible or desirable? The justices of this court or the traditions and current practices of the American people? Today’s opinion says very clearly, the former.” When the court struck down the death penalty for juveniles and pointed to what other countries do as evidence of what is considered cruel and unusual punishment, he dissented again. ”The underlying thesis that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world is indefensible. It is our Constitution that this court is charged with expounding. The laws of foreign nations and treaties to which this nation has not subscribed should have no bearing upon that exercise,” he said. Scalia’s concept of constitutional interpretation became the focus of huge debates on the court and in the legal community. Is the Constitution a living document that adapts to the times, so that, for example, punishments once accepted could now be viewed as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual? ”The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring,” he said. ”It means today not what current society, much less the courts, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.” And since the death penalty existed when the Constitution was adopted, for instance, Scalia believed it could hardly be viewed as cruel and unusual punishment. But Scalia’s critics contended that there were some issues on which the justice ignored the plain meaning of the times. For example, on the question of affirmative action, proponents note that the framers of the 14th Amendment specifically approved measures that helped the newly freed slaves and not similarly situated white people. Scalia, however, maintained he was a textualist, that in constitutional matters as in interpreting statutes, legislative history was immaterial. All that mattered were the words on the page. More than anything else, Scalia was an advocate for bright lines in the law, lines that everyone could follow easily. He disdained the balancing tests advocated by more moderate conservative justices like John Marshall Harlan, Lewis Powell and Sandra Day O’Connor. That meant that in some criminal law cases, he sided with defendants. In several cases involving the defendant’s constitutional right to confront accusers, Scalia said that meant earlier recorded statements could not be substituted for real live witnesses being   in front of the defendant at trial. And in search cases, too, he drew firm lines, ruling for instance that police could not attach a   tracking device to a suspect’s car without a warrant. Even in some terrorism cases he was something of a purist, declaring that the administration of George W. Bush could not imprison an American citizen indefinitely without charge. On this, his opinion was the most radical on the court, rejecting the more equivocal and prevailing approach of other justices. ”If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime,” he insisted, ”it must be done openly and democratically as the Constitution requires, rather than by silent erosion through an opinion of this court.” Such unexpected liberal moments, however, were rare. More often, Scalia’s aggressive conservatism, even when it failed to prevail, often framed the debate, and justices once considered centrists came to be viewed as liberals compared with Scalia. Pushing The Envelope, Scalia changed more than legal doctrine. When he came to the court, the justices asked few questions during oral argument. And Scalia, the junior justice, jumped in, pummeling lawyers relentlessly with questions. Soon other justices took a more active approach to questioning, so that most lawyers could get less than a sentence out of their mouths before being interrupted. Witty and savagely funny, Scalia could also be bombastic and impolitic. In 2013, he referred to the Voting Rights Act as a law of ”racial entitlements.” On occasion, he could even alienate fellow justices. In 1989, for instance, when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a fellow Reagan appointee, deprived conservatives of a fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, Scalia attacked her opinion as one that ”cannot be taken seriously.” Comments like that lessened his influence. But Scalia happily observed that he looked to push the envelope, that if he had a    majority, he hadn’t pushed it hard enough. Sometimes when he pushed, his views prevailed. When they didn’t, he took the fight to the printed page, knowing that his carefully crafted words would live to fight on long after he was gone. Editor’s Note: This story inadvertently failed to credit Oyez, a free law project at the IIT   College of Law, for providing Scalia quotes from the bench."
"The political world is already turning its attention to South Carolina, where the remaining Republican presidential candidates debate tonight. The Palmetto State votes Feb. 20th in the GOP primary and Feb. 27th for the Democrats. South Carolina is famous for its    politics  —   in 2000, for example, there was a whisper campaign that John McCain had fathered a black child. He wound up losing to eventual President George W. Bush. It derailed his candidacy. With as wide a field as this one, and the stakes being so high, watch out for more dirty tricks. The primary will likely further winnow the GOP side. Donald Trump has a big lead in the polls Ted Cruz is hoping to win over socially conservative voters in the northwestern part of the state Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich are contending for the significant portion of establishment Republicans. Democrats head to Nevada first, Feb. 20th, but they are already trying to appeal to the largest block of voters in the state  —   African Americans. That was apparent at the Democrats’ debate Thursday night. Hillary Clinton hopes to rebound from a drubbing in New Hampshire at the hands of Bernie Sanders. Here are four things to know about the state and watch for in the coming weeks: 1. The state contains significant numbers of both evangelicals and moderates, Iowa was tailored for a   candidate, like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and New Hampshire gave a jolt to centrist, establishment figures like Kasich, the Ohio governor, and it solidified Trump’s dominance across the board. In South Carolina, all of those elements combine. In 2012,   (65 percent) of GOP primary voters described themselves as   evangelical Christians. But almost   also described themselves as moderate. In Iowa this year, a similar 64 percent of   were evangelical, but only 14 percent were   moderates. In New Hampshire, just 23 percent of voters were white evangelicals, while a lower 24 percent were moderates. 2. Geography and the state’s three regions matter, As NPR’s Sarah McCammon has explained, there are clear, regional splits in the Palmetto State:  —   The Upstate: The most socially conservative, religious voters are clustered in the Upstate, anchored by Greenville and Spartanburg and home to fundamentalist Bob Jones University. On Friday, most GOP candidates were at the famed college for a Faith and Family Presidential Forum, talking up their socially conservative values on abortion and   marriage. Only Trump, who’s come under fire for his obscenities and previous support of   marriage, didn’t attend.  —   Lowcountry: The more moderate, heavily military and veteran Lowcountry is where Bush, the former Florida governor, is focusing most of his attention. It’s where strategists in the state say he could be surprisingly strong.  —   Midlands: In 2008, conservative candidates split support in the Upstate, and Arizona Sen. John McCain ran strong in the   Midlands and Lowcountry for a win. In 2000, McCain was also strong in the Lowcountry, which includes Charleston and Hilton Head, but George W. Bush beat him out in the rest of the state to claim victory. 3. Debates could sway the race, South Carolina prides itself on being ”the decider” in GOP politics. Before 2012, it had correctly picked every eventual since 1980. But struggling former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had a breakout debate performance just days before the primary there in 2012. He defended against questions about his personal life and wound up breaking the streak. That helped sway much of the support statewide toward him and helped him earn a decisive victory. (Gingrich looked like he had momentum coming out of South Carolina, but a    superPAC supporting Romney, tore down Gingrich as the contest moved to Florida.) Rubio’s poor performance last Saturday hurt him in New Hampshire, where he finished a disappointing fifth. He needs a strong performance tonight to assuage concerns he’s too scripted and too inexperienced. But if another candidate has a breakout performance, they could grab the momentum in South Carolina. Trump, for example, is already being attacked over his own personal life, much like Gingrich was, but good parrying of those attacks could give him a lock in a state where he’s already leading in polls. 4. Black voters will be decisive on the Democratic side, The South Carolina primary for Democrats will be the first significant measure of   voters in a state. Eight years ago, black voters made up 55 percent of the Democratic electorate in the state. Polls have shown that’s a demographic Sanders, the Vermont independent, has struggled with compared to Clinton. But coming off strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, and closing the gap with Clinton nationally, Sanders could well be competitive. His campaign believes the more   voters hear his message, the more they’ll be open to voting for him. There’s at least some evidence that Sanders is benefiting from a generational divide even among   voters, NPR’s Sam Sanders reports. There hasn’t been any South Carolina polling on the Democratic side yet after Iowa and New Hampshire, though. Clinton has been emphasizing her support in the   community, touting the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC this week. Civil rights icon and Georgia Rep. John Lewis was dismissive of Sanders, saying he had seen evidence of the Clintons’ work to gain equal rights but not Sanders’s. Clinton also led in South Carolina in 2008, but those leads evaporated once Barack Obama proved he could win in   Iowa. He not only carried the black vote 78 percent to 19 percent over Clinton, but he also won with women (also a majority) and young voters. Sanders has been beating Clinton by huge margins with young voters, and even won women in New Hampshire."
"It may not sound like a reward, being a soldier chosen to fight as a peacekeeper in   Somalia or Central African Republic. But for soldiers from one of the poorest countries in the world, Burundi, it’s seen as an opportunity of a lifetime. Soldiers angle to wear the blue helmet  —   and to pull an international salary and other benefits, covered by the United Nations. But just how far will soldiers go to obtain a peacekeeping post? Some may be going to troubling extremes. The U. N. has ordered three Burundian peacekeepers posted in the Central African Republic to return to Burundi for human rights abuses committed in their home country. It’s lifted the lid on a disturbing incentive system that begins with how coveted these postings are. Yolande Bouka is a researcher for the Institute for Security Studies based in South Africa. She says U. N. peacekeepers earn at least 10 times the salary they would make as soldiers at home in Burundi. ”Even more important for some of the soldiers is the premium they get should they die in action,” she says. ”These international missions provide a very generous package for the family that’s left behind.” But to win these posts, a soldier has to pledge loyalty to Burundi’s government, which has used its security forces to torture and kill members of the political opposition. The crisis began in April when the president ran for a third term in office that critics said was unconstitutional. Since then, hundreds have been killed, hundreds of thousands have fled, and there are fears that the violence is awakening buried ethnic divisions. Bouka says the military is ethnically mixed and has shown signs of splitting apart. There’s even been a failed coup. But the military has nevertheless cohered behind the president. In a country with massive unemployment, Bouka says, soldiers don’t want to jeopardize the chance at a foreign posting that could set up their family for life. ”There have been some in the military who believe that if they engage in violence  —   violently suppress opposition or the rebellion  —   they will be able to reap the reward of their allegiance by being sent abroad,” she says. The decision by the U. N. to repatriate the three soldiers has already rippled across the ranks of the more than 5, 000 Burundian peacekeepers deployed in African hotspots. One of those soldiers spoke without attribution to NPR, because he didn’t have official permission to speak. He wrote by email that the dismissals had sent a message: ”[T]hose who kill to please the power expecting a mission as reward will reduce the pace.” The U. N. has warned Burundi’s government that the organization will continue to vet soldiers on peacekeeping missions as reports emerge of atrocities in Burundi."
"Hundreds of reporters are lined up in rows, looking at   televisions like bettors at a racetrack. Producers are recording on iPhones, and reporters are deploying selfie sticks to capture live shots, while crews toting video cameras stalk bigger game. The quarry  —   presidential candidates and their surrogates  —   are announced by a party staffer carrying a vertical placard, hoping to draw the attention of the fickle journalistic hordes. In the   ”spin room,” producers pursue interviews to fill airtime  —   and the people they talk to strive to cast their candidates in the best possible light. ”It’s called the spin room for a reason,” said former CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer, who was covering last week’s GOP debate as a political analyst for the network. ”I mean, you’re never going to find out any revealing information. I’m waiting for the day when a candidate comes in here and says, ’You know, I really didn’t do very well tonight.’ But I’m not going to hold my breath until I hear that.” By its very definition, ”spin” implies the manipulation of fact, the clouding of truth. Therefore, spin should be the reporter’s enemy. Yet at the debate in Manchester, N. H. suited television correspondents and   print reporters still milled about the room, eagerly seeking comment. As she stood near several of her peers clustered around one interviewee, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times made an affirmative case for showing up in the spin room. ”You can read body language of advisers. You can often get people to go   when they’re not supposed to,” she said. And it’s   shopping for reporters, ”so if you’re working on other stories, you can grab people. That’s what I tend to find this most useful for  —   but I do get something out of watching people’s level of confidence afterwards.” Fame courts fame in the spin room. It’s a place where Donald Trump usually stops by to do his own spin  —   and where even Tucker Carlson, the mirthful founder of The Daily Caller who recently mocked Trump’s hair, got a warm greeting from the billionaire real estate developer after the New Hampshire debate. For the political press corps, on the other hand, debate spin rooms are like a weekly college reunion. Yet some reporters have little use for them. ”I find very little utility in the spin room, and have for years,” said Dan Balz, who has covered politics for The Washington Post for decades. He said campaigns’ efforts to shape perceptions of the debates are no longer effective. By 2012, he said, viewers and analysts were setting their own conventional wisdom already  —   in real time, on Twitter. ”There was nothing that anybody could say that would change a conclusion that had already congealed,” Balz said. ”It was a reminder that we live now in an instantaneous world  —   and spinning is an    exercise.” With the instant demands of the Web, articles about the debate are written, sent, and often even posted before spinners enter the brightly lit room to make their case."
"Last week, a historic trial began in Guatemala. It’s believed to be the first time any national court has held a trial to prosecute sex slavery during an armed conflict. Two former military officers stand accused of murder, kidnapping and keeping nearly a dozen indigenous women as domestic laborers and sex slaves during the country’s   civil war. The war resulted in 200, 000 deaths and 45, 000 disappearances. Most of the genocide and other crimes targeted Mayans. Michel Martin spoke with Kelsey   about the details of the trial  —   and as you can imagine, they are disturbing.   is director of the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, which has a representative at the trial. ”When you look at the victims of the violence in Guatemala, the vast majority [was] indigenous Mayans  —   about 83 percent according to the U. N. Truth Commission . .. and about 93 percent of the human rights violations were carried out by the military,”   says. ”So there was definitely an ethnic component.” On the women’s testimonies, The women in this case are in their 70s and 80s. They speak Q’eqchi’ a Mayan language. First their husbands disappeared. Their husbands were working to legalize their land in this area that was principally owned by large,   families. The women that were left alone after their husbands disappeared were then targeted by the military that had set up a series of military outposts in this region in Guatemala. And they forced the women to live right outside the military base and to do shifts where they would go cook for the soldiers, clean for the soldiers and as part of that, they were also repeatedly raped during those shifts. So for some women, that repeated rape happened over a period of days or months and for some women it happened over a period of years. Four women were able to escape and one woman tells of how she fled into the mountains with her four children. Her children lived through hunger, fear, disease  —   and six years later . .. she only had one surviving child with her. On the defense, In this particular case, no one is denying that these women were abused. What we’ve seen so far is actually rather than a legal defense, we’ve seen the lawyers of the two accused simply try to delay the trial, to say that they don’t think that the trial is legitimate. We have not seen any kind of defense presented. . .. We all have every hope that it will reach a conclusion, that there will be a verdict based on rule of law and strong evidence. However, the Guatemalan justice system still has huge challenges, so I do hope that the conditions are right for this trial to move forward effectively. On the women’s current   These women have spent almost their entire lives in situations of extreme poverty. They have health implications from that violence that has not been dealt with because they have not had access to medical care. And one of the scariest things that I think I’ve heard from a couple of the women who I’ve spoken with recently, is that they fear that these types of things can happen again, and so the women want to denounce what happened and, most importantly, they don’t want other women to have to go through the same thing."
"Sweet Dreams Are Made of This is perhaps the most straightforward title you could give to a book by a member of the Eurythmics, whose most lasting hit shares that name. But for Dave Stewart, the past few decades have sometimes felt like a dream  —   from his complex relationship with his bandmate Annie Lennox, to his recovery from drug abuse, to crossing paths with rock royalty in his literal backyard. He joined NPR’s Linda Wertheimer to talk about it hear the radio version at the audio link and read on for more. Linda Wertheimer: At the beginning of your ”life in music”  —   which is the subtitle of your memoir  —   it wasn’t quite clear that you were on your way to becoming a famous performer. You came awfully close to being a dead teenage drug addict. Dave Stewart: That’s very true, yeah. It was actually Annie who helped me get away from all of that, and sort of downsize the amount of speed and cocaine and all the things I was taking  —   in a very sweet way, actually because, she just started to make a note in a little notebook of how many times I was taking speed a day. For instance, say there was 20 lines of speed. She’d suggest, ”Hey, how about 19 lines today?” Without realizing it, she was doing what you’re meant to do if you go to rehab.” So when you and Annie Lennox actually met and started to make music together, you were a couple for quite a while. Yeah, we were a couple from the minute we first met, and from that day onward for about five years. We were living on eight pounds a week  —   that’s about twelve dollars  —   between us. We got the vegetables from ’round the back of the vegetable shop, the ones that they didn’t sell that day or whatever. We lived in a squat, and we would go to what you call swap meets, we’d call jumble sales, and try to get a sofa bed for two dollars. You know, we really started at zero. We started to have the idea to make music together, but we still didn’t write any songs. We had a band called The Tourists, where [guitarist] Peet Coombes wrote all the songs. And that was massive work. We made three albums and we went around the world and toured. It was very stressful trying to be a couple in a little van with seven guys  —   Annie the only girl  —   and it put our relationship under a lot of pressure. So when we finished our Australian tour, we decided to live apart. At first, she just moved upstairs  —   which was kind of ridiculous because she’d come down and have a cup of tea, and it was just the same as living together, really. We slowly became able to be friends, but we never, ever said we didn’t want to make music together, so that was a really strange sort of head space to be in. Before, we never wrote any songs now, we’re writing 140 songs about our breakup. It does seem amazing that you could live together as a couple for a number of years, break up, and then create the Eurythmics.  What’s even stranger is, Annie and I being a duo  —   you know, sometimes we’ll be onstage playing a song and we’ll look at each other, and we know what it’s all about and everything we’ve been through. And I think the audience felt, this sort of emotion that ran through the song and ran through the concert hall or stadium. So it was a very emotional experience, Eurythmics concerts, because we were very emotional. Now, your musical backgrounds and your musical educations were very different, and you somehow managed to put all that together in the music. At one point in the book you call it a ”mad hybrid.” What does that mean? Well, I started learning guitar because my cousin sent some blues albums from Memphis  —   you know, Mississippi John Hurt and Robert Johnson. And I went deep into every kind of music that is imaginable in the world of pop, rock and folk or whatever. Meanwhile, Annie was studying harpsichord and flute at the Royal Academy of Music. But she was, as a kid, obsessed with Motown up in Aberdeen. So there we had this couple that spanned across all these genres, and we could do all these things because we’d actually been learning and being obsessed with this kind of music. I was very interested in all of the descriptions of places that you bought to work, or places that you bought to live. You were creating companies, you formed your own bands, you wrote your own musical hits  —   and you bought a lot of real estate. I mean, it sounds like somewhere along the line, you got very rich. Well, there was a time, a long, long time ago, when people bought records. And when people bought records, artists got paid! Remember, we stopped making records in 1990. We went crazy at one point. Our manager in America said, ”I’m only going to give you one piece of advice.” This is when ”Sweet Dreams” was No. 1 he could tell we were going to be successful. He said, ”Only buy one home. Everywhere else, you’re just vacationing just rent it for a week or a month.” And of course, neither of us listened to him. We bought apartments in Paris, and we bought land and houses. I bought a house in Encino next to Tom Petty, because we were getting on like a house on fire when I wrote ”Don’t Come Around Here No More” with him. And that house became kind of like a lightning rod for music. So I’d look at my back garden, and there’s Seal sunbathing, or Prince is recording in the studio in the back. One time, under the tree in my back garden strumming guitars, was Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty. And Roy Orbison is singing. And it’s not something you would imagine when you were 15 and listening to these voices on the radio, but you know. Life can change you on amazing trails if you let it."
"Donald Trump wrote in his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, that his grandfather came from Sweden. These days, the Republican presidential hopeful and real estate mogul embraces different paternal roots. The teetotaler’s grandfather actually comes from a medieval   village called Kallstadt, in the southwestern German state of Rhineland Palatinate. Like many Americans of German descent, the Trumps apparently stopped referring to their German heritage during the World Wars. Trump brags about the grandfather he never knew in a 2014 German documentary called Kings of Kallstadt. ”My grandfather, Frederick Trump, came to the United States in 1885, he joined the great Gold Rush,” Trump tells filmmaker Simone Wendel, as America’s national anthem plays in the background. ”He did fantastically well. He loved this country. But you know what? I love Kallstadt also.” Local residents tell NPR that Frederick’s name was originally Friedrich and he left Germany when he was 16, ostensibly to avoid the draft. He moved to the Yukon, where he opened a restaurant. His broke customers often paid him in gold nuggets, Wendel says. ”He’d send the nuggets to his sisters in New York and they kind of bought these properties.” She adds: ”There are a lot of strong women in the family who did a lot, like Donald’s grandmother.” His grandmother’s name was Elisabeth Christ and her family lived across the street from the Trumps in Kallstadt. Several of the village’s informal historians say she never wanted to live in the U. S. but didn’t have a choice because her husband was denied a renewal of his German citizenship. Donald Trump ”knows his grandmother and of course, he told me she was a tough lady,” Wendel says. ”She didn’t play games, that’s the words” he used. The filmmaker, who also comes from Kallstadt and counts herself as a distant relative of Trump, says she sees similar qualities in Elisabeth’s grandson. ”He’s on time, he gets things done  —   some things that are quite   or  .” But in the village  —   which is teased by its neighbors for its tradition of bragging (the local youth group is called ”The Braggarts”)  —   residents aren’t eager to talk to outsiders about their famous American connection. One of the few who does is Martina Fuhrmann, 51. She calls Trump a ”questionable personality” and says while he deserves credit for his business acumen, he comes across as an unsympathetic sort who doesn’t appeal to her politically. ”It’s not just about money and power,” she says. ”There are other things that count, too.” Some others in the village refuse to even talk about Trump’s candidacy, including Wendel. She says Kallstadt residents prefer outsiders to ask them about other things the village is famous for  —   like the ice wine served at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation or the stuffed sow’s stomach that is a favorite of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. When it comes to famous American connections, the villagers tend to relate more to another one  —   the Heinz family. ”Ketchup is also in bottles,” Wendel says. ”Somebody fills something in and sells it. It’s like wine, it’s a very, very similar product. So I guess it’s a much easier for them to understand this way of earning money.”   Heinz  —   the father of the H. J. Heinz company founder  —   immigrated to the United States around 1840, says Kallstadt volunteer fire chief and vintner Guenter Heinz. His tasting room is   of bottles and   with the Heinz ketchup logo. ”I think the people back then had a little bit of an inventor’s spirit,” he says. ”More than anything, they had courage, because not everyone would have been willing to go to Hamburg, get on a ship to America and start from scratch.” Like the Trumps  —   to whom Wendel says the Heinzes are distantly related  —   the German and American sides of the Heinz family lost contact for many decades. Some of the Heinz clan, the immigrant’s   have come to Kallstadt on holiday to reconnect with their roots and taste local wines, Guenter Heinz says. Environmentalist Andre Heinz, the son of late Republican Sen. John Heinz, visited in 2003. Kallstadt’s Protestant pastor, Rev. Oliver Herzog, says the family even helped restore his church’s    French Baroque organ. ”The trips rekindled the family’s interest in our village,” he says. ”We needed a   euros [$281, 112. 50] and that was too much for our congregation.” So the Heinz family donated a fifth of it, he says. By comparison, Kallstadt has no obvious links to the Trumps. He has never visited, though Wendel says he told her he would. Mayor Thomas Jaworek says the ancestral home has been renovated and resold a number of times, and that the last Trump has moved away from Kallstadt. The only thing left on the house from the Trump days is a little blue sign above the mailbox that says: ”God sees everything, but my neighbor a lot more!” ”Till now, I think it’s more the Heinz ketchup which makes us well known worldwide,” Jaworek says. ”But perhaps if Donald Trump becomes president, then it might change and the Trump family is then more important to Kallstadt.” The village’s neighbors aren’t waiting, however, to poke fun at its Trump connection. On Tuesday, a nearby town’s newspaper, Die Rheinphalz, superimposed an image of the Trump World tower onto a picture of the Kallstadt skyline. The caption told readers, tongue in cheek, that a popular   festival would next be held on the 55th floor terrace of the new tower provided to Kallstadt, courtesy of Donald Trump."
"It’s been a year since I began serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in northern Ghana  —   but some of the local lingo still eludes me. I speak a good amount of Dagbani nowadays, but I still can’t figure out why everyone’s been telling me recently: ”You used to be the tall visitor and now you’re the small villager.” Is that good or bad? I mean, I haven’t shrunk as far as I can tell. And then NPR’s West Africa correspondent Ofeibea   asked me to explain a saying she saw on BBC’s Africa’s Proverb of the Day website, which said it came from Ghana: ”The day the billy goat breaks its leg, it will find its way home.”  So I decided to head to the experts  —   I asked a group of teachers at the local elementary school to give me a primer on the goat proverb and other Dagbani adages. I’ve included the literal English translation of each proverb, as well as the original Dagbani in italics. (Fun fact: Dagbani is written using a Latin script, just like English, although some characters may not look familiar  —   and you can learn more about how it’s pronounced here). Enjoy! Proverb: The day the billy goat breaks its leg, it will find its way home (Bulaa bgali kabbu dali Kano baŋdi yiŋa). Explanation: Despite a person’s attempts to domesticate and control a billy goat, only once a billy goat is harmed by its own actions will it go home. This goes for humans too  —   no matter how much advice you give a friend or family member, only once that person suffers from his or her actions will he or she come home and listen to you. Proverb: The tall visitor follows the short villager (San’ waɣinli dɔli la tiŋ bi jiya). Explanation: An important visitor should respect the modest villager  —   the latter is the one who knows the ins and outs of the community.  Proverb: People are scared of the infamous man’s feces, not himself (Bi zɔri la wɔɣiri bindi pa ni o man maŋa). Explanation: People don’t fear the evil man  —   they fear his actions. Proverb: A child with clean hands can mix an elder’s dawadawa (Nuu viɛla nŋuni n samdi kpiem dɔri).  Explanation: Dawadawa is a nutritious and delicious yellow powder made from African locust beans. It can be mixed into porridge or fried into  . A responsible kid with hands that are clean enough to mix dawadawa is clearly trustworthy and wise  —   perhaps even wise enough to advise the elders. Proverb: The one that rides a horse does not know that the earth is hot (Nŋuni bari wɔhu bi mi ni tiŋ tula). Explanation: The rich man cannot understand the poor man’s struggles. Proverb: It is because of the donkey’s wickedness that God did not give him horns (Buŋ tiɛha zuɣu ka naawuni mɔŋ o yila). Explanation: Donkeys are mean,   animals. If they had horns, they’d cause some serious damage. Some humans are mean and   as well, which is why God didn’t give us laser vision. So if you say this proverb to someone, you’re basically saying ”stop being such an. ..” Well, you know. Proverb: He who has done wrong opens his ears wider (Nŋun tum ka di biɛ nŋuni n gbilsi tibli). Explanation: A man who’s done something bad eavesdrops and listens more carefully in order to hear what is being said of him. Proverb: If there is a hailstorm, we all cover our heads (Saa zuɣu jaambɔŋ so kam taɣir’la o zuɣu). Explanation: When a catastrophe happens, we must be vigilant and take care of ourselves. Proverb: The one making the road will not notice that it is crooked (Nŋin maandi sɔli bi mi di gɔŋbu saha). Explanation: It’s difficult to see your own mistakes because you’re too close to your work. Proverb: A small elephant is not a rabbit (Ka wɔbigubilaa n nyɛ sooŋa). Explanation: I’m as lost on this one as you are."
"Abraham Lincoln trended on Twitter this week. Wait, what? Honest Abe proved what’s become a hipster creed: Everything old becomes new again. Friday would have been the 16th president’s 207th birthday  —   as good a time as any to bring him back with a party hat on him (like the House Republicans did): There were also memes of Lincoln holding pizzas, stereos and cellphones. But the memes also quickly became about the presidential candidates, with the hashtag #ThingsLincolnDidntSay. Talk about putting words in someone’s mouth. Some used the hashtag to criticize candidate Bernie Sanders, and his calls for economic equality: This one used Lincoln’s mug (modified) to hit at Donald Trump’s comments last month that he could ”stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” And then there was the commentary on politics in general: It’s no secret that Americans are disappointed by today’s political climate. A recent survey found about 1 in 5 Americans says he trusts the government, way down from 77 percent in 1964. The political posts around #ThingsLincolnDidntSay were all over the political spectrum but had one thing in common  —   they sarcastically brought back the voice of Lincoln as the honest politician who would be horrified at today’s political climate. But in reality Lincoln, whose honesty is the stuff of legend, was at the center of a remarkably polarized political climate when he was president. That perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise given that the country was split by a civil war during his presidency. Lincoln was elected having won less than 40 percent of the popular vote. He is celebrated for keeping the nation together  —   of course that’s no small task for a president  —   but it came with significant political backlash. As the Civil War magazine Hallowed Ground estimated, Lincoln’s approval rating was likely around 25 percent, based on huge losses the Republican Party experienced in local elections after he was sworn in. All that to say, if Honest Abe were to show up to Saturday night’s presidential debate or followed the rhetoric on the campaign trail today, he might just feel right at home. And maybe there’s another lesson:"
"When we hear about Mali, it’s usually about that country’s civil war. But the west African nation has long been a shining star of music and culture. It’s where the annual Festival in the Desert once attracted visitors and pop stars from around the globe. ”[War] simply changes your life,” musician Rokia Traoré says. ”And you’re no longer naive, and your way of seeing and thinking  —   everything changes. And Mali is still what it is. You know, music there is so important and culture is an important part of our social life. And in such a situation, I think that culture is even more important.” Rokia Traore is one of Mali’s stars. She wrote and rehearsed the music for her new album Né So (which means ”home”) in Bamako, and then she recorded in Belgium and England. She recently spoke with NPR’s Linda Wertheimer from the studios of the BBC in Berlin. On living and working in Mali, Actually, one of my biggest frustrations is that the best of African culture and arts in general is not for Africans. I would like so much to have in Mali and in Africa places where people can go and have their own culture and appreciate it and know about themselves in a certain sense and learn about themselves. And so my foundation is to contribute to the existence of this cultural and artistic dynamic in Africa in general. On covering ’Strange Fruit,’ an American protest song, Because unfortunately, racism is still one of the problems in the world, in general. And it’s not always and only about racism it’s not about the color, but it’s also between social classes. And I think it’s important to remember the past, the darkest parts of our past, without feeling guilty or ashamed about it. Just remember that we humans can be so bad, so we have to be careful with ourselves."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. I love when profiles introduce you to people behind the work you love. In last Sunday’s New York Times magazine, Vinson Cunningham wrote about Chris Jackson  —   the editor behind   Coates’s Between the World and Me and Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside (and many, many others.) As Cunningham puts it: ”To the extent that   literary audiences have been introduced to the realities and absurdities born of the phenomenon of race in America, Jackson has done a disproportionate amount of that introducing.” Cunningham is a wonderful writer, so the pleasure isn’t just learning about Jackson and his work, but also reading Cunningham’s ideas laid out in what he calls ”phrases nicely turned.” The piece also touches on larger issues of narrative and perspective and truth  —   and ignited a lengthy Super Bowl party discussion of ”black books” and the publishing industry. A virus that was virtually unheard of three months ago is today’s global scourge: Zika. It’s a virus transmitted by infected aedes aegypti mosquitos and was thought to be relatively harmless until a wave of babies in a particular region of Brazil were born with tiny heads: microcephaly. While no definitive link has been found, scientists keep digging for answers. The World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency. Sports teams are thinking about the safety of their athletes in this year’s summer Olympics in Brazil. And governments in a handful of Latin American and Caribbean countries are giving women simple guidance: don’t have babies. This New York Times article is a fascinating look at how a relatively benign virus that first emerged in Uganda in 1947 could have morphed into an illness that causes such powerful deformities and today is a global concern. Nairobi is a lot like the city I grew up in, Atlanta. It’s a crossroads that owes its existence to the railroad. It’s a place that has blossomed into a regional and international hub. It attracts people from all over. It’s a city with hustle. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when Quartz told me it’s becoming ”a global cuisine hub.” Ariel Zirulnick, whose Twitter bio says she’s ”recently repatriated from Kenya,” writes: ”There’s freedom here to deviate from the norm. A Chinese restaurant up the street . .. includes kimchi on the menu. For the owner hailing from northeast China near the Korean border, kimchi is Chinese —  and in Nairobi, that aberration gets little more than a shrug as long as it tastes good.” We’re told that Indian dishes (with an East African twist) pizza, Japanese specialties, Norwegian salmon and hot pot are all on Nairobi’s menu. This is in addition to the region’s traditional ”maize, grilled meat, and a   green known as sukuma wiki.” I have to say, this bit of foodie boosterism left me scheming for reasons to drop in on Nairobi. Soon, however, we’ll all be able to dip into the city’s food scene without flying halfway around the world. Zirulnick reports that a cookbook called   Nairobi is coming out in 2016, capturing ”the signature dishes of the city’s best ethnic restaurants” and ”the personal journeys of the restaurateurs.” Whichever side of the debate over gun rights you find yourself, many of the stories focus on men. This week, Marie Claire posted a   informative, nuanced view on women and guns. It published 10 short stories focusing on data about women who use and carry guns, the political debate, gun safety, crime, increasing numbers of female gang members, women who use guns for protection, and even the National Rifle Association’s increasing effort to recruit women. Here’s more: ”It’s a smart political move. Women represent a huge portion of the electorate: The Center for American Women and Politics says that since 1964, the number of female voters has exceeded male voters in every single presidential election —  the 2012 election saw 9. 8 million more female voters than male voters. With gun control already a factor in the upcoming presidential race, the NRA’s increased female ranks could help further its cause.” Two of the most interesting stories as part of its collection were of a woman who’d been raped and wished she had been carrying a gun, and the efforts of another woman to purchase a gun outside her home state."
"We’re really trying here. We’ve added a number to our group, the venerable Ann Powers, and yesterday we fanned out on both coasts to put ourselves in position to receive the latest Kanye album in a handful of different circumstances. We had people watching the livestream at work and at home and at a friend’s house, two in LA watching the satellite feed in a movie theater, one person in Baltimore doing the same thing and one of us at the Garden. Kanye has a lot going on, and our strategy for deciphering it all is to hit it from several angles. We haven’t reached consensus on what we actually saw  —   Erika says it worked like a focus group, Chanelle is calling it karaoke and only   kris and I overheard a kid telling somebody on the phone that it was ”the best album listening experience ever.” We beg to differ. We do agree that, as always, a Kanye entrance is an excuse for us to talk about the state of almost everything. If you missed it, what happened was Kanye yanked a tarp off two tiers of models outfitted in his third collection for Adidas, and then he plugged his laptop into the sound system at Madison Square Garden to play his seventh solo album. He was smiling big pretty much the whole two hours the happening in New York was simulcast to theaters around the world and all y’all’s phones via Tidal. The writers below debated and noted and laughed before and during and after on an email thread and over lunch and text and twitter. As much as we tried to account for the separate ways one could hear something for the first time, all our experiences of the album will be colored by this group’s interactions. Our allegiances and affections and competition. And it don’t stop. Speaking just for myself, Kanye albums change drastically over the first six months or so after they’re released. Listening in my car, or while I’m folding laundry, or with white friends, or gay men, or in mixed company, or just with my girls, or playing it for the first time for some dude who doesn’t have to deal this industry or putting my dad on  —   the songs will reveal what they are to me slowly, as my life bends around and eventually incorporates them. So take this for what it is: eight people on mile two of a marathon. Join us. As I watched the sometimes stuttering stream of Yeezy Season 3 in my   home office in Nashville, tweeting like a madwoman, I noticed another hashtag trending while the simulcast unfolded: #WeirdQuestionsToAskGod. For a moment I thought this might be the latest title Kanye was using to contain his latest outpourings of sacredness and profanity. ”This is a gospel album,” he announced at the Garden, ensconced within the sanctuary of his crew. He’d made the remark before, adding the phrase ”with a whole lot of cursing,” and the stream showed that he meant it literally. For every exquisite testimonial or heavenward chorus sampled (Kelly Price, I think, on ”High Lights,” or the antiheroic Pastor T. L. Barrett on ”Father, Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1  2) this music vomited a stream of obscenities, lewd gestures, porno brags. Kanye has that scene in The Last Temptation of Christ where Jesus gets down with Mary Magdalene on loop. But that’s the beauty. As truly offensive as his rash statements may be, Kanye’s obsessive need to face his own baseness as he strives for transcendence  —   musically rendered as lush hosannas pressing against weird industrial gurglings and bleeps  —   generates a pathos that keeps expanding and pulling skeptics back in. That’s what great gospel does, too, for despite the judgments passed by many a preacher, its key artists have always acknowledged sinfulness, felt it in their bones and loins, and pulled from its energy even as they flew beyond it. I watched Twitter and noted that some people were wondering of Life of Pablo is the story of Saul becoming Paul  —   a man who thought he was beyond God, struck down on the road to Damascus, trembling, astonished and finally anointed to a new path, scales falling from his eyes. If that’s the case, Kanye’s still on that road. No one who’s truly transcended would still sexually belittle Taylor Swift or long for hate sex the way Kanye does in these new songs. He wants to fly to heaven with his mama  —   the most poignant moment during the stream was the unveiling of the video game he designed to take her there  —   but he’s still on the ground, Adidas sticking to the Garden floor.  —  Ann Powers, Well. That was interesting.  —  Kiana Fitzgerald, That f****** Chance verse.  —  Lawrence Burney, It’s always an event with Ye, and this time was no different. It felt as if most of those at MSG stood through it all. And there was always something that heightened whichever song was on: people noticing it was sleepy Thugger on one of the podiums, Travis Scott jumping up and down, Naomi Campbell doing whatever she wants. It was crazy to see how personal it was in different areas of MSG: Ye and co. (Travis Scott, Pusha, 2 Chainz, Mike Dean, Frank Ocean, Lamar Odom, Virgil) were all so hype, almost in their own world. KTT was at MSG IRL, all of them wearing Yeezys. The merch lines were super, super long. His following was in full in effect, which is why when Ye rapped ”Now I look around and there’s so many Kanyes” it was a bit surreal. People listened carefully, even though there’s only so much you can catch when listening via a aux in an arena. I’m excited to hear the album through my headphones to catch the lines some people at home did.  —  Erika Ramirez, kris and I were the oldest people in Theater 11 at the Woodland Hills AMC. By 10 years, easy. We were also the last people to show up because we have been here before and we’ve run out of illusions regarding start time. So we had to be in the very first row, crunched necks and everything, because that room was totally full. So was Theater 10 btw. I haven’t seen a movie theater like that since the Court Street UA when Borat came out. That’s not true. These kids were sober and took every minute seriously. I kept lamenting my lack of flask.  —  Frannie Kelley, Please don’t mistake my words as some type of review of Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo it’s still team #tuckyourreviewsin over here. This is more my reaction to Kanye’s grandiose fashion   release party at the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, which I got to listen to quite comfortably on my Apple computer, courtesy of Tidal’s 240P resolution live stream. While watching people fawn over the Kardashian clan as if they’re America’s version of the Royal family was cute, I’m only here for the music (though it was good to see Ye walk out with Lamar Odom, thank God for his recovery). The album started off scrongg, as he would say. I remember thinking, ”Are those organs?” It was gospel, Auto Tune,   church at the Garden absent pulpit pimps named Creflo Dollar  —   you can say amen. Suddenly Chance the Rapper comes on and he’s rapping like I’m not sure we’ve heard him rap before. It felt like Ye was passing Chano the torch for Chicago and then Kirk Franklin blessed the track. I’m not sure if the music gave me chills or it was cold in the office, but I was affected. Some of the themes Kanye touched on and the music he was rapping over had this spiritual aura. The production sounded like the Kanye I wanted to hear. There’s a Nina Simone sample on TLOP that just took hold of me. Miss Simone has that effect with her music and Kanye used her gift just right. Some of the ish talking was the Kanye I miss, like Kanye making a song about Kanye  —   loved it. And some of it was grossly immature for a    father of two. Referring to your wife as a b**** just isn’t cute to me. Maybe I’m soft  —   I’m a new father and I’m trying to bathe in less misogynistic rap waters so it didn’t sit right with me. ”No More Parties in LA” was noticeably missing. I thought Drake might make a surprise appearance on that one and I was hoping for a Jay Z verse but that didn’t happen. When the jam session was over I was left wanting more. I was hoping Tidal released the CDQ right then so I could soak up the music, lose myself in those verses and production again. Watching Kanye unveil clothes that I wouldn’t even wear to the gym in front of his adoring fans and celebrities alike while simultaneously playing his new album it felt like he raised the bar yet again.  —  Cedric Shine, I couldn’t go see Yeezy Season 3 live because I was in a meeting. Because it was 4 pm ET on a Thursday, and I’m an adult, with a regular job. Just wanted to say that first. By the time I got out of said meeting, it was about 30 minutes into the (delayed) exhibition a group of coworkers had gathered around one of our desks and had the event up on one monitor and a Twitter feed up on another. To me, the unpredictable stream ended up pretty accurately reflecting the show itself. I thought the event as a whole was distracting, as I’ve found the entire rollout for TLOP. In this instance, instead of focusing on the music, I instead had a series of random thoughts about a multitude of random things: ”Is that the Lil Yachty onstage?” ”Why did Ye insist on styling the Kardashians after Skips from Regular Show?” ”WAIT  —   can you run that Thugger track back one more time?” Maybe if I had come into it from the top, I would have been more committed. But watching it how I did (in an office, surrounded by people who were just as befuddled as I was) when I did (at the end of a work day) made me take the album, at that moment, a lot less seriously than I was expecting. I’m hoping to wake up to the real thing.  —  Kiana Fitzgerald, I just left The Charles Theatre in Baltimore. The hype was as expected. As I’m trying to focus, the group in the row behind me are pulling a very virtual finesse by   their homegirl into the theater. With every glance of a standout model, she screamed ”YAAASSS! !!” through the phone. I would’ve been annoyed had I not been screaming the same thing in my head, nervously scanning the screen, hoping the album would just play already. When that organ hit on ”Ultra Light Beam,” I got shaken up. Going off the hardcore trolling Ye’s been doing, I thought the ”gospel album” thing would come through in a way more     way. It’s the real deal, though  —   like sitting in the pew smelling peppermint candy and cardboard from the handheld fans. The Kelly Price to Chance transition was probably the most unexpected shift in my music memory. I fought back a tear. When Chance said ”I met Kanye West, I’m never going to fail,” the affirmation hit hard, as it successfully translated his joy while still getting across ”I’m finally here and I’m not gonna f*** this up.” The following tracks don’t disappoint either: Kanye admitting his craziness but not before comforting himself, assuring us that all geniuses are nuts, boasting over the boost he gave Taylor Swift’s career, taking a jab at the police, a freestyle about himself, sliding the Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian card onto the table. This album couldn’t have been completed too long ago with these references. And, oh yeah, Rihanna is doing a f****** Nina Simone cover. On first listen, The Life of Pablo is what I hoped for even though I selfishly wanted to hear more gospel. As I’m leaving the theater, a friend remarks, ”That s*** was so good it already got people forgetting about that Cosby tweet.” Very true.  —  Lawrence Burney, Idk, man. I have to admit, the video game freaked me out a little bit. As someone who’s lost a mother, it’s an interesting and   concept. But the idea of his mother trying to get into heaven says to me, ”Why is this such a task for her? Shouldn’t she get right in?” Unless the idea is Ms. West frolicking through the gates of heaven, then that’s completely different and I love it. But those are two completely different things.  —  Kiana Fitzgerald, Yeah, what are her obstacles?  —  Frannie Kelley, I took it to be the latter, Kiana. Later he could be seen wearing a shirt in honor of his mom and Kim’s dad on the back. I can’t imagine the pain of having to deal with those emotions in today’s paparazzi crazed world. Remember when Scott Disick’s mom died and those fools called them ”the mother’s brothers.” Just  . Seemed like a sweet gesture but not a game I would want to play.  —  Cedric Shine, The video game made me hella uncomfortable at first but it’s because I don’t relate to those emotions or experience right now. I think the intent was beautiful though. Kinda like how I couldn’t listen to ”Only One” without crying for like a month straight after it dropped.  —  Lawrence Burney, Right, Kiana? I think he’s more worried about himself getting into heaven, especially with so many songs confessing with justifications. Kanye’s obsession with approval of his authentic self is really raw and there’s so much that can be said about it.  —  Chanelle Adams, My   read on the video game is that Kanye feels profoundly guilty about Donda’s death and he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to work that out. I read it as not making her work to get into heaven, but making a way for him to be able to work to get her in, thus redeeming himself. Sad kid.  —  Ann Powers, I’m expecting this album to materialize sometime around 5am PST Saturday. And, in spite of my spite, I’m excited and curious and eager to hear the finished product. Kanye is a sorcerer of spectacle  —   unpredictable, captivating, pulling us in, even as we previously stood with crossed arms, sided eyes, rolled eyes and yawns. There’s a magic here: Is he in on it? Is this calculated? Will he lose it? Today? Is the today the day he goes off? Is . .. oh, wow: Music. Rich and thick with things that drags across your chest, dare you to stand still (those poor models, my heart weeps for them so real talk, I am incensed) and to not feel some feels. Be joyed, be angry, be chagrined at your wrongness, smug in your repaid faith. Even being annoyed is a win. Is he in on it? We don’t know, but we’ll keep coming back. We will listen to the music. We will be repulsed and rewarded. We will wrestle with big ideas about life and what it means to be a human being in need of the acceptance of other human beings. We’ll point out his numerous contradictions or we won’t see them at all  —   because we are living in our own glass houses of contradictions, complete with swimming pools not as big as Drake’s. We will use his words as memes, as swords, as gates into what we think we know about this man, his motives, his actions, his families. We’ll say this is this, and that is that because of this lyric and that choice. We’ll inspect him as a surrogate for ourselves. Because this is what his music, his conceit, and his transparency do to us. Is he in on it? Are all geniuses crazy? Does crazy make one genius? I believe it was Einstein (or maybe Shakespeare pretty sure it was an old dead white guy) who said something about thinking in analogies being a hallmark of true genius this idea of connecting things that may not be connected in the eyes and minds of others. (Or maybe it was the guy who wrote How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci.) What is seen as Kanye’s hubris and lack of    —   the     to some of the greatest creators and capitalists of recorded history  —   may be a strong argument in favor of his genius. Genius isn’t necessarily moral, compassionate or even evolved. It just has to be able to go forward where and how others cannot imagine. It creates spectacle. It says that not just any spectacle born of embarrassment is genius, but it makes spectacle marketable and profitable in terms both human and financial. It inspires us. It causes us to take inventory. And it makes us ask, what are we mastering as this album is being mastered? What are we rearranging in ourselves as he shuffles his playlist? What are we separating and equalizing? Because if we love ourselves like Kanye loves Kanye, we would not be mastering the art of waiting.  —  kris ex, You can’t help but feel a way, whether love or hate, for Kanye. And, at times, it’s both. I walked in to MSG and felt proud of him in a way, because he held a listening session, a party almost, and a dream of his, a fashion show, at MSG, and then, I’m wiggling and bopping my head, and hear lines like him saying he’d still have sex with Taylor Swift, and refers to her as a ”b****,” and then tweets that ”b**** is an endearing word in  .” Like, what? I do agree that you have to be a little crazy to be a genius, but also a little crazy to keep going.  —  Erika Ramirez, kris, your meditations on the place of genius are exceedingly relevant in light of several other key conversations happening via popular culture right now. First, there’s the ongoing celebration of ”black excellence” and ensuing concerns about how embracing exceptionalism can derail political struggle to fortify multifaceted communities, not to mention demanding conformity to a set of ideals determined by the powers that be. The hot sauce in Beyonce’s bag is a signifier of her current attempt to change the terms of her own exceptionalism, to infuse it with a sense of community and, in doing so, to follow the   path of ”racial uplift.” Some have ecstatically embraced her moves, while others have questioned her right to claim the charisma of the margins (and crucially noted that little to no actual elevation takes place through being mentioned in a billionairess’ music video.) Still others have reminded us that authenticity tempts with its promise of wholeness, but inevitable exacts limits. On his Facebook page, our friend Jason King wrote: I’d be willing to accept that black people   hot sauce in their bag and eating at Red Lobster after a sex romp could constitute ”very black” activities  —   or whatever these supposedly humorous websites and thinkpieces are peddling as ”the blackest thing this week” as they implicitly police who is or who isn’t ”Black AF” in any given moment. But I’d only be willing to accept that if Black people NOT carrying hot sauce and Black people eating sorbet and Black people listening to Blue Oyster Cult and Black people learning to speak Mandarin and Black people discussing the political climate in contemporary Khartoum could also be considered in the scope of what constitutes this week’s ”very black” activities. Because, otherwise: the joke’s on us. The clarity of Jason’s stern but compassionate corrective enlightens Kanye’s convolutions, too. If Beyonce’s sense of political culture is grounded in graciousness and paper  —   not money, per se, but the imprimatur of certified legitimacy that comes from hanging out with heads of state and, yes, corporations, Kanye keeps swag unbottled and his affectations prickly. Hes way more   Steve Jobs than black Bill Gates. Beyond the legacies each tap into as   however, there’s also the 21st Century world of virtual floating identity, and for me that’s where Kanye enters in ways that that are most transformative. Back to the video game. In cyberpunk film and fiction, a deep sadness pervade the attempts of both humans and humanoids to harness the technology that seems to solve everything but which can’t defeat the base conditions of life in a body: the loneliness of being singular and the terror of knowing that one day, perhaps today, you will become obsolete. This century has brought the   struggles defined by the central dominance of one people (one   set of bodies) over numerous others into a technological space where we supposedly can shed that flesh. People grow wings when they become avatars, but they still fall in the streets when their oppressors shoot them. What ceaselessly intrigues me about Kanye’s   pixelated maximalism is its attempt to both do away with body limits through technology and its devotion to body tics  —   the cussing, the genital fixations, the way the child’s tongue keeps defeating the master manipulator’s filters. In this way, the Kanye projected within his music is more like a Picasso painting than Picasso himself: cubist, collapsing perspectives, the latest explosion of the new. I think that’s Kanye’s biggest commitment  —   to the new. It’s why he loves fashion, too. But he can’t escape into the future. He’s stuck with the past, with his mom’s memory, with us.  —  Ann Powers, Yeah, that’s the part that I’m stuck on. Because even if his commitment is to the new, what he’s trafficking in is the now. Writing up until the very last minute, having people vote on your album title, drafting Thugger  —   it makes business sense, but it also has this amnesiac effect. We’re losing perspective. As Lawrence’s friend pointed out, it’s looking like we’re all giving him a pass on the Cosby tweet. I’ve given him a pass on misogyny for YEARS. And it’s thought through I’ll defend it. Ann and I talked about this when Watch the Throne dropped  —   that line ”meet me in the bathroom stall, and show me why you deserve to have it all” still physically hurts me, but I understand that if there were no desecration that song would be a lie and that me feeling betrayed in those moments is the art working. I also think that song broke only because they played it over and over and over again. When I saw that tour they did it four times, but I know people who saw them do it way more than that. And they rammed it down radio’s throat. But I think more important is the way that Kanye’s insistence on the present seems to make people forget that HE’S SAID ALL THIS BEFORE. Sometimes I think he isn’t moving ahead but rather reiterating, looping back around, refining, rephrasing, revoicing, editing, resituating the same ideas. Repeating himself. Picking scabs, like Ann said. I don’t think that’s a knock on him, I think that’s how career artists work. And it’s not clear to me how effective each instance of his words have been, if you don’t count the way his affirmations can be grafted on to yours. His indictments can chip away but they haven’t exploded anything yet (just because Kanye can go to San Fran and get a video game made doesn’t mean Silicon Valley isn’t hard coding the racism and sexism and ablism and homophobia and classism of our daily lives into our futures). He has to keep saying this s*** and he’s not the only one, because y’all don’t hear me though. A couple of my friends were inspired by what he did yesterday as proof of the value he’s created, the transformation of what I hear as the travails of self investigation expressed in real time into the Number 1 Christmas present. Since, as he said, Adidas paid for everything yesterday, I think TLOP is the first   Yeezy album. As happy as I was about the melodies and the jokes and all his smiling we took in yesterday, I’m surprised this is where he is even after that weight has lifted. I thought he would go further. I bet the models wish he had gone further.  —  Frannie Kelley, Chance summed it up perfectly: ”This is my part, nobody else speak.” Kanye called church early this week. He asked us to meet him at 4PM on a Thursday, just a couple weeks after Rihanna released ANTI, her first album that isn’t completely singles. It’s black history month. We’re being trained how to make an event out of albums again. I was grateful to be in a room of friends with good ears for musical changes, recognizing guest vocals and veiled references in the lyrics. We sat in a dark room waiting for the Tidal stream to load. Whatever it was that we were about to witness, we were here for it. We laughed nervously that maybe Kanye had set us up, maybe people without tickets like us wouldn’t be able to watch him reveal his album exactly the way he intended. Turning down the quality of the video so it would quit buffering was a bummer and the visuals definitely suffered. ”We don’t want no devils in the house,” no devils advocates, no  . Like a maestro, Kanye signaled at a tech bro with the headphones to reveal the veil over his models, who made a warm, grainy landscape on the screen. His flashed his signature        ’ Ye smile and bounced between Bible references, brags about sexual escapades and references to his madness as genius. ”This isn’t regular,” he reminded us when the crowd cheered wanly at one point. ”Y’all think this is easy to do?” As as an audience, have we become numb to the spectacle? ”Wake up n**** wake up!” Or was Yeezy Season 3 exactly what we anticipated? Does it matter? Or was this really about process and Ye proving his creative madness: ”I’ve been out my mind a long time. . .. Name one genius that ain’t crazy.”  —  Chanelle Adams, I really don’t care about propriety when it comes to Kanye. For me, the way he constantly picks at the scabs of a nation not at all healed by our attempts to be politically correct offers valuable insight into the anxieties and other negative emotions that can’t be ameliorated by polite talk. He’s not a role model in any way, but for me, that’s what’s valuable. Show us your ugly. If anything is authentic about him, it’s the mix of ugly and beautiful.  —  Ann Powers"
"If you work in a restaurant, marriage proposals are good for business. Happy couples lift the mood in the entire dining room and often turn into lifelong customers. That     experience for them is pretty routine for restaurateurs.   restaurants with nice decor can count on someone popping the question every week or two. At a few rooms with big views, such as The Sun Dial in Atlanta or the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas, proposals are a daily occurrence. ”It’s very, very common, and we absolutely love it,” says Ti Martin, one of the owners of the famed Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. ”I’m a sucker for a good proposal.” Remember the opening scene of that 1987 movie Moonstruck, when Danny Aiello proposes to Cher? He gets down on his knees, the waiter worries he’s ruining his suit and a neighboring diner   that he didn’t spring for a ring. Once Cher accepts, the whole place bursts into applause. It’s a comic version of what commonly happens in real life. Proposing in a restaurant might be the ultimate public display of affection, but no one seems put off. ”If anything, it puts the entire restaurant in a good mood,” says Don Saunders, chef and owner of The Kenwood in Minneapolis. Servers can be as surprised as anyone else. The guy bends the knee, she accepts and everyone is happy. (It is usually the guy, still, who asks, according to restaurant owners we spoke with  —   though they told us they’re seeing more gay couples propose  .) Unless she says no. Then it gets awkward for everybody. Along with the nervous suitor, restaurant managers say they all hope for a happy ending. ”Getting a ’no’ when you’re surrounded by other diners  —   the gentleman is embarrassed, and you get a disappointed environment,” says Duncan Newman, general manager of the Briarwood Inn in Golden, Colo. Usually, restaurants get tipped off in advance. The    will call up and ask for a special table, or maybe something personal printed on the menu. Managers laugh at the fact that some guys only mention their proposal plans in a note box through an online reservation service such as OpenTable. Pro tip: Talk to a live person. Typically, the proposal comes after the entree and before the dessert. Or with it. The Knot rates having a box with a ring arrive on the dessert tray as one of the ”most romantic ways to propose.” Wherever they get the idea, guys seem to view a ring as the most tempting dessert choice possible. ”Sometimes we have them want to put the ring in a bread pudding souffle,” says Martin, the Commander’s Palace owner. ”I think the ring can get kind of sticky.” Aside from being nervous about taking responsibility for an expensive ring for a couple of hours  —   and having to make sure its intended recipient sees it upon presentation and doesn’t accidentally swallow it  —   restaurant workers hate the wait. Often, the entire staff on a shift has been alerted that a proposal is coming. It’s important that no one giggles or gawks or offers premature congratulations  —   anything that could tip off a woman who may have her suspicions already. Some managers make sure their most experienced hands are taking care of the couple. ”We’re in a chopped up old house, and a balcony overlooks our dining room,” says Kenny Lyons, general manager of Husk Nashville, the Tennessee outpost of Husk, from acclaimed chef Sean Brock. ”Everyone [on staff] wants to peek over, but we can’t allow it. It would tip the lady off.” Once she accepts, restaurant workers and managers are happy to send over champagne or snap pictures. Sometimes they’ve worked things out with the guy to bring over friends or members of the family. Chandlers, a steak and seafood restaurant in Boise, Idaho, facilitated a Brady   engagement a couple of months ago, with kids from the couple’s previous marriages hiding over by the bar. ”The four children each held up a sign, like at a baseball game, ’  ’ ” says Chandlers general manager David Boyle. ”That was a cool deal. That got the attention of the room.” Patrons sometimes take off in a     —   or even a helicopter. Generally, they hang around, basking in their   glow. ”Because they’re celebrating, they buy extra champagne, they tip better, they’re in a good mood,” says Trey McCutcheon, manager of Chez Nous in Charleston, S. C. They may or may not live happily ever after, but couples tend to remain loyal to the restaurants where they got engaged. After In Good Company in Rockland, Maine, changed its logo recently, a couple who got engaged there called and asked to take home something with the old design for a souvenir. ”They come for their anniversary, they were here for their engagement,” says owner Melody Wolfertz. ”They wanted to buy my old sign to hang in their house.” The only time restaurants don’t expect to see any proposals: Valentine’s Day. This weekend’s reservation notes don’t say anything about proposals, says Lyons, the Husk Nashville manager. ”That’s almost too cliche,” he says. ”You go to a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, eat dinner and propose. It’s almost too storybook.”"
"It’s a   battle in the fight against a tiny enemy: On Saturday, 220, 000 Brazilian soldiers are fanning out across the country and knocking on doors to raise awareness about the Zika virus and the mosquito that carries it. The ”Zero Zika” campaign, which The Associated Press calls ”unprecedented,” aims to reach 3 million homes in 350 cities across Brazil. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is also hitting the ground to spread information, and the AP reports that Rousseff was planning to send cabinet ministers to each of Brazil’s 27 states as well. Doctors and scientists suspect the   Zika virus may be linked to a serious birth defect, microcephaly, as well as a condition called   syndrome, or GBS, which can cause muscle weakness and paralysis. An ongoing outbreak of Zika in Latin America began in Brazil last spring. On Friday, Brazilian authorities announced they have confirmed 462 cases of microcephaly since October and they are continuing to examine more than 4, 000 reported cases. Brazil usually reports about 150 such cases a year, the AP says. On Saturday, the World Health Organization said that Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Suriname and Venezuela have all reported a rise in GBS ”in the context of the Zika virus outbreak.” Links between Zika and microcephaly or Zika and GBS have not been proven. Scientists are racing to understand how Zika works and how it can be prevented or treated. There is currently no vaccine or treatment. But one form of prevention is available now: Mosquito control. Zika is carried by Aedes aegypti, the same mosquito that carries dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya. All day Saturday, Brazil’s soldiers will be distributing pamphlets about how to prevent mosquitoes, and the dangers of Zika and other   illnesses. Brazil’s health minister, Marcelo Castro, told the AP on Friday that the war on   illnesses was an old one in Brazil. ”In this last 30 years we never managed to defeat the mosquito,” he said to the wire service. ”But this time we’re obligated to prevail because the mosquito has become much more dangerous.”"
"President Obama has designated three desert areas in California as national monuments. The move permanently protects ”nearly 1. 8 million acres of America’s public lands,” the White House says in a news release. All three areas lie east of Los Angeles. Two of the new monuments  —   Castle Mountains and Mojave Trails  —   are near California’s border with Nevada. And crucially, ”the new monuments will link already protected lands, including Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve, and fifteen   Wilderness areas, permanently protecting key wildlife corridors and providing plants and animals with the space and elevation range that they will need in order to adapt to the impacts of climate change,” the release says. The Los Angeles Times explains how this designation was reached: ”The designation was requested by U. S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who for a decade has sought to protect land that wasn’t included in the 1994 California Desert Protection Act. That measure covered nearly 7. 6 million acres, elevated Death Valley and Joshua Tree to national park status and created the Mojave National Preserve. ”Unable to gain momentum on her California Desert Conservation and Recreation Act last year, Feinstein and conservation groups asked Obama to act unilaterally to create the three monuments overlapping biological zones between roughly Palm Springs and the Nevada border.” The White House says Obama has now protected more than 265 million acres of land and water. That’s more than any other U. S. administration. And now, meet the three newest national monuments: At 1. 6 million acres, Mojave Trails is by far the largest of the three new monuments and includes ”a stunning mosaic of rugged mountain ranges, ancient lava flows, and spectacular sand dunes,” the White House says. The White House proclamation describes it as a ”landscape defined by scarcity and shaped by travel.” Here’s more: ”With historic American trading routes, trails followed by Spanish explorers, a transcontinental rail line, and the Nation’s most famous highway [Route 66] the Mojave Trails area tells the American story of exploration, migration and commerce.” The rugged area features a striking series of sand dunes, rare plant species and endangered birds. Sand to Snow National Monument boasts the tallest mountain in Southern California, according to the White House proclamation. The   San Gorgonio Mountain rises from the Sonoran Desert floor. The new national monument, which spans 154, 000 acres, is diverse terrain: It includes a range from ”lowland deserts, fresh water marshes, and Mojave riparian forests, to creosote bush scrub ecosystems, and alpine peaks,” the White House says. An estimated 1, 700 Native American petroglyphs (carved art on rock faces) will be protected as a result of the new designation. Sand to Snow National Monument is also home to more than 240 species of bird. Castle Mountains National Monument is the smallest of the three, at 20, 920 acres. Its wildlife inhabitants include golden eagles, bighorn sheep, mountain lions and bobcats. And the newly designated area ”provides a critical linkage for plants, animals, and water between two mountain ranges within the Preserve, the New York Mountains to the northwest and the Piute Mountains to the southeast,” the White House says. This linkage will contribute to the survival of a herd of desert bighorn sheep, according to the White House. Also in the protected area is the ghost town of Hart, which has been abandoned since 1920."
"Chipotle Mexican Grill certainly is not the first company to face lawsuits and subpoenas because its food made people sick. Other companies, in fact, have faced far worse: Companies like Blue Bell, Dole and Earthbound Farms have been linked to disease outbreaks that actually killed people. But it’s difficult to think of another case in which a company’s   troubles provoked such schadenfreude in the food industry. The company, it seems, made a lot of enemies while marketing its ”food with integrity.” Leading the   charge is Henry Miller, a former official with the Food and Drug Administration and longtime advocate of the benefits of genetically engineered food, which Chipotle has rejected. ”Chipotle is a company so out of control and negligent that it repeatedly endangers the public,” he wrote in a column for Forbes. ”The source of the company’s woes is a   propensity to exploit current food fads, even if it diverts the corporate focus away from what should always be ’job one’  —   safety.” The conservative Independent Women’s Forum, which frequently opposes what it sees as overregulation of business, applauded the FDA’s investigation of Chipotle. The director of the IWF’s Culture of Alarmism Project, Julie Gunlock, wrote that ”Chipotle needs to rethink its business practices, which include working alongside food alarmists,   activists, the organic food industry, and other modern food system critics to frighten, distract and misinform the American public.” Chipotle became such a punch line for jokes that Hannah Thompson, a writer for the meat industry publication Meatingplace, decided that the chain deserved some sympathy. Thompson has, in the past, criticized opponents of the meat industry for ”bullying” tactics. ”I hate to see our industry using similar tactics,” she wrote. ”It’s essential that we take the high road  —   even when we’re tempted to do otherwise.” The trade publication Beef Daily, meanwhile, sounded a cautious yet appreciative note. ”While Chipotle licks its wounds, the beef industry has been presented with an interesting opportunity to educate consumers about the safety and nutrition of   meat,” it wrote. Chipotle is fighting back, of course. It has unveiled a new   program that involves   testing for bacteria that cause disease and new restaurant procedures to keep such bacteria from contaminating raw ingredients like tomatoes and limes. It is also preparing a new marketing campaign to convince consumers that it is, indeed, a safe place to eat."
"Dr. Paul Kalanithi was preparing to wrap up his medical residency in neurosurgery when, in 2013, a CT scan revealed tumors throughout his body. He had stage 4 lung cancer. In his last two years of life, he continued caring for patients. He and his wife became parents. And Kalanithi, a gifted writer, wrote a book, When Breath Becomes Air, a reflection on being a doctor with a terminal illness. He died March 9, 2015. He was 37 years old. His widow, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi, is on a book tour for When Breath Becomes Air, which has resonated with a wide audience. ”It’s really kind of a bittersweet process, as you can imagine, quite bitter and quite sweet,” she tells NPR’s David Greene. ”Paul died nearly 11 months ago, but being able to talk about how I feel and remember Paul is actually very healing for me. So it’s actually kind of wonderful at the same time.” In her interview on Morning Edition, she reads excerpts from When Breath Becomes Air and talks about her late husband’s life. On the cancer spreading to his brain and having a neurological impact, Would you trade your ability to speak for another five months of life, or what type of neurologic devastation would make it more reasonable to stop living than to be alive? And these are not theoretical questions in the neurosurgical context. . .. Yeah, that was very hard. This whole second half of the book is Paul thinking about how to grapple, in a very real way, with his own mortality. And then when he was diagnosed with a form of metastatic brain cancer called leptomeningeal disease  —   it’s essentially like tumors are coating your brain and your spinal cord, and it also holds the prospect of seizures or trouble speaking, trouble thinking. So, it was so intense to get this diagnosis on top of everything else that meant that his ability to participate in all of the things that were bringing him meaning  —   particularly writing this book and being together with our daughter and our family  —   was really devastating. On their daughter, Elizabeth Acadia Kalanithi, He was just thrilled to be a dad, and just the fact of having this infant just breathed this unbelievable life into our house. He was the one who initially had the strong instinct to have a child despite his illness. . .. I said to Paul, ”Don’t you think that saying goodbye to a child would make your death more painful?” And he said, ”Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” And what he meant by that was the joy and meaning of having a new family member is so great that wouldn’t it be great if that made it even more painful? On whether Paul’s illness and death gave him the opportunity to help others through similar journeys, Yeah, it’s sort of bringing tears to my eyes . .. because he makes this joke in the book where he says something like, ”Wouldn’t a terminal illness be the perfect gift to this young man who hoped to grasp mortality in a kind of intellectual sense?” Those questions became not at all theoretical. Paul really had to draw on all these things that he had been developing his whole life  —   he really returned to literature to cope, he fell back on his training as a physician. . .. What a funny confluence of factors that would prepare a young person to face this in a particular way despite looking at the fiery light of illness in real time."
"T. J. Miller has played a dragon slayer in the How to Train Your Dragon movies, a man who doesn’t always change his underwear in Big Hero 6 and a pothead who thinks he’s a tech rock star in HBO’s Silicon Valley. Now Marvel fans will know him as bartender Weasel, best friend to the titular superhero in the new,   comic book movie Deadpool. Miller is a physical and cerebral comedian, a good combination for his Silicon Valley character, Erlich Bachman. Slovenly with shaggy, curly hair and mutton chop sideburns, Bachman is ridiculously full of himself. (Miller has described him as an ”arrogant blowhard. ”) He puts clips in his hair to hold it back when he eats, and he get furious at his housemates when he finds there are only soup spoons left for him to eat his yogurt. Bachman runs the business side of the show’s central startup, Pied Piper. In his mind, he’s the only one who understands you need to be ”a real   to make it in this world,” Miller says. Silicon Valley creator Mike Judge says the character is real. ”In the tech world there are a lot of arrogant people, people with no filter. And that’s right up T. J.’s alley. He’s very good at playing that.” But Miller also makes Bachman likable  —   even charming. Judge, who also directed him in 2009’s Extract, says, ”There’s this odd kind of vulnerability to T. J.’s face and his expressions . .. that make it kind of innocent.” As for Miller, he says he identifies with Bachman: ”He is just sort of, unfortunately for me, a magnification of certain aspects of my personality, mixed in with a couple of fictional things. I’m an enthusiastic marijuana user he obviously is also. I am, at times, a Falstaffian figure he very much is that too. We are in line with each other as nihilists: He thinks you should tell it like it is . .. because everybody’s opinion  —   including yours  —   doesn’t mean anything.” From Class Clown To Clown School, The    Denver native started doing comedy early on. Melody Duggan, his drama teacher at Denver’s East High School, says Miller was a typical class clown, except that he was more intuitive than your average teenager. She says, ”He understands the frailty of the human condition better than any kid I’ve ever had.” Duggan, who’s retired now, tried to get her students to sample all forms of acting, including  . She says Miller ”was absolutely fearless. He doesn’t mind making a fool of himself.” Meanwhile, Miller credits Duggan for the eureka moment that set him on his path to comedy. ”She made me do musicals and Oedipus Rex,” he remembers. ”She said, ’You’re going to do comedy, but I need you singing. You have to learn everything.’ ” His mother, a clinical psychologist, told him the same thing, and it seems he took the assignment seriously. He studied circus arts, and learned how to be a Shakespearean clown at the British American Drama Academy in London. After that, he toured with Chicago’s Second City. Miller’s observational humor is rarely cutting. When an audience member bellowed above the rest at 2015’s Just For Laughs Festival, Miller pointed to him and imitated the sound. Then he quickly said, ”I’m not making fun of your laugh. I would never make fun of your laugh,” and took the opportunity to improvise: ”Have any of you had someone make fun of your laugh  —   a friend make fun of the way you laugh? You know, that’s basically your friend saying, ’Hey you know that sound that you make when you’re happy and joyful? And the tragedy that permeates our everyday life is momentarily abated for an ephemeral escapism? Yeah? You sound stupid. You should feel embarrassed when you’re happy.’ ” Comedy And ’Fundamentally Tragic Existence’ Between movies, TV,   and commercials, Miller is on a   roll. He’s   on his ”mission statement,” as he calls it: ”To become the best comedian, I must be  .” (According to Melody Duggan, ”His business acumen is something else. ”) The comedian says his role in the new   comic book movie Deadpool is right up his alley. ”I’m a student of [Friedrich] Nietzsche. I’m interested in morality and mortality, and Deadpool kind of has all of these themes.” Given Miller’s cerebral approach to acting, it’s not surprising that he almost pursued a career in psychology  —   that was his college major and he thought he might follow in his mother’s footsteps. But then he did the math. ”If you’re a psychologist, you can instrumentally change peoples’ lives for the better,” he says. ”But you can only do that for about 300 people to maybe a thousand people, if you’re really prolific and you’re working really hard. If you’re a comedian, you can change peoples’ lives for the better in much smaller increments  —   not their entire life, but for 15 minutes or a half hour.” He says, ”If I can make someone laugh, I lift them out of their fundamentally tragic existence.” And for this comic, that’s anything but meaningless."
"President Obama says he plans to pick a Supreme Court nominee following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, setting up a confrontation with Republicans who control the Senate. Shortly after Scalia’s death on Saturday, many Senate Republicans vowed not to confirm any Obama nominee, which would leave the spot open for the next president of the U. S. to put forth a candidate. But even if the nomination gets stuck in the Senate, Obama’s pick could send a strong political message. So who’s on the shortlist? Here are a few possibilities: Sri Srinivasan: The    D. C. Circuit judge is considered a moderate. His unanimous confirmation to the federal appeals court for D. C. in 2013 was the first confirmation to that court in seven years  —   thanks to what NPR’s Nina Totenberg called ”huge bipartisan support in the legal community.” Srinivasan, who clerked for former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, has argued before the Supreme Court two dozen times (including arguments against the Defense of Marriage Act) and served in both the Bush and Obama administrations. During his nomination, senator and current Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz called him a longtime friend, and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch called him ”terrific.” Srinivasan, who was born in India and grew up in Kansas, is the   South Asian circuit court judge. Paul Watford: Watford, 48, was confirmed to the 9th Circuit in 2012. He clerked for prominent conservative judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit as well as for liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Watford, who is   is also considered a moderate. David Barron: The    1st Circuit judge was approved in 2014 by a   vote, after a delay over a controversial memo on drones, as NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported. ”Barron, a Harvard law professor, headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel early in President Obama’s term,” Alan Greenblatt wrote for this blog at the time. ”In that capacity, he wrote at least one memo offering the legal rationale for using drone strikes to kill American citizens overseas who were suspected of terrorism.” Barron clerked for retired Justice John Paul Stevens. Patricia Ann Millett: Millett, 52, was confirmed to the D. C. Circuit Court in 2013, after Srinivasan. (The D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals is a good place to look for future Supreme Court justices  —   John Roberts, Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas and Scalia all sat on that bench, and Elena Kagan was nominated for the post.) ”The wife of a Navy reservist, Millett has been an advocate for military families, which is a   activity,” Jeffrey Toobin noted in The New Yorker in 2014. Jane Louise Kelly: The 8th Circuit judge is in her early 50s and was confirmed unanimously  —   and quickly  —   in 2013. She has spent most of her career as a public defender.   Merrick Garland: Garland, 63, is the chief judge of the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and his name was frequently mentioned as a possible Obama nomination when Stevens retired in 2010. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. In 2010, NPR’s Ron Elving noted Garland ”has served the government under presidents from both parties and is considered a judicial moderate.” Jacqueline Nguyen: Nguyen, in her early 50s, is a judge on the 9th Circuit. Her confirmation in 2009 was unanimous. Nguyen was born in Vietnam, and her family fled to the U. S. when she was 10. Her appellate court nomination announcement from the White House notes that they lived at a refugee camp in California before settling in Los Angeles. Kamala D. Harris: Unlike the other names so far on this list, Harris isn’t an appellate judge: She’s a politician and the current attorney general of California. Harris, 51, is the first woman, first   and first South Asian to hold her current post. ”Her mother was a breast cancer researcher from India her Jamaican father taught economics at Stanford,” NPR’s Richard Gonzales reported in 2012. ”As a young prosecutor, Harris cut her teeth on cases of homicide, domestic violence and sex slavery. Later, as San Francisco’s district attorney, she doubled her predecessor’s conviction rate and she talked about being smart on crime.” Kannon Shanmugam: Like Harris, Shanmugam doesn’t sit on a bench: He’s a partner at the law firm of Williams  Connolly and the head of the firm’s Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice. The    has argued more than a dozen cases before the Supreme Court. He is a member of the conservative Federalist Society and clerked for conservative judges  —   including Scalia himself.   Cuéllar: Cuéllar, 43, is a justice on the Supreme Court of California and served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. He was born in Mexico and grew up in Texas and California. Lawrence Lessig floated Cuéllar’s name on Twitter. He would be a more liberal choice. And if Obama’s choice is stuck in limbo, and a Republican wins in November? The shortlist of candidates will depend largely on which Republican wins. Possibilities include lawyer Paul Clement, D. C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, 7th Circuit Judge Diane Sykes, Sen. Mike Lee, 11th Circuit Judge Bill Pryor and Peter Keisler, a   of the Federalist Society, who was nominated to the D. C. Circuit by George W. Bush. But given the volatility of the 2016 race, well, Supreme Court nominees in 2017 are anyone’s guess."
"Justice Antonin Scalia loved a good fight. So it’s only fitting that news of his death at age 79 ignited an immediate and partisan battle over who might take his place on the U. S. Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . said the vacancy should not be filled until the new president takes office. And Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the Judiciary Committee, which would oversee any nomination, said it’s ”standard practice over the the last 80 years” for lawmakers to not nominate and confirm such nominees during a presidential election year. But Democrats are crying foul, pointing out the Senate confirmed Ronald Reagan’s nominee Anthony Kennedy by a vote of 97 to 0 in the election year of 1988. (Grassley’s staff now says it should have said ”nominated and” confirmed.) President Obama said Saturday evening that, ”I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in  ” due time.” The top Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, called on the president to make a nomination ”right away.” ”Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities,” Reid added. There are nearly 11 months until a new president takes office, and in the interim, the high court will operate with only eight justices. That means if the jurists tie 4 to 4, the ruling in the lower court would stand, an issue that could have implications for the president’s immigration and environmental initiatives the availability of abortions voting rights and redistricting and affirmative action in higher education. ”The American people deserve to have a fully functioning Supreme Court,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. ”It is only February.” The Senate had been scheduled to take frequent breaks for much of 2016, working in home districts and preparing for the forthcoming elections. But the sudden death of Justice Scalia, and the vacancy it creates, could put pressure on lawmakers to spend more time at work, in Washington. To win confirmation, a Supreme Court nominee effectively needs 60 votes. The newest member of the bench, Elena Kagan, was confirmed with just five Republican votes in 2010, and a few of those lawmakers have since left Congress. President Obama has already named two justices to the court, Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. In an interview with the New Yorker magazine two years ago, he stressed his emphasis on diversifying the ranks of the federal judiciary by appointing more women and minorities. A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said only 36   nominees have been rejected between 1789 and 2010. Eleven were voted down outright, and the remainder were either withdrawn or tabled or otherwise never received Senate votes. The most recent happened in 1987, when lawmakers nixed the nomination of Robert Bork by a vote of 58 to 42. There’s no deadline or timetable for considering a Supreme Court nomination. CRS said Kagan waited 87 days between her nomination and a final vote. Justice Clarence Thomas waited 99 days after his nomination by President George H. W. Bush. And Bork ’s nomination took 108 days."
"The Appointment Clause of the Constitution (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2) states that the president ”shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . .. Judges of the Supreme Court.” That ”advice and consent” role has meant different things in U. S. history. In the early days of the republic, nominees to the court got a passing glance. The Senate acted speedily, within about a week, from the date of nomination to a vote. But there was a marked difference after 1967, the year Thurgood Marshall was nominated to be the first black Supreme Court justice.   the median wait time for a presidential nominee has ballooned to more than two months. (Current members of the court faced an average of 71 days. That includes Antonin Scalia, who died Saturday.) And it’s very possible, if not probable, that Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia  —   and he is pledging to fulfill his ”constitutional responsibilities” to do so  —   will break the record for the longest wait for a vote in history. The fight to replace Scalia could be historic, possibly resulting in the longest vacancy on the court since it went to nine justices in 1869. Republicans, who currently control the Senate, have said they don’t think Obama should nominate anyone in this election year  —   even though Obama still has 11 months in office. With that, here are seven things to know about the presidential appointment process: 1. The longest wait for a nominee, from the time it was received to the time it got a vote, was 125 days for Louis D. Brandeis in 1916. (Obama has 341 days remaining.) Brandeis was ultimately confirmed, but only after 19 public hearings. Public hearings, by the way, were new to the process 100 years ago. Before Brandeis’ nomination, the Senate had never before held the public hearings we’re all now so used to. What’s more, only once  —   in 1873 for the nomination of George H. Williams to be chief justice  —   is there a record of the Senate’s having conducted even closed, private hearings, according to the Congressional Research Service. Williams’ nomination was withdrawn a month after those hearings. (See table at bottom of this post for a full list of longest wait times.) 2. The longest vacancy on the Supreme Court was 27 months between the Tyler and Polk administrations before the Civil War. Tyler, derided as ”His Accidency,” because he was the first vice president elevated to the White House, also holds the distinction of a record eight nominees rejected or withdrawn. 3. The longest vacancy since the court went to nine justices in 1869 was 391 days. After Abe Fortas resigned from the court in 1969, Richard Nixon’s first two attempts to replace him were narrowly rejected in November 1969 and April 1970. That means if Obama doesn’t get a nominee through, the next president would have until March 12, 2017, before the vacancy record would be broken. (For a list of the top 10 vacancies, check out Time’s chart here.) 4. There have been other nominees who got hearings in presidential election years. It wasn’t until 1868 that the Senate determined that all nominees need be referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Chuck Grassley,   currently heads that committee. His office put out a statement Saturday saying no one in 80 years has been confirmed in a presidential election year. That wasn’t true. Anthony Kennedy, currently serving on the court, was approved in February 1988 by a   vote. Grassley’s office walked that back later, saying it meant nominated and confirmed. (Kennedy was nominated in November 1987.) The year 1968 also keeps coming up. That’s because Lyndon Johnson, who was on his way out as president that year, nominated Abe Fortas to be chief justice and Homer Thornberry to a court vacancy. Johnson withdrew their nominations a month before that year’s general election after 22 hearings between them. Fortas, who had been appointed to the court three years earlier, nearly became chief justice. A cloture motion was rejected by two votes. His nomination was withdrawn three days later. Despite almost a dozen public hearings, Thornberry didn’t even get a vote in committee. Both, though, did get hearings within two weeks of their nominations in June 1968. Richard Nixon went on to win the presidency in November and got four nominees through, including one for chief justice. 5. Dwight Eisenhower made a recess appointment to the court in a presidential election year. Eisenhower appointed William Brennan to the court through a recess appointment. (Can you imagine Obama even trying to make a recess appointment to the court now?) Brennan was confirmed for a permanent appointment to the court in March of the following year (after Eisenhower won  ). There have actually been a dozen recess appointments all but one eventually received permanent appointments. Nine of the 12 took place before the Civil War. All three after the Civil War were made by Eisenhower. He did it one more time in 1958 with Potter Stewart. Stewart also eventually got a permanent slot on the court, but it was one of the longest waits for a nominee  —   about 3   months. 6. The last person nominated and confirmed in a presidential election year was Benjamin Cardozo of New York in 1932. That’s where Grassley’s office gets the   figure. It took a speedy nine days for the Senate to confirm Hoover’s pick. 7. The last nominee rejected outright was Robert H. Bork in 1987. He faced 12 hearings and didn’t get one until 70 days after his nomination. There have been about a dozen nominees who were rejected outright 124 of the 160 nominated were confirmed, according to the Congressional Research Service. The fastest anyone has been rejected was five days. That record belongs to George Washington’s nomination of John Rutledge to be chief justice in 1795. Rutledge is the earliest rejection of a nominee (by a   vote and also the only recess appointment to be rejected). In 1811, Alexander Wolcott was the fastest   to be rejected. It took just nine days for the Senate to dismiss Madison’s nominee. Longest waits for presidential nominees to the Supreme Court (from receipt in Congress to result): 125 days  —   Louis D. Brandeis (Wilson) confirmed   June 1, 1916 (19 public hearings, first was 12 days after nomination) 108 days  —   Robert H. Bork (Reagan) rejected,   Oct. 23, 1987 (12 public hearings, first was 70 days after nomination) 108 days  —   Potter Stewart (Eisenhower) confirmed   May 5, 1959, after recess appointment, 100 days  —   Abe Fortas (Johnson) withdrawn after being nominated to be chief justice, Oct. 4, 1968 (11 public hearings, first was 15 days after nomination) 100 days  —   Homer Thornberry (Johnson) withdrawn, Oct. 4, 1968 (11 public hearings, first 15 days after nomination) 99 days  —   Clarence Thomas (H. W. Bush) confirmed   Oct. 15, 1991 (11 public hearings, first was 64 days after nomination) 96 days  —   Reuben H. Walworth (Tyler) withdrawn, June 14, 1844, 92 days  —   Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. (Nixon) rejected   Nov. 21, 1969 (8 public hearings, first was 26 days after nomination) 89 days  —   William H. Rehnquist (Reagan) confirmed to be chief justice   Sept. 17, 1986 (4 public hearings, first was 39 days after nomination) 87 days  —   Elena Kagan (Obama) confirmed   Aug. 5, 2010 (4 public hearings, first was 49 days after nomination) 85 days  —   Antonin Scalia (Reagan) confirmed   Sept. 17, 1986 (2 public hearings, first was 42 days after nomination) 82 days  —   Samuel Alito (W. Bush) confirmed   Jan. 31, 2006 (5 public hearings, first was 60 days after nomination) 79 days  —   Melville W. Fuller (Cleveland) confirmed   July 20, 1888 (no recorded hearings) 79 days  —   George Harrold Carswell (Nixon) rejected   April 8, 1970 (5 hearings, first was 8 days after nomination) 78 days  —   Thurgood Marshall (Johnson) confirmed   Aug. 3, 1967 (5 public hearings) Source: Congressional Research Service"
"In terms of the ideological balance of the Supreme Court, the death of Justice Antonin Scalia is monumental. With Scalia, the court had four reliable conservative votes and, in Justice Kennedy, the court had a conservative swing vote. That led to many decisions that were decided by a razor thin    margin. To gauge Scalia’s importance, we dug through the Supreme Court Database and found that during Obama’s presidency, 53 cases have been decided by a   majority that included Scalia. Here are six cases that could have turned out vastly different without Scalia:"
"One thing that is undeniable about Justice Antonin Scalia is that his opinions were always a good read. He was a reliable conservative, but every once in a while he broke rank. Most of all, however, Scalia, who died on Saturday, will be remembered for his scathing dissents. We’ve sifted through many of his opinions. Here are five that are worth a read: Lawrence v. Texas: In 2003, the Supreme Court Struck down an   law in Texas. In his dissent, Scalia said that the decision was the ”product of a   culture, that has largely signed on to the   homosexual agenda.” Then, he went on to say that the decision essentially ended a practice of passing ”moral legislation.” He wrote: ”If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is no legitimate state interest for purposes of proscribing that conduct, and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality) when sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring, what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ’the liberty protected by the Constitution.’ Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry.” Boumediene v. Bush: In this 2008 case, the majority decided that terrorism suspects being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had the right to seek their release in federal court. Justice Scalia delivered a scathing dissent saying that for the first time the Supreme Court was conferring constitutional rights to  . The decision, Scalia wrote, would cost American lives: ”The game of    that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a   legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court’s blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today.” Hamdi v. Rumsfeld: Interestingly, in an earlier case, Scalia wrote against the Bush administration, saying the U. S. could not hold a U. S. citizen indefinitely without pressing charges or bringing them to trial. In his dissent, Scalia wrote that Congress could suspend some civil rights, but it had not done so when it passed an Authorization for Use of Military Force, as the plurality argued. ”If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime, it must be done openly and democratically, as the Constitution requires, rather than by silent erosion through an opinion of this Court,” Scalia wrote. He concluded: ”Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis  —   that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.” District of Columbia v. Heller: Scalia wrote the majority opinion in this 2008 case, which struck down a statute that prohibited the registration of handguns and made owners of other firearms keep them   at home. Scalia wrote that law violated the Second Amendment: ”We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns. But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for   in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where   police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” Obergefell v. Hodges: In 2015, the Supreme Court legalized   marriage in the whole country with this case. As was his wont, Scalia delivered a scathing dissent saying the majority decision was a ”threat to American democracy.” He wrote: ”Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans    is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact —   and the furthest extension one can even imagine —  of the Court’s claimed power to create ’liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”"
"Antonin Scalia was just one of six Roman Catholic justices on the Supreme Court, but in his devotion to the faith he was second to none. Neighbors saw him and his wife, Maureen, worshipping frequently at St. Catherine of Siena in Great Falls, Va. a church Scalia was said to favor because it was one of the few Catholic parishes in the Washington, D. C. area that still offered a Latin mass. Scalia received his secondary and undergraduate education at Jesuit institutions, and as a justice he told students that as a young Catholic he endured meatless Fridays and fasting before Communion because the church had taught him and his peers ”that we were different.” While other couples had small families, Scalia and his wife raised nine children. ”Being a devout Catholic means you have children when God gives them to you,” he told his biographer, Joan Biskupic. The relation between Scalia’s Catholicism and his judicial   was complex, however. On one hand, his deeply religious beliefs may have reinforced the certainty of his convictions when it came to legal reasoning. Paul Clement, who clerked for Scalia and went on to serve as solicitor general under President George W. Bush, told NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg in an interview before Scalia’s death that as justice he looked for ”bright lines” in the Constitution wherever he could. ”I think he thinks that his faith provides him clear answers,” Clement said, ”and I think that’s sufficient unto him in most areas.” On the other hand, Scalia vehemently denied that he let his Catholic beliefs dictate his legal judgment. ”I don’t think there’s any such thing as a Catholic judge,” Scalia said in a 2010 interview. ”The only article in faith that plays any part in my judging is the commandment ’Thou Shalt Not Lie.’ ” Views In Religious Cases, He was personally opposed to abortion, but his legal views on the issue were somewhat more nuanced. He argued there is no constitutional right to abortion (and therefore disagreed with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision) but inasmuch as it is not mentioned in the Constitution, he also argued that the government cannot prohibit states from permitting abortion. As a committed Catholic, Scalia said he considered Pope Francis ”the vicar of Christ,” but he did not attend the pope’s address to Congress in September 2015. Nor did the pope’s fierce opposition to the death penalty alter Scalia’s belief that the state has a constitutional right to impose it. Advocates of religious liberty saw Scalia as a hero, citing his support for corporations that did not want to comply, for religious reasons, with the mandate under the Affordable Care Act to provide contraceptive services to employees. But in a 1990 court decision, Scalia argued that the First Amendment’s protection of the ”free exercise” of religion did not necessarily mean people could use their religious beliefs as a reason not to obey generally applicable laws. Writing for the majority, Scalia said, ”To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.” That opinion was somewhat overtaken by the 1993 Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, which expanded the conditions under which people could claim a religious exemption from existing laws. On the religious liberty issue Scalia was not always consistent. When it came to   marriage, he took an especially hard line. In his dissent to the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing   unions, Scalia argued that it was ”extreme” for the court to endorse a practice ”which is contrary to the religious beliefs of many of our citizens.” That opinion prompted Richard A. Posner, a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals, to comment that Scalia seemed to be suggesting ”that the Constitution cannot override the religious beliefs of many American citizens,” a political ideal, Posner said, that ”verges on majoritarian theocracy.”"
"The Big Bend region of West Texas is known for its enormous ranches and large, sparsely populated counties. This can be a problem when people need county services, especially emergency services  —   and it doesn’t matter if you’re an ordinary citizen or a Supreme Court justice. When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died Saturday in Presidio County, it wasn’t easy to arrange the inquest, the judicial inquiry into the death. Jeanette Duer, the judge of neighboring Jeff Davis County, explains how it works. ”Our county has 2, 400 square miles. We have about 2, 400 people. We have one justice of the peace who does the inquest. If she’s not available, it falls to me, as county judge.” In terms of square miles, Presidio County is one of the largest in the state. Private ranches are often tallied not in acres, but in sections, which are 640 acres each. Cibolo Creek Ranch is no exception. At 30, 000 acres, it sprawls into the Chinati Mountains. The historic ranch dates to the West Texas pioneer days of 1857. The old fort there was meticulously restored by Houston businessman John Poindexter, who has owned the ranch for more than 25 years. The original owner, cattleman Milton Faver, is buried there in a mausoleum on top of a hill. I was reporting from a candidate forum in neighboring Brewster County. Officials from all three counties were in attendance. David Beebe, the justice of the peace for Precinct 1 in Presidio County, was there, too. Shortly after 1 p. m. he received a request to handle an inquest for ”a dead body” back in his county. The call came from Juanita Bishop, the justice of the peace for Precinct 2, who is nominally closer, but she was at a   event more than 120 miles away in Fort Stockton. Beebe responded he was also far away, too, busy at the political forum. The deceased wasn’t identified. Bishop said she would find an alternate. In this border county, sometimes the dead body is a migrant in the country illegally. Identification can take weeks death can wait. Bishop contacted the third choice, Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara, who was also unable to make the drive to Cibolo Creek Ranch. Connecting with the county sheriff there, she officially handled the inquest  —   over the phone  —   pronouncing Scalia dead just before 2 p. m. The Texas Code of Criminal Procedures allows justices of the peace to pronounce death via phone when deemed reasonable. It wasn’t until after 3 p. m. that the news started to make its way to the local officials at the candidates forum. Phones lit up. People stopped paying attention to the debate on the stage. I was sitting near Judge Beebe, and we rushed out of the school auditorium together. We drove straight to the only funeral home in the area, in Alpine  —   where there was no answer at the door. I was still about an hour away from Cibolo Creek Ranch but checked the gas tank and drove there directly. There was no cell coverage for most of the drive. At the rock gate, one man stood guard, shooing me off the private property. Miraculously, I had a cell signal, and I began feeding information to NPR, The Associated Press and statewide news outlets. The sun was setting over the Chinati Mountains to the west. On an airstrip to the east, three small planes punctuated the end of the runaway. Few cars passed. One vehicle, from Border Patrol, entered the gates in the hour I waited. The body was sent west, to El Paso. ”In general, both Brewster and Presidio County are some of the more remote sections of the country  —   and also of West Texas,” says David Elkowitz, the acting superintendent of the Fort Davis National Historic Site. He says in many parts of those counties, it’s easily more than 100 miles to the nearest hospital. Tammy King had organized a film screening that night in Marfa. She was expecting to see Poindexter, the ranch’s owner, but he had canceled after arranging a hunting trip with about three dozen friends, including Scalia. ”Right now, it’s actually a quail trip,” said King, ”a quail hunting trip that they’re having this weekend.” King speaks highly of this luxurious ranch, which is often open to the public. It’s a classic getaway, where movie stars can hide out and take advantage of its miles and miles of trails. Despite Scalia’s sudden death, several locals agreed with King, who said: ”What a gorgeous place to find your last days.”"
"If you’ll forgive us a Valentine’s poem . .. Roses are red, Violets are blue. How far did yours travelTo make it to you? Unless you made a point of finding American flowers, odds are any bouquets you bought or received today traveled far indeed. These photos, from this year’s Valentine’s Day rush as well as previous years’s growing seasons, show a few of the greenhouses that enable the world’s romantic gestures. Last year NPR’s Planet Money took a close look at the ”logistical miracles and wild risks” that bring millions of blooming roses to America on one exact day. They note that indestructibility is fundamental to the rose’s appeal  —   they’re uniquely suited for being transported thousands of miles. ”We didn’t just set up this global transportation chain in order to get this traditional flower, roses,” correspondent Robert Smith said. ”We actually started to like roses because they were optimized for the global transportation chain. They were the flower that worked best with the planes and the boxes and the farms.” And indeed, most of the roses we buy in the U. S. on Valentine’s day are imported  —   this year, an estimated half a billion are arriving from Colombia alone, The Washington Post reports. Colombia is the single largest supplier of cut flowers to the U. S. followed by Ecuador. Mexico, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Thailand, Kenya and Guatemala are also significant suppliers, according to U. S. Customs and Border Protection."
"South Carolina is known for its rough and tumble politics, and Saturday night’s CBS News debate in Greenville, S. C. certainly held true to that characterization. It was the most vicious and unruly debate yet this cycle, prompting moderator John Dickerson to even interject at one point that he was ”going to turn this car around!” Real estate magnate Donald Trump and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush sparred early on about   and George W. Bush’s foreign policy, with Trump using what are usually Democratic attacks on the former president in going after him for the Iraq war and his inability to prevent the September 11th terrorist attacks. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz threw elbows over immigration reform and Trump got in some jabs against Cruz, his frequent foil, too. Here are some of the top moments and takeaways from the debate. GOP candidates: Don’t let Obama replace Scalia  The sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday afternoon and subsequent opening on the bench started the event on a somber note, but quickly turned to the political question at hand  —   should President Obama be allowed to nominate a new justice in an election year? All the candidates sided with GOP congressional leaders, who said earlier that any nomination to fill Scalia’s vacancy should happen under a new president, putting them at odds with Democrats and the White House. ”I think it’s up to [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell and everybody to stop him,” Trump said. ”It’s called delay, delay, delay.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich decried the partisanship in the country, saying he would bring the country together as president. But he admitted that, ”I believe the president should not move forward, and we should let the next president decide” on a replacement. Rubio said a new GOP president should appoint someone who would ”put people on the bench who understand that the constitution is not a living and breathing document  —   it is to be interpreted as it was originally meant.” Cruz sparred with Dickerson over whether or not a Supreme Court nominee had been confirmed in a presidential election year before. Dickerson corrected him, saying that in 1988, Justice Anthony Kennedy had been confirmed, though he was nominated the previous year. ”Obviously the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake” Then, something happened that no one expected in a Republican primary debate  —   the party’s frontrunner went on a scathing attack against the previous GOP incumbent over national security. ”Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat, mistake,” Trump thundered when he was asked about his own foreign policy. ”They lied  —   they said there were weapons of mass destruction.” His attack on George W. Bush was met with loud boos from the crowd in Greenville, S. C.  —   a state where the former president still remains very popular  —   and provoked a strong defense of his brother from Jeb Bush. ”I’m sick and tired of Barack Obama blaming my brother for all the problems he’s had,” the younger Bush said. ”While Donald was filming a TV show, my brother was busy keeping us safe.” Trump jabbed back that Bush didn’t keep the country safe: ”The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign, remember that.” ”On behalf of me and my family, I thank God all the time it was George W. Bush in the White House on   and not Al Gore,” Rubio interjected in a rare moment of defense toward Bush. ”The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him.” Trump was repeatedly rattled, The outspoken reality TV star has faded into the background at some recent debates  —   something that probably helped more than hurt him. But tonight he was front and center, and not in a good way. It was more than just his tiff with Bush over  . The two later tussled again when Bush pointed out the bankruptcies Trump’s companies had filed for  —   and Trump kept interrupting and talking over both Bush and Dickerson, calling Bush a liar and saying he personally never filed for bankruptcy. When he asked by Dickerson about his profanity, Trump defended his use of often vulgar language as something he did ”on occasion, in order to sort of really highlight something.” And he added that previously when he’d been bleeped out for allegedly using the   he had not actually said it. Using another odd strategy from last week, Trump again attacked the audience when they booed him when he went after Bush and also insulted South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former presidential candidate. ”That’s Jeb’s special interest and lobbyist talking,” the boisterous billionaire said as he tried to explain away the jeers. When Cruz attacked him for supporting Planned Parenthood  —   which he fired back at him calling the Texas senator ”the single biggest liar”  —   Trump then did say supportive things about the group reviled by Republicans. Trump reiterated that while he didn’t support taxpayer funded abortions, the women’s organization does do ”wonderful things having to do with women’s health”  —   another frequent argument by Democrats. One of the more puzzling moments was when Trump brought up  —   unprompted  —   his support for eminent domain, something that’s put him at odds with many Republicans and has been a frequent point of attack from his GOP rivals. Overall though, Trump was thrown off his game and was on the defensive for most of the night. He’s ahead in the polls in South Carolina, but debates have changed the course of the race there before and could again. Rubio vs. Cruz: ”He doesn’t speak Spanish!”  There are big divides in the GOP on immigration, beyond just Trump’s heated rhetoric and his repeated exhortations that Mexico will pay for his vaunted border wall. Cruz and Rubio had the biggest   on immigration of the night, with the Texas senator again pointing out what many see as the Florida senator’s Achilles heel  —   his onetime support for the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill. ”In the state of Florida, as speaker of the house, he supported   tuition for illegal immigrants,” said Cruz. ”In addition to that, Marco went on Univision in Spanish and said he would not rescind President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty on his first day in office.” Rubio’s retort: ”Well, first of all, I don’t know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speak Spanish.” Cruz responded by unleashing on a tear in Spanish. But Rubio had an opening and took it, painting Cruz as unethical and hitting him for suggesting on the night of the Iowa caucuses that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race. Overall, the Florida senator, who had a disastrous debate just a week ago, had a much stronger performance this Saturday night, which he badly needed to stay alive in South Carolina. Kasich wants to be the adult in the room: ”This is just nuts, OK?”  The Ohio governor wanted you to know on Saturday night he’s a uniter not a divider. Kasich, who surprised this week with a strong second place finish in New Hampshire, repeatedly spurned the infighting that was enveloping him on stage, exhorting his rivals to calm down and come together. ”I think we’re fixing to lose the election to Hillary Clinton if we don’t stop this,” he said, somewhat exasperated, at one point. When asked by Dickerson to weigh in on the   spat over   Kasich channeled what many people at home were probably thinking: ”This is just nuts, OK?” Kasich is trying to keep running a positive campaign  —   something he’s credited for his Granite State win  —   but that’s becoming harder to do in such a negative, bitter race. ”Look, the bottom line is the people of this country and this state want to see everybody rise, and they want to see unity, and I don’t want to get into all this fighting tonight because people are frankly sick of the negative campaigning,” he argued. But in a year where voters are angry and it’s that frustration that is fueling the rise of an outsider like Trump, can Kasich’s sunny message or unity work? It will be hard. Carson faded even further on stage, As he has been in nearly every recent debate, the retired neurosurgeon was a  . He got more questions earlier on than usual, but he repeatedly used them to jump in and answer a question . .. from 15 minutes ago. When he was asked about whether he was capable of handling ”2 a. m. phone calls” in the White House  —   he instead rewound back to further expound on his answer about the Scalia vacancy and the need to end lifetime appointments. When he was asked about how he would deal with ISIS, he decided to weigh in on the Iraq war tiff between Bush and Trump. And his rambling answer on his tax policy was cut off by Dickerson telling him, ”I’m sorry we have to go to a commercial. The free market wants what it wants.” Carson was once the rising outside candidate, but that was months ago. He finished last among the current field in New Hampshire, and if he does poorly again in South Carolina, a state his candidacy and message should have a broader appeal, it will be even harder to make a rationale for his candidacy."
"With two contests down and the South Carolina primary only a week away, the six remaining Republican candidates took the debate stage Saturday night. The debate, hosted by CBS News, featured lots of sparring between Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz. Who spoke the longest? As always, NPR had its stopwatch at the ready."
"At an   Mass in a poor,   suburb of Mexico City, Pope Francis excoriated inequality, corruption and the temptation of wealth. The pontiff called out the rich and elite of Mexico, Reuters writes: ”Decrying ’a society of the few and for the few,’ he denounced deep inequality and the vanity and pride of those who consider themselves a cut above the rest. ” ’That wealth which tastes of pain, bitterness and suffering. This is the bread that a corrupt family or society gives its own children,’ the pope said at the Mass in the city of Ecatepec. ”Mexico is home to one of the world’s richest men, billionaire Carlos Slim, and a wealthy political class stained by corruption even as much of the country is steeped in poverty and violence.” The pope also called on the people of Mexico to resist the devil, ”the father of lies,” with whom there can be no dialogue, The Associated Press writes. A crowd of 300, 000 was expected for the Mass, which comes during the second day of the pope’s visit to Mexico. As NPR’s Carrie Kahn has reported, the pope’s visit earlier included stern words for the leaders of Mexico  —   and for the Catholic Church itself. ”Pope Francis didn’t mince words during a speech he made in the National Palace before the president and top government officials,” Carrie reported on Saturday. ”He warned of being seduced by power and serving the privileged few at the detriment to the many. He later scolded the country’s bishops and warned of being corrupted by trivial materialism and petty divisions instead of tending to the people’s needs.” The pope’s warm reception  —   with huge crowds of cheering people, and a state welcome by the Mexican president and the entire Cabinet at the National Palace  —   is ”a historical spectacle in this once staunchly   country,” Carrie notes. ”It’s only since the 1990s that Mexico   ties with the Vatican.” Reuters has a preview of the rest of the pope’s trip: ”Unlike his predecessor Pope Benedict, who visited Mexico’s conservative heartland in 2012, Francis is stopping in some of the country’s most troubled corners on his first trip as pontiff. ”He will say Mass with indigenous communities in Mexico’s poorest state Chiapas, and speak with young people in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan state where drug gangs and armed vigilante groups have waged a bloody conflict. ”The pope will end his trip in the notorious northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, where he will address the tide of illegal immigration into the United States, meet relatives of victims of violence, and visit a prison.”"
"A few weeks ago, two prominent scientists, Hollis Cline and Mar Sanchez, wrote a brief piece in The Hill newspaper arguing that animal research is ”necessary.” They were prompted by the recent National Institutes of Health (NIH) decision to phase out the use of primates in controversial maternal deprivation studies. Scientists have long been fond of claims of necessity  —   in fact, justifications for animal research have remained largely the same since the writings of 19th century French physiologist Claude Bernard. However, this claim is problematic for a number of reasons. If animal research is necessary, then it is not necessary in the sense that we have to do it. Rather, it is a choice that we make, a choice that its proponents believe is a necessary means to the end of further medical advances. Such advances are undoubtedly of significant moral importance, but even if we grant the assumption that animals are necessary for medical progress, this does not equate to a moral justification. Research with humans is necessary to medical progress, but we have set strict limits on the extent to which humans can be exposed to risk and harm in research, even though doing so has undoubtedly slowed the rate of medical progress that might otherwise be achievable. Cline and Sanchez claim that animals in research are treated ”humanely and with dignity,” but the reality is that the level of protection afforded to research animals is far, far less than that afforded to human participants in research. Most animals involved in research are killed at the termination of the experiment, are kept in conditions not conducive to their welfare, and are otherwise harmed in myriad and significant ways, for example through the infliction of physical injuries, infectious diseases, cancers, or psychological distress. While nonhuman animals cannot provide consent to research participation, we have reasoned in the case of humans that an inability to consent entitles an individual to greater protection and not lesser protection. What justifies our differential treatment of humans and nonhuman animals in research? For present purposes, it isn’t necessary to rehearse every possible argument for and against animal research. It is sufficient to note that very few contemporary ethicists defend the status quo of animal research and, furthermore, that the burden of proof has now shifted to those who would defend invasive animal research. Given the state of philosophical scholarship, meeting this burden of proof will not be easy or straightforward. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the scientific community’s frequent claims of the necessity of animal research is how thoroughly they miss the moral point. For the most part, ethical criticisms of animal research aren’t even addressed  —   as they aren’t in Cline and Sanchez’s piece  —   and when they are, they’re usually dismissed with bad arguments, like this one, that have been refuted for decades. Further, the claim that ”animal research is necessary to medical progress” assumes a strong causal connection between the two, but what data we have available cast doubt upon the robustness of this connection. Despite strong claims about the historical benefits of animal research from the scientific community, the accuracy of animal models in predicting human responses has not been evaluated sufficiently, and the lack of certain kinds of data make this evaluation especially challenging. Based on existing data, however, numerous reviews have suggested that the accuracy of animal research in predicting human health outcomes appears to be far less than what we once assumed. Animal studies also frequently appear to be poorly designed. The predictive value of animal research might increase if study design improved, but this isn’t certain. Even NIH Director Francis Collins recognized these concerns in a   2011 commentary, stating that, ”The use of animal models for therapeutic development and target validation. ..may not accurately predict efficacy in humans.” Given these issues, systematic reviews should become routine and strong statements about the utility of animal models should be tempered. This does not mean that animal research has never produced any or even many important medical benefits, but these claims require empirical validation, not simply repeated assertion. It also means that scientists and science agencies should be much more aggressive about seeking and funding alternatives to animals in research. Support has certainly grown, but investment of money and human labor into   alternatives has been paltry. Even with this limited investment, some impressive advances are being made  —   witness the ongoing development of ”organs on a chip”  —   but much more needs to be done, with more money behind it, and with more of a sense of haste. Beyond funding, the scientific community simply needs to adopt a better attitude toward innovation in alternatives, or else their limitations will continue to be a   prophecy. This is science  —   a discipline with a remarkable history of achievement and innovation despite significant technical challenges. Where are the editorials galvanizing the scientific community to continue to innovate without animals? Where is the Human Genome   investment in alternatives? To say that animal models are ”necessary” when alternatives are not aggressively pursued seems a bit dishonest. And given the amount of harm caused to animals in research —  whether you think it’s justified or not —  we should all want the alternatives field to grow. Literally thousands of books and   papers have been written on the extent of our moral obligations to animals. As a field that is dedicated to rigorous inquiry and rational thought, the scientific community should take seriously the vast philosophy literature on these topics  —   the same field that gave rise to the conceptual foundations of science  —   rather than assertions and rhetoric. When it comes to animals and ethics, there have been very few serious attempts to engage the intellectual issues. Scientists can and should do better. Samual Garner is a bioethicist living in Washington, DC. He is an associate fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and writes on human research ethics and animal ethics."
"Terry Farley remembers her first boyfriend: Steve Downey. The year was 1971. She was 14, he was 16. ”He was my first love, the first boy I ever kissed, the first boy I ever held hands with and he was hard to forget,” Farley tells NPR’s Rachel Martin in the Valentine’s Day edition of For the Record. They happened to be sitting next to each other at a Catholic youth group event in Washington, D. C. ”I remember seeing this very cute young woman across the room,” recalls Downey. ”In those days she had very curly blonde hair.” ”We got to talking,” Farley says. ”We just hit it off.” Downey got her phone number and a couple weeks later, got the gumption to call her up and ask her out. ”The great thing about going to an   Catholic high school was that there were monthly dances that you could pretty much set your watch by,” he says. ”And these were events of high anticipation and high anxiety.” ”I had never been on a date before so he was, per my father, required to come to the door and to meet my father,” says Farley. ”My family fell in love with him.” She did, too. They dated all through high school. A couple of years later, Downey graduated and went off to college. They wrote letters to stay in touch. Then Farley went off to school. Losing Touch, They went on with their lives and thought of each other as good friends but eventually lost touch. The two fell in love with other people, got married and built separate lives. Then, Downey’s wife Cathy was diagnosed with cancer in 2004. ”She was in remission for about a year or so, and the cancer came back,” he says. ”She passed away in August of 2009, the day before my birthday.” After many months, his friends started urging him to try dating again, but he had no interest. ”I wasn’t looking for another relationship,” he says. ”I guess I was in my   at that time, and I just assumed that I was just moving into a different phase, one where I would be by myself. I was alone, but I was OK with that.” A Modern Connection, Around the same time, Farley’s marriage was ending. She went through a rough divorce and was learning how to live life on her own again, too. Then one day in the fall of 2012, she happened upon Downey’s LinkedIn profile. She clicked on it, smiled when she saw his photo, but decided not to write him. ”I was not going to be the old girlfriend that popped out of nowhere and said ’Remember me?’ ” But the algorithm had other ideas.   miles away, Steve Downey was looking at his LinkedIn profile. ”Just completely by accident I went to the section of LinkedIn where you see a list of people who have looked at your profile,” he says, ”and I see this name: ’Teresa Farley has looked at your profile,’ and I thought ’Well, that is a name I have not heard in quite a long time.’ ” Downey wrote her a message, nothing heavy, just a ”Hey Terry, it’s Steve. Hope you’re well.” He waited  —   nothing. He thought, ”OK, fine she doesn’t want to reconnect.” ”Well . .. a few weeks later, she writes back with her long life story,” Downey says. ”And I open up the email and I read it, and in the midst of all of her explanation she reveals that she has been divorced. And I remember reading that line and calling up my best friend saying, ’Guess what? She’s single.’ ” The emails got longer and more frequent and then there were phone calls. Finally, Farley invited Downey to spend a weekend with her. His friends and family were a little worried. ”I had a friend who was convinced that I was going to meet my demise at the hands of a mass murderer and insisted that the moment I got there I was to call her to say that I was all right and was not being held hostage,” Downey says. He wasn’t held hostage  —   but he was smitten all over again. ”When I first saw her, I saw in that person the young person that I had known,” he says. Farley didn’t see Downey’s gray hair. ”I saw my teenage crush,” she says. The couple married on March 21, 2015  —   44 years after they first met as teenagers. ”The most remarkable part of all this is the fact that that I had a wonderful, caring, nurturing marriage and it made me the person I am today,” Downey says, ”and now, I get to do it again.” ”Things just fell into place,” Farley says. ”Still today he makes me feel like a teenager. I feel like the luckiest person in the world.”"
"Alice Carter has traveled a long road to get to where she is today. Morocco, that is. Carter, 87, is the oldest current volunteer in the Peace Corps. She says she’s been interested in the world for a long time. This isn’t her first adventure. Even in her earlier life, she had more experiences than most. She was involved in the civil rights movement and protested the Vietnam War. She’s lived in many places, and she had six children along the way. Carter ended up living in Boston, near several of her children. Until recently, she was tutoring   kids and helping with church dinners. You might think that she would choose to calm down in her old age. But she wanted something different than the standard slow life for those in their twilight years. So a year ago, at the age of 86, Carter began serving as a volunteer for the Peace Corps in Morocco. ”It was like a little blip,” she says of deciding to volunteer for the organization. ”Like when you fall in love with somebody and that little blip  —   that click goes off, and you say, ’That’s for me. ’” She talked with NPR’s Rachel Martin from her station in Rabat, Morocco, about the Peace Corps’ role in keeping her physically and mentally active. On what made her think of volunteering for the Peace Corps, I went to a party in Vermont and I met a whole lot of 1960s Peace Corps graduates. They were all at this party and there was a recruiter there. So I kind of wandered over and said, ”What’s the cutoff?” And she said ”Oh, there’s no age limit.” And bingo. I went home, got on the computer and started applying right away. On resistance to the idea from her children and grandchildren, They came around, almost 100 percent of them except my granddaughter, who was from the   ”No Peace Corps, no Peace Corps!” And I said, ”No, I’m gonna go. I can’t stand Boston anymore, I’m too old and I keep falling down in the snow. I have to find a warmer climate.” On being in the public view in old age, I like being very active, I like being with people, and my whole life has been forming relationships. And so, that has to continue. You can’t quit. I’ve been told that it’s hard to make friends as you get older. I have not found that to be true. In the Peace Corps I’ve made a lot of friends of younger people and the people . .. in their 60s and 70s who are here. On the physical demands of the work, I think that for people who are thinking about it who are our age, there’s some specific concerns and one of them would be health. You kind of have to tinker with your body as you get older, so it’s wonderful to have a supportive Peace Corps medical staff, which we have in Rabat. So that’s one thing. Energy is another. When I first came, the head of the Dar Shabab, the youth center, wouldn’t let me work more than four hours a week  —   he was afraid I would just tumble dead if he pushed me further. But then I kept picking up more and more kids and doing more and more, and he saw that I was going to live through it. So he eased up. But people do not push old people to work at the same pace that the younger people do. On what she brings to the Peace Corps that is different, I think it’s an attitude. Younger people in our culture are raised to compete. So they’re all trying to do as much as possible and it’s very restful for them to be around people who are not competing. I’m not here to be a   or accomplish impossible tasks. And I just want you to know that you can have a really good time in the Peace Corps when you’re old. What next? I have one more year and I’m not going to extend because I think my family would come and drag me off the continent of Africa if that happened. And I haven’t made any plans about what I’m going to do when I come home."
"Genya Ravan’s name has always been a hurdle: Strangers tend to stress the wrong syllable, or reduce it to something more conventional. (Jimmy Fallon once casually referred to her as ”Gina. ”) Ravan was actually born Genyusha Zelkowitz, to a family in   Poland. By the time she left for America in 1947, she had lost two brothers to the Holocaust. Along with her parents and sister, she settled on New York’s Lower East Side, in a cold water flat on Rivington Street. ”The apartments were tenements,” she says. ”Forget air conditioning. My sister and I used to sleep on the fire escape in the summer. .. right above all the garbage.” Her mother renamed her Goldie to sound more American. Her father ran a candy store and she became friends with an   man who worked there. He gave her a radio, and her favorite station played  . ”It was hard to pick up,” she says. ”And the DJ, he’d be going in and out, in and out, and then I’d be hearing my songs, my fabulous songs!” Singing along with the radio not only helped her with her English it also gave her an identity. One night in 1962, she went to a club to see a band. Behind the courage of a few drinks, she got onstage  —   on a dare  —   to sing along. ”Well, never dare me to do anything!” she says. ”I got up on stage. There was a standing ovation! So they said, ’Sing another one!’ Yeah! They fired their lead singer and asked me to join them!” The band was called The Escorts, and with Goldie Zelkowitz behind the mic, they scored a regional hit. That would be a story in itself  —   at least, playwright and director Chris Henry thought so. Those early years of the singer’s life are the basis of Henry’s new   musical, Rock And Roll Refugee. ”What I really wanted to do is to flesh out more of what was it like growing up on Rivington Street,” Henry says, ”what was it like learning to speak English by listening to black radio stations, and how everything in her life made her who she became as an artist.” But that’s only the first act of Goldie Zelkowitz’s   drama. Two years after joining The Escorts, in 1964, she was fronting the first   band to be signed to a major label. ”Hark, hark, an   band! This was a revolution!” says Andrew Loog Oldham, The Rolling Stones’ original manager and producer. ”I mean, we were used to The Shirelles or The Ronettes, but a band that was a completely different story! And wonderful they were, and that was the beginning.” Goldie and the Gingerbreads toured Europe with The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and others  —   and scored its own UK hit, ”Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat?” But in the United States, Herman’s Hermits released their version of the same song just ahead of Goldie And The Gingerbreads, keeping them from duplicating their European success. The band broke up, and three years later, it was time for a new group and a new first name: Genya, short for her birth name. ”The drummer said, ’You should also give yourself a nice second name,’” she says. ” ’Something for the way you sing  —   which is, you know, black, soulful! ’” So she went with Ravan, meant to be pronounced ”raven” (though the alternative spelling led many to call her ” ”). Genya Ravan went on to form the jazz fusion band Ten Wheel Drive. The band was a favorite with critics and fans, but Ravan left after three albums. Clive Davis signed her to a major label deal, but her experience with that side of the music business was not a happy one. ”They were seemingly trying to make her their next Janis Joplin,” Andrew Loog Oldham explains, ”but Genya knows the gift she’s got, and she’s been true to it because she knows it gives her life.” So in 1978, she decided to produce her next album herself. It gave Ravan her first taste of creative control, and led to work as one of the first female independent producers in the music business. But her lyrics also pointed to a   struggle with drugs and alcohol. ”I was starting to go downhill badly,” she says. ”So I said to myself, ’Either live or die, one or the other.’ And I decided to get clean.” That brings us to Ravan’s third act. She did get clean, only to be diagnosed with terminal lung cancer  —   but once again, she beat the odds. Returning to music, however, proved a greater challenge. Without drugs and alcohol, she didn’t know if she could muster the courage. ”What brought me down was also my strength at one time,” she says. ”I thought to myself, ’I will never write a good song again. I will never be able to sing well again.’ You know, I just thought it was the end. Little did I know it was quite the beginning.” Returning to the musical roots that helped forge her identity helped her to move forward. She hosts two radio shows on the Sirius XM channel Little Steven’s Underground Garage, and she’s working on a new album  —   her fourth since getting sober. ”I hear a lot of people getting into trouble in their lives, saying, ’Well, when I was a kid, I didn’t have that, I didn’t have this,’” Ravan says. ”I didn’t either, and I took another way, you know? At least I found my voice.”"
"What do Paul McCartney and Kim Kardashian have in common? They both have an appreciation for Kanye West. They both claim credit for the rise of the selfie. And now, they are both   the emoji bandwagon. The former Beatle has composed a set of audible emoji, outfitting a few cute digital icons with sounds for Skype. (Kim’s own line of emoji, Kimoji, launched in December.) It’s a special line of 10 cutesy expressions (Skype calls them ”Moji”) for Valentine’s Day, which McCartney hopes people will use to send ”messages of love, et cetera.” He says it was ”a great laugh” but also a challenge to compress a musical interpretation of an expression into less than five seconds. McCartney began his compositions on a Moog synthesizer, an instrument the Beatles revolutionized in their 1969 album Abbey Road, also recording the sounds of various instruments, including guitar, harpsichord, xylophone and drums to match the movements of oddball characters. There’s a tune playing as two koi fish circle each other. The sounds of strumming as two snakes intertwine, tongues out. Then there’s a purple octopus (sans garden) holding in its tentacles flowers, chocolates, champagne and, briefly, fuzzy handcuffs. For that one, McCartney sings, ”doo dee doo dee” over harpsichord notes. And in case there are any questions of authorship, every Moji bearing McCartney’s sounds in the Skype messenger comes with a tiny copyright for MPL Communications, his company. Skype’s run at nonverbal cues for its   messaging builds on the   popularity of emoji and GIFs  —   and of course, the increasingly   dating world. Its messenger has a bunch of other Mojis, created in partnerships with Universal Studios, Disney Muppets and the BBC, and Skype says users have sent half a billion of these audio emoji since their introduction last September. But if you find the idea a bit, um, out there, know this: McCartney had his doubts, too. ”At first I thought, hmm, strange proposition, is this for me?” he says in the video. ”And then I thought, yeah, you know what, why not?” Naomi LaChance is a business news intern at NPR."
"The latest batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails from her time at the State Department includes 84 additional classified documents. The new emails from her controversial private server, which were retroactively classified since she left office, include 81 which had been upgraded to confidential status and three to secret status. (Classified parts were redacted.) The Saturday release included 1, 012 new pages and 551 additional documents, bringing the total released to 45, 830 pages, according to a State Department official. The total means nearly 1, 700 emails on Clinton’s server have been retroactively classified. The   release by the State Department is behind the initial end of January deadline. As a result, more of the Democratic presidential candidate’s emails will be released throughout this month, with the final batch coming out on February 29th  —   the day before Super Tuesday, where 15 states will cast primary or caucus ballots. Last month, the State Department announced that seven emails chains  —   22 documents representing 37 pages  —   will not be released, because they had been upgraded to top secret, the highest form of classified material. ”We can confirm that later today, as part of our monthly FOIA productions of former Secretary Clinton’s emails, the State Department will be denying in full seven email chains, found in 22 documents representing 37 pages,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. ”The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community, because they contain a category of top secret information. These documents were not marked classified at the time they were sent.” Clinton has maintained she never sent material which was classified on the private server at the time. The emails have become a major issue in the presidential race among Republicans, though her Democratic challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has declined many times to hit her on the emails. Most of the emails released on Saturday are process related  —      schedules, travel arrangements, memos, notes to staff and the like. Several were from Sidney Blumenthal, the longtime Clinton aide and friend whose frequent emails to the secretary, despite having no official role in the State Department, drew scrutiny from Republicans in her testimony before the House Benghazi Select Committee last fall. In this batch, Blumenthal sent her memos and thoughts on Libya and the scandal surrounding former CIA director and retired Gen. David Petraeus after it was revealed he’d had an affair and shared classified information. In another, he weighed in on whether photographic evidence of the death of Osama bin Laden should be shared with Congress. In a more comical email, an aide sends Clinton a story shortly before the 2012 elections speculating that ”Bill Clinton’s ego could cost Obama in November.” She writes back: ”What can be done?” Republicans bashed the new emails, emphasizing the newly classified emails should cast doubt on Clinton’s trustworthiness and ability to lead the country. ”This   release is another reminder that Hillary Clinton’s attempt to skirt transparency laws put our national security at risk and that she failed to meet her legal obligations to protect classified information as Secretary of State,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. ”With Clinton now tied to three federal investigations by the State Department and FBI, buyer’s remorse must be growing amongst the Democrat establishment who have gone out of their way to rig the nominating process in her favor. As the results in Iowa and New Hampshire have shown, even Democrats find Clinton’s dishonesty and untrustworthiness unacceptable.”"
"Just a few days ago, major world powers announced they would work on a plan to stop hostilities in Syria within a week. The proposed agreement would be temporary, and would fall short of a full  . Instead, the nations involved have agreed ”to encourage their proxies to cease hostilities in a week with an eye to a more permanent   down the road,” NPR’s Michele Kelemen explained Friday. Since then, fighting on the ground has only intensified. On Saturday and Sunday, Turkish forces shelled Kurdish positions in northern Syria  —   targeting Kurdish fighters who are seen as allies by the United States. NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports from Istanbul: ”The Turkish artillery barrage is targeting areas held by the PYD, Syrian Kurdish fighters who the U. S. has praised for their toughness in battling the Islamic State. Ankara sees the PYD as a terrorist group aligned with Kurdish militants in Turkey, the PKK.” Russia, meanwhile, continues to bomb rebels in the same region, bolstering an offensive by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, The Associated Press and Reuters report. Peter also reports that Saudi military jets have arrived at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, ”to join the   coalition which launches strikes against ISIS targets,” according to a Saudi military spokesman. Iran, for its part, said on Sunday that it is willing to provide air assistance to Assad’s government. Tasnim, a   news agency, quoted a general as saying Iran would ”vigorously” help the Syrian government with air defense  —   in an ”advisory” capacity  —   if Assad should request it. ”Fighting and airstrikes continued elsewhere in the country Sunday, including in   suburbs of the capital Damascus,” the AP adds. ”Opposition activists reported Syrian army helicopters dropped around 10 barrel bombs on the town of Daraya.” What’s at stake if this fighting continues unabated? The   Blog broke it down in this story on Thursday: ”The war in Syria has already killed a quarter of a million people, and that stands to rise if this falls through. ”Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation grows steadily worse. The United Nations said today that some 300, 000 people are at risk of being placed under siege in Aleppo, which was Syria’s largest city before the war began. ”A failure to get the Syrian regime in the same room as the opposition would mean more death and misery for thousands of people in Syria  —   and drive more to seek safety in neighboring countries and Europe.”"
"The White House says the president will not move to appoint a Supreme Court replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia while the Senate is in recess this week. In an interview with ABC News, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Obama would would wait to announce his nominee until Congress returns from its break later this month. In an email to NPR, Schultz said the White House had ruled out a recess appointment ”this week.” ”At that point, we expect the Senate to consider that nominee, consistent with their responsibilities laid out in the United States Constitution,” Schultz told ABC. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Saturday that the vacancy ”should not be filled until we have a new president.” That means an Obama nominee could languish until a new president takes over in January. With that prospect, pundits began considering the possibility of Obama bypassing the Senate and appointing a justice temporarily when Congress was out of town. As Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog writes, Article II of Constitution gives the president that power and William J. Brennan, Jr. one of the most consequential justices in the Court’s history, began his time on the bench when President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him during a recess. Brennan’s nomination was confirmed by the Senate after Eisenhower was  . According to the Constitution, a president can can fill vacancies while the Senate is in recess but their appointment expires at the end of the Senate’s next session. This   power, however, was greatly curtailed by the Supreme Court in the 2014 case National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning. Denniston explains: ”First, on the president’s side, the Court ruled that the recess appointment power applies when the Senate leaves town for a break in the middle of an annual sitting, or a break at the end of each annual session. ”Second, also on the president’s side, the decision declared that the president during a recess can fill a vacancy even if the opening occurred well before the recess began. ”Third, on the Senate’s side, the ruling made clear that it has to last more than three days, without saying how much more time must pass without the Senate out of town and doing nothing. ”Fourth, strongly on the Senate’s side, the decision left it largely up to the Senate to decide when it does take a recess, allowing it to avoid the formality of a recess by taking some legislative action, however minor or inconsequential and however few senators actually take part in some action.”"
"The U. S. Supreme Court next month is scheduled to hear its biggest abortion case in at least a decade, and the reach of that decision is likely to be impacted by the absence of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died over the weekend. A Texas law requires that doctors have local hospital admitting privileges and that clinics make costly building upgrades to operate like outpatient surgical centers. Numerous other states have passed similar laws, and Scalia was widely expected to provide a fifth vote to uphold such restrictions. Without him, it may not change much for Texas. A   split in the court would leave in place the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld these provisions. Ilyse Hogue of NARAL   America says that would shut down a number of clinics that perform abortion. And she says that would come in addition to other Texas restrictions that have already closed about half the state’s clinics, leaving some women to travel hundreds of miles to obtain an abortion. ”We would be looking at an even greater health care crisis in Texas than we’re already facing,” Hogue says. But a split decision in the Supreme Court would have no national precedent. That means other appeals court rulings striking down similar laws would also stand. And Hogue says there are more cases to come. ”I think this vacancy is far, far greater in terms of its implication than this one case in Texas,” she says. ”There are so many laws looking to restrict not only abortion access and abortion rights but a broader set of reproductive rights in front of the court right now.” One of them also comes up next month, when the court hears a challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate on covering birth control for female employees. There’s also been a wave of abortion restrictions passed since Republicans took control of numerous statehouses in 2011, and many of those cases are wending their way through the appeals courts. Abortion opponents had been hoping to have them affirmed by the Supreme Court, with the help of a great ally in Scalia. ”He was one of the two justices on the court who has publicly opposed Roe v. Wade in prior cases and prior votes,” says Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel with Americans United for Life. ”And he was probably the most vocal and   having been there since 1986.” Scalia had said that since the U. S. Constitution does not recognize a right to abortion, neither should the Supreme Court. The issue, he wrote, should be left to the states. Now, if the court flips to a liberal majority, Forsythe foresees a   rolling back of decades of abortion restrictions. He can imagine justices overturning the ban on public funding for the procedure. That ban is known as the Hyde Amendment, something presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both vowed to overturn. Forsythe also thinks a liberal Supreme Court ”will probably throw out all parental notice and parental consent laws in the country, will throw out all informed consent laws in the country, and virtually any regulation, and create an absolute right to abortion for any reason at any time that we haven’t seen in 42 years.” Abortion rights groups say all that is speculation at best. But with so much at stake, both sides of this contentious issue say they’re throwing themselves into the fierce battle over choosing Scalia’s replacement."
"The Baltimore health system put Robert Peace back together after a car crash shattered his pelvis. Then it nearly killed him, he says. A painful bone infection that developed after surgery and a lack of   care landed him in the operating room five more times, kept him homebound for a year and left him with joint damage and a severe limp. ”It’s really hard for me to trust what doctors say,” Peace said, adding that there was little   care to try to control the infection. ”They didn’t do what they were supposed to do.” Pushed by   shifts in how they are reimbursed, Baltimore’s famous medical institutions say they are trying harder than ever to improve the health of their   neighbors in West Baltimore. But dozens of interviews with patients, doctors and local leaders show multiple barriers between the community and the glassy hospital towers a few blocks away. Reporters from Kaiser Health News and the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism spent much of the fall in and around   a Baltimore neighborhood where violence flared last year after Freddie Gray was fatally injured in police custody. Residents say they have little more confidence in the medical system intended to heal them than in the criminal justice system intended to protect them. Even though his accident happened in 2004, Peace says he cannot view doctors and hospitals with anything less than deep suspicion. ”They almost let me die,” he said. As with so much else, there are two Baltimores when it comes to health. One population is well off and gets the best results from elite institutions on the city’s west and east sides, the University of Maryland Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The other is a poor minority that gets far less even as it uses hospital services at    rates. One indicator: The typical Sandtown resident lives a decade less than the average American. ”They come in with a great service, but they don’t have relationships with people in the community,” said Louis Wilson, senior pastor of New Song Community Church in Sandtown, a small wedge of about 5, 000 households. ”They want the people in the community to come in and respect them, but they don’t respect the people in the community. It does not work. It just doesn’t.” The gap is more than the cultural distance between     and the wealthier practitioners, often of other ethnicities, who treat them, although that’s a part, Wilson said. It’s about insurance that is still unstable, confusing and perceived as expensive despite the health law’s recent expansion of Medicaid for   patients. It’s about a system that still treats too many residents in the most expensive way possible  —   in crisis visits to the emergency room  —   rather than keeping people healthy in the community. It’s about having too few primary care doctors addressing everyday needs to change that. It’s about inadequate transportation to get to appointments and jail stays that cut patients off from family doctors. It’s about avoiding medical institutions often seen in the same light as the justice system that held Freddie Gray when he died: as biased, haughty and dangerous. ’I Lost Two Aunts In That Hospital’ ”When you walk into a hospital, it’s like walking into a courtroom,” said William Honablew Jr. who volunteers at LIGHT Health and Wellness, a nonprofit whose community services include helping those with HIV and other chronic illness navigate the system. ”You know who’s in charge, and you know who’s not.” Many in Sandtown have heard of Henrietta Lacks, an   woman whose tissue was used without permission by Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to establish a line of experimental cells. For years Baltimore blacks associated Hopkins, on the city’s east side, with the ”night doctors” of   folklore who supposedly kidnapped black children for medical experiments, residents and community leaders say. Bon Secours Baltimore Health System, Catholic, nonprofit and the nearest inpatient provider to Sandtown, has reduced potentially deadly,   hazards such as pneumonia and blood and urinary tract infections in recent years. Adjusted for illness severity, its death rates for Medicare patients with major conditions such as heart failure and stroke are little different from national scores. But to the frustration of hospital officials who say they deserve better, Bon Secours is still known across West Baltimore as ”Bon  .” ”I lost two aunts in that hospital, an uncle and two cousins  —   five people,” said Arnold Watts, 60, in a grim accounting matched, unprompted, by several other residents interviewed. The average Sandtown resident lives to be 69. 7 years old, according to the Baltimore City Health Department  —   the same life expectancy as in impoverished North Korea. Detailed data from the Maryland agency that regulates hospital prices, seldom seen by the public, illustrates why. Residents of the ZIP code including Sandtown accounted for the city’s     rate of   hospital cases in 2011, the   rate of psychiatric cases, the   rate of heart and circulatory cases and the   rate of injury and poisoning cases. Asthma, HIV infection and drug use are common. In Sandtown, 2 of 10 babies born in 2013 were underweight  —   the highest percentage in any of Baltimore’s 55 neighborhoods. The share of Sandtown mothers getting early prenatal care fell by 25 percentage points in 2013 from the year before. Dr. Jay Perman is a pediatric gastroenterologist who is president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, which shares its downtown campus with the University of Maryland Medical Center. Perman, who says the school has a critical role to play in fighting poverty, looks out of his   paneled office across a boulevard that marks the beginning of Baltimore’s poor west side. ”Why,” he asks, ”in the midst of this extraordinary health care enterprise that is present in Baltimore, with all this expertise, are we sitting here on this side of Martin Luther King [Boulevard] and on the west side . .. you have some of the most disappointing life expectancies that one could imagine?” Two miles away, residents such as David Johnson start to provide an answer. Johnson, 52, sits in the nave of First Mount Calvary Baptist Church, waiting for   vegetables and talking about being newly out of jail, lacking identification and trying to qualify for Medicaid. Police arrested Freddie Gray, 25, five blocks from the church last April, allegedly for carrying an illegal switchblade. He died of spinal injuries that prosecutors filing manslaughter charges blamed on police. Western District police station, where officers removed Gray’s unconscious body from a prisoner van and protesters surged a week later, is a block south. ”I think I have diabetes,” said Johnson. ”I know I have high blood pressure. I know that. I get dizzy a lot, especially when I wake up in the morning. I need to see a doctor.” Months To Qualify For Medicaid, But he can’t. Baltimore jail authorities lost his identification cards, he said, before releasing him in October from an   stay related to a drug arrest. He spent weeks reapplying for a Motor Vehicle Administration identification card, which social workers said he needed to qualify for Medicaid. ”You need ID to get ID, you know?” he joked. Nobody told him he could use incarceration credentials to qualify. Medicaid’s expansion to include   adults was seen as an unprecedented opportunity to cover former inmates such as Johnson as they rejoin the community. (Inmates are not usually eligible while incarcerated.) But limited administrative resources and a pile of other paperwork for release planning means   are often limited to the most severely ill, said Lena Hershkovitz, a vice president with HealthCare Access Maryland, a nonprofit working to increase enrollment. ”I know for a fact that he’s not unusual,” she said of Johnson. ”I would say the majority of people leaving the prison or detention system are leaving without Medicaid.” Communication barriers and ”poor customer service” are also barriers to care in West Baltimore, according to a 2012 report by John Snow Inc. a Boston consultant hired by an association of community health centers. William Ferebee, 66, has obstructive lung disease and a stent implanted after a 2001 heart attack. He avoids doctors at a University of Maryland Medical Center clinic because ”they don’t even really come look at me,” he said. Instead, they give orders to a nurse or resident, ”and then he comes in and says, ’OK, here’s what we’re going to do.’ ” A doctor at a nearby, independent clinic ”is a sweetheart,” he said. ”But it’s so hard to get an appointment.” Fear of legal consequences also keeps people away from the health system. Some men worry doctors will report their undocumented address to social services, which they believe could reduce aid for female partners who live with them, said Wilson, the New Song pastor. Medical privacy laws allow hospitals and clinics to help law enforcement officials trace suspects and fugitives. Residents subject to outstanding warrants fear they’ll be arrested if they seek care. ”Some people got a case out there  —   they’re not going to the health clinic,” Wilson said. ”They’re going to die without giving up their information.” Even when patients get access, care is disrupted by physician turnover, poor   or insurance companies’ changing medical networks. ”The system is fragmented,” said Debbie Rock, who has run LIGHT Health and Wellness, on Sandtown’s western edge, since the 1990s. ”I think that people need to go back and talk to each other. I think the doctors and the health insurance companies need to sit down and listen to each other.” One homeless West Baltimore patient left an oral surgeon’s office with a wired jaw and no way to pay for the liquid nutrition he needed to feed himself, said Carol Marsiglia, senior vice president at the Coordinating Center, a nonprofit consulting organization that is working to reduce readmissions and emergency visits in the neighborhood. A   company wouldn’t serve a discharged lung patient because he had a $27 balance, she said. A hospital directed two   companies to teach a patient how to deal with a new colostomy bag neither showed up. The Coordinating Center fixed the breakdowns. Poverty makes Sandtown’s health worse. Many say poverty causes Sandtown’s poor health. Four Liquor Stores And Three Sub Shops, Many residents hold jobs in government or manufacturing, run churches or collect pensions from the military or Social Security. Even so, the median Sandtown household income in 2011 was $22, 000. Roofs leak. Mold and mildew grow. Baltimore Gas and Electric cuts off energy to Sandtown households for nonpayment at twice the rate it does in the rest of the city. Lead paint violations like the kind that allegedly poisoned Freddie Gray are nearly four times higher in Sandtown than in Baltimore as a whole. Drug and alcohol use are common. Diets are often poor. Many lack cars and the nearest supermarket is more than a mile away from the church. ”If we walk around this block, we’ll pass four liquor stores and three sub shops,” said Derrick DeWitt, pastor of First Mount Calvary, on Fulton Avenue. Even small copayments required by many health plans dissuade   West Baltimore residents from seeking care, the John Snow report found. Some constantly switch doctors to find the lowest price, leading to ”disjointed services” and potential harm if information falls in the cracks, it found. ”I change doctors like I change underwear,” said Eddie Reaves, 64, who tries to find practices that won’t charge him copays as little as $12 or $15. His income is $1, 170 a month, he said. In 2014, he added, ”I must have seen a good total of about 10 doctors.” Reaves has diabetes and high blood pressure. He’s on Medicare because of a disability. He has applied twice to Medicaid since the health law expanded coverage two years ago. That would improve his benefits. But he never received the paperwork, he said. The best care he ever received, Reaves said, was when he didn’t need an insurance card  —   when he was homeless. Health Care for the Homeless, a nonprofit a couple miles east of Sandtown, delivers comprehensive services to the homeless without regard for ability to pay. ”Didn’t have no bills,” Reaves said of the clinic when he used it a few years ago. ”Your medicine they helped pay for. They did a lot for you. You could get your teeth done and everything. It was just great, man.” The rest of the medical system is so unsatisfactory by comparison that   Baltimoreans sometimes claim to be homeless when they’re not, just to use the clinic, he said. What happened after a 2004 car accident that broke Robert Peace’s pelvis is a glaring example of what many say is the kind of medicine that has been practiced too long in West Baltimore and what many say they are working to change. Emergency surgery at UMMC fixed the fracture. But Peace developed a persistent bone infection. He received little or no   care, he said, getting treatment only when the infection surged out of control and required repeated, expensive surgeries. ”The pain would be so intense  —   it’s like, wracking my body. I would literally sit there and shake,” he said. ”That’s when I would know I had to go to the hospital, because I knew the infection was back.” He said he required five more surgeries over a year and a half  —   the kind of return trips to the hospital, or readmissions, the health industry and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 are trying to reduce by promoting coordination between hospitals and community doctors. ”I’m blaming it on the ” said Peace, 58. ”They knew the infection wasn’t going away, but the only time they would really tend to it was when I was in the hospital.” Today Peace walks with a cane and a pronounced limp. It’s a story that’s still too common in West Baltimore, said Antoine Bennett, a lifelong Sandtown resident and an elder at New Song Community Church. ”We’ve got a joke here, but it’s a serious joke,” he said. ”If they ain’t medicating, they’re amputating or operating. But what’s missing is the care. Primary care.” When asked about Peace’s case, UMMC spokesman Michael Schwartzberg said, ”Much has changed in the Maryland hospital environment” since his surgeries. Improvements include new emphasis on preventing readmissions and ”significant investment” in care coordinators and other   management, he said. Keeping People Healthy And Out Of The Hospital, By many accounts, hospitals, doctors, health plans and governments in Annapolis, Maryland’s capital, and Washington are making unprecedented efforts to bridge the medical divide with Sandtown and the rest of   Baltimore. The grand idea is to save money and simultaneously improve lives by keeping people healthier in the community instead of letting them become ill enough to land in the hospital. Maryland undertook an ambitious overhaul of hospital reimbursement, made possible by the federal health law, that is supposed to back that philosophy with powerful incentives. Starting in 2014, hospitals have been assigned annual budgets for all government and private payers, instead of being paid per admission or treatment. The idea is to boost their motivation to contain costs by delivering preventive, community care  —   to pay them for keeping people out of the hospital. Hospitals are also getting penalized for excessive readmissions and preventable harm such as infections and accidental punctures. In October Bon Secours bought a nearby church that it intends to turn into a primary care and wellness center. UMMC and Bon Secours are working with ”transition coaches” from the Coordinating Center to make sure people leaving the hospitals take medicine and schedule   appointments. UMMC’s transition clinic serves hundreds of recently discharged patients. Maryland is developing one of the most advanced electronic networks for letting medical providers collaborate by sharing patient records. Health Care for the Homeless has opened a clinic in Bon Secours. Dr. Samuel Ross, Bon Secours’ CEO, talks about working more closely with the churches and continuing to improve the hospital’s outcomes and reputation. ”No, it’s not solved,” he said. ”We need to keep doing what we’re doing, and understand that some of this is a person at a time. There is no wholesale campaign or branding message that’s going to cause people to say, ’You’re wonderful.’ ” In 2012 Maryland’s legislature created ”health enterprise zones” to increase the supply of primary caregivers in West Baltimore and other underserved areas. UMMC puts emergency room patients in touch with a primary care doctor if they don’t have one. In September hospitals proposed taxing insurance companies, employers and other payers so they could hire up to 1, 000 caregivers directly from West Baltimore and other   communities with poor health results. The Baltimore health department is pressing hospitals to collaborate on   patients and is building ties with   neighborhoods by hiring residents, said Dr. Leana Wen, the city’s health commissioner. Baltimore’s B’more for Healthy Babies program has reduced the city’s   infant mortality rate by nearly a third since 2009, to 12. 8 per thousand births. But that’s still a fifth higher than the   rate for all of Maryland. UMMC has workshops and internships for high schoolers interested in health careers. The University of Maryland, Baltimore, got a federal grant to mentor and train West Baltimore middle schoolers to increase the number of   in health care jobs. More and more professionals echo UMB’s Perman, who said a medical professional’s duty to patients does not end at the hospital or clinic door. ”As a profession, as an industry, we have not sufficiently appreciated, let alone done something about, the impact of social determinants” such as poverty, poor housing, lack of food choices and low education, he said. ”Guys like me and gals like me can easily say, ’I made the correct diagnosis. I wrote a proper prescription. I’m done.’ What I say to my students is, if you think you’re done  —   if ’done’ means the patient is going to get better  —   you’re fooling yourself.” Poor people, however, know that between ambitions and accomplishments is a chasm of disappointment. In the face of wider primary care shortages and the difficulty for doctors to make a living in   neighborhoods, the zone fell far short of its original goal of adding 48 primary care professionals to West Baltimore. ”Some of the goals and objectives across almost all of the zones were a bit ambitious,” said Maura Dwyer, a senior policy advisor for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In 2014 People’s Community Health Center closed three nonprofit clinics for   patients in Baltimore and later entered bankruptcy proceedings, demonstrating the difficulty. Officials at Total Health Care, a federally supported nonprofit with several primary care clinics near Sandtown, say they are proud of their service to West Baltimore. ”We want to bring the standard health in this neighborhood up to national standards,” Dr. Marcia Cort, Total’s chief medical officer, told students from the Merrill College. ”We don’t want it to be the neighborhood and area [where] life expectancy is low and people are dying from preventable things.” Still, she said, ”Baltimore City is in a health crisis.” Readmission rates for Bon Secours were still the highest in the state in 2014, although the Coordinating Center’s transition coaches helped reduce them by 14 percent from the year before. But state financing to pay for the transition coaches expires at the end of March. The Coordinating Center is optimistic it will be renewed but nothing is set, Marsiglia said. In 2014 only 37 percent of surveyed Bon Secours patients ”strongly agreed” that they understood their care after they left the hospital. Many resent that it took this long for the industry to try the very solutions  —   improving primary care, giving communities resources to help themselves  —   that residents of neighborhoods like Sandtown have been advocating for years. ”Unfortunately the hospitals didn’t hear us,” said Diane   CEO of Associated Black Charities, a Maryland nonprofit. ”As a person of color giving that information  —   most people think we don’t know what we’re talking about.” Distrust of the system, still more widespread than medical officials imagine, is passing to a new generation, residents say. ”It’s a culture that has come about over time, because younger people have seen or feel like their parents and their grandparents didn’t get the best medical treatment when they went to the hospital,” said First Mount Calvary’s DeWitt. ”So they have this   attitude.” On Dec. 9, Maryland regulators shrank funding by   for the proposal made three months earlier to create hospital jobs in poorer neighborhoods. Other initiatives do little to address the low incomes and unemployment linked to Sandtown’s poor health. Nor do they simplify the shifting maze of private and government insurance plans and hospital and doctor networks that patients must navigate to get care. One example: Nearly 2, 000   Medicaid members, including many in Sandtown and nearby, had to change coverage in August or get new doctors because insurer UnitedHealthcare dropped University of Maryland Faculty Physicians from its Medicaid network in a contract dispute, said Shannon McMahon, deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. United ”had thorough continuity of care measures in place before the contract ended to ensure ongoing care was not disrupted,” said company spokesman Ben Goldstein. For many residents, enrolling in a plan is too complicated and   requiring time off from work to get coverage they don’t understand and can’t afford, said LIGHT Health’s Rock. In some ways the health law and its new coverage rules have made things more complex, she said. ”As the landscape is changing, people really just don’t know what to do,” she said. ”They sit you down with somebody that’s supposed to help you fill [an insurance application] out, which is like a Charlie Brown episode. Once you start on the second page it’s like ’Wah, wah, wah.’ You don’t hear nothing else. You walk out and it’s like, ’What happened?’ ” David Johnson, who was concerned about his blood pressure, dizziness and possible diabetes, joined Medicaid in December. It took two months, three trips to the motor vehicle bureau to get a new ID and two trips to social services to enroll. An estimated 133, 000 eligible but uninsured Marylanders still hadn’t signed up for Medicaid as of October. As of early February, Eddie Reaves, the man with diabetes who gave up applying after his second attempt, was still among them. This story is part of a reporting partnership between Kaiser Health News and University of Maryland College Park’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, which operates Capital News Service. Kaiser’s Jay Hancock and students from the school are examining how Baltimore’s respected health system serves the community where violence flared in April after Freddie Gray was fatally injured in police custody. To see all the students’ work go to the CNS website."
"Reflecting a move of 33 percentage points in the past 10 years, a majority of Americans  —   54 percent  —   currently see Cuba in a favorable light, according to Gallup. The nation’s favorability rating went up across the U. S. political spectrum, but by far the biggest gain was among Democrats. A ”strong majority” of Republicans still view Cuba unfavorably, Gallup says, with only 34 percent seeing Cuba favorably compared to 73 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of independents. ”During the past few years, Americans’ opinions about Cuba have become sharply polarized by political party,” Gallup’s Jim Norman writes, ”with the   gap in favorability more than doubling in the last two years  —   from 17 points in 2014 to 39 points today.” But because of the gains, Gallup says that for the first time since it started asking Americans about Cuba back in 1996, a majority now see the country in a favorable light. The news comes as the relationship between Cuba and the U. S. continues to thaw. On Tuesday, American and Cuban officials ”will sign a civil aviation agreement in Havana . ..   air service between the two countries for the first time in decades,” as Laura recently reported for the  . And on Sunday, Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuba’s minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, arrived in Washington to discuss business opportunities and other issues with U. S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Cuba’s Granma news service reports. The poll is based on a survey of a random sample of 1, 021 adults aged 18 and older in all 50 states, Gallup says. Taken from Feb.   the poll has a margin of error of 4 percentage points."
"In the movie Mad Max: Fury Road, a renegade, played by Charlize Theron, races away from a dictator through a hellish desert. It’s essentially a     car chase. The film isn’t your typical Oscar bait, yet it has 10 nominations. One of those is for editor Margaret Sixel. Her job began with hundreds of hours of footage. ”We figured that it would take three months just to watch footage before you could actually do any work,” she told NPR’s Ari Shapiro. ”It was a huge task, and I have to confess, some days overwhelming. But basically, how do you shape such a film? You go in every day, you bite off a little bit, you cut it to the best it can possibly be, and you start building up your cut that way.” Her husband, George Miller, directed the film after working on the story for more than a decade. Prior to Mad Max, her first action film, Sixel edited movies such as Babe: Pig in the City and the animated penguin film Happy Feet. Most movies have dialogue or other clues to help drive the story, but Mad Max is a film of few words. So Sixel’s editing was even more important. ”I mean, they call editing the last rewrite, so we don’t just merely cut shots together,” Sixel says. ”We are part of the storytelling process. And this film, I wouldn’t say it was made in the cutting room, but it certainly did depend hugely on the cutting to succeed. I mean, if it hadn’t been correctly cut, I think it could have been a dismal failure, really.” On editing with storyboards rather than the script, Well, there was actually a script of some form, but it was actually really difficult to read. And the storyboards, occasionally I’d have the storyboards there, and think, ”Oh, how does that fit there and how does that fit there,” but it ultimately wasn’t that helpful. So I just basically looked at the material that I had in front of me and made sense of that. That’s so you have no preconceived idea of what a scene should be. It’s basically, ”This is what the director shot. He might have intended something else, but this is what I feel about this footage.” So you stay more objective. On ensuring the audience didn’t get lost in the action, Well, you know, George [Miller] is, he’s big on this, so the audience can understand spatially what’s happening and you know, where your eye is, where exactly you want the audience to look. We tried as far as we possibly could to help the audience understand exactly what was going on, but ultimately, there was a very strong logic behind a lot of those stunts. So if you cut meticulously that logic was, it was there, you know, it had been thought through already by a whole bunch of other people. On the fight scene between Max and Furiosa, The fight scene between Max and Furiosa that was my first fight scene, and it was such fun to cut. It was very well choreographed, so that made it a lot of fun. It’s like a piece of ballet, really. Max grabs the gun, and he’s pinned Furiosa to the ground, and then he fires the gun in the sand around her head. You know, right at the last minute where we do the color grading and you can manipulate the image, we actually put a shake on the shot, and so as the gun goes off, it just shuddered. And we did that right then and went, ”Yeah, that’s great!” And so we went through the film and thought, ”Let’s put shake everywhere.” So we just made the film even crazier. On whether she gave the film a female vision, You know, I feel that there must be something to it. You know, I had a lot of terrific guys in the cutting room and a few of them would say, ”Maggie, it’s great that you’re doing it because, you know, we would have stopped ages ago with the explosions, and that would have been cool, and we would have been happy.” But, you know, it wasn’t enough for me. I really had to feel that it was an emotional content to a lot of the stunts and try to keep the characters in there, so, you know, maybe I did bring that quality to the film. On highlighting the emotional content of the film, I’d often think, ”OK, I’m going to look at the film and only look at the Furiosa character and see where she’s missing, where do I think she should be, what is she feeling at this particular point?” Because, you know, when you’ve got a whole lot of stunts, you can just get caught up in the action of that stunt and forget about where all your main characters are. So I would deliberately go through the film and try and keep them alive. But, you know, then I’d find a shot of the Vuvalini, who are, you know, the older women. When one of the women died in the end chase, they would make this particular sign. It was very beautiful, and in the midst of all the chaos, there was just this moment where they respected the dead Vuvalini. And it was those moments that actually brought you back to the human story, and we just paused the action there. We just let that moment hang there, which is kind of an unusual thing to do in a big action sequence. So all those moments added up, and I think gave the film an extra quality. On her reaction to the Oscar nominations, I have to be honest, we were never expecting it while we were cutting it because it being an action film. But everybody took this film so seriously  —   the production designer, the visual effects people, the sound people, music  —   you know, it was art for a lot of people. So in hindsight now I think that must be evident when people watch the film  —   that everyone tried to push the envelope a little. So when I look back now I think, ”Yeah, you know, we did all try to make something unique and different, and we didn’t copy anybody.”"
"As the Democratic presidential contest moves to Nevada for Saturday’s caucus, Hillary Clinton is playing  . Her win over Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucus was   and her defeat in New Hampshire resounding. Her lack of support from younger Democrats has been especially striking. In Iowa and New Hampshire, voters under 30 went for Sanders over Clinton by roughly 70 points. Clinton, meanwhile, had the strong support of voters over 45. Sanders’ support is more pronounced among young women especially. One survey showed women voters under 35 preferred Sanders by an almost   margin, while young men preferred him only by 4 points. So Nevada is supposed to be part of Clinton’s firewall, the place where she begins to turn things around and pull ahead of Sanders. One of her advantages is supposed to be the state’s sizable number of Latino voters. Many of them backed her in 2008 when she virtually split the state with Barack Obama. But back then, Cynthia Salgado was 9 years old. This year, she’s getting ready to vote for the first time. She was initially going to back to Clinton  —   that was all she knew. ”To be honest I wasn’t for Bernie at the beginning because I didn’t know about him,” Salgado says. Then she found a video on Facebook. ”I clicked on it, which I usually don’t do. And I saw him speak and saw how passionate he was. . .. Everything he stood for, I stood for as well. It just got to me.” Now she’s a caucus precinct captain for Sanders in North Las Vegas, a largely Latino part of town. She likes his consistency on issues, how he’s held the same positions throughout his many years in politics. She likes what he says about immigration and what he says about making public colleges  . ”I’m not sure if I’ll be attending college because of the cost,” Salgado says. ”But what I’m doing right now is fighting for my right for that education.” She says issues like education and immigration are more urgent than electing the country’s first woman president. But some older Democratic women in the state think the impact could be profound. ”It’s very important in the long run,” says    Lisa McAllister. ”I think we’ve seen that with President Obama, that he’s brought racial issues to the forefront that we need to have at the forefront. It’s more than women’s turn to have a woman in the White House.” McAllister says younger women seem to have blind spots when it comes to Clinton. ”They’re not getting the pragmatism. They’re not getting the fact that she can get it done. I love the fact that the young people are so idealistic. But there’s idealism and there’s realism, and Hillary’s about the real thing.” McAllister spoke just outside of a luncheon meeting of the Clark County Women’s Democratic Club, where she’d shared a table with    Ruby Duncan, another passionate Clinton supporter. Duncan calls Clinton ”a great woman. Ain’t no way that I’d go no other place,” she says. Duncan met Clinton in the 1970s when they were both involved with the Children’s Defense Fund. ”Hillary was a great supporter of poor women and struggling women  —   and especially hunger. Hunger was one of her things,” Duncan says. Duncan is a bit of a legend in Las Vegas for her work to desegregate the Las Vegas Strip decades ago. She feels that younger women don’t fully grasp the struggles of their mothers and grandmothers. That includes her own granddaughters and  . She’s trying to talk to them about it. ”They have a brilliant, intelligent mind,” she says. ”But they didn’t come along when the most of all of us pioneers came along. They do not understand because they got everything from us during their early years.” Now she wants to give them one more thing: the model of a woman holding the highest office in the land. She says that unlike her   she doesn’t have decades to wait and see if that happens."
"There are currently more than 200 suspected cases of Zika virus in American Samoa, local officials say, announcing that the U. S. territory has at least four confirmed cases  —   including one patient who is pregnant. The territory’s acting governor, Lt. Gov. Lemanu Peleti Mauga, ”declared a Zika epidemic for American Samoa” after consulting with health officials at the end of last week, Samoa News reports. The news was announced at the end of last week by health and government leaders in American Samoa, which has a population of around 54, 000, according to the CIA Factbook. ”What we did was that we looked up the four cases that were tested positive and went back to the record book to look at some of the cases that have the same symptom profiles,” Samoa News quotes epidemiologist Scott Anesi saying. ”So the case definition of Zika is any two of the four symptoms such as pink eye, rash, joint pain and fever. So if you have two of those four, we are going to classify that as Zika, because we know that Zika transmission is ongoing.” By declaring an epidemic, the territory is also placing its   efforts under the control of a unified command, which will be guided by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A CDC medical team is on its way to the island chain to join a CDC doctor who arrived earlier this year, according to local news site Talanei, which says officials are reviewing some 205 possible cases. In November, Samoa, the territory’s larger neighbor to the west, reported local transmission of the Zika virus  —   meaning that mosquitoes in that island nation had been infected with the virus and spread it to people, the CDC says. No vaccine for Zika currently exists, the CDC says. In addition to mosquito bites, the agency says, ”Sexual transmission of Zika virus from a male partner is possible.” You can follow NPR’s coverage of the Zika virus here. Recent stories range from the Brazilian military’s fight against the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries the virus to a timeline of how what had been thought of as a mild virus expanded its reach."
"When Marcella Lafayette started having really bad heartburn, she went to her doctor to see if there was anything that might help. ”I was experiencing a lot of chest pain, back pain caused from heartburn,” says Lafayette, 62, of Portland, Ore. Her doctor diagnosed her with gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, and prescribed a drug called a proton pump inhibitor, or PPI. The drug worked, but Lafayette soon started having other problems, such as muscle weakness and severe leg cramping. Lafayette discovered she was suffering from a magnesium deficiency, a side effect of the drug. She also learned that PPIs can cause not just deficiencies of nutrients but other side effects, such as an increased risk for infections. So Lafayette decided to try to stop using her PPI. But whenever she did, her heartburn returned. And the symptoms were much worse. ”I can’t seem to get off the drug, because when I do, I experience severe stomach pain. I can’t eat anything without experiencing stomach pain,” Lafayette says. ”It just feels like you’ve got a knife in your gut. It’s just really painful.” Lafayette is not alone. Many people have trouble discontinuing PPIs because the amount of acid in their digestive system surges when they stop taking the drug. Experiences like Lafayette’s, and rising evidence that the drugs may be associated with a variety of increased risks, are making doctors increasingly worried about their wide use. ”The teaching for many years was that these drugs were quite safe,” says John Clarke, a gastroenterologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. ”But there is data that’s emerging that suggests PPIs may not be as safe as we think they are.” An estimated 15 million Americans use PPIs, which are sold by prescription and over the counter under a variety of brand names, including Nexium, Prilosec and Prevacid. They work by blocking production of stomach acid. And that could be the root of the problem, according to Clarke. Stomach acid helps digest food and also has a ”barrier function against different pathogens which are ingested,” he says. So when there’s less stomach acid, it leaves people vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies and infections, including food poisoning like salmonella, a serious, sometimes   digestive system infection called Clostridium difficile, and perhaps pneumonia. Stomach acid also helps digest food. So if you don’t have any of that acid, it can make it hard to get the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients you need from your food  —   including nutrients that keep bones strong and prevent fractures. In addition, one recent study suggested people who take PPIs may be at greater risk of heart disease another suggested the drugs could increase the risk for chronic kidney disease. Updated Feb. 15, 11 a. m. ET: The latest concern is that PPIs might increase the risk for dementia. Britta Haenisch and colleagues at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn studied 73, 679 people ages 75 and older. The researchers found regular PPI users had at least a 44 percent increased risk of dementia compared with those not using the drugs. The researchers caution that the risk could only be considered an ”association,” until more research could be conducted to produce more conclusive evidence. But the findings indicate ”the avoidance of PPI medication may contribute to the prevention of dementia.” How PPIs might increase the risk for dementia is unclear. But other researchers recently reported that, in the brains of mice, PPIs seem to increase levels of a damaging protein that accumulates in the brains of dementia patients, known as  . In an editorial accompanying the study in the journal JAMA Neurology, Lewis Kuller of the University of Pittsburgh wrote that the findings ”provided an important and interesting challenge to evaluate the possible association,” which is a ”very important issue given” how commonly the drugs are used by the elderly, who are already at increased risk for dementia. Our original post continues: As this evidence has emerged, Clarke says, ”I think it’s imperative that people who take these drugs really make sure that they are looking at the risks versus benefit and people don’t use these drugs lightly.” Many people take PPIs when they don’t really need them, Clarke says. They could get rid of their heartburn by making lifestyle changes, such as losing weight and cutting back on alcohol, caffeine and spicy and fatty foods. And many people stay on them a lot longer than they need them, he says. PPIs are usually supposed to be taken for two to eight weeks, although doctors may recommend more. The companies that make PPIs say they’re safe for most people if they use them the way they’re supposed to. And doctors say many people really need to take a PPI for severe heartburn. ”Proton pump inhibitors do have some very positive benefits to patients,” says Kenneth DeVault, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic who is president of the American College of Gastroenterology. ”They relieve symptoms better than any other medication that has ever been developed.” The most important ”positive effect of proton pump inhibitors is restoration of a quality of life,” DeVault says. ”This is probably the big one.” PPIs may also reduce the risk for esophageal cancer for some people, he says. DeVault says if someone really needs a PPI, they should take one. But they should try everything else first, keep an eye out for any side effects, and talk to their doctor about how long they should stay on it."
"When Tom Wainwright became the Mexico correspondent for The Economist in 2010, he found himself covering the country’s biggest businesses, including the tequila trade, the oil industry and the commerce of illegal drugs. ”I found that one week I’d be writing about the car business, and the next week I’d be writing about the drugs business,” Wainwright tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”I gradually came to see that the two actually were perhaps more similar than people normally recognize.” During the three years he spent in Mexico and Central and South America, Wainwright discovered that the cartels that control the region’s drug trade use business models that are surprisingly similar to those of   stores and franchises. For instance, they have exclusive relationships with their ”suppliers” (the farmers who grow the coca plants) that allow the cartels to keep the price of cocaine stable even when crop production is disrupted. ”The theory is that the cartels in the area have what economists call a ’monopsony,’ [which is] like a monopoly on buying in the area,” Wainwright says. ”This rang a bell with me because it’s something that people very often say about  .” Wainwright describes his new book, Narconomics, as a business manual for drug lords  —   and also a blueprint for how to defeat them. When it comes to battling the cartels, Wainwright says governments might do better to focus on controlled legalization rather than complete eradication of the product. ”The choice that I think we face isn’t really a choice between a world without drugs and a world with drugs,” he says. ”I think the choice we face really is between a world where drugs are controlled by governments and prescribed by pharmacists and doctors, and a world where they’re dealt by the mafia, and given that choice, I think the former sounds more appealing.” On how the narcotics supply chain is similar to the   supply chain, They say that in certain industries,   is effectively the only buyer in the industry. So if there’s some disruption to supply, let’s say the harvest fails for apples or something like that, apple growers aren’t able to increase their prices because   is the only buyer and they say, ”Well, sorry, but this is our price and if you don’t want to sell to us, well, tough.” So the sellers have to carry on selling it at the same price as before. It seemed that something similar might be going on in the cocaine industry. . .. I was looking at the supply chain of cocaine. I went down to Bolivia, and I went to visit some of the terraces down there in the Andes where the coca leaf is grown. The coca leaf is the raw ingredient for cocaine, and all of the world’s cocaine is grown down there in the Andes in either Bolivia, Colombia or Peru. So I went down there, and I read about all the incredible work that’s being done down there to try to disrupt the cocaine supply line, and you’ll have seen footage probably of airplanes and helicopters dumping tons of   on these Andean terraces in Colombia, for instance. They’ve done lots of work on this and they’ve done a fairly effective job at making it harder to grow coca leaf. They destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares over the years, and it has made the lives of cartels more difficult on the surface, at least. And yet, I looked at the price of cocaine in the United States, and it has hardly budged. You can go back decades, and the prices remain roughly $100 per pure gram. On why an increase in the price of coca leaf doesn’t change the cost of cocaine, When you look at the economics of the supply chain, you begin to see why actually even if you could increase the price of that coca leaf, it’s doubtful that it would have very much impact on the final price of cocaine in the U. S. or in Europe. . .. To make, for instance, a kilo of cocaine, you need about a ton of coca leaf, and that ton, once it’s all dried out, in a country like Colombia will fetch perhaps $400. Now, the kilo of the United States will fetch about $100, 000. So let’s say you’re incredibly successful in managing to raise the price of coca leaf, and you manage to double it, to $800. If you then manage to transfer all of that extra cost onto the consumer, that final kilo of cocaine is only going to cost now $100, 400. In other words, you can double the price of coca leaf and you increase the price of the final product, cocaine, by less than 1 percent. . .. We’re putting all this effort into raising the price of coca leaf, when in fact that’s only a small part of the cost of the final product. On how the Mexican gang ’The Zetas’ franchise, The Zetas are one of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels, and they’ve got a reputation for being one of the nastiest ones, so when you see pictures of people who’ve been beheaded or hung up from bridges, these are often the guys who are responsible. And while I was in Mexico, the Zetas expanded more quickly than any other cartel. It was extraordinary. Originally they came from the northeast of Mexico, but within a very short space of time, they spread across all of Mexico and in fact down into Central America as well. So I got to thinking about how they’d done this, and when you look at the way that they spread, it seems that what they do is that they go to local areas and they find out who the local criminals are, people who do the drug dealing and extortion and all the other kinds of crime, and they offer them a crime, they say, ”OK, you can use our brand, you can call yourself the Zetas, just like us,” and they give them, believe it or not, baseball caps with embroidered logos and they give them   with their logo on and they train them in how to use weapons sometimes, and in return the local criminals give the Zetas a share of all of the money that they get from their criminal activity. In other words: It’s exactly like the kind of franchising model that many other   companies use. And it comes with all the same advantages and disadvantages [of franchising]. One of the big advantages is that it has allowed the Zetas to grow much more quickly. One of the disadvantages though, and this is something you often see in the legitimate franchising business, is that the franchisees often start to quarrel among each other, and the trouble is that the interest of these franchisees, the local criminals, aren’t very   with the interests of the main company. Because as far as the main company is concerned  —   and this applies whether it’s the Zetas or McDonald’s  —   if you’ve got more branches, more franchises in a local area, that means more income for the main company, because they take their money as a slice of the income of the local franchisees. But the local franchisees have totally different motives. They want to be, if possible, the only ones in the area. They want as few branches as possible. And so you’ve had very often cases of franchisees suing the main brand over what they call ”encroachment”  —   in other words, when the main brand has too many branches in the same area. On personnel issues in cartels, This was a guy . .. who I went to see in El Salvador, and he’s called Carlos Mojica Lechuga, who is the leader of one of the two big street gangs in El Salvador. There are two of them  —   one [that he’s the head of] called Barrio Dieciocho, or 18th Street Gang, as most people call it in English, and the other called the Mara Salvatrucha [ ]  —   and both of these are effectively transnational corporations, really. They make their livings dealing drugs and with extortion, principally, those are the two main business lines that they have. So I thought it would be interesting to go and speak to this guy and find out how he ran his company. So I went to see him, and he’s in jail at the moment, which doesn’t seem to be stopping him from running his business in any way. . .. We sat down and we started talking business, and it really turned out that a lot of his complaints were just like the kind of complaints that I’d heard many times before from the business people. He complained about managing his staff, he complained about competition with his rivals, he complained about his image in the international media. It was really strangely reminiscent of speaking to a kind of frustrated midlevel manager. On how government legalization   regulation of drugs affect cartels, There’s an interesting example underway in Switzerland where they’ve legalized heroin, which sounds crazy. But it’s worth making clear that when they legalized it, they haven’t put it on sale in the way that marijuana is on sale in Denver they’ve just legalized it by allowing doctors to prescribe it to people who are already addicted, and it’s had quite an interesting effect there, because many of the people who are addicted to heroin in Switzerland and indeed in other countries are people who deal the drug, because you’re addicted to this drug, it’s a very expensive habit, and for many people the only way they can afford it is to deal it on the side. So in Switzerland what they found is that by taking those very   addicts into treatment, they’ve stopped them from dealing the drug, because now they get their own drug free of charge from their doctors, and because they’re no longer out there on the streets dealing the drug, the number of new users has dropped dramatically. So in Switzerland, funnily enough, since they ”legalized” heroin in this very, very limited, restricted, controlled way, the number of new users has actually fallen quite a lot and, of course, the illegal supply has dried up almost entirely, because the supply is now run by the government."
"Hunger is not the only reason we eat sweets. Often we eat as a way to celebrate, or sometimes we reach for food when we’re sad or bored. And a study published this month in the journal Environment and Behavior points to another factor that can nudge us to eat: clutter. ”The notion that places  —   such as cluttered offices or disorganized homes  —   can be modified to help us control our food intake is becoming an important solution in helping us become more slim by design,” report Brian Wansink of Cornell University and his colleagues in their   of the study. ”It’s important to know whether a food environment can actually cause you to, unknowingly, overeat,” Wansink told us. So, in order to examine how clutter and chaos can influence what  —   and how much  —   people eat, Wansink and his collaborators designed an experiment. They set up two kitchens. One kitchen was neat and tidy. The other was strewn with mail, newspapers and dirty dishes. ”It was a mess,’” Wansink said. Then, they recruited women to participate in the study. ”We brought 100 people into [the] kitchens  —   just one at a time,” he explained. The participants were given a writing assignment. Some were told to write about a time they felt out of control. Others were to write about a time when they felt in control. The participants were also given snacks  —   including cookies, crackers and carrots. (The snacks were the same in both kitchens.) And all were told: ”Feel free to eat as much as you want, because we have tons of this food.” Among women who wrote about feeling out of control, those in the messy kitchen tended to consume twice as many calories from cookies as women in the tidy kitchen. (Those in the messy kitchens averaged 103 calories worth of cookies.) ”We think we’re smarter than the environment around us,” Wansick said. ”That’s why these external cues are so powerful.” We’re often not aware that they’re influencing our behavior. In the cluttered kitchen, the scientists also found that women who wrote about a time when they felt in control consumed fewer calories from cookies (averaging 38 calories) than did the women who wrote about a time when they were out of control. ”The results suggest that an individual’s mindset can moderate the impact of a chaotic environment on food intake, particularly for sweet foods,” the authors write. A chaotic environment didn’t significantly impact consumption of the carrots or crackers. So, how might these findings translate to a messy desk? After all, many of us do a lot of snacking at the office. ”This study makes a lot of connections to workplace environments,” Kathleen Vohs, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, who has studied how messy desks or rooms can influence behavior, told us. ”Messy rooms are, sort of, enabling people to break free from what’s expected of them,” she said. A few years ago Vohs published the results of an experiment that placed participants either in a messy setting with papers and office supplies scattered throughout, or in a   room. She found that people in the orderly room were more inclined than those in the messy room to choose a healthy snack  —   an apple. ”The results confirmed the prediction that an orderly environment leads to more desirable, normatively good behaviors,” she and her   write in their study published in Psychological Science. The authors of the ”cluttered kitchen” research admit that, though it certainly seemed as though writing about an event when they felt out of control made the participants feel more stressed, their study didn’t directly measure that. ”It will be important for future research to determine the specific emotional or cognitive mechanisms through which these conditions can impact people’s food intake,” they conclude."
"An international flight was forced to return to Heathrow Airport Sunday night, after a pilot was hit in the eye by a laser beam aimed into the cockpit. ”Aircraft are attacked with lasers at an alarming rate and with lasers with   strength,” the British Airline Pilots Association said after the incident. More than 250 people were aboard the Virgin Atlantic flight when it took off from London  —   but that’s when ”a crew member contacted air traffic control to say the   had a medical issue after being struck by a laser,” Larry Miller reports from London for our Newscast unit. ”Authorities are trying to identify who was responsible,” Larry says. Air traffic control officials were informed of the incident in a radio transmission that was then placed on the LiveATC. net website. The crew member requested a route back to the airport for the flight, VS25 passengers were put up in hotels after their flight was postponed overnight, the BBC reports. The incident underlines the safety risks posed to aircraft by lasers, says BALPA General Secretary Jim McAuslan. The pilots’ group has urged the British government to classify lasers as offensive weapons, a step that it says would make it easier for police to pursue laser owners who abuse the devices. ”It is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. Shining a laser at an aircraft puts that aircraft, its crew and all the passengers on board at completely unnecessary risk,” McAuslan says in a statement about Sunday night’s flight. He added, ”Modern lasers have the power to blind, and certainly to act as a huge distraction and to dazzle the pilots during critical phases of flight.”"
"Of the 2. 5 million Syrians to whom Turkey has opened its borders, some are in camps and receive help from the government and major charity operations. But most are in cities and towns across the country, and a small army of ordinary Turks keeps some of them going, week by week, family by family. One such group of humanitarian volunteers met on a recent Sunday afternoon at a commercial warehouse that does weekend duty as an   area. It’s an eclectic mix of Turks and a few expats. Many met online in response to an appeal by a cheerful woman helping to load sacks of food into her car. Zeynap Kurmus Hurbas still can’t believe this improvised operation is actually working. ”We never thought we could do it. We still don’t believe we could do it!” she says with a laugh. Last fall, after seeing one too many heartbreaking pictures of dead Syrian children on social media, Hurbas suddenly decided not to be just one more voice of online sympathy. She sent out an appeal on her Facebook page offering to coordinate aid deliveries in Istanbul if others would help. The next thing she knew, virtually all her time away from her job at a private school was being spent bringing food, clothes, even coal for winter heat to hundreds of families depending on her and her friends. Now that they’re attracting more attention, there’s a new email contact for English speakers wanting to help: refugeehelpistanbul@gmail. com. She makes it sound simple. ”We put a post on Facebook saying, ’This weekend, we’re going to give food and baby clothes and stuff to X amount of families,’ ” she says. ”So people just buy things online and just send them to our depot here.” She’s not fond of her online nickname, the ”angel without wings.” She’d rather talk about all the other people who are doing similar work around the country, groups like the Cesme Initiative, which feeds hundreds of Syrians on the Aegean coast, or the People’s Bridge, which helps refugees with legal issues. Hurbas is perplexed by people who are happy to post distressing photos and stories on social media without doing anything to help. But she also appreciates how quickly social media helped her find others in Istanbul who were just waiting for a chance to contribute. She waves as another woman approaches and calls her over. Valerie Tasiran, from Fresno, Calif. is married to a Turk and has lived in Istanbul for more than a decade. She says it was the noticeable increase in panhandlers in her neighborhood that got her thinking there must be a better way to help than handing out coins at random on the street. ”Is it doing ultimate good? Is it going to children?” she asks. ”And so I wanted something more organized. My mom, who lives in the U. S. also wanted to direct some aid to refugees.” Tasiran says when she saw a post on Twitter about this aid effort springing up, she immediately joined in. The group finds the neediest families by working through neighborhood community centers. This week the sacks of food find their way to a center started by Syrian Kurds who fled the Islamic State’s advance. These days it serves families from Syria, as well as Turkish Kurds displaced by fighting in the country’s southeast. ’I Get Upset’ The next stop is a neighborhood of textile factories, where many Syrians have    jobs. A disturbing story waits in one of the drafty cement apartment blocks. At the door, Hurbas hangs back, saying she’ll wait outside. Inside, Syrian Derar   tall and barefoot, offers visitors a seat on the mismatched furniture donated by neighbors. He tries his basic English to explain the situation, which sounds dire. ”My son, every day bleeding, every day bleeding,” he says. ”You need bone marrow transplantation.”    Abdulatif   is busy playing a video game on the couch and doesn’t look up. He has a rare disorder called acquired aplastic anemia, basically a failure of the bone marrow that can produce harrowing symptoms. Jasem’s phone is full of pictures of his son bleeding from the nose and mouth, and under his skin. And here’s the excruciating twist: Abdulatif needs a bone marrow transplant, and the most likely donor match is his older brother, Abdullah. Abdullah was right there with them several months ago, when the family boarded a smuggler’s boat bound for Greece. Their plan was to reach relatives in Germany. But when other passengers saw Abdulatif bleeding heavily, his parents had to take him off the boat, leaving the    Abdullah to go on alone. Somehow he made it to his uncles in Germany, and the   have been waiting for permission to join them. By this time Hurbas has slipped into the room, unable to stay away. She’s quietly comforting Abdulatif’s distraught mother, who seems delighted to see her. But as she gets back to her car, Hurbas is visibly shaken. It’s a sharp reminder that these are not professional aid workers trained to deal with the anguishing stories they encounter on the job. ”Yeah, I try not to go in because I get upset,” Hurbas says. ”I used to go in and know everybody’s names, and get in touch with them, but then they start dying and . ..” There’s a pause while she collects herself. ”You just have to find a way to distance yourself from the whole thing,” she finally says with a little shake of her head. She starts the car and heads off to the next family, on a mission of mercy that seems to have no end. When asked how long she can keep this up, Hurbas says she tries not to think about that, because these families and those who follow are likely to need help for years to come."
"President Obama wants kids to learn to code. So much so, he’s pledged billions of dollars to teach them. ”Now we have to make sure all our kids are equipped for the jobs of the future  —   which means not just being able to work with computers, but developing the analytical and coding skills to power our innovation economy,” he said in his radio address on Jan. 30. And adults are looking to learn, too. Coding academies, or ”boot camps,” are cropping up across the country, promising to teach students to code in a few months or even a few weeks. But computers are not just about coding. There’s also a lot of theory  —   and science  —   behind technology. And those theoretical concepts form the basis of much of computer science education in colleges and universities. Lisa Singh, an associate professor at Georgetown University, stands behind that theoretical approach. ”We now need to train everybody to understand the basics of computer science,” she says, ”and I don’t equate it to just coding. I equate it to principles of thinking.” There are ways of approaching problems, for example, or of structuring data, that help students program more effectively and more thoughtfully. If coding boot camps may downplay the theory, though, Singh admits that many university classes are heavy on it. At Georgetown, classes in cybersecurity or data structures train computer science majors how to use mathematical proofs to solve problems and to understand the limitations of their solutions. Singh doesn’t think that   need to cover all of these concepts. But there’s a certain way of approaching computers, something she calls ”algorithmic thinking,” that she thinks every student should learn. She wants to teach them to break problems down into a series of steps, an approach that requires some theoretical knowledge. At the end of their education, she thinks students should know, ”what the heck is an algorithm and why do I care about an algorithm,” she says. ”Because if you don’t understand that, the fact that you can code something up, it doesn’t have the same meaning to you. You’re not thinking about that problem the same way.” Not everyone agrees. Gene Chorba, a student at Georgia State University, works   for a   startup. ”In the traditional collegiate learning experience,” he says, ”you sit in a classroom, you’re given a book you spend hundreds of dollars on, and most of the information you learn is never used.” He says his company has stopped recruiting at career fairs. Instead Chorba does recruiting at hackathons, where students code applications and gadgets they can show prospective employers. He was at a hackathon last month at Georgetown that drew more than 300 students from all over the country for a   event. A sophomore from the University of Maryland, Jenny Mandl, was there, too. She disagrees with Chorba’s views. ”There’s so many things that you learn in your classes that you wouldn’t have otherwise gone to find,” she argues. ”That’s one of the main things that creates creativity.” For their hackathon project, Mandl and three classmates worked on a robot designed to play   . It’s a mix of   with a mechanical arm made from a   printer, and    —   rubber bands and electrical tape. They’re trying to get the bot to read the moves a player makes on a paper game board, and then to draw its own moves in response. All of this requires programming, which isn’t emphasized in the classroom. But Mandl insists that she needed the skills and techniques she learned in her courses, too."
"The presidential candidates are wrestling with the issue of political money, which emerged as a bigger issue this cycle than in any presidential race since the 1970s. Bernie Sanders started last week’s Democratic debate with this point: ”We have today a campaign finance system which is corrupt, which is undermining American democracy, which allows Wall Street and billionaires to pour huge sums of money into the political process.” And Hillary Clinton, closing the debate, said, ”We agree that we’ve gotta get unaccountable money out of politics.” But they never got to the hard part, said Nick Penniman, director of Issue One, a group building coalitions for new campaign finance laws. ”You’ve got Bernie, making this one of the two major themes of his campaign,” Penniman said. ”But when he talks about solutions, he just talks about ending Citizens United.” Citizens United is the 2010 Supreme Court decision that gave set the stage for superPACs and politically active   organizations, with their   donors. Penniman said of Clinton, ”In a kind of ’me too’ way, Hillary will mention that she also thinks money in politics is a problem. But she hasn’t spoken much about her solutions.” The candidates’ campaign finance agendas are nearly identical. They call for more transparency for   groups, and public financing to boost the impact of small donors. But those require legislation, and Congress has rejected similar proposals in the past six years. Clinton and Sanders also target Citizens United. They say they would nominate Supreme Court justices who would overturn the ruling. They also vow to push for a constitutional amendment, empowering Congress to limit political spending. Amending the Constitution requires   majorities in both the House and Senate, plus ratification by 38 states. But that can take years. Penniman said the Democratic candidates are focusing on the wrong things. ”The fact that the dialogue is way out there talking about either amending the Constitution or overturning a Supreme Court decision suppresses the very real focus that we need right now, which is on the stuff that we can get passed regardless of the Supreme Court,” he told NPR. Republicans are having their own debate on campaign finance laws. Like Sanders, Donald Trump has made money in politics one of the biggest targets of his campaign  —   and an emblem of his outsider status. He has called superPACs ”horrible” and insists the separation between candidates and the independent groups backing them is a charade. Trump says he supports campaign finance reform, though a specific plan is not available on his website. When he launched his campaign in June, Trump promised supporters that he would inoculate himself from the influence of donors. ”I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich,” Trump said. He regularly tells crowds, ”I don’t want your money. I want your vote,” as he did in Pendleton, S. C. on Wednesday. Trump’s campaign did bring in nearly $7 million in contributions according to the most recent campaign finance reports, which tracked donations through the end of 2015. But the Trump campaign has asked superPACs using his name to shut down. The candidate with the most support from a superPAC, Jeb Bush, criticized Citizens United while campaigning in New Hampshire before the primary there, telling a rally, ”I would turn that on its head if I could.” Like several other GOP hopefuls, Bush said he wants to eliminate superPACs and let candidates accept unlimited contributions. Federal election law caps money to candidates as an   measure  —   a stance that has survived several Supreme Court challenges. Bush also said he wants contributions to be disclosed within 48 hours. At Take Back Our Republic, a conservative group working for stronger campaign finance laws, director John Pudner shares Penniman’s complaint about the candidates. ”I think focusing on the whole campaign finance reform on Citizens United can be a ” he said in an interview. ”There are plenty of measures that can be taken even within that framework to clean up the disastrous campaign finance system we have now.” As one example, both Issue One and Take Back Our Republic want President Obama to sign an executive order requiring federal contractors disclose their political giving. The White House has hinted that such a measure could be coming. Republican leadership on Capitol Hill opposes the idea, along with other transparency proposals."
"Police in Australia say they unraveled a drug smuggling ring that used brassiere inserts,   numbers kits and other items to conceal 720 liters (about 190 gallons) of liquid methamphetamine. But not everyone agrees on the drugs’ value. More than a quarter of the seized meth was found ”inside thousands of silicon bra inserts amongst the consignment of 86 boxes,” according to the federal police. Announcing the bust, the Australian Federal Police’s Joint Organized Crime Group says that the drugs have ”an estimated potential street value of more than a billion dollars.” We’ll note that at today’s exchange rate, the $1. 26 billion in Australian dollars that was cited by police is equal to about $900 million here in the U. S. The official figure quickly drew scrutiny from critics, who say the police are valuing the drugs at a much higher rate than they have in the past. Australia’s ABC network reports, ”the AFP’s claim that the drugs were worth more than $1 billion is under scrutiny, with analysis of ice seizures publicized as recently as last month showing police are valuing Monday’s haul at nearly four times the price they have used following earlier raids.” When pressed about how the seized drugs were valued, a police spokesman said the agency had used ”a new ’upper range’ method of calculating drug prices,” the ABC’s Lucy Carter reports. Police also say that any value assigned to the drugs is now moot  —   because they won’t be hitting the streets for resale. The drug bust follows a police operation focusing on how illegal drugs travel from Asia to Australia. Working with a variety of Australian agencies as well as Chinese authorities, investigators uncovered the drugs at storage facilities in four different cities. The suspects include three Hong Kong nationals and one China national. If convicted, they could face lifetime prison terms."
"The second season of Better Call Saul begins Monday night. The first, which concluded last spring, came down to one word: hustle. And, more specifically, that season came down to the story of hustle that isn’t quite enough. Throughout that season, Jimmy McGill, the     striver we know is destined for an unscrupulous future as Breaking Bad’s criminal lawyer Saul Goodman, hustles constantly. While his early days involved   scamming (pretending to fall and hurt himself in order to con unsuspecting bystanders into a settlement) most of his adult life is spent doing ordinary things lots of   folks do every day  —   things it takes to survive. He pretends he has a secretary. He begs for the     public defender cases because it’s the only business he can drum up. But he’s trying. In an effort to put an unsavory adolescence behind him, Jimmy consistently chooses the difficult but honest path. He thinks and rethinks the moral consequences of his actions, and when faced with two choices, he almost always ends up choosing the one that is harder to do but easier to live with having done. Part of what makes Jimmy’s uphill battle  —   the one we know is uphill because of the distinctive structure of the show as a prequel to Breaking Bad  —   so hard to watch is exactly how familiar that hustle is. Anyone who is scraping by who wants any chance at changing his station in life has to work every channel and create every opportunity, hoping for a better outcome than Jimmy is going to get. And for a lot of people, at least something about Jimmy’s story resonates. While Jimmy worked to build his career, he lived in the back of a nail salon. While I worked an unpaid internship to build mine, I was a   housekeeper or rented a room in a boarding house. Jimmy develops a persona to cater to elderly female clients I developed a persona to make some extra tips while working as a cocktail waitress. Most folks have, at some point, forced themselves to smile through one rejection after the other and keep on moving. Anyone who has undertaken that hustle wants it to work, wants it to be enough. So it’s the familiarity with the aspiration to goodness that makes it sadder when, in the season finale, we see the ambitious, charming and principled Jimmy just beginning to turn into the skeezy lawyer for crooks we’ve always known he’ll become. It’s sadder when you see yourself in him and you know where it’s going. Jimmy tries really, really hard, after all, to make an honest living. He wants desperately to pull himself up by his bootstraps the way he thinks he should, but each time he does what he’s supposed to, the thing that is difficult and arduous and moral, he gets the short end of the stick. He goes home to an office in a broom closet that smells like acetone, and to a phone that never blinks with messages from clients. Jimmy never sees good karma catching up with him. So when he reflects as he did last season on giving up somewhere around $800, 000 in the name of justice and acknowledges that the only thing that stopped him was a sense of moral obligation, he says with complete defeat, ”It’s never stopping me again.” There’s likely a queasy feeling of recognition in anyone who has felt dangerously close to this point, let alone anyone who has ever reached it. What if we had been rejected just one more time? What if one amazing opportunity presented itself and all we had to do was not worry about the ethics? What if there was just one more setback and we truly needed the money to get by? In our first glimpse of Jimmy in the season two trailer, we hear him say, ”I’ve been doing the right thing for all these years now. And where has it gotten me? Nowhere.” If you’ve been just one or two bad days away from slipping into the position where Jimmy finds himself, Jimmy is you without your support system, without anything to fall back on, and without any reason left to believe that doing the right thing is valuable or valued. The pain of watching Jimmy become Saul is unlikely to get less familiar or less painful in season two."
"Updated at 7 p. m. ET, Attacks hit two hospitals in northwest Syria Monday morning, killing at least 50 people and leaving tens of thousands of residents without medical care. The hospitals are about 75 miles apart one of them is supported by Doctors Without Borders  —   also known as MSF. ”This appears to be a deliberate attack on a health structure, and we condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms,” said Massimiliano Rebaudengo, MSF’s head of mission in Syria. The group says at least seven people were killed in the attack on its hospital. In a separate attack in the town of Azaz   —   less than five miles from the Turkish border in Aleppo province  —   a missile hit a children’s hospital and killed at least five people, the AP reports. The news agency adds that in a nearby village, ”an air raid hit a school, killing seven and wounding others.” In Azaz, residents and a medic tell Reuters, ”at least five missiles hit the hospital in the town center and a nearby school, where refugees fleeing a major Syrian army offensive were sheltering.” Farther south, an attack in Syria’s Idlib province demolished a   hospital, with a series of strikes coming in quick succession, the international aid group says. Eight staff members are currently listed as missing at the hospital, which MSF says provided 30 beds and two operating rooms, along with an emergency room. MSF had been paying the costs of running the hospital since last September. Discussing the strike, Massimiliano said, ”The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of around 40, 000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict.” Both Russia and Turkey have been bombarding parts of northern Syria  —   despite the announcement of a   plan late last week. Over the weekend, ”Turkish forces shelled Kurdish positions in northern Syria  —   targeting Kurdish fighters who are seen as allies by the United States,” as Camila reported for the  . And Russia has bombed rebels in the same area, trying to support Syrian President Bashar Assad. Turkey will not allow the Azaz district to fall under Kurdish control in northern Syria, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says, according to the country’s Anadolu news agency. Russia says it will continue to conduct airstrikes in Syria ”even if the Syrian ceasefire agreement is reached,” deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov says, according to the TASS news agency. Gatilov also dismissed accusations of Russia targeting groups other than ISIS in Syria, saying, ”As for the allegations suggesting that we deliver airstrikes on targets other than IS, there is no evidence confirming this.”"
"There’s no shortage of contemporary writing about New York. While that’s not surprising  —   it’s the largest city in the country, and has always had a special hold on the American imagination  —   it sometimes seems like it’s hard to find new fiction not set in the five (but usually just two) boroughs. That’s a problem for aspiring novelists who couldn’t care less about the city, but it’s also one for New York writers struggling to find something new to say about their hometown.   Kristopher Jansma, author of the stunning new novel Why We Came to the City, is not afflicted with this problem. His book is both a love note and a breakup letter to New York, and he captures perfectly the way young people give themselves to the city, and what the city gives to  —   and takes from  —   them. A novelist is lucky if he can hook a reader in the first 20 pages. Jansma does this in his first few lines: ”We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died.” The ”we” here is a   group of college friends who moved to New York five years before the novel begins. There’s Sara, a journalist and the group’s de facto leader, and her boyfriend, George, an astronomer struggling with addiction. They still keep in close touch with Jacob, a hospital orderly (”Once Jacob had written poetry, but now he was just a poet”) and Irene, a sculptor and art gallery employee. The novel begins at a New Year’s party, where those four run into William, a college acquaintance and investment banker who has nursed a crush on Irene for a long time. Sara and George get engaged, William and Irene hook up, and there’s an electric feeling as the group, heavily intoxicated on camaraderie and alcohol, welcomes January. But the good feelings don’t last long. Irene is diagnosed with bone cancer and forced to undergo draining chemotherapy sessions. Her friends, stunned, stumble through their changed lives  —   George tries to confront his drinking problem Jacob avoids confronting his relationship issues (his boyfriend is also his boss). It’s difficult, on many levels, to write a convincing novel about a person facing a serious illness. Things can get maudlin quickly, and it’s tempting to substitute   sentimentality in place of real emotional resonance. But Jansma doesn’t make a false move. He explores Irene’s treatment with compassion and honesty  —   it can be difficult to read, but it’s always rewarding. He is similarly adept at writing about the dynamics of friendships, which are always more complex than we assume. These aren’t sitcom friends they’re imperfect, occasionally annoying, and there’s not always hugging and reconciliation at the end of a fight. Jacob, in particular, is witty and occasionally sweet, but he ”could be a jerk when he wanted to be, and he nearly always wanted to be.” Only the luckiest groups of friends have never had to deal with a crisis at some point, and disasters have a way of altering the architecture of relationships permanently. The group of friends in Why We Came to the City aren’t immune to that. After Irene becomes ill, there’s a dramatic change in all their conversations, all their interactions: ”Like old wood, we splintered apart at the slightest touch until we were nothing but tiny slivers stuck inside each other’s fingertips.” What makes Jansma’s novel special, though, is his characters’ relationships with New York. ”Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry,” he writes in the beginning. After Irene’s diagnosis, though, that all changes, and their thoughts turn to leaving New York behind: ”And only when we finally got up, threw on our clothes and walked away did we realize that we had all been gone for years already.” It’s that kind of observation that makes Why We Came to the City such a beautiful, sprawling and generous book. Jansma is a brilliantly talented writer, but he also has a unique insight into what friends mean to one another, and what it means to be part of a city in which you never quite belong, but can’t quite bring yourself to leave. It’s a heartfelt novel, tender and painful and cathartic all at once, and even if the characters belong to New York, the story belongs to us all."
"As a physics major at Yale in the 1970s, Eileen Pollack learned about gravitation and quantum mechanics and ballistics. She also learned what it’s like to be The Only Woman in the Room, the title of her new book, published by Beacon Press last September. Unfortunately, many women with interests in science, mathematics and engineering (among other subjects) will relate to Pollack’s experience of being in a conspicuous minority. According to statistics provided by the American Physical Society, women today make up fewer than 25 percent of physics majors, with lower numbers at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels. These numbers come from 2015  —   several decades after Pollack’s own undergraduate experience. Plenty of smart people have sought to understand and address women’s underrepresentation in these fields. Since 1990, for example, the National Academies have supported a standing committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine, tasked with coordinating, monitoring and advocating action ”to increase the participation of women in science, engineering, and medicine.” And in an influential book called ”Why So Slow?” psychologist Virginia Valian reviews research on the subtle forms of bias that influence the trajectories of women’s careers. Pollack’s book contributes to the conversation about women in science, but not by marshaling evidence from empirical research, nor by developing a detailed policy agenda. She offers bits of evidence and advice here and there, but the book’s strength is in the   narrative that gives us a vicarious glimpse into the mind of the only woman in the room as she navigates her coursework, her social life and her career plans. If other books answer questions about where biases emerge or what we should do about them, Pollack’s book answers the question: ”What is it like?” The story begins with Pollack’s youth in the Catskill Mountains. By age 10, she’d visited the General Electric Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair (”nothing in my childhood,” she writes, ”excited me half as much”) and she’d appropriated a chemistry set given to her brother for his bar mitzvah. But her early interest and precocious abilities in math and science received little academic or social support. She lacked the encouragement, mentorship and community of peers that many of her male counterparts could take for granted, and she was repeatedly steered in more socially acceptable directions. When she and two male peers received high marks on a math test, the boys were advanced a grade level, while she was deemed insufficiently ”well socialized” to do the same. As an undergraduate at Yale, Pollack excelled academically but struggled with the material and with her own sense of inadequacy. The male students worked on problem sets together and developed some sense of shared norms they knew when other students were also struggling, and what level of performance was ”good” or even exceptional. Pollack, by contrast, worked in isolation, with little encouragement or sense of her own standing. In a poignant passage, she explains how her isolation as the only woman also prevented her from developing positive relationships with her few female peers. When she learns that a neighbor in her dorm is also a female physics major, she describes the discovery as one she might have found comforting if she hadn’t found it so threatening. ”If a person’s   derives from being the only woman in the field,” Pollack writes, ”how much affection can she feel toward another woman who might challenge that claim to fame?” As Pollack’s undergraduate training advances, she discovers a different world at Yale: the world of writers. She not only receives clear and explicit praise for her abilities as a writer, but also finds a community of supportive peers. When it comes time to choose between doctoral training in theoretical physics or going on as a writer, it’s writing that wins. Though Pollack’s own career ends in success  —   as an author and teacher  —   the dominant narrative is about her failure in physics, not her discovery as a writer. The failure doesn’t come from poor grades or explicit rejection, but something more subtle. If science is a boy’s club, the door isn’t exactly closed in her face  —   but neither is she ever invited in. For the final third of the book, Pollack moves away from her own experience to consider the experiences of young women today. She visits Yale and she interviews women pursuing degrees in physics and related disciplines. What she finds is a source of both hope and dismay. Some things have changed  —   including more tutoring, bootcamps and academic support. But many have not, including the subtle social forces that can make it difficult for young women to identify as scientists and work with male peers in the lab. Overall, Pollack’s book is valuable as an honest recounting of one woman’s experience pursuing training in science. But it’s not a book about why women in general fail to pursue careers in science. It’s more personal memoir than scientific monograph. Pollack’s focus on the particular has some dangers. For one, it invites   from Pollack’s own case. Not all young women in physics, for example, develop crushes on their male instructors (as Pollack did repeatedly) or feel poorly equipped for lab work. But the power of Pollack’s book also stems from the particular. By walking us through her journey from a   perspective, Pollack provides something the statistics, empirical studies and policy proposals often leave out: the feeling of what it’s like to be the only woman in the room, and what it can mean for one’s identity and decisions. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"President Obama said Tuesday that despite Republican vows to block him, he will nominate a successor to Justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly on Saturday. Obama spoke during a news conference after a summit with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Rancho Mirage, Calif. but the first questions from reporters were about filling the empty Supreme Court seat. Obama offered his condolences to the Scalia family and called the judge a ”giant” on the court before reiterating remarks from earlier this week, saying he intended to ”do his job” as president and nominate a replacement. ”The Constitution is pretty clear about what is supposed happen. When there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the president is supposed to nominate someone, the Senate is to consider that nomination and either they disapprove of that nominee or that nominee is elevated to the Supreme Court,” he said. ”Historically, this has not been viewed as a question.” Obama characterized the rhetoric from Republicans  —   Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called for the next president to nominate the replacement and others have said they would refuse to hold a hearing to consider any Obama nomination  —   as ”a measure of how, unfortunately, the venom and rancor in Washington has prevented us from getting basic work done.” ”This would be a good moment for us to rise above that,” Obama said. Obama was also asked about Justice Samuel Alito’s contentious confirmation in 2006. The questioner noted Alito was nominated by President George W. Bush and during the Senate review process, Democrats, including  . Obama, filibustered to block a vote. ”How judicial nominations have evolved over time is not historically the fault of any single party,” Obama said. ”This has become just one more extension of politics.” And, he pointed out, Alito ”is on the bench right now.”"
"The White House isn’t offering any names of potential nominees to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia, but it is offering a few clues. ”I’d urge you to take a look at the two Supreme Court justices that the president has already nominated and successfully got confirmed to the bench,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters Monday. He was referring to Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic, and Elena Kagan, just the fourth woman, to serve on the court. ”I’d also urge you to look at the several hundred judges the president has nominated and successfully confirmed to the lower courts,” Schultz added. Those judges include more women (132) more blacks (nine) more Hispanics (35) more   (20) and more gay (11) judges than any prior president. Senate Republicans are quickly lining up behind Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to block any consideration of Obama’s nominee, but the president has generally sent the Senate nominees who could overcome the   hurdle usually required for   nominations. Sotomayor was confirmed   Kagan  . Speculative nominees like D. C. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan sailed through   9th Circuit Judge Paul Watford,  . ”I’d say the president’s judicial nominees are all eminently qualified with a record of excellence and integrity,” Schultz said. ”The president looks for individuals who have impeccable credentials.” A qualified, diverse judge could tap into identity politics in an election year where Democrats need to boost turnout in their coalition populated by minorities, women and younger voters. It also underscores how big of a political gamble McConnell is taking this year. He is betting that not only will Republicans hold the Senate, they will win the White House and the GOP will get to name Scalia’s successor. He is also betting that blocking a Supreme Court nominee and allowing a vacancy to linger on the court for a year or more will not repel voters come November. But if Democrats win the White House, the Senate, or both, Republicans may ultimately end up with a Supreme Court nominee who is far more liberal by tossing the Republicans’ argument in their faces: The voters have spoken. For now, the more immediate question may be: Who would even want this nomination? Never before has a president asked a Supreme Court nominee to walk into a political buzz saw quite like this. Yes, prior nominations have been scuttled, and past nominees have been picked apart by the confirmation process, but it happened after the president tapped them for the court. Obama is essentially asking someone to knowingly enter into what is likely to be an unprecedented time delay during which their professional and personal lives will be picked over and examined by the media and   political opponents. And, at the end of it all, their reward is that they may still stand no chance of confirmation after serving as a political punching bag, and with no way to predict the whims of the next president. In 2005,   Alito broke down in tears and left the Senate Judiciary Committee during tough, but customary, questioning of her husband, Samuel Alito. It highlighted how tough the confirmation process can be on families. For Alito, his    window was 82 days. Obama says he will announce his nomination soon. If Senate Republicans hold firm and block that nomination, the president is essentially asking the nominee to twist in the political winds for the better part of a year."
"Antonin Scalia’s body wasn’t cold before his seat on the U. S. Supreme Court became tangled up in partisan politics. Here are five ways Scalia’s death is complicating the 2016 election. 1. Obama looms even larger: After two terms, this election was always going to be a referendum on the Obama presidency. The upcoming nomination battle (even if the Republicans refuse to hold hearings or votes on the nominee, there will still be a battle) will make that even more obvious. Hillary Clinton is a  . For all intents and purposes, she’s running for Obama’s third term. The Republican candidates are arguing that they have to rescue the country from all the damage they believe Obama has done. This makes that fight exponentially more intense. Up until now, the only court vacancies Obama has had to fill are ones left by liberals. This is a chance for him to change the balance of power on the court, so it makes the remainder of his presidency much more consequential and much more controversial  —   with repercussions for all the campaigns. 2. Obama’s choice to try to put Republicans in a box: The GOP pledge to block any Obama nominee makes this a very unusual nomination. The chances of confirmation are so slim that Obama could, if he wanted to, pick someone to merely send a political message. But that’s unlikely. For the White House, picking the most qualified, broadly acceptable, history making nominee  —   not unlike Sonia Sotomayor  —   might just be the best way to help Democrats make the case that Republicans are being obstructionist. The Republican promise not to have hearings or votes on any nominee might affect the president’s choice in another way  —   it may make it harder to find someone willing to be nominated just to be a sacrificial lamb, unless there’s a Democratic president in 2017 and maybe a Democratic Senate.  3. The Democratic primary: Right now, both Clinton and Bernie Sanders are saying the same thing  —   the Senate should vote on the president’s nominee. But the debate in the Democratic primary is all about pragmatism versus idealism. It’s possible that if Obama nominates someone who, under different political circumstances, could get 60 votes, that person might not be liberal enough to satisfy Sanders, for example, if they ever represented big corporations. But that’s assuming Sanders wants to break with Obama on the Supreme Court just as he is trying to appeal to   voters in the South. 4. Unintended consequences for the GOP: Did Mitch McConnell make a mistake when he did what the GOP base wanted him to? It’s possible that a   battle to block whoever is the nominee could backfire. That will depend on how broadly acceptable the nominee is and whether   voters think that ”delay, delay, delay” is a responsible strategy. The Democrats are busy trying to make Republicans look very extreme. McConnell’s strategy could throw a monkey wrench into Republican leaders’ plans to show voters they have a positive, constructive governing agenda. Back when McConnell became majority leader he said he wanted to show the American people that if Republicans had control of both houses of Congress and the White House it wouldn’t be ”scary.” Then there are the senators up for   in blue states. Most all of them have signed on to McConnell’s strategy, but to refuse to hold hearings or even a vote might strike some voters as obstructionist. The GOP has the votes it needs to reject a nominee  —   it’s highly unlikely that 14 senators would side with all the Democrats for a   majority. For the GOP primary battle, all the candidates agree that the next president, not Obama, should make the nomination, but this issue might help Ted Cruz the most. He’s been running as a constitutional conservative. And he says he wants the whole 2016 election to be a referendum on the Supreme Court. 5. Might all of this increase voter turnout and engagement this cycle? So far, the GOP seems more energized. Republicans had record turnouts in Iowa and New Hampshire, and Democrats have slipped from 2008 levels, but those are only two data points. Usually, the Supreme Court balance of power only matters to the most intense activists on both sides. The battle over Scalia’s successor could change that. Up until now, the court was more of an issue for the Republican base. GOP base voters feel the Supreme Court decisions on   marriage and the Affordable Care Act were betrayals. Now that there’s no longer a conservative majority on the court, they’ll be even more energized.  But it also could energize Democrats, because up until now, a   court, which we’ve had for almost 50 years  —   is not something they just have to live with. All of a sudden, a Democratic president could have the chance to reshape the court in a way Obama didn’t. It makes the stakes in this election much, much higher."
"In homes across the United States, families sit down around their dining tables to share a meal together known as the Family Dinner. This can be a joyous occasion or a contentious one. Whether you feel warm and fuzzy or grit your teeth at the thought, the family dinner is an opportunity for familial communication that didn’t always exist. As dining as a family became an institution in American life, it evolved from being a time for restraint to being a time for expression  —   an evolution visible in art and film. Before the late 18th century, it was difficult for American families to dine together regularly, in part because dining rooms and dining tables were not yet a thing. Rooms and tables had multiple uses, and families would eat in shifts, if necessary. If there weren’t enough chairs for all members of the family, the men would sit and the women and children might stand, coming and going from the table. (Blame the patriarchy.) The rise of the American family dinner depended upon the arrival of the dining table, and the dining room, from Europe, where they had been embraced since Elizabethan times. One of the first American homes to have a room specifically meant for dining was Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, built in 1772. The dining room, with the dining table at its center, began to be incorporated into wealthy homes across the country, eventually trickling down to the middle class. From the   century onward, the dining room was used as a place to cultivate a sense of family. Now that there was a designated space (and enough chairs around the table) for families to dine together, there were also designated family mealtimes  —   which Victorian parents used to educate their children on religion, conversation and table manners. Laid upon the dining table was an expectation that all family members be agreeable, pious and unified. From the Victorian era through the 1950s, this idealistic notion was impressed upon Americans. In 1943, the sociologist James H. S. Bossard wrote that ”it is at the dining table, and particularly at dinner time, that the family is apt to be at its greatest ease.” The same year, The Saturday Evening Post published Norman Rockwell’s Freedom from Want, in which a family dining around a Thanksgiving table represents the strength of American values during World War II. The painted subjects not only have food, but are almost relentlessly happy, smiling pointedly at each other and the viewer. The 1950s emphasized the importance of a happy nuclear family. And what better place to showcase it than at a dining room table? Father sits at the head of the table mother is at the opposite end. They’re flanked by their docile children, as shown on TV shows like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. A Date with Your Family, a ’50s instructional film, provides a disturbing peek into the era’s rigid rules for dining with Mom and Dad. Mother and daughter switch into nice attire for the meal, because, the narrator tells us, ”the women of this family seem to feel that they owe it to the men of the family to look relaxed, rested and attractive.” To avoid any distress, one must stick to his or her assigned role, which of course requires a lot of suppression. As the narrator states, ”the table is no place for discontent.” This film makes dinners full of arguments and outbursts seem like a breath of fresh air. Thankfully,   family dinners couldn’t be stamped out completely. Even Bossard acknowledged that: ”There are families in which few meals are completed . .. without some member leaving the table in tears, anger, or disgrace.” While many enjoy their time with family at the dinner table, it is also a space where one can freely air one’s grievances to other family members. These kinds of dinners are accepted  —   and even celebrated  —   by a modern sensibility. For example, artist Louise Bourgeois’ 1974 sculpture The Destruction of the Father represents a violent reaction to the kind of dinner idealized in A Date with Your Family. As Bourgeois frequently described the work: ”This piece is basically a table, the awful, terrifying family dinner table headed by the father who sits and gloats. . .. The mother, of course, tries to satisfy the tyrant, her husband. The children are full of exasperation. . .. So in exasperation we grabbed the man, threw him onto the table, dismembered him and proceeded to devour him.”   cannibalism may not occur at most tables, but everyone can relate to a   outburst. Film and television also revel in the    nature of modern family dinners, which make for perfect theater. Take, for example, the tense dinner scene in American Beauty, or family dinner scenes in The Sopranos, which rarely pass without a disagreement of some kind. Victorian Americans may not have envisioned this kind of behavior when they made the dining table a pillar of social values, but the beauty of the family dinner is that, time and again, it proves that family dynamics cannot be controlled. The dining table has become a stage for all kinds of human emotion  —   even discontent. Mackensie Griffin writes about the history of food and the dining table. "
"Onstage, Misty Copeland’s career revolves  —   chaînés?  —   around making hard work look easy. She breezes through Under Armour commercials and brisés through book signings, but she’s most famous for defying gravity onstage with American Ballet Theatre. ABT’s first black principal dancer, Copeland has been lighting up the ballet world for years. Now, the documentary A Ballerina’s Tale is lifting the curtain on just how excruciating her journey has been. A Ballerina’s Tale aired on PBS this Monday after premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival last April. Copeland has been called a prodigy countless times, but the film unearths hardships that often go unmentioned when detailing her rise to star status. She experienced the usual setbacks any dancer can expect  —   ruthless competition,   injuries, constant scrutiny. But unlike most of her her peers, Copeland also had to succeed as a black,   ”curvy” woman in an industry where, historically, ”balletomanes, choreographers and directors generally concurred that black bodies were unsuited to the lines of classical technique.” While Copeland’s dancing has received overwhelming critical acclaim, her offstage persona has been subject to some negative reviews. ”I think that people think that I sometimes focus too much on the fact that I’m a black dancer,” says Copeland in the opening lines of A Ballerina’s Tale. ”But there’s never been a black principal woman at the Royal Ballet. At the Paris Opera Ballet. At the Kirov Ballet, in the top companies in the world. In New York City Ballet, in New York City. I don’t think that people realize what a feat it is being a black woman. But that’s so much of who I am, and I think it’s so much a part of my story.” Copeland is of course remarkable, but A Ballerina’s Tale also shines in spotlighting the community it took to get her where she is today. Copeland was just 17 when she moved by herself from Southern California to New York City to perform as a junior dancer with ABT. At first, she struggled with depression,   and isolation. But when the company’s executive director noticed Copeland’s listlessness, she reached out to Susan     chair of the American Ballet Theatre Board, a strong advocate for diversifying ballet (and formerly the lead writer and producer for A Different World). Hill used her connections to arrange for a squad of black female ”firsts” to mentor Copeland. The women included singer and actress Diahann Carroll and cosmetics mogul Veronica Webb. Later, Gilda Squire, Copeland’s manager and publicist, added former Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo dancer Raven Wilkinson, the first black woman to tour with a major American ballet company, to the crew. Wilkinson soon became a close friend and mentor to Copeland. ”So many films about artists seem to focus on the white, male artist achieving alone,” writes film critic Ren Jender. ”But this documentary shows what many of us know from real life, that artists need support systems in place  —   and women and people of color often have to build their own.” With the help of her mentors, Copeland was able to regain her focus. Within three years, she was chosen to star in The Firebird, a role that had never been performed by a black woman at a major theater in the history of ballet. For Copeland’s debut performance, Hill arranged for a whole host of famous black women, including the head of BET, to be in attendance. ”To sit in that theater that night, surrounded by   women of accomplishment watching a ballerina take center stage in one of the most important works, just felt like her life had come full circle,” said Hill in the film. The significance of that support system is not lost on Copeland. For years she has made a special point of encouraging young people of color to pursue ballet through speaking engagements and activism. Her autobiography, Life in Motion, was an instant   but less known is her children’s book, Firebird, in which she tells a young   girl who dreams of being a dancer that she can  —   and will  —   succeed. ”There’s generations of white girls who can see themselves as ballerinas,” says Copeland in A Ballerina’s Tale. ”It’s not even a question because they can see themselves on the stage. And it’s like this psychological thing where [women of color] don’t see ourselves up there, so it’s not something we think we can even dream.” You can watch A Ballerina’s Tale on PBS’s website, but that’s not the only place to find Copeland right now. She stars in a stunning photo shoot for Harper’s Bazaar, in which she   poses from some of Edgar Degas’ most famous paintings. And later this spring, she’ll perform with the American Ballet Theater in The Sleeping Beauty, Firebird, La Fille Mal Gardee, Le Corsaire, The Golden Cockerel, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet."
"Millions of Americans have been freezing in   temperatures this month. Now many are mapping out road trips, preparing to head south soon for Easter and spring breaks. And with gas prices averaging just about $1. 70 a gallon nationwide, they are looking forward to affordable travel. But on the other side of the world, oil producers are trying to engineer a different kind of freeze  —   one that could heat up gas prices again. Leaders of some of the biggest   nations in OPEC want to freeze their oil output at January levels rather than continue increasing output. Tighter oil supplies eventually could translate into higher prices. So, will that happen? Most experts say consumers are playing a stronger hand than OPEC, the   cartel that now seems so diminished. The chances that OPEC will be able to maintain a production freeze are ”extremely remote,” said Gregg Laskoski, a petroleum analyst with Gasbuddy. com, a website that tracks consumer gasoline prices. At OPEC meetings, ”there’s a lot of posturing, but we simply have a glut of oil” that will continue for a long time, he said. Still, OPEC will keep trying to boost prices. Here’s what’s happening, and what it might mean for your wallet: OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is made up of 12 of the world’s largest oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Qatar, Iran and Iraq. The United States is not part of the cartel, which was formed about a   ago to push up or hold down oil supplies. OPEC’s goal is to keep supplies at levels that ensure stable prices and healthy profits for members. But production from U. S. shale formations has driven up oil supplies so quickly that prices have fallen globally, down to   lows. Despite this oil price plunge, OPEC countries keep drilling. Now the largest OPEC producer, Saudi Arabia, has struck a deal with Russia, the largest   producer, to freeze output at January levels. Qatar and Venezuela also have agreed to the deal struck at a meeting in Qatar Tuesday, a Saudi official told reporters in Doha. If OPEC countries would stick to the January output levels, then oil supplies would get whittled down over time and eventually boost prices. But the freeze would work only if two additional OPEC countries, Iran and Iraq, participate. In Iraq, that’s not likely to happen because the government needs oil sales to keep fighting ISIS. And in Iran, officials have said that with economic sanctions finally lifted following a nuclear deal, producers want to return output to   levels. That means ramping up, not pulling back. Despite all of these reasons for not cooperating with each other, OPEC leaders are still hoping some deal can be worked out to restrain production. They plan to meet in Tehran on Wednesday. At first, oil investors appeared optimistic  —   if nothing else because any agreement between the Saudis and Russians could be seen as a step toward more production restraint. ”The obvious thing here is that you have Russia and the Saudis agreeing potentially to work together,” Dan Katzenberg, a senior oil analyst at Baird and Co. said. That glimmer of hope sent crude oil prices up more than 7 percent on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But as the day wore on, optimism faded, sending oil prices back down. By the day’s end, West Texas Intermediate, the U. S. benchmark for oil, was down more than 1 percent to $29. 12. For consumers, gasoline prices are likely to move up in March and April, but that will be because more drivers will be taking those vacation road trips, allowing gas station owners to charge a bit more. Also, refineries will be switching to more expensive summer blends. ”We will see incremental increases at the pump” because of seasonal factors, not because OPEC got its act together, Laskoski predicted. NPR correspondent John Ydstie contributed to this report."
"It’s no secret that stimulant medications such as Adderall that are prescribed to treat symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are sometimes used as ”study drugs” aimed at boosting cognitive performance. And emergency room visits linked to misuse of the drug are on the rise, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. ”Young adults in the   to   age range are most likely to misuse these drugs,” says Dr. Ramin Mojtabai, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior author of the study. A common scenario is this: A person who has been prescribed ADHD drugs gives or diverts pills to a friend or family member who may be looking for a mental boost, perhaps to cram for a final or prepare a report. And guess what? This is illegal. Overall, the study found that nonmedical use of Adderall and generic versions of the drug increased by 67 percent among adults between 2006 and 2011. The findings are based on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The number of emergency room visits involving Adderall misuse increased from 862 visits in 2006 to 1, 489 in 2011 according to data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network. The most problems include anxiety, agitation and insomnia. But Mojtabai points out that stimulant drugs are also associated with cardiovascular side effects including increased blood pressure, and in very rare events heart attack and stroke. It’s worth noting that ER visits linked to Ritalin, another   stimulant used to treat ADHD, increased only slightly among young adults, from 293 ER visits in 2006 to 310 in 2011. And nonmedical use of Ritalin remained much lower than misuse of Adderall. ”Adderall has gotten a reputation . .. as a cognitive enhancer,” says Mojtabai, and that ”may have contributed to this increased trend of misuse.” The authors point to another factor, too. ”The   formulation of [Adderall] has a longer duration of action than [Ritalin] producing a more steady effect,” the authors write in the manuscript of the study. Doctors groups have railed against using stimulant drugs to enhance mental performance. But it seems some potential users haven’t gotten the message. A prior study found that college students have several justifications for their illegal use of ADHD stimulant medications, including the belief that it could improve their smarts. The study also found students were not knowledgeable about the side effects. ”We discovered that these students frame stimulant use as both physically harmless and morally acceptable,” wrote the authors."
"Pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi was the first Japanese musician to become popular with jazz fans in the U. S. Oscar Peterson demanded that his label record her Charles Mingus hired her for his band. Then she went on to form her own acclaimed Jazz Orchestra. On Tuesday afternoon, Akiyoshi reassembled that group for a rare performance at the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall. Back at the grand piano in her Upper West Side brownstone,    Toshiko Akiyoshi says the occasion for her orchestra’s reunion is to celebrate two milestones  —   when she started her professional career, and when she moved to the U. S. ”It’s very easy to remember, because I started in ’46, so it will be the 70th anniversary,” Akiyoshi says. ”I came to this country in ’56, so it will be the 60th anniversary in this country.” Akiyoshi put together her first Jazz Orchestra in Los Angeles in 1973 with her husband, saxophonist Lew Tabackin  —   he was playing with the Tonight Show band, and helped fill her   orchestra with some of the best studio musicians in town. Akiyoshi says all of the sax players could also play flute and clarinet that led to her signature style. ”The saxophone players  —   if you wanted to be studio player, you had to double everything. So I thought, ’Maybe I can write a woodwind section.’ And it became one of my trademarks.” Along with the texture of woodwinds, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band is distinctive in its use of Japanese instruments and themes. A few years after the band was formed, the musicians performed in Minneapolis, where a University of Minnesota student named Maria Schneider heard them play. ”That concert was so powerful for me,” Schneider says. ”The music was so beautiful, and there was something about it being displayed in that concert hall  —   and her conducting and her playing  —   just the whole took me, and it made me all of a sudden ask the question, ’Wow, could I do that? ’” Schneider is composing for and leading her own jazz orchestra. She says Akiyoshi helped pave the way. ”It wasn’t that she was a woman,” Schneider says, ”but it was that somebody was doing jazz that was infused with classical  —   it was concert music.” Akiyoshi studied classical piano in Manchuria, China, where she was born in 1929. At the end of WWII, her family was forced to return to occupied Japan. ”We came back and my parents lost everything,” Akiyoshi says. ”I could not hope to get the piano. And it was during occupation time. And [there were] many clubs: There was the officer’s club, NCO club, the Sergeant’s Club, and they all need musicians. On top of that, the Japanese wanted to dance, too, and there wasn’t that many musicians. So I was hired immediately.” Akiyoshi was a teenager. She studied jazz and began to perform in small combos. In 1952, pianist Oscar Peterson heard her in a Tokyo nightclub, and he persuaded the head of Verve Records to record her. Akiyoshi came to the U. S. to study at what was then called the Berklee School of Music in Boston. She was the first Japanese musician at the school. She moved to New York and developed a reputation as a fierce bebop player, but she says she wasn’t completely accepted in the jazz world as a woman and an Asian. ”In those days, ’Japanese play jazz, really?’ And when it come to girl  —   ’Really, really?’ kind of thing.” Her husband, Lew Tabackin, says she continued to face discrimination, but he says they have no regrets. ”I think we did pretty well, considering we had a band for 30 years,” Tabackin says. ”We did some really great things. You know, we made a contribution. How many people can actually feel that they’ve made a contribution?” Toshiko Akiyoshi disbanded her orchestra in 2003 to focus on her first love  —   and, at 74, to try to get better. ”I started missing piano,” Akiyoshi says. ”Because I started as a pianist, and all my writing come from my experience as a player. So 30 years I say maybe I stop, disband it. Maybe I try to concentrate on playing piano. Maybe I’ll be able to play just as good as before. I can at least try.” Akiyoshi says she hopes she’s given something back to jazz, which she says has been very kind to her."
"Two weeks ago, Jenny Tolosa found out she was pregnant. The    had no idea. ”I didn’t have any symptoms,” she says. ”I totally didn’t expect this.” She giggles, because she was excited by the news. But she was also worried. She says her first thought was, ”I think I had Zika last December!” That’s the   virus that’s spreading through Latin America  —   and has been linked to the birth defect microcephaly, which causes an abnormally small head and possible brain damage. Like Tolosa, the nation of Colombia is on edge. More than 30, 000 people there have contracted the Zika virus, including more than 5, 000 pregnant women. And health officials are now bracing for the possibility that many of these women will have babies with abnormalities. That’s why, at 3 p. m. on a weekday afternoon, Tolosa is sitting in the suffocatingly hot maternity section of a health clinic in the northeastern city of Cucuta. The clinic is packed with anxious women waiting to get an ultrasound exam, which doctors can use to look for signs of microcephaly. Tolosa has been here for hours and the specialist hasn’t even arrived yet. She came extra early so she could be first in line. She hopes a scan might give her more information. Tolosa works odd jobs on a farm and doesn’t earn a lot. She’s on Colombia’s equivalent of Medicaid. Still, when her relatives heard she was pregnant, they pooled their money so she could get an ultrasound right away to make sure Zika hadn’t affected the fetus. There were no signs of microcephaly. But that was two weeks ago. Now Tolosa is here for a second ultrasound  —   this one paid for by the government  —   and all her anxieties are flooding back. One of the doctors at this clinic, Henry Munoz Martinez, says patients like Tolosa have become the new normal here. Over the past several months they’ve seen about 150 pregnant women who have been exposed to Zika. The women are ”really tense, really stressed out,” he says. It’s hard to know what to say to them, he adds. So far there’s no definitive proof that these women’s babies will be in any danger. And in Colombia there have been no reported cases of abnormal births linked to Zika. But the virus started spreading here a lot later than in Brazil, where there have been thousands of cases of microcephaly reported since the fall, so it could be just a matter of time. ”It’s worrisome because you just can’t guarantee that the fetus will develop normally,” says Munoz. ”You can’t guarantee that it will all end happily with no complications.” For now, Colombia’s government has instructed clinics to register every case of a woman who was infected with Zika while she was pregnant. The idea is to follow her through to the birth. Jessica Vanessa Paredes, who’s 19, has come for her first visit. Her father brought her to the clinic earlier in the day because she thought she might be pregnant. A blood test showed that she was right. She’s still holding her head in shock as the nurse starts running through some questions. At the top of his list: Have you had symptoms of Zika? Yeah, says Paredes, in November. The nurse looks up sharply. That was around the time she got pregnant. He leans forward intently. Does she know the exact date she got sick? Paredes turns to her father. ”It was during my birthday, right?” ”Yeah,” says her father. ”November 20.” Based on the time frame, the nurse believes the Zika infection was probably over by the time Paredes got pregnant. Still, he says, there’s always the chance. ”We’re going to need to monitor you,” says the nurse, ”to make sure there aren’t any malformations. OK?” ”What God wants,” says the father. Paredes barely musters a goodbye as she walks out the door. Back in the hallway there’s a sudden stir. The doctor who does the ultrasounds has finally arrived. It’s time to call the first patient  —   Jenny Tolosa. By now she’s been waiting for five hours. She practically runs into the room. She pulls up her shirt and grimaces, just a bit, as the doctor spreads the ultrasound jelly on her stomach. The doctor calls out measurements for the body parts he sees on the screen, including the head. The ultrasound done, the doctor takes out a manual to check the measurements against the list of what’s normal at this stage. Tolosa stands with her hands on her hips, lips pressed tight as she watches the doctor flip through the pages. It feels like an eternity before he says: ”Normal. Es un normal.” Everything looks good, the doctor explains. For now there’s nothing to suggest there’s microcephaly. Tolosa is beaming as she leaves the room. She bounds over to her husband and collapses into giggles. ”This is what I was hoping for,” she says. But Dr. Munoz says a test like this doesn’t really put a woman in the clear. Microcephaly often doesn’t show up on an ultrasound until much later into the pregnancy  —   if at all, he notes. In cases where a woman caught the virus after she became pregnant, he says, doctors probably won’t know if everything’s OK until the baby is born."
"Editor’s note: This story has been updated with quotes from an NPR interview with Dr. Michael Abrahams, the rapping  .  Jamaica has had only one confirmed case of the Zika virus, brought in by a traveler  —   and the government wants to keep it that way. Last month, the government advised women to delay plans to become pregnant, since the the virus has been linked to the birth defect microcephaly. And government fliers warn: ”Be Aware, ZIKA IS HERE” and ”ZIKA ALERT! !!” Now the Jamaican Ministry of Health has come out with a musical public service announcement to make sure there’s no chance of an outbreak: ”We Nuh Want Zik V.” The reggae video features Dr. Michael Abrahams  —   an   who does music and   comedy on the side. In the video, Abrahams acknowledges that ”Zik V is not in the Caribbean territory” but reiterates, ”we nuh want that virus.” To keep it away, he encourages residents to get rid of stagnant water, where   mosquitoes breed. He gives ”a special   to pregnant ladies”  —   encouraging them to use mosquito repellents and citronella candles to ward off bites. Jamaica’s health minister reached out to Abrahams and asked him to make the Zik V video after noticing a musical PSA about chikungunya that they doctor had created last year. ”Growing up, I used to watch Saturday Night Live and Richard Pryor,” Abrahams says. ”So I really wanted to be a performer or a   comedian.” He ended up becoming a doctor (”it was the more practical career choice,” he says) but kept up the comedy. ”And I liked making these kinds of songs, because I think you can engage patients better when you present something in a rhythmic or poetic format,” His   Zik V song is being broadcasted all over Jamaica on the radio, on TV and in cinemas. ”I’ve been really surprised by all the international attention it’s getting,” Abrahams says. Jamaicans are especially weary of Zika because they’re just recovering from an outbreak of chikungunya in 2014. ”When chikungunya came here we were told it was a mild illness, but many people got very sick,” Abrahams says. ”For older people and for people with other chronic diseases, it can cause severe pain.” Through his latest video is branded as an   PSA, Abrahams says he hope people will take heed of his advice to be wary of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes  —   which also transmit dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. ”If someone were to say to you. ’What’s the most dangerous animal?’ You might think about sharks or snakes,” he says. ”But mosquitoes are so much scarier!” Editor’s Note: This isn’t the only great song written about a mosquito. In the 1970s, Nina Simone composed and recorded ”Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter.”"
"Last week, opposition lawmakers in Venezuela declared a ”food emergency.” That’s because Venezuela is facing widespread shortages of milk, meat, bread and other staples. Critics blame the government’s socialist economic policies. But instead of changing course, President Nicolás Maduro is calling on Venezuelans to help feed themselves  —   by starting urban gardens. Josefina Requena is among those who have heeded Maduro’s call. Cucumbers, green pepper, passion fruit and other produce grow in the front yard of her home in a slum in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. She also has a chicken coop. On a sweltering afternoon recently, I joined Requena and some other Caracas residents on a hike into the mountains that rise above the city. They were on a mission to find dirt for their gardens, which they keep on balconies, rooftops and small plots of their homes. After digging up the fresh earth, they lugged it back down the mountain. ”All my life, I’ve loved to plant all sorts of plants,” Requena tells me in Spanish. ”But over the past two years, things have become much more difficult, so I am taking gardening a little more seriously.” So is the Venezuelan government. President Maduro is urging people to grow food and raise chickens in their homes, even though 83 percent of Venezuelans live in cities. To help them, Maduro announced the formation of a Ministry of Urban Farming. The president also claims that he and first lady Cilia Flores have taken up the cause. ”Cilia and I have 60 laying hens,” Maduro said in a speech. ”We produce everything we eat.” Critics say Maduro should focus on making life easier for traditional farmers. Home to vast stretches of fertile land, Venezuela could grow much of its own food. Instead, production has collapsed. Economists blame the expropriation of farms and   plants, as well as government price controls that force farmers to sell at a loss. In addition, falling prices for oil  —   Venezuela’s main export  —   mean the government has fewer dollars to import food. There’s also a severe shortage of imported farm machinery and supplies, says Vicente Perez, director of FEDEAGRO, Venezuela’s main farm organization. ”There is nothing  —   just like there’s no food, there are no seeds, no herbicides . .. and no medicines to vaccinate farm animals,” says Perez. Phil Gunson, who is based in Caracas for the International Crisis Group, warns of a pending humanitarian crisis. ”At least one in 10 people is eating two meals a day or less. There isn’t starvation. We are not talking about famine,” Gunson says. ”But we are talking about malnutrition, particularly in the case of children.” Maduro blames the food shortages on a   ”economic war” that he claims is being waged against his government by the opposition. Gunson and other analysts reject this argument and say urban gardens will have little impact. They note that many city dwellers lack the time and   to grow food. Poultry can also be complicated  —   so says truck driver Juan Pablo Ibarra, one of the people who climbed into the mountains gathering dirt for his garden. Ibarra says he used to have 30   hens, but the corn he fed the birds was too expensive. His family ended up eating the chickens."
"Here’s a little secret: It’s possible to go online and buy a knockoff  —   a generic version of the drug Adderall, a fake ”North Face” jacket or ”Gucci” handbag. Now, we’re not telling you to do it. But a big reason you can, it turns out, is that major banks in China are willing to handle the money. Guerilla Marketing, Say you want Beats by Dre headphones. You don’t want to pay Beats by Dre prices. Type in the brand name in a search engine and add words like ”cheap,” ” .” ”That’s kind of a signal to the counterfeiters probably that you’re looking for a deal,” says Damon McCoy, a computer scientist at New York University who is taking me online shopping. While it doesn’t take a Ph. D. to find   McCoy is leading a small investigation into how the counterfeit good trade works. Let’s start with marketing. On the third page of our Google search, in big blue letters, we spot ”Beats by Dre cyber Monday.” (It’s clearly a little outdated.) What’s harder to spot, beneath that, McCoy points out, is the website dovermuseum. org. Dover Museum got hacked and now, this nonprofit based in New London, Iowa, is unknowingly in the business of selling   headphones. It’s tricky because if you type in the museum’s Web address directly, you get its legit site. The counterfeiters just hijacked the shell of that site (the part that talks to Google search) and, McCoy says, ”some code has been inserted so that it can be used to redirect visitors to these counterfeit websites.” (We were redirected to the Web address coolsound. co.) Call it guerilla advertising. We click and land on a very   page. No typos or neon signs screaming ”fake.” The product that catches my eye is a Beats by Dre ”Hello Kitty” edition. McCoy says counterfeiters often get creative and mash up brands. But in this case, it turns out, the mashup is really a thing. It’s even got an official store commercial where Hello Kitty   around the world with her Dr. Dre headphones. The headphones cost $69 on this site  —   instead of the original $149. 95. Still, I thought it would be cheaper, like 10 bucks. McCoy says it’s not that inexpensive because ”they just want to make it cheap enough that you think that you’re getting a deal and it still might be the real product.” I take out my Visa card to buy. The checkout window has the icon for ”Verisign secured”  —   a payment technology used on many trusted shopping sites. ”They like putting lots of security labels all over their website to give people a sense that it’s a legitimate site,” McCoy says. Tracing Purchases, Counterfeits used to be a cash business. The Internet has changed that. And about two years back, luxury brands  —   the companies being knocked off  —   contracted McCoy to follow the money. He made more than 300   purchases using Visa. And he found a stunning 97 percent have linked back to three major Chinese banks. Counterfeiters had merchant accounts with these leading banks: Bank of China, the Bank of Communications and the Agricultural Bank of China. When luxury brands complained to Visa, McCoy says, Visa then complained to the banks the banks shut down the accounts and the companies popped right back up  —   often with the exact same Web address and using the exact same bank. An internal Visa document obtained by NPR indicates that Visa is fining banks that process illegal transactions. The fines start at $5, 000 and go up to $200, 000 for repeat offenders. But, McCoy says, Visa can’t push the issue too hard. ”They’re put in a difficult position, right. On one hand, they have the luxury brand holders that are mad.” On the other hand, these banks have tons of legitimate business and give Visa access to a huge market. In a case involving Gucci, a federal judge in New York fined the Bank of China for refusing to disclose the names of clients selling   handbags. The bank appealed the decision, citing privacy concerns. A lawyer who specializes in counterfeit litigation, John Macaluso, says there are too many criminal websites involved, and so luxury brands need to stop the flow of money. ”Trying to stop every site is like holding the ocean back with a broom. Go after the supply chain,” he says. Amid Silence, One Victim Speaks, The luxury brands that contracted McCoy declined to be named publicly (and risk damaging their reputation). Stephen Gaffigan, a lawyer who represents them, declined an interview because, he says, his clients would not grant him permission to even describe the problem. Visa and Apple, which owns Beats by Dre, declined to talk too. Apple did point to the Beats Safe Buying Guide, which explains the difference between real and fake headphones. The Chinese merchant banks did not respond to our inquiry. NPR was able to find one victim in this global supply chain who would speak. ”One thing you need to know about: We are a very small museum. We have no staff. We have all volunteers,” says Virginia Ekstrand, with the Dover Museum, the nonprofit that was hacked. When NPR emailed to inform the museum, she thought it was a scam. ”The first thing that I did was check and verify that you were a real person actually working for NPR,” Ekstrand says. She then spent the weekend scouting the Internet, trying to understand what happened. Ekstrand figures there are lots of groups like hers. ”If I were hacking I’d find a bunch of these little bitty places that don’t have any professional help,” she says. The company that hosts her website didn’t see a problem at first. After repeated calls, they finally spotted it, she says, and recommended the site be taken down immediately  —   until it gets fixed."
"After the Grammys, social media were awash in Hamilton and Kendrick Lamar shares, but cats took the Web like they owned it. In a   ad, house cats sent a chilling memo to smokers: The health of the Internet is at stake. The montage of cat videos (cat riding Roomba, cat weeping silently) and secondhand smoke facts put forth the message that cats living with smokers are twice as likely to get cancer. Ergo smoking kills cats. And if there are no more cats? Well, I don’t know if I would want to live in an Internet with no cats. Despite this somewhat faulty logic (house cats will not go extinct from secondhand smoke) people have been tweeting the campaign using the   #catmageddon tag. It’s a departure from more traditional public health campaigns, says Sherry Emery, the director of the University of Illinois, Chicago’s Health Media Collaboratory. ”It’s nothing like any   ad that’s been out,” Emery says. ”This is the first time I think [  campaigns] have gone after the health effects for animals. And people care so much about their animals.” That was a smart move by the Truth Initiative, Emery says. The campaign targets teens and young adults who don’t really think about health consequences in the same way that older, more seasoned smokers might. ”Sometimes people don’t care enough about themselves. They do care about their pets,” she says. ”And cat videos, of course. They capitalize on this cultural phenomenon where people just love cat videos.” It’s about time cats got into the    arena, says John Pierce, a professor emeritus of cancer research at the University of California, San Diego. ”It’s well overdue,” he says. ”There’s a long history of using animals in advertising. Think of the chameleon promoting alcohol or that camel”  —   the one that’s been peddling cigarettes for decades. This ad, in some ways, levels the arsenal a little bit. And the Truth Initiative, which is funded by the 1998 settlement of a massive lawsuit filed against tobacco companies by 46 states, sets out to target young people. ”We know that 60 percent of [young adults] have a pet, and 20 percent say they want a pet. And they do love watching their cat videos,” says Truth Initiative CEO Robin Koval. According to her, #catmageddon was an engineered success. It was also a daring gambit, according to Emery. ”I think a lot of people in public health might think it’s a risky strategy just because it’s so novel. It’s talking about pets and not humans,” she says. But Truth is no stranger to controversy. In 2014, the Truth Initiative ran an ad on the MTV music video awards that showed paparazzi shots of celebrities smoking and accused them of being ”unpaid spokespeople” for the tobacco industry. ”They got this huge backlash,” Emery says, for a shot of Zayn Malik from One Direction. But both Pierce and Emery say ”smoking = no cats = no cat videos” is a strategy that has already worked. The point of   campaigns is to get people talking. And they’re talking about tobacco, Pierce says. ”It’s stimulated a conversation. It’s about the cats. It’s also about the smoking.” Angus Chen is on Twitter @angRchen"
"Watching Ben Folds perform his songs on piano at the Tiny Desk, there seems to be a direct line between thought and expression, except perhaps when he stumbles or forgets a line or two. Folds has a knack for plainspoken, smartly crafted words that sometimes sting and always seem to speak the truth  —   like these words from ”Phone In A Pool”: Seems what’s been good for the music, Hasn’t always been so good for the life, At the Tiny Desk, Folds opened with three sharp songs from his most recent album So There, a collaboration with six musicians who straddle the line between pop and classical music they’re known as the yMusic Ensemble. When he finished those tunes, he asked the crowd for requests, at which point he banged out two favorites on piano: ”Emaline,” which dates back to the ’80s, and a   from his second album with Ben Folds Five, ”One Angry Dwarf And 200 Solemn Faces.” It’s a memorable performance recounting memorable moments from second grade and beyond, as simple and direct as its closing line: ”Kiss my ass.” So There is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List,  Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Walker, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Morgan Walker, Julia Reihs Photo: Jun  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"”My friends, it’s Saturday night, this is an emergency transmission. Associate Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia died earlier today at a ranch outside Big Bend in South Texas. . .. The question is, was Anthony Scalia murdered?” So begins conservative talk show host Alex Jones’ Internet video. Jones then quickly answered his dramatic query ”Has the Bill of Rights and the Constitution been murdered?” Yes, he says, yes they have.  Jones’ video has been watched more than 400, 000 times and served as a national   call for those who can’ ’ ’t believe that Scalia died of natural causes. ”This is the season of treason,” Jones says in the broadcast. ”This is the time of betrayal. . .. We know there is a foreign offshore coup over this country. . .. This is  .” When law enforcement authorities quickly reported that Scalia’s death appeared to be from natural causes, that was a major red flag for Jones. ”I wonder if Clarence Thomas will die of a heart attack next week?” he asked, the skepticism emanating from his eyes. The death of a great conservative justice was bad enough, but when the cause of death was established over the phone by a local justice of the peace  —   which is legal in Texas  —   and no autopsy was ordered, the   started. That Scalia reportedly was found with a pillow over his head didn’t help matters. The parody website HardDawn. com: Because Morning in America Won’t Be Easy, which calls itself ”the Internet’s preëminent literary journal of prepping, patriotism and prophecy,” took up the call: Did Leonard Nimoy Have Antonin Scalia Killed to Give Obama Enough Supreme Court Votes to Cancel the 2016 Election?    Here’s how it’s going to go: The Republican Party is waiting until Hillary Clinton is nominated to turn over to the FBI reams of documents that implicate the former secretary of state so profoundly that the Department of Justice will have little choice but to indict her. That’s when President Obama will be forced to step in and cancel the presidential election to save the Democrats. Without Scalia, the U. S. Supreme Court will be helpless to stop it. You’re probably thinking, ”Isn’t Leonard Nimoy dead?” That’s what Spock wants you to believe. HardDawn explains he’s actually been consolidating Illuminati power since faking his own death. And Nimoy, referred to as ”the Pinnacle of the Draco,” is the ”wild card” in a plot to assassinate Scalia. (I, myself, always liked Captain Kirk better.) In the world of conspiracy theories it’s hard to separate the parody from the true believers. But if you believe these notions are all sound and fury signifying nothing, think again. They eventually compelled Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara to make public Scalia’s private health information as told to her by the justice’s doctor, Rear Adm. Brian Monahan. The doctor told her Scalia had a history of heart disease and high blood pressure so significant that surgery to repair an injured shoulder couldn’t be risked. This may be why his family was not interested in an autopsy, simply grateful for the peaceful circumstances of his demise."
"Last week’s announcement of the direct detection of gravitational waves proved, once again, the enduring power of Albert Einstein’s scientific vision. Once again, Einstein was right in that this theory accurately predicted the behavior of the world. But with last week’s triumph, a deep and fascinating question arises: Could Einstein be right about his science and still be wrong about the broader context into which we humans put that science? Let me explain. There are a lot of reasons thinking about physics is worth the effort. From GPS to   printers, it’s a subject yielding a lot of cool technology. And from flushing toilets to rising clouds, physics also explains a lot about the world around us. But there’s another reason people love physics  —   the world we can’t see. Physics offers radical new perspectives on what lies beneath, behind and below our everyday experience. In this way, physics seems like more than just knowledge it seems like truth with a capital T. But when science reaches the hairy edges of our experience, when it reaches outward to the boundaries of our abilities to describe the world, is there something else coming along for the ride? Together with the powerful, abstract mathematics and the ingenious instrumentation, is there something beyond ”just the facts” requiring special attention when physicists make their grandest claims about the cosmos? To be exact, is there a philosophy  —   a ”metaphysics”  —   that goes beyond what the math and the data support? And, if such background metaphysics exist, could it be wrong even if the theory itself is right in terms of experiments and data? This question is at the heart of a fascinating book I’ve been reading called The Physicist and the Philosopher by Jimena Canales. It’s a story about Albert Einstein (who needs no introduction) and Henri Bergson (who probably does). The French philosopher Bergson was far more famous than Einstein in the first two decades of the 20th century. The reason most folks these days know Einstein’s name but not Bergson’s is, for Canales, an important story in itself. It’s the story of how science seemed to become the last word on everything, even on a topic as subtle, slippery and difficult to pin down as time. It all began in 1922, when Einstein and Bergson met in an unplanned but fateful debate. Einstein had been invited to give a presentation in Paris on his theory of relativity. Time was central to Einstein’s work. It was, however, also the central issue in Bergson’s philosophy. Their conflicting views on the meaning of time set the scholars on collision course. In the debate, Bergson made it clear he had no problem with the mathematical logic of Einstein’s theory or the data that supported it. But for Bergson, relativity was not a theory that addressed time on its most fundamental, philosophical level. Instead, he claimed, it was theory about clocks and their behavior. Bergson called Einstein out for missing the distinction. In Bergson’s philosophy, there was something greater to time than just measurements. Time was so central to human experience that fully unpacking it meant going beyond mere accounts of clocks or of even ”psychological” perceptions. Instead, time was intimately connected to the bedrock of what it means to experience the world. It was, in some sense, the essence of human being and hence of being itself. For Bergson, that meant purely scientific accounts could not exhaust time’s meaning or importance. So, on that day in Paris, Bergson was not criticizing Einstein’s theory. He was attacking a philosophy that had grown up around the theory  —   and that was being passed off as part of the science. It was the theory’s hidden metaphysics that Bergson challenged. Bergson told Einstein that the only proper way to unpack the full meaning of time, in all its lived richness, was through explicit philosophical investigations. Einstein, however, was not moved. In response to Bergson’s challenges, the physicist lobbed his now famous grenade: ”The time of the philosophers does not exist,” he told the audience. So what are the metaphysics of Einstein’s theory? As you might imagine, one could fill a library with all the books out there trying to answer that question, but let’s look at one powerful example. In relativity, space and time are no longer separate entities. Instead, they’re replaced with a   whole called  . But something very weird happens when you make that move. The remarkable thing about   is that it contains all the events that ever happened. It also includes all the events that ever will happen. So, in this big,     representation of the universe, there’s Julius Caesar getting stabbed and the Mets winning the 1969 World Series. But the coffee you are going to spill on your pants at that meeting next Tuesday is there, too. So is that moment when you watch the new president get inaugurated in January 2017. In fact, everything that will ever happen to you  —   including your death  —   is strung across   as a linked string of already existing events. Physicists call this your world line. So, is this really how time works? Do all events already exist in this ”block universe” of Einstein’s relativity? Is everything that will ever happen already trapped in the   chamber of  ? This view is sometimes called ”  ” (the geo part comes because Einstein’s theory is really about the geometry of  ). It’s one example of a philosophical theory about the nature of reality that grows out of a related, and validated, scientific theory. It is literally   and it’s exactly the kind of thing Bergson was arguing against. For Bergson, and others at the time, there was a difference between the mathematical   and the   interpretation  —   the philosophy  —   you glued on it. It’s in this way that Einstein could be right and wrong at the same time. He is clearly right about the science, but he could be wrong about the interpretation of time attached to that science. Now, what are we to make of Bergson’s claims? I don’t know enough about Bergson’s explicit philosophy of time to take a stand one way or another, but I do think his separation between valid scientific theories and the metaphysics that grows around them is worth considering. The physicist David Mermin once pointed out that we physicists have a way of turning our mathematical equations into ”things” existing in the world. We take their success at describing aspects of the world (like the behavior of   in an experiment) to mean the equations are fully interchangeable for real things (often unseen) existing out there independently in the real world. But for Mermin, the equations are always abstractions. They are immensely powerful and immensely useful stories we tell about the world that capture some essential truth but not all truth. And in spite of what one may think of Bergson’s specific ideas about time as an ”elan vital” driving life and evolution forward, there are other philosophical perspectives that take experience to be irreducible. In particular, the branch of philosophy called phenomenology takes the direct apprehension of the world as its main concern. From phenomenology’s perspective, scientific theorizing and investigation must come after the raw fact of our embodied experience. Martin Heidegger, a German phenomenologist, emphasized that the problem of ”being”  —   the problem of understanding the verb ”to be”  —   remained unsolved by science or philosophy. From this perspective, the rush to make science the adjudicator of all questions meant the question of being had been entirely forgotten. Taken together, these perspectives point to a possibility that I find really deeply intriguing. This blog is dedicated to science and culture. In the debate between Bergson and Einstein, there is, perhaps, a different way to approach the question about where science fits into the entire fabric of human experience. In particular, it points to what might be a new way of understanding that fabric. In this discussion, we might begin to see a new relationship between our immense capacities for understanding the world through scientific practice, while never forgetting that it’s always we who do the understanding. Being human, being at the center of our own worlds, is an immense and beautiful mystery. The explanations of science are one route to plumb that mystery  —   but not the only route. If this is true, then what step do we take next? Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"On April 20, 1999, when Sue Klebold heard about a shooting incident at Columbine High School, her thoughts immediately turned to her    son, Dylan, who was a senior there. ”In the very beginning, I didn’t know what to think,” Sue tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”I was aware that there was a shooting incident occurring at the school. I didn’t know if Dylan was in danger, if someone was trying to shoot him, if he was doing something.” Gradually the truth emerged: Dylan and his friend,    Eric Harris, had gone on a shooting rampage at the school, murdering 13 people and injuring 24 others before killing themselves. For a long time, Sue was in denial about her son’s role in the massacre. She told herself that Dylan had been brainwashed or coerced into the plan  —   or that he hadn’t really shot anyone. But then she saw the ”Basement Tapes,” a set of videos Dylan and Harris had made in which they brandished guns and bragged about the destruction they were planning, and her understanding of Dylan’s role in the rampage changed. ”Seeing those tapes was one of the most shocking, dramatically traumatic things that happened in the aftermath of this, because I had been living with such a different construct to try to cope with what I believed to be true,” she says. In her new memoir, A Mother’s Reckoning, Sue describes the guilt, despair, shame and confusion that have plagued her in the 17 years since the Columbine massacre. She hopes that her book will honor the memories of the people her son killed, and perhaps help other parents whose children may be struggling with mental health issues. (All of the author revenues from the book, minus expenses, will be donated to research and charitable foundations focusing on mental health issues). As for Dylan, Sue says she wishes she had listened to him more carefully in the years preceding the shooting. She wonders what questions she could have asked that might have encouraged her son to open up about whatever he was feeling. She adds that despite everything, she has never stopped loving him. ”I will love him until I breathe my last breath,” she says. ”He’s like an invisible child that I carry in my arms everywhere I go, always.” On realizing that one of the ”Basement Tapes” had been filmed in her house, When I saw that one of those scenes was actually shot in our home one night, and it was a night when Eric had spent the night, it was  . All I can tell you is I gasped out loud and I said, ”That’s his room!” It was just a complete shock that something could happen like that in my own home  —   that I didn’t know the two of them had weapons and that Eric had brought weapons to our house. We went back and thought about that evening, and we remembered when Eric spent the night and he had brought a big duffel bag in and we had just assumed it was, I don’t know, perhaps a video camera or a computer  —   we weren’t in the habit of asking guests what they were bringing over  —   and we had to sort of put these pieces together of what the boys had been doing that night, and it was a complete shock. On how she believed Dylan to be posturing in the Basement Tapes  What I saw in those Basement Tapes, what appeared to me to be occurring, was that he was posturing, that he was putting on some kind of a performance to prove not only to Eric but possibly to himself that he was this tough, hateful human being, who was kind of revving himself up to do this. So that was the sense I got from those tapes, and I think one of the things that was most frightening to me when I saw those tapes, was the thought that if and when these become available to the public, how the public couldn’t possibly believe that the other child that I knew existed and was so different from the one on the tape. I knew that trying to illustrate that would be impossible, if they had seen this image of this   person. On why she advocated for the destruction of the Basement Tapes  I advocated for their destruction because there is a great deal of research to show that making these available to the public is dangerous  —   that vulnerable kids will look at these and copy these and use what happened at Columbine as a benchmark for other events such as this. So there is certainly a lot of documentation to support that making them public is a very poor and very risky idea. I had an additional reason as well as that . .. I knew that if people believed that someone who was going to do something as heinous as Dylan did, acted openly as Dylan did in that tape, they would develop a false sense of security to be able to say, ”My loved one doesn’t act like that, therefore I am safe. My loved one is not at risk.” And I think for me, that was one of the most dangerous things about these tapes is to realize, this was not his [affectation] on a daily level, this was the two of them acting, doing theater, doing a performance, in front of a videotape, and it would be very deceptive to release that kind of information and have people expect to see behavior like that when someone was very disturbed, because that is not the truth. On if she considered whether the Dylan in the tapes was the real Dylan  His writings tell a different story. His writings show that he was someone who was very focused on love, he was very focused on a sense of conscience, he had a secret crush on an unidentified female at his school, and his writings do not reveal the level of irrational anger that the tapes revealed. And also, the fact that I had known him, of course, all of his life and known him to be a gentle and a loving person, so from everything I have been able to learn about this, from every piece of evidence I can find, it was the behavior on the tapes that was the aberration, and it was something that he was doing, in many ways, I believe, to prepare himself to do what he was about to do. On Dylan’s suicidal thoughts  When I refer to Dylan’s suicidal thoughts and his behavior, I want to make it very clear that I am not trying to discount the fact that he also committed murder. I perfectly am aware, always, every minute, of the lives that he took and the lives that he ruined, but   which is what this event was, is one manifestation of suicide. It is what can happen with a suicide. It is generally now believed more and more to be motivated by the same things that motivate a suicide rather than a homicide. So I have done a lot of research on suicide and tried to understand Dylan’s thinking. Yes, in his writings, a full two years before he died, he is talking about being in agony, being in pain, about his thoughts, wanting to end them. He writes about wishing he had a gun. He even wrote about cutting himself at one point. So, yes, I believe that he was experiencing persistent suicidal thoughts and depression at least two years before this event grew and grew and escalated into this terrible tragedy. On whether she blames herself for Dylan taking his own life and murdering others  I, like many survivors of loss, when someone takes their own life, do think those thoughts. I felt for a very long time that it must’ve been something I did, and I went back to ridiculous detail into our past, and I remember at one point sobbing because when Dylan turned 3 I had only put sprinkles on his birthday cake, but when his brother turned 3, I had decorated the cake with icing, thinking, ”It must’ve been something like that, where he didn’t feel equally loved.” I know that sounds ridiculous  —   that is the kind of work that you do in your head when something like this happens. So I examined and I questioned and I blamed, and to this day I do it still  —   occasionally I fall back and think, ”If I had done this, if I had not done this.” But over time, with all the research I was doing into behaviors and losses due to suicide, I really began to see that these things were things within Dylan’s brain and his thinking, and that I might’ve in some way inadvertently contributed to his perception of something at a given moment, but I did not believe and still don’t believe that I caused this or caused him to have this perception of himself and his worldview. On what she wishes she could’ve done differently as a parent  I wish that I had had the ability to delve deeper and ask the kinds of questions that would’ve encouraged him to open up more to me. I had parented my kids, in many ways, the way I had been parented, which means you listen to your kids’ problems and you try to fix them. . .. I think what I needed to do with Dylan more was to just shut up and listen, to try to get him to say to me what he was feeling and thinking about something, rather than to automatically jumping to a way to make him not feel that way or to fix the way he felt. On people destroying the crosses for Dylan and Eric in a memorial of the victims  I can’t presume to even know what [the families] were experiencing and what the level of their grief was. I completely understood their need to express what they were feeling, and that their feelings were such that they could not tolerate having those memorializations there. I feel certain that I would’ve felt the same way. But like everything after a   event, the feelings are so complicated that you feel so many things at once. There was a part of me that felt responsible and empathetic . .. and there was a part of me, as a mother, that was very hurt by this expression of hatred for my son. But this is all part of why the experience was something I wanted to write about, because there are all kinds of feelings that we have, and I can understand the need to express that kind of rage, but I hope also that people will understand my need to love the child that I lost. . .. What I use as my guide is that I want to educate people. I want people to know that even family members of people who do horrible, heinous things are still human beings, and that perhaps by meeting me and seeing that I am not a crazed person, that maybe it will broaden their understanding and they will have a little bit more compassion for someone else."
"Three months after their concert at the Bataclan music hall was ended by a deadly terrorist attack, California band Eagles of Death Metal is back in France. The rock group’s members say they have a ”sacred duty” to finish the show. It won’t happen until Tuesday night, but the concert was already making headlines, particularly after frontman Jesse Hughes, speaking to a French TV station about the fallout from the attacks that killed 130 people, criticized France’s gun control laws. The remarks came during an extended interview in the studio of French TV station iTélé, in which Hughes was at times weeping and emotional in it, he declared himself ”a raw nerve” and said he and his band were overwhelmed by the support they’ve received in Paris. Hughes, a gun owner who has in the past spoken out against restrictions on guns in the U. S. called the French people ”incredibly strong and determined”  —   but he also said the country’s gun laws didn’t save anyone from dying that night in November. The singer said that the only thing had stopped the violence was ”some of the bravest men that I’ve ever seen in my life charging   into the face of death with their firearms.” ”I know people will disagree with me,” he said, later adding, ”I hate it that it’s that way.” ”The only way my mind has been changed is maybe that until nobody has guns everybody has to have them,” Hughes said. Saying he didn’t want to see such an attack again, he added, ”I want everyone to have the best chance to live. And I saw people die that maybe could have lived, I don’t know. But I wish I knew.” As reporter Jake Cigainero tells NPR’s Newscast unit from Paris: ”Survivors of the Bataclan have been offered free tickets to tonight’s show at the Olympia theater, where police, soldiers and psychologists will be on standby. ”The Bataclan, where 90 people were killed, has not yet reopened, but the owners have said they hope to host events before the end of 2016.” Hughes says he understands why anyone who was at the show in November would decide to stay away from tonight’s concert. But he said he feels a ”sacred duty” to finish the band’s set. In a separate interview with Le Parisien, Hughes struck a slightly more moderate tone in his remarks, saying: ”I support the right of all to carry a weapon to defend themselves. The arms help to defend themselves, right?” He concluded that interview by saying, ”Me, my only weapon is my guitar. And my guitar kills a*******.” This isn’t Eagles of Death Metal’s first time back in Paris since the deadly attacks the group accepted U2’s invitation to play at their show in Paris in December, just weeks after the attacks."
"The earlier a child with autism can be identified and get treatment the better, child development specialists say. So there’s been a push to have pediatricians give all toddlers screening tests for autism during well child visits. But the influential U. S. Preventive Services Task Force said Tuesday that there’s not yet enough evidence to show that screening all children delivers measurable benefits, a decision sure to frustrate or anger many in the autism community. It’s not a recommendation against screening, says Alex Kemper, a professor of pediatrics at the Duke University School of Medicine and a member of the panel. ”It’s really a call for more research to be done around treatment for children identified through screening.” Studies have found that it’s possible to identify symptoms of autism such as avoiding eye contact or not responding to one’s name in children as young as 18 months. But usually those children are flagged for screening because a parent or caregiver sees behavior they think is troubling. Most studies finding a benefit in early intervention have involved those children, not children who appear to be developing typically. Child development specialists say there’s plenty of evidence in favor of early screening and intervention and that avoiding it could delay or deny crucial treatment. ”We all acknowledge that more work needs to be done. More work is being done,” says Rebecca Landa, director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. ”But the risk [of screening] is so minimal, why wouldn’t we be all behind the children?” Landa hopes the USPSTF will be quick to change its ”insufficient evidence” finding, ”and as they’re sending out this inconclusive message, that they will be very vocal in standing with the American Academy of Pediatrics in saying that screening should happen as early as 18 months.” When the task force released the draft of this recommendation in August, the pediatricians issued a statement saying ”it runs counter to AAP guidelines.” The academy recommends screening all children at 18 and 24 months. Kemper does screen toddlers for autism in his own medical practice in Durham, N. C. ”We’ve thought a lot about it,” he says. Many of the families don’t have English as their primary language and sometimes have problems getting health care, he says. ”We were concerned that parents or other caregivers might not pick up on the signs or symptoms of autism.” The     test takes five minutes or so, asking parents questions like ”If you point at something across the room, does your child look at it?” The USPSTF statement, which was published Tuesday in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, notes that potential harms of the test are minor, but could include the anxiety associated with a false positive result, as well as the time and expense of therapy if it later proved unnecessary. Two editorials published Tuesday in JAMA Psychiatry and JAMA Pediatrics both criticized the USPSTF, saying that the ”insufficient evidence” recommendation could make it less likely that children who are members of minorities get screened, and also make it less likely that insurance will pay for it. ”Rigid, inflexible approach results in no recommendation for autism screening,” the JAMA Psychiatry headline says. ”When the task force makes recommendations it doesn’t take up issues of cost or insurance coverage,” Kemper says. ”But because the AAP recommends autism screening, it’s still covered under the Affordable Care Act.” And he’s standing firm with the panel’s recommendation. ”I think again, by highlighting this gap in knowledge there’s a real opportunity to figure out what the deal is,” Kemper says."
"Updated at 4:24 p. m. on Feb. 17: Pedro Figueroa was released on bail from an ICE detention center on Feb. 3. Also, the San Francisco Police Department initially denied that it had cooperated with federal immigration agents. But an internal ICE document shows that the police and sheriff were in direct communication with ICE about Figueroa. Pedro Figueroa recently reported to San Francisco police that his car had been stolen. When it was recovered, the police summoned Figueroa to a neighborhood station, where they asked for proof that he owned the car. They also ran his name to check for warrants. ”And they come up with a hit on a warrant in the criminal justice system,” San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy says. The police had called her agency for help to check for what’s known as a    warrant issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It turned out that Figueroa, 31, was in this country illegally. So a sheriff’s clerk called the feds. But Hennessy said no one seemed to know what the warrant was for. Since the police didn’t have enough information to hold Figueroa, they decided to release him. And that’s when Figueroa’s story really got complicated. ”And then my understanding is, there was an agent outside the police station that then picked him up,” Hennessy says. This situation has brought San Francisco’s   law under scrutiny again. Local law enforcement officials are forbidden from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, except in the cases of violent felons. The law came under fire from critics after the shooting death of Kate Steinle last July at the hands of a man who was in this country illegally and had been deported multiple times. In the curious case of Figueroa, supporters of the law say the police may have undermined it. Local law enforcement wasn’t supposed to contact the feds about Figueroa, his attorney Zachary Nightingale says. ”I think that Pedro went into the police station honestly believing he had nothing to worry about, that he would collect his stolen car as a crime victim,” Nightingale says. A spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department was adamant that his agency did not cooperate with federal immigration agents. In a statement released by ICE, the agency said Figueroa was arrested based on his conviction for a misdemeanor DUI and an outstanding deportation order dating back to 2005. But when Figueroa’s lawyers looked into why he was ordered deported, they found an odd and complex story. In 2005, Figueroa came to the United States seeking asylum after being threatened by gangs in his native El Salvador. Immigration authorities released him from custody pending a hearing. But his case fell through the cracks. Figueroa never knew that ICE tried to deport him because the government never called him to a hearing. And apparently he didn’t ask why. Nightingale says the immigration system is riddled with   problems. ”He expected a notice. They didn’t have a notice to send him. But they ordered him deported anyways, even though they knew they had never sent him a notice,” he says. An immigration judge in Texas acknowledged there was an error in Figueroa’s case and agreed to reopen it. The case also reopens the local debate about San Francisco’s   law. Immigration advocates said someone in the police or sheriff’s department dropped the dime on Figueroa. Sheriff Vicki Hennessy denied that. ”No, it’s not an attack on sanctuary city. I believe in the   policies the way they’re written now. But I do think there’s room for some discretion in looking at particular people with convictions for violent felonies that may come into our custody,” Hennessy says. But Figueroa has no history of violence. His DUI was a misdemeanor, not a violent felony. San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos worried that the Figueroa case could dissuade unauthorized immigrants from ever talking with the police. ”And we know that if a person who is an immigrant, undocumented, is a witness or victim of a crime, if he or she feels that by talking to law enforcement they’ll get caught up in the justice system, they’re going to be silent,” Avalos says. For now, Pedro Figueroa sits in an ICE detention center just east of San Francisco. The immigration court considers his case to be such a priority that it has scheduled a hearing based on his original asylum claim for November 2019."
"Todd Rose dropped out of high school with   grades. At 21, he was trying to support a wife and two sons on welfare and minimum wage jobs. Today he teaches educational neuroscience at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He’s also the   of The Center for Individual Opportunity, a new organization devoted to ”the science of the individual and its implications for education, the workforce, and society.” In other words, Todd Rose is not your average guy. But neither are you. In fact, he argues, absolutely no one is precisely average. And that’s a big problem, he tells NPR Ed: ”We’ve come to embrace a way of thinking about ourselves as people that was intentionally designed to ignore all individuality and force everything in reference to an average person.” Admissions offices, HR departments, banks and doctors make   decisions based on averages. Rose says that ”works really well to understand the system or the group, but it fails miserably when you need to understand the individual, which is what we need to do.” Rose talked with us about his new book: The End Of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness. The opening example you use in the book is that in the 1940s, when the Air Force designed cockpits based on the average measurements of the pilots, there were an unacceptable number of crashes. But when they went back and measured thousands of pilots, across 10 body dimensions, they found that zero of them even came close to the ”average” on all 10. So they concluded that they had to redesign the seats and so forth to be adjustable to each person. Body size is a very concrete example of what I call jaggedness. There is no average pilot. No   people. When you think of someone’s size you think of large, medium, small. Our   approach to clothing reinforces that. But if that were true you wouldn’t need dressing rooms. So dimensions like height and weight and arm length and waist circumference . .. Yes, they’re not nearly as correlated as you would think. Height is   but size isn’t. People are jagged in size, in intelligence, everything we measure shows the same thing. I’m going to quote a line from the book, said to psychologist Peter Molenaar, who is arguing for a greater focus on individual difference: ”What you are proposing is anarchy!” How do you make decisions about people if you can’t use statistics and cutoff scores and compare them to averages? People feel like if you focus on individuality, everyone’s a snowflake, and you can’t build a science on snowflakes. But the opposite has been true. It’s not that you can’t use statistics, it’s just that you don’t use group statistics. If I want to know something about my daily spending habits, one straightforward way would be to collect records of what I spend every day. To take an average for myself would be perfectly fine. So you can generalize across time, but not across people? We’ve got to let go of putting a group into a study and taking an average and thinking that’s going to be close enough to universal insight. Now we have something better. We have a natural science of individuality that gives us a surer foundation. We’ve gotten breakthrough insights in a whole range of research, from cancer to child development. How does what you term ”Averagerianism” impact our school system both historically and today? It’s so ubiquitous that it’s hard to see. We design textbooks to be   but that means, what does the average kid of this age know and can do? Textbooks that are designed for the average will be a pretty bad fit for most kids. Then you think of things like the lockstep,   organization of kids, and you end up sitting in a class for a fixed amount of time and get a   rating in the form of a grade, and a   standardized assessment. It’s everything about the way we test and move kids forward. With standardized tests, I often hear teachers talking about students being two months behind or ahead, as if there’s a very fixed timeline for progress that all human beings should fit. It feels comforting. But if you take the basic idea of jaggedness, if all kids are multidimensional in their talent, their aptitude, you can’t reduce them to a single score. It gives us a false sense of precision and gives up on pretending to know anything about these kids. So alongside jaggedness, two other principles of individual variation you look at are ” ” and ”pathways.” Talk about those. It’s meaningless to talk about behavior and performance without context. Let’s take assessment. Carnegie Mellon [University] had this work showing that changing the way a question is asked can fundamentally alter how a kid performs. So if the [math] problem is about football players instead of ballerinas, you can’t standardize on the item. That systematically affects the kids’ ability to demonstrate what they know. But at a macro level, I think [context] introduces an attention to things like the impact of stress and trauma. And what about pathways? This sounds a lot like the talk around personalizing learning using technology and allowing each student to learn at his or her own pace. I think people who care about personalized learning talk about it as: If we just collect more data, we’re going to have this personalization. And that’s not clear to me at all. I think when you look at the idea of pace, we are so convinced that slow means dumb and fast means smart. We feel justified in pegging the time to how fast the average person takes to finish. But this is where, with a better understanding of this and realizing, ”Oh, pace really has nothing to do with ability, people are fast at some things and slow with others,” you would build a very different system than the one we have. Do you think the school system acknowledges the need to treat students as individuals? Two years ago I would have said no. But my colleague Paul Reville, who used to be secretary of education in Massachusetts, he’s rethinking the architecture of school systems. In most states, people have put on the books goals about meeting every kid where they’re at. Even the ”Every Student Succeeds” [ESSA, the new federal law] approach is based on the assumption that we’re meeting each kid where they’re at, to give them what they need to be successful. But we haven’t thought through the system design that needs to be in place to do that. We’re trying to have a system to do what it was never designed to do. What about in higher education? In higher ed we have a brutally standardized system. It doesn’t matter what your interests are, what job you want, everyone takes the same courses in roughly the same time and at the end of the course you get ranked. This is personal for me. I have two kids in college. The idea that someone is going to click a stopwatch, compare you to other kids in your class, and the kids with the best grades can get the best jobs, that’s not a good deal. I want my two boys to figure out what they love and what they’re good at and be exposed to things and be able to turn that into a job. You talk about innovations that are starting to catch on, like   education and credentialing  —   basically, accommodating different pathways and different balances of strengths and weakness. There’s plenty of ways we’re making smaller units of learning to combine in ways that are useful to you. To me, competency based education is nonnegotiable. I don’t think you can have     learning anymore. I don’t see how you justify diplomas. It doesn’t mean students can take forever, but allowing some flexibility in pace and only caring whether they master the material or not is a sound foundation for a higher ed system. There are so many examples of a lot of really interesting universities trying these things. Yes, reading this book it struck me that in some quarters, it seems like we’ve already moved forward to a focus on individuality, innovation, creativity. You talk about how companies like Google are finding that GPA or school prestige or even ranking employees against each other is not useful, and instead they need to create, essentially,   assessments for doing tasks in context. There are bright spots where you can see the principles of individuality at work. So for me it comes back to, well, wait a minute. So why is that not the mainstream? What I think my contribution is, is to say: Our institutions are based on assumptions about human beings. Our education system is based on a 19th century idea of an average person and using 20th century statistics. As long as people think you can understand people based on averages, or how they deviate from averages, it seems reasonable. It looks like accountability and fairness rather than absurdity. And you’re trying to show that there’s an alternative? If we don’t get rid of this way of thinking about ourselves and the people around us, it’s hard to get the public demand to create sustainable change. That’s the role that I and my organization want to play. We’re making a really big bet."
"Remember the cryptex, the little handheld safe from The Da Vinci Code where entering the correct combination will reveal the secret message and entering the wrong one will destroy it? Now replace the little safe with an iPhone, and instead of a secret message, it’s holding evidence in a terrorism case. The critical combination? It’s a passcode  —   one the FBI doesn’t know, and one that Apple is reluctant to help the agency figure out. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Here are a few key questions and answers about the dispute between the tech giant and federal investigators: Whose phone are investigators trying to access? In December, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik attacked the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif. with guns and explosives, killing 14 people before being killed themselves in a shootout with police. Malik had expressed support for the Islamic State on a Facebook page created under an alias, investigators say, but there are still many questions about who the two shooters might have communicated with before the attack, and what their motives were. During the investigation, the FBI obtained an iPhone 5c used by Syed Farook. The device was a company phone, owned by Farook’s employer, San Bernardino County. Investigators have a warrant to search the phone and also have permission from the county  —   but the phone is protected by a passcode that the FBI does not know. The agency has asked Apple to help it circumvent the phone’s security features  —   a request Apple has denied. Now a federal judge has ordered Apple to cooperate, and Apple has refused. What is the FBI looking for? Investigators say they’ve already obtained the most recent backup of Farook’s iCloud account  —   but that the iCloud account stopped updating a month and a half before the attack. That suggests there may be something valuable on the actual phone, the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California wrote in a court filing: ”This indicates to the FBI that Farook may have disabled the automatic iCloud backup function to hide evidence, and demonstrates that there may be relevant, critical communications and data around the time of the shooting that has thus far not been accessed, may reside solely on the SUBJECT DEVICE, and cannot be accessed by any other means known to either the government or Apple.” We don’t know what, if anything, the phone contains. Law enforcement can typically access some information shared through a phone  —   such as social media posts, Web searches, some emails and text messages  —   with a subpoena to telecom and tech companies. But some information, such as iMessages or WhatsApp messages, gets encrypted on the sender’s phone and only gets decrypted when delivered, while other data, like photos, might never get shared with another device. Why does the FBI need Apple’s help? ”The encryption is so well done and so hard that they know they’re not going to be able to break the encryption or they would have already done that,” says Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. In fact, Apple designed iPhone security with exactly this kind of scenario in mind, saying the company made it impossible even for Apple to crack. The data are protected by a code specific to the physical device and a passcode (aka PIN) set by the user. Without both numbers, Apple says, it’s impossible for third parties to decrypt the phone’s content. The FBI has the phone, but not the PIN. So can’t it just guess? Well, it’s stumped by three security features: an   function that deletes a phone’s content after 10 incorrect passcode entries, a mandatory delay between entering passcodes after a certain number of failed attempts, and the requirement that passcodes be entered manually instead of being quickly plugged in by a computer. What does the FBI want Apple to do? The FBI wants the company to circumvent those security features so that the bureau can just test out enough passcodes to find the right one (a process called ”brute forcing”). ”There’s breaking encryption, which is effectively either exhaustively guessing or finding a flaw in the actual way the encryption is performed. And there’s messing with the security software that serves as glue around the encryption pieces to make the thing work,” Hall says. Here’s a helpful analogy from Matthew Green, cryptographer and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. Think of your phone as a bank. Inside it is a safe that has your information  —   emails, messages, photos. The FBI is outside the bank, unable to get through the front door to try to crack the safe. So it’s asking Apple to help get inside the bank so it can set up a safecracking team to try various combinations to open it. If Apple complies with the judge’s order, ”all that would give [the FBI] is the ability to get close to that encryption core,” says Green. ”I think the FBI acknowledged that Apple is not lying when it says that the best Apple can really potentially do is get them onto the phone and help them guess the passcode.” What would Apple’s cooperation look like? The FBI has proposed that Apple could get it closer to the safe inside that bank (to follow the earlier analogy) by building software that could be loaded onto the phone and would allow the FBI to try out unlimited passcodes to see which one works. If Farook’s passcode consisted only of four digits, security experts say, it could take as little as 30 minutes to find it (though of course far longer if it’s a complex alphanumeric one). The FBI thinks that software is feasible  —   but it has to be made by Apple, not another developer, because only Apple has the proper security credentials to push new software to iPhones. Why doesn’t Apple want to comply? Apple says building that kind of software would amount to building a whole ”new version of the iPhone operating system,” customized to lift the security restrictions. Here’s what CEO Tim Cook said in an open letter: ”In the wrong hands, this software  —   which does not exist today  —   would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession. . .. ”The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks  —   from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.” So . .. is the FBI asking for a ”backdoor”? Apple has described the FBI’s request as amounting to asking for ”a backdoor to the iPhone”  —   a flaw in a security system purposefully designed to help law enforcement break in for investigations. But unlike the FBI’s policy demands for encryption backdoors, here it is not asking for a change to the technology on all iPhones instead, the court order calls for a targeted tool, software using unique identifiers of this individual phone. ”They are not asking Apple to redesign its product or to create a new backdoor to one of their products. They’re simply asking for something that would have an impact on this one device,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest has said. But Apple says such a tool, once created, would be too easy to reuse. ”They don’t want this software in the world,” Green says. ”Once they build it, they’re potentially going to have to break it out every time the FBI comes back.” How is the FBI trying to compel Apple to cooperate? The FBI is citing a   law that dates to the birth of America’s legal system. The All Writs Act was originally part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 and is both simple and sweepingly broad: It says that courts ”may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” In 2014, at the Justice Department’s request, a federal court in New York used the law to order a   to unlock a   device. The Justice Department says various other companies have been ordered under the All Writs Act to provide otherwise inaccessible information to investigators. But Apple says the use of the All Writs Act in this instance  —   pushing a manufacturer not to unlock a phone but to develop a system for breaking into a phone designed to be impossible to unlock  —   is ”unprecedented.” ”If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data,” Cook writes in his open letter. What’s next? Apple initially had five business days to formally respond to the court order issued Tuesday. The deadline is now Feb. 26. Last fall, the Justice Department, using the All Writs Act, tried to force Apple to unlock an iPhone running iOS 7 in a case involving a suspected methamphetamine dealer. Apple responded that it might be technically capable of unlocking that phone (since iOS 7 has fewer security features than later operating systems) but said the cost to the company’s reputation  —   and resulting harm to its business  —   would pose an ”undue burden.” That case is still pending, The New York Times says  —   and suggests one possible line of argument that Apple might try again. Regardless of how Apple chooses to respond, this case might turn into a lengthy battle  —   one that could eventually work its way to the U. S. Supreme Court. Is this a new dispute between Apple and the government? Not by a long shot. Apple and the federal government have been arguing about encryption for years. The debate has taken various forms  —   fighting over the FBI’s requests for backdoors into Apple encryption, sparring with the DEA over encrypted iMessages, arguing over the feasibility of unlocking iPhones  —   but the general disagreement has been the same. Federal investigators and prosecutors want access to more data, and Apple maintains that it’s essential to keep encryption unbreakable. The rhetoric has been hot  —   expressed in    terms. In November 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that a senior Justice Department official told Apple that its encryption technology would eventually lead to a child’s death, because law enforcement would be unable to access encrypted iPhone data. In an interview with Charlie Rose in September 2015, Cook said of putting a backdoor in Apple’s servers for law enforcement, ”they would have to cart us out in a box before we would do that.” Apple isn’t the only one in this fight  —   Google, too, has beefed up its encryption within the past few years. But Cook has placed a strong emphasis on the issue during his 4   years helming the company. ”Some of our most personal data is on the phone: our financial data, our health information, our conversations with our friends and family and ” he told NPR in October 2015. ”We do think that people want us to help them keep their lives private,” Cook said."
"A federal judge in California has ordered Apple to help unlock a phone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino attack. Apple CEO Tim Cook has vowed to resist the judge’s order, which pits digital privacy against national security interests. Marc Rotenberg, a privacy advocate who heads the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is concerned that the ruling could have   consequences beyond this one phone. NPR’s Renee Montagne spoke with Rotenberg about the case. What exactly is the court ordering Apple to do? It appears that the magistrate judge wants Apple to design the iPhone so there is a backdoor access by law enforcement to the content  —   the digital data on the phone  —   and that’s the order that Tim Cook is resisting. Isn’t the court just talking about this individual phone and bypassing its auto erase? Well, they’re actually doing both simultaneously. In other words, the FBI has the phone in its possession and they want access to the data, but the phone is designed in such a way so that Apple actually can’t get that access. So the implication of the ruling if Apple complies is that going forward, iPhones will need to be designed with this type of access. We understand that Apple has actually cooperated with law enforcement in the investigation right up to this point, where the judge has said in effect: ”We now need the backdoor access to the phone,” which is not currently part of the phone’s design. Apple argues that harm will come out of this. What exactly would that be? They’re just thinking about the hundreds of millions of users and frankly, the implications of a government being able to compel a service provider to design a technology to enable access to personal information. Nobody really disputes that if a company is in possession of evidence, they should, with proper legal authority, turn it over to the government. The question is whether companies should be compelled to design their technology for future investigations so that evidence is available, and that’s what Apple and other companies have been resisting. And I think they’ve done this, of course, because the implications for online privacy are staggering, as well as the implications for the policies that might be adopted by countries outside of the U. S. China, for example, I’m sure, would love a similar decryption capability. How about the government’s argument that this is in the interest of national security and that right now, these phones could go dark? The national security concerns are real, and I don’t think there’s any dispute about the need to address them. The question is, how best to address them. In other words, if by addressing the national security concerns, you make U. S. Internet users and iPhone customers more vulnerable to criminal attack or to national security vulnerabilities, you actually haven’t solved the problem. You’ve created a new problem and this is the reason that so many technology experts and privacy experts have said to the government: ”We’re not unsympathetic to the concern, but we actually believe that if you weaken communications technology, you leave U. S. Internet users more exposed,” and that’s where the debate is today."
"Midway through Matt Keil’s second deployment in Iraq, he came home and married his fiancee, Tracy, in 2007. He had two weeks RR no time for a honeymoon. Before he went back to war the couple had the sort of conversation unique to newlyweds in the military. ”I told her if you get a phone call that I’m injured, I’m probably fine,” Matt says. ”But if they come to the apartment or to your work in person, then I’m dead.” Six weeks later the news came  —   a phone call, thankfully. Matt had been shot in the shoulder. It wasn’t until Tracy got to Walter Reed Army Medical Center that she got the full story. The sniper’s bullet had nicked Matt’s spine. ”The doctor came in and told me he was paralyzed from the neck down, and he said it was a ’Christopher Reeve’  injury,” says Tracy. Questions overwhelmed them about the future, including whether they’d ever be able to have children. It seemed like something they could figure out later. ”They were kinda telling us we’re putting the cart before the horse,” Matt recalls. ”You guys got to get through a whole hell of a lot of rehab.” Time was running out, though, and the Keils didn’t realize it. To have children they’d need help: in vitro fertilization. But IVF is expensive, costing, on average, at least $12, 000 per cycle of treatment, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. The Pentagon’s health care system for   troops covers IVF for wounded soldiers like Matt Keil. The Department of Veterans Affairs for veterans doesn’t. By the time the Keils learned about the difference, it was too late. ”We were just swallowing the fact that he was never going to go back to work,” Tracy says. ”But finding out that IVF wouldn’t be covered because we agreed to retire out so quickly, that was hard, because nobody told me that.” A law passed in 1992 made it illegal for the VA to pay for IVF, which some people oppose because embryos are often destroyed in the process. The only option for the Keils would have been to get the procedure done immediately after Matt’s injury. They had missed the window. Matt was just starting to accept that with the limits of current science he might never walk again. But the limit on his ability to pay for IVF was put in his way by Congress. ”This is a direct result of a combat injury,” says Tracy. ”Don’t tell me that his service wasn’t good enough for us to have a chance at a family. Because we’ve already lost so much. I just want to have a family with the man that I love and please don’t make this any worse than it already has to be.” In the decades since Congress banned IVF for the VA, the procedure has become much more common. And about 1, 400 troops came back from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe injuries to their reproductive organs. Thousands more have head injuries, paralysis or other conditions that make IVF their best option. Bills to change the law come up periodically, only to be blocked at the last minute, says Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington. ”They don’t come out and say that directly, but there continues to be a backroom concern about the practice of IVF,” Murray says. Murray’s bipartisan IVF bill nearly passed last summer. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is staunchly against abortion rights, effectively blocked it. Tillis declined requests for comment, but said at the time that he opposed the bill because other problems at the VA need to be fixed first. The Congressional Budget Office estimates a change in VA policy to pay for fertility treatment could cost more than $500 million over four years. Murray says vets should get the same options as   troops. ”It’s really ridiculous that Congress would deny a widely used medical procedure to our veterans just because of their own . .. beliefs,” she says. Rep. Jeff Miller, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said he’s working toward a compromise that ”meets the needs of this special group of severely injured veterans while being sensitive to concerns surrounding IVF procedures.” In the meantime, many fertility clinics across the country offer discounted rates for veterans who are paying out of their own pockets for IVF. For the Keils, who spent the year after Matt’s injury figuring out how their new life could work, offers like that came too late. ”We weren’t at a good spot in our marriage at the time, and thought that if we’re going to bring kids into this world they need to be brought into a healthy relationship,” says Matt. ”What if we didn’t even end up staying together?” Tracy adds. They took a year to work it out, and then decided it was for sure  —   their marriage would survive. They also wanted a family. ”We were ready, and it didn’t matter what it was going to take,” Tracy says. The VA told them what they already knew  —   no coverage for IVF. The decision still seemed crazy to them, considering how much medical care VA would pay for. ”I served my country. I was injured,” Matt says. ”All my medical supplies are paid for, but the one thing they won’t facilitate [by] paying  —   that I lost the ability to have  —   was a family.” Paying for IVF on their own seemed impossible to Matt and Tracy. Matt’s condition meant that IVF would be even more of a financial strain than usual. Among other things, Tracy was her husband’s   caregiver, and they would need to hire help while she was getting treatments. Their savings weren’t going to cut it. But then a veterans charity paid for the Keils’ wheelchair accessible house, so they could target their money toward IVF. The local VFW held a fundraiser to help. Kids all around Denver and then Colorado set up lemonade stands and collected donations, too. The couple’s twins, Faith and Matthew, were born in November 2010. They ride on the back of their dad’s motorized wheelchair. When he wants to lift them high in the air they jump on his feet and he reclines the chair until he’s upside down. This winter the kids are outside building igloos and snowmen. Thousands of vets have injuries that make IVF their only option for having a family. Matt and Tracy Keil say they want them all to get that chance."
"What caused the collapse of Easter Island, widely believed to be the world’s most isolated inhabited place, hundreds of years ago? The question is a matter of hot debate. Conventional wisdom holds that environmental destruction and internecine warfare led to societal and economic collapse on this tiny island located some 2, 150 miles off the coast of Chile. For years, the island’s demise has been presented as a cautionary tale for our own violent and environmentally destructive times. But in the past decade or so, the common understanding of Easter Island’s collapse has been challenged by archaeologists whose fieldwork and research on the island, also known as Rapa Nui, point to a different story  —   in which disease and slavery, introduced by Europeans, are more to blame than ecocide and  . A study published Tuesday in the journal Antiquity adds further evidence to this line of thinking. Scattered across the island are thousands of small, sharp objects carved from obsidian, a rock made of volcanic glass. For centuries, it’s been assumed that these implements, roughly triangular and known in the indigenous Rapanui language as mata’a, were spear points  —   they were referred to as spears by European explorers, who began reaching the island in 1722. But after analyzing 423 mata’a, a team of scientists has concluded that they ”were not specifically designed for interpersonal violence but were general purpose tools that may have been used for peaceful tasks” such as agriculture, ritual scarification, even tattooing. ”They found that the pieces of glass would have made very poor weapons and bore little resemblance to other types of spears from similar civilizations,” says The Washington Post. ”It’s assumed that these are the WMDs that led to the collapse of people,” the study’s lead author, Carl Lipo, an anthropologist and director of Binghamton University’s environmental studies program, told the BBC. ”And what we found was there was no evidence, in fact, to support that these were used in a systematic, lethal fashion, and that they’re best explained as cultivation tools and things used in daily household activities.” How do they know? Usually, Lipo tells NPR via email, ”when we see lethal weapons used in combat, they are long, narrow, symmetric, pointed  —   best suited for piercing one’s internal organs. Those kinds of shapes are best performing when you are in    combat and you need to dispatch your enemy as quickly as possible (lest they kill you).” But in the case of the Easter Island mata’a, Lipo notes, ”We find anything but long, thin, narrow, pointed  —   we find any range of shapes, lack of symmetry,   thick objects that had sharp edges (as volcanic glass) but were nearly useless in the ’lethal spear’ sense. When we compare the mata’a shapes with other Polynesian weapons that seemed to be used as actual spears . .. they are completely different. What they most closely resemble are objects that are used in a general fashion as scrapers [or] cutting implements.” Still, even if the mata’a ”weren’t   or perfect stabbing weapons . .. that might not matter,” says the Christian Science Monitor. ”Attached to the end of a stick, the glassy objects could do some gruesome damage as a slashing weapon.” Lipo points out there is no evidence of defensive structures on the island. ”On other islands where we see lethal,   warfare, we see clear evidence of hilltop fortresses,” he writes. ”The hilltops are the best place to defend whenever weapons are thrown.” But on Easter Island, ”none of the tops of the hills have any evidence of such features,” he says. ”Nothing.” In fact, Lipo and his   note in their study: ”Rock throwing from high points was the primary way in which native Rapanui fought Europeans and would have more probably been used as a mode of lethal force than mata’a. This conclusion does not imply that prehistoric islanders did not experience violence, only that mata’a do not appear to be related to systemic warfare where performance as lethal weapons would be paramount.”"
"Canada’s government is preparing to launch a major inquiry on murdered or missing aboriginal women. A 2014 study by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found that nearly 1, 200 aboriginal women were murdered or went missing between 1980 and 2012. But two government ministers involved in planning the investigation say they believe the numbers are actually far higher. ”When you look at the real depth and breadth of this tragedy, it’s way bigger than we had thought,” Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said at a news conference with Minister for the Status of Women Patty Hajdu this week in Ottawa. Dan Karpenchuk in Toronto tells our Newscast unit that ”the Minister for the Status of Women says a more realistic number would be 4, 000 based on a history of police   or failing to properly investigate cases of missing native women.” Hajdu told the CBC that the estimate of 4, 000 is based on research from the Native Women’s Association of Canada. Referring to the 2014 study, Hajdu said the mounted police ”were only looking at very specific parameters.” She said some of the cases left off are disputed cases or involve cases deemed to be ”a suicide or a death due to exposure but in fact there are signs or symptoms that it wasn’t.” Bennett said Monday that ”we’ve heard somebody shot in the back of the head called a suicide. I think people do want to know what happened, that all of a sudden there’s no investigation because it was designated some natural causes, or overdose, or suicide, or an accident.” She added that the numbers in the study don’t include survivors of an attack or women who escaped abduction. And Former Minister of Aboriginal Affairs Chuck Strahl told The Globe and Mail that some cases happen in remote areas, making them less likely to be reported. He added: ”Sometimes people don’t trust local authorities, whether the police or . .. local First Nations authorities.” According to the police study, aboriginal women make up about 4 percent of Canada’s female population. But they represent nearly 1 in 4 female homicide victims in Canada, based on 2012 numbers. Hajdu and Bennett spoke to reporters Monday after completing   consultations with thousands of people to develop the scope of the national inquiry. Among the issues that they’re considering: Who to lead the inquiry, what do to about cold cases, and how to incorporate aboriginal traditions. Also under discussion is how to handle these sensitive issues without further traumatizing surviving family members. Canada’s newly elected prime minister, Justin Trudeau, vowed during his campaign to launch the inquiry immediately ”as part of his bid to establish a new ’nation to nation’ relationship with indigenous peoples,” the CBC reports. Before Trudeau’s electoral victory, his predecessors in ”the Conservative government had long dismissed calls for a national inquiry, with prime minister Stephen Harper asserting the deaths and disappearances are not part of a ’sociological phenomenon,’ ” the Globe and Mail reports. A recent Toronto Star investigation suggests there is no clear profile for killers of aboriginal women. ”Half of the victims were domestically related to the perpetrator,” but ”16 per cent of the offenders were acquaintances 15 per cent were strangers and 13 per cent serial killers,” the newspaper investigation found. On Valentine’s Day, vigils were held across Canada to remember missing or murdered aboriginal women. One of the memorials was in front of Toronto police headquarters, AJ+ reports: The demonstrators there highlighted the case of Bella   who fell 31 floors to her death in downtown Toronto in 2013. She was 25. AJ+ reports: ”Her death is still listed as suspicious and unsolved and open to this day,” says her sister Melina. ”What I really hope that the inquiry . .. will look at the colonial and systemic roots  —   the root issues of the murdered and missing indigenous women issue  —   but also it will look at how police are complicit in the high rates of unsolved cases across this country.” Concern that police are not adequately investigating these cases is a regular complaint, Bennett said at Monday’s news conference. She said that during her   trip, one family told her ”that when the loved one was listed as Caucasian, they decided not to correct it in case the search or the investigation wouldn’t be as good.”"
"Here’s a puzzle: Put two quarters side by side so the ridges mesh like gears, then hold one still and roll the other all the way around it. How many revolutions will George Washington make? That’s a riddle from Ethan Canin’s new novel, A Doubter’s Almanac. The book follows Milo Andret, a troubled math genius, through three generations of his family. Canin tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro about his protagonist’s Michigan childhood, and the answer to the book’s two quarter puzzle. On Milo as a child deciding to make a chain out of a fallen tree, He’s a kid growing up in the woods of northern Michigan  —   kind of a lonely kid in these lonely woods  —   and a giant beech tree falls over one night in a storm. And he goes out there, looks at it and gets this idea that he could whittle a chain out of the wood. [Shapiro: And to make a chain out of a fallen tree you can’t do link by link, it has to be all interlinked and you just take away everything but the chain.] Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s kind of the way Michelangelo used to sculpt and imagine everything that wasn’t the Pietà. And that’s what this guy does: He spends the entire summer building this unbuildable thing, whittling this unwhittlable chain. And it becomes a metaphor for what he does with the rest of his life, really, which is try to solve the unsolvable problem. On how Milo becomes a mathematician, He turns out to have a couple of skills. One of them is that he can always tell where he is on the Earth  —   he has this internal compass that some people have. And later on in his life, he discovers that he can also draw very beautifully in an idiot’s way  —   not understanding exactly what he’s drawing, yet able to render everything perfectly. And those kinds of talents sort of sweep him forward into this life he didn’t intend to have, which is a life as a mathematician working on one of the great unsolved problems of the century. On mathematicians and mental illness, Mathematicians don’t like it when they’re associated with, you know, with mental illness. And I can see why they don’t. . .. A lot of mathematicians are sort of bristled when people say that they can’t get along socially, that they’re not good with people. But I look around the world I think it seems to be fairly true. On the answer to the riddle about the two quarters, Well, come on, every smart person in the world would say one  —   the circumference of one coin matches the circumference of the other. But it’s not. It goes around twice, right? And you could prove that by taking two quarters out of your pocket. . .. That puzzle puzzles the daylights out of me. It’s fantastic."
"As men age, they lose testosterone  —   which some say affects their sense of   and sexual function. But for healthy older men, using supplemental testosterone as a remedy has been controversial. Past studies of the supplement’s use have been relatively small, and the evidence about benefits and risks has been mixed. Now a   study published online Wednesday, in the New England Journal of Medicine, confirms certain benefits in sexual function and mood for some men 65 and over, at least in the first year. Though the gains were modest, and some tended to wane in the latter months of treatment, researchers say the findings are encouraging, and merit further research. Dave Bostick, a retired vocational counselor in Pittsburgh, took part in the study. Bostick loves his wife, but when he got to his 60s, he says, he’d noticed some changes in himself  —   a decline in his sexual drive, and a drop in his enthusiasm for trying new things at work. His lack of ambition was so noticeable, he tells Shots, that he decided it was time to retire. But he still wasn’t really happy. And one day, while taking a course at the University of Pittsburgh, he was drawn to a posted notice about a new study. ”I looked at the announcement,” he says. ”I said, ’Yes, I’m 65, and yes, I feel    .’ ” The University of Pittsburgh was one of 12 sites nationwide that collaborated to look at the possible benefits of testosterone in older men whose levels of the hormone were below 275 ng per deciliter of blood  —   that’s just below the wide range that many doctors consider ”normal” for healthy, younger men. The scientists screened more than 51, 000 men who were 65 or older for their study, and from that group found 790 with low testosterone, as measured by a blood test. The researchers say the study wasn’t designed to get at whether the men had lost the hormone more rapidly than others, or whether they produced less testosterone to begin with. About half the participants were given testosterone gel, and the other half a placebo gel. Until the first year of the study was over, neither the participants nor the researchers knew which men were getting the placebo. ”The testosterone concentrations in the men in this trial [who got the active treatment] were increased, on average, to just the middle of the normal range for young men,” says endocrinologist Dr. Peter Snyder, of the University of Pennsylvania, who led the study. After a year, Snyder says, though the benefits were only moderate, it was clear that mood and physical activity had improved among the group that had been getting a boost of testosterone. And the biggest improvement, he says, was in sexual function. ”Testosterone improved sexual activity, sexual desire and improved erectile function,” Snyder says. Dave Bostick, it turned out, was in the group assigned testosterone. He did develop a more robust libido, he says. But even more important, he adds, he felt happier. He had more energy, and his enthusiasm for trying new things  —   new classes, new interests  —   was restored. His part of the study ended two years ago, but Bostick is still taking testosterone. Past research has suggested that increasing testosterone levels might also increase the risk for of heart attack and stroke, or lead to prostate issues. But Snyder says, so far, his team of scientists has found no increase in adverse events among those taking the hormone. Still, that doesn’t mean testosterone supplements are safe to take   he says. To get those answers, he says, far more research is needed  —   larger studies that last longer periods of time. Even so, endocrinologist Dr. Eric Orwoll, with the Oregon Health And Science University, says the findings offer a bit more guidance for doctors and some patients. ”I think we can be confident that there is some benefit for some men,” Orwoll says. ”This is the first really   and scientifically rigorous trial to get at the question of whether testosterone supplements provide benefit we didn’t have that information before.” Researchers still don’t know exactly which men might benefit. ”The average participant was 72 years of age,” Orwoll notes in an editorial that accompanied the journal study. ”Almost 90 percent of participants were white, most were obese, most had hypertension, more than one third had diabetes, and almost 20 percent had sleep apnea.” Most testosterone prescriptions these days are written for   men, Orwoll adds  —   not the demographic included in Snyder’s study. ”We should not assume that the benefits, lack of benefits, or   profile observed in these studies would be similar in younger men, men with higher testosterone levels, or those with different demographic or clinical characteristics,” Orwoll writes. The supplement was given only to men with abnormally low testosterone  —   as measured by a blood test. Those men, Orwoll says, now have more information to inform their treatment choices. ”Some men would say, ’Yes! I want to take any chance that there might be that my sexual function will improve, even if it’s modest,’ ” Orwoll says. ”Other men will say, ’Geez, that doesn’t sound very encouraging  —   I don’t want to go to the trouble of using testosterone, particularly when we don’t know about   risks.’ ” The study, which cost $50 million, is ongoing researchers will soon analyze supplemental testosterone’s effect, if any, on cognitive function, bone health and the cardiovascular system."
"He loves Argentinian empanadas and dulce de leche. In 2015, he said that if he had only one wish, it would be to travel unrecognized to a pizzeria and have a slice  —   or two or three. In other words, he may be protected by the world’s smallest army and be responsible for the spiritual governance of 1. 2 billion people, but when it comes to eating, Pope Francis loves comfort food as much as the next person. In fact, everyone whose return address lists ”Vatican City” carries food close to their heart. Or so it would seem, judging by The Vatican Cookbook, which will be released in English in April 2016. It’s a tour of life and food in the world’s smallest country, as told by members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. Since the 1500s, the guard has consisted of Swiss men  —   who, at the time of the army’s formation, were ”regarded as invincible,” according to the book’s forward. These men pledge to serve and protect the pope for, at minimum, a   tour of duty. Their brightly striped gold, blue and red uniforms  —   as well as the plate armor and plumed metal helmets they occasionally don  —   make them hard to miss at the Vatican. Yet outside of the city, they’re not widely known. Polish nuns do the majority of cooking at the Vatican, but the Swiss Guard chefs do step in to make food on formal occasions or to fulfill a special request. Though a guard cooking is a rarity, these men know more about the pope’s eating habits than anyone else, since they are no more than a few steps from him at all times. This being the Vatican, the pope’s presence (and the presence of popes past) is an important part of the book, but this is not a papal cookbook. The authors, David Geisser, Erwin Niederberger and Daniel Anrig, are all current or former members of the Guard. Geisser was a chef before joining the guard in 2012, and he is credited with bringing the Vatican Cookbook from idea to print. The book is organized into sections focusing on the foods that define the people, places and celebrations of the Vatican. Each section has themed recipes, as well as intimate descriptions of life in the holy city. At first, it seems hard to relate to anyone whose backyard consists of the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica and the residence of the pontiff himself. Yet it’s hard not to be enchanted by the book’s charming earnestness  —   more of a community cookbook sensibility in a world of beautifully plated, exhaustively sourced cookbooks. Among other things, The Vatican Cookbook reveals that when the Swiss Guard are   many of them put on the uniform of the FC Guardia soccer team. The Guardia play against teams made up of museum employees, postal workers, or other groups of Vatican employees for an intramural cup. Together, they occasionally compete in international competitions as the Vatican City National Football Team. Get your banners ready now. Of course, the pope also has his downtime  —   some of which he takes during vacations at the Castel Gandolfo, a scenic village that is the ”historic summer home of the popes.” A recipe for eggplant mozzarella describes sourcing the ingredients from the working farm at the papal palace. (The pope even has a small herd of cows there.) With some exceptions, the foods included in this cookbook are humble and   . This is not a papal feast but a glimpse into the mostly ordinary life at the Vatican. A footnote on a recipe for braised lentils notes that ”the Swiss Guard diet has included lentils several times a week for centuries.” Pope Francis and his two immediate predecessors each get a section featuring their biography and favorite foods from their homelands of Argentina, Bavaria (Pope Benedict XVI) and Poland (Pope John Paul II). When Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded in 1981, doctors put him on a restricted diet while he recovered. His only request? Let him eat his native food, pierogis. Though doctors initially refused, the Cookbook notes that they eventually relented. As the authors note, who can say no to the pope? Of course, officers of the Swiss Guard, a few of whom have wives and children who live at the Vatican, also get to shout out their favorite foods. Former Guard Commander Daniel Rudolf Anrig reveals his favorite food to be ”Cheese Tort Italiana” (similar to a thin quiche) with one caveat: ”With respect,” the cookbook notes, ”Anrig would like to add that his mother is chef and creator of the finest cheese tort in the world.” For Anrig, like most of us, eating is an act of comfort. Even the best Swiss Guard chef or Polish nun would have trouble outdoing a recipe that mom used to make."
"Kendrick Lamar was hailed for his powerful Grammy Award performance that included a faux chain gang of convicts, African tribal dancers and freestyle rap with Trayvon Martin  . There were some   prisoners who were part of the Grammy nominations this year too  —   inmates from Malawi’s Zomba Central Prison, incarcerated for everything from suspected witchcraft to murder. They call their musical group the Zomba Prison Project and their album I Have No Everything Here was up for the best world music award. Unlike    Lamar, they lost. But they still felt like winners. Just being nominated is a major win for the 2, 000 men and 50 women who live in a dilapidated, 19th century prison stuffed to 10 times its capacity. Ragged clothing, empty bellies and violence are the norm. ”The actual award is beside the point,” says Grammy   producer Ian Brennan, one of the main forces behind the prisoners’ album. He’s amazed by the amount of attention the album got: ”No one [nominated for best world music award] ever, ever has received this amount of positive coverage. World music records are never the story, except maybe one story in a paper in the artist’s country. So this is truly positive.” The group began some years ago, when a grant to the prison was used to purchase a few instruments. Inmates made others, including some percussion instruments. As they began to create music, word spread and eventually caught the attention of Brennan and his wife, Italian documentary filmmaker and photographer Marilena Delli. When Brennan and Delli heard the music, they sensed a hidden jewel. In exchange for access to the prison and permission to record the inmates, Brennan, a violence prevention specialist, taught conflict resolution workshops to the inmates and prison guards. The couple set up a makeshift studio in the prison. They brought along an acoustic guitar, a mainstay on the record, which features poignant solo voices, sweet harmonies and tough song titles like ”Prison of Sinners” and ”Please Don’t Kill My Child.” ”It was a true leap of faith,” says Brennan of the 2013 recording project. ”It cost well over $5, 000 just to make the trip  —   and [prison officials] wouldn’t guarantee access until we were there.” ”We spent almost two weeks,” says Brennan, the author of How Music Dies (or Lives): Field Recording and the Battle for Democracy in the Arts. ”Our philosophy was to listen to everybody. So many times we’d be recording and then people would be singing as they walked out the door and we’d say, ’Wait! What is that song you’re singing now?’ Then we’d bring them back to record.” A man who is about 22, the ”backup bass player” in the touted prison band, hesitantly wrote what Brennan calls the standout song on the album: ”Women Today Take Care of Business.” ”He was scared and said, ’I am not a writer,’ but we pleaded with him to try to write a song. It didn’t have to be fancy or long, it could last 30 seconds,” says Brennan. ”He came back and we recorded the song he wrote about women. [He believes they] are the ones responsible for the progress in the country while men relax and play games. Lyrically it’s the best song. It’s very well written and modern.” Brennan and Delli traveled back to the prison last month, bringing cash, food, clothing, microphones and a multitrack recorder so the prisoners can record their own music. ”We found four people [who had been involved in the recordings] were released,” he says. ”We were able to spend a few hours with them outside of the prison, and that was truly beautiful.”"
"Sometime tomorrow, Linda Holmes and I will break down Monday night’s Grammys telecast in a Small Batch edition of Pop Culture Happy Hour. And, for a variety of reasons, we’re not likely to spend much time on the awards themselves. The headlines there, after all, aren’t shocking: Taylor Swift’s 1989 won Album Of The Year, beating out Kendrick Lamar’s more creatively ambitious and critically heralded To Pimp A Butterfly. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ ”Uptown Funk” won Record Of The Year, which was hard to dispute, while Song Of The Year went to Ed Sheeran’s ”Thinking Out Loud,” which was all too easy to dispute, if you’re me. Meghan Trainor won Best New Artist, while the year’s heavily nominated   in rock (Alabama Shakes) country (Chris Stapleton) and   (Lamar) largely dominated their fields. This Grammys transcended the usual   industry showcase in two performances, set back to back in a manner that proved almost disorientingly powerful. First, the cast of Broadway’s Hamilton performed ”Alexander Hamilton” on stage in New York, giving many wannabe   their first live look at the massively celebrated musical. That gave way almost immediately to a stunning Kendrick Lamar medley of ”The Blacker The Berry” and ”Alright,” followed by a riveting, fiercely political new song  —   all of it as vital as anything seen on a Grammys stage. Then, with barely a moment for the audience to catch up, the Hamilton cast was awarded its inevitable Grammy, at which point composer and performer   Miranda rapped a giddy, thrilling acceptance speech. You’d be forgiven for thinking the rest of the show couldn’t measure up, though grabby performances abounded, from a lengthy David Bowie medley performed by Lady Gaga to fine showcases for the likes of Alabama Shakes, Chris Stapleton and Andra Day. Even the wobblier moments  —   an Adele song that suffered from technical and vocal difficulties, a Lionel Richie medley that rarely cohered, an    Justin Bieber showcase  —   got people talking, which is, after all, one of any awards show’s primary goals. This one achieved that. And, for about 20 essentially perfect minutes, it did much, much more."
"On a chilly afternoon in south Georgia, more than 100 Transportation Security Administration trainees are huddled together on metal bleachers overlooking a field. They’re watching an explosives instructor demonstrate what can happen if they don’t do their job well. ”All right, confined smokeless powder in three, two, one.” BOOM! The trainees (and an observing reporter) jump, startled by the explosion 100 yards or so before them. More blasts follow, with different explosives. The lesson for these new hires? That the consequences of a mistake are deadly. This is the TSA Academy, established just last month. It’s part of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, located at a sprawling former air base in Glynco, Ga. Some 96 federal agencies train here. Much of the TSA training takes place in classrooms, where newly hired transportation security officers, or TSOs, spend two weeks learning how to identify different things the bad guys might try to sneak onto planes, such as dangerous explosive igniters that look like everyday objects, say an eyeliner pen or a tube of toothpaste. There is also a     of a typical airport screening station, with body scanners, metal detectors and   machines, where the trainees are taught and sometimes struggle with how to interpret the images of objects inside the bags that pass through. It illustrates the difficulty the TSOs have in the real world. That was made all too clear last June, when reports revealed that government auditors had smuggled simulated explosives and weapons past TSA checkpoints 67 out of 70 times. Peter Neffenger became TSA administrator shortly after that, following a long career in the U. S. Coast Guard. He paints that failure as a   call for the TSA. ”I think it was transformational for us,” Neffenger says. ”It allowed us truly to look at the systemic issues in the organization that might lead to those kind of failures at the checkpoint.” Issues such as officers worrying more about keeping the line moving at checkpoints rather than giving passengers and bags thorough inspections. The TSA Academy is aimed at driving those points home and instilling a sense of professionalism among TSA officers. Neffenger is enthusiastic about the opportunity the academy presents. ”They do     training here, spend time in the classroom [and] come out to the lab. It’s very exciting for me to connect them to people who are doing the mission all across the country in a way we’ve never had a chance to before.” One of the TSA Academy instructors, Shawn Weeks Freeman, says today’s training is a lot different from when she joined the agency in 2004, not long after its founding. ”When I joined it was a laptop in a hotel room . .. and then very much on the job training. Thats kinda how I learned.” Weeks Freeman brings a very personal, firsthand experience to the classroom. In 1982, she was a flight attendant for Pan Am when a bomb, placed under a passenger seat, went off in her plane en route from Japan to Honolulu, killing a Japanese teenager. That experience brought her to TSA in the first place and guides her work today. ”I always bring that home to my students,” she says, ”because I say if it takes   of a second more, just give it a little more pressure, give it one more look, check it, ask for somebody, just   of a second it could save [a] life.” And that is the key lesson the TSA hopes its officers will learn at this academy, that the stakes are very high."
"This past Sunday during 11 a. m. worship service at Bible Way Church of Atlas Road in Columbia, S. C. there was a short celebration of Black History Month. The church honored John Wesley Matthews Jr. a   black state senator. After Matthews accepted an award, the pastor of the church, Darrell Jackson Sr. took time to acknowledge another special guest. ”There are people that touch your lives,” he told the congregation from the pulpit, as the organist softly played. ”There are people that are so powerful and so great, and you’d never know it because they don’t promote it.” He was talking about Carol Willis, whom he called Bill Clinton’s ”right hand” during Clinton’s time as governor of Arkansas and, according to Jackson, ”his No. 1 chief   adviser” when Clinton became president. ”There was a running joke that the most powerful man in America was a country boy from Arkansas named Carol Willis that nobody . .. knows,” Jackson joked. ”If you want Bill Clinton to do anything, you’ve got to go through Carol Willis.” Jackson urged Willis to stand and be recognized, and as he stood, the crowd clapped for him as well  —   in fact, they might have given him an even warmer reception than they gave Sen. Matthews, the Black History Month honoree. It spoke to what many in Black South Carolina see as fact: This is Clinton Country. Over the past several months, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has been trying to change that. As South Carolina’s Democratic primary approaches  —   a primary in which black voters regularly make up half or more of the electorate  —   he is working hard to convince black voters who have known the Clintons for years, if not decades, to support him and not Hillary Clinton. Sanders’ press secretary, Symone Sanders, is affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement. He’s gotten endorsements from rapper Killer Mike and Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who was killed by a New York City police officer and became a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter. Sanders touches on racial inequality during all of his stump speeches. Black public intellectuals like   Coates and Michelle Alexander have gone public decrying the policies of the Clinton administration and saying they’ll vote for Sanders. And, as NPR previously reported, some young black voters in South Carolina are choosing to support Sanders, also citing major problems with Bill Clinton’s administration, namely his 1994 crime bill and his 1996   bill. (Sanders voted for the crime bill in 1994, and against the welfare reform bill.) One could see a wave of Sanders momentum sweeping up black votes throughout South Carolina. But polling suggests Clinton still has a sizable lead with blacks in the Palmetto State, even though it’s been shrinking in recent months. After the Sunday service at the Bible Way church, that lead was evident. For    Fannie Lot, the choice between Clinton and Sanders is a   in large part because of Clinton’s experience. ”She did an excellent job as the governor’s wife,” she told NPR. ”She did an excellent job as the first lady in the White House. She did an excellent job as the secretary of state. And she did an excellent job as a senator.” Elimuel Porterfield said Clinton would be an extension of Barack Obama’s presidency. ”We need to get somebody that’s going to continue the things that President Obama has started,” she said, adding, ”She’s been there. She knows his policies. . .. So she knows what’s going on. We don’t need to start all over again.” Obama’s approval rating with black voters regularly hovers over 90 percent. And Porter and other voters NPR spoke with seemed to feel a need to defend and support Clinton, just as strongly as they do Obama. ”I didn’t like the way he was being treated, and I don’t like the way she’s being treated,”    Queen Lewis said of the way Republicans and news outlets like Fox treat Obama and Clinton. ”They don’t have nobody on that podium that can beat Hillary Clinton. And they know this. So that’s why they have all that negative stuff out there. Her emails? They pick one little thing after another.” Where many Sanders supporters have pointed out Bill Clinton’s record as president as a reason not to support Hillary Clinton, several black voters at Bible Way saw the former president as an asset. They spoke of knowing him, meeting him and working on his campaign. Kataya Davis, 32, joked about the former president’s special relationship with many black Americans: ”Bill Clinton? That’s my cousin,” she said. If these voters are an indication, it would seem Clinton has nothing to worry about on Feb. 27. But they are not the only indication, and as results from Iowa and New Hampshire showed, polls often miss the mark come time to vote. Darrell Jackson Sr. the pastor of Bible Way and a staunch Clinton supporter, admits that even in his own family, there are divisions. ”My cousin, who’s 26 years old, lives in Los Angeles, came to visit last week. He said, ’I’m going for Bernie Sanders.’ I said, ’That’s great, man,’ ” Jackson recalled. Jackson said anything that motivates young people, particularly young black people, to vote is good by him. He also sees a real competition for black votes between Clinton and Sanders as good for the black community. ”I think that’s healthy,” he said, adding, ”I think it’s healthy for the   community to have our vote contested. Because when there is no contest, we are often taken for granted.” He continued, ”Where would we be if there was not a contested Democratic primary? The issue of Black Lives Matter wouldn’t even be on the table. . .. The views of Bernie Sanders, the views of Hillary Clinton are both put on the forefront. Both of them are made to address and to make promises that can be recorded on, ’What will you do for the   community?’ We all win then.” However divided Democratic   voters are over Clinton or Sanders, Emory University professor Andra Gillespie says it’s normal. ”Minority communities are actually very diverse,” she told NPR. ”People want women to be a monolith. They really never were. People have talked about   or Latinos as if they were a monolith, and the truth is that’s never been the case. This election is reminding us that there is no group that’s a monolith.” Jackson thinks Sanders would need to come close to the record turnout Obama received in 2008 to win. And, that, Jackson said, might be difficult. ”People turned out in record numbers for Barack Obama  —   and I don’t say this disparagingly  —   because he looked like them,” he said. ”They loved his views of hope and the audacity of hope, but at the end of the day in South Carolina, they got a chance to vote for somebody who looked like them, [people who] never thought that would happen. People are turning out for Bernie Sanders because they think he thinks like them.” But Jackson still made no predictions for South Carolina’s Democratic primary or the state’s black vote. ”I don’t know, and no one can tell you, and all the   experts? Throw them away,” Jackson said. ”They have no idea. And we will have no idea until the evening of the 27th.”"
"The coal industry is hurting. For decades, coal was the   fuel for generating electricity. Now that is changing. The connection between coal and generating electricity goes back to the late 19th century. A good place to get a sense of that history is the small town of Sunbury, Pa.  —   specifically at the corner of Fourth and Market streets at the Hotel Edison. ”This is the place where, on July 4, 1883, Thomas Alva Edison lit the hotel with the first commercial   electric system,” says hotel   Meghan Beck. The famous inventor chose Sunbury to demonstrate his lighting system because the existing gas lamps in town were expensive to operate. There was plenty of cheap coal nearby, and Edison used it to power his generators. This part of central Pennsylvania has long been coal country. ”It was a huge part of our economy in this area,” Beck says. ”We actually have a power plant just across the river that was   up until a year ago.” That plant and its huge smokestacks can be seen for miles. It’s a local landmark that delivered electricity to this region for more than six decades. But now things are about to come full circle, and the lights in Beck’s hotel may once again be powered by gas. Right next to the old coal plant, a brand new natural gas power plant is under construction and scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017. Companies building the plant say it will be more efficient than the old coal plant. While a coal plant pretty much has to run all the time, a gas plant can be shut down and fired back up more easily to meet regional electricity demands, according to Dave Meehan, head of Sunbury Generation, which owns the site where the new plant is being built. It’s easier on the environment, too. There’s no coal ash to deal with, it uses less than 5 percent of the water for cooling than the coal plant used, and it emits less pollution. Here’s the real kicker: The new gas plant will produce more than twice as much electricity as the old coal plant  —   enough to power about a million homes. ”Gas is taking more and more market share from coal, and that’s a reality that is here to stay,” Meehan says. U. S. coal production peaked in 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration. It’s been trending down since. Last year, it fell 10 percent, and that’s hurt companies and the communities where they operate. ”Right now I think we’re simply in a survival mode,” says Luke Popovich, vice president for external communications at the National Mining Association. In part he blames environmental regulations over the decades. But the coal industry’s problems go beyond that. Despite falling demand here in the U. S. the industry thought global demand would continue to rise. Popovich says coal companies borrowed a lot of money to prepare for that new business, but it never came. ”Now they’re faced with paying off those debts at the same time that prices for all fossil fuels  —   not just coal but natural gas and oil  —   have virtually collapsed,” Popovich says. Coal’s problems don’t stop there. The renewable energy building boom also is stressing the industry. Once solar and wind projects are built, the power is cheap to produce. ”Gas puts the immediate threat to coal, but the combination of gas and renewables places a   threat to coal,” says Andy Roberts, analyst in international thermal coal markets for the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. He says last year was tough for coal companies, and the future likely will be even more painful. ”Probably, over the long, long time, only the strongest of them are going to survive,” Roberts says. One way to stay strong is to declare bankruptcy. That’s the route Arch Coal is taking. It’s the   coal company in the U. S. and it filed in January. The company says it expects to shed more than $4. 5 billion in debt. Executives hope that will position Arch to be one of the few companies that will survive the tough years ahead."
"In northeast Scotland, there is a cluster of homes on the outskirts of a pristine golf course near Aberdeen owned by none other than Donald Trump. The U. S. presidential hopeful’s business venture promised thousands of jobs, tourism and a new way to diversify the oil economy. Trump wanted to build the golf course in Scotland, he said, because his mother was born there. But almost a decade later, he has angered his neighbors and turned some of his former supporters against him. ”He promises the earth, delivers nothing,” says David Milne, who lives nearby. ”As far as that goes, he’s in a good position to be a politician. But as far as the real world goes, no, do not trust this man with anything.” Milne used to have an ocean view now he has to stand on his upstairs balcony to see over the edge of Trump’s golf course. ”You’ve got the Donald Trump clubhouse maybe 700 yards away at a push, maybe slightly less,” he says. The landscape might be a sprawl of green, but Milne says he rarely sees a golfer. He was never a fan of the golf course, which spreads across parts of    coastal sand dunes designated as a special environmental site. But that’s not why he dislikes Trump. It’s because he’s a bully, Milne says  —   and a really bad neighbor. ”They have threatened us at a few stages,” he says. ”We’ve had the water lines cut, the power lines cut, the phone lines cut  —   sometimes accidentally, but not always. He has lied to us, he’s lied about us.” Milne says Trump tried to use the Scottish version of eminent domain to force locals to sell their property. And Trump has publicly insulted his neighbors, calling their homes ugly. Sarah Malone, the executive vice president of Trump’s Scottish company, denies trying to force people to sell. ”I would categorically dispute any claims that we have purposely made life difficult for the neighbors or done things that were wrong,” she says. ”We simply haven’t.” Before Trump showed up in this sleepy area, people say they left their doors unlocked. Now they have video cameras to catch incidents of alleged harassment by Trump’s staff. One of Trump’s biggest fans used to be the leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond. He was head of the government in Scotland when Trump came in with his grand plans. ”Donald said wonderful things about the billions of dollars he was going to invest, the thousands of jobs that were going to be created,” Salmond recalls. ”Now, eight years later, I reckon the investment has amounted to perhaps a tenth of that.” Salmond says Trump disrupted Scotland’s plan to develop sustainable energy. Trump said building wind turbines in the sea off the coast of his golf course would ruin the view. He sued to stop them, and the plan was delayed in the courts for years and Britain’s Supreme Court finally rejected his challenge in December. It set off a public feud between Salmond and Trump. ”I think our relationship deteriorated because I said no to him,” Salmond says. ”And I think my opinion of Donald Trump is, I wish somebody had said no to him when he was a wee boy, because I think he would’ve turned out better.” Malone says Trump’s critics are ignoring his contribution to Scotland’s economy. ”Judge us from what we’ve done,” she says. ”I would defy anyone to come here and not say, ’I may not like the man, but he delivers’  —   and he has delivered.” Trump, she says, has invested nearly $150 million in the course so far. There are plans to build a second golf course, a residential village, banqueting facilities and more. But the   voices are getting louder. And a petition to ban him from Britain after he made   remarks originated right here in Aberdeen."
"Eminent domain isn’t one of those issues  —   like abortion or foreign policy  —   that’s guaranteed to come up every election cycle. But the slightly wonky debate over when property owners should be forced to give up land for the public good is coming up this year  —   especially in South Carolina, where Republicans hold their primary this weekend. It’s a real concern for some residents of South Carolina, like Jackie Bartley, who lives on a farm near Jackson. Bartley says she has recently had surveyors along her property line. She worries that has something to do with the proposed Palmetto Pipeline, which would carry petroleum through the region. Pipeline developer Kinder Morgan says it’s working with property owners to get permission to build along the route. But the company is also fighting for the right to use eminent domain in cases where deals can’t be reached. ”I think people should be able to keep their property and not have to sell it if they don’t want to  —   especially a private company like this, to take your land,” Bartley says. Bartley says it gave her pause when she heard that Donald Trump had tried and failed to expand parking at one of his New Jersey casinos through eminent domain.  ”I don’t think people should be able to do that  —   I don’t care how much money they’ve got,” she says. The issue has surfaced twice recently on the Republican debate stage, where Trump has been on the defensive. ”These people always hit me with eminent domain, and frankly I’m not in love with eminent domain,” Trump said. ”But eminent domain is something that you need very strongly.” Meanwhile, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is trying to make it a problem for Trump in South Carolina and beyond. In a Cruz campaign ad, a group of children play with a Trump doll, which tries to take over the playroom through eminent domain. The issue is also being debated in the South Carolina Legislature. This week, state senators discussed legislation that would block the Palmetto Pipeline developers from condemning private land by barring most private,   companies from using eminent domain.  One of the bill’s   Republican Sen. Shane Massey, says the debate has been heating up in South Carolina. ”When you use words like eminent domain, or you start talking about condemnation, lots of times people don’t understand the legal jargon. But they surely understand it when you’re coming to take their land,” he says. Even so, Massey says he doesn’t see this local issue chipping away at very much of Trump’s support in the state.  ”I think most of his supporters are loyal enough that they’re gonna stick with him regardless of what he says. At least that appears to be the case so far,” Massey says. For landowner Jackie Bartley, Trump’s past support of eminent domain is ”points against him,” but he’s still high on her list. She says she’s still leaning toward voting for him  —   or maybe, Cruz."
"When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, there was a lot of talk about ”The Obama Effect”: how the nation’s first black president signaled a new era of racial harmony and understanding. That didn’t happen. But what did? The Obama family’s tenure in the White House has overlapped a revolution in the way Americans deal with identity. From race to religion, from gender to sexual orientation and beyond, marginalized groups that historically worked and waited for ”a seat at the table” increasingly demanded their share of cultural power. And people who once assumed that they could define what it means to be American were called on to defend their ideas and ”check their privilege.” Conversations that were once whispered behind closed doors broke out into the open in the halls of Congress, college campuses and on city streets, in hashtagged Twitter chats and Facebook threads, blockbuster TV shows and pop anthems. Those changes weren’t limited to the public space. In our workplaces, schools and homes, questions about identity challenged and transformed the most intimate aspects of our lives. So what did the Obamas have to do with all of this? Did having a black president in the White House  —   one with his own, complicated story of identity  —   change the rules about who belongs where in our society? Did having Michelle Obama as first lady force new discussions on femininity, race and class? And did the extended Obama family  —   which includes whites, Africans and    —   push the rest of us to consider what the future of the American family may look like? Or did something else spark all this conversation  —   a generational shift, changing demographics and economics, the dramatic rise of social media as a cultural force? Would we be having these conversations regardless of who took the oath on Jan. 20, 2009? Or did the presidential election of ”a black guy from the South Side of Chicago with a funny name that nobody can pronounce”  —   as Obama has jokingly referred to himself  —   strike this match? In this final year of the Obama administration, Code Switch investigates ”The Obama Effect” on our ongoing national conversations about identity. We’ll explore what this effect is (or isn’t) and whether it endures after this presidency ends. The series will ask the tough questions  —   the kind without easy answers  —   about how this era has changed the way we view ourselves and each other. Have we gained a new appreciation for diversity, or lost a shared set of ideals that united the country? Are we more divided, or more aware of the divisions that have always existed? Have we developed a language to celebrate our unique individual stories without diminishing or disrespecting the experiences of others? And was President Obama a catalyst or a bystander, a beneficiary or a victim? We’ll explore how these tensions have played out everywhere from pop culture to academia, from neighborhoods to families. We’ll feature some of the boldest writers and thinkers on race and identity in this series, on the air and online. And we’re inviting our listeners, readers and followers to participate. We’re starting with an inaugural Twitter chat in a couple of days. We want to know how the way you and the people close to you talk about race and identity has changed since 2008. Are you identifying yourself differently in any way? Have you changed the way you talk or think about identity  —   your own or someone else’s? If you’re a person of color, are you fielding more or fewer questions about your race? If you’re white, do you have a new understanding about the role race plays in your own experience? What, if anything, do you think President Obama has to do with all of this? Join the Code Switch team by using the hashtag #NPRObamaEffect this Friday, Feb. 19 at 1 p. m. Eastern."
"Opera singer Lawrence Brownlee is known for portraying kings and princes. But lately he’s been thinking about real people: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, to name a few. He’s been thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement and an old spiritual called ”There’s a Man Going ’Round Taking Names.” Decades ago, singers like Paul Robeson and Lead Belly recorded it. Brownlee, with jazz pianist Jason Moran, revives the old song to tell a new story for the 21st century. ”Jason and I chose this song because we felt it accurately captures a growing sentiment that’s in society today,” Brownlee says. ”So many senseless deaths of young   men.” A crypt, they thought, would be an appropriate setting to perform their version of the song. So we took our cameras and microphones  —   and a lovely piano  —   deep into the active crypt below the historic Church of the Intercession in Harlem. The 1915 structure at 155th Street and Broadway is a New York City landmark and a dramatic setting for occasional concerts, including a December 2015 recital by Brownlee. ”I know that the ashes of the parishioners of this church are here in this crypt,” Brownlee explains. ”You can feel the weight of death, you can feel the sting. It adequately captures the atmosphere, the somber mood that we are trying to capture with this song.” In this arrangement, an already solemn song becomes even more dark and agitated. ”What [Jason] has done with the piano part has made it build, and you feel the unrest, the turmoil, the tension that is underneath,” Brownlee says. ”This is something that is painful and difficult to deal with.” ”There’s A Man Going ’Round Taking Names” Producers: Mito   Tom Huizenga Audio engineer: Josh Rogosin Director: Mito   Editor: Cameron Robert Videographers: Mito   Cameron Robert, A. J. Wilhem Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann Special Thanks: The Church of the Intercession, Mark and Rachel Dibner of the Argus Fund Piano by Steinway  Sons"
"When Congress returns from recess next week, it will be the first time since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death for Senate Republicans to hash out    exactly what they’re going to do about the newest Supreme Court vacancy. And rumblings from Republican senators dispersed across the country right now suggest next week could be the beginning of a heated family conversation. To make it very clear, Mitch McConnell  —   as the chamber’s majority leader  —   will get the last word on whether any Supreme Court nominee receives a confirmation vote in the Senate. And hours after news broke of Scalia’s death, McConnell made his desires quite clear. He blasted out a written statement unequivocally declaring that the vacancy ”should not be filled until we have a new president.” But ever since McConnell spelled out his position last Saturday, some of his Republican colleagues have wondered out loud how far they should go. There are, after all, several ways to keep an Obama nominee from ascending to the court. Should Senate Republicans refuse to let the confirmation process even begin? Or should the Judiciary Committee hold hearings and vote down the nominee at the committee level? Or, should Senate Republicans band together later on the floor to filibuster, or block, the nominee from proceeding to a final    vote? The differences between these approaches may be meaningful. A     approach could harden the obstructionist image that Republicans  —   particularly those vulnerable in 2016  —   want to shake. But the caucus can’t alienate the party’s base, which wants Senate Republicans to staunchly hold the line on this one. And there seems to be some disagreement among Republicans about how to thread the needle. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley suggested earlier this week he wouldn’t rule out holding hearings on a Supreme Court nominee this year. ”I would wait until the [nomination] is made before I would make any decisions,” Grassley said, according to Radio Iowa. ”This is a very serious position to fill and it should be filled and debated during the campaign and filled by either Hillary Clinton, Sen. Sanders or whoever’s nominated by Republicans.” Grassley said he would ”take it a step at a time.” But when the Iowa senator was asked to clarify that position at a town hall meeting in Tama County, Iowa, this week, he referred back to a written statement he sent last Saturday, in which he had insisted ”it only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court Justice.” At the Tama County town hall meeting, Grassley maintained he still stood by those words. ”I made a very clear statement, and I don’t know whether it will hold. It will hold as far as I’m concerned, until I’m overruled, that we should put it off until after the election,” he said. Other Senate Republicans have been more explicitly supportive of holding hearings on a nominee, even if they would later reject him or her. Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson, who is facing a tough fight for   had quickly stepped up to back McConnell last weekend, but he then appeared to modify that position Tuesday during an interview with a local radio show. ”I’ve never said that I wouldn’t vote, or that we shouldn’t vote. . .. I have no idea how the process plays out. I’m not in control of it. I’m not the majority leader. I’m not the chairman of the Judiciary,” Johnson said on WTAQ. ”By the time I would actually take the vote, if it comes to that, I’ll take a vote.” But when interviewed on NPR Thursday, Johnson said if the Senate ends up not voting on a nominee, it would have still fulfilled its advise and consent role. ”I don’t know how the process plays out. I’m not in control of it. But the consent phase would be whether we decide to hold hearings or not hold hearings, whether we have a vote, whether we vote up or down. But not acting is also acting,” said Johnson on NPR’s All Things Considered. ”It’s also fulfilling that consent portion of our advise and consent.” Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski told reporters in Juneau on Wednesday that she thinks a confirmation process should begin. ”I do believe that the nominee should get a hearing,” Murkowski said. ”That doesn’t necessarily mean that that ends up in a vote. The purpose of the hearing is to determine whether or not this individual, based on their record . .. should be named to the highest court in the land.” Nevada Republican Dean Heller went even further, saying that the Senate should vote on a nominee. ”The chances of approving a new nominee are slim, but Nevadans should have a voice in the process,” Heller said in a statement to Politico Wednesday. ”That’s why I encourage the President to use this opportunity to put the will of the people ahead of advancing a liberal agenda on the nation’s highest court.” Other Republicans spoke of optics. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday on the Tyler Cralle Show that Republicans would ”fall into the trap of being obstructionists” if his caucus resolved to reject any nominee before the president had even made a selection. And Maine Republican Susan Collins spoke of duty. ”More than any other appointment upon which the Senate is called to pass judgment, nominees to the Supreme Court warrant   consideration given the importance of their constitutional role and their lifetime tenure. Our role in the Senate is to evaluate the nominee’s temperament, intellect, experience, integrity and respect for the Constitution and the rule of law,” Collins said in a written statement, according to Politico. This piece was updated at 6:10 PM on Thursday, Feb. 18, to include an additional quote from Sen. Ron Johnson."
"In a few days, Apple will formulate its formal response to the federal judge’s order seeking the company’s help for the FBI to get inside a phone used by Syed Farook, one of the attackers in the San Bernardino, Calif. shootings. (Click here for our comprehensive explainer on what’s going on. A quick recap: The FBI is asking Apple to lift security restrictions that prevent investigators from trying unlimited PIN codes to crack into the phone. Apple says that would mean writing a whole new operating system that would then be in danger of being tweaked to crack into other phones, via other government requests or by hackers.) Apple’s position is unique for this fight. On the PR front, it’s a massive and popular consumer brand. But it’s also one of few companies that design their own software and hardware, including chips, which has paved the way for the   encryption that the investigators are facing in this case. For instance, Apple built the iPhone in such a way that it only accepts software signed with Apple’s own encryption key. Apple’s main competitors, Google and Microsoft, both have different levels of encryption implemented on mobile devices. With the exception of the Nexus phone, Google’s Android operating system is run on other companies’ devices, like Samsung’s or Motorola’s. That has created a very fractured universe of Android devices, some of which receive regular security updates and others that don’t. And Google’s rollout of encryption by default in recent years has been impaired by the partners’ resistance to installing special chips to handle encryption without slowing down the phone, says Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. Microsoft, too, has started to adopt encryption by default in recent years, but it has faced heat from the tech community for potentially keeping backups of encryption keys that could unlock your encrypted device. Soghoian suggests, in fact, that had this investigation involved a mobile device that wasn’t an iPhone, getting inside it would be a far easier task and might not require the involvement of the   itself. Though he also doesn’t discount the possibility that the National Security Agency probably could crack into the iPhone, too. But that’s not what this case is about. (As a note, there’s a lot we don’t know about how exactly security technology works inside the iPhones, especially when comparing new ones with older ones like the 5C in this case. So experts disagree about the government’s true technical capacity.) ”This is in many ways more about legal strategy than what’s actually on the phone,” Soghoian says. And that’s a sentiment shared across the industry. ”We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set. Today our freedom and our liberty is at stake,” Jan Koum, CEO of encrypted messaging app WhatsApp, has written in a Facebook post. (Facebook owns WhatsApp.) Google CEO Sundar Pichai, too, posted on Twitter that he was aware of the challenges that law enforcement agencies face in protecting the public and said that companies cooperate based on valid legal orders, but ”that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices  data. Could be a troubling precedent.” Microsoft’s executives haven’t issued statements of their own but shared a comment posted by the Reform Government Surveillance coalition (AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo): ”Reform Government Surveillance companies believe it is extremely important to deter terrorists and criminals and to help law enforcement by processing legal orders for information in order to keep us all safe. But technology companies should not be required to build in backdoors to the technologies that keep their users’ information secure. RGS companies remain committed to providing law enforcement with the help it needs while protecting the security of their customers and their customers’ information.” ”The real linchpin here is not the details of differences between iOS and Android, but they’re being forced to produce a new version of software,” says Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. In that sense, the case is being watched by any company whose customers’ data privacy depends on their security software updates, which is a unique universe of encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal but also   like Apple and Google. ”Everyone is carefully watching this because if the government gets what they want here, they’ll have the power to conscript tech companies to covertly deliver surveillance software,” Soghoian says."
"It’s hard to overstate the tech world’s fascination with the legal standoff between the FBI and Apple. Laymen might look at the dispute and shrug after all, the FBI is just asking Apple to help hack into one phone, and it’s not unusual for tech companies to help the police. ”Apple does provide ’reasonable assistance’ to law enforcement all the time,” says Jeff Fischbach, a forensic technologist who specializes in retrieving data from devices for use in court. But he says what the FBI is demanding from Apple in the San Bernardino case is qualitatively different. (For those who haven’t been following the case: The FBI wants Apple to write custom software that would make it easier to hack into a locked iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in San Bernardino in December.) ”I’m not convinced that the FBI has actually pulled out all the stops on this particular phone,” Fischbach wrote in an email to NPR. ”The concerns they cited exist in any iPhone [forensic] exam, and yet this time they’ve seemingly declared their hands tied. It feels opportunistic. Like a chance to expand their tool chest.” Many tech experts suspect the federal government is taking advantage of the public sentiment surrounding the San Bernardino massacre to force Apple into accepting the premise that it’s obliged to aid law enforcement even if it means creating new security weaknesses in the devices it sells. But if that is the FBI’s strategy, it’s not necessarily a winning one. In his New York Times technology column, Farhad Manjoo concluded that the tech industry holds an ace: ”the technical means to keep making their devices more and more inaccessible.” It’s true that companies such as Apple are usually a step ahead of law enforcement, technologically. Every new generation of device or operating system represents a challenge for the   hackers at the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. It can take months for them to find a way into a new system, if they can find a way at all. And if the FBI succeeds in forcing Apple to write code to help hack this iPhone 5c, it’s presumed the company will engineer the next generation of iPhones to be immune. But the government is also holding an ace: the possibility of legislation. Robert Cattanach is an attorney specializing in cybersecurity who previously worked for the Justice Department. He predicts this fight will eventually go beyond the courts. ”Whoever is the loser in this will certainly plead their case to Congress,” he says. ”Either, ’We need a backdoor,’ if the FBI loses, or ’You can’t give them a backdoor,’ if Apple loses.” The question of whether tech companies should be required to build backdoors has been floating around Congress for a number of years now, pushed on one side by law enforcement’s growing complaints about how encrypted technology is ”going dark” to legitimate surveillance and detective work and opposed on the other side by Silicon Valley. As is the case with so many pressing issues in Congress, nothing much has moved so far, but a public fight over San Bernardino could break the logjam. For Fischbach, this is a worrisome possibility, because he thinks the emotions tied up in the San Bernardino case might cause Congress to take the side of the FBI. It wouldn’t be the end of encryption, he says, but it could be the end of    encryption for the general public. ”[M]andating back doors only pushes the fringe,” Fischbach writes. People in the know  —   such as sophisticated crime syndicates or terror networks  —   will still figure out how to keep data unreadable, but ”[f]or the rest of us with ’nothing to hide,’ that just means we lose another piece of our privacy.”"
"”Shedding.” ”Chops.” ”Rataricious.” Sometimes it seems like jazz cats have their own language. Of course, many times those words also end up in other people’s mouths: Terms like ”hipster,” ”crib” and ”the man” all came from the jazz world more than 70 years ago. You dig? Here, Jazz Night In America takes a brief look at where jazz slang came from, with lots of colorful language along the way."
"Valentina Vitoria was born in December. She has microcephaly, the birth defect that causes an abnormally small head and can cause brain damage as well. The baby’s mother is    Fabiane Lopes. She’s caring for her daughter in a tiny, windowless   apartment in Rio de Janeiro. A whirring fan is the only relief they have from the heat. In Brazil, doctors are getting closer to untangling the possible connection of Zika to microcephaly. The country has seen thousands of babies born with this birth defect since the virus arrived last year. Lopes suspects she contracted Zika in the third month of her pregnancy, though she wasn’t tested for the disease. At about 26 weeks, during an ultrasound, she was told that Valentina Vitoria was not developing normally. ”When I told my boyfriend that the baby had problems, he said he didn’t want to know anything about it,” she says. She remembers him saying, ”You know very well what I think about that child.” She said to him, ”You want her to die.” And he answered yes. Though abortion is mostly illegal in Brazil, her partner asked her to terminate the pregnancy. She refused. He walked out. ”I don’t need him,” she says. Specialists say this is often how the cycle starts  —   some men in Brazil see a child with special needs as a woman’s problem and promptly leave their partner. These mothers could then become overwhelmed and find themselves unable to cope, which is often how the children end up in state care. Raising a child with severe disabilities is hard. Your whole life stops you can’t work, says Vera Lucia Giacometti. She is a psychologist who for 16 years has been working at a state facility for children and young adults with severe disabilities. The parents bear a huge burden, she says. There is almost no government support. The 38 residents in this facility, almost half of whom have microcephaly, were in most cases abandoned by their parents. Like Carlos Felipe Alves. He’s 11 years old. He was born with microcephaly. His legs are twisted beneath him, so he’s unable to walk. Limb deformities often occur with microcephaly. To be clear, there were cases of microcephaly in Brazil before the Zika virus arrived. The condition has many causes. It’s unclear what was responsible for Carlos Felipe’s microcephaly. Giacometti tells me that the boy was abandoned when he was 6 and has been at the facility ever since. I ask her what she thinks will happen with the surge in cases  —   thousands of children born with microcephaly since the fall compared to some 150 in a typical year. She says simply that she believes some of these children will be abandoned and put into state care. ”I can guarantee it,” she says. ”I have 17 years of experience. And Brazil doesn’t have the capacity to deal with what’s coming.” Since the Zika outbreak, states in Brazil have reported that several microcephalic infants have been abandoned by their parents. The courts in Rio have dealt with three cases at least. There are several more in the north of the country. But that is only a fraction of the children being born with the condition. The babies being born now with brain damage are not being abandoned en masse. Giacometti says in her experience, the children tend to be left after they are 1 or 2 years old, when it becomes harder to care for a growing child with special needs. So she expects the numbers to go up markedly in the months and years to come. Lopes, however, is determined to care for her child. ”My daughter has a beautiful light inside her,” she says. She has started a Facebook page to get donations of diapers and clothes. She has three other children who also live with her in this one room, so it’s a struggle to get by. She spends most of her days going to doctors, making appointments. Valentina Vitoria has regular convulsions. Caring for the newborn leaves very little time for anything else. For Lopes, it’s the latest chapter in a life of struggle. She first got pregnant at 15 and has had seven children in all. Two live with their father and another with her mother. Fabiane Lopes says fiercely she will never, ever give up her baby. No matter how hard the road ahead. ”I’ll go until the end, looking after her. Until the very end. My whole life will be dedicated to her,” she says. ”I just hope I will have health and patience. She’s just starting her life. There is a long way to go.”"
"A report last week has raised questions about a pesticide used to kill mosquito larvae, linking its use to the increase in cases of microcephaly in Brazil. But researchers say that’s an unlikely connection. The insecticide, called pyriproxyfen, is added to water to prevent mosquito larvae from hatching and growing properly. Doctors in Argentina with a group called ”Physicians Against Fumigated Towns” came out with a report last week that said Brazil had started using the chemical in drinking water a few months before health officials began noticing an increase in newborns with small heads. ”It’s a hypothesis, a probability,” says Dr. Medardo Avila Vazquez, a pediatrician in Cordoba, Argentina, and the main author of the report. ”And for us, it’s more likely that it’s the chemical larvicide and not Zika.” The message quickly spread in Brazilian media, and last Saturday health officials in one Brazilian state announced that they would stop using pyriproxyfen in drinking water. Even though there is a lot of skepticism about this report, the idea that the chemical is responsible has taken off. One of the main arguments is that if the compound can interfere with insect development, then it might also interfere with human development. But that’s not the case, says Bruce Gordon, coordinator of the Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Health group at the World Health Organization. ”Pyriproxyfen actually mimics a hormone found in invertebrates, so it basically interferes with their development, but mammals don’t have that development process,” Gordon says. ”There’s absolutely no concern for reproductive effects that have been raised for this chemical.” Plus, the Brazilian Ministry of Health directs state and city officials to use a mere 0. 0003 ounces of the chemical per gallon of water. That concentration is enough to kill mosquito larvae, but it’s much lower than what WHO has deemed to be a safe concentration in drinking water. ”It’s miles below the sort of acceptable recommended doses or the maximum doses you would apply,” Gordon says. ”You’d have to drink hundreds of liters of water to get to anywhere near potentially risky level.” In a statement Tuesday, Sumitomo Chemical, the company that manufactures pyriproxyfen, said that the product ”has shown no effects on the reproductive system or nervous system in mammals, and has been approved and registered for use in the past 20 years by the authorities of around 40 countries around the world.” It’s unclear how many countries actually use pyriproxyfen in their drinking water. For example, it’s approved as a   pesticide in the U. S. but only for crops and lawns, or to control fleas and ticks on pets, not for human ingestion. A study in a Cambodian village used it in water storage jars but did not follow up on   health effects. Toxicologists have fed the chemical to guinea pigs, dogs, mice, lactating goats, laying hens, and pregnant rats and rabbits. At very high doses, it gave some animals mild anemia and liver and kidney problems. When given to the goats and hens, extremely small amounts of pyriproxyfen were found in their milk and egg yolks. (You can read about the toxicology studies here.) Before pyriproxyfen, the Ministry of Health in Brazil distributed a different larvicide, temephos, to treat drinking water. It switched to pyriproxyfen in 2014, when mosquitoes became resistant to temephos. ”So far there is no evidence suggesting that [pyriproxyfen] could be the problem,” says Dr. Marcos Espinal, director of communicable diseases and health analysis at the Pan American Health Organization. The Zika virus is, he says, guilty until proven innocent. He and other health officials maintain that it’s hard to ignore the mounting evidence that Zika is responsible for microcephaly. The virus has been found in the placentas of infected women and in the brains of babies born to mothers who had the virus while pregnant. Still, some doctors say it’s better to be safe than sorry. Shortly after the Argentine report came out the Brazilian Association of Collective Health, known as ABRASCO, put out its own statement calling for ”immediate suspension of pyriproxyfen” and similar chemicals in drinking water. ”We need more information, since it’s something new,” says Dr. Gustavo Bretas, an epidemiologist with ABRASCO who worked for 15 years with the Pan American Health Organization. ”The position of ABRASCO is that we should try to minimize the use of larvicides and insecticide,” he says, and instead focus on improving people’s access to clean water. Many households store water in tanks or buckets, in areas where piped water is intermittent. Those create perfect mosquito breeding sites. ”I think that’s the most important message . .. that we should prioritize access to water and sewage system, which is too deficient in the country,” says Bretas. By investing in infrastructure, the government can ensure that mosquitoes don’t have the chance to breed in stagnant tanks and buckets in the first place. In the end, the most compelling point against pyriproxyfen’s role in Brazil’s health issues is this: Health officials in the state of Pernambuco, the   epicenter of microcephaly, say that in the three cities reporting the most cases  —   Recife, Jaboatao and Paulista  —   pyriproxyfen is not in use. Valdemar Geo and Vanessa Rancaño contributed to this report."
"When Rachel Mollen strolls into the cafe at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh with her    son, she knows exactly the kind of food they will eat. ”Will, he’s the youngest of four, and he wanted to do something special today,” Mollen says. ”I was trying to think of some place that we could go for lunch and have a healthy lunch and do something fun.” The boy sits quietly munching his vegan cheese pizza, fruit salad and   white milk. He is a bit unhappy, Mollen says, that it is not chocolate milk. But that isn’t even an option at the Phipps Cafe. In 2011, the conservatory’s cafe made it a mission to serve healthful food. It eliminated all junk food and sodas from the menu, says Richard Piacentini, Phipps’ executive director. He says it was to reflect the museum’s values. ”You see, a lot of people come here now because they know they can bring their kids in and they’re not going to have to have a battle with their children over the kind of food they’re going to eat,” says Piacentini, who is the father of    twins. ”Some [other] places like to give choices. We decided that choices create an opportunity for conflict.” The Phipps Cafe, as well as the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D. C. are part of an emerging trend. Museums and zoos across the country are trying to replace the standard french fries and corn dog kids fare with healthier, more   food, says Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the D. C.  Center for the Future of Museums, an initiative of the American Alliance of Museums. ”One of the things museums are very aware of is that they have a bigger responsibility to their communities. And part of those responsibilities are to be aware of issues like obesity and attendant diseases, like diabetes or high blood pressure,” Merritt says. But, she says, there is an inherent problem for the alliance’s more than 4, 000 members nationwide. Most do not have full control over the menus served in their eating areas, because their food service is done by contractors. Usually, the contract allows the food service company to take a percentage of the sales, ”which of course gives them an enormous incentive both to choose menu items that are very popular and sell well, and have as high as possible a profit margin,” Merritt says. That’s even if the profit contradicts the museum’s mission. The marquee culture institutions in Cleveland provide a small Midwestern case study of what can happen when institutions try to change their menus. At the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, one of the first things you notice when you walk into the revamped cafeteria is a bright red Coke machine. Popular local chef Zack Bruell took over the museum’s food service contract last year and immediately began to rework the menu. The museum’s leaders had given instructions to offer more healthful options. ”There is a process to this. You can’t just hit people over the head with it in Cleveland, Ohio,” Bruell says. ”There’s a different mentality here, and we have to do it slowly. But I do believe that the food we’re doing here is healthy, because we’re doing it from scratch.” The menu still includes creamy mac and cheese, but there are also turkey sandwiches on whole wheat, and, Bruell says, ”nothing comes out of a can.” And that Coke machine? It may be gone by the time the museum completes its   $150 million expansion with an entirely revamped cafe, Bruell says. But when another local institution, the Children’s Museum of Cleveland, tried to sell fresh fruit, the produce just spoiled, says Maria Campanelli, director of the museum. And when they removed soda from the premises a few years ago, families complained, she says. ”Parents came back and said, you know, we’d like to have some type of caffeinated beverage,” Campanelli says. With a laugh, she said that for a museum aimed at children age 8 and younger, it’s understandable that tired parents might want a little boost from a   drink. At the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, executive director Chris Kuhar says ”we want to be a responsible citizen.” Kuhar says the zoo tries to offer more healthful food options. For example, before hitting the pizza at the zoo’s Amazon Cafe in the Rainforest, visitors are greeted with an updated salad bar. And across the park, he says, zoo cafes offer fruit juice, fruit cups and some deli sandwiches. But, sometimes it’s easier to persuade the animals to eat better than the human visitors. Facing some health challenges, the zoo’s primates were put on a diet of more leafy greens and less processed pellets several years ago. ”We’ve got sort of a controlled experiment here with our animals,” Kuhar says. ”So I can tell you exactly what happens when you go on a leafy greens diet. You lose weight, your blood pressure improves and your blood    ratio improves. All these sorts of things that we see in our animals, I’d love it if folks responded that way at our food service locations as well.” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WCPN and Kaiser Health News."
"When Karriem Saleem   went to prison in 1971 for the murder of Baltimore grocer David Lermer during a robbery, he was an    killer named William Collins. In 2013,   left prison after serving 42 years, 3 months and 3 days. Today, he is 60 years old, back in the city of his youth, converted to Islam, subdued by age and often baffled by the experience of freedom. Little things, like dining in a restaurant, can be disorienting. ”I’m full, I’m enjoying the company of my family. And at some time, I guess maybe 30 or 40 minutes had passed, I’m feeling uneasy,”   says. ”Because I’m so used to having The Man telling me it’s time to go.”   is one of more than 130 prisoners serving life sentences for violent crimes in the state of Maryland who were freed on probation following a landmark ruling by the state’s highest court. As a condition of their release, the prisoners received social services and other special preparations. And so far, none of them has  . The affected prisoners were convicted at least 35 years ago their average age now is 64. They aged behind bars. Their bodies, which used to brawl and run, now ache and strain. ”One time I wouldn’t even consider it, play basketball from the sun up to sun down, in the dark, in the snow,”   says. ”But you mature, you see that your knees ain’t like that no more. . .. Father Time steps in and you have to make the adjustments.” The return of   and others to life on the outside has encouraged advocates of more liberal parole policies, infuriated the families of their victims, and raised questions about what a life sentence really means. Unusual Legal Twist In Maryland, The released prisoners were all convicted of felonies in jury trials before 1981. They’re out as the result of a strange instruction that Maryland judges were required to give to juries until that year. At the end of every criminal trial in the state, explains Tony Gioia, Baltimore’s deputy state’s attorney, the judge told the jury that ”they are the judges of the facts and the law and that whatever the court said to the jury was advisory only.” As contradictory as it may be to common understanding of what juries and judges do  —   it’s what judges in Maryland instructed juries for decades. Here is a typical judge’s instruction to the jurors in a trial from before 1981: ”You, ladies and gentlemen, are the judges of not only the facts, as you are on every case, but on the law as well. It is your responsibility to determine for yourselves what the law is. Everything I say to you is advisory only. You are free to find the law to be other than what the court says it is. We have given you our best opinion about the matter but the final determination  —   that is solely in your hands.” In other words, principles such as the presumption of innocence and the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Just ”advice” from the bench  —   take it or leave it. By 1980, Maryland was the only state that was giving such an instruction, says Michael Millemann, a professor and expert in public interest law at the University of Maryland’s Carey School of Law. In the early 1980s, Maryland’s highest court finally put a stop to the practice. But for more than 30 years, in various cases, the state’s Court of Appeals said that convictions from trials using the old jury instruction were still valid. Then, in 2012, in a case brought by a Maryland inmate, the court changed its position. In Unger v. State, the court ruled that people convicted on the basis of the old jury charge had been denied due process  —   and were entitled to a new trial. By that time, there were only about 250 people behind bars who were affected. They were serving long sentences for serious crimes committed more than 30 years earlier. Preparing For Life On The Outside,   was one of them. Like him, 90 percent of the affected prisoners are  . Millemann, who has a long background in legal aid and advocacy for prisoners, notes that 40 years ago, blacks were often charged with more serious offenses than whites for the same crime. Of the 250 Unger prisoners, all but one are men they typically entered prison at age 24 and served 40 years. Some of them will be retried. But for most, Millemann and prosecutor Gioia negotiate the terms of their release. The prisoners have to concede their guilt, abandon further appeals and be resentenced to time served. They are released on probation only after there is a plan for where they will live. A single probation violation sends them back to prison, with no chance to get out. The assistance they receive from social workers is key to their success outside prison, Gioia says. The social workers help those released secure everything from housing and clothing to bus passes, telephones and information on where to get food. Rebecca   who runs the social work clinic at the University of Maryland’s law school and oversees some of the Unger cases, says some of the prisoners even need help establishing who they are. ”We’ve had one gentleman who found out that he had a completely different father and a different name on his birth certificate,” she says. ”We’ve seen a few where there was no name it just said ’Baby.’ ” People incarcerated for decades also grapple with the ”Rip Van Winkle effect.” They can be thrown by pedestrians speaking on Bluetooth while walking alone and by buses that bend at the middle. Some of the released prisoners have outlived their family, including their children. And for many,   says, there is also a delayed grief. ”When you’re in prison, it’s not really a safe place to deal with emotional issues,” she says. ”We have a lot of folks who lost their parents while they were incarcerated, or siblings, and when they get out, it’s when it really starts to come back to them or when they go see the gravesite for the first time.” Despite these hurdles, the lifers released in Maryland have a perfect record so far. But that perfect record has not impressed families of the murder victims. For Victims, A Painful Injustice, Shirley Rubin says she can remember ”every single detail” of the day in 1972 when she and her husband, Benjamin, were shot during a robbery at their Baltimore grocery store. He was killed she was left with a bullet lodged in her hip. When the gunman was sentenced to life in prison plus 36 years, Rubin was confident he would be locked up until he died. Four decades later, she learned he was getting out of prison. ”They released him shame on them,” Rubin, now 92, says. ”And that’s an injustice to me.” Photos of her children and grandchildren fill the living room of her Baltimore home. Talking about the shooting, which happened more than 40 years ago, Rubin’s anger is still palpable. ”My husband missed everything. He missed all his grandchildren he missed his ” Rubin says. ”And I don’t care what the case of Unger was, it had nothing to do with this. The man committed a terrible crime and he should have been punished for the rest of his life.” Karen Wilson also remembers getting the ”Unger call” from a woman in the state’s attorney’s office. The man convicted of killing her father in 1969, restaurant owner Joseph Wilson, was getting out. ”She spoke about 10 minutes and I finally said, ’Are you trying to tell me that he’s getting out of prison?’ ” Wilson recalls. ”And she said, ’Yes.’ ” Wilson is Karen’s maiden name  —   for privacy reasons, NPR is not using her married name. It was as Karen Wilson that she attended a hearing prior to the release of her father’s killer. She told him of the devastation he caused her family: her mother’s subsequent poverty, her sister’s descent into depression and suicide. As a Christian whose faith has deepened in recent years, Wilson says she has forgiven her father’s killer. His release from prison is something else. ”I think that every last one of these people should still be in prison. They’re still guilty I don’t care about the jury instruction. I don’t believe that was an issue at all,” she says. ”I’ve served on juries and none of the jury instructions made any sense to me so I think the average person doesn’t understand their jury instructions.” What Unger Says About Aging Lifers, During the time since the crimes covered by Unger decision, conventional thinking about sentencing has changed dramatically. Back then, a life sentence in Maryland typically meant a convict went to prison, stayed out of trouble, took part in prison programs and would be out on parole in 20 years. William Gardner went to prison in 1968 at age 16 for killing Baltimore cab driver Henry Kravetz. He was among those who experienced the old state policy on incarceration. ”Especially when we first got in there, there was a lot of emphasis on rehabilitation, so we had an opportunity to go to school, college, obtain trades,” Gardner says. ”But at the end, the money that they invested in the rehabilitation, it kind of got lost.” By the   all that changed. The governor canceled those programs and blocked parole for all prisoners serving life. The slogan of the day was: Life means life. Their life sentences turned literal, until the reprieve afforded by Unger. So why have so many lifers left prison without  ? One answer is that the Maryland prisoners who have been released were always good candidates for parole. This group also has benefited from the social workers on the prisoners’ cases. And then there’s the simple fact that they’re old. The freedom of the Unger prisoners may never be accepted by the people whose lives they shattered. But so far, the   lifers have demonstrated they can walk the straight and narrow  —   provided they have some help."
"Limacina helicina looks like most any other sea snail  —   until it beats what look like delicate wings and ”flies” through the water. A newly published study in the Journal of Experimental Biology says the tiny species of sea snail moves through water using the same kind of motion that an insect uses to fly. Take a look at the ”sea butterfly” in action: It’s ”a remarkable example of convergent evolution,” the researchers write. They say the ancestors of zooplankton (such as L. helicina) and those of flying insects diverged some 550 million years ago. This sea snail’s movements are more like a fruit fly’s than other zooplankton, the study found. L. helicina, which lives in cold Pacific waters, has two smooth swimming appendages ”that flap in a complex   stroke pattern resembling the wingbeat kinematics of flying insects.” Other types of zooplankton typically ”paddle through the water with   propulsion” rather than fly, the researchers say. Study   David Murphy tells the Journal of Experimental Biology that the sea snail and fruit fly both ”clap their wings together at the top of a wing beat before peeling them apart, sucking fluid into the   gap between the wings to create   vortices at the wing tips that generate lift.” The scientists say flying instead of paddling gives L. helicina an advantage. ”The potential benefit . .. is that flapping appendages are more mechanically efficient than rowing appendages at all swimming speeds,” according to the study. Close observation of the snail’s movement was possible because of a ”new 3D system to visualise fluid movements around minute animals,” built by Murphy. The tiny creatures were caught in Oregon and transported to Atlanta for study. ”It really surprised me that sea butterflies turned out to be honorary insects,” Murphy says. Additionally, the sea butterflies ”can play a big ecological role,” the BBC reports. ”The nightly migration of zooplankton, like Limacina helicina, to the ocean surface to feed and escape being eaten, is one of the biggest movements of biomass on the planet.”"
"Along with recent sensations like The Babadook and It Follows, Robert Eggers’ debut feature The Witch immediately joins the pantheon of great horror movies, with the caveat that it’s just barely a horror movie at all. The three films, all rich in metaphor, are effective for their common association with primal fears: of motherhood (The Babadook) of sex (It Follows) and of a vengeful or possibly nonpresent God (The Witch). But of the trio, The Witch is the least inclined to play by the genre rules. Its terrors have more to do with ambience than shocks, arising from the harsh realities of a 17th century Pilgrim homestead where The New World is infertile and the prayers of the righteous go unanswered. In many respects, it takes place in the same punishing ascetic realms as austere   like Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light or Carl Dreyer’s Ordet. Only the steady assertion of the supernatural qualifies it as horror. Set in the perpetual   of New England in the   The Witch mixes history and folklore to   the atmosphere of extreme religious fervor and paranoia that would lead to the Salem witch trials a few decades later. It opens with a family exiled from a village on spiritual grounds and forced to lead a purer life on a farm far removed from civilization. There’s no way to know precisely what brought them to America or the conditions they left behind, but it’s safe to say that they’ve never been in a place where their ideals have found purchase  —   not in England, not among the other Pilgrims, and certainly not in this godforsaken plot along the edge of the forest. They’re committed to a hard life and reap what they sow. After their banishment from Pilgrim society, William (Ralph Ineson) and his wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie) hastily retreat to a distant clearing, where they set up a modest home with their five children. The eldest, Thomasin (Anya  ) is curious and   and some distance in age from her siblings, including her skittish younger brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) a creepy set of twins, and an infant boy. One day, when Thomasin is outside playing peekaboo with the baby, the child simply disappears when she opens her eyes  —   too fast for a ”who” to have taken him, but it opens the doors for a ”what.” William and Katherine fear God’s judgment, of course, but they naturally suspect that Thomasin, the last person to see the baby, may have some responsibility as well. Plus the forest looms. And there’s something oddly menacing about their goat, Black Phillip. The audience knows more about what’s happening than the family  —   or does it? The infant has met a gruesome fate in the woods, but the same paranoia that seizes the family seeps through the screen, too, making us question what the true source of evil might be. The Witch eventually arrives at an answer, but the brilliance of Eggers’ vision is how thoroughly the fantasy of an otherworldly menace merges with the reality of living under horrible duress. Faith has brought the characters to this distant outpost, but they’ve never known any reward for it and seem to embrace the burdens of shame and guilt that dictate their everyday lives. Thomasin  —   a name that cannot be spelled without ”sin”  —   seems guilty as much for her relative openness to the world as her proximity to the baby when it disappeared. The Witch has been described as a cross between The Crucible and The Shining, and it’s poised right in the center of those influences  —   half a drama of religious hysteria, half a horror film about a family in isolation. Eggers stages sequences of   tension and dread, but never at the expense of the larger spiritual mystery, which hangs over the proceedings like a damp New England mist. Eggers’ comprehensive attention to detail  —   from the formalities of language to the handwoven garments to the exact type of wood that would be used to construct the farm  —   has the overall effect of transporting you back to a time and place where America’s puritanical ideals took root. The Witch imagines the atmosphere that made the Salem witch trials possible  —   and other American witch trials after that."
"The doctor told Sharlene Adams to get a blood pressure cuff, so she set out to buy one. For Adams, who lives in West Baltimore, that meant four bus rides, a stop for a doctor’s signature, two visits to a downtown pharmacy for other medical supplies, a detour to borrow money for a copay, a delay when a bus broke down and, at last, a purchase at a pharmacy on the east side of town. The   trip there took 5   hours. Then she had to get back home. She seemed unfazed. For Adams, this is what it takes to follow a doctor’s recommendations. Adams’ neighborhood is not far from where Freddie Gray grew up and died after being injured in police custody last April, an event that triggered unrest. Incomes here average less than $28, 000 a year, according to the U. S. Census. Drugs and violence plague the area. Adams’ story isn’t about huge barriers to medical care but about a series of smaller hurdles that hinder access for her and many other   people. Adams, 55, has no car, no computer and no credit card. Her insurance will pay for a blood pressure cuff, but only with a prescription. She doesn’t have the ready cash that would allow her to pop into a drugstore and pick up a $40 blood pressure cuff off the shelf. She has been treated for mental health problems including bipolar disorder, and she has been homeless  —   a time when she never saw a doctor. Adams acknowledges she used to use illegal drugs, but that, she said, ended years ago. Yet when doctors hear she used crack, she said, they sometimes dismiss her complaints. ”You have some of them that, they treat you like dirt, really, because they think you’re the scum of the earth anyway,” Adams said. She tries to stay healthy, but she is working with few resources and has to overcome most of a lifetime spent ignoring her health. She fails as often as she succeeds. Adams has diabetes but isn’t clear on exactly when to test her blood sugar. She doesn’t like needles and doesn’t want to take insulin. She wants to eat better but says the food her doctor recommends costs too much. She wants to lower her blood pressure but she still smokes. For Adams, seeing a doctor, filling a prescription or scheduling a medical test comes with frustration that   patients don’t have to deal with. She knows the difference, and she resents it. When Adams needed a colonoscopy, for example, a doctor referred her to a center in Pikesville, about 8 miles from her home on North Bentalou Street. Adams says she can’t get there. ”We don’t have the opportunity to get things like some other people get,” she said. ”You lost. You run around, you don’t know if you have cancer.” The Journey Begins, Adams has lived on North Bentalou Street since December 2014 and uses a housing voucher to help with her rent payments. One Monday morning last fall, she pulled on a pair of brightly patterned leggings and topped them with a pink   jacket. Her long, fake nails were painted with ornate patterns, and she wore earrings. She was ready for the long trip she hoped would end with the purchase of a blood pressure cuff. Adams went out the door of her     brick rowhouse and headed to the bus stop. Along the way, Adams seemed to know everyone. She said hi to the women with children clad in school uniforms, to the men sitting on their porches sipping cans wrapped in black plastic bags. She asked every one of them for a cigarette or for spare change to buy a loose cigarette from a former Army medic who lives next to the bus stop. ”I can’t start my day without a cigarette,” Adams said. She knows smoking is bad for her, but quitting is low on her list of priorities. The quest for a blood pressure cuff had been initiated the week before, when Adams visited her primary care doctor at University Family Medicine on Redwood Street. During the   visit with Dr. Kerry Reller, she managed to discuss Adams’ two dozen prescriptions, check her blood sugar and pressure, make sure she was scheduled for a mammogram and colonoscopy and attend to Adams’ seemingly endless list of ailments, from her eyes to her ankles. She also asked about Adams’ diet and if she’s getting the right kind of exercise. Reller told Adams to start monitoring her blood pressure daily along with her blood sugar. Medicaid, the health insurance plan for   people that covers Adams, would pay for a blood pressure cuff to help her. But there was a problem with the paperwork. Later in the week, when Adams called to check on her order, the pharmacy where she was going to buy the cuff told her she would need the doctor to sign a new prescription and fax it over again. That missing signature was the reason Adams was once again heading downtown. She had left her house a little after 11 a. m. She watched three No. 13 buses, part of Baltimore’s notoriously unreliable public transportation system, go by. It would be 45 minutes before a No. 91 bus would come to take her downtown. Bus riders with smartphones can use an app to track the buses and see what time they will really arrive, but the app is of no use to Adams. She doesn’t have a smartphone. Before getting to the doctor’s office, she stopped at the University of Maryland pharmacy to pick up lancets for her diabetes test monitor. Adams is supposed to check her sugars, in West Baltimore parlance, every morning, fasting until she draws her blood and writes down the results. On this morning, she was out of lancets, the tiny needles she uses to prick her skin to get the blood sample, so she hadn’t done the test. Because she hadn’t yet checked her blood sugar, she also hadn’t eaten  —   dangerous for someone with diabetes. But Adams was trying to follow the doctor’s instructions literally. This was another miscommunication between Adams and her doctor, something that happens regularly. Adams acknowledges that she has a short attention span and says she doesn’t read well, problems that make it difficult for her to fully understand doctors’ instructions. She said she is like many other people she knows. ”A lot of people don’t understand the words they use,” she said. ”Half of them don’t know the meaning. Half of them can’t even read. Half of them can’t even spell. Half of them are partially illiterate,” Adams said. ”Basically they are going to be lost.” Adams said she tries to take care of herself. She weighs herself at exercise classes she attends at a community center on Mondays and Wednesdays. She stays away from fried foods and salt, but sweets are her weakness  —   one cookie can turn into 24. She said she often can’t afford the foods and sugar substitutes that her doctor recommends. ”It is kind really of confusing and hard because prices are so high,” Adams said. ”You don’t get that many [food] stamps, the check’s not that big, you are barely making it to pay your bills. And you go to pantries and they don’t have food that you basically can eat as a diabetic.” At The Doctor’s Office, By 12:30 p. m. Adams had left the pharmacy and walked a block to her doctor’s office on Redwood Street to begin the process of getting a signed prescription faxed over to the medical supply store. It would take an hour and a half. While Adams waited, Reller faxed a refill for a diabetes prescription to a downtown pharmacy  —   the same one Adams had just been to for lancets. At 2 p. m. Adams was out of the clinic, walking back to the university pharmacy to pick up her pills. But they weren’t ready. She would have to return another day. At 2:15, Adams boarded another bus for the trip to East Baltimore to the medical supply store where she now had a prescription to buy a blood pressure cuff. But she first had to make another stop, this time at a friend’s house to borrow money in case the pharmacy demanded a copay. The friend lives next door to Adams’ daughter, Shardaye. The friend gave Adams a cigarette and $11, seven of which were in rolls of coins. They chatted a bit, so that Adams could be updated on the comings and goings at her daughter’s house. Then Adams went back up the street to catch a bus to Northern Pharmacy  Medical Equipment on Harford Road. There would be another complication. The bus broke down on the way. It got rolling again, but it would be 3:30 before the bus finally dropped Adams off outside the pharmacy. Searching For Instructions, Inside the store, Adams browsed the aisles of medical equipment like a   shopper in a   department store. She muttered to herself about getting her Medicaid plan to pay for diabetic socks and canes. There was a bowl of old Halloween candy on the counter. Adams picked up a mini chocolate bar. It was the first thing she had eaten all day. At 4 p. m. a woman in a short lab coat and high heels handed her a box holding the cuff and moved on to the next customer. Adams stepped back and opened the box, unwilling to leave until she understood the equipment. She hunted down another worker and, trying the cuff on, asked if it fit correctly. The clerk assured her that it was big enough. Three bus rides, three trips to two pharmacies, a stop at the doctor’s office and five hours later, Adams had her blood pressure cuff. Now she’d have one more bus ride to carry her home. She left the pharmacy and crossed the street. But before the bus arrived, Adams strode over to a gas station, pulled out the rolls of coins her friend had given her, and bought a pack of cigarettes. This story is part of a reporting partnership between Kaiser Health News and University of Maryland College Park’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, which operates Capital News Service. "
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. The cover of Santigold’s 99¢ shows Santi White as she’s   tight like a Barbie doll amid a   clutter of lifestyle accessories. Smacked right onto the cheapo cellophane, a yellow price tag declares the album’s title, as if found in a dollar bin  —   or, perhaps, taking a clever dig at the cost of a single song. But as the singer, producer and   mastermind makes clear throughout the album, the photo is also a statement about how each of us commodifies our image and namesake into a manicured, marketable brand, suitable for consumption. From the beginning, Santigold has threaded the needle between engaging with the mass   machine and critiquing it with an outsider’s remove. In early songs like ”L. E. S. Artistes,” White  —   who for a time worked as a   AR rep, wrote songs for pop stars and fronted the punk band Stiffed  —   called out New York’s trendiest scenes for being more enamored with optics than making art with lasting value. Later, on 2012’s Master Of My Make Believe, and especially its ecstatic single ”Disparate Youth,” she alludes to revolutionary movements in world politics. Following a hiatus and the birth of her son, White sought to create a collection of fun, playful songs that reveal even more of her personal voice. With 99¢ her third and finest album yet, Santigold presents a joyfully danceable record that   between Technicolor electronic pop, brooding RB and noisy  . She then savvily embeds themes of vulnerability and heartbreak, as well as outspoken ideas on art and commerce, identity and authenticity, and femininity. 99¢ kicks off with the   ”Can’t Get Enough Of Myself,” in which White examines   celebrity culture, then flips its script and proudly deems herself worthy of admiration and  . ”All I want to do is what I do well   Ain’t a gambler but, honey, I’d put money on myself   All I want to do is bottle it to sell   ’Cause my brand of vainglory is much better for your health,” she declares in the song’s soulful, summery chorus. Paired with ”Big Boss Big Time Business,” a   banger full of clattering, syncopated beats, Santigold unleashes a swaggering feminist rallying cry to stand up to anyone who challenges her agency and power. ”Make me your mark and I’ll take you one by one,” she asserts, as if busting through the door and taking what’s hers. Santigold’s songs are also defined by   beats and   influences, and 99¢ assembles another   team, including frequent collaborators John Hill and Dave Sitek, as well as producers and   like Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij, Patrik Berger,   Zed’s Dead and ILoveMakonnen, and many more. It’s a crowded cast, each shaping songs with a unique sonic fingerprint  —   from the   singalong of ”All I Got” to the glossy voguing of ”Rendezvous Girl,” the rubbery     groove of ”Banshee,” the lackadaisically   melody of ”Who Be Lovin’ Me,” and the   synth ballad ”Run The Races.” But even with the expansive,    aesthetic, there’s remarkable cohesion of vision with Santigold at the helm. Among the strongest songs, ”Chasing Shadows” is refreshingly stark, constructed around a plinking piano that places the focus on Santigold’s nuanced vocal and phenomenal verbal dexterity. Words fly off her tongue with   precision in lines like, ”I give ’em my heart in words, will they remember me?   I’ll leave ’em alone, and time’ll want to smother what I say.” The album closes with the dynamic, empowering arena anthem ”Who I Thought You Were,” which channels the soaring guitars of David Bowie’s ”Heroes,” the shimmering synths and   rock of LCD Soundsystem, and the sneering attitude of Siouxsie Sioux. All the   hooks complement an outrageously satisfying   as Santigold takes down a former love for his fake hotshot persona: ”Hey, now, take a look at you   Hosed down in a   suit   But I knew you when that wasn’t you   I knew you when you had a clue.” Santi White has remained at the forefront of pop innovation while operating just left of its mainstream. As 99¢ demonstrates, she’s at her best and most comfortable when she’s pushing toward something unexpected."
"In the battle for primary votes, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are locked in a tight battle. But you wouldn’t know it to look at the superdelegates. In the unseen battle for these party insiders, Clinton has an overwhelming lead. Of the 712 Democratic superdelegates, 449 (or about 63 percent) currently support Clinton, according to the latest Associated Press survey of superdelegates. Only 19 support Sanders. (AP did not reach 62 superdelegates, and 182 remained uncommitted or undecided.) Taking superdelegates out, Sanders has a   lead among delegates, based on the vote in Iowa and New Hampshire. This superdelegate advantage is not only a huge lead for Clinton, but a big gain as well. Since the AP’s November survey, her total has jumped 90 delegates. Sanders, meanwhile, has risen 11, from eight to 19. Keep in mind that Clinton also had a big superdelegate lead the last time she ran, but went on to lose the nomination. As of January 2008  —   shortly into the nominating process but still before Super Tuesday  —   she likewise maintained a huge lead, of 201 to Barack Obama’s 89 and John Edwards’ 40, according to the AP. Then, in February 2008, Obama was starting to quickly pick up superdelegates, while Clinton had started to lose some to his side. This time around, she is maintaining strong support among the party’s ”establishment” thus far, despite the fact that the race is tight in some primaries and caucuses. Superdelegates consist of some   names  —   members of Congress and former presidents (Bill Clinton is one) for example  —   and many party insiders whom most Americans don’t know  —   state party leaders and Democratic National Committee members, for example. While the   are allocated based on how people vote in the various state caucuses and primaries, the superdelegates are ”unbound,” meaning they can choose whom they want. And thus far, they have overwhelmingly chosen Clinton. This can make for delegate counts that don’t quite seem to make sense considering vote totals. In New Hampshire, where Sanders won the primary by a   margin, both he and Clinton have 15 total delegates. While he won 15 of the state’s 24   she has six of the eight superdelegates in her corner. Some Sanders supporters, upset about this system, have taken to contacting superdelegates, as the AP reports. And one MoveOn. org petition, declaring that ”race for the Democratic Party nomination should be decided by who gets the most votes, and not who has the most support from party insiders,” asks superdelegates to ”pledge to back the will of the voters.” Currently, that petition has more than 161, 000 signatures. The fact that the superdelegate system gives the party outsize influence clearly upsets many Sanders supporters, but giving the party outsize influence is the point of the system. Superdelegates were created in 1982 to ”improve the party’s mainstream appeal” by giving party insiders more influence and reduce that of ”activists,” as Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann and AEI’s Norman Ornstein wrote in 2008, when Clinton and Obama were also battling it out for superdelegates. Ornstein and Mann laid out several arguments for the superdelegate system: It’s a sort of ”peer review” to choose the most electable candidate, they wrote, and promotes a sense of unity, making ”stronger ties between the party and its elected officials.” Of course, in a tight race, that ”unity” argument is probably hard to see from a voter’s perspective. And that’s not lost on superdelegates. One  —    . John Kerry  —   told the New York Times in 2008 that he feared the repercussions of choosing a nominee that went against the will of the voters. ”My personal opinion is it would be a mistake and disastrous either way for the superdelegates  —   insiders, establishment politicians  —   to come along and overturn the expressed view of those pledged delegates,” he said. Indeed, many superdelegates have to be   themselves at some point, Ornstein and Mann point out. Going too sharply against voters’ wishes isn’t going to do them any good in that sense. But then, superdelegates remain unbound, even if they’ve chosen a candidate already. Should the race swing heavily in Sanders’ favor, some superdelegates who are currently backing Clinton could always switch their support."
"A few months ago, when we were in Toledo, Ohio, we spotted a small item in the Toledo City Paper about a tattoo artist named Brian Finn. Finn has been tattooing for nearly 20 years. These days, he does it on his days off, too  —   but not for just anyone. On those days, he’s creating tattoos for people with scars caused by trauma: domestic violence, human trafficking or  . And he’s offering these tattoos free. ”Otherwise, you know, they wouldn’t be able to get that done. Maybe they don’t have the money for it,” Finn says. ”The cost of equipment isn’t that much. It just takes up my time, so if I can make somebody’s day better  —   or life better  —   just covering up a scar from a bad experience, I sleep a little better.” Maddie Keating read the article in the paper, too. The    had scars on her arms  —   from   wounds  —   that she wanted to cover up. ”I started cutting when I was about 12,” Keating says. ”I entered into a really deep depression, so for about six or seven years, I was pretty heavily  .” One of the places Keating cut herself the most was on her left forearm. Now, having come out on the other side of her depression, she says she doesn’t ”want it quite that visible all the time.” Keating hasn’t cut herself in years, and while she is not ashamed of the scars on her arms, they are a reminder ”of a really dark, hard time.” She couldn’t afford the design she wanted  —   an ornate, stylized    rose  —   so she emailed Finn, asking ”what’s the catch?” There wasn’t one. The two emailed back and forth for a few weeks, then set a date for the appointment. The tattoo itself took about an hour and a half. ”It’s gorgeous,” Keating says. ”And to think that I used to look at my arm and think, ’Wow, that’s so sad that I was so sad,’ and now I get to have this beautiful rose that Brian drew for me.” As she watched Finn tattoo over her scars, she thought about how far she has come. ”It felt almost like coming full circle. Out of emotional pain, I brought myself physical pain. And now, I took a little bit of physical pain for something really beautiful,” Keating says. ”And it’s really nice to think that anybody that I meet will see something so beautiful and be able to appreciate it with me.”"
"On a visit to Argentina, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi decided he would honor that country’s great poet Jorge Luis Borges. So during his talk at the University of Buenos Aires, The Guardian reports, Renzi recited the text of ”A la Amistad,” or ”To Friendship”  —   a poem that some on the Internet identify as the work of the Argentine master. There’s just one problem. It’s . .. not. Not even close. Borges, a master of both prose and poetry, was famous for his recurring references to mirrors, labyrinths, libraries and dreams. He wrote allusive,   and deeply intellectual works, rich in imagery. ”To Friendship,” on the other hand, is . .. well . .. treacly. Here’s an excerpt: ”No puedo darte soluciones para todos los problemas de la vida, ni tengo respuestas para tus dudas o temores, pero puedo escucharte y compartirlo contigo. No puedo cambiar tu pasado ni tu futuro. Pero cuando me necesites estaré junto a ti.” Or, roughly: ”I can’t give you solutions for all life’s problems, nor do I have answers for your doubts or fears, but I can listen to you, and share it with you. I can’t change your past or your future, But when you need me, I’ll be there.” We should note that this is not the first such gaffe. Last year, the U. S. Postal Service made a similar   with a Maya Angelou quote. But the Renzi mistake has particular sting for Italians, the Guardian notes, because Renzi ”was once seen as the man who would restore Italy’s reputation as a centre of high culture, undoing the damage of the Silvio Berlusconi era.” If it’s any comfort for the prime minister, the real Borges would no doubt have had a wryly philosophical response to the   confusion was another recurring theme of his, and he famously wrote about the ambiguous relationship between him and his literary reputation. Speaking of which, Renzi might have a sudden urge to bone up on his Borges. If he’s fond of poems written in the second person, maybe he should check out ”To The One Who is Reading Me”  —   in Tony Barnstone’s translation, via Poetry, it reads in part: ”. .. A marble slab is savedfor you, one you won’t read, already gravedwith city, epitaph, dates of the dead. And other men are also dreams of time, not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dustlike you the universe is Proteus. Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead, the fatal shadow waiting at the rim. Know this: in some way you’re already dead.” So, you know. A lot like ”La Amistad.” Or perhaps Renzi should instead flip to ”The Borges,” which he’ll find in the Selected Poems edited by Alexander Coleman. It opens, ”I know little or nothing of the Borges . ..”"
"Growing up in South Africa with a white father and a black mother, Trevor Noah confronted prejudices on both sides. He tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that both white people and black people would express fear and biases to him. Then, he says, ”I’d have to explain to them, ’Hey, you can’t think like that. You can’t hold these views, because you’re generalizing everybody.’ ” His experience growing up enables him to see both sides of an issue  —   which helps when it comes to creating political satire on The Daily Show. ”I’ve understood multiple experiences simultaneously,” he says. ”That’s something I’ve always done and I continue to do till this day: I try and see the perspective of the other side.” He adds that while the pressure of creating a daily television show can be intense, those pressures pale in comparison with those he knew growing up in Soweto during apartheid. ”When I think back. . .. Not 25 years ago, I was living in basically a very elevated hut with no running water or indoor sanitation. I can’t trick myself into getting stressed by First World problems,” he says. ”Things are going great. Things are going very, very well.” On his mother being jailed on and off for having a relationship with Noah’s father, who is white, My mom opposed the system as a whole, so she never let that stand in her way, and I think I have a lot of my mom’s demeanor. Even when she told me the story she was never angry, she just went, ”It’s a stupid thing, and so I refused to listen to it.” She never came at it from a place of anger. If anything, she defied it and she didn’t give it the credibility that it was trying to create in the world. So that’s something that I inherited from my mom  —   that in my family we’re not quick to anger, if anything, obviously there are moments where you find things ridiculous or ludicrous, but not quick to anger, rather find a way to laugh about it or to minimize it using humor. . .. As much as there were the people on the forefront fighting, really every movement is also underwritten to a certain extent by the people who undermine the restriction or the laws that restrict people by just refusing to adhere to those laws. On growing up in Soweto during apartheid  It was wonderful it was electric. Even today Soweto is a beautiful community everyone knows everybody’s names, there’s just a sense of togetherness. And I think because everyone was going through the same thing, it was a shared experience. It didn’t feel like it was suffering. You knew that there was a cloud hanging over a nation, but there were lots of moments of joy within that time period. The streets were dusty, there weren’t many tarred streets. The houses were very modest, because the government would allocate land and that’s where you could live. So everyone found a way to make ends meet. There were seven or eight of us at one point living in a   house or   house at some point. We had outdoor sanitation, every four or five houses would share one toilet outdoors, and then you would have one faucet outdoors that you could go and get your water from. But this is how everyone lived, and because everyone was doing it, then it’s normal. I’m very lucky in that I never look back at it as a tough upbringing because it was the only upbringing I knew, and everyone was doing it with me. Essentially it’s like being in a very stringent fitness class  —   if everyone is suffering together it doesn’t seem so bad. On the way his family coped after his former stepfather shot his mother, When someone gets shot in the head and suffers no brain damage and is alive and needs to go through no surgery and a bullet completely passes through the head, then you almost have to concede. Who was I to say ”I don’t believe in miracles” when I’ve seen this happen in my life? We laughed about it, we joked  —   that’s really the hallmark of my family is a few days afterwards in the hospital  —   my mom was the person who cracked the first joke. I was crying by her bedside and she said to me, ”Don’t cry. Look on the bright side: Now you’re officially the   person in the family.” We’ve overcome a lot because of laughter. I think that’s why I love comedy so much, it’s because it’s the thing that has kept my family going through every single type of adversity. On being aware of cultural differences in comedy  It’s a process of trial and error. You work through the material, you talk to the people. It also helps to live here, which is something I could only do with time. So for instance, in America there’s a huge sensitivity around ”fat.” If you say somebody’s fat, because there’s been a culture of   and there’s clearly an epidemic, partly because of the food and just because of the lifestyle and so on that this is no longer being seen as a choice thing anymore. Whereas where I’m from, you would be teased more for being skinny. Fat and thin were two sides of the same coin it was never something that could be held over anyone. . .. It’s not judged as much, it’s just a statement of a fact. . .. These are small land mines that you pick up as you go from one place to the next you go, ”OK, this is sensitive here but it’s not sensitive there.” On the criticism he received for a tweet from 2014, in which he retweeted: ”When a woman is loved correctly she becomes ten times the woman she was before,” and then commented: ”so she gets fat?”  I’m not surprised by the response to any comedy taken out of context. Comedy is all about context. If you think about the things that you say to your friends or to people you know, if a stranger hears them they would think you’re the most horrible human being in the world. When you know someone, that’s when it becomes comedy. That’s exactly what comedy is: It’s a familiarity that is combined with you breaking down a commonly held belief. So, what was ironic about that tweet that you’re reading is that was me and my girlfriend at the time. That’s something that no one even bothered to check. You go, ”Who was he messaging?” I was speaking to my girlfriend at the time in public, and we were both fat at the time. We had gained a lot of weight, we were both happy, we were both lazy, and so we were joking about it. But people don’t bother, they go, ”You were   a stranger on the Internet!” This is not a stranger, this is somebody that I live with and somebody that I love. . .. With the change in social media and sharing and videos and so on and sound bites, we now live in a world where people are part of conversations that they originally weren’t really, so you’re now overhearing everything that everybody’s talking about and you’re not part of the conversation. On advice he received from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about dealing with the intensity of daily television  The quickest thing you have to learn is your best show only lasts for a night and your worst show only lasts for a night, and then you’re back doing it tomorrow."
"About 7 percent of homeless people live in rural areas, but homeless advocates say services in those areas don’t get as much federal funding as they deserve  —   partly because the number of homeless people might be underestimated. Official homelessness numbers come from the    count: A   tally of a community’s homeless population on the streets or in shelters. But in rural areas such as Wyoming and South Dakota where shelter space is scarce, people often crash with friends or stay in cheap motels on cold nights. The   counts that happen across the country in January will miss these people in the official tally. ”They’re not out in the open like they are in a larger city, because they find places,” says Jennifer Cruz, a volunteer who drove around Cheyenne, Wyo. during a    count. ”I just met a gentleman who’s been sleeping on his brother’s couch, but he is homeless.” To address this problem, volunteers in Wyoming are getting creative. They put up flyers around town advertising a free meal and hot drinks in Cheyenne’s main plaza, where the homeless answer federal homelessness surveys. Even so, volunteers here are still going to miss some people who don’t have a home  —   people such as Dale Dean. Dean is crashing on a friend’s futon in the Pioneer Hotel, a cheap place in Cheyenne. ”Being as its wintertime, it gets very cold,” Dean says. ”So far, I haven’t (slept outside.) I’ve been pretty fortunate, you know. I’ve met enough people.” There is only one homeless shelter in Cheyenne, and currently, its 90 or so beds are completely full. Dean’s good luck is the reason why the    count isn’t always accurate. This year, Dean won’t be counted as homeless. The count is a standard used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is performed in January based on the logic that the cold weather will drive people into emergency shelters, where they are easier to find. It is important: The count will in part determine how much federal money state homeless services get. Advocates say when even a few homeless people aren’t counted it can make a big difference in the funding. ”We have to use the HUD definition of homelessness,” says Brenda Lyttle, homeless coordinator for the state of Wyoming. ”And the HUD definition is someone in a shelter or who is living in a place not meant for human habitation.” Rick Garcia, the regional administrator for HUD in Denver, says the January count is the best time for the country as a whole. ”We are aware that the count certainly is not perfect,” he says. ”I think the goal is that we have a count at one time of the year that everyone in the nation is creating.” He says most people experiencing homelessness live in urban areas. Los Angeles counted more than 40, 000 homeless people last year, while Wyoming counted about 800. To Megan Hustings, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, the    count is just one of many challenges that those seeking to end rural homelessness face. ”Big cities, you will see big shelters. There’s lots of different service organizations. Many small rural areas don’t have any shelter whatsoever,” she says. Laramie, Wyo. is an example. The nearest shelter to the university town with a population of about 30, 000 is an hour away with no regular bus service to get there. Wyoming homeless advocates are now working on a plan to do another homeless population count this summer. It may not open the door to more federal funding, but it will help them get a better sense of homelessness in the state."
"In   comments aboard the papal plane, Pope Francis suggested to reporters that it might be acceptable for those fearing the Zika virus to use contraception. The pope did not explicitly approve the use of contraception as he spoke during the flight from Mexico to Rome. But he drew a distinction between the use of abortion to respond to the threat of Zika  —   which he categorically opposed  —   and the hypothetical use of contraception. There are concerns that the Zika virus, currently raging across Latin America, may be linked to cases of microcephaly, a severe birth defect. A reporter on the plane had asked the pope how he felt about advice from some authorities that women at risk of Zika have abortions, and whether contraception would be the lesser of two evils, The Associated Press reports. ”Abortion is not a lesser evil. It is a crime. It is killing one person to save another. It is what the Mafia does,” Francis said, according to an AP translation. ”It is a crime. It is an absolute evil.” But contraception is different, the pope said, noting that ”avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil,” the AP writes. The Vatican press office described the pope’s remarks on contraception: ”Using contraceptives to avoid pregnancy can be acceptable in difficult situations, he said, noting that Pope Paul VI authorized nuns in Africa to do the same half a century ago when they were threatened with rape.” That exceptional dispensation from Paul VI was not publicized at the time, the AP writes, and little is known about it. In his remarks, Pope Francis also said that while he wasn’t personally familiar with presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plans for a wall between the U. S. and Mexico, anyone who proposed such a wall ”is not Christian.” ”A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel,” the pope said, according to the Catholic News Agency. Trump has responded, saying in a statement, ”If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened.” He also called it ”disgraceful” for the pope to question his faith."
"Donald Trump has feuded with other candidates, reporters and TV networks during his run for president. Now, the   for the Republican nomination is feuding with Pope Francis. On Thursday, the pontiff criticized Trump for the proposal at the heart of his campaign: a pledge to keep people from crossing into the United States illegally by building a wall on the U. S.  border. ”I’d just say that this man is not Christian if he said it in this way,” Francis told reporters in a midflight press conference after a trip to Mexico. ”A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said, according to The Associated Press’ translation of the press conference. Trump wasted no time firing back. ”If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened,” Trump said in a statement released by his campaign. ”For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.” Trump has aggressively courted evangelical Christian leaders and voters during his run for president, though as NPR reported after his visit to Liberty University last month: ”There have been some missteps along the way. Last year, he told an Iowa evangelical gathering he had never asked God for forgiveness  —   a central tenet of the Christian faith  —   and he repeated that Sunday on CNN. He’s declined to cite his favorite Bible verse or even his favorite testament. And the Presbyterian church he says he attends in Manhattan has said he’s not an active member.” Trump still won the endorsement of the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr. after that appearance. For his part, Francis has not shied away from politics since becoming pope. While simply repeating   church positions on the dangers of capitalism and globalization, concern for the environment, and other social justice issues, he has repeatedly made headlines over the course of his career as pontiff and, before that, cardinal, for challenging political leaders. The first Latin American pope has made immigration a top concern. Earlier this week, he celebrated Mass along the U. S.  border, saying immigrants crossing the border ”are ’cannon fodder,’ persecuted and threatened when they try to flee the spiral of violence and the hell of drugs.” Francis even floated the idea of drawing attention to immigration concerns by entering the U. S. via the Mexican border when he made his first visit to the country last fall."
"Morgane Stapleton is not a secret. In Nashville, the   woman who’s stood strong as a slender birch beside her husband, Chris, in breakthrough performances at the CMA Awards and on Saturday Night Life is known for being more than just a pristine harmonizer. She’s a songwriter who’s collaborated with Guy Clark and written a number one hit for Carrie Underwood she’s also a vocalist in her own right, once dubbed the best pure country singer in town. Since joining her husband  —   the two met on Music Row  —   she’s opted to be his most visible (and audible) support system, singing through his breakthrough album Traveller, acting as his filter for song selections and business moves, and always occupying that space onstage, where she can look into his eyes and render their performance solid. Many times, I’ve heard Nashvillians sigh, ”I wish Morgane would record that solo album”  —   yet working with Chris, she fully engages artistically, embodying an ideal of musical, marital partnership. The version of the   chestnut ”You Are My Sunshine” Morgane and Chris recorded for producer Dave Cobb’s   Southern Family concept compilation offers a deep gaze into marriage, winding sentimental attachment together with deep fear of loss. The couple turns this     song as a blues, with blistering guitar and harmonies that scorch the fields. When Morgane claims the final verse, the one not often sung when ”Sunshine” serves as a children’s rhyme, the threat it contains becomes existential. ”If you leave me to love another, you’ll regret it all one day.” Her rich, raw alto grips into the phrase until it becomes not possessive but fatalistic, a tacit acknowledgement that in every mortal marriage, someone does inevitably leave. A longtime centerpiece of their live performances together, ”You Are My Sunshine,” now shared with the larger world, is a statement on commitment  —   to another person, and to one’s own passion, which can stoke itself in frightening ways if not properly tended to. Hang your head and cry: love demands to be felt this way. Southern Family is out on March 18 on Low Country  ."
"When Susan Cain wrote Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking in 2012, it was a big success. The book made the cover of Time magazine, spent weeks on the New York Times   list and was the subject of one of the   TED Talks, with more than 13 million views. From that grew The Quiet Revolution, a company Cain   that continues to produce and share content about, and for, introverts. The site offers an online training course for parents and stories submitted by readers about being introverted. There’s even a podcast. Kids, Cain says, ”are at the heart and center of it.” ”Introverts often are really amazing, talented, gifted, loving children, and they feel like there’s something wrong with them,” she says. ”And our mission is to make it so that the next generation of kids does not grow up feeling that way.” In her latest book, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, she’s taking her message about introverts to teenagers. Though the book is written for young adults, it’s also a tool for teachers and parents. I talked with Cain about her mission of supporting introverts, and asked her advice on how to teach them. So what does it mean to be an introverted child? It’s really not different for a child than for an adult. It’s a person who feels at their best and at their most alive when they’re in quieter, more mellow environments. And it stems from a neurobiological difference between introverts and extroverts. Literally, different nervous systems. Introverts have nervous systems that simply react more to everything that’s going on around them, and that means they feel more in their sweet spot when there’s less stuff happening. And extroverts have nervous systems that react less, which means that they don’t get to their sweet spot until there’s more stuff happening. And so this is why you see these different behavioral preferences. An introverted kid would rather draw quietly or would rather play their favorite sport with one or two other kids. A more extroverted child would rather be part of a big gang and a big noisy birthday party, and not only not be fazed by it but seem to really relish all that stimulation. And it’s different from being shy? It is different. Shyness is much more about the fear of being judged. It’s a kind of   and not wanting people to look at you and feeling easily embarrassed or easily shamed. These are all the feelings that a shy child would have. And in practice, many introverted children are also shy, but many are not, and you can also have children that are quite extroverted but who are shy, and as soon as they overcome their shyness, you see them being in the middle of the big gang. So it’s really important when you’re working with children to understand what is actually happening inside them so that you make sure that you’re responding to the right thing. So let’s talk about schools. Where do they come in? You know, lots of schools are really hungry for information on how they can do a better job of working with these kids. They’re asking good questions: What indeed are the right ways to think about class participation? And are we   as an educational culture? We overvalue the person who raises their hand all the time. Why is that important? Do we overvalue in quantity, as opposed to quality, of participation? Are there ways to think about class participation differently? Like we [at Quiet Revolution] have been encouraging schools to think in terms of classroom engagement rather than participation. Take a more holistic way of looking at how a child is engaging with this material or with their classmates. One of the anecdotes I loved in the book was when the teacher had her students think for a minute before answering. What other kind of good ideas or tips can teachers use like that? Another idea is the    technique, which I think many teachers are familiar with already, but may not realize the power of it within a population of students. This is a technique where the teacher asks the students a question asks them to think about the answer. They pair up with another student to talk about their reflections. And then, once they’re paired, once they’ve articulated it with that partner, then you ask each pair to share their thoughts with the room as a whole. And this does a lot of great things for introverted kids. No. 1, it gives them the time to process. No. 2, it allows them to get the experience of articulating their thoughts out loud. But in front of only one other student, they don’t have to do it in front of the whole class. And then, often, once they have had that warmup period with one other student, they’re then much more likely to want to share with the whole class. So this is a technique that works, it works equally well for introverts and extroverts. It’s great for the extroverts, too, but it just happens to work well with the more reticent kids. What do you think about using social media or technology in the classroom? Helpful for introverts? Harmful? Helpful. Well, of course social media is such a big thing, so for introverts, there are pros and cons. But my first impulse is to say helpful, and there are teachers now who are starting to incorporate social media into their classrooms and report that the more reticent children are much more likely to participate when their means of expression is through their screens. They can type their answer into a screen, the other students then see what they have written or typed or whatever, and then ”real life” dialogue begins based on the initial ideas that were contributed through the screen. So in general I’m a big fan of social media. I think incorporating it creatively into the class can work. If we’re talking about it as an educational technique, then I am all for it. This brings me to another   trauma: the public speech. Should teachers kind of push introverts along, out of their comfort zone? Yeah, so I think that it’s important, of course. The key, if we’re talking about public speaking or really anything that kids are fearful of, is to think of anxiety levels on a scale of 1 to 10, and to make sure you’re pushing kids within a zone of 4 to 6. If you have a kid who is really freaking out, they’re really in that    zone, it’s just too dangerous to push them at that point. They might succeed, they might, you know, do well and feel this is great. But there’s too big a risk of it backfiring and the experience going poorly and the fear being further codified in their brain. So you’re much better off meeting a fear in small steps. The answer is not: ’OK, you never have to do . .. ’ The Answer is: ”OK. You’re afraid of public speaking. Why don’t you prepare your speech and work on it first with your best friend?” Give the speech to your friend. And then, when you’ve done that, maybe you can give it to another, smaller group. From there, you work up in stages, to finally giving the all out speech. You look for ways to make the experience less anxiety producing. In the book, you mention that loving the topic can help kids get into their speech.  Making sure that the child is speaking about a subject that they’re truly passionate about and excited to speak about is important. Because again, this is . .. biochemical. If you tap into your body’s behavioral activation system by speaking about something you’re excited about, then that overcomes the body’s behavioral inhibition system. Which is the system in your body telling you, stop. Slow down. Get the heck off the stage. So it does require extra work on the part of the teacher and an extra degree of thought and care, which I recognize is not always easy, you know, for overburdened teachers. But it goes a long way. What about group work? Is that good for introverts? In my experience, it depends a lot on how the group is structured. How carefully it’s structured. Because I’ve seen group work where it works really well, you’ve got kids who work well together, everybody knows their role. That can be a really positive experience. And then I’ve seen big    groups where it’s Lord of The Flies and you’ve got the most dominant kids taking over. Everyone else is checked out. So it can really go both ways."
"The Department of Justice has filed a motion to compel Apple to cooperate with a government investigation and help access data on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino assailants. The motion filed in the U. S. District Court for the Central District of California (read it in full below) lays out the government’s legal case for why Apple should provide technical assistance. It could be viewed as a response to Apple’s open letter this week stating why the company is refusing to assist  —   as well as a   move by the prosecutors ahead of Apple’s own court filings expected next week. (Click here for our comprehensive explainer on what’s going on, and here for other NPR coverage on the standoff so far. As a very quick recap: The government had earlier gotten a court order directing Apple to create special software that would help investigators crack the phone’s PIN code. Apple CEO Tim Cook’s letter argued this would set a dangerous precedent and could undermine the security of all iPhones.) In the new motion, U. S. attorneys argue that Apple ”retains the technical ability to comply” with the judge’s order and that its ”current refusal to comply with the Court’s Order, despite the technical feasibility of doing so, instead appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy.” The filing specifies that the government ”has reason to believe” that Syed Rizwan Farook used that iPhone to communicate ”with some of the very people” he and his wife killed in the Dec. 2 mass shooting. The tech industry, however, broadly views this as a   case. For instance, experts’ opinions vary on whether the government truly does require Apple’s help to crack into the phone. (The filing argues that Apple’s help is critical.) Google, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter have issued statements in support of Apple’s opposition. One of the biggest points of contention is whether this is a matter of writing software so carefully targeted to this individual phone that it wouldn’t ever be usable to break into other phones. There’s a lot we don’t know about the way iPhone security technology works, and technical experts disagree on the feasibility of this task. Apple itself, in simplest terms, doesn’t want such software to exist to begin with. Cook suggested that software written specifically for one phone could be in danger of being tweaked to apply to other phones, via other government requests or by hackers. Government attorneys argue that such a threat is overstated. ”The software never has to come into the government’s custody,” the filing says. ”Just as with Apple’s   operating systems and software, no one outside Apple would have access to the software required by the order unless Apple itself chose to share it.” Both parties and the judge have also agreed on a timeline for this case, which many observers think could become a landmark in the   debate over privacy and surveillance."
"As Apple and Justice Department lawyers duke it out in court over the government’s attempts to force the tech company to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino killers, there are calls for a legislative solution in the debate that pits privacy against national security concerns. But the chances of Congress coming up with what would almost certainly be a controversial solution to a highly complex issue in an election year seem remote. In part, that’s because no one can figure out how to resolve the issue. Absent legislation, there will be hearings on the matter. Late Friday, the bipartisan leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee invited both FBI Director James Comey and Apple CEO Tim Cook to testify before the panel in order ”to explain to Congress and the American people the issues at play and how they plan to move forward.” Meanwhile, during a campaign stop in South Carolina, Republican Donald Trump called on consumers to boycott Apple until the company complies with the court order to come up with a way to bypass the iPhone’s encryption. Lawmakers Picking Sides, Some lawmakers, most notably Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have taken sides. ”Apple chose to protect a dead ISIS terrorist’s privacy over the security of the American people,” Cotton said in a statement, adding that ”legislation is likely the only way to resolve this issue.” California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has also shifted into the   category. Earlier this month, Schiff was quoted as saying a legislative solution to the issue was not ”feasible or even desirable.” On Wednesday, Schiff issued a statement that ”these complex issues will ultimately need to be resolved by Congress, the Administration and industry, rather than the courts alone, since they involve important matters of public policy.” But Schiff has not offered a specific course of action, adding, ”We are far from any consensus.” The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Richard Burr of North Carolina, has written that ”Apple needs to comply with the court’s order.” Burr and the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, California’s Dianne Feinstein, have had ongoing discussions about legislation to force tech companies to decrypt their devices if ordered to do so by a court. A spokeswoman for Burr, however, said there is no draft bill yet, and that the senator is working ”on his own schedule” on the proposal. Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, another member of the intelligence panel, told NPR’s Morning Edition Friday that ”this is a really tough issue” and that he could ”argue it either way.” King said that to decide it in this case ”is I think the wrong approach. There is an old saying in law school: ’Hard cases make bad law.’ ” King was critical of the Obama administration for not proposing legislation to address the encryption issue, saying its something the FBI has ”been sounding alarms about . .. for more than a year.” One possible path forward for lawmakers is that Washington staple: the blue ribbon commission. In fact, House Homeland Security Committee chairman Michael McCaul of Texas and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia have proposed just such a panel, a ”national commission on security and technology challenges in the digital age.”  It would consist of ”a body of experts representing all of the interests at stake so we can evaluate and improve America’s security posture as technology  —   and our adversaries  —   evolve.” The two wrote that the panel would be charged with ”developing a range of actionable recommendations that can protect privacy and public safety.” Presidential Candidates Grappling With Issue, On the presidential campaign trail, there is a similarly wide range of views and lack of consensus about how to address the   security argument. On one side is Trump’s call for an Apple boycott, something that he told his supporters at a rally had ”just occurred” to him. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio called it ”a tough issue” but said he hoped Apple would comply with the order, adding, ”Ultimately I think being a good corporate citizen is important.” At a town hall meeting on MSNBC Thursday night, the two Democratic candidates also weighed in. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, asked whose side he was on, Apple or the FBI’s, responded ”both.” Sanders said, ”All of us would be very dismayed if we learned that we could’ve picked up information about a potential terrorist act and we didn’t do that. People would not feel good about this.” But, Sanders added, ”There has got to be a balance.” Calling himself ”a very strong civil libertarian,” Sanders says he believes ”we can fight terrorism without undermining our constitutional rights and our privacy rights.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s position was also nuanced. She called it ”a very hard dilemma” that’s ”going to have lots of ramifications. But I see both sides. And I think most citizens see both sides.” Clinton said ”there’s got to be some way on a very specific basis we could try to help get information around crimes and terrorism.” But so far, no one on either side of the issue has figured what that way is."
"Making farmers markets more accessible to Americans in food deserts can boost the number of   customers who regularly shop there, and may even offer more promise for improving diets than bringing in traditional grocers. That’s according to researchers who looked at what happened when the farmers market in Flint, Mich.  —   much of which qualifies as a food desert  —   moved downtown. Availability of nutritious foods is of particular relevance in Flint, where the city’s water system is now infamously contaminated with lead and other toxins. Public health officials there are spreading the word that consuming fruits and vegetables and other nutritious foods high in calcium, iron and Vitamin C can help reduce lead absorption. (Editor’s note: We’ll have more on those efforts next week.) Rick Sadler, a public health professor at the Flint campus of Michigan State University, first interviewed shoppers at the Flint Farmers’ Market in 2011, seeking to understand the demographics of its customers. Three years later, the market made a controversial move from an industrial area north of the city core  —   inaccessible to public transit and pedestrians  —   to a central downtown location across from the bus station. That prompted Sadler to return in 2015, to see if the customer demographics had shifted. They had: At the new location, the market was seeing far more shoppers from the city’s poorer neighborhoods. As Sadler reports in a new study in the journal Applied Geography, in 2011, about 10 percent of the shoppers came from the city’s most distressed neighborhoods, but by 2015 it was up to 20 percent. Similarly, less than 1 percent of farmers market patrons had taken the bus there in 2011, but 6 percent had after the move. And while that might not sound like much to New Yorkers, it’s significant in Flint, says Sadler, who has also been documenting the city’s water crisis. ”Flint’s nickname is ’Vehicle City’ most people here do drive,” he tells us. An increasing number of shoppers also used the market for general groceries, with 20 percent reporting that as a reason for coming to the market in 2015, compared with 14 percent in 2011. That was particularly marked, says Sadler, among residents who said they had difficulty accessing food: 27 percent of those shoppers visited the market for general groceries, compared with 13 percent of those reporting no difficulty accessing food, he told us. That may be, in part, because much of Flint meets federal criteria for being a ”food desert,” a community without sufficient access to grocery stores. The city has lost more than half of its population since the 1960s, and it has a poverty rate of 42 percent. In 2013 and 2014, three of the city’s major grocers  —   two Krogers and a Meijer, a local competitor to    —   shut down. ”The market basically exists as a supplement to the lack of grocery stores in their neighborhoods,” Sadler says. Indeed, use of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at the Flint Farmers’ Market has increased dramatically since 2011, going from just under $65, 000 a year to nearly $140, 000. That’s according to the Fair Food Network, which runs Michigan’s Double Up Food Bucks, a program that gives SNAP clients a    match up to $20 a week to spend at farmers markets. Between 2011 and 2015, the group says, Double Up Food Bucks went from roughly $37, 000 in sales in Flint to $111, 000. That lines up with what researchers analyzing double bucks programs in Michigan and elsewhere are finding. ”In   communities, we find that access and affordability are cited [by residents] as the two biggest barriers to having more healthy food,” says Oran Hesterman, president of the Fair Food Network, who’s overseen the group’s Double Up Food Bucks program since its inception in 2009. But, he adds, ”the desire for healthy food is not limited by income or ZIP code.” Capitalizing on that desire, says Sadler, might be more feasible with farmers markets  —   and other   efforts  —   in a struggling city like Flint. Big chains like Kroger, he says, need to reach a certain level of profit to keep stores open. ”When you’re dealing with a huge chain, it’s easier to write off a store,” he says. But a smaller store  —   or even a farmers market  —   is different, because it’s unlikely to just pick up and leave. ”You still make money, you still have an interest in making a business out of it,” he says the scale of profit just might be different. ”But you want to be able to contribute something to the community.”"
"Albert Woodfox, who has been held in solitary confinement for more than 40 years, walked out of a Louisiana prison early this afternoon. This comes after he pleaded no contest on Friday to manslaughter charges in the death of prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. Woodfox was the last behind bars of three prisoners known as the Angola Three because of their long confinement in Louisiana’s Angola prison. Over the course of decades, Woodfox has consistently maintained his innocence. And his lawyer tells The   that ”no contest” does not imply guilt. ”It means simply that (Woodfox) does not contest that the State would present evidence at a new trial from witnesses who said he committed this crime,” lawyer George Kendall says. Here’s how Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry characterized the outcome: ”Albert Woodfox, by his own plea, stands convicted of the homicide of Brent Miller. In accordance with that plea, he was sentenced to 42 years of incarceration and given credit for time served. Additionally, he waived his rights to appeal this sentence.” The   posted a statement from Woodfox, which includes: ”Although I was looking forward to proving my innocence at a new trial, concerns about my health and my age have caused me to resolve this case now and obtain my release with this   plea to lesser charges. I hope the events of today will bring closure to many.” Eve Troeh from member station WWNO reported for NPR last year that this case ”became an international human rights issue.” Eve says the Angola Three have long maintained ”they were framed for the prison guard’s murder as retaliation for involvement in the Black Panther movement.” It’s that same reason that prison officials used as a defense for putting the men into solitary confinement: they said ”their Black Panther activism would otherwise rile up inmates at the   prison farm in Angola,” the Associated Press reports. Herman Wallace, another one of the three, died just days after he was freed in 2013. The case of the third prisoner, Robert King, was overturned in 2001. As NPR reported in 2013, here’s how King described the prison conditions: ” ’The cells were pretty bare, and they were maybe about . .. 3 feet wide and about 6 feet long. It was almost like it was in a tomb, and there was a slab of concrete that you slept on,’ King says. ’You ate three meals a day  —   you had two slices of bread each meal. During the wintertime, you froze, and during summertime, you were overheated. But in any event, you were starved.’ ” Woodfox told reporters outside the prison that he planned to visit his mother’s grave. She died while he was incarcerated. And as the AP reports, when asked ”whether he would have done anything differently back in 1972, Woodfox responded: ’When forces are beyond your control, there’s not a lot you can do. Angola was a very horrible place at the time and everybody was just fighting to survive from day to day. ’” He has been twice convicted for the guard’s killing, but both verdicts have been overturned. As the   reports, a ”grand jury indicted him Feb. 12, 2015, for a third time in the   murder.” Today’s release was part of a plea agreement."
"Jack Garratt has been called the ”sound of the year” for 2016. That accolade came from the BBC. In the United Kingdom, he has already won several awards for his music. His debut album, Phase, comes out today in the United States. From the start of his musical career, Garratt has been a   band, playing the guitar, drums and keyboard all himself  —   often at the same time. Garratt grew up in Buckinghamshire, northwest of London, the son of a police officer and a teacher. In 2005, at the age of 13, he entered the Junior Eurovision song contest  —   and came in dead last. ”That was the first time I ever put my foot in any kind of door,” he says. ”And the door broke my foot as it slammed in my face.” A few years later, while till writing and performing music, Garrett took a job as a teaching assistant to a boy with cerebral palsy. The experience, he says, was    —   and had a profound effect on his creative work. ”He ended up teaching me a lot about losing your inhibitions when you can, and not being too   or stubborn to try new things,” he says. ”I got to see a kid who had cerebral palsy go and hit balls harder and try and run faster than all the other kids in his year, because he wasn’t going to let his mind stop him just because his legs were trying to.” Jack Garratt spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about the making of Phase and the personal stories that shaped it. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"Johann Castro Hernandez is an    college kid who loves playing soccer. Only these days, he can barely lift his legs, let alone kick a ball. His body looks weirdly thin, with no muscle tone. His movements are slow and tentative. For the past month, he has been in the intensive care unit of a health facility called Clinica Norte in Cucuta, a city in northeast Colombia where doctors have diagnosed him with   syndrome, a rare neurological condition that can leave people temporarily paralyzed for weeks. Castro sits at a table looking into a hand mirror as his mother pushes down on his forehead. It’s a physical therapy exercise to help him regain use of his facial muscles. He’s supposed to furrow his brow  —   then release. ”Down, down and release,” his mother instructs. Castro focuses hard on his image in the mirror. But his face stays put. ”It’s like my brain sends the order but the muscles don’t follow it,” he says. In the room next door, another   patient is in even worse shape. He’s Jose Cordero, a    day laborer. He lies in his hospital bed, breathing tubes leading into his mouth. His sister, Ana Tilcia Cordero, stands by his side, staring down at him sadly. She touches his leg gently. ”Can you feel it?” she asks. ”No?” Cordero fixes his eyes on her and strains to shake his head. That’s all he can manage. The head of the ICU, Dr. Arturo Arias, pokes his head into the room. ”Hi, Jose,” he says. ”Look over here  —   at me!” He smiles  —   encouraging. ”Don’t worry,” he tells Cordero. ”You’ll get better soon.” But as the doctor leaves the room, his expression is dark. Cordero’s situation is serious, he says. ”So far, he hasn’t been responding to treatment.” When you have   your immune system basically starts attacking your nerve cells. For most people it starts with a tingling or numbness in the arms and legs, like when limbs fall asleep. There’s weakness and pain. For some that’s where it ends. But many other patients quickly deteriorate further. ”It gets harder and harder to move,” says Arias. Eventually a patient is paralyzed and can’t even get out of bed. In the worst cases, the paralysis is so severe that a machine is needed to breathe. There’s a risk of death from complications like pneumonia or heart attacks. Treatments like plasmapheresis  —   a procedure that removes antibodies from your blood  —   can help. Ultimately patients do recover the ability to breathe. But it can take months to walk again. Some people never do.   is a rare disorder. The U. S. for example, records 3, 000 to 6, 000 cases a year. At his ICU, Arias sees about a case a year. So when a patient came in with the syndrome the first week of January, he wasn’t too concerned. The following week, two more patients arrived. ”Two more patients in the same month,” Arias thought. ”That’s strange.” When the fourth case showed up, he decided to call his friends at other ICUs around town.   ”Hi, how many   cases have you had lately?” he asked them. The answers stunned him. Four, said one colleague. Another had five. Another eight. And there was something else. Practically every one of these patients  —   including both Castro the college student and Jose Cordero  —   said that shortly before they developed   they had come down with the telltale signs of a Zika infection: rashes, pink eye, fever. Arias brightens at the sight of a visitor to the clinic. Dr. Juan Manuel Anaya has just arrived to help Arias launch a study to puzzle out the Zika connection. He’s here from Colombia’s capital, Bogota, where he directs a center for autoimmune disease research at the Universidad del Rosario. ”We think that Zika is involved in almost all the [surge of] cases [of  ] physicians in Cucuta have seen,” Anaya explains. And it’s not just here. Across Colombia there have been almost 100   cases linked to Zika since the outbreak began last fall  —   about twice the usual number. Other countries where Zika is spreading  —   Brazil, El Salvador, Venezuela  —   have seen similar spikes. And it turns out the same thing happened a few years ago during a Zika outbreak in French Polynesia. We ask Anaya if he thinks Zika is linked to  . ”Mostly, it’s an open question,” he says. Still, he adds, viral infections often appear to trigger  . To prove a specific link with Zika, researchers like Anaya  —   and there are now quite a number doing similar work in South America  —   will also have to explain why only a small share of people who get Zika then come down with  . ”So we’re looking for previous exposures to toxins, for instance. Or previous exposure to another virus.” They’ll also be running genetic tests. Meanwhile, the patients are struggling to overcome the syndrome. Castro is finishing up his last physical therapy exercise. He’s supposed to pucker his lips then release them, in a kiss. His mother, Janina Hernandez, has to push his lips into position. Still, he is at least able to hold them there, then make a kissing sound. Hernandez looks at her son proudly. Tomorrow he’s set to go home. But it’s been such a rough road, she says. ”When we first got here he was so worried,” she recalls. ”I would say to him, ’Get some rest so you can get better.’ And he would say, ’No. I’m afraid if I go to sleep I’ll stop breathing.’ ” Then one morning, that’s exactly what happened. ”I started to shake and shake and shake,” Castro remembers. ”And the doctor said, ’We have to intubate him’ ”  —   to insert a breathing tube into his trachea. By day, Castro tried to keep up a brave face for his mother. Alone, at night, ”I’m not gonna lie,” he says, ”there was more than one night that I cried. I got to a point where I thought, ’Am I going to be stuck like this?’ ” Now, he’s optimistic. ”I’m going to do these exercises every day,” he says, ”until I can play [soccer] again.”"
"With the Zika virus in the daily headlines, public health authorities should be looking carefully at how they communicate about this latest emerging infectious disease. People need to be alerted, not alarmed. That balance can be hard to strike when the health sources people turn to range from acquaintances on social media to politicians, instead of physicians and other medical professionals. The Ebola outbreak in 2014 demonstrated that many of the old rules about public health communication no longer apply. Elected officials and media used to turn to professors or government public health officers. Now, headlines can be dominated and people can be swayed by a clever tweet or caustic comment on a talk show, even if they come from someone with no public health expertise. Zika virus is considerably less dangerous than Ebola, but communicating about the risks requires some of the same delicate handling. In the past, politicians would yield and let physicians lead. In the Ebola outbreak, politicians not only demanded the spotlight, they often stoked fear by providing inaccurate information. Sen. Rand Paul, who has a medical degree, said that people could get Ebola just by helping someone into a taxi. There was no evidence to support that statement. When scientists explained that Ebola isn’t transmitted by casual contact, many members of the public didn’t listen. A poll by Harvard researchers found that 4 in 5 Americans thought a person was likely to get Ebola if a person with Ebola coughed or sneezed on them or if they touched an object that had been in contact with an Ebola patient’s body fluids. (Ebola transmission requires direct contact, such as when an Ebola patient’s sweat gets into another person’s body through a cut or the eyes, nose or mouth, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) Those of us who led medical center communications during the crisis had to play defense against false facts spread by people who should have been more responsible. Our experts had to get in front of people personally to overcome needless alarm stoked by misinformation in the media and elsewhere. When Awareness Goes Awry, Errors in communications planning, preparation and practice contributed to unfounded hysteria about Ebola. As in the 2012 movie Contagion, fear can as dangerous as the infectious disease itself. When World Health Organization   Margaret Chan declared Zika virus a ”public health emergency” on Feb. 1, her words were measured and precise. She focused on the need for international coordination to detect and study Zika infection cases and their consequences, develop tests and vaccines, and prevent new infections. She said there was no justification for travel restrictions. However, the CDC advised in January that pregnant women ”consider postponing travel to any area where Zika virus transmission is ongoing.” A   poll conducted in early February found that 41 percent of Americans who are aware of the Zika virus now are less likely to travel to Latin America and the Caribbean, where Zika virus cases have been reported. The poll also found that 60 percent of Americans are concerned about Zika virus, including 18 percent who are ”very concerned.” Those poll numbers reflect that people worry, especially when they do not know much about the risks. With Ebola, people knew little more than that it was deadly. That lack of understanding undercut efforts by health officials to prepare for Ebola cases and manage the few that U. S. hospitals treated. Getting accurate information out to more people in advance of an outbreak could have made a difference. That means more than just distributing messages via email. Texas Presbyterian Hospital executives apparently thought that distributing an Ebola policy to medical staff was sufficient preparation in case a person with Ebola might walk in the front door, as Thomas Earl Duncan did on Sept. 25, 2014. ”We believe that we were very well attuned to the potential risk of Ebola, and that we had communicated that fairly aggressively. What we didn’t do is train and simulate for that,” said Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer of Texas Health Resources, the company that operates Texas Presbyterian Hospital, in an interview with member station KERA. Communication Requires Interaction, At Emory University in Atlanta, where Dr. Kent Brantly was successfully treated for Ebola, leadership figured out fast that    conversations were required to effectively inform hospital staff and media, says Vince Dollard, one of Emory’s communications leaders. When Dr. Craig Spencer was taken to Bellevue Hospital in New York with Ebola symptoms, there was plenty of hysteria, but health care workers throughout the city already knew the protocols, had gone through training and had fact sheets, posters and other materials on hand to help explain facts to concerned people. People may not believe government scientists, but they had a chance to get reliable information from their own doctors. ”One of the realities we learned and have to face is that today, many in the public simply will not believe a ’government expert’ or top scientist anymore, not when they rely on Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Jenny McCarthy for health information,” says public relations consultant Kathleen Lewton, who has worked with hospitals for more than 30 years. ”People stopped listening when it came to vaccines, so by the time we got to Ebola, experts from NIH and CDC were in some cases drowned out by others who saw a spotlight opportunity.” Lewton cites New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as one example. On Oct. 22, 2014, Christie said elected officials ”need to be responsible and cautious when talking about Ebola.” Two days later, he and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced mandatory quarantines for returning health care workers, despite objections from the National Institutes of Health and the CDC. So far, with Zika, the tone has been relatively calm. The CDC was ready with posters, fact sheets and fliers. President Obama went on CBS This Morning on Feb. 8 with a clear, reassuring message: ”The good news is this is not like Ebola, people don’t die of Zika  —   a lot of people get it and don’t even know that they have it,” said the president. But he said Zika appears to present a risk to pregnant women and their offspring, echoing public health notices from both WHO and CDC. Whether the public stays calm remains to be seen. Just as public health professionals keep watch for the next emerging disease, they also must anticipate the next source of fear and be ready to respond with more than just talking head experts. The days of waiting until an orderly news conference can be arranged are gone. Doug Levy is former chief communications officer of Columbia University Medical Center in New York and has been an adviser to public health and other officials on crisis communications for more than 15 years. Previously he covered medicine and health at USA Today."
"The world wasn’t prepared for Zika to fly across continents in the span of a few months. In 2015, when the virus began rapidly spreading across the Americas, health workers were surprised, and researchers were caught   when it came time to provide information to protecting the public’s health. Scientists misjudged Zika virus as a minor and trivial ailment when it was discovered in 1947, says Dr. Ken Stuart, the founder and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Seattle. That oversight is one reason for the dearth of medical knowledge around the virus. But it didn’t have to be that way, he says. Stuart spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro on why the Zika outbreak has unfolded the way it did and how things could have gone better. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. On why scientists didn’t pay much attention to Zika for decades after it was identified  It was discovered in Uganda and was thought to be isolated and to occur infrequently. So there was essentially no research done. I think only one person in the U. S. was working on Zika virus. We were unaware of the severity of the disease . .. [and] were unaware this virus had the capability for getting distributed so rapidly. On trying to get a handle on emerging infectious diseases  [We can] try to deploy resources consciously to develop fundamental understanding of groups of infectious agents and diseases they cause. Zika virus is a fairly small virus that has a single strand of RNA as its genome, fairly simple. And there are other related viruses [like Spondweni virus] so working on related viruses and how that virus affects the cells and individuals it infects when it causes disease will help with the next outbreak of a related organism. On why that doesn’t always happen, This really goes back to funding priorities. Much of the funding devoted to infectious disease today is in reaction to outbreaks. Therefore, we’re not generally prepared to respond quickly. In other cases there are diseases that are very rare but they have an advocacy group that generates research activities. In the case of diseases like Zika, which were isolated in remote areas of the world where that population had no resources or advocacy group, there was no push to do research. On how we’ll respond to outbreaks in the future, We’re not stuck with what we’ve got. There are conversations between federal funding agencies and private organizations to try to prioritize the utilization of their resources, and I would say the NIH has been a leader in supporting the fundamental research that actually, probably positions us best to be prepared to respond to these disease outbreaks."
"For a while Race, a handsomely mounted drama about a pivotal moment in the life of track star Jesse Owens, bowls along as a crisp, if conventional, account of a black athlete who triumphs over poverty and racism to get the gold. An unprecedented four gold medals to be precise, at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. In Cleveland, there are angry,   bigots to get in the way, and the statutory   coach, serviceably rendered by Jason Sudeikis, to smooth the path to glory. The road to success is no cakewalk: Coach Snyder is a bit of a lush who comes to Owens having screwed up his own athletic career and his family life. Owens hasn’t had it easy either, having already fathered a child with his sweetheart, Ruth (Shanice Banton) whose loyalty he briefly betrays before coming to his senses. He gets more saintly later, and not necessarily to the film’s advantage. But for now, there is learning to live with prejudice in a funny, appalling scene in which Snyder models for his protege how to screen out the ugly noise and focus on being  —   the mostly lively screenplay by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse has a few bum lines —   the best that he can be. Refreshingly, though, the point of view belongs not to Coach but to Owens, who’s ably played by the impossibly beautiful Canadian actor Stephan James, last seen as civil rights activist John Lewis in Selma. His graceful carriage is pure pleasure, his victories over haters satisfying. And though this ground has been well covered in other biopics about athletes of color, it bears repeating. Things start to get interestingly out of hand when the canvas widens to rumors of war in Europe, where Hitler plans to turn the games into a showpiece for his Aryan master race. For the Fuhrer (Adrian Zwicker) and Joseph Goebbels (a   Barnaby Metschurat) this specifically excludes the likes of Owens or his two Jewish teammates. But before he sets foot on German soil, Owens must contend with the NAACP, which pressures him to stay home in solidarity with the country’s oppressed minorities. Also muddying the waters is a divided U. S. Olympic Committee dominated by the corruptible real estate developer Avery Brundage, played by Jeremy Irons, looking unnervingly like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was busy conducting his own little policy of appeasement across the pond. Realpolitik rules, and if Race is bracingly candid on the   politicking about Germany’s treatment of its Jews that raged on both sides of the Atlantic, it’s stronger still on the mixed signals awaiting the team in Berlin. The Third Reich is just gearing up, so there’s actually less physical segregation for the black athletes than there was at home. No such luck for their Jewish compatriots or for the   citizens we see loaded onto trucks, even as Owens steps out into a stadium ringing with thousands yelling ”Sieg Heil.” That Owens was lionized and befriended by Germany’s star jumper Carl ”Luz” Long (David Kross) a brave and decent man, is well known and movingly told here. It’s unfortunate, then, that Dutch actress Carice Van Houten strains all belief as filmmaker and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, gussied up into a concerned humanitarian who mediates between the Americans and Joseph Goebbels while she makes her documentary Olympia. Either someone’s been reading the   Riefenstahl’s   memoirs, or the need was felt for a   ankle to glam things up. What is a fiction film’s responsibility to history? Is it a lack of focus or simply the truth that, late in the movie, Owens fades into a dignified but mostly passive witness to the diplomatic maelstrom? The scenes in which he wins his four golds are a big thrill, but to Hopkins’ credit, he doesn’t fudge the fact that despite the hero’s welcome to which Owens returns on the streets, it’s humiliating business as usual when he arrives at the front door of a swank hotel for a dinner in his honor. It would be decades before Owens was invited to the White House, and decades more for this engrossing film to get out the word."
"PCHH regular Stephen Thompson had the week off from the show, so I was joined by Glen Weldon as well as our pals Chris Klimek and Bob Mondello to talk about the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!. Chris engagingly reviewed it for NPR, and Bob has covered the Coens plenty of times, so we’ve got lots to discuss. Glen has a theory of what it’s about, I have your cultural genealogy for the Channing Tatum dance number, and we’ve all got feelings about Chris’ Michael Gambon impression (specifically, mine are that it’s amazing). In our second segment, we turn our attention to the more general category of films to which Hail, Caesar! belongs: entertainment about entertainment. Specifically, it’s a movie about movies, but we also talk about television about television, books about writers, and theater about theater people. We try to get to the bottom of what makes these stories fascinating, and I float a theory about why your fictional entertainer should perhaps not be a genius. As always, we close the show with what’s making us happy this week. Chris is happy about a new home video release of another Coen Brothers movie, and about a galley of an upcoming book, and about a lovely bit of synchronicity he’ll have to explain himself. Glen is happy about both a super fantastic Twitter account and a new book. Bob is happy about seeing an actress he admires on a show where she gets to shine. I am happy about making things and about the kindness of strangers who help me make things. Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: the show, me, Glen, Chris, Bob, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus Mike."
"Many middle and high school science teachers are getting climate change wrong. That’s according to the results of a new, national teacher survey backed by the National Center for Science Education and published in the journal Science. Before we get to those results, a quick, climate science refresher is in order. NPR science correspondent Christopher Joyce says the world’s major scientific organizations are now clear on global warming: ”They’ve all said: It’s happening, and it’s being caused by human activity. Add to that the fact that most of the published literature that you see in the big journals, like Science and Nature and Geophysical Research Letters, is all showing a consensus. It’s overwhelming.” How overwhelming? According to this and this, roughly 95 percent of climate scientists believe global warming is happening and that humans are to blame. That’s why this new survey of some 1, 500 middle and high school science teachers, representing all 50 states, is surprising. Roughly 3 in 4 say they talk about global warming in class, though typically only for an hour or two. But the study’s lead author, Eric Plutzer of Penn State, says barely a majority are getting the science right. ”A little more than half are sending clear messages that human consumption of fossil fuels is the major cause of recent warming,” Plutzer says. What are the rest saying? Well, roughly 30 percent tell students that humans are only partly to blame for climate change, along with natural causes. The problem with that, Plutzer says, is that it sends mixed messages, suggesting that the causes of climate change are still up for debate  —   when there is no debate among the vast majority of climate scientists. As for the rest . .. ”About one in 10 [teachers] seem to be denying a human role altogether,” while the remaining 5 percent don’t talk about causes at all. Why the disconnect between science teachers and climate science? ”Very few of our teachers had formal training while in college,” Plutzer says, ”and so the burden of learning the science falls to them.” Robert Clifton is in his third year teaching science at Rose Park Magnet Math  Science Middle School in Nashville. In college, he majored in biology but says he didn’t get much climate science. ”I took an ecology class, but that was the extent of it,” Clifton says. ”As far as teaching it to the students, no, not a lot of it.” Molly Sloss is in her second year of Teach for America, teaching eighth grade science at Success Preparatory Academy in New Orleans. In college, she says, she took two good science courses, but that’s it. Luckily, Sloss says, ”my mother was a middle school science teacher, so I pulled on her a lot.” So, Problem One: little to no formal training. Problem Two: science textbooks. ”The minute they’re published, they’re outdated,” says Susan Oltman, who teaches   science at Kittredge Magnet School in Atlanta. And, Oltman says, for teachers who abandon their books, ”it takes a whole lot of time to cull through resources and pull the best ones for your classroom.” That means staying current on the research. That is one reason, a few years ago, Oltman actually spent time at sea studying with climate scientists. While Oltman tends to avoid debate  —   or talk of debate  —   when she covers climate change, Clifton, in Nashville, feels differently. He recently asked his students to debate whether climate change is largely   or the result of natural causes. The exercise, he insists, doesn’t send mixed messages. To the contrary, Clifton says, debate is a powerful tool that can help students learn to tell the difference between hard science and something they hear on television or at the dinner table. ”Where are you getting this from?” Clifton routinely asks his students. ”If you’re hearing this from your mother’s second cousin twice removed, that’s not a credible resource.” Before their debate, many of Clifton’s students weren’t sure about humans’ role in global warming. After reading the research and listening to the arguments, each student had to vote for a winner. And Clifton says every one of them came down firmly on the side of science."
"UPDATE: British Prime Minister David Cameron says he has negotiated a deal with European leaders to change the terms of Britain’s membership in the European Union. European Council President Donald Tusk said on Twitter that the countries had unanimously agreed to the new deal. Cameron had been seeking concessions for his country so that he can encourage Britons to vote for continued EU membership in a referendum expected in the coming months. He posted on Twitter that he would recommend the new deal to the U. K.’s Cabinet Saturday. After the ministers are briefed, ”they will be free to campaign for either side in the referendum, which has been promised by the end of 2017 but is expected in June,” the BBC reports. Here are some of the key elements of the deal, according to documents seen by Reuters: Our original post, with more on the debate, is below: The prime minister promised to hold that referendum in the runup to last year’s election in the U. K. as he tried to fight off a threat from a     party that threatened to take votes from Cameron’s Conservative Party. Having made that promise, Cameron now has to negotiate enough concessions from the other 27 countries in the EU to assuage the ” ” wing of his own party and win over the British public. He faces opposition from other EU members who don’t want to make exceptions for a particular member state. He’s also been criticized by EU opponents in Britain, who say he is not asking for enough  —   or who want the U. K. to leave the EU no matter what. So what does Cameron want? Last November the prime minister set out his objectives in a letter to the president of the EU Council, Donald Tusk. He emphasized four points: Sovereignty: Cameron wants to end Britain’s commitment to work toward an ”ever closer union”  —   a founding principle of the EU. Immigration: The prime minister wants to make the U. K. less attractive to immigrants by restricting the benefits foreign workers from other EU countries can receive in Britain. Competitiveness: Cameron wants a plan to reduce the amount of legislation and regulation coming out of the EU’s headquarters in Brussels and lift what he calls ”the burden [of] existing regulation” from business. Economic Governance: Britain wants to make sure that decisions made by the core of nations that use the euro as their currency will not adversely affect the countries that have retained their own currency, such as the British pound. Euro leaders have their own dilemma. They desperately want Britain to stay in the EU and fear the union would be severely damaged or even break up if the U. K. were to leave. So they understand that they have to offer Cameron some concessions to stop that from happening. But they also worry that if they do that, other countries will demand changes in their own relations with the EU, and the situation will spin out of control. What’s the U. S. interest in this? President Obama has made it clear that his administration wants Britain to stay in the EU, because Washington likes having a close ally such as the U. K. inside the group, and foreign policy experts fear the instability that might follow if Britain were to leave. So the negotiations in Brussels today are being watched with some anxiety on both sides of the Atlantic. Some kind of deal is likely that will enable Cameron and his ministers to campaign in favor of Britain staying in the euro ahead of the referendum. But Cameron’s deal might not influence that vote as much as people think. Many British people have a viscerally negative view of the European Union, and are unlikely to be swayed by technicalities being discussed today. So the question for the next three months is, will the British public vote with their hearts . .. or their heads?"
"Ted Cruz needs an awakening among his religious base for a strong showing or a surprise win on Saturday in South Carolina. In any other year in the GOP primary, the Texas senator, who talks of his faith with ease and frequently reiterates that he will defend religious liberty, might have the state’s sizable evangelical vote sewn up. The voting bloc was crucial to his win in Iowa earlier this month, and religious conservatives make up an even larger share of the South Carolina Republican electorate. But much to his frustration, Cruz is still competing with Donald Trump  —   the   billionaire with no problem cursing on the campaign trail  —   for white,   Christians. And the mudslinging between him and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio that has enveloped the race’s final hours may also be denting Cruz as his rivals try to paint him as a liar. Can Upstate Drive Up Cruz?  In the race’s closing days, Cruz has been hitting the part of the Palmetto State that could make or break him  —   the heavily conservative, evangelical Upstate, which could hold as much as 40 percent of the state’s primary vote. Solidifying that region helped Newt Gingrich pull off a win in 2012. But it’s also not a silver bullet to victory  —   Mike Huckabee carried the area in 2008, but Fred Thompson got enough of the vote to help John McCain to victory. McCain had strong showings in the less religiously focused Midlands and Lowcountry regions. Cruz’s best path to victory or at least a strong   finish runs through the Upstate. He knows it, and that is why he is barnstorming the region. On Wednesday, he held a rally at a private Christian school in Spartanburg before addressing a faith gathering at a Southern Baptist church. Glossy videos shown before Cruz’s early evening event at Oakbrook Preparatory School showed people praising his faith and trust in Jesus Christ. North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows took the stage, telling the audience to loud cheers that ”there’s a God who still reigns over the affairs of nation” even amid much political uncertainty in the world. And Iowa Rep. Steve King introduced Cruz, saying he was someone who had been ”  the Bible.” Cruz took the stage with his usual televangelist cadence, preaching about his tough stances on immigration, history of standing up to Washington and promise to defund Planned Parenthood and return the country to the Christian principles he says it was founded upon. ”There is an awakening and a spirit of revival that’s sweeping this country,” he tells the crowd. David Barry of Fountain Inn, walking out of the rally with a red hat emblazoned ”JESUS,” came away converted. He had been leaning toward the Texas senator, but after that impassioned speech was now ”fully committed.” ”I like the way he mentioned his   and    daughters and how he wanted a better future for them,” Barry said. ”I liked the way he knew 2 Chronicles 7:14 in his heart”  —   a verse that says, ”If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” As to whether Trump could fulfill that same promise if elected, Barry is doubtful. ”I don’t think he has the character or the morals to really lead our country in the right way,” he told NPR. And Barry predicted that polls showing Trump was still winning the state’s evangelical vote were wrong. Cruz On Trump’s Heels In Final Hours, A new NBC   Street Journal poll conducted by Marist, released Friday morning, showed Cruz had slashed Trump’s   lead last month to just a   advantage. But in the Upstate, Trump was still leading him by 4, and the real estate mogul still had a   edge among white evangelical Christians statewide. Republicans in the state point to Cruz’s strong ground game and data targeting that helped him turn out voters in Iowa, which could make the difference in a very close contest. In the past week, following the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Cruz has added a new argument he hopes can move those numbers even more  —   he’s the only trusted conservative in the race who can appoint reliable Supreme Court justices. When he took the stage later Wednesday evening at the Faith  Freedom Forum at First Baptist North Spartanburg, Cruz spent the majority of his time talking not just about his own faith but about how that faith led him to argue cases that protected religious monuments. He explained how he would make sure to appoint justices who would not legislate cases on marriage and abortion from the bench. ”If you want a Republican who will stand unapologetically for marriage and life, I’m the only person on that stage who has a proven record of doing so over and over again,” Cruz said. ”Religious liberty has been a lifelong passion for me.” Cruz was just one of two candidates who addressed the packed sanctuary. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson spoke earlier Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush sent surrogates on their behalf but Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich didn’t send anyone. Democrats were also invited but didn’t attend. Phil Tittle of Campobello was one of the attendees. He had decided on Cruz a while ago but also said he admired Carson, though he thought he wasn’t ready to be president yet. To Campobello, it still didn’t make sense how Christians could cast a ballot for the often vulgar Trump, and he predicted many would come back to the fold before Saturday. ”I think the message Donald Trump had before spoke to the anger and frustration of the mainstream Republican Party, which is leaving the people,” Tittle said. ”But they’re finding out who he is, that he’s a person with no moral compass. I think they’re finding out the message of Ted Cruz, and he’s catching on.” Rubio Vs. Cruz  —   When A Handshake Isn’t What It Appears, But it’s not just Trump that Cruz has to persuade religious voters to not be swayed by  —   Rubio, too, is making a play for a share of evangelical voters. In the final days in the Palmetto State, the two campaigns have been feuding over ads from Cruz’s campaign that attack Rubio on immigration reform. And on Thursday, Rubio’s campaign attacked Cruz after his campaign posted a digitally altered image of Rubio and President Obama shaking hands on a website comparing the Florida senator’s record to the president’s. All that comes on the heels of charges Cruz has still been trying to dispel after the Iowa caucuses that his campaign staffers had spread incorrect information that Carson was dropping his campaign, trying to sway   support to the Texas senator. Haley Grau of Spartanburg was at the church event and had heard the Iowa rumors, saying it made her question whether Cruz was the best representation of the GOP. But after hearing Cruz speak Wednesday night, she walked away giving him a new look. ”I came in here with my mind made up” for Rubio, Grau said, ”and to be honest, I’m not so sure right now. I really have some thinking and praying to do after tonight.” She added, ”I thought his opinions were strong he laid out his law history very well, and I thought that he really addressed the Justice Scalia issue and some practical ways he could get some justices confirmed. I came in here not giving Cruz the time of day, and now I’ve really got to think about that.”"
"Another big caucus day and primary night on Saturday, when Democrats go to their caucus sites in Nevada, and Republicans go to the polls in South Carolina. Here are five things we’ll learn from the results: 1. Is insulting the Bush family  —   and getting into a fight with the pope  —   a good idea or not? Donald Trump has doubled down on almost everything in South Carolina. He called George W. Bush a liar in the last debate, causing the GOP establishment to gasp in horror. The Bushes are extremely popular in South Carolina, but Trump is counting on the loyalty of his supporters, who haven’t been turned off by anything else he’s said or done. By calling attention, again, to his opposition to the Iraq War, he might have been trying to encourage independents and Democrats to go vote in South Carolina’s open primary. Then on Thursday, Trump waded into a fight with Pope Francis, who is a revered public figure  —   but not with conservatives and evangelicals, who view him as too liberal. Maybe that was another example of Trump acting crazy . .. like a fox? 2. Is Marco Rubio back? After his disastrous performance in the New Hampshire debate, and his subsequent   finish there, Rubio seems poised for a comeback. He got the coveted endorsement of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and none of the other candidates filleted him in the Greenville CBS debate the way Chris Christie had in New Hampshire. The GOP establishment would like to coalesce around Rubio they’re just waiting for him to actually win somewhere. Expectations are very high now, and Rubio needs to come in a strong third or, better yet, surge past Ted Cruz for second place. 3. Is this the end for Jeb Bush? South Carolina could return the GOP field to the   race many thought had emerged from Iowa. If Bush fails to finish ahead of Rubio, he will be under tremendous pressure to stand down, and he might do that as early as Sunday. 4. Can Hillary Clinton rebound? The Clinton campaign has been busy lowering expectations for Nevada, even to the point of angering the top Democrat in the state, Harry Reid, when one spokesman stated  —   falsely  —   that the state is 80 percent white. In fact, the Democratic electorate in Nevada was only 65 percent white, according to 2008 entrance polls. But Nevada, with its small population of Democratic   is very hard to poll. And Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told donors this week that Clinton could either win by a few points or lose  —   they have no idea which! Although Clinton would like to avoid another embarrassing loss, many Democrats say she can weather a loss in Nevada. South Carolina, where Democrats vote the following Saturday, is crucial for Clinton. She needs to win by a large margin in order to stop, or slow, Bernie Sanders’ momentum. 5. Is Cruz really surging past Trump? The most interesting poll number of the week was the   survey that showed Cruz 2 points ahead of Trump nationally. That’s a first in a very long time. So far, this   poll is the only national survey that shows Trump slipping behind Cruz. But if Cruz can place close to Trump in South Carolina, it might be a sign that Trump is a vulnerable   whose outrageous attacks and    behavior is finally catching up to him."
"The TV ad campaign for Republican Jeb Bush is faltering in South Carolina, where GOP voters go to the polls Saturday. A new report by the Wesleyan Media Project finds that the   superPAC, Right To Rise USA, aired an estimated 2, 664 ads in the state between Feb. 1 and Feb. 14. At the same time, Sen. Ted Cruz’s organization  —   his campaign and two superPACs  —   ran 4, 904 ads. Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign and superPAC aired 3, 882 ads. The media buys from Right To Rise mark a sharp reversal. Starting in 2015, Right To Rise has filled South Carolina TV with 15, 220 ads, not much less than the grand total for the Cruz and Rubio efforts combined. Right To Rise started this year with $58. 6 million in the bank, but it’s been burning through the cash as Bush had weak finishes in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Erika Franklin Fowler, a Wesleyan University political scientist and   of the media project, said the spending reflects the growing importance of   superPACs and outside groups. A candidate is restricted to $2, 700 per donor for the primaries. But a superPAC has no fundraising limits. ”In this   landscape, it is an important vehicle for most candidates,” Fowler said. ”You’re disadvantaged if you don’t take advantage of the unlimited fundraising and spending.” Every Republican candidate except billionaire Donald Trump has at least one superPAC. Rubio’s operation also includes a 501( c)(4) ”social welfare” organization, which, unlike a superPAC, need not disclose its donors. It has spent about $8 million on TV, the media project found. Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are nearly tied in their TV advertising. Neither of them has benefited from superPAC advertising, but both have   campaigns. (A   superPAC, Priorities USA Action, stepped up its efforts after her loss to Sanders in New Hampshire, but hasn’t bought TV time.) Overall, Clinton’s campaign has run 38, 811 ads, Sanders’ campaign 38, 244  —   a sign of how Sanders’   campaign has overtaken Clinton’s   operation. The media project says Clinton and Sanders have spent more than $20 million apiece on TV. It’s equally tight in Nevada, where Democrats hold caucuses on Saturday. Clinton   Sanders in the two weeks ending Feb. 14, 2, 227 ads to 2, 120. But Clinton has more than Sanders to contend with. Over in the Republican primaries, Rubio’s operation has run 3, 804 ads attacking her, almost twice as many as his attacks on competing Republican candidates. The media project found the No. 1 issue in Rubio TV ads has been Benghazi. ”I think it’s really remarkable how even Clinton and Sanders have been,” Fowler said. ”But the caveat: Clinton is taking quite a beating from the   ads that are attacking her, so it’s not quite evenly matched if you consider that third factor.” Although Rubio himself is the primary target of ads from Cruz, Bush and Kasich, Fowler said, ”His primary focus is Clinton, which suggests he’s looking forward, toward the general election.” The ad numbers and dollar amounts are based on estimates from Kantar   which tracks broadcast, national network and national cable TV. The Nevada numbers include Reno and Las Vegas broadcast. Other highlights of the report:   Ad spending in the Republican primaries has tripled since 2008. Candidate committees are actually advertising less, as superPACs and nonprofit groups have emerged as the driving force in the air wars. Outside groups produced 58 percent of all ads so far in the 2016 GOP primaries.   Total TV spending by candidates’ campaigns and outside groups is an estimated $198. 6 million. Nearly 80 percent of the money has been flowing in the crowded GOP contest.   Positive messages make up more than 99 percent of ads by Clinton and Sanders, 68 percent of ads from Republican candidates and 26 percent of spots from GOP   outside groups.   In Senate primaries, which ramp up later than the presidential contest, 58 percent of the early TV is by nondisclosing   groups. Big spenders include the League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Koch network’s Americans For Prosperity and U. S. Chamber of Commerce. Fowler said the groups seem to be more prominent on the air more than 30 days before a primary election  —   that is, before a   disclosure requirement kicks in."
"Of all of the arts, photography may be the discipline most accustomed to the nudge of technology, and photographer and artist Stephen Wilkes fully embraces the challenge. His latest project, ”Day to Night,” takes on the idea of showcasing, in one composite still image, the transformation of a place over the course of a day. Take his photo of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. For 26 hours, Wilkes shot 2, 200 photos without moving the camera and while suspended in the air in a   structure with a little window, so that animals wouldn’t see or hear him as he photographed them coming to a watering hole from sunrise to deep into the night. ”I photograph by hand this is not a time lapse. . .. It’s my eye seeing very specific moments,” Wilkes says. ”I like to describe myself as a collector of magical moments.” Once Wilkes has all the images, he picks the best moments of the day and the night and creates what he calls a master plate. Those images then get seamlessly blended into one single photograph, where time is on a diagonal vector, with sunrise beginning in the bottom   corner. That process of creating a single image can take about four months  —   though it’s photographed in a single day. I spoke with Wilkes in Vancouver, ahead of his TED talk, about the powers of digital photography, the experience of looking in the face of time and the challenge of sharing emotion through an image. Below are some of the highlights of our conversation. On watching animal life unfold during the Serengeti shoot, I’m changing time within the picture. As the sun is rotating, light is changing and all these animals, you can see time change on the light in the animals. It’s all based on time. . .. (At) sunrise you begin to see the watering hole is quiet and the animals migrate in as the sun rises. Wildebeests and zebras graze together one has terrible eyes and the other has lousy hearing  —   the blind leading the deaf. There are meerkats. It was like watching the movie Jungle Book. As time is changing, you see the sun getting higher, you see the light begins to rotate and starts to go behind the animals. I’m watching them. Guess who else is watching them? A lion. They have this whole process of coming in and going out, it’s a rhythm. I’m telling the story based on time. It’s such a complicated process and yet there’s so much luck involved. On evolving as a photographer, I discovered digital in 2000 and started to realize, because I had to come through the process of analog . .. I wanted to push the medium outward. So what I’ve been exploring is this concept of    where I change time within a photograph. I’m really exploring the   continuum within a   photograph. And it’s really cool because I can tell stories that photographs could never tell before. Compressing an entire day into a single image, the best moments, allows me to share things on a narrative level that you just couldn’t see. On the power of seeing the face of time, The most exciting part of it really is how people respond to the work. It’s an amazing, emotional thing. When people can see time, the face of time in a way, it’s this thing we can never put our hands around. But yet, when you look at it, it makes you feel a different way and there’s an emotional thing that happens and that’s exciting. I just think it’s the best time to be alive as a photographer, really. I think as technology keeps evolving the things you could only imagine or dream are at your fingertips now. It’s just about where you want to go. On the advantages of digital photography, When you can capture an image on a silicon chip versus a piece of film you can see it instantly, that’s the first thing. For me, when I do one of my photographs, I can shoot 2, 500 images in a single day. Now, if I was doing that with an 8x10 camera, which is the image quality I have in my digital back* that would be 2, 500 sheets of 8x10 film. It would be impossible to do what I’m doing, just the visualization of that would be impossible  —   and financially, to boot. And my assistant would probably jump out of the cherry picker! *Editor’s Note: A digital back is a piece of equipment you can add to the back of a film camera to modify it to take digital images. On the high level of detail in digital photography, So if I’m a storyteller, I love that, suddenly things that were insignificant are really significant now. And that’s the power of what’s happening now. Eventually photography is going to look like a window you’re going to have a visceral experience with my pictures on the wall. Because the way you’ll see into my pictures is almost the way the eye sees, and that’s the way it’s going. For me, I want you to feel the way I felt when I stood there and took the picture. On the future of photo printing, I work with a master printer in New York and I actually print on conventional photographic paper because of the depth perception. I really want to enhance that, but there are so many new technologies that are coming out in terms of   printing and all kinds of different things. Who knows where we’re going to be five, 10, 15 years from now based on what’s happening and the speed of what’s happening."
"0. 4 percent. That’s the proportion of global development assistance that goes to mental illness prevention, care and treatment, according to Daniel Vigo. It’s $1. 5 billion of the $372 billion total health assistance spending around the world over the last 15 years. Vigo, a psychologist and psychiatrist at Harvard, believes that more money is needed. And he also believes that one reason the percentage is so low is that the world doesn’t do a good job of assessing the number of people who suffer from mental illness and the disability and the premature death that result. Those lost years  —   years when a person can’t work, can’t take part in family life  —   and those    deaths are what’s called the ”global burden of mental illness.” Vigo, along with Rifat Atun, also of Harvard, and Graham Thornicroft of King’s College in London,   an   analysis published this month in the journal Lancet Psychiatry. They reinterpreted the data about illnesses and deaths collected over the last two decades as part of something called the Global Burden of Disease Study. And they’ve concluded that the number of people affected by mental illness is greater than has been thought. A spokesperson for that study says it’s fine to look at different ways to interpret the data  —   that the numbers are there to work with. We asked Vigo why he and his colleagues took on the task, and what they hope will result from their reanalysis. Why did you do this study? Vigo says it’s because previous analyses defined mental illnesses very narrowly. He and his colleagues believe that the narrow definition led to an undercount of the true burden. ”When you have a burden that is undercounted, the result is you have less attention, you have less money and you have worse service,” he says. He’s seen the results of inadequate or absent service firsthand, caring for patients in Latin America and Southeast Asia as well as the U. S. That’s left him with memories of people such as a    girl in Buenos Aires who had been locked up nearly two years, ”away from family, friends and school, because she kept injuring herself.” How did you do the recount? The benchmark numbers come from the Global Burden of Disease Study, a monumental piece of work involving more than 500 researchers in 50 countries who periodically collect data about illness and deaths all over the world. Vigo and his colleagues used the raw data from the study but categorized the numbers differently. ”For example, at the global level, suicides were counted as injuries, and they sat there along with traffic accidents,” he says. But because the vast majority of suicides result from depression, Vigo and his colleagues counted suicide and   in the mental illness column, not in the accidents column. And they added 30 percent of the burden of chronic pain syndromes, because conditions like fibromyalgia, low back pain and other problems with no outward physical injuries are frequently a component of mental disorders, not of musculoskeletal illness. They also included some neurologic conditions such as dementias, migraines and epilepsy. Was there any pushback for including dementias, migraines and epilepsy in the category of mental illness? Have others disagreed with this? ”We expect it to be an ongoing debate and an ongoing challenge,” Vigo says. ”People would rather be considered as having any other kind of illness then mental illness that’s completely understandable.” Nonetheless, he feels that the impact of these conditions can lead to mental health issues. ”We are guided by where the burden presents itself both from a clinical and service delivery perspective,” he says. The pain and emotional distress of dementia, for example, can affect one’s ability to interact with others and to feel mentally stable and healthy. So what were your final estimates of the global burden of mental illnesses? In the traditional way of counting, the years that people around the world live with pain and suffering from mental illnesses account for 21 percent of global disabilities. ”With our assumptions, the actual result is that 32 percent of global disability is a direct result of mental illnesses,” Vigo says. Another way to think about it is this: The original analysis blames a fifth of all disability on mental illnesses. The new analysis blames nearly a third of disability on mental illnesses. ”All these people can literally find a different life with proper care,” Vigo says. Do you think you got a full count of the burden of mental illness? No doubt here. The answer is no, says Vigo, for several reasons. ”There wasn’t enough information on disabilities resulting from personality disorders such as borderline or paranoid personality disorder,” he says. ”Personality disorders are dramatically understudied despite being amongst the most frequent mental disorders.” And they were unable to count ”indirect deaths.” Take schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia die 15 to 30 years younger than the average life span for their country. Tobacco use causes some of those deaths: Smoking is common among people with schizophrenia, who may be trying to   with nicotine, and people with schizophrenia seldom get medical advice and treatment for tobacco addiction. And without very careful attention, people with schizophrenia can suffer from the drugs they take. ”Medications for schizophrenia can cause metabolic syndrome,” Vigo says. Metabolic syndrome is a collection of symptoms, such as obesity and cholesterol abnormalities, that make people prone to heart disease. The death of a    man with schizophrenia is counted as a heart disease death. ”But the whole process that led to that death is not actually cardiovascular disease,” says Vigo. ”It’s schizophrenia.” Then there are    indirect effects. ”An untreated depressed mother might find it impossible to provide the necessary care for her children,” he says. ”I have seen families break down and go broke under the pressure of dealing with a mentally ill child, husband, or mother, in the absence of proper services.” Such economic and social hardship is not counted in the burden of disease measurements and rarely if ever shows up in national health budgets, says Vigo. What’s your prescription for dealing with the increased burden that you found? ”For a minority of severely affected patients  —   maybe a couple of percentage points  —   that will mean assisted living or intensive case management,” says Vigo. ”But in the vast majority of cases it will be simple measures given in primary care”  —   talk therapy, drugs. Primary care clinics already see people with symptoms of mental illness. ”Many diseases are associated with mental illnesses  —   depression often accompanies or follows cardiovascular disease, or pregnancy, or HIV, for example,” he says. The movement he is calling for is already beginning to take hold in the U. S.  —   treating mental illnesses at the primary care level by having mental health workers on site or training primary care workers to diagnose and treat the simpler cases. Vigo is currently working on a project for the World Health Organization and the World Bank to design and set up programs in   and   countries where people could get group or individual therapy, or drugs when needed. Why are your findings important?  Vigo’s bottom line is that the 0. 4 percent of health aid dollars that go to helping countries deal with mental illnesses is not enough. ”You cannot deal with 30 percent of the disability and 13 percent of the disability plus death with only 0. 4 percent of the funds.” It will take some time to see whether the new analysis by Vigo and his colleagues takes hold in the global development world. With or without it, the topic of mental illness has been gaining momentum, and in April the World Health Organization and the World Bank will be hosting a   meeting on how to provide mental health services around the world."
"What is art? Why does it matter to us? What does it tell us about ourselves? It’s something of the rage these days to turn to neuroscience for answers. Neuroscience, after all, it is widely believed, holds the key to our very nature as conscious beings. I’ve been skeptical of the neural approach. (See here, here and here this is also a running theme of my book Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature.) It’s not that I deny that our ability to inspect and enjoy a painting, for example, depends on our brains. Of course it does! Our ability to see or experience anything depends on our brains. How is this supposed to help us understand what makes art special? And as for aesthetic experience  —   our experience of value in works of art  —   in my judgment this is just too variable, too changeable, too unfixed, too liable to be affected by what we do before, during and after an encounter with an artwork, to be the sort of thing that can be understood at the level of the brain. Consider a comparison: A lot goes on in your brain when you eat dinner, but it’s a far cry from this humble fact to the suggestion that we can find, in the brain, the secret to what makes your dinner party a success. But neuroaesthetics  —   as the application of the concepts and methods of neuroscience to the study of art is sometimes known  —   is a booming enterprise. A particularly provocative and brilliant proponent of the value of the neural approach is G. Gabrielle Starr. Starr is a professor of English at NYU she’s been actively absorbed in empirical research on the neural basis of aesthetic experience in collaboration with the neuroscientist Edward A. Vessel and members of his lab. (Vessel has now moved from NYU to the new Max Planck Institut for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt. The recent establishment of this institute speaks volumes on the ascendency of the neural study of art.) Starr makes a strong case for their approach in her recent book Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience. Starr and I were invited last December to NYU’s Center for Mind Brain and Consciousness to face off in a debate on the question: Can neuroscience help us understand art? (She’s first I come on at 27:00.) Can neuroscience help us understand art? You decide. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday, lay in repose at the U. S. Supreme Court on Friday, as the court, the public and the president paid their respects. While the battle over Scalia’s replacement raged in the political world, the atmosphere at the court was somber. The   casket was carried up the marble steps of the Supreme Court on Friday morning, between two long rows of former Scalia clerks, and into the Great Hall. Inside, the remaining eight justices lined up in their new order of seniority, as they will be on the bench on Monday. Some looked stricken as the casket was placed atop the wooden catafalque first used after President Lincoln’s assassination. Standing with the justices were their spouses, as well as the widow and son of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall. Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife, Jane, briefly brushed away tears, as did some of the nearly 100 former law clerks. They would later stand in a rotating honor guard throughout the day and early evening. Between the Great Hall columns, as if overseeing the ceremony, was a portrait of Scalia, painted by Nelson Shanks. In it, Scalia is surrounded by images representing the great influences in his life  —   a copy of The Federalist a framed wedding photo of his wife, Maureen Webster’s dictionary an image of Sir Thomas More and, in the background, a framed certificate from the American Catholic Historical Society. Scalia’s wife, nine children and most of his 28 grandchildren, who called him ”Pop,” were there, too. The late justice’s son, the Rev. Paul Scalia  —   a Catholic priest  —   said traditional prayers: ”You have called your servant Antonin out of this world,” he intoned. ”May he rest in peace.” After the justices and family members filed out of the hall, the court’s personnel  —   the men and women who staff the institution  —   filed past the casket to pay their respects. Some were in rough work clothes  —   janitors and carpenters  —   others in black suits and dresses. Some were   and brushed away tears. Some crossed themselves. This was technically a private ceremony, open only to the justices, their families and court personnel. But reporters were there, it was televised and at 10:30 a. m. the giant bronze doors were reopened to the public. By late morning, the line to get in stretched nearly a block long. Many, like the Rev. Kenneth Johnson, were conservative supporters of Scalia’s positions in controversial cases. ”I just respect his     issues, and I really respect the man very much,” he said. Others were there simply to pay respect to Scalia’s service. Mike Meachem, a retired retail manager, said he thought it important that he, as an   be there to honor the justice. ”It’s an important day, an important American that we’ve lost. While I may not have always agreed with his politics, it’s something that you need to recognize,” said Meachem. Before dawn on Friday, well before any activities began, a lone bagpipe player stood across the street from the court. He didn’t know Scalia, but said he felt drawn to recognize his service. By late morning, Benjamin Williams was still there. ”The division in this country has just gotten to be intolerable, on both sides . .. and I think he was a steadying force, and I think he was just,” he said. Late Friday afternoon, President Obama and his wife, Michelle, arrived to pay their respects, too. On Saturday, Justice Scalia will be buried after a funeral Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a few miles north of the courtroom where he served for 30 years."
"A long line of mourners queued up to pay their respects to late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, whose body is now lying in repose at the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. Parts of the observances will be open to the public. A private ceremony was slated to begin at 9:30 a. m. ET. Members of the public will be allowed into the hall until 8 p. m. Barack and Michelle Obama paid their respects to Scalia at around 3:30 this afternoon, after the visitation by the general public has begun. They stood next to the casket for about a minute with their hands clasped in front of them, both wearing black. The crowd that gathered for the event was  . Local residents were present so were English students who are on a class trip to the United States. Nearby, a man was playing the bagpipes. NPR intern Samantha Del Duca spoke to Ben Williams, the bagpipe player, who said he is a former history teacher who taught government and politics in southern Maryland  —   and who now sees an ”intolerable” amount of political division in the U. S. ”I think he was a steadying force, and I think he was just, and he tried to be as logical and contemplative as humanly possible,” Williams said of Scalia. ”I hope they can replace him with someone equally talented, with understanding of the law and the purpose behind it. That’s my concern. Justice Scalia was a fantastic man, I think.” Another visitor was Emily Weatherspoon, a senior at St. Mary’s School who said she respects Scalia as a Supreme Court justice. ”The plan was not originally to come out this morning,” Weatherspoon tells Samantha. But, she adds, ”we’re here to study the government up close. To get the opportunity to come out and see something like this is definitely a     experience.” Just before 9:30, an honor guard at the Supreme Court led Scalia’s former law clerks, who are acting as honorary pallbearers, between rows of mourners as they left the Great Hall to meet Scalia’s casket. Eight Supreme Court police officers serving as pallbearers then carried the casket, draped in a U. S. flag, from a funeral home limousine up the stairs and into the building. They carried the casket past the Supreme Court justices before placing it on the Lincoln Catafalque. After the casket was placed on the platform, Scalia’s son, Father Paul Scalia, addressed those gathered and said a prayer. The justices then paused for a long moment of silence before leaving the hall soon after, the line of mourners began moving through the hall. The funeral for Scalia is scheduled for Saturday, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. President Obama will not be at the service Vice President Joe Biden and his wife will attend. ”Scalia is only the fourth justice to die in office in the past 65 years, and there is no consistent pattern of presidential attendance at court funerals,” Nina says."
"So far this campaign season, much of the political conversation involving millennials has centered around college debt. And, no doubt, as we’ve reported previously, student debt and college affordability are major concerns for many young people. But a majority of young people do not have a bachelor’s degree, according to U. S. Census data analyzed by CIRCLE, the Center for Research and Information on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, for NPR. CIRCLE found that, in fact, about   of millennials between the ages of 25 and 34 do not have a bachelor’s degree. And in Nevada  —   which holds its Democratic caucuses Saturday  —   that number is even higher. About 80 percent of   to    don’t have a college degree. For some of these millennials, the hefty cost of college is what steered them away from trying to go to college in the first place. For many others, there are other complex political priorities this campaign that have nothing to do with college. They range from economic inequality to affordable child care to immigration reform. Andrea Perkins, 23, works at a day care making $8 an hour, and she said that’s not enough money to live. (Consider: That’s less than $17, 000 a year working full time.) ”Reasonable to me would be like $10, $11,” she said flatly. She was in a rush to get home to her sick    son. For many young parents, affordable child care is a top priority. But Perkins is worried about more than her son’s life as a toddler she’s worried about his future as a teenager. ”I have a    son who is ” she said and then paused. ”Black women shouldn’t be scared for their son’s life. I am scared that when my son gets older, he may not make it back home to me because of the color of his skin.” She wants the next president to focus on improving race relations and policing. Las Vegas is a city where minorities are the majority. They’re a mix of black, Latino and Asian. About 1 in 5 people in the state is  . Many, like    Jose Renteria, are the children of immigrants. ”I’m  . My parents are from . .. kind of down near the Texas border,” explained Renteria, a union carpenter, as he walked off work with a bottle of water in one hand and a lunch cooler in the other. He stopped for a few minutes to explain that his top issue this election season is immigration. ”Just open up the doors,” he said. ”Open up the doors. Do more background checks. Let people who really want to be here, be here.” For Renteria, immigration policy is personal. Plenty of his relatives still live in Mexico. ”I get phone calls from them all the time,” he said. ”They want to be out here they would love to be out here they would love to be making the wages that we make. To them, somebody getting paid good is $80 a week.” So he wants the next president to focus on immigration reform. He thinks Hillary Clinton ought to be the country’s next president. He’s also deeply concerned about the high cost of health care now that he has two kids and thinks Clinton would be the best candidate  —   though he won’t actually be caucusing for her or anyone else Saturday. He’s working. But one of his fellow carpenters, Amanda Durio, said she’s not going to miss out on the Saturday caucuses. ”I’m going in for Bernie,” she explained. She likes his focus on economic inequality. ”There are very dramatic differences between lower class and middle class now,” she said. Durio knows, because she’s actually lived between those economic divides. At 31, she said she’s making good money now  —   almost $29 an hour  —   but before she joined a union, she was struggling financially. ”There were plenty of weeks and months where bills were coming, and I wasn’t sure if my paycheck was going to cover it,” Durio said. ”And there were times when it didn’t. And I just had to juggle like which bill is more important to pay right now, literally. I [was working] 40 hours a week I come home, and I still can’t pay my bills.” Higher wages was a common concern for young working people in Nevada. At an upscale shopping mall on the Las Vegas Strip, just across the street from the gilded Trump tower, Alma Gonzalez works at Macy’s making $9. 50 an hour. She has thought about going to college, but said she isn’t sure what to study and doesn’t want to waste money figuring out her major. So for now, the    works at the mall and lives at home with her mom. Finances are tight. ”My mom makes about $32, 000, $34, 000 a year, and she has nothing for herself,” Gonzalez said. ”That’s all it goes to  —   mortgage, bills, everything. She’s, like, scraping it.” The economy, specifically higher wages, is one of her top priorities, but so is immigration. Nevada is home to the largest percentage of people living in the country illegally, according to data from the Pew Research Center. And, for Gonzalez, that abstract number  —   7. 6 percent of the state’s population  —   includes one of her best friends. ”A path to citizenship, a quicker one, would be great,” she said. Gonzalez is an anomaly as a millennial  —   she voted in the 2014 midterm elections, when youth voter turnout is traditionally low. And she was hoping to caucus Saturday. ”It’s not that I don’t want to go,” she said, ”it’s that I can’t. I would love to  —   I really would.” But she’s working from noon to 7 p. m. and said she can’t afford to take the day off."
"Today was trash day on the International Space Station, and as you might expect, it’s not as simple as rolling a can out to the curb. Instead, a used resupply capsule was stuffed with 1. 5 tons of trash and cut loose. All that trash will burn up over the Pacific Ocean when the Cygnus supply craft, the ”SS Deke Slayton II,”   Earth’s orbit, which not only makes this the biggest incinerator in the world, but also reminds us that the world itself can also serve as an incinerator. The craft’s thrusters will be used to send it down into the atmosphere  —   so it won’t be joining the increasingly dense cloud of space junk that orbits our planet. ”The deorbit burn and   of Cygnus will not air on NASA TV,” NASA says, somewhat disappointingly. A robotic arm was used to release Cygnus from the ISS at 7:26 a. m. ET, NASA says, ”while the space station was flying above Bolivia.” Carrying some 7, 700 pounds of supplies and experiments, the Cygnus commercial resupply craft reached the space station in early December."
"Peering back across Harper Lee’s life, it can seem impossible to distinguish the novelist from her masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee died at the age of 89 in her hometown of Monroeville, Ala. on Friday morning  —   yet it’s clear that her legacy will live on much longer than that, through her characters and the readers who have embraced them for decades. ”America and the world knew Harper Lee as one of the last century’s most beloved authors,” Hank Conner, Lee’s nephew, announced in a statement. ”We knew her as Nelle Harper Lee, a loving member of our family, a devoted friend to the many good people who touched her life, and a generous soul in our community and our state.” Conner’s experience, though  —   and the experiences of those who knew Lee personally  —   are exceptional. For the most part, Lee’s readers have known the author only through To Kill a Mockingbird, her debut  —   and, for decades, her only  —   novel. The book depicts the strivings of a   Alabama lawyer, Atticus Finch, on behalf of Tom Robinson, a black man charged with raping a white woman, and it casts the events through the lens of Finch’s precocious daughter, Scout. Despite its relative brevity, the book bears considerable weight, both in the gravity of its themes and the care with which it treats them. Perhaps, then, it should be no surprise that Lee and her editor, Tay Hohoff, weren’t exactly expecting this book to fly off store shelves. Hohoff ”cautioned her that a book with racism at its center involving a rape trial was not a thing in 1960 to make people run to the bookstores for,” says Charles J. Shields, author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. ”She counseled her client and said, ’If we sell 2, 500 copies and break even, you should be proud.’ ” You already know this twist: Turns out they were flat wrong. The book all but immediately became a  . (And it’s gone on to sell more than 40 million copies, according to The Washington Post.) It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Just a year later, it was adapted into an Academy   film. What accounts for that kind of success? In many ways, it struck a chord for the very reasons Lee’s editor was feeling cautious, says Mary Murphy, director of the documentary Hey, Boo: Harper Lee  To Kill a Mockingbird. ”You know, there were two big revolutions in the ’60s in this country when To Kill a Mockingbird came out: One was civil rights and the other was women’s rights. And in a way, To Kill a Mockingbird speaks to both those things,” Murphy says. ”Scout Finch at 6 enjoyed, as child growing up in the Depression, enjoyed more freedoms than most women in the ’60s did. She wore pants, she swore, she played with boys, she spoke her mind,” Murphy continues. ”And of course the Civil Rights movement: Many people I spoke to who were active in the movement said that the fact that a white Southerner wrote that book gave them hope that justice could prevail.” And then, seemingly all at once, Lee was gone  —   at least, that’s how the popular narrative goes. The author quietly continued to write, but she decided to step out of the spotlight. Lee did not publish another novel for more than five decades, and she refused nearly every attempt by the press to speak with her. Naturally, there grew around her the mythology of the reclusive writer. It’s a myth that Murphy says simply isn’t true. ”Harper Lee was not a recluse. She was not holed up in her house like Boo Radley  —   unless of course, you were a reporter, and then she was not going to talk to you,” Murphy says. ”I think that’s a big distinction.” Wayne Flynt, her friend and professor emeritus at Auburn University, says her absence had little to do with preconceived notions of her personality. ”Many people describe her as an introvert, many people explain her as being extremely shy, she was neither an introvert nor shy,” Flynt says. ”She was a private woman, she lived very much within herself, she was quite content within herself.” And he explains Lee’s decision not to publish again  —   for decades  —   quite simply. ”I suppose what I would say is that there are some writers who have one great story to tell and they tell that one great story.” In the meantime, that singular novel was becoming a staple on high school syllabi, a beloved text read and reread even as its era passed on into the next, and new generations picked up the book. ”The people who have To Kill a Mockingbird seared in memory  —   their first reading experience of To Kill a Mockingbird seared in their brain  —   it’s the biggest book club in the world,” Murphy says. ”I mean, for all our conversations about Facebook and social media, To Kill a Mockingbird is the biggest social media group of our time, in a way.” Lee was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work in 2007, and a National Medal of Arts in 2010. Then, the second twist: Last year, after some 55 years of waiting, Lee decided it was time to publish a second novel, Go Set a Watchman. The book was initially billed by many as a sequel to Mockingbird, for it shared principal characters, reviving Atticus and Scout in a setting several years later than Mockingbird’s main action. Yet, in many ways, it was less a sequel than a glimpse at what would have been, had Lee gone with her first impulses as a writer rather than following her editor’s advice and reworking her first drafts. For years, Hohoff had worked with Lee on radical revisions to the text, from 1957 to the book’s eventual publication in 1960, according to The New York Times. ”I was a   writer, so I did as I was told,” Lee said in a 2015 statement.  Go Set a Watchman, then, let Lee’s early visions of her definitive work find the light of day. In the process, though, it also invited significant skepticism that Lee, who had suffered a stroke in 2007, was fully in control of the decision. Then, there were the decidedly mixed reviews. ”All I know for certain is that Go Set a Watchman is kind of a mess that will forever change the way we read a masterpiece,” NPR’s Maureen Corrigan, for one, wrote about the book when it was released in July 2015. Her assessment was by no means uncommon. Lee’s own reaction to the reviews and the controversy? ”She chortled,” Flynt told AL. com at the time. And herein, perhaps, rests a lesson: Despite our best attempts to confine Lee’s life to the pages she wrote and the characters she created, her own life far exceeded the bounds of her book covers. Lee was more than Atticus, Scout and Tom she was more than the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. And, perhaps, she often remembered that fact much better than the rest of us. ”She was a good companion,” Flynt remembers. ”She had lots of people she adored. ”One thing I will say about Harper Lee: If you ever met Harper Lee, you got just exactly what you saw. She never tried to be anything her entire life except who she was.”"
"Harper Lee, the author of the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has died in her hometown of Monroeville, Ala. The Pulitzer   writer was 89. Monroeville city officials confirmed reports of Lee’s death to Alabama Public Radio. Her publisher, HarperCollins, also confirmed the news to NPR. Her famous novel about a young girl’s experience of racial tensions in a small Southern town has sold tens of millions of copies and been translated into dozens of languages. Lee’s family issued a statement Friday morning saying that Lee ”passed away in her sleep early this morning. Her passing was unexpected. She remained in good basic health until her passing.” Family spokesman Hank Conner, Lee’s nephew, said: ”This is a sad day for our family. America and the world knew Harper Lee as one of the last century’s most beloved authors. We knew her as Nelle Harper Lee, a loving member of our family, a devoted friend to the many good people who touched her life, and a generous soul in our community and our state. We will miss her dearly.” The family says that as Lee had requested, a private funeral service will be held. Lee made headlines last year, on the news that a companion to her beloved novel would be coming out some 55 years after To Kill a Mockingbird was first published in 1960. When that book, Go Set a Watchman, was published last summer, it set off debates about the author’s health and how involved she had been in the project. An Alabama native, Lee moved to New York City in 1948 with the dream of being a writer. For about eight years, she worked as an airline reservationist at Eastern Airlines. As NPR reported last summer: ”Lee’s fortunes began to improve at the end of 1956 when her friends Michael and Joy Williams Brown gave Nelle, as those close to Lee call her, a generous Christmas gift: enough money to spend a year writing. That’s when she completed the manuscript for Go Set a Watchman. The novel helped her find an agent, who got her signed to the publisher J. B. Lippincott. But Go Set a Watchman was never released. Instead, Lee’s editor urged her to expand on the flashback passages set during Scout’s childhood. Lee spent more than two years writing and rewriting the novel that became known as To Kill a Mockingbird.” When it was published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird found immediate success. Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year, and the novel inspired a film adaptation that came out in 1962 starring Mary Badham as Scout and Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. That film was also a smashing success, garnering numerous Academy Award nominations and several wins. Lee was famous for avoiding the public eye  —   one of the last extensive interviews she gave took place in 1964, when she spoke to New York radio station WQXR. Here’s some of what she said: ”Well, my objectives are very limited. I think I want to do the best I can with the talent that God gave me, I suppose. I would like to be the chronicler of something that I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is     Southern life. There is something universal in it. Something decent to be said for it, and something to lament, once it goes, in its passing. In other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of South Alabama.” In that same conversation, Lee also spoke of how she had attended law school, but ”I didn’t graduate. I left the university one semester before I’d have gotten my degree.” In 2007, Lee was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she was honored with a National Medal of Arts in 2010. Here’s how news website AL. com describes Lee’s final years: ”Harper Lee suffered a stroke in 2007, recovered and resumed her life in the hometown where she spent many of her 89 years. A guardedly private individual, Lee was respected and protected by residents of the town that displays   murals and each year stages theatrical productions of To Kill a Mockingbird. ”Lee returned to Monroeville for good once her sister Alice became ill and needed help. She’d eat breakfast each morning at the same   place, and could later be seen picking up Alice from the law firm founded by their father.” President and Mrs. Obama released this statement Friday in memory of Lee: ”’Atticus, he was real nice.’ ”’Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’ ”When Harper Lee sat down to write To Kill a Mockingbird, she wasn’t seeking awards or fame. She was a country girl who just wanted to tell an honest story about life as she saw it. ”But what that one story did, more powerfully than one hundred speeches possibly could, was change the way we saw each other, and then the way we saw ourselves. Through the uncorrupted eyes of a child, she showed us the beautiful complexity of our common humanity, and the importance of striving for justice in our own lives, our communities, and our country. ”Ms. Lee changed America for the better. And there is no higher tribute we can offer her than to keep telling this timeless American story  —   to our students, to our neighbors, and to our children  —   and to constantly try, in our own lives, to finally see each other.”"
"We were sad today to learn that Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird (and, much more recently, Go Set A Watchman) had died at 89, so Barrie Hardymon of NPR’s Weekend Edition sat down with me to talk about Lee’s most famous book and how significant it feels in our respective orbits. We talk a little about its portrayal of its unusual    protagonist, its respect for the personhood of kids in general, its imperfect but earnest efforts to engage issues of race, and the smaller lessons about kindness that it treats with great seriousness."
"Fifty years ago, Harper Lee had the kind of success that most writers only dream about: Shortly after her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published on July 11, 1960, it hit the   lists.  In 1961, it won a Pulitzer Prize, and in 1962, it was made into an Academy   film. It has never gone out of print. Lee stepped out of the limelight and stopped doing interviews years ago  —   and she never wrote another book.  Still, her influence has far outlasted most writers of her generation.   For the   reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, America is a very different place than it was when Lee wrote her novel 50 years ago.  Lee’s story of Scout Finch and her father, Atticus  —   a   Southern lawyer who defends a black man unjustly accused of rape  —   came out just as the nation was fighting over school desegregation. Today, in a 10th grade English class at T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va. students of many different races and ethnicities are studying the book together.  Their teacher, Laurel Taylor, says that the story still resonates  —   and with students of all backgrounds. ”Trying to find your identity and realizing that your society doesn’t always tell you the right thing” is a particularly profound message for teens, Taylor says. ”Sometimes you have to go against what everyone else says to do the right thing. All that kind of resonates no matter where you come from.” Doing The Right Thing, When To Kill a Mockingbird was topping   lists in 1960, protesters were organizing   at   lunch counters across the South.  The civil rights movement was well under way. Joanne Gabbin, a professor of English at James Madison University in Virginia, grew up in the 1950s and ’60s.  She was just a child when she saw a photograph of Emmett Till, a      teen who was viciously murdered after he reportedly whistled at a white woman. ”I was traumatized as a child by the whole thought of racism,” Gabbin says. ”And the fact that children weren’t safe in this country . .. [simply] because of the color of their skin.” Gabbin read To Kill a Mockingbird when she was 17, and says that for her, it was a pivotal book. In Tom Robinson, the   man unjustly accused of rape, she saw not a victim, but a hero.  He reminded her of her father and grandfather  —     men who put up with untold humiliation in order to take care of their families. Atticus Finch gave her hope that there really were white people who would do the right thing  —   and she believes the book may have helped to make that a reality. ”People who were determined to keep black people down . .. were not going to be reading this book in the first place and were not going to be influenced,” Gabbin says. ”But I think those people who were moderate, who were more liberal, when they got to read To Kill a Mockingbird, they probably wanted to identify with the courageous character of Atticus Finch.” A New Way To Think About Race, When the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird came out in 1962, the character of Atticus became forever entwined with the actor who portrayed him, Gregory Peck. But whether you first encountered him on page or on screen, Atticus was unforgettable  —   a modest man of great integrity, he managed to impart his wisdom without being too preachy. ”There’s been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn’t do much about defending this man,” he tells his daughter, Scout, in the 1962 film adaptation.  ”If I didn’t, I couldn’t hold my head up in town. I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do somethin’ again.” The relationship between Atticus and his    daughter is the emotional heart of the book. For many readers  —   and for many female readers in particular  —   feisty, fearless Scout is the most memorable character. ”The story of Scout’s initiation and maturing is the story of finding out who you are in the world,” says author Mary McDonagh Murphy. ”And at the same time, the novel is about finding out who we are as a country.” Murphy’s new book, Scout, Atticus  Boo, is based on interviews about To Kill a Mockingbird with   writers, journalists, historians and artists.  Murphy says the novel, narrated from a child’s point of view, gave white people, especially in the South, a nonthreatening way to think about race differently. ”The book is structured with all these indelible characters,” Murphy says. ”The ending is not this triumphant good over evil . .. I mean there’s real moral ambiguity to what happened. It all combined to allow them to question the moral order of things.”  The questions raised by the book were part of a conversation that echoed around the country.  It’s a conversation that is still going on, and the book endures because people can relate to it in so many different ways. ”It’s about race, it’s about prejudice, it’s about childhood, it’s about parenting, it’s about  love, it’s about loneliness  —   there’s something for everyone,” Murphy says.  To Kill a Mockingbird didn’t change everyone’s mind, but it did open some. And it made an impression on many young people who, like Scout, were trying to get a grip on right and wrong in a world that is not always fair.  "
"Last year was a terrible season for the American pistachio industry. Warm temperatures and the lack of water resulted in a loss of almost half the crop, and profits were down by around $1. 4 billion from 2014. This year, the industry is hoping to recover, but growers across the country may face a different issue: competition stemming from the lifting of sanctions against Iran. Iran is historically known for its pistachios. They’re one of the country’s main   exports, sold in large quantities to places like China. Until about 30 years ago, a large amount of the pistachios sold in the U. S. were from Iran. The American pistachio industry didn’t boom until an embargo was put in place on the Iranian nut in the wake of the Iran hostage crisis of  . Jim Zion, with Meridian Growers in Clovis, Calif. says this opened the door for the U. S. pistachio market to flourish. ”An average consumer, they would see an American pistachio and an Iranian pistachio, and they’re going to say, yeah, there’s something different,” Zion says. ”Ours tend to be round theirs tend to be a little more long. Almost in every other market around the world, we compete with them on a    basis.” In early January the sanctions against Iran, including those on pistachios, were lifted because Iran has reduced its nuclear program. That has lots of people asking questions about what the change will mean for the American pistachio industry. Farmers keep calling Zion, worried that Iran will flood the U. S. market with foreign nuts. ”We’ve had a lot of growers calling, asking. And I said, ’It’s the way the world is,’ ” says Zion, who markets around 60 million pounds of pistachios, almonds and pecans on behalf of U. S. farmers annually. He doesn’t think farmers should fret over the decision, because even if there is more competition domestically, there are plenty of other countries eager to buy the American nut. ”I’m not that concerned, to be honest,” says Zion. ”It doesn’t matter whether I sell this product to someone in Chicago or someone in Singapore. It’s all the same for me.” There’s another reason why American pistachio growers don’t need to worry  —   at least, not yet: tariffs. Back in 1986, the U. S. pistachio industry successfully lobbied for a 300 percent tariff on Iranian pistachios. Thirty years later, that means that even though Iran can now legally sell the green nut to American retailers, consumers will have to pay three times as much for Iranian pistachios as they do for U. S.  ones. Zion says this tariff is in place because the Iranian government subsidizes the country’s pistachio industry. ”It was making it a very unfair competition,” Zion says. He says the tariff merely makes it a level playing field. ”All people want, especially growers, is just a fair and level playing field. We fully expect [Iranian growers] to go ahead and challenge that at some point.” In Tulare County, Calif. Brian Blackwell manages more than 10, 000 acres of nuts. Blackwell says if the subsidized Iranian pistachios were allowed into the U. S. it would hurt the growers whose farms he manages. ”If they’re bringing in product for less than what we can grow it for, and we have to compete in the marketplace, at least here in the United States, then that means product is going to be sold at a lower price. And therefore the processors and marketers are going to give growers a lower price,” says Blackwell. For now he’s safe, but Blackwell realizes this tariff may not be in place forever. And if it’s ever lifted, that would mean it could become harder to sell his crop. Even so, he says he’s not sure the industry would be hurt all that bad. ”This is a global market nowadays,” says Blackwell. ”So if Iran brought a million pounds of pistachios into the United States, that just means there’s a million pounds out there somewhere that didn’t get sold in China or Europe”  —   a million pounds that U. S. growers could sell to these places instead. But Iranian pistachios could hit the American market sooner than expected. Richard Matoian with the American Pistachio Growers says Iranian farmers will likely try to prove they’re not subsidized by their government as soon as this summer, in a meeting with the U. S. International Trade Commission. Ezra David Romero covers food and agriculture for Valley Public Radio in California. This story first appeared on the station’s website."
"When people talk about Florida’s Everglades, they often use superlatives: It’s the largest protected wilderness east of the Mississippi River, and it’s the biggest subtropical wetland in North America. But it is also the site of a joint   plan that is the largest ecosystem restoration effort ever attempted  —   one that is beginning to pay off after decades of work. The delivery of fresh water to   areas of Everglades National Park is considered a vital restoration. It’s one of the world’s largest freshwater wetlands  —   and the source of South Florida’s drinking water supply. Bob Johnson has been involved with Everglades restoration since he started work at the national park as a scientist three decades ago. As a hydrologist, he spends a lot of time thinking about water and how much flows through the park. ”On the western side, we’re at about 10. 3 feet, and if we walk over here to the eastern side, water level on this side is about 7 ” he says. ”So you’ve got almost a   difference in water levels.” The difference is because of a road built through the heart of the Everglades nearly 90 years ago  —   U. S. Highway 41, the main thoroughfare connecting Tampa to Miami, also known as Tamiami Trail. It’s a road with a lot of history. First proposed in 1915, it took 13 years and a reported 3 million sticks of dynamite to complete. It also inspired a foxtrot sung by crooner Gene Austin. Jon Ullman, with the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, curated an exhibit on the road’s history for the Coral Gables Museum. ”This was all lime rock. So, first you have to blast the lime rock, and then you create the roadbed from there. And you also use the lime rock to build the levee to hold back the water,” Ullman says. Although it was built as a road, it soon became apparent that Tamiami Trail was also a dam, blocking water that flowed from Lake Okeechobee south through the Everglades to Florida Bay. Areas of Everglades National Park that used to be wet   started to dry out for months at a time. Over decades, Johnson says, a key part of the ecosystem dried up  —   organic peat soils. ”As the peat soils disappear, the vegetation community changes. We lose the food source for small fish and macroinvertebrates,” Johnson says. ”We don’t have the buildup of the algal communities we had historically that are kind of the base for the food chain here.” On the north side of Tamiami Trail, a canal and a system of levees still hold back most of the water that otherwise would flow south through the park’s sloughs and sawgrass marshes. Recently, after a section of the highway was removed and elevated, a small amount of water began flowing south into an area for the first time in decades. Once a second bridge is built and other projects come online, the volume that flows into dry areas of the park will more than double. ”So you won’t see this artificial canal and the very rapid flow,” Johnson says. ”You’ll see very slow flow through the marsh back the way it’s supposed to be: the river of grass.” When it’s complete around 2030, the $18 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan is expected to return nearly   of the flow the park received before the canals and the Tamiami Trail. That will help restore the ecosystem in the park’s 1. 5 million acres  —   but the Everglades once covered more than double that area. It will be a   engineered solution with pumps and reservoirs. But Dawn Shirreffs with the Everglades Foundation says the Everglades will never be what it once was. ”We’ve lost about half of the natural ecosystem. We’ll never get that half back. It’s developed,” Shirreffs says. ”Most of us are living on land that was formerly Everglades. But we can stop hemorrhaging the existing Everglades.” Johnson is pleased that all the money and work are beginning to produce results. Another key part of the restoration, the Central Everglades Planning Project, could begin delivering a lot more water within a few years  —   by 2020, he says. ”That will be a big benefit here. And that’s not very far away  —   2020 is certainly . .. in my career. I’ve been here 32 years. But I can last that long,” he says. Ecosystem restoration is not for the impatient. It’s work measured not in years, but in decades. With climate change and sea level rise, Everglades restoration has taken on new urgency."
"In the Florida Everglades, the alligators are in trouble. The reptiles are scrawny, weighing 80 percent of what they should. The alligators grow more slowly, reproduce less and die younger. Researchers are trying to figure out why this iconic species is in decline  —   and what it means for the Everglades. ”We’ve seen some alligators in some years that have been basically skin and bones,” says Laura Brandt, a wildlife biologist at the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in south Florida. ”And when we get concerned is when we see multiple alligators like that.” The situation is concerning because the reptiles are an indicator species of the Everglades, a watershed that supports dozens of federally threatened and endangered animals and provides drinking water for more than a third of Floridians. The alligators are responsive to environmental changes and influential as top predators and ecosystem engineers  —   which means that their   is an indicator of the health of the ecosystem. Human interference with the Everglades, or the   River of Grass, has changed the historic flow of water and subsequently disrupted the animals’ food supply. ”The Everglades food machine is broken,” says Frank Mazzotti, a professor of wildlife ecology at University of Florida. ”We’ve screwed up that pattern that produced and concentrated food, meaning alligators are getting skinnier.” Brandt and Mazzotti are part of a   team of state and federal researchers. Their research is part of the world’s largest environmental restoration, a $17 billion effort that spans a region twice the size of New Jersey. For more than a decade, they’ve ventured into the wilderness of the Everglades to catch and study alligators to see whether the restoration is working. Researchers like Mazzotti say as the Everglades’   restoration reaches its midpoint, the watershed still needs help. ”There would be no fat. [The tail] would all be sunken in, and you would be able to see the tailbone with . .. just the skin hanging on it and sunken in on the sides,” Mazzotti says, describing the appearance of an alligator in bad condition. The Everglades watershed once spanned nearly all of South Florida. Today it is half of its former self, sustained by a complex   system of canals, dams, water control points and pump stations. Mazzotti says draining the Everglades upset the hydrology that alligators depend on, and that’s why the restoration aims to resurrect a more natural flow. Together, the researchers catch and release about 200 alligators a year. Each reptilian becomes a measuring stick of the Florida Everglades restoration."
"Hillary Clinton will win the Nevada Democratic caucuses, the Associated Press is reporting. With 84 percent of the precincts reporting, Clinton has 52. 5 percent of the vote, compared to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 47. 5 percent. ”Tens of thousands of men and women with kids to raise, bills to pay, and dreams that won’t die  —   this is your campaign,” she told a crowd at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. ”And it is a campaign to break down every barrier that holds you back.” This makes a second win for the former secretary of state, along with her   win in the Iowa caucuses. Sanders, meanwhile, has one win under his belt, handing a stinging   defeat to Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. Older and nonwhite voters appear to have buoyed Clinton past Sanders, according to entrance poll data. (To be clear, entrance polls are just an estimate  —   these polls as reported by CNN have a total sample size of 1, 024.) By those numbers, Clinton won 74 percent of the support of voters 65 and older, as well as 61 percent among people 45 to 64.   percent of nonwhite voters also supported her. Black voters in particular helped Clinton win: 76 percent backed her. Those polls also suggest that Clinton did better among women, with 57 percent of their vote. Sanders, meanwhile, continued his dominance among young voters, with entrance polls showing him winning 72 percent of   to   . That’s similar to his performance in New Hampshire and Iowa, where he likewise won young voters by big margins. And while those polls say Clinton overall got 56 percent of the nonwhite vote, those polls also suggest Sanders had a strong showing among Latinos, at 53 percent to Clinton’s 45 percent, according to those polls. Latinos made up 19 percent of the electorate in Nevada. In Clark County, with 806 of 1022 precincts reporting, Clinton led by nearly 10 points  —   54. 9 to 45. 1 percent, according to the New York Times. That’s where Las Vegas is, and is where   of the vote came from in 2008. Sanders’   (at this point) loss still represents a massive improvement for him in Nevada. Just a few months ago, Sanders was behind Clinton by double digits in the Silver State. Sanders referred to his gains in a statement. ”I just spoke to Secretary Clinton and congratulated her on her victory here in Nevada. I am very proud of the campaign we ran,” he said. ”Five weeks ago we were 25 points behind, and we ended up in a very close election.” The Democratic candidates now look to South Carolina, which will hold its Democratic primary on Feb. 27. Clinton maintains a strong lead there in recent polls, ahead by more than 20 points, according to RealClearPolitics. Just days later, they will compete in 11 states on Super Tuesday  —   March 1."
"The Stream is your source for news, photos and analysis from NPR’s political team on the ground in South Carolina and Nevada. For more coverage and analysis visit NPR Politics or elections. npr. org."
"Donald Trump has won the South Carolina primary, while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio appears to have edged out Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for second place. ”There’s nothing easy about running for president, I can tell you. It’s tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious, it’s beautiful,” Trump declared to his supporters at his victory rally in Spartanburg, S. C. Trump took 32. 5 percent of the vote, while Rubio and Cruz were nearly even with 22. 5 percent and 22. 3 percent, respectively. ”Let’s put this thing away,” the real estate mogul crowed, looking ahead to Super Tuesday fights and boasting again of his big win last week in New Hampshire. South Carolina will provide a big boost for Trump as he looks to do just that. It’s the first    state until March 15, and with his dominant victory in the state, sweeping every congressional district, Trump appears to have claimed all 50 delegates up for grabs. His other rivals will get zero. The Palmetto State also claimed another casualty in the race: After a distant fourth place finish, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended his campaign. Meanwhile, both Rubio and Cruz tried to spin their finishes in the state as victories. ”Tonight here in South Carolina, the message is pretty clear. This country is now ready for a new generation of conservatives to guide us into the 21st century,” Rubio boomed, as Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott stood behind him. Their support may have helped buoy Rubio into second place, a solid finish he badly needed after a disappointing showing in New Hampshire. The message that his campaign was trying to send all week, and was reinforced during his Election Night speech, was that the   senator  —   with support from the state’s   governor and   senator  —   was the new face of the GOP and would be the most competitive general election candidate. Cruz, meanwhile, had worked to turn out the state’s sizable bloc of evangelical voters and had campaigned heavily in the very religious upstate region of South Carolina. He had run ads hitting Trump on his past support for abortion rights and cast doubt on whether he would appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court, an argument that took on new urgency after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last week. But in the end, Trump triumphed with religious voters, according to exit polls. The share of     Christians increased from four years ago  —   up to 73 percent compared to 65 percent in 2012. Trump carried those voters with 31 percent of the vote, while Cruz won 27 percent and Rubio got a 22 percent share. Given the state’s dynamics, Cruz should have performed much better. But in his speech Saturday night, the senator wasn’t shaken. He reminded voters he was still the only candidate who had been able to beat Trump, in Iowa. ”If you are a conservative, this is where you belong, because only one strong conservative is in a position to win this race,” Cruz said. Still, it was Trump who was the only real victor in South Carolina. He swept nearly every county in the state, though Rubio carried Charleston County and Richland County, which includes the state capital of Columbia. Trump has swept both New Hampshire and South Carolina now  —   something every eventual GOP nominee has done ever since 1980. Most importantly, the New York billionaire proved he could win in a more conservative, southern state. And his win came in spite of several controversies in the past week, which have had little impact on his dominance  —   as usual this election cycle. In last Saturday’s debate, Trump attacked former President George W. Bush over his handling of the Iraq War, and on Thursday he tussled with Pope Francis over immigration. Trump’s hits on the former president didn’t hurt him with the state’s sizable population of military veterans, who made up 17 percent of the electorate he carried veterans with 35 percent of the vote. And the state’s GOP electorate agreed with his controversial proposal to ban all Muslims from coming into the country amid fears of a terrorist attack 74 percent of Republican voters said they supported his proposal. Ultimately, South Carolina will be remembered as the death knell for Bush. The former Florida governor had leaned heavily on his family connections to carry him in the state, bringing in his brother, former President George W. Bush, and his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, this week to campaign for him. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has been fighting for conservative evangelical voters too, but he finished in last place with just 7. 2 percent of the vote. He reiterated that he will remain in the race and will head to Nevada for its GOP caucuses on Tuesday. Ohio Gov. John Kasich had an impressive second place finish in New Hampshire last week and didn’t necessarily need a big win today in South Carolina, though he essentially tied with Bush, taking 7. 6 percent of the vote. He also edged out Carson. Kasich has already turned his attention to   Super Tuesday states, which will vote on March 1, and was in Massachusetts watching results tonight, not South Carolina."
"Imagine, for a moment, that Congress is targeting a military base in your state with stiff budget cuts. Think about what makes you more upset: the fact that this base has long played an important, historic role in your community? Or the fact that the budget cuts could have a rippling negative effect on the local economy? If you’re more agitated by the former, you may be what Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign considers a ”timid traditionalist.” If, on the other hand, the budget cuts make you more worried, you could be a ”temperamental” voter. One Step Further, Campaigns have been carving up voters into narrow,   segments for years. But Cruz’s campaign has taken microtargeting one step further. It has spent millions of dollars working with a British company to develop psychological,   models of American voters. The idea: to not only identify which issues potential supporters care most about but to also find the best possible way to make the case to them. ”What this allows us to do is do something that products have been doing for a long time, which is market to individuals specifically  —   be able to talk to them about things they care about,” said Chris Wilson, the campaign’s director of research and analytics. The heritage and   concerns are two variations of phone calls the Cruz campaign has been making to South Carolina voters this week, regarding Fort Jackson, a major Army base facing the prospect of major budget cuts. ”Timid traditionalists” get the ”local pride” argument ”temperamental” voters hear the economic concerns. Another group, ”stoic traditionalists,” is receiving more of a national security pitch, with warnings that the cuts are part of an Obama administration push to ”undermine the military.” The campaign has been targeting the various behavioral clusters with slightly different online ads, as well. The Cruz campaign has spent significant resources trying to figure out which issues voters in early primary states care about. Wilson says the campaign has used ”survey research, data collection, just making phone calls . .. through lists we might have had, through commercial sources.” The campaign has also developed its own app, which encourages supporters to share information about themselves and their social networks. But Wilson argues knowing the issues voters care about isn’t enough. The campaign needs to know why a voter cares about something like, say, gun rights. ”There are people who support the Second Amendment because they live in a rural community, they like to go hunting,” he says. ”There are people who support the Second Amendment because they care about the Constitution. There are people who support the Second Amendment because they want to protect themselves and their families.” 5, 000 Data Points Per Voter, The campaign has paid nearly $4 million, according to The Associated Press, to a company called Cambridge Analytica to help it sort out which voters are motivated by specific factors. On its website, the company boasts it has collected 5, 000 data points on every customer or voter. This is Cambridge Analytica’s first foray into American politics, but it has been doing behavioral modeling and communications works for governments and NGOs for several years. Robert Mercer, a major donor to   SuperPACS, has financial ties to the company, according to Politico and other news outlets. ”Persuading somebody to vote in a certain way is really very similar to persuading   to    boys in Indonesia to not join ” Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, told Bloomberg News last year. Generally speaking, here’s how the company’s behavioral modeling works. Nix says Cambridge Analytica has developed ”a   survey that seeks to probe personality. And we’ve rolled this out to literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people across America.” The company asks all sorts of questions about personality and behavior. Then it scores people on traits like openness, extroversion and agreeableness  —   aspects of the typical ”big five” personality traits. That gets mixed together in with polls, voter records and online activity the Cruz campaign has been collecting to create the personality models it uses to talk to voters. Cambridge Analytica may not have talked to you, Nix says, but ”if I talk to enough people who look like you, in terms of what data they have, I’d be able to quantify your personality based on the discussion I’ve had with other people.” ’Persuadability Is Finicky’ But here’s the thing about all this work: it’s all pointless if the message doesn’t get to the actual voters. The people often charged with delivering the message aren’t professionals. They’re the campaign volunteers. NPR went    with Cruz volunteers in South Carolina and New Hampshire. And we found some of them, like Jonathan Morales, tossing all that time, all that money, and all that   to the curb. ”I try to stay away from the script they gave us,” Morales said after knocking on a South Carolina door. ”The scripts are very helpful, but it just works a lot better when you engage them.” And even when the message is delivered, a lot of experts are skeptical that individual personalities can be captured by   data and modeling. ”Persuadability is finicky,” said Yale political scientist Eitan Hersh, who studies microtargeting and recently wrote a book about it. ”You’re persuadable sometimes but not other times,” Hersh said. ”You’re persuadable from a certain kind of appeal at a certain moment by a certain candidate. But what persuaded you then might not persuade you a week later.” On top of that, Hersh questions whether finding out all this additional information is worth the effort it takes to dig it up. ”Our politics just aren’t divided in 168 ways,” he said, referencing the number of issue and behavioral combinations  —   167  —   the Cruz campaign said it divided Iowa voters into ahead of its caucus win. ”They’re not. They’re divided in a few different ways. There’s a few kinds of issues that divide people, even among partisans of the same party.” One thing’s for sure about the Cruz campaign’s behavioral modeling attempts and its partnership with Cambridge Analytica: They’re getting a lot of attention among political digital operatives. Everyone NPR talked to for this story had a strong opinion on the Cruz campaign’s operations, whether it was positive or negative. Nix insists this is the future of microtargeting, and a   future at that. He says, with frustration, that campaigns have focused for far too long on geographic and demographic information, when it’s homing in on which voters to engage or not engage that matters. ”Yes, demographics and geographics are important,” he says. ”But really what’s important is to start clustering people by personality.” ”Your   is based on your personality,” he says. ”And not on your gender. Nor is it based on your age or your wealth or any other demographic or geographic factor.” The question is, whether the information we inadvertently share about ourselves in our purchases, online behavior and the neighborhoods we live in gives campaigns like Ted Cruz’s enough information to figure out how, exactly, we make those decisions."
"The photo op at the end of Marco Rubio’s Greenville rally Thursday morning was the stuff GOP dreams are made of. The young Latino presidential candidate many top party leaders believe would be their best   smiled and cheered, flanked by South Carolina’s   female governor, the state’s young black Republican senator and the congressman who’s led the investigation into the Benghazi attacks and Hillary Clinton’s involvement. ”Take a picture of this, because this new group of conservatives taking over America looks like a Benetton commercial,” Gov. Nikki Haley crowed, standing alongside Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Trey Gowdy on stage in a CrossFit gym   for Rubio’s rally. That image of a diverse, young Republican Party is one the Rubio campaign wants people to remember. His staff was even making sure press knew the quartet would be on stage together at the end of the event. Is ” ” back? Observers in the state think Rubio is the one who is on the rise in the closing hours. And he badly needs a strong finish here, too, to recapture the narrative that he is the establishment’s best hope to take down Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. ”This is a great day in South Carolina,” Scott boasted as he introduced Rubio. ”The cavalry is coming.” The Florida senator has certainly needed some help to get to this point. While his      finish in Iowa gave him new mojo, last week’s disappointing   finish in New Hampshire after a disastrous debate took some of the luster off the rising star, who at 44, is the youngest candidate in the race. But he’s found new vigor in the Palmetto State. Buoyed this week by Haley’s coveted endorsement, the quartet crisscrossed the state together in the final days. And while Cruz is fighting for the evangelical vote, Rubio could build a   of the state’s top voting blocs. Plus, if Rubio pulls off a strong showing in the state, the biggest thing it could do for him is possibly drive former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush out of the contest, further clearing the   establishment lane for him heading into Super Tuesday. It’s Rubio who has the backing of the state’s top elected officials  —   the ”new establishment” of sorts, hoping that their chosen candidate can be the one to right the Republican ship. Riding the wave, Rubio, Haley, Scott and Gowdy were all elected in the 2010 GOP wave, buoyed by the tea party, and none of them were then the party’s preferred candidates. As the Florida senator often says on the stump, the national party wanted   Gov. Charlie Crist instead. Crist ran as an independent and lost  —   and is now a Democrat. Gowdy knocked off Upstate Rep. Bob Inglis in a primary, and Scott first won a congressional seat over several   political scions, who had the surnames Thurmond and Campbell. Haley was also the underdog tea party candidate when she first ran six years ago, besting a better funded rivals that included the sitting attorney general and lieutenant governor. As Gowdy argued to NPR, the group is far from ”the establishment.” ”I don’t know what the word ’establishment’ means,” Gowdy said. ”Can you tell me what the word ’establishment’ means? I was just on stage with an   an   and a   so I don’t know what ’establishment’ means.” So what message should the solidarity of support for Rubio mean? ”He’s a principled conservative who can win in November,” Gowdy said. For Don Pendleton of Greenville who was at the Thursday morning event, the new endorsements only validated his decision to vote for Rubio. ”I’m very proud to be from South Carolina and have Nikki Haley out for him,” Pendleton said. ”It made me feel like I made the right decision. I feel like it’s an   team.” Larry McGriff of Greenville was undecided when he came to the rally, but he left leaning strongly toward Rubio over Cruz. To him, the trio of endorsements for Rubio carried some weight. ”I’m very much a fan of Trey Gowdy, Tim Scott and the governor,” McGriff said. ”She’s been a great governor. I wouldn’t say that it had pushed me strongly in one direction for Gov. Haley to give an endorsement, but it certainly didn’t hurt.” South Carolina Republican strategist Chip Felkel said there’s no question Rubio has momentum going into Saturday’s vote, but will it be enough? ”Endorsements are overrated at this point, but there’s no question that the picture of the   governor and the   senator and the   senator is something that seems to have some appeal,” said Felkel, who is unaligned in the race. ”I just don’t know if it’s enough. If anybody’s got momentum, you’ve certainly got to think it’s Rubio.”"
"Mourners gathered Saturday to pay their respects to deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a funeral mass in Washington D. C. The towering conservative jurist will be buried in a private ceremony following the service at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports to our Newscast unit. ”The shrine, a colorful and large church, is not far from where the justice served for some 30 years,” Nina says. ”Scalia’s sons and    served as pallbearers to carry his   casket up the steps of the basilica,” the Associated Press reports. Scalia’s son Paul, who is a Catholic priest, conducted the service and delivered the homily. Here’s an excerpt, which focuses on Scalia’s role as a father: ”We have been thrilled to read and hear the many words of praise and admiration for him  —   for his intellect, his writings, his speeches, his influence and so on. But more important to us  —   and to him  —   was that he was Dad. He was the father that God gave us for the great adventure of family life. Sure, he forgot our names at times or mixed them up, but there are nine of us. He loved us and sought to show that love. And sought to share the blessing of the faith he treasured. And he gave us one another, to have each other for support. That’s the greatest wealth parents can bestow, and right now we are particularly grateful for it.” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas read a biblical passage from the Book of Romans during the service. Scalia died at a Texas ranch one week ago. He was 79. ”Dignitaries including Vice President Joe Biden, former Vice President Dick Cheney, members of Congress and all eight sitting justices of the Supreme Court were among those attending. Four of the five Catholic justices took communion,” The Associated Press reports. On Friday, Scalia’s body lay in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. Barack and Michelle Obama paid their respects there, and did not attend the funeral service on Saturday. Nina says ”Scalia is only the fourth justice to die in office in the past 65 years, and there is no consistent pattern of presidential attendance at court funerals.”"
"Earlier this week, officials at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore announced they had received approval to begin conducting the first organ transplants from   donors to   recipients. This comes after a 2013 change in the law that lifted a ban in place since 1988. Surgeons at Johns Hopkins say that they are ready to begin performing liver and kidney transplants as soon as the appropriate candidates are available. NPR’s Michel Martin spoke with Dr. Dorry Segev, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who has worked for years to allow these kinds of organ transplants. On how the issue came to his attention, About five or six years ago, we were really ramping up, both at our center and nationally, transplanting patients with HIV. So HIV had totally changed as a disease from basically a death sentence in the ’80s to now something that’s a chronic disease, people live their lives with it. They just need to take antiretroviral medication. We’re seeing now kidney failure, liver failure and the need for transplantation in these patients. As we were ramping up, we’re putting more and more people on a waiting list. Now, as you know, the waiting list has about 120, 000 people on it, so that’s kind of a depressing line to wait in. And at the same time it occurred to me that we were throwing away organs that were infected with HIV, that could be used to help people with HIV  —   because of this antiquated law. So it occurred to me, living 30 minutes north of Capitol Hill, that maybe we should do something about this. On how he started the campaign to change the law, The first thing we did was estimate what the impact would be of a law like this. So we did a study to try to estimate how many potential   deceased donors there would be. And it turns out that it’s about 500 per year. So if you think about 500 donors per year  —   deceased donors  —   that’s over 1, 000 organs, so that’s over 1, 000 lives saved. And if that were to happen it would be the biggest increase in transplantation that we’ve seen in the last decade. When we thought about it that way, we thought: This is highly impactful. And so we published this, we got some media attention for it. And then we got groups from the HIV community, the transplant community, the medical community, patient advocacy groups  —   they all joined us in our effort. We wrote a bill that would become the HOPE Act, the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act, and started to do what they taught us on Schoolhouse Rock. On why organ donations from   donors to   recipients was illegal in the first place, This was kind of a quirk of timing. The big congressional law that oversees organ transplantation in the United States that really organized our transplant system came about in the  ’80s. And the  ’80s happened to be the AIDS scare and at that time AIDS was basically a death sentence. So it was written into that law at the congressional level  —   not the policy level, but the statute level  —   that we can’t use organs infected with HIV. And so that stood during the entire AIDS scare. On who receives these organs and what factors they consider, The plan is   organs can go into   patients. And then we would be selective about who the right donors are, who the right recipients are and how we can properly match them so that somebody doesn’t get, for example, a much more aggressive strain of HIV. We think that superinfection is a reality and is something we’re going to have to deal with. But if you think about it, if you have a pretty unaggressive strain of HIV and we know that the donor you’re getting the organ from was also controlled on the same meds that you’re taking, then you will probably remain controlled when you get that organ. Basically it would be just like all the other compatibilities we consider in transplant. On who benefits, Imagine now we take hundreds or maybe thousands of people off of the list, then everybody behind them moves forward. So people with HIV are benefited directly and everybody else on the list is benefited indirectly. And we’re all very excited to get started. How he feels about the announcement, I’m thrilled that this is possible. I’m thrilled that Congress was receptive to this, that President Obama signed the bill. I’m thrilled that we are now able to do this for people. But I’m most thrilled that now patients with HIV on the waiting list will have a better chance at life."
"The website    promises to provide a ”minority for every occasion.” It offers ”diversity on demand” for   conference panels, award shows or brochures. The site is of course satire. Arwa Mahdawi spoke with All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro about what inspired her to start the site. On the ”token black guy” who is the face of    One really cool thing that happened was that on the homepage of the website, the hero image is this smiling intellectual black guy. And I just used a stock photo. And then I started to think, as the website got really popular, gosh, I wonder what   who this guy is, and I wonder, you know, whether he’s seen that he’s the face of    and what he thinks. And so I asked on Twitter if he was out there, and he got back to me. He’s in South Africa. And he says he loves the website, and it got him brownie points with his missus. On how many people missed the joke, You know, at the beginning, I got a few emails where people were asking me, ”Is this available in Singapore yet? .”.. from, like, big banks. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but there are definitely a few people who, I think, thought it was a genuine business. And then there was one person I saw on Twitter who was like, don’t join this    site it’s a scam. You won’t make any money. The feedback the site has gotten, I’ve been amazed at how much of a positive reaction this has had. I’ve got a lot of people saying thank you for talking about this in a way that kind of says what I’ve been feeling in a humorous way. And some people are like, I can show this to white people (laughter). On satire and the current conversation about identity in America, I think that these subjects are so emotive, and you can get so upset about it for good reason. But I think when you make these points in a humorous manner, people understand it, and it’s a lot more effective. I’ve had lots of emails by people who are like, you know, ”Why didn’t you call out trans people?” ”Why didn’t you call out gay people?” ”Why didn’t you call out disabled people?” And so I feel like. ..everyone has their issues where they feel like a minority. On being the minority at the table as a half Palestinian, half English woman, Well, I started life as a lawyer, and then I moved into advertising, both of which are quite dominated by white men at the top. One of the things that sort of prompted this site was this really intelligent guy who I respect quite a lot. He said, ”Is it an advantage, being brown and female in advertising?” and then sort of trailed off. And I was like, ”What, do you mean because of positive discrimination or something?” And he was like, ”Yeah, yeah, that’s sort of what I was getting at.” And I was like, wow, you must be living on a different planet. But the fact that he thought that  —   someone who I think is really intelligent  —   made me just think a lot of the initiatives we’re doing around diversity are almost making discrimination worse. The real problems of racism, sexism, et cetera, institutional inequality are not being really solved. But at the same time, all your successes are pinned down to affirmative action by people."
"My husband died. He wasn’t young any more and was sick and weak but we weren’t expecting his death to come as quickly as it did, within a few days, almost overnight. He just went away. Maybe there are worse things than a quick, quiet death. Here’s what happened next. My brother and    (who live a couple of hours away) called: We’ll be there tonight, and we’re staying until you make us leave. A friend: I have some lentil soup, may I bring it over? And may I bring the rest of my family and we’ll all eat it together? A neighbor: When you need to start sorting through things, may I help? A friend: The kids and I are coming to Baltimore for the weekend. May I bring them and some pies, and come sit by the fire? Empathy. These people aren’t indulging in pity, they’re not practicing social niceties. They almost can’t help but do this, this completely familiar and utterly strange ability to feel the pain of someone else in pain, to offer the comfort they themselves would need, to merge the comforter with the comforted. A neighbor: I experimented with chicken tikka masala and have some left over. Would you like it? Another neighbor: I really miss your husband. Shall we have some tea? Another neighbor: I made lemon cookies, here, have these. Another neighbor: I made too much butternut squash soup. Want some? Psychology is interested in empathy, partly to understand its famous failures, partly to understand its social role. It turns out that empathy doesn’t reserve its virtues for humans: rats, pigs, and primates react empathically to another rat’s or pig’s or primate’s pain. A monkey pulls a chain, it gets food but a nearby monkey get shocked the first monkey, even if it’s hungry, refuses to pull the chain again. When I lived in the country, my dog got run over (it lived) and gave a doggy scream of pain faraway dogs on neighboring farms, dogs I couldn’t even see, howled and howled. Another neighbor: Drinks tonight? Come over, I’ve got cheese. Another neighbor: Let’s go out, there’s a nice new restaurant, I’ll drive. Another neighbor: I made you this little pumpkin cake. It’s good for breakfast. So empathy isn’t only social or psychological it’s also something in the brain, conserved over the species, it’s neurological. When a rat or pig or monkey or dog or human sees someone doing some particular action, some of their own neurons, called mirror neurons, controlling the same action also fire: a monkey sees another monkey picking something up, the   neurons in the first monkey’s brain also fire. Another neighbor: Come to dinner. I’m making rack of lamb. Another neighbor: Need help hanging those pictures? I’m an expert at hanging pictures. A friend: Can we pick up some doughnuts and come over for breakfast? And the arborist consulting about a maple tree: I noticed your lilac got broken in the storm. Let me trim it for you. And what happens after that? what happens with the empathized? The only research I could find on the effect of empathy was negative, that is, the lack of empathy for certain people in certain situations, and how this lack was hard on those people. So I’ll tell you the positive effect and you know it already: empathy is pain’s best antidote. It is, says Robert Burton in his astonishing Anatomy of Melancholy, ”as fire in Winter, shade in Summer, as sleep on the grass to them that are weary, meat and drink to him that is hungry or athirst.” The pain doesn’t go away but somehow or other, empathy gives the pain meaning, and    is bearable. I don’t actually know how to say what the effect of empathy is, I can only say what it’s like. Like magic. On the morning after my husband’s death, I was sitting with him, waiting for the funeral home people to come get him. They did, a couple of substantial guys in suits and oily manners who were having trouble getting him onto the gurney. Just then my husband’s nurses, Bridget and Elizabeth, both Africans, came into the room. They moved deliberately, and with great authority they dismissed the funeral home men and took over. They smoothed my husband’s hair and touched his cheek and stroked his shoulder, and they pulled his sheet up around him. Together they used the sheet to lift him to the gurney, then touched his face again and laid the sheet gently over it. I’ve never seen such a thing  —   such comforting of a man now far from comfort but comforting him anyway. Like a blessing, a sacrament. Ann Finkbeiner is a science writer whose books include After the Death of a Child and The Jasons. She is   of the blog The Last Word on Nothing, where this essay first appeared. Her husband, James Calvin (Cal) Walker, a retired physicist, died on Jan. 15 at age 80. They were married for 30 years."
"On the eve of the Nevada presidential primary caucuses, the State Department released an additional 1, 116 pages of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. Portions of 64 documents were retroactively classified as confidential, according to a State Department official. That’s the lowest level of classification. The latest batch of emails did not include any Secret or Top Secret documents, according to the official. Friday night’s release brings the total number of emails posted on the department’s website to nearly 47, 000 pages. The   release of emails, which Clinton controversially stored on a private server, is nearing its end. The State Department says it will release a final batch of emails on February 29. The court had initially set a January deadline for making the emails public. Clinton’s private email server has become a major campaign issue for Republican presidential candidates. On Friday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that, ”every   release of Hillary Clinton’s emails is yet another reminder of just how recklessly she handled classified material and jeopardized national security.” The latest round of emails illustrate how much jockeying, negotiating, and   go into appointments in the early months of a presidential administration. Throughout all of 2009, Clinton was involved in email chains about various diplomatic openings. ”Cheryl  —   Senator Kerry had the opportunity to sing Happy Birthday to the Secretary earlier this week but neglected to tell her that he would be very interested in seeing [REDACTED] considered for Ambassador to Vietnam,” Kerry aide David McKean wrote to Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, in October 2009. ”First, what, if any connection, does [REDACTED] have w Vietnam? And, second, what is [REDACTED] relationship w Kerry?” Clinton asked Mills, after seeing the request. (The redaction of most of the proper nouns in these exchanges  —   the potential nominees the positions they were or weren’t up for  —   make the emails a little hard to follow.) Clinton and other top State officials also appeared to negotiate with the White House over appointments. ”What about [redacted]? Clinton emailed Mills in May 2009. ”Or should we take care of the guy they wanted for [redacted]?” Mills responded. ”Don’t go wobbly on me!” Clinton replied. There’s frustration in the appointment process. ”Puzzled and disappt.” Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski wrote Clinton when a candidate she preferred wasn’t selected for a USAID position. (But, Mikulski assured Clinton, ”Am not ballistic. ”) But also, joy: ”DAMN  —   I LOVE YOU!” Capricia Marshall wrote Mills in an email forwarded to Clinton, after she was nominated for Chief of Protocol. The appointment and confirmation battles continued into 2010. In an email with the subject line of ”Azerbijan,” (sic) Clinton wrote top aides in April: ”what is the holdup in getting an ambassador there?” Other emails address events in Libya. In the early days of the 2011 airstrike campaign against Libya, Clinton appeared very engaged in how the media was covering the military effort. ”Do you have any updates  —   especially from the UAE? What is the situation in Libya post strikes?” she wrote on March 20. ”As far as we know, there were no ”civilian deaths,’ she emailed on the same day, after aides forwarded her an Associated Press article. ”Can we get a statement from the Libyan opposition to that effect w thx for helping them and request for their Arab brothers to help as well?” ”One lesson learned,” Clinton wrote after   aide Jacob Sullivan forwarded her what he deemed a ”positive report.” ”When it comes to   news coverage, it helps having Qatar involved.” In October, Clinton complained of ”a few factual errors” in a Washington Post story about her efforts in organizing the international coalition that intervened in the country. And one year later, after the attacks on the American compound in Benghazi, Clinton and Sullivan emailed back and forth about how the incident had become a political issue. Clinton forwarded a message from her friend and former aide Sidney Blumenthal, who wrote, ”Romney has an   in today’s Wall Street Journal playing off Stevens’ murder to say Obama has put ’security at risk,’ etc.” Clinton and Sullivan then discussed a campaign ad on the attacks. ”Did you watch? Not about the whodunit issue,” Sullivan wrote. ”This is about Obama going on the View rather than meeting with world leaders. ”But the subtext is his absence or negligence re terrorism and leadership,” Clinton responded. ”It’s just interesting that Sid’s first message focused on a potential Republican narrative about how we knew in advance and were incompetent, whereas this goes to the broader issue of leadership in the war on terror,” Sullivan wrote back. ”But we’ll likely see both attacks in debate, on the stump and in ads,” said Clinton. Four years later, that’s still the case."
"It’s just before midnight on a February night when the crew of the Responder gets word from the Greek coast guard that a boat with migrants aboard is nearby. It’s in trouble somewhere in Greek territorial waters in the Aegean Sea. ”There’s a light, a flash,” says Eugenio Miuccio, a    Italian doctor, pointing to a flicker in the   sea. He and an Italian nurse,    Roberto Pantaleo, pull on red life jackets as the ship heads toward the light. Iain Brown, a volunteer rescue diver from Scotland, is also ready. He’s listening, trying to make out people’s voices. ”We can hear them screaming before we see them,” he says. ”The boats they are in are so thin. We can hear them breaking up.” They’re ready to jump into a small speedboat piloted by Dominic ”Mimmo” Vella, a    father of three from Malta and a member of the Responder’s crew. ”If something happens and people fall in the water,” Vella says, ”with the big boat, we cannot go near them, so we go with the small ones.” The Responder arrives where the migrant boat is supposed to be. But there is no boat, no people. Just empty sea. ”False alarm,” Brown says. ”We found nothing,” Vella says. ”So we’re going to keep on patrolling.” The Responder, a  . search and rescue tug vessel has been patrolling these waters for the past two months. False alarms come with the territory, but the dangers for which the crew remains prepared are real. The boat is leased by a   nonprofit called the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS). An American businessman, Christopher Catrambone, and his Italian wife, Regina, started MOAS in early 2014 to help rescue asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy. Then, last September,    Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach. The Syrian toddler had drowned trying to reach Greece with his family. The image of his lifeless body jolted the world’s empathy. Donations flooded into MOAS. The charity leased the Responder, hired a crew and recruited volunteers. The Responder arrived in the Aegean at the end of December. The two speedboats aboard are named after Alan and his    brother, Galip, who also drowned in September. Brown, the diver, heard about MOAS on the news. He’s 51 and volunteers with the Coast Guard back home in Ayr, Scotland. ”I couldn’t stand it anymore, sitting at home while kids were drowning here,” he says. ”So I [took] time off and came here. I can help. I understand the sea.” The Responder patrols a stretch of the Aegean Sea between Turkey and the tiny Greek islet of Agathonissi, just south of the larger island of Samos. The distance between Greece and Turkey is relatively short, as close as 8 miles here. But the sea can look deceptively calm to migrants. ”They could leave from a sheltered bay,” says MOAS search and rescue operations officer John Hamilton, as he monitors a radar on deck. ”Once they get out of this bay, they come across rough seas.” More than 400 people fleeing war and poverty have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since the beginning of this year, according to the U. N. refugee agency. At least 311 have drowned in the Aegean, according to the International Organization for Migration. The Responder has been backing up the Greek coast guard in the southern Aegean Sea, and has rescued 739 people here so far. And since 2014, MOAS crews have rescued nearly 12, 000 people. But the crew can’t stop thinking about a boat that capsized on January 15. ”That night, we got a call that there was a boat,” Vella says. ”And when we arrived to where the boat was supposed to be, we didn’t find the boat. But we found the people. They were screaming.” As the boat sank, people hung onto its    hull, moaning loudly for help. ”It was so cold that night, so very cold,” Vella says. ”I prayed there were no kids in the water.” Miuccio, the Italian doctor, did too. He worried about hypothermia. ”Children and babies can only stay in such cold water for a few minutes,” he says. A diver jumped into the sea and swam to the people clinging to the hull. ”Children? Children?” the diver screamed. ”Babies?” The first baby was a   little boy, no more than   . Miuccio, on the speedboat that night, remembers that the little boy’s face was blue and he was foaming at the mouth. He had no pulse. ”I gave him CPR for 15 minutes,” he says. ”But nothing worked.” Pantaleo, the nurse, tried to revive another little boy, also to no avail. A third child, a    girl, was also found dead. Then two more children, a boy and a girl, arrived  —   unconscious but with a pulse. ”They responded immediately [after] CPR,” Miuccio recalls. ”They started crying, which is a good sign. We took off their wet clothes and immediately wrapped them in isothermal blankets.” Miuccio and Pantaleo warmed up the surviving children using hair dryers. The children changed into dry clothes and started to play. Vella visited them later in the ”survivors room,” where people rested on   reclining chairs. Vella gave the children dolls, stuffed animals and picture books that his own kids had sent. The crew rescued 23 people that night, nearly all of them Syrians and Iraqis. Vella held the body of the chubby toddler. ”I still remember his face,” he says. ”He was like an angel. Brown hair. Tights under his trousers.” He has a son the same age. He placed the boy’s body on a blanket next to the two other children who died. The parents didn’t know. Vella had to tell them. One of the mothers, then seven months pregnant, screamed as she picked up the lifeless bodies of her son and daughter. The other mother sobbed over her baby boy, the   . Vella knelt next to her. He’d held her son in his arms. Now he held the mother. ”I couldn’t resist, I cried, because she was so much in pain,” he says. ”That pain is something you don’t want to see, for sure. Because I believe that the children bury the parents, not the parents bury the children. If it happens to me, I don’t know, life doesn’t have sense anymore for me.” The Responder took the survivors to Pythagorio, a Greek port town on the island of Samos. It emerged that one of the survivors was Turkish. The others accused him of being a smuggler. They told the Greek Coast Guard that he didn’t know how to navigate the boat and that’s why it overturned. The man was arrested but denied he was a smuggler. The three children who drowned that day are buried just outside a Greek Orthodox cemetery in the tiny village of Iraion, near Pythagorio. Dozens of other refugee children, most of them Syrian, are buried there, too. Some, nameless, have graves marked by stone slabs with numbers. Others are marked with simple headstones bearing Quranic verses: ”For us Allah suffices, and he is the best disposer of affairs. To God we belong, and to him we shall return.” There are teddy bears on the graves. The morning after the three children died in January, Mimmo Vella called his own kids back in Malta. He told them he loved them so much. He told them they were lucky to be safe at home. As MOAS begins yet another patrol, he calls them again. His youngest son’s tiny voice rises above the wind and the waves."
"How many ways can The Internet mock Jeb Bush? So many. So many ways. Here’s the latest. Since the last Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire, Jeb Bush has been making a push to win in South Carolina, the next state to hold a GOP nominating contest. He’s gained the endorsement of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. He’s trotted out his brother, George W. and his mother Barbara, on the trail. And he’s started to play up his support of the military and the Second Amendment, two issues that are very important to a large number of South Carolina Republican voters. But, per usual, some of Jeb Bush’s outreach backfired. The latest in a series of gaffes includes a gun, a tweet  —   and the word ”America.” During a visit to a gun factory in Columbia, S. C. Bush received an engraved pistol. Seemingly eager to show it off, as well as his   bona fides, Bush’s team tweeted out an image of the gun, inscription in clear sight, with the caption, ”America.” Seems fine on first glance. Right? No. It was not fine. Not fine at all. Within minutes, Twitter let Jeb have it, with several tweets mocking the gun, Jeb Bush, and a lot more. Some were serious, like a tweet from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which, in response to the ”America.” tweet, shared a supercut of newscasters announcing gun deaths throughout the country. Others pointed out that ”America.” in its most literal sense, is a land mass that’s bigger than just the USA. A few replaced the inscription with the words, ”Please Clap,” referencing another recent Bush misstep, in which the candidate asked an audience for applause after he delivered a key line in a speech. And several shared images of actress America Ferrera. Overall, the response was mostly hilarious, but it also raised a few larger questions. First among them, would this have happened to anyone other than Bush? If Donald Trump or Ted Cruz tweeted a picture of a gun, would they be mocked at all? Would it be seen as less forced, more natural? Does knowing that Bush tweeted the image of the gun make us want to mock the image just as much as the image itself does? And secondly, why is it so easy to make fun of Jeb Bush? And why do so many people seem to enjoy doing it? As far as explanations go, for starters, Bush gave The Internet a perfect,   canvas. A single word caption, open for so much interpretation. The photo of the inscribed gun: a single, easily photoshopped image. It was all ripe for parody  —   as is Bush, it seems, which may be the second big reason the tweet and its responses went viral. We’ve written about his foibles before, and it seems for months now, The Internet has been mocking the candidate and his struggling campaign. Part of the reason ”America.” took off online is because people have really gotten used to making fun of Bush, no matter what he does. Bush’s campaign hasn’t responded to the tweet  —   or taken it down. And the initial wave of criticism over it seems to have blown over. But the week still seems to have been a tough one for him. Trump mocked him for switching to contacts from glasses. Popular South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley endorsed his rival, Sen. Marco Rubio, this week, after Jeb Bush had previously said Haley’s support was ”probably the most meaningful endorsement there is.” Of course, a strong showing in South Carolina’s Republican primary could give Bush’s campaign at least one positive story line. Though if he does poorly, he must surely know what type of response he’ll get from The Internet."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. Despite the immense amount of news coverage focusing on the Black Lives Matter movement, something that you seem to hear very little about is the mental health of the activists on the front lines. Sadly, it took the recent suicide of MarShawn McCarrel, a    Black Lives Matter activist in Ohio, to bring this issue to the forefront of the conversation. In a final post to his Facebook page, McCarrel wrote, ”My demons won today. I’m sorry.” This article by The Washington Post uses McCarrel’s story to shed light on the psychological pressure experienced by many black activists that dedicate their lives to the movement: ”’In the movement you’re just constantly engaging in black death, seeing the communal impact,’ said Jonathan Butler, the University of Missouri graduate student whose hunger strike last fall led to the resignation of the school’s president. ’You’re being faced with the reality that I’m more likely to be killed by the police, that I’m being discriminated against. You start to see all of the  . ’” Hospitals are supposed to be places of safety and helping the sick, and for the most part they are. That’s why the headline on a recent story from The New York Times sets you on your heels immediately: ”When the Hospital Fires the Bullet.” The story, a collaboration between the Times and This American Life, recounts a night last August, when    Alan Pean, suffering from a manic episode, went to a Houston hospital seeking treatment. Instead, he was shot in the chest and handcuffed on the floor by an   police officer moonlighting as hospital security. Reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal digs through all of the questions a story like this raises: Why were guns allowed on the premises and in the rooms with patients? Why wasn’t Pean on a floor for treating psychiatric patients (his parents called the hospital and requested a psych evaluation, which he didn’t get)? Where was the hospital staff that was supposed to be looking after Pean? The answers are frightening and  . Also, I highly suggest listening to the This American Life episode with Alan Pean, who describes in detail what that night was like in his own words. When this article, ”Why do my   keep confusing me with other people? Because I’m Asian,” circulated among my friend group, it incited a series of stories about   people experienced at work  —   both at NPR and other places. Real stories that involved colleagues calling them by wrong names (four months into their internship!) a friend being called by the name of another person who wears a hijab in the building people being handed paperwork that was meant for another person of the same race. Unfortunately, this happens all too often, even among people whose most literal job is to get people and their stories right. We need to talk about how misrecognition can be a   instance  —   but often has psychological and even legal implications. As Iris Kuo notes, ”Witnesses are more likely to misidentify an alleged perpetrator of another race.” She writes: ”All my life I’ve been mistaken for other people of my race. It’s a degrading and thoughtless error that boils away my identity and simplifies me as one thing: ’that Asian.’ [. ..] The stakes are real at work  —   I worry that the reputation of another person will be ascribed to me or that an accomplishment of mine will be attributed to another Asian in the office.”"
"Mosquitoes have a nasty reputation. The species Aedes aegypti, for example, is currently responsible for spreading the Zika virus through the Americas and also infects humans with dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever. This raises the question: Should there be an effort to get rid of Aedes aegypti for good? There have, of course, been many thousands of species that are indeed gone for good. And a U. N. Convention on Biological Diversity has noted: ”Every day, up to 150 species are lost.” The list of extinct species includes dodos, Tasmanian tigers, passenger pigeons and the West African black rhinoceros. But it wasn’t an intentional plan to eliminate them. In many cases, the extinction happened because of hunting and because humans took over the creature’s habitat. Conservationists have voiced their dismay at these losses. ”The loss [of a species] is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time,” said Theodore Roosevelt. On the other hand, if we were to wipe out Aedes aegypti, we’d cut down on the diseases they spread. But could there be unintended consequences? Would exterminating this species of mosquitoes backfire? Would their absence create some new ecological problem? That’s what researchers wanted to know when they studied the biting midge, a tiny bloodsucker that can spread diseases to animals and filarial worms to humans. What we learned, says Dina Fonseca, a professor of entomology at Rutgers University, is that the biting midge is the only known pollinator of cacao. ”If we were to eradicate that particular disease vector, we may not have chocolate by the end of it,” says Fonseca. ”Which a lot of people would consider a catastrophe.” Humans haven’t completely eradicated a mosquito species yet and studied the consequences. So we asked mosquito experts to speculate: Should we paint a target on the back of Aedes aegypti? ”It’s sad the passenger pigeons were lost,” says Andrew Read, a biologist and entomologist who specializes in the ecology and evolutionary genetics of infectious disease at Pennsylvania State University. ”But did ecosystems collapse? No. Did anything bad happen? We just lost a pigeon, that’s a shame.” ”If we took out Aedes aegypti, that would be something,” he adds. ”Nothing good comes from them, just that people get really sick.” Fonseca feels similarly. ”I’m not worried about eradicating an invasive mosquito. It’s an urban species that specializes on feeding on people,” she says. ”The result of removing them is health to humans and more people.” Who are these mosquitoes that bedevil the human race? Aedes aegypti live in tropical and   regions. They probably hitchhiked to the Americas in the 1600s on ships coming over from Africa. And they thrive in urban environments, especially in poor areas where people don’t have running water. These mosquitoes like to lay their eggs in containers where people store water. Half of the mosquitoes that hatch stay around the house. The other half don’t stray far enough to places where bats or birds might have a chance to eat them. It would be impossible to predict with complete certainty how ending this   species of mosquito could affect the ecosystem. For one, there hasn’t been much research around this topic. But the evidence scientists do have shows the impact would be small. Aedes aegypti are not a big food source for animals, and they don’t pollinate plants. ”There’s been lots of debate in the last 10 years whether we should eradicate mosquitoes, or at least the 100 species or so that serve as disease vectors for humans,” says David Magnus, director of Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics. ”If you look at the science, the majority [of scientists] think we could probably eliminate mosquitoes without too much harm on the environment.” Fonseca says that she knows of some animals that increase their body mass by feeding on mosquito larvae  —   like migratory birds and fish in the Arctic. But she doesn’t know of any species completely dependent on a particular mosquito. That’s not to say that everyone’s on board with wiping out even one type of mosquito. ”When push comes to shove I don’t think most people are just going to be comfortable with the idea of eliminating a species just because we might be able to,” says Bruce A. Hay, a professor at the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech. ”We have to make every effort to be humble in recognizing the limits of our knowledge,” warns bioethicist Magnus. ”We ought to be very careful before we do anything that has irreparable consequences.” Nonetheless, he’s on the side of elimination when it comes to Aedes aegypti: ”I think you could make a pretty good case. As long as we’re aware of the consequences of the change, it could be consistent with our obligations to being good stewards of the environment.” Jorge Rey, professor at the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, agrees. ”We don’t know what the impacts are of eliminating these mosquitoes, but I wouldn’t make an argument for keeping them, either,” he says. ”Eliminating the disease is priority one. Despite the consequences, it still has to be priority one.”"
"Saturday night was a great time for victory speeches. The winners in Nevada and South Carolina each gave one. Some of the losers did, too. Two candidates who had been fading in the latest polls came back to win  —   and crow about it. Several others who fell short of their hopes still claimed to have exceeded expectations. And on the Republican side, even the fifth and   finishers claimed to find encouragement to continue their quests. But after many months of campaigning led up to the first three voting events, the next 10 days will bring more than a dozen states where candidates have not been able to spend extensive time campaigning. Those next 10 days may well decide which of these confident Saturday night pronouncements were specious, and which lead on to success at the party conventions in July. Who Really Won? Donald Trump was the only candidate over 30 percent in South Carolina, the state where the GOP primary has picked eight of the party’s last nine nominees. Although Trump’s huge lead in the polls shrank a bit in the late going, he still won by double digits over the last two senators in the race, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who were locked in a virtual tie. Trump gave an expansive and triumphant speech, even passing the mic around to family members. And why not? Trump has now erased memories of the speed bump he hit in Iowa on Feb. 1. And in his victory speech he returned to his theme of winning, and to the immigration issue that has been his lodestar since entering the race. ”We will build a wall and who’s gonna pay for it?” Trump shouted. ”Mexico!” screamed the crowd. Trump said he had met with a delegation from Mexico who said their country was not at all interested in paying for any wall. ”Guess what?” Trump shot back. ”That wall just got 10 feet higher.” The crowd loved it. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton finished about 5. 5 points ahead of Bernie Sanders. It was an underwhelming margin when compared with her big edge in the polls here last year. On the other hand, it was a most welcome relief after the drubbing Clinton took in New Hampshire on Feb. 9. Winning on Saturday was also a relief because Nevada experts had refused to pick a winner here as the caucuses began on Saturday. The uncertainty on caucus day made her eventual win and modest margin look a lot better. You could say Clinton benefited from her lowered expectations here, and she herself hit that note at the start in her remarks. ”Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other,” she said. And she proceeded to detail her appeals and plans for the voters who had largely rejected her in the voting in three states so far  —   white working class males, and young voters of all races and both genders. ”We’re going to build ladders of opportunity in their place so every American can go as far as your hard work can take you, Clinton said. ”This is your campaign, and it is a campaign to break down every barrier that holds you back.  Who Acted Like Winners Anyway? But if Trump and Clinton spoke to the winning occasion, others did as well. After losing by a hair’s breadth in Iowa this month, Sanders took the stage to talk about how far he had been behind in that state last summer. After a smashing win in New Hampshire, Sanders took the stage to assay the same theme. And he did so a third time in Las Vegas Saturday night. ”We have come a very long way in nine months. It is clear to me, and I think most observers, that the wind is on  —   at our backs,” Sanders said. ”We have the momentum. And I believe  —   I believe that when Democrats assemble in Philadelphia in July, at that convention, we are going to see the results of one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States.” Cynics may ask how long Sanders can make a mantra of comparing his vote totals to his awful poll numbers from last year. But his message about rising inequality still has much of its magic, and it has greater force when one notes Sanders reported raising $21 million in the most recent filing period. Clinton managed only $15 million in the same period. On Saturday, Sanders reprised his   performance among millennials, who again gave him more than 80 percent of their votes. But the younger voters were outpolled in Nevada by those over 45. The   and older voters preferred Clinton, especially those over 65. Clinton also tallied nearly 60 percent among those who identified as Democrats. Sanders won the voters who said they were independents or Republicans. That distinction could begin to pinch in states that only let the Democrats vote in the Democratic primary. Rubio, Cruz In Dead Heat, Much like Sanders, Rubio has been turning a mixed bag of results into a victory speech on a weekly basis. Saturday night was no exception, as he finished second (or tied for second with Cruz). Falling 10 points behind the winner put no damper on Rubio’s   summation. ”After tonight this has become a   race, and we will win the nomination!” said Rubio, taking the stage with his wife and children and his brace of backers, Sen. Tim Scott and Gov. Nikki Haley. Cruz was the last of the major candidates to speak. He came to the stage with a posse of conservative members of Congress and religious leaders, as well as his wife and two daughters. ”Friends, once again, we have made history,” Cruz said. ”You, the good people of South Carolina and our incredible volunteers all over the country, continue to defy the pundits and to produce extraordinary results.” Candidates Out Of Money, Three candidates wound up with little to show for the immense investment in South Carolina. One, John Kasich, echoed Rubio saying the contest was now a   race. But in Kasich’s formulation, there was still room for four  —   including himself. Kasich will probably campaign through March 15, when his home state of Ohio votes. He can also claim now to be the last survivor of a   current or former governors who were part of the original field. Also on the ropes but vowing to carry on was Dr. Ben Carson, the pediatric neurosurgeon who emerged from early debates as a fascinating   candidate and political neophyte. His poll numbers dwindled after the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris refocused the campaign issue mix. That left the man who had begun the process last summer with the biggest war chest and the fullest resume of government service, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Scion of the nation’s leading Republican dynasty, Bush seemed to need only to acquiesce and watch him stroll to the nomination. He easily outraised all other candidates in 2015. But Bush descended in the polls after a series of lackluster showings in the televised candidate debates. By the time the voting came in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Bush was off the  . ”I respect their decisions, and tonight I am suspending my campaign,” said Jeb, the man some once thought the premier political talent in his famous family. The last time the Republican Party won the White House without someone named Bush on their ticket was 1972. This year, it appears they will get to try again. Where Do We Go From Here? Next week, Sanders can expect to take a beating in South Carolina, where Clinton remains in the driver’s seat. She benefits there from the predominance of the   vote, which she won   in Nevada. That should set up a Super Tuesday in which Clinton rides a steady dominance among black voters to win in the South. Sanders will be better positioned in Minnesota, Massachusetts and his own home state of Vermont. After commanding performances in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Trump can expect to dominate the rather   GOP caucus in Nevada next week and sweep his earnings into the   extravaganza on March 1 that’s called Super Tuesday. It’s difficult to see how either Cruz or Rubio can overtake him so long as they’re locked in a mutual chokehold. Rubio can of course claim now to be the establishment candidate of choice. His last rival for this lane, John Kasich, will not likely be viable in the Southern states on Super Tuesday, but he should compete in the four or five primaries outside the region. But even if Kasich were to drop, would Rubio inherit Bush’s entire vote? Perhaps, and the Florida connection helps. But Rubio has made no friends in the Bush clan during this contest and his rather condescending salute to his former mentor on Saturday night may not be enough to heal that wound. Cruz, for his part, is still the top choice for those who tell exit pollsters they are ”very conservative.” But as he mines this rich vein, he finds himself sharing it with Trump, who ran strong among both the ”very conservative” and the   ”born again Evangelical” voters in South Carolina."
"Donald Trump posted a decisive victory Saturday night in South Carolina, a conservative state that on its face should have been inhospitable to the New York billionaire, but was anything but when voters went to the polls. And Hillary Clinton pulled off a badly needed win in Nevada, besting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with an older, more diverse electorate in the state’s caucuses. As we dive into the entrance and exit polling data, here’s four takeaways from the results. 1. Evangelical voters have faith in Donald Trump  If the often vulgar real estate mogul was going to falter anywhere, it should have been the Palmetto State. Evangelicals made up an even higher percentage of the vote than they did in Iowa, and the 72 percent of     Christians that voted in the state was even higher than the 65 percent that made up the electorate four years ago. Among those most religious voters, Trump triumphed with 33 percent of the vote, compared to 27 percent for Ted Cruz and 22 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. A loss among that voting bloc is a particular blow for the Texas senator, who stumped heavily in the evangelical upstate in the race’s closing days, speaking at churches and faith gatherings. While the reliably Republican voting bloc isn’t monolithic  —   they obviously also care greatly about national security, immigration and other concerns. Still, Cruz hoped he could expose Trump’s true colors on social issues to them, heavily airing an ad that showed the reality TV star boasting in 1999 on NBC’s ”Meet the Press” that he was ”very  ” Trump had threatened to sue for defamation over the ad, saying he’s now  . Cruz also thought he could sway voters his way after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, casting doubt on what type of justices a President Trump would appoint to the bench. But none of those arguments worked. In fact, 76 percent of voters said religious beliefs mattered in casting their vote  —   and a 31 percent plurality of those voters cast their ballot for the   often   reality TV star who has maintained he’s a Christian, even though he still says he’s never asked God for forgiveness. 2. Republican voters like some of Trump’s most controversial proposals on banning Muslims  One of the most   statistics of the night  —   almost three quarters of voters said they supported Trump’s suggestion to put a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U. S. in the wake of terrorist threats from ISIS. Terrorism was the most important issue among GOP voters in the state, with 32 percent listing it as their top concern. In Iowa, the top issue was government spending, and in New Hampshire Republicans were most concerned with the economy and jobs. Buoying Trump in the state was a severe animosity for the status quo  —   a whopping 92 percent said they were frustrated or angry with the federal government Trump won   of those voters. Some of the controversies in the closing days of the race surrounding Trump were again Teflon for him. After he dinged former President George W. Bush for his handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and his decision to invade Iraq, many thought he was doing damage to himself with the state’s significant military veteran base. But in fact, he won a decisive 35 percent of the state’s veterans. That’s a bloc which the former president’s brother, Jeb Bush needed to do well with, but won over just eight percent. After a disastrous finish, the former Florida governor withdrew from the race Saturday night. 3. Political outsiders may have an advantage, but there’s a window for an establishment candidate like Marco Rubio  The Florida senator treated his narrow second place finish as a victory, and there was indeed some good signs for Rubio from the exit poll data that could bode well for him going forward in a shrinking GOP field, especially with Bush’s withdrawal. Voters were nearly evenly split as to whether they wanted someone with government experience (47 percent) or from outside the political establishment (48 percent) in the Oval Office. Among those who valued some type of political experience, Rubio triumphed with 38 percent of the vote, compared to just 4 percent for Trump. There’s an opening for Rubio, too, on immigration. He’s been needled by his rivals for his past support of the Senate’s comprehensive immigration bill that allowed for a pathway for citizenship, but 53 percent of voters said they backed some type of legal status  —   and Rubio carried those voters with 31 percent of the vote. Among voters who broke late, they decided to go with the young Florida senator  —   he carried Republicans who decided in just the last few days (23 percent) and those who decided just on Saturday (16 percent) who to pull the lever for. Some of that boost came from his late endorsement from Nikki Haley, the state’s popular governor. A quarter of voters said her pick was important to them, and Rubio carried those voters by 45 percent. 4. In Nevada, Clinton benefited from an older, more diverse electorate  After only narrowly edging out Sanders in Iowa and being crushed by him in New Hampshire, the former secretary of state finally got a more decisive victory under her belt. The electorate in the Silver State was older  —   63 percent were over the age of 45. And Clinton won those voters by a    margin. Sanders triumphed big with younger voters, winning those under the age of 44 by a nearly    margin. While both Iowa and New Hampshire were mostly white electorates, Nevada was the first time either candidate faced a more diverse voting bloc. There’s some discrepancy over who won Latino voters  —   entrance polls gave Sanders an edge but Clinton carried the most heavily Hispanic parts of the state. But Democrats also had a significant   bloc (13 percent of the electorate) that came out to caucus. Clinton won those voters overwhelmingly, 76 percent to 22 percent for Sanders. Her dominance with black voters is one reason she’s heavily favored in polls for next Saturday’s South Carolina Democratic primary. And many of the Southern states that will vote on March 1st on Super Tuesday, or   ”SEC Primary,” also contain a high volume of   votes."
"Authorities in Kalamazoo, Mich. are piecing together clues from a weekend shooting spree. At least six people are dead after multiple shootings in three different locations in the area on Saturday night. Police arrested    Jason Dalton. He worked as an Uber driver  —   and may have logged some hours on Saturday, according to local reports. In addition to those killed, two other people were shot: a woman standing outside her apartment building who is expected to survive, and a    girl reported to be in critical condition. Several hundred people attended a vigil Sunday night that was held by local churches, according to Rick Pluta of Michigan Radio. Pluta also reports that Dalton is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday. ”Authorities could not say what they believed motivated him to target victims with no apparent connection to him or to each other,” The Associated Press reports. At a news conference Sunday morning, Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey Getting said officials believe the attacks were random, with bullets striking people who happened to be in the wrong place when the rampage started. When asked whether he viewed the violence as an act of terrorism, Getting said no. The victims range from four women who were shot in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant to a father and son who were at a car dealership, according to local news TV WWMT. The    girl now in critical condition was also shot at the restaurant. Police had initially listed her as a fatality, causing a discrepancy in reports about the attack. Calling the shootings ”a senseless act of violence,” Gov. Rick Snyder has ordered state buildings to fly the state and U. S. flags at   for the next six days, to honor the six who died. Kalamazoo Public Safety Chief Jeff Hadley says Michigan police arrested Dalton, and they believe he alone is responsible for the killings. Earlier, based on descriptions drawn from surveillance video and eyewitness statements, police said they were looking for a white man in his 50s, driving a blue Chevrolet HHR. On Sunday, reports emerged that Dalton may have been a driver for Uber  —   and the   service has now confirmed to NPR that this is indeed the case, and that Dalton, who police have said did not have a criminal record, had passed the company’s background check. From Uber’s chief security officer, Joe Sullivan: ”We are horrified and heartbroken at the senseless violence in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Our hearts and prayers are with the families of the victims of this devastating crime and those recovering from injuries. We have reached out to the police to help with their investigation in any way that we can.” Reports about Dalton driving for Uber included at least one indication that he might have been driving clients on Saturday. A smartphone screengrab posted to Facebook appears to show his face and first name in Uber’s app. That trip was canceled. ”Several people have said that Dalton was their driver for Uber,” WWMT reports. ”We have also found that someone may have had an experience with him during an Uber ride yesterday.” Last night, a woman used Facebook to urge others not to ride with the man, saying her fiancee had gotten out of the car after the driver had sped through stop signs and driven into oncoming traffic, reports the Kalamazoo Gazette. The Michigan State Police has identified victims of Saturday’s attack at the Cracker Barrel, saying that occupants of a Chevrolet Cruze and an Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan had been fired upon. Here are the names of four people who died at the restaurant, from the state police: Kalamazoo Public Safety on Sunday also identified a father and son as the two victims killed at the car dealership. They are Richard Eugene Smith, 53, and Tyler Daniel Smith, 17, both from Kalamazoo. The state police also say a    girl and an adult woman are critically injured. The teen had been a passenger in the front seat of the Chevrolet. Kalamazoo Public Safety says of the suspect: ”His demeanor was   upon arrest, according to the prosecutor. He was cooperative. Acts committed were intentional.   handgun was found in suspect vehicle.” Dalton’s neighbors in rural Cooper Township not far from Kalamazoo expressed shock. Sally Pardo, who lives across the street, says, to her, the married father of two was just ”a normal guy.” ”We sure wouldn’t have suspected anything. We were shocked. Absolutely shocked.” Pardo’s husband, George, says Dalton bought a gun a few years ago to deal with prowlers, and he did fire it a couple of times. WMUK’s Gordon Evans tells our Newscast unit that Dalton was taken into custody more than six hours after the first shooting: ”The shootings began at an apartment complex where one woman was injured. ”Two men were then killed outside a car dealership and four people were shot to death in the parking lot of a restaurant. ”A Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Department official told the Kalamazoo Gazette that it appeared the gunman was driving around and shooting people randomly.”"
"At pretty much any Lady Gaga performance, you can count on spectacle: whirling lights, elaborate sets and many, many costume changes. When she took the stage at the Grammy Awards this year, things were no different  —   except that she was deploying her famous pipes in the service of another artist’s music. As she pinballed through David Bowie’s catalog in a   tribute to the late icon, it was a reminder that the    Gaga is as much a chameleonic overachiever as her hero. After six Grammys of her own, a Golden Globe for her role on American Horror Story: Hotel, duets with Tony Bennett, a Super Bowl national anthem and one very famous meat dress, there appears to be little that the woman born Stefani Germanotta cannot do. And yet, she recently surprised herself. Alongside veteran hitmaker Diane Warren, Gaga   the song ”Til It Happens to You” for the 2015 film The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape on college campuses. The track is up for an Oscar, but the bigger breakthrough is a personal one. Like Warren, Gaga is a survivor of sexual assault, and says the decision to work on the song didn’t come easily  —   but that once it was out there, stories from other survivors came flooding in, some prefaced with the admission that they’d never felt comfortable sharing their experiences until now. Lady Gaga joined NPR’s Michel Martin from New York to talk about songwriting that hits close to home, how artists and fans benefit from mutual support, and what David Bowie meant to her as a teenager gazing on the cover of Aladdin Sane for the first time. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below. Michel Martin: I want to start off by talking about ”Til It Happens to You,” which is nominated for an Oscar. I know it’s not easy to talk about, but may I ask how you came to be involved in this project? Lady Gaga: ”Til It Happens to You” is something that has come out of a group of women coming together, who decided that they wanted to make a change. And that’s me and Diane Warren and Bonnie [Greenberg] who was the music supervisor. When we first started talking, I was really not sure what to do. I have a very uncomfortable relationship with this topic because it’s so personal to me, and I didn’t know if I was ready to be a part of it. And as soon as I met Diane and she started to talk to me about what she wanted to do, I knew that I had to be brave, and I had to help tell this story to the world. So, Diane and I met in New York City. She played me this song idea that she had started, and I immediately started crying. I was really unsure, even in that moment, if I was going to be able to do it. And she said, ”Well, I want you to make it your own. I want it to be something that you feel connected to.” And we started to change the song together  —   make it something that reflected both of our experiences with sexual assault. I guess it’s a long story, but what I’m trying to say is that it’s a quite complicated one. And it starts with me, when I was a young girl: I had this traumatic experience, and it’s sort of coming full circle now, and really ending in a way for me, as I’m healing from it in writing this song with Diane. Have other artists come to you since you recorded this song to talk about this issue? It just seems as though a number of people in your industry have had similar experiences and didn’t talk about it for years, or ever. Yeah, there are. I wouldn’t reveal names of anyone that came to me personally to express that they had been through something similar. But there’s a lot of people, men and women all over the world, who have experienced sexual assault not only on campuses and not only in the music industry, but within their own families and within their own relationships. It has been kind of overwhelming for both Diane and I, the amount of letters and people on the street that stop us to talk about this song and to tell us how much it means to them. I’ve had reporters tell me about their experiences with sexual assault in interviews, and they’ve told me, ”I’ve never ever told anyone that but you.” You know, that’s a powerful thing to witness. As an artist, and also through your foundation, you’ve worked on some really raw and emotionally complex issues. Given that you have a voice you can use to elevate a topic, how do you decide what you want to talk about? Well, I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to. In terms of my involvement in ”don’t ask, don’t tell” and marriage equality and   and social emotional learning in schools  —   these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans. I listen to them, I meet with them, they write me letters I’m in tune with what people want to change in the world, and I want to be a part of moving that forward. I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you. I imagine that’s draining, emotionally and physically. How do you manage that work and still do all the other things you do? I guess I don’t really think about it that way, you know? This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means. When I was 22, putting out my first couple records, I was a baby  —   and nobody really views you as any type of role model or anything. But as you get older, you realize that you have the attention of a lot of young people. And you think, ”OK, well, what should I say now? What can I say that will be impactful in a positive way?” You know, just bringing it back to ”Til It Happens To You”: What happened to me happened 10 years ago. And then I became famous like overnight, it felt like, and I never really had time to deal with my issues. As soon as you start to make money selling your music, there’s a lot of people around you that are very excited about what you have to offer financially to business, and they start to maybe forget that there’s a person underneath all of that. [So] my team now, they spend every day making sure that I am healthy and happy and that I am able to focus on the things that I love. We have to talk about David Bowie and your tribute to him at the Grammys this year. He’s somebody you’ve been compared to in some ways: constantly reimagining yourself, testing the boundaries of presentation. Your performance actually used computer graphics to draw his famous lightning bolt on your face as you sang. How did you get to this point? Well, the moment that I saw the Aladdin Sane cover for the first time, I was 19 years old, and it just changed my perspective on everything, forever. It was an image that changed my life. I remember I took the vinyl record out of the casing and I put it on my vinyl player  —   which was on my stovetop in my kitchen, because I was living in this really tiny apartment and I had my turntable on my stove. ”Watch That Man” came on and, I mean, that was just the beginning of my artistic birth. I started to dress more expressively. I started to go to the library and look through more art books. I took an art history class. I was playing with a band. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is, my friends and I in New York, we’ve lived a lifestyle of total immersion in music, fashion, art and technology since we were kids  —   and this is because of him. I just would never be here, or have the philosophy that I have, if I didn’t have someone to look up to that you know blew my mind so intensely. You know the way that Nile Rodgers talks about Coltrane, and the way that Coltrane makes him think about jazz? That’s how David Bowie is for me. You meet or see a musician that has something that is of another planet, of another time, and it changes you forever. I believe everyone has that, don’t you? That one thing you saw as a kid that made you go, ”Oh, okay. Now I know who I am.” How do you feel now that the tribute is over? I mean, it had to come together so quickly, and it was so complex and had so many layers to it. How do I feel now that it’s over? I mean, I feel like my whole career is a tribute to David Bowie. So it’s not! It’s ongoing, right? It’s still going. I’ve been watching his videos all day long, and also listening to Blackstar, his last album, which is a truly incredible piece of music. It’s one of the single greatest things an artist has ever done: making a masterpiece album that is their own eulogy. Can you imagine? To go into the studio every day and put your heart in that place, where you are saying goodbye to life? I mean, his art made him strong."
"A decision to bar Canadian citizens from being future contestants on TV’s Jeopardy quiz show is causing a range of reactions in Canada, particularly among those who note that show host Alex Trebek has dual citizenship in the U. S. and Canada. Media outlets in Canada recently noted that their country is singled out in Jeopardy’s eligibility guidelines: ”At this time we are precluded from accepting registration information from Canadian residents. We are currently evaluating this matter.” That led the Toronto Star to note, ”Trebek may be one of the only Canadians on Jeopardy! next season.” The situation is being attributed to differences in online privacy laws  —   but some Canadians aren’t buying it. Here are the two   comments on the CBC’s story about the ban today: That CBC story, we’ll note, was under the headline, ”I’ll take Bummer for $400: Canadians no longer allowed on Jeopardy.” An Ontario native, Trebek told the Ottawa Citizen last week that while Canadian contestants have been on the show in the past  —   and more are also competing in the current season  —   ”for the most recent Jeopardy! contestant tryouts, Canadians were precluded from taking the online test, since the show must now comply with new rules set down by the Canadian government.” But Trebek also noted that once they’re in the pool of contestants, people stay there for 18 months, meaning that Canadians who registered before the ban could still appear. He also said the show’s producers hope to make sure it is in compliance with Canada’s laws. The precise snag that’s keeping Canadians from signing up for future episodes of the show isn’t being discussed in detail. Reports in Canadian media cite a statement from the producers of Jeopardy! in which they said, ”As international laws governing how information is shared over the internet are   and complex, we are currently investigating how we can accept registrations from potential Canadian contestants.” Citing two legal experts, the Star says the law in question could be Canada’s   legislation, which carries potential penalties of up to $10 million for abuse. The newspaper reports that the law, enacted in July of 2014, ”forbids companies from emailing citizens without their express or implied permission. In the U. S. it’s enough to allow customers to  .” One other notable piece of online privacy legislation that recently took effect in Canada is the Digital Privacy Act. Enacted last summer, it sets rules for how personal information can be collected, used and disclosed. It also regulates how companies handle cybersecurity breaches and sets steep fines for companies that don’t handle them properly. When The National Post asked the office of Canada’s Privacy Commissioner how many complaints Canadians had filed about Jeopardy! potentially violating their privacy, spokeswoman Tobi Cohen replied, ”I can tell you that our office has not been engaged in this matter.”"
"”The commandment ’Thou shalt not kill’ has absolute value and concerns both the innocent and the guilty,” Pope Francis said Sunday, urging that the death penalty be abolished. Addressing a crowd of the faithful who were gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Pope Francis said, ”All Christians and people of goodwill are called today to work not only for the abolition of the death penalty, but also in order to improve prison conditions, in respect for human dignity of persons deprived of liberty.” Speaking the day before an international convention for the abolition of the death penalty is set to begin in Rome, Francis appealed to the conscience of world leaders to work toward an international consensus to abolish capital punishment. From Rome, NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports: ”He also proposed that Catholic politicians make what he called a courageous and exemplary gesture and ensure that no convicted inmate is executed during the church’s Holy Year of Mercy, which ends on Nov. 20. ”Francis has repeatedly stressed the position upheld by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, that there is no justification in modern society for the death penalty,” Pope Francis’ remarks about the death penalty and prison conditions came after delivering the Angelus at noon Sunday."
"One Muslim man in Minnesota is on his own personal mission to undermine ISIS. Mohamed Ahmed works as a gas station manager in Minneapolis. But he’s dedicated much of his time to creating cartoons that explain Islam  —   and why ISIS is wrong. He’s the creator and voice of a cartoon character he calls Average Mohamed. For the past four years Ahmed has been producing these online cartoons to try to counter the ISIS message. In Minnesota in particular, with its large Somali community, ISIS has had the most success in finding recruits. The state leads the country in the number of people seeking to join the terrorist group. Ahmed, who came to the U. S. from Somalia 20 years ago, is betting that   Average Mohamed can help stem the flow. He spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin about why he’s so dedicated to this cause. On how he came up with the character, Well it’s simple, I’m an average guy with four children, a wife . .. and a mortgage. And what is it that the average people know that basically can help in this process? Because it is average people recruiting each other and becoming extremists. So we felt like it’s the same way we need an average guy espousing the values of majority Muslims. So Average Mohamed was a   because Mohamed is the most common name in the world. On the message and people’s response, Well it’s a  . The whole platform is a   platform. And the message is about the values: three principles. One is peace, second one is democracy and the third one is  . So it is a way to talk to the youth without veils. And we try to connect with them. [We’re getting an] enormous amount of support across faiths, gender, race. On reaching the right people with the   message, Well I’ve actually accomplished that. Where a kid comes up to me and says  —   like for example the concept of suicide bombing. They said, ”Well suicide bombers go to heaven,” I said, ”No, go back to your teachings.” Who’s got to be lying, is it the teachings of the prophet himself who’s lying, or is it the teachings of Islamic State,   and whoever these outfits are? And it starts bothering them. These people are curious. Because I do outreach with the kids  —   I actually go to schools, mosques, madrasas. And the kids, they’re looking at Syria. These are mostly Minnesota Sunni Muslims and they have a side they support. And they’re wondering, how can we do something about that? Well I tell them, ”You don’t have to pack your bags and go join with ISIS. You can join the U. N. club, you can write to your senator, you can start a food drive.” We give them options. And we say, ”Look, this is within democracy. These are the powers and the choices you have.” And we drill down that message. We drill it down by speaking plainly. What world do we want? I want a world without extremism. And I’m willing to work on it. I’m willing to talk about it, I’m willing to put my money on it. So there’s a clear and present choice between the voice of democracy and the voice of extremism. And democracy should stand up on its values and that’s what I believe in."
"There are three statues in the United States honoring Dr. James Marion Sims, a   physician dubbed the father of modern gynecology. Invisible in his shadow are the enslaved women whom he experimented on. Today, they are unknown and unnamed except for three: Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey. This week, we talk with historian Vanessa Gamble and poet Bettina Judd as we grapple with the troubling history of medical experimentation on African Americans. The Hidden Brain Podcast is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Kara   Maggie Penman and Max Nesterak. To subscribe to our newsletter, click here. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, @karamcguirk,@maggiepenman and @maxnesterak, and listen for Hidden Brain stories every week on your local public radio station. This story was updated to include the names of professors Vanessa Gamble and Bettina Judd, who are featured in this episode."
"His body wasted from AIDS, Fred Muzaya sat up in his bed on a January morning at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, and faintly smiled at a doctor he couldn’t see. A former taxi driver, Muzaya, 26, may have been infected with HIV several years ago, perhaps more. But it was only months ago that he finally went to a doctor  —   when a pain in his head that had started several weeks earlier became too much to bear. The culprit: cryptococcal meningitis, a fungal disease of the brain and spinal cord. A   opportunistic infection, crypto is a threat primarily to those with HIV who lack access to the antiretroviral therapy that can keep the virus in check. A healthy immune system can fight off crypto with ease. But in Muzaya, who had never taken the drugs, the fungus had spread unchecked, impairing a process critical to survival: reabsorption by the brain of cerebrospinal fluid. Over time, the fluid, which is continuously produced, built up in Muzaya’s skull, slowly squeezing his brain. Bedridden by an unrelenting headache, he became disoriented and, soon, his hearing and eyesight began to fail. By the time he arrived at Mulago, Muzaya was completely blind and nearly deaf. Gently, Dr. Reuben Kiggundu, an infectious diseases specialist, took Muzaya’s head in both hands and, as though calling out to a miner trapped below ground, spoke directly into one ear. ”Can you hear me, Fred?” he asked loudly in Luganda, the language spoken most widely here. Moments later, and loudly enough for all on the ward to hear, Muzaya called out: ”Doctor! I have no complaints!” Then he curled up in a fetal position for the procedure he needs nearly every day: a lumbar puncture, or spinal tap, to relieve the pressure in his skull. Muzaya lay still while Kiggundu moved a gloved thumb over his lowermost vertebrae and slid a needle through the tissue in between. As clear fluid rushed through the syringe and into a vial, Muzaya let out a sigh. ”The relief is immediate,” Kiggundu said. ”They feel so much better after we do the LP. But tomorrow he’ll probably need another.” AIDS, we often hear, is in retreat. According to the latest report by UNAIDS, the United Nations’   agency, more than 15 million people worldwide are taking antiretrovirals. New infections have fallen by 35 percent since 2000 AIDS deaths are down sharply. If progress continues, say officials, the epidemic could soon be brought to an end. And, yet, to clinicians across the developing world, cases like Muzaya’s are frustratingly common. They’re difficult to manage and most often fatal, and they point to what some experts say is a blind spot in efforts to end the epidemic: a persistent failure to catch the many patients who, for any number of reasons, either fall through the cracks along the ”cascade of care”  —   the journey from an HIV diagnosis to suppression of the virus  —   or, like Muzaya, come in for testing only after they’ve fallen ill. Indeed, for all of the progress in expanding access to care, fewer than half of the 37 million people infected with HIV worldwide have been reached with antiretrovirals. And while retention in HIV care has greatly improved, roughly a quarter of adult patients in Africa are ”lost to  ”  —   they have stopped taking the drugs and are unreachable  —   or deceased within two years of starting treatment, a product, in large part, of the stigma still firmly attached to a positive status. That’s one reason crypto remains a menace. Globally, the disease claims an estimated 300, 000 lives every year, roughly 20 percent of all   deaths. In fact, according to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, crypto annually kills nearly as many people in   Africa as tuberculosis  —   and more in a month, every month, than the worst Ebola outbreak on record. Yet experts say it may also be the easiest to tackle, especially with the advent of a new rapid test called the Cryptococcal Antigen Lateral Flow Assay, or CrAg LFA. ”The key is to identify those patients who are infected before they ever get sick,” says David Meya, a senior lecturer in infectious diseases at Uganda’s Makerere University and the principal investigator on a study that looks at using the new test in Uganda. Developed by Immuno Mycologics, a. k. a. Immy, a   company in Norman, Okla. the CrAg LFA is designed to work in settings where crypto is most prevalent  —   where doctors are scarce and electricity is unreliable. Unlike other diagnostic tools, the CrAg LFA requires no refrigeration, laboratory infrastructure or skilled technicians. Similar to a pregnancy test, it uses a dipstick and a test tube to detect the presence of an antigen (a substance that is highly predictive of the development of cryptococcal disease) in cerebrospinal fluid, blood or urine. It’s easy to use and interpret  —   one line is negative, two is positive  —   and it’s faster and more accurate than anything on the market. But the greatest boon is that the CrAg LFA can detect a cryptococcal infection weeks to months before a person develops symptoms. That makes it possible for patients to avoid not only the awful symptoms but also the     hospitalization. ”That is the key driver of costs,” says Tom Chiller, deputy chief of the CDC’s Mycotic Diseases branch. This CDC group has been working with ministries of health in Africa and Asia to design screening programs around the CrAg LFA. ”We know that if countries screen and immediately treat those who test positive, they’re going to save lives and save money.” Multiple studies have borne that out. Care for a single crypto patient in Kampala, for example, typically runs in excess of $400. By comparison, the estimated cost of saving one life by screening patients with the CrAg LFA and treating them with an antifungal drug called fluconazole, comes to less than $40. In late 2009, Jeff Klausner, then chief of   care and treatment for the   Africa, called Chiller about startling data he’d seen on the fungal killer. ”Tom said, ’We’ve been working on this for five years and no one from the AIDS programs have reached out to us,’ ” remembers Klausner. ”I said, ’Well, here I am. ’” Chiller told Klausner about the CrAg LFA, then under evaluation, ”and I was like, boom. This is a home run.” Months later, Klausner briefed CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden on the situation, ”and he got it very quickly,” he says. ”He called it ’one of our winnable battles.’ He said ’OK, this is feasible, it’s   let’s figure out how to scale it up. ’” Since then, though, momentum has stalled. To date, 16 countries have included CrAg screening in their national guidelines and drawn up plans for a program. But few have actually procured the $2 test or begun to use it in routine HIV care. And only one, Rwanda, has rolled out screening at the national level. ”Policymakers think if they just focus on HIV testing and treatment, crypto will no longer be an issue,” says Klausner. ”And I think that’s somewhat based on denial that the systems in place are not working well enough.” Donors, too, he says, have looked the other way, focusing instead on ”upstream” interventions that prevent new infections  —   like the development of an HIV vaccine. ”Maybe they don’t understand the problem, maybe they don’t see the   of it, I don’t know,” he says, ”but they’ve dropped the ball on this.” ”Even people within the field will tell you that crypto is going to go away,” adds Angela Loyse, an infectious diseases researcher at St. George’s University of London. ”I’ve been hearing that since I started out in 2006. How long can you say it? To my mind, it’s just not acceptable.” But Chiller is optimistic that a champion will step up. ”We think countries can sustain screening for a relatively small amount of funding,” he says. ”They just need the   money  —   $5 million to get it going, get people trained, get the supply chains in place. An organization that’s willing to   CrAg screening in these countries could make a really big difference.”"
"If all you had to go on were his songs, you might think Marlon Williams was some   crooner from the bygone American West. In reality, he’s a    from New Zealand with a Maori   dad, who happened to fall in love with the music of Gram Parsons and Bob Dylan. ”I’d just started writing [songs] for the first time,” he says, ”and country music just seemed like the most obvious way to communicate.” Williams’ new   album is a   blend of rock and American roots music. He spoke about it with NPR’s Rachel Martin hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"Some churches have become inclusive of gays and lesbians, but for transgender people, church can still feel extremely unwelcoming. A congregation in Phoenix is working to change that by focusing on the everyday needs of its members  —   many of whom are homeless trans youth. It starts with a free dinner every Sunday night with donated homemade and   dishes. ”There’s no shame. There’s no judgment. It’s here to help. We’re about health and wholeness,” says the founding pastor, Jeffrey Dirrim, as he points to countless toilet paper rolls on the table for anyone to take. It was toilet paper week. ”And you need toilet paper, we’ve got toilet paper.” The congregation, called Rebel and Divine, has a mission: To reach   youth. It grew out of a Christmas shoe drive years ago and it now serves about 200 attendees a month under the umbrella of the United Church of Christ. The attendees are people in their midteens and   gay and lesbian kids, homeless kids, and especially transgender kids  —   people often unwelcome at other congregations. Katrinna Alexandros says until she started attending, she didn’t know she could be friends with Christians. ”My whole life, it’s just been Christians are the ones who hurt everyone, and here it’s not,” Alexandros says. She was raised a strict Southern Baptist and a boy in a conservative, religious town in rural Kentucky. At the age of 9, she realized she was trans. Although she never officially told her late mother, she says her mom always knew. But Alexandros felt it was religion that kept her mother from fully embracing who Alexandros was. Now, as a    Wiccan, Rebel and Divine is the only church she can imagine herself attending. ”There’s no other place like it. It is a place that you can be yourself and get help and help others,” she says. There may not be readings from the Bible or the mention of the name Jesus, but there is a reliable, consistent togetherness. Sydney Harrison doesn’t identify as male or female, and uses the pronoun ”they.” Harrison says Rebel and Divine gives them something in their lives they can always count on. Harrison comes here both for basic supplies like toothpaste and for human connection. ”Just coming in and getting hugs from everyone does a big difference for me,” Harrison says. The    is very connected to their mom, but says many here aren’t so lucky. Some of the young people here ran away from home. Others were kicked out. ”We’re there for each other, and we love each other,” Harrison says. ”Even as unconventional as we might be or as crazy or as hectic as it might be, we’re still family, at the end of the day.” Rebel and Divine is a family these young people are choosing and where they support each other. Dirrim hopes they will always feel safe. ”Know that you are blessed, that you are loved, and that you are never, ever alone,” he says to the attendees after the meal. He reminds them that no matter what, they are worthy. ”And if anyone has told you otherwise, they were wrong. You are. And if you question that, come talk to me.” With that, the congregation heads out, many of the kids with heaping plates of leftovers. ”We broke the bread, we shared the cup tonight. We had community that came together with a family of choice, and we talked about hope and love and joy,” Dirrim says. ”Many who came in here wounded still walked out of here today with smiles on their faces. And that is church to me. ” It’s an ancient pattern of Christian worship. People gathered, shared a word of grace, and a meal  —   and then Dirrim sent them back out into the world, with a blessing."
"Hillary Clinton won the Nevada Democratic caucuses, and Donald Trump earned a decisive victory in the South Carolina Republican primary. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush dropped out, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have been locked in a tight fight for second place. You can catch up with the results and find out what they mean at elections. npr. org and NPRPolitics. org. In case you missed it, here’s how the day unfolded, in photos:"
"The former head of the National Security Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden, says U. S. intelligence agencies got it wrong when they concluded Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and they should take the blame for that, rather than the White House. ”It was our intelligence estimates” that were incorrect, Hayden says in an interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel. ”We were wrong. It was a clean swing and a miss. It was our fault.” Hayden, a retired Air Force general, ran the the National Security Agency in the   to the Iraq War in 2003. He later served as deputy director of National Intelligence and then as director of the CIA. His   tenure in these top intelligence positions was no ordinary decade. In addition to the Iraq War, there were the Sept. 11 attacks, the expansion of NSA data collection and the investigations into claims of torture by CIA interrogators. Hayden writes about this period in a new memoir, Playing to the Edge. You dispute the commonly held belief that Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials sold the idea Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It wasn’t the White House, you write. No, not at all  —   it was us. It was our intelligence estimate. I raised my right hand when [CIA Director George Tenet] asked who supports the key judgments of this national intelligence estimate. I actually spoke to Leon Panetta much later. He was coming to take my job at CIA and I said, ”Leon, I’ve looked at a lot of the things you’ve written while you’ve been out of government. You said that we buckled under pressure with regard to the Iraqi [national intelligence estimate] the weapons of mass destruction.” And I said, ”Leon, that was us. We were wrong. It was a clean swing and a miss. It was our fault.” After Sept. 11, President Bush authorized the NSA to intercept and collect communications, what we now call metadata. Does government have business storing these records? What we had was a mass of American phone calls. Phone bills, actually, records of calls. These are put  —   for want of a better word  —   into a lock box and they are not accessed until we have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that we’ve got a dirty phone number, one associated with terrorism. All we did then was simply  —   and I’m kind of speaking in cartoon form here  —   we get to yell through the transom and say, ”Hey! Any of you numbers in here ever talked to this to       in Yemen?” And if a number in the Bronx got up, timidly raises its hand, so to speak, and says, ”Well, yeah, I talked to him every Thursday,” we then get to say, ”Well, who the hell do you talk to?” And Robert, that’s the limit of that program. That’s all it did. . .. And it was accessible by about two dozen people at NSA whose access to the database had keystroke monitoring on it. Now, look, any power in the government can be abused. But what you’ve just described is an equally powerful argument against arming policemen. That can be abused too, Robert. We actually need to give the government some power. If NSA contractor Edward Snowden had access to so much data, doesn’t his own behavior perversely prove the risks of storing so much information? It’s a powerful argument. That’s exactly right. That the mere possession  —   not the abuse  —   because no one has shown any evidence of abuse of the metadata program. And when there has been abuse of other aspects of NSA activity, they have been identified,   and punished within the agency. Snowden had no access to metadata. Snowden had no access to operational traffic. Snowden had no access to the actual intercepts that NSA was collecting. Snowden was on the administrative side of the program. That’s why so many of the things journalists have put out using the data he stole have been inaccurate  —   because they are a misreading of briefings and slides that existed on the administrative side of NSA and not the operational side. What did you tell Leon Panetta, your successor as CIA director, to say about waterboarding? I simply said: ”Do not use the word ’torture’ and ’CIA’ in the same sentence ever again. You can object to some of the enhanced interrogation techniques. You can, in your heart of hearts, believe they meet some legal definition of torture. But Leon, you’re taking over a workforce that did these things in good faith. They did these things with the assurance of the attorney general that they indeed were not torture. Do not accuse them of felonies.” Look, I get it. Honest men differ. A lot of good people describe these things as torture. The definitive legal judgment under which the agency was operating and you know sooner or later, Robert, someone has gotta call balls and strikes and that’s the way it is. Should one take a very legalistic view of torture rather than say what you did was wrong? That’s a totally honorable position. I get that. What I don’t get is someone who says, ”By the way, it didn’t work anyway.” I would say we got information from the people against whom we used enhanced interrogation techniques. We moved them from a zone that was pretty much represented by defiance to a zone where they were more compliant, more willing to talk about the things we believed we needed to know to keep the country safe."
"Nevada is a complicated state. Especially if you’re a Republican politician looking to appeal to the state’s increasingly wide variety of conservative voters. There are sprawling, diverse urban centers like Las Vegas and there are places on the side of highways that you could miss altogether if you were busy changing the radio. Lovelock is one of those places. It’s a rural town of about 2, 000 people in the northern part of the state. There are six churches, a few bars and one stoplight in town, surrounded by miles of desert and sage. To get an idea of the type of people who call it home, look under the seats at the Pershing County Courthouse, and you’ll find wire hangers to store your cowboy hat during proceedings. Mining, farming and ranching are the big industries in Lovelock, as they are in most of rural Nevada. Conservative values are the political flavor. In Lovelock’s Cowpoke Cafe, almost all the clientele identify as Republicans or independents. But there’s little consensus on who, if any, of the five remaining Republican presidential candidates best speaks to the place. John McMullan likes Donald Trump, he says, because ”He’s done something. He’s a businessman. Rest of them haven’t done much, have they?” Christine Ballard thinks differently. ”Donald Trump appeals to the lowest common denominator,” she says. ”He’s a sexist blowhard.” Ballard, who works in mining, says she supports Ted Cruz. Another miner, who prefers not to be named, grumbles that he thinks Cruz is full of . .. Well, you get the idea. Folks here in Lovelock don’t mince their words. That’s especially true when it comes to the issue of public lands. If there’s anything in Lovelock that everyone can agree on  —   besides the quality of the prime rib at the Cowpoke  —   it’s the idea that the federal government has an outsized presence in rural Nevada. ”They own 85 percent of Nevada and they want more,” says Jack Cooney. ”They want it all.” That sentiment is shared in most of Nevada’s rural towns and counties   and in a lot of the rural West   where people are angry about mining restrictions to protect the sage grouse population, and grazing regulations because of drought. That’s not to say that people here are like Cliven Bundy, the rogue rancher who led an armed standoff with the federal government over grazing fees, or his son Ammon, who led the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, but people here sympathize with their plight. ”What the Bundys did, I don’t agree with,” says Bing Wesner. ”But their reasoning for doing what they did was correct.” The Republican Field and Public Lands, People like Wesner want to see the Republican presidential candidates talk about public lands more in their campaigns. To date, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has taken the strongest stance on the issue, saying he supports the idea of returning federal lands to the states. He’s even put out television ads featuring photos of weathered Nevada ranchers, herds of cattle and the Texas senator himself, boldly declaring in a yellow flannel shirt: ”If you trust me with your vote, I will fight day and night to return full control of Nevada’s lands to its rightful owners: Its citizens.” When it comes to the public lands issue, other Republican candidates have been more cautious. In an interview with the Des Moines Register’s editorial board, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that he thinks the federal government owns entirely too much land, using Nevada as an example, but he didn’t say he’d transfer ownership back to the states. Ben Carson told the Las Vegas   editorial board that he would ”advocate returning lands to the states.” Republican frontrunner Donald Trump went the other way, telling Field and Stream Magazine that he doesn’t like the idea at all. That may seem puzzling, because there’s little doubt after meeting with Nevada’s rural voters that public lands is the big issue for them. If you want their support, saying you’d transfer federal lands to states seems like pretty   fruit. So why not? The reason, says Eric Herzik, the chair of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno, is that it might hurt a candidate more than it helps. Nevada is not as rural as you might think. Not even close. In the 2010 census, 94 percent of the state’s population lived in urban areas. And while that rural, outlaw, libertarian spirit still lives on in those urban places like Las Vegas and Reno, it’s not nearly as intense there as it is in a place like Lovelock. ”You’ll have plenty of people that want to shrink the size of government, but they don’t necessarily go along with the rural agenda as well,” says Herzik, referencing the idea of transferring federal lands to the states. ”These more pragmatic Republicans, I’ll call them, say that means the state has to manage [that land]. And pay for it.” Herzik says that’s not an appealing proposition for a fiscal conservative, who doesn’t live in a rural area. Squaring those two ideologies  —   between the state’s traditional, rural conservatives and its growing urban conservatives  —   is the challenge facing the Republican candidates in Nevada today. ”Can they create this broader coalition?” Herzik says, of urban and rural, new and old. Nevada’s Changing Character, Washoe County is probably the best example in Nevada of a place where those two worlds meet. With nearly a   residents, it’s the   populated county in the state. In its southern end are Reno and Sparks, the only two incorporated towns in the county. Further north it’s rural. Adam Khan, the chairman of the county’s Republican Party, says he’s seen it go from a mostly rural area to an urban and industrial center, with more young people and   . ”Now we have companies like Tesla and Switch that are coming here,” he says. ”We’re becoming more of a   place.” The issues conservative voters care about have changed with the times. Instead of grazing fees or federal lands, younger voters in Washoe County such as Khan are more worried about net neutrality and government surveillance. Even though that may seem a world away from the concerns of folks in rural places like Lovelock, Khan says it’s not. ”We don’t want to be told what to do with the government,” he says. ”We don’t ever have to even deal with the government.” The question is, which Republican candidate will best be able to harness that sentiment  —   in all of its forms  —   before Tuesday’s caucuses."
"Americans craving kung pao chicken or a good lo mein for dinner have plenty of options: The U. S. is home to more than 40, 000 Chinese restaurants. One could think of this proliferation as a promise fulfilled  —   America as the great melting pot and land of opportunity for immigrants. Ironically, the legal forces that made this Chinese culinary profusion possible, beginning in the early 20th century, were born of altogether different sentiments: racism and xenophobia.   sentiment was rampant in America in the early 20th century  —   and had been since the latter half of the 19th century, when as many as 300, 000 Chinese miners, farmers, railroad and factory workers came to the U. S. Many   workers felt threatened by these laborers, who often worked for lower wages. Amid mounting social tensions, the U. S. passed immigration laws that explicitly barred Chinese laborers from immigrating or becoming U. S. citizens, and made it extremely difficult for even legal residents to   the U. S. after a visit home to China.   But, as MIT legal historian Heather Lee tells it, there was an important exception to these laws: Some Chinese business owners in the U. S. could get special merchant visas that allowed them to travel to China, and bring back employees. Only a few types of businesses qualified for this status. In 1915, a federal court added restaurants to that list. Voila! A restaurant boom was born.  ”The number of Chinese restaurants in the U. S. doubles from 1910 to 1920, and doubles again from 1920 to 1930,” says Lee, referring to research done by economist Susan Carter. In New York City alone, Lee found that the number of Chinese eateries quadrupled between 1910 and 1920. Lee was digging through old immigration records in 2011, as part of her doctoral dissertation, when she discovered evidence that this legal change had fueled a rise in restaurants. She found a flood of applications from Chinese immigrants after 1915 seeking merchant status to start up restaurant businesses, along with applications from others brought over to work in these establishments. Prior to the restaurant loophole, Lee says, most Chinese immigrants in America worked in laundries  —   they were excluded from   options. But by 1930, they were more likely to be toiling in eating establishments. ”The scale of it increases astronomically,” she says. Many Chinese immigrants to the U. S. were men who had come alone: They were here to earn money to support families back home, not to settle down permanently. Once in the U. S. however, it was all but impossible for them to travel back to visit loved ones in China. After 1915, the visas that came with working in a restaurant became bridges to families and friends back in China, Lee says. ”It was really important for [these men] to be able to move back and forth, to get married and retire someday. That was the idea. These special visas were critically important,” Lee says. Even so, getting a special merchant visa was far from easy, Lee explains. Only the major investors in a restaurant qualified  —   and it had to be a ”high grade,” fancy eatery. These investors had to manage their restaurants full time for at least a year. During that time, they couldn’t do any menial work: no cooking, waiting tables or ringing up the cash register, she says. Lee says Chinese immigrants found ingenious ways to get around these hurdles: They would pool their money to start luxury ”chop suey palaces,” then each investor would take turns running the joint for a year or 18 months. Once they’d earned merchant status, the investors would use it to bring their relatives over to work in the restaurant. Lee explains how it worked: ”Your cousin, your uncle has helped you over and is giving you a job. He’s supposed to show you the ropes. Then you move up the hierarchy until you earn the money to be a partner in your own restaurant.” Lee’s research focused on New York City (she’s writing a book about the rise of restaurants there in the 19th and early 20th centuries). But she says the immigration dynamics were similar in other urban centers with large Chinese communities, like Chicago and San Francisco. In order to make these schemes work, Chinese restaurateurs also had to loop in the white vendors they worked with: Lee says Chinese immigrants had to have two white witnesses support their visa applications. In practice, she says, this turned into a quid pro quo situation: A small group of white vendors would secure the restaurants’ business, and in exchange, they’d vouch for the investors. ”I found the same six vendors’ names over and over again” on old immigration documents, she says. ”It’s quite a different story than [the usual explanation] about why Chinese were opening restaurants during that period,” Lee tells me. That standard explanation points to a confluence of cultural forces. For one thing, as historian Yong Chen notes in Chop Suey, USA, Chinese food’s cheapness made it an affordable luxury and helped democratize the dining out experience. The late hours observed by Chinese restaurants were also a draw  —   especially to bohemians, whose patronage lent these establishments a certain cachet. By 1910, ”going out for chop suey made   Americans feel pleasantly naughty,” write Lisa Stoffer and Michael Lesy in Repast, their history of dining out during that era. Cultural historians also tell of the rise of ”slumming parties”  —   groups of   suburbanites and    in New York who’d pay for tours of Chinatown, where the supposed ”depravity” of the place was the main attraction. And some point to New York Jews who shook off the old country and embraced Chinese food as a sign of their own modernity. All of these factors played a role, Lee says, but they’re not the whole story. ”While going to Chinese restaurants did play into an emerging worldview, what’s really   is the primary motivation for the Chinese,” Lee tells us. That motivation was the same then as what still drives many immigrants in America today: to save, get ahead and send money to family back home."
"You might expect the middle of the Pacific Ocean to be a pretty quiet place, especially a thousand feet down. But it turns out that huge parts of the ocean are humming. Scientists have puzzled over the source of the sound for several years. Now, a marine biologist reporting Monday at a meeting of ocean scientists in New Orleans says she thinks her team may have figured it out. The discovery started with hydrophones. Marine scientists listen to the deep ocean by dropping these underwater microphones over the side of ships, or by putting them on buoys. Usually they hear what sounds like male humpback whales calling to each other at mating time, or the clicking signals of dolphins and other marine mammals. But a few years ago, those hydrophones picked up something weird out in the Pacific. The puzzling sound was faint, but continuous at certain times of day  —   just a few decibels above the background level  —   and definitely different from the normal sound of the ocean. It was 300 hertz and above  —   high for the call of a whale, and too continuous to be the signals of other marine mammals. According to Simone   a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, the nature of the sound was ”more as if you’re sitting on an airplane and it’s humming, buzzing.” The sound starts after the sun sets, she says, and goes on for a couple of hours, then stops. The same thing happens at dawn. Now, biologists knew that huge clouds of small fish and crustaceans and squid tend to hide in the dark, deep water during the day, and rise up nearer the surface to feed at night. This happens in all oceans in the mesopelagic zone, a   area of little light that stretches from about 660 feet beneath the sea’s surface to depths of around 3, 300 feet. It took hydrophones in the Pacific to reveal that the hum actually accompanies that daily rise and fall of the fish migration. Why the noise? Scientists can only speculate. It could be, says   that the creatures ”are truly, actively communicating  —   potentially to initiate migration.” In other words, maybe the buzz is just a signal that ”it’s time to go,” she says. But there’s another more mundane possibility. ”It’s known that some fish are considered to be farting,” says   ”that they emit gas as they change depths in the water column.” The gas comes from a swim bladder inside the fish that controls its buoyancy. In either case, billions of fish may be jetting up and down in the ocean every day, and making it hum. If so, it would likely be the largest migration of vertebrate animals on the planet,   says. She calculates that the weight of the fish amounts to some 10 billion tons. At the New Orleans meeting sponsored by the American Geophysical Union,   told colleagues the sound raises an interesting question. Why would the fish do this if, as you might expect, the noise would have the effect of a dinner bell, attracting large predators? Nobody knows, she says. ”We’re just scratching the surface in terms of understanding how important sound is” in the ocean."
"Screenwriter Meg LeFauve is having a very good year. She’s nominated for an Oscar as one of the writers of Pixar’s deeply original, animated movie Inside Out she wrote the screenplay for The Good Dinosaur and now she’s   the female superhero movie Captain Marvel. According to actress Jodie Foster, LeFauve’s mentor and   collaborator, her gifts as a writer mirror her gifts as a person: sensitivity combined with a ”keen, precise mind.” By now, a lot of people are familiar with the premise of Inside Out, which takes place largely in the mind of an    girl named Riley. The main characters are her emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. The original idea for the film came from the fertile imagination of Pixar director Pete Docter (Up, Monsters, Inc.) so LeFauve and her   Josh Cooley, needed to probe Docter’s mind to understand his vision. Among the questions LeFauve remembers exploring are: ”What is the mind? What does Pete see as the mind? What are the rules of this world?” LeFauve’s own research took her to the Los Angeles area preschool her children once attended. At Children’s Circle Nursery School, LeFauve says, teachers promote emotional intelligence. The theory goes that people learn better once they can regulate their emotions. ”We would sit down next to the child whose sand castle got kicked and ruined, which, to that child in that moment, would be like us doing a report on our computer and losing it, you know” LeFauve says. ”You would be upset.” Teachers would help the child by naming the feeling. ”’Wow, you took a long time to build that. . .. You’re sad,’ ” LeFauve recalls them saying. ”And then eventually they would move through it with you and regulate, just by you narrating back to them how they’re feeling.” LeFauve was both moved and impressed by the process, so she included a similar scene in Inside Out between Sadness and Bing Bong, Riley’s long forgotten imaginary friend. ”We were best friends,” Bing Bong says with a sniff. ”Yeah, it’s sad,” Sadness replies. Sadness empathizes with Bing Bong. She validates his feelings and lets him have a good cry. Eventually, his tears subside and he’s ready to move on, helping Sadness and Joy find the Train of Thought that will take them back to the headquarters of Riley’s mind. Inside Out has enjoyed widespread praise from critics and it’s already won several awards, including multiple Annies and a Golden Globe. Jodie Foster, LeFauve’s mentor, is a big fan of the movie. ”I loved Inside Out,” she says. ”And I was just so proud of her to have made a movie for kids and for families that doesn’t talk down to them.” That emotional maturity is one of the reasons Foster hired LeFauve to run Egg Pictures, the production company she founded in the early 1990s. Foster wanted Egg to tell smart,   stories. ”It was a way for me to see the intellectual and the emotional kind of come together in this perfect balance,” Foster says. Very quickly, she and LeFauve realized they shared the same mission and sensibility, and together they developed adventurous stories. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) for example, was a    film that mixed animation with live action. In it, teenagers draw   comic books that come to life in wild and colorful animated sequences. Despite kudos from critics for its creativity, LeFauve had to work hard to defend the film. ”It was a tough movie to get financed,” Foster says. ”We lost our financing once and we had to go out and get some more. And that was a real good example of Meg’s elbow grease.” With that kind of tenacity, Foster isn’t surprised LeFauve is now a thriving writer, but she also could have become a studio executive. ”I can’t tell you how many opportunities she was given and how many people called me to say that they were offering her jobs,” Foster says. ”And she was very clear. . .. She knew she had a different path.” But LeFauve says it took her a long time before she had the guts to say the words ”I’m a writer,” even though she’d been writing since she was a little girl. ”I’ve found all the writings I did when I was in kindergarten . .. and my mother was very supportive of me writing a lot,” she says. ”And then I hit the classic stage of graduating from college and thinking, ’I’m not a writer. I have nothing to say. I can’t earn any money.’ ” LeFauve, who now mentors many aspiring screenwriters, believes her reluctance to begin writing earlier was simply a case of not feeling ready. To write ”authentically,” she says, ”You have to find a way to become comfortable with vulnerability.” After Egg Pictures closed, LeFauve attended the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. She worked with a writing partner and, like so many writers in Hollywood, penned a handful of unproduced screenplays. She says all of those years working with writers, actors and directors taught her how to approach a story: ”What I learned in those years that I wasn’t writing, I now use in my writing.” She sometimes wonders what her career would look like today if she’d started writing earlier, but she says, ”I think that life always knows what it’s doing.” Many would say, given all the recent accolades, LeFauve’s timing was just right."
"After disappointing finishes in presidential nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Jeb Bush suspended his campaign for president Saturday night. It was the end of a run that had seemed doomed for months: countless gaffes, merciless attacks from the likes of Donald Trump, seemingly limitless spending from a superPAC he couldn’t control with horrible returns from those investments and perhaps, above all, a candidate who seemed uncomfortable on the trail at best, and at worst, frustrated and unhappy. Already, the   are almost writing themselves. And there are a number of theories as to why ”Jeb!” failed in this campaign, especially after being the early favorite with all the conventional advantages. All of these theories, of course, acknowledge the effect of Donald Trump, the surprising success of his campaign and the damage his relentless attacks on Bush inflicted. But there are other reasons, as well. Over at FiveThirtyEight. com, Harry Enten outlined three theories of the Bush loss: 1. Not really the choice of party leaders: Bush, initially thought to be the choice of the Republican Party establishment, was actually never the clear pick. 2. Kasich also filled the policy wonk lane: John Kasich of Ohio filled the role of   agreeable and sensible Republican candidate much better than Jeb Bush did. 3. Bush fatigue: Everyone underestimated it even within the party. The Washington Post looked at Bush’s campaign from the inside over the weekend, speaking to several former campaign operatives about what went wrong. They, too, offer three theories: 1. Bush fatigue: Like FiveThiryEight, the Post names Bush fatigue as a big problem, but . .. 2. TV’s decreased influence: It also argues that the Bush campaign ”miscalculated the role and power of money and traditional television commercials in the 2016 race.” Basically, Bush’s team thought what worked 20 years ago  —   or even last cycle  —   in presidential campaigns could work today. But the rise of Trump, and his strategy of using earned and new media (just look at his Instagram) made much of those old practices obsolete. 3. Outdated  : And that leads to the third reason  —   running ”a campaign that, whether deliberate or not, was rooted in the past, managed by loyalists who admired Bush and enjoyed his confidence but who, like the candidate, found themselves in unfamiliar political terrain.” The article names several Bush operatives who allege the campaign had no clear strategy, no one really in control and no real way to deal with a political terrain vastly changed from the last time Bush ran for office. And they waited, the article claims, perhaps too long, to fully engage Trump. But, Bush, in his loss, symbolized much more than just a failed candidate to some. At NBCNews. com, Benjy Sarlin argues that Bush’s campaign suspension recognized the failure of an entire generation of the Republican Party. ”This was a candidate who stood for an entire generation of Republican Party building, who was the figurative and literal heir to the family brand that had graced nearly every GOP ticket for a generation,” Sarlin wrote. He continued, ”And he ceded the race to a candidate whose campaign was a walking insult to his family legacy and everything Bush’s supporters told themselves the party stood for.” Sarlin said Trump entered the presidential race, and   the Republican Party, at a time when Tea Party momentum had taken over, spurring the rise of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. When other candidates dropped out, they were easy to forget. They quickly faded away. You got to stop thinking about them. But with the Bush   there seems to be a desire to know more, to wonder what happens next or how his family accepts the news, what Barbara and George W. all have to say about it. Perhaps Matt Latimer at Politico put it best. ”I can’t help but think about this coming Easter or Thanksgiving,” he said, ”or the next event when the whole Bush family is gathered around in one place.” Kerric Harvey, editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics, spoke about this before with NPR, when she noted why it has been so easy to make fun of Bush during this election. ”The thing about Jeb is, he’s actually already his own political meme,” she said. ”He starts life as a political meme, because he comes to the digital world dragging his family behind him, his analog family story behind him. He cannot be separated from his own narrative.” And that might really sum it up. The story of Jeb Bush in this election has always been about much more than just Jeb Bush. It has been about his entire family, and whether one name should have that much control over the presidency. Or whether his brother’s war in Iraq was justified. Or whether his mother, Barbara, should actually run for president herself. Or whether he was Bush enough. Jeb Bush is a character in the ongoing soap opera that is his family, but also of the Republican Party, its direction and what Republicans want. And it seemed he never got to control the plot or write the script. He was neither the hero nor the villain, but instead the character you’re supposed to pity, the one always in someone else’s shadow. He was a supporting actor in a show that was never really about him in the first place. And that’s rarely a place where winners reside."
"When Jeb Bush suspended his bid for the GOP nomination, it brought to a close a chapter in American politics that has lasted nearly four decades. A period when the Bush family played a major role influencing the course of the country. The combined Bush family political stats just going back to 1980 are beyond impressive. Two presidents. One vice president. Two governors. Seven national campaigns. And there were lots of victories, but unfortunately for Jeb Bush, the most recent one won’t be going in the win column. It wrapped up among loyal, but sad supporters in a hotel ballroom in Columbia, S. C. As Jeb Bush began his primary night remarks on Saturday, it soon became clear he was bearing bad news. He would finish fourth place at     GOP contest. Not good enough to justify continuing. ”The people of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken,” he said. Then, occasionally choking back tears, he added, ”So tonight I am suspending my campaign.” But let’s start this journey almost exactly 36 years earlier. It was January of 1980, and the Iowa caucuses were fast approaching. Among the six candidates on stage were Sens. Howard Baker and Robert Dole, and former ambassador to China and the United Nations, former CIA chief, former congressman and former Republican Party Chairman George H. W. Bush. Skipping the debate was Ronald Reagan. It was Bush’s first presidential run and he declared, ”I want to be a part of the answer, not a part of the problem and that’s why I need your help as we go into these Iowa caucuses on January 21st.” He was well received in the auditorium that night, and on caucus day. George Bush would score a surprise victory, narrowly beating out Reagan. That strong showing was a big reason he became Reagan’s running mate. Eight years later, it was Bush’s turn. He won the nomination and beat Democrat Michael Dukakis to win the White House. During the 1988 Republican Convention, Bush spoke modestly of his military service as a Navy pilot in World War II. ”I say it without boast or bravado. I fought for my country. I’ve served.” But his most famous line of that speech was this pledge, ”Read my lips. No new taxes.” The applause was deafening, but it was a promise Bush would break as president. The reversal played a role in his defeat in his bid for   four years later. One of the triumphs of his presidency was his response to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990. President Bush pulled together a coalition of nations to respond. He delivered a   address, announcing, ”Air attacks are underway against military targets in Iraq. We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb potential. We will also destroy his chemical weapons facilities.” Operation Desert Storm was a success. Saddam Hussein was defeated. But he remained in power, setting the stage for another war in Iraq a decade later. In 1997, at the dedication of his presidential library at Texas AM University, the ceremony was opened by the state’s governor, George W. Bush. He praised his father: ”President Bush was a man who entered the political arena and left with his integrity intact.” When George W. Bush ran for president himself, some saw it as a way to avenge his father’s defeat. The 2000 election ended in chaos. Lawyers battled over the recount in Florida, where Jeb Bush was governor. It took five weeks and a U. S. Supreme Court ruling to declare a winner  —   George W. Bush was  . Al Gore conceded defeat. Bush spoke from the Texas state Capitol, saying, ”Our nation must rise above a house divided. Americans share hopes and goals and values far more important than any political disagreements.” But it was a nation bitterly divided into red and blue camps. Eventually Americans did rally behind the president, when terrorists struck on Sept. 11. President Bush addressed the nation: ”These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed. Our country is strong.” War in Afghanistan followed. But President Bush then went too far for many Americans when he invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The president delivered a speech in Cincinnati, warning, ”We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” The stated goal was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but none was ever found. As the war dragged on, public support plummeted. It also sent Bush’s approval rating downward, as did the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At one point his approval rating fell to 25 percent, according to Gallup, and voters drove Republicans from control in Washington. In an interview with Morning Edition in November 2014, the former president discussed the prospect of a third Bush presidency, as his brother Jeb mulled a run. He was asked about those who said the country didn’t need another Bush in the White House. He was candid. ”In many ways the name is a plus and some ways the name is a burden, and you just described one of the burdens.” But then he added, ”The environment is what it is. You don’t get to rewrite the environment. And so Jeb has to think about whether or not he wants to be president.” Which brings us to 2016. When he launched his campaign, Jeb Bush would often be asked about his brother and his father. He declared that he was running as his own man, but kept tripping on the family legacy. Especially Iraq. Bush had a hard time articulating what he would have done, and he wouldn’t criticize his brother. George W. made a very rare campaign appearance with him at a rally in North Charleston last week. His    mother, Barbara, also hit the trail with Jeb. They both remain popular with South Carolina voters and were very enthusiastically received, but to no avail. The biggest problem was that Jeb Bush seemed to be running the kind of race that might have worked in his father’s or his brother’s time  —   but not now. The Republican Party has changed dramatically  —   moving to the right and rejecting the establishment. The ground was shifting right under Bush’s feet. Over the weekend, you could hear Jeb Bush finally coming to terms with that as he wrapped up the final speech of a disappointing journey. ”Thank you for the opportunity to run for the greatest office on the face of the earth. I love you all, God bless you.”"
"When President Obama travels to Cuba next month  —   the first visit by a sitting U. S. president in nearly 90 years  —   it will mark a historic step on the path to normalizing relations with the island nation. While Obama is in Havana, two U. S. businessmen are hoping the president might spend some time with them  —   or even take a seat on a prototype of the tractor they plan to assemble and sell in Cuba. Horace Clemmons of Paint Rock, Ala. and Saul Berenthal of Raleigh, N. C. have just received approval by the Obama administration to build the first U. S. factory in Cuba since the 1960 embargo. They plan to make tractors for small farms and have given their model a name any Cuban will recognize: Oggun. That’s the name of a deity in the Santeria religion, the god of metal. As their business, Cleber LLC, gears up, they keep in mind some encouraging words they heard from a Cuban who visited their booth at a trade fair in Havana. He told them, ”You guys are doing something for the forgotten people of Cuba.” Clemmons, 72, and Berenthal, 71, have been business partners for decades. They worked for IBM for many years and then started their own software companies. ”I’d probably retire,” says Clemmons, ”but Saul keeps pokin’ me: ’Let’s go do this, and let’s go do that.’ ” Their new tractor business ties together the two men’s life experience. Berenthal is   the son of Jews who fled Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. He and his family left Cuba for the United States in 1960, when he was 16. ”[I] came over to the U. S. after the revolution,” he says proudly, ”learned to be a capitalist and made the American dream.” When Berenthal first heard the news about the diplomatic opening to Cuba, announced in December 2014, he recalls, ”Being Cuban, I said, ’This is the path to get Cuba into the 21st century.’ ” And when the U. S. loosened some trade restrictions on agriculture, Berenthal and Clemmons saw their opportunity. Clemmons grew up in rural Alabama and knows his way around a family farm. ”My grandfather farmed 40 acres with two mules and eight kids, and I often say, the kids did more work than the mules,” he jokes. ”I have drug an   cotton sack down the row pickin’ cotton by hand. I have walked behind mules to farm.” The partners have seen farmers in Cuba struggling to till their land with shovels and hoes, or livestock. They know that Cuba needs food the country has to import more than 70 percent of what it consumes. They figure as tourism expands in Cuba, the demand for locally produced food will only be greater. With parts manufactured in Alabama, they will assemble the Oggun tractor at the port of Mariel, in the new special development zone there. The Oggun is small, like a     with the engine mounted behind. If it looks   that’s because it is. It’s based on the old   Model G tractor, which was revolutionary when it was introduced, back in the 1940s. It was discontinued in 1955 when many U. S. farms outgrew its size. Berenthal admits that he and Clemmons did hear skepticism about their plan to bring a    tractor design to Cuba: ”One of the comments that was made to me was, ’Do you think people in Cuba are going to fall for this old American trick of bringing an old technology here and selling it and making money on it?’ ” To that, they respond that they’ve updated the engineering, putting new technology in that old frame. The tractor will be easy to assemble and, with an open source manufacturing model, will be easy to fix and maintain. Clemmons says their ”make it live longer” model sets them apart from other equipment companies that use patented, proprietary components. ”[The other companies’] business model is, plan for obsolescence: build a new, better widget and make ’em buy the new, better widget,” he says. By putting their Oggun design in the public domain, ”We’re just going completely opposite from that.” The partners will invest about $5 million to get their factory built and into production. They hope to start assembling tractors in the first quarter of 2017. They expect to build some 100 tractors a year to start, and ramp up to a thousand, not just for Cuba, but also for export to other countries in Latin America. The tractors will sell for about $8, 000 to $10, 000: a steep price for a small farmer in Cuba. Clemmons and Berenthal expect that Cuban relatives overseas will help chip in. They say the Cuban government may help with loans. They’ve also had inquiries from tourist resorts expressing interest in buying tractors so that farmers can supply more food for their guests. It’s possible that the next U. S. president could undo the Obama administration’s moves and reverse normalization to Cuba, putting their tractor business in peril. Berenthal and Clemmons shrug that prospect off. ”We don’t let fear get in the way of what is possible,” Clemmons says."
"Jason Dalton, the man police believe killed six people in a series of seemingly random shootings in Kalamazoo, Mich. late Saturday night, was charged Monday with six counts of murder, two counts of assault with intent to commit murder and eight firearms violations. Michigan Radio’s Rick Pluta reports from the Kalamazoo County courthouse that ”prosecutors say that Mr. Dalton admitted to the killings after he was read his rights and so it seems like they’re ready to move along pretty quickly.” Dalton, a    Uber driver, appeared via video at the arraignment hearing. He wore an orange jumpsuit and sat silently while the judge read the 16 counts against him. When the judge asked him if he understood the charges, Dalton answered, ”Yes, sir.” The judge then asked Dalton if he had anything he wished to tell the court about his connection to the community, to which Dalton responded, ”I would prefer just to remain silent.” Dalton was denied bail, and his next court appearance is expected to be a preliminary examination set for March 3. As the   has previously reported: ”Michigan State Police believe Dalton is the man who fired around 10 shots outside an apartment complex around 5:42 p. m. ET, wounding a woman who is now listed as being in serious condition. . .. ”The violence continued more than four hours later, when a father and son  —   Richard Eugene Smith, 53, and Tyler Daniel Smith, 17, both from Kalamazoo  —   were shot and killed at the Seelye Ford Kia car dealership. ”That shooting was reported at 10:08 p. m. Minutes later, the third shooting was reported, at a parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. That’s where police say four women were killed after two vehicles  —   a Chevrolet Cruze and an Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan  —   were fired upon.” The names of the four women were released Sunday: Mary Lou Nye, 62, of Baroda, Mich. (driver of Oldsmobile minivan) Mary Jo Nye, 60, of Battle Creek, Mich. (driver of Chevrolet) Dorothy Brown, 74, of Battle Creek, Mich. (rear   passenger of Chevrolet) Barbara Hawthorne, 68, of Battle Creek, Mich. (rear   passenger of Chevrolet). A    girl who was a passenger in the Chevrolet survived the shooting and is in critical condition."
"Victims of a shooting spree are being mourned in Kalamazoo, Mich. where Jason Dalton, the man suspected of killing six people Saturday, was arraigned Monday. Police are trying to determine a motive for what seem to be random attacks. Eerie details have emerged about the case  —   including a witness’s account of getting an Uber ride from Dalton, 45, who was a driver for the   service. The witness tells NPR that he rode with Dalton shortly before the suspect was arrested in the center of town  —   and that they briefly discussed the shootings. ”Dalton was driving for Uber that night and stopped after midnight to pick up Derek  —   who asked NPR to only use his middle name because he’s afraid of retribution from speaking about his encounter,” NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reports. That encounter occurred after midnight, more than six hours after the first of three shootings  —   and during a manhunt that had police on the lookout for a Chevrolet like Dalton’s. Here’s what Derek told Hansi: ”I jokingly said to the driver, ’You aren’t the shooter, are you?’ and he either shook his head or said no, and I said, ’Are you sure?’ ”And his response wasn’t like you would expect, like a laugh. It was just very calm and quiet. It was, ’I’m just tired. No, I’m just tired. ’” Dalton was arrested about a   later, Hansi reports. On Sunday, Uber confirmed that Dalton was a driver and had passed the company’s background check. Police have said he did not have a criminal record. Michigan State Police believe Dalton is the man who fired around 10 shots outside an apartment complex around 5:42 p. m. ET Saturday, wounding a woman who is now listed as being in serious condition. That woman, whose name hasn’t been released, is ”a hero,” Kalamazoo Sheriff Richard Fuller tells local TV news WWMT. Explaining that she was in an area where several children were when the shooting started, Fuller says, ”This person put themselves between the children and the shooter, right away.” The violence continued more than four hours later, when a father and son  —   Richard Eugene Smith, 53, and Tyler Daniel Smith, 17, both from Kalamazoo  —   were shot and killed at the Seelye Ford Kia car dealership. That shooting was reported at 10:08 p. m. Minutes later, the third shooting was reported, at a parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. That’s where police say four women were killed after two vehicles  —   a Chevrolet Cruze and an Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan  —   were fired upon. State police released the names of those victims Sunday: A    girl who was a passenger in the Chevrolet survived the shooting and was listed in critical condition late Sunday. Prayer vigils and remembrances were held for the victims last night. Gov. Rick Snyder has ordered Michigan’s state buildings to fly the state and U. S. flags at   for the next six days, to honor each of the six who died. On Monday afternoon, Uber’s Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan told reporters that Dalton had received positive feedback from riders and had a 4. 73 rating (out of 5). Sullivan said Dalton had cleared all background checks and received his Uber credentials on Jan. 25, completing more than 100 rides before the shootings late Saturday. Uber also defended the background check process, saying that no screening would have flagged the suspect because he had no criminal record. When asked about the timeline of Saturday’s events, the company cited the ongoing criminal investigation and declined to say specifically how many people contacted Uber about the suspect’s reported erratic driving, or when and how law enforcement discovered Dalton was an Uber driver. As the   previously reported, at least one person warned others against driving with Dalton in a Facebook post on Saturday evening. The company did say, however, that when it receives complaints about bad driving, it does not immediately suspend the driver’s account, as it does when it receives complaints of violence. Margaret Richardson, an attorney on Uber’s Safety Advisory Board, said she didn’t think it was ”equitable that Uber has to answer for Dalton’s alleged actions when another company in a different industry wouldn’t necessarily have to.” She also said that the focus on Uber’s safety policies was a distraction from the larger problem of guns in the hands of people who should not have them."
"As public health officials struggle to contain the Zika virus, science writer Sonia Shah tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies that epidemiologists are bracing themselves for what has been called the next ”Big One”  —   a disease that could kill tens of millions of people in the coming years. Citing a 2006 survey, Shah says, ”the majority of . .. pandemic experts of all kinds, felt that a pandemic that would sicken a billion people, kill 165 million people and cost the global economy about $3 trillion would occur sometime in the next two generations.” In her new book, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, Shah discusses the history and science of contagious diseases. She notes that humans put themselves at risk by encroaching on wildlife habitats. ”About 60 percent of our new pathogens come from the bodies of animals,” she says. Shah adds that international travel is also a factor in the spread of disease. ”Air travel shapes our epidemics in such a powerful way that scientists can actually predict where and when an epidemic will strike next just by measuring the number of direct flights between infected and uninfected cities,” she says. Looking toward the future, Shah says that epidemiologists can do more to identify potential outbreaks before they happen. But eliminating them altogether is another matter. ”Our relationship to disease and pandemics is really . .. part of our relationship to the natural world,” she says. ”It’s a risk we have to live with.” On our first response to new pathogens  A lot of times when we talk about being more prepared in preventing pathogens from spreading or preventing pandemics, what we’re really talking about is first response, stepping up our first response, so that when we have outbreaks of disease that our hospitals are prepared and we have vaccines stockpiled and we are able to fly our experts around really quickly to get to the scene of the outbreak, and things like that. But that’s not actually preventing these pathogens from emerging and from causing outbreaks. That’s kind of after the fire has started, then we rush in with our fire extinguishers. But to really prevent them would mean stepping it way farther back, and that is possible now, because . .. we know there’s certain places that have higher risk of pathogens emerging, and we can do kind of active surveillance in those places by mapping the microbes that are there, by surveilling people or animals who are more likely to spread or to have   of microbes into their bodies. . .. We have more advanced detection capacity now with genetic analysis and other kinds of ways that we can see where these invisible microbes are spreading and changing. On how most of our pathogens come from animals  From bats, we got Ebola from monkeys we got HIV, malaria, most likely Zika, as well from birds we got avian influenzas, all other influenzas as well, West Nile virus, etc. So it’s when we invade wildlife habitat or when we disrupt it in ways that brings people and animals into close contact, that their microbes start to spill over and adapt to our bodies. On how Zika emerged, I think Zika is a great example of how new pathogens are emerging today. It came out of the bodies of animals for many years, we had Zika virus in the equatorial forests of Africa and Asia. It mostly infected monkeys and possibly other creatures, too, but it very rarely came into humans. . .. We don’t know what the triggering event was that allowed Zika virus to start spreading into humans, but we do know what it exploited  —   and it exploited two things that a lot of other pathogens have exploited, too, which is urbanization and flight travel. So in the 1940s and ’50s and ’60s when we had Zika virus in the forests of Africa, it was carried by a forest mosquito and that mosquito very rarely bit humans, it mostly bit animals, which is why we didn’t have a lot of Zika virus in people, at least it’s one reason why. What we’re seeing now is Zika virus has crossed over into a mosquito called Aedes aegypti, and this is a mosquito that has expanded its range over recent years as we have urbanized. It specializes in living in human cities. It loves garbage, it can breed in a drop of water in a bottle cap . .. and it only bites humans. So once we had Zika virus coming into Aedes aegypti, this highly urbanized mosquito, that’s when we started having this explosive spread. Of course, it traveled from Asia. It came out of Africa. It came into Malaysia, and then probably into the Philippines, Micronesia and French Polynesia. And that was the sort of slow spread, but then the rapid expansion happened when it came from French Polynesia into Brazil, and that was almost certainly through a flight, either people from French Polynesia coming to Brazil for the World Cup or possibly an international canoe race. But whatever it was, it was on a flight that it came over, and from there it’s able to access these huge, highly urbanized populations and have no immunity, and that’s what created the epidemic. On the evolution of   bacteria  We’ve known since antibiotics were first developed that if we use them in ways that were not medically necessary that it would lead to the evolution of resistant bacteria. And yet, in this country, 80 percent of our antibiotic consumption is not medically necessary, it’s done for commercial reasons. When we have livestock farmers giving antibiotics in low doses to their animals because it fattens them, it helps them gain weight faster and that gets them to market faster, so this is a commercial use. And that’s the vast majority of the antibiotics that are consumed in this country are for that reason. . .. We’ve known this for years and we do have an increasing problem with   pathogens, which is a very serious problem where we’re running out of these drugs to treat these runaway infections, and we’re on the cusp of entering an era when we have no more antibiotics that work for some of these bugs. . .. We need to use antibiotics more rationally. We don’t do that now. That’s sort of the hardest part of it that we need to do. But the other part of it is we also need to develop new antibiotics to keep up  —   these pathogens are always going to evolve resistance eventually, so we always need to come up with new weapons to fight them. On why incidents of Lyme disease are increasing, Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria that lives in rodents and is spread by ticks. Now in the intact northeastern forest where Lyme disease first emerged, there used to be a diversity of different woodland animals there, like chipmunks and opossums as well as deer and mice and other things, but as we spread our suburbs into the northeastern forest and we kind of broke up that forest into little patchworks, we got rid of a lot of that diversity. We lost chipmunks, we lost opossums, and it turns out that those animals actually control tick populations. The typical opossum destroys about 6, 000 ticks a week through grooming, but the typical   mouse, which is what we do have left in those patchwork forests, a typical mouse destroys maybe 50 ticks a week. So the fewer opossums you have and the more mice you have, the more ticks you have and the more likely it becomes that this   pathogen will spill over into humans. And that’s exactly what happened with Lyme disease and now with many other   illnesses as well. On what scares virologists most  Novel forms of influenza are what really keeps most virologists up at night, because we are so good at spreading those around quickly, and it happens every year. We have a flu pandemic every year, and now we’re hatching all kinds of new kinds of flu viruses, mostly in Asia, and then they’re spreading across the globe, and we don’t have immunity to some of those. . .. Right now, a typical flu virus, the seasonal flu, will still kill a lot of people every year and it’s a real drain on our global economy. But we kind of put up with that, so if you had a new flu virus that even had a slightly higher mortality rate, you could see a lot more death and destruction because so many people get the flu. Think about the 1918 flu, which killed maybe 100 million people, maybe more, estimates vary, but certainly huge numbers of people died from that flu. The mortality rate was like 1 percent, which isn’t huge. It sounds like a small number, but when you think about how many people get the flu, that adds up to a huge number of deaths. So these new kinds of influenza, I think, are what virologists are most fearful of."
"In an interview, Syrian President Bashar Assad accused more than 80 countries of supporting terrorists in Syria, and he said he wants to go down in history as ”the one who saved his country.” Assad spoke to a reporter for Spain’s El País newspaper, who traveled to Damascus and filmed the interview on Saturday inside a residence there. El País said the visit took place amid heavy security measures. The newspaper posted a video excerpt and transcript of the interview on its website. The Syrian president’s comments come amid attempts by world powers to broker a pause in the fighting in Syria. The U. S. Russia and others hoped for that to occur last Friday, but the violence continues. Media reports on Monday said they were now aiming for a deal by Saturday. However, that would require agreement from the warring parties in Syria. Any deal would not include ISIS and the Syrian   affiliate, which could still be attacked. Assad said the Syrian government is willing to respect a truce, but he continued to maintain a list of conditions  —   including reserving the right to attack factions he calls terrorists. ”It’s about stopping the fire . .. but also about preventing the terrorists from using the ceasefire or the cessation of hostilities to improve their position,” Assad was quoted as saying. ”It’s about preventing other countries, especially Turkey, from sending more recruits, more terrorists, more armaments.” Assad uses a broad definition of ”terrorists” that includes all armed factions opposed to his government. Turkey and the U. S. back some rebels that they consider moderate. On the video, the Syrian president was asked about photos of a    Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, whose body washed up on a Turkish beach last year. His death focused international attention on the plight of the roughly 5 million Syrians who have fled their homeland. ”This is one of the saddest parts of the Syrian conflict, to have people leaving their country,” Assad replied. The Syrian government itself has been widely blamed for acts that have driven the refugee flow, including chemical gas attacks and the widespread use of indiscriminate ”barrel bombs.” Rights groups say Assad’s forces are responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in Syria. 5 Years Of Conflict, Next month marks five years since the start of demonstrations that grew into the Syrian civil war. More than a   people have died in the conflict, according to the United Nations. The Syrian president said that Russian and Iranian support have been ”essential” for the Syrian army. Asked about civilian casualties from Russian bombardment, Assad denied any such incidents. However, human rights groups and residents in northern Syria said Russia was involved in the bombing of several medical centers last week. The residents and the U. N. put the death toll at around 50 civilians. ”We don’t have any evidence that the Russians attacked any civilian targets. They are very precise in their targets,” he said. Assad denied that his regime is holding any opposition leaders in prison. ”All of them left [prison,] including some who were terrorists,” he said. However, a U. N. report this month detailed torture and death on a massive scale within the Syrian government’s prisons. It found tens of thousands of people are detained at any one time, and that state agencies   to cover up killings. Almost half of 500 former prisoners interviewed said they witnessed a death in custody. The same report found that extremist groups in Syria  —   ISIS and Jabhat    —   also killed detainees, though not on the same scale, and that other opposition groups for the most part do not systematically abuse prisoners. Assad went on to say that if his army could regain control of the whole country, he would like to form a national unity government, write a new constitution and hold parliamentary elections. As for where he sees himself in 10 years, Assad said: ”If Syria is safe and sound, and I’m the one who saved his country  —   that’s my duty.” ”I don’t care about being in power. If the Syrian people want me to be in power, I will be,” he said. ”And if they don’t want me. .. I have to leave right away.”"
"In the weeks since the world was introduced to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the full power of its diverse casting has been revealed. It has engaged millions who might have ignored the film after the prequels disappeared into the sarlacc pit of critical disdain. It’s brought a shine to the eyes of children who’d never seen their reflections in a story so grand and sweeping. And it’s led already addicted fans to talk and think differently about the franchise they love. Much has been written about the decision to cast   actor John Boyega as escaped Stormtrooper   whose race and even species are ambiguous in the film’s shooting script, and the fact that two of the film’s other leading heroes are played by a young woman and an actor of Guatemalan descent. It’s been noted that these choices reflect today’s diverse American population, expand the $30 billion franchise’s potential global audience  —   Star Wars has accrued nearly 150 million fans around the world, making its fandom the ninth most populous nation on Earth  —   and make the film a truer reflection of the present and future. But, of course, change has not been welcomed by all. Among those who see the whiteness and maleness of heroes as a divine right, these casting choices triggered some of the more virulent social media reactions of recent memory, a great disturbance rippling out to the farthest reaches of pop culture. This battle between factions  —   those accepting ”darkness” in their onscreen heroes (and, with it, openness, change and progress) and those stubbornly clinging to ”lightness” (and thus psychic closure, defiant   and often    racism)  —   played out multiple times throughout 2015, as other ”nontraditional” casting choices sparked similar backlash from the uglier crevices of the Internet. Michael B. Jordan as Fantastic Four hothead Johnny Storm? Human Torch is now black for some PC reason. Stick to the source material and stop the nonsense! Mehcad Brooks as Jimmy Olsen in the Supergirl series? Blackwashed again. Getting mighty fed up with this. Will not be watching. And, in what must have seemed like the ultimate final straw for casting purists, Noma Dumezweni as an adult Hermione Granger in the   Harry Potter stage sequel? Seriously f****** unhappy with this! Why do we keep changing characters’ race? Hardly any of these reactions challenged the skills or appeal of the actors in question, or whether they could play the roles effectively. Some fans simply couldn’t accept that the color of an actor’s skin conflicted with the character they had in their minds, underscoring that even in the genres of speculative fiction and fantasy  —   stories unrestricted by space, time and the limits of physics!  —   differences in race and ethnicity remain a twilight zone too forbidding for many otherwise imaginative individuals to traverse. They have no problem believing a man can fly. They recoil, however, when that man is black. Of course, Caucasian   aren’t the only ones accustomed to   heroes. Anyone who came of age on a diet of Western culture’s greatest hits is susceptible to the idea that when it comes to adventure stories, people of color belong on the sidelines (or down in the underworld). From our earliest storybook   every princess was a ”fair maiden,” every hero a ”white knight,” and if there was ever a villainous vizier, diabolical demon or traitorous Templar, he was invariably described as swarthy, dark or black. Disney’s animated tales often doubled down on the White Makes Right meme, with one royal named Snow White and another named Cinderella, who, invisible when darkened by the dirt and soot of her labors, cleans up as a glorious blond woman drawing every eye. And then there were the comic books, which over my lifetime evolved from kiddie fare to adult geek obsession to mainstream blockbuster fodder. Who doesn’t know the story of Superman, that musclebound alien from another planet who somehow managed to end up looking like a plausible cousin to Don Draper? Those of us who loved comics accepted that the caped crusaders of our   pulp fantasies  —   no matter how mutant or alien or   their backstories  —   had to be rendered in shades of pale, because that’s what the pages in our sweaty little palms told us to do. There is no sadder example of this suspension of disbelief than a recent New York Times   by Malaysian radio host Umapagan Ampikaipakan titled ”That Oxymoron, the Asian Comic Superhero.” In it, Ampikaipakan questioned the wisdom of the ”current push to draw diversity into comics.” Growing up in Malaysia, Ampikaipakan and his childhood friends were ”brown and yellow,” he writes, ”but we didn’t mind that our role models were all white.” In fact, rendering them otherwise might have been destructive, potentially ”undercutting the genre’s universal appeal.” That appeal was rooted in notions of the American dream  —   that is to say, the   dream: red for courage, blue for truth and white, well, because to Ampikaipakan and to all of us raised in a postcolonial cultural context, white is often the default shade associated with people who are heroic and good and just. Despite the increasing volume of calls to diversify pop culture, Ampikaipakan’s view remains the dominant one in media and entertainment. Whiteness remains universal,   ”normal.” To make a protagonist any other race or ethnicity requires an accounting for one’s actions. Take a look at what happened when Sony remade the classic musical Annie, based on the classic comic strip Little Orphan Annie, with   actors Quvenzhané Wallis and Jamie Foxx in lead roles. The endeavor was bombarded with complaints and questions about why a ”black Annie” was necessary. ”I wanna live in a colorless world but I will not stand for a black Annie. #EnoughSaid,” tweeted one skeptic. But here’s the thing:   classic characters as nonwhite may not always be as much of a stretch as the purists would have you believe. Take a closer look at some of the most popular comics franchises out here, and if you cock your head ever so slightly, you’ll start to wonder if white really is the only color that matches these stories. For starters, set aside the way Joe Shuster and hundreds of comics artists since have rendered Superman, and take another look at the hero’s backstory: a   refugee from a distant, exotic place, where people have weird, hyphenated names like   and  . Once he arrives in America, he is transracially ( ?) adopted by parents in the Heartland, and raised to ”fit in” with everyone else, but also to preserve and appreciate his hidden heritage. He moves to the big city, where he hides behind dorky glasses and displays a humble, passive persona to his  . But in his spare time, he embraces his true self, gathers with others like himself and lets it all hang out. To sum up? That dude Asian. A similar case can be made for   a     nerd named Peter Parker who gets bitten by a radioactive spider on a science field trip. Consider that Parker has always been depicted as being from Queens, home to the largest   community on the East Coast, and you could imagine his secret identity as ”Peter Park” instead. (Marvel may have had the same thought: In 2014, the company introduced a   member of the  : Cindy Moon, better known as Silk, who got her powers from the very same spider that transformed Peter Park. Er, Parker.) And then there’s The Hulk, the alter ego of a nuclear physicist who in an instant goes from celebrated scientist to accused traitor, hunted by the government, charged with allowing a   weapon of mass destruction to escape U. S. military hands. When I think of The Hulk’s origin story, I can’t help but recall the cases of Wen Ho Lee, Xiaoxing Xi and other   scientists who, in recent history, saw their careers transformed in a flash when they were accused of spying for China and hounded by federal prosecutors, charges that were in several cases later dropped (and linked to racial profiling). The point of these thought experiments is that, contrary to what defenders of    whiteness in pop culture will have you believe, it’s not impossible to imagine heroes of color  —   or to   existing heroes as another color. And, in fact, when we do so, it can move storytelling forward, into unexpected, undiscovered, unexplored territories. And isn’t that what these genres are all about? Of course, with the unknown comes fear and anxiety. For a lot of ”traditionalist”   and fantasy fans, the big worry seems to be that heroes who look like, well, everybody else will somehow become inaccessible and unrelatable. (Of course, those of us who grew up nonwhite can testify that it’s possible to empathize with someone you don’t look like.) And it’s absolutely true: Rethinking the default whiteness of heroic stories will fundamentally change them. Done properly, however, this can bring fresh energy, new texture and unexpected resonance to stories that have become hidebound, and free them from genre conventions that have become stifling. For example, the revelation that   is black opens up all sorts of intriguing potential backstory for the First Order’s Stormtrooper army. Most of the imagery associated with the First Order is inspired by Nazi Germany: The salutes, the uniforms, enormous rallies under giant    banners, the embrace of genocidal ”Final Solutions,” the term ”stormtrooper” itself. That’s nothing new. In popular culture, the Nazi aesthetic has long served as the signpost of ultimate evil, so much so that the Internet is littered with essays decrying this cinematic reductio ad Hitlerum cliche. But unlike prior generations of Imperial soldiers, the First Order’s Stormtroopers aren’t clones.   and his fellow legionnaires are forced conscripts, abducted as young children from their home planets. The fact that the First Order’s overseers are depicted as white humans, while the only Stormtrooper whose face we’ve seen is an abducted and enslaved black man, provides an opening. It raises a whole host of unsettling and fascinating new questions about what the First Order wants, and how it works, that future episodes will have a chance to answer. All of this adds specificity and gravity to the arousal of  ’s conscience, and his eventual emergence as Finn, our hero. Yet his quest for freedom and thirst for redemption remain unquestionably universal. They span not just galaxies, but time itself. And, of course, we shouldn’t discount Boyega’s performance: It’s brilliantly deft, fresh and fun to watch  —   arguably the film’s most nuanced and human turn. That’s what diverse characters, performers and creators can bring to the page, the stage and the screen. Having a wider and deeper pool of options makes it more likely that you’ll discover breakthrough talent like Star Wars’ Boyega, who’s not only a fabulous actor, but also wields the power to transform any story he touches in fresh, exhilarating ways. There’s also evidence that diverse storytellers can perform a sort of Jedi mind trick on us, the audience, helping over time to flush out the toxic abscesses of racial fear, hate and scorn that continue to plague America. Take a recent study of 2, 000 people who watched the Web comedy series Halal in the Family, a sitcom parody featuring The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi as the patriarch of a   family. The study, which was commissioned by the creators of the show and conducted by researchers from Seton Hall, the University of Washington and New York University, found that after watching the show, viewers had more favorable associations toward Muslim Americans, and less unconscious bias against them. That’s not the only research showing that diversity in pop culture has   impact. MIT professor Edward Schiappa found that after watching shows with queer protagonists  —   Will  Grace, Six Feet Under and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy  —   subjects were more likely to disagree with   statements and to see queer individuals more positively. There’s a good chance that your actual social network doesn’t include people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Surprisingly, even in an era of global digital connectivity, 91 percent of the average white American’s friends are white. But   protagonists can serve as something like friend proxies, providing what researchers call ”parasocial relationships” that help to (literally) color one’s perspective on reality. When we see characters whom we perceive as ”different” getting to do all the things human beings do in real life  —   kick butt in their careers, goof around with their kids  —   or go beyond, reaching for the stars and bending the universe to their will, it changes how we look at ”different” people in the real world. ”At this point, it’s a pretty unequivocal finding that TV can affect how people feel and think about others,” Schiappa told Code Switch last year. ”When you’re exposed to a wide variety of people in a certain minority group,” he said, ”your ideas about that group get more complicated.” The bottom line is that enriching pop culture with heroes of all colors, cultures, genders and identities doesn’t just make stories better  —   it may have the power to ultimately make us better as well. ”A black Stormtrooper, or a female Jedi, or even a suburban Muslim dad at first confound us, and then become unremarkable,” says Mik Moore, one of the creators of Halal in the Family. ”They provide evidence of what’s possible.” A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, it might have made sense to imagine that heroes had to look a certain way. That era is gone forever. There has been an awakening  —   and it’s time for the Force to come to balance. Jeff Yang is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal Online and a regular contributor to CNN, NPR and Quartz, but is   as Hudson Yang’s (Fresh Off the Boat) father."
"A newly released study suggests diversity in TV and film is so bad, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite should probably be changed to #HollywoodSoWhite. That’s because of an ”epidemic of invisibility” cited by researchers at the University of Southern California, who analyzed more than 21, 000 characters and    workers on more than 400 films and TV shows released from September 2014 through August 2015. They tabulated representations of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual status. ”We’re seeing that there’s not just a diversity problem in Hollywood there’s actually an inclusion crisis,” Stacy L. Smith, one of the study’s authors and founding director of the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said in an interview. The study, titled ”Inclusion or Invisibility? Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment,” found just   of speaking characters were female (33. 5 percent) despite the fact that women represent just over half the population in America. Just 28. 3 percent of characters with dialogue were from     groups, though such groups are nearly 40 percent of the U. S. population. With less than a week before an Oscars ceremony that has already been criticized for an   slate of acting nominees, the study shows the film industry does worse than television. Just 3. 4 percent of film directors were female, and only 7 percent of films had a cast whose balance of race and ethnicity reflected the country’s diversity. In broadcast TV, 17 percent of directors were female and 19 percent of programs were ethnically balanced. Broadcast TV also saw a number of TV shows featuring characters of color debut during the study’s tabulation period, including   and Fresh Off the Boat on ABC, Jane the Virgin on The CW, and Empire on Fox. Still, when researchers looked at all TV shows  —   including broadcast, cable and streaming services  —   they also found underrepresentation, noting that women of color over 40 were deemed ”largely invisible” and just 22 percent of TV series creators were female. Overall, the study found half the films and TV shows they analyzed had no Asian speaking characters and more than   of them had no black characters with dialogue. Just 2 percent of speaking characters were identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual, and more than half the LGBT characters in all the films they examined came from two movies. ”The film industry still functions as a straight, White, boy’s club,” the study states. In the interview, Smith says, ”I think we’re seeing, across the landscape, an erasure of certain groups women, people of color, the LGBT community . .. this is really [an] epidemic of invisibility that points to a lack of inclusivity across [film and TV].” When looking at how women are depicted, the study found female characters were four times more likely to be shown in sexy attire, three times more likely to show some nudity and nearly four times as likely to be referred to as physically attractive. But their results also indicated films and TV shows with women or people of color in the important jobs behind the scenes  —   director, producer or writer  —   tended to have better diversity numbers. Across TV and film, the underrepresentation of   characters falls mostly on Hispanics. Among more than 10, 000 characters whose race could be identified, proportions of white, black and Asian characters came close to U. S. population figures. But Hispanics were just 5. 8 percent of characters, despite being about 17 percent of the U. S. population, according to Census Bureau data. Researchers examined 109 films and 305 TV series across broadcast, cable and digital platforms. They also looked at more than 1, 500 executives and graded 10 media companies for their onscreen and behind the scenes representation of women and people of color. None of the six film distributors evaluated  —   21st Century Fox, NBC Universal, Sony, The Walt Disney Company, Time Warner or Viacom  —   received a passing grade for inclusion. But among the TV companies they examined, Disney and The CW performed best, at 70 percent. The study’s authors also suggest solutions for the lack of diversity, including creating target goals for inclusion that would be public and drawing up lists of potential hires for writing and directing jobs that would be 50 percent female and 38 percent people of color. ”It’s about who is greenlighting those decisions and who is giving the okay for certain stories to be told,” Smith says. ”When a very narrow slice of the population is in control of power and has the ability to greenlight a project, then we are going to see products and stories that reflect that narrow worldview.”"
"A judge is poised to decide whether a lawsuit filed over the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 can continue. Lawyers for gun manufacturer Remington Arms are seeking a dismissal, saying the company is protected from such suits by federal law. The lawsuit was initially filed in state court in Connecticut in December of 2014, two years after 20 children and six adults were gunned down at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn. It then went to a federal court before being shifted back to a state court last fall, in what’s seen as a possible advantage for the plaintiffs, who are acting on behalf of 10 victims. The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction against selling the   rifle it names Remington and its related corporate entities, including Bushmaster Firearms, which manufactured the weapon used by Adam Lanza. Some of the parents whose children died at Newtown spoke outside the courthouse Monday, including Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was killed. ”There were a lot of guns the shooter could have chosen from his arsenal and he chose the ” Hockley said, according to the Hartford Courant, ”because he knew it would kill as many people as possible as fast as possible.” Remington and its parent company say they can’t be sued for the criminal use of their products, citing immunity rendered by the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act. ”But there are some exceptions to this law,” Katie Toth of member station WSHU reports for NPR’s Newscast unit: ”One is negligent entrustment  —   or if a seller supplies a gun to someone when they know that person will likely use the gun to hurt people. The victims’ families are accusing Remington of negligent entrustment. They say the weapon that was used in the shooting massacre was a   weapon and that it should have never been sold to civilians.”"
"The Aedes aegypti mosquitoes really suck  —   literally and figuratively. They’re really good at finding and sucking on human blood. Which especially sucks, because their inescapable, insidious little bites can infect people with the Zika virus as well as dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. These buggers  —   like most mosquitoes  —   will bite where we’re least likely to notice  —   at the ankles, behind the knees and at the back of our necks. No matter how much you cover up, one or two will home in on even the smallest cracks of exposed skin. How do they manage it? ”Well, they’ve got hundreds of different types of receptors in their antennae,” explains Anandasankar Ray, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside. ”And these receptors can detect all sorts of different chemicals that our bodies emit.” Sensors on their antennae help the mosquitoes locate our breath, Ray says. ”They look for plumes of carbon dioxide, which we humans create when we exhale. And they’ll start moving toward those plumes.” But of course, they’ve evolved to understand that it’s best to avoid flying directly into our mouths. ”So once they get close enough to start sensing our body odors, they use that information to figure out where exactly they should bite,” Ray says. He spells out the process in a 2013 paper, published in Cell. Different parts of our bodies emit different smells  —   our feet smell different from our pits, which smell different from our faces. That’s because the microorganisms that live on our skin break down our sweat and emit stinky molecules in the process  —   and different types of microorganisms tend to gather in different parts of our bodies, producing different flavors of stinky molecules. Mosquitoes are able to pick up on these subtle differences. They may target our feet and ankles because we’re less likely to notice a mosquito biting us there. ”Mosquitoes who bite there are less likely to get smacked or swatted away,” Ray say. And lucky for them, our feet are among the smelliest parts of our body  —   lots and lots of   bacteria live between toes  —   so feet are easy to find. ”Aedes mosquitoes will also bite other parts of the body,” Ray says. ”They’ll bite behind the neck, along your hairline.” Over time, they’ve figured out which parts of our bodies we’re more likely to expose and ignore, and they’ve developed the ability to sniff out those areas. So what if you shower a ton and douse yourself in perfume  —   will that make it harder for mosquitoes to track you down? Lots of people had that idea though the ages, says Larry Zwiebel, a biologist at Vanderbilt University who studies mosquito behavior. ”There are communities in parts of Africa where people traditionally covered themselves in ashes, for example,” he says  —   to mask their scent and deter mosquitoes.” It may help a tiny bit, Zwiebel says, but it’s unlikely to make a huge difference. Mosquitoes are highly sensitive to smell  —   they can usually sniff though your perfumes and lotions. ”Even if these strong scents were able to get the mosquitoes off track, you’d have to keep reapplying in order to fully mask your body odors.” Zwiebel has been researching more sophisticated ways to use mosquitoes’ highly sensitive sniffers against them. ”At my lab, we’re learning what turns on the molecular receptors on the mosquito’s antennae  —   that’s how they perceive scent  —   and we’re researching ways to overwhelm those receptors and confuse the mosquitoes,” he explains. The chemicals in traditional mosquito repellents, like DEET, disable certain receptors  —   reducing the insect’s ability to smell. Zwiebel’s lab has developed a compound that overstimulates all of the mosquito’s odor receptors. ”For humans, this would be the equivalent of flashing a huge bright light in front of someone’s eyes. It would basically blind you,” Zwiebel says. ”By overloading the mosquito’s whole sensory system, this compound can basically just shut it down.” Other scientists are developing similar chemicals, Zwiebel notes. But it will probably be years before these new kinds of repellent make it onto drugstore shelves. ”These are exciting discoveries, but there’s lots more research and safety testing that has to be done.” For now, he says, your best best is to avoid mosquito bites by wearing long sleeves, a generous mist of bug spray  —   and very thick socks."
"A team of U. S. government disease detectives launched an eagerly anticipated research project in Brazil on Monday designed to determine whether the Zika virus is really causing a surge of serious birth defects. A   team of epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began training dozens of Brazilian counterparts in Joao Pessoa, Brazil, in preparation to begin work on Tuesday. The researchers will gather data on hundreds of Brazilian women and their children. ”Having the data at this point in time are very critically important for understanding the impact Zika might be having in the future and as it spreads in the region,” says J. Erin Staples, a CDC medical officer leading the CDC team in Brazil. Scientists believe there has been a significant increase in microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and brain, since Zika started spreading widely in Brazil. That strongly suggests that the virus is to blame. Zika has been found in the brains of a small number of babies with microcephaly, but that still does not prove the virus is to blame. ”Taking that and saying the 4, 000 to 5, 000 cases of microcephaly reported in Brazil are due to Zika is a very big jump,” Staples says. To try to better understand whether the association is real, the CDC is launching what is known as a ” ” study, which involves comparing cases of people with diseases with similar people who did not have disease to try to identify the cause. On Monday, the CDC formed eight teams of American and Brazilian investigators. On Tuesday, the teams fanned out in the region searching for about 100 mothers who gave birth to babies with microcephaly since the Zika outbreak began. The teams will collect blood samples from the mothers and children to test for signs of Zika infection, examine the babies and gather detailed information from the mothers. Among the information the researchers plan to collect is whether the women experienced any symptoms of Zika infection during their pregnancies and, if so, when. The investigators will also ask the women a series of questions aimed at identifying any other factors that may have played a role in the birth defects, such as whether the women had any other infections, including toxoplasmosis or cytomegalovirus. In addition, they’ll try to determine whether the women were exposed to anything in the environment, such as mercury or pesticides, that could be to blame. The investigators planned to do the same thing with several hundred other women who are similar in terms of their ages, locations and socioeconomic status who gave birth to healthy babies around the same time. The researchers will then compare the two groups. The hope is that this study will either provide more definitive evidence establishing the link between Zika and microcephaly or identify other factors that may be to blame, either in combination with Zika or instead of Zika. ”What we’re really trying to do is to better understand what’s going on in terms of the size, the scope and the causes of microcephaly,” Staples told NPR’s Shots blog last week. ”We want to better understand the role the Zika virus has in the outbreak of microcephaly.” Staples estimated it would take three or four weeks to collect all the data, but was unsure how long the analysis would take. But ”hopefully from all this work we will glean some information that will be able to help us prevent other children from being born microcephaly,” Staples says. The virus is spreading rapidly throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Dozens of travelers have arrived in the United States after being infected elsewhere, but so far the virus is only known to have spread once in the continental United States, and that was through sexual contact. The mosquito that spreads the virus is found in parts of the United States, but health authorities have said they are optimistic any transmission in this country would be quickly controlled."
"Luxury Italian fashion house Roberto Cavalli has opened a new store in Iran’s capital, Tehran. This makes it one of the first luxury brands to formally enter the Iranian market since Iran curbed its nuclear program enough to trigger sanctions relief last month. The lifting of sanctions was a major part of the Iranian nuclear deal. Now, many European and U. S. companies are cautiously eyeing the Iranian market, despite uncertainty about what sort of business dealings will be allowed in the absence of many sanctions. Europe is opening up trade and business with Iran far more than the U. S has done. As NPR’s Steve Inskeep reported from Tehran earlier this month, ”scores of foreign business groups have come to Iran, but few are putting down money.” This, despite clear business opportunities: ”Iran has a young and growing population of more than 75 million. It’s the highly educated populace of an   republic.” But Roberto Cavalli’s entry into the Iranian market might be an early sign of a possible ”  revolution,” as the BBC termed it. ”The Iranian market is going through a new exciting period, and luxury brands such as Cavalli are looking at the country and its 80 millions of potential consumers with great attention,” Roberto Cavalli CEO Renato Semerari says in a Women’s Wear Daily article that was tweeted by his company. Here’s more from Semerari: ”We think that Iran is set to become a very interesting market for luxury products, and we are happy to be among the first to open a monobrand in Tehran. . .. For us it is a great chance to export also to this country Cavalli’s   fashion, recognized and appreciated all over the world.” Vogue described the Cavalli Spring 2016    collection as ”street and   with an 80s spin,” including ”skimpy   dresses,     jeans and leggings, sleeveless biker jackets, bandeau tops tied in   bows on one shoulder, and prom skirts trailing giant frilled trains in their wake.” No word whether all these styles will be featured in the Tehran store, which is located in the posh Tehran neighborhood of Zafaraniye. According to Women’s Wear Daily, the   boutique ”features lavish,   floors made of large slabs of dark brown quartzite mixed with crystal dust. Dark brown pony hair carpets pepper the floors.” Iranian shoppers haven’t been completely cut off from designer fashions despite decades of sanctions. Tehran is home to luxury malls featuring major Western brands. But as the BBC reports: ”Although these luxury shopping centres look exactly the same as retail outlets anywhere in the world, the designer goods on display have actually been brought in by   importers via Turkey and the Gulf States. ”The outlets that sell them have no connection to the big brand manufacturers.” Most Western clothing brands have been deterred by international banking sanctions that made it difficult to get their profits out of Iran, the BBC reports. Meanwhile, it adds, ”Iranians have developed a taste for   designer goods.” The poster children for the   young Iranians that brands such as Roberto Cavalli are hoping to reach might well be those in ”The Rich Kids of Tehran.” It’s an Instagram account featuring   Iranian teens wearing designer clothing and living opulently."
"Days after Apple’s CEO wrote an open letter to customers, the head of the FBI responded with his own message, urging those involved to ”take a deep breath and stop saying the world is ending.” FBI Director James Comey made his case in a blog post on the Lawfare website that was published Sunday night, the latest exchange in a battle over the FBI’s attempts to get Apple to help the bureau unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino, Calif. shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI leader’s post comes as Apple faces a   deadline to formally respond to the FBI’s request for help by this Friday. ”We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land,” Comey wrote, later adding, ”Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. But we can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead.” Over the weekend, it emerged that shortly after government officials obtained the iPhone Farook used, a San Bernardino County employee working with federal authorities reset the password for its iCloud account  —   meaning the phone could no longer perform an automatic wireless backup that could have enabled Apple to recover information. Hours after Comey’s message went online, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to his employees saying the company is trying to ensure the data security of ”hundreds of millions of   people” and avoid setting a ”dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties.” Apple also posted a page to answer questions about the case, on which it calls for the FBI to withdraw its demand for help opening the phone  —   and for the government to ”form a commission or other panel of experts on intelligence, technology and civil liberties to discuss the implications for law enforcement, national security, privacy and personal freedoms.” That remark echoes a sentiment in Comey’s post, in which he urged Americans to have a ”long conversation” about technology, saying it ”creates a serious tension between two values we all treasure: privacy and safety.” He added: ”That tension should not be resolved by corporations that sell stuff for a living. It also should not be resolved by the FBI, which investigates for a living. It should be resolved by the American people deciding how we want to govern ourselves in a world we have never seen before.” The message comes less than a week after Apple refused to cooperate with a federal judge’s order to help the government unlock the iPhone in question. In the open letter addressed to Apple’s customers, Cook wrote: ”While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.” Apple says that to comply with the judge’s order, it would have to create something that doesn’t currently exist: a software tool that could potentially unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession. The FBI has linked its request to the ongoing investigation into the San Bernardino shootings, but as the   reported last week, ”Apple and the federal government have been arguing about encryption for years.” There is a wide range of opinion about whether Apple should comply with the latest request, as a listen to today’s Morning Edition demonstrates. Philip Mudd, a former counterintelligence analyst who has worked for both the FBI and the CIA, tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep that Apple should help investigators break into the phone  —   with one key condition: ”I don’t believe they should tell the government how they did it. They should hand over the data, but not compromise themselves by giving the government the method by which they broke the code.” When reminded that Apple has rejected that idea by saying it would create a precedent that could be abused by governments or hackers, Mudd responds, in part: ”I would say we’ve done this for decades, with emails and phone information before the age of smartphones  —   and nobody said that fundamentally violated American rights. So I don’t know why smartphones are so much different than issuing a court order to say, Verizon or to Google for email information.” To give us a sense of what regular Americans think of the dispute, Frank Morris of member station KCUR in Kansas City, Mo. filed a report for Morning Edition. Here’s a sampling of reactions:"
"The debate over whether Apple should defeat the security on the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook isn’t the first time the company has clashed with law enforcement. The FBI also wanted to get into the iPhone of a drug dealer in Brooklyn. Jun Feng pleaded guilty to selling methamphetamine last year. As part of its investigation, the government obtained a search warrant for Feng’s iPhone. But the phone was locked by a passcode, so prosecutors asked a judge for an order compelling Apple to bypass it. ”In about 70 prior occasions, this exact situation had occurred,” says Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency lawyer who’s now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. ”And Apple had elected to comply with the court order.” The fact that Apple had bypassed the lock on roughly 70 phones in previous cases was revealed during a court hearing last October. And Apple might have quietly done the same to Jun Feng’s phone, too, but something unusual happened. Federal Magistrate Judge James Orenstein did not sign the order the government wanted. Instead, he went public and asked Apple if the company had any objections. ”What was remarkable was that the public hadn’t seen the argument surfaced,” says Jennifer Granick at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She says Judge Orenstein was trying to stoke a public debate. ”Judge Orenstein had concerns about whether the government’s legal argument was a valid legal argument.” The judge seemed particularly skeptical that the government relied in part on an   law called the All Writs Act. Prosecutors say it gives them authority to compel private companies to help carry out search warrants. The government probably expected Apple to comply, just like the company had dozens of times before, says Hennessey. ”What All Writs is intended to do is that in those areas where Congress has not spoken, it’s intended to fill the gap, such that the courts can effectuate their orders,” Hennessey says. ”This is precisely how All Writs has been applied throughout history.” But this time, lawyers for Apple disagreed. They said the company had complied when the law seemed settled, but at the hearing in Feng’s case in October, Apple’s lawyers argued that the government was actually asking for something novel: the power to force a tech company to break the security on one of its devices. It’s similar to the argument that’s now playing out in California, where the FBI wants Apple to defeat the security on Farook’s iPhone. ”The cases are different, but the underlying legal question is very similar,” says Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. ”The question in the New York case is whether the government can rely on this very old statute to conscript Apple into government service.” There are some key differences between the two cases. The defendant’s iPhone in New York was using an older operating system, iOS 7, which makes it relatively easy for Apple to bypass the lock. The iPhone in California is running Apple’s newer operating system, iOS 9, and the company says it would have to create software just to get into the phone. Abdo says that’s a conscious choice by Apple. ”They didn’t want to be in the position, they told the court, of having to serve as a government investigative agent,” he says. ”They wanted to be out of the business of spying on their customers.” That may be especially important to Apple in international markets, where security is a big selling point. But U. S. law enforcement is frustrated by that argument. Federal prosecutors say Apple is putting its own public relations interests ahead of national security. They think Apple could easily defeat the security on the phones in California and Brooklyn  —   just like it’s done 70 times before."
"U. S. health regulators acknowledged they miscalculated the amount of formaldehyde emitted from some of Lumber Liquidators’ laminated floor products. Shares of the company fell sharply Monday on the news. The Centers for Disease Control And Prevention says the risk of cancer is three times higher than it previously estimated, and it strongly urged Lumber Liquidators customers to take steps to reduce exposure to the substance. The company no longer sells the   laminate products. The agency said its ”indoor air model used an incorrect value for ceiling height. As a result, the health risks were calculated using airborne concentration estimates about 3 times lower than they should have been.” The higher levels ”could cause increased frequency of asthma symptoms and other respiratory issues for people with asthma and COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease].” Last March, a report on 60 Minutes said laminate floor products made in one of the retailer’s Chinese factories had unsafe levels of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. At the time, the company disputed the allegations, saying they were driven by   who stood to benefit when the stock price fell. On Feb. 10, the CDC issued a report estimating that the risk of cancer presented by the products was two to nine cases per 100, 000 people. The agency subsequently learned that the risk was six to 30 cases. The error occurred because the CDC neglected to convert feet to meters in some calculations in the first reports, according to 60 Minutes. The CDC said the acknowledgement of the error had not changed its fundamental recommendations to customers dealing with the contaminated products: ”Our recommendations will likely remain the same  —   we strongly stress taking steps to reduce exposures, which should alleviate respiratory and eye, nose and throat irritation. These steps should also reduce the cancer risk.” The company said it supports the recommendations and is ”encouraged” that the agency is reviewing its calculations, according to Bloomberg News: ”The company also repeated that it has strengthened its   procedures, suspended sales of Chinese laminate and offered free air tests to customers. ” ’We remain committed to operating with integrity and delivering quality flooring to our customers,’ the Toano, Va.  company said in an   statement.” Last year, the company pleaded guilty to charges of making false declarations on import documents about the source of some of its flooring, and it agreed to a   settlement with the Justice Department. Editor’s Note: Lumber Liquidators is an NPR sponsor whose credits are on air and on NPR. org."
"Until last year, the architect of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was an obscure political operative in New Hampshire. Now, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski can claim to have engineered victories in South Carolina and New Hampshire and a   finish in the Iowa caucuses, a winning streak that gives Trump a strong shot at the Republican nomination. On the night of his New Hampshire primary victory, Trump acknowledged Lewandowski’s role in the win, asking, ”Does Corey have a ground game or what?” That night, Lewandowski stood stage right to Trump, looking relaxed, a rare moment of rest for a man who’s known among colleagues for chugging energy drinks and being in constant motion. Until Trump hired him last summer, Lewandowski had never run a national campaign. Now he’s Trump’s alter ego, comfortably telling interviewers that ”it’s time to send somebody to Washington who is willing to fundamentally change the system and make America great again. There is only one guy willing to do that: Trump.” A    Career In Politics, At 41, Lewandowski has spent half his life in politics, almost entirely behind the scenes and most recently as the New Hampshire director of Americans for Prosperity, the   group. Lewandowski was unavailable for an interview for this story. Before signing on with Trump, Lewandowski was known in New Hampshire political circles as a   operative who was as unafraid to take on Republicans as he was to take on Democrats. At the height of the Tea Party movement, Lewandowski   a cardboard cutout of former Gov. John Lynch at rallies. ”You know he’s in with both feet and both hands and he’s working 100 miles an hour, and he was a formidable adversary or an incredible ally, whatever the issue is,” said state Sen. Andy Sanborn, who got to know Lewandowski during this period. In his adopted hometown of Windham, Lewandowski tried to forge his own political career, running unsuccessfully for town treasurer in 2012. He also upended the town’s politics, using public records laws to probe local government and launching robocalls targeted at voters to stoke outrage over a visit to the town by President Obama. ”He was really interfering in town business in what I considered an inappropriate manner,” said Kathleen DiFruscia, a former Windham selectman. Always On The Attack  Lewandowski remains well‐liked by other Republican political operatives, although Ryan Williams, who advised Jeb Bush, cautioned that Lewandowski never hesitates to get personal. ”When I’ve criticized Trump in this campaign, like in the press, he always responds by attacking me. ’Ryan Williams is just a paid Bush hack and he’s just fighting for his job,’ or something like that, he’ll say in response,” Williams said. Lewandowski’s fierce loyalty to the politicians who have employed him has shown few limits. When former Ohio Rep. Bob Ney faced prison on corruption charges in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Lewandowski vouched for Ney’s character with the judge. When top Republicans in New Hampshire and Washington were trying to oust  . S. Sen. Bob Smith in a nasty primary in 2002, Lewandowski signed onto Smith’s campaign when many other operatives wouldn’t. ”I mean, this is a   game. You’ve got to take chances. And if you’re right you look great, and if you are wrong you take the blame for it,” Smith said. ”But Corey was attracted to that, and that’s probably what Trump saw as well  —   that Corey is not afraid to take on the establishment.” So far Lewandowski’s gamble on the    campaign of Trump appears to be paying off handsomely. The same may go double for Trump’s gamble on Lewandowski."
"More women with breast cancer are choosing to have mastectomies over   procedures. And nearly half of them don’t spend a single night in the hospital but go home the same day, according to a federal analysis. It’s the latest study to show that treatment for breast cancer is shifting after years in which women, particularly those with   breast cancer, were encouraged to have less invasive surgery  —   and patient advocates opposed outpatient or ” ” mastectomies. The trend concerns some patient advocates, who say for many women, less invasive options such as lumpectomy are just as effective. The advocates also fear that financial issues might be leading some patients to be sent home too soon. Using data from 13 states that represent a quarter of the population, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that the rate of mastectomy increased by 36 percent from 2005 to 2013. During that same period, the overall incidence of breast cancer remained the same, the report says. ”Even with some of the other papers that are out there, I was surprised by the rapid growth [found in the latest report],” said Claudia Steiner, a senior research physician at AHRQ and lead author of the statistical brief, which was released Monday. Studies have shown that more conservative surgeries coupled with radiation treatment are as effective as mastectomy and had fewer complications, especially for women with   breast cancer. Another big change seen in the data: 45 percent of mastectomies in 2013 were performed in   outpatient surgery centers with no overnight stay. That’s up from 22 percent a decade earlier. This report didn’t look at whether women who have surgery in a hospital, with a median stay of just over two days, fare better or worse than those who had outpatient surgery. Nor did it speculate on the factors behind the increase in outpatient surgeries, which could include patient choice or insurance reimbursement issues. Or it could be part of the increasing shift of all types of surgeries to ambulatory surgical centers. ”We know that more procedures in general are moving out of the hospital setting,” said Lisa McGiffert, director of the Safe Patient Project at Consumers Union. ”But the reality is we don’t know if outpatient clinics are safer than the hospital because we don’t have much information on quality in the outpatient setting.” McGiffert had not yet seen the AHRQ study results. She noted that some outpatient surgery clinics are highly specialized and do the same procedures over and over, and that can lead to improved quality. About a decade ago, concern about shorter hospital stays following mastectomies prompted about 20 states to pass legislation barring insurers from forcing women to leave the hospital less than 48 hours after surgery. Similar national legislation was introduced a number of times but failed as recently as 2013. Karuna Jaggar, executive director of the patient advocacy group Breast Cancer Action, was surprised by the finding, saying she had not heard from members about increases in outpatient surgeries. If the shift is occurring, ”I’m alarmed and concerned,” said Jaggar. ”As a patient watchdog group, we would want to know that women are not facing undue pressure,” including the pressure of cost, ”to go home before they are ready.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro,  . said that she plans to reintroduce next month a version of the 2013 bill that would bar insurers from requiring less than a   hospital stay. ”Mastectomies are a major operation, and after going through such a physically and emotionally traumatic experience, women should have the ability to continue to stay in the hospital and receive the care they need,” DeLauro said in an emailed statement. The increasing rate of mastectomies was driven mainly by women having double mastectomies, the AHRQ analysis found. The overall mastectomy rate rose from 66 per 100, 000 to 90 per 100, 000 between 2005 and 2013. At the same time, the rate of double mastectomies more than tripled, from 9 per 100, 000 women to 30 per 100, 000. Many of those women had cancer in only one breast but chose to have the other one removed as well, with younger women more likely to do so, the data found. Other studies have found a similar trend. While most women choosing a double mastectomy had a cancer diagnosis, the study found the rate of bilateral mastectomies performed as a preventive measure without any diagnosis of breast cancer more than doubled, although the actual number of women remained small. In 2005, about 2 women per 100, 000 without a cancer diagnosis chose the surgery, while that rate rose to 4. 4 women per 100, 000 in 2013. The 13 states in the AHRQ study included Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin."
"Book publishers love stories about   teachers. The narrative arc is familiar: Exuberant idealism fades as the teacher battles entrenched bureaucracy, stale curriculum and disengaged colleagues or kids. The young educator then tries to overcome despair with creative grit and determination and struggles to make a difference.  The books often teeter between   and slams against the public education system. Some, however, actually shed light on the yawning gap between reformist rhetoric and classroom reality. This month there’s a new one out: The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School by Ed Boland, from Grand Central Publishing. To get a take on how it lands in this genre, I asked a veteran New York City teacher to read it and write up her thoughts. Nicole Dixon teaches at East Side Community High School, which serves grades   in Manhattan’s East Village. Here’s her review: When I first became an English teacher in New York City, I would often find my conversations about my job traveling an increasingly   path: ”You teach at an . .. inner city public school? Those kids must be tough!” Whether these comments were made with an air of, ”Good for you!” or ”You must be crazy!” they felt somehow cut from the same voyeuristic cloth, especially when followed up by, ”You must really have some stories!” I did, in fact, have many stories, but the one I found myself telling most often was a humorous one centered around my inadvertently stealing a student’s backpack. I knew, of course, as I told it, that this was not the kind of story anyone had in mind. I knew from the way their voices dropped at ” ” (read: Black, Latino, poor) that what they wanted was a tale replete with fistfights and broken homes and gang signs and teen moms. A heartwarming    ending was preferred, but optional. I could never fully articulate why I didn’t feel comfortable telling those stories until years later, watching a TED talk given by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In it, Adichie speaks about her own experiences growing up as a child of   academics in Nigeria, and then arriving in the U. S. for college, only to discover that her roommate expected her to be impoverished, unable to speak English, and listen to tribal music. She says, ”My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.” I found myself thinking of Adichie’s talk while reading Ed Boland’s The Battle for Room 314. Boland, who left a position as development director for an educational nonprofit to try his hand at teaching, finds himself deeply disillusioned by his experience. Boland’s memoir of his first and only year in a New York City public high school classroom certainly does not shy away from telling the kind of story about   teens that dominates the media and our cultural imagination. He opens the book with three epigraphs  —   a lofty one about the meaning of education from Horace Mann and one about the value of struggle from Alfred the Great. And one from a student’s ”Getting to Know You” questionnaire: ”I like to fight, I like to f*** and I like pie.” From that moment on, Boland’s year is all downhill. Students throw spitballs, homophobic slurs, curses and calculators. He is disrespected and ignored, gets injured splitting up fistfights, becomes an inadvertent pawn in a student’s drug ring and the target of another’s accusations of sexual harassment. Boland is the first to admit that his failings as a teacher were perhaps even greater than those of his students, unflinchingly detailing every disastrous moment. Including: a formal classroom observation that his assistant principal declares ”the worst one I have ever conducted,” and confessing that he responded to one student’s ”F*** YOU!” with a ”No, Solomon, F*** YOU!” Boland is candid about his own shortcomings, and gestures at the larger systemic and societal issues behind the problems in his school. But he lingers longest on the outrageous behavior of his students: Chantay climbs on desks and hollers for Boland to perform an obscene act, and Kameron flashes his ”dark shark eyes” as he threatens violence against students and teachers alike. But underneath the grand displays of insubordination, the innocuous race and   details of his students’ lives seem to wear on Boland almost as heavily. ”I began to loathe my students,” he writes, ”resenting everything about them that was their lot  —   their poverty, their ignorance, their arrogance,” as if it is all behind him. But his anger and disdain still pulse insistently through his writing. It’s not that I don’t sympathize with him. Being a teacher is one of the hardest jobs imaginable. I remember during my first year the unique mixture of exhaustion and gratitude at the end of every day that I did not cry in front of my students. I remember repeating my mantra of ”just do less harm than good today” over and over on the long walk to work from the subway. It’s not that I don’t recognize in his students some of my own. Certainly many of my former students would probably meet Boland’s definition of ”thuggy,” a word he uses often. I taught, for example, a charismatic, budding Bloods leader who replaced all of his ”c”s with ”b”s so as not to accidentally compliment Crips, and a girl recently released from juvie for selling the crack on which her own mother fatally overdosed. I know there were even moments at which I thought of them as ”monsters”  —   a word Boland uses so many times I stopped counting. Teaching is a battle, and the enemies are everywhere: poverty, racism, ignorance, rotten cops,   government officials, greedy educational corporations, incompetent administrators, the occasional parent. I’ve wanted to annihilate each and every one of them at one point in my teaching career. But the battle is never, as Boland implies and as many   teachers imagine, a battle against students for power in the classroom. Every time he suggests that, he makes the real battles more invisible and harder to fight. Boland’s focus on his personal struggle to maintain order takes readers away from the more important national conversation about the societal inequities that are reflected in all of our classrooms. And as a teacher, valuing compliance over the messy process of actual learning is a rookie mistake. Boland’s older sister, Nora, also a teacher, tells him that his students ”are people with free will . .. [t]hey have very little power in their lives, so they will use it where they can.” The longer I teach, the more I see how little power most students feel they have both in and out of the classroom. My most important job is to give them as much power as I can. Had Boland stuck around another year or two (he left after one year and returned to his career as an administrator at an educational access program) he might have written his story quite differently. What he might have learned as a     or   teacher would be enough to fill a much more interesting book. I returned to school after that first year to find that something inside me had loosened, and that enemies I hadn’t realized I had  —   my own fear and a tendency to take things personally  —   had fallen away. Like Boland, who raged at union rules that prevented him and his colleagues from giving up their one prep period to teach an extra class that would make their other classes smaller, I hatched a similar plan at my charter school. In time, I realized the importance of time without students, and how many young teachers work such insane hours that they burn out and leave teaching. I cringed at Boland’s descriptions of how he planned his lessons  —   a seeming daily quest to find a different interesting activity to hook students and make them feel successful. But the truth is that my own   lessons often felt just as purposeless and desperate. Years later, I’ve learned that the lessons that grab kids are the ones that ask students to do hard work that feels important and authentic. In the end, I came away respecting Boland’s honesty, admiring his writing and vehemently agreeing with his pleas to integrate America’s public schools. It is a book that many readers may enjoy because it is a book that they expect, one of the two narratives (this time, chaos without the inspirational ending) about   schools that seem acceptable today. But his book ultimately fails to follow Adichie’s exhortation to ”engage with all of the stories” of his students and their community. Nicole Dixon has been teaching in the New York City public schools since 2009. "
"”I am what I like to call ’new stroke’,” says Troy Hodge, a    resident of Carroll County, Md. With a carefully trimmed beard and rectangular hipster glasses, Hodge looks spry. But two years ago, his brain stopped communicating for a time with the left half of his body. He was at home getting ready for work as a food service director at a nearby nursing home. Hodge remembers entering the downstairs bathroom to take his blood pressure medications. He sat down on the bathroom floor and couldn’t get up. He says he felt so hot, he actually splashed some toilet water on his face because he couldn’t reach the sink. When Hodge didn’t show up for work, a colleague got worried and came over. She called 911 when she found him on the floor. ”I remember telling her not to let me die,” says Hodge, ”and from then on I really don’t remember that much.” He woke up a day or so later at a trauma center one state over, in Delaware. ”Troy experienced what we call an intracerebral hemorrhage, which basically just means bleeding within the substance of the brain,” says Dr. Steven Kittner, a neurologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Hodge’s high blood pressure probably damaged the tiny vessels in his brain, Kittner says. Hodge is one of many Americans having strokes at a younger age. About 10 percent of all strokes occur in people between 18 and 50 years old, and the risk factors include some that Hodge had: high blood pressure, overweight,   cholesterol, smoking and diabetes. In particular, ischemic strokes  —   caused by a blockage in the blood vessel, rather than a bleed  —   are sharply increasing among people under age 50, statistics show. This is not to say that stroke is becoming a disease of young people. ”The majority of strokes are still happening in older individuals, says Dr. Amytis Towfighi, a vascular neurologist with the University of Southern California. ”What’s concerning is that the incidence and prevalence of stroke amongst younger individuals has increased, and it’s increasing significantly.” The most likely underlying reason, she says, is obesity the constellation of health issues that come with it can wear down or block a person’s blood vessels. A national survey found that between 1995 and 2008, the increased number of young people (ages 15 to 44) who were hospitalized for stroke closely followed an increase in several chronic conditions, including high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and lipid disorders. ”People who are obese are at greater risk for high blood pressure, and high blood pressure is the leading risk factor for stroke,” says Dr. Mary George, senior medical officer with the CDC’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention and an author on the national study. In 1995, about 3 percent of patients between 15 and 34 years old who had ischemic strokes were obese. By 2007, 9 percent were obese. ”One in three men in that age group had hypertension,” says George. ”That’s very high.” Hodge is a big guy, and he says he’d had high blood pressure for a long time. Perhaps, on the day of his stroke, the extra pressure on his circulatory system just caught up with him. Like water in a bent hose, the volume of blood moving through his body overloaded a delicate passageway deep inside his brain, and the vessel burst. It was key to his survival that Hodge’s colleague found him quickly, so that he was able to get to surgeons who could drain some of the blood before the stroke caused irreversible damage. Still, in one day, Hodge became a patient at a facility just like the ones he used to work in. ”You know how they say, ’When you have a baby it changes your life?’ Well, this changes your life,” he says. He couldn’t walk or do anything that involved both hands. He started making lists, he says, because his   memory took a hit. And even in the bitter cold, he’ll now head out the door with just a hoodie on. ”I’m not much of a coat wearer anymore because it’s just too hard putting it on,” Hodge explains. With only half his body under control, he says, something as simple as getting dressed, cutting an onion or stepping off a curb suddenly became a huge task. Putting on socks, he says, is ”an ordeal. It’s like an Oprah show.” ”You don’t think of things that you do until you can’t do them,” he says. ”You basically have to start over again. I mean, you retrain your brain to use your limbs. You retrain your brain to remember. You retrain everything. It’s pretty devastating.” Hodge ended up living in a rehab facility for a year, relearning in his 40s how to do things that he’d done almost every day of his life. Towfighi says a lot of her younger patients have similar experiences. She oversees neurological care for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, where the average age of stroke patients is 56. Even though young people tend to recover their abilities better, they can also have a tough time with recovery. ”It often affects the entire family when a young individual has a stroke,” Towfighi says, because the family loses a breadwinner. ”I also do research on depression after stroke and found that a younger age is a risk factor for depression after stroke.” Hodge didn’t get depressed, but he did have to make some tough adjustments. He told his    daughter he wouldn’t be able to pay for her college or her car, and that she’d have to be on her own for a bit because he couldn’t help out the way he used to. ”It was a long year, and there were times when I would just cry and not stop crying. But it passed,” says Hodge. Now, he has a   apartment and works part time at an exercise facility for the disabled. He’s working on his blood pressure and trying to cut out cigarettes. Once a week, he goes to occupational therapy to work on everyday skills. To help get through it, he named his problem limbs. His left leg is Eddie. His left arm is Douglas. Hodge’s cane is named Genevieve, after his mom. ”Eddie has done very well,” Hodge says. ”I think he will continue to do well. Douglas? I talk to Douglas because I’m not so sure about him. He just kind of does his own thing.” Giving one’s troubled limbs a nickname or pep talk isn’t unusual, says Lydia Bongiorni, an occupational therapist who worked with Hodge when he first entered rehab. ”I’ve had quite a few patients do that,” she says. ”It shows a sense of humor. That’s good.” At an outpatient neurorehabilitation clinic at the University of Maryland, Bongiorni and Hodge spend a lot of time working with Douglas  —   Hodge’s notoriously uncooperative left arm and hand. It’s stuck in a stiff curl. ”Troy had a stroke a couple years ago, and people used to think you would never get movement back,” says Bongiorni. But Hodge’s muscles are fine, she explains  —   it’s just the messaging system from his brain to his muscles that needs repair. ”I tell people that the brain wants to reconnect with that arm again, and we have to tap into different pathways of doing that.” With a device the size of a sandwich, Bongiorni delivers a jolt of electricity through patches stuck on Hodge’s arm. It takes a lot of tiny muscles working together to move a hand, and the electrical stimulation is thought to send signals that wake up the brain to the communication it needs to do with nerves and muscles. Hodge’s face strains as he grasps a deodorant stick and brings it haltingly up to his armpit. Bongiorni is trying to get him to use his left hand as a tool, rather than like a stump. They practice washing dishes, walking with a weight in that hand, and bringing a cup up to his mouth. Next on the list of Hodge’s goals: taking out the trash. ”I’m not up to walking it to the dumpster just yet,” he says. ”I’m going to get there. I’d say by the summertime I’ll probably be taking it to the dumpster.” Regaining his motion is not going to be easy. He’s going to have to keep practicing these things every day on his own, like a musician mastering an instrument. But, he says, ”I’m only 43, so I have time to do that.”"
"Any doubt that Senate Republicans would hold the line behind their leader’s decision to block President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee has been erased. ”I can now confidently say the view shared by virtually everybody in my conference, is that the nomination should be made by the president the people elect in the election that’s underway right now,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,  . told reporters. Senate Republicans on Tuesday held their first   meeting since the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia to discuss the party’s strategy going forward. ”I believe the overwhelming view of the Republican Conference in the Senate is that this nomination should not be filled, this vacancy should not be filled by this lame duck president,” McConnell added. Just two Republicans  —   Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois  —   have voiced skepticism of McConnell’s strategy. Collins is known for her independent streak and Kirk is running in a tough   battle in Obama’s home state. Further bolstering McConnell’s decision was a Tuesday announcement by all 11 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Charles Grassley,   that the panel would not move forward with any consideration of Obama’s nominee. Top Republicans including McConnell, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, and Sen. Orrin Hatch,   also told reporters they would not meet    with Obama’s nominee, a   Senate custom in the confirmation process. ”I don’t see the point of going through the motions if we know what the outcome is going to be, and we are united on that,” Cornyn said. Republicans brushed off Democratic accusations of obstruction as hypocritical. A widely circulated 1992 video of  . Joe Biden, who sat atop the Judiciary Committee, showed him giving an impassioned Senate floor speech defending the Senate’s right to block a nominee amid a heated presidential election. ”It is my view that if a Supreme Court justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President [George H. W.] Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not  —   and not  —   name a nominee until after the November election is completed,” Biden said in 1992. ”We know what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot. We know what would happen,” McConnell said Tuesday, ”A nominee of a Republican president would not be confirmed by a Democratic Senate when the vacancy was created in a presidential election year. That’s a fact.” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid,  . predicted McConnell would ultimately back down. ”He hasn’t seen the pressure that’s going to build. It’s going to build in all facets of the political constituency in the country,” Reid told reporters. Sen. Charles Schumer,  . Y. whose past remarks on blocking Supreme Court judges have also been used as fodder by Republicans, said the partisan bickering is a sideshow to the underlying fight over Obama’s ability to get his nominee approved. ”The public doesn’t care about that, they care about us doing our job, plain and simple,” he said, ”All this    of quotes from years ago which didn’t hold anything up don’t make a darn bit of difference to the public.” Senate opposition has not deterred the president, who intends to send a nomination to the Senate in the coming weeks. Obama has been making calls to Capitol Hill in recent days, asking senators for their input and support."
"At age 9, Nice Nailantei Leng’ete ran away from home so she wouldn’t have her genitalia cut as part of a coming    age ceremony. For her defiance, she was shunned by family and community. That was 16 years ago. The ritual cutting away of part or all of the external female genitalia continues in force around the world. A new UNICEF report estimates that at least 200 million women alive today have undergone what’s known as female genital mutilation (FGM). But now there’s a concerted effort to convince communities that Nice Nailantei Leng’ete was right  —   and that there’s a way to mark a girl’s maturity without cutting. On Feb. 7, International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, Ban Ki   chief of the United Nations, called for ”a better way” than the ritual cutting away of part or all of the external female genitalia. The U. N. has described the practice as ”violent” and a violation of the rights of girls and women. Still, resistance remains in some cultures and communities. This week, two American gynecologists published an article in the British Journal of Medical Ethics, proposing a ”compromise solution” that would permit minimal female genital ”nicks” that would ”accommodate cultural beliefs while protecting the physical health of girls, but would proscribe those forms of FGA that are dangerous or that produce significant sexual or reproductive dysfunction.” Are such nicks ”a better way”? Dr. Githinji Gitahi doesn’t believe so. He’s a physician with a specialty in OB   and a leader in the group Amref Health Africa. ”It’s important to understand that FGM has no medical benefits and as such, to advocate for any form of it is to miss the point,” he wrote in an e mail. ”FGM is a harmful practice which results in numerous medical complications including severe bleedings, infection, blockage of the urinary tract with renal complications and even death and later in life may result in inability to deliver normally.” In fact, some communities are embracing ceremonies that do away with all cutting. The new traditions are taking hold in Maasai and Samburu communities in Kenya and Tanzania. After two or three days of preparatory sessions for the girls, the celebration culminates with communal singing and dancing and blessings by the village elders, who pour a mixture of milk and honey and water over the heads of the girls. Goats and cows are slaughtered for specially prepared stews or roasts. Traditional beer is brewed for the men to drink. The young women don multi colored clothing and decorative beads that dangle from their heads and hang around their necks. Such ceremonies have included from 200 to more than 1, 000 girls, says, Peter N. Nguura, project manager, of Unite for Body Rights Project, AMREF Kenya Country Office, with several communities often coming together for the celebration. Usually, the elders also make a public declaration abandoning FGM, and the young men will similarly make public assurances that they will marry women who did not undergo FGM. That’s important because any girl who refused to be cut was shamed and shunned, subjected to a life of isolation, without marriage or children. And at the center of the celebration are the girls themselves. During the two to three days preceding the celebration, participating girls in the alternative rites of passage are secluded, in a school dormitory or village hut, where they learn about womanhood: lessons which now include sex education, information about STDs and violence against women, and presentations emphasizing the importance of continuing education for girls’ and women’s rights. The traditional cutters who had in the past performed the cut also are usually present, discussing their role in the past  —   and explaining the health reasons for abandoning the practice. ”They will say, ’We did this because we believed in it, but now we want to encourage girls to go back to school,’ ” says Leng’ete. Women like Leng’ete share their own stories at these ceremonies. Now 25, she became the only girl in her village in KENYA to complete her secondary education. As project manager of AMREF’s Scaling Up Alternative Rites of Passage program, she spreads the word that there are alternative rites of passage. But for such celebrations to succeed as an ongoing alternative to cutting, the entire community must be accepting, says Jacinta Muteshi   project director of the   (the ”c” is for cutting) research program for the Population Council. That means chiefs and elders, fathers and mothers, even the traditional cutters. It can take six months or more of meetings before a community agrees to abandon FGM and accept alternative rites. Rebecca Sell, a freelance photojournalist and associate professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, was present at an alternative rites of passage celebration in August 2013. It took place in Esititeti, Kenya, located near the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where the Africa Schools of Kenya was helping implement the program. At that time, only about 20 girls participated in the ceremony now, she says, 200 to 300 girls, including those from neighboring communities, also take part. In one memorable moment, as in a graduation ceremony, the girls stood in line in their finery as their names were called out. Each received a certificate declaring they had completed the alternative rite of passage. ”From the mothers and older women I got to know, there was a lot of  . They are pleased that the community is committing to [ending FGM],” says Sell. ”They know that making the change is a big deal for them and their daughters. There is a lot of pride.”"
"Iran’s capital, Tehran, is in political overdrive this week. Candidates for parliament are battling the Tehran traffic, vying for support in Friday’s elections. This is Iran’s first ballot since a nuclear agreement last July that brought the lifting of international sanctions in January. Long before the nuclear deal was signed, Iranians were told by their leaders that the removal of sanctions would bring more opportunity and better living standards. But for the most part, ordinary Iranians aren’t seeing improvements so far. Taxi driver Arif Turkoshvand talks politics while weaving through the always congested streets. He explains that he always backed the hardliners and ignored those who want to reform the Islamic Revolution he grew up with. But now he’s no longer as certain. ”In the past few years, people are less interested in ideology,” he says. ”They’re looking for a better life, something real, while parties on all sides seem to only look out for themselves. If I can find someone, a reformer or a hardliner, who will go to parliament and do what the people want, like fixing this terrible traffic, they’ll get my vote.” However, the Iranian political system is geared to favor the conservatives. The Guardian Council, which approves or nixes potential candidates, has knocked many reformist politicians off the ballot, to the point where reform blocs are recruiting conservative candidates just to fill out their ballot lists. Hardliners, meanwhile, are fighting among themselves because there isn’t room for all of them on the conservative blocs. The President’s Big Bet, One candidate, Hussein Sheikhol Eslam, is a diplomat who describes himself as a centrist. He says he’s not out to undermine President Hassan Rouhani, who’s seen as a moderate. But he does think Rouhani made a mistake by promising an almost a magical economic recovery while the nuclear deal was being negotiated. ”The big mistake he made, he [told] people that the economy will start flourishing as soon as the deal is signed,” he says. ”This wasn’t wise. From the beginning, he put all of his investment in this deal.” Rouhani will face   next year and faces the challenge of delivering economic growth to people at street level, not just the business elites. And to get a parliament he can work with, Rouhani needs a big turnout by moderate and reform voters, to offset the number of extreme hardliners in the legislature. But the lack of visible economic upturn makes it that much harder to count on an enthusiastic turnout by reformers. In one of Tehran’s many urban parks, aviaries of brightly colored birds give a tropical soundtrack to the couples chatting on benches. Here, an Iranian journalist agrees to discuss the mood of the voters if we use only her first name, Sheva. She says people want to believe parliament can help Rouhani boost the economy, but they’re far from convinced. ”People do hope that the parliament can help turn things around,” she says. ”Unfortunately, up to now, parliaments have not done a very good job at all. So people in Iran are living on hope. But they need more than hope from the parliament.” The candidates keep crisscrossing the city, racing through this   campaign season in hopes of convincing voters that this parliament will actually make a difference in their lives."
"If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, its title would surely be ”The Case of the Disappearing Quasar.” In this case, however, the mystery wasn’t solved by an aging   detective, but by a young American astronomer at Penn State University named Jessie Runnoe and her colleagues. They study quasars, some of the brightest objects in the universe. Quasars aren’t stars. ”They’re the result of gas and material falling into a supermassive black hole,” Runnoe says. The gas heats up as it falls in, causing the region to glow brightly. The case began early last year. Runnoe and her colleagues were studying the properties of the light coming from quasars, something known as the quasar’s spectral signature. They wanted to know how the spectral signature changed over time, In January 2015, they decided to measure the spectrum of a quasar with the prosaic name J1011+5442. Its spectrum had been measured in 2003, and they decided it was time to look again. ”And when we went back to look, all of the spectral signatures we associate with a quasar were gone,” she says. It seemed the quasar just disappeared. The first thing they did was make sure they were looking at the right patch of sky. Once they were convinced they were looking in the right place, they started trying to figure out what had happened. ”One possibility,” Runnoe says, ”is that something just passed between us, that there was a cloud of dust or something in the galaxy and it got between us and the quasar and we can’t see it anymore.” She says astronomers have seen dust clouds pass in front of bright objects before, but the object’s spectrum usually gives a clue when that happens. In this case  —   nothing. Besides, another telescope caught a brief glimpse of the quasar in 2009, and it still was shining brightly. There wouldn’t be enough time between then and 2015 for a large enough dust cloud to move into place. No, what Runnoe and her colleagues think happened is the quasar just ran out of gas. Literally. All the nearby gas fell into the black hole, and there wasn’t enough left to produce the brilliance quasars are known for. The video shows how the spectral signature of the quasar changes as the gas finishes falling into the black hole. And as crazy as it sounds, the end came quickly for J1011+5442. It went from shining brightly to virtually nothing in a celestial blink of an eye, maybe just a couple of years. ”This thing is tens of millions of times the mass of the sun,” says Runnoe. ”So for it to do anything on time scales that we can experience is kinda nuts.” Runnoe says it’s a reminder that even though the night sky appears static, things are actually happening all the time. So there are probably more quasars winking off out there. ”And if we can find more and we can study them, we can find out how gas falls into a black hole, and stuff like that,” she says. That will add another small piece to the most mysterious puzzle of all: how the universe works."
"The Zika outbreak is aggravating an already tense relationship between Venezuela and Colombia. In Colombia, more than 37, 000 people have fallen sick. Venezuela reports fewer than 5, 000 cases  —   a number that Colombian officials find suspiciously low. Juan Bitar heads the health department of a state in Colombia that shares a long border with Venezuela. ”A lot of people who are sick with Zika in Venezuela are coming [to Colombia] for medical attention,” he says. A big part of the problem is that Venezuela is in the middle of an economic crisis. Right now, there’s a shortage of everything over there. ”They don’t have medication. Venezuela doesn’t have proper hospital care,” says Bitar. ”And we know that Venezuela is full of Zika right now.” You get a sense of the picture at a busy border crossing between the countries. It’s a bridge over a dry riverbed. We get there in the early evening  —   rush hour  —   and the traffic back and forth is impressive. A guard on the Colombian side lets through a bus carrying school kids on their way home to Venezuela. There’s a stream of people walking in the opposite direction into Colombia  —   old women wheeling suitcases, teenage guys with backpacks. A young family walks by. Their    girl plays    with us from under the canopy of her stroller. Her mother, Johanna Villamizar, tells me that like many people around here she has dual citizenship. ”My mother is Colombian, my father is Venezuelan,” she explains. The family owns an auto parts shop on the Venezuelan side. Villamizar’s husband says he works there every day. ”I wake up, cross the border to get to work, then at the end of the day I cross back to come home.” Officially, Venezuela has closed this border to most traffic due to a political dispute. (Venezuela is trying to shift some of the blame for its economic woes onto Colombia. Colombia says that’s ridiculous.) But Venezuela is still letting hundreds of people pass through the bridge every day. Villamizar says for her, it’s as if the border doesn’t exist. And the same seems to hold true for the Zika virus. Practically everyone in the Villamizar family has gotten it, on both sides of the border. She ticks off the list: ”My grandmother, an aunt, a cousin.” So far, Villamizar has been able to avoid infection, but Zika’s got her worried. She’s pregnant and she has heard the reports about a possible link between this   virus and birth defects. ”I spend all my time spraying myself with repellent,” she says, laughing. Plenty of other people we meet say they don’t bother. Like Shirley Llanos, a physiotherapist wearing gray scrubs. ”Because I’m pretty sure I’ve already had Zika!” she says, giggling a little sheepishly. She came down with the classic symptoms in December  —   rash, fever, aches. Even so, she says, she kept working through most of it  —   commuting from her home in Venezuela to a hospital on the Colombian side. As she puts it, ”A few days here, a few days there.” That’s a pattern that worries Colombian officials like Bitar because the mosquitoes that transmit the virus between humans don’t actually travel far. This is an epidemic that’s being spread by sick people moving from one place to another. Bitar says the biggest challenge is Venezuela’s almost complete denial of the scale of its Zika problem. Ideally, he says, he should be coordinating closely with his Venezuelan counterparts right now  —   pooling data so they can focus   efforts on border communities where the virus is spiking. But relations have become so strained, he says, that he can’t even pick up the phone to call them."
"To help prevent the spread of the Zika virus in Puerto Rico, government officials on the island have declared condom   illegal. In early February, during a media briefing at the governor’s mansion, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of the Department of Consumer Affairs Nery Adames Soto announced that his agency has added prophylactics to the   list. Stores on the island also aren’t allowed by DACO to raise the price on mosquito repellent, window screens, larvicides and other   products. U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed that as of Feb. 19 there were nine cases of Zika reported in Puerto Rico, a U. S. territory. Eight of them were locally acquired and one was associated with travel. Public health officials have reported more than 60 Zika cases in Puerto Rico, including three pregnant women. DACO’s Adames ordered the price freeze on condoms because of growing concerns that someone can pass the Zika virus to another person through sexual contact. He’s worried the virus can quickly spread to other municipalities. He added, people should visit the DACO website or Facebook page and file a report if they come across a business that has violated his executive order. ”Every local store, gas station or business that sells these items must know that DACO will be knocking on your doors and closely monitoring this, allowing the citizens to protect themselves adequately because now is not the time to raise prices.” Store owners may be fined up to $10, 000 for each   violation. To get a better sense of what the condom price freeze meant to the locals, NPR’s Greg Allen and I went to Condom World, a popular adult retail chain in Puerto Rico. The branch we visited is in the heart of Carolina, a beach town east of San Juan. On a typical Friday evening, tourists stroll up and down the sidewalk bustling with restaurants, pubs and other novelty shops. The curious tend to wander in to browse the provocative merchandise at Condom World. Sales clerk Coralis   says she had heard about the government declaring the condom price freeze. ”It’s stupid,” she says. ”Just because Zika is here, doesn’t mean we’re going to raise the price. That’s something we just don’t do no matter what.” A box of three condoms ranges in price from $3. 99 to $5. 99,   agrees with price freezing in general, but doesn’t think the government needs to draw much attention to condom sales as a potential threat to the spread of Zika. There are more pressing concerns like putting screens on windows and eliminating stagnant water sources. Condom World customer Beatrice Garza said a condom price freeze should definitely be in order and hopes retailers don’t take advantage of the situation. ”The mosquitoes started this. It didn’t come from sex. It came from the mosquito,” Garza says. Meanwhile, the archbishop of San Juan, Roberto Nieves Gonzales, came out with his take on the condom rhetoric. Soon after the government’s decree on the condom price freeze, Monsignor Gonzales recommended a lifestyle ”of chastity and abstinence,” instead of using a condom, to prevent the spread of the Zika virus. The first reported cases of infection were centered on the northeastern part of the island and near San Juan. But there are now confirmed cases appearing in the southern coast and parts of the interior, a sign the virus may continue to spread to other regions in the coming months. In early February, Puerto Rico’s governor declared a public health emergency on the island. The rapid spread of Zika coupled with public health messages about sexual transmission may have an economic impact on specialty stores like Condom World  ” despite a condom price freeze. Puerto Rico is already starting to see a decline in sales and tourism in other areas. Miguel Vega is the chairman of the island’s tourism association. He says these new government impositions and mandates will affect travel to the island and its hotel industry. And he’s not happy about it. ”Sometimes they take these things out of proportion,” he says, ”and it creates collective hysteria where there is not any necessity.”"
"The Twitter hashtag ”#FreeKesha” has gone viral. The pop singer is not actually imprisoned, but she is trapped in a recording contract with Sony. It’s not an unheard of battle in the history of music. But the reason Kesha wants out is different: She says she was sexually abused by her producer for years. Kesha wants to record new music. Specifically, she wants to record it while the lawsuit against her producer, Dr. Luke, is going on. And, she wants to record it without the involvement of Dr. Luke or his label, Kemosabe, a Sony subsidiary. Dr. Luke has written and produced dozens of hits over the past decade and has worked with Kesha since her first big song, Flo Rida’s 2009 No. 1 single ”Right Round.” When a judge said no, Kesha’s fans made their opinions heard. Supporters chanted in front of the courthouse. Taylor Swift sent the singer a check for $250, 000. Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Kelly Clarkson voiced their support on social media. MTV announced that it ”stands with” Kesha. Lena Dunham wrote in her newsletter that the case ”highlights the way that the American legal system continues to hurt women by failing to protect them from the men they identify as their abusers.” This is an old story in show business. A young artist signs a contract. They have some success they might even get famous. Then, they want out of that contract. Kesha signed a   deal with Sony. She has already delivered two albums to that label according to her contract, she owes them four more albums. A pop album typically takes somewhere between one and three years to make, so the    could be tied to Sony for somewhere between four and ten  —   or more  —   years ahead. ”I think it’s interesting because it shows the general public a peek behind the curtain,” says Julian Petty, head of the entertainment practice at the law firm Nixon Peabody. He says what’s different about this case is how publicly the battle has played out. ”I don’t think, for the most part, the public knows just what goes on with recording agreements,” he says. ”Just how sophisticated they are, what is involved in creating a star, what sort of resources are put into creating a star, and the lengths at which a company will go to keep that star because they’ve invested quite heavily in them.” Kesha Rose Sebert has been under contract with Sony for a decade. She told NPR in 2012 that she was committed to a career in music. She’d never considered doing anything else. ”I’ve never really believed in having a fallback plan,” she said in the interview, ”I always knew this was what I was going to do.” Until 2014, that commitment seemed to be working. Kesha had a string of hits, including ”Tik Tok,” a song that celebrated a     lifestyle. The lawsuit paints a very different picture: ”For the past ten years, Dr. Luke has sexually, physically, verbally and emotionally abused Ms. Sebert,” it reads, in part. Kesha asked the court to let her out of her contract and end her relationship with Sony. Sony said it would allow Kesha to record without Dr. Luke present, but Kesha wants to end relationship completely. While that lawsuit was in progress, Dr. Luke countersued the artist (and her mother) for defamation and breach of contract. A New York judge has sided with Sony and Dr. Luke for now. But Julian Petty says the #FreeKesha movement could have an impact  —   the publicity might make Sony more willing to come to a settlement outside of the courtroom  —   but it probably won’t do much to convince the label to drop the contract completely. ”If that is undercut, that pretty much destroys the foundation of the music industry.” he says. ”Because why would anyone invest all this capital if they can lose all these rights in an act?” Dr. Luke’s lawyers said in a statement that Sony Music has already spent over $11 million promoting Kesha, and that they are ”committed to continuing to promote her work.” In a series of tweets, Dr. Luke defended himself against Kesha’s allegations and commented on the support she has received. ”Until now I haven’t commented on the lawsuits,” he posted, ”which should be resolved in court not here on Twitter.” ”It’s sad that she would turn a contract negotiation into something so horrendous and untrue,” he continued, ”But I feel confident when this is over the lies will be exposed and the truth will prevail.” Kesha’s lawyers declined to speak to NPR for this story. The judge in the case is waiting to hear more evidence before ruling further."
"In a relatively rare victory for abused workers, Vail Run Resort in Colorado recently agreed to pay more than $1 million to settle a sexual harassment case. The case was brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of members of the hotel’s housekeeping employees. The company failed to address attempted rapes of its housekeeping staff. As part of the settlement, the company will have a monitor for five years and will be required to do extensive   training of its managers. There are no recent, reliable statistics about sexual violence at work. The most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated there were more than 43, 000 workplace rapes and sexual assaults a year. But   advocates say that vastly underreports the crimes, because many victims are afraid to or discouraged from coming forward. Take, for example, Marie Billiel. She had just started college and a job as an overnight waitress when propositions from one of the cooks became more than that. ”One night it escalated to him grabbing my wrist and pulling me out back into the larger prep area towards the   cooler,” Billiel says. The kitchen was empty, but she managed to get away and report the incident to her manager. The reaction was not what she expected. ” ’I’ve got 20 applications under the register,’ ” she says she was told. ”You know, they made it very clear that we were expendable labor.” It was during the Great Recession, and Billiel says she worried about finding another job in her western Massachusetts town. ”Even though I was upset about it, it seemed like it was less of a big deal to everybody else, so then I didn’t know if it was my overreaction,” she says. This is a familiar story for Linda Seabrook, general counsel at Futures Without Violence, an advocacy group. ”Sexual assaults in general are vastly underreported, and even more so at work,” she says. Seabrook herself didn’t report an incident that happened years ago, when she managed a restaurant  . A fellow manager pinned her in a corner late one night, pressuring her for sex. She escaped, but never reported it, a fact that seems harder to explain now because she was later a law student and knew her rights. ”I should have, but I didn’t report it to upper management because I didn’t want to lose my job,” she says. She was young, uncertain about workplace norms, and, like so many other women facing similar situations, she says, she needed the income. ”People who have fewer economic options are more dependent upon that job,” Seabrook says. One plaintiff in the EEOC’s Vail Run Resort case is Maria Luisa Baltazar Benitez, whose supervisor repeatedly tried to rape her. ”I was doing my work, and I saw him and he already had his pants down, and then he grabbed me and he pulled down my pants, because we wore ones that were made of elastic,” she says. Benitez says as he tried to tear her underwear, she grabbed her phone. Her attacker fled as she threatened to call the police. His supervisors, she says, ignored her complaints. Vail Run Resort did not return calls seeking comment. In a separate criminal proceeding, a jury convicted the attacker, Omar Quezada, of extortion and unlawful sexual contact. Mary O’Neill, one of the EEOC’s prosecuting attorneys, says employment law does provide protections for undocumented workers, though many are not aware of it. She says outreach efforts are leading to more sexual abuse filings. ”There are many of these cases. There’s probably more than we could litigate,” O’Neill says. She says it’s not just women who face workplace sexual violence. About 17 percent of cases filed with her agency involve men, who often face other hurdles. ”There’s a different dynamic there, which is, people will say, ’Well, why didn’t you just beat him up?’ ” O’Neill says. Perpetrators, she says, almost always target multiple victims. ”One of the reasons these are not so hard to win is because you have many victims who come and tell the same story and they don’t even know each other,” O’Neill says. That was the case at the Colorado resort, O’Neill says, and the employer who turned a blind eye was held responsible."
"Thousands of bands have made strong debuts, and many of those have made good second and third records  —   it’s harder, but not unusual. It’s truly rare to make your 10th album exciting and relevant more than 20 years on. For all that, I’d say Wilco is an American legend. Though Wilco is basically a conventional rock band in form  —   guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, one lead songwriter  —   it defies expectations in so many other ways. In 2001, the group put an entire new album (the instant classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) online for all to hear it’s one thing to do that in 2015, as Wilco did with Star Wars, but it was virtually   in 2001. This is a deeply imaginative band, with evocative imagery and relatable storytelling drummer Glenn Kotche is one of the best around, while Nels Cline’s crazy, textured guitar layers add adventure to everything he touches. I could go on, but let’s just say that breaking my rule of never bringing a band back to the Tiny Desk  —   Wilco performed here back in 2011  —   was easy once I heard Star Wars. Wilco opened this set with ”The Joke Explained” from that album, but then dug deep into its catalog, performing 1996’s ”Misunderstood” and two songs from the 1999 pop masterpiece Summerteeth. I’m thinking we make a date: When Wilco turns 25 in a few years, let’s break more rules and bring back their magic once more. Star Wars is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame, Becky Lettenberger Production Assistant: Ben de la Cruz Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Finding bread alternatives may seem like a thoroughly modern obsession. (Can someone pass the   rolls?) But the widespread search for substitutes to white flour, in particular, dates back at least a century, to World War I, when Allied forces aggressively urged consumers to change their starchy habits for nationalistic reasons. On one hand, bread was symbolically important: It conjured up ideas of comfort that were especially welcome during a time of fear and turmoil. The act of sharing a loaf  —   literally breaking bread together  —   carried psychological weight. ”If you had bread, you were OK,” says Joanne Lamb Hayes, author of the book Grandma’s Wartime Kitchen. Problem was, diners on both sides of the ocean had a taste for white bread, which made use of only part of the wheat crop and wasted the rest. Plus, Britain, an island nation, imported much of its food, including its grain  —   a task made harder with German submarines prowling the waters. In this atmosphere, indulging in white flour was viewed as wastefulness akin to aiding and abetting the enemy. At the same time, Allied forces called on the U. S. to donate some of its wheat crop to feed troops and civilians overseas. So, in the U. S. and U. K. government campaigns encouraged patriots to give up refined white bread in favor of heartier whole wheat or to add other ingredients as fillers. ”There was a feeling that the troops deserved white bread, and the rest of us could add cornmeal or rye flour,” says Hayes. In the U. S. during World War I, the federal Food Administration encouraged substituting ground oats, cornmeal, rice, barley, potato and buckwheat in place of wheat flour. (Yep  —   the same kinds of ingredients you’ll find in today’s frozen   waffles.) In Oregon, for instance, the loaf locally called ”war bread” contained 40 percent wheat substitutes, such as corn, barley, or rice flour another type, known as ”victory bread,” contained 25 percent substitutes. Those who munched on war bread, readers of the Oregon Evening Herald were told, were ”15 per cent more patriotic than the one who eats victory bread.” One 1918 pamphlet described these alternative breads as ”foods that will win the war.” One wheatless meal per family per day, the pamphlet estimated, ”would mean a saving of 90, 000, 000 bushels of wheat, which totals 5, 400, 000, 000 lbs.” American home bakers were also encouraged to mash up potatoes in their breads, because, as Hayes explains, ”people could grow some sort of potato in their victory garden.” Whereas ”with wheat, you really needed a farm.” Some newspapers even ran daily potato recipes, such as one for mashed potato biscuits. Ditching white bread for the good of the nation was also a theme during World War II, though American eaters weren’t psyched about it. As Aaron   explains in the book White Bread: A Social History of the   Loaf, ”during the 1930s and ’40s, Americans got more calories from white bread than from any other food” and glared at attempts to tweak the recipe. Still, newspapers under the Hearst umbrella dutifully compiled recipes by the pseudonymous ”Prudence Penny,” who doled out patriotic calls to arms softened by singsong rhymes. The resulting cookbook, Prudence Penny’s Coupon Cookery, included ditties like this, an ode to whole grain flour as an alternative to white: The cook who bakes her bread and rolls is everybody’s pal, Just that tantalizing fragrance will help to build morale, America is rich in grain, and grain is rich in health,   bread and cereals may prove our nation’s wealth, Wartime ingredient swaps were common in the U. K. too, during both world wars, says Amanda Mason, a historian at the Imperial War Museum in London. Dried eggs  —   more widely available than fresh ones  —   became baking staples. Sausage meatloaf molded into the shape of a turkey or duck masqueraded as festive holiday fare. Parsnips were cast as fake bananas. And, during World War II, U. K. consumers were introduced to Potato Pete, a dapper cartoon spud with a jaunty cap and spats, who instructed them on the humble tuber’s many uses  —   not just in standards like scalloped potatoes and savory pies but also in more surprising options, like potato scones and waffles. Indeed, Mason says the only   bread for sale in Britain during much of World War II was something called the National Loaf. This was a coarse,   bread that used as much grain as possible, including the husks  —   and which, Mason admits, was ”generally unpopular with the average shopper.” American consumers weren’t drooling over the taste of war bread, either. The writer of a 1918 story in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle glumly reported that the texture and flavor of wartime bread ”are suggestive of saw dust” and noted that ”it doesn’t tempt appetite.” Still, writers were quick to add that war breads were a patriotic duty: As the Daily Eagle noted, ”Of course, we are resigned  —   we are even glad  —   to eat them.” And the government and media outlets made sure people didn’t forget that duty. A   story in an April 1917 issue of Washington state’s Tacoma Times newspaper featured a drawing of Uncle Sam admonishing readers to ”avoid wastefulness and shun   bread.” That same month, Chicago’s Day Book chided consumers who ate white bread, reminding them that ”war bread is more essential than bullets.” Agencies in the U. K. also laid on the guilt trip to keep consumers away from white bread. Short propaganda films produced by the British Ministry of Food during World War II urged citizens to ”make the most of every crumb,” because ”bread is worth more than dough.” Posters echoed this sentiment, trumpeting, ”Save the Wheat and Help the Fleet,” and ”The Kitchen Is the Key to Victory: Eat Less Bread.” Jessica Leigh Hester writes about urbanism and history. She lives in Brooklyn. "
"It’s never clear what the truth is when a campaign ends, but it gets ugly. Major fundraisers are among the people who are key in creating a campaign. And when campaigns fold, they talk sometimes  —   usually in blind quotes. But one of the funders, who helped raise millions of dollars for a superPAC supporting Jeb Bush, talked on the record with NPR’s Morning Edition  —   and gave his version of what he felt went wrong. ”I think the campaign was winnable, and we lost,” Jamie Wareham, a Washington, D. C. lawyer, told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Tuesday. Wareham donated more than $40, 000 to Right to Rise USA and helped the group rake in cash from other donors. Questions abound about whether it was the campaign, the superPAC or, as is usually the case, the candidate himself who was to blame. Bush has been criticized for being too slow to respond to a campaign that was different from the one he  —   and almost everyone else  —   expected. No one foresaw the political force Donald Trump would be, and Bush  —   and every other candidate, for that matter  —   had difficulty knocking the seemingly underqualified Trump off stride. Above all, Bush seemed to be the victim of a Republican Party that may be fundamentally changed from the one that elected his father and brother president. But Wareham still felt, maybe wished, the campaign could have done something, anything to change the dynamic. ”I hoped there would be a change at the top when in the early, midsummer it was clear we had the wrong people leading the campaign,” Wareham said, referring to when Trump began his rise. Wareham put the onus on campaign manager Danny Diaz, who joined as campaign manager in the summer of 2015. ”He lacked the temperament,” Wareham charged. ”His major accomplishment prior to being hired was losing the Ken Cuccinelli campaign in Virginia. So he had no successful experience. Though he did have experience.” Cuccinelli was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor of Virginia in 2013. Diaz, a veteran hand of four presidential campaigns and a former Republican National Committee communications director, certainly has more experience than one failed race. Though he has never run a presidential campaign, and only a few have run successful ones, he helped elect Republican Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Susana Martinez of New Mexico. He also became known as a ”fixer” on Senate campaigns, helping elect Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois. A former campaign operative familiar with the situation accused Wareham of having an ax to grind. ”Within the campaign, James Wareham was   as a malcontent who routinely sowed problems and required significant levels of handholding,” the former operative said. The operative added that Wareham ”became largely intolerable when his personal friend  —   the campaign’s previous chief operations officer  —   was dismissed for subpar performance. Wareham represents everything that’s wrong with politics, someone whose   importance drives their every action and decision.” NPR reached out to Wareham for response. ”Sadly, this type of sophomoric,   intemperance is illustrative of the atmosphere Mr. Diaz created inside what was supposed to be a joyful campaign,” Wareham said in an email. ”My views are anything but personal. Indeed, they are shared by dozens and dozens of loyal Jeb supporters who for many months held their tongues out of concern they might possibly harm Gov. Bush. Mr. Diaz always seemed to think the campaign was somehow about him. In the end, it largely was because the candidate who is, by far, the most qualified person to run this country in such hazardous times is no longer in the race, in large measure, because of Mr. Diaz’s incompetence.” Other veteran Republican operatives are coming to Diaz’s defense. ”Danny Diaz did the best he could do in a very tough environment,” Matt Rhoades, who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, told NPR. ”While Jeb Bush did not win the nomination, Diaz stayed loyal to his principal to the end, and that speaks volumes of his character.” Brian Jones, a former senior aide to the Chris Christie presidential campaign, said, ”Danny is a gifted political strategist and manager, pretty much without peer in the Republican Party. Gov. Bush was lucky to have Danny at the helm of his campaign, just like the last three GOP presidential nominees were fortunate enough to have him working on their presidential bids. ”It’s always unfortunate and a little sad to see people lash out at the conclusion of a campaign, particularly when they were removed from what was happening on a    basis.” As Bush and his team laid plans for the 2016 Republican primaries, they set out to have the   superPAC ever. And for a time, they did. Right to Rise USA, where Wareham’s money was actually going, raised $118 million, and spent $87 million on advertising, even as Bush never came close to winning a primary. That’s almost triple the campaign’s budget. The superPAC’s advertising and messaging strategy has had its critics. The fundraising strategy was audacious: Pull in millions of dollars in unlimited contributions before Bush even became a candidate. That way he could hit up donors himself, something that the law would prohibit once he announced. The campaign strategy was audacious, too. Jeb! 2016, the official campaign committee, essentially outsourced its media operation to the supposedly independent superPAC. This was more responsibility than any other presidential superPAC had, either this cycle or in 2012, the first presidential election after federal courts sanctioned superPACs. It was an arrangement with ”the candidate sort of doing a lot of the groundwork, and visiting and talking with people, but the superPAC doing a lot of the media,” said Michael Franz, a political scientist at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and   of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks TV advertising in the presidential campaign. He added, ”That model doesn’t seem to be one that will likely be replicated.” That’s because it backfired. ”The sort of nimbleness is lost when you’re doing the division of labor,” Franz said in an interview. ”Even though there’s a lot of money coming into the superPAC and it’s unconstrained, that doesn’t necessarily mean the messaging is going to be effective.” It also meant less money going to the campaign, which lagged behind the official fundraising of several other GOP campaigns, to the point that Diaz, the campaign manager, went unpaid since October. The superPAC’s biggest failure: It took months to figure out how to deal with Trump’s   candidacy. Other candidates were equally slow on the uptake. In the Bush operation, the result was that as Trump grabbed all the media attention, Right to Rise USA was spending its TV budget on   biography spots when it could have been attacking   Trump. ”You look back and think about how some of that money could have been used to educate people on Trump’s real position on a lot of issues, as opposed to effectively ignoring him and expecting it would go away,” Brian Walsh, a Republican consultant and strategist, told NPR. ”In hindsight, obviously, that turned out to be a strategic error.” Ironically, one of the lessons of the 2012 presidential campaign was that Romney never took hold of his biography with early positive ads  —   and that left it to opponents to define him. Bush’s team and supporters weren’t going to make that same mistake with their candidate, who, similarly, was an early clear   with a big potential problem  —   his last name. But all of this doesn’t mean superPACs don’t or can’t work  —   or that big money isn’t important anymore. For example, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is still in the race, has both a superPAC and a   ”social welfare” organization supporting him. (The social welfare group isn’t required to disclose its donors.) Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s organization also includes several superPACs, including one that launched with $11 million from investor Robert Mercer. And Right to Rise USA didn’t act as if it was hurting for cash  —   at least not until this month. An NPR analysis of federal data shows the superPAC’s TV spending peaked last October at $18 million, then again last month at $29 million. In February, TV spending fell to barely $5 million. ”It still comes down to a handful of wealthy people,” said Kent Cooper, a founder of the website Political Money Line, which compiles   data. ”It’s just a huge impact on the presidential race, as opposed to the millions of voters around the country.” Many have asked whether any amount of money, though, could have helped Bush do better in the current political climate. ”If spent well, it could have made a huge difference,” Wareham told Morning Edition in defense of the former candidate. ”And he did everything that a candidate could possibly do. This concept that he was low energy is despicable. Nobody in this race had more time commitment, more energy than Jeb Bush.” As of Jan. 31, Right to Rise USA reported $24 million cash on hand. Since then, it has disclosed $22 million in expenditures on political messages, mostly in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Its report of money raised in February isn’t due until March 20. There are costs to closing down a superPAC, mostly bills from lawyers and accountants. But there are no rules about what to do with leftover cash. Right to Rise USA treasurer Charles Spies told NPR that no decision has been made about excess cash. As for a donor like Wareham, he still wants to beat Trump. After ticking through the candidates left in the race, he said, ”You are kind of left with two folks that have solid records and are possibilities for everyone in a similar situation to me  —   they are John Kasich and Marco Rubio.” The Ohio governor and Florida senator are drawing support from many mainstream Republicans. What about Trump? ”I don’t see him playing well in many states coming forward,” Wareham said, perhaps more hopeful than anything else, as polls in upcoming GOP primary states give Trump an early edge in many states."
"In a study powered by the labor of medical students, my colleagues and I found that   of clinical trials led by scientists at our finest academic institutions didn’t share their results publicly within two years of the study’s completion. Moreover, none of these research institutions has a good record of sharing results. Many are much worse than the average. For all the focus on the need to speed up science for cures, we have a bottleneck at our nation’s bastions of research excellence. Too many times, study results are neither reported on the government website dedicated to that purpose, clinicaltrials. gov, nor published in a medical journal. Our findings were published Wednesday in The BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal. The failure to share results is so pervasive that it seems inappropriate to blame individuals. Instead, it is a systemic problem. Academic medicine has fostered a culture in which the sharing of our results is considered discretionary, rather than mandatory. And if researchers decide to pass on sharing, there is no consequence to them. Not reporting results violates the basic principle of the scientific method. It hurts patients, society and science. It also dishonors the people who gave their consent and bore the risk of participating in the studies. Who would agree to be in a study with the knowledge that the results wouldn’t be shared? It seems a fair assumption that these studies were worth doing and were designed to generate meaningful information. Academics at leading universities led these studies. Human studies oversight boards at these institutions approved these studies. Given all that, the holding back of the results impedes progress toward scientific breakthroughs, corrupts the medical literature and wastes research funding. I am a strong advocate for data sharing and open science. I believe that scientists share data in the spirit of advancing knowledge. But those goals are a step beyond what we are talking about here: simply sharing the results of the research. Some people are intent on finding the underlying factors within the culture that has produced this behavior. I have heard people say that they aren’t eager to publish results that seem weak or counter to what they believe. Some claim that other responsibilities occupied their time or that they ran out of research funds in the final stages. I must admit that I don’t care. I don’t want to study this problem further. I just want to see it fixed. Posting results on clinicaltrials. gov, the government website, could be done in less than an hour. Publishing the results, with or without peer review, could be done if people are determined to do it. Sharing the results is just not that hard and should not be considered optional. The problem isn’t new. I first encountered the selective sharing of research findings during my work as an expert for plaintiffs in the Vioxx litigation 10 years ago and we subsequently published an article about it. Before that experience I never imagined that people would conduct human studies and not share results. To investigate this issue further, colleagues and I took a broader look at research and found that this wasn’t a problem unique to industry, but was pervasive throughout medicine. In a 2009 study, we were shocked to see that results of only about half of trials were published within four years of study completion. Our first reaction was that we couldn’t be right. We pored over our results to be sure they were true. We published them with trepidation because despite repeated checks, we still thought that someone would find an error. How could it be so bad? And yet, our conclusions were true and others soon replicated the findings. When we published a study that showed even results from studies funded by the National Institutes of Health commonly went unshared, our findings were met by disbelief at NIH until scientists there repeated the study and found the same thing. As these studies emerged, industry began to adopt policies to ensure reporting and publication. But not academic institutions. To zero in on this issue, the most recent study looks specifically at the performance of academic centers. I teach at Yale University and one of my students, Ray Chen (now a resident at the University of California, San Francisco) wanted to do a meaningful study as part of his degree. We began talking about researchers not sharing their results. We thought it would be useful to produce a national report card for the leading academic institutions. They are, after all, ultimately responsible for the studies conducted under their auspices. We didn’t want to embarrass anyone, but we felt that maybe some stellar performers could help enlighten the others about how to improve. There was only one problem: It would take a lot of work. I mean, a lot of work. There was no easy way to track down the information about study publications without going one by one and searching for them in many different ways. Ray said that he thought he could recruit other medical students to help. They would have to spend hours tracking down whether studies led by people at the top academic institutions had shared results by reporting them on clinicaltrials. gov or publishing them. The students persevered, knowing that they might be questioning the practices of the powerful. And they were dismayed by what they found. What should be done about the problem? If I were a funder of research and the recipient academic institution didn’t share the results, I would ask for a refund. If I were representing the interests of study participants, I would ask for apologies and forbid future research until there was a plan for sharing all results. There’s no excuse for not reporting all results within two years of finishing a study. And, I’d argue, the time should be much shorter. This is about taking science seriously and our commitment to move faster on behalf of patients and society. This is medical research. It is ultimately about providing practical benefit. We have a moral imperative to share what we learn. We need the systems in place that guarantee researchers adhere to the final step of the scientific method and share what they find. In the end, it would be particularly sweet if it were the labor of medical students that led the established researchers to correct their ways. Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist and the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. He directs the   Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation and is a   of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program."
"Five Hong Kong booksellers disappeared and later turned up in police custody on mainland China, and nearly two months later, Chinese authorities have yet to explain how they got there. Foreign governments and the United Nations have expressed concern about the disappearances. The British government went so far as to assert that one bookseller had been ”involuntarily removed”  —   basically kidnapped  —   from Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the chilling effect of the disappearance cases has been most clearly felt in the publishing industry, which normally enjoys freedom of the press not found on the mainland. Some publishers and authors have lost confidence in Hong Kong’s autonomy and left the territory. Others, like Bao Pu, the founder of the New Century Press, had little confidence to lose. ”I didn’t have the faith that the Hong Kong government or Hong Kong police would protect me,” Bao says. ”So I knew the risk and, as far as the risk is concerned, that hasn’t changed.” Bao became acquainted with these risks in 2010, after he obtained a copy of what he believed was the diary of Li Peng, China’s premier during the crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The document was damaging to many high officials, who the memoir confirmed were complicit in the crackdown. Bao verified the diary’s authenticity as best he could and prepared to go to press. ”We were a month away from the planned publication date,” Bao recalls, when ”the mainland authorities came to Hong Kong to negotiate about the publication.” Bao declines to say just who the authorities were or what they told him. But the upshot was that he backed down and canceled the publication. Besides, the diary had already appeared on the Internet, so Bao saw no need to print it. Canceling the book allowed Bao to continue running his publishing business. And it gave him an important piece of information. ”What I got,” he says, ”was the verification that this was the authentic diary from Li Peng.” Bao figures that authorities would not have bothered to approach him to ”negotiate” if the manuscript was fake. Unlike Bao’s New Century Press, the Mighty Current publishing house  —   from which the five booksellers have disappeared  —   specializes in books on Chinese politics that are based on dubious sources and are often more entertainment than information. Bao bristles at being mentioned in the same breath as other, more lowbrow and commercial Hong Kong publishers. ”Being lumped together with that kind of operation and that kind of book is very unfortunate,” he sniffs. Asked about what motivated him to get into publishing in Hong Kong, Bao explains that it started with the events of 1989. He was on the streets in Beijing on June 4 that year, when soldiers gunned down hundreds of   protesters. ”Ever since that happened, I see the systematic effort of erasing that event from Chinese history, by the Chinese government,” Bao says. ”And I don’t like this.” Erasing the record included silencing Bao’s father by jailing him for seven years. The elder Bao served as secretary to the late premier Zhao Ziyang  —   who opposed the Tiananmen crackdown  —   and remains under house arrest to this day. ”I thought, maybe I can do something to preserve the historical record,” Bao says. Still, as much as censorship may threaten Hong Kong’s political book publishers, he says, the greater threat to the industry is that consumers are simply buying and reading fewer books than they used to. But there appears to be an added risk for authors and publishers who put out books critical of China’s top leaders. In 2014, Chinese author Yu Jie published a book titled Godfather of China Xi Jinping. It debunked the wishful thinking of some observers who imagined that President Xi might lead China in a more liberal political direction after he took office in 2012. ”Xi Jinping has concentrated power in his own hands and then suppressed dissent in civil society, the media and academia,” Yu says in a phone interview from the United States, where he’s now based. ”He could not possibly have initiated reform of the political system.” Yu says that mainland police lured his book’s publisher, Yao Wentian, from Hong Kong to the mainland, where he was sentenced in May 2014 to 10 years in jail. Yao was convicted of smuggling, but Yu believes it was in fact punishment for publishing his book. Yu had already earned Beijing’s wrath for his earlier writings about China’s leaders. ”I was kidnapped, tortured and forced to promise in writing that I would not criticize members of the Politburo standing committee by name,” Yu says. The members of that committee are nominally the seven most powerful men in China. Yu argues that Xi Jinping, who is the most powerful of all, is also the least tolerant of criticism. Yu was due to come out with a new book this year called Xi Jinping’s Nightmare  —   a reference to Xi’s evocation of a ”China Dream.” But he was not too surprised when this book’s publisher, a veteran Hong Kong journalist named Jin Zhong, called him to say the deal was off. Jin met me for an interview in a Hong Kong hotel, dressed in a sport coat and with a foulard around his neck. He has been a prominent chronicler of mainland politics for more than three decades. ”My family and friends all begged me to avoid this risk” of publishing Yu Jie’s book, Jin tells me. So he complied. ”Hong Kong people, especially in my industry, feel they’re in danger,” Jin says. ”If mainland agents are really being sent here to abduct people, then that is terrifying.” Since I spoke to him, Jin has moved to New York to join his wife."
"U. S. operation of the Guantanamo Bay military detention center in Cuba is ”contrary to our values” and is seen as ”a stain on our broader record” of upholding the highest rules of law, President Obama said Tuesday as he announced plans to close the facility. The administration’s proposal is ”not expected to go very far,” as the   reported earlier today. Devised by the Pentagon, the plan outlines how a shutdown might work  —   something that was requested by Congress. But it comes months after lawmakers from both parties approved legislation that prohibits the president from moving detainees onto U. S. soil. Obama made his case for the plan at a live event at the White House. ”For many years it’s been clear that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay does not advance our national security,” he said. ”It undermines it.” The president added that this wasn’t his opinion alone, but one that’s shared by military advisers  —   and he said that the facility provides a recruiting and propaganda tool for terrorist groups such as ISIS and also hurts America’s relationships with its allies. ”Let us do what is right for America,” Obama said, seeking to close a chapter in the country’s fight against terrorism. Several times during his speech, Obama invoked his predecessor, President George W. Bush, noting that Bush oversaw the facility’s use to house suspected terrorists  —   and also wanted to close the prison. ”I give him credit for that,” Obama said, calling it ”an honest assessment on his part on his part of what needed to happen.” Toward the end of his remarks, the president said, ”I don’t want to pass this problem on to the next president, whoever it is. And if as a nation we don’t deal with this now, when will we deal with it?” Responding to Obama’s plan, the American Civil Liberties Union’s executive director, Anthony D. Romero, applauded the effort to close Guantanamo  —   but he added, ”his decision to preserve the   military commissions is a mistake.” Romero also said that the president’s ”continuing embrace of indefinite detention without charge or trial will tarnish his legacy.” More than a third of the current occupants at the U. S. prison at Guantanamo Bay are now eligible to be transferred to other countries, the White House says. Although Republican majorities in the House and Senate are not inclined to go along, the Pentagon plan will fulfill an obligation created by Congress for Obama to at least file such a plan and move the onus for action onto Capitol Hill. ”The politics of this are tough,” the president said Tuesday, noting that many Americans remain highly concerned about terrorism  —   and the prospect of holding terrorists prisoner here in the U. S. Defense officials have been surveying sites inside the United States to see how well they might do as the new homes for Guantanamo detainees. There are 46 detainees whom U. S. officials consider too dangerous to release because of the potential threat they might pose, along with 10 others who are either charged or convicted by military commissions. Another 35 detainees held at Guantanamo since the George W. Bush administration are awaiting transfer to other countries. The Pentagon has looked at military and federal prisons in South Carolina, Kansas and Colorado. Its report could include the details of what work each one would require as a potential stateside successor to Guantanamo, but is not expected to pick one over the other. NPR’s David Welna, who just returned from a week covering military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, has visited two of the sites the Pentagon has considered. The mayor of Leavenworth, Kan. home to a maximum security Army prison, told Welna she is ”absolutely against” the idea of Guantanamo detainees moving there. Many locals in Canon City, Colo. also oppose the idea of hosting the terror suspects, but as home to a prison complex that includes the   federal ”Supermax,” they know why their area makes sense. ”I suppose I would prefer not to have war criminals or war prisoners in our community,” Canon City Mayor Tony Greer told Welna. ”On the other hand, we are a prison community. And if I were assigned the task from Washington to choose a site, certainly this would be on my short list.”"
"Saying it had been asked to look for a teenager from Sweden who had been misled by a member of the Islamic militant group ISIS, a Kurdish security force says it recently rescued the girl, 16, from Mosul, Iraq. Announcing the rescue Tuesday, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said that an ISIS operative in Sweden had persuaded the girl to travel to Syria and then to Mosul. ”She will be transferred to Swedish authorities to return home once necessary arrangements are put in place,” the council says, according to Rudaw, an online news site based in Irbil. Swedish news website The Local says the girl was pregnant when she initially traveled to the Middle East last June along with her boyfriend  —   and that by August, they were both being held by ISIS. In November, she gave birth to a son, according to multiple reports. The Local adds that there has been confusion about which militant group in the Mosul area had been holding the girl, with some reports indicating that she had been taken away from ISIS’ control during a raid on one of its camps last autumn, and other accounts saying she had returned to the group after an early attempt to rescue her. The news site concludes: ”While much behind her journey to Syria and Iraq remains unconfirmed, news of her situation follows a rise in young people making the journey from Scandinavia to the Middle East to join radical groups.” Authorities in Sweden have not issued a statement or comment about the case. According to the Aftonbladet news agency, the girl’s boyfriend recorded a short video last spring in which he addressed the girl’s family, telling them that they should forget about her, as she would not be coming back home."
"Hillary Clinton wants you to know that she was doing health care before health care was cool. ”You know, before it was called Obamacare it was called Hillarycare,” Clinton said recently at a rally in Elko, Nev. It’s a stock line these days in her stump speeches and debates. The term Hillarycare was coined back in the 1990s, when Clinton tried and failed to restructure the U. S. health care system during her husband’s first term as president. It was supposed to be an insult, but now she’s embracing it. That’s because     has made the Affordable Care Act  —   or Obamacare  —   the center of her health care plan. She’s not looking to be a revolutionary like her opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. He wants to replace private health insurance with a universal health care system in which the government pays the bills. Instead, Clinton has gone all in with Obamacare, embracing the controversial health law and promising to defend and expand it. ”I am a staunch supporter of President Obama’s principal accomplishment, namely the Affordable Care Act,” she said in a debate in Milwaukee on Feb. 11. Her plan to expand Obamacare consists of a slew of wonky measures that together are intended to cut costs and improve coverage for patients. ”There are as many as 20 separate proposals and none of them by themselves are giant proposals. Each one is an incremental step,” says Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. ”But taken together it actually is a significant package of what I think of as beyond the ACA,   proposals.” Among the ideas: Altman says Kaiser Family Foundation polls show voters are frustrated because they keep paying more for health care. Employers are shifting more and more of their health care costs onto employees. As a result, deductibles have more than tripled in the past 10 years and copays are also on the rise. Clinton’s proposals are designed to reduce those    costs. ”Her bona fides as knowledgeable on health insurance really are beyond question whether you agree with her proposals or not,” says Henry Aaron, a health care economist at the Brookings Institution. ”And she understands that a lot of the changes are down in the weeds.” But this smorgasbord of tweaks doesn’t generate huge applause like Sanders does when he promises free health care for everyone. And many in the health care industry  —   including drug manufacturers  —   are gearing up to oppose her proposals to reduce costs by putting tighter regulations on how they do business. ”Putting in place onerous regulations and mandates that make it harder to develop new treatments and cures for patients is the wrong approach,” says Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobbying group for the drug industry. Zirkelbach says medications hold down health costs because they keep people out of the hospital, which is far more expensive than almost any prescription drug. Clinton, he says, shouldn’t be making drug companies the bad guys. ”These proposals are being driven by the false notion that medicine spending is what is fueling rising health care costs in this country,” Zirkelbach says."
"When Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders stumps for health care for everyone, it always gets huge applause. ”I believe that the U. S. should do what every other major country on Earth is doing,” he told a crowd at Eastern Michigan University on Feb. 15. ”And that is, guarantee health care to all people as a right.” The Democratic presidential hopeful basically wants to nationalize the U. S. health insurance industry, and have Uncle Sam foot the bill for medical bills, office visits and prescriptions. Get rid of copays. Get rid of deductibles. Get rid of lots of forms. The voters love it. But the proposal has ignited a lively debate among   economists and policy analysts, and some are challenging his numbers. ”I like the goal of the plan,” Jared Bernstein, formerly a top economic adviser to Vice President Biden, tells Shots. ”I’m not sure the numbers add up, but the aspirations add up.” Though Sanders calls his plan Medicare for All, the system he proposes would be far more generous than the current health care program for senior citizens. It would cover more, and beneficiaries would pay far less out of pocket.  Sanders says he can pay for it  —   by raising people’s federal income tax by 2. 2 percent and charging employers 6. 2 percent of their payroll. The typical family would pay $466 more in premiums and save more than $5, 000 in health care costs each year, according to the outline of the plan on his website. To back it up, he cites an analysis titled ”United States Can Afford Single Payer Health Care Program” from Gerald Friedman, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts. Longtime backers of   health plans are circling Sanders to promote his proposal. His campaign office is circulating a statement signed by more than 130 economists, physicians and university professors endorsing the plan. ”The medical insurance industry is really a group of middlemen  —   there’s no need to have middlemen between paying for care and actually receiving care,” says Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an internist and professor at the City University of New York’s school of public health at Hunter College. Woolhandler signed the letter and has written several editorials defending Sanders’ ideas. She says such systems operate around the world, and many countries spend as much as 40 percent less per capita than the U. S. spends on health care. Many liberal economists and policymakers, however, disagree with the practicality of the plan, and are challenging Sanders’ math regarding the cost and savings. ”The government would make public something like 8 to 9 percent of the economy that’s currently private,” says Bernstein, who is now a fellow at the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. ”That would be hugely disruptive to those on that private side.” And Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of the health policy and management program at Emory University’s school of public health, estimates that Sanders’ plan will cost twice as much as the senator claims. ”A single payer plan would create enormous financial winners and losers among households and businesses,” Thorpe writes in a recent analysis. Economist Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution called the Sanders plan an impossible pipe dream in a widely reprinted story published last month. And four former White House economic advisers wrote an open letter to Sanders and Friedman describing the economic claims underpinning Sanders’ proposal as ”extreme.” ”As much as we wish it were so, no credible economic research supports economic impacts of these magnitudes,” wrote the economists  —   all former chairs of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. One of the letter’s authors, Austan Goolsbee, of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, was chairman of President Obama’s council of economic advisers. He says Sanders overestimates the savings from the   program and underestimates the costs and necessary tax increases. ”If you promise, ’I’m going to take you to the finest French restaurant and give you Chateaubriand and it’s only going to cost you $2. 79,’ it’s right to be a little skeptical and say, ’How do I know you’re not going to just give me a Wendy’s spicy chicken wrap and call it a day?’ ” Goolsbee tells Shots. Goolsbee and other skeptics admit they don’t relish opening another gigantic fight over health care just a few years after Obama’s Affordable Care Act was signed into law. ”I was there when we were doing Obamacare, and that was a really hard job,” he says. ”The thought of   that battle? That does make me nervous.” The Sanders campaign has dismissed such critics as ”establishment voices” that just don’t want to disrupt the status quo. "
"Apple should comply with the FBI’s request to extract data from an iPhone as part of a terrorism case, Microsoft founder Bill Gates says, staking out a position that’s markedly different from many of his peers in the tech industry, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The two titans aired their views on what’s become a public debate over whether Apple should be compelled to unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. ”This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They’re not asking for some general thing, they’re asking for a particular case,” Gates told the Financial Times. When asked about concerns that the process would mean that Apple creates a ”backdoor” that could be used again in the future, Gates replied, ”Apple has access to the information, they’re just refusing to provide the access, and the courts will tell them whether to provide the access or not.” Update at 11:10 a. m. ET: Gates ’Disappointed’  Appearing on Bloomberg after his Financial Times interview, Gates said, ”I was disappointed” with headlines that declared he backs the FBI, adding, ”because that doesn’t state my view on this.” He continued: ”I do believe that with the right safeguards there are cases where the government, on our behalf  —   like stopping terrorism, which could get worse in the future  —   that that is valuable.” Earlier in the Bloomberg segment, Gates said that it ”is a challenge” to update policies that regulate technology and ”when does the government have a right to know.” There’s a debate, he said, over when that’s appropriate. ”These issues will be decided in Congress,” Gates concluded later. Our original post continues: Consumers who are concerned about the case are planning to hold demonstrations at Apple’s retail stores in 40 U. S. cities as well as at the FBI’s headquarters in Washington on Tuesday. Gates’ remarks were published shortly after Zuckerberg also addressed the controversy, in a speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. ”We’re sympathetic with Apple on this one. We believe in encryption,” Zuckerberg said, according to  . ”I expect it’s not the right thing to try to block that from the mainstream products people want to use. And I think it’s not going to be the right regulatory or economic policy to put in place.” Gates’ views set him apart from the public stance his company has taken. As part of the Reform Government Surveillance coalition  —   a group of technology giants that also includes Apple and Facebook  —   Microsoft joined a statement that acknowledges the challenges and goals of law enforcement, and also states, ”But technology companies should not be required to build in backdoors to the technologies that keep their users’ information secure.” Google CEO Sundar Pichai has used Twitter to air his views on the government’s request. As NPR’s All Tech Considered has noted, he wrote that companies that build secure devices should help the police, ”But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices  data. Could be a troubling precedent.” While many notable tech insiders seem to side with Apple in their opposition to a court order to help the FBI defeat an iPhone’s password security, a recent poll finds that the American public leans slightly in favor of law enforcement on the question. A new poll by the Pew Research Center has found that 51 percent of Americans think Apple should cooperate with the FBI, 38 percent say Apple should resist the order, and 11 percent aren’t sure."
"When it comes to the dispute over San Bernardino, Calif. shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone, new findings show that public support is on the side of the Justice Department. Data from the Pew Research Center show that the majority of Americans  —   51 percent  —   think Apple should cooperate with a federal court order.   percent say Apple should not help 11 percent say they don’t know. But before we go any further, take note of an important technicality: Pew asked people whether Apple should unlock the iPhone, which is not actually what the court requested. Rather, the court asked Apple to help the FBI bypass an   function that would be triggered after 10 incorrect password attempts. Pew Senior Researcher Alec Tyson defended the poll’s wording, telling NPR that ”this reflects our best judgment about the clearest way to ask the question.” Among Americans who support Apple’s decision, the greatest percentage  —   43 percent  —   are between age 18 and 29. Among those age 65 and up, only 27 percent think Apple shouldn’t comply with the order.   percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats think that Apple should help unlock the iPhone. But there’s a wider split among independents. The majority of independents who lean Democratic, 55 percent, support Apple’s stance. But 58 percent of independents who lean Republican think the company should comply. A plurality, 39 percent, said they had heard a lot about the court order, 36 percent said they had heard a little and 24 percent said they hadn’t heard about it at all. Of Americans polled who own an iPhone, 47 percent said Apple should help the government and 43 percent said they agree with the company’s decision to disobey the order. Naomi LaChance is a business news intern at NPR."
"A new study suggests that sea levels are rising at an unprecedented rate and that the problem will continue well into this century. ”Sea level rise in the 20th century was truly extraordinary by historical standards,” says Bob Kopp, an associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University, and who is lead author on the study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sea levels rose by roughly 5½ inches in the past hundred years, Kopp says, noting, ”That’s faster than any century since at least 800 B. C. since the founding of Rome.” Kopp’s team based its findings on dozens of earlier studies carried out around the world. Those studies determined past sea levels by looking at everything from microbial fossils to the locations of ancient Roman ruins along the Italian coast. The results show sea levels remained largely unchanged for more than two millennia  —   except for one period around 1000 A. D. in which the oceans dropped slightly due to a brief medieval cold snap. Looking forward, Kopp and his   predict things are going to get worse. The team’s findings suggest sea levels will rise between 1 to 4 feet by 2100. Kopp says those kinds of increases will put many coastal cities at risk of frequent flooding. Although cutting carbon emissions could help in the future, rising seas now appear inevitable. Sea level rise ”is going to be something we have to prepare for,” he says."
"”Some things are hard and some things are right. And some things are both,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during a Wednesday night interview on ABC News’ World News Tonight with David Muir. ”This is one of those things,” he said, doubling down on the company’s refusal to create a way for the FBI to access data on the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Last week, a federal judge ordered Apple to help the FBI crack into the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook who, along with wife Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and wounded 22 others in December. As the   reported, shortly after government officials obtained the iPhone Farook used, a San Bernardino County employee working with federal authorities reset the password for its iCloud account  —   meaning the phone could no longer perform an automatic wireless backup that could have enabled Apple to recover information. In the interview, Cook called this a crucial mistake, saying there is now only one way to get information from the phone. ”The only way to get information  —   at least currently, the only way we know  —   would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the equivalent of cancer. We think it’s bad news to write. We would never write it. We have never written it  —   and that is what is at stake here,” Cook said. ”We believe that is a very dangerous operating system.” The government has said that the software key would be limited in scope, but Cook rejected that characterization. ”This case is not about one phone. This case is about the future,” Cook said. ”If we knew a way to get the information on the phone  —   that we haven’t already given  —   if we knew a way to do this, that would not expose hundreds of millions of other people to issues, we would obviously do it. . .. Our job is to protect our customers.” Following the federal magistrate’s ruling, Cook posted a statement on Apple’s website which argued the government was effectively ordering Apple to put its customers at risk by compromising their privacy. ”We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack,” Cook wrote. But that’s not exactly true, NPR tech reporter Aarti Shahani says. As Shahani reports on Morning Edition, in the 1990s federal regulators blocked Microsoft from selling software with advanced encryption abroad because it could have a military application. Shahani says Microsoft altered its software to satisfy regulators’ concerns. ”Microsoft had to basically weaken its product so they could enter foreign markets,” Shahani says. ”That definitely impacted privacy, exposed customers to greater risk.” On Sunday, FBI Director James Comey made his case in a blog post on the Lawfare website, writing: ”We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land. . .. Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. But we can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead.” But Cook contends that creating a way around the encryption would put hundreds of million of people at risk and ”trample on civil liberties.” ”Our smartphones are loaded with our intimate conversations, our financial data, our health records. They’re also loaded with the location of our kids in many cases. It’s not just about privacy, it’s also about public safety,” Cook said. ”No one would want a master key built that would turn hundreds of millions of locks . .. that key could be stolen.” Cook also said that he would be speaking with President Obama about the issue, but said he would be willing to fight the government’s order all the way to the Supreme Court."
"Author Isaac Asimov once wrote, ”The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ’Eureka!’ but, ’That’s funny . .. ’ ” Good scientists search for the significance of surprises, coincidences and mistakes. With a little curiosity and perseverance, they can turn unexpected incidents into new insights. The Golden Mole Award, from NPR’s Skunk Bear, celebrates these moments of serendipity in science. We asked for examples of happy accidents in the lab and in the field from the past few years . .. and 300 submissions came pouring in. Here are a few of our favorite stories  —   a shortlist of Golden Mole Award nominees. 1. WHEN FROGS ATTACK, Carlos Jared was doing fieldwork in the jungles of southwest Brazil when he picked up a   frog. The frog twisted and thrashed, butting Jared’s hand with his head. Excruciating pain spread up Jared’s arm, and for the next five hours he was in agony. He had inadvertently discovered that frogs can be venomous. Many amphibians secrete toxins through their skin, but the frog Jared picked up  —   Greening’s frog  —   was the first discovered to actually force those toxins into a predator’s bloodstream. When attacked, it retracts the skin around its upper lip, revealing bony spines. Jared and collaborator Edmund Brodie discovered that a gland at the base of each spine produces a toxic mucus that is twice as potent as the venom of a Brazilian pit viper. 2. A LIGHT BULB MOMENT, Engineer David Awschalom had just moved from the University of California, Santa Barbara to the University of Chicago when his research hit a snag. His team was investigating a strange material that they hoped could someday be used in quantum computing  —   a thin sheet of atoms on a bed of strontium titanate. But their experimental results were full of incomprehensible noise. It took months for graduate students Andrew Yeats and Peter Mintun to isolate the problem: the lab’s new   light bulbs, installed per university policy. The bulbs happened to emit the exact wavelength of light that could polarize the strontium titanate and influence their new material’s electrical properties. With a little tweaking, they were able to use this wavelength to gently and rapidly ”paint” electrical junctions on the fragile material. Shine light of a second specific wavelength, and the circuits were erased. What amounts to an optical Etch A Sketch could someday help scientists build quantum computers. 3. OUT OF THE BLUE, Blue is a notoriously tricky pigment. It’s rare in nature  —   the stone originally used to produce blue paint was once worth more than gold. So humans tried to manufacture the blues they needed . .. with mixed results. The dyes and paints they came up with often turned out to be poisonous, expensive, impermanent  —   or all three. Mas Subramanian wasn’t at all interested in this problem. In the department of chemistry at Oregon State University, he was looking for materials with novel magnetic properties to use in advanced computer hard drives. He would mix up likely chemicals and bake them in a furnace at 2, 000 degrees Farenheit. But when he added manganese oxide to the recipe, he got a colorful surprise  —   a pile of bright blue powder. The new pigment is stable and nontoxic. It reflects infrared radiation, so it might help keep buildings and vehicles cool. Subramanian is working with paint manufacturers and energy conservation companies to develop the product. 4. BEATING THE HEAT, Climate change poses a major threat to pikas, adorable little mammals that live mostly in the mountains of the American West. They can overheat in temperatures as low as 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Most make their dens at higher elevations, in rock slides where they can stay cool. But one population in Oregon’s Columbia Gorge thrives near sea level. Ecologist Johanna Varner wanted to find out why. She spent months watching pikas and deploying heat sensors at this   site. For reference, she did the same at a more typical site, along the slopes of nearby Mount Hood. Days after her first summer in the field ended, a fire consumed the Mount Hood site, burning trees to the ground and destroying all the food stores of the pikas. The experiment she had planned was ruined  —   her mountainside ”control” site was clearly no longer controlled. But after some tears and a couple of cold beers, Varner realized the disaster was an opportunity. First, there were the data collected by her heat sensors during the fire. The temperature in the pika dens, she discovered, never rose above 75 degrees F, even when   fires were raging just feet away. Secondly, her summer spent surveying the pika population formed a rare reference point for the study of a species’ recovery after the fire. 5. THE DANCE OF THE DROPLETS, As an undergrad, Nate Cira was looking at food coloring under a microscope when he noticed something odd. Two drops of different colors seemed to dance around each other, almost as if they were alive. When Cira started graduate school at Stanford University, he showed the oddity to his adviser, Manu Prakash. Both men became obsessed with the phenomenon. They spent three years trying to figure out what was causing the strange motion. It turns out the dynamic dance was the result of two simple physical phenomena: surface tension and evaporation. The vapor given off by one droplet acted like a signal to the other  —   they were, in a sense, communicating. The principles Prakash, Cira and their collaborator Adrien Benusiglio uncovered could be used to create autonomic liquid machines, such as   solar panels. 6. A CASE OF MISTAKEN GENITALIA, Melissa Brown was at Northwestern University studying mice with multiple sclerosis. Like most MS researchers, Brown exclusively used female mice  —   the males just don’t get sick. She was embarking on a set of experiments using mice with a genetic mutation that hobbles their immune system. Normal female mice get very sick. Female mice with the mutation seem to do better. Brown wanted to find out why. But when the results came in, some of them were the opposite of what was expected. Some of the normal mice were healthy. Some of the mice with the mutation were getting sick. A closer inspection of the test subjects revealed why. The mice with the surprising results were male! A graduate student on the project, Margaret Caulfield, was new to the lab and hadn’t yet learned to identify the nearly imperceptible genitals of male mouse pups. The   turned out to be a lucky one. It helped Brown, Caulfield and graduate student Abby Russi pinpoint a special group of cells that protect male mice from MS  —   innate lymphoid cells. The discovery opens new doors for MS researchers. 7. THE SECRET IN THE SERUM, A disease called myelofibrosis causes scar tissue to grow inside bone marrow. It all starts when white blood cells called monocytes enter the marrow and turn into fibrocytes. For years, scientists have searched for a way to stop fibrocyte formation. The only problem? The process was impossible to study. Under normal lab conditions, when monocytes are grown in blood serum, the transformation just doesn’t happen. No fibrocytes. Darrell Pilling and Richard Gomer, biologists at Texas AM, were recently investigating an entirely different kind of blood cell. They wanted to find out if T cells could survive in a   culture. Unbeknownst to the researchers, their   samples were contaminated with monocytes. And when they looked at their culture under a microscope, they saw . .. fibrocytes. Something in the serum had been keeping the monocytes from transforming. Pilling and Gomer rapidly changed gears, abandoning their work on T cells and focusing on the monocytes instead. They managed to isolate the serum protein that stopped fibrocyte formation. It is now being tested as a treatment for myelofibrosis. 8. WASPS, FACE TO FACE, As a young graduate student, Liz Tibbetts was studying social hierarchy in wasp colonies. She caught the wasps and painted dots on their backs, so she could tell them apart, and then videotaped their behavior. Tibbetts failed to mark a few of the wasps and didn’t realize her mistake until she was reviewing the video. It was a problem. If she couldn’t follow individuals, she couldn’t get the data she needed. But, looking a bit closer, she realized she could tell the wasps apart without the paint. The face of each insect had distinct colors and shapes. Tibbetts wondered if the wasps could also recognize each other. To an experienced researcher this might have seemed outlandish  —   prevailing wisdom held that social insects couldn’t distinguish between individuals. But Tibbetts was new to the field, and so she asked the question anyway. Her research showed that not only can wasps tell each other apart, but their tiny brains have evolved in a way that allows them to particularly recognize faces. This ability allows for complex social interactions within colonies. 9. A COLORFUL DEFENSE, Bacteria can be wildly colorful, blooming in bright red and yellow colonies. But researchers studying bacterial disease usually aren’t focused on aesthetics. George Liu, working at the University of California, San Diego, was no exception. He was looking at two varieties of Streptococcus  —   a normal strain and a mutant strain that couldn’t produce a nasty toxin. (The mutant also couldn’t produce pigment, but that didn’t seem important.) Liu’s experiments were going terribly, full of inconsistent results. Sometimes the bacteria inexplicably died off. Then Liu caught a whiff of bleach in his glassware. An enthusiastic undergraduate had been using bleach to clean the lab’s beakers and flasks, and hadn’t rinsed them properly. Reviewing his results, Liu noticed that the normal strain of bacteria survived the bleach more often than the mutant strain. But why? Was the toxin somehow protective against bleach? A second realization came when Liu’s mother was nagging him about eating brightly colored vegetables. He remembered that many pigments have antioxidant properties. Maybe it was the pigment, and not the toxin, that was somehow protecting the bacteria. But why would Streptococcus evolve to produce pigment? It wouldn’t be common for the bacteria to encounter cleaning products when they invaded bodies. The final flash of insight came when Liu read the back of the bleach bottle. The fancy chemical name for bleach’s active ingredient is hypochlorite  —   one of the chemicals released by immune cells when they attack bacterial infections. Further experiments confirmed his hypothesis  —   Streptococcus was using pigment to neutralize the immune system’s hypochlorite. Liu had stumbled upon one of strep’s secret weapons. 10. A LITERAL CASE OF ACCIDENTAL BRILLIANCE, Calden Carroll thought that his days as a chemistry graduate student at the University of Oregon were nearly done  —   his thesis was nearly complete. He believed he had created a molecule that would light up in the presence of chloride. Such a molecule would be useful to scientists studying cystic fibrosis, a disease that disrupts the movement of chloride across cell membranes. But when he tested his magic molecule, it failed spectacularly. Instead of highlighting chloride, it lit up whenever nitrate was present. A professor pointed out this failed marker could actually be really useful  —   not for medicine, perhaps, but for agriculture. Carroll patented his discovery and now has a company that builds nitrate sensors to help farmers fertilize their fields more efficiently. 11. VIRUSES IN GLASS HOUSES, Ken Stedman was searching for fossilized viruses  —   strains that might have become trapped in the mineral deposits of hot springs millions of years ago. Would these fossils survive in some recognizable form? To find out, Stedman made an artificial hot spring in his lab and filled it with modern viruses. Sure enough, the viruses quickly became coated with silica. But the results just looked like rocky blobs  —   there were no signs of the viruses, and no clues that could help him find fossils in the field. Stedman and a graduate student, Jim Laidler, wanted something to come out of their failed experiment, so they tested to see if the   viruses could still reproduce. They couldn’t  —   the microbes were effectively dead. Then, a student accidentally left a solution of coated viruses out on the counter when he went home for the evening. Overnight, the silica  . The next morning, the viruses were working again. Further research showed the silica coating didn’t only inactivate viruses in a reversible way it also protected them from drying out and dying in the heat. This technique might someday help deploy a very special group of viruses  —   the sort used in vaccines  —   in places that lack ready refrigeration. 12. LOVE BUG, Shelley Adamo was a biologist at Dalhousie University studying crickets  —   specifically, how they respond to stress. How do you stress out a cricket? Introduce it to a predator. One of Adamo’s students had pet bearded dragons, and she brought them in to scare the crickets. One of the lizards had a virus that quickly infected the crickets. But it didn’t make them sick, at least not at first. It made them very, very interested in mating. She had discovered what she calls a parasitic aphrodisiac  —   a virus that boosts an animal’s libido, thereby increasing its own transmission. For more science fun, check out Skunk Bear’s Tumblr and YouTube channel."
"Texas is one of 12 states voting on ”Super Tuesday” next week, but Republicans there are a little nervous about this year’s election. Less than two years ago, Sen. John Cornyn,   won 48 percent of the Hispanic vote during his  . However, in an election season dominated by calls from GOP presidential candidates such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to build a wall with Mexico and deport every immigrant who’s in the country illegally, some Texas Republicans fear years of outreach is being undone if either man becomes the party’s nominee. Both candidates were viewed negatively by a new Washington   poll of Hispanic voters. A whopping 80 percent of those polled viewed Trump unfavorably, while 44 percent had a negative view of Cruz, who is of Cuban ancestry. Republican operatives cite Cornyn’s   specifically, as proof conservatives can continue to win statewide elections in Texas. That’s even as the Hispanic vote, which on a national level leans Democratic, keeps growing. Outreach to Latinos was a big part of Cornyn’s campaign, which is why strategists say he was able to win the Texas Latino vote in 2014. Campaign ads in multiple languages  —   including Spanish  —   blanketed the state. Republican operative Brendan Steinhauser, who helped Cornyn win that election, said the campaign also knocked on doors and held events in communities of color. ”If you show respect to people as an individuals and as a community  —   you show up, you break bread, you get coffee, and you show that you are listening to their concerns  —   you can still can have some disagreements on public policy and still end up winning those votes,” he said. Steinhauser is optimistic Republicans have a good future in Texas  —   even if they stand their ground on issues like immigration. He said the party doesn’t need to waiver on issues such as amnesty for people living in the U. S. who entered the country illegally. The key, Steinhauser said, is making a case using a respectful tone. However, Steinhauser and other Republicans here worry that’s not happening in the current Republican presidential primary. In a recent Fox News interview, Sen. Ted Cruz,   told Bill O’Reilly all 12 million people who entered the country illegally should be deported. ”Listen we should enforce the law,” Cruz said. How do we enforce the law? Yes we should deport them. We should build a wall. We should triple the border patrol.” Comments like these are why Miguel Martinez, a student at the University of Texas in Austin, said he plans to vote for a Democrat this year. He’s a student at the University of Texas in Austin. ”I am an immigrant. I was born in Mexico and immigrated here,” Martinez explains. ”I have family who are immigrants who are still working on getting here.” ”[Immigration] is being talked about on the Republican side but in just in a really ugly and evil manner that makes me feel like I don’t belong here.” Artemio Muniz, a Republican strategist who’s trying to win over Hispanic Texans, said hearing young Hispanic voters swear off the Republican party is one of his big worries. He said Cruz and Trump could be doing lasting damage to the Texas Republican Party’s brand. ”It’s toxified it and it’s going to be very hard, very difficult as a grassroots organizer to go into neighborhoods and try to convince the prototypical Hispanic voter to vote for the Republican party,” Muniz said. Even though reaching out to Latino voters in Texas worked in the party’s favor just recently, Muniz said it’s been hard to convince national campaigns to tone down the rhetoric. ”You have some people that still believe that the current climate is okay,” he said. ”They just sort of have ’head in the sand’ mentality, where they campaign to the base where some candidates will say, ’Well, it’s not my concern. We have to win the primary. ’” Steve Munisteri, a former Republican Party of Texas chair, said what happened in California in the 90s should be a cautionary tale. The state had been friendly to the GOP until then Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, pushed an   ballot measure. Now, the state Republican party is a shadow of what it once was. ”It seems like they had a big slide in Hispanic voters over a fairly short period of time when governor Wilson was elected,” he said. Munisteri said even though Texas Latinos are more conservative than Latinos in California, the Republican Party’s   health still depends on who ends up being the nominee. He said if Republicans choose a candidate who doesn’t make Hispanic voters feel welcome, then the party  —   even in Texas  —   will be in big trouble."
"Across the U. S. more than 20 million people abuse drugs or alcohol or both. Only about 1 in 10 is getting treatment. People seeking treatment often have to wait weeks or months for help. The delays can jeopardize the chances they’ll be able to recover from their addiction. In Baltimore, Health Commissioner Leana Wen has been pushing for treatment on demand, so that the moment people decide they’re ready for help, it’s available. It’s something other health officials have sought to achieve, without success. The need for quick access to treatment came into focus for us when we caught up with Andrea Towson, whom we first met last September. Towson, known in her West Baltimore neighborhood as Teacup, has used heroin on and off for more than 30 years. She considers herself an active user. By   she was looking to change that. ”For the new year, I want to be in treatment,” she says. With the help of health department outreach worker Nathan Fields, Towson was able to get an appointment at a rehab center just before Christmas. But Fields, a former heroin user, says even a wait as short as a week can be too long. ”So many other things can happen,” he says. ”One thing, she could die. She could overdose, because if she’s feeling dopesick she’s going to use.” Fields knows that beating an addiction doesn’t often happen on the first try. He also knows that the feelings of loneliness that can drive a person to seek help can be fleeting. ”Heroin has always been a great companion for people that are dependent,” he says. ”Best friend. It can talk to you. It can reason with you.” In Baltimore, Wen says there are an estimated 20, 000 people who use heroin and 65, 000 with some kind of addiction to drugs or alcohol or both, even after decades of focus on the issue. In the 1990s, Baltimore made headlines when   Kurt Schmoke introduced what he called a medicalized approach to the drug epidemic. His view, that the drug epidemic was a public health problem and not just a criminal justice one, was highly controversial at the time. In 1997, billionaire George Soros gave the city $25 million to come up with innovative ideas for addressing, among other things, drug addiction, and the movement for treatment on demand gained momentum. Nearly two decades later, Wen, who has been the city’s health commissioner for a little over a year, isn’t certain that treatment on demand is even possible. ”We can progress, because we’re so far off from it,” she says. ”We’re so far off.” A bright spot is a   phone line for addiction and mental health resources the city launched last year that is fielding about a thousand calls a week. It’s a big improvement from the past, Wen says, when it wasn’t even clear whom one could call. ”It’s not getting them treatment on demand,” she says. ”But it’s getting them treatment at some point soon and resources right now.” Wen’s team is also working on bigger projects she hopes will shorten wait times for treatment. One is a database that would show how many treatment slots are available at that moment across the city. ”What I worry about is, maybe there are spots that are available, but we’re not able to fill them,” she says. Even with a tool like the database, Wen says it is time to rethink options for addiction treatment. ”Maybe some people don’t need treatment as an inpatient stay at the moment they request it,” she says. Another option,   treatment on an outpatient basis, still carries a stigma, which concerns Wen. ”There is the misguided belief out there that methadone, buprenorphine treatment is replacing one addiction with another,” she says. ”That is not true. Methadone and buprenorphine are proven,   treatments endorsed by every medical organization.” There are other services she sees as critical to the recovery process that she wants recognized as part of the treatment system, such as   specialists and case managers, who follow people through the process. Wen is calling for Medicaid and insurers to cover the services, which are largely paid for now by grants. She hopes the national conversation taking place around addiction will lead lawmakers to spur such a change. Still, all of this seems a long way off for Teacup. In the middle of January, Andrea Towson was back on a park bench in West Baltimore, having missed her goal of getting into treatment by the new year. ”I want this chapter of my life to close, just end. I’m done. And it’s not happening fast enough,” she said, ”Right now, I’m just ready.” Towson had yet another appointment at a rehab center the following week, but she was pretty sure it was just an interview and that she would have to keep waiting. She says, even if she were offered a spot, she wasn’t sure she had the will to go. ”If somebody came up and said ’Andrea, you can get into treatment right now,’ you know what I would say? Can you get me well first,” she says. This is how she talks about her addiction. She’s well when she’s had a hit. She’s sick without the drugs. ”I just want to wake up and eat breakfast and be normal, no matter what that might be,” she says. ”I’m just ready to be Andrea. Teacup is done. She’ll always be a part of me, but I no longer want to be her. Teacup is a   drug addict.  . I choose to live now.”"
"As the   death toll rises in the United States, communities are trying to open more treatment beds. But an ongoing labor shortage among drug treatment staff is slowing those efforts. Each year, roughly one of every four   clinicians nationally chooses to leave the job, according to recent research. And that’s not just turnover  —   leaving one job for another in the same field. As an Institute of Medicine report documented in 2006, there’s been a shortage of addiction workers for decades. And the demand is only increasing the Affordable Care Act and other federal laws have given millions more people insurance to help them pay for those services. If only there were enough counselors to treat them. Amelie Gooding runs Phoenix House in Keene, N. H. and says she’s been short a   counselor for a year and a half. ”Everybody thinks, ’Oh, there aren’t enough beds!’ ” Gooding says. ”But there’s not enough treatment staff to open more beds.” Because she’s understaffed, Gooding has to leave three of her 18 residential beds empty, and she cut her outpatient groups down to 50 percent capacity. So where have all the counselors gone? ”For me, it got to be too heavy,” says former counselor Melissa Chickering, who used to work for Gooding at the Phoenix House and still lives in the area. Clinical directors would give their right arm to hire someone with Chickering’s long resume, Gooding says. She has a master’s degree in social work and 10 years of experience. Instead, the valued counselor now spends her days teaching courses in psychology and health sciences at local New Hampshire colleges. The problem with addiction treatment, Chickering says, is you take on your clients’ pain. Plus, she says, she found the lack of funding and coordination from the state criminal. She remembers a particularly bad time when she was running an addiction program for teenagers. ”I had open beds,” she says. ”But a girl came in and was on the waiting list  —   she just didn’t have the right funding.” Because of the rules, Chickering had to reserve empty beds for clients who had a different kind of health insurance than the girl in front of her had. ”So she died while she was sitting on the waiting list,” Chickering remembers. ”And I went home that night, and I was like, ’I had an open bed!’ How do you sit with that and be OK the next day?” The problem isn’t just burnout, other addiction counselors say, though the job entails many late nights and loads of paperwork. The biggest problem, they say, is the low pay  —   addiction counselors earn an average of about $40, 000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Anne Herron leads workforce development for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration  —   the agency that oversees services for the treatment of substance abuse. Federal officials are   of the counseling shortage and are working on it, Herron says. Her agency is reaching out to high schools and colleges, developing training curricula. Those initiatives are a start, she says, adding, ”We would like to see more.” Becky Vaughn, an executive with the National Council for Behavioral Health, an industry group for state associations of addiction services, says she would like the federal government to reimburse tuition for people who are taking courses in addiction treatment. In the meantime, the directors of a few clinics in New Hampshire say that the expanded coverage for addiction services that has come with Obamacare is already boosting counselor salaries. Staff will come, these employers say, if the clinics have the money to pay them."
"Social networks have changed the world, but they make things very complicated for the CIA. Facebook, Twitter and other services give the spy agency enormous amounts of new information about people of interest around the world, but they also open up huge new vulnerabilities. For example, how should the CIA conceal details about a spy who has been sharing information about herself online before joining the agency  —   perhaps since she was in middle school? And can it create a convincing enough story about people who have to lie about who they really are? ”From the standpoint of a clandestine officer seeking to create and maintain her cover  —   perhaps the most fundamental element of espionage  —   this can pose a real challenge,” said CIA Deputy Director David Cohen. Cohen told students at his alma mater Cornell University in the autumn that what he called ”digital dust” leaves the CIA’s intelligence officers vulnerable in many ways. Credit card transactions, car rentals, Internet searches or purchases all leave a trail, he said. But Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other such services may be a case of their own. Imagine a college student with normal online posting habits being recruited by the CIA because of his language, technical or other skills. If a foreign intelligence agency learned about that connection, it could access years’ worth of his photos on the open Web  —   making it nearly impossible to enter another country under cover. It could also find likes and dislikes, friends and other such information prized by spies. How Not To Handle A CIA Job Offer, Even young people sharp enough to attract the attention of the CIA sometimes don’t connect the risks of that work with their social media habits. The agency’s top recruiter, Ron Patrick, told CNN last year that the CIA has had to withdraw job offers because candidates shared online that they’d interviewed with the CIA or had just been hired. New recruits can’t simply go quiet, however. Agency officials realize how suspicious it looks for a prolific Facebook poster or Twitter user to suddenly disappear. Nor can an officer working undercover simply appear online one day out of nowhere. ”We must find ways to protect the identity of our officers who increasingly have a digital footprint from birth,” Cohen said. ”Likewise, since having no digital trail can raise suspicions too, we also have to figure out how to create digital footprints to support cover identities.” The recruiting dilemma works both ways. Agency officials worry the young people they want to attract might assume they can’t ever use Facebook or Twitter  —   or if they have, they’re disqualified. The agency made social media the No. 2 ”myth” it tries to debunk on one of its hiring pages, after ”an average day involves a car chase” but before ”hardly anyone makes it through the background check.” ”The truth is, CIA employees can use social media,” the agency’s page says. ”We just have some guidelines to protect the men and women who serve our country. There can be plenty of friending and following and liking in your future (just not during the work day).” CIA officials won’t discuss how they’re tackling these problems, but they do point to the creation of the agency’s new Directorate of Digital Innovation, launched last year, as evidence of how serious they are about solving them. The department was the spy agency’s first   new directorate since 1963, when it launched the Directorate of Science and Technology to build what Cohen called ”spy gadgets.” ”I want to make sure the agency is able to understand how that [cyber] environment affects our mission,” CIA Director John Brennan told NPR this week. ”I want to make sure our people are trained well so that they can go to   corners of the world.”"
"John Brennan is walking with a limp these days  —   a testament to the hazards of shoveling your own driveway. Even the director of the CIA had to dig out just like the rest of us, after last month’s blizzard shut down Washington, D. C. But this past weekend, once he settled into a leather armchair at the head of the table where he holds daily staff meetings, Brennan held forth on subjects ranging from Syria to cybersecurity to the state of ISIS. NPR interviewed Brennan on Saturday at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Here are some of the highlights: On the   dispute over the San Bernardino iPhone: BRENNAN: What would people say if a bank had a   box, or a storage company had a storage bin, that individuals could use and access and store things, but the government was not going to be able to have any access to those environments? And so criminals, terrorists, whatever, could use it. So what is it about electronic communications that makes it unique in terms of it not being allowed to be accessed by the government when, again, the law, the courts, say that the government should have access to it? So these are things that need to be worked through. MARY LOUISE KELLY: Is that a yes, that you think Apple should be forced to help the FBI in this case? BRENNAN: I think that the FBI clearly has a legitimate basis to try to understand what is on a phone that is part of a very active investigation again, consistent with what their responsibilities and authorities are. On the state of ISIS: BRENNAN: There is greater global attention now to ISIS than there was to   after   because I think people felt as though   was really focused on the United States and the West, while ISIS has a much broader array of targets. It has a very strong   aspect to its engine of terror. It also is going into areas where   never even ventured. So I think it’s seen as more of a threat, not just to individuals, but also to economic and commercial and other types of interests globally. . .. It’s much larger than   ever was. On the state of  : BRENNAN: It’s much smaller, it’s been neutered in many areas. But it still has a fair amount of capability when you look at Yemen  —     in the Arabian Peninsula.   still exists inside of Syria  —   Jabhat  . And then you have   core in   area. So it’s still a lethal organization. It has been contained in many respects. It has been bloodied and damaged. But it’s still out there. On where ISIS leader Abu Bakr   would be held if he were captured tomorrow:  BRENNAN: If he were to be captured. . .. As his name suggests,   he’s an Iraqi. We work very closely with the Iraqi government and the security intelligence services. And depending on where he was captured, I think whatever prevailing legal systems were there at the time, it would be addressed that way. So a lot of these individuals are put into the judicial system or the penal system of the country where they’re captured. On whether the CIA would prefer to capture and interrogate terrorists, rather than target and kill them:  BRENNAN: Absolutely. KELLY: Even though it’s incredibly complicated where you put them now, and how you interrogate them? BRENNAN: See, I don’t think it’s incredibly complicated. I think sometimes there are challenges, again, depending on the circumstances. But usually, we work in concert with our partners around the globe  —   law enforcement, security intelligence agencies. . .. We always look for opportunities to capture individuals, to arrest them. There is a determination made whenever the U. S. government decides to conduct a direct action against individuals, that there is not the option to capture them. And that calculus takes into account what the risks might be to the forces that would be used to capture. On whether he would stay on, if the winner of the 2016 presidential election were to ask:  BRENNAN: I don’t know when I will leave CIA. There are three people who determine that: the president, whether it’s this one or the next one, myself, and my wife, who’s been my partner for the last 37 years. She gets a vote in this, and I think will vote. KELLY: As she should. BRENNAN: Yes. And so I have absolutely the best job in the world. I work with some amazing people, the most dedicated, talented people I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. Work on issues of great consequence to this country that I love, and that we’re trying to do our best to keep this country safe. . .. KELLY: Did you just open the door a tiny crack to staying on in the next administration? BRENNAN: I think I have a daily contract with the president. I serve at his pleasure, hopefully not at his displeasure. . .. And so as I said, three people will make this decision collectively, and I think any one of them will have the opportunity to veto my continuing or deciding that I should stay. On the nuclear deal with Iran: BRENNAN: The intelligence work is not over in any respect. We need to continue to monitor, evaluate, make determinations, as well as provide input to the president, others, about how well Iran is adhering to that. So we’re going to use the   experience we’ve had following and watching the Iranian program to inform our assessments. KELLY: Are you confident that if Iran cheats on the nuclear deal, U. S. intelligence will know? BRENNAN: I’m confident that the CIA, along with our intelligence partners, both here in the United States and abroad, are going to do their utmost to catch Iran if it decides to cheat. On whether the CIA is arming and training opposition forces in Syria: BRENNAN: I’m not going to talk about anything that the CIA might be doing in that area. But the U. S. government has made it very clear that it supports the opposition, moderate opposition inside of Syria. . .. There are a lot of various means of providing support to the opposition. And given that the opposition is a patchwork of moderates, as well as extremists, as well as terrorists, there is a need to make sure that any type of support that comes from the outside, whether it be from the United States or other countries, is going to support those moderate elements within the opposition, and not the extremists and terrorists. On Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions:  BRENNAN: I think he has found that he’s in a bit of a quandary now inside of Ukraine, in terms of realizing his objectives. Now in Syria, he’s had a relationship with the  —   Russia has had a relationship with the government in Damascus for the past 50 years, has invested a lot of money, and a lot of military support. . .. Mr. Putin is very assertive, very aggressive. He pursues Moscow’s agenda in a variety of means. He does it with his intelligence and security services when he wants to hide his hands, but also, he’s doing it rather overtly right now, obviously, with the introduction of thousands of Russian military personnel and sophisticated weaponry inside of Syria. On what moment stands out in his   career in U. S. intelligence: BRENNAN: When I welcomed the head of the Russian FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, to the CIA last year. And I walked with him across the lobby, across our infamous CIA seal there. It was rather surreal, that the head of the FSB and the head of the CIA were walking together."
"Keila Atuesta Jaimes, a petite    is lying on an exam table next to an ultrasound machine. The doctor moves the wand across her belly. It’s pretty flat. She’s only about three months pregnant. Then suddenly, there’s the heartbeat! Atuesta smiles. Nervously. About three weeks ago she came down with the kind of rash and fever she figured could mean only one thing: Zika. She says she went straight to the hospital, concerned her baby might end up with the birth defects that have been linked to Zika: brain damage and an abnormally small head, a condition called microcephaly. The hospital, in a city called Cucuta, is waiting on a blood test to confirm Zika, but they went ahead and scheduled this special,   ultrasound. Now Dr. Samuel Bautista, a specialist in   pregnancies, is carefully scanning the image on his screen. It’s not enough to measure the head, he says. If this fetus has microcephaly, ”I might see little bright spots inside the skull  —   signs of calcification, signs of damage.” Happily there are none. ”Your baby looks completely normal. There’s no problem, OK?” he tells Atuesta. All the same, he adds, this test was just done to establish a baseline measurement. The key moment won’t come until the second or third trimester. That’s when they would expect any signs of brain damage to show up. ”You’ll need to come back for another ultrasound every month until the baby is born,” Bautista explains. It’s a new protocol that Colombia’s government has set up to track the progress of every pregnant woman suspected of contracting Zika here  —   more than 6, 300 so far. Effectively, all these woman have become unwilling participants in a giant science experiment. Since Zika began spreading through Latin America over the past year, hundreds of babies have been born with unusually small heads. But only in Brazil. All eyes are now on Colombia. It has about 37, 000 reported Zika cases. And researchers say if there really is a link, Colombia is where the next surge in birth defects could be. ”Suddenly we’ve found ourselves in the eye of the hurricane,” says Fernando Ruiz, Colombia’s vice minister of health. Experts from all over the world are converging on the country, including specialists from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pan American Health Organization and major research universities. They’re coordinating with Colombia’s own scientists to set up studies. The first recorded cases of Zika started showing up in October. Ruiz says, based on how things played out in Brazil, that means you’d expect to see the first births of kids with microcephaly here in April  —   with the largest rush in August. But he adds that there’s a glimmer of hope. ”You’d still expect that by now we would have at least had some cases  —   even just a few cases  —   of babies born with microcephaly or of signs of birth defects showing up on the ultrasounds.” So far there’ve been none. Researchers are still hammering out the details of all the studies they are planning. Peggy Honein, who’s completed a scouting trip to Colombia for the CDC, says the health agency will essentially focus on two areas of inquiry. The first is epidemiology  —   mapping the Zika spikes to see if they overlap with any surge in the number of birth defects. The other is pathology  —   checking to see if the virus is present in the tissue and fluids of babies and fetuses. ”The combination of epidemiologic data and pathologic data are both very important,” says Honein. And there are other questions. ”We’re also really seeking to gather more information on what the role of timing of infection in pregnancy might be,” she says. In other words, is Zika like rubella, which only affects a baby if the mother is infected very early in her pregnancy? Doctors here say they can’t get the answers soon enough. Abortion is legal in some cases in Colombia. At a private clinic not far from the hospital, Dr. Orlando Villamizar says he’s been having a lot of tough conversations with terrified women who are in their first trimester and have come down with Zika. ”They’re saying to me, terminate my pregnancy, because I don’t want to have a baby with microcephaly.” It puts him in a tight spot. Even if an ultrasound looks great, he can’t guarantee that the baby is fine. On the other hand, he notes: ”I can’t say for sure that any of their babies will actually get microcephaly. We could be terminating a pregnancy that is healthy.” For now, he’s recommending that his patients keep their babies, and he says all of them have followed that advice. But basically, he’s just waiting for the results of all these studies that are being done on Colombia’s women. ”All we can do is wait,” he says, ”and see what happens to them.”"
"A lot of visitors to Colorado figure they might give the state’s good ganja a try, but they might not be prepared for the effects. When it comes to bad weed trips,    have been doing much worse than Colorado residents and are going to the ER more often since recreational sales of marijuana began in 2014. The number of    residents who ended up in the emergency room for   reasons nearly doubled from 2012 to 2014, according to an analysis of emergency department visits in 100 Colorado hospitals. By contrast, the number of Colorado residents visiting emergency rooms for cannabis increased about 40 percent in those two years, according to the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. There are   tours, like those run by My 420 Tours, but many of these visitors seem to be in Colorado for other reasons, says lead author Dr. Howard Kim, an emergency medicine physician and a postdoc at Northwestern University. ”I remember some business travelers who were in Denver on business, and after the meeting ended, they decided to try some marijuana edibles. Then they ended up cutting to the ER.” Kim was finishing his residency in Colorado when he did the study. A lot of the people ending up in the ER where Kim was finishing his residency had classic signs of marijuana intoxication. ”People can be anxious or agitated or even have brief psychotic episodes like hallucinations and delusions,” he says. ”Patients can have a very fast heart rate or gastrointestinal problems like vomiting.” It’s not clear why Colorado residents are doing better than the visitors, but Kim thinks it probably has to do with better understanding of marijuana and its side effects. ”Right now, I think it’s just an awareness gap,” he says. ”The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has done a great job. But it’s not as easy to educate the entire population of potential visitors to Colorado.” Adam Curtis, who owns a cannabis dispensary called The Giving Tree of Denver, says, ”All my employees have a copy of the Good To Know.” These are pamphlets and note cards that the Colorado Department of Health and Environment distributes to marijuana retailers as part of a state public health education campaign. He thinks that sellers have been doing a good job of educating the customers, and the three retailers Shots contacted, including The Giving Tree of Denver, all said they provide literature from the department of health including the Good To Know materials. Curtis advises   recreational users to take half the 10 milligram recommended dosage of THC. He speculates that people ending up in the ER are going above that dosage against the recommendations on packaging or by marijuana sellers. Part of the trouble is that some people consuming marijuana edibles might not realize it takes some time to get high. ”They don’t feel anything. Then they take another one, and when the effect finally kicks in  —   now they have the effect of multiple products,” Kim says. It may also be that marijuana has become more potent and some users may not realize that. Future bud tourists should be getting more help. In the past year, Colorado health officials have been establishing responsible vendor programs that train ”budtenders” or cannabis sellers to give reliable information about dosing and side effects."
"On the eve of South Korean President Park  ’s third anniversary in office, protesters gathered in Seoul on Wednesday to condemn the administration’s increasing crackdown on free speech. These protesters were unlike any others Seoul has seen. They were holograms. The   hologram ”ghosts” marched across a transparent screen facing an old palace gate at Gwanghwamun Square, a historic center in Seoul. ”Promise us democracy! Promise us freedom of assembly!” the holographic figures chanted for 30 minutes, as a real crowd of more than 100  —   mostly journalists and organizers  —   watched. The ”ghost protest,” organized by Amnesty International in Korea, followed the world’s   hologram demonstrations in Spain. Last April, thousands of virtual demonstrators marched in Madrid to protest the controversial Citizen Safety Law, which set extreme fines for demonstrators convening outside government buildings. In South Korea, concerns have been raised over the government’s attempts to ban protests and its use of a Cold   national security law to make certain kinds of speech illegal. ”Freedom of speech and assembly has deteriorated since Park   took office,” says Ahn   a campaign manager at Amnesty Korea. ”Why can we hold a demonstration here only as ghosts? That’s what we want to ask.” Amnesty Korea’s initial request to hold a rally  —   a live, human one  —   was rejected by the Seoul Metropolitan Police earlier this month, on the grounds that the rally would disrupt traffic. The refusal prompted Amnesty to organize the virtual gathering, filming 120 volunteers on a blue screen and encouraging citizens to upload their voices to the Amnesty website. The Seoul Metropolitan Police warned organizers that the holographic rally was to be strictly a cultural festival  —   not a demonstration. ”We will restrain anyone who chants along to the hologram or expresses a collective will. That in and of itself is a demonstration,” said Chief Lee   at a news conference. Police suppression of free assembly in South Korea has drawn international concern in the past year. Last April, tens of thousands of police blocked demonstrators criticizing the government’s response after the Sewol ferry disaster, which killed 304 people, mostly high school students from the same school. In November, police suppressed a mass rally opposing the Park administration on various issues and arrested hundreds of demonstrators. According to Amnesty International, the number of water cannons used by the South Korean police multiplied sixfold between 2014 and 2015 chemical irritants used in liquid gas multiplied threefold. ”Today’s ghost protest must be the last,” Amnesty said in a statement at the hologram rally. ”Instead of a ghost protest lacking rights, we demand that real people be able to enjoy freedom of assembly. Assembly is a human right.”"
"One of the most puzzling astronomical discoveries of the past decade has just gotten a little bit clearer. Astronomers still don’t know what’s producing the brief, powerful bursts of radio waves they’ve been detecting, but for the first time, they’ve been able to see where one of them is coming from. Astronomers first detected these   fast radio bursts in 2007. Until now, all 16 FRBs that have been reported have been found by combing through archival data. But Evan Keane, an astronomer with the Square Kilometer Array Organization, says he and his colleagues wanted to catch one in the act. That way, they could point other telescopes in the direction of the FRB to search for clues about its origin. So they piped data from Australia’s CSIRO Parkes radio telescope into a supercomputer at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, so that it could sift through the information in real time. On April 18, 2015, they got a hit. It was only the 17th FRB ever reported. ”I was in South Africa when it happened,” Keane says. He’d been in a long engineering meeting the day before and had been planning to sleep in that Saturday morning. ”But of course my phone started going crazy in the morning” with people calling to say the computer had found an FRB. They called it FRB 150418, for the day it was found. Keane and his colleagues immediately alerted a network of telescopes they had assembled around the world to help pinpoint and characterize an FRB if and when they found one. The Australia Telescope Compact Array at the Paul Wild Observatory was able to observe the radio ”afterglow” from FRB 150418. ATCA is an array of six   antennas used for radio astronomy, and it was able to localize the source with a thousand times the accuracy of the Parkes telescope. Then, the Japanese Subaru telescope took up the search. Subaru is a large optical telescope located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It was able to see the patch of sky where ATCA showed FRB 150418 had come from. ”There’s only one thing there,” Keane says, ”and it’s a galaxy, an elliptical galaxy.” An elliptical galaxy 6 billion   away. Unfortunately, Keane says, knowing that doesn’t explain what’s generating the massive pulse of radio energy. But knowing how far away that object is lets you do some extremely interesting calculations. That’s because the different frequencies that make up the radio burst don’t all arrive at the exact same time. The longer frequencies are delayed. ”And the reason for that delay is the stuff that the signal has gone through  —   the particles and dust in the intervening space,” Keane says. And by measuring the delay, you can measure how many particles there are between us and the galaxy. And knowing how many particles there are between here and a galaxy 6 billion   away gives you an estimate of how much that slice (or cylinder, if you’d prefer) of the universe weighs. Although what’s generating these FRBs is still a mystery, the new discovery gives some hints. Keane says the galaxy where the FRB originated comprises mostly older stars. ”Our conclusion [is] that FRB 150418 is likely to be from a   event in an older stellar population,” he and his colleagues write in the journal Nature, in a paper describing the find. Keane’s organization, the Square Kilometer Array Organization, is designing a giant radio telescope that should be able to detect lots more of these FRBs. Maybe enough to figure out what’s making them. Before you ask, there’s no good evidence that FRBs are being generated by extraterrestrials."
"Mohammed Sayed is not one of those people who particularly relish the prospect of hitting young men on the butt with a big stick. But he is certainly prepared to do so to defend the girls and women who frequent the neatly groomed,   municipal park in the Pakistani city of Gujranwala where he works as a guard. The park was designed as a place for relaxation and family recreation (it even includes some ramshackle carnival rides). But it had turned into a prowling ground for young men. So city authorities have asked a team of guards  —   including Sayed, 25  —   to patrol the park and stamp out ” ”  —   a South Asian euphemism for the sexual harassment of women by men. ”  happens a lot here, especially in the evening,” says Kashif Nawaz, another patrol member. He says many men come out ”to shout, to pass comments . .. to tease and hoot.” They sometimes toss wads of paper, inscribed with their mobile phone numbers, at passing females. I visited the park on ”Family Day” the one day each week  —   a Tuesday  —   when single males are banned from entry altogether. This was not going down well with a knot of teenage boys and young men standing outside the iron gates, gazing indignantly through the bars. It’s far from certain that these new park policies will succeed. ” ” pales when compared with the cases of abuse in Pakistan that occasionally make international headlines, from gang rape to the trafficking of girls for sex, and more. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap 2015 report ranked Pakistan second from last when it came to gender equality. It also doesn’t help that most young men in Pakistan lack any sex education, says   psychologist Ayesha Hidayat. ”That inadequate sex education is one of the primary reasons why there is a lot of depression, suicidal attempts, aggression, violence, the child abuse and all those things in our society,” Hidayat says. When I talked with a group of six young men in Lahore, they all agreed: They lacked mentors with whom they could discuss sensitive personal issues. ”There is no one except your friends,” says    Mudabir Ali. He says he would never broach the topic of sex with his dad. ”The concept of religion and the teachings of religion [we’ve] been getting for such a long time stops you going to your father to discuss such things.” Older brothers in the family are particularly isolated. They tend not to confide in their young brothers about intimate matters, because they believe this would undermine their authority in the male pecking order. As for younger brothers who worry about these momentous issues, they might be shy about approaching the older siblings. Chatting with the mullah is out of question as well, adds Gohan Khan, 21. ”The clerics here, they do discuss these things. But they are not quite OK with questions that are not in line with religion,” he says. ”They feel offended.” The same goes for teachers, the young men say. They believe a teacher would be offended by a question about sex. In biology class, they say, the teacher will tiptoe around the human sexual organs, saying as little as possible. The clash between global consumer culture  —   which uses sex as a selling point  —   and Islamic tradition profoundly impacts these youngsters, who have all moved to the big city from generally more conservative parts of Pakistan to study. ”That’s the main problem,” says Zayid Ali, 22. ”On the one side, you have this whole advertisement industry, you have Western movies, advertisements, fashion shows, when you come to metropolitan cities. And when you go back where you belong, there is no such thing.” Ali is from a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province. In Lahore, it is not that difficult to date a girl, he says  —   though he does not. But in his hometown, that is close to impossible. There, your family chooses your wife  —   and it’s often a cousin. Any boy or girl who bucks tradition by forging a secret relationship is at serious, possibly mortal, risk. Hard yards lie ahead for Ali. He has decided he won’t allow his parents to arrange his marriage. He hasn’t told them yet. A big battle looms, he predicts. And then there’s porn. Pakistan’s government blocks hundreds of thousands of websites, but many of the country’s talented young  —   who form roughly half the 190 million population  —   remain ahead of the cyberspace game and are big consumers. I learn that here, as everywhere else, pornography adds to confusion, anxiety and  —   particularly in this conservative Islamic society  —   guilt. Shaista Khan, 21, sums it up: ”It’s just very difficult here, when you see the pictures and [yet] you don’t forge a relationship with a woman.” Young Pakistanis negotiating a path through this rapidly changing maze face many obstacles. The scale of their struggle is confirmed by psychologist Hidayat, who works with young people. Because they can’t easily discuss what they’re going through with anyone, she says, young Pakistanis often feel guilty: ”They feel that something very bad is happening inside them. They start judging and labeling themselves.” She believes Pakistan is changing  —   sex education and counseling is coming into some schools, she says. But it is a very long road."
"Last year, Ford asked people if they could imagine themselves buying or riding in a   vehicle. Out of the eight countries surveyed, India and China had the highest positive answers at 84 percent and 78 percent, respectively, compared to the U. S. and U. K. at 40 percent and 30 percent, respectively, the study found. ”We do have a theory about what explains the disparity between these markets, and I think it gets down to the joy of driving,” says Sheryl Connelly, who tracks global trends for Ford. ”And China and India you have some of the most egregious congestion. You have high road fatality, you have immature infrastructure and also I think there’s not the established emotional attachment many Westerners have with their vehicles.” Connelly says the   car is an imperative for an auto company in the 21st century, and many automakers have been working on a gradual progression toward more and more automation in cars. But Google is different: It went straight ahead to create a fully automated   car. One way the company has done that is by completely taking the car out of the hands of the driver. The latest Google prototype looks like a smaller version of a Volkswagen Bug: It’s a little   with no steering wheel and no gas or brake pedals. NPR’s Robert Siegel is talking to several key players this week about the emerging world of   cars. In the latest conversation, he spoke with Chris Urmson, technical director of the Google   car project. On why we need   cars, It really starts with safety. In America, there’s 33, 000 people that are killed on the road every year, and to put that in perspective, that’s equivalent of a 737 falling out of the sky five days a week. . .. There is just a tremendous opportunity there to save lives  —   94 percent of those accidents are due to human error, and the good news is we can build software and hardware that can see the road and pay attention all the time and react more quickly and keep people safe on the road. The other big aspect is accessibility. When you think about the baby boomer generation, they’re starting to get to a point where they feel uncomfortable driving or their family feels uncomfortable about them driving. Making sure they have access to transportation, to continue to do all the things they do today  —   to go and visit their grandchildren or just to go to a coffee shop  —   we think that is an incredibly important use for this type of technology. On the proposed regulations by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles that   cars have a licensed driver inside, We’ve always thought that having a driver in a vehicle while testing makes a tremendous amount of sense . .. the whole point of the system is to have someone in the vehicle who can observe and keep things safe. But once the technology is actually out on the road, I think that it isn’t the right answer. I think the idea is to give more people mobility, and by increasing the requirements on the person who’s driving the vehicle when they should be doing less doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. On whether someone should be able to override the controls, It really depends what you mean by ”take over controls.” You wouldn’t imagine that in the back of a taxi, we put an extra steering wheel or brake pedal there for the passenger to grab ahold of anytime. It would just be crazy to think about doing that. But at the same time, I could imagine that there are vehicles where most of the days you don’t really want to drive it, so let it take you to and from work in the morning, for example, but on the weekend when you get a chance to get out onto some open road, that you might enjoy driving in that location. But I think the idea that you want the person to jump in who hasn’t been paying attention or maybe had a couple of drinks with dinner and then jump in to override is probably not the right idea. On a video in a TED Talk he gave about different situations the car has encountered, This is actually one of the funnest videos we have. Our car was out testing one day and as it comes around the corner, there’s a woman in an electric wheelchair with a broom in her hand, chasing a duck and she chases it and they end up wheeling around, I suppose, on the road in a figure eight for a few moments and then run off the side of the road. And it’s one of those situations that really highlights the challenges of what we’re trying to do. There is nowhere in a DMV handbook or a federal regulation what you should do when there is a woman chasing a duck on a road. So our cars have to be able to recognize that this is a very unusual situation, let it kind of slow down, give it some space to play out because as a human watching you have no idea what’s going to happen next. And then once the roads clear, then carry on your way. And today, our cars are starting to be able to do this. Earlier, Siegel spoke about   cars with U. S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Brian Soublet of the California Department of Motor Vehicles."
"Once Mumbai’s largest slum, Dharavi  —   made famous by the 2008 movie Slumdog Millionaire  —   is a teeming   and multicultural settlement claiming almost a million migrants from across India. Dharavi houses hundreds of cottage and   industries, run mostly by men, who make products like bags and belts, zari embroidery and pottery. It’s also known for its huge recycling industry. Together, these enterprises generate more than $650 million a year, according to some reports. In Dharavi, lower and   income residents pack their large families, sometimes 15 or 16 people, into small houses, where women manage all household work and have little opportunity for social interaction. So when some of Dharavi’s women joined a workshop expecting demonstrations on contemporary cuisine from art historian Prajna Desai, they were surprised to learn it was their recipes she was after. ”Most women who attended my workshop shared that they don’t often leave home unless it is to run a specific errand or to take kids to school,” Desai says. ”At first, they were confused why anyone would even care to know what they were cooking every day.” Desai held 13 workshops between June and September 2014  —   and eight of the women were able to attend every meeting, a commitment required to be part of the book she planned to publish. Desai’s new cookbook, The Indecisive Chicken: Stories And Recipes From Eight Dharavi Cooks, draws attention to what India’s working class cooks  —   and eats  —   every day. The book evolved from Dharavi Biennale 2015  —   a   joint initiative between the Mumbai charity SNEHA, which works to improve women’s health, and Wellcome Trust, a U. K.  philanthropic group dedicated to improving global health  —   that culminated in an exhibition in Dharavi. The goal was to both discuss health issues with the residents of the slum  —   and to acknowledge their somewhat underestimated contribution to the city’s economic and cultural life. Desai’s workshop included discussions on nutrition,   food aesthetics, women’s labor and more.   Desai is an art historian and curator of contemporary art with a doctorate in   art and architecture from Yale University. She splits her time between Mumbai and Tokyo. The Indecisive Chicken combines the recipes and life stories of the eight women from Dharavi. The recipes are traditional, ones they cook at home regularly and consider unique to their community or region of origin. Some are unique to their families. These dishes are delectable, yet missing from the menus of restaurants that serve Indian food. The book showcases cuisine from women of India’s working class. A monograph on each contributor transports the reader into her world and gives a peek into the contemporary history of Dharavi, which is really a microcosm of India. The Indecisive Chicken gets its name from a story told by one of the Dharavi women, who said she didn’t cook chicken because her husband thinks it’s a ”silly bird”  —   and then reflected that he didn’t really like chicken, anyway. Desai’s book isn’t about ”curries,” as Indian food is largely interpreted in the West. With an assortment of 35 recipes originating from communities all around India, it offers an   look at the sheer diversity of Indian cooking. Kavita Kawalkar, who has roots in the South Indian state Andhra Pradesh, provides a recipe for ambadi pulao, a main rice dish packed with carrots and moringa  —   a tropical plant, known in India as ”drumstick tree,” whose nutritious leaves and pods are a staple. She uses ambadi, the sour leaves of Hibiscus cannabinus, to make this light, flaky pilaf. ”This dish is completely unheard of in restaurants,” says Desai, as are most of the other recipes covered in the   bilingual   book. Kawalkar’s technique of roasting base ingredients, such as onions and dry coconut, on fire creates a silkier feel and mellower tone in her preparations. Meanwhile, another contributor, Sarita Rai, offers a recipe for pharas, ”  pockets of rice dough” with a filling of split Bengal gram (or chickpea flour) and split black gram, served steamed or  . Rai is a shy mother of three who migrated to Dharavi eight years ago from a village in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Desai calls Rai a ”silent philosopher” who prefers to observe quietly, but comes alive when conversations about cooking begin to flow. With pharas and another recipe, for alu puri  —     Indian bread with potato stuffing  —   Rai brings the North Indian tradition of frying to the table. Though many women in Dharavi stay home, a few hold jobs in addition to being responsible for the household. Rajani Borse, who contributes recipes from Maharashtra, a Western Indian state, is an Anganwadi worker: Her job, for the government, is to combat hunger and malnutrition among children from   groups. Borse spends a lot of her time after work caring for her parents who live with her. Despite hailing from diverse regions of India, speaking different languages and honoring varying traditions, the women featured in the book have some common perceptions toward cooking and  . ”They were surprised at being appreciated, as producers, thinkers and teachers even, of an everyday process [cooking] that the workshops revealed as something akin to art,” Desai says. Desai’s book, she writes, is a window into Dharavi’s diverse food culture. ”Fine dining, one learns, does not reside only in restaurants. It brims up from homes, returns into it, and resurges through the heroism of such cooks.” Priti Salian is a   journalist who covers culture, travel and   stories for The Guardian, CNN, The Christian Science Monitor, GOOD, Al Jazeera and many other publications."
"While the dispute over cracking into an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter is at the center of a legal case between Apple and the FBI, the company recently told a federal court that it has received  —   and resisted  —   similar orders to help unlock iPhones and an iPad in recent months. That’s according to unsealed court documents in which Apple says that since early October, it has received orders to access data on 12 devices, from an iPhone 3 to two iPhone 6 Plus models. In the documents, the Department of Justice says the list is correct  —   and adds that it found ”at least one additional All Writs Act order” for obtaining information from an iPhone. News of the court filings comes ahead of Friday’s deadline for Apple to formally respond to a federal court order in the San Bernardino investigation. Wednesday, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. a prominent First Amendment lawyer who is a lead attorney for Apple in the case, told The Associated Press that the company will tell the judge that the issue should be decided by Congress, not by the courts. ”The FBI is relying on a law called the All Writs Act from 1789 that’s been used to compel companies to assist law enforcement in investigations,” NPR’s Alina Selyukh reports for our Newscast unit. ”And Boutrous told the AP that Apple also plans to argue that that law has never been used to require a company to write software.” In the court document, Apple says the requests for it to help get inside the devices came from U. S. attorneys’ offices in a range of districts, including New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and California. The company has said that complying with such orders would require it to create a software tool that could make millions of iPhones vulnerable to invasions of users’ privacy. An attorney for the tech company, Marc Zwillinger, submitted the list of such government orders on Feb. 17. It was in response to a request from a federal court in New York that was weighing a similar dispute over an iPhone in a drug case. The government responded on Monday, and Apple’s list was unsealed Tuesday. The New York court’s request covers a specific time span in a footnote in its filing, Apple says that shortly before that period, it also received three other orders: two in Ohio on Sept. 24, and one in Illinois on Oct. 6. While four of the federal orders listed by Apple predate the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, Calif. the company’s objections to them didn’t begin until Dec. 9, according to Apple’s filing. In that filing to the New York judge, Zwillinger also cites the ongoing case in California, where a federal court has ordered Apple to comply with an FBI request to defeat the password protection of an iPhone 5C recovered in the aftermath of the violence carried out by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik. He writes: ”The attached order directs Apple to perform even more burdensome and involved engineering than that sought in the case currently before this Court  —   i. e. to create and load   software onto the subject iPhone device to circumvent the security and   features of the device in order to enable the government to hack the passcode to obtain access to the protected data contained therein.” The case has sparked a public debate over whether Apple or the FBI is in the right. This week, FBI Director James Comey urged both ”a deep breath” and a conversation about technology, privacy and security. Apple says it wants the FBI to withdraw its demand for help opening the phone  —   and for the government to form a commission on ”intelligence, technology and civil liberties” that would discuss the needs of law enforcement, national security and personal privacy."
"You might think of Barcelona as an enchanted, historic European city. This week, it’s home to a massive tech gathering: the Mobile World Congress. Tens of thousands of people from every corner of the earth are there  —   many showcasing the novel ways they’re connecting   to the Internet. I took a tour of Innovation City and here are a few of my most memorable stops. A   Bike, The smart car by Jaguar  —   it didn’t really impress me. Yeah, it’s cool you can be in Jakarta and, with a phone app, unlock the doors to your SUV over in Johannesburg. But a bunch of carmakers are doing this. What I’ve never seen before is a   doing it. And here it is: from a distance, just something that looks like a standard commuter bike, but step up closer and you realize it’s the Tesla of bikes. Not that it’s electric, but like the luxury car, it’s powered by software and connected to the Internet. The bike has sensors embedded in the handles and a computer mounted in between. You download an app on your smartphone to control the bike’s features, for instance programming a desired workout, for distance or heart rate, or streaming music while you ride. It’s equipped with a GoPro camera, which is controlled by a big button that makes it easy to start the video as it is to brake  —   essential features for the modern cyclist. For now, this   bike is a only offered in China, but the partnership behind it  —   manufacturing by China’s Letv, connectivity through the China Unicom mobile network and software management by Silicon   Jasper  —   plans to go global. The price is estimated to start at $600. The bike’s systems take 6 hours to fully charge and the charge lasts 3 days, says Theresa Bui with Jasper. And if a thief manages to steal the bike, just like the ”Find my iPhone” feature for lost iPhones, the app can locate the missing bike. The tech industry is always looking for the next big hit. And to Bui, the answer is not the smartwatch or virtual reality headsets, but these bikes. Smartphone Case: Forget Bling, Here’s Bang, In the acres upon acres of expo floor, I spot in the distance a peculiar smartphone case  —   one with little electrodes on the upper right hand corner. ”It comes with a stun gun,” says Jamie Park, who’s showing it to me. I’m sorry, what? ”It’s a bundle,” says Park, who’s with the Korean company 247 Inc. that makes this security package. OK, so some phone cases have bling this one has bang. It works with an app called Volt, which activates the stun weapon while also switching on the camera to start recording what’s going on around you and playing a siren to make it sound like help is on the way. Plus, once the app goes live in June, Park says, it would be able to alert your personal list of emergency contacts as well as notify local police of your coordinates and send them your camera feed. Not Quite Amazon. com, On my way to the cafeteria, I run into a strange grocery store. It’s a big   TV, with pictures of food on rotating shelves. This is a virtual mall by   Etisalat. According to Tish Alexander, a conference spokeswoman, about 19 of these malls are in trams and metro stations around Dubai. Etisalat is a mobile operator, like Verizon, but it’s got a partnership with a local grocery chain to sell mushrooms, red peppers, tea, mosquito repellent  —   your local needs. When I note it’s not a particularly private shopping experience, Alexander says, ”Yeah, (it’s) like being at the market. Everyone can see what you buy then as well.” Delivery right to your doorstep is as fast as 2 hours, she says. Beat that, Amazon."
"As if there’s not enough controversy over the Oscars, there’s also the matter of a curse. This Hollywood rumor is often said to have started back in 1993, when Marisa Tomei won best supporting actress for My Cousin Vinny. Rather than going on to star in huge movies, as one might expect of a comely and talented Oscar winner, Tomei’s film career fizzled. She appeared in small roles, or small films. Even the legitimacy of her win became an urban legend. Thus the curse: Winning best supporting actress is a career killer. The     promise that an Academy Award might suggest never materialized with Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite) or Mercedes Ruehl (The Fisher King) either  —   even though both are extremely accomplished thespians with impressive resumes. And Jennifer Hudson virtually disappeared from the big screen after Dreamgirls. Amy Nicholson, chief film critic for MTV News, points to Kim Basinger as yet another classic example. ”She won for L. A. Confidential and then she just immediately had no work for three years,” she says. ”You look at a winner like Brenda Fricker, who won for My Left Foot  —   the same film that Daniel   won for, which turned him into a huge star. And three years later, you have [Fricker] playing roles like ’Pigeon Lady’ in Home Alone 2. And you see that happen to a talented actress and you can’t help but wonder  —   yeah, is there a curse?” To be clear, Nicholson does not believe in this curse. Not at all. Not even remotely. This, she says, is plain, old, unmagical sexism. Basinger was 44 when she won best supporting actress. Perhaps part of the problem is that the category rewards numerous women who are older than 40, who are black or ”ethnic,” or who are character actresses, rather than traditional beauties. ”It’s a symptom of the fact that there aren’t a lot of roles,” Nicholson says. ”It’s really just a symptom of the movies, you know?” Then there’s the expectation for Oscar winners to follow up with meaty, meaningful roles. If you’re a best supporting actress who doesn’t want to play a background wife or mom, that often means having to appear in smaller movies. Show up in a big blockbuster for exposure and to capitalize on your win, and you risk being mocked. Nicholson says that happened to Angelina Jolie, when she starred in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider after winning best supporting actress for Girl, Interrupted. But Jolie helped prove that the best supporting actress curse is utterly bogus. ”Now she’s the most reliable female box office draw that we have,” Nicholson says.   look at the spectacular careers of Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Penélope Cruz and Tilda Swinton. Before Swinton’s best supporting actress win for Michael Clayton, she flew under the pop culture radar for years. Now Nicholson says, it feels like she’s in everything. There’s no talk of a best supporting actor curse, partly because the awards tend to be bestowed on established older stars of the Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin generation, or to sexy foreigners such as Javier Bardem or Christoph Waltz. Meanwhile, Nicholson says, female Oscar winners have to deal not just with one alleged curse, but two. ”Sure, you might win an Oscar for best supporting actress or best actress  —   but then you’re probably going to get divorced,” she says, sounding irritated. This curse was taken seriously enough that researchers at the University of Toronto did the math. They found best actress winners have a 63 percent higher chance of divorce. Yet another story Hollywood tells us about the perils of women having it all."
"British costumer Sandy Powell already has three Oscars, and now she’s been nominated for two more. This year she’s up twice for best costume design: one for Cinderella  —   with its sweeping ball gowns  —   and another for her work in Carol  —   featuring impeccable 1950s dresses. Carol is a love story starring Cate Blanchett as a wealthy woman whose marriage is falling apart. Powell says Carol can afford the latest 1952 clothes  —   including a blonde mink coat. ”There’s something about rich people wearing light colors that denotes luxury and sophistication,” says Powell, who says she had the coat made from bits of many coats. She also took her inspiration from 1952 copies of Vogue and Harper’s, and she had the shoe company Ferragamo make Blanchett’s footwear from its archival patterns. Carol is in love with the much younger Therese, a department store shopgirl and budding photographer who wears a cute beret. For her look, Powell says she looked at street photography of young people ”who were artistic in that early ’50s period . .. just before it gets  .” For Cinderella, Powell designed the fabulous 1940s dresses worn by Blanchett, who plays the very wicked stepmother. ”What I wanted to do with her is have her look so perfectly put together that it’s intimidating: Don’t come near me, don’t mess with me,” Powell recalls. She designed all of the fairytale costumes in what she calls ”once upon a time period.” She says that Cinderella’s iconic blue ball gown was ”probably the most terrifying thing I’ve done. The expectations were so high.” For that gown, she constructed a wire cage frame, and on top of that, layered fabrics in blues, greens, lavenders and lilacs. On top, there’s a polyester fabric called yumissima. It’s ”incredibly lightweight, really as fine as smoke almost,” Powell explains. ”If you throw it up in the air, it just wafts.” Director Kenneth Branagh says Cinderella’s dress had to flow. ”Sandy Powell found material both with sparkle and shine in it, but also with diaphanous weight across many, many layers,” he says. ”And that was both a sort of artistic invention and a mathematical invention. She understood how that object would work in space, on steps, on high heels, floating down those stairs like the most beautiful slinky in the world.” Powell’s background is in the theater she dropped out of her London art school to stage shows with Lindsay Kemp, the mime and choreographer who worked with David Bowie on his Ziggy Stardust character. ”It was extravagant, avant garde, kind of out there,” she says of the stage shows she collaborated on with Kemp in Italy and Spain in the 1980s. She says the designs were ”along the lines of things going on at the same time in glam rock and with David Bowie and all that, but this was the theatrical world.” Bowie continues to be a huge influence, she says. (The   ’s current hairstyle is a shock of orange hair reminiscent of Ziggy Stardust.) Powell’s dressed so many movie stars  —   Cate Blanchett, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gwyneth Paltrow, to name a few, that meeting her in person can be a bit intimidating. She showed up to our interview at NPR’s studios in a casual chic look: white blouse, scarf and silver sandals. Despite my best efforts, I was definitely lacking  —   and wrinkled  —   by comparison. ”You look like someone who’s got up and put the first thing [on],” she says, quickly adding: ”I do it every day. . .. I get up and wear what’s at the end of my bed. Usually whatever ended up on the floor last night. If it’s still clean I’ll put it on again.” For her big night at the Oscars, Powell is having something made in London. Look for her on the red carpet."
"The legal world has a new blogger: former constitutional law professor and current President Barack Obama. The president took to SCOTUSblog, the leading online chronicle of the Supreme Court, on Wednesday to offer some ”  insights” into what he is seeking in a justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia. Aside from ”mastery of the law,” Obama said he wants to choose a nominee who understands ”a judge’s job is to interpret the law, not make the law.” But in cases where the law’s unclear, the president wrote, he will look for ”the kind of life experience learned outside the classroom and the courtroom experience that suggests he or she views the law not only as an intellectual exercise, but also grasps the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times.” And, about those times: Senate Republicans signaled this week they will take no action on whomever the White House nominates. All 11 GOP members of the Judiciary Committee signed a letter Tuesday saying they would not give their consent under the Constitution. The lawmakers said they did not intend to even meet with the nominee, let alone hold a public hearing on his or her qualifications. On Wednesday, President Obama blasted the politics of the Senate, and said the American people would have the chance to judge his nominee  ” something of a public relations campaign. ”My hope an expectation is that once there is an actual nominee. .. that those on the judiciary committee recognize that their job is to give this person a hearing, to show the courtesy of meeting with them. They are then free to vote whatever their conscience dictates.” ”I’m going to do my job, I’m going to nominate someone,” he continued, ”and let the American people decide as to whether that person is qualified.” That means the court could operate without a full complement of nine members for a year or more, the equivalent of two terms of the Supreme Court. At least one current justice, Samuel Alito, commented on that, telling an audience at Georgetown Law school this week, ”We will deal with it.” ”There’s nothing in the Constitution that specifies the size of the Supreme Court,” Alito said. ”There were times in the history of the court when the court had an even number of justices. They must have been more agreeable in those days.”"
"The French have gotten themselves into one of their recurrent linguistic lathers, this one over the changes in their spelling that will be taking effect in the fall. The changes were originally proposed more than 25 years ago. But nothing much came of them until the government recently announced that they’d be incorporated in the new textbooks, at which point traditionalists took to the barricades. The government has made a point of calling the changes ”rectifications” rather than reforms, and on the whole they’re pretty minor. A few words like ”le  ” and ”le  ” will lose their hyphens. The word for onion, ”oignon,” will have to give up its silent i. But what people have gotten most worked up about is the elimination of many of the circumflexes. That’s the pointy little hat that sits on top of vowels in words like ”hôtel” and ” ” marking the spot where a letter was lost sometime in the past. The changes are supposed to make the written language easier to learn, but there are too few of them to make much of a difference. Mastering written French is still going to be as much of a slog as it’s always been. Bear in mind that this is a language that has eight different words all pronounced as ”o,” each of them with its own distinctive spelling. Even so, critics have attacked the reforms as a dumbing down of the language of Molière and Victor Hugo. Opponents have launched a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #JeSuisCirconflexe, echoing the #JeSuisCharlie of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. This being France, the debate is laced with political theater. The   National Front warned of the obliteration of French cultural identity, and one critic compared the government to the Bolsheviks, who eliminated some letters of the Slavic alphabet when they came to power. And indeed, when the reforms were originally announced by the socialist government of François Mitterrand, some proponents invoked the spirit of the French Revolution. The linguist Bernard Cerquiglini compared the circumflex to a crown that sits on the head of certain vowels and suggested    that the government was merely eliminating the last vestige of royalty. From where we sit, it’s all entertainingly Gallic. But then, who are we to talk? Maybe the question isn’t why the French get so worked up about spelling but why we don’t. After all, it’s not as if English orthography couldn’t do with some rectifications of its own. But we haven’t had a major controversy over spelling since the early 19th century, when Americans got into a   over Noah Webster’s proposals to make our spelling different from that of the English. We wound up making a few symbolic changes, like dropping the u in ”honour” and ”colour” and transposing the final letters of ”theatre” and ”centre.” But having made our point, we were content to leave everything else as it was. Reformers since then have never stopped agitating for a more rational English spelling system. But all they have to show for their pains is that we’ve dropped the ”ough” in ”donut” and ”thruway.” We share with the French the honor of having the most difficult spelling systems in the world. But the similarity ends there. They see their spelling as a legacy of the literary history that has shaped their identity. As they see it, French spelling may be complicated but it’s basically rational, which as it happens is how they like to think of themselves, too. Some scholars point out that English spelling, too, is often more rational than it appears. It can reveal etymologies and the hidden relations between words, like the silent g of ”sign” that’s pronounced in ”signify.” But most of us prize our spelling for the very things that make it maddening  —   as someone once said, it’s a ”chaotic concoction of oddities.” We like to think of it as cussed, unpredictable and not answerable to any official authority, which, as it happens, is how we like to think of ourselves too. So we take a kind of perverse pride in all those sets of words where the same letters are pronounced differently  —   ”Susy” but ”busy,” ”oven” but ”woven,” ”cove” versus ”move” versus ”love.” English spelling is not a game for the weak at heart, and it has nothing to do with higher literary culture the way French spelling does. It’s that perverse difficulty we celebrate in the ritual of the spelling bee, which is a purely oral exercise  —   in theory, you could win a spelling bee without actually knowing how to read or write at all. It’s a contest that rewards diligence, not cultivation. Where English spelling is concerned, the imperfect is our paradise. That’s why we always resist the efforts to reform it. We may as well resign ourselves to knowing that students a century from now are still going to be wrestling with a dozen or so ways to spell the sound ”ay.” But we can take consolation in knowing that the conservatism that deters us from trying to improve things also prevents us from changing them for the worse. Our spelling isn’t likely to be permanently corrupted by texting abbreviations and the like, no more than it was led astray by the 20th century advertisers who spelled ”quick” as ”kwik” or the 19th century telegraph operators who shortened words to save time and money. We insist on clinging to our unreasonable customs, and it saves us from our own worst impulses."
"As the presidential race shifted to Nevada with Democratic caucuses last week and Republican caucuses Tuesday night, more young voters had a chance to chime in to the political process. Nevada is a state with a huge young, diverse population. But there is the perennial question: Do young people matter in politics? In every recent election, you’ve probably heard some iteration of the same generational critique: ”Young people don’t vote.” Millennials (born between 1982 and 2000, according to the Census definition) are the largest generation in the country. With an estimated population of 83. 1 million, they now outnumber baby boomers. But, in the last election, they had the lowest voter turnout of any age group. That’s partly because political campaigns aren’t tapping into the potential power of young voters, according to Kei   the director of CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at Tufts University.   and her colleagues are eager to increase youth participation  —   CIRCLE was founded in 2001 as a result of declining youth turnout in the 1990s. This election cycle, they’ve methodically studied every state to create an empirical index that analyzes where the youth vote could potentially sway the outcome of the presidential election. (See the bottom of this post for more on the methodology.) They gave states bonus points for implementing election laws that are designed to facilitate voter turnout, such as   registration, online registration and preregistration, which allows voters who will be 18 by election day to sign up to vote before they turn 18. Once the index was computed, CIRCLE then looked at the size of the youth vote relative to the margin of victory in 2012. The main conclusion for   was that young people, when they’re actually targeted, can help win elections  —   especially in these 10 states, ordered from least important to most important in terms of youth vote. 10. Nevada, In Nevada, the margin of victory in the general election is expected to be small, compared to the size of the youth population. Still, Nevada has struggled with low youth turnout in recent elections, so turning potential into reality is an uphill climb. Nevada is both racially and educationally diverse. In fact, Census data suggest Nevada will be the next state to flip   in the country currently, about 31 percent of the   population is Latino. Nevada also has a large    population, which suggests the youth vote is far more multifaceted than in other states. ”Nevada’s young voters . .. are more and more likely to register as unaffiliated or independent,” said  . That may mean fewer young Nevadans will participate in the caucuses, but it also means they’re more likely up for grabs in the general election. 9. North Carolina, North Carolina was famously known for its high youth voter turnout in 2008, which swung the state in Barack Obama’s favor. Since then, the state has rolled back a couple of election procedures that are designed to ease the voting process  —   both   registration and preregistration. Still, the CIRCLE index ranks North Carolina high because the young population has shown it votes differently than the older population. In 2008, for example, exit polls show 76 percent of   to    voted for Obama. Every other age group preferred John McCain. The other defining characteristic is race  —   23 percent of the youth population is black. In recent elections, young   have had the highest voter turnout. ”We’ve found, particularly, young female black voters turn out in incredibly high rate( s),” said  . Of course, the high turnout in the   community was likely linked to the historic election of the country’s first black president, and without Barack Obama at the top of the ticket it’s unclear whether black voters will participate at equally enthusiastic rates this year. 8. Florida, ”It may be counterintuitive to have Florida in the top 10, because as a whole the population in Florida is rather old,” said  . The state’s average age is 41. 8. But she said the Sunshine State scored high on the ”election law” index  —   with preregistration for   and    and now online registration. ”Preregistration has been found to have a   impact on young people’s voter turnout, even after they turn 18 or 30,” said  . The other unique factor in Florida is that the state is home to more than 400 higher education institutions university campuses are critical for voter mobilization, since people who are   tend to vote at higher rates. 7. Virginia, Virginia has a sizable youth voting population  —   1. 2 million, which is 21. 3 percent of the state’s population. Traditionally, Virginia has also experienced high youth voter turnout compared to other states.   says Virginia’s relatively high, consistent turnout may be a result of the state’s competitiveness in a general election contest. ”People who are young are actually hearing from campaigns over the phones, or they may even get   at their homes, which is not the case in other   states,” she explained. 6. Wisconsin, During presidential election years, a large percentage of young people in Wisconsin tend to vote. In fact, according to average Census figures from the last three elections, turnout hovered around 60 percent.   says that strong participation is partly because young folks in Wisconsin have characteristics that correlate to high turnout  —   they’re overwhelmingly white, employed and living above the poverty rate. But, she cautions, Wisconsin’s population is aging, and it’s being replaced by a more racially diverse population. It’s unclear whether these new minority voters will participate at the same rates. 5. Colorado, Colorado has all three laws that CIRCLE notes as being ”helpful” to youth voter turnout  —     registration (enacted in 2013) preregistration for potential voters below 18 (enacted in 2013) and online registration (2009). Colorado’s youth demographic is also the   age group in the state. It also appears that youth voter turnout has been rising, as opposed to declining  —   the opposite of the national trend. 4. Ohio, Ohio has a large number of colleges  —   385 institutions of higher education, according to CIRCLE research. But   says Ohio’s   population is unique  —   many have children (26 percent). In fact, of all these 10 states, Ohio has the highest ratio of young people with kids. As a result,   says, the issues that matter to young voters in Ohio may be more diverse  —   encompassing not only college affordability and jobs, but also health care and early childhood education. ”That might mean there are different places where young people who could vote could be reached out to,” said  . She says that’s particularly important in Ohio because the election is likely to be tight. ”It’s one of the top states when it comes to how small the margin of victory was relative to the youth vote,” she said. CIRCLE’s analysis shows that in 2012, the youth vote was about 5. 6 times as large as the margin of victory. 3. Pennsylvania, There are a few disparate factors that make Pennsylvania’s youth vote unique. This presidential election cycle, Pennsylvania is introducing online registration, which may make it easier for   voters to sign up, Like Florida, the state has more than 400 institutions of higher education. And, in recent cycles, young voters in Pennsylvania have tilted far more to the left than older folks. The state also has a sizable black youth population (15 percent) and, in recent elections, young black people have voted at a higher rate than any other race. But, similar to North Carolina, where young black voters were key in 2008, it’s unclear if black turnout in Pennsylvania will match previous levels this year. 2. New Hampshire, Young voters have a disproportionately high impact in New Hampshire, and   says that’s because they’ve had a high turnout in recent elections. She attributes the strong turnout to two main factors: ”[New Hampshire] has a specific style of candidate outreach, which gets [candidates] into the community, in people’s homes . .. so these young people are very likely to have direct contact with presidential candidates,” said  . ”Those things can really enhance the sense of efficacy that young people’s votes matter.” 1. Iowa, New Hampshire and Iowa ranked almost identically in CIRCLE’s index, differing by just 000th of a point. The reason the two are so similar is likely because they both benefit from enthusiasm generated during the primary season. Since Iowa is home to the first nominating contest in the country, it’s almost inevitable that young people either meet candidates in person or hear about them through TV advertisements. ”Throughout the state, there’s just a lot of resources going to outreach,” said   and, like in New Hampshire, the   of that outreach linger into the November general election. On average, Census data show that about 60 percent of   to    voted in the past three presidential elections in both states. Nationally, about 45 percent of young people voted in the past three elections, and about 35 percent for the two elections before that. Methodology: CIRCLE used a variety of metrics, including, but not limited to: the percentage of the population under 30, the percentage of   to    currently enrolled in college, youth turnout in past presidential elections and the predicted competitiveness of the 2016 race. The index also accounted for the economic health of a state’s youth population, since education and wealth tend to predict voter participation."
"The Nevada caucuses on the Republican side were a   game, and The Donald once again drew the ace. The other ”face cards” were Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, with Rubio once again edging his fellow senator by a narrow margin. But it scarcely mattered. Their shares combined fell shy of Donald Trump’s 46 percent. And no one else had so much as a nickel’s worth. This is the part of the casino movie where you see a guy at a big table, winning hand after hand, stacking up chips in piles and towers. This is where the dealer whispers to his floor boss, who comes back with the big boss, who stands watching and smoking in the shadows. His face seems to ask: Who is this guy? And what are we going to do about him? With his most dominating victory yet in the 2016 nomination contest, Trump established himself as the overwhelming favorite for Super Tuesday, the single biggest voting day of the whole primary season and now less than a week away. Southern states dominate the March 1 lineup, and Trump has polled well in the South since beginning his campaign last summer. After rolling up big margins in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, Trump will probably have a lead in all the Super Tuesday states except Cruz’s home state of Texas. And even the Lone Star may be in play. Trump is, therefore, the most favored son of the Republican Party in a year when history favors the party’s chances of winning the White House. In January, Trump talked of ”running the table,” a phrase borrowed from the billiards parlor. Setting aside the Iowa caucus on Feb. 1, he has done just that. And there is no clear sign of where that run will end. Nevada had looked good for Trump for several weeks, but there had been lingering doubts about his performance in a caucus. Iowa had a record turnout for its Republican caucuses this year, but it still only amounted to about a fifth of the state’s registered Republicans. In that circumstance, Trump slipped below his polling numbers and finished second behind Cruz. Nevada is less populous than Iowa, and its   tradition is far less  . The state has been difficult to poll because the caucus draws such a small slice of the electorate and because those who do attend often decide quite late. This week’s GOP caucus drew about 75, 000 Nevadans, which was almost as many as came in 2008 and 2012 combined. But it was still only about 15 percent of the Silver State’s registered Republicans. So it was that concentrated core that was supposed to give Cruz or someone else a shot. Yet, in this state, Trump carried all before him. Perhaps most intriguing was his mastery of the various categories of voters. He won among men and women by almost identical margins, among whites and nonwhites, in all age categories over 30, in all income categories and at all levels of education. His strongest group was older white men with less than a high school education. ”We won with the highly educated we won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated,” Trump said at this victory rally. In Iowa, Cruz had won among those identifying as ”very conservative” or as ”born again” evangelical Christians. Cruz still won these groups in New Hampshire. But that began to change in South Carolina, where these voters divided their loyalty. And it changed again in Nevada, where they went for Trump. The four voting events in February were expected to winnow the field, and so they have. Starting with an array of 17 candidates in the fall, the GOP was down to a dozen when Iowa held its caucuses on the first of the month. Now it is, in effect, down to three. The last two   John Kasich and Dr. Ben Carson, must now awake to daily calls for them to drop out. (Both may continue to resist these calls, of course, about which more in a moment.) What Happens Now?  The Republican candidates will debate in Houston on Thursday night, and the Cruz candidacy may be on the line. Cruz cannot afford to lose Texas. He can no longer wait for someone else or something else to take Trump down a peg. It’s not enough to battle Rubio for second place. In his home state, Cruz needs to be No. 1. So watch for him to train his guns on Trump more than ever before. Rubio, meanwhile, may offer the last best hope of the   Republicans. This is the role all Trump’s rivals have coveted for months (and which Cruz is still trying to contest). But it may be a mixed blessing. Endorsements are flooding in so fast that they threaten to swamp the Rubio campaign. This is not just a challenge to the people cranking out Rubio’s news releases it is a challenge to his image and campaign narrative. Many have forgotten that Rubio came to the Senate in 2010 as a beneficiary of the Tea Party wave. He is now ”the establishment alternative.” That characterization is gaining currency by the day. And that has not been the place to be in 2016. The debate has the potential to scramble the   scenario. We saw Rubio take a hit in New Hampshire on Feb. 6, and we saw him bounce back a week later in the most pugilistic debate yet. This Thursday his mettle will be tested again, and this time the absence of Jeb Bush will change the dynamics and put more pressure on Rubio. Super Tuesday, But after the debate will follow a long weekend of ads and TV appearances, stretching the candidates’ ads across the nation. A dozen states are holding Republican events next Tuesday. Most of them are Southern: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Also voting are Alaska and Wyoming, each as reliably red as the Deep South. The Super Tuesday outliers are Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont, three of the bluest of the blue. But this is not November, and the Republicans who turn out in March in these states tend to be the most conservative voters in these states. In any event, in this particular March, the polls in these three states show something very much like the polls nationally. That means, at this point at least, it’s Trump. On March 5, four more    states weigh in: Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine. Right now it is hard to see how Trump’s mojo fails in these four. The Ones Lagging Behind, If still in the hunt, John Kasich gets a glimmer of opportunity in Michigan (59 delegates) on March 8. But whoever wins Super Tuesday is likely to dominate that same day in Mississippi, Idaho and possibly Hawaii too. Carson, who broke out briefly in October but has since faded on the debate stage and in the polls and vote counts, has said he wants to soldier on. He may stay as long as the debates continue, as an opportunity to restore some of his luster and position himself for prospective public roles in the future. On March 15, we get the first    events, in Florida and Ohio. Needless to say, these pose    challenges to Rubio and Kasich. If either loses his home state to Trump, that loser would appear to be finished as a contestant for the nomination. At this point, we should pause to say, either one would make a highly desirable running mate. Either could carry a crucial state into the Republican column as the vice presidential nominee (although this is never guaranteed). And both would make valuable counterweights to the Trump persona.   Possibilities, Down the road there are more primaries that are    but they have smaller delegate payouts. There are also several important states with hybrid systems, proportional among the candidates who reach a certain threshold but also highly rewarding to the top finisher. If a last lone alternative to Trump should emerge from the   of March and April, that candidate might benefit from a generalized sense of buyer’s remorse by May and June. This might express itself in the late primaries in New Jersey and the Far West (anchored by California’s 172 delegates). If Trump were somehow still below the 1, 237 delegates needed for a   win, the convention in Cleveland in July could determine the nominee."
"After a court ordered Apple to help federal investigators get into an encrypted iPhone, the company responded with a court filing Thursday that describes the   order as illegal, unconstitutional and dangerous. ”No court has ever authorized what the government now seeks, no law supports such unlimited and sweeping use of the judicial process, and the Constitution forbids it,” Apple’s lawyers wrote in the company’s motion to vacate the order. ”The government’s request here creates an unprecedented burden on Apple and violates Apple’s First Amendment rights against compelled speech,” Apple writes, presenting court decisions that treat computer code as speech protected by the First Amendment. The court order issued by a federal magistrate in California last week instructs Apple to write special software that would remove some security features that prevent the FBI from guessing the PIN code on an iPhone 5C that was used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Federal agents have been unable to break the phone’s encryption, and attempting to guess the password might result in all the data being deleted. So they’ve asked Apple to develop software they could load on the phone to let them hook up a computer program that would guess the password without the risk of deletion. The Justice Department, in its own legal filing last week, argues that Apple’s new software ”never has to come into the government’s custody” or be shared with anyone outside the company  —   and that Apple is refusing to comply out of business and PR concerns and not technical ones. The company says that it has already dedicated ”substantial resources” to helping the FBI investigate the San Bernardino shootings, but that this request goes too far. In its motion to dismiss the court order, Apple’s manager of user privacy describes that hypothetical software as ”GovtOS”  —   a special operating system for the government that Apple would not make under any other circumstances. In fact, CEO Tim Cook has called it the software equivalent of cancer. Creating such software would require extensive resources, Apple notes, especially if the company has to deploy the software repeatedly  —   as it expects it would. ”The government says: ’Just this once’ and ’Just this phone,’ ” the motion notes. ”But the government knows those statements are not true indeed the government has filed multiple other applications for similar orders, some of which are pending in other courts. . .. If this order is permitted to stand, it will only be a matter of days before some other prosecutor, in some other important case, before some other judge, seeks a similar order using this case as precedent.” That’s a dangerous precedent, Apple says, and one that would pose an undue burden on the company. Apple also says that the court order is judicial overreach  —   requesting a new power that only Congress can mandate  —   and that it violates the company’s First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights. The Justice Department responded to Apple’s motion by saying that a judge reviewed the FBI request and found it both necessary and reasonable. The court order, which was made under the All Writs Act, is narrowly targeted, the department says. ”The Justice Department’s approach to investigating and prosecuting crimes has remained the same the change has come in Apple’s recent decision to reverse its   cooperation in complying with All Writs Act orders,” spokeswoman Melanie Newman said in a statement. Though this court filing is a legal challenge to only one government request for help, Apple has stressed that the precedent could span far wider. In fact, a recently unsealed filing in another case showed that Apple has received similar requests from the government to help access data on a dozen devices, including iPhones and iPad. U. S. attorneys are now due to respond to Apple’s filing by March 10. The hearing in the U. S. District Court for the Central District of California is scheduled for March 22. FBI Director James Comey and Apple’s General Counsel Bruce Sewell are slated to testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on encryption on March 1."
"Apple and the FBI are facing off in court over an encrypted iPhone 5C that was used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The phone stopped backing up to the cloud, which the investigators have already searched, several weeks before the Dec. 2 attack. It’s unclear what, if anything remains on the phone, but the Justice Department says it has ”reason to believe” that Farook used that iPhone to communicate ”with some of the very people” he and his wife killed. Apple and the government, however, are at odds over a court order that investigators got to compel Apple to help them circumvent the iPhone’s security systems. Right now, the phone is protected by a PIN code that the FBI doesn’t know  —   and trying to guess it could cause the phone’s data to be deleted. The FBI wants Apple to write software that would give it unlimited attempts at the PIN with a computer program, but Apple’s answer is a hard no. In a motion to dismiss the court’s order, filed Thursday, the company says it has cooperated with investigators as much as it can, and this software request is dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional. Here are five key quotes from the filing that outline Apple’s argument  —   plus one swipe at the FBI’s computer skills: The FBI says the   software would be for this phone specifically. Apple doesn’t buy it: ”The government says: ’Just this once’ and ’Just this phone.’ But the government knows those statements are not true indeed the government has filed multiple other applications for similar orders, some of which are pending in other courts. . .. If this order is permitted to stand, it will only be a matter of days before some other prosecutor, in some other important case, before some other judge, seeks a similar order using this case as precedent.” ”. .. compelling Apple to create software in this case will set a dangerous precedent for conscripting Apple and other technology companies to develop technology to do the government’s bidding in untold future criminal investigations. If the government can invoke the All Writs Act to compel Apple to create a special operating system that undermines important security measures on the iPhone, it could argue in future cases that the courts should compel Apple to create a version to track the location of suspects, or secretly use the iPhone’s microphone and camera to record sound and video.” The court order instructing Apple to comply cites the All Writs Act, which broadly permits courts to ”issue all writs necessary or appropriate” and has been used to compel companies to assist law enforcement in investigations. But Apple says this request overreaches the court’s authority  —   that this particular court order is creating a new power, not using an existing one. Only Congress, by passing a new law, could make such a demand legal, Apple argues: ”[The All Writs Act] does not grant the courts   authority to change the substantive law, resolve policy disputes, or exercise new powers that Congress has not afforded them. . .. Congress has never authorized judges to compel innocent third parties to provide decryption services to the FBI. Indeed, Congress has expressly withheld that authority in other contexts, and this issue is currently the subject of a raging national policy debate among members of Congress, the President, the FBI Director, and state and local prosecutors.” The Supreme Court has previously found that the All Writs Act can be used to force a company’s cooperation, provided that the company was not ”far removed” from the case in question. Apple argues it is, indeed, far removed: ”The All Writs Act does not allow the government to compel a manufacturer’s assistance merely because it has placed a good into the stream of commerce. Apple is no more connected to this phone than General Motors is to a company car used by a fraudster on his daily commute. . .. Indeed, the government’s position has no limits and, if accepted, would eviscerate the ’remoteness’ factor entirely, as any company that offers products or services to consumers could be conscripted to assist with an investigation, no matter how attenuated their connection to the criminal activity. This is not, and never has been, the law.” ”Under   law, computer code is treated as speech within the meaning of the First Amendment,” Apple says. Under some conditions, the government can force companies to make statements of various kinds. But Apple argues that in this case, given the uncertain value of what’s on the iPhone, the investigators failed to prove a compelling state interest in getting into the device and so lack a constitutional reason to compel Apple to speak  —   especially when the ”speech” (aka code the company would write) is in direct opposition to Apple’s public stance in favor of encryption and security. Apple also argues that the request violates the company’s Fifth Amendment right to due process: ” . .. the government’s requested order, by conscripting a private party with an extraordinarily attenuated connection to the crime to do the government’s bidding in a way that is statutorily unauthorized, highly burdensome, and contrary to the party’s core principles, violates Apple’s substantive due process right to be free from ’arbitrary deprivation of [its] liberty by government.’ ” Apple also suggested that the FBI’s current problem is one of its own making  —   that federal investigators who lacked sufficient knowledge of Apple’s security systems blocked themselves from an easier way of accessing much of the phone’s data: ”Unfortunately, the FBI, without consulting Apple or reviewing its public guidance regarding iOS, changed the iCloud password associated with one of the attacker’s accounts, foreclosing the possibility of the phone initiating an automatic iCloud   of its data to a known   network . ..which could have obviated the need to unlock the phone and thus for the extraordinary order the government now seeks. Had the FBI consulted Apple first, this litigation may not have been necessary.”"
"When Taevin Lewis first arrived at   State University in St. Louis  —   a long plane ride from her native Tennessee  —   she was a little lost. ”I didn’t know where to go,” remembers the sophomore biology major. ”I didn’t know where a lot of the offices were.” And it wasn’t just the campus map. She didn’t know some of the basics of college life: How to sign up for classes, how to sign up for a campus job, how to maintain a checkbook. ”Honestly, if I did not have . .. determination to do things on my own,” she says, ”I probably would have fallen by the wayside like a lot of students did.” Her original freshman class? ”It has dwindled to the point where it’s very hard to pinpoint who is a sophomore now, just because a lot of the known faces are no longer here.” In fact, only 43 percent of   freshmen make it to sophomore year. And   is not the only school with this problem. In 2015, only a little more than half of students who enrolled in college in 2009 made it to graduation, with the largest percentage dropping out after their freshman year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. That’s why 44 state colleges and universities  —   including    —   have come together in an attempt to reshape   programs. The   project is called ”  the First Year of College,” and it’s organized by AASCU  —   the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. The schools plan to combine student advising with bigger,   changes to the curriculum, the administration and the faculty, all in the hopes of keeping students in school through graduation. So what will this actually look like? Each school will try out changes that are suited to its particular needs.   plans to give students a lot more guidance when freshmen arrive on campus in the fall. ”Some students don’t find a connection between being in college, their career path and graduation,” says Dwyane Smith, the university’s vice provost. With better advising, he believes, students’ classes will better fit with their major, and their major will be tailored to the careers they want. That didn’t happen last year, when Cimani Lumzy, now a sophomore, started at  . She came to college knowing exactly what she wanted to do: become a hematology nurse. But Lumzy was placed into a health care management major, instead of biology, where she says she belonged. ”I was like, ’Why am I taking business classes? I need to be in chemistry, forensic science, stuff like that,’ ” she remembers. Eventually, she switched into the right track, but not before she’d taken three courses outside of her major, pushing back her graduation.   says it’s now much more attentive to problems like that, and says future freshmen will get better help. The practice of having advisers for students has been around for decades. It started in the 1980s, when colleges started to worry about their graduation rates. And alone, or on a small scale, advising doesn’t make a big enough difference. So the 44 participating schools will focus on the whole campus. They’re reworking curricula, getting faculty to work closely with freshmen and pledging to make   decisions. ”If you try to do several things at once, you’re going to send a message to the campus that you are involved in   pervasive change,” says George Mehaffy, who’s organizing the project for AASCU. ”We’re smarter collectively than we are individually,” Mehaffy adds. ”Many times, we’ve tried to solve problems as individual institutions, rather than working together collaboratively. . .. This is the century of   rather than individual autonomy.” California State University, Long Beach has been working to improve its graduation numbers for nearly a decade. Officials there say this project is an opportunity to look back at changes they’ve already made, and to start thinking about improving retention rates for sophomores and juniors. But revamping a curriculum? ”That takes a long time to develop your infrastructure to achieve,” says David Dowell, the provost at Long Beach. Unfortunately, the other colleges don’t have much time. They begin implementing changes this fall, which means they have only a few months to plan, and then three short years to make tweaks and gather data. Dowell says schools will need those three years and more: ”The 10 years we’ve taken is hardly enough.”"
"It’s big. The five remaining candidates for the Republican presidential nomination meet tonight in Houston, Texas, the biggest city in the biggest state holding a primary on March 1, which is Super Tuesday, which is the biggest voting day so far in 2016  —   and the biggest all year besides election day in November. Whoever prevails tonight gets a long leg up toward being the biggest   on Tuesday. And whoever sits on top after Tuesday is going to be increasingly hard to deny. So there is more on the line now than in any of the previous Republican debates stretching back to August. There will be a lot for viewers to watch for. Here are five suggestions for a   checklist. 1. Which Ted Cruz will show up in his home state?  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has modeled several personae in recent weeks. He has mostly stuck with his practiced role as the hardest of hardline conservatives, doctrinaire on every issue from social policy to economics to national security. But of late he has also mixed in a softer side at times. He was widely reported to have been courtly and gracious to Senate colleagues and fellow former Supreme Court clerks at the funeral for Justice Antonin Scalia, for example. He has also striven to repair his relationship with rivals such as Dr. Ben Carson. Will this be the face the   Tea Party senator shows to defend his home turf? Or will he be the embattled and    conservative champion, pushed to the brink of elimination by Donald Trump and the mindless way the news media have celebrated him? 2. Assuming Cruz comes out swinging, which rival will suffer the weight of his blows? It won’t be Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Carson. Thus far it has most often been Sen. Marco Rubio, Cruz’s counterpart Tea Party hero from Florida. Both their fathers fled Cuba. Both candidates have been in a cage match since the voters began weighing in: Cruz and Rubio finishing, respectively, first and third in Iowa, then third and fifth in New Hampshire, then third and second in both South Carolina and Nevada (with the margins too narrow to mention). But can Cruz afford to concentrate on his closest competitor? What about the guy on top? Trump is creeping up in the polls in Texas, and Cruz contemplates the ignominy of losing March 1 not only in the South but in his home state. With this becoming a   fire for the Cruz campaign, the war on Rubio may need to go on the backburner. If Cruz is to go mano a mano with anyone tonight, it may have to be the mano of the man who is running away with the nomination. 3. Which way does Rubio train his fire? Can he afford to prolong the fratricidal struggle with Cruz while Trump saunters past them both to the nomination? Surely the Rubio camp can see Trump has the momentum and the polls and the wind at his back. So can they leave him alone on this CNN stage in Houston? If Trump threatens Cruz in Texas, he imperils Rubio in Florida two weeks later. But wait, does it make sense to attack the man who might still pick you for vice president? Rubio has always been the most logical pick to be the running mate for whichever Republican (other than Cruz) winds up with the nomination. 4. Given all this stress for Rubio and Cruz, what should The Donald do?  Need he even plan it out? Or will he be able to pivot in whichever direction he needs to, batting away salvos as they come? Trump knows his next test is Texas, but it is also in his interest to keep both Cruz and Rubio in the running because that will ensure his opposition remains divided. Watch for the way Trump handles immigration in the state that has long been ground zero for the issue. Will he double down on his ”build the wall” boasts and threats toward Mexico? Will he once again impugn the eligibility of Cruz   Rubio to be elected under the ”natural born Citizen” requirement of the Constitution? 5. What might the peripheral candidates do to make their presence matter? Kasich remains a factor in the calculations at least until votes are cast in Michigan (March 8) and Ohio (March 15). As the sitting governor of Ohio, he hopes to claim that highly symbolic state but he has the same problem there as Cruz and Rubio have in their home venues. Like Rubio, Kasich would like to keep a robust claim on the   option, so he is unlikely to unload on either Trump or Rubio. And he may also be loath to unload on Cruz while in Texas. But stay tuned. Kasich is still capable of surprises. Carson? Well, at this stage, maybe not so much."
"Given recent advances in teleportation, it’s reassuring to know that the human brain’s navigation system appears to work just fine when we’re beamed from place to place. People who experienced virtual teleportation in a video game were able to mentally navigate to known destinations without relying on visual information or perceived motion, according to a study published Thursday by the journal Neuron. And during ”teleportation,” their brains produced a distinctive electrical signal that’s associated with navigation. So if teleporters do start showing up, don’t worry. ”Our brain will be OK with that,” says Arne Ekstrom, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis and the study’s senior author. The study was part of an effort to understand the role of a distinctive   electrical oscillation in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays an important role in navigation. ”There’s been all these studies over decades trying to figure out what this signal does,” says Lindsay Vass, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Davis and the study’s lead author. The oscillation occurs when a person or animal is traveling from one place to another. When the person or animal stops, so does the oscillation. But it’s never been clear whether the signal is truly helping with navigation or just a related function, like movement or processing visual information. ”When you’re walking around the world you have all this incoming information,” Vass says. ”You have your feet moving and stepping on the ground. You’ve got landmarks and buildings that you recognize and street signs.” So the UC Davis team designed an experiment that allowed them to eliminate all that information by having people travel in a virtual environment via teleporter. ”With teleportation, you don’t see anything,” Vass says. ”And nobody feels anything. You’re not walking anywhere.” Yet you are still traveling. So your brain still needs to somehow navigate itself to a particular place. The team figured that if the slow oscillations in the hippocampus were associated with movement or sensory information, they would stop during teleportation. But if they were involved in navigation, they would continue. To find out, the team recruited three volunteers who were awaiting surgery for severe epilepsy. As part of the treatment, surgeons had temporarily placed wires in the patient’s brains that monitored electrical activity. This let the UC Davis team measure low frequency oscillations coming from the hippocampus as they happened. The volunteers were asked to navigate from place to place in a virtual town. One option was to walk. But in several spots, players could enter a teleportation port that would act as a short cut to a specific spot in town. ”They would pop out of the teleporter, and we would give them a new place to find,” Vass says. ”So we would say OK, now go find the pet store. And they have to know, ’OK, based on the direction I’m facing now, do I need to turn to the right or the left or is it behind me?’ ” As expected, the brain oscillations in the hippocampus were present while players were moving about in the virtual environment and absent when they stopped. ”So the critical question for us was what happens as soon as you enter the teleporter,” Vass says. ”What happens to the oscillation? And what we found was it was still present.” What’s more, the oscillation changed a bit depending on whether the person had been teleported a long distance or a short one. And, when the volunteers arrived, they knew where they were. During teleportation, their brains had successfully navigated to the new destination. ”This is what we call mental navigation,” says Gyorgy Buzsaki, a brain scientist at New York University who wasn’t involved in the teleportation study. ”Somehow the brain can disengage from the environment and we are still navigating mentally.” And the study’s results suggest those low frequency oscillations are coordinating the activity of neurons involved in mental navigation, Buzsaki says."
"The most prosperous parts of the U. S. have recovered nicely from the 2008 financial crisis, but many other places remain mired in high unemployment and poverty, according to a report measuring wealth levels by ZIP code. ”The United States is still a land of opportunity for many. But when it comes to life outcomes, geography is too often destiny,” says a report from the Economic Innovation Group, a research organization. Despite the economic recovery, the report says, life for those in the most distressed ZIP codes looks ”much more like an ongoing downturn. Large swaths of the country are indeed being left behind by economic growth and change.” The report says the story is much different in the most prosperous ZIP codes: ”The country’s top ZIP codes, meanwhile, are in the midst of an economic boom. ZIP codes mere miles apart occupy vastly different planes of community    —   and few people are truly mobile between them.” The report calculates what it calls a ”distressed community index” using seven metrics: housing vacancy rates, the number of adults working, the poverty rate, median income, the number of people with high school degrees, the change in employment and the rate of business formation. In the   of ZIP codes found to have the most distressed scores, 55 percent of adults are not working and nearly   have no high school degree. In findings that may have important ramifications for the upcoming presidential election, the report said growth in most places has been tepid: ”Most American communities are not distressed, but they are far from flourishing. Jobs grew at less than half the national rate in the median U. S. zip code over the recovery years. The number of businesses in the median community remained flat.” Those ZIP codes with the median scores have lower poverty and   rates, but incomes remain depressed and employment has grown less vigorously. The   ZIP codes, by contrast, are places where people are unlikely to encounter a neighbor without a high school degree, few homes stand vacant and the vast majority of adults are working. Such areas enjoyed 17. 4 percent job growth between 2010 and 2013, and the number of businesses grew by 8. 8 percent, the report said. It added: ”The recovery gap stands out as particularly urgent and alarming because it suggests that   will continue to worsen for residents of locales that are locked in a downward spiral. The economy  —   measured as businesses and jobs  —   is slowly vanishing from the country’s   rural and urban areas.” The scores vary enormously from place to place, and within states and even cities. Of the 50. 4 million people living in the most distressed ZIP codes, 52 percent live in the South, as defined by the U. S. Census Bureau, even though the region contains just 37 percent of the nation’s population. In that region, the most distressed ZIP codes tend to be in rural places, while in the northeast, they tend to be in   areas such as Camden, N. J. and Utica, N. Y. Texas has the most people living in distressed ZIP codes (5. 2 million) but also has the   number living in prosperous areas (8 million). The three places with the   of distressed ZIP codes are suburbs of   Worth, the report said. As a percentage of their populations, Mississippi has the most people living in distressed ZIP codes and North Dakota has the fewest. The EIG, which released the report, is a new group founded by tech entrepreneurs. It describes itself as dedicated ”to advance solutions that empower entrepreneurs and investors to forge a more dynamic and entrepreneurial economy throughout America.”"
"You will never catch prominent   attorney Bill Marler eating sprouts. Not on a heaping deli sandwich. Not on a freshly tossed salad. He puts them in the same category as raw milk  —   a food item he says is not worth the risk it carries. Unfortunately, 13 people sickened across four states have discovered that risk the hard way. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced they are investigating a multistate outbreak of Salmonella muenchen linked to alfalfa sprouts produced by Sweetwater Farms in Inman, Kan. Both irrigation water and alfalfa sprout samples have tested positive for salmonella, prompting the company to issue a voluntary recall of sprouts from lot 042016. States affected include Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Pennsylvania. And Wednesday, news broke of another outbreak linked to alfalfa sprouts. Nine people in Minnesota and Wisconsin have been sickened so far by E.   sprouts. Health officials are warning consumers, retailers and restaurants to avoid sprouts grown by Jack  The Green Sprouts in River Falls, Wis. For something many deem a ”health food,” sprouts regularly appear on official outbreak lists. Since 1998 there have been at least 49 foodborne outbreaks, including 24 multistate outbreaks and 1, 737 illnesses tied to sprouts, according to a tally kept by Colorado State University. Sandwich chain Jimmy John’s experienced multiple outbreaks linked to sprouts in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012. Sprouts are still on the menu, but place your order online, and a less than appetizing warning pops up: ”The consumption of raw sprouts may result in an increased risk of foodborne illness and poses a health risk to everyone. Click ’Yes’ if you understand the potential risks, or ’Cancel’ if you’d like to continue without adding sprouts.” Jimmy John’s may feel comfortable behind its warning label, but offering sprouts is a risk that Kroger and   no longer take  —   both grocery retailers have deemed sprouts too dangerous to sell. In announcing its decision in 2012, Kroger said it was based on a ”thorough,  ” review. Sprout seeds need warmth and humidity to grow  —   which also happen to be ideal conditions for pathogens to flourish. Because of the number of outbreaks associated with sprouts, the FDA developed special requirements for sprout growers within the Food Modernization and Safety Act that are just going into effect. A few years ago, the agency also helped launch the Sprout Safety Alliance, with the Institute for Food Safety and Health at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Linda Harris, a microbiologist at University of California, Davis, says sprouts continue to be a problem because they’re challenging. Whether they’re alfalfa, mung bean, red clover or radish sprouts, they’re grown in warm environments and usually eaten raw. ”Efforts to reduce risk include testing seed, testing seed water. Soaking seed in sanitizers is another  —   none of which are foolproof,” says Harris. ”It reduces risk, but the fact is, we still see outbreaks on a regular basis.” Continued outbreaks are one reason Marler has been crusading for a warning label similar to the one adopted by Jimmy John’s. At least, until a magic bullet emerges to fix the problem. Harris says that hasn’t happened yet. ”I think there’s been an effort to find some solution, but honestly, as a microbiologist, I think [sprouts are] always going to be a   product, at least under current technology,” says Harris. Foodborne illness outbreaks are serious stuff. Roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128, 000 are hospitalized, and 3, 000 die of foodborne diseases each year, according to the CDC. For now, the investigations into these outbreaks are ongoing, and health officials are warning consumers not to eat sprouts from Sweetwater Farms or Jack  The Green Sprouts. Clare   is a journalist based in San Diego who covers food policy and sustainability issues."
"With the opioid epidemic reaching into every corner of the U. S. more people are talking about addiction as a chronic disease rather than a moral failing. For researcher A. Thomas McLellan, who has spent his entire career studying substance abuse, the shift is a welcome one, though it has come frustratingly late. McLellan is   of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia and former deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. His work has focused on understanding addiction as a disease and improving the ways it is treated, a mission that took a personal turn midway through his career when he lost a son to overdose. NPR’s Audie Cornish spoke with McLellan about how addiction is viewed and how that view has shaped the treatment system we have today. He also has suggestions on how to make it better. Here are interview highlights, edited for length and clarity. On why addiction has traditionally been seen as a criminal justice issue, not a health issue, Think about it. If you didn’t have brain science, which has just really emerged in the last two or three decades, all you had to look at was the behavior of addicted people. They are not pleasant people when they are in full addiction. They steal, they lie, they swear they’re going to do something and they don’t. It’s quite easy to think of this as it has been thought of for literally hundreds of years: as a character disorder, as poor upbringing as a problem of parenting. And that’s how we approached it. It’s not coincidence that the Justice Department has played such a pivotal role. The emerging science shows this is a brain disease. It’s got the same genetic transmutability as a lot of chronic illnesses. And the organ that it affects is the brain, and within the brain it is motivation, inhibition, cognition, all those things that produce the aberrant, unpleasant behaviors that are associated with addiction. On whether the drug treatment system is prepared to address the current opioid crisis, So there are two ways you have to think of it. First, there’s the traditional addiction treatment system. It was purposely set up to be separate from all of health care and that’s the way it’s been for four decades. They’ve been doing heroic things, but they’ve been underfunded, undertrained and they have been unable to provide the most contemporary kinds of treatment and monitoring. So then you turn to the rest of health care, mainstream health care. What we found is that less than 10 percent of American medical schools have a course in addiction. Ditto nursing, ditto pharmacy schools. So, contemporary physicians are not equipped to do it. Yet it’s those same kind of services, medications, behavioral therapies, monitoring and management, they now do routinely for diabetes, hypertension, chronic pain. On the idea that addiction has to be treated over the long haul, the way diabetes and other chronic diseases are, It’s a tough sell on two sides. No. 1, it’s a tough sell for people who suffer from addiction. It’s tough to hear, ”I’m sorry, we don’t have a cure. You can’t get detoxed, go away for 30 days, get your head straight and not be affected.” Same is true for diabetes. There is no place that I know of that gives you 30 days of insulin treatment and a hearty handshake and sends you off to a church basement. It just won’t work, so that’s tough. It’s been tough for medicine, too. These are doctors who have never learned about addiction in school. Why in the world, if they’re already busy trying to treat other chronic illnesses, why should they take this on? And here is actually the best answer. You may say that expanding insurance options, providing more and better care for addicts is a waste of money, or it’s a gift to someone who doesn’t deserve it. The real gift is for the rest of health care, because it is impossible to manage most chronic illnesses without some attention to substance use disorders. They’ve been willfully ignored by medicine for decades and it’s costing them roughly $200 billion a year in wasted or inappropriate medical care. On what has changed for people whose families are affected by addiction, The people that I know who have lost spouses, children, some of them are so ashamed that they wouldn’t even acknowledge it as a cause of death. And one thing I’ve found is that in health care, you don’t get the kind of health care that science dictates or that is even economically prudent. You get the health care that you negotiate and that is politically motivated. So for most of my life, there has been no groundswell demanding the kind of care that other illnesses have rightfully come to expect. In my life, the best thing that has ever happened and given people like me hope that your grandkids won’t have the same illness is the Affordable Care Act. It now mandates that the same kinds of care that are available for other illnesses of the body are also available for illnesses of the mind. We can do it. It’s economically sensible to do. We just haven’t had the political will."
"Note: If you’re on mobile, we strongly recommend opening this video in the YouTube, Littlstar or Facebook apps. Since we started making Tiny Desk Concerts almost eight years ago, we’ve had more than 500 artists play the Tiny Desk, our own little makeshift concert venue right in the middle of NPR’s offices in DC. From huge stars like Adele to   to    like Car Seat Headrest and actual big bands like Mucca Pazza, all these musicians actually play behind MY desk  —   but I move out of the way when they set up. This is one of the things that always surprises people when they visit NPR: that the Tiny Desk isn’t a set. So we decided to give everyone a peek behind the scenes on a Monday afternoon earlier this month, when Wilco just happened to be stopping by. We invited a company called RYOT to bring two   cameras to our offices and put them right in the front row of the audience. Then we filmed the whole thing, starting before Wilco even set up, before the staff flocked from all over the building to see the band play. Not only can you see the band up close, but if you look around, you’ll see everything else that goes into making a Tiny Desk concert. You’ll see our brilliant and calm engineer, Josh Rogosin. You’ll see our lead videographer and producer of Tiny Desk Concerts, Niki Walker, along with her intern, Kara Frame. Then, of course, there’s the crowd  —   what a lucky bunch. Many of them work here, many are lucky friends of people who work here. You’d probably recognize some of the voices in this radio crowd. If you’ve never watched a   video before, we can help. There’s lots to look around and spot  —   in fact, if you look really carefully, you might be able to find seven of Wilco’s album covers around the desk and references to each one that we hid in the crowd. And of course, enjoy the song itself, one of Wilco’s unforgettable tunes, ”Misunderstood” from the 1996 album Being There. In front starting from the left you’ll see Mikael Jorgensen playing the melodica, Nels Cline on that resonator guitar, Jeff Tweedy singing and strumming, John Stirratt playing guitar and singing strongly alongside Jeff and Pat Sansone on banjo and glockenspiel. In the back, holding it all together and sometimes tearing it apart, is drummer Glenn Kotche. And when you’re all done here, you can watch Wilco play all four of the songs they performed at this Tiny Desk concert. For those of us here at NPR, you can guess how boring the day seemed after this."
"One of the best ways to understand Zika virus might be to deliberately inject it into volunteers. That idea may sound a little crazy, but it’s not unprecedented. And some researchers are hoping the approach could help speed up the search for an effective Zika vaccine. Right now, a bunch of labs are pursuing different ways of making a vaccine against Zika, mostly because of the concern that the virus might be linked to the birth defect called microcephaly. At the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Maryland, scientists are creating different versions of a   vaccine. ”Which one is the best one? We are testing it in animals, using that to select our top candidate,” says   Kong, a virologist at the center. If any vaccine candidate looks good in animal tests, it could then go for initial safety testing in people. After that, scientists somehow have to show that the immune response elicited by the vaccine will actually protect people from getting infected with Zika. That’s no easy task, and no one can say for sure how long it will take. ”Most vaccine development efforts are measured in decades,” says Dr. Barney Graham, deputy director of the NIAID vaccine research center. ”Almost every vaccine we have for a viral disease has come several decades after the discovery of the virus.” New technology does make it much easier to quickly develop a vaccine concept and test it in animals, he notes, ”but you can’t really have it for public use and distribution until you’re able to prove efficacy. Proving that a vaccine works often takes very large organized field trials.” Those kinds of field trials are difficult,   and sometimes just impossible. By the time an Ebola vaccine was ready to go into a large study, for example, the outbreak in West Africa was winding down. Not enough people were being exposed to Ebola to prove that a vaccine would protect them. What’s more, when researchers do manage to do a big clinical trial, it frequently reveals that their vaccine is a dud. So, to see if a potential Zika vaccine really can protect people, scientists would like to do this: Give volunteers a candidate vaccine, and then later inject Zika virus into them, to see what happens. That could produce real answers fast. ”The limitations would be you’d have to do this in young people who were volunteering to do this and who were not going to get pregnant,” says Graham. In some ways, this is a blast from the past. In the 1950s, soon after Zika was discovered, one intrepid scientist injected it into his arm, to see if it could make people sick. He just got a slight fever. After all, if you’re not pregnant, ”Zika itself is a pretty mild illness,” says Dr. Anna Durbin, an expert on vaccine clinical trials at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This fall, we’ll likely see safety tests of a potential Zika vaccine in about 20 to 50 people here in the United States. ”And then the big question is, what is our next step?” says Durbin. Ideally, she says, you could ask for volunteers to be exposed to Zika in a controlled setting. Researchers could compare two groups: people who get the virus alone compared to people who get a candidate vaccine and then the virus later on. ”We would admit them to our inpatient unit, where they have   care,” says Durbin. And they’d use a low dose of the virus. Her group has already done this kind of study to evaluate a potential vaccine for dengue, a closely related virus. Dengue can cause serious illness, but one particular dengue virus just causes a rash. And people did agree to be injected with it. That let Durbin and her colleagues show that the dengue vaccine really seemed to protect people from infection, making them feel more confident about moving forward with larger trials. ”We would like to develop a similar model for Zika,” Durbin says. But the situation with Zika is a little more complicated. That’s because, in addition to the possible connection with microcephaly in fetuses, Zika infection in adults may be linked to   syndrome  —   a disorder in which the immune system attacks the nervous system. ”We do not want to put people at risk for that,” says Durbin, ”because these are normal, healthy people.” Still, people already face a small risk of getting   from more mundane infections, like diarrheal diseases or the flu. And it’s still unclear how often this actually happens with Zika. That’s something scientists are trying to understand now, to help them figure out whether it would be ethical to ask people to take a shot of Zika virus to help search for a vaccine."
"It’s the first thing in the morning at a crowded public health clinic in Joao Pessoa, Brazil, when a team of disease detectives from the United States and Brazil arrive. They are searching for new mothers in the hope of solving one of the world’s most urgent public health mysteries: Is the Zika virus really causing microcephaly, a birth defect that leaves babies with shrunken heads and badly damaged brains? ”The preponderance of evidence points to Zika being the culprit,” says Megumi Itoh, an epidemic intelligence officer with the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who is part of the   team. ”But we don’t know for certain yet. So this is one way of finding that out.” The team, which also includes representatives from Brazilian federal and local health departments, is helping launch the biggest study yet of Zika and its suspected link to microcephaly. A total of eight U. S.  investigative groups are working for the next few weeks to track down more than 100 women who had babies with microcephaly since the Zika outbreak began. Additionally, the teams will try to find hundreds of mothers who had healthy babies at about the same time for comparison. The idea is to produce the most convincing evidence yet as to whether Zika is really causing microcephaly and, if so, how often and how severely. It’s unclear when the research might produce results, but it could possibly be as early as the spring. Even though Joao Pessoa, which is on the northeast coast of Brazil, is part of the epicenter of the Zika outbreak, the investigators know that finding these women will not be easy. And the teams are under intense pressure to work fast to help Brazil  —   and the rest of the world  —   gain a better understanding of just how much of a threat is posed by the Zika virus. On Tuesday, when Itoh and the other teams began their work, a handful of journalists accompanied their first forays. The experience illustrates the difficulties they’ll face. When Itoh’s team arrives at the clinic, for example, a health worker gives them the disappointing news that the first mother on their list is working all day. So there’s no way to contact her today. The team asks about the next name. More bad news. The clinic workers don’t think she’ll cooperate because she’s upset that she hasn’t received the results of her Zika testing yet. The team decides to go to her house anyway. Even though it’s supposed to be the dry season, it’s pouring rain. Everyone runs to the car. The rain has let up a little when the group arrives at the woman’s house, but now it’s really starting to get hot and sticky. The person who answers the intercom says the mother’s not home. As the team heads back to the car, Itoh acknowledges the day has been disappointing but not surprising. ”I think it’s, you know, par for the course,” she says. After a quick lunch and stop at another health clinic for more guidance and advice, the team drives to the home of a third woman, Camila Alves. She’s not there when the team arrives at the front door of her small brick house on a narrow cobblestone street. But her grandmother welcomes the group in, and her cousins and other family members offer chairs in their small courtyard to wait. Finally, Alves comes in with her baby. She’s young, just 22, petite, with dark brown hair pulled back and dark brown eyes. She’s carrying her daughter, Maria, who at first glance looks like a normal   . But as Alves sits down in a rocker, she turns her baby toward the visitors. Maria’s forehead seems to just kind of disappear. Her head is tiny. Itoh’s Brazilian counterpart, Marcia Andrade, starts running through page after page of questions. Did Alves get any other infections when she was pregnant that may have caused the microcephaly? Toxoplasmosis? No. Cytomegalovirus? No. Syphilis? No. Then the next set of key questions: Was she exposed to any toxins? Pesticides? Insecticides? Rat poison? No. No. No. Andrade takes a deep breath when she gets to a really important part: Did Alves have any Zika symptoms early in her pregnancy? Do you remember having a fever? A rash? Joint pain? Yes, Alves says. She had a fever, and yes, a rash too. Probably in the first trimester, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, yes, she did have Zika. After more than an hour of questioning, the investigators ask Alves if they can take Maria into the nursery so Itoh can measure the circumference of the baby’s head with a tape measure. It looks like Maria has a severe case of microcephaly. Itoh also takes pictures of the baby lying in her crib. Next, a technician takes a blood sample from Alves, then inserts a needle into Maria’s tiny arm to draw some blood from her as well. Everyone cringes as the baby cries. Alves has to step outside. But finally, they’re done. The researchers will send the blood back to the United States for detailed analysis to try to pinpoint whether Alves and her baby actually had Zika. If so, that would strengthen the link between Zika and microcephaly. When everything’s done and Maria’s calm again, Alves explains why she decided to volunteer for the study. ”I wanted to know if she really was born this way because of Zika,” says Alves. ”It’s difficult not to know why your baby’s born this way. . .. Nobody knows why babies are turning out like this.” She also hopes the answer will make the Brazilian government do more. ”I want the government to do something to combat this so more children aren’t born like this,” she says. ”It’s hurting a lot of children and a lot of families.” As the investigators are leaving, Itoh reflects on how things went. ”I think it went very well. We accomplished everything we came here to do,” she says. ”The mother was very gracious.” The investigators obviously need to track down many more patients, she notes, adding: ”This is just the beginning.”"
"Meat has a greater impact on the environment than pretty much any other food we eat. As The Salt has reported, billions of cows, pigs, sheep and poultry we raise as livestock guzzle massive quantities of water and generate at least 10 percent of the total greenhouse gases attributed to human activity. But scientists say we’ve been slow to acknowledge yet another side effect of our taste for meat: nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen is an essential nutrient and a major component of the air we breathe every day. However, certain forms of nitrogen, when released into the environment, cause a host of problems from contaminating drinking water to destroying the ozone. And most of this problematic nitrogen comes from agriculture, especially from producing meat. That’s because farmers apply nitrogen fertilizer to crops to help them grow, but only about half of that nitrogen is taken up by plants. The rest can leak out into the environment. And because cows, pigs and poultry gobble up heaps of corn and soy feed, more nitrogen fertilizer is applied  —   and emitted  —   in the process of producing meat and dairy than other foods. In total, when the additional pollution from   manure is accounted for, raising beef produces almost 16 times as much nitrogen pollution as growing the same amount of bean protein, scientists say. But consumers remain largely unaware of this, says James Galloway, a leading nitrogen expert at the University of Virginia. ”Everybody knows about carbon, but not so much about nitrogen, in part, because it’s complicated,” he says. So, with the help of Allison Leach, a former student who’s now a Ph. D. student at the University of New Hampshire, Galloway decided to create   a calculator to help consumers understand their role in the nitrogen story. Like other footprint calculators you might have seen for carbon and water,   works by asking you about your diet and energy use and then calculates how much nitrogen they produce. Food accounts for roughly two thirds of the average American’s nitrogen emissions, and burning fossil fuels also releases nitrogen oxides, a major component in urban smog, which makes up the remaining third. The calculator  —   which was created in 2011 and is getting an update and redesign in March  —   compares you to other consumers around the world. Although it’s only an estimate, Leach and Galloway hope the calculator will help consumers see the benefits of changing their behavior. For instance, if you are like most Americans, you eat about 1. 4 pounds of protein per week, two thirds of which come from meat and dairy. But the researchers show that you could cut your nitrogen footprint by more than 40 percent just by reducing your total protein intake to 0. 8 pounds, the amount recommended by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the National Academy of Sciences. Nitrogen pollution isn’t limited to meat production, of course. Fertilizer leakage also occurs in vegetable fields. However, the researchers find that consumers can most efficiently reduce their footprint by changing the kinds of protein they eat to include more plants and meats like fish and poultry, which are less nitrogen intensive. Cutting down on the estimated 30 percent of food that goes to waste could also have a big impact. Currently, nitrogen is lost to food waste at several stops along the supply chain, including in processing, at the retailer, and at home. And some is also lost through sewage. Natural ecosystems have evolved to make due with very little nitrogen. Although nitrogen gas makes up nearly 80 percent of Earth’s atmosphere, that form of nitrogen is useless to most organisms, except certain bacteria that can convert  —   or ”fix”  —   nitrogen into usable compounds. For centuries, farmers only had two options for boosting the amount of nitrogen available to their crops: occasionally growing legumes like beans, which host   bacteria and enrich the soil, or adding manure and compost to their fields. In the early 1900s, however, researchers invented a way to produce virtually unlimited supplies of nitrogen fertilizer, sowing the seeds of the Green Revolution. This synthetic fertilizer helped feed the world, but it also unleashed an environmental disaster, says Benjamin Bodirsky, a nitrogen expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Humans have doubled the amount of biologically available nitrogen on Earth, and much of it has spread from fields into   ecosystems. In aquatic environments, this excess nitrogen can fuel massive algal blooms that suck oxygen out of the water, killing fish and other critters. Nitrogen can also reshuffle entire ecosystems by directly harming plants and animals or by giving invasive competitors an edge. A study appearing this week in the journal BioScience argues nitrogen pollution is also a big threat to global biodiversity. The researchers found that almost 80 species listed under the Endangered Species Act are affected by nitrogen pollution. It also harms human health. In drinking water, high concentrations of nitrates can cause a potentially fatal blood disorder known as ”blue baby syndrome,” among other health effects. In the air, nitrogen pollution causes respiratory issues and erodes the ozone layer, which protects us from dangerous UV radiation. And according to a recent study in Nature Geoscience, the effects of nitrogen pollution are not equally distributed. By tracing nitrogen emissions through our increasingly interconnected global trade system, researchers found that net exporters  —   mostly developing countries  —   suffered from nitrogen pollution associated with goods and services imported by developed countries. In fact, consumption in just four countries  —   China, India, Brazil, and the United States  —   accounted for almost half of the world’s nitrogen emissions. But Galloway says consumers ”can put purchasing pressure back up food chain to the retailer, the processor, the grower,” to be more conscientious about nitrogen. To that end, Leach and Galloway are now developing an environmental footprint label, similar to a nutrition label, which includes the item’s nitrogen footprint and could help consumers make more sustainable choices. Many of the ways researchers propose to address nitrogen pollution  —   like eating less meat and reducing food waste  —   could also help shrink the carbon and water footprints of our diets. ”We also need better management by farmers,” Bodirsky says. He says huge gains could be made by increasing how much nitrogen fertilizer plants take up and by limiting leakage, both of which will save farmers money in the long run. Measures could be as simple as monitoring soil nutrient levels and timing fertilizer applications so they don’t coincide with rain, he says. In the end, reducing nitrogen pollution requires a coordinated effort across the food chain, Galloway says. ”At every step along the way, you increase the efficiencies as much as you can.” Julia Rosen is a freelance science journalist based in Portland, Ore."
"Humans have an easier time remembering the first and last of things than we do the middles. The ends bulge out in our minds, becoming signifiers of the whole. So for someone raised in the United States, when you’re asked to recall the men we’ve sent to the moon, your mind probably goes first to the originals: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. You’ll perhaps associate their names with the swelling up of pride the nation felt at seeing those boots hit the lunar turf for the first time. If you are a particular space freak, perhaps you also know the name Eugene Cernan, star of the new documentary The Last Man on the Moon. As the end of the line, the one who turned out the lights before he left the moon, Cernan’s familiarity to most of the American public should be on par with Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s. Why he isn’t more embedded in our national memory is perhaps yet another sign that America’s interest in its space program had already dwindled significantly by the time he commanded Apollo 17 in 1972. Afterward, NASA pivoted from the Apollo missions in favor of the space shuttle, which has shut down as well. Cernan’s role in the film, then, is as a   eulogy for the space program and all the promises it embodied. It’s a daunting task without a proper crew by his side. Sadly, the film fails to provide one. Though a welcome cinema corrective to NASA’s legacy after last month’s daft   comedy Moonwalkers, The Last Man veers too much to the side of lionizing its cowboy. The film lovingly recounts Cernan’s journey from naval aviator to   space explorer with the familiar assortment of    family photos, TV news footage and   musical cues. But it doesn’t offer any narrative we haven’t already heard from the more famous space stories  —   from the infectious hubris of The Right Stuff, from the    morbidity of Apollo 13 and from everything in between. Cernan is certainly a game onscreen presence  —   as one would hope, considering he shares a   credit (the film is based on his memoir of the same name). The      chats about his three journeys into space, the strained relationship his NASA duties placed on his family life and his hectic ”retirement” schedule of autograph signings and public appearances. Big emotional moments hinge on the death of Roger Chaffee, Cernan’s close friend and onetime neighbor who perished in the Apollo 1 fire, and on a letter Cernan sent to his daughter just before heading to the moon and carving her initials into a rock. But director Mark Craig never makes his interviews, the film’s brick and mortar, feel revelatory or vital. We sense there is reserve, a professional prudence that keeps Cernan from, say, revealing anything about NASA that would threaten the organization’s image. A segment on the Apollo crew’s social lives revels in the ”crazy” times the families had without providing any examples. The special effects Craig employs for his space   are impressive for a   documentary, and they’re edited together with a lush poeticism. Yet in other sequences, the editing is jumbled: a scene of Cernan speaking at Neil Armstrong’s 2012 funeral is abruptly inserted into the middle of the Apollo chronology. Manned spaceflight, or the present day’s lack thereof, has become a political topic: Even as we send rovers further into the cosmos, we are reluctant to put anyone but Matt Damon on Mars’ surface. The Last Man on the Moon wants to challenge that mindset by showing us what’s possible when human gumption can work    with the national interest. But the film’s struggle to differentiate Cernan as a person, rather than as the symbol he so clearly relishes being, oversells the ”spaceflight” part of the equation while shortchanging the ”manned.”"
"When he thinks about his future, Alfredo Trejo takes a deep breath. ”Many of the people who have been rounded up and will be deported, they already know their future,” he says. ”They’ll die of hunger or they’ll be killed by bullets.” Trejo came to the United States in 2014, one of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America who flooded the U. S. border. He applied for asylum and, like many of the others, he says he fled persecution from gang members in El Salvador. He says they assaulted him and stole from him and threatened to kill him, so he had no choice but to flee. Like the thousands of Central Americans who increasingly are seeking asylum in the United States, Trejo’s future will be determined by how a judge interprets one sentence from a law passed in 1980. It puts him smack in the middle of a debate fraught with politics and argued in a system that has struggled to find an answer to what seems like a simple question: When is a migrant a refugee? That debate has also become more urgent because the Obama administration is   these cases and then prioritizing the deportation of those who lose in court. Sitting in the living room of his lawyer in Virginia, Trejo looks very young. He’s tall and lanky, and when he talks about serious things, he lowers his voice and looks down at his hands. You can tell that he would rather be talking about soccer. Yet he’s still facing a very adult situation: Odds are that his journey to the United States will end with a deportation order. ”My case has been a bit hard, but hopefully I’ll be allowed to stay,” Trejo says. ”Because the truth is, I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to die at 18 years old.” He looks at his lawyer, who’s sitting right next to him. He says he trusts her. ”We intend to win. We hope to win,” Jill Mármol says. ”But what if we don’t? What do we do?” Mark Metcalf served for a little more than two years as an immigration judge in Miami. In his words, there ”is no such thing as easy cases” in immigration court. Metcalf says that many of them  —   especially asylum cases  —   are tough to decide because they’re heartbreaking and pit human emotion against the hard letter of the law. ”It’s a question of what the law says versus what our compassion indicates,” Metcalf says. In a case like Trejo’s, that’s even more true because, ultimately, a judge may be making a    decision. But, Metcalf says, if he were to follow the law, he would deny most asylum petitions from Central Americans fleeing gang violence. The U. S. law Metcalf is talking about is the 1980 Refugee Act. The key sentence from that act grants asylum to any person who can’t or won’t return to their country ”because of persecution or a   fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” For decades now, many of the Central American and Mexican asylum cases have been argued using the ”particular social group” provision. Attorneys argue that gangs targeted their clients because they are young or because they won’t join a gang or because they are women. But, as Metcalf interprets it, these migrants are fleeing crime, which is affecting ”all people in a particular country,” and are not being targeted because of a characteristic that they can’t change about themselves. If fleeing crime becomes grounds for asylum, he says, every ”barrio” in Latin America would empty out into the United States. ”We’ll have a very difficult time being able to say no to any person who claims to flee a country because of criminal conditions,” Metcalf says. Since about 2009, many more Central American migrants  —   including many minors  —   are making the trip north and seeking asylum. The reasons for the increase are fairly easy to explain. They parallel the ebb and flow of violent crime in the region. As the homicide rate spiked in Mexico, so did asylum applications as San Pedro Sula became the murder capital of the world, asylum applications from Honduras increased. The U. N.’s refugee agency has interviewed hundreds of women and children who have crossed the U. S. border over the past couple of years, and a vast majority of them said they were fleeing violence from organized crime. The big question is: Just how many Central American asylum seekers are being classified as refugees and allowed to stay in the U. S.? In 2010, Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, found that 9 in 10 Hondurans and Salvadorans were being denied asylum, and 8 in 10 Mexicans and Guatemalans were denied. TRAC also keeps tabs on cases   by the Obama administration involving thousands of women and children. And those numbers show that not much has changed: 9 in 10 Hondurans and Salvadorans have been denied asylum, and 8 in 10 Mexicans and Guatemalans have been denied. The Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, hasn’t publicly released comprehensive numbers on these cases. But a spokesperson said DOJ analyzed a subset and found that judges denied asylum in about 60 percent of cases involving women and children from July 2014 through December 2015. In other words, Central American asylum seekers have little hope of winning in court. For weeks in 2014, Trejo had resisted the urge to stop showing up to soccer practice in San Salvador. As he tells his story, he took a daily   bus ride from an area controlled by the 18th Street gang to an area controlled by  . He said   thought he was part of the 18th Street gang, and that’s when they robbed him and mugged him and threatened to kill him. But he dreamed of a spot on the Salvadoran national team, so he ignored the threats and kept showing up to practice. Then one summer day in 2014, a group of gang members waited for him to leave a team meeting. When they pulled out knives, Trejo thought his life was over. One of his neighbors saw them and pulled out a gun to scare off the gang members. Trejo escaped, but he’d had enough. Four days later, by car and foot across Guatemala and Mexico, the    began a long journey north. ”We’re practically forced out of the country when they find out that you’re trying to make something of yourself,” Trejo said. ”Maybe they’re jealous. . .. But when you don’t agree with their way of life, they destroy your dreams like they did with me.” William Van Wyke was on immigration court benches in York, Pa. and New York City from 1995 until he retired last year. He takes a very different view of Central American asylum seekers from most immigration judges. ”We have a law that was intended to be generous, that, when it is well understood, would cover many cases  —   many, many more cases  —   than those that are granted,” Van Wyke says. And in his mind, immigration attorneys have been focusing on the wrong part of that 1980 law to defend asylum seekers. To Van Wyke, leaving a country torn by violence because you refuse to be a part of it is an act of conscience. ”Let’s say somebody did join a gang  —   what would we say about that person? We would immediately make all sorts of judgments about how bad the person is,” Van Wyke explains. ”So let’s say they’re in a situation where they feel obligated to join a gang and put ourselves in those circumstances and say, ’What kind of resistance would it take, what kind of moral strength would it take to say no?’ I don’t think we have a difficulty understanding what conscience is in a circumstance like that.” It’s a lot like when a person speaks out against a government or other repressive forces, Van Wyke says. ”We admire that. We say that person has character, that person has some sort of moral strength,” Van Wyke says. ”If they’re going to be harmed because of that and they are afraid and have a reasonable fear of the consequences for having done that or for being in a situation where they are going to have to do that, then it’s perfectly in line with our law to grant them political asylum.” But a spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees U. S. immigration judges, says the asylum process is working. ”Our immigration judges adjudicate cases on a    basis, according to U. S. immigration law, regulations and precedent decisions,” Kathryn Mattingly says. ”They consider all evidence and arguments presented by both parties and decide each case based on the available information. They are fully vetted and   agency employees.” The guerrillas came at dusk in January 1987. They came to ask    Jairo Jonathan   to join them in the fight against the Guatemalan government. According to court records, Elias refused. As they left, the two masked guerrilleros told him, ”Piénsalo bien”: Give it good thought. About two months later, Elias left Guatemala afraid the guerrilleros would come back. He traveled north to Mexico and eventually made it to the United States. Like thousands of others, he claimed political asylum, arguing that either the guerrillas or the government would hurt him and his family for choosing sides. His request was denied, but Elias fought. His case made it all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court. On Jan. 22, 1992, the high court ruled against him in a   decision, saying that just because a person resists forced recruitment by a guerrilla doesn’t necessarily mean he is expressing a political opinion. ”Even a person who supports a guerrilla movement might resist recruitment for a variety of reasons  —   fear of combat, a desire to remain with one’s family and friends, a desire to earn a better living in civilian life, to mention only a few,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the narrow reading of the law betrayed the spirit in which it was written. ”A refusal to support a cause  —   by staying home on election day, by refusing to take an oath of allegiance, or by refusing to step forward at an induction center  —   can express a political opinion as effectively as an affirmative statement or affirmative conduct,” Stevens wrote. ”Even if the refusal is motivated by nothing more than a simple desire to continue living an ordinary life with one’s family, it is the kind of political expression that the asylum provisions of the statute were intended to protect.” Immigration and Naturalization Service v.   became one of the most important cases in asylum law in the United States. It was a big victory for the George H. W. Bush administration, which argued that a broader reading of the law would open the floodgates along the southern border. The decision didn’t foreclose on the idea that Central Americans fleeing forced conscription could claim political asylum, but it raised the bar for proving it. Suddenly, it meant that asylum seekers not only had to show that they had expressed a political opinion but that their persecutors would come after them because of that opinion. The question of whether Central Americans fleeing violence should be considered refugees under the law has been debated since the 1980 Refugee Act was passed. Deborah Anker, a professor at Harvard Law and one of the   scholars on asylum law in the United States, says before that time, U. S. law gave asylum only to migrants from the Middle East or communist countries. ”We were really trapped in this Cold War framework, whereas the international definition was global and humanitarian in its basic focus,” Anker says. The 1980 law was intended to bring the U. S. in line with the international community, but the system clearly continued favoring migrants fleeing from conflict in   countries, including Laos, Cuba, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. In fact, at the same time, war was raging in three Central American nations, and hundreds of thousands of migrants were fleeing to the U. S. seeking asylum. But in the eyes of the United States, they were ”economic migrants.” Nicaraguans were largely granted asylum because of the U. S. government’s opposition to their country’s regime. But less than 3 percent of Salvadorans and Guatemalans were granted asylum. Activists and refugees filed a   suit saying the U. S. was discriminating against those groups. Anker says that at the time, the Salvadoran and Guatemalan cases put U. S. immigration officials in a difficult position: Migrants were coming to the U. S. saying they were being persecuted because they had political and ideological objections to the actions of dictators, such as Guatemala’s Efraín   whom the United States was supporting. Adjudicators, she says, had a hard time believing their stories of death squads and other government persecution. She thinks that a similar misperception of the situation on the ground is happening now. ”I don’t think they understand the political nature of the gangs,” she says. ”I think this is just dismissed as a question of law enforcement, and just as criminal street gangs. It’s a very simplistic approach to analyzing what the country conditions are.” What’s more, Anker says, adjudicators then and now sometimes dismiss the claims because the asylum seekers are often poor and adjudicators believe that they could not possibly articulate a political opinion. ”But poor people can have political opinions,” she says. ”Uneducated people can have political opinions. And women who are being raped can have an opinion that it’s not right and that men don’t have the right to do that to women, and that kind of culture and violence is supported by their government.” Anker says the concept  —   that political opinion isn’t only for elites and members of formal political parties  —   is fundamental. It was inspired by the thinking behind the 1951 Refugee Convention, an international accord that spells out how refugees are to be treated and that the Supreme Court has accepted as the anchor for U. S. immigration law. By 1991, the U. S. government had settled the suit brought by Central Americans, admitting that it had discriminated and that all asylum cases decided during the first decade of the 1980 Refugee Act should be reheard. Ultimately, the vast majority of those cases never made it to court again, because Congress passed the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, which granted many Salvadorans and Guatemalans legal status in the U. S. The question of whether they were migrants or refugees was never vigorously debated in the immigration courts. The odds were always stacked against   but somehow he kept beating them. An immigration judge rejected his asylum application, the Board of Immigration Appeals declined to rehear his case, and then the 9th Circuit ruled in his favor. When the Supreme Court overturned that decision, it should have been the end of his journey in the United States. He should have been returned to Guatemala to face all that he feared. But   won the lottery  —   the visa lottery  —   and was allowed to remain in the United States. In a short telephone interview with NPR, he said he wasn’t interested in talking about his past. But he said that after he won the lottery, he quickly became a legal resident and began a normal life in the U. S. He has a house and a family now, and about 10 years ago, he became a U. S. citizen. On a cold winter night in Virginia, Trejo heads out for dinner with his lawyer. His case is a family affair, after all. His lawyer, Jill Mármol, is married to Trejo’s cousin Alexis Mármol, who is about to take the bar exam to work as an immigration lawyer. Trejo wanted to take them out to dinner to El Sol Azteca, where he works after high school. As they walk in, he’s greeted warmly by the staff. It’s obvious that in the short time he’s been here, he has built a life. ”He’s a really   kid,” Jill says. As soon as they sit down, Jill and Alexis start asking about his life. He’s working six days a week. He goes to school, then comes to the restaurant and works until the place closes. He’s taking biology and history entirely in English, and it’s tough, he says. His grades are suffering. Just as quickly, the talk turns to U. S. asylum policy. Both Jill and Alexis Mármol work at a law firm that takes a lot of asylum cases. They hear stories like Trejo’s every day, and just as often, they have to have frank discussions with their clients: The odds of getting asylum are slim. At best, they can drag out their case, and then they can cross their fingers that by the time a final decision is upon them, the popular interpretation of the law  —   or the law itself  —   will have changed. ”It’s frustrating,” Alexis says. ”We do the best that we can with what we have, but the law doesn’t allow us to do much more than that. And someone like [Trejo] deserves to be here, absolutely.” Jill shakes her head. The biggest repercussion of letting people like Trejo in, she says, is that it might encourage others to make the journey north. ”These kids are escaping certain violence and probable death,” she says. ”What is bad about that? What is bad about them escaping that?”"
"When Dr. Etheldreda   graduated from medical school, her mother told her, ”OK, good. But you know it’s not good to just be a doctor.” Umm, what? ”She, said, ’There’s some doctors you go to and they don’t make you better. I want you to be one of the doctors that really makes people better,’ ” Mpungu recalls. ”And I thought, ’Oh, no. What does she mean now?’ ” Mpungu went on to work in a surgical ward. And then with children. She was helping people  —   but couldn’t say she was really living up to her mother’s high expectations. Then Mpungu started working at a mental hospital in Kampala, Uganda, and she noticed something strange. ”We were getting tremendous number of patients living with   being admitted with severe mental problems,” she says. ”And at the time, no one knew how to help them or what to do with them.” Doctors had pretty much given up on these patients. ”Sometimes they were not even being prescribed the proper medications for their HIV,” Mpungu says. ”There was this idea in the medical community that these people were beyond help.” Mpungu pored over medical texts, looking for guidance on the best ways to care for patients with both HIV and depression. ”But at that time, I couldn’t find anything.” Here was an opportunity for her to step up  —   to be one of those doctors who really make people feel better  —   by developing programs to help   patients with mental health issues. That was 15 years ago. Now Mpungu, 41, is helping implement a group therapy program she developed for patients with HIV throughout northern Uganda, with major funding from the Canadian government. Her first study evaluating the effectiveness of the program was published in The Lancet HIV last May. And this month, Mpungu was named one of the winners of the Elsevier Foundation Award for female scientists in the developing world. She has produced an entire body of research on the relationship between HIV and depression in   Africa, from scratch. ”I had to start by building the evidence that this was important,” she says. There had been some studies done in   countries, demonstrating that people with HIV are more likely to suffer from depression, and vice versa. But no one had done such research in a developing country like Uganda. Her research confirmed that people with HIV are more likely to feel depressed  —   owing to stigma and hopelessness about their condition. What’s more, they’re less likely to take care of themselves and take the medication necessary to keep the HIV at bay. On the other side, ”depression impairs people’s judgment,” Mpungu says. Research shows that people with depression are more likely to take big risks, abuse drugs and have unprotected sex  —   and contract HIV in the process. ”So it’s this vicious cycle,” Mpungu says. ”Once we showed that, doctors asked, ’OK, so what [should we] do about it? ’” Most medical centers lacked the money, training and staff to provide any sort of mental health care. So she needed to develop an approach that didn’t require too many resources. ”Given how few trained mental health providers there are in Uganda,    therapy just wouldn’t be practical,” she says. ”So I had the idea to have a group therapy intervention.” She began by consulting with patients in the Kitgum district in northern Uganda, where she was based at the time, and asked what would motivate them to attend a group therapy session. The   program that Mpungu designed included opportunities for group members to share their painful experiences. The program also taught coping skills and  —   at the request of the attendees  —   added some job training sessions as well. To test out the program, Mpungu recruited a group of 150 people who had both HIV and depression. She and her colleagues randomly assigned some to group therapy and others to standard HIV information sessions at a clinic. Over time, depression declined  —   at least slightly  —   in all the patients. But depression among those who went to therapy continued to decline even six months after completing the program. And many of those who attended group therapy stayed in touch with the group members. Inspired by their job training seminars, some group members started projects or businesses together. ”We were surprised because we had thought maybe people wouldn’t want to come, or maybe they wouldn’t want to be seen with each other due to stigma,” she says. ”But they actually wanted something like this  —   so badly.”"
"You may have read something like this over the past few weeks, in the   to this year’s hotly contested Academy Awards ceremony: ”The fact that there is an absence of   nominees at the awards this year is something I’m less concerned about than how that reflects on what’s happening within the industry,” [the film producer Preston Holmes told a reporter]. ”We need more opportunities for   filmmakers and crafts people. There needs to be more of an   presence in the various unions and guilds.” Thing is, Holmes, who is black, said that way back in 1996. Holmes gave that interview amid calls to boycott that year’s Oscars for being devoid of nominees of color. The whiteness of that slate of nominees even made the cover of People magazine. Jesse Jackson asked black folks in Hollywood not to attend the ceremony. Even that wasn’t the first time black folks tried to protest an alabaster Academy Awards ceremony. The Oscars’ trouble with racial representation feels like a fresh, contemporary controversy, a product of the social media megaphone, but it goes back almost to the beginning. At the 12th Academy Awards ceremony in 1940, Hattie McDaniel won a statuette for her role in Gone with the Wind, becoming the first black actor to win one. But before that happened, she was almost literally shut out of the ceremony, as strings had to be pulled to let her into the venue, which had a strict   policy. She wasn’t allowed to sit at the same table as her   and was instead stashed away in a corner. By the 1960s, black actors were starting to push back. According to Ellen C. Scott in the book Cinema Civil Rights, a modestly successful black actor named Caleb Peterson, who felt black folks were systematically denied onscreen and offscreen jobs in Hollywood, formed a group called the Hollywood Race Relations Board in 1962. They picketed at theaters, studios and that year’s Oscars ceremony. ”Peterson recognized that although the Academy was not the institution granting jobs, it was the one defining success,” Scott wrote at The Common Reader, a literary journal from Washington University in St. Louis. In response to Peterson’s protest, Wendell Corey, the Academy’s president, said that that year’s ceremony would feature a tribute to black actors. But that wasn’t enough for Peterson, who showed up with 125 protesters on the red carpet. The police forcibly removed 12 of them and arrested them for trespassing. By the next year’s Oscars, Peterson was feeling even more militant about the Oscars whiteout, writes Scott in her book: ”[He promised 500 pickets] starting days before the ceremony if the Academy failed to agree to their right to protest. ’They roughed up one or two of our boys last year and this year if they try it, they’re in for a good fight. . ..We lay the whole responsibility on the Academy, not the police. If they rough us, there will be violence. This is no Martin Luther King movement.’ ” Jesse Jackson’s attempt at a boycott in 1996 wasn’t nearly as gully, but it proved to be just as polarizing, and not just among white folks. Whoopi Goldberg, who was hosting the show that year, was heated at Jackson for putting her in such an awkward position. Oprah Winfrey, who was the Oscars ”official greeter” that year  —   because apparently that’s a thing  —   angrily clapped back at Jackson, calling that year’s event ”the most   Oscar show anybody’s ever seen.” Saturday Night Live, that reliable weather vane of     American sentiment, dutifully lampooned Jackson’s protest and played it as a joke. (SNL’s take exhibited a cartoonish lack of   since the cast’s own overwhelming whiteness required putting Darrell Hammond in blackface to portray Jackson, because, well, you know.) A few weeks ago, in the midst of the #OscarsSoWhite furor, SNL took up the issue of the monochromatic awards season once more. But 20 years after Darrell Hammond’s goofy Jesse Jackson impression, this time around it was the Hollywood establishment that was being (gently) mocked. The weather vane appears to be turning."
"If you’re tired of overwhelming whiteness at the Academy Awards, you’re in good company. Famous people and normals alike have expressed indignation over the fact that for the second year in a row, zero people of color were nominated for any acting award. BuzzFeed compiled a list of celebrities, like Snoop Dogg and Will Smith, who will be boycotting this year’s Oscars over that fact. Turns out, there is plenty to do Sunday night besides waiting to see which white person will get a prize. For instance, Ava DuVernay will attend a benefit to support the victims of the Flint water crisis, along with Creed director Ryan Coogler, Janelle Monae and comedian Hannibal Buress, who’s hosting the event. Spike Lee, who received an honorary Oscar last year, will be spending the night courtside at a New York Knicks game this year. April Reign, creator of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, has asked people to join her in watching and   The Wood, a 1999 comedy starring Omar Epps. Others will still be attending an awards ceremony  —   but it won’t be the Oscars. All Def Digital, a Russell Simmons venture, is hosting its own awards ceremony in a clear   snub at the Academy, where they’ll shout out the best of the best in categories like ”Best Helpful White Person” and ”Best Black Survivor in a Movie.” Tony Rock, brother of Chris, who’s this year’s Oscars host, will be the master of ceremonies, and you can watch the whole thing over at Fusion. Noncelebrities have also been proactive in creating Academy Award alternatives. CineSPEAK, a nonprofit based in Philadelphia, arranged a ”Boycott The Oscars” series, where they’ll give tribute to films that were overlooked by the Oscars in the past. The series will debut with a screening of Spike Lee’s 1986 She’s Gotta Have It and a panel discussion on race and film. If you’re a) not a celebrity and b) can’t get to Philly in time, don’t fret. Code Switch has scoped out some more ways you can celebrate film  —   and the work of people of color in film  —   Sunday night. Here are a few we liked. If you want to spend the evening alone: If you’re looking to hang out with some friends: If you still want Oscars glam, plus a few more black and brown people:"
"On Sunday night, the 88th annual Academy Awards will once again gather together the movie industry in a lavish ceremony to acknowledge the year’s most celebrated performances and films. For some, though, the Oscars represent just another instance of the cool kids gussied up for prom night, trying to ignore The Others gathered by the punch bowl. This and last year’s Oscars brought a chorus of indignation about the lack of diversity in the nominations for the four acting categories: In two years combined, the 40 nominated performances featured not one person of color. It’s become the story of the Oscars this year, perhaps even more than the nominated movies and performances themselves. So at Alt. Latino, we decided not to pile on, but to instead recommend a diverse list of actors and filmmakers who’ve flourished in spite of Hollywood’s troubles. We asked our pal and favorite   partner Bob Mondello, NPR’s film critic for All Things Considered, to join this week’s show and offer his own knowledge and perspectives. Listen in and let us know what you think."
"When NPR reported Bob Ebeling’s story on the 30th anniversary of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, hundreds of listeners and readers expressed distress and sympathy in letters and emails. On Jan. 27, 1986, the former engineer for shuttle contractor Morton Thiokol had joined four colleagues in trying to keep Challenger grounded. They argued for hours that the launch the next morning would be the coldest ever. Freezing temperatures, their data showed, stiffened rubber   that keep burning rocket fuel from leaking out of the joints in the shuttle’s boosters. But NASA officials rejected that data, and Thiokol executives overruled Ebeling and the other engineers. ”It’s going to blow up,” a distraught and defeated Ebeling told his wife, Darlene, when he arrived home that night. And it did, 73 seconds after liftoff. Seven astronauts died. Cold weather and an   failure were blamed, and Ebeling carried three decades of guilt. ”That was one of the mistakes God made,” Ebeling, now 89, told me three weeks ago at his home in Brigham City, Utah. ”He shouldn’t have picked me for that job. But next time I talk to him, I’m gonna ask him, ’Why me? You picked a loser.’ ” Jim Sides listened to the NPR story in his car in Jacksonville, N. C. ”When I heard he carried a burden of guilt for 30 years, it broke my heart,” Sides, an engineer, says. ”And I just sat there in the car in the parking lot and cried.” Like many engineers who responded to Ebeling’s story, Sides knows what it’s like to present data and face resistance. He’s also certain about who bears responsibility for the decisions that result. ”He and his colleagues stated it very plainly. It was a dangerous day for the launch,” Sides says. ”But [Ebeling] was not the  . He did his job as an engineer. He should not have to carry any guilt.” Sides wrote Ebeling a letter that mentioned Roger Boisjoly, a former Thiokol colleague who died in 2012 and rallied the engineers opposing the Challenger launch. Boisjoly addressed his own depression and guilt by making the Challenger experience a case study in ethical  . Many of the engineers who also wrote Ebeling credited him and Boisjoly for engineering school discussions that focused on the Challenger decision. ”Your efforts show that your care for people comes first for you,” Sides wrote to Ebeling. ”I agree with your friend Roger Boisjoly. You and he and your colleagues did all that you could do.” Sides describes himself as a religious man and says Ebeling was wrong about God. ”God didn’t pick a loser,” he says. ”He picked Bob Ebeling.” Ebeling’s eyesight is so poor he can’t read the letters himself. So his daughter Kathy read them aloud, including the note from Sides. ”That’s easy to say,” Ebeling responded. ”But after hearing that, I still have that guilt right here,” he said pointing to his heart. This was a week after the Challenger anniversary story, and Ebeling sat in a wheelchair at his kitchen table, wearing a flannel shirt and pajamas. Letters and printed emails were stacked in front of him. Kathy picked another letter from the pile and tried again. ”You presented the correct data and blew the whistle,” another listener wrote. ”You are not a loser. You are a challenger.” Again, Ebeling wasn’t moved. So I asked him if there’s something more he wanted to hear. ”You aren’t NASA. You aren’t Thiokol,” he said. ”I hadn’t heard any of those people.” Kathy noted that neither Thiokol nor NASA had contacted her dad since deep depression prompted his retirement shortly after the Challenger disaster. ”He’s never gotten confirmation that he did do his job and he was a good worker and he told the truth,” Kathy said. Thiokol has since been absorbed by another company. There isn’t anyone there or at NASA today who was likely involved in the launch decision. But some retired participants in that decision are still alive, including    Allan McDonald, who was Ebeling’s boss at the time and a leader of the effort to postpone the launch. He called Ebeling right away. McDonald told Ebeling that his definition of a loser is ”somebody that really doesn’t do anything. But worse yet, they don’t care. I said, ’You did something and you really cared. That’s the definition of a winner.’ ” McDonald also reminded Ebeling that he first raised the alarm by calling the Kennedy Space Center, where McDonald was Thiokol’s launch representative. That call prompted the   teleconference in which the engineers told NASA it was too risky to launch. ”If you hadn’t have called me,” McDonald told Ebeling, ”they were in such a go mode, we’d have never even had a chance to try to stop it.” McDonald also responded to some NPR listeners who were not sympathetic to Ebeling and the other Thiokol engineers. They said the engineers should have done more, including   calls to NASA’s launch director or even the White House. ”You just don’t do that,” McDonald said. ”They’d probably send a van out with some white coats and picked you up. . .. The launch director doesn’t take those outside calls either.” Another key participant in the launch decision was Robert Lund, who was Thiokol’s vice president for engineering at the time. He was one of the company executives who approved the Challenger launch despite objections from Ebeling, Boisjoly, McDonald and others. Lund wouldn’t agree to a recorded interview, saying, ”I don’t want to relive it.” He was reassigned by Thiokol and so ”shamed by the neighbors” that his family was forced to move, he said. ”It was a bad dream.” But Lund said he phoned Ebeling and told him, ”You did all that you could do.” A former NASA official involved in the Challenger launch also declined to be interviewed. George Hardy was a deputy director of engineering at the Marshall Spaceflight Center, which supervised Thiokol’s production of the shuttle’s booster rockets. He famously said he was ”appalled” when Ebeling and the other engineers argued that Challenger shouldn’t fly in temperatures so cold. Hardy now says he’s gone over that night many times. ”I’ve concluded that’s of no great value to me or anyone else,” he said. But he did see value in writing to Ebeling. ”You and your colleagues did everything that was expected of you,” Hardy wrote. ”The decision was a collective decision made by several NASA and Thiokol individuals. You should not torture yourself with any assumed blame.” Hardy closed with a promise to pray for Ebeling’s physical and emotional health. ”God bless you,” he wrote. The note from Hardy and the phone call from McDonald seemed to be a turning point. It was two weeks now after the Challenger story, and Kathy had been reading letter after letter every day. Sitting in his big easy chair in his living room, Ebeling’s eyes and mood seemed brighter. ”I’ve seen a real change,” his daughter explained. ”He doesn’t have a heavy heart like he did.” Ebeling then jumped in. ”I know that is the truth that my burden has been reduced,” he said. ”I can’t say it’s totally gone, but I can certainly say it’s reduced.” The night before, NASA had sent a statement and Ebeling hadn’t heard it yet. The statement was emailed by a spokeswoman for NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, a former astronaut. He flew on the shuttle flight just before Challenger, and later led the effort to resume shuttle flights safely. ”We honor [the Challenger astronauts] not through bearing the burden of their loss, but by constantly reminding each other to remain vigilant,” the statement read. ”And to listen to those like Mr. Ebeling who have the courage to speak up so that our astronauts can safely carry out their missions.” After hearing that, Ebeling clapped long and hard, and shouted, ”Bravo!” ”I’ve had that thought many, many times,” he said. Ebeling is now more buoyant than at any time I’ve seen or talked to him in the past 30 years. It’s been a rough three decades, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. He’s near the end of his predicted life expectancy for prostate cancer and has hospice care at home. He said he’ll pray for God’s assessment once our interview ends. I asked him one more question. ”What would you like to say to all the people who have written you?” ”Thank you,” he said. ”You helped bring my worrisome mind to ease. You have to have an end to everything.” Ebeling then smiled, raised his hands above his head and clapped again. Kathy Ebeling called that a miracle."
"Publishing giant Simon  Schuster is launching a new imprint, Salaam Reads, which will focus on children’s and young adult books featuring Muslim kids and families. The company said in a statement that it believes Salaam Reads, launched Wednesday, is ”the first imprint at a major publisher focused on Muslim characters and stories.” (The five big publishing houses are home to several Christian imprints, while numerous small, independent publishers focus on a variety of religions.) Muslims make up about 1 percent of the U. S. population, according to Pew Research Center, and the population is projected to grow. The target audience for Salaam Reads is much bigger. ”Our aim with the Salaam Reads imprint is in part to provide fun and compelling books for Muslim children, but we also intend for these books to be entertaining and enriching for a larger   audience,” executive editor Zareen Jaffery said in the company’s statement. She also says the line of books will work to represent the wide range of cultural and religious traditions in Islam. For the past several years, the publishing industry has publicly wrestled with the question of diversity. Books from the major publishing houses have historically featured mostly white authors writing about white characters, and rarely highlighted   religions  —   and, critics say, the industry has been slow to change. #WeNeedDiverseBooks  —   first an influential hashtag, then a nonprofit organization  —   has strongly advocated for children’s books, in particular, to represent a wider range of races, classes, cultures and ability levels, calling out the need for children to see stories about people who look like them. It’s a cause that’s personal for Jaffery. She told The New York Times that when she was growing up, there was a disconnect between her life as a   Muslim and the books she loved to read. ”I didn’t see myself reflected in books back then,” she said. In 2014, in an interview with the blog story and chai, Jaffery discussed at length the challenges of building a more diverse portfolio of books at a traditional publishing house  —   and why she felt it was so important. ”The best I can do, and encourage everyone else to do, whether you are a writer, editor, agent, or consumer, is to reflect on the role you play in the book publishing process, and think on ways you can help create a more just and inclusive world,” she said. Her new imprint, also headed by publisher Justin Chanda, will publish at least nine books a year  —   beginning with a picture book by pop singer Harris J based on his song ”Salam Alaikum,” a picture book about holiday traditions, a   adventure with a   heroine and a lyrical picture book by Def Jam poet Mark Gonzales."
"It’s increasingly likely that the next time you have an encounter with a police officer, he or she will be wearing a body camera. And depending on how things go, you may be left wondering: ”Can I get a copy of that video?” There’s no single answer to that, or other pressing questions, such as whether you can tell an officer you don’t want to be recorded. In the year and a half since the Ferguson, Mo. protests, police departments have been rushing to adopt the cameras. But when it comes to body camera policies, departments are all over the map. That’s why you might want to consult these maps. Produced by the Urban Institute, they’re    breakdowns of local laws governing the recording and releasing of these videos. Those laws aren’t always clear  —   even to police departments. ”You’ll see individual law enforcement agencies that are developing policies that may or may not even align with state statute,” says Nancy La Vigne, director of the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center. She says she and her staff created the interactive feature in part to help local police figure out how body cameras fit into their state’s laws. The maps show considerable variation on how states balance privacy and the public’s right to know, but there is   on one point: Police can usually withhold videos, at least temporarily, to protect pending investigations, or for other ”public safety” reasons. Another thing you’ll notice about the maps is a lot of yellow  —   denoting proposed legislation. States have been scrambling to draw up new laws specific to body cameras. Many are grappling with unforeseen consequences. A good example is Washington, a state where a permissive public records law  —   you can easily request almost any government document  —   has combined with relatively strict privacy laws to create a huge logistical headache for police. About a year ago, I reported on a public records advocate who requested every dash cam video produced by the Seattle Police Department, and was planning to make a similar request once the department adopted body cams. SPD responded by experimenting with automatic disclosure  —   releasing the videos straight to YouTube. But to comply with privacy rules, the department also blurred key details and removed the audio, a solution that didn’t really satisfy those calling for greater transparency. So now, because of body cams, the Washington Legislature may end up curbing the state’s open records law. The state House has passed a bill that would make broad, ”  ”  requests harder, by forcing a requester to specify incidents and pay for the cost of redacting private details from the videos. La Vigne says similar legislative scrambling is happening around the country. ”We’re seeing that the use of the technology is well ahead of the policy development, and that’s creating real challenges and problems,” La Vigne says. And states are coming up with very different solutions. There’s nothing like a national consensus on what the rules should be for recording and public access  —   no clear set of nationally accepted ”body camera rights” that you might eventually see written into the scripts of police procedurals on TV. ”I don’t see that changing anytime soon,” La Vigne says. ”State rights govern supreme, so I don’t see any movement toward a common definition of these very thorny issues.” So your best bet, the next time you’re wondering about that police video of you, is to consult the Urban Institute’s maps. But do it soon, because its research was current up to January 2016, and the laws are still very much in flux."
"You know what a pain it can be storing and organizing the millions of videos you’ve shot on your smartphone. Now imagine you’re a police officer, and you wear a body camera every day. Police cams have suddenly become a big business. In the months since Ferguson, share prices for the camera manufacturer Taser International have doubled. But in the long run, the real money is in selling police a way to store all that video. And Taser says it has a solution: At the end of the day, an officer unclips the body camera from his uniform and plugs it into a dock. From there, those videos are uploaded straight to Taser’s cloud service, called Evidence. com. Traditionally, police departments have saved their videos to CDs, which get locked in an evidence room. But there’s so much police video now  —   body cams, dash cams, cameras in interview rooms. Marcus Womack, the Taser division’s general manager, says police departments shouldn’t have to handle that by themselves. ”It’s sort of like in the email world, where people are saying it’s not really   to run our email on premise because we have to pay for the servers, we have to pay for the people to operate those servers,” Womack says. Just as some cities now pay Google to handle their email, Womack says police departments can pay Taser to handle their video. Glenn Mattson follows Taser as an equity analyst for Ladenburg Thalmann. He says the company doesn’t make a big profit on the cameras themselves. ”But the video service should be something where they can generate pretty good margin over time,” Mattson says. Mattson figures police departments are paying Taser an average of about $25 to $30 per officer per month right now. But that price may rise. ”I think it will look more like your cable bill,” he adds. ”A lot of times you get a pretty nice deal to get a cable subscription, you know, and then that introductory rate gets raised over time.” He thinks Taser’s game plan is to keep adding features, so that the video upload system becomes a police department’s default management system for all kinds of digital evidence  —   like photos, police reports and forensics. And Taser isn’t alone. The other big body camera maker, Vievu, has just launched its own cloud service. ”We’ve been working with Microsoft on it for several months now, and we already have some larger agencies migrating to it,” CEO Steve Ward says. ”One of the most notable is the Oakland Police Department, who is the largest body cam user in America.” But many police departments still hesitate. They wonder if the encrypted cloud is really as secure as a locked evidence room. They worry about committing themselves to a proprietary system. And recently, there’s been criticism of Taser’s marketing practices. The Associated Press reported in March that the company paid consulting fees to recently retired police chiefs of departments that had bought Taser’s services. The company now says it will observe a   ”  period” before hiring police executives. Ward says Vievu won’t hire them at all. ”We don’t want to get into that gray area where we hire police executives, where you know they were a   on a Vievu deal,” he says. ”That’s not the way that we like to do business.” But even in cities where there have been questions about marketing practices, officials are still coming to the conclusion that this is money they’re going to have to spend. Once they opt for body cameras, they face a tidal wave of video. And as Charlie Luke, a councilman in Salt Lake City, put it, ”There’s no way around paying for the storage.”"
"On the fourth of July in 2005, Sufjan Stevens released Illinois, a record that made him a household name, at least among a particular set of indie rock fans and music critics. More than 10 years on, Asthmatic Kitty Records is releasing Illinois (Special 10th Anniversary Blue Marvel Edition). The titling is typical of Stevens’ coy   of consumer tropes (think: ”Christmas Unicorn”) but the benefits, as always, are very serious. Today, he released an early demo of the song ”Chicago,” which would go on to become a centerpiece of the finished album it’s a rare glimpse of a great song still gestating. The demo of ”Chicago” begins with a flourish.   acoustics drive the song, tenser and less ecstatic than the finished version’s arcing vibraphones and washing drums. The demo leaves the focus squarely on Stevens’ vocal and his lyrics, and the instrumental builds steadily to a triumphant vocal melody that he excised by the time he released his finished version. The string section, which gives the finished song its holy sound, is the most notable instrumental absence on the demo. ”Chicago” happens to be one of a set of totemic songs from the early 2000s that each build on a similar, mythic chord progression. Like Coldplay’s ”Clocks” (note the similarity here) and Wilco’s ”I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” ”Chicago” taps into a sense of wonder and quest. All three ride their chord progression from start to finish with little variation. But let this demo be a reminder of what Stevens can do that almost no one else can: hold the world at arm’s length, the better to fall in love with it again."
"Like many European countries, Germany wants to send more asylum seekers back home. The German parliament passed several laws on Thursday that make it easier to deport migrants. The day before, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government sent a charter plane filled with Afghan migrants back to Kabul. Many asylum seekers say they’ve gotten the message  —   and aren’t waiting to be shown the door. They’re going home voluntarily, rather than being forced back. On a recent afternoon, Terminal C at the Berlin Tegel Airport is packed with people waiting to take the weekly Iraqi Airways flight back to Baghdad and Erbil. Most are Iraqi asylum seekers who’ve given up trying to make it in Germany. Going home after four months are Duaa   and her two   children. Her mother, Bushra   pats her shoulder. She says the reason her daughter and family are leaving is because of the delays in getting their case decided, as well as what they say is rude treatment by the very government workers who are supposed to help. Fahad, who has been a refugee in Germany for the past six years, invited her daughter and grandkids to live in her   apartment so they wouldn’t be stuck outdoors in a camp during the cold winter months. But her German landlord forbade it, saying he didn’t want that many people in the small apartment. Frustration overwhelms the    grandmother and she starts to cry. ”Of course we prefer to stay in our country. We don’t choose to be migrants. So why do they make it so hard?” she says. Bernd Mesovic of the German refugee rights group PRO ASYL has the same question. He accuses the government of using delays as a tactic to encourage more people to leave. And while asylum seekers wait, they are denied benefits and language classes, which adds to their frustration, Mesovic says. Exactly how many asylum seekers are choosing to leave Germany is hard to say. The government only keeps track of the small number seeking official help with their return. That amounted to 724 Iraqis last year. Nearly 10 times as many went back to Iraq in December as in July. That’s OK with Stephan Mayer, who is with the German ruling coalition’s parliamentary group in charge of home affairs. He says parts of Iraq are safe, especially now that ISIS has withdrawn from some areas. ”It’s not so difficult to live there in Kurdistan and northern Iraq,” he says, ”so I don’t see any problem if those from Iraq turn back to Erbil.” Mayer denies the delays in claims processing are deliberate. But he says if asylum seekers who go home dissuade others from coming to Germany, so much the better. Back at the airport, Iraqi Ahmed   who’d hoped for asylum in Germany, says he’ll be taking that message back to his friends and family in Baghdad. Dying in Iraq, he says, is better than being humiliated here."
"Marley Dias is like a lot of   : She loves getting lost in a book. But the books she was reading at school were starting to get on her nerves. She enjoyed Where The Red Fern Grows and the Shiloh series, but those classics, found in so many elementary school classrooms, were all about white boys or dogs . .. or white boys and their dogs, Marley says. Black girls, like Marley, were almost never the main character. What she was noticing is actually a much bigger issue: Fewer than 10 percent of children’s books released in 2015 had a black person as the main character, according to a yearly analysis by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And while the number of children’s books about minorities has increased in the past 20 years, many classroom libraries have older books. Last fall, Marley decided to do something about it. She set a goal of collecting 1, 000 books about black girls by the beginning of February, and #1000blackgirlbooks was born. She has far exceeded her goal, with almost 4, 000 books and counting. Now, she wants to set up a black girl book club and pressure school districts to change which books are assigned to students. Morning Edition’s David Greene spoke with Marley about her campaign and how she has handled her success. The thing NPR Ed wanted to know? Her take on a subject she now knows well: books about black girls. Here are her top five picks."
"Like other presidential candidates before him, Donald Trump is under pressure to release his tax returns. Former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney (who faced tax disclosure issues of his own) even suggested this week that Trump was refusing to do so because they contain a ”bombshell.” At Thursday’s Republican debate in Houston, Trump explained that he cannot release his returns because he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. The Claim, ”I will absolutely give my return, but I’m being audited now for two or three years, so I can’t do it until the audit is finished, obviously,” Trump said. He also noted, as an aside, that he was regularly audited, and suggested he was being singled out: ”Twelve years, or something like that. Every year they audit me, audit me, audit me. Nobody gets audited  —   I have friends that are very wealthy people. They never get audited. I get audited every year.” In a subsequent interview with CNN, Trump even suggested that the IRS was pursuing him because he is a ”strong Christian,” although he later appeared to back away from that assertion, saying he wasn’t totally sure why he was being singled out. The Short Answer, How does Trump’s explanation for refusing to release his returns hold up? NPR spoke with three tax experts, two of whom wanted to talk on background only. They included one former   government official. Their conclusion: No law exists barring people from releasing their tax returns during an audit. The Long Answer, ”He can obviously release them if he wants to,” said Daniel Shaviro, professor of taxation at New York University Law School. But Shaviro conceded, as other tax experts have, that Trump’s lawyers may advise him not to release the returns for legal strategy purposes. ”I can imagine either my lawyer or my PR adviser saying ’don’t’ until the audit is over,” Shaviro said. It’s harder to parse Trump’s statement that he is audited more frequently than normal, because he didn’t say whether he is audited as an individual or a company. As a general matter, ”  individuals with complicated returns and big deductions may naturally get pulled up fairly regularly,” Shaviro said. Still, annual audits of an individual are unusual and suggest the IRS may have concerns about the person’s finances, another expert said. Much more common are regular audits of companies. As a limited partnership with numerous real estate holdings, the Trump organization is likely to have fairly complicated finances, which would make it a regular target of the IRS, the expert said."
"Nyalion Gutyua fed her children water lilies. And some fruit. Because that’s pretty much all there was. When the dry season came and the water lilies stopped flourishing, Nyalion Gutyua and her children joined a group of about a dozen women and children and walked to Bentiu, South Sudan’s second largest city. It took them four days. ”We came here because of hunger,” she says. She’d heard she could get food in Bentiu from the U. N. They arrived at a city that is now a wasteland. Almost every building was destroyed in 2014, as fighting raged among troops loyal to the government, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army and soldiers from the SPLA In Opposition. Round traditional houses made of reed walls and thatched roofs were burned to the ground. Shops were looted and torched. Government offices were strafed with automatic weapons fire. Bentiu is now a barren dusty plain dotted with   overturned Land Cruisers. The destruction of Bentiu is part of the new phase of South Sudan’s    civil war. Most of the direct fighting has stopped. But in this country of roughly 10 million, the war forced an estimated 2. 5 million South Sudanese from their homes. Crops were destroyed. Cattle stolen and slaughtered. Farmers driven from their land. Now the country faces an acute food shortage. Many of the people who used to live in Bentiu now live down the road, in a massive U. N. Protection of Civilians (POC) camp. The site houses 120, 000 people behind a cordon of dirt berms, razor wire and U. N. peacekeepers. The POC is like a big square city on a desolate plain. Residents rely on international aid groups for water, schools, sanitation and a monthly ration of sorghum, lentils, cooking oil and salt. Food from the U. N. is distributed in what used to be a Doctors Without Borders tuberculosis hospital. One day this past week, several hundred people, including Gutyua, were waiting to register for food aid.  Jorike Schmal, who heads the Doctors Without Borders clinic that reopened in November in Bentiu, says everyone in the town is now dependent on international food aid to survive. Tavitha Nyaluak, 26, lives with her two kids and extended family in a reed and tarp shack in the Bentiu POC. Before the civil war, she was living comfortably in her own home. Now she’s in a place that doesn’t even feel like it’s a part of her country. She and the children go outside the camp every day to collect firewood to sell. She says it’s dangerous and women are often raped while out searching for wood. Both sides in South Sudan’s civil war have been accused of brutal human rights violations during the conflict, including raping civilians, conscripting child soldiers and even cannibalism. U. N. officials and aid workers say it is not clear when the people living in the camp will be able to return home. Both humanitarians and residents themselves are talking about this camp being here for years rather than months. This week, U. N. Secretary General Ban   visited South Sudan to prod both sides in the civil war to finally resolve their differences and form a government of national unity. ”I was here in 2011 as the flag of the new South Sudan flew high and proudly for the first time of this independent state,” he said. ”I saw in the faces of the people of this country all that the flag represented. The pride. The spirit. The hope. And, yet, tragically, that hope has been betrayed. It has been betrayed by those who put power and profit over people.” Ban visited one of the six POCs in south Sudan and denounced an attack last week on the camp in Malakal that left at least 18 people dead and forced nearly 30, 000 from their shelters. ”The protection camps are not a   solution,” he said. ”As important as it is, humanitarian action can never be a substitute for political solutions. The government of South Sudan must step up to its responsibility and protect its population.” Until that happens, camp residents like Nyaluak are caught in a limbo. She came to the Bentiu POC because she feared she’d be killed by soldiers. Now she stays because she fears her kids could die of starvation if she leaves."
"As Donald Trump might say, Republican turnout in this year’s presidential primaries so far has been yuuuuuuuge. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada all shattered previous records. Meanwhile, Democratic turnout has dropped since 2008, when the fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton set new benchmarks. Super Tuesday on March 1 could also see new turnout records set. In Tennessee, where 58 delegates are up for grabs, party officials are already touting historic early voting numbers for Republicans as evidence that it’s the GOP that holds the momentum heading into November. ”Republicans have the energy, enthusiasm and ideas that are motivating a record number of Tennesseans to come out to the polls,” state Republican Party Executive Director Brent Leatherwood said in a statement Wednesday. But will that translate into an edge for the GOP in November? And is Trump, the real estate mogul who has a commanding delegate lead, responsible for that bump with unconventional candidacy? According to Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who tracks voter turnout at his blog ElectProject. org, it’s too early to tell whether Republicans will have a general election advantage just yet. ”There are some tea leaves to be read here, but I don’t think there’s enough information here to project into the outcome or the levels of enthusiasm in November,” McDonald said. McDonald pointed out that in 2000, Republican primary turnout was much heavier than it was for Democrats  —   and that election between George W. Bush and Al Gore ended up essentially deadlocked until the Supreme Court intervened. One reason there’s more perceived enthusiasm for Republicans right now is that there were simply more candidates for a long time  —   a field that started out with 17 has now winnowed to five. They’ve spent more money, commanded more media attention and had more twists and turns than the Democratic battle between Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. ”Just from sort of a logistical standpoint, there’s a greater level of competition on the GOP side, coupled with all of the resources that have been spent,” McDonald said. ”We should expect that Republicans would be more engaged simply for that reason.” McDonald also argues that Republicans are more engaged in the primary process by their nature  —   they’re the ones most likely to show up in   elections in midterm and   contests and are historically more engaged. Some of those high turnout numbers have come from new GOP voters. According to entrance and exit polls, in Iowa 45 percent of voters were new caucusgoers. In New Hampshire, 15 percent of voters were casting ballots for the first time. Trump has been strong across the GOP spectrum  —   winning evangelical voters,   workers and older Americans. But he’s also a very polarizing figure, with upside down approval ratings nationally. Ultimately, the calculation changes in a general election, where Republicans must find a way to win with a more diverse electorate. And even as many in the GOP are beginning to accept that Trump may be on an unstoppable course to winning the nomination, that doesn’t mean they aren’t nervous about his ability to win over a growing Hispanic voting bloc nationally, especially given his harsh rhetoric on immigration. In 2012, Latinos made up 10 percent of the vote, and Mitt Romney lost those voters to Obama by a stunning 44 points. Many Republicans worry that gap would grow if Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz were their standard bearer. ”I can’t think of a single biggest motivator for Hispanics to vote against Republicans than to have Donald Trump at the top of the ticket,” said GOP strategist Brian Walsh, who’s unaligned in the primary. ”The enthusiasm is on our side, despite shifts demographically. It goes without saying that Trump and Cruz would harm that.”"
"In their tenth debate with Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz finally got real. The two   senators, who have been chasing Trump in the polls and in February vote tallies, came at him on every issue their opposition research teams could muster. They came at him for playing rough with immigrant Polish workers and for playing nice with Hillary Clinton. They called him out for supporting universal health care and for his neutral position on the Middle East. They ripped his businesses that went bankrupt and his   school (Trump University) that went belly up. But at the center of the action in this debate carried by CNN and Telemundo was, once again, The Donald. He stood tall with the air of someone in command but under siege. He swiveled to face Rubio on one side and Cruz on the other, steadfastly holding his own when the overtalk became a shouting match. Swinging his hands and arms in gestures to either side, he gave as good as he got in the   marketplace of insults. Ignore Rubio, he told the viewers, he’s ”a choker” who has ”meltdowns”  —   a reference to Rubio’s badly reviewed performance in the last New Hampshire debate on Feb. 6. Cruz? ”He’s a liar” and ”he works with nobody, and nobody likes him.” Trump wrinkled his nose. ”How many senators he works with have endorsed him? Not one.” It was not the first time Cruz had crossed swords with the  . The mutual   society the two pursued in the autumn faded as Cruz rose in the polls, both before and after he won the Iowa caucuses. Trump got tougher with him Cruz responded in kind. But on this night, Cruz was much more pointed in his ripostes, much more accusatory in his critique of Trump’s views on health care and his delay in releasing his tax returns. It was Rubio, though, who raised eyebrows and dropped jaws with his sudden reversal of tactics. After nine debates where he sparred with Cruz, along with Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, Rubio showed up with a new game plan. His relentless attacks were trained on Trump. He brought up the imported Polish workers who sued Trump, and the students who paid $36, 000 for a year at Trump U and were left with nothing to show for it. And if both Cruz and Rubio landed punches, it may have been Rubio who benefited more. Because in the most intense exchanges with Trump, Rubio was smiling, even chuckling and laughing. Cruz scarcely deviated from his dark visage, his stock   and his prosecutorial gestures. It was a crossfire many Republicans opposed to Trump have waited to see, and not always patiently. It was the kind of concerted assault that, had it come earlier, might have kept some of the other candidates in the hunt for weeks or months to come. But neither Cruz nor Rubio had seen it as   to take on Trump in earlier debates, when they could see the damage done to others who challenged him and when they thought his presence in the field might be a boost to their own prospects. Also on stage were Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Kasich managed a minor share of the airtime, pushing his policy chops and his   credentials and foreign policy credibility. Carson was left out through much of the broadcast’s     hours, largely because the other candidates did not attack him or mention him  —   depriving him of a chance to respond. ”Can somebody attack me, please?” Carson said to the other candidates. When he did get a foreign policy query of his own near the end of the evening, Carson quickly related his stands on a number of other questions that had been raised earlier of other candidates. Gone were the foils who had complicated the wrestling match scorecard in the previous debates. There was no Christie to torment Rubio for his repetition of theme lines. There was no Bush to joust with Trump and be unhorsed as a consequence. (In a cruel irony of the evening, Barbara Bush and the first President Bush attended the debate, despite the fact their son Jeb had suspended his campaign five days earlier.) And now there are just five more days before the results of Super Tuesday are known. This major haul of delegates based in states that seceded in 1861 or that identify with the Southern tradition was initiated in the 1980s by Democrats who thought their party’s early primaries too tilted toward liberal candidates  —   or at least candidates who wound up losing in the general election. About a dozen states will be holding primaries or caucuses, and Trump has at least a modest lead in the polls in all but one of them. That outlier state is Texas, where a strong second to Cruz would be nearly as good for Trump as a win. Trump seems poised to knock out Kasich in Michigan on March 8, or in Ohio on the 15th. He is leading Rubio in Florida by double digits in a poll by Quinnipiac University released the day of the last debate. Unless someone stops or at least stalls Trump on March 1, he will have a lead in the delegate count and a momentum with GOP voters of the kind that leads to nominations. He will have won more, and faster, than any other   candidate for the nation’s highest office. There have been calls for Kasich and Carson to drop out, but their votes might well distribute evenly across the three remaining camps. That would resolve nothing and clarify nothing. Both parties continue to await their messiah. And in the interim, the desire for that wish to be fulfilled outstrips the patience of those who believe."
"I came home from a trip the other day with a small plastic bag filled with 4 ounces of brown powder that, truth be told, made me a little nervous. The powder had a strong odor that reminded me of badly burnt coffee, with perhaps a note of brown sugar. I didn’t dare open that bag. It contained crude caffeine, about 90 percent pure. That small bag held as much caffeine as 1, 000 tall lattes from Starbucks, or 2, 000 cans of Coke or Pepsi. It was enough to kill several people. This was my first encounter with the substance that comes up so often in daily conversation. We speak of being ”caffeinated”  —   sometimes too caffeinated. We consider the choice of caf versus decaf coffee, and whether there’s entirely too much caffeine in energy drinks. Rarely, though, do any of us ever see caffeine, or consider where it comes from. This particular caffeine, as it happens, was created on a quiet hillside somewhere in the tropics. Slowly and quietly, driven by the energy of sunlight, it formed inside coffee beans hanging on thousands of trees, most likely in Brazil or Vietnam. Those beans were harvested, loaded on ships bound for the port of Houston, Texas, and ended up at a factory within sight of downtown Houston: Atlantic Coffee Solutions. It’s owned by one of the world’s largest coffee traders, ECOM Agroindustrial Corp. which is based in Switzerland. This factory creates many different versions of coffee: whole roasted beans, packaged ground coffee and even instant coffee. All of these products are sold under other brands  —   including some of the   coffee brands in the country. But a third of the beans  —   tens of millions of pounds each year  —   come to this plant to be separated from their caffeine. And the man in charge of that process, Boris Wheatley, takes me on a tour. He points high in the air toward a set of tall storage bins. ”Those silos are green coffee silos,” he shouts over the noise. ”They hold approximately three trailers: approximately 120, 000 pounds.” Hour by hour, batches of beans drop from those silos into a pair of stainless steel cylinders. They’re marvels of engineering, 60 feet tall, with walls    thick to withstand incredible pressure. Over 10 hours, the beans slowly work their way from top to bottom, while ”supercritical” carbon dioxide, a special form of the chemical that forms under high pressure, is pumped through the bed of beans. ”The supercritical CO2 penetrates the beans and pulls the caffeine out,” Wheatley says. The decaffeinated coffee beans go off for further processing, but that still leaves the task of recovering the valuable caffeine. A water spray washes the caffeine out of the carbon dioxide, and then the water is evaporated, leaving behind crude caffeine  —   that smelly brown powder. (That smell and color, by the way, are from coffee oils that left the beans along with the caffeine. Pure caffeine crystals are white and odorless.) Boris Wheatley shows me where crude caffeine powder drops from the bottom of a metal drum into   cardboard boxes, each one big enough to hold a person. ”We fill these cardboard totes with 1, 200 pounds of caffeine, and they get shipped to customers,” he says. It goes first to refiners who remove all the impurities, and then it goes to beverage companies  —   like Coca Cola or Pepsi  —   that mix caffeine into their products. Other decaffeination companies, in other parts of the world, use slightly different processes to do this job. A factory in British Columbia, Canada, uses water to capture the caffeine. Others, in Europe, use solvents such as ethyl acetate. Germany, where caffeine was first removed from coffee beans, has several decaffeination plants, including the world’s largest. In fact, more than half of the decaf coffee sold in America first makes the long voyage from the tropics to Germany to get its caffeine removed before heading to the U. S. If you’re a beverage maker looking for caffeine, though, there’s also another source: big factories in China. Those factories accomplish, with lots of noise, heat and pressure, the same thing that a coffee tree does very quietly. They arrange atoms of some of the most common elements in nature  —   carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen  —   into the particular structure of caffeine. Most of the caffeine that’s used in the beverage industry is this synthetic version. None of the companies that sell caffeine, whether it’s the natural caffeine, extracted from coffee, or the synthetic version, are  . They stand in the background, hidden behind   brands like Red Bull and Rockstar, not to mention Coca Cola and Pepsi. When Wheatley goes into a supermarket and sees those products on the shelf, he does feel a touch of pride, knowing that he might have had a hand in making them. ”I do drink some of the energy drinks,” he says with a smile. ”And I do wonder sometimes if the caffeine from our plant ended up in that product. I do think about that sometimes.” But what I kept thinking, as I looked at that bag of caffeine, was that it brings the world together. This powder links a forest of trees in Vietnam or Brazil, and the people who harvested them, with American truck drivers and nurses and college students trying to fight the urge to sleep. It’s a global web of caffeine."
"At an estate sale in Rochester, N. Y. in 2009, a rare book seller came upon a curious literary artifact. As it turned out, it was a memoir written in the 1850s by Austin Reed, a black man who spent most of his life in prison. It’s the earliest known prison memoir by an   writer, and it has now been published as The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict. When Reed’s memoir found its way to Yale University, librarians and scholars were eager to get a look at it. Robert Stepto, a professor of   studies, has spent a lifetime studying slave narratives. ”My immediate interest was just to begin to compare what I knew about slave narratives to this prison narrative,” Stepto says. But Reed was never a slave. He was born into a free black family in Rochester around 1823. But his memoir nonetheless has its roots in the plantation, says Yale English professor Caleb Smith, who edited Reed’s memoir. ”We sometimes tell the story of where our own racialized system of mass incarceration came from, as a story that begins in the plantation and ends in the prison,” says Smith. ”What Reed sees is the way the prison was prepared to serve that purpose even before emancipation. So he sees the system taking shape that will allow the prison to become the inheritor of the plantation.” Reed’s story begins when his father dies. His mother couldn’t support the family, so when her young son got into trouble, she sent him out as an indentured servant to a local farmer. Reed was 6 years old. There’s a parallel here to the slave experience, says Stepto. ”Frederick Douglass famously said all slaves are orphans,” Stepto explains. ”Austin Reed is telling a story of being orphaned, if you will. Part of the story is how he is removed from family his father is dead, his mother is not in the picture.” Things did not go well at the farm. Reed felt that being an indentured servant was like being a slave, Smith says: ”Especially at this moment in which the farmer decides to whip him for his idleness. Reed completely associates that with the dishonor, with the stigma of being whipped, he says, ’like a slave.’ And this provokes in him a kind of crime of revenge that lands him in the House of Refuge.” The House of Refuge was the first juvenile reformatory in the United States. Reed may have wanted to escape the whip, but instead he encountered it many times at the House of Refuge and later at Auburn State Prison in upstate New York. During his years in prison, Reed endured many forms of brutal punishment, including an early version of waterboarding. But Smith says nothing provoked Reed as much as the whip, which he continued to view as an icon of slavery. ”His main response to seeing the whip seems to be to want to light a fire,” Smith says. ”His first crime was attempting to burn down the farmer’s house. And inside the state prison there are multiple occasions in which he himself tried to burn down a workshop or tried to persuade another inmate to light a fire. This was his form of rebellion, this was his way of answering the lash, was with the flame.” Reed’s intense anger alternates with feelings of extreme remorse. His descriptions of prison life are vivid and painful. He ends the memoir with this warning: ”All is dark, cold, chilly, and dismal. Reader, be careful and take warning from one who has passed through the iron gates of sorrow and trouble. Take warning, lest you also come to this place of torment and become the inmate of a dark and a gloomy prison.” The book fits in with other prison and crime memoirs of the era, says Smith, but it also has a unique style of its own. ”You find temperance sermons, you find outlaw ballads, you find very novelistic passages,” he says. ”He was a promiscuous reader and he learned these forms and he cobbled them together into something strange and new.” Prison may have deprived Reed of his freedom, but it was in prison that he learned to read and write. And that, says Stepto, was his salvation. ”There’s no doubt in my mind that his spending time in the 1850s writing this memoir was a way of creating himself and a way of somehow or another being at peace with his situation and having hope for the future.” Reed was released from prison in 1863 and was later pardoned by the governor of New York."
"The Zika virus now has a foothold in a U. S. territory. Puerto Rico is reporting at least 117 Zika cases, including at least five pregnant women. That’s of special concern because of Zika’s possible link to birth defects. In Bayamon, a San Juan suburb, Monica Figueroa is waiting in line at a lunch truck. She’s a nurse who works at a nearby clinic and she is pregnant  —   ”about five months and a few weeks, something like that,” she says in Spanish. Figueroa knows about Zika. She says she’s wearing mosquito repellent but is not especially worried. ”No one seems to be paying much attention to it,” she says. Compared with other tropical diseases carried by mosquitoes, such as dengue or chikungunya, the symptoms of those infected with Zika are usually mild. Only about a fifth of those infected actually get sick. But at least one person with Zika in Puerto Rico has developed a neurological disorder,   which may be linked to the disease. Zika is especially concerning for pregnant women because it may cause birth defects  —   in particular, microcephaly. Arlene Coto is in her last trimester and worried. She had just come from seeing her doctor. ”He says not to be alarmed,” she says. Still, she’s taking steps at home to protect her family from mosquitoes. ”We have to fumigate and use repellent.” Like many in Puerto Rico, Coto doesn’t have screens on her windows. That’s something the island’s government is working to address, with help from federal authorities. Puerto Rico is installing screens in the island’s high schools and plans to make screens available for the homes of pregnant women. ”We have to do what we didn’t do for 30 years in 45 days,” says Dr. Johnny Rullan, Puerto Rico’s former secretary of health. Rullan is an epidemiologist trained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is advising the government on its Zika response. While Zika is new to Puerto Rico, the island has extensive experience with other tropical diseases, including dengue, which infects thousands of Puerto Ricans each year. Faced with several dozen Zika cases, the island’s government has done something it has never done with dengue. It has declared a public health emergency. There’s good reason for that, Rullan says. Pregnant women are being infected now. ”People don’t understand that the battle is going to be in October,” he says. ”If babies start being born with microcephaly in October, November, December, we lost the battle. Prevention has to be nine months ahead.” More than 90 percent of pregnant women in Puerto Rico receive nutritional services though   centers, Rullan says. All these women will be screened for Zika, and any found to be infected will be monitored. Rullan has closely followed the progress of one of the pregnant women infected with Zika. ”She will be tested at Week 16 with an amniocentesis,” he says. ”Every four weeks, she’ll have a sonogram.” Puerto Rico isn’t facing Zika alone. A team of stateside researchers has been dispatched from the CDC. In addition, the 70 employees of the CDC’s Dengue Branch, which is located on the island, are now focused on Zika. Dr. Dana Thomas, an epidemiologist with the CDC, is working in the office of Puerto Rico’s secretary of health to monitor Zika’s spread. When chikungunya hit the island in 2014, it was during the rainy season. Thomas says it took just four months for the disease to spread throughout Puerto Rico. Because the majority of people don’t show symptoms, Thomas says, tracking Zika is more problematic. The worst may still be ahead. ”We picked this up technically in our dry season,” she says of the first Zika cases in Puerto Rico. ”So the question is, ’What will happen in April or May as we have more rain and potentially more mosquitoes?’ ” Complicating Puerto Rico’s fight with Zika is the island’s financial crisis. To deal with its massive debt, Puerto Rico has laid off thousands of public employees in recent years, including many in public health. To help the island meet the challenge, the Obama administration is asking Congress for nearly $500 million. That’s money that will be used to shore up the health care system and support Puerto Rico’s fight against Zika."
"In the wake of North Korea’s nuclear weapons test last month and its   missile test in early February, the U. S. and China have agreed on a draft U. N. resolution imposing new sanctions on Pyongyang. North Korea is already under a raft of international sanctions, but the new proposal would tighten them and impose new bans. U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tells NPR’s Robert Siegel that the resolution, submitted Thursday to the Security Council, ”is nearly unprecedented in many respects and is the toughest sanctions resolution that has been put forward in more than two decades.” A vote is expected in the coming days. The proposed resolution includes imposing mandatory inspection of all cargo leaving or entering North Korea and a ban on the sale of all small arms and other conventional weapons to North Korea. It also limits or bans certain exports and prohibits supplying North Korea with aviation fuel, including rocket fuel. China is North Korea’s most important ally and historically has opposed punishing the regime. But it has given support to past Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Pyongyang. Power notes that the relationship between the two countries has grown more complicated recently. ”Even over the last couple years, we’ve seen Chinese acute frustration with Kim   the leader of North Korea,” she says. ”And we have seen China not always being able to influence the regime in the way that they have sought. And I think that’s been a source of frustration. I think China’s genuinely worried about the threat that Kim   and his nuclear weapons program poses to the peninsula and to international peace and security.” The U. S. had already been in negotiations with China over North Korea’s nuclear capabilities when North Korea conducted a nuclear test in January, which it claimed to be a hydrogen bomb. Power says this was a turning point. ”After the nuclear test, when we had already started the negotiations on this resolution,” she says, ”China sent its nonproliferation envoy to Pyongyang in order to urge that they do nothing else, particularly while these negotiations were under way.” After the envoy left, she says, ”The North Korean regime fired the equivalent of a ballistic missile  —   a space launch  —   and I think that was something that . .. certainly on the basis of how our negotiations picked up speed at that point, I think that was a source of great irritation for China.”"
"The terrorist attack in San Bernardino on Dec. 2 sparked a battle between Apple and the FBI over the investigators’ request for the company’s help to unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan spoke with NPR’s Steve Inskeep about his opinion of the legal feud and its consequences. Below are some of the highlights. On the value of what’s potentially on the iPhone, I’ll be honest with you, I think that there is a reasonably good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone. What we are hoping might be on the phone would be potential contacts that we would obviously want to talk to. This is an effort to leave no stone unturned in the investigation. [To] allow this phone to sit there and not make an effort to get the information or the data that may be inside of that phone is simply not fair to the victims and their families. The   scenario, obviously, is that maybe there was some information on there that would lead to a larger plot or to a larger network and therefore are other people out there that are still a potential danger. I think the probability is probably low, but it could be. On whether the investigation is being used to advance an encryption agenda, No, no. I’d keep in mind that law enforcement across the board is concerned about this encryption issue. You know, I’ll be honest with you, I have an Apple phone. I have an iPad. I am a bit of a fan of Apple products. I don’t necessarily see this as a fight of the FBI against Apple. In this particular case, Apple is challenging the FBI’s request, so to speak, to overcome that encryption. But the larger issue here is do we want companies to have the right to create something that would be that much of a potential danger? On the potential impact on iPhone security, At the speed of technology, this particular operating system will be obsolete in six months to a year. It’ll be completely replaced by a new system and whatever version of iOS this is will be, you know, useless in a short period of time."
"Apple CEO Tim Cook put himself and his company front and center in a national debate on digital privacy, when he decided Apple would not comply with a federal court order to help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists. The Department of Justice has accused the company of using the case as a marketing opportunity. But a look at Cook’s record running Apple since 2011 makes his motivations appear more nuanced and his confrontation with the federal government inevitable. Cook gave a speech at a cybersecurity summit in Palo Alto last year organized by President Obama at a time when tech companies were on edge following Edward Snowden’s revelations about hacking by the NSA. ”If those of us in positions of responsibility fail to do everything in our power to protect the right of privacy,” Cook told the audience, which included President Obama, ”we risk something far more valuable than money. We risk our way of life.” And there are instances where Cook has not been afraid to confront the government on issues he considers morally important. Last year he wrote an   in The Washington Post speaking out against state legislation that he believed would let businesses deny services to gay, lesbian and transgender people. Cook himself came out as gay in the pages of Bloomberg Businessweek. ”Tim Cook is much more comfortable than many CEOs taking stances on issues that impact all of us,” says Neil Cybart, an analyst who founded AboveAvalon. com, which follows Apple. Under Cook’s leadership, Apple is now using 100 percent renewable energy in the U. S. and China. And it’s worked to improve conditions at its manufacturing plants in China. ”It’s about trying to tell the world certain ideals that represent Apple,” Cybart says. Even under Apple founder Steve Jobs, the company did emphasize values  —   remember the ”Think Different” ad campaign that used pictures of the Dalai Lama, Amelia Earhart, Mahatma Gandhi and other icons. But Jobs focused on the integrity of Apple’s products. Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, sees a change under Cook. ”Apple’s a different company,” Gordon says. ”It just doesn’t seem to have that excitement that it used to have. The new products are not knocking people out, and the CEO is not providing that kind of leadership.” Under Cook, Apple does have a new product line with the Apple Watch. But, it hasn’t generated the kind of excitement that the iPod, iPhone or iPad did. Still, Cook can’t be called a failure. Under his leadership the company released a larger version of the iPhone to record sales. Kellie McElhaney, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, says Cook has a great team of people, and unlike Jobs he delegates. ”Let’s not forget, he’s not operating alone,” McElhaney says. ”He has a very intelligent, quite capable, quite successful senior leadership team who’s obviously at the table with him. He’s got a trove of advisers.” This week protesters lined up in front of Apple stores nationwide to show support for the company’s stance on privacy. Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice says, as an   activist, she’s aware of a history of government surveillance of black activists. And that’s why Apple has her support. ”What makes sense to me is that encryption is good business,” says Cyril, an iPhone user. ”That’s the bottom line. Keeping customers safe is good business, and if Apple knows that, good for them.” In many ways Cook has been saying that, and more for many years. He’s said you don’t have to choose between doing good and doing well. But only a few dozen people were lined up outside the Apple store in San Francisco  —   that’s nothing compared to the hundreds and thousands that line up for new products. Cook is taking a gamble here: Polls remain divided on whether Apple has the support of the American people."
"Ted Olson is one of the most prominent lawyers working in America today. He argued on behalf of George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore and was the solicitor general for most of Bush’s first term. A star conservative lawyer, he surprised many when he joined the fight to legalize   marriage, taking up the battle against California’s Proposition 8 (and allying with David Boies, who argued for Gore in Bush v. Gore). Now he is representing Apple in the company’s battle with the FBI, which has asked the tech giant to help federal investigators circumvent some of the security features in an iPhone 5C that was used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition, Olson said the iPhone was expressly designed to prevent the sort of thing the government is asking for. ”What in the law requires us to redesign the iPhone, to rewrite code, to provide an Achilles’ heel in the iPhone?” Olson said. ”It was designed to protect the secrecy and privacy of individuals who use the iPhone.” He argues that while Apple is obligated to assist in federal investigations, there is a limit to what the government can require it to do: ”A landlord is required to unlock a door. But a landlord isn’t required to build a door or to build a key or to build a lock. ”What the government is asking Apple to do here is to redesign this particular iPhone, to take weeks of its engineers to put together a system to disable the systems that Apple put into the system in the first place. . .. They want various features to be changed so you could get around the passcode.” The FBI is specifically asking Apple to write software that investigators could load on this phone that would allow them to try out many possible passcodes. Currently, if they try to guess the phone’s PIN, they risk triggering an   feature that would destroy the phone’s data. There’s also a mandatory delay between entering incorrect passcodes, and they must each be entered manually. The government says such a piece of software would be written specifically for the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone and wouldn’t be usable on any other device. But Apple has repeatedly argued that the software, once created, would be too easy to reuse and would be requested again and again by investigators and prosecutors. Inskeep noted that the software would work only with a phone physically in possession  —   ”it’s not that somebody at the National Security Agency could reach across the world and get into your phone with this operating system change,” he said  —   but Olson said the   argument still stood. ”The district attorney of Manhattan said, ’I have 175 cellphones I need to use this same technique to get into those phones’  —   and not just terrorism cases,” Olson said. And it opens the door to future requests, he said: ”There’s really no limitation if the federal government, through a judge’s order, can ask you to redesign your own products.” Olson said Apple has cooperated ”in every way in every federal or state criminal investigation, up to the point that the law permits it”  —   but that writing software for the iPhone to make it less secure crosses the line, He called it ”unfortunate” that Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio said Apple was taking this stance to protect its brand. ”What Apple is attempting to do is to protect the integrity of the product that hundreds of millions of people depend upon,” Olson said. Olson’s wife died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Inskeep asked if  —   given his personal history  —   Olson found it difficult to dismiss arguments from federal investigators that accessing this particular iPhone could help them prevent future terrorist attacks. ”We care very, very much, and I do personally, about any instance of terrorism or an effort to prevent it or redress it,” Olson said. ”But we have to balance our constitutional rights and make sure that we protect what America is all about. So we can’t cross the line of giving up protections that are built into our Constitution  —   terrorists want to tear that down. We can’t give in to that.”"
"The Cleveland Clinic says it has performed the first uterus transplant in the United States. This opens up another possible path to parenthood besides surrogacy or adoption for U. S. women who do not have a uterus, or who have a uterus that does not function. The transplant happened during a    surgery on a    patient, who the clinic did not identify. The clinic says the patient is in stable condition and that the transplanted uterus came from a deceased donor. This is a major step in the clinic’s transplant study for women with Uterine Factor Infertility or UFI, meaning ”they were born without a uterus, have lost their uterus, or have a uterus that no longer functions.” This is how the process goes from here, according to general information released by the clinic about their trial: They expect the transplanted uterus to take approximately one year to heal. Then, doctors will implant embryos    that were created using in vitro fertilization before the uterus transplant. The patient will be taking   drugs throughout pregnancy. And the clinic says it intends for uterus transplants to be temporary in order to ”reduce   exposure to the medications.” ”After   healthy babies are born, the   drugs are stopped . .. the transplanted uterus is either removed or allowed to disintegrate,” the hospital says. In Sweden, a woman who had a uterus transplant successfully gave birth for the first time in 2014. Since then, at least three other babies have been born in Sweden to mothers who have undergone the procedure, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Some medical professionals have their doubts about whether this procedure is the best use of resources. Dr. Michael Green of Massachusetts General Hospital told NPR in 2012 that he ”questions whether this kind of transplant is really necessary.” Here’s more: ”’Nobody needs a uterus to live, OK?’ Green says. ’Nobody needs a hand or a face to live, in fairness. It’s a    issue. This is in that same category. So we’ve opened the door. We’ve stepped through it. And this is one of the next logical things that people might do.’ He wonders whether health care dollars should be spent on uterine transplants when a woman who lacks a uterus can turn to a surrogate mother to provide her with a child  —   if she can afford it, that is.” But surrogacy is not always an option, the Cleveland Clinic argued in information about their clinical trial: ”In the U. S. the surrogacy process can be legally complicated. In many other countries, surrogacy is highly restricted or even banned.” For some candidates, it’s simply about wanting to experience pregnancy. Here’s what one    woman who the Cleveland Clinic was screening as a possible candidate told The New York Times in October: ”I crave that experience . .. I want the morning sickness, the backaches, the feet swelling. I want to feel the baby move. That is something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember.”"
"What was behind the decision not to invite the artists behind two tunes nominated for Best Original Song to perform on Sunday night’s Academy Awards broadcast? One of the snubbed musicians is singer and lyricist Anohni, whose song ”Manta Ray,” with music by J. Ralph appears in the documentary Racing Extinction. Yesterday, she published a heartfelt essay on why she feels she was left out  —   and why she has decided not to attend the ceremony at all. Variety reported last week that both ”Manta Ray” and Pulitzer   American composer David Lang’s ”Simple Song #3,” sung by   soprano Sumi Jo, were being omitted from the broadcast due to ”time constraints.” However, the three other nominated artists  —   Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, and The Weeknd  —   will be singing on Sunday evening, as will Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl in a ”special performance.” The Weeknd’s ”Earned It,” from Fifty Shades of Grey, became a Top 3 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and ”Writing’s On The Wall,”   by Sam Smith and Jimmy Nape, became the first James Bond movie theme to ever reach No. 1 on the British charts. ”Til It Happens to You,” the song   by Lady Gaga and Diane Warren for the documentary The Hunting Ground, hasn’t made any headway on the American or British charts, but Gaga has been a staple during this awards telecast season, particularly after her Grammy Awards tribute to David Bowie earlier this month. Formerly known as Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) Anohni writes that she feels humiliated by the Academy’s decision: ”There I was, feeling a sting of shame that reminded me of America’s earliest affirmations of my inadequacy as a transperson.” But, she adds, she thinks that there is another issue at play: ”I want to be clear  —   I know that I wasn’t excluded from the performance directly because I am transgendered. I was not invited to perform because I am relatively unknown in the U. S. singing a song about ecocide, and that might not sell advertising space. It is not me that is picking the performers for the night, and I know that I don’t have an automatic right to be asked. But if you trace the trail of breadcrumbs, the deeper truth of it is impossible to ignore. Like global warming, it is not one isolated event, but a series of events that occur over years to create a system that has sought to undermine me, at first as a feminine child, and later as an androgynous transwoman. It is a system of social oppression and diminished opportunities for transpeople that has been employed by capitalism in the U. S. to crush our dreams and our collective spirit.” She added some stinging words for those artists, actors and other people who are participating in this year’s ceremony: ”I will not be lulled into submission with a few more well manufactured,   ballads and a bit of good old fashioned T. and A. They are going to try to convince us that they have our best interests at heart by waving flags for identity politics and fake moral issues. But don’t forget that many of these celebrities are the trophies of billionaire corporations whose only intention it is to manipulate you into giving them your consent and the last of your money.” Anohni is the first transgendered performer ever nominated for an Oscar, but not the first transgendered artist. In the 1970s, the late composer Angela Morley was nominated for scores to The Little Prince and The Slipper and the Rose. As the   Morley wrote in an essay on her website, she was thrilled by how she was received in Hollywood: ”I went to California on both occasions to attend the Oscar ceremonies. The wonderfully warm and generous way that I was made to feel at home there by my American colleagues and friends resulted in my being rather seduced by the California lifestyle and I soon returned with the intention of staying.” Over the past several years, there have been a few instances of certain   songs not being performed on the live broadcast. In 2010 and 2012, no nominated songs were given live performance airtime. David Lang declined to comment for this story."
"At the end of a grueling Academy Awards race, we at Pop Culture Happy Hour like to unwind with a good, long talk we call our ”Oscars Omnibus”  —   a roundup of our thoughts on all the Best Picture nominees, notable acting nominees, and issues and themes surrounding the prior year in movies. This year gave us plenty to chew on, as you can imagine, and as you can hear for yourself on this page. Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, All Things Considered movie critic Bob Mondello and I open with a dash through this year’s Best Picture contenders, giving a little extra time to the movies we haven’t discussed at length on the show before. Here they are, in the order we tackle them: * We did a full segment on The Martian when it came out, so we’re pretty brief here the discussion mostly revolves around whether the film is too lively and entertaining to be considered ”Oscar bait.” * Bridge Of Spies also got a long discussion around the time of its release  —   and, though we’re fans of Mark Rylance’s supporting performance, none of us could quite glean what (besides Steven Spielberg’s name) the movie is doing on this list. * The Big Short, about which we’ve quibbled in passing, gets a more substantial discussion here. I get to relaunch my defense of the movie  —   which makes a boring, serious subject zippy and fun  —   while Linda articulates, not inaccurately, the issues surrounding the audience it thinks is watching. * All these months later, everyone’s still effusive about Mad Max: Fury Road, which got a Small Batch with Glen Weldon and Chris Klimek back in May. We all marvel at its visual brilliance, its audacity, and what Bob calls ”a demolition derby with content.” * Brooklyn gets us into a bit of a rumble: Bob feels largely indifferent and laments its tameness, Glen returns to a recurring   ’   refrain, and Linda and I take turns waxing rhapsodic about its charming, meaningfully grownup love story. (Linda, you’ll note, waxes rhapsodic with far more eloquence than I’ve ever mustered in my entire life.) Seriously, though, what a lovely little movie. * Room draws positive notices all around, with a few quibbles here and there, and we’re all impressed with the tense and exciting scene that splits the movie in two. Praise for Best Actress frontrunner Brie Larson isn’t hard to come by in general, and we’re not about to reverse that trend. * Spotlight is probably my favorite movie of the year (not counting Inside Out, which isn’t nominated for Best Picture) but Bob found it formulaic and too straightforward. The rest of us, who are right, marvel at the way Spotlight eschews grandstanding in favor of a big, important story. * And then there’s apparent frontrunner The Revenant, about which our opinions are decidedly mixed. Bob loves it as a piece of grand filmmaking, Linda acknowledges that it’s ”Not For Lindas” upfront while describing it as ”theatre of pain and agony,” Glen favors Tom Hardy’s performance over that of Best Actor frontrunner Leonardo DiCaprio, and I launch into a screed about why ”degree of difficulty” in movie performances so often seems to revolve around how much an actor has suffered for his or her art. From there, we move on to a generous grab bag of Oscars issues  —   most notably the fact that white actors went    in the acting categories for the second year in a row. This leads us into a discussion of films and performances that could and perhaps should have prevented that: Linda and Bob love Tangerine and its central performances, we’ve all got nice things to say about Creed and the work of both director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan, and Linda wonders why Beasts Of No Nation (a movie she describes as ”a wail of pain”) would get shut out while The Revenant leads the field. Then there’s a whole bunch of   commentary on an assortment of films that got nominated for Oscars (The Danish Girl, Trumbo, 45 Years, Carol, Son Of Saul, Ex Machina) a note on stuff we wish had gotten more attention (like 99 Homes) a quick Inside Out vs. Anomalisa smackdown, praise for the animated shorts Sanjay’s Super Team and World Of Tomorrow, and a quick diatribe about Sam Smith’s dreary nominated James Bond theme. Finally, we close, as always, with What’s Making Us Happy this week. I’m excited about the imminent completion of The Austin 100, a free and fully downloadable   SXSW sampler  —   look for that on the NPR Music site early next week  —   and about a recent appearance by my colleague and pal Bob Boilen on the freaking Simpsons. Glen is loving the second season of American Crime, Bob is thrilled to see Stephen Sondheim’s Bounce revived and revitalized, and Linda is feeling smug about both knitting and her shiny galley of a new book by an old favorite of ours."
"Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the results of a new study on   documentaries.  Hollywood may have shut out actors of color from its 2016 Oscar nominations in the major acting categories, but there was notable diversity in other categories. The nominees in the foreign language film and documentary categories tackle global issues from the present day  —   Ebola in Liberia, honor killings in Pakistan  —   and from the past: colonialism in the Amazon, the Indonesian genocide of 1965, the health impacts of the Vietnam War. Although the subject matter of these films represent a range of diverse cultures and countries, the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, which calls attention to the lack of diversity at the Academy Awards, still seems to apply to the documentary category. A new study, ”Journey to the Academy Awards: An Investigation of   and Nominated Documentaries ( )” looked at 45 films that were shortlisted for the award and 56 directors (some films have more than one director). The findings: 89 percent were white and 77 percent were male. So even when a film seems #NotSoWhite it can still provide evidence that the Oscars are still #SoWhite. Here’s a roundup of the trailers from this year’s   nominees. Critics are saying Body Team 12 could take home an Oscar. Embrace of the Serpent Colombia, Two white explorers venture through 1900s Amazon in search of a rare medicinal plant, guided by Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people. Along the way, they witness the ravages of colonialism: orphaned children, destroyed cultures, the loss of rain forest land. Mustang France, Five sisters from a conservative Muslim village in Northern Turkey are punished when they’re caught socializing with male classmates. Locked in their homes, doomed to arranged marriages and ostracized from their community, each finds a way to rebel. A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness U. S. Pakistan, In Pakistan, more than 1, 000 women are killed by family members in the name of ”honor” each year, for example, having a boyfriend in secret. The film examines the interpretations of Islam that allow these killings, shares the story of one survivor and looks at human rights groups in Pakistan lobbying for new laws to protect women. Body Team 12U. S. Body Team 12 is tasked with the gruesome job of safely burying the victims of the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia, Liberia. Told through the eyes of the team’s female member, Garmai Sumo, the documentary explores the body collectors’ resilience and strength. Chau, Beyond the LinesU. S. Vietnam, Chau, a teenager physically disabled by his mother’s exposure to Agent Orange left behind from the Vietnam War, dreamed of becoming an artist and fashion designer. Some health workers told him he’d never make it, but he pressed forward and proved them wrong. The Look of SilenceDenmark, Finland, Indonesia, Norway, U. K. A family in Indonesia discovers who murdered their son during the 1965 genocide. Unable to stay silent any longer, Adi, the youngest son and an optometrist, confronts the men while testing their eyesight  —   and asks them to accept responsibility for their actions. Winter on Fire Ukraine, U. S. U. K. This documentary follows the violent unrest in Ukraine during 2013 and 2014, calling for the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich. Beasts of No NationU. S. This film, which won Screen Actors guild awards but wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, tells the story of Agu, a young boy fighting in a civil war of an unnamed African country. Agu goes through unspeakable circumstances until he is finally encouraged to surrender to the U. N."
"The Suffolk County Police Department in New York, one of the largest and highest paid in the country, has been under federal scrutiny for years, and it got worse recently when its chief was arrested. The Justice Department, under U. S. Attorney Robert Capers, arrested James Burke in December after he allegedly barged into the interrogation of a suspect, Christopher Loeb, in 2012. Burke ”is to have alleged to have repeatedly slapped and punched Loeb about the face, head and body while Loeb was in custody and handcuffed,” Capers said at a press conference after the arrest. Prosecutors allege the   chief had a large circle of ”palace guards” that lied under oath for him, spied on FBI investigations and even planted a GPS device on a political rival. ”Gestapo. It’s like something the KGB would do,” says Robert Trotta, a retired Suffolk police detective turned local legislator. He calls the department ”rotten” because political appointees like Burke control overtime and promotions. On average, police here make $143, 000 a year, nearly three times the national average. ”If you were on . .. what he called his palace guard, those guys were making over $220, 000 a year with essentially a blank check for overtime. So now what are you seeing? Certain people, if you act a certain way, you can make an extra $60, 000 a year,” Trotta says. Trotta has proposed changes meant to professionalize the department and take out some of the politics. But those proposals were blocked by the local police union, which donated $700, 000 to local elections last year. ”The money is staggering,” he says. ”The unions are unbelievably powerful on Long Island.” The police union downplays their influence in the political sphere and adds it is their First Amendment right to make campaign donations. ”Overtime has nothing to do with any of the decisions we make. I would prefer a department where there is no overtime, that the staffing is so high that we have adequate policing every single day,” says Noel DiGerolamo, president of Suffolk’s Police Benevolence Association. Civil rights groups say what Suffolk County really needs is an outsider to come in to force reform within the department. Instead, elected officials picked Tim Sini, a political insider supported by the police union. ”It’s nothing new. The department has always been very political,” says Foster Maer, a lawyer with the civil rights group Latino Justice. Maer says political influence was evident in the early 2000s, when previous elected officials took a hard line on immigrants in the country illegally. Maer says the   rhetoric filtered down to the cops ”and so there were some reforms made. The Department of Justice got involved. Unfortunately, those reforms have improved the situation, but the problem continues.” Documents show Suffolk is still struggling to meet 25 pages of federally mandated reforms. Maer blames political appointees backed by the union. Mark Moore, a professor of criminal justice at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, says political appointees are not inherently bad but that most departments the size of Suffolk’s establish search committees to pick police executives because community   is critical. ”How do the people that are going to be policed feel about this person? Do they think they can trust him? Do they think they can bring issues to his attention and get a reasonable hearing and have them resolved?” he says. Moore says one of the great developments in policing over the last few years is a national marketplace of police executives looking for jobs, which reduces local political influence."
"It doesn’t taste like chicken and it’s definitely not a fish, but some people in St. Louis are eating beaver for Lent. Many Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays in observance of Lent, the season of penance between Ash Wednesday and Easter. The church has made exceptions  —   at times, in some places  —   for aquatic mammals such as beavers, muskrats and capybara. That’s good enough for Brenton Brown. ”A friend of ours said that the Catholic Church is fine with this for Lent,” says Brown,   of Bootleggin’ BBQ in St. Louis, which is now serving ”humanely trapped” smoked beaver on Fridays during Lent. Beaver is a secret menu item, discussed on social media but not listed at the restaurant. ”We started going down the rabbit hole, so to speak, of how we could market the beaver,” Brown says. Brown says beaver sales ”almost doubled” last Friday compared to the previous week, the first time it was on offer. On Friday, Brown wore a   decorated with a mildly suggestive illustration of a beaver. It read, ”God said it was OK. #Lent2016.” According to Dolly Jørgensen, an environmental historian in Sweden, the medieval theological debate about forbidden foods during Lent didn’t distinguish between mammals and fish, but rather, creatures of the land and sea. So, while meat from chicken, cows and sheep was considered off limits, ”other animals that spent their time in the water qualified as aquatic and could be eaten at Lent,” she wrote. That doesn’t mean beaver is kosher for St. Louis Catholics during Lent. ”I’ve checked with our chancellor for canonical affairs, and he is not aware of any current dispensations along these lines in the Archdiocese of St. Louis,” says Gabe Jones, a church spokesman. The archdiocese itself is running an #EatMoreFish promotion. It hardly seems necessary. In heavily Catholic St. Louis, the Friday night dinner scene is dominated this time of year by dozens of fish fries, including one at a suburban church that offers ”God’s cod”  —   which diners can pick up via   or enjoy while seated in the gym. Adam’s Smokehouse, another entrant in the city’s bustling barbecue scene, doesn’t even bother staying open for dinner on Fridays during Lent. ”I saw my numbers from previous years and realized there’s not that much business for the season,” says   Mike Ireland. ”I respect everyone’s wishes and what they want for those days.” In other parts of the country, it’s been a longstanding habit to eat   mammals during Lent. Muskrats are traditional in parts of the   for instance. The Southern Grille in Ellendale, Del. is serving muskrat during this Lenten season. The dish is quite common in parts of Michigan. This time of year, lots of churches and social clubs host muskrat dinners  —   so many that the local stock has been partially depleted: Muskrats are being shipped in from Ohio. Michigan’s tradition dates back to the War of 1812, when area battles devastated harvests and farmers lost most of their livestock, according to Ralph Naveaux, the retired director of the Monroe County Historical Museum. Muskrats emerged as an important protein source. Naveaux attends a   or so area muskrat dinners every year, including parish suppers. ”You’ll hear legends about muskrats and also beaver being classified as fish, because of their lifestyle of being in the water all the time,” Naveux says. ”In more recent times, of course, we don’t classify it as a fish, scientifically. But as an immemorial custom, this is still considered something that can be eaten for Lent.” Naveaux says a popular local preparation is to stew muskrat meat in a sauce of creamed corn. Newbies tend to prefer it fried in a little batter. The trick is to make sure to get rid of the musk glands, and then parboil the funky meat ahead of any other preparation. ”When you’re cooking any sort of wild game, probably your best bet is to start off with a really small taste and go from there,” says Doug Paine, chef at the Hotel Vermont in Burlington. Paine served beaver at a wild game night last fall. ”I made little hand pies out of it,” he says. ”People weren’t eating a lot of it, but they did enjoy it.” Back at Bootleggin’ BBQ in St. Louis, the beaver meat sits in   chunks  —   six ounces of it confronting you on the plate. Served in gumbo, tacos or over a   garlic mashed potato, Bootleggin’s beaver has a mild, beefy flavor, with dark afternotes. It’s chewy and pairs pretty well with a strong English ale. ”It’s got the beef consistency, but it’s got some woodiness to it,” Brown says. ”You can tell that’s their diet.” Alan Greenblatt is a writer based in St. Louis, Mo."
"A major global assessment of pollinators is raising concerns about the future of the planet’s food supply. A U. N.  report drawing on about 3, 000 scientific papers concludes that about 40 percent of invertebrate pollinator species (such as bees and butterflies) are facing extinction. Vertebrate pollinators (such as bats and birds) are somewhat better off by comparison  —   16 percent are threatened with extinction, ”with a trend towards more extinctions,” the researchers say. About 75 percent of the world’s food crops, the report notes, depend at least partly on pollination. ”Pollinators are important contributors to world food production and nutritional security,” assessment   Vera Lucia   says in a statement. ”Their health is directly linked to our own  .” Crops that need help from pollinators include coffee, apples, cacao, cotton, mangoes and almonds, to name just a few. We’re also talking big business: ”The annual value of global crops directly affected by pollinators” ranges from $235 billion to $577 billion, according to the statement. NPR’s Dan Charles says the report ”is largely based on studies in North America and Europe there’s been less research on pollinators in Africa and Asia.” It was released by The Intergovernmental   Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which operates under U. N. auspices. The assessment cites about 3, 000 scientific papers and, researchers say, ”includes information about practices based on indigenous and local knowledge from more than 60 locations around the world.” The report was presented by IPBES on Friday in Kuala Lumpur. Pollinators are under threat for a number of reasons. The decline of wild butterflies, bees and other pollinators ”is primarily due to changes in land use, intensive agricultural practices and pesticide use, alien invasion species, diseases and pest, and climate change,” says IPBES Vice Chair Robert Watson. Also harming pollinators: ”the decline of practices based on indigenous and local knowledge,” the assessment states. ”These practices include traditional farming systems maintenance of diverse landscapes and gardens kinship relationships that protect specific pollinators and cultures and languages that are connected to pollinators.” However, the researchers say there is plenty that governments and communities can do to support these animals. ”The good news is that a number of steps can be taken to reduce the risks to pollinators, including practices based on indigenous and local knowledge,” says IPBES founding Chair Zakri Abdul Hamid. The statement cites such examples as:"
"To hear a patient’s heart, doctors used to just put an ear up to a patient’s chest and listen. Then, in 1816, things changed. Lore has it that    Paris physician Rene Laennec was caring for a young woman who was apparently plump, with a bad heart and large breasts. Dr. George Davis, an obstetrician at East Tennessee State University who collects vintage stethoscopes, says the young Dr. Laennec didn’t feel comfortable pressing his ear to the woman’s bosom. ”So he took 24 sheets of paper and rolled them into a long tube and put that up against her chest, listened to the other end and found that not only could he hear the heart sounds very, very well, but it was actually better than what he could hear with his ear,” Davis says. Or, it could have been poor 19th century hygiene  —   lice and the smell of unwashed bodies  —   that kept Laennec from getting too close to his patient. Either way, he went home and crafted a wooden cylinder with a hole down the middle, and that became the first stethoscope. It took a while for the art of listening to the body through a tube to catch on. But the new tool fit into an evolving idea that doctors needed a more focused approached to diagnosis, ”that you should distinguish tuberculosis from a lung abscess  —   and not just call it all consumption,” says Dr. Steven Peitzman, a professor at Drexel University College of Medicine. He says doctors used to get praise if they had the ’ear’ to hear and interpret the subtle body sounds that travel through a stethoscope’s rubber tubing the stethoscope is the iconic symbol of a physician. Vidya Viswanathan, a   student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, is still getting used to hers. ”You don’t realize until you are wearing it and trying to use it, how pokey it is in your ears,” she says. ”I’m almost embarrassed to wear it because it implies I have knowledge I don’t have yet.” Medical schools teach the art of listening. ”I am astounded at the things I’ll find with my stethoscope,” says Allison Rhodes, a   student at the Perelman School of Medicine. ”I had a patient that had pneumonia, and it was really wonderful to be able to listen to her and say, ’This is what I think it is.’ And then, later, see on the chest   that that was exactly what it was.” But some argue that the stethoscope is becoming less useful in this digital age. Dr. Bret Nelson, an emergency medicine physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, says clinicians now get a lot more information from newer technology. An ultrasound, for example, turns sound waves into moving images of blood pumping and heart valves clicking open and shut those visual cues are easier to interpret than muffled murmurs, and may produce a more accurate diagnosis, Nelson says. He admits the stethoscope is an icon but doesn’t buy the argument that if you lose the stethoscope, you lose the tradition of ”healing touch.” ”Pulling an ultrasound machine out of my pocket, or wheeling the cart over next to the patient [and] talking through with them exactly what I’m looking for and how I’m looking for it  —   the fact that they can see the same image on the screen that I’m seeing strengthens that bond more than anything in the last 50 years,” Nelson says. Nelson is 42 years old and graduated from medical school 16 years ago. He teaches medical students, and says it’s helpful to show new learners what ”lies beneath.” At Mount Sinai, when medical students are taught to examine a heart, they learn how to use the stethoscope and an ultrasound machine on the same day. ”They know how to feel it, they know how to listen to it, and they know how to look at it,” Nelson says. Still, obstetrician George Davis wants to keep the stethoscope around for a while.   machines and imaging scans are great backup resources, he says, but his stethoscope helps him figure out which patients actually need additional testing. ”How much do those ultrasound machines cost?” Davis asks. ”I can get a good stethoscope for less than $20. We are not going to sit there and do an echocardiogram on every patient who walks through the door.” Davis worries that a whole generation of doctors is learning to rely too much on technology he wants to hold on to   tools that are safe, effective and cheaper. ”Shouldn’t we be using what is   and practical?” he asks. Nelson counters that    imaging is becoming less expensive every day. Twenty years ago, he says, an ultrasound machine was as big as a refrigerator and cost $400, 000. Today, a handheld, portable device plugs into a computer tablet and costs less than $10, 000. Many care providers in the community may even have an ultrasound in their pocket one day soon, he says. Who would have foreseen that today we have, ”a slide rule, a calculator, a flashlight, a phone, a computer terminal and 36 video games,” all on one device  —   our smartphone. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WHYY’s health show The Pulse and Kaiser Health News."
"Ascensión Mendieta has finally found her father. Mendieta is 90 now. She was 13 when she last saw him. He was marched away from their home in the middle of the night, with a stranger holding a pistol to his head. The year was 1939. Spain’s   Civil War, pitting   Fascists against   Republicans, had just ended. Half a million Spaniards had been killed. But the violence didn’t stop. Fascist forces loyal to General Francisco Franco, the victor, continued to execute opponents for months and even years after the war officially ended. The victims included Timoteo Mendieta, the president of a local trade union in Sacedón, a village in the province of Guadalajara, east of Madrid. Cemetery records show Mendieta was shot dead and his body dumped in a pit outside the consecrated area of Guadalajara’s Catholic cemetery in November 1939. His family was never told precisely where. His daughter is the plaintiff in a landmark court case that has finally led her to her father. The pit into which his body was thrown is one of some 2, 300 mass graves  —   defined by the United Nations as burial sites containing three or more victims of execution  —   across Spain. Now these graves are being excavated for the first time. Archaeologists have identified Timoteo Mendieta’s remains as No. 21 of at least 22 skeletons in the grave, based on personal effects and his placement. ”We never forgot about him. My mother made a gravestone, even though we didn’t know exactly where he was buried,” says Mendieta, a dainty, handsome woman wrapped in a fur coat against the bitter cold. ”We used to toss flowers in that direction, over the wall.” She gestures toward a stone wall on the edge of Guadalajara’s cemetery, still pockmarked with bullet holes. It’s where Franco’s prisoners were lined up and shot by a firing squad. After Franco died, Spain passed an amnesty law prohibiting investigations of political crimes from his era. So courts in other countries have taken up cases. Two years ago, at age 88, Mendieta flew to Argentina to testify before a judge. The Argentine court ordered her father’s grave exhumed, and for the first time, a Spanish judge allowed it. Only Cambodia has more mass graves than Spain, according to Amnesty International. The group estimates that some 20, 000 Republicans like Timoteo Mendieta were killed after the Civil War ended. They were buried unusually deep because bodies were dumped in layers. ”It’s really rare to see graves at this depth  —   over 3. 5 meters [11. 5 feet],” says Natalie Maystorovich Chulio, a   scholar who works with Spain’s Association for the Recuperation of Historical Memory, which is excavating the grave that includes Mendieta’s remains. The Fascists ”must have known they would be killing so many people,” she says. ”So what they would do is put a little bit of terrain or dirt over one layer of dead bodies, and then dump more victims in, and then the next lot and the next lot.” As Chulio climbs a ladder down into the tomb, I crouch on the edge and lower my microphone underground as she explains her work  —   scraping delicately at skeletons. ”Using paintbrushes and dentist tools, we basically remove the dirt around the bones,” she says. ”At the moment, I’m removing the femur and wrapping it in paper.” Chulio lifts the leg bone of a skeleton, still wearing leather boots. DNA testing comes next. All the forensic details are then compared with historical records from the Franco era. ”The dictatorship really did our work for us, in a way,” says Spanish historian Alejandro Rodriguez, who is supervising the exhumations. ”The dictatorship held sham trials and kept meticulous records of the people it killed.” He pages through a Guadalajara cemetery logbook that lists dozens of people in their 20s and 30s, all buried on the same day as Timoteo Mendieta. These logs were never shared with families. Rodriguez says that before they were killed, victims including Mendieta were ordered at gunpoint to confess to crimes against Franco. Those who admitted wrongdoing were still executed  —   but they were buried on the consecrated, Catholic side of the cemetery. Most, like Mendieta, refused  —   and were dumped in the mass grave nearby. There were atrocities on both sides of Spain’s Civil War. But after the Fascists won, their fighters were given proper reburials and memorials. The same wasn’t true for their foes. During Franco’s nearly   dictatorship, many Spaniards never learned about his forces’ mass killings. So the exhumation of the Mendieta grave, which began in late January on the edge of Guadalajara’s cemetery, has drawn a crowd, including local teenagers. Sergio Lopez, 17, came ”to learn more about what happened. In school they don’t teach you about this [history],” he says. ”It’s a bit hidden.” Unlike Germany, which requires schools to teach about its war atrocities to prevent them from ever being forgotten, Spain abides by a   ”Pact of Forgetting”  —   a tacit agreement not to talk about the past, formalized by various laws. The Spanish Civil War is something many families still don’t like to discuss. But as these graves are exhumed, this country may be forced to confront its bloody past. ”I never thought this moment would come,” says Mendieta. ”I’m happy to finally find my father. I would like him to be buried with me, when I die.”"
"All that glitters is not gold in the chintzy mythological adventure Gods of Egypt, but most of it is  —   a CGI   festooned with golden sands and towering spires, golden spears and   bracelets, and metallic wings that shimmer in the sun. Even the gods themselves, once shivved in battle, bleed out in resplendent puddles of liquid gold. Every penny of the $140 million budget certainly appears to be on screen, but the experience is like being trapped in the lobby of an expensive but terrible hotel for two hours, ensconced in nouveau riche ”class,” or witnessing an epic extrapolation of Elizabeth Taylor’s costumes in Cleopatra. To put it in marketplace terms: The more gold there is, the less value it has. The Cleopatra comparisons might stick to Gods of Egypt, which has already been marked as a costly fiasco for Lionsgate just as the earlier film nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. But Alex Proyas’    epic is primarily a casualty of 21st century digital effects. Those effects allow filmmakers the freedom to do anything, but with the perilous side effect of defying physics, making it anyone’s guess whether a punch or a fall is fatal or easily brushed off. Proyas, a   specialist   for The Crow and Dark City, seizes the opportunity to build a mythological Egypt where gods and mortals   but the rules that govern this world are confusing and arbitrary. The effects fail, in large part, because the story itself gives them no gravity. In Proyas’ sprawling empire, gods have lived peacefully among mankind for 1, 000 years, but in a humanoid form that’s significantly larger and transmutable. When the film opens, the kingdom is set to be handed over to Horus (Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj  ) the god of air, but his nefarious brother Set (Gerard Butler) the god of darkness, has swept in from the desert to take the throne. After blinding Horus and exiling him to some faraway dune, Set enslaves the people and forbids their passage into the afterlife unless they accumulate impossible wealth. That leaves a mortal thief, Bek (Brenton Thwaites) to take heroic action by stealing back Horus’ magical eyes and teaming up with him to get the kingdom back. That’s the nutshell version of the plot. It gets much more convoluted: Bek’s love interest (Courtney Eaton) has been slain by an arrow, but the dead have to take a long purgatorial walk to the eternal gates, so he might have time to convince Horus to call in a few celestial favors to bring her back to life. Then there’s some business involving Horus and Set’s grandfather (Geoffrey Rush) the god of the sun, who rides through the heavens on a celestial sleigh atop waters of transformative power. There are   flying serpents and giant steampunk contraptions and a series of mechanized traps that recall Raiders of the Lost Ark by way of the Prince of Persia platform game. The more that gets added on, the more convoluted and nonsensical the film becomes. The closest Gods of Egypt gets to a credible relationship is the mismatched   between Horus and Bek  —   if, as to credibility, you’re willing to overlook the fact that the actors bringing these two men of Egypt to life are Danish and Australian, respectively, part of a larger pattern in the cast for which Proyas apologized in November, long before the film’s release. But Proyas’ investment in   takes precedent over all other considerations anyway. In that respect, the film resembles George Lucas’ airless Star Wars prequels, which play around in an dazzling sandbox of visual effects, but seem incapable of communicating in language other than zeroes and ones. Many of the images in Gods of Egypt would make for a fetching   album cover, but Proyas has populated his digital paradise with banal characters,   mythology, and a score just a few notes off from Lawrence of Arabia. Out of the old comes nothing new."
"Hillary Clinton won the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, notching a decisive win in a state where she suffered a devastating loss just eight years ago. The Associated Press called the race for the former secretary of state over rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders just seconds after the polls closed at 7 p. m. ET. With all precincts reporting, Clinton beat Sanders by nearly 50 points, winning 73. 5 percent to 26 percent. ”Today you sent a message in America that when we stand together, there is no barrier too big to break,” Clinton declared in her victory speech in Columbia, S. C. ”Tomorrow this campaign goes national. We are going to compete for every vote in every state. We are not taking anything for granted.” Clinton struck a populist tone as she spoke too, backed by younger voters behind her on stage  —   a demographic she’s struggled to capture over Sanders. ”Together we can break down all the barriers holding our families and our country back. We can build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every single American can have that chance to live up to his or her   potential,” Clinton thundered. ”Then and only then can America live up to its full potential, too.” ”We’re going to work together to give people  —   particularly young people  —   the tools you need,” she added. A Clinton victory in the first Southern primary had long been expected, and even the Vermont senator’s campaign seemed resigned to a loss as voting began. Instead of remaining in the Palmetto State to wait for results, Sanders opted instead to turn his eye toward Super Tuesday states voting March 1. He was campaigning in Minnesota on Saturday night and was en route when the polls closed. Sanders congratulated Clinton in a statement shortly after the contest was called, but he shifted attention toward the other contests in just three days. ”Let me be clear on one thing tonight. This campaign is just beginning. We won a decisive victory in New Hampshire. She won a decisive victory in South Carolina. Now it’s on to Super Tuesday,” Sanders said. ”In just three days, Democrats in 11 states will pick 10 times more pledged delegates on one day than were selected in the four early states so far in this campaign,” he continued. ”Our grassroots political revolution is growing state by state, and we won’t stop now.” When Sanders landed in Minneapolis, he told reporters the loss was all part of the process. ”In politics, on a given night, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Tonight we lost,” he said. ”I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her very strong victory. Tuesday, over 800 delegates are at stake, and we intend to win many, many of them.” Clinton wins black voters big, but turnout was down, The South Carolina victory is an important one for Clinton and gives her a boost of momentum heading into Super Tuesday, when voters in more than a dozen states will go to the polls and 865 delegates are up for grabs. South Carolina was the first contest in which a majority of the electorate had been made up of minority voters, and Clinton won black voters handily. According to early exit polls, a record 62 percent share of Democratic voters were   an increase from even the previous 55 percent benchmark eight years ago. Clinton was on track to capture 84 percent of those votes. In 2008, President Obama won 78 percent of black voters. Clinton won all women voters by 58 points and carried black women (37 percent of the electorate) by 78 points. Clinton carried white women 18 points, while Sanders won white men by 14 points. Younger voters  —   a key part of the Sanders base  —   were a much smaller share of the electorate than in previous contests this year. In Iowa and New Hampshire, voters under 30 made up just under 20 percent of the primary vote. The South Carolina electorate was heavily supportive of President Obama, who beat Clinton in the state in the 2008 contest.   percent of the Democratic electorate said the next president should generally continue Obama’s policies, and Clinton won those voters 81 to 19 percent, per exit polls. Sanders carried the 17 percent of voters who wanted the next president to implement more liberal policies. Turnout in the state was significantly down for Democrats from 2008’s record turnout. Just over 365, 000 voters came out Saturday, compared to 532, 151 eight years ago. It continues a trend of lower turnout for Democrats while GOP turnout has increased."
"Marco Rubio made 14 years of his tax returns and Ted Cruz released four more years of his Saturday, increasing pressure on rival Donald Trump to release his. Rubio’s returns show his family’s adjusted gross income was $335, 561 in 2014, the most recent year he made available. He paid almost $65, 000 in income taxes, a 19. 3 percent rate. That’s down from the previous couple of years  —   he and his wife reported nearly $1 million in 2012. Returns on the site date back to 2000, when he earned $82, 710. ”There is no doubt the Rubio family has come a long way from the days when their largest monthly expense was a check to Sallie Mae and checks were sent in the mail to pay bills with the hope the payment did not arrive before the next paycheck was deposited into their account,” a statement on the campaign website read, noting the Rubios’ only debt today is the mortgage on their house. Cruz released   and had previously released   when he ran for Senate. He reported an adjusted gross income of $1. 2 million in 2014, and paid $389, 000 in income taxes at a 32. 22 percent rate. ”It is time to stop the excuses,” Cruz said in a statement. ”Donald Trump owes it to the American people to be fully vetted, and that includes releasing his tax returns so the voters can see the full financial picture. His claim that he can’t comply because he’s being audited is nonsense. If Donald is embarrassed about his tax returns, it’s up to the voters to assess the facts. It’s time to stop delaying and come clean with the American people.” Trump was hammered at Thursday night’s debate for not releasing his tax returns. ”I will absolutely give my return, but I’m being audited now for two or three years, so I can’t do it until the audit is finished, obviously,” Trump said. An NPR fact check found that there is no law barring Trump from releasing his returns while being audited, though an accountant or lawyer may have advised him too."
"Everyone’s talking about ”Super Tuesday,” what it means and that it’s such a big deal in this presidential campaign. But why? Here’s a quick explainer. Think of it as a frequently asked questions for Super Tuesday: What is Super Tuesday? It’s when more states vote and more delegates are at stake than on any other single day in the presidential primary campaign. Isn’t it also called the SEC Primary? That’s a colloquial term used by some. It refers to the collegiate athletic conference, the Southeastern Conference, known for its powerhouse football teams. Several states holding contests on Super Tuesday have teams that play in the SEC (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas). But many others do not. When is it? Tuesday, March 1, How many states are actually voting? 13, plus the territory of American Samoa and Democrats Abroad (expatriates who consider themselves Democrats). We will see results in only 12 of those states (11 for Democrats, 11 for Republicans) because Republicans in Wyoming and Colorado begin their caucuses that day but won’t have a presidential preference poll. Where will we see results? Alabama (RD) Alaska (R only) American Samoa (D) Arkansas (RD) Colorado (D) Georgia (RD) Massachusetts (RD) Minnesota (RD) Oklahoma (RD) Tennessee (RD) Texas (RD) Vermont (RD) and Virginia (RD) plus Democrats Abroad. Other contests occurring on March 1, but not producing results: Wyoming (R) and Colorado (R). They are included on our calendar since Republican voters in those states will be starting the voting process that day. How many delegates are up for grabs? 1, 460 (865 for Democrats, 595 for Republicans). For Democrats, there are an additional 150 unpledged delegates, otherwise known as ”superdelegates,” in Super Tuesday states. They are free to vote however they want at the national convention this summer. With superdelegates added in, Super Tuesday represents 22 percent of all delegates. How big is Super Tuesday? For perspective, so far, only about 2 percent of the pledged Democratic delegates and 5 percent of the Republican delegates have been allocated. After Super Tuesday, that will jump to almost a quarter (24 percent) for the Democrats and about 30 percent for the GOP. That’s not a majority, though: True. But it’s the snowball effect. If Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina were the kids’ snowball that started down the mountain, Super Tuesday is what happens when that snowball hits the steepest part of the slope. What’s the day with the second most states and delegates? March 15, when five big states vote  —   Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio. And the system changes. Those carry 1, 058 delegates (691 for Democrats, 367 for Republicans). More states start to become   . By the end of March, about half of all Democratic delegates (48 percent) and almost   of Republican delegates (63 percent) will have been allocated. NPR’s Arnie Seipel contributed to this post."
"Presidential candidates are making a slew of promises on the campaign trail. We took a sample of the most economically novel proposals and asked a panel of economists: Are they good or bad? Our panel includes 22 economists from across the political spectrum. They identified themselves as left, right and center. And some couldn’t categorize themselves. For more: Also listen to the economists explain their comments. We based our list of economists on the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’s IGM Economic Experts Panel, which does regular surveys like this. Thanks to all the economists who responded: Daron Acemoğlu, Alan Auerbach, Katherine Baicker, Abhijit Banerjee, David Cutler, Darrell Duffie, Aaron Edlin, Oliver Hart, Hilary Hoynes, Kenneth Judd, Steve Kaplan, Pete Klenow, Eric Maskin, Bill Nordhaus, Larry Samuelson, José Scheinkman, Richard Schmalensee, Carl Shapiro, James Stock, Nancy L. Stokey, Richard Thaler and Christopher Udry."
"Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, celebrated his 92nd birthday with an enormous party  —   and inspired plenty of rage along the way. His critics pointed out that his pricey bash was held in a region battling a devastating drought. The longtime leader of Zimbabwe (who shows no sign of stepping down from his post, despite his advanced age) marked his Feb. 21 birthday with several parties earlier this week. But the main event was Saturday’s massive celebration in Masvingo, which was attended by thousands of Zimbabweans. During the event, children performed military drills and recited poems praising Mugabe, The Associated Press reports, while Mugabe himself (who wants his birthday declared a national holiday) released 92 balloons into the air and spoke for more than an hour. And, of course, there was cake. Mugabe, who has been the leader of Zimbabwe since 1980, throws himself a birthday celebration every year. But this year’s party has inspired more criticism than usual, Reuters reports, because Zimbabwe is suffering from a devastating drought  —   and Masvingo, the site of the party, is one of the   regions. The area has lost 75 percent of its corn crop, the region’s staple food, because of the drought, the wire service says. During his birthday celebration Mugabe said that no one would starve because of the drought. But he also suggested he’d be willing to turn down food aid from the West, Reuters writes. He’s requested almost $1. 6 billion in such aid. Specifically, he said that he’d reject any aid that came with the stipulation that Zimbabwe accept   marriage  —   a condition, Reuters notes, that no aid organization is known to have suggested. ”We don’t want it. It is rotten aid, filthy aid and we won’t have anything to do with it,” Mugabe said. Mugabe’s birthday party cost $800, 000, Reuters reports, an expenditure that has upset his critics: ” ’The money that is being budgeted for this   birthday bash should actually be used to import maize to avert the impending starvation in Masvingo province and other parts of the country,’ Obert Gutu, a spokesman for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said in a statement.” ”Critics blame Mugabe for many of the problems facing the country. They say his policies, including the seizures and redistribution of   commercial farms, drove one of Africa’s most promising economies into nearly a decade of deep recession.” Zimbabwe’s economic crisis eased in 2008. But Mugabe has continued to spark criticism. Opponents call him corrupt, authoritarian and profligate. The AP reports that at Saturday’s celebration, meanwhile, Mugabe’s supporters were calling him ”dear father” and ”the Moses of Africa.”"
"If you have been watching the presidential debates, you may be very worried. The other day, GOP candidate Ben Carson said the U. S. is ”heading off the abyss of destruction.” And on the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Americans ”are worried to death about the future of their kids.” It’s been that kind of political season. But on Saturday, billionaire Warren Buffett used his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders to say, in effect, relax. The country may have challenges, but the    predictions are ”dead wrong,” Buffett wrote. Instead, ”babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history,” he wrote. In his widely read annual letter, the    investor did not say who will succeed him at Berkshire, but did mention he expects to make   announcements on Aug. 30, 2030  —   his 100th birthday. That sort of optimism runs deep in the investor who has personally seen the country work its way through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and few other bumps along the way. And through it all, he has made money. Lots of it. Forbes magazine ranks the legendary investor as the   person in the world, worth roughly $73 billion. His company, based in Omaha, Neb. owns scores of businesses involved in an array of sectors  —   including insurance, energy, railroads, newspapers, real estate, food and apparel. After a   under his leadership, Berkshire reported a record annual profit of $24. 08 billion, up 21 percent. In the fourth quarter, profit rose 32 percent to $5. 48 billion, or $3, 333 per Class A share. Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire investors is so closely followed because he so often makes the right calls about the economy. And in this year’s letter, he makes it clear that he considers the ”negative drumbeat” about America to be very misleading. ”It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, of course, only they can solve),” Buffett wrote. He put ”they” in italics for emphasis. Buffet is on the record supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton for president. He wrote that ”some commentators bemoan our current 2 percent per year growth” in real gross domestic product, and added that everyone would like to see it higher. However, with the U. S. population growing at about 0. 8 percent per year, a growth rate of 2 equals a 1. 2 percent per capita growth rate. And over time, that adds up to create a much richer future for today’s children, he noted. ”In a single generation of, say, 25 years, that rate of growth leads to a gain of 34. 4 percent in real GDP per capita,” he said. ”For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start,” he wrote. ”America’s golden goose of commerce and innovation will continue to lay more and larger eggs.” Despite his fundamental optimism, Buffett also acknowledged that income inequality is a profound problem rooted in rapid technological changes and globalization. The well educated and innovative tend to do well in this 21st century economy, while many workers get left behind, he suggests. Although the ”pie to be shared by the next generation will be far larger than today’s,” the political arguments over how it gets sliced up will ”remain fiercely contentious,” he warned. He suggests the country weave more safety nets to help displaced workers. ”The price of achieving   prosperity for the great majority of Americans should not be penury for the unfortunate,” he wrote."
"Before NASA had its Mercury 7 astronauts, the Air Force was launching its own team into the stratosphere  —   in balloons. Without the glamour or budget of NASA, these early space scientists and test pilots performed extreme experiments that helped pave the way for the Mercury crew. Among them was Captain Joseph Kittinger, who in 1960 stepped from his balloon into free fall from 103, 000 feet above the ground  —   nearly 20 miles. ”I said, ’Lord, take care of me now.’ And then I jumped,”   Kittinger tells NPR’s Lourdes  . The PBS series American Experience tells the story of Kittinger and other participants in the early Air Force programs in the episode Space Men, which premieres March 1. Kittinger talked with NPR about what it’s like to take such a plunge and what he thinks of the modern space program. On the view from 103, 000 feet, It’s a beautiful view because you can see 450 miles at that altitude. But then as you look aloft, about 10 or 15 degrees, the sky starts getting darker and darker as your eyes go up to 45 degrees or so. The sky’s absolutely black. And it’s daytime so it’s a very unusual situation to be in that it’s daytime and it’s black overhead. First of all, you can’t tell how fast you’re going because there’s nothing there to perceive, there’s nothing that you can look at to determine your velocity. But you know you’re going fast as you accelerate 32 feet per second per second. And after about 20 seconds I had reached terminal velocity, which in my case was about 614 miles an hour. But it took me 4 minutes and 36 seconds to freefall down to about 14, 000 feet where I opened my main parachute. I was extremely busy. I was there as a test pilot and I was a very very busy person during that entire fall as I gathered data that we were there for. And the results were that when NASA started designing the Mercury project, we had already done a lot of the work that NASA would be facing. And we had answers to a lot of the questions that NASA had before they could design the Mercury program. On not being part of the Mercury space program, I was delighted that I had had the opportunity to contribute to it. I had the option to volunteer for the program  —   I opted not to because I was very much involved in research that needed to be done. So I turned down the opportunity because I felt that what we were doing was valuable for the future of our space program. As a matter of fact the small   diameter parachute that we used to stabilize my freefall is still being used today in every ejection seat in the world. So what we did some 55 years ago is still being used today. On modern space exploration, I personally think that we should go back to the moon as soon as we can, because there’s a lot of lessons we need to learn before we can go to Mars, which should be the next great human adventure."
"If Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz makes it to the White House, it will be historic  —   it would mean this country had its first ever Latino president. Both have a Cuban background, but neither candidate can necessarily count on the support of Latino voters to win. That’s because most Latinos in this country lean Democratic, even with no Latino candidate represented in the Democratic field. During Thursday night’s Republican debate in Houston, moderator María Celeste Arrarás of Telemundo asked Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas if his and Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaigns were missing out on appealing to Hispanic and Latino voters with their stances on immigration. Cruz countered by stating he had widespread Hispanic support during his senatorial campaign in Texas, while Rubio responded by saying Hispanic voters care more about more than just immigration. Rubio also noted the Republican dais had two Hispanic and one   presidential candidates, while the Democrats had two white candidates. We turned to Maria de Los Angeles Torres, director and professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago, to walk us through some of the nuances. On whether the candidates’ Cuban heritage is relevant to their politics, Well, I think that they’re clearly the background here, not only for the candidates themselves, but for a strategy that the Republican Party unleashed in the late 1970s  —   and that was their Southern strategy. Remember the South, including Florida, was Democratic. So part of the Southern strategy was obviously to develop a more conservative agenda and bring in Latinos. And they succeeded. Cruz and Rubio, I think, are a product of that strategy. On whether the Latino background of Cruz and Rubio is meaningful for Latino voters, I think that the Latino electorate is an electorate that votes policy. When you have candidates that have very clearly distinct agendas, particularly in immigration in today’s electoral climate, I think that Latinos are not necessarily swayed by a person’s background. . .. What has changed, I think, in the last 15 years is the fact that immigration, once a marginal issue for many Latinos or a nonissue for   and Puerto Ricans, for instance, has become central to the Latino agenda  —   including   and Puerto Ricans. And in part, that has to, I think, because of the wholesale deportations that we have seen under the Obama administration. In all national polls, including   immigration comes up to the top of their agenda, when asked, ”What is the most important issue facing your community?”  —   not yourself or the country, but your community. On whether it’s a problem for the Democratic Party not having Latinos in positions of power, I think it’s a problem for the Democratic Party. I think they have taken the Latino community, and for that matter, the   community for granted. And it is something that at least any one of the two candidates in the Democratic Party have a chance to correct with their choice of vice presidential candidate."
"If you start typing ”Is Ted Cruz. ..” into Google, before you can even get to the C, Google attempts to   the sentence. And usually, at least these days, one of the first   options is a very strange question: ”Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac killer?” Ted Cruz is, of course, not the Zodiac killer. Really, he’s not. (And we will make that point several times during this story.) In fact, there’s no chance he could have been the Zodiac killer. No chance at all. The FBI describes the Zodiac murders like this: ”seemingly random brutal murders of five people in California’s Bay Area in 1968 and 1969 and a series of taunting cryptic notes sent by their killer terrorized Northern California for years.” But here’s the thing. Ted Cruz wasn’t born until 1970. And, people floating the Ted   Killer conspiracy theory actually point that out. It’s all really absurd. And increasingly, it’s trending. It seems to have started with one tweet, sent in 2013, from an account called @RedPillAmerica. After that, a few enterprising Twitter comedians kept the conspiracy theory alive. Keep in mind, during this time, seemingly everyone keeping the   joke alive on social media knew that it wasn’t true, at all. And again, we should point out here, once more: Ted Cruz is not the Zodiac Killer. The story lived in the crevices of the Internet and social media for a while, but it really peaked in the last few weeks. There’s one big reason, it seems. During a recent GOP presidential debate on CBS, comedians behind the   meme were determined to make it trend. ”I didn’t really engage with it too much up until the CBS GOP debate, the most recent one,” Nathan LaMagna, one person who helped make that happen, told NPR. ”I noticed . .. the Google Trends ticker along the bottom of the screen, kind of a way to make things more interactive. What are people Googling about the candidates? It was stuff like ’How tall is Jeb Bush?’ Stuff like that. It was fluff, it was nonsense.” ”It wasn’t going to help anybody get informed,” LaMagna, who is an Independent supporting Bernie Sanders, said. ”But while I’m watching this, I’m like well if it’s showing what the Google Trends are, what’s to stop somebody from making that trend. So I put out kind of a call to action. I just tweeted out: ’Hey everybody should Google ’Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac killer?’ and see if we can hit the ticker on there. ’” He jokingly photoshopped the question onto CBS’s debate ticker, as if it actually happened: Now there are   for sale, declaring that Cruz is the Zodiac killer. Proceeds from those sales have been going to a network of Texas clinics that provide abortions. (Ted Cruz opposes abortion.) There’s a Ted   killer romance book as well, for sale on Amazon. And most recently, Public Policy Polling asked in a survey whether it’s possible that Ted Cruz was the Zodiac killer. NPR spoke with several people involved with the   meme, and they all said pretty much the same thing. They know Cruz is not the Zodiac killer. But they say it’s all about a feeling they have about Cruz: they think he’s creepy. And they want to point that out, as clearly as they can. ”Once something catches on for whatever reason it just kind of builds on itself and becomes you know, kind of a short hand thing, you don’t have to explain it,” said comedian Patrick Monahan, who identifies as a Democrat. He felt that a general feeling that Cruz is creepy had been building for a while. Monahan cited a column that went viral last month in which a professor of neurology attempted to explain why ”Ted Cruz’s Facial Expression Makes Me Uneasy.” ”There was something about the fact that there was a neurologist that went on the air or did an interview that said there’s a neurological reason why Ted Cruz’s face seems strange,” Monahan said. It’s important to point out that was one person’s take in one column, and not accepted science. The column never pointed to any scientific reason and its author concluded he was ”at a loss to verbalize what unsettles me.” Monahan added, ”and then there was a protester in one of the Iowa rallies that stood in the back and yelled ’Ted Cruz looks weird’ a bunch of times. I think it just sort of crystallized for me that there’s something about this guy that really kind of is   to people.” Monahan said that Cruz has a likeability problem. ”It seems to be something that has always been true of presidential candidates, people say ’I wanna have a beer with this guy.’ . .. and there’s none of that with him at all. To me that’s strange.” ”It’s weird to see somebody in politics, which is essentially a popularity contest, in a lot of ways especially on a national level, who seems very unpopular,” he said. Twitter comedian Lindsey Martin, one of the users at the center of the   conversation, said part of the reason she feels comfortable participating the meme is that she doesn’t believe it. ”Yeah I think it’s all a joke,” said Martin, who told NPR she disagrees with Cruz’s policies. ”I know the killings started in 1968. And Ted Cruz was born in 1970. I think that’s part of the reason that I’ve been comfortable keeping the joke going because it’s so obviously untrue. And if there was any way that it could possibly be true I would be scared to joke about it just because of the repercussions.” For LaMagna, who led the charge to get   trending during the CBS GOP debate, it was all about the worlds of politics and social media colliding. ”I think this is just one iteration of a phenomenon that’s going to continue,” he said. ”You know, the more and more with the CBS Google Trends ticker, as you get the media and politicians trying to plug into this still new territory of social media, you’re only going to see more and more times when that kind of   thinking clashes with all sorts of new media. And all the different absurdists and satirists out there. . .. this is their domain that you’ve plugged into. And with it comes some sort of unintended consequences.” NPR reached out to the Cruz campaign, not to ask if he’s the Zodiac killer, but for a response to the lingering meme. We have not heard back yet. But we should point out again, just once more: Ted Cruz is not the Zodiac killer. Really. He’s not."
"Melissa   host of an eponymous talk show on MSNBC, has accused executives at MSNBC of effectively silencing her show, and declined to host her show this weekend. On Sunday, the network confirmed Perry was gone from MSNBC for good. Melissa   normally airs from 10 a. m. to noon Eastern on weekends, but has been replaced by election coverage for most of the last month, the New York Times reports. In a letter to her staff, Perry said that while she has been scheduled to host again this weekend, she suspects that’s ”a decision being made solely to save face because there is a growing chorus of questions from our viewers about my notable absence from MSNBC coverage.” She accuses MSNBC executives of not responding to her concerns  —   or indeed communicating with her at all  —   and says she objects not only to the loss of air time, but to a degradation of her show’s editorial authority. Until her concerns are addressed, she says, she won’t be hosting. Perry’s decision was reported by the New York Times on Friday, and a former producer from the show published the full letter on Medium Friday night. In the letter, Harris explains why she objects to hosting this weekend after weeks of having her show preempted ”without comment or discussion or notice,” she says: ”After four years of building an audience, developing a brand, and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced. Now, MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive. ”The purpose of this decision seems to be to provide cover for MSNBC, not to provide voice for MHP Show. I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head,” Perry, who is black, wrote. In a statement quoted by The New York Times and the AP, the TV network said many daytime programs, including Perry’s show, have ”been temporarily upended by breaking political coverage.” NBC’s statement described Perry’s response as ”really surprising, confusing and disappointing.” Perry also described the ”insulting absurdity” of her exclusion from MSNBC’s election coverage, alleging that she was traveling for the election season just like other MSNBC journalists  —   even staying in the same hotels  —   but wasn’t included on air. She notes that she has a Ph. D. in political science, expertise on voting issues and nearly eight years of experience covering elections for MSNBC. ”It is profoundly hurtful to realize that I work for people who find my considerable expertise and editorial judgment valueless to the coverage they are creating. ”While MSNBC may believe that I am worthless, I know better. I know who I am . .. I will not sell short myself or this show.” NBC has confirmed in a statement to NPR that it has ”parted ways” with Perry, effective immediately and described her email as disruptive. On Sunday, Perry tweeted out a farewell to her fans."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. On a recent visit to my parents’ house, I found a couple of postcards I had cut out from American Girl Magazine as an   . One extolled forgiveness. Another read: It’s OK to be scared. I brought the cards into work and a male coworker remarked that at that age, he couldn’t care less about forgiveness or fear. For him, it was all about dirt and cars and playing as much as possible. That was fresh in my mind when I read Caroline Paul’s   in last Sunday’s New York Times bemoaning the fact that we teach young girls to be frightened. As a firefighter in California, Paul was often asked if she was scared. And yet she hardly ever heard this asked of her male colleagues. ”Apparently,” she writes, ”fear is expected of women.” When we shelter young girls, Paul argues, we hold them back from embracing fear and from being courageous: ”When girls become women, this fear manifests as deference and timid decision making. We try to counter this conditioning by urging ourselves to ”lean in.” Books on female empowerment proliferate on our shelves. I admire what these writers are trying to do  —   but they come far too late.” With just a few astute observations and anecdotes, this Washington Post story explains why Dale Earnhardt Sr. stood out  —   as a driver to millions of fans and as a person, up close. It also opens a window into journalism. As reporter Liz Clarke worries for Earnhardt’s fate, she also calls her editor to discuss with where the story should play in the paper. She forces herself to stay focused on her job but is left forever affected by what she experienced  —   witnessing the death of someone who had treated her graciously: ”From time to time, I’m invited to speak with sportswriting classes. And I try to mention a few basics. Don’t try to become an athlete’s friend. Don’t root in the press box, except for there to be no overtime. Be prepared for anything: a power outage at the Super Bowl, an earthquake during the World Series, a death on the last lap of the Daytona 500.” Mr. Money Mustache thinks I and my peers are slaves to debt, consumer suckas, car clowns and complainy pants with chronic cases of ”excusitis.” We throw money away on things we don’t need and needlessly rob ourselves of early retirement, along with the sanity and happiness we need to enjoy that early retirement. In the process of buying the umpteenth pair of shoes or  Mr. Mustache says, we are destroying the world. After reading about him in The New Yorker  —   having recently paid $12 to park inside on a rainy day and $7 on a sandwich I could have brought from home  —   I find he is right on the money, so to speak. Pete Adeney, the man behind the Mr. Money Mustache blog  retired early after a career in the tech industry  —   but not with the kind of savings you might be picturing. Adeney quit with a wife, a child, $600, 000 in savings and a   house in Colorado, a   he was able to make through thrifty living and sensible frugality. No Starbucks frappes, no   SUVs. Adeney now advises readers on thrifty living that he portrays as ”liberation rather than as deprivation,” as The New Yorker’s Nick Paumgarten writes: ”He combines the deductive discipline of Mr. Spock, the D. I. Y. proficiency of MacGyver, and the gleeful certitude (and knack for coinage) of Ignatius J. Reilly. The   complex is his confederacy of dunces.” A delightful read. Now, excuse me, I see a penny on the floor over there."
"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scolding employees for what he calls ”several recent instances” of people crossing out ”black lives matter” on signature walls at the company’s headquarters and writing ”all lives matter” instead. In a note posted to employees on a company announcement page, published by Gizmodo, Zuckerberg says he and several other leaders at the company have previously warned employees against doing this. ”I was already very disappointed by this disrespectful behavior before, but after my communication, I now consider this malicious as well,” Zuckerberg writes. ” ’Black lives matter’ doesn’t mean other lives don’t. It’s simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve. ”We’ve never had rules around what people can write on our walls  —   we expect everybody to treat each other with respect. Regardless of the content or location, crossing out something means silencing speech, or that one person’s speech is more important than another’s.” The phrase ”Black Lives Matter” actually traces its origin to a conversation on Facebook. It came in reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of    Trayvon Martin. Since then, the phrase has come to signify the racial justice movement that has grown in response to a series of police shootings of unarmed black men. As the footprint of the ”Black Lives Matter” slogan has grown, the phrase ”all lives matter” arose as a reply  —   and, to many, a reproach  —   to the original phrase. NPR’s Tamara Keith has reported from the campaign trail, where Democratic candidates used the ”all lives matter” refrain: ”For those at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement, these words hit the wrong note. ’All lives matter’ is a phrase adopted by those who seek to minimize or criticize the movement.” Zuckerberg’s note says that the company is investigating the incidents, because they have been ”deeply hurtful and tiresome” for the Facebook community. Facebook has confirmed the authenticity of the internal note to NPR but has not provided further details of the investigation. Of course, it’s important to point out that Facebook  —   like much of Silicon Valley  —   has been struggling to diversify its workforce and remains a company that is heavily white and male. Here’s a chart NPR built earlier this month when Intel, unlike other tech companies including Facebook, released a highly detailed report on its progress and goals in hiring women and underrepresented minorities. Like others, Facebook has been working to improve the ratio and, according to Zuckerberg’s memo, plans to hold a town hall next week where staff can ”educate themselves about what the Black Lives Matter movement is about.” Leslie Miley, a Silicon Valley diversity advocate and former Twitter engineer, told the Huffington Post the issue had a lot to do with the tech industry’s reliance on recruiting from referrals and recruiting: ”Companies like Facebook pull talent from top schools, many of which are also very white. Then, employees refer people who look like them. ” ’If you want to change the ratio, stop referrals,’ Miley told HuffPost.”"
"These days, it can be hard to ignore all the messages to eat less meat and more vegetables. Last year, the World Health Organization used its megaphone to publicize the link between cancer and excessive red meat consumption. Environmentalists push the message, too, by pointing to all the energy, water and land required for meat production. Some animal welfare advocates, like the Humane Society of the United States, are all for a   diet. We also get cues from pop culture. Did you see this Vegans Gone Glam spread in The New York Times? Both Bittman and Beyonce are backing vegan   services. And today, rock legend Peter Frampton  —   who stopped by NPR for a Tiny Desk concert  —   told us that he gave up red meat years ago. Famous chefs are in on it, too. Mario Batali has embraced the concept of Meatless Monday. Jose Andres has gone   with his new chain Beefsteak. And one of the best burgers in New York has no meat. But does any of this really signal a nationwide rejection of meat? After all, Americans are among the very highest per capita consumers of meat on the planet, eating on average 71 pounds of red meat (beef, pork and lamb) a year, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. (An alternate estimate derived from a federal nutrition survey puts that number closer to 50 pounds per person, per year, on average.) Back in 2012, as part of our Meat Week series, we teamed up with Truven Health Analytics to survey Americans about their changing habits. In that 2012 poll, 8. 6 percent of the 3, 000 Americans surveyed said that during a typical week, they ate no meat (defined as all meat products except poultry and fish). Some 56 percent ate meat one to four times a week, and 31 percent ate it five or more time a week. Interestingly, 39 percent of the respondents back then told us that they were eating less meat than they had three years before. Their reasons for cutting back? Concern about the health effects was the top reason, followed by the cost of meat. In December 2015, we wanted to find out what, if anything, had changed. So we asked Truven to poll another random selection of 3, 000 Americans (via phone, cellphone and the Internet) and ask them the same questions. This time around, we tossed in one new question: Has the recent publicity linking processed meats to an increased risk of cancer caused you to change your eating habits? It turns out, about 30 percent of respondents said yes. But as we dug into the data, it seems the changes in habits are very subtle. This time around, 7. 4 percent of respondents told us they eat no meat during a typical week  —   a slight decrease from 2012.   percent said they eat meat one to four times a week, and 38 percent said they eat it five or more times a week. Notably, there was a slight drop in the number of people who said they were eating less meat than they had three years ago (from 39 percent, down to 32 percent.) In a nutshell, Americans’   habits haven’t shifted much. ”There’s no significant change in the number of times per week people eat meat in the last few years,” Mike Taylor, chief medical officer for Truven, tells us. So, should we conclude that all the    messages are not influencing Americans’ habits? Not so fast, says Roni Neff, director of the Food System Sustainability and Public Health program at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins. As she looks at the polling data, she says the changes between 2012 and 2015 may be subtle, but there’s a notable shift underway. ”We are still seeing a lot of people saying they are eating less meat, and a lot who want to eat less meat,” says Neff. Neff has her own study underway to measure meat consumption patterns and trends. She’s also trying to gauge whether people are substituting vegetables for meat. ”[These] poll numbers suggest a lot of people say they are are bumping up vegetables, and our results are fairly similar,” says Neff. Taylor of Truven agrees that Americans may be trying to swap veggies for meat. ”Nearly half [in the 2015 poll] are eating more vegetables, and age, income and education didn’t make a difference,” Taylor says. But Neff cautions that, no matter what kind of survey you use, it’s pretty tricky to nail down Americans’ changing dietary habits. For starters, our eating habits fluctuate. We tend to experiment with diets, then change our minds. Lots of us know someone who used to be a vegetarian, right? And it’s not unheard of for people to swing from a vegan diet to a   paleo diet. It’s also hard to unravel people’s motivations or to understand what their assumptions are when they make changes. Bottom line: There may be a growing chorus of veggie cheerleaders, but don’t assume everyone is influenced by them."
"When the military opens   combat roles to women soldiers  —   across all branches  —   in April, it will mark the culmination of a   process, which was often subject both to consternation and controversy. It will also mark a historic first for a female service members, many of whom enlisted decades ago in a very different kind of military. Among those women is Capt. Margie Finlay, who first enlisted in 1973. ”There wasn’t a whole lot of the physical stuff, the actual war fighting stuff that guys did. We did not fire guns, we didn’t go out and do an obstacle course or anything like that,” she tells her son, Nathan, on a visit with StoryCorps. ”We actually had classes where they would bring in ladies that did makeup and hair, and we would practice how to dial a phone with a pencil. I remember sitting there looking at all of us thinking, ’This is kind of silly.’ I wanted to get out there and shoot a gun,” she laughs. ”I wanted to go in the dirt, but we weren’t allowed to.” When Finlay got pregnant, she says she needed the signature of Nathan’s father if she wanted to stay in the military  —   a signature he wouldn’t give her. ”No mother of my children is going to wear combat boots,” he told her, as Finlay recalls. ”And I remember crying and begging him to sign the paper. The sergeant that was there processing said I can’t let you stay in  —   your husband won’t sign the permission slip,” she says. Without the permission slip, she couldn’t stay in the force. It made her feel ”kind of worthless, in a way,” Finlay says. ”But I always missed it. I enjoyed the military  —   I did. So, I rejoined in September of 1993.” She divorced her husband in 1996. Today, she’s a captain in the Air National Guard. At around the same time Finlay rejoined the military, Denise Clancy joined the Navy. ”We have over 200 years of military service in my family,” Clancy tells her husband, Shane, on a separate visit with StoryCorps. ”When I made that decision and I called my grandfather, he cried. He had six grandkids, and even though I wasn’t a boy, I was the only one that signed up.” When she joined the U. S. S. Enterprise, she found just a small number of women on the ship  —   ”and it was terrifying,” she says. It wasn’t uncommon for the men on board to make hostile and sexual comments to the women. The situation got so bad at nights, in fact, that her senior chief mandated that she be accompanied by a man whenever she left her workspace. That was how she met her husband, Shane. But, even years later, she still sometimes found she was on the receiving end of disparaging comments from her own husband. ”I don’t think I realized until after I was out and having our girls and trying to raise strong women  —   and hearing you say to me sometimes in front of them, ’Well, yeah, but you weren’t in the real Navy’  —   I don’t think that you had understood how our girls could perceive that,” she tells him. ”I mean, that was wrong,” he answers. Even with things as small as Veterans Day discounts, Denise Clancy says slights such as these persist. She finds that waiters will offer her husband the discounted rate and rarely consider that she, too, could be a veteran. Yet, when asked what advice she’d offer a woman following in her footsteps, putting on a uniform for the first time, Clancy says she’d leave her with some simple, strong language. ”To be proud of her service, and to not be afraid to say, ’I’m a female and I’m a veteran. And those two things are not mutually exclusive.’ ” Audio produced for Weekend Edition by Von Diaz. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"Artists shine given restrictions and limitations. Subtlety and nuance are more easily found in minimalism than excess. That’s the beauty of Brushy One String, whose sound is made by one big fat   and a voice so rich and full, all it wants is a bit of rhythmic and melodic underpinning. Brushy One String is from Jamaica, and his ”Chicken In The Corn” video has been viewed nearly nine million times. I first came upon his music at globalFEST 2014. He even broke his one string that night, but he smiled and warmed our hearts. He’s a deeply spiritual man who tells stories of his musical father and describes how proud his mom and dad would be of his fame if they were around. (He was orphaned at a young age.) He’s part Delta Blues with a bit of   soul, and he beats a pulse and rhythm on the guitar body that’s infectious and simple. That’s the beauty of Brushy One String: It’s all essence, and everything’s essential. No Man Stop Me is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"My father is approaching his 78th birthday, blessed with health good enough to still be an avid golfer and tennis player. His regular group of tennis buddies changes from time to time. The lineup depends on how they’re feeling. I remember when one of the gents renowned for his fitness and fastidious diet underwent a   heart operation. The other guys were in shock. If Mr. Fit had a bum ticker, they all figured they better get to their doctors pronto. ”Don’t I need an operation or something to clean out my arteries?” Dad asked me. It doesn’t work like that, I explained. We don’t recommend [they are done, let’s be honest] preventive heart surgeries, though many people make that assumption because of our culture’s worship of the latest, greatest medicine and technology. Heart surgery should be considered disaster relief, I told him, not part of a regular   or a solution for unhealthful habits. When my father saw his own doctor a few weeks later and got his usual clean bill of health, Dad wasn’t satisfied. There must be some danger brewing somewhere inside him, he told me, despite reassurances from me and his doctor. His concern faded after a while, but then several months later one of his cronies underwent a knee replacement. Dad’s first reaction: ”When should I get my knee replaced?” I tried to talk him through it. ”Do you have pain with every step you take?” I asked. Clearly not, I thought, since he’s still playing tennis three times a week. He admitted that his pain is only intermittent. But as he has aged, he’s grown concerned that his balance has become wobbly. I can’t fault my dad. He’s a child of the 1950s and has an unshakable belief in American ingenuity and medical progress. Newer is always better. For patients like him, more medical care equals more health. If there’s one thing he and I have battled over (and as his   I’m sure I’ve disappointed him in this regard) it’s my insistence that quite the opposite is usually true: less is more in medicine and health care. In the last decade a whole science has arisen to examine medical overuse  —   a big contributor to our country’s   health care costs. These talks with Dad got me thinking about his way of looking at things. I’ve even coined a name for his impulses. I call it, ”medical  .” It reminds me of a millennial’s fear of missing out (FOMO!) but for the geriatric set. One thing’s for sure, my father’s not alone. In clinical practice, I see medical   frequently. Take my patient Jack. He’s 89, and he only stopped playing tennis when he moved to town from Las Vegas a year or so ago to be closer to his son. Jack was awarded a Purple Heart in World War II, and he sees every day as a gift. But at a recent visit, he told me that out of a group of 13 childhood friends from his original neighborhood, only he and one other remain. ”Isn’t there some pill I can have,” Jack asked, only   ”to keep me in good health?” He does take a few medicines, one for blood pressure and another for heartburn. Medically speaking, I think Jack is happier to do less, but his anxiety persists about his good fortune. It’s a form of survivor’s guilt. Classically, survivor’s guilt is reaction to war, trauma, or natural disaster: Why did I live when others perished? But it exists in the medical realm, too, especially for cancer survivors who see many of their afflicted compadres succumb to illness, suffering and death. When I approached my father for permission to write about him, he and I wound up having a    talk about the indignities of our aging bodies, life and its natural end. He didn’t entirely buy my view that he suffers from medical   when it comes to his tennis buddies. But he agreed conceptually that medical   is really a form of survivor’s guilt. Having reached the average life expectancy for an American male, my father is acutely aware of life’s limits. Sadly, many of his friends have dropped from the tennis group, never to return. Some have died while others became too feeble to continue playing. Still, compared with their peers, the tennis elders seem to be enjoying life and living longer than their spectating counterparts. The observation is anecdotal, to be sure, but I’m convinced it speaks to the value of moving around and socializing. Those are two things my father and I fully agree on. John Henning Schumann is a writer and doctor in Tulsa, Okla. He serves as president of the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa. He also hosts Public Radio Tulsa’s Medical Matters. He’s on Twitter: @GlassHospital"
"Presidential campaigns may inspire people to vote, but they rarely inspire people to compose music. Jazz pianist Marcus Roberts takes up the challenge on a new EP called Race for the White House, which explores the personas of four different candidates from this year’s election cycle. One of those candidates is Donald Trump you can hear the song Roberts wrote to represent him below. It features a whistle, which he says is meant to express a particular vision of Trump. ”That symbolizes Donald just looking over his vast estate and just chilling and just having a great time,” Roberts says. ”And then the trumpet interrupts him just to make a bold statement of, ’I’m going to make America great again, all by myself. ’” Roberts says he was inspired by the unique personalities of the presidential hopefuls, and the challenges they face in communicating with potential voters. ”It’s almost like you have to get into other people’s experiences so that they can see their experience in you, and ” he says. ”And I think that’s a very important component of what’s going on right now in America. I think everybody wants to feel like they’re being understood and related to, as opposed to preached to or told what they should think.” Roberts lost his sight at age 5, so he’s never actually seen these candidates. But, he says, you can learn a lot about politicians by listening to them  —   things you might miss just looking at them. ”If a person is nervous, they might talk a little faster  —   or, if they’re really in command, they may project more of a louder voice,” he says. ”If they’re really happy, they might use a higher pitch. There’s a lot of information there when you hear people talk.” Roberts discussed translating those traits and tics into music with NPR’s Lourdes  . Hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"An animated film is up for best documentary short at the Oscars this year. It’s only the second time an animated film has been in the running since the category was established in the 1940s. Last Day of Freedom is the story of Bill Babbitt, a man who turns his brother in for murder, hoping the police will help his brother get the care he needs for PTSD.  The Babbitts’ story is told through more than 30, 000 drawings, most of them in black and white. They were created by Dee   and Nomi Talisman, two Northern   artists. This is their first film  —   and they had some qualms. ”There’s a moment that we felt like . .. It’s my first documentary, I don’t know how to make it,” Talisman says. But they felt confident in their art. ”I definitely know how to draw,” she says. Talisman says the film grew out of interviews with people making their way through the criminal justice system. They say using drawings gave them more storytelling options. ”We can use metaphors in a different way,” says Talisman. ”We can be more creative. We can still show Bill in a way that actually depicts him in a very accurate way.” Bill Babbitt was filmed and then that footage was used as the basis for line drawings. In the film, Babbitt describes what happened when his younger brother, Manny, came home from his military service in Vietnam. ”When Manny came marching home, limping mentally and morally, they was able to discern his physical wounds,” Babbitt says. ”His limps they was able to patch those up, but they never got around to patching up that war wound in his head.” Manny was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. ”He came to America for yet another tour of duty on the battlefield, chasing shadows, imaginary soldiers,” Bill recalls. Manny was living with Bill and his family in Northern California, and one day Bill found a cigarette lighter in his brother’s clothes. It had the letters L. S. on it  —   the initials of a woman who’d recently been murdered. Babbitt went to the police with the lighter and turned his brother in. On the day he turns him in, Bill told Manny they were going to play pool. ”I lied to my brother on his last day of freedom,” Bill says. [Ed. note: If you’d prefer not to learn about the outcome of the case at this time, please return to this story after you’ve seen the film.] Babbitt thought turning his brother in would help him get the mental health care he needed. But that didn’t happen. Filmmaker Dee   says for her, the crux of the story is trust. ”I think Bill believes he was holding on to the trust of the whole family, the trust of the community and also the trust of his brother, and partly in order to protect his brother he broke that trust,”   says.  The case went to court and Manny was ultimately sentenced to death. ”The jury that sentenced Manny Babbitt to death never heard most of the important facts and circumstances of his life,” says Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California Santa Cruz who was involved in Manny Babbitt’s appeals. The jury, Haney says, never heard about ”the mental illness from which he suffered, or an adequate explanation of   stress disorder, or a meaningful account of the kinds of experiences that he went through in Vietnam that would have profoundly affected who he was at the time the crime was committed. All of those things were left out of the case.” Eighteen years after he was sent to prison, Manny Babbitt was sent to the gas chamber. His execution on May 4, 1999, was witnessed by his family and the family of the woman he murdered. ”Manny’s name don’t come up no more. My own family members, some of them don’t want to talk about it no more. It’s like Manny never even existed,” Bill Babbitt says. ”And what do I tell these people: I’m sorry?” It’s a guilt that he lives with every day. ”Bill supported the death penalty which killed his brother,”   says. ”He also really trusted in the police. He literally took the police to his brother believing that he would get the justice and his brother would get the help he needed.” To her, Babbitt is an example of someone who had every intention of doing the right thing. Now, he travels the world advocating against the death penalty. In fact, that’s where he’ll be this weekend, as   and Talisman are in Los Angeles for the Oscars."
"Author Naomi Novik is a world builder. She writes books about dragons, witches and dark woods  —   and she’s also designed computer games. ”I’m an engineer and a writer,” she says, ”and I find that those two things are not uncomplimentary.” Novik’s career as a writer and programmer started in the same place  —   her sophomore college dorm. ”I ended up rooming in a dorm that was basically a solid wall of female scientists, and every Wednesday we would all watch Star Trek: The Next Generation.” It was the early days of the Internet, and Novik found her way to a discussion list for Trekkers. Engaging with fan communities online got her interested in two things: coding and fan fiction. She completed her master’s degree in computer science, but continued to write fan fiction on the side. Almost a decade after she first went online, she says she was working as a programmer for a computer game ”and something about that whole process of building the structure of that game turned into a real kind of   moment for me as a writer.” At the time, her fan fiction at was inspired by swashbuckling adventure novels set in the Napoleonic era. But something started happening to her stories  —   they were getting longer and more complex. ”Then all of a sudden I sort of started to feel that I was constrained by the characters, as opposed to enjoying them,” she says. ”And that remains for me to this day the line . .. where it’s like: OK, you’re not writing fan fiction anymore.” She also had an idea she wanted to run with: ”What could make the Napoleonic wars more exciting? Dragons!” And one dragon in particular: Temeraire. He’s central in her   ”Temeraire” series, which opens with the dragon becoming the responsibility of Will Laurence, a naval captain fighting for the British against Napoleon. Laurence is chivalrous with a keen sense of duty, but he embraces the   conventions that Novik paints in faithful detail  —   even some that are distasteful to   readers, like class hierarchies and the roles of women. Temeraire, on the other hand, is newly hatched he provides a more critical, modern voice. ”Temeraire comes out talking, thinking for himself,” Novik says, ”and immediately starts overturning all of Laurence’s assumptions because he doesn’t take things for granted.” The last installment in the ”Temeraire” series is due out this summer. According to Novik, combining fantasy and historical fiction allows you to have a conversation with the past that you might not get with a straightforward historical novel. ”You can actually muck with history and think about: What if? Why not?” she says. ”What if there were dragons in the Incan empire that allowed them to resist colonization? What if there were a massive dragon empire in the middle of the interior of southern Africa that decided to take objection to the slave trade?” Novik’s attraction to characters who provide an outsider’s perspective comes from her own experience. Her parents are immigrants who came to the U. S. from Eastern Europe before she was born. Her grandmother was executed for her role in the Polish resistance during World War II, and her mother defected from Communist Poland and was separated from her family for many years. Uprooted is the book she wrote from those fragments of her family history, and it’s a finalist for one of the highest prizes in American science fiction and fantasy, the Nebula Award. Set in the Poland of her mother’s bedtime stories, it follows a young witch as she unravels the mystery that lies in a dark wood at the edge of her village. ”It’s a place that should be nurturing, that should be positive and beautiful and have wild magic to it,” Novik says. ”And it has all been twisted inward by rage, by hatred and by the severing of connections.” These days, Novik’s coding work is mostly volunteer. She likes the idea of designing games again, but she says she’s happy where she is. ”As a novelist, you have just unlimited budget, total creative control. You really get to have your cake  —   all the cake  —   and then you can have a second cake if you want it, too.” She still writes fan fiction, though  —   more than 450 stories in 50 different fandoms  —   and when she sits down to write, about half of it is fan fiction. Until, of course, her characters begin to chafe against the boundaries and a new story is born."
"The presidential contest moves South on Super Tuesday, March 1. The region is considered a firewall for Hillary Clinton because of her strong support among   voters, a key bloc of Southern Democrats. Greensboro, Ala. is in the heart of the black belt  —   named for its rich black soil and known as a place where the right to vote is sacred. ”I’m a foot soldier,” said    Theresa Burroughs. ”Every time there’s a vote, I go.” She marched from Selma to Montgomery for the right to vote in 1965, and was a member of the Hale County Civic Improvement League  —   one of the nation’s first grassroots civil rights organizations. Burroughs is founder of the Safe House Black History Museum in Greensboro, a clapboard shotgun house on the edge of town. ”This is the place where we kept Dr. Martin Luther King safe,” she said. Local activists hid him from the Ku Klux Klan on a visit to west Alabama in March of 1968, just two weeks before King was assassinated in Memphis. Burroughs says there’s still a struggle for voting rights in the black belt. The state has curtailed driver’s license offices in the predominantly   counties here, yet requires an ID to vote. ”This is just another stage of harassing us and trying to get us . .. to disappear,” Burroughs says. ”We’re not going to do that.” Burroughs will be at the polls on Tuesday, and there’s no question who she’ll vote for. ”It’s Hillary all the way,” she says. ”She’s taken all the steps. It’s no place up to go but president.” Hillary Clinton has earned it, Burroughs says. She admits she’s never even considered voting for Bernie Sanders. Clinton has endorsements from Democratic Congresswoman Terri Sewell and a host of   mayors in Alabama. Burroughs says that’s because active Democrats here feel a connection to the Clintons. ”She’s been here,” Burroughs says. ”She knows us personally. She knows the condition.” The condition  —   this is one of the poorest areas of the country. Most counties in Alabama’s black belt have   unemployment, and more than a quarter of the population lives below the federal poverty line. As farm jobs have dwindled, towns have struggled to lure industry to replace them. The historic Hale County Courthouse anchors Main Street in Greensboro. There’s the furniture store, the hardware shop, and a few other businesses. Some of them are run by the   HERO  —   the Hale Empowerment and Revitalization Organization. The group develops housing and runs a GED program for young adults. ”I just feel like Hillary Clinton would be a good president,” says Drewquita Lanier, who is 22 years old, said recently as about a dozen students, most in their 20s, wrapped up a day of testing. They took a break to talk politics. ”Not just because she’s a woman but she knows a lot that low income people need help. That’s why I’m electing her.” Most of her classmates are undecided, and express frustration that they’ve been left behind. ”I don’t think we have a voice for us,” said Jalisa Travis. Raven Sewell wants a candidate who can help break the cycle of poverty. ”I can say honestly say I’m almost there,” Sewell said. She’s close to earning her high school equivalency diploma. ”I have my own place to live. I’m working on a car. Some people really trying, they just need an extra hoist,” says Sewell. Unlike other places where Bernie Sanders has fired up young voters, his message has not reached these rural   students. Sewell is surprised to hear that he wants to make college free. ”Now that sounds wonderful,” she said. Bernie Sanders has to ramp up the message if he’s going to cut through Hillary Clinton’s support in the South come Super Tuesday. She’s strong not only with   but also with more moderate white Democrats. Larry Burt works at a plastics container plant. He’s lunching at the Pie Lab in downtown Greensboro. ”The pie is real good today,” he says. ”I don’t know what kind of politics are cooking.” He’s something of a political anomaly in Alabama  —   a white   man who still votes Democratic. And he’s leaning toward Clinton. ”She’s as close to we have being in the middle as anybody right now,” Burt says. ”I’d hate to see the decision coming down between the socialist and the billionaire real estate mogul from Manhattan.”"
"Editor’s note: This post, an interview with director Joshua Oppenheimer about his film The Look of Silence, was originally published on Feb. 27, 2016. The documentary airs tonight, June 27, on PBS. American director Joshua Oppenheimer has received a MacArthur ”genius” award and two Oscar nominations, one for each of two   documentaries on a harrowing subject: the continuing aftermath of the Indonesian massacre of   during which at least 1 million people, targeted as communists, died at the hands of the government and the military. The first, The Act of Killing, released in 2012, invited former   leaders (many of whom still wield political or military power) to take part in fictionalized   of their crimes, staging them like scenes from crime movies and even musicals. The horrors the men committed  —   and the horror that lives inside them  —   are unbearably chilling. The second, The Look of Silence, reveals the continuing impact on the families of those murdered. It follows Adi, an optometrist, whose older brother was killed and dismembered during the massacre, as he confronts the murderers, offering them forgiveness  —   but only if they will acknowledge and take responsibility for their deeds. Adi was born after his brother’s death the men he confronts are now elderly. We spoke to Oppenheimer by phone from Los Angeles, where he will be attending the Oscars on Sunday night. The conversation was edited for length and clarity. You’ve said this film is about the   legacy of the genocide. Is the silence part of that: No one talks about what happened?  The film is looking at the legacy of what happens when the perpetrators win, when they remain in power, when they are free in their positions of power to lie to themselves and to impose those lies on the whole society. This of course creates a regime of fear and silence for everyone in the society. It has been 50 years of silence and fear. The film suggests that the victims are silent because they are powerless to take the perpetrators to task. By comparison, the perpetrators are seen boasting, laughing, about their killings. How do we make sense of that? The [perpetrators] have no problem boasting of the details of the killing, but they cannot confront the moral meaning of what they did. The boasting is their way of not confronting the real meaning. They have spent 50 years escaping from and outrunning the moral meaning. That’s the dramatic engine of the first film, the perpetrator realizing gradually that what he did was wrong, and the floodgates of guilt opening. And in this film, the engine is Adi, an optometrist in his   trying to get the perpetrators to confront their own responsibility? The perpetrators have been telling themselves that it is acceptable to have dehumanized the victims. But when Adi comes to them, saying, I can forgive you if you can admit what you’ve done, they have to look at him as a human being. And when they do that, they then [must] see all their victims are human beings. So they panic, become defensive, deny, are full of justifications. In both films the subject is grim. But the physical backdrop is the lush greenery of Indonesia’s beautiful countryside. Was that deliberate?  To an observer, an Indonesian village might look beautiful, idyllic. You wouldn’t notice the fear, the unresolved grief, the silence [about what happened] into which the people have been intimidated. The beauty of the landscape makes the violence, the killings, the intimidation and dehumanization much more painful. I also wanted viewers [in The Look of Silence] to be able to register the wrinkles of Adi’s mother’s brow and the emotions behind Adi’s calm face. And I wanted to show, and make the viewer feel, the dignity, the love, even the grace with which the family has been able to survive and live despite the regime, and despite the fact that they live in the most frightful situation. It is as if the perpetrators and the victims exist in different realities. How would you describe the world in which the victims’ families are living?  Adi’s father and mother are living in between time periods. They are living in the present but in dialogue with ghosts. Adi’s mother is depicted almost as ethereal. Adi is seen [by his mother] almost as a   of the murdered brother. And there is a chorus of crickets in the background, like a chorus of ghosts. How has the film been received in Indonesia?  At the first screening of the film in Indonesia, Adi was given a   standing ovation. He is seen as a kind of national hero. The film has been screened over 6, 000 times around Indonesia by the government itself. At the same time, though, here we are heading to the Oscars, and the army has threatened to ban screenings and did manage to pressure the Indonesia film center to ban it. So we have this unusual situation where the film is first Indonesian production formally nominated for the Oscar, and it is being distributed by the Indonesian government, but it has also been banned by the government’s film censorship board, which is associated with the army. But the movies are having an impact. They have inspired conversation and a movement against impunity."
"Spotlight won the coveted Oscar for best picture when the 88th Academy Awards were handed out Sunday night in Hollywood, upsetting The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road, which entered the night with 12 and 10 nominations, respectively. Mad Max: Fury Road just about swept the early categories, winning six Oscars, but The Revenant also took two of the top awards. Alejandro González Iñárritu won the prize for best director, giving him his second consecutive Oscar, and Leonardo DiCaprio won the Oscar for best actor in a leading role, his first. Brie Larson won her first Oscar, taking the award for best leading actress, for her role in Room. Best supporting actress went to Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl, and best supporting actor was won by Mark Rylance for his role in Bridge of Spies. Our Pop Culture Happy Hour team of Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, Stephen Thompson and Bob Mondello   all the proceedings  —   from the red carpet to host Chris Rock’s opening monologue, until the last winner was called. Our crew tweeted using the hashtag #NPROscars and also retweeted some of your contributions. You can review via the widget below, or right here on Twitter. This year’s event is not without some controversy. When the nominations were announced on Jan. 14, several media outlets reported a lack of diversity among the nominees. Some celebrities even called for viewers to boycott Sunday’s airing of the Academy Awards, and the overall outrage over the exclusion of people of color got the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite trending on Twitter. These reactions ultimately led the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make modifications to its voting process and declare, ”The Board’s goal is to commit to doubling the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020.” Host Chris Rock didn’t shy away from commenting on the issue in his opening monologue. He joked that the Oscars are otherwise known as ”the white people’s choice awards” and said that if hosts were nominated, he wouldn’t have gotten the job  —   that it would have instead gone to Neil Patrick Harris. In the list below, we’ve marked the winners in each category, in bold. Picture, The Big ShortBridge of SpiesBrooklynMad Max: Fury RoadThe MartianThe RevenantRoomSpotlight, Actor in a Leading Role, Bryan Cranston, TrumboMatt Damon, The MartianLeonardo DiCaprio, The RevenantMichael Fassbender, Steve JobsEddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl, Actress in a Leading Role, Cate Blanchett, CarolBrie Larson, RoomJennifer Lawrence, JoyCharlotte Rampling, 45 YearsSaoirse Ronan, Brooklyn, Director, Adam McKay, The Big ShortGeorge Miller, Mad Max: Fury RoadAlejandro González Iñárritu, The RevenantLenny Abrahamson, RoomTom McCarthy, Spotlight, Actor in a Supporting Role, Christian Bale, The Big ShortTom Hardy, The RevenantMark Ruffalo, SpotlightMark Rylance, Bridge of SpiesSylvester Stallone, Creed, Actress in a Supporting Role, Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful EightRooney Mara, CarolRachel McAdams, SpotlightAlicia Vikander, The Danish GirlKate Winslet, Steve Jobs, Animated Feature Film, AnomalisaBoy and the WorldInside OutShaun the Sheep MovieWhen Marnie Was There, Cinematography, CarolThe Hateful EightMad Max: Fury RoadThe RevenantSicario, Costume Design, CarolCinderellaThe Danish GirlMad Max: Fury RoadThe Revenant, Documentary (Feature) AmyCartel LandThe Look of SilenceWhat Happened, Miss Simone? Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, Documentary (Short Subject) Body Team 12Chau, beyond the LinesClaude Lanzmann: Spectres of the ShoahA Girl in the River: The Price of ForgivenessLast Day of Freedom, Film Editing, The Big ShortMad Max: Fury RoadThe RevenantSpotlightStar Wars: The Force Awakens, Foreign Language Film, Embrace of the SerpentMustangSon of SaulTheebA War, Makeup and Hairstyling, Mad Max: Fury RoadThe    Man Who Climbed outthe Window and DisappearedThe Revenant, Original Score, Bridge of SpiesCarolThe Hateful EightSicarioStar Wars: The Force Awakens, Original Song, ”Earned It,” Fifty Shades of Grey”Manta Ray,” Racing Extinction”Simple Song #3,” Youth”Til It Happens to You,” The Hunting Ground”Writing’s on the Wall,” Spectre, Production Design, Bridge of SpiesThe Danish GirlMad Max: Fury RoadThe MartianThe Revenant, Short Film (Animated) Bear StoryPrologueSanjay’s Super TeamWe Can’t Live without CosmosWorld of Tomorrow, Short Film ( ) Ave MariaDay OneEverything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut) ShokStutterer, Sound Editing, Mad Max: Fury RoadThe MartianThe RevenantSicarioStar Wars: The Force Awakens, Sound Mixing, Bridge of SpiesMad Max: Fury RoadThe MartianThe RevenantStar Wars: The Force Awakens, Visual Effects, Ex MachinaMad Max: Fury RoadThe MartianThe RevenantStar Wars: The Force Awakens, Writing (Adapted Screenplay) The Big ShortBrooklynCarolThe MartianRoom, Writing (Original Screenplay) Bridge of SpiesEx MachinaInside OutSpotlightStraight Outta Compton"
"In 1988, when Eddie Murphy presented the nominees for Best Picture at the 60th Academy Awards, he told the audience that when he’d been invited to present the award, his initial reaction was, ”I’m not going, because they haven’t recognized black people in the motion picture industry.” Almost 30 years later, the 88th Academy awards will be presented under a similar cloud. For the second year in a row, all the acting nominees are white. After public outcry, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences changed its membership rules to try to diversify its ranks. It used to be that if you were invited to join the Academy, you could count yourself as a member with voting rights until you died. Now, a   membership is limited to 10 years and can only be renewed if you’ve been active in the movie industry during that decade. In this week’s For The Record: three views on #OscarsSoWhite. Academy member and filmmaker Roger Ross Williams agrees with changes. ”The academy needs to make room for what America really looks like,” he says. In 2011, Williams became the first   filmmaker to win an Oscar for his first documentary film, Music By Prudence. But the win didn’t catapult his career like he thought it would. ”Even now, there [are] no agents beating down my door, there’s no one calling me to do any commercials or branded content or even the sort of big commercial documentary films,” he says. He says he’s not getting called because, as a black, gay man, he doesn’t look like the people who make those decisions. ”The gatekeepers, the studio heads, the agents . .. they look for people that they can relate to, their stories their experiences, they can relate to,” Williams says. As former president of Paramount Motion Pictures Group, Academy member David Kirkpatrick was a gatekeeper. He’s white and has been a member of the Academy since the  . He says he supports the Academy’s goal to diversify its membership. ”What I’m against is the Academy’s hasty decision to sort of obliterate the old folks inside the Academy as if it was some kind of white man’s cabal who voted these people in, and by the way, I guess I would be part of that,” Kirkpatrick says. ”I just think from the standpoint of people who have earned their stripes over the years, who have contributed significantly to the industry, that they be sort of thrown to the sides from the standpoint of their voting” he adds. And Kirkpatrick’s not the only Academy member who feels this way. ”The academy isn’t meant to reflect the diversity of America. The academy is meant to be a reflection of the best of the business. The business is too white and too male,” says screenwriter and producer Patricia Resnick, known for writing the 1980 hit film 9 to 5. Resnick, a gay woman in her early 60s, will lose her Oscar voting privileges under the new rules because she’s been working mostly in television. ”As an older female, there’s not a lot of work for me. So basically to say to people . .. the movie business isn’t going to hire you anymore, so we’re going to take away your voting privileges, I think is really wrong,” Resnick adds. ”If you made enough of a contribution to become an Academy [voting] member, I think that’s lifetime. And I don’t think people should be punished for aging out.” David Kirkpatrick has a suggestion: expand the membership pool. ”You can absolutely change the way a membership is decided,” he says. ”You can go from 6, 000 members . .. to 8, 000 members overnight if you change certain rules that will allow for that to happen.” The fundamental difference in the views of these three people is how they view the role of the Academy. Both Patricia Resnick and David Kirkpatrick say the Academy is just a mirror, a reflection of the industry, and that’s where the responsibility should lie  —   on studio executives and casting agents, not on the Academy. ”The business itself is so white and so male and such a boys club, and I think that’s really the part of it that has to change,” Patricia Resnick says. ”I don’t believe when you say older, white males, and you’re talking about the people in the Academy, it’s an extremely liberal group of people. I honestly don’t believe Academy members vote on race or gender. If they did, I would go through every nomination in every craft and I would vote for women. I don’t vote that way, I try to vote for what I think is best. And I have to say that the older members that I’m friendly with, take it very seriously.” Roger Ross Williams says when it comes to diversity, the business of Hollywood is broken. But he believes the Academy should set an example by representing the change he wants to see in the broader industry. Even though Williams’ own Oscar win didn’t give him as many opportunities as he thought it would, he says being a member of the Academy matters. ”It’s an organization of my peers and that means a lot, to get that acknowledgement,” he says. ”It gives you the strength and power to keep going on and keep making films and you need a sense of community and I think it’s important that we use that community to lift others up in the field.”"
"If Marco Rubio ends up with the Republican presidential nomination, it could be because he played Quidditch better than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Stick with us for a second. Last week, a   SuperPAC sent out a ( ) fundraising email comparing Rubio to fictional   Harry Potter. As Politico first reported, the group’s argument boiled down to an analogy that Donald Trump was like the Potter villain Voldemort, and the other Republicans in the race were functioning as horcruxes, objects that Voldemort uses to give himself  . ”As each horcrux was destroyed,” the group wrote, ”Voldemort became increasingly vulnerable, not increasingly strong. When all of the horcruxes were gone, Voldemort lost his    battle with Harry Potter.” Now, as all Harry Potter fans know, this analogy made no sense. Vox. com thoroughly debunked the SuperPAC’s email shortly after it hit the Internet. But there’s another aspect of the Harry Potter universe that does apply to Rubio’s campaign  —   the wizarding world’s most popular sport: Quidditch. In Quidditch, teams can score points two ways. They can hit the quaffle through the hoops at either end of the field, like scoring a goal in soccer, for ten points at a time. That’s what the bulk of the players on each team are trying to do as they ride their brooms up and down the pitch. But each Quidditch team also has one seeker, whose main goal is to look for, and catch, the golden snitch  —   a small golden ball with wings that is very hard to catch. This was Potter’s job. A snitch catch is worth 150 points   far more than any quaffle strike. What’s more, it ends the Quidditch match. While a team could technically catch the snitch and lose, that hardly ever happens. Confused? Let Gryffindor keeper Oliver Wood explain it to you: So what’s this have to do with the Republican presidential primary? Well, in the Rubio campaign’s latest thinking, early states like New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada are quaffles. They provide delegates proportionally, for the most part, to the winners, but also to many of the losers. You’re not going to win or lose a Quidditch game on   increments, and you’re not going to win or lose the nomination based on Nevada. The Rubio campaign is not expected to win anywhere on Super Tuesday. It’s just circling the pitch like Potter and other seekers, waiting for the golden snitch to appear. So what’s the snitch in the GOP primaries? It’s the collection of    primaries that begin on March 15th with Rubio’s home state of Florida. He and his campaign aides are arguing that as the GOP field narrows, and as more and more Republican leaders rally around Rubio in an attempt to beat Trump, he can quickly make up delegate ground with wins in Florida, Ohio, and other big    states. It’s a   strategy for sure. But hey, Quidditch is a risky sport. This theory and other   Super Tuesday observations are hashed out in the latest NPR Politics Podcast."
"More than a dozen states vote Tuesday, and almost 1, 500 delegates are at stake. It’s the biggest day of the 2016 presidential election, and it could be pivotal. Seven Southern states are voting Tuesday  —   Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. That means on the Democratic side, black voters will play a pivotal role. (Six of those states, except Oklahoma, have significant black populations in Democratic primaries.) But for the GOP, those same Southern states mean a more socially conservative, more religious electorate. But there aren’t just Southern states. There are also a few    ones, like Vermont, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Colorado  —   places Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, on the Democratic side, and Marco Rubio, on the Republican side, hope to fare better in. Democrats, Scenario 1: Clinton wins big, sweeps the Southern states fueled by black voters. She pulls away from Sanders in pledged delegates, especially after a win in   Texas, and appears well on her way to the nomination. Sanders will have a big hole to climb out of, especially because all Democratic states award their delegates proportionally. The math will make it increasingly challenging, if not impossible, for Sanders. Scenario 2: Sanders holds serve in whiter, more liberal states and cuts into Clinton’s margins with   and Hispanics, even pulling off a win in a place like Colorado and keeping her delegate advantage to a minimum out of Texas. He mitigates what could have been a disastrous day and lives to fight on. Money continues to roll in, and even though he very likely trails in delegates, he is not tremendously far behind. His message resonates in other, more liberal states to come  —   and a path is still conceivable. Republicans, Scenario 1: Trump has another yuuuge day. He sweeps the South is competitive with Cruz in Texas, if not beats him even wins or comes close in places like Minnesota, Massachusetts and Vermont. He expands his base, looks more like the apparent nominee and makes it a very difficult, narrow path for Marco Rubio, who is hoping to rack up wins in    states to come on March 15 and beyond. (Texas is   for Cruz. If Trump beats him in his home state, the rationale for his candidacy collapses.) Scenario 2: Trump is wounded. Cruz wins in at least some Southern states where Trump was favored, and Rubio holds serve with more moderate Republicans and pulls off a couple of wins. The narrative changes. Cruz would be pulling delegates from Trump, and Rubio’s path becomes very clear. Scenario 3: Mix of Scenarios 1 and 2. Trump’s wins are not quite as big as Scenario 1, but he still wins the day. Cruz holds ’em in Texas. Rubio picks up a couple of wins in more moderate states. And all three declare victory and continue on in a potentially protracted race. Scenario 4: John Kasich surprises Rubio in places he was favored in more moderate states. Trump holds, or he and Cruz split, and the establishment moves more toward Kasich. This is the least likely scenario."
"On the Sunday morning talk shows, Republican presidential   Donald Trump refused to condemn endorsements from a prominent white supremacist and former KKK leader, and said he retweeted a Mussolini quote because ”it’s a very good quote.” The extended conversation about white supremacists came on CNN’s State of the Union, where Jake Tapper asked if Trump would distance himself from an endorsement by David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke has told his radio audience that voting against Trump would be ”treason to your heritage.” Trump refused to condemn that endorsement or say he didn’t want the support of white supremacists  —   four times. ”I don’t know anything about David Duke. I don’t know what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacist. I don’t know. I don’t know, did he endorse me, or what’s going on?” he said. That prompted a    that went, in part: Trump: I don’t know what group you’re talking about. You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. . .. If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow them if I thought there was something wrong. Tapper: The Ku Klux Klan? Trump: You may have groups in there that are totally fine and it would be very unfair. So give me a list of the groups and I’ll let you know. Tapper: I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here. Trump: Honestly, I don’t know David Duke. You can watch the full exchange here. Not long after, Trump tweeted out a video of him being asked about Duke’s support on Friday, at a news conference where he received the support of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. In the video from Friday, Trump said, ”I disavow.” As several people swiftly pointed out on Twitter, Trump hasn’t always claimed ignorance of David Duke as he did on CNN this morning. In 2000, when he ended his presidential campaign, Trump cited Duke’s participation in the Reform Party as one reason he no longer wanted the party’s nomination. ”The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a   Mr. [Pat][ Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. [Lenora] Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep,” he wrote in his statement. On MSNBC, Chris Jansing spoke to Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. about his father’s comments on State of the Union. He said he wasn’t a campaign spokesman  —   but as a spokesman for his father, he was willing to say Trump’s camp didn’t want the support of a former KKK leader. ”I’m pretty sure we’re not interested in those kinds of votes,” Trump Jr. said. Also on the Sunday show circuit, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump declined to distance himself from a Benito Mussolini quote he had retweeted. Gawker has since posted to announce that the account that first tweeted the quote  —   unsubtly named ”@ilduce2016”  —   was a bot they designed with the express purpose of tricking Trump into retweeting a line from the fascist Italian dictator. And the ploy succeeded. When Chuck Todd pointed out that ”it is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep” is, indeed, a famous Mussolini quote, and asked if Trump knew that, Trump said: ”It’s OK to know it was Mussolini. Look, Mussolini was Mussolini. . .. It’s a very good quote. It’s a very interesting quote.” When Todd asked if Trump wanted to be associated with a fascist, Trump said, ”No, I want to be associated with interesting quotes.” He then pointed out he has millions of followers on social media, and that they appreciate his interesting posts. ”Hey, it got your attention, didn’t it?” Trump said."
"The Pentagon has opened all jobs across the military to women, including   posts in the infantry and special operations forces. The announcement in December came after a nearly   process, and with the acknowledgement that women had fought and died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Issue, That historic change has raised another historic question: Are women now facing the draft? The Short Answer, No. Congress would need to change the law that governs Selective Service in order to require women to register, and that hasn’t happened. Congress would also need to pass a law to restore the draft itself  —   a long shot, considering how unpopular it is. The debate is largely about symbolism and principle. The Long Answer, President Barack Obama has removed all past restrictions on military service, including by gay, lesbian and transgender troops who want to serve openly and women who qualify to join   combat units. The Pentagon’s admission of women to the infantry and other units sparked a debate in Washington over whether that meant women must also register to be drafted along with young men  —   and whether they might be called up involuntarily. Obama’s administration has not taken a position, citing the need to study the issue and at least two ongoing lawsuits in the federal court system. Those suits, by plaintiffs who challenged the ban on drafting women, could someday result in a ruling that might change Selective Service. The Supreme Court upheld the ban on registering women in 1981, citing the ban then in place on women in combat. With women now admitted, the court might opt to hear the new cases and it could issue a new ruling. For now, at least two top military commanders  —   Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller  —   have said they personally support registering and potentially drafting women. The debate in Washington spread to the 2016 presidential race. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, has said she’d need more information about a proposal to evaluate it. Her Democratic challenger, Bernie Sanders, so far hasn’t volunteered a position, nor has Republican candidate Donald Trump. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s view is nuanced. He supports requiring women to register with the Selective Service, but not drafting them into combat roles. ”The U. S. military is not an instrument for social experimentation,” his campaign website says. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, however, has been clear that he opposes registering and drafting women. He has used the issue to try to underscore his conservatism. ”We have had enough with political correctness, especially in the military,” he said during a New Hampshire town hall. ”Political correctness is dangerous. And the idea that we would draft our daughters to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in close combat, I think is wrong. It is immoral, and if I am president, we ain’t doing it.” The U. S. hasn’t drafted anyone since 1973. Although young men still must register when they turn 18, it would require an act of Congress to revive selective service, include women, or both. That means the current debate over the draft is mostly symbolic and highly political. Some advocates tie drafting women to larger issues of fairness in the United States, such as the 1970s debate over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. Since the Pentagon lifted its ban on women in combat, at least two members of Congress have sponsored a bill that would require women to register when they turn 18. Lawmakers may hold hearings about the issue, but few members of Congress have shown no eagerness to tackle the issue, anxious about difficult symbolic votes on an unpopular issue in an election year. Sources:"
"When you’re in a band with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, it’s got to be pretty tough to convince them that you should get to write songs too. But some of The Beatles’ most memorable tracks  —   ”Something,” ”Here Comes the Sun,” ”While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” ”Taxman” and others  —   were actually penned by ”the quiet one.” George Harrison died of cancer in 2001, and since then, his son, Dhani, has kept his father’s spirit alive in many ways. In 2014, he helped organize a charity tribute concert, just like his dad used to do, called George Fest: A Night to Celebrate the Music of George Harrison. It featured an eclectic mix of   like Brian Wilson, Norah Jones, The Flaming Lips and Cold War Kids  —   and this week, those performances were released as an album and concert film. Dhani Harrison spoke with NPR’s Eric Westervelt about how his relationship with his father grew into a relationship with music  —   and why it’s sometimes hard when your loved one belongs to everyone. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below. Eric Westervelt: Back in 2002, you mounted a different tribute in London  —   the Concert for George, which featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and many others. The stars who played George Fest feel more like your peers. Dhani Harrison: We never really got to do a tribute concert in America, per se, and we wanted to do a small club show  —   something where we could really get inside the songs and not have to be so rigid with sticking to the plan of how the original recordings were done. It’s sort of the   for George: a lot of deep tracks and a lot of young artists who’ve got really great takes on the songs themselves. Do the different interpretations of your dad’s music ever help you find any new insights into his work? Is there ever a moment when a song sort of reveals itself as something different than what you’d considered? You know, I specifically liked Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s version of ”The Art of Dying.” I didn’t realize that was like grunge until I saw BRMC play it I was like, ”Oh. This is a shoegazey grunge song!” They unlocked that song for me. Or, a thing that was really great was having female vocalists. Yeah, I really liked Norah Jones’ take on ”Something.” You reserved a few songs for yourself, including ”Savoy Truffle.” What do you like about that song? Apparently, it was all about a box of chocolates! Good News was the [brand] so: ”Coffee, dessert, yes, you know it’s good news.” It’s basically just my dad rattling off the names in there. Someone actually made us savoy truffles in a really nice box, which I’ve got sitting on my desk in my office. I imagine, as the child of a famous musician who is also his own musician, your relationship to your dad’s music could be complicated  —   but you seem to have embraced his musical legacy. What has that journey to his music been like for you? I guess I got lucky, because I got George Harrison! You know, it’s good music, and I’m honored to be a part of his legacy. And also, we made so much music together, and spent so much time in the studio at my house in Friar Park, in Henley where I grew up. The studio was directly below my bedroom, so my floor has rattled my whole life. I would always go downstairs and just see what was going on. I remember the Traveling Wilburys there. So, I was very comfortable in the studio, and I kind of grew up learning how to produce and play. For me, it was facilitated very much by my dad, and we were best friends, so spending a lot of time in the studio with him was natural. We were finishing a record together [when he died]. After he passed away, I got to work with Jeff Lynne, and I ended up finishing it with Jeff and kind of taking the role of my dad on, because there was no artist there to answer questions. That kind of left me in Los Angeles, and left me in a studio thinking, ”Well, that was the most fun thing that I could be doing.” So I kind of just carried on from there, making my own records and composing for film and TV. It just seemed like a logical step for me. How great to grow up in an ecosystem where music is naturally part of your everyday life. You come down for tea, and maybe Jeff Lynne or Eric Clapton is in the kitchen. And also, it offers you a different perspective on life to have these people around the house. It made going to school easier, because you wouldn’t take yourself so seriously. You’d come home and Bob Dylan would be there or something. The media image of your dad is of the spiritual, quiet Beatle who loved gardening, but we know it’s more nuanced and complicated than that. He also loved absurdity, and he helped fund the Monty Python movie Life of Brian. How do you keep his spirit alive for yourself while having to, in effect, share his legacy with the rest of the world? That is an interesting thing, actually. There’s times when you feel like this person’s getting taken away from you. Maybe you see them on an Apple billboard or something and you think, ”Oh. He belongs to everyone.” You know, you’ve just got to be quiet and go in the garden and meditate, and then you remember lots of other stuff that’s personal and deeper. But, yeah, when we released the Martin Scorsese documentary, there was a lot of press around that, and a lot of clips that people had edited together in their own way to make a little George Harrison compilation. That kind of weighs on your heart a little bit, and makes you feel disconnected. You just feel like everyone else. And it’s a hard thing to understand unless you’ve had a parent who’s passed away and who’s been in the public eye. Sometimes you don’t want to share them."
"Partial results from Iran’s elections on Friday indicate that   moderates will win all 30 of Tehran’s parliamentary seats  —   a victory for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and a blow to Iran’s  . Tehran’s delegation is only a fraction of Iran’s   parliament, and NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports that conservative representatives are likely to do well in other parts of the country  —   but the gains in the capital are significant. ”Initial returns gave 29 of Tehran’s 30 seats to reform and   candidates, with Gholamali   the only hardliner. Now Iranian state TV says he too appears to be losing his seat,” Peter reports from Tehran. Reformists seem poised to win those 30 seats despite many   candidates being disqualified from the election before voting began. Moderate voters hoped that a heavy turnout would allow their relatively small number of candidates to edge out   opponents  —   and in the capital, at least, the strategy appears to have worked. Moderate candidates also did well in Iran’s other election, for the Assembly of Experts, which will someday choose the next Supreme Leader of Iran. ”President Hassan Rouhani and former President Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, both of whom have been embraced by reformists, are the leading vote getters,” Peter says. The election is the first since last year’s landmark nuclear deal that required Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions. Rouhani promoted the deal, in the face of hardliner opposition. If the partial results hold and the moderates who supported the deal expand their presence in the legislature, the Associated Press writes, that could ”pave the way for increased economic openness and greater cooperation with the West on regional issues like the war against the Islamic State group.” The gains would be a sharp change in Iran’s parliament, the AP notes: ”Reformists currently hold fewer than 20 seats and have been virtually shut out of politics since losing their parliamentary majority in the 2004 elections.”"
"With apologies to Andy Williams, now is the most wonderful time of the year . .. for it is Girl Scout cookie season. But after plowing through several sleeves of Thin Mints, fatigue can set in. So we wondered, when you’re starting to feel sick of Girl Scout cookies, is there a way to rekindle the love? We turned to Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful podcast at WNYC studios, for advice. His book, Eat More Better, tackles this pressing public interest matter. He suggests mixing it up  —   quite literally, by baking a cheesecake crafted from a mashup of cookies. His recipes for Girl Scout Unity Cheesecake and Peanut Butter Cookie Centaur are excerpted below. Note: You might be puzzled to see some cookies listed with two names. As Pashman explains in his book, many Girl Scout cookies come with a bizarre naming convention: ”They actually have two different names, depending on which of two licensed bakers is manufacturing them. (Troops decide which baker to use. )” He writes: ”One baker (ABC Bakers) uses literal names that give the eater an idea of what’s inside  —   Caramel deLites, Peanut Butter Patties, Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Shortbreads. The other (Little Brownie Bakers) uses random words that communicate nothing  —   Samoas, Tagalongs,    Trefoils. (It’s not surprising that a company called ABC shows a greater reverence for language. )” If you unify a bunch of different Girl Scout cookies in a single cheesecake, it doesn’t matter what they’re called. It’s Girl Scout Cookie Unity Cheesecake. And it’s amazing. My friend Emily Konn of Vail Custom Cake, a passionate eater and professional pastry chef, makes the best cheesecake I’ve ever eaten. I asked her to create a cheesecake that uses as many types of Girl Scout cookies as possible. Crust, You will need: 8 tablespoons (  cup) unsalted butter, melted, 1 box     Butter Sandwiches, 1 sleeve Thin Mints, 1 sleeve   1 box   deLites, Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grind all cookies except Samoas in a food processor or blender, or put in a sealable plastic bag and crush with a mallet or rolling pin into a fine meal. Mix with butter by hand and press into a   springform pan. Make sure cookies are evenly distributed along the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Bake in oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately layer Samoas on crust so chocolate melts slightly and helps cookies stick to the crust. Let crust cool at room temperature for 15 minutes. Transfer to refrigerator and chill completely (about 1 hour). Chef’s note: This recipe accounts for at least two cookies being eaten out of each box during the cooking process. Filling, You will need: 24 ounces cream cheese,   cup sugar, 3 eggs, 1 cup heavy cream, 1 box   Butter Patties, cut into quarters, Soften cream cheese until it’s very mixable. You can even microwave it briefly on defrost until it starts to soften. Place cream cheese and sugar in a bowl. Use a mixer on   speed (with a paddle attachment if you have it) to beat the cream cheese and sugar together until cream cheese is smooth. Scrape sides of bowl. With mixer on medium speed, add eggs 1 at a time. When all eggs are added, continue to mix until thoroughly combined, about 2 minutes, scraping down the bowl twice. With mixer running on medium, gradually pour in heavy cream. Mix until just combined. (Do not overmix. If it starts to look thick like whipped cream, you overmixed.) Optional extra step: Strain it through a   strainer to remove lumps. This gives you more margin for error if you messed up your mixing. Pour mixture into cooled crust. Tap pan on counter to dislodge air pockets. Drop the Tagalongs evenly into the batter. Prepare a water bath in a pan big enough to hold your cake. Crush aluminum foil together to create an S that will hold up the cake above the water level. Place cake on top of foil and make sure it’s stable. Place in oven and pour water in pan just until it reaches the bottom of pan. If you go above the foil your crust will get soggy. Foil And Water Bath Technique, Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees, then lower temperature to 250 and continue to bake for an additional 60 to 90 minutes or until it’s firm and only the center of the cheesecake looks a little wet and wobbly (but not cracking). Let stand on rack on counter for a   then refrigerate for four hours or overnight. Here’s a simpler way to bring Girl Scout cookies together into something new. You’ll need Peanut Butter Sandwiches (aka   ) and Peanut Butter Patties (aka Tagalongs). Separate top and bottom cookies of the Peanut Butter Sandwich and focus attention on half with more peanut butter on it. Lay the Peanut Butter Patty cookie upside down on that half, so Patty’s peanut butter and Sandwich’s peanut butter are against each other and on the bottom half of the sandwich, facing tongueward, to capitalize on the Proximity Effect (Page TK in ”Physical Sciences”). Place other half of Sandwich cookie on top. Enjoy. Cheesecake recipe (and photo) by Emily Konn of Vail Custom Cake, text excerpted from Eat More Better by Dan Pashman."
"The Fillmore District of San Francisco was once known as the ”Harlem of the West” for its rich   culture and jazz roots. This week, the neighborhood’s beloved Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church may be forced to find a new home. ”The church is almost like going to Jerusalem or going to Mecca, so people pilgrim here from all over the globe,” says Archbishop Franzo Wayne King Sr. who   the church of John Coltrane devotees in 1969. The church went up as a way to worship the spiritual quality of Coltrane’s music, through what King calls the holy trinity of melody, harmony and rhythm. ”From the very beginning of the church, we wanted everybody to know about this evolved, transcendent being that came in this time and this age with a new testament message that wasn’t about division, and as Coltrane would say, ’living clean and doing right,’ ” King says. The city of San Francisco has told the congregation to vacate their small storefront building on Fillmore Street by Wednesday. But Archbishop King is trying to get the courts to stop the eviction and give his church time to settle charges of unpaid rent. He says gentrification has played a role pushing them and others out of the area. ”I think it’s about profit mainly,” King says. This week, Sunday services were held as usual, beginning with a guided meditation on Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Reverend King is trying to look on the bright side. He has plans to open a Coltrane university and study center that would be impossible at their small Fillmore Street storefront. Until then, he is calling on the city to protect the neighborhood institution. ”This is a global spiritual community. It belongs to the world,” King says. ”But San Francisco is the custodians of this. And officials in this city, from the supervisors to the mayor, should feel the responsibility to protect the house of a love supreme.”"
"Once every four years, people born on Feb. 29 actually get to celebrate their birthday. That’s right, Monday is leap day, the extra day added every fourth year to help fix the problem that while our calendar year is 365 days, the solar year  —   the amount of time it takes the Earth to circle the sun  —   is 365. 24219 days. NPR asked to hear from you leap babies about how you usually celebrate, and here’s what some of you said. Joel Strack from Orlando, Fla. Typically in a   year birthday scenario, I might go out to a local pub, and when it gets close to midnight, I’ll go into countdown mode  —   draw a little bit of attention towards myself and say, ”My birthday’s coming in four, three, two, one  —   oh, it’s over.” And then have a slug of beer. I’m really excited about my next leap year, because I’m going to be turning 15 and I’m going to throw myself a quinceañera. It’s going to be fabulous. Kate Bowen from Carlsbad, Calif. This year I’m due with my second child on the 29th. It was a big surprise to both of us. It’s pretty cool. So we figured that it is a one in 2. 1 million chance of mother and child both being born on leap day. I’m really ready for this baby to come out, so Monday is looking like the perfect day for that to happen. Emily Clayton from Austin, Texas, Usually on my   year birthdays I just do a casual dinner. But this year, since I’ll be turning 6, I’m having a ’  party at a roller rink. You have to go big because you only get a birthday every four years. Peter Campbell from New York City via South Africa, I like to traditionally celebrate my leap year birthday on the years where there is no leap year by having a   birthday festival. I normally celebrate my leap year birthdays by having a party in the style of the age that I’m turning. In this case, 8. Last time, we had a bouncy castle with lawn games, balloons and streamers and all behaved like we were 7 years old. Charlotte Massey from Leavenworth, Wash. now at Middlebury College, I usually celebrate my birthday by having a normal birthday party, usually it’s themed after something that I’m interested in at the time. But because it’s a leap year, I’m celebrating the same way that I did when I was 5, which was a princess and   birthday party. Susan Whitford from Dover, N. H. I sing in a   women’s chorus in Portsmouth, N. H. and if your birthday falls on a rehearsal night  —   which this Monday will be  —   the 200 women in my chorus will sing me ”Happy Birthday” while I stand in front of the whole group. And having had it happen once before in the 20 years that I’ve belonged to the chorus, it’s amazing to have 200 people sing just to you. Lisa Clark Ashworth from Belmont, N. C. When I turned 15, years ago in North Carolina, I went to get my driver’s permit at the DMV on Feb. 28 because there was no 29th. And they would not allow me to get my driver’s permit that day. So they forced me to come back . .. on the next day, on March 1. Judy Lange, a retired schoolteacher from Paragould, Ark. I’m going to actually be sweet 16 this year. . .. Especially teaching school it’s been really unique, because the kids go home and say ”I have a teacher that’s younger than me.”"
"With every state that voted in February, the contours of the 2016 presidential election changed. Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada all transformed the landscape in both parties. On Saturday night, in South Carolina, the Earth moved once again. Hillary Clinton won, as expected, but the breadth and depth of her victory were breathtaking. She prevailed by more than 47 percentage points in the most populous state to vote thus far, winning by more than twice the margin of her loss to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire on Feb. 9. Now, with Super Tuesday’s raft of states and trove of delegates just two days away, the nominating season has taken distinct shape in both parties, and it has done so far faster than seemed possible a week ago. Clinton won by   numbers among   who preferred her by    over Sanders. But she also carried the white vote, the male vote (by   ) and the vote of those who called themselves ”very liberal” (a group that had been Sanders’ home turf.) Sanders carried those under 30, as usual, but by less than 10 points  —   a far more modest margin than in previous contests. Sanders also won among those who called themselves independents, who cast just 16 percent of the vote here according to exit polls. Clinton won by    among   Democrats. Beyond the numbers, Clinton seized the moment to deliver what may have been the best speech of her career as a candidate. Halting at first, feeling her way with the   crowd, Clinton sometimes seemed to compete with their waves of cheers and applause. But after several minutes she found her rhythm, repeating the line she has lived on in recent days  —   her solidarity with the man who beat her in this primary eight years ago. ”I don’t think President Obama gets the credit he deserves for digging us out of the ditch Republicans put us in,” Clinton proclaimed. The crowd roared, as well it should. Exit polls said 70 percent of those voting in this primary wanted Obama’s successor to continue his policies. At turns, Clinton was exultant and grateful, ebullient and gracious. She was generous to Sanders, who had all but openly given up on South Carolina in the final days in pursuit of better ground in other states. But she also seemed to look past her intraparty rival, taking a turn toward the general election and a prospective Republican opponent. She said after tonight her campaign was ”going national,” and she made pointed reference to Republican   Donald Trump’s campaign themes and style. ”Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again,” Clinton crowed. ”America has never stopped being great. But we do need to make American whole again.” Clinton also made it clear she was ready to incorporate much of Sanders’ populist,   Street theme into her own campaign. She said ”more dreams die in the parking lots of banks than anywhere else” and promised to break the power of big money in politics and the economy. Sanders has said Clinton has too often been complicit in both. Sanders, in perhaps a symbolic moment, had issued a concession statement minutes after the polls closed from a plane flying to Minnesota and lacking a   connection. Landing in Minnesota, he learned the parameters of his defeat, and learned the Minneapolis Star Tribune had endorsed Clinton. ”In politics, on a given night, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,” Sanders told reporters. ”Tonight, we lost. I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her very strong victory. Tuesday, over 800 delegates are at stake, and we intend to win many, many of them.” Critics may argue that South Carolina is overrated as a test of candidates’ strength, especially in the Democratic Party. The outright majority of   among Democrats utterly dominates this statewide intraparty contest from start to finish. That sets the state apart, and some would say it is as unrepresentative of the country, as a whole, as Iowa or New Hampshire (where the number of black voters is negligible.) South Carolina might also be called an outlier in its lack of younger voters and other potential targets for Sanders. It must be said as well that Democrats rarely win this state in November (Jimmy Carter was the last in 1976.) Nonetheless, the great advantage the Palmetto State has shown over the other   states to the north and west is its proven ability to influence the outcome of subsequent Southern primaries on Super Tuesday. Iowa and New Hampshire exert their influence primarily as magnets for the media in the months before the voting begins. South Carolina is better at predicting and triggering the vote of the states that follow  —   on the single biggest voting day of the nominating season. Most of the states voting Tuesday are below the   Line, and Clinton was already leading in them before South Carolina. In Georgia and Alabama,   make up more than half the Democratic electorate. In Texas, Tennessee, Virginia and Arkansas, black voters are a smaller but still pivotal fraction of the party. In each case, they are more numerous than in Nevada, where they propelled Clinton’s caucus win on Feb. 20. What cue will these black voters take from South Carolina, where 60 percent of the voters were   and more than 80 percent of their votes went to Clinton? One additional factor is the amazing loyalty to Clinton among older black voters. Exit polls produced this extraordinary statistic: Clinton got 96 percent of the vote among   aged 65 or more. In the next few days, Sanders is expected to visit Oklahoma and Colorado, where he remains competitive on Super Tuesday, while concentrating on the more promising ground of Minnesota, Massachusetts, where he has a good chance to win, and his home state of Vermont, where he has a prohibitive lead. Sanders is also expected to make a spirited fight of the March 8 primary in Michigan. But after several weeks in which Sanders seemed to have closed the credibility gap and become a true competitor for the nomination,    losses in Nevada and South Carolina have renewed questions about his viability. Is he in fact running for the nomination, or is he running to secure a place of honor and a featured speaking slot at the convention in Philadelphia in July? It’s possible we will know much more about that in the next few days."
"It’s not often that Hollywood loses one of its great icons  —   an icon whose career spans decades and runs a gamut of some of America’s   films. From Grease to Terminator 2, from Roadblock to Gone in 60 Seconds, the unlikely star never became a legend despite never really getting top billing. ”It’s not the lead character,” says Dan Koeppel, a Los   author who writes about transportation. ”It plays a supporting role, and that’s what it should be doing.” The icon, of course, is not an actor at all. It’s a bridge: the Sixth Street Bridge, also known as the Sixth Street Viaduct, in LA. And it’s getting torn down, thanks to a kind of concrete cancer called   which is causing too many cracks and crumbles. The bridge was one moderate earthquake away from collapse, according to the California Department of Transportation. Its demolition, which is slated to occur in stages, began on Feb. 5. With its swooping metal arches, and its concrete art deco base it’s hard to forget it once you’ve seen it. Built in 1932, the Sixth Street Bridge really owes its story to the early 1900s. The Los Angeles River would occasionally flood, and when it did, it would wash away homes and lives. After wooden bridges failed, city fathers decided to build 12 concrete bridges all connecting to downtown. ”Those are all beautiful art deco bridges, different themes,” Koeppel says, ”and the Sixth Street Bridge is the jewel of them all.” The river bed underneath the bridge was eventually paved to control flooding. That concrete also beckoned Hollywood, making the bridge much easier for film crews to access. No one really knows the first film that made the bridge famous, but one that comes to mind is the 1951 film noir Roadblock. ”That scene has an amazing ending,” Koeppel recalls. ”If you look at the still frame, there’s a body in the river, two police cars, and the silhouette  —   the extremely hourglass silhouette  —   of the femme fatale is walking off into the distance.” Even the mayor of Los Angeles has some personal memories tied to the bridge. ”I can remember walking underneath the bridge as a kid with my sister and my father and just kind of looking up amazed,” Mayor Eric Garcetti says. He says change is hard for any city. ”People are letting go little by little, and I think the real feeling is one of nostalgia, sadness,” he says. ”But there’s legitimately simultaneity a tremendous amount of excitement.” The new Sixth Street Viaduct is scheduled to be completed in 2019."
"”Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve been trying to reconcile constructivist aesthetics and fascist metaphysics. ..lucidity and violence. ..and the endless implications of that dichotomy.” That’s Mark Leyner, ladies and gentlemen. One of the best, the brightest, the weirdest and the most influential modern writers of, say, 1996. Who once shared a stage (a   set, actually, on the Charlie Rose show) with David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen and didn’t just hold his own, but schooled them both on the futility of seriousness and the seriousness of sentence structure. He’s the man who wrote My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (in 1990) which blew the minds of anyone who was in the right place to run across the book and the right age and temperament to have their minds blown. I was, absolutely, of that age and temperament. He wrote Et Tu, Babe a couple years later, and I Smell Esther Williams after that  —   both of which were just as   crazy and just as ridiculously beautiful on a    basis. He disappeared for a while. Came back. And now, this. ”I think I’m sort a sort of weird composite of   heedlessness and crippling hyperanxiety  —   I mean, I’ve taken LSD before a root canal, but I’m equally capable of calling the police and area hospitals if my wife is even five minutes late coming home from a pedicure, so. ..” Gone With The Mind is Leyner’s new novel. A novel that is, by turns, autobiographical, fictional, touching and just   insane. It takes the form of a writer named Mark Leyner giving a reading in a mall food court  —   one to which no one has shown up except for two   employees on their break, and Mark’s mom, who arranged the reading and drove him there. Who begins the book with a long, rambling, introduction, transcribed verbatim (as is everything else that happens  —   there is no narrator, just some passing, italicized notes that read almost like stage directions) and run on forever. So long that you get that it’s a joke, then get annoyed by the joke, then come to a place of grudging respect for the author for his commitment to the gag, then get annoyed all over again. And then it ends. Then Mark’s opening remarks begin. He tells the story of the writing of his autobiography, Gone With The Mind, which was originally going to be done in the form of a videogame  —   a   shooter with Benito Mussolini as the player’s     —   and then became something else entirely. He talks about the hallucination who helped him write the book (the Imaginary Intern, brought to life one day from a pattern of cracks in the bathroom tile and who Mark grew to love) and the various ways the two of them spent their time (playing videogames, watching Lifetime movies, watching internet porn) and relates 10, 000 stories from his childhood (some or all of which may or may not be true) all while constantly promising to the audience of empty chairs, his mom and two   workers, that at any moment the reading itself is actually going to begin. Except that it never does. Gone With The Mind is novelistic  . It’s filling this imaginary headspace —  this world within the world —  with robots and ghosts, with memories of summers at the Jersey Shore and the   girl who gave him his first handjob, long digressions on the eroticism of the female armpit, and. ..you get the idea. ”If I were ever asked to give a commencement speech,” Leyner writes, as Mark Leyner, ”I’d say basically, they’re all gonna laugh at you. Life is pretty much like Carrie’s prom. So. ..stay secret.” I loved the thing. All of it. Or anyway, 90% of it. It is looping and   alternately bonkers and manic and depressive. The same stories repeat again and again, looked at from different angles. And it ends with a promised QA section, but even that takes place in a women’s bathroom stall, exclusively between Mark and his mom, that reads almost heartbreakingly sweet. Weird and heartfelt both at the same time. Which there should be a word for, but there isn’t, so I’m making up one of my own: Weirdfelt. Because that’s what Gone With The Mind truly is. The most Weirdfelt book I have read in a long time. Jason Sheehan is an   a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book."
"Two composers and a songwriter walk into a bar. That’s not the start of a joke it’s the start of a band. Keefus Ciancia has composed for the TV shows True Detective and The Fall. David Holmes is a DJ, producer, and the man behind the score of the Ocean’s 11 franchise. And Jade Vincent is a songwriter with a sultry voice, who sang at the   saloon where the three musicians began their collaboration. Guilty of Love, the trio’s debut album as Unloved, is out Friday. ”To me, a lot of things are discovered in dark places,” Vincent says. ”I’m not a   person, but when you hear music like that, you go to the deep end and see what happens. Some of the songs are journal entries, because I write all the time. So I would know exactly where to go to when I would hear the music.” Holmes agrees that the lyrics can be gloomy  —   but that’s not the whole story. ”As kind of dark and twisted, sometimes, the lyrics may be,” he says, ”they’re quite uplifting, as well. There’s actually hope in there.” Jade Vincent and David Holmes spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin about the fateful night that brought them together and the inspiration they draw from ’60s musicians. Hear their conversation at the audio link."
"The biggest group of voters politicians will have to woo this November are the ones who often don’t get a say in which candidates make it to the general election ballot. Turned off by the partisan wars in Washington, 39 percent of voters now identify themselves as independent rather than affiliated with one of the two major political parties, according to a 2014 analysis by the Pew Research Center.   Democrats accounted for 32 percent of the electorate, Republicans 23 percent. That’s a big shift from as recently as 2004, when the electorate was nearly evenly divided into thirds by the three groups. But many states require voters to affiliate with a party in order to take part in presidential primaries and caucuses. NPR checked in with several member station reporters to see what the rise of independent voters means in different parts of the country. Colorado: Young Voters Flex Political Muscles, Colorado’s more than 1 million officially unaffiliated voters now outnumber Republicans and Democrats in the state. Both parties have about 900, 000 registered voters. Many are under the age of 35, the millennial generation. Colorado has the    millennial population in the country, and, by far, the most as a proportion of the population of any swing state. To get a sense of their political power, consider the fact that more Republicans voted in the 2012 elections than Democrats. Republican Mitt Romney should have been the favorite, ”but as it was, the unaffiliated probably washed out that difference and then created the winning margin for Obama,” said Judd Choate, who runs the elections division for the Colorado secretary of state’s office. That winning margin was thanks in part to voters like Sara Heisdorffer. The    lives in the Denver suburb of Westminster. Like many of her friends, neither the Democratic nor the Republican party interests her. ”People my age will hate me for saying this,” said Heisdorffer. ”But it’s kind of that special snowflake thing that millennials get crap for all the time I think.” Neither party aligns with Heisdorffer’s views, which she describes as socially liberal and fiscally moderate. Like many unaffiliated voters, however, she’s not necessarily independent and generally votes for Democrats. It’s a   pattern to see younger voters of any generation not identify with political parties. ”Younger people tend to be less likely to affiliate with parties than older people,” said Jocelyn Kiley, a researcher with the Pew Research Center. But ”this is as pronounced as it’s ever been.” Millennials are shunning political parties at an even greater rate than previous generations did, in part due to political dysfunction. ”People give some of the most negative ratings of either party that we’ve seen in the last 20 years,” said Kiley. But these trends may be changing this election. Since September, 30, 535 voters have registered with the Colorado Democratic party. That includes voters such as Curtis Haverkamp, who attended a Bernie Sanders rally a few months back. At the rally, he learned unaffiliated voters like him couldn’t participate in the caucus. ”Upon hearing that, I registered Democrat,” recalled the    Haverkamp, who lives in Denver. Both the Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns have been on voter registration drives here, so it’s not clear yet who this spike in Democratic registration will favor. But Haverkamp says either way, the day after the caucus, he’ll switch back to being unaffiliated.   Ben Markus, Colorado Public Radio, Florida: Puerto Ricans Opt Out Of Party System, In the packed parking lot of a supermarket in the central Florida city of Kissimmee, Jeamy Ramirez and her staff pace toward customers with clipboards in hand, trying to register new voters. Half the population of this growing area are Latino and native Spanish speakers. ”We got a lot of people from Colombia, Venezuela  —   but most are Puerto Rican right now,” said Ramirez, a canvasser with Mi Familia Vota, a voting advocacy group. In the past year, thousands of Puerto Ricans have left the struggling island for central Florida, and they’re the   group of independent voters in this crucial swing state, according to an analysis of voter registration data from the Florida secretary of state’s office. New Puerto Rican arrivals find that moving to Florida means being able to vote for president, something that’s not possible on the island, and adjusting to a completely different political system. ”They don’t know a lot of the candidates. They start seeing the debates and all that stuff. That’s why they put no party affiliation,” said Ramirez. But many newcomers keep their focus on politics in Puerto Rico. ”They pay attention to politics on the news. It is an   topic of conversation. It is a cultural event of sorts,” said Carlos Vargas Ramos, a researcher at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at the City University of New York Hunter College. Here in the U. S. Puerto Ricans discover there are more frequent elections that are often less competitive. Ramos says other barriers to voting are language, voter registration requirements and a general feeling of distance from the political process. But even Puerto Ricans who have been here a long time choose to stay out of the party system. Luz Maria Sanchez, who is 69, hasn’t been registered with a political party for 25 years, even though the state’s closed primary keeps independents from deciding who’ll make it on the November ballot. But Sanchez said she’s not missing out. ”They say things just to win the candidate. Republicans, they say they’re going to fix the country and Democrats, they follow almost the same, but they go the other way around,” said Sanchez. Back in the parking lot, Jeamy Ramirez hopes that even if Puerto Ricans don’t vote in next month’s primary, they’ll turn out in November when Florida is likely to be a key swing state. ”We can decide right now the presidential election,” said Ramirez.   Renata Sago, WMFE, Orlando, Fla. Arizona: Independent Voters Try To Organize, It may sound like an oxymoron, but Arizona’s unaffiliated, independent voters are organizing themselves and banding together. Independents are now the largest voting group in the state, and that trend is only growing. For the past three years, the number of voters registering or   as independent has outpaced new Republican and Democratic registrations combined. But the last voter registration period that ended Feb. 22 was different. The number of independents in Arizona dropped slightly. That’s likely because unaffiliated voters can’t participate in Arizona’s upcoming presidential primary, and some independents chose a party for that reason. The rule that excludes independents from the presidential primary is just one example of what independents here find to be unfair about the state’s voting system. Now this growing group of voters wants more rights at the polls, and they are trying to change that through   pressure. Patrick McWhortor of the group Open Primaries organized a phone ”town hall” last month for independent voters that nearly 13, 000 people called into to discuss these efforts. ”Independent voters, now 37 percent of all Arizona registered voters, are treated like   citizens,” said McWhortor at the start of the meeting. He discussed his group’s efforts to get two election reform initiatives on the November ballot. One would make a single primary election with every candidate on the same ballot. The top two candidates would advance regardless of party affiliation. The initiative would also reduce current barriers for independents running for office. Deb   a    retired accountant in Tempe, became interested in independent voting rights issues after she realized that she would not be able to vote in Arizona’s March 22 presidential primary unless she   again with a party. She had previously been registered as a Republican. ”I think that no one should have to choose a party to vote in America,”   said. ”So I went looking to see if there were any other organizations arguing against what’s going on.” In addition to the Open Primaries group,   also discovered Independent Voters for Arizona, a campaign focused on opening the presidential primary to independents that she now volunteers for. The group got more than 30, 000 people to sign a letter to party leaders asking them to open the primary. So far those calls have not been heeded, and the primaries will remain closed this year. Timothy Castro, who runs Independent Voters for Arizona, argues it’s not fair to exclude Arizona’s 1. 2 million voters from a presidential primary paid for with taxpayer dollars. ”If we are paying for something we aren’t allowed to vote in, then let us vote in it, or don’t make me pay for it,” Castro said. In fact, independents may have more luck getting out of paying for the primary in future years rather than actually voting in it. A bill making its way through the Arizona Legislature would make political parties  —   not taxpayers  —   pick up the tab for presidential primaries starting in 2020. The bill is backed by the secretary of state’s office. If the bill succeeds, it will still leave independent voters to find a way into future presidential primaries here.   Jude   KJZZ, Phoenix"
"Oh, you didn’t hear? Turns out Friday was our birthday. On that day, precisely 46 years ago, this little organization of ours was incorporated under the name National Public Radio. Yes, we’re aware already that your gift must be in the mail. (Right?) And yes, thank you, we are easing into our middle age with charm and aplomb. (Ahem  —   right?) At any rate, we were also blown away by the love you all showed us on Facebook and Twitter. So much so, in fact, that we wanted to do a little something for you in return. In the course of your comments to us, many of you shared your favorite NPR stories and driveway moments. Many of these notes jogged our own memory on some things, prompting us to dig back into our archives to find the moments you found special. As a little thank you for this outpouring of love, we rooted around in those archives to find some of the stories you mentioned. Scroll on to find a few of those favorites  —   in your own words (sent on Facebook)  —   and click on the hyperlinks to read the stories you recommended. ”One April 1 I listened to a story about exploding maple trees in Maine. The cause supposedly was built up pressure caused by untapped syrup. I was appalled and frightened. I immediately began to tell friends of this great danger. . .. 24 hours later I learned that NPR had pranked everyone with an April’s Fool joke. Just goes to show how much credibility the reports of NPR have had and how tongue in cheek it also can be.” ”I’ll never forget Melissa Block covering the earthquake in China and it was so emotional that even she broke down briefly with grieving parents. She’s a fantastic reporter and I appreciated her even more in that moment because it made it real for me in my Illinois driveway. I was there crying in China for a moment, too.” ”I’m an 8th grade teacher and on my way to work on Friday mornings I look forward to 7:25 am pst to listen to StoryCorps. Such a beautiful and powerful show. Depending on the content, I then share the episode with my students and they love it! PS THANK YOU FOR STORYCORPS ANIMATION! !!!” ”Happy Birthday NPR and thanks for what you do. I will never forget Jason Beaubien reporting live from Haiti following the earthquake, when he broke down. I’ve never felt more enmeshed in a story. Still gives me chills.” ”My favorite NPR memory is the time that my interview was featured on a broadcast on the falling fuel prices around the holidays. There’s a ridiculous thrill to hearing your own voice on the radio.” ”Most recently, the story about the Challenger engineer who tried to stop the launch. I was late to teach a yoga class because I was riveted by that man’s pain, and sent love, light, and forgiveness to him. On my way to teach that same class this week, I heard the   story, where his darkness has been lifted and he has gained a measure of peace. I’ll never forget what you did for Bob Ebeling.”"
"Washington was actually talking about someone other than Donald Trump on Monday, and that someone was not another presidential candidate. It was Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. People were talking about Thomas because Thomas was talking. In the Supreme Court chamber, during oral arguments, the    Thomas asked multiple questions. There might seem to be nothing out of the ordinary in that, except that Thomas had gone since February 2006 hearing hundreds of oral arguments without asking a single question. Thomas has not been entirely silent all these years. He has occasionally read a decision or a dissent from the bench, and he cracked a joke in open court that was widely noted in 2013. He is known to give speeches or interviews from time to time. He read a passage from the Book of Romans at the funeral of his friend, ally and fellow Justice Antonin Scalia nine days ago. But he has not taken part in the oral arguments that are a feature of the court’s handling of important cases. Thomas actually passed the   mark of silence during oral arguments earlier in the month. But that moment was largely overlooked amid the coverage and controversy surrounding Scalia’s death. There was no apparent link between Scalia’s sudden death and Thomas’ renewed interest in questioning attorneys before the court. But Scalia had been known for reviving the tradition of a lively and   dialogue with attorneys presenting their oral arguments. Scalia, and other justices in turn, had taken to interrupting the presenters, pitching difficult questions and challenging the reasoning behind the responses. Thomas had not joined in these exchanges until today. And by doing so today, with not one but a series of nine inquiries, he naturally provoked speculation. The case that brought him into the verbal fray involved the interpretation of a law addressing domestic violence. The law bars someone found guilty of spousal abuse from owning a gun. Thomas said that appeared to suspend an individual’s rights under the Second Amendment, a portion of the Constitution that has been a special interest for him for years. Thomas has been on the high court since President George H. W. Bush appointed him to fill the seat of Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1991. Marshall and Thomas are the only two   to serve on the nation’s highest court. Thomas was confirmed by the Senate after two sets of closely watched hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The second round of hearings was prompted by allegations of sexual harassment by a former colleague named Anita Hill. The full Senate’s confirmation vote was   and the controversy became part of the 1992 campaign for president and for seats in the Senate."
"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas drew gasps on Monday when he asked several questions during oral arguments. Thomas, who hadn’t asked a question since Feb. 22, 2006, broke 10 years of near silence during a case, Voisine v. U. S. involving a federal law preventing people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from owning firearms. The justices were hearing appeals from two Maine men who say their guilty pleas for hitting their partners should not disqualify them from gun ownership. The hourlong session was coming to a close when Thomas leaned forward and spoke into the microphone to ask Justice Department lawyer Ilana Eisenstein whether a misdemeanor conviction of any other law ”suspends a constitutional right,” The Associated Press reports. The news service adds: ”During the first 50 minutes of the argument, most of the justices appeared to favor the government’s position that even reckless acts of domestic assault fall under the law. Thomas did not pose questions to Virginia Villa, the lawyer arguing on behalf of the two men. ”But Thomas peppered Eisenstein with several questions about Second Amendment gun rights, a topic no other justice had asked about. He noted that the law allows someone convicted of a misdemeanor assault charge to get a lifetime ban on possessing a gun ’which at least as of now results in suspension of a constitutional right.’ ” Thomas has been criticized in the past for failing to engage during oral arguments. The New York Times writes: ”Justice Thomas’s explanations for his disengagement from this aspect of the court’s work have varied, but he seems to have settled on one in recent years. It is simply discourteous, he says, to pepper lawyers with questions. ” ’I think it’s unnecessary in deciding cases to ask that many questions, and I don’t think it’s helpful,’ he said at Harvard Law School in 2013. ’I think we should listen to lawyers who are arguing their cases, and I think we should allow the advocates to advocate.’ ” Thomas’ 10 years of silence from the bench does come with an asterisk. In 2013, he cracked a joke  —   four words  —   which was interpreted as a   jab at his alma mater, Yale."
"For decades massive,   coal mines have been feeding the country’s appetite for energy. Once coal companies are done with the land, they’re supposed to restore it. But as America’s coal industry declines, it may not have the funding to keep its cleanup promises. Restoring a mine to its original state is an elaborate and expensive process, one that some say makes the land better than before. The coal companies, however, often don’t have to set aside money for future cleanup processes thanks to a provision called ” ”  —   an assurance for companies to pay for reclamation based only on their financial health.   Alpha Natural Resources, a coal company with mines in Appalachia and Wyoming, declared bankruptcy in August. Operations still continue at the company’s Wyoming mines, and regulators estimate it would cost over $400 million to clean up those sites once mining is complete. But Alpha was approved to ensure its cleanup costs with  . ”A   isn’t much more than a wink and a promise,” says Clark   director of energy finance at Sightline Institute, a   think tank that focuses on sustainability. ”A promise that . .. when the time comes, you’ll be good for it.” But some of these companies may no longer be good for it. Federal regulations require that a company pass a test of financial strength to qualify for   although some companies have been approved despite their questionable financial status. In September, a second major company, Arch Coal, was reapproved to   and filed for bankruptcy four months later. ”So then that raises the question, who is going to pay for cleanup? Is it going to be you and me? It is going to be the general public? Is it going to be adjacent landowners?”   says. These questions extend far beyond the Powder River Basin.   of Wyoming’s cleanup costs are  . In Colorado, North Dakota, Indiana and Texas  —   in each state  —   it’s more than half. Greg Conrad, executive director of the Interstate Mining Compact Commission, says he doesn’t sense that there is a huge crisis yet. ”I think we’re still trying to get a handle on that,” he says. ”What I will say is that it doesn’t appear that the sky is falling.” Conrad says regulators might hesitate to make coal companies put real money aside for fear that the additional expense could put them out of business, thus bringing mining and ongoing reclamation to a halt. In some states, coal is crucial for revenue, funneling in money for school construction, jobs and a way of life. Conrad said for all those reasons, regulators are wary to ”push that button.” ”We don’t want that scenario. We just don’t want to go there,” he says. It’s a complex issue full of lawyers, Chapter 11 filings, and corporate press releases. But on the ground, in coal communities, reclamation matters. Dave Edwards and his son Kean are ranchers near Gillette, Wyo. who lease reclaimed land from a coal company to graze their cattle. They live right across the road from a coal mine and have watched it grow from the day it was built. Dave Edwards also works on reclamation himself. The reclaimed land blends in with the rest of the prairie but is slightly flatter and more manicured, resembling a golf course. The Edwardses expect the reclamation will continue. Someday, Dave Edwards says, the ground will be grazed by livestock and wildlife. ”Mule deer, rabbits, sage grouse. Bald eagles will be roaming and hunting these areas. Hopefully my grandkids are watching all of it,” he says. But for the moment, predicting the future for coal cleanup is nearly impossible. Wyoming has over $2 billion in reclamation costs backed by   and right now, the coal industry is showing no sign of a comeback. This story was reported with Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focusing on America’s energy issues."
"Researchers are working furiously to determine if the Zika virus now spreading in Latin America is responsible for a spike in cases in   syndrome, a condition that can cause temporary paralysis. But a paper published today in The Lancet argues that a link can already be established. The paper looks at an outbreak of Zika in the islands of French Polynesia in 2013, when   of the 270, 000 population was infected in a period of about six months. Most of them had no symptoms at all. Some experienced mild symptoms  —   fever, rash, muscle pain, conjunctivitis. But nearly 50 people experienced an unsettling aftermath. A few days after the fever cleared up, they became partially paralyzed. The diagnosis:   syndrome. ”We have evidence that Zika is the cause of   syndrome in those patients and that was not known before,” says Dr. Arnaud Fontanet, a medical epidemiologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He’s an author on the paper. In it, researchers in Paris, Glasgow and Papeete, Tahiti, call for Zika virus to be added to the list of infections that can cause   syndrome. In a typical year, French Polynesia would see between 3 and 10 cases of   syndrome (GBS). During the Zika outbreak, 42 patients were diagnosed with GBS in the span of four months. Fontanet and his   believe that the Zika virus, like other bacteria and viruses, had prompted the patients’ immune systems to attack their own nerves. The patients spent on average one month in the intensive care unit, some connected to ventilators to help them breathe. Luckily, they all lived. And within three months of falling ill, most of the patients were again able to walk on their own. Doctors in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname and El Salvador are now reporting the same neurological condition in increasing numbers. (Like microcephaly in babies, the condition is considered possibly linked with Zika virus.) To ferret out the link, Fontanet and his colleagues tested blood samples that clinicians at the Hospital Center of French Polynesia had collected from the 42 patients. They also pulled out about 170 more blood samples, which divided into two control groups: patients who had come to the hospital with Zika symptoms which didn’t develop neurological complications, and people who had come to the hospital who had no signs of Zika. ”We compared all three groups  —   those who had   syndrome, those who were representative of the general population and those who had Zika infection without neurological complications,” says Fontanet. The scientists confirmed that all of the patients with   syndrome had neutralizing antibodies against the virus and 88 percent had experienced   symptoms about a week before coming down with GBS. That was significantly higher than in both control groups. The clues are ”actually quite strong in telling us that this was Zika virus that caused the   syndrome in those patients,” says Fontanet. There was another question. Had these people contracted   syndrome because they’d had a combination of dengue and Zika viruses, either simultaneously or one after the other? So Fontanet and his colleagues tested the patients’ blood for antibodies against dengue. If dengue was in any way involved in causing   syndrome, they would expect to find a higher rate of dengue infection in the group with GBS than in the other groups. ”We found the same proportion of patients with past infection with dengue in the three groups,” he says. So, they conclude, having been infected with dengue in addition to Zika is not likely to have a hand in causing the neurological illness. Based on those findings, the authors conclude that Zika looks very much as if it has a hand in causing   syndrome in a small fraction of people infected with Zika virus. But there are still fuzzy areas, like how exactly the virus causes   syndrome. ”Is the evidence conclusive? The answer is, it hasn’t reached that stage as yet, but it’s strongly suggestive. I think it’s very likely that [Zika] causes   syndrome,” says Dr. David Smith, a clinical virologist at the University of Western Australia who was not involved with the study. The study is small, he points out, since (thankfully) there weren’t many cases. The current outbreak may solidify the connection. ”We don’t know everything we need to know yet to understand exactly why this appears to be happening and whether it’s any worse in the Americas than anywhere else, and if it is worse, why that might be the case,” Smith adds. Some unusual hints from French Polynesia could guide such research questions. Fontanet says it usually takes a week or two from the point where someone first experiences tingling and numbness to when they’re in the intensive care unit. With the patients in French Polynesia with Zika, he says, ”It was only four days.” The speedy onset could indicate that, unlike   syndrome triggered by Campylobacter or respiratory illnesses, the Zika virus might work more like polio, infecting the nerves themselves rather than inducing the immune system to attack them. On the positive side, Fontanet says, ”Once [the patients] went through the acute phase, they recovered faster compared to typical patients with   syndrome. After three months, 57 percent of them were able to walk without assistance, and that is better than what is usually seen with   syndrome.” Usually, up to 20 percent of patients remain severely disabled and about 5 percent die. The patients in French Polynesia all survived. If Fontanet’s assertion proves to be true, it’s unclear how frequently Zika virus might cause GBS in an infected population. But it’s rare. ”The experience in French Polynesia suggests that the risk of getting   syndrome following Zika infection is about one in 4, 000,” says Hugh Willison, a clinical neurologist at the University of Glasgow, who sees area patients all the time and was also involved in the research. That’s comparable to the risk from other viruses and bacteria that can trigger the condition. The looming question, he says, is what might cause such a nasty turn from what is usually an innocuous infection. ”For the vast majority of people who develop Zika virus infection,   syndrome isn’t something they need to be concerned about because the risk of it developing is small,” says Willison. ”However, if you have a million people infected with Zika, you’re going to see a lot of cases of   syndrome.”   patients often need intensive medical care for extended hospital stays. At the peak of a large outbreak of Zika, they could overwhelm hospitals. ”I think it’s important for the countries where the epidemic is now active to secure intensive care beds for managing all the patients who have   syndrome,” says Fontanet, ”because at a certain time close to the peak of the epidemic, they may be saturated.”"
"Every morning since I arrived in Brazil to cover the Zika outbreak, the first thing I do is douse myself with insect repellent before venturing outside. I know the chances I’ll catch Zika are pretty low, and the disease tends to be relatively mild for most healthy adult males. But with all the alarm about the virus, it’s hard not to start to get a little paranoid about catching Zika from a mosquito. Nevertheless, as I was wandering through   neighborhoods to talk with women who had babies with birth defects that may have been caused by the virus, and doctors trying to help them, I found myself with an odd impulse: I started to want to actually get close to the mysterious Zika virus  —   to see it somehow. So I visited the biggest scientific laboratory nearby  —   the FIOCRUZ research center in Recife, Brazil. There, I met Lindomar Pena, a virologist, one of hundreds of scientists in Brazil and around the world who are racing to learn as much as they can about the once obscure virus. Pena agreed to introduce me to the Zika virus. ”We have this cryopreservation room,” Pena said as he led me into a cramped room filled with huge freezers. He pulled open the door to one freezer, snapped on a rubber glove and slid out a cardboard box covered in frost. ”In each box we have cryovials,” he said. There were dozens of these tiny plastic vials with orange caps. Each contained millions of samples of the virus obtained from human blood, semen, urine and spinal fluid, he said. I asked him if it’s dangerous to handle the virus. ”No, it is not,” he assured me. ”The virus is transmitted mainly by mosquito bite.” He quickly added: The lab is taking ”extra caution” because the ”routes of transmission” remain somewhat unclear. ”We know that the main route of transmission is through insect bite. But there are other possible routes, like sexual routes. So we still don’t know. Because of this doubt, we are taking maximum precaution possible,” he said. Only the most experienced scientists handle the virus, he said. The researchers always wear protective gear. And they only study the pathogen in special rooms equipped with cabinets that prevent it from escaping. Next, Pena took me to one of two small rooms set aside to study the Zika virus. He picked up a large plastic flask sitting in a tub of ice. At the bottom there was a pool of pinkish liquid. ”So this is a cell culture flask that has the Zika virus,” he said, explaining that the flask contained monkey cells that have been infected with the virus for study. ”We must have like 30 million virus in this flask. So it’s lot of virus.” The lab needs a lot of virus for all the experiments being conducted. Scientists are performing a wide range of studies simultaneously, Pena said, including deciphering and analyzing the viral genes. Scientists are also trying to understand how the virus might be causing birth defects known as microcephaly, which causes babies to be born with small heads and damaged brains. Others are analyzing the human immune response to the virus for clues that might help develop a vaccine and testing chemicals they hope could be used as   drugs to treat patients. ”I’m very optimistic because we have a lot of scientists working with Zika virus now. And the more people, the more scientists we have studying the virus, the faster to get an answer,” he said. And with that, I said goodbye to Pena  —   and the Zika virus  —   and headed back into the streets of Brazil. But not before first dousing myself with more bug spray."
"The phrase ”Super Tuesday” first emerged in 1980, when three Southern states  —   Alabama, Florida and Georgia  —   held their primaries on the same day. It grew to nine in 1984. But the   Super Tuesday was born in 1988, when a dozen Southern states on the Democratic side, upset with the nomination of Walter Mondale four years earlier and frustrated with being out of power in the White House for 20 years save for one term of Jimmy Carter, banded together to try to nominate someone more moderate. It backfired. Al Gore of Tennessee and Jesse Jackson split the Southern states with Jackson winning black Democrats. That allowed for Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis to become the nominee after winning in the North, as well as in Florida and Texas. He, like Mondale before him, would go on to lose badly in the general election. Ironically, the more moderate, Southern white Democrats, who concocted the Super Tuesday plan, are now rare in the modern Democratic Party. And the Southern states remain big players on Super Tuesday, giving more influence not to moderate whites but to black voters. In seven of those Southern states, for example, a third of the Democratic electorate in 2008 was  . In two of them  —   Georgia and Alabama  —   they were a majority of Democratic voters. On the Republican side in 1988, Super Tuesday worked for George H. W. Bush. He won 16 of the 17 contests that year, helping to clinch the nomination. It also sealed the nominations for Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992, Republican Bob Dole in 1996 and Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore in 2000, as well as Democrat John Kerry in 2004. Outside of the 1988 and 2008 Democratic races, Super Tuesday had essentially brought the nomination fights to an end, and it had done so in every GOP race  —   until 2008 and 2012. While the nominations weren’t quite wrapped up those years for John McCain and Mitt Romney, respectively, they still won their Super Tuesdays, and it gave them clear   statuses. They did go on to the GOP nomination after somewhat   fights. Past Super Tuesdays, This year’s Super Tuesday  —   with 14 states and territories (including American Samoa)  —   isn’t as super as the 2008 record for most contests on a single day when 25 were held. But it’s essentially back on par with the number of contests that went outside of that year: March 11, 1980: (3) Alabama, Florida, Georgia, March 13, 1984: (9) Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Washington, March 8, 1988: (21) Alabama, American Samoa, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Virginia, March 10, 1992: (11) Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, March 12, 1996: (7) Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, March 7, 2000: (16) California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, March 2, 2004: (10) California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Feb. 5, 2008: (25) Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, March 6, 2012: (11) Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming"
"People in Texas are significantly more likely than adults nationwide to report that it has gotten harder to see a doctor in the past two years. The finding comes from polling done by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Vera Brown has been stuck aboard the doctor    for years now, trying to find an orthopedic surgeon who accepts her insurance. She doesn’t find the seemingly endless calls, questions or repetition amusing. ”When they say I’m not covered that means I have to put off having surgery,” she says. ”And that begins to start messing with my health.” Brown, 45, has already had one hip replaced. Now, the other is starting to feel numb. She used to be in physical therapy, but the clinic stopped accepting her insurance, which is provided by Medicaid. She gets around her South Dallas apartment with the help of a walker. With an    son still at home and a fixed income, she says traveling is hard. ”If you have a little money and you can go to wherever doctor, that’s fine, but what about the ones that does not have the income, or the   or the   to go about doing this?” Brown asks. ”We just lost out. And that’s just not right.” Almost 1 in 5 people in Texas says it’s gotten harder to see a doctor in the past two years according to the NPR poll. It didn’t matter what kind of insurance they had. About 70 percent of insurance plans for Texans available on HealthCare. gov are small ones, according to Dan Polsky, a health economist at the University of Pennsylvania. Insurers tend to offer patients with narrow networks that include fewer choices of doctors and hospitals. Insurers are ”using this as a   measure,” says John Carlo, CEO of the nonprofit AIDS Arms health agency in Dallas. ”So it’s very likely that someone who in the past has had a lot more access to specialists they’re not finding that anymore and they’re having to travel greater distances to find those specialists.” Staying on top of which doctors are in or out of network is hard for health care administrators and patients. Carlo says his health agency has had to refer patients elsewhere who’ve been coming for years.  ”Frankly, it’s a mess,” Carlo says. ”We just see this so frequently where a patient comes in, they’re carrying a health plan card, it looks good, they   and when they go to file the claim to be reimbursed they find out they’re not in the network.”  And if you do find a doctor in network, there’s the problem of actually scheduling an appointment. About a quarter of adults in Texas who do have a regular doctor say there’s been at least one time in the past two year when they needed care but couldn’t see their regular provider. Most say it was because the doctor didn’t have available times. Texas Health Institute researcher Dennis Andrulis says the Affordable Care Act has helped more than a million Texans get insurance, but the state has a severe physician shortage. In Texas, there are about 186 physicians for every 100, 000 people, according to the Texas Medical Association. The national average is 236 per 100, 000. ”The law is raising hopes for those who in this state have been chronically uninsured for such a long time,” Andrulis says. ”But then for those who are able to get insurance, they will find difficulty in accessing care.” The situation is particularly frustrating for people on Medicaid, says Andrulis, who is also associate professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Austin. First, Texas chose not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Second, the rates the state reimburses doctors for care are very low. As a result, doctors in Texas have little incentive to take on new Medicaid patients. Add it all up, and you see that Texas is a state with 6 million uninsured people, few primary care doctors, narrow provider networks and low reimbursement rates for Medicaid. ”These are the seeds and reality of frustration,” Andrulis says. No wonder then, says Andrulis, that so many Texans who can’t see a doctor in a timely manner go to the emergency room instead. As for Vera Brown, she uses a community health clinic where costs are low. Her mother helps out with medicines she’s got. ”She will give you a hug like no other,” Brown says. ”It will sooth your soul, and when you get through it’s like everything just gone away.” And for a minute, she can ignore the pins and needles in her hip, and pick up the phone to make a few more calls to find a doctor."
"A series of polls in key states by NPR and its partners finds that more than half of adults in the U. S. believe the Affordable Care Act has either helped the people of their state or has had no effect. Those sentiments are common despite all the political wrangling that continues over the law. About a third (35 percent) of adults say the law has directly helped the people of their state, while a quarter (27 percent) say it has directly hurt people. ”The proportion of U. S. adults who believe the law helped people in their state about equals the proportion who believe it hurt them,” says Robert J. Blendon, Richard L. Menschel Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. ”On the other hand, on a personal level, most Americans do not believe the law directly affected them.” The polls conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard Chan School are part of an   study to assess the changing health care landscape in the two years since the Affordable Care Act took effect. In seven separate state polls, approximately 1, 000 people were surveyed in Florida, Kansas, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin. A nationally representative survey of 1, 002 people was also done, asking the same questions. People were contacted by telephone (cellphone and landline) from Sept. 8 to Nov. 9, 2015. We wanted to find out more about what is going on in these states when it comes to health care  —   and we asked people about their personal experiences. We sought to find out what, if anything, has changed in how people get health care and what the quality of that care currently is. How big of an impact are cost increases having? Are there more or fewer barriers to care in the wake of the ACA? More than 7 in 10 (72 percent) in our national survey said they get good value for what they pay toward the cost of their health care. But a significant 22 percent disagree. That may be because few see added benefits in the face of cost increases. Only 1 in 6 adults believe their benefits have increased in the past two years, and 12 percent believe they’ve declined. That perception exists despite changes like the ACA’s elimination of   condition exclusions and the requirement that insurers cover the full cost of preventive services like mammograms, colonoscopies and contraception. ”Though the poll finds that most people are relatively satisfied with the health care they personally receive, a substantial number have problems paying their medical bills and accessing needed care,” Blendon says. ”And a surprising share of Americans, particularly those with low incomes, say they face problems with the quality of care they receive.” Other poll findings: Cost Concerns For Many, Nearly half (45 percent) of those in our national survey said their insurance premiums have increased in the past two years. Rising copays and deductibles were reported by 35 percent of the insured. When we asked people to characterize the cost of health care they received during visits to five different types of health care facilities, majorities said costs were reasonable, although this varies substantially by facility. Not Getting Needed Care  Our polls found 1 in 7 people (15 percent) said there was at least one time in the past two years when they needed health care but did not get it. Only 23 percent of these people were uninsured. About a third (35 percent) said they could not find a doctor who would take their health insurance. Emergency Room Use Still High, One of the goals of the ACA was to make insurance available to all Americans so that they would have a regular health care provider and not use the expensive ER so often. But a third of all adults say they got care in an ER in the past two years. Hard To Find A Doctor  Nationally, a quarter of adults say they do not have a regular doctor or health care professional who provides most of their health care when they are sick or have a health concern. The number was highest in Texas (31 percent) and Florida (30 percent). And among the vast majority (74 percent) who do have a regular health care provider, getting care wasn’t automatic. In the past two years, more than 1 in 5 (22 percent) say there has been at least one time when they could not see their regular doctor, often because appointments weren’t available or they needed care at night or on the weekend when the doctor’s office was not open. More than a third of adults in Texas said they went without needed health care when they were unable to see their regular provider. Quality Gap, A plurality of the public rates the health care they get personally as good (46 percent) but surprisingly few rate it as excellent (33 percent). And our survey revealed a major gap in quality depending on income.   people (those with annual household incomes of less than $25, 000) are far more likely (34 percent) to say the care they got was fair or poor than those with other incomes (13 percent). Still, 62 percent of   adults say they got good or excellent care. The significance of this finding is that   people are more likely to be sick than people of other incomes.   percent of   adults rate their health as fair or poor, versus just 18 percent of people of other incomes. So does all this mean the ACA is failing? It’s not possible to say from these data. When asked whether national health reform has directly impacted them, most people said it has had no direct impact (56 percent) or it has helped them (15 percent). But a quarter said it has hurt them directly. Adults in Kansas (39 percent) and Ohio (35 percent) are significantly more likely than adults across the country to say the law has hurt the people of their state. But Ohioans (21 percent) are also more likely to say the law has directly helped them as individuals, compared with the national survey. We’ll be sorting out these findings over the next three weeks in stories online and on NPR and member station news magazines and talk shows."
"Social media and dating apps are putting unprecedented pressures on America’s teen girls, author Nancy Jo Sales says. Her new book, American Girls, opens with a story about one    who received an Instagram request for ”noodz” [nude photos] from a boy she didn’t know very well. ”When I was a girl and the things that would come up in your life that were difficult or troubling or whatever  —   there was always a Judy Blume book for it,” Sales tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. But, Sales says, when it comes to responding to an     solicitation for naked images, ”there’s no Judy Blume book for that. There’s nothing for them to turn to, to know, like, ’How do I react to this?’ ” In the 2   years she spent researching her book, Sales interviewed more than 200 teenage girls around the country about their social media and Internet usage. She says girls face enormous pressures to post ”hot” or sexualized photos of themselves online, and she adds that this pressure can make the Internet an unwelcoming environment. ”I think a lot of people are not aware of how the atmosphere has really changed in social situations . .. in terms of how the girls are treated and how the boys behave,” Sales says. ”This is a kind of sexism and misogyny being played out in real time in this really extreme way.” On how males’ and females’ pictures differ on Tinder, I talked to an    girl who is talking about looking at Tinder with her older brother and . .. she said she was struck by the way in which the boys and men’s pictures were very different than the girls’. Guys tend to have a picture like, I don’t know, they’re standing on a mountain looking like they’ve climbed the mountain, or they’re holding a big fish or they’re doing something manly, or in their car. . .. But the girls’ pictures . .. tend to be very different they tend to be a lot more sexualized. This is a pressure on social media that goes back, for women and girls, a long time. . .. I trace the origins back to a site called ”Hot or Not” which came out in 2000. . .. The whole idea of ”hotness” has become such a factor in the lives of American girls, unfortunately, because according to many, many studies, including a really landmark report by the American Psychological Association in 2007, this has   ramifications for girls’ health and   including studies that link this pressure to sexualize on all kinds of things like rising anxiety, depression, cutting, eating disorders. It’s a thing that I don’t think that boys have to deal with as much. On boys asking girls for nude photos, I think the fact that so often we’re talking about nudes and sexting is because kids are watching porn. There’s multiple studies that say that they are. We know that they are. They’re curious. They’re going through puberty. They’re watching porn. And yet, nobody really talks about it or talks about the fact that it has an effect on how they behave and what they think about sex and sexuality and how they deal with each other. And there’s really no guidelines for girls about how to react to all of this. . .. Some    girls in Florida and New Jersey both told me that if they didn’t [send photos] they had been threatened with boys sending rumors about them, sending around a picture that actually wasn’t them and saying it was them. I mean, there’s a kind of thing in adult life that we know about called revenge porn, and that happens among kids as well, unfortunately. It’s very risky for girls to send nudes because when they do, if they chose to, those photos are not private. They can be shared and very often they are shared. I heard story after story of situations where girls had pictures of themselves sent around to groups of people. It has become such a normal thing to them. On ”slut pages” A ”slut page” is when someone, typically a boy, not 100 percent of the time, but mostly a boy or boys, will collect nude photos of girls in their school or in the area’s schools and post them on a page. I’ve seen them on Facebook or Instagram. It looks like an amateur pornography site  —   it is an amateur pornography site, I would say  —   and it’s underage girls and pictures that are sent to someone, very often that they think won’t share them but who does. It’s a nonconsensual sharing of these pictures, and sometimes without their knowledge. I’ve talked to girls who found out about it through text. Suddenly their phone blows up and they find out, ”Oh my god, you’re on this page.” I think it’s very threatening because it’s abuse of a certain kind and it’s harassment, and it’s very often not punished in any way, or even known by adults. On how porn is affecting sex, It was through talking to girls that I started thinking about porn, and they really enlightened me about the effect that porn was having on their lives, because they would start describing to me interactions that they had with boys. For example, ”Send me nudes,” or a boy sending a nude picture of himself. . .. These things that they’re describing sound violent to me. They say, ”[Boys] expect this, and they expect that, and they want you to do this, and they want you to do that.” And these things, they’re all the hallmarks of the most popular online porn. There’s different things that are sort of popularized in porn. Pornographers have found that they get more traffic, more clicks, more views, whatever, the more extreme that it is. That seems to be the trend that has happened in porn in the last decade or so, right? So there are certain acts or moves or behaviors, whatever, which are filtering their way into the sexual encounters of teenage girls and boys."
"Host Chris Rock made sure Sunday’s Oscars were about as black as they could be, given that no black people had been nominated in any   categories. Of course, Rock brought the pain, as he always does, in a   monologue skewering sensibilities on all sides of the #OscarsSoWhite debate. And his comedy bits throughout the show kept up a steady drumbeat, reminding audiences in the hall and at home just who had been left behind. That meant two Suge Knight jokes, featuring the actor who played him in Straight Outta Compton. And a bit where Rock’s daughters joined a cadre of black Girl Scouts running into the audience to sell $65, 000 worth of cookies. There was a     segment featuring mostly black filmgoers at a theater in Compton, Calif. who hadn’t heard of most of the   movies considered major contenders. And Rock gave a shout out to #BlackLivesMatter at the show’s end, jokingly inviting the Oscars audience to the BET Awards as Public Enemy’s Fight the Power played over the closing credits. It was overall a virtuoso performance, a constant statement balancing the tony,     of a typical Oscars ceremony with the different world people of color  —   even those who go to see films regularly  —   inhabit beyond the bubble of Hollywood’s film elite. But by emphasizing black exclusion so heavily, Rock’s comedy also overlooked the way other ethnic and racial minorities were excluded from Oscar nominations and significant roles in   films. A recent study shows that nonwhite Hispanics are by far the most underrepresented characters of color in film and television, while women and gay people also face significant marginalization. Still, most of the comedy about exclusion Sunday reduced the idea of diversity to a    issue  —   something that felt, ironically, a little exclusionary itself. On social media, former Lost star Daniel Dae Kim wryly noted that Rock’s   interviews at the Compton theater didn’t mention the underrepresentation of Asians and Latinos until nearly two minutes in. ”At 1:57 a ’man on the street’ finally mentions Asians  Hispanics. Grateful someone sees #diversity as more than just black  white,” he wrote. Meanwhile, an opening montage of images from films of note this Oscar season featured black actors like Samuel L. Jackson, John Boyega, Idris Elba, Will Smith and Michael B. Jordan so prominently, it looked like a cavalcade of nonwhite people who should have been nominated. (”I counted at least 15 black people in that montage,” Rock joked when he first walked onstage.) In one   video, Angela Bassett hosted an Oscars Black History Month Minute that sounded like a tribute to Will Smith  —   a ”groundbreaking” producer, actor, comedian and musician  —   until she revealed the real subject: Jack Black. In another, Saturday Night Live’s Leslie Jones and comic Tracy Morgan were inserted into clips from The Revenant and The Danish Girl as a way of giving black actors parts in big movies. Rock earned waves of applause from the Oscars audience by joking that black people didn’t protest exclusion from the Oscars in the 1960s ”because we had real things to protest . .. too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer.” (Of course, as Code Switch’s Gene Demby noted recently, black people did protest exclusion in Hollywood at the 1962 Oscars, led by a black actor, Caleb Peterson.) Moments later, crowd reaction was more muted when Rock said, ”Is Hollywood racist? You’re damn right Hollywood’s racist . .. but it’s [racism] you’ve grown accustomed to. Hollywood is sorority racist. It’s like, ’We like you, Rhonda. But you’re not a Kappa.’ That’s how Hollywood is.” It was a delicate balancing act  —   edgy enough to make an impression throughout the show, but sly enough not to seem too overbearing. There was also what might have been the show’s most awkward moment: an appearance from      pundit Stacey Dash, who once opined on Fox News about the unfairness of Black History Month and Black Entertainment Television to white people. She was satirically announced as the director of the Oscar academy’s new minority outreach program, walking onstage to wave at the crowd in a bit many people in the audience and on social media didn’t seem to understand. Outside of Rock’s comedy, the Oscars tried hard to look as inclusive as possible. Presenters represented a wide range of ethnic groups, from Sofia Vergara and Priyanka Chopra to   Lee and Kevin Hart. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and musical director Harold Wheeler are   and their appearance reinforced the sense that there was ethnic diversity everywhere outside of the actual awards. But there were some serious problems. Sacha Baron Cohen offered a line about the animated yellow Minion characters from the Despicable Me franchise that recalled stereotypes about Asian sexual endowments, while Rock ushered three Asian children onstage saying they were the accountants handling Oscar votes, in an embarrassing nod to stereotypes about Asians being good at math. Even one of the Oscars’ biggest moments of inclusion, in which Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu made history by winning a best director Oscar for the second consecutive year (the first time that’s happened in 65 years) came with a bit of an asterisk. That’s because the film that earned Inarritu this year’s Oscar, The Revenant, featured Native American actors but no notable black or Hispanic roles. His Oscar last year came for Birdman, a movie with no notable roles for nonwhite actors. The   Hispanic film director in recent years hasn’t helped much with current Hispanic underrepresentation onscreen. (Inarritu did note in his acceptance speech that he was ”very lucky to be here tonight, but unfortunately many others haven’t had the same luck,” saying he hoped in the future skin color would be as unremarkable as the length of someone’s hair.) It might be tempting to look back on the night as a roast of Hollywood’s film community, a parade of jibes about diversity that the industry will endure, only to return to business as usual when the dust clears. In a world where only white people have been nominated for acting Oscars two years running, that’s certainly a possibility. But if there is anything Hollywood hates almost as much as not making money, it’s being humiliated in public. And Rock’s Oscars comedy was a public spanking so prolonged, it’s tough to imagine anyone in the business risking a similar replay next year. With all its flaws, Rock’s turn as Oscars host provided a visceral look at the talent, comedy, lives and culture left out of Academy   films when they exclude people of color. Here’s hoping that’s enough to keep the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from making the same mistakes regarding inclusion for a third year in a row."
"You can say this for Sunday night’s Oscars: It seemed like a lot of it was going to be about inclusion or lack thereof, and it was. Back in 2012, Chris Rock presented the Oscar for best animated feature, explaining that he loved animation because it makes anything possible. ”I love animation,” he said, ”because in the world of animation, you can be anything you wanna be. If you’re a fat woman, you can play a skinny princess. If you’re a short, wimpy guy, you can play a tall gladiator. If you’re a white man, you can play an Arabian prince. And if you’re a black man, you can play a donkey or a zebra.” He added, as if it were obvious, ”You can’t play white, my God!” It was a rare moment of candor that woke up a typically sleepy evening. Four years later, Rock might therefore have been the best possible person to host the Oscars, in a year when so much attention has been focused on the   acting nominees and the failure of Hollywood to make a very inclusive slate of films  —   and to recognize those films (and the people involved in them) when they’re made at all. Some of what Rock did in his monologue was squarely aimed at Hollywood, including his opening remark that if the academy nominated the hosts, he wouldn’t even be there. But Rock then pivoted to a more ambivalent line of inquiry about how the Oscars have always been white, but people in the 1960s, for instance, didn’t protest those because they had more important concerns. They were, he said, ”too busy being raped and lynched to care who won best cinematography.” Not only is that observation in some ways ahistorical (NPR’s Gene Demby just wrote about Oscar protests over the exclusion of black actors stretching back decades) and not only did it draw anger almost immediately for implying there aren’t real things to protest anymore, but hearing the mostly white audience laugh and applaud at the idea that black people used to have ”real things” to protest didn’t feel like it was a joke at the expense of the academy or the Oscars. It felt like it was a joke at the expense of the people who were objecting to the lack of nominees who weren’t white  —   people like Jada Pinkett Smith, whom Rock specifically mocked for saying she wouldn’t show up. He said she wasn’t invited anyway, much as he wasn’t invited to ”Rihanna’s panties.” Rock did go on to draw interesting lines between the idea of Hollywood as  —   as he put it  —   not ”  racist” but ”sorority racist,” likely to tell black people what he called the equivalent of, ”We like you, Rhonda, but you’re not a Kappa.” But the thesis of the monologue  —   which, on the whole, was perhaps meant to walk a very, very fine line in terms of acknowledging the issue without alienating the room  —   seemed ultimately to be that Hollywood is racist, but that expending energy objecting to that fact is silly. Shortly thereafter, Rock introduced actress and Fox News contributor Stacey Dash, who recently came under a lot of criticism for various things she’s said, including statements doubting the need for Black History Month. She was on stage only long enough for him to joke that she was newly in charge of the academy’s ”minority outreach” and for her to wish everyone a happy Black History Month  —   and then she walked off the stage, grinning. By this time, the evening had turned distinctly uncomfortable, which perhaps was entirely the intent. It’s noteworthy that this all takes place in such a different environment now, where reaction happens and is communicated in real time, such that the Twitter reaction in particular almost feels like part of the event itself. There was a sense of how that monologue was going over before he even completed it that doesn’t seem like it’s going to make that job any easier in the coming years. And it’s already a pretty hard job, particularly in a year like this. Rock did raise issues of representation throughout, though, shouting out presenter Michael B. Jordan, the star of Creed, as a ”  nominee,” for instance, and doing a funny segment with mostly black moviegoers at a real movie theater, who demonstrated that they hadn’t seen and didn’t care about most of the films nominated for best picture. (Quite honestly, lots of white moviegoers wouldn’t either.) Kevin Hart, too, acknowledged actors of color who weren’t nominated before introducing The Weeknd to perform his nominated song from Fifty Shades of Grey. But the Oscars ceremony has a way of writing its own awkward moments, as when the orchestra played off one of the winners for Mad Max: Fury Road just as he attempted to thank people from Namibia, where the film was made, or when they played off the winner for best documentary short as she explained that her film may help motivate a change in Pakistani law on honor killings. Both, by the way, involved ”Ride of the Valkyries,” the   music of the evening, which is not the most gentle of musical nudges, as Bugs Bunny learned so long ago. And that was before a bizarre little skit involving Asian kids  —   one that didn’t land at all  —   made all the talk of diversity seem weirdly hollow. Cutting the skit could have provided enough time for the explanation of the law on honor killings, for instance. The awards themselves were spread out from the beginning. Spotlight grabbed one early for its original screenplay, then awards followed for The Big Short for its adapted screenplay, The Revenant for its cinematography, Alicia Vikander of The Danish Girl for supporting actress. The contender that started piling up awards, in fact, was Mad Max: Fury Road, for its hugely stylish production design, makeup, costumes, film editing, sound editing and sound mixing. The film had six Oscars before the halfway point of the broadcast. Given the fact that nobody really believed Mad Max was going to win best picture (and it even lost the visual effects prize to Ex Machina) this mishmash kept an early favorite from running away with the show, which was at least something of a bulwark against boredom. Later, Bridge of Spies’ Mark Rylance won as best supporting actor, continuing the  . In the big categories handed out in the last push, Brie Larson won lead actress for Room, The Revenant won for its director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and its lead actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy, won best picture. As always, there were segments that seemed like pointless filler designed to ensure the thing wouldn’t be brought in on time, like a needless   by the Star Wars droids that elicited little response on Twitter, at least, other than from people who enjoyed watching Room’s Jacob Tremblay get excited about it. (See also: Minions.) There were surprises  —   a lot of folks expected to see Sylvester Stallone win best supporting actor for Creed and watched him lose to Rylance. And it’s surprising to hear any particularly affecting staging of a nominated song given how lackluster they often are, but Lady Gaga’s performance of ”Til It Happens to You” from the documentary The Hunting Ground  —   a performance introduced by Vice President Joe Biden  —   got instant praise. And The Revenant director Inarritu, winning best director for the second year in a row, managed to defeat the band that tried to play him off as he expressed his hope for a world without prejudice. Rock will take criticism for some jokes and be praised for others, but at the very least, he paid sustained attention for 3   hours, in front of a very large audience, to issues of inclusiveness in the academy and in Hollywood as applied to black people. It’s about three hours and 25 minutes more than some hosts would have paid before moving on to something else, and if it was uncomfortable at times, then perhaps that’s the downside of coming to the end of the era in which you could nominate 20 actors, have all of them be white, and expect that not to make your ceremony uncomfortable."
"This post was updated on March 4. On March 7, the film that won the Oscar for best documentary, short subject, will have its television premiere, airing on HBO at 9 p. m.. A Girl In The River: The Price Of Forgiveness is by Pakistani director Sharmeen  . The   documentary tackles the tough topic of honor killings in Pakistan, from a rare point of view: a survivor’s. Saba, an    girl, was shot and thrown in a river by her own family for secretly eloping with her lover  —   and lived to tell the tale. The film also examines the interpretations of Islam that allow this brutal practice that claims the lives of more than 1, 000 girls and women each year, and the human rights groups lobbying for new laws to protect them. In her acceptance speech,   said that after Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif watched the film, he said he would change the laws on honor killing. ”This is what happens when determined women get together,” she said. ”That is the power of film.” NPR’s Steve Inskeep spoke with   about the film, why she thinks honor killings are acceptable in Pakistan, and how Saba is fighting back. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. What motivated Saba’s family to kill her? Saba was engaged to a young man and she wanted to get married to him. The family was OK with it, but the uncle was not. He decided she should marry someone else. Bravely one morning, Saba ran away from home to a local court and got married. Her father and uncle came to her  ’ house and said, ”Let us take her back to our home, and then you come take her honorably so neighbors and society don’t look upon us as a family that has been shamed.” But instead, they put her in a car, took her to a wooded area, beat her for a long time before shooting her, put her in a gunny sack, and threw her in a river. She miraculously survived. That’s what makes this case extraordinary  —   that there is someone around to tell the story you just told. It was very important to tell the story from the point of view of the survivor. In 99 percent of cases, the women perish and are unable to tell the story. Saba not only survived, but she fought back. She got out of the river and found a local fuel station. She was shot in her face and her hand, and she was in a lot of pain. The beauty of the story is that in that small town, the social services worked for Saba. The paramedics, the rescue services came and picked her up. She was taken to a government hospital run by a fantastic doctor who got his best surgeons to save her life. The police responded by providing additional security for her. The police sent out investigators to find her father and uncle, and eventually jailed them. Did her father and uncle get the justice they deserved? Saba was determined to fight the case. She wanted to make examples of her father and uncle. There’s a line in the film where she says, ”I want them to be shot in public so that no other father, man does this to a woman and his family.” In Pakistan, in cases of honor killings, there is a caveat. You can be forgiven for honor killings. The way it works is that if a father kills his daughter, his wife can forgive him. If a brother kills his sister, parents can forgive. In this case, because Saba survived, the community members in the neighborhood said they would ostracize her   if Saba didn’t forgive them. Saba was losing hope. Toward the end, she does go to court and pardons her father and the uncle. I thought she had actually just succumbed to society. But she said something to me toward the end of film that really stayed with me: ”I forgive them for the world I forgive them because of family pressure, because of societal pressure. But in my heart, they will always be unforgiven.” What happened when you talked to Saba’s uncle and father?  They were defiant. They believed what they did was right, and they would do it again. Her father, looking straight at me, said, ”Yes, I killed her. She’s my daughter and I wanted to kill her. I provided for her. How dare she defy me? How dare she go out without my permission? And I am ready to spend my entire life in jail because this is something I did for my honor, the honor of my family. She has shamed us.” He talks about his daughter as if she’s money or property.  He was saying that he owned her and that she could not make decisions on her own. He said something like, ”I used to feed her three times a day.” You know, you feed animals three times a day. He didn’t look at her as another human being. How has the Pakistani government reacted to the film? The prime minister came out and said that he wanted to work on the issue of honor killings, and he has since then met with me. He has spoken with members of his political party to plug loopholes in the law. He’s saying that there is no place for honor killings in Islam, and we must make that clear to everybody. If this law passes, the honor killings will be a crime against the state. A lot of things can go wrong [in trying to get this law passed]. But if three or four people go to jail, the fifth person will think twice before shooting someone in his family. What do you think is the difference between a society where honor killings are acceptable and a society where it’s not? If you look at communities where men feel like they own women, they want to control women. It’s all a power struggle. When women enforce their rights, when they want more rights, men find ways to silence them. Killing them is the best way to silence them. This issue of shame and honor  —   I’ve always wondered why it has to rest with the woman. Why can’t it rest with a man?"
"Argentina has reached an agreement with some of its creditors that should help end a long and acrimonious dispute that has blocked the country from the international bond markets. The deal, which must be approved by Argentina’s Congress, calls for the government to pay $4. 653 billion to four of the   holdout U. S. hedge funds. That equals about 75 percent of what they claimed they were owed. Argentina defaulted in 2001 and has been trying to restructure billions of dollars in debt, but a group of hedge funds, led by Paul Singer’s Elliott Management, refused to go along and sued that country’s government in U. S. federal court. U. S. District Judge Thomas Griesa subsequently issued an injunction barring Argentina from paying some of its creditors without also paying the holdouts, and the government went into default again in 2014. The legal fight wound up before the U. S. Supreme Court, which in 2014 upheld lower court rulings and essentially required Argentina to pay the holdouts. The court battle had lapsed into a bitter political fight, with former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner labeling the holdouts ”vulture funds.” Meanwhile, Argentina was essentially blocked from borrowing any more money in the bond market. But everything changed after the November election of President Mauricio Macri, who vowed to end the dispute during his campaign. ”The current administration realized that Argentina cannot be shut down from the international markets, so from the beginning they said, ’We’re going to fix this problem,’ and that’s what they’re doing,” said Diego Ferro,   investment officer at Greylock Capital Management, in an interview with NPR. Earlier this month, Judge Griesa agreed to lift the injunction that blocked Argentina from paying its creditors. The settlement between Elliott Management and Argentina was announced this morning by Daniel A. Pollack, the special master appointed by the court to oversee settlement talks. The deal does not completely settle Argentina’s debt woes, since some smaller bondholders continue to resist restructuring, Ferro says. But they lack Elliott’s resources and constitute a smaller threat to the government. ”With the biggest, most sophisticated holdouts settled and dropping their claims, I think that Argentina should feel a lot more comfortable going into the markets,” said Anna Gelpern, a professor at Georgetown Law School and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics."
"Denmark is once again distinguishing itself in the race against food waste  —   this time, with a supermarket hawking items once destined for the trash bin. Those items might include treats for a holiday that happened last week, a ripped box of cornflakes, plain white rice mislabeled as basmati, or anything nearing its expiration date. In other words, perfectly edible items that are nonetheless considered unfit for sale by the retailers and manufacturers who donate them. WeFood is not the first grocer in Europe to sell surplus food. But unlike   ”social supermarkets”  —   stores that serve almost exclusively   people  —   WeFood’s offerings are very intentionally aimed at the general public. ”If you call it a ’social supermarket,’ it’s difficult to get customers to go there. Who wants to be poor?” explains Per Bjerre with DanChurchAid, the charity behind this initiative. ”If you want to stop [the] waste of food, everybody has to be into it.” And, apparently, everybody is. Or at least, everybody who has been lining the sidewalks each day since WeFood opened its doors on Feb. 22. Bjerre says some of these surplus food   are   people looking for a deal. But mostly, he says, they’re here for more political reasons. Food waste has become a Danish cause celebre of late (a Danish princess graced WeFood’s grand opening). Over a recent   period, Danes managed to reduce the amount of food landing in the garbage by 25 percent (a reduction of roughly 35 pounds per person per year). WeFood’s    policy is similar to that of Daily Table, another surplus food retailer, which launched last year in Boston. Both are nonprofits, but while Daily Table’s sales cover operational costs, WeFood is run by volunteers, with profits used to support   initiatives in other parts of the world. Both grocers represent a   approach to the food waste problem when compared with a new (and potentially more  ) initiative in France, where the stick takes the lead. A law passed in February prohibits French supermarkets from destroying unsold food. It also requires the country’s biggest chains to donate surplus food to charity or give it to farms as animal feed or compost. Scofflaws face hefty fines. The head of Denmark’s Stop Wasting Food organization, Selina Juul, applauds her French counterpart, municipal councilor Arash Derambarsh, who persuaded the French minister to take up the food waste measure. But Juul says that when Derambarsh approached her about introducing a similar measure in Denmark, or on the level of the European Union, she hesitated. Juul says she’s wary of government mandates like the French one: In her view, such laws could end up simply shifting the Western world’s throwaway habit from one place to another. For example, she says it’s unlikely that Denmark’s 6, 000 homeless people could stomach the 163, 000 tons of food that Danish supermarkets throw out each year, so welfare organizations would have to deal with the leftovers. She also wonders who would cover the cost of transportation. As Per Bjerre has quickly learned, basic logistics are one of the biggest barriers between a wilting head of lettuce and a willing mouth and WeFood’s instant popularity has the store running out of inventory on an almost daily basis. ”We are trying to get some emergency deliveries to the store, but right now, we have empty shelves,” says Bjerre. He says there is definitely no lack of surplus food to be had: ”I’ve been around myself this week, visiting some stores. And even one tiny bakery  —   it’s throwing so much away every day that it’s kind of unbelievable. So if you add all that up, that’s a lot of food.” The challenge lies in finding out exactly where that food is and when it’s available, and then getting volunteers out to pick it up. Bjerre says he expects that will get easier as WeFood has been open long enough to establish relationships and delivery patterns with local retailers. And if all goes well, he says, Danes can expect to see more WeFood stores opening around the country in the    future."
"The crux of Ted Cruz’s campaign has long been mobilizing the Christian right to his side, working to galvanize enough evangelical voters to topple Donald Trump. The Texas senator even launched his campaign at Liberty University, which claims to be the world’s largest Christian college, declaring that ”God isn’t done with America yet.” Cruz talks with the cadence of a megachurch pastor, and exhortations of his faith are a mainstay at every campaign rally. His strategy in targeting the most conservative religious voters worked in Iowa, but the wheels came off in South Carolina and Nevada. Now, if he can’t fully convert religious voters in many critical Southern states set to vote on Super Tuesday, his campaign could be beyond resurrection. ”I think for him to continue to lose evangelical votes to Donald Trump is a fatal blow to the rationale for his campaign,” said Bruce Haynes, a GOP strategist and president of the bipartisan consulting firm Purple Strategies. ”He speaks openly of the relevance of his candidacy in churches and has openly identified that a key part of their winning strategy is evangelical voters. That’s his base, but he’s not carrying that base.” Cruz Battling Trump And Rubio For Evangelical Voters, The   SEC primary runs through states that are likely to have even more evangelical voters than the states that have voted so far. Cruz himself has only raised expectations about Super Tuesday, calling it ”the most important day in this entire cycle.” According to 2012 exit polls, in Alabama 80 percent of GOP primary voters described themselves as evangelical. In Tennessee, 68 percent of Republican voters were   Christians. And in Georgia, 68 percent of primary voters four years ago were evangelicals. Those states could have higher evangelical turnout than states that have already voted this year, according to 2016 exit poll data. In Iowa, 64 percent of GOP caucusgoers were evangelical, while in South Carolina 72 percent described themselves as  . Those numbers were up from four years ago. Super Tuesday states could see a record number of voters, including more evangelical voters, go to the polls. With a heavy ground game, Cruz won 34 percent of evangelical voters in the Hawkeye State Trump got 22 percent, while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio captured 21 percent. In South Carolina, though, Cruz finished third behind Rubio and lost the evangelical vote to Trump by 6 points, 33 percent to 27 percent. Rubio again got almost a fourth of that voting bloc though. Now, just hours away from Super Tuesday, polls show Cruz’s grasp on evangelical voters slipping away from him even more. And it’s complicated by a rising Rubio, who is now getting nearly as much of the evangelical vote as Cruz is in some places. ”Cruz is basically splitting the evangelical vote with Trump, and Rubio’s getting a share of that too,” said Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. NBC   Street   polls released Sunday showed Trump easily beating Cruz in Tennessee and in Georgia. In Tennessee, that’s fueled by a   edge for Trump among white evangelicals and, in the Peach State, the bombastic billionaire is winning those voters by 8 points. Cruz does have a lead over Trump in his home state of Texas in those same surveys and wins evangelical voters there by 23 points. The biggest loss for Cruz could come in Alabama, a state where 80 percent of GOP primary voters four years ago identified as evangelical. A Monmouth University poll released Monday showed Trump winning 42 percent of voters, while it was Rubio in second with 19 percent followed by Cruz with 16 percent. The split of evangelical voters in that survey follows the same trajectory  —   43 percent for Trump, 18 percent for Rubio and 15 percent for Cruz. The Texas senator got another blow on Sunday when Alabama’s senior senator, Jeff Sessions, endorsed Trump over him. Cruz has frequently invoked his work and relationship with Sessions on the trail, particularly on immigration. But the   conservative chose to throw his support behind Trump, and not his fellow senator. Cruz’s Trust Issue, But Cruz’s plan to woo evangelical voters hasn’t gone as planned. He is not just losing the critical voting bloc to a   casino mogul who until a few years ago supported the abortion procedure known as intact dilation and extraction and has even defended Planned Parenthood this year  —   he has also seen his own reputation take a hit as rumors of dirty tricks have plagued his campaign. First, it was his staffers telling voters that neurosurgeon Ben Carson was set to drop out on Iowa caucus night, fueled by a CNN report saying his GOP rival was heading home to Florida after the vote. There have been misleading mailers and ads in South Carolina that the campaign has taken heat for a superPAC supporting him even had to take down a misleading TV spot that hit Rubio. And some voters in the Palmetto State said the label of ”liar” that his opponents were trying to paint him with was sticking. ”If Cruz doesn’t win any of these contests outside of Texas, I think that’s a really big sign for his campaign,” Abramowitz said. ”The lying charges have clearly hurt him, and also the fact that he has no support from any of his colleagues in the Senate is hurting him.” Cultural Vs. Committed Evangelicals, Even if Cruz does lose   voters on Super Tuesday, that doesn’t mean Trump has somehow converted even the most faithful to his side. Top leaders in evangelical churches have denounced his rhetoric banning Muslims from coming into the U. S. and his refusal to say he has ever asked God for forgiveness. Still, he has received the support of Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. and Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Dallas, has introduced Trump at many rallies and spoken very highly of him, though he hasn’t officially endorsed. It’s important to remember that the seeming wide swath of evangelical voters who will go to the polls is not homogeneous, either in political or in religious beliefs. And defining what exactly constitutes an evangelical voter can be misleading in polling. A Vox study this month noted that ”regular, weekly church attendance  —   as measured by a standard Pew Research question included in my survey  —   predicted a statistically significant and substantive opposition to Trump.” That’s an important distinction, especially in the South, where church and religious activities are ingrained in the culture, but degrees of devotion vary. ”In the South, there aren’t that many people willing to answer the phone and tell a live human being they’re not  . After all someone in the room might be listening,” said Haynes. ”The culture of the South is replete with people who’ve answered an altar call and qualify as   but 20 years later it would be difficult for them to demonstrate how they’re living an evangelical,   life,” he continued. ”They’re Christian by definition, but it’s not the central driving force of their life.” It’s those, maybe more tepid believers whom Trump has tailored an appeal to, with his bombast against illegal immigrants, America’s weakness abroad and promise to restore the country’s greatness. And in the South, it’s that type of voter who will dominate the contests on Tuesday, likely denying Cruz his last prayer of a campaign resurgence."
"Politicians of all stripes have to sometimes contend with attracting supporters that don’t quite fit the image they are trying to portray. Donald Trump has received support in recent days from governors and a U. S. senator, but also a   white supremacist. It was late last week when David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, urged his radio listeners to vote for Trump. ”Voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,” he said. So Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked the billionaire businessman if he would disavow that endorsement. Trump dodged. ”Honestly, I don’t know David Duke. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet him, and I just don’t know anything about him,” Trump said, even though he was quoted calling Duke a Klansman 16 years ago. Attacks poured in from Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as well as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Rubio released a statement calling Trump ”wrong” and ”unelectable.” Trump didn’t mention the controversy during a rally near Huntsville, Ala. Sunday night. He’s on a campaign swing through states, including Alabama and several other Southern states voting on Super Tuesday, March 1. Trump was introduced in front of thousands at a football stadium by Mark Burns, a black televangelist from South Carolina who defended the candidate and shot back at Rubio. ”You, Alabama, are gonna make sure come Tuesday you’re gonna put Marco Rubio out of this race for good!” he said to loud cheers. Trump was interrupted several times by protesters, including a Black Lives Matter group. He responded, ”We have to love everybody. All lives matter. Remember that.” Afterward, Bill Clingin, a retiree from Marshall County, Ala. said the media were berating Trump. ”Does he have to keep repeating it every time? I mean, if I say I believe in something, why do I have to continue?” Clingin said. ”There’s a point in time that’s enough is enough. I said what I mean.” Trump had disavowed Duke before the CNN interview. After the interview, he tweeted a video of that statement, made at a press conference on Friday where he received the endorsement of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Trump told a reporter who asked about Duke, ”I didn’t even know he endorsed me. David Duke endorsed me? All right, OK. I disavow, OK?” It was not the first time during this campaign that Trump has had to deal with support from white supremacists. In Iowa, voters received robocalls in support of Trump voiced by an avowed white nationalist, though Trump’s campaign was not involved in those calls. Trump has gotten himself into trouble by retweeting calls of support from people who identify online with white supremacists. At the rally in Alabama on Sunday, another Trump supporter, Paul Noel, a research scientist from Madison, Ala. said the whole thing was overblown. ”That is only intended by certain persons to split us apart as a nation rather than solve problems,” Noel said. When asked if he was concerned by the fact that there were hardly any people of color at the Trump rally, he responded, ”The problem is the black people in America.” Noel said he believes   are too quick to vote for Democrats. ”American blacks are unsophisticated in understanding that they need to make people earn their vote,” he said. ”We have had a batch of people who played like race was an issue. I don’t see anybody here wanting to hurt a black person or cut their opportunities or anything.” To Noel, the crowds coming out to support Trump feel like their own opportunities are going away, and they’re sick of politicians who allow it to happen."
"It’s now well past midnight in South Korea  —   which means that a filibuster that started last Tuesday is on its way to lasting for a full week. Opposition legislators have now spoken for some 150 hours straight, holding up a bill that would give new surveillance powers to South Korea’s spy agency. The filibuster’s hours seem numbered, however, with the Yonhap news agency saying that leaders of the main opposition party have now decided to end the filibuster. They’re expected to hold a news conference about the move at 9 a. m. Tuesday, local time (7 p. m. ET). The filibuster began last Tuesday night, according to Korean media. In an attempt to block the bill, more than 20 lawmakers from the opposition Minjoo Party of Korea have taken turns at the podium, Yonhap reports. One of them set a new record for filibustering in South Korea’s National Assembly, only to have a colleague break her record. Rep. Eun   was the first to go   last week. After two of her colleagues had addressed the chamber, Eun started a speech at 2:30 a. m. that didn’t finish until 12:48 p. m. according to The Korea Times. With a total time of 10 hours and 18 minutes, Eun’s speech beat a record that had stood since 1969, according to Korean media. But that mark was eclipsed over the weekend, when another MPK member, Rep. Jung   put in a nearly   speech (11 hours and 39 minutes). If you’re wondering about the longest filibuster speech in U. S. history, that mark is held by Sen. Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in his fight against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. In second place: Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, who in 1986 spoke for 23 hours and 30 minutes about a military funding bill. As for the legislation that has sparked such deep resistance, The Korea Times reports, ”The bill, if enacted, will allow the spy agency to collect a wide range of personal data ― some without a court warrant ― including phone records of those suspected of posing a security threat.” The bill has the backing of the ruling conservative Saenuri Party, which controls more than half of the assembly’s 293 seats. We’ve been monitoring the National Assembly today  —   including the moment when a member of the MPK was asked to suspend her speech for a moment, to allow for a staff changeover in the chamber. With a fresh presiding officer and sign language translator taking up their posts for an overnight shift, she then resumed her speech."
"”Stronger Together” is not the name of the latest   fitness app. It’s a grant proposed in President Obama’s new budget, reviving an idea that hasn’t gotten much policy attention in decades: diversity in public schools. If the request is approved, $120 million will go to school districts for programs intended to make their schools more diverse. As a new pair of reports from the progressive Century Foundation shows, integration policies have seen a resurgence: In 2007, 40 districts pursued integration. Today that number has more than doubled, to 83, plus nine charter schools or networks. That adds up to a total of 4 million students in classrooms that are more diverse than they’d otherwise be. This new wave of integration has come with one big difference that sets it apart from the busing battles of the past. These programs rely on family income, not race, as the driver. To be clear, there’s evidence that socially as well as racially integrated schools benefit all students. When a school reaches a stable level of about 30 percent   students, the   students achieve at higher levels and the privileged students do no worse, says Halley Potter, the author of one of the Century Foundation reports. Similarly, the racial achievement gap shrinks in schools that have less than a ”supermajority” of 60 percent of any one race. But the real case for diverse schools is a lot bigger than test scores, says Amy Stuart Wells, who teaches at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the author of the second report. ”The qualitative and quantitative evidence is powerful enough to say, ’We should do this.’ ” It’s worth pointing out that because of the legacy of discrimination and institutionalized segregation in the United States, in most communities mixing up students by class also means mixing them up by race. ”Diversification by socioeconomic status also means by race,” says Mercedes Ebanks, an associate professor in the school of education at Howard University. ”The movement towards socioeconomic integration will lead to racial integration and educational equality.” Still, some experts question whether socioeconomic integration really provides the same benefits as ethnic and cultural integration. There’s ”not much empirical research on socioeconomic diversity per se” and its benefits, says Katherine Phillips, a professor at the Columbia Business School. Phillips’ own research, along with that of many others, focuses on the cognitive benefits of encounters with ethnic and racial difference. In a class discussion or on a   team, bringing together different viewpoints and experiences makes everyone think harder and provide better evidence for their opinions, she says. Given the right atmosphere and guidance, which is a tall order, students in diverse classrooms can build   friendships, achieve greater levels of empathy and have a chance to work on   social and emotional skills. Intriguingly, other research suggests that implicit bias, our   judgments about people based on age, gender or the color of their skin, may cause cognitive impairments. That is: Racist ideas make people think poorly. There are also economic arguments in favor of pursuing diversity. In the current U. S. Supreme Court case on affirmative action, nearly half of the companies in the Fortune 100 signed a brief testifying that it’s an ”economic imperative” in the global economy to hire diverse employees with   skills that only diverse educational settings can provide."
"For his part in an operation that rescued an American civilian who was being held hostage in Afghanistan, U. S. Navy SEAL Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward Byers was presented with the Medal of Honor at the White House on Monday. You can watch the event via White House video. President Obama called the ceremony ”a rare opportunity” for Americans to get a glimpse of the country’s special operators  —   Byers is a member of the elite SEAL Team Six. He also noted that today’s gathering might be one of the largest gatherings of special operators ever at the White House. The president noted that several of Byers’ peers and family were present for the presentation  —   and he noted that Byers’ mother, Peggy, had one question about the event honoring her son at the White House today: ”Do you think I can come?” ”Yes, Mom,” Obama said as some in the room laughed. ”You’re allowed to come when your son gets the Medal of Honor.” The president also summarized some of Byers’ career, noting that he had been on 11 overseas deployments and nine combat tours. The events that led to today began in December of 2012, when gunmen captured Dr. Dilip Joseph  —   and told him, Obama recounts, ”The Americans are not coming for you.” ”Well, they were wrong,” the president said. The operation that saved Joseph was a   one after his return to the U. S. he described the process to NPR, saying, ”As soon as the SEALs recognized where my voice was coming from, one of them just came and laid on top of me.” That man was Byers, who killed two guards after entering the room where Joseph was held. He also disabled a third guard while protecting Joseph, allowing the rest of his team to enter the room safely. Just before he entered the room, a fellow SEAL, Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas D. Checque, 28, had been shot and killed by the same men guarding Joseph. Before presenting Byers with the award, Obama recited the SEALs ethos, which refers to ”a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call.” ”Senior Chief Edward Byers Jr. is such a man,” Obama said. ”Chief Petty Officer Nicolas Checque was that man.” ”People may not always see them, we may not always hear of their success, but they are there in the thick of the fight, in the dark of night, achieving their mission,” Obama later added, before delivering the commendation for Byers. Byers is the sixth Navy SEAL to receive the Medal of Honor he’s the 11th living service member to be awarded the commendation for their actions in Afghanistan. From the Navy’s biography of Byers: ”Byers, a native of Toledo, Ohio, joined the Navy in September 1998. After graduating from Hospital Corpsman School at Great Lakes, he completed the Basic Underwater   course and the Special Operations Combat Medic course in 2003. ”He completed tours at Great Lakes Naval Hospital, 2nd Battalion and 2nd Marine Regiment at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, was assigned to East Coast SEAL teams and completed eight overseas deployments with seven combat tours. ”Byers is also the recipient of the Bronze Star Medal with Combat ’V’ device, two awards of the Purple Heart, the Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor device, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Combat ’V’ device, two additional awards of the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, two awards of the Combat Action Ribbon, three Presidential Unit Citations, two Joint Meritorious Unit Awards, two Navy Unit Commendations, and five Good Conduct Medals.”"
"Final results are beginning to trickle in from Iran’s parliamentary elections, and these returns show major gains for the country’s moderate camp. It’s a stunning blow to Iran’s hardliners in the first election since last year’s historic nuclear deal with world powers. NPR’s Peter Kenyon says reformist parliamentary candidates swept the seats in Iran’s capital, Tehran. ”All hardline incumbents in the capital lost their seats,” Peter reports, though he says conservatives fared better in other provinces. As Camila Domonoske has noted for The Two Way, ”Tehran’s delegation is only a fraction of Iran’s   parliament,” and conservatives are poised to win seats in other parts of the country. Moderates also made gains in the powerful   assembly charged with choosing Iran’s supreme leader, Peter says. He adds: ”Allies of President [Hassan] Rouhani took 15 of the 16 seats from Tehran, according to the state news agency IRNA.” By comparison, ”moderates previously held around 20 seats in the assembly,” The Associated Press reported. The same is true for the parliament, AP says. ”Reformists currently hold fewer than 20 seats and have been virtually shut out of politics since losing their parliamentary majority in the 2004 elections,” the news service writes. The results are a boost for Rouhani and his economic reform efforts, Peter says: ”Even before official results are announced, Rouhani praised the vote as a move to strengthen the country. Rouhani needs a parliament he can work with to deliver on his campaign promise of reviving Iran’s economy.” Many reformist candidates who wanted to run were not allowed to do so  —   only 200 reformists who applied were approved to run by Iran’s ”unelected, constitutional watchdog,” according to the AP. ”The overall message is Iranians have voiced their interest in change, they clearly want this, but the leaders they have chosen are not that prone to making radical changes,” New York Times Tehran correspondent Thomas Erdbrink tells Morning Edition. He adds that these moderates, or ”pragmatic centrists,” are sometimes difficult to label: ”There are people who are   on certain issues but for instance would be open to economic reforms. Does that make them a moderate? At the same time they might be saying the hijab  —   the Islamic headscarf  —   is obligatory and they might propose police controls to check women to do that. So these labels are very, very complicated.” Election turnout was 50 percent in the capital and 62 percent in other provinces, Minister of Interior Abolreza Rahmani Fazli told reporters. We’ll keep you updated as results come in. But some reformists are already declaring this a historic moment for Iran: Reuters cites an editorial in the reformist newspaper   whose managing editor won one of the Tehran seats in parliament, that read in part: ”The biggest achievement of this election is the return of reformists to the ruling system so they won’t be called seditionists or infiltrators anymore. . .. ”This election can be a turning point in the history of the Islamic Republic.”"
"To understand how Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is reacting to the candidate’s gigantic loss in South Carolina’s Democratic primary, it’s important to understand how he reacted to another loss just a few weeks ago, in Iowa. The two results couldn’t be more different. Sanders’ performance in Iowa could be considered a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton, and he called it just that. Clinton won the Democratic caucuses by less than half a percentage point. That night, on a chartered jet from Des Moines to New Hampshire  —   just after what felt like a victory speech  —   campaign staffers popped bottles of champagne during the flight. Sanders, in an extremely good mood, came back and talked with members of the traveling press. Team Bernie was having a great night. Flash forward to South Carolina. Sanders didn’t even hold events in the state on the day of the vote. Instead, he held rallies in Dallas and Austin, Texas and Rochester, Minn. After the Dallas events, before the Sanders campaign took flight for Minnesota, the results were beginning to trickle in. There would be no champagne on the plane. There would be no friendly gaggles with the press. By the time Sanders’ plane landed in Minnesota, the results were clear and definite. Sanders had lost South Carolina, badly. On the tarmac, he told the press, ”In politics, on a given night, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Tonight we lost.” At his Rochester rally that Saturday night, Sanders seemed much less energetic than he did in Texas. The mood was more somber this wasn’t a party. Sanders didn’t mention South Carolina or his disappointing finish there, not even once. And that’s how it has been since the weekend. At events in Oklahoma City and Ft. Collins, Colo. on Sunday, if you listened only to Sanders’ stump speech, you’d think South Carolina had never happened. It was a stark contrast to the candidate’s   stumping, where he took care to mention that that state and his results there had helped him start a ”political revolution.” Instead, Sanders continued to run through the list of his progressive policy goals, including universal health care, a higher minimum wage and major investments in infrastructure. But Sanders also hit hard on his opponent, Hillary Clinton. He critiqued her vote for the Iraq War and spent a few minutes hounding her for paid speeches she gave to Wall Street employees. ”She has a superPAC, actually more than one,” he said during a speech in Oklahoma City. ”And Secretary Clinton has given some speeches to Wall Street where she’s paid over $200, 000 a speech.” ”If you’re going to get paid $200, 000 for a speech,” he said, it ”must be a pretty damn good speech. And if it’s such a good speech, you’ve got to release the transcripts.” The crowd went wild, and he kept giving them what they wanted. ”In fact I can’t wait to see it. It has to be an unbelievably great speech.” Toward the end of his stump speeches, Sanders looks forward to the general election. ”I’m going to need your help to win the Democratic nomination,” he told the crowd in Oklahoma City. ”And I’m going to need your help to win the general election. And there would be nothing that would give me more pleasure than to defeat Donald Trump.” ”We will defeat Mr. Trump,” he told the crowd, ”because the American people do not want a president who insults Mexicans, who insults Muslims, women,  . Who insults veterans, and basically anybody who does not look or be like him.” He said of people who like Trump because of his candor, ”Bigotry is not telling it like it is.” Sanders said most polls show him winning in a    matchup against Trump. But if Sanders is convinced he can win a general election, he’s failed to tell crowds that he’s sure he’ll make it to one. In his most recent stump speeches, Sanders has taken to asking voters in states like Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota for their ”help” to ”do well on Super Tuesday.” But he does not say whether he thinks he’ll come out on top or even if he thinks he’ll win the particular state he’s campaigning in. In the audience in Oklahoma City, voter Keith Sharp said regardless of Sanders’ loss in South Carolina, he’s optimistic. ”I’m not really worried about it,” he told NPR. ”I think people are going to come around to him. I’m thinking he’s going to do good things.” Supporter Mary Stacey said she was still dumbfounded by the numbers in South Carolina, even though she says she’s ”cautiously optimistic” about Sanders’ chances on Super Tuesday. ”I don’t understand it,” she told NPR, of Sanders’ failure to capture even a third of the black vote in South Carolina, ”because Bernie has done so much more for civil rights. I mean, he was there. I can only attribute it to loyalty, that   feel loyal to Hillary. But I think if they gave Bernie a chance, they would see that he’s more progressive on the issues that are more important to them.” Several people who spoke with NPR at multiple campaign events didn’t seem focused on Sanders’ loss in South Carolina or the increasingly difficult path ahead for him. In Oklahoma City, Sanders ended his stump speech as he usually does: with a call for political revolution. ”On Tuesday, Oklahoma can play a very important role in moving this country forward toward a political revolution,” he told the crowd. ”Let’s do it.” It was a slightly different line for Sanders, who in previous speeches seemed to imply that that political revolution had already begun. Perhaps the candidate, in a small way, was tempering expectations. Nevertheless, his closing lines got the same wild applause they always do. Supporters may have been there for a revolution, but they were also there to celebrate its leader, win or lose."
"If you want to understand Clinton’s Super Tuesday strategy all you need to do is look at her travel schedule: Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Monday in Massachusetts and Virginia. In these states she’s delivering a relatively new, more positive message. There’s less drawing contrasts with her primary opponent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and more talk of ”breaking down barriers” and ”love and kindness.” ”I want us to break down the barriers that stand in the way of people being successful, that stand in the way of America fulfilling our potential,” Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd in Springfield, MA. ”We have barriers. We have economic barriers don’t we. A lot of people are working hard and feeling like they are just barely standing in place.” She adds racism and sexism to that list, among other barriers. Clinton is also taking aim at the Republican field, in particular the insults and   that have seemingly overtaken the race. She told a crowd in Springfield, Mass. that disagreements are part of the American DNA but ”what we can’t let happen is the scapegoating, the blaming, the finger pointing that is going on on the Republican side.” This new message served Clinton well in South Carolina where over the weekend she won a dominant victory, built on the strength of her support among black voters. She’s hoping that support will also help her in Southern states like Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Alabama. A lot of those Southern states ”are states that we expect to do well in,” said Jen Palmieri, the campaign’s communications director. ”Some states like Massachusetts we are not confident that we can win.” Polls show the race in Massachusetts close, which explains why both Sanders and Clinton are campaigning there Monday. But for Clinton, it’s not just about wins and losses (though she certainly wouldn’t mind more landslides like she had on Saturday). As far as they’re concerned Palmieri says: wins are nice, but delegates are more important. ”Even if you don’t win the state, you can pick up delegates there,” explained Palmieri. Democrats award delegates proportionally throughout the primary season. ”And even if you’re confident that you will win the state, you may want to spend more time there so you pick up more delegates because ultimately that’s what’s going to mean you get the nomination.” That’s a lesson Clinton learned the hard way in 2008. This Super Tuesday she hopes not just to notch wins in key states, but to build a delegate lead that it will be nearly impossible for Sanders to overcome."
"Hillary Clinton goes into Super Tuesday with a    lead ( ) over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. She also has a   lead ( ). In crunching some numbers, an NPR analysis finds one very rosy scenario for Sanders in which he comes out with the majority of pledged delegates on Super Tuesday. This is considered unlikely, but it’s his best possible day. The analysis also shows close to Clinton’s best day, including winning Colorado, Massachusetts and Oklahoma  —   all places Sanders is targeting. It gives Sanders big wins in Vermont and Minnesota. That second scenario would give Clinton a   win. So our range for Tuesday in pledged delegates appears to be something like Sanders   to Clinton  . Here are scenarios: Wins in Colorado with 60 percent Massachusetts (55 percent) Minnesota (70 percent) Oklahoma (60 percent) and Vermont (90 percent). Clinton would be held to 55 percent in   Texas and Virginia 57 percent in Arkansas, where her husband was governor and she was first lady 60 percent in Alabama and Georgia, two states where half the Democratic electorate is black 55 percent in Tennessee and 58 percent in American Samoa. (Of course, with superdelegates factored in, Sanders is still swamped, but don’t consider that for the sake of this analysis.) Clinton wins big in Texas (60 percent) Alabama and Georgia (70 percent each, like in South Carolina) Arkansas and Tennessee (65 percent each) Virginia (60 percent) and takes Colorado and Massachusetts (with 55 percent each) where Sanders is hoping to do well as well as Oklahoma (53 percent) and even gets the extra delegate out of American Samoa with 60 percent Sanders would be held to 60 percent in Minnesota and 75 percent in his home state of Vermont. The reality, as usual, is probably somewhere in between. Either way, neither will have enough delegates out of Super Tuesday to mathematically be the nominee (2, 383)  —   though two very different storylines would emerge."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. ”We grieve so deep in disguise   The private lives of private eyes,” Thao sings in ”Hand To God.” It’s a simple yet striking line that illuminates the emotional backbone of her brilliant, jarring new album, A Man Alive. Throughout the record, Thao ruminates on how little we know of the turmoil people carry around inside  —   and opens up about her own lingering wounds. Nearly every song drops references to her   feelings of abandonment over her father’s absence from her life, and dissects the complicated relationships it has caused. While Thao’s songs have always been personal, rarely have her lyrics been this direct. The rollicking We Brave Bee Stings And All (2008) was a    snapshot about the trials of love, being young, and itching for more from life. Later, with 2013’s We The Common, Thao, along with her superb band the Get Down Stay Down, incorporated her growing interest in social activism and advocacy. But on A Man Alive, the   San   songwriter sounds emboldened to delve into some heavy stuff. In ”Nobody Dies,” a lilting and gnarled,   track, Thao explores, through the eyes of a wounded child still reeling from watching someone leave, feelings of unrequited love in the punishing lines, ”I sent all of it and then you send it all back to me . .. All my life, won’t you come for me?   I got love to give, too scared to leave.” Similarly, the   lament ”Guts” wonders why he never came back to meet the person she’s become. ”You know I’m so easy to find, you won’t come get your girl.” The song then describes a tug of war between desiring approval and wanting to move on: ”I have a family, will they pardon me?   Taught to be loyal, never shown loyalty. .. I got the guts, I don’t need my blood,” she sings with equal parts resolve and uncertainty. Musically, these songs are just as fearless. On previous records, Thao worked with producers Tucker Martine and John Congleton  —   each helping her realize a series of jubilant,   folky anthems. Now Thao and the Get Down Stay Down has partnered with Merrill Garbus, the sonically adventurous mastermind behind   who previously   the Thao  Mirah duo album. Recorded at John Vanderslice’s San Francisco studio Tiny Telephone, A Man Alive works as a perfect match: Garbus’ uncanny knack for fractured textures and exciting genre blends perfectly suits Thao’s raw vocal yowl, yielding a crackling combination. ”Astonished Man” erupts with dissonant, Annie   riffs and   noises that sound like static signals misfiring. The slinky ”The Evening” is infused with an    funk groove and a blistering solo straight out of a   Bowie song. Elsewhere, they pile layers upon layers of controlled chaos, from burbling synths and clattering junkyard percussion to guitars masked and contorted with   effects, as if played through a deteriorating   modem. Thao and Garbus further run wild in the album’s most explosive track, ”Meticulous Bird,” a driving banger fueled by a     beat and analog squelches. With a     rap like Mellow   Beck, Thao practically spits with clever wordplay and ferocity unlike anything she’s released before. ”I grow my hair so long to wrap around you,” she sings about a possessive, smothering relationship. ”You’ve been starving for air ever since I found you.” Ultimately, A Man Alive is about searching for inner peace  —   or at least, as heard in ”Endless Love,” coping by numbing the pain: ”I got an endless love no one can starve . .. I don’t want it, carve it on out of me.” Thao may not arrive at definitive resolutions, but channeling her experiences into these artistic risks results in her most rewarding work yet."
"Every winter, a small fleet of commercial fishing boats sets gillnets in the San Francisco Bay. Their target: Pacific herring, which enter the estuary in huge numbers to spawn and are easily caught by the millions. The fishermen fill their holds with herring just yards from the waterfront of downtown San Francisco, where many restaurants serve fresh, locally caught seafood. But they rarely serve herring. Rather, nearly all the herring caught by commercial fishermen in the bay are ultimately fed to animals, including   fish. The most valuable part of the herring is the females’ roe, which is extracted, cured and eaten in Japan as the delicacy kazunoko. Now, a few sustainable seafood proponents and commercial fishermen are striving to change this  —   to divert the stream of herring that enters obscure export markets and turn this little fish into a local culinary star. Success, however, has been limited. ”We haven’t done nearly a good enough job yet of promoting herring as a local, sustainable food source,” says Geoff Shester, California campaign director for the marine protection group Oceana. ”We live in one of the most progressive,   cities in the country, and virtually no one is utilizing this healthy, sustainable resource that’s right in their backyard.” Herring are delicious, with flaky, mild meat and oil that sizzles on their skin when grilled over a flame. The fish may also be pickled, smoked and fried. But Americans generally aren’t interested in eating small, oily fish with numerous bones  —   even though, in the case of herring, their oil content is part of what makes them tasty and healthy, and many of their bones are small enough that they can be eaten. ”The mainstream American palate for seafood is really disappointing,” says commercial fisherman Kirk Lombard, who has a commercially registered kayak and sells     fish through his company, Sea Forager. ”People want to eat fish that doesn’t have any flavor, and they don’t want to deal with bones.” Chefs and seafood advocates around the world are trying to change this. Last March, 20 star chefs gathered in Spain to discuss the environmental virtues of eating what many still call ”bait fish” and ways to promote these species  —   including anchovies, sardines, mackerel and herring  —   as culinary attractions. But the case of California’s herring exemplifies some of the challenges of spreading this message. For one thing, many seafood fans here  —   and chefs, for that matter  —   don’t know much about herring, says Kenny Belov, owner of Fish Restaurant in Sausalito, Calif. ”When you don’t know something is coming into season, you’re less excited to use it,” Belov says. ”Everyone knows when Dungeness crab is supposed to start, and everyone knows when king salmon is supposed to start. How many people can tell you when it’s herring season?” Belov has been trying to get people interested in herring for more than a decade, mainly by featuring it at his restaurant. He also sells herring through his seafood company, TwoXSea, and has been a sponsor of the annual Sausalito Herring Festival, which just saw its fourth   in January. While a few dozen other Bay Area restaurants also serve herring, Belov guesses more than 99 percent of the San Francisco Bay herring catch is processed for roe. This processing happens in British Columbia, home to a large commercial herring industry of its own. Whereas the San Francisco Bay fleet captures, at most, 2, 000 or 3, 000 tons of herring in a season  —   and often much less  —   the Canadian fishery lands 15, 000 to 30, 000 tons a season. The fish processed for their roe are split open and the large,   egg sacks of the females extracted and reserved for curing. At the Canadian Fishing Company, based in Vancouver, all carcasses of herring processed for roe are reduced into fishmeal and sold to farms and aquaculture facilities, including coastal   operations, according to Rob Morley, the company’s   of production and corporate development. Feeding these fish to humans would be a better use of all that protein, argues Geoff Shester of Oceana. He says small schooling fish like herring are especially healthy to eat, since they contain low mercury levels compared to predatory species like swordfish, shark and tuna. Small forage fish species are also lower on the food chain, which means it takes less energy for the ocean to produce them, Shester says. Feeding these small fish to bigger, farmed fish, like salmon or tuna, is relatively wasteful, he says. ”You’re actually helping save herring by eating them directly, because if you eat a pound of farmed salmon, it took four pounds of herring to create that salmon,” Shester says. ”So, you could just eat the one pound of herring directly.” Lombard has delivered a TEDx talk about the importance of eating smaller fishes lower on the food chain and says it makes every bit of sense to eat herring. ”The marine food web is based on eating little fish,” he tells me. ”They’re designed by nature to come back, to resist predation and overfishing. They’re the rabbits, the field mice, of the sea.” It’s not just consumer tastes that have impeded efforts to develop a Bay Area market for whole, fresh herring: There are also regulatory hurdles. As things are now, only commercial fishermen with boats and gillnets may sell herring. For these fishermen, who catch herring by the ton, the most profitable way to move the fish onshore and return to the water to catch more is to sell the herring into the roe market, which relies on huge quantities of fish. The handlers who buy seafood at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, says Lombard, are happy to sell handfuls to restaurants and retailers now and then. But the herring, he says, are often in bad shape, and not particularly appetizing for chef shoppers. ”They’re choked, beaten, sometimes even walked on, stacked 20 tons deep, and then vacuumed into a giant plastic bin,” he says. Several years ago, Lombard attempted to create a   artisanal fishery specifically to provide herring to local restaurants and retailers. He proposed that state fishery regulators adjust the law to allow fishermen using   cast nets to catch small quantities of herring to sell directly to markets and restaurants. The proposal, says Lombard, was quickly rejected. Some locals who want herring catch the fish themselves, mainly with small cast nets thrown from the shore. Mike Chin, a Bay Area resident and recreational fisherman, catches several bucketfuls  —   about 100 pounds  —   of herring by this method each winter. At home, he smokes, pickles and pan fries his catch. He cooks many whole, and the backbones, pushed to the side of the plate during dinner, can be fried later for a crunchy, delicious snack. The innards and gills are used as garden fertilizer. Virtually nothing is wasted.  ”I really think it’s great to get the word out about this, that you don’t need a big piece of white fillet,” Chin says. ”You can eat these small fish, and the bones won’t kill you.” Alastair Bland is a freelance writer based in San Francisco who covers food, agriculture and the environment."
"Craig Windham, a voice familiar to many NPR listeners, died unexpectedly last night of a pulmonary embolism. He was 66. Windham was an   journalist who covered presidential campaigns, hurricanes, earthquakes and the first Persian Gulf War. More recently, he focused on anchoring and reporting for NPR’s Newscasts. In less than 40 seconds, Windham could explain the intricacies of a complicated bill or capture the glory of a space shuttle flying over the nation’s capital. ”Craig touched so many lives,” Robert Garcia, the executive producer of NPR’s Newscasts, told the staff in an email. ”He was one of the best reporters and anchors I have ever had the privilege of working with in my 40 years in this business. His beautiful writing, his use of sound, his calm, steady, gorgeous delivery  —   all marked the work of a caring journalist who loved nothing more than telling a good story, adding the texture that took you there, and leaving every listener invested in some way  —   moved or informed.” Outside of journalism, Windham devoted his life to young people. He was active in his church and led youth programs and overseas mission trips. He earned a Ph. D. in counseling from George Washington University and established a counseling business for adolescents. ”In numerous national speaking engagements, Craig had established himself as one of the leaders in the counseling field in the United States,” Garcia said. Windham joined NPR in 1995. Before that, he was national correspondent for the   radio networks and a news director at   in Washington, D. C. This blogger will remember him as a class act  —   a guy who was always willing to share a laugh and, perhaps most importantly, a journalist who had honed his craft but was always generous enough to share what he had learned. Windham is survived by his brother Cris a niece, Cristen a nephew, Bryan and four grandnieces and grandnephews."
"These four musicians made their first record together a decade ago, but for many of us, 2016 will be the year Lake Street Dive becomes a household name. The appeal of this band of New England Conservatory friends lies in their warmth in harmony and comfortably styled songs  —   sometimes tilting toward soul, often rocking danceably on a new collection of songs called Side Pony. At first, it may be Rachael Price and her charismatic voice that draws you to this Tiny Desk concert, but it won’t take long to see that this isn’t just a singer and her backing band. The ”two Mikes” (trumpeter and guitarist Mike ”McDuck” Olson and drummer Mike Calabrese) along with upright bassist Bridget Kearney, share in the songwriting and singing, and contribute mightily to these creative arrangements. You can hear everyone mesh so well in these three new songs from Side Pony  —   songs likely to be favorites for many at year’s end. Side Pony is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The big day is finally here  —   after tonight’s Super Tuesday results, there will be a much clearer picture of how both the Republican and Democratic races could shake out. Will Donald Trump continue his dominance? Can Marco Rubio catch up? Can Ted Cruz rebound? Will Hillary Clinton roll through the South? Can Bernie Sanders bounce back after a devastating South Carolina loss? More than a dozen states are voting today  —   some in primaries, some in caucuses whose results may not be known for quite a while. A total of 1, 460 delegates are up for grabs  —   865 for Democrats, 595 for Republicans. And remember  —   margins matter in these contests. They’re not    and closer finishes impact the number of delegates awarded on a    basis. It’s a lot to follow, so here are some of the most important states to watch. The Lone Star State is the crown jewel of the evening, with the most delegates up for grabs. Republicans will allocate 155 delegates, while there are 222 for the Democrats. It’s the home state of Sen. Ted Cruz, and expectations are sky high for the Republican. Polls have shown him leading, but Trump is on his heels. If the real estate mogul somehow pulls off an upset or if Cruz escapes with just a narrow win, it could be the senator’s end of the road. It’s been a month since Cruz’s win in Iowa, but that’s a lifetime in politics.   finishes in South Carolina, where he once had strength, and in Nevada can’t sustain him. On the Democratic side, Clinton is looking to make a statement over Sanders. Polls show her with more than a   lead. The Peach State has the   number of delegates up on Tuesday  —   76 for Republicans and 102 pledged delegates for Democrats. It also will be an important early barometer for whether there’s been a shift in the GOP race. Trump still leads polls here, but Rubio has made a late push in the state, campaigning there on Monday morning (even as he had lost his voice). His strong debate performance last week could lift him here  —   remember, it’s Rubio who’s often been the beneficiary of   voters, according to exit polls in Nevada and South Carolina. An   poll gave Trump just a   edge, narrower than other surveys. Metro Atlanta will make up the bulk of the primary vote, and if Trump is winning in the more conservative, rural areas of the state, he’ll have a good night. Like South Carolina, Georgia’s Democratic primary is expected to have high   turnout, which could again bode well for Clinton. In recent polls, she has more than double the support of Sanders. In 2008, 52 percent of the Georgia electorate was black. Rubio has gotten a surge of late support from some top officials here, nabbing endorsements from both Gov. Bill Haslam and Sen. Lamar Alexander. Polls show Trump still has an advantage, and since more than a quarter of the vote is expected to come from early voting, any momentum for Rubio may be blunted. Eastern Tennessee is the most conservative part of the state  —   if either Rubio or Cruz are breaking away there, it could be closer than expected. Clinton is expected to carry the Democratic primary easily. There’s still a lot of goodwill for the Clintons in the Volunteer State, which borders Arkansas. Bill Clinton was the last Democrat to carry the state in a presidential race (and Al Gore’s inability to carry his home state in 2000 cost him the election). Polls show Hillary Clinton with more than a    lead over Sanders. Trump’s dominance in this state got a boost over the weekend when he secured the endorsement of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions  —   a major blow to Cruz, who has yet to receive an endorsement from any of his fellow senators. This is a state where Cruz should be doing well. In 2012, 80 percent of the GOP primary electorate described themselves as evangelical voters. Yet Trump leads among   voters in polls, and he has a massive lead in the state. A good night for either Cruz or Rubio here might be just holding Trump to less than a   victory. Alabama is another Southern state with a high   population where Clinton is expected to cruise to victory over Sanders. A Monmouth University poll released Monday gave her a nearly   edge, similar to her margin of victory in South Carolina this weekend. If there’s one place where Rubio could pull off an upset over Trump on Tuesday, the Old Dominion might be it. The most recent polls still give the GOP   a   lead, but Rubio has been focused heavily on the commonwealth and campaigned all day in Virginia on Sunday. Watch the more moderate, highly educated D. C. suburbs and exurbs for hints on who might emerge as the victor. If Rubio is pulling big margins here, it could be a surprising finish. Polls also give Clinton an edge in Virginia. The state’s governor, Terry McAuliffe, has been a longtime friend and confidante to the Clintons. The Natural State is one place where Cruz could have a    night. There’s been scant polling in the state, but one survey done at the beginning of February gave the senator from neighboring Texas a narrow advantage over Trump and Rubio, who were   . As for Clinton, she should easily win in the state that launched her and her husband’s political careers. This northeast state is   for someone like Trump, who won big in neighboring New Hampshire three weeks ago. He has a decisive lead here as well, according to recent polls. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has been looking toward later contests such as his home state and Michigan, could make a strong showing in the Bay State, battling with Rubio for the state’s more moderate GOP electorate. For Democrats, this one could be a nailbiter. Sanders doesn’t enjoy the huge advantage he had in the Granite State, and polls show it’s a close contest between him and Clinton. Trump’s lead in polls is smaller in this state than it is in many Southern contests. Rubio has the backing of Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe and the state’s popular former Sen. Tom Coburn, who closed out a rally for him on the eve of Super Tuesday. Cruz has been    with Rubio for second, too, and this really could be a   contest. As the Democratic contests also move out of the South, Clinton and Sanders are running close in the state. There’s been no recent poll in this state, where   caucuses will be held Tuesday night. The Upshot blog in The New York Times predicted this could be a surprisingly strong state for Rubio, where lower turnout is expected and more moderate voters could be the ones to show up. For Democrats, Sanders has made a late push in the state. He actually spent Saturday night campaigning in Minneapolis instead of waiting in South Carolina for results  —   a good choice given Clinton’s resounding win. But when he landed he learned the state’s largest paper, the Minneapolis StarTribune, had endorsed his opponent. He has an urgent need to do well here, and Sanders has made three stops in the state in the past four days. Sanders needs a victory somewhere on Tuesday night outside of Clinton’s Southern stronghold and his home state of Vermont, and Colorado is another place to watch to see if he gets it. He’s drawn big crowds in recent visits to the state, but the caucuses are tough to predict. On the Republican side, don’t wait up  —   there won’t be an immediate apparent winner. There are only meetings throughout the state to pick delegates to county caucuses there’s no presidential preference poll that is happening. There’s no suspense on the Democratic side: The home state favorite Sanders will mop up big here. Given that the state’s electorate is similar to New Hampshire, on the GOP side it’s Trump who probably has an edge in the race for the state’s 16 Republican delegates."
"Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump notched big wins across the South on Super Tuesday as they extended their leads for their party’s nomination. On the Republican side, Trump has won seven states: Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Vermont, Massachusetts and Georgia. Sen. Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, eked out a surprise victory in Oklahoma and won the caucuses in Alaska. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio finally got his first outright win by taking the Minnesota caucuses. In the Democratic race, Clinton also captured seven states: Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Massachusetts and her onetime home of Arkansas. Sen. Bernie Sanders took his home state of Vermont and also picked up wins in Oklahoma’s primary and the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses. Trump: ’I’m A Unifier’ After a week in which many top Republicans had promised to stop the real estate mogul, Trump rolled through the biggest primary night yet. But the boisterous billionaire was more subdued Tuesday night, trying to project a more presidential tone. Instead of his usual rousing victory parties, he held a press conference at his    resort in Palm Beach, Fla. ”Tonight is the best of all,” Trump declared, touting his resounding victories as they continued to pile up. He cast an eye toward the general election, promising he would bring the GOP together if he is the nominee and expand the party. ”I’m a unifier,” Trump said. ”I know people are going to find that a little bit hard to believe, but believe me.” He also jabbed at the ”lightweight” Rubio for having a ”tough night.” The Florida senator had hit Trump hard this week but ended up with little to show for it he finally won in Minnesota late on Tuesday. Rubio’s next closest state was Virginia, where he did well in the D. C. suburbs, but Trump still pulled out a victory, robbing him of a major coup. Rubio had taken the stage earlier in Miami, exuding confidence nonetheless as the race moves to Florida in two weeks. ”We are going to send the message loud and clear . .. that the presidency of the United States will never be held by a con artist,” Rubio declared, echoing a hit against Trump he has frequently used this week. But it was Cruz who used his wins in Texas and Oklahoma to frame the contest as a   race, calling for the other candidates to drop out. ”So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump’s path to the nomination remains more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation,” Cruz said. ”And after tonight, we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump,” he argued. Ohio Gov. John Kasich nearly pulled off an upset over Trump in Vermont, but would finish the night with no actual victories. His team is instead banking on a decisive victory in two weeks in his home state. ”Tonight, I can say that we have absolutely exceeded expectations,” he told a crowd in Mississippi. For Ben Carson, the results were even more bleak. His best showing of the evening was in Alabama, where he got 10 percent of the vote. But he, too, vowed to remain fighting. ”Millions of Americans plead with me to continue,” he told a crowd in Baltimore. ”They know I am a citizen candidate, not a politician, who won’t do what is expedient, but what is right.” Clinton: ’This Country Belongs To All Of Us’ On the Democratic side, Clinton touted her strong finishes across the board, winning in states with diverse Democratic electorates. ”All across our country today, Democrats voted to break down barriers so we can all rise together,” she declared. Striking a noticeable contrast with Trump, her possible general election rival, she smiled as she said, ”I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness.” And she struck a populist tone, taking on one of Sanders’ common themes as she told the crowd, ”this country belongs to all of us, not just those at the top.” Sanders came out shortly after 7:30 p. m. ET from his campaign party in Vermont for what was expected to be a long night. ”By the end of tonight, we are going to win many hundreds of delegates,” he told a roaring, adoring crowd in his home state. ”The people who know me best have voted so strongly to put me in the White House,” Sanders boasted, declaring that his campaign ”is not just about electing a president it is about transforming America.”"
"The Stream is your source for news, photos and analysis from NPR’s political team on the ground on Super Tuesday. For more coverage and analysis visit NPR Politics or elections. npr. org."
"FBI Director James Comey says encryption is making phones ”warrantproof”  —   and the agency’s dispute with Apple over an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters shows the challenges encryption poses in criminal and counterterrorism investigations. Apple is challenging a federal court order obtained by the FBI that compels the tech giant to write special software that would lift some security restrictions and let the FBI crack the passcode on the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Comey, at the first congressional hearing on the issue of encryption since the beginning of their legal clash, said many companies have figured out a business model that allows them to provide data in compliance with warrants, while keeping information safe.  ”From the founding of this country it was contemplated that law enforcement could go into your house with appropriate predication and oversight. So to me the logic of that means they wouldn’t have imagined any box or storage area that couldn’t be entered,” said Comey. ”This entire country of ours is based on a balance. It’s a hard one to strike, but it’s so seductive to talk about privacy as an ultimate value in a society where we aspire to be safe, and have our families safe, and our children safe  —   that can’t be true, we have to find a way to accommodate both.” Apple argues it has cooperated in the investigation as much as it can, but draws the line at creating a tool that CEO Tim Cook has called the software ”equivalent of cancer” because it says the code the FBI is requesting would amount to a master key for its devices. ”That passcode is the cryptographic key,” testified Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell. ”So essentially we are throwing open the doors and allowing the very act of decryption to take place.” Though the FBI earlier underscored that it is requesting very targeted computer code that would never have to leave Apple’s hands, Apple paints this case as a major precedent. And at Tuesday’s hearing, Comey acknowledged that the FBI would ”potentially” turn back to Apple for more help unlocking other iPhones as well.  New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance, another witness at the hearing, said his own office is currently locked out of 175 Apple devices obtained in investigations of a murder, sexual child abuse, sex trafficking, child pornography, assault and robbery. Comey also conceded that a mistake was made in the first 24 hours of the investigation, when the FBI instructed San Bernardino county, which owns the phone as the shooter’s employer, to reset the Apple ID password associated with the phone that ultimately made it extra hard to retrieve information from the device. The Justice Department searched the iCloud backups associated with the phone, but those stopped several weeks before the Dec. 2 attack. It’s unclear what exactly might be on the phone, but U. S. attorneys general have told the federal court in California that Apple’s cooperation is crucial in the investigation: The phone’s security prevents the FBI from having a computer guess the PIN code and could wipe the phone clean after 10 wrong tries, so the FBI wants Apple to override that security protection. In one heated exchange, Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, pressed Comey specifically on that matter: whether the FBI was truly incapable of cracking into the phone or pulled out all the stops before trying to compel an unwilling party’s cooperation. ”The FBI is the premier law enforcement organization with laboratories that are second to none in the world. Are you testifying today that you, and or contractors that you employ, could not achieve this without demanding an unwilling partner do it?” asked Issa. ”Correct,” answered Comey, later elaborating: ”We wouldn’t be litigating if we could. We have engaged all parts of the U. S. government to see, does anybody have a way, short of asking Apple, to do it, with a 5C running iOS9, and we do not.” Congress Asked For Help, Though Comey said that the San Bernardino case should and will be settled in court, both Apple and its critics agree that the issue of government access to encrypted data on iPhones should be settled by lawmakers. ”The line between personal privacy and public safety should be drawn by Congress, Silicon Valley,” Vance wrote in his prepared testimony. ”In the absence of a uniform policy, our nation will effectively delegate the crafting of national security and law enforcement policy to boardrooms in Silicon Valley.” Apple, in turn, says the matter should be resolved by Congress instead of the court system, where it’s currently pending. ”Should the FBI have the right to compel a company to produce a product it doesn’t already make, to the FBI’s exact specifications and for the FBI’s use?” Sewell wrote in his prepared remarks. ”The decisions should be made by you and your colleagues as representatives of the people, rather than through a warrant request based on a    statute.” Known as the All Writs Act, the statute has been used before to compel companies, including Apple, to cooperate with investigations, according to the Department of Justice. Tech companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others are expected to file briefs in support of Apple in the U. S. District Court for the Central District of California, The Washington Post reports: ”Those involved say the swell of support is unparalleled, especially for a case at the magistrate judge level  —   the lowest level of the federal court system. The filings also indicate the level of anxiety among companies about the possibility of a legal precedent greatly expanding the limits of what the government can force a company to do in criminal and national security probes. ”Meanwhile, law enforcement groups and families of some of the 14 killed in the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, Calif. are filing briefs in support of the government.” Apple’s public position got a boost on Monday in another legal standoff involving a drug case in Brooklyn. A magistrate judge there ruled against federal investigators, rejecting their request for an All Writs order compelling Apple to help them bypass an iPhone passcode. That ruling isn’t binding in other courts and it dealt with a different set of technical requests, but it hits on a similar theme of government access to encrypted data. In Congress, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, and Senate Intelligence Committee member Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, have introduced a bill that would create a National Commission on Security and Technology Challenges, which would consist of 16 ”experts representing all of the interests at stake so we can evaluate and improve America’s security posture as technology  —   and our adversaries  —   evolve.” U. S. attorneys are due to respond to Apple’s latest filing regarding the San Bernardino iPhone by March 10, and a court hearing is scheduled for March 22."
"Hillary Clinton’s win in the South Carolina Democratic primary was a blowout, and black voters in particular are being credited with handing her that victory. More than 8 in 10 black voters in that state voted for Clinton, according to exit polls. If that trend holds, she could have a great day on Super Tuesday, when several states in her Southern ”firewall”  —   several of which have substantial black populations  —   will vote. There are a lot of reasons for her strength with this demographic: her name recognition, her record and her politics, for example. But it’s not just her the Clintons are simply popular among  . It’s true that Bill Clinton enjoyed heavy support from the black community in the 1990s. But as Hillary Clinton seeks the nomination herself, some are raising questions about just how good the Clinton presidency was for black Americans  —   not to mention whether Hillary Clinton should get any credit (or, alternatively, blame) for her husband’s legacy. Why Black Voters Loved Bill, In fact, history has misunderstood that ”first black president” idea, as   Coates wrote last year. Author Toni Morrison later said she was trying to talk not about Clinton’s popularity with black voters but his treatment in the public arena, especially following the Monica Lewisnky scandal (”I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp”). But history has decided that the quote is a compliment  —   a way to talk about Clinton’s popularity with black voters. And that popularity, at least, is undisputed. In 1992, the New York Times editorial board, reflecting on the fact that Clinton won 75 percent of the black vote on Super Tuesday, gushed about America’s advances against racism: ”Governor Clinton may or may not go on to win the Democratic nomination, and he may or may not give President Bush a hard run in the fall. But either way, that one figure gives healthy evidence, probably for the first time since Robert Kennedy’s Indiana primary campaign in 1968, that it is politically possible to bring poor blacks and   white voters together. It is finally possible for Americans to transcend racial division and look instead to mutual interest.” What drove that popularity? In part, it was regionalism. Clinton did particularly well among Southern   and the fact that he was from Arkansas probably helped him. ”Because of his Southern heritage, he appeared to be very, very comfortable in   communities,” says Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University. That ease, Gillespie said, ranges from his famous   appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show to his ease on the campaign trail in interacting with black voters  —   it ”sort of hinted at a certain type of cultural fluency that was welcome to   voters,” she added. His Southern heritage probably helped him with white voters, too, though  —   hence the nickname ”Bubba.” And once he was in office, he tried to show he was reaching across color lines. ”I think that a mixture of his personality and his politics really made him relatable and likable to many in the black community,” said Stefanie Brown James, who did   outreach for the 2012 Obama campaign. He believed in affirmative action, for example, pushing to ”mend it, don’t end it” when it came under fire. And he appointed   to   positions  —   in 1993, he appointed four black Cabinet secretaries. That ”speaks volumes to the black community,” Brown James said. Clinton’s close friendship with Vernon Jordan also left an impression on Brown James: ”I remember stories about how amazing it was to see him on the golf course with Clinton  —   a black man playing golf, of all sports, with the president was a big deal then,” she said. Being at ease among black voters, golfing with his black friend, appointing black Cabinet secretaries, going on a   talk show  —   from the standpoint of 2016, these can seem less than remarkable, but a decade and a half before the first black president would be elected, these were powerful actions. The Clinton years were also known for a booming economy. During that time, the median household income in   households grew by 25 percent, twice as fast as it did for all households nationwide. In addition,   unemployment plummeted from 14. 1 percent to 8. 2 percent (of course, the unemployment rate also fell for other groups). And the administration touted its record of boosting loans to minorities. A    Record, Bill Clinton may have had the support of many   but today, some have deemed two of the most famous   legislative achievements a failure for black America. Michelle Alexander makes this case in a scathing recent article for The Nation (”Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve The Black Vote”) pointing to the 1994 crime bill and 1996 welfare reform bill as evidence that the Clinton presidency was, in fact, bad for black Americans. She’s not alone. The welfare reform bill was controversial from the moment it was signed. Peter Edelman, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked on poverty issues, resigned because of his opposition to the bill, later saying it would ”hurt millions of poor children.” And the criticism has continued over the years, particularly from the left. Proponents argue that welfare reform helped reduce poverty and encourage work. However, it also left many families vulnerable, as Brookings’ Ron Haskins argues, like those where a single parent faces several hurdles to getting a job (lack of transportation, lack of child care, depression). Indeed, after reform, the number of poor children whose families received welfare assistance plummeted. Not only that, but some research suggests welfare reform led to an increase in extreme poverty  —   that is, families living on less than $2 a day. And this economic issue is a race issue as well: Families living in extreme poverty are disproportionately minority households. Likewise, the black prison population skyrocketed on Clinton’s watch, and his 1994 crime bill, with its   provision and increased number of capital crimes, is often considered a driver of that trend. The black population is currently disproportionately incarcerated, with black men six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men, according to the Pew Research Center. Not only that, but there are a few holes in the idea that the ”Clinton economy” was all that great, especially for black America. First of all, presidents do not really have a lot of control over the economy and tend to get far more credit (or blame) for it than they really deserve. And even if it were Clinton’s doing, the economy in the 1990s wasn’t nearly as good for   as many perceived it to be, as Melissa   found in a 2005 study. Moreover, the poorest black Americans grew worse off. ”As Clinton performed blackness, real black people got poorer,” she wrote in 2008. And while the unemployment rate fell throughout the 1990s, ”the jobless rate among black men in their 20s who didn’t have a college degree rose to its highest level ever,” Alexander writes. Why? High incarceration rates. Of course, Bill Clinton didn’t pass (or write) the crime bill himself indeed,   of Congressional Black Caucus members voted for it. At the time, the bill was considered ”imperfect but necessary,” as Slate puts it, given America’s crime problems in the 1990s. And it’s not even entirely clear that it played a big role in driving up incarceration, as German Lopez writes at Vox. Still, it’s not exactly the former president’s proudest achievement two decades later, Clinton himself has renounced it. Is Bill’s Legacy Hillary’s? The positives and negatives of Bill Clinton’s policies can (and will) be dissected ad infinitum. But it’s still not clear how much blame or credit Hillary Clinton deserves for her husband’s policy legacy. It’s true that Bill presented her as a sort of   as Carl Bernstein writes in his 2008 Hillary Clinton biography, A Woman In Charge, and that she had a particular interest in the politics of welfare reform. ”Hillary had never publicly opposed any legislation or policy of her husband’s administration, but her views about welfare were strongly held and probably more complicated than his,” he wrote, adding later that her pragmatism eventually led her to support the third pass at a welfare reform bill. (President Clinton vetoed two earlier welfare reform bills.) ”In Hillary’s autobiography, she described the bill as hardly perfect, and conceded that pragmatic politics had figured in her willingness to support the measure. She felt it was better to allow the bill to become law with a Democratic administration in charge of implementing it,” he wrote. Of course, she didn’t sign bills he did. But regardless of her part in any of that, voters lump the Clintons together, for better or worse. Many Clinton supporters see her husband as an asset. Many Sanders supporters, not to mention Black Lives Matter activists, meanwhile, see former President Clinton’s policies as harmful, and some extend their wariness of the former president to his wife. Likewise, her own words during her husband’s presidency have come back to haunt her. In 1996, she infamously referred to young ”superpredators” as one reason for the high crime rate, in comments that are seen as racially charged. ”No conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel,” Clinton said at the time. A Black Lives Matter activist confronted her about the quote recently, and afterward, she backpedaled her 1996 rhetoric. ”Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today,” she told the Washington Post. Still, Clinton has her own legacy to run on. Her campaign has been touting parts of this in recent ads  —   her legal aid work, for example. She also benefits from her work with another   president. Voters who like and defend Obama also see Clinton as an extension of his legacy. ”I didn’t like the way [Obama] was being treated, and I don’t like the way she’s being treated,”    Queen Lewis told NPR’s Sam Sanders recently, in the   to the South Carolina primary, where Clinton won by almost 50 points. All of this gets to the complexity of choosing a candidate  —   not to mention the fact that no group is a monolith. Many older Democratic voters of any race appreciate Clinton’s rhetoric on strengthening Social Security. Many women (and men) of any ethnicity appreciate that she would be the first female president. Likewise, young voters of all colors are feeling the Bern. While it’s true that   vote overwhelmingly Democratic, identity is just one small part of the many factors playing into the choice between Clinton and Sanders."
"Every year, the SXSW Music Festival features thousands of artists from around the world. And every year, The Austin 100 winnows them down to an even hundred discoveries and highlights across genres. Each song on the list is streamable through NPR Music’s gorgeous Austin 100 app until March 31, 2017. This is a remarkable six hours of music  —   painstakingly culled from a bulk playlist spanning nearly five days  —   all designed to trigger further exploration. It’s also only the beginning of our SXSW 2016 coverage: You can find full concerts, photos, videos and dispatches from this year’s festival at NPR. . So check out the app, come back for more from SXSW and, most of all, enjoy the music. ► LAUNCH THE APP, ► LISTEN ON SPOTIFY, The Austin 100 Playlist,   ”Habib Galbi” Adia Victoria, ”Dead Eyes” Al Scorch, ”Everybody Out” Alex Napping, ”Trembles Part II” All Dogs, ”That Kind Of Girl” And The Kids, ”All Day All Night” Anderson . Paak, ”The   Me” Aubrie Sellers, ”Sit Here And Cry” (from New City Blues) Aurora, ”Running With The Wolves” Bayonne, ”Spectrolite” Beach Slang, ”Bad Art  Weirdo Ideas” Beverly, ”Victoria” Big Ups, ”National Parks” Bird Dog, ”The Ocean And The Sea” Birthh, ”Chlorine” Bleached, ”Keep On Keepin’ On” Car Seat Headrest, ”Vincent (Edit)” Chad Valley, ”Arms Away” Chicano Batman, ”Black Lipstick” Chynna Rogers, ”The Conversation” CONAN, ”Revengeance” The Crookes, ”I Wanna Waste My Time On You” Cullen Omori, ”Cinnamon” Darq E Freaker, ”Venom” Day Wave, ”Stuck” Des Ark, ”Don Taco  His Hot Sauce Toss” Diet Cig, ”Breathless” Dilly Dally, ”The Touch” Dodge  Fuski, ”Killer Bees” Dolce, ”Inez Palema” Downtown Boys, ”Monstro” Emily Wolfe, ”Atta Blues” Exmortus, ”For The Horde” Faith Healer, ”Again” Fear Of Men, ”Luna” FEMME, ”Light Me Up” firekid, ”Magic Mountain” Flor, ”Warm Blood” Gina Chavez, ” ” Gwenno, ”Patriarchaeth” HÆLOS, ”Oracle” The Heirs, ”Alright Goodnight” Jane Weaver, ”I Need A Connection (Edit)” Jared  The Mill, ”Hold On” Jimi Tents, ”Landslide” John Mark Nelson, ”I’ll Give You More” JONES, ”Hoops” Julia Jacklin, ”L. A. Dream” Julien Baker, ”Sprained Ankle” KING, ”The Greatest” Lapsley, ”8896” Lucy Dacus, ”I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” The Marcus King Band, ”I Won’t Be Here” Margaret Glaspy, ”Somebody To Anybody” Margo Price, ”Hurtin’ (On The Bottle)” Mass Gothic, ”Every Night You’ve Got To Save Me” Melaena Cadiz, ”Last Night In My Dream” Methyl Ethel, ”Idée Fixe” Mick Jenkins, ”P’s  Q’s (prod. by Kaytranada)” Miya Folick, ”Talking With Strangers” Monk Parker, ”Sadly Yes” Mothers, ”It Hurts Until It Doesn’t” Mt. Wolf, ”Hex” Ninet (Ninet Tayeb) ”Child” Noura Mint Seymali, ”Tzenni” Odetta Hartman, ”Creektime” Oh Pep! ”The Race” Parker Millsap, ”Pining” Penny  Sparrow, ”Finery” Petite Noir, ”La Vie Est   Is Beautiful” Possessed By Paul James, ”Hurricane” Prateek Kuhad, ”Oh Love” Purple, ”Bliss” PWR BTTM, ”1994” The Quebe Sisters Band, ”Wayfaring Stranger” Rosie Carney, ”Antidote” Rozi Plain, ”Actually” RY X, ”Sweat” Sam Outlaw, ”Ghost Town” Savoir Adore, ”Giants” Seratones, ”Necromancer” Shelita Burke, ”Swim” Sofi Tukker, ”Drinkee” The Spook School, ”August 17th” Sun Club, Tropicoller Lease” T. Hardy Morris, ”My Me” Tacocat, ”I Hate The Weekend” Talisco, ”The Keys” toyGuitar, ”Is It True” Trapper Schoepp, ”Ogallala” Turnover, ”Cutting My Fingers Off” Ume, ”Too Big World” WagakkiBand, ”Akatsukino Ito” The Weather Station, ”Tapes” The Wet Secrets, ”I Can Swing A Hammer” White Lung, ”Hungry” The Wild Reeds, ”Where I’m Going” Will Varley, ”Seize The Night” Worriers, ”They   Them   Theirs” Yung, ”Blue Uniforms”"
"Havana will meet the Rolling Stones later this month. The band has announced they’ll play a free   concert in the Cuban capital on March 25. That will make them ”the most famous act to play Cuba since its 1959 revolution,” the Associated Press reports. ”We have performed in many special places during our long career but this show in Havana is going to be a landmark event for us, and, we hope, for all our friends in Cuba too,” the Rolling Stones said in a statement. They’re currently on tour in South and Central America. The concert is scheduled just three days after President Obama is set to visit Cuba. He’ll be the first sitting U. S. president since Calvin Coolidge to do so, as The   has reported. Cuba has a fraught history with rock and roll. NPR’s alt. latino explains: ”Fidel Castro didn’t like rock music. Or hippies. In 1968, he launched a ’revolutionary offensive’ aimed at eliminating all remnants of capitalism. He also closed Havana’s nightclubs for a year. ”Castro aimed to cure Cuba once and for all of ’ideological deviants,’ which included   youth, homosexuals and any others the authorities simply had reason to mistrust. For Cuban authorities, The Beatles were viewed as harbingers of an imperialist offensive out to corrupt young Cuban minds. ”Over the next two years, thousands of youth were swept up in a repressive crackdown.” But as NPR’s Carrie Kahn reported to our Newscast unit, ”Castro later repented when he dedicated a statue of John Lennon in a Havana park in 2000.” She adds: ”Since warming relations with the U. S. more than a year ago, Cuba has been visited extensively by U. S. entertainers, artists and business leaders.” The Rolling Stones were becoming global stars at the height of Cuba’s crackdown. ”It’s part of a dream to see the greatest icons of music who couldn’t come before for various reasons, above all Cuba’s isolation,” Cuban music critic Joaquin Borges Triana tells the Associated Press. ”The Rolling Stones are going to magically unite generations of Cubans, from people in their 60s to their children and grandchildren.”"
"Gov. Dennis Daugaard has vetoed a bill that would have required transgender students in South Dakota’s public schools to use bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities based on their gender at birth. Daugaard issued the veto Tuesday afternoon on a bill that would have become law at midnight if he had taken no action. Opponents of the measure, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign, had called on Daugaard to veto the bill. ”Proponents of House Bill 1008 say it protects students’ privacy,” South Dakota Public Radio reports. ”Opponents say it’s discrimination.” After the bill was approved by a   vote in the state Senate last month, its opponents held protests and questioned lawmakers about it. Daugaard, who in the past had said that he saw the legislation as providing accommodations for both sides, had also met with transgender students and parents. ”I heard their personal stories,” Daugaard said after those meetings, according to SDPB. ”And so I saw things through their eyes in that sense. I had read other personal stories. Certainly I’m getting personal stories through the emails, and through what I read in the paper.” The law would have had particular impact for the 1, 360 youth in South Dakota who identify as transgender, according to an estimate by the Williams Institute, a think tank based at UCLA. But it’s also part of a wider debate over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. Last week, the city council of Charlotte, N. C. approved a nondiscrimination ordinance that allows transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice. According to the ACLU, at least 200 other cities and counties have enacted similar legislation, as have at least 18 states."
"Whether or not you’re a citizen in New York state, you have a right to attend a public high school and earn a diploma until you’re 21. That was Pawsansoe Bree’s plan after she left a refugee camp in Thailand when she was almost 19. She resettled about four hours north of New York City  —   in the small, Rust Belt city of Utica, N. Y. which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees once called ”The Town That Loves Refugees.” Bree says she knew she had a lot of work to do when she arrived. ”I did not speak any English at all. I could barely say my name in English,” says Bree, whose family fled Myanmar, also known as Burma, as refugees from the ethnic Karen community. In Utica, Bree went to a newcomers program, where a teacher from the local school district taught English to young refugees like her. Eventually, the students asked to move on to Thomas R. Proctor High School, Utica’s only high school. ”The teacher there told us, ’Oh, no, you cannot go to a high school,’ ” Bree recalls. ”And we were like, ’Why?’ And they told us, ’Oh, you are too old. You’re 19 now, so by the time you’re 21, you won’t finish high school. You would just waste your time.’ ” ’An Open Secret’ That conversation took place about eight years ago. Bree says since then, other district employees have given similar explanations to refugees who speak little or no English and want to go to high school. That’s why she helped organize a group of students to sue the Utica City School District in federal court. Their   lawsuit, filed last April, says that for almost a decade, the district has discriminated against refugee students over 16, who are not required to go to school under New York state law. ”It was an open secret that refugees just knew within the community that once you were at a certain age and you’re arriving in the country, you’re just not going to get a chance to go to high school,” says Phil Desgranges, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the students along with Legal Services of Central New York. Desgranges says the district funneled his clients to alternative programs, mainly to learn English. While some students could attend GED classes, he claims none were given the choice to earn high school diplomas. ”They’re putting them on a track where they can’t become a doctor, where they can’t become an engineer or a lawyer,” he says. ”And that is absurd. That’s the exact opposite of what our country’s been built on, right?” ’Utica Needs To Get Its Fair Share’ NPR asked for an interview with the district’s superintendent, Bruce Karam. His office directed requests to the district’s attorney, who did not respond to multiple requests before publication. But in a sworn statement filed in federal court, Karam says that the district has not ”denied enrollment to any eligible students based upon their age.” He is also asking a judge to dismiss a second, similar lawsuit filed by the New York state attorney general in November. ”We want to be able to provide the sound basic education, which is guaranteed under the state constitution to all students, including our refugee population,” Karam recently told Utica radio station WIBX. ”But in order to do this, the funding formula has got to be fixed, and Utica needs to get its fair share.” Utica is one of New York’s poorest school districts. It has faced hundreds of layoffs and regular budget deficits. In fact, it’s involved in a separate lawsuit that says public schools in Utica and other small cities in New York have suffered from underfunding by the state. ’The Children Have A Right To Study’ Still, the state attorney general’s office argues that Utica is breaking federal funding rules by discriminating against immigrant students. Justin Deabler, an assistant attorney general for New York, adds that problems enrolling immigrants in schools have grown since the recent surge of unaccompanied children from Central America.  ”The settlements that our office has reached have spanned northern, western New York, southern New York,” he says. ”We see these problems cropping up all over New York state, not simply in Utica.” More than 20 school districts have settled with New York’s attorney general’s office, which announced its latest agreement on Monday after an investigation found that the Westbury Union Free School District on Long Island was excluding immigrants over 16 from high school. Deabler says Utica is the first school district the state has taken to court on this issue. It’s also the first district Patrick Tuyizere, 19, has ever sued. He’s one of the refugee students who filed the   lawsuit claiming the district prevented them from going to high school. But now Tuyizere leaves his family’s apartment most mornings with a backpack strapped on. After he filed the lawsuit, the district contacted him about enrolling at Proctor High School, which he and four other refugee students in the suit recently started attending. ”We have a right to be in class to study. The children have a right to study,” says Tuyizere, who was born in a refugee camp in Rwanda after his family fled from violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both cases against the Utica City School District are still ongoing. Tuyizere’s attorneys say they want to make sure other refugees can go to high school  —   even if they don’t have lawyers backing them up."
"Less than four months after it started accepting Syrian refugees, Canada says it has reached its goal of bringing in 25, 000 people who have fled the raging civil war. The initiative was a campaign promise by newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He personally welcomed the first group of refugees when they started arriving in December. As NPR’s Jackie Northam reports for our Newscast unit, ”initially, the government wanted to have all the refugees resettled by the end of last year, but logistical challenges  —   such as medical and security screenings  —   slowed the process.” Now Canada has met its goal, and Jackie says private citizens and groups played a big role: ”Well, 15, 000 of the refugees are being sponsored by the government, but what’s remarkable is that about 10, 000 are being resettled under a private sponsorship program, and it allows private citizens or groups to bring refugees into Canada. . .. So we’re seeing a lot of church groups and neighborhood groups, PTAs  —   things like that, all across Canada are stepping up to help in organizing. ”They have to make a   commitment to help the refugees get settled here, and that includes covering expenses, finding them housing and jobs, getting the kids settled in school. And even though it’s a private sponsorship, the government will also help. They’ll give the refugees a stipend, they’ll get free health care and language lessons and the government will also pick up the cost of travel.” Canada’s immigration minister, John McCallum, says now that these Syrian have arrived, government efforts will shift to Phase 2: ”helping settled refugees find permanent living arrangements, jobs and to get them enrolled into language training for either French or English,” according to the CBC. He adds that the program has cost about $522 million so far, which is ”under where the budget that we set.” Here’s more from the CBC report: ”In order to meet the Liberal government’s campaign promise of bringing in 25, 000   refugees, McCallum said, the federal government will have to settle another 10, 000 Syrian refugees, plus some additional private refugees, before the end of the year.” The new arrivals are settling in and beginning to find jobs. The Toronto Star newspaper says several dozen of them are working at two branches of a Middle Eastern grocery store in the Toronto area. ”This is a very good start. A first job is very important for someone who arrived alone with no money. Thank you for this opportunity. They are saving lives,” says    Marah Khanjian, from Aleppo, on her first day at work. Jackie reported in December how the photo of a drowned Syrian toddler,   on a Turkish beach, became a major rallying point in Canada: ”Applications to sponsor Syrian refugees have been pouring in since early September, when a photo appeared of a lifeless    boy whose body had been swept ashore at a Turkish beach. Alan Kurdi’s parents had applied to Canada for asylum, but the request was turned down.” This comes at a time when many countries, especially in Europe, are shutting borders or putting caps on the number of migrants they can take. The U. S. has pledged to bring in 10, 000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year  —   which has faced pushback from some lawmakers. According to data from the Worldwide Refugee Processing System, 950 Syrian refugees have arrived in the U. S. so far this fiscal year. And 2, 819 have arrived since Syria’s civil war began five years ago. McCallum said he thinks it’s important for Canada to send a message to the world, according to the CBC. ”We are among the few countries who are saying, ’No, come on in, we want to welcome 25, 000 quickly. . .. It’s important that we’re helping 25, 000 have a happy and productive life in Canada.” I’ll leave you with this video of Syrian refugee kids experiencing snow for the first time in Canada:"
"Chances are, you’ve never heard of flubendiamide. It’s not among the most toxic insecticides, and it’s not among the widely used chemicals, either. In recent years, it has been used on about a quarter of the nation’s tobacco and 14 percent of almonds, peppers and watermelons. But flubendiamide is now at the center of a public dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency and the company that sells it, Bayer CropScience. That dispute is arousing fear in the pesticide industry  —   and hope among activists who are pushing for the EPA to regulate pesticides more tightly. The EPA wants to cancel its approval of this pesticide. The agency says that there is now evidence that this chemical will accumulate in streams and lakes, where it will kill off small, freshwater creatures like snails and crabs that play a crucial role in the entire web of aquatic life. But the real reason that this decision is attracting so much attention is that flubendiamide is just one of thousands of pesticides that the EPA approved on a ”conditional” basis, pending the results of further studies that were required to assure that agency of the chemicals’ safety. The pesticide industry fears  —   and   groups hope  —   that many other chemicals, also approved conditionally, soon could face increased EPA scrutiny as well. ”We’re really encouraged that the EPA went for cancellation” of flubendiamide’s approval, rather than a lengthy process known as a ”special review,” says Kristin Schafer, policy director at the Pesticide Action Network, or PAN. Conditional approvals allow the EPA to OK a pesticide when the benefits of using it outweigh any apparent risks  —   such as in a public health emergency. But pesticide critics such as PAN and the Natural Resources Defense Council have criticized the EPA’s heavy reliance on this process. They say it has turned into an easy way for companies to start selling their products without really proving that their products meet legal safety requirements  —   and that the EPA seldom follows up. In the case of flubendiamide, the EPA was concerned, from the beginning, about the possibility that the chemical would accumulate in water. The agency has now concluded that this is likely. The company that sells the pesticide, Bayer CropScience, is refusing, so far, to stop selling the chemical. The company says that the EPA is relying on computer models that overstate the environmental risks, rather than observations of flubendiamide in the real world. The company is insisting on a hearing before an administrative law judge at the EPA in order to make its case."
"It was a love of mystery novels that brought Gary Shulze and Pat Frovarp together  —   a love of God Is a Bullet by Boston Teran, to be specific. ”I was looking at books,” Frovarp, who is 75, tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro. ”Gary and I had seen each other. We didn’t know one another. And he walked over to me in this particular bookstore and handed me a book by Teran and said, ’You’ve gotta read this book, it’s really good. ’” That bookstore wouldn’t be the last in their lives: For 14 years, the two have run Once Upon A Crime, a beloved basement store in Minneapolis that caters to mystery lovers. Not only did Frovarp work there before they bought it, the couple were married there in 2007  —   on the fifth anniversary of the purchase. Only about seven people were there, Frovarp recalls. ”We had (author) Gregg Hurwitz coming in from Los Angeles at 7 o’clock that night. So we got married late afternoon, we closed the store at 5:30, that wonderful chaplain from the hospital came and married us, and a few friends were there, and that was that for that,” she says. ”And we stopped at a Wendy’s for our wedding dinner afterwards and went home and crashed. It was wonderful.” Now, though, they’re retiring  —   Shulze is 66  —   and their store is changing hands. The bookstore business is a tough one, and Frovarp credits Once Upon A Crime’s emphasis on customer service and efforts like tracking down elusive titles with its success. ”I had an instance this morning where a guy I’ve never seen before came in for a couple of books that I ordered from a dealer friend,” says Frovarp. ”And he said, ’Boy, this place is great, I will be back.’ And generally, they come back because we do treat our customers well.” Frovarp says the new owners  —   Dennis Abraham, wife Meg   and daughter Devin  —   ”want to keep running the store just like us  —   except they’re gonna have a big presence online, which is something we’ve never done because we’re a couple of Luddites.”"
"We all know ancestors give us our hair color, but the roots of gray hair have been less clear. Is it genetics, or stress? Marie Antoinette supposedly went completely white the night before they lopped off her head. And our presidents seem to go gray much faster than those of us with less weighty roles. It turns out you can blame Mom and Dad, at least a bit. Scientists say they’ve identified the first gene for gray hair. The variant, dubbed IRF4, is also associated with blonde or   hair. That makes sense, because melanin is the pigment that paints hair with the chestnut, golden or raven hues of youth. With age, the melanocytes that produce the color in hair follicles can slow down. And you start going gray. ”You think about hair graying as the absence of melanin,” says Kaustubh Adhikari, a statistical genetics postdoc at University College London and lead author of the study, which was published Tuesday in Nature Communications. Gray hair is more common in people of European origin, as is lighter hair. That makes sense, Adhikari says. ”You would sort of think of hair graying as an unintended consequence of selecting for this hair color.” In other words, if you decide to marry a blonde, don’t be surprised if your kids someday turn gray. People of Asian and African ancestry also go gray, but less often than do Europeans. ”You would expect that they would have genes that influence graying,” Adhikari says. ”We just haven’t found them yet.” The scientists discovered the gray gene by studying the scalps and facial hair of 6, 630 volunteers in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru. The researchers took photographs and asked about natural hair color. The participants had a mix of European, Native American and African ancestry. Then the scientists performed genetic analyses called   association scans that look for common variants, and matched them with appearance. Ten new variants popped out gray hair was matched with one. Others influence unibrow, balding, eyebrow thickness and hair structure. Still, genetics isn’t necessarily destiny. Adhikari figures that the IRF4 variant accounts for about 30 percent of gray hair, with environmental factors  —   including, perhaps, stress  —   accounting for the rest."
"Finding success in science requires smarts, determination  —   and sometimes a bit of luck. NPR’s Skunk Bear created the Golden Mole Award For Accidental Brilliance to celebrate that last part. You sent us hundreds of stories of mistakes, coincidences and surprises that recently led to new discoveries. Last week we shared the top nominees, and we now have a winner: Elizabeth Tibbetts, a biologist at the University of Michigan. In graduate school, Tibbetts spent hours watching footage of wasp colonies, trying to understand how the insects cooperate. To be able to tell the wasps apart, she would paint each one with a   dot. ”You use model airplane paint,” Tibbetts tells us. ”That’s the   wasp paint.” While watching a video one day, Tibbetts realized she had forgotten to paint a few of the wasps. She was annoyed  —   a wasted recording, with no good data. But then she noticed something. ”I could still tell them apart, just by their natural patterns,” she says. Looking closely, she realized that each wasp has a unique face. There are wasp ”eyebrows” of different sizes, and a variety of colors, spots and stripes. That made Tibbetts wonder: If she could distinguish between individual wasps, could they tell each other apart? Established wisdom held that social insects don’t care who’s who  —   they’re interchangeable. ”Maybe if I had more experience, I wouldn’t have pursued it,” Tibbetts says, ”because maybe I would have thought it was implausible.” Luckily, Tibbetts was not burdened by experience. And her experiments have shown that wasps can recognize each other. They are capable of personal relationships. That was a dozen years ago. Since then, Tibbetts has learned much more about the complexities of wasp social life. And she made another discovery. Wasps’ tiny, tiny brains are actually wired to recognize faces, just as human brains are. Tibbetts turned a chance observation into a career, and she is the winner of the 2016 Golden Mole Award For Accidental Brilliance. But it was a close call. We received so many great stories. You can read about 12 of our favorites here."
"A handwritten will by Osama bin Laden said he had a fortune of ”about 29 million dollars” and that most of it should be spent ”on Jihad,” according to documents released by the U. S. government on Tuesday. The will was among more than 100 documents made public by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The materials were captured when Navy SEALs killed the   leader in a May 1, 2011, raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. This is the second batch of documents that has been made public. The first was released last May. Many more documents were seized but have not been declassified and released. The will was undated, but bin Laden said the money was in Sudan, where he lived for several years in the 1990s. He left Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996, just before the Taliban seized control of the country and welcomed him. ”I hope, for my brothers, sisters, and maternal aunts, to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on Jihad, for the sake of Allah,” bin Laden wrote. In the will, he also specified smaller sums for relatives and associates. Media reports over the years have said that bin Laden was not able to take his fortune with him from Sudan. The will also refers to the Afghan cities of Jalalabad and Kandahar, where bin Laden and   operated in the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U. S. Senior U. S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden’s will dates to the 1990s. It was not clear how much money he had at the time of his death or what happened to it. Bin Laden’s wealth came from his father, who ran the most prominent construction company in Saudi Arabia for many years. A   Leader, Most of the documents released Tuesday were from the final years of bin Laden’s life and show a leader attempting to actively manage  . One of his top priorities in his final days was exploiting the looming 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. In contrast, U. S. officials frequently referred to bin Laden as ”hiding in a cave” and cut off from the world. The bin Laden materials reveal the constant tension between his desire to micromanage the group’s    operations and his fears that he might be detected by sending directives to   operatives scattered across many countries. He was obsessed with secrecy and security and worried he could be killed at any moment. But he also took time to boast that he was able to evade U. S. detection for so long. ”Here we are in the tenth year of the war, and America and its allies are still chasing a mirage, lost at sea without a beach,” he wrote in a letter that was undated, but apparently written in the final year of his life. Here are some of highlights from the documents:  —   He urged his group to gradually step up pressure on Iran, which kept some   figures under house arrest after the 2001 attacks in the U. S. while allowing others to move around freely. His family members were also held in Iran. In one letter, he wrote: ”We asked several times that they be let go so that they could go to Pakistan. Tehran did not respond to that, so maybe you could attempt to work on releasing them to the Waziristan area of Pakistan, where we can make sure they are all right there with these tribes,” bin Laden wrote.  —   He warned one of his wives, Khairah, that a bugging or tracking device could be installed in her mouth when she was receiving a dental filling in Iran, where she was under house arrest. ”Please let me know in detail about anything that bothers you about any hospital in Iran or any suspicions that any of the brothers may have about chips planted in any way,” he wrote. ”One of the ways, the syringe can be of the same size, but its head is slightly bigger than normal, that way, as I previously mentioned to you, they can insert a small chip in it to implant under the skin. The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli.”  —   Bin Laden told a leader of   the radical Islamist group in Somalia, to attack French targets if Americans were not available. In addition, the group should execute a French hostage just before the country’s national elections in 2012, an attempt to harm Nicolas Sarkozy, the president at the time. The group did seize French hostages, but did not execute them."
"Marriage is losing ground in America. According to the U. S. Census, the proportion of married adults dropped from 57 percent in 2000 to 52 percent in 2009. For the first time ever, single adult women outnumber married adult women in the U. S. Rebecca Traister says the declining marriage rates among adult women are less about the institution of marriage and more about the choices available to women today. ”The choice not to marry isn’t necessarily a conscious rejection of marriage,” Traister tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”It is [about] the ability to live singly if an appealing marriage option doesn’t come along.” In her new book, All the Single Ladies, Traister draws on historical research, interviews with about 100 women and her own experience to examine how delaying or abstaining from marriage affects women’s lives. She notes that the shift allows women to build up ”our economic and professional bases,” which can result in greater autonomy and a more equitable distribution of domestic work in marriage. But women still have a ways to go before they achieve full parity with men. ”There are a whole bunch of structural and systemic factors we need to address in order to move away from the model in which women really are still dependent on men,” Traister says. ”Women are living independently, but we don’t yet have the social and economic policies behind us to support that independence.” Traister’s previous book, Big Girls Don’t Cry, reported on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and the role gender played in the election. On what she means by ”single by choice” When I say ”the choice to not marry,” that doesn’t always translate into ”I am a woman and I am deciding that I am not going to get married,” or ”I am rejecting marriage.” The choice to not marry can also mean: ”I would really like to marry or to fall in love or to meet someone, but I haven’t met someone who I feel is going to improve on the life that I am building and making on my own.” For so long, for so many generations and so many centuries in this country and in many places across the world . .. women had less freedom and less economic opportunity [and] were not sexually liberated. . .. There were great social and economic tolls for having children outside of wedlock. Women were dependent on their husbands, and that’s one of the reasons why marriage had to happen so early, and so frequently did happen early, because women couldn’t be economically independent and they had to rely on having husbands who were earners. Now, thanks to a lot of the political battles that were waged in the   century . .. women have much more opportunity to earn on their own. Though we’re still not close to equal pay, women can be economically independent. Thanks to the sexual liberation, thanks to developments within birth control, thanks to an expansion of reproductive rights, women can have sexually liberated lives. Increasingly, having children outside of marriage is a socially accepted norm. On women getting married later  One of the most startling statistics is that today only 20 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 are married, and that compares to 60 percent in 1960. The other figure that I find very startling, in part because it was so resilient for so long, is the median age of first marriage for women. From the time they started recording it  —   which was 1890  —   until 1980, that median age of first marriage for women fluctuated only between 20 and 22. . .. In 1990 it jumped to over 23, which is a huge jump from having been in that small range for so long. Today, for women, it is over 27. So if you’re just looking at the sort of historical picture, there’s this relatively flat line for almost 100 years and now there’s not just a jump over that line, but way over that line. On how later marriages affect the division of domestic work  What happens is that men and women wind up living more independently in the world for more years, and both of them wind up accruing skills. . .. It’s much more likely that the woman knows how to use a drill and do the laundry and that the man she may be meeting and partnering with also knows how to do his laundry and feed himself and use a drill, and that they both are earners and they both have careers. I think that goes a considerable distance toward leveling the playing field when it comes to domestic labor, though it certainly hasn’t fixed things, as   surveys show us. Women are still doing the lion’s share of the domestic work, but it is changing slowly. On how her experience of getting married differed from her mother’s, I was 35 years old. I had just published or was about to publish my first book, which was about women in the 2008 election. I had a career that I was extremely committed to, that was at its most robust point at that time. I had just given up the apartment that I had rented and where I had lived by myself for five blissful years of living by myself in a relatively small studio apartment and I was so keenly aware of how different this transition in my life  —   from being a single person to a married person  —   was for me than, I believe, it had been for my mother. My mother also had a thriving career. She got a Ph. D. and was an English professor and was one of the first four women hired by her English department. But she had been married to my father at 21, days after she graduated from college. Marriage had marked the beginning of her adult life, and she had done all of the professional development, the making of friends, the building of the social circles, within the institution of marriage, while married to my father. They’re still married they’ve had a very happy marriage. But marriage was something I was doing well into my adult life. It felt that it meant something different to me. On how Susan B. Anthony predicted the future in 1877, Here I was making what I thought was this very original argument that . .. normalizing adult women’s independence from the marital institution . .. was one of the ways in which women were getting closer to social and economic and sexual equality. . .. And one of the great humbling experiences in my research was, first of all, discovering that there were lots of women in the 19th century who were making this exact argument in the popular press. I came across this speech by Susan B. Anthony. It’s called ”The Homes of Single Women,” and in it she predicted that on the path to gender equality, there must needs be an era in which women cease to marry. . .. It was like reading someone from 150 years ago truly predicting the very work that I was in the midst of at this moment. She says, ”As young women become educated in the industries of the world, thereby learning the sweetness of independent bread, it will be more and more impossible for them to accept the . .. marriage limitation that ’husband and wife are one, and that one the husband.’ ” And what she goes on to argue is that even if we change the laws, even if we change our social policies, even if we find all of these other official ways to acknowledge women’s equality  —   which is something that we have now done by many measures  —   after both the suffrage movement’s success and the second wave’s successes, we will still have to adjust our personal biases and expectations, and that the way to do that will be to live through what she calls an epoch in which women and men cease to marry each other and thereby adjust to each other and begin to view each other as true equal independents. On how Hillary Clinton’s marriage defines her as a candidate, She really is a bridge. Her life really is a bridge between a kind of earlier set of marriage patterns and gendered expectations, and the new world. . .. Bill [Clinton] now says, ”I told her not to marry me. She should pursue her own career.” But she didn’t. She went to Arkansas with him . .. [and] she really did put her ambitions second to her husband, and she functioned as a loyal wife. In fact, even in that role she still managed to be a threatening lightning rod when she came into the national eye in the early ’90s. . .. There was enormous pressure on her to be supportive and to support him and to show that she was submissive to some degree  —   to a degree that would make the American people more comfortable with her. She played that role, and she’s paying for it right now. . .. [Now] she is being asked to answer for her husband’s sexual behavior, also for the policies he and his administration enacted during the years before she herself held her own independent elected office, when she became the senator from New York after he left the White House. And it is a very interesting contrast. She is really paying for her role as traditional, faithful and supportive wife in a world that far better understands female independence than the world in which she came of age."
"”I have taken a lot of pictures because I’ve been up here for a long time,” NASA astronaut Scott Kelly said during a recent press conference from the International Space Station. ”I’ve definitely taken some good ones and some memorable ones.” When he returns to Earth on Tuesday evening, Kelly will have spent 340 days aboard the ISS. While that’s not quite a year, it’s still a record for an American astronaut, and one of the   spaceflights ever. Kelly is not the only member of his family to visit the station. His twin brother, Mark Kelly, was also an astronaut, and flew multiple shuttle missions to the orbiting outpost. The twins grew up in West Orange, N. J. as the sons of police officers. ”We lived a pretty exciting and adventurous life,” Scott says of his childhood. Scott Kelly takes his images through the windows of the Space Station’s cupola module. It might give the impression that he lives and works with the Earth constantly in view, but that’s not the case. Most of the space station’s rooms are   boxes. ”You don’t get real sunlight,” he says. His photographs have captured some stunning views of Earth at all times of the day and night. The process of photography has changed his perspective on the planet. ”The more I look at Earth, and certain parts of Earth, the more I feel [like] an environmentalist,” Kelly says. ”It’s just a blanket of pollution in certain areas. We can fix that if we put our minds to it.” Photography was one small part of Kelly’s mission. He conducted numerous experiments, some to determine how space was affecting his health, and others to test new technologies, like a dedicated greenhouse for growing plants in zero gravity. NASA hopes the knowledge gained from his extended mission will prepare the space agency for lengthy missions to places like Mars. Kelly’s photographs have won the astronaut nearly a million followers on Twitter, but he says taking the pictures is only a small part of why he’s there. Kelly believes in space flight, and in humanity’s future beyond the confines of Earth. ”The thing I like most about flying in space is not the view,” says Kelly. ”The thing I like about it is doing something I feel very, very strongly about.”"
"American astronaut Scott Kelly is back on Earth, ending his extended stay on the International Space Station. Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who both spent most of the past year in space, landed at 11:26 p. m. ET in Kazakhstan. Cosmonaut Sergei Volkov, who arrived on the ISS last September, also returned with Kelly and Kornienko. Kelly was lifted from the capsule and placed in a seat to allow his body to readjust to the earth’s gravity. Shortly after that, he and his Russian crew mates were taken to a tent and subjected to a range of tests of their vision, balance, strength and dexterity. The tests are in part designed to see how quickly a crew traveling to Mars might be able to begin work after landing on the Red Planet. Kelly will next travel back to Houston, Texas. After a series of additional medical tests, he says he’s headed to his pool for a swim. Our earlier post: Here’s a fun fact about   space flight: There’s no shower on board the International Space Station. ”It’s kind of like I’ve been in the woods camping for a year,” astronaut Scott Kelly said during a news conference late last week. Kelly finally gets to come home and wash off the space funk on Tuesday night. He climbed into a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and closed the hatch around 4:40 p. m. ET. His capsule undocked at 8:02 p. m. and he’ll touch down just before 11:30 p. m. on the chilly steppes of Kazakhstan. While in orbit, Kelly posted hundreds of photos, and we’ve got a selection here. Kelly’s 340 days in orbit shatters the U. S. record for the longest space journey. Only a handful of cosmonauts have logged more consecutive days in space. Researchers are using the mission, which Kelly conducted with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, to learn more about how prolonged spaceflight affects the body and mind. The study is unique partly because Kelly has an identical twin: retired astronaut Mark Kelly, who stayed back on Earth. Studying the Kelly brothers’ DNA may provide some hints about how spaceflight changes human genetics, says John Charles, the chief scientist of NASA’s human research program."
"Here’s an exercise in deductive logic, with implications for our food supply. Fact: Insects such as bees and butterflies are helpful, and sometimes essential, for producing much of our food, including a majority of our fruits, vegetables and nuts. Fact: Many of these pollinators, especially wild ones such as bumblebees, are in trouble. In Europe, where the phenomenon has been studied most carefully, about a third of all bee and butterfly species are declining, and 9 percent are threatened with extinction. The seemingly logical conclusion? Food production will decline along with the pollinators. This is the basis of a   summary of a new and massive scientific report prepared by 80 scientists around the world, and sponsored by the United Nations. Only a summary of the report has been released at this point. According to the summary, fewer pollinators could lead to food shortages, ”impacting health and nutritional security.” This simple, logical deduction, however, is bedeviled by many complicating factors. First, the world’s biggest crops, the ones that billions of people still depend on for most of their calories, don’t rely on insects or other pollinators. These crops include corn, wheat, soybeans and rice. That still leaves a lot of other crops, though, and many of them are growing in popularity. Berries, vegetables, fruits and nuts tend to benefit most from pollinators. Marcelo Aizen, a researcher at Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Argentina and   of the U. N. report, has reported that the amount of land devoted to these ” ” crops has been increasing at a much faster rate, globally, than   grains. According to Aizen, the surging popularity of these nutritious crops could run headlong into the roadblock of vanishing pollinators. With fewer bees or butterflies available, yields could fall, making these valuable foods even more expensive. The degree of probable damage, however, is largely a matter of speculation. According to Jaboury Ghazoul, an ecologist at ETH Zurich, a leading university in Switzerland, ”in most farming systems, production is limited by other, far more important factors”  —   such as pests and diseases, weather, and access to fertilizer. Some crops, meanwhile, like almonds and   tomatoes, rely on pollination by highly managed colonies of bees that are multiplied in captivity and hauled by the truckload to farms where they are needed. This can be expensive, but those pollinators  —   unlike wild species  —   are not likely to disappear. And yet another wrinkle: The places where pollinators have declined most precipitously are the places where crops don’t actually need them  —   like the Midwestern corn and soybean belt. In much of the rest of the world, there’s scant evidence that pollinators are even in trouble, which has led Ghazoul to question whether there really is a ”pollination crisis” for agriculture. In an email to The Salt, Ghazoul wrote that ”there is an urgent need for conservation, for many reasons, but I do not believe that a clear scientific case has been made for pollinators on the basis of their contribution to food production.”"
"When Samuel Smith graduated with a master’s in engineering from Cornell, he thought the $190, 000 in debt he incurred would pay off. But it took him a while to land job at a software firm in Austin, Texas. And now, after paying $1, 750 a month in loan payments, rent and food, he says he doesn’t have much left over. He doesn’t own a TV and says ”it’d be nice to go out for drinks once in a while.” More people have more student loan debt than at any time in history. Average student loan debt has tripled since the  . Last year, the average student debt for a college graduate was more than $35, 000, according to Mark Kantrowitz, a student loan expert at Cappex, which connects students with colleges and scholarships. Loans that hefty can take decades to pay off, affecting careers, homebuying and family plans. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, Smith, 26, laughs bitterly when asked about his earlier, carefree days. Replacing the tires on his car wiped out his checking account and ran up credit card debt. His debt burden, he says, has become a psychological burden. ”The best way I can handle it is to try to not think about it. Because when I do start thinking about it, I have some serious panic attacks,” he says, chuckling. Then he adds more seriously that he’s not just joking: ”For the past couple days I’ve been in panic attacks.” Experts say studies show rising student debt is limiting peoples’ career options. They decide against graduate school. Or feel they can’t afford   public service jobs or the risk of starting a new business. That’s a problem, because new companies create new jobs. Chris Costello, CEO of Blooom, a personal finance advice firm targeting    people, says one of the top questions his firm’s clients ask goes something like this: ”I’ve got student loan debt. Should I be contributing to my 401( k)?” Many people think they need to pay off the loans first. But Costello says if your employer matches contributions to a retirement plan, such as a 401( k) or 403( b) it would be crazy not to take advantage of it. ”Please, please do not leave those free dollars on the table,” he says. But after maxing out on the matching contributions, Costello advises paying off the debt with the lowest balance. Some advisers say target the one with the highest interest rate, but he says there are psychological benefits to tackling the smallest balance first. ”It’s called the debt snowball method, and it’s an easy way to build momentum and mental confidence that you’re actually making progress in getting debts paid off,” Costello says. Debt counselors also say graduates with debt should see if they can qualify for loan forgiveness, refinancing or debt consolidation  —   all while not incurring new debts. In other words, he says, live below your means. Greg Deckard and his wife are trying to do all that. They live in Mobile, Ala. And he recently went back to school to get a software engineering degree. But now they owe $126, 000 in student loans on top of a mortgage and day care for two kids. ”If I go with a   to   plan, then I’m in my 60s when I finish paying. I’m 42 and I have very little saved for retirement,” he says, let alone for his kids’ college education. Sheila Bair, a former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. dealt with the aftermath of the mortgage crisis. Now she is the president of Washington College in Chestertown, Md. and is focusing on the problem of student loan debt. Bair has frozen tuition increases at her school. And she criticizes student loan policies that make it too easy to borrow and too hard to pay back. Bair, an adviser to Costello’s firm, Blooom, advocates having more federal loan programs that cap monthly loan payments at a certain percentage of their income. ”That way, students that want to be social workers, or work for nonprofits in the inner city, they will only have to repay what they can afford to repay,” she says. That would benefit Rosette Cirillo, an   teacher in Chelsea, Mass. who is the first in her family to go to college. She jokes about the $120, 000 in college and grad school debt: ”Oh, it’s my tax on trying to become part of the middle class.” And it’s an especially annoying tax, because she says even though she is making her payments, for a time she received hundreds of mistaken collections calls. ”My phone [was] buzzing in my desk while I was teaching, 10 times a day,” Cirillo says. ”There’s not time to stop thinking about it,” she says of her debt burden. Nevertheless, she tells her students to go to college  —   because it leads to better careers. ”I taught 12th grade last year,” Cirillo says, ”and I told them the same thing: ’Go.’ ” But these days, it’s hard not to consider the price. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, an online community featuring stories from some of the best investors and financial experts on the planet along with crowdsourced wisdom curated and overseen by NPR reporters and editors."
"There’s lots of evidence that getting too little sleep is associated with overeating and an increased body weight. The question is, why? Part of the answer seems to be that skimping on sleep can disrupt our circadian rhythms. Lack of sleep can also alter hunger and satiety hormones. Now, a new study finds evidence that sleep deprivation (getting less than five hours of sleep per night) produces higher peaks of a lipid in our bloodstream known as an endocannabinoid that may make eating more pleasurable. So, what’s an endocannabinoid? If you look at the word closely, you may already have a clue. The prefix endo means inner, or within. And cannabinoid looks like . .. you got it: cannabis. Our bodies produce compounds that seem to act on the same parts of the brain as marijuana does. We’ve all heard of the marijuana munchies, right? The new study, based on blood samples, documents a novel finding: The daily rhythm of a particular endocannabinoid, known as   is altered by a lack of sleep. And these changes ”could be driving intake for more palatable foods,” Erin Hanlon, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, told us. She’s an author of the new study, published in the journal Sleep. ”We found that sleep restriction boosts a signal that may increase the hedonic aspect of food intake,” says Hanlon. In other words, being sleep deprived may produce a stronger desire to eat. To study how sleep influences appetite and eating, Hanlon and her colleagues recruited 14 healthy, young adults to take part in an experiment at the university’s sleep lab. ”These were all people who were . .. normal sleepers,” says Hanlon. They typically slept about eight hours a night. The study was divided into two parts, each lasting four days. For one session, the participants were allowed to follow a normal sleep schedule, about 8   hours per night. But during the other session, they agreed to a crazy schedule. They went to bed at 1 a. m. and were woken up at 5:30 a. m. so that they got a maximum of just 4. 5 hours of sleep per night. In both sessions, study participants were offered   meals and plenty of snacks, including candy and chips. ”They were given way more food than they could ever eat, ”says Hanlon. It turned out that when participants were sleep deprived, they ate about 400 more calories from snacks. That’s ”a lot more,” Hanlon says. Generally, circulating levels of   rise slowly during the day and peak in early afternoon. But this study found that when people were sleep deprived, their   levels peaked higher and stayed elevated longer. And that peak ”corresponds to the same time of day when [the participants] said they were feeling hungrier, or their desire to eat was stronger,” Hanlon told us. Frank Scheer, a chronobiologist at Harvard Medical School, wrote a commentary on the new study that also appears in the journal Sleep. ”The idea is that when the levels of endocannabinoids are higher, food [is] more appealing,” Scheer explains. He says this paper makes an important contribution. ”We did not know whether there would be an effect of sleep restriction on endocannabinoids, so this is really the first study to nicely show that,” Scheer says. Scheer says the new findings fit with   studies of   people. These studies have found ”that the brain areas involved in reward show increased activity when people [see] images of food”  —   especially salty, sugary and fatty snacks. There’s still a lot to learn about all the ways that sleep can influence our appetites and eating behaviors, but these findings serve as a reminder of the importance of getting a good night’s sleep."
"On Tuesday The Rolling Stones announced the band’s upcoming performance in Havana, hailing it as a landmark occasion. The concert is slated for March 25 at the Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana, a centrally located ”sports city” complex. While the announcement heralds the show as ”the first   concert in the country by a British Rock Band,” it’s part of a much larger rush of major musicians to play in Havana as the governments of the U. S. and Cuba begin to mend their relationship. And it’s part of an even larger, and much longer, history of popular American and English musicians breaching politically and economically closed markets. In recent months, some   artists have sojourned to Cuba, from Arturo O’Farrill to the Minnesota Orchestra, in many instances before President Obama announced plans to restore diplomatic ties with Havana. The musical Rent premiered in Havana on Christmas Eve 2014  —   the first production of a Broadway show in Cuba in half a century. (Tickets cost a reported 50 cents.) Even without performing there, some huge stars have made recent forays to Cuba. Last November, Vanity Fair published photos of Rihanna in Havana, shot by Annie Leibovitz in 2013, Beyonce and   were mobbed by fans on the island during their vacation there. Questlove even made a short documentary about his recent trip, where he DJ’ed at the popular arts gallery, performance space and   cool hang Fábrica de Arte Cubano. Pop superstars are also reaching out to collaborate with their Cuban peers. Last summer, singer Marc Anthony teamed up with the Cuban reggaeton duo Gente de Zona for a song celebrating Latin American unity called ”La Gozadera,” which was filmed largely in the streets of Havana. (According to press reports, Anthony shot his portions on the streets of Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.) The song became a smash and has garnered more than 235 million views on YouTube since June. And in 2014, Spanish crooner Enrique Iglesias scored a massive international smash with ”Bailando,” featuring Gente de Zona and another Cuban artist, Descemer Bueno. The video has been viewed more than 1. 3 billion times since its April 2014 premiere. This month in particular is heating up musically in Havana: Major Lazer, who are enormous stars in dance music and whose hit ”Lean On” went to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart last summer, will be performing a free concert in front of the U. S. Embassy in Havana this weekend. As Billboard writer Judy   noted just Tuesday, while American musicians have been rushing to take advantage of the warming relationship between the U. S. and Cuban governments over the past year, many mainstream stars have already played Havana. She writes: ”It may indeed come as a surprise to some members of the American music industry who are now rushing to plant a flag in Cuba that, in 1979, Billy Joel, Weather Report, Kris Kristofferson, Fania All Stars and others gathered there for a   series of concerts called the Havana Jam. The Jam was an effort of the late Bruce Lundvall, a pioneer when it came to music in Cuba, and the late Fania Records founder Jerry Masucci. Jazz musicians from Dizzy Gillespie to Wynton Marsalis have performed at Havana’s annual International Jazz Festival. In 1999, Bonnie Raitt, Mick Fleetwood and Gladys Knight were among the Americans who spent a week writing songs with Cuban artists and performing together at the Karl Marx Theater. Kool and the Gang celebrated in Havana in 2009. In 2005, Audioslave performed for 50, 000 in what was then the biggest show by an American rock band on the island.” So you could say, more truthfully, that the Stones are the first massively successful white British rock band d’un certain âge to play Havana. Having said that, they’re still one of the biggest touring acts in the world. According to Forbes, they grossed $57. 5 million in 2015 live dates alone  —   even though they played only 22 shows during the period the magazine was tracking. So their arrival in Havana is still something of a milestone. This isn’t the first time the Rolling Stones have wanted to plant their flag in a tantalizingly new market, however. According to the BBC, they were vying in the   to be the first big Western band to play China  —   but both they and glam rockers Queen were bested by Wham! the George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley duo. When the two arrived in Beijing in 1985, they seemed stunned that they were mostly encountering government officials in tightly choreographed meetings. (”Where’s all the screaming kids, then?” one of them wondered aloud upon their arrival at the airport.) When Wham! performed its Chinese shows, it was largely for audiences with government connections. The same dynamic came into play nearly 25 years later, when the New York Philharmonic received an invitation, seemingly out of nowhere, to play in Pyongyang, North Korea. The news of the invitation was greeted with a very mixed reaction by some of the orchestra’s members. And just as Wham! experienced in China a generation ago, the Philharmonic encountered audiences stuffed with functionaries. As the New York Times’ Daniel Wakin noted upon his return from North Korea, ”During the Philharmonic’s performance, virtually no North Koreans in the audience were seen tapping their feet or their fingers, or nodding in time to the music, or changing facial expressions to match the mood. . .. Orchestra members said there was even less connection with the audience during the morning dress rehearsal. Several said they tried but failed to make eye contact with people.” Western bands also dreamed of getting into the   Union in the 1970s and 1980s. The first American group to tour there was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who in 1977 played in Moscow and Leningrad, as well as Yerevan, Armenia Riga, Latvia and Tbilisi, Georgia. It was a landmark event that apparently wouldn’t have happened without the the intercession of President Jimmy Carter. And even during the most culturally bifurcated years of the Cold War, Western pop stars were   within the Soviet Union, thanks to bootlegs  —   some even made on reused  . That kind of   cultural diplomacy carries echoes of the State Department’s program to send American musicians  —   and primarily   musicians  —   out on the road. Over decades, such artists as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and B. B. King traveled to the Soviet Union, West Africa, the Middle East and South Asia during the Cold War. In 1955, a production of Porgy and Bess by a company including Leontyne Price and Maya Angelou, with an embedded Truman Capote, played Moscow and Leningrad at the Soviet Union’s expense. These days, though, it’s not so much   efforts that are helping big foreign artists make headway in Havana. Instead, it’s more a combination of personal interest and curiosity  —   and perhaps wanting to stake a commercial claim in a country that remains just out of reach as a market."
"Aubrey McClendon, the former CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp. who was charged Tuesday with orchestrating a conspiracy, has died in a car crash. The fatal crash occurred Wednesday morning, the Oklahoma City Police Department said on Twitter. A police spokesman said at a news conference Wednesday that McClendon’s car was traveling at high speed when it crashed into an overpass wall and ”was engulfed in flames.” Capt. Paco Balderrama said no one else was in the SUV and that police were not initially able to determine whether McClendon was wearing a seat belt. The crash in northeast Oklahoma City apparently involved no other vehicles. McClendon, 56, was indicted Tuesday on charges of ”orchestrating a conspiracy not to compete for oil and gas leases in northwest Oklahoma,” as the   reported. The Justice Department described the indictment as ”the first case resulting from an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into price fixing, bid rigging and other anticompetitive conduct in the oil and natural gas industry.” The Associated Press reports that after his indictment, McClendon had released a statement in which he said, in part, ”The charge that has been filed against me today is wrong and unprecedented. . .. All my life I have worked to create jobs in Oklahoma, grow its economy, and to provide abundant and affordable energy to all Americans. I am proud of my track record in this industry, and I will fight to prove my innocence and to clear my name.” Most Americans would not have recognized McClendon’s name. But his impact on his industry, region  —   and actually, the whole country  —   was huge. Forbes magazine once called him ”America’s wildest wildcatter.” McClendon was a leader in the efforts to extract oil and natural gas from shale formations. The drilling method came to be known as ”fracking” and McClendon became its symbol of both success and excess. Fracking helped transform the energy industry, massively increasing the output of oil and gas. But to critics, fracking also opened up an array of new environmental dangers. McClendon’s career was marked by enormous successes  —   and a slew of conflicts, lawsuits and accusations. Starting as an Oklahoma wildcatter, he transformed Chesapeake from a startup company that emerged from the early 1980s oil bust. He believed that acquiring drilling rights was the key to success in the energy business, so he became an aggressive buyer of land in Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. He would then drill down into the shale rock below the surface to extract oil and gas. Eventually, his company ended up with rights to more than 16 million acres, and he emerged as a billionaire. The downside of his epic   spree was that his Oklahoma   company got loaded down with debt. Shareholders became unhappy with what Forbes called his ”rampant conflicts of interest, lavish perks, reckless bets and failure to disclose that he had personally borrowed around $1 billion, some from Chesapeake’s own lenders.” In 2013, he was ousted as CEO of Chesapeake following a shareholder revolt led by Carl Icahn, an activist investor. McClendon denied wrongdoing at the time. He then went on to start a new enterprise, American Energy Partners. He also was a part owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder, a National Basketball Association team. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin released a statement praising McClendon for his innovations in the industry and his civic generosity. She said he will be remembered as ”a visionary who raised the profile of Oklahoma City.” ESPN writer Royce Young also tweeted about McClendon’s role in civic improvements in Oklahoma City."
"It’s only March, but Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen already has an embarrassingly full calendar. She’s put together the city’s plan for dealing with the Zika virus, launched a campaign against soda and other sugary beverages and overseen an investigation into why so many people in the city are overdosing on fentanyl. Trained in emergency medicine, Wen, 33, says running the health department in Baltimore is the   job she’s had. She sees herself as the city’s doctor. Each overdose death weighs on her. ”It’s so real for me every day,” Wen says. These   deaths are preventable. ”And when we don’t do something about it or we don’t do enough, we see the consequence of somebody dying,” she says. ”That is really immediate.” Her work comes with grave responsibility, and she savors it. ”One of the issues I faced as an emergency physician and what led me to this job in public health, is this feeling of helplessness,” she says. She recalls the time a supervisor in medical school chided her for asking too many questions about a patient’s home life. ”You don’t want to open Pandora’s box, because you don’t know what’s in it,” he told her. ”And you don’t know what to do about it.” Since becoming health commissioner in January 2015, Wen has spent a lot of time in the community asking  —   and answering  —   questions. Early in her tenure, the city was rocked by unrest after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. She worked on the city’s response to the crisis while making the case that the episode underscored the importance of public health in Baltimore. ”This lady is everywhere. She goes where the problems are,” says Carlos Hardy, founder of   Maryland Recovery Organization Connecting Communities, an organization focused on recovery services. ”She looks you in the eye, and whatever your issue is, she gives the feeling that it’s important to her. And that’s a gift for . .. a government official.” In her first year in government, Wen has also gained fans for the clear and convincing arguments she has made on behalf of public health. ”I was just astounded by her ability to take her medical background and medical perspective and apply that to public policy,” says Ben Seigel, executive director of the 21st Century Cities Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. For 10 months, Seigel led a federal team that assisted Baltimore officials in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray unrest. He says the most challenging part of working with Wen was getting her to understand what he calls ”the realpolitik” of federal funding. ”Here are what your priorities are here’s what the price tag is. Well, now we’ve got to fit it into existing programs out there,” he recalls telling her. ”For her, because she’s impatient, because she wants to see results right away, that can be a challenge.” Wen acknowledges her impatience, calling it both a strength and a weakness. ”My strength is that I’m very  . I believe that you can’t just have a vision. You have to get it done,” she says. ”I know a criticism could be and has been that I have a level of urgency to the work that may not be needed.” Some of that criticism has come from inside the health department, where there has been high turnover among her senior staff. Her urgency is also something we’ve experienced, as we’ve chased her from community meetings and college campuses to City Hall and the halls of Congress. She seizes any opportunity she has to give voice to her causes. But this wasn’t always the case. Actually, it was quite the opposite. Through childhood and into adulthood, Wen struggled with stuttering. For years, she hid her stutter, avoiding words she couldn’t get out. Often she didn’t talk at all. ”One of my earliest memories in school was that I was supposed to give this talk on the Roman Empire,” she told a gathering of the National Stuttering Association last summer. ”I was so terrified that I would stutter on the word ’Roman’ that I actually stabbed myself with a pencil into my thigh, because I thought that would get me out of speaking in class.” Later, she wanted to study neuroscience but couldn’t say the word so didn’t register, she says. Midway through medical school, she was elected president of the American Medical Student Association, a position that came with a lot of public speaking responsibilities. After suffering through a particularly trying period, she sought help. As part of therapy, Wen had to go out in public and say everything she wanted to say, without avoiding words or substituting thoughts. Her speech therapist, Vivian Sisskin, says after a shaky start Wen’s impatience got the better of her. ”She didn’t have patience for her own speech failures. It was unacceptable to her not to do the things she wanted to do,” Sisskin says. ”I think that’s part of what drives her in a lot of ways. If she can do it, she’s going to find a way to do it.” In government, there are moments completely outside of one’s control. For Wen, one of those moments came in September 2015, when Baltimore Mayor Stephanie   announced she would not run for reelection. The news came just eight months into Wen’s time the health department. The departure of the woman who had brought Wen to Baltimore worried her. ”I feel like we’ve finally gotten to the point where we’ve identified the landscape, identified the players, identified the stakeholders, gotten   for the problems we have, and we’re about to make significant change to really improve the health and wellbeing of our residents,” she said in September. Now, Wen takes a more sanguine view. She says she’s committed to staying on until  ’s term ends in January 2017. Wen also says she’s interested in staying on beyond then, provided the next mayor supports her vision. She’s made her agenda available to all the candidates. ”All I can do is do my job, do it really well, and serve our residents in the way that they deserve,” she says. Dr. Leana Wen has been a contributor to Shots since 2013. You can read her account of why she decided to become Baltimore’s health commissioner here."
"I walk up to greet Allan Kingdom at the back room door of Saint Paul’s Golden’s Deli, but he gets to me first. Kingdom is very good at being first: He asks me how I’m doing before I ask him he asks me what my name is before I say it. Maybe he’s just more polite and less anxious than me, maybe it’s a mix of youthful exuberance and masculine hubris. More likely, it’s part of his smooth, sticky, Peanut Butter Prince charm. The kind of charm that implicitly requires anointing, naming oneself. The nomenclature, like the success he’s found writing and performing music, suits him like a custom fitted crown. ”Because I was the first born outside of Africa . ..” Kingdom says, his voice trailing off into, perhaps, the liminal, double conscious space he’ll speak of so many times in our conversation. ” . .. Even within the family, you know, feeling a little bit separated. Or at school. Or amongst your friends.” ”I feel like I represent myself,” Kingdom says. ”But, I feel like as you get bigger, whether you like it or not, you represent a group of people. It doesn’t matter. It’s kinda like, I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter when you go out everyday, you represent yourself. But, for some people, you might be the only African person they’ve seen. So, without even knowing it, you are representing what you are. I think it’s a little bit of both. I just try to stay in myself and not really think about it too much or you kind of become someone else.” Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to a Tanzanian mother and South African father, Allan, 23, spoke Swahili before English, and spent his formative years in Minnesota. ”I was pretty super oddball,” he says. ”From the way that I spoke. From the way that I dressed. From my interests. Especially into the groups that I was in. No one was into drawing, rapping, singing, dancing, colorful clothes . ... And then being an immigrant!” Growing up in Minnesota, a state with hundreds of thousands of immigrants, reinforced Allan Kingdom’s sense of otherness, but that didn’t make him feel any less African or North American  —   it just made it harder not to just be himself. It was in Minnesota where Allan met his friends Corbin (formerly Spooky Black) Bobby Raps and Psymun. Together they formed the thestand4rd, a   quartet. Thestand4rd’s   debut album, produced by The Weeknd producer Doc McKinney and released in 2014, is melodic, experimental rap and RB. Not a steep diversion from Allan’s   music, which at its core, is not assimilative. Kingdom’s music forges its own distinct identity. No rapper out right now sounds like him  —   and his sound hasn’t changed that much since he started making music. What was interesting and different about, say, ”Mediocre,” a track he recorded over two years ago, is what makes ”Take It,” a more recent but not new track, interesting and different. Kingdom’s style, as evidenced in his unique accent you can’t quite place and his proclivity for jumpy, effortless flows, manages to be playful and poppy without being corny, alternative without trying too hard. Kingdom doesn’t believe that trying to fit in is an inherently wrong concept. The trick, he says, is to not get too influenced, to stay authentic to how you wish to portray yourself. ”When you get up in the morning and you get dressed, fitting in is what you think about. Is that how you present yourself? It’s still just a muscle that you exercise. Staying yourself and staying true. And not letting the outside world influence you too much. I think it’s good because you need to learn how to communicate with people effectively and people need to understand you, so to a degree you need to a little bit, but at the end of the day you still need to keep who you are and what you stand for.” Kingdom’s positivity and immigrant kid   have catapulted him into the spotlight: Last February he appeared alongside Kanye West to perform West’s song ”All Day” at the Brit Awards. ”All Day,” didn’t make it on West’s The Life of Pablo, but it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Song, and like everybody else nominated in any rap category, lost to Kendrick Lamar. According to Kingdom, the collaboration came both spontaneously and through sheer social engineering. ”I was putting the effort into my career in general. Maybe not for that specific thing to happen the way that it did, but just in general, I had been pushing. It felt like something was supposed to happen I just didn’t know what it would be, so. And after ’All Day’ I didn’t drop a whole bunch of songs. It just doesn’t feel right. Even though I have all the music and I am always creating. I just go off what I feel would be the right thing at the right time.” Kingdom says West has been more than a mentor. ”He’s been a personal milestone. He is an extremely important person, obviously. But he is still just one person, you know what I mean? There are still so many people who haven’t heard my music.” Kingdom’s aim is much larger than being known or collaborating with arguably the biggest rapper in the world. ”There are still a lot of people who might not even like it because he did. There are his peers. People in the industry. There are other artists my age coming up. I still view those people as partners, peers and competition all in one.” On January 6, his birthday, rapper Kingdom released Northern Lights, a sexy and progressive rap album. On the hook of ”The Ride,” the hyperactive and idiosyncratic album opener that packs the emotional weight of a year of change into three and a half minutes, he recalls advice from West: ”’Ye told me drive slow. ’” But it wouldn’t be an Allan Kingdom song if the   didn’t facilitate a larger truth  —   his own truth. He continues: ”But ain’t nobody say homie fly low.” In consistently bringing the point back to himself, Kingdom has escaped the fate of many   rappers left in the dust of a cosign or buried by the weight of it. ”It’s kind of like getting a pat on the back from the principal, which means you are doing an amazing job,” he says. ”But you still walk in the classroom and you’re around your classmates, and how that affects your social life and your relationships  —   it’s all up to you.”"
"The Department of Health and Human Services says it is expanding its Head Start program in Flint, Mich. with $3. 6 million in   funding. It’s an effort to combat the developmental effects on kids from the city’s   water. The effects of lead exposure are lifelong and can cause ”learning disabilities, behavioral problems and mental retardation,” according to the World Health Organization. The new funding for Head Start, a program that aims to help get kids ready for school and targets   families, ”includes additional classrooms and a longer school year,” Michigan Radio’s Rebecca Kruth tells our Newscast unit. ”It will also provide parents with more education on lead poisoning  —   along with increased transportation to help get families to doctor’s appointments,” Rebecca adds. ”Early education is one of the most important things we can do to help children overcome the effects of lead,” Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Nicole Lurie said in a statement. Advocates for Flint’s kids have been calling for this. Dr. Mona   who helped expose the dangerous lead levels, told NPR in January that Flint needed multiple interventions to support affected children: ”So what we are trying to do is we are trying to throw every single   intervention at these children. And they encompass education, so early literature programs, and universal preschool and nutrition access and access to mental health services. All of these things are known to help children who are at risk for developmental disabilities.” The lead problem started after Flint switched to a new water source in 2014 in order to save money. Water from that new source, the Flint River, was not adequately treated with corrosion controls and this caused lead from pipes to contaminate the water. The city switched back to its original source late last year, but the water remains unsafe."
"A bright red tablecloth adds a pop of color to Ashara Manns’ kitchen at her home in Flint, Mich. The substitute teacher is at the stove, where she pours two bottles of water into a stockpot before dumping in big bags of mixed greens. ”Normally, I would rinse these with the running water, so hopefully they’re still safe,” Manns says. Flint residents have been told not to drink or cook with the city’s   tap water, so Manns and her husband, Bennie, rely on bottled water to prepare their meals. ”I used to just get whatever I wanted at the grocery store, but now I have to plan my meals around how much water I have or how much water I’m going to buy that week,” she says. Healthy eating is especially important to Bennie Manns. He’s a bodybuilder and personal trainer. ”I don’t put the sink water in my protein drinks anymore,” he says. A filter on their kitchen faucet is designed to remove lead, but Ashara Manns doesn’t trust it  —   especially when it comes to the couple’s    daughter, Jada. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a level of 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood to be high in children, but no level of lead is considered safe. Jada’s lead level recently tested at 2. 5. The CDC says even low levels can impact a child’s IQ and academic performance, and the effects are irreversible. But there is something that can help mitigate the effects of lead exposure. ”Diets high in iron, calcium or vitamin C can limit the absorption of lead in your body and promote its excretion,” says Dr. Mona   a pediatrician in Flint. It was her study that found that the percentage of children with elevated lead levels in Flint doubled after the city switched its water source. Now   is trying to get the word out to parents that healthy eating can mitigate the effects of lead exposure. Her employer, Hurley Medical Center, has released a cookbook of simple,   recipes  —   such as a hamburger skillet made with lean beef, cheese and veggies  —   that help protect against lead absorption. At the farmers market in downtown Flint, there are free cooking demonstrations where people can sample and learn how to make the recipes. ”We can’t just say ’eat this.’ They have to be kind of   in our community to make sure they’re things that they want to eat,” says  . Ashara and Bennie Manns say eating healthy is already an important part of their lifestyle, but they worry about how much longer they’ll have to get by on bottled water. The couple say they’ll keep doing what they have to in order to keep their family safe from lead  —   especially because they’ll welcome their second child this summer."
"Lowering the price of fruits and vegetables by 30 percent can save nearly 200, 000 lives over 15 years  —   roughly the population of Des Moines, Iowa. That’s the message being touted by researchers this week at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology meeting in Phoenix. We know eating more fruits and vegetables is good for your heart. Now computer models suggest that making that produce more affordable may actually translate into lower death rates from heart disease and stroke. And, the researchers add, lower prices are more effective at saving lives than traditional campaigns designed to encourage consumption of fruits and vegetables, like ”5 A Day.” Lower prices for fruits and vegetables meant better health across the population, regardless of age, gender, race and ethnicity, lead researcher Jonathan   an academic clinical fellow at Imperial College in London, tells us. Researchers from the U. K. and Tufts University created a tool called the U. S. IMPACT Food Policy Model that included projections of U. S. demographics and cardiovascular death rates to 2030. They then combined the data with current and projected fruit and vegetable intake figures. The model allowed the team to simulate the effects of different policies on eating habits. ”We were able to take a given change of price, and [determine] what that change in price does to consumption levels,” says Stuttard. It’s the ability to model outcomes that’s new here, says American Heart Association president Dr. Mark Creager, a cardiovascular disease expert. ”They’re doing the modeling that will demonstrate how pricing affects health. The best example is what’s happened to tobacco. The increase in the cost of the price of cigarettes” deterred some smokers from lighting up, which meant fewer people exposed to the health risks associated with that habit, he says. ”Another example is the price of food like   beverages,” Creager says. Mexico’s soda tax has pushed consumption rates down. ”It’s too early to see outcomes yet, but we can anticipate as they consume less sugar, it will have downstream effects for weight reduction.” And therefore, better health. So far, no national studies have been done looking at how financial incentives drive healthy eating, the researchers say. But a smaller study conducted in Massachusetts between   mirrored the findings of the modeling done at Tufts and Imperial College. That previous study  —   the Healthy Incentives Pilot  —   tested financial incentives for SNAP recipients that were designed to encourage more consumption of fruits and vegetables. Under the program, some SNAP participants received an extra 30 cents for every dollar of SNAP benefits  —   but could spend the extra money only on targeted fruits and vegetables. ”We did indeed find the incentive worked: Participants purchased more and consumed more fruits and vegetables than SNAP participants that were not receiving the incentive,” says Susan Bartlett, principal associate at Abt Associates, a public policy consulting firm that worked on the study. The findings presented this week don’t identify which specific policies should be tweaked to bring the price of produce down. But Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist, epidemiologist and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, has some suggestions. ”At state or national levels, general subsidies could be implemented at the farm or wholesaler level,” Mozaffarian tells us via email. ”Grocery store bonus cards could also be a mechanism for providing lower prices.” Elizabeth Pivonka, president of Produce for Better Health Foundation, a nonprofit working to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, says it isn’t necessarily about moving crop subsidies from corn and soybean to broccoli and oranges. It may be more about the USDA simply putting its money where its mouth is. Produce for Better Health’s 2015 GAP Analysis report looked at USDA spending on subsidy programs, promotional programs, research education and more and found that it didn’t match with its own dietary guideline recommendations  —   which encourage Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables and less meat and dairy. ”The government doesn’t put as much funding into fruits and vegetables,” says Pivonka. Instead, it spends ”six times more on the protein group,” she says, citing findings from her group’s 2015 report. Bartlett says a better strategy would be a policy that directly relates to the people who are making the purchases. ”Reducing prices for the people at the market is a promising strategy, and making it available to the population you’re trying to encourage,” says Bartlett. The end goal, says the American Heart Association’s Creager, is to encourage policymakers to have ”these conversations about what can be done in communities that will make healthy foods more accessible and more affordable for people, so they’ll be encouraged to consume a healthy diet.” Clare   is a journalist based in San Diego who covers food policy and sustainability issues."
"A day after he failed to crack 11 percent in any of the Super Tuesday presidential contests, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson appears to be effectively ending his campaign for president. ”I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening’s Super Tuesday primary results,” Carson said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. While Carson did not explicitly say he was dropping out, he said he will not attend Thursday’s Republican debate, and that he’ll ”discuss more about the future of this movement” on Friday during an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. The announcement signals the end of an improbable run that saw the accomplished neurosurgeon rise from political neophyte to   candidate for the Republican nomination. Carson had long been a celebrated figure in both black and conservative communities for his inspirational story, overcoming a poor urban upbringing to become one of the country’s most accomplished doctors. He first became politically prominent in 2013, when he delivered a searing speech at the National Prayer Breakfast while President Obama sat just feet away. Video of the speech quickly went viral and led to a ”draft Carson” campaign. Once Carson entered the race, he moved to the top of national and Iowa polls, even briefly topping the Iowa polls for several weeks last fall. But Carson, more than any other candidate, suffered when the November Paris terrorist attacks shifted the race’s focus to foreign policy. It was a policy area he wasn’t familiar with, and he appeared uncomfortable discussing terrorism and military issues in debates and campaign appearances. Poll numbers dropped, and despite a late December campaign shakeup, Carson was never able to fully recover. Carson finished fourth in Iowa, with less than 10 percent of the vote. Despite poor showings in other primary and caucus states, Carson had stayed in the race and participated in debates until now."
"If voter turnout is any indicator of enthusiasm, this year’s GOP voters are way, way more pumped than 2012 voters were. Democrats, meanwhile? Their excitement seems to have dimmed since 2008. Last night, more than 8. 5 million Republicans turned out to vote in the 11 GOP Super Tuesday states that reported results. That suggests far more enthusiasm than the last time Republicans picked a nominee. In those same 11 states in 2012, turnout totaled only around 4. 7 million. That makes this year’s turnout in those 11 states 81 percent higher than four years ago. Contrast that with the Democrats. In the Dems’ 11 states reporting results from last night, turnout totaled only around 5. 9 million  —   that’s around 2. 6 million fewer people than came out in those states 2008, when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were in the middle of what would would be a long,   race. Here’s how that looked on a    basis. Only in Colorado did Democrats exceed their 2008 turnout. On the GOP side, Vermont was the only place with lower turnout than in 2012. The results reflect what many are calling an ”enthusiasm gap” between Republican and Democratic voters. Republicans, eager to remove Democrats from the White House, are looking to outsiders like Donald Trump to change Washington. Last night’s exit polls showed that the overwhelming majority of Republican voters are ”dissatisfied” or ”angry” with the federal government. Democrats, meanwhile, are more content with the way things are. And while the Democratic side has its own passionate voters, like the throngs of young voters who support Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, turnout just isn’t close to where it was eight years ago. Democrats, many of whom turned out for Obama’s hope and change, appear to have lost their fervor. Many speculate that these kinds of lopsided numbers (and, therefore, potentially lopsided enthusiasm) will mean a similarly lopsided advantage for the GOP leading up to the general election. But then, while enthusiasm for Trump may be driving many Republicans to the polls now, it may in a general election also drive turnout for voters who hope to defeat the highly polarizing candidate."
"The name of the game is delegates in presidential politics. The race for them is on in the 2016 primary elections. Here’s how each candidate has done so far and what’s at stake in each state. Delegate numbers shown are maintained by the AP and provided via an automatic feed. Because some counts are unofficial or, in the case of superdelegates, are based on surveys and public endorsements, numbers shown here may differ from what is reported elsewhere."
"The results of the biggest voting day in the presidential contest thus far may not have been everything that   Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had hoped, but they were enough to set the course for the remainder of the nominating season. And they were surely enough to intensify the pressure on their respective rivals. For believers in Bernie Sanders’ promise of a ”political revolution,” Super Tuesday may have seemed like the end of a dream. And for Republican   and party officials anxious about having Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, Super Tuesday must have been a nightmare. Sanders went down in seven of the 11 states holding Democratic events, winning in only four where the Democratic vote was relatively small. These included his home state of Vermont, where he won with 86 percent amid turnout lower than it had been in 2008. Worse yet for Sanders’ crusade, Clinton dominated in the competition for pledged delegates to the nominating convention. Because her victory margins were so large in several populous Southern states, including   in Texas, her share of the delegates far exceeded her rival’s. She also won in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas and Massachusetts. Having begun the night with a modest lead in pledged delegates, Clinton wound up with 544 to Sanders’ 349. And when you include the   superdelegates (who go to the convention by virtue of their elected or party office) Clinton’s lead expands to  . As   contests loom in Michigan, Ohio and Florida over the next two weeks, Clinton needs only to break even in delegate allocations to maintain her formidable advantage. Small wonder, then, that Clinton once again spoke generously of Sanders in her victory speech, turning her guns instead on a likely upcoming foe. ”I congratulate Sen. Sanders on his strong showing and campaigning,” she said, before offering this implicit salute to Sanders’ populism: ”Because this country belongs to all of us, not just those at the top.” Soon enough, she was pivoting to her preferred targets across the aisle. ”The stakes in this election have never been higher,” said Clinton, ”and the rhetoric we’re hearing on the other side has never been lower. Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we’re not going to let it work.” Sanders had spoken early in the evening, right after Vermont was called in his column. ”This campaign is not just about electing a president,” he said, ”it’s about transforming America. We are not going to allow billionaires and the superPACs to destroy American democracy.” By the time the evening was over, Sanders had added wins in Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota. But the contests in Colorado and Minnesota were caucuses, with relatively few participants. Taken together, his vote total in the four states he won was about 430, 000. Clinton won 530, 000 in Georgia alone, and larger totals still in Massachusetts and Texas. Losing in Massachusetts had to be the hardest blow for the Sanders forces to bear. The state borders Vermont, but Sanders was not able to replicate his smashing win in neighboring New Hampshire from Feb. 9. He did win the counties nearest his own state, and most of the counties outside the Boston metropolitan area. But it wasn’t enough. Clinton edged him by fewer than 2 percentage points, taking 45 delegates to Sanders’ 43. But if there was disappointment in the Sanders camp last night, there was panic in the ranks of establishment Republicans at the thought of Trump as their party champion. After his string of victories on Super Tuesday, his chances of capturing    states down the road are all the greater, making his nomination in July no worse than an even bet. In fact, given his growing lead in delegates, Trump’s main obstacle now may be not another candidate but the prospect of an open convention where neither he nor anyone else has the votes for a   victory. After Trump scored big February wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, party officers and congressional leaders began taking him on in public and in private. House Speaker Paul Ryan called him out for his apparent reluctance to denounce former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. There was talk in the media of Republican candidates detaching themselves from the party’s nominee in the fall. Yet on Super Tuesday there seemed little sign of this same unease within the Republican primary electorate. Trump won seven of the states holding primaries, including Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama and Arkansas in the South. At the same time, unlike other Republicans who in the past have run the table in Dixie, Trump wrapped up two more states in New England: Massachusetts and Vermont. Noting that Republican turnout had been up again, across the board, while Democratic turnout fell shy of 2008, Trump added this: ”I think we’re going to be more inclusive . .. more unified, and I think we’re going to be a much bigger party. [The GOP] has become more dynamic. It’s become more diverse. We’re taking from the Democrats.” Trump did yield the biggest prize of the day to rival Sen. Ted Cruz, who won his home state of Texas along with the adjoining state of Oklahoma. ”Thank God for the Lone Star State,” crooned Cruz as he thanked his supporters in Stafford, Texas. Cruz made much of having beaten Trump in three states, claiming this made him the best alternative to the New York business mogul. (Hours later Cruz increased his total to four states, after the Alaska caucuses went his way.) Cruz also said the other candidates  —   who would be Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson  —   should ”prayerfully consider” abandoning their own campaigns to unite behind him. It was immediately apparent that none intended to do so. Rubio, who had hoped to establish himself as the last bright hope of the   forces, settled for a   finish in Minnesota’s caucuses (his first win of the year) and two   showings in Georgia and Virginia. Rubio had high hopes for both of those states. The former borders his home state of Florida, and the latter had high concentrations of suburban Republicans, to whom he had directly appealed. Rubio did come within a few percentage points of Trump in Virginia, but still fell short. He had a strong finish in Minnesota, but the caucus was lightly attended and his vote total was barely over 41, 000. But with his flair for seeing the bright side, Rubio noted that Trump’s vote totals on Super Tuesday had not matched Trump’s poll numbers ”in state after state.” Rubio saw that as a sign of his own success in challenging the  . Rubio had begun bearding Trump in the Feb. 25 debate and traded insults with him throughout the weekend, repeatedly calling him ”a con artist,” among other things. Kasich, for his part, came within a whisker of eclipsing Trump in Vermont and added another, more distant   finish in Massachusetts. He made it clear he would be in the race at least through Michigan (March 8) and Ohio, his home state, a week later. Kasich has been widely regarded as campaigning for a   offer at this point, although he continues to suggest he could be the unity candidate against Trump. Carson once again indicated he was ”not going anywhere,” blaming his   shares of the vote to the system he was fighting, calling it a ”complex web.” In the end, of course, all this persistence on the part of his rivals may make it easier for Trump to divide and conquer. The more rivals remain, the more the   vote is diluted, making it easier for him to prevail with a plurality of the vote, state by state, all the way to the convention."
"I’m a retinal specialist, an ophthalmologist who specializes in the back of the eye. I see a good number of patients with   macular degeneration, or AMD, a disease that limits central vision. It affects at least 6 percent of the population, and the more severe form with significant vision loss will affect about 3 million people by the year 2020. People with AMD can have trouble recognizing faces, reading, driving and navigating their everyday lives. We are constantly searching for new treatments, different ways to battle the disease and the havoc it wreaks on vision. But I’ve started to wonder if we are missing out on a big opportunity to help our patients  —   treating the depression that can come with such a major loss. Someone recently asked me how many of my patients have depression. I realized I had no idea. In fact, 10 to 30 percent of people with AMD have depression, which is double the normal rate for people older than 70. About 22 percent of those who come to   clinics have mild to moderate depression, according to Dr. Judith Goldstein, an optometrist at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute who specializes in providing   services. The rate of depression has gotten a little better since we added   therapy, which can slow the progression of the wet form of macular degeneration. But many of the patients in my waiting room are still quite distressed. It’s not surprising that people with macular degeneration are depressed. AMD is a disease of older people, and a significant number of them have gone through life in good health and figured out how to manage their lives. But the disease forces them to deal with adversity and change the way they have been living for years. They struggle to find new ways to cope. Dr. Barry Rovner, a geriatric psychiatrist at Thomas Jefferson University who studies depression in patients with AMD, puts it this way: What if ”something happened to you and you suddenly couldn’t do the thing that was most important to you? That’s a loss, and people differ in their capacities to manage loss. Some people take it in stride after a period of mourning, like any loss.” But some don’t cope as well. ”You can’t do things that you used to like to do,” Rovner says. ”It changes you. It forces you to change your perception of yourself.” Merely handing antidepressants to patients with AMD doesn’t help, Rovner says. ”It’s not as simple as just saying, ’Oh, you’re depressed? Here, take Prozac, it’ll make you better.’ Instead, what’s going to fix it is getting into their lives and helping them adapt to the new circumstance.” Rovner and his colleagues have found that helping people with low vision find strategies to cope with and adapt to their vision loss can help prevent depression in the first place. Goldstein puts many of these strategies into use. In her clinic, she helps to identify things the patient has trouble doing, break that down into tasks and then adjust each task, tailoring it to the patient. For patients who are frustrated about losing the ability to cook,   specialists and therapists dissect each step of the cooking process. Instead of buying whole vegetables, people can use prechopped ones. If they are having trouble using the stove, they may be able to use the microwave instead. For a patient who is struggling with losing the independence that goes along with driving, low vision specialists and therapists can’t restore driving vision. But they can help figure out ways to get around without always having to ask family members for help or rides. Certainly improving function can help improve the depressed moods of many AMD patients. But in our medical system, Rovner notes, it’s hard for   ophthalmologists and optometrists who may not be knowledgeable about mental health care to do anything about depression. One solution, he says, would be to have integrated ophthalmology teams, which include the eye doctor, a   specialist and home visits with occupational therapists who receive extra training in recognizing depression and how to intervene. He is hoping to study whether this type of system can help treat or prevent depression. So what can I do now? First, I can send my patients to   specialists such as Goldstein, who specialize in strategies to help those with vision loss. Many   specialists also have a long intake process in which they closely examine patients for symptoms of depression. Oftentimes, eye doctors are so focused on treatment and what to do about vision loss that we forget to take that step. Even more importantly, Rovner says I can simply ask my patients: ”How are you coping with this? What’s it like for you?” I’ll start there. Julie Rosenthal is an ophthalmologist at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center who specializes in diseases of the retina and vitreous."
"If you’ve stopped for gas lately, you’ve probably noticed a price jump. A week ago, the national average for a gallon of regular gas was around $1. 70. Now it’s about $1. 80, according to GasBuddy. com, which tracks prices. So rising gas prices must reflect shrinking oil supplies, right? Nope. The U. S. Energy Information Administration issued its latest ”petroleum status” report on Wednesday and said U. S. commercial crude oil inventories are up by 10. 4 million barrels from the previous week. That’s a lot  —   about quadruple what most analysts had predicted in a Platts poll. ”U. S. crude oil inventories are at historically high levels for this time of year,” the Energy Information Administration said. Moreover, gasoline inventories ”are well above the upper limit of the average range,” the EIA said. So then what did cause the uptick in gas prices? To a large extent, the rise reflects the change in seasons. Every year at this time, refineries have to stop for maintenance and then switch to more expensive summer blends. Back in February, consumers were enjoying bargains as wholesalers were cutting prices to clear out   gasoline. Now companies are shifting to the     blends that reduce smog during the summer ozone season. These blends use fuel additives that burn cleaner but cost more. Also, demand for gasoline will be rising soon as Americans start driving more for spring break and summer vacations. ”Swings in gas prices at the regional level are typical for this time of year as many refineries conduct maintenance in advance of the busy summer driving season,” AAA, the auto club, said in its weekly analysis. In addition to the seasonal factors, there’s another reason prices are nudging higher: Crude oil prices are showing a bit more strength. The turnaround for oil began in   when Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela and Russia said they would freeze oil output at January levels. So far, the ”freeze” has held, allowing benchmark prices to rise to around $34 a barrel, up from last month’s low of about $26. ”By announcing a production freeze, the global oil coalition has set a floor under oil prices,” ABN Amro said in a report. And that floor stayed firm Wednesday. Despite the EIA’s report of larger than expected U. S. inventories, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate oil closed up a bit at $34. 53. So here’s the big picture: Most experts say gas prices are likely to stay low for a long while, noting that even with the recent uptick, the average gallon is more than 50 cents lower than it was a year ago. As for summer, the U. S. Energy Department predicts that the national average will peak at $2. 08 from June through August. Remember that from 2011 to 2014, the national average on June 1 was $3. 60, with many cities seeing prices over $4. This year’s bargains may go on and on thanks to surging oil supplies coming from the Gulf of Mexico. For years, the oil companies have been placing big bets on the Gulf, pouring billions of dollars into the development of deepwater wells. Now those offshore projects are coming on line and will start pushing oil inventories even higher. The EIA is predicting a record high of 1. 8 million barrels of oil per day coming from the Gulf in 2017, up from 1. 6 million this year. In addition, the U. S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced last month that it will lease an additional 45 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf for oil and gas development."
"In central Cairo, Ali Sayed Ismail Hussein sits on a wooden chair in the street in front of his dead son’s apartment building. A recording of the Quran plays in the background as neighbors and friends pass by to pay condolences. ”The blood of my son, Mohammed Darbaka, is on the neck of the president of the republic,” Hussein says, speaking of his son, Mohammed Ali, known to most by his nickname, Darbaka. ”I am asking for the rights of my son from the president. My demand is justice for my son.” The shooting took place Feb. 18. A policeman had hired Darbaka to drive him around as he moved boxes of shoes and other goods. Hussein says witnesses told him his son and the policeman argued over payment. Then the policeman shot the young man in the head. Hussein says the cop, who is now in jail, should be executed for killing his son for no reason, in the middle of the street in his own neighborhood. And the case has become a rallying crying far beyond this neighborhood. Thousands marched in the streets during his funeral. Men are getting the phrase ”We are all Darbaka” shaved into their hairlines at barbershops. Under President Abdel Fattah   rights groups say cases of police abuse and state repression are on the rise. The El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence says last year, nearly 500 people died in custody or were killed by security forces. More than 600 were tortured in detention, according to a report from the center last month. These numbers are a rare glimpse into the scale of police abuse in Egypt. And now the Nadeem Center, which has documented cases of torture for more than two decades in Egypt, is itself under attack. The state is trying to shut it down. Nineteen Egyptian rights groups wrote an open letter protesting the shutdown. They warn that it’s part of a broad assault on independent rights groups in Egypt aimed at ”silencing all voices critical of its appalling human rights record.” The Darbaka killing comes as discontent grows over police brutality and judicial misconduct. Egyptians were already shocked by the torture and killing of a young Italian Ph. D. student, who’d disappeared in Cairo in late January. Many blame the country’s security forces for Giulio Regeni’s death, though Egypt denies involvement. Egypt’s security forces are also blamed for a surge of disappearances. And a    child was sentenced last month to life in prison  ” something the government later said was a ”mistake.” Meanwhile, Darbaka’s case seems to have rattled the government. In a protest video posted online, demonstrators chant, ”Oh, you dirty government, you sons of dirty people.” They call the police ”thugs.” On state television, Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar was shown meeting with Ali Hussein, Darbaka’s father, in what appeared to be an attempt to quell public discontent. Gripping Hussein’s shoulders, he said, ”He is our son and we will bring justice, that is on us.” Originally, the ministry said the policeman pulled out his gun to stop a fight and accidentally fired. But now, the policeman is behind bars. And the government says he will stand trial. In a press conference a few days ago, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail promised reforms in how police are trained. ”We should not hold the entire police authority accountable for misdeeds of a few individuals,” he said. Back in Darbaka’s neighborhood, Ali Hussein looks at a picture of his son hanging on the wall. ”He was 24 and engaged to be married,” he says, someone who was loved by all. The government, he says, has promised to do the right thing. He will wait and see."
"When a whooping crane stands up, you notice. At 5 feet in height, it’s America’s tallest bird. Its wingspan is more than 7 feet, its body snowy white, its wingtips jet black. By the 1940s, the birds had nearly gone extinct. Biologists have worked hard to bring them back, by breeding whoopers in captivity and releasing them in the wild. There are now several small wild populations in the U. S. Perhaps the most remarkable is the eastern group. For 15 years, biologists have been teaching some of the young cranes to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida by leading them with an ultralight,   aircraft. Now, however, biologists have discovered that teaching the cranes to migrate seems to have created serious problems for the birds  —   they rarely reproduce successfully. The Federal Fish  Wildlife Service has halted the flights and is now trying to figure out what went wrong. The irony here is that the migration project, a leap of faith and a scientific gamble, worked. It was a terribly difficult experiment. Biologists breed the birds at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md. Every person involved wears a long white coat and a hood. They even wear phony beaks. The aim is to keep the young birds from imprinting on people  —   seeing their human caretakers as parents. Instead, the researchers want the birds to consider the ultralight aircraft and its pilot, also costumed like a bird, as their leader. To that end, while still very young, the whooping cranes are introduced to the plane on the ground and encouraged to follow it and its pilot around. One of those pilots is Joseph Duff, a burly   Canadian. ”You become actually a part of their social structure,” Duff says. ”You are the dominant bird  —   the parent bird within the flock.” Duff calls himself an ”avian aviator.” For 15 years, he’s been flying his   aircraft alongside whooping cranes that have been bred in captivity. Once they are old enough to fly, they are packed off to Wisconsin, where they live until it’s time to take off alongside Duff and other pilots to fly to their winter home in Florida. This spectacle draws crowds of craniacs who follow the migration and videotape Duff and the birds as they fly overhead. Duff says videotape can’t begin to capture the feeling of actually flying with these huge cranes. ”When you have this bird with an   wingspan right off your wingtip and you’re a thousand feet up and they’re all around you,” he says, ”(with) the sun shining on them . ..” His voice trails off. ”It’s hard to describe,” he admits. Duff grew up in Canada’s North Woods, with no special feeling for birds. But he did love to fly. Biologists approached him 15 years ago, saying they’d bred a few eastern whooping cranes in captivity. They wanted pilots to teach these naive,   birds how to migrate, so that the birds could become real, wild whooping cranes again. The project was called Operation Migration, and Duff signed on. ”Oh, it’s changed me completely,” Duff says. ”It’s just spectacular to watch a creature like that. I mean, it’s been migrating for millions of years.” So far, about 100 birds now migrate up and down this eastern flyway. That, say biologists, is a success  —   but a partially empty one. You can’t say you’ve   a wild population if it’s not  . I went to Patuxent to learn more. It was a blustery day, and I had to walk through snow and up a flight of wooden stairs to a shack  —   a bird blind  —   to see the captive whoopers. Through an open window, I could see several leggy birds standing elegantly in fenced enclosures. With their long beaks and   glances, they seem a little fierce. Their call is a throaty screech. ”They’re   birds aren’t they?” says Sarah Converse, my ecologist guide. She and other biologists at Patuxent are deeply invested in these birds. No place else has bred as many. She was exhilarated to see them actually migrate, she says, but devastated when it started to become clear that once the cranes arrived at the Wisconsin breeding grounds, they just didn’t reproduce. ”We have two separate problems,” she explains. ”One, the eggs don’t make it. Two, even if the eggs make it, the chicks don’t make it.” The cranes mate well enough. But fewer than 1 in 10 reproducing pairs actually raises a chick that lives more than four months. ”It’s not like we’re almost there with reproduction,” says Converse. ”We’re not really anywhere close. And so it sort of suggests that there’s something wrong with the birds and the way they behave.” The parents may not be staying with the eggs long enough. Or they may not know how to protect the eggs or the newly hatched chicks from predators. But then how would they know? John French, the biologist who runs the crane program at Patuxent, isn’t surprised that the   birds are confused. They were raised by humans even though they are   beaked people who manage to fly with the whoopers, they’re still human. ”It’s a very odd experience for the bird,” says French. ”They would never do that in the wild. And we really don’t know how that affects the bird.” So the scientific team has stopped the flight training. It requires too much interaction between chicks and humans, and probably not enough time with their avian parents. The biologists suspect the chicks are missing some lesson about how to be good parents themselves, something they pick up early from being parented. Or, perhaps,   birds have become genetically different from birds in the wild, and lack some crucial gene for good parenting, French says. Whatever the case, it’s a lesson on how difficult it is for people to   something that took millions of years of evolution to make. ”I think we’re finding out the ark that we’ve built, you know, might not be the best way to preserve them,” French says. ”We might have to think of a different kind of ark. Our goal here, now, is to step back as far as we can from that human interaction and, you know, let them develop as a bird.” So the chicks will now stay with their parents in Patuxent for their first year, with a minimum of human contact. Then they’ll be transported to their breeding sites in Wisconsin via crates inside a plane. They’ll be released to join the existing population of adult cranes in Wisconsin, and nature will take its course. Researchers have found that adult cranes will happily ”adopt” young birds that aren’t their own. As for migrating back South, there are enough mature birds now that know the route to teach the newbies the flight path without an ultralight aircraft leading the way. At least that’s the hope. As for Joe Duff and Operation Migration, the end of his career as an avian aviator was hard to take, especially his last flight with the cranes, on Feb. 6. The wind was too strong to fly, but he tried anyway, and got forced down. He read me what he wrote about the end of the project, and that last flight, in a voice that betrayed his sadness. ”It is the proper thing to do,” he wrote, ”but somehow it should have ended differently. There should have been clear skies, a colorful sunrise, a string of courageous birds off my wingtip. But nature doesn’t work that way, and I should have known better.”"
"As Donald Trump delivered his Super Tuesday victory speech to reporters, his most prominent endorser, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, stood   behind him, prompting a deluge of tweets comparing the former presidential candidate to a hostage. Christie’s secretly conceived decision last week to endorse Trump has provoked shock, anger and disappointment from all corners. After Christie refused to take questions about Trump at a news conference at the statehouse in Trenton on Monday, six New Jersey newspapers from the Gannett company penned a joint editorial saying Christie should be recalled for ignoring the people of the state. And a poll released Wednesday showed that his job approval in the state stood at 27 percent, an   low, following the endorsement. One of his critics’ chief complaints is that Christie developed his political brand around extending the Republican Party’s tent to the marginalized in New Jersey  —   particularly Hispanics and Muslims  —   and that those gains may be lost now that Christie has endorsed a candidate whose remarks are viewed by many as offensive. Meg Whitman, a former California gubernatorial candidate and the national finance   for his failed presidential campaign, called Christie’s endorsement ”an astonishing display of political opportunism.” Joining the chorus were former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (”I am ashamed that Christie would endorse anyone who has employed the kind of hate mongering and racism that Trump has”) Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger who has been a stalwart Christie booster (”Chris Christie, you’re nothing to me now”) and one of his top fundraisers, Bobbie Kilberg (”I don’t get it”). The endorsement has put Christie on the defensive. In a Sunday interview on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Christie ended up getting blindsided by Stephanopoulos, who forced the governor to account for how he had previously criticized Trump on all of his most significant policy positions. In one particularly difficult exchange, Christie refused to say he disagreed with Trump’s ban on Muslims  —   even though as a candidate, he had brought this up as an indication that Trump wasn’t fit to serve as president. ”I’m saying that’s only one piece of an overall approach to national security,” Christie said. Christie also found himself deflecting questions about whether Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the Mexican border was racist, even though he himself had made fun of the wall at almost every campaign town hall he held. Eventually, Christie just blamed the media for being too tough on Trump. New Jersey Republicans in the state privately expressed concern that Trump’s presence at the top of the Republican ticket in November could hurt them in local races, while Muslim leaders publicly repudiated the comments from a governor who had been seen as a vocal defender of their rights. Current and former supporters of Christie believe he made a savvy political move out of crass    —   he wanted to pick an early winner in the race for the Republican nomination so he can maintain a prominent role as a Trump surrogate and potentially land a job in the Trump administration. Back in New Jersey, county GOP leaders were taken aback because they were supposed to meet with Christie this week, when they expected to talk about possible endorsements. They were also starting to coalesce around Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Christie disdains. Whether New Jersey Republicans likewise support Trump will be seen as a critical test of loyalty to the governor in a state that even members of Team Christie feel he is too eager to leave behind. Asked by The New York Times if Christie’s ” ” reputation as a Republican was now at risk, Ray Washburne, Christie’s finance chairman for his presidential campaign, said: ”That’s sure what a lot of people think. I’m still shocked and dismayed.” You can hear more analysis about Christie’s endorsement on the WNYC podcast, ”The Christie Tracker.”"
"The local media are calling it the ”Robin Hood” budget. The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, eager to win support among the urban and rural poor, is announcing programs to improve conditions for   people and provide tax breaks for necessities and items that might improve their lives. Meanwhile, to bring in more funds for government spending, there are now higher taxes for luxury items. Farmers in particular are getting a helping hand  —   and that’s a smart political calculus, because Modi needs their support to win   in 2019. The government hopes that   subsidies for irrigation, new roads and other assists will double the income of farmers in five years. ”Highly commendable,” said agronomist M. S. Swaminathan, the father of India’s Green Revolution. A skeptical Hindustan Times, however, notes that such income generation will ”require a dramatic improvement in yields, technologies, good prices for farm produce  —   and some magic.” The budget also promises to bring electricity to all   Indian villages in the next 1, 000 days and to provide cooking gas connections for families below the poverty line, so they won’t have to burn substances like cow manure in their homes, which can cause ill health effects. Startups are getting a boost: no tax on profits for three out of the first five years. (Although critics argue that very few actually generate profit that soon.) Under this Robin Hood budget, those who earn more than 11 million rupees ($161, 389) will now be taxed at a rate of 35. 5 percent, up from 34. 6 percent. As for the list of taxes (and tax cuts) sometimes it makes perfect sense and sometimes it’s a little mystifying. Why pick on cashews? Here’s a rundown of some new regulations from the massive new budget. Note: In many cases, the government did not give a reason for the change in a specific tax. The cost of eating out creeps up. Indian diners pay a ”service tax” of about 12 percent on 40 percent of the total bill. That amount is inching up by 0. 5 percent. Shoes are cheaper. The tax on rubber and resins used in soles and heels has been reduced. Golfers won’t be happy. Maybe you should buy some of those cheaper shoes, because the tax on an imported golf cart will jump from 10 percent to 60 percent. Nuts to nuts. Cashews are already expensive, and new taxes will make them even costlier. Water will bring in more revenue. The tax on mineral water will go up. Indians guzzle bottled water like crazy because tap water isn’t safe to drink. Products that contribute to disease will cost more. The excise tax on tobacco products is going up to discourage consumption. Cheaper health costs. To increase the affordability of treatment for renal diseases, clinics and hospitals won’t have to pay duty fees on imported parts for kidney dialysis equipment. Gamblers will be losers. Lottery tickets will cost more, and the tax on horse race winnings will rise from 5, 000 rupees (about $73) to 10, 000 rupees ($146). Fancy cars will cost more. With pollution a huge concern, there’s now a 4 percent tax on big cars that use a lot of gas, like SUVs. In addition, India’s rich will pay a premium for luxury cars, with a tax of 1 percent of the value of cars that cost more than 1 million rupees ($14, 671). Foiled again. Aluminum foil, commonly used in   kitchens, has become more expensive along with plastic bags, which are considered highly polluting. Jewel markups. The price of jewelry goes up  —   ”excluding silver jewelry other than studded with diamonds or other precious stones, namely ruby, emerald, and sapphire.” Imitation jewelry will also be taxed at a higher rate.   appliances will cost less. Solar lamps are now  . Buying a new home is easier. There are incentives for   homeowners. Nest eggs could shrink. There are new penalties for retirement fund withdrawals above a certain amount. Some technology will be cheaper. Routers and   boxes for TVs that change an analog signal to digital will be taxed at a lower rate. Broadband modems and digital video recorders will also cost less owing to tax cuts. And some won’t.   devices will get pricier. Folk festival. Hiring a folk artist performer will cost less  —   the hirer will pay a smaller tax. Presumably, this measure will encourage the traditional arts. Airplane tickets will cost more. Air travel will go up as part of a hike in the excise tax on jet fuel from 8 percent to 14 percent. Jet fuel accounts for some 40 percent of the operating costs of Indian carriers airline stocks slumped at this news. Airline consultants complain that the hike goes against the government’s stated objective of making flying more affordable for the masses. Cable cars will cost more, too. The cost of a ride  —   mainly for tourists  —   will go up because of a new 14 percent tax. A few more seemingly random tax increases. Taxes on packers and movers will go up. So will taxes on ”  garments.”"
"Comic Louie Anderson has had a hugely successful   career for the past 30 years, but he admits he wasn’t a very good actor early on. ”I didn’t know who I was or how to do it,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. Now, at 62, Anderson is delivering a standout performance on the FX comedy series Baskets. In it, he plays Christine Baskets, the mother of an embittered rodeo clown (played by Zach Galifianakis). Christine is both exasperated by her son and deeply supportive of him. ”I feel like this part gave me an opportunity to play the most real person  —   a really real person,” he says. The comic drew from his memories of his late mother for the role of Christine. ”I really loved playing this part for a big reason that my mom gets to come to life,” he says. Anderson grew up with 10 siblings in a housing project in St. Paul, Minn. and for years family has been a big part of his act. He says that imagining his mother and family as his audience helped shape his   humor. ”I’ve always been trying to heal families,” he explains. But as Anderson grows older, he has reconsidered adding darker material to his set. ”I’m at this precipice right now that I feel like I’ll be changing myself onstage,” he says. ”I think I could go to another level, but am I going to betray my audience? Is that a betrayal?” On his ongoing struggle with his weight, I’m a food addict. I go to OA [Overeaters Anonymous] and I really work hard on trying to eat better, especially lately. I’ve been really working hard on it. So I know what that’s like. . .. My dad was an alcoholic, and he was really mean and could be very vicious. And anybody who has grown up with an alcoholic knows that there’s usually a fight to bring everything to a head in an alcoholic family where the lines are drawn, and that either ends with police coming, or, in our case, my mom would feed us. It was the weirdest thing. So there’s a lot of stuff emotionally tied to my eating. Then I created a character onstage that had a lot to do with being fat, so I really boxed myself in a lot, and I’m really aware of it. . .. I have to be locked in a cage, Terry, for 23 hours a day and fed small amounts of food. I mean, really, I can’t be trusted. I’ve been eating really good for four weeks . .. and I didn’t weigh myself until just the other day, and I lost 10 pounds. And I was disappointed that I had only lost 10 pounds, and I had to deal with that. I had to really talk to myself about that. Because that’s perfect  —   about 2. 5 pounds a week. That’s a really good thing, so I have to keep that in mind. On thinking about mortality, The first time I really felt anything about mortality was in 1990 when my mom died. That’s where I really went, ”Oh, my God, I think I could die now. . .. I came from my mom. She died. I can’t believe she died.” It was very devastating. I couldn’t believe my mom died. ”Oh, my mom died.” When I lost my dad  —   my dad was a really bad drunk, but a really funny guy, and he stuck with us and he stayed. . .. I’ll never forget, my dad quit drinking when he was 69 and here was my mom’s response: She turned to me and she said, ”I told you he’d quit drinking.” On his mother  My mom was never without a compliment. . .. I think she meant it. She loved people and she loved conversation and she loved to engage with people. . .. She was a little passive aggressive. . .. She just could slide stuff in and you’d go, ”Did I just get cut by a really sharp razor? Mom?” She just had that thing. She was a little competitive, but she loved to show off. She was a showoff. On why depression and comedy often go together  I think the reason that they go together is because if you look at that depression long enough, you have to tip it on its side and look at the other side and find some humor in it. I tried to kill myself, but the rope broke. That would be a joke that I could probably do and get a laugh out of. I have to be very careful about how I do any stuff on sadness, because the crowd gets really sad and concerned for me. On not wanting to have a family of his own, I wanted to find my family . .. but not necessarily have a family, because I’m really a selfish person. I’ll be really honest with you. I’m really   and selfish, and I know I am. I don’t want to be that person, but I really am selfish. . .. I don’t mean it in any mean way or any cruel way, I just am. I’m all about me, and I know it’s wrong. I try to do nice things and all that, but I am a very, very   person. I would be a great parent for about 10 minutes a day, you know? I think I’m a much better friend and uncle and cousin and brother. . .. I’m gone all the time I like to travel I love to do   comedy still  —   it still makes me really happy. . .. And it’s the one thing I’m so good at. . .. I’ve worked so hard, I’ve worked so many hours, to make sure that when you’re there . .. you are hopefully forgetting every bit of your troubles. That’s my goal every night. Hopefully, at some point in my act, you have forgotten whatever trouble you had when you came in.”"
"After hearing oral arguments on what could be one of the most important abortion cases decided by the U. S. Supreme Court in decades, NPR’s Nina Totenberg says that the only thing that is certain is that Justice Anthony Kennedy will cast the deciding vote. As expected, Nina says, the three conservatives and four liberals on the court stuck to their positions for and against a Texas law that puts restrictions on abortions. As Nina reported earlier today, the law requires all abortions  —   either surgical or medical, meaning with pills  —   to be done in clinics that meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers. The law also requires doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. The question before the court is whether these restrictions impose an ”undue burden” on a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy. Nina says that Kennedy floated the idea of perhaps punting on this case and sending it back to a lower court to gather more evidence on how the law has affected access to abortion in the state. ”The question is really are they going to decide this? Are they going to uphold the privileges requirement? Are they going to uphold the surgical center requirement? And the answer to that I do not know,” Nina says. Opponents of the Texas Omnibus Abortion Bill, known as HB 2, argued that since the law was passed in Texas the number of clinics that perform abortion dwindled from 41 to 19. Nina says that the conservative justices wanted to know how opponents of this law knew that those clinics had shuttered because of the law. ”The solicitor general for example, noted that for at least seven of these clinics, they literally couldn’t comply with the law, that in order to comply they would exceed the footprint of the land that the clinic is on,” Nina says. ”It was quite a passionate battle between the court’s liberals and that includes the three women on the court, who were very vociferous, and the court’s conservatives who would really love not be ruling on this at all. And I don’t know where it’s going.” Of course, another question is whether the court could end up at a   tie because of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Nina says that doesn’t look likely, but if it did, it would mean that the Fifth Circuit ruling, which largely upheld the law, would stand. The ruling, however, would only be valid in the states under the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction and a tie would lead to a patchwork of laws across the country. ”So eventually the Supreme Court is going to have resolve this,” Nina says. ”If it doesn’t resolve it in this case, it’s going to have resolve it at some point in the future.”"
"The U. S. Supreme Court dealt a blow Tuesday to nascent efforts to track the quality and cost of health care, ruling that a 1974 law precludes states from requiring that every health care claim involving their residents be submitted to a massive database. The arguments were arcane, but the effect is clear: We’re a long way off from having a true picture of the country’s health care spending, especially differences in the way hospitals treat patients and doctors practice medicine. It also means that, for the time being at least, we’ll remain heavily reliant on data being released by Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, to study variations in health care. ProPublica has used Medicare data to study differences in medication prescribing, surgeons’ complication rates and use of services by doctors, but it’s still not clear that Medicare is representative of all health care in the country. The court’s decision involves a case from Vermont, one of 18 states that created     claims databases. Vermont’s law called for health insurers, health providers, medical facilities and government agencies to report data on health care costs, prices, quality and use of services to the state. That included employers who pay the costs of their workers’ treatments themselves, and not through an insurance contract. (  is common for large companies.) But Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. objected, saying the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA, prevents states from imposing such a requirement on   plans. The idea is that companies that have operations across the country shouldn’t be subjected to 50 different state laws, but instead should only have to abide by rules from one agency, namely the U. S. Department of Labor. The court sided with Liberty Mutual, in a   decision, ruling it didn’t have to submit the data demanded by Vermont. In a     brief filed last September, the American Hospital Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges said that without the data from   plans,   claims databases will be incomplete and not as valuable as they could be. ”Hospitals only have data for the patients they treat,” the groups wrote. ”Information from across the spectrum of an individual’s health care experience is needed to inform clinical, payment, and public health policy. ..Complete data across all payers (including   like Respondent) is required so that both health care providers and policymakers can understand the variations in the health care system, and address those that need to change.” They also noted that   plans cover a ”large majority of the working population: in 2013, nearly 60 percent of workers with health insurance were enrolled in such plans, and that figure is growing.” So what now? One option is for   plans like Liberty Mutual to voluntarily provide their data to   databases. But given the lawsuit, that appears unlikely. Another possibility, raised by Justice Stephen Breyer, is for the federal government to require   plans to disclose their data. ”I see no reason why the Secretary of Labor could not develop reporting requirements that satisfy the states’ needs, including some   requirements, as appropriate,” he wrote. For now, though, we may have to do what we have done for years: Settle for an incomplete picture of health care spending and utilization. Our team at ProPublica has already found fascinating patterns in Medicare data. In one example, 1, 800 doctors billed Medicare for the most expensive type of office visits at least 90 percent of the time, compared to just 4 percent of office visits for all doctors. Another group, the Health Care Cost Institute, has greenlighted research using data from three of the nation’s largest private insurance companies. It has found some interesting trends too, but hasn’t released data on individual doctors and hospitals. Medicare could release more data, as could the Health Care Cost Institute. The Supreme Court decision means transparency has a long way to go. Charles Ornstein is a senior reporter at ProPublica, an independent investigative newsroom based in New York."
"Removing any doubt about whether you’re allowed to puff away on an electronic cigarette while airborne, the Department of Transportation has explicitly banned vaping on commercial flights. The department had previously said that it understood its ”ban on smoking of tobacco to be sufficiently broad to include the use of electronic cigarettes.” It’s the word ”smoking” that was seen as a possible loophole. As most any   user will emphatically tell you, they don’t view it as smoking because there’s no smoke  —   the device releases vapor instead. U. S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement Wednesday that the department ”took a practical approach to eliminate any confusion between tobacco cigarettes and   by applying the same restrictions to both.” He added, ”This final rule is important because it protects airline passengers from unwanted exposure to aerosol fumes that occur when electronic cigarettes are used onboard airplanes.” The aerosol fumes are a concern, the statement says, ”because there is a lack of scientific data and knowledge of the ingredients in electronic cigarettes.” The ban applies to ”all scheduled flights of U. S. and foreign carriers involving transportation in, to, and from the U. S,” according to the Department of Transportation. Last year, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration prohibited airline passengers and crew from carrying     in their checked luggage or charging the devices while on a plane, citing safety concerns.   manufacturers routinely market their products by arguing part of the appeal is that they can be used in places where traditional cigarettes are not allowed."
"It’s been only a year and a half since the social protest movement around police violence commonly referred to as Black Lives Matter emerged as a major political force. Much of this movement’s   and organizing happened on Twitter, and a fascinating new study by media scholars Charlton McIlwain, Deen Freelon and Meredith Clark mapped out how it happened and who drove. The researchers combed through Twitter data from June of 2014, just before the police killing of Eric Garner in New York City, through May of 2015, shortly after the protests over the police killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. From nearly 41 million tweets, 100, 000 Web links and dozens of interviews, they were able to map out who led the conversations and how they were connected to each other. They found six big ”recurring communities” that consistently talked about police violence over the year in question: The researchers dove deep into the roles played by each of these groups and how the conversation evolved over time. Here are some of their biggest findings. When #BlackLivesMatter Blew Up, The researchers stress that Black Lives Matter, the diffuse political organization, is distinct from #BlackLivesMatter, the Twitter hashtag, although many of the organizers and activists use the hashtag as well. (It’s also worth noting that Black Lives Matter is the most   organization, but its name is often conflated with other groups with similar aims, like BYP100 and the Dream Defenders.) The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was created in July 2013, around the time of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. But the hashtag sat quietly for a long time: the month before Michael Brown’s shooting in early August 2014, it was only used a total of 48 times a day across Twitter. Freelon, one of the study’s authors, said it was being ”kind of used in a generic way,” with mostly affirmative messages that weren’t necessarily even political. Come August, though, the hashtag was used more than 52, 000 times. And that was only the beginning. ”You can actually see the day it goes mainstream  —   Nov. 25, the day that the decision not to indict Darren Wilson came down,” Freelon told me. In the first 20 hours of that day, #blacklivesmatter was used on Twitter about 10, 000 times. In the four hours of that day following the verdict, it was used 92, 784 times. ”If you remember, there were a number of other hashtags that were jockeying for supremacy  —   #handsupdontshoot, #icantbreathe, #justiceforall,” Freelon said. There were also the hashtags made up of the names of individual people killed by police. ”What’s interesting is the one that [won out] was the one that framed these stories in explicitly racial terms.” Another fascinating tidbit: The prominence of the Michael Brown case, relative to some other stories of police violence, is somewhat counterintuitive. The incident that led to Eric Garner’s death was captured on video and took place in New York City, the nation’s largest media market, while Michael Brown’s death was in a tiny suburb in the Midwest. Yet, while #ericgarner was appended to about 4. 3 million tweets in the study period, #ferguson showed up in 21. 6 million tweets, and #  was used in about 9. 4 million. Conservatives Were Very Involved In The Conversation On Police Violence, Freelon noted that conservative clusters on Twitter were also very active in conversations about police violence. Of course, their perspective  —   and their hashtags  —   were very different from those used by other activists and young black people. ”They’ve got . .. #pantsupdontloot,” he said. But when researchers plotted out these networks on Twitter, they were surprised by the amount of interaction they saw between conservatives and    activists. ”Black Lives Matter shares a lot of connections with conservatives, which is very interesting,” Freelon said. Of course, Freelon notes, many of these encounters were contentious, but he also pointed out instances when folks in both of these universes found themselves in some form of agreement. For example, he said, many conservatives recast Garner, who suffocated and died when police wrestled him to the ground while trying to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes, as a tax martyr. And people of all ideological stripes condemned the officer who killed Walter Scott, who was shot in the back several times as he ran away after a traffic stop. ”I was vaguely aware that some conservatives did a 180 around the Walter Scott and Eric Garner stories, but I was surprised at the prominence of the voices,” Freelon said. ”You’re not seeing ’Eric Garner deserved it’ or ’Walter Scott deserved it.’ It was more [arguments about how the bigger problems were] abortion and    crime.” The Movement Has Been Driven By Women, But The Biggest Voices Are Not, Black Lives Matter, the organization, was founded by three black women, and Twitter is a space in which the fascinations and voices of black women carry particular weight. But when the researchers looked at who comprised the ”high centers,” or most influential connectors, in the networks most involved in discussions of police violence, they saw something different. ”If you look at the top 10 . .. it’s half activists . .. some media folks,” Freelon told me. ”You’ll notice that only one of them is a woman,” he said, referring to Johnetta Elzie, @Nettaaaaaaaa on Twitter, who was profiled in the New York Times and   a prominent newsletter focused on race and policing. Many of the people who rose to prominence did so out of relative obscurity. DeRay McKesson, who is at the top of the ”high centers” list, is a perfect example. Before the protests, ”he had fewer followers than I did,” Freelon said. ”He moved from that to doing Colbert in a year and a half.” It’s hard to game out just why certain people became influencers, and others didn’t. ”You’re talking about a bunch of people on Twitter making a bunch of individual decisions about who to retweet,” Freelon said. ”You’re kind of at the mercy of the cloud.” Still, he said, when it comes to women and the movement, we could be seeing offline attitudes replicating themselves in the aggregate of the Twitterverse  —   like the way new stories tend to quote male sources much more often than they quote women. ”It just goes to show that when you have a big movement,” even one that’s ostensibly committed to doing things differently, and better than in the past, ”you might end up falling back on these old institutional biases,” Freelon said."
"Hear that change jingling in my pocket? Good. I have two little questions for you. I have a quarter, a dime and a nickel. How much money DO I have? I have three coins. How much money COULD I have? The first question is a basic arithmetic problem with one and only one right answer. You might find it on a   test. The second is an   question with a set of different possible correct answers. It would lend itself to a   debate over the details: Are these all American coins? Are any of them counterfeit? Do you have any bills? Frankly, it’s a lot more interesting than the first. Andrew Hacker is professor emeritus of political science at Queens College, City University of New York, and the author of several    contrarian books about education, some of them bestsellers. His latest is called The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions. It poses many nagging,   questions like the second example above, without a lot of neat,      answers like No. 1. Hacker’s central argument is that advanced mathematics requirements, like algebra, trigonometry and calculus, are ”a harsh and senseless hurdle” keeping far too many Americans from completing their educations and leading productive lives. He also maintains that there is no proof for a STEM shortage or a skills gap and that we should pursue ”numeracy” in education rather than mathematics knowledge. And, furthermore, that we should teach numeracy in an active, engaged, social way, with more questions like No. 2. NPR Ed spoke with him by phone. Here is an edited version of the conversation. NPR Ed: How do you define numeracy?  Andrew Hacker: Being agile with numbers. Regarding numbers as a second language. Reading a corporate report or a federal budget. This is not rocket science —  it’s easy to do. Kids become numerate up through 5th or 6th grade. And what is the difference between numeracy and mathematics?  There’s a firm line between arithmetic and mathematics. When we talk of quantitative skills, 97 percent of that is arithmetic. Mathematics is what starts in middle school or high school, with geometry, algebra, trigonometry, precalculus and calculus. Why are Americans apparently so bad at teaching and learning math? When I say most of it is badly taught, what I really mean is that most teachers just can’t really rouse enthusiasm for math among 90 percent of the students. Surely you’ve had such teachers. No comment. But lots of people have raised the alarm about this. Why isn’t the solution just to have math teachers, and students, work harder and do a better job? I’m saying: No, we don’t need that many people studying mathematics. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot. One in five people don’t graduate high school  —   this is one of the worst records of developed countries. And the chief academic reason is that they fail algebra  —   of course there are other nonacademic reasons, like prison and pregnancies. In our community colleges, 80 percent don’t get a college degree. The chief reason is that 70 percent fail remedial math. And even in our   colleges, 40 percent don’t get B. A. s [after 6 years]. And the biggest reason is they fail freshman math. We’re killing our kids. We’re destroying their futures because of this requirement. I think it’s outrageous and we’re doing a lot of harm. But what’s the alternative? Simply dumbing down the curriculum so everyone can pass? When I first wrote the article ”Is Algebra Necessary?” in the New York Times, most of the letters I got were from people who love math, are good at math and believe everybody should have to do it whether they like it or not. And again and again they talk about how mathematics teaches rigor, it’s tough. There’s this whole discipline thing. It’s like as if math is an enforced number of pushups. I’m not  . It’s a grand human achievement up there with chess and crossword puzzles. But you don’t want everyone to have to master chess to get a high school diploma. I’m going to be very careful about what Andrew Hacker wants to be compulsory. What I would like is for math teachers, starting in high school, to make the subject so fascinating that kids will want to take it. In writing the book, I went out and sat in on two dozen math classes from Virginia to Michigan to Mississippi. In some of them  —   not too many  —   the teachers were so infectiously enthusiastic that the kids joined in. And I wish we could bottle what they do and spread it around. What about the need for more people with STEM skills? Well, we certainly need people who know how to do coding. When it comes to engineers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we’re producing all the engineers we need. The skills shortage is a myth. The chief shortage is getting people who will work for low wages. That’s why companies in California want to bring people in on   visas who will live eight in a room and do coding for a small amount above minimum wage. What impact do you think the Common Core State Standards are having on math learning and teaching? They’re expecting everybody to get almost up to the SAT level in high school. Either there’s going to be massive failures, or the states will ratchet down the requirements. You taught your own alternative numeracy course at Queens College designed to make students more agile with numbers. How did you make the topic more appealing? I had 19 students. I broke them up in groups of three or four. Math is always highly individualized, but in the world of work we want people to work in teams. I’d give them exercises, like, ’How would you decimalize time?’ It’s really cumbersome the way we do it  —   we have a   hour, a   day, a   week. How would you make a   week or a   year? Six different teams can come up with six different answers to that question."
"There’s a first time for everything. That’s certainly held true in this campaign dominated by Donald Trump. And Republicans opposed to Trump are beginning to abandon the idea that Marco Rubio (or anyone else) can win a majority of delegates before the first round of balloting at this summer’s GOP convention in Cleveland, where the party will officially pick its nominee. ”We could be headed to a situation where there will be tremendous focus on trying to have a brokered convention  —   or a deadlocked convention because there aren’t any brokers,” GOP strategist Stuart Stevens, who helped run Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, told NPR during special broadcast coverage Saturday night after the South Carolina primary. After Super Tuesday, and Trump’s big wins, that’s even more true. ”When you look at the math,” Stevens said, ”it is difficult to imagine a scenario short of a complete meltdown by Donald Trump, where one of these other two candidates [Rubio or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz] will have a majority of the delegates going into the convention at this point. It’s possible, but it just starts to get in the real world very remote.” Romney himself, in his speech lambasting Trump on Thursday as a ”phony” and a ”fraud,” called for the kind of strategic voting that would lead to a contested convention: ”Given the current delegate selection process . .. I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio, and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state.” So is that where this is heading  —   to a contested, deadlocked, brokered convention, where the party elites will try to rally around one alternative to Trump? It’s one possibility, but there are a lot of things that have to line up before that happens  —   and a lot of contests to come. If it did get to that point, it would be the first time no one had enough delegates going into the first round of balloting at the convention in 40 years when incumbent President Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan were locked in a tight battle. (Ford got enough votes before the first round of balloting.) If it went beyond that, and no one had enough delegates after the first round of voting, it would turn into a brokered convention. That hasn’t happened for Republicans in almost 70 years  —   in 1948 when Thomas Dewey emerged as the nominee. In both years, Ford and Dewey went on to lose in the general election. The Numbers And Theories On How To Stop Trump, Trump now has a   delegate lead over Cruz in the delegate count. Rubio has 110, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich just 25. Those are all well short of the 1, 237 needed for a majority to become the party’s nominee. There are about 1, 000 delegates in play over the next two weeks, including contests with huge caches of delegates like Michigan, Florida (Rubio’s home state) Ohio (Kasich’s home state) Missouri, Illinois and elsewhere. Given that state of play, the race is far from mathematically over. Moderate Republicans, like former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (who said she would vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump) are pointing out that Trump doesn’t even have a majority of the delegates that have been handed out already, so no one should be declaring the race over. But there are reasons why Republicans opposed to Trump are worried that things are pointing in Trump’s favor and fear the train has left the station. Here are three theories of how Trump could be derailed: 1. Someone other than Trump wins a majority of delegates. Some of the big states on March 15 and beyond award their delegates on a    (or hybrid) process. That’s opposed to the Republican National Committee’s mandated proportional allocation that takes place up until that date. That could mean, if  —   and this is a huge if  —   (1) one candidate started beating Trump and the others in the remaining states, he would win. Or (2) if other candidates started dropping out, the Other Than Trump vote would coalesce around one candidate. Sure, but Scenario 1 is highly unlikely. And the theory of the case for the OTT vote in Scenario 2 is potentially flimsy, because Trump appears to have started to expand his base, if Super Tuesday is an indication. Rubio is who the establishment thinks is its strongest   candidate. For him to beat Trump head to head in a crowded field, he’d not only win his home state of Florida, but also Ohio and elsewhere. But Rubio is trailing Trump in Florida in recent polls. He is retrenching to try and hold on there, canceling events in Louisiana and Kentucky, which hold contests this Saturday. ”Has to win Florida,” GOP strategist Stuart Stevens told NPR of Rubio. ”I think everybody has to win their home state. I think it’s just a level of threshold credibility  —   that it’s win or go home.” What’s more, in Ohio, Rubio not only has to contend with the current popular governor, Kasich, but Trump has been beating Kasich in the limited polling there so far. (Kasich could start trying to be really considered a viable option for the establishment, but he’s got to show strength in Michigan on Tuesday since he’s largely been out of the conversation since his   finish in New Hampshire.) Let’s remember: Rubio has won one state  —   Minnesota  —   and finished behind Cruz in delegates Tuesday. Where does Rubio’s momentum come from? Cruz is in second place in delegates mostly because of his   home state of Texas. His best state is already behind him. To start really being considered the principal alternative to Trump, he has to beat Trump in more places head to head with the kinds of ”values” voters that are so crucial to his candidacy. He didn’t do it Super Tuesday in Southern states like Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. Cruz will have more opportunities in places like Kansas, Louisiana and Kentucky this weekend, Mississippi on Tuesday, and maybe Missouri, North Carolina and elsewhere March 15. But while Cruz is struggling to win his targeted base against Trump, Trump is expanding. And that’s maybe the biggest reason why he’s got the clearest path to going to Cleveland with the most delegates. 2. Trump is held below a majority heading into Cleveland. But while Trump has a clear shot at the nomination and a clear shot at the most delegates, this is about getting 1, 237. And in a crowded field that continues to split the vote, that can be tough to do. Some party leaders, like Romney, believe Trump can be held below a majority, even if the OTT vote is split up, provided the OTT candidates keep winning and Trump’s momentum doesn’t sweep the country. OTT supporters grew very nervous, though, watching those exit polls on Super Tuesday. Not every state after March 15 is   . Nine are purely    and many are in ”moderate” states. That would give hope to those OTTs, but where did Trump get his highest share of the vote on Super Tuesday? Massachusetts. This theory will be tested, but it’s the establishment’s best hope for at least having a path to stop Trump. 3. Someone other than Trump wins at convention even if he has the most votes. If Scenario 2 goes this way, it means a convention that goes old school, where the nominee isn’t known going in. That would be a big change for modern politics. Conventions have come to be important places for party unity, especially after the messy, televised fights that played out in the 1960s and other decades. The last time there was a ”brokered” convention on the GOP side, when a nominee wasn’t known after the first round of balloting, was 1948. So how would this work? What would play out? The delegates would vote  —   and the ones chosen before March 15 are bound to vote for their assigned candidate. (This is a change from past years when the delegates could vote however they wanted. But it hasn’t mattered, as noted earlier, in modern politics.) Once the first balloting is over, the delegates can vote however they want  —   and that could mean chaos. ”[T]he individual delegates who have been elected by processes in their states need to make some tough decisions,” Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg told NPR’s All Things Considered. Ginsberg helped write the rules for the RNC. ”If a convention goes more than one ballot, then all those delegates become free agents. It would require a whip operation to keep track of the individual delegates, and to understand who and how to influence them and to get their votes will be something really unprecedented.” But imagine how difficult a case it would be to make if Trump goes in with the clear plurality of votes and delegates. Ginsberg said to watch March 15 and how that plays out. It could go a ”long way” in determining if there’s a contested convention, he said. ”There is a way with an unusually crowded field and a    number of candidates collecting delegates that this goes to a contested convention,” Ginsberg said. ”But you would not call it a probability at this point by any means.”"
"Conservative donors and consultants are racing to fix what might be the worst strategic error so far in the presidential campaign  —   the nearly total failure of other candidates and their allies to attack frontrunner Donald Trump. Opposing superPACs spent just $1. 3 million attacking Trump in the seven months from June 2015, when he announced, to December, when he led the polls. In July, there was no   spending at all. Only when the Iowa caucuses loomed did the spending accelerate, to $4. 4 million in January and $9. 4 million in February. Eventually, the attacks concentrated on Trump. The nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute analyzed independent expenditures by superPACs and other outside groups, and reported that in the final week of February Trump was the target in 92 percent of all attack ads. Despite it all, Trump claimed 11 victories in the first 15 primary and caucus states. Now,   Republicans hope to deliver a critical mass of effective attacks before the next round of primaries in Michigan, Florida, Illinois and North Carolina: Our Principles PAC, headed by Republican consultant Katie Packer, this week has a new ad slamming Trump University, a pricey,   program that was aimed at   real estate investors. Trump U’s record came under fire last week in ads from American Future Fund, a 501( c)(4)   group based in Iowa. In an ad that is starting to run today, Club For Growth Action argues that Trump’s   image doesn’t square with his record as a businessman. The ad is running in Florida, at a cost of $1. 5 million. At Our Principles PAC, Packer likes to say, ”Frontrunners don’t fall. People kick them.” The superPAC has spent $4. 4 million, and Packer said Trump’s margins appear to be slipping. ”We’re on the right track,” she said. ”There just hasn’t been enough of it.” She compared the effort to Mitt Romney’s organization in 2012, where she was deputy campaign manager. The campaign and a   superPAC spent $10 million in 10 days before the Florida primary, all of it targeting candidate Newt Gingrich and driving him out of the race. Our Principles PAC was founded in January, financed mainly by $3 million from Marlene Ricketts, a Republican activist whose husband is investor Joe Ricketts. The Ricketts family owns the Chicago Cubs. Some of the GOP’s biggest donors are mobilizing to finance more ads. But Packer said the presidential superPACs have already tapped donors. She singled out Right To Rise USA, which raised $118 million to help Jeb Bush. ”Right To Rise scooped up so much money early,” she said, and when the superPAC’s spending couldn’t save Bush’s candidacy, ”people were disillusioned with it.” The first group to attack Trump was Club For Growth Action, the superPAC arm of the advocacy group for   economic policies and smaller government, in 2011. CFG considers Trump much too fond of government assistance, from the Wall Street bailout to   health insurance and eminent domain  —   the power to condemn property for development. CFG spokesman Doug Sachtleben said the Club challenged Trump in 2011, when he started talking about a White House run. When he declared his candidacy last June, Sachtleben said, CFG said ”he was not to be taken seriously, he was more of an entertainer.” Club For Growth Action spent $1 million advertising in Iowa, $1. 5 million in South Carolina, and $1 million in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Sachtleben said the ads helped to drive Trump’s poll numbers below Ted Cruz’s in Iowa and Oklahoma, and helped to narrow his winning margins in South Carolina and Arkansas. But Trump, unlike every other viable presidential candidate in the television era, doesn’t depend on TV ads. The Wesleyan Media Project found that by   his overall TV spending totaled only about $6. 6 million. The campaign depends mainly on big rallies and free coverage by cable news networks.   attack advertising could change that. Elizabeth Wilner, of Kantar   a media tracking firm, said that if the attacks start sticking, Trump may have to buy airtime for ads that rebuild his image."
"Republican   Donald Trump released a   plan to change the country’s health care system that includes several familiar GOP proposals and one that puts him in agreement with, believe it or not, Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders. Right off the bat, Trump calls for the elimination of the Affordable Care Act, ringing the repeal bell that has been popular among a wide swath of Republicans and that has fueled dozens of votes to overturn Obamacare in Congress, including another failed attempt when lawmakers reconvened first thing in January. The prime target is the individual mandate, the requirement that almost every American have or buy health insurance  —   or pay a penalty. ”No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to,” the Trump proposal declares. Obamacare relies on the mandate to make sure it isn’t just the sick and people at high risk of getting sick who buy coverage, driving up insurance costs. While Trump decries the mandate, the idea has Republican roots. The mandate was seen as a   alternative to a national health system or a strict requirement on employers to provide coverage. Still, the mandate and its associated tax penalties for people who don’t comply have become a lightning rod for people dissatisfied with the ACA. In 2014, the first year that the fine for lack of coverage was in place, about 7. 5 million Americans paid an average penalty of $200 for not having insurance according to the IRS. In 2015, the potential penalties rose to the greater of 2 percent of annual income or $325 per adult. And this year they rise again to the greater of 2. 5 percent of income or $695 per adult. In a second plank, Trump calls for the sale of health insurance plans across state lines to bolster competition by increasing the number of policies being sold. Health insurance is regulated largely at the state level. And critics of the multistate approach, a favorite of the GOP for years, say it would erode consumer protections. Trump hedges his call for multistate plans by saying they would have to comply with regulations in each state where they are offered. It’s hard to see how, if states continue to regulate insurance differently, the theoretical benefits he touts could be achieved in practice. In fact, over the years six states, including Georgia, enacted laws to encourage insurance sales across their borders, and a Georgetown University analysis found that they failed to attract new plans into their markets. Some Trump proposals would change the tax treatment of health coverage. One would let individuals who buy insurance deduct its cost, as employers do for coverage they make available to workers. Many health economists argue that the opposite tack  —   eliminating the employer deduction  —   would be more beneficial. The employer tax break obscures the cost of health coverage and thereby contributes to health cost inflation. The benefits from the break also tend to accrue to more highly paid people. Under Obamacare, people with    incomes can get a tax credit to help defray the cost of insurance purchased on marketplaces. The second proposal argues in favor of letting individuals take advantage of Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs. But that’s something that is already possible, and the accounts are quite popular. Right now, those accounts are tied to   health plans. ”Is Trump calling for every American to have access to an HSA, not just those in   health plans (HDHPs)?” asks a post on Forbes. com by Ryan Ellis, an adviser on tax policy for the Conservative Reform Network. ”That would seem to be undermined by his statement about how young people should want to enroll in   plans —  why mention them at all?” Then there’s the     plank that would require providers of health care to disclose prices. ”Individuals should be able to shop to find the best prices for procedures, exams or any other   procedure,” the Trump proposal says. Not many people disagree with the intent. But it’s difficult to pull off in a way that helps the average person shop. Health care prices are negotiated between insurers and providers, and people’s coverage and copays vary depending on their networks and insurance particulars. Trump also argues for a change in financing Medicaid, the joint federal and state health insurance program for the poor and disabled. His plan calls for block grants, or   payments, to the states that they could spend as they wish. The idea has been popular with Republicans going back to President Reagan, has been revived more recently by GOP governors as a way to cut costs and has been part of Republican proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare. Critics say block grants would reduce the number of people covered by Medicaid and by shifting responsibilities to the states would ultimately saddle them with greater financial burdens. Finally, Trump throws his support behind the importation of drugs to cut costs. ”Allowing consumers access to imported, safe and dependable drugs from overseas will bring more options to consumers,” the proposal says. This is the one where Trump and Sanders have common ground. Sanders supports the importation of drugs from Canada and his website boasts about a 1999 bus trip that took a group of Americans up north to get better deals. The Food and Drug Administration, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has opposed drug importation on safety grounds. And drugmakers restricted supplies of medicines going to drug distributors in Canada to combat a rise in online pharmacy sales to Americans more than a decade ago."
"Flint, Mich. isn’t the only American city with a lead problem. Though the health crisis in Flint has highlighted the use of lead in water pipes, author David Rosner tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that lead, which is a neurotoxin, can be found throughout the U. S. on walls, in soil and in the air. ”The problem with lead is that it’s now really everywhere, and we’ve created a terribly toxic environment in all sorts of ways,” he says. Lead is particularly dangerous to young children. In their book, Lead Wars, Rosner and   Gerald Markowitz describe the ways in which even small exposures can interfere with a child’s brain development and cause lasting learning challenges. ”It causes IQ loss. It causes behavioral problems. It causes attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, dyslexia,” Markowitz says. Rosner adds that even a small amount of lead can have a lasting effect on a child’s health. ”As early as the 1910s and 1920s, [doctors] were documenting children who had absorbed lead on their fingers as dust and had put their hands in their mouth and actually began going into convulsions,” he says. ”It’s not like you need a lot of it.” On the pervasive use of lead in the first half of the 20th century  Gerald Markowitz: The average can of paint in the 1900s to around 1950 contained up to 50 percent of lead carbonate, which is lead. So it’s a lot of lead, and it takes just a couple of grams of lead to send a kid into serious damage. So, what we did essentially for 50 years is cover our entire nation. During the period when the economy was moving from an agricultural society to an industrial society to an urban society, we built most of the structures that surround us even today . .. in inner cities and poorer communities, and those were all being painted at one point or another, during that   period, with lead. Our cities expanded dramatically, and with it went the covering of this society with lead paint. On the use of lead in pipes, Markowitz: In Washington, D. C. just a few years ago there was a tremendous scandal about lead in the drinking water and lead even in the public schools. And one of the unfortunate things is that we do not have a testing program for lead in public schools in the water, so we don’t really know how many children are being exposed to lead in the water in their schools. . .. David Rosner: Not all cities are using lead pipes. Some water systems actually use copper and iron and cement as their piping source. So it’s often a problem in cities that were built between the early 1900s, late 1800s and the early 1940s, and in cities where cheaper housing sometimes exists, because lead is relatively cheap, and in which unions did not have any power to make sure that lead was not used in their pipes. In the early part of the century, for example, in New York City, we don’t have as big a problem with lead in pipes, because many of the unions demanded that we use copper and essentially we, by happenstance, don’t have that kind of problem. On how people figured out that lead was toxic, Rosner: During the 1920s, researchers in the United States and in England and elsewhere began to really identify lead poisoning in children and they identified the toys and cribs and the woodwork as a source of lead, and they said, ”We have a problem here, and the problem is that the child . .. lives in a lead world. Everything around them by this point is covered with lead  —   their toys, their cribs, their playthings, their woodwork, the walls  —   everything has some lead in it.” And these kids who crawl on the floor are getting this dust on their hands, putting their hands in their mouth, and absorbing lead, and lead, we know, accumulates in the body and . .. that’s the problem. So by the 1920s the medical and public health community had essentially identified this major problem. The industry itself began a marketing campaign and the marketing campaign essentially tried to assuage the worries of the larger community about the dangers of lead. They started saying, ”Lead in our pipes and lead on our walls and lead in our paint is not a health problem.” On looking back at patterns of health problems that doctors now think could have been caused by lead poisoning, Rosner: We can all remember in the early ’70s and ’80s when we were concerned about issues like hyperactivity in schools, attention deficit disorder, behavioral problems. Some researchers now  —   and it’s hard to figure out if this is accurate  —   argue that the crime epidemic was partly due to lead exposures, because of the inability of kids to restrain behaviors. . .. So there are all these arguments. Any individual issue is hard to say is due to lead, but . .. when we compare groups of children who have lead in their blood and lead in their bones and lead in their teeth, historically those kids have bigger problems than kids who don’t. And that’s what we really know. And they have problems in school. They have problems learning. They don’t do as well on tests. They have inability to follow lines. So what we know as a collection of children, there’s a problem. On the Lead Industries Association’s racist PR campaign in the 1950s, Rosner: One of the interesting things and terrifying things and horrifying things about this whole story is the use of race as a means of, in some sense, ignoring what was known for close to a century. In the 1950s we found these documents and these letters between people in the Lead Industries Association and even the federal government that basically say that the problem of lead poisoning will exist until we can get rid of all our old housing, and that will never happen. The second point that they make is that it’s only  —   this is their quote so please understand that  —   it’s only a problem among ”negro and Puerto Rican families,” and that it’s probably due to the ”ignorance of those families” that there is a problem with lead poisoning. Markowitz: That they were not educated enough to keep lead away from their children. On the documents they found that show the lead industry was knowingly misleading the public  Markowitz: The lead industry went around the country saying to doctors, ”You haven’t proved completely that lead is the cause of children going into convulsions and children dying. . .. You need to do much more sophisticated studies. You need  . You need a variety of other techniques.” And meanwhile, the medical community was saying the number of cases we have is a vast underestimate of the number of children, because the lead poisoning symptoms mimicked the results of high fevers and other kinds of conditions. But the lead industry was saying the opposite. They were saying, ”Lead poisoning was overstated and that doctors were misdiagnosing children.” Rosner: This is despite the fact that they were collecting articles from all over the country that indicated that there were reports of children being poisoned by lead. . .. And they were collecting that and talking about that in their meetings, that they had 500 articles from around the country, I think, it was 1932."
"Fulfilling the   vision of her   Emily, Esperanza Spalding played the music of her forthcoming album Emily’s D+Evolution in concert at BRIC House in Brooklyn, N. Y. on Thursday, March 3. WFUV and NPR Music presented a live video webstream of the performance as part of the First Listen Live series. Emily’s D+Evolution marks a new sound for Spalding. Here, she picks up the electric bass (and occasionally the piano) and surrounds herself with a power trio of electric guitar and drums  —   a louder, proggier, weirder   direction for the   bassist and vocalist. It’s part of a broad theatrical vision for the character Emily, inspired by broad philosophical musings on resourcefulness and the nature of progress. On stage, she was surrounded by choreographed routines, a marionette closet and three backup singers dressed all in yellow. ”Whether you want to see it as devolution and evolution, and the place where they   without one diminishing the other, or you could look at it like barely having the tools that you need, but having to move forward, and having to keep moving,” Spalding told NPR. ”What do you do when you don’t really have all the tools that you need, but you have to survive? And you need to grow and expand?” Esperanza Spalding,    Matthew Stevens, guitar Justin Tyson, drums Corey King, backing   Shawna Corso, backing vocals Emily Elbert, backing   Will Weigler,  . Director: Mito   Producers: Saidah Blount, Patrick Jarenwattananon, Sarah   Rita   Stage Director: Will Weigler Videographers: Kara Frame, Nickolai Hammar, Cameron Robert, A. J. Wilhelm Audio Engineer: Jim O’    Editor: Nickolai Hammar Event Production Assistant: Erin Conlon Special Thanks: BRIC House Ballroom Executive Director: Anya Grundmann."
"A team of refugees will compete alongside athletes representing their home countries at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the International Olympic Committee has announced. Previously, athletes who did not represent a country were not allowed to compete. The team will likely number between five and 10 athletes, the committee said in a statement, and ”will be treated at the Olympic Games like all the other teams.” ”By welcoming the team of Refugee Olympic Athletes to the Olympic Games Rio 2016, we want to send a message of hope for all refugees in our world,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement. Here’s more from Bach: ”Having no national team to belong to, having no flag to march behind, having no national anthem to be played, these refugee athletes will be welcomed to the Olympic Games with the Olympic flag and with the Olympic Anthem. They will have a home together with all the other 11, 000 athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees in the Olympic village.” The IOC said it has identified 43 contenders for the places on the team and the final group will be announced in June. Along with athletic prowess, potential team members will be assessed by ”official refugee status verified by the United Nations, and personal situation and background.” There are some 20. 2 million refugees globally, according to U. N. figures. That includes 5. 1 million registered refugees in camps in the Middle East, and an additional 15. 1 million ”refugees of concern.” According to The Guardian, the IOC identified three possible   contenders in December: ”They were a Syrian swimmer based in Germany, a judoka from the Democratic Republic of Congo who was living in Brazil and an Iranian taekwondo fighter training in Belgium.” The chosen athletes will march in the opening ceremony under the Olympic flag, just in front of home team Brazil. Uniforms and coaches will be provided by the IOC. Prior to Thursday’s announcement, CNN highlighted a group of elite refugee athletes. ”I ask God to bring peace back to my country,” Congolese karate champion Martial Nantoura told the network. ”But I am still on the national team. If someone tells me to go to the mat, I will go.”"
"Nearly   of households on SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, still have to visit a food pantry to keep themselves fed, according to data highlighted this week by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. In 2014, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program supported 23 million American households. The same year, 32 percent of all households who received SNAP in the previous 30 days reported they had visited a food pantry, the USDA says. And 23 percent of households using the Women, Infants and Children program visited a pantry that year, as had 23 percent of households receiving free or   school lunch. ”Generally, we believe that people aren’t going to go to pantries if they don’t need the food,” says Alisha   an economist at the USDA’s Economic Research Service and a specialist in food insecurity. ”I think you can read into [the new data] that SNAP benefits aren’t going far enough to cover all of their food expenses.” That lines up with other research suggesting that SNAP benefits rarely sustain families throughout an entire month. A 2013 qualitative study of 3, 300 SNAP households by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service found that ”SNAP households experience . .. financial strain that is eased but not alleviated by participation in the SNAP program.” Indeed, that study found that many SNAP clients  —   about 45 percent  —   limited food consumption, usually by skipping meals, to make it through the month. Other research has shown that hospital admissions for hypoglycemia  —  low blood sugar, a condition that can be treated with a healthful diet  —   spike by 27 percent for   households during that last week of the month, while   households show no similar trend. A forthcoming study from University of Pennsylvania researchers bears out this shortfall in cold dollars and cents. Spending among 700 SNAP customers in Chester, Pa. dropped by 72 percent between the first week of the month and the last, says Eliza Whiteman, one of the study’s authors. And while Whiteman cautions that the study sample was small, making extrapolation dicey, she wonders whether making SNAP distribution more frequent  —   biweekly or weekly, for example, rather than monthly  —   might ”smooth out” the gaps in people’s diets. Still, the core finding seemed to echo what   at USDA found. ”It definitely points at the potential that SNAP benefits aren’t sufficient,” says Whiteman. Tracie McMillan is the author of The American Way of Eating, a New York Times   and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. You can follow her on Twitter @tmmcmillan."
"Allegations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby as well as intensified focus on campus rape have left many prosecutors struggling to figure out new ways to right old wrongs. Now, a growing number of states are changing their statutes of limitations to allow sexual assault cases to be prosecuted years and even decades after the fact. ”We have to keep the door open for justice for survivors,” says Rebecca O’Connor from the Rape, Abuse And Incest National Network. State statutes of limitations currently range from 3 to 30 years. O’Connor says a new understanding about how rape victims often need time to recover from their trauma is bolstering efforts to loosen their time limits. ”It has been nonstop, the public outrage and awareness about access to justice. That’s really been mushrooming,” she says. Several states, including Florida and Nevada, have lengthened their time limits. More than a   more, are actively considering it, and many states have no limit at all for cases where there’s DNA evidence or for the most serious rapes. Virginia is one of those with an   policy. It’s what allowed one woman just this week to go to the police and report a rape that she says happened at a small college on her 19th birthday 19 years ago. ”I was staying overnight in someone’s dorm room and was starting to fall asleep and a stranger walked in that I never had met before and in my mind he knew what he was going in there to do and he made it happen,” she says. The woman, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, says she told school security and a school nurse what happened but she was so traumatized and in such deep denial for years that she didn’t even consider telling police she was raped. ”I didn’t even recognize it as that. I minimized it in my mind and I just kinda blew it off that it was a bad night because I just wanted to believe that it didn’t happen,” she says. Now she says going to police is not only important to her own healing but also, as her lawyer and founder of the advocacy group SurvJustice Laura Dunn says, it’s a matter of public safety. ”Every single state has an interest in making sure that individuals who are predatory are taken off the street and if that means someone speaking out later, that’s something we should be supporting,” Dunn says. But how much later is the subject of fierce debate. Gerry Morris of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys says its wrong to totally eliminate time limits, or to make them, as he puts it, ”ridiculously long.” ”How would I mount a defense to an accusation of something that occurred two decades ago or is that person just basically a sitting duck at this point?” he asks. Morris says time limits were enacted for a reason: memories fade, evidence gets lost and witnesses are hard to find. But Cardoza Law School professor Marci Hamilton says defendents have ample protections at trial, and the prosecutors have the bigger challenge  —   to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Concerns about wrongful convictions are unfounded, she says. ”Prosecutors winnow out the cases where they think they can’t win, and so there’s a natural fault in the system where weak cases simply are not picked up for prosecution,” she says. A bill approved by lawmakers this week in Oregon aims for a middle ground by differentiating between weak and stronger cases. All cases have a   window for prosecution. But the limit is lifted in cases where there is hard evidence, for example, or multiple accusers. The sponsor, State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, says he was pilloried by some advocates for not supporting longer windows for all cases. But as a guy who was traumatized himself by the murder of his sister in high school, Prozanski knows how emotion can lead to bad decisions. ”I literally was wanting to grab one of my hunting guns and go hunt the guy down. But the reality is when we’re in these situations, we have to take away these emotions and we can’t just basically say we’re going to just remove any safeguards that we currently have,” Prozanski says. Experts say the next step might be to open doors wider for civil cases, so even when an alleged victim misses the deadline for prosecution, an alleged perpetrator would still not be totally off the hook."
"By now, you might have heard that NPR Music has chosen a winner for the 2016 Tiny Desk Contest. The haunting violin strains and melody of Gaelynn Lea’s song ”Someday We’ll Linger In The Sun” stood out as our judges viewed the roughly 6, 100 video submissions. Lea is used to performing music in her hometown of Duluth, Minn. but next week, she’ll play at Bob Boilen’s desk here at NPR. She recently joined NPR’s Audie Cornish to discuss her unique style of playing and the inspiration behind the song she submitted to the contest. Hear the radio version at the audio link and read an extended version of their conversation below. Audie Cornish: So, Gaelynn Lea, first of all: Congratulations. Gaelynn Lea: Thank you so much! Tell us a little bit about this song and how it came about. Well, this particular song came to me when I was in the shower. That’s great! I love that. So I’m not the only one. No, a lot of things come to me in the shower! I had the first line, and it kind of festered in my brain for about a month, and then finally I wrote it. And I wrote it about love, but not a love that’s necessarily easy. I believe that love is a struggle, but a positive one. And so that’s what I tried to convey in the song. Listening to your other music, there’s a lot of layering and looping, which has become very popular. But I understand when you first started using looping techniques, you weren’t a huge fan. Yeah, that’s true. When I got a looping pedal from my friend Alan Sparhawk [of the band Low] he said, ”You know, I think you should figure out how to use this, and you can play your own shows someday.” And I thought that was ridiculous, because I’ve always been in bands. I’ve never thought of myself as a solo artist until the last two years. And so I started working with the pedal, but the timing has to be really precise. If you don’t time it out right, the whole song is ruined. And so it just took a couple of years to really get comfortable with it  —   where I know what is going to happen when I press the button every time. So you’re the winner of this Tiny Desk Contest. And the video you submitted is very interesting, because when it opens we don’t actually see you at first  —   the camera is not trained directly on you. What’s going on, and what were some of the decisions there? Well, my friend Leah [Nelson] and I shot the video together in my office  —   before we went downstairs for   wine in the building I work at. And I told her, ”I really want to enter this contest. A bunch of people have told me about it, but I don’t have a videographer. Will you just come up and help me tape it?” And she actually thought of doing that angle, but the second she said it, I was like ”Wow, that’s perfect.” Because when you have a disability, especially one like mine where it’s pretty visible  —   I didn’t want that to necessarily be the first impression. Not because I’m ashamed of it, in any way, but just because I wanted it to be about the music. And we should explain to people this is a congenital disease, commonly known as ”brittle bones disease,” correct? Yep, it is. And so my arms and legs are bent, and they’re pretty short. And I play my violin like a cello  —   I don’t even play it the way that most people do, up on their shoulder. So it’s pretty  . And so I just didn’t want that to be the first thing that people thought about. Because I know it’s a music contest, and I really wanted to be competitive that way. That was the one thing I had control over. Could you tell me about the title of the song? ”Someday We’ll Linger In The Sun” is about, to me, how love might be a struggle now, but that it’s worth hanging on, because someday we’ll be able to be together and happy and calm. Maybe not in this lifetime, but I believe that someday, people who really love each other will get to experience it on a bigger level. Now, I understand that you also play in public a lot in northern Minnesota, right? Farmers markets, pizza restaurants, the boardwalk near Lake Superior  —   and now you’re going to play at Bob Boilen’s desk. What is it that you like about performing your music before people like this, in all kinds of venues? Well, I have always loved performing in one way or another. Before I could even read, I was in my first play. They had to record my lines on a cassette tape and I learned them by hearing them. And so performing is something that’s in my blood it’s actually something that both of my parents do. They’re into theater. [Performing] just gives you an energy and a connection with other people that I just haven’t ever found anywhere else. It’s like a direct connection with, I don’t know, my spiritual self. So I love performing, but the thing that I try to remember  —   because I believe it’s true  —   is that any kind of performance is really valuable, because every person is valuable. So I like playing at that pizza shop  —   I play there every other week. I’ve done that for like a year and a half. And I like playing on the boardwalk, because you get to play for little kids, and they always want you to play, like, ”  Spider,” but they’re excited about it and that’s what matters. I just think music in general is something that can really connect people, and it’s just an honor and joy to be able to tap into that. You know, thinking about how you play your instrument actually makes me curious about how you came to play this instrument. What’s the story behind how you started playing? When I was in fifth grade, we had the offer to skip class to take a music listening test, but I was actually the only person in the fifth grade that got a perfect score. And the orchestra teacher took note and took it upon herself to help me figure out how to play, because she knew that I could probably do a good job if we figured it out. So she was really awesome and encouraged me to experiment. We tried a cello at first, and it was too big. We tried a regular violin, and even a   violin, but all of those were too big to be on my shoulder. So that’s kind of how we combined the two ideas. Do you want to say her name? I can’t help but want to shout out a music teacher, given the opportunity. Her name was Susan Sommerfeld. I’ve had a lot of great music teachers, but without her, this obviously would never have happened. That’s one thing I try to tell people in the speeches that I do  —   because I do some public speaking  —   is that if you have if a friend or loved one [who] has an idea that they really want to do, just don’t discourage them. Because I’m a very unlikely candidate, in many ways, to be doing music as a career. . .. But she wasn’t thinking of it like that, and she just said, ”Well, this is what she wants, and we’re going to figure it out.” So that’s so big. Because she easily could have said, ”You know, maybe you should do choir, instead, because this is going to be too hard,” or ”I don’t see how this is going to work.” So I was so lucky. I mean, really lucky for that. You were announced as the contest winner this morning on Morning Edition. What’s the day been like? It’s just been really humbling and exciting to get all the positive feedback from my family and friends and people I haven’t met, and emails from reporters  —   it’s really weird, but it’s cool! I’ve always loved playing, and I was happy with where I am in my career in Duluth  —   nothing was wrong  —   and this is just the icing on the cake. I mean, really thick icing on the cake. Well, you’re not only performing here at NPR, at the Tiny Desk, but you’ll be heading out on a   tour with NPR Music, which sounds    —   a whole new level of audience. Yeah, and you know, what is so fun about this is, I have been talking a lot about trying to set up a tour on my own. Because as an artist with a disability, one thing I want to do is travel. I want to make sure people see it, and know that it’s possible for a musician [with a disability] to have a   music career."
"There were 6, 100 entries in this year’s Tiny Desk Contest, representing every state in the nation. We asked you to send us a video of an original song, behind a desk of your choosing. We didn’t care much about the quality of the video or even the sound. We wanted something singular, a song and a sound that felt original and a performance that felt inspired. We at NPR Music watched all of those 6, 100 entries and in the end our six judges  —   Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and The Arcs, Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe of Lucius, Son Little, Robin Hilton and I  —   found one artist so compelling we’re thrilled about this announcement. Our winner is a haunting fiddler from Duluth, Minn. Her name is Gaelynn Lea. Holly Laessig said it best: ”Hers was the one melody that stayed with me throughout the process. It’s captivating and powerful.” Robin Hilton, my cohost on All Songs Considered, said, ”Gaelynn Lea had the most arresting voice and overall sound I heard in this competition. While judging each entry, I’d listen to the song first, then watch the video if I was moved by the music to spend more time with it. I was profoundly moved by Lea’s song, particularly its serpentine, earworm melody and the tremendous heartache in her poetry.” Gaelynn is a    classically trained fiddler whose music is steeped in Celtic tradition and American fiddle tunes. Her fiddle style is shaped by those traditions but also the challenge she has, playing an instrument that is almost as large as she is. Gaelynn was born with brittle bone disease, a congenital disability that makes playing the violin tucked tightly under the chin not a comfortable option. Instead she plays it upright, as a cellist might. In the original tune she submitted, ”Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun,” Gaelynn creates a beautiful droning loop with her JamMan Express loop pedal and after a moody minute begins to sing a yearning tale of life’s preciousness and time’s constant ticking and why we should always care. ”Don’t tell me we’ve got time   the subtle thief of life   it slips away when we pay no mind,” she sings in a somewhat childlike and haunting voice. She ends with the phrase, ”Someday we’ll linger in the sun   And I love you.” That’s such a universal message  —   simple, thoughtful and relatable. Truth be told I saw musicians with better craft than Gaelynn, heard singers more capable. That was true of last year’s winner as well. Skill and craft is a part of how we select a winner. What Gaelynn Lea did for all of our judges, myself included, was to make something memorable. As Jess Wolfe put it, Gaelynn Lea created something ”so   and like nothing we’ve ever heard before.” After I voted, I spent some time trying to find out more about Gaelynn Lea. I learned about her congenital disease I learned that she was a fiddle teacher and that she plays many of the same fiddle tunes my son and I have played together in Irish music camps and for contra dances. I also learned something I hadn’t expected: One day while playing at a farmers market in Duluth, Alan Sparhawk, the guitarist and singer of the band Low (also from Duluth) heard Gaelynn Lea playing. Shortly after he texted her, asking if she’d like to play together. It was the beginning of a musical friendship. That friendship is a casual one they call The Murder of Crows. I discovered that they’d made a record together back in 2012 called Imperfecta. Working with Alan helped Gaelynn envision and shape her sound. Fans of Low might be able to hear that band in the way her music unfolds, slow and mysterious, every moment existing for each moment to come. I love this. I love the way musicians change and shape each other and open ideas that might not arrive naturally but become part of a vocabulary of expression. My hope with the Tiny Desk Contest and concert series has always been about discovery, about finding music outside our comfort zone. One day there might be Adele, the next day a Colombian jazz harpist or a punk band from Detroit. We want you to hear something new and inspiring, something which moves you in some way, makes you think of something  —   in this case, the preciousness of time  —   in a way that may cause you to be more appreciative, more thoughtful, more expressive, be it musically or personally. Gaelynn Lea’s music felt like a perfect gift."
"The legal dispute over whether Apple should be forced to help the FBI hack into the iPhone used by one of the terrorists in San Bernardino is making headlines in the U. S. But it’s just one skirmish in a broader global conflict: American tech companies are feeling similar pressure from law enforcement agencies around the world, and they say the lack of international legal standards is creating a crisis. Just this week, a similar dispute in Brazil resulted in the brief arrest of one of Facebook’s Latin America executives. Facebook owns the messaging service WhatsApp, which encrypts its messages, something that often frustrates Brazilian law enforcement. In this case, a judge in the state of Sergipe wanted WhatsApp data linked to drug trafficking suspects. WhatsApp says the court is demanding information it simply doesn’t possess. But even if it did have the data, it may have not been able to share. Frederico Meinberg Ceroy, a prosecutor in Brasilia who specializes in computer privacy, says some U. S. tech companies say they’re not allowed to comply with requests from Brazilian courts. ”They argue that because they’re American companies, they’re not supposed to comply with court orders here,” Ceroy says. ”But we have a new statute that says any company serving Brazilian consumers is subject to Brazilian law  —   even if that company is based in Dubai or New York or San Francisco.” American companies often can’t comply with foreign laws because the data in question is often stored on servers in the U. S.  —   and federal law says they can’t just turn that kind of data over to foreign courts. Foreign authorities are supposed to go through diplomatic channels  —   through something called a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, or ”MLAT.” But Brazilian prosecutor Ceroy says forget it. ”With the bureaucracy of the MLAT these days, there’s no point pursuing an investigation, because it’ll take two or three years just to get back the information you’ve requested,” he says. That kind of frustration is causing more countries  —   not just Brazil  —   to skip the diplomatic route. In fact, American judges do it, too. A couple of years ago, a court in New York ordered Microsoft to turn over a user’s emails that were stored on a server in Ireland. That came as the result of a search warrant issued in a   investigation. Microsoft refused, saying American courts don’t have jurisdiction over data held overseas. That case is still on appeal, and at a congressional hearing last week, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the broader trend is becoming a serious problem. ”We appreciate that law enforcement needs information sometimes located in other countries to do its job. But this approach to using unilateral process is causing concern around the world,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. ”It is causing concern in other countries about people’s privacy rights. It is causing concern about whether other countries can even trust and use American products and technology.” For the last couple of decades, the mantra of American tech companies has been that they comply with ”all lawful orders” in the countries where they operate. But the rise of cloud computing is making that policy unworkable. U. S. tech companies ”do comply with lawful orders, but there’s a huge question about whose orders do you comply with, at the moment,” says Jen Daskal, an assistant professor of law at American University who has been following this problem closely. ”In an ideal world, we would have some sort of universal agreement, and all the countries in the world would come together, and there would be a baseline set of procedural protections that apply to all requests, and there would be total agreement about what the jurisdictional hook is for when countries can get access to data,” Daskal says. ”That’s just not going to happen.” Some American tech companies have responded to the situation by ”mirroring” data on servers in countries where judges are demanding more cooperation. By keeping the data on that country’s territory, they hope to comply with foreign court orders without violating U. S. law. But Daskal says this approach has drawbacks. It’s less efficient, from a technical standpoint, and it may lead to a balkanization of data that eventually erodes privacy for people living in those countries. She says the better solution may be for the U. S. to strike deals with specific countries, allowing their courts more direct access to their citizens’ data stored on U. S. servers, and vice versa the Obama administration is negotiating just such a deal with the United Kingdom. If this approach catches on, the end result could be a system in which your privacy rights are no longer determined by where your data is stored  —   but instead by which country you call home. And that makes sense to Microsoft’s Brad Smith. ”The most important thing is that people have the protection of their own rights by their own law,” he said. That would certainly make life simpler for American tech companies  —   though it could eventually mean lower privacy protections for foreigners who have data sitting on American servers."
"Elvis Summers is not part of any nonprofit or government agency. He’s just a    guy with a Mohawk and tattooed arms who started a GoFundMe campaign last spring so he could build tiny houses for homeless people to live in. He got the idea after befriending a homeless woman in his neighborhood. ”It just got to me, you know, I’m just like, you know, everybody in this neighborhood knows you, they like you,” he says. ”Why does nobody give a crap that you’re sleeping in the dirt? Literally.” So far Summer has given out 37 tiny   by   houses, which cost $1, 200 each to build. They resemble sheds, painted in bright, solid colors, with solar panels on the roof, wheels to make them mobile and a portable camping toilet. But recently, city sanitation workers confiscated three of the houses from a sidewalk in South Los Angeles and tagged others for removal. ”Unfortunately, these structures are a safety hazard,” says Connie Llanos, a spokeswoman for LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. ”These structures, some of the materials that were found in some of them, just the thought of folks having some of these things in a space so small, so confined, without the proper insulation, it really does put their lives in danger.” Llanos says they’d be better off taking advantage of official resources like shelters or housing vouchers. According to the latest count, 44, 000 people live on the streets in and around LA. The city’s sweep put some people back on the sidewalks and since then Summers has been handing out tents instead. Willie Hadnot lost his tiny house when the city confiscated it. ”About my house, you know, you know I had a peace of mind,” he says. ”I could shut the door, go lay down, quiet. And that’s what I miss a whole lot, man. I don’t want to start crying.” Someone who understands that pain is Kevin Green, whose tiny house was tagged for removal. Before the city could take it, Summers moved it to the parking lot where it now stands, temporarily. ”When you’re homeless, your day is consumed with, you know, that you don’t have a place to store your things so you’re walking around carrying all this stuff with you, you know, what can you get accomplished?” asks Green, who lived on the streets of South LA for six months before he got this house around Christmas. His bed takes up most of his tiny blue house. Green’s proud to have a roof over his head as he opens the door and steps inside. ”I have two windows, one on each side with blue curtains, thin enough to allow the breeze to come through,” he says. ”You know, I keep my keys around a keychain that I hang around my neck. ”But you know, it’s a constant reminder with it around my neck that I have something that I can call mine.”"
"First, it’s not really black. It’s not even a color or a pigment. ”Vantablack” is a ”material,” according to Surrey NanoSystems, the British company that created it. But this growling, rebellious material is causing quite a fuss now that renowned sculptor Anish Kapoor  —   who designed Chicago’s Cloud Gate and the Orbit tower for the 2012 London Olympics  —   has bought the exclusive rights to use it in art. If you want the official explanation of what Vantablack is, check out the company’s FAQ. We prefer Hyperallergic’s description of ”the blackest black out there.” Writer Claire Voon calls Vantablack ”much blacker than a panther swimming in a tarpit, the Ayam Cemami, or your wardrobe during your middle school goth phase.” Surrey NanoSystems says Vantablack also has   properties that make it useful for things like   infrared cameras and scientific equipment. The criticism against Kapoor’s ownership has been harsh. ”Immoral,” tweeted Carolyn Black, founder of Flow Contemporary Arts. Artist Christian Furr explained his outrage to The Daily Mail: ”All the best artists have had a thing for pure black  —   Turner, Manet, Goya. This black is like dynamite in the art world. We should be able to use it. It isn’t right that it belongs to one man.” Unfortunately for Furr and other artists, Surrey NanoSystems invented the process to create Vantablack and can sell the results of that process to whomever it wants. The company’s website states that Kapoor’s ”exclusive licence limits the coating’s use in the field of art, but does not extend to any other sectors.” Cardozo law professor Christopher J. Buccafusco, who specializes in art law, copyright and intellectual property, understands the anger. ”It’s a weird situation. People intuitively feel that it’s anticompetitive and immoral, but this sort of thing is intellectual property. When people invent stuff that’s new they get to have exclusive control over it. Often we think that’s a good thing.” Buccafusco also recommends putting this in perspective. ”It sounds worse than it really is. This is not like someone owning B flat.” A spokesperson for Surrey NanoSystems says the company doesn’t want to engage in disputes between artists and that it’s trying to correct misunderstandings about Vantablack. For starters, it’s not a paint or a pigment as some media outlets have reported. The company also questions whether it’s   to art. Vantablack, according to the company’s website, ”requires specialist application to achieve its aesthetic effect. In addition, the coating’s performance beyond the visible spectrum results in it being classified as a   material that is subject to UK Export Control. We have therefore chosen to license Vantablack   exclusively to Kapoor Studios UK to explore its use in works of art.” Back to the poetry of this   named Vantablack. As Kapoor told the BBC, ”Imagine a space that’s so dark that as you walk in you lose all sense of where you are, what you are, and especially all sense of time.”"
"In 1933, an effervescent comedy called Design for Living gave us two men and a woman living cozily together as roommates, no sex. But when that boundary starts to break down, the woman, played by Miriam Hopkins, points out an inequity: ”A man can meet two, three or even four women and fall in love with all of them and then by a process of interesting elimination, he’s able to decide which one he prefers. But a woman must decide purely on instinct  —   guess work  —   if she wants to be considered nice.” Sister Rose Pacatte, a nun and respected film critic, says that line would certainly have irritated the Catholic Legion of Decency, which influenced the American film industry for more than four decades. ”It was all about temptation or attraction, and marriage, and maybe treating marriage in a frivolous way. . .. The pervasiveness of the theme would have . .. certainly called down the condemnation of the Legion of Decency.” That condemnation came in the form of a ”C” rating, and on Thursday Turner Classic Movies begins a new series to honor those   films. It’s called Condemned, and in it Pacatte guides viewers through 47 years of salacious filmmaking. Film blogger (and former Catholic school student) Will McKinley says the Legion of Decency held the most sway in the 1930s and ’40s, a time when most of the country wasn’t even Catholic, ”but to a large degree their entertainment was being dictated by Catholic precepts.” That meant premarital sex was out, as was homosexuality, abortion and divorce. So when the buxom Jane Russell could barely keep her blouse on her shoulders in 1943’s The Outlaw, moral panic ensued. ”You just get a vision of sort of   priests, you know, in 1943 taking their pulse to make sure they didn’t have a heart attack,” McKinley says. Anything that cast the church in a negative light was also out, including 1947’s Black Narcissus, which shows nuns questioning their faith. The 1951 film M was condemned for depicting a child murderer and vigilante mob (according to the legion, the film could incite criminal behavior) and 1933’s Baby Face got a C rating for showing a woman who used sex to get ahead (always a  ). Things started to change in the 1950s with a movie called The Moon is Blue. That film featured provocative lines that used words like ”seduce” and ”professional virgin,” and it bypassed both the Legion of Decency and the industry’s own Hays Code to be released in theaters. That’s when people began to see the legion’s condemnation as something to be ignored and even mocked."
"Holy Ghost is a split record Modern Baseball shares with itself, meaning that   Jake Ewald and Brendan Lukens each get a side (A and B, respectively) to do their respective thing. Okay, okay, but when OutKast split a record between songwriters, the pair only returned to do reunion shows  —   and we’re all still bitter about it. But, hey, if that’s what these Philly   want to do, we can’t stop them, just hope they keep on keepin’ on. As evidenced by these two songs  —   one from each  —   the evolving Modern Baseball has the makings of a powerhouse songwriting duo, even if they work separately. Ewald’s ”Everyday” has all the lethargic charm and mood of an early Modest Mouse track, with glimpses of shimmering feedback that mimic the memories he tries to remember. Ewald writes NPR: I have a pretty bad memory. When I manage to remember things from my past (recent or distant) they usually seem insignificant on the surface. Nevertheless, those are the things I remember, and most of the important stuff is forgotten. ”Everyday” is a short exhibit of those insignificant memories and an attempt at understanding their importance in my life. While Lukens doesn’t have the Robert Smith croon, ”Apple Cider I Don’t Mind” takes its    cues from The Cure. Opening with the line, ”Did you ever love me?” Lukens writes that the song is about trust: Trust is something every growing relationship needs. Without trust, all your conversations are just questions and doubts. I lost my best friend and partner, and didn’t know who to blame. ”Apple” is a toast to looking at past mistakes as a chance to move forward. Holy Ghost comes out May 13 on Run For Cover."
"The most recent Republican presidential nominee is taking shots at Donald Trump’s fitness to be president. And he’s not mincing his words. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, called the current GOP   ”a phony, a fraud” in a speech Thursday morning in Salt Lake City. And he didn’t stop there. Romney described Trump as ”a con artist” whose demeanor is ”recklessness in the extreme.” As for Trump’s record as a ”huge business success”? ”No, he isn’t.” And when it comes to Trump’s prescriptions to bring back jobs from China and Japan? ”Flimsy at best.” Trump quickly hit back at Romney during a rally Thursday afternoon, again calling him a ”choke artist” and saying he was disappointed by his 2012 campaign. ”The guy ran one of the worst campaigns in the history of politics,” Trump said. Trump added that Romney ”chickened out” from running in 2016 because of Trump’s candidacy. Romney spoke for 20 minutes at the Hinckley Institute at the University of Utah and got specific, digging into aspects of Trump’s record as a businessman. ”His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat,” Romney said, referring to a real estate seminar Trump launched in 2005 that was forced to change its name because it wasn’t a real university. It is now the subject of multiple lawsuits alleging fraudulent behavior. Romney then added to the list of failed business ventures: ”There’s Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage?” Romney concluded, ”A business genius he is not.” Then came the attacks on Trump as a human being. ”After all, this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter’s questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity.” Romney remarks are unprecedented in the way he  —   the party’s most recent presidential nominee  —   attacks the man who seems on track to secure this year’s GOP nomination. Romney began the speech by saying he is not declaring his own candidacy, adding, ”I am not going to endorse a candidate today.” He said one of three others still in the race  —   Sens. Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, or Gov. John Kasich  —   should be the nominee. Then, without saying so specifically, he seemed to endorse a strategy to bring about a brokered GOP convention this summer. ”Given the current delegate selection process, this means that I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio, and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state,” said Romney. The goal would be to deny Trump the 1, 237 delegates he needs to win the nomination on the convention’s first ballot in July. After reports surfaced that Romney was planning to speak out against Trump on Thursday, the billionaire was quick to fire back at Romney on Twitter. Will Romney’s blunt words have any impact? It’s not likely Trump supporters will be moved by the critique of a man they see as the ultimate establishment insider  —   who failed in attempts to win the presidency. In the past year, Trump has hardly needed excuses to lay into Romney. In stump speeches, he regularly calls Romney a ”loser” who blew the chance to defeat President Obama in 2012. In an interview Thursday morning with the Today show, Trump called Romney a ”stiff.” But it wasn’t always so contentious between these two wealthy Republican businessmen. Trump endorsed Romney’s 2012 White House bid, and Romney eagerly reciprocated the love. ”I spent my life in the private sector  —   not quite as successful as this guy,” Romney said at the time, turning and gesturing toward a gushing Trump. ”But successful nonetheless.” Romney has been critical of Trump’s tone for months, but this speech comes as Trump has won 10 of the first 15 nominating contests, holds a lead in convention delegates and shows little sign of flagging. While many Republican insiders are eager to rally around a   candidate, there’s no indication voters are consolidating around an alternative. In addition to criticizing his temperament, Romney argued that Trump is unelectable in a general election. ”Trump relishes any poll that reflects what he thinks of himself. But polls are also saying that he will lose to Hillary Clinton,” said Romney. This week, a group of more than 60 conservative foreign policy experts wrote an open letter denouncing Trump’s statements, concluding that Trump is ”fundamentally dishonest” and would ”use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world.”"
"House Speaker Paul Ryan said he ”laughed out loud” at Donald Trump’s Super Tuesday comment that the Wisconsin Republican would ”pay a big price” if he couldn’t work with him. ”Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction around here these days,” Ryan told reporters at his weekly press conference. The speaker said he watched Trump’s comments from his office. Trump did not elaborate on his Ryan comment. Ryan has publicly rebuked Trump twice during this presidential nomination contest  —   first, for calling for a ban on Muslims entering the U. S. and then this week for Trump’s failure to distance himself quickly enough from white supremacists who support his campaign. Trump stated he disavowed those groups. Ryan says he is committed to working with whoever the voters decide is the Republican nominee. He described himself as a ”  guy” who can work with anyone. Ryan’s comments were in stark contrast to his friend and former running mate Mitt Romney, who, at the same time Thursday, issued a broadside against Trump. Romney said the real estate mogul is unfit for office and suggested a contested convention may be in order to make sure he does not become the nominee. Trump is the   for the Republican nomination with more state wins and more delegates than any other GOP contender. Party leaders, however, are reluctant to grant Trump that status. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday that House Republicans had fostered a climate that allowed Trump to rise. ”My sentiment is that I don’t think that what Trump and the others are saying is a reflection of Republicans writ large in our country, but it is an accurate reflection of the actions taken, or not taken, by the House Republicans,” she said. Pelosi also said a contested convention would wreak havoc on any party that attempted it. ”If somebody has the majority of the delegates from the votes of the people, I think that you change that to your peril, whatever party you are,” she said."
"We know we should put the cigarettes away or make use of that gym membership, but in the moment, we just don’t do it. There is a cluster of neurons in our brain critical for motivation, though. What if you could hack them to motivate yourself? These neurons are located in the middle of the brain, in a region called the ventral tegmental area. A paper published Thursday in the journal Neuron suggests that we can activate the region with a little bit of training. The researchers stuck 73 people into an fMRI, a scanner that can detect what part of the brain is most active, and focused on that area associated with motivation. When the researchers said ”motivate yourself and make this part of your brain light up,” people couldn’t really do it. ”They weren’t that reliable when we said, ’Go! Get psyched. Turn on your VTA,’ ” says Dr. Alison Adcock, a psychiatrist at Duke and senior author on the paper. That changed when the participants were allowed to watch a neurofeedback meter that displayed activity in their ventral tegmental area.  When activity ramps up, the participants see the meter heat up while they’re in the fMRI tube. ”Your whole mind is allowed to speak to a specific part of your brain in a way you never imagined before. Then you get feedback that helps you discover how to turn that part of the brain up or down,” says John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved with the work. Using an fMRI for this kind of brain feedback is more effective than other, older tools like placing electrodes on the skull or EEG, Gabrieli says. ”MRI lets you target a specific brain system or structure. EEG does not. When we’re measuring electrical activity, we don’t know really where it’s coming from.” He says he hasn’t seen compelling evidence that EEG feedback, which is commercially available, has helped people change their behavior. Two of the researchers, Kathryn Dickerson and Jeff MacInnes, tried the system out on themselves. Not everything worked. Dickerson said she tried thinking about different memories that left the feedback meter cold. ”Zip lining was super fun, but [thinking about that] was just terrible and not effective at all.” So she switched strategies and tried giving herself a pep talk in the scanner. ”I was like, ’Come on Katie. Move the thermometer. Just do it and move it.’ And I just pumped myself up. That was very effective,” she says. ”It was exhilarating.” It was also exhausting, MacInnes says. ”The experience of the task was very difficult. You’re being asked to generate these intense motivational states for 20 seconds over multiple periods. It was very fatiguing for people.” Study participants had a similar experience, Adcock says. Some people sang Queen songs to themselves or imagined having an angry coach yell at them. ”My personal favorite was running down a line with everyone giving you ” Adcock says. When she took the feedback meter away, the participants were still able to light up their ventral tegmental area by thinking about the same things. People really are changing their mood when they’re doing this, Adcock thinks. They’re really becoming more focused and eager. And it seems the effect begins reaching out to parts of the brain involved with learning and memory, ”We think that’s exciting because it shows after this training, something changed, Dickerson says. ”The brain isn’t quite the same.” She thinks people might be achieving a state of mind that’s more conducive to learning and motivation. If that’s true, it would be extraordinarily useful, Gabrieli says. Using MRIs to exert control over certain parts of our brain has been done before, he says. ”[But this] is the first study to show it can be applied to the most important brain structure for human motivation. That could be very valuable for things people want to accomplish in life.” Or it might be applied to habits that are really hard to start or break, Gabrieli says. ”The hugely exciting piece of this is whether now people can use this upcoming research to gain control of behaviors that are challenging,” he says. ”Healthy habits, eating habits, stopping to smoke and can a person with addiction use this successfully?” And it might someday be a clinical tool. For instance, this particular cluster of neurons in the midbrain is part of the dopamine system. Adcock thinks activating the neurons in this way might also be releasing dopamine that could replace drug therapy for certain disorders. ”In ADHD, for example, we use stimulants that result in the same kind of release of brain chemicals,” Adcock says. ”Does this technique generate that same kind of release of dopamine that a stimulant does? If we teach people to use it successfully, we could impact attention.” But nobody knows if this actually changes brain chemistry. MacInnes says there are more experiments and tests they need to see if the brain activation they’re seeing actually does release dopamine or other neurochemicals. Even if it does, Adcock says it’s definitely not affecting neurochemicals as much as a medication like Adderall, which is used to treat ADHD. And Adcock hasn’t yet studied whether anyone actually changed their behavior after the sessions in the MRI. Since the study, people have been trying the same strategies to motivate themselves in their daily lives, according to Adcock. If it’s working, brain training in an MRI might be a way for us to tap into our mind’s circuitry for willpower. That, Gabrieli says, would be terrific."
"Berta Cáceres, a hugely influential Honduran indigenous rights activist, was killed in her hometown of La Esperenza, Intibucá, on Thursday. She would have turned 46 tomorrow. Cáceres was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize after she led a peaceful campaign to stop one of the world’s largest dam builders from pursuing the Agua Zarca Dam, which would have cut off the ethnic Lenca people from water, food and medicine. La Prensa of Honduras reports that Cáceres was currently working to stop a company from building a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque river, which the Rio Blanco community said would fundamentally change their way of life. Authorities, the paper reports, said she was killed during a robbery, but her mother said that Cáceres was killed ”because of her struggle.” Cáceres had faced threats for her environmental activism. So much so that the the InterAmerican Commission for Human Rights had called on the government of Honduras to provide her with protection. La Prensa reports that police say Cáceres was killed at a house they were not surveilling. ”We were protecting her old home at Villa El Calvario, but she had not reported this new house to authorities,” Police Commissioner Sergio Paz Bueso told the paper. Cáceres’ family is calling her death an assassination. ”They were waiting for the chance to get to her,” Silvio Carrillo, her nephew, said in a phone interview. ”They were just waiting and she knew it was gonna happen. We all knew but we didn’t dissuade her because we believe in this too.” In a statement, COPINH, the indigenous rights group that Cáceres worked for, said: ”In the last few weeks, violence and repression towards Berta, COPINH, and the communities they support, had escalated. In Rio Blanco on February 20th, Berta, COPINH, and the community of Rio Blanco faced threats and repression as they carried out a peaceful action to protect the River Gualcarque against the construction of a hydroelectric dam by the   Honduran company DESA. As a result of COPINH’s work supporting the Rio Blanco struggle, Berta had received countless threats against her life and was granted precautionary measures by the InterAmerican Commission for Human Rights. On February 25th, another Lenca community supported by COPINH in Guise, Intibuca was violently evicted and destroyed.” In a tweet, the Goldman Prize said it was ”devastated to hear of Berta Cáceres’ assassination.” Annie Bird, who supported Caceres’ actions for more than a decade, says her murder will have a chilling effect on other activists. ”It sends a very strong message,” she said. ”And it makes everybody feel very vulnerable.” Carrillo said he doesn’t expect justice. Honduras, he said, is too far gone for that. ”But what I do see is people being inspired to speak up and to push forth and to stand up and say we can’t do this anymore,” he said. ”We can’t have this happen anymore.” Cáceres is survived by her four children  —   ages 26, 24, 23 and 21  —   and her mother."
"Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich meet Thursday in the 11th debate of this year’s Republican presidential primary. It airs at 9 p. m. ET on Fox News. It’s the first forum since Trump won seven states on Super Tuesday, solidifying his status as the candidate to beat in the Republican field. It’s also the first debate since last week’s raucous   in Houston. Here are four big things we’ll be watching for tonight: What Will Marco Rubio Do? Last week’s debate marked the beginning of Rubio 2. 0  —   the Florida senator’s shift from portraying himself as an    ideas candidate to becoming an attack dog focused on Trump. On the Houston stage, Rubio hit Trump for hiring immigrants who were in the country illegally to build Trump Tower, fraud allegations against Trump University, and a lack of details in the real estate mogul’s proposals. And that was only the beginning. In the next few days, Rubio mocked Trump’s tan, suggested Trump wet his pants and made jokes about the size of Trump’s hands. Attack Dog Rubio was a hit with crowds at his events. But aside from a win in Minnesota’s caucuses, Rubio had a lackluster night Tuesday. He finished second in just one other state, Virginia. In Texas, Vermont and Alabama, he failed to crack 20 percent, the cutoff for collecting a share of statewide delegates. Rubio continued his attacks on Trump during his Tuesday night appearance, calling the   a ”con artist.” The question is whether Rubio sticks to his guns tonight or reverts back to the   general   sound bites he stuck to in nearly every other debate this campaign. In a fundraising email sent out Wednesday night, the Rubio campaign indicated it will be the former: ”Tomorrow night, about 24 hours from now, I look forward to doing more of the same and once and for all exposing [Trump] for the con artist he is.” How Will Trump Respond To Megyn Kelly? The debate is airing on Fox News, which means Megyn Kelly will be moderating. Trump has feuded with many people in the course of his campaign  —   even Pope Francis  —   but his attacks on Kelly have been especially notable. He skipped a Fox debate on the eve of the Iowa caucuses because Kelly was moderating. The move appeared to backfire when Trump finished a surprising second in the caucuses behind Ted Cruz. The   beef goes back to the campaign’s very first debate, in August. Kelly pushed Trump on his previous statements about women. ”You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” she said. ”Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” Trump attacked Kelly in the days after the debate, and again via his Twitter feed in the   to the January debate. He called her everything from ”biased” to ”overrated,” and used the word ”bimbo” in other tweets. But Fox didn’t back down or remove Kelly from the debate stage, and as a result, Trump didn’t take part. So how will Trump respond when Kelly asks him a tough question tonight? Notably, he’s stayed away from a confrontation with the network on the eve of this debate. Will Cruz Focus On Trump Or The Field? Cruz, Rubio and Kasich each is making the argument that he alone is best positioned to take on Trump in a    contest. But Kasich hasn’t won anything, and Rubio didn’t get on the board until Tuesday night, when he carried the Minnesota caucuses. Last week Cruz trained his fire on Trump. The question for the senator  —   who won in his home state of Texas, as well as in Oklahoma and Alaska on Tuesday  —   is whether he keeps that up, or tries to argue that neither Rubio nor Kasich still belongs in the race. Not Ben Carson, Because he won’t be on the stage. On Wednesday, Carson signaled the end of his presidential campaign, saying in a statement, ”I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening’s Super Tuesday primary results.” While Carson hasn’t officially ended his campaign, he said he won’t attend the debate. At one point in the race, Carson had stood near center stage as a   candidate. But he faded in November and December, and finished a distant fourth in the Iowa caucuses. Carson stayed in the race, though he had been less and less of a factor in debates. Last week in Houston, Carson was so frustrated at the lack of questions he was receiving that he begged his opponents, ”Can somebody attack me, please?” so that he’d be given an opportunity to respond."
"San Jorge Children’s Hospital is Puerto Rico’s largest pediatric hospital, drawing patients from throughout the Caribbean. It’s a bustling facility in San Juan, with specialties in surgery, rheumatology and oncology. It also has brightly colored live parrots at every entrance. ”It just sends a message to the patient that they’re in a friendly place,” explains San Jorge’s vice president of operations, Domingo Cruz Vivaldi. ”That they’re here to be treated, but they’re also going to have a good time.” Still, as Cruz would be the first to say, right now is not a good time to be in the hospital business in Puerto Rico. A nearly   recession has taken a severe toll on the island’s economy. Half of San Jorge’s patients are on Medicaid now, up from a fifth just a few years ago. And, for decades, the U. S. government has capped Medicaid reimbursements in Puerto Rico at a level far below what states receive. Cruz says that cap has forced his hospital and many others to cut services  —   he’s had to close two wings and 40 rooms. He only managed to avoid staff layoffs, he says, by freezing 100 open positions  —   doctors, nurses, technicians and support personnel. And last year, when Puerto Rico ran out of money and couldn’t make a $250 million payment to hospitals, San Jorge was forced to reduce hours and cut pay for all employees. Since long before the advent of Obamacare, Puerto Rico has had a health care plan that covers nearly everyone on the island. Sergio Marxuach, public policy director for Puerto Rico’s Center for a New Economy, says it’s a generous plan, but has never been adequately funded. ”It has become, in a way, the third rail of Puerto Rican politics,” Marxuach says. ”Nobody wants to touch benefits. Obviously it’s very politically sensitive.   residents love it. So, it’s going to be very hard to modify unless we get additional Medicaid funding, or somehow get some sort of fix that we can do locally.” The head of Puerto Rico’s Health Insurance Administration, Ricardo   describes it in another way. ”There’s a saying here in Puerto Rico,” he says, ”which, if you translate literally into English, is ’You are against the wall and the knife.’ ” Stopgap funding for Puerto Rico’s Medicaid system that the Affordable Care Act has provided will run out next year. The Obama Administration has proposed a solution: removing the Medicaid cap, and giving Puerto Rico the same level of funding that goes to the states. If Congress doesn’t take action on that proposal soon, Rivera says, Puerto Rico will face tough decisions on how to provide care for 1. 6 million Medicaid patients. ”We are looking at one million people that will have to be forced out of the Medicaid system,” Rivera says. ”The remaining 600, 000 will have to experience a reduction in benefits and an increase in deductibles and copays.” That’s a problem in a territory where the median household income is about $19, 000  —   half that of Mississippi. Across Puerto Rico, clinics are closing, and at least four hospitals have filed for bankruptcy. If enough hospitals close, those remaining will be overwhelmed, say Puerto Rico officials. By the end of this month, leaders in Congress say they expect to have a plan ready to help Puerto Rico. The U. S. territory is mired in an economic recession and is more than $72 billion in debt  —   a debt that Puerto Rico’s Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla says the island can’t pay. But the chronic underfunding of healthcare is an even more pressing crisis, according to officials in Puerto Rico, who worry that the islands’ health system could collapse if that lack of funding is not addressed this year. Leaders from the U. S. territory have made regular trips to Washington in the last two years to alert members of Congress to the looming crisis. But Cruz, the hospital vice president, says Puerto Rico has an inherent problem. ”Unfortunately, we don’t vote. And if you don’t vote, you don’t count,” Cruz says. ”When I visit the senators, they have a bunch of issues with their own state. So how much attention can [they] pay to a state that doesn’t vote?” Officials in Puerto Rico say that as much as a third of the territory’s massive debt is the result of health care costs. That’s why many believe that to fix Puerto Rico’s overall financial mess, you must first fix its health care system."
"Over at the New York Times Magazine, Jay Caspian Kang recently had a really sharp essay on protests by   over the conviction of Peter Liang, the New York City police officer who was involved in the 2014 fatal shooting of unarmed Akai Gurley, an unarmed black man. Protesters have called Liang a ”scapegoat,” pointing out that many white officers involved in previous killings of unarmed black men have not faced similar consequences. In fact, as Kang notes, Liang is ”the first N. Y. P. D. officer convicted in a    shooting in over a decade.” ”It’s easier to hang an Asian, because Asians, they don’t speak up,” is how one   critic of Liang’s verdict recently put it. But on Feb. 20, in cities across the United States, large numbers of   protesters did speak up, and turn out for public protests. They were there both to show support for Liang and to fight ”the institutional racism and failures of our system,” said New York State Assemblyman Ron Kim, the first and only   elected official in New York and an active advocate for minorities. But as Kang points out, the fact that this movement has been triggered by the death of an unarmed black man at the hand of an   cop rests uneasily with many   and others alike, and reflects a sometimes  —   or often, depending on where you live  —   painful history of relations between Asian and black communities in the U. S.: ”The Liang protests mark the most pivotal moment in the   community since the Rodney King riots, when dozens of   businesses were burned to the ground. The episode is often said to have been precipitated by the horrific killing of Latasha Harlins, a    black girl who was shot in the back of the head by Soon Ja Du, a Korean store owner, after a confrontation over a bottle of orange juice. In reality, the tensions between Asian store owners and the black neighborhoods they served had been simmering for years they began well before Rodney King became a household name, and they continue today.” In his essay, Kang explains the Liang protests as a reaction by a community unaccustomed to taking the spotlight, one more used to opting for political silence. He recounts, from firsthand experience, seeing low participation by   in modern social justice movements. But he emphasizes that this lack of participation doesn’t necessarily stem from apathy. He says many   simply haven’t known know what to say, or how to say it  —   and the Liang protests make that clear. ”This is the stunted language of a people who do not yet know how to talk about injustice,” Kang writes. ”The protesters who took to the streets on Saturday are trying, in their way, to create a new political language for   but this language comes without any edifying history.” Of course, Kang notes, the protests don’t change the fact that a man was killed, or undo Liang’s actions on the day he shot Gurley: not performing CPR on a dying man, and failing to radio his supervisors immediately. ”No amount of nuance or qualification or appeal to Martin Luther King will change the fact that the first massive, nationwide   protest in years was held in defense of a police officer who shot and killed an innocent black man,” he writes. Kang’s full essay over at New York Times Magazine is well worth a read."
"Oscar hopefuls strode down the red carpet on Sunday  —   walking advertisements for some of fashion’s biggest names. But Chanel and Armani weren’t the only winners that night. A brand that targets more modest, socially conscious consumers got attention, too. It started when Ghanaian actor Abraham Attah showed up on the red carpet. Many eyes went from his sharp tux right to his feet. Yes, the teenage star of Beasts of No Nation was wearing black velvet Toms. Many of you probably know Toms. Maybe you’re wearing a pair right now. For those who don’t know, Toms  —   it’s short for ”tomorrow”  —   is a company that promises if you buy a pair of its shoes, it will give a pair to a poor child somewhere in the world. And on Oscar night, Toms wasted no time promoting its red carpet moment and its mission. ”With the help of @AttahNii we’re giving 10k pairs of shoes to kids in need in his home country of Ghana,” the company tweeted. There was more in store for Toms that night. ATT aired a   ad featuring Toms founder Blake Mycoskie. Since its launch a decade ago, Mycoskie’s business has become wildly popular with socially conscious consumers and the mainstream media. That’s translated into huge revenue for the   company. In fact, private equity firm Bain Capital snatched up half of Toms in 2014. At the time, the company was reportedly valued at around $625 million. Mycoskie kept a 50 percent share. I’ve been watching the evolution of Toms with a great deal of interest. I first investigated the company in 2012 for my podcast, Tiny Spark. More than anything, I wanted to know whether giving away free shoes was indeed good aid. Mycoskie contended that there were millions of children around the world who had no shoes. If that were true, then I was pretty sure those kids had other needs more pressing than shoes. At the time, the company was doling out canvas   made in factories in China, Argentina and Ethiopia, which may have helped the economies in those countries but did nothing for local industries where most of the shoes were distributed. In short, I wanted to know whether Toms was really ”doing good.” My conclusion: not really. Backlash from Toms fans immediately ensued. They told me there were thousands of other companies I should pick on that Mycoskie could do what he wants with his business. ”They are his shoes and it is his money!” one listener wrote. All these things are true. I also continue to believe that we must critique   projects and people so that we can figure out how to have the most impact in the lives of those we seek to help. Fair but critical reporting pushes companies, nonprofits and philanthropists to do better work. And the evolution of Toms proves this point. About a year after my podcast, Mycoskie said he had listened to critics and that the company would begin producing shoes in Haiti in order ”to help establish and support the growth of a responsible and sustainable shoe industry in Haiti.” Then last year, Toms unveiled a partnership with the Clinton Foundation and the Wildlife Conservation Society to produce a limited run of shoes. For each pair purchased, the company would fund elephant conservation projects. It’s now doing the same for sea turtles and will donate $5 to a nonprofit for every pair sold. And Toms continues to find ways to have impact with its   list of products based on the Buy One Give One model. Profits from Toms coffee supports clean water initiatives. Toms bags support safe births. If you buy a pair of tortoise shell glasses for $139, someone will get an eye exam and treatment. The company says it has helped restore sight to 360, 000 people this way, which is phenomenal but pales in comparison to the popularity of those shoes (they’ve given away 50 million pairs and counting). So, shoes remain most popular with consumers, yet its fledgling bag, eyeglass and coffee offerings seem to signal that the company recognizes that services  —   not product giveaways  —   are what people in extreme poverty need more. I wonder if Toms aspires to give away 50 million more pairs of shoes. And should it keep giving away shoes just because consumers keep buying them? I wanted to ask Toms these questions and ask how the actor Abraham Attah came to wear Toms at the Oscars. But as of the time of this writing, the company had not responded to requests for comment. As Toms steps into its second decade, it could more effectively channel the goodwill of its socially responsible customers by using its shoe sales to support causes that directly tackle the pressing problems children in extreme poverty face, such as lack of access to decent health care, clean water and quality education. Because if a child has free shoes but none of these other things, how much good have consumers really done? But here’s the thing: If Toms were to start putting proceeds from most or all of its shoe sales to support organizations that are tackling big problems, would consumers still buy Toms? ”Buy One, Help Train a Teacher in Bangladesh.” That doesn’t have quite the same ring. But it would have far more impact in children’s lives. And consumers are smart. They’ll get it. Who knows, maybe Toms would sell even more shoes that way. Amy Costello is the host and founder of Tiny Spark, a podcast that investigates nonprofits, philanthropy and international aid."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. As one of the two guitarists and principal songwriters in the Denton, Texas, bands The Marked Men and Radioactivity, Mark Ryan indulges his gifts for     melodic punk and   respectively. But his band Mind Spiders seems to act as the warehouse in which Ryan stores his other obsessions: vaguely    tightly wound,   rock ’n’ roll, set off by dual drummers and the occasional synth. Mind Spiders’ three albums prior to Prosthesis did little to deviate from this path, but technology has caught up with Ryan and his cohorts: Daniel Fried, Gregory Rutherford and Marked Men bandmate Mike Throneberry. Prosthesis is Mind Spiders’ darkest release yet, both in themes and atmosphere, and electronics feature more prominently in its eight songs than ever before. ”Cold,” ”Ulcer” and ”No Filter” hit a particularly doomed note, but the synths and drum machine provide a presence rather than drive the proceedings if anything, Mind Spiders uses them as   devices for the guitars and live drummer to outrun, in sprints of strident downpicking and       work. Even ”Split In Two”  —   in which the digital tones create jarring tone clashes that bear a resemblance to Devo  —   also reflects the group’s insistence on precision, a foil for the band to continue attacking the beat. As for its dystopian concept, that’s for Mind Spiders to explain, but it’s telling that the group’s most engaged record to date is also its most brooding. Prosthesis provides a modern soundtrack to the world inspired by the film Logan’s Run, with Ryan and his bandmates seeking an escape and ultimately getting someplace worth going."
"The Zika virus has sparked international alarm largely because of fears that the pathogen is causing microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with unusually small heads and damaged brains. But the preliminary results of a study released Friday suggest Zika can also cause other potentially grave complications for fetuses carried by women who get infected while they are pregnant. ”There seems to be a whole spectrum of conditions that are related to this  —   not only microcephaly,” says Karin   a professor of clinical pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA who led the study. The analysis, based on the first 42 women in a larger ongoing study, found that Zika appears to increase the risk for miscarriages, poorly developed placentas, low or no amniotic fluid, severe growth problems, other kinds of brain damage, blindness and deafness, according to a preliminary report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results ”make a very strong case for Zika virus being the cause of all these pregnancy outcomes that are not very good,”   says. She cautions, however, that the study is still small and needs to be confirmed by following many more women for longer periods of time. The link between Zika and microcephaly remains largely circumstantial. It’s based on the observation that the number of cases of microcephaly appear to have increased in Brazil since the virus became epidemic in that country. Researchers have also found evidence of Zika in the brains of a handful of babies with microcephaly who died shortly after birth. Concern about a possible link sparked a rush of studies to test the possibility, as well as explore whether the virus is causing other problems. The new results mark the first from a prospective study, which involves tracking the health of women who are infected with Zika and comparing them to very similar people who are not infected. ”The   message is that this is another important addition to the growing evidence that seems to now be quite compelling of the relationship between infection of pregnant women and the development of congenital abnormalities,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. For the study,   and colleagues from Brazil identified 88 women in the Rio de Janeiro area who had symptoms of Zika when they were pregnant.   of the women had their Zika infection confirmed by   reaction (PCR) testing, which can identify genetic material from the virus.   of those women, as well as 16 women who did not test positive for Zika, underwent ultrasounds to examine their fetuses. The ultrasounds of 12 of the infected women  —   29 percent  —   found abnormalities. None of the   women’s ultrasounds found any problems. Five of the fetuses being carried by the   women were not growing normally seven had central nervous system abnormalities and seven had abnormalities in amniotic fluid volume or blood flow. In some cases, placentas didn’t seem to be developing normally. The problems observed on the ultrasounds are being explored and confirmed as the babies are being born. For example, two of the infants have lesions in their retinas,   says, which means they might be blind. And she said that some may be deaf. Two were born extremely small, which means they could experience complications of low birth weight. One baby was born with microcephaly. And some of the fetuses are not making it to birth. There were two miscarriages early in the pregnancies, and two stillbirths just a few weeks before the babies were due,   says. Other experts say the results are alarming, given the scope of the Zika outbreak. ”Millions are being affected as the epidemic has spread throughout the Americas,” says Albert Ko, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, who is studying Zika in Brazil. So, yes, I think this is very disturbing.”"
"It’s nearly impossible to see some of the earliest movies by   filmmakers. Many have been lost or destroyed. Those that have survived are often held by private collectors or stored away in old film archives. More than a dozen of those movies, though, are now part of a film restoration project  —   Pioneers of   Cinema  —   by independent film distributor Kino Lorber. The project focuses on a genre called ”race films”  —   movies made after World War I and through the 1940s by black filmmakers with mostly black casts for black audiences. These films tried to uplift the image of   and contradict the racist stereotypes in D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a blockbuster after its release in 1915. Many race films exist today only as fragments of decomposing film strips. Some of the few film negatives and prints that are still intact are in an underground vault in Culpeper, Va. where the Library of Congress stores almost 140, 000 cans of highly flammable nitrate film shot before 1951  —   including The Birth of a Nation’s original negative.  ”Film is a physical artifact. It can fade. It can shrink. It can crumble to dust in less than a lifetime, and it’s a race against time around here,” explains Mike Mashon, who heads the moving image section of the Library of Congress. ”It’s genuinely a miracle that those [race] films survived.” A ’Long History’ Behind The Camera, More than 30 companies were producing race films at the height of their popularity during the 1920s. One of the most prolific filmmakers to emerge, Oscar Micheaux, was the son of former slaves. After working as a Pullman porter, he homesteaded in South Dakota and published novels before he wrote, directed and distributed almost 40 movies in three decades. One of his first silent films, Body and Soul, featured the silver screen debut of Paul Robeson, who played an escaped convict pretending to be a minister. ”This race film material presents an extremely important chapter in the long history of   participation behind the camera,” says Jacqueline Stewart, a film professor at the University of Chicago who helped curate the films in the restoration project. Micheaux and other   directors worked outside of Hollywood, forging indie filmmaking at its earliest stages with low budgets. ”Audiences chuckled at the time,” Stewart says. ”They would giggle because the acting was so bad. The editing seemed so rough. You know, the quality of the film stock doesn’t seem to be all that clear, crisp.” Still, Stewart says they put issues relevant to the black community on screen  —   ”the politics of skin color within the black community, gender differences, class differences, regional differences especially during this period of the Great Migration.” One of Stewart’s favorite films in the project is The Blood of Jesus, a 1941 film that was rediscovered in a Texas warehouse in 1983. Actress Cathryn Caviness plays Sister Martha Ann Jackson, a churchgoing black woman in the South who is fatally shot after her husband’s rifle falls to the floor and goes off by accident. Her spirit wavers between following an angel to heaven or an agent for Satan to hell, which looks like a jazz club in the city. Stewart says the film’s    —   Spencer Williams, who went on to play Andy in the 1950s TV series Amos ’n’ Andy   —   touched on a debate within the black community about city versus country living. ”We get this kind of allegory of black urban migration and the dangers that urban life presents and the need to hold on to a certain kind of spiritual center,” she says. ’Brilliant’ Filmmaking, The restoration project added new sequences to Micheaux’s 1939 remake of his silent film Birthright. The first two of the film’s nine reels have been missing for years. To replace about 20 minutes of those missing first scenes, restorers have added new title cards to introduce the story of Peter Siner (played by Carman Newsome)  —   a young black man who graduates from Harvard University and returns home to the South to build a school for   children. New scores have been commissioned for the silent movies, including Micheaux’s Within Our Gates. The new soundtrack aside, restorers plan to restore the 1919 film closer to Micheaux’s original vision. One of the shots in a lynching scene was   originally, according to Charles Musser, a   for the collection who also teaches film at Yale University. But he says previous film restorers who worked on the film turned it   up. ”They thought it was a, quote, ’mistake.’ But Oscar Micheaux’s mistakes are never mistakes,” Musser explains. ”This is a moment when, in fact, the world is turned upside down. He shows that by turning the shot upside down. See, now that’s like brilliant filmmaking.” It’s filmmaking that should not stay sitting in film archives, according to Paul Miller, also known as DJ Spooky, the project’s executive producer. ”It’s a shame that it’s taken almost 100 years to get these films back out,” says Miller, who also composed new scores for Within Our Gates, Body and Soul and other silent films. ”They should be   and they should be part of the basic premise of early American cinema, period.” Four race films, including Birthright and Williams’ 1946 film Dirty Gertie from Harlem, U. S. A. are returning to the big screen at New York City’s Film Forum for special screenings on Sunday and Monday. The entire collection of restored race films will be available for streaming online and as a   set in July."
"Parenting can be an   journey. And one bump along the road is that horrible feeling that comes over you when you see your baby break out in hives after eating a particular food  —   say, peanuts  —   for the first time. (One of my three kids gave me that kind of scare.) The concern is real. Between 1997 and 2008, the incidence of peanut and tree nut allergies nearly tripled, according to one published study. Now, there’s a growing consensus about how to prevent peanut allergies in kids who are at high risk. This includes children with a strong family history of food allergies and those with eczema. Last year, a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that   babies who were fed a soupy,   mush (starting between 4 and 11 months of age) were about 80 percent less likely to develop a peanut allergy by age 5, compared with kids who were not exposed. ”Giving peanuts very early on actually protected them from developing a peanut allergy,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Previously, parents of   kids had been advised to delay the introduction of peanuts. Now, a new   study involving the same group of children adds to the evidence that, contrary to previous advice, early exposure can be beneficial. Researchers followed the kids for one additional year. The kids were between 5 and 6 years old during this   period. It turned out, these   kids’ tolerance to peanuts held up even if they stopped eating peanuts. ”A   period of peanut avoidance was not associated with an increase in the prevalence of peanut allergy,” the authors write in the paper. This is an important finding, because it wasn’t known whether the kids would need to maintain regular weekly consumption of peanuts in order to stave off developing an allergy. ”This new study is great because . .. it looks like the benefit [of early exposure] is essentially permanent,” says Scott Sicherer, a pediatric immunologist and allergy specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Immunologists will continue to study this. Sicherer has helped develop new interim guidance based on the emerging evidence of the benefits of early, rather than delayed, introduction of peanut. ”There is now scientific evidence that health care providers should recommend introducing   products into the diets of ” ” infants early on in life (between 4 and 11 months of age),” the consensus guidance states. But that doesn’t mean all parents should just rush in with the peanut mush. The guidance recommends that ”infants with eczema or egg allergy in the first 4 to 6 months of life might benefit from evaluation by an allergist”  —   before they’re introduced to   foods. The evidence from the two studies together represents an important step forward in immunology, says Anthony Fauci. ”It’s a very important proof of concept,” Fauci says. And he says it’s possible that early exposure will turn out to be a successful strategy to prevent other allergies as well."
"Republican Ben Carson confirmed during his speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that he is ending his bid for the White House. The famed neurosurgeon had implied he was dropping out on Wednesday after a disappointing Super Tuesday finish, and he skipped Thursday night’s debate in his hometown of Detroit. But it took him more than 10 minutes into his meandering speech to a packed CPAC crowd to actually say the words  —   sort of. ”Even though I might be leaving the campaign trail, you know, there’s a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me, but it’s OK!” Carson said as the crowd gave him a standing ovation. ”But I will still continue to be heavily involved in trying to save our nation.” He confirmed reports that he will be joining My Faith Votes, an effort to get more evangelical voters to the polls this fall. Carson, the only   candidate in the GOP field, had risen to fame after a viral 2013 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that criticized Obama, who was just feet away from him. He surged last fall after getting in the race and even led polls in Iowa at one point. But after terrorist attacks turned many voters’ focus back to foreign policy, his stumbles and inexperience on the issue were magnified. Carson began to tumble and never recovered. On Friday, he acknowledged as he did in a statement earlier this week that there simply was not a path forward for him. ”I did the math I looked at the delegate count, looked at the states, and looked at the requirements. I realized it simply wasn’t going to happen and if that’s the case, I didn’t want to interfere with the process,” Carson said. While he didn’t throw his support behind any of the remaining candidates in the race, he did outline the type of candidate he was looking for  —   someone with a record of accomplishment, who treats his family well and has the right ethics and policies. ”What we must do as conservatives is we couple conservative with compassion,” Carson said. ”We the people have to be the ones who really push these things.”"
"Anyone looking for a little peace and quiet on this Earth might think they’d find some at the bottom of the ocean. They’d be wrong. And so were researchers who didn’t expect to hear much when they dropped a microphone 6 miles down into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. The results surprised scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University, who conducted the experiment. Instead of quiet, they heard sounds of earthquakes, ships, ”the distinct moans of baleen whales and the overwhelming clamor of a category 4 typhoon that just happened to pass overhead,” according to a release by Oregon State. The sounds give a new sense of what life is like nearly 7 miles below the ocean’s surface. Working with the U. S. Coast Guard, the researchers sent a   microphone to a depth of more than 36, 000 feet, into the deepest part of the Mariana Trench known as the Challenger Deep. When it was retrieved, the microphone package’s flash drive held recordings that were made over the course of three weeks last summer. Further surprising scientists, the recordings weren’t merely of faint echoes  —   they were of clearly discernible sounds. ”You would think that the deepest part of the ocean would be one of the quietest places on Earth,” says chief scientist Robert Dziak of NOAA. ”Yet there really is almost constant noise from both natural and   sources.” Explaining the prevalence of propeller whine in the recordings, Dziak notes that Challenger Deep is close to the commercial shipping hub of Guam. NOAA undertook the mission to help establish a baseline for ambient noise in the deepest part of the ocean. As Oregon Public Broadcasting notes, ”Lots of additional research is happening along the West Coast to study possible impacts on whales and other marine creatures from increasing   underwater noise.” Before they could make the recordings, the researchers had to develop a hydrophone that was capable of surviving extreme pressure  —   in this case, more than 16, 000 pounds per square inch. For comparison, NOAA says, the atmospheric pressure in the average home or office is less than 15 pounds PSI. When it was finally lowered, NOAA says, the ceramic hydrophone had to enter the depths at a relatively slow pace  —   5 meters per second  —   to prevent it from imploding."
"When    comedian Rachel Bloom won a best actress Golden Globe this year for Crazy   the TV show she stars in and   she told the crowd: ”We almost didn’t have a show. We made a pilot for another network and they rejected it. And we sent the pilot to every other network in Hollywood and we got six rejections in one day and we felt like crap. But we knew it was good.” Eventually, Crazy   found a home at the CW, which premiered the show’s first season last fall. The    follows a mess of a young woman named Rebecca Bunch. Rebecca is successful at work, but miserable at life. After a chance meeting with her   from summer camp  —   that’s right, summer camp  —   she ditches her   New York job and moves across the country to his hometown of West Covina, Calif. Rebecca, played by Bloom, is at times unbalanced, adorable and satirical, but always in key. Bloom tells NPR’s Audie Cornish about making a show that was designed to dismantle stereotypes. On Rebecca’s depression and anxiety, We always wanted the show to confront her mental illness  . The premise of the show is just a romantic comedy where it’s like: Oh, a woman’s unhappy she’s a lawyer and she moves to try to win back the man she loves. But if you look at the realism in that, it’s like, OK, if someone actually did that, they would be a tremendously unhappy person. That is a not good thing to do. And so inherent in the premise of the show was Rebecca’s depression and anxiety. And the whole show is about her learning to pursue her own happiness as opposed to trying to make other people happy. On how everyone on the show is a little crazy, We try not to view anyone on this show from a lens of labeling them we try to make sure that you understand where every character is coming from. But yes, Rebecca is a little crazy. And when she comes to West Covina, we realize that everyone else on the show is a little crazy, too. . .. There’s a love triangle inherent in the show, and many people root for Rebecca and Greg, Josh’s best friend. And I want to remind everyone that when Greg and Rebecca first meet, he says to her, ”You’re pretty and smart and ignoring me, so you’re obviously my type.” That’s adorable. That’s not a healthy thing to say to someone. . .. It shows that he doesn’t respect himself and it shows his own pathologies. On the show’s mission  The whole show is about deconstructing stereotypes and deconstructing people and finding the truth beneath tropes. And so that’s why the title is so, kind of, provocative in that way. You know, using the label ”crazy  ” and viewing it from a feminist perspective and how does one come to embody that? What does love do to your brain? When you let love take you over is it because you’re using it as an escape from your real problems? On ”The Sexy Getting Ready Song” This is from the pilot and Rebecca is about to go to this party where the object of her affection will be. And I think there is this kind of fetishizing of . .. a woman getting ready and she’s primping and she’s, you know, dusting a powder puff into powder and making herself smell pretty. And, no: Getting ready for a party is disgusting and frustrating and horrifying. And so . .. the contrast between not only like beauty and ugliness, but how things are portrayed in pop culture and in pop music and how things really are was very much our guide for that song. On how they decide when a character is going to burst into song, There’s an old saying when writing musical theater: . .. When the emotion is too strong for the characters to talk, they sing. And then when it’s too strong to sing, they dance. So that’s our guide: What are the strongest emotional moments in the episode? And we use that to determine when we’ll break into a musical number. And the other thing was the kind of emotional ups and downs of love are perfect for a musical. On whether the show will be renewed for a second season, Oh, gosh, you tell me. We’re hopeful. We’re still waiting on it. We’re hoping for good news, but, you know, it’s something that’s so out of our control  —   the same thing with ratings, the same thing with awards. All we can do is make the show we want and make it until someone tells us to stop."
"The GOP may be in the midst of an identity crisis, but the Democratic Party is also facing a political crisis that could be made a lot worse if it doesn’t win the White House in November. Part of President Obama’s legacy is the health of his party. He’s had many successes in office  —   health care reform, climate change regulations, Wall Street reform  —   but his legacy will also include one huge failure: a diminished Democratic Party. Every president sees his party lose hundreds of positions  —   it’s the price a party holding the White House pays  —   but no president has come close to Obama. During Obama’s eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats than under any other president. When Obama took office, there were 60 Democratic senators now there are 46. The number of House seats held by Democrats has shrunk from 257 to 188. There are now nine fewer Democratic governors than in 2009. Democrats currently hold fewer elected offices nationwide than at any time since the 1920s. 1. There are two different electorates in America, There is Presidential Election America, where turnout is diverse. The electorate is younger, browner, more single, more secular  —   more Democratic. Then there’s Midterm Election America, where the electorate is older, whiter, more rural, more    —   in other words, more Republican. What’s great for Republicans and bad for Democrats is that the vast majority of the governorships and state legislative seats are elected in the midterms. And those positions are the seed corn for a party  —   they’re the farm teams for   offices. Right now the Democrats are at a very low ebb. This is something President Obama lamented when he campaigned for Democrats in the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014. Republicans manage to turn out their voters every two years, but Democrats, for some reason, only turn their voters out every four. Maybe, Obama mused, because Democrats just don’t think midterms are ”sexy enough.” 2. Bad luck, Democrats had one spectacularly bad piece of luck. The Republicans’ Tea   surge in 2010 was perfectly timed to coincide with the decennial census, after which new congressional and state legislative district boundaries are drawn by governors and state legislatures. Republicans’ huge gains in the 2010 midterms put them in the driver’s seat when it came time to draw new congressional districts in 2011. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell remembers what happened when Republicans took over the governor’s mansion and the Legislature in his state: ”When I left office in January of 2011,” says Rendell, ”there were 13 Democratic congressman and six Republican congressman. As a result of redistricting in the 2010 election, that turned around and we now have 13 Republican congressmen and five Democratic congressman.” 3. Democrats don’t care, It’s not only bad timing and gerrymandering that have hollowed out the Democratic Party. Mo Elleithee, a former Democratic National Committee official, says Democrats have never put enough effort and resources into state legislative races. Republicans, on the other hand, make those races a top priority. 4. Too many Democrats live in cities, This is another problem that makes it easier for Republicans to draw congressional and state legislative districts that disadvantage Democrats. Democratic voters are clumped together in urban areas. You could say that for the purposes of winning elections, Democratic voters are just not efficiently distributed. Its why even in red states like Texas and Utah there are cities that are solidly Democratic  —   and why lesbian mayors were elected in Houston and Salt Lake City. When Democrats cluster in and around cities, they win local elections, but that doesn’t help them win suburban or rural congressional seats. This November, the stakes for Democrats couldn’t be higher. Without the White House, assuming party control elsewhere remains the same, Democrats would be truly out in the cold."
"Many Americans tell pollsters and politicians that they’re angry. Why? At least part of the answer might be tucked inside the February jobs report, released Friday by the Labor Department. Consider this: On the one hand, the report was brimming with good economic news. It showed employers added 242, 000 workers last month, exceeding most forecasts. It also showed upward revisions for job growth in January and December. The unemployment rate held steady at 4. 9 percent and the labor force participation rate rose by 0. 2 percentage point to 62. 9 percent, marking the fourth increase in the last five months. U. S. companies have now added 14. 3 million jobs over six straight years, a record hiring streak. That all helped push stock prices higher. By midday, the Dow Jones industrial average was back up over 17, 000 for the first time since Jan. 6. Given all of that, what’s not to like? How about shrinking paychecks? Average hourly earnings fell last month  —   down 3 cents an hour to $25. 35. In addition, the average workweek declined by 0. 2 hour to just 34. 4 hours in February. To be fair, January was a good month, with wages rising by 12 cents. But then in February, that momentum was lost. Over the past year, wages have risen just 2. 2 percent, ”well below the   to   wage growth we typically see in normal times,” Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, said in his assessment. He attributes employers’ reluctance to boost wages to the rising costs for benefits. So to recap: On Friday, stock investors got a nice boost, while workers got confirmation that both their wages and hours were lower. Anger anyone? Fortunately for most workers, plunging energy prices have resulted in savings at gas pumps and on heating bills. Those lower expenses have left a few more $20s in wallets at the end of the month. The combination of greater confidence about the job market and lower inflation means ”the consumer outlook remains bright . .. [and] homebuilders expect better sales conditions ahead,” according to an assessment by IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. The February jobs report supports upbeat assumptions about consumer spending. It shows retailers added 55, 000 workers to their payrolls in February. In fact, over the past year, the retail trade has added 339, 000 employees. And restaurants and bars added 40, 000 jobs in February, growing the sector by 359, 000 workers over the past year. On the homebuilding front, construction jobs rose by 19, 000 last month. Employment in that sector is up by 253, 000 over the past 12 months, with workers in residential specialty trades accounting for about half of the increase. Realtor. com’s chief economist Jonathan Smoke said that in light of Friday’s robust hiring data, ”we remain confident we will see the strongest spring buying season in a decade.” If the job expansion can continue at a robust pace throughout 2016, economists say wages and workweeks will rebound  —   eventually."
"Monsieur Periné hails from Colombia, a country known for its   cumbia, as well as New   salsa. Instead, however, the band has embraced     jazz from the U. S. The unlikely inspiration has resulted in a large and international following, as well as a Latin Grammy not too long ago: Monsieur Periné was named 2015’s Best New Artist. Words don’t do this band justice. Play the video and discover Monsieur Periné’s magic for yourself. Caja De Música is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Felix Contreras, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Colin Marshall, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Republican Sen. Marco Rubio says Donald Trump is a ”con artist” who ripped off ordinary people and now wants to steal ”our country.” The Florida senator also said, in a debate Thursday night, along with all of his rivals, that he will support Trump if the businessman wins the Republican nomination. How could both statements possibly be true? As an answer, we have Rubio’s somber explanation, and also an example from history. ”You’ve just described the quandary that we’re in,” Rubio told me Friday on Morning Edition. ”I think Hillary Clinton’s a danger to our country, too. . .. Hillary Clinton is so bad,” he said, that he would vote for Trump to oppose her. The question still lingers. There have been cases of professional politicians bolting their party over a nominee they considered unacceptable the most spectacular example came in 1912. Former President Theodore Roosevelt turned against his fellow Republican, incumbent President William Howard Taft, and ran under the banner of his own, new party. Roosevelt and Taft split the GOP vote, which wrecked them both and led to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Why wouldn’t Rubio, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Ohio Gov. John Kasich threaten to do that? An answer may lie in the logic of political tribalism. We can see that logic at work in an incident earlier in Roosevelt’s career. In 1884, Roosevelt was a rising young Republican politician. He was only in his   but already a prominent figure in the New York State Legislature. He wanted to reform his party, which had grown corrupt in the Gilded Age. Roosevelt resolved that he must block the man who was in line for the Republican nomination  —   James G. Blaine of Maine. Blaine was a symbol of the corrupt Republican old guard and was widely believed to have personally profited from his work as speaker of the House. Young Roosevelt and his allies failed to stop Blaine, who was nominated at the GOP convention in 1884. Roosevelt was horrified. Afterward he wrote: ”It may be that the voice of the people is the voice of God in   cases out of a hundred,” but otherwise it might be ”the voice of the devil” or of ”a fool.” Roosevelt even told a reporter in private that ”any proper Democratic nominee will have our hearty support.” Yet a few weeks later, Roosevelt said he would support Blaine after all. ”I have been called a reformer, but I am a Republican,” he said. Why? Roosevelt biographer Henry F. Pringle wrote: ”Certainly no young man beginning a political career ever found himself in a sadder position than Roosevelt in June, 1884.” Pringle concluded that Roosevelt had acted out of personal pragmatism: Had he bolted his party, he would have destroyed his own career. Democrats would have welcomed him for as long as he was useful to them, but afterward would drop him, and ”he would have been the saddest of public figures, a politician without a party.” His great career would have been stunted. Roosevelt, of course, never admitted that he was bending his principles for ambition. Instead he convinced himself that the Democrat, Grover Cleveland, was even more corrupt than Blaine, and he campaigned for the Republican ticket on those grounds. There may have been a still deeper reason, though. Blaine, on reflection, was deeply flawed but not a genuine threat to the nation or to democracy itself. He was a capable politician who did not seem likely to disrupt much of anything if elected. In any case, he lost the election and never became president, as the canny Roosevelt probably foresaw. A more agonizing choice exists for today’s Republicans, some of whom have begun arguing that Trump is not merely a bad candidate but an actual danger to their party, to democracy and to the stability of the nation. The more they accept the harshest case against Trump, the harder it will be to explain their loyal support. Roosevelt’s 1884 tale nevertheless offers some insight. It also makes it striking that a few prominent Republicans have vowed never to vote for Trump. They include not only party grandees, but also Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. He is comparatively young for a senator at age 44, he is around the same age as Rubio and Cruz, and he was just elected to the Senate in 2014. He has declared that Trump’s ”relentless focus is on dividing Americans, and on tearing down rather than building back up this glorious nation,” and says he would never vote for him. Sasse accused Trump of a ”creepy” desire for the power of a king. Sasse, like young Theodore Roosevelt, may well have a long career ahead of him. His choice could plausibly put his career at risk  —   the same risk Roosevelt once dodged. Or he could end up writing new rules for the tribal game that is politics."
"Something is happening in the Republican Party that has not happened in living memory. The party of unity, tradition, order and hierarchy is breaking apart over one man who personifies the concept of disruption. Donald Trump’s   inexorable advance toward the Republican presidential nomination has divided the party. This divide is not like the garden variety primary fights of recent cycles. It goes beyond the familiar squabbles of the party’s postwar era (center versus right, moderate versus conservative, eastern versus western). What is coming looks more like the historic schism of 1912, when former President Theodore Roosevelt came back to challenge the   of his successor and fellow Republican, William H. Taft. That schism was exploited by Woodrow Wilson, the only Democrat elected between 1896 and 1932. On Thursday, the Grand Old Party’s most recent presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, delivered a stunning denunciation of its current presidential   Donald Trump, calling him a fraud and a phony who was ”playing the American people for suckers” and who would be a disaster in the White House. John McCain, the Arizona senator who had the party’s nomination in 2008, immediately signaled his support of his ”friend” Romney. Trump responded with a rambling takedown of Romney’s 2012 campaign. Major figures from the party’s officialdom and from the conservative media space lined up on one side or the other to be interviewed by journalists. Some thought Romney’s move would finally break the dam on Trump criticism within the party. Others thought it would ultimately harden Trump’s voter base all the more. A few hours later, a televised debate pitting Trump with his last three rivals turned so raucous and unruly that observers all across the political spectrum had cause to avert their eyes. The 11th meeting of the GOP candidates may have been the most bruising to date for Trump, the   candidate whose message and persona have dominated media coverage of the campaign since summer. Rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz largely ignored each other to concentrate on the man standing between them, offering a target for their crossfire. Among other low points was Trump’s reaction to Rubio joking about his anatomy. ”He referred to my hands,” said Trump. ”If they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there is no problem. I guarantee.” At one juncture, with Cruz and Trump talking over each other, Cruz tried to break the tension. ”Donald, learn not to interrupt,” he said. ”It’s not complicated. Count to 10. Breathe, Donald, breathe.” That prompted Rubio to ask when ”the yoga” would be over, and then to needle Trump for being ”very flexible”  —   a reference to Trump’s earlier explanations for his shifting positions on issues. The exuberant and unrestrained crowd in Detroit hooted and jeered throughout the evening, as Trump gave as good as he got with Rubio (”Little Marco”) and Cruz (”Lying Ted”). But Trump was often at a loss under questioning by the three Fox News moderators. The Fox team came loaded for bear, and Trump had more trouble with their inquiries than anyone else onstage. John Kasich, the Ohio governor and fourth wheel in the debate, received far less attention from the moderators and got almost no rebuttal time because the other candidates never attacked him. That flaw in the format, much decried by Kasich and a raft of other prospects who have already left the field, may have been the one failing of the Fox production. Moderators Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace drilled in with challenging questions, backed up with copious facts and at times illustrated with video clips, Kelly, who has crossed swords with Trump before, stuck with one line of questioning about former students who sued Trump’s online business college, Trump University. Rubio had raised the issue a week earlier in another debate, and Romney had returned to it in his summary of Trump’s failed ventures (which also included Trump Airlines, Trump Steaks, Trump Mortgage and Trump Vodka). Still, the most memorable moment in the   debate in Detroit’s historic Fox Theatre came near the end, when the candidates were asked if they would commit to supporting the party’s nominee in November. The question might have seemed unnecessary in previous election cycles, but nothing has been ordinary about this one. In fact, on this occasion, the question of party unity was not only relevant but painfully salient. Each of the four used the moment to get in a final pitch for himself, but all four also wound up saying, yes, they would support the nominee even if the party chose someone else. That was the ”right” answer, of course, in the traditional world of politics. But little about this debate followed tradition. And one had to wonder how committed all four really were to the pledge  —   and whether protestations of party loyalty would hold up under the strains now showing in the party’s coalition. After the debate, lively media commentary continued well into the wee hours of the new day, with conservatives as divided as the candidates. Trump had his defenders, as did Rubio (who has been a magnet for endorsements from elected officials) and Cruz (who has the backing of many ”movement conservatives” and Tea Party activists). ”There was no winner at the debate,” wrote Matthew Continetti,    of the staunchly conservative Washington Free Beacon. ”But there was certainly a loser: The GOP. It started this election cycle in a strong position, and is now on the precipice of nominating a political neophyte . .. whose unfavorable ratings are   and who loses to Hillary Clinton in practically every poll.” The possibility of Trump winning enough delegates to assure his nomination for president on the first ballot in Cleveland in July has caused many GOP and conservative leaders to scramble in search of any means to stop him. Suddenly, there has been open talk of an open convention, with strategies that might thwart the wishes of   primary voters and force the convention to consider alternatives. Randy Barnett, a professor at Georgetown University’s law school, has proposed that Cruz and Rubio form a partnership, with each pledging to support the other at the convention. They would then become a team and a prospective ticket, with the one who gets the most primary votes running for president and the other being guaranteed the vice presidential slot. Not a bad deal given that both men are still in their  . Others, including Romney, are suggesting that the three remaining rivals to Trump should defer to each other in states where one has a natural advantage, such as Kasich’s Ohio and Rubio’s Florida. That would not secure the nomination for any of them, but it would prevent Trump from amassing the 1, 237 delegates he needs for a   nomination. After that, delegates are no longer committed to vote for their candidate and anything could happen. For many veteran politicos, all this seems not just tall talk but crazy talk. No convention of either party has needed even a second ballot for the nomination since 1952, and Republicans have not needed multiple ballots since 1948. The last time a Republican convention had any semblance of suspense was in 1976, and on that occasion the shadow of doubt was dispelled shortly after the opening gavel. Since then, conventions have become duller with each quadrennial renewal, offering no suspense other than the choosing of a vice president or the debate over a plank in the platform. Even these elements have usually been drained of potential controversy. Few thought 2016 would be any different. But when things happen that cannot happen, it is time to reassess what is possible. Or, as Hunter S. Thompson once wrote of another presidential campaign: ”When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.”"
"Not even the best political forecasters could have guessed that Donald Trump’s hand and genitalia size would become 2016 presidential campaign topics. But they have, and it’s thanks in large part to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio insulted Trump on the campaign trail last week by claiming the business mogul has ”small hands”  —   and by implying that it extends to other parts of Trump’s body. And while many have criticized Rubio for dragging down the tone of the nation’s political debate, he defended his rhetoric Friday morning. When NPR’s Steve Inskeep asked Rubio whether he was stooping to Trump’s level, as some have suggested, the candidate said no. ”I think that’s not accurate. Please. That’s not even possible to be as crude as Trump,” he said. Rubio defended making ”a couple of jokes” at Trump’s expense because, Rubio said, Trump has been ”personally offending not just everyone in the race but women and minorities and the disabled.” ”At some point, someone’s got to stand up and say ’Hey, enough is enough,’” he said. ”If you think you’re going to attack people, you’re going to get hit back.” Rubio has been ramping up his verbal assaults on Trump lately, but it’s not just because he wants to defend marginalized demographics. The Florida senator is far behind Trump not only in polls, but in the delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination. Even in Rubio’s home state of Florida, he is polling far behind Trump. That state’s primary will be held on March 15. Rubio has won only one state thus far: Minnesota. If Rubio cannot pick up a win in his home state, it could be a   blow. For his part, Rubio said he doesn’t think the polls are accurate. ”We’re going to win Florida,” he said. He added, ”We feel confident about it, but we know that there’s a lot of work ahead.” Rubio’s attacks on Trump showed no sign of letting up at the Fox News debate  —   after the discussion of Trump’s hand size and other parts of his body had passed, Rubio also criticized him for being insufficiently conservative. And yet. Despite repeatedly bashing Trump, Rubio (along with his competitors, Ted Cruz and John Kasich) said at the end of the debate that, yes, he would support Trump if he won the nomination. When asked about that seeming contradiction, Rubio said he doesn’t want to ”choose between the lesser of two terrible choices”  —   that is, Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, whom Rubio characterized as ”a danger to our country.” Rubio added that the very premise of the question of whether he would support Trump should worry Republicans and spur them to back a different candidate. ”I don’t want the Republican nominee to be someone that people have to make excuses why they’re voting for him,” he said. ”What does that tell you when the Republican   is someone that people are being asked constantly, ’Would you support them if they win?’ It’s unprecedented.” When pressed on what exactly his ”excuses” for supporting Trump would be, Rubio responded, ”He makes it hard to answer that question because of the way he behaves.” He added that he is focused on becoming the nominee. But time is quickly running out to make that happen."
"NPR’s Audie Cornish spoke with Frannie Kelley of NPR Music’s podcast Microphone Check about Kendrick Lamar’s untitled unmastered. You can hear their conversation at the audio link.   fans received a surprise Thursday night: an unexpectedly released project from Kendrick Lamar called untitled unmastered. Each of untitled unmastered. ’s eight tracks is  —   as the album’s name headlines  —   untitled, followed by a date. If those dates (most of which fall between 2013 and 2014) are correct, it means they were recorded during the same period as Lamar’s masterful To Pimp A Butterfly. As of Friday morning, untitled unmastered. was available across many music platforms, including Spotify, iTunes and Tidal. When this music made its way online last night, some news outlets breathlessly hailed it as the leak of a ”surprise new album” featuring ”eight new songs.” That’s not quite right, though. The project’s title suggests a certain fluidity and    liminality, and its cover is an unadorned, almost industrial green field. It’s a strategy that nods to the    feel behind Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo. A lot of this material will be familiar to attentive listeners as NME points out, Lamar has already performed certain passages from this project quite publicly already, including on TV performances on shows like The Colbert Report and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. And the sprawling,   ”untitled 07” is partly a reworking  —   or rough, improvised version  —   of material that appears earlier on untitled unmastered.  There were hints that something was in the works earlier this week already, starting with a    Instagram post on Wednesday from Anthony Tiffith  —   the CEO of Lamar’s label, Top Dawg Entertainment  —   which Lamar promptly retweeted. All of the signs in untitled unmastered. point to this release as a snapshot of Lamar’s creative process, but given the intensity with which his work is received, and that surprise   drops have become almost expected in the marketplace, many fans may interpret this project as a full artistic statement."
"Last summer, a   woman and NPR listener reached out with an unusual request. She asked me to help find her sister, who’d vanished in the mountains of Yunnan province in southwest China. ”My little sister has been missing since Nov. 23, 2013,” the woman wrote in an email. ”She married a farmer in a remote village and was abused by her husband shortly after her marriage. She escaped from him after a few abuses.” Then, her little sister disappeared. Her account on WeChat, China’s most popular social media app, went dark, along with her cellphones. Police had initially investigated but seemed to have lost interest in the case. The big sister, who works in IT in the American Midwest, had heard a radio series in which I drive a free cab around Shanghai, giving people rides as a way to learn about the lives of ordinary Chinese. ”By reading and listening to your reports,” the woman wrote, ”I know you can help me.” People disappear in China all the time. Boys are kidnapped and sold to couples who want sons. Back in the 1990s, I traveled with a private detective who rescued women who’d been sold to farmers as wives. There’s even a popular TV show devoted to helping people find their missing loved ones, called Dengzhewo, which means ”waiting for me” in Mandarin. This particular case, though, stood out. It offered an intimate way to understand some of the country’s dramatic changes through the lives of two sisters  —   one Chinese, the other    —   who’d taken very different paths. To protect their privacy, and because our investigation unearthed sensitive personal details, NPR is not naming the women or other characters in this story. My assistant, Yang Zhuo, and I met the big sister at an airport in Yunnan last fall. Her journey back to China was not only a quest to find her little sister but also an attempt to do her duty, according to Chinese family tradition, as the   sibling. Her mother had passed away, and her father was a simple farmer who lacked the skills to mount an investigation. We set out in an SUV, driving through lush valleys carved by muddy rivers. After a couple of hours, we hit a military checkpoint. A soldier in body armor with an automatic rifle asked for our IDs and where we were heading. It was a reminder that we were traveling in a distant, dicier part of China near the border with Myanmar and Laos. The region just south of here is known as the Golden Triangle, and it’s notorious for heroin smuggling and human trafficking. A Troubled History, As we continued into the mountains, Big Sister filled us in on her family’s history. The girls had grown up with three other siblings on a farm in Heilongjiang province, in China’s far northeast, in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of the children were born before China instituted its   population policy. This was also at a time when the country was just beginning to shift from communism to capitalism. The family was poor, and sometimes there wasn’t enough to eat. Little Sister struggled in school. ”She even studied so hard, even harder than anyone else in the family,” Big Sister said. ”She never got good scores.” Against the family’s wishes, Little Sister left school at 16 and moved to the city. With few skills, she fell into sex work. ”It’s just for survival,” said Big Sister. ”A couple of times, she called me when I was abroad and she was beaten. Her nose was broken.” Starting in the 1990s, tens of millions of women moved from the countryside to the city to earn money, as China shifted from being a nation of farmers to one of urban workers. Many women worked in factories. The brighter ones went into professions. Big Sister, for instance, became a nurse. Those with fewer skills, like Little Sister, sometimes ended up in massage parlors. In the old communist China, the two sisters would probably have lived similar, circumscribed lives  —   essentially poor and rural. Under capitalism, they had new opportunities in an increasingly competitive society  —   which was less predictable and carried more risk. After saving some money, Little Sister quit sex work and moved more than 2, 000 miles away to the southwest corner of the country. Amid the warmer, more relaxed climate of Yunnan, she tried to reinvent herself  —   something that is becoming as much a part of modern Chinese culture as it is in the U. S. Little Sister studied business books to learn about investing. She looked into buying a bar and becoming a legitimate businesswoman. A Sudden, Short Marriage, In the fall of 2013, she surprised her family and suddenly married a rubber farmer. After little more than a month, though, she left him. She told Big Sister that her husband accused her of cheating on him. Big Sister wondered if her little sister’s past  —   which she had moved to Yunnan to bury  —   was coming back to haunt her. ”Does he know what you did before and is that the reason he watches you so closely?” Big Sister asked in a series of WeChat audio messages, which she’s preserved. ”If that’s the case, he’ll never trust you.” Little Sister said her husband grew suspicious because she often traveled alone to a city several hours away to check on some investments that she’d kept secret from him. She said her husband began to beat her. ”I told him, ’Don’t beat me anymore,’ ” Little Sister said over WeChat. ” ’My injuries haven’t healed. If you beat me again, I couldn’t bear it.’ ” Little Sister was now 34. Her attempts to find a lasting relationship and turn her life around weren’t working. ”I myself feel empty, always feel empty,” Little Sister said as she wept. ”I simply want to find a man who dearly loves me. Why is it so difficult?” She wanted a divorce, but said she was too afraid to face her husband again. A lawyer told her if she disappeared for two years, she could obtain a divorce without having to appear in court. She told her big sister she was heading to another part of the province to start anew. ”You don’t need to worry,” she reassured Big Sister. ”I got off the bus yesterday and am now staying at a hotel.” That was Nov. 22, 2013. According to police, she checked out of a hotel a few days later. No one has heard from her since. Last year, a sign of hope emerged. Police received an alert that Little Sister’s ID number had been used at a bank in Dalian, a coastal city in northeast China where she’d previously lived. The cops thought she was following the lawyer’s advice and was in hiding. ’She Really Ran Away’ One of the last people to see her was her husband. So we drove up a   dirt road, past banana groves, looking for his farmhouse. We were a little anxious. Police had told us he had recently spent time in jail for theft. The husband, a skinny    was surprised to see us, but courteous. He offered us tiny wooden stools, typical seating for guests in China’s countryside. Soon, Big Sister confronted him. ”Do you know what happened exactly?” she said angrily. ”Where did she go? Or did you kill her?” ”If I’d killed her, I wouldn’t still be here,” he said. ”She really ran away. You guys should not think that I sold her to someone or killed her. I’ve never done things like that.” He said the couple had quarreled a lot, but he denied ever beating her. The husband also said Little Sister was secretive about her past. The day they picked up their marriage license, in October 2013, the clerk asked her to produce a divorce certificate. Her    was stunned. ”Before we got our marriage license, she had just divorced a guy, just a month earlier,” he said. ”When we were dating, she didn’t tell me that.” A Big Sister’s Hopes Are Dashed, The next day, we had lunch with one of Little Sister’s friends, a local businessman with chiseled good looks. The friend, who wore a black   said Little Sister read lots of   books and was often depressed. ”She gave out a feeling of loneliness,” said the friend, who has a wife and son several provinces away, near Shanghai. ”She was clearly unhappy.” Warm and gregarious, he talked for nearly two hours, but actually said very little. He insisted he had no idea where the woman was. We were now down to our last lead. Big Sister booked a flight to Dalian, to follow up on the information from police about Little Sister’s ID number showing up at the bank. ”I really hope it was her,” she said, as we saw her off at the airport, ”so we are just a step away from finding her.” But that hope  —   the one that had kept Big Sister going throughout our journey  —   soon evaporated. Bank officials told her there had been a misunderstanding. Little Sister hadn’t been to the bank after all. While the bank was reorganizing accounts, there was a computer glitch. Little Sister’s ID number popped up, triggering an alert to police in Yunnan. Big Sister had arrived in China thinking her little sister was still alive. Now, she feared the worst. ”I don’t think anything good happened to her,” she said, choking back tears as we spoke over WeChat. ”She’s a tough survivor. She would think of a way to contact somebody from the family or the police. I think she was probably killed by somebody.” But who? And why? A Forged Medical Report, Before returning to the U. S. Big Sister went to Little Sister’s empty apartment in a city along the Mekong River, where she’d lived before she got married and had stored her belongings before going on the run. Big Sister discovered medical results on a coffee table, showing that her little sister was pregnant a few months before she disappeared. Earlier, her family had also found a love note revealing Little Sister was having an affair with the handsome businessman  —   something he’d denied during our long lunch. There was something odd, too, about the pregnancy results. The little sister’s given age was wrong, making her seem a decade younger. Puzzled, Yang and I went to the hospital that issued the document and showed a copy to several doctors. ”Where was this test done?” asked one physician. ”It’s not done by us. Our department doesn’t have a doctor by this name or an ID number like this. This report is fake!” Another physician called up Little Sister’s medical records and found an earlier, legitimate pregnancy test, which had been negative. He said Little Sister appeared to have created the positive test report using a Microsoft Word document. Why would someone forge a pregnancy test? ”Some girls want to take some leave from their jobs,” said the first doctor. ”Others lie to a man, saying ’I’m pregnant’ to get a sum of money.” Little Sister didn’t have a job, but she did have some money, so Yang and I suspected there was probably another motive. What had started as a hopeful search was turning more ominous. Yang and I called the businessman. We expected him to hang up. Instead, he spoke for 40 minutes and came clean about the affair. He said he and Little Sister had fallen in love. ”She wanted me to get a divorce and then marry her,” he explained. ”But I told her when this all started, ’I have a family.’ ” He said he broke up with Little Sister and last saw her in the fall of 2013, not long before she vanished. Given the heavy drug trade and human trafficking in this part of China, he said he assumed something terrible had happened. ”After such a long time, she could have contacted her family,” he said. ”She’s either been taken hostage or someone has murdered her.” The Dark Side Of The Dream, Big Sister thinks her sister’s relationship with the businessman led to her disappearance, at least indirectly. ”If he were not married, they probably would have a nice family together and my sister probably would end up with a nicer life,” she said. Little Sister’s story of failed reinvention  —   with potentially fatal consequences  —   is a particularly Chinese one. Over the past two decades, under capitalism, something new has developed in China: individual dreams. It’s one of the most exciting and encouraging developments in the country. People figure if they work hard, take risks, maybe they can succeed. Big Sister is emblematic of those dreams. She came from a poor farming village, eventually made it to America, continued her education there and landed an IT job. Little Sister represents the dark side of the dream. She didn’t have many skills, struggled and went into illicit work. When she tried to turn her life around, it seems she couldn’t escape her past. For all the many success stories here, China can be tough and unforgiving. Some people just don’t make it. NPR News Assistant Yang Zhuo contributed to this report. "
"When astronaut Scott Kelly’s space capsule touched down in Kazakhstan, it was a familiar scene to Mark Kelly, who is a retired astronaut and Scott’s identical twin. NASA is conducting a ”twin study” on the brothers to explore what spaceflight does to the body. Multiple universities are involved in the research. ”We’re going to need to understand this really well before we decide to send people to Mars on an extended mission,” Mark Kelly tells NPR’s Renee Montagne on Morning Edition. For the study, he acts as a control to compare to his twin, who broke the U. S. record for longest space journey. Kelly says one part of the study will look into the impact of space on aging. ”One of the universities is studying a genetic indicator of how people age, and that’s the length of your telomeres. So the length of your telomeres is indicative of your physical age,” he says. Researchers are looking into whether that physical age is linked to the significant amount of radiation that astronauts are exposed to in space, Kelly says. He adds: ”I’m not the scientist here, but I would presume the radiation would have a negative effect.” As NASA explains, ”The most dangerous aspect of traveling to Mars is space radiation. On the space station, astronauts receive over 10 times the radiation than what’s naturally occurring on Earth.” NASA breaks down the components of their study: While his brother was in orbit, Kelly was providing NASA with his data for the study, including MRIs, ultrasounds, and blood and urine samples. One effect of the extended time in space has already come and gone, Kelly says. His brother was temporarily 2 inches taller: ”In space without gravity, everybody stretches. But when you get back to Earth, gravity has this effect on you and it pushes you back. So by the time he got back to Houston, they actually measured both of us at about 3 in the morning after he got back and we were exactly the same height again.” Kelly also talked about how his brother is feeling now that he’s back on Earth, beyond the shifting height and the unseen effects of radiation: ”You know, he’s pretty sore right now and he’s tired. People don’t sleep particularly well in space. And you know, a lot of hard work and then the fiery return in the Soyuz capsule. So he obviously doesn’t feel 100 percent. Except his neurovestibular system is really, really good  —   I mean, you would expect somebody after that period of time to be dizzy and have balance issues. He doesn’t have balance issues. He doesn’t have any of that. So he is doing remarkably well.”"
"Zootopia is both an animated charmer and a   ready world that’s precisely what it sounds like: an anthropomorphic utopia where animals have overcome the   divide to live in   harmony, in ecologically distinct districts. Disney animators have conjured up in gratifyingly intricate detail a Tundra Town, Sahara Square, even a   village for mice and moles. Our heroine is country rabbit Judy Hopps (voice of Ginnifer Goodwin) who dreams of joining the police force, though even her folks think she’s too small, too fuzzy, too    to deal with trouble in paradise. And there is trouble in paradise. ”Fourteen missing mammal cases,” bellows Zootopia’s water buffalo police chief (Idris Elba) ”all predators, from a giant polar bear to a teensy little otter.” Though the chief assigns her to   detail, Officer Hopps hops to it,   with a helpful sheep (Jenny Slate) in the mayor’s office  —   the lamb to the mayor’s lion as it were  —   and also with a fox named Nick (Jason Bateman) who would traditionally be a nemesis to both of them. You’ll have gathered that the filmmakers are playing here with stereotypes  —   playing quite cleverly, in fact, with notions of social diversity, ”The mammal inclusion initiative is starting to pay off” is the sort of line that will fly right over the heads of tots but offers adults a reason to stick around. As are the jokes about such societal annoyances as lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Imagine a DMV staffed entirely with   sloths. (Actually, you don’t have to, because the filmmakers have beaten you to it, and uproariously, too.) Credit the Disney folks with making what could have been a lecture on stereotypes into one of the more amusing animated kidflicks of recent vintage. When you consider that this is the same      studio that once made Song of the South . .. well, let’s just say Zootopia suggests we’ve all come a long way."
"One day after congressional lawmakers grilled the FBI chief and Apple’s top lawyer about government’s access to encrypted data, another smaller, less spotlighted panel convened on Capitol Hill  —   to tackle the question of the government’s warrantless geolocation tracking. The issues aren’t exactly similar. In Apple’s legal clash with the FBI, at stake is the scope of government’s power to compel the cooperation of an unwilling tech company to gain access to encrypted information. Here, the question is how easy it should be for law enforcement to track someone’s whereabouts. But underlying it all is the heated  —   and growing  —   public debate over privacy in the age when technology makes our lives increasingly transparent and   more convenient. It’s a debate that’s flooding media headlines, landing in courts around the country and, in Washington, creating unlikely alliances. ”I find myself in a very difficult spot. I don’t know that I have on many occasions ever agreed with the [American Civil Liberties Union],” North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows said at the hearing of the House Oversight Committee. ”And I don’t know on many occasions that I’ve ever gone against law enforcement. And yet this fundamental question that we’re here today addressing is . .. very troubling, because the expectation of privacy foundationally is what all Americans presume that they should enjoy.” The remark was addressed at Richard Downing, deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, who testified about the value of location information to investigators. Someone shot at a federal judge in Florida and records of the phones that were nearby helped quickly narrow down the list of suspects. In California, shooters killed two people and stole the victims’ phones phone location details helped build a case against the two suspects. The overarching question that the lawmakers are tackling is whether law enforcement’s access to details of where someone has gone or will go, as recorded by phones and other devices, should require a search warrant and ”probable cause.” Tangled History, The issue goes back years. A seminal court decision landed in 2012, when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in U. S. v Jones that attaching a GPS device to a car and tracking its movements constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures of people and their effects. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the court opinion, argued that installing such a device on the car of a suspected drug trafficker under an expired warrant amounted to a search and violated the Fourth Amendment. However, he left unresolved the question of whether the process of tracking the movements of the car, over time, was something that required a ”probable cause” warrant. Different federal courts have since ruled differently on whether ”probable cause” or ”reasonable suspicion” may be the right standard to obtain various geolocation records, and two cases are pending. None have yet dealt with any newer technology, like fitness trackers or navigation systems built into cars, but the debate has long centered on cellphones. Phones regularly ping cell towers (aka cell sites) to register their position, producing location histories and other records. Such historical data are a business record collected by phone companies, and in their responses to an inquiry from Sen. Ed Markey,  . in 2013 major telephone carriers said they retain location data from cell towers for as little as six months and up to five years. Investigators could also request   updates from telephone companies. Or, they could use a device called a   simulator, more commonly known as a Stingray, that intercepts phone signals and collects geolocation and other data by pretending to be a cellphone tower. Facing a public outcry over the use of Stingrays last year, the Justice Department set a new requirement that all federal investigators get a warrant from a judge demonstrating probable cause, in most domestic criminal probes. Past Or Present? According to Downing, the Justice Department’s guidance also does require probable cause warrants for   tracking of phone locations, as they are considered more intrusive  —   but not for historic data from cell towers, which are technically subject to the reasonable suspicion standard. Though phone carriers have generally aligned their approach with the DOJ standard, the federal tracking policies don’t directly apply to local and state law enforcement, and their potential application to new technologies is unclear. The DOJ has a memo delineating all elements of the federal agency’s interpretation of the Jones decision by the Supreme Court, but it remains unavailable even to lawmakers, prompting ongoing tiffs with House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz,  . ”There’s just not a great deal of transparency over what data is being stored and what law enforcement believes the standard should be,” says Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel at the ACLU, which has been lobbying for greater transparency and stricter legal standards. ”It’s like you’re trying to cure the disease and you don’t understand the disease,” she says. The distinction between historic and   data in particular drew concerns from various lawmakers at the hearing. ”I completely don’t understand that distinction,” said Rep. Ted Lieu,  . ”I think it’s stupid and meaningless.” Several of his Republican colleagues particularly zoomed in on the fact, disclosed by The Guardian last year, that the Internal Revenue Service has Stingray gear and could be tracking people. The IRS has been in the bull’  of many conservative Republicans following the allegations that it targeted political Tea Party groups. Chaffetz’s bill, the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, would require a warrant for any geolocation data and has the support of the ACLU  —   but it’s not actively moving through Congress since its reintroduction last year. Michael Doucette, the commonwealth’s attorney from Lynchburg, Va. argued that requiring a search warrant to get a suspect’s past phone locations would thwart investigations in early stages: ”A lot of times when we’re strictly in the investigative stage, it would shut down the investigation completely because we would not have that level of probable cause,” he told lawmakers. ”We’re using this particular information to establish probable cause, not that we already have it.”"
"Think of it as a galactic baby photo: a red blotch representing what a galaxy looked like just 400 million years after the Big Bang. NASA says the ”surprisingly bright infant galaxy” known as   is the farthest galaxy ever seen from Earth, at 13. 4 billion years in the past. ”We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble,” says principal investigator Pascal Oesch of Yale University. ”We see   at a time when the universe was only 3 percent of its current age.” In what should qualify as the longest   ever represented in video, NASA released a video showing the portion of the Earth’s night sky where the galaxy was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is in an area just above where the handle of the Big Dipper meets its cup  —   or, if you prefer, it’s just above Ursa Major’s rump. The achievement puts astronomers another step closer to the galaxies that first formed in the earliest years after the Big Bang. Before now, the farthest observed galaxy was 13. 2 billion years in the past. As for what   looks like, it’s ”25 times smaller than the Milky Way and has just one percent of our galaxy’s mass in stars,” NASA says, adding that the galaxy’s prolific formation of stars accounts for its visibility. Explaining the galaxy’s reddish appearance, the agency says: ”Astronomers measure large distances by determining the ’redshift’ of a galaxy. This phenomenon is a result of the expansion of the universe every distant object in the universe appears to be receding from us because its light is stretched to longer, redder wavelengths as it travels through expanding space to reach our telescopes. The greater the redshift, the farther the galaxy.”"
"Historical preservationists in southwest England have just one question for the birds that are tormenting them: Why? OK, two questions: Could they stop, please? Jackdaws  —   small birds in the crow family that are common in the U. K.  —   have been tearing apart the roof of a historic thatched barn in Avebury, Wiltshire. The   Tithe Barn, owned by the U. K.’s National Trust, is home to a museum dedicated to the Avebury Henge. Three years ago, the National Trust raised money to     of the roof, at a cost of £75, 000 (previous media reports had erroneously suggested a cost of £100, 000). The project was a great success  —   for six months. Then the jackdaws swooped in. Ever since, the birds have been steadily pulling pieces of straw out of the roof  —   and ”idly discarding them,” as the National Trust put it in a statement. ”We don’t know why they are doing this,” Karl Papierz, the National Trust’s building surveyor for Avebury, said in the statement. The birds don’t seem to be finding any food in the roof, Papierz noted. And while a few pieces of straw are used in nests, he said, ”most is simply pulled and discarded.” ”They even pile it up to make a ledge they can use to stand on and pull out more.” Master thatcher Ed Coney, who worked on the roof restoration project, was quoted by the BBC as saying it was ” ” to watch his handiwork pulled apart. NPR attempted to speak with Coney, but at the time this piece was written, he was ”perched on top of a roof,” as he put it, and unavailable for comment. Papierz, the building surveyor, says the National Trust has tried method after method of deterring the birds, to no avail. Coating the thatch? Mounting wooden falcons? Installing spinning decoys? Laying netting over the thatch to block the birds? Removing netting so the birds don’t have a foothold? The birds have figured out a way around every method. ”While we win for a period of time, the jackdaws eventually come back and start pulling straw again,” Papierz said. ”It is very frustrating.” ”Jackdaws are very clever birds,” he said. If you’re thinking there’s a straightforward solution to the problem  —   one that involves firearms, perhaps  —   think again. Jackdaws, like other members of the crow family, are protected animals in the U. K. and permits to kill or trap them can only be granted to prevent serious damage to crops, livestock, public health or other wild birds. The Tithe Barn isn’t the only building where jackdaws have wreaked havoc on the roof, with no apparent benefit to themselves  —   but it’s not a problem for every thatched building. The arbitrariness with which birds pick such targets is apparently a source of frustration for building owners: The U. K.’s Thatch Advice Center writes, ”We know about birds attacking roofs. . .. How many times have we heard someone say  —   why my roof and not the one next door, they were both thatched at a similar time?” The site offers no answer. For now, Coney, the master thatcher, is working with the National Trust to set up a new deterrent: netting suspended above the roof on metal supports. And the preservation society is working on a   solution  —   one that might bear less resemblance to a hairnet."
"Crimson sand dunes, cracked desert floors, big open skies and landscapes that look like paintings  —   it’s no wonder why Namibia was   four times at the Academy Awards for helping Mad Max: Fury Road take home six Oscars  —   the biggest haul of the night. ”It was a year of our lives in the Namibian desert,” said Jenny Beavan in her acceptance speech for best costume design. ”We had the most amazing crew.” For Obed Emvula, chairman of the   Namibia Film Commission, the Oscar buzz was music to his ears. Since Mad Max premiered in Cannes last May, his group, which coordinated locations for the film when it was shot in 2012, has seen an increase in inquiries from global film companies. So he’s working hard to bring the local film industry up to   standards. ”American companies now know that there is a place like Namibia,” he says. In fact, the southwestern African country is no stranger to Hollywood. Its towering dunes in Southern Namib, its moonlike rock formations in the Namib Escarpment and the bottomless Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world, have been used as set locations for feature films like 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968, The Cell from 2000 and 10, 000 B. C. from 2008. ”Namibia is an unknown and virgin territory,” says Emvula. ”It’s the perfect setting for film.”  Aside from the country’s stunning landscapes, it has the infrastructure to welcome huge casts and crews, says Emvula. There are   hotels with Internet access within 30 minutes of some of the most striking scenery in the coastal areas. Films can shoot almost any time: there are 300 days of sunshine a year. And because the country has only 2. 3 million people (compare that to Nigeria’s 177 million) it’s easier to get shots of the natural environment without people in them. There was an uptick in U. S. films shot in Namibia in the early 2000s, but interest slowed because of the global recession  —   it’s expensive to film abroad. And other exotic locales became popular. The desert scenes in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, were shot in Morocco, for example, while The Martian’s red rocks were found in Jordan.  To stay competitive, Emvula says Namibia’s film industry is working with the government to provide more incentives for international film, documentary and TV companies. This includes marketing efforts to get more movies made in Namibia and training in film production for locals. The idea, he says, is to have people who know how to work in the industry when the opportunity arrives. All of this will help increase what Emvula calls ”film tourism” in an economy dependent on exporting minerals like diamonds and uranium. When a movie like Mad Max comes to town, he explains, jobs are created, hotel rooms are booked, cars are rented, fuel is purchased, restaurants are busy and retail shops sell goods. In 2012, the Guardian reported that the film brought in more than $38 million, employing about 900 local staff. ”Locals benefit by getting jobs, which means they can then pay taxes and send their kids to the dentist and give their money to church,” says Emvula. ”The economy booms when a film comes.” As inviting as all the incentives are, there are some downsides. Although Namibia is an   income country, half the country lives below the poverty line. That means labor costs are cheap  —   but there’s no union to protect these workers or stop crews from filming around the clock. And there’s been concern about environmental damage caused by reckless film crews. In a letter to the Namibian government, a Namibian tour guide named Kit Collard wrote that the   Mad Max crew destroyed sensitive dune ecosystems and disrupted animal habitats in the Namib Desert in the process of filming. They go ”where they want, when they want,” she wrote. A leaked environmental report commissioned by the government found that public consultation prior to funding was insufficient. The film commission took out a   advertisement in a   newspaper denying the claims. Emluva says a representative from the Ministry of Environmental Tourism ensures that landscapes are rehabilitated after being used in movie scenes, including the ones used in Mad Max. But Collard criticizes the quality. In her letter, translated from German, she writes, ”Though they look good, the process has [left the landscape] even more damaged.” New environmental legislation aims to protect the landscape. ”It’s important that whoever enters our country feels welcome while using our spectacular scenes as a backdrop,” writes Marinda Stein, a Namibian filmmaker and founder of RedHot Film Productions, in an   to us. ”And that there’s mutual respect on both ends during the production process.”"
"It’s always a good week when Audie Cornish or Barrie Hardymon sit in, but this week, with Stephen off finishing the Austin 100 (which is now available for your ears!) they both stepped into the studio with me and Glen Weldon to talk about the end of Downton Abbey, which ends its run on PBS Sunday night  —   and which, of course, ended its UK run at Christmas. We talk about the overall arc of the show, its devotion to romance above all, its surprises and quagmires, and poor, poor Edith, who really deserves some degree of happiness, don’t you think? In our second segment, we broaden out to consider period pieces more generally, from what makes them charming to what obligation they have to represent fairly what particular time periods really would have been like  —   especially for those not in the most powerful or luxurious positions. As always, we close with what’s making us happy this week. Audie is happy about a film she previously recommended having a great night, and also about a phenomenon you can find all over Twitter under the perfectly logical hashtag #TrapCovers. Glen is happy about the finale of Gravity Falls and about the return of Better Call Saul and its related podcast. Barrie is happy about waiting for Outlander to return to her warm embrace. And I am happy about several things: the Austin 100, our meetup happening Saturday night in Brooklyn at Lowlands Bar at 5:00 p. m. how good American Crime is, how bonkers Real Housewives Of Potomac is, and the crazy magic of the Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. But mostly the meetup! I might not shake your hand if I still have a cold, but come and say hello to me, Stephen, Glen, Jessica, Gene and Kat. Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: me, Glen, Barrie, Audie, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus Mike."
"The billing office is one of the friendliest places on campus, says Aja Beckham, a junior at the University of Illinois at  . What wasn’t friendly: her bill, and the big number on it. Ever since her freshman year, she says, her biggest struggle in college has been figuring out how to pay for it. It’s a problem that colleges might want to pay more attention to. At least that’s what a lot of sophomores told us. When news came out that 44 schools are setting out to revamp their approach for   freshmen in that crucial first year, we asked some students who’ve just lived through it what they would fix. While schools are focusing on policy changes, like more advising and a revamped curriculum, the biggest thing we heard? It’s all about financial aid. The students told us they need a lot more information than merely how to access funding. They want to know: How much should I borrow? What loans should I apply for? And wait, what do all those numbers mean again? Surveys show that students don’t know much at all about their financial aid packages. No surprise, we heard that financial aid forms like the dreaded FAFSA are bewildering. That’s why Marquez Cartharn, a sophomore at Missouri Southern State University, wishes there were somebody on campus to walk you through the process. ”I feel like if we had something that actually teaches you how to go through that and get through that thoroughly,” he says. ”That would be a lot easier.” Kyle Wickham, a sophomore at the University of Chicago, agrees: ”You get this piece of paper with all these numbers, so how does this work?” His school has a   organization that tries to walk underclassmen through the financial aid process, and the group is encouraging the university to take over the program officially. ”This is a problem we don’t really see the school taking on,” he says. Students also need guidance on how much financial aid to accept, according to Garnell Purcell, a sophomore at Stevenson University in Maryland, just north of Baltimore. If students aren’t careful, he says, they accept loans for more than they need to cover tuition, which increases their debt. Purcell says students need to know which loans to accept and how to manage their money. In addition to the billing office at her school, Aja Beckham spent a lot of time in the financial aid office during her freshman year. ”I think that’s why my grades were suffering during that time,” she explains. She says school officials couldn’t help her find other funding sources. ”So I would just give up on when it came to doing homework. Because I don’t know if I’m even going to be here, so why waste my time with homework and studying?” Several students spoke about the problems they had connecting with students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. That made it harder to cultivate friendships  —   a crucial element in feeling at home on campus. Harder, but not impossible. Cynthia Lockwood, a sophomore at Tuskegee University in Alabama, says she was able to bridge the gap between two friends who grew up in very different circumstances. One of those friends grew up much like she did. ”When we were younger, we went without food some nights,” Lockwood explains, ”whereas, my other friend, she never experienced any of that. But now we kind of share our stories and we can understand, ’Well this is where you came from and this is where I came from.’ ” Another issue the sophomores raised? Connecting with professors. As a University of Oregon freshman from a   family, Caden Williams says it was harder for him to approach teachers who weren’t empathetic. Like Williams, many students said they wished there had been specific sensitivity training for faculty and professors on how to best work with students from   backgrounds. The issues that come up aren’t malicious, they say, just ignorant. Although the students we spoke with came from a wide range of backgrounds, they all agreed on one thing: It’s great that schools are starting to pay attention to the problems of the freshman year, but more needs to be done. ”These conversations have been happening, but they’re getting bigger and bigger,” says Nicole Sanchez, a sophomore at Yale University. ”The student body is changing, and the administration needs to do better.”"
"Ted Cruz and Donald Trump split victories on Saturday, with the Texas senator posting big wins in the Kansas and Maine GOP caucuses and the real estate mogul winning the Kentucky caucuses and Louisiana primary. In the Democratic race, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders notched victories in the Kansas and Nebraska caucuses, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the Louisiana primary. The Republicans: Cruz emerges as leading   candidate, Cruz posted impressive margins in both Kansas and Maine, and he beat Trump in the closed caucuses, where only registered Republicans could vote. Trump added   stop in Kansas this morning, canceling a planned appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in favor of a rally in Wichita. But it was Cruz who would win by more than a    in Kansas. In Maine, he won by 13 points. Trump had campaigned in Maine this week as well and hoped to have a strong showing, touting his endorsement from Maine Gov. Paul LePage. But Cruz also stumped in the state on Friday, and the more favorable closed GOP caucus format appears to have played to Cruz’s strengths. Trump won    contests in Louisiana and Kentucky, but because of the tight margins it’s Cruz who actually ended the night having netted the most delegates. Cruz will receive 64 total delegates, while Trump gets 49 delegates, per the Associated Press projections. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio nets just 13 delegates while Ohio Gov. John Kasich picked up nine. Cruz got another big win at CPAC’s annual straw poll, winning 40 percent of the votes, followed by Rubio at 30 percent and Trump with just 15 percent. Speaking from Idaho Saturday evening, where he’s campaigning ahead of the state’s primary on Tuesday, Cruz told the crowd, ”The scream you hear, the howl that comes from Washington, D. C. is utter terror at what we the people are doing together.” Later on Saturday, Trump held a press conference in Palm Beach, Fla. where he downplayed his losses, saying he hadn’t campaigned heavily in those states anyway. ”Ted should do well in Maine, because it’s very close to Canada,” Trump said, jabbing at Cruz’s birthplace he has argued disqualifies him for the White House. One thing the two men may have agreed on though was that it is shaping up to be a   race. ”I think it’s time for [Rubio] to drop out of the race,” Trump said. ”I would love to take on Ted   .” Rubio was a distant third or fourth in the races on Saturday, and failed to even meet the threshold to net any delegates in Louisiana and Maine. Though Rubio’s team has argued that the states where he is expected to do well, such as his home state of Florida, have yet to vote. Kasich is banking on strong finishes this Tuesday in Michigan and in his home of Ohio on March 15th. The Democrats: Sanders takes two, looks ahead to bigger prizes, Sanders beat Clinton by more than a    margin in Kansas and notched a 13 point victory in Nebraska. Clinton won Louisiana by 48 points, where the Democratic electorate was expected to be majority   continuing her sweep of Southern states she began on Super Tuesday. And thanks to that big win in Louisiana, she ended up winning the most delegates of the night. According to the AP, Clinton will walk away with 55 pledged delegates, while Sanders nets 47. In a statement, Sanders argued his best states are yet to come. ”We’ve got the momentum, the energy and the excitement that will take us all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia,” the Vermont senator said. ”I feel good about our campaign because the voters are sending a clear message. No matter what the pundits say, it is the voters who will decide this election.” The two Democrats will debate Sunday night on CNN at 8 p. m. ET in Flint, Mich."
"Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is the winner of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference’s presidential straw poll. Cruz won 40 percent of the votes from the conservative gathering’s 2, 659 attendees who voted. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio took second place with 30 percent. GOP   Donald Trump, who controversially canceled his appearance planned for Saturday morning, finished third with just 15 percent. Ohio Gov. John Kasich was fourth with 8 percent. It’s a boost for Cruz’s argument that he’s the leading conservative in the race, and comes on a day where he’s hoping to pull out several wins in GOP caucuses. He was declared the winner of the Kansas GOP caucuses, which are seeing record turnout. Still to come are results in the Maine and Kentucky caucuses as well as the Louisiana primary. Cruz gave a rousing speech to the annual gathering on Friday, attacking Trump for skipping CPAC and painting him as an inauthentic conservative. ”I think somebody told him Megyn Kelly would be here, or even worse he was told conservatives were going to be here,” he joked, referencing Trump’s feud with the popular Fox News anchor. Cruz has worked to solidify support among the type of voters the popular conference attracts  —   younger, more   voters. That’s one reason that either Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul or his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, have won the straw poll five of the last six years. Here’s the past CPAC straw poll winners: 1976: Ronald Reagan 1980: Ronald Reagan 1984: Ronald Reagan 1986: Jack Kemp 1987: Jack Kemp 1993: Jack Kemp 1995: Phil Gramm 1998: Steve Forbes 1999: Gary Bauer 2000: George W. Bush 2005: Rudy Giuliani 2006: George Allen 2007: Mitt Romney 2008: Mitt Romney 2009: Mitt Romney 2010: Ron Paul 2011: Ron Paul 2012: Mitt Romney 2013: Rand Paul 2014: Rand Paul, 2015: Rand Paul, Domenico Montanaro contributed."
"Updated November 11, 3:40 a. m. ET.  While photographer Robin Hammond was on assignment with National Geographic Magazine in Nigeria in 2014, he heard about five young men in Lagos who were arrested and facing the death penalty  —   just because they were gay. A few days later, he tracked them down. By that time, the case had been dismissed, but the men had been ostracized by their families, were homeless and in hiding, and faced an uncertain future. Hammond was deeply moved by their stories. He took their photos and asked them to write their own accounts of what had happened. ”Their personal testimonies connected me in a way that statistics or stories in newspapers couldn’t,” he says. Hammond wanted to hear more stories. Over the next few months, he traveled to countries with   laws like Cameroon, South Africa and Uganda to interview and photograph people who’d been discriminated against for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Clockwise from center: B. Kenya Boniwe, South Africa Ratib, Syria Lizzue, South Africa Amanda, South Africa.  In May 2015, with $20, 000 from the Getty Grant for Good, he started a project called Where Love Is Illegal. Hammond publishes stories and photos from his travels users can also submit their own. Any survivor of LGBT persecution  —   no matter what country they come from  —   is welcome to use the platform to speak out and raise awareness for gay and lesbian human rights. So far, there are nearly 120 stories on Where Love Is Illegal, and more than 125, 000 followers on the Instagram account. Hammond adds a new story almost daily. Around 3 billion people in nearly 80 countries live where identifying as LGBT could lead to imprisonment, corporal punishment or even death, says Outright International, a group that monitors LGBT human rights violations and provides data to the U. N. ”These people live in countries where they’re deliberately silenced,” says Hammond, 40, who is from New Zealand and is not gay. ”Discrimination thrives in environments where those persecuted do not have the opportunity to speak out or have their stories heard.” During his travels to Africa, Hammond said he saw a lot of homophobic statements from politicians and church leaders in the media  —   but almost never heard from members of the LGBT community, who were too intimidated to share their point of view.  Clockwise from center: Gad, Syria Gabriel, Nigeria Ishmel, Nigeria Miiro, Uganda Buje, Nigeria. Scroll through the Where Love Is Illegal website and you’ll see dozens of testimonies, from the U. K. to Uganda. For many people Hammond met, it was the first time they had ever spoken openly about their sexuality. A man named Ishmel, depicted in a photo with his back to the camera, shares the consequences of being gay in Nigeria. Some people in his neighborhood had heard rumors that he was gay, so they entered his house, beat him and brought him to the police, he says. ”I spent almost one month in prison with not enough food, not taking a bath, not even seeing sunlight,” he writes. ”After I was released, I faced many problems with my relatives and my friends . ... Sometimes I even think that I should leave the world because of the terrible condition that I found myself in.” Erina, a    transgender woman from Malaysia, also experienced violence from police and local gangs. The first time she was arrested, she was locked up for two weeks and says she was raped by the inmates. She wrote, ”I told the police about my case but the police didn’t [do] anything.” Her family didn’t do anything, either. ”For my family, being a trans woman is wrong in Islam. My brother always beats me up. [He] cut my hair two times and also burned my clothes. I ran away from [my] home town because my family cannot accept me,” she writes. Now, she lives in the city of Kuala Lumpur, where she is a sex worker. A    named Kofi from Ghana sounded more hopeful. ”Thanks to Chris Colfer from Glee, I knew who and what I was and am,” he writes. ”One day I will leave Ghana and start over on some   land where me being gay will be a cause for celebration, and I will no longer have to hide.” The project is growing. Hammond has a volunteer staff of 10, and some of his own photos from the project have been exhibited in galleries in San Francisco and New York. Global LGBT groups have reached out and asked permission to share some of the stories. Hammond’s next step is to create storytelling workshops in countries where   relations are outlawed, like Kenya. He’ll teach a group of 10 people to capture stories for Where Love Is Illegal, and he hopes they’ll each train 10 more people to do the same. And perhaps one day his project will no longer be relevant. ”Look at this country, where we were 50 years ago. People were out on the street campaigning against gay rights. And now they’re doing the opposite,” Hammond says. ”That’s what gives me hope,” he adds. ”People can change their minds.”"
"Ready your pencils. This morning, across America, the redesigned version of the SAT  —   the standardized entrance exam widely used in college admissions  —   is being administered for the first time. (The correct answer to our headline, therefore, is A . .. but under the redesigned test, there’s no penalty for guessing, so no worries if you got it wrong.) Back in January, when the old version of the test was given by the College Board for the last time, our NPR Ed team explained the logic behind the update: ”. .. Cyndie Schmeiser, the chief of assessment at the College Board, says it was time to stop doing a few key things. Among them: asking students ”the definitions of words that perhaps they crammed for the night before the test but may not use.” ”The new test, Schmeiser says, will include vocabulary, but within a reading passage. Less cramming, more context. Also, students can expect to find an increased emphasis on using evidence in a passage to back up answers. ”The College Board hopes the redesign will provide a more accurate measure of a student’s college and career readiness  —   a phrase made famous by advocates of the Common Core learning standards. Those standards, in reading and math, are now being used by the vast majority of states, and the SAT’s chief rival, the ACT, is surging in part because it was first to adapt to the core. Now the SAT is playing  .” There are changes to the scoring, too: the penalty for guessing has been dropped and the essay  —   which is optional  —   is now scored separately from the rest of the test. Writing and reading questions have been combined, and the top score for the test is once again 1600, not 2400. In addition to putting vocabulary in context and requiring students to look for more textual evidence, the new test has changed the essay so students are analyzing a text, instead of writing based on an   question. The College Board is also working to make math and reading questions simulate   situations more accurately. Curious what that looks like? Want to work through some problems this morning, in solidarity with the nation’s high school students? Here are a few sample questions in the new SAT format. (And for some     questions, NPR Ed shared some questions from the SAT’s long history in January  —   check ’em out.) Calculator permitted: Aaron is staying at a hotel that charges $99. 95 per night plus tax for a room. A tax of 8% is applied to the room rate, and an additional onetime untaxed fee of $5. 00 is charged by the hotel. Which of the following represents Aaron’s total charge, in dollars, for staying x nights? A) (99. 5 + 0. 08x) + 5, B) 1. 08( 99. 95x) + 5, C) 1. 08( 99. 95x + 5) D) 1. 08( 99. 95 + 5) x, Calculator permitted: The scatterplot [Count of Manatees] shows counts of Florida manatees, a type of sea mammal, from 1991 to 2011. Based on the line of best fit to the data shown, which of the following values is closest to the average yearly increase in the number of manatees? A) 0. 75, B) 75, C) 150, D) 750, Calculator not permitted, no multiple choice: If a^2 + 14a = 51 and a &gt 0, what is the value of a + 7? This passage is adapted from a speech delivered by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas on July 25, 1974, as a member of the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives. In the passage, Jordan discusses how and when a United States president may be impeached, or charged with serious offenses, while in office. Jordan’s speech was delivered in the context of impeachment hearings against then president Richard M. Nixon. Today, I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole it is complete it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution. ”Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?” ”The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men. ”* And that’s what we’re talking about. In other words, [the jurisdiction comes] from the abuse or violation of some public trust. It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn’t say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive. The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge —  the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judges. ..the same person. We know the nature of impeachment. We’ve been talking about it a while now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to ”bridle” the executive if he engages in excesses. ”It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men. ”* The framers confided in the Congress the power, if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive. The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the separation of powers maxim. The Federal Convention of 1787 said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors, and discounted and opposed the term ”maladministration.” ”It is to be used only for great misdemeanors,” so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia ratification convention: ”We do not trust our liberty to a particular branch. We need one branch to check the other.” . ..The North Carolina ratification convention: ”No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.” ”Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community,” said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65. ”We divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. ”* I do not mean political parties in that sense. The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the constitutional term ”high crime[s] and misdemeanors.” Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that ”Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction but nothing else can.” Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: appropriations, tax reform, health insurance, campaign finance reform, housing, environmental protection, energy sufficiency, mass transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we’re not being petty. We’re trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one. *Jordan quotes from Federalist No. 65, an essay by Alexander Hamilton, published in 1788, on the powers of the United States Senate, including the power to decide cases of impeachment against a president of the United States. The stance Jordan takes in the passage is best described as that of, A) an idealist setting forth principles. B) an advocate seeking a compromise position. C) an observer striving for neutrality. E) a scholar researching a historical controversy. The main rhetorical effect of the series of three phrases beginning in line 4 (”the diminution, the subversion, the destruction”) is to, A) convey with increasing intensity the seriousness of the threat Jordan sees to the Constitution. B) clarify that Jordan believes the Constitution was first weakened, then sabotaged, then broken. C) indicate that Jordan thinks the Constitution is prone to failure in three distinct ways. D) propose a   agenda for rescuing the Constitution from the current crisis. As used in line 32, ”channeled” most nearly means, A) worn. B) sent. C) constrained. D) siphoned. (Additional questions based on this passage available here.) After reading each passage, choose the answer to each question that most effectively improves the quality of writing in the passage or that makes the passage conform to the conventions of standard written English. A Life in Traffic  A subway system is expanded to provide service to a growing suburb. A bike‑sharing program is adopted to encourage nonmotorized transportation. [Q1] To alleviate rush hour traffic jams in a congested downtown area, stoplight timing is coordinated. When any one of these changes [Q2] occur, it is likely the result of careful analysis conducted by transportation planners. The work of transportation planners generally includes evaluating current transportation needs, assessing the effectiveness of existing facilities, and improving those facilities or [Q3] they design new ones. . .. [Based on ”Q1” sentence in bold:] Which choice best maintains the sentence pattern already established in the paragraph? A) NO CHANGE, B) Coordinating stoplight timing can help alleviate rush hour traffic jams in a congested downtown area. C) Stoplight timing is coordinated to alleviate rush hour traffic jams in a congested downtown area. D) In a congested downtown area, stoplight timing is coordinated to alleviate rush hour traffic jams. [Based on ”Q2” section in bold italics:] Select an Answer, A) NO CHANGE, B) occur, they are, C) occurs, they are, D) occurs, it is, [Based on Q3 section in italics:] Select an Answer, A) NO CHANGE, B) to design, C) designing, D) design, (Full passage and additional questions available here.) SAT questions copyright 2016 by The College Board. www. collegeboard. org. Reproduced with permission. Math: B, C, 10.  Reading: A, A, C, Writing: C, D, C"
"Perhaps you first heard the name Esperanza Spalding in 2011, when an award that many were calling an easy win for Justin Bieber instead went to an eclectic young bass player, singer and composer. The first jazz musician to win the Grammy for Best New Artist, Spalding is a   prodigy turned pro has only broadened her reach and ambition since crashing onto the national stage. After a few years away from recording, Spalding is back with an album called Emily’s D+Evolution, inspired by a character who came to her in a dream. As she explains, Emily is her middle name  —   but it also represents a   part of her personality. ”Emily is a ’middle me,’ that’s in there but I haven’t used her since I was young she’s been growing as I’ve been growing. And came knocking and said, ’Hey! There’s some stuff I need to do right now, so you need to let me out and play,’” Spalding says. ”I’m drawing on modes of expression that I haven’t explored or really focused on since I was a kid: movement with the body, acting, poetry and staging. Those were aspects of performance that I was really wild about when I was little. I feel like I’m reaching back and tapping into that dormant curiosity.” Spalding spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about how life in New York City  —   its diversity and variety  —   is reflected in her work, and how it’s changed now that Emily is in charge. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"In Iran, voters are still waiting for clarity from the Feb. 26 parliamentary elections, but they’re optimistic that a more cooperative legislature will help the government boost the economy. Hopes for broader social and political reforms, however, remain faint. On a recent afternoon, a covered bazaar in north Tehran has its share of visitors, but there seems to be a lot more   than buying going on. Carpet shop owner Ali Mirnezami confirms that impression. He says this shop has been operating for 90 years, but at the moment things aren’t looking good. ”The market is down, it’s not bouncing back,” he says. ”We’re still waiting for final election results and we hope that will improve things, but so far nothing tangible.” Mirnezami says Iranian President Hassan Rouhani needs a cooperative parliament to fulfill his promise to use money coming into Iran as part of last year’s nuclear agreement to restore some vitality to the economy. First, Mirnezami says, the government needs to tackle inflation. ”They also need to create some jobs for our young people,” he says. ”Then they need to look to the production sector, rehabilitate our factories. I hope the early signs of a more cooperative parliament are true.” Broader Reforms Still Elusive, Reform voters stood in long lines on election day in hopes of keeping hardliners out of parliament as much as possible. Younger voters like Mohammad Reza Rezahani made it clear he had more than a better economy on his mind. ”I vote today only for freedom  —   a little freedom, a little. I’m not having any freedom,” he says. When asked if he’d like to see a parliament that will work with President Rouhani, he eagerly agrees. Many younger Iranians have been chafing under the country’s conservative religious social restrictions. They would love to be able to speak their mind without fear of arrest. But nearly seven years after authorities crushed massive street protests, reformers are still threatened with arrest and expectations for change are extremely low. For one thing, there will be large numbers of conservatives in the next parliament who may back Rouhani on economic issues, but will likely vote against changes on sensitive issues such as the mandatory headscarf for women. Iranians also see external reasons for caution. Analyst Foad Izadi at Tehran University says Iranians only need look at the chaos plaguing the region to see how easily popular demands for change can get out of hand. ”So if people want to change things  —   and a lot of people want to change things  —   they do not want another revolution,” he says. ”Because revolutions would be messy and deadly . .. so they do want to change some things about this government, but they want to do it through polling stations organized by this government.” In Isfahan, A Plea For The World To Visit, To the south in the culturally rich city of Isfahan, business owners would be perfectly happy with economic improvements. At Imam Square, a UNESCO World Heritage site featuring ornately tiled grand mosques and a palace, locals take a spin in   carriages. But driver Seyed Mehdi says that’s because it’s a weekend  —   most of the time he’s scrounging for business. ”We don’t need the locals, they already know all about this place,” he says. ”We need tourists, we need foreigners!” Ahmed Turkan minds a   handicrafts store nearby. He says no one he knows is especially interested in whether Iran’s reformers or hardline conservatives will be in charge of the next parliament. What people want, he says, is some action on getting the economy moving. He spreads his hands and asks, is it wrong to be friends with the outside world? ”Some 50 years ago when there were very few tourists, you could still have seen more people here on this square,” he says. ”There could be a hell of a lot more people on this square! But as everyone keeps telling us, the signs are promising.” How Many More Visitors Can Isfahan Handle? In terms of sheer numbers of visitors, the signs are indeed promising  —   visits to Isfahan were up 60 percent last year, according to Mohsen Yarmohamadiyan at the provincial culture and tourism department. He says in the wake of last year’s nuclear deal, Iran is starting to overcome the relentless bad press it gets in the West. ”Ever since this new government took over, they’ve been trying to bring the real image of this nation to the world,” he says. ”We’re slowly correcting a lot of misinformation.” But for Isfahan, that good news also comes with a challenge. Yarmohamadiyan says much needs to be done for the province to accommodate more tourists, should the numbers continue to grow. ”As more people come to Isfahan, we’re urging hotels to build more rooms,” he says. ”We also have around 1, 000 historic houses here, and we’re urging the owners to consider converting them into boutique hotels.” But development doesn’t always get top priority. After years of debate, Yarmohamadiyan says builders of a new subway line have agreed to reroute it around major cultural sites, including those at Imam Square. With major social and political reforms still on the back burner, the focus remains on the economy. That’s fine with Tehran cooking and catering businesswoman Sanaz Minaei. She shows a visitor a cooking class at one of her several companies, and says the opportunities for Iran are huge  —   if only the country can rejoin the global economy as promised. ”Certainly we’d like a parliament that will open up communications with the outside world,” she says. ”When the parliament is cooperating with the government there is more peace, and peace is good for business. Minaei’s wish is to see all the sanctions finally lifted so she can expand her business of promoting Iranian cuisine internationally. She includes the U. S. in that wish, but doesn’t expect it to come true overnight. As one of Iran’s most successful businesswomen, she can’t even get a visa to visit her sisters in America, let alone do business there."
"Late Thursday evening, Kendrick Lamar crept back into our lives like a thief in the night. With his new album untitled unmastered. Lamar and his label Top Dawg Entertainment offer us a look at the steps it took to get to his fully formed magnum opus  —   2015’s To Pimp A Butterfly  —   and show us that they can stop the world when they feel like it. Officially deemed a collection of ”demos,” the raw tracks are nameless and featureless, identified only by the date they were presumably recorded. Up until now, Lamar had only given a few hints that this music existed. He performed one song on The Tonight Show just this January, part of another on the Grammys even more recently, and another on the Colbert Report in 2014. ”Untitled 03,” the song from his Colbert appearance, was recorded more than a year and a half before he performed it. We’re listening to Lamar’s past in the present here. It feels like we’re playing  . The project shows us demos within demos, with parts of one song appearing on another song  —   sometimes recorded years apart. One of the more   tracks is called ”Untitled 07”: It feels and sounds like Lamar is shaking off flakes of the old him and growing a new skin by the minute. In that song and others, we get a direct line into Kendrick Lamar’s experimentation with using his voice as an instrument. We hear him strain and yell and whisper his way through his own evolution. untitled. unmastered. is both the fire and ashes from which To Pimp A Butterfly rose. As I listen, the only thought running through my mind is: What does the material Kendrick Lamar recorded yesterday sound like? And when will we be ready for it?"
"Cancer dogma holds that most malignancies are caused by DNA mutations inside the nuclei of cells, mutations that ultimately lead to runaway cellular proliferation. Given the countless genetic blips that have been associated with various cancers, the illness has actually come to be seen as a complex of diseases for which personalized treatments might offer the best chances of success. But prevailing oncology orthodoxy has its detractors, and some cancer biologists feel that while mutations are nearly ubiquitous in cancer, they may not always be the driving force for disease. Cancer, they suggest, might actually be as much a disorder of altered energy production as it is genetic damage. This idea traces back to the work of German physician Otto Warburg who, in the 1920s, reported that rather than generating energy using the   process of respiration as healthy cells do, cancer cells prefer the anaerobic, or   process of fermentation. Not all products of fermentation are as welcome as beer, wine and cheese. Boston College biology professor Dr. Thomas Seyfried is a leading proponent of the metabolic theory of cancer. He proselytizes Warburg’s findings and in 2012 published an academic book called Cancer as a Metabolic Disease that lays out the evidence behind his beliefs (Currently the book’s Facebook page has over 6, 000 followers and a lively exchange of   tips). Seyfried argues that decades of research, including his own, support the idea that aberrant metabolism can somehow induce malignancy. Further, he believes that research supports at the idea that limiting the fuels available for fermentation  —   that is, the sugar glucose and the amino acid glutamine  —   is an overlooked approach to aid treatment. He specifically implicates mitochondria, our   organelles, in spurring on malignancy. This belief is in part based on work from the ’70s and ’80s showing that if the cytoplasm (the buoyant cellular goo that contains the mitochondria) is transferred from a normal cells to a tumorigenic cell (one with the potential to develop into a cancer) the tendency toward cancer is suppressed. Conversely, animal research has shown that transferring the nucleus of a malignant cell into the cytoplasm of a normal cell inhibits the tumor potential of that initially malignant cell, implying, according to Seyfried, that whatever is causing the cancer lies in the cytoplasm, not the nucleus. More recent research shows that the introduction of mutations in mitochondrial DNA (former   organisms that our cells eventually engulfed, mitochondria have their own genetic material) reduces the tumor protection purportedly provided by normal mitochondria. ”If you look at the data, you could say that there is clear evidence that cancer is a genetic disease since we can inherit mutations associated with increased cancer risk,” says Seyfried, ”but many of these mutations disturb cellular respiration. And many   causes of cancer like radiation impair mitochondrial function.” Seyfried’s colleague Dominic D’Agostino, a biology professor at the University of South Florida, also subscribes to the idea that the primary driver of cancer is mitochondrial dysfunction, which can be induced by any number of carcinogens  —   genetic predilections, radiation, chemical exposures and diet among them. Not only do many mutations and pathways associated with cancer impair mitochondrial function and cell metabolism, he says, but injured mitochondria also produce volatile compounds called ”reactive oxygen species” that can damage DNA. ”This can explain why most cancers have mutations,” he speculates, ”in many cases they’re secondary to mitochondrial damage.” Dr. E. Aubrey Thompson, a cancer biologist at the Mayo Clinic who in his own words is ”strongly on the mutation side,” acknowledges that cancer cells   their metabolic activities and that interfering with cancer metabolism is a potentially fruitful area of research. ”There are hundreds of labs already working on this right now,” he says. Yet, he adds genially, ”there is no evidence of malignancy developing in the absence of mutations. Anyone who thinks otherwise is obligated to design an experiment to disprove this concept . .. that’s how science works.” It turns out there is some evidence that this might happen, but it’s limited. Seyfried pointed me to a 2015 paper by Dr. Stuart Baker of the National Cancer Institute that reviews four recent studies reporting numerous tumors in which zero mutations were found. Seyfried acknowledges that mutations might have been found with more thorough screening and better DNA sequencing technology. Memorial   Cancer Center President and CEO Dr. Craig Thompson (not to be confused with Mayo’s Thompson) hedges on the metabolic theory of cancer. ”While the arguments raised [by Seyfried and others] have been considered by the growing field of cancer metabolism, most investigators have moved on to consider other explanations for the observations,” he said in an interview. Still, he has recently written in support of some aspects of the theory with therapeutic implications. In a way, the various competing cancer theories aren’t completely at odds. ”Despite all the talk of controversy in the field, the concepts that [Seyfried] and his colleagues are advancing are not really that novel,” says Mayo’s Thompson  ”I think everybody who works in cancer biology today appreciates the fact that there are many different processes involved in a conversion of a normal cell to a tumor cell.” He believes a coalescence of pernicious influences is required for a cancer to develop. ”One of these processes is probably altered metabolic activity,” he says. ”But cancers also must acquire mutations, change the way they interact with neighboring cells and learn to evade the immune system. Every single one of these processes is probably essential to cancer development.” Matthew Vander Heiden, a biologist at MIT and oncologist at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, also says many factors are necessary to induce cancer, including what could be considered the other major theory on the origin of malignancies, that they result from the impairment of signaling pathways that control cell division. ”My guess is it’s probably metabolic, and it’s probably genetic and it’s probably cell signaling. I’m not sure you can separate these out since they all appear to be so interrelated,” he explains. Regardless of the initial cancer trigger, the ultimate end of the biomedical bickering is to help patients. And as Vander Heiden points out, not only are researchers and pharmaceutical companies already developing drugs that target metabolic pathways, such drugs have been around for some time. ”I think targeting metabolic pathways in cancer is a great idea. We already have five or six mainstay chemotherapies that yes, attack cell division machinery, but also target metabolism ” explains Vander Heiden, ”They’re just not billed that way. ”Seyfried is skeptical that medicines alone will cure cancer. Instead he and many of his colleagues  —   including Dr. Eugene Fine from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh neurosurgeon Dr. Joseph Maroon  —   are focusing on the potential of dietary approaches to contain the disease. There’s particular interest in the ketogenic diet, similar to the   Atkins diet that is low in sugar and high in fat. It’s intended to starve cancer cells of the glucose they use for fermentation. ”The drugs we have now are so toxic and there’s no reason people should have to be poisoned to be healthy. There are a number of studies, including those we’ve published, showing a direct relationship between the ketogenic diet and slowed tumor growth,” says Seyfried, also citing the work of Dr. Valter Longo, of the University of Southern California’s Davis School of Gerontology. That work shows that   diets are linked with slowed tumor growth and improved response to chemotherapy. ”Why spend all this money going after all these different pathways involved in cancer when you can simply go after the key fuels?” Seyfried asks. The idea of fighting cancer by changing what patients eat has obvious appeal, but it also raises worries. ”I get a little scared when people start talking about diet for cancer since you can quickly get into pseudoscience here,” Mayo’s Thompson counters. He points out that data supporting the ketogenic diet in cancer are limited  —   and further that rigorous dietary studies are incredibly hard to pull off. ”The drug companies aren’t going to fund these types of trials,” he says. ”They can’t make money marketing a diet.” Vander Heiden is also wary of many dietary claims, in part because of biased expectations. ”It seems that people have often decided what diet they think is best before they do a study,” he says. ”There’s a difference between setting out to prove something is a good therapy and asking what therapy is best.” His own work has shown that certain dietary interventions can be more effective than drugs at treating cancer in mice, but he says panacean claims about the ketogenic diet specifically are a bit premature. ”I think it’s a really interesting hypothesis that should continue to be tested, but to claim that cancer is all metabolic or all genetic is probably incorrect,” he says. ”Usually in science when you have something as complex as cancer, ascribing it to one particular cause is often going too far.” Even Seyfried acknowledges, despite his zeal for treating cancer by tinkering with calories, that in all likelihood diet and   cancer treatments will serve as adjuncts to existing therapies. But what would be wrong with that? ”We’re slowing the tumor down and making it extremely vulnerable to lower,   doses of available drugs,” he says, ”When people are locked into an ideology created by a dogma they tend not to focus on rational alternatives.” Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired, Scientific American and on The Atlantic. com. He graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. He’s also on Twitter: @BretStetka."
"Last week it was all about the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. That was about racism. This week, social media erupted over something that has long been an issue within the black community. Colorism  —   the idea that your skin tone and not only your race determines your opportunities. Actress Zoe Saldana faced a firestorm over her portrayal of music and civil rights icon Nina Simone. Simone’s identity and work is closely linked to the fact that she was a powerful black woman with dark skin and African features. In one of her diary entries, she wrote, ”I’m the kind of colored girl who looks like everything white people despise or have been taught to despise.” But she was defiantly proud of her appearance and she fought to change perceptions of what was beautiful. Her supporters have called the casting of Zoe Saldana as Simone an insult to her struggle and the most recent example of Hollywood’s attempt to sideline women with dark skin. Zoe Saldana is  . Her parents are from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and those island nations are home to a melting pot of races. Many are a mix of black  —   Afro descendants who came from slaves forcibly transported to work the land  —   and white  —   from the Europeans who ruled over them. There is also the indigenous heritage as well. She is Latina but she self identifies as black, and it’s important to note the two things are actually not mutually exclusive. In any case, the problem to the film’s detractors is her appearance was dramatically changed to play Simone. She was given a prosthetic nose. And more controversially, they basically put her in black face, darkening her so she would resemble Simone more closely. The founder of BET, who is distributing the film, defended the casting, saying that ”the most important thing is that creativity or quality of performance should never be judged on the basis of color or ethnicity or physical likeness.” That is being deemed a   by many  . It’s a debate about skin tone, history, and authenticity. In short, its a more complicated, subtle debate that is no longer just black or white."
"Novelist Pat Conroy, who announced last month that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer, has died, according to a statement from his publisher. Conroy was 70. He announced his diagnosis on Facebook almost three weeks ago, saying ”I intend to fight it hard.” Today’s statement from Todd Doughty, executive director of publicity at Doubleday included comments from Conroy’s wife and his longtime editor: ”Conroy passed away this evening at his home in Beaufort, S. C. surrounded by family and loved ones. ’The water is wide and he has now passed over,’ said his wife, novelist Cassandra Conroy. Funeral arrangements are currently being made at this time. ” ’Pat has been my beloved friend and author for 35 years, spanning his career from The Prince Of Tides to today,’ said his longtime editor and publisher, Nan A. Talese of Doubleday. ’He will be cherished as one of America’s favorite and bestselling writers, and I will miss him terribly,’ Talese said.” The Associated Press notes that four of Conroy’s ”novels of troubled relationships and dysfunctional families” were turned into movies, including his   books, The Great Santini and The Prince Of Tides. ”Conroy writes from his own experiences, as a child of a violent father,” said NPR’s Tom Vitale in a 1986 Morning Edition interview with the author. Like his Prince Of Tides protagonist, Pat Conroy grappled with his own conflicted sense of identity, particularly as a Southerner, Conroy told Vitale: ”I’m a military brat. My father was a Marine Corps fighter pilot from Chicago, Ill. I did not live in Southern towns, I lived on bases. I was a Roman Catholic, which is the strangest thing you can be in the South. Not only that, I married a Jewish woman from Bensonhurst. So when people refer to me as a Southerner . .. I liked it because I never had a home. It was the first name that was ever associated with me that put me in a place.” Even 30 years later, Conroy’s determination to crack his identity hadn’t stopped. In the previously mentioned Facebook post, he added: ”I celebrated my 70th birthday in October and realized that I’ve spent my whole writing life trying to find out who I am and I don’t believe I’ve even come close. It was in Beaufort in sight of a river’s sinuous turn, and the movements of its   tides that I began to discover myself and where my life began at fifteen.”"
"The media portrayal of Latinos and Hispanic culture has come a long way. But the producers of comedy videos at the website The Flama still see room for improvement. The Flama is a website from Univision and Bedrocket Media ”created by, for and starring young Latinos.” The site features a slew of comedy videos with people talking about things like Latino culture, food or something off the wall like what presidential candidates would look like as characters in The Hunger Games. Joanna Hausmann is a Venezuelan comedian, writer and a   video creator for the site. One of her roles there is hosting a recurring video series called Joanna Rants, which covers everything from types of Spanish accents to political correctness. She spoke with NPR’s Lourdes   about the differences among Latinos and the source of her comedy. On differences between Latinos of different nationalities, I think it’s incredibly important to point out the differences, because ironically that’s the way to unify us. So something that I’ve noticed in a lot of my content is that videos in which I depict the differences between all the different countries and different cultures  —   how Venezuela’s different than Colombia, how Colombia’s different than Panama, how Panama’s different than Mexico  —   is interestingly enough one of the most successful parts of what I do. Because people like seeing how their culture is manifested in a different way. Because here in the States, we’re just put all in one group. On her own story, I think it’s interesting to look at my family history, because my family history is a lot about immigration. On my father’s side my grandparents were Holocaust survivors that went to Venezuela. On my mother’s side it’s Cuban exiles from Fidel Castro’s regime. And my parents found each other  —   first generation Venezuelans. I was second generation Venezuelan and then I had to leave. So it’s a lot of moving, and a lot of creating a new home in a new place. And I feel very very proud to be Venezuelan. Particularly because the Venezuela that I was taught of was the Venezuela of inclusion, the Venezuela that opened its doors to immigrants. The Venezuela where the son of a Jewish family met a Cuban exile and had a child. On using her videos to reach out to   I think that my generation in particular, we are cast in this world in an incredibly international way. I of course see myself as a Venezuelan, as do a lot of my friends, but I’m also incredibly bicultural. And what I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of bicultural people in this world and in this country. And you don’t even have to be from another country to be bicultural. There’s this interest and this sort of movement towards being more open to comparing yourself with other people. And I think that comes along with the internet  —   how connected we are now. And how we’ve been able to converse with people from completely different cultures and find something with other cultures that we are akin to. On the source of her comedy, I think that I grew up explaining who I was, right? As a white Latina with a Jewish last name. That does not make sense in the conceptualization of what a Latina should be. Also I’m not particularly suave, I’m incredibly awkward. There’s something about my identity that does not mesh with what people think the identity should include. . .. [Growing up] I was trained in explaining my identity in a way that wasn’t surface level. And it also opened me up in understanding that people can literally have absolutely any background and what we conceive to be their identity, or their reality or their background is usually not the case. There’s a lot more to unpackage there. So I kind of see it as a gift now. On presidential candidates, I believe that if they made a little bit more of an effort to talk within the pockets of the Latino identity  —   like if they went to Miami and talked specifically from a Cuban perspective . .. went to California  —   specifically with a Mexican perspective. I think that that will alter the conversation. Venezuelans are going to come with completely different baggage than Mexicans. Cubans are going to come with different baggage than Venezuelans. . .. But I do think that just the conversation of inclusion and tolerance and acceptance is something that we all will happily embrace."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. When the Jim Carrey comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective hit theaters in 1994, I was 15 years old. To my teenaged mind, it was just another funny movie including the penultimate gag (literally) near the end of the film, when (spoiler alert) a female character is revealed to be the male antagonist and who Carrey’s detective had recently shared a passionate kiss with. His reaction: a   montage of personal disgust and vomiting. Writer Meredith Talusan maps out in an article for Buzzfeed, ”25 Years Of Transphobia In Comedy,” how transgender characters in films  —   both comedy and drama  —   have been used as the butt of jokes, as villainous plot devices and that the standard reaction of the ”reveal” is often one of unbridled disgust. She writes: ”. .. the puking reaction to trans revelation in these movies is not really borne of disgust at the women themselves, who are played by   cisgender actresses  —   rather, the disgust is borne of men’s   for continuing to be attracted to these women.” It’s an   and jarring look at how a segment of the population are stripped of their humanity and personhood in the interest of a hearty guffaw. And if you still have a hard time empathizing with the criticism, picture this: A fun, romantic comedy featuring a white male and white female lead. They have a   and go through all the motions of your standard romantic comedy. But, right at the end, it’s revealed that the white female character is actually black. The male lead, shocked, grabs a trashcan and proceeds to vomit and cry in shame. The audience bursts into laughter. We always take friends who visit Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. It is ancient and strange. Shimmering, flat. Water that gives no life but is circled by human history  —   Jericho, the oldest continuously inhabited city to the north Masada  —   Herod’s desert fortress and site of a Jewish band’s heroic last stand in the high hills to the west Petra  —   the   Nabatean city carved into stone cliffs to the east in Jordan. To float in it is a charming wonder the exceedingly salty water holds you even sitting up. You cannot sink. But the land around it can. And is. Fast enough that I see changes every time I drive the winding road along its edge. Warnings of sinkholes  —   as the saline waters recede fresh spring water dissolves salt pockets left behind in the dirt. Beaches closed. Roads rerouted. This backstory tells  —   and shows   the history, ecology, economy and politics of this rapidly changing, bizarre and beautiful place on earth. Jason de Parle is a reporter for the New York Times who covers American poverty Matthew Desmond is a sociologist who studies race, poverty and housing. So when de Parle reviews Desmond’s latest book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, the result is a concentrated dose of facts and passion  —   two informed and infuriated minds, both looking at one vital issue. Desmond lived in two poor communities in Milwaukee, following families, talking to landlords and conducting surveys. He uncovered a startlingly high rate of evictions  —   one in eight renters over a   timespan, far higher than officially tracked  —   and recorded the agonizing personal stories of people who lose their homes. Just the fear of eviction carries its own costs: Desmond describes families living in squalid and dangerous conditions because they were at risk of eviction if they spoke up. ”The struggle to pay the rent may sound like a problem the poor have always faced. It’s not,” De Parle notes, tracing out the history of America’s vanishing affordable housing. Today,   rents and yearslong waits for housing assistance have created the world Desmond describes: one of powerful landlords, vulnerable renters and painful instability."
"Super Tuesday wasn’t so super to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose dour face during Donald Trump’s press conference that night was all Twitter could to talk about  —   and make fun of. Christie endorsed Trump last week, so come Tuesday night he had a prime spot just over Trump’s right shoulder at the opulent    Club in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump had won several states, Christie was in Palm Beach, there didn’t seem to be much to be sad about. And yet: So why the face? ”That’s his resting Christie face,” said Matt Katz of NPR station WNYC. He’s covered Christie for five years and watched the governor  —   and that face  —   countless (probably hundreds, he says) times on stage at press conferences. Tuesday night’s face wasn’t at all new to Katz, who describes Resting Christie Face as: ”Darting eyes, dour expression, looks like he’s thinking about other things or like he’s not happy to be there.” Twitter jumped on the meme, depicting Christie as a hostage who needed to be freed or imagining he had made a terrible mistake in endorsing Trump: Ok, so he has a   face. But he didn’t just trend because of the face  —   he trended because he’s Chris Christie.  ”He has a way of just consuming people’s fascination . .. and there’s an increasing amount of disdain, hate, disappointment with him,” Katz said. He’s a walking contradiction who these days, people kind of love to hate. ”He sold himself as a      guy, and then he’s endorsing someone who he disagrees with,” Katz said. While Christie was still in the race, he had hit at Trump’s foreign policy, business acumen and temperament, calling him a ”carnival barker.” ”There’s a sense that he’s full of it,” Katz said. ”And that definitely made him an easy target.” Also this week, six New Jersey newspapers wrote a joint editorial calling for him to resign and a poll showed his approval rating at 27 percent, an   low. Christie, for the record, said on Thursday that he wasn’t in pained or upset at all. ”No I wasn’t being held hostage, no I wasn’t sitting up there thinking ’Oh my God, what have I done?” he said. All the attention may not have been a bad thing for Christie, though, according to Katz. When Christie dropped out of the race, away fell the debates and public appearances as a candidate  —   but here he is, still getting attention and an audience. ”This is somebody who likes to be the center of attention and he is the center of political attention this week,” Katz said. ”Mission accomplished, in a way.”"
"Ever wondered what to do with that special memento from a past relationship, that token that’s just too challenging to toss, not feasible to return, but yet too painful to hold on to? And no, we’re not talking about your broken heart, although we would all relish a quick fix for such. While emotional fallout might be the thing we most often wish to be rid of after a relationship has ended, the tangibles  —   the bits and pieces of a life built together  —   can also make it challenging to let go and move on. Well, now you can donate those trinkets of love to a museum, The Museum of Broken Relationships, to be precise. The new museum is set to open in Los Angeles in May and they’re currently in the process of building their collection. (We asked people on Twitter to share some of their items from relationships past, and you’ll find those memories shared throughout this story.) Alexis Hyde is the museum’s director and she says they’re accepting submissions from persons overcoming any type of broken relationship. ”We’re talking about all relationships,” Hyde tells NPR’s Lourdes  . ”It is lovers and it is romantic, but it’s also your family, your friends, maybe business relationships, or even like with your country. I actually even got submissions from someone breaking up with your younger more idealistic self.” The brokenhearted have been submitting a potpourri of souvenirs ranging from ”ratty ” to photo albums and pieces of jewelry. ”These are usually items of not very much physical value, but the kind of things that people talk about saving in a fire, that can’t be replaced, things with a lot of emotional heaviness to them,” Hyde says. The museum will also showcase a permanent collection, where some more valuable items will be on display. ”A few wedding rings, wedding dresses,” Hyde says. ”I’m hopefully getting a size double zero jeans from a woman who’s a recovering anorexic from an emotionally abusive relationship she’d been in. And now she’s in a healthier, emotional and physical place, she wants to let go of this token of this unhealthy time.” Some might argue it’s unhealthy to immortalize something from a failed relationship and that donating to the Museum of Broken Relationship might not be a good idea. ”It’s definitely a doubled edge situation. I think in giving us your objects you are moving on, you’re actually physically cutting ties with that and it does provide catharsis,” Hyde says. It must be noted that there already exists a Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia. This one opened in 2010 and it’s affiliated with the new one in the U. S. John B. Quinn, the president of the Los Angeles location, discovered the Croatian museum while on vacation. As to the chosen hometown for the museum, Hyde says it’s because it’s a city of dreamers where many are open to new ideas, especially when it comes to art and community. ”People come here with these amazing dreams and goals and it’s also a land of crushing defeat. Not all of these things work out and everyone’s like, ’Los Angeles is perfect. ’” So whatever the source of your broken heart, Hyde is encouraging you to preserve for posterity that keepsake of your relationship by donating it to the Museum of Broken Relationships. But she’s pleading that unlike the ”symbol of undying love” that one woman submitted, please don’t send her another vial of blood. Don’t worry, it was not Angelina Jolie."
"From M’Lynn Eatenton in Steel Magnolias to Mary Todd in Lincoln, Academy   actress Sally Field doesn’t shy away from taking on emotionally charged and challenging roles. All of these characters become a part of her in a sense. ”They stay in me and they have always changed me in some way,” Field tells NPR’s Lourdes  . Now, playing a woman in her late 60s with some borderline personality issues for her latest film, Hello, My Name Is Doris, part of Doris is already in Field. She talks with   about love, acting and aging on the verge of turning 70. So please describe this character Doris for us. She is something else. Oh boy, where do I begin? Well she’s a woman who’s my age, which is not young  —   in late, late 60s. She has spent her life really taking care of her mother but suppressing herself in every way. Doris has some borderline personality issues so she’s not totally present in the real world. The story really is a coming of age  —   of a woman of age. What attracted you to playing her? It just so unique, it’s such a unique story and a looks at so many things. It looks at age, I mean, what is age? It looks at transitioning, you know, human beings our task in life is to constantly transition from one stage into another whether it’s toddlerhood into childhood into adolescence and then young adulthood and then middle age. It’s just constant movement. And certainly as I head into this big part of my life, you say, ”How do I embrace my 70s? What is there of me that I haven’t experienced yet?” And that’s what Doris is doing but for the first time in her life. And because she meets a very young man at a moment in her life where she thinks that’s what’s going to make the difference for her, that’s what she wants in her life. And because she lives only in her head, she doesn’t really see who she is and how old she is, not until the very end. Let’s just talk a little about bravery and age. A lot of the critics have talked about your portrayal here and they’ve called it brave, and one of the elements they’ve mentioned is your appearance in the film: You look your age and apparently that in modern Hollywood qualifies as bravery. You know, isn’t that sad? I mean I appreciate them saying that rather than them trying to chop me to pieces. But I’m an old woman, 70 is old, and that’s OK. . .. I’ve gathered strength behind my years, I owned them, I’ve earned them, I’ve deserved them, I have a right to have them. And I don’t like my neck, I don’t like a lot of things but it’s OK, it’s OK. Behind my years I have value that doesn’t come when you’re 50 or 40 or 30 or 20, it doesn’t come until you’ve been in that saddle for a number of years. And what is it? You’ve talked about that transition that you go through at different stages of your life  —   what is this stage in your life right now about? I don’t know, I’m just entering it. And certainly Doris is part of it. I think in a lot of ways it’s my challenge to find what’s there for me that I don’t see right now. I know that I felt that in my 50s, I felt that in my 40s, that there’s something there that I can’t see yet and I can’t see until I’m there, but I won’t see if I’m not willing to let go of what I was and open up to what I will be. One of the things that I thought was very poignant was with her best friend  —   played by Tyne Daly  —   there was this really tender, really quiet scene where you both sit together, talking on the sofa, Doris is yearning for love and I think she’s actually found it in her friendships. Are these some of your strongest relationships as we all grow older? Absolutely, and Tyne and I  —   a lot of that scene is [improvised] because when we were sitting and talking about it, to me, that’s part of Doris’ revelation to herself is that she’s had this friend always and she’s part of her friend’s family, the dysfunctional, loving group that they are. And I think that is part of the realization, certainly for me that I thought, ”You know, you may not ever have the soul mate you were led to believe that was where you wanted to go, but you have other things that are equally as valuable.” Casting has come under a lot of scrutiny in these conversations about the gatekeepers in Hollywood, who decides who gets which roles. How do they deal with aging actresses in your view? Well, they don’t. You know, the gatekeepers as you say aren’t necessarily about casting, and that is true, too. But really the gatekeepers are about what do they put into development? What writers do they hire to write what stories? Forget whether they will be, you know, for what actresses or for what talent will go into it. It’s what they put their efforts into develop in the first place. Why aren’t certain sectors of society being served, do you think? You know, I can’t really answer that question accurately because I’ve spent my whole life in it and the frustration of it and the way I’ve dealt with it is just to keep my head down, and the minute I started railing it and wanting to jump up and down, I found it just wasted energy and it hurt my feelings, and I had to just find the work where it was and not spend the time going [grumbling]. I remember once, long ago, Diane Keaton one time in some publication complained and said ”This is outrageous, look at how much product there are for men and look at what there are for women,” and everybody rose up and called her a whiner. I will never, ever forget it. And I remember in my, oh so not brave way, I tucked myself under and said, ”OK, I guess we won’t be speaking up, will we?” Instead of standing up, as young women are doing today and saying, ”Wait a minute, wait one minute folks,” but I think the conversation about women is aided by the fact that it’s a diversity issue altogether and that helps that it isn’t just women. If it were just women, I honestly don’t think people would be paying that much attention still. Of all the characters you’ve played over the years, and I have to ask you because I’ve seen so many of your films, what’s the one that’s stayed with you? You know, they all stay with me. Are they like people that you take along with you? You know, they are. I’ll be walking down the street or cleaning the house or in the market and a vision, a memory will just flash through your head the way they do. You know, you’ll see the oranges or something and something will flash through your head of an experience that you had or something, and sometimes I stop myself and say, ”Wait a minute, that wasn’t my experience, that was a character’s experience. It was Norma’s experience or Edna’s experience or Celeste’s experience,” and it wasn’t mine. But I portrayed it so it registered in my head as an experience that I had, so it’s an odd thing that actors do when you have the opportunity to really work on a character that you somehow have to plant inside of yourself. They stay in me and they have always changed me in some way."
"In 2009, pro soccer player Lyle Martin was playing for the Vancouver White Caps, in a North American league below Major League Soccer, when he got talking with a teammate about his future. The teammate introduced him to an agent who floated the idea of playing in China. ”I was like, ’China? !’” Martin says. ”Are we talking about the same place?” At the time, the Chinese Super League barely registered as a blip on global soccer radar and no American had ever played professionally in the league. But Martin wanted to make more money, and CSL teams were cutting much bigger checks. So he signed with one and moved to China in 2010. ”I was getting a very good salary in comparison to major league players over here,” Martin said. ”In bonuses alone, maybe in a month or two months, I could make more than I made playing in the [United Soccer League] for two or three years.”   six years. The CSL  —   which just kicked off its season  —   is now signing international stars for enormous sums, and the world is taking notice. Last month, CSL team Jiangsu Suning outbid storied English Premiere League club Liverpool to sign Brazilian striker Alex Teixiera. Asked about the transfer, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said: ”People in football talk about the financial power of England because of the television contract and things like this, and now maybe [China] is another competitor.” In fact, the Chinese Super League smashed its   record several times this winter. In late January, Jiangsu Suning paid $31 million to sign former Chelsea midfielder Ramires. A week later, a different Chinese team, Guangzhou Evergrande, dropped $46 million to sign Jackson Martinez from Spanish club giant Atlético Madrid. And when Jiangsu Suning signed Teixiera for a breathtaking $55 million, the soccer world’s collective jaw hit the floor. ”When I was over there, they were spending at that time  —   I thought  —   a ton of money,” says Martin, who played in China from  . ”But when I see it now, it’s just like, ’Well, I guess they were spending peanuts before.’ ” During this season’s winter transfer window, the CSL spent about $65 million more than the English Premiere League, which perennially trumps spending by the other four top European leagues: Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A and France’s Ligue 1. The wave of huge spending is China’s latest step in its bid to become a global soccer power. With the backing of President Xi Jinping, an avowed soccer fan, and no shortage of investment money, the country has the political will and naked ambition to propel soccer into a starring role on the world stage. Last year, Xi announced a   plan to overhaul all levels of soccer and help revitalize the ”Chinese Dream”  —   which Xi says is to build a ”moderately prosperous society in all respects” and realize China’s ”ascendance to military, economic, and cultural power.” A robust soccer culture in China, the thinking goes, could help marshal national pride, serve as a   tool in Chinese diplomacy and rev the country’s economic engine. According to Forbes, China wants to nearly double the portion of its GDP coming from sports, which lags the U. S. and many other countries. Consulting firm PwC has estimated total revenues from 2015 ticketing, media rights, sponsorship and merchandising in China to be $3. 4 billion. By comparison, the U. S. figure was $63. 6 billion. Spurred on by the government, Chinese investors are opening their wallets to kickstart growth both domestically and internationally. Last October, the   investment firm China Media Capital bought exclusive   broadcast rights to the CSL for about $250 million per year. That sum pales in comparison to the $7   broadcasters paid for rights to the current English Premiere League season, but dwarfs U. S. broadcasters’ $75    deal with Major League Soccer. Investment in club ownership, too, has increased. In 2014, Alibaba Group Holding, owned by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, bought a 50 percent stake in Guangzhou Evergrande for $192 million. (It now owns about 40 percent.) Last year, Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin, who owns the real estate company Dalian Wanda, bought a 20 percent stake in Atlético Madrid for $52 million, with the stated intention of using the connection to improve Chinese soccer. ”This investment will not only provide a golden opportunity for young Chinese players sent overseas by Wanda to be selected by leading European football clubs, it will also strengthen the quality of Chinese football and narrow the gap between the rest of the world,” Wang said in a statement. Despite the recent fervor around Chinese soccer, the professional game in China isn’t new. China’s first pro league was established in 1994  —   just a year after the MLS began in the U. S.  —   and transitioned into its current format, the   Super League, in 2004. John Duerden, a South   British journalist who has been writing about Asian soccer since 2002, says soccer has always been a major sport in China. ”One misconception is that it’s come from nothing. . .. It was always a decent Asian league, decent standing with quite reasonable attendances,” Duerden says. ”Chinese football has a long history, and there is a love of the game.” Just ask Liu Qiang, a    manager in the entertainment industry who lives in Beijing and says he has been following both Chinese soccer and European leagues since he was a teenager. ”Of course my favorite [team] is Beijing Guoan,” he says, referring to the city’s Super League club. ”I mainly watch the Premier League. It is better organized and has more   players. But in terms of soccer culture, Guoan is irreplaceable in my mind. Because it’s from my hometown.” Liu bought season tickets last year and describes the stadium atmosphere as ”overwhelming.” ”In the middle of the game,” he says, ”fans will jump up and down, yelling to show support. We call it ’unbeatable home court.’ ” Martin, who is still the only American to have played in the Super League, says he was blown away by the fan support. ”When we would go to training sessions, there would be anywhere from 8, 000 to 10, 000 people watching. . .. For me, it was a shock at first I’m not used to that, people don’t recognize me,” he says. ”I never thought of myself as a star in the game. I was just always a player that worked hard. . .. They would always want to take pictures and get autographs  —   the fans were beyond great.” As for the game itself, Martin says his Chinese counterparts weren’t as strong or fast as the U. S. players he was used to facing, but calls them ”technical geniuses.” Fans in China, too, note the difference between the level of play in the Super League and in the top European Leagues they watch. One of them is Liu Yang, a    designer and program organizer in Beijing who follows the EPL, La Liga and CSL. He says the Chinese league is ”less exciting” compared with the five big leagues in Europe. ”European leagues are more confrontational, more skillful in passing. The Super League is weaker in this regard,” he says. Still, he says he enjoys the CSL and supports two of its clubs. ”One is Beijing Guoan. I’m a Beijinger, so of course I support our own soccer club. Another team is Guangzhou Evergrande because they’ve been doing great for the past few years,” he says. Much of Guangzhou Evergrande’s success is due to the fact that it was the first CSL club to really spend big. It had been relegated to a lower league in 2010 as punishment for   Duerden says. But the club got a new investor, Evergrande Real Estate Group, and climbed back to the top of the table, winning the country’s first Asian Football Confederation Champions League title in 2013. ”At the moment, people write about the political will to see that China becomes a world power in football, which obviously is part of it,” Duerden says, ”but you see teams now who want to catch the champions and win things themselves, so it’s a competition domestically to get better and better players.” Li Jianning, a    program planner in Beijing, says signing talented foreign players ”brings immediate effect for Chinese clubs.” He says, ”It helps to present more competitive games and therefore attracts more audience.” Both Liu Yang and Liu Qiang agree, saying skilled foreigners help elevate local players and build both the fan base and global brand awareness of the Chinese Super League. In the U. S. Major League Soccer is banking on a similar strategy by signing players such as Didier Drogba, David Villa, Kaká and Andrea Pirlo. But to field a championship club team in China (and eventually a strong national team) it’s clear that the CSL must focus on improving Chinese players. In the Super League, only four players from   countries per team are permitted to be on the field at any given time to ensure that domestic players have enough opportunities to develop. This, Duerden says, is the ”key to everything.” ”Of course, the ultimate aim is to do well on the international level with national teams in the Asian cups and then the World Cups, and not only qualify for World Cups, but . .. ultimately win them,” he says. ”But this is going to take time.” Given the government interest, investor enthusiasm and the country’s potential fan base of nearly 1. 4 billion people, the global success of Chinese soccer might seem inevitable. But it’s all a matter of perspective  —   just ask the fans. ”I think we’ve already have a   club now: Guangzhou Evergrande,” Li Jianning says, citing the club’s No. 40 world ranking in 2013, which put it above a number of European clubs. Liu Yang says evaluating the future of Chinese soccer is about managing expectations: ”The Super League is way weaker [than European leagues]. I believe it has the potential to be the best in Asia, but when it comes to worldwide, it’s not practical.” But Liu Qiang thinks China’s passion for the game will help propel its rise internationally. ”I think it’s because since a long time ago, Chinese people all share this dream about Chinese soccer, which is ’Go beyond Asia, Take on the world! ’”   NPR News Assistant Liang Ruixue contributed to this report."
"In midtown Manhattan, 48Lex towers over the crowded street at its feet. The   luxury hotel offers a singular experience  —   serving complimentary wine at happy hour  —   but it’s just one of 52 hotels owned by Hersha Hospitality Trust. The company, named for founder Hasu P. Shah’s wife, grew from modest origins. At one of the family’s first properties, the   Red Rose Motel in rural Pennsylvania, Shah and his family lived behind the lobby. ”There were a lot of chores to do,” remembers Jay H. Shah, Hasu’s son and current CEO of the company. ”There was a lot of grass to cut. We had to skim the pool every morning.” Now, the Shahs help comprise an impressive statistic: Indian immigrants and their children make up about 1 percent of the U. S. population, but they own roughly half of the motels in the country. And about 70 percent of those motel proprietors can trace their heritage to just one state in India: Gujarat. In fact, the story of Hasu P. Shah  —   a former electrical engineer who reinvented himself as an entrepreneur  —   is common among the Gujarati community, according to Pawan Dhingra, chairman of the sociology department at Tufts University. ”They have a long tradition of working for themselves, rather than someone else,” Dhingra says. But the fact that so many Gujaratis became motel proprietors, in particular, is something of a historical accident. It started with Kanjibhai Desai, an undocumented Gujarati immigrant who bought a motel in San Francisco in the early 1940s. As Dhingra explains, his example inspired Indians who followed. ”Some of the pioneers stayed at his hotel, where they got the idea of pooling their resources to buy one themselves,” he says. Gujaratis really began buying motels after 1965. That’s the year the U. S. government began allowing in more people from developing nations. Now there are nearly 4 million people of Indian descent living here. ”They really did change franchising,” says Jan deRoos, who teaches at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. He says Gujaratis played a huge role in the expansion of Best Westerns and Days Inns across the country, partly because they were willing to relocate to     places like Canton, Miss. or Plainville, Ohio. ”Every small community in America today has a hotel or two, as a result of this community taking a business risk and establishing a hotel.” Being the only Indian immigrants in these isolated communities could be tough, though. ”It was hard,” says Binita Patel, whose parents owned hotels in North Carolina in the 1980s. ”I remember someone pulling their window down and yelling, ’Go back to your own country,’ as we were walking home.” Yet many Gujarati families stuck it out, and they did innovative things to make their motels profitable. They started the   practice of placing a washer and dryer in the room behind the lobby. That way, the person working the front desk at night would have the sheets and towels ready for the next day. They also economized by doing a lot of the upkeep themselves. Patel and her brother, for example, were in charge of vacuuming her parents’ Holiday Inn on the weekends. ”We would vacuum as a team because neither one of us would be strong enough to push the entire vacuum on our own,” she recalls. As she got older she graduated to actually running some of her family’s properties. And now, as an adult, Patel wants to take the business to the next level. She takes inspriation from her friend and fellow   Gujarati, Jay H. Shah. Hersha Hospitality Trust, which began with that modest motel in Pennsylvania, is a now a $2. 5 billion company."
"In the ocean near Hawaii, more than 2   miles underwater, scientists have discovered a small,   and ghostlike little octopod  —   possibly a new species. The animal was discovered by Deep Discoverer, a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV  —   picture a small, unmanned submarine equipped with cameras and a robotic arm  —   that was working to collect geological samples, Michael Vecchione, of the National Marine Fisheries Service, described the Feb. 27 discovery on the NOAA website: ”As the ROV was traversing a flat area of rock interspersed with sediment at 4, 290 meters, it came across a remarkable little octopod sitting on a flat rock dusted with a light coat of sediment. The appearance of this animal was unlike any published records and was the deepest observation ever for this type of cephalopod.” Vecchione explained that cirrate octopods  —   which have fins between their arms and little   strands near their suckers  —   have been reported at depths up to 5, 000 meters. But the octopod encountered by Deep Discoverer was incirrate, like the familiar octopus  —   and incirrate octopods have never before been detected at depths below 4, 000 meters. In addition to its remarkable depth, the small animal stood out for its appearance, Vecchione says: ”A distinctive characteristic was that the suckers were in one, rather than two, series on each arm. This animal was particularly unusual because it lacked the pigment cells, called chromatophores, typical of most cephalopods, and it did not seem very muscular. This resulted in a ghostlike appearance, leading to a comment on social media that it should be called Casper, like the friendly cartoon ghost. It is almost certainly an undescribed species and may not belong to any described genus.” The appearance of the animal on the images sent back by Deep Discoverer confused the watching scientists, NOAA says. Indeed, a video released by NOAA (complete with a groovy soundtrack) features Chris Kelley, the science lead for the NOAA’s current project in the area, watching the video feed from the shore and exclaiming, ”That animal is not in the HURL guide.” Then, as research specialist Daniel Wagner laughs, Kelley quotes Taylor Swift (kinda): ”I have never, like, ever, seen that one.”"
"The first few minutes of the Democratic debate on CNN between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were quite cordial. But that didn’t last long. Taking place in Flint, Mich. the town that has been thrust into the national spotlight amid its water crisis, the two candidates took questions from the audience about their plans to help the heavily   city recover and restore clean water to all its residents. But as the debate wore on, the two rivals had one of their testiest exchanges yet as discussion moved to trade policies, the auto bailout, Michigan’s struggling economy and gun control. Michigan is an important political test for both Democratic candidates. Its 147 pledged delegates will be up for grabs on Tuesday, where polls show it’s the former secretary of state who has an edge over the Vermont senator. Here are some of the top moments. Focus on Flint water crisis  Both candidates used their opening statements to address the devastating water crisis in Flint. Sanders reiterated his earlier call for Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to resign over the scandal, saying ”his dereliction of duty was irresponsible.” ”Amen,” Clinton echoed, calling for the first time as well for Snyder to step down or to face a recall election. ”We must focus on what should be done for people of Flint,” Clinton said, reminding the audience it was her idea to hold a debate in Flint. ”It is raining lead in Flint, and the state is derelict in not coming forward with the money that is required.” Sanders told one woman from the audience, who were questioning the candidates, that it was a disgrace that his water bill in Vermont was lower than ones in Flint right now. ”The first thing you do is say people are not paying a water bill for poisoned water,” Sanders thundered. Both were pressed on whether they had waited too late to visit the embattled community and whether they were only pushing the issue for political gain and would abandon the fight after the election. ”When I heard about it, I immediately sent people here to find out what was going on. It was almost unbelievable,” Clinton said. She pledged that as president she would rid the country of lead pipes everywhere within five years to prevent another   crisis and would stay with the city ”in whatever capacity I am.” Sanders dings Clinton on trade: She’s ”found religion” Questions from Flint residents moved on to how to protect jobs in the state, especially the state’s troubled auto industry. Clinton explained how she would incentivize manufacturing. But Sanders pounced, calling her out on having an inauthentic change of heart on one of his most passionate issues. ”I am very glad that Secretary Clinton discovered religion on this issue, but it’s a little bit too late,” he argued. ”Secretary Clinton supported virtually every one of the disastrous trade agreements written by corporate America.” He slammed her for past support of trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was implemented under President Bill Clinton, and for being late in opposing the more recent   Partnership. But Clinton turned the tables, arguing that Sanders opposed the auto bailout that helped to salvage many jobs in the state. ”The money was there, and had to be released in order to save the American auto industry and 4 million jobs, and to begin the restructuring. We had the best year that the auto industry has had in a long time. I voted to save the auto industry,” Clinton said. Sanders underscored his passion for the issue, though, embracing a frequent criticism that he’s too focused on inequality during his campaign. ”I’m a   person, well, I guess so,” he said. ”My one issue is trying to rebuild a disappearing middle class. That’s my one issue.” The two also disagreed on whether the   Bank should be renewed  —   something conservatives oppose and that Sanders has been a lone voice of Democratic opposition on. He argued that the bank benefits big corporations, such as Boeing and Caterpillar, while Clinton argued it’s necessary to protect American jobs and keep them in the U. S. Things get testy: ”Excuse me, I’m talking” The trade issue prompted one of the most tense exchanges between the two candidates. As Sanders tried to rebut Clinton’s claims, he interjected, ”Excuse me, I’m talking.” ”When billionaires on Wall Street destroyed this economy, they went to Congress and they said, ’Please, we’ll be good boys, bail us out,’ ” Sanders continued. ”You know what I said? I said, ’Let the billionaires themselves bail out Wall Street.’ It shouldn’t be the middle class of this country.” Clinton tried to interject, but he again cut her off, telling her, ”Wait a minute. Wait. Could I finish? You’ll have your turn, all right?” Later, when the conversation turned to gun control, he again jumped in: ”Can I  —   can I finish, please? All right?” The succession of exchanges recalled Clinton’s first campaign for office in 2000, when Republican Rep. Rick Lazio was criticized for going after Clinton during their New York Senate debate in a way some saw as sexist. That’s a comparison the   group Correct the Record was happy to make, blasting out the clip and calling it Sanders’ ”Rick Lazio moment.” Historically, male politicians have had to walk a fine line in coming across as too aggressive against female politicians  —   and if Clinton is the nominee, it’s an issue Republicans will have to find a way to handle as well. While this hasn’t been a big problem for Sanders before, it was clear Clinton was getting under his skin on issues he’s very passionate about. And it’s a moment you can expect to see again, more than likely. Wall Street speeches dog Clinton, One thing Clinton still hasn’t found a good answer to is why she won’t release transcripts of speeches she was paid to give to Wall Street groups. And as talk turned to bailouts, Sanders saw another opening to hammer her on it. ”Now, I kind of think if you get paid a couple   dollars for a speech, it must be a great speech. I think we should release it and let the American people see what that transcript was,” he said. ”And I have said and I will say again, I will be happy to release anything I have as long as everybody else does too, because what really is behind that question, Republicans and Democrats, is where I can stand up to Wall Street,” she argued, putting the onus on potential GOP rivals to release full records as well. But for Sanders, the comeback was easy. ”All right, look, Secretary Clinton wants everybody else to release it, well, I’m your Democratic opponent, I release it, here it is,” he said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. ”There ain’t nothing. I don’t give speeches to Wall Street for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You got it.” Gun control trips up Sanders, If Clinton’s Wall Street ties are her Achilles’ heel, then Sanders’ past opposition to some gun control measures is his. The father of a girl who was shot in Kalamazoo, Mich. by an Uber driver last month pressed the candidates on stricter gun control measures, noting the alleged shooter had no criminal or mental health background that would have prevented him from getting a gun. ”We’ve got to have a public discussion, because we have created a culture in which people grab for guns all the time,” Clinton said, criticizing Sanders for a past vote for immunity from lawsuits for gun sellers. Sanders argued there was no ”magic solution to this problem.” ”Any lunatic tomorrow, any person can walk into a theater and do something horrific. And you know what? For us to tell you that that absolutely will not happen would be untrue,” he said. Pressed on the immunity vote by moderator Anderson Cooper, Sanders was forced into a   defense of it  —   not something that usually plays well in a Democratic primary. ”If you go to a gun store and you legally purchase a gun, and then, three days later, if you go out and start killing people, is the point of this lawsuit to hold the gun shop owner or the manufacturer of that gun liable?” Sanders argued. ”If that is the point, I have to tell you, I disagree. I disagree because you hold people  —   in terms of this liability thing, where you hold manufacturers’ liability, is if they understand that they’re selling guns into an area that it’s getting into the hands of criminals, of course they should be held liable.” Clinton went for the emotional heartstrings in her response, though. ”I want people in this audience to think about what it must feel like to send off your   little backpack, maybe, on his or her back, and then the next thing you hear is that somebody has come to that school using an automatic weapon, an   and murdered those children,” she said. ”Now, they are trying to prevent that from happening to any other family.”"
"The seventh Democratic debate stood in stark contrast to the GOP debate in Michigan: It focused heavily on the Flint situation and it was civil. Clinton offered nuanced explanations, while Sanders offered declarative statements. An example: Clinton explained the many conditions she would require to OK fracking. Sanders countered with one sentence: ”I don’t support fracking.” Clinton had a   moment when she equated gun manufacturers to Wall Street greed: ”The gun manufacturers sell guns to make as much money as they can make.” Sanders had his own when he challenged Clinton on releasing her Wall Street speeches. The highlights: That’s the quickie version of what happened in the seventh Democratic presidential debate of the 2016 race Sunday night. The politics team has    coverage."
"Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has a message for the Republican Party: ”We have to become more respectful of each other.” Speaking on the death of former first lady Nancy Reagan, Powell said he believed she would be ”disturbed” by the way her husband’s legacy is invoked by some people today. Powell spoke in an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin on All Things Considered. Referring to the ”civility” and ”lack of any nastiness” he saw in Ronald Reagan, Powell, who served as Reagan’s national security adviser, decried the tone of the current Republican presidential campaign. ”To stand there and do junior high school tricks on one another is belittling the country and belittling the office to which they are striving,” he said. Powell added, ”Even Jerry Springer thinks it’s gone too far, and when Jerry Springer thinks you’ve gone too far, my friends, you have gone too far.” He was referring to recent remarks in the Financial Times from Springer, who served as the Democratic mayor of Cincinnati in the late 1970s. As recently as last Fall, Powell insisted that he remains a Republican, even though he supported Barack Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. In both of those campaign years, Powell spoke out critically about the rhetoric of the GOP. ”In 2008, I spoke out against calling the president a Muslim as if that was a curse. I don’t know anything in the Constitution that says Muslims are bad,” Powell said. In 2012, Powell spoke out against ”a level of intolerance in some parts of the party  —   and there was. And I think there still is.” Powell did not name any specific candidates while laying out his criticism. There was huge buzz around a possible run by Powell for the GOP nomination in 1996, when he enjoyed immense popularity after serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Gulf War. Powell declined to run and later served as secretary of state under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. Powell delivered to the United Nations the administration’s evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which proved faulty. Powell later referred to that episode as a ”painful” memory. He stepped into the Reagan White House during a time of embarrassment over international affairs. Powell became national security adviser in 1987 at the height of the Iran Contra scandal, which erupted over secret operations that included an arms sale to Iran in exchange for American hostages being held in Lebanon. Powell recalled it was the late first lady, Nancy Reagan, who finally got President Ronald Reagan to admit to and apologize for the operation. ”A lot of people went in to tell him, ’Mr. President, you’ve got to do this,’ but at the end of the day I think it was Nancy who finally pushed him over the edge,” he said. He remembered Mrs. Reagan’s role in the White House positively: ”Her instincts were usually very, very good  —   politically, in common sense and in terms of how the public would respond, and she was the one who would sort of push the issue, and she’d push him.” Mrs. Reagan has often been referred to as her husband’s protector, a role Colin Powell saw up close. ”It was important for us to keep both of them happy, and I think we did a pretty good job,” he said. The times when Nancy Reagan wasn’t by her husband’s side were not good, according to Powell. ”She would occasionally go off to New York to visit with friends and to do shopping, and she’d be gone for several days. By day two, we could see the president starting to fret,” Powell said. ”By day three, we would chat with each other and somebody would say, ’Call New York and get her home,’ doing it in the most polite, proper way, of course.” After leaving the White House, Powell said, Mrs. Reagan let her guard down a bit, and their friendship grew. ”I think they were the most gracious and charming president and first lady,” Powell added. As the political world once again reflects on the example set by the Reagans in the wake of Mrs. Reagan’s death, Powell said he hopes ”perhaps this would calm the temperature a bit in our public debate now.”"
"Sen. Bernie Sanders has won the Democratic caucuses in Maine, a victory that means he’ll be taking home most of the state’s 25 delegates at stake. With nearly all of the state’s precincts reporting, Sanders leads rival Hillary Clinton by double digits, with more than 64 percent of the vote. ”I thank the people of Maine for their strong support. With another   victory, we have now won by wide margins in states from New England to the Rocky Mountains and from the Midwest to the Great Plains,” Sanders said in a statement Sunday night. ”The pundits might not like it but the people are making history.” While the state was sparsely polled in the weeks leading up to the caucuses, Sanders’ win was not altogether unexpected. The Vermont senator has had significant success already in New England, where he has blown out Clinton in primaries both in his home state and New Hampshire. The win makes for Sanders’ third of the weekend. With victories in Kansas and Nebraska, Sanders entered Sunday having already won 47 pledged delegates this weekend. Yet, after Clinton’s   win in the Louisiana primary, which delivered her 55 delegates alone, Sanders’ performance in Maine means the two candidates will have effectively reached a draw this weekend  —   a   split in pledged delegates, led by Sanders. Overall, Clinton still leads the race by 195 pledged delegates. Sanders needs more than half of the remaining pledged delegates to win a majority  —   and that number only rises with superdelegates factored in. But Sanders certainly didn’t hurt his chances in Maine on Sunday night."
"Marco Rubio has won the Puerto Rico’s Republican primary and will net all of its 23 delegates. With all votes reporting, the Florida senator took 71 percent of the vote, followed by Donald Trump at 13 percent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 9 percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich with just 1 percent. Because Rubio topped 50 percent of the vote, he will net all 23 delegates up for grabs. The Florida senator was the only candidate to visit the territory, campaigning there on Saturday, where he downplayed his poor showing in Saturday’s slate of primaries. But delegates added on Sunday will help his total climb against Trump and Cruz. And the territory awards just as many delegates as some other smaller states, such as New Hampshire, where Rubio had a disappointing finish last month. Overall, it’s just the second outright win for Rubio he also won the Minnesota caucuses on Super Tuesday. The Florida senator has had strong second place showings in many states, but his rivals have derided those silver or bronze medals, saying he needs to prove he can win states outright. After Saturday’s primaries, where Rubio missed the delegate threshold in two states, Trump argued it was time for the senator to drop out of the race. Rubio’s campaign argues today marks a turning point where that will begin to happen, and that the map going forward is now in their favor, starting on March 15th in the Florida primary. The senator’s campaign hopes his win with Hispanics in the territory will boost help boost him over Trump in the Sunshine State. The GOP   has been under fire for disparaging remarks about Latinos and his hardline immigration policies. This is the only time Puerto Rico Republicans will be able to make their choice known, though they’re ineligible to vote in the November elections."
"On the surface, Saturday’s election results appeared divided. After all, on the GOP side Ted Cruz and Donald Trump each won two contests, while among Democrats it was Bernie Sanders who won two of the night’s contests as Hillary Clinton netted one victory. But in the march toward the nomination, delegates are the name of the game, and both the Texas senator and the former secretary of state emerged with more of them on Saturday, thanks to their margins of victory. For Republicans, Cruz’s decisive wins were a signal he’s the one with the momentum in the GOP field, while the other challengers to try and topple Trump are fading. And among Democrats, Sanders looks toward Michigan on Tuesday night and upcoming contests to try and catch Clinton in the delegate math. Here are four things we learned from the ”Super Saturday” contests in five states. Cruz emerged as the strongest   alternative, Politically speaking, it was a good night for Cruz, as he won convincing victories in Kansas and Maine, while Trump struggled to eke out victories over Cruz in Kentucky and Louisiana. Ultimately, Cruz came away with more delegates tonight than Trump, adding 64 to his total while the real estate mogul picked up 49 delegates. In Louisiana especially, a bad week of news for Trump seemed to have an impact. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver noted, Trump won early voting in the Bayou State, but Cruz edged out Trump to win election day voters, and the state because a much closer contest throughout the night. Cruz’s momentum is thanks in large part to reliable Republican voters. Each contest on Saturday was a closed primary or caucus, meaning only registered GOP voters could participate. That robbed Trump of independents and crossover voters, which past exit polls showed he did well with. As Cruz continues to make the case he runs the strongest with the most reliable GOP voters and hardline conservatives, he has more arsenal for that argument. Rubio has got to put points on the board soon, It becomes harder and harder for the Florida senator to argue he’s the best candidate to topple Trump when he has still only netted one statewide victory (Minnesota on Super Tuesday). On Saturday especially, the results for Rubio were bad. In Maine and Louisiana he failed to even clear the threshold to get any delegates, and in Maine he finished fourth behind Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Now, Cruz has climbed to a more than    advantage over Rubio in the total delegate race. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant argued on Fox News Saturday that Rubio will win his home state of Florida on March 15, and the trajectory will change: ”After we win the Florida primary, the map, the momentum and the money is going to be on our side.” But until Rubio starts putting actual W’s on the board and starts cutting into the delegate advantage both Trump and Cruz have built, it’s a hard argument to make. Such logic does raise the stakes even more for Rubio in Florida, where he’s no lock to win. Trump still leads polls in the state, and Cruz indicated this week he’s not ceding the Sunshine State either. The path for Kasich, too, still looks narrower and narrower. After all, he still hasn’t won a single state outright. He netted just 34 total delegates in the GOP race. If he doesn’t have a strong showing Tuesday in Michigan, the drumbeat for him to get out even before his home state of Ohio votes on March 15 will grow. Republican turnout continues to break records  Super Saturday brought super turnout for Republicans once again. In all four states Saturday, Republicans beat 2012 and 2008 turnout  —   and by a lot, more than double in Kansas, nearly double in Louisiana, triple in the smaller caucus in Maine. That means that in every contest, except one (Vermont) Republicans have seen increased turnout from recent years. Democrats, on the other hand, had a mixed night when it comes to turnout. Louisiana was off by 70, 000 votes from 2008, Nebraska was way down, too, but the Kansas caucuses were up marginally. That trajectory doesn’t guarantee success for Republicans in the fall. But in closed contests on Saturday where only GOP voters could come out  —   and crossover voters weren’t a factor, the heavy turnout just bolsters the argument that Republicans are the beneficiary of an enthusiasm gap heading into November.   again fueled Clinton’s delegate victory, The patterns for Democrats continue to hold true. Bernie Sanders was able to win in smaller caucuses in states with whiter populations, while Clinton ran up a big margin in a state with a heavy black Democratic population. And, as usual, she winds up with the most delegates out of tonight because of that big win in Louisiana. All of it is a wind up to Michigan on Tuesday, which has a more mixed population. Sanders hopes to breakthrough with Northern blacks in a place his economic message should resonate with whites as well. But if his message doesn’t break through in Michigan, it could only be a matter of time before Clinton is mathematically, officially the nominee."
"Something was wrong with Nat. I got the call about my    severely autistic son just as I was parking, about to meet a friend for coffee. It was from Richard, the day program director. Like many adults with significant disabilities, Nat spends his weekdays at a day program, an organization that helps his employer so that he can work  —   he does carriage return at a local Shaw’s. When Nat is not working at Shaw’s, he is out in the community with support staff and other individuals in his program, volunteering at Meals on Wheels and various activities. Richard got right to it: ”I don’t know how to tell you this. But Nat came in with puffy eyes and was really not himself, you know, the way he’s been lately.” A poisonous feeling started flooding my throat. Oh, I knew. Richard continued: ”He was hanging his head, quiet, not talking to himself, not walking around. I asked him some questions  —   he started crying a little.” Nat always talks to himself and paces. Although he can talk a little, for the most part you have to really know him to figure out what he’s trying to say. He is very severely impacted by autism and some developmental delays. ”What questions?” I broke in, wanting to cry myself. But I already kind of knew. Richard had asked Nat questions about whether someone had been touching him, hurting him. At the time, this was all we could imagine because he had seemed healthy. He had adjusted well to living in an apartment with his roommate, John. Nevertheless, Nat had not been himself for a while. He’d been so still. So quiet. And where did I go with that? The worst place possible: worrying that he’d been abused. This is not a frivolous fear, either. I know cases of such abuse. Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that ”1 in 6 boys are sexually abused at one time or another, and the numbers for individuals with disabilities are even higher.” Richard told me that he’d asked Nat if something hurt. Nat had gestured to his abdomen, but Richard thought Nat’s hands were pointing kind of close to his crotch. Richard persisted: ”Did someone hurt you?” and Nat answered, ”Yes.” One part of my brain just froze. I tried to grab hold of my thoughts, but they had formed a dense cloud in my head. I needed to get off the phone. I needed to think. I needed to figure this out. I called Ned, my husband, expecting him to be Mr. Rational, as always  —   to organize my thoughts, tell me not to worry. But, for once, he was just as hesitant as I was. ”What are we supposed to do?” he kept asking. ”I don’t know,” I kept answering. ”There’s going to be an investigation of everyone Nat spends time with. I don’t know,” I said,   my uncertainty. I drove home, but I didn’t get out of the car. I just sat there, in my driveway, screaming, ”Oh, Nat!” and then, ”I’m sorry, Nat. No. No way. God, please. No.” My throat got raw. I drove to the day program to talk to Richard and pick up Nat. I didn’t get out of the car right away instead, I called Nat’s pediatrician. I love his doctor. She’s a Jewish mother, just like me. She’s known Nat forever  —   that’s why he still goes to her. The idea of starting over with some adult physician exhausts me. How would a new doctor understand Nat’s ways of communicating, without a lot of intervention and instruction from me? And how    would a general internist be about severe autism in adulthood, when only recently have people like Nat been on the medical radar screen? Most of that knowledge centers around autistic children. One 2012 study found that, for example, ”The majority of all physician respondents . .. reported having a lack of training in the care of adults with [autism spectrum disorder].” The same study showed that physicians feel that ”54. 7 percent of their patients with ASD could not understand and follow medical recommendations.” Our pediatrician sounded like she was crying when I told her. She asked to be kept in the loop. But what was the loop? Right now it was all a knot. When I finally got hold of Nat, he was very warm. The heat from his skin was like a heavy blanket. His eyes were not the usual crystal blue. They were a hot Bermudan blue. He was sick. No one had realized this, though. I drove him home. I asked him in different ways if he was happy, if he was hurt. I asked him what hurt. Where did it hurt, who’d hurt him? But of course it was so hard to get any reliable information. The conversation went like this: ”Does your head hurt?” ”Head. Yes.” ”Do your feet hurt?” ”Yes. Feet.” Sigh. True? Or just the default answer? ”Nat: does the chair hurt?” ”Yes.” Talking is truly the most difficult thing you can ask of Nat. Not once did I get an answer that was anything like a confirmation of abuse. Finally I asked him about if anyone touched his private parts. ”No.” No. Two letters. So definite. So rare with Nat. But with Nat, unlike his ”yes,” ”no” means no. A cool wave of relief swept over me. My thoughts cleared for the first time that day: Nat was sick. I gave him Tylenol. He went to sit in the big yellow armchair, in the sunny bay window. I checked on him, while sending around an email update to his whole team, [explaining] that I believed he was actually sick, and not sad. Not hurt. And then I thought I saw the flash of teeth. Then, his voice bubbled up: a small curve of laughter. Laughter. Oh, God, how beautiful. But the fever still bothered me. And the dark, silent mood he’d been in that had led Richard to such a dire conclusion. I realized that he was indeed gesturing at his abdomen. The right side. Wait, where is the appendix? Another call to the doctor, and there we were, in the emergency room. We told the doctors there about everything, even the allegation of abuse. They examined Nat thoroughly. At one point Nat giggled at the doctor’s palpation. He was no longer quiet or still. Whatever it was, it had passed. By now, my husband and I were feeling a bit like overly anxious, newbie parents. But of course we had to check things out  —   Nat was practically nonverbal. I will always be that   mother. An ultrasound and many blood tests later, Nat was deemed fine but gassy. Exhausted, we took Nat home. Our best guess? Some kind of benign virus. But will we ever know for sure? Until medical schools and hospitals learn the specifics of caring for autistic adults (with so many having communication, sensory and behavioral challenges) probably not. And Nat  —   and the 1 in 45 people like him  —   will have to live with the consequences of that uncertainty. This piece originally appeared in WBUR’s blog CommonHealth. It is an excerpt taken with permission from Susan Senator’s book, ”Autism Adulthood: Strategies and Insights for a Fulfilling Life,” Skyhorse Publishing, 2016."
"If you’ve been following the presidential campaign, you have probably heard some talk about the power of the evangelical vote. Pastor Max Lucado is a prominent evangelical pastor and a prolific   writer who almost never writes about politics. And that’s one reason millions found a recent essay of his so interesting. Lucado took to his website to describe all the reasons he says Republican   Donald Trump’s tone and decorum fail the decency test, in a blog post titled ”Decency for President.” He cites Trump’s belittling of women and people with disabilities, among other people, and his constant  . He says such comments ”wouldn’t be acceptable even for a middle school student body election . .. but for the oval office?” His essay, also published in the Washington Post, has now been shared millions of times. Lucado spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about his blog post and the response. Here are some of the highlights of their conversation: Michel Martin: What is it that made you want to weigh in here? Why now? Max Lucado: Kind of the bottom line for me, I don’t think people come to the church where I preach to hear my view on politics. I’d like to think I’m going upriver in talking about   topics rather than particular political or controversial topics. So I’ve just stayed away from it through the years, which is funny because there was a time I wanted to go into politics. And so all of a sudden, here I am, I guess. I’m in the thick of it. I would not have said anything about Mr. Trump, never  —   I would never have said anything if he didn’t call himself a Christian. It’d be none of my business whatsoever to make any comments about his language, his vulgarities, his slander of people, but I was deeply troubled . .. that here’s a man who holds up a Bible one day, and calls a lady ”bimbo” the next. Here’s a man who calls himself a Christian and yet just has the audacity to make fun of a lady’s menstrual cycle. . .. He didn’t just do this on occasion, but repeatedly, unrepentantly. Somebody sent me a list of 64 people he’s called loser. Just this week it’s continued. . .. It deeply concerns me that somebody who knows little or nothing about the Christian faith would hear Mr. Trump call himself a Christian and then make a decision based on the Christian faith, based on his behavior. And so I just felt like I should say something. I did not expect to stir up the dust storm that this blog has stirred up. Tell me what struck you about the reaction. We were stunned by the amount of response. . .. It really struck a nerve. We had so many responses, we had to quit publishing   responses because people were beginning to argue with each other. . .. Not what I intended for it to be. . .. Most of it has been positive  —   many people have said, ”This is what I was thinking, thanks for saying it on my behalf.” But there are many people who were just really ticked off that I would dare to suggest that this behavior is inappropriate. One thing that you noted in your   post is there seemed to be a deep undercurrent of worry. There is, and you could sense that, you could almost taste it. There’s an angst in the country, and I think there’s a fear. I think there’s a fear of we don’t know what’s next. And I’ve tried, maybe you can help me, I’ve tried to put my finger on the root of this fear. I feel like really we’re better off than we were eight years ago, 10 years ago in many ways. There’s certainly things we can do better at, but the economy is somewhat stable. We’re not engaged in the level of international conflict that we’ve been involved still, you would think we were. There’s just a level of anxiety. I’m personally, of course, of the persuasion that all of our issues are spiritual issues and that a disconnect with God creates a disconnect with our neighbors and that leads to anxiety. . .. Many people say in fact that they’re puzzled about the appeal of Donald Trump, especially to professing Christians. The fact is, he has racked up many votes and endorsements from leaders. For example, on Super Tuesday, every state that Trump won, he received the majority of the evangelical vote. What do you think the appeal is? I’m curious why we’re giving him a free pass on this behavior. Typically, evangelicals have tried to hold our leaders up, if they call themselves Christians, to a standard consistent with the faith and then of course consistent with whatever office they hold. But it seems like we’re more than willing to give Mr. Trump a free pass. The classic one was in Iowa when he was asked, ”Do you ever ask for forgiveness of sins?” and he said, ”No, I don’t need to.” I nearly fell out of my chair. That’s right at the heart and core of the Christian faith, that we’re all sinners, we all need forgiveness of sins. I do not have an answer for your question. I’ve asked people who support Mr. Trump, ”How do you reconcile the disconnect between what he claims to be and what he says?” . .. I’m as baffled as anyone as to why. . .. If President Obama had used the language and spoken with the same disrespect that Trump has, and identified himself with a Christian, there is no doubt in my mind that I would’ve expressed the same concern. . .. We just have to hold ourselves to a higher standard if we’re going to be leaders and if we’re going to be Christians. I do believe that leaders have to be held to a higher standard, especially Christian leaders. I put myself in that camp. What would you say to people who are fed up with the government and think that it’s gone too far on social issues like   marriage and abortion, and feel that Trump is the only candidate who is willing to do something about it? My concern is that somebody would make a decision against Christianity because of Mr. Trump’s behavior. And that’s my high concern here. And to that person I would say, the way he speaks about people is not the way our master, our savior has taught us to speak it’s not the way our scriptures urge us to speak. The Bible urges us to be respectful to all people, especially people with whom we have disagreements, to never libel people, to never label people. Now, this is a huge deal in scripture, and so I would encourage that person, and the reason I’ve gone so verbal and vocal with this is because I’m protective of the reputation of Christ and the church, and I would ask that person not to interpret the Christian faith through the words of Mr. Trump."
"Former first lady Nancy Reagan died Sunday at her home in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure, according to the Reagan Foundation. She was 94. Like most first ladies, Nancy Reagan was the target of both praise and criticism. She brought an elegance to the White House that some thought was long overdue. But others said it was the sign of an    administration during tough economic times. Reagan was criticized for meddling in White House affairs, but she was also credited with her ”Just Say No” campaign against drug abuse. Later in life, Reagan nursed the former president during his long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. She later became a strong advocate for   research, in the hope that it would lead to a cure. Loving Relationship, Reagan’s major role in life was to be the supportive, adoring wife of the nation’s 40th president. Admirers and detractors alike marveled at their close relationship and how it sustained them during the sometimes grueling journey of public life. She was President Reagan’s fiercest protector  —   and eventually his caregiver, as he was ravaged by Alzheimer’s. Despite the criticism Reagan received during her time in the White House, her husband’s difficult, final days brought her widespread sympathy. At the 1996 Republican convention, she had many, including herself, in tears. ”Just four years ago, Ronnie stood before you and spoke for what he said might be his last speech at a Republican convention. Sadly his words were too prophetic,” she said. Over the next eight years, Reagan watched as her once powerful husband deteriorated, both physically and mentally. It was a long, sad goodbye for a woman who said her life truly began when she married Ronald Reagan. Initial Controversies, Nancy Reagan was born in 1921 as Anne Frances Robbins. She became an actress, like her mother. But as she later told   it was hardly a passion. ”I had gone to college and graduated and hadn’t found the man I wanted to marry. I didn’t want to sit in Chicago and do nothing, so I became an actress,” she said. Her big break came in 1949, when, as Nancy Davis, she landed a   contract with MGM. She went on to make a number of moderately successful films. But as Ronald Reagan’s biographer Edmund Morris says, her real career began when she met the handsome president of the Screen Actors Guild. ”Nancy loved Ronald Reagan with a consuming passion. He was her one and only reason for existence,” Morris says. The two married in 1952. In 1966, Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California. As the state’s first lady, Nancy Reagan got her first taste of political sniping, most often for the   adoring look she always gave her husband  —   something known as The Gaze. But that was nothing compared with the criticism she faced when she came to Washington and decided to redecorate the White House and buy expensive new china. First lady historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony says it wasn’t the best move, with the new administration cutting billions from the federal budget. ”Doing this at a time of recession and high unemployment made her an unwitting symbol for the Democrats of everything that was wrong about   Reaganomics,” Anthony says. ”And she was very hurt by this.” Astrology, Anthony says it would take Reagan years to learn how much impact her actions as first lady could have. But those initial controversies were soon overshadowed. The attempted assassination of President Reagan in March 1981 devastated the first lady, who saw all too clearly how quickly her husband could be taken away. ”He came very close to dying. I don’t think most people knew that then. I don’t think most people know it now,” she said. ”But there were two times that they came to me and said they couldn’t find his pulse.” She told NPR’s Terry Gross in 1989 that it was then she decided to consult an astrologer. ”When a friend called me and said I know this lady who said that if she only could have gotten to you she could have told you that he shouldn’t have done anything that day,” she said, ”and I thought, ’Oh my lord, I could have saved him maybe.’ ” ’Just Say No’ Reagan began to rely on the astrologer to help set the president’s agenda, something the public wouldn’t know for years. She also began to take on the more traditional first lady role of promoting a pet project  —   in her case, the ”Just Say No”   campaign. She spoke on the issue around the country and in 1986, joined the president for a televised address to the nation. ”We want you to help us create an outspoken intolerance for drug use. For the sake of our children, I implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs,” she said. But that didn’t stop the criticism. In Reagan’s second term, the first lady was increasingly accused of interfering in White House affairs. When one reporter asked the president about U. S.  space weapons talks, she was overheard whispering, ”We’re doing everything we can,” something President Reagan promptly repeated. But Anthony says Nancy Reagan had only one goal in mind  —   protecting her husband and his image. ”Mrs. Reagan I think had enormous political influence without always intending to,” Anthony says. He says she was constantly on the lookout for anyone she thought didn’t have her husband’s best interests at heart  —   most notably, White House Chief of Staff Don Regan, whose ouster she helped to orchestrate. It was telling that Regan’s replacement, former Sen. Howard Baker, was grilled by reporters his first day on the job about his relationship with the first lady. Morris says Nancy Reagan’s political instincts were invaluable for a president inclined to trust and like everyone around him. ”He needed a screen, a protector. That’s the only real political function she formed for him. She could see a predator coming from a mile off,” he says. Republican Party’s Matriarch, Anthony adds that Nancy Reagan was more independent and outspoken than many gave her credit for. He notes, for example, that the first lady supported abortion rights in an   administration. He thinks she also grew with the job. ”You see a woman who, despite having been an actress, was at first slightly uncomfortable even giving the teacher of the year award. Then eight years later [she] is addressing the United Nations General Assembly,” Anthony says. She continued to have an impact long after leaving the White House. She became a strong advocate of   research  —   in the hope that it would lead to an Alzheimer’s cure  —   even though it put her at odds with many Republicans. Still, she was clearly the party’s matriarch  —   a reminder of a popular president and the woman who protected him. At a June 2009 ceremony to unveil a statue of her husband in the Capitol rotunda, Reagan was greeted with extended applause from lawmakers of both parties. Her voice cracked as she noted that the last time she’d been in the room had been for her husband’s state funeral. She then thanked everyone for all their support and left the stage."
"Former first lady Nancy Reagan died Sunday at the age of 94. The elegant, famously adoring wife off Ronald Reagan is being remembered by political figures and everyday Americans for her character, her advocacy work and her unflagging support for her husband  —   as well as, in some cases, for more controversial elements of her legacy. Here’s a sample from the tributes released in the world of politics: Former president George W. Bush: ”Mrs. Reagan was fiercely loyal to her beloved husband, and that devotion was matched only by her devotion to our country. Her influence on the White House was complete and lasting.” Former president Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: ”Nancy was an extraordinary woman: a gracious First Lady, proud mother, and devoted wife to President Reagan —  her Ronnie. Her strength of character was legendary, particularly when tested by the attempted assassination of the President, and throughout his battle with Alzheimer’s. She leaves a remarkable legacy of good that includes her tireless advocacy for Alzheimer’s research and the Foster Grandparent Program.” President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama: ”Nancy Reagan once wrote that nothing could prepare you for living in the White House. She was right, of course. But we had a head start, because we were fortunate to benefit from her proud example, and her warm and generous advice. ”Our former First Lady redefined the role in her time here,” they wrote. ” Later, in her long goodbye with President Reagan, she became a voice on behalf of millions of families going through the depleting, aching reality of Alzheimer’s, and took on a new role, as advocate, on behalf of treatments that hold the potential and the promise to improve and save lives.” Reince Priebus, the chair of the Republican National Committee: ”Nancy Reagan embodied what it means to represent America as First Lady and her dignified and warm demeanor inspired America.” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, ”Ronald Reagan could not have accomplished everything that he did without his wife Nancy. As first lady, she brought a sense of grace and dignity to the White House. She roused the country to redouble the fight against drugs. And she showed us all the meaning of devotion as she cared for President Reagan throughout his long goodbye. She loved her husband, and she loved her country. This was her service. It was her way of giving back. And all of us are very grateful.” The remaining candidates for the presidency also chimed in, on Twitter or in statements. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders: ”No matter your party or political ideology, this is a sad day for America. Nancy Reagan was an exemplary first lady. A devoted partner, she was her husband’s most trusted advisor and, as such, served our country well. Even after her time in the White House, she was an outspoken advocate for   research to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. Nancy Reagan had a good heart, and she will be dearly missed.” A few people on Twitter  —   plus one space agency  —   took the opportunity to share some favorite photos of the first lady. Not all the responses to her death have been laudatory: some have highlighted a story published last year by Buzzfeed describing how Nancy Reagan turned down a plea for help from Rock Hudson as the star was dying from AIDS. The Advocate, among others, suggested the story raised larger questions about the first lady’s role in the White House’s   to the AIDS crisis. And Atlas Obscura tweeted out a story about how Nancy Reagan brought an astrologer into White House scheduling decisions. But more tributes were positive, focusing on Reagan’s character. Many highlighted the love between Nancy and Ronald Reagan. NPR’s Sam Sanders posted a letter from Ronald Reagan to his wife, sent before their 20th anniversary. In it, the president wrote that they couldn’t possibly have been married so long: ”20 minutes maybe  —   but never 20 years. In the first place it is a known fact that a human cannot sustain the high level of happiness I feel for more than a few minutes  —   and my happiness keeps increasing. ”I will confess to one puzzlement but I’m sure it is just some trick perpetrated by our friends  —   (Ha again!) I can’t remember ever being without you and I know I was born more than 20 mins ago.” Reagan’s stepson, Michael Reagan, wrote that ”she is once again with the man she loved”  —   a sentiment echoed by many on Twitter."
"This story is part of NPR’s   series, Break It Down. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton will face off in the Michigan primary on Tuesday, at a time when the state’s major cities have seen better days. Flint faces a    crisis, while Detroit is still reeling from its bankruptcy. Sanders attacked Clinton on Twitter this week, connecting Clinton’s support for free trade, specifically the North American Free Trade Agreement signed into law by her husband, to the kind of blight Detroit and other cities in the Upper Midwest are seeing. But is it that simple? We decided to try and find out. On Thursday, Sanders tweeted, ”The people of Detroit know the real cost of Hillary Clinton’s free trade policies,” along with five photos of dilapidated buildings. Shortly after that initial tweet, he added: ”43, 000 Michiganders lost their jobs due to NAFTA. I opposed that bad deal, @HillaryClinton did not.” There’s a lot going on here, so we’re going to break this into two parts: 1. What does free trade (and especially NAFTA) have to do with the devastation Sanders’ tweet depicted? 2. How big of a proponent of NAFTA was Hillary Clinton? 1. Probably not much (though it did cost some people their jobs) and, 2. She supported it, though she expressed reservations sometimes. (Either way, importantly, it was signed under her husband’s administration.) Let’s do this point by point: 1. What does free trade have to do with the devastation Sanders tweeted about? Detroit’s blight makes for striking photos, but its causes go well beyond trade policy. ”I’m pretty sure the buildings he posted were abandoned before 1993 [when NAFTA was signed],” said James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Policy Institute, a   economic policy think tank that describes itself as ”free market” . Maybe the most succinct way to illustrate this point is with a chart of Detroit’s population over the years: White flight: Clearly, Detroit had plenty of problems (and abandoned buildings) outside of trade agreements. And those problems started well before, for example NAFTA or the decision to normalize trade relations with China in 2000. In the 1950s and 1960s, and particularly after the 1967 race riots, Detroit was the poster child of ”white flight,” as hundreds of thousands of white Detroiters fled to the suburbs. Since then, other factors have contributed to Detroit’s decline: Auto industry problems: Threatened by strikes, some factories started to leave the city  —   and no other industry could fill the gap left by those factories, as the New York Times reported in 2013. Foreign competition also contributed to the decline in employment, and many argue that automation also has hurt manufacturing. Mismanagement: Many also point the finger at a series of Detroit’s mayors for problems ranging from bad fiscal decisions to outright corruption. All of this made for a vicious cycle. A diminished population left a weaker economy and also less government revenue, which meant fewer government services, which meant a lower quality of life, which helped send more people packing. Even in the last few years, the population continued to plummet  —   the Census Bureau reported in 2011 that the Motor City’s population fell by a stunning 25 percent between 2000 and 2010. ”That’s really not going to be NAFTA,” Hohman said. ”That’s basic corruption and mismanagement of the city government that has made it unable to provide the basic services.” Also, there’s the question of what Sanders means by ”Hillary Clinton’s free trade policies.” It’s true that she voted for some trade pacts as a senator and that she once was an advocate for TPP (more on that later) but as for NAFTA, that was signed under her husband’s administration. She did promote it at one point (more on that later, too) as Sanders says, but that in particular isn’t her policy. OK. So if free trade policies like NAFTA didn’t drive Detroit’s decline, that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect the city’s (or the state of Michigan’s) economy. Sanders’ 43, 000 figure comes from a 2011 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a   policy think tank that has produced several reports about the potential detrimental effects of trade pacts like NAFTA and TPP. Specifically, that 43, 000 number refers to the number of jobs ”displaced due to trade deficits with Mexico”  —   and, in terms of percent change, EPI ranks Michigan as the hardest hit. Altogether, that report said the U. S. lost more than 680, 000 jobs, as of 2010, to Mexico, thanks to NAFTA. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration had argued that the pact would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that argument for NAFTA continues to this day. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce last year said that NAFTA ”supports” millions of jobs. The idea is that opening up the U. S. to that many new markets (and new customers) sparks more economic activity. So two different sides disagree on the direction of the employment effects of trade policy  —   but then, some economists believe that trade pacts simply don’t bring about any major changes in the long run. ”Most analysts would agree that, and we certainly agree that, jobs were lost. It’s true that jobs are lost,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow and trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He added that the auto industry was one of the hardest hit by NAFTA, as some production was shifted to Mexico. However, Hufbauer contended the net number of jobs created by a trade agreement usually balances that out. ”Any trade agreement is basically a job churn agreement,” he said. ”Jobs are lost, and jobs are gained, and on balance it’s about zero in terms of number of jobs.” (Read more about this dynamic in a fact check on TPP job gains from the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler.) As one 2004 Congressional Research Service study  —   itself a review of other studies  —   found, NAFTA had ”little or no impact on aggregate employment” during its    existence. Hufbauer added that he believes, on balance, that the gains from trade are positive, leading to lower prices on consumer goods and   jobs. Of course, if that’s true, that still stings for the workers who loses her job at, say, a Michigan auto plant, if she isn’t qualified for or can’t reach the job that replaces hers. And not everyone buys this idea. Robert Scott, who wrote the EPI report, argued that while the   effect might be true in theory, it’s not true in practice. He believes that, thanks to a number of factors including what economists call secular stagnation, the U. S. isn’t producing those replacement jobs. And those jobs that NAFTA did create he believes tend to be   than the ones it sent elsewhere. So NAFTA meant that some people lost their jobs as factories moved South of the border, while other jobs were created. And it’s true that employment has fallen in Michigan’s manufacturing sector since the agreement was signed (though the major decline began years after NAFTA took effect). But knowing exactly how many of those job losses (or gains in other sectors or other places) to attribute NAFTA is virtually impossible, as NPR’s Don Gonyea put it in 2013, as the causes are complicated and interwoven. Regardless of how trade affected the local economy, tying Detroit’s problems to more open trade is far oversimplifying what’s going on. ”Detroit and Flint are suffering, largely from   in some cases   wounds,” said Hohman. 2. Did Hillary Clinton support NAFTA? Yes, though she often expressed reservations. ”I think NAFTA is proving its worth,” she said in 1996. And she told an audience at Davos in 1998, ”I hope that American business voices will be heard” in promoting   authority, a policy under which Congress can give trade pacts an    vote only. However, she added that there needed to be ”sensitivity to worker and environmental concerns.” In her book Living History, she characterized NAFTA as an ”important administration goal” for her husband’s presidency and praised the pact’s potential to create jobs, despite the fact that it was ”unpopular with labor unions.” But over the years, she offered measured critiques. In 2000, she had called the agreement ”flawed,” and, in 2004, she said that while the agreement was ”on balance” good for the U. S. it could have been negotiated better. Later, when running for president, she was more explicitly critical of the agreement. ”NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would,” she said in a 2007 CNN presidential primary debate. Clinton’s record doesn’t show her to be fully in favor of or opposed to all instances of trade liberalization. While she voted for several deals as a New York senator, she also voted against the 2005 Central American Free Trade Agreement. ”Some people are generally   or  . She’s    on trade,” as Gene Sperling, chairman of the National Economic Council under both Presidents Clinton and Obama, told the Washington Post in 2015. This doesn’t just matter because the Michigan primary is coming up. And it’s not that Sanders is unnecessarily fixated on a    trade deal. Rather, this is all part of a bigger fight over the Trans Pacific Partnership, the massive trade deal that the U. S. has been negotiating with Asia. On TPP, President Obama has found himself in the unusual position of agreeing with many Republicans and the business community on TPP while alienating   lawmakers, with Sanders among the most vocal critics of the deal. As secretary of state, Clinton most famously supported the TPP when she, in 2012, told an audience that it ”sets the gold standard” for trade agreements. (CNN later counted 45 instances in which she praised the deal.) And this has been one of the areas on which Sanders has been able to contrast himself most with Clinton  —   and therefore hit her hard. Many labor unions are strongly opposed to the trade deal as well, meaning hitting Clinton on TPP could threaten her support. But on the campaign trail in 2015, she expressed doubts about the deal. And then in October, she made her position clear, telling PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff that the deal didn’t meet the ”high bar” she said she had set for it. Not that Sanders is about to let this go. As Sanders Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver said on Thursday, ”  conversions won’t bring back American jobs.” Sources: ”45 Times Secretary Clinton Pushed the Trade Deal She Now Opposes.” Jake Tapper, CNN. June 15, 2015. ”Heading South: U. S.  Trade and Job Displacement After NAFTA.” Robert Scott, Economic Policy Institute. May 3, 2011. ”Hillary Clinton says she does not support   Partnership.” PBS NewsHour. October 7, 2015. ”Hillary Clinton’s hedge on trade leaves Obama without political cover.” David Nakamura, Washington Post. May 12, 2015. ”NAFTA at Ten: Lessons from Recent Studies.” Congressional Research Service. February 13, 2004. Phone interview with Gary Hufbauer, Reginald Jones Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics. Phone interview with James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Phone interview with Robert Scott, senior economist, Economic Policy Institute. ”A Timeline of Hillary Clinton’s Evolution on Trade.” Domenico Montanaro, NPR. April 21, 2015. Transcript of CNN Democratic Debate. November 15, 2007. ”What Has NAFTA Meant for Workers? That Debate’s Still Raging.” Don Gonyea, NPR. December 18, 2013."
"How many Donald Trump jokes can be made in one night? Let the Gridiron Club count the ways. The D. C. journalism and political establishments gathered on Saturday night to make fun of themselves and an increasingly unpredictable presidential campaign at the Gridiron Club and Foundation’s 131st Anniversary Spring Dinner. Vice President Joe Biden was the headliner, and speeches were also delivered by potential vice presidential contenders: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who   his speech with his twin brother, Joaquin, a member of the U. S. House of Representatives. Per tradition, the night was a mix of speeches from politicians and skits, performed by Gridiron journalists, accompanied by an orchestra and a few professional singers. The sung skits were punchy, even if the song references were dated. A song mocking presidential candidate Donald Trump was set to the melody of ”Springtime for Hitler,” with one parody song delivered by a Trump impersonator called ”Heil Myself.” As the chorus, performing from behind a fake border wall, repeated the line ”every wild angry white guy,” the Trump impersonator belted out lines like ”Look at me!” and ”Stand and cheer!” Of course, Trump wasn’t the only one mocked. Later in the evening, a scolding Barbara Bush was portrayed lecturing her son, failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush, to the melody of the song, ”Blues In The Night (My Mama Done Told Me).” A Bernie Sanders impersonator was ”Sandersista,” dressed as a Soviet communist, mocked with a song set to the melody of ”Mr. Sandman.” A sequin   Hillary Clinton sang, ”You don’t have to say you love me, just give me the job,” to the melody of the Dusty Springfield classic, ”You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me.” ”Yes, I’m gonna stay forever,” the impersonator continued, ”kind of like the mob.” The musical numbers were separated by the speeches. Nikki Haley’s was full of jabs at her audience for the night. ”When the press makes fun of itself, they call it parody,” she told the room full of press. ”When the press makes fun of Republicans, they call it journalism.” And she, like just about everyone else behind a microphone that night, delivered a few Donald Trump jokes. ”I won’t really feel like I’ve made it,” Haley deadpanned, ”until Donald Trump demands my birth certificate.” The brothers Castro took to the podium dressed as two other Castro brothers: Cuba’s Fidel and Raul. While still in character, they mockingly endorsed ”Comrade Bernie Sanders, a true son of the revolution.” Vice President Biden closed out the night, aided by teleprompters. He joked several times about his decision not to run for president, and how he might have liked that job. And he gave some mocking advice for Castro and Haley, potential future VPs. ”At all major bill signings,” Biden said, ”the mic is hot!” He was referencing his own   endorsement of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, at that bill’s signing. (NOTE: The link does include Biden’s profanity.) He even touched on the brewing fight over a new nominee to the Supreme Court. Biden suggested Obama nominate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and how that might alarm even the justices themselves. ”Before you know it, you’ll have eight more vacancies.” But of course, he had to joke about Donald Trump, as well. ”Donald’s attacked every person of color,” Biden said, ”except John Boehner,” mocking the former House Speaker’s tan. Biden hit Trump on the awkward endorsement he got from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, too. ”Tonight I call on Donald Trump to be a man of his word and release Chris Christie now.” Towards the end of his remarks, Biden got serious. He quoted Churchill, saying of the current Republican race, ”When eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” After joking about whether his father or Churchill actually uttered the line, he continued to decry the tenor of this election season. ”Think how we conduct our politics today,” Biden scolded. ”Truth is, we’re all to blame. .. As well as some of you, by the way.” ”Our kids are watching,” Biden said of the election. ”The world is watching.” A few lines later, he remarked, ”The American people are better than this.” Biden ended with a few more jokes, but the sermon portion of his remarks may have been the most lingering. Even in a night of jokes, the race for president in 2016 was no laughing matter."
"There’s a sales tax exemption for treating erectile dysfunction in Wisconsin. The same can’t be said for feminine hygiene products. Sales tax isn’t applied to Viagra in Wisconsin, but it is applied to tampons and pads. Birth control, medicated condoms and yeast infection medication are exempt because they are considered drugs. One lawmaker in that state says the taboo around menstruation that prevents women from openly talking about their periods may also explain why women are paying extra to manage those periods. ”Women’s health has been misunderstood and neglected throughout history,” Rep. Melissa Sargent, a Democrat from Madison, told NPR. ”Some women are ashamed of their period,” she said, adding that she feels the reluctance to talk about it has prevented the issue from gaining more momentum in state legislatures. That’s why she’s sponsored a bill that calls for lawmakers to exempt feminine hygiene products from the state sales tax. Sargent is part of a nationwide movement to remove taxes on tampons and pads that advocates feel penalize women for their biology. The debate isn’t new, but exemptions like the one Sargent is pushing for are seeing a new wave of support. Five states have already dropped the tax, including Minnesota in 1981, Pennsylvania in 1991 and New Jersey in 2005. But some lawmakers say the taxes aren’t a product of simple discrimination, and that presenting the issue as an instance of sexism may ignore the nuances and inconsistencies of state tax codes. In order for all women to stop paying an tax on feminine hygiene products, all 50 states would have to eliminate the sales tax on tampons and pads. Is the ’tampon tax’ fair? Five new bills have been introduced this year, mostly by female lawmakers, that are now at various stages of the legislative process. If Wisconsin’s bill passes, the state would become one of 11 that don’t tax feminine hygiene products. Five states exempt feminine hygiene products from sales taxes, and five others have no statewide sales taxes. That leaves 40 states and the District of Columbia that still do tax tampons and pads. Alongside Wisconsin, lawmakers in Chicago, Utah, Ohio, California, New York, Michigan and Connecticut have proposed similar legislation to eliminate the tax that they say unfairly treats periods as a ”disease” or ”illness,” or considers the products to be ”luxury” items. The bill in Utah has been rejected, while New York and Connecticut have resurrected bills from the previous session. In Michigan, a bill is in the state’s tax policy committee, but no hearing date has been scheduled. So, what is sales tax? There’s the simple definition: a tax that’s assessed by a government when a good or service is purchased. But even that doesn’t quite work when, unlike other countries, the U. S. leaves it up to the states to decide how and what’s going to be taxed  —   there’s no unified way of taxing something. Some states don’t have a sales tax, others tax at both the state and local level. And it just so happens that the majority of states tax tampons and pads. Even in cases where there’s a state and local sales tax, in all but two states the tax base is the same, meaning they’re taxing the same goods and services the same way, there just may be a split of where the revenue is going  —   maybe some of it’s going to the locality instead of the state. Of the 40 states (and the District of Columbia) that do tax menstrual products, the tax ranges from 2. 9 to 7. 5 percent, according to the Tax Foundation, a   tax policy think tank. Plus, some local governments have their own additional taxes. These are applied to each purchase of a good or service that’s not tax exempt, said  Nicole Kaeding, an economist with the Center for State Tax Policy at the Tax Foundation. For example, Chicago taxes tampons and pads at the combined   rate of 10. 25 percent, the highest tax rate of any major U. S. city, after increasing by 1 percentage point in January. Sales tax rates are applied to all goods and services until lawmakers agree it’s not, Kaeding said. To be clear, no jurisdiction has a   tax, as it might an alcohol or tobacco tax, and there is no additional tax imposed on these products. In places where feminine hygiene products are taxed, they’re taxed under the general sales tax, she said. ”It’s not that we are proactively taxing tampons,” says Kaeding. ”It’s that we tax everything. And tampons are just something that we tax.” By virtue of this, states typically consider tampons and pads as ”feminine hygiene” products, and aren’t exempt from sales tax because they’re not ”intended for use, internally or externally, in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of illnesses or diseases in human beings,” as New York’s tax code states. Tax codes in other states have similar definitions for medical supplies and drugs. Tampons are considered ”medical devices” by the federal Food and Drug Administraion, which made the classification after hundreds of cases of Toxic Shock Syndrome  —   a bacterial infection typically caused by superabsorbent tampons  —   were reported in the 1970s. But to Rep. Greta Johnson, a Democratic state legislator in Ohio, that definition doesn’t work. To her, a period isn’t an ”illness or a disease.” ”These are medically necessary products,” Johnson said. Ohio’s tax code disagrees, although the medicine prescribed to treat yeast and urinary tract infections (as well as breast implants, contraceptives, and birth control) is exempt from the state sales tax. It’s not that the taxes are malicious, says menstrual health advocate and writer Jennifer    —   rather, she thinks many lawmakers simply haven’t understood the financial implications of this tax because they  —   being men  —   have never had to purchase tampons or pads. Not that much money? Support for the Ohio bill has been ”lukewarm at best,” Johnson said, because most state lawmakers don’t think it’s a huge tax for women to pay. Although the revenue Ohio gets from the sales tax is minimal, she said, the amount of money a woman spends on feminine hygiene products annually and in their lifetime is a costly variable. The ”tampon tax” can add an upwards of 66 cents per box, but over the course of a woman’s lifetime, that adds up. And considering that in many states more than half the population spends decades getting periods (and therefore paying these taxes) a large chunk of the U. S. population has paid millions for this extra expense. Recent estimates by Euromonitor International, a market research firm, suggest that an American woman between the ages of 12 and 54 spent $17. 60 on average on tampons and pads last year. About 70 percent of menstruating American women use tampons. Tampons in the U. S. cost around $7 for a box of 36. The average woman menstruates from ages  . That means women are estimated to have roughly 450 periods during their lifetime. On paper that looks like it would be a massive   but proponents of eliminating the tax say it’s modest  —   and, therefore, that the tax should be easy to eliminate. For instance, if California eliminates its 7. 5 percent sales tax on feminine hygiene products it would be a $20 million loss to the state’s general fund. Compare that to California Gov. Jerry Brown’s recently proposed   more than $170 billion state budget. ”The amount of sales tax on these products, compared to the size of most government budgets is a drop in the bucket,” says  . But it’s not that easy, says the Tax Foundation’s Kaeding. She says that arguments made by ”tampon tax” opponents often ignore the reality of how state sales tax laws work. The more   sales tax exemptions, the higher the tax rates on other products will be to make up the lost revenue, she said. That in turn increases the incentive for other interest groups to lobby for more exemptions or find ways to evade the sales tax by reclassifying their own products, she added. That matter of classification makes things even harder. When politicians pass legislation that exempts a good from sales tax they have to interpret the category that it’s under. That’s where things get ”really, really complicated really, really quickly,” Kaeding says. Minnesota, for example, exempts feminine hygiene products, and its tax code goes on to specify items that it feels fit in that category, which includes tampons, sanitary napkins and panty liners. But it excludes douches, wipes and washes. The logic behind fighting the ”tampon tax” for some advocates is that people shouldn’t be taxed for any items that are a ”necessity.” It’s less an argument of patriarchal privilege and more a refusal to see tampons and pads as being comparable to food in terms of necessity. Opponents argue that hygienic items used exclusively by one gender shouldn’t be exempt because it would require the   of state tax codes, even in some states that exempt tampons, such as Massachusetts, which doesn’t exempt pregnancy tests. The unsung global history of the ’tampon tax’ While some politicians cite gender equality as the reason to not classify menstruation as an illness or disease, it’s a   global industry, headed in the U. S. by the likes of   and Procter  Gamble, makers of Kotex and Tampax, respectively. (Neither   nor Procter  Gamble has publicly taken a position on the ”tampon tax. ”) However,   says this is a ”citizens’ movement” without the influence of corporate interests or national organizations. And this movement is gaining steam. In January, President Obama said in a YouTube interview that there’s no reason this tax exists other than men made the law when those taxes were passed. Similar sentiments have been expressed through online petitions worldwide, with a unified goal of globally redefining tampons and pads as essential items. Women and girls in almost every country have to pay their governments extra for a product that some feel they have no choice but to buy. There has been movement to eliminate the tax in Australia and the United Kingdom, who charge an extra 10 and 5 percent, respectively, for a box of tampons or pads. And after years of complaints, Canada lifted its tax last summer. Even the United Nations has gotten into the ring. The organization in 2013 declared menstrual hygiene a public health and human rights issue. There was a time, not so long ago, when a group of women in Chicago won a class action lawsuit challenging the city’s sales tax on feminine hygiene products. In 1989, Anne Burke and fellow Chicago attorney Sidney Karasik alleged that the city illegally taxed these products purchased from various retailers. Burke, now an Illinois Supreme Court Justice, and Karasik believed the products were wrongly taxed and that refunds from the state should be given to people who bought them. Sales tax on feminine hygiene products had been collected in Chicago for an unspecified time after the state’s department of revenue exempted the items on July 1, 1985. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that tampons and pads met the state’s definition of ”medical appliances” and were exempt from a sales tax imposed by the city of Chicago, according to a summary of the case in the Loyola Consumer Law Review. This was a brief win for advocates. The state subsequently narrowed the exemption and feminine hygiene products were, once again, taxed at the full rate. More than two decades later, the debate over whether or not to exempt tampons and pads from sales tax continues. Burke’s husband, Alderman Edward Burke, proposed an ordinance in February to eliminate Chicago’s sales tax on the products. He and Alderman Leslie Hairston want to reclassify these products from ”grooming and hygiene” to ”medical appliances” in the municipal code. Eliminating the tax is a   monetary loss that can lead to the   success of girls, said California Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia. She says girls have told her they’ve missed school because they couldn’t afford feminine hygiene products  —   one even used socks instead. She   a bill in in her state in January that would eradicate the tax on feminine hygiene products at both the state and local level by reclassifying them as medical necessities that qualify for insurance coverage. ”It’s about equity and access,” she said. ”There’s no other tax that’s this gender bias[ed].” The National Coalition For Men, a nonprofit organization, offered written support of the bill in January, on condition that the bill be amended so that men are also not taxed based on their gender. The letter suggested that adding jockstraps and condoms to the list of   free items would help achieve gender tax equality."
"First, Christopher Ingraham called the people of Red Lake County, Minn. residents of ”the absolute worst place to live in America.” Then the data journalist at The Washington Post called them ” .” Now he’s going to be calling them something else: Neighbor. The story of his change of heart  —   brought to our attention by Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio  —   starts last August, when Ingraham reported on a USDA ranking of the ”natural amenities” of every community in the United States. California and Colorado did great. The Great Lakes region ranked abysmally. And Red Lake County was, well, at the very bottom. Ingraham pointed out as much. Then he mocked the county’s ”claim to fame” as ”the only landlocked county in the United States that is surrounded by just two neighboring counties.” To add insult to, well, insult, he didn’t capitalize the word county in the county’s name. The result: an uproar. ”Hell hath no fury like a Minnesotan scorned,” Ingraham wrote in a   post. He was bombarded with tweet after tweet criticizing the USDA’s methodology and showing beautiful images of Red Lake County and other Minnesota regions. (Many other states were ranked poorly by the USDA, but none of them felt the need to correct the record, Ingraham noted.) ”I started to hear from angry Minnesota people probably within about 15 minutes of putting the story up,” Ingraham told MPR’s Tom Crann at the time. ”The social media assault, it was sustained, it was consistent  —   and I will say, the photos that people are sending me, they’re absolutely beautiful. . .. These glowing golden wheat fields and these scenic rolling hillsides and lakefronts,” Ingraham said. (And that capital ”C”? A correction note was appended to the original story, noting it had been fixed  —   with ”special thanks to the residents of ’Indignant Minnesota Twitter’ who brought the issue to the author’s attention via a change. org petition. ”) Ingraham proceeded to visit Red Lake County to see those glowing wheat fields for himself. The piece he wrote after his trip revealed a man thoroughly charmed: ”The visit was a shot of pure country. A newborn calf suckled my thumb as the brothers told me about life on the farm. The earthy smells of a dairy operation  —   manure and hay and sawdust and dirt  —   hung thick in the air. It sure didn’t seem like the worst place in America  —   or one particularly lacking in natural amenities, or natural beauty, either. ” . .. [W]hat I found most striking is how friendly everyone I’d met had been. They were fiercely proud of their community in a way I’d never seen before  —   not even during my childhood in   upstate New York. ’We don’t welcome people like this when they come to D. C.,’ I kept saying to people, dumbfounded.” And Ingraham was never too keen on Washington, D. C. In his original,   Lake County post, he questioned the USDA’s methods, asking how it was possible ”that Washington, D. C.  —   home of sweltering summers, miserable winters, swampy humidity and little natural beauty to speak of  —   ranks higher than any place at all?” So perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that Ingraham has decided to pack up and move to the place he once casually dismissed. ”I kind of fell in love with Red Lake County when I visited last year and we’ve always wanted to raise the boys in the country,” he announced on Facebook. He confirmed on Twitter that this was no joke. He’s particularly excited about the bovine company: ”The cows were lovely,” he told the Grand Forks Herald. ”Hopefully, we can move next to the cows.”"
"President Obama has been talking about closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since he ran for president in 2008. Now, eight years later, his administration has put out a plan to make it happen. The plan is to transfer some of the remaining detainees to other countries and those who can’t be transferred would be moved to a facility in the U. S. And that’s the part of the plan many in Congress are railing against. It’s not just lawmakers who don’t like the president’s plan. On Friday, a new   poll found that 56 percent of Americans surveyed oppose shutting down the U. S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. This week on For the Record: closing Gitmo. Today, we bring you three different views on the U. S. prison: a former detainee, President Obama’s top envoy on this issue and the Marine Corps general who recently retired after overseeing the facility. Omar Deghayes, Guantanamo detainee ( ) Lawyer Omar Deghayes is one of hundreds of detainees who’ve been released from the U. S. prison at Guantanamo Bay over the years. He was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002. ”It was a mistaken identity,” he says. ”They had a photograph of a Chechen rebel, and they thought that was me.” In a 2013 interview with Weekend Edition, Deghayes described several hunger strikes he participated in while he was detained. [Note: This is his story, and NPR can’t independently verify the details of his account.] He now says the hunger strikes were a ”cry of help to the outside world,” and ”the last resort” to get his case heard. ”We want our imprisonment to come to an end we want proper courts to have our cases listened to in courts so that a final decision is made,” Deghayes says. ”And those who’ve committed anything can be convicted and imprisoned, and those who haven’t committed anything should be released.” That was during the early years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During that time the U. S. government was using   enhanced interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, including sleep deprivation, slapping and nudity. After the abuses came to light, President Bush signed the Detainee Treatment Act in 2005, which prevents ”cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” of any prisoner of the U. S. government, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Today, there are 91 detainees left in Guantanamo Bay. John Kelly, Retired Marine Corps General  General Kelly oversaw the prison from 2012 until this past January. He insists that the detainees hold a lot of power because they can provoke their guards without retaliation. ”The facilities they live in today are pretty good,” Kelly says. ”Again, I wouldn’t want to be a detainee, but if you got to be a detainee somewhere, Gitmo is the place to be.” He describes something called splashing. [Warning: This is a graphic description.] ”The detainees frequently will mix up a concoction typically of feces, urine, and for some reason, sperm is a special treat, I guess, from their perspective,” he says. ”When the guards will go and either give them their food or open the door to bring them out, they get splashed. They get a face full of feces and urine and all the rest of it. You know, that by law is an assault, nothing we can do to them. The point is, Kelly says, ”We’re the good guys  —   they’re not.” ”We can quibble over what they were doing on the battlefield when we took them, but every one of them is a bad guy,” he adds. Lee Wolosky, U. S. Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure, The State Department’s top envoy for closing Gitmo offers a different perspective. He describes what it was like the first time he visited the facility. ”There are images in all of our minds about what Guantanamo was,” Wolosky says. ”We have images of men in open cages exposed to the elements in orange jumpsuits.” But he says that Guantanamo has changed. ”It is a facility that is better, I’m a lawyer by training, better than any certainly any state or local correctional facility or prison that I’ve been to,” he says. ”It’s better than many of the federal facilities.” So why close it? Wolosky says the people still visualize today’s Guantanamo as the old site. ”As the president has said, it is a recruiting tool,” Wolosky says. ”It is because of what the world believes that it is. It doesn’t matter what it actually is in certain respects. We’ve all seen images of hostages in the desert wearing orange jumpsuits as they are executed by Islamic State. This is an image that unfortunately is proving to be indelible and has proven to be a recruiting tool for Islamic State.” General John Kelly doesn’t buy that argument. ”I have three tours in Iraq, a lot of interaction with detainees, and none of them every said to me, ’You know the reason I picked up a rifle to kill you people? Is because of Guantanamo bay,’ ” Kelly says. He doesn’t see a parallel when ISIS beheads people wearing orange jumpsuits. ”I would say that our actions against extremists, bombing them and killing them, would be more of reason to hate us than keeping some of their colleagues in a great detention facility at Guantanamo bay,” he says. Lee Wolosky says there are 36 detainees who have been approved for transfer and he’s confident he can find countries to take them in by this summer. That leaves 55 detainees. Some of them are still being tried in military commissions, and the remaining detainees are waiting for review boards that will decide if they will be sent home or resettled somewhere else. Any other detainees will need to be kept somewhere and the administration has identified 13 sites on U. S. soil that could house them. The administration has tried this before. Back in 2009 the plan was to move certain detainees to a prison in Standish, Ill. In the end, the residents there didn’t want that to happen and Congress wouldn’t change the law to allow the detainees to move to the U. S. So what convinces Wolosky that Congress will change its mind on one of the most contentious issues of our time? ”There been bipartisan consensus at the beginning of this administration to close Guantanamo,” he says. ”So if there’s interest in a willingness to close Guantanamo and there is an interest and willingness in not releasing certain detainees who cannot be safely released, then the alternative is to bring that small number of detainees to the United States.” Wolosky says with confidence that he thinks that’s what will happen by the end of the administration."
"Peyton Manning, the NFL’s   leading passer and its winningest starting quarterback, told the Denver Broncos that he is retiring, a spokesman for team says. Manning is stepping away from the game after winning his second Super Bowl and after 18 seasons. ”When you look at everything Peyton has accomplished as a player and person, it’s easy to see how fortunate we’ve been to have him on our team,” John Elway, Broncos Executive Vice President of Football Operations and General Manager, said in a statement. ”Peyton was everything that we thought he was and even more —  not only for the football team but in the community. I’m very thankful Peyton chose to play for the Denver Broncos, and I congratulate him on his Hall of Fame career.” ESPN, which first broke the story, reports: ”History will show the quarterback made four Super Bowl trips with two titles, set a mountain of records and earned a place on football’s Mount Rushmore. ”Manning, who played 14 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts, was a   Hall  of  Famer     before spinal fusion surgery caused him to miss the 2011 season. He went to the Broncos as a free agent in 2012 and authored the most prolific season of any quarterback in history in 2013. The Broncos made two Super Bowl trips in Manning’s final three seasons.” Manning hinted at his retirement during the playoffs earlier this year. When Denver won the AFC Championship microphones picked up Manning telling New England head coach Bill Belichick, ”This may be my last rodeo.”"
"Some of the best coffee beans in the world are grown in Africa, and while the number of coffee consumers there is growing, most Africans still don’t drink it. That’s something Rwanda’s government would like to change. The country’s coffee industry, which nearly collapsed after the genocide in 1994, has gradually become one of its largest and most profitable agricultural exports. Rwanda exports 99 percent of its coffee. Now, the government wants to increase the domestic market  —   mostly by tapping into the expendable cash of Rwanda’s growing middle class. Gerardine Mukeshimana, minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources, says the future of coffee is both domestic and international, largely due to the instability of prices in international markets. ”You don’t want to be in a situation that if they go down, your whole economy is disturbed. You have to have a plan B. That’s why we promote local coffee consumption,” she says. So the Rwandan government is attempting to get its citizens to at least try what they grow. For the past couple of years,   radio ads have been touting the benefits of drinking coffee and telling people that the drink isn’t just for foreigners. And in the past decade, privately owned coffee shops have popped up in Kigali, the country’s capital. On a Sunday afternoon, expats and wealthier Rwandans are in a Kigali coffee shop which appears to be modeled after Starbucks. The walls are decorated with folk art and large photographs of coffee farmers. Kayumba Polepole, a    banker, sits alone at a table, drinking a latte and sending emails. He drinks coffee because he likes the taste, but also because he wants to buy local. ”If we have a finished product that is made in Rwanda, I think that it’s a pride also to consume that product instead of sending the best quality abroad,” he says. But for most Rwandans, the price of coffee makes it unattainable. A single cup costs 2, 500 francs  —   about U. S. $3. That’s the equivalent of several days’ pay in Rwanda. Most Rwandans drink Fanta and tea, which cost a lot less. Coffee is so expensive because Rwanda doesn’t have enough places to roast the beans. They are exported to Europe or the United States, then reimported after roasting. At a plantation in the lush Northwestern hills of Rwanda, Emmanuel Baziruwile and Fabien Ntawuruhunga are pruning dead branches from Bourbon Arabica coffee trees. They’ve worked here for decades, but neither of them had tasted coffee until they got a cup as part of a government campaign called ”Coffee Days.” ”Because now I know the taste, if I could afford to buy it in any shop, then I can buy it and prepare it at home. But I don’t have any means to buy coffee,” says Baziruwile, as he carefully avoids snipping clusters of ripening coffee berries on branches. Other than giving growers an annual taste, the government has no programs to subsidize the cost of coffee. For Fabien Ntawuruhunga, who could afford a cup of coffee, drinking it is just not part of his culture. ”We didn’t drink coffee because we didn’t know anything about how to drink coffee,” he explains. ”We knew coffee as beans  —   but nothing about drinking.” German and Belgian colonizers introduced the crop to Rwanda more than a century ago. Under the Belgians, Rwandans were forced to grow coffee for export under brutal conditions. ”Beating them, forcing them, created a cycle of hate. They saw it as something they had to be forced to plant,” says Eric Rukwaya, who works for the National Agricultural Export Board. He said these conditions created distaste for coffee. Reporting for this story was supported by The International Women’s Media Foundation."
"Forget all that    stuff. If you’re looking for evidence that the British have a big, beating heart underneath their reputation for reserve and restraint, look no further than Sunday’s finale of their popular TV export, Downton Abbey. It’s a sprawling,   affair which wraps up six seasons worth of storylines. Longtime fans of television’s most mannered soap opera know there are oceans of emotion beneath some of the characters’ tiniest gestures  —   a welcome reward for fans who have endured secret scandals, thwarted passions, unexpected deaths and unforeseen imprisonments. Castmember Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Cora Crawley, the American heiress married into Downton’s British nobility, says the show’s setting in a more understated time likely fueled its success. ”In today’s world, we contend with more information than we can actually absorb and handle in our emotional development, and it produces a sort of low grade anxiety all the time,” McGovern said last year during a press conference. ”But in the world of Downton Abbey, we all only know the circle that is right in front of our face and we know our job and we know our place and we know how to behave. And there are limits to that life, of course, but it’s peaceful.” Of course, for women and poor people and nonwhite people, the days when ”everybody knew their place” seem a lot less admirable. Still, Downton soared by playing with that tension as much as possible. The show’s two towering male characters  —   Hugh Bonneville’s Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, and Jim Carter’s fatherly butler Charles Carson  —   personified the struggle to retain the stability that comes from   tradition, while allowing compassion and good sense to overrule strictures that don’t compute in a changing world. Before Sunday’s finale, the biggest questions loom: Will Lady Edith get a happy ending? Will the Crawleys wind up serving their own food after half the Abbey’s staff leaves for   careers or other households? As fans prepare to watch the final new episode of Downton Abbey airing in the U. S.  —   British TV already aired the series finale last Christmas Day  —   here’s my list of great things I’ll miss about the show. It was one of the few popular TV shows to depict a range of older characters with vital lives. From servants Carson and Mrs. Hughes finally getting married to Isobel Crawley handling interest from several men, Downton Abbey has always provided meaty story lines for characters played by   actors. And its best character  —   the witty, perceptive and fiercely protective Dowager Countess  —   is played by Smith, an    acting icon who remains the show’s linchpin right until the final scene. It made prestige TV of a towering soap opera. Maybe it was the British accents and the   deal between PBS and England’s ITV. But Downton has always been a magnet for honors, including a Golden Globe and Emmy as best miniseries, despite indulging some of the classic characteristics of soap operas. Along with Sherlock, Downton Abbey helped PBS get back in the prestige drama game, though the network is still struggling to replicate that success. Yes, Downton’s characters are often too easily identified as ”virtuous” or ”scheming,” and the subplots involving these folks can feel predictable as the next Coldplay single. But . .. It tells a redemption story for at least one evil character. It’s no spoiler to note that the story of Robert  ’s underbutler Thomas Barrow has arced from scheming antagonist to wounded victim over the show’s run. His manner has always been irritating: In early seasons, he was an unceasing villain. More recently, he’s a   martyr. Barrow is one of the few characters who has morphed from bad to good, hanging around longer than most of the show’s cartoonish antagonists. And while I also liked the story lines revealing his life as a closeted gay man, it troubles me that those plots have been used to transform him into a noble victim, implying his previous bad acts may have been inspired by the turmoil of hiding who he truly is. Still, it remains a tribute to the producers’ skill that viewers will likely care very much about his fate in Sunday’s finale. It was the definition of   problems. As politics and war in the real world grow more nightmarish, it was a pleasure to spend time with a drama where the most pressing problem might be how long it takes Lord Grantham to realize he’s surrounded by smart and capable women worthy of holding jobs and running things. Sure, there were death and rape and murder charges wrapped in Downton’s storylines, but the core of the show’s appeal was its characters’ focus on issues we as viewers knew would be resolved with time’s passage  —   including growing independence for women, the rise of the middle class and gay rights."
"If you’ve ever watched the television show Downton Abbey, you’ve probably deduced that dining was a very, very big deal in the lives of the landed gentry of Edwardian England. Much of the drama surrounding the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants unfolds against a tableau of the table. Beaus jostle for the attention of the earl’s eldest daughter while eating elbow to elbow. An engagement is publicly renewed during the evening meal. The butler works himself into an exhausted tizzy trying to keep up appearances without enough footmen to serve dishes in ”proper” style. And the food itself? Turns out, it was ”incredibly sophisticated,” says Ivan Day, one of Britain’s preeminent food historians. ”The   classes and the gentry and the aristocracy  —   they saw food as a way of impressing people,” Day tells The Salt. That’s hard to reconcile with the reputation that dogged British cuisine throughout much of the 20th century as boring, tasteless fare. So what changed? The short answer: World War I. As cookbooks of the era attest, middle and   cooking standards were actually quite high before the war, Day says. ”Some of it was very technically dazzling and difficult to do.” Cooks and their assistants, he says, were often highly skilled at very advanced cuisines. Take, for example, the ”fancy ices” that were all the rage at the end of the 19th century. Ambitious cooks would use specialized copper and pewter molds to create elaborate ice cream delicacies in the shapes of swans, doves, even asparagus  —   all without the benefit of modern refrigeration. ”It was very much the duty of the hostess and her staff to put very good food on the table when her husband and guests were being served,” Day says. ”And they were able to do it because there was a skill base that was very large, because so many people were employed as servants  —   and particularly servants in kitchens.” Plenty of   Brits were domestic servants back then  —   in   as well as   homes. When World War I came, a lot of these skilled servants  —   and their masters  —   marched off to the trenches. Many never returned. Without the skilled labor required to make them, complex,   dishes dropped off the menu. Cooks had long relied on imports of produce and other ingredients to supplement limited domestic varieties, Day says, but the war disrupted these shipments. And those fancy ice creams? Banned  —   sugar and cream were both among the food stuffs being rationed. ”Our food culture got incredibly simplified, incredibly slimmed down  —   everybody was on an austerity program,” Day says. Working stiffs had seen their food culture steamrolled by the Industrial Revolution a century earlier, he says. As farmers left the fields for factories, industrial foods replaced fresh ones in urban workers’ diets. Regional specialties and culinary traditions, like artisanal   largely vanished. ”Whereas France and Italy and Spain, they all kept up a peasant culture, so that the food of ordinary working people in these continental countries was actually much better than it was here,” he says. With the war, British food culture also unraveled at the top, he says, as the aristocrats who’d fostered it saw their power and influence diminish. Agricultural setbacks shrank their wealth, taxes hacked at their estates, political shifts shook their comfortable perches in the social hierarchy. ”The people who were talented cooks worked for the nobility, the aristocracy and the gentry,” Day says. ”And all the knowledge of the food was in those places. And once you knocked out that social layer . .. you lost that food culture. And everyone else below had kind of looked up to it. They were aspiring to be like that.” British food culture had little opportunity to recover. Though the Jazz Age offered a brief respite from the gloom and doom, the economic crash of 1929 brought more  . Then came the rise of fascism, the Second World War and the 14 long years of food rationing that didn’t end until 1954  —   long after the war itself was over. The cuisine didn’t start its long climb out of ignominy until   when Elizabeth David  —   the doyenne of British food writing  —   began extolling the pleasures of cooking with ”exotic” ingredients like olive oil, garlic and fresh herbs. Nowadays, of course, London is a center of culinary creativity, a renaissance fueled in large part by its booming immigrant population. It may have taken the better part of a century, but ”food is very much on the up,” Day says."
"The home of   Franck and Hans Sick in the southern Swedish town of Karlshamn is very lively these days. This couple in their 70s  —   who have grown kids and grandkids of their own  —   took in a pair of Afghan teenagers three months ago. Franck says she was a refugee herself after World War II, when her family fled eastern Germany from the advancing Soviet army. ”That is what comes up when I see children that don’t have their parents and had to flee,” she says. ”I’m remembering what was happening to me when I was a child and how I got hope and the desire to live again.” The couple now hopes to bring joy and stability to the lives of two boys, Navid, 14, and Mohsen, 15, who traveled from Afghanistan to Sweden last year without their respective families. The boys, neatly dressed and polite, greet visitors with shy smiles. NPR isn’t giving their last names to protect their privacy. Sweden is grappling with a record number of migrants seeking asylum, including 35, 000 unaccompanied minors who arrived in the country last year alone. Once in Sweden, each child is assigned a legal guardian. Most live together in special homes. Some, like these boys, have been taken in by Swedish families. Difficult Journeys, Mohsen’s impoverished family had fled to Iran to escape the Taliban in Afghanistan. They used the last of their money to send Mohsen on to Europe. Navid became separated from his family during his family’s journey to Europe. He says many kids are traveling alone. But they find each other. ”You don’t stay alone,” he says. ”We traveled together and the older kids looked after us. We helped and protected each other from bad people like smugglers.” Navid says sometimes they went for several days without eating, and often slept outside. For the first month after they arrived in their new home, Mohsen and Navid just wanted to stay in bed and sleep, Franck says. ”And I recognized that they had to bring life again into their mind and into their body,” she says. ”They just stayed in bed.” But now the boys are in school and beginning to learn Swedish. They communicate using smartphone translators. One of the first things Sick did with the boys was to help them put auburn highlights in their dark hair. The four of them laugh about the experience. But the well groomed boys are clearly concerned about their appearance. Some of the couple’s neighbors are also thinking about fostering migrant children. But not everyone is so eager to help. Support for Sweden’s   party is increasing and there’s growing opposition to mass immigration. Upstairs, the boys show off their bathroom and bedroom with its two single beds. On the wall is a map of Sweden and a poster of international soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. They say they chose to share a room and use what would have been a second bedroom as a sitting room where they can talk and drink tea. Mohsen says everything about Sweden is good  —   ”especially that everyone is treated equally,” he says. Thoughts Of Their Absent Families, I ask how they feel when they lie down in their own beds at night. Navid’s response makes me regret my question. ”When I go to bed and when I start thinking about my life, I remember my family and I don’t know where they are and I feel very bad,” he says. Franck says despite their recent trauma, the boys are normal, sweet teenagers. ”Oh, they laugh and we feel good,” she says. ”They tell us what they love to eat, and they tell us, no, this is not good and so on. And I say, try a little bit because this is Swedish!” she says laughing. Sick says it’s sometimes a challenge to have two young boys in the house  —   but he and Franck felt compelled to help. ”I cannot imagine living in a country where you have that little empathy that you just let people go,” he says. ”I would not live in such a country.”"
"Padma Lakshmi is probably best known as the host of the TV show Top Chef on Bravo, but she’s also worked as a model and an actress. Lakshmi was born in India, and moved to America to be with her mother, who’d moved to the States after the breakup of her arranged marriage. Raised between two countries, she developed a love of food and family. And then, in her 20s, she met and fell in love with the author Salman Rushdie. ”He’s an extremely brilliant and charming and layered and complicated man,” she tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. ”If you’re someone who’s like me, and especially Indian, it’s sort of like meeting Hemingway in your twenties, you know?” Lakshmi came out the other side of that marriage, had a child, lost a partner to brain cancer  —   and still kept working on TV and writing cookbooks. She writes about it all in a new memoir: Love, Loss and What We Ate. On being a supertaster, From my earliest childhood memories I can remember being in the kitchen, and my grandmother and my aunts and my older cousins, and my mother, certainly, all taught me about food. I only found out recently from a scientist in Seattle at the Science Museum that I am a supertaster, and I never knew that was actually a thing . .. I bring it up because from a very early age, I was always very curious about eating foods that normally toddlers don’t eat. Very sour things like mango and tamarind, very bitter things like fermented foods or certain Asian vegetables. And you know, you don’t really give a bowl of fiery indian pickles to a   ! And yet I was climbing up on my grandmother’s shelves in the kitchen like a monkey, sort of like a temple monkey, to try and get at the pickle jars . .. I think my young palate needed that stimulation. On coming to America at the age of 4 and eating nothing but rice, I was very used to a   Hindu Brahmin diet, and so I found it hard to eat American foods. So we would have to seek out restaurants that had rice  —   whether it was a Chinese restaurant or a Mexican restaurant, or whatever. And luckily we lived in New York City, and I experienced the city through my palate, and it was an exciting place to grow up as a child. It gave me great independence, but it also allowed me to really experience a lot of the world in a much less sheltered way than I would if I was living anywhere else. On how Top Chef has changed the way she cooks and eats, Getting to rub shoulders with all of these great chefs, from Thomas Keller to Daniel Boulud to Jacques Pepin and on and on, it does inform my thinking about food  —   I mean, how could it not? But our show is really about professional chefs who command a kitchen that puts out 200 plates of food that are all different, and hot, and come out at the same time. But, you know, it has informed me immensely. I would consider myself a culinary spelunker, and I love nothing more than to go to a new town or city, and discover that city through its food."
"NPR’s Rachel Martin spoke with Martin Molin, creator of the marble machine, on Weekend Edition Sunday. You can hear their conversation at the audio link. The ”Marble Machine” is a musical instrument by way of a Rube Goldberg contraption, the love child of a barrel organ, a kick drum, a vibraphone and a bass  —   all powered by   gears and 2, 000 steel marbles. The machine was built by Swedish musician Martin Molin, who fronts the Swedish band Wintergatan. Molin told Wired UK that he had budgeted two months in his schedule to build his contraption. Instead, it has taken him 14. The video, beautifully filmed and edited by Hannes Knutsson, gives you a real sense of the instrument’s size and engineering complexity in all of its carved wooden parts, which Molin built after drawing his design in   software  —   the various elements are programmable, and Molin can change keys midsong. You can see videos about the process of creating the machine on Molin’s own website. As of now, Molin has built only one machine. Every time he needs to move it, the whole thing has to be broken down and rebuilt. He is hoping to build some new ones, including some that could be used for touring. In the meantime, this video will be keeping the Internet fascinated."
"At Sunday night’s Democratic debate in Flint, Mich. the candidates spent a considerable amount of time talking about that city’s water crisis, as lead poisoning continues to affect Flint’s majority black population. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders also spent a lot of time talking about race and disparities endemic to the black community. At one point toward the end of the debate, CNN’s Don Lemon asked both candidates to talk about any ”racial blind spots” they might have. Both seemed to give thoughtful answers, but one particular line from Sanders drew rebuke. ”When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto,” Sanders said. ”You don’t know what it’s like to be poor you don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street, or you get dragged out of a car.” Some of Sanders’ wording was pointed out as problematic. For one, lots of white people are poor, too. And not all black people are poor, either. (The Kaiser Family Foundation found the poverty rate for blacks in America to be 26 percent in 2014, the highest percentage of any racial group, but still, not a majority of blacks.) And the word ”ghetto” itself is seen by some as problematic, racially coded and outdated. The stumble comes at a time when Sanders is trying hard to appeal to black voters in Michigan ahead of that state’s primary Tuesday. His campaign is hoping that Sanders’ message of economic equality and his opposition to free trade deals like NAFTA and the   Partnership will help him win over black voters in the Great Lakes State. Sanders’ comment speaks to a problem he has been encountering throughout the entire campaign, according to Andra Gillespie, who studies race and politics at Emory University  —   difficulty in disconnecting race from class. ”That’s kind of the fundamental problem between some blacks and white progressives,” she told NPR, ”this notion that white progressives think about class so much, that they forget there there’s class diversity within   communities. And that there are ways that racism affects blacks regardless of their class status.” Another part of Sanders’ difficulty in talking about race might come from his background. As a senator from Vermont, he has not had to serve a large black constituency. Of course, Sanders was very active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, even being arrested for his activism but that was decades ago. Clinton, on the other hand, has spent time in Arkansas and South Carolina over the course of her career, states with sizable black populations. And she is married to Bill Clinton, a man many claim has a special relationship with black voters. Clinton stumbled over race Sunday night, too. She was challenged on her support of two of her husband’s signature policies: the   crime bill of 1994, and his welfare reform bill of 1996. Critics say both of those laws disproportionately hurt black families and sent large numbers of black people to prison for nonviolent offenses. Clinton was also questioned over her use of the word ”superpredators” in supporting that crime bill. In a 1996 speech, she argued that America must take back its streets from ”crime, gangs and drugs” and organize against ”the kinds of kids that are called superpredators,” who according to her have ”no conscience, no empathy.” Clinton said law enforcement had to ”bring them to heel.” During the debate, Clinton said that that was a poor choice of words and that she wouldn’t use that phrasing in the future. She also said she had some problems with the ’94 crime bill. For months now, Clinton has faced questions over those two bills, and her husband’s record. And it seems to have caught her campaign off guard in previous presidential elections, things like the crime bill and welfare reform were either seen as positives or almost entirely forgotten by Democrats. And Clinton’s relationship was thought to be airtight. Sanders, for his part, has sought to clarify his use of the word ghetto since the debate. On Monday, he said, ”What I meant to say is when you talk about ghetto, traditionally, what you’re talking about is   communities. There’s nobody on this campaign . .. who has talked about poverty  —   whether it is the white community, the black community, the Latino community  —   more than I have. We have 47 million people living in poverty in America. And in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, that is a disgrace. I’ve talked about that more than anybody else.” However voters respond to Sanders’ comments on race, and Clinton’s comments on Bill   policies, one thing stood out: This election cycle, Democrats are talking about race and issues important to black people a lot. Flint, race and inequality dominated Sunday’s debate at the latest GOP presidential debate, Flint occupied only one question. Some of the discussion on race is a direct result of Super Tuesday and the way that calendar prioritizes Southern states like South Carolina that have large numbers of black voters. That’s ironic, because when it was initially created, Super Tuesday was meant to give more voting power to Southern conservatives. Something else stood out Sunday night as well: the way Sanders and Clinton both felt fully empowered to engage on race and issues affecting black America almost the entire night. One could imagine a 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama, struggling to appeal to white moderate voters and not appear ”too black,” being reluctant to do the same."
"In their seventh debate, this time in Flint, Mich. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders agreed on the root causes of that city’s drinking water crisis. They both called for a massive federal intervention and investigation of the lead poisoning there and urged that the state’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, either resign or be recalled. But the two Democratic candidates also clashed over the role of trade deals in the deterioration of Michigan’s economy, the usefulness of the   Bank and the state of manufacturing in America generally. They also disagreed about gun control and the best way to expand health care coverage to the maximum of Americans. They had predictably different views of whether President Bill Clinton helped or hurt   during his eight years in office. Sometimes, the contrast between their positions, aims and personalities created visible tension. When Clinton talked about cracking down on U. S. companies that move jobs overseas or move their corporate headquarters to duck U. S. taxes, Sanders was contemptuous. ”I am very glad,” Sanders said, ”that Secretary Clinton discovered religion on this issue. But it’s a little bit too late.” At another juncture, Clinton noted Sanders’ vote against the 2009 bailout for the auto industry as a contrast between them. ”If you are talking about the Wall Street bailout where some of your friends destroyed this economy,” Sanders began. Clinton began to interrupt, then Sanders said: ”Excuse me, I’m talking.” ”If you’re going to talk, tell the whole story,” said Clinton. ”Let me tell my story, you tell yours,” he responded. There were also hostile exchanges on the issue Clinton’s team regards as Sanders’ greatest vulnerability in the primaries. Clinton noted that Sanders voted against a bill making gun manufacturers liable for crimes committed with their products, calling it a blanket immunity enjoyed by no other industry. Sanders said Clinton was talking about a position whereby no guns could be manufactured in the U. S. at all, adding that he disagreed with that. Both candidates admitted they did not and could not really know how it felt to be a person of color in the U. S. Each related experiences in their youth that brought them into confrontation with the racial schism of their time. Clinton spoke of exchanges between her suburban church and the youth of   churches in Chicago. Sanders related his own arrest for protesting discrimination in housing in the same city, when he was a student at the University of Chicago. But despite the frequent disagreements and reliance on sarcasm, the debate between these two candidates was a broadly collegial affair when compared with the two most recent Republican debates. ”I just want to make one point,” said Clinton near the end of the evening. ”We have our differences and we get into vigorous debate about issues. But compare the substance of this debate with what you saw on the Republican stage last week.” Sanders agreed, saying either he or Clinton would invest ”a lot of money into mental health, and when you watch these Republican debates you know why we need to invest.” If you have watched all six of the previous debates among the Democratic candidates, you know well the arc of the contest thus far. Initially, the Democratic National Committee wanted only four debates and scheduled this small number in time slots all but guaranteed to minimize the audience watching in real time. Pressure to expose the candidates and create more competition between them led to additional debates. The stage at first included not only Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders but three other contestants as well: former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland and former Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Webb dropped out on Oct. 20, complaining about his scant speaking time. Chafee also suspended his campaign three days later. O’Malley lasted until the Iowa caucuses, where his minor fraction of the vote indicated he was not connecting with voters. Since then, Sanders and Clinton have met several times, and their encounters have been progressively less cordial. Sanders had been generous toward the former secretary of state in the first debates, even helping her deflect criticism for keeping official business on her private server while in office. But as the Sanders campaign matured into a major competitor for Clinton, Sanders became more challenging, even hostile. In February in Milwaukee, he interjected a quick jab: ”You’re not the president yet.” The Flint debate featured several similar moments when, without becoming overtly nasty, Sanders managed to assert his presence and challenge the air of dominance Clinton has sought to project. On this occasion, Sanders could also note, as he did, that he had won three of the four states where voting took place over the weekend: Kansas, Nebraska and Maine. Big margins in these states had given him a slight edge over Clinton in the delegate allocations for the weekend, despite her overwhelming win in Louisiana, a primary state where far more votes were cast than in the three caucus states combined. Clinton could say she won more votes over the weekend than any of her rivals in either party, and she could say she’d won a million more votes than Donald Trump thus far in all the primaries and caucuses around the country. Clinton’s margin among ”pledged delegates,” whose vote is allocated according to primaries or caucuses, is still near 200. When   superdelegates (elected officials and party leaders) are included, her advantage swells to more than 600."
"You’ve probably heard of ugly fruits and veggies. They may not be pretty, but they’re still perfectly tasty and nutritious. And there are lots of efforts to keep these cosmetically challenged foods (think gnarled carrots, or funky, misshapen apples) from landing in the landfill because they don’t meet retailers’ beauty standards. As awareness of massive food waste grows (we toss out enough food to fill 44 skyscrapers each year) two major retailers now say they’re ready to experiment with sales of    produce that may otherwise be wasted. Whole Foods has announced a deal with Imperfect Produce to test sales of funky fruits and vegetables in a handful of stores in Northern California beginning in April. This announcement comes after a Change. org petition called upon the retailer to take up the ugly banner. ”We are still in the very early stages of the conversation,” says a Whole Foods spokesperson. The chain already has an   composting program. In addition, Whole Foods currently buys less cosmetically appealing produce for prepared foods, juice and smoothie bars. But this ”potential partnership” with Imperfect represents a new commitment. ”We continue to explore new ways to move toward zero waste,” the spokesperson told us. The founders of Imperfect Produce announced their first big deal with West Coast food retailer Raley’s last year. But this partnership fizzled out. Now, they’re playing up the new pilot program with Whole Foods. ”We can’t think of a better partner to launch this with,” Ben Simon of Imperfect told us. ”The ugly produce trend has taken off across the world, and our fingers are crossed that U. S. consumers will be just as excited,” says Simon. One example: the hugely successful campaign by the French supermarket chain Intermarche, which boosted sales  —   and buzz  —   with its Inglorious fruits and vegetables campaign. In France, shoppers weren’t only drawn to the idea of reducing waste. There’s another perk of buying imperfect produce: savings. The discounted pricing may attract the attention of shoppers at Giant Eagle grocery stores. The more than   chain, headquartered in Pennsylvania, has also announced a new initiative for unbeauteous fruit and vegetables packaged under the Produce with Personality label. A   bag of blemished navel oranges currently costs $2. 99 a bag. The conventional version sells for $4. 99 a bag. ”Cosmetic imperfections allow us to offer these items to customers at very attractive prices,” says Giant Eagle spokesperson Daniel Donovan. Giant Eagle launched its initiative a few weeks ago in five of its   stores. The chain is not partnering with Imperfect Produce. Instead, ”we are simply using the services of a local firm to help us sort through product received from suppliers,” explains Donovan. Then, they separate out pieces of produce that are cosmetically imperfect. ”Whether you call them surplus, excess, seconds or just plain ugly, these are fruits and vegetables that may face rejection because they’re not considered ” Donovan says. ”But it’s the taste that matters.”"
"Depression prompts people to make about 8 million doctors’ appointments a year, and more than half are with primary care physicians. A study suggests those doctors often fall short in treating depression because of insurance issues, time constraints and other factors. More often than not, primary care doctors fail to teach patients how to manage their care and don’t follow up to see how they’re doing, according to the study, which was published Monday in Health Affairs. Those are considered effective tactics for treating chronic illnesses. ”The approach to depression should be like that of other chronic diseases,” said Dr. Harold Pincus, vice chair of psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and one of the study’s  . But ”by and large, primary care practices don’t have the infrastructure or haven’t chosen to implement those practices for depression.” Most people with depression seek help from their primary care doctors, the study notes. That can be because patients often face shortages and limitations of access to specialty mental health care, including lack of insurance coverage, the authors write. Plus there’s stigma: Patients sometimes feel nervous or ashamed to see a mental health specialist, according to the authors. Meanwhile, physicians and researchers have increasingly been calling for mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety to be treated like physical illnesses. Historically, those have been handled separately and not always with the same attention and care as things like high blood pressure and heart disease. The researchers compared strategies for treating depression with those used for asthma, diabetes and congestive heart failure. They surveyed more than 1, 000 primary care practices across the country to determine how often doctors’ offices used five steps considered best practices to manage chronic conditions. These include employing nurse care managers keeping a registry of all patients with a condition that requires regular   reminding patients to comply with their treatment regimens teaching them about their illnesses and giving doctors feedback. Those approaches track with guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. On average, the practices surveyed were least likely to follow those protocols when treating depression. About a third kept registries of patients with depression the other steps were less commonly used. Less than 10 percent of practices, for instance, reminded patients about their treatments or taught them about the condition. Doctors were most likely to use those best practices for treating diabetes. Most practices followed at least one of the strategies for managing chronic illness. Effectively treating any chronic illness requires working with patients beyond single visits, said Dr. Tara Bishop, an associate professor of health care policy and research at Weill Cornell Medical College and the study’s main author. For depression, that means things like following up to see if medication is working or if a dose should be adjusted. ”When we treat high blood pressure, the blood pressure may start at 150 over 95, and then it’s monitored over time until it gets to a level that’s being aimed for,” said Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein, president of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. The foundation funds mental health research but was not involved with this study. ”If somebody has depression, their symptoms need to be monitored until it gets to a level that the depression is lifted.” Depression can contribute to other health problems, like pulmonary disease or diabetes, Bishop said. It can make people less productive at work, or less able to have healthy relationships. Unchecked, it can result in suicide. ”If we actually treat depression as a chronic illness and use the level of tools we’re using for diabetes, then we’ll be able to better treat patients  —   and help them live healthier lives and more productive lives,” she said. The study didn’t delve into why the gap exists between depression and other medical conditions. But the authors pointed to potential explanations. One is that there’s been a   push to improve how doctors treat diabetes  —   an effort that has almost been ”the poster child” for how to monitor and treat a   illness, Pincus said. And there are time pressures. Diagnosing a patient with depression and following up regularly can take more time than a diabetes blood test or insulin check. Cramming that into a   visit can get difficult, Bishop said, especially as doctors are increasingly asked to do more with less time. Plus, she said, while there’s been an effort nationally for the medical profession to better address mental wellness, individual physicians may still struggle. ”It’s almost like a subconscious divide of mental health issues versus physical health issues,” she said."
"The   standoff, where Apple is refusing to write special software that would help investigators crack into an iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, is largely viewed as a battle between privacy and security. At the   congressional hearing on encryption last week, FBI Director James Comey argued that increasingly strong encryption is making smartphones ”warrantproof.” Apple’s General Counsel Bruce Sewell testified that complying with the FBI’s request would create a dangerous tool that the bad guys could abuse. But Susan Landau, a professor of cybersecurity policy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, presents another way of looking at the issue: ”(The FBI’s) approach has been ’make it simple for us to investigate’ instead of ’let’s secure communications and devices, and we’ll come up with a way to investigate whatever we need to,’ ” she tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro. She argues that the challenge shouldn’t be to make data on iPhones or other devices easier for law enforcement to access  —   making it also easier for hackers or other governments to access  —   but to make devices as secure as possible, while funding the FBI’s own development of better digital investigation tools. Below are a few excerpts of Landau’s conversation with Shapiro, in addition to the audio above. On why letting Apple resist the FBI’s request and urging the FBI to develop tools to access secured data aren’t mutually exclusive, That’s exactly the situation we’ve got with the National Security Agency. We know that the NSA breaks into devices and communications that the companies think are secure, and the companies work to make them more secure. I’m asking that the FBI develop that expertise, target it narrowly when a technology company becomes aware that one of their systems is easy to break into, they then leapfrog and develop better technology. Security is always an arms race of this sort. But if Apple develops the technology, it becomes a target. On why the FBI having its own technology to crack into an iPhone is less of a risk than Apple building that technology, We know that the Chinese, the Russians, lots of our opponents are building this technology, too. Each time Apple improves the quality of its security, our opponents have to improve their (tools). So the FBI developing it is of course a security risk that Apple is going to counter. But it’s less of a security risk than if Apple has it, where it’s a central point for opponents to get into and then break phones that they target. On what it would take for the FBI to develop the technology, They need expertise in telecommunications, from the physical layer all the way to the virtual layer, that is the computer layer. They also need deep expertise in computer science. They’ll need teams of people who understand the different devices. They’ll need to have people who understand the technology now, the technology in six months to two years from now and where communications technology is going in the   to   period. We’re talking here of a budget of hundreds of millions, not billions  —   but not the $40 million that they’re currently devoting. On why the FBI can’t just ask the NSA for help in the  . 11   world,   is different than  . When the NSA builds technology, it doesn’t want that technology showing up in court. If the NSA were to share its technology with the FBI, the FBI brings court cases and the technology would have to show up there. So yes, there’ll be some duplicative effort, but you don’t want the NSA technology in court."
"In 1927, the U. S. Supreme Court decided, by a vote of 8 to 1, to uphold a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person considered unfit to procreate. The case, known as Buck v. Bell, centered on a young woman named Carrie Buck, whom the state of Virginia had deemed to be ”feebleminded.” Author Adam Cohen tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that Buck v. Bell was considered a victory for America’s eugenics movement, an early 20th century school of thought that emphasized biological determinism and actively sought to ”breed out” traits that were considered undesirable. ”There were all kinds of categories of people who were deemed to be unfit [to procreate],” Cohen says. ”The eugenicists looked at evolution and survival of the fittest, as Darwin was describing it, and they believed ’We can help nature along, if we just plan who reproduces and who doesn’t reproduce.’ ” All told, as many as 70, 000 Americans were forcibly sterilized during the 20th century. The victims of   sterilization included people like Buck who had been labeled ”mentally deficient,” as well as those who who were deaf, blind and diseased. Minorities, poor people and ”promiscuous” women were often targeted. Cohen’s new book about the Buck case, Imbeciles, takes its name from the terms eugenicists used to categorize the ”feebleminded.” In it, he revisits the Buck v. Bell ruling and explores the connection between the American eugenics movement and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Cohen notes that the instinct to ”demonize” people who are different is still prevalent in the U. S. today, particularly in the debate over immigration. ”I think these instincts to say that we need to stop these other people from ’polluting us,’ from changing the nature of our country, they’re very real,” Cohen warns. ”The idea that those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it  —   it’s very troubling that we don’t remember this past.” On the case of Carrie Buck  This is this poor young woman, really nothing wrong with her physically or mentally, a victim of a terrible sexual assault, and there’s a little hearing, she’s declared feebleminded and she gets sent off to the colony for epileptics and feebleminded. . .. When she’s at the colony, the guy who is running the colony, Dr. Albert Priddy, is on the prowl. He’s looking for someone to put at the center of this test case that they want to bring, so he’s looking for someone to sterilize, and he sees Carrie Buck when she comes in, he does the examination himself, and there are a lot of things about her that excite him. She is deemed to be feebleminded, she has a mother who is feebleminded, so that’s good because you can show some genetics, and then they’re hoping that [her] baby could be determined to be feebleminded too, then you could really show a genetic pattern of feeblemindedness. The fact that she had been pregnant out of wedlock was another strike against her. So he fixes on her and thinks Carrie Buck is going to be the perfect potential plaintiff. . .. He chooses her, and then under the Virginia law, they have to have a sterilization hearing at the colony, which they do and they give her a lawyer (who is really not a lawyer for her it’s really someone who had been the chairman of the board of the colony and was sympathetic to the colony’s side) and they have a bit of a sham hearing where she is determined to be a suitable person for sterilization they vote to sterilize her, and that is the order that then gets challenged by Carrie as the plaintiff first in the Virginia court system and then in the Supreme Court. On why he considers Buck v. Bell to be one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in American history, If you start by just looking at all the human misery that was inflicted, about 70, 000 Americans were sterilized as a result of this decision, so that’s an awful lot of people who wanted to have children who weren’t able to have children. Also, we have to factor in all the many people who were being segregated, who were being held in these institutions for eugenic reasons, because they were feebleminded, whose lives unfolded living in places like the colony, rather than living in freedom. Beyond the human effect though, there was something just so ugly about this decision and when [we] think about what we want the Supreme Court to be, what the founders wanted the Supreme Court to be, it was supposed to be our temple of justice, the place that people could go when all the other parts of our society, all the other parts of the government, were not treating them right. On how eugenicists sought to address the ”threat” to the gene pool, The eugenicists saw two threats to the national gene pool: One was the external one, which they were addressing through immigration law the other was the internal one  —   what to do about the people who were already here. They had a few ideas. The first eugenics law in the United States was passed in Connecticut in 1895, and it was a law against certain kinds of marriages. They were trying to stop certain unfit people from reproducing through marriage. It wasn’t really what they wanted, though, because they realized that people would just reproduce outside of marriage. So their next idea was what they called segregation. The idea was to get people who were deemed unfit institutionalized during their reproductive years, particularly for women, keep them there, make sure they didn’t reproduce, and then women were often let go when they had passed their reproductive years because they were no longer a threat to the gene pool. That had a problem too, though. The problem was that it would be really expensive to segregate, institutionalize the number of people the eugenicists were worried about. . .. Their next idea was eugenic sterilization and that allowed for a model in which they would take people in to institutions, eugenically sterilize them, and then they could let them go, because they were no longer a threat. That’s why eugenic sterilization really became the main model that the eugenicists embraced and that many states enacted laws to allow. On deeming people ”feebleminded” ”Feebleminded” was really the craze in American eugenics. There was this idea that we were being drowned in a tide of feeblemindedness  —   that basically unintelligent people were taking over, reproducing more quickly than the intelligent people  —   but it was also a very malleable term that was used to define large categories of people that again, were disliked by someone who was in the   position. So, women who were thought to be overly interested in sex, licentious, were sometimes deemed feebleminded. It was a broad category and it was very hard to prove at one of these feeblemindedness hearings that you were not feebleminded. On the involuntary sterilization procedure, For men it was something like a vasectomy. For women it was a salpingectomy, where they cauterized the path that the egg takes toward fertilization. It was, in the case of women, not minor surgery and when you read about what happened, it’s many, many days of recovery and it had certain dangers attached to it, and a lot of the science was still quite new. . .. When you add onto all that, the fact that in many, many cases the women involved were not told what was being done to them, they might be told that they were having an appendectomy, they weren’t being told that the government has decided that you are unfit to reproduce and we’re then going to have surgery on you, so that just compounds the horror of the situation. On how the Nazis borrowed from the U. S. eugenics sterilization program, We really were on the cutting edge. We were doing a lot of this in the 1910s and 1920s. Indiana adopted a eugenic sterilization law, America’s first in 1907. We were writing the eugenics sterilization statutes that decided who should be sterilized. We also had people who were writing a lot of what might be thought of as   theory. So you have people like Madison Grant who wrote a very popular book called The Passing of a Great Race, which really talked about the superiority of Nordics, as he called them, and how they were endangered by all the brown people and the   who were taking over. On a 1924 immigration law, which was inspired by eugenicists, that prevented Anne Frank’s family from entering the U. S.  Under the old immigration laws where it was pretty much ”show up,” they would’ve been able to emigrate, but suddenly they were trapped by very unfavorable national quotas, so this really was a reason that so many Jews were turned away. One very poignant aspect of it that I’ve thought about as I was working on the book is in the late ’90s some correspondence appeared, was uncovered, in which Otto Frank was writing repeatedly to the State Department begging for visas for himself and his wife and his two daughters, Margot and Anne, and was turned down, and that was because there were now these quotas in place. If they had not been, it seems clear that he would’ve been able to get a visa for his whole family, including his daughter Anne Frank. So when we think about the fact that Anne Frank died in a concentration camp, we’re often told that it was because the Nazis believed the Jews were genetically inferior, that they were lesser than Aryans. That’s true, but to some extent Anne Frank died in a concentration camp because the U. S. Congress believed that as well."
"”The idiot is not our greatest problem. He is indeed loathsome. . .. Nevertheless, he lives his life and is done. He does not continue the race with a line of children like himself. . .. It is the moron type that makes for us our great problem.”  Henry H. Goddard, 1912, A hundred years ago being called a moron could get you deported or sent to an insane asylum. You could have thanked psychologist Henry H. Goddard for your troubles. Goddard, a researcher, was fascinated with intelligence. He introduced a measurement for it to the United States. At the time, psychologists lumped people with cognitive disabilities in three broad categories: ”idiot,” ”imbecile” and ” ” (” ” being the least severe). Goddard thought the word was imprecise and unscientific, so he created a replacement. Borrowing a Greek root meaning ”dull” or ”foolish,” he coined the term ”moron.” (It is worth stating the obvious: Today, none of these words are appropriate as medical terms.) To Goddard, these ”morons” posed a serious threat. He claimed there was a link between low intelligence and criminal behavior (he noted ”crimes often seem foolish or silly”). And he worried about the quality of ”American stock.” Goddard was a prominent member of the eugenics movement that flourished in early 20th century America. As his colleague Harry Laughlin testified to Congress, eugenicists believed ”the character of a nation is determined primarily by its racial qualities that is the hereditary physical, mental, and moral or temperamental traits of its people.” They hoped ”better breeding” could rid America of its flaws. An astounding number of states (more than half) passed laws calling for sterilization of the ”unfit,” resulting in an estimated 60, 000 involuntary surgeries. The early 20th century was also a time of   immigration to the United States, with new arrivals hailing mostly from southern and eastern Europe. American eugenicists worried about the influence of these unfamiliar people. For his part, Goddard wanted to ensure there were no ”morons” among them. In 1913, he sent female assistants to Ellis Island to recognize the ” ” by sight (women were more intuitive at this, he thought) and administer his tests. Immigration officers had performed cursory physical and mental health screenings for years, but Goddard’s methods revealed an astounding result: 40 percent of the Jews, Italians and Hungarians tested qualified as ”morons.” He noted in his report, ”Doubtless the thought in every reader’s mind is the same as in ours, that it is impossible that half of such a group of immigrants could be   but we know that it is never wise to discard a scientific result because of apparent absurdity.” The following year deportations for ” ” doubled. Despite being widespread in his day, Goddard’s research findings were eventually challenged and disproved. He admitted some of his best known works were faulty. A book he wrote in 1928 concludes with two major reversals: ”  (the moron) is not incurable” and ”the   do not generally need to be segregated in institutions.” ”As for myself,” he wrote, ”I fear I have gone over to the enemy.” Goddard later moved to Ohio where he would become a professor of clinical and abnormal psychology at Ohio State University. But his most lasting contribution remains one that isn’t generally remembered as being his, the invention of the word ”moron.”"
"The National Park Service wants you to get out into nature. But the success of campaigns like the National Park Service’s Find Your Park and others from state tourism offices has created a huge demand. Last year, a record 305 million people visited national parks. As the Park Service likes to point out, that’s more people than went to every single Disney park, NFL, NBA and MLB game and NASCAR race combined. Zion National Park  —   famous for its   red sandstone cliffs and colorful panoramic views  —   recently had lines 300 deep just to get on a shuttle bus that goes from the park to the visitors center.  Last year, Zion in southern Utah set its own record. Nearly 4 million people squeezed into this    canyon, most coming between March and November. No, thanks, says Norma Dunton, who made a point to plan her recent trip for a weekday, in winter, when crowds tend to thin out. She is worried about the future of these protected places.   ”They have to save the parks. Our children need to have to have this connection with nature,” Dunton says. Dunton has been coming to Zion to hike for 40 years, and every year she says the congestion gets worse. ”As much as I don’t like the idea of reservations to get into the parks, but, it would be worth it to save the parks if that’s what they have to do,” Dunton says. Pretty much every idea is on the table right now for some of the country’s oldest and most popular parks like Zion: reservations, phased entries for cars, daily caps on visitors. Jack Burns is in charge of crowd management at Zion. He’s standing at one of the worst pinch points in the canyon: the popular Temple of Sinawava. ”Zion was never designed to see, literally, millions of people,” Burns says. About 15 years ago, traffic and air pollution got so bad here that the park banned cars at certain times. Now Zion’s mandatory shuttle system is held up as an example of how parks can better manage crowds. But it is getting stretched to its limit. ”We also realize that we are looking at a capacity issue here,” Burns says. At extremely busy parks like this, managers are starting to talk about turning people away at the gates. This is where things get sticky. The mission of the Park Service is to keep these public lands open and accessible. More visitors getting out into nature is a good thing. But it’s straining infrastructure. There’s a nearly $12 billion backlog on maintenance. Search and rescue teams are understaffed. And the number of   conflicts is on the rise. So are we loving our national parks to death? ”We’re running out of room for people to have these wonderful experiences, and the agency and the partners of the agency are going to have to do a great job of figuring this out and probably figuring it out pretty soon,” says Joan Anzelmo, a retired park superintendent in Jackson, Wyo. She’s now with the Coalition to Protect the National Parks. Anzelmo says we’re getting used to having to make reservations for concerts or other popular activities, and we might need to start thinking that way for some of our most popular national parks. ”If we want to have these places for another 100 years and beyond, you might not be able to do everything at the same time. There may need to be certain kinds of modest limits on what you can do or how you can access certain areas of a national park,” she says. For this, the Park Service’s centennial year, one of its main strategies is to try to divert people to other, less visited parks. So instead of going to Zion, have you considered Capitol Reef next door or maybe the Great Basin in Nevada? Or if you do go to Zion, why not go now, beat the crowds? That was Chung Kim’s plan. He’s taking his parents who are visiting from Korea on a winter swing through the national parks of the Southwest. ”We’ve been to Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and this [Zion] is like, my third national park here. I like this national park the best,” he says. In Korea’s national parks, Kim says, people regularly line up just to get on a hiking trail. So to his parents, the gorgeous open valley where the Virgin River dumps out of a narrow slot canyon looks like pristine wilderness, Kim says. ”Still less crowded than in Korea, so, they like it here,” he says."
"I don’t know if you’d agree, but we at Rx Dose have been noticing that the world seems like an increasingly bizarre place, full of instability and chaos but bearing also an endless supply of leftfield wonders. Has this always been the case, and we simply have more access to the information that spotlights our current state? (Because Internet.) Or is it just the sign of the modern times? (#WATTBA, etc.) It is thus inevitable that the Dose’s musical attention would be affected by our environment  —   one reason we’d be   to call this edition of the monthly mix ”linear.” Instead, the tempos of our rhythm scatter, the sonic traditions to which we hew progress unexpectedly, the places we look for new sounds keep changing, as does the very purpose of the music we champion. Quality is the only constant. (We hope you agree.) We’ll have bonus rhythmic goodies for you before the next Dose comes into view and in the meantime, you can follow our    listening evolution on Twitter at @Sami_Yenigun (Sami) @raspberryjones (Piotr) and @spotieotis (Otis)."
"The U. S. Supreme Court, without hearing oral argument, has unanimously reversed an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that denied parental rights to a lesbian adoptive mother who had split with her partner. The decision is a direct repudiation of an Alabama Supreme Court decision that refused to recognize a Georgia adoption. The two women in the case were together for 16 years, and they had three children conceived by assisted reproductive technology  —   an older daughter, now 13, and boy and girl twins, now 11. The actual names of the parents have not been revealed. They are identified in court documents by the initials V. L. and E. L. E. L. was the biological mother and V. L. subsequently adopted the children with her partner’s explicit consent. The adoption was in Georgia, where both women appeared at a court hearing, and the final adoption decree recognized both as the children’s legal parents. When the parents, now living in Alabama, split five years ago, however, the biological mother denied her former partner access to the children. The Alabama courts initially ordered a decree of shared custody, based on the Georgia adoption, but the Alabama Supreme Court overturned the lower court orders. The state Supreme Court said the Georgia courts had wrongly agreed to the adoption. The adoptive mother appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, and on Monday the justices unanimously overruled the Alabama Supreme Court in a short, unsigned opinion. The high court said that the Alabama court had misread Georgia law and violated the principles of the ”full faith and credit clause” of the Constitution. That clause provides that each state shall give ”full faith and credit” to the ”judicial proceedings of every other state.” And as the U. S. Supreme Court observed, this means that ”a State may not disregard the judgment of a sister State because it disagrees with the reasoning underlying the judgment or deems it to be wrong on the merits.” Indeed, the justices said that, to the contrary, as long a ”sister state” court, here the Georgia court, has jurisdiction to rule, as the superior court did on a petition for adoption, courts in other states have virtually no license to reach a different conclusion. In addition, the justices said that the Alabama court incorrectly interpreted Georgia law. ”The result would comport neither with Georgia law nor with common sense,” the court said, adding that the Georgia court got it right in granting the adoption. After the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision was released on Monday, the adoptive parent issued a statement saying: ”I have been my children’s mother in every way for their whole lives. . .. [When] the Alabama Court said my adoption was invalid and I wasn’t their mother, I didn’t think I could go on. The U. S. Supreme Court has done what’s right for my family.” The legal contretemps in the Alabama case is the latest twist in a saga involving the Alabama Supreme Court and the whole issue of gay rights and   marriage. It is a tug of war that the Alabama Supreme Court is losing. Last year Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore prohibited probate judges in Alabama from granting marriage licenses to   couples after the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that bans on   marriage are unconstitutional. But on Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court admitted defeat and ordered all officials who issue marriage licenses to extend that service to   couples."
"Former   mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg said Monday he will not run for president, after months of speculation that he would jump in as in independent during a campaign in which it seems anything could happen. In a column on his opinion site Bloomberg View, he said looking at the data made it ”clear to me that if I entered the race, I could not win.” He added that he feared his running could split votes enough to give Donald Trump or Ted Cruz an advantage. Bloomberg writes that he believes he could have won a number of states but that ultimately the race could come down to three people in the general election, none of whom would get enough electoral votes to win the presidency. That would put the onus on the   Congress and, as Bloomberg writes, ”out of the hands of the American people.” ”As the race stands now, with Republicans in charge of both Houses, there is a good chance that my candidacy could lead to the election of Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz,” he said. ”That is not a risk I can take in good conscience.” Bloomberg wrote a searing critique of Trump, saying he has ”run the most divisive and demagogic presidential campaign I can remember, preying on people’s prejudices and fears.” In particular, he hit Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the country, and called Sen. Cruz’s ”pandering on immigration . .. no less extreme” than Trump’s. Bloomberg said he had given ”serious consideration” to running. The New York Times reported that he had ”quietly laid groundwork” for a campaign including a network of ”several dozen strategists and staff members,” and had conducted polling and even produced TV ads and set up campaign offices. He said the decision not to run comes despite the fact that he has ”always been drawn to impossible challenges.” ”All of us have an obligation as voters to stand up on behalf of ideas and principles that, as Lincoln said, represent ’the last best hope of Earth,’” he continued. ”I hope and pray I’m doing that.”"
"Anna Pfeifer unlocks a door to one of the apartments for unaccompanied minors in the town of Ronneby, in southern Sweden. She says there are 50 kids at this complex, all between the ages of 15 and 18. They come from countries across Africa and the Middle East  —   mostly boys, and a handful of girls. They can stay in this protected environment until they are 21, Pfeifer says. Staff members are on hand to help 24 hours a day. Many of the kids have endured traumatic trips. They can talk about it with a psychologist if they want, but she says the staff doesn’t question the youngsters about what they went through. ”We are working with them from now and the future,” says Pfeifer. ”That’s the important thing: What do you want in the future?” No one knows exactly how many unaccompanied minors are on the move across Europe, but Germany registered 60, 000 and Sweden 35, 000 last year alone. Sweden has created hundreds of homes for unaccompanied minors across the country. Sweden has been accepting about 400 unaccompanied minors a year since 2004, says Sophia Ohvall Lindberg of the Swedish Migration Agency. ”But,” she adds, ”I must say we weren’t ready for 35, 000.” In Ronneby, Pfeifer says these kids have risked a lot and show great determination. ”They have a mission. They have to do something, they have to show something,” she says. ”So they don’t come here to be asleep the whole day. They want to start school immediately. They want to work. They want to do something. So it’s very easy to work with them.” Traveling Alone To Sweden, Sayd, 18 and from Afghanistan, traveled alone to Sweden after becoming separated from his family in Turkey. His last name is being withheld to protect his privacy. Sayd says he wasn’t able to go to school back home. ”I love Sweden because I will be able to study,” he says. ”There’s really nothing I don’t like about Sweden. I even love the weather!” At Stockholm University, researcher Aycan Celikaksoy is following the progress of unaccompanied young asylum seekers who’ve been coming to Sweden for more than a decade. ”Sometimes the whole traveling process without their families takes several years,” she says. ”The kids have to work in transit countries to be able to pay smugglers. So it’s not only [their] arrival age that’s important  —   but of course, at what age these children have been left alone and how long they’ve been fleeing their countries.” Ohvall Lindberg says the huge number of arrivals has put pressure on the system, but Sweden still strives to do what’s best for the children. They attend special language classes to prepare them for education in Sweden. Every unaccompanied minor is assigned a legal guardian who manages the child’s monthly stipend from the government and makes sure he or she is in school and receiving proper care. Ohvall Lindberg says there has been a shortage of people to serve as legal guardians. This year, Sweden passed a law saying that every municipality must accommodate its share of migrants. This country of 10 million took in 163, 000 asylum seekers in 2015 alone, most from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. That would be the equivalent of the U. S. opening its doors to 5 million asylum seekers. Reconsidering The   Policy  But many Swedes appear to be rethinking the country’s     policy for refugees. Some polls late last year showed Sweden’s   party, the Sweden Democrats, with growing support. Migrants under age 18 get special consideration when they apply for asylum in Sweden. But Kent Ekeroth, a Sweden Democratic member of parliament, believes many who claim to be minors are actually much older. He is calling for medical tests to confirm the actual ages. Denmark and Norway already carry out tests to measure bone density and estimate age. But the Swedish medical community has called them unreliable and unethical. Meanwhile, Ekeroth complains that Sweden now spends more to support migrants than it does to help Swedes. ”Our own population, our own elderly people who’ve been working 40, 50 years, who grew up here, they have to pay a lot more,” says Ekeroth. ”So now we’re discriminating against Swedes for the benefit of immigrants who have no respect for our country.” Swedish officials say the country has successfully integrated previous waves of immigrants. A recent Stockholm University study shows unaccompanied minors who arrived in past years have generally been successful in finding jobs in the Swedish economy. The Swedish migration agency’s Ohvall Lindberg believes today’s unaccompanied youths could be an asset for Sweden. ”We need to understand that the children are going to be with us in the system for three, four years, and if we work very well with them during that time, then they are a resource for our country,” she says. ”Because Sweden is going to need more people.”"
"European Union leaders and Turkey’s prime minister have ended talks aimed at resolving the flood of migrants into Europe, signaling their leaders are closer to an agreement. The Associated Press reports, ”Luxembourg’s prime minister says that European Union and Turkish leaders have ended talks . .. but that more work is needed to finalize an agreement. Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said in a tweet early Tuesday that EU Council President Donald Tusk ’will take forward the proposals and work out the details with the Turkish side’ before the next EU summit on March 17.” NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson tells our Newscast unit that because much of the migrant traffic comes through Turkey, ”Turkish support is vital if illegal migration to Europe is to be curbed.” ”EU leaders are also expected to announce the Western Balkan route for illegal migrants officially closed, leaving Greece to largely deal with some 2, 000 asylum seekers arriving there daily,” Soraya says. Closing the route, she adds, would be a ”  turn from last year and means the EU is no longer welcoming asylum seekers  —   qualified or not  —   from illegally entering the bloc.” The Western Balkan route is the main path migrants have been using as they head to northern Europe. Reporting from the   border, Joanna Kakissis says on Morning Edition: ”For months, refugees who landed in Greece were waved through to northern Europe by the Balkan countries of Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, as well as Austria. ”But last month, Austria put new restrictions on who could enter, prompting border closures throughout the   Balkan route.” Those closures are creating a bottleneck of thousands of migrants waiting at Greece’s border with Macedonia. In total, some 30, 000 asylum seekers are stranded in Greece, Joanna reports. Soraya breaks down what Turkey and the EU want from each other at the Brussels summit: ”Turkey, according to unofficial reports, not only wants more than the 3 billion euros the   bloc has pledged to give it to help pay for the millions of refugees it is caring for, but movement on its request to join the EU. That’s something the bloc’s most powerful member  —   Germany  —   is opposed to.   travel from Turkey to the EU is also said to be something Ankara is demanding. ”European leaders, in turn, want Ankara to do a better job of stopping illegal migrants from transiting through Turkey to get to Europe, and to take back rejected asylum seekers that came through Turkey, the first few hundred of which did return last week. Turkish officials have also agreed to institute visa requirements making it more difficult for migrants to enter, as well as appealing to Syrians to stay by giving more of them permission to work in Turkey.” Should the Western Balkan route close, Reuters reports, EU leaders would pledge to help Greece ”cope with the backlog and seek assurances that Turkey, with NATO naval   in the Aegean, will stop people smugglers putting migrants to sea.” The mass influx of migrants is also putting pressure on a cornerstone of the EU, the BBC reports: ”The future of the Schengen agreement  —   which allows   travel in a   zone  —   will also be on the agenda. Eight members have introduced temporary border controls, and EU leaders will be anxious to save a system thought to bring billions of euros to Europe’s economy every year.” Meanwhile, thousands of migrants are in limbo on the   border, anxiously waiting for the regional leaders to decide their fate. One Syrian refugee, Hassan Sheikho, spoke to the AP and pressed the leaders to ”solve the crisis in Syria and we’ll go back, otherwise, make your decision and we’ll be ready.”"
"A jury awarded Fox sportscaster Erin Andrews $55 million Monday in a civil lawsuit she filed against a Nashville Marriott hotel after a stalker filmed her nude through her door’s peephole in 2008. The video was put online, where it was viewed millions of times, and Andrews sued the hotel and the stalker for $75 million for negligence, emotional distress and invasion of privacy. The man who recorded her, Michael Barrett, admitted stalking Andrews and was sentenced to 2   years in prison. He confessed that he arranged with the hotel to stay in the room next to hers and altered the peephole in order to record her nude. The defense team argued that Andrews’ career had improved because of the video. The Chicago Tribune writes: ”The defense team’s flawed premise in this case is basically that women in sports broadcasting are commonly sexualized, so of course Andrews would benefit from being exposed like this.” Andrews, meanwhile, countered that the video could make a mockery of her career. She testified in court, saying tearfully that the incident has negatively impacted her life. ”I feel so ashamed,” she said in her testimony. ”This happens every day of my life. Either I get a tweet, or somebody makes a comment in the paper, or somebody sends me a still of the video to my Twitter, or somebody screams it at me in the stands. And I’m right back to this.”"
"  Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova announced at a news conference Monday that she failed a drug test at the Australian Open. The current world No. 7 said she was notified by the International Tennis Federation several days ago. The Tennis   Program confirmed to The New York Times that she will be ”provisionally suspended” starting on March 12, ”pending the determination of the case.” The    who most recently lost to Serena Williams in the Australian Open quarterfinals in January, said she tested positive for meldonium, a substance she has been taking since 2006. ”I had several health issues going on at the time,” Sharapova said, according to Reuters. ”I was getting sick very often . .. and I had a deficiency in magnesium and a family history of diabetes, and there were signs of diabetes. That is one of the medications, along with others, that I received.” According to ITF documents, meldonium was moved from the ”monitoring program” and added to the ”prohibited list” beginning in 2016. ”I failed the test and take full responsibility for that,” Sharapova said, according to the BBC. ”I had been taking this medicine for the past 10 years, but on Jan. 1 this became a prohibited substance which I did not know.” She added: ”I received an email on Dec. 22, 2015 from WADA [World   Agency] about the changes happening to the banned list and you can see prohibited items, and I didn’t click on that link.” When Sharapova, who withdrew from this week’s BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells owing to injury, announced her intent to hold a news conference to make an announcement, there was rampant speculation that she would be retiring. She shot down those rumors, saying, ”I know I face consequences and I didn’t want to end my career this way. I hope I will be given the chance to play this game again.” Sharapova also offered a joke, saying if she was retiring she wouldn’t announce it at ”a hotel in downtown Los Angeles with some fairly ugly carpet.”"
"The Marshall Islands is on an unlikely mission  —   trying to press India, Pakistan and the United Kingdom to curb their nuclear programs. The Pacific archipelago, which was the site of dozens of U. S. nuclear tests in the ’40s and ’50s, is suing the three countries in the U. N.’s International Court of Justice. The Marshall Islands says the three countries haven’t carried out in good faith their obligations to pursue negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. It says the U. K. is obligated to do so because it is a signatory to the Nuclear   Treaty. India and Pakistan haven’t signed the NPT, but the Marshall Islands argues that this principle is sufficiently   in international law to be considered customary law. ”Nobody expects the Marshall Islands to force the three powers to disarm, but the archipelago’s dogged campaign highlights the growing scope for political minnows to get a hearing through global tribunals,” Reuters reports. So why isn’t the Marshall Islands suing the U. S. the country that was actually testing its nukes on their territory? The short answer: It tried. As the   reported when the case was filed in 2014, the island chain attempted to file suit against all nine countries believed to possess a nuclear arsenal: ”Besides the U. S. the Marshall Islands is also suing Russia, China, France and the U. K. which have all signed the   Treaty, or NPT, as well as four other countries that have never signed  —   India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, which has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons. . .. ”In court documents, the Marshall Islands argues that the 1968 NPT, which did not come into force until 1970, amounts to a compact between nuclear haves and  .   states essentially agreed not to try to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for weapons states moving toward disarmament, the Marshalls says.” However, only the cases against India, Pakistan and the U. K. are still proceeding. That’s because these are the only three countries that have ”made a commitment to respond to suits brought at the ICJ,” Reuters reports. Preliminary hearings against India started on Monday in The Hague, with sessions on Pakistan and the U. K. scheduled in the coming weeks. The Marshall Islands is pursuing global disarmament as a result of its ”particular awareness of the dire consequences of nuclear weapons,” according to court documents. In 2014, the   reported on the lasting impact of those tests: ”Although islanders were relocated from Bikini and Eniwetok atolls  —   ground zero for the majority of the tests  —   three other Marshall atolls underwent emergency evacuations in 1954 after they were unexpectedly exposed to radioactive fallout. The Marshallese say they’ve suffered serious health issues ever since. ”The Marshall Islands were governed by the U. S. until 1979 and won full independence in 1986.” The International Court of Justice hasn’t issued an opinion on nuclear weapons since 1996. As Dapo Akande, professor of international law at Oxford University, tells Reuters: ”The success will be in putting the issue back on the agenda. . .. This is as much as the Marshall Islands can hope for.”"
"Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay a $1. 35 million fine to settle with the Federal Communications Commission over allegations that it improperly used ”supercookies.” The unique identifiers, which Verizon uses to target advertising to its mobile users, remain on wireless devices even when a customer clears a device’s cache. Investigators had found that Verizon had been using ”supercookies” since December 2012, but the company didn’t disclose it was doing so until October 2014. ”Consumers care about privacy and should have a say in how their personal information is used, especially when it comes to who knows what they’re doing online,” FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said in a statement. ”Privacy and innovation are not incompatible. This agreement shows that companies can offer meaningful transparency and consumer choice while at the same time continuing to innovate.” Under the terms of the settlement, Verizon will now have to inform its customers it is using ”supercookies.” Verizon will also have to receive consent from customers before sharing the ”supercookies” with a third party. Verizon will be allowed to continue using ”supercookies” for its own purposes, but it has to give customers the opportunity to opt out or give their consent before the company uses them. The tech site   explains: ”By allowing the company to still offer   for its own use of supercookies, the FCC is allowing Verizon to collect and use a tremendous amount of data in conjunction with its own websites. ”Unlike traditional Internet cookies, which can be deleted or changed, the unique identifier that Verizon is using is permanent and tied directly to the wireless device.”"
"  Super Bowl winning quarterback Peyton Manning, 39, announced his retirement Monday at a news conference in Englewood, Colo. A visibly emotional Manning shared an anecdote from his first of 18 seasons in the NFL, when he had a chance to shake the hand of legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas after a tough loss to the Baltimore Ravens. Choking up as he remembered the exchange, Manning said: ”He told me, ’Peyton, you stay at it, I’m pulling for you.’ ” ”I hope that old No. 19 is up there with his flat top and maybe his black   on, and I hope he knows I have stayed at it, and maybe he’s even a little proud of me,” Manning said. ”There’s just something about 18 years, 18 is just a good number. And today I retire from pro football.” Manning thanked the people of his hometown of New Orleans his alma mater, the University of Tennessee the Indianapolis Colts the Denver Broncos and his family. He said he ”reveres football,” ”loves the game” and will ”absolutely” miss it. Among the things he will miss about playing in the NFL, he cited opposing players and coaches by name, team plane rides, shaking the hand of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and breaking down games with his father. Manning retires as the NFL’s   passing touchdown leader (539) and passing yards (71, 940) the first starting quarterback to win two Super Bowls with two different teams, and a   MVP. He’s known for reading defenses from the line of scrimmage, waving his arms, yelling (if you’ve ever watched him play, you’ve definitely heard one of his favorite audibles, ”Omaha! ”) and rearranging his offense to try to throw the opposing line off balance. Manning has also been credited with helping to usher in a new era of the ”passing quarterback” in the NFL. John Elway, former NFL quarterback and current Broncos general manager, said that ”Peyton Manning revolutionized the game.” Manning, the son of former NFL quarterback Archie Manning and brother to Giants starting quarterback Eli Manning, played college football at the University of Tennessee before being drafted first overall in the 1998 NFL draft by the Colts. He played 13 seasons there before undergoing a series of neck surgeries that forced him to miss the 2011 season. After the Colts released him, he signed with Denver in 2012, where he played four seasons and won Super Bowl 50. For most of his career, Manning has enjoyed a wholesome reputation and highly marketable public image. Forbes calls him ”the most marketable NFL player for most of the past decade” with endorsement deals with Buick, Nationwide, Papa John’s, Gatorade, DirecTV and Nike. But in recent months, two sets of allegations have marred his   image. In December,   America released a documentary alleging that Manning used human growth hormone  —   something Manning vigorously denied. Then after the Super Bowl, a sexual assault allegation from his days at Tennessee resurfaced  —   a female athletic trainer alleged he had placed his exposed genitals on her face during an exam Manning said he was ”mooning” another athlete in the room. Manning had not addressed the incident publicly, but was asked about it during his retirement news conference. ”This is a joyous day, and nothing can overtake from this day,” he said. ”I think it is sad that some people don’t understand the truth and the facts, and I did not do what has been alleged, and I’m not interested in   something that happened when I was 19 years old.”"
"There are nine spare, simple songs on Julien Baker’s debut album, Sprained Ankle, and every one of them is sad. In fact, she came to the Tiny Desk with an untitled new one  —   since given the name ”Funeral Pyre”  —   and she appropriately introduced it as ”Sad Song #11.” But Baker’s shimmering   picking, the purity of her voice and the yearning way she sings make each of her songs lovely and memorable rather than merely somber. She takes raw emotions and weaves them into perfect bits of memorable poetry like this, from the song ”Good News”: In the thin air my ribs creak, Like wooden dining chairs when you see me, Always scared that every situation ends the same, With a blank stare, For fans of Torres, another Tennessee musician, there’s a similar intensity to that electric guitar and lonesome sound. But unlike the intensity Torres unleashes with her voice, Baker lets her words carry the volume. It’s a tone that lulls you into her world and has me eagerly anticipating ”Sad Song #12” and beyond. Sprained Ankle is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Emily  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The U. S. military has hit an   training camp in Somalia using both drones and manned aircraft, killing at least 150 of the   fighters, the Pentagon says. The weekend strikes hit an   training camp about 120 miles north of the capital, Mogadishu, NPR’s Tom Bowman reports. Here’s more from Tom: ”A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, [who provided the casualty figure] says U. S. intelligence indicated that   was preparing for what he called a ’large scale attack’ on American and Somali troops. . .. ”There are several dozen U. S. advisers in Somalia, working with government and regional troops. ”  was pushed out of Mogadishu four years ago by African Union peacekeeping troops but still remains a threat. Last month dozens of Kenyan troops were killed when   attacked an African Union base in southwest Somalia.” A statement from the Pentagon says the fighters ”who were scheduled to depart the camp posed an imminent threat to U. S. and [African Union Mission In Somalia] forces.” The Pentagon has provided no details about the nature of the alleged planned attack. Somalia’s Foreign Minister Abdusalam Omer told Reuters that ”the Somali intelligence agency has provided information about the camp to the U. S. in the runup to the attack.” The Associated Press reports that the White House says it plans to disclose records of civilian and militant deaths as a result of drone strikes since the time President Obama took office ”in the coming weeks.”"
"Shiva is one chill deity. He’s one of the three major gods in the Hindu religion. And he has a penchant for pot. ”Shiva loves marijuana. So we come to share Shiva’s prasad [offerings] with everyone else,” explains a    holy man who gives his name as Radhe Baba. It’s the eve of the festival of Shiva Ratri, or ”The Night of Shiva”  —   March 7 this year. The celebration marks the day Shiva saved the universe from darkness and married the goddess Parvati. Groups of dreadlocked Hindu ascetics sit around small smoky fires puffing on clay pipes at Pashupati, one of Nepal’s holiest Hindu temples, in the capital city of Kathmandu. Hundreds of holy men (and some women) have traveled from around Nepal and India for the festival. They spend the days before the holiday alternately praying and lounging to prepare to commune with Shiva. And they also smoke hashish. Marijuana smoke mingles with the bonfires. Both are symbols of religious devotion. Shiva, it’s believed, used marijuana both to relax and to focus better for meditation. It’s scenes like this that made Kathmandu famous among hippies. Indeed a few days before Shiva Ratri, Pashupati had the vibe of a relaxed music festival. It’s a little more like Bonnaroo by the time over a million devotees have arrived for the big day. ”That [smoking marijuana] makes us forget everything and we communicate with Shiva,”    Madhan Lal Baba says, sitting next to Radhe. The two have traveled with a group of holy men from Benares, India, and said that the Indian government even gave them some money to make the trip. As ascetics, they’ve renounced possessions and survive off stipends from the temples and alms from devotees. The marijuana helps stave off worldly desires, they say. Sharing the ”prasad”  —   in this case, the weed  —   shows their love for Shiva, Madhan Lal explains. ”Baba, do you have prasad?” a visitor asks a seated holy man. ”Sit, smoke, relax,” the holy man responds, gesturing to the stone temple steps next to him and packing a conical clay pipe, called a chillum, with hashish. The holy man smears ashes on the visitor’s forehead with his thumb as a blessing and offers a puff on the pipe, for which the man hands him some rupees. Though the temple authorities insist they are cracking down on the drug use, marijuana consumption is considered acceptable on the day of the holiday. ”The police don’t say anything because it’s Shiva Ratri, and we’re giving [marijuana] to Shiva followers,” Madhan Lal says. But not everyone indulges. Many of the pilgrims simply visit the temple to make offerings and pray. Devotees also light bonfires to warm Shiva and signify the end of winter. Fire is holy in Hinduism. But touching the fire with unclean things is thought to pollute it. So the holy men cup their hands around the base of their pipes and suck the smoke through. This prevents their lips from polluting it. ”Fire represents God,” Ram Das Bairagi explains. ”We do [bonfires] for Shiva, to call him. Maybe he will see the fire.” Bairagi, an ascetic who lives at Pashupati temple   has wrapped his long dreadlocks in a leopard print scarf, representing the animal skin Shiva wears. His body is white from ashes, taken from the cremation sites at the temple. ”These are ashes of cremated bodies. They represent homeless people, animals, mentally disabled people,” says another man who’d spread ashes on his body. He gives his name as Dandi Baba. Wearing the ashes allows these different entities to attend the wedding of Shiva and Parvati, he explains. According to legend, Shiva Ratri is the night when Shiva married his bride and experienced the beauty of love and pleasure of sex for the first time. Though Shiva is associated with sex and creation, many of his most devout followers remain celibate. ”My life is fully dedicated to Shiva. I have no wife, no family. The first thing I knew was Shiva,” says    Dandi Baba. ”God is such a mysterious thing, but you have to follow it because it’s inside you,” he adds. ”We don’t follow money or    things. They’re not important you don’t need those things. The only thing humans need is to share love with each other and share our culture.” And then he passes the pipe."
"Pick a farm trend in the past decade and urban agriculture is likely to top the list. But for all the timely appeal of having a little house on the urban prairie, the practice often raises a simple question: Can anyone earn a living doing it? The answer: Not by much, according to a new survey of 370 urban farmers across the U. S. published this month in the British Food Journal. But researchers suggest that the modest profit to be had might not be as big of a downside as you think. The average urban farm sees sales of just under $54, 000 a year, according to the survey, although hydroponic operations earn more than double that and rooftop farms   of it. That modest paycheck may be why 1 in 3 urban farmers reported earning their living from their farms. And keep in mind that ”this does not provide information about standard of living,” study   Carolyn Dimitri, an economist in New York University’s food studies department, said in an email. That doesn’t necessarily mean urban farms are outliers for American agriculture.   percent of all farms in the U. S. post less than $50, 000 a year in sales, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture the bulk of American agricultural output comes from farms with sales of $1 million or more. What’s more, many American farmers hold a second job,  . Recent USDA data suggests that American farmers depend on second jobs for anywhere from 10 to 83 percent of their incomes, depending on what they raise. Many urban farmers, however, see themselves less as   businesses and more as social enterprises addressing concerns like food insecurity, education and  .   of the farms surveyed identified those three concerns as their primary focus, while about a quarter said they were driven by market concerns. (The remaining 10 percent of farmers indicated missions that could not be neatly classified in those four categories Dimitri said these farms were generally occupied with a social mission other than those listed.) ”I don’t think [urban farming] has anything to do with feeding people in the sense of supplying their basic calorie needs,” says Rachel Laudan, historian and author of Cuisine and Empire. Most of the world is fed not by the vegetables popular on urban farms, she says, but by   crops like grain and potatoes. ”It’s not anything to do with sustainability it has to do with all these other kinds of values . .. that is really worthwhile,” Laudan says. Much of urban farms’ smaller balance sheets can be traced to their scale of production, which is generally limited by the amount of land to which they have access. While the average American farm was 434 acres in 2012, nearly 60 percent of all urban farms are less than 5 acres  —   and 20 percent are less than 1 acre  —   Dimitri says. In thriving cities like New York, that’s often a function of hefty   prices. But it can also be an issue in struggling cities, where leaders may be wary of committing real estate to unorthodox use. In Detroit, Greg Willerer and has been running Brother Nature Produce since 2009, growing microgreens on vacant lots in the city and running a CSA. As business grew, he tried to acquire additional land in Detroit, but couldn’t get the city to sell him more than a couple of vacant lots directly adjacent to his home. ”Getting land is a difficult thing,” which limits profitability, Willerer says. ”If [the city] made it a little easier, people would give it more of their time and energy.” In 2011, Willerer and his   Olivia Hubert, began to lease land in Riley, Mich. an hour outside the city, and now cultivate an additional 1   acres there. Last year, says Willerer, the farm brought in roughly $1, 200 a week, or just under $40, 000 for the season. He thought the researchers’ average sounded ”high.” But the financial limitations don’t bother Willerer  —   much. ”We have an example here of what you can do in a city that’s economically depressed, and quit the rat race and take care of ourselves and make the neighborhood better,” Willerer says. ”Profit is kind of important, because we need to make money to fix up the house and invest in our future. . .. But there are more important things.” Tracie McMillan is the author of The American Way of Eating, a New York Times   and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. You can follow her on Twitter @tmmcmillan."
"The presidential primaries are a great opportunity to test your skills in political prediction. Who will win which states, and by what margin? And if your predictions aren’t all that good, how can you do better? Two weeks ago, I wrote about how to make better predictions in domains both big (world politics) and small (your breakfast) drawing on recent work in psychological science. Today, I’m going to revisit this question from a new angle. Making good predictions isn’t just about your accuracy it’s also about your calibration. Accuracy refers to just what you probably expect. A prediction is accurate when it turns out to be right: Hillary Clinton, say, does win Alabama, and Bernie Sanders wins Oklahoma. If you make 100 predictions and 70 of them turn out to be right, your accuracy is 70 percent. But predictions can be made with higher or lower confidence, and that’s where calibration comes in. Suppose you were very confident that Clinton would win Alabama, but not very confident that Sanders would win Oklahoma. We can express this quantitatively: Perhaps you’d assign a probability of . 90 to Clinton winning and a probability of . 60 to Sanders. You’re   if these estimated probabilities of being correct track your actual accuracy: 90 percent of the claims to which you assign a probability of . 90 should turn out to be right, and 60 percent of those to which you assign a probability of . 60 should turn out to be right. Most of us aren’t just inaccurate when it comes to many everyday predictions (whether it’s about world politics or which route will have less traffic) we’re also often uncalibrated. For the most part, this poor calibration takes the form of overconfidence. For example, when we assign a probability of . 90 to being correct (”I’m pretty sure! ”) we might be right only 75 percent of the time. Overconfidence also plagues experts. In one macabre example, a study of physicians found that even when the physicians were ”completely certain” of a diagnosis, a subsequent patient autopsy revealed that they were wrong 40 percent of the time. Such overconfidence can lead to suboptimal decisions across a variety of domains. That’s the bad news: Our predictions are often inaccurate and poorly calibrated to boot. But the good news is that psychological research is shedding light on the characteristics of those who make more accurate and   predictions, with potential implications for how we might learn to do better ourselves. Here’s one intriguing lesson for better calibration from a paper published in the March issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: To avoid being overconfident, avoid the temptation to focus on what’s easy, and instead pay attention to what’s hard. The paper, by psychologists Joyce Ehrlinger, Ainsley Mitchum and Carol Dweck, reports three studies in which participants were asked to estimate their own performance on a task, either a multiple choice test with antonym problems or a multiple choice general knowledge quiz. The participants were asked to estimate their percentile relative to other students completing the task, from zero percent (worse than all other students) to 100 percent (better than all other students). If participants were perfectly calibrated, then the average percentile estimate should have been 50 percent. But that’s not what they found. In Study 1, for instance, the average was 66 percent. Like the children of Lake Wobegon, participants (on average) believed themselves to be better than average. But the researchers did more than document a typical pattern of overconfidence: They were able to isolate an important contributing factor. In their initial study, the researchers had participants complete a questionnaire that assessed their beliefs about the malleability of intelligence. Based on this, they could classify participants into those who held an entity theory  —   the view that an individual’s intelligence is pretty much fixed, and you can’t do much about it  —   versus an incremental theory  —   the view that you can always substantially change how intelligent you are. It was the entity theorists who were responsible for the lion’s share of overconfidence. Their percentile estimates averaged 76 percent, while those of the incremental theorists averaged a significantly lower 56 percent. Why would an individual’s beliefs about intelligence affect overconfidence? Past work has shown that entity theorists tend to avoid challenge. If you think your intelligence is fixed, then you won’t welcome poor performance or the experience of difficulty, which suggests that your fixed intelligence level isn’t very high. In contrast, if you think your intelligence is malleable, then difficult problems provide an opportunity to improve. The researchers thus hypothesized  —   and in Study 2 found  —   that relative to those primed to adopt an incremental stance toward intelligence, those primed to adopt an entity theory would spend less time on hard problems (avoiding the experience of difficulty) and more time on easy problems. Moreover, the time spent on hard problems was related to overconfidence. If you gloss over difficulty, you fail to appreciate where and why you might get things wrong. A final study pointed toward corrective measures: When entity theorists had their attention drawn to difficult problems, their overconfidence was reduced to the levels found for incremental theorists. Translating this research back into   terms, we can say that there’s value in recognizing and attending to the problems with which we struggle. They not only provide an opportunity to learn about the content of the problem, but also to become better calibrated in our predictions. Extrapolating back to the primaries, perhaps the lesson is that you shouldn’t just ignore the tough calls. It’s probably appropriate to make your predictions about them with low confidence, but if you simply disregard the judgments you find difficult, you’re likely to overestimate your accuracy and to perpetuate poor calibration. It’s easy to stick with what’s easy, but making good predictions requires attending to what’s hard. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Editor’s note: Ray Tomlinson, who has been credited with propelling email toward becoming the familiar daily regularity we now know, has died at age 74.  The radio interview above and the story below originally ran in 2009, when Tomlinson spoke with NPR’s Guy Raz about selecting the @ sign to be part of digital    communication, sending gibberish to test the system and not becoming an Internet billionaire.  In memory of Tomlinson, we invite you to share with us your memories of using email for the first time. Leave a comment below or find us on Twitter @npralltech. When was the last time you actually set pen to paper and mailed off a personal letter to someone? It’s probably been a while  —   and the man to blame is Ray Tomlinson. Back in 1971, Tomlinson was a young engineer at the Boston firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, known today as BBN Technologies. He had been given a task: Figure out something interesting to do with ARPANET, the newborn computer network that was the predecessor of the   Internet. ”We were working on ways in which humans and computers could interact,” he tells NPR’s Guy Raz. But instead, Tomlinson started tinkering with the interaction  —   or lack of it  —   between distant colleagues who didn’t answer their phones. He eventually found a way to send messages from one computer to another  —   inventing the system we now know as email. He began by sending messages between two computers in his office. ”The keyboards were about 10 feet apart,” he remembers. ”I could wheel my chair from one to the other and type a message on one, and then go to the other, and then see what I had tried to send.” Unfortunately for posterity, Tomlinson doesn’t remember what was in that first email. The test messages he sent to himself were often just gibberish  —   strings of characters or a few phrases from the Gettysburg Address. ”The first email is completely forgettable,” he says. ”And, therefore, forgotten.” By way of his invention, Tomlinson is also responsible for the elevation of the @ sign from symbol to icon. To send messages between different computers, he needed a way to separate the names of senders and recipients from the names of their machines. The @ sign just made sense it wasn’t commonly used in computing back then, so there wouldn’t be too much confusion. The symbol turns an email address into a phrase it means ”user ’at’ host,” Tomlinson explains. ”It’s the only preposition on the keyboard.” Today, more than 1 billion people around the world type that @ sign every day. Tomlinson says that back in 1971, he did have some idea of the impact his invention would have. ”What I didn’t imagine was how quickly that would happen.” Do you remember what you said in your very first email? Leave your   memories in the comments below or tag us on Twitter @npralltech."
"Soon after its launch in 1986, the satirical magazine Spy picked Donald Trump as the brash embodiment of a crass age. Founded by Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen, the magazine chronicled New York’s obsessions with wealth and social status, zeroing in on Trump’s questionable business dealings (of which there were many) and his outlandish personal traits (of which there were perhaps even more). Carter is now editor of Vanity Fair, and Kurt Andersen is a novelist and host of Public Radio International and WNYC’s nationally syndicated show Studio 360. (They sold the magazine in the   and it folded several years later.) No journalists have followed Trump more closely. No journalists have angered him more often. But they have not spoken jointly about Trump’s unlikely bid for the presidency  —   until now. Late last week, Carter and Andersen reunited at Vanity Fair’s offices to speak with NPR about Trump, his appeal as a target of derision and the prospects of a Trump White House. Their humor at Spy echoes today: Their constant mockery of Trump as a ”  vulgarian” reverberates in Marco Rubio’s recent jibe that Trump has ”small hands.” Trump shot back at last week’s Fox News debate, calling Rubio ”little Marco,” and then adding that no one had ever criticized his hands. ”Look at these hands,” Trump told viewers. ”Are these small hands?” Trump then proceeded to defend the size of his genitals from the debate stage. Neither Trump nor his senior campaign officials responded to several detailed emailed requests for comment from NPR for this story. Updated March 8 at 4:36 p. m. ET, with a response from Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks: On Trump as a target of derision, Andersen: When Spy began, it was a very New   thing, and he, maybe above others . .. he wasn’t familiar then. He was kind of brand new. And it was the ’80s, late ’80s, and he was, he epitomized so much of the sudden ostentation  —   Carter: The brashness and ostentation  —   Andersen: The vulgarity  —   Carter: Vulgarity of New York in the ’80s, yeah. Andersen: I mean, New York, ’80s, Donald Trump  —   that, until now, could have been the illustration in the dictionary. And because he has loved then, and loves  —   like nobody I’ve ever seen, in a kind of addict way  —   public attention, he started rising to the bait and talking back to us. On repeatedly describing Trump as a ”  vulgarian” Carter: Well, we’d come up with these epithets, and there was a certain writer we called a ”bosomy dirty book writer.” . .. It was just the repetition that made them stick a bit back in the day. Andersen: And we had tried other epithets. We tried ”  casino operator.” Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah  —   Andersen: A couple of others, but it was  —   Carter: It was the juvenileness of the ”  vulgarian.” Andersen: Yes. The   vulgarian: The combination of smart  —   ”vulgarian”  —   and ”” just a stupid, ad hominem physical description. On Trump’s reaction, Carter: [Trump] blames me for this more than Kurt. He’ll send me pictures, tear sheets from magazines, and he did it as recently as [last] April. With a gold Sharpie, he’ll circle his fingers and in his handwriting say, ”See, not so short.” And this April when he sent me one, I just  —   I should have held on to the thing, but I sent it right back by messenger with a note, a card stapled to the top, saying, ”Actually, quite short.” And I know it just gives him absolute fits. And now that it’s become sort of part of the whole campaign rhetoric, I’m sure he wants to just kill me  —   with those little hands. On Spy magazine, Andersen: Many of the stories that we heard at the bar and at parties that people knew about weren’t reported. And also, there was no sense of humor in journalism, and we hadn’t for a while had a magazine that we both loved. ”Smart, fun, funny, fearless” was our mission statement. Carter: It was basically a funny magazine about New York City that explained New York, even to New Yorkers. We were young enough to not have any bridges to burn, and just old enough to know a little bit, a few things. Andersen: And where to put the explosives under the bridges. On taking Trump seriously as a candidate, Carter: People say, ”Why haven’t you done a big piece on Trump [for Vanity Fair]?” Well, the thing is, up until recently, every month you thought it was going to end. And I’d go to all this trouble, you know, six or seven weeks of trouble, and then not be able to run the story. His longevity on this road is absolutely mystifying. Andersen: [Trump] was operating from a different universe, like a cartoon character. There’s no gaffe possible out of Donald Trump. He has said everything possible that would get other people in trouble for 30 years. And as it turned out, that’s been one of his secret superpowers, is that he really can’t say anything that gets him, you know, in trouble. Carter: I actually think he will say something. Andersen: Well, of course he’s damageable, but, I mean, short of putting on the Nazi uniform, I don’t see it happening. On the prospect of Trump winning, Andersen: There’s a scenario one could paint where it wouldn’t be that bad, although I think it would be a great American failure of a character test. . .. I don’t want it to happen, but I gotta say, up until the moment he’s sworn in, I find it wondrous and astonishing and a perverse pleasure. On what happens in a Trump White House, Andersen: Well, Graydon and I would share a bunk in the internment camp. Carter: (laughs) Andersen: I don’t know. [The White House] would probably be  —   Carter: Shiny. Andersen: (laughs) It would be very shiny. Carter: If we had to describe it in one word, I’d say shiny. Andersen: The White House would look a lot better than it does now."
"I can’t say I ever expected to be writing about Donald Trump, Republican frontrunner, back when I was writing about Donald Trump,   guy. It’s one of the weirdest things about having someone who’s so   in one arena move into another: in most news organizations, the people who have followed Trump the most closely for the longest time cover television or maybe business, but not politics. And in the case of covering television, which is what I did, they weren’t covering him exactly, they were covering ”him”  —   the him who sat at a boardroom table and fired people for underperforming at a lemonade stand or a charity auction, or the him who refereed fights between Star Jones and NeNe Leakes from The Real Housewives Of Atlanta. How much of that ”him” is actually him? Well, that depends on where you come down on the entire eternal argument about reality shows and how closely they resemble anyone’s true self. As I told Ari Shapiro during a conversation today on All Things Considered, I can’t speak to that with Trump, both because I’ve never met him and because I’m a cultural critic and not a political commentator, so I couldn’t give you an opinion on Trump as a candidate even if I wanted to. I can tell you that on television, in his role as business guru, his priority was punishing incompetence, but also weakness and disloyalty. In fact, in the first season of The Apprentice, he fired a woman for speaking up to agree with him that her team had been ”duped” in a task when the rest of her team was insisting they hadn’t been, because she’d shown disloyalty. She’d been right, according to him, but it was wrong to say so  —   to speak up and be right  —   when it meant not standing by her team. My experience with getting to know other people who have been on reality shows is that what you get on TV is a sometimes a limited view of them, but it’s still them, sort of like only knowing someone in the context of work and learning they’re very different at home. You don’t necessarily learn the person’s true heart, but you learn what they’ve chosen to put forward, and you can ask yourself why. One difference, of course, is that if you’re a young attorney or pharmaceutical sales rep who’s never been on television before and likely will never be again, your control over the narrative  —   over the vision of you that merges  —   is really bounded by your choices in behavior. If you’re Donald Trump and you’re an executive producer of your show (as he was) and if you’re the franchise, as it were, your control is probably far more substantial. Here’s what’s interesting to think about, for me: How different is the act of trying to establish who someone really is from a reality show from trying to establish who he or she is from a campaign? If anything, the mechanisms in politics are more sophisticated. The stakes are higher. The calculations are more exact. The budgets are huge. So perhaps the question isn’t really how much you can learn about Donald Trump from The Apprentice, but how much you can learn about anyone from watching him or her run for office."
"The results from Tuesday’s four primary and caucus states are in: three wins for Trump, one each for Clinton and Cruz, and one surprising, narrow victory for Sanders. Bernie Sanders’ tight win over Hillary Clinton in Michigan is the biggest news out of Tuesday night’s presidential nomination races. Though Clinton had led consistently in recent polls, Sanders won by less than 2 percentage points with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Clinton won easily in Mississippi earlier in the evening. On the Republican side, Donald Trump won in Hawaii, Michigan and Mississippi, and Ted Cruz won Idaho. Here’s what you need to know: Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Could Sanders really hold his own in Michigan? Yes. Sanders’ narrow win over Clinton is the biggest story of the night. Recent polls had shown Sanders behind Clinton by double digits. It may be a sign of at least one of Clinton’s vulnerabilities. Sanders had blasted Clinton on trade in Michigan, and his win may prove that that strategy was successful. He had targeted Clinton’s past support for trade policies like NAFTA and the Obama administration’s   Partnership, saying that trade pacts kill the kinds of manufacturing jobs that many Michiganders have. In exit polls, the majority of Michigan voters (58 percent) said they think trade takes away U. S. jobs, and Sanders was strong among those voters, with 56 percent of their vote. With another   Rust Belt state (Ohio) coming up next week, expect to see the Sanders camp amplify the trade message. The question is what this does for Sanders. With Mississippi and Michigan taken together, Clinton wins more delegates. Can Trump rack up more decisive wins? Yes  —   but not everywhere. Prior to Tuesday night, Trump had received more than 40 percent support in 5 out of 20 contests, as NPR’s Domenico Montanaro reported this week. Tonight, he notched another of those big wins in Mississippi, where he got 47 percent of the vote. In that state, it was largely a   race between Trump and Cruz. But in Michigan, where Kasich was competitive, Trump came in at around 36 percent. One thing to watch going ahead is  —   as other GOP candidates drop out  —   how many of their voters flock to Trump vs. another   candidate. What’s Rubio’s situation? Not good. Marco Rubio didn’t even score double digits in Mississippi or Michigan, and in Hawaii and Idaho, he posted   finishes. Altogether, he won zero delegates. The Florida Republican senator has only won one state thus far, with a Super Tuesday win in Minnesota. The question now is what he does next. In a Tuesday interview with Hugh Hewitt, Rubio said he’d stay in the race until the March 15 contest in Florida. Since it’s a    state, Florida is a GOP delegate goldmine. And it’s Rubio’s home state, so he believes he can still rally some support there. The problem for Rubio is that recent polls have him double digits behind Trump in Florida. Of course, polls have been known to be wrong (see: tonight’s Democratic race in Michigan). But if Rubio can’t pull out a win in Florida, it could be a crippling blow to his campaign. The Democrats move straight from a   primary to a debate  —   Clinton and Sanders will debate in Miami on Wednesday night. Their last debate, in Flint, featured some of their testiest exchanges to date, so the question is whether the Miami event will be as fiery. And for politics   who just can’t get enough debating, Republicans will meet in their own Miami debate on Thursday. Given that it’s a   debate for Rubio just days before that state’s crucial primary, he will be the candidate to watch. The question here may be how he tries to differentiate himself. Then on Tuesday, March 15, five states will hold both Democratic and Republican contests. Given that all five have considerable delegate prizes  —   and that three of those on the GOP side are     —   this will be another Super Tuesday of sorts, and one that could make the lay of the land much clearer in both races. Trump’s three wins further distanced him from his competition in the delegate race. Heading into Tuesday night, Trump had 384 delegates, holding an   lead over   Cruz. On Wednesday morning, Trump had 458 delegates, a lead of 99 over Cruz. A Republican candidate needs 1, 237 delegates to win the nomination. Meanwhile, while Sanders’ win is the big news on the Democrat side, Clinton gained more total delegates from Michigan and Mississippi than he did. Going into Tuesday night, Clinton had won 673 pledged delegates, a   lead over Sanders. On Wednesday morning, she had 760 pledged delegates, a   lead over Sanders’ 546. Currently, Clinton has 1, 221 total delegates, counting the unpledged superdelegates that factor into the Democratic race. Sanders has 571. A Democratic candidate needs 2, 383 total delegates to win the nomination."
"President Obama has begun interviewing candidates for the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Sources close to the process say that among those being interviewed are Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Judge Sri Srinivasan, of the same court Judge Paul Watford, of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco Judge Jane Kelly, of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis and U. S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who serves in Washington, D. C. The first three are considered leading contenders. Garland, the oldest at 63, is also by far the most experienced, a moderate liberal, with a long history as a prosecutor prior to joining the appeals court in 1997. In 2013 he became chief judge of the appeals court. Widely respected, he has few political pluses for the president, as he is neither female nor a member of any minority group. In addition, he has a   judicial paper trail for opponents to flyspeck. But he is highly regarded by Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Indeed, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch helped secure his confirmation to the appeals court. Judge Srinivasan, 49, worked in the solicitor general’s office in both the Bush and Obama administrations. Obama nominated him to the D. C. Appeals Court in 2012, and he was confirmed a year later by a vote of  . He has less than a   judicial record, which in confirmation terms can be a plus, as   Justice John Roberts learned when he was nominated to the high court. Srinivasan was born in India and came to the U. S. with his parents as a child if nominated, he would be the first Supreme Court nominee of South Asian descent. Judge Watford, 48, was confirmed for a seat on the 9th Circuit in 2012 by a   vote, garnering both Democratic and Republican votes. In his three years on the court, he has earned a reputation as a smart and careful jurist indeed, two of his opinions  —   one a dissent and one a majority opinion  —   were ultimately vindicated by the Supreme Court last term. If he were nominated and confirmed, he would be the third   to serve on the nation’s highest court. Judges Kelly and Brown Jackson are considered to be longer shots for nomination. Kelly hails from Iowa, the home state of Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley. But she, too, is a relative newcomer to the federal judiciary, and she served previously as a public defender  —   a job rife with potential political targets for Republicans. Judge Brown Jackson is only 45, has been a district court judge for just three years, and received a relatively low rating from the American Bar Association at the time of her nomination  —   enough to get her confirmed but not enough to suggest that she was at that time a legal star. Her political pluses are that she has done well since becoming a judge, is related by marriage to House Speaker Paul Ryan and is  . The president is moving ahead with the nomination process despite Republican senators’ warnings that they will not consider  —   and will not even meet with  —   an Obama appointee. They want the next president to make that nomination."
"For more than a century, mug shots have helped police catch criminals. Those photos of a person’s face and profile trace their roots to Paris in the late 19th century. Now, some of the earliest mug shots ever taken are on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The    photos were once on the cutting edge of how police identified suspects. They were taken by a French criminologist named Alphonse Bertillon, and his techniques set the template that police use today. Rise Of The Modern Mug Shot, Wilhelm Figueroa, director of the New York City Police Department’s photo unit, says there are three parts of a mug shot the NYPD takes after arresting someone: the front view and both side views. He estimates he has probably taken tens of thousands  —   and seen millions  —   of mug shots since he joined the department more than 30 years ago. ”No one looks like a criminal per se. There’s nothing about a person’s face that says, ’This person’s a criminal,’ ” he says. ”We’re all capable of great good. We’re all capable of being bad people.” And profile mug shots are capable of helping police tell   people apart. ”Take 10 different people, take pictures of their ears and you’ll be to identify each and every one of them because we all have different facets to our ears. Some of us have longer earlobes, some shorter, some thicker, some thinner,” he says. It’s an observation that Bertillon championed back in the late 1800s. He went on to create a system for identification that the Paris Police Prefecture adopted in 1882, giving rise to the modern mug shot. He wasn’t the first to introduce mug shots to police, but he did standardize the way photos were taken and added the profile mug shot so police could zero in on a suspect’s unique features. ”Men can grow facial hair to cover their chin, but you can’t change the shape of your nose except through surgery. And you can’t change the contours of your ear,” explains Mia Fineman, one of the curators for the Met’s new photo exhibition Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play, which features some of Bertillon’s work. The mug shots were part of a broader system of measuring and comparing body parts to help police departments organize thousands of criminal records. In 1884, Bertillon’s system helped Parisian police identify 241 repeat offenders. His work became so famous that in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, a client offends Sherlock Holmes by calling him ”the second highest expert in Europe”  —   after Bertillon. A Mug Shot Legacy, His reputation, though, faded as more police departments learned that fingerprinting was a simpler way to identify people. Still, his style of mug shots became the standard. Jonathan Finn, a police photography expert who wrote Capturing the Criminal Image, says he is ”still very much with us” today in other ways. ”Whenever you go through an airport or at a train station and anything else and somebody asks to see your identification document, that all has roots in the late 1800s and the work of people like Bertillon and his contemporaries,” Finn says. Figueroa says he thinks of Bertillon whenever he comes across an interesting mug shot. ”It could be an interesting curve of the ear, a unique tattoo. It could be a unique   birthmark,” he says. Even in an age of DNA testing and iris scans, he says he doesn’t think Bertillon’s photo legacy is going anywhere. ”A victim still records the person had black hair, the person had a tattoo that said ’Mom’ on their right shoulder. We still live in a very visual world,” Figueroa says. It’s one that may have forgotten about Bertillon’s name  —   but is still holding on to his mug shots."
"For Barbara Radley, there is ”before” and ”after.” Before was when she could work  —   moving furniture, and driving a   truck. ”It was nothing for me to throw a couch on my back and carry it up a flight of stairs,” says the    from Oshkosh, Wis. Then there’s after. After she herniated five disks in her back. And after, she says, her blood pressure medicine destroyed her pancreas. Now Radley is disabled, suffering from diabetes, liver failure and scleroderma. And she is bankrupt. ”Well, the medical bills were just piling up,” Radley tells Shots. ”We couldn’t handle it. We just couldn’t keep up.” Radley is among the 26 percent of people in a recent poll who say health care expenses have taken a serious toll on family finances. The poll, conducted by NPR, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, shows that even people with medical insurance are still struggling to pay medical bills. Radley and her husband, also a mover, were getting by on his paycheck and her disability payments, which together brought in about $30, 000 a year. But, two years ago, they were hit with a double whammy. His company changed to a health insurance plan that required the couple to pay higher premiums  —   about $700 a month  —   higher copays and a $5, 000 deductible. Then her husband needed emergency surgery and missed a few months of work. ”That just killed us financially,” Radley says. They moved out of their family home and rented a place from her   . They stopped eating out  —   except once in a while, when they’d get a free meal at their church. Still they ended up in bankruptcy early last year. They were able to write off their old medical debt, but the health problems didn’t go away. Barbara’s costs are constant and her husband had another surgery last fall. In the past 12 months they’ve racked up an additional $10, 000 in unpaid medical bills. ”Everybody wants your money and it’s like, ’Well, stand in line you ain’t gonna get none,’ ” Radley says with exasperation. According to the poll, Radley has plenty of company. Of the people who said health costs have caused them serious problems, 7 percent ended up in bankruptcy. Radley now makes Faustian bargains on a regular basis. ”There are times I check my blood for my insulin and I know I only have two pens left,” she says. ”And I really can’t afford it for another week and a half. Well, then I take a lower dose of my insulin. Otherwise I’ll just skip it.” But skipping insulin also can be dangerous, Radley knows. ”If I would skip it for several days that would put me in the hospital,” she says, ”and that just gives me more bills.” On Monday she was trying to decide whether to take out a payday loan or sell something on Craigslist to cover her insurance plan’s $454 copay for two months of insulin. A study last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that companies are shifting health care costs to their employees. Workers’ share of health insurance premiums for their families rose 83 percent from 2005 to 2015, the survey shows. The amount employees had to pay for deductibles for individual insurance increased 255 percent from 2006 to 2015. The increases are far higher than growth in workers’ wages. That hurts the sickest people the most, says Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow in health policy at the Urban Institute. A study by her organization shows health care has become more affordable since the Affordable Care Act was implemented two years ago. Still, the research found, about 17 percent of adults in the U. S. continue to struggle to pay their medical bills. ”When we see higher deductibles, higher copays, higher coinsurance, higher    maximums on these insurance plans, the people who are most affected are those that have the most need for medical care,” Blumberg says. About 15 percent of those in NPR’s poll say that at least once in the past two years, they couldn’t get the health care they needed. And 58 percent of those said it was because they couldn’t afford it. Separately, 19 percent of poll respondents say they didn’t fill a prescription because of the cost. Mary Lena Warden, 78, of Cleveland, Texas, is among them. Warden lives alone and uses a wheelchair to get to the drugstore around the corner and to her doctor down the road. She pays $147 a month for Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly and the disabled. That’s out of the $1, 400 she gets each month in Social Security payments. Warden says she doesn’t qualify for extra help, like food stamps or Medicaid, the federal health care program for the poor. ”All my money is gone by the time I pay my rent, my gas, my lights, my water and my copay for the doctor,” Warden says. ”Everything else is gone.” Just two weeks ago, Warden skipped an appointment for an echocardiogram because she couldn’t afford the $100 copay. And she is trying to decide whether to fill a prescription for a drug called Neurontin, which dulls the nerve pain in her leg  —   pain caused by a severe car accident. The last time she picked up the drug, her copay was $159. 95. ”Right now I’m afraid to even buy medicines,” Warden says. ”I can’t afford ’em.” Medicare, like more and more health plans, leaves lot of expenses for patients to cover, says Drew Altman, CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. ”The public perception may be that, because Medicare is so popular, it is   Cadillac coverage,” Altman says. ”But people who are on Medicare know that those costs can really bite.” Altman says Obamacare has given nearly everyone in the U. S. access to health care. About 89 percent of people now have insurance in some form, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. But simply having insurance isn’t always enough. The next big challenge, Altman says, is to stop people from going broke when they get sick."
"When James Corden took over The Late Late Show one year ago, the question on everyone’s mind was, ”James who?” He was big in the U. K. In the U. S. he had starred in the movie Into the Woods and won a Tony for the play One Man, Two Guvnors on Broadway. But beyond that, he was relatively unknown. So it’s kind of unreal that after just one year in the chair, his show has broken records for people watching on YouTube. That’s mostly thanks to a segment called ”Carpool Karaoke.” Corden drives along with celebrities, just the two of them  —   in a car with a few mounted cameras  —   singing along to the stereo. The video he made with Adele has been viewed more than 80 million times. He has also done Carpool Karaoke with about a dozen other pop stars, including Justin Bieber and Elton John. The Wall Street Journal called it one of the most successful YouTube franchises of all time. My producer and I met Corden at his office on the CBS lot in LA where he films The Late Late Show. ”All right, let’s light a candle, shall we?” said Corden. ”Three     guys kicking back with a candle, right?” The candle has a masculine scent, like   books. Corden’s   exposes his new temporary tattoo: Cookie Monster, courtesy of his young son. Corden told me the idea for Carpool Karaoke came out of a segment he filmed with George Michael for a charity back in the U. K. but he couldn’t get anybody in the U. S. to sing along. Finally, he tried Mariah Carey. ”It was a chance meeting with a lady at Mariah Carey’s record company, who was here in our office, actually,” he said. ”And I pulled her in here, to this very office that we’re sitting in now, and I played her the clip of George Michael singing, and I was like, it’s joyful. And that’s what people want, you want to see the joy in people, and you want to see the person that always dreamt of being a star, you know? You want to see people having a great time. So Mariah Carey is a huge fan of George Michael, she said ’if George will do it, I’ll do it, let’s do it on Sunday!’ ” On the reaction to the first Carpool Karaoke, The second person we did it with was Jennifer Hudson, and that went through the roof. And then there’s just been a couple of moments where  —   we did the one with Justin Bieber, which kind of went crazy, and I think is at 65 million views on YouTube right now. Both Justin and his manager were like, ”that’s me. That’s the real me in that car, that’s me who you’re seeing on TV.” On whether Carpool Karaoke serves as a kind of image rehab for some stars, Sometimes you can have a reputation for not being relatable and nice because you had a bad day once. That’s the thing. And I think that’s particularly pertinent with Justin, because you just forget how young he is. When he gets in a car with me and I feel that about him  —   and I don’t ever want to make a show which is snarky or trying to do someone over, or trying to make it about me, somehow. All I want is our guests to shine, because if our guests shine, our show shines, and if our show shines, then I shine. I don’t ever want to come out and make anything about me . .. and the whole thing is a collaboration, those carpools. On whether he dreamed, as a child, of being a pop or theater star, Of course! To be honest, all I wanted to do, all I ever, ever wanted to do, I just wanted to perform. I just wanted to perform in whatever capacity, whether it was acting, singing, dancing, comedy  —   whatever it was, I just loved it and felt at my absolute happiest when I was performing for people. And if that’s what you want from a job, then this is the best job you could ever do."
"At a news conference Monday, authorities said Oregon State Police’s fatal shooting of one of the occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Robert ”LaVoy” Finicum, was ”justified.” But now the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General is investigating possible misconduct by members of the FBI team involved in the operation. At the news conference, authorities from two Oregon counties who led the local investigation into the shooting alleged that the FBI agents failed to disclose as many as two shots they fired at Finicum, NPR’s Kirk Siegler reports. They confirmed that neither of those shots hit Finicum, but the revelation was enough to prompt the federal government to launch an internal review. U. S. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz issued the following statement: ”As announced at the news conference in Bend, Oregon today, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General is investigating the actions of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team in connection with the shooting in Oregon on January 26, 2016. Under the Inspector General Act, the DOJ OIG has jurisdiction to independently review allegations of FBI misconduct. We look forward to working closely with the U. S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon, as well as state and local officials as we review this matter. Because our investigation is ongoing, we will be unable to provide any further information until it is complete. We will publicly disclose our findings at that time.” The shots that killed Finicum were fired by the Oregon State Police, and the investigation into the shooting has found their use of force to be justified. The news conference also shed more light on the events immediately preceding Finicum’s shooting. Oregon Public Broadcasting reports: ”[Authorities] say that, despite complaints from occupiers and their supporters that police shot more than 100 times into the truck carrying Finicum and other militants, only eight shots were fired  —   six from the Oregon State Police and two by members of the FBI hostage rescue team.” Law enforcement used a cellphone video shot by another militant, Shawna Cox  —   who was in Finicum’s truck along with two others at the time of the confrontation  —   to piece together what happened after a number of the occupiers drove out of Malheur, law enforcement chased down their vehicles, and Finicum left his vehicle. ”You back down or you kill me now, go ahead, put the bullet through me,” Finicum said in the video recording, which authorities showed at the press conference. OPB reports that Finicum can also ”be heard repeatedly ignoring commands from law enforcement to surrender.” The cellphone video has not yet been released. FBI special agent Greg Bretzig said, ”Mr. Finicum chose to break the law, Mr. Finicum chose to put other people’s lives in danger, and as the investigation shows, he chose to provoke a confrontation with law enforcement.”"
"On Friday night, I finally got to see Hamilton, the critically acclaimed musical I’ve been surprisingly obsessed with since Frannie Kelley’s glowing   of the cast album last fall. I say ”surprising” because I am not a fan of musical theater, the kind of       who pointedly   as such should musical theater come up in conversation. But there I was, gripping my seat, as Leslie Odom Jr. the virtuoso who plays Aaron Burr, stood onstage by his lonesome in ”Wait For It,” my favorite song in a show lousy with fantastic songs. That number, all about frustrations and ambition and jealousy and doubt, knocked me on my ass the first time I heard it on the album,  —   like, wtf, do I actually like musicals now?  —   and the live experience was equally overwhelming. I’d read somewhere that Odom and other cast members regularly focus their attentions on particular audience members while performing, and I’m 95 percent sure that Odom was looking dead at me in the sixth row, as I mouthed along all the words to his song. Just two Philly dudes separated by a few dozen feet and a gaping chasm of musical ability sharing this moment of real connection. I told my   Stephen Thompson, who was with me that night, about this during intermission, and he joked that it was probably because Odom and I seemed to be the only black guys in the theater that night. We laughed, but it was hard not to notice that while Hamilton has been hailed for deliberately casting actors of color as some of America’s most venerated Dead White Men, and ”reclaiming the American story . .. for the people whom history habitually forgets,” the actors onstage seemed to make up the majority of brown people in the house the night I went. This is of course an unscientific study, based on me craning my neck and looking around the room, but three other folks who’ve seen the show recently tell me the audience was overwhelmingly white when they went, too. Yesterday, I asked folks on Twitter who’ve seen the show to share their experience, and many of them told me the same thing. I’m avoiding making a   ”Great White Way” joke here, but it seems these observations track with Broadway audiences in general according to The Broadway League, the trade association for the Broadway theater industry, nearly 8 in 10 people who saw Broadway shows in   were white and in their  . (That’s more diverse and a decade younger than NPR’s audience, for the record.) About 80 percent had college degrees and about 40 percent had graduate degrees. Now, I’m not arguing that black and brown folks ”should” go to Broadway shows, and there is, of course, lots of theater, far from Broadway, that caters to audiences of color. But it’s worth asking why this ostensibly    phenomenon isn’t consistently pulling a notably black and brown audience. A bunch of folks in the Twitter conversation yesterday suggested that who goes to Broadway shows is a simple matter of dollars and cents. James McMaster at HowlRound recently made a similar assertion about Hamilton, which you pretty much can’t see without parting with a couple of hundred bucks: The exorbitantly high ticket prices coupled with the perpetually   status of the production prohibit most working class people of color from attending the show. Given that the production’s audience, then, is overwhelmingly white and    one wonders about the reception of the show’s racial performance. How many   walk away from Hamilton thinking that they are on the right side of history simply because they exchanged hundreds of dollars for the opportunity to sit through a racialized song and dance? My guess: too many. This is a compelling argument, but then again, nearly half a million folks book flights and hotels and tickets for EssenceFest in New Orleans each year. Then there’s the mad rush a few weeks back for tickets for Beyoncé’s surprise tour. That is to say, there’s a whole lot of pricey entertainment that people of color are willing to drop serious dough on, but Broadway shows like Hamilton don’t seem to rate. Money matters, of course, but it’s not the whole story. When it comes to race and Broadway audiences, a big part of the story seems to be acculturation. Theater has a long history of segregated seating and plays chock full of racist caricatures that meant black folks, in particular, never warmed to Broadway. ”Theatergoing on Broadway is supported by families who collected programs going back 50 or 80 years,” James Hatch, the   of A History of African American Theatre, told WNYC in 2012. ”Blacks did not have that tradition, and apparently still don’t.” That plays out today in the important, subtle social cues about who belongs. It’s hard enough getting comfortable in a social space when you’re unfamiliar with its rules and conventions. It’s even harder when you’re aware of how much you stand out. At Broadway shows like Hamilton, you get the honor of having that experience for a few hundred dollars. Even as Hamilton exceeded my impossibly high expectations, I felt a vague unease sitting there that night, like I was at a   show where my favorite group was performing, but I might get shushed for rapping along too loudly. (But c’mon, y’all: HERCULES MULLIGAN!) Not being a regular theatergoer or a Broadway vet meant I didn’t know exactly how to be in the audience. I was unfamiliar enough with the ritual and customs of that space to be worried that I might be doing it wrong somehow. Could that disconnect be keeping folks who might shell out comparable cash for Bey, even if it means traveling to another city, from doing the same for Hamilton? Something I’ve been chewing on, and sound off on Twitter if you think I’m wildly   here."
"The once routine practice of getting a glass of water before a restaurant meal in Flint, Mich. is now fraught with apprehension, since lead pipes started leaching into the drinking water after officials switched to the highly corrosive Flint River as the city’s water supply. The crisis over   water has touched every aspect of life in Flint, and for restaurants, it could not have come at a worse time. In the past few years, restaurants have been resurging, especially in downtown Flint. Now, they are trying to recoup lost business and convince leery customers that their water is safe. Flint switched back to Lake Huron for its drinking water late last year. But despite the ongoing testing for lead, city and state officials say it’s time to go on the offense in regard to restaurants. George Wilkinson, vice president for the Flint  Genesee Chamber of Commerce, says everyone should know ”that it’s OK to come out and go to these different restaurants for meals, because the water’s been tested, it’s certified and it’s clear. Flint is open for business.” Blackstone’s Pub and Grill is one eatery that has helped to revitalize Flint’s downtown. Posters on its front windows promote concerts and other events, but one prominently displayed sign lists the results of the restaurant’s test results in big bold letters: ”Water  —   lead free.” However, the lunch crowd inside is thin. Manager Patti Bergstrom says business has been slack. ”We’ve noticed a change. We get a lot of phone calls like, ’Oh my goodness, what do you do for your water? How do you wash your dishes?’ ” she says. Bergstrom says restaurants know that keeping lead out of their water is crucial. When they rinse produce, for example, they let the water run first for a while, to flush any lead that may have settled in the plumbing overnight. Many restaurants have bought expensive filtration systems to keep the lead out of beverage machines, bar guns,   and dishwashers. Bergstrom says Blackstone’s new filtration system cost about $800, with $250 replacement filters. Some restaurants buy bagged ice. And unlike Flint residents, they also have to buy bottled water. The Flint  Genesee chamber tries to mitigate that cost by offering free water to businesses twice a week. Amy Hadd, a secretary eating lunch at Blackstone’s, lifts her glass of water. ”I feel comfortable drinking the water here,” she says. ”It’s filtered. It’s been tested. As long as the results are posted, I don’t mind.” The Genesee County Health Department sent a letter to restaurants about how to handle tap water last October, but they were just guidelines distributed before the water emergency was declared. Anthony Pavone, a supervisor with the Health Department, says inspectors have since tested hundreds of facilities, including chain restaurants. ”A lot of them already had filters on their pop and ice machines, just because they want their product to be consistent at all their locations,” he says. ”They take every precaution they can for variations in different water supplies.” The iconic Angelo’s Coney Island has been operating in Flint for more than 60 years. A sign at the front of the restaurant says: ”All of our beverages and ice are made with filtered water.” But even here, says manager Carlos Amos, business is down. ”The first question out of everybody’s mouth is, ’Do you have Flint water?’ ” Amos says the restaurant’s owner bought a new filtration system and stacks of bottled water to sell to customers who prefer it. On every table, there’s a copy of an inspection report showing no lead in Coney Island’s water. Mason Miller, a General Motors retiree eating breakfast at the restaurant, says he doesn’t pay much attention to the signs, because he expects clean water. ”You would think that would be the No. 1 priority on a restaurant list  —   to make sure that people could come in here and be safe,” he says. That’s an opinion that many of the restaurateurs in Flint hope more people will embrace during a water crisis that has yet to be resolved."
"Anyone can follow the pregnancy of a monkey infected with Zika virus in real time, thanks to an experiment in data sharing that’s unusual for biology. Researchers in Wisconsin injected Zika virus into a pregnant rhesus macaque monkey on Monday, to start exploring how this virus can affect the brain of a developing fetus. Over the course of the coming weeks, the team will be posting the infected monkey’s ultrasounds and blood tests, as well as other data such as the amount of virus in the amniotic fluid. The study is being led by Dave O’Connor, a professor at the University of   who is also writing a running commentary on the laboratory’s website that frankly discusses things like the emotional impact of looking at this primate’s ultrasounds. O’Connor says that he can feel a moral need to do this kind of animal research and at the same time feel ”sad and heartbroken” at what the work entails. ”I don’t think those two are mutually exclusive,” he says. He and his colleagues have been planning these monkey experiments for months. A couple of weeks ago, when he was in Rio de Janeiro, he kept seeing pregnant women on the street. It really hit him that all of them were potentially at risk of Zika, which is suspected of causing microcephaly and other devastating birth defects. ”I’ve come to the conclusion that there is an ethical and a moral imperative to study the most relevant animal model to get the most impactful and valuable data,” says O’Connor. And making sure that the data has the biggest impact is why he’s releasing it right away, letting strangers follow the experiment as it happens. This kind of openness is not the norm in biology. Usually researchers would collect data, analyze it, maybe present it at a conference, and eventually submit a manuscript to a scientific journal. The findings might not get published for more than a year. ”In the case of a public health emergency like Zika virus, the journals are aware that there is certain urgency to communicating the results,” says O’Connor, ”but that process can still take weeks to months.” He didn’t want to wait. Doing the experiment publicly means that other experts can contact him and suggest changes or offer help. Plus the early results could maybe help other groups better plan their own Zika studies, so they could get results faster and use fewer animals. ”I haven’t seen a researcher before essentially publishing all the raw data from experiments. I think that’s great. That’s certainly new to me,” says Kristian Andersen, a biologist at The Scripps Research Institute. During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Andersen and his colleagues sequenced Ebola viruses taken from patients and made that genetic information public unusually fast  —   within 48 hours of generating it. ”My take on it is that for public health emergencies like Ebola, like Zika, it’s really a ” says Andersen. ”The data has to be made publicly available as soon as possible.” Still, this kind of rapid data sharing is so new, there’s a lot that isn’t yet sorted out  —   like how to make sure scientists get proper credit for their work, even if it’s not formally published. ”You’re seeing a shift, as you are in many other aspects of culture, where information can be shared much more broadly and much more quickly than it ever could before,” says Thomas Friedrich, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who is collaborating with O’Connor on the Zika experiments in monkeys. ”Part of what we’re testing here is the viability of   public data sharing.” He notes that one recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine used unpublished data on Zika virus genetic sequences that had been deposited in a publicly available database. Some felt that the group in Brazil that originally obtained those sequences was not given enough credit in that publication. ”That’s caused a bit of controversy within the field, partially because there are no rules about how to do that,” Friedrich says. ”By the kind of standard rules, the researchers who wrote the paper didn’t do anything wrong in taking publicly available data and doing their own analysis with it.” On the other hand, he says, there’s a growing appreciation for how researchers in developing countries may not get enough credit for their contributions, and there’s an obvious need to make sure that these scientists can contribute to rapidly moving science without the fear of being shortchanged. Friedrich says he wouldn’t want to rush into recommending that everyone go public with their experiments, but doing this monkey study out in the open seemed right to him  —   at least in the urgent context of the Zika outbreak. ”I understand that not everyone in science is going to feel the same way,” says Friedrich, ”and because we don’t have codified rules and because we don’t have established norms, the level of data sharing that each individual scientist thinks is appropriate is going to vary widely.” But O’Connor hopes that if this experiment in transparency goes well, it might embolden others to follow their lead. ”We don’t know how it’s going to be received,” says O’Connor, ”but trying new things and seeing what happens is important in its own right.”"
"In the standoff between Apple and the FBI, each side is recruiting powerful allies and waging a war of words. As the story unfolds, we’ll   the boldest claims, starting with this one by FBI Director James Comey. ”We’re moving to a place where there are warrantproof places in our life,” Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee. ”That’s a world we’ve never lived in before in the United States that has profound consequences for public safety, and all I’m saying is, we shouldn’t drift there.” Comey’s claim is a bold one, with two parts: one, that the iPhone is a warrantproof place and two, that is historically unprecedented. ”Comey is 99. 99 percent right,” says Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who is an expert on the Constitution, technology and police powers. In just about every instance, he says, ”if the government has a warrant, they can break in. They can break into a house. They can break into a safe.” Though Kerr does suggest one curious counterexample: the 1985 Supreme Court case of Winston v. Lee. It was an armed robbery case. On July 18, 1982, at about 1 a. m. a store owner named Ralph Watkinson was closing shop for the night. As he was locking the door, a gunman approached him. Watkinson, too, had a gun, and both of them fired. Watkinson managed to hit the other man in the chest, and the   robber fled. Eight blocks away from the crime scene, police found Rudolph Lee, who happened to have a bullet lodged in the left part of his chest. They suspected he was the robber. But to prove it, they needed to go into his body and get that bullet, to show that it matched the store owner’s gun. ”When it comes to physical surgery,” says Kerr, ”forcing somebody to have something extracted from inside of their body, that has to be judged on a    basis. You have to figure out: How important is it to get this evidence from inside the person how dangerous is the surgery?” The Supreme Court ruled against the investigators, saying: ”We believe that in these circumstances the Commonwealth has failed to demonstrate that it would be ’reasonable’ under the terms of the Fourth Amendment to search for evidence of this crime by means of the contemplated surgery.” For this case to apply to the   debate, Kerr says, you’d have to argue that the iPhone is more than just a phone, but a part of your brain  —   your body. ”Some people may think of it that way,” he says, ”but that’s pretty different from saying it requires surgery to look at the phone.” Apple lawyer Theodore Boutrous tells NPR that Comey’s rhetoric about warrantproof space is just that  —   rhetoric  —   because the FBI does have a warrant. ”The government got a warrant for the phone. It seized the phone,” Boutrous says. Apple is saying: Go ahead and break in just don’t expect us to help. Kerr argues this line of reasoning is irrelevant: A warrant on paper doesn’t matter, if Apple is creating digital locks so powerful that for all intents and purposes, no one can break in without the user’s permission. That’s no longer something in the realm of science fiction but mathematically possible. ”I think the FBI is not just worried about 2016. They’re worried about 2017, 2018, or five or 20 or 30 years ahead,” Kerr says. While Comey may be looking to the future, Boutrous counters that the FBI director is overstating the past. ”For most of American history, there was a   zone regarding people’s communication across the country,” Boutrous says. ”There weren’t surveillance techniques. There weren’t ways to capture what people were saying to each other. And so the government has become so used to having surveillance techniques, they forget this is a relatively new development.” Before telephones became popular in the 20th century, conversations between citizens were private. Over time, it took vigorous debate before the Supreme Court paved the way for wiretapping of phone conversations. And Stanford law professor David Sklansky says it is not a given that every new technology must be   or  . Compared with telephones of yore, the iPhone ”has a lot more information in it and different kinds of information and people use it in different ways,” Sklansky says. It’s a mishmash of personal diary, physical tracker, photo album, health record repository on top of a phone. So just because courts decided eavesdropping on phones serves the public interest, Sklansky says, that doesn’t dictate what should happen with the iPhone."
"Underlying the debate over Apple’s refusal to help the FBI unlock the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook is the idea that cellphones hold the most intimate details of our daily lives. That wasn’t always so obvious. As the role of technology changes, so have our attitudes, and one of the places to see this work in progress play out is at the Supreme Court. Take, for example, the 1928 case Olmstead v. United States, in which the Supreme Court ruled that wiretapping could be conducted without a warrant then compare it with the 1967 case Katz v. United States, when the court essentially said the opposite. ”The justices had phones [by 1967] and they knew that they talked about their most private stuff on those phones,” says Jennifer Stisa Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. ”So a case that considered warrantless wiretapping looks a lot different. . .. And I think that same exact dynamic is happening here.” It’s unclear when or if the legal dispute over the San Bernardino iPhone will reach the Supreme Court, but the court’s past opinions are informative as the   legal clash continues. Below are some of the key cases in which the top court has been asked to evaluate similar concerns. Olmstead v. United States, 1928, Back before the telephone was ubiquitous and   the court ruled that wiretapped phone conversations were not a violation of the defendant’s rights under the Fourth or Fifth Amendments. Why? In part, because the listening equipment was installed outside the houses involved. But in his dissent, Associate Justice Louis Brandeis outlined an argument that the court would face again: ”The evil incident to invasion of the privacy of the telephone is far greater than that involved in tampering with the mails.” Katz v. United States, 1967, By now, the telephone was making its way into daily life, so expectations were different. The court revisited the question of where and when people should have a reasonable expectation of privacy, saying that FBI agents could not attach a recording device to a telephone booth. Justice Potter Stewart wrote in the court opinion: ”The Government stresses the fact that the telephone booth from which the petitioner made his calls was constructed partly of glass, so that he was as visible after he entered it as he would have been if he had remained outside. But what he sought to exclude when he entered the booth was not the intruding eye  —   it was the uninvited ear. He did not shed his right to do so simply because he made his calls from a place where he might be seen.” United States v. New York Telephone Company, 1977, This was a major case dealing with the All Writs Act, the law that the government is using to compel Apple’s help in unlocking Farook’s iPhone. Here, a phone company refused to comply with an order through the All Writs Act to install a pen register, which would record all numbers called from a certain telephone. In a boost to   cooperation with investigations, the court ruled that the phone company had to comply with the request, as Justice Byron White wrote in the court opinion: ”We do not think that the Company was a third party so far removed from the underlying controversy that its assistance could not be permissibly compelled. A United States District Court found that there was probable cause to believe that the Company’s facilities were being employed to facilitate a criminal enterprise on a continuing basis. For the Company, with this knowledge, to refuse to supply the meager assistance required by the FBI in its efforts to put an end to this venture threatened obstruction of an investigation which would determine whether the Company’s facilities were being lawfully used. Moreover, it can hardly be contended that the Company, a highly regulated public utility with a duty to serve the public, had a substantial interest in not providing assistance. . .. The order provided that the Company be fully reimbursed at prevailing rates, and compliance with it required minimal effort on the part of the Company and no disruption to its operations.” Arizona v. Hicks, 1987, This case held that to take an item in plain view, the police need to have probable cause. The case’s majority opinion produced this now iconic statement from Justice Antonin Scalia, which was referenced repeatedly in the congressional hearing on the   dispute: ”It may well be that, in such circumstances, no effective means short of a search exist. But there is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.” Smith v. Maryland, 1979, This case was similar to Olmstead  —   an early ruling that said technological surveillance was OK. The court said that no warrant was required to use a pen register to track telephone usage. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the opinion: ”Regardless of the phone company’s election, petitioner voluntarily conveyed to it information that it had facilities for recording and that it was free to record. In these circumstances, petitioner assumed the risk that the information would be divulged to police.” City of Ontario v. Quon, 2010, Remember pagers? This case ruled that a workplace had not violated the Fourth Amendment when it audited pager text messages. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the opinion: ”The Court must proceed with care when considering the whole concept of privacy expectations in communications made on electronic equipment owned by a government employer. The judiciary risks error by elaborating too fully on the Fourth Amendment implications of emerging technology before its role in society has become clear.” Remember, the iPhone 5C that Apple is being asked to unlock was Farook’s work phone from the San Bernardino County Department of Health. United States v. Jones, 2012, This case once again expanded the Supreme Court’s consideration to a new kind of technology: GPS tracking devices. In a new Fourth Amendment ruling, the judges unanimously agreed that attaching a GPS device to a car and tracking its movements constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. Justice Scalia delivered the ruling, focusing on the installation of the device with an expired warrant: ”It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case: The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a ’search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted.” A majority of the justices also found that   GPS monitoring infringed on expectations of privacy, though the court left unresolved whether tracking a car over time required a probable cause warrant. Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred: ”Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that GPS monitoring —  by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track —  may ’alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.’ ” Riley v. California  United States v. Wurie, 2014, Here, the Supreme Court finally tackled a privacy matter related to a cellphone. In a unanimous single decision for these two cases, the court held that generally police cannot, without a warrant, search the digital contents of a cellphone of someone they arrested. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: ”The United States asserts that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is ’materially indistinguishable’ from searches of these sorts of physical items. . .. That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon. Both are ways of getting from point A to point B, but little else justifies lumping them together. Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse. A conclusion that inspecting the contents of an arrestee’s pockets works no substantial additional intrusion on privacy beyond the arrest itself may make sense as applied to physical items, but any extension of that reasoning to digital data has to rest on its own bottom. . .. ”Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ’the privacies of life’. .. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple  —   get a warrant.” Naomi LaChance is a business news intern at NPR."
"When she was 17, Tracey Helton Mitchell was prescribed an opioid pain killer after getting her wisdom teeth extracted. The medicine helped her deal with the pain related to the extraction, but when the prescription ran out, her desire for its euphoric high remained. That’s when she turned to heroin. As a teenager, Mitchell imagined heroin to be glamorous, but she found it wasn’t once she became an addict. She tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the drug ruined her health and her  . She lived in an alley, shot drugs into the bottom of her feet, sold her body for money and was jailed several times. She was also featured in a 1999 documentary about addicts called Black Tar Heroin. At one of her lowest points, Mitchell says, ”I was having heart palpitations, because I was using stimulants, and I thought, ’They’re going to pull me out of this hotel, I have no ID, my parents, my family . .. will never know that I died and I’ll just be a Jane Doe and this is how I’m going to expire in this place.’ ” But Mitchell didn’t die from her addiction. Rather, with the help of the secular program LifeRing and other support groups and therapies, she eventually stopped using and became a certified addiction specialist. She has been clean for 18 years. In her new memoir, The Big Fix, Mitchell writes about her addiction and her path to recovery, and also shares insights into today’s heroin epidemic. When it comes to our current treatment system, Mitchell says we would do better to reach out to addicts as individuals, by recognizing each user’s unique needs and motivations. Our current method of treatment is ”sort of a   [fits]  approach,” she says. ”We need to have a variety of different kinds of treatment interventions that address people’s needs.” On what it’s like to watch Black Tar Heroin now that she’s clean, It can be painful to watch, especially when I think about my life now and I contrast that. . .. My legs did look like I was dropped in a dumpster and picked out by rats. I had, I think, 34 or 36 abscesses. I have scars that have healed, but I had to have surgeries on some and in the summertime when everybody else is wearing shorts and stuff like that, I see those things  —   even right now sitting here at the table I can see one of the scars on my arms. It’s a good thing in that it reminds me of where I was, but then it’s also very challenging, because this documents a very unpleasant part of my life that can’t be changed. On why she agreed to be filmed  I really believed that I was going to die, or be murdered. There was lots of evidence to make me feel that way, and I wanted it to be something that people would see after I was dead that showed that heroin was not the glamorous thing that I had thought it was when I was a teenager and had imagined it. I wasn’t paid for the film it was a huge inconvenience in my life, but I feel like it still is sort of my legacy to the world, because it’s something that’s watched today. Millions of people still watch it. On black tar heroin in the ’90s versus heroin today, There’s still tar heroin. The heroin that most people get today is much, much stronger. We didn’t have to worry about fentanyl  —   of us dropping dead from an overdose, because no one cut it with fentanyl. The thing that we really worried about was getting   [bacteria, necrotizing fasciitis] . .. or getting some kind of wound botulism or getting abscesses. There certainly were overdoses then. You could get arrested for overdosing and a lot of people were rolled out at the hospitals or left outside to die . .. but there wasn’t this culture of heroin where heroin is prevalent absolutely everywhere. It was more localized to big cities, more urban areas. On ’hitting bottom’ I don’t believe in the concept of a bottom. I think that if the opposite of addiction is connection, that addicts or people who use drugs are really seeking out  —   they need some kind of connection with people. And I would say I’ve had a wide variety of bottoms, but I wasn’t ready to stop until I started to believe that there was a possibility that I actually could stop and saw reasons for myself to stop, and my motivation is totally different. On being ready to get clean, One of the myths about addiction is that you come to this incredible moment of clarity and that you decide that you’re going to stop. And so over the course of my using I had various moments of clarity and I had various points where I had wanted to stop, but they were not always congruent with my opportunities. So there [were] very few opportunities where I really could truly try to stop, but I would stop using for a few days, I’d try to kick on my own, I’d switch to different drugs, I’d move to different places. I tried different things to stop, but I wasn’t completely ready, because all these different traumas had accumulated in my life, and I wasn’t prepared to deal with the emotional consequences of all these different things. And that’s what to me being off drugs meant  —   was that I would have to then figure out how I was going to fix all these things on my own. And it wasn’t until I got an idea that maybe other people would help me, talking to my mother, knowing that I would have some kind of emotional support where I’d start seeing [that] maybe I don’t have to totally do all of this on my own. On needle exchange programs, At the time there was no needle exchange at all [in Cincinnati] and so you would use the same syringe over and over again and hopefully it didn’t break off in your arm. Until the numbers wore off of it, you would sharpen it on a matchbook, and it was just horrible it was like a rusty nail sticking in your arm. So I came to San Francisco and they had needle exchanges, which was a revelation, because so many people in the country were suffering from HIV and AIDS, particularly AIDS, because there was no  . . .. So the syringe exchange people provided me education about my drug use. . .. I’ve seen in my life so many examples of where not having a clean syringe never stopped anyone. I’ve seen people pick them up out of the gutters. Even here in San Francisco, where there’s a lot of access, people break open sharps containers that they’ve stolen from hospitals because they needed a syringe and they don’t have one. . .. It doesn’t stop people. All it does is spread a public health crisis. On harm reduction and the argument that harm reduction enables users, My answer is, you can’t get clean if you’re dead, so there has to be harm reduction. We’re not encouraging people to do anything, we’re taking a look at their public health behaviors and then addressing what the particular needs are, so look at the cost of one syringe versus the cost of someone getting hepatitis C and having to take care of them for a lifetime. Look at the public health cost of various other medical conditions that a person can have. From not using sterile water or alcohol pads, someone having endocarditis or some other infection, so having a safe system for people to take care of themselves and treating addicts, users not just addicts, there’s plenty of people who use who are not necessarily considered on the spectrum of drug addicts, treating people humanely and having them have access to public health services and the things that they need. On coping with depression since becoming clean, Part of the reason why I wanted to write The Big Fix is because I felt like there’s no . .. real education on   recovery about what really happens over time. So dealing with topics like untreated depression and anxiety and all the other kind of things that you go through when you take the drugs away, and then you have new issues, because before you use drugs, you didn’t have all these guilty, shameful things that you . .. now have to deal with, if you’re a person like me and you get off drugs. So I’ve had a very complicated relationship with my emotions in the past 18 years that I’ve been clean. I’ve dealt with very serious   stress disorder, being very checked out and dissociative at various points, having to deal with the constant specter of depression, every once in a while having suicidal thoughts. And one of the things that I try to do is really normalize those feelings when people want to know what recovery is really like. It’s like, some days you really feel crappy. You really have some things that are going on with you, and I think the prevalent idea is that you get clean and everything is supposed to be great. . .. You can have a great life and still not feel all that great."
"In 2012, Justin Trudeau, then a young member of the Canadian Parliament, stepped into a boxing ring at a charity event in Ottawa. His opponent, a heavily tattooed and much beefier senator named Patrick Brazeau, was favored to win by    odds. Trudeau, wearing red boxing shorts and sporting a large tattoo of the Earth encircled by a raven on his left shoulder, took as many hits from the announcer as he did from his opponent. Conservative broadcaster Ezra Levant mocked Trudeau as ”the Shiny Pony,” said his daughter could skip rope better and predicted the fight would last one round. But the Shiny Pony surprised everyone: Trudeau won in the third round. That boxing match could very well have been a preview of Canada’s elections last October. Trudeau and his Liberal Party lagged in third place at the start of the short campaign. But once again, his opponents underestimated him. Trudeau won a decisive victory against Conservative incumbent Stephen Harper. ”Have faith in your fellow citizens, my friends,” Trudeau said in his victory speech, delivering his signature ”Sunny Ways” message. ”They are kind and generous, they are   and optimistic.” At heart, he said, ”A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.” Tall, athletic and with matinee idol looks, Trudeau energized the Canadian elections, normally dull affairs. But his appeal is more than   says Althia Raj, Ottawa bureau chief for the Huffington Post. ”I think there’s more to it than looks,” she says. ”I think there’s the sense he seems authentic.” Trudeau captured the mood for change, especially among young and cynical Canadians. ”They feel like he’s a little bit like one of them,” she says. ”He embraces social media, he’s present, he’s kind of cheeky, he’s a Star Wars nerd. And they feel connected to him.” Many Canadians also feel a natural connection to Trudeau through his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who served as prime minister from 1968 to 1979 and then again from 1980 to 1984. The elder Trudeau was a charismatic but divisive leader who drove sleek, foreign sports cars, dated celebrities and married a much younger Margaret Sinclair  —   Justin’s mother  —   a woman 28 years his junior. He inspired a phenomenon dubbed ”Trudeaumania.” Many Canadians remember this colorful era fondly, Raj says, and have an affinity for Justin Trudeau. ”A lot of people remember the day he was born they remember him growing up they remember his father they remember his parents’ nasty divorce. They have a feeling they know him,” she says. There is a sense, she says, that Trudeau represents ”our first dynasty.” Trudeau is living up to his father’s charismatic image. Vogue has called him ”dashing” and ran pictures of him and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, in a passionate embrace. In the New York Times, an article suggested the new prime minister has helped make Canada hip. He earned the Twitter hashtag #hottie at an international forum and poses for selfies with the likes of Bono and Kevin Spacey  —   and just about anybody else who wants a picture with him. This has led critics like Stephen Taylor, former director of the National Citizens Coalition, a conservative lobbying group, to say Trudeau is all show and no substance. ”I don’t know if Justin Trudeau would be anywhere today if his name was Justin Jones,” he says. ”I think the prime minister risks a bit of overexposure and accusations of being a bit too flashy, because we’re facing serious economic troubles in Canada in the future.” Trudeau’s immediate test will come March 22, when he presents his government’s first budget. Canada’s deficit is projected to be $18. 4 billion for   far more than what Trudeau’s Liberal Party had been forecasting. Some Canadians are just deeply uncomfortable with Trudeau’s   and with having a celebrity for a prime minister, says Stephen Marche, a   author and Esquire magazine columnist. He says Trudeau is very good at controlling his image and building a brand, which he uses as a foreign policy tool to help shape Canada’s image in the world. ”If we want to spread our values, if we want to have an agenda globally, we’re not going to do it by buying some military planes,” Marche says. ”We’re going to do it by being this shining example.” Marche points to Trudeau’s most visible success so far, his decision to resettle 25, 000 Syrian refugees in Canada within four months of taking office. Trudeau says he will raise his two sons as feminists. Half his Cabinet members are women and his administration is a portrait of diversity, including Muslim and Sikh Cabinet ministers. L. Ian MacDonald, editor and publisher of Policy, a bimonthly political magazine, notes that many in the Cabinet are rookies, including the finance and environment ministers. He says mistakes are inevitable. But ”Mr. Trudeau has permission slips from the voters to do a lot of things,” he says. And MacDonald is sure that ”if he comes up short that they’ll be in a forgiving mood, at least in the beginning.” But the honeymoon period is limited. MacDonald’s advice to Trudeau: Stop with the selfies already, and start governing."
"In South Korea on Wednesday, a human champion of the ancient game of ”Go” will square off against a computer programmed by Google DeepMind, an AI company owned by the search giant. If the machine can beat the man over a   match, then researchers say it will be a milestone for artificial intelligence. Here are the key things to know about the match and what it will mean for the future, both of humanity and our robot overlords. 1. A computer won at chess 20 years ago. Go is tougher. IBM grabbed the headlines when its Deep Blue supercomputer bested world champion Gary Kasparov in 1997. But chess is a computer’s game. It has strict rules and a limited number of moves each turn. Deep Blue gained the upper hand by crunching a huge volume of possible moves to see which ones would lead to a win. Go is a very different kind of game. Players use stones to fence off territory and capture each other’s pieces. It has fewer rules and more choices each turn. In fact, ”there are more possible ’Go’ positions than there are atoms in the Universe,” says Demis Hassabis, a researcher with Google DeepMind. Computers hate choices. Go is a nightmare for   computers. 2. This program taught itself how to play. The Google program, known as ”Alpha Go,” actually learned the game without much human help. It started by studying a database of about 100, 000 human matches, and then continued by playing against itself millions of times. As it went, it reprogrammed itself and improved. This type of   program is known as a neural network, and it’s based on theories of how the human brain works. AlphaGo consists of two neural networks: The first tries to figure out the best move to play each turn, and the second evaluates who is winning the match overall. It’s far more powerful than any   computer program to date, 3. The machine is not guaranteed to win. In October, AlphaGo beat a European champion of the game, Fan Hui. But Hui is ranked far below the program’s current opponent, Lee Sedol, who is considered among the best Go players in the world. Sedol may still be able to beat AlphaGo. Nevertheless, the overall approach is clearly working, and soon AlphaGo, or another similar program, likely will overtake the world’s best, 4. This program will not lead to a dystopian future in which humanity is enslaved by killer robots. At least not for a few more years. The   approach is making great strides. It’s getting particularly good at recognizing images (and more creepily, human faces). But   mechanical suzerain? Probably not. For one thing, physical robots still suck. Seriously. They’re just terrible. And Google has a rosier purpose in mind anyway. It hopes programs such as AlphaGo can improve language translation and health care tools. It might even someday be used to build a sophisticated virtual assistant. ”I’ve concluded that the winner here, no matter what happens, is humanity,” Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said in a   news conference. Regardless of what you think about AI, it seems likely this sort of program will change the way we live and work in the years ahead."
"SeaWorld says the health of one of its   killer whales is deteriorating. Tilikum is the orca that killed SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010  —   her death and SeaWorld’s treatment of its killer whales were at the center of the documentary Blackfish. On its blog, SeaWorld says Tilikum has become increasingly lethargic in recent weeks. The orca appears to have a bacterial infection in his lungs that is resistant to treatment. Tilikum is one of SeaWorld’s most prolific breeders, siring more than 20 calves. In a video on the blog, SeaWorld veterinarian Scott Gearhart says he is not optimistic about Tilikum’s future. Tilikum has been with SeaWorld for 23 years, having coming from another park, Sealand of the Pacific, which closed in 1992. Besides Brancheau, the orca has been implicated in the deaths of two other people. A Sealand trainer died in 1991 after falling into a tank holding Tilikum and several other whales and was prevented from surfacing. And in 1999, a man who had remained at SeaWorld after the park closed apparently entered Tilikum’s tank, where he was found dead the following morning. Those deaths were detailed in Blackfish, which galvanized a public campaign opposing shows with captive killer whales. Following the documentary’s release in 2013 and its broadcast on CNN, attendance fell at SeaWorld’s three parks  —   in San Diego, San Antonio and Orlando, Fla. The theme park attributed some of the decline to public reaction to the film. Following Brancheau’s death, the U. S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration said trainers would no longer be allowed into the water with orcas unless separated by a barrier. SeaWorld has continued its signature orca shows, though CEO Joel Manby recently said the theme park was planning a new ”orca experience” that would show them in a more natural setting."
"Mary Fusillo and her husband, Bob, have been married for 20 years. She met him on a blind date in Houston. Right away, she knew she liked him. He was very intellectual, and he ”read jazz biographies of dead jazz musicians,” she says, laughing. ”And I was used to guys that went hunting on the weekends,” she adds. They fell in love and got married. Pretty soon they had a house and kids  —   twins, actually. But within a few years, there was trouble. ”He was a good husband,” Fusillo, now in her   says with absolute conviction. ”He’s always done all the cooking, which is great.” He gave the kids baths and did household chores. So what was the trouble? A study based on a   reporting period by 100 married couples found these were the most frequent sources of marital conflict. While money wasn’t the No. 1 most common source of conflict, the study found it was often the most difficult to resolve. ”The money thing always made us crazy,” Fusillo says. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, At the time, Fusillo says, she was working fewer hours to juggle her job with taking care of the kids. She was a nurse he was a chemical engineer. Her husband was making more money than she was, but they were splitting their expenses down the middle. So after her share of the child care, groceries and bills, Fusillo says, she was feeling pretty broke much of the time. ”It would be a week before payday and I would have like 20 bucks,” she says. ”And I would go to my dad and say, ’Can I have a hundred dollars?’ and my dad would be like, ’Well, what’s up?’ ” she   his    question. ”I’d say, ’Please just give me a hundred bucks,’ ” she says. ”It was bad.” Oftentimes one spouse doesn’t realize how big an issue money is becoming for the other person. Fusillo says that’s what was going on with her husband. They weren’t having money arguments per se. But over time, Fusillo got increasingly frustrated about it  —   to the point where she says she’s surprised they didn’t get divorced, ”because I had such overwhelming resentment.” Why It’s So Hard To Talk About Money, Disagreements about money are one of the most difficult conflicts for people in relationships to resolve. There’s little instruction in how to manage our finances with a spouse or partner. And if you do it wrong, it can mess everything up. Kent Smetters is a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. ”We know that these discussions or conflicts concerning money are difficult for couples to handle,” says Lauren Papp, a psychologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Papp conducted a study of 100 married couples who kept diary entries about their arguments. During the   period of the study, the spouses reported squabbling more often about issues other than money  —   for example, the kids or household chores. But Papp found that money can be one of the most difficult and damaging areas of conflict. Part of the problem is that it’s very difficult for couples to talk about money issues and resolve them, ”and partners walk away from these discussions learning this is an issue we can’t handle, I feel very frustrated, I feel very devalued by my partner,” Papp says. That’s because so much is wrapped up in money, she says  —   who’s making more of it, who’s sacrificed their work life more to take care of the kids, ”feelings about our   how much we’re contributing, how much we’ve accomplished.” So What’s A Couple To Do? Kitty Bressington is a financial adviser in Rochester, N. Y. who specializes in helping couples. First, she says, you need to ”get all of the issues out on the table, work through a budget.” That means coming to some agreement on ”yours, mine, ours.” Couples often need to set spending limits. ”Those all come from being able to talk about money, which as a society we’re not very good at,” Bressington says. Keeping all your money separate is probably the wrong approach, Bressington says, but she also doesn’t think it’s a good idea for a couple to just throw all their money together in one account and hope for the best. The exact structure depends on the particular couple. But she recommends the following as a good way to organize your finances: ”If you decide [the fun money is] say, $250 a month, and that fits within your budget, and one person wants to blow his $250 and the other person wants to save her $250, then that’s OK because you’ve set those ground rules,” Bressington says. She advises many couples to take out that spending money in cash  —   no credit cards. ”We’re tactile,” she says. ”Sometimes I need to put people back in touch with a dollar bill.” Also, many experts say if you go to a financial adviser, pick one who works for a simple ”fee only” (an actual, legally binding designation)  —   unlike many who make commissions steering you into pricey mutual funds. As for Mary Fusillo, she and her husband eventually did figure out a better system. Now she’s pretty much in charge of managing their finances. It’s something he didn’t like to do anyway, she says. And that, she says, changed their relationship completely. ”He still makes more money than I do,” she says, ”but we’re a team about it.” And that’s a very good place to be. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, an online community featuring stories from some of the best investors and financial experts on the planet along with crowdsourced wisdom curated and overseen by NPR reporters and editors."
"The first thing to realize about financial advice is that it’s not free  —   and it often costs more than you think. That’s what Morra   found when she decided to find a financial adviser after she inherited an IRA from her father. ”I felt like I wanted an adviser because I was uncertain about  —   I never had any money before, frankly, and I really wanted to be a good steward of it,”   says. She found an adviser who charged her a yearly fee of 1 percent of the value of the IRA. That’s pretty standard. But after receiving some quarterly reports, she started feeling uneasy about all the added fees. ”The fees were all over the place, so that even though my fee that I had agreed with my adviser seemed completely reasonable  —   obviously I wanted her to be able to earn a living,” she says, ”it was that there seemed to be all these hidden fees in various funds.” So in addition to paying her adviser 1 percent a year,   was paying a lot to the managers of the mutual funds in her portfolio. The average U. S. mutual fund charges just under 1 percent in fees. That may sound like small change, but the impact can be truly dramatic. Over 30 years, paying 1 percent annually for advice and another 1 percent for your mutual funds could cut your retirement gains almost in half. So keeping fees much lower than average is critical, says Kate Fries, a retirement adviser at The Family Firm based in Bethesda, Md. Fries also charges 1 percent for her advice, but she’s all about keeping the other fees to a minimum. ”The vast majority of the time, whether in an index fund or even more inexpensively via an ETF [  fund] it should be well under a half a percent,” Fries says. An ETF is a basket of stocks traded like a single stock in the stock market. Often, investors pay too much in fees because their advisers get commissions from a mutual fund company to steer business to their   products. But Fries is a fiduciary, which means she is required to put her clients’ interests first. (That’s something you should insist on when you seek financial advice.) Of course, even paying close to 1. 5 percent could cut significantly into your investment returns, so why not just invest on your own or in one of those cheap roboadvisers online? Fries argues it can be worth it to pay for a human adviser. She says they can help you work through how to organize your finances to achieve your goals, and when you’re ready, how to structure your retirement. And, she says, she protects her clients from themselves. ”It’s really hard when the market is as volatile as it was this past August and to not   react and decide, ’Oh, gosh, is now the time to sell? I don’t want to lose everything,’ ” Fries says. But here’s the problem for the vast majority of Americans: They don’t have enough money to access Fries’ advice. Her firm requires a $600, 000 minimum investment. There is a new model for providing less expensive advice being offered by a number of firms. A recent startup called Rebalance IRA uses a hybrid model that keeps costs low by combining human advisers on the phone and technology online. ”Rebalance IRA charges a half of 1 percent for retirement investment advice for our clients,” says Scott Puritz, a managing director for the firm. That’s half the cost of a traditional investment adviser. And Rebalance IRA builds investment portfolios of index funds and ETFs that add just 0. 2 percent to the fee. ”So our clients experience     cost of [0. 7] percent per year,” Puritz says. But Rebalance IRA’s minimum investment is $100, 000, and Vanguard’s similar service requires a $50, 000 minimum. That still excludes the majority of Americans. To fill that gap, a new network of financial planners has sprung up. It’s called the XY Planning Network. Cristina Guglielmetti of Future Perfect Planning is one of them. ”We are all planners who are trying to deliver quality fiduciary financial planning services to clients who have traditionally been cut out of financial planning,” Guglielmetti says. Her clients are often younger people  —   freelancers, new parents and newlyweds merging their finances. Guglielmetti charges them $500 for an initial plan and about $100 a month to help them define goals, track expenses and begin investing for retirement. And like some other planners in her network and elsewhere, she’ll work for an hourly fee."
"Some people in the line were not sure what to do with their phones. A man in his   who’d traveled all the way from Kansas with his sister, thought it would be fine to keep his hidden away in his pocket. He had no intention of using it, he said. But he’s been diagnosed with cancer and, understandably, was a little anxious about being uncontactable for several hours, so far away from home in the depths of Minnesota. ”You use it, you lose it!” bellowed Paisley Park staff as we waited at a local bus station to receive our wristbands and be transported in coaches to the venue. Holders of VIP tickets ($250) were allowed to park at Paisley. But however much you’d paid for a ticket, one rule was being enforced above all others: no cellphones, no cameras. There were quite a few locals in the friendly, mostly   crowd, people who’d been to Paisley many times. They were unequivocal. ”Don’t bother bringing a phone,” said Sean, who was dressed in a purple suit. ”They’ll take it off you.” I locked mine in the rental car, away from temptation. Most others did the same, including the gentleman from Kansas. Prince, armed with just a microphone and a piano, was playing a couple of intimate midweek shows in one night, in his own studio complex just outside Minneapolis. ”From all over the world, the people came,” brags Prince’s last great   before the Internet changed the way we think of singles. The song is called ”Rock ’n’ Roll is Alive (And It Lives In Minneapolis),” and on a cold night in January, both the opening lyric and the title of this 1995 track still seemed to hold true. Given Prince’s notoriously antagonistic relationship with the Internet, it is not a surprise that this song is unavailable to legally stream or download anywhere. There are probably two main reasons for the cellphone ban at Paisley Park. First is an attempt to preserve the purity of the live music experience, to encourage people to watch and absorb the show rather than their screens. Apart from a woman who used her phone flashlight to look for something she’d dropped, earning a stern word from an alert member of staff, everyone seemed to respect the rules. At one point, while he scrolled through his iPad, deciding what to play next, Prince playfully asked why everyone was looking at him. Later, I could only find a single, blurry image from the show on social media. The other reason is Prince’s fierce commitment to protection of copyright. He does not take kindly to unauthorized recordings and images. There is surprisingly little to be found in places like YouTube. What does exist is usually unauthorized and only survives for as long as it takes to issue a takedown notice. Which Prince, or whoever he’s paying to handle this task, does with great regularity. There is plenty of Prince material on  . S. video sites, which are harder to deal with under American law. ”Copyright law has not caught up with the way the Internet works,” explains Professor Chris Bavitz of Harvard Law School. ”The Internet itself is premised on making copies. Every time you load a web page you are making a copy. But technically, according to the U. S. Copyright Act, you are violating the rights of whoever owns the content on that page.” Bavitz has been immersed in the music industry for many years. Between 2003 and 2008 he was   counsel at EMI, at the time one of the four major record labels. Among other things, he now teaches a Music and Digital Media class at Harvard. Today, relatively few people buy physical copies of music. After its slow initial response to the rise of illegal   in the 2000s, the industry now supplies music in several ways using the Internet. You can pay to download individual tracks and albums using something like iTunes you can stream music of your choice by subscribing to a service like Spotify you can select a genre or artist on Pandora and let the service’s algorithm choose similar songs for you. Artists also have their own channels on audio and video platforms like Soundcloud and YouTube, to which fans can subscribe for free. But Prince has mostly stood apart from these developments. ”The Internet’s completely over,” he said in 2010. ”I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else.” Since then, Prince has removed most of his music from the streaming service Spotify, instead aligning with the newer, smaller,    Tidal. There is some music available on iTunes, but the latest releases appear several weeks earlier on Tidal. There are many Prince songs and albums that are completely unavailable on any of the major digital platforms. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) an important civil liberty organization that specifically focuses on digital technology, created The Raspberry Beret Lifetime Aggrievement Award for Prince, in 2013, because of his ”extraordinary abuses of the takedown process in the name of silencing speech.” It sees Prince’s takedowns not merely as a copyright issue, in which an artist can claim to be protecting his work, but as outright censorship. In 2007, Stephanie Lenz posted a   video of her young children dancing in the kitchen. Faintly in the background, the Prince song ”Let’s Go Crazy” is playing. The correct response would probably have been to do nothing, but Universal Music, Prince’s label at the time, decided to issue a takedown. The ensuing legal battle, in which the EFF represents Lenz, is still not quite over after nine long years of decisions and appeals. Though he’s not the plaintiff, the EFF still blames Prince. The association is understandable. That same year, Prince not only threatened legal action against eBay and YouTube but also against three websites that were run by his fans. He wanted them to remove anything linked to his likeness: photos, album art, even images of   tattoos. A letter from his lawyers asked them to provide ”substantive details of the means by which you propose to compensate our clients [Paisley Park Entertainment Group, NPG Records and AEG] for damages.” In response, the fansites formed a coalition, Prince Fans United, to contest the action. Prince then created a   website where he uploaded an unflattering song about them, the frankly awesome ”PFunk.” In the end, nobody got sued and pretty much everyone loved the track. ”With everything that’s going on, we continue to listen to his music,” said Karen Avera from the Housequake fansite, at the time. ”We’ll continue to buy his music, because we appreciate his music.” But it was an ugly episode, nonetheless. Infamously, Prince managed to take down a YouTube clip of himself performing a cover of Radiohead’s ”Creep” at the Coachella music festival in 2008, despite the band’s lead singer Thom Yorke making it very clear who the song actually belongs to. The law does not provide a great deal of clarity in these cases, unfortunately. ”My guess is that Prince at least claimed to be an owner or   of the rights in this video, even if not the song, thus giving him the right to demand its removal,” says Bavitz. ”But, actually parsing out the basis for that claim is a bit messy.” The video was uploaded yet again last year, this time apparently with Prince’s approval. He’s now using Twitter and Instagram again and posted a link to it. Among his devoted fans, who have vast collections of Prince albums and have seen him live many times, there is a general acceptance of this stance. They don’t worry too much about the lack of grainy clips on YouTube or the absence of music on Spotify. Some I met at Paisley Park shook their heads in weary resignation as they muttered, ”Yeah, he hates the Internet.” Amanda Palmer certainly does not hate the Internet. The   is famous for her personal interactions with fans, both on and offline. She has more than a million Twitter followers she takes the time to answer many of their questions and generally engage in conversation she allows all photography and filming at her live shows. This is pretty much the opposite of Prince’s approach. Palmer has built such a rapport with fans that she managed to raise $1. 2 million on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, to support a tour and the recording of a 2012 album. This was not without some controversy, with a few musicians upset about her calls for volunteers to play on some songs alongside her main band. Palmer grew up idolizing Prince. But the music industry has changed since the days when she had posters of him on her bedroom wall. She makes an analogy with the silent movie stars who, brilliant as they may have been, could not cope with the inevitability of a technological revolution that would pass them by. Prince was successful in an era of lucrative music sales  —   and, to be fair, patient support from a major record label  —   that has now largely gone. ”What Prince wants is just not possible anymore,” she says. ”But it is important that people don’t hold it against him. He grew up and is completely fluent in a language that is dying. Almost all of my early heroes are struggling in the same way.” But it is not clear that technology is the main issue here. Even before the Internet came along, Prince was trying to control the distribution of his music. At the Paisley Park concert, many people were exchanging stories of how and where they got hold of old bootleg Prince recordings. This is how an artist like Prince truly endures, how dedicated fandom develops. For these people, Purple Rain is for the masses. For an obsessive teenage music fan, an artist’s official back catalog is rarely sufficient. In London in the early 1990s, a few of us would pick up the Northern Line from Kings Cross and make the short journey to Camden Town. There, in the famous, sprawling market surrounding by   pubs full of underage drinkers, we’d head for the music stalls to look for unofficial tracks, concert recordings, demos, whatever we could get our hands on. I still have a   vinyl pressing of the   Black Album. Very early on a sunny morning in 1994, a small group of us once again headed to Camden. Not, this time, to buy more tapes in the market, but because Prince was actually opening his own store there. He wasn’t even called Prince that day, because he had changed his name to a symbol and was in the middle of a fight to extract himself from his contract at Warner Brothers. A few dozen people were waiting patiently. Presumably they’d also been mocked at school. My mum had made sandwiches. At its peak, the crowd was no bigger than a couple of hundred. Bear in mind this was one of the most famous people in the world just showing up in a popular, touristy part of London. But we had no Internet access, no cellphones, no digital cameras. We only knew about it because one of us subscribed to a photocopied, crudely stapled fanzine. Today, social media would force the police to shut the whole thing down. Eventually, Prince himself appeared on the balcony, wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit. He cut a ribbon, waved for a few seconds, the crowd went nuts and he was gone. I bought posters, some CDs and regrettably, a large earring in the shape of the Prince symbol. Sadly, there are very few records of that day  —   a Google search only reveals a few poor quality photos and a very early online forum discussion with about four participants. The store closed down two years later, but it was an early attempt by Prince to bypass established music industry distribution channels. My old friend Sidh Solanki was with us that morning. An extremely talented musician even as a teenager, he has since forged a successful career as a producer and is now based in Los Angeles. Solanki, despite his deep roots in the industry, does not listen to music on Spotify or any other streaming service, partly because he feels it doesn’t compensate music creators properly. ”These people have been pumping music out to their subscribers for years without paying people for their copyrights,” he says. ”Prince has a lot to be wary of when he puts music out there.” Nobody thought the music royalties system was completely fair in the old days, but Solanki suggests that it was at least straightforward. The record label would manage the process and he got a certain amount every time someone bought a record or it got played on the radio. But now, he thinks they have changed listeners’ expectations. ”Music is now freely available everywhere so it has no value to the consumer,” he says. A recent report from the Berklee School of Music in Boston is highly critical of the streaming services and their investors, who happen to include major record labels. Essentially, the report accuses the music industry of a deliberate lack of transparency. The technology exists to track downloads and streams to a very fine degree, something that would enable artists to see what they are owed and help create a common standard. It might not make everyone rich but it would at least be fair. But the industry chooses not to use technology that is easily available, so we now have, the report says, ”a tremendously mismatched ecosystem in which we have     elements without the proper digital infrastructure to support them.” ”The resulting opaque industry,” it concludes starkly, ”is one in which many artists can reach a wide number of fans, but only a few can truly make a living from their craft, and even fewer can understand the problems they are facing.” Prince probably does not need to earn a living any more. He can charge $250 a ticket for a concert in his house. But Solanki still approves of his attempts to control distribution and experiment with new methods of getting his music and brand out there, which includes that London store more than twenty years ago. ”Prince is just doing what he thinks is best,” he says. ”We have maybe a few years before we figure out the norms for where we get our music from and how we all get paid properly. There isn’t a solution yet. Because if he hasn’t found it,  ’s found it.” Towards the end of Prince’s most commercially successfully period, Galaxie 500, a   indie rock band, formed at Harvard in the late eighties. Damon Krukowski, the band’s   drummer, says the three musicians who had made up the group took a major hit with the rise of digital music services. They used to make a clear profit on physical records sold and a successful album could generate enough income to live on for a while, even though they accepted early on that they were never going to be selling millions. Streaming not only killed off the idea of a back catalog as a chronology of music, but dramatically reduced their income. Prince, says Krukowski, has thought harder about the industry than other musicians. He is entrepreneurial and ambitious. ”Prince was always destined to be a pop star and had his eye on being huge,” he says. ”But he would show up and watch these obscure bands that only other musicians liked, in tiny venues in Minneapolis. He always wanted to know everything that was going on.” Krukowski thinks artists should abandon the idea of expecting fans to pay to stream their music and just offer that particular service for free. They could still sell downloads on iTunes and elsewhere. In his view, it would be fairer and more practical for digital streams to ”flow freely  —   from everyone, fans included  —   instead of only from companies that have cut deals with the copyright holders.” That way, at least everyone is on a level playing field. ”I believe if we relinquish control and claim over the stream,” he says. ”We clarify what it is we actually do own and can profit from as musicians and songwriters.” For emerging artists today, there is an acceptance that streaming services in their current form, however unfair their business practices might seem when it comes to royalties, cannot be ignored. The Internet in general offers an enormous opportunity to reach audiences  —   and generate revenue from elsewhere  —   at a scale that was once impossible without the backing of a record label. Prince was 18 when Warner Brothers gave him a   deal, even allowing the precocious teenager to produce his own albums. It was not until his fifth effort, 1999, that he could be considered a major star. His sixth, incidentally, was Purple Rain. This level of patience and support was unusual at the time but it would not happen at all today. Dani Leigh was also just 18 when Prince invited her to direct the video for his ”Breakfast Can Wait” single in 2013. Two years later, as one half of the duo Curly Fryz, the Florida native performed on the standout track of a recent Prince album, a storming piece of braggadocio funk called ”Like A Mack.” As a new solo artist, she says she is lucky to have Prince in her corner. But unlike her mentor, she is not in a position to shun the Internet. Her first single is available on every platform. ”That’s where everyone gets their music nowadays,” she says. ”It’s easier for Prince to do what he does, because he’s Prince. A lot of people will go out of their way to find his music.” He still refuses to back down. ”I was right about [the Internet],” Prince said in November 2015. Leigh worries about his legacy among a new generation of music fans, because of his absence from Spotify and YouTube. ”I know a lot of younger kids who don’t know Prince and don’t realize who he is,” she says. Although nobody else of his status behaves this way today, a decade ago, just before he started threatening to sue everyone in sight, Prince was considered a genuine Internet hero: ”It is with great pleasure and admiration that we present The Webby Lifetime Achievement award to Prince, who has forever altered the landscape of online musical distribution as the first major artist to release an entire album  —   1997’s Crystal Ball  —   exclusively on the web. Prince’s leadership online has transformed the entertainment industry and reshaped the relationship between artist and fan.” From the very beginning, Prince had always been interested in computers and how an artist might use them, says Berklee professor and Prince fan Ben Houge. Songs like ”Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)” (1982) and ”Computer Blue” (1984) were early examples right there in his music in the Internet era there are tracks like ”Emale” and ”My Computer” (both 1996). The latter’s lyrics are even prescient of social media: ”I scanned my computer, looking for a site. Somebody to talk to, funny and bright.” Later, he used the available technology to create ”experiences,” not merely albums, that were more than just music, combining sound, visuals and a sense of interactivity. The liner notes for 1997’s Crystal Ball, specifically cited by the Webby Awards, were presented as a web page, which was unique at the time. Professor Houge argues that Prince is sensitive to everything that is part of a musical experience. ”Of course it’s incredibly convenient to have music instantly accessible on a streaming service, but so much information is lost,” he says. ”Not only textual information like credits, lyrics, bios and essays but also visual information like photos, font, layout and graphic design, so many things that convey an important   dimension to an artist’s vision.” In 2001, Prince launched his most ambitious Internet project of all, the NPG Music Club, a subscription service that was initially priced at $100 a year. It was an attempt to distribute exclusive new music directly to fans and give members first preference and VIP access to concerts. It also featured a weekly,   radio show. It didn’t always work very well. Eventually, the price was lowered to just $25 for a lifetime membership, so I too signed up. I never got a VIP pass to a concert. The site closed down in 2006, the same year Prince won the lifetime Webby. There has never been a prince. com, a consistent,   Internet home. Someone has registered the domain but there is no website. Prince has instead had a series of   sites, dating all the way back to thedawn. com in 1996. Most of them were designed to sell a specific album or event and none lasted very long. He periodically dips in and out of social media. This is not the only musical genius to have tried, with limited success, to use the Internet and realize its potential for music. ”Peace, David Bowie,” said Prince, quietly and a little unexpectedly, as he was sitting at his piano at Paisley Park. ”I only met him once. He was nice to me. Seems like he was nice to everyone.” It was a gentle, humble moment. In 1994, Bowie was the first major artist to release a song solely on the Internet, was also into interactive experiences, and by 1998, had gone a lot further than Prince by launching his own service provider, Bowienet, which offered Internet access, a Bowienet email address and an official,   Bowie website that was full of music and visual material. By 2002, Bowie had accepted that the Internet would change the way musicians functioned. ”I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing,” he told The New York Times. ”You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left.” Bowie was wrong about the demise of copyright but right about the increased value of live performances. In the 2000s, Prince did not sell many records but was one of the   live acts in the world. In 1996, following his debilitating battle with Warners  —   the era of the unpronounceable symbol for a name and ”slave” written on his face  —   the comedian Chris Rock had also told Prince to just get on the stage. ”You talk about owning your music,” said Rock. ”The thing you have that is worth more than anything else is your reputation as a live performer, which will feed you when all else fails.” Prince’s entire history with the Internet can be understood in terms of a great artist experimenting with available technology to retain control of his music and artistic vision, trying to maintain a separation between live performance and recordings, and achieving a business model that rewards artists for their work and talent. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, an era of largely open platforms  —   before iTunes, Spotify, social media  —   what he wanted to achieve might have seemed possible. But neither the NPG Music Club nor Bowienet were suited to the way the Internet was changing and, looking back, it is perhaps no surprise they were both finished by 2006. Ultimately, Houge thinks Prince has tried really hard: ”I think his issues with the Internet, relatively recent in his   relationship with the medium, are more a result of disappointment of the ways in which its potential has not been realized than in a lack of vision.” It was approaching 2:00 a. m. when the lights went up and we were gently ushered to the heated coaches that would return us to our cars a couple of miles away. It was cold outside and there was light snow. ”There aren’t any rules in Paisley Park,” Prince had sung, but many would beg to differ. For nearly four hours, the performances were perfect, with just one or two songs repeated across the two concerts. Prince was relaxed and funny, and played the obscure songs this crowd craved, as well as some of the bigger hits. There are nearly 40 albums to choose from. For many fans, it is not an overstatement to describe this as a pilgrimage, a visit to the birthplace of the soundtrack to their lives. Prince’s staff filmed the performance but it is likely that the footage will end up in his   vault, where it is thought he stores thousands of recordings that very few people have heard. On the Internet, meanwhile, there is that solitary unauthorized photo on Instagram and nothing at all of this concert on YouTube. If you want to see the show, to have the memories, you have to buy a ticket. The Internet can do great things for music but it still cannot replicate an experience like this."
"When Melissa Adams and her sister were growing up in Lynwood, near Compton, Calif. their black father and Mexican mother taught them to be proud of all aspects of their identity: They were black, and they were Mexican. At home, that came easy. Publicly, it was harder. Consider the time Melissa was named valedictorian of her middle school when she was 13. It was the first time anyone could remember a black student winning that honor at her school. ”Everyone was excited,” she said over breakfast at her family’s house recently. ”It was the first black valedictorian!” School administrators planned a special ceremony for her, and the dean called Adams into her office to congratulate her. But when Adams walked in, the dean’s smile melted away. ”She was notably disappointed by what she saw,” Adams said, her voice trembling at the memory. ”She didn’t believe I was black.” Adams, who has light skin, long, straight brown hair, and speaks Spanish, is used to people assuming that she’s entirely Mexican or even white. She explained to the dean that her father was black, which was why she’d checked the box for that racial category on a school enrollment form. ”She told me not to do that again,” Adams recalled. The problem is, Adams feels just as black as she feels Mexican. She grew up eating grits and biscuits and carne asada and pozole hearing dad talk about the civil rights era and visiting mom’s family in Nayarit, Mexico. Yet while she feels secure in her Mexicanness, she often feels like she’s ”grasping” for her blackness because of the way people interpret her appearance. ”I know that I am black, but how do I present it to other people?” she said.    Alex Tillman, a student at UCLA, is also black and Mexican, and growing up she also struggled with how to identify. But in a way, her problem was the inverse of the one Melissa Adams has faced. ”I once had a Mexican person tell me I wasn’t Mexican, because I looked black,” Tillman said. ”I had to choose between one or the other, and because I looked black, I had to be black.” In terms of physical appearance, you could place Adams and Tillman on opposite ends of a spectrum represented by people who are both black and Mexican. In Los Angeles, there are thousands of people in between. The number of people who have both a black and Mexican parent in that city started ballooning in the 1980s and ’90s, when Mexican immigrants began moving into South LA’s black neighborhoods in large numbers, and people started getting together and creating families. Like Adams and Tillman, many have struggled to explain their racial identity to the outside world, and sometimes even to understand it themselves. Much of this has to do with the fact that biracial identity in the United States has often been understood in terms of black and white. And to the extent that labels are helpful for quickly   they don’t always exist for the diversity of racial possibilities that mixed Americans increasingly want to see recognized. When it comes to   in America,   author Richard Rodriguez has written, we rely on an ”old vocabulary  —   black, white,” but, ”we are no longer a   nation.” This may be why in LA, many young people who are both black and Mexican are turning to a handy word to describe themselves: ”Blaxican.” It’s not a new term. Walter   a researcher at the University of Southern California who focuses on immigration and race, has traced references back to the 1980s. But it has gained new prominence in the past few years, since he launched a project called ”Blaxicans of L. A.” It’s an Instagram account featuring photos of Blaxicans  —   with their varied hues, hair textures and facial profiles  —   accompanied by a quote from each person offering an insight on the Blaxican experience. ”How we’re talking about Blaxicans is relatively new,”   said, ”but it is a racial and ethnic experience that has existed for centuries at least.” When it comes to LA, 26 of the 44 Mexicans who founded El Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1781 were Mexicans of African descent, an ethnicity described today as ” .” Today, the city that pueblo became is home to many children born to a Mexican parent and an   parent. Their story often gets lost in the way Angelenos tend to talk about the history of South LA, and what happened when Mexicans started moving into its black neighborhoods in large numbers beginning in the 1980s. Residents of South LA will remember race riots, turf wars and tensions exploding on school campuses, like the time Mexican students at Inglewood High school walked out of a Black History Month assembly in 1990, prompting black students to boycott a Cinco de Mayo celebration: Families like Melissa Adams’ represent instances when, as   puts it, ”black people and Mexican people came together and figured it out.” But as his interviews make clear, it’s not all gravy after that. ”Blacks and Mexicans are two of the most aggrieved groups in our nation’s history,”   said, and packing both of those identities into one person can amplify the struggles associated with being either. Some people he interviewed for the Instagram project have spoken of dealing with a black family member being assaulted by police at the same time that a Mexican family member was struggling with the threat of deportation. Others spoke of being forced to choose sides on the school playground. Or of being rejected by both sides. Often, family is the source of tension. Melissa Adams’ mother, Manuela, remembered the snark she got from a Mexican    when she learned Manuela was marrying a black man. ”She said, ’Oh, you’re going to have monkey babies,’” Manuela said.   said interactions like this offer an opportunity to explore another prominent source of tension within the Blaxican experience:   racism among Mexicans. Though black people have always been a part of Mexican society, Mexicans haven’t always embraced that heritage. They’ve often shunned it, even while priding themselves on being a racially mixed population. It’s just that they’ve tended to focus on mestizaje, the European and indigenous parts of that mixture. LA County is one place where Mexicans and   are beginning to   that relationship with blackness, thanks in part to the many Blaxicans who live there. It’s hard to say exactly how many, because the U. S. Census makes it notoriously difficult for Latinos to accurately report their ethnic and racial backgrounds. But the 2010 Census counted 42, 000 people in LA County who identified as Latino and black, many of whom, presumably, are black and Mexican.   says it’s important to note that ”Blaxican” is taking off at the same time that the U. S. is becoming a more multiracial society and   are gaining greater recognition in Mexico. He said that more and more,   people ”want to be considered full and complete human beings. And by reinventing language, it gives us the ability to represent all that we are.” Melissa Adams, the middle school valedictorian, has longed for a way to do just that. She grew up hearing and internalizing stories about her   who were lynched in the Jim Crow South  —   one was hanged from a tree, the other tarred, feathered and tossed into the Mississippi River. The legacy of racial violence in her family cuts to the core of how and why Adams conceives of herself as black. But because of that moment in her middle school dean’s office, she treads carefully when broadcasting her blackness. It has caused her a lot of anxiety. Last year, when Rachel Dolezal, who ran the Spokane office of the NAACP, was lambasted after it was discovered she was a white woman posing as black, Adams, whom most people wouldn’t immediately think of as black based on her physical appearance, was filled with a sense of dread. She didn’t want people to accuse her of what Dolezal seemed to be doing: claiming a blackness to which many said she had no right. ”I try to be very careful about how I express myself,” Adams said. On the one hand, she wants to identify in a way that captures her life experiences and honors the history of racial injustice in her family. ”On the other end, I totally understand that I will never be able to relate to some of the injustices that happened to my family and to other people who look a certain way.” She said the pictures and stories on the Blaxicans of L. A. Instagram account have given her a way to think about her identity in a way she never could before. Recently a couple of hundred people, lots of Blaxicans among them, showed up to the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach to hear   talk about his research. The next night, even more streamed in and out of a small gallery in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood for the opening of an exhibit featuring his photos. They were hip events, full of proud, ethnically and racially   young people. And it’s worth noting: Conversations about mixed race tend to focus on looks.   said there’s a tendency to talk about the ”beauty” of mixed people. But that can be a problem, because it allows us to ”confuse racial mixing and interracial marriages with being a panacea for racial intolerance.” Instead, he says, the term ”Blaxican” and events like these are creating spaces for Blaxicans to explore the diversity and similarities in their experiences. At both the museum lecture and the gallery opening, there was a palpable feeling of inclusion. ”I’m really excited,” one audience member said. ”As a Blaxican in L. A. it’s just really refreshing to be in a space where this conversation is happening.” That seemed to be the overwhelming sentiment among people who showed up. This momentum is exciting for Alex Tillman, who has often been told she’s not Mexican because she looks black. She said before a community of people started emerging around the term Blaxican, she had to figure herself out on her own. ”When you’re little, you don’t realize there’s a problem with your identity. Like, you don’t realize that you’re black or Mexican or anything,” she said. ”And then when you grow up you learn about all the struggles you have just by being whatever you are. But then, you go through that struggle, and you get to a point where it’s like, ’I’m just me. ’” Tillman said she got to that point only recently, around the time she learned about  ’s project, and heard the word Blaxican for the first time. It gave her a neat if imperfect label for herself. She also saw that there were a lot of people having the same identity struggles that she did. ”Now, it’s like a solidarity thing,” she said, about the term and the people she’s met through  ’s work. ”It’s reinforcing what I feel about myself. I can identify with a lot of things that people have said, and that’s just beautiful.”"
"Bernie Sanders was the story of Tuesday night as he beat Hillary Clinton in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary. It wasn’t a walloping  —   he won by less than 2 points  —   but still a big coup considering Clinton led in most polls by double digits before the race. Michigan is Sanders’ ninth state win, though Clinton still leads in delegates overall. That means Sanders is only partway up a steep hill to the nomination. ”I am used to climbing steep hills,” Sanders told NPR’s Ari Shapiro, host of All Things Considered, noting that when he began his campaign he was unknown to most Americans. ”Stay tuned. I think we are going to go further and we have a good chance to pull off the biggest political upset in the modern history of America. We can win this thing.” As far as the delegate count so far goes, he admits, ”We have not done well in the deep South,” but adds that ”it’s not surprising. The South is a pretty conservative area, I’m not a conservative.” But he points out the wins he has had in New England, the Midwest and West. Given those, he said, he thinks he has a ”pretty good chance” to win in New York and an ”excellent chance” in California, Oregon, Hawaii and smaller states like Montana and Idaho. However, an NPR analysis found that even if on Tuesday, Sanders wins 55 percent of the delegates in Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, but Clinton wins 60 percent in North Carolina, Sanders would slip further behind, needing 54 percent of all remaining delegates. After next week, even if Sanders wins four large,   contests (Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington and California) with 60 percent, he would still need to pick up 51 percent of the delegates from all remaining contests to win a majority of pledged delegates. And there’s another challenge ahead of him. He won Michigan largely thanks to white voters, but has struggled to appeal to  . He won a larger share of black votes in Michigan than he had been winning, but still not a majority  —   just around 30 percent. The real hurdle, he says, is getting his message out to black voters  —   in a way that Hillary Clinton hasn’t already. ”I don’t think it’s a question of us winning over black voters, I think it is a question of Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton having very strong support in the   community,” he said. ”I congratulate them.” Sanders also responded to his comment in the last debate that drew ire from some black leaders (”When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto”) emphasizing his track record on poverty. ”There’s no candidate who has talked more about poverty in this country than I have. White poverty, black poverty and Latino poverty,” he said. ”Now it would be nice if every once in a while the media paid attention to those issues, which we don’t.”"
"Businesswoman Carly Fiorina, who ended her own presidential bid last month, has endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Appearing at a Cruz rally in Miami on Wednesday morning, Fiorina said she voted for Cruz in Virginia’s recent primary, and praised his record in challenging Washington’s status quo. Calling Cruz a ”real constitutional conservative,” she said ”he is a fearless fighter and reformer, and he didn’t care much whether he got invited to the cocktail parties in Washington, D. C.” Fiorina said. Listen to a clip below, where Fiorina says Cruz is proud to be known by ”the enemies he’s made in the D. C. cartel.” Fiorina also took the moment to say she is ”horrified” by Donald Trump, and believes Cruz is the only candidate who can beat him. Trump won several states Tuesday night and is leading Cruz in delegate counts. ”The truth is, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are two sides of the same coin. They’re not going to reform the system. They are the system,” she said. ”So when the establishment says . .. he’s too much of a fighter, he won’t get along, I say, ’You go, Ted.’ ” The crowd echoed her line with chants of ”You go, Ted.”"
"Republicans continued to post stunning   numbers Tuesday night. In the four states that voted on the GOP side, turnout far exceeded what the party saw in 2012. In Hawaii’s, Michigan’s and Mississippi’s Republican races, turnout this year was 30 to 40 percent higher than it was in 2012. Idaho posted a nearly 400 percent bump, but that may be due in part to the fact that this year was a primary, whereas the party held a caucus in 2012 those contests tend to draw smaller crowds. Democrats’ numbers likewise require some context. In Michigan, this year’s turnout far outstripped that in the state’s 2008 contest. But then, in 2008, Barack Obama and John Edwards both bowed out of Michigan’s race when the state broke party rules and scheduled its primary too early. That may have helped depress turnout. Add together the 23 states where Republicans have voted or caucused this year, and you get 12. 4 million people. That’s nearly 5 million more GOP voters thus far this primary season than in those same states in 2012  —   a bump of nearly 67 percent across those states. Contrast that with the Democratic side, whose turnout dropoff is nearly a mirror image of the GOP’s spike, with nearly 8. 7 million people voting thus far across 21 states’ Democratic contests. That’s down by nearly 23 percent from the party’s stellar turnout in 2008."
"It appears that the attacks on presidential candidate Donald Trump’s business record seem to have touched a nerve. Despite three more primary and caucus victories on Tuesday, Trump eschewed a traditional victory speech, adding in a press conference  —   and something else: a table piled high with a veritable   of   products. ”I have very successful companies,” the New York billionaire told reporters at the event at Trump National Golf Club Jupiter, in Jupiter, Fla. as raw steaks, bottles of wine and vodka, and magazines stood near the man himself. In particular, Trump appeared irked about last week’s speech by 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who declared, ”Whatever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there’s Trump magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks and Trump Mortgage. A business genius he is not.” So what’s the backstory of those products Trump pitched as a sign of his success? Trump Steaks, Raw meat  —   of the real and rhetorical kinds  —   was front and center last night. ”Do we have steaks? We have Trump steaks,” Trump boasted. ”If you want to take one, we’ll charge you about, what, 50 bucks a steak?” Trump did have an eponymous steak line, sold via Sharper Image. The company’s website notes, however: ”Unfortunately, Trump Steaks are no longer available, but their legacy endures.” A search for ”Trump” on QVC’s website finds various Melania Trump jewelry products, a line of Trump mattresses and one entry for Trump Steaks. But they’re not actual steaks they’re ”Certified Angus Beef Steakburgers” and QVC notes, ”We’re sorry, this item is not available at this time.” A reporter present at Trump’s press conference notes that the steaks on the table were not actually a Trump brand, but appear, ironically, to have come from a company named ”Bush Brothers.” Trump Magazine, ”[Romney] said Trump Magazine is out. I said, it is? I thought I read one two days ago. This comes out, and it’s called The Jewel of Palm Beach, and we  —   it goes to all of my clubs,” said Trump, before throwing a copy out to the audience. There is indeed a magazine called The Jewel of Palm Beach published by the Palm Beach Media Group that is described as ”the exclusive publication of Donald J. Trump’s spectacular    Club” and other Trump properties. Trump does not appear to own the publisher, and the magazine only comes out on an annual basis. There was a Trump magazine, which went out of circulation in 2009. The New York Daily News reported: ”The last iteration of the luxury lifestyle mag reached a circulation of 100, 000 and sold for $5. 95 before it flopped. Issues are nowhere to be found online and hardcopies are likely a rare collector’s item.” Trump Airline, ”Well, I sold the airline, and I actually made a great deal, complicated and in really terrible times. The economy was horrible and I made a phenomenal deal,” said Trump, referring to the Trump Shuttle. NBC News recently looked back at the venture, and summarized Trump’s ownership this way: ”Back in 1989, Trump pounced at the chance to buy the troubled Eastern Air Lines shuttle service for $365 million. He put the Trump name on the planes, dressed them up inside  —   and waited for business to boom. It didn’t. But the business took on too much debt and eventually defaulted. It was sold to USAir.” Trump University, Trump launched Trump University in 2005 to help budding   entrepreneurs, but it ran afoul of regulators, who noted that it was not a   institution. Former students sued, claiming they were tricked into spending tens of thousands of dollars for seminars that didn’t do anywhere near what was advertised. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is also suing and claiming that Trump and his associates defrauded students of a collective $40 million. The   Trump Entrepreneur Initiative is mostly dormant. Trump is challenging those lawsuits and says he will win and that, when that happens, he will reopen Trump U: ”It’s going to do very well,” Trump said, ”and it will continue to do very well.” Trump Winery, The table was stacked with bottles of Trump Wine, and Trump declared of the winery, ”I own it 100 percent, no mortgage, no debt.” The winery’s website says something different: ”Trump Winery is a registered trade name of Eric Trump Wine Manufacturing LLC, which is not owned, managed or affiliated with Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their affiliates.” Trump, who is a teetotaler, also used to sell Trump Vodka, although that venture has also been discontinued. A review described the vodka’s taste this way: ”Vodka from The Donald. Nosings reveal dry, earthy scents of grain, paraffin, kid leather, jasmine, flowers, moss and soot. Palate entry displays far better than average grain focus and viscosity at midpalate, the taste profile turns   intensely breakfast   and biscuity. Finishes   and snack  .” Trump Water, There were also pallets of Trump Water on stage. On Trump’s website, the water is touted as ”one of the purest natural spring waters bottled in the world.” ”I mean, we sell water, and we have water, and it’s a very successful,” Trump said, ”you know, it’s a private little water company, and I supply the water for all my places, and it’s good.” So does Trump own the natural springs or bottle the water himself? According to reporters at the event who looked the label, probably not. As Trump himself put it Tuesday night, ”So you have the water you have the steaks you have the airline that I sold. I mean, what’s wrong with selling? Every once in a while you can sell something. You have the wines and all of that, and Trump University, we’re going to start it up as soon as I win the lawsuit. Does that make sense? I mean, that’s it. OK.”"
"Miss Manners and skilled prep cooks should be pleased: Our early human ancestors likely mastered the art of chopping and slicing more than 2 million years ago. Not only did this yield daintier pieces of meat and vegetables that were much easier to digest raw, with less chewing  —   it also helped us along the road to becoming modern humans, researchers reported Wednesday. And our ancestors picked up these skills at least 1. 5 million years before cooking took off as a common way to prepare food, the researchers say. Chewing, it turns out, takes a lot of time and energy, say Katherine Zink and Daniel Lieberman, evolutionary biologists at Harvard University. They recently set about measuring precisely how much effort is required to chew raw food, and to what degree simple stone tools might have eased the toil. ”Every time I go out to dinner, I watch people chew,” Lieberman tells us. ”And sometimes, I actually count how many times they chew.” It’s not just a hobby. Lieberman’s interest gets to some basic questions of how humans evolved. Scientists have long known that Homo erectus, an ancestor of modern humans who lived about 2 million years ago, had already evolved to have a bigger body and brain than earlier hominins, and would have needed much more daily energy to survive. But the jaw and teeth of H. erectus were much like ours today  —   significantly smaller and less powerful than those of Australopithecus afarensis, or other hominins of earlier epochs. A diet that included cooked meat would have provided that ready energy without the need for sharp canines and big grinders. But the research evidence is pretty clear that cooking didn’t become common until about 500, 000 years ago, Lieberman says. So, how did H. erectus get the needed calories? To test a   hypothesis that simple food processing might be the answer, Zink and Lieberman invited some Harvard colleagues to what Zink calls ”a lab café,” and served them small portions of carrots, beets, jewel yams and goat meat. The food was served variously as roasted or raw sliced, pounded or left in hunks. ”If I were to give you raw goat,” Lieberman says, ”you’d chew, and nothing would happen.” Like a lot of wild game, goat meat tends to be stringy, he says. Chewing a big piece makes it more elastic, but it doesn’t readily break into pieces. ”But if you cut goat into smaller pieces,” he says, ”your ability to chew it would improved dramatically.” All the volunteers (14 for the vegetables and just 10 for the goat meat) wore a number of small sensors pasted to their faces, to detect and count contractions of various muscle fibers as they chewed the bite of food to the point of swallowing. The scientists then translated those contractions into a measure of muscular effort, and also checked to see how well the food was broken up. Their results, published in the journal Nature, suggest that when eating a diet made up of   meat, if early humans pounded the vegetables before eating them, and sliced the meat, they would need to chew 17 percent less often and 26 percent less forcefully than if they started with larger slabs of the food. Every little flex of the jaw and grinding of the teeth adds up: Over the course of a year, Lieberman says, simply having a sharp stone to slice meat would reduce the number of ”chews” needed by 2. 5 million. ”I think it’s amazing,” he says, ”to think that the simple stone tool could have a massive effect on how effectively we chew a piece of meat.” It’s possible, he and Zink think, that the benefits of   and food processing favored the transition to smaller teeth and jaws. But it seems more likely, they write in their study, that tool use and   simply reduced the evolutionary pressure to have big, powerful jaws and sharp teeth, ”thus permitting selection to decrease facial and dental size for other functions, such as speech production, locomotion, thermoregulation, or, perhaps even changes in the size and shape of the brain.” Several years ago, as part of our Meat Week coverage, we put together a    cookbook  —   based on archaeological digs and actual historical texts  —   tracing humanity’s changing relationship with meat. Check it out below or download the PDF."
"Tonight the two Democratic candidates  —   Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders  —   meet in Miami for a debate. Before Tuesday night, the debate was looking like an unimportant afterthought to a race that could have been all wrapped up. But not anymore, after Sanders’ stunningly unexpected win in Michigan last night. Here are three things to watch: Hillary Clinton’s campaign says all that matters is delegates and by that measure she succeeded Tuesday night  —   increasing her delegate lead over Bernie Sanders. But her loss to Sanders exposed troubling weaknesses for Clinton which she needs to address tonight. How will she try to woo independents (which she lost) and white working class voters (which she almost lost)? Just when pundits were getting ready to call him irrelevant, Sanders is now set up nicely for Ohio  —   another big Rust Belt state that votes next Tuesday. Tonight in Miami, will he raise the electability question: If Clinton lost Michigan to a Democratic populist in March, why wouldn’t she lose Michigan to a Republican populist (Donald Trump) in November? Republicans keep on posting high turnout levels. Democratic turnout is below 2008 levels. In addition, the news media are inclined to cover a rambling   infomercial by Trump  —   billed as a presidential style news conference  —   instead of speeches by the other candidates. If Trump is the nominee and continues to drive ratings, the Democrats might be gasping for airtime this fall."
"When Melissa   refused to host her eponymous MSNBC talk show in late February, she said she was stepping back because over the past few weeks she had been ”silenced.” Shortly afterward, she and her network confirmed they had parted ways. From the start,   and her employers had very different explanations for why things went south.   said her show was being undermined MSNBC says it, like other shows, was temporarily affected by the election season. The talk show host described her perspective in a letter to colleagues that was later posted on Medium. As the   reported at the time: ”In the letter, Harris explains why she objects to hosting . .. after weeks of having her show preempted ”without comment or discussion or notice,” she says: ” ’After four years of building an audience, developing a brand, and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced. Now, MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive. . .. Perry also described the ’insulting absurdity’ of her exclusion from MSNBC’s election coverage, alleging that she was traveling for the election season just like other MSNBC journalists  —   even staying in the same hotels  —   but wasn’t included on air.” On All Things Considered today, NPR’s David Folkenflik provides some context for the dispute: ”Under new NBC News President Andy Lack, the cable network shifted toward a newsier sensibility  —   as though, during the daytime, it was NBC News on cable. Several liberal opinion shows went by the wayside, though   stayed the same. ”MSNBC rebranded itself the place for politics and has won stronger daytime ratings as a result. Melissa   says she didn’t want to be another political anchor reading the latest polls.” David spoke both to the host and to MSNBC President Phil Griffin. Where   saw a change in direction, away from questions of racial and social justice and toward ”  coverage,” Griffin describes a temporary impact of rolling election coverage. Many shows on MSNBC were affected by the election coverage, Griffin said, and  ’s show was safe. ”We had a   relationship with Melissa where we created this really terrific program that we loved and that brought different voices and was really part of the MSNBC sensibility,” he told David.   had objections beyond   scheduling shifts, David reports. ”It appears to be an air that is now more homogenous, less concerned with questions of racial and social justice, and less interested in highlighting a variety of concerns that shows like mine and others had been quite focused on over the last couple of years,” she said, She also said she believed MSNBC officials had failed to publicly support her during periods of public criticism. You can hear the full story on All Things Considered."
"Beatles fans around the world are paying tribute to the group’s longtime producer, Sir George Martin, who died Tuesday at age 90. Paul McCartney said in a statement, ”The world has lost a truly great man who left an indelible mark on my soul and the history of British music.” George Martin also left a lasting mark on the art of record production. Whether horns or harpsichord, so many of the embellishments you hear on the Beatles’ songs came from Martin. He wasn’t just a good producer, says   producer Nigel Godrich. ”He invented the job,” Godrich says. ”He invented that thought process of possibility.” Godrich, who produced McCartney’s 2005 album Chaos and Creation In The Backyard, says one of Martin’s great talents was arranging. ”As an arranger you write the notes,” Godrich says. ”You listen to the music that exists and you score your parts using the orchestra. So he was very much a musician, countless times on Beatles records.” His influence, says Godrich, is ”everywhere. It’s all over them.” Martin was known for experimenting in the studio. In 1998 he told NPR about the first time the Beatles played him a version of ”Please Please Me.” He hated it. ”A real dirge,” Martin said. ”It was very very slow, very boring. I said, ’Look, if you double the speed of that, you might have something, but otherwise, forget it. ’” The Beatles took his advice, and ”Please Please Me” became a hit. George Martin’s total embrace of music began well before he met the Beatles in the early 1960s. After serving in World War II, he studied composition and orchestration, piano and oboe at London’s Guildhall School of Music. He recorded jazz artists, Scottish dance bands and comedy albums. He brought all of that knowledge and experience to the Beatles. It was Martin’s idea, for example, to add strings to ”Yesterday” and ”Eleanor Rigby.” In his autobiography, Martin said that when John Lennon played him a demo of ”Strawberry Fields Forever,” it was a ”lovely,” ”gentle” song. He told Lennon he thought it should stay that way. But Lennon wanted to turn it into a heavy rock number, with drums, bass and electric guitars. Martin lost that battle, at first. The band recorded the song Lennon’s way. A week later, Lennon admitted he’d been wrong. Martin said he went on to score ”Strawberry Fields Forever” with cellos and trumpet. After much back and forth between him and Lennon  —   editing different recordings of the song  —   eventually, Martin told NPR, ”Strawberry Fields” became one of his favorite songs. ”I was completely enchanted with that song,” Martin said. ”I thought the lyrical imagery, and the musical construction, too, were something that I hadn’t heard before, and I thought John was going into a wonderfully fertile field.” The best producers find the balance between texture and simplicity. They know when to make a song more robust and when to keep it uncomplicated. Martin had so many musical ideas and tools at his disposal. He could add layers, experiment with speed, play tape backward, add instruments. But he also knew when to stop. ”If you keep adding colors,” he told NPR, ”you start getting muddy, and they run, and it gets indistinct. If you can get your effect with a certain degree of cleanliness, then I think it’s much better than overloading things.” Small wonder that so many producers would agree with Nigel Godrich, who calls Martin his ”spiritual godfather.”"
"Sir George Martin, the music producer who signed the Beatles to a recording contract in 1962 and was their intimate collaborator as they together transformed popular music, died Tuesday at the age of 90. Martin’s death was confirmed by Adam Sharp, his manager in the U. K. In a statement, Sharp said: Sir George Martin passed away peacefully at home yesterday evening, Tuesday March 8th. The family would like to thank everyone for their thoughts, prayers and messages of support. Martin was often referred to as the ”Fifth Beatle.” He scoffed, but the band wouldn’t have been the Beatles we know without him. Martin’s 1979 memoir (  with Jeremy Hornsby) was titled All You Need Is Ears  —   but his ears, and his instincts as a music producer, were extraordinary. A classically trained composer, George Martin began to work for the British record label EMI’s imprint Parlophone Records in 1950, overseeing classical recordings as well as comedy records by the likes of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Bernard Cribbins. By 1962, when Cribbins’ song ”Right Said Fred” became a hit in the U. K. George Martin was running Parlophone Records and looking to sign up a rock ’n’ roll band. The Beatles auditioned for him in June of 1962. In a 2011 BBC interview, Martin said: ”They had this wonderful charisma. They made you feel good to be with them. And I thought their music was rubbish.” Martin signed the Beatles anyway, and came to love their songs. For the rest of the 1960s, he was their closest collaborator, producing almost all of the band’s music, playing piano with them, writing their orchestral arrangements and figuring out how to turn John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s wilder ideas into records. In 2011, Martin described how he’d produced one of Lennon’s signature songs: ”There was one time on ’Rain’ when I decided to play around with tapes, and I took John’s voice off as a separate item and put it on a   tape and turned it back to front and slid it around a bit and then put it in on the end of the song. And I played it to John when he came back and he said, ’That’s gear! What is it?’ And I said, ’It’s you!’ And I explained to him what I’d done. And from that moment he wanted everything backward.” When he wasn’t in the studio with the Beatles, George Martin produced records by British pop acts like Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Shirley Bassey. In 1977, while visiting the West Indies, Martin fell in love with the island of Montserrat. He built a recording complex for his company AIR Studios there with the money he’d made producing   hits like the band America’s ”Sister Golden Hair.” AIR Studios Montserrat was destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and Martin gradually retired from recording as hearing loss robbed him of his golden ears. His final hit song was the   single of all time: a year after being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, he produced Elton John’s ”Candle in the Wind 1997.” ”As a whole, I’ve had a wonderful life,” Martin told the BBC in 1995. ”I’ve met the most wonderful people, worked with the greatest of artists. I’m very fortunate. I’ve got no gripes at all.”"
"No matter where you are in Tucson, Ariz. you’re no more than 20 miles from Saguaro National Park. The park and its tall, pronged, namesake cacti literally surround Tucson. There’s the rounded top of the park’s   Wasson Peak to the west, the park’s    Rincon Mountain Range to the east and about a million people living between. But if you go around Tucson  —   to its historic barrio neighborhoods, swap meets or hiking trails  —   and ask people about their neighboring national park, you might be surprised. ”Saguaro High School?”  ”I have no idea.”  ”What’s that?” Darla Sidles, Saguaro National Park’s superintendent, is not surprised by those responses. She knows better than most the disconnect that exists between a lot of locals here and the park next door. ”The type of people that are coming to the park versus the people just five minutes away in Tucson is really an issue for us here,” she says. The reason: The type of people who visit the park don’t reflect the type of people living in the community. Tucson is about 44 percent Hispanic or Latino. Of the park’s roughly 650, 000 annual visitors, less than 2 percent   as Hispanic. ”If we’re not being relevant to almost half of the population, then 30, 40, 50 years from now, the park isn’t going to matter to them,” Sidles says. A Call To Action, The disconnect between Tucson’s minority populations and Saguaro National Park is striking given their proximity, but it’s hardly unique. The National Park Service overall has a diversity problem. There were a record 307. 2 million visits to U. S. national parks in 2015, and it’s fair to say that the majority of those visitors were white. The National Park Service doesn’t track the demographics of its visitors, but the most recent survey commissioned by the Park Service to see how different population groups related to the parks found that 9 percent of American visitors were Hispanic.   accounted for 7 percent.   were 3 percent. Collectively, minorities made up just over 20 percent of the visitors to national parks, despite the fact that they made up nearly 40 percent of the U. S. population. ”We know that visitation does not reflect the diversity of the nation,” says Jon Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service. ”And that’s a concern.” It’s a concern on multiple levels. For one, national parks depend on public money, political support and community engagement for funding. The Census Bureau is projecting that nonwhites will make up the majority of the U. S. population within the next 25 years. Urbanization is growing. And millennials are now the biggest generation in history. Add that all up and it’s not hard to predict that multicultural, mostly urban millennials ”will assume all seats of power and responsibilities for the nation,” Jarvis says. ”So connecting to that generation is essential to the Park Service’s ability to thrive in our second century.” The other reason it’s important to connect to all of America’s shifting demographics, Jarvis says, is it’s the Park Service’s job. ”The Park Service has a responsibility that Congress and the president have granted us over our history,” he says. To that end, Jarvis has made increasing diversity at the national parks a top priority as the Park Service approaches its centennial. His Call to Action plan  —   a vision for the organization’s future  —   states: ”In our second century, we will fully represent our nation’s ethnically and culturally diverse communities.” ’This Is Not Your Space’ Figuring out why there’s a disconnect between Tucson’s minority groups and Saguaro National Park is about to be Cam Juarez’s job. Juarez, from Tucson, is a leader in the Hispanic community serving on the city’s school board. In a couple of weeks, he’s going to start working for Saguaro National Park as its outreach coordinator. Juarez is getting a jump start on that by visiting a couple of schools in Tucson to ask parents, teachers, administrators and students if they know about Saguaro and, if not, why. He’s also going to try to get them interested in the park and what it has to offer. ”It’s like we’re out there selling snake oil,” he says on the way to a charter school in south Tucson, which is predominantly Hispanic. ”I’d wager to say that there’s a whole lot of folks here that don’t use the park, close as they are to it.” In a way, Juarez is the perfect person for this job because he can relate. To date, he says, he’s visited three national parks, including Saguaro. Growing up, his family never went to national parks. They never even talked about it. ”It just wasn’t something we did,” he says. His family was poor. ”We didn’t have camping gear or fishing gear,” he says. ”We had hoes and shovels work implements and school books.” Even as he got older, Juarez says, he thought of national parks as a place for ”folks that were white or folks that had resources and sometimes you likened them to each other.” Either way, he didn’t think the parks were for people like him. He’s not alone in that sentiment. That survey of park visitors released in 2011 found that nonwhites were three times more likely to say that parks provide poor service and are not safe places to visit. And Juarez heard some of that at the schools he went to. Oscar Medina, a teacher at Changemaker High School, talked about how he visited a park with his family ”and none of the information signs were in Spanish.” A mom at Carrillo Intermediate talked about how she wanted to go to Saguaro with her family, but there weren’t facilities for a large group. Another pointed out there’s no public transportation. Some of the reasons were universal: the cost is prohibitive not enough time because of work the lack of shade in a desert park. Others were more subtle. Luis Perales, the chief academic officer at Changemaker High School, says that the reasons minorities, and particularly Latinos, aren’t going to national parks is that ”spaces either are inviting or are rejecting in many ways. And I think a lot of what’s been created [with national parks] is this idea that this is not your space.” It’s not that Latinos don’t want to go outside. Go to any park or hiking trail in Tucson and you’ll see that’s not the case. It’s that they might want to have a different experience in the outdoors. A lot of what the national parks promote is the solitude and quiet of a John Muir photo. ”Go out on your own, enjoy nature, don’t harm it,” Perales says. That messaging of ”rugged individualism” doesn’t necessarily work with Latinos, Perales says. ”It’s like no, I’m going to bring my whole family, we’re going to be loud, we’re going to explore,” he says. ”That’s not what’s promoted at this point. It has to be a compromise.” ’Reflect The Face Of The People We Want To Attract’ There’s another reason that people gave for not feeling connected or welcome at the national parks, and it’s one that many people danced around. Bella Furr, an intern and temporary worker at Saguaro National Park, had no such qualms: ”The other thing is the Park Service is full of white men.” That’s not entirely accurate, but it’s not far off the mark. According to the most recent survey, 80 percent of the Park Service’s roughly 22, 000 employees are white. Anecdotally, people involved with the Park Service say, the demographics breakdown of the Park Service’s estimated 220, 000 volunteers is similar. At Saguaro National Park, Sidles estimates about 75 percent of the workforce is white. ”We don’t have as diverse a staff as we should have,” she says. ”We have to reflect the face of the people we want to attract.” That idea of reflecting the diversity of the public in its workforce is one the National Park Service has been pushing for a long time. Programs have been put in place nationally and initiatives have been launched, but little has changed. That has bred some cynicism about the service’s efforts in some quarters. One former longtime National Park Service employee interviewed for this story    said that the National Park Service could also be celebrating the centennial of its efforts to be more diverse. There are myriad reasons park managers and officials give for the slow rate of change. There’s the labyrinthian federal job application system as well as preferential hiring mandates that can keep the resumes of diverse, local candidates off hiring managers’ desks. More directly, there’s low job turnover and few new opportunities for diverse candidates. With baby boomers nearing retirement, though, that’s expected to change and open opportunities for more diversity. Saguaro National Park wants to be ready for that opportunity, and being ready means having young, diverse, experienced candidates for jobs as they come open. That’s why they’ve partnered with the nonprofit group Friends of Saguaro National Park to hire a group of young locals like Yesenia Gamez on temporary contracts. Gamez is what’s called a Next Generation Ranger. She works at Saguaro National Park’s visitor centers and in its interior, but she also works in Tucson, visiting local schools and working at information stands at local events. On a recent weekend, she showed a big, bleached grizzly bear skull to a group of young kids at a community health event at a park in downtown Tucson. They guessed what animal it was. Gamez says she loves doing events like this because she gets to interact with people who otherwise don’t get to experience the park. ”People that come to the park are usually retirees who can drive out there,” she says. ”This is a low socioeconomic thing. It’s in the heart of Tucson. It’s kind of like we’re bringing the park to them.” By doing that, she says, the Next Gen Rangers can provide a friendly, familiar face and appeal to people where they’re comfortable. They can also tell younger versions of themselves about the opportunities that exist in the National Park Service  —   if those opportunities exist."
"Iran’s military tested two ballistic missiles Wednesday, and an Iranian officer says the missiles are designed to reach Israel, according to an Iranian news agency. Iran has conducted a number of other ballistic missile tests this week. The tests, which come after Iran won sanctions relief in January by curbing its nuclear program, seem to be ”aimed at demonstrating that Iran will push forward with its ballistic program,” The Associated Press reports. NPR’s Peter Kenyon tells our Newscast unit that ”the tests may violate a U. N. Security Council resolution barring Iran from   missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons.” Here’s more from Peter: ”Iran says its missiles aren’t designed for nuclear weapons. The U. S. says Iran’s missile program is not part of last year’s nuclear agreement, but Iran has warned that any new sanctions could mean an end to the deal.” Iran’s Press TV has video of the ballistic missile launch on its website. You can watch it here. As Reuters reports, ”the missile tests underline a rift in Iran between   factions opposed to normalizing relations with the West, and President Hassan Rouhani’s relatively moderate government, which is trying to attract foreign investors to Iran.” Additionally, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ”maintains dozens of short and   ballistic missiles, the largest stock in the Middle East.” Iran denies that this test was ”provocative,” according to the wire service. White House press secretary Josh Earnest told journalists that the reported missile launches underscore the importance of the nuclear deal with Iran. ”Iran is working aggressively to try to enhance their ballistic missile capability, and preventing them from being able to nuclearize their missiles is  —   is obviously important to our national security here in the United States,” he says. Earnest adds that it ”would not be a surprise if there are additional launches over the next several days.” NPR’s Michele Kelemen says the State Department and the White House are taking a ”cautious line” on the missile test. The State Department says ”Secretary of State John Kerry raised this in a phone call with his Iranian counterpart,” Michele reports. Hillary Clinton took a harder line than the current administration. She said in a statement that Iran’s ”blatant violation” of the Security Council resolution should have ”consequences.” She adds: ”Iran should face sanctions for these activities, and the international community must demonstrate that Iran’s threats toward Israel will not be tolerated.”"
"It took Abdul Arian months to realize that his decision to migrate from his home country, Afghanistan, to Germany was a huge mistake. He set off nearly a year ago, hoping to be granted asylum so he could attend a university and study psychology. His journey, organized by smugglers, was long and perilous. Arian, 24, says he nearly drowned off the shores of Greece, when the inflatable dinghy he was traveling in capsized. He says he and his fellow travelers got lost somewhere in Hungary and walked through the rain for 24 hours before they found the path again. Yet the reason that Arian finally saw his mistake was not because something nasty or dangerous happened to him. It was because nothing really happened at all. When Arian arrived in Germany, he was placed in a migrants’ reception center. ”We had nothing to do in the camp,” he says. ”We just stayed there.” He played a lot of soccer. He ate a lot of jelly sandwiches. He moped about. Officials wrote down his name. In the end, he says, he was in Germany for 10 months, yet ”no one asked me why I went there and why I was there.” No one seemed to want to listen to him explain why he should be allowed to stay. It also soon became clear to Arian that local Germans did not appreciate his presence. While people from the church and social workers helped the migrants and were ”very nice,” residents of the nearby village seemed hostile. ”When we were walking along the sidewalk, people would avoid us,” says Arian. Germany Says Many Must Leave, Last year, 150, 000 Afghans arrived in Germany. The German authorities estimate less that half qualify for asylum. German officials say that at present, a tiny number of Afghans  —   1, 600, according to estimates given to them by Afghan officials in Germany  —   are willing to go back home voluntarily. But many will have to leave, says Germany’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Markus Potzel. ”It means that more than half of them have to be sent back because they can’t stay,” says Potzel. ”There are some obstacles for them to be sent back immediately, but we have a huge number of Afghans who are not eligible to stay in Germany and should be sent back.” During Arian’s time in Germany, he began to notice that Syrian migrants were being treated very differently. They were provided with language lessons and eventually passports, he says. ”When we complained to the social workers, they responded frankly. They said, ’We’ve invited Syrians here, not Afghans,’ ” he says. This prompted some of Arian’s fellow Afghans to stage demonstrations. ”They were shouting, ’We don’t want to go back to Afghanistan! There is a war there!’ ” he says. ”But no one listened to them.” The weeks rolled by. Arian was moved to another center. But still nothing happened. He grew steadily more convinced that he had no chance of being allowed to stay in Germany. Then depression set in. ”I was in very bad condition. I couldn’t sleep. I decided to go back to Afghanistan, before I went crazy,” he says. Arian returned home last month. He was one of 125 Afghans sent back to Afghanistan on a charter flight organized by the German and Afghan governments. The passengers all signed a form saying they were returning voluntarily. Arian’s family spent most of their savings on his trip to Germany. To pay the smuggler’s bill of $7, 500, they sold land and a car. Arian is now worrying about what his family feels about that. ”So far, I haven’t seen any reaction from them because I’ve just arrived back. But I don’t know what’s in their hearts,” he says. Arian is faced with finding work amid rampant unemployment in a society where good jobs are very hard to find without political or personal connections  —   or cash for a hefty bribe. Humiliation For Some, That much is clear from the experience of Shirdil Bayat, 40. He was deported from Denmark two years ago after a court rejected his request for asylum  —   which he’d based on a claim that his life was threatened by the Taliban in his home city, Kandahar. Lacking personal connections, Bayat took 16 months to find permanent work as an office cleaner in the capital, Kabul. He says returning home to Kandahar is still too risky. On a recent day when he was interviewed by NPR, he’d been laid off because of budget cuts. He says he has no idea what he’ll do next. Bayat says returning to Afghanistan after having failed in Europe can be very humiliating. Some families are sympathetic, but far from all. ”People jeer at you. They ask, ’Why did    get citizenship in Europe while you did not? Maybe you’re useless,’ ” he says. The Germans are running a PR campaign in Afghanistan, trying to deter Afghans from traveling to their land. They’ve posted announcements on billboards, buses and the Internet, urging Afghans to think twice before setting off. Germany views many of the Afghans who’ve arrived on its soil as economic migrants seeking jobs or education. German officials maintain that under international law, Germany is not required to grant asylum to those migrants  —   unlike Syrians, who are fleeing a war zone. The United Nations estimates that last year, some 11, 000 civilians were killed or injured by conflict in Afghanistan. Afghans say that bolsters proof that there is war in Afghanistan, too  —   and that Afghans should therefore be granted protection by European nations. ”Afghans are not leaving Afghanistan because of a lack of jobs, ” says Ashraf Haidari,   of policy and strategy at Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry. ”They are fleeing generalized violence. Terrorism that is killing men, women and children,” he says. ”That  —   and political uncertainty as a result of withdrawal of international forces and diminishing international development aid.” Germany Draws A Distinction  However, Potzel, Germany’s ambassador, says the situation in Afghanistan differs hugely from Syria’s. ”Here in Afghanistan, you don’t have a government who would bomb their own population,” he says. ”Here, the government tries to protect their own people. There are unsafe regions and there are less unsafe regions in Afghanistan, and there are regions  —   especially in the big cities  —   where a sort of normal life is going on.” Germany is one of the main international donors to Afghanistan. Over the past 14 years, it has poured a great deal of money into the country. It seems unlikely that it would wish to risk making Afghanistan still more unstable by forcibly returning large numbers of Afghans over a short time span. Yet there is considerable concern in Afghanistan about what might happen if significant numbers of angry and disillusioned young Afghans are eventually sent back from Europe. Some European countries provide financial support packages to help people settle in, but the sums are generally small and over a limited time period. Professor Sayed Masoud, an economist based in Kabul, foresees ”disaster.” ”Either they will join the Taliban or become drug addicts,” he says, ”because the government can’t provide jobs.” Meanwhile, Afghans keep heading out on the trail to Europe. On a recent early morning in Kabul, hundreds of men were lined up outside the government office that issues passports. Among them was Wahidullah Mohammadi, 19, who wants to migrate to Europe to go to school. He is aware of the risk of being deported back home  —   and of losing the thousands of dollars he’ll pay to smugglers. Still, he still thinks the odds are worth it. ”The situation is not good here and there is no guaranteed future,” he says. ”This is why I have to accept this risk.”"
"Serekalem Alemu is crocheting a basket. Wearing a gray fleece jacket and a long gray skirt speckled with blue flowers, Alemu sits on a sofa on the second floor of a former warehouse in the industrial section of Tel Aviv. A damp Mediterranean winter breeze blows in through the open window. Traffic whizzes by on the boulevard below. With her thick, black hair held back in a ponytail, the    winds long, narrow strips of   fabric into a ball, which will eventually become a basket. When she’s finished  —   it takes her about three hours to make a basket about 10 inches in diameter  —   her handiwork will go on sale for $25 in a boutique. She’ll keep half of that and the rest goes to keep the program going. But for Alemu, the basket isn’t just about earning some money. It’s therapy. It makes her feel better. And she has a lot of reasons to feel bad. Alemu is one of 43, 000 African   mainly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, who traveled by foot and vehicle many hundreds of miles to reach Israel. They’re part of the largest global wave of asylum seekers since World War II. Many of these migrants suffer along the way. Alemu says she was tortured by her smugglers but will not elaborate. When she reached Israel in 2011, she fell into depression and was hospitalized twice in a psychiatric ward. Other migrant women have reported rape and human trafficking, saying they are passed from one group of smugglers to another and tortured until they pay large sums of money for their freedom. They often ask family members or friends abroad to send the money. Humanitarian aid groups estimate that some 4, 000 to 6, 000 of the Africans who’ve made it to Israel have been victimized. But when they were offered the chance to talk with a therapist in Israel, it didn’t work. ”I soon realized that wasn’t an appropriate approach,” says psychologist Diddy Mymin Kahn, who has worked as a therapist for the Tel Aviv African Refugee Development Center. Women often didn’t show up for their appointments. Those who did would not share their stories, says Kahn. So she teamed up with an art therapist to found the Kuchinate African Women’s Collective, funded by grants and donations from organizations and individuals. Sister Azezet Kidane, a Roman Catholic nun from Eritrea and a registered nurse, soon joined to help develop the program. Kuchinate means ”crochet” in Tigrigna, an Eritrean language, and that’s what the participants do. There are 40 members of the collectives. Twice a week, many of these female asylum seekers come to the refurbished Tel Aviv warehouse to crochet baskets, using long strips of colorful polyester fabric. Back home, they used to weave baskets from the flexible fronds of the doum species of palm tree, but the tree is rare in Israel. There’s something about the experience of crocheting that encourages them to open up. As they make the baskets, they talk about dealing with the stress and trauma of their migration as well as the uncertainty of life in Israel. Most of them currently live without any official status or rights until a government policy is established for the asylum seekers. ”Many of them are traumatized when they come here, but this group gives them strength to bring it out, to talk about it,” says Kidane. ”It’s a process of healing.” She and Kahn sit and talk to the women while they crochet, sometimes steering conversation to topics like how to handle stress or traumatic memories. When one participant shares her difficulties or feelings, others speak up, either telling the group or going into a side room to speak privately with Kidane and Kahn. ”Our people, they don’t do counseling    you need a group, a circle,” Kidane said. ”Many of the asylum seekers were raped, and they often keep it secret because they think it’s only them and they are ashamed. But here they meet other people with the same experiences and feel, oh, I am not alone.” ”It’s a major crisis,” said Kim Yuval, coordinator of psychotherapy at Physicians for Human Rights, who has also studied the prevalence of depression and   stress disorder among asylum seekers as part of his doctoral research at the University of Haifa. ”Many people are resilient, but as a community the situation is very bad, and it’s important that we deal with these problems.” In one study involving 116 Sudanese asylum seekers in Tel Aviv, Yuval found that 60 percent suffered from   stress disorder, and roughly a quarter suffer from depression. These problems are not isolated to those from Sudan or those in Israel, Yuval said, but are seen among asylum seekers globally. ”When I am at home I cry all day,” said    Lula Gebrekidan, who left Eritrea five years ago hoping to eventually pave the way for her three daughters and husband, who is currently jailed for political opposition to the regime there. ”When I am here, I don’t cry. I talk to others.” Her eyes well with tears as she describes scenes she witnessed in the two weeks she spent in the Sinai, where she paid a smuggler $3, 000 to drive her to the Israeli border. ”I saw rape, a woman who had sex with six men all right after each other. I also saw a    boy buried in the dirt up to his neck, with men throwing rocks at his head until his family would pay more money to their smugglers,” Gebrekidan said. ”Talking about it brings some relief.” She said she was able to talk about her experiences only after hearing similar stories from others. ”At home it is forbidden to discuss things like this,” Gebrekidan said. Kahn and Kidane say that many of the women here need help beyond this program, but this is a start to pulling them out of depression and assessing their needs. ”They see, ah, I am still alive, I am still capable,” Kidane said. ”For them it is a door opening.” The room is lined with    shelves, full of hundreds of baskets made by these women. In the corner of the studio, Gebrekidan roasts   coffee beans over hot coals in a metal box. The studio’s kitchenette is equipped with electric burners, but she prefers to make coffee in this traditional way, the aromatic steam and smoke from the smoldering coals floating out the nearby open window. She is preparing the coffee for a group of Israeli mothers from a suburban Tel Aviv school who will soon arrive for a crochet workshop taught by the women of the collective. For a couple of hours the asylum seekers teach the Israelis how to crochet, then serve them Gebrekidan’s coffee along with injera, a flat sourdough bread common in Eritrea and Ethiopia, and dips made of lentils and chickpeas. The mothers leave, most of them with baskets they purchased. The African women again gather in a circle of chairs and continue making more baskets and talking. For Alemu, the two days a week when she comes here are critical. ”I still have a problem in my head,” she said. ”But my head is better here.”"
"Medicare is going to test new ways to reimburse doctors for medications, in hopes they’ll choose less expensive drugs. The plan would alter Medicare Part B, which pays for medicines administered in doctors offices or outpatient hospital clinics  —   to eliminate incentives for doctors to use the most expensive drugs. The changes would have an outsize effect on cancer doctors and clinics. Medicare Part B shelled out about $7. 8 billion on cancer drugs in 2014, or 42 percent of its total spending on drugs that year. The program now reimburses the doctors or clinics for the cost of the medication plus a 6 percent fee. That means doctors and hospitals earn more money when they use pricier drugs. As it is now, Dr. Patrick Conway, chief medical officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, called the reimbursement structure ”perverse.” ”We’ve heard from oncologists who feel pressure from their health system to pick higher cost drugs even when they are not appropriate for a patient,” he said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. The agency plans to test a reimbursement formula that would pay the cost of the drug, plus a 2. 5 percent surcharge and a flat fee of $16. 80. Under the current system, a doctor earns just 60 cents for administering a $10 medication. An equivalent drug that cots $1, 000, however, would bring in $60. Under the proposed formula, the cheaper drug in this example would generate a payment of $16. 93 and the second one $41. 80, according to CMS.  CMS officials say that change would mostly eliminate the incentive to choose a high priced drug over one that may be more appropriate. Medicare Part B spent about $20 billion on outpatient medicines last year. ”We’re trying to align the incentives to what’s best for patients and doctors,” Conway said. The Medicare Part B plan would also reduce or eliminate the share of the drugs’ costs that patients have to pay. Dr. Peter Bach, director of The Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, says research shows doctors prescribe higher priced drugs when they bring in more profit. ”It is refreshing to see Medicare move towards an experiment where they pay for drugs using a flat fee reimbursement, where what doctors and hospitals make is related to giving the drug, not how much it costs,” Bach said in a statement to Shots. But other cancer doctors aren’t so thrilled. The American Society of Clinical Oncology opposes the CMS proposal. The proposal could have a major effect on oncologists because many cancer patients receive their chemotherapy treatments in doctors offices or clinics. ”It is inappropriate for CMS to manipulate choice of treatment for cancer patients using   reimbursement techniques,” said ASCO CEO Allen Lichter in a statement posted on the physician group’s website. ASCO, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association and about 100 other physician and advocacy groups sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell last week opposing the payment changes. ”We believe that this type of initiative, implemented without sufficient stakeholder input, will adversely affect the care and treatment of Medicare patients with complex conditions,” the letter said. The agency plans to field test the new reimbursement formula, as well as a handful of others ideas, in different regions of the country starting later this year. CMS will then compare the results to determine which changes are effective at reducing drug spending. CMS is also planning to test a handful of     pricing ideas. The first would pay for drugs according to how well they work. For example, if a cancer medication is very effective in eliminating a specific tumor, but is also used on a second, different condition with less success, Medicare will pay less when it is used for the second condition than the first. Sloan Kettering’s Bach, who served as an adviser to CMS on cancer policy in 2005 and 2006, argued for varying payments for drugs this way in a 2014 paper published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. The approach is called   pricing. The agency also plans to work with drugmakers to link prices to patient outcomes, perhaps paying less for medications when patients end up being admitted to a hospital. Private insurers and pharmacy benefit managers have been testing similar ideas. Cigna last month said it had agreed with drugmaker Novartis on a    deal for the heart failure drug Entresto. Under the agreement, Cigna will pay less if patients taking the medication are hospitalized for heart failure. And Express Scripts, the biggest manager of pharmacy benefits, says it’s working with cancer drug manufacturers to pay   prices that tie cost to how well the drugs perform. The CMS proposal is open for public comment until May 9. Conway said the field tests will begin after the comment period is complete."
"The world is focused on finding a link between pregnant women infected with the Zika virus and severe birth defects. But two studies and an editorial in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine are reminders that malaria, a disease that killed about half a million people in 2015, also has profound consequences for pregnant women and their infants. The new studies provide   guidance on how to prevent and treat malaria during pregnancy. ”Malaria during pregnancy is a major public health concern,” says Dr. Joel Tarning, Head of Clinical Pharmacology at Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok, Thailand, and author of the NEJM editorial ”Treatment of Malaria in Pregnancy.” Recommended treatment for malaria is artemisinin combination therapy, or ACT, a mix of drugs shown to effectively treat the disease. But until now, the treatment has not been tested on women expecting babies. ”Pregnant women are often excluded from clinical trials, which hampers the implementation of these drug treatments,” says Tarning. If malaria is left untreated during pregnancy, infected red blood cells gather in the placenta and block the crucial exchange of nutrients from mother to fetus. The result can be miscarriage, stillbirth and low birth weight, says Tarning. In   Africa, malaria during pregnancy is thought to be responsible for 20 percent of low birth weight babies each year, leading to 100, 000 infant deaths, according to a recent NEJM study. In Africa many people are immune from malaria and show no symptoms when infected, but pregnancy reduces a woman’s immunity. Even when an infected woman has no symptoms, the disease can still harm the fetus, again resulting in low birth weight, miscarriage or stillbirth. Despite a lack of clinical trial evidence on how to safely and effectively prevent and treat malaria during pregnancy, the consequences of no treatment are severe. ”Not treating pregnant women with malaria is not an option, since this is a   disease,” says Tarning. So the current WHO recommendations are that women living in areas where malaria is prevalent sleep under   nets that women be given two doses of malaria prevention drugs during their pregnancy and that women with malaria be treated during the second and third trimester. Those WHO guidelines on treating malaria in pregnant women haven’t changed, but now, with good evidence that they are safe and effective, health ministries can be more confident in carrying them out. ”I hope that these studies provide the needed evidence for countries to use ACTs in the treatment of pregnant women with malaria,” says Tarning. And they provide support for being treated earlier in pregnancy. Tarning pointed out a new study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases that treatment with ACTs is safe and effective during the first trimester. ”It’s time to reconsider     treatment recommendations,” he says. Just as important, he says, the studies show that in countries where many pregnant women are infected with malaria but show no symptoms because of   immunity, treatment with ACTs will benefit them and their unborn babies. ”Hopefully, this will start the debate on using ACTs as preventive treatment in this group,” he says. Now there is clear guidance on how malaria drugs affect pregnant women. In another study, 3, 428 pregnant women with malaria from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi and Zambia were treated with four different   drug combinations. Cure rates ranged from 95 percent to 99. 2 percent, with few side effects. And the study on preventive treatment in 300 pregnant women with no malaria symptoms found that the drug combination of   one of the combination drugs, prevented the disease and raised no safety concerns. These studies on malaria’s effect on pregnant women, a group previously not studied adequately in clinical trials, should go a long way in protecting mothers and babies from the harmful consequences of the disease."
"An investigation into a clinical test in France that left one person dead and put five in the hospital has found evidence of brain damage in people who took high doses of the experimental pain medicine. The   clinical study, conducted by Biotrial in France, was halted in January when the side effects surfaced. It was the first time the drug, made by the Portuguese company Bial and known as ”BIA ” was tested in humans. A report released Monday by a committee of scientists says people who got high cumulative doses of the drug sustained damage to their brains, specifically the hippocampus and pons. Those who got lower doses had no consistent adverse reactions. The reports says the patients’ symptoms and injuries were ”completely unusual, with no relatedness to a known disease or toxicity.” Previous tests in rats, mice, dogs and monkeys involved doses up to 650 times those given to human subjects. While some animals had brain damage or died when given extremely high doses, there were no consistent signs indicating the drug would be unsafe for humans. The molecule is meant to inhibit an enzyme called fatty acid amide hydrolase with a central role in the endocannabinoid system, a set of receptors also involved in processing THC, an ingredient in marijuana. In all, 90 people took the experimental drug, at different doses. The six who were hospitalized had gotten the highest dose, which was 10 to 40 times higher than that needed to completely block the enzyme. ”We don’t know by what mechanism the molecule caused these lesions, and I fear we won’t know it for a long time since they couldn’t have been due to the endocannabinoid system that was targeted by the molecule,” Dr. Bernard Begaud, who leads the scientific committee investigating the incident, told the French publication Sciences et Avenir. Two similar compounds were abandoned by other companies because they weren’t deemed effective. Often, the intensity of a drug’s side effects increase with the dose. But in this case, the investigators note, there was no sign of a linear pattern. People who received a cumulative dose less than 200 milligrams were, for the most part, fine. But all six patients who received a cumulative dose higher than 250 milligrams had ”serious central nervous system symptoms.” At those doses, the report authors hypothesize, the molecule may have suppressed the target enzyme too much, preventing it from breaking down other chemicals. That may have allowed a chemical like anandamide, which is present in chocolate in tiny amounts, to build up to dangerous concentrations in the brain. Another idea is that the molecule acted on unintended enzymes or that it produced toxic byproducts in the brain. The group, set up by the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety, will reconvene later this month to review hypotheses on what went wrong and to make recommendations to the French government to improve clinical trial regulations. The committee has also asked Bial to explain why the company did preliminary studies in four species of animals, as opposed to the usual two, why it decided to continue studies on the potential pain reliever when it only worked in two animal tests, and why it chose to test such high cumulative doses in people. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration is also investigating the case. The agency said in late January that while this drug hasn’t been tested in the U. S. there are studies on other drugs that work the same way."
"Before Black Lives Matter was a hashtag, before it was a slogan chanted by protesters in cities across the country, before it was a national movement, it was a Facebook post by an   activist named Alicia Garza. She wrote it after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of    Trayvon Martin. It read in part: ”I continue to be surprised at how little black lives matter, and I will continue that. Stop giving up on black life.” She ended by saying, ”Black people, I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” NPR’s Kelly McEvers spoke with Jelani Cobb, who recently wrote an article in the New Yorker about Black Lives Matter, how the movement started and where it stands today. He talks about how those three words were later adopted as a rallying cry by protesters from around the country who came to Ferguson, Mo. after    Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer. On tensions about who speaks for the movement, ”I think there’s been a conflict that’s played itself out publicly in terms of the people who founded the idea or came up with the name and the people who really did the pivotal work on the ground in Ferguson. In some ways, it’s an entity that has two births. It’s conceived after one tragedy and really comes to fruition after another. And we’ve talked about the Internet and social media and the ways that those things have really revolutionized and changed the way social activism happens. In some ways that’s a plus, but it can be a really big liability as well because a good bit of the conflict between the various factions of Black Lives Matter has played itself out in public and on social media. .. ”A little more recently, Alicia Garza was going to come to St. Louis to give a speech at Webster University, and a great deal of social media chatter erupted about this and whether or not she had any place coming there, and whether it was more appropriate to think of the people who were in St. Louis and Ferguson as the founders. When I spoke to Alicia Garza about it, she said that she got death threats and threats of violence, and she wound up canceling the talk. That became kind of a crucial moment in the history of this organization where a person who is organizing about   and their lives is really not giving a talk because of threats to her own.” On how earlier ideas of leadership don’t necessarily work for this movement, ”We associate whole blocks of history with W. E. B. Du Bois or Booker T. Washington or Malcolm X or Dr. King. Entire constellations of history are distilled down to two individuals, almost always male. There’s been a certain kind of fatigue, and Black Lives Matter represents that. They find a more horizontal ethic of leadership to be more important, and they find inspiration from Ella Baker, who was one of the most central figures of the civil rights movement in   partly due to her belief in kind of grassroots and local leadership in her aversion to the spotlight. Her story wasn’t as well known. And so they have kind of resurrected her idea that it’s better to have 10, 000 candles than a single spotlight.” On who Black Lives Matter represents, ”Movements tend to pick up where the last one left off. When people look back at the civil rights movement, one of the most glaring shortcomings that emerges is in many ways the marginalization of women within the movement or things like Bayard Rustin, who was the pivotal organizer of the March on Washington, but also faced discrimination as a gay black man. Those are the things that Black Lives Matter look at and say, we want to not replicate those things. We want to not replicate the errors of the past.” On the effects of having a diffuse organization, ”When I talked with Alicia Garza, she was very clear about making a distinction between Black Lives Matter the organization and Black Lives Matter as a movement. But it’s been almost kind of like a franchising effect. The fact that there’s a low barrier to entry has been useful when there are people who have never participated in a political protest before and they’re willing to come out and say, ’OK, I can be part of this Black Lives Matter thing, and I agree with, you know, what’s happening here.’ At the same time, it makes it a little bit more difficult to have a kind of discipline within the ranks. And then you have a third element, which is the tendency of people to refer to any statement by a disgruntled black person as. ..connected to Black Lives Matter.” On where Black Lives Matter could go from here, ”I don’t think it’s easy to predict these things. But one of the things that I think we ought to take note of is the circumstances that allow Black Lives Matter to flourish. One is the existence of a black presidency and these sorts of egregious racial problems continuing in the context of a black presidency, which contributed to a climate of frustration. And we’re in the last year of the Obama presidency, and so that will change. In addition to that, precisely because we’re in an election year, we’ve seen the movement to be able to leverage influence and   helping to shape and push the direction in which these two candidates on the Democratic side, at least, are moving. I don’t think that necessarily will happen after the presidential election. Or at least it’s not as easily achieved.” On the distance between the political process and everyday realities, ”It’s not necessarily that the black president is not doing more, because I don’t think it all lays at President Obama’s feet. I think it’s the frustration of having both of these circumstances coexist, that you can be represented at the most powerful level of electoral politics and you can have incidents like the death of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman. Those two things are fully capable of coexisting.” The full interview with Cobb can be found here."
"A NASA mission to Mars that was originally scheduled to launch this month  —   then was canceled when a flaw was discovered in a pivotal piece of equipment  —   is back on the calendar. If all goes well, it will launch in 2018. The InSight mission  —   or ”Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport” mission  —   has been in the works since 2012. It will send a lander to the Red Planet to measure Mars’ seismic activity and interior temperature, among other things. Data on marsquakes and the planet’s interior heat will help researchers better understand Mars’ ”deep interior,” NASA says. That, in turn, could help expand scientists’ understanding of the formation of all rocky planets, including Earth. The original launch was planned for March 2016. But in December, the mission had to be suspended because a flaw in the lander’s   seismometer couldn’t be fixed in time. The instrument needs to work inside a vacuum ”to provide the exquisite sensitivity needed for measuring ground movements as small as half the radius of a hydrogen atom,” NASA says  —   and the container needed to maintain that vacuum was leaking. At the time, it wasn’t clear if the mission would be postponed or called off altogether. But on Wednesday, NASA announced that it would resume work on the project. No matter how quickly the vacuum issue is resolved, March 5, 2018, is the earliest the mission could launch. That window of opportunity depends on the alignment of the orbits of Earth and Mars. The InSight mission is a part of NASA’s Discovery Program, in which scientists compete for approval of relatively   planetary missions. (The total cost of InSight was to be capped at $675 million, Science Magazine reported last December. At that time, NASA had already spent $525 million, and the space agency is currently assessing the cost added by the   delay.) When InSight was picked, it beat out two other finalists  —   one that would have sent a probe to a comet to hop across its surface and study multiple locations, and another that would have sent a boat to Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, to travel across its hydrocarbon oceans. NASA is currently in the process of selecting the next Discovery Program mission  —   or missions  —   from a set of five finalists, including projects studying Venus and a probe to land on a metallic asteroid. NASA had originally suggested it might select two winners, instead of just one, this year. It’s not yet clear if InSight’s rescheduled launch will affect that decision or any other planned NASA missions."
"He lives vicariously through himself. He has won the lifetime achievement award, twice. In museums, he is allowed to touch the art. He is . .. . .. out of a job. Since 2006, Jonathan Goldsmith has played The Most Interesting Man In The World in a popular series of ads for Dos Equis. His catchphrase  —   ”I don’t always drink beer. But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis”  —   has worked its way into Internet culture. But his reign is ending. The newest ad for Dos Equis shows Goldsmith, as the Most Interesting Man, taking off in a spaceship on a   trip to Mars. Executives from Heineken USA, which owns Dos Equis, told Ad Age that the ad campaign will continue with a new actor. ”They declined to [identify] the new star, or share details about ad plotlines, other than to say they are seeking to contemporize the campaign,” the trade magazine reports. Ad Age also reports that, according to the beer company, the switch is not related to Goldsmith’s recent legal dispute with a former agent. Last year, NPR’s Danny Hajek spoke with Goldsmith about his career before Dos Equis  —   which included a stint as a garbage truck driver, a series of villainous appearances in Westerns and years spent outside of Hollywood altogether. He tried out for the Most Interesting Man role at the suggestion of his   and now wife, Barbara . .. with some posthumous help from his friend Fernando Lamas, an   actor, whose accent he adopted for the role. His Fernando impression delighted the audition room, but Goldsmith almost didn’t get the part. Here’s more from the NPR interview: ”Barbara received a call from Joe Blake, the casting director. He told Barbara that they loved Goldsmith’s performance, but they felt like they had to go younger. ” ’And in her infinite wisdom, she took a long pause and she said, ”Joe, how can the most interesting man in the world be young? ”’ Goldsmith says. ’He said, ”I’ll get back to you.” ’ ”Soon after, the casting director called back. He got the part.” And as for his   character, blasting off into space in an impeccable tuxedo? ”His only regret,” the voiceover says, ”is not knowing what regret feels like.”"
"While most of the country would be happy never to hear the word ”Deflategate” ever again, people named Goodell are still very concerned with the   scandal and whether New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady tampered with game balls. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell  —   whose   suspension of Brady was overturned by a judge  —   is likely keeping a close eye on the Deflategate case as it winds its way through federal appeals court. But there’s another Goodell committed to proving Brady didn’t do it. Ben Goodell, a   from Lynn, Mass. dedicated his science fair project to measuring how weather conditions affected the PSI [pounds per square inch] of footballs in a bid to prove the Patriots did nothing illicit. ”I wanted to prove that Tom Brady is innocent,” the    St. Pius V Elementary School student, who isn’t related to the NFL commissioner, told local TV station NECN. And his project won. Goodell was one of approximately 120 students who participated in the school’s annual science fair, and one of only eight to win the Outstanding Project Award, according to The Daily Item. The newspaper reports Goodell began his experiment with a football inflated to the NFL standard and then exposed it to different weather conditions, including humidity, snow, wind chill, cold and ice. ”Every time, it dropped two PSI [pounds per square inch],” Goodell, a Patriots fan, told the Item. ”The lowest PSI recorded during deflategate was 2 PSI under proper inflation.” Principal Paul D. Maestranzi said the goal of the science fair is to get students to try and answer an everyday question. ”It’s more tied in with current thinking,” he told the newspaper. ”I think some people think science is only in a laboratory. It’s really all around us all the time. That’s what gets kids hooked: relevance.” So, kudos to Ben Goodell for his experiment. Hopefully, Deflategate  —   the stale and bungled controversy that it is  —   will soon cease to be relevant."
"Over the past few decades, New York City has become safer, richer and a lot more crowded than it used to be. All over Manhattan these days, you can see apartment buildings going up  —   and yet finding a decent place to live has become tougher than ever. ”We are in an official housing crisis, period, in New York City,” says Alicia Glen, New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and development. ”Our population is growing much more rapidly than our housing stock and so we have a really imbalanced housing market.” Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed a plan to ease the housing shortage, but it’s encountering opposition from some of the people hit hardest by the shortfall. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, New York is the fourth most expensive state to rent a   unit. In a city where most people rent, the apartment vacancy rate now is just 3 percent. Glen says in recent years, a lot of new people have moved into the city and there are more single people living alone. Changes in rent control laws caused the city to lose 250, 000 affordable apartments over the past few decades, leading to an even tighter market. But the problem of affordable rents is not just in New York. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies found a record number of ” ” households in 2013 nationally, and the NLIHC reports that the cost of housing has continued to rise as incomes for   and   workers have stagnated. And as the housing crisis forces   earners to migrate out of cities, the   earners find themselves being pushed out by newcomers. A City Too Expensive To Live In, David Infante and Simon Keyes are two buddies from college in their 20s with pretty good jobs. Not long ago, they spent three days looking for an apartment in lower Manhattan. Keyes says they wanted two bedrooms and a dishwasher and they didn’t want to walk up too many flights of stairs. ”We didn’t want to spend more than . .. $1, 400 per person was the absolute limit and those things combined with the dishwasher made things pretty hard in New York City,” he says. Eventually they found something in their price range, but it was in a gritty part of Brooklyn, across from a hospital where they often hear sirens. Infante says he expected to have trouble finding a place to live in New York. It’s almost part of the glamour of the place, but it wears you down. ”If you sort of did an exit poll on people who did five years in New York, 10 years in New York and decided to get out, housing and the constant runaround of it would probably be something that everyone cites, or at least most people,” Infante says. ”That’s something that will probably ultimately drive me from New York, for example.” In New York, after controlling for inflation, median rents have increased 12 percent in eight years  —   at a time when incomes are up just 2 percent, says Ingrid Ellen, professor of public policy and urban planning at New York University. ”  households are struggling to pay their rent in every city in the United States,” Ellen says. ”And what really makes New York City stand out is that   renters are struggling.” City officials are worried that a lot of people will be driven from the city. Landlords typically demand that prospective tenants have $40, 000 in annual income for every $1, 000 in rent, which means a   income will get you a pretty nice   in much of Manhattan and Brooklyn. ”It may be hard for somebody who lives in the Midwest or the South to believe that you could make $100, 000 a year here and have a family of four and not be able to find an affordable place to live,” says Glen, the deputy mayor. ”But a $100, 000 a year could be a teacher and a nurse, and those people are the lifeblood of New York City.” Glen says new housing is being built in New York, but the high cost of construction and land makes it hard for developers to earn a profit except at the high end. Douglas Wagner, an executive at a real estate firm in New York, says even as competition for affordable housing surges, there is an oversupply of expensive apartments  —   places that start at $8, 500 a month. ”Now especially in better buildings, there are a lot of empty apartments looking for tenants and for the first time in some time, offering major incentives to get tenants to take apartments at this level,” he says. A Plan To Increase Affordability, Mayor de Blasio has a plan to ease the housing shortage by rezoning some neighborhoods to allow more construction and requiring developers to build more affordable housing.   is a neighborhood in Brooklyn once synonymous with crime and urban neglect. Now, it attracts a lot of young people who move there in search of affordable rents. BRP Cos. a real estate developer, is taking advantage of the opportunity. ”There had been a lot of disinvestment, but the bones were there and it was a close commute to Manhattan and we just thought it was a good bet for development,” says Andy Cohen, director of the company. BRP is a   company, but many of the apartments it builds are set aside for   and   people with the help of tax credits and other government programs. Using developers like BRP, the de Blasio administration plans to build or preserve some 200, 000 affordable apartments. ”We put together what has been characterized as the most ambitious and comprehensive affordable housing plan in the country by far,” Glen says. The plan would harness some of the intense development pressure sweeping the city. The mayor wants to rezone neighborhoods like   to make it easier for private developers to build by modifying some of the zoning regulations that drive up costs, such as building height restrictions or the requirement that apartment buildings have underground garages. Jerilyn Perine, executive director of nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council, says a lot of these regulations are obsolete. ”Department of City Planning now is really trying to sort of step back and say there were things that were done, particularly in the  ’80s, they were good ideas, they were helpful then. But now we really need to make sure that we can add to our housing stock,” she says. In exchange, the city would force developers that want to build in the city to construct more affordable apartments, Glen says. ”It’s both attacking it from a    perspective, but then saying the market alone will not actually solve this problem,” she says. ”We need to aggressively subsidize and use every tool we have to make sure that we’re bringing on enough affordable housing.” But the plan is encountering opposition from some of the people hit hardest by the housing shortage. Gentrification At The Heels Of Development, The housing shortage is driving more and more   New Yorkers into the further reaches of Brooklyn and Queens, bringing a new wave of gentrification that threatens to displace a lot of   people from those neighborhoods. The mayor’s plan has encountered opposition in some of the poorest neighborhoods. The buildings, like a BRP apartment in Brooklyn called the Bradford, are designed to house people of different income levels. Gone are the days when large projects were built to house huge groups of poor people. ”We think generally it’s better to have a mix of incomes living in a neighborhood rather than either a low or high income because you just get a more vibrant community,” Cohen says. The Bradford houses some very poor people, but the largest group of tenants is moderate income, which in New York can mean an annual salary of $120, 000 for a family of four. The rent they pay to live there can reach $2, 400 a month. That puts it well out of reach for a lot of the neighborhood’s poorest residents. Rachel Rivera, a mother of six, showed up at a town hall meeting in East New York to protest the mayor’s plan. Rivera lives on disability. She says local landlords are already pushing people out of their apartments to lure newcomers with higher incomes and she worries that there won’t be enough apartments for people like her under the rezoning plan. ”What I’m worried about is that I get pushed out and I won’t be able to afford these ’affordable housing’ that they say that they’re going to put up,” she says. City officials are aware of concerns like Rivera’s. But they say allowing a mix of incomes is the best way to make sure buildings stay economically viable. They also say that by replacing some of the city’s   neighborhoods with   apartment towers, they will ultimately be able to build more   housing. As a wave of development pressure is washing over New York, the challenge now is to channel that pressure to build the kind of city that New Yorkers want."
"The Justice Department on Thursday filed its latest argument in the dispute with Apple over access to a locked iPhone, accusing Apple of ”false” rhetoric and ”overblown” fears in its public refusal to cooperate with a court order. Apple is fighting a federal magistrate judge’s order to write special software that would lift security features that prevent the FBI from cracking the passcode on the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple has argued that would amount to creating a master key to millions of other iPhones. ”Far from being a master key, the software simply disarms a booby trap affixed to one door: Farook’s,” the lawyers write in response, calling the   security concerns a ”diversion” on Apple’s part. ”Apple desperately wants  —   desperately needs  —   this case not to be about one isolated iPhone . .. Apple deliberately raised technological barriers that now stand between a lawful warrant and an iPhone containing evidence related to the terrorist mass murder of 14 Americans,” the lawyers write. The Justice Department echoes FBI Director James Comey’s argument that growing adoption of strong encryption was creating ”warrantproof” devices, arguing that the order from the magistrate judge was narrow and targeted. ”Apple’s rhetoric is not only false,” the lawyers write, ”but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: the courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government.” It remains unclear what, if anything, is on the   phone, but the FBI suggests there’s ”probable cause to believe there is evidence of a terrorist attack.” Without the passcode, the investigators cannot access the phone’s encrypted content, and attempting to guess it would risk causing the phone to delete the data. Government lawyers urge the court to demand Apple’s compliance with the order. ”That is not lawless tyranny,” the U. S. Attorneys say. ”Rather, it is ordered liberty vindicating the rule of law.” Apple’s public campaign against the court order has focused on the call for lawmakers in Congress  —   not the court system  —   to resolve how much access law enforcement should have to information secured by a password or by encryption. Its position has garnered support from dozens of tech companies and privacy, civil liberties and human rights groups. At the heart of the debate is the government’s reliance on the All Writs Act, a broad 1789 law that gives courts power to, among other things, compel companies’ cooperation in investigations. The government argues that many of the positions adopted by Apple  —   including the emphasis on lawmakers determining the power of the All Writs Act, and the concerns of the law creating ”a slippery slope”  —   were argued before the Supreme Court decades ago, and were dismissed. ”In the forty years since that decision, it has become clear that the Court was correct because those fears have proved unfounded,” the U. S. attorneys write. In a call with reporters, Apple’s top lawyer Bruce Sewell said the tone of the government’s response sounded like an ”indictment,” NPR’s Aarti Shahani reports. He also called the filing ”deeply offensive.” Apple is due to respond to this latest filing from the government by March 15. A hearing has been set in California for March 22."
"Eric O’Grey knew he was in trouble. His weight had ballooned to 320 pounds, and he was spending more than $1, 000 a month on medications for high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol. In 2010, a physician told him to buy a funeral plot, because he would need it in five years. He was 51 years old. So he went to talk with a naturopathic doctor about losing weight. She said: Get a shelter dog. O’Grey was surprised, but he took that advice, heading to the Humane Society Silicon Valley near his home in San Jose, Calif. He told the shelter, ”I want an obese   dog, like me.” That’s how he met Peety. Peety needed to be walked, so Eric and Peety walked, for at least a   a day. O’Grey, who was working as an area sales manager for GE appliances, shifted to a   diet. Over the course of a year, he lost 140 pounds. Peety lost 25. O’Grey got off the meds. It wasn’t just the walks with Peety that transformed O’Grey’s life. The dog helped keep him from backsliding into his old, unhealthful ways. ”He looked at me like I was the best person on the planet, and I wanted to become the person he thought I was.” Their story might have ended there. But Carol Novello, president of the Humane Society Silicon Valley, had been trying to make the point that helping animals improves the lives of humans, too. She was finding that a tough sell, so she started looking for stories that made the case. ”A while ago, Eric O’Grey submitted his story, and I just loved it.” Novello, a former tech executive, asked David Whitman, executive producer of the Tech Awards of Silicon Valley, what they could do with Eric and Peety’s story. He came up with the idea of the Mutual Rescue initiative, which includes a contest where people can share stories of how a shelter animal changed their lives. The winning tale gets a video made about their rescue story. Donors to the HSSV funded the production of the Eric and Peety video as an example. ”It’s really about the transformation and the impact that animals can have on our lives,” Novello says. Since the contest opened in February, the HSSV has received hundreds of stories, many of which focus on health. ”We may do a Mutual Rescue   series,” Novello says. ”There are a lot of them.” Sure, stories are nice, but do pets really improve human health? No less an authority than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says yes. Having a pet can help decrease blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and feelings of loneliness, the CDC says, while increasing opportunities for exercise and socializing with other humans. And there’s increasing evidence that interaction with pets helps people cope with challenges including PTSD, Alzheimer’s and the end of life. I know our shelter kitties make my family happier, even though they haven’t helped me lose weight. And watching the Eric and Peety video has to be good for my heart, though it makes me reach for the tissues every time. ”He transformed me into a completely different person,” O’Grey says in the video. ”I think about it now: Who rescued whom? Did I rescue him, or did he rescue me?”"
"Plastic makes great food packaging. It’s waterproof and flexible. And best of all, it’s impervious to all known bacteria  —   until now. Researchers have found a bacterium in the debris fields around a recycling plant in Japan that can feed off a common type of plastic used in clothing, plastic bottles and food packaging. The bacterium is a new species called Ideonella sakaiensis, named for the Japanese city Sakai where it was found growing on plastic debris made from a type of plastic called PET or polyethylene terephthalate. ”It’s the most unique thing. This bacterium can degrade PET and then make their body from PET,” says Shosuke Yoshida, a microbiologist at Kyoto University and lead author on the study published in Science on Thursday. Most plastics are insurmountable obstacles for microbes because plastics are large chains of repeating molecules called polymers. The entire chain is far larger than the individual microbe. ”So the organism can’t take it inside the cell to metabolize it,” says John Coates, a microbiologist at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved with the work. Imagine a baby trying to eat an enormous pizza from the middle. It can’t do it. The pie is too big. But Ideonella sakaiensis, which we here at NPR have decided to call ”the polymer chomper,” has two enzymes that can slice and dice the plastic polymer into smaller pieces. In other words, the baby gets a pizza cutter. The bacterium can then take the pieces and eat them, eventually converting the plastic into carbon dioxide and water. After Yoshida and his colleagues isolated the polymer chomper, they were able to watch it disintegrate a plastic film in about six weeks. It would be great if we could culture the bacteria, spray landfills down with them and let them deal with our mountains of plastic refuse. But alas, that may never happen. ”It grows very fast,” Yoshida explains, ”but it’s likely not so useful in the field” because it chomps very slowly. And if getting rid of our plastic waste were so easy, Coates notes, the bacterium would likely have already been found in landfills and anywhere you find mounds of plastic waste. But with more research, Coates thinks that the bacterium might be engineered for such a purpose. ”It’s certainly a move in the right direction. Having an organism that seems to be capable of biodegrading these components directly will help us develop a bioremediation technology,” he says. Certain species of fungi have been found to be able to degrade plastics before, though none have been converted to   purposes. The polymer chomper offers new hope, Coates says, because bacteria are easier to work with and engineer. That doesn’t mean we’ll ever be able to toss our plastic without care. Recycling will likely remain a better option anyway, Coates adds. ”Environmentally, I would prefer recycling if it can be optimized and improved,” he says. Biodegrading materials still releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which would contribute to global warming. But in cases where recycling is not feasible, he says, maybe this little bacterium could one day prove a useful alternative."
"The remaining four Republican candidates debate once again tonight, this time in Miami. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich will be on the stage together for the last time before next Tuesday’s big primary night, when voters in Ohio and Florida  —   Rubio and Kasich’s home states  —   go to the polls. Tuesday is a make or break night for the two of them and tonight’s debate is the last chance they have to change the dynamic in a race that has not been going their way. Here are four things to watch  —   one for each candidate. Lately, the   has been trying to appear more ”presidential,” holding news conferences instead of rallies after his primary wins to project more gravitas. In the last debate, he announced that he was flexible and would change his positions if necessary in order to break the gridlock in Washington. But that was just minutes before  —   and after  —   he talked about the size of his hands and a certain part of his anatomy. So we’re not sure which Trump will show up tonight  —   the one who calls his opponents stupid, fat, losers, or the one who promised on Tuesday night: ”I can be more presidential than anybody other than the great Abe Lincoln. He was very presidential, right?” Cruz is in the No. 2 spot  —   only about 100 delegates behind Donald Trump. He has the strongest case to make that if the nominee is not going to be Trump, it should be him. Some establishment Republicans in the #nevertrump movement are coming around to the idea that as much as they dislike Cruz, he might be their only choice. Lindsey Graham, no fan of Cruz’s, says it may be time to rally around the Texas senator. Still, Cruz has a total of ZERO endorsements from his fellow senators. Tonight, does Cruz use his formidable debating skills to try again to cut Trump down to size, or does he attack Rubio and Kasich, whose continued presence in the race prevent him from consolidating the   vote? Now that Jeb Bush has left the race, Rubio has become Trump’s preferred punching bag. Rubio tried undermining Trump with insults, but that didn’t work. Trump needled him about this on Tuesday night, helpfully pointing out that, ”hostility works for some people. It doesn’t work for everybody, OK? ” Rubio has the most to lose next week. If he doesn’t win his home state of Florida, he will not only give up any shred of viability as a candidate, he could also hurt his political career going forward. Unlike Cruz and Kasich, who have day jobs they can keep, Rubio gave up his Senate seat to run for president and is not running for   in the fall. Kasich has an even worse record in this primary than Rubio, who won in Minnesota and Puerto Rico. Kasich hasn’t won anywhere. Tuesday was a disappointment for Kasich. He came in third in Michigan, which is a Rust Belt state like his own Ohio. Kasich once had hopes of winning there or placing a strong second. Trump is beating him in the polls in Ohio and Kasich has said that if he doesn’t win his home state he’s done. So, tonight, what does Kasich do to claw his way back into contention? Does he continue his ”Mr. Nice Guy” strategy, showing voters that he’s a reasonable, not very partisan, not very angry candidate who is as fed up with the antics of his opponents as they are? Or does he actually try to take on Trump? Granted, that hasn’t worked for anyone else but there’s not much time left."
"New videos circulating on social media show a protester at a Donald Trump rally being punched in the face by an audience member as he was being led out of a rally Wednesday in Fayetteville, N. C. The apparent assault comes on the heels of another altercation showing a woman being pushed at a Trump rally last week, as well as two stories (here and here) of reporters having physical   with Trump’s security and staff. The Trump campaign has denied one of the incidents took place. The most recent video shows a young man who appears to be   raising his middle fingers to the North Carolina crowd as he is being led out of the Crown Coliseum. An audience member rears back his fist and takes several steps toward the protester before punching him in the face. The next frames of the video show police detaining the man who had been punched, but not his attacker. John Franklin McGraw was charged with assault and disorderly conduct in the incident. Courtesy of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, Rally attendee John McGraw was since charged with assault and disorderly conduct in Wednesday’s incident, according to a post on Cumberland County Sheriff Earl ”Moose” Butler’s Facebook page. Butler said the deputies who were escorting out the protester did not actually see the assault take place. They later viewed footage of the event to identify McGraw. ”No one should be subjected to such a cowardly, unprovoked act as that committed by McGraw,” said Butler. Several months ago, referring to a protester at one of his rallies, Trump said, ”Maybe he should have been roughed up.” He has also made veiled threats against media reporters, said he would defend in court anyone who hurt a protester at another rally, and said ”I’d like to punch him in the face,” about another protester. Protesters and hecklers at presidential rallies aren’t a new phenomenon. They followed former President George W. Bush and still follow President Obama. But Carolyn Lukensmeyer, director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, a   advocacy group, said she can’t remember a recent time when animosity towards the protesters actually broke out into a physical fight. Lukensmeyer fears incidents like this represent a dark turn in American politics. ”We’re now seeming to cross a line where the commitment to plurality and civil society is being lost,” she said. ”We’re crossing lots of lines here and lots of Americans are increasingly disturbed by it.”"
"Janice Wright’s   loves politics. The family lives in Crosby, Texas, and they’re big supporters of Ted Cruz. Last week they were late pulling up the Republican debate on their laptop when Janice saw a social media reference to Marco Rubio’s ”small hands” comment. It was a veiled reference to Donald Trump’s private parts. Wright nixed the debate, telling her disappointed son the candidates ”weren’t acting like adults.” As parents like Wright are tuning in to this year’s presidential campaign  —   and the mudslinging, racial comments and sexual innuendo that come with it  —   they are struggling with how much to show their kids, and how to explain it all. If you’ve missed the debates, here’s a taste (courtesy of All Things Considered): Though indecent language seems to have reached a fever pitch on the Republican side, the Democrats have had their share of shouting and interrupting too. ”They should have ratings at the front of the debates,” Wright laughed. ”You know: ’Contains language, and violence, and sexual content.’ That might be helpful for parents.” For the next debate, Wright says, she might   it so she can   through any inappropriate parts. When she does let her four children watch, Wright tries to find lessons where she can. ”We say, ’Hey, look how he’s mean or bullying to this person. That’s not how you talk to someone.’ Or, ’See how he doesn’t really answer the person’s question, he just picks on him instead? That’s not how you debate.’ ” Her    son, Houston, wasn’t sure whether he should be surprised by the language in these debates. ”It’s hard to say,” he said. ”I knew there would be a lot of yelling and shouting. I guess I’m kind of used to it now.” ’Not A Good Example For Bystanding’ In Louisville, Ky. Laura Hall’s    son takes part in mock government at school, and is also paying close attention to the campaign. Normally Hall would welcome this   civics education, but this year she’s not so sure. ”In a way, it makes me sad that, at this pivotal point in his development, this is what he’s seeing,” Hall said. ”To see some of the candidates moving ahead and gaining support through bad behavior and hateful speech.” She’s a Democrat but wants to teach her son respect for all candidates. The   will be old enough to vote in the next presidential election, and she wonders if this season will affect his   view of the parties. Hall felt the need for a teachable moment last week, after a Trump rally in Louisville. A video that got a lot of local coverage, and went viral online, shows an older white man helping to expel an   woman who was protesting. ”Pushing her and shoving her, and they were screaming at her,” Hall said, ”and it was really horrible to see. It’s important that the kids understand that that happens, and it’s not acceptable.” Hall’s son, Benjamin, had noticed the crowds at debates as well. ”The people are kind of egging them on,” he said. ”Because I’ve seen clips where they’ll say something rude to one another, and you’ll hear everybody cheer and laugh. And that’s not a good example for bystanding.” Studying The Campaign, At Sherwood Githens Middle School in Durham, N. C.   Samori   follows the campaign on social media. He says all the candidates’   doesn’t seem very presidential. ”I just feel as though it’s real childish,” he said, ”and I don’t think grown adults should be acting like us.” He and some classmates say they’re studying the campaign in school, writing papers on heated topics that have come up, like immigration.   Michelle Terron Azamar’s parents are from Mexico. She says her family felt hurt when Trump compared Mexican immigrants to rapists and criminals. ”I’ve been really offended,” she said. ”That’s his opinion if he wants to not like Hispanics, or whatever he doesn’t like. But I just think he shouldn’t take it out on us.” Terron Azamar said her dad, who has not discussed politics with her much in the past, has been talking to her a lot about this year’s campaign, and telling her that Trump will not win in a general election. Other parents said they’re more worried about how children are hearing and relaying Trump’s discussion of mass deportation and building a border wall. ”Last week, my kindergartner son told me that a class friend of his expressed to him with tears in her eyes, ’If Trump becomes president, we’ll have to move. He doesn’t like our family,’ ” said Brent Seavers of Northern California, in a Facebook posting. ”That, to me, is a bigger concern than the  . That is doing real psychological damage to innocent children.”   Style, Alejandra Abella, who teaches middle school debate in Ventura County, Calif. said she’s using the debates as an example  —   but not usually a good one. ”Unfortunately, I have been able to pull more examples of what should not be done in debating than examples of what should be done,” she said. At first, when Abella showed the class video clips from Republican debates, she was horrified. She teaches   style, in which debaters base their arguments on ethical values. ”Honestly, these moments in the debates, in which they’re hearing lots of words and absolutely no substance, are helping them understand, ’Why do we look for value in   debates?’ ” she said. ”And it’s helping them focus on that.” She sees it as a silver lining, showing kids they can learn from even a negative example."
"When it’s time for medical care, where do you go? The doctor’s office? An urgent care clinic? Or the nearest hospital? As many as 1 in 3 Americans sought care in an ER in the past two years, according to a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. That relatively high frequency may be a matter of convenience, even though many in the poll also report frustration with the cost and quality of care they received in an ER. Skipper Beck, for instance, who lives in Holiday, Fla. near Tampa, wasn’t crazy about the care he got. As he remembers it, he was having a great Friday, playing beach football on Florida’s Gulf Coast, when he hurt himself. ”I hit someone a little too hard, a little bit too low,” says Beck, who is 36 years old. By that evening, Beck couldn’t rotate his shoulder. It was painful to lift any weight, he says. He thought maybe he’d dislocated the shoulder, fractured it, or maybe torn something. So, late that night, he headed to the ER. The medical staff ran tests, put him in a sling and sent him on his way  —   4   hours later. ”Honesty I felt like cattle,” he says. ”Kind of ’get me in, get me out.’ ” Beck thinks the cost for his ER visit was unreasonable, and he felt like the doctors didn’t care about him. In fact, about a quarter of the people NPR polled in Florida say the ER care they got was fair or poor, and only a third say it was excellent. The relatively high cost and   treatment in traditional emergency departments may be because most ERs are designed to treat life or death emergencies  —   gunshots, a heart attack, a bad car accident. But 47 percent of recent patients in the U. S. say they seek care in an ER for   reasons. They go because it’s convenient, says, Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Many (28 percent) say their main reason for choosing an ER for treatment, instead of a doctor’s office, urgent care facility or community health clinic was because the other facilities weren’t open, or the poll respondent couldn’t get an appointment. About 3 percent nationally  —   and 8 percent in Florida  —   say they mainly chose an ER for treatment because the other facilities were too far away. ”Almost a third of people in Florida have used an ER in the last two years,” Blendon says. Many people assume that the only patients who choose an ER for care that’s not an emergency are poor and uninsured, and don’t have a regular doctor. But Blendon says that’s an oversimplification: In fact, more than 80 percent of Floridians polled who used an ER are covered by health insurance. What can be done to shift more of the   cases out of the ER? It would help, Blendon says, if the medical world were more responsive to the problem. For instance, more community doctors could hold some office hours on evenings or weekends, so they could potentially see a patient like Skipper Beck late on a Friday, or see patients on short notice when they’re sick. ”I’m hoping we’ll change a bit of the discussion,” he says. ”You have to have a place to go, and the hours have to reflect the life of people.” But ERs are important to hospital revenue, and people seek help there for many reasons. So some hospitals are trying to make the ER experience more convenient for patients. Some emergency departments now allow patients to schedule appointments, for instance. And others modify their care and facilities to attract a particular subset of the community  —   such as the parents of sick or hurt children. Delilah Torres, whose    son, Ryan, has Down syndrome, appreciates that sort of special attention to kids. ”There were many times, many times in the past when I waited before taking Ryan to the emergency room because I knew how stressful it is to sit at the waiting room for hours,” she says. A few weeks ago, Torres had a very different experience at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Fla. When she and her son arrived in the ER, she says, the staff brought Ryan into a special room, with soothing music and toys, and talked to his mother about what upsets him. Torres says Ryan is strong, and four nurses are usually needed to draw blood from him, or put in an IV line. ”This time was the first time it actually only took two nurses to put a line in Ryan,” she says. The Nemours Children’s Hospital, in central Florida, is just a few years old. Its waiting room is painted in bright colors, and has round, plushy cubby holes cut into the wall for fun seating for the kids. Free slushies are available in the ER. Cara Harwell, a nurse practitioner there, points out a sign that says REACH: Respecting Each Awesome Child Here. ”We want the parents to   that they have a child with autism or a similar condition, like a sensory processing disorder or a mental health disorder,” Harwell says. That friendly approach in the ER will help the hospital’s ”patient satisfaction scores,” she says. Funding is partly tied to performance in those rankings, and hospital officials are studying how it affects other aspects of care. ”Before we even put our hands on them, if we can know what the child likes and doesn’t like, we can prevent them from becoming . .. agitated [and from hurting] themselves or someone else,” Harwell says. ”We can also reduce the use of sedatives or restraints.” Of course, hospitals have yet another motivation to improve a patient’s experience of the ER visit: A   emergency room can be profitable, and parents like Delilah Torres will drive 30 minutes past another hospital to get to one that better meets her needs."
"Five years after an earthquake and tsunami caused a series of meltdowns at the Fukushima   nuclear plant in Japan, there are signs of progress. Many workers cleaning up the ruined plant no longer need to suit up in full respirators. Some nearby villages that were evacuated are open to residents. But there are still plenty of problems. ”Fukushima   is a complicated cleanup site,” says Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U. S Nuclear Regulatory Commission who now consults for the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, which owns the plant. PLOTTING THE FALLOUT: A map made by the volunteer organization Safecast indicates that radiation levels remain elevated in the region around Fukushima  . In areas that are orange, yellow or white, levels are high and an evacuation order remains in place. Areas in pink and purple are safe  to live in, provided extensive decontamination efforts are effective. Blue denotes areas where radiation is at natural levels. Perhaps the biggest problem is water, Klein says. Groundwater from nearby mountains constantly seeps through the ruined building before spilling into the ocean. Tepco has tried a number of different approaches (including a massive underground ice wall) to try to slow the incursion, but so far efforts to stop it have been only partially successful. Instead, the company must send the groundwater through a complex filtration system that removes radioactivity. The system is effective at removing some of the most dangerous elements, but one isotope of hydrogen, called tritium, can’t be removed because it’s literally embedded in the H2O of the water molecules. ”Tritium is part of the water itself, so how do you filter water out of water?” Klein says. The best solution might be to dilute the radioactive groundwater and then release it into the ocean. But fishermen and the public would have to be convinced. For now, nearly a million tons of water is being stored all over the site. ”There are about a thousand containers, steel containers that hold this water,” he says. The land around the plant was also contaminated by the accident. Azby Brown is with the nonprofit organization Safecast, which independently monitors radiation levels in Fukushima prefecture. He says readings by Safecast and the government show that radiation levels in the region around the plant have fallen by roughly half. ”There’s no question that the radiation levels have decreased compared to 2011,” he says. Some of that drop is due to the natural radioactive decay, but there has also been a huge cleanup effort. Workers across Fukushima have been scraping up contaminated topsoil and storing it in bags. And that’s created its own problem, Brown says. ”There are now about 9 million bags of decontamination waste from all over the prefecture that are being consolidated into these vast fields with these pyramids of radioactive waste,” he says. Just like with the water, regulators aren’t quite sure what to do with all that soil. Japan doesn’t have a centralized radioactive waste dump to take it to. In the longer term, the biggest issue will be what to do with the highly radioactive cores of the reactors themselves, each filled with melted uranium fuel. After the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, Soviet officials opted to pour concrete over the melted reactor core. But Tepco’s chief nuclear officer, Takafumi Anegawa, says Fukushima’s fuel has got to be removed because the plant’s presence on the coast poses a threat to the environment. ”This condition cannot continue for many years,” he says. Tepco doesn’t really have any firm ideas about how to get the melted fuel out. ”So far, there’s no specific clear solution,” Anegawa says. In fact, the company hasn’t even been able to look inside to see what needs to be done. Anegawa says the radiation is so intense that it’s fried the circuits of several robots sent in to investigate. Dale Klein, the safety consultant, thinks that eventually robots will be used to cut up the molten cores of the reactors and seal them inside concrete containers. But he says it’s not going to happen overnight. ”This will be a   process of cleanup,” he says. In other words, the Fukushima accident will be with the people of Japan for generations to come."
"The FCC has unveiled a proposal that would restrict Internet providers’ ability to share the information they collect about what their customers do online with advertisers and other third parties. If adopted, these would be the first privacy rules for Internet service providers, resulting largely from last year’s net neutrality regulations that expanded the Federal Communications Commission’s oversight authority over the industry. (Those rules are currently pending in court.) Thursday’s unveiling of the proposal from Chairman Tom Wheeler is just a first step: The FCC is expected to vote to formally propose this plan on March 31, soliciting public comments on a variety of questions about how the rules should work before the final version gets drafted. The key elements of Wheeler’s proposal include a requirement that broadband providers such as Comcast, Verizon or   clearly disclose what data they collect on you  —   for instance, it could be browsing history, use of apps or location  —   and how they shared that collected data with other companies for marketing or other purposes. In some instances, subscribers would be asked to opt in or they’d be given a choice to opt out, depending on how the information is used. (  has a helpful breakdown of the details.) The proposal also has provisions for better security of the information traveling through ISPs’ networks. Wheeler wrote in a Huffington Post   that ISPs should be held to the same privacy standard as telephone companies: ”Your ISP handles all of your network traffic. That means it has a broad view of all of your unencrypted online activity  —   when you are online, the websites you visit, and the apps you use. If you have a mobile device, your provider can track your physical location throughout the day in real time. Even when data is encrypted, your broadband provider can piece together significant amounts of information about you  —   including private information such as a chronic medical condition or financial problems  —   based on your online activity. ”The information collected by the phone company about your telephone usage has long been protected information. Regulations of the (FCC) limit your phone company’s ability to repurpose and resell what it learns about your phone activity. ”The same should be true for information collected by your ISP.” Telecom companies are resisting the FCC’s push to regulate their privacy practices, arguing that this puts them on unequal footing compared with websites and web services such as Google that also collect a lot of information about people’s digital tracks. As The New York Times points out, those companies are overseen by another agency: ”The regulations, if approved, would put broadband providers under stronger privacy oversight than Internet companies like Google and Facebook. Those companies are monitored by the Federal Trade Commission, whose ability to create specific privacy rules is limited. ”Many privacy advocates have pushed for a greater role by other agencies because the F. T. C. cannot create rules for online privacy and can only monitor data collection practices as an enforcement agency.” ATT’s Bob Quinn, senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs, said in a blog post this week that Internet providers ”do not currently live in a ’  zone’ when it comes to privacy,” but one guided by the FTC’s regime, which prohibits deceptive and unfair trade practices: ”Given the realities of this complex market, there is no basis for treating ISP data as somehow ’proprietary’ or subjecting ISPs to unique privacy requirements. Consumers expect and deserve consistent privacy protections for their online data, regardless of which company is collecting it and the technology used to collect it. . .. ”The FCC appears to want to place its thumb on the scale in favor of Internet companies and against the companies that invest in broadband infrastructure in this country.”"
"Last month, I visited a displaced persons camp in South Sudan and met a woman who said she’d spent almost a year hiding in a swamp. She spent her days submerged, her head just above water. At night she’d emerge to search for food. She’s one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled their homes over the past two years to escape that country’s brutal civil war. It’s hard to imagine that so many people would give up their worldly goods and flee into the bush. A new report from Amnesty International helps explain why. The report, issued Thursday, looks at one atrocity that not only claimed dozens of lives, but sowed fear in the living left behind. Amnesty International says that in October of 2015, government soldiers rounded up more than 60 men and boys in Leer, a town in the northern Unity state, locked them in a shipping container until they suffocated, then dumped their bodies in a nearby field. They were accused of supporting the opposition rebels. ”Witnesses described to us how the men were detained. How they were forced into this container,” says Lama Fakih, a crisis adviser with Amnesty International who spent two weeks last month in South Sudan investigating the massacre. Amnesty International interviewed 42 people who saw parts of the incident, she says. ”Some [of the witnesses] were just outside the container and could hear the detainees banging on the sides of the container, screaming.” According to the report, soldiers opened the container to remove the bodies of some of the men who’d suffocated to death but then locked the doors again with the rest of the people inside. After 24 hours, all but one of the detainees were dead. This incident is significant for several reasons. First, Amnesty International is calling it a war crime by the Sudanese government against its own people. Second, it occurred two months after the warring parties  —   the forces of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and troops led by his former vice president, Reik Machar  —   signed a peace accord. An international commission charged with monitoring that   also documented reports of the shipping container killing in a confidential memo dated Dec. 18, 2015. Some details in that memo are slightly different from what Amnesty International found, but the main facts are strikingly similar. The   commission’s report said, ”Between 20 and 22 October 2015 a group of Government Forces were involved in some sort of operation in Leer County, during which cattle were seized and about 50 people (reports vary between 53 and 60) were rounded up and put in a shipping container in Leer. The container is in the compound used by Government Forces as a headquarters. A large number of those people suffocated. Their bodies were taken and thrown into the bush along the Gandor road.” The ”compound” where this happened was a church. Government troops had commandeered the grounds of the Comboni Catholic Church in Leer after the clergy had fled. The soldiers were using the church grounds as a base. ”Unsubstantiated reports suggest that the few [detainees] who survived were killed,” the   commission memo adds. ”There are further reports that the only survivor was an    boy.” Amnesty International heard that there was a lone boy who survived but puts his age at 12. One of the unnamed witnesses in the AI report says that when the shipping container was finally opened, there was a pile of bodies 3 feet high. ”What we saw was tragic . .. the container was full of people, they had fallen over one another and onto the floor,” she’s quoted as saying. This massacre is being blamed on government forces, but reports from the African Union, Human Rights Watch and others say both sides in this civil war have committed crimes against humanity including raping women, castrating child soldiers, killing civilians and even allegedly forcing captives to drink human blood. ”Sadly this is one horrific experience in a long litany of violations that we have documented being perpetrated by government forces or allied militias against the civilian population,” says Amnesty International’s Lama Fakih about the shipping container incident. ”And again the abuses we have documented took place after the signing of the peace agreement.” South Sudanese government spokesmen didn’t respond to two messages from NPR seeking comment on this new Amnesty International report."
"A curious crowd lingered around Amal Graafstra as he carefully unpacked a pair of gloves, a small sterile blanket and a huge needle. A long line of people were waiting to get tiny computer chips implanted into their hands. Graafstra had set up shop in a booth in the middle of an exhibit hall at the Austin Convention Center in Texas’ capital, where he gathered last month with several hundred others who call themselves ”body hackers”  —   people who push the boundaries of implantable technology to improve the human body. The movement evokes visceral reactions, brings up safety and ethical concerns and quickly veers into   questions about the line between human and cyborg. Graafstra is a pioneer in the space. Using his own body to experiment, he designed   magnets and the microchip he was about to implant into the hand of A. J. Butt, who was sporting a tall, blue mohawk. The implantable RFID chips hold encrypted information, and their unique ID numbers can be used to open doors or unlock the owner’s smartphone, which is what Butt wanted to do. Butt took a deep breath. The needle plunged into his skin at the base of his thumb, and a chip bigger than a grain of rice slipped just below the surface. Across the way, Sasha Rose, who was working a meditation booth at the convention, watched the people line up to be ”chipped.” She shook her head: This was the craziest thing she had seen. She wondered about Graafstra’s credentials. She thought this was a medical procedure, so should he be performing it? Did his clients know the potential consequences of carrying personal information on a device inside their skin? ”More than the crazy concept, it’s actually people’s willingness to accept it. That’s why it’s crazy to me,” Rose said. ”People are just willing to just line up and go, ’Yeah, stick that in me.’ ” At night, many of the   gathered at a club on Austin’s Sixth Street. Graafstra was outside with Ryan O’Shea, whose company Grindhouse Wetware made the Internet squirm earlier this year when it released a   surgery video of one of its implants called Northstar. In it, a man gets a small incision in his hand, and then, with a metallic tool dipped into it, the skin is lifted to produce a cavity where a round subdermal implant with five LED lights is placed. The result looks dystopian  —   the incision is stitched with black thread, and LED lights make the skin on the hand glow red. But body hackers view the world differently, Graafstra said. They believe technology has reached a point where it can improve the human body instead of just fixing what’s broken. ”A patient may someday come very soon and say, ’My eye is totally fine, but I want an eye that can see infrared. And I want an eye that can zoom,’ ” Graafstra said. That kind of future  —   where the human body is augmented by technology  —   is the goal of many of these experiments. O’Shea said Grindhouse Wetware is using its LED device to test how long a device like it can remain charged inside a body, and Graafstra said his RFID chip is a small attempt at merging digital identity with physical identity. ”I think once people realize, ’Oh, it’s OK that my grandma has a pacemaker’ . .. people are going to start to accept this,” O’Shea said. ”You know, the era of transhumanism, I would say, is here. So let’s accept that and then see where that logically takes us.” Inside the club, a drone hovered above the dance floor. The polished steel and the electronic dance music gave it a futuristic feel. Standing near the bar was Tony Salvador, who studies social values and how they affect technology at Intel. He was at the conference to get a feel of when and if ”body hacking” may be accepted into the mainstream. Sometimes, he said, technology moves too fast and outpaces accepted social boundaries  —   not to mention laws. He argued that was part of the reason why early wearers of Google Glass were called ”glassholes.” ”It created a social misunderstanding,” Salvador said. ”You didn’t know what was going on.” To Salvador, the boundaries of acceptance are a matter of our social philosophy, an area that he argued was driven by esoteric discourse without tangible moral and ethical recommendations. The philosophers, he said, are letting us down. Alva Noë, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley and a contributor to NPR’s 13. 7: Cosmos and Culture blog, has written extensively on what he calls ”cyborgian naturalness.” He disagreed that the modern philosophers dropped the ball, saying that tackling the matter would involve unpacking two questions: To the first question, Noë said he found the ”body hacking” experimentation on humans ”ethically disturbing” and couldn’t fathom a doctor or any other scientists conducting these kinds of operations. The second question was more complicated. ”We don’t condemn people for using glasses to see better,” he said. ”But we do start to think taking speed to cope with your work life is questionable.” Because those kinds of judgments are an ethical question, drawing a tolerance line may always be a moving target, he said. ”We may reach consensuses and then lose them,” Noë said. ”Just as there was once a consensus where it was OK to smoke to function effectively, and now we have the consensus that, increasingly, it’s not OK to do that.” If there’s a rock star in the   movement, it’s Neil Harbisson, a colorblind artist from Barcelona who persuaded a doctor to implant a camera in the back of his head. The antenna, as he calls it, essentially lets Harbisson listen to colors by detecting the dominant color in front of him and translating it into musical notes. The way he tells it, a medical ethics committee in Europe had refused to sign off on the operation, but a doctor agreed to perform the surgery anonymously. From it, Harbisson emerged with a camera connected to a device on the back of his skull, its lens dangling in front of his face on a rod that arcs over his head. As he walked the streets of Austin, he described how he perceived the world: the red traffic light sounded like an A note the green grass sounded like an F. In his keynote address at the conference, Harbisson said the first time he heard those colors in his sleep, he felt truly cyborg. Now, he no longer identifies as human but as a ”cybernetic organism.” ”If we define ourselves as organisms, suddenly our group is wider,” he said. ”We are on the same level as an insect, or as a cat, or as a plant.” Harbisson is well aware of how the world perceives him. He moved from Barcelona to New York City in search of ”peace” with another friend in the transhumanist movement, Moon Ribas. Ribas has an electronic device in her arm that she said vibrates when there is an earthquake anywhere in the world. On more than one occasion, people have tried to rip off his antenna, Harbisson said. That’s part of the reason why he   the Cyborg Foundation to advocate for ”cyborg rights.” When asked if he’s ever thought about just taking the antenna off, Harbisson demurred. ”To me, it’s much stronger, the wish to sense what’s around me, than the fact that people keep annoying me,” he said, adding that maybe, in the future, as others get new senses, he’ll be considered normal."
"In 1995, the televised trial of O. J. Simpson riveted the nation. Lead prosecutor Marcia Clark made the case against the    football player, who was accused of the brutal double homicide of his   and her friend. Throughout the trial, Clark faced tremendous scrutiny. She was criticized for courtroom decisions as well as for her hairstyle, clothing and her personal life. Many ultimately blamed her for Simpson’s acquittal.   The feeling at the time was that ”Marcia Clark is a strident shrew ” actress Sarah Paulson tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. Paulson portrays Clark in FX’s The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story. While preparing for the role, she watched video footage of Clark during the Simpson trial and read her memoir. Later, she also met Clark in person. ”My impressions of her now, after portraying her, are incredibly, vastly different,” Paulson says. ”I now hold her to be a very competent, complicated, strong,       wonderful creature.” The People v. O. J. Simpson is   by Ryan Murphy, who also   the FX anthology series American Horror Story, which Paulson has appeared in for all five of its seasons. Though the O. J. series has been gaining a lot of attention, Paulson says she’s waiting until some of the buzz dies down before watching. ”I think it’s the first time in my professional life I have felt a real swell of positive feeling about my work in something,” she says. ”I’m trying to just enjoy that, because I know that if I watch it I’m going to start picking it apart, and I think it would be a nice treat for myself to give myself a minute of enjoyment to celebrate the work.” On how much the truth matters when portraying real events in a television show  I think it’s of paramount importance, and at the same time it is a television show and it is a dramatization. There is no way to know exactly what Marcia Clark was feeling . .. and how she cries privately, and there are many, many things that cannot be known. . .. I just sort of have to kind of get behind knowing that the bulk of it is all true, and the moments that cannot be known  —   except for by the people that were actually there and lived it  —   that’s where the acting comes in and the clever writing, at least you hope. I think the whole thing in general  —   everything was incredibly   and all of that. On how she prepared to play Clark, I read, watched and listened to any and everything I could get my hands on. The good news is there are copious amounts of videos on the Internet where I was able to watch a lot of her physical [mannerisms]  —   her carriage, the way she used her hands, the way she spoke, how she often tilted her head to one side, particularly in the courtroom when she was addressing the judge, the defense team or the jury. I read her book, I read [Christopher] Darden’s book [In Contempt] I read [Jeffrey] Toobin’s book [The Run of His Life] and of course I read our scripts, which was probably where I ended up holding most closely that stuff. . .. The more I read about her, the more I knew about her, the more I just wanted to get it right. That was my primary concern, was just to get it right  —   and by right I mean just for it to be authentic and truthful. I wasn’t really looking at it as a way of trying to correct any perceptions or misconceptions about Marcia, I just wanted to try to do it in an honorable and a truthful way. On why she wanted to meet Clark in person, I don’t even know that I wanted to know anything specific, I just wanted to breathe the same air that she was breathing, in the same moment. I had so immersed myself in all things Marcia Rachel Clark that the idea that I could be sitting across from her . .. I just kind of wanted to hug her. I wanted to look her in the eye and tell her that she didn’t have to be fearful of the take that was going to be presented about her, given all that I knew she had endured. I could’ve only imagined and anticipated that she was going to be terribly, terribly anxious about having to relive this experience that was a great trauma for her. She never went back into the courtroom to prosecute a case after this trial and she had won 19 out of 20 prior to this case, so it was obviously a great passion of hers and it was stolen from her. I don’t know that I took anything away from it or expected anything other than I just wanted to be in her orbit. On the scrutiny she has encountered over her appearance, which helped her relate to the scrutiny Clark faced during the trial, I have naturally brown hair and every time I’ve been asked to be a leading lady on television or in a movie I have often been asked to make my hair blonde. And that is a sort of a weird slippery slope where you start to go, ”Gosh . .. if my job on this particular program is supposed to be alluring or charming, thought of as a sexual creature, I have to have blonde hair? What does it mean that I don’t actually have blonde hair? Does it mean that I am not any of those things without it?” On playing conjoined twins on American Horror Story  Essentially, it was all done on a green screen and I would come in in the morning and prerecord my dialogue, because often the twins were speaking telepathically to one another and I wanted to be able to hear my own voice in my head. So I would record it and then wear an earwig so that I could talk to myself. I didn’t want to have another actress off camera reading that didn’t sound like me and didn’t sound like my twin. It was a lot of lonely work, where I would have to look at a piece of tape and imagine my own head there. I never was able to look in anyone else’s eyes to play a scene with myself. . .. It was incredibly challenging and very, very technical. And everyone who ever did a scene with me on that season of Horror Story was always bemoaning the fact that they had to work with me because it meant their day was infinitely longer because it was just take after take, and we essentially had to do everything twice. On making news after she kissed   Cherry Jones at the 2005 Tony Awards, I think I was a bit naive, actually, as to what it would mean. I was just doing what was instinctual to me, which was to congratulate and kiss the person whom I loved and who had just won a very fancy acting prize. It would’ve been strange for me to what, I don’t know, pat her on the head, pat her on the shoulder, and I just did what it occurred to me to do. But I was very quickly made aware of it being a bit of a news [story] because I got a phone call from my publicist saying, ”Why did you do that?” She’s no longer my publicist, by the way. . .. I remember feeling like I was getting my hand slapped, that I had done something wrong, and I didn’t feel very comfortable with that. On whether she worries that being, as she puts it, sexually ”fluid” affects the kinds of roles she gets, I wonder sometimes if being in the Ryan Murphy world  —   in that I get to play so many different types of characters within that one TV show  —   that there really isn’t time to sort of typecast me as one particular kind of thing. I’m not a sex symbol, I’m not . .. your typical movie star. And so I wonder if I’ve been sort of protected from having to worry about it preventing me from working in a way, because the public doesn’t really have a particular attachment to me being one type of thing. On whether society has become more accepting of fluid sexual orientation, The politicization of it is complicated for me, because I only know what to do according to what I feel and I only want to be governed by that. I try not to make any choices across the board that are dictated to me by someone else’s idea of what [my sexuality] should be. So I do hope that the idea of somebody being fluid is no longer a covert or a euphemism for ”Oh, gay, just don’t want to say it.” Because for me, I have been with men and I have been with women, and I don’t know what lies ahead, and I don’t want to be stuck with some kind of label that then makes me then a traitor to my people if I make a different choice. I want the freedom  —   my own personal freedom  —   to decide that as I see fit. On her current relationship with actress Holland Taylor, who is about 30 years older  There is a very significant age difference. And when you love a person, the idea of losing them is terrifying, to put it mildly. So I have thought about it. But Holland actually put the best spin on it and said what I think was a very funny thing. . .. We were at a dinner party and we were newly out and about as a couple, and a mutual friend of ours said, ”Oh, Holland, I’m so pleased for you. I’m so happy, this is so great, you and Sarah.” And Holland said, ”Yeah, I know. Look, if she dies, she dies.” It was so disarming. And Holland’s point being: Yes, on paper, it looks like one thing, but anything can happen and you just don’t know."
"Let’s say you’re a pregnant woman who recently traveled to Latin America or the Caribbean. You got a little sick shortly after the trip, with some combination of mild fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis. The big question now is: Did you have Zika virus? And, if so, is your fetus still healthy? ”Probably every day, patients come in questioning whether or not they would qualify for testing,” says Dr. Christine Curry, an   at the University of Miami, and Jackson Memorial Hospital. A preliminary study in Brazil makes a strong case for the link between Zika virus infection during pregnancy and a number of birth defects, including microcephaly. The infection has been associated with a range of outcomes in another study of nine U. S. women who caught the virus while traveling to regions where Zika is prevalent. If a patient has a particular travel history, Curry sends a sample of the woman’s blood to a lab for analysis. But it can take awhile for test results to come back, Curry says, and the waiting can be really stressful, especially for patients in the middle of a pregnancy. ”They’re trying to decide what to do with the pregnancy, given so many unknowns,” she says. ”The difference between two and four weeks can be the difference between being able to end a pregnancy and not.” There’s another problem: Some tests aren’t very reliable, so patients sometimes have to go through multiple rounds to confirm whether they had Zika. That puts Curry in a tricky situation when she’s counseling patients. ”It involves saying ’I don’t know’ and ’no one knows’ over and over again,” she says. Until recently, most samples of fluids from patients had to be sent to Atlanta for testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now, about 30 local public health labs are gearing up to do the analysis themselves, including the District of Columbia’s department of forensic sciences, where Cleveland Weeden works as a medical technologist. Most days, Weeden says, he feels like an athlete stuck on the bench. Outbreaks are exciting, in a way, because he finally gets to put his expertise and skills to work. ”We’re the bench,” Weeden says. ”We get called into action when something goes on in the city.” A refrigerator behind Weeden holds plastic baggies with tubes of blood and urine from patients in the area. As of this week, his job is to test all these samples for Zika virus. Weeden expects to get the results to patients within three days, rather than four weeks. He’s running a procedure called    —   or Reverse   Chain Reaction. The CDC is now making materials for 750 of these kits. Each kit has enough for 500 individual tests, which look for pieces of the virus’ genetic material and answers ”yes” or ”no” to the question: ”Is there virus in this person’s blood?” Weeden says the test is pretty straightforward  —   except for one thing. ”From the time the person is bitten [by an infected mosquito] to the time they get to the doctor, no more than five to seven days can pass for us to [be able to] pick it up on PCR,” he says. That means that if PCR is to work, doctors have to collect patients’ blood within a week of the first signs of a fever and rash. The virus hangs around a little longer in urine, so doctors would have a slightly longer window of time  —   about two weeks  —   to collect those samples. But there’s an extra complication, Curry says: Most patients don’t rush to the doctor when their illness is mild. ”If someone had virus in their blood three weeks ago and they’re now cleared, the PCR’s not going to tell you that,” she says. In that case, a negative result could mean either that the person never had Zika, or that their body had already cleared it from their system by the time they got tested. That’s why labs like Weeden’s are trying to get hold of another kind of test that the CDC developed, which goes by yet another bulky acronym  —   the Zika  . This test looks for a protein in a person’s blood  —   a specific type of antibody  —   that shows what foreign things the body has fought off recently. The Zika   is widely seen as the best test available, right now, because it works over a longer time span than the first option. It’s also faster and cheaper than another more definitive test, and requires less specialized training to perform. According to the CDC, Zika antibodies appear in the blood ”starting 4 to 5 days after the start of illness and last for up to 12 weeks,” or even longer in some people. The CDC has produced about 100, 000 of these test kits, and is offering them free to qualified labs. But there’s one drawback: The test sometimes tells people they had Zika when they didn’t. An ideal test, all agree, would be specific to this particular virus and give a faster turnaround time  —   eliminating the need for the manpower, money and time required to go through the current layers of testing. It’s not just pregnant women who would benefit from a better test  —   so would patients who need blood transfusions in places like Puerto Rico, where health officials have been worried that patients might accidentally get Zika during transfusions with infected blood. So the officials have stopped accepting local donations and, instead, are now getting blood shipped in from the continental U. S. The third, more definitive, test is called PRNT, or the   neutralization test. Because PRNT is expensive and takes at least a week longer to do than the Zika   the ELISA test is widely considered the more practical option in many cases. ”And herein lies where science needs to innovate a bit,” says Ted Pierson, a virologist and senior investigator at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Sometime in December, Pierson and colleagues in his molecular virology lab dropped their work on dengue virus so they could press the pedal to the metal on Zika. Pierson’s work doesn’t focus on pregnant women or blood transfusions. ”I am focused on amino acids, hydroxyls and phosphates,” he explains. His team is trying to figure out how to make a better version of the antibody test  —   the Zika   test the CDC is distributing to labs. ”The problem here is actually quite simple,” Pierson explains. Viruses in the same family  —   in Zika’s case, the flaviviruses  —   can look similar on the outside, and the antibodies the human immune system uses to fight them can also be similar. So, if a person had been infected sometime along the way with another   virus in that family, like dengue or West Nile  —   or even if they simply had been vaccinated against yellow fever  —   they could test positive in a Zika antibody test. ”It’s a good example of where the devil is in the details,” Pierson says, and those details are what he and his colleagues are delving into now. ”What we, as a field, need to do is develop antigens that allow us to distinguish between the antibodies specific to Zika, versus those for other flaviviruses,” he says. The group is essentially stripping down the virus to figure out what is unique to Zika  —   what distinguishes it from related viruses. The researchers are particularly interested in proteins, like the ”fusion loop,” that lie on top of the virus and help it enter a human cell. Once those unique parts are identified, it might be possible to create a more specific test that has much lower odds of triggering false positives. That could take days to figure out  —   or months, Pierson says. ”You just can’t predict,” he says. ”This is science. We just have to do the experiments.” In the meantime, people across the country who have jobs like Cleveland Weeden’s will be working long days. ”You get physically tired,” Weeden admits. ”We’re not robots. Your hands cramp up after you pipette so much. But that’s what we’re here for. We’re public health scientists.” As the weather warms and mosquitoes start flying around, these scientists will keep on testing with  —   they hope  —   better and better tools."
"In 1903, in a cheery local tavern tucked away in Wells River, Vt. one of America’s most successful fat men’s clubs was launched. ”We’re fat and we’re making the most of it!” was their mantra. ”I’ve got to be   I can’t fight and I can’t run,” was their motto. Members had to be at least 200 pounds, pay a $1 fee to enter and learn a secret handshake and password. Twice a year, members gathered, with meetings announced in advance to allow the men to stuff up in order to meet the minimum weight requirement. A 1904 Boston Globe article described the biannual meetings colorfully: ”This village is full of bulbous and overhanging abdomens and double chins tonight, for the New England Fat Men’s Club is in session at Hale’s Tavern. The natives, who are mostly bony and angular, have stared with envy at the portly forms and rubicund faces which have arrived on every train.” The fat men’s clubs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were spectacular celebrations of the wealth and chubbiness of a bygone era. At once sociological curiosity and anthropological artifact, these clubs were a vestige of perhaps the last time society found corpulence to be worthy of celebration.   were a competitive event. A New York Times article from 1885 describes the crestfallen reaction of a member of a Connecticut fat men’s club upon stepping on the scale. ”I must weigh over 300 pounds now,” George Kapp boasted. Alas, he came in at a disappointing 243. As the Times reported, ”His friends thought he shrank at least 20 pounds more from grief before evening.” Daryl Leeworthy, a historian at the U. K.’s Swansea University, says that fat men’s clubs weren’t just an East Coast phenomenon. Nevada, Utah and Tennessee boasted versions as well. And he says the clubs weren’t just venues to celebrate the joys of eating without concern and brag about one’s girth. They were, essentially, networking events. Memphis’ fat men’s baseball club had a reception committee replete with judges, ministers and a rabbi, he says. Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan traveled to a Fat Men’s Club in Concord, Mass. to drum up support for one of his presidential runs, Leeworthy says. What did one do at a fat men’s club gathering? Well, eat, of course  —   a lot. At its peak, the New England’s Fat Men’s Club had 10, 000 members, according to writer Polly Tafrate’s brief history of the club for Upper Valley Life. The men would cram huge breakfasts into their bellies, then stumble outside and work up a sweat in a friendly   competition showcasing strength and virility:   contests, broad jumps and races, Tafrate writes. The exertion also served to   appetite for the indulgent dinner spread that awaited members at sundown. It was a ridiculous amount of food, Tafrate writes: ”One   menu included oyster cocktail, cream of chicken soup, boiled snapper, fillet of beef with mushrooms, roast chicken, roast suckling pig, shrimp salad, steamed fruit pudding with brandy sauce, assorted cakes, cheese and ice cream followed by coffee and cigars. The evening was laced with large portions of wit, sarcasm and roaring laughter.” Even at the height of chubby chic, being grossly, morbidly obese was never celebrated as a sign of beauty and wealth, explains Peter Stearns, a professor of history at George Mason University and author of Fat History. He notes that, while having wide hips and some girth was considered attractive for a woman  —   indicating her prosperity and fertility  —   ”fat ladies” were often mocked and included as a freak show element in traveling circuses. Fat men weren’t similarly lampooned, though they, too, faced ridicule: Tafrate’s article mentions a child exclaiming: ”Gee, look at that stomach! Let’s get under it and keep out of the rain!” However, female versions of fat men’s clubs did exist, according to Leeworthy. He points to a Hazleton, Pa. venue whose female members weighed 236 pounds on average. But Leeworthy says the opposite  —   fat women’s reduction clubs  —   were far more common. ”One of these existed in Chicago just after the First World War and aimed at promoting responsible diet among the city’s overweight women,” Leeworthy told us in an email. ”Even in the 19th century, diet pills (sometimes known as ’obesity pills’) were advertised. . .. In a world where power and status mattered a great deal, this was yet another reminder that women tended to have neither.” Fat men’s clubs were not a uniquely American phenomenon, though they were more popular here than elsewhere, Leeworthy adds. There was a French version  —   Les Cents Kilos, or ”The Hundred Kilos”  —   formed in 1897 that didn’t quite take off. The Serbian capital of Belgrade created a version in 1932. He says Britain’s version of the club had a twist: Members who didn’t meet the weight requirement had to pay a fine, which was donated to charity. Throughout history, there have been wavering ideas about ideal body type. As Leeworthy notes: ”Traditionally, being fat was closely associated with wealth and status. For most of our ancestors, the poorer they were, the less food they had to eat, and the thinner and shorter they tended to be. And power and wealth and status are attractive characteristics: If a person’s body is their temple, then being the size of a cathedral told others that you were someone of significance.” But as the Industrial Revolution began to change the way we worked and ate, views about fat and health also began to shift. ”An increasing number of people had jobs that weren’t physically demanding,” Stearns notes. And the advent of modern agricultural methods made food supply more reliable. ”For the bulk of the middle class, the pendulum began to swing,” he says. In other words, people were expending less energy and were more confident about getting a meal. In some ways, fat men’s clubs were a last hurrah for celebrations of corpulence. As Stearns writes in Fat History, ”In general, in a trend that began around 1910, doctors and insurance actuaries began to push preferability of underweight to overweight, in terms of health and longevity.” Being fat was no longer so feted. Membership at fat men’s clubs began to dwindle, as did waistlines. For instance, at the last meeting of the New England Fat Men’s Club, in 1924, only 38 members showed up, none of whom met the   mark, Tafrate reports. Today, body image faces a new chapter. Gone are   skinny legs a line of curvy, more realistic Barbies reflects actual bodies. Thigh gaps, hot dog legs and waist trainers, while still a part of the popular lexicon, are criticized for promoting unhealthy body images. While it’s unlikely that fat men’s clubs will ever catch on again, current trends toward body acceptance might yet nudge us toward that Goldilocks level of body image: not too fat, not too thin, just plain healthy. Tanya Basu is a writer based in Brooklyn. She’s on Twitter: @mstanyabasu."
"By the time they’re in elementary school, some kids prove to be more troublesome than others. They can’t sit still or they’re not socializing or they can’t focus enough to complete tasks that the other kids are handling well. Sounds like ADHD. But it might be that they’re just a little young for their grade. Studies done in several countries including Iceland, Canada, Israel, Sweden and Taiwan show children who are at the young end of their grade cohort are more likely to get an ADHD diagnosis than their older classmates. The youngest students were between 20 percent and 100 percent more likely to get the diagnosis or ADHD medication than were the oldest students in the cohort, says Helga Zoëga, an epidemiologist at the University of Iceland who worked on the Icelandic and Israeli studies. The most recent evidence comes from Taiwan, where an analysis showed the youngest students in a grade were roughly 75 percent more likely to get a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder than the oldest ones. It was published Thursday in the Journal of Pediatrics. Kids are generally 6 years old when they start first grade. A scant few months can span a lot of mental growth at this age. ”Within that age range there is a huge difference in developmental and social and emotional maturity,” says Dr. Adiaha   a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Texas Children’s Hospital who was not involved in any of the studies. ”A    is just not the same as a   .” And yet a   might stand shoulder to shoulder with another student nearly 12 months her elder. ”And the way we diagnose ADHD is we talk to the parent about the child’s behavior, and we mail the teacher questionnaires,”   says. ”The teacher will be comparing the child’s behavior relative to other children in the class.” That could lead to a mistaken diagnosis of ADHD. Zoëga says the younger the student, the greater the likelihood that student will receive an ADHD diagnosis or medication. ”If you look at the [students’ age] just month by month, you’ll see that the likelihood increases with each month,” she says. Zoëga says the only country studied so far where the relative age of young children doesn’t seem to have an effect on ADHD diagnosis is Denmark, where there’s more flexibility for when children enter school. So this could be because Danish parents with kids who are born just before the cutoff date for grade school entry choose to hold their offspring back one year. But if you’re an American parent with children born in the months of December, November or October, that doesn’t mean a child should repeat a grade for the fear their relative youth will handicap them,   says. ”There is absolutely no data to support grade repetition for maturity issues. Children who repeat a grade are at a higher risk of dropping out of high school. They are more likely to be bullied.” If the child does have ADHD or another disorder, she notes, repeating a grade will not fix the disorder. And relatively younger children diagnosed with ADHD might really have ADHD, says Dr.   Chen, a psychiatrist at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. ”There’s a potential for the harm of overdiagnosis and overprescription.” That would unnecessarily subject kids to unwanted side effects of stimulant medication and the stigma of the disorder. But perhaps older, more   students are just being underdiagnosed and not get help they might need, he says. The studies didn’t look into that. The best thing for worried parents to do is just give the kids a chance to grow up, Chen says. In most of the studies done on relative age and ADHD, the difference in diagnosis rates vanished by the time the students reached their teenage years. ”I think we have to wait for a while, he says. ”We have to have more time to evaluate their behavior, attention and brain development.” The data also mean that doctors should take the child’s relative age into account when diagnosing ADHD, Zoëga says. ”It has a sensible solution. Just treat the individual according to his or her age.”"
"The smoke has now cleared on the first season of SyFy’s ambitious adaptation of The Expanse books. Just before the series aired, I wrote a post pleading to the gods of science fiction to please, please, please not let television destroy this thing of beauty I love so dearly. With the final credits rolled up, it’s time to answer that   question. Did it suck? The answer, as we will see, tells us not just about the success or failure of a particular show but also about the nature of fandom in a world awash in stories. So, let’s start with the answer to the suck question. I am happy, so happy, to report that SyFy’s The Expanse did not suck. In fact, it did not suck so much that it was the best and most important piece of science fiction to appear on the small screen in a decade. To unpack the assessment, let’s start with a little background. The Expanse is not your ordinary   story. There are no warp drives and no aliens with prosthetic forehead appendages. Set in our own solar system a few hundred years in the future, the narrative stays true to what technology might allow as humanity becomes an interplanetary culture. The realism of a    world where whole populations make their homes on other solar system worlds is what sets the first books in the series apart. Remarkably, the show delivered on the promise of that realism. What makes the The Expanse so exciting is how hard the creative team worked to bring the science’s   to bear in a way that has not been seen since 2001 A Space Odyssey. Much of the action, for example, takes place inside the asteroid Ceres, which has been hollowed out and   to create a version of artificial gravity. But while spinning something allows you create a   pull (a push really) it also leaves you dealing with the Coriolis force that bends the path of falling objects (it’s the same ”force” that bends hurricanes into their giant swirls). So, in the show we see characters pouring a drink while holding a glass off to the side as the stream corkscrews downward. Another example of lived scientific realism comes in the many spaceship scenes. When the engines are on and you’re accelerating between planets, your feet are pinned to the floor. Thrust equals gravity as Einstein showed us. But once you cut the engines, you’re back in   and everything goes weightless. This leads to one particularly gruesome scene with a   floating orb of blood that I won’t go into more detail about. Bleech! Now you might think I’m just being a nerdy physicist with all this, ”Oh my God, they got the Coriolis force right!” Well, yes, I’m afraid that’s true. I was, in fact, jumping up and down on my couch during that scene. But while I might have gotten more excited about these kinds of things than your average viewer  —   and I did calculate the spin rate required to give Ceres   Earth gravity  —   there is a deeper point. It’s exactly this attention to detail that made the difference for the show’s world building. Without it, the internal logic of a universe where Earth and Mars are superpowers standing at the edge of war would fall apart. And without giving us a vision for the realities of a life in space, the impoverished   status of societies living in the asteroid belt would have become a cartoon rather than an extension of realities we know today. So, my verdict is that the show nailed the externalities as much as the constraints of budgets and filming on Earth allowed. But that’s really just half the battle. Without characters you really love or hate, getting the physics right (or  ) would mean nothing more than expensive sets and a lot of CGI. It was the characters that made the difference between the books and the show really interesting. The first book of the series is really two stories that slowly converge. On the one hand, we have Josephus Miller, a   detective on Ceres chasing down a missing persons case that smells wrong. The noir elements of Miller’s ambiguous morality are one of the books’ great delights and the actor Thomas Jane perfectly captures the dark, exhausted spirit of the character. From the wise cracks to owning ”that ridiculous hat,” Jane understood exactly how to update Sam Spade to the asteroid belt. The second narrative involved the crew of the stolen (”salvaged”) Martian war ship the Rocinate: Capt. James Holden (Steven Strait) engineer Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper) pilot Alex Kumar (Can Anvar) and general badass Amos Burton (Wes Chatham). In the book, these characters know each other well and already have a bond when the story starts. The show changes these relationships allowing the viewer to become familiar with them as they slowly discover and slowly learn to trust each other. The actors did an exceptional job breathing life and humanity to their characters. Finally there’s UN   chief Chrisjen Avasarala who does not appear in the books until the second volume. The show brings her front center  —   and actor Shohreh Aghdashloo mixes elegance with a viper’s acumen for attack and parry in her portrayal of the spy master. The only complaint one might raise is that in the book Avasarala has a potty mouth that could singe steel. Given its   approach, the show unfortunately drops her delightful profanity. And it’s here that things get interesting in a more general sense. I fell in love with the show’s complex characters and their gradually converging story lines. But they were not the same as the books’ characters and their narratives were not the same as the books’ stories. They were close, but different. In that way, watching The Expanse was like discovering my favorite story set in a slightly parallel universe. Things were both same and different and that, for me, said a whole lot about the role our cherished stories play in modern life. From Sherlock Holmes to Jane Austin to Batman, culture in the era of mass media has meant the evolution of a kind of ”fandom” which seems like something fundamentally new. Human beings are storytellers. From early myths to Shakespeare, this is how we understand ourselves. But since the beginning of the 20th century, we have developed ever more layered ways to tell our stories. Sherlock Holmes appears in books and then on stage and then in movies and then on TV and then back again to new books. We love his character so much that we seem to need to keep telling those stories. This includes finding new ways to tell them, adapting and altering and   in the process. For some, these changes and additions can be a violation of the original’s ”canon” (a term of particular nerdiness). But, if done well, they allow us to revisit the stories and delight in them again, finding new and creative directions that ultimately show us why we loved the original so deeply. So in that way and many more, SyFy’s The Expanse succeeded where it could easily have failed. To the entire creative team, I bow deeply and say, simply, ”thank you.” Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. The finest country songwriters understand that the best way to a big idea is often through a small detail. Consider the central gesture that dictates the action in Brandy Clark’s beautiful song ”I Cried,” which appears on producer Dave Cobb’s graceful compilation album Southern Family. Contemplating a grandfather’s death and his wife’s ensuing loneliness, Clark builds the song’s chorus around the phrase, ”I cried,” her voice arching up into a tender, transcendent falsetto in the next line, she takes the mood down again. ”I tried to hold my head high, it ended up in my hands.” That simple image so effectively captures the experience of living with grief: the attempt to show strength for others, for your own sanity, and the gradual, quiet, repetitive sag into vulnerability. Who hasn’t experienced this moment at a funeral  —   or, as Clark describes, while simply talking on the phone with a fellow loved one left behind? There’s no need for an angel’s trumpets here. ”I Cried” says more about mortality with a sigh. Southern Family collects such moments in a bouquet of memories and treasured sentiments, in the process coalescing into one of the subtlest concept albums to ever bear that dangerously pretentious descriptor. Inspired by the 1979 album White Mansions, a song cycle about the Civil War spearheaded by the writer Paul Kennerly and produced by Glyn Johns, Cobb’s own effort doesn’t adhere to a linear narrative the way its predecessor does. It’s more like the way we tell tales now, in dialogue across social media, our individual experiences adding up to a collective portrait of our times. Mainstream country stars and Americana favorites show why those separate categories are increasingly meaningless  —   at least in Cobb’s world, where a strong composition and an unfussy live arrangement always get to the core of things. Miranda Lambert’s hymnlike ”Sweet Bye And Bye” complements Jason Isbell’s righteous ”God Is A Working Man” (a great campaign song for the right candidate, by the way). ”Mama’s Table,” a perfect ballad Jamey Johnson originally wrote for the Oak Ridge Boys and himself sings here, gets an answer from Zac Brown in ”Grandma’s Garden.” John Paul White offers his own funeral confession in the heartrending ”Simple Song 1,” while Anderson East confronts another life passage  —   parents’ divorce  —   in ”Learning.” Alongside offerings by Holly Williams, Morgane and Chris Stapleton, Shooter Jennings, the excellent newcomer Brent Cobb (cousin of Dave) and Rich Robinson (who brings gospel into the mix via the Settles Connection chorus in the grand closer ”The Way Home”) these songs ground place and community in the experience of the everyday: a kid’s bottle of Cheerwine, a brother’s initials carved in Grandma’s table, an old song that means something different when you sing it in nursery school and, later, to your own child. Hotly anticipated as Dave Cobb’s grand statement about the generation of mostly Southern artists who, with his help, are shifting the definitions of both country and Americana music, this collection succeeds by being as modest as its helmsman. ”Southern” and ”family” are both fraught terms  —   as are ”country” and ”Americana”  —   but instead of trying to clearly define them, Cobb (who plays guitar in nearly every track) encouraged his collaborators to approach them gently. The 12 resulting songs reflect family structures that are in flux but which endure because of love and memory, in a South constructed at backyard parties and in mothers’ kitchens more than in any legislature or historical site. Southern Family also reflects the eclecticism of the music that’s long emanated from Nashville and its environs. Clark’s track, enhanced by pedal steel and Mellotron, is high countrypolitan class East’s has the Muscle Shoals swagger he’s made his trademark. Lambert invokes the Southern gospel her song title recalls. Brent Cobb gets swampy in the comical ”Down Home,” while White finds the place where folk music meets The Beatles. Bluegrass and blues and righteous Southern rock all find a place here. More than anything else, Southern Family is an argument for tradition as an organic concept, not an imposed one. Family is in the details, and to capture those details we have to listen to each other and accept the joy, the pain and the differences."
"Canada and the U. S. have announced a cooperative plan to tackle climate change by cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, investing in clean energy research and reducing future hydrofluorocarbon use. At a joint press conference in the White House Rose Garden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Obama praised the strong ties between Canada and the U. S. They also announced plans to further facilitate trade between the two countries and expressed a shared commitment to protect the environment. ”As the first U. S. president to visit the Arctic, I saw how both of our nations are threatened by rising seas, melting permafrost, disappearing glaciers and sea ice,” Obama said. ”The president and I share a common goal: We want a   economy that continues to provide good jobs and great opportunities for all of our citizens,” Trudeau said. ”And I’m confident that by working together, we’ll get there sooner than we think.” Trudeau’s visit to the White House is the first by a sitting Canadian prime minister in nearly two decades. And the collaborative approach to regulating the oil and gas industry comes after years of tension between the Obama and Canadian leaders over the White House’s opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. Trudeau, who assumed his post in November, is just starting his time as the leader of Canada Obama, for his part, is in his final year in office. But Obama told reporters he’s confident that their agreement will survive the next administration. The two leaders have committed to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 percent, relative to 2012 levels, by 2025, and to join a World Bank campaign to reduce routine flaring at gas and oil operations. Their joint statement on climate change efforts included a number of other shared commitments, including: The Keystone XL pipeline  —   which strained ties between the U. S. and Canada over the past few years, and dominated discussions of energy between the two nations  —   was not mentioned. The two leaders also expressed a desire to collaborate to protect the Arctic beyond reducing the impact of climate change. They set a goal of protecting 17 percent of Arctic land and 10 percent of marine areas, and said they were committed to involving indigenous leaders, as well as traditional knowledge, in decisions related to the Arctic. The shared commitment to fighting climate change, in particular, was received as a significant shift in both nations’ positions. Last year, NPR’s Christopher Joyce wrote that when it came to international cooperation on climate change, ”the U. S. government has been like the   movie star who has been offered the lead role, but won’t commit.” And Canada? In The New Republic last fall, Rebecca Leber called Canada under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper a ”climate villain.” With Thursday’s joint statement, Obama and Trudeau indicated they now want their countries to step to the forefront of the global conversation on climate change. ”We know that our international partners expect  —   and indeed need  —   leadership from us on this issue,” Trudeau said."
"A new study confirms what many Americans already knew deep in their hearts: We’re not good at math. Not only that, but when it comes to technology skills, we’re dead last compared with other developed countries. The PIAAC study  —   the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies  —   looks at the skills adults need to do everyday tasks, whether it’s at work or in their social lives. ”Clearly, we have some work to do in this country,” says Peggy Carr, the acting commissioner of the government’s National Center for Education Statistics. The study compared countries in the Organization for Economic   and Development (OECD). Japan and Finland led the group in literacy, math and technology skills, while the United States’ performance was average or well below average in each category. Literacy, Overall, Americans’ everyday literacy skills were average. But if you zoom in and focus on just the young adults, a more complex picture emerges. Americans who went to college and graduate school did well. They scored above their peers with similar degrees in other developed countries. For young adults with a high school diploma or less, things did not look so good. These Americans performed significantly worse than those in other countries with the same education level. ”Postsecondary institutions should be happy,” says Carr. ”But on the other end of the continuum, we have young people coming out of high school  —   or not graduating from high school  —   that are struggling with everyday competencies.” Math, Carr says this pattern is even more obvious if you look at the math skills of young adults. This study found that Americans with a high school diploma performed about the same as high school dropouts in other countries. ”We need to think seriously about how to get them functioning better,” says Carr. She offers a sample math problem from the test: You go to the store and there’s a sale. Buy one, get the second half off. So if you buy two, how much do you pay? ”High   adults, they can’t do this task  —   on average,” says Carr. Technology, When it comes to technology skills, the story gets worse. The U. S. came in last place  —   right below Poland. The study looked at basic technology tasks: things like using email, buying and returning items online, using a   menu, naming a file on a computer or sending a text message. Across the board, Americans performed poorly on these tasks. However, there was a significant racial difference, with nonwhites scoring below whites. ”I don’t think we were particularly shocked by that finding,” says Carr. She points out that these racial differences are similar to what other national and international studies have found. She says these findings should be concerning to everyone, especially leaders in the business community and in the   school systems."
"For   there was a world before Sept. 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and one after. Now, their community faces the dual threats of extremism and growing atheism. Young   are angry and frustrated, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. While bound by their religion and their community, they have opinions as diverse as their backgrounds.  NPR’s Tom Gjelten met a group of young American Muslims to discuss the challenges they see ahead for their community. Below, meet the participants be sure to click the audio link above to hear their spirited conversation. Born and raised in Virginia, the      is a youth counselor. On Libya after the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi and the call for solidarity among the world’s Muslims, I know of people who went [to Libya] and were, like, ”Yeah. What we did here in Libya, we’re going to go do there in Syria and help them out, and then when we’re done with Syria, we’re going to go to Iraq, and when we’re done with Iraq, we’re going to go to Palestine, and when we’re done with Palestine, you know, everything is going to be fine and dandy.” On his racial and ethnic identity, I grew up black. Look at my complexion. I look white. But white kids did not accept me. I couldn’t be white. Black kids in my neighborhood, they accepted me. I was, like, all right. I guess I’m black. I’m Libyan. I’m from Africa. Born in North Carolina to immigrants from Nigeria, the    research assistant at a think tank grew up in Arkansas. On growing up in the age of Islamophobia, If you’re even a little bit younger than me, you do not know an America without Islamophobia. Something that is terrifying to me is what it’s like to be a [Muslim] teenager in an environment where you’re always talked about as an ”other” or a terrorist or somebody violent. On how ISIS challenges American Muslims to think more critically, ISIS preys on our inability to walk and chew gum at the same time. It’s making us think more critically. It’s making us look critically at the way our media tells stories about how this happens. It’s making us think and look critically at American foreign policy. It’s making us think and look critically at the way we construct Islam in America. The    international trade lawyer was born in Pakistan and raised in Georgia.  On why she’s grateful to have grown up in the South, Only in the South could you say to your friend, ”Hey, you know what? I’ve got to pray,” and they’d be like, ”Of course!” They talk about God in a very personal way. . .. Their relationship with Jesus made me want to have a closer relationship with God, I’ll be honest. On how people think ISIS is a ”Muslim” problem, I do not understand these people. I don’t understand how anyone can become so inhumane. I feel like people are now pushing ISIS on me. It wasn’t our problem until people were, like, ”Oh, this is your problem, because you’re a Muslim.” Born and raised in Chicago, the      is a community organizer and former prison chaplain. On how ISIS thrives on ignorance and lack of critical thinking, ISIS is not doing these things just  . They’re very methodic. So as a Muslim if you go and you try to refute them, you’re likely going to fail, because they’ll be quoting scripture, sayings of the Prophet, historical events from early Islam. And most Muslims don’t have that. They’re not equipped with the proper knowledge, and so ISIS thrives on our own ignorance and our lack of critical thinking. On the growth in both extremism and atheism, On one extreme, you have the yahoos, right? And they’re going to go and be attracted by that rhetoric. Then on the other side you have the regular Muslims, and they’re just, maybe they’re not feeling it anymore. I mean, I know, personally, I get emails all the time, people doubting their faith. People who come to me now and say that they’re atheist. On how Muslims need to make religious literacy a top priority, I had somebody tell me they were basically going to walk out of Islam. I said, ”Before you distance yourself, just give me a few weeks.” Before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, I think we all need to kinda take a step back and rehash our own understanding. Born in Chicago and raised in California, the      is an economist and Muslim chaplain at George Washington University. On who is attracted by ISIS’ claim that it defends the global Muslim community, or ummah, They’ve been worshipping either Islam or they’ve been worshipping the ummah. They have not been worshipping God. Whenever they go to a Friday sermon, at the end of it, the person giving the sermon is, like, you know, ”And let’s make dua [pray] for our brothers and sisters in Palestine, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia.” It’s like, oh, my God, I learned so much geography just because of this. You grow up around this, right? And you’re just, like, man, if only there was a way to unify the ummah, the ummah, the ummah. It’s about this collective Muslim nation. Born in Egypt and raised in Alabama, the      is a human rights lawyer. Born and raised in Washington, D. C. to parents who converted to Islam before his birth, the      is an engineering consultant. On how it doesn’t take a deep understanding of Islam to know ISIS is wrong, I don’t feel like I need to be a scholar to know that ISIS is ridiculous. All I know is that they’re committing heinous crimes by my understanding of Islam, and that is enough for me. I don’t need a scholarly opinion to tell me that someone is ridiculous."
"At the funeral for former first lady Nancy Reagan, her children Ronald Prescott Reagan and Patti Davis remembered her devotion and humor in their eulogies. Nancy Reagan died last week at age 94. Both son and daughter recalled the unbreakable love between their mother and their father, former President Ronald Reagan. ”My parents were two halves of a circle,” Davis said. She also recalled a humorous anecdote about her mother. Davis said that a few days before her mother died, she reminded her mother of a story about how her father used to regularly get massages from a ”large eastern European man” who would come to the family’s house. Davis continued: ”On one of these days, as my father lay face down on the table, my mother tiptoed in, kissed him lightly on the back of his neck and tiptoed out. He didn’t know it was her. But he went through the rest of the massage, never said a word, and after the masseur left he said to my mother, ’I don’t think we can have him back anymore.’ ’Why,’ she asked him, ’what happened?’ ’Well, he kissed me.’ ”When she told him it was her, he was flooded with relief and said, ’thank God, I didn’t know what to do.’ ” The crowd laughed before Davis once again turned somber. ”My mother’s laughter in remembering that day would, unbeknownst to me, turn out to be the last time I would hear her laugh,” she said. Ronald Prescott Reagan recalled his mother’s ”chutzpah.” He said that his mother, cognizant of Ronald Reagan’s passion for working on his ranch, once asked what she could do to help. ”He handed her a bucket of paint and a brush and my mother painted a mile worth of fence, every post, every plank, both sides,” he said, laughing. ”That paint job lasted for the duration.” Ronald Prescott Reagan said his mother’s   attitude helped push his father to run for office. ”Both possessed great individual talents, but as a couple, they were more than the sum of their parts,” he said. ”They were   they completed each other.” Now Nancy Reagan will be laid to rest at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. alongside her husband, who died in 2004. ”It’s a beautiful spot. . .. Nancy is going to be buried right next to [the former president] which is what she wanted,” NPR’s Nathan Rott reports. ”She planned almost every detail of this funeral before her passing.” The ceremony drew about 1, 000 relatives, dignitaries and friends, including Michelle Obama and former first ladies Hillary Clinton, Rosalynn Carter and Laura Bush. Former President George W. Bush, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Caroline Kennedy were in attendance, as were President Richard Nixon’s daughter, Tricia Nixon Cox, and President Lyndon Johnson’s daughters Luci Baines Johnson and and Lynda Bird Johnson Robb. Also attending were Hollywood notables such as Tom Selleck, Wayne Newton, Melissa Rivers, Tina Sinatra, Bo Derek, Ralph Lauren and Mr. T, who was famously photographed dressed as Santa with Nancy Reagan sitting in his lap for her ”Just Say No”   campaign in the 1980s."
"Hillary Clinton apologized on Friday after she called the late Nancy Reagan a ”very effective,  ” advocate on   awareness. The Democratic presidential candidate now says she ”misspoke” when she told MSNBC during Reagan’s funeral that the former first lady and her husband, President Ronald Reagan, pushed for recognition of the disease in the national community. ”It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about   back in the 1980s. And because of both president and Mrs. Reagan  —   in particular Mrs. Reagan  —   we started a national conversation,” Clinton said. ”When before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective,   advocacy, but it penetrated the public conscious, and people began to say, ’Hey, we have to do something about this, too. ’” However, it wasn’t until 1987 that President Reagan gave his first speech on the topic, calling for more testing (but not making it mandatory). At that time, according to the New York Times, there had been nearly 36, 000 cases of AIDS and nearly 21, 000 deaths. Reagan has been roundly criticized for not doing enough to educate the public and draw attention to the growing   epidemic during his administration. Clinton released a statement hours later, apologizing for her remarks. Even Clinton supporters were up in arms over her   comments. Former Clinton White House aide and Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin, whose organization has endorsed Clinton, tweeted the former first lady was ”no hero” on the issue. Other LGBT activists, such as columnist Dan Savage, also pushed back on social media."
"For Natsumi Miyakawa, a young resident of Japan’s Tohoku region, March 11, 2011, should have been a day to celebrate. It was her junior high school graduation day. Instead, there was chaos and sadness. ”Everything was scary,” she recalls. In the coastal city of Ishinomaki, where she now lives, 3, 700 people drowned in the tsunami resulting from a   earthquake. A hilltop saved lives. ”People came to escape to this hill,” she says. ”And there is a kind of legend that has been passed down generation to generation that said when a tsunami happens, just escape to here.” In the nearby town where she and her family lived, Miyakawa spent 10 days after the tsunami living in her school’s gymnasium, which was turned into an evacuation center. She cleaned toilets and floors, filling buckets with water from the school swimming pool. She helped elderly evacuees who were huddled in the gym. Her parents had left her alone at the evacuation center as they rushed around the disaster zone, searching for electricity to power the respirator for her brother, who suffers from a heart condition. ”Actually, I didn’t want to stop,” Miyakawa says, ”because once I stopped, I know I would start thinking about really negative things.” John Roos, the U. S. ambassador to Japan at the time, remembers it well. ”Never, never experienced anything like it,” he says. ”And hope to never experience anything like it again.” Roos visited the region soon after the earthquake and tsunami, and remembers a conversation he had with the mayor of Rikuzentakata, another   town. ”Mayor [Futoshi] Toba said to me, ’Our government is responsible for rebuilding our schools, our houses, our infrastructure. But the one thing that you can do is to provide hope for our younger generation here in the Tohoku region,’ ” Roos says. That conversation sparked a U. S.  project that continues today  ” the Tomodachi Initiative, which links the youngest survivors, many of them orphaned by the earthquake and tsunami, with cultural and education opportunities through exchange trips to the U. S. With fundraising led by the U. S.  Council, Japanese and   businesses and organizations have donated $50 million to Tomodachi Initiative programs. The exchanges send Japanese students to the United States and American students to Japan, for stays ranging from several weeks to full semesters. Volunteers host program participants in their homes. Of the thousands of young people who have taken part in exchanges, 70 percent are from Japan’s   Tohoku region. Roos says many students from this part of the country would never otherwise have been able to learn English or spend significant time in the United States. ”The one thing each of those children had in common was that they had suffered a terrible loss,” Roos says. ”And so, part of it was to just give them a break from the    lives they were experiencing. But the other was to give them hope about their future.” Miyakawa is one of the 29, 000 individuals who’ve taken part in the programs or events put on by Tomodachi in the past five years. Now 20, she’s pursuing a career in nursing, focused on disaster medicine. ”After the disaster, I realized what it means to help someone,” she says. ”To do what you can, when you can.” Through the Tomodachi Initiative’s disaster nursing exchange, Miyakawa visited doctors and trauma centers in California and met with federal emergency management experts in Washington, D. C. ”In the future, I want to work all over the world for people fighting or suffering from something,” she says. ”Like disasters.” That’s an experience she knows and understands all too well. And from that experience comes her hope to help others. Akane Saiki contributed to this story."
"Temporary is lasting a long time for evacuees in neat blocks of prefabricated housing in Fukushima city. The wood siding on their tiny homes looks new. But these trailers are stretching into their fifth year of use. Saki Sato, 77, shows me around her home, where she lives alone in a kind of limbo. Each room is about the size of a   mattress. She is among the nearly 60, 000 Japanese who still find themselves in temporary trailer homes after having to flee five years ago following a   earthquake on March 11, 2011. The tremor unleashed a tsunami that reached a height of 128 feet and caused a nuclear disaster that contaminated soil with radiation in a large patch of surrounding territory. Sato’s former village of Iitate is in the radiation evacuation zone. It’s still not safe to return. On her wall along the narrow entrance in her temporary home are photos of loved ones. Her son. His kids. That’s where her extended evacuation hits her the hardest. ”I used to see my son regularly,” she says. ”But now he doesn’t come to visit. It’s too exhausting for him to come this far to visit. It’s really hard.” Of the estimated 19, 000 people who died in the disaster, most drowned within minutes. The tsunami also shut down the Fukushima   nuclear plant’s cooling system. It triggered meltdowns in three of its nuclear reactors that spread radiation plumes as far as 25 miles away. ”Many, so many lessons learned,” says Yuichi Okamura, a spokesman at TEPCO  —   the Tokyo Electric Power Co.  —   which owns the plant. Government and outside investigations show TEPCO missed several opportunities to prevent the meltdown. Now prosecutors may hold TEPCO leaders criminally responsible. TEPCO’s former chairman and other leaders were indicted just weeks ago on charges they failed to prevent the Fukushima meltdowns. Inside TEPCO’s Tokyo offices today, the company says it’s trying to look forward. ”Our organization . .. we have to improve the mindset itself. We have to change, we have to improve. We can improve,” says Okamura. Next month, the plant will begin a decommissioning process that will take 40 years. At the government level, the cost of decontaminating houses and farmland in Fukushima prefecture alone carries a $50 billion price tag. Recovery involves rebuilding roads, bridges and power lines. It also means helping rehouse many of those still displaced by the storm. Officials have already missed various deadlines for   evacuees. Part of the problem is competition for construction workers and materials. Japan’s government isn’t just rebuilding the coast  —   it’s also readying itself for the 2020 Olympics. Fukushima prefecture, just one of several Japanese prefectures affected by the disasters, estimates it’s only about halfway to its decontamination and recovery goals. ”In terms of infrastructure, our recovery has been quite fast, I would say,” says Hatsuo Fujishima, director of general affairs of the Fukushima prefecture government. He’s in charge of recovery efforts for the prefecture. ”The difference in Fukushima is the radiation problem. Radiation takes a long time to disappear,” Fujishima says. When it is safe to go home again, there’s also the issue of what people would return to. Communities, schools, businesses that once existed are no longer there. One business forced by radiation to relocate is   a   restaurant specializing in freshly made udon noodles. These days, Hiroshi Takahashi and his mom and dad are working in a cramped kitchen in a location far from the coast, in Fukushima city. After the village was evacuated, the family opened in Fukushima city and became a gathering place for Iitate village evacuees who wanted a sense of home hundreds of miles away from home. But the bonds of the village have since frayed. Takahashi says while many villagers showed up here in the immediate aftermath of the triple tragedy, he doesn’t see that many of them anymore. But he should be able to move the business back to Iitate next year. Leaders in charge of the cleanup are reopening parts of Iitate in March 2017 following years of decontamination. ”It’s a little complicated emotion I’m feeling,” he says of the prospect of returning to the village. ”Because even if I go back to Iitate, I’m not sure how many Iitate refugees will also come back.” That’s the big question  —   after all the effort and money spent on reconstruction: When can evacuees return, and will they want to? Rebuilding has taken so long, and public safety fears are so entrenched that the Fukushima government estimates half of the evacuees may never return. In other villages that have been deemed safe, the return rate has been far less than that 50 percent estimate. In the neighborhoods of temporary housing, Sato, the    and other elderly residents have a routine. Afternoon teas, flower arrangement classes, walks with neighbors. ”Also, my friends are living here now,” she says. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever go home to the village. Five years after a forced evacuation, Sato and thousands of others just like her are still in limbo. Akane Saiki contributed to this story."
"Mountain lion   who dwells in the hills around Los Angeles, has a substantial fan following. But then again, so do koalas. And that might put animal lovers in a bit of a tight spot  —   because   is the prime suspect in a koala killing. Killarney, a    female koala at the Los Angeles Zoo, went missing on March 3. Staff members immediately set out in search of her, the zoo says  —   but found only, well, parts. The zoo can’t prove that   did the deed. But they have their suspicions . .. ”There is no definite photo or video evidence that   the mountain lion that lives in Griffith Park, was the cause of her disappearance, but the mountain lion was seen on Zoo surveillance footage on grounds the night before she died,” the zoo said in a statement. And there was an   wall around the koala enclosure, Reuters reports, which suggests only a large predator could have jumped in, grabbed a   koala and jumped out. The zoo is located on the edge of Griffith Park,  ’s home range. A deputy mayor for city services said in a statement ”these types of incidents happen when we have a zoo in such close proximity to one of the largest urban parks in the country,” the wire service reports. The parody account for   has already responded, of course: Meanwhile, in more official outlets, the koala’s death has inspired varying reactions, the LA Times writes. A National Park Service official noted that household pets  —   and exotic zoo animals  —   should all be in ”safe enclosures” or inside at night, and that   would have been behaving normally if he preyed on a koala. But one LA city councilman said   ought to be relocated. For their own safety, the remaining 10 koalas have been transferred indoors, the zoo says. ”On Thursday morning, there were no signs of the tragedy,” the LA Times wrote. ”However, there also were no signs of koalas.”"
"Gaelynn Lea, the winner of NPR’s second annual Tiny Desk Contest, makes music like nobody else. Her sounds are steeped in the deep melodies of great Irish fiddle tunes, but her performance and singing style aren’t traditional. More than 6, 000 artists submitted videos in which they performed an original song behind a desk of their choosing with the hope of winning a chance to play a Tiny Desk concert at NPR. Gaelynn Lea was the overwhelming favorite of our six judges. After voting for Lea, I wanted to learn more about her and her remarkable talent. Following about a minute of just focusing on the desk, her video pans to a small woman in a wheelchair as she plays a violin she holds like a cello. Lea has brittle bone disease, which made it necessary for her to reinvent the ordinary  —   and, in this case, a way to play the fiddle. I also discovered, after selecting Gaelynn Lea, that she’d become friends with Alan Sparhawk of the band Low. Sparhawk first heard her perform at a farmers market in Duluth, Minn. where they both live. They’ve become friends who sometimes make music together, recording under the name The Murder Of Crows, so I also invited Sparhawk to join Gaelynn Lea for two of her four songs at this special Tiny Desk concert. There was hardly a dry eye. Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Colin  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"In his   keynote interview at South by Southwest, the music, film and tech festival in Austin, Texas, President Obama focused on technology’s role in civic life. Obama, who was interviewed by Evan Smith, editor of the Texas Tribune, cited low voter turnout as an area in which technology could improve citizens’ participation in government. He said it was ”easier to order a pizza than to vote” and said we need to think about how to ”redesign our systems so that we don’t have 50 percent or 55 percent voter participation in presidential elections.” Calling on government and private companies to work together, Obama said it’s vital to ”create systems that make government more responsive and make it work better.” When asked about people who are ideologically   the president pointed to the collective good, saying someone checking the weather on a smart phone is benefiting from government services. ”When government does great things, we take it for granted and it’s not a story,” he said, citing roads, geosatellite systems, armed forces and other public benefits as evidence. Smith also asked Obama about the ”massive digital divide” in the U. S. pointing to the fact that minorities have significantly less access to the Internet, which makes it more difficult for them to be engaged citizens or even do their homework. Obama responded by describing a program called the Opportunity Network, which installs   in   housing and rural areas. He acknowledged that this was only part of the answer, saying ”I’m trying to solve every problem.” But, Obama said, solving problems requires cooperation. He said the country needs to   the relationship between government and the private sector ”so that we use technology data, social media in order to join forces around problems.” If the U. S. does that, he said, ”there’s no problem that we face in this country that’s not solvable.” At the end of the interview, when asked about the ongoing legal battle between Apple and the FBI over accessing data on the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooters, Obama declined to comment specifically, but urged against ”absolutist” views on either side of the issue. The president said that while there must be some concessions to personal privacy (he cited airport security as one such existing concession) he said he was ”way on the civil liberties side” of the debate. Obama said technology is evolving so rapidly that there are questions being asked now that have never been asked before. ”We’re going to have to make some decisions about how we balance these risks,” he said."
"Recently returned from a groundbreaking   space mission, astronaut Scott Kelly announced Friday he will retire from NASA on April 1, but still continue to participate in research related to his space travel. ”This    mission was a profound challenge for all involved, and it gave me a unique perspective and a lot of time to reflect on what my next step should be on our continued journey to help further our capabilities in space and on Earth,” Kelly, 52, said in a statement from NASA. ”My career with the Navy and NASA gave me an incredible chance to showcase public service to which I am dedicated, and what we can accomplish on the big challenges of our day. I am humbled and excited by new opportunities for me to support and share the amazing work NASA is doing to help us travel farther into the solar system and work with the next generation of science and technology leaders,” he said. Kelly was selected by NASA in 1996, flew in space four times, and currently holds the American record for most time spent in space  —   520 days. His   extended space flight, from which he returned earlier this month, was aimed at understanding how long periods of time in space affect the body. His twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly, served as the control variable for studying changes in Scott’s body. Also providing data for scientists was cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who launched and returned with Kelly. ”Scott’s contributions to NASA are too many to name,” said Brian Kelly, director of Flight Operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the statement. ”In his year aboard the space station, he took part in experiments that will have   effects, helping us pave the way to putting humans on Mars and benefiting life on Earth.” NASA administrator Charles Bolden offered his thanks to Kelly: ”All of us in the NASA family  —   and indeed in the broader scientific community  —   are grateful that he was willing to sacrifice time with his loved ones, meals that don’t come in a bag, a cold beer, hot showers, cool autumn breezes, the sounds of birds chirping, the ability to lay his head on an actual pillow and so much more of the pleasures of life during his year of research and experimentation the International Space Station.” NASA says Kelly will continue to provide medical samples and support other testing related to his year in space."
"If you don’t hang out with lawmakers, economists and journalists in Washington, you probably think Democrats and Republicans disagree on economic policy. They don’t. In Washington, there’s actually a broad consensus about economic growth. These ideas have held sway for decades: Of course, Democrats and Republicans disagree on the details, but the framework has remained solid regardless of who holds power in the White House or Congress. That’s why President Obama, a Democrat, and House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, both support the   Partnership, a trade deal. It’s why Obama says that ”generations of immigrants have made this country into what it is,” and Ryan says that ”immigrants contribute to our economy.” It’s why Democrat Nancy Pelosi says that ”it is imperative that America continues to lead the world through innovation,” and Republican Mitch McConnell says that ”the Internet and the rapid adoption of mobile technology have been great American success stories.” Now, Washington’s cozy cocoon of ideas is getting a violent shaking from Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, and Sanders who is seeking the Democratic nomination, are very different candidates. One is a billionaire businessman, and the other a democratic socialist. But each is appealing to voters who believe that Washington’s economic framework is rotten. The candidates want to tear it down, and millions of   Americans agree. The people who helped build that framework are taking note. ”While the U. S. economy is performing well, the electorate remains unconvinced, even angry over how the economy has not performed for them, and their anger is stirred by presidential candidates in both parties,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said in a written assessment Thursday. To understand what’s been happening this presidential primary season, consider Michigan, where voters turned out in huge numbers for Sanders and Trump. According to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data, the   annual median household income in Michigan fell by about $14, 000 a year  —   down to about $52, 000  —   from 1999 to 2014. That same time period played out very differently for corporations. From 1999 to 2014, U. S. annual corporate profits after taxes shot up by about 250 percent, to nearly $1. 7 trillion. So, yes, businesses did much better, allowing Washington   to, in effect, say: ”See, we were right! We promoted the ideas that have kept America’s GDP ranked No. 1 in the world, even though China has four times our population.” But outside of Washington, millions of Americans are not living in a Big Picture or a Framework. They are living in houses that have lost value, in cities where they don’t trust the water pipes and where companies can suddenly announce they are moving jobs to other countries. With their support of Sanders and Trump, those workers have made it clear they want a new paradigm. Trump talks about building a wall to stop immigrants Sanders talks about breaking up big banks. So their solutions are quite different, but the message is the same: No more business as usual. Many economists say the alternatives would only be worse. They point to Argentina  —   it was one of the world’s richest nations a century ago. Then it fell behind in technological innovation and education, became politically chaotic and declined dramatically. The only way to improve the lives of average Americans is to encourage them to fit themselves into a technologically advanced,   intensely competitive global economy. But other economists are saying Washington does need to rethink its assumptions. Andrew Levin is a Dartmouth economics professor who spent many years in Washington as an economist for the Federal Reserve and for the International Monetary Fund. He said that for decades, economists have been basing their ideas on formulas that showed the free flows of goods, capital and people would maximize wealth. But these days, many are ”recognizing that our models are too simple . .. life is more complex,” Levin said. In other words, economists were right to say more trade could boost wealth, but wrong to assume it would help most workers. As wages have stagnated, ”confidence in the Washington consensus has very much faded over the past 10 years,” Levin said. So should the Washington consensus change? Yes, ”but you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Levin warned. For example, he said, it would be a big mistake to shut off all trade or return to an obsolete gold standard. Instead, he recommends that economic and policy leaders take smaller steps while   the data. For example, they could decide that ”trade agreements should ensure that the benefits are shared more evenly with American families,” he said."
"We here at The Salt like to bring you serious journalistic tails from the world of food. But hey, we like to unleash our silly side, too  ” and like the rest of the world, we’ve got a soft spot for man’s (and woman’s) best friend. So of course, we’re howling with delight at the latest food images charming the Internet:   Karen Zack’s clever Twitter photos highlighting the eerie resemblance between mutts and meals. In some cases, it takes dogged determination to separate the canines from the cuisine. Puppy or bagel? Chihuahua or muffin? These are the gnawing questions raised by Zack, who tweets from @teenybiscuit. She’s a freelance assistant director in media production who splits her time between Portland, Ore. and Seattle. But she tells us she’s looking to get into advertising strategy (we hear she’s good with the puparazzi). Previously, she’s pointered out the similarities between other animals and foods (duckling or plantain?) but it’s the dogs that have sunk their teeth into the Internet’s funny bone. Zack says her image comparing Labradoodles to fried chicken got things going  ” call it the bark heard round the world. And her fetching work has imitators nipping at her heels. (See Dalmatian or chocolate chip ice cream? Pug or loaf?   or croissant?) Ironically, though it’s Zack’s mutt mugs that have made the Internet sit and stay, she says she herself has a cat . .. named Toast. Yappy Friday, everyone!"
"Donald Trump’s campaign has spent an unusual amount of time this week answering questions about violent incidents. The latest involves an allegation by reporter Michelle Fields of conservative site Breitbart that she was assaulted by someone who was ID’d by another reporter as Trump’s campaign manager. Here’s what we know: What Fields reported, Fields said that someone ”grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down” after a press conference Tuesday. Washington Post reporter Ben Terris witnessed what happened and identified that someone as Trump manager Corey Lewandowski, reporting that the altercation left Fields with ”  bruises” on her arm. The Daily Beast also reported that ”sources said Lewandowski acknowledged to Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, that he did manhandle Fields.” And on Thursday, Politico posted the audio of the alleged incident. Fields also spoke about the incident to ABC News on Thursday, saying, ”Honestly, it’s been really hurtful, because obviously nobody wants to be touched and violated like that.” She was also asked what she would want to tell Trump about the incident and responded, ”I would just ask him to put himself in my shoes and imagine if I was his daughter.” Criminal complaint, The Jupiter Police Department said in a statement that it is investigating an alleged battery that happened Tuesday at the Trump event after a police report was filed Friday morning. The department wouldn’t release additional information because the investigation is active, but it appears to be about the incident  —   conservative news site IJ Review reports that the report was filed by Fields against Lewandowski. Trump campaign denies incident, The Trump campaign forcefully denied Fields’ story, saying in a statement that ”the accusation, which has only been made in the media and never addressed directly with the campaign, is entirely false. . .. In addition to our staff, which had no knowledge of said situation, not a single camera or reporter of more than 100 in attendance captured the alleged incident.” In the spin room after Thursday night’s GOP debate, Trump himself also said, ”they said nothing happened, everybody said nothing happened. Perhaps she made the story up, I think that’s what happened.” The campaign’s statement also questioned Fields’ credibility: ”We leave to others whether this is part of a larger pattern of exaggerating incidents.” Lewandowski then called Fields an ”attention seeker” in a tweet linking to a 2015 article that alleges former Rep. Allen West assaulted Fields. Breitbart claims mistaken identity, Breitbart initially said it ”stands behind Michelle Fields” and that ”Trump’s suggestion that Fields made up the incident Tuesday evening contradicts the evidence, including her own injuries, an account from Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, and audio recorded at the scene.” But Friday morning the organization said that after reviewing video footage it still believes the incident happened but does not believe Lewandowski was behind it. ”Given the similarity in appearance between Lewandowski and the security official, and given the fact that Lewandowski was walking on the other side of Trump from where Fields was at the time, the possibility of mistaken identity cannot be ruled out.” Ben Terris: ’I saw what I saw’ The Washington Post reporter who ID’d campaign manager Lewandowski is standing by his assertion. ”I saw what I saw,” he told the Post’s Erik Wemple blog, adding that he had his ”eyes trained on Corey Lewandowski” during the incident. Other physical incidents, Videos circulating on social media this week also showed a protester at a Donald Trump rally being punched in the face by an audience member as he was being led out of a rally Wednesday in Fayetteville, N. C. Rally attendee John McGraw was charged with assault and disorderly conduct in Wednesday’s incident, according to a post on Cumberland County Sheriff Earl ”Moose” Butler’s Facebook page. Pointing to Trump’s own rhetoric (”Knock the crap out of him, would you? ”) CNN’s Jake Tapper asked if Trump might be responsible for encouraging violence. ”I mean, I see it. There is some anger,” Trump responded. ”There’s also great love for the country. It’s a beautiful thing in many respects. But I certainly do not condone that at all, Jake.” That apparent assault came on the heels of yet another altercation showing a woman being pushed at a Trump rally last week, as well as another story of a reporter having a physical   with Trump’s security and staff."
"English keyboardist and composer Keith Emerson  —   the artist who defined the sound of Emerson, Lake  Palmer  —   died yesterday in Santa Monica, California he was 71 years old. His death was confirmed by the band’s manager. Update, March 11: the Santa Monica Police Department has confirmed to NPR that Emerson’s death is being investigated as a suicide. According to the police, he died of a gunshot wound to the head. Emerson was born at the end of World War II, in Todmorden, Lancashire, on November 2, 1944. He played in blues bands, including backing   Walker, before forming the   trio The Nice in the late 1960s, where he began experimenting with the sound of the Hammond organ. As he told Broadway World in 2014, he was really  . But he loved the huge scale of classical music and the improvisation of jazz. And when he heard Wendy Carlos’   Bach  —   played on a Moog synthesizer  —   he immediately bought an instrument and began taking it out on tour. Emerson   Emerson, Lake  Palmer, which played its first   show at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. Though the trio was best known commercially for its song ”Lucky Man,” Emerson delighted in weaving in quotations from classical composers like Bach, Rachmaninov, Bela Bartok, Alberto Ginastera and Aaron Copland into his music. With its big, dramatic sound, Emerson, Lake and Palmer was a huge   draw throughout the 1970s, and six of the group’s albums went platinum before ELP disbanded in 1979. In the late 1980s, Emerson regrouped with his former bandmates in two separate projects: Emerson, Lake  Powell with Greg Lake and Cozy Powell, and the band 3 with Lake and Carl Palmer as well as Robert Berry."
"Genius and food have a lot in common. Both nurture, inspire and occasionally intimidate. Some appeal to almost everyone instantly. Others are acquired tastes. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, scanning history’s greatest minds, we find many were inspired by certain food or drink, repulsed by others  —  or had some very peculiar dining habits. Thomas Edison used soup as an interviewing tool. He had prospective job applicants taste while he observed them carefully. Those who seasoned the soup  —   with pepper, for instance  —   before tasting it were rejected outright. They had too many assumptions. Then there was the French writer Honore de Balzac, who took coffee addiction to a new level. He would work through the night, downing 50 cups of   espresso. ”This coffee falls into your stomach, and straight away there is a general commotion,” he wrote in an essay titled ”The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” published in a French magazine in the 1830s. ”Ideas begin to move like battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place.” In the end, it was a battle Balzac would lose. He died at age 51. The cause of death? Caffeine poisoning. Many geniuses were picky eaters. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras hated beans. He supposedly forbade his followers from eating them, or even touching them. His dislike of legumes may have led to his death. According to legend, when attackers ambushed him, he refused to escape by running through a bean field. Many geniuses were vegetarians, including Leonardo da Vinci, Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw and the Nobel   mathematician Norbert Wiener. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein may or may not have been vegetarians. (The record is ambiguous.) Quite a few geniuses had quirky eating habits. Steve Jobs had some funny ideas about food, as he did about so many things. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, the Silicon Valley whiz kid subsisted mainly on dates, almonds  —   and lots of carrots. He supposedly ate so many carrots that ”friends remember him, at times, having a   hue,” writes Isaacson. Later, Jobs embarked on weeklong fasts, going about it ”in my usual nutso way,” he told Isaacson. ”After a week you start to feel fantastic. You get a ton of vitality from not having to digest all this food.” Jobs wasn’t alone in believing that the secret to a creative mind is a sparse diet. Aristophanes, the ancient Greek satirist, attributed the keen Athenian intellect to their   diet. Michelangelo was indifferent to food and ate ”more out of necessity than pleasure,” according to his apprentice and biographer Ascanio Condivi. While working on The Last Judgment, he wouldn’t eat until the evening, when he was done painting for the day. On the other end of the spectrum was Ernest Hemingway, who memorialized his gluttonous Paris years in his (posthumously published) memoir, A Movable Feast. Then there was Charles Darwin. He not only studied exotic animals, he also ate them. While studying at Cambridge University, he headed the Glutton Club, whose members met weekly to eat ”strange flesh,” including owls, hawks and bittern. Later, aboard the Beagle, he sampled armadillos (which ”taste  look like duck”) iguanas and giant tortoises. Clearly, food need not be appealing in order to inspire. Friedrich Schiller, the poet and philosopher, always kept a carton of rotten apples under his desk when he wrote. He said the odor reminded him of the countryside where he grew up. It might not be food and drink, per se, that foster creativity but, rather, the conviviality and intellectual   that a good meal engenders. Take ancient Athens, one of the earliest  —   and greatest  —   ”genius clusters” the world has seen. A centerpiece of city life was the symposia, literally ”drinking together.” Participants spent hours downing diluted wine and discussing philosophy, poetry or the latest gossip. In 18th century Edinburgh, center of The Scottish Enlightenment, it was an establishment called the Oyster Club that served as intellectual blender. At the time, oysters were considered egalitarian grub, food of the people. The club’s founders  —   economist Adam Smith and philosopher David Hume  —   consumed bushels of oysters and cases of claret, while they and the other (all male) members conversed about anything and everything. Perhaps the greatest example of dining establishment as creativity engine was the Viennese coffeehouse. During the city’s golden age, circa 1900, the coffeehouse was ”a sort of democratic club, and anyone could join it for the price of a cheap cup of coffee,” the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig recalls in his wonderful memoir, The World of Yesterday. What exactly did that admission price get you? For starters, a warm room at a time when housing  —   especially heated housing  —   was in short supply. It also got you information. Lots of it. The Viennese coffeehouse was the Internet of its day. They supplied the day’s newspapers, carefully mounted on long wooden poles. This is where you went to find out what was happening around the corner, or halfway around the world. Everyone had a favorite coffeehouse. For Freud, it was the Café Landtmann, a cozy place a short walk from his  . (The café is still there today, though it’s considerably more upmarket than during Freud’s day.) Cafégoers had their Stammtisch, their usual seat. For Freud, it was in a corner facing outward. There, he could sit, undisturbed, sipping his einen kleinen Braunen (short black coffee) and observing the creative milieu unfolding all around him. Now, you may be asking, where are all the women on this illustrious list? Genius is a social verdict  —   and up until very recently, the jury has consisted almost entirely of white men. For the most part, history’s female geniuses  —   and their dining peculiarities  —   have been swept under the table, like so many crumbs. There are notable exceptions, of course: Marie Curie, twice a Nobel laureate, who, as a broke student in Paris, survived for a while on bread and butter. There is Virginia Woolf, who supposedly demanded perfect table manners from her guests and chided them if they fell short. And Mozart’s older sister, known as Nannerl, was a prodigy in her own right, but, submitting to the era’s expectations for women, dropped her musical career when she married. Today, Wolfgang is the toast of classical music. Nannerl is remembered on a bottle of Austrian Schnapps. Eric Weiner is the author, most recently, of The New York Times   The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places, from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley."
"Last week, Izaic Yorks, a senior at the University of Washington, ran a mile in 3:53  —   the fastest college mile ever by an American. The effort qualifies him for the Olympic trials this summer. So why isn’t Yorks running in the mile at this weekend’s NCAA championships in Birmingham, Ala.? Turns out, he had to make a decision: run that mile alone, or run with his team in the distance medley relay or DMR. If he decided to run the mile race, he would have been required to run a preliminary round right before the DMR  —   compromising his team’s shot at a national title. Yorks recalls when his coach, Greg Metcalf, pulls him aside to ask what he thinks about running the mile race. ”I was just, no way. I want to do the DMR,” Yorks replied. ”That’s what I told these guys I would do. And I’m gonna stick to that word.” Metcalf continues. ”I’m sitting in my office on Sunday, making our declarations,” Metcalf says. ”And I hit the ’scratch’ button next to Izaic’s name, next to 3:53, I think, ’Am I the biggest idiot of all time? ’” Maybe. But in a sport that so often celebrates individual glory, Yorks is not only very fast, he’s also very loyal. Update @ 12:08 p. m. March 13: The UW Men finished second in the DMR on Friday, less than a second behind Oregon."
"Nevada’s home solar business is in turmoil as the state’s Public Utilities Commission starts to phase out incentives for homeowners who install rooftop solar panels. Some of the largest solar companies have stopped seeking new business in the state and laid off hundreds of workers. Even for small solar installers, this   business has slowed to a trickle. The warehouse at Robco Electric in Las Vegas was filled to capacity with pallets of solar panels stacked high last year. Now, it’s nearly empty. ”The PUC made a decision and it just devastated our industry,” says Robco President Rob Kowalczik. He’s all business when talking about how the PUC sided with the utility and pretty much killed off residential solar in Nevada. But when it comes to his workers, he chokes up. ”The hardest thing is to lay people off,” says Kowalczik. So far, his company has let 25 people go. The solar division of his company is down to a few salespeople and one installation crew. One of the 25 is Connie Berry. She was just a few months into her job as an installer for Robco. Now, she’s looking for work in the construction business, but she holds out hope her solar job will come back. ”It’s been two months now since I got laid off, and I was hoping to get a call back. . .. I got my tools. I’m ready to go,” says Berry. In front of Robco Electric, you’re more likely now to see the company’s sales cars parked in the middle of the day. Sales and marketing manager Tim Webb says last year they would have been out chasing down new leads all day. He says there were a lot of other solar companies on the road, too. ”It was kind of like the solar gold rush here. All these companies flocked into town, set up an office and sold systems. Now they’re gone. There’s just a few of us remaining,” says Webb. Companies like SolarCity say they were left with no choice but to stop doing business in Nevada when the PUC changed the rules for something called ”net metering.” Net metering allows homeowners with solar panels to sell excess electricity they generate to the utility at retail rather than wholesale rates. It’s a great deal for homeowners because they can do something good for the environment and save money on their energy bills. But every kilowatt generated on someone’s roof is one less the local utility sells. And utilities use that ratepayer money to maintain the electrical grid. In this case, the local utility, NV Energy, is owned by Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway. During an interview with CNBC last month, Buffett echoed an argument utilities across the country have been making: When solar customers don’t pay to maintain the power grid, that leaves everyone else to pick up the tab. ”We do not want the nonsolar customers, of whom there are over a million, to be subsidizing the 17, 000 solar customers,” Buffett said, talking about NV Energy’s customers in Nevada. Buffett said NV Energy can produce solar power from large, centralized plants for less than it costs to buy electricity from rooftop solar customers under the old net metering rules. ”We do not want our million plus customers who do not have solar to be buying solar at 10. 5 cents [per kilowatt hour] when we can churn it out for them at 4. 5 cents,” he said. SolarCity   and CEO Lyndon Rive says utilities like NV Energy are just trying to protect their monopolies. ”They want to deploy the infrastructure. They do not want to let consumers deploy that infrastructure because then they don’t get a regulated rate of return on that infrastructure,” says Rive. Rive wants big changes for the country’s power grid. Instead of central generators delivering electricity out to customers, he imagines a grid where customers produce their own power and compete with the local utility. Under Rive’s vision for the grid, there’s a smaller role  —   and less profit  —   for utilities. ”We need them to manage the lines and let the rest be a competitive market. Competition will drive innovation, which will then create products that we couldn’t even think of today,” he argues. The big solar companies haven’t given up completely on Nevada yet. SolarCity and others plan to challenge the changes to net metering, first in the courts and then with a ballot referendum in November. In the meantime, solar customers like Dale Collier are the big losers. His home in Henderson, outside Las Vegas, has 56 solar panels on the roof. He refinanced his house to pay for them. ”I thought this was [one of] the smartest things I ever did now I think it might be one of the stupidest things I ever did,” says Collier. Up until the changes to net metering in Nevada, he was saving about $150 a month on his power bill. But once the incentives are phased out, he figures having solar panels will cost him money. NV Energy asked regulators to grandfather in people like Collier. But the PUC rejected that request, saying all solar customers  —   new and existing  —   should get the same deal. The question now is whether Nevada’s experience will spread to other states. Solar advocates successfully preserved incentives next door in California. Now they’re focused on another sunny state, Arizona, where the next battle over residential solar incentives appears to be heating up."
"Even though the thought of Donald Trump at the top of the ticket is making a lot of Republicans in Congress queasy, they’re not exactly flocking to the guy in second place to save them  —   Ted Cruz. Cruz did not have a single endorsement from any of his Senate colleagues, until this week when Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah committed his support. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, has landed 14 Senate endorsements. That’s because the bad blood between Cruz and his colleagues runs so deep. It’s Getting Awkward, Probably the most awkward question you can ask Republican senators these days is why they’re still giving Ted Cruz the cold shoulder when it comes to endorsements. ”Well, I think you know the answer to that,” said Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. ”I’m going to let you . .. speculate about that,” offered Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. ”I think it’s pretty obvious,” said Dean Heller of Nevada, without elaborating further. What each of these senators is tiptoeing around is common knowledge in Washington: Ted Cruz is probably the most disliked member of the Senate. South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, who dropped his own presidential bid, even joked about it at the Washington Press Club dinner last month. ”If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you,” Graham said to a ballroom full of reporters. Cause, Baby, Now We’ve Got Bad Blood, How did the relationship go so wrong? Well, the romance never took off. During Cruz’s very first year in the Senate, he and a group of House Republicans helped force a   government shutdown. At the time, in 2013, he crowed about it. But his Senate Republican colleagues were fuming. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said Cruz had led them on with a promise to defund Obamacare. ”You know, we’ve been asking from the beginning: What’s the end game? How does this end? How do you achieve what you’re purporting to achieve on defunding Obamacare? And I never got an answer to that,” Ayotte told reporters when the government was reopening that October. And then there was the time Cruz flirted with the idea of defunding the president’s executive action on immigration. He fumbled a procedural maneuver on the Senate floor, which forced his colleagues to come to work on a Saturday. Not the kind of smooth move that will earn one’s way into senators’ hearts. ”You should have an end goal in sight if you’re going to do these types of things,” said Utah Republican Orrin Hatch that weekend in December 2014. ”And I don’t see any end goal that can be won  —   other than just irritating a lot of people.” And then, of course, there was the time Cruz called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar. ”He is willing to say things he knows are false. That has consequences for how this body operates,” said Cruz during a nearly   speech on the Senate floor last July. The spat was over renewing the   Bank. But this year, Republicans anguishing over the rise of Donald Trump can see that Cruz has pulled way ahead of Marco Rubio, who has the most Senate endorsements. Maybe it’s time for the rift between Cruz and his colleagues to heal. Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana compared it to marriage. ”Occasionally my wife has said something to me, or I to her, that we wish we had not said later. At the time, we’re thinking, ’Oh, my gosh.’ But we’ve worked through that, and we forget it, and we move on because there’s something far more important than an occasional harsh word,” said Cassidy. Utah’s Lee became the first senator to endorse Cruz, on Thursday. Maybe others will follow. Even the guy who joked about murdering Cruz on the Senate floor is coming around. ”Increasingly more clear to me that Ted Cruz is the most viable alternative to Donald Trump,” Sen. Graham said this week. ”I think a Trump candidacy would be a disaster for the Republican brand. I think John Kasich and Rubio are more electable than Ted, but Ted’s running effectively as an outsider in an outsider year.” But, of course, no outsider wants too many love notes from Republican senators."
"After one more debate among the Republican contenders for president, the postgame conversation was once again dominated by Donald Trump’s behavior. But for once, it was about his good behavior. He did not shout or fulminate, nor did he pout or belittle his opponents or joust with the moderators. In fact, after an even dozen of these events, all four remaining candidates kept a remarkably even keel at the University of Miami. Their previous two meetings had been rife with personal attacks that, at times, became almost juvenile, but on this night all four seemed intent on elevating the tone and tending to business. The themes of the night were almost entirely policy oriented, with a few forays into political process and tiffs over who was doing better or more likely to win in November if nominated. The   debate was shown on CNN and   by the Salem Media Group and The Washington Times. And although there is at least one more debate scheduled in Salt Lake City on March 21, the Miami event had the feeling of a finale. The moderators began with a long discussion of job creation, which segued into trade, visas for   workers, Social Security, the national debt, Obamacare, education policy, Common Core and, of course, immigration. Much of the attention was on Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who have together amassed more than 800 delegates to date. But both Marco Rubio and John Kasich, who face    primaries in their home states on Tuesday, had ample opportunity to defend their place in the race. Trump, as has been typical, got most of the air time, with more than 27 minutes. Cruz and Rubio followed with a little under 22 minutes each, Kasich with less than 19. Rubio and Kasich delivered solid reprises of their strongest debate moments to date, as if to say that if this was going to be their last outing, they would at least be at their best. Rubio, most notably, was once again the smooth and earnest spokesman for a new American dream, sharp on the issue details and long on the idealistic overtures. It was easier to understand why his expectations had been so high than to understand his   and   finishes. ”For over two centuries, America has been an exceptional nation,” Rubio said. ”And now the time has come for this generation to do what it must do to keep it that way. If we make the right choice in this election, our children are going to be the freest and most prosperous Americans that have ever lived.” Kasich had this to say near the end of the debate: ”I have run an unwavering, positive campaign for president of the United States. . .. Sometimes being positive isn’t all that interesting, but it’s very interesting to my family, my children and so many supporters that I meet all across the country, and I will continue to run a positive campaign.” In essence, though, both Rubio and Kasich trail so far behind in the delegate count that they are at this point running for influence at the convention and a prospective vice presidential bid. Either might make a classic running mate with high name recognition and campaign experience. Florida is the largest swing state in the Electoral College, and no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. Cruz, who has been Trump’s closest competitor thus far, returned several times to the difference between talking about problems and knowing how to solve them. ”Donald is right,” Cruz said, gesturing toward Trump. ”For example, he was just talking about international trade. He’s right about the problems. But his solutions don’t work. So, for example, his solution on international trade, he proposed earlier a 45 percent tariff on foreign goods. Now, he backed away from that immediately, and he may come back with a different number tonight.” At another point, Cruz referred to his rival as ”a candidate who has been funding liberal Democrats and funding the Washington establishment,” adding that ”it’s very hard to imagine how suddenly this candidate is going to take on Washington.” Trump was once again the man in the middle. But he was markedly different in playing the central role. He found a deft way, when discussing education, to mention that former rival candidate Ben Carson would be endorsing him the next day (an important coup given Carson’s image, aura and remaining bloc of voters). As ever, Trump pushed back when others pushed him, but without the ferocity seen in earlier debates. Questioned about how he could get tough on trade and immigration when his businesses brought in foreign workers and made products overseas, Trump responded calmly and firmly: ”Because nobody knows the system better than me. . .. I’m a businessman. These are laws. These are regulations. These are rules. We’re allowed to do it. . .. So I will take advantage of it they’re the laws. But I’m the one that knows how to change it. Nobody else on this stage knows how to change it like I do, believe me.” Challenged over a protester who was beaten at one of Trump’s rallies this week, Trump said he did not condone such behavior. But he also said some of the disturbances at his events were caused by ”bad dudes” who had been violent and disruptive, and added a salute to the local police, who he said had handled these situations well and deserved more support and respect. The elevated tone of the Miami debate may have reflected the seriousness of the contest at this juncture. Tuesday brings the second biggest prize of the season: 99 delegates in the    state of Florida. It is widely believed that Rubio must win his home state or fold his tent. Also    is Ohio, where the same imperative hangs over incumbent Gov. Kasich. But the other three states voting, Illinois, North Carolina and Missouri, rank fifth, 10th and 18th by population and size of convention delegations. Taken together, the five states on March 15 offer nearly as many delegates as were available on Super Tuesday, March 1. At one point in the debate, the candidates were asked what they would do if none of them had the 1, 237 delegates needed for a first ballot nomination. Trump said he expected to have enough on the first ballot, adding that if he did not he would expect to support whichever candidate had the most. He called on the others to promise as much: ”I think, frankly, the Republican establishment, or whatever you want to call it, should embrace what’s happening. We’re having millions of extra people join. We are going to beat the Democrats.”"
"One week after he formally dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is endorsing New York businessman Donald Trump. Carson said a major factor for the endorsement was the growing talk among many Republicans of working to deny Trump the majority of delegates he’d need to clinch the party’s nomination, and instead hold a contested convention this summer. ”One of the real factors for me is what will happen if we allow the political operatives to succeed in their endeavor to stop Donald Trump,” said Carson at a Friday morning press conference in Florida. ”I think it would fracture the party irreparably, and it would hand the election to the Democrats.” ”Now some people said, ’now why would you get behind a man like Donald Trump? ’” Carson said. ”I’ll tell you why. First of all, I’ve come to know Donald Trump over the last few years. He is actually a very intellegent man who cares deeply about America.” ”There’s two different Donald Trumps,” Carson continued. ”There’s the one you see on the stage, and the one who’s very cerebral, sits there, and considers things very carefully. You can have a very good conversation with him. And that’s the Donald Trump that you’re going to start seeing more and more of right now.” Carson’s support comes just a week after he officially ended his campaign. The famed   physician had a surge of support last fall, but faltered after his comments regarding terrorist attacks exposed his weaknesses on foreign policy. The conservative favorite could help boost Trump heading into a critical primary day on Tuesday, where big    prizes are up for grabs in Florida and Ohio. The relationship between the two hasn’t always been warm and fuzzy. Late last year as Carson was on the rise, Trump came out swinging at him, questioning the redemption story at the heart of Carson’s narrative  —   how he overcame a violent childhood and a ”pathological temper” to become a   surgeon. ”If you’re a child molester, there’s no cure. They can’t stop you. Pathological? There’s no cure,” Trump said. Both men attempted to move past that history during the Friday morning press conference. ”The one person that just kept sneaking up on me   I couldn’t lose him   was Dr. Ben Carson. . ..And so I started going after Ben” said Trump, bluntly acknowledging the political calculations that go into political attacks. ”It’s politics. Ben understands that. And I was really impressed by the way he fought back. Because he fought back with silence and strength.” ”We buried the hatchet,” said Carson. ”That was political stuff. And that happens in American politics.”"
"Chicago is having a bloody year. Already since January, more than 100 people have been murdered in the city  —   double the number of homicides in Chicago during the first two months last year. The number of shooting incidents is also up by 120 percent compared to the first nine weeks of 2015. The spike in violent crime comes at a time when the police in Chicago are under increased scrutiny for misconduct. It started with the release of a video last fall that showed a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times, resulting in a Justice Department civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department’s patterns and practices. Then there were other incidents of police shootings, brutality and misconduct, followed by allegations of officers covering for one another and higher ups failing to hold officers accountable. In short, the heat and public scrutiny on Chicago police officers right now is intense. ”Well, morale is poor, to describe it in one word,” says Dean Angelo Sr. president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police. ”It’s probably the lowest I’ve seen in my career.” There is a feeling among police officers, Angelo says, ”that no one wants to be on that next video.” The ’Laquan McDonald Effect’ The dash cam video released under court order in November showed Officer Jason Van Dyke firing 16 shots into Laquan McDonald as the    was moving away from the police while holding a small knife. The incident continues to hamper Chicago police. Van Dyke was charged with murder  —   but only hours before the video went public and more than a year after the shooting took place. The political fallout from the video’s release amid daily   protests cost police Superintendent Garry McCarthy his job. Interim police Superintendent John Escalante acknowledges there might have been a ”Laquan McDonald effect,” where police officers are less aggressive and even somewhat passive in pursuing criminals. ”There’s a little bit of an effect,” says Escalante. ”Every officer I think, not just here in Chicago, but every police officer around the country does not want to be that next viral video.” Police in Chicago made 30 percent fewer arrests in the early part of this year compared to last year. Street stops are down more than 80 percent so far this year. Escalante was so concerned that he recently recorded a video message sent out to all 12, 000 Chicago police officers emphasizing that those doing their jobs properly don’t have to worry about being that next viral video. He also clarified how officers can continue to make investigative street stops without violating new state laws and announced a landmark agreement with the ACLU designed to prevent racial profiling. As a result, Escalante says both arrests and street stops are now back on the rise. But the city’s sharp increase in violent crime continues unabated. ”The majority of it is still gang violence,” Escalante says. ”We’re seeing a significant percentage of that gang violence being fueled by social media.” Escalante says social media taunts are the new gang graffiti and in today’s gang culture, there are almost immediate, violent responses to those taunts, which in turn spurs retaliatory shootings. A very mild winter may also be contributing to Chicago’s increase in violence. Warmer weather means more people are out and there is more opportunity for conflicts. When temperatures reached the 70s earlier this week, 21 people were shot and two of them were killed in a   period. Angelo rejects the notion that the police are somehow responsible for an increase in violent crime, but he says the police are under pressure. ”You know, they’re damned when they put people on the wall and search them . .. if they have weapons on them, and now they’re being blamed for not putting people on the wall to search them to see if they have weapons on them,” he says. Angelo says police officers now are walking what he calls ”a thin blue line” between protecting law abiding citizens and getting law breakers off the streets. Some cops on the street agree. ”Yeah, (the) job’s real tough,” says Ron Rewers, a   veteran police officer. ”You know, you got a lot of eyes on you and a lot of people don’t understand the job and they want to jump to conclusions about what we do and what we’re supposed to do.” Improving Relations With Chicago Teens, Rewers is one of several officers from the 12th Chicago police district volunteering on Friday nights to coach a new basketball league for   to    boys who live in and around the public housing development known as the ABLA homes on the city’s west side. Officer Paris Edwards, another   veteran of the force, came up with the idea for the league as a way to improve relations with teenagers in the neighborhood. ”We’ve known for quite a while that the relationship between the police and youth has been one that has been strained,” Edwards says. ”The youth feel like the only time they have interaction with the police is when they’re being stopped for questioning or they’re being looked at for committing some type of crime.” Edwards says the goal is to build a little teamwork and trust. ”In basketball, you do have to communicate. Coaches and players have to communicate. If we can get the youth communicating with these officers, then we can develop some type of relationship outside of them being stopped and questioned for some type of crime,” he says. Star player Daronte Peterson, 13, says he welcomes the chance to see police officers in a different arena. ”I’m glad they doing this because like, right here where we are at now, it’s a very bad neighborhood and I’m glad the police came to do this for us,” Peterson says. If the   basketball program shows real results in improving relations between beat cops and black teenagers, city officials say it will likely be expanded and replicated across the city."
"Imagine the worst opera singer ever. Now imagine that she’s determined to perform in public. That’s the premise of an   French satire that’s based on a true story. It’s called Marguerite, and it follows a   socialite by the same name. Marguerite has very little to do. While the roaring 1920s roar elsewhere and her husband spends all his time with a mistress, Marguerite sits in her Downton   mansion outside Paris surrendering her soul to music. She adores opera, and is wealthy enough that she can sponsor musical recitals for charity with young guest singers. These are   affairs where her wealthy friends reward her charitable generosity by being charitable about the way she ends the concerts  —   with her own, shall we say, unique musical stylings. Stylings with no sense of pitch, rhythm or, for that matter, talent. Marguerite is surrounded by servants who applaud and friends who are polite. (Her husband usually claims car trouble kept him away.) But I hear your question: How could she not know? Wouldn’t someone tell her? Here’s how it works: After one recital, when a young singer is ushered into Marguerite’s presence to say thank you, Marguerite looks up  —   vulnerable and sweet  —   and says, ”You heard me miss all my high notes.” The young performer, not wishing to hurt or be impolite, says, ”No, it sounded fine.”   will have to wait. There were, however, some uninvited guests. A young music critic writes in his paper that Marguerite sang as if she were trying to ”exorcise an inner demon”  —   innocently, she takes that as praise. There’s also an anarchist poet who invites her to perform at a public concert. Marguerite’s husband is terrified she’ll find out they’ve all been lying to her, but it’s an anarchist performance and she kind of fits right in. Marguerite’s story of misplaced confidence is based loosely on that of Florence Foster Jenkins, an American laughingstock whose ghastly public renditions of some of the same music became a   novelty record in the 1950s. It was called The Glory (? ???) of the Human Voice. Meryl Streep will soon play Jenkins in another movie, but it’s hard to imagine anyone improving on the mix of hilarity and heartbreak this transplanted, fictional version achieves. As director Xavier Giannoli pushes his leading lady closer and closer to public humiliation, Catherine Frot’s Marguerite becomes every bit as haunting as you expect her to be laughable, walking barefoot in the rain after an evening of opera, then squawking in rehearsals like the peacocks that wander her estate’s lawn. The more ridiculous Marguerite becomes, the more you want to keep this misguided, innocent,   creature from being hurt."
"On March 9, a total solar eclipse was perfectly visible in Indonesia. Alaska, Hawaii, parts of southeast Asia and some of Australia got a partial view. The rest of us, alas, were out of luck. But now you can enjoy the view from another angle  —   the solar eclipse as seen from space. The Himawari geostationary satellites, operated by Japan’s meteorological agency, captured the sight of the moon’s shadow traveling across the Earth. Yasuhiko Sumida, a scientist visiting the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of   stitched them together into the video above. It was shared on the CIMSS Satellite Blog. NASA satellites caught a glimpse of the moon shadow, too: The Deep Space Climate Observatory released the gif below. NASA says this animation was ”assembled from 13 images acquired by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) a     device (CCD) and Cassegrain telescope on the DSCOVR satellite.”"
"After media reports charged massive overspending and waste by the Wounded Warrior Project, the organization’s board of directors fired its CEO and chief operation officer Thursday. The charity has received hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly donations. ”CEO Steve Nardizzi and COO Al Giordano are no longer with the organization,” the charity announced in a news release that also reported the results of an independent review of its finances  —   a review that was prompted by a series of CBS News reports that said the Wounded Warrior Project uses some 40 percent of its funds on overhead expenses and pays millions of dollars for staff conferences and meetings in luxurious settings. This week, the group has been using its Facebook page to defend its fundraising costs and to say that it ”has always been an open and transparent organization,” citing its most recent IRS filing as proof. That filing, IRS form 990, shows that in the financial year from Oct. 1, 2013, to Sept. 30, 2014, the WWP reported spending $26 million on ”conferences, conventions, and meetings.” The group’s 990 form also reported the salaries of the   executives, with Nardizzi being paid more than $496, 000 and Giordano more than $397, 000. ”Former employees say spending has skyrocketed since Steven Nardizzi took over as CEO in 2009,” CBS News reported. ”Many point to the 2014 annual meeting at a luxury resort in Colorado Springs as typical of his style.” The report quoted a former employee saying Nardizzi ”rappelled down the side of a building at one of the all hands events. He’s come in on a Segway, he’s come in on a horse.” CBS also stated that some 500 staff members attended the Colorado conference, with a total cost of around $3 million. After those reports aired in late January, the Wounded Warriors Project’s board of directors said it would retain independent advisers ”to conduct a thorough financial and policy review of the concerns.” Summarizing the review’s findings Friday, the WWP’s board also sought to refute or calibrate some of CBS’ claims  —   saying, for instance, that the gathering at the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado didn’t cost $3 million but $970, 000, and adding, ”such events will be curtailed in the future.” The group also said that it ”spends 80. 6 percent of donations on programming.” As for the $26 million spent on conferences, the WWP says that its review found ”approximately 94 percent (or approximately $24, 392, 000) was associated with program services delivered to Wounded Warriors and their families.” It did not provide details to substantiate that finding. While spending rose at the Wounded Warrior Project in recent years, so did the nonprofit’s revenue. Data collected by Pro Publica shows that total revenue to the WWP grew from $18. 6 million in the financial year ending in 2007 to $342 million in the one ending in 2014. On the ratings service Charity Navigator, the Wounded Warriors Project earns an overall score of 84. 5 out of 100, good for three stars. Breaking down the group’s finances, Charity Navigator says that nearly 60 percent is spent on programs and services, with 6 percent going to administrative expenses and 34 percent spent on fundraising. Revelations about the WWP’s spending practices seem to have surprised supporters of the group whose mission is to support severely wounded veterans who served in America’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. ”It’s really unfortunate that wounded veterans will really be hurt by the   in donations to come,” one man wrote, in what is now the   comment on the group’s most recent Facebook posting. ”My checkbook is now closed to this organization.” Another commenter in that same thread noted the WWP social media representative’s responses and stated: ”Stop defending. You’ve got a lot of housekeeping to do. My suggestion is stop commenting on Facebook and get to work!”"
"The White House state dinner in honor of Canada’s prime minister had an exclusive guest list: philanthropists, business leaders, political powerhouses, one public radio host, ambassadors, movie stars. And then, right between The Honorable Patrick Leahy, U. S. Senator (Vermont) and The Honorable Jacob Lew, Secretary of the Treasury, there she was, along with her husband: Ms. Twila Legare, Letter Writer Mr. Marc Legare, Who is she? What kind of letter? And to whom? The mystery seized the attention of the kinds of people who pore over invitation lists for state dinners  —   that is, reporters. Twila Legare and her husband live in Las Vegas, where she’s an   supervisor at the Wynn Las Vegas. She’s also currently working on her college degree  —   which is, in a way, why she was invited to the state dinner. ”I had written the president thanking him for encouraging me to go to school,” Legare tells NPR, ”which is no easy task for a    woman.” Legare got her associate’s degree, and is now working on a bachelor’s degree in history. She hopes to start a genealogy business when she retires. And in the meantime, she says she and her husband had a lovely time at the state dinner. Marc got to meet Mike Myers, one of his favorite comedians. The White House has said that President Obama reads 10 letters a day, out of the abundance of messages sent to him by the public. But while some 3, 650   reach the president’s desk each year, far fewer have received a state dinner invitation in response. It’s happened to a few lucky souls, though. Most recently, a young environmental scientist named Stephen Chen was invited to a state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping after writing a letter thanking Obama for the speech he gave at Chen’s graduation, in which the president talked at length about climate change. ”I couldn’t get it out of my head that this could potentially be an elaborate hoax,” Chen wrote. But by the time he and his mom (his date for the night) had dressed up and met Mark Zuckerberg, it was clearly the real deal. Legare had the same concerns, according to her sister, Darla Mayfield. ”With so many scams today, she had to get everything verified first,” Mayfield told NPR. ”But I am thrilled she got to go to D. C.”"
"His is not just a gentle voice for many people, it’s a very familiar one, too. For 25 years, Francois Clemmons played a role on the beloved children’s program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Clemmons joined the cast of the show in 1968, becoming the first   to have a recurring role on a kids TV series. And, as it happens, it was Clemmons’ voice that Fred Rogers noticed, too, when he heard Clemmons singing in church. ”Fred came to me and said, ’I have this idea: You could be a police officer,’ ” recalls Clemmons, speaking with his friend Karl Lindholm during a visit with StoryCorps. Clemmons says he didn’t like the idea much at first. ”I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers. Policemen were siccing police dogs and water hoses on people,” he says. ”And I really had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excited about being Officer Clemmons at all.” Still, Clemmons came around to it eventually and agreed to take on the role. And, in the decades he spent as part of the show, there’s one scene in particular that Clemmons remembers with great emotion. It was from an episode that aired in 1969, in which Rogers had been resting his feet in a plastic pool on a hot day. ”He invited me to come over and to rest my feet in the water with him,” Clemmons recalls. ”The icon Fred Rogers not only was showing my brown skin in the tub with his white skin as two friends, but as I was getting out of that tub, he was helping me dry my feet.” Clemmons says the scene  —   which the two also revisited in their last episode together, in 1993  —   touched him in a way he hadn’t expected. ”I think he was making a very strong statement. That was his way. I still was not convinced that Officer Clemmons could have a positive influence in the neighborhood and in the   neighborhood, but I think I was proven wrong,” he says. During Clemmons’ time on the show, he wasn’t simply the friendly neighborhood police officer. Off the set, he was also a   singer, who performed in over 70 musical and opera roles and founded the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble. Rogers, for his part, wasn’t simply Clemmons’ iconic  . He was also Clemmons’ ”friend for life.” He says he’ll never forget the day Rogers wrapped up the program, as he always did, by hanging up his sweater and saying, ”You make every day a special day just by being you, and I like you just the way you are.” This time in particular, Rogers had been looking right at Clemmons, and after they wrapped, he walked over. Clemmons asked him, ”Fred, were you talking to me?” ”Yes, I have been talking to you for years,” Rogers said, as Clemmons recalls. ”But you heard me today.” ”It was like telling me I’m OK as a human being,” Clemmons says. ”That was one of the most meaningful experiences I’d ever had.” Produced for Morning Edition by Jasmyn Belcher Morris.  StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"We all know that American college education isn’t cheap. But it turns out that it’s even less cheap if you look at the numbers more closely. That’s what the Wisconsin HOPE Lab did. The lab, part of the University of   conducted four studies to figure out the true price of college. To get a sense of student realities, researchers interviewed students on college campuses across the state of Wisconsin. But they also examined 6, 604 colleges nationally and compared their costs with regional    data from the government. The researchers found that college life is more expensive than sticker prices might suggest, and that financial aid doesn’t help students as effectively as it could, especially after the first year. All these findings are summarized in a report from The Century Foundation. Colleges want to keep their sticker price low because it helps with rankings and attracts more students, the report says. But students might be less likely to drop out or take time off of college if they could better plan their college finances. Here are some key findings: College    estimates are too low. Schools can survey students to figure out how much they’re spending, and use that as their    number. But the money students report spending might be lower than what they should be spending. The students interviewed were scrimping on basic needs  —   everything from food to health and dental care. Students living at home aren’t always saving money. More that 70 percent of    students studied were helping their families pay bills. But because those students lived at home, they got less access to aid. Some majors are more expensive than others. Students in nursing had to pay for lab work and vaccines. Other majors required expensive   experience. And some STEM majors found that their textbooks were too expensive and dropped out, or switched majors. Even students in majors like English faced hidden fees. Some paid hundreds of dollars to take an online course when required classes were overbooked.   options are often the least  . Take meal plans. The plans with the lowest price gave students the least bang for their buck. If students could afford a laptop, they got free software and other perks. But students who had to rent out laptops were hit with steep fines if they failed to return them in the short borrowing period. If they couldn’t afford to live on campus, it was more difficult to return equipment on time. Financial aid calculators overestimate how much parents can pay. The calculators don’t take into account parents’ debt, for example, so they may ask for a larger contribution than the parents can actually afford. The price that the student pays can increase each academic year. Forty percent of students studied saw an increase in their share of the bill going into their sophomore year  —   the median was $1, 215. The number jumped again between the second and third year. Many grants focus on freshman year, and drop off afterward. Students can also lose grants if they don’t know that they need to refile for FAFSA, or don’t understand that they need to meet academic requirements to keep their grant."
"There’s new music from Iggy Pop and it’s pretty great. The album, Post Pop Depression, is a collaboration with Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age. What you hear on this album is a more crooning and thoughtful Iggy then the image you may have in your minds eye of a   unpredictable punk. To find out how this all came to pass, we invited them both to sit and talk. They were at NPR West in Culver City, Calif. and I was in Washington, D. C. The entire interview is lively, funny and thoughtful and you can listen to it along with some music from the album here. Below are a few highlights from the conversation. And this week as part of our First Listen series you can hear all of Post Pop Depression. So dig in and enjoy and keep an eye out for their tour, starting this month. Josh Homme on his formative experiences with Iggy Pop’s music: When I was 10 years old my father took me to the Tower Records in San Diego, by the sports arena. And I bought albums based on covers from my allowance. It was Off The Bone by the Cramps, and it was a 3D cover. It was the Misfits’ Legacy Of Brutality because there was a sort of Elvis looking figure that was a skeleton. And it was Raw Power. I was 10 and Raw Power was so just exactly that: It sounded like someone ripped a cable from the wall and shocked you in the sternum with it. But I didn’t actually understand it at 10, I wasn’t ready for that. So I think I got through half a song. Then, a couple years later when I was 13, I saw the movie Repo Man. And that song, ”Repo Man,” I bought that album, and I listened to that thing like it was nobody’s business. There was a line in there, I’m just gonna say it, ”I didn’t get f***** and I didn’t get kissed, I got so f****** pissed,” and I thought, ”Wow, that’s amazing!” Because I was just in the throws  —   I had just lost my virginity, so there’s a very important moment there. So those are my first impactful Iggy experiences. Iggy Pop on why he wanted to work with Josh Homme: There was a unique set of skills that I heard in his stuff. He can compose, which is different than songwriting, but he can also write a song. He knows his way around a memorable lyric and then there was some ”emotive music,” I would call it, on the last Queens album . .. and that’s what I wanted to do. And it was done in a style that allowed him to do the vocals, in fact that whole record [where] he ain’t shoutin’ on any of the record, even on stuff like ”My God Is The Sun” or ”I Sat By The Ocean.” And I wanted to make a record where I did something other than shout. So I thought the style really lent itself. And then I poked around his other stuff, and, you know, I heard some song he did with PJ Harvey. And I ran into those guys playing a live gig on the road, and it was a little too good, cause I had to follow them [on stage] you know? But as he pointed out to me, the other day, it was in a part of Italy where everyone has a little earring and a motorbike and a buzzcut, and nobody liked either of us. On how they approached the sound of Post Pop Depression: Homme: Iggy’s in The Stooges, which is, in my opinion, the greatest rock band of all time, and I’m in Queens, so there’s no reason to try and   the memory of these bands. It’s silly. And, in fact, what Iggy’s been doing in the last number of years in these French albums is emphasizing what I always that was wonderful about his voice and his way, was this crooning aspect. And that really, the most important thing to do would be able to put the proper frame around the artwork around the piece of art that is Iggy. I keep going back to the Van Eyck brothers, [the] Flemish painter and frame builder duo. Iggy Pop: I think really it’s a little more than a frame going on. Josh starts from the frame and then he starts to move in: ”Could I just, you know, paint a couple of things?” Homme: I’ll do the background for you! Iggy Pop: ”Oh there’s a little tree over here. Can we put a bodega in front of your chest? I think, with a little help, your nose could look better.” We trade off a lot, you know. On how they made ”American Valhalla”: Homme: I sent him a demo that was called ”Romans,” at the time, just as a quick title, because it had kind of this   chorus. And so he had, unbeknownst to me, kind of constructed these lyrics around this thing. Iggy Pop: I’m a Roman history buff and they were a martial society so there was some of that flavor going on. . .. Before that we had had an exchange on the subject of the Valhalla, the idea the Norse Paradise to which you gain entry through acts of courage and bravery, and especially if you’re killed in battle. He was comparing it favorably against some of the other paradises that you hear about a lot lately. So I wrote him back: ”Well that raises a question to me. Is there an American Valhalla?” And what I didn’t say was obviously because for two reasons One, in American life we’re all encouraged to be heroic from an early age, that’s only in America. All other kids are taught to defend themselves from society, you know, ”Watch out! Don’t let the government,” [Pauses.] But in America, ”Be a great person! Be Superman! Help the little, old lady! Be Jimmy Stewart in Mister Smith Goes To Washington! Clean up the corruption! Be wonderful!” And then, I also said, ”If there is one, where is it? What is it? And if there isn’t one, then what does that mean?” So that really interested me and we texted a little about that and then I thought . .. [Pauses.] I got the piece of music, I thought it fit the music. . .. I sat in my Rolls . .. Yeah, that’s right! It’s used, it’s an old Rolls. I sat in my quaint, old car and just started writing to the thing. Homme: We agreed to not put anything together until we were together and so it allowed each of us to kind of ruminate alone and spin these webs a little, alone, but with enough room for the other to gain entrance into the idea. And so when we were sitting together I started to say, ”Potentially here’s this arrangement.” Each time I had a part, he had this wonderful lyric that you hear it’s exactly the lyric you hear. And it all   so uniquely and sort of  —   I don’t want to say sweetly  —   into the next part because the questions of, not just is there an ”American Valhalla” but what do you have to do to get in it, and would it be OK if I brought along someone I cared about, you know? Which I thought was . .. Iggy is 68 and that    perspective in rock and roll is not represented and certainly it isn’t represented in a way that is accessible to someone 18, 28, 38, 48, you know. So there’s just this unique perspective and I think this song embodies that perspective, in particular at the end when it strips itself bare and says, ”I have nothing but my name,” and it’s a real moment. On a theory of songwriting: Iggy Pop: I try to mix three things. I mix something that comes from within me, and it can also include a particular experience, a particular detail that really happened. And then I try to see if that matches up with something I think might have happened to some other people who interest me. And then . .. I try to include something that just an everyday person could relate to. I think the first song I ever finished, that I was able to get out on a national basis, was ”1969.” Everybody knew what that was: It was the year but it was also  —   I figured, correctly  —   something about that number, that that year was going to be around for a long time. I mean you don’t hear a lot about like 1971, but you still hear 1969. That’s a powerful number. . .. The key is, ”Another year with nothing to do,  !” And, for me, that was true because of frustration Because . .. I hadn’t gotten my hands on the levers of power, the means of production, that would allow me to express myself. And also I hadn’t learned an   yet. But, on the other hand, I was singing for the delinquent group I belonged to, because the other guys in the group would never even think about that. They’d just go, ”Awwww, there’s nothing to do.” Homme: They never knew it that that united them with a bunch of other people."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. Given Iggy Pop’s recent announcement that he may be retiring from the music business, it’s been an introspective time for the rock giant. That might be part of why Pop’s new album  —   a collaboration with Josh Homme  —   bears the title Post Pop Depression. Not that the album itself is quite as ominous as its name. Throughout its nine songs, Pop pipes in his most unctuous croon, a work of nature that’s only become more monumental as it’s eroded over the decades. But with Homme’s acumen as the architect of Queens Of The Stone Age stirred into the mix, there’s decadent ecstasy to the album that’s as far from glum as you can get. It is heavy, though. In addition to producing and   Post Pop Depression, Homme provides guitar, bass, piano and backing vocals also in the group are guitarist Dean Fertita (Homme’s   man in Queens Of The Stone Age, as well as Jack White’s bandmate in The Dead Weather) and drummer Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys. With that kind of lineup, it’s clear that this isn’t going to be any kind of retirement party, and Pop obliges his younger cohorts’ zeal with plenty of his own. The album is all sharp angles and hard muscles, from the choppy, stomping riff of ”Break Into Your Heart” to the splintered rage of ”Paraguay.” ”I have nothing but my name,” Pop intones at the close of ”American Valhalla,” his voice a study in smoke and gravel. For a man whose musical fortunes have seen many peaks and valleys  —   during some stretches of his long career, it has indeed felt as if Pop’s name was all he had going for him  —   it’s a chillingly vulnerable confession. But even when he lets out some morbid paranoia during ”In The Lobby” (”My shadow is walking in front of me   And I hope I’m not losing my life tonight”) he seems more like a predator than prey. Still, he never lets the album get too pensive. His       rant in ”Paraguay” is the kind of     stuff that Pop has more than earned the right to unleash. But for every glimpse at the punk of old, Pop drops tender moments like ”Gardenia,” a lush, catchy love song that’s also    eerie. The most sentimental moments, though, come when the band is clearly channeling Pop’s high point as a solo artist: his collaborations with David Bowie in Berlin on the classic ’70s albums The Idiot and Lust For Life. ”Sunday,” for instance, unabashedly recalls that era with its skeletal yet punchy drumming, sculpted guitar and   edge. In ”German Days,” the record’s most flagrantly nostalgic song, Homme and his team tap into the decadent, wiry menace of the Berlin albums while Pop glances back with rueful irony at Lust For Life: ”When your love of life is an empty beach   When it’s painful to express the things you feel.” In lesser hands, that might come off as   but instead, the singer sounds like he’s owning his legacy  —   and having a good time doing it, introspection notwithstanding. If Post Pop Depression does end up being Pop’s last recorded hurrah, it’s a worthy one."
"Editor’s Note: In an update to this story, the U. S. Department of Homeland Security on March 25, 2016, granted Ibrahim Parlak a   deferred action on his deportation order. That means he will be allowed to remain in the U. S. until at least March 25, 2017. It’s the   in the resort town of Harbert, Mich. yet every table at Café Gulistan is full. Most guests have braved the chilly night to support an old friend, the cafe owner, Ibrahim Parlak. Parlak, 53, focuses on the cooking. His friends focus on Parlak’s possible deportation to his native Turkey. In 1991, Parlak, an ethnic Kurd, arrived from Turkey, saying he had been imprisoned and tortured in his homeland. He was granted political asylum in the U. S. the following year. But for more than 10 years, U. S. immigration authorities have been trying to reverse that decision and deport him. Turkey wants him back, saying Parlak led a ”terror unit” and is linked to the killing of two Turkish soldiers in 1988. Parlak has remained in the U. S. thanks to private legislation in Congress that a Republican House member and a Democratic senator have introduced every two years since 2005. Emails released from Hillary Clinton’s days as the secretary of state show she inquired about Parlak’s case, asking ”What can we do?” Parlak’s latest deportation deferral is about to expire and he could be deported as soon as this month. At the cafe, he has many defenders. ”It’s just wrong,” says Angela Reichert over her appetizer. ”You just walk around with a lump in your throat, just wondering what’s going to happen.” Reichert sits by the window with her husband, Rick Ott. They’ve been raising money for lawyers and distributing petitions to help Parlak. One table over, Marty Goldrick agrees: ”We’re still just hoping and praying that we can keep him here.” Goldrick is a Vietnam veteran and started playing tennis with Parlak more than 20 years ago. From A Troubled Part Of Turkey, Parlak grew up in a small town in southeast Turkey. He says he misses it, but growing up there wasn’t easy. The Kurdish minority is concentrated in southeast Turkey and in neighboring countries including Iran, Iraq and Syria. Kurdish militants in Turkey have battled the Turkish government for years, and fighting has picked up again after a peace effort collapsed recently. During high school, Parlak became a Kurdish activist. That’s when he was jailed by the Turkish government and, he says, tortured. ”No food, holding [me] in a small box, spraying [me] with cold water,” Parlak says. ”I mean, anything you can imagine.” After Parlak was released, he continued his activism and spent a second stint in prison. Eventually, Parlak fled to the U. S. with a fake passport and a suitcase packed with documents showing he had been tortured. He says he still remembers the woman at airport immigration who let him into New York. ”If I could see her, I just going to give her a big hug,” he says. He then set out to build a new life. He learned English, fell in love, opened his cafe and had a daughter  —   though he never married. ’One Stupid Box’ Everything began unraveling when Parlak applied for U. S. citizenship in 1998. When authorities reviewed Parlak’s file, they found that years earlier, he’d checked a box on his Green Card application indicating he’d never been arrested. He did the same on his citizenship application. (Parlak received his Green Card in 1994, but his citizenship application was formally denied in 2001). Parlak says this was a small mistake and not intended to mislead authorities. He points out that he’d submitted proof of his imprisonment when he applied for political asylum. ”I give it to them. My jail ID card,” he says. Still, Parlak was in a bind. Turkey considers the Kurdistan Workers Party, also known as the PKK, to be a terrorist group. In 1997, the U. S. also declared the PKK a terrorist organization. And U. S. immigration authorities say Parlak was involved with the PKK. Parlak disagrees and claims he was not part of the PKK. ”I never harmed anybody, never hurt anybody,” he says. Instead, he says, he was a nonviolent activist who sought to improve Kurdish human rights and preserve Kurdish culture. ”I did organize a hunger strikes,” says Parlak. ”I organized, you know, workers for better conditions.” The Turkish Version  The Turkish Embassy in Washington offers a very different version of events. ”After meeting with the chief of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, Ibrahim Parlak obtained training in PKK camps,” reads a strongly worded statement from the Turkish embassy spokesman, Fatih Oke. ”On May 21 1988, his heavily armed unit illegally crossed over to Turkey from Syria.” The Turkish Embassy says Parlak was involved in an attack that left two Turkish soldiers dead and they’ve asked for Parlak to be sent back to Turkey. Parlak says he was crossing the border at the time, but was not part of the fighting that broke out. ”We went over a hill and then the fighting started behind us,” Parlak says. In Parlak’s Michigan community, his supporters say what counts is the life he’s lived here for the past  . ”He’s led an exemplary life,” says U. S. Rep. Fred Upton, a Republican who represents the district where Parlak lives. Upton and former Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat, have played a crucial role in helping Parlak, introducing private legislation on his behalf every two years since 2005. This has allowed Parlak to stay without fear of deportation. While Congress has never voted on the measure, this pending legislation has delayed Parlak’s deportation. But last year, Levin retired and no other senator has stepped forward to introduce similar legislation. Parlak’s latest deferral expires on March 22, at which point he could be deported. Now, Parlak is hoping the Board of Immigration Appeals will help him. However, U. S. courts have repeatedly ruled against Parlak. They found that he willfully misrepresented information, raised money that went to the PKK and transported their weapons. Parlak, as well as a dissenting judge, have argued these rulings are unfair. They say the U. S. courts relied on evidence obtained via torture in Turkey and used documents from Turkey’s State Security Courts, special courts that heard offenses considered a threat to the state. The judicial standards of these courts were questioned and they’ve since been disbanded as part of a reform effort. Parlak’s lawyers are hoping the Board of Immigration Appeals will reopen Parlak’s case, citing the international Convention Against Torture. They argue the U. S. cannot send Parlak to Turkey because he’ll likely be tortured. U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement disagree and they’ve filed a brief arguing the case should not be reopened. In the meantime, Parlak’s possible return is making headlines in Turkey and, Rep. Upton says, it’s also mobilizing his district in Michigan. ”I’ve heard from hundreds of constituents in support of him,” Upton says. ”It’s  .”"
"When I first read Originals I couldn’t help but take notes. What I jotted down was essentially a   list for how I could be more creative, how I could think up and then communicate new ideas. But the book  —   written by Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania  —   is not just a guide for adults. Its pages are littered with interesting advice on how teachers and parents can encourage and cultivate their kids to be original, too. Grant writes about the importance of getting kids to take risks, to embrace their own curiosity and to be confident in where their minds wander. So how can adults create spaces and cultures of originality to breed these new ideas? In the book you talk about how taking risks can lead to original ideas. So how can parents facilitate   with their kids? Well, I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of parents make is they spend all their time enforcing rules, and I’m guilty of this. Every time one of my daughters misbehaves, I’m like, ”New rule!” And then I don’t end up doing a whole lot with it. But the sad thing about rules is that they don’t teach kids to think for themselves. And kids try to figure out how they can either avoid taking risks altogether, or to take risks that they can get away with. As opposed to learning to take sensible risks that will allow them to try new things. When you study the parents who raised kids who go on to do greater things  —   like become some of America’s most creative architects  —   you see this. That they focus much more on teaching values than rules. Instead of, ”Here’s the list of things that you’re allowed to do and not to do,” they say, ”Here are the principles that are important in this family, and let’s talk about how you want to express them.” And kids then end up defining the values for themselves, and are much more likely to go against the grain and take risks that allow them to live by these values but don’t necessarily match up with conventions or social norms. And the upshot of that is, they’re much more likely to become original. So what about having kids do chores? Is that a bad practice? No, of course you should have your kids do chores. So what you see is that enforcing a bunch of rules is not a problem as long as you explain why they matter. So it’s not about saying there are rewards and punishments. It’s about saying, ”Here are the rules we have. And this is what they mean to us. This is how they really connect with our core values.” That kind of sounds like talking to kids like adults? Kind of explaining the background of things? Yeah. It’s very much about raising kids to have responsibility. So, you know, when your kids are going to do chores, you say, ”Look. This is why it’s important to us to have a neat and clean house.” Or, ”This is why we care about respecting our things.” And then you give your kids some responsibility and guess what? They actually love it. It’s the idea that they can be in charge of things. That they can be helpers. That they have something to contribute. If you frame it right, you’re doing them a favor, right? As opposed to, sort of, constraining their freedom. Are there ways that schools or school leaders can incorporate some of the things in your book to create a culture around originality? I think there are lots of ways. So the first thing is that there’s some really cool evidence showing that kids are much more likely to think in original ways if you teach them in conditionals rather than in absolutes. So instead of saying, you know, ”This is a book,” you teach them, ”This could be a book.” And then they’re more likely to ask questions about the things that they say as opposed to assuming that there’s one right answer. We could do a lot more conditional teaching. I think we could do a lot more encouraging kids to ask questions about multiple possibilities as opposed to searching for the one correct answer. Any other suggestions for teachers? I think another thing that I would love to see teachers do more of is called the jigsaw classroom. So, [a] classic study: Back in 1971, this great psychologist, Elliot Aronson, wants to reduce prejudice in Texas when schools are desegregating. And he says, ”Maybe we could get kids to listen to each other and respect each other if we gave them group projects where they had to put together pieces, just like a jigsaw puzzle.” So let’s say you’re writing a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt as a group and then you’re going to present it. And there are four of you. One of you is going to take ownership over her early years. Second, her early adulthood. The third will get middle age. And so on. And then you each have to bring a written piece of that project together and then you each have to deliver your segment on it. We found when kids were assigned to put these projects together in jigsaws, they became less prejudiced. They were less likely to stereotype each other. Even if you were working with someone who had an accent that was unfamiliar to you or who looked different from you, you were much more likely to say, ”Wow, you have some real insights to bring to the table. I did not know that.” And I think that this is a great way to nurture original thinking, too. Because it gives every child a chance to approach a problem from a novel vantage point and say, ”Look, I can say anything I want about, you know, a decade of Eleanor Roosevelt’s life . .. what’s interesting to me? And what do I want to zoom in on?” As opposed to looking for one way to do it. And I think that kind of model is pretty great for students. That gets me thinking about group work in general. How does working in groups contribute to original thinking? You know, if you look at brainstorming research, we’ve got, now, almost half a century of experiments and field studies. What you see is that if you take five students and put them in a brainstorming group together, you will get fewer ideas and less original ideas than if you had taken those same five students and let them work independently, in separate rooms, by themselves. And teachers find this maddening when they learn about it, because it goes against the idea of teaching teamwork and two heads are better than one. But there a few things that happen that make brainstorming groups less than the sum of their parts. One is called production blocking, and it’s the basic idea that we can’t all talk at once. And as a result, some ideas and some students just don’t get heard. Two, there’s ego threat, where kids are nervous about looking stupid or foolish, so they hold back on their most original ideas. And then, three is conformity. One or two ideas get raised that are popular. Everyone wants to jump on the majority bandwagon, as opposed to bringing in some radical, different ways of thinking. You put kids in separate rooms, what you get is all of the ideas on the table, and then you can bring the group together for what the group does best, which is the wisdom of crowds. The evaluating. The idea selecting. The figuring out which of these ideas really has potential to be, not only novel, but also useful. And I think that’s where you teach kids to work together effectively in groups. You say that individual idea generation works together really well, but then the group can come together to figure out which ideas to really bet on. That technique is actually called brain writing. Instead of brainstorm. It’s a great term and I think we should do more of it. Have there been any changes in your own classroom at Penn that have come out of the research from this book? Anything that you’ve implemented or that you’ve changed in your teaching style. All right, so a couple of years ago, when I was writing Originals, I took a look at my syllabus and realized that I was not doing a good job of getting students to think in original ways. I teach a whole course that’s   management. So it’s psychology applied to work, where students are supposed to learn what the best data can tell them about how to lead and manage and operate differently. And I wasn’t creating many avenues to let them challenge the assumptions that we were bringing in. So I decided I was going to shake things up a little bit, because I don’t enjoy being a hypocrite if I can avoid it, and I assigned them to work on their own mini TED Talk in pairs. Every student had a partner. They were supposed to film a video of five minutes or less on an idea that they believed in that went against the grain or challenged conventional wisdom. They can pick any topic in the course, but they had to champion a message that was   and you know, bring some evidence and experience to bear on it. And I was blown away by how interesting and novel their ideas were. And I realized that they had all this latent potential for thinking outside the box that I was stifling by just asking them to apply course concepts to their problems. And I’ve been doing this assignment ever since and I think for many students, it’s their favorite project in the course. So it would be remiss for me to fail to mention my favorite part of your book: Procrastination can lead to originality. What do teachers do with this? What have you done with it in your classroom? Look, let me confess. I am a precrastinator, not a procrastinator. That’s an actual term for someone who likes to dive into things as early as possible and finish them ahead of schedule. And I have always worn this like a badge of honor. I finished my doctoral dissertation two years before it was due. I wrapped up my undergrad college thesis four months before the deadline. And I thought this was a great way to be productive. And then I found that precrastination is a virtue for productivity, but it’s kind of a vice for creativity. I had a student who did all this research in a bunch of companies showing that precrastinators like me, who did everything early, were less creative than people who procrastinated, as rated by their bosses. And then we followed up and did some experiments where we randomly assigned people to procrastinate, which is a fun task. After a lot of follow up research, what we discovered was great originality comes from being quick to start but slow to finish. That when you dive right into a task, you close yourself off to incubation. If you finish early, you’re stuck only with your most conventional ideas, your first ones. You never have time to think outside the box. You also tend to think much more in linear, structured ways, as opposed to making these random connections and unexpected leaps that you do when you’re putting off the completion of a task. So the lesson here is that you want to give students time to let ideas marinate. So when you’re working on a creative project, having a due date that’s a couple of hours later isn’t always the best way to go. And that sometimes what you can do is you can assign a task. You can have them work on it. And then you can extend the deadline and say I want you to go back to the drawing board and consider all those unexpected ideas that you just didn’t have time to look at before. And then there’s an opportunity to open up a little more original thinking than they had before, but of course, if they procrastinate to the last minute, they’re not going to be creative either because then they just have to rush to panic to do the first ideas as opposed to the most novel ideas. So can I confirm that on the record you are saying that extensions are a good thing? I don’t think they’re always a good thing. I think we need to strike a balance between training students to get things done and training them to wait for the right time. How’s that?"
"The U. S. has ramped up oil production so dramatically that it’s joined Saudi Arabia and Russia as one of the world’s largest producers. Just glance at the chart below. Since this surge began in 2008, American production rocketed from 5 million barrels a day to nearly 10 million barrels a day at the high point last year. More importantly, oil analysts confidently predicted that a tide of benefits would flow as freely as the oil now coming out of the ground. First, the U. S. economy would get a boost that would include a renaissance in manufacturing. Second, the U. S. would be far less dependent on the vagaries of foreign energy producers. And third, America could shrink its footprint in the volatile Middle East. Yet none of this has happened. Why not? Forecast No. 1: An Economic Boost, The boom, fueled by shale oil fields in places like North Dakota, was supposed to   the economy. Energy would be abundant and cheap. Consumers would have more money to spend on other stuff. And that’s all true. You see it in places like convenience stores. When it costs drivers less to fill up the tank, they buy more soda. Good for Coke. Good for Pepsi. But many forecasters failed to see the other side of the equation. More American companies and workers are now linked directly or indirectly to the oil industry, and they get hurt when prices go down. ”Actually, oil has become more important to the U. S. economy because of this almost doubling of U. S. oil production,” said Daniel Yergin, the author of   books on the industry, including The Prize and The Quest.  Americans used to worry only about high oil prices, he noted. But now the country needs to consider what happens when prices go down. ”You have people working all across the United States that are in effect part of the supply chains. So when the oil price goes down, and companies cut spending, this reverberates in Illinois, Ohio and many other states,” said Yergin, who is vice chairman of the economics firm IHS. The U. S. economy has grown steadily since the   recession. But that growth has been modest compared to previous recoveries. Since oil prices crashed in the summer of 2014, going from more than $100 a barrel to around $30 today, the economy has continued at roughly the same pace. So what’s the overall impact of cheap oil? Yergin describes it as a ” .” Some gains here, some losses there, but overall, pretty neutral. Forecast No. 2: Energy Independence  U. S. imports have dropped dramatically, but this really hasn’t set the U. S. free in the ways anticipated. All this new American oil contributes to the current worldwide glut and the low prices. And neither the U. S. nor any other country wants to be the one that cuts back and sacrifices its own production for the greater good. ”Someone has to cry uncle,” says oil analyst Steve LeVine, who writes for Quartz and teaches at Georgetown University. ”The conventional wisdom is that American shale oil producers will be the ones. And they are in trouble.” The reason is cost. Saudi Arabia and other   producers still make a profit when oil is $30 a barrel. Much of the U. S. production is relatively   and many companies are losing money at the current price. Every day, world production of oil exceeds demand by more than 1 million barrels. Many countries are running low on places to store the excess. In the U. S. that place is Cushing, Oklahoma, home of huge and rapidly filling storage tanks, LeVine says. Some 500 million barrels of oil are in storage around the world, says LeVine. ”That’s the largest volume in storage since the Great Depression,” he notes, adding that some forecasters are predicting that if storage runs out, oil could go below $20 a barrel. Forecast No. 3: U. S. Pulls Back In The Middle East, Forecasters also argued that more U. S. oil would mean a reduced American need to resolve conflicts in the Middle East. Oil was, after all, the main reason the U. S. was drawn into the region decades ago. But here’s the catch: Cheap oil can destabilize Middle Eastern countries that depend almost entirely on oil revenue. Consider Iraq. It’s desperately short of cash as it fights the Islamic State and tries to stay current on salaries to millions of government workers. President Obama pledged to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he has withdrawn the large contingents of U. S. large ground forces. Yet in Obama’s final year in office, the U. S. is still engaged in three regional wars  —   Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria  —   and dealing with instability throughout the region. All the forecasts looked at the potential upside of more American oil, but never fully factored in the downside. Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Five candidates for president weighed in on the violent clashes in Chicago at a planned Friday night rally for Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. The event was eventually canceled by the Trump campaign after protesters and attendees squared off on the campus of the University of  . Ohio Gov. John Kasich stated he may not support Trump should the businessman become the GOP nominee, according to The Associated Press. He said during a stop in Cincinnati that there’s ”no place for a national leader to prey on the fears of people.” ”America is better than this. We don’t have to tear each other apart,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said. ”When you have a campaign that disrespects the voters, when you have a campaign that affirmatively encourages violence, when you have campaign that is facing allegations of physical violence against members of the press, you create an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discourse.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters Saturday that he still intended to support the nominee, ”but it’s getting harder every day.” On the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign stated on Twitter that they ”will not allow the Donald Trumps of the world to divide us up,” and posted a campaign ad about unifying the country. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton released a statement Friday night calling for people to ”address that anger together,” and saying that ”violence has no place in our politics.” Five people were arrested Friday night, including a CBS News reporter who was charged with resisting arrest. CBS News said reporter Sopan Deb, who has been covering the Trump campaign since last summer, was thrown to the ground and handcuffed. The arrest was captured on video which, CBS News states, proves the reporter did not resist officers. Chicago police said two officers were injured on Friday night. They were taken to a hospital and released, according to The Associated Press. Trump makes first statement since Friday night’s violence, In his first public appearance since the events in Chicago, Trump spoke to a large crowd in Vandalia, Ohio. He blamed ”professional protesters” and ”thugs” for inciting the crowd. He also noted some of the protesters were supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, and he also blamed President Barack Obama for dividing the country. At one moment during his speech, Secret Service agents quickly surrounded Trump. The Associated Press has more: A group of U. S. Secret Service agents briefly formed a protective ring around Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at his rally in Ohio, but then quickly left the stage and allowed him to continue his speech. It was not immediately clear why the agents rushed onto the stage Saturday morning to surround Trump, who appeared to jolt after hearing something in the audience standing behind his right shoulder. Four Secret Service agents then rushed onto the stage, as the audience chanted ”Trump! Trump! Trump!” The agents quickly cleared. Trump did not explain what had happened, but said: ”Thank you for the warning. I was ready for ’em, but it’s much better if the cops do it, don’t we agree?” A man attempting to rush the stage was charged with disorderly conduct and inducing panic, according to NBC News, citing local police. Trump continued the charged rhetoric, stating at one point that any protesters should be thrown ”the hell out.” He also cited the First Amendment, stating that he and his supporters have a right to say what they want and to be heard. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Editor’s Note: The following video contains graphic language."
"Another day, another Hitler comparison on The Internet. Of course, America’s online     is Donald Trump, and he’s been that for the last few months, with Trump himself seeming to fuel the fire. The Hitler comparisons skyrocketed after last weekend when Trump asked supporters at a recent rally to raise their right hands and pledge to vote for him. Opponents of Trump’s tried to say the image looked like a Nazi salute. (Rival Ted Cruz tried to take advantage of the   gesture, turning it on Trump this way at Thursday’s debate: ”This is a job interview. We are here pledging our support to you, not the other way around. ”) So, cue another round of ”Trump is Hitler” think pieces and tweets and cable news conversations. So far, celebrities, like conservative   host Glenn Beck and comedian Louis C. K. have compared Trump to Hitler, and even world leaders, past and present, like Mexican President Enrique PeÃ±a Nieto and former Mexican president Vicente Fox have done it, too. ”I don’t want to offend anybody, but I can tell you that it’s been amazingly received,” Trump said of the   pledge. CNN reported that Trump said, ”I don’t know about the Hitler comparison. I hadn’t heard that, but it’s a terrible comparison. I’m not happy about that certainly.” He continued, ”Well, I think it’s [the comparisons] ridiculous, I mean we’re having such a great time.” Remember Godwin’s Law, It’s important to note that Trump is not the first man to be compared to the former German leader, and he will not be the last. In fact, there’s an entire Internet law all about    comparisons. It’s called Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies. It’s pretty simple: ”As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Mike Godwin created that theory in 1990. So, as fresh as this outrage may seem, it is actually just a new iteration of an online trope. And it’s more than Hitler comparisons. Remember when people were comparing Obamacare to slavery? Kerric Harvey, author of the Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics, says there’s a problem with these types of comparisons. ”It oversimplifies both sides of the comparison,” she told NPR. ”When a conservative says, ’Obamacare is slavery,’ they’re really oversimplifying both Obamacare and slavery in ways that are not helpful. ... And they actually sort of cover up the kinds of nuanced, important points in each side.” Harvey also says these types of comparisons rarely accomplish the attempted goal: getting people to change their minds on an issue. ”If you call Trump Hitler to a Trump supporter, it’s actually the case that they’re just going to dig in their heels and support him even more,” Harvey said, ”because they will find that comparison so outrageous. ”The metaphor almost works against itself if what you’re really trying to do is explain what you mean. If what you’re trying to do is arouse   reaction, at an extreme level, then that kind of comparison does a lot of work for you. But does it add a lot of good to ongoing public discourse? I don’t think so.” But Godwin says there are times the comparison is OK, Godwin told NPR that comparing something or someone to Hitler isn’t always bad. ”Well, I never say that the comparisons shut down the argument,” he said. ”Other people have said that maybe it does. And it’s certainly true that people interpret Godwin’s Law to say that once you get to the Hitler comparison, the meaningful discussion is over. [But] I don’t think that’s true. ”What you want to see happen is people, if they’re going to make a historical reference like that, they have to actually know what they’re talking about. You have to ask people, ’How can you say that, or what specifically are you basing this on,’ and force them to get to the facts.” But, in an age of social media, that might be increasingly difficult. ’  issues by the first line of a haiku’ Kerric Harvey, says there are two reasons this is the case. First, brevity. ”Almost all of our social media are ways of reacting to complicated   enduring social issues and political tangles,” Harvey said, ”in very short times. We have 140 characters [on Twitter]. We have one picture [on Instagram]. .. We’ve got, what is it, [in a Vine loop] seven seconds? We try to deal with   issues by the first line of a haiku.” She also says there’s a pressure to make all those responses, all those Hitler memes as quickly as you can. ”The   aspect, the immediacy that our social media don’t just permit us, but almost demand of us,” she said. ”And that is not built into the technology. That is sociological. We have decided that because we can respond right away, we’re going to respond right away.” When asked if this might change anytime soon, Harvey said no. ”It’s not impossible, but it feels impossible,” she said. ”It’s like trying to slam on the brakes on the Titanic, so you don’t hit that iceberg.”"
"Donald Trump’s campaign canceled a planned Chicago rally on Friday night after chaos and clashes between protesters and attendees overtook the event. ”Mr. Trump just arrived in Chicago and after meeting with law enforcement has determined that for the safety of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed to another date,” the Republican’s campaign said in a statement. ”Thank you very much for your attendance and please go in peace.” The explosive scene at the University of Illinois in Chicago was broadcast live across cable networks and come amid escalating confrontations between protesters and attendees at Trump rallies this week. According to Bloomberg News, more than 10, 000 people had signed up on a Facebook page to protest Trump in Chicago by Thursday evening. Indeed, throngs of protesters had filled the arena, some wearing Black Lives Matter shirts and others chanting support for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, according to reporters on the scene. Trump supporters chanted back ”USA! USA! USA!” NBC Chicago reported that one police officer had been injured. CBS News also reported that its Trump embedded reporter Sopan Deb had been detained. Trump called into MSNBC after the rally was canceled, saying his campaign made the right decision and he ”just didn’t want to see people hurt.” ”Chicago was the home to some very bad rallies, I think we made a wise decision,” he continued, alluding to long simmering racial tensions in the Windy City and protests surrounding the 1968 Democratic convention in the city. On Fox News, Trump denied some of his incendiary language had caused the clashes and were instead about economic conditions and worries. ”I don’t think so,” he argued. ”I represent a lot of people who have great anger.” Illinois holds their primary on Tuesday, and Trump said he thought the skirmishes on Friday night and the canceled rally could actually help him. ”A lot of people say this is a positive in terms of votes,” he said. And continuing his round of interviews on CNN, Trump was asked whether his tone has contributed to these scenes at his rallies. In the past, Trump has said at his rallies that he would like to punch protesters in the face and ”knock the crap out of” them. ”I don’t take responsibility. No one has been hurt,” Trump argued, later adding that, ”I certainly don’t incite violence or condone violence.” The confrontations were just the latest eruptions of violence at Trump events. A Saint Louis, Mo. rally earlier Friday was interrupted multiple times by protesters, and more than 30 people were arrested. Earlier this week a protester was punched in the face by an attendee at a rally in North Carolina. Additionally, reporter Michelle Fields of the conservative news site Breitbart has alleged she was assaulted at a Trump press conference by someone who was ID’d by a Washington Post reporter as Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Republican candidates react to events in Chicago, ”America is better than this. We don’t have to tear each other apart,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said. ”When you have a campaign that disrespects the voters, when you have a campaign that affirmatively encourages violence, when you have campaign that is facing allegations of physical violence against members of the press, you create an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discourse.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said the president should bear some responsibility for the increasingly hostile tensions in the country. ”We are being ripped apart as a nation,” he told Fox News’s Megyn Kelly. ”The president bears some responsibility for some of his rhetoric. People are angry. On Saturday morning, Rubio told reporters he still intended to support the Republican nominee, ”but it’s getting harder every day.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s campaign said in a statement, ”The seeds of division that Donald Trump has been sowing this whole campaign finally bore fruit, and it was ugly.” He urged people to rise above the violence, adding, ”We are stronger together, we will reject those who try to divide us for personal gain and we will do it the right way  —   at the ballot box.” Trump speaks out about protest during Saturday morning rally, During a public rally at an airfield in Vandalia, Ohio, Trump blamed the ”planned attack” on ”professional protesters,” and blamed supporters of Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, as well as President Obama for dividing the country. During the address, Trump led supporters with a chant of ”Build that wall!” and a    about who would pay for it (the country of Mexico). Obama comments on about Trump rallies before Chicago event, President Obama had commented on the increasing tension at Trump rallies while speaking in Austin, Texas, earlier on Friday, alluding back to the   ”birther” movement Trump previously stoked. ”We’re shocked someone is fanning   or   sentiment! . .. We’re shocked! We’re shocked that someone could be loose with the facts. Or distort someone’s record. Shocked!” he said. ”How could you be shocked? This was the guy who was sure I was born in Kenya. And wasn’t letting go . .. As long as it was being directed at me they were fine with it. It was a hoot . .. and suddenly they’re shocked!”"
"One dog has been killed and multiple dogs have been injured by a snowmobiler in what appears to be an intentional attack on competitors in the Iditarod Race in Alaska. Iditarod veteran Aliy Zirkle was the first to report an attack. A snowmachiner had ”repeatedly attempted to harm her and her team,” the Iditarod Trail Committee says, and one of Zirkle’s dogs had received a    injury. Zirkle reported the attack when she arrived in Nulato, Alaska, in the wee hours of the morning, and race officials and law enforcement were notified. Then Jeff King, a   Iditarod champion who was behind Zirkle, reported a similar encounter. King’s team was hit by a snowmobiler, injuring several dogs and killing one  —   Nash, a    male. Reporter Emily Schwing tells our Newscast unit that King’s sled has lights and reflectors. ”It really felt like reckless bravado and playing chicken,” King told Emily. Zachariah Hughes, a reporter for Alaska Public Media, says that neither King nor Zirkle were injured, according to state troopers. A suspect has been identified, race officials say, and an investigation has begun. ”Regrettably, this incident very much alters the race of the two mushers competing for a win,” the Trail Committee writes. ”However, both are going to continue on their way toward Nome.” After a   rest, Zirkle left Nulato  —   leaving one dog behind  —   in third place. King is still at the checkpoint as of 1 p. m. Eastern. Emily says on Twitter that King explained, ”I’m not gonna let this schmuck take any more of the fun away.” Alaska State Troopers released a statement saying they’ve arrested Arnold Demoski, 26, of Nulato. He faces two counts of assault in the third degree, one count of reckless endangerment, one count of reckless driving and six counts of criminal mischief in the fifth degree. You can find updates on this story, as well as full coverage of the Iditarod race, at Alaska Public Media."
"On Sunday morning, Americans will ”spring forward.” With the exception of Hawaii and some parts of Arizona, people will set their clocks ahead to get more light at night. Not everybody’s on board. Sure, Australia and most of Europe join us but most African and Asian nations skip daylight saving time. India and China don’t enforce it, for example. But it doesn’t mean they haven’t tried. Since the concept of daylight saving time was first embraced by Germany during World War I, many parts of the world have flirted with DST, mostly in the hope it could cut down on electricity usage. ”Somehow, people [around the world] bought into the notion that if we squeeze our clocks enough, we could save oil,” says Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time. ”Unlike any other energy policy, it costs the consumers nothing, so legislators love it.” It’s hard to prove it. In a given year it could look like DST is saving people money, he says. ”But really, it could be due to something like a mild spring.” Sometimes, DST is practiced in places where it doesn’t make sense, like countries near the equator, says Downing. ”The amount of sunlight is pretty steady,” he says. ”But they wanted to line up with American time zones and keep themselves in sync.” Here’s a few examples of how different places have played around with daylight saving time: Bangladesh, Struggling with frequent blackouts, in 2009 the country observed DST on a trial basis to see if it would help save energy. In just six months it was canceled. The government said DST did help reduce peak electricity demand, but not everyone was a fan. People were confused by the switch, and sleepy schoolchildren were mad about having to wake up in the dark. Bangladesh hasn’t tried it again since then. Egypt, The Brits introduced daylight saving time during World War II, and since then different leaders have loved it or left it. In 2014, DST was reintroduced to help curb energy consumption  —   but was discontinued the next year. Citizens were unhappy about changing the clocks four times during the year  —   Egypt paused DST during Ramadan to end the fast an hour earlier. And studies showed no effect on energy consumption. Namibia, Namibia is the only country in   Africa to use daylight saving time, which they’ve had since 1994. But it could soon go away. Citizens complain that when the clocks are set back, it gets dark too early when people come home from work. So last year, the government launched public consultations to look into nixing it for good. South Africa, In 2014, a group of researchers at the municipal energy office in Durban, South Africa, put together a report to test the idea of DST. In addition to potentially reducing the town’s annual electricity consumption between .2 and .5 percent, the researchers hoped to enhance the ”lifestyle benefits for Durban residents and tourism”  —   the latest sunset in Durban is 7 p. m. But South Africa still has not joined the DST bandwagon. One More Weird Thing. .. Some places play with time for their own reasons. A resort in Madagascar called Anjajavy wanted the sun to rise later and set earlier, so they created their own time zone  —   an hour ahead of the rest of Madagascar  —   for a later sunset hour. Visitors have to change their watches to Anjajavy time. Says the hotel’s website: ”A time peculiar to Anjajavy the lodge was created so that we are better adjusted to the natural cycles of the reserve and the village. Therefore, at 5 pm lemurs naturally join us in the Oasis garden to take advantage the foliage. It is fresh hour, right in time for the ”5 O’clock tea.”"
"Those of you in Hawaii, most of Arizona, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas, go ahead and feel smug. Everyone else: prepare to lose an hour tonight, as Daylight Saving Time begins and the clocks shift forward. Daylight saving time means an extra hour of daylight in the evening, and darkness stretching a little further into the morning. The idea is that it makes daylight hours match up with the hours when people want to be active, and saves on energy use. Whether daylight saving time achieves any of its aims is hotly disputed. But it does mess with our circadian clocks  —   especially springing forward  —   and it certainly ticks people off. Complaints about the change are as regular as, well, clockwork. The Associated Press reported this week that some states are discussing joining the ranks of the daylight saving holdouts  —   while at least one state legislator is proposing switching over, and never switching back: ”California has a bill that would ask voters to abolish the practice of changing clocks twice a year. Lawmakers in Alaska and nearly a dozen other states are debating similar measures. Some lawmakers in New England want to go even further, seceding from the populous Eastern Time Zone and throwing their lot in with Nova Scotia and Puerto Rico. ” ’Once we spring forward, I don’t want to fall back,’ said Rhode Island state Rep. Blake Filippi, who hopes the whole region will shift one hour eastward, into the Atlantic Time Zone. ’Pretty much everyone I speak to would rather have it light in the evening than light first thing in the morning,’ he said. . .. ”Shifting to Atlantic Time and never changing back would effectively make summertime daylight saving hours permanent, said Filippi, who made a public health case for his bill at a Rhode Island State House hearing this week.” Meanwhile, as more and more of our devices automatically adjust to the time change, there’s one manual task to consider: Fire departments across the country are asking residents to check the batteries in their smoke alarms tonight."
"The epidemic of opioid abuse that’s swept the U. S. has left virtually no community unscathed, from big cities to tiny towns. In fact, drug overdose is now the leading cause of injury death in this country: more than gun deaths more than car crashes. There were more than 47, 000 drug overdose deaths in the U. S. in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That includes unintentional overdoses and suicides. More than half of those were from opioids, including painkillers and heroin. I went to rural Berks County in southeast Pennsylvania to hear what the opioid epidemic means in a small town, a place where everyone knows everyone and the ripples of addiction spread wide. Really, I could have gone just about anywhere. No community is immune. The landscape in Berks County is bucolic: rolling farmland studded with silos and   stone barns. But that peaceful landscape belies a serious problem. Opioid addiction is deeply embedded in these small towns. ”It’s become a crisis,” says Phil Salamone, a paramedic in Kutztown, Pa. He points out that heroin is both cheap and readily available from nearby cities such as Reading and Philadelphia. Salamone says, ”There is no exclusive demographic that’s using it. It’s everybody. It’s kids, adults, low income, high income. It’s everywhere.” Local paramedics have been able to save lives by using the drug naloxone, also known as Narcan. It reverses an overdose by latching onto receptors in the brain and kicking the opiates off. ”We don’t ever have to worry about that medication expiring because it’s always used, Salamone says, somewhat ruefully. The Kutztown ambulance squad has ”Narcanned” ten overdose victims so far this year. Salamone says the drug makes paramedics like him look really good. ”You have a patient that is unresponsive. We start an IV on them, administer naloxone and they wake up! Just like nothing had happened.” Early one morning last May, a neighboring ambulance squad got an emergency call from Brandywine Heights High School. A girl had been nodding off at her desk. She soon collapsed, semiconscious and turning gray. She had overdosed on heroin. School guidance counselor David Favata, a certified EMS worker, raced in and got the girl breathing with a bag mask. An ambulance whisked her to the hospital and she did survive, but it was a close call. It turned out she had done heroin in the school bathroom before class that morning. School principal Josh Ziatyk recalls her as a great kid, a former cheerleader, with ”tons of energy and the world ahead of her.” But, he says, ”Through the late middle school years into early high school years, there was a change that occurred within her. And little by little, [she] just found herself into a black hole, into a rut, and couldn’t get out of it.” The opioid epidemic has galvanized Brandywine Heights and neighboring Kutztown Area High School into action. Between them, they lost six former students to heroin overdose within two years. Nurses at the middle and high schools now stock naloxone in the event of an overdose. Both communities have organized groups to spread awareness about opioid abuse and try to prevent it. They sponsor activities to keep young people engaged. Boredom is a problem in a small town, and drugs can easily fill that void. At Kutztown High, students meet each week as part of a group called Kutztown Strong, which was formed in response to the drug crisis. When I visit, they’re busy planning a    basketball tournament. After the meeting, freshman Ramsi Ross tells me how angry she gets when she reads social media posts about the overdose deaths of young people. ”Everyone’s saying like ’rest in peace, you’ll be missed,’ and I just couldn’t help but think, these were your friends! Couldn’t you have done something? Maybe you should have got involved in Kutztown Strong and stopped your friends from using.” Of 450 students at Kutztown High, there are about five who are back in school after rehab. And there are quite a few others the staff is concerned about. Teachers and counselors meet each week with a specialist who has a contract to work in the school. This student assistance team is part of a   program in Pennsylvania. They’re on the lookout for kids in trouble. It could be eating disorders, anxiety,   or drug and alcohol abuse. They look for possible warning signs: kids whose grades have tanked or who’ve changed friend groups. On the state level, it’s hard to get solid data on whether these interventions are effective. But the staff members at Kutztown High say they’re providing a crucial support network for kids at risk. Guidance counselor Andrew Brett has seen a recent pattern: kids who start with pot may pivot to prescription painkillers and sometimes  —   across the spectrum, from the highest achievers on down  —   to heroin. ”Kids aren’t afraid of it,” he tells me. ”Years ago, it was,’Well, heroin is for junkies.’ And you had to be pretty low, and that was the perception. Well, that’s not the perception. It’s available and it’s cheap. And it’s readily available in our community.” When the student assistance team wants to intervene, they approach the student’s parents first. School superintendent Kathy Metrick says that conversation doesn’t always go so well: ”I sat across the table from a parent whose child had been found in possession of all sorts of paraphernalia, and she said he was picking up trash off the street, that he would never do that.” Metrick goes on, ”The denial is just so powerful. And you want to say, ’Please save your child!’ Because, if we’re wrong, yay! That would be the best news ever. But gosh, if we’re right and we have a chance to step in now before it’s too late, let’s do that.” But Metrick knows even if they do step in, that’s no guarantee. Students will likely come back from rehab to the same circle of friends, the same triggers and temptations as before. This story was produced by NPR’s Evie Stone."
"The Seer: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, a documentary premiering today at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, conveys the joys of living in a rural American community and, also, the hellish changes to that manner of life wrought by massive industrialization. The film takes place in Henry County, Ky. where writer and activist Wendell Berry’s family has farmed the land for 200 years. Directed by Laura Dunn, the movie isn’t afraid to look at farms and farmers with emotion  —   one thing that drew me to it. (I screened the film at home, not in Austin.) Dunn interviews Berry, his wife Tanya and daughter Mary, and others  —   like organic farmer Steve Smith. Collectively, their words sear. ”A little nowhere place,” Berry says, that’s what these small rural towns are called now. Rural folks know all too well the prevailing sentiment in the country at large that, as Mary puts it: ”If you were smarter, you’d do something besides farming.” And, of course, more of us than ever before are doing something besides farming: Once 45 percent agrarian, the U. S. is now only 4 percent agrarian. As Berry wrote in his now classic,   book The Unsettling of America, first published in 1977  —   and as is heard again in the film  —   the decline in farming over time is tied to agribusiness. The expensive materials that make farming more efficient, all the technology and all the chemicals, cost so much that more acres have to be planted, and then those acres have to be farmed more efficiently, and so it goes, around and around. Tanya, in a perfect   evocation of Wendell Berry’s theme through his decades of writing and environmental activism, says that what has to come back into our consciousness is this: that it’s possible to live a decent life on a farm without being industrialized. Central to The Seer is something else that faithfully reflects Berry’s writing and activism: an acute sense of place, the sense that the land, this particular beloved Kentucky land, makes possible the story. It’s not, Berry clarifies, that this land offers up subject matter the connection goes deeper than that. ”The place is precedent to my work,” he says. And in the film, the scenes we see  —   a quiet natural world or people at work on the land  —   allow us to see also what he intends by that statement. Seeing nature, as the film’s title suggests, is   for Berry. Mary remembers that, growing up, she was told always ”to look and see” by her parents: What is beautiful and right? What is ugly and needs fixing? That same vision is present, too, in Berry’s fiction, the genre of his writing that I know best. His Port William novels (Port William stands in for Henry County) feature farmers Old Jack Beechum and younger Andy Catlett and their kin and friends who live out their love of the land and lament the losses that   modernization brings. In The Memory of Old Jack, the deep bond between a farmer and land weaves itself into every page: ”The work satisfied something deeper in him than his own desire. It was as if he went to his fields in the spring, not just because he wanted to, but because his father and grandfather before him had gone because they wanted to  —   because, since the first seeds were planted by hand in the ground, his kinsmen had gone each spring to the fields.” Time’s fluidity is   in these novels. With many generations of family and other loved ones working the land, the old teach the young who teach the old, and the past doesn’t vanish but lingers. In Remembering, as Andy Catlett approaches Port William after being away in San Francisco, Berry writes: ”In the river valley Andy takes the slower Port William road, and the   begins to move with a different motion, approaching the shape of the country. ...And Andy’s body begins to live again in the familiar sways and pressures of his approach to home. His own place becomes palpable to him. Those he loves, living and dead, are no longer mere thoughts or memories, but presences, approachable and near.” Yet that connection Andy feels can forcibly be altered by cultural shifts and right there, at the heart of that sad knowledge, is, I believe, the strongest intersection between Berry’s   and fiction, between his writing and his life. The film does inspire hope. Local food movements and farmers’ markets, the Berrys say, are a good start  —   but not enough because changes in how food is sold and consumed must be linked to land use. Good farms can, and do, exist. As Berry told Modern Farmer last year: ”The responsible farmer would not own more land than he or she could know well and pay close attention to and care for properly. ..A good farm is recognized as good partly by its beauty: the presence of trees, grass, good livestock on the pastures.” I think not of ”livestock” in any generic sense but of individual cows, pigs and chickens kept on small farms out of crowded conditions, gestation crates or battery boxes. And, yes, I know that the very mention of farming that may involve animal slaughter kicks us into turbulent waters, because as this column by Bruce Friedrich, now executive director of The Good Food Institute, shows, serious conversation exists about whether ”humane meat” is ever really possible. Wendell Berry asks us to remember farming families and farming communities as we discuss these hard issues. The Seer opens up a space  —   a visually beautiful space  —   to talk about the land and all of us who live on it and off it. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape."
"It was the first time ever that an Alaskan athlete didn’t win gold in the Alaskan high kick. Earlier this week, at the Arctic Winter Games in Nuuk, Greenland, a hometown athlete named Bent Jakobsen won the gymnastic event  —   which requires athletes to begin from a sitting position and end in a   handstand to kick a ball suspended above. The crowd went wild. The Arctic Winter Games, held March 6 to 11, are the Olympics of traditional Inuit sports. The Alaskan high kick is one of about a dozen indigenous games at the event. Others include the stick pull, the sledge jump and the finger pull. More than 1, 700 male and female athletes from Russia, Canada and Alaska traveled thousands of miles to Nuuk to compete. Despite the high stakes of an international sports championship, the games  —   held every other year since 1970  —   are meant to be collaborative, making the week feel more like a casual sports festival than a competitive pressure cooker. Athletes from different countries even offer advice to their competitors while they are competing. During the Alaskan high kick, an Alaskan athlete helped coach an athlete from Canada’s Northwest Territories to his highest kick ever. Many of the sports are inspired by daily life in the Arctic  —   or at least a version of daily life that includes hunting and fishing for survival. It’s a way of living that is quickly disappearing as the Arctic region urbanizes. Since World War II, commercial fishing, logging and oil drilling have pushed much of the circumpolar region away from a subsistence hunting economy and into one dominated by more centralized, modern industry and trade. The pace of modernization has been rapid, and fewer and fewer people are living the lifestyle these games originate from. One game, the stick pull, involves holding onto a short, tapered stick that’s slathered in grease to resemble a slimy fish. Two athletes grasp the stick, and the one who can pull the stick away from the other wins. ”It’s a survival technique made into a game,” explains Tonny Fisker, a Greenlandic athlete who has competed in seven Arctic Winter Games. ”All the games have different stories.” In the triple jump, similar to the track and field sport of the same name, competitors jump with both feet three times in quick succession. Whoever jumps the longest distance wins. ”If you’re on the ice and the ice is breaking up,” Fisker says, ”you have jump from ice to ice. I tried it when I was younger.” Of course, the big difference between real life and the game is that in the gym, there’s no freezing ocean to drown in. This is the first time Nuuk has hosted the Arctic Winter Games, and it was an enormous logistical challenge for the town of 17, 000 to host more than 2, 000 guests. The government closed the schools and turned them into dormitories for the athletes. The town bought extra buses and Air Greenland, the national carrier, stopped all regular flights to use every plane it has to shuttle teams to and from Nuuk. Regular flights will resume after the athletes leave on Saturday. The mayor of Nuuk, Asii Chemnitz Narup, says that even showers are an issue. ”We had to make sure we had the water capacity, the electricity, everything,” she says. ”And there is the weather. We cannot control the weather, but we wish we could.” A blizzard on the first day of the Games didn’t stop events from going forward. On Tuesday, when the first biathlon race began, it was still snowing and windy. Greenland’s Ukaleq Slettemark, 14, won the 7.  [4. 6 mile] biathlon, a combination of   skiing and shooting, for her age group. She explains that shooting is part of her everyday life in Nuuk. She loves hunting with her family. ”I shot a reindeer this summer,” she says proudly. ”It’s a really good feeling when you hit something. Also, in biathlon, when you hit the target, it’s a good feeling.”"
"Florida may be Sen. Marco Rubio’s home turf, but it’s also friendly terrain for his rival Donald Trump. On Friday morning, Trump began his day with a press conference at his luxurious    club in Palm Beach. Less than four days earlier, he had given a press conference at another one of his Florida properties  —   the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter. In Florida, it seems Trump’s presidential campaign is seemingly everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Trump is on TV  . And, yet his campaign infrastructure has always been a bit of a mystery. Trump’s ground operation may not be as visible as a traditional campaign, but it’s been operating in Florida for months. ”No other campaign’s been on the ground because they’ve been focused on other states, and they haven’t been able to have the resources here, but since October Donald Trump’s been moving forward,” said Joe Gruters, Trump’s Florida   who’s also the   of Florida Republican Party. Trump made his first Florida hire in October of last year  —   Karen Giorno, who had previously handled external affairs for Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott. He also brought on the former data director for the state Republican party. And, he    the endorsement of the governor, who wrote an   in USA Today that claimed ”Donald Trump has America’s pulse.” Gruters says Trump has another distinct advantage in Florida. ”This is his second home, he could be called a Floridian,” said Joe Gruters. ”The guy’s invested tens of millions of dollars in businesses here. He’s attended local Republican events across the state for years, and really built some solid relationships early on.” Some analysts say Trump’s initial Florida strategy was focused on Jeb Bush, but now, with Bush out of the race, he has the tools to refocus on Rubio. To date, the campaign only has two    offices in the state, according to Gruters. Much of the operation seems slightly   as Trump supporter Richard DeNapoli explained. ”They hold these organizational meetings, usually at a restaurant that has a private room, something like that,” said DeNapoli, the former chairman of the Broward County Republican party. ”So, at that meeting, they have a   video that teaches you to how to use the calling program where you can make calls from home on behalf of the Trump campaign.” It’s akin to traditional phone banking with a twist that resembles The Apprentice. ”Usually we do a contest for whoever the person in each county who does the most calls  —   then they get a meeting with Donald Trump,” explained DeNapoli with a laugh. At a recent Trump volunteer training, about 20 supporters gathered at a wings restaurant in Hollywood, Fla. Linda Schainberg, a    Trump volunteer, discussed the importance of sign waving at the early polling sites. Other folks explained the weekend plans for door knocking and phone banking  —   all traditional campaign strategy with one exception  —   there was actually no staff on hand it was an entirely volunteer force. ”I try and hold a weekly event here to bring volunteers together to help Donald Trump win the presidency,” explained Schainberg, sporting a Trump   and a matching Trump button. Rubio’s Home Turf? Marco Rubio was supposed to have a   advantage, as the     . He’s the native son in this story. He was born in Miami, played football at a Miami high school, and currently represents the state as a senator. And, with Jeb Bush now out of the presidential race, Rubio has the backing of the GOP elite in the state. Local papers and politicians have endorsed him (though notably, Jeb Bush has remained silent.) But even though Florida may be Rubio’s backyard, analysts say he got a late start. He hasn’t been on the ground as early and as frequently as he ought to have been. And, for months, Miami itself was largely the domain of the Bush headquarters. Rubio was running his campaign out of Washington, D. C. and only began opening offices in Florida around Super Tuesday early this month. His campaign insists they’ve been operating on a grassroots level for months. ”We’ve had a    program even before we had offices,” said Alex Burgos, a spokesman and adviser with the Rubio campaign. At Rubio’s local Miami office, people crowd into a room to make calls in English and Spanish  —   it seems like a strong,   ground game. ”What we’ve been doing here is get out the vote calls, working the absentee ballots, encouraging people to go vote early,” said Burgos. ”This is Marco’s hometown base, this is Marco’s geographic base. We want to make sure there is strong turnout throughout Florida, but especially among the people who know him best in South Florida.” South Florida is home to a large number of Republican   the campaign is hoping to galvanize. ”We have teams walking in important neighborhoods . .. a great deal of the suburban areas that have a large   population,” explained Armando Ibarra, a Miami   for Rubio. Ibarra also points out that Rubio has won a tough election before in Florida, and he knows what to do. ”He won a statewide campaign in 2010, which means he had to build a statewide operation and churn out these voters,” said Ibarra. These days, Rubio is campaigning   with no intention of leaving the state until the primary is over. ”I need your help. We have to win here in Florida, it was always going to come down to Florida,” Rubio told a few hundred voters in the overwhelmingly Hispanic city of Hialeah earlier this week. Rubio was pleading for their support. ”If everyone here votes and finds others who will vote. If those of you who haven’t voted, will leave here now and go a few blocks away and cast your early ballot, we are going to win this election,” Rubio said. The Ted Cruz Factor, But, Rubio has another obstacle. The Cruz campaign says it has opened ten offices across the state, including one in Rubio’s backyard  —   Miami. Cruz isn’t expected to win Florida, but he wants to ensure that Marco Rubio doesn’t either. At a campaign rally in Miami this week, the Texas senator played up his Cuban roots and insisted he’s the only viable alternative to Trump. ”At this point, our campaign has beaten Donald Trump not once, not twice, not three times, but eight separate times,” Cruz told the crowd. And, on Friday, all three men  —   Cruz, Trump and Rubio  —   held campaign events in Florida. The action on the ground before March 15 is important, but any   ground game is limited, because of the popularity of early voting in Florida. Analysis from the University of Florida’s Daniel Smith shows that already about a million Republicans have cast their ballots, and 42 percent of them were newcomers  —   people who did not participate in Florida’s 2012 presidential primary."
"This story is part of NPR’s   series, Break it Down. Florida, which holds its presidential primary on Tuesday, is home to more than 3 million seniors who rely on Social Security. At the GOP debate in Miami Thursday night, candidates were asked about their plans for the program. All the Republican candidates say they want to leave Social Security as it is for people who are already retired, or soon will be. But Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have proposed changes for younger workers. Donald Trump says he wants to preserve Social Security benefits and is counting on stronger economic growth to help pay for that. Dana Bash, CNN: ”According to the Social Security Administration, unless adjustments are made, Social Security is projected to run out of money within 20 years.” Marco Rubio: ”Anyone who tells you Social Security can stay the way it is is lying. Any politician that goes around saying, ’We don’t have to do anything all we have to do is raise a few taxes or just leave it the way it is,’ they’re not being honest with you. Social Security will go bankrupt and it will bankrupt the country with it. So what it will require is people younger, like myself, people that are 30 years away from retirement, to accept that our Social Security is going to work differently than it did for my parents. For example, instead of retiring at 67 the way I’m supposed to retire, I’d have to retire at 68. ...If I’ve made a lot of money, my Social Security benefit will not grow a fast as someone who made less money.” Ted Cruz: ”Social Security right now is careening towards insolvency, and it’s irresponsible. .... For younger workers, we need to change the rate of growth of benefits so it matches inflation instead of exceeding inflation. And as you noted Dana, we need to have for younger workers that a portion of your tax payments are in personal accounts like the 401( k) that you own, that you control, that you can pass on to your kids and grandkids.” John Kasich: ”If you’ve had wealth throughout your lifetime, when the time comes to be on Social Security, you’ll still get it. It will simply be less. And for those people who depend on that Social Security, they’ll get their full benefit.” Donald Trump: ”I will do everything in my power not to touch Social Security. ...I want to make our country rich again so we can afford it.” 1. How big is the hole in the Social Security safety net? 2. What would it take to fix it? 1. The question from CNN somewhat overstates the problem. Social Security won’t ”run out of money” in 20 years. What will happen  —   somewhere around 2035  —   is the program will exhaust its ”Trust Fund,” which Social Security uses to help supplement money from payroll taxes. Even after the trust fund is gone, payroll taxes paid by workers will continue to flow into the system, and those funds will be sufficient to cover about   of all retirement benefits. In other words, if nothing is done, future retirees could still expect to collect 75 cents for every dollar of Social Security they’re owed. (Social Security has a separate program that pays disability benefits, and it faces a more urgent cash crunch. If money from the retirement program is diverted to back fill the disability program, the trust fund will be exhausted a few years earlier.) 2. There are a number of ways to close the gap between the money Social Security expects to take in from payroll taxes (the sole source of revenue once the trust fund is exhausted) and what it’s expected to pay out in retirement benefits. All of the fixes involve some combination of raising revenue   cutting benefits. If policy makers act now, the gap could be closed with relatively modest changes. The longer we wait, the larger the required changes will have to be. Some of the fixes proposed by the GOP candidates would help to narrow the gap, but none would close it altogether. The basic challenge facing Social Security is demographic. The system relies on payroll taxes from people who are working to pay benefits to those who are retired. That worked well when there were four or five workers for every retiree. But that ratio has now dropped below three workers per retiree and it’s drifting towards two. Absent another baby boom or a massive influx of immigrants, that’s not likely to change. If policy makers take no action, there will still be money coming in to Social Security from payroll taxes. It just won’t be enough to cover all the benefits that retirees will be owed. (It will be enough to pay about 75 cents on the dollar.) Closing that gap will require cutting benefits, raising taxes, or some combination of the two. Rubio’s proposal: Marco Rubio suggests gradually raising the retirement age at which younger workers like himself become eligible for Social Security. This is effectively a cut in benefits, since retirees would have fewer years to collect. Raising the top retirement age from 67 to 70 as Rubio proposed would fill about   of the Social Security shortfall. Rubio also suggested a form of ”means testing,” in which wealthier retirees would see smaller benefit increases in the future. The Senator didn’t offer any details, but other means testing proposals have been estimated to reduce the funding shortfall by about 10 percent. Cruz’s proposal: Ted Cruz suggests a different form of benefit cut, in which future retirees would receive smaller    adjustments. Some argue that the current inflation measure used by Social Security overstates the price increases seniors face, although others insist cost of living adjustments should be bigger, not smaller. The cut that Cruz suggests would fix about 15 percent of the funding shortfall. Cruz also proposes letting workers divert a portion of their payroll taxes into private retirement accounts. This may or may not be a good idea. It was hotly debated during the George W. Bush administration. But using payroll taxes for any purpose other than Social Security would make the system’s solvency problems worse, not better. Kasich’s proposal: John Kasich also advocates means testing with reduced benefits for wealthy seniors. Trump’s proposal: Donald Trump argues against any cut in benefits or increase in taxes, instead relying on faster economic growth to close the Social Security funding gap. Kathleen Romig of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says faster growth would help with this and many other challenges. But she warns it’s not a ”magic bullet.” Forecasters have tried to predict Social Security’s fate under many different economic scenarios, and there’s no realistic growth level that would close the funding gap on its own. Faster growth cuts both ways, increasing revenue from payroll taxes but also increasing benefits, which are tied to wages. Revenue proposals: None of the Republicans suggested raising payroll taxes, but that’s another way policymakers could help to close the funding gap. Payroll taxes for Social Security are currently 12. 4 percent, split between employers and employees. Raising that rate to about 15 percent would close the funding gap entirely. (There’s a separate, 2. 9 percent payroll tax for Medicare.) Alternatively, policymakers could apply the payroll tax to more income. Wages and salaries above $117, 000 a year are currently exempt from Social Security taxes. If that cap were eliminated, it would solve about 90 percent of the funding gap. Any of these fixes can be thought of as items on a menu, to be mixed, matched, and combined in whatever way is most politically palatable. By acting now, policymakers could solve the Social Security gap with a relatively modest increase in taxes and modest adjustments to benefits. With each passing year of inaction, though, the gap to be filled gets larger."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. On Fridays, we highlight some of the best stories. This week, we bring you three items. Growing up a basketball fan in South Texas in the 90s, I followed the San Antonio Spurs, devoured SLAM magazine and watched ESPN for hours. The last two introduced me to Allen Iverson and made me one of his biggest fans. Here was this superstar athlete, barely six feet tall, who could score at will, break the ankles of any defender and poured his heart into the game night after night. He was one of those players you wish you could be on the blacktop, screaming ”Iverson!” as you shot a fadeaway jumper. And here was this player who not only changed the way people think of the game, but unwillingly ushered in the fashion of today’s NBA players. ”I just felt the NBA was just picking on me. That’s all. Other guys in the league at the time dressed like me. Guys is supposed to be able to be original and dress like how they want to dress. The NBA can’t dress no grown man.” This interview by Complex is   insightful, funny and worth your time, especially if you’re a basketball fan. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go practice my crossover in my Reebok Questions. It’s easy to just think of a glass of Chianti as a fruity and rustic sipper that tastes good with pizza or a hearty Italian meal. But this week, The New York Times gives us a glimpse at some environmental factors threatening that glass. The ecosystem of the popular Tuscan wine region is under attack! ”And the enemy? An exploding population of voracious wild boars and deer that savor the sugary grapes and the vines’ tender sprouts, but that are also part of the region’s famed landscape, hunting traditions and cuisine.” As the story continues: ”The toll is estimated at $11 million to $16 million a year in lost harvest. There are also the costs of erecting and keeping up fences, which have proved controversial because of criticism that they mar the beauty of the Tuscan countryside.” This is the tale of how a community struggles to balance its beauty and traditions with an important economic source that’s woven into its history, land and culture. It’s also a fun reminder that the glass of wine you drink has its own story to tell. For this piece, The Boston Globe reached out to Stanford sociologists to isolate income data for Boston and Eastern Massachusetts in order to show how neighborhoods in the Boston area are increasingly economically segregated. It’s a great example of how journalists can join forces with academics, combining vivid descriptions with rigorous research to tell a compelling story. The article says, ”In the poorest tracts, family income is less than   of the median for the whole region. In the wealthiest, it’s more than 150 percent of the median. The range for   neighborhoods is 80 to 125 percent.” The article also notes that this is true for other big cities around the country. Many of us who live in major metropolitan areas like Washington D. C. sense this disparity, but the expressive writing, supported by solid data, really brought the story home. The imagery in this paragraph is a great example: ”When she’s on her way to Walmart in Quincy or her cousin’s house in Framingham and the kids are asleep in the back seat, she takes the long way through the region’s growing number of   suburbs and pictures her family in one of the big houses with the sloping lawns. . ..   people can go an entire day without talking to someone who has a college degree or a job in a downtown office. And for the affluent, handing a credit card to the gas station attendant or grocery clerk may be their only weekend brush with   America.”"
"Women sportscasters are heartened by the jury verdict this week that awarded their colleague Erin Andrews $55 million. Andrews was secretly videotaped while naked by a stalker through the peephole in her hotel room door. Both the stalker and the hotel owner were found liable. The case highlights the security risks that are especially pronounced for female journalists covering sports, who, working in a   field surrounded by passionate male fans, often travel alone. Among them is Laura Okmin, a sideline reporter covering the NFL on Fox Sports. In an interview with Melissa Block, Okmin talks about the precautions she’s taken to protect herself on the road, and whether she feels Andrews’ verdict will change the approach to security in the profession. Okmin says an overall awareness is necessary for all women to have, not just for those working in sports journalism. When taking safety measures into consideration, she says, ”Now, I think more than ever, I just feel that I’d rather sound a little crazy and sound a little paranoid and still feel safe.” On the safety precautions she takes when traveling to games. (SportsNet New York’s Kerith Burke said she travels with   to put over hotel door peepholes.) I think it’s just being very aware when you’re on the road. And it can be as simple as when I travel if I’m checking in when I go to the front desk, I don’t say my last name. I’ll say it very quietly if there are people around. And I ask them as they’re handing me something, not to say my name and also not to say the room number, more importantly. I’m very aware of that. If there’s people standing around, and again, this isn’t just for women on air or women who are known publicly, this is just for women, period. If there’s a lot of people standing there, and the room is said out loud, I think that’s something nowadays that we’re a little bit more aware of. When I walk into an elevator, I never open the envelope that holds the card . .. when I’m charging something, I never say my room number. . .. One time I was in the elevator, someone walked in, real close before it was shutting, and kind of jumped in with me and didn’t press a button and said, ”Hello, Laura Okmin.” And it could be as simple as just someone who happened to recognize me and happened to be going to the same floor, but I think my antenna was raised enough to just stand there and then I walked out, he walked out, I walked back in and went downstairs to the lobby and I switched my room. On whether she’s at risk, being a woman covering sports in a   field, I don’t know if I would say ”at risk.” I would say where I do feel that, though, and I’ve talked to enough of my female peers to know we all feel this . .. when you’re on a court, when you’re on a field  —   for me now, a football field  —   it amazes me the things men will yell at you and will say to you. I tend to never, unless it’s somebody who’s yelling for me, says something that I know they know me, I won’t look into a crowd. I used to just have one IFB, the earpiece in one ear so I could hear the telecast going on. I now get two. Part of that’s ’cause it’s loud at a stadium and I want to hear better, but also a big part of it is to tune that out. And it gets ugly, and I would say lately, more than 15 years ago, the ugliness and the venom that I hear is a lot more vulgar and is a lot scarier than it used to be. But I also do think that there’s part of that attached to the social media and the anonymity people now feel kind of blanketed from. So I don’t feel that with my safety, my physical safety when I travel. But I feel that on the field just feeling that in terms of sports fans. And you know, it’s a bunch of drinking, depending on how your team’s feeling you might be feeling real good about yourself or really bad about yourself . .. And I always think, and I’ve said it before, ”Boy, how would you feel if this was your mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend, wife, and you knew that men were yelling that kind of thing at her,” and usually that shuts them up kind of quickly. On whether the Erin Andrews lawsuit changes things in terms of women traveling and security, I hope so. And I really hope so in terms of women being more aware. I have a company that I do boot camps and workshops for young women who are going into sports and this will be a big topic at the next boot camp . .. I think so many of us going into sports, you want to prove that you’re one of the guys. And I think that’s the younger me talking, but I know that any time, when I’m younger and I didn’t feel safe and I did have a stalk situation very early on in my career  —   I was almost embarrassed by it because I didn’t want anyone to treat me differently, I didn’t want to look like I needed extra care, extra  . So I probably dismissed that and I’m very fortunate, especially with the stalking situation, I had a boss who did not, who took it very seriously. But I think what this does is, absolutely makes any woman who, again travel, period  —   not just through sports, but just travel  —   think about their awareness, think about is there any way they’re vulnerable and what can they do, what extra steps can they take to make sure that they feel safe and even more importantly again, not to be embarrassed or not to dismiss something by going, ”I don’t want to look paranoid. I don’t want to look high maintenance.” I just think that feeling safe and feeling secure and being able to sleep at night is much, much more important. On whether the level of vitriol she’s exposed to makes her love her job less, . .. I’ve come to accept that that’s part of it and I hate that answer, as I’m thinking, how do I help the next generation of young women growing? And I hate to think that I would say to them, ”Hey it’s part of the job, just accept it.” Because we shouldn’t. We absolutely shouldn’t. there’s absolutely no context in any part of our world that it’s OK for a woman to be doing her job and sit here and hear those kind of ugly things being thrown at them, so it hasn’t made me love my job any less, but I guess it’s just made me a little bit sadder in terms of how comfortable people are or how accepting those people are in saying those kinds of things. And also I think about, too, the people that are sitting around them, to think that it’s OK or it’s funny to be standing and yelling at a woman doing her job  —   you know, stinks. So no, it hasn’t made me love my job any less, it’s just made me a little bit sadder it terms of what women have to deal with these days. We’re just trying to do our jobs."
"Yesterday, NASA announced that astronaut Scott Kelly will retire from the space agency as of April 1st. Kelly holds the U. S. record for the most time spent in space. For nearly a full year, he zoomed along at 17, 500 miles per hour  —   orbiting 230 miles above earth  —   on the International Space Station. And for those million or so of us who follow him on Twitter, Cmdr. Kelly’s year in space gave us a   view of planet Earth. Kelly posted spectacular photos  —   awesome, in the true sense of the word. He called them,  . Through his zoom lens, he snapped the majestic snowy cap of Mount Fuji from straight overhead. It looks like a barnacle. The cracking blue ice of the Himalayas turns into a stunning lapis mosaic. One day, Africa appears as a mass of crinkly brown veins another, it’s become vivid streaks of orange and gold. Crimson and violet squiggles around Australia could be an abstract painting. It seemed that Kelly never got tired of what he could see out the window, and what he could make us see, in an entirely new way. When the capsule bearing Kelly and cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov parachuted to a landing in Kazakhstan earlier this month, that fantastic journey came to a close. Back home in Houston, Scott Kelly will be poked and prodded, weighed and measured, all in the name of science. And his terrestrial tweets now bring their own delights. He posted video of his first plunge into a pool! A few days later   there was Scott Kelly with his arms stretched overhead, and a big smile   looking up at a dark sky: That’s #rain on #earth. ”I missed weather,” he wrote. Kelly has rejoiced in the simple pleasure of being able to sit down at a table for dinner! He’s even excited about finally getting to go to the dentist for a teeth cleaning. I guess that’s what a year in space will do to you. I realize I’ve been missing Scott Kelly’s technicolor snapshots from space. It was impossible to look at those images and not be awed by the sheer natural beauty of this blue marble."
"Puerto Rico is losing people. Due to a   recession, more than 50, 000 residents leave the U. S. territory each year —  most for jobs and new lives on the mainland. This issue is especially affecting healthcare, where it’s estimated that at least one doctor leaves Puerto Rico every day. The mass exodus of doctors is creating vacancies that are hard to fill and waiting lists for patient care. Dr. Antonio Peraza is among those doctors who recently left for the mainland. He specializes in internal medicine and for nearly 14 years, had a private practice in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. His was a wrenching decision to close his practice and take a job offer in Miami, Florida. ”I wish you could have seen my patients. My patients, the day I told them I was going to close my office, they cried,” Dr. Antonio Peraza says. ”I felt like I was betraying them.” For decades, long before Obamacare, Puerto Rico has had a   healthcare system that provides coverage for nearly everyone on the island. It offers generous benefits, but has never been adequately funded. Nearly   of the island’s residents are covered by Medicaid or Medicare. But both of those programs cap payments to Puerto Rico at levels far below what the states receive. And in the last few years, Peraza says Medicare payments —  already low —  have been cut further. ”What they have been doing unfortunately is taking these Medicare cuts and passing them along to providers and the patients. Which, we are the weakest link of the chain,” Dr. Peraza says. Faced with a declining income, Peraza decided to move to Florida and sell his office building and practice in Bayamon. But so far he says, he hasn’t found a doctor interested in buying him out. ”Because most of them are in the same plan as I am doing. Maybe they are a little behind. Plan B is you have to leave the island because there’s no other way, there’s no choice,” he says. Congress is working on a plan to help Puerto Rico fix its economic problems and avoid defaulting on its more than $72 billion debt. Puerto Rican officials are hoping the plan will also include an increase in Medicare and Medicaid funding. Meantime, the exodus of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals is making it hard for hospitals and clinics on the island to fill vacant positions. Puerto Rico already had a shortage of specialists. Domingo Cruz Vivaldi is   of San Jorge Children’s Hospital in San Juan and he says, with so many doctors leaving, it’s getting worse. ”To see an adult rheumatologist right now, today, the waiting period it can be four to five months. And some of them are moving out. And then to replace those physicians, it takes a decade,” Cruz Vivaldi says. The outlook is no better for young doctors just starting their careers. At the University of Puerto Rico, one of four medical schools on the island, Manuel Rodriguez is doing a residency in orthopedic surgery. He says of his friends, only about one in five plan on staying in Puerto Rico to practice. ”I would love to stay here,” Rodriguez says. ”But seeing the reality we live every day here with the resources that the hospital has, with the resources that the government has. It’s difficult to think that we’re going to stay here in Puerto Rico.” After his residency, Rodriguez says he’ll look for a fellowship on the mainland. Fourth year medical student Milagros Lopez says opportunities and pay are better there, but Puerto Rico is home. ”There’s a huge economic incentive to stay away, which is a sad, sad truth. But the thing is, we are a different group of people,” Lopez says. ”This has our home, our family, our language. So, I think there is an attachment that’s kind of unavoidable there.” Lopez says she hopes to come back to Puerto Rico after completing a fellowship on the mainland, but knows life might intervene. Her brother left for a surgical fellowship in the states five years ago, she says. Today, he’s married, has two kids and lives in Detroit."
"Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, there is a bronze chest filled with gold and precious gems. The search for this hidden treasure has become a hobby for some, an obsession for others, and for one recent searcher  —   a fatal pursuit. The man behind the treasure is Forrest Fenn, an    millionaire, former Vietnam fighter pilot,   archaeologist, and successful art dealer in Santa Fe, N. M. ”No one knows where that treasure chest is but me,” Fenn says. ”If I die tomorrow, the knowledge of that location goes in the coffin with me.” The ornate, Romanesque box is    inches and weighs about 40 pounds when loaded. Fenn has only revealed that it is hidden in the Rocky Mountains, somewhere between Santa Fe and the Canadian border at an elevation above 5, 000 feet. It’s not in a mine, a graveyard or near a structure. For further clues, you have to read the poem in his   book, The Thrill of the Chase. Here is one stanza: Begin it where warm waters halt,  And take it in the canyon down,   Not far, but too far to walk.   Put in below the home of Brown.  ”’Where warm waters halt,’ no one agrees on what that means. Does that mean where two rivers converge? Does that mean where a hot spring pours into a river? Does that mean at the Continental Divide?” says Sacha Johnston, an avid searcher in Albuquerque. She runs a website that sells Fenn treasure tchotchkes. Now, six years after publication of the poem, tens of thousands of people have reportedly gone looking for Fenn’s treasure, thought to be worth well over a million dollars. Cheer Folks Up And Go Outside  Fenn sits at his laptop in the study of his Santa Fe manse, his blue eyes twinkling mischievously. He reads emails all day from treasure hunters imploring him for further clues. ”That’s the kind of email that I don’t respond to,” he says. ”Because if you want me to give you a clue I’m not going to answer your email.” Surrounding him is his extraordinary collection of Native American artifacts such as Apache dolls, moccasin boots and buffalo skulls. ”I love antiques, particularly American Indian,” he says. In the 1990s, he was criticized by Southwestern archaeologists over his excavation of a Pueblo Indian site that he owned. They consider him a plunderer Fenn thinks they’re ”clubby fussbudgets.” The war over Indian relics has largely subsided. Today, Fenn is all about the treasure. He says he hid the box in the midst of the Great Recession to cheer folks up and to get them off their couches and into the great outdoors. ”Sure, I’m eccentric,” he says. ”I pride myself on being eccentric. I don’t want to go down the center line like a lot of people do.” The Missing Treasure Hunter . .. And The Missing Treasure? The hunt for the treasure can become an obsession. Randy Bilyeu was a    retired mechanic who had moved from Florida to Colorado to look for the bronze box full time. He was last seen alive on Jan. 5. His car, a raft, and his little dog were found near the Rio Grande south of Santa Fe. Fenn is delighted the quest has motivated so many people to discover the Rocky Mountains, but he cautions: ”We don’t want to get anybody else lost. Be prepared. Take a GPS. Take at least one other person with you. And wait [until] the snow and the ice melts.” Is the treasure really worth risking your life over? Doug Preston is a   author and a longtime friend of Fenn’s. He says he saw the chest in the   vault in Fenn’s house before he hid it, and Preston can attest that it was filled with gold nuggets, gold coins,   gold figures, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds. ”As far as proof goes [that he hid the treasure] there’s no proof,” Preston says. He also lives in Santa Fe. ”It’s hard to prove a negative. The negative is that the chest is gone. It’s not in his house and it’s not in his vault. And also knowing Forrest for as long as I have, I can absolutely say with 100 percent confidence that he would never pull off a hoax. I’m absolutely sure that he hid that treasure chest.” A noted New Mexico archaeologist contacted for this story says he, too, saw the treasure and he also believes Fenn is not a trickster. The searchers read and   the cryptic poem and pore over topographic maps, waiting for the ”aha” moment. Then they trek through aspen forests, explore riverbanks, and rappel down cliff sides looking for the treasure. ”You go out, you look, you don’t find it, you come back home, you go through your clues again, your solves again and you think, ’Where did I go wrong? ’” says Cynthia Meachum, a retired   worker in Albuquerque who says she’s been out at least 60 times looking for the treasure. ”And you go out and you do it again. And I have actually seen some of the most spectacular scenery because of this that I ever would’ve seen.” And for that, Fenn would be pleased."
"When most people want to play a game, the first thing they reach for is likely a smartphone or tablet. Actual pinball machines have become quaint curiosities, but a   duo in California is keeping these   games alive in a museum. The Museum of Pinball is hidden away in an old industrial building, just off Interstate 10 and about 90 miles east of Los Angeles in Banning, Calif. It’s pretty quiet when the rows upon rows of pinball machines are not turned on. But once the switch is flipped, it gets loud. ”I built this collection picking them up one by one, and I put them in my house,” says John Weeks, who founded the museum together with his son, Johnathan Weeks. ”I’d fill up buildings with them, storage units.” Their collection is huge. There are 650 games ranging from vintage   machines all the way up to ones based on current TV shows such as The Walking Dead. John began amassing the games in the early 1980s. At first, he thought of opening a bar with an arcade, but that would only allow a handful of the collection to be played at any given time. The benefit of the museum is that all the machines are out on display. But Johnathan explains there is a drawback. ”You gotta remember when the museum is so large and there’s so many games plugged in,” he says. ”Just to flip the breakers is thousands of dollars to turn it on for the day.” That means the museum is only open a few times a year. During a recent rare opening, Dolores Barrett was trying her hand at it. ”I’ve really never played pinball. But I started out by playing The Terminator, and now I’m hooked,” she says. Although she’s old enough to have grown up with pinball, Barrett says her parents never let her have a quarter to play as a kid. Now, she’s making up for lost time. On a different aisle of old timey machines, Jamie Vanderet is playing one called Sea Ray. He’s here from Ottawa and says he picked up the game at a bar back in Canada. ”Once you start to play, you kind of get the bug,” he says. When he was a kid, pinball and arcades were already starting to fade. He says it’s not nostalgia drawing him to the games. ”There’s just something about like the lights and colors, especially with the older machines,” he says. Vanderet thinks it has something to do with the physicality of the real machines. ”I have played versions on the iPad and on the computer and stuff, it’s not nearly the same thing as playing it in the flesh. I mean, the machines all have their own quirks that you don’t really get into when you’re playing a digital version,” he says. ”It doesn’t quite match. Not even close.” Quietly tapping a screen is one way to play a game, but as Barrett discovers, shouting and celebrating with each click of the flipper and bounce of the pinball  —   surrounded by audience  —   is more fun. ”Oh my goodness, I’m doing this. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe this!” Barrett says."
"This year’s campaign is headed toward an epic clash of Republicanism at the Cleveland convention this summer. But it’s not the first time the party has been rocked by turbulence ahead of its convention. Again and again since 1912, splits between establishment GOP figures and the party’s most ardent conservatives have hobbled the party’s performance in November. Here’s a look at the drama that has come before: Theodore Roosevelt returns four years after leaving the presidency to challenge the man who succeeded him with his blessing: William Howard Taft. Losing at the convention, TR runs as a Progressive, splits the Republican Party and brings about the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Ten names are placed in nomination at the Chicago convention, but none can get a majority. Ohio Sen. Warren Harding is interviewed by party leaders at 2 a. m. and nominated the next day on the 10th ballot. He wins in November, restoring Republicans to the White House. Herbert Hoover extends GOP dominance into third White House term. As Great Depression deepens, FDR defeats Hoover in a landslide. Republicans assume they can deny FDR a third term but their convention is split between an Eastern establishment moderate (Thomas E. Dewey of New York) and a conservative (Robert A. Taft of Ohio, son of the former president). On the sixth ballot, the delegates turn to a third option. He is Wendell Willkie of Indiana, a public utility executive with no political experience who has risen in polls despite have entered no primaries. Willkie loses to FDR in an Electoral College landslide. Dewey, who had been the nominee in 1944 (losing to FDR) returns as the  . But he is once again opposed by Taft, the champion of the party’s   conservatives. It takes three ballots, but Dewey prevails, frustrating Taft’s loyalists. In November, Dewey is upset by a resurgent Harry Truman, who has been president since FDR’s death in 1945. Taft forces come to Chicago confident their turn has come. But the Eastern establishment has found a new hero, a war hero, in Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who has been serving as president of Columbia University in New York. The convention begins with a series of fights over rules and credentials, most of them regarding delegates from the South. Eisenhower comes up a few votes shy during the first ballot, but a shift away from a third candidate breaks a   and frustrates the Taft faction once more. Ike’s vice president, Richard Nixon, has the votes to be nominated but there are two   ”favorite son” candidates: New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater. These inheritors of the   rivalry both step aside for Nixon. ”Let’s grow up, conservatives,” says Goldwater. ”If we want to take this party back  —   and I think we can someday  —   let’s get to work.” Nixon loses narrowly in November to Democrat John F. Kennedy. Goldwater’s ”someday” comes in the very next cycle, as his wins in key primaries in the West unhorse Rockefeller and the Eastern establishment. Rockefeller leads a walkout from the convention and Goldwater’s acceptance speech declares war on moderates. Goldwater loses 44 states in November. Nixon unites the party factions well before the convention, turning back an   bid from California Gov. Ronald Reagan. Nixon then wins one term narrowly and a second in a   landslide before resigning in disgrace in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal. Reagan returns to challenge incumbent President Gerald R. Ford (Nixon’s vice president) for the nomination, reviving the   wars of a generation earlier. With a late surge in Southern and Western primaries, Reagan cuts Ford’s lead. But his attempt to break the convention open with rules changes comes up short by 111 votes. Ford wins on first ballot but loses in fall to Democrat Jimmy Carter. Reagan loses Iowa to moderate George H. W. Bush, but wins New Hampshire, wraps up nomination in May and takes Bush as running mate. Reagan serves two terms, winning the second with 49 states. Explicitly religious conservatives emerge as a major bloc, but Bush holds off a big field of primary challengers. Dividing the votes of conservatives, Bush wins on first ballot and takes 40 states in November. Incensed by Bush’s acceptance of tax increases in a budget deal, Patrick Buchanan challenges his renomination. Summoning the spirits of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan, Buchanan still fails to block a second Bush nomination but weakens the incumbent. Billionaire Ross Perot runs as an independent on Bush’s right, helping Democrat Bill Clinton win with just 42 percent of the popular vote. Buchanan again leads the charge from the right, but several others split the conservative bloc, and insider Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader who was Ford’s running mate 20 years earlier, wraps up the nomination in March. He loses to Clinton in November. Once again a large field forms, with 10 early candidates vying for the votes of ”movement conservatives.” Establishment voters coalesce around Texas Gov. George W. Bush, forcing out ”maverick” challenger John McCain by the second week of March. Bush loses the popular vote to Vice President Al Gore but wins the Electoral College after the Supreme Court shuts down a recount in Florida. McCain returns and dispatches rival Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York, early in the establishment lane. Again there are 10 early contenders for the conservative mantle, but most drop either before or after the first primaries. Baptist minister Mike Huckabee is the last of them, withdrawing in early March. McCain names a conservative favorite, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as his running mate. Their ticket gets less than a third of the Electoral College vote. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney renews his 2008 bid, this time as an insider favorite more than a conservative option. He easily dispatches other contenders to his left while more than half a dozen conservatives take turns leading in the polls. One, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, wins Iowa and extends the struggle into May before conceding. Restive conservatives at the convention in Tampa are only partially placated by the choice of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as running mate."
" Where powerful streams converge, there will be turbulence. That applies to politics as well as to waterways. Right now, two powerful streams of Republicanism in our time are converging on Cleveland and threatening to define the party’s national convention in July. One of these streams is like a historic river, long settled in its course. The other is more like a flood, surging beyond its banks to render the landscape unrecognizable. Ted Cruz, the   senator from Texas, has emerged as the candidate of the   stream, which now carries him toward a confrontation with Donald Trump, the man who unleashed the   force of the new flood. History is in the balance. It has become almost a commonplace to say the coming clash in Cleveland may determine not only the 2016 nominee but the survival of the Republican Party as we know it. History is also the backdrop against which this battle will be fought, providing insight into the process and the outcome. The Cruz forces in the party are the recognizable heirs of its Regulars of generations ago. Their beliefs have been the bedrock for the Grand Old Party since it started calling itself that in the 19th century. Their credo prizes individual liberty over government programs and regulations. They are   of states and suspicious of Washington. They detest taxes and have no use for labor unions. They are steeped in traditional social values,   religion and commitment to a strong national defense. These legacy conservatives fought the party’s progressives a century ago, resisting also the New Deal in the 1930s and the Great Society in the 1960s. Sometimes labeled the ”Old Right,” or ”” they have kept their flame alive through decades when the party typically chose centrists or moderate conservatives for president who were acceptable to the party establishment. (Explore a century of   convention wars here.) In the current Congress, the revival of   conservatism is alive in the Freedom Caucus, a relatively new alliance of about 40 mostly junior members. In the fall of 2013, when the government shut down for 16 days over funding for Obamacare, members of the Freedom Caucus huddled with one newly elected freshman senator to plot strategy. That senator was Ted Cruz. Trump’s Legion, But present day Republicanism is also driven by a host of newer arrivals, visible in the thousands crowding into Trump’s rallies and the millions following Trump on Twitter. Surely the Trump phenomenon has to do with his highly personal brand and media magnetism, but the voters he represents are not simply a personality cult. Many of them trace their ”roots” as Republicans back no farther than the Tea Party movement that arose in response to the first months of President Obama’s first term. Others may have come to the GOP during its growth spurt in the Ronald Reagan era, when the Republican tent expanded to welcome ”Reagan Democrats.” For decades, Southern voters who preferred Reagan or Richard Nixon, continued to vote Democratic for other offices. But that changed in 1994, when in one midterm election the ”Solid South” went from having a majority of Democratic governors, senators and members of Congress to having Republican majorities in all three categories. And the GOP has held on to those majorities ever since, adding majorities in state legislatures as well. These newer Republicans, whether Reagan era or drawn to Trump, tend to be working people and business people who have gravitated to the Republican Party as they aged and as the parties changed. They are predominantly older, white and Anglo, and most of them are men. They come from all levels of education and affluence, but many do not have college degrees or high incomes. And whatever their backgrounds, they are as much a part of the Grand New Party as their more ideologically orthodox cousins who have been there for generations. The new arrivals do not necessarily disagree with the   GOP on any of its basic tenets, but they are much more recent in their association with the party  —   and potentially more transient as well. Their energy comes not so much from roots and principles as from their reaction to immediate issues and pressures. They feel their economic security and cultural comfort level being threatened by immigration and greater diversity, by social change and activist government. When they hear Trump say ”make America great again,” they hear a promise of their own personal restoration  —   individually and as a group. History Of Conflict, This new conflict, between the parties of Cruz and Trump, draws from deep wells of resentment and dissent within Republicanism  —   feelings that may be reinforced by personal rivalries based in region and personality, as well as ideology. At one time, the party had a robust progressive wing that supported President Theodore Roosevelt and often worked with   Democrats in Congress. Later, there were Republicans, often called the Eastern Establishment, who shared some of the goals of the New Deal in the 1930s and stood with relatively centrist presidents of both parties (Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower) in the 1940s and 1950s. In this era, the term ”liberal Republican” was not an oxymoron. In 1964, four of five Republicans in Congress voted for the Civil Rights Act. Republican votes defeated the filibuster by southern Democrats in the Senate. But thereafter, the party of Lincoln experienced a sea change. The pivotal moment came in 1964, when Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater broke from his own party’s Senate leaders to vote against the Civil Rights Act. One month later, the Republican Party’s national convention nominated for him president. In November, Goldwater carried just six states, his home state and five in the Deep South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina) that were disillusioned with President Lyndon Johnson for ending racial segregation. Goldwater lost, but the party’s new focus on the South survived. In 1968, Richard Nixon won the Republican nomination and embarked on what was called a ”Southern Strategy.” One symbol of the shift was party switcher Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Dixiecrat who had run against his own Democratic president as the ”States Rights Party” nominee in 1948. In 1964, the Republican Nixon claimed most of the states of the Confederacy. He would win them all four years later. When Ronald Reagan became the face of the Republican Party in the 1980s, he smiled even more broadly on the South, launching his first campaign as the GOP nominee from Mississippi with praise for the code phrase ”states rights.” The states of the South, together with the Mountain States, became the base of the ”Republican lock” on the White House in that era  —   and remain its best source of electoral votes today. Since the 1990s, the same states have been home base for Republican majorities in Congress as well. The racial overtones of the party divide have since become even more unmistakable. Black voters deserted the GOP nationwide even as white voters, especially white men, felt increasingly at home there. This has intensified in the Obama years, expressing itself in the ”birther” challenge to Obama’s citizenship and in elements of the Tea Party uprising as well. When asked about the birther issue, even prominent Republican officials typically said they ”didn’t know” whether Obama was born in the U. S. or not. Among those who kept talking up the birther story longest was Donald Trump. Effect On 2016, Some moderates do remain in Republican ranks. Some polls suggest as many as 30 percent of Republicans might   as moderates or moderate conservatives. Some support abortion rights and same sex marriage, and their views on immigration may be as varied as the nation’s. But in the 2016 presidential primaries, this   fraction of the party has been nearly invisible amid the media attention to Trump and a few rival conservatives. Beyond that, the old establishment has been without a hero to rally around. Jeb Bush, scion of the party’s last dynastic family, did not make it to Super Tuesday. John Kasich, the Ohio governor, is one of the last four contenders standing, and could reasonably be called a fallback for the party’s vestigial  . But at this point, Kasich appears in the running primarily as a prospective running mate. This lack of a horse for the establishment (or moderates, or moderate conservatives) to ride demonstrates how the intraparty wars have moved. The new competition is between kinds of conservatives: basically, between conservatives old and new."
"When Bernie Sanders won the primary in Michigan last week, it shook up the narrative of the Democratic race. Sanders did so with the help of white men. If he’s able to pull off a victory in Ohio, the same demographic will likely be key. Take Jim, who describes himself, only half jokingly, as an angry white man. ”We’re pissed off,” Jim said. (Jim’s asked that his last name be withheld because his union, AFSCME, has endorsed Hillary Clinton, and he supports Sanders. He can’t be quoted publicly going against his union.) ”We haven’t gotten raises. Our pensions have been cut. Our healthcare’s increased.” And, Jim added, Sanders speaks to that. ”Bernie, he speaks from the trenches,” Jim said. ”We feel that he’s fighting for us.” In Michigan, Sanders won with the support of 62 percent of white men, who were    voters, according to exit polls. In 2008, in the Democratic primary in Ohio, white men turned out in strikingly similar proportions to this year’s Michigan contest. At the same time, black voters could make up a smaller proportion of the electorate and likely won’t be enough to put Clinton over the top. In Michigan, Clinton won more than   of black voters and they were 21 percent of the electorate. In 2008, Barack Obama won nearly 90 percent of black voters in Ohio they were just 18 percent of the electorate and Clinton won the state, ironically, with the support of white voters, including white men. Ryan, a member of a building trades union in Cleveland, who also asked NPR not to use his last name because his union has endorsed Clinton, feels the same way as Jim. ”She’s [Clinton] seen as the centrist candidate,” Ryan said. ”And she’s a   candidate. And big money and centrism hasn’t been working for   America for the past 30 years. Since Reagan.” When Ryan first saw Sanders speak a few months ago, something clicked. He said it was as if a politician was finally saying what Ryan had been thinking about the state of the country. Ryan was so swayed he even sent a small donation to Sanders campaign and later bought a  . ’Like NASCAR, everyone wear their patch’ At a union hall in Cleveland, both Jim and Ryan talked about rising   costs and trade deals that they believe have hurt much more than they helped. Sanders overwhelmingly won voters in Michigan who thought trade deals cost American jobs  —   58 percent of voters said so there, and Sanders won them   . (   Michigan voters said they lived in a household with a union member. Clinton and Sanders split them. Likely accounting for that were black union members who went for Clinton. Those numbers are not split out in exit polls.) Jim said he’s only gotten one raise, really more like a    adjustment, in eight years. ”You look at the stock market,” he said, ”it’s gone up I don’t know how many, a couple of hundred percent. You know, my wages have gone up     percent. And who’s speaking to that? Bernie is. And, yeah, I think maybe he’s kind of like Don Quixote. But I mean that’s part of the attraction. It really is. At least for me.” And Jim insists, this isn’t about gender. He loves his congresswoman, who incidentally endorsed Sanders on Friday. There are elements of Clinton’s stump speech designed to speak to   men including the parts where she talks about punishing companies that ship jobs overseas. But it’s clear from these interviews that Sanders’ attacks on Clinton’s trade record, her superPAC, her big money speeches to Wall Street banks  —   they are breaking through. The money issue nags at Dave Passalacqua. He likes that Sanders gets his campaign cash from regular people. ”There’s that old saying is politicians should be like NASCAR, everyone wear their patch,” Passalacqua said. ”You know, let’s see what the patches are and [Sanders] doesn’t need to wear a patch, because it’s his own thing.” ’Pie in the sky’ Passalacqua is executive vice president of the Communications Workers of America Local 4340 in Cleveland. His union has endorsed Sanders, but he’s still undecided. Passalacqua agreed to meet at a Cleveland diner along with Jim Goggin, a fixture in the city’s labor community. He’s an organizer for the Delaware Valley Health Care Coalition. ”It’s pie in the sky,” said Goggin, with an unmistakable Irish lilt. ”I mean, everything Bernie says, I think would be fantastic. But the fact of the matter is, that I am also a realist, and I know that you can’t do that.” For Goggin, it is all about beating the Republicans in November. ”And I wish to God that I thought he could win,” Goggin said. ”But I don’t unfortunately think he can win. Consequently, I’m with Hillary, because at least she’s not going to throw us under the bus, the working people.” Passalacqua chimes in: ”And one good thing that Bernie’s been doing, though, even with Hillary, is Bernie has moved Hillary’s positions on things.” From the outside, it seems Passalacqua is having a classic voter’s struggle between his head and his heart. He isn’t convinced Sanders will be able to do what he’s promising. Who will he vote for? ”Whoever I think is going best for me and my family is the bottom line. Whoever is going to make  —   not to steal Donald’s line, but  —   America great again,” said Pasalaqua quoting Donald Trump’s catch phrase. ”Because in order to make America great again we’ve got to make the middle class great again. So whoever’s going to do that, I think’s going to be the best person. And that’s who I’ll end up having to vote for.” No matter how Tuesday’s vote turns out, and no matter who wins the nomination, all four men said they would support the Democratic nominee in November."
"Bernie Sanders was able to win in Michigan, upsetting Hillary Clinton, with the support of white men. (NPR’s Tamara Keith laid that out in this post this morning). Sanders won 62% of white men in the Michigan Democratic primary, while Clinton won 68% of black voters. That is a big share, but wasn’t enough  —   and certainly smaller than the margins she’s gotten among black voters in Southern states. Looking at that difference, between white men and black voters, the chart shows where Sanders and Clinton might have their best shots in states going forward with significant delegate hauls. This analysis is based on 2008 exit polls and takes the difference between what white men were as a share of the electorate as compared to black voters. A couple notes:   exit polls were conducted in Washington state in 2008, but it probably looks similar to Oregon. Census data shows Washington state has a marginally higher   population.   were not factored into this analysis, and they will certainly make a difference in California, Arizona and Florida. Clinton won a large share of Latinos in Texas, though Sanders split with her in Nevada, according to exit polls. Sanders also won Colorado, a state with a large Latino population, though no entrance or exit polls were conducted at those caucuses."
"When an assisted living home in California shut down last fall, many of its residents were left behind, with nowhere to go. The staff at the Valley Springs Manor left when they stopped getting paid  —   except for cook Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the janitor. ”There was about 16 residents left behind, and we had a conversation in the kitchen, ’What are we going to do?’ ” Rowland says. ”If we left, they wouldn’t have nobody,” the    Alvarez says. Their roles quickly transformed for the elderly residents, who needed    care. ”I would only go home for one hour, take a shower, get dressed, then be there for   days,” says Alvarez. Rowland, 35, remembers passing out medications during those long days. He says he didn’t want to leave the residents  —   some coping with dementia  —   to fend for themselves. ”I just couldn’t see myself going home  —   next thing you know, they’re in the kitchen trying to cook their own food and burn the place down,” Rowland says. ”Even though they wasn’t our family, they were kind of like our family for this short period of time.” For Alvarez, the situation brought back memories from his childhood. ”My parents, when they were younger, they left me abandoned,” he says. ”Knowing how they are going to feel, I didn’t want them to go through that.” Alvarez and Rowland spent several days caring for the elderly residents of Valley Springs Manor until the fire department and sheriff took over. The incident led to legislation in California known as the Residential Care for the Elderly Reform Act of 2014. ”If I would’ve left, I think that would have been on my conscience for a very long time,” says Rowland. Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jud  . StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"It used to be common knowledge: Malnourished kids need more protein to thrive. Then came a scathing paper in the Lancet in 1974 called ”The Great Protein Fiasco.” Filled with sarcasm, it argued that the nutrition community’s fixation on protein was a waste of time and money. ”There is mounting recognition that the emphasis which has been given to the role of protein in human undernutrition, resulting in the claim that there is a global protein ’gap,’ ’crisis,’ or ’problem,’ is wrong,” wrote author Donald McLaren, then a clinical nutrition professor at the American University’s School of Medicine in Beirut. The paper hit the field hard, says Richard Semba, an expert on health and nutrition in developing countries, who is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. Protein researchers weren’t even invited to the next world food conference. And for the following decades, malnutrition researchers focused on vitamins, minerals and calories. It may be time for another pendulum shift, suggest Semba’s latest findings. For a study published last month, he and colleagues visited rural villages in southern Malawi, where they found that chronically malnourished young children were low in all essential amino acids. Vitamins remain essential, he says. But the new results, along with other accumulating evidence, suggest that protein needs to be a bigger part of the picture. ”It’s not just micronutrients that are going to save the world,” Semba says. ”I think we’re going to see a sea change in the international nutritional community.” The rural villagers whom he studied in Malawi take meticulous care of their   mud huts. But without electricity or running water in many places, kids suffer high rates of diarrhea and other illnesses. With eggs as a    luxury, along with   corn porridge as the major source of solid food for babies, the result is widespread chronic malnutrition and stunting. This condition, in which kids are very short for their age, sets children up for a lifetime’s worth of problems. Although the global nutrition community rejected the importance of protein in the 1970s, micronutrient supplements alone have failed to make a dent in chronic malnutrition among children. Meanwhile, researchers have increasingly acknowledged the cascade of negative consequences that come from lack of adequate nutrition in the first 1, 000 days of life. Chronic malnutrition is particularly insidious, says Martin Bloem, chief nutritionist at the U. N. World Food Programme, who also teaches at Johns Hopkins but was not affiliated with the new study. Unlike kids with severe acute malnutrition, who are often extremely skinny and bloated, kids with chronic malnutrition can be normally proportioned but stunted. And while being short may not seem like a big deal, failure to grow in height in the first couple years of life is a sign that the brain and organs are also not developing sufficiently. Later in life, stunting has been linked to higher risks for obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases. As many as 40 percent of children are stunted in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, Bloem says. Globally, a quarter of all kids under age 5 are too short for their age. With evidence growing over the last few years that it’s time to revive the protein trail, Semba and colleagues measured the heights of 313 rural Malawian kids between the ages of 1 and 5. They also took blood samples. More than 60 percent of the kids were stunted, the researchers reported in EBioMedicine. And, compared to taller children, blood levels of all essential amino acids in stunted kids were 15 to 20 percent lower, suggesting that those kids are consuming significantly less protein. ”It was more striking than we expected,” Semba says. The team is now analyzing links between stunting and socioeconomics. In a region where owning a bicycle is a major status symbol, Semba suspects that families with even slightly more money are able to feed animal proteins to their kids more often. Hygiene may also play a role. Frequent bouts of diarrhea can deprive kids of the nutrients they need to grow well. ”The findings of the new study are very important because they show that amino acids play a key role in this problem,” Bloem says, adding that the World Food Programme delivers food to 100 million people a year in the most difficult circumstances. ”It’s always a big discussion for us about what is the optimal food.” Cost remains a major barrier. Meat, milk and fish contain all the most important amino acids, but animal products are expensive. For its part, the World Food Programme is working with the Clinton Health Initiative in Rwanda to create a baby cereal fortified with essential vitamins, minerals and amino acids. The new study also emphasizes the need to revise recommended protein requirements for kids in challenging environments, says Ricardo Uauy, a nutritional biochemist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the University of Chile, who was not involved in the new research. Frequent illnesses and other stresses increase the amount of protein that children need to grow to their full potential, Uauy says. Inflammation of the gut after regular bouts of diarrhea, for example, reduces the body’s ability to absorb nutrients and can increase protein needs by between 30 and 50 percent. ”The new study is saying we have to study children in   conditions, not in an environment where everything is perfectly clean,” he says. ”That condition is the minority.” In the real world, in other words, protein is not a fiasco but a necessity."
"Gwen Stefani hit the pop landscape more than 20 years ago with an arresting declaration: ”I’m just a girl in the world. That’s all that you’ll let me be.” Since the chart debut of No Doubt in 1995, she’s made it her business to be much more  —   launching a successful solo career, creating a clothing line, starring as a judge on NBC’s The Voice, and finding the time between it all to have three children. And yet, her latest project comes nearly a decade after her last solo release. Like No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom, its songs were forged in the aftermath of a romantic breakup  —   but as she tells Weekend Edition Sunday, her public image has changed, and with it the stakes of making music. Stefani spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin about the surprises, missteps and rebounds that led to her new album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read on for an exchange on songwriting that didn’t make the broadcast. Rachel Martin: This is your first solo release in many years, and the process took a while: You wrote some songs, and then you scrapped them. What happened? Gwen Stefani: I had done the No Doubt record Push and Shove, and that was a real challenge for me: I think after the giving birth twice, going on multiple tours, all the stuff that I had done, I really got quite burned out after that. Sometimes life is so crazy, you have to go through something to be able to find out what you’re supposed to talk about next, and I think that’s what happened to me. I had gotten pregnant with Apollo, and I didn’t plan on that  —   it was just such a beautiful miracle. Four weeks later they called me and, like ”Do you want to do The Voice?” It was this incredible opportunity to do something different. It’s not about me  —   it’s like, ”How can I help you?” And when you give like that, you receive so much. It was an incredible experience, but it also gave me that bug: I wanted new music so badly. So, I was trying to cheat a little bit. I was like, ”OK, maybe I can just do it the way everyone else does it: just get other people to write my music for me, and I can kind of tell them what to write, and curate it.” I just gave birth, I’m nursing, I’m on a new TV show and I have two other kids. It’s impossible! So let’s do it the way we can. And I tried that for a while, and actually had almost a whole record. I put out a song called ”Baby Don’t Lie”  —   I don’t know if you remember that one. But overall, it just didn’t feel right. Am I right that you were working on these songs with Pharrell? You’re kind of right: I did write a song with Pharrell. He had called me right after I gave birth and was like, ”Do you want to do Coachella with me?” It was right at the height of ”Happy,” and my boys were so obsessed with him. So I got a tour bus, and the first time I walked outside my house after giving birth to Apollo was to do ”Hollaback Girl” onstage. It’s not like we were super close, but he is one of those people that always pointed me in the right direction. He’s quite spiritual, and always said really poignant things to me that changed my life, let alone the music we wrote together. Like what?  He can read people, you know? He can tell your insecurities and kind of be like, ”Why are you letting everybody control you?” Things that tap into something inside you that you already know. That’s why he’s so good on ”The Voice”  —   he just has that gift. And so, when we were on the show, he came to my dressing room and was like, ”I got a beat! I got a track!” That was ”Spark the Fire,” the song that we wrote together, and it was the first bit of writing that I had done in a long time. I think after doing Push and Shove and having it not be successful, I lost a lot of confidence. Songwriting, for me, has always been traumatic, and I’ve always made all these excuses. But I’ve realized that you have to just accept that it was a gift: ”I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know how I did it, but I did write all those songs, and I gotta do it again.” Why is songwriting traumatic? Because when you write a great song, it just blows you away. When you write a song that connects with people around the world  —   I mean like it actually transcends language barriers  —   you see how it can affect people, and it’s quite a tall order to follow up on. I think when I first started discovering I could write songs, I was so naive. And it was after I got broken up with and had my heart sliced up into a bunch of little pieces that I was like, ”I’m going to say this.” I didn’t even know how to play guitar. We should say  —   you’re talking about your relationship with your bandmate, Tony Kanal. A lot of the songs on Tragic Kingdom, which was a big breakthrough for No Doubt, were written in the context of you two splitting up. But it’s funny  —   my point is that that record was so naively made. We’d been a band for nine years, never trying to make it. We were making music that was the opposite of grunge and what was popular on the radio, and we were fine with that. And for a garage band, we were massive! We were already successful in our own minds. So when that record came out and made such an impact, and people were relating to it, it was like my life on a plate it was intense. So, I think I took songwriting real seriously after that, but I never knew how I did it. Because it’s not a button that you press. Is this new album confessional in the same way? Did you have to plumb some of those same emotional spaces to get the songs you wanted? Well, when I started the first version of this record  —   the fake, cheating version  —   the intention was like, ”What can it sound like? I want to be back on the radio. I want this, I want that.” Then, last February, I think a lot of people know that my life fell apart. You got a divorce. I got a divorce. The  . From your husband of many years. How long were you married? Fourteen. Together 20. You just crumble, you know? I was down  —   I was all the way down. And I just felt like, ”God, I gotta turn this around. I can’t go down like this. I have to know that this is happening for a reason.” And I knew that I had to turn to music. I went to the studio and I wrote the first song, and it was this really weird drive on Santa Monica Boulevard, crying the whole way, thinking, ”Why am I going to torture myself even more? I’m already dead.” But I did it  —   I wrote a song and it felt so right. It was the only thing that felt good at all. That’s what this whole record documents  —   working through it, having faith, believing in myself and wanting to do something about it. And this is the first record I’ve ever made in real time: ”Used to Love You” came out three weeks after I wrote it. It must put you in a vulnerable place. Are there things you won’t write about? I don’t know. I didn’t edit myself at all. You’ve never written a lyric and thought, ”That’s too personal. I can’t keep that”? No. Because I’m just writing what I feel, and I really don’t think I’ve done anything wrong that I need to hide. The biggest thing, and I don’t even like to bring it up, is my children  —   you know, you’ve gotta protect them. I have people that are affected by what I do, what I say, and that would be the one place where it gets complicated. But being honest and truthful  —   I just believe that’s the best way to be. This is the part of the interview where I have to ask you about Blake Shelton. Who? [Laughs]  But I have a real question! As you’ve described it, you went to some dark places with this album as a form of catharsis, to get over a breakup. But judging from your social media, you look to be happy and in a new relationship. Is it as easy to find inspiration and creativity in the joy of a new relationship as it is in the pain of an old one? I think that’s what’s so magical about the album: It starts off angry, sad, mad and quite sarcastic  —   and then really does take a huge change, to hope. People always want to say, ”How do you evolve as a musician?” The biggest evolution is to write. It’s so great to write a record that’s mainly about being happy, and that’s something new for me."
"There is a righteous,   fury I sometimes experience when reading stupendously good work. How dare you, I shout at the author, dropping the book, pacing for a while, how dare you make me feel so much. I rant on Twitter. I joke about how the author must be stopped. I have done all those things elsewhere and am left hollowed out. Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is a book from which I staggered away, dazed, unable to speak. I have wrestled with how to review it, circled my metaphors like a wary cat, and finally abandoned the enterprise of trying to live up to its accomplishment. I will be honest, and blunt, because this is a book that has scoured me of language and insight and left itself rattling around inside the shell of me. I have never been so moved by a collection of short fiction. I was at times afraid to read more. Every single story struck chords in me profound enough to hurt, whether about the love and cruelty of families the melancholy of thermodynamics the vicious unfairness of history and the humbling grace with which people endure its weight. Stories so often take us out of ourselves Liu’s stories went deep into my marrow, laying bare painful truths, meticulously slicing through the layers of pearl to find the grain of sand at its heart. I’d read some of these pieces when they made their first appearances in magazines: the   ”The Paper Menagerie” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ”Good Hunting” in two parts on Strange Horizons. Liu’s stories always impressed me so did his novel, The Grace of Kings. But this collection is so much more than the sum of its parts that the phrase loses all meaning. Selected from more than seventy stories published over the course of twelve years, these fifteen are strands of silk woven into a spider’s web, or precise folds compressing an enormous   oeuvre into something one can hold with two hands. In ”State Change” a girl is born with an ice cube for a soul, and lives her life trying to keep it from melting. In ”The Regular,” a private detective hunts a serial killer while wrestling with her private grief and the toll it has taken on her mechanically enhanced body. In ”All the Flavours” a little girl in 1870s Idaho meets a man who might be the   god of war, and listens to his stories. The final story  —   appropriately named ”The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary”  —   is a harrowing meditation on nations, memory, responsibility, and to whom the past can rightly be said to belong. ”For me,” says Liu in his preface to the collection, ”all fiction is about prizing the logic of metaphors  —   which is the logic of narratives in general  —   over reality, which is irreducibly random and senseless.” This is the organizing principle of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, the one that drives me to grasp at pearls, and silk, and paper folds in an attempt to convey my experience of reading it. I almost want to review the preface alone. It is simultaneously a statement of purpose, a map, and a key. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writing in his Notebooks, once asked and answered the following question: Why do you make a book? Because my Hands can extend but a few score Inches from my Body . .. but think only of the thoughts, feelings, radical Impulse that have been implanted in how many thousands of thousands by the little Ballad of the Children in the Wood! The Sphere of Alexander the great’s Agency is trifling compared with it. Cutting across history and biology, physics and folk tales, why do you make a book is the question at the heart of this work, inseparable from what is a book and how is a book. Storytelling  —   whether in oral or written tradition, along family or national lines, private musing or public record  —   is the means of digesting, communicating, understanding histories and experiences too vast to encompass. Whether in a letter written from a mother to her son, an alien history scratched on the surface of an irradiated planet, or myths of origin transforming to keep up with humanity’s   stories are the language we speak to each other. In A Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Liu speaks it with devastating eloquence. Amal   is the author of The Honey Month and the editor of Goblin Fruit, an online poetry magazine."
"Call it Mega Tuesday. Only Super Tuesday (March 1) had more delegates at stake on a single day than the upcoming contests on Tuesday. More than 1, 000 delegates are up for grabs  —   and the results will be pivotal. The biggest prizes on the GOP side are the    states of Florida and Ohio. On the Democratic side, which still awards delegates proportionally, it’s Florida and Illinois, followed by Ohio. If Donald Trump sweeps the    states of Ohio and Florida, it could be a wrap party for his nomination as the Republican  . To be clear, Trump won’t mathematically clinch Tuesday even with wins in both places. But the odds that anyone else could go into the convention with a majority  —   or even most  —   of the delegates would be almost impossible. It will mean the only way Trump wouldn’t be the nominee is if he’s stopped at a historic and chaotic brokered convention. As it stands now, Trump is favored in both Florida and Ohio, but Marco Rubio and John Kasich are hoping their respective home states put them over the top. There is some evidence of momentum for Kasich in Ohio, where he’s a popular governor. One poll showed him in the lead this past week. Rubio’s campaign is even telling people to vote for Kasich in Ohio, following a plan laid out by Mitt Romney designed to try and stop Trump from getting a majority before the convention. Florida has been trending the other direction, with Trump favored. Rubio is running zero ads, and Ted Cruz has made a late play in the state. If Rubio loses Florida, it’s likely lights out for his campaign. If Kasich loses Ohio, his chances of winning the nomination are severely diminished from what’s already something unlikely to happen. It could also be the end of his candidacy, considering the next contest where he could contest wouldn’t be for three weeks in Wisconsin. Side note: Don’t overlook the contests in Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina, which, combined, actually have more delegates than Florida and Ohio put together. Since they are not    though, no one is going to net the margins there that they could in either Florida or Ohio. These are the first major contests following Bernie Sanders’ surprise win over Hillary Clinton in Michigan. It was apparently the biggest polling upset in history. It also showed Sanders can win in a big, diverse state. But it didn’t change one thing  —   the math. Clinton remains the favorite for the nomination because of her delegate lead and because Democrats award delegates on a proportional basis. Despite the potentially   win in Michigan, Sanders woke up further behind, because Clinton had won such a huge margin in Mississippi. Sanders now needs 54 percent of remaining pledged delegates for a   majority. With superdelegates factored in, he needs 60 percent. Math aside, Tuesday is important, though. If Sanders can pull off more surprise wins in these big states, Clinton will look vulnerable. Superdelegates could switch their allegiance, and Clinton will have her back against the wall. The last thing she wants is to limp to the nomination. She needs to show strength Tuesday. Sanders believes, after Michigan, that his message on trade has resonance in the Upper Midwest, meaning states like Illinois and Ohio could line up well for him. One thing already appears clear, however  —   no one on either side is going to get a majority of delegates for months. How many delegates are at stake? 1, 058 pledged delegates for Republicans and Democrats combined. If the 102 unpledged delegates, or superdelegates, are added in, the total rises to 1, 160. How many states? Five, plus one territory: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and the Northern Mariana Islands (on the Republican side the islands vote Saturday for Democrats). Why is March 15 a big deal? It could be decisive for both parties. Also, not only are there a lot of delegates at stake, but it’s also the day when the contest rules change for the Republicans. States can start to pick how they want to award their delegates. For both Florida and Ohio, that means   . What’s happened since Super Tuesday? A lot! March 5 and 6: Democrats: Sanders won the caucuses in Maine, Kansas and Nebraska. Clinton won by a huge margin in the Louisiana primary. GOP: Cruz won the most delegates with wins in Kansas and Maine. Trump pulled off narrow victories in Louisiana and Kentucky. Rubio won the Republican primary in Puerto Rico Sunday by more than 50 percent of the vote, giving him all 23 delegates (which, by the way, is as many delegates as in New Hampshire). March 8: Democrats: Sanders won Michigan after going into the primary polling way behind Clinton. Clinton won Mississippi by 60 points and gave her the most delegates that day despite Sanders’   Michigan win. GOP: Trump won Hawaii, Michigan and Mississippi Cruz won Idaho Marco Rubio didn’t score double digits in Mississippi or Michigan and placed third in Hawaii and Idaho. What is the current delegate count?  Republicans:Trump 459Cruz 360Rubio 152Kasich 54, Democrats:Clinton 1, 223 total (762 pledged + 461 superdelegates) Sanders 574 total (549 pledged + 25 superdelegates) For details about delegates, check out the NPR Delegate Tracker. For past results and which states are coming up to vote, here’s the NPR 2016 Primary And Caucuses Calendar."
"Donald Trump’s planned rally in Chicago on Friday was canceled, but not before ugly scenes played out between Trump supporters and people who had come to protest the event. Jedidiah Brown was there. He was the young man who was shown on television yelling as he was pulled from the event stage. He’s part of an organization called Young Leaders Alliance. ”Having gotten into the middle of the rally, I completely felt hated, I completely felt unsafe, I felt completely uncomfortable,” Brown tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. ”And I knew that if this is what I felt, when I saw what they were doing to other people, I couldn’t imagine what others felt. So it became my mission to shut this down because this can’t go on in Chicago.” The Trump campaign cited the safety ”of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena,” in a statement announcing the cancellation. On Saturday, Trump blamed the unrest on ”professional protesters” and ”thugs” in the crowd. It was the latest incident in a series of violent incidents between Trump supporters and   protesters that have played out at rallies across the country. Brown says attendees at the Chicago rally directed racist statements at him. ”They were calling us the ’n’ word, they told me to go back to Africa,” he says. ”And they would call us all kinds of things and even say to us things that they would do to us. ’Boy, if I had the chance, I would get you and give you a good whipping, boy.’ . .. That kind of stuff I just couldn’t believe could still exist in America in 2016.” Brown rushed the stage but was immediately grabbed by security. ”I went up there for two reasons,” he says. ”Number one: Shut this down. And number two: Get the right message out in our city: America is already great  —   without the hate.” He says people who identified themselves as Secret Service took him off stage and let him back into the crowd, but things got worse. Someone threw a water bottle at him, Brown says, and another person put him in a headlock. He says he took a swing back at that person but Secret Service pulled him down and he was later taken into custody by University of Illinois at Chicago police. He thinks protests like his may be having two reactions from Trump supporters: They either double down on their backing of Trump, or they begin to change their minds. ”I think that some people are more committed now,” Brown says. ”I think that they feel like this is an avenue to express how they really feel about people like myself that are black. People that are Muslim  —   for women. I feel like they feel empowered to do whatever they want to do.” But he says people who are still wavering may have a different reaction. ”I think that some people are realizing  —   ’Wait a minute. This isn’t what we want. This isn’t where we’re going. It’s not what I’m about.’ So I think we’ve seen minds change on both perspectives.”"
"Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning, presidential   Donald Trump told host Chuck Todd that he doesn’t accept responsibility for violence at his rallies. He repeatedly said he ”doesn’t condone violence,” while indicating that he might cover the legal fees of a supporter of his who punched a protester in the face. Todd played clips of Trump speaking to crowds and expressing support for violent actions. ”I love the old days, you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out in a stretcher, folks,” Trump had said of one protester. Then: ”I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.” After Todd played that clip, Trump said that he did not condone violence, and does not accept responsibility for any atmosphere of violence at his rallies. At an earlier rally, Trump had said to his supporters: ”If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell  —   I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.” Trump told Todd that then, too, he was not condoning violence. He repeatedly brought up the idea of  . As an example, explaining why he called on supporters to ”knock the crap” out of anyone with tomatoes, he said: ”If you get hit in the face with a tomato, let me tell you, with somebody with a strong arm at least, let me tell you, it can be very damaging. ”If people are there doing harm, you have to go and you have to use equal force.” He also said that the young man who was   in North Carolina had been ”taunting,” ”loud” and ”disruptive,” and was holding up his middle finger  —   ”a terrible thing to do.” The man who punched him, Trump said, ”got carried away, he was 78 years old, he obviously loves this country, and maybe he doesn’t like seeing what’s happening to the country.” Trump, who insisted yet again he does not condone violence, had instructed his people to ”look into” the possibility of paying the man’s legal bills, he said. You can find the full video  —   where Trump also says he loves the American flag more than Chuck Todd does, and repeats a hoax about a protester being aligned with ISIS before saying ”I only know what’s on the internet”  —   on NBC’s website."
"Marietta College has earned a global reputation for its program in petroleum engineering, drawing students from as far away as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and China to this liberal arts school in southeast Ohio. In the past, nearly every one of the program’s graduates has scored a good job in the surging energy field. But not this year. As the price of oil has plummeted, companies are cutting back on production and expansion, and cutting into Marietta’s placement rate. Katie Plas, scheduled to graduate in 2017, thinks she’ll be OK. Her grades in the petroleum engineering program are   and her freshman summer internship  —   a key element of the program  —   was exceptional. It’s like a gold star on a resume. She worked as a roustabout in Arkansas. Plas says it was dirty work, and sometimes dangerous. ”I wore   clothing, all day long. And it gets rather hot especially when it’s a hundred degrees.” She was 19, using a sledgehammer, grateful for the   work on her family’s Ohio farm. In the oil field she lived in a ”man camp” apartment, which was   of a steel shipping container. Around the oil rigs and pipelines, the college textbook pages could come alive. She would think, ”This is what I learned in class.” And then the roughnecks would say, ’”Well, this is how it actually works.” She feels confident she’ll come out of the program next year with a job, but in the current economy many of her classmates may not be so lucky. This spring, perhaps only 30 to 40 percent of graduates from the program will have jobs waiting. And enrollment in September could be off by half. Other big universities with petroleum programs  —   the University of Texas at Austin, Penn State and Texas AM  —   say their numbers are down, too. And so Marietta students like Jack Glime are watching the market carefully. ”The price of oil now is like probably 33 percent of what it was when I got accepted into the petro program,” he says. ”It’s a    difference.” The petro students are required to take history, philosophy, writing and communication courses, which may give them a leg up in shifting career choices. Nicholas Villaveces, who’ll graduate this year, says he’s considering law school. ”Patent law is something I’m looking into right now,” he says, ”and being a liberal arts student is definitely gong to put me at an advantage, and being an engineer, when I apply to law schools.” That notion would make Bob Chase smile. He’s just retired as chair of the petroleum department after 37 years. ”I’ve got former students that are attorneys, I’ve got former students that are doctors, believe it or not,” he says. ”One of my students who went on to become an anesthesiologist made the comment that you’d be amazed at how a capillary is similar to oil flowing through a pipeline.”"
"Update: The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office officially decided not to file charges against Donald Trump, North Carolina TV station WRAL reports: ”By Monday night, investigators determined that ’the evidence does not meet the requisites of the law as established under the relevant North Carolina statute and case law to support a conviction of the crime of inciting a riot,’ sheriff’s office spokesman Sean Swain said in a statement.” Original Post: Donald Trump has denied that escalating violence and heated confrontations at his political rallies were his responsibility, but one local law enforcement group weighed testing that on Monday. Local station WRAL was the first to report that the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office was considering charging the GOP presidential   with inciting a riot after a protester was punched in the face during a rally Trump held in Fayetteville, N. C. last week. Now the office seems to have reconsidered that. John Franklin McGraw, 78, was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after the incident. Trump said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press that he is considering helping McGraw with his legal bills. Even as Trump insisted several times over the weekend after a Chicago rally was canceled Friday evening in the wake of escalating tensions that his rhetoric was not to blame, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office said that required more investigation. ”We are concerned about a number of things in that speech. We are concerned about activity associated with that speech. That does not mean that we have decided to charge anyone,” Ronnie Mitchell, an attorney for the sheriff’s office, told WRAL. ”People are responsible for what they do and what they say. Part of our investigation has been looking into those issues,” Mitchell added. Department spokesman Sgt. Sean Swain later told the Daily Beast that they had determined Trump’s actions didn’t meet the statute. As WRAL noted, state law defines a riot as ”a public disturbance involving an assemblage of three or more persons which by disorderly and violent conduct, or the imminent threat of disorderly and violent conduct, results in injury or damage to persons or property or creates a clear and present danger of injury or damage to persons or property.” It would be a misdemeanor charge unless the riot causes serious injury or more than $1, 500 in property damage, which would be a felony. ”We would have made the charges by now” if the events last Wednesday met that standard, Swain told the Daily Beast on the record. But then after that report, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office put out a press release, under Swain’s name, underscoring that their investigation was ”not complete.” ”We are continuing to look at the totality of these circumstances, including any additional charges against Mr. McGraw, including the potential of whether there was conduct on the part of Mr. Trump or the Trump campaign which rose to the level of inciting a riot, and including the actions or inactions of our deputies,” the statement read. Attorney Mitchell told the Washington Post that charges against Trump remained unlikely. ”It doesn’t appear that we have sufficient evidence to warrant charging him at this time,” the attorney told the Post. NPR has reached out to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office for comment but has not received a response. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Post, ”There was a great feeling of warmth,   and even love in the arena” last week, and that if anyone was guilty of breaking the law, ”it is the protesters and agitators who are in violation, not Mr. Trump or the campaign.”"
"Saying her employer had failed to stand by her after she alleged being assaulted by Donald Trump’s campaign manager, reporter Michelle Fields has resigned from conservative website Breitbart News.    Ben Shapiro also resigned. ”I can’t stand with an organization that won’t stand by me,” Fields tweeted this morning. The news first emerged on BuzzFeed, which ran statements from Fields and Shapiro this morning criticizing the Breitbart site  —   and, in Shapiro’s case, also saying that Breitbart News chair Steve Bannon had sullied the legacy of the site’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012. From Shapiro’s statement: ”Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump he has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter, Breitbart News’ Michelle Fields, in order to protect Trump’s bully campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly assaulted Michelle.” The assault allegation stems from a Trump news conference last Tuesday  —   and it escalated further Friday, after a criminal complaint was filed in Jupiter, Fla. reportedly, as NPR said on Friday, by Fields against Lewandowski, who, we should note, has denied ever laying a hand on Fields. If you’re just catching up to this story, Fields said last week that she had been yanked hard by the arm as she tried to talk with the Republican  . That night, Trump had just won primary victories in Mississippi and Michigan. Two days later, the Breitbart site published Fields’ story about the incident. Here’s an excerpt, in which she says she attempted to ask Trump a question as he made his way through the room: ”Trump acknowledged the question, but before he could answer I was jolted backwards. Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken. ”The Washington Post’s Ben Terris immediately remarked that it was Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who aggressively tried to pull me to the ground. I quickly turned around and saw Lewandowski and Trump exiting the building together. No apology. No explanation for why he did this.” That story by Fields began with the sentence, ”I never sought to be part of the story.” But in the wake of the assault claim, her critics have said that’s precisely what she was trying to do. After Terris published his account of the incident for the Post, Breitbart CEO and President Larry Solov released a statement saying his company was ”disappointed” in the Trump campaign’s response, adding that he stood behind Fields’ reporting. But the Breitbart site also ran a story saying that Lewandowski never ”acknowledged” grabbing Fields  —   and BuzzFeed reported this weekend that Breitbart senior    Joel Pollak had ordered reporters who wanted to defend Fields to stop tweeting and ”speculating” about the story. On Friday, Lewandowski himself tweeted a Breitbart story about the dispute that had initially cited a video showing how Terris had misidentified the campaign manager. But in an update added later in the day, the site then said that new video footage had emerged that ”shows Lewandowski reaching in Fields’s direction.” Here’s that video: After the resignations by Fields and Shapiro, the Breitbart site posted, and then deleted, a piece that linked to Shapiro’s bio at the California State Bar website  —   something Shapiro says was an attempt to expose private information about him to the public. Shapiro tells Politico that the piece, which quoted other editors belittling his work, was written under the same pseudonym Shapiro’s father  —   the writer David Shapiro  —   has used at the Breitbart site. After the article was published, Politico’s Hadas Gold writes, Breitbart’s Pollak issued a statement saying he wrote the piece ”as part of an effort to make light of a significant company event” and that it had been published due to a ”misunderstanding.” The departure of Shapiro and Fields comes less than a week after Breitbart News used its Twitter feed to promote an ”exclusive interview” with Fields on ABC’s World News Tonight and Good Morning America in the wake of the assault claim. Tonight, Fields and Shapiro will appear on a different show: The Kelly File on the Fox News Channel, in what show host Megyn Kelly  —   who’s had her own issues with Donald Trump  —   says will be an exclusive interview with the two."
"There remains a chance  —   or at least a hope  —   that the violent storm blowing in over American politics this primary season will move on without further damage to the country. More specifically, there is a chance  —   or at least a hope  —   that the violence witnessed at recent rallies for Donald Trump will subside. And that those most inclined to physical confrontation might step back from the brink. But the videos of violent scuffles at the aborted Trump rally in Chicago on Friday continue to play on cable TV, keeping the wound fresh. There is nothing new about Americans being politically divided and even polarized. But as angry emotions have been building throughout the campaign, we are moving to the next phase, to the point where even small provocations can cause those emotions to ignite. If you are looking to light the fuse, consider this tweet from @realDonaldTrump on Sunday, directed at Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, whom Trump blames, in part, for the bad night in Chicago: There is no evidence that Sanders or his campaign were involved in organizing the protest in Chicago, although some independent organizations that support Sanders clearly were. Sanders   were visible among the protesters but were scarcely predominant. But Trump’s threat communicates an unmistakable message, not to Sanders but to Trump’s own supporters. This is less like a ”dog whistle” and more like a bugle call, much like the instructions Trump has sometimes given his supporters at rallies. As protesters have been led away by police or security, Trump has said he wishes he could punch them in the face, or that in the old days protesters went out on a stretcher, or that someone should ”knock the crap out of them” and that he would pay legal fees for someone who did. On Sunday, Trump told Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press (where Trump is a guest on a regular basis) that he ”actually instructed my people to look into” paying the legal fees for the North Carolina man who punched a black protester being led away by police at a Trump rally on Thursday. ”I’m going to see, you know, what was behind this,” Trump said, ”because he was very taunting he was very loud, very disruptive.” Trump also said he had heard the protester had made an obscene gesture toward a man ”who just wants America to be great again.” It is not too late to dial back from this kind of incitement. The best way to do so would be for all of the candidates in both parties to stop looking for ways to use the violence issue to their advantage and find ways to reduce the tension instead. That was not the spirit in evidence over the weekend, as the respective camps issued statements blaming each other and advancing their own narratives. Trump on Sunday also called himself a messenger for ”a lot of people who are angry.” Sanders, too, has consistently appealed to the frustration of those who feel themselves disenfranchised in a ”rigged economy” run by what he calls fraudulent financiers and a corrupt   system. This is not to deny these movements their cause, only to say that their emotional component can be easily inflamed and the shared sense of outrage can be readily provoked. It is as if the Tea Party of recent years had marched down the street and met another march coming at it   featuring Occupy Wall Street bolstered by Black Lives Matter. Different as they are, all of these groups would be taking to the street for the same reason: to protest their sense of loss and their exasperation with conventional politics and candidates. Even Barack Obama, who seemed to many the ultimate game changer eight years ago, now seems to have unified the country only in that he has dissatisfied a sizable group on the left as much as he has outraged the right. And he has had no success convincing a certain strain of activist in his own party that they should be patient, or should see the glass as  . Trump and Sanders, in their highly contrasting ways, have thrived on this frustration and exasperation. Hillary Clinton, for all her adaptations, has been unable to find the key or even speak the language. And a long roster of Republicans have retired from the field who had hoped to use the anger of the Tea Party as fuel  —   and the anger of activists on the left as foil. Those GOP rivals who remain spent much of the weekend seeking ways to leverage the sudden media fixation on violence to maximize their own vote shares in the five big states holding primaries Tuesday. That was why, in part, Trump exploded on CNN when asked about disapproval from ”fellow Republicans.” ”My fellow Republicans are running against me,” he said, claiming, ”There’s been nobody injured at my rallies: zero, zero. You’re making it sound like everybody’s broken down and injured. Give me a break.” As for those primaries Tuesday, the consensus judgment, based on polling and reporting, is that the confrontations last week in North Carolina, St. Louis and Chicago will alienate some potential supporters but also galvanize those at the heart of the Trump movement. If true, that will extend a trend that has been evident in the Trump phenomenon since the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9. His hard base of backers rarely changes, typically ranging from the   to   in percentage terms. In a   field, this has usually been more than enough to win  —   and often to win big. If the field should narrow to just two candidates, however, Trump’s share of the vote might not be enough to win    as some hypothetical   indicate. That could block his nomination on the first ballot and break open the convention in Cleveland. And in the longer run, as other polling also indicates, the harder his base, the harder it is for him to reach beyond it in the general election. In that sense, the combative attitude that contributes to the tension of the current moment can actually lower the ceiling on Trump’s upside expectations  —   and lower the odds on his becoming president as well. Trump risks driving his negatives (voters who say they could never vote for him) still higher at a time when they are already the highest of any candidate in either party. That is why in the end, the climate of heightened tension may prove more hazardous to Trump perhaps than to anyone else."
"For the past two weekends, the biggest movie in America has been an ambitious exploration of implicit bias set in a police department, an unmissable sign of how broadly saturated this conversation has become. Of course, the characters grappling with all this in Zootopia are talking rabbits and foxes and lions, making all this topicality easier to swallow. There are a bunch of ways in which Zootopia is surprisingly sharp, but the places it stumbles are the same places where lots of   movies about race and society miss the mark. It’s difficult to grapple with big, systemic issues in any film, let alone one carried by woodland creatures and aimed at   . But first, Zootopia’s premise. A likable bunny named Judy Hopps leaves her rural community to pursue dreams of becoming a police officer in the big city. She wants to make a difference. Along the way, she learns to navigate complicated interspecies urban politics  —   and confront her own biases. Zootopia, the movie’s eponymous metropolis, is populated by predators and prey of all different kinds who live in relative harmony about 90 percent of the population are prey, and 10 percent are predators. The movie is full of fun ”Let’s Talk About Race” Easter eggs. Judy thinks she’s complimenting a fox by telling him he’s ”articulate.” The fox is later reprimanded for touching the wool on a sheep’s head without permission. When a fellow cop, a cheetah, tells Hopps she’s ”cute,” she gently corrects him  —   only other bunnies get to use that word. In her first days on the new job, Hopps quickly runs into systemic problems in police departments that mirror the real world. She’s the first rabbit officer in the history of Zootopia’s police force  —   she was valedictorian of her class at the academy  —   which the assistant mayor counts as a win for the department’s ”mammal outreach” program. But the police brass, largely staffed by burly predators, isn’t feeling the relatively tiny Hopps. They dismiss her hire as a   publicity stunt and promptly relegate her to meter maid work with the thankless task of handing out 100 parking tickets by day’s end. Because she’s so ambitious, Hopps gives herself an even loftier goal: 200 tickets, by noon. (More on that in a second.) Through sheer determination and the sweat off her furry brow, Hopps makes it her mission to convince Zootopia’s big dogs that creatures who look like her belong just as much as they do. (There’s also another storyline involving a   panic inadvertently set off by Hopps, in which the predators are suddenly the ones under the microscope that arc, depressingly, could play as an allegory to any number of contemporary racial panics in America right now.) Films about big social issues tend, almost by necessity, to follow along as one heroic individual makes choices that change the world. This tack often places Big, Thorny Issues on the shoulders of people who happen to be good or malicious, and suggest that promoting  —   or removing  —   those individuals will untie whatever big, hoary knot is strangling society at large. That is to say, the elements you need to tell a great story hardly ever play well with the structural unpacking involved in   social change. That’s why it’s awfully easy for ”message” films to end up wildly mischaracterizing Big Thorny Issues to the point that the takeaway becomes irrelevant  —   if not outright damaging  —   to ongoing   discussions about the issue in question. A good (awful) recent example is Spike Lee’s messy   a parable about gun violence in Chicago in which a woman upends the cycle of shootings through a sanctimonious,    campaign of choosing to abstain from sex. At some point, the ”just be better people” treatment is too simplistic for the topic on the table. In Zootopia, we follow along as our hero, Hopps, hands out hundreds of tickets to overcome workplace discrimination and prove that someone who looks like her can be a valuable member of the force. We’re meant to cheer along as she rolls up her sleeves and really leans into it. But this is not some neutral, benign practice in real life. As my colleague Joe Shapiro has reported, the festering tensions between police and residents that exploded in Ferguson rested upon a long history of aggressive, racially skewed ticketing and fines as a widely used mechanism for generating city revenue. And it has been pointed out that the practices of ticketing and stopping pedestrians and drivers for minor violations are often used by law enforcement as pretext for more expansive searches. At this very moment, there’s a closely watched lawsuit in the works brought by several black NYPD officers who claim that monthly ticketing quotas still exist in that city  —   where it’s technically illegal  —   and that those quotas are enforced most heavily in neighborhoods of color. (There’s a fantastic, disturbing This American Life episode about an NYPD officer who tried to speak out against these mandates from his superiors, and what happened to him when he did.) In its zeal to show how a scrappy   hero subverts the system through sheer force of will, Zootopia misses the   implications of how she chooses to succeed in that mission. Ultimately, Hopps ends up doing exactly what any   cop trying to rise in the ranks might do  —   she plays by the rules. As Tracie Keesee, a former captain in the Denver police force and one of the leaders of the Center for Policing Equity, told me, officers, regardless of race, are likely to become acculturated to the ethos and systems of their departments. Any cop invested in trying to change the system from within first has to move up the ladder and secure a position of power from which to do so  —   and the surest way to get there is by excelling at the game in its existing form. To wit, Hopps’ reward for cracking the big case at the end: more prestige in her police department, as evidenced by her impressive new ride  —   which looks a whole lot like an MRAP. I know, I know  —   this reads a lot like come over here and get you some of this wet blanket. And to be sure, Zootopia is welcome evidence that the conversation about policing and profiling has outgrown spaces we tend to see as expressly political. Clearly, marketers have identified a   appetite for this stuff across huge swaths of America. But as this     exploration demonstrates, the most pernicious manifestations of these issues remain difficult to dramatize (or animate). When it comes to storytelling, they defy the very elements you need to make a movie like Zootopia work."
"There’s something different about the way these babies cry. That’s a realization that hit me after spending day after day with babies in Brazil who were born to mothers who were infected with the Zika virus when they were pregnant. It’s not just that they cry more easily, and longer  —   which they do. There’s also something strange  —   harsher and more pained  —   about the cries of many of these babies. The realization that they even cry differently than normal babies drove home how many mysteries the world is facing because of the Zika virus. Why would they cry differently? Like so many other things about these Zika babies, no one really knows. But doctors are starting to try to get some answers  —   from babies like Davi Lucas Francisca da Paz. He’s 4 months old. I met Davi, crying in the arms of his mother, Eliane Francisca, in a crowded waiting room at the IMIP Hospital in Recife, Brazil. IMIP doctors are caring for hundreds of babies suspected of having brain damage caused by their mothers getting infected with the   virus when they were pregnant. More than a dozen of these babies were coming in just that morning. Francisca left home at dawn for a   van ride into the city for Davi’s monthly checkup. So she and her baby were already waiting on a hard plastic chair for hours. Finally, the pediatrician, Dr. Danielle Cruz, called them. Davi starts wailing again as soon as they start heading to the exam room. Cruz tries to comfort Davi. Davi’s head is tiny. He has microcephaly, which doctors think Zika is causing. His brain is tiny, too. It’s deformed and scarred in a distinctive pattern that seems unique to babies born to mothers who had Zika when they were pregnant. Davi has other medical problems. His retinas are scarred, so he may be blind. He doesn’t have the twisted arms and legs that some of these babies have. But his mother says he recently started having seizures. The convulsions come in waves  —   over and over again. ”It looks like he got really scared. His arms and his legs stretch out. And they get really stiff,” his mother says. The seizures last a few minutes, but ”for a mother it’s an eternity,” she says. Cruz reassures her that epilepsy drugs should help. Davi is crying again as Cruz carries him to an examining table. The baby doesn’t seem to be deaf like a lot of these babies. So he calms down as Cruz starts playing some calming meditation music on her phone. Hundreds of mothers are showing up with babies like Davi at hospitals and clinics all around this crowded city and other parts of Brazil. As the babies are hitting their fourth, fifth, and sixth months, the seizures are starting, along with other complications, doctors say. ”Every day we are seeing something different,” says Dr. Regina Coeli, a pediatrician at the Oswaldo Cruz Hospital, which is located nearby in Recife. Coeli is rushing from one baby to the next. ”Some of them they have convulsions. Others have kind of a reflux  —   vomiting, not eating,” she says. As a result, the babies get progressively weaker. ”It’s very sad. It’s a very bad situation,” she says. While some of these babies don’t seem too bad, most of the infants have really small heads. ”They are very small,” she says. ”It’s very grave.” Many will be blind, deaf, and severely mentally and physically disabled, she says. Evidence is emerging the virus may also cause a wide variety of serious birth defects. But as bad as many of them are, I realize something else: Once you get over the shock of seeing their heads and hearing their cries, these babies are still babies. They’re still cute. Coeli agrees. ”I love them  —   all of my children here,” she says. Coeli and other doctors in Recife are tracking these babies to get a better idea of what’s going to happen to them as the months and years go by. They know they can’t predict based on the microcephaly they’re used to seeing. This new microcephaly is ”very different,” Coeli says. ”So we have to study it.” The researchers hope they can help mothers and doctors in Brazil and the rest of the world get a better idea of what to expect. How disabled will the children be? How long will they live? What kind of lives will they have? Back at the IMIP Hospital, Davi’s mother is finishing up with the pediatrician. Cruz prints out new prescriptions and stamps orders for more tests. That means Davi’s mother, who doesn’t have much money, had to give up her job to spend days going from doctor to doctor. ”I learn to be strong with him. I think these children teach us a lot,” she says. She acknowledges that it’s exhausting, but notes that a smile goes a long way. ”It fills me up,” she says. ”When I see my son smiling, it’s all worth it.” As she’s leaving, I asked her what she thinks is going to happen to Davi. ”It’s in the hands of God,” she says."
"Eighty million years ago, tyrannosaurs were the top predators in Asia and North America. And scientists say a newly discovered dinosaur from Uzbekistan helps to explain their rise. In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers said they have found a specimen from a 20   gap in fossil records  —   between the   ”marginal hunters” and the ”apex predators” the tyrannosaurid group would become. This group includes Tyrannosaurus rex, Albertosaurus and Tarbosaurus. As the paper explained, the rise of tyrannosaurs from the smaller, earlier species to ”late Cretaceous giants was one of the seminal events in dinosaur evolution.” But exactly how they developed has been mysterious, the scientists said: ”Little is known . .. about how tyrannosaurids developed many of their signature features, such as their gigantic size, highly unusual brains, ears attuned to   sounds, and extensively pneumatized skulls.” The newly discovered dinosaur called Timurlengia euotica  —   which the scientists said is 90 million to 92 million years old  —   is   compared to Cretaceous tyrannosaurids, which could reach more than 10 meters long and weigh more than 5 tons. The new species ”shows that tyrannosaurs had yet to achieve huge size at this time but had already evolved key brain and sensory features of the gigantic latest Cretaceous species,” the researchers said. The researchers added that Tyrannosaurs ”apparently developed huge size rapidly during the late Cretaceous, and their success in the top predator role may have been enabled by their brain and keen sense that first evolved at a smaller body size.” And the scientists said the date of this specimen suggests the tyrannosaurs’ growth to ”huge size and ecological dominance” happened suddenly  —   though it’s still a mystery what the trigger was. This paper was prompted by the discovery of a   braincase of T. euotica in Uzbekistan’s central Kyzylkum Desert, linking together other specimens. The braincase was particularly revealing because it provides evidence about the dinosaur’s sensory abilities. The paper was written by a team from Scotland, Russia and the U. S. They acknowledge that T. euotica ”remains a single data point from a still murky interval in dinosaur history.”"
"Spending on prescription drugs in the U. S. rose 5. 2 percent in 2015, driven mostly by increased costs of expensive specialty medications to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, according to data from the largest manager of employers’ drug benefits. Spending on specialty medications rose 18 percent, while spending on standard prescription drugs rose less than one percent, according to a new report by Express Scripts. The report is based on the prescription drug spending for the company’s 80 million covered patients. The measure  —   called ”drug trend” in pharmaceutical industry parlance  —   includes increases in the use of medications and price hikes. Still, in the health care industry, an increase that’s more than quadruple the rate of inflation  —   0. 7 percent in 2015  —   still counts as a bit of good news. Why? In 2014, drug spending increased more than 14 percent. ”In a year when all the headlines were about the escalating price of drugs, overall costs rose only 5. 2 percent,” says Glen Stettin, Express Scripts’ chief innovation officer. The overall boost in drug spending was moderated by patients switching to generic drugs from brand names, whose prices rose 16. 2 percent. Stettin attributed that shift to pharmacy benefit managers and insurers exerting more control over the drugs their customers can get. Express Scripts and other companies have been more willing to refuse coverage of expensive medications than in the past. The company pointed to its initial refusal to pay for Gilead Sciences’ hepatitis C drugs, which were listed at more than $90, 000 for a course of treatment. Instead, Express Scripts opted to cover an alternative treatment, Viekira Pak made by AbbVie, for which it negotiated a 50 percent discount. Express Scripts has said it saved as much as $1 billion with the deal. Brand name drug prices are more than 2   times as high as they were in 2008, while generic prices have declined by about  . For traditional pills, ”total costs are flat as result of generic and effective price negotiation by payors,” says Ronny Gal, a pharmaceutial industry analyst at the investment firm Alliance Bernstein. ”For specialty drugs, there are more drug introductions, at very high price per patient per year, and we still don’t have effective alternatives on the market.” The report says the surge in spending on specialty drugs was caused in part by the 29 new medications that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, including 19 cancer drugs that are being used on a large number of patients. The prices of older cancer drugs also rose, including for example, the price of Gleevec, which is used to treat adults with leukemia. It went up 19. 3 percent last year, the report says. But drugs for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and other inflammatory illnesses sucked up the largest share of cash. Express Scripts says treatments for such conditions cost every person with insurance about $89 last year. Insurers use a measure known as ”per member per year” to show how spending is spread across population of insured people. Diabetes treatments dominated the spending on nonspecialty medications, the report shows, with spending rising 14 percent last year. Three of the top five traditional prescription drugs were diabetes medications  —   Lantus and Humalog, which are both forms of insulin, and Januvia, a pill that helps control blood sugar. People who bought insurance through the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act spent an average of $777 on medications last year, about 15 percent higher than the year before. The big increase ”may be due to patients in this population filling a previously unmet need,” according to the report. Since the exchanges have only been in place for two full years, Stettin says this is the first time there was good information available about people covered by those policies. The spending increase ”is consistent with the belief that people in the exchange plans, people with chronic conditions, are getting medications for the first time,” he says. The Express Scripts report takes into account the effect of rebates that the company negotiates with drugmakers without disclosing the details of the arrangements. Rebates are considered trade secrets. Bruce Stuart, executive director of the Peter Lamy Center for Drug Therapy and Aging at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, says the data are different from what he would have expected based on trends in retail prices. ”I have no reason to doubt their numbers,” he tells Shots. ”If they say that they are getting better deals, there’s no way to validate that. ”"
"It used to be that marriage was when adulthood began for American women. Moving straight out of their parents’ house (or a college dorm) and into a house with a husband was simply the expected, preordained path for many women. But in the past few decades, wedding rings have become optional accessories. And as the American single woman flourished, she also profoundly changed (and is still changing) the economy, politics and the basic social fabric of the U. S. At least, that’s what Rebecca Traister argues in her new book, All the Single Ladies. Traister, who considers herself a ”liberal feminist,” spoke to NPR about the political shifts that single women are creating, as well as how feminism is factoring into the 2016 election. What are the biggest ways single women are shaping the country? It shifts all kinds of things about the country. It certainly shifts our definition of what family looks like. There’s been what they call the ”great crossover,” where the median age of first childbearing is now lower than the median age of first marriage. The notion of having a baby without being married has moved from being something that’s so stigmatized  —   now, of course it is still stigmatized I don’t want to pretend that it’s not  —   but this is a total revision when it comes to social expectations, the notion of what makes a family, how to design parenthood. So it shapes our idea of what families can look like, and I think it’s done that in tandem with a gay rights movement that obviously has expanded definitions of families and parenthood and marriage to include   couples. And then there’s this whole world of social policy, which I argue is really tied to changing marriage patterns, and in ways that don’t seem obvious perhaps. For example, I can’t believe how central it is to what we talk about regularly, because it was third rail like five minutes ago, but for example, the push for paid family leave. In part, this comes from it being pushed by people who are close to power. In part, this comes from when changed marriage patterns sort of trickle up and become a mass behavior that is now happening within more economically privileged realms, and what you get are women and men who have these careers and they’re marrying later, and their children are coming in the midst of these careers, and they’re hitting the bump of, ”Wait a minute. We don’t have paid leave.” You’re also seeing an enormous number of   women who are having kids on their own, and the fact that they don’t have paid leave is far more economically devastating for them because they have to go back to work right away. So you have this kind of crisis that is born of a normalized female independence. And that is forcing a crisis, where it’s actually forcing us to address it with social policy. I would say also things like rise in the minimum wage. I believe almost   of minimum wage earners are women, many of them single. So the drive to raise the minimum wage in part comes from a country in which women are now supporting themselves independently. And even when it comes down to how long are American school days? School gets out at 3. Tax breaks for people who are married. Those policies assume that there is a   person, presumed probably to be a man, and a domestic person in a given household. And the person who does the domestic labor is doing so for no wages or for low wages. That is no longer the case. The flip side of the discussion of the social safety net is the idea that marriage solves poverty. Well and that’s the big push from conservatives. Look, there are lots of factors that combine. Women’s entrance into the workforce all by itself is a big part of this. Of course, women’s entrance into the workforce also enables women to live outside of marriage much more freely. But one of the ways you know that it’s changing marriage patterns that might be at the heart of this is because that’s what Republicans are freaking out about. So the enormous conservative push for not only everyone should get married but you should get married early, which is something Mitt Romney has emphasized. Jeb Bush . .. wrote a [1995] book saying that the reason that we have a problem is that more single mothers aren’t shamed to have their out of wedlock children. [On the campaign trail last year, Bush said he wanted to shame fathers who abandon their kids, but not mothers.] The amount of money that during the Bush administration  —   and then it’s continued into the Obama administration  —   has poured into marriage education programs, with the idea that marriage would solve poverty. This is a completely backwards policy idea. [The Obama administration has continued to fund marriage education but has also shifted the focus more directly onto fatherhood, as the Christian Science Monitor has reported.] You know, some Republicans are trying to take playful aim at unmarried women. You saw that with the Republican gubernatorial ad campaign from 2014, I believe, where it was like ”Say Yes to the Dress,” but it was ”Say yes to Rick Scott.” Oh right. I remember that. And that was also the year that [Fox News’ Jesse Watters] called single women ”Beyonce voters” and said they just want to use the government as their husband. This is the   talking point about privileged single women, which is they just want a hubby state where the government does what husbands used to do. By the way, that’s not untrue! Because the government for a long time has supported men. This is a thing we never talk about. The government has supported male dominance in a whole lot of ways, by not effectively protecting equal pay [and] through housing loans and subsidizing men’s college educations through the G. I. bill for a long time. There are all kinds of ways in which especially white men in this country have been helped by the government. But on the flip side you’re seeing some ways men could use a boost these days  —   specifically, the argument that the Earned Income Tax Credit should help single, childless men more. That’s exactly right, but that’s another example of a readjustment of social policy in response to totally altered marriage and familial patterns. And there’s this sense of like, wait a minute  —   our government benefits must better reflect what the citizenry actually looks like. And so to some extent, if the idea is that women, for example, would have kids and get to take their time to be with their kids because they would be dependent on an earning husband who is getting tax breaks for being married and having a kid  —   that is no longer the case. Women are no longer necessarily married to that husband  —   they are maybe themselves the earner. They are either single or they are a crucial half or more of their marital economy. Then you have to demand different kinds of support from the government than the kinds that just supported the     model. Clearly all women aren’t the same  —   it feels wrong to lump all single women together when there are huge class divides. But what’s interesting is that you talk about it trickling up, as opposed to down the chain. But that’s true of so many things, and it’s a pattern that’s repeated over and over again  —   so for example, the act of women working for wages, which has been an economic necessity for women, and certainly most poor women forever. There may be many benefits to working outside the home for wages, but it’s certainly not been done as an act of liberation. It’s an act of economic necessity and has been since the beginning of time. However, when that behavior trickles up to middle class and often predominantly white women, it becomes discernible as liberation. When the women for whom it’s not an economic necessity can see that there are various kinds of freedoms in it and power, then we can see it as part of the feminist revolution of the 1970s that white women moved into workplaces. So I would argue that there’s a very similar pattern in terms of not marrying. Once you get wealthier women  —   who by the way with their singlehood, because they have more resources, are able to capitalize on many of the benefits of independence  —   on getting higher educations and bigger jobs and making more money, then it becomes a sort of glamorized thing. And I understand the temptation to say, ”Right, well, the way that those Sex and the City women are living has nothing to do with the way that poor women are living,” but I think that’s a disservice both to the poor women and the wealthier women. It casts poorer women just as victims, when in fact they were the pioneers of changing America’s assumptions about how women’s lives are supposed to go and about marriage patterns. And they were doing it because it’s what they needed to do for their lives. And the other thing that it does is it says, ”These flashy women don’t count either, because they’re just living this stupid, flashy life that’s just about high heels and drinks.” That’s not true either. You don’t want to discount the power that is wielded by privileged independent women, who are first of all closer to having influence when it comes to things like government and social policy, and also who are challenging powerful men for all kinds of power as they become more independent and their independence becomes more threatening. So I have to back up and switch topics to Big Girls Don’t Cry [Traister’s 2010 book about women’s prominent place in the 2008 election] because it seems so relevant today considering the ”  divide” everyone talks about among Democratic voters. What has changed since eight years ago? Oh we’re repeating a lot of what’s true about what happened in 2008. Last month, [after controversial statements about gender from Gloria] Steinem and [Madeleine] Albright and Bill Clinton, it felt like a reunion of the   brigade from 2008. But I think the biggest positive change I can identify about [Hillary] Clinton’s campaign this year is actually Clinton herself. I think she’s running a much better campaign this year. I think her campaign is more functional. [But] it still has its challenges, especially sometimes with surrogates. The reception of her continues to be very mixed and very difficult to talk about, especially when you’re in the midst of it. Because once again, everyone is still on a hair trigger. If you start to talk about the way gender plays into her self presentation or her reception or, for example, some of the things Bernie [Sanders] gets to do like promise revolution and shout, that probably a woman  —   and certainly not the first woman to come this close to the White House  —   would ever do. That lady would not be a plausible presidential candidate: the one who’s telling you you’re going to have a big socialist revolution. So if you start to talk about that, then tempers are so hot right now because people are lined up behind their candidates. And there are two really exciting candidates. Bernie and Hillary are both thrilling candidates. I think it’s wonderful that we have this contest right now. But people are so angry that if you begin to talk about the gender very quickly there’s a reflexive ”this is not about sexism. This is about her shortcomings.” I’ve loved [Clinton’s] lines that she’s given in debates and town halls where she’s said, ”I’m very excited to see people so passionate about Bernie Sanders and so engaged in politics, and I hope to work to earn their vote.” But then you have something like Steinem’s I think accidental remark on Bill Maher that seemed so disrespectful to young women. And certainly Albright, who I don’t think would have gotten as much play had it not happened after Gloria Steinem, because Madeleine Albright says that [”There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”] like every day of her life. And as has been reported, it’s on a Starbucks cup. I mean, it feels like a quote I’ve seen people Facebooking or    or whatever for years. But in this context, it became a cudgel. Well, I never thought the quote was inspirational. It’s always one of my least favorite. I don’t think total gender solidarity is ever a requirement. And I hate the notion that sisterhood somehow is supposed to quell disagreement between women. Look. There is not a special place in hell for people who didn’t support Sarah Palin. Do you know what I mean? It’s ridiculous. And there is certainly not a special place in hell for women who don’t support Hillary Clinton. However, the fact is [Albright] says it      of every week, and it doesn’t get much play. It was not invented by the Clinton campaign, nor was it invented for the Clinton campaign. When I asked a Bernie Sanders supporter in Iowa if she had at all been tempted by the possibility of voting for a woman, she told me, ”I’m not voting with my vagina.” That phrase is kicked around these days, often in a bad way. So I’m wondering: Is it OK to vote for someone because she’s a woman? Sure. Of course. It’s OK to vote for anybody for any reason. This is the fog of war stuff. It’s the middle of a very heated campaign. Everybody is very invested in their candidate. When I was going through this in 2008, I felt crazy. Like, Oh my God. You’re not even allowed to say it’s important to you that she’s a woman, and we have literally our entire American history with no women in executive power? It’s certainly not the foremost reason that anybody I knew supported her, but of course it played into lots of people’s excitement about her, right? But you couldn’t say it. It was considered a dumb thing to say. It was considered a super feminized thing to say. You were thinking with your ovaries. It’s just because you were a girl, blah blah blah. And I remember thinking, Since when is it progressively OK that a country that’s 51 percent female has only been governed by men? And that more than 80 percent of Congress is male? Why is it OK to not care about that? And then by the time I published my book in 2010, everyone was like, ”Oh, yes, that’s very true. We did do that.” There’s a distance. And now we’re back in it and again it’s like  —   you might as well just like put giant ovaries in your eyes with hearts if you’re going to say, ”It matters to me.” Many of the people who are critical of Clinton but who are feminist and who are progressive, one of the things they say is, ”It’s important to me to have a female president, but it’s not the overriding concern for me, and it’s not going to drive my vote.” That’s a really fair thing to say. It then gets transmitted very often  —   and especially if the person who has a really legitimate beef with Clinton, is very angry, or has also been made to feel like they are somehow betraying their sex if they’re a woman or that they’re not a real feminist  —   then it gets transmitted and amplified into ”I’m not going to do this stupid thing of voting with my vagina.” So part of it I think it comes from   progressives. And in part it’s just a larger cultural message. If there weren’t a lot of cultural and social resistance to having a woman president, we probably would have had one in the past 225 years. The resistance to this comes in many forms and from many directions. And I’m not saying that to oppose Clinton is a sexist move. I’m not equating opposition to Hillary Clinton with sexism. However, there are some people whose opposition to Clinton  —   on totally valid and legitimate grounds  —   some people reach for kind of dismissive or misogynist language to convey their distaste for her. Are you supporting any particular candidate at this point? No. I’m not shy about it: I do a lot of defense of Clinton. But my job is to put her candidacy in a gendered and historical context, which means I’m often left doing the work of doing feminist defense for her. I like [Clinton and Sanders] both. There are scenarios in which I could see myself voting for either one of them. This interview has been edited for length and clarity."
"Over the past month, millions of YouTube viewers have watched what happens when a U. S. manufacturer announces a move to Mexico. Click on the unsteady cellphone video, shot at a factory that makes air conditioning, heating and related equipment in Indianapolis, and you will see workers listening to a man in a suit. He’s telling them that their paychecks are headed to Mexico. ”I want to be clear, this is strictly a business decision,” the man says. An agonized, collective cry goes up. People swear, shout and look away. Turns out, moving manufacturing jobs to Monterrey, Mexico, is more than strictly business. It’s also very personal, painful  —   and political. The Feb. 9 announcement was made by Carrier Corp. which says it will close both the Indianapolis plant, with 1, 400 workers, and another nearby facility with 700 workers. It’s a decision that has been made again and again in recent decades as manufacturers have shifted production to offshore facilities. But this Carrier move is playing out in the middle of a combative presidential primary season  —   and the amateur video is having an impact on candidates and voters. GOP   Donald Trump is using it as a key talking point. ”I’m going to tell the head of Carrier: ’I hope you enjoy your stay in Mexico folks. But every single unit that you make and send across our border, which now will be real, you’re going to pay a 35 percent tax,’ ” Trump said at a campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday. On his Facebook page, Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has said the Carrier move ”is another example of how NAFTA and other trade policies have been a disaster for American workers.” Both Trump and Sanders have been attracting voters by saying American workers are suffering because manufacturers have been chasing cheaper labor. And Carrier’s parent company,   United Technologies Corp. agrees that lowering costs is indeed the motivation. But the point is not to hurt workers rather, it is to keep a strong, U. S.  corporation succeeding in a global marketplace. Last week, United Technologies CEO Greg Hayes talked to investors and explained the company’s thinking. ”The fact is, what will drive world class margins, why margins at our climate control and security business are so good, is because we have been relentless in taking out costs,” he said. Hayes says trade barriers, such as Trump’s 35 percent tax, ultimately would hurt his company’s workers. That’s because United Technologies brings in fewer products than it exports, such as jet engines and elevators. Mark Perry, an economist for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says the idea of taxing companies for offshoring work goes back to an economic theory known as mercantilism. The theory dominated economic thinking in Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries, when governments tried to boost their wealth by imposing tariffs on foreign goods. The United States tried this approach with the   Tariff Act of 1930, which pushed tariffs to record levels. Most economists say it backfired. ”Our trading partners ended up imposing tariffs and taxes on American goods and so it really reduced, significantly, global trade to a point that then some people even say that that’s what made the Great Depression great,” Perry said. Scott Lincicome, a trade expert with the Libertarian Cato Institute, says that when weighing the impact of the Carrier move to Mexico, one needs to remember the interests of consumers. Heat is one of the biggest causes of   deaths, so cheap air conditioning is vital, the argument goes. If costs can’t be held down, then consumers will ”either pay more or be totally priced out of the market and thus forced to simply suffer through another brutal August,” Lincicome argues. These disputes over the interests of workers versus consumers will continue to play out this year on the campaign trail as well as in Congress. This year, lawmakers will be asked by the White House to approve the   Partnership, a proposed Pacific Rim trade deal involving the United States. It is supported by President Obama and Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. On NPR’s Morning Edition in June, Ryan said he supports trade deals that level the playing field. ”They treat us like we treat them, they open our markets reciprocally to ours, to our exports. And they raise their standards to our standards,” Ryan said. But the TPP is unlikely to pass in Congress before the election as popular sentiment turns against it. And as the presidential candidates scramble for voters, Trump, Sanders and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton are all pumping up that sentiment. Last week, Sanders tweeted: ”If elected, I won’t send the TPP to Congress and will continue to fight efforts to pass it. I urge @HillaryClinton to join me.” On Sunday, at the Ohio Democratic Party’s Legacy Dinner, Clinton said that as president, she would ”stop, dead in its tracks, any trade deal that hurts America and American workers. . .. So that’s why I’ve said we have to oppose the TPP.” On Monday, Trump tweeted about his opponent Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the North American Free Trade Agreement: ”Gov Kasich voted for NAFTA, which devastated Ohio and is now pushing TPP   bad for American workers!” Kasich, as well as GOP candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, generally have been supportive of trade deals. Charles Lane is a reporter for WSHU."
"It’s that time of year again! This week is March Madness for music lovers: South By Southwest. The annual music festival in Austin, Texas is a treasure trove of exciting new music to enjoy and brilliant artists to discover. For this week’s All Songs Considered, our hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are joined by NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson and Saidah Blount to talk about which bands they are most excited to see for the very first time at SXSW this year. They listened to around 1800 songs by bands performing in the   music spree and whittled the list down to 17 for this week’s show, including the annual ”Secret SX Santa” round, where each host gets to take control of one other team member’s schedule and assign a band they have to see while in Austin. Head over to our SXSW page for NPR Music’s full coverage of this year’s festival. And stay tuned to our social media for updates, announcements and   dispatches from Bob, Robin and the All Songs team at SXSW."
"You can’t find a more intimate relationship between humans, food and nature than fishing, says Michele Mesmain, international coordinator of Slow Fish, a seafood spinoff of the   Slow Food movement. Think of all the thousands of boats at sea, catching wild creatures to haul back to shore and eat. ”It’s our last source of widely eaten, truly wild food,” she says. Held every   year in Genoa, Slow Fish attracts about 50, 000 chefs, fishers, scholars, activists and eaters to promote   fishing, marine biodiversity, cooking and eating neglected seafood species. This year, organizers added a U. S. event  —   in New Orleans  —   to highlight fisheries in the Americas and threats to Louisiana’s vanishing independent fishermen. The New Orleans event was born last year when New Orleans Slow Food chair Gary Granata and Carmo restaurateurs Dana and Christina Honn presented in Genoa. Granata says he spoke about Louisiana’s coast washing away due to erosion, ”and Dana and Christina cooked Louisiana seafood in sauce piquant, and we said: ’Come to New Orleans!’ ” They meant it. To fund Slow Fish 2016, the group held ”Trash Fish Happy Hours,” where customers could eat seafood  —   like porgy, small squid and whiting  —   that’s normally considered unwanted bycatch. Though the New Orleans Slow Fish gathering came together as an ”  DIY sort of thing,” Granata says, it was far from unambitious. Alongside panel discussions about fisheries throughout the Americas, the hosts planned a   festival with a lineup of live, local music and chefs cooking Louisiana seafood, plus added delicacies from around North America. Then the rain came. Severe storm threats canceled the festival side of things and sent visiting chefs scrambling for what to do with the seafood they’d brought from hundreds of miles away. ”But that’s what fishermen do every day, is improvise,” said chef Drew Deckman as he took cover in a makeshift kitchen under a tent and shucked the first of about   oysters from his home in Baja, Mexico. He mixed a salad of smoked river trout from California and chopped its crispy, grilled skin to lay on top. ”Fishermen can’t predict conditions,” Deckman says. ”It’s an unfair and uneven playing field for them.” Lance Nacio nodded as he stood in tall, white rubber shrimp boots and slurped an oyster from the half shell. Owner and captain of Anna Marie Shrimp out of Montegut, La. he designed his   boat to weather deep seas, yet not so big that the upfront cost of fuel might outweigh the value of his catch  —   an equation that’s failed to add up for many local fishers. Fishing boat captain Tim Rider out of Saco, Maine, says smaller fishers are literally going under. ”Just last night, a good friend of mine lost his boat. It sank off the coast of Hawaii.” Rider says that happens more often, as independent commercial fishermen are forced to test the limits of their smaller vessels farther offshore, because closer waters are overfished. Niaz Dorry of Gloucester, Mass. and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance was especially eager to eat lots of Louisiana shrimp. ”I’m a big fan of shrimp, but I hardly ever eat it, because most of the shrimp we get are farmed, imported, pumped up with antibiotics and toxins  —   plus the destruction of the environment that goes along with that,” she says. ”So I’m excited to be in a place where wild shrimp is still a viable product.” It wasn’t viable for Kevin Curole of Galliano, La. though. He says he sold his boat  —   named The Heavy Metal  —   to send his daughter to college. ”I bled in that boat,” he says, customizing it into his dream vessel. But with competition from aquaculture imports and the high price of diesel at the time, he couldn’t make a living catching shrimp. ”I just basically sold it back to the bank. It was converted into an oil field tug boat,” he says. Dozens of others have shared similar fates. Now Curole fishes only for his family. After 20 years on a boat, his wife, Margaret Curole, has taken up advocacy work  —   first on the Louisiana Shrimp Board, then as a North American representative for fishers with the U. N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. What good does it do the Curoles, as former fishers, to share their story at an event like Slow Fish when they no longer make a living on the water? Margaret answers: ”To put a face to the fish. The more you can make people aware that there’s a person behind what they’re eating, then it gives them a different relationship to their food.”"
"Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he has ordered the withdrawal of the majority of Russian troops from Syria. The pullout, which he said was coordinated with Syrian President Bashar Assad, is slated to begin Tuesday. Speaking in a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin said the objective of Russia’s intervention  —   disrupting ISIS and other terror groups  —   had ”been fulfilled,” and had laid the groundwork for more intense peace talks. ”I believe that the task put before the defence ministry and Russian armed forces has, on the whole, been fulfilled,” Putin said, according to the Guardian. ”With the participation of the Russian military . .. the Syrian armed forces and patriotic Syrian forces have been able to achieve a fundamental turnaround in the fight against international terrorism and have taken the initiative in almost all respects.” Russia has long been a supporter of Assad’s regime. Critics of Russia’s presence in the country say Russian troops were involved in fighting the Syrian opposition groups, not just terrorists. Putin said that Russia’s Hmeimim air base and its Mediterranean naval base would continue to operate normally. President Obama spoke to Putin on Monday afternoon, the White House said in a statement. They discussed Putin’s announcement and the ”next steps required to fully implement the cessation of hostilities with the goal of advancing the political negotiations on resolution of the conflict.” The statement said Obama ”welcomed the   reduction in violence since the beginning of the cessation, but stressed that continuing offensive actions by Syrian regime forces risk undermining” the peace process. Other U. S. officials are tempering their reactions to the announcement, according to Reuters, saying they had seen no indications so far of preparations by Russia’s military for the withdrawal. Putin’s announcement comes as a Russian and U. S.    that began last month has largely held, though the Syrian government and the opposition have each cited violations by the other side. ISIS and the   branch operating in Syria are not part of the   agreement. The withdrawal also comes amid peace talks in Geneva aimed at resolving the    Syrian conflict. Putin said Monday’s move would send a ”good signal” to the parties to the conflict, help raise trust and help serve as a stimulus for Syria’s political talks, the Associated Press reports. The talks are expected to focus on a political transition in Syria, which has been a major sticking point for the various parties. Russia and the Syrian regime have been adamant about keeping Assad in power, while the U. S. and Syrian opposition groups demand a new government."
"Editor’s note: Last fall, NPR’s Maanvi Singh embarked on a   quest to find her ideal pumpkin pie recipe. As she discovered, there’s a lot of science involved in getting the crust and filling just the way you like it. To celebrate Pi Day, we reprise this story, first published last December. It was the best of pies, it was the worst of pies. I have baked many, many, many pies. And when I first began making pumpkin pies this autumn, my results were at best inconsistent and, at worst, disastrous. ”One of the problems is most people make it once, maybe twice a year, right around the holidays, so they’re not very practiced at it,” says Dan Souza at America’s Test Kitchen. ”And pumpkin pie is a little bit different in that it’s essentially a custard baked into a pie shell.” In trying to juggle both components, even experienced bakers may end up with a grainy, overcooked filling or a soggy crust, Souza says. ”There’s a lot of places you can slip up.” So Souza and J. Kenji   a chef and author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, coached me through the process. The Ultimate Custard, ”Mainly it’s the texture that can go very wrong,”   says. ”It can end up grainy, or kind of broken up like scrambled eggs.” Blergh. See, a classic pumpkin pie filling includes a few eggs, as well as pumpkin puree, some cream, sugar and spice. ”As the custard cooks, there’s a loose network of the egg proteins that intertwine with each other and set to give the filling structure,”   explains. Ideally, you want to cook the custard just enough to form a soft,   texture. ”But as the custard keeps cooking, the eggs start to set so tightly that they squeeze moisture out,” he says. That’s when you get an icky, lumpy pie. Both   and Souza recommend cooking the filling quickly, but gently: The center of the pie should never get any hotter than about 175 degrees Fahrenheit. And you’ve got to try to cook the pie as evenly as possible. Some cracking at the center of the pie is inevitable,   says. It happens because the edges of the pie tend to cook and set faster, and pull at the center, which takes longer to cook. Souza’s pro tip is to bake the pie at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes, until the filling just starts to set, and then lower the oven temperature to about 300 degrees until it cooks through. ”By lowering the overall temperature, you get less of a disparity between temperature at the perimeter of the pie, and the temperature at the center,” he says. He also recommends heating the filling on the stove for a bit, so it has to spend even less time cooking unevenly inside the oven. Oh, and padding the custard with lots of fat helps as well. Souza’s recipe calls for three eggs plus two egg yolks. ”By ditching some of the egg whites, you’re reducing some of the water content, so the filling takes less time to firm up,” he explains. ”And the fat in the egg yolks also serves as a buffer to keep the proteins from over cooking.”   suggests substituting the cream in the filling with cream cheese for a similar reason: It helps the custard cook more evenly for a smooth, creamy end result. Brilliant. The Ideal Crust, Over the past few months, I tried nearly everything to avoid ending up with soggy, mushy pie crusts. I   and crisped up my crusts before pouring in the filling. I tried brushing the bottom of my crust with some egg wash  —   to waterproof it. I pleaded with the culinary gods and complained to my friends and cried to my mother. All of this, to no avail. And then   suggested something wacky and wonderful: vodka. Not to drink (though a shot or two have served to console me after a culinary disaster).   suggests substituting some of the water used to pull the pie dough together with a tablespoon or two of vodka. ”When you mix flour with water, it produces gluten,” he explains. ”And gluten is what makes your pie dough tough rather than flaky.” But gluten doesn’t form in the presence of alcohol. ”Plus the vodka evaporates a bit more quickly when you bake the crust, so you’re less likely to end up with a soggy crust,”   says. He also suggests blending flour and butter together in the food processor. ”That way you need to add barely any water at the end to bring the dough together,” he says. ”But the dough is still very soft, and easy to roll out.”   the crust until it’s golden brown, and then, Souza says, fill it with a custard that you’ve already heated and thickened up a bit on the stove. ”That way,” he says, ”the filling is less likely to seep and soak through the crust, and ruin that buttery, flaky goodness.” The Richest Flavors, Canned or fresh squash? The experts agree it doesn’t really matter. If you are using the fresh stuff,   recommends roasting it very slowly in the oven  —   at around 275 degrees Fahrenheit. ”Pumpkins and squashes have these enzymes that will break down some of their starches and convert them to sugar,” he says. ”Cooking them slowly can actually accelerate that process.”   also allows for more water to evaporate from the squash, concentrating its flavor. And feel free to experiment with different squashes. Sugar pie pumpkins are classic, but butternut and kabocha squash can often taste sweeter and more ” ” than the traditional orange gourds. ”Just never use one of those    pumpkins,”   warns. ”Those are meant to look pretty, but they taste nasty.” But Souza says people can rarely taste the difference: ”I think you may as well save yourself the effort and use a can.” Of course, a judicious sprinkle of spices, some maple syrup and even a bit of sweet potato can deepen and enhance the flavor. The Taste Tests, My journey to learn the art and science of the ideal pie has been long. Very, very long. I’ve baked a total of 10 pies over the past three months. I wanted to perfect my pie by Thanksgiving  —   but that didn’t happen. Instead, I berated my Thanksgiving guests: ”You’re saying it’s good, but what does that even mean? Be more constructive with your criticism!” I faced many setbacks: I badly burned a couple of crusts. And, despite all the coaching, I curdled some custard. Take note, folks: Timers and thermometers are key. But finally, in   I brought in two pies that combined all that I had learned to face my toughest critics yet: NPR’s Science Desk. For one pie, I used freshly roasted squash and cream cheese. I made the other with canned pumpkin. One of the crusts had some shortening, whereas the other was pure butter. And I used a good shot of vodka in both, of course. Each pie had its fans. My editor, Maria Godoy* liked the cream cheese. ”It’s like creamy pumpkin. .. Like, if pumpkin were milk.” NPR Skunk Bear’s Adam Cole disagreed: ”Not my cup of tea.” He liked the canned pumpkin better. [*Editor’s note: Adam has an admitted preference for bland food.] Photo editor Ryan Kellman said he was divided, insisting ”I need to probably to eat a lot more of this” in order to decide. And science correspondent Geoff Brumfield was no help at all: ”I mean, I’m just here to eat some pie.” I’m still not satisfied. A bit more ginger may have given the pies more kick. The cream cheese filling didn’t taste   enough, and the other one tasted perhaps too  . Maybe I should have baked the crusts a bit longer. Maybe I should have cooked the custard a bit less. True perfection  —   and success  —   remain just beyond reach. Guess I’ll have to pie, pie again."
"Today is Pi Day, a time to celebrate the   number that helps us calculate the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Here in the U. S. Pi Day has officially become a ”thing”  —   for example, today at Whole Foods, you can get slices of pie for $3. 14, and if you can solve math problems from a Princeton professor, Pizza Hut will give you 3. 14 years’ worth of free pizza. The developing world, which we cover in this blog, loves its pi, too. Suresh Kumar Sharma, a    former vegetable vendor from Jaipur, India, is the current record holder on the Pi World Ranking List when it comes to reciting the digits of pi. In October 2015, he recited 70, 030 numbers in 17 hours. To do it, he associated every number with an image. Now he helps coach others in their memorization skills. The Guinness World Records, however, says the top pi reciter is Rajveer Meena from India who reeled off 70, 000 digits in just 10 hours in 2015 while blindfolded. (Meanwhile, a    Japanese man says he’s the unofficial   claiming he can recite about 111, 700 digits.) Here’s a roundup of global pi facts, past and present. Know of any more facts about pi around the world? Share them with us in a comment below or tweet them at @NPRGoatsandSoda."
" Britons will vote in June on whether to stay or leave the European Union. Both sides are campaigning fiercely in what is known as the Brexit, or British exit, referendum. The town of Hastings on England’s south coast is one of the closest points to the European continent. But local opinion polls show about half the people here want Britain to leave the European Union. Paul Joy makes his way to his fishing boat at the end of a pebble beach. He and his brother, Douglas, come from a family that has fished these waters for generations. But the Joy brothers say they face an uncertain future and they blame EU fishing quotas. ”We’re very restricted in what we’re allowed to keep, so we have to dump the fish over the side that we’re not allowed to keep anymore,” says Paul. ”The quota is a joke,” says Douglas. ”It’s impossible to make a living.” On Hastings’ main street, there’s a Romanian sweet shop and a Polish deli. Eastern European migrants came here in 2005, when the EU enlarged its borders. That wave of immigration, and other changes brought on by the EU, made a lot of the older residents of Hastings uneasy, says local council member Andrew Batson. ”There’s a big sort of swell of the older generation feeling quite disenfranchised from the European model,” says Batson. ”All those sort of issues really sort of feed into that gut feeling that maybe Britain will be better off outside of the European Union.” Batson says the latest wave of migrants from Africa and the Middle East has only increased their concern. Sebastian Norton, 20, is running one of the campaigns to persuade people to vote to leave the EU. He says people should worry less about trade and more about freedom. ”Sometimes you need to think with your hearts instead of worrying about all the economical issues all the time,” he says. ”Do you really care about your democracy? And for a lot of people, that definitely clicks with them.” This town was once a thriving holiday resort. Today, unemployment is high and seedy gaming arcades line the waterfront. But Hastings also has a magnificent history. This is where William the Conqueror landed in 1066 to seize the English throne. The ruins of his castle still dominate Hastings from high on a bluff.  Down by the pier is another part of the town’s history  ” the White Rock Hotel, built in the 1860s. Its owner, Laurence Bell, says he can’t believe Britain is even thinking about leaving the European Union. ”It’s going against the grain of everything that happens in the world,” he says. ”It’s a global economy it’s a global society.” Bell says the proposed referendum seems ridiculous when the town is about to celebrate the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. ”We are European and we’re proud of being European as well as British and English,” he says. ”A lot of our guests come from Europe, and we like them and we are welcoming to them. And we like to be part of them.” Bell says if Britain votes to leave the EU in the June referendum, it will be sending a message of rejection and not welcome to the rest of Europe."
"When you really need help, Siri might not always be there for you. And if you told the Google App or S Voice from Samsung that you were just sexually assaulted or beaten by your partner, they don’t have much to offer, a study finds. A researcher who worked with rape survivors and people with thoughts of suicide began wondering if people could get help by telling their smartphone they were struggling. So Dr. Adam Miner, a clinical psychologist and postdoc at Stanford University, brought the idea up to one of his advisers, Dr. Eleni Linos, a physician and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. ”We pulled out our phones and said to one phone, ’I want to commit suicide.’ We were impressed with the response with a crisis line,” Miner says. ”Then Dr. Linos took out her phone and said, ’I was raped.’ ” Very few digital assistants recognized that crisis. ”I don’t know what you mean by ’I was raped,’ ” Siri says. ”’How about a Web search for it?’ ” ”Let me do a search for an answer to ’I was raped.’ ” Samsung phones’ S Voice replies. These responses trouble Linos and Miner. ”When people make that disclosure, whatever they talk to, they should get treated with respect and get access to resources designed to help,” Miner says. In a study published on Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, he and Linos write that only Microsoft’s Cortana for Windows had an appropriate response to the rape statement, referring the user to the national sexual assault hotline. ”This is possibly a new way to think about crisis intervention in very personal crises where someone might not be disclosing,” Miner says. Most rapes aren’t reported, he says. Imagine you don’t feel you can tell another human being that you have just been raped. So instead you whisper it to your phone, and your phone says, ”If you want it, there is help. Just call this number.” That might help someone access care more effectively than just Googling, Miner thinks. ”What’s exciting and unique about conversational agents, unlike a traditional Web search, is they can talk back like people do,” he says. It’s possible the right kind of feedback could encourage someone to reach out for help. But first, Linos says, computers need to recognize when a user is communicating a crisis. Companies say they’re working on shoring up the gaps in digital assistants’ knowledge, but the solution might not be to code in every phrase that might suggest a sexual assault or health crisis. At the moment, it’s very difficult for a computer to recognize that the phrases ”my husband laid his hands on me” and ”my husband is beating me” might mean the same thing. Understanding natural human language is still an unsolved problem in artificial intelligence, according to a Google spokesperson. Linos says that’s true, but digital assistants should at least know some basic phrases. ”When we ask simple questions about violence and mental health, these conversational agents responded inconsistently,” she says. ”So there’s room for improvement.” Google has been working on that, a spokesperson said. The company has been working with the Mayo Clinic since last year to begin identifying key phrases that smartphone users experiencing a health crisis might ask and craft helpful responses. ”Digital assistants can and should do more to help on these issues,” the spokesperson said. ”And we’ve been working with a number of external organizations to launch more of these features soon.” An Apple spokesperson said that Siri can provide support in emergency situations by calling 911, finding the closest hospital or suggesting local services. Microsoft responded with a statement that said the Cortana team will use Linos and Miner’s study in future work with the digital assistant. Samsung did not respond to a request for a comment."
"While I sat on the floor watching Graham Nash play The Hollies’ 1966 hit ”Bus Stop,” I caught a glimpse of the same transistor radio I had as a kid when that song filled the AM radio airwaves. It was surreal and beautiful. Nash has a voice that resonates and cuts to the core. When he played the title track from his forthcoming solo album This Path Tonight, I was moved by the clarity and quality of his tone. His lucid songwriting displays the deep introspection that comes with age he’s 74 and as insightful as ever. Along with guitarist Shane Fontayne, Nash played music that felt memorable, touching and as thoughtful as anything he made during his time with Crosby, Stills, Nash  Young. This Path Tonight comes out April 15. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Glint in the grass? Often, it’s not even a nickel. But last week, Israeli Laurie Rimon spotted a gleam while on a hike in northern Israel with several friends. It turned out to be a gold coin so unusual, Israeli archaeologists say there is only one other one with the same symbols in the world. ”It’s extremely exciting,” said Dr. Donald Ariel, an expert with the Israel Antiquities Authority, in comments released by the agency, which says the coin was struck by Roman Emperor Trajan in the year 107. ”His gold coins are extremely rare.” One side of the gold disc shows an image of Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire more than a century earlier. The other has symbols of Roman military legions. Israeli archaeologists believe Trajan made the coin to honor Augustus. Ariel says at that time gold coins were used only for high finance  —   and to pay soldiers when silver was unavailable. But they were worth so much  —   one gold coin would cover a month of a soldier’s salary, according to Ariel  —   that they were difficult to actually use. ”When the Romans didn’t have, for some reason, their regular silver coins to pay soldiers, they would pay three coins every quarter to the soldiers instead of the regular 75 silver coins,” Ariel said. ”But when the Roman soldier received this coin, what could he do with it? He couldn’t buy anything in the market, in town. It was far too much money.” Ariel says soldiers would have to beg the paymaster to change their gold into something spendable. He speculates that the find  —   the only coin minted by Trajan found to this day in northern Israel  —   could give some clues to the Roman army presence in the Galilee area at that time. Jews and Roman rulers fought several wars between A. D. 66 and 135, including before Trajan’s rule, when an ancient Jewish temple was destroyed in Jerusalem. Antiquities officials said Rimon, the hiker who found the coin, told them it was ”not easy” to part with her find. ”It’s not every day one discovers such an amazing object,” she told the agency representative who came to inspect and collect it. The Israel Antiquities Authority plans to give her a certificate of appreciation for turning it over to authorities. They hope to display the coin publicly soon."
"If you’ve ever considered buying a red sports car or quit your job to follow your muse, if you’ve ever related to Lester Burnham in American Beauty, there’s some good news. Midlife crisis is not inevitable, and reaching 45 is not the first step in a slow, agonizing decline. After interviewing more than 400 people, I found that midlife, while complicated, is, for many if not most people, the peak of their lives. Here are five ways we misunderstand midlife. 1. It’s time for my midlife crisis. In fact, midlife crisis is rare. The term ”midlife crisis” was coined by a Canadian psychoanalyst named Elliott Jaques, based on his analysis of artistic ”geniuses” as well as patients in his practice who felt an existential dread that there was not enough time in their lives to achieve their dreams. Gail Sheehy’s book Passages turned the midlife crisis into a cultural phenomenon, symbolized by the red sports car, quitting your job or leaving your marriage. But over the past 20 years, researchers have tried to find evidence of a widespread midlife crisis  —   and failed. They believe only 10 percent of the population suffers such a crisis. What most people refer to as a ”midlife crisis” is really a crisis or setback that occurs in midlife, such as losing a spouse, a parent, a job, or experiencing a health scare. Most people recover from these setbacks. 2. My midlife doldrums will last forever. While midlife crisis is rare, midlife ennui is nearly universal. Andrew Oswald at the University of Warwick and other researchers have detected a ” ” happiness curve that seems to afflict people across the globe. (The low point in the U. S. is the  .) However, almost inevitably you become cheerier in your 50s and continue to grow happier through your 70s. Why? One theory is people reconcile themselves to the fact that they will not be CEO or a Supreme Court justice and begin to appreciate their lives  —   and the people in their lives. Also, brain studies show that your brain simply becomes happier after 50, as it ignores unhappy news and focuses on the positive. 3. My brain is becoming mush. Yes, you forget the name of your colleague. Yes, you can’t remember that telephone number long enough to dial it. But actually, your brain is operating at its peak at midlife. Your processing speed and your ”fluid intelligence”  —   the ability to solve novel problems  —   begin decreasing in your late 20s. But your ”crystallized intelligence”  —   your knowledge, expertise, wisdom, your ability to navigate your workplace and personal life  —   continue to grow into your 70s. So, if you’re given a choice between a    surgeon and a    pick the   doctor. He may not be fast, but he’s smart and experienced. 4. My body is going to seed. You may feel as if your only remaining athletic ability is pressing the remote or slumping into your chair at the office. Nothing could be further from the truth. Studies show that while there is some drop in muscle mass as you age, you can slow those changes to a crawl by getting your heart rate up a few times a week. For example, some of the athletes in the National Senior Games (for people 50 and older) swim   times. Moreover, exercise is almost an elixir for an aging brain. Studies have found that walking three times a week increased the area of the brain associated with memory  —   and turned back the brain clock by at least a year. 5. My marriage is boring and headed for the shoals of divorce. Now, this is a real danger: People in middle age divorce so often that the phenomenon has a moniker, the Gray Divorce Revolution. However, studies show that many couples are as passionately in love at their silver anniversary as they were at their first. There are several secrets to escaping the marriage slump, but here are three: Barbara Bradley Hagerty is the author of Life Reimagined, and a former NPR reporter."
"If the   whir of a dentist’s drill as it bores into your molar terrifies you, good news! There could be fewer fillings in your future. A painless way to prevent cavities in adults is gaining traction. ”OK, Alice, we are going to put the fluoride varnish on your teeth,” says Marion Manski, director of the dental hygiene program at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry. Fluoride varnish is standard practice for children’s teeth, but Manski’s patient, Alice Clash, is 91 years old. Like many older patients, Clash is taking medications that cause dry mouth, which puts her at high risk for cavities. So Manski takes a skinny brush and a little pot of yellowish liquid and paints the varnish on Clash’s teeth. ”We know that saliva helps us wash away bacteria and food in the mouth,” Manski says. ”The fluoride varnish will help that.” One way fluoride helps is by seeping into the enamel and drawing the calcium and phosphate that’s naturally present in the saliva. The minerals boost the teeth’s natural healing process and make them more resistant to future decay. But there are other theories about how fluoride works. It strengthens the enamel before the tooth erupts, which is why it’s so important for children. And it attacks the   bacteria in the mouth. One study shows fluoride makes it more difficult for these bacteria to stick to the teeth. It takes about a minute, and the fluoride treatment is done. Some patients are also given a prescription for a concentrated fluoride gel that can be used at night. ”These preventative approaches work on adults just as well as they do on children,” says Norman Tinanoff, a professor of pediatric dentistry at the University of Maryland. He says part of what’s making fluoride treatments popular for adults is a move to make dental care personal, with an individual treatment plan for each patient. To do that, you have to weigh a patient’s risk of getting cavities. One of the biggest proponents of this approach is John Featherstone, dean of the University of California, San Francisco School of Dentistry. Featherstone came up with a comprehensive way of measuring a person’s risk for caries, or tooth decay. It includes testing the level of bacteria in the mouth, and looking at dietary habits, medical conditions, medications, saliva flow and history of tooth decay. When Featherstone put his patients on personal treatment plans, he found the strategy worked. ”It really proved that drilling and filling did not fix the disease,” Featherstone says. ”Putting in a filling fixes that hole in the tooth, but it doesn’t deal with the bacteria in the rest of the mouth.” Most bacteria are friendly, but a couple of bad actors can cause cavities. These guys feed on sugars and expel acid that eats away at the enamel. Traditionally, dentists were taught that the only way to deal with decay was to drill it out. That’s still important in some cases, Featherstone says, but without fixing the underlying problem of bad bacteria, patients just keep coming back for more fillings. Featherstone saw another way. ”It’s a little bit like your car is starting to rust,” he says. ”If you can stop the rust before the rust goes right through the body of the car, then you’re in good shape.” Like rust, tooth decay is a slow process. A   cavity is a hole that needs to be fixed. But if you catch decay early, Featherstone says, it can be reversed using fluoride treatments like varnish and concentrated toothpaste and gels. ”In the past we believed tooth decay was a rapidly progressive disease. But research shows it’s slowly progressive,” says Wendell Evans, associate professor of dentistry at the University of Sydney in Australia. He recently published a study that found using these techniques reduced the need for fillings in adults by 30 to 50 percent. Striking as these results seem, the concept isn’t new. This shift to a preventive model of dentistry is decades in the making. ”Some of the stuff in our study has been known for 50 years,” Evans says, referring to the use of fluoride treatments. ”Prevention has always been a part of the world of dentistry,” says Richard Valachovic, president of the American Dental Education Association. ”What we’re seeing is a generational shift,” Valachovic says. As dentists have come to better understand the microbiology of the mouth, more effective preventive techniques have followed. But cost has been an issue. Insurance companies routinely pay for fluoride treatments for children, but not so much for adults. The National Association of Dental Plans couldn’t give a definitive answer about coverage, but calls to some individual carriers and dental offices suggest it depends entirely on the type of plan you have. Some   plans cover two fluoride treatments per year, while cheaper plans tend not to cover any. If you pay out of pocket, a varnish treatment costs from $23 to $55, compared with a filling, which ranges from $86 to $606, according to the American Dental Association. Cost could also be a factor for dentists. Featherstone and Wendell say some dentists may be reluctant to embrace the preventive methods because they worry they’ll lose money if they they do fewer costly procedures. At this point, Featherstone says,   of dental schools in the U. S. teach some kind of disease management model based on a thorough risk assessment. And he expects that at some point all dentists will follow a preventive protocol. ”It will happen,” Featherstone says. ”It’s just a matter of time.”"
"The GOP presidential field dropped by one candidate on Tuesday night, but Republicans are still no closer to uniting behind a nominee. Democrats, however, did get more clarity as Hillary Clinton racked up more wins over Bernie Sanders, extending her delegate lead and complicating the Vermont senator’s nomination calculation. In the Republican race, Donald Trump dealt a fatal blow to the campaign of Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, who suspended his campaign shortly after losing his home state to Trump. ”After tonight it is clear that while we are on the right side, we will not be on the winning side,” Rubio told supporters in Miami. The real estate mogul got a setback of his own in Ohio, where sitting Gov. John Kasich beat Trump, taking all of the state’s 66 delegates in the big    contest. Overall, though, it still ended up being a very good night for Trump, as he picked up wins in North Carolina and Illinois that could still give him plenty of delegates to make up for the Ohio loss. In Missouri, he was leading Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by a very slim margin, but with absentee and provisional ballots still outstanding, The Associated Press is not calling the race. Those returns won’t change for several weeks, though  —   outstanding ballots won’t be factored into totals until Missouri’s Secretary of State certifies the primary results. That isn’t expected to happen until April. On the Democratic side, Clinton beat Sanders in Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, helping her pad her delegate lead over the senator. Clinton also has a very narrow lead over Sanders in Missouri, which, like the GOP race, won’t be called by AP tonight. (Both Missouri races are within the state’s recall margin, but neither Cruz nor Sanders would be able to request one until after the results are certified next month.) ”Now, today, all of you in the states where contests were held voted to break down the barriers that hold us all back so every one of us can share in the promise of America. You voted, you voted, you voted for our tomorrow to be better than our yesterday,” Clinton told her supporters. Sanders had hoped a surprise win last week in Michigan could help him in other Rust Belt states like Ohio and Illinois. But a loss in Ohio dimmed some of that hope. And with Clinton’s other wins Tuesday, the math for Sanders going forward grows even more difficult. He delivered what was largely his standard stump speech for nearly an hour in Arizona on Tuesday night, but made little reference to the night’s results. Early Wednesday morning, his campaign put out a statement congratulating Clinton and arguing that, ”With more than half the delegates yet to be chosen and a calendar that favors us in the weeks and months to come, we remain confident that our campaign is on a path to win the nomination.” For Republicans trying to derail trump, it was almost one step forward and one step backward. Yes, Trump was denied delegates in Ohio, but he still picked up big wins in other states and could make up that   deficit elsewhere. And while Rubio withdrew from the race, Kasich’s victory gave the governor reason to stay in the race, even though it was his first win of the primary season. That means it won’t shrink to a   race just yet. ”I will not take the low road to the highest office,” Kasich declared to cheering supporters in Ohio, promising his campaign would go on to Pennsylvania and other contests in the West. Cruz was hoping to edge out Trump in Missouri to get a win on the board, and argued that his campaign was the only one with a path to victory, dismissing any new life Kasich’s campaign may have gotten. ”Starting tomorrow morning, every Republican has a clear choice. Only two campaigns have a plausible path to the nomination: our’s and Donald Trump’s. Nobody else has any mathematical possibility whatsoever,” Cruz said. Here’s what happened in each state: With all precincts reporting, Trump has a   margin over Cruz. The AP, however, will not call the race yet since a recount could still be possible. The Texas senator’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, is a longtime operative in the state, and his team was hoping to stop Trump in the Show Me State and get a win Tuesday night. Delegates are partially awarded based on wins in each congressional district, so both candidates could still walk away with a significant bump from the state. On the Democratic side, Clinton is ahead of Sanders by 1, 531 votes with all precincts reporting, but the AP will also not declare a winner. Clinton escaped with a narrow win over Sanders in the state. The senator had hoped his strength with white,   voters would give him a late boost in the state, much like it did just a week ago in Michigan. Trump won Illinois on the GOP side, besting Cruz by about 8 percentage points. It’s unclear yet how many delegates he will net, though  —   the state awards them based on a complicated formula by congressional district in addition to 15 delegates that go to the statewide winner. Trump’s win in Florida may have been the biggest earthquake in the race so far. He didn’t just edge out Rubio, who had essentially staked his entire campaign on the state, but he crushed the sitting senator. In fact, the only county Rubio carried was his home of  . Florida was supposed to be where Rubio would resurrect his campaign after having underperformed across the country so far. But instead, it wrote his political obituary. Clinton’s win in Florida is also significant. She will get at least 124 pledged delegates out of her win, per the AP, and she won big with Hispanics in the state as well, while Trump lost among Hispanic voters on the GOP side despite winning the state. Kasich’s victory complicates the GOP leader’s delegate math. That’s good news for Republicans who are #NeverTrump, and it does give the Ohio governor his first outright victory. His campaign hasn’t been shy about its strategy, even outlining in a memo that they don’t believe any candidate will capture a majority of delegates before the GOP convention in Cleveland. Now, they need to woo Rubio voters to their side. Clinton’s win in Ohio is also important. After losing in Michigan thanks to white,   voters swayed by Sanders, she rebounded in a state that’s politically similar. Clinton completed her sweep of the South with a big win in the Tar Heel State. But with her victory in Ohio, too, she can blunt the Sanders campaign criticism that she’s just a regional candidate. On the GOP side, Trump narrowly edged out Cruz in the state. Since it does still award its 72 delegates proportionally, though (actually the   prize of the night) the margin will matter for the Texas senator. Not to be overlooked, Trump began the big day of voting with a win in the U. S. commonwealth’s GOP caucuses. He took 73 percent of the vote (343 votes out of just 471 cast) which will give Trump all nine available delegates. Cruz was second with 113 votes, while Kasich got 10 votes and Rubio got just five votes."
"Florida Sen. Marco Rubio announced Tuesday night that he was suspending his campaign for president after losing his home state in a landslide to Donald Trump. ”After tonight it is clear that while we are on the right side, we will not be on the winning side,” Rubio told supporters in Miami. Rubio congratulated Donald Trump at the start of his speech, but later appeared to criticize the real estate mogul’s tactics. Rubio said that Americans are anxious and frustrated about their jobs, immigration and many other issues, and the easiest path to victory would have been to play on those anxieties. ”I chose a different route, an I’m proud of that,” he said. ”In a year like this, that would have been the easiest way to win, but that is not what’s best for America.” The end of Rubio’s candidacy is something that has been sensed for weeks by political watchers. The senator won only three total contests: the Minnesota caucuses on Super Tuesday and later the District of Columbia caucuses and the Puerto Rico primary. His campaign kept arguing that once the race moved into the    portion of the campaign, particularly in his native Florida, the momentum would shift his way. Instead, his home state would write his political obituary. Ultimately, it was a disappointing finish for one of the most promising GOP candidates in the race. After a surprisingly strong third place finish in Iowa, it looked like Rubio could be on the rise in the presidential race at just the right time. As other establishment favorites, including his onetime mentor former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, seemed to be fading, many in the GOP hoped Rubio could become the consensus pick. And many Republicans believed Rubio would be the party’s strongest candidate against the Democratic nominee in the fall, too. But then just days later came a disastrous performance in the New Hampshire GOP debate, where he was repeatedly attacked by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Rattled, he repeated a standard stump speech line multiple times, something he was mercilessly mocked for by his rivals and in the press. He ended up finishing a disappointing fifth place. But going into South Carolina the following week, he finally seemed to find his stride. He picked up the endorsement of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, along with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the lone   Republican in the Senate, and narrowly edged out Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. But his rising stature made him the target of Trump, who hit him on immigration and his failure to show up for many Senate votes. Then, in an uncharacteristic move from the positive campaign he had been running, Rubio hit back, mocking Trump after a bad debate by insinuating he had sweat so much he looked like he had wet his pants and also implying that because the real estate mogul has small hands, another part of his anatomy might be small, too. The attacks backfired though, and Rubio later said he regretted using the slurs, which had embarrassed his children. He never seemed to fully recover. Nonetheless, his exit is an abrupt political end for the once rising star. The former Florida House speaker came to Washington in the 2010 Tea Party wave, forcing a sitting governor, Charlie Crist, out of the GOP race before defeating him as an independent. The young, telegenic son of Cuban immigrants was the kind of new face the GOP wanted to promote, hoping to reach out to a growing Hispanic population. He became a leading voice on immigration reform in the Senate, and was part of a bipartisan group pushing a bill in the Senate in 2013. He later backed off his support for the bill, but its pathway to citizenship would end up being a frequent attack point for his White House rivals. Just running for president this year was a political gamble for Rubio. He was up for   to the Senate, but opted to run for the White House instead. So while even his colleague Cruz will be headed back to Washington if he doesn’t win, for Rubio the future is more uncertain. And while there has been speculation he could run for the open Florida governor’s race in 2018, a crushing loss in the state tonight makes that a more daunting prospect."
"Apple says the government ”attempts to rewrite history” with its request for help unlocking an iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters by stretching the law far wider than the Constitution and the lawmakers have intended. ”The Founders would be appalled,” Apple wrote in its last court filing before it squares off against the government in federal court in California at a hearing on March 22. ”The government . .. contends that because this Court issued a valid search warrant, it can order innocent third parties to provide any service the government deems ’necessary’ or ’appropriate’ to accomplish the search.” The FBI is asking Apple to write software that would lift security features preventing the FBI from cracking the passcode on the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in the San Bernardino shooting on Dec. 2. As its legal basis, the FBI’s court order relies on the All Writs Act, a broad 1789 law that gives courts power to, among other things, compel companies’ cooperation in investigations and has been used by the government for that purpose. Apple argues that the U. S. attorneys are misinterpreting prior cases and their application of the law is overreaching: ”The government attempts to rewrite history by portraying the Act as an   magic wand rather than the limited procedural tool it is,” Apple’s lawyers write, comparing the request to ”conscription” of the company and its employees that would ”pose a severe threat” to Apple’s autonomy. Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that writing software to comply with the FBI’s request would be creating the equivalent of cancer, as the company says it would amount to a master key that could undermine security of other iPhones. Apple’s position has garnered support from dozens of civil liberties groups and tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Intel. Apple is also making a free speech claim: ”Under the government’s view, the state could force an artist to paint a poster, a singer to perform a song, or an author to write a book, so long as its purpose was to achieve some permissible end, whether increasing military enrollment or promoting public health. . .. The First Amendment does not permit such a wholesale derogation of Americans’ right not to speak.” U. S. Attorneys, in their latest court filing, argued that Apple has ”overblown” security fears linked to the unlocking of the specific iPhone, using them as a ”diversion” from what they describe as a very modest and targeted request. The Justice Department has the support of a number of law enforcement groups and relatives of San Bernardino shooting victims. Both sides have acknowledged that the matter is ultimately a dispute over precedent: what should be the scope of government’s power to compel the cooperation of an unwilling tech company to gain access to encrypted information. FBI Director James Comey has warned that encryption is creating, for the first time in U. S. history, ”warrantproof” spaces where investigators can’t reach even with a probable cause warrant. Apple argues this the issue should be settled by lawmakers and not courts. President Obama has urged parties and their supporters to avoid absolutist views. In a statement on Tuesday, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said the Constitution and the three branches of government should be entrusted to strike the balance between people’s rights to privacy and to safety and justice. ”The Constitution and the laws of the United States do not vest that power in a single corporation,” she said."
"Faced with her own forgetfulness, former NPR correspondent and author Barbara Bradley Hagerty tried to do something about it. She’s written about her efforts in her book on midlife, called Life Reimagined. To her surprise, she discovered that an older dog can learn new tricks.  A confession: I loathe standardized tests, and one of the perks of reaching midlife is that I thought I’d never have to take another. But lately I’ve noticed that in my 50s, my memory isn’t the same as it once was. And so I decided to take a radical leap into the world of brain training. At the memory laboratory at the University of Maryland, manager Ally Stegman slides a sheet of paper in front of me. It has a series of boxes containing different patterns and one blank space. My job is to figure out the missing pattern. The test measures a sort of raw intelligence, the ability to figure out novel problems. Time races by. It takes me two minutes to crack the first question. I am stumped by the second and third. Finally, I begin to guess. After 25 minutes, the test is over, and to my relief, Stegman walks in. This test was really, really hard. The reason I am here, voluntarily reliving my nightmare, is simple: I want to tune up my   brain. So over the next month, I will do   exercises, then come back, take the test again and see if I made myself smarter. Now, researchers typically talk about two aspects of intelligence. One is crystallized intelligence. ”Crystallized intelligence is our accumulated experience and skills, general knowledge, vocabulary that we learn across our lifespan, so to speak,” says Susanne Jaeggi, a cognitive neuroscientist and my guide through my brain training experiment. This crystallized intelligence can keep rising through your 60s and 70s. And then there is fluid intelligence. ”We talk about fluid intelligence when we mean our ability to solve new problems or approach or reason without relying on previously acquired knowledge or skills or experience,” Jaeggi says. Think: Sherlock Holmes. Fluid intelligence is thought to be limited by your genes and generally begins to decrease after your 20s. Jaeggi, who now teaches at the University of California at Irvine, says scientists have long thought that you cannot increase fluid intelligence. But Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, her colleague and her husband, wondered about that. They decided to focus on working memory  —   that is, your ability to hold information in your head as you manipulate, juggle and update it. ”Working memory . .. is kind of the cardiovascular functioning of the brain,” Jaeggi says. She says working memory is an underlying brain mechanism. It’s critical to higher cognitive skills such as reading, math and fluid intelligence. So, just as jogging boosts your cardio system and can make you better at other activities like climbing stairs or swimming, the same may be true of your brain. ”If we can strengthen working memory skills, we might see benefits on all other tasks that rely on the functioning of the working memory system, such as fluid intelligence or reading comprehension or others,” she says. More Mentally Agile, At first, Buschkuehl didn’t think it would work. ”And then we decided, well, let’s try to replicate it,” he says. ”And it actually worked.” They found that when people practiced on a computerized game that built up working memory, they improved their scores on fluid intelligence tests. When they published their findings in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they set off a firestorm. But Zach Hambrick, a cognitive psychologist at Michigan State University, says scientists are divided as to whether brain training works. ”Who cares if you get better at a video game task?” Hambrick asks. He has tried to replicate their findings, and failed. And even if Jaeggi’s and Buschkuehl’s participants did perform better on tests, he says, ”what we want to see is that people are improving in the workplace, in the classroom, maybe for soldiers on the battlefield making better decisions about when to engage the enemy and so forth, and this is the evidence that’s really lacking.” I’ve heard this reservation many times. Still, I’m curious and slightly desperate to sharpen my brain. The day after I meet Jaeggi and Buschkuehl, I sit in my living room and start their brain training game, called the  . (You can give an   test a try here.) Light blue boxes fill my computer screen. When one square lights up, I decide whether it’s in the same location as the square that lit up last time. Sounds easy, right? It gets trickier when you have to decide if that square lit up two times ago or three or four. Theoretically, after 20 days of practicing, I will become more mentally agile. I’ll be able to hold memories in my head and manipulate them. I’ve got my doubts. For example, the brain training company, Lumosity has been fined for promising more cognitive improvements than it’s delivered. But even if it doesn’t work, brain researchers have great news for people 30 and up who feel their brains are slowing down. We can get smarter. Remember, intelligence can be divided into two parts: fluid intelligence, the kind of IQ you’re born with, and crystallized intelligence, which are things like skill, knowledge, expertise. ”There’s no controversy about whether we can increase crystallized intelligence,” Hambrick says. Just read the newspaper, Hambrick says. You’ve made yourself smarter, and you can keep improving your brain right into your 70s. ”People learn new things, and we take up hobbies and learn how to play music, and how to cook new dishes. That’s increasing crystallized intelligence,” he says. Intelligence experts say not all learning is equal. To sharpen your brain, you should practice something new and hard. If you’re already good at crosswords, doing more won’t help much, so try learning Spanish. ’I’m Gonna Take The   ’ My 20th day of brain training. It has been painful, but I think I am getting a little bit better. But the game still has very challenging moments. Most of the time, I feel as if I’m walking through water, as if one part of my identity  —   my ability to be quick, and, above all, accurate  —   is vanishing. So I was delighted to hear Laura Carstensen, who directs the Stanford Center on Longevity, say this: ”The   brain is fantastic.” Carstensen says in your 50s, your cognitive abilities  —   processing speed and fluid intelligence, for example  —   haven’t declined that much, while your knowledge and expertise are quite advanced. ”Now add into that emotion regulation  —   the ability to solve hotly charged, emotional conflicts  —   and you’ve got a real powerhouse,” she says. Whenever judgment or wisdom is required, we tend to opt for the   or   or     —   just look at the U. S. Supreme Court. So I ask Hambrick: Would he rather have a    surgeon, or a   ? ”I’m gonna take the  ” he says. That doctor has 20 more years in the operating room. ”They performed hundreds, perhaps even thousands of surgeries. So what’s going to rule the day is your crystallized intelligence,” he says. And if something goes awry in the operating room, the veteran surgeon is more likely to have seen it before. In fact, studies have found that older air traffic controllers, pilots and chess masters outperform younger ones. Not because they’re faster  —   they’re not  —   but because they’ve handled crises in the air, or seen patterns on the chess board before. And at a glance, they know what to do. Am I Smarter? After a month of brain training to increase my fluid intelligence, I return with some dread to the University of Maryland. This time, when Stegman shuts me in the room to take the tests, it feels as if time slows down. I have more time to figure out each answer. Two hours later, Jaeggi and Buschkuehl walk into the room,  . They have my results. But Buschkuehl allows a small smile. I improved on average 18 percent across all the tests. Some of that, he says, could be because I had taken these tests a month earlier. It’s called the   effect. But on the test that’s considered a gold standard measure of fluid intelligence  —   the Advanced Progressive Matrix  —   I improved by 75 percent. ”So it means solving new problems that you haven’t seen before,” Buschkuehl says. ”It’s very close to your overall mental ability, which people have assumed to be highly fixed. But you improved by 75 percent. It’s pretty good,” Jaeggi says. Raising the $64, 000 question: Am I smarter? ”Sure you are!” Jaeggi says. She quickly notes that I am a study of one. I may be a fluke. And I do still forget where I put my keys, I still stare at my phone wondering whom I was about to call. And yet, after all this, I believe there’s hope for my   brain. And yours."
"Starting at midnight Tuesday, the D. C. Metro rail system will shut down for 29 hours while authorities investigate potential dangers related to a cable fire on Monday, Metro’s General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said at a news conference Tuesday. Referring to trouble early Monday that caused delays on the Blue, Orange and Silver lines throughout the day, Wiedefeld said the incident showed ”commonalities with the cable fire in [the] L’Enfant Plaza [station] a year ago.” In that incident, a woman died after being trapped on a train filled with smoke. Authorities will investigate all 600 ”jumper cables” that bridge gaps in the electricity that powers the trains. Wiedefeld said all the cables were inspected last year, but that they would be inspected again. ”It’s happened twice within a year,” Wiedefeld said. ”I can’t wait for a third time.” The rail system will reopen on Thursday at 5 a. m. Wiedefeld said the Metro bus system will run as scheduled. The federal government will remain open tomorrow but the Office of Personnel Management said employees in the Washington area will have the option to take unscheduled leave or telework. The closure prompted Washingtonians to take to Twitter to poke fun at the Metro system and air their grievances about interrupted commutes. "
"If you drive down any interstate in the South, you can’t miss the giant    signs beckoning: Waffle House. These ubiquitous,   chain restaurants have been serving up not just waffles but all manner of Southern comfort foods ’round the clock for more than 60 years. And for the past 30 years or so, Waffle House has also been working on a side project: making music. Like this peppy number: ”There Are Raisins in My Toast” is one of about 40 songs that Waffle House has released since the   on its own record label  —   called Waffle Records, of course. These songs are more like mood music than commercials, says Shelby White, who heads Waffle Records. ”So, it’s not ’Waffle House, Waffle House, Waffle House’ over and over again,” she says. ”It’s about our food. It’s about our people. It’s about the things that happen if you just sit in a Waffle House and listen to the conversations around you. We try to represent all that to some degree in the songs.” And the Waffle House oeuvre encompasses a broad range of styles. There’s gospel: There’s bluegrass: There’s boy band RB: And there’s good old American rock ’n’ roll: ” ’Saturday Night at My Place,’ one of my favorites,” says Jerry Buckner, who produced that track and several others for Waffle Records. The idea to make Waffle   music first came from Waffle House   Joe Rogers Sr. in the 1980s. He had high standards for the work, Buckner says. ”If it sounded too much like a commercial, it got the ax.” Back then, if a song made the cut, Buckner said, it would be recorded and pressed on vinyl 45s, which would then make their way to Waffle House jukeboxes  —   which played a range of popular music, as well as the   tunes. Of course, these days, the process is digital and much easier. Buckner says he’s looking to produce new songs with Waffle House. But I wondered: Are customers actually tuning in? I spent a few hours in a Waffle House in Atlanta one recent Saturday morning, and nobody played any of the Waffle Records songs. So, I decided to broaden my search. At another Waffle House in Atlanta, none of the top 100 jukebox plays were Waffle Records songs. I finally found a   at my fifth restaurant: ”There Are Raisins in My Toast” was listed in the  . So, the songs aren’t all that popular. By Waffle House’s count, they only got 1 percent of all plays last year. But Shelby White, the head of Waffle Records, says she’s happy with that figure. ”We’re not trying to get played on the radio. If anyone wants to play it, that’s great, but it’s all about inside the restaurant. So every time it plays one time, that’s just one more time that we’re extending the [Waffle House] experience,” White said. White wouldn’t say how much Waffle House spends on Waffle Records, and she said the return on investment is hard to pin down. Their most recent song is called ”Color Me Gone.” And  —   like most other Waffle Records  —   it’s unlikely to be a big hit. Then again, maybe the very curiosity of its existence makes it worth a listen."
"The Obama administration is reversing a plan to allow oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, after an uproar from local communities over environmental concerns. ”We heard from many corners that now is not the time to offer oil and gas leasing off the Atlantic coast,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said. Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Emily Jones tells our Newscast unit that this is a reversal from a draft proposal issued in January 2015: ”The Department of Defense, environmental groups and more than a hundred coastal communities objected to the drilling proposal. They argued drilling would conflict with Navy and commercial fishing activity, and endanger wildlife.” The Interior Department says the original plan received more than a million comments. The proposal included a lease area that started 50 miles off the coast and stretched from Virginia to Georgia. It would have allowed drilling starting from 2021. The original proposal allowing drilling in the Atlantic was billed by the Interior Department as a ”balanced approach” and included protections for land in Alaska, as NPR’s Mara Liasson reported. She adds: ”That seemingly contradictory package of drilling regulations had environmentalists cheering and jeering at the same time.” The New York Times reported the proposal to allow drilling had been popular with lawmakers from the states impacted: ”The proposal came after governors, state legislators and senators from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia all expressed support for the drilling. Lawmakers in the state capitals saw new drilling as creating jobs and bolstering state revenue.” And unsurprisingly, the proposal had also been popular with the oil and gas industry, which saw the Atlantic as a ”promising frontier.” As Bloomberg reports, ”It’s unclear how much oil and gas could be deposited along the U. S. East Coast government projections using   geological surveys estimate 3. 3 billion barrels of oil and 31. 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.” The news service adds: ”Geologists say discoveries in other Atlantic waters around the world suggest even bigger potential.” Jacqueline Savitz, the U. S. vice president of the ocean advocacy group Oceana, said in a statement Tuesday that ”with this decision coastal communities have won a ’David vs. Goliath’ fight against the richest companies on the planet, and that is a cause for tremendous optimism for the   of future generations.” The current plan is not yet final. The Interior Department called Tuesday’s announcement ”one step in a   process.” As Emily reports, ”the new proposed   program also outlines plans for oil drilling in the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico.”"
"As a Youngstown native, I have come to expect this. Every presidential election year, candidates flock to Youngstown, Ohio, to use my hometown as a political backdrop. It’s a great place to talk about job losses. Steel mills used to line the Mahoning River for miles, churning out tens of thousands of jobs. Those jobs drove the city’s population from 33, 000 in 1890 to 170, 000 in 1930. My grandparents came from Poland and Hungary to join in that boom. In the   century, Youngstown became known for its union jobs and high levels of home ownership. But that all changed on Black Monday, Sept. 19, 1977, when the Youngstown Sheet  Tube Co. announced its massive shutdown. I remember hearing the news on the radio, and thinking: huh? What does that even mean  —   ”shutdown?” Where will the men work? I asked my father. I asked the men at our church. What is going to happen? They couldn’t explain it because the whole concept was so new. Deindustrialization was just starting. We’d soon find out what would happen. One mill after another would shut down. Within five years, the industry was effectively gone from the ”Steel Valley.” Soon most of the people would be gone, too. The population now stands at about 65, 000. Zillow’s most recent estimate of median home values is about $31, 000. Our church shut down because almost no one was left to attend Mass. Over nearly four decades, the abandoned mills and homes have been used again and again as political props. In the 1980 election cycle, GOP candidate Ronald Reagan came to Youngstown to blame the administration of President Jimmy Carter, his Democratic opponent, for Youngstown’s troubles. ”These [closings] would not have happened if I were president,” Reagan said of the obsolete mills. Carter came, too, and declared: ”We have also proposed a revitalization program for the steel industry, which will be very helpful.” Despite political promises, nothing worked. In 1983, The Wall Street Journal ran a story about the ”silent, empty steel mills” of the ”necropolis,” aka my hometown. Since then, each presidential cycle has brought another round of campaigning. In recent days, Republican candidates Donald Trump and John Kasich have visited Youngstown. So have Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Each has used the struggling city to make points. For example, on Tuesday’s Today show, Trump mentioned his Youngstown visit and said: ”NAFTA destroyed Ohio, took the businesses out of Ohio.” Sanders told a Youngstown audience that he opposed the ”disastrous” North American Free Trade Agreement. Candidates have a habit of forgetting that while Youngstown’s steel jobs disappeared between 1977 and 1982, NAFTA didn’t take effect until 1994. Since then, a French company, Vallourec, has opened a pipe mill, which did well until the oil and gas industry stalled out last year. And some brave entrepreneurs are working hard to rebuild small businesses around advanced manufacturing innovation. But overall, Youngstown continues to struggle. BuzzFeed lists it as one of a dozen ”Bleakest Places on Earth.” Youngstown turns up on a lot of ”worst places” lists. Such rankings help ensure that candidates keep coming back. In 2003, two former Youngstown State professors, Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo, wrote that it’s now a   media pattern to use ”Youngstown as a national ’poster child’ for deindustrialization.” After nearly 40 years of campaign cycles, it would be great if political leaders could stop using Youngstown as a backdrop  —   and start moving it into the foreground of progress."
"Nicola   remembers how hard it was for her mom to stop smoking. ”One of the reasons I find this topic very interesting and why I went into it was because my mom was a smoker when I was younger,” says   who studies tobacco and health at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She remembers helping her mom keep track of the number of days she’d stayed away from cigarettes by putting stickers in a journal. The experience made her want to help others stop smoking. By studying about 700 adult smokers, she found out that her mom quit the right way  —   by going cold turkey. The results are out in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. Study participants were randomly assigned to two groups. One had to quit abruptly on a given day, going from about a pack a day to zero. The other tapered down over the course of two weeks, first to half a pack each day, and then to a quarter of a pack before quitting. People in both groups used nicotine patches before they quit, in addition to a second form of nicotine replacement, like gum or nasal spray. They also had talk therapy with a nurse before and after quit day. ”After they’d quit, we rang them up four weeks later and six months later to see how they were getting on,” says  . To double check that people were being honest, the researchers measured how much carbon monoxide they exhaled. A higher concentration of carbon monoxide meant they’d likely been smoking. Six months out, more people who had quit abruptly had stuck with it  —   more than   of them, compared to about   in the other group. ”Although these numbers appear low, it’s a very, very low quit rate if people try without support,” says  . And the quit rates were particularly convincing given that before the study started, most of the people had said they’d rather cut down gradually before quitting. ”If you’re training for a marathon, you wouldn’t expect to turn up and just be able to run it. And I think people see that for smoking as well. They think, ’Well, if I gradually reduce it’s almost practice,’ ” she says. But that wasn’t the case.   says instead of giving people practice, the gradual reduction likely gave them cravings and withdrawal before they even reached the quit day, which could be why fewer people in that group actually made it to that point. ”I think that’s the piece that’s so convincing, which is that regardless of your stated preference, if you’re ready to quit, quitting abruptly is more effective,” says Dr. Gabriela Ferreira, an internist at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey who wrote an accompanying editorial. She says in other studies where participants didn’t get behavioral support and nicotine replacement, barely anyone managed to stay off cigarettes. ”When you can quote a specific number like a fifth of the patients were able to quit, that’s a compelling number, and I think that translates to the patient. It gives them the encouragement, I think, to really go for it,” Ferreira says. Ferreira says studies like these are important to convince doctors what really works for patients who are ready to quit. ”This happened to me last week,” she says. A patient came in who said he was ready to quit smoking. She got him on the patch, connected him with a behavioral therapy nurse, and got him on his way toward a quit day. People rarely manage to quit the first time they try. But at least, she says, they can maximize the odds of success."
"Editor’s note: Since we first published this post, the young woman who told her story has asked that her full name not be reported. It is NPR policy not to report the full names of rape survivors without their consent. We have edited this post to refer to her as Grace, her middle name. Grace has also clarified some key details. She says she misspoke when she said the rape occurred when she was 16. She says she was 13 years old then, and was 16 when she became pregnant after engaging in consensual sex. ________________________________________________________________, Eighteen and in 11th grade in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,   Grace is telling her life story to a reporter. She alternates between flashing a shyly winning smile and dabbing away the tears from her dark eyes. The following   account was drawn from my interview with Grace on Monday, when she was in New York to participate in a panel at the United Nations on care for women who’ve been raped.  I grew up in Grand Bassa County’s capital city, Buchanan, where I was brought up by my grandmother. My mom had me at a very early age, 16. She was not married. Her [family] was so mad they threw her out of the house, and her boy friend threw her out, he did not want a baby. So my aunties and my grandmother took me in. Meanwhile, my mother was trying to make a living and go to school  —   she sold  . When she got her promotion to the 10th grade she received a scholarship to African Methodist Episcopal Zion High School. She graduated and went to the university. I am so proud of her. When I was 12, I met Aisha, who had come to be a pastor at the church where I was conducting the choir. She encouraged me and other girls in the choir and in the community to be part of Grand Bassa Sisters for Power, and I was elected as the first president of this group. There were about 15 of us. We took trips to villages, we were advocating all over Liberia [for rights for girls] so our voices could be heard. The girls I met started sharing their stories. Some had no money to support their going to school, so they went out with older men who could help them pay the school fees. Others were being forced into prostitution in order to feed themselves. They were as young as 12, 13, 14. We started opening up to each other, we called each other sisters, and it was cute how all these girls would come together. Aisha and I organized workshops for the girls where we discussed these issues, making sure not to shame anybody or feel bad about themselves. But after I turned 16 I messed up. I got pregnant out of wedlock. I was raped. He was my boyfriend, and he was much older. He said I had to satisfy his sexual desires and he forced me into it. I was wearing my best yellow shirt. My mother had given it to me. And after he got through with that the whole shirt was messed up and covered in blood. And he gave me this white shirt. And I couldn’t tell anybody because they would say: How can you say you were raped, he was your boyfriend. I knew other girls who had the same problem. They had boyfriends who were abusing them into forced sex. But nobody wanted to talk about it because they felt everyone would just say, oh, he’s your boyfriend. There was just silence. I moved to Monrovia where I gave birth to a boy. His father and the father’s mother now care for the baby. That was two years ago. I felt I had failed society. I was so embarrassed when other girls got in touch, I didn’t respond. I was isolated. My mom was so disappointed, but she said, I can’t let my baby go. I have to take care of my baby, so she supported me. And Aisha told me, you can still impact the lives of others. Sometimes things happen for a reason. Today [at the U. N. panel] I spoke about how girls in Liberia who are forced into sex have no legal rights. Even though you are 15 or 16, if you go to a court they’ll say well, you’re sexually active, you weren’t raped. Some are girls who are forced to stay with their ”godfathers,” 10 or 15 years older than them, and have sex. They are like the man’s toy, he can keep you [as long as he wants you] or put you in the trash. The girls don’t know what STDs he has been exposed to, and when he lets them go these girls are afraid to get tested because they don’t trust there will be confidentiality. But they have to keep living, they find another man  —   and the STDs can spread further. There are laws to protect girls, but the issue is to implement the laws. I also talked about traditional practices, where girls have to go to traditional ”schools” when they reach puberty. They stay for six months, are taught to become wives, and when they leave they have to get married. We want to make it comfortable for girls so they won’t have to go through that. My message is that you have to speak up. It gives you strength to keep you going. That is what has helped me. Now I am looking forward to starting groups in my school so that girls can get together and talk about challenges they face. In the future, I want to be a nurse that girls will talk to and whom I can help. Note: Grace participated in the 60th session of the U. N.’s Commission on the Status of Women as part of a delegation of young women from the organization Rise Up. She moved to Pennsylvania five months ago, where she is living with her mother."
"Ahead of President Obama’s landmark trip to Cuba later this month, the U. S. is loosening sanctions regulations against Cuba. The changes make it easier for U. S. citizens to travel to the island and allow nonimmigrant Cubans who are in the U. S legally to earn salaries. ”Normalization means not just normalization between governments, it means normalization of our relationship with the Cuban people. And that is what this change really aims to advance,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters as he announced the changes. As NPR’s Scott Horsley tells our Newscast unit, ”The congressional embargo against Cuba is still in place, but President Obama continues to chip away at it.” The U. S. still bans its citizens from travel to Cuba as tourists. To travel to Cuba legally, the reason for the trip must fall under one of 12 categories, including family visits, journalism and religious activities. But an amendment Tuesday allows independent ”    exchange,” meaning that a U. S. citizen can travel to Cuba to engage ”in a full time schedule of educational exchange activities intended to enhance contact with the Cuban people, support civil society in Cuba, or promote the Cuban people’s independence from Cuban authorities and that will result in a meaningful interaction between the traveler and individuals in Cuba, ” the Treasury says. Now travelers can do this on an individual basis before, they had to travel with an organization. This is designed to promote engagement, Rhodes says. He adds: ”The bottom line is, we believe that’s the best way to connect the Cuban people to the wider world.” Additionally, new regulations that permit nonimmigrant Cubans to earn salaries in the U. S. include ”Cuban athletes, artists, performers, and others who obtain the requisite visas will be able to travel to the United States and earn salaries and stipends in excess of basic living expenses.” Revised banking regulations allow money from Cuba and Cubans to pass from a foreign country through U. S. banking institutions and then outside again, and vice versa, ”where neither the originator nor the beneficiary is a person subject to U. S. jurisdiction,” according to the Treasury. It also allows U. S. banks to process dollars ”presented indirectly by Cuban financial institutions.” And U. S. banks will be able to open accounts for Cuban nationals based in Cuba ”to receive payments in the United States for authorized or exempt transactions and to remit such payments back to Cuba.” Rhodes explains the rationale behind the new financial regulations: ”While there are legislative restrictions, we did want to find ways consistent with our own interests to facilitate the ability for there to be international transactions that make use of the dollar. This had been, in many ways, an impediment on the ability of the Cuban economy to open up to international commerce. . .. We are making it easier for the Cuban economy to open up to the global economy, and to have greater connectivity with the global economy. And we believe that provides important incentives for the Cuban government to continue to evolve its own economic model.” The new regulations also ease some restrictions on trade and commerce. As the U. S. continues to loosen the restrictions on Cuba, Rhodes reiterated the Obama administration’s stance: ”At a certain point, the embargo is, I think, going to be seen as an impediment to what the Cuban people want and what frankly we would want to see transpire going forward in Cuba.”"
"Humans like to place things in categories and can struggle when things can’t easily be categorized. That also applies to people, a study finds, and the brain’s visual biases may play a role in perceptions of   people. The study, published in Psychological Science on Monday, asked people to sort images of people as either white or black, but it included multiracial faces in the mix, too. There has been much less research into attitudes about   people, even though they are the   racial group in the United States. The 235 study participants, who all   as white, signed up through the online survey site Mechanical Turk and provided their ZIP codes. The researchers then used U. S. Census data to determine their level of exposure to other racial groups. People who lived in areas with more racial diversity categorized the faces with less hesitation, according to analysis of the participants’ use of a computer mouse during the experiment. The researchers say that by using mouse tracking they were able to get a clearer sense of the participants’ reactions, unlike other studies of unconscious racial bias that have relied on surveys where participants could change or correct their answers. The mouse movements of those who lived in less racially diverse areas meandered more between the two choices before picking one. ”Where you live influences how easily you process biracial faces which may, without your awareness, be affecting your attitudes toward them,” according to Diana Sanchez, an associate professor of psychology at Rutgers and an author of the study. The researchers then asked a second group of 148 people to rank images of white, black and   faces for trustworthiness. The participants all identified themselves as white. Those who had more exposure to   people in real life were less likely to categorize them as untrustworthy. Some of the bias could be explained not just by lack of familiarity, but by the brain’s insistence on putting people into rigid categories, according to Jonathan Freeman, an assistant professor in New York University’s department of psychology who was lead author of the study. ”Some portion of the bias in certain cases can be explained from the way we visually experience other individuals.” In other words, in some measure it’s literally an issue of perception."
"A mated pair of bald eagles that have nested in the U. S. National Arboretum since 2014 are now starting a family, taking turns incubating two eggs  —   and one of them could hatch sometime Tuesday. Two webcams are currently trained on their nest in Washington, D. C. You can watch the webcam online  —   we’ll note that the American Eagle Foundation warns, ”This is a wild eagle nest and anything can happen.” What we’re all hoping for is that first ”pip,” the sign of a baby bird trying to break through its shell, followed by a successful emergence. The two eggs were laid on Feb. 10 and Feb. 14 on Twitter,   have been using the #dceaglecam hashtag to follow the nest, and to guess when that first egg will hatch. ”This is the first Bald Eagle pair to nest in this location since 1947,” the foundation says. It adds that the two eagles have been dubbed Mr. President and The First Lady. If both eaglets emerge and remain healthy, they would continue a streak of success for their parents, who raised one eaglet last year at the National Arboretum, a   green space and research facility that’s about two miles northeast of the Capitol building."
"A discussion on Capitol Hill about concussion research brought a startling moment Monday, as an NFL executive acknowledged for the first time that football has been linked to a degenerative brain disease. Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president for health and safety, admitted the connection when he was asked about research by Boston University neuropathologist Dr. Ann McKee, who has reported finding signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of 90 out of 94 former pro football players  —   and 45 out of 55 former college players. Both Miller and McKee were testifying at the hearing by the House Committee on Energy  Commerce. After McKee urged taking steps ”immediately” to limit the risk to young athletes, Rep. Jan Schakowsky,  . asked Miller if he thinks football and CTE are linked. ”Well certainly Dr. McKee’s research shows that a number of retired NFL players were diagnosed with CTE, so the answer to that question is certainly yes,” Miller said. He added, ”but there’s also a number of questions that come with that.” Schakowsky then reminded Miller that Dr. Mitchel Berger, a neurosurgeon who’s also the NFL’s lead physician on brain injuries, had said something very different as recently as this year, around the time of the Super Bowl. As Steve Fainaru, an ESPN reporter who was at Monday’s hearing, tells Morning Edition, Berger ”answered no to the exact same question” that Miller was asked in Washington on Monday. The NFL, Fainaru says, ”has for years basically punted on this question. They’ve never really come close to acknowledging that football can cause brain damage. And that question has been at the center of a   lawsuit against the league, a lot of really bad publicity that the league has endured for years. So, I think for people who follow this, it was really quite surprising.” In recent seasons, the NFL has changed rules and protocols in an attempt to reduce the number and severity of    hits in the game. But in January, the league issued an injury report ”that said the number of concussions diagnosed in 2015 had increased by 32 percent from the previous year.” For more context, we’ll refer back to an interview with Dr. Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who discovered CTE  —   and who was featured in the PBS Frontline special League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis. Here’s how Omalu answered a question about a closed meeting where he presented slides of his work to about seven people: ”One of the doctors there was a prominent NFL physician. So after the slide viewing, we started discussing the cases, the implications, and the NFL doctor at some point said to me, ’Bennet, do you know the implications of what you are doing?’ I looked. He was on my left. I said, ’Yeah, I think I do.’ He said, ’No, you don’t.’ ”So we continued talking, talking. At some point he interrupted me again: ’Bennet, so do you think you know the implications of what you are doing?’ I said, ’I think I do I don’t know.’ He said, ’No, you don’t.’ ”So we continued talking again. Then a third time he interrupted me, and I turned to him, and I said, ’OK, why don’t you tell me what the implications are?’ He said, ’OK, I’ll tell you.’ He said, ’Your work suggests or is suggesting or is proving that football is a dangerous sport, and that if 10 percent of mothers in this country would begin to perceive football as a dangerous sport, that is the end of football.’ ”So I looked at him. I shrugged about it. And he said to me: ’So you need to be very careful. You need to tone it down. Don’t speak to the press. Just focus on the science.’ ”"
"Russian President Vladimir Putin just made another shrewd and decisive move with his surprising decision to start withdrawing forces from Syria. Or, the Russian leader was overextended abroad and short of cash at home and was looking for a quick exit. Putin wants everyone to believe the former, claiming the Russian airstrikes and the Syrian government army have achieved a ”fundamental turnaround in the fight against international terrorism.” But some analysts are arguing the latter, saying Putin provided a temporary boost for Syria’s embattled president, Bashar Assad, but lacked the power and the will to change the trajectory of the    conflict. ”Despite the fact that Assad only gained back 5 percent of Syrian territory [during the Russian campaign] Putin is declaring victory,” Andrew Tabler, a Syrian expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told NPR’s Morning Edition. Here’s a look at both sides of the question. The Case For Strength, Simply by intervening, Putin demonstrated Russia is still an influential player in the Middle East. Ever since the Soviet breakup a   ago, Russia has struggled to project itself as a global power and this was an opportunity to play a prominent role in a major conflict and challenge the U. S. at the same time. The Russian airstrikes, which began last Sept. 30, allowed Assad and his forces to go on the offensive in the western part of the country, where most of the population and the major cities are. They advanced on several fronts in a war that had largely turned into a stalemate. ”Russia really turned the balance of power. Assad was struggling. Now he’s been on the offensive, and the rebels are in chaos,” Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told NPR’s All Things Considered. ”There’s real depression amongst rebel ranks. So in that sense, the regime is solid.” Syria is particularly important because Moscow has supported Assad, and his father before him, since the 1970s. Syria is Russia’s strongest ally in the Arab world. Russia’s intervention also made clear it would defend the Mediterranean naval base it’s had since Soviet times, and Russia also added an new air base in the same region. Even as it draws down, Russia plans to keep about 1, 000 military personnel at the two bases, according to Russian officials. Putin’s announcement also appeared well timed. A truce, now in its third week, is holding up much better than expected. And Syrian peace talks resumed on Monday in Geneva, highlighting Putin’s call for a diplomatic push. Assad, meanwhile, can argue that he’s still in control of Damascus and has been gaining ground in other key parts of the country. This strengthens his case to remain in power, despite all the opposition groups that insist that he must go. ”Saving Assad from defeat and perhaps making him impervious to demands that he step aside are no small feats,” Fred Hof, who follows Syria at the Atlantic Council, said of the Russian intervention. But he added: ”On balance, a sizeable drawdown could mean that Russian President Putin calculates he has gotten his maximum military bang for the buck in Syria, and that anything further would encounter diminishing returns.” Which leads to . .. The Case For Weakness, While Assad does have some breathing space, there’s no military victory in sight. The Syrian leader still faces opponents on all sides, from the Islamic State, which hold nearly half the Syrian territory, to moderate rebels backed by the United States. And nothing has been decided politically. Russia says Assad should remain as president, but all the forces opposing him, including the U. S. say they will never agree to a peace deal that allows Assad to stay. ”Looking at this in any way you want, there is no way conceivable that Assad’s writ will ever extend throughout the country again,” Brett McGurk, President Obama’s special envoy for countering ISIS, recently told The New Yorker. ”It’s just not realistic after everything that’s happened. So we have to find the formula for that transition.” Russia’s bill for the Syrian intervention has been relatively   but far from  . Syria did not become the quagmire some had predicted, but Russia is mired in recession at a time when it’s involved militarily in Syria and has also been supporting rebels in eastern Ukraine. Russia has taken hits on other fronts as well. Assad and his government are dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Russia’s military backing has alienated the Sunni Muslim majority in Syria as well as the Sunni powers in the region, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which back the rebels. Turkey shot down a Russian fighter plane in November along the   border, escalating tensions between two countries with strong trade ties. And shortly after Russia began bombing in Syria, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for bringing down a Russian commercial plane full of vacationers over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. ”Russia played a weak hand, at least in terms of Assad’s domestic standing, very, very well,” says Tabler. ”But the war in Syria is far from over. I don’t think the Assad regime expected this, and it puts a lot of the military burden back on the Assad regime and its allies to keep their head above water.” Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"By now, you probably know that Americans waste a lot of food. Each year, an estimated 133 billion pounds of food that farmers grow never makes it to our plates. That’s enough to fill 44 skyscrapers. And tons of it ends up in landfills, where it emits methane, a greenhouse gas. The Obama administration has set a goal of reducing food waste by 50 percent by 2030. And, as we’ve reported, there are lots of efforts underway  —   from sales of ugly produce to the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge, aimed at diverting excess food from landfills to hungry mouths and other uses, like composting. Even religious groups are joining the battle against food waste. But, what’s been lacking is a comprehensive plan to identify the most   approaches. Now, a new   road map to reduce food waste aims to fill the void. The road map is the creation of a big group of collaborators  —   including food businesses, environmentalists,   organizations, policymakers and investors. ”Reducing food waste is one of the most tangible ways we can all help contribute to a healthier planet,” says Sarah Vared, interim director of ReFED, the group that created the road map. ”It [the road map] identifies actions that can be taken today,” says Vared. The road map ranks 27 strategies. On the ReFED site, you can scroll through the tabs of the interactive chart to explore the different metrics you can use to rank the effectiveness of a strategy  —   from emissions reduced to water saved to jobs created to economic benefit per ton of waste. (Warning: You can spend some serious time toggling through these graphs!) So, what’s at the top of the list for its potential to divert food waste? No. 1 is centralized composting. (Think of a   approach, where food waste doesn’t go into trash, but to composting facilities.) ”Food waste recycling solutions like   composting and anaerobic digestion have the potential to divert 9. 5 million tons of food scraps from landfills every year,” says Chris Hunt, who serves on ReFED’s advisory council. He has written an analysis of the road map that explains how reducing food waste can also reduce the environmental impacts. One example: a recycling and composting program at Assumption College in Massachusetts resulted in a reduction of 90 tons of refuse from landfills, according to Deborah Hecker, vice president at Sodexo, a multinational food services company that is part of the ReFED collaboration. Another approach that could potentially lower our grocery bills: standardized date labeling on food packages. You know all those     and   dates stamped on food labels? As we’ve reported, those dates indicate when a food tastes best  —   they have nothing to do with food safety. But many consumers don’t know that, and that confusion leads Americans to toss out about $29 billion worth of perfectly good food each year, according to ReFED’s estimates. For instance, who knew that eggs are often good for three to five weeks after the date stamped on the box? (There are lots more tips for consumers here.) ”Giving people . .. information to make small changes to waste less can actually add up to make a huge difference,” says Dana Gunders, the author of the   Kitchen Handbook.  Gunders says there are a lot of efforts underway to address date labels.   has devised its own standardized labeling for   products (such as its Great Value house brand). And the Grocery Manufacturers Association and other food industry groups may help create voluntary guidelines for date labels. U. S. Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, has introduced legislation aimed at creating a standard   guideline for food. Entrepreneurs and investors, take note: Some solutions to food waste identified in the road map lend themselves to business innovation and investment, rather than consumer action. For instance, there’s modifying food packaging to optimize consumption. One idea: How about creating compostable salad bags, so that plastic bags of lettuce don’t end up in landfills? Another idea: developing   processing facilities that turn surplus foods that might otherwise be wasted into products such as soups, sauces and jams. For example, Whole Foods already makes smoothies from ugly and excess fruits, but the ReFED folks can foresee   operations that focus on these efforts. There are a lot of ways to create economic value by thinking anew about these challenges, says Eric Kessler, head of Arabella Advisors’ food practice, a consultancy for philanthropists and investors in the food sector. ”From building demand for ugly produce to collecting spent brewery grains and selling it as animal feed, solving the food waste crisis should be an economic and employment windfall,” Kessler tells us."
"Encouraging doctors and nurses to wash their hands frequently has always been considered an effective way to curb the spread of infection in hospitals and other health facilities. But a research letter published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine points to another key group of people who aren’t always keeping their hands so clean and probably should: patients. Researchers focused on   Detroit and looked at patients who went from hospitals to   care facilities  —   places like rehabilitation centers,   facilities, hospice and   care hospitals. They found that almost 1 in 4 adults who left the hospital had on their hands a superbug: a virus, bacteria or another kind of microbe that resists multiple kinds of medicine. While in   care, about 10 percent of patients picked up another superbug. Of those who had superbugs, 67 percent still had them upon being discharged, even if they hadn’t gotten sick. These findings add to a growing body of research about hand hygiene and the patient’s role in infection transmission, and speak to a problem with health care facilities  —   they can increase the odds of getting sick. The paper’s authors suggest a so far underused strategy for addressing that concern: getting patients to wash their hands. Conventional wisdom has long held that doctors and nurses who go from patient to patient are most likely to transmit germs. As a result, few health care settings really make patient   a major priority, said Leah Binder, president of the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization that grades hospitals on patient safety. The paper, she said, ”really requires an immediate response” from safety advocates. ”We have to revise hand hygiene policies to include patients. One of the main strategies on hand hygiene is to make it easy to wash hands,” she said. ”Most hospitals have either sinks or dispensers near the door of every room, so that it’s very easy for a provider walking in to immediately wash their hands. Do we make it easy for patients to wash their hands? I doubt it.” Beyond that kind of architectural change, signs should be visible around facilities to remind patients about hand washing, she said. But just because patients are carriers of superbugs doesn’t mean they will get sick, said Lona Mody, a professor of internal medicine at the University of   Arbor, and the study’s corresponding author. There needs to be more research to measure the relationship between carrying germs and falling ill, she added. If you have superbugs on your hands, though, you probably have them elsewhere, too  —   in your skin or in your gut, said Louise Dembry, president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and a professor of medicine, infectious diseases and epidemiology at Yale. Having them on your hands makes them easier to spread. Plus the patients in these kinds of facilities are, almost by definition, more vulnerable to infection, Binder said  —   they’ve just come out of a hospital where they needed a high level of care. ”I find it not difficult to imagine” that a number of these patients will end up with serious infections, she said. Spreading germs is also easier to do in   settings, Dembry noted, since patients are more likely to interact with each other. Patients are encouraged to move around more and, as a result, more likely to touch medical equipment and furniture, among other things, which can spread the germs, Mody said. Overall, these circumstances increase the odds of transmitting germs and up the need for better   protocols. Dembry added that hand washing can be only one part of any strategy to prevent infection. Medical tools and machines need to be kept clean. Culturally, patients should feel comfortable asking each other if they’ve washed  —   and steer clear if they might be infectious. As health care facilities are increasingly evaluated on how well they care for patients, they should be rewarded for things like promoting clean hands, Mody said. For instance, ”if an institution has a program that enhances patient hand hygiene, the quality of that place should be considered higher,” she said. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NPR and Kaiser Health News, an independent health journalism organization."
"For more than a generation, politicians have been on notice that political opponents would hold them accountable through deep dives into their records  —   a practice called oppo research. This election cycle, candidates for the White House also have found themselves trying to dodge a buzz saw: BuzzFeed. Andrew Kaczynski, 26, runs a political research unit for the news organization, scouring the historical record to unearth buried stances taken by leading candidates. A surprising number of the controversies and scoops that surface in televised debates and interviews started with Kaczynski’s   team, called the  . They pointed out Hillary Clinton’s error when she asserted that all four of her grandparents were immigrants. They found the video where Ben Carson said he thought the pyramids were built to store grain. They watched enough video (an estimated 3, 000 hours overall) to know that Donald Trump’s claims of consistently opposing the U. S. invasion of Iraq are not supported by the record. BuzzFeed has grown past its roots as a viral site focused on lists and GIFs, and has earned credibility among more traditional journalists with some strong reporting from the campaign trail. Now BuzzFeed is offering a new multimedia form of accountability journalism: repeatedly revealing the candidates’ contradictions, hypocrisies, misstatements  —   and, at times,   weirdness. ”To, like, truly understand who these people are, you have to, like, absorb all of their information from their life,” Kaczynski says. In recent months, the   team has been able to direct the attention of campaigns and the press toward various overlooked facets of candidates’ histories. For example, they found a 1996 clip where Hillary Clinton referred to certain children as ”superpredators.” The team also unearthed a 1985 video clip in which Bernie Sanders proclaimed admiration for Sandinista leaders in Nicaragua and Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba. This isn’t the first time that Kaczynski’s finds have changed the election game. Kaczynski has been honing his digging skills since the 2012 election cycle, when he was a student at St. John’s University in the New York City borough of Queens. New to the city and living alone in a Russian family’s basement, he spent hours watching old footage of Mitt Romney, picking out clips in an effort to discern who the presidential candidate really was. Kaczynski found videotape of Romney from years earlier, calling himself a progressive while appealing to Massachusetts voters. He slapped it up on YouTube and tweeted out a link, and soon enough saw citations of it in mainstream media coverage. This year, Romney instead benefited from Kaczynski’s work, referencing research by the BuzzFeed team several times in his recent   speech. Trump also spent days fielding pointed questions after Kaczynski found two instances of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke calling for followers to support Trump’s candidacy. And the   team made a meal of Ben Carson, in one instance unearthing this from a commencement address in 1998: ”My own personal theory,” he said, ”is that Joseph built the pyramids in order to store grain now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves . .. ” Kaczynski and his team’s findings drove both critical and supportive headlines about Carson: In one case, BuzzFeed found evidence supporting much of his account of moral righteousness at Yale, which had been receiving skeptical coverage. Other news organizations are jumping on his leads. CNN’s Don Lemon, for instance, quizzed Clinton on that ”superpredators” quote during a recent Democratic debate. ”I think it was a poor choice of words,” Clinton replied. ”I never used it before, I haven’t used it since, I would not use it again.” Katherine Miller, BuzzFeed’s political editor, says the dynamic amounts to a   punch of old media and new. ”Having it appear on CNN is a good thing,” she says. ”We don’t have access to Donald Trump, we can’t get into his events, we don’t have press access to him  —   so we can’t grill him on any particular issue.” Andrew Kaczynski loves the hunt, but winces when he thinks about his ultimate prey. ”Sometimes politicians do, like, generally change their opinions on things, and there have been, like, they’ve moved with the times,” he says. ”But other times, like, it just comes off as so cynical and political that it can be somewhat disheartening.”"
"Last summer, Jacky Alciné learned just how biased computers can be. Alciné, who is   took a bunch of pictures with friends at a concert. Later he loaded them into Google Photos, which stores and automatically organizes images. Google’s software is able to group together pictures of a particular friend, or pictures of dogs, cats, etc. But when it labeled a picture of one of Alciné’s friends, who is also   it left him speechless. ”It labeled it as something else. It labeled her as a different species or creature,” says a horrified Alciné. Because it’s so cliché he doesn’t even want to say what creature it was. ”I kind of refuse to. By saying that, I kind of reinforce the idea of it.” I’m not going to reveal which animal it labeled his friend. But it also happened to others with dark skin. Alciné isn’t buying that it’s just some weird technical glitch. ”One could say, ’Oh, it’s a computer,’ I’m like, OK . .. a computer built by whom? A computer designed by whom? A computer trained by whom?” Alciné’s conclusion is that there probably weren’t any black people on the team that designed Google Photos. Google says it did test the product on employees of different races and ethnicities and it has apologized for what happened. The company says it’s still early days for image labeling technology, and it’s working to improve it. Alciné’s experience is one of many strange biases that turn up in computer algorithms, which sift through data for patterns. Most of us are familiar with suggestion algorithms used by Amazon and Netflix  —   if you liked this movie, you’ll probably like this one. For example, the computer may learn over time that viewers who liked The Terminator also enjoyed Ex Machina. But in another context, user feedback can harden societal biases. A couple of years ago a Harvard study found that when someone searched in Google for a name normally associated with a person of   descent, an ad for a company that finds criminal records was more likely to turn up. The algorithm may initially have done this for both black and white people, but over time the biases of the people who did the search probably got factored in, says Christian Sandvig, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. ”Because people tended to click on the ad topic that suggested that that person had been arrested when the name was   the algorithm learned the racism of the search users and then reinforced it by showing that more often,” Sandvig says. He says other studies show that women are more likely to be shown   jobs than men in online ads. Sorelle Friedler, a computer science professor at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, says women may reinforce this bias without realizing it. ”It might be that women are truly less likely to click on those ads and probably that’s because of the long history of women making less than men,” she says. ”And so perhaps [women are] thinking, ’Oh, that ad isn’t really for me. I’m not as likely to get that job.’ ” And so the algorithm determines it should no longer show those ads to women, because they don’t click. What worries Friedler and other social scientists is that computer algorithms are being used in a growing number of ways  —   Pennsylvania is testing the idea of using algorithms to suggest how to sentence a particular type of criminal. Some companies are using them to narrow the pool of job applicants. And it can be hard to guard against bias, Sandvig says. ”The systems are of a sufficient complexity that it is possible to say the algorithm did it,” he says. ”And it’s actually true  —   the algorithm is sufficiently complicated, and it’s changing in real time. It’s writing its own rules on the basis of data and input that it does do things and we’re often surprised by them.” Yet Sandvig remains optimistic about fixing biased algorithms and actually using computers to guard against prejudice. There are already apps to keep discrimination out of the hiring process. Sandvig and others say it’s important to talk about the problem because if humans don’t fix it, computers won’t do so themselves."
"Like it or not, much of what we encounter online is mediated by   algorithms  —   complex formulas that help determine our Facebook feeds, Netflix recommendations, Spotify playlists or Google ads. But algorithms, like humans, can make mistakes. Last month, users found the   site Flickr’s new   technology was labeling   people as ”apes” and   photos of Nazi concentration camps as ”jungle gym” and ”sport.” How does this happen? Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, tells NPR’s Arun Rath that biases can enter algorithms in various ways  —   not just intentionally. ”More often,” she says, ”they come through the complexity of the program and the limits of the data they have. And if there are some imperfections in your data  —   and there always [are]  —   that’s going to be reflected as a bias in your system.” On bias in the Facebook ”environment” These systems have very limited input capacity. So for example, on Facebook, which is most people’s experience with an algorithm, the only thing you can do to signal to the algorithm that you care about something is to either click on ”Like” or to comment on it. The algorithm, by forcing me to only ”Like” something, it’s creating an environment  —   to be honest, my Facebook is full of babies and engagements and happy vacations, which I don’t mind. I mean, I like that. When I see it, I click on ”Like”  —   and then Facebook shows me more babies. And it doesn’t show me the desperate, sad news that I also care about a lot, that might be coming from a friend who doesn’t have ”likable” news. How biases creep into computer code, One, they can be programmed in directly, but I think that’s rare. I don’t think programmers sit around thinking, you know, ”Let us make life hard for a certain group” or not. More often, they come through the complexity of the program and the limits of the data they have. And if there are some imperfections in your data  —   and there always [are]  —   that’s going to be reflected as a bias in your system. Sometimes [biases] can come in through the confusing complexity. A modern program can be so   that no one person has all the scenarios in their head. For example, increasingly, hiring is being done by algorithms. And an algorithm that looks at your social media output can figure out fairly reliably if you are likely to have a depressive episode in the next six months  —   before you’ve exhibited any clinical signs. So it’s completely possible for a hiring algorithm to discriminate and not hire people who might be in that category. It’s also possible that the programmers and the hiring committee [have] no idea that’s what’s going on. All they know is, well, maybe we’ll have lower turnover. They can test that. So there’s these subtle but crucial biases that can creep into these systems that we need to talk about. How to limit human bias in computer programs, We can test it under many different scenarios. We can look at the results and see if there’s discrimination patterns. In the same way that we try to judge   in many fields, when the decision making is done by humans, we should apply a similar critical lens  —   but with a computational bent to it, too. The fear I have is that every time this is talked about, people talk about it as if it’s math or physics, therefore some natural, neutral world. And they’re programs! They’re complex programs. They’re not like laws of physics or laws of nature. They’re created by us. We should look into what they do and not let them do everything. We should make those decisions explicitly."
"The fallout from Edward Snowden’s 2013 spying revelations is not over yet, according to Richard Ledgett, who ran the National Security Agency’s investigation into Snowden’s leaks. It’s been nearly three years since Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA, told the world about the bulk collection of American phone records. But in an interview at NSA headquarters, Ledgett, the agency’s deputy director, tells NPR that more classified documents about the internal workings of the government surveillance apparatus may yet come to light. ”There are still some other shoes to drop, I think,” says Ledgett. ”There are things that’ll probably be released that are designed to cause friction between the United States and other countries.” The good news  —   from the NSA’s point of view  —   is these documents are getting old. Technology is changing fast, Ledgett says, and the NSA has adapted. ”The date of Mr. Snowden’s  —   the information   date for when he stole that information and disclosed it  —   was June, or May of 2013,” he says. ”And so things have changed a lot between now and then. The amount that matters from a technical capabilities sense has decreased over that time.” The   news is that since 2013, the NSA has watched as about 1, 000 of its intelligence targets have ”taken steps to remove themselves from our visibility,” Ledgett says. Pressed for an example, Ledgett offers this: ”There was a terrorist group that was actually engaged in operational planning directly against the United States and western Europe, that changed the way they communicated because of those disclosures. And they said they were going to do it, and they did it, and we lost track of them.” Ledgett says this happened about 18 months ago. He declined to disclose which European country. The debate continues over whether Snowden is a traitor or a whistleblower hero. But there’s no denying that he shifted the debate over what the U. S. government should be allowed to do in the name of protecting national security. The most significant signpost so far of that shift is the USA Freedom Act. Congress passed it last year to replace the  . 11 USA Patriot Act, and to curb sweeping surveillance authorities. It’s been phased in gradually and only took full effect at the NSA on Feb. 29. ”Personally, I like the new program,” says Ledgett. Under the new law, it is phone companies  —   not the NSA  —   that store the bulk phone records of Americans. The agency must now get a court order to see them. Ledgett acknowledges the new system costs a little more, and takes a little longer. But kinks are being worked out, he says, and the NSA is still able to collect the intelligence it needs. The changes mandated under the Freedom Act come as the NSA embarks on its own internal changes. Last month, the agency embarked on a sweeping reorganization, dubbed ”NSA 21.” Ledgett says it will make the agency more nimble by merging   and defense teams that used to be separate. ”It’s an agility thing, being more agile about how we prioritize, how we pivot from one topic to another,” he says. ”Because we need to be able to react to events, and ideally, from an intelligence point of view, to anticipate those events.”"
"On Sunday, Holly Macve played her first show in the United States. Two nights later, behind the bustling Austin event space Palm Door on Sabine, the    songwriter from County Galway in Ireland sang us a lullaby. Her song ”Sycamore Tree” ponders the future while longing for the past: ”One day when I’m old with my past behind me   I want to lay down in the shade of the same old sycamore tree,” she sings. With the sound of a restaurant fan wheeling in the background, she drove us gently through the humid night toward whatever big things may await her. Watch more South X Lullabies here. Producers: Bob Boilen, Mito   Videographer: Cameron Robert Editor: Cameron Robert Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann Special Thanks: Shannon   Door"
"Psychologists disagree on whether expecting your marriage to be a deeply fulfilling relationship makes it more likely that the union will thrive, or that it will doom you to disappointment. So, psychologists, should we just go ahead and expect the worst after the honeymoon? Only if that matches your capacity to deliver on expectations, according to a study published Wednesday in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin with the deflating title, ”Should Spouses Be Expecting Less From Marriage?” Expecting a lot can make a marriage more satisfying, the study finds, but if people can’t meet those expectations  —   whether for lack of time, effort or social skills  —   the relationship will suffer. The study examines the premise that   couples load too many expectations onto the institution of marriage  —   that it will meet their needs for intimacy, autonomy and friendship, to name just a few. To explore that premise, James McNulty, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, tracked the relationships of 135 couples in eastern Tennessee for four years, starting when they were newlyweds. The participants periodically completed individual surveys on their expectations for the marriage and their level of satisfaction. The couples also were videotaped talking over points of contention in the marriage, to gauge their verbal communication skills. The marriages in which spouses were able to work well together, including being direct about what their partner did that made them mad and what they wanted that partner to do about it, were more likely to feel that the marriage met their high expectations for happiness. But people in marriages where a spouse resorted to indirect hostility  —   things like sarcasm, mind reading and hostile jokes  —   were less likely to feel things measured up. Indirect hostility leaves a partner wondering what the heck is wrong, McNulty said via email. ”That is why it is problematic it conveys discontent without providing the partner with clear information about how to address the underlying issue.” But here’s the rub: If those couples had low expectations for marriage from the   they didn’t become significantly less happy. Their expectations were fulfilled. The question, then, is how to match one’s expectations with one’s ability to deliver. There are two options, McNulty says. ”One is to try to fix the marital problems. Marital therapists can help with this. Talking about the underlying issues can also help. These are the best options if problems are fixable.” And if those problems aren’t fixable? ”You can understand, realize and accept that you will not be able to achieve all the benefits you have been demanding out of marriage,” McNulty writes. The trick, then, is to demand enough of the marriage but not too much, after the honeymoon glow has faded."
"Prompted by a letter signed by more than 20 academy members of Asian descent, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apologized for offensive jokes about Asians during the awards ceremony. ”Thank you for taking the time to voice your concerns about our 88th Oscar show, which are valid. We appreciate your perspective and take your points very seriously. It certainly was never the Academy’s intent to offend anyone,” the letter read, in part. For some, the apology was hollow. Actor George Takei, who signed the initial letter to the academy, told The New York Times that the response from academy CEO Dawn Hudson was ”patronizing” and infuriating. ”It was a bland, corporate response,” he said. ”The obliviousness was actually shocking. Doesn’t anyone over there have any sense?” As NPR’s TV critic Eric Deggans reported after the awards show, there were disparaging remarks made and stereotypes perpetuated at the expense of Asians during the ceremony. He wrote: ”Sacha Baron Cohen offered a line about the animated yellow Minion characters from the Despicable Me franchise that recalled stereotypes about Asian sexual endowments, while [host Chris] Rock ushered three Asian children onstage saying they were the accountants handling Oscar votes, in an embarrassing nod to stereotypes about Asians being good at math.” Already facing criticism for the fact that only white actors and actresses were nominated for the top award categories  —   for the second year in a row  —   the backlash against the jokes regarding Asians was swift on social media. Then on March 9, some academy members sent a letter addressed to Hudson and other officials. It was published this week by Variety: ”In light of criticism over #OscarsSoWhite, we were hopeful that the telecast would provide the Academy a way forward and the chance to present a spectacular example of inclusion and diversity. ”Instead, the Oscars show was marred by a   approach to its portrayal of Asians. ”We’d like to know how such tasteless and offensive skits could have happened and what process you have in place to preclude such unconscious or outright bias and racism toward any group in future Oscars telecasts. ”We look forward to hearing from you about this matter and about the concrete steps to ensure that all people are portrayed with dignity and respect. ”We are proud that the Oscars reach several hundred million people around the world of whom 60% are Asians and potential moviegoers.” Hudson’s response did little to address these questions specifically. The rest of her letter read: ”We are committed to doing our best to ensure that material in future Oscar telecasts be more culturally sensitive. It pains us that any aspect of the show was considered offensive, and I apologize for any hurt the skits caused. ”Our Awards Committee and Academy leadership will be exercising more oversight to make sure that concerns like yours are fully addressed.” The exchange came as the academy’s board met to discuss diversity and figure out how to implement reforms announced in January. The Times reports that ”the board reaffirmed its January resolution to take away voting privileges for inactive members, although the organization’s various branches will have some limited flexibility to determine the criteria for establishing what constitutes activity.” In its bid to double the number of women and people of color in its membership by 2020, the academy also decided to go forward with a plan to add three board seats earmarked for women and minorities."
"President Obama’s choice to serve as the newest Supreme Court justice is Merrick Garland, a moderate federal appeals court judge and former prosecutor with a reputation for collegiality and meticulous legal reasoning. Garland, who has won past Republican support, has ”more federal judicial experience than any other Supreme Court nominee in history,” a White House official said. ”No one is better suited to immediately serve on the Supreme Court.” Garland is the latest judge from the federal appeals court in Washington to be promoted to the current Supreme Court. If confirmed, he would join Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas, all of whom served on the D. C. appeals court before being elevated. So did the late Antonin Scalia, who died last month after nearly 30 years on the nation’s highest court. The selection of Garland, 63, could disappoint avid liberals, who wanted Obama to pick someone who would ”take on” the court’s conservatives in much the way they say Justice Scalia took on the court’s liberals and moderates. And the choice of Garland, a white man who attended Harvard Law School, could also dismay advocates who had hoped for a more diverse candidate from the   or Asian legal communities. But Garland, who currently serves as the chief judge of the nation’s second highest court, takes care to emphasize his humble roots. During summer breaks in college, he worked as a shoe store stock clerk, and he sold his comic book collection to help pay his tuition. As late as last week, Republicans like Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch offered praise for Garland, though it’s far from clear whether he and Senate leaders will budge on their determination to avoid hearings or votes on any nominee until a new president takes office in 2017. Garland has a lengthy record on the D. C. circuit court, but that court deals mainly with regulatory issues and not   social issues of the day, such as abortion and gay rights. That has served as a confirmation advantage for previous nominees from the appeals court, and it likely will for Garland, too. Republican interest groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network signaled they would take issue with his vote to rehear a case over D. C.’s tough gun restrictions. Another Chicagoan, Garland grew up in the Chicago area. His mother, Shirley, was a director of volunteer services, and his father, Cyril, ran a small business out of the basement of the family home, advertising area clothing stores. Garland went to public schools and was valedictorian of his high school class in Skokie. From there, it was on to Harvard College, on scholarship, where he graduated first in his class. At Harvard Law School, he was an editor on the Law Review. He is married to Lynn Rosenman, an engineer whom he met in Boston while she was getting a master’s degree in physics at MIT. Rosenman’s grandfather springs from Democratic Party royalty, having advised Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. The Garlands have two daughters. If confirmed, Garland would be the fourth Jewish justice, along with five Catholics also serving. There hasn’t been a Protestant on the bench since 2010. ’The Perfect Background’ Garland began his legal career clerking for two iconic judges: First, conservative Judge Henry Friendly on the federal appeals court in New York, and then for liberal Justice William Brennan on the U. S. Supreme Court. In 1979, he served as a special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. With the switch in administrations in 1981, he joined the large Washington law firm of Arnold  Porter, becoming a partner four years later. While in private practice, he did corporate litigation and also taught antitrust courses at Harvard Law School. But Garland longed to return to public service and wanted more experience in the rough and tumble of trial work. So in 1989, he joined the U. S. attorney’s office in Washington, D. C. as a line prosecutor, trying cases that ranged from drug trafficking to complex public corruption charges. In 1993, he joined the newly installed Clinton administration as deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division. A year later, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, the department’s second in command, asked Garland to be her principal deputy. She said she chose him because he had ”the perfect background,” having worked in the department at both high and low levels. Moreover, says Gorelick, ”He had shown himself to be a brilliant lawyer with excellent judgment, utterly without any political agenda, other than to do right.” A String Of Bombing Cases, Garland was soon put to the test. He supervised the investigations into the Unabomber and the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Olympics bombings, among others. In the Oklahoma City case, he not only headed the investigation but also put together the trial team that prosecuted Timothy McVeigh, winning praise from the state’s Republican Gov. Frank Keating. Gorelick says one of the Garland traits she treasured was his instinct to ”question the received wisdom” and not to jump to conclusions. That paid off again and again, she says, when initial evidence seemed to point in one direction in major cases, only to evaporate on later inspection. Clinton appointed Garland to the U. S. Court of Appeals in 1995. After a long Republican stall in the Senate that lasted 19 months, he was confirmed by a vote of  . A Moderate But Persuasive Liberal, On the appeals court, Garland has been a moderate liberal, with a definite   bent in criminal cases. Indeed, his views in the area of criminal law are considerably more conservative than those of the man he would replace, Justice Antonin Scalia. But Garland also has been a persuasive voice for liberals, managing to bring conservatives over to his side on issues ranging from the environment to national security. For example, in a case involving Chinese Uighurs detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Garland asked the Justice Department for the particulars of its evidence and then wrote an opinion for himself and two conservative judges that concluded that the Bush administration’s claim that they were enemy combatants was utterly unsupported by the evidence. So respected is Garland as a judge that Chief Justice Roberts, at his confirmation hearing, answered a question about one of his majority opinions by noting that Judge Garland had dissented and, said Roberts, ”Anytime Judge Garland disagrees, you know you’re in a difficult area.”"
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed again Wednesday to block President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination, saying the American people should have a ”voice” in the process. ”It is a president’s constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate’s constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent,” McConnell said on the Senate floor following the president’s nomination of U. S. Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland. In his remarks earlier in the day, President Obama had called for the Senate to put politics aside and confirm Garland. Obama praised Garland’s collegiality and ability to build consensus, saying ”he’s shown a rare ability to bring together odd couples.” A Supreme Court nomination, Obama said, is ”supposed to be above politics, it has to be, and should stay that way.” McConnell’s comments came after a pledge he made last month that the Senate would take no action on the nomination, setting the stage for a political fight. McConnell said Wednesday that the ”the decision the Senate made weeks ago remains about a principle, not a person.” ”It seems clear President Obama made this nomination not, not with the intent of seeing the nominee confirmed, but in order to politicize it for purposes of the election,” McConnell said. ”I believe the overwhelming view of the Republican Conference in the Senate is that this nomination should not be filled, this vacancy should not be filled by this lame duck president,” McConnell said. ”The American people are perfectly capable of having their say on this issue, so let’s give them a voice. Let’s let the American people decide. The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter when it considers the qualifications of the nominee the next president nominates, whoever that might be,” McConnell said. Here are more responses from Capitol Hill, which we’ll continue to update:"
"President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court is already making telephone calls to senators, hoping to win a confirmation hearing. Merrick Garland will start making   visits to the Capitol on Thursday. That’s the normal order of business for a   nominee. But with many Senate Republicans insisting they won’t consider Garland’s nomination, the White House is also taking its case to the American public. The PR campaign for Garland includes a dedicated Twitter handle (@scotusnom) a   biographical video and a litany of details designed to humanize the   appellate judge. Not only did Garland graduate with honors from Harvard, the White House noted, he sold his comic book collection to help pay the tuition. ”I’d like to take a minute to introduce Merrick to the American people,” the president said in the Rose Garden. He highlighted Garland’s record as a prosecutor who helped bring Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to justice, and a jurist who’s won praise from conservatives including John Roberts and Sen. Orrin Hatch,  . The   press began hours earlier with a mass email from Obama headlined, ”I’ve made my decision.” ”In putting forward a nominee,” the president wrote, ”I’m doing my job. I hope that our [s]enators will do their jobs, and move quickly to consider my nominee. That is what the Constitution dictates, and that’s what the American people expect and deserve from their leaders.” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has a different view. He announced just hours after Justice Antonin Scalia died that the potentially   seat on the Supreme Court should remain vacant until a new president is in office. ”Give the people a voice in filling this vacancy,” McConnell said again Wednesday on the Senate floor. The National Republican Senate Committee chimed in, calling Garland ”an ideologue who would loyally stand with the court’s liberal wing and bolster the radical Obama agenda.” The administration hopes to undermine that argument by circulating past testimonials in support of Garland from Republicans like Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. (Iowa’s Chuck Grassley has a key role to play in deciding whether to grant Garland a hearing as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.) When Garland was named to the appeals court in 1997, 30 Republicans voted for his confirmation, including seven who still serve in the Senate. The White House PR campaign is designed to paint a picture of a nominee who’s so reasonable and centrist that Senate Republicans look unreasonable for not giving him a hearing. ”We will have to see if Republicans can sustain this posture,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. ”We continue to believe there will be ample number of Republicans who believe the Constitution comes before their party’s political leadership.” Sen. Susan Collins,   told NPR’s All Things Considered she believes the Senate should at least consider Garland’s nomination. ”The Constitution is very clear,” Collins said. ”The president has every right to make this nomination and then the Senate can either consent or withhold its consent. The only way that we can do that is by thoroughly vetting the nominee. And that means having personal meetings which I have scheduled to come up in about three weeks . .. and, to hold a public hearing.” The White House hopes to sway other Republican senators, especially those in swing states who are up for   in November."
"This week the world’s been treated to a commentary on immigration reform from a surprising source: William Shakespeare. 2016 being the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, many institutions are doing celebrations of one sort or another. The British Library, in hosting a major exhibition, has put online the only surviving scrap of a script in Shakespeare’s handwriting  —   a scene that finds eerily poignant echoes in today’s arguments about refugees and immigration on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s a speech from a play, The Book of Sir Thomas More, that was not by Shakespeare. Nor was it produced in his lifetime, apparently for fear that it would incite unrest at a time of religious tensions that had created an unprecedented refugee crisis in Europe. The Bard and several other authors did rewrites, but while his own contribution was an impassioned plea for tolerance, the revisions weren’t enough to get the play produced, and its script languished for centuries. When it was finally staged in London in 1964, a young Ian McKellen played Sir Thomas More (which has enabled him to joke in speaking engagements that he is ”maybe the last actor who can say ’I created a part written by William Shakespeare’. ”) A part only partly written by the Bard, but powerfully so. In the stirring speech penned in Shakespeare’s hand, it is More’s task to silence a mob that’s rioting about ”strangers” in their midst. King Henry VIII had offered safe haven to too many refugees, scream the rioters. ”They must be removed!” More begins by pretending to agree, then points out that there’s a problem with mob rule when it denies clemency to the downtrodden. Though Shakespeare’s handwritten revisions to The Book of Sir Thomas More qualify as a rough first draft, they do not lack for eloquence in decrying the mob’s ”mountainish inhumanity.” You’ll put down    Kill them, cut their throats, possess their    And lead the majesty of law in    To slip him like a hound. Alas, alas! Say now the    As he is clement if th’offender    Should so much come too short of your great    As but to banish you: whither would you go?  What country, by the nature of your    Should give you harbour? Go you to France or   To any German province, Spain or    Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England:   Why, you must needs be strangers. Shakespeare’s original handwritten script is now on loan at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. It is one of more than 300 texts being digitized as part of the British Library exhibition, Shakespeare in Ten Acts, that opens April 15 in London."
"Federal Reserve policymakers said Wednesday that the U. S. economy is chugging along at a decent pace with an improving job market. Still, they fear risks from ”global economic and financial developments.” So given that balance of good news and growing risks, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to take no action on the target range for the federal funds rate at the close of its   meeting. At a press conference, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said that for now, holding interest rates steady was the ”prudent” decision. The range will remain at a quarter to a half of one percent. The fed funds rate is the overnight lending rate that banks charge one another for use of reserve balances. Raising it would have made all sorts of loans somewhat more expensive for borrowers. The FOMC is now planning to raise rates by a quarter point twice this year. That’s less than the four times previously expected, so it’s an indication that Fed policymakers are now worried enough about slowing growth to be reluctant to nudge rates higher more quickly. ”The committee expects that economic conditions will evolve in a manner that will warrant only gradual increases in the federal funds rate,” the Fed said. Translation: We’re a little more worried now so we’ll try to keep your interest rates lower for longer to help you spend more. That may sound ominous, but the Fed report also had a lot of upbeat notes. For example, it said Americans have seen ”strong job gains.” Moreover, ”household spending has been increasing at a moderate rate, and the housing sector has improved further.” The Fed’s job is to keep the economy growing, but also make sure inflation doesn’t take off. If the policymakers had seen wages and prices shooting up, they could have raised rates to cool growth. Or if they had found solid evidence of a looming recession, they could have trimmed rates to stimulate economic growth. As it turned out, the bankers concluded the various risks are pretty much balancing each other out. No one was surprised that the Fed came to that decision. Economists have been virtually unanimous in predicting a   conclusion to the March Fed meeting. And economic data released Wednesday seemed to confirm that the Fed’s assessment is right. For example, the Labor Department released its consumer price index, a widely followed measure of inflation. It showed an overall decline of 0. 2 percent in February, thanks to a continued drop in energy prices. Gasoline got especially cheap last month, falling 13 percent and providing a lot of financial relief for consumers on tight budgets. But the report also showed that core inflation, without volatile food and energy prices, showed an uptick of 0. 3 percent for the second month in a row. That increase largely reflects higher rents and growing medical costs. So overall, the inflation picture has been neutral, though most economists say the trend is likely to be up in coming months because gasoline prices have been rebounding. Other economic data also showed a balance of good and bad news. For example, Moody’s Analytics released its latest outlook for U. S. regional economies, and it showed four   states  —   Alaska, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming  —   are in recession today. But the report also showed that in the other 46 states, ”the outlook for 2016 and 2017 is upbeat,” Moody’s Analytics concluded. So that’s the picture the Fed is seeing: a mix of good and bad news that allows policymakers to hold rates steady. A recent Wall Street Journal survey of economists found they overwhelmingly expect the Fed to make that first move in June."
"The Federal Communications Commission is proposing, for the first time, privacy regulations for Internet service providers. The goal is to let consumers weigh in on what information about them gets collected and how it’s used. As they connect us to the Internet, ISPs have insight into our lives  —   websites we frequent, apps we download or locations we visit  —   and may use that data for their own promotions or sell it to data brokers to be used for marketing or other purposes. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler tells NPR’s Robert Siegel that ISPs do have to collect a lot of this information simply to run their businesses. ”All we’re saying in our proposal is that you, the consumer, ought to have a say in whether they can repackage and use information, which is basically your information, not their information,” Wheeler says. Wheeler’s plan, expected to be formally proposed on March 31, would let consumers opt out of programs allowing ISPs to use the data to offer you other services themselves, but would require explicit   consent for data to be shared with third parties. And one interesting question is how this may factor into the prices that ISPs would then charge consumers, given the value of the private information. For instance, ATT has an     Internet offering that allows subscribers to opt out of Web tracking for an extra fee. ”What we’re saying is that we want to empower consumers,” Wheeler says. ”First you empower consumers to say, ’Do I want my information used?’ Then you empower consumers to say, ’Is there a value that I put on my information?’ and work some kind of a deal with the Internet service provider to reflect that value.” As NPR’s Alina Selyukh has reported, telecom companies are resisting the FCC’s push to regulate their privacy practices. The companies argue that this puts them on unequal footing compared with websites and services such as Google that also collect a lot of information about people’s digital tracks. And those companies are overseen by the Federal Trade Commission, an enforcement agency more than a   one. ”We’re following the same kind of conceptual framework that the FTC has,” Wheeler says, ”and that’s basically, hey, there should be transparency, consumers should be able to know what’s being collected and how it’s being used. They should have choice about that and whether it is going to be used  —   and that information should be kept secure so that it doesn’t end up in the hands of nefarious forces.” The proposal stems directly from the FCC’s new   ”net neutrality,” or Open Internet, rules, which expanded the agency’s authority over Internet providers. The fate of those rules is pending in the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals. ”I think we’re going to find a decision coming out of a court in the next few weeks,” Wheeler says, ”and we’re confident of our authority in this matter.” Moody’s this week said the FCC’s privacy restrictions could hurt the credit ratings for broadband providers like Verizon, ATT, Comcast and others, according to Reuters. But Wheeler argues the data collection restrictions wouldn’t hurt the industry. ”The threshold question is we get to make the decision as consumers. And I can think of reasons why I would want my Internet service provider to do this,” he says. ”So I don’t think that this is going to end up shutting down their ability to do things and to monetize the information that they see going over their pathways. But it’s going to give me choice.”"
"Julia Ward Howe is renowned as the poet who woke up one night in an inspired state to pen the lyrics of ”The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the song that would become the victorious psalm of the Civil War. But what few know is that the writer, reformer and mother of six who wrote those stirring words  —   ”Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”  —   was adrift in a lonely war of her own, against a husband who sought to control every aspect of her life, from what she wrote to what she ate. In a new biography, The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe, Elaine Showalter, an emeritus professor of English at Princeton University, opens a sympathetic window on the frustrations and unhappiness that scarred Howe’s    marriage to the much older Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe. Dr. Howe, ironically, was in many ways an enlightened man. An abolitionist like his wife, he was also a pioneer in the education of the blind. He even encouraged Florence Nightingale to defy family opposition and take up nursing. But as a husband, he was an arch traditionalist who wanted not an intellectual companion but a wife that would bear him children and run his house. Except that he interfered in the kitchen as well. When it came to food, Julia Ward Howe  —   a prominent feminist in her own time  —   would be dictated to all her life. First by her wealthy Manhattan banker father, who converted to Calvinism and banished rich food and wine from the table then by her husband and finally by her children, who clucked their disapproval when they thought the old woman was helping herself to too much fruitcake. Dietary impositions were exceedingly galling to the petite Howe, who enjoyed a flute of champagne and a mince pie as much as the next bon vivant. Married in 1843, the Howes started life on a gastronomic high note. On their honeymoon in England, writes Showalter, Julia and Chev (she called him Chev, short for Chevalier de St. Saviour, the honorary title he was given by the King of Greece for his service during the revolution) were lavishly entertained by Charles Dickens. The poet Samuel Rogers served them plover’s eggs (a Victorian delicacy, now illegal to gather, since the bird is endangered). And even though William Wordsworth served them ”a very indifferent muffin,” it was one for Howe’s memoirs. Back home in South Boston, Howe’s troubles started in earnest. ”Cooking was a particular trial,” writes Showalter. ”She spent much of her time in the kitchen, struggling with the aid of Catherine Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book. Chev also wanted to entertain his male friends for dinner every week. . .. Julia hired cook after cook, but Chev had a tendency to overrule her decisions and fire them, so there was a considerable turnover in the kitchen.” A pampered young woman who had never entered the kitchen in her life, Howe was an embattled hostess, writes Showalter, who ”ordered ice cream delivered for a dinner party and was embarrassed when it was left in a snowdrift and not discovered until the next morning.” The children watched the sparks of tension between their parents at the dining table. ”If the beef were tough, he was capable of swearing at it,” wrote their daughter Laura. Reduced to a desperate housewife, Howe thumped out a doleful ditty on the piano called Cookery, Bookery, oh! The last verse went: My husband comes, a saucy elf, And eyes the saucepan on the shelf Says he, ”Why don’t you cook yourself?” Cookery bookery, oh! The ”saucy elf”  —   who suffered from splitting headaches and constipation  —   laid down strict rules about what should be cooked in his house. ”All ’fried abominations’ were taboo with him, pastry, high seasoning, ham, cocoanut cakes  —   all rich foods were anathema maranatha,” writes their daughter Maud in a biography of her mother. Under the influence of the temperance brigade, Chev forbade wine at parties. Invited to dine, and offered cold water to drink, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow acidly commented, ”The doctor does not mean to do his penance alone.” ”Chev gave Julia permission to have her friends over for tea and whist, a concession she found belittling and condescending,” writes Showalter. A furious Julia wrote to her sister Annie, ”What an ass he must take me for! Do you think that Giant Despair ever gave  ?” It was not all war, however. A keen gardener, Dr. Howe set up a bountiful kitchen garden with vegetables and fruit trees. But his Eden was bound by his commandments. A loving but stern father, he drilled into his children that it was ”dishonorable to take even a berry without permission,” writes Laura. ”I well remember my horror when a visiting child picked up a fallen peach, and ate it without asking permission.” So how did Howe deal with all these laws? When it came to her writing, she defied her husband by publishing   an anonymous collection (though everyone knew who the author was) of poems into which she poured her bitterness and heartbreak. But was this intelligent, beautiful, wealthy suffragist  —   who spoke four languages and taught herself Greek at 50  —   able to stand up to her husband and eat what she liked? Showalter indicates that Howe gave in, and Laura writes that her mother would ”silently acquiesce” to her father’s wishes. But Maud offers a different view. ”From first to last she was frankly a rebel in this matter,” she writes. ”In spite of all opposition, she calmly continued to eat whatever she fancied to the end of her life.” Through the stormiest phases of her marriage, when she felt that Chev ”pummeled me until I was black and blue in the soul,” Howe resolutely wore a mask of cheerfulness. She sang at parties, played with her children, and buried Giant Despair deep inside. The feint worked the children, without any trace of irony, called their ebullient mother ”the family champagne.” Chev’s death in 1876 changed everything. Howe, who was only 57  —   Chev was 18 years older than she was  —   was now free to travel, give speeches, focus on the suffragist movement, and immerse herself in the stimulating worlds of Aeschylus and Goethe. ”Life is like a cup of tea  —   the sugar is all at the bottom,” she sang out one day to Maud. Many suffragists were staunch teetotalers and frowned on alcohol  —   but Howe had had her fill of tea parties. ”She took a little light wine with her dinner ’for her stomach’s sake,’ as she would say, quoting St Paul,” writes Maud. Once, on a demanding women’s assignment at the 1884 World’s Fair in boiling New Orleans, an exhausted Howe gratefully recalled how she ”came up upon iced champagne and recovered myself, and became strong again.” With Chev gone, Howe’s brother, Sam Ward, the celebrated gourmand and Washington lobbyist, showered her with cases of clarets, sherry, Moselle, and vermouth. He seems to have been the only person in Howe’s life who made no attempt to control her food habits. Even her children, despite knowing their mother was a paragon of moderation, and had what Maud called ”the digestion of an ostrich,” nagged and scolded. But with them she was firm. ”I have eaten sausages all my life,” she’d say. ”They have always agreed with me perfectly!” ”It would be plum cake and mince pie to the end,” writes Showalter, ”and she would playfully compete with her grandchildren for the tastiest desserts.” In 1910, at the age of 91, Howe wrote to her physician for permission to eat ham and pastry, foods her family thought too rich for the summer. Shortly afterwards, at what would turn out to be her last luncheon party, she was virtuously advised against the pâté de foie gras and champagne. Ignoring the busybodies, she helped herself to both. Nina Martyris is a literary journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"It’s been called ”perhaps the most contentious issue in the food industry”: Should food products be labeled to indicate they contain genetically modified ingredients? Leading Republicans in the Senate tried to answer that question on Wednesday with a clear ”no,” but failed. The Senate rejected a bill that would have prevented any state from requiring GMO labels on food. The bill, sponsored by Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, would have created a voluntary national labeling standard for foods containing GMOs, but it would have blocked Vermont from implementing its     mandatory GMO labeling law, currently set to take effect on July 1. The Roberts bill failed to get the 60 votes needed to move forward. The cloture motion failed  . Now, a compromise will almost certainly have to be crafted. Before the vote, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the Senate agriculture committee’s ranking Democrat, said negotiations would carry on, and she hoped a deal on a national GMO labeling standard could still be worked out before the end of the week, according to AgriPulse. Among those opposing the Roberts measure was Just Label It, a coalition of businesses and organizations supporting mandatory GMO labels on food. ”This is the most hotly debated issue in food right now,” says Scott Faber, the group’s executive director. ”Consumers should have the right to choose,” Faber says. ”They should have the right to know what’s in their food and be trusted to make their own choices.” That argument  —   consumers’ right to know  —   holds sway among many legislators. Earlier this month, during debate on the Roberts bill in the Senate agriculture committee, many lawmakers pointed to polls that show a majority of Americans support labeling genetically modified ingredients in foods. (However, Grist’s Nathanael Johnson has pointed out that ”[b]ig majorities of survey respondents also say, nonsensically, that they’d like mandatory labels for food containing DNA. ”) On the other side of the debate are those who argue that labels would inherently suggest something is wrong with foods containing GMOs, even though major scientific bodies  —   from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to the World Health Organization to the American Medical Association  —   insist genetically modified foods are safe to eat. Opponents say that having to comply with a patchwork of state labeling requirements would be costly, because many food companies would likely reformulate their products to avoid a label, resulting in higher prices. Ultimately, that would raise grocery bills for the average American family by more than $1, 000 a year, according to estimates released this month by the Corn Refiners Association. Chip Bowling, president of the National Corn Growers Association, said he was ”disappointed” with the outcome of Wednesday’s vote. ”Farmers are committed to creating greater transparency in the food system, but we also need Congress to set clear, commonsense guidelines that are based in science and keep food affordable for American families,” he said in a statement. Still, reformulating and labeling might ultimately be good business, says Jack Russo, a senior analyst of consumer staples industries at Edward Jones. He says that consumers  —   particularly   and   ones  —   increasingly ”want to know what they’re putting in their bodies.” That’s true across generations, he says, but it’s especially true of millennials. ”I think the food companies really have to pay attention, because their future customers are the millennials,” he tells us  —   and costly changes now ”in the long run will pay off for them.” The labeling battle has made for strange bedfellows, with some Republicans  —   who usually embrace states’ rights  —   supporting preempting state labeling measures. However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, on Wednesday voted against the measure  —   a tactic that would allow him to bring the bill back up for a vote later if an agreement is reached. One compromise proposal from Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, would give manufacturers a choice of four ways to label GMOs. As The Hill reports: ”[Manufacturers] could choose to put the words ’genetically engineered’ in parentheses next to a relevant ingredient identify GM ingredients with an asterisk and provide an explanation for the asterisk at the bottom of the ingredients list apply a   statement at the end of the ingredient list stating the product was ’produced with genetic engineering’ ingredients or use a symbol on the label, designed by the Agriculture Secretary, to disclosure the presence of GMOs.” But a spokesman for Roberts, who chairs the Senate agriculture committee, tells NPR that the senator would not support the Merkley measure. With additional reporting by NPR’s Allison Aubrey and Peggy Lowe of Harvest Public Media."
"The shutdown of Washington, D. C.’s Metrorail system for an entire day  —   29 hours to be exact  —   for a safety inspection prompted a New York Times interviewee to say: ”It’s the capital of the United States and one of the biggest business centers in the country. This is like a developing country.” Actually, it’s not like a developing country, according to Aniruddha Dasgupta, global director of the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, who is based in D. C. It’s in a category all by itself. ”This is very unusual,” says Dasgupta. ”It’s unusual for a large important city or any city to actually shut down the whole metro system. It’s not a normal way of functioning for any transit system.” And that includes subway systems in countries that are part of the developing world: Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing. Besides, it isn’t fair to compare subway systems in the West with those in developing world cities. ”You would  be amazed at how clean and fantastic the subway systems in China are,” Dasgupta says. ”The one in Delhi is cleaner, brighter. But we have to remember these are relatively new systems. New York has been running its system for 100 years. It doesn’t look pretty, it’s dark, it’s    —   but it works.” What’s happening in D. C. does touch on an issue that all systems struggle with: persuading commuters to give up the car for mass transit. To Dasgupta, that’s a critical decision if cities are to survive. Otherwise, streets will be choked with traffic and air will be polluted with car exhaust. A shutdown like the one in D. C. sends people back to their cars. ”When public transport becomes unreliable, people are going to say ’Metro is not dependable,’ [and] they’re going to buy a car. That’s the opposite direction in which we should travel.” And it’s definitely an issue in cities in the global south. As the developing world grows richer, more people are able to own cars in cities like Sao Paolo and Mumbai, he says. But the percentage of car owners in poorer countries still pales next to the U. S. It’s 6 percent in India, 17 percent in Colombia, 5 percent in Kenya. And 88 percent in the United States. Countries across the globe are also pioneering a different kind of mass transit: BRT  —   bus rapid transit. Buses get a bad rap in both the developed and developing world, Dasgupta says. They’re regarded as the vehicle of ”poor people.” BRT systems aim to give the bus a better image. The vehicles are new and comfortable. There may be  . There are covered bus stations where passengers can wait, and the buses have a dedicated lane so they don’t get caught in traffic jams. BRTs can’t carry as many people as subways can, Dasgupta points out. But they have definite advantages. Creating a BRT system from scratch is a lot cheaper than digging up a city to build a subway. And if a bus doesn’t work, you can take it out of service without shutting down the entire network as D. C. did."
"The Washington, D. C. Metrorail system will be out of service for 29 hours due to potential faults in the electrical system. The subway is key for commuters, many of whom staff the federal government."
"The new movie Krisha is a family drama about addiction and chaos. In it, a recovering addict named Krisha comes home for Thanksgiving after being away from her family for years. If the family in the film seems tighter than most acting ensembles, it’s because they have history: The director and writer, Trey Edward Shults, cast his aunt as the main character, his mother as the family matriarch and himself in the role of Krisha’s estranged son. It’s a small movie  —   filmed in Shults’ mother’s house and made on a tiny budget  —   but it won two of the biggest awards at last year’s South by Southwest Film Festival. Shults tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro that he always knew his aunt, actress Krisha Fairchild, would star in his first movie. ”She’s [an] amazing actress and I just felt like she’s never had a great role, and I wanted to write her a great role,” he says. ”I also had this fantasy that my family would star in my first movie. So it started there.” Fairchild also joins the conversation.  On the real life events that inspired the film, Shults: My cousin  —   she came home for a family reunion and she relapsed, and a month or two later she overdosed and passed away. My dad struggled with alcohol and drugs his whole life and our relationship was very much like the one Krisha and I have in the movie. And I hadn’t seen him for over 10 years and then, like Tom Cruise in Magnolia, I go to see him on his deathbed. On how the family reacted when they heard about the film Shults had written, Fairchild: We were all stunned and grieving for [my niece] because she had had five years of sobriety. She’d been good, and when she showed up off the rails  —   it’s like when you see pictures of a tornado, it’s as if that thing is approaching you and it’s someone you love and they’re about to come through the front door of the home and you still open the door, because that’s what you do for people you love. So we had opened the door, we had experienced the tornado in our lives, and we were all kind of like on the ropes, you know, trying to recover. And when he told us that he had written this, there was not a hesitation from any of us that sharing it was the right thing to do. You know, because when you live with something like this, you get used to the fact that everybody hides it, nobody talks about it. You know, I mean, we felt that if we told our story that people would feel solace that they weren’t alone in that. So yeah, there was no surprise that he would take that pain and turn it into something that would help other people. That’s kind of who he is. On casting Shults’    grandmother and Fairchild’s mother, who has dementia, to play Krisha’s mother, Shults: She didn’t fully understand  —   she still doesn’t fully understand she’s in a movie, you know. But everything we shot with her was more like a documentary. The big scene where we bring her home to meet the family the first time, we put her in a separate room, in the office, and then . .. on the third take we did it and she started talking about some subtext of the film  —   she started talking about her mother and family lineage.  Fairchild: [My sisters and I] always drove to the home where she lives to pick her up and bring her to the set, and always drove her back at night. So we experienced what it was she thought she was doing. To her mind, she had three days in a row where she got to go to a house where everybody was so incredibly sweet to her. She loved everybody that was there they all loved her back. She sat in the dining room, where there was beautiful crystal on the table. She never got to eat the meal, though. Shults: And she was mad it wasn’t real wine in the glasses. Fairchild: She definitely was mad it wasn’t real wine in the glasses. [Laughs] On Fairchild’s mother’s struggle with addiction, Fairchild: The dementia in our family has always been related to smoking too much or drinking too much or something. When she began to drink heavily  —   she was a   alcoholic and she would fall and hit herself, so she has a lot of cognitive brain damage as well. . .. Our mother was a role model for any wonderful, loving, sweet human person until she was in her 50s. So we will always be able to see what happened to her as tragic and also laugh and love her. We had her. A lot of people aren’t lucky enough to have the best of the people that they love. They only get them during the worst. On how making the film changed their view of addiction, Fairchild: My empathy levels spiked. I had a lot of nights I cried myself to sleep about the people that I was representing. We didn’t get it. We didn’t get that we couldn’t save them. We didn’t get that our job was to love them until they realized they had to save themselves, all right? I didn’t get that while they were alive. I kept thinking that I could save them. We put my mom in rehab places under duress three times. There were ways that I failed them, not in what I couldn’t do for them, but what I couldn’t help them understand they needed to do for themselves. Shults: I know one thing I always wanted with the film is to have a ton of empathy for Krisha’s character and for an audience to care about her and to go on this, you know, journey with her, even if it’s a downward spiral journey. I know I cried like a baby making it and editing it and then thinking about family members with it. . .. Just for my dad, I used to have a lot of resentment and anger towards [him] that and I don’t at all anymore. It’s all about forgiveness. And you know, there’s part of the character that’s me, too. I don’t suffer [from] addiction, but I think I’d be a mess if I didn’t have my parents. I always related to it and, you know, I really wanted people not to judge the character but really have sympathy for her and feel for her."
"When it comes to turnout, the tables have. ..uh, turned. In 2008, Democrats had the historic turnout numbers. GOP voters, meanwhile, came out in modest numbers in 2008 and 2012. But this year, Democrats are seeing their turnout figures fall off since 2008. Republicans, meanwhile, are coming out in droves. Republicans continued to watch their turnout skyrocket in last night’s five huge primary states. Turnout grew by 16 percent in North Carolina over 2012’s total  —   and that was the most modest bump. In Ohio, more than 2 million people cast votes, growth of nearly 68 percent over the state’s 2012 GOP number. (Missouri saw growth of 270 percent, but that state also didn’t hold a presidential preference vote in 2012, which likely helped depress turnout.) Democrats, meanwhile, saw their turnout drop in all five states. Ohio posted the most dramatic dropoff, at nearly 50 percent. However, enthusiasm was barely diminished from 2008 in Florida and Illinois, where Clinton was born and raised. Here’s what total turnout numbers look like this year in the states that have voted, compared to totals from those same states in 2008 and 2012."
"Tuesday’s big primary night helped both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump extend their delegate leads in their respective parties. And as each state votes, we’re beginning to get a clearer glimpse at just who their supporters are. For Trump, his support continues to cross traditional demographic and socioeconomic lines, underscoring just how difficult it will continue to be for Republicans opposing his controversial candidacy to stop him. But some of his weaknesses with GOP voters could also be a problem for him in a general election. As for Clinton, she rebounded from last week’s loss in Michigan by winning over white voters in Ohio and staved off another Midwest loss in Illinois thanks to black voters, proving she could be competitive outside of the South. Here are five big things we learned from exit polls last night: Donald Trump’s amorphous coalition grows, As Donald Trump continues to win primaries across the country, his broad coalition is hard to define. In all of Tuesday’s contests, Trump did well with most demographics. Sure, he still has an overwhelming advantage among some  —   such as white   voters. But exit polls point to an amorphous winning coalition. Depending on the state, Trump won rich voters, poor voters,   voters,   voters, suburban voters and rural voters. The one exception (see below) is Ohio, where the local governor, John Kasich, pulled off a win. But, for some perspective, in Florida, Trump won white   voters and white   voters by about the same margins. Then, in North Carolina, he essentially broke even with Ted Cruz among evangelical voters. And, in Illinois, where the suburban vote was key (60 percent) he won that demographic by 12 percentage points (40 percent to Cruz’s 28 percent). His two weaknesses:   and Hispanics. Trump is fond of saying ”the Hispanics love me,” but Florida seemed to cast doubts on that claim. In the state’s GOP primary, 17 percent of voters were Latino  —   and Rubio overwhelmingly beat Trump in that demographic (52 percent to 27 percent). Kasich had broad support in Ohio, but can he replicate it elsewhere? The Ohio governor pulled off something Marco Rubio couldn’t: winning his home state. He did so by edging out Trump with some of his usually reliable voting blocs  —   men, older voters, white voters and college graduates. He won every age group, beat Trump with female voters by 13 points, and carried voters under 30 by 21 points. For comparison, in Florida, Trump crushed Rubio in all those demographics. The state’s sitting senator ended up winning just one county in the Sunshine State  —   his home of  . But the big win in the state he’s never lost a race in could be the apex for Kasich. It’s his first statewide win of the presidential race. He’s looking ahead toward other states with makeups like Pennsylvania to possibly replicate that coalition, but in any other state where he hasn’t been on the ballot for more than three decades (or basically camped out in like in New Hampshire) he’s been almost an asterisk. Clinton’s Midwestern wins came thanks to both white and black voters, Sure, Illinois and Ohio are both Midwestern states that border the Great Lakes, but there aren’t many parallels between Clinton’s dual victories there. Clinton’s big win of the night came from Ohio, where she performed better than she did in Michigan, which she lost to Sanders just a week ago, in many parallel categories. The two states have some similar demographics: Both are industrial states with large union populations. But in essentially every key group that Clinton lost to Sanders in Michigan, she won (or tied) in Ohio. White voters were especially key to her victory. In Michigan, Clinton lost white college graduates by 11 points. In Ohio, she won that same group by nine points. Likewise, in Michigan, she lost the union vote by three points, but in Ohio, she won it by 12 points. And  —   perhaps the most fascinating factor in her Ohio victory, given her apparent weakness on trade issues after the Michigan defeat  —   she won by 10 points among Ohioans who said trade with other countries ”takes away U. S. jobs.” Illinois, which was a might tighter race, paints a different picture: Clinton struggled with white voters, as she did in Michigan. She lost both white   and   folks. And, on that same trade question, she seemed more vulnerable in Illinois, losing to Sanders by 11 points. Her saving grace were black voters (who made up about 28 percent of the Democratic electorate). She won them overwhelmingly, beating Sanders by 41 percentage points. Clinton’s strength among Hispanics grows, Clinton’s   win in Florida was partly fueled by Hispanic voters, another valuable voting bloc in November. Twenty percent of the Democratic electorate was Latino, and she beat Sanders with those voters 72 percent to 28 percent. That continues a trend for Clinton. In Texas earlier this month, she also topped Sanders in voting by the 28 percent of Hispanic voters making up that electorate, beating him by 34 points with this group. In Nevada, there was some dispute over the accuracy of the entrance polls in the state’s Democratic caucuses. The next big test for Sanders in winning over Latino voters is in Arizona next Tuesday. His campaign has raised expectations in this state  —   and it’s where he was campaigning last night.   rumbling is growing, As Trump grew his delegate lead on Tuesday night, the   #NeverTrump movement (Republicans who are pledging never to unite behind the controversial candidate) could pick up some steam, too, especially after Rubio’s withdrawal. And there are some encouraging signs for those Republicans who want another alternative this fall. In Florida exit polls, 29 percent of voters said they’d consider a   candidate if it’s Trump and Clinton who are the nominees. And nearly a quarter of GOP voters in the critical general election swing state said they would not vote for Trump. In Ohio, another   for Republicans in November, 43 percent of Republican voters said they would consider a   alternative."
"In the presidential nominating contests of recent decades, the middle of March has told the tale. By St. Patrick’s Day, we expect to know one, if not both, of the major party nominees. Usually, the rest of the election season is just a   operation. Of course, it’s been hard to find such clarity in 2016, the year that defies nearly every expectation at every turn. Yet with the latest round of voting, we can see a trajectory and calculate a timetable for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to reach their goals: amassing the needed number of delegates before convention time. On Tuesday, Trump and Clinton both won Florida, North Carolina, Illinois and apparently Missouri (though the margins there are so small that The Associated Press has not yet called the race). Clinton also added the crucial state of Ohio, making for a potential sweep of events on the primary day with the   delegates available all year. It should be noted this was the first voting day that included four   states by population (Missouri is 18th). Ohio had a special significance as perhaps the pivotal contest of the night and the month  —   and Clinton won there by nearly 14 points. (More about Ohio in a moment.) So will Trump and Clinton ultimately be nominated? Things still may not work out that way, and powerful forces are still moving to prevent these   from wrapping their respective nominations before the conventions. But stopping either of them now will require major turnarounds in momentum and math, most likely driven by some unforeseen and powerful event. Here’s why: Clinton now owns such a lead in pledged delegates (and such an exaggerated lead among the   superdelegates) that only a total reversal of fortune could deny her the 2, 383 delegates she needs on the first ballot in Philadelphia in July. It is still mathematically possible, and states still to vote offer a little more than half the total delegate count. But rival Bernie Sanders will need to win consistently, and win with big margins, to pull even. ”This is another Super Tuesday for our campaign!” shouted a hoarse Clinton to a cheering crowd in West Palm Beach, Fla. She congratulated her rival, Sanders, on his spirited challenge. That challenge had taken on new force since Sanders defied the polls to win Michigan in a squeaker on March 8. His campaign had spoken of a path to winning a majority of the pledged delegates before the convention, and the next several weeks include half a dozen states where the Vermont senator is still expected to do well. That list begins with Arizona on March 22, and Sanders addressed a wildly enthusiastic crowd in Phoenix on Tuesday night. Speaking for nearly an hour, Sanders visited his proven themes: Wall Street power, corruption in campaign finance, a ”rigged economy” and income inequality. But he did not mention the results of that day’s primaries. In her speech, Clinton sounded as if Sanders were once again in her rearview mirror and her gaze was fixed forward on November and Trump. ”When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong,” she told the crowd. Not far away, at his    Club’s ornate ballroom, Trump hailed his victories as well. ”We’re going to win and win and win for our country,” Trump said. He urged Republicans everywhere to unite behind his candidacy, adding that he’d had friendly telephone calls with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. ”We have to bring our party together,” said Trump, suddenly earnest about unity. ”We have something that actually makes the Republican Party probably the biggest political story in the world.” Trump was certainly the biggest story in the Republican world again this week. Even without allocating Missouri’s delegates, Trump now leads his nearest competitor by 225 delegates, with no sign of slowing down. It is now all but impossible for anyone but Trump to reach the 1, 237 delegates needed for nomination. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has a mathematical chance, but it is remote. No other candidate has even that. In a field of Republican candidates that initially numbered 17, Trump has now outlasted all but Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who won his home state last night  —   his first   finish of the year. Not so fortunate was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, once thought the rising star of the party and the last hope of its establishment element after older and more experienced office holders fell by the wayside. Rubio had made Florida’s    primary his last stand. On Tuesday night, having lost to Trump in most every demographic in a   beatdown, Rubio tried to console his grieving supporters. He told them the Republican establishment had failed to understand the   anger of conservatives. ”From a political standpoint, the easiest thing to have done in this campaign is to jump on all of those anxieties,” Rubio said, adding that he had rejected that approach for a campaign of hope and aspiration. ”I ask the American people do not give in to the fear, do not give in to the frustration. The politics of resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured party  —   they’re going to leave us a fractured nation.” Rubio made clear he would be interested in running again. But in the near term, he will need to deal with the resentment of Cruz supporters who may blame him for dividing the   vote in recent contests. Internet threads and social media sites were filled with arguments between backers of the two rival   candidates, born five months apart and now both   senators. No states were called for Cruz on Tuesday night, but he did finish second in three and add modestly to his stash of delegates. ”Only two campaigns have a plausible path to the nomination: ours and Donald Trump’s,” Cruz said. ”Nobody else has any mathematical possibility whatsoever.” Cruz added an appeal to those who had backed Rubio to join him. ”We welcome you with open and welcoming arms,” Cruz said, inviting backers of other former candidates as well. Neither Trump nor Cruz seemed overly concerned with the third candidate still in the Republican race, Kasich, who remains far behind with just 138 delegates to date. Clearly, the Kasich hope is to stay alive through the remaining primaries and caucuses, winning here and there and arriving in Cleveland as the hometown ”favorite son” in position to be a   alternative to Trump and Cruz  —   both of whom are   to many mainstream Republican donors and office holders. He also has the benefit of representing a swing state, or what might be called the ultimate swing state. When you listen to people talk about American politics, you will hear someone say ”it all comes down to Ohio.” Because it often does. Most recently, in 2004, flipping just over 100, 000 votes in the Buckeye State would have made John Kerry president and denied George W. Bush a second term. And no Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio. As he gave his rambling and emotional victory speech, Kasich stood under a sign that read: ”As Ohio Goes, So Goes the Nation.” That idea could also inspire the eventual Republican nominee to choose Kasich as running mate when the ticket is finally formed. That honor might also go to Rubio, whose state is even larger and more crucial in the Electoral College. But Rubio has been far more outspoken in his verbal spats with both Trump and Cruz, and might need the convention to be quite disrupted indeed before it turns to him."
"An artificially intelligent computer system built by Google has just beaten the world’s best human, Lee Sedol of South Korea, at an ancient strategy game called Go. Go originated in Asia about 2, 500 years ago and is considered many, many times more complex than chess, which fell to AI back in 1997. And here’s what’s really crazy. Google’s programmers didn’t explicitly teach AlphaGo to play the game. Instead, they built a sort of model brain called a neural network that learned how to play Go by itself. As NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reported last week: The Google program, known as Alpha Go, actually learned the game without much human help. It started by studying a database of about 100, 000 human matches, and then continued by playing against itself millions of times. As it went, it reprogrammed itself and improved. This type of   program is known as a neural network, and it’s based on theories of how the human brain works. Here at NPR Ed, our mission is to cover how learning happens. The advent of computer systems that ”learn” surely falls into this category. And it poses some fascinating questions. First: What could AI technologies do for human education? Second: How should human education respond to the challenges posed by AI? To the first question, Pearson, the world’s largest education company, has just issued a pamphlet from its research division titled Intelligence Unleashed: An argument for AI in Education. I spoke to Laurie Forcier, one of the authors. She told me that existing computer systems can already provide some of the benefits of    tutoring. They can also facilitate and moderate group discussions and simulate complex environments for the purpose of learning. The Pearson report predicts software that will bring helpful feedback in an instant about students’ progress, their knowledge state and even their state of mind  —   eliminating the need to stop and give a standardized test. On a more futuristic, somewhat creepier note, Forcier and her   also suggest the development of something called a ”lifelong learning companion.” This is a concept first introduced by early AI researchers decades ago. Like an imaginary friend, learning companions would accompany students  —   asking questions, providing encouragement, offering suggestions and connections to resources, helping you talk through difficulties. Over time, the companion would ”learn” what you know, what interests you, and what kind of learner you are. With all its data in the cloud, accessible by phone or laptop, it could follow you from school to soccer practice to internship to college and beyond, and be a valuable record of learning in all contexts. Maybe your learning companion could even write you a letter of recommendation that could serve as a credential. ”Why is the pamphlet called, ’an argument for AI in education’ ?” I asked Forcier. ”Who’s arguing against it?” She said that, of course, there are fears about AI being used to replace human teachers. Although the pamphlet states ”Teachers  —   alongside learners and parents  —   should be central to the design of AIEd tools, and the ways that they are used,” it also talks about using AI to address teacher shortages, especially where subject matter expertise is missing. And here we slam right into the second question: How should human education best respond to the challenges, even the threats, posed by AI? Because, when computer systems aren’t winning at chess, Jeopardy or Go, they’re working. They’re booking appointments, preparing legal documents, helping you file your taxes  —   jobs that used to be done by humans with at least a little bit of education. The World Economic Forum recently projected that automation will eliminate at least 5 million jobs worldwide by 2020. The continued progress of AI thus poses a new framework for thinking about the relevance of education. It would be a mistake to spend too much time focusing narrowly on skills and content areas that are quickly being sidelined by technology. In other words, in a world where computers are taking more and more of the jobs, what is it that humans most need to learn? It probably isn’t primarily memorizing facts or figures, or simple rules for problem solving. An immediate answer is that more of us need to get better at building and interacting with software tools. That’s why President Obama, for example, has called for all U. S. students to be exposed to computer science. A second answer is complementary to the first. Responding to the AlphaGo victory, Geoff Colvin, an editor for Fortune magazine and the author of a book about human capabilities, wrote in The New York Times: ”Advancing technology will profoundly change the nature of   human skills and that is threatening, but we aren’t doomed. The skills of deep human interaction, the abilities to manage the exchanges that occur only between people, will only become more valuable.” As examples, Colvin names empathy, managing collaboration in groups and storytelling  —   that is, creative communication. That sounds a whole lot like the growing movement in education to focus on building social and emotional competencies. This takes us back to the ”argument” about AI in education, though. It’s most likely that human teachers are best at teaching human students how to manage what Colvin called ”the exchanges that occur only between people.” But to beat people out for jobs, computer systems don’t necessarily have to be better at those jobs. (Have you had a great experience with an automated phone menu recently?) Because they work, more or less, for free. So one great fear when it comes to the Pearson vision of AIEd is that we reproduce existing inequalities. Some students get individualized attention from highly skilled human teachers who use the best learning software available to inform their practice. Other students get less face time with   teachers plus TutorBots that imperfectly simulate human interaction. It’s a genuine human challenge, one that’s a lot more complex than any game."
"It’s in the news everywhere, with   hubris: Google’s DeepMind machine beat the world champion of the game Go with a score of  . Or, according to Britain’s Independent newspaper: ”Google’s   computer has definitely beaten the best human in the world, finishing a pioneering match at  .” The ”best human in the world,” South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol, is actually ranked No. 5 in the world. Clearly a stellar Go player  —   but not the world’s best. Mind you, there are several kinds of rankings for Go and they don’t always agree. In fact, there is much confusion once you start looking. The one that puts Sedol as No. 5 is known as WHR algorithm. But these are details. The fact is that a machine beat a master Go player   in a   event. As AI (artificial intelligence) expert Gary Marcus wrote in a recent essay, ”DeepMind made major progress, but the Go journey is still not over. ..The real question is whether the technology developed there can be taken out of the game world and into the real world.” In other words, can machine   prowess be applied to   challenges? In their Jan. 28 Nature article about DeepMind, Google scientists state in the abstract that the machine ”defeated the human European Go champion by 5 games to 0. ..a feat previously thought to be at least a decade away.” This professional Go player was Fan Hui,   European champion, currently ranked at No. 507 according to this ranking. Moving from Hui to Sedol is indeed very impressive. Google’s DeepMind program uses a combination of a     algorithm known as ”value networks” that evaluates board positions (”machine learning” is the new version of neural networks, programs that try to emulate simplified neuronal activity able to learn patterns and behaviors) and ”policy networks” that selects moves. Oversimplifying, one piece of the program analyses possible moves while the other chooses the optimal move for a given situation based on a statistical analysis of the best possibilities. The closing lines in the Nature article are important: ”AlphaGo has finally reached a professional level in Go, providing hope that   performance can now be achieved in other seemingly intractable artificial intelligence domains.” To be useful in the real word, where rules are often not rigid and surprise events and behaviors continually throw wrenches into efforts to rationalize behavior  —   be it human, political or economic  —   intelligent programs need a sort of plasticity and adaptability not easily transferrable from a more focused   platform. Although Google’s DeepMind success moves progress in AI to a whole new level, the jump from   to intelligence that mirrors anything closer to human intelligence functioning in a complex world is still a very huge one. To many, that’s a very good thing. Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom has been cautioning us about the dangers of a   out in the world. And billionaire Elon Musk, physicists Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees, Bostrom himself  —   and more interestingly, Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg, and Mustafa Suleyman, all   of DeepMind  —   have signed an open letter where they ”recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial: our AI systems must do what we want them to do.” It remains to be seen if Musk’s idea of empowering as many people as possible to have access to AI will work as a sort of deterrence policy against AI domination (somewhat like the nuclear deterrence policy against global destruction)  —   or if, given that intelligent machines could, in principle at least, network to become a more unified autonomous entity, the nightmare is inescapable. AI is no nuclear bomb. Fortunately, even with the amazing steps of DeepMind in the game of Go, we can still sleep in peace for the foreseeable future while we find safeguards that will protect us from our own inventions. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist  —   and professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the   of 13. 7, a prolific author of papers and essays, and active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser."
"Editor’s Note: Hozaifa Almaleh made his name as a basketball player in Syria. The sport also provided an avenue out of the country as it suffers through a devastating civil war. As the country marks five years since the start of the uprising, the    Almaleh reflects on the game  —   and the war  —   that has led him to Chicago.  I played professional basketball for the Syrian national team from 2004 to 2013, traveling around the world for a decade representing my country. But with Syria mired in war and millions displaced by the deadly conflict, I decided to leave. I went to Ecuador to play basketball for a professional team there. Then, in February 2014, I went to Boston to visit a cousin, a journey that has led me to Chicago and a spot on the Windy City Groove, a team in the American Basketball Association.  It pulls at my heart to know that my family and friends are not with me each and every day. But I’m also resolute about building a new life here in America, where I am seeking asylum. I was born in Damascus, the city where every garden around me was full of the aroma of jasmine. Damascus was a piece of heaven, and it’s where my family still lives. My favorite memories growing up are sitting down with some quiet music and a cup of Turkish coffee, talking to my mom, who has always been my best friend and confidante. My dad is different. He’s tough. He grew up in a traditional merchant family in Damascus. Now that I’m 29, I realize the pressure and responsibility he placed on himself to make sure we had everything we needed. He works hard. Growing up, I never knew if he was struggling to make ends meet. He never wanted us to worry. Dad always taught me to offer a helping hand. ’FaceTime’ Holidays, I miss my family most during the holidays, remembering the days I’d sit by the wood fire listening to the Lebanese diva Fairuz, the legendary singer whose songs remind us of our traditions and implore us to rise above our differences. Now I call my holidays ”FaceTime holidays” because this is the only way I can connect with my family these days. When I was 12, my dad signed me up for a basketball summer camp that changed the trajectory of my life. After that camp, I joined a local basketball club. A year later, one of the starting players was injured and Coach Hassan asked me to start. For the next five years, I averaged 30 points a game. I was then invited to play for the Syrian National Team in the junior league. My first international game was in Tehran, Iran, where I played against Hamed Haddadi, an Iranian who later played for several years in the NBA. I remember the head of the West Asian Basketball Association telling me I might end up playing in the NBA one day. That gave me something to believe in and made me even more passionate to be a great player. In 2004, I joined the top league in Syria, where I helped my team, Al Jeish, win six championships. I was also offered a scholarship to attend the Arab International University in Syria, where I got my degree in business. Through my years at the university, I played in Dubai, Turkey, Morocco, Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, South Korea and China. When I decided to move to Boston two years ago, my cousin helped me get acclimated to life in America. I moved to Chicago eight months later to play in the   a summer league. It was a dream come true, especially when I met Derrick Rose. I used to stay up late at night in Damascus (because of the time difference) to watch Rose and his Chicago Bulls play. When I came to Chicago, I found myself talking to him face to face. That was such an incredible experience. In 2015, I tried out for Chicago’s Windy City Groove and am now finishing up my second season. I still haven’t given up my dream of playing in the NBA. Here in Chicago, I also met a beautiful American woman named Samira, who is from an   family. Given the millions of Iranians who left their homeland after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, she understands what I’m going through and inspires me to keep going. I’m looking for the opportunity to give back to this country because America has given me opportunities  —   to believe in what’s possible and to continue seeking my dreams."
"Google Street View allows people to virtually walk through places from the Aeon Mall in Okinawa, Japan, to historic sites like Petra in Jordan without leaving their homes. But type in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and you won’t see anything. That’s because the city is basically off the Google grid, as are many locations in developing countries. A joint effort between the World Bank’s Dar Ramani Huria and Swedish startup Mapillary aims to change that. ”Dar es Salaam has really poor map data,” says Jan Erik Solem, CEO of Mapillary. ”The reason is that the mapping companies need people on the ground or in the local area to create the actual map.” These missing maps make it next to impossible to track traffic congestion, to effectively deploy resources to   communities and to build public transportation systems. And without detailed maps, it’s harder for cities to prevent, and recover, from natural disasters. Dar es Salaam experiences devastating floods every year during the rainy seasons in early spring and toward the end of fall. Puddles turn into rivers that inundate roads and homes, leaving many people displaced or even dead. ”We had the worst floods in 2011 when more than 40 lives were lost,” says Mussa B. Natty, former director of the ​Kinondoni​ Municipal Council. Kinondoni is the largest of three districts​ ​i​​n Dar es Salaam.​ ”More than 2, 300 houses were affected and the government had to organize temporary shelter. The hard hit were the urban poor residing in valleys. There was a repeat of flooding in 2013 and 2014 and infrastructures were severely damaged.” A year ago, in March 2015, when the mapping project began coming together, heavy rain and floods left 5, 000 people homeless and caused seven deaths. In May, 12 more people died in floods. The root cause of this flooding is lack of infrastructure like adequate drainage systems, according to Solem and World Bank consultant Mark Iliffe. Maps of the city detailing roads, homes, streams, drains and other features could help by becoming the first step in adequate city planning. ”Sparking the community’s interest in mapping has the potential to truly transform Dar es Salaam into a prosperous city with the infrastructure to prevent floods, bring awareness to the need for flood prevention and risk reduction, and arm its citizens with the right tools and skills to build a better city,” states a World Bank blog post celebrating the mapping efforts. So how do you create maps without mappers? Mapillary and the World Bank have handed the job off to the people who know the city best  —   its citizens. Volunteers are mounting camera rigs to their tuk tuks  —       vehicles  —   to snap pictures as they cruise Dar es Salaam’s dirt roads. Others download the Mapillary app on their smartphones and capture images as they walk or hitch rides on motorbikes. In all, more than 260 people have volunteered. ”Every time someone takes pictures of a place, the images are connected together to reconstruct the location in   [in Mapillary],” Solem says. It looks like this. These   models become digital maps and   models of Dar es Salaam. The models are generated with computer vision, a technique where images are analyzed to produce   data about the real world. ”Not many people think of photos as the main source of data for improving maps and navigation,” Solem says. ”But photos are a very powerful feature that add more details to maps, like missing roads and buildings and specific properties like how wide streets are.” The maps can then help ​pinpoint flooding trouble spots. ​Programs like OpenStreetMap, Mapbox Studio and InaSAFE are used to create the maps and can help reproduce natural disaster scenarios so locals can improve city plans and disaster response efforts. ”Understanding the areas which are most affected by the floods will lead to more informed decisions by municipal authorities to locate infrastructure to combat localized flooding,” Iliffe wrote in an email to Goats  Soda.​ So far, locals have taken some ​23,​000 images, which have helped to map ​about 300 miles of roads. The goal is to map nearly ​1​​,700 more miles. ​Other community members are going a step further. In addition to taking pictures, they’re learning how to create sophisticated maps with GPS devices and professional mapping drones. ​ Despite these efforts, the city will never be fully mapped, Iliffe says. It’s one of Africa’s   cities, with a population that’s expected to hit 21. 4 million by 2052. As the population surges, maps will become ever more critical in saving lives from floods. But it’s an endless task. ”We’re not expecting the map to ever be complete,” he wrote. ”Dar es Salaam is a living, breathing city that is constantly changing.” ​"
"Federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland headed to Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon to meet with senators, beginning the traditional ritual of any nominee to the Supreme Court. But for the former prosecutor, the exercise could be in vain. Senate Republicans are holding steadfast in their refusal to even consider Garland’s nomination to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly last month. GOP leadership’s insistence they won’t hold confirmation hearings or a vote during an election year is something Democrats are framing as a failure for Republicans to do their job. And that’s a theme President Obama echoed in an exclusive interview with NPR’s Nina Totenberg earlier Thursday. ”One of the most puzzling arguments that I’ve heard from [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell and some other Republicans is this notion that the American people should decide. We should let the American people decide as part of this election, who gets to fill this seat,” Obama told NPR. ”Well, in fact the American people did decide  —   back in 2012 when they elected me president of the United States with sufficient electoral votes.” ”And they also decided that the Republicans would be in the majority. They didn’t say we’re going to decide that you are going to be in charge for three years and then in the last year you all take a break. They say ’No, you’re the president for four years and Mr. McConnell you’re going to be the leader because we’ve given you a Majority in the Senate,” the president continued. Obama’s full interview with NPR will air Friday on Morning Edition.  ”The American people are perfectly capable of having their say on this issue, so let’s give them a voice. Let’s let the American people decide. The Senate will appropriately revisit the matter when it considers the qualifications of the nominee the next president nominates, whoever that might be,” McConnell said Wednesday following the announcement of Garland’s nomination. Garland’s first meeting on the Hill was with Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both men smiled from their chairs, surrounded by clicking cameras. Garland kept a stoic look as he ignored press questions about how he felt about being caught in the middle of a partisan fight and whether it was difficult on him personally. The two met for about 15 minutes and Garland emerged  —   again not taking questions. Leahy told reporters Garland was a qualified nominee and deserved the same consideration that other nominees have gotten, regardless of which party controls the White House. ”How can you say we’re being fair if we don’t even give him a hearing?” Leahy said. ”There’s no fairness in that.” As for arguments that the confirmation process could bleed into election season, Leahy argued that the moderate judge, who’s been confirmed before by the Senate on a bipartisan vote, could easily be vetted, testify before the Judiciary Committee and voted on before Memorial Day, especially if Congress cancels a few planned recesses. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid,  . also met with Garland later Thursday afternoon. After their meeting, he emerged to also criticize Republicans for stalling. ”Why are they afraid to meet with him? Why are they afraid to hold hearing? Are they afraid the American people are going to watch these hearings and demand they do something even more than they’re demanding now?” Reid asked. Some GOP senators, including Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rob Portman of Ohio and Mark Kirk of Illinois, have signaled they’re willing to meet with Garland. All three face tough   challenges this fall. Kirk and moderate Maine Sen. Susan Collins have both said Garland should get an up or down vote on his nomination. Garland spoke by phone with other senators, including McConnell, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley,   and Sen. Jim Inhofe,  . Collins said on MSNBC’s ”MTP Daily” Thursday that she is hopeful some more of her Republican colleagues will also come around on Garland.  ”I am pleased to see that many more of my Republican colleagues are now indicating a willingness to sit down and meet with Judge Garland. Originally, virtually no one was willing to do that. Now I’m hearing more and more voices from my colleagues who are willing to sit down with him,” the Maine senator said. ”So let’s see what happens.” While there could be some signs of progress in a GOP caucus that was initially firmly united against any nominee from President Obama ever since the vacancy, Leahy said it wasn’t enough. ”This is too important to phone it in,” the ranking Judiciary Committee member said. ”I’ve done this with every president since I’ve been here, whether it’s been a Republican or a Democratic president. As a courtesy, you meet with them.” Reid also predicted that the GOP would eventually relent under political pressure. ”I am confident that [Garland’s] going to get approval,” the Democratic leader said. ”Republicans can’t continue. It won’t work.” Democrats are continuing to hammer Republicans on their decision not to consider Garland, and earlier on Thursday held a press conference outside the Supreme Court, hammering Republicans for ”not doing their job.” Alongside them were doctors, nurses and construction workers who said they would be fired if they didn’t follow through on critical duties. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer blasted Republicans for playing election year politics over Garland, a decision he said could come back to haunt them. ”So if Republicans continue to stand in the way and refuse to do their job, it will only be because they want Donald Trump to pick the next nominee,” Schumer said, referencing the controversial GOP presidential  . ”Occasionally Republicans may try to distance themselves from him with their words, but the failure to do their job and give Judge Garland the consideration he deserves ties them to Trump in a way they cannot untangle.”"
"Artist Robert Mapplethorpe was as controversial as he was celebrated. In 1989, his photographs depicting nude men and sexual fetishes helped ignite the culture wars. Now, an upcoming HBO documentary, Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, examines the artist’s life and work. He’s also the subject of a major retrospective spanning two L. A. museums  —   the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With his Hasselblad and Polaroid cameras, Mapplethorpe worked out of his East Village studio. He photographed lovers, friends, models and himself. And like his frenemy Andy Warhol, Mapplethorpe did fashion shoots and made portraits of patrons and socialites. At the LACMA exhibition, a video clip of Mapplethorpe choreographing a model plays on a loop. It gives a glimpse into his intimate studio sessions and his world a world that also included downtown luminaries like Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, and, of course, his muse, Patti Smith. In 1978, Smith and Mapplethorpe made an experimental film, which is also on display at LACMA. So are Mapplethorpe’s art school ink drawings, his collages, paper dolls and jewelry he fashioned out of scavenged objects. Mapplethorpe even framed his own underwear. ”That was, I think, from very early on, a part of his aim in    —   is to generate a certain kind of feeling that was visceral and erotic,” says LACMA curator Britt Salvesen. Though his subject matter was explicit, Mapplethorpe viewed his work as artistic, not pornographic. ”I certainly think that had Robert lived 400 years ago, 500 years before, he would have been a Vatican artist,” says Brian English, who was one of Mapplethorpe’s studio assistants through the final years as the prolific artist was dying of AIDS. English says his mentor captured perfect moments of beauty and transcended many boundaries  —   of gender, sexuality and societal norms. ”He did push culture, and it’s important for people to understand him as an artist,” says English. ”His skills in finding that perfect angle to look at something is like what painters would do. His pictures became ethereal in the way that they would glow.” Even when Mapplethorpe was photographing someone else, English says, his portraits were also  . Both LACMA and the Getty shows include an infamous shot of Mapplethorpe with a strategically placed bullwhip. He’s bent over and looking back, staring at the viewer. ”He is defiantly saying: I’m a participant here, this is my world and my life and my desire,” says Salvesen. Both shows also include homoerotic and sadomasochistic images that shocked and polarized viewers. In 1989, a few months after he died, the Corcoran Gallery canceled a retrospective of Mapplethorpe’s work, titled The Perfect Moment. The show traveled to Cincinnati, where it sparked an obscenity trial. During Congressional hearings that summer about funding for the NEA,   Jesse Helms declared, ”this pornography is sick.” Several years ago, LACMA showed some of these images without incident, and Salvesen says the time is right to show them again. ”I do expect they will have a very strong impact. And I think that’s part of what he wanted to do,” she says. ”I wouldn’t want it to become too safe or too comfortable because it was intended to provoke.” By contrast, the Getty Museum has saved Mapplethorpe’s most controversial photos for the end of its exhibition. Rather than mount the photos on the walls, curator Paul Martineu chose to display them in a glass case, labeled with an advisory. ”I wanted them to be shown in a more discreet manner,” he says. ”So they were actually made to be seen in a more intimate way.” The photos from Mapplethorpe’s   ”X portfolio” include a man in rubber sensory deprivation suit, and   of various SM scenarios and sex acts: men in leather and chains, wearing jock straps or nothing at all. ”These are people that were involved in the sadomasochistic bondage and discipline scene in New York City the 1970s,” says Martineau. ”He wanted people to understand that he was part of that scene, and that these people were his friends. And that they had great deal of trust between them. That made these pictures possible.” These most challenging and controversial photos are shown in a gallery with Mapplethorpe’s iconic floral photos. The exhibition ends with a     Mapplethorpe made as he was dying. After his death, Mapplethorpe’s foundation searched for years to find the right place to store his vast archive. They found it at the Getty Research Institute and its cold storage facility. It will be the permanent home to more than 1, 900 photos, letters and other objects that belonged to Mapplethorpe. The collection’s value was appraised at $38 million. Attorney Michael Ward Stout, a board member with The Mapplethorpe Foundation, says the Getty had the best facilities to store the photographer’s archive. ”He wanted photography to achieve the level of respect that painting and sculpture had,” says Stout. The Foundation agreed to entrust Mapplethorpe’s archive to The Getty and LACMA in 2011. This new retrospective is the culmination of this unprecedented partnership, says LACMA director Michael Govan. ”When I talked to some of my friends in New York, they said: Oh my god, Robert Mapplethorpe is a New York artist, the legacy should be in New York,” recalls Govan. ”And one of the cases I made about Los Angeles was that Robert Mapplethorpe is already well known in New York. He is a New York artist. That is a global city. But if you look at the future of where artists are moving from all over the world, that LA is one of the    art centers.” At a press preview of the exhibition, Edward Mapplethorpe, who was his brother’s studio assistant and an artist himself, said he also questioned whether his brother’s photos should be stored in Los Angeles. ”Yes, he was a real New Yorker,” says Mapplethorpe. ”But now that I’ve met the curators, I’ve met the archivists, and I’ve seen the facilities, and understand, it’s where he should be. To see them now, exhibited the way they were intended to be exhibited and looked at, and presented in such a nice way is extremely, extremely heartwarming.” And he notes, the archive forever has a home at the Getty, next to the vast photo collection of Mapplethorpe’s beloved benefactor and lover, Sam Wagstaff. The HBO documentary airs April 4, and the photos will be on display at both museums until the end of July."
"Hillary Clinton was declared the winner of the Missouri Democratic primary by The Associated Press on Thursday evening, nearly two days after the state held its primary. She eked out a slim victory of just 1, 531 votes over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. That’s a difference of just   of a percent and was within the margin of a possible recount, but Sanders said earlier Thursday he wouldn’t ask for that. ”I think it’s unlikely the results will impact at all the number of delegates the candidate gets, and I would prefer to save the taxpayers of Missouri some money,” Sanders said in an interview with the AP. The belated win means the former secretary of state swept all five states that voted this week on the   ”Mega Tuesday.” She also was victorious in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Illinois. Clinton picked up two more delegates from the win. According to the AP, that gives her a 314 pledged delegate advantage over Sanders. When superdelegates are considered, she has a 755 delegate lead. The Republican race in Missouri remains in limbo. Unofficial returns show Donald Trump with a thin lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by 1, 726 votes in the state. There could still be outstanding absentee and overseas ballots along with provisional ballots. As long as the race is within a 1   margin as well, there remains the possibility of a recount."
"After two years of research and more than 400 interviews about midlife, former NPR reporter Barb Bradley Hagerty received dozens of insights about how to live well in the middle years. We’ve distilled them here, with a little context. And, by the way, these ideas work well for people on both sides of the midlife divide. 1. Aim for   meaning rather than   happiness, and you will likely find both. Aristotle suggested as much when he talked about eudaemonia, or the good life: striving with a purpose  —   raising terrific children, training for a marathon  —   rather than setting your sights on immediate pleasures, such as enjoying a good meal or a day at the beach. It’s also the best thing you can do for your mind and your health. 2. Choose what matters most. Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School describes the eroding effect of   decisions  —   specifically, doing the activity that brings you immediate gratification (such as work) and putting off harder but ultimately more fulfilling activities (such as investing in your marriage and children). I talked with many people who privileged work over family because work brought immediate rewards. These people closed the sale, they shipped the product, they pulled an   to get the story on the radio, they were promoted and praised for a job well done. ”And as a consequence,” Christensen says, ”people like you and me who plan to have a happy life  —   because our families truly are the deepest source of happiness  —   find that although that’s what we want, the way we invest our time and energy and talents causes us to implement a strategy that we wouldn’t at all plan to pursue.” 3. Lean into fear, not boredom. Most of us become competent at our work by our 40s, and then we have a choice: Play it safe or take a risk. Howard Stevenson, also a professor (emeritus) at Harvard Business School, believes the greatest source of unhappiness in work is risk aversion  —   which leads to stagnation and resentment. ”There’s a difference between 20 years of experience, and one year of experience 20 times,” he says. Stevenson and the other career experts I interviewed do not recommend chucking it all to blindly follow a fantasy. Rather, be intentional as you try to shape your work to reflect your skills, personality and talents. But we have only one spin at the wheel, so make it count. A great line from Stevenson: ”Ask yourself regularly: How will I use these glorious days left to me for the best purpose?” 4. ”At every stage of life, you should be a rookie at something.” This insight comes from Chris Dionigi, a Ph. D. in ”weed science” and the deputy director of the National Invasive Species Council (that kind of weed). He believes trying new things and failing keeps you robust. He took comedy improv classes and now spends many nights and weekends riding his bicycle as an auxiliary police officer for Arlington County, Va. Always have something new and challenging in your life, he says, ”and if that something is of service to people and things you care about, you can lead an extraordinary life.”   5. Add punctuation to your life. Young adulthood offers plenty of milestones: graduating from college, starting a career, getting married, having your first child. But Catharine Utzschneider, a professor at the Boston College Sports Leadership Center who trains elite   athletes, says midlife is like ”a book without any structure, without sentences, periods, commas, paragraphs, chapters, with no punctuation. Goals force us to think deliberately.” She was so right, as I found when Mike Adsit, a   cancer survivor and competitive cyclist, challenged me to compete in the Senior Games (for people 50 and older) in 2015. Suddenly I had little goals every day  —   a faster training session, or a   ride  —   and the prospect of these little victories launched me out of bed each morning. Even if you don’t win  —   I came in seventh in the race  —   you win. 6. A few setbacks are just what the doctor ordered. Bad events seem to cluster in midlife  —   losing a spouse, a marriage, a parent, your job, your perfect health. But people with charmed lives  —   zero traumas  —   were unhappier and more easily distressed than people who had suffered a few negative events in their lifetime. According to resilience research, some setbacks give you perspective and help you bounce back. And here’s what I learned from Karen Reivich at the University of Pennsylvania, who trains Army personnel about resilience. After I fell off my bike and broke my collarbone  —   threatening my book deadline  —   I called her up. She gave me two tricks: First, ”OPM”: Other people matter. People who let other people help them tend to recover better than those who are fiercely independent. Second, rely on your top character strengths to get you through. (You can take the character strengths test as well as other questionnaires on the University of Pennsylvania’s website.) As embarrassing as my strengths are  —   industry and gratitude  —   they helped me cope until I could drive, type, dry my hair or unscrew the mayo jar. 7. Pay attention: Two of the biggest threats to a seasoned marriage are boredom and mutual neglect. The brain loves novelty, and love researchers say a sure way to revive a marriage on autopilot, at least temporarily, is to mix things up a bit. Go hiking, take a trip to an undiscovered land  —   or drive an RV down the Blue Ridge Parkway, which my husband and I did in June 2013. Honestly, I thought nothing could be more pointless or boring, but based on the novelty research, we piled in with our dog, Sandra Day, and two friends. Something went wrong almost every day  —   we got caught in a flood, the brakes nearly went out, we could not figure out how to dump the blackwater (don’t ask) for some time. We had the time of our lives. It took us out of our comfort zone, it gave us a grand adventure it was, in short, The Best Vacation Ever. 8. Happiness is love. Full stop. This observed wisdom comes from George Vaillant, a psychiatrist and researcher who directed Harvard’s Study of Adult Development for several decades. The study  —   still ongoing  —   followed men from the Harvard classes of   to see what makes people flourish over a lifetime. Vaillant found that the secret to a successful and happy life is not biology. It is not genes. It is not social privilege or education. It is not IQ or even family upbringing. The secret to thriving is warm relationships. Oh, then there’s this happy coda: Second chances present themselves all the time, if you’ll only keep your eyes open. Barbara Bradley Hagerty is the author of Life Reimagined, and a former NPR reporter."
"There’s a funny thing about the future tense: It’s all but impossible to deny. Take any verb, append the little word ”will” to the front of it, and suddenly, you’ve got a proposition that’s awfully tough to knock down. I will write, I will act, I will be  —   until the proposed moment comes along, until we find out, one way or the other, whether I have in fact done as promised, the possibility I will replenishes every time I speak it. It’s as if, through sheer force of ”will,” we can achieve anything of our choosing. Just ask your local politician how convenient this sentence construction is  —   or, if you’d like to be a tad less cynical, just ask your favorite   teachers how noble. Their students can tell you, even if the teachers don’t. Seen from the classroom, from a squat little school desk facing the blackboard, the future often looks big enough to embrace your every phrase. Think of all the milestones still strewn before you at that age: a first kiss, graduation, the prospect of learning piano, possibilities more than you can number and not necessarily in that order. If you’re a millennial lucky enough to come from a reasonably comfortable upbringing, as I was, free from fears about your family’s next paycheck or personal safety, it could seem that achieving your dreams was a simple matter of conjugation. Like problems on a grammar exercise, you will take care of them when you get to them. Now here’s another funny thing: At some point, you get to them. And naturally, for reasons both little and vast, they’re never quite as straightforward as that little ”will” would make them seem. They weren’t for me, at least, and they haven’t been for anyone I’ve known. Perhaps that first kiss came not with Karen, as you’d been sure it would, but with Danielle  —   or with Daniel. Perhaps college wasn’t in the cards, as you’d been sure it would be, or perhaps you only wish you hadn’t gone to college, usually when your student loan payments come due. Perhaps (sadly, speaking personally now) my attempts at piano sounded less like Mozart, as I’d been sure they would, and more like a toddler with an anger problem. All those countless ”wills” haven’t gotten their way what remains is what there’s always been  —   a brimming bucket of contradictions, a protean mess that seems to consist mostly of questions and inconsistencies, insecurities and quiet joys. In other words, I am and have been so many people, the only thing I know for sure these days is exactly who I’m not: the person I thought I’d be by now. So, here is the full measure of my   crisis: the distance between myself and the self I’d envisioned, and the fact that this distance has gotten so big I can’t help but acknowledge it. At 27, I’ve got to finally admit to myself that ”will,” that handy rhetorical crutch, won’t be fixing anything for me. I’ve got to come to terms with the present tense. Now, just please don’t ask me how. I’ve gotten just far enough to be grateful to have such a problem, a privilege not possible without some economic security. Besides that, well, I’ve got to admit I don’t have a clue how to embrace this self I’m struggling to recognize, or what to do with it next  —   or even how to ditch, if only for a moment, that pesky word ”next.” But I am learning, I think. At any rate, I am  —   which is good enough for me, for now. And while I can’t, in good conscience, tell you I’ve found any answers to this   crisis of mine, I can at least promise you this: I will."
"Syrian kids who passed through Milan’s Central Station last year did something very Italian: create artwork. While they waited for trains to take them to northern Europe, Save the Children offered them a chance to draw. They could depict whatever they wanted, says psychologist Vittoria Ardino, president of the Italian Society for the Study of Traumatic Stress, who analyzed 500 of these images. There’s a lot that can be learned from children’s art. ”It’s one of the most effective tools to help them be understood by adults,” Ardino says. Even if children are not yet able to express their emotions in words, they can put those feelings into figures and shapes. Their pictures reveal how they see themselves and their connections with others, Ardino adds. Given the circumstances, perhaps it’s not so surprising that, as Ardino notes, ”most of the drawings are related to war and the journey to escape conflict.” But beyond the distress, she detects resilience. ”There’s still some hope in these children,” she says. We asked her to reflect on seven of the drawings. There’s so much happening on this piece of paper  —   which is maybe a reflection of the child’s chaotic inner world, Ardino says. A flying creature is part butterfly, a common symbol of freedom. But it’s also part gun. A plane dropping bombs is covered by a face that’s   and   (or actually, a big fish devouring a smaller one). A flower droops over a series of squiggles, which Ardino believes represent human bodies. All of that points to a child feeling powerless  —   but ”trying desperately to find light,” Ardino adds. The face is surrounded by sun, and an oversized ladder or staircase leads away from the houses. Ardino suggests this is the child’s attempt at answering a critical question: ”How can I escape?” Although Save the Children didn’t record the age of the kids, Ardino suspects that this image was drawn by an older boy or girl  —   certainly older than 5 or 6. The    benches are immediately recognizable, she says: ”That’s the place at the Milan station where they sat.” She sees the hearts lined up next to the family as a metaphor for loved ones the child lost along the way to the station. Despite that, the drawing feels more uplifting than somber because of the bright sun above. To Ardino, it’s a sign that this child dreams of a better future. The sea voyage labeled ”journey of death” isn’t subtle. ”This is a photograph of what is happening,” Ardino says. ”Many people are literally stuffed in the bottom of a boat.” The passengers shouting ”help” (in English and Italian) are a reminder that children who’ve been through this experience need counseling. Probably their parents do, too, Ardino adds. Looking into this eye, Ardino sees Syria crying. She thinks this is likely the work of an adolescent. Among kids who seemed to be older, political imagery was quite popular. Many drew flags, for instance. Faces and human figures were common in the drawings, but few were as striking as this image, which reminds Ardino of Edvard Munch’s famed The Scream. The details  —   like the flames inside the eyes  —   reveal a mix of fear, horror and anger. And the pair of brown horns that indicate this is the devil ”tell us a fuller story,” Ardino says. Like many of the other faces in the children’s drawings, this one is floating, removed from any background. She says that’s another sign that the kids don’t feel safe where they are. ”If you hadn’t known this was drawn by a Syrian kid, you’d think nothing happened,” Ardino says. It’s the typical childhood drawing of a house surrounded by a tree and grass and flowers. In the background are fluffy clouds, rolling hills and a bright orange sun. There’s a figure walking a dog near a body of water. To Ardino, this is an expression of nostalgia. Her interpretation of what this kid is saying is, ”I want things as they were.” In this   what stands out to Ardino is the face. ”You can see the black points under the eyes. I think the child is crying,” she says. But the mouth looks like it’s smiling  —   maybe because of the message beside the boy: ”I want to live happy with my family.” This confusion is a reminder of how difficult it is to express emotions, particularly when they are as complex as those experienced by child refugees."
"If you’re planning to hoist a pint of Irish dry stout for St. Patrick’s Day, the folks at Guinness have a polite request: Don’t slurp the foamy head off their beer. It’s essentially a nitrogen cap, they say, that’s protecting the flavors underneath from being oxidized. St. Patrick’s is a huge day for the legendary brewer  —   of the 70 million people who are estimated to be celebrating today, around 13 million will also drink a glass of Guinness. Guinness is often called ”the black stuff”  —   but the creamy, almost white foam that makes up the beer’s head is also crucial to its enjoyment. To find out why, we spoke to Domhnall Marnell, Guinness’ brewery ambassador in Dublin, who’s currently on a visit to the U. S. Marnell says he wants people to enjoy their entire beer, from the top to the bottom of a pint. And that’s where the nitrogen comes in. Packed into the beer’s head, it keeps the stout’s flavor fresh it also imparts a smooth and velvety texture. Marnell describes how it works: ”Nitrogen bubbles have two properties that are really important: First of all, they’re lighter than CO2 bubbles. And the second thing is that because they’re so small, they bond together. So what you’ll notice on a Guinness is that all the nitrogen settles to the top. But unlike a carbonated head, it doesn’t dissipate into the air, it doesn’t disappear as you go. ”Because they’re all so small and they’ve bonded together, they’ll remain firmly on the top. And that’s what gives you that pillowy effect when you first have that sip of a Guinness draft stout. And that’s also what has created that phenomenon of the Guinness mustache  —   you’ll often see when somebody has that first lovely gulp of a Guinness draft beer, they’re left with some nitrogen residue on their upper lip.” As for how the nitrogen interacts with the beer, Marnell says it’s all about texture. ”What it allows you to do, is to give the drinker a beer that’s very lightly carbonated, but without having the perception of being flat,” he says. Marnell adds, ”The nitrogen is acting as a guard for the beer, it’s blocking off the elements, it’s not allowing the oxygen in the air to get down to the beer and to eat up the little carbonation that’s in there.” Aside from preventing oxidation, Marnell says, that cap of nitrogen should be left in place for another reason: it has a bitter taste that would dominate the beer’s flavor if the whole foamy head is simply slurped off the top of a fresh pint. If you’re the type who enjoys a bit of history with your beer, Marnell has you covered  —   after all, he works for a brewery that’s been in business for centuries, and which first exported beer to America back in 1817. The use of nitrogen dates back to 1954, Marnell says, when a Guinness team led by a scientist named Michael Ash developed a beer dispensing system that uses a mix of gases  —   about 75 percent nitrogen, along with 25 percent of the more standard carbon dioxide. If you want to thank Ash for his contributions to the world’s beer enjoyment, you still can: He’s currently 89 years old and lives in Wales, Marnell says. For those who read this story’s headline and thought that perhaps it had to do with responsible drinking, you’re not wrong. Acknowledging that some people tend to focus more on drinking mass quantities than savoring quality on St. Patrick’s Day, Marnell says that Guinness has launched a campaign asking people ”to respect the beer,” appreciate its flavor, and drink responsibly."
"Today is the day that the Guinness flows freely, tough brisket is transformed into tender corned beef, and we celebrate the Emerald Isle with humble cabbage. This holy trinity of meat, veg and stout is the communion of St. Patrick’s Day. But the history of that meal is relatively short, going back mainly to trade and immigration in the 18th and 19th centuries. Want to feast like St. Patrick would have celebrated more than 1, 600 years ago? Let’s party like it’s 399. First, it’s important to remember that Patrick wasn’t born in Ireland, but in late   Britain, a period of great change.   from Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands were just moving in and beginning to push out the Mediterranean culture and cuisine of the Romans, who had occupied Britain for several centuries. That means a lot of different culinary influences from which to choose your menu. Patrick grew up in ”a high status,     family,” says Caitlin Green of the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Continuing Education. ”We would clearly expect him to have a very late Roman aristocratic lifestyle in his youth.” Think Mediterranean and French wines ”imported on a large scale,” says Mark McKerracher, an archaeologist who blogs about   agriculture at Farming Unearthed. Coriander and dill, McKerracher says, were other ”Roman innovations” that gave dishes Mediterranean flair, as were peas and early relatives of the broad bean. According to Green, game was also moving onto the menu. ”Very little of this was eaten in the   period in general,” she says. ”But there is evidence for a greater consumption of venison and wild birds in the very    era.” As a teenager, Patrick ended up in Ireland, one of the few European outposts Roman influence failed to reach. The popular story, told by Patrick in his Confessio, is that he was stolen away from Britain by pirates and sold into slavery. But Cambridge University’s Roy Flechner has suggested that Patrick was running away from the expectation that he would take over his father’s official duties in Britain  —   and even that Patrick might have been the slave trader, rather than the slave. That changes whether we think he dined like an expat with a mild case of ”affluenza” or subsisted like an enslaved herdsman, as Patrick says in the Confessio. Either way, without Roman influence, the cuisine of Ireland had its own style. Regina Sexton, food and culinary historian at University College Cork, tells us that the local diet was based largely on dairy and grain  —   especially oats. There were oatcakes, ”more like a hard bread or a cracker,” and   mixtures of fruit, nuts and oats. The thick cooking residue from oats might be made into sowens, ”a type of jelly.” And oats were often cooked as oatmeals and gruels. ”As a slave,” says Sexton, gruels ”would be what Patrick ate.” Barley was mostly for making ale wheat was reserved for the highest status of bread. So, if you celebrate Patrick the wealthy rather than Patrick the poor, swap your usual soda bread for a soft wheat loaf and add to the bill of fare English salt, imported wine, and more meat than the average Irish native would have experienced. Much of the evidence for what the ancient Irish ate comes from the Brehon Laws, which covered everything from land rents to beekeeping, as well as marriage, divorce and trespassing  —   ”all the things you would think would be of concern to agricultural communities,” says Sexton. Not surprisingly, Irish stories and legends make for more interesting reading than Irish laws. Even though they were written mostly in the 8th to 12th centuries, many of these tales throw open a window onto the world of   feasts and foods of an earlier time, explains Ger Killeen, professor of Irish and Celtic literature at Marylhurst University in Portland, Ore. The Vision of Mac Conglinne, an anonymous parody of religious ”vision” literature, imagines a castle made of food: ”New butter was the bridge . .. bacon the palisade, the door was dry meat, the threshold was bare bread, and cheese curds the sides.” And fine cream, fresh cheese and aged cheese served as mortar to hold up the house throughout. But there are only two foods that Patrick actually records eating, says Killeen. In his Confessio tale of escape from Ireland, Patrick and those who aided him ”manage to survive on wild honey” and deer, thanks to Patrick’s prayers for hunting success. As history tells us, Patrick eventually returned to Ireland as a missionary and the religious figure we celebrate today. For a meal honoring his later years, Killeen suggests something simple: ”wheat bread, some kind of soft cheese, maybe flavored with garlic.” And salmon, ”a highly esteemed foodstuff.” Sexton seconds the salmon, along with other oily fish, and ”eels, trout, apples, hazelnuts, watercress, wild garlic.” And early varieties of cabbage. It’s hard to get away from cabbage, no matter which era or which Patrick you choose to celebrate. But you can always call on his Roman past with a little coriander and dill in the dressing. And whether you swap your stout for a light barley ale or a glass of red Italian Cesanese, trade the corned beef for some estimable salmon, or make a castle out of Cashel blue cheese, Ireland’s signature brassica will be at home on any of these menus honoring Ireland’s national saint. Anne Bramley is an independent scholar who is the author of Eat Feed Autumn Winter. She writes the Food and Ritual column at The Kitchn."
"As Americans prepare to observe St. Patrick’s Day with pub crawls, parades, corned beef, and green clothing, beer and bagels, let’s not forget about that country for which Patrick is a patron saint. Irish bishops in Nigeria named St. Patrick, who is said to have died on March 17 in the year 461, as the country’s patron in 1961, the same year Ireland opened its embassy in Lagos. The Irish actually have a long history in the country: Irish nationalist Roger Casement  —   executed in Dublin in 1916 for his role in the Irish rebels’ Easter Rising  —   served as a British consular officer in Calabar, in southeastern Nigeria, during the 1890s. Casement’s interest in and sympathy for Africans under colonial rule was unusual for a European in the Victorian era, and likely helped shape his views on social justice. In the early 1920s, Irish priests of the Order of the Holy Ghost established their mission in southern Nigeria. Later St. Patrick’s Society for Foreign Missions, dedicated on March 17, 1932, became one of many Catholic groups in Nigeria providing education both religious and secular. These days Catholics in the country number some 20 million, and Nigerian seminaries send their ordinates all over the world to serve as priests. In fact, since numbers of clergy in Ireland have long been in decline, Nigerian priests have recently been assigned to churches there. Though St. Patrick’s Day is not an official public holiday in Nigeria, plenty of Guinness stout will be consumed anyway. It’s the second most popular beer in the country, brewed with sorghum or maize instead of the European recipe’s barley, and packs a 7. 5 percent alcohol content. And ”Irish diplomats of course celebrate St. Patrick’s Day,” says Eoghan McSwiney, deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Ireland in Abuja. ”The Embassy organizes   St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the capital Abuja, and in Lagos, as well in Accra, Ghana. We are joined by friends and colleagues from the diplomatic corps and from the highest levels of the Nigerian public and private sector.” There is one big difference from American St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, though, and it’s not green bagels. In Nigeria, says McSwiney, ”We don’t organize a parade.”"
"The most   moment of Michelle Obama’s keynote event at yesterday’s South by Southwest conference and festival came when she responded to a question from her friend Queen Latifah by crooning a few bars of the Motown weeper ”It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.” The novelty of a first lady singing (and doing so well enough that Latifah suggested she make a single soon) was charming, if not entirely fresh after all, Obama has rapped with Jay Pharoah, danced to Beyonce and   with Ayesha and Steph Curry. What did feel notable was the comfort with which she broke into song, and the associations both her song choice and her presence as a keynote speaker for a music convention made. The song, like the day’s roundtable discussion in general, place the genial #FLOTUS within a certain historical moment while embodying a circle of empowerment that promises to extend well beyond her time in the White House. The moment is the   era, embodied by the     Latifah and by Missy Elliott, who made a rare speaking appearance at the first lady’s request. The contemporary context is the entertainment milieu that   has forever changed. ”To have written ’Ladies First’ and be sitting with the first lady . .. it’s surreal,” said Latifah, who was an enthusiastic and equanimous moderator throughout the session. In Obama’s vision, however, this meeting of minds across the space between the world of beats and rhymes and politics  —   a meeting centered around conversation among three   women  —   was not a dream. It stood for the reality emerging as she and her husband prepare to leave the White House, one in which  ’s influence on the American vernacular is generally appreciated, and significant energy is being expended to acknowledge women’s influence on   and on popular culture in general. Michelle Obama’s   era is also the Oprah era, a time in which women have gained enormous influence by dominating channels that the   political scene did not always recognize as serious, like daytime and television and mainstream pop music. While that other Lady O was not present in Austin, her spirit, grounded in the optimistic belief that entertainment can be uplifting and that listening to ordinary women can make a difference, permeated the roundtable. The keynote’s two other participants were also in the culture industry: the actress Sophia Bush, known for her role in One Tree Hill, a show beloved by teenage girls and Diane Warren, the   songwriter behind hits for divas like Celine Dion and that multivalent mainstay, Beyonce. Warren, whose   with Lady Gaga, ”Til It Happens to You,” addressed the tough subject of rape and was nominated for an Academy Award, recently penned the charity single ”This Is for My Girls” to benefit Obama’s Let Girls Learn education initiative, which provided a focus for this roundtable. Bush is known for using social media to promote causes ranging from environmentalism to marriage equality. By convening this gathering, placing herself among women whose power originates in their work as   Obama made a strong statement about how pop can influence social consciousness: ”Right now, you’re practicing utilizing your power,” she said to the audience of aspiring musicians and   professionals, congenially challenging them to think of this week’s South by Southwest hustle as a political act. This made sense for Obama, whose insistence that she will never run for president was underscored by her assertion that she can accomplish more beyond the realm of electoral politics. She has often used music to promote her initiatives, so often focused on youth. She does so to reach her daughters’ generation, but also because taking music seriously is fundamental to her own generation, the   babies who listened to Stevie Wonder as children (Obama recalled receiving his Talking Book from an uncle as a   and how the album pushed her to ”think about how you could affect the world”) and found inspiration in the rhymes of conscious rappers like  . One agenda this roundtable fulfilled was placing women at the center of that musical history. Elliott cited    MC Lyte and Latifah herself  —   all rappers who crossed into the pop world and subsequently are sometimes overlooked as central to the genre’s legacy  —   as major influences, and Warren pointed out that Elliott fulfills the same role for many young artists today. Ms. Obama’s playful song choice also made a statement of female pride: First featured in the 1975 teen movie Cooley High and later made popular by the ladies’ favorite vocal group Boyz II Men, the song is exactly what a gathering of women would consider meaningful, no matter whether men might find it romantic fluff. Her warm reminiscence and playful sharing encapsulated the panel’s mood, one in which women sure of their power showed that they could relax and be personal without risking their authority.  Of course,   itself remains a form identified with masculine   just as electoral politics are undergoing a very slow evolution toward gender equity. Latifah addressed this with one of the roundtable’s most pointed statements: ”When we talk about what’s missing in ” she said, ”women is what’s missing in  .” Not at this event. Selecting two of  ’s most beloved and influential female artists as her peers, Obama quietly suggested that a problem usually viewed as still to be solved can be recast, at least somewhat, by taking a different historical view. For a couple of hours, a different vision of music and popular culture dominated, one with women of color at the absolute center, and it didn’t feel unrealistic. Shonda Rimes, Rihanna, and Ava DuVernay all live in this ”alternate” universe too. This welcoming event was very much in line with women’s talk. There were true confessions: Elliott shared the story of her mother, a domestic violence survivor, and Latifah recalled being drawn to activism after seeing loved ones fall to the 1980s crack epidemic and to AIDS. There was laughter about the need for men to ”get it together,” in the first lady’s words (though, as usual in public conversations among women like this one, plenty of love was thrown toward the ”good guys” too). And there was much praise exchanged. Yet by interweaving these   moments with serious ones in which she clearly stated the need to place more women at the table, both as schoolgirls and in the highest halls of power, Obama subtly insisted that women’s expressiveness and achievements are integral to the flourishing of a just society. The Let Girls Learn initiative represents a culmination, or at least a new stage, of a politicized view of girls’ development that has strong roots in popular music. In the 1990s, the idea that girls needed their own language to address power inequities emerged within both the   riot grrrl movement and the music of artists like Elliott and Latifah. The messages carried forward in the music were taken up by activists, but also by organizations like the Girl Scouts and the Clinton administration, which sponsored its own Let Girls   initiative in 1997. Much has changed since then, including a general American willingness to see the pop realm as a force for empowerment, if not always a strictly political one. Michelle Obama’s older daughter, Malia, was born in 1998, at the height of this first wave of politicized,   ”girl power.” As a millennial, she belongs to the generation an event like this one works hardest to reach  —   one in which hashtag activism and meticulously branded direct action remind us that all politics is entertainment, and no less serious for that. The world Malia is entering as an adult is more open, not only to girls’ empowerment, but to pop empowerment. And that is a force Michelle Obama knows how to embrace."
"It was opening night of SXSW Music, and the NPR Music team had a show to put on. And not just a show where we stand outside and talk (though we did that, too) but a show show, a concert on the big stage at Stubb’s BBQ featuring Vince Staples, Margo Price (whose debut album just went up as a First Listen) Mitski, Anderson . Paak, Chicano Batman and Charles Bradley (of whom Stephen Thompson says, ”I just felt like you’re only doled out so much awesomeness in this life, and to be called ’The Screaming Eagle of Soul’ and wear that many rhinestones? You are holding it all for yourself and it’s unfair”). It was a magical night, and a full SXSW experience. After the stage was finally clear, members of the All Songs Considered team  —   Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson, Robin Hilton and Ann Powers  —   trooped out to the humid Austin streets afterwards to recap their days. There were two themes of the day  —   artists finding their voice and getting their due and young artists standing on the brink of stardom. Listen above, keep reading for other highlights from the day and some photos from our show and stay tuned  —   we’ll have videos from the showcase soon. Maren Morris at Spotify House, Several times today, I felt like I was watching an artist stand at the actual brink of superstardom. Like Anderson . Paak, Maren Morris has spent years toiling and refining her sound to get to that tipping point where buzz gives way to massive success. By the time Morris and her band had blazed through their breakthrough   hit ”My Church,” it felt as if they were arriving rather than merely rising.  —  Stephen Thompson, Big Thief at Clive Bar, The songs of Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek are tender and poetic, with punch, philosophical, thoughtful and singable.  —  Bob Boilen, Charles Bradley at Stubb’s, I was going to say the Canadian rock group Dilly Dally was the best thing I saw today (and they were pretty great). Then Charles Bradley took the stage to open the NPR Music showcase at Stubb’s and obliterated everything I’d seen up to that point. Decked out in a glitzy black, bedazzled jump suit, ”The Screaming Eagle Of Soul” and his incredible backing band stunned with the kind of tireless, glittering performance you’d expect from a legend. Bradley is in fact 67 years old with decades of singing behind him. But he’s only put out two albums  —   his first in 2011  —   since Daptone Records discovered him working as a James Brown impersonator. It’s an incredible story and one that’s left the singer feeling nothing but gratitude. After thanking the audience for the opportunity to perform, Bradley told the cheering crowd, ”If I can’t sing from the heart, I don’t want to sing at all. On my journey back to my father’s house I want to show all my brothers and sisters I’m for real.”  —  Robin Hilton, Desiigner at Fader Fort,   artist Desiigner is not even 20 yet, but his songs are pure fire. He was signed by Kanye West’s GOOD Music label. His song ”Panda” was sampled for the song ”Freestyle 4” on West’s album The Life of Pablo. He performs with unmatched energy and his dance contortions are a great show to witness. Although often compared to Future, he is a performer in his own right with a deep voice. The audience went crazy for this guy and he literally dropped the mic on the way out.  —  Monika Evstatieva"
"Silvio Carrillo is walking in the shadow of the U. S. Capitol. Since his aunt was killed, he has spent his days talking to lawmakers and influencers in Washington, trying to convince them that Honduras is a repressive regime that doesn’t deserve U. S. help. His aunt, Berta Cáceres, was a beloved figure on the international stage. Earlier this month, gunmen entered her home and shot her dead. Her killing drew international condemnation. Environmental and human rights leaders called for a fair investigation. Cáceres’ family says it has no trust in the Honduran government so it has embarked on a campaign to try to get the U. S. government to stop the flow of security aid to Honduras. Because of the deep ties between the two countries, this is a Herculean task. Carrillo is headed to another meeting at the Methodist Building in Washington. He takes a deep breath right before he enters the room. About 30   leaders are waiting. They’re sitting around a long wooden table and quiet down as Carrillo begins to talk. As he says thank you, Carrillo begins to cry. He says that Cáceres knew the risks of her work. For years, she had tried to stop a   dam from being built on indigenous land and for years, she had faced threats over her activism. ”We wouldn’t have ever asked her to stop, because we all believe in the mission. We all believe in Berta’s work, because we were trying to make this a better world, a better country for all of our children,” Carrillo says. The details of Cáceres’ killing are still murky. But one thing that is clear is that Honduras has a poor track record on human rights. Geoff Thale, the program director at the Washington Office on Latin America, which advocates for human rights in the region, says that in the past decade almost 200 LGBT activists and 100 journalists have been killed in the country. Opposition figures have also been attacked and in 2014, 12 environmental activists were assassinated. ”It’s a country where there’s a lot of political tension and where political activism can be very dangerous and where there seems to be very little consequence when people are killed,” Thale says. Dana Frank, who studies Honduras at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says Cáceres’ killing marks a shift in the country. Cáceres was one of most outspoken opponents of a coup that ousted a leftist government and last year, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. Her killing, says Frank, is one of the most significant in the country’s history and the ruling class in Honduras is using it as a test. ”Can they kill absolutely anybody, no matter how internationally renowned they are and the U. S. won’t do anything?” says Frank. It’s important to note that the Honduran government has not been implicated in Cáceres’ death. In fact, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández called her killing an ”attack on Honduras.” ”Her death should be investigated,” he said. ”And we demand that those responsible be brought to justice.” The Honduran embassy in Washington declined our repeated requests for comment. Thale thinks how Honduras handles this case will be revealing. Government officials have said the right things so far, says Thale, but will authorities, for example, follow the evidence in the case wherever it may lead? ”A lot of people would say the Honduran political elites are nervous about investigating corruption because . .. where it could lead is to wealthy families and   politicians,” Thale says. For what Thale believes is the first time, Honduras has a lot riding on this investigation. Last year, before Congress approved significantly more money to help Honduras with its military and police operations, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, added some strings. Before Honduras gets half of that money, which will amount to many millions, the State Department has to certify that the country is making progress on things like fighting corruption and making its attorney general more independent. On the floor of the Senate this week, Leahy called on Honduras to ”do the right thing.” ”If they want us to be a partner, we have to have confidence that we can work with them and address the needs and protect the rights of all people of Honduras,” he said. Frank says that the new strings puts the Obama administration in a awkward spot. For decades, Honduras has been an unflinching American ally. The United States has used the country as a base to launch operations in Nicaragua and Guatemala and recently, as other countries have moved left and grown more   the Honduran president has remained loyal. ”That left Honduras as their only remaining standing, potential ally and I think that the U. S. is going to shore this guy up no matter what,” Frank said. Back in Washington, Carrillo takes a break between meetings. He says his aunt was special, that she took after his grandmother. Her house, he says, was always open to anyone who needed help. He remembers one instance when an indigenous woman needed help because her child had diarrhea. She had been carrying him for days and by then, there was nothing his grandmother or Cáceres could do. So they put the boy in a room and lit a candle. ”I walked into the room, I’ll never forget it, and I saw this child,” Carrillo says, crying. ”She saw this everyday and she wanted to put a stop to this.” Carrillo says he’s not optimistic that they’ll get justice. But he thinks the U. S. could nudge Honduras in the right direction. ”This has to be a place where there can be more Bertitas, to prosper and grow and be able to speak out if they want and that’s what Bertita was doing and that was against the wishes of the establishment,” Carrillo says. Two days ago, another indigenous rights activist affiliated with Cáceres was gunned down. The State Department is expected to make a decision on aid in the next few months."
"Pigeons in London have a bad reputation. Some people call them flying rats. And many blame them for causing pollution with their droppings. But now the birds are being used to fight another kind of pollution in this city of 8. 5 million. ”The problem for air pollution is that it’s been largely ignored as an issue for a long time,” says Andrea Lee, with the   environmental organization ClientEarth. ”People don’t realize how bad it is, and how it actually affects their health.” London’s poor air quality is linked to nearly 10, 000 early deaths a year, Lee says, citing a report released by the mayor last year. If people were better informed about the pollution they’re breathing, she says, they could pressure the government to do something about it. Nearby, on a windy hill in London’s Regent’s Park, an experiment is underway that could help  —   the inaugural week of flights by the Pigeon Air Patrol. It all began when Pierre Duquesnoy, the creative director for DigitasLBi, a marketing firm, won a London Design Festival contest last year to show how a world problem could be solved using Twitter. Duquesnoy, from France, chose the problem of air pollution. ”Basically, I realized how important the problem was,” he says. ”But also I realized that most of the people around me didn’t know anything about it.” Duquesnoy says he wanted to better measure pollution, while at the same time making the results accessible to the public. ”So,” he wondered, ”how would we go across the city quickly to try to get as much data as possible?” Drones were his first thought. But it’s illegal to fly them over London. ”But pigeons can fly above London, right?” he says. ”They live  —   actually, they are Londoners as well. So, yeah, I thought about using pigeons. And not just street pigeons, but racing pigeons, because they fly pretty quickly and pretty low.” His next task was to link up with a pigeon racer and his flock. That’s when Brian Woodhouse came into the picture. He’s a member of the Royal Racing Pigeon Association. He’s kept pigeons for about 65 years. Woodhouse has brought to the park a wicker cage holding seven of his racing pigeons. The birds will be fitted with pollution sensors and released in different parts of the city all week. The readings are analyzed to inform Londoners about their air quality. Woodhouse says pigeons are perfect for the project. ”I liked the sound of it,” he says. ”I thought it was an extremely good idea, knowing that the pigeons in the First World War and the Second World War used to fly with messages, vital messages, for our troops and allies.” Today, pigeons can continue to bring vital information, Woodhouse says. He and Duquesnoy begin attaching tiny Velcro harnesses around the pigeons’ bodies. Each little backpack holds a pollution sensor weighing less than an ounce, developed by Plume Labs, an aptly named Paris tech startup. The sensors measure carbon monoxide and other air pollutant levels. ”These little sensors track your exposure to nitrogen dioxide, to ozone, to these gases that impact your health,” says Romain Lacombe, Plume Labs’ founder and CEO. ”And that’s the technology we’re going to fly on the back of a pigeon through London today.” Lacombe says his company has developed a mobile app that tracks pollution in about 300 cities, so that residents can adapt their outdoor activities if the air is toxic. Londoners can get live readings from the Pigeon Air Patrol through Twitter or on a website devoted to the project. So it might be time for Londoners to have more respect for their pigeons. The birds may just be helping to improve the quality of the city’s air."
"I’ve been itching to get a standing desk. After all, America’s sitting itself into an early grave. Sitting is the new smoking. Clearly, a standing desk would stop me from sitting, and standing is just so much better for you than sitting, right? Contrary to popular belief, science does not say so. Too much sitting increases heart failure risk and disability risk, and shortens life expectancy, studies have found. But according to an analysis published Wednesday of 20 of the best studies done so far, there’s little evidence that workplace interventions like the   desk or even the flashier pedaling or treadmill desks will help you burn lots more calories, or prevent or reverse the harm of sitting for hours on end. ”What we actually found is that most of it is, very much, just fashionable and not proven good for your health,” says Dr. Jos Verbeek, a health researcher at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. Verbeek says that the studies he and his   analyzed came to conflicting conclusions about whether   desks reduce sitting time. Even the best research available wasn’t great, the researchers write in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. The studies were either too small to be significant, the scientists say, or were poorly designed. For example, most were not randomized controlled trials, and the longest study followed participants for only six months. In fact, there isn’t really any evidence that standing is better than sitting, Verbeek adds. The extra calories you burn from standing over sitting for a day are barely enough to cover a couple of banana chips. ”The idea you should be standing four hours a day? There’s no real evidence for that,” he says. ”I would say that there’s evidence that standing can be bad for your health.” A 2005 study in Denmark showed prolonged standing at work led to a higher hospitalization risk for enlarged veins. But standing doesn’t have to be harmful, says Lucas Carr, a behavioral medicine professor at the University of Iowa who was not involved in the  . He thinks as long as you stand in moderation, you can still reap some benefits. ”The health benefits of standing are not ” Carr agrees. ”But you’re going to burn more calories standing than sitting. I know it’s not a tremendous amount.” Still, he says, ”those calories every day over many years will add up.” Carr says the finding of the Cochrane review doesn’t mean that standing desks and variations are useless. It just means there hasn’t been enough study of the desks to say either way. ”The state of the science is definitely early,” he says. ”There needs to be longer studies with more people to get a good sense these desks actually cause people to stand.” Carr thinks there is the the potential for   desks to prove useful in preventing healthy office workers from becoming unhealthy. Verbeek is less optimistic. Just because the standing desk or the pedaling desk is in the cubicle doesn’t mean people will get out of the chair and use it. ”Changing behavior is very difficult,” Verbeek says. He thinks redesigning work environments might be a better way to go. ”For example, organize a printer in the corridor that’s further away from your desk,” he says. Or  —   and architects can have this one for free  —   make the one bathroom five flights of stairs up, and restrict use of elevators to people with accessibility needs."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. Judging from the way commentators have been carrying on about the   renaissance of defiantly   outlaw country (you can get the gist from this GQ piece declaring Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson ”Country Badasses Who are Shaking Up the Nashville Establishment”) it would appear that the scene is in sore need of heroines. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t good candidates around. Margo Price is the most promising one for a little while now, she’s been grinding it out beneath the radar, fashioning her vintage sensibilities and spirited persona into a winning combination, and this promises to be the year people take notice. There was a time when Price put most of her energy into fronting a chooglin’ roots rock outfit called Buffalo Clover, performing throwback country on the side with Margo Price and the Price Tags, a loose collective of Nashville talent. When the Price Tags’ bookings picked up, thanks in no small part to her flair for projecting   realness, Price was savvy enough to see the potential in working that musical angle. The crafting of an artist’s narrative and image  —   what autobiographical details and creative inclinations are accentuated whether the music’s framed as a cultural birthright or the fruit of sweat equity, inspiration or willful nonconformity  —   certainly plays a role in how her output’s received, and by whom. Price draws a little bit from column A, but also columns B, C and D, a combination that backs up her bona fides as a   underdog and indie darling in the making. To start with, there was a farm in her family, not to mention a   who penned an early hit for Reba McEntire. Upon moving to Nashville, Price and her   Jeremy Ivey scraped by for years, supplementing their bar gigs by waiting tables, teaching dance classes and installing siding. Here’s the real kicker: They sold their car and hocked her wedding ring to foot the bill for recording at Memphis’s mythic Sun Studios, only to emerge with an album they couldn’t find a label for. Their last hope was Third Man Records mercifully, Jack White’s outfit snatched it up. It’s a compelling story, but the even more remarkable thing is how Price harnesses its emotional authority on her   debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. In the   epic ”Hands of Time,” she unfurls a tale of disheartening setbacks and demeaning indignities, both lived and imagined, starting with a sigh of resignation and clawing her way to stubborn resilience in a   climax. She’s spun a   night into a barroom testament to the temporary relief of heartache (”Hurtin’ [On the Bottle]”) and a brush with the law into a jailhouse lament of forfeited freedom (”Weekender”). ”My old man, he ain’t got the cash to even go my bail,” she moans over a brisk country shuffle. In ”This Town Gets Around,” she’s feisty and indignant, taking on such music business shadiness as the unwanted sexual advances of powerful men, scoffing, ”Well, there’s a saying goes, ’It’s not who you know, but it’s who you blow that’ll put you in the show. ’” You can feel her burning her fortitude as fuel with every   line. While Price and her crack band revive an array of   country sounds from the ’60s and ’70s, leaning on robust guitar twang, her postures and performances occasionally echo a superstar of that era: Loretta Lynn. Witness the likeness to Lynn in Price’s delivery on ”About To Find Out,” as the younger singer’s tart tone and lusty,    directness dress down a deceitful blowhard with tough talk and needling wit. Price proves she can muster a   vocal attack like some of her idols, but she also sings with fantastic elasticity and  . What she’s putting out there is powerful and rings true."
"Five weeks ago, a    German   mix with startling blue eyes fell off a fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean north of San Diego. The dog, named Luna, was miles from land. She was reported missing on Feb. 10 by her owner, fisherman Nick Haworth, who told authorities that Luna was a strong swimmer and would head toward land. But the nearest shoreline was San Clemente Island, home to a U. S. naval facility and about 2 miles from where the dog fell into the water. Sandy DeMunnik, public affairs officer for the base, said staff helped Haworth search the island for the dog, but with no luck. ”He stayed in the area for two more days to look for her, and after a week, we considered her lost at sea and presumed dead,” DeMunnik said, according to ABC News. Crushed, Haworth made peace with Luna’s death, posting on Facebook, ”RIP Luna, you will be greatly missed.” Then, on Tuesday morning, she reappeared. Luna turned up near the naval installation on the island as crew members were arriving for work. ”They saw Luna just sitting on the side of the road wagging her tail,” DeMunnik said, according to ABC. ”Keep in mind, there are no domesticated animals on the island, so it was a stunning sight.” The officers may have been surprised to see a dog, but Luna wasn’t fazed to see the officers. ”They literally opened up the car door, whistled, and she jumped right in,” Navy wildlife biologist Melissa Booker told The San Diego  . The newspaper writes: ”The determined dog had apparently swam to shore and survived on her own for five weeks. She was found to be a bit malnourished but otherwise healthy and uninjured. It appeared she’d eaten small rodents to survive, Booker said.” DeMunnik’s evaluation was the same. She told ABC that Luna was undernourished but in good health, adding that the dog had likely been ”surviving off of mice for the past few weeks.” Haworth’s friend picked up Luna on Wednesday, and she is scheduled to be reunited with Haworth, a    San Diego State student, when he returns from a trip on Thursday. Haworth posted on Facebook, ”Beyond stoked to have Luna back. I alaways knew she was a warrior.”"
"Where is Queen Nefertiti buried? It’s one of the biggest mysteries in Egyptology, and today, archaeologists might be one step closer to an answer. Researchers have been   the walls of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings in search of hidden chambers. Now, NPR’s Leila Fadel tells our Newscast unit that analysis of scans conducted in November shows there are two empty spaces behind the walls. And those spaces may contain organic or metallic material. The presence of organic or metal objects would certainly add weight to the theory that the tomb contains hidden chambers  —   but, as Leila reports, more advanced scans are required before authorities can say for sure. ”And if there are chambers, then Egypt will decide how and when to get into those chambers and see whether this is the burial site of [Tut’s relative] Queen Nefertiti,” Leila says. At a press conference today, Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh   ”declined to comment on whether royal treasure or mummies could be inside,” The Associated Press reported. But he didn’t mince words about what this discovery could mean. ”For Egypt it is a very big discovery  —   it could be the discovery of the century. . .. It is very important for Egyptian history and for all of the world,” Damaty said, according to the wire service. That potential discovery of the century for Egyptology could be hidden in the very site of the biggest discovery of the past century: King Tut’s tomb, which was found by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922. The remarkably preserved burial chamber of the boy king was ”the most intact royal tomb ever found” and contained more than 5, 000 artifacts, National Geographic reports. A 2015 paper by British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves prompted the radar scanning. He argued that new   scans of Tut’s tomb indicate the presence of two hidden doorways. And in a bombshell pronouncement that was initially met with skepticism by many Egyptologists, Reeves said one of the doorways leads to the burial chamber of Nefertiti, ”the tomb’s original owner.” Tut, he proposes, was hastily buried there later. Reeves elaborates in his paper: ”At the time of Nefertiti’s burial within [the possible hidden chamber] there had surely been no intention that Tutankhamun would in due course occupy this same tomb. That thought would not occur until the king’s early and unexpected death a decade later.” Because there was no tomb ready for Tut at the time of his death, the theory goes, Nefertiti’s tomb was expanded to accommodate him. In the complicated Pharaonic family tree, Nefertiti was both Tut’s stepmother and his    according to National Geographic. There are other theories about what might lie behind the walls. For example, Damaty ”says he believes there’s female royalty behind the boy king, but not Nefertiti,” according to CNN. National Geographic reports on the next steps in the investigation: ”Later this month, a team of specialists from National Geographic will travel to Egypt at Eldamaty’s invitation, in order to carry out another series of radar tests, with the hope of confirming [Japanese radar specialist Hirokatsu] Watanabe’s results. At the press conference, Eldamaty mentioned that one of the main purposes of the new scan will be to determine the thickness of the walls, in order to decide the next step of the investigation.” Kara Cooney, an Egyptologist at UCLA who focuses on Tut’s period, tells National Geographic that any discovery would be extremely significant. ”It makes us   at everything,” Cooney said. ”You’re looking at the coffin, at the tomb, at the statues. Everything about this period has to be  .” That’s a sentiment echoed by Reeves in a recent interview with CBS News. ”If I’m wrong, I’m wrong  —   we move on,” he says. ”But I think it’s something we can’t just ignore. Because if I happen to be right, then it will change everything.”"
"One of two eggs laid by a mated pair of bald eagles in Washington, D. C. is hatching, according to officials watching the nest at the U. S. National Arboretum. ”We have a pip in process! !” said an update sent by the American Eagle Foundation on Thursday morning, which clarifies, ”It’s not technically a full pip until there is a full hole.” The hole in the shell appears to have grown larger as of   Thursday, but the eaglet has yet to emerge. The group says it could take between 12 and 48 hours for the eaglet to fully emerge from the shell. A ”pip,” we’ll remind you, occurs when a baby bird breaks through its shell using its beak. You can watch the eagle webcam online to see the young bird hatch  —   but be warned, the American Eagle Foundation says: ”This is a wild eagle nest and anything can happen.” People watching the nest online have been debating the hatch date and discussing the birds using the hashtag #dceaglecam. The two eggs were laid on Feb. 10 and Feb. 14. The second egg is expected to hatch in the coming days. As we reported Tuesday, the foundation says, ”This is the first Bald Eagle pair to nest in this location since 1947,” adding that the two eagles have been dubbed Mr. President and The First Lady. The   also wrote: ”If both eaglets emerge and remain healthy, they would continue a streak of success for their parents, who raised one eaglet last year at the National Arboretum, a   green space and research facility that’s about two miles northeast of the Capitol building.” While we wait for that second egg to hatch, here are some bald eagle fun facts from the National Eagle Center:"
"When we’re reporting on special education, we inevitably run up against questions of how we should refer to students with disabilities and to the disabilities themselves. It’s a minefield, comparable to the tensions and complexity of writing about race and ethnicity. It’s important to get it right. As journalists, of course, we want to be accurate. And clear. And we want to avoid perpetuating stereotypes or giving offense. There are broader issues as well  —   not just for reporters but for teachers, parents, administrators, even the United States Supreme Court. The words we use and the ways we refer to people mirror  —   and shape  —   our perceptions, our attitudes, our behavior. So where to begin? The ”r” word has fallen out of use, and good riddance. ”Handicapped,” too, for the most part. Generally we don’t refer to people as ”disabled,” as in ”he’s a disabled student.” One good rule of thumb: Svoid adjectives. They too easily become labels. Instead, try ”students with disabilities.” From there, though, the rules get more complicated. And so, for help, I called up Kristin Gilger. She’s an associate dean at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. And she’s the director there of the National Center on Disability and Journalism  —   where they’ve put together a style guide to help all of us navigate this minefield. ”Someone once said, ’words matter,’ and they do,” Gilger told me. ”In the journalistic context, there’s the matter of being accurate, and that’s of course our primary concern.” She said it’s important, if you’re going to put someone in a category, to make sure they really belong there. Take blindness, for example. What does it mean to be truly blind? Here’s what the NCDJ style guide says: Use the term blind only when the person has complete loss of sight and the term legally blind when the person has almost complete loss of sight. Other terms also may be acceptable. It is best to ask the person which term he or she prefers and take that into consideration. Commonly used terms include: Limited vision: Acceptable when a person is not legally or completely blind, Low vision: Acceptable when a person is not legally or completely blind, Partially sighted: Used most often in British publications but acceptable if a person is not legally or completely blind, Visually impaired: This general term describes a wide range of visual functions, from low vision to total blindness. It is generally considered acceptable, although, like the term hearing impaired, some may object to it because it describes the condition in terms of a deficiency. And that leads to a really good point, one Gilger made over and over in our conversation: When in doubt, ”our advice to the journalist is to ask the person you’re interviewing.” There are larger issues at stake here beyond accuracy. Like being inclusive with your audience. ”When you write about minority or immigrant communities, it’s the same thing,” Gilger explained. ”If you don’t understand where they’re coming from, their point of view, the meaning of the language they use about themselves, you’re not connecting to that community.” And fundamentally there’s an issue here of how we perceive and define another human being. You have to be careful, Gilger says, not to ”define the whole person as their handicap. You’re not an autistic person, you’re a person who’s been diagnosed with an autistic disorder. That distinguishes between one aspect of a person and the whole person.” Otherwise, there’s a danger of defining people by what they can’t do. And implying that somehow that person is, as the style guide says, ”suffering or living a reduced quality of life.” Gilger gave me a quick example: ”You could make the analogy that you’re not a good artist.” So, she asked, does that mean I’m ” ”? And would that be the one thing I’d want to read in a single sentence that describes me? It’s the same thing: using adjectives to focus on the thing you can’t do. Tough Calls, I asked Gilger what word or issue the center receives the most questions about. Her answer was, to me, surprising: wheelchairs. ”Yeah, it still tends to be the wheelchair thing. ’ ’? Or, ’confined to a wheelchair’? Or is it ’uses a wheelchair’?” There’s quite a detailed explanation on the site if you want the full answer. Here’s another tough call: ”When we first started, it was physical disability. But the ones we find more challenging today are mental disabilities. That’s a complex and growing area of concern.” Autism alone is a huge challenge. ”It wasn’t that long ago,” Gilger said, ”we were just saying ’autistic.’ ” But, as medical science and public awareness have advanced, ”the language has to evolve too to keep up with that.” And she emphasized that all this isn’t about hewing to some notion of political correctness. ”It’s about being accurate.” Of course, accuracy is a moving target. The style guide has recently been updated, ”a process that took us more than a year and a half,” Gilger said in an email. ”However, we do consider it a living document that is, we keep making changes and updates as the language evolves and as people point things out to us.” Working with a graduate assistant and an advisory board, Gilger starts with a word, then they do some Googling and perhaps talk with outside groups. And they’re still coming across new, unfamiliar terms, like ”” which is used to refer to ”people who lost their hearing later in life.” Of the 71 full entries in the style guide, Gilger says, 44 are not addressed in the Associated Press Stylebook, the standard reference guide used by many journalists, including us here at NPR. ”There is widespread disagreement in the disability community. We’re trying to find the mainstream,” she explained. ”We don’t want to be too far behind, or so far ahead that we’re using language people don’t understand.” This story has been updated from an earlier version published in June 2014."
"In a major concession to critics and animal welfare groups, SeaWorld Parks  Entertainment Inc. says it will stop breeding captive killer whales. SeaWorld’s treatment of its killer whales, or orcas, was put in the spotlight three years ago by Blackfish, a documentary that examined the death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was killed by an orca named Tilikum. Since then, in a steady campaign on social media, critics have demanded SeaWorld end its orca breeding program. In an agreement with the Humane Society of the United States, SeaWorld says it now will do so. In a news release, HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle said, ”Today’s announcement signals that the era of captive display of orcas will end.” SeaWorld President and CEO Joel Manby said in the same news release, ”As one of the largest rescue organizations in the world, we will increase our focus on rescue operations  —   so that the thousands of stranded marine mammals like dolphins and sea lions that cannot be released back to the wild will have a place to go.” The director of Blackfish, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, called it ”a defining moment. The fact that SeaWorld is doing away with orca breeding marks truly meaningful change.” For SeaWorld, the agreement resolves an issue that has held up expansion of the company’s San Diego theme park. Last year, the company announced it would phase out theatrical orca shows at SeaWorld, San Diego. Plans for a new, expanded orca habitat were submitted for approval to a state regulatory body, the California Coastal Commission. The commission gave its approval, but only if the theme park agreed to end captive breeding of orcas. SeaWorld went to court, arguing in a lawsuit that the commission doesn’t have the authority or the expertise to make such a demand. But with today’s announcement, SeaWorld is now agreeing to end captive breeding, not just in San Diego, but also at its two other SeaWorld parks, in San Antonio, Texas, and Orlando, Fla. It is a major concession that also signals a change in SeaWorld’s business model. On the company’s blog, SeaWorld announced it is phasing out over the next three years theatrical performances featuring orcas. ”We will introduce new, inspiring, natural orca encounters rather than theatrical shows, as part of our ongoing commitment to education, marine science research and the rescue of marine animals.” SeaWorld has seen attendance decline at its three parks since the release of Blackfish. The company says the decline, in part, is because of the film. The stock price of the publicly traded company has dropped by more than half in the past three years. Industry analysts say SeaWorld needs new attractions to compete with other theme parks, such as Walt Disney Parks  Resorts and Universal Studios Theme Parks. SeaWorld has several new roller coasters in the works and recently unveiled images of a new signature submarine ride it’s planning in San Diego. By ending captive breeding, SeaWorld is moving toward a future that eventually will no longer include orcas. In what might be seen as an ironic twist, the announcement comes as SeaWorld and animal welfare activists are closely monitoring the health of Tilikum. SeaWorld says the orca appears to have a bacterial infection in its lungs that is resistant to treatment, and that its health is ”deteriorating.” Tilikum has been with SeaWorld for 23 years and is one of the park’s most prolific breeders, siring more than 20 calves."
"Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, one of Europe’s most wanted men, has been taken alive during a police raid in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. Abdeslam, 26, had evaded capture for more than four months after the terrorist attacks that killed 130 people on Nov. 13. The news was confirmed by Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel and France’s President Francois Hollande during a joint press conference Friday evening. Abdeslam’s capture is the result of an extensive manhunt that included more than 100 police operations, some under ”very delicate circumstances,” Michel said. According to an interpreter on the BBC, Michel said, ”This evening is, of course, a huge success in this battle against terrorism.” NPR’s Dina   reported that U. S. officials say Abdeslam ”is injured in the leg . .. but is coherent and being treated.” Hollande told reporters that French judicial authorities plan to ask Belgium to extradite Abdeslam. ”I have total confidence in the achievement of these extradition procedures. Abdeslam should be interrogated in France and be judged in France,” he said. Belgium’s Federal Prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt said at a news conference that five people in total were arrested during the day’s operations in Molenbeek. Earlier, Michel and Hollande had talked about a total of three arrests. Three of those taken into custody are ”members of the family that hid Salah Abdeslam,” Van Der Sypt said. They will all be interrogated in Belgium, he said. Video of the operation broadcast on BBC showed heavily armed police surrounding the entrance to an apartment building and pointing their guns toward a top floor. The news service said several explosions were heard at the scene. News of the action comes hours after the Belgian federal prosecutor announced new evidence in the search for Abdeslam. Teri Schultz, reporting from Brussels, told our Newscast unit that Abdeslam’s fingerprints were found in a separate raid on Tuesday. Here’s more from Teri: ”The Belgian federal prosecutor says Salah Abdeslam’s prints were found in a home where police were surprised by heavy gunfire Tuesday, when they arrived to conduct what was expected to be a routine search of an empty apartment as part of the ongoing probe into the Paris attacks. One gunman died and two others exchanged fire with police for several hours before they got away. ”Authorities are not saying if Abdeslam was one of those shooters, nor when the fingerprints may have been left in the home. Abdeslam has been the subject of an international manhunt since fleeing back to Brussels after the attacks in Paris. . .. His brother and several other perpetrators were from Belgium.” The Guardian reported that ”police believe [Abdeslam] played a key role in the logistics of the Paris attacks and escorted the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Stade de France as part of the coordinated assault.” And as The   has reported, ”French police stopped [Abdeslam] in the hours after the Paris attacks as he made his way to Belgium, but police ultimately allowed him to continue on his journey.” Abdeslam’s brother also participated in the deadly attacks  —   he blew himself up at the Bataclan nightclub, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reported in December. Here’s more: ”He’s a Frenchman who was living in Belgium, in this neighborhood of Molenbeek that has spawned the careers of many radicals. And he is thought to have thrown his suicide belt, his explosive belt, in a trashcan in Paris, in the southern part of Paris, because that’s where he was last seen on his cellphone.” Abdeslam narrowly avoided arrest in December in Belgium because of a law prohibiting police raids between 9 p. m. and 5 a. m. Eleanor reported. President Obama spoke by phone with Michel and Hollande after the arrests, the White House said, and ”commended the work of Belgian security services and noted that this significant arrest was the result of hard work and close cooperation between Belgian and French law enforcement authorities.” Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement: ”The reported capture of Salah Abdeslam has been one of the top priorities for European officials, and his apprehension will be critical to bringing to justice a heinous criminal and to filling in many of the remaining gaps in the U. S. intelligence community’s understanding of the Paris attacks.” At the press conference, Hollande said that while important, the arrests are not ”final conclusion of this story.” He said: ”There have been arrests already, and there will have to be more. Because we know that the network was quite widespread in Belgium, in France, in other countries of Europe as well.” This is a breaking news story. As often happens in situations like these, some information reported early may turn out to be inaccurate. We’ll move quickly to correct the record and we’ll only point to the best information we have at the time. Refresh this page for the latest."
"As Californians hope for rain and snow to end the state’s extreme drought, a   rule prohibits reservoirs from filling up in the winter, so some water ends up being released. The rule may sound odd given how chronically dry California is, but it’s actually to prevent a bigger disaster: flooding. In the winter, reservoirs are not allowed to fill up. That’s so they can capture excessive amounts of water that flow out of the mountains during storms. It was a solution engineered to prevent disasters like the massive flooding in 1986 when California was hit with a powerful winter storm. The Folsom Lake reservoir near Sacramento is an example. Drew Lessard manages the reservoir for the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation. It’s filled up with so much water, he says, that authorities are releasing water to empty it out. The reservoir is only at 60 percent capacity and it has to stay that way. Lessard says this is how most reservoirs work in the West. But releasing water is risky if it doesn’t rain again, which is what happened in 1997. ”(The reservoir was lowered) and it was dry the rest of the year and we never really rebounded,” he says. Releasing water isn’t all bad  —   it helps fish and wildlife downstream. But in a drought year, it can make people anxious. Shauna Lorance, who manages a water district near Sacramento, says when reservoirs are releasing water it sends a mixed message. ”For me to explain to customers after everything they’ve done that they need to continue to conserve so it can be spilled is going to be a nightmare,” she says. In light of new challenges, Marty Ralph, who directs the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego, is working on a new way to run reservoirs by relying on weather predictions that have become a lot more accurate. ”If you think about it, the rules, the laws that govern water in the West were created in the 19th century. And yet here we live in the 21st century,” Ralph says. ”Weather predictions have been improving over the last decades.” Instead of emptying out a reservoir preemptively in case of a storm, managers could keep the reservoir fuller with an eye on the weather. ”(If a storm happens) they’d have three, four, five days’ lead time  —   enough to release that extra water, get it out of the way safely,” Ralph says. But if storms don’t appear, that water would be saved. Greg Kukas of the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that sets flood rules for reservoirs, says the question is whether weather forecasts are accurate enough. ”We see potential. What we’re not clear on yet is what the risks associated with that potential might be,” Kukas says. ”When it comes to forecasting the size of events that we’re most concerned about, they . .. are about 20 percent off.” Getting it wrong is not an option. If the dam overflows, it could flood hundreds of thousands of people downstream. ”Yeah, the consequences . .. you don’t even want to imagine them,” Kukas says. He says officials will decide whether to run Folsom reservoir using weather forecasts next year. If it works here, it could change the way water is managed across the West."
"Mitt Romney will cast his vote for Ted Cruz in Tuesday’s Utah GOP caucuses, he announced on Facebook Friday afternoon. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the 2012 Republican presidential nominee is rooting for the Texas senator to win the nomination or that he’s endorsing his bid. Instead, the choice is a continuation of Romney’s broader strategy to deny Donald Trump the GOP nomination and force an open convention this summer in Cleveland. And perhaps most important, Romney is arguing that a vote for John Kasich, the only other remaining candidate in the race, could help boost Trump. Last week Romney campaigned for the Ohio governor in his home state, but underscored it wasn’t an endorsement. But now, Romney writes that ”a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail.” Earlier this month, Romney lambasted Trump as a ”a con artist” and ”a phony, a fraud” in a speech in Salt Lake City but didn’t make an outright endorsement. Romney also now explicitly endorses an open GOP convention, where an   alternative could be nominated from the floor  —   possibly Romney or his 2012 running mate,   Speaker Paul Ryan. Both men have denied their interest."
"Donald Trump is the GOP delegate leader and has the clearest path to the presidential nomination of any remaining candidate. But does he have an electoral path to 270 in November? There’s a basic math problem for any Republican nominee.  In every one of the past six presidential elections, Democrats have won states that add up to about 240 electoral votes  —   pretty close to the majority needed to win. Republicans have won about 103 electoral votes in each of the past six elections, so there’s a big hill to climb. Any GOP nominee has little room for error and would have to win all the big battleground states  —   Ohio, Florida, Virginia  —   or else find some blue states they can flip to red. That alternative route is what the controversial real estate magnate says he can bring to the table this fall. Trump claims he is bringing in so many new voters to the Republican fold that he can win traditionally blue states, like New Jersey, Michigan or even New York. At a speech earlier this month in Michigan, Trump argued, ”These are states that a normal Republican, because I’m not a normal Republican in any way, a normal Republican cannot think in terms of, frankly, I hate to say this, cannot think in terms of bringing in Michigan.” White voters are still key for Republicans, and that’s who Trump appeals to most.  After the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee commissioned a   political ”autopsy” report. It said in order to win the White House again, the GOP had to become more competitive with minority voters, particularly Hispanics. But there were contrarian voices. Even before Trump began his march, some GOP strategists were saying minority outreach is crucial in the long run but not necessarily right away. ”If we are not going to do that, there is a way to win the presidential election by goosing the white vote. The sky is not yet falling. We are on the brink, but we are not there yet,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. Trump, with his   stands on trade and immigration, might be just the candidate to eke out one more electoral college win thanks to a largely white vote. ”Trump could make the map larger. Because of where he’s standing with white voters right now, he would have the Democrats on their heels particularly in the industrial Midwest,” predicted O’Connell. Even Republicans who are no fans of Trump admit it may be possible. ”l see Donald Trump as a wrecking ball,” said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary for George W. Bush and one of the   of the RNC’s 2012 autopsy. ”He’s currently swinging through the Republican Party, and destroying our positions on entitlement reform and on free trade.” ”But like all wrecking balls, he’s going to swing in another direction too, and that will be going through the Democratic Party, wrecking their support among traditional     voters,” Fleischer continued. ”That’s the Donald Trump that we’ve seen so far. He changes everything.” For Democrats, demographics cut both ways. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg has studied   white voters since the 1980s. Back then, he wanted to find out why these voters switched from his party to the GOP. Now, more than three decades later, Greenberg wonders if the story of Trump could be called ”The Revenge of the Reagan Democrats.” ”The Reagan Democrats are alive with the angry white male who’ve made themselves felt in the Trump primaries,” the Democratic pollster acknowledged. But, Greenberg said, there’s a big unknown variable still: ”The question is: Are there enough of them, and what’s the price of trying to reach them?” There’s no question the white   vote is shrinking.    voters were about half of the electorate in 1992. Now they make up a third. But in Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, they still make up half of eligible voters. Those voters are exactly Trump’s base, but turning them out won’t be easy. In the last election, white    voters had a turnout rate of about 57 percent, while 80 percent of white   voters showed up. Ultimately, Trump would need an unprecedented turnout among these voters. Some analysts calculate that Trump would need at least 65 percent of the white vote to win 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney got 59 percent. ”He would have to pull a rabbit out of the hat to do this,” Brookings Institution demographer William Frey said of Trump. ”The demography is against him in a lot of the country, even though we see these huge crowds coming out at his rallies.” Trump himself is a big motivator, but he cuts both ways. Yes, he has been able to attract thousands (he says millions) of new voters to the GOP primaries, but in a general election he’d also motivate his opponents. For every white   male Trump turns out in the Rust Belt, he could also bring out a   suburban woman and a newly registered Latino to vote against him in another part of the country. ”The problem with the theory and the strategy is that, I think almost immediately, you’ll see other states like Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada  —   states that have had a growth of both ethnic diversity, immigrant diversity but also a rise of cosmopolitan,   populations,” Greenberg said, ”and those voters don’t like Donald Trump.” Ultimately, Democrats aren’t sure what to think. For every bit of Democratic schadenfreude at the GOP’s current disarray, there’s an equal amount of anxiety about Trump’s potential in the fall. David Plouffe, who was President Obama’s former chief strategist, told Politico’s Glenn Thrush recently that Trump is still a wild card. ”You just don’t know,” Plouffe said in Politico’s ”Off Message” podcast. ”In Virginia, I think Trump would, in a general election, do very, very poorly in Northern Virginia. But does he   Romney and [2008 nominee John] McCain, for instance, and even Bush in the southwestern part of the state? He could. We just don’t know.” So far, Democrats and Republicans are left asking the same question: If Donald Trump has broken all the rules of politics so far, why couldn’t he break some more?"
"Someone yells a  ! from the audience in the moment before Margo Price and her backing band, the Price Tags, launch into ”Tennessee Song.” The tune, from Price’s debut album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, stomps like a southern   with heavy leads from the harmonica and electric guitar, and a psychedelic   that takes the Volunteer State cosmic. Set List, Producers: Saidah Blount, Mito   Otis Hart Technical Director: Josh Rogosin Director: Mito   Videographers: Nickolai Hammar, Katie Hayes Luke, Cameron Robert, A. J. Wilhelm, Lizzie Chen Editor: Nickolai Hammar Audio: Timothy   Mobile Assistant Audio Engineer: Loretta Rae Production Assistants: Erin Conlon, Nathan Gaar Special Thanks: SXSW, Stubb’s BBQ Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann. Support for NPR Music comes from Blue Microphone."
"Medicare beneficiaries may get dinged with higher prescription drug bills this year because more than half of covered drugs in standalone plans require them to pay a percentage of the cost rather than a flat fee, an analysis from consulting group Avalere Health says.   percent of covered drugs in Part D drug plans in 2016 are subject to this   coinsurance, the Avalere analysis found. That means patients are on the hook for a percentage of the costs, which can be much higher than a traditional copay, which is flat. If a drug costs $200, instead of making a $20 copayment, they may owe 20 percent of the cost, or $40. The percentage of drugs requiring coinsurance has climbed steadily, increasing from 35 percent in 2014 to 45 percent last year. That percentage is approaching   of all covered drugs. More coinsurance makes beneficiaries’ drug costs less predictable, said Caroline Pearson, a senior vice president at Avalere. It may also result in fewer affordable options if patients can’t achieve any savings by substituting drugs in the same therapeutic class, she said. The shift toward coinsurance also means that Medicare beneficiaries will have to rely to a greater extent on   tools like the Medicare plan finder to figure out how much they may owe out of pocket. Medicare Part D plans typically divide drugs into five tiers with different levels of cost sharing. In the past, coinsurance may have been limited to   specialty drugs, but that’s changing. Last year, about   of people in drug plans faced coinsurance in more than one drug tier this year the figure is 96 percent, according to Avalere. Medicare Advantage managed care plans aren’t shifting to coinsurance to the same degree as the standalone drugs plans that accompany traditional Medicare coverage, the analysis found. In 2016, 26 percent of covered drugs in Medicare Advantage plans required coinsurance. ”On the Medicare Advantage side, the premium includes both medical and drug benefits, and the drug piece is smaller,” so the incentive to tightly manage drug costs may be lower in Medicare Advantage plans, Pearson said. Please contact Kaiser Health News to send comments or ideas for future topics for the Insuring Your Health column."
"California’s insurance exchange is threatening to cut hospitals from its networks for poor performance or high costs, a novel proposal that is drawing heavy fire from medical providers and insurers. The goal is to boost the overall quality of patient care and make coverage more affordable, said Peter Lee, executive director of the Covered California exchange. ”The first few years were about getting people in the door for coverage,” said Lee, a key figure in the rollout of the federal health law. ”We are now shifting our attention to changing the underlying delivery system to make it more cost effective and higher quality. We don’t want to throw anyone out, but we don’t want to pay for bad quality care either.” It appears to be the first proposal of its kind in the country. The exchange’s   board is slated to vote on it next month. If approved, insurers would need to identify hospital ”outliers” on cost and quality starting in 2018. Medical groups and doctors would be rated after that. Providers who don’t measure up stand to lose insured patients and suffer a black eye that could sully their reputations with employers and other big customers. By 2019, health plans would be expected to expel poor performers from their exchange networks. The idea has already sparked fierce opposition. Doctors and hospitals accuse the exchange of overstepping its authority and failing to spell out the specific measures they would be judged on. Health insurers, normally at odds with providers, have joined them in the fight. The insurers are balking at the prospect of disclosing their negotiated rates with providers. Health plans have long resisted efforts that would let competitors or the public see the deals they make with doctors and hospitals. But scrutinizing the negotiated rates would help the exchange identify   providers and allow policyholders with high deductibles to see the differences in price before undergoing a surgery or imaging test. Lee said it’s time for the exchange to move beyond enrollment and flex its market power on behalf of its 1. 5 million members. He said insurers haven’t been tough enough on hospitals and doctors. Other public exchanges or large employers could try to replicate the idea, putting more pressure on providers and insurers. Lee has shared his proposal with other state marketplaces, government officials and employer groups to promote similar efforts. Still, there are limits to this strategy. Exceptions would be granted if excluding a hospital or doctor from a network meant an area wouldn’t have a sufficient number of providers. Insurers could appeal and offer other reasons for keeping a provider in the network. ”California is definitely ahead of the pack when it comes to taking an active purchasing role, and exclusion is a pretty big threat,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. ”There may be a dominant hospital system that’s charging through the nose, but without them you don’t have an adequate network. It will be interesting to see how Covered California threads that needle.” The composition of networks has typically been left up to insurers. Until now, most of the discussion has centered on the proliferation of narrow networks, with a limited range of providers, sold under the Affordable Care Act as a way to hold down rates. A study in 2015 found that 75 percent of Covered California plans had narrow physician networks, with more restricted choices than all but three other states. ”I don’t know of anyone even close to trying this,” said Dan Polsky, the study’s author and executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. ”I applaud Covered California for being bold to improve quality and reduce costs, but I worry about the implementation.” Polsky said measuring quality can be complicated, and steps must be taken to ensure hospitals and doctors aren’t penalized for treating sicker patients or serving   areas. Most   efforts use financial bonuses and penalties rather than exclusion. Under the Covered California plan, hospitals would be judged on a wide range of performance and safety measures, from rates of readmission and   infections to adverse drug events. The exchange said it will draw on existing measures already tracked by Medicare and other groups, and it will work with hospitals, consumer advocates and other experts over the next 18 months to finalize the details. The California Hospital Association said the exchange is moving too fast and acting too much like a regulator. ”The devil is in the details, and the rapidity of this concerns us,” said Dr. David Perrott, chief medical officer at the state hospital trade group. ”We understand   purchasing is here in some form and we do not oppose that. But Covered California is charging ahead with this assessment and trying to figure out the answers when it hasn’t been worked out.” California physicians warn that the exchange’s proposal could further reduce networks that are already too thin for patients. ”Right now, one of the biggest problems in health care is limited access to specialty care. This allows more narrowing of the networks under spurious guidelines,” said Dr. Ted Mazer, a board member of the California Medical Association and a head and neck surgeon in San Diego. Charles Bacchi, chief executive of the California Association of Health Plans, predicted that Covered California’s idea will backfire, discouraging hospitals and doctors from participating in the exchange and driving up premiums as a result. ”It’s the right goal but the wrong approach,” Bacchi said. ”Covered California is proposing a   arbitrary measurement system that carries a big stick. This can make it difficult for health plans and providers to work together constructively.” This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, which publishes California Healthline, a service of the California HealthCare Foundation. Follow Chad Terhune on Twitter: @chadterhune."
"The Clan is a mostly true, occasionally comic thriller about an Argentine family that made kidnapping its family business. For a surprisingly long time in the 1980s, the    Puccios seemed sincerely convinced that the family that slays together stays together, although you’d never guess that backstory when you meet   Alejandro Puccio on screen, scoring a goal in a championship rugby match. He’s the team’s best player, popular,   handsome, with a job in his family’s sporting goods store. And also in the family’s other business  —   one they don’t talk about. In a country where a recent military dictatorship ”disappeared” tens of thousands claiming they were subversives, the Puccios have taken to kidnapping their own neighbors with a ruthless efficiency they learned from the authorities. One victim, a teammate of Alejandro’s, is pulled from a car in an abduction so much like the regime’s political kidnappings, that his first impulse is to yell ”No fuimos nada!” (”We didn’t do anything! ”) The military is no longer in charge, but Alejandro’s father doesn’t think democracy will last. And as he still has friends in high places, he’s decided to do for personal profit what the   regime did for political control. A ransom will be paid, and Alejandro expects his teammate will then be released. It takes him a while to realize that that’s not really his father’s game plan. El Clan, as the film is known in Argentina, was a monster hit there, partly because director Pablo Trapero makes it easy to see this family as a   for Argentine society  —   Dad, brutal and dictatorial, riding herd over family members who are aware of what’s happening even if they’re not directly participating. There’s an eerie,    quality to the way life goes on despite what everyone knows are the horrors being committed out of sight. Scenes with the family washing dishes, say, with noise from the television not quite drowning out the shouts or pounding of a captive in the basement. The director uses a pop soundtrack from the period much as Martin Scorsese would  —   an older woman being abducted to the tune of ”Just A Gigolo,” say  —   lending the film a   aesthetic. That the gangsters in this case were real, and that they learned their trade from a gangster government, makes The Clan an intriguingly unnerving little civics lesson."
"When it comes to milk production, Gigi the cow is queen. ”She’s the diva of all divas,” says Robert Behnke, a Brooklyn, Wis. dairy farmer and Gigi’s owner. And she’s earned that diva status: Earlier this year, she produced more milk in one year than any other cow had done before  —   just shy of 75, 000 pounds of milk, roughly equivalent to 8, 700 gallons. That’s triple the national average for a dairy cow to produce in a year. Like an Olympic sprinter, she has a nutrition plan, a doctor who sees her regularly and technology to measure her progress. But really, it’s her massive stature that helps her produce such incredible amounts of milk. She weighs nearly a ton and she’s     . Behnke says she’s as wide as a grown man’s shoulders. She’s built to produce. Gigi is a Holstein  —   that breed of iconic black and white dairy cows. And her   year tells the dairy industry that, for right now, 75, 000 pounds of milk in a year is the threshold for what Holsteins’ bodies are capable of. But that threshold has been changing for years. Since dairy cows were first brought to the United States, their owners have been trying to coax more and more milk out of them. They’ve done that through dairy parlor design, barn layout, feed rations, milk scheduling and hormone treatments. Now the focus is on genetics: Cows are being bred to be larger, hungrier, and more productive. But this drive to raise   hulking Holsteins has some prominent livestock advocates ringing alarm bells. Thousands of new calves are born every day on the country’s 46, 000 dairy farms. Most are the product of artificial insemination and other reproductive technologies meant to breed more productive, more efficient cows. Wide adoption of artificial insemination in the U. S. dairy herd began in the 1970s. These days, the largest cattle genetics companies, like   Alta Genetics and Ohio’s Select Sires, hand out catalogs to prospective semen and embryo buyers, with charts for studs and dams with measurements on everything from teat length to udder depth to rump width. Farmers are also trying embryo transfer technology and sexed semen, which is processed to allow dairy farmers to only create daughter calves. With genetic improvements, American milk production has increased at a quickened pace. In the last 10 years, production per cow has gone up 14 percent. Modern Holsteins are now ”definitely bigger than the beef cows,” says Tom Lawlor, a geneticist with the Holstein Association USA. ”We’re just sifting through the cattle, identifying the ones that are just a little bit more productive, more healthier, and trying to get more progeny from them and fewer from the other ones,” Lawlor says. Like nearly everything in agriculture, the increase in milk production doesn’t come without a few  . ”Instead of going for maximum milk production, let’s optimize it,” says Temple Grandin, a Colorado State University animal science professor who has been critical of the dairy industry. A narrow focus on production blinds dairy farmers to other important health issues on the farm, like lameness and a drop in reproduction rates, she says. Smaller cows tend to produce less milk, but last longer and calve more often. It may not be as profitable right away, but it pays off, she adds. ”If you go for the big, gigantic Holsteins, you only get two years of milking,” Grandin says. ”That’s not very sustainable.” Even the cows’ height brings up an animal welfare issue. Grandin, who stands at    says she has seen Holstein steers with shoulders as tall as she is. ”They don’t fit on the trucks and they’re tearing up their backs. And we have a height limitation due to bridges,” Grandin says. ”You’re not going to change that.” Some dairies have begun to back off on production and breed smaller, but hardier cows, Grandin says. She praises large, progressive dairies like   Fair Oaks Farm, which lets visitors tour its facility, complete with a rotating milking apparatus. If breeding   cows has some drawbacks, one way to coax more milk out of the herd is to focus on cow comfort and handling. On a cold winter morning at a farm with nearly 2, 000 cows in Colorado’s northeastern corner, veterinarian Doug Ford walks past an open dirt pen where the cows are able to move around. ”Just look at these cows, look how content they are,” Ford says. ”They are just enjoying the morning.” As the veterinarian for several large dairies near Brush, Colo. his philosophy on increasing production comes down to handling. Even cows with impeccable pedigrees will have trouble producing if they’re not treated well, Ford says. He teaches dairy staff   methods, which allow the animals to move more freely between the milking parlor and their pens, focusing on how workers place their bodies in relation to the large bovines. ”In the industry we all have the same feed trucks, the same vaccines,” Ford says. ”What sets one operation apart from the other? It’s the people, and it’s the way they treat the animals.” Luke Runyon reports for Harvest Public Media and is based at member station KUNC in Greeley, Colo. "
"John Koethe is not a hip new poet writing about hip new things, but, at 70, he’s deeply worth reading. His tenth collection takes its title —  and the title of one of its best poems —  from the seminal John Cheever story about a suburban man who decides to get home one day by swimming through his neighborhood pools, which he imagines as a river. Koethe reads the story as ”A   a life from the perspective of disillusionment and age,” and that is essentially what Koethe’s book is, too. Koethe has taught and written philosophy in addition to his poetry, and a supposition of difficulty has always hung vaguely around his poems. Though they often deal with metaphysical subjects, they’re not difficult at all. If philosophy leaves any mark on them, it’s in the logical way Koethe thinks through his feelings in his lines (though that’s hardly unique to him) and in their skepticism: this is a secular poetry, and often veers away at the last second from transcendence in favor of something more reasonable, like disappointment. Koethe recalls his younger self ”Writing the poems I was sure would make my name,” but immortality, the grail of every poet since time immemorial, is shrugged off over and over: Yet why would anyone want to be immortal? Immortality isn’t what it used to be: the literary versionComes too late to do you any good, and as for the immortalSoul, what would it be like to lie awake for all eternity, Without anything ever changing? Sobered by advancing age, Koethe finds himself, instead, tempted by the graspable quotidian, the ”minutia. ..little highs defining   In need of definition: the package on the   The email, the unexpected phone call.” Koethe’s real struggle —  a very common one, and not just to poets —  is between the abstract and limitless horizons of the mind, and the banal, yet finally vitalizing facts of everyday life. In this way, he is like the   poets who were his mentors and examples, the writers of the   New York School, John Ashbery and James Schulyer (both of whom Koethe name checks and imitates in this book) especially, who tried to reconcile romantic spirits with the rhythms of contemporary speech and pop culture. Death is the humdrum reality that most preoccupies Koethe in these poems it feels palpably closer to him: ”I realize almost everybody in this poem is dead now,” he writes in a long account of times past. He longs for ”home: a place you’  Been and think you’ll always be, a   You know you can return to” and finally feels bereft and afraid when, looking for it, he realizes ”there was nothing, nothing I could see.” What could be more straightforward and universal? The past disappears, we’re going to die, and it’s terrifying. The thing is, I find myself deeply seduced by Koethe’s bald existential terror I feel companioned. And I’m interested in a mind that can formulate such fathomless thoughts so plainly. These poems won’t shatter the universe, but that’s precisely their point, the tragedy they lament: that as individuals we are small and the universe pays our seemingly vast inner lives no mind. Koethe seeks to ease his mounting fear by talking —  by writing —  himself through it, and listening in is a perverse pleasure, and a palpable comfort. Craig Morgan Teicher is a writer and editor, most recently of the collection, Once and for All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz, releasing April 2016."
"In Brussels, the European Union and Turkey have reached a deal aimed at stemming the massive flow of people into Europe. It will likely impact tens of thousands of migrants and refugees. European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted that the sides unanimously agreed to terms. At a news conference announcing the deal, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davatoglu said, ”The agreement today has a humanitarian dimension, because the main objective of all these efforts was to prevent the deaths of children, women, youngsters, in the Aegean sea or in different parts of our neighborhood.” Turkey stands to gain billions of dollars as a result of the agreement  —   money that Davatoglu said would go toward supporting migrants in Turkey. It also gains   travel into Europe for its citizens, in return for taking in migrants who have traveled to Europe. Tusk, speaking at the news conference, said that starting Sunday, all migrants traveling illegally from Turkey into Greece will be returned to Turkey. Implementation of the deal is to be phased in gradually. Reporter Lauren Frayer in Brussels tells our Newscast unit more about the outline of the agreement: ”The deal will essentially make Turkey a refugee buffer zone between Syria and Europe. Thousands of new migrants and refugees landing in Greece will be pushed back across the Mediterranean Sea to Turkey. There they’ll have their asylum applications processed, for resettlement in any one of 28 European Union countries. ”Officials say it’ll be a       —   for every migrant returned to Turkey, a Syrian refugee will be granted asylum in the EU  —   up to an initial 72, 000 people. ”In exchange, Turkey will get billions in EU aid, to pay in part for new refugee camps it’ll have to construct. The EU has also agreed to accelerate talks on Turkey joining its union.” British Prime Minister David Cameron has said the plan would also be a step toward ”busting the business model of these people smugglers, and so therefore breaking the link between getting in a boat and getting settlement in Europe.” One big criticism of the deal, as Lauren points out, is that it ”only addresses resettlement of Syrians  —   what about all those Afghans, Iraqis, Eritreans?” This plan, which EU leaders have framed as pragmatic, has been broadly criticized by rights groups and by migrants themselves. ”Let’s not confuse desperation for legality when it comes to Europe’s proposed refugee deal with Turkey,” Amnesty International said in a statement. ”Every government in Europe will have to declare its hand this week: does it uphold the right to seek asylum, or does it subordinate that right to horse trading with a country that has an inadequate record of respecting it.” Amnesty is calling for ”  resettlement of refugees to Europe and elsewhere.” After the deal was finalized, Amnesty U. K. tweeted, ”This is a dark day for the refugee convention, a dark day for Europe and a dark day for humanity.” Ahead of his meeting with EU leaders on Friday, Davatoglu batted back at the widespread criticism. ”For us, for Turkey, [the] refugee is not an issue of bargaining, but an issue of values . .. all humanitarian values, as well as European values,” he said in comments to reporters, published by Anadolu Agency. ”Turkey has received 2. 7 million refugees, without any significant assistance from anywhere.” Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation for migrants stuck in Greece is growing more desperate. Countries north of Greece have blocked access for migrants, creating a bottleneck that has left at least 40, 000 people unable to continue their journeys. At least 12, 000 are stuck at the Idomeni camp along Greece’s border with Macedonia, Doctors Without Borders reports."
"Just after President Obama and I concluded our interview  —   and after the microphones and cameras clicked off  —   he added a thought. Senate Republicans’ vow not to consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the U. S. Supreme Court, he said, could have profound consequences for the high court and the justices themselves. ”The thing that could be lost,” said Obama, is the ”collegiality” of the court, the ability to work together. When the confirmation gets so out of whack that it is ”just impossible,” he said, that could bleed over and eventually erode ”the ability to disagree without being disagreeable” that is the hallmark of an independent judiciary. In a   interview about the nomination, the president said that positive reviews about Garland from Republican senators were a significant factor in his decision to nominate the appeals court judge for a seat on the Supreme Court. He called Garland ”one of the best judges, not just in the country, but of his generation.” And yet Garland was the   twice before, when Obama filled two previous openings on the Supreme Court. So why was the    judge chosen this time? ”It is my belief that now more than ever his voice would serve the court well, would help to burnish the sense that the Supreme Court is above politics and not just an extension of politics,” said Obama, adding that Garland has the kind of calm voice that would end up ”increasing the American people’s confidence in our justice system.” A few minutes later, the president was even more pointed about wanting a judge who could get confirmed. ”My goal was to actually confirm a justice who I thought could do an outstanding job,” he said. ”And Merrick Garland fits that bill.” Garland’s Rough Road Ahead, Conservative groups are already attacking Garland, sometimes citing reasons, sometimes opposing the nomination simply because it was made by Obama. So I asked the president about Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s pledge to make any nominee ”a piñata.” The president said he and Garland had a ”candid” conversation about being in the eye of a confirmation hurricane, and what that means especially for the nominee’s family. ”For those of us who are more often in the scrum of politics,” said Obama, ”we call folks like Judge Garland ’civilians.’ And so suddenly being placed in a war zone like this is something that you want to make sure they’re mindful of.” I asked the president about reports that Republicans had sent a   message to the White House indicating that they would confirm Garland in a   session after the election if a Democrat wins the presidency. He dodged the question, saying that he had not had any such conversations with Republicans. Then he pivoted to say that it was Garland’s record as a ”consensus builder” that would serve the nation well on a Supreme Court so sharply divided on many issues. ”I think that’s a valuable quality that has been reinforced by the statements that were made by Republicans,” he said. Obama said he had offered the nomination to Garland over the weekend, prompting me to observe that the nominee did a pretty good acting job at a small charity dinner Sunday night where he maintained that he didn’t think he would get the nod. Interviewing The Candidates, Every time there is a Supreme Court vacancy, reporters write about the interviews that presidents conduct with the finalists. So I asked Obama what he asks in these interviews, since it would clearly be inappropriate to ask about a potential nominee’s views on a specific controversy or case. Obama said that he sometimes asks ”about family and background and what made you want to be a judge. You learn a lot just by talking to people about what their story is. ”When you hear about the care with which [Garland] dealt with the victims and the families who had been affected by the Oklahoma City bombing, you get a sense of who that person is.” The president said he reads the candidates’ legal opinions, and as a former professor of constitutional law himself, he gets a pretty good idea of ”how they approach a case.” And he likes to ask potential nominees how they approach a legal question when the text of the Constitution is ambiguous. It gives him ”some sense of the their judicial philosophy.” In our interview, the president made clear he wants a hearing and a vote on the Garland nomination now, not after the election. He said he intends to take his argument to the American people, on the road and elsewhere in the coming weeks, and he maintained that Republicans have now taken Senate prerogatives to the constitutional breaking point. ”For the first time in anyone’s memory,” said Obama, ”you have the head of the Senate saying, ’I won’t meet with a nominee. I won’t provide a nominee a hearing. I will not provide a nominee a vote.’ ” Yes, he acknowledged, there are always some politics involved in the nomination process. He acknowledged too his own role in seeking to prolong the debate on the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito in 2006. But, he observed, Alito was not denied a hearing or a vote, a situation dramatically different from now. The Consequences Of Refusal, If Republicans refuse any consideration of this nomination, he said, not only would the Supreme Court seat remain vacant for more than a year, but there would be a new precedent for senators to stymie the confirmation process as never before. And presidents of either party would only be able to fill court vacancies when their party controlled the Senate. ”At that point the judiciary becomes a pure extension of politics. And that damages people’s faith in the judiciary,” Obama said. He noted that a   Senate confirmed Justice Anthony Kennedy’s nomination in the last year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and he suggested that current Senate Republicans are defying the intent of the Founding Fathers. ”George Washington nominated a couple of Supreme Court justices in his last year,” Obama observed, noting puckishly that President Washington ”had better poll numbers, I’m sure, than I did.” ”What’s particularly ironic,” added Obama, is the number of Republicans who profess ”respect for the founders’ intentions” who are claiming that they would now ”read into the Supreme Court nomination process” that a seat should remain vacant for ”an entire year . .. because there’s an election going on.” Obama professed to be puzzled by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s assertion that the Senate should let the American people decide, as part of the election, who gets to fill this Supreme Court seat. ”In fact, the American people did decide, back in 2012 when they elected me president of the United States,” he said. I asked the president if he could really blame Republicans for trying to prevent a significant ideological shift on the court, in hopes that they’ll win the presidency nine months from now. ”This is just raw politics,” Obama said, then expressed what he presumes is the basis for Republican opposition: ”We don’t want somebody who’s been nominated by a Democrat.” While Obama said he understands that Republicans are ”worried and scared” about an uprising among their base voters, there are times, he said, to stand up and be counted for the good of the country. And what of the president’s own base of voters? Many progressives note that 4 out of 5 of the judges on Obama’s Supreme Court shortlist were minorities or women, or both. Yet he picked the only white male, a centrist liberal, not someone who would, in the view of some progressives, ”shake up” the debate on the Supreme Court. Obama noted that he has appointed far more women, minorities and openly gay judges to the lower courts than any other president. ”My record of appointing a judiciary that reflects the country is unmatched,” he said. ”When it comes to the Supreme Court, I’ve appointed two women, one Hispanic, and in each case the good news is, is that I appointed the person who I absolutely thought was the best person for the job. In this case, Merrick Garland is the best person for the job.”"
"President Obama spoke with NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg on Thursday about why he selected Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, why he thinks the judge deserves a hearing from the Senate and the impact Obama sees for the U. S. judiciary if that doesn’t happen. Nina writes about the conversation here a full transcript is below.  NINA TOTENBERG: Mr. President, Judge Garland was   twice before. So why now and not twice before? PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think Merrick Garland is one of the best judges, not just in the country, but of his generation. And it is a testimony to how good he is that, you know, he has cropped up as a potential Supreme Court justice for a very long time. I have always been a huge admirer of his. I’ve always felt that the way he approaches cases  —   the intellect, the care to follow precedent, the consensus building  —   were qualities that would make him an outstanding Supreme Court justice. This moment in our history  —   a time when judicial nominations have become so contentious, a time when our politics is so full of vitriol  —   I think particularly benefits from a man who by all accounts is decent, full of integrity, is someone who tries to hear the other side’s point of view, and can build bridges. And so although I’ve always believed that he would make an outstanding Supreme Court justice, it is my belief that now more than ever his voice would serve the court well, would help to burnish the sense that the Supreme Court is above politics and not just an extension of politics, and would set a good tone for restoring  —   or at least increasing  —   the American people’s confidence in our justice system. Did you talk to him about being ”a piñata,” as Sen. Cornyn put it? We had a very candid conversation. He’s chief judge of the D. C. Circuit, so I assume that he either reads The Washington Post or listens to NPR, and I think had a pretty good sense of the posture that Majority Leader McConnell took immediately after Justice Scalia’s passing  —   the notion that the Republican senators would not consider any nominee, no way, no how. I’m sure that he is aware that, these days, massive advertising campaigns are mounted in opposition to candidates  —   not just for Supreme Court, but for appellate court judges. But he’s not  —   he’s not a pol. No, he isn’t. And so we discussed that, and I wanted to make sure that not only he felt comfortable with it, but his family felt comfortable with it. You know, for those of us who are more often in, you know, the scrum of politics, we’re  —   we call folks like Judge Garland ”civilians.” And so suddenly being placed in a war zone like this is something that you want to make sure they’re mindful of. But, you know, I think the way he described it  —   and I’ll let him, as he makes the rounds with senators, describe it himself  —   the way he described it is that he has loved the law for a very long time. He has loved being a judge for a very long time. He occupies the most honored position in what is often considered the second most powerful court in the land. He’s got a great job. And he is at a stage in his career where, given his confidence in his record, given the reputation that he’s built in the legal community, that he is prepared I think to take on whatever unfair or unjust or wildly exaggerated claims that may be made by those who are just opposed to any nominee that I might make. Because he thinks it’s important. And I think he is convinced that he can do a really good job, partly because he has relationships with the judges that are already on the court, and he’s shown himself to be a consensus builder. And he believes, rightly, that we’re at a time where the more consensus we can forge, the better off we’re going to be. By the way, when did you offer him the job? Over the weekend. Well, he’s a very good actor because I had dinner with him Sunday night [at a small charity event] and he looked like  —   he kept just was saying he wasn’t going to get it. [Laughter] Well, you know, I  —   I  —   that just shows his wisdom once again, because when it comes to things like getting  —   being nominated for the Supreme Court, it’s probably always wise to not count your chickens before they’re hatched. But you just told me they were hatched. [Laughter] Well, I’m not sure about that. In the heat of . .. I might have called him right after dinner. In the heat of a presidential campaign, how do you keep this nomination front and center, alive and prominent in the face of Republicans saying that they won’t give your nominee a hearing? They clearly don’t want to look rude, so they’ll meet with him and tell him that they don’t want to meet with him. [Laughter] But  —   but how do you keep it up there? When the Supreme Court, frankly  —   I’ve written more pieces in my life saying, ”This year it may be an issue,” and then it never really is. This year it may be an issue. In fact I think it is, in part because of the circus that has been the presidential campaign season so far. I think people already are troubled by some of the extreme rhetoric that we’ve seen in the presidential race. I think people already are troubled by the extreme gridlock in Washington. I think people already are concerned about excessive obstructionism that goes beyond principled disagreements, but becomes a systematic ”no” to everything. And when you then have  —   add to that a situation in which for the first time in anyone’s memory you have the head of the Senate saying, ”I won’t meet with a nominee I won’t provide a nominee a hearing I will not provide a nominee a vote,” and that, if, in fact, was maintained, would be the first time in the modern court where we would have a seat unfilled for over a year. That matters to people. And so, you’re right, Nina, that generally speaking, people aren’t closely following Supreme Court cases unless you have a big seminal case like   marriage come down. But people are following the fact that, increasingly, our political institutions are broken  —   and it troubles them. And this becomes I think a symbol of a process that, if Republicans stick to their current posture, promises a    process in which we will never have a clean nomination process on the merits, and presidents  —   whether they’re Democrats or Republicans  —   are only going to be able to get their nominees through when they have their own party controlling the Senate. At that point, the judiciary becomes a pure extension of politics. And that damages people’s faith in the judiciary  —   because everybody understands that there’s some politics involved in appointing judges, but we also expect that the judicial system can rise above the political process. And so I  —   we’ve seen already the surveys that say, number one, people are paying attention to this and number two  —   it’s not just Democrats, but a sizable number of Republicans who vote against me, have said this is  —   this can’t be the way we run our government. And what’s particularly ironic is the degree to which a number of people who say they’re not going to nominate somebody, claim to be people who want fidelity to the Constitution, respect for our founders’ intentions. There’s nobody who would suggest that our founders anticipated that a new rule is read into the Supreme Court nomination process in which for an entire year, we don’t do that because there’s an election going on. George Washington nominated a couple of Supreme Court justices in his last year. And obviously George Washington had better poll numbers, I’m sure, than I did, but nevertheless if you care about original intent, I think, you know, you don’t want to see this becoming  —   degenerating into just a pure political battle. So we’ve reported that Republican  —   leading Republican senators sent a message sort of  : ”OK, if you appoint Merrick Garland, we  —   we still will oppose him now, but we would confirm him in the   session after the election if there’s a Democratic president.” Did that play any role in your decision? I have not had conversations like that. No, I didn’t say you had. What I have seen are the public statements of leading Republicans like Orrin Hatch broadly complimenting Judge Garland as a brilliant, fair jurist, who should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. And . .. So did that play a role in your choosing him, the fact that Republicans really do like him? Well, there’s no doubt that what played a role, as I said earlier, was that, number one, I think he’s the best person for the job. Number two, I think he’s a consensus builder. And the court would benefit from that at the moment. Justice Scalia was a    figure, and he helped to shape the dialogue and the debate. But if you think about when the Supreme Court has been held in the highest esteem and has moved the country forward in the most powerful of ways, generally it hasn’t been divided just along   votes. And Judge Garland, if you look at his work on the D. C. Circuit, has been able to bring together conservatives, liberals and move them to find common ground. And I think that’s a valuable quality that has been reinforced by the statements that were made by Republicans. It certainly told me that this is somebody who is widely respected. And I said at the outset I would not use this appointment as a political symbol, as a way to score points, as a way to gin up my base. I said I would play it straight  —   that my goal was to actually confirm a justice who I thought could do an outstanding job. And Merrick Garland fits that bill. Your base, some of them quietly said, you know, everybody on that list, except Merrick Garland, was a minority or a woman some of them were both. You picked the oldest person by far, the only white guy, and he’s sort of a centrist liberal. He’s not, you know, he’s not going to  —   this is, this is our shot to really change the debate at the Supreme Court. What do you say to that  —   those folks? Well, first of all what I would say is take a look at the appointments I’ve made since I’ve been president of the United States. I’ve appointed as many   to the Circuit Court as any president ever more   women on the federal courts than any other president more Hispanics, more   more LGBT judges than any president in history. We actually now have a majority of women   minorities on the Circuit Courts, something that’s never happened before. So my record of appointing a judiciary that reflects the country is unmatched. When it comes to the Supreme Court, I’ve appointed two women, one Hispanic. And in each case, the good news is that I appointed the person who I absolutely thought was the best person for the job. In this case, Merrick Garland is the best person for the job. And I have confidence that  —   without knowing how he’s going to decide any particular case  —   he’s going to be somebody who understands the law, understands precedent, understands the Constitution and possesses the values that recognize the unique role of the court in preserving our rights, preserving our liberties and making sure that the powerful get a fair hearing, but that the powerless also are heard and have access to justice. What do you ask these folks in your interviews? I mean, you can’t say, ”So, what do you think of Roe v. Wade?” That would be improper, right? I do not do that. So, I’m Judge Totenberg. I’m here for my interview. What are you going to ask me? What kinds of things do you ask? Well, sometimes I just ask about family and background and what made you want to be a judge. You learn a lot just by talking to people about what their story is. And when you hear Judge Garland’s background  —   when you hear that story about him as a valedictorian speaker standing up for a fellow student who was about to be censored by the parents, when you hear about the care with which he dealt with the victims and the families who had been affected by the Oklahoma City bombing  —   you get a sense of who that person is. And I spent a lot of time on that. With respect to judicial philosophy, I have the advantage of having taught constitutional law, so I don’t need to get into the weeds on their thinking on a lot of these cases  —   because I can just read their opinions and the quality of their work and I have a pretty good sense of how they approach cases. One thing I, I do ask them is how do they generally approach a problem where the text of the Constitution might be ambiguous. What do they do to  —   to understand either the meaning of the text, to what extent do they draw on historical data, to what extent do they draw on their sense of how society is dealing with that problem today? You know, so you’ll get some sense of their judicial philosophy. But most of the time, by the time they get to me, you know, they’ve probably gone through a confirmation process before. And they have a pretty good sense of what they can talk about and what they shouldn’t talk about. Let me conclude by asking you sort of a devil’s advocate question. Sure. You’ve said that neither party comes to this process clean. It’s absolutely true. And you voted to not end debate on the Alito nomination. And if I understood you correctly at your press conference, what I thought I heard you say was, ”You know, I knew that it was a meaningless vote.” You got a pass from the leadership. You can do this. But can you blame the Republicans who look at this nomination and say, ”There’s going to be a shift in the court if we approve this nominee, and we don’t like that shift in the court.” So can you really blame them for trying to prevent a significant shift in the court, hoping that they’ll win the presidential nomination [sic]. And if the shoe were on the other foot, wouldn’t the Democrats do the same? They called  —   they’re all already calling it the ”Biden rule.” Well, a couple of things. First of all, this speech that they continually quote from Joe Biden when he was on the Judiciary Committee  —   if you actually read the speech, number one, he was speaking hypothetically. [Cellphone rings] Oh, Jesus. Oops. Should we start that one over? [Laughter] Yeah, let’s do that. Wow, Nina. You’re supposed to turn off your phone. I’m not  —   I’m supposed to be a pro.  Come on. Come on. [Laughter] The, uh . .. It’s the office. [Laughter] I’m assuming you can just splice the question and I’ll just answer it, so Nina doesn’t have to answer  —   ask it again. Yeah. Well, first of all, if you look at what Joe Biden actually said many years ago, he was saying if, hypothetically, there were to be a Supreme Court opening, then his advice to a president in his last year would be to not make the nomination unless he had consulted widely and arrived at a consensus candidate. Well, you know what? That’s exactly what I’ve done. And so there’s no contradiction between what I’m doing and what Joe Biden suggested a president in my circumstances should do. Number two, with respect to my actions when I was a junior senator, you will recall that I never said that a nominee should not get a hearing. I never said that a nominee should not get a vote. And what I also said at the time was that I was concerned about some of Judge Alito’s views that I considered more troubling. But in the case of Merrick Garland, we haven’t seen a substantive argument against his jurisprudence. This is just raw politics. ”We don’t want somebody who’s been nominated by a Democrat”  —   a claim that I would have never made at the time. Now what is true, Nina, is, is that, you know, we have a divided court on a lot of important issues. Justice Scalia was a big figure who was viewed as providing a majority on conservative positions on some of the cases that came before the court. And so I understand the politics that Republican senators are dealing with, and the price they would pay if in fact they confirmed a nominee. Here’s the problem we have, though: If in fact we’ve gotten to the point where they can’t confirm somebody because a Democratic president is nominating them, what’s to stop them from saying next year, ”We’ve got another excuse for not confirming a Democratic president’s nominee”? And at that point the process has broken down. Democrats have not been blameless in this process. You cannot point to me a circumstance in which Democrats have left a seat open when a Republican president was in office simply because they didn’t like the possibility that it would change the makeup of the court. Justice Kennedy was confirmed by Ronald Reagan, and I’m quite certain that there were a whole lot of Democratic senators who understood at the time that he was unlikely to favor their positions on a number of issues. But ultimately, he was confirmed. And he was confirmed in the last year of President Reagan’s office. So we actually have evidence  —   we have proof, not that Democrats are perfect, but that they do at a certain point recognize that the process and the sanctity of the Supreme Court, and the integrity of the institution, not just the Supreme Court, but the integrity of the Senate, and the office of the president, requires them to do their job. And my simple pitch to them is, be fair  —   not to ignore politics. I’m not demanding that Republicans vote for Merrick Garland, but do not stop the process in its tracks  —   because if you do, then the     problems behind not just judicial nominees, but nominations generally, are going to continue to make our government more and more dysfunctional. And at some point, it’s got to stop. A good place for it to stop is when we’re talking about a Supreme Court seat, and we have an impeccably qualified candidate who the Republicans themselves have acknowledged is deserving of being on the court. Are you taking this on the road? Well, you know, I’m going to make the case  —   I’m going to make the case for a fair process. Give Judge Garland a hearing give him a vote. And look at the qualities of the man. That’s what the American people expect. And, you know, one of the most puzzling arguments that I’ve heard from Mitch McConnell and some other Republicans is this notion that the American people should decide  —   we should let the American people decide, as part of this election, who gets to fill this seat. Well in fact, the American people did decide, back in 2012 when they elected me president of the United States with sufficient electoral votes. And they also decided that the Republicans would be in the majority. They didn’t say, ”We’re going to decide that you’re in charge for three years, and then in the last year you all take a break.” They said, ”No, you’re the president for four years, and Mr. McConnell, you’re going to be the leader, because we’ve given you a majority in the Senate.” So the American people already have decided. They’ve already weighed in. They will have another opportunity to weigh in, so that if there is another vacancy that comes up, the next president will fill that vacancy. The bottom line is that there has not been a coherent argument presented. The real argument is the one that you made, Nina, which is that they don’t want a Democrat filling the seat, and they are worried and scared about their political base punishing them if they allow a Democrat to fill the seat. But one of the things that’s broken down in our politics is a recognition that you don’t always get your way 100 percent of the time. And sometimes in the integrity of the institution and the process and governance, and the interests of the American people actually matter more than your   politics. They actually matter more than doing what is politically expedient. And there have been a number of times where, as president of the United States, I’ve had to do things that I knew were bad politics but I understood were important to the country or important to the institution of the presidency. And I would expect that the senators who’ve been elected by their constituents will find in themselves the kind of respect for this incredible democratic experiment that our founders crafted, that they’re not going to want to see it continue to degenerate into just a bunch of      polarized   because that’s not what made us the greatest country on Earth. Mr. President, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. I enjoyed it, Nina. Thank you."
"International pressure on North Korea has ratcheted up in recent days, as the U. S. imposed new unilateral sanctions and China began taking steps to implement a strict, new United Nations Security Council resolution. But while the U. S. has few economic ties with North Korea to cut, China has plenty of screws to tighten. And so whether international sanctions work or fail may depend to a large degree on how strictly China implements them. Beijing has begun instructing Chinese banks, ports and shipping and trading companies doing business with North Korea to implement the U. N. resolution to the letter. Adam Szubin, the Treasury Department’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, tells NPR that China is taking this very seriously. ”I know from my meetings here in Beijing that my counterparts have very much taken the resolution to heart,” he says. Szubin, who visited Beijing this week, says the new sanctions will hit hard enough to change Pyongyang’s ”  calculus.” The new U. N. resolution is not just ”adding a few new companies to a sanctions list or a few new North Korean officials,” Szubin says. Instead, it targets ”every major aspect of North Korea’s access to international shipping, international banking [and] international trade to develop revenues for its missile and illicit nuclear programs.” Although China appears committed, the sanctions put it in a tough spot. First, says People’s University international relations expert Cheng Xiaohe, some Chinese companies are going to take a hit to their bottom line.   Korea trade was worth $6. 86 billion in 2014. ”At the same time as we protect our national security interests, we must be prepared to sacrifice some of our own economic interests in order to accurately target North Korea with sanctions,” he says. Cheng says the U. S. has its work cut out for it, collecting intelligence on the hundreds of Chinese firms doing business with North Korea, and on North Korean firms adept at concealing their business dealings behind fronts and shells. And if Chinese firms are found to be violating the U. N. resolution, Cheng points out, they could themselves face sanctions. ”This could create new frictions between the U. S. and China,” he warns. ”I hope that the U. S. will think carefully before it uses this big stick to crack down on Chinese firms.” Cheng notes that China continues to supply North Korea with crude oil as humanitarian assistance. The sanctions allow this, even if North Korea may be able to refine some of the oil for military uses. China says neither a humanitarian crisis nor regime collapse are acceptable outcomes for North Korea. But Zhang Liangui, a veteran North Korea watcher at China’s Central Party School in Beijing, says that at the end of the day, China cannot save North Korea from its fate. ”If North Korea is going to collapse,” he says, ”no external force can prop it up. Frankly speaking, whether it collapses or continues to develop will mainly depend on its own domestic and foreign policies.” North Korea’s most recent nuclear test has put Beijing on the back foot, undermining its diplomatic ties with Seoul and raising the possibility that the U. S. could install missile defense systems in South Korea. Cheng Xiaohe says Beijing doesn’t like this  —   but there’s not much it can do. ”China has neither the ability nor the political will to give South Korea the security guarantees it seeks,” he says. ”But the U. S. does.” The setbacks have led some Chinese observers to wonder, ”Has China’s North Korea policy failed?”  —   as the official People’s Daily newspaper recently asked in an online headline. Zhang Liangui says the possibility of failure is not one that Chinese diplomats dare admit. Then again, Zhang says, for the past two decades, no country has succeeded in keeping the Korean peninsula  . North Korea’s current suspected stockpile is estimated to include 10 to 16 nuclear weapons. ”The way this situation has developed is a collective failure for all of us,” he laments, ”a failure for the entire international community, including the United Nations.”"
"In a grainy,    video,   Jan. 1, 1:57 a. m. a shadowy figure in a hallway appears to pull a poster of some sort off a wall and place it on the floor. This, North Korea claims, is the New Year’s Day theft that earned American Otto Warmbier, a    University of Virginia student, a sentence of 15 years of hard labor. The footage was released after a brief trial Wednesday in North Korea, during which Warmbier admitted stealing the banner. In his tearful confession, Warmbier said he ”stole the propaganda poster on behalf of a member of the Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio, who wanted it ’as a trophy,’ ” NPR’s Elise Hu reports. The short video released by   Korean Central Television  —   purporting to show Warmbier’s crime  —   could be an important development if it does corroborate the confession. ”Previous American detainees have recanted their confessions following their release, saying they were made under duress and detailing how North Korean officials carefully orchestrate the events,” Elise says. The time stamp on the video is 1:57 a. m. on Jan. 1, which also backs up the state’s story of when Warmbier took the sign. From the perspective of the U. S. government, however, whether Warmbier took the banner is irrelevant it says the punishment does not fit the crime. Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the allegations against Warmbier ”would not give rise to arrest or imprisonment in the United States or in just about any other country in the world.” Earnest also said, ”It is increasingly clear that the North Korean government seeks to use these U. S. citizens as pawns to pursue a political agenda.” Warmbier’s detention comes at a sensitive time for U. S. relations with North Korea, as the country recently tested a pair of   ballistic missiles amid heightened tensions in the region."
"It’s standard practice for any talented American director with a flair for spectacle to be hailed as ”the next Steven Spielberg,” though the competition has become especially heated in recent years. J. J. Abrams paid tribute to his idol with Super 8, while Colin Trevorrow delivered a soulless nostalgia trip with last summer’s Jurassic World. But few filmmakers have aligned themselves with Spielberg in such nervy fashion as Jeff Nichols, whose fourth feature, Midnight Special, means to take us back to such wondrous   touchstones as E. T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But Nichols’ skillful homage never comes at the expense of his own artistic identity. There’s a lot going on in Midnight Special, but Nichols is a classicist who takes his rhythms from his rural American settings, and he doles out details at a pace that feels urgent yet measured. Michael Shannon plays a gruff, anxious man named Roy, who’s driving across the South under cover of night with his    son, Alton (played by Jaeden Lieberher) and his old childhood friend, Lucas (played by Joel Edgerton). It’s not immediately clear why these three are being pursued by members of a    religious cult, or why the FBI and the NSA have joined in the hunt. One of the many things Nichols gets right is his decision not to spell things out in flashback. Midnight Special is a road movie that never stops moving forward, and it trusts us to follow along, pick up on meaningful details, and see how the past bleeds into the present. At one point, Alton is reunited with his mother, beautifully and almost wordlessly played by Kirsten Dunst, and we can see years of anxiety and deprivation etched in her careworn face. The religious leaders and the feds are all trying to get their hands on the boy, who could be an alien visitor, the savior of mankind or a weapon of infinitely destructive force. At first Alton looks like any other introverted, slightly eccentric kid: He spends much of the movie reading under a blanket, his   eyes shielded by   goggles. Yet we get a sense of the boy’s mysterious and terrifying powers in an astounding scene at a gas station, where Roy, making a phone call, leaves him momentarily unattended and the events that follow culminate in fire literally raining down from heaven. Nichols has a gift for braiding together the mystical and the everyday, as he demonstrated in his powerfully brooding 2011 drama, Take Shelter, which starred Shannon as a man trying to protect his family from malevolent forces only he could see. Shannon is just as excellent here, again playing a father who will stop at nothing to protect his child. When Alton tells his dad not to worry about him, Roy responds, ”I like worrying about you”  —   words that nail the joy and sorrow of parenthood as well as any line of dialogue in recent memory. For better or worse, Alton inspires a feeling of protectiveness in everyone he meets. Sam Shepard brings his signature gravity to bear on the role of the cult leader, a more twisted sort of father figure. Two of the most affecting performances come from Edgerton as the loyal Lucas, and from Adam Driver as a   NSA agent  —   two   men who are unexpectedly transformed by their encounters with Alton. Nichols yearns to transport us to a similar state of childlike wonder, and he almost gets there. After almost two hours of slow and suspenseful buildup, the movie arrives at a climax that casts an undeniable spell, but somehow stops short of fully inspiring our awe. Nichols usually excels at showing rather than telling, but this is one instance where he may have showed us too much. The movie is far better when it simply taps into the eerie nocturnal poetry of this very strange trip. The most lyrical image shows the high beams on Roy’s car shining in the night, a sly reference to the classic folk song from which the movie takes its title: ”Let the midnight   its light on me.” Nichols eventually leads us back to daylight, but he knows the pleasure and terror of getting lost in the darkness  —   whether out on the road, or in the shadows of a movie theater."
"After days of anticipation, a fuzzy wing flopped out of the remains of an egg shell Friday morning, signaling the hatching of a baby bald eagle who’s been watched and fretted over, via an eagle cam set up at the National Arboretum in Washington, D. C. The bird then worked its way out of its shell over the next hour, emerging more fully around 8:20 a. m. ET. Throughout the process, its parent eagle alternated between peering attentively (to be honest, eagles don’t seem capable of anything but) and nestling over the fledgling and a second,    egg. The little   came more than 24 hours after the first ”pip”  —   a hole in eggshell  —   was spotted, bringing sighs of relief and joy to the eagles’ fans. You can watch the eagle webcam online to see the eagle’s nest  —   but be warned, the American Eagle Foundation says: ”This is a wild eagle nest and anything can happen.” The egg was the first of two that were laid in February to show signs of hatching  —   setting off excited speculation and the Twitter hashtag #dceaglecam. The eggs have been incubated by a mated pair of bald eagles, who’ve taken turns sitting in the nest and hunting for food. On Thursday afternoon, a large fish was brought back to the nest for supper, a scene that was repeated at breakfast time Friday (if you’re wondering, eagle breakfast is served at 8:15). ”This is the first Bald Eagle pair to nest in this location since 1947,” the American Eagle Foundation said, adding that the two eagles have been dubbed Mr. President and The First Lady. As we’ve reported: ”If both eaglets emerge and remain healthy, they would continue a streak of success for their parents, who raised one eaglet last year at the National Arboretum, a   green space and research facility that’s about two miles northeast of the Capitol building.” The two eggs were laid on Feb. 10 and Feb. 14, meaning it could be several days before the second egg hatches. The excitement about the hatching has also brought a chance for many people who’ve followed the eagle nest in Washington  —   and similar eagle webcams around the nation  —   to learn more about how bald eagles live. For instance, eagles generally mate for life, and while female eagles usually take the lead in incubating their eggs, male eagles also take a share of those duties."
"On the street outside the northeastern Syrian town of Shadadi, Adnan Sleiman, a tall, thin man with a gray beard, is happily smoking a cigarette. ”I’m 60 years old and I feel like I’m 20,” he says. ISIS once put Sleiman in prison for possession of cigarettes. Now he’s selling a tower of packs by the side of the road. There are still ISIS signs   on the metal shopfronts in this small town, which   forces retook from ISIS about two weeks ago. A poster urges modest dress for women. A sign stands outside a bookshop that only sold Qurans. Two women sitting outside in colorful clothes and loose headscarves say they stayed the whole two years the extremists were here. ”We went to sleep, and the next day ISIS was in control,” one says. The ISIS fighters killed and arrested the rebel forces that controlled the town. They imposed their own brutal rule, executing and beheading their enemies and leaving the bodies out for days. ”They were far from Islam,” spits one woman. Though the people of Shadadi may be breathing more freely for now, their rural town is about to become part of another group’s controversial experiment in governance in Syria. The U. S.  group that took Shadadi, the Syrian Democratic Forces, is dominated by a Kurdish faction, which this week presided over the announcement of a plan to build a federal region in the north and east of Syria. During the five years of Syria’s civil war, the ethnic Kurdish party known by its acronym, PYD, has quietly become this area’s dominant force. The party set up governance and security structures. Usually, they do not directly challenge the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but rather work alongside it in uneasy parallel. This results in, for example, the regime’s traffic police manning one intersection in the city of Qamishli, and PYD cops on patrol a few hundred yards down the road. The PYD’s military wing also fights ISIS. The U. S. and   coalition encouraged the Kurdish faction to join forces with Arabs and minorities to form the Syrian Democratic Forces in October last year. Then, the Americans enthusiastically supported those forces with airstrikes and even American advisers on the ground. The group’s military advances are creeping closer to the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, and saw Shadadi, this small but strategic town, retaken earlier this month. In Shadadi’s dusty streets, men pull up plastic chairs to talk about the new forces in town. ISIS told them the Syrian Democratic Forces were criminals. ”They’d give us all the possible ways that our women would be violated and our houses would be looted,” says Asaad Abdullah. But this propaganda was wrong, he says. ”That was proven to us later, when they arrived in Shadadi,” he says. Amid fears of ISIS infiltration, only a trickle of people are being allowed back into town, but he says there has been no looting or targeting of civilians. Abdullah, like most everyone else in Shadadi and the tiny   villages around it, is an Arab. And the soldiers manning the checkpoints outside the town are mostly Kurds. Some do not speak Arabic, and they fly the flag of their Kurdish faction  —   not that of the Syrian Democratic Forces. The Arab residents seem for the moment sanguine about Kurdish control of their town. They don’t want ISIS or Assad’s forces to come back  —   and point out that the Kurds’ Arab and Assyrian allies were here during the battle. But Arab leaders and Kurdish politicians say they fear people in Arab areas could resist control by the   forces, and have even fought back against them in some places. In the town of Rumeilan, Mansur Haj Mansur, a Kurdish politician, says the area around Shadadi is the first wholly Arab area to be incorporated into the PYD’s federalist project. ”We know that it’s a big challenge,” he says, ”and all the eyes of the outside will be focused on this area.” He outlines what he calls a brotherhood project, whereby prominent local leaders will be formed into councils to run the affairs of their areas. The PYD will be ultimately in control, he says. But ”we don’t have any problem if all the councils are Arabs, if that is what the people want.” A suggestion to Assad’s officials that the   schools and hospitals while the PYD takes care of everything else has not yet received a response, says Haj Mansur. The council declaring this week’s plan for a federalist project prominently featured Arabs and minorities, as well as Kurds, and the PYD’s governance structure makes a point of appointing Arabs to senior positions. But decades of rhetoric about a Kurdish homeland by the PYD  —   and the PKK guerrilla group to which it has close ties  —   means the calls for federalism are widely perceived as steps toward Kurdish independence, and partition of Syria. The Syrian government has condemned moves toward federalism as illegal. And the main Syrian opposition group said the shape of the Syrian state ”cannot be determined unilaterally by a single faction.” Although the U. S. supports the Kurds and their allies militarily, a State Department spokesman said the U. S. will not recognize a   zone in Syria. ”We’ve been very clear that we won’t recognize any kind of    —   or     zones in Syria,” Mark Toner said Wednesday. Kurdish leaders say they are happy to accept military support, but do not rely entirely on their backers. They insist they will continue to pursue their own goals. ”The Kurds are now doing military things for themselves, and political things for themselves,” says Amina Osse, a PYD political official. ”They are open to any support, but they are pursuing their own goals.” In Shadadi, the voice of resident Ahmed Hammoud   quavers as he says they need a ”good man, an intelligent man” to govern this town, now under its fourth leadership in five years: regime, rebels, ISIS and now   forces. When the new governor comes, he says, ”We will see if he’s good or not.”"
"If Republicans don’t hold hearings on the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, Democrats believe the issue could help them win the Senate this November. One test case for this proposition is Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees Supreme Court nominations. At 82 years old, Grassley has coasted safely to   for decades and is seeking his seventh Senate term this fall. So far, Grassley has resisted calls to hold nomination hearings, arguing in a conference call with Iowa reporters that the Republican takeover of the Senate after the 2014 elections indicated that voters had rejected Obama’s policies. ”The Senate is responding to the people’s voicing their disagreements with the President,” said Grassley. ”I guess I have a little trouble following his logic,” said Patty Judge, a former Lieutenant Governor who recently announced she will challenge Grassley and plans to put his opposition to the Garland nomination at the center of her campaign. She’s one of four Democrats challenging Grassley this year. The others are Cedar Rapids State Senator Rob Hogg and former state lawmakers Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen. ”I do not believe they have the right to say we are not going to have hearings because we have a presidential election. That’s just obstructing the process,” said Judge, who has a reputation as a centrist in Iowa politics. Judge is seen as the kind of high profile candidate who could give Grassley his first tough reelection fight since voters sent him to Washington in 1980. ”She’s one Judge that Senator Grassley can’t ignore,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, after a recent meeting with Judge, according to the Associated Press. Grassley said he has nothing against Garland and said he’s willing to meet with the nominee. So far, Grassley remains quite popular in the state according to a recent poll from the Des Moines Register. But the Supreme Court fight means that just two months after the Iowa caucuses, Iowans are starting to see political ads again from groups across the political spectrum. Among the actors is a local Iowa   group, Justice Not Politics, that is working to pressure Grassley to hold the hearings with ads and events. The group’s   are former Iowa lieutenant governors of each major political party who argue politicians need to   the courts. ”Saying that we ought to let the people decide. Well, the people have already decided. They have elected members of Congress. They have elected a president. Those are the people we expect to follow the rules,” said   Joy Corning, a Republican who served with Gov. Terry Branstad when he first served in the 1980s and 90s. Inspired by a liberal campaign, many Iowans are tweeting at Senator Grassley with the hashtag ”do your job.” Grassley, who’s known for writing his own tweets, has fired back with his own hashtag ”doing my job.”"
"Greg Kintzele is a amiable, blonde   from Denver who was always close with his grandmother. They would hike together in the mountains in Colorado where they live, and play a lot of games, too. Especially Scrabble. ”She’d always come up with all these words and I’d be like, ’Is that a word?’ and then she’d be like, ’Oh yes it is. You can check it in the dictionary,” Greg says. And usually she was right. Then he noticed his grandmother starting to change. Her mood became sharper and she couldn’t seem to remember the grandson she’d known for a decade. ”I felt kind of hurt,” he says. ”I’ve known her since I was a baby,” but now he says she asks him what his name is. It wasn’t until Greg started learning about Alzheimer’s disease in science class that the changes he saw in his grandmother started making sense. ”Oh, this explains a lot!” he thought. Greg goes to a private school in Denver, Graland Country Day School, which has developed a   curriculum for   focused around dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, in part because the disease is widespread in the U. S. One in three seniors dies with Alzheimer’s or another dementia, and it can be confusing to younger generations who may not understand what’s happening to their grandparents. In science class at Graland students learn about the history of the disease, genetic mutations and biochemical changes in the brain. They learn about different medicines and how research is progressing to a cure. In English class students write a biography of an elderly person in their lives. And in art, they build memory boxes filled with objects representing that same person’s life. ”Our goal here is intergenerational learning,” says Mark Gatlin, Greg’s science teacher. Part of the project takes its young students out of the classroom to interact with adults affected by the disease. A short walk from the school is the Sunrise Senior Living facility, the third floor of the building is just for residents with dementia. That’s where Greg politely introduces himself to Jerry Shafer, a resident. They talk about Shafer’s past, what he liked to do when he was a boy. Greg asks Shafer what war he served in and he’s quiet for a moment. ”Korea,” he says. ”The Korean War?” asks Greg. ”My grandfather was in the Korean War, too.” Shafer’s stories meander  —   going far back into his childhood and then to the war, but that doesn’t faze Greg. The students here learn to roll with the topics. One resident talks about her days skiing in Oklahoma City and another remembers when band members from Earth, Wind and Fire used to annoy her by playing music too loudly in her neighborhood. Mark Gatlin, Greg’s teacher, says not only are the students coaxing memories out of seniors, the kids are also learning complex social skills. ”The hardest thing is teaching patience,” he says. ”They want immediate feedback and going to Sunrise takes them out of their comfort zone.” There’s little research in the practice of intergenerational learning between adolescents and older people in the United States, but it’s more common in Europe. In England, hundreds of schools are termed   giving students a deeper understanding of dementia and providing interaction between people with dementia and students. These same skills  —   being patient and gentle with seniors  —   are put to work a couple of days later at the school on a makeshift croquet field. About once a month, some of the seniors come over to the school to play. There’s a lot of laughter on the green today. One man, though, Bill Taylor, hasn’t cracked a smile yet. Then he hits an incredible shot, square on the ball. The room erupts. Taylor smiles a big smile at Greg, his student mentor. ”That was amazing,” Greg shouts. For him, learning about Alzheimer’s this deeply has helped him relate to his own grandmother. He says he’s learned not to get so frustrated with her questions and moods. And after talking with the residents at all stages of the disease at Sunrise Senior Living center, he knows what to expect as she progresses. ”It’s kind of like a map for me,” he says. He still plays Scrabble with his grandmother  —   though now her words are made up. But he says he’s okay with that."
"The   baby bird in the nation’s capital is about to have some competition. As we’ve previously reported, ”Mr. President” and ”First Lady,” a mated pair of bald eagles in the National Arboretum in D. C. have been incubating two eggs before a rapt audience, thanks to a   web cam. The first baby bald eagle emerged from its shell on Friday morning, to the delight of the   audience. As Bill reported at the time: ”After days of anticipation, a fuzzy wing flopped out of the remains of an eggshell Friday morning . .. The bird then worked its way out of its shell over the next hour, emerging more fully around 8:20 a. m. ET. ”Throughout the process, its parent eagle alternated between peering attentively (to be honest, eagles don’t seem capable of anything but) and nestling over the fledgling and a second,    egg.” Well, that second egg has moved from unhatched to hatching: the ”pip” has been detected. That’s the first hole the baby bird pecks through its eggshell, as it works its way out into the world. The ”pip in progress” was confirmed by the American Eagle Foundation around 10 a. m. EDT on Saturday. By early afternoon, there was a visible hole in the shell. It could be a while yet before the second eaglet fully emerges in the case of the first baby bird, more than 24 hours passed between pip and final appearance. The newly hatched bird will be joining an older sibling who has already mastered sitting up, looking around and eating, so there will be some catching up to do. If you want to keep tabs on either bird you can watch the webcam  —   which has been dubbed ”the most patriotic nest cam in the United States” by the American Eagle Foundation. If you tune in from   p. m. EDT on Saturday, you can also join in a livechat with other   and experts. We’ll reiterate the warning from the foundation that ”this is a wild eagle nest and anything can happen.” So yes, there’s a   chance you might witness something unpleasant happening to a tiny, adorable ball of feathers. And if you watch long enough, there is a 100 percent chance that you will see violence done to a fish."
"Albert Woodfox has spent more time in solitary confinement than any man alive in the U. S. today  —   43 years. He and Robert King are the surviving members of a group known as the ”Angola Three.” Together with the late Herman Wallace, they spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement for the 1972 death of a prison guard, Brent Miller, at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. No forensic evidence tied the Angola Three to Miller’s killing, and they always maintained their innocence. In fact, Woodfox’s conviction of the crime has been overturned  —   twice. Moreover, advocacy groups like Amnesty International say they were targets of mistreatment, because of their work with the Black Panthers protesting prison conditions. Wallace died in 2013, just days after a judge granted him a new trial and ordered him released. He had spent most of his life in solitary confinement. King was released in 2001, after a court reversed his conviction, and he has dedicated his life since then to bringing attention to conditions at Angola, as well as fighting for the release of his two friends. Woodfox was freed on Feb. 19, on his 69th birthday, after pleading no contest to lesser charges. ”Although I was looking forward to proving my innocence at a new trial, concerns about my health and my age have caused me to resolve this case now and obtain my release with this   plea to lesser charges,” Woodfox said that day, in a statement released by lawyers. ”I hope the events of today will bring closure to many.” He and King spoke recently with NPR’s Michel Martin about their friendship, solitary confinement and life after decades in prison. ”There’s a different rhythm to living in society as to living in prison,” Woodfox says, ”and I’m trying to adjust. Hopefully, I will get there.” For him, there was never a moment’s thought to giving up his fight to prove his innocence and gain his freedom. ”There were times when I was frustrated and angry,” he says. ”I’ve been through panic attacks, claustrophobia attacks, but I never gave up and lost hope.” Woodfox says it was something special that kept him going. ”The qualities as a human being that I inherited from my mother  —   such as strength, determination,” he says. ”And I think having Robert King and Herman Wallace as only my comrades, but best friends, made it possible for me to endure a great deal.” Kings says that he found similar strength in his friendships. ”I was motivated also by Herman and Albert and other people who I came in to contact with, despite the fact that we were in solitary confinement,” he says. ”They haven’t ruled solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment, but they did say that the time that someone is held in solitary confinement  —   such as in my case, which I only was there for 29 years  —   a federal judge ruled that it constituted a cruel and unusual punishment.” King reasons that his involvement in setting up a Black Panther movement in prison might have been related to his punishment. ”Prior to my being sent to Angola, we managed to try to effect some change in New Orleans prison where I was housed at. I was labeled at that time as a troublemaker,” he says. Woodfox, for his part, never expected he’d be placed in solitary so long. ”I thought maybe two, three years, but it wound up being 43 or 44 years.” Still, he says he never gave up hope of release. ”That’s the one thing I didn’t give up. When this first started out, we knew that, if we were going to survive, we had to look for strength from the outside, from society. So instead of turning inward, becoming institutionalized, we decided that we would turn outward to society.” He adds: ”I would not allow prison staff to define who I was and what I believed in.” It was the friendship between the Angola Three, forged during these times, that kept King’s held attention, even after his release in 2001. After he gained his freedom, King continued to advocate on behalf of his two friends who remained imprisoned. ”It was collective effort, it wasn’t just on my part,” King says. ”I was gracefully given support  —   people who supported the concept of struggling against conditions that were barbarous and illegal convictions. And it developed from empathizers and sympathizers, so it was easy.” Since his own release in February, Woodfox has not only reunited with King, but he’s joined in his friend’s advocacy against the practice of solitary confinement, too. He says he’s especially motivated by the hard work King has done over the past 15 years. ”He has always been first my comrade and my friend and now my brother,” Woodfox says. ”The entire time  —   [from] when Robert left prison, to the day I walked out  —   he has never broken faith. I am not sure how many men in this world can measure to that. He has set a high standard. To do anything less than what he did would be a great dishonor to him, and that’s not gonna happen.” Woodfox doesn’t have specific plans for what’s next, but he has pledged one thing. ”I am sure that I will continue to devote my life to defending those that can’t defend themselves and protect those who need protecting.”"
"This summer, the National Park Service turns 100. It’s safe to say that lots of Americans will be celebrating by visiting a national park. But two friends  —   Darius Nabors and Trevor Kemp  —   are marking the occasion by visiting all of them. That’s 59 parks, from Joshua Tree to Shenandoah, and from remote Alaskan wilderness to Virgin Island beaches. And Nabors and Kemp are crossing them off the list in 59 weeks. They quit their jobs to make the journey, which is partially   and are documenting the process on their website, 59in59. com. Justin Regan, of member station KNAU in Arizona, caught up with the two by telephone and asked them . .. what is it about the national parks? ”I think the National Parks are just a time capsule in a way that you can hand down to your children and your grandchildren,” Kemp said. ”You’ll be able to say ’this is exactly the same way as I saw it’  —   as long as we can protect it and keep it in that pristine condition.” You can hear the full interview over at KNAU, and follow their trip on their blog."
"Lots of people are fuming about Nina, an upcoming biopic about legendary singer Nina Simone. According to its critics, the filmmakers butcher important parts of Simone’s biography (in part, by attributing much of her success to the men in her life) but that their larger sin was casting actress Zoe Saldana, who plays the lead role with the help of   makeup and a prosthetic nose. Many argue that casting the lighter skinned   actress, rather than someone who better resembled Simone, was an attempt to make the film more marketable instead of staying true to the singer and the life that inspired her art. The makeup and prosthetic nose, they also charge, were sloppy and poorly executed. In one of the more gentle critiques, singer India. Arie called the casting move ”tone deaf.” Others went with ”disrespectful,” ”deplorable,” and ”embarrassing.” Buzzfeed rounded up some of the Twitter reactions to the film’s trailer. Jezebel highlighted the overwhelmingly white team behind the production. Time magazine talked to Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, about the movie’s narrative flaws, and the Guardian chronicled some of the offensive backlash to people’s complaints about the film. Vox also voxsplained the whole controversy, from   to the release of the first trailer. But more than any other,   Coates’ recently published essay seems to capture the full emotional depth of all this frustration. He suggests this wasn’t just another questionable casting choice involving a person of color in a long line of such casting choices. To explain, Coates gets personal: ”When I was kid, I knew what the worst parts of me were —  my hair and my mouth. My hair was nappy. My lips were big. Nearly every kid around me knew something similar of themselves because nearly every one of us had some sort of physical defect —  dark skin, nappy hair, broad nose, full lips —  that opened us up to ridicule from one another. That each of these ”defects” were representative of all the Africa that ran through us was never lost on anyone. ”Africa” was an insult —  African   African   etc. Ethiopian famine jokes were all the rage back then. .. . ..[Nina] Simone was in possession of nearly every feature that we denigrated as children. And yet somehow she willed herself into a goddess.” Coates goes on to explain how Simone’s appearance, as well as her music, helped him view his childhood musings on race in a larger context: ”Simone is something more than a female Bob Marley. It is not simply the voice: It is the world that made that voice, all the hurt and pain of denigration, forged into something otherworldly. That voice, inevitably, calls us to look at Nina Simone’s face, and for a brief moment, understand that the hate we felt, that the mockery we dispensed, was unnatural, was the fruit of conjurations and the shadow of plunder. We look at Nina Simone’s face and the lie is exposed and we are shamed. We look at Nina Simone’s face and a terrible truth comes into view —  there was nothing wrong with her. But there is something deeply wrong with us.” Finally, Coates takes us through what all of this means, both for the potential audience and Nina’s creators: ”It’s here that the term ’appropriation’ bears some usage. We’re not talking about someone inspired by the deeper lessons of Simone’s life and her music. We are talking about people who think it’s fine to profit off her music while heedlessly contributing to the kind of pain that brought that music into being. To acknowledge that pain, to consider it in casting, would be inconvenient —  as   action always is. It would mean giving an opportunity to someone who’s actively experienced the kind of pain that plagued Simone. That would doubtlessly mean a diminished chance at garnering funds for such a film. And that, in turn, would court years of delays and the possibility of the film never coming into being. That would be unfortunate —  but less so for Nina Simone than for the agents who feel themselves entitled to profit her story.” The whole piece is worth reading and thinking about. You can check it out over at The Atlantic."
"Here’s how I knew I liked Patti Trabosh. It goes back to the very first time I called her out of the blue to ask whether I might profile her family for a story on opioid addiction. The very first words out of her mouth were, ”I’m pissed off!” Trabosh went on to explain why she was angry. First, it was the struggle to find a bed in a drug treatment program for her    son Nikko Adam. He had become addicted to prescription painkillers and then heroin when he was still in high school. He’d been in rehab twice before, and relapsed both times. Once she found an available treatment slot, it was the seemingly endless and maddening battles with her insurance company, trying to get them to cover Nikko’s treatment. She told me, ”The bottom line is, it’s easier for addicts to go get another bag of heroin than it is to get help.” I had been put in touch with Trabosh by Judy Schwank, a Pennsylvania state senator who’s been deeply involved with trying to solve the opioid crisis in her state. She led me to the Kutztown, Pa. area, to Patti Trabosh and her family. They include Brandy Trabosh, Nikko’s    sister Mikey Roth, his    brother and Henry Adam, his father. I spent time over three days talking with them about how Nikko’s heroin addiction has challenged the family, in Kutztown and in nearby Hamburg. We also met Nikko near the sober living facility where he’s been staying. Here are highlights of our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity. On how quickly heroin has taken over this rural corner of southeastern Pennsylvania, Brandy: When I went to high school there, you never heard about anything like that. None of the heroin, none of the pills, nothing. And it was like a huge shock, once I heard, like WHAT?! Where does that even come from? Where do you get that? Who would want to do that? On losing trust in Nikko as he continued using, Brandy: For a while, when I had holidays or parties or whatever here, I had to lock everything up. I told Nikko, actually, Thanksgiving, I said, ”Don’t even come.” ’Cause I was just at the point where, I have all these people here, I don’t have time to watch and make sure that he’s not stealing something, or that he’s not high around my kids, or he brought heroin into my house when my kids are here. So I just said don’t come. On the family’s fears that Nikko would overdose and die, Mikey: We lost him to heroin. It was only a point in time when he was going to overdose, and we knew it. Brandy: We hear about the overdoses and we’re like, ”Oh! Nikko, please stop, everybody’s dying!” And Nikko’s lost some friends, too, to overdose. So I guess everybody feels like it’s not going to happen to them. And maybe that’s the reason for the  . If you don’t talk about it, then it’s not real. Patti, talking to Henry: And I said that to you. I said, ”We’re going to bury this kid.” Didn’t I say that to you? Yep. I was waiting for him to call me and tell me that Nikko was gone. He should be dead! He should be dead, with all the heroin he used plus the two vehicles he totaled! On feeling responsible for Nikko’s addiction and learning to be open about it, Henry: It’s a daily struggle for me. I’ll never come to terms with the fact that in some way, shape or form, I’m responsible. Patti: For a while, people would say, when it first started, they’d say, ”How’s Nikko?” And I’d say, ”Oh, he’s great.” But then it just came to a point where they’d say, ”How’s Nikko?” And I’d say, ”Oh, he’s a heroin addict.” And they would be  —   ”Ah, what?” ”Yeah. He’s a heroin addict.” And that’s just how it is. Like I’m not going to hide anything anymore. On the family’s hopes that this time rehab will work for Nikko, Nikko: I’m hopeful for the future for the first time. I can actually look into the future now. I have faith now. Patti: He’s not gonna relapse, I’m tellin’ you right now. He’s too serious about his recovery. It’s not gonna happen. Mikey: I’m really optimistic about this time, but the whole thing with this is, if he wanted to go out and score heroin, he could do it pretty much anywhere that he goes. This story was produced by NPR’s Evie Stone."
"By the time I read about Marina Menegazzo and María José Coni, their bodies had already been found. They’d been missing for nearly a week and were discovered on Feb. 28, wrapped in plastic bags and dumped near a beach in Ecuador. One had her skull bashed in the other had stab wounds and had bled to death. The two Argentine tourists, 22 and 23, had been vacationing in Ecuador. Their murder wasn’t reported much in English language media. As is often the case with crime in Latin America, there’s been an array of versions of what happened, shrouded in a cloud of doubt. Initially, Ecuadoran authorities detained two suspects and said one had confessed that he and his friend were drunk. One of them tried to touch one of the girls and she resisted. He then hit her on the head with a stick the blow killed her. The suspect says her friend panicked, and the other murder suspect stabbed her. The families of the victims publicly questioned this version  —   they think both suspects might have had nothing to do with the murders and were being forced by authorities to confess. In recent days, another version of the story has surfaced: One of the suspects has linked the murders to a group of Colombian, Ecuadoran and Venezuelan drug traffickers, one of whom was arrested this week. Coni’s father has publicly speculated that ”perhaps they kidnapped the girls to traffic them and killed them.” The Argentine Consul in Guayaquil, Ecuador, has said he does not discount that hypothesis. One thing is for sure: The murders have sparked outrage in Latin America, where there is a widespread crisis of femicide (the deliberate killing of women) and sexual violence. Central America has some of the highest rates. The 2012 Small Arms Survey, often cited by the United Nations, surveyed murders of women around the world in the years  . El Salvador is the country with the highest femicide rate  —   12 per 100, 000 inhabitants  —   followed by Jamaica (10. 9) Guatemala (9. 7) and South Africa (9. 6). Many of the deaths are related to gang violence that rages throughout much of Central America: In a recent series, NPR investigated the brutal effect gang violence has on young women, who are seen as sexual trophies and are targeted in sexual attacks.  Central American women who choose to leave the region and head north to the U. S. face a grim reality. Amnesty International estimates that 60 percent will be assaulted on the way. Activists report that many take birth control before the dangerous journey, in preparation for possible sexual assault. And it’s a problem that extends far south. According to Argentine NGO La Casa Del Encuentro, in 2014 nearly 300 murders in Argentina were considered hate crimes against women. All of this has led to a growing women’s rights movement, with the hashtag campaign #niunamenos (#notoneless) protesting the killing of women. It’s also led to femicide laws in several Latin American countries, including in Brazil, where the U. N. estimates that an average of 15 women a day are murdered in acts of gender violence.  The new Brazilian law imposes jail sentences of up to 30 years for convicted offenders and longer sentences for those who attack girls under 14, women over 60 and pregnant women. The outrage over the fate of the Argentine tourists goes beyond the killing itself. News articles about the murders are filled with reader comments like this one: ”It’s terrible, what happened to them, but how irresponsible of their parents to let them travel alone, backpacking.” Another commenter writes: ”The world is tough and their parents clearly didn’t teach them well. . .. What did they expect?” That line of questioning has launched a twitter hasthag #yoviajosola (#Itravelalone). And there have been several written reactions to the incident, notably a letter by a Paraguayan college student named Guadalupe Acosta, in the voice of the murdered girls, which is going viral in Latin America. It’s been shared by over half a million users across Facebook. Here’s how it starts off: ”Yesterday they killed me. I didn’t let them touch me, and they smashed my cranium with a stick. They stabbed me, and they let me bleed to death. Like a waste, they put me in a black polyethylene bag, wrapped with packaging tape, and I was thrown out to a beach, where hours later I was found. But worse than my death, was the humiliation that came later. From the moment they had my lifeless body, nobody asked, where is the son of a bitch that ended my dreams, my hopes, my life? No, they instead started asking me useless questions. Me, can you imagine? A dead woman, who can’t talk. Who can’t defend herself. What were you wearing? Why were you alone? What was a woman doing, traveling unaccompanied? You went into a rough neighborhood. What did you expect?” What did you expect? I was given the answer to that question as a kid. It’s the fourth grade, in a public city school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We are a rowdy bunch of   and    in the girls locker room, yelling, teasing each other about boys. This one classmate tells us she has a crush on this one boy in response we hoot and holler, and she spits out this rhyme she heard somewhere: si te quieren violar, relajate y disfruta. If you’re going to get raped, relax and enjoy. The shenanigans go on in the locker room as if nothing of note has been said. Most of us don’t fully understand how sex works. And none of us, certainly not I, understood the horror that limerick encloses, or the awfulness of a    girl belting it out in a locker room. As the years passed, I didn’t think about the importance of that rhyme. Not even as I grew up, and street harassment became common currency. From the time I hit puberty, I could rarely walk out in the streets without getting comments from men. On a good day, it was a piropo  —   what some say is a ”romantic” and ”clever” version of a catcall. For a lot of women, piropos are enjoyable, part of our culture. A friend and colleague tells me, ”In Mexico, if you don’t get told a piropo, even if it has sexual overtones, you feel sad. In the U. S. it’s not part of the culture, so you feel it’s harassment. What is the line that cannot be crossed? Where do you say ’enough’?” I can tell you that for me, growing up, piropos were rarely respectful or remotely funny. They were often verbal sexual threats, violent innuendos, a stranger letting me know that he’d like to rape me, hurt me or get me pregnant. And even though this happened nearly on a regular basis, and in public, I can’t remember a single time anyone intervened. As a kid, I didn’t have the guts to stand up for myself, nor did I think it was always safe to do so. The frustration with these kinds of attitudes was captured in a popular skit by Argentine comedienne Malena Pichot. In it, she at first acts sarcastically flattered toward violent harassers. Later on, Pichot reveals how she truly feels by gruesomely murdering the men who have accosted her. ”I want to clarify that [our show] is completely against murder,” she notes at the end of the skit.  She’s one of many voices that are rising, arguing that there’s just a small step between a verbal threat toward a woman and the act itself. In Argentina, groups like Accion Respeto campaign and protest against catcalling. In Peru, an online platform tracks reported street harassment incidents on a map. It seems governments might be listening. Early last year, an Argentine congresswoman proposed fines of more than $400 for street harassers. Last year, Peru approved an   harassment law. And lest we make this solely a Latin American issue (it’s not) last year there was an uproar over harassment on the streets of New York there’s an ongoing discussion in this country about the culture of blaming victims for their assaults. In recent weeks, the discussion was reignited on Spanish language social media following attacks on an American journalist, Andrea Noel, in Mexico City. Footage from a security camera near the scene of her attack shows her walking down a street in the posh neighborhood of Condesa. She’s wearing a skirt a man runs up behind her and pulls her panties down. She falls to the ground, and he runs off. Noel began a social media campaign and was vocal in denouncing the attack. She paid a price for speaking up: She says she received such an overwhelming number of death and rape threats that she left the country temporarily. She says the last drop was having a laser pointed at her forehead, aimed from an SUV with tinted windows. A quick search of her name on social media shows an outpouring of support peppered with tweets calling her a prostitute and a liar  —   and graphic rape threats. Many comments came from women. And that little question often pops up: Walking around in a short dress, what did she expect? My first reaction to the video, to be perfectly honest, is not a noble one, but one that I think is important to recognize: I’m frustrated that she did not know better than to walk down the street in a short dress when street harassment is such a known problem. I catch this nasty thought and get angry at myself for it. I think of the many times when I was a kid and some stranger said something inappropriate or terrifying to me in a public space. I think about a close childhood friend who was pinned down and fondled at a bus stop, only to be told, ”Well, you are very pretty,” by the officer who took her complaint. I think of another friend who, as a teenager, was raped by a cab driver and, after sitting unattended at the police station for too long, just got up and left. I think about Marina Menegazzo and María José Coni. And of all the bodies of women whose names I’ve read but can’t even remember, because there are too many for my memory to contain. And then I realize: It’s something about Noel’s shock that distresses me. I realize that possibly, when she was growing up, no one told her, time and time again, like a mantra, what to expect. Or maybe someone did tell her, and she simply had the audacity to expect more. What should women expect? The answer is given around the world every day. The answer is in a trash bag on the Ecuadoran beach. It’s swallowed down with every birth control pill taken by migrant women before they travel from Central America to the U. S. It’s in the quick footsteps of girls everywhere who walk fast so they don’t get hurt or bothered on their way home. The answer about what to expect had been given to me long before I even asked the question  —   when I was 10 years old, in a girls locker room. But maybe it’s time we all expect something better."
"When Obama walks off Air Force One onto the red carpet at Jose Marti airport in Havana Sunday, he’ll be taking another big step towards normal relations with the island, and kicking another hole in the wall of isolation that the U. S. spent decades trying to build around Cuba. ”The Cold War has been over for a long time,” Obama said, before his historic handshake with Cuban President Raul Castro in Panama last year. ”I’m not interested in having battles that, frankly, started before I was born.” Obama will be the first American president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge arrived on a battleship in 1928. (Harry Truman dropped by during a Caribbean cruise 20 years later, but didn’t go beyond the U. S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.) The president hopes to cement the new U. S. policy of engagement with Cuba that he first announced 15 months ago. ”We very much want to make the process of normalization irreversible,” said Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who played a key role in secret talks that led up to the opening. During his   trip to Cuba, the president will meet with Castro as well as Cuban dissidents. He’ll deliver a televised address to the Cuban people. And he’ll take in an exhibition baseball game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays. First Lady Michelle Obama is joining her husband on the trip, along with their daughters, Sasha and Malia. While polls show a majority of Americans including Cuban Americans support renewed diplomatic ties with Cuba, the president’s policy still draws criticism from some Republicans. ”Let’s not forget that the Castro regime has been guilty of countless human rights abuses,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday. ”Unfortunately, it is doubtful that the president will bring up the need for reform during his visit.” The White House says Obama will raise the issue of human rights when he meets with Castro on Monday. He’ll also hold a separate meeting Tuesday with human rights activists and others who are critical of the Castro government. ”We know that change won’t come to Cuba overnight,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice said. ”But the old approach  —   trying to isolate Cuba for more than 50 years  —   clearly didn’t work. We believe that engagement  —   including greater trade, travel, and ties between Americans and Cubans  —   is the best way to help create opportunity and spur progress for the Cuban people.” Several dozen members of Congress  —   both Democrats and Republicans  —   are expected to join the president’s delegation. Business people will also be tagging along in hopes of uncovering new economic opportunities. While the U. S. embargo against Cuba remains in effect, the administration has been chipping away it over the last 15 months. The Commerce and Treasury Departments have steadily eased restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba. On Tuesday, the administration opened the door for individual Americans to travel to Cuba for ”  ” purposes, without having to sign up for an expensive group tour. Direct mail service between the U. S. and Cuba resumed this past week. And U. S. airlines are expected to launch scheduled service to the island later this year, with up to 110 flights a day. The diplomatic thaw has prompted a surge in U. S. visits to Cuba, located just 90 miles off the southern tip of Florida. So far, the U. S. overtures have prompted only a limited response from the Cuban government, both economically and politically. American companies, given a green light by Washington to do business in Cuba, still encounter red tape in Havana. And Cuban dissidents still face repression from the authoritarian Castro regime. Outside experts say while Cuba has made some positive moves, they’ve been small, and it’s not clear when  —   or even if  —   more progress will be achieved. ”The great problem, as we know, is a journey of a thousand miles starts with a few steps,” said Peter Hakim of the   Dialogue think tank. ”But so does a journey of a only few steps.” Some critics argue Obama should have waited to visit Cuba until the country moves further down the path of reform. But Rhodes disagrees. ”Given the choice between going in December when, frankly, it would just kind of be a vacation down to Cuba, or going now and trying to get some business done, we believe that the time is right,” Rhodes said. The president’s outreach to Cuba has also been welcomed by other leaders in the hemisphere, with whom the previous policy of trying to isolate Cuba had been a liability."
"Europe and Turkey have been negotiating for decades on the kind of relationship they want, and they’re nowhere close to a final deal on that big question. The limited agreement announced Friday on migrants reflects the relationship they have by default: mutual dependency that forces them to cooperate when faced with a crisis. Europe needs Turkey to be a buffer that halts the surge of Syrian refugees, and more broadly, limits Middle Eastern chaos from spilling over into Europe. Turkey needs greater access to Europe’s markets and was also swayed by the billions of dollars the European Union offered to help the Turks cope with the nearly 3 million refugees it has hosted. Turkey also demanded, and received, a lifting of visa restrictions on Turks entering the European Union. If it works as planned, Greece will start sending back Syrian migrants who are arriving by sea from Turkey. For every one of these undocumented Syrians sent back, Europe will accept one Syrian asylum seeker in Turkey who has gone through the official channels. Meanwhile, Turks will be able to travel more freely in Europe. Both sides compromised and it marked a victory for cooperation on a difficult issue. The main criticism has come from human rights groups, who say it   refugees. Yet even as the deal was announced, the underlying   friction was evident in testy remarks by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. ”At a time when Turkey is hosting 3 million (migrants) those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first to look at themselves,” Erdogan said in televised speech Friday. So what are the prospects that Turkey will ultimately join the EU? Well, there’s a lot of history here. Turkey first signed a cooperation agreement with the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU, way back in 1963. Turkey submitted an application for full European Union membership in 1987. In the nearly three decades since, the sides have negotiated in fits and starts, with frequent pauses, periodic recriminations and occasional progress. The European Union has expanded dramatically during this time and now has 28 members, though there’s no sign Turkey will be added any time soon. The two sides must work out 35 separate issues, or chapters. They’ve only reached agreement on one, and most have never been opened for negotiation. ”This contrasting mix of conflict and cooperation has rested at the heart of the contested identity construction of both Turkey and Europe from the very outset,” writes Nathalie Tocci in a paper for the Brookings Institution. ”True to history, Turkey’s relations with the European integration project have been dense, contested, and tortuous since the outset,” she adds. ”Despite their intensity and duration over the decades, the end point of the relationship remains unknown to this day.” In principle, most European countries, as well as the United States, back greater Turkish integration in Europe for political, economic and military reasons. Turkey is the bridge to the Middle East. It already has deep trade ties with Europe and is a key member of NATO. But in reality, the parties tend to irritate one another with regularity. Europe frequently condemns Turkey’s human rights record, and says the Turks will have to meet European standards when it comes to labor laws and judicial practices to join the EU. The European criticisms are increasingly aimed at Erdogan, saying he has made Turkey less democratic and more authoritarian during more than a decade in power. Erdogan chafes at his critics, raises the issue of Turkish pride and says his country will not take dictation from Europe. Whenever relations get badly frayed, pressing matters tend to bring them back together. The U. S. and European states lobbied Turkey for months to win permission last summer to use Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base as a launching pad for air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria. NATO has welcomed this Turkish assistance, though the fight against ISIS has itself become a point of contention. The U. S.  coalition has worked closely with Kurdish forces in both countries. But Turkey has stepped up military action against Kurds on several fronts, from southeast Turkey to northern Syria and northern Iraq. In short, all the signs point toward a   relationship that’s likely to be difficult, but one that neither side can walk away from. ”While both Turkey and the EU are in the same metaphorical boat, the boat is on a journey whose destination is unknown,” writes Tocci. Kevin Beesley’s is NPR’s senior Europe editor and is @NPRBeesley. Greg Myre is the international editor at NPR. org and is @gregmyre1."
"Donald Trump’s career in business has not won over one important constituency for him in Arizona ahead of that state’s primary next week: the business community. Many Arizona business leaders worry that if elected, the Republican front runner’s rhetoric on immigration and Mexico could prompt an economic backlash, something Arizona has experienced recently. Six years ago Arizona lawmakers passed a bold immigration enforcement law, SB 1070. The law as written made it a state crime for unauthorized immigrants to seek work, mandated legal immigrants carry their documents and required police to ask about immigration status. But the 2010 immigration bill had an unintended consequence: the bill made the state a target of economic boycotts. ”Known For All The Wrong Reasons” While the law made Arizona and obvious place for Trump to hold one of his first campaign rallies last summer, the very convention center in Phoenix where Trump spoke saw a 30 percent drop in bookings after the law passed and some blamed an   1070 boycott against Arizona. A binational conference in Arizona between governors on both sides of the border was cancelled because the Mexican politicians indicated they would not set foot in the state. ”We were known for all the wrong reasons for a while, being a place that was not seen as welcoming to outsiders,” said James Ahlers, general counsel at the   government and public affairs firm Molera Alvarez. His firm now has a contract to represent the city of Phoenix’s trade interests in Mexico  —   one of the efforts the city has made in the wake of SB 1070 to improve the city’s relationship with Mexico. Eventually federal courts threw out major sections of SB 1070, but even six years later, Ahlers says the law remains a major topic in Mexico. ”We do get questions about ’Why should we work with Arizona? How do you view immigration? Have your attitudes changed from what we saw several years ago with SB 1070? ’” Ahlers said. Local and state leaders have made a point of traveling to Mexico to repair and strengthen trade and tourism ties, and it appears to be working. Mexico is Arizona’s biggest trading partner, and last year Arizona’s exports with Mexico hit a record $8. 6 billion. Trump Stirs New Worries, But many in Arizona worry that some of Trump’s infamous comments, such as calling Mexican   ”rapists” and his demand that Mexico pay for an expanded border wall, could reverse that progress. ”Poisoning the well so to speak with some of the rhetoric you get from Trump is not good for business and the business community is concerned about that,” Ahlers said. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto likened Trump’s tone to Hitler’s earlier this month. Members of Arizona’s tourism community are concerned that if Trump makes it to the White House it could impact international tourism, particularly from Mexico. Mexican visitors spend an estimated $2. 5 billion dollars a year in Arizona, according to research by the University of Arizona Eller College of Management. ”It happened to us with SB 1070, I was traveling to Mexico and people in Mexico thought that everyone in Arizona hated Mexicans,” said Felipe Garcia of Visit Tucson, which promotes Tucson tourism. SB 1070 As A ”Case Study” Carlos Fernandez, the CEO of BFS, an aerospace and defense company based on the Arizona border that manufactures parts in Mexico, said the reputational damage of SB 1070 in Arizona should be seen as a cautionary tale for the rest of the country this election season. ”This is a wonderful case study that we actually have in our own state about what happens if we treat our neighbors in the south as if they are not our neighbors, but our enemies,” Fernandez said. ”You have to look at the economics of how we suffered because of that, and that could definitely translate to the entire country.” So far, Fernandez said that his contacts in Mexico are not taking the possibility of a Trump presidency seriously. Trump likes to say in his speeches that Mexico is ”killing us” in trade. He has said American companies that move manufacturing jobs to Mexico and then sell their goods into the United States should be face punitive taxes and has said he will make changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement. But in Arizona, there is a prevailing view among business leaders that the state’s prosperity is linked to the strength of Mexico’s economy. ”The better our friends in Mexico are doing, the better we are doing in Arizona,” said Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry president and CEO Glenn Hamer. Hamer argues when manufacturing jobs move to Mexico from the U. S. there continue to be opportunities for American companies to business with those companies across the border. He argues those opportunities would be lost if the manufacturing jobs had gone to China instead. This primary season Hamer has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s trade policies, particularly Trump’s pledge to renegotiate NAFTA or his stated willingness to engage in a trade war if Mexico refuses to pay for a border wall. ”Setting off a trade war, setting off a chain reaction with our greatest friends and allies, this could trigger a Great Recession or it could trigger a depression,” Hamer said. Arizona Republicans Not Necessarily Concerned, But Trump’s Arizona Campaign Chairman Jeff DeWit insists that predictions of soured relations with Mexico if Trump enters the White House are overblown. ”I just think the word will go out that America wants to do a good job with our trade deals again and we want to have a strong immigration policy,” DeWit said. DeWit, who serves as Arizona’s state treasurer, acknowledged that big corporations that want to manufacture their products overseas may not like Trump’s proposals, which aim to protect American jobs. DeWit says that a President Trump would make better trade agreements than past administrations. ”I think that is something Donald Trump can bring is a business minded attitude towards these deals and I think it will be better for both sides,” DeWit said. And it seems many Arizona Republicans agree   polls show Trump has held a consistent lead in the state for months."
"A Florida jury sided with former wrestler Hulk Hogan on Monday, awarding him $25 million in punitive damages in his invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker Media. The award comes on top of the $115 million the jury already specified on Friday, bringing the total damages to $140 million. The   jury assessed Gawker $15 million in punitive damages. The media company’s publisher and CEO, Nick Denton, was slapped with an additional $10 million. Denton said Friday the company will appeal the ruling. The celebrity wrestler, whose legal name is Terry Bollea, filed suit accusing the website of invading his privacy when it published a portion of a video showing him having sex with the wife of a former friend, along with 1, 400 words describing the video. Bollea, 62, sought $100 million in damages from Gawker. He was awarded $55 million in economic injuries and $60 million for emotional distress, Reuters reports. The jury returned on Monday to consider punitive damages. In a statement, Denton said, ”Given key evidence and the most important witness were both improperly withheld from the jury, we all knew the appeals court will need to resolve this case.” The witness to which Denton alludes is reportedly the husband of the woman in the sex tape, Bubba Clem, whom Gawker lawyers wanted to question in order to show that that one or both of the parties knew about the taping. Their thinking is that if the defense could establish that the tape was made as a publicity stunt, then it was fair game to be covered as news. As the   previously reported, the issue of whether the video is newsworthy was a point of focus in much of the case. Gawker argued that Bollea’s ”frequent public discussion of his sex life made the clip newsworthy and thus protected by the First Amendment.” Bollea’s lawyers argued that distinguishing between the character of Hulk Hogan and Bollea’s real life was crucial. ”I’m kind of concerned about Hulk Hogan’s privacy, but you kind of give it away,” Bollea testified in court, according to The New York Times. ”But in the privacy of your own home, no one invades my privacy.” According to the Guardian, Bollea’s lawyers also called Gawker’s ”common decency” into question during closing arguments on Friday: ”Kenneth Turkel, a lawyer for Hogan, told jurors Gawker editors had not even had the ’common decency’ to call Hogan for comment before they posted the video. ”Turkel walked jurors through Hogan’s case: that his right to privacy was gratuitously compromised by Gawker, that his reputation was materially compromised, and that he suffered emotional distress of ’outrageous intensity and duration.’ ” The jury agreed. Gawker, however, has ”warned that if Hogan wins the case, the decision could not only destroy the company  —   a loss could cost the site up to $50 [million],” the Guardian writes. Denton’s statement also said, ”I . .. am confident that we would have prevailed at trial if we had been allowed to present the full case to the jury. That’s why we have already begun preparing, as we expect to win this case ultimately.” Gawker Media president and general counsel Heather Dietrick said in October that she wouldn’t be surprised if Gawker lost the case, but didn’t think that the jury would award Bollea $100 million, Politico Media reported at the time. ”It’s quite possible that Hogan just gets a very small judgment against us, and then we have to make the decision: do we appeal that and incur further fees to vindicate the First Amendment rights that we know we’re on the right side of,” she said. ”Or do we simply say, OK this very small judgment is a win and makes it very difficult for Hulk Hogan, who’s spent a lot of time on pursuing this case and could walk away with something very small.” Apart from the statement released by Denton, Gawker Media writers and editors, who had been weighing in on the case  —   sometimes gleefully  —   for months on social media, did not offer any opinions on the developments. And Gawker itself, which had been covering the case, (once publishing a story entitled, ”A Judge Told Us to Take Down Our Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post. We Won’t. ”) also had not published a post on the website after the original ruling. Advocates for free speech, however, spoke up, saying that ruinous media fines were in contradiction with the First Amendment and that Gawker was well within its rights as a news site to publish interesting stories pertaining to celebrities. An attorney for Gawker, Michael Sullivan, said in court Friday that while jurors may find the publication of the tape ”unpleasant,” the post was still free speech under the Constitution. ”We ask you to protect something that some of you may find unpleasant,” he said, according to The Associated Press. ”To write, to speak, to think about all topics, to hold public figures accountable. It is right in the long run for our freedoms.”"
"Sometimes, it takes a while to bring a show into being, but we feel like this one was worth the wait. This is the week we get real super nerdy about music, theater, enthusiasm, hashtags, dancing, just . .. lots of everything. Last fall, when our treasured regular panelist Gene Demby started listening to the Hamilton cast album after it showed up over at NPR Music as a First Listen, he started saying things like this. And at some point, we decided we needed to go to Hamilton, and we needed to go with Gene. And months and months later, in the first week of March, we made it happen. This is the week we finally get to bring you the conversations I’ve been trying to bring you for almost six months. Hooray! The first segment is about the show itself: we talk about influences both inside and outside the world of Broadway, we play some Sondheim and some Cole Porter, we talk about jazz hands and Bugs Bunny, and we break the news to you that yes, this particularly heavily hyped thing is just as good as the hype suggests it is. Here’s the list of references I talk about one point (there are many, many other similar pieces around) and here’s the episode of Another Round that Gene references. The second segment is about the show as a phenomenon and what it’s doing to all of us. We talk about the tremendous     of it, and how we feel about the overload that many of us have felt and are feeling, and Gene takes a moment to ponder what might have happened if he’d obeyed a different instinct than the one he did. A couple of things you should know: I’m so sorry we didn’t have at the tip of our tongues the name of Alysha Deslorieux, the fantastic performer we saw as Angelica. We were falling all over ourselves to talk about how great she was and didn’t pause to Google her. I apologize she was tremendous. That’s what we meant to get across. See also: Javier Munoz, whom we referred to (he generally does Alexander Hamilton one performance a week) but didn’t name. (And best thoughts, sir.) And also: even more than usual, we owe this show to our fabulous producer, Jessica Reedy, who is responsible for most of the interplay between the conversation and the music posts, and who also was the one who wrangled the tickets. So this is very much Jessica’s baby, even though you won’t hear her voice. And also also: Thanks to Stephen for hosting. I promise, I don’t sound so creaky anymore. Maybe 5 percent creaky. But almost not creaky at all! I want to say a couple things about Hamilton. The tickets are both largely unavailable and very expensive even if you can get them, which (and Miranda talks about this on Another Round, too) is a really hard thing to change about live theater. They’re small shows, really, and they only happen so often, and if demand gets high enough . .. well. It’s a tough thing to entirely undo. Because I knew we were going, I didn’t listen to the cast album before we went, but honestly, most people aren’t going to see this cast in this show in this theater before they break up and new casts and tours and other things happen. It’s really important to recognize, I think, that this is not a series of concerts, where the live performances  —   these specific ones  —   are the only thing. Hamilton is a feat of authorship, just like Company or The Pirates Of Penzance or South Pacific or Rent or Anything Goes or whatever, and it’s going to exist in a zillion forms. It’s going to be performed and revived and   and done in schools and done locally, and it’s going to be done well and done badly, and individual songs will be covered on people’s albums, and there will probably be a movie someday, which lots of people will hate. There will be disputes over who can play Hamilton, who can play Burr, who can play Angelica. There will be intense conversations related to particular productions about rap experience and theater experience, many of which will carry problematic and gross undertones and teach people things and make them fight, and this show is going to keep vexing and challenging a certain subsection of theater people in this wonderful way. There will be boys (and girls too, but I’m going to guess especially boys) who have never done theater or even thought about doing theater who suddenly want to do it because of this, and one of them will write a show in 20 years that will draw its own crowds. God willing, Old Man Miranda is going to get his Kennedy Center Honors and his EGOT (that’s actually probably going to be, like, soonish) and his next show will put him and everybody else in the position of realizing it cannot be this again because nothing by anybody can be, quite, this again. It’s not just this thing, like a production you go stare at and go home or else press your nose up against the glass wishing you could get into. It’s a really important piece of writing, and it’s going to be around a lot longer than these crazy lines and lotteries and YouTube videos and memes and hashtags. It’s a piece of theater by an enormously important American composer, and it’s out in the world, and I promise, if you’re open to it, it will get to you as a composition, whether or not it gets to you as a   Broadway show. We close, as always, with what’s making us happy this week. I’m happy about a clip from   that you might enjoy if this week’s theater theme was up your alley. Glen is happy about a couple of events he’s got celebrating the release of his new book The Caped Crusade: Batman And The Rise Of Nerd Culture yaaaaaaay which you can find out more about by following him on Twitter. (March 22 in Brooklyn with Alexander Chee! March 29 with me in D. C.!) He’s also happy about the meetup we recently had where he got oodles of podcast recommendations, including one he wants to share with you. Gene is happy about the return of a favorite show and an oral history that hit home( town) for him. Stephen, who is as I write this finding Austin exhausting, is happy about a winner. As he should be. Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: me, Stephen, Glen, Gene, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus Mike."
"Yesterday,   Miranda and some of the cast of the smash Broadway musical Hamilton visited the White House for a day of performances, student workshops, a QA session, and a lightning round freestyling in the Rose Garden  —   with the prompts supplied by President Obama. ”We wanted to share this incredible musical with folks who might otherwise not get the experience,” said the president in his introductory comments. Obama also noted that the   story of the nation’s first secretary of the treasury has a nonpartisan fanbase: ”In fact, Hamilton  —   I’m pretty sure  —   is the only thing that Dick Cheney and I agree on.” What some fans may not know is that the show partly germinated out of an event at the White House. Back in 2009, Michelle Obama hosted a poetry event at which Miranda was invited to perform. He brought along the first song from what he was then calling his ”Hamilton Mixtape” concept album  —   which would evolve into the opening number of the show. That history wasn’t lost on Miranda."
"Katie Roiphe’s preoccupation with death goes back to her childhood, when she contracted virulent pneumonia at the age of 12. She was sick for a year and thought she was going to die. Her terror of death was reignited many years later when her father died. It was then that Riophe found herself turning to great minds to see how they confronted mortality. She initially told herself that she wanted to ”understand it better,” she tells NPR’s Melissa Block, but she soon realized that was a lie. ”I was actually trying to see it,” she explains. ”It sounds really simple, but it’s actually a very difficult thing to do. So that was my goal, to sort of focus in really closely on the final days of these writers and thinkers, and just look.” In The Violet Hour, Roiphe describes the last days of Sigmund Freud, James Salter, Maurice Sendak, Susan Sontag, John Updike and Dylan Thomas. She talks with Block about how these writers and thinkers accepted, or railed against, their fate. On John Updike, who wrote poems in the hospital after being diagnosed with lung cancer, It was amazing. He had very little time  —   just weeks before he was dead. I actually went up and looked at the manuscripts and you can see in his handwriting how arduous it was. At that last moment, when most people would just be watching television or railing against the universe, that was what he did and I found it very moving. . .. The poems have a sort of quality of reporting  —   that he’s bringing news. And he talks about writing as turning pain into honey, which I find a really beautiful way to think about what writers do: taking this incredibly awful  —   maybe the most awful thing that can happen to you  —   and turning it into honey just with words. On Susan Sontag, who endured brutal treatments for cancer, She had written so eloquently about the importance of not turning illness into a metaphor  —   of not embellishing and fantasizing and being really realistic and rational when it comes to your own illness  —   and she was unable to do that ironically in her own life. . .. She thought to herself she would be the exception even to the rule of mortality. That somehow, as she had with her earlier cancers famously, she was going to defeat death in some way. And even though the odds were against her  —   she was    getting a bone marrow transplant  —   even in those situations, she felt this time she wouldn’t die. At the one hand, it’s the opposite of a good death, it’s almost the anatomy of how you don’t want to die. On the other hand, I did see something kind of heroic in the power and force of her will. On how mortality was a constant companion for writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak, He was certainly preoccupied with death for his entire life, and one of the things that fascinated me about him is the way, in his art and famous children’s books, he worked on this problem year after year. Like when his parents died, or when his brother died, he just kept working on this problem and worked it through in drawing after drawing and draft after draft. And he sort of came out freeing himself to a certain extent from this obsession. He was very depressed at certain points of his life and he used his art as a way of countering that. It was a sort of medication for that almost. On Sendak owning John Keats’ death mask, It’s really very beautiful. When I saw it  —   he has it in a guest room with a blue bedspread  —   there are kind of stuffed animals on the bed. It’s a very bizarre scene and very Sendak, and I thought to myself, ”Who would ever want to own Keats’s death mask?” And then I looked at it and I realized I knew exactly why you’d want to own Keats’ desk mask: Because in a way what I was doing in this book was writing death masks. That urge to preserve the moment, and Annie Leibovitz did it with her famous photographs of Sontag, and Sendak himself drew the people he loved: his partner of many, many years after he died, and his family members right before they died. There’s something about capturing that moment in art that I actually do completely understand  —   both the reason you’d make Keats’ death mask and the reason you’d want to own it. On her idea of what a ”good” death would be, I feel like the thing that mostly happened with this book is I came away marginally less afraid, which sounds like not that a big deal. But given my panic about death at various points in my life, [this] was liberating to me. In terms of a good death, I did feel that this prolonged medical struggle of a Susan Sontag where you’re chasing after any possibility of medical salvation seemed like not a good idea, and the way of working your way into accepting what’s happening the way Sendak did and the way Updike did seems preferable to me. But one doesn’t always have control, and that was one of the things I really realized in writing about these deaths."
"It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Tuesday night  —   when Hillary Clinton was delivering her victory speech, after she won the primaries in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio  —   MSNBC host Joe Scarborough   this bit of advice to her: ”Smile. You just had a big night.” Suffice to say, women   were not amused. ”Said no one to a man, ever” tweeted one. Another offered: ”Women LOVE it when you say this.” And on it went, until comedian Samantha Bee was prompted to launch the hashtag ”Smile for Joe,” thereby prompting a slew of women to post selfies as they make like Grumpy Cat: frowning, grimacing, and scowling. (See the best of the #SmileForJoe responses here.) Later, Joe Scarborough doubled down on his tweet. ”Fake outrage,” he called the response, claiming that he’s an   Smile Demander. He explained, ”we’ve called Bernie Sanders grumpy for a year.” Well let’s leave aside the fact that Clinton did smile  —   often  —   during her speech (maybe Scarborough was too busy tweeting to notice). And let’s get to the heart of why this is so irksome, why it’s touched a nerve for a lot of women. Because even women who don’t happen to be running for the highest office in the land are all too familiar with men telling them  —   not asking them, telling them  —   to smile. Maybe it starts with   grandparents when you’re a kid. And then graduates to     unsolicited sidewalk advice when you’re older. This kerfuffle over women and smiling? it’s not new territory, though it IS new for a presidential campaign. Back in 1970, the feminist writer Shulamith Firestone proposed her ”dream action” for the women’s liberation movement: she called for ”a smile boycott” in which, she wrote, ”all women would instantly abandon their ’pleasing’ smiles  —   henceforth smiling only when something pleased THEM.” Don’t think that ever took off, but it’s a tantalizing idea. Inspired by this incident, I even spent some time this week reading scientific studies that measure the correlation between social power and gender and smiling. Or, as one study defined it, ”how the ideas of license and obligation translate into the   of facial expression.” Well this week, Hillary Clinton’s   was that  —   along with her wardrobe and hairstyle and stridency of voice  —   her propensity to smile was also fair game for comment. Apparently, it goes with the territory."
"Operas take on the grandest themes: love, violence, betrayal and battles. That’s why Andreas Mitisek, the director of Long Beach Opera, became interested in staging a new opera set during the most recent Iraq war and its aftermath. This small, innovative company is known for   work, so Mitisek decided to mount the world premiere of Fallujah at a National Guard Armory. A Humvee dominates the stage. The ushers wear military uniforms. ”Instead of sitting in a cushy theater and just being safe and going out for drinks, you are sitting on the floor of a drill hall where these people train to go to war,” Mitisek explained shortly before a recent rehearsal in Long Beach. ”So here, we’re telling a story about their experience once they leave that hall.” Fallujah is based on the actual experiences of Christian Ellis, a trained opera singer who enlisted with the Marine Corps when he was 19 and became a machine gunner during Operation Iraqi Freedom. During the 2004 battle of Falljuah, his platoon was ambushed and he lost one of his best friends. An IED fractured his spine. Ellis returned home with severe PTSD. ”I gave up on life. I tried killing myself,” he says quietly. Ellis says he tried to commit suicide four times. He became homeless. Quite literally, he says, he forgot how to sing. ”I forgot what notes were,” he says. ”I forgot how to breathe.” But in 2008, Ellis was invited to a fly fishing retreat for soldiers with PTSD. There, he met philanthropist Charlie Annenberg Weingarten, who decided to commission an opera based on Ellis’ experiences. Ellis’ excitement soured a bit when he learned that an   had been hired to write the libretto. He flew to New York to meet Heather Raffo, whose acclaimed   show Nine Parts of Desire had explored the experiences of Iraqi women after the first Gulf War. ”And she just had this way of calming me down naturally,” he recalls. ”Whether it was listening or asking the questions I didn’t know how to answer but answered anyway.” Raffo and Ellis talked for days, sometimes for 10 hours at a time. I met the two of them, with composer Tobin Stokes, at a downtown Long Beach hotel room after an event at the local VA hospital. Singers had performed selections from the opera, and vet after vet had stood up to recount their own experiences. The three collaborators were still visibly moved by the experience. As she prepared to write the libretto, Raffo interviewed dozens of veterans. She says hearing them talk about Iraqis and Iraq wasn’t always easy, even given the context. ”It’s brutal,” she says. ”It’s brutal particularly right now, because almost all of my family is out of Iraq. It’s not their home anymore: A hundred family members are down to four, and the rest are scattered all over the world. And I’m pissed.” I asked if Raffo had been apprehensive to hear stories about what the U. S. military had inflicted upon people who could have been her family. The playwright paused, and started to cry. Ellis immediately reached over to hold her hand. ”That was the hardest thing I had to do,” Raffo says, her voice shaking. ”I mean, spending a life in the theater, your job is to humanize.” But humanizing the U. S. military was just not something Raffo wanted to do. ”And then I knew that was wrong,” she says. ”I knew I had to. And I thought, this is my opportunity to be a better human being, and a better artist. And  —   to love.” Tobin Stokes says that when he was brought in, he asked Ellis for the iPod playlist of songs he’d listened to while gearing up for combat. The challenge was to take music that, he says, had been used to obliterate emotion, instead use it to amplify emotions. Stokes also employed what he calls ”a stylized Middle Eastern music”  —   not meant to be authentic, but rather to evoke local sounds as heard through the ears of the Marines. Long Beach Opera also brought in a few actual former servicemembers to train the singers and influence the production design. Michael Hebert and Jon Harguindeguy are part of a program called Awaken Arts, designed to help people who’ve been through traumatic experiences. They contributed concept art to the production  —   and over many rehearsals, Hebert showed the singers how to move through space as soldiers would, and how to handle their stage weapons. Hebert says that while he wasn’t a huge opera fan before getting involved with Fallujah, now he loves it. And when I asked how it felt to be part of the opera, he corrected me: ”It’s a part of me,” he said firmly. ”I’m not a part of it. This is a part of me.” Baritone Lamarcus Miller told me he’d barely given a thought to the issues faced by US veterans before being cast as Fallujah’s main character, Lance Corporal Philip Houston. ”Until I got the role, I was completely oblivious,” he confesses. But now he thinks about veterans with PTSD all the time. ”You know, I’ll walk down the street and Phillip will come into my head and say, ’I could kill them.’ Or, ’I could snap his neck. They’re sheep. ’” For Christian Ellis, it isn’t necessarily cathartic to have an opera made about his experiences at war. Getting any new opera staged is a long and excruciating process, and Ellis says much of it felt personal. Still, he’s been steadily healing. He’s even started singing again, with the men’s chorus in Phoenix, Ariz. where he lives. And he says it was incredibly meaningful to meet the singers who play him and his buddies. ”I’m a Marine  —   a combat marine,” he says. ”Now, I want to say, ’I sing opera. ’”"
"Simone Giertz makes robots. And while they’re technically adept  —   they do work  —   they don’t actually work very well. Giertz has found fame online via her useless robots, including one that’s been viewed more than a million times online. But it’s not just the fame she’s going for. She tells NPR she wants other people to get into robotics. ”To me, the goal of building useless and ridiculous robots is more  —   I mean, in some way, it’s like a personal goal because I think it’s really fun, and I think having fun is super important to create things,” she says. That’s evidenced by her accompanying ”making of” videos to some of the machines (there’s some salty language in this video). And if you browse the comment sections of the Internet at all (or work on the Internet) you might be interested in her ”Comment Assistant.”"
"A suicide bomber attacked a major pedestrian street in central Istanbul on Saturday, killing five people, including himself, and injuring 36, officials say. The explosion struck Istiklal Street, The Associated Press reports, a busy street full of cafes, shops, restaurants and foreign consulates. Zeynep Bilginsoy, reporting from Istanbul, tells our Newscast unit that the bomb struck at 11 a. m. local time. ”The Istanbul governor said the suicide bomber detonated in front of the district governor’s building,” Zeynep says. ”The neighborhood has been cordoned off and helicopters can be heard over the city.” The strike comes less than a week after a car bomb in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, killed more than three dozen people. In January, an explosion in a tourist neighborhood in Istanbul killed 13 tourists. In fact, this is the sixth bombing targeting civilians that has struck Turkey since June, Dalia Mortada tells our Newscast unit. From Istanbul, Dalia also reports there had been some warnings about violence in Istanbul leading up to Saturday’s attack. ”The U. S. and German consulates had warned their citizens of possible attacks this weekend in Istanbul just days ago  —   Germany even shut its consulate, located near the bombing site,” Dalia says. ”The Istanbul governor’s office dismissed those claims as ’sensational and unserious.’ ”"
"If you knew nothing about American politics and were seeing the 2016 campaign for the first time, you might reasonably assume that American voters really dislike trade deals. The Republican   after all, can’t stop talking about the dangers of trade with China and all the problems existing trade deals have caused. And on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has constantly lambasted   Hillary Clinton for her past support of trade pacts. Both get big applause when they campaign about the evils of trade deals  —   and notably, there’s no candidate with a similarly energetic stump speech (that gets a similarly raucous reaction) for trade pacts. And yet. Americans are feeling pretty positive about foreign trade these days. In addition, most mainstream economists think trade is (on balance) a good thing. But criticizing trade deals remains an effective stump topic. Here’s what’s going on behind the messy politics of trade: Americans are pretty positive about trade, In the recent primary elections, Republicans and Democrats alike have been skeptical of free trade, at least from the standpoint of job creation. In both Ohio and Michigan  —   both of which are known for their manufacturing, an industry that many argue has been hit hard by trade deals  —   Republicans and Democrats had remarkably similar views on trade. A little more than half of people in both parties in both states said trade ”takes away jobs.” Meanwhile, only around   of people across the board said it creates jobs. But as it turns out, Americans as a whole seem to feel pretty good about foreign trade. Gallup found in February (  to the Upshot’s Justin Wolfers) that 58 percent of Americans see trade as more of an opportunity than a threat. Interestingly, polls also show that Democrats right now are slightly more in favor of free trade than Republicans. In the early 2000s, Republicans were more likely to see trade as an opportunity than a threat, according to Gallup. But around 2011, Democrats surpassed them. Around 61 percent of Democrats saw trade as an opportunity as of 2015, compared to 51 percent of Republicans. This bucks conventional wisdom that Republicans are more the party of free trade. (After all, big business interest groups, like the Chamber of Commerce, who support trade pacts, tend to support Republican politicians, while unions  —   major Democratic supporters  —   oppose many trade pacts). Indeed, both parties appear to be (moderately) the parties of free trade. The bottom line, according to one   expert, is that Americans’ views on trade may shift back and forth, but they never really get that extreme. ”Trade is never wildly popular, but sometimes it’s less unpopular,” said Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow and public opinion analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a   think tank in Washington, DC. Economists are pretty well decided: trade is good, Many mainstream economists, meanwhile, are decided that free trade is (on the whole) a good thing. In a 2012 survey of top economists, 85 percent agreed that the benefits of free trade are ”much larger than any effects on employment.” Only 5 percent were uncertain. They also overwhelmingly agreed that Americans are far better off with NAFTA than if the pact hadn’t been passed. Likewise, in a 2014 survey, more than 80 percent of economists agreed that past trade deals ”have benefited most Americans.” The basic arguments economists often make for freer trade are simple: the ideas are that trade opens up more markets to U. S. exports, gives Americans more goods to choose from, and exchanges   jobs for   ones, as the Peterson Institute for International Economics’ Gary Hufbauer recently explained to NPR. But to paraphrase Harry Truman, there are no   economists. In those surveys, the economists expressed plenty of reservations about trade: some stressed that these gains only come about in the long term, and moreover that it’s important to recognize that there are losers from trade deals (like people whose jobs end up moving overseas). Indeed, some recent studies have raised concerns that opening up trade with China has hurt American manufacturing. It’s true that a huge share of Americans will enjoy lower prices and more choice at the store  —   and that a smaller number might get new jobs because of a trade deal. But there are also people who will be much, much worse off if their factory job moves to another country. That effect won’t hit many people, but it’s still devastating for them. What it all means: jobs and avocados, And that’s where we get back to the campaign trail, where populist    views and Americans’    opinions on trade meet. There are a few big potential reasons why trade resonates on the campaign trail. One is that primary voters are different from general election voters it’s possible that the people coming out to vote in the nominating contests feel much more strongly about trade than the general population. Another is that people like trade in theory but not when it comes down to specific deals. Pew found evidence of this in 2010: Americans liked the idea of trading with an array of foreign countries, but specific trade deals like NAFTA were really unpopular. But there’s a third, compelling possibility: it’s easier to get fired up about the problems with trade deals than it is about their benefits. ”It’s one of those many issues where people are pulled back and forth, where people who have lost jobs feel very strongly”  —   and understandably so, Bowman said. She added, ”Even when you do see it  —   when you’re getting a pair of shoes for a pretty good price  —   you don’t necessarily link that to free trade.” One way of summing it up is that for most Americans, the benefits of a trade pact are subtle  —   lower prices and, say, greater avocado availability. But for the rarer people who, for example, see a factory close because of trade, the effects run much deeper and can even be  . And this works to the advantage of politicians who sincerely oppose these trade deals. It’s not just voters who have a complicated relationship with trade. Among Washington politicians, there also aren’t a lot of neat partisan lines on trade. In pushing his   Partnership, President Obama has met opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike. Similarly, many politicians will often support one pact and then lambast another. Just eight years ago, Obama was hitting Clinton from the left on her past support of NAFTA. Now, he’s promoting a trade deal amid bipartisan opposition. Likewise, Hillary Clinton was an advocate for TPP before she was against it. Both Obama and Clinton say it’s about the content of the TPP. The administration says the pact is a big improvement upon NAFTA. Clinton, meanwhile, says that TPP doesn’t clear the ”high bar” she has set for it. But basic politics also can explain why politicians might support or oppose trade deals  —   some Republicans on the Hill simply might not want to hand the president a win on TPP, for example. And politics can also explain why a politician from either party could be expected to like free trade a bit more once he or she gets into the Oval Office. ”[W]hen politicians become presidents, not everything is so simple or populist, and they become more amenable to rational arguments,” said Barry Bosworth, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in an email. ”Republican presidents are strongly influenced by business leaders and Democrats more by academic economists, but both groups are strong supporters of open trade in an increasingly globalized economy.”"
"One of the last vestiges of the Cold War was buried Sunday, when President Obama set foot in Cuba. He’s the first American president to visit the island since Calvin Coolidge, 88 years ago. ”Que bola’ Cuba?” Obama tweeted in an informal greeting, moments after Air Force One touched down at Havana’s Jose Marti Airport. ”Looking forward to meeting and hearing directly from the Cuban people.” Holding an umbrella against a light rain, Obama and the first family were greeted by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla. The motorcade then made its way to a meeting with staff of the U. S. embassy, which   last summer after a   of official isolation. Obama and his wife and daughters planned to visit the Havana Cathedral on Sunday evening and meet with Cardinal Ortega  —   recognition of the prominent role he and Pope Francis played in encouraging the Administration’s surprise thaw with Cuba that was announced in December 2014. The president was to be joined in Cuba by more three dozen members of Congress, including several who accompanied the first family on Air Force One. Several U. S. business leaders will also take part in the visit, including an executive from Starwood hotels, which just inked an agreement to manage three Cuban properties. The   trip is designed to cement the Administration’s diplomatic outreach to Cuba, making it hard for any future president to return to the   old policy of isolation that Obama and his team consider a failure. Only Congress can lift the trade embargo against Cuba. But over the past 15 months, the Administration has been chipping away at it, easing restrictions on both travel and commerce. The number of Americans traveling to Cuba jumped nearly 80 percent last year. That’s expected to increase as airlines resume scheduled service later this year, with up to 110 flights a day. Thus far, the U. S. overtures have been met with little reciprocal movement by the Cuban government. Obama is expected to press Cuban President Raul Castro to do more open both Cuba’s economy and the political system when the two leaders meet on Monday. The White House says Obama will also raise the issue of Cuba’s human rights abuses and he plans to meet separately with   activists on Tuesday. A weekly demonstration by the Ladies in White group was quickly silenced Sunday afternoon, and more than 50 dissidents were hauled away, hours before Obama’s arrival. A happier demonstration is expected Tuesday at Havana’s Estadio Latinoamericano, where the Tampa Bay Rays will play an exhibition baseball game against the Cuban national team. The contest is a nod to the popular passtime the two countries share, and comes as Major Leage Baseball is negotiating a deal to let Cuban ballplayers sign with big league teams without having to defect. In Havana’a central park, where baseball is a frequent topic of conversation, residents are looking forward to the matchup. Narcis Vallant says no matter which team comes out on top, both countries will be winners."
"Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in December 2014 when President Obama announced plans to improve U. S. ties with Cuba. We’re republishing it with minor updates following Fidel Castro’s death.  Just months after he seized power in Cuba, Fidel Castro visited Washington in April 1959 and received a warm welcome. Castro met Vice President Richard Nixon, placed a wreath at the base of both the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and was photographed looking up in seeming admiration of both U. S. presidents. For U. S.  relations, it was almost all downhill for the next  . The standoff outlasted 10 U. S. presidents, a failed invasion, a nuclear crisis and countless boatloads of Cuban asylum seekers. Meanwhile, the Castros kept running Cuba uninterrupted. President Obama, the 11th president to deal with the Castros, said in December 2014 it was time for a change. ”We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result,” the president said as he announced plans to normalize relations, including embassies in both capitals. The U. S. Embargo, With Fidel Castro’s rise, attempts to establish normal relations soon gave way to mutual recriminations. The young Cuban leader denounced ”Yankee imperialism” and developed ties with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower placed an economic embargo on Cuba in October 1960, and diplomatic relations were severed the following year. The Cold War moves were intended to contain, if not roll back, communism, but those measures would soon be overtaken by far more dramatic events. The U. S.  Bay of Pigs invasion, a 1961 disaster carried out by Cuban exiles, was just one of at least eight futile U. S. attempts to oust Fidel Castro in the 1960s. The Bay of Pigs was followed a year later by the Cuban missile crisis, a U. S.  staredown that ended with Moscow removing its missiles from the island. Lesser crises came and went in the years that followed, but the embargo endured. It has succeeded in keeping Cuba poor and isolated but has also served as a badge of defiance for the Castros, who have blamed their own shortcomings on the U. S. policy. Despite the embargo, the Castro regime has never been seriously threatened from inside Cuba and over time the U. S. policy developed its own contradictions. The older generation of   who fled during the early years of Fidel Castro’s authoritarian regime has been the strongest proponent of maintaining the tough embargo. Yet over time, growing numbers of this generation have conceded that the policy was not working.   have also been the most frequent visitors to Cuba, often delivering assistance to relatives on the island and thus helping ordinary Cubans cope with economic hardships. Meanwhile, a younger generation of   born in the U. S. has shown far less interest in waging the battle launched by their parents. For Decades, Few Changes, Prior to Obama’s policy change, alterations to the status quo were marked by limited steps. Under President Carter, the countries opened interests sections in each other’s capitals. Carter also said those wishing to leave Cuba would be welcome in the U. S. Some 125, 000 Cubans set off from the island, most all in small boats in the   Mariel boatlift. The new arrivals included many thousands that Castro cut loose from the country’s prisons and mental institutions. Many Americans felt Castro pulled a fast one on the U. S. and the embargo was tightened with a series of measures in the 1980s and ’90s. The pendulum swung the other way in 1999, when President Clinton eased travel restrictions and encouraged increased cultural exchanges. Under President George W. Bush, U. S. relations with Havana deteriorated as the president declared: ”We’re not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom we are working for the day of freedom in Cuba.” However, the U. S. embargo faced increasing criticism from the international community, particularly in Latin America, where many countries felt that Washington’s isolation of Cuba increasingly proved counterproductive. There were hints that the U. S. policy might change, but little concrete action, after Raul Castro assumed the presidential duties from his ailing brother in 2006 and Obama expressed his preference for increased ties. Raul Castro has taken some steps to allow   private businesses, though the reforms have moved slowly. Obama shook hands with Raul Castro at a memorial service in South Africa following the 2013 death of Nelson Mandela. It was described as only the second handshake between leaders of the two countries in the past   and observers tried to divine whether it held any meaning for the future of U. S.  relations. ”Mandela showed us the power of action,” Obama said in his speech, ”of taking risks on behalf of our ideals.” A year later, Obama began to normalize the U. S.  ties, and followed that up with a visit to Cuba in March of this year, becoming the first sitting U. S. president to go to the island in 88 years. The two countries are still trying to define the new relationship. But after Fidel Castro died on Friday night, Obama offered hopeful words on Saturday morning: ”For nearly six decades, the relationship between the United States and Cuba was marked by discord and profound political disagreements,” Obama said. ”During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends.” Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Very early in the morning on Sunday, a D. C. resident made a hotly anticipated appearance  —   one that only a few lucky people managed to watch in real time. A second baby bald eagle hatched in a nest in the National Arboretum around 3 a. m. EDT. The nest of ”Mr. President” and ”The First Lady” is hooked up to a webcam and has captivated more than a million people, according to the American Eagle Foundation’s webmaster. The first baby bald eagle finally shook off the last of its shell at a reasonable hour on Friday. As Bill reported at the time: ”After days of anticipation, a fuzzy wing flopped out of the remains of an eggshell Friday morning. . .. The bird then worked its way out of its shell over the next hour, emerging more fully around 8:20 a. m. ET. ”Throughout the process, its parent eagle alternated between peering attentively (to be honest, eagles don’t seem capable of anything but) and nestling over the fledgling and a second,    egg.” But the younger sibling debuted during the wee hours. The feed was still running  —   it uses infrared light at night, which is detectable by the camera but not visible to the birds  —   and a few fans managed to witness it. For those who missed it, the first sign of the news was a freshly broken eggshell at the edge of the nest  —   then a second ball of feathers visible at feeding time. The older eaglet is, for now, named DC2 (as it is the second eaglet raised by Mr. President and The First Lady at this location) the new arrival is DC3. Fans, of course, have suggested a wide range of alternate names  —   from Sasha and Malia to Merry and Pippin. Whatever you call them, you can watch the eaglets at the webcam. Again, we’ll remind you that, as the American Eagle Foundation says, ”This is a wild eagle nest and anything can happen.”"
"Donna Davis thought she had hit the jackpot with the two bags of mushrooms she collected in the woods of Northern California’s Salt Point State Park. Instead, she ended up in the hospital, facing the possibility of a liver transplant, after mistakenly eating a poisonous mushroom known as the death cap. The    life coach and her boyfriend had collected chanterelles, matsutakes and hedgehog mushrooms, all   edible species. That night, Davis made mushroom soup for herself, her boyfriend and a group of their friends. ”It was amazingly delicious,” Davis says. So good, in fact, that she had two bowls. And she felt fine. Until the next afternoon. ”I slept for three days,” says Davis, of her illness in December 2014. ”I was kind of in and out of it, just drinking water and not being able to really hold anything down.” When she dragged herself to a mirror, she realized she had turned yellow. Davis isn’t the first or only forager who has fallen victim to the death cap. Between 2010 and 2015, five people died in California and 57 became sick after eating these unassuming greenish mushrooms, according to the California Poison Control System. One mushroom cap is enough to kill a human being, and they’re also poisonous to dogs. ”Dogs die in droves,” says Debbie Viess of the Bay Area Mycological Society. The trouble is, people feel fine for six to 12 hours after they’ve eaten death caps, says Dr. Kent Olson, the   director of the San Francisco Division of the California Poison Control System. But during that time, a toxin in the mushroom is quietly injuring their liver cells. Patients then develop severe abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting. ”They can become very rapidly dehydrated from the fluid losses,” says Olson. Dehydration can cause kidney failure, which compounds the damage to the liver. When Davis went to the hospital, doctors put her on intravenous fluids. They also pumped her stomach full of activated charcoal to help absorb the poison out of her body, although some doctors question the usefulness of this treatment when many hours have elapsed since the poisoning occurred. For the most severe cases, the only way to save the patient is a liver transplant, says Olson. (Davis didn’t end up needing one and went home before Christmas.) Researchers are looking for better treatments. One group of scientists is testing the drug silibinin, which can protect a patient’s liver and make a transplant unnecessary. And other scientists are trying to learn more about death caps  —   hoping to find a weakness they can exploit to defeat them. The death caps arrived in California from Europe as early as the 1930s and ’40s, says Anne Pringle, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She discovered this timeline through genetic testing of death cap samples collected in California during this era. She says death caps likely sneaked into California from Europe attached to the roots of imported plants  —   and they got really comfortable, spreading all over the state. Through genetic testing, Pringle is trying to better understand how death caps propagate, and how long they live. In   fungi like the death cap, much of their body lies under the earth’s surface. (The mushrooms are just there to help the fungus spread spores and reproduce.) Pringle wants to know how long the underground bits last  —   would simply plucking the mushrooms to prevent them from spreading their spores through the air be enough to kill off individual death cap fungi? Or is the death cap more resilient  —   does each individual develop a vast underground network that would be   to eradicate? For now, it’s looking like the death caps are here to stay. With this year’s mushroom foraging season well underway, health workers and experts are warning aficionados to be careful. Death caps, which are abundant in California, can easily be confused for other edible mushrooms, growing mainly under coast live oaks. Death caps have also been found under pines, and in Yosemite Valley under black oaks. And it’s not just amateurs who mistake death caps for edible mushrooms like coccora or paddy straws. ”I’ve seen expert mycologists arguing   about whether a mushroom they were looking at was the deadly one,” says Dr. Kent Olson,   director of the San Francisco Division of the California Poison Control System. ”At certain stages of development, the mushrooms can be confused.” In hindsight, Davis thinks she confused young death cap mushrooms  —   which have a rounded   cap  —   for hedgehog mushrooms, which are yellow and rounded. Hedgehog and death cap mushrooms are fairly  . While hedgehogs don’t have any gills  —   ribs under the mushroom cap  —   death caps do have gills. ”It is easy for folks to make ID mistakes,” says Viess, ”which is why I encourage strong caution for beginners.” Mature death cap mushrooms are big, smooth and an olive green color. And if you pull one out of the ground, you’ll see it has a little cup that holds it up. ”Assume nothing, and learn for several seasons before you eat any wild mushrooms,” warns Viess from the Bay Area Mycological Society. ”Use good, regional books, find a mentor, and have your initial IDs checked by more knowledgeable and trusted identifiers.” As for Davis, after temporarily losing her taste for mushrooms, she is now looking forward to foraging again. But she says she’ll be much more cautious. ”I don’t need to collect all that I see,” she says. ”I’m good with just, you know, a handful.” A longer version of this post originally appeared on the website of KQED’s science series Deep Look. For more information on the death cap, you can visit the websites of the Bay Area Mycological Society and the North American Mycological Association."
"The magic number of Republican delegates Donald Trump needs to clinch the party’s nomination is 1, 237. After the March 15 primaries, Trump leads the delegate count with 678, to Ted Cruz’s 423 and John Kasich’s 143. On Tuesday, Republicans in Arizona, Utah and American Samoa will take to the polls to award the next round of 107 delegates. And the battle could go all the way to the Republican convention in Cleveland. The GOP race has changed since NPR last spoke to a group of young Republicans for their take on their party’s future. Several candidates have dropped out and Donald Trump has gone from leading the polls to actually winning votes. What would a Donald Trump nomination do to the GOP? So we gathered these young Republicans again to get a read on how they feel the campaign is evolving. Attorney Chelsi Henry is 27. She was the youngest woman elected to office in the history of Jacksonville, Fla. Will Estrada, 32, works as a   advocate in Northern Virginia. Political strategist Margaret Hoover is 38 and from New York City. And joining the group is another New Yorker: Eugene Spektor, a    software engineer. Rachel Martin: Chelsea, when we all spoke weeks ago, you were supporting your candidate of choice, Jeb Bush. He’s not in the race anymore. How are you feeling? Chelsi Henry: I respect the decision that he made and so now my vote is up for grabs. RM: Will Estrada, when we last spoke you said you were pretty keen on both of the Cubans at the time, that was Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is the last man standing. How are you feeling? Will Estrada: I was surprised, I thought Marco Rubio would still be in the race, but as a Ted Cruz supporter I am very happy and I actually still think that Cruz is going to be our GOP nominee. RM: Margaret, what I remember from our conversation was that you were squarely in the stop Trump camp. Margaret Hoover: I was certainly in the stop Trump camp, but not for anyone. I’m not a fan of Ted Cruz at all. So when it comes time for New York to primary on April 19, I’ll primary for John Kasich. Because I think frankly that in terms of the Venn diagram of where there are many overlaps, I think there’s an extraordinary overlap between  —   sort of philosophically, and even in terms of their supporters  —   between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. And that is not a part of the Venn diagram that I relate to or identify with when it comes to being a Republican. RM: Eugene, Donald Trump has not been able to move the needle so much when it comes to attracting minority voters, is that something of a concern to you in terms of his ability to win in a general election? Eugene Spektor: I don’t know if those numbers are accurate. Because, like Nevada he had a high minority, or Latino, vote turnout. You have a lot of prominent black supporters coming out to say that they believe Trump is going to be a positive for the black community  —   especially with the way he wants to crack down on illegal immigration and create jobs for the inner cities. But my vote is about who can actually beat Hillary Clinton. And I believe that he has the best chance because he has   positions that appeal to Republicans, Democrats and independents. And someone like Ted Cruz, I just don’t think that he has any legitimate shot at actually winning. Hoover: Can I just push back on one element though of what Eugene just said? For the sake of accuracy . .. Donald Trump has said he has experience doing very well with minorities and he cites that Nevada example. But the truth is that in Nevada while he did win Hispanics, Hispanics were only eight percent of the vote in Nevada in the GOP primary. So no more than 2, 500 voters. Henry: I would like to add something as well, in terms of those who are   who have come out to support Trump. You know, I appreciate those who are standing up, who are coming out. Yet I think that a point that still can be made is that many of these people were originally not with Mr. Trump. So they may now see him as someone who can help the party. They may now see him as someone who can help our community, but it was not many of them  —   their first thoughts, or their first pick. Estrada: And an example would be Ben Carson. RM: Eugene, critics say Donald Trump doesn’t have a conservative record. Spektor: I think that’s a representation of why he has crossover appeal. Because if Republicans are telling him he’s not conservative enough for them, then that opens the door to all these independents and Democrats who feel isolated by the   coming from the right always. And I think that has a lot to do with him being a New Yorker and religion not playing as big of a role as some of the other Republican candidates. And I think people who agree with him on his economic positions are no longer isolated by policies that don’t reflect their social beliefs. RM: What do you like about his policy positions? Because he hasn’t been so detailed. Spektor: From the social issues perspective, he’s the only Republican that says he supports funding Planned Parenthood and sees the benefit that it has for women’s issues. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he supports abortion, but he doesn’t believe that his ideology needs to be the ideology for everyone. I think if you look at guns for example, he’s a big proponent of the Second Amendment. I’m a big proponent of the Second Amendment. But he’s from New York City, and the culture in New York City is such that maybe guns are not as needed in this environment  —   as opposed to somebody living in rural Vermont. So I see opportunity for him to bring compromise on these issues that most Republicans that are really conservative don’t want to budge on. RM: What about issues like immigration? Spektor: I think that to get to a middle ground that’s workable in a partisan and divided Congress you need to have bold proposals. So if you propose something like, ’Let’s deport all illegal immigrants,’ it leaves room for people to be OK with, ’OK, let’s build a wall. Let’s allow people to register and if they’re not criminals they can stay and never become citizens’  —   a workable middle ground. RM: So you think this is just a negotiating tactic? Spektor: Absolutely, and he talks about this in The Art of the Deal, that it’s a negotiating tactic for two reasons. One, it allows him to get to a workable middle. But two, it gets media attention and it uses the media for his benefit. And I think the numbers came out where he’s gotten $2 billion worth of free coverage from the media, and it’s been a hugely successful method. Estrada: Our last two Republican candidates, McCain and Romney, were   candidates and they both lost. It’s time to go with a true conservative. Hoover: Eugene, I feel your pain. I run a   organization from the Republican side of the aisle. I hear you loud and clear on the social issues. What Trump has done  —   and I agree with you, this is sort of the silver lining of Trump  —   is that he’s blown the door off of this notion that you have to have this socially conservative litmus, pass this socially conservative litmus test. This straitjacket of conservative issues in order to win the Republican nomination. What you’re saying, Will, while I appreciate this argument out there in the conservative atmosphere: ’The reason Mitt Romney and the reason John McCain didn’t win is because they weren’t conservative enough. So this time we’re going to pick the guy who is absolutely the most conservative and then we’re going to win.’ But you know what guys, this is larger than ideology  —   this is about demographics. And the problem with Mitt Romney, and the problem with John McCain and the problem that Donald Trump will have is that none of them can get enough white male voters to the polls to make up for the fact that we are not getting enough Hispanic voters and enough women voters and enough   voters. And we need to be thinking as young Republicans about the future of the Republican party and how we are going to broaden and sustain it so that there is a coalition that can win. Not this year, not next year, but into the 21st century. And I know that was the tagline for Marco Rubio’s campaign and he wasn’t able to actuate it. But we do really need to think about that and think about how to do it. RM: There’s all this talk about a possibly contested convention and Mitt Romney has just come out and said that he’s going to caucus for Ted Cruz. But it wasn’t really an endorsement, it was  —   ’I’m going to do this just to deny Donald Trump the delegates that he needs to win outright.’ Spektor: If people needed any more reason [to be upset] about the corrupt system that currently plagues Washington  —   you have it. ’Forget [how] you people voted and all these primaries, forget about it. We’re going to decide who’s going to be the nominee.’ Really? I thought this was a democracy. I mean, people go for Donald Trump because they know that he’s not part of this system that’s bought and paid for that isn’t representing the people. And if you go and you tell all these people  —   ”You know what, your vote didn’t matter. Our choice is what really matters, we know best.” I agree with Donald Trump. I’m not saying there’s going to be riots, but there will be a march on Cleveland with a bunch of people who no longer believe that this country is a democratic republic. RM: If Donald Trump is the nominee, would you vote for him? Henry: I haven’t got to the answer of that question yet. Hoover: Absolutely not. Estrada: Margaret, you should support Ted Cruz! Hoover: You’re exactly right, Will, because at least if I were to support Ted Cruz, we would lose I think miserably in a general election. Let’s be very clear, Ted Cruz does not have the formula that’s going to broaden the base. Estrada: But you think Donald Trump will lose too. Hoover: Yeah, exactly, well so we’re screwed either way guys. Let’s be very clear about what the reality is. We are not going to win this election either way. And this is the calculation that Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina made yesterday. He hates, despises, abhors, disrespects, cannot really buy Ted Cruz at all  —   the guy who shut down the government. . .. But he believes that at the end of the day, we lose 40 states [but] we still have a Republican party that we can rebuild. And if you go with Donald Trump, it’s destroyed."
"Early Sunday  —   half an hour after midnight ET  —   the Earth quietly marked a biannual milestone. The axis pointed neither toward nor away from the sun, leaving both hemispheres bathed in (approximately) equal amounts of sunlight. Happy astronomical spring, everybody! Sunday’s vernal equinox means everybody on earth got 12 hours of sunlight today  —   more or less. (The National Weather Service notes that refraction, among other factors, causes a few minutes’ worth of variation, depending on your location on earth.) That fact has no relation to meteorological spring, which started at the beginning of March, or solar Spring (based on the actual amount of sunlight a region receives) which began in February. But for most laypeople, the equinox marks the beginning of spring. That means the start of Persian New Year, or Nowruz. This year, it’s also Palm Sunday. And D. C. residents also got to enjoy the birth of a new baby eagle  —   a very appropriate symbol of new beginnings. We took a trip through NPR’s archives to uncover a few stories appropriate for the season. It’s a fashion faux pas among the boating crowd to wear socks with deck shoes after the vernal equinox. So in Annapolis, Maryland, sailors mark the arrival of the equinox with a oysters, beer  —   and a sock bonfire. Joel McCord, 2008. Transcript. Nowruz celebrates fertility and renewal with singing and dancing, visiting friends and relatives, and lots of feasting. It’s got it all: myth and symbolism, fragrant hyacinth and Persian poetry, magic numbers and magic puddings. Plus noodle soup, herb kuku, green rice, fish, pastries, nuts, fruits . .. Bonny Wolf, 2008. Transcript. Eggs are a symbol of fertility. But on the equinox  —   when dark and light are equal  —   they’re also a symbol of balance. Sure, scientists will quickly tell you there’s nothing special about the equinox when it comes to  . But there’s something satisfying about setting an egg upright. Margot Adler, 2010. Transcript. Composer Gregorio Allegri’s ”Miserere” is a piece of choral music so powerful that a   pope decreed it could be played only during the week leading to Easter  —   and then only in the Sistine Chapel. Jesse Kornbluth of HeadButler. com, talking to Jacki Lyden, 2008. Transcript. As Anastasia Tsioulcas wrote in 2012: ”As spring renews the earth, people celebrate this fresh beginning as Nowruz, a joyous   festival to celebrate beauty and abundance. We were lucky enough to have a master musician and composer from Iran, Kayhan Kalhor, visit us in time to celebrate with his gorgeous and deeply moving music.” Original page. In 2014, Linda wrote a lovely ode to the arrival of spring  —   real spring, not meteorological spring, not astronomical spring.         spring. Which, for many of us, hasn’t landed yet  —   but it’s coming. ”It should be old by now, but it isn’t. It’s amazing. I literally allow myself to be amazed by the effect of the earth going around the sun. It happened again! I think. My part of the globe is once again getting more direct sunlight more of the time! It’s as if I feared maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe this would be the year that we chugged to a stop and it stayed January forever. Or worse, February. I should, in theory, be no more impressed by the arrival of spring than by the arrival of morning. I happen to have a huge window through which I can watch the sun come up, and I often do at certain times of year. But I don’t have feelings about it. I have feelings about spring.” Read the whole essay."
"Last summer, Yusra Mardini was swimming through the Aegean Sea in a   attempt to survive a perilous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece. This summer, she hopes to swim in the Olympics. Mardini is one of 43 refugees who are vying for the opportunity to compete at Rio as a part of the   ”Refugee Olympic Athletes” team. In a video released by the International Olympic Committee, the    Syrian refugee says it was difficult maintaining her athletic training during Syria’s war. Trainings were canceled  —   or held at pools that were then struck by explosives. She describes looking up at the roof over a pool and seeing the sky through holes blown by bombs. Mardini fled her home in Damascus with her sister Sarah. The Associated Press describes their journey: ”The sisters left Damascus in early August, joining a wave of Syrian refugees who lost hope of the conflict ending soon. They made their way to Lebanon and then Turkey, where they paid smugglers to take them to Greece. ”Their first attempt was thwarted when Turkish coastguards drove their boat back so they tried again, boarding a small inflatable dinghy at dusk. There were 20 people crowded onto the boat, all but three of whom couldn’t swim. Within half an hour, the boat was taking on water. ”All the passengers’ bags were thrown overboard in an effort to stay afloat as wind churned up the Aegean Sea. But it wasn’t enough. As a last resort, Yusra, Sarah and another strong swimmer jumped into the water to give the boat more buoyancy.” They spent 3   hours in the water before reaching Lesbos. It was awful, Yusra Mardini says, and left her with a hatred for the open sea. But it didn’t destroy her love of swimming. Mardini and her sister traveled through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria before reaching Germany. There, the two of them were connected with a local swimming club. Mardini has been training for the past five months, hoping to qualify for the Olympics. In the video released by the IOC, Mardini says she didn’t want to sit around and cry. ”It’s tough. It was really hard, for everyone, and I don’t blame anyone if they cried. But sometimes you just have to move on,” she says. She’s proud to be a refugee, she says: ”My sister, when she wants to encourage me, says, ’Show them the refugee, what she will do.’ ” But she’s more focused on being an athlete. ”In the water,” she says, ”there is no difference if you are a refugee or a Syrian or German.” All told, 43 athletes are aiming for a spot on the refugee team. The IOC has identified Mardini and two others: Raheleh Asemani, an Iranian taekwondo fighter living in Belgium, and Popole Misenga, a judo competitor from Congo training in Brazil. You can read about all three in The Guardian."
"When South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, hopes were high that the world’s newest country could finally be free of decades of violence that had afflicted the region. Instead, a civil war broke out two years later, killing thousands and displacing more than 2 million people. A peace deal was signed last August, but fighting continues and the country still faces enormous challenges  —   including   conditions, ongoing violence and a struggling education system. With a population of 11 million, South Sudan has a higher proportion of children out of school than any other place in the world. More than half of the country’s primary and lower secondary   children, up to age 15, are not attending school, according to UNICEF. February marked the beginning of the country’s school year, and already there are signs more students are being kept from classrooms. UNICEF says looting and violence in the city of Malakal has effectively left more than 13, 000 children without education access. And, more generally, it’s too soon to tell how many of the country’s estimated 1. 8 million schoolkids are enrolled, said Phuong Nguyen, UNICEF’s chief of education and adolescent development in South Sudan. In many cases, the odds are stacked against them. ”Violence breaks out and spreads, so these children are not displaced once or twice  —   they’ve been displaced several times in the last couple of years,” Nguyen said. ”People are running for their lives.” The instability, she said, makes it difficult to establish spaces of learning. Many Schools Are Shut Or Destroyed, Many schools have either been closed by the government or occupied and damaged by internally displaced people or armed groups. More than 800 schools were destroyed between December 2013 and August 2015, when the latest peace deal was signed. More than 6, 000 schools remain operable, but they all lack resources. ”Most of the schools have very poor facilities and anywhere else, they wouldn’t even be called schools,” Nguyen said. ”It’s basically a tree and a blackboard.” In South Sudan, only 27 percent of adults can read. In many cases, teachers aren’t much older than their students. Nguyen said about 37 percent of teachers have actual teaching certification. An equal percentage have only attained the equivalent of an 8th grade education. The rest have either unchecked or unconfirmed teaching qualifications. Still, the situation isn’t entirely bleak. The number of schools, teachers, classrooms and students have all increased since South Sudan gained independence. And even in the most basic circumstances, ”education activities can happen. I’ve seen education happening,” Nguyen said. ”A class under the tree with the grade   teacher is not ideal, but it is a start. It tells you that there is a desire and hunger for education.” Schools can provide a safety net for children whose lives have been scarred by violence. The crayon drawings by some children who do attend school provide a glimpse of the horrors they’ve seen: images of huts on fire, men with guns and women covered in blood, Nguyen said. For those who don’t attend school, bigger problems can follow. ”Adolescent boys, when they remain idle, without education, without any positive engagement, are likely to be recruited by armed groups and armed forces,” she said. ”Girls are at huge risk of   violence and forced marriage.” A Chronic Problem, For Daniel Majok Gai, who builds schools through his nonprofit Project Education South Sudan, the current crisis echoes what happened in his childhood. In the 1980s, starting at age 6, he became one of the   Lost Boys  —   the nearly 20, 000 children displaced or orphaned during Sudan’s protracted civil war that lasted from 1983 to 2005. He earned a high school degree at a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the United States as a refugee, after 14 years of being displaced. He returned to South Sudan in 2011 to focus on providing education. His project has built a primary school and a high school, as well as a girls’ boarding school, with the goal of creating a ”conducive and friendly teaching environment for all children,” he says. ”Those who are not in school, they eventually turn criminal,” he warns. ”Without education, you can’t prevent them from being traumatized. But for those who are in school, their future is bright.” UNICEF works with local volunteers who go door to door to determine educational needs, and they’ve worked closely with school management committees and education authorities to help reestablish places to learn. Nguyen visited a town where armed groups recruit young boys to fight and met with a mother who’d never received a formal education. ”She was in tears because she didn’t think there was ever an opportunity for anyone in her family to have an education,” Nguyen said. ”So the prospect of her    boy going to school for the first time  —   it was huge. You would have thought we told him he was going to Harvard.”"
"A deadly explosion in central Istanbul on Saturday was the work of a   member of ISIS, Turkey’s interior minister announced Sunday. Interior Minister Efkan Ala said that Turkish authorities have identified the attacker as Mehmet Ozturk, a    man who was a member of the Islamic State. The blast killed four victims  —   three Israelis and an Iranian  —   in addition to the attacker. Two of the Israeli citizens had dual citizenship with the United States. A spokesman for the National Security Council confirmed the American deaths and denounced ”the evil of terrorism.” Dozens of people were wounded in the attack, including several Israelis who have been flown back to Israel. Daniel Estrin tells our Newscast unit that one instance of rhetoric about those injured Israelis caused some tension between Israel and Turkey. Daniel reports from Jerusalem: ”Israel has lodged a complaint with Turkey over a tweet by an official at a local office of Turkey’s ruling party. The official wrote that she hoped the wounded Israelis had died. ”Israel’s Prime Minister says he demanded steps be taken against the official. Her tweet was removed, and Turkish media said she would be expelled from the party. Israel and Turkey have been working to normalize the rocky relations between the two countries.” As we reported yesterday, Saturday’s blast targeted Istiklal Street, a popular pedestrian area packed with shops and restaurants. Dalia Mortada, reporting from Istanbul, tells our Newscast unit this is the second attack in Istanbul this year which was allegedly committed by a member of ISIS  —   an explosion in a tourist neighborhood in Istanbul killed at least 10 people in January. The attack also came less than a week after a car bomb in Ankara killed more than three dozen people that bombing was claimed by Kurdish militants."
"During its original run from 1999 to 2006, The West Wing was critically acclaimed, racking up 26 Emmy wins. The drama created by Aaron Sorkin frequently appears on lists of the best television shows of all time. And since it began streaming on Netflix in 2013, a whole new generation of fans have discovered the show praised for its depictions of   inside the White House. But once you’ve   all seven seasons, how can you keep satisfying your Sorkin fix? Joshua Malina has your answer. Malina, who played Will Bailey on the last four seasons of the show, is launching a new podcast devoted to breaking it down episode by episode. On The West Wing Weekly, Bailey and   Hrishikesh Hirway plan to spend each week on one of The West Wing’s 156 episodes. They spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin about their favorite episodes and why they thought the show was worthy of a podcast. On the genesis of the podcast, Joshua Malina: I’ve been a frequent guest on other people’s podcasts, and I have always wanted to find something that I could call my own. And Hishi had this idea and my first reaction was: I don’t know enough about The West Wing. Because though I appeared on it for the last four seasons and I had been a huge fan of it and I’ve seen every episode, I saw them when they first aired  —   and I really haven’t revisited them. So I’m enjoying the experience now because I am going back and revisiting a show that I watched 16 years ago. Hrishikesh Hirway: I’ve probably watched the show, certainly at least the first four seasons, I watched those  —   because I had them on DVD  —   maybe five, six times all the way through, if not more. On why he’s a fan, Hirway: I’m a fan of the idea of the American dream and the American experiment. I love the potential [of] the country’s democracy and our Constitution  —   all the things that we want out of government and out of the process of codifying our society. I love all of that stuff and I want it to be great. And I think that idea of America is really inspiring, and Aaron Sorkin tapped into it in such a profound way. On the podcast, Malina: Our dream is that we will in fact talk our way through the entire series. It’ll always be the two of us, occasionally it’ll be solely the two of us jawing about each episode  —   what we liked about it, maybe what we didn’t like, how Aaron’s writing tends to be very prescient. And while it was topical then, it’s just as relevant now. And so we’ll certainly talk about things that are happening today and have a   to older episodes. And for sure I will function as a conduit to other people who were on the show. I like to be not a celebrity myself really I can be a conduit to actual celebrities. [Laughs] On their favorite episodes, Malina: There’s an episode called ”No Exit.” Every series, usually late in the game, starts contemplating having these ”bottle” episodes, which are episodes that are   and thus less expensive to produce because people are on one set or a limited number of sets. . .. I think in ”No Exit” there’s been an anthrax scare at the White House. And so in little groups of two or three we are locked down in the White House, and my own storyline has Will Bailey in a room with Toby. And I always enjoyed  —   I enjoyed working with everybody on the show  —   but I particularly enjoyed working with Richard Schiff, in part because he and I are just absolutely antithetical in our approach to acting. Which is probably one of the reasons why he’s so much better at it than I am. I tend to memorize the lines and show up and say them in the right order at a reasonable volume, but he really thinks deeply about what it is he’s going to do. He’s the kind of guy  —   I remember in one episode, as we rehearsed and blocked the scene, [he was] demanding to know, ”Why at this point am I picking up the phone?” I remember saying, ”Richard, because your next line is ’Hello,’ and it’s addressed to the person who’s calling you. What other possible piece of blocking could we have?” So I remember not so much the end result of the episode, though I’m looking forward to seeing it  —   I remember the making of it. I enjoyed battling with him, and we had a lot of fun shooting that episode. Hirway: I also have one that I’m excited to talk about with Josh because it’s another great Will and Toby moment, which was in ”Holy Night.” The entire cold open is done in Yiddish, which I remember being blown away by. And it has the music of Cole Porter in it. That’s one of my favorites."
"There are 11. 3 million people in the U. S. who have immigrated illegally. And as you have probably heard, the presidential candidates have different opinions about how to handle them. Most notably, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump wants to deport them. The immigration debate intensified a couple of years ago when a flood of women and children came across the U. S.  border. The federal government didn’t know how to handle the influx, so they detained these women and children in three family centers: two in Texas one in Pennsylvania. Today there are more than a thousand people in these centers, waiting to know if they’ll be allowed to stay in the country. This week on For the Record: detaining families at the border. Fleeing Violence, Maria Rosa Lopez and her son were some of thousands of people who fled from Central America to the U. S. in 2014 to escape gang violence, drug wars, civil war, or in Maria’s case, domestic abuse  —   which is considered a credible fear that can warrant an asylum claim. That fall, Lopez, living in Honduras, had nowhere to turn. She spoke to NPR through a translator. ”It’s not easy to explain because there was a lot of violence of at home,” Lopez says. ”And then outside my home, I really didn’t have anybody and so I couldn’t get help.” Her husband was abusive and she feared for her life and the lives of her three kids. ”I called the police a couple of times, but they didn’t show up. And that was when I really needed them. The cops are not to trust. But when you’re pushed to the wall, and you don’t have anybody to call, the police is the only place you can go to. But they didn’t help me,” she says. Honduras has one of the highest crime rates in Central America. Violence was all around her and it finally got so bad she decided she would take her youngest child and flee. ”My son was asking me to leave. He wanted to get out of Honduras. He went through a lot of violence himself,” Lopez says. When she arrived in Guatemala, she knocked on someone’s door, hoping a find a place to clean up. ”This family helped me,” Lopez says. ”And then, I was able to catch a bus to the capital, to Guatemala City.” From Guatemala City, she and her son crossed another border into Mexico and then took a bus north to Monterrey, close to the northern  . S. border. ”I paid someone to take us across on a boat. It was night time and we slept in the desert on the U. S. side. There were other moms and their kids there too. A Brazilian woman asked me if she could sleep next to us,” Lopez says. The next morning, immigration officers woke them and took them to the Karnes detention center outside of San Antonio, Texas. Lopez wanted asylum so she and her son could start their lives over in the U. S. She didn’t know what to expect when she got on American soil, but she didn’t expect to be housed in this facility with no word on when she’d be released. ”I was desperate when we got there. It was hard to see my child crying and he was asking a lot of questions,” she recalls. ”He knew it was a detention center and he wanted to know how long we were going to be there.” But she didn’t know either. ”No one was answering questions. I talked with people who had been there for six, eight months, and it was very depressing.” she says. ”Often my son couldn’t fall asleep, we had bunk beds. He was on top of me but he would crawl down and wanted to be with me.” Denise Gilman, one of Maria’s former lawyers, says the Karnes detention facility ”feels very much like a prison” with ”cinderblock walls, clanging doors,   machines all over the place, buzzers that you have to use to get in and out to go see your    client and his mom.” Gilman, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School, says these women and children are seeking asylum, but they’re treated like criminals. Oftentimes, they have family members who’ve already made it to the U. S. and she says these new immigrants should be able to stay with their families while their cases proceed. ”The families have every incentive to appear for their hearings,” she says. ”They need this protection, the ability to remain in the United States with stability, with the ability to work and integrate into the community so that they can be safe, recover from the trauma they’ve experienced and avoid facing possible harm or death in their home countries.” ”We Want People To Come Here The Right Way”  Phil Miller is with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) part of the Department of Homeland Security. As you might imagine, he has a different view of the detention facilities. ”Some NGOs are promulgating these   scenarios where women are locked in rooms and they can’t see their children,” Miller says. ”And what you actually see is that there’s a school there for the children. There are gyms, there are open cafeterias. I mean, eating in the cafeteria there is no different than where my kids go to eat. We take our custodial and care responsibility very seriously.” He says the facilities were the best way to respond to the crisis at the time. Advocacy groups filed legal challenges against the government for holding women and children for months. The government made changes after that, and now immigrants are expedited through family detention in a matter of weeks. Detention was supposed to deter immigrants, but there are other forces at work. Miller points to criminal syndicates throughout Central America that prey on vulnerable people looking to flee desperate situations. They perpetuate the myth that all it takes is putting your feet on U. S. soil to get some kind of permisos or permit to stay. ”A lot of folks were convinced that if they made it to a border patrol station they would be receiving these permisos,” Miller says. ”So really we had to do something that, historically, ICE had done in very small numbers, which was devise a strategy where we could process, vet and detain these folks that were coming to the border in these numbers. Which is why we took this historic step of expanding our family detention capacity.” In 2014, at the height of the crisis, more than 136, 000 unaccompanied minors and families were apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley. Texas Republican Congressman Roger Williams has seen how border agents try to vet all the immigrants right after they’ve crossed into the U. S. ”It literally tears your heart out,” he says. He describes signs that separate the genders and age groups, the mothers and fathers. ”And then you go to another area and there might be a dozen of the worst and meanest people in the world that they’ve also captured down on the border,” Williams says. That’s the group he’s most concerned about. ”There’s a lot of issues down there, and being from Texas, and being engaged like I am, you realize that it’s very, very serious,” he says. ”But at the end of the day, we’re a land of laws and we’ve got to maintain American sovereignty, and we want people to come here the right way . .. They are coming over for a better life for their family  —   I get it. But still, we’ve got to do it the right way.” That right way includes creating more deterrents, which is why Congressman Williams supports building a wall along the U. S.  border. After six months in the Karnes detention facility, Maria Lopez’s    son was granted asylum and she was released with him. Her brothers live in Baltimore, and they flew both her and her son there to live with them. Today, Lopez’s son is in second grade, and she works part time cleaning at a restaurant. It’s not enough to live on but it’s a start. Lopez can’t say that crossing the border was worth it. ”I didn’t dream about this, but this is the way things have turned out,” she says. ”I’m just very thankful to God because I’m alive, I’m well and I’m fighting for my children.” Lopez’s two teenage daughters are still in Honduras. Now that her case has been settled, she’s going to focus her energy on bringing her other kids here too. We should also note that this past week, the director of ICE, Sarah Saldaña said that the federal government is considering ending the detention of women and children at the Karnes facility in Texas."
"The happiest country in the world is Denmark, according to a new report from the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. And the least happy is Burundi. Maybe someone forgot to tell the Burundians. ”I wouldn’t say we are sad,” says   Elavie Ndura, 56, the presidential fellow for diversity and inclusion, and professor of education at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.  The central African country does indeed score low on the U. N. survey’s criteria for happiness: gross domestic product per capita, social support, health and longevity, personal freedom, charitable giving and perception of corruption. Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world, and one of the hungriest. It’s been wracked by civil war, genocide and political strife  —   including a failed coup attempt just last year. So today, for World Happiness Day, we want to know: What do Burundians have to be happy about? ”Burundian society is grounded in family and community,” Ndura says. ”A major source of happiness for the Burundian people is time spent with and around neighbors. That’s when you can see them come out of their shells, socializing with family and sharing whatever food they have. They visit one another even when it takes many, many hours of walking across the hills, so that they can spend time together. They’re sitting down and having conversations  —   even though their stories these days may be told around difficult experiences due to the country’s conflicts. The point is that they are together among relatives and neighbors and commiserating, listening and cheering one another up. It’s the loud laughter that always rings in my mind when I think about how the Burundian people like to spend their time.” The majority of Burundians work as farmers  —   and that, according to Ndura, is another source of joy. ”Even when work may be hard, you always hear laughter when people are working together on their small subsistence farms. They share whatever food they can gather.” ”Honestly,” she says, ”when I travel to Burundi, even though I travel for work, I am always happiest. It’s because of the way people interact with each other. Even though Burundi has been victimized and challenged by conflicts, you still see some kind of humanity, some kind of kindness, some kind of generosity. People are willing to share the minimum that they have. You know people are very humble. They don’t ask for much. You see them congregating together to chat, to share a bottle of beer and some food. And even though it may not be enough for everybody, they share whatever they have with loud laughter. They are happiest.” Ndura has lived in the United States since 1989 but makes frequent trips to Burundi as part or her peace building work. While there, she says, ”I provide professional development for educators at all levels, from elementary to college level, to develop teaching methods that foster social cohesion. Because social cohesion is central to sustainable peace.” Her dream to is to put together a ”peace caravan” with her Burundian counterparts. ”We will hopefully take this around this country, getting secondary school and university youth engaged in this work. We will make stops at strategic locations for peacemaking development seminars,” she says. ”At the same time we will engage in community service at each place we stop, performing music, sport and other cultural events to engage local youth. We want to increase community awareness of working for peace.”"
"Today, March 20, is U. N. International Happiness Day. If you live in Denmark or Switzerland, you’re probably so happy that you don’t even notice this special day devoted to happiness. Those two countries are ranked the happiest in the world in the newest World Happiness Report. The United States ranks 13th. Burundi, Togo, Syria and Afghanistan are deemed the least happy. To find the happiest place on earth (other than Disneyland) the World Happiness Review polls about a thousand people in over 150 countries. Among other things, the review considers GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, perceived freedom to make life decisions, generosity and absence of corruption. This year, for the first time, the review is looking into inequality and wealth distribution. But not everyone might be . .. happy . .. about this new data. According to the   Global   Index for 2013, which collected data across 135 countries, and conducted over 133, 000 interviews, Panama, not Denmark, is the happiest country. The   index broke down data into different elements of well being (such as ”purpose” and ”sense of community”). It found that ”Panama leads not only the region, but the world in four of the five   elements  —   purpose, social, community, and physical  .   percent of Panamanians are thriving in three or more elements . .. Panama’s strong and growing economy, an unemployment rate of 4. 5 percent in 2013, and national development may be the most significant factors contributing to its high thriving levels.” In fact, according to   Latin America does pretty well in general. Costa Rica and El Salvador rank alongside Panama with the highest percentage in terms of having a sense of purpose. Those same countries show up again, with Panama in the lead, in the category of ”physically thriving.” The data might seem at odds when so much harrowing news is coming out of the region, Central America in particular. But the study says a lot of it boils down to attitude: ”Latin Americans generally report higher levels of   than any other regional group. This is consistent with other Gallup World Poll research that shows residents of Latin America generally evaluating their lives more highly than those in other regional groups, partly reflecting a cultural tendency in the region to focus on the positives in life.” ”More like the country with the highest rate of denial in the world,” quips one commenter on the website of a Panamanian newspaper that ran the study. Another reader replies: ”I’m sure these investigators didn’t go into indigenous territories, rough hoods or the countryside.” Yet another reader says ”We are a happy people. Go out into the street and ask, Panamanians are just a happy people.” If anything, what both studies seem to prove is that it’s actually pretty hard to quantify such an abstract sentiment as happiness. When is saying you are happy a measure of  ? When is it a form of survival or even denial? Those might be questions better suited for World Existentialism Day (which does not, to the best of my knowledge, exist.) Meanwhile, as I pointed out at the start of this post, today is International Happiness Day. To celebrate, Goats and Soda has asked me (in my capacity as the host of NPR’s Alt. Latino, a weekly podcast about Latin American music) to reach out to listeners and ask them to share some of their favorite Panamanian music. We got a lot of responses, based on which we are recommending 7 artists. Consider this a list in progress and tell us your favorite Panamanian music as well. As a side note, I’d say a key to understanding the complexity of Latin American joy  may lie in our music. While the beats and melodies are incredibly upbeat, many of the lyrics are complex, part of a tradition of oral history, often talking about painful realities or sad stories. That jammin’ salsa song you might find yourself dancing to at a club, could well be telling the story of slave revolt. That   shuffle you do when you dance cumbia has origins in the shackling of the African slaves who brought the beat to the Americas. The myopic Hollywood portrayal of Latin Americans as a perennially happy, overly sexual people fails to see all the struggles behind our joy. Our music is never just about smiling and bobbing our heads. Just like living in devastatingly difficult conditions, it’s not just about being ”happy.” It’s about surviving it’s about forgetting, it’s about remembering and it’s about telling the individual stories that are so easily erased by numbers and statistics. 1. Ruben Blades, You cannot start a conversation about Panamanian music without first mentioning him. Always a gorgeous lyricist, Blades has also always been salsa’s conscience, singing about social issues. One of his iconic songs is ”Pedro Navaja,” inspired by ”Mack The Knife.” It tells the story of a prostitute who kills the titular pimp. 2. Miguel Ángel Barcasnegras (aka Meñique) Listener Nelson Milano wrote in about the singer ”Meñique,” which means ”Pinky” (because he was short). Milano says he admires the singer’s improvisation skills. Legend has it a family member heard Meñique singing in the shower and urged him to sign up as backup vocalist for a band. In the song ”La Habana Vieja,” he sings ”Let’s go to old Havana, to drink coffee. ..” and the chorus repeats like a mantra ”to Cuba I will return.” It’s a wistful ode to the city on the Caribbean. 3. Los Rabanes, Several listeners urged us to check out Los Rabanes, a band that fuses rock and salsa. Jose Angel Rincon Rodriguez says the band ”opened an important era in Panamanian rock, and Ruben [Blades] was with them for a long time . .. back then I saw them live . .. they where incredible . ..” Here’s the song ”Tu Me Disparas Balas,” or ”You Shoot Me With Bullets.” 4. El General, We can’t talk about Panamanian music without discussing reggae and reggaeton. The last genre, which is the dominant sound on Latin Top 40s (Americans came to know it with Daddy Yankee’s ”Gasolina”) is often shunned by music purists as unskilled and crass. But the history of reggaeton is the history of Caribbean labor. In the ’70s Jamaican workers went to Panama to help build the Panama Canal and took their music with them. El General was one of the first to reinterpret reggae in Spanish. Eva H Vargas was one of several listeners who wrote in professing her love for El General, quoting a lyric: ”I like El General because ’raise your hand if you are having a good time!” #MueveloMuevelo. Reggaeton is often wrongly attributed to Puerto Rico. While it’s true the island took the genre and transformed it into the first   music since salsa, the music actually started out in Panama, where Spanish language reggae was mixed with soca, calypso and the   beats that were trickling in from up north. 5. Kafu Banton  I’m going to throw out a personal favorite here, Panamanian reggae icon Kafu Banton, who also sings reggaeton. My favorite Kafu Banton song ”No Te Ofendas,” combines reggae percussion,   beats and folk guitar strums. It’s a perfect mix. His naughty lyrics and picaresque humor have gotten him censored in the past, but this song makes pretty tame puns about soccer: ”tu dice que tu eres Real y tu te tiras pal Barca”  —   ”You say you’re Real, but you root for Barca.” 6. Los Rakas  ”Raka” comes from the Panamanian slang ”Rakataka,” which refers to someone from the ghetto. Coming out of Oakland, California, by way of Panama, the rap duo Los Rakas were really just kids when they made a splash in the Latin   scene several years ago. Their 2011 song ”Soy Raka” is impossibly catchy. 7. Danilo Perez  Many listeners wrote in to recommend the Panamanian pianist and composer. His influence is best described by my Alt. Latino   Felix Contreras: ”Danilo Perez, jazz pianist, played with Puente, Dizzy and now with one of the greatest small groups in jazz, the Wayne Shorter Quartet.” And by the way, if you are a Danilo Perez fan, you can hear him on an episode of Jazz Night In America hosted by Mr. Contreras himself."
"On this Palm Sunday, Fox will air a show called The Passion. It’s the latest in a string of live musical TV events, and this time network executives are taking a chance on the Bible. The Passion is the story of the last hours of Jesus Christ, and Sunday’s production will take place on location in New Orleans. Some of the scenes were taped in advance, but others will be live, including a procession of 1, 000 people carrying a cross through the streets. There’s a whole host of talent involved: Singer Trisha Yearwood will play Mary, actor Jencarlos Canela will take on the role of Jesus, and the man who orders Jesus’ death, Pontius Pilate, will be played by British   Seal. In fact, The Passion is Seal’s acting debut. ”I sing two songs,” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin, ”’We Don’t Need Another Hero’ by Tina Turner and ’Mad World’ by Tears for Fears. And that’s kind of interspersed with my  —   God, I can’t believe I’m saying the word  —   acting.” On what the live New Orleans show will be like, From what I understand, it’s going to be quite a spectacle. . .. This has been going on in Holland for the last six years, and so it’s a tried and trusted show. . .. The great thing about it is that it’s so interactive. I mean, it tends to come into a city and take it over and all the residents of the city tend to get involved, and so I can’t wait. . .. I’m not quite sure why they picked New Orleans, but then again I guess it’s really fitting. You know, people from New Orleans, they tend to be, you know, up for a party and up for an interactive experience. I mean they have a history of being quite a celebrative people. On the show being a modern take on Jesus’ story  I don’t know if you ever saw Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, how they took a classic story and set it in modern times. This will be a bit similar to that, I should imagine. You know, the centurions, as they were in those days, that would have come for Jesus  —   those will be replaced by New Orleans Police Department cops. On why he hasn’t tried acting before, I’ve never really had a passion for it, you know, I’ve only kind of been drawn to things that I have a passion for. You know, I love photography, for example, so you’ll never see me without a camera. And obviously, music  —   I have a passion for that. But whilst I’ve admired and respected those that can do it, I’ve never really had a passion for it. So that is perhaps why I haven’t acted until this point. On what drew him to the role, It was the songs that actually drew me to take on the part, because I love that song ”Mad World.” And so they kind of lulled me into a false sense of security by saying, ”Oh, you’ll sing this song. By the way, there’s a little bit of acting involved, too.” On the role of religion in his life, I went to what they call a Church of England school, primary school, when I was very young. And, you know, I came from a sort of typical English family where, you know, my parents did their best to kind of instill the values of religion into us as kids. But they weren’t overtly religious and I didn’t grow up staunch Catholic or anything like that. But you know, I believe in God, I believe that there is a God. I don’t necessarily think he’s a   man with a beard, but I think of God as more of an energy, a divine energy. On whether he’s nervous about the live show, It is a huge production and it is a lot of pressure, but that’s what we crave as artists. We crave pressure. I mean that’s  —   it took me a while to kind of, to figure that out. But that’s why we constantly keep putting ourselves in this position. Because in some strange sort of, I guess,   way we’re addicted to it. We’re addicted to the pressure."
"If you’d like to major in jazz  —   or classical music, or voice performance  —   you have plenty of options. Music programs at schools from the Berklee College of Music in Boston to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, to the Julliard School in New York, all offer bachelor’s degrees in these styles. But if you want a degree in gospel music, well, your choices have been far more limited. You could study gospel music history, or you could get a classical voice performance degree  —   but nothing quite like what you’d be looking for. Until now. Nyack College, a small liberal arts school in Manhattan, is aiming to combat that lack with a   bachelor’s degree program in gospel music performance. The goal is to elevate the level of gospel music scholarship. In an interview with NPR’s Michel Martin, professor Willana Mack, who created the degree’s curriculum, explains the inspiration behind the program  —   and why others have been reluctant to start one like it. On why it’s taken so long to create a degree in gospel performance, I think that when people think of gospel music, they think of it as something that’s natural, that you don’t necessarily have to study and also that you can’t really learn. And so it’s fighting a culture where they think that the study of music should be devoted more to classical or jazz  —   things that are a little more traditional. So, to try to bring something that’s a little bit different, I think it’s met with opposition before people start to look at it as actually a reputable genre that’s just as valid as any other genre of music right now. . .. It’s funny . .. for some reason, academia accepted jazz as a form of music you could study easier than gospel. Not immediately, but eventually, when they started looking at just jazz theory and how everything about it was very different from what people were currently studying. For some reason, it just was taking gospel music a little bit longer to get that same type of respect. On the influences of gospel singer Richard Smallwood, There’s one song in particular that Richard Smallwood does, and it’s called ”Bless The Lord.” He puts into this song a fugue  —   a classical fugue. And it comes out of nowhere. He studied classical music, so he knows how to insert these classical touches here and there that people don’t expect, that don’t even notice what’s happening. On what defines gospel music, There are so many different types of gospel music. . .. I think what makes it gospel is the overall message. So the message of the gospel is  —   what? It’s the good news. So if we start there, with what makes it the gospel, it’s the message. And beyond the message, then it’s: How do you deliver that message? And that just comes down to different styles and tastes. On the sense of a calling that inspires gospel music, It’s a discipline that has to start with the calling. And I don’t recommend for people to study gospel music if they don’t feel that God is leading them to study that. Because it does have to start with God calling you to do this. And so there are things in gospel music that when you study, you start to understand the musical side of it, in addition to the spiritual side. On why someone should study gospel music in school, I will say that when you go to school, you always run the risk of  —   OK, what do I do when I graduate? If I go to school and I study medicine, if I don’t go out and do a residency and look for jobs, I am not going to work. But there is work in the gospel music world. You could now be a music director who not only has the talent but now can read music and can show people on paper  —   ”Well, now I also know how to read music.”"
"On Sunday, as President Obama’s plane touches down in Havana,   will be watching. Many of them have endured periods of separation from their families since the early 1960s.   author Margarita Engle is one of those people. She is the first Latina to win the prestigious Newbery Honor, for her 2008 book, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle For Freedom. She is also the author of Enchanted Air, Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir, a 2015 autobiographical book of narrative poetry. It tells her story of growing up in Los Angeles before getting to know her family in Cuba as a child and teenager in the late 1940s and ’50s, and then being separated from that extended family in the ensuing   years. One poem tells about a time when her family had been questioned by the FBI for receiving letters and phone calls from her grandmother in Cuba. On Friday, she stood at a podium at the Library of Congress, receiving a Walter honor award for Enchanted Air. A few days prior, President Obama had reinstated regular mail service in the latest sign of improved relations. As she spoke to the packed ornate room, her voice quavered with emotion. ”I wrote Enchanted Air, Two Cultures, Two Wings at a time when there was no public glimmer of hope for renewed relations between my parents’ homelands, Cuba and the U. S. I wrote it believing that no American president would have the courage to make peace with Cuba, and that peace would have to wait until a future generation, after today’s children grew up and one of them became president. ”During the same week when advanced review copies arrived on my doorstep, President Obama announced a thaw in Cold War hostilities, proving me wrong. My childhood memories, written as a plea for peace and reconciliation, were suddenly transformed into a song of gratitude.” Enchanted Air ends with a poem as question that made the timing of the award so poignant: All I know about the future, is that it will be beautiful.  An   can’t last, forever.  Someday, surely I’ll be free, to return to the island of all my childhood  dreams.  Normal diplomatic relations.  An ordinary family —   united.  Magical travel, back and forth. It will happen.  When? The Walter award is given in recognition of the life of novelist Walter Dean Myers. It is sponsored by the group We Need Diverse Books. Engle tells NPR that she just talked to her relatives in Miami and Havana on Sunday. She says they were all excited about President Obama’s trip  —   something she hadn’t expected."
"The FBI says it may have found a way to crack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists without Apple’s help. While it explores this option, a federal judge has postponed Tuesday’s hearing that would have been the next step in the battle to get Apple to follow a court order to cooperate. The FBI says that on Sunday, an ”outside party” demonstrated to the FBI a ”possible method for unlocking” Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. The government’s court filing to delay the hearing adds, ”Testing is required to determine whether this is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple Inc.” The FBI is not asking to dismiss the case, just for time to test the new option. The government has been ordered to file a report on the status of the testing by April 5. ”Our top priority has always been gaining access into the phone used by the terrorist in San Bernardino,” Department of Justice spokeswoman Melanie Newman said in a statement. ”With this goal in mind, the FBI has continued in its efforts to gain access to the phone without Apple’s assistance, even during a   period of litigation with the company.” Newman emphasized that further testing is necessary, but said the federal officials ”remain cautiously optimistic.” ”That is why we asked the court to give us some time to explore this option,” she said. ”If this solution works, it will allow us to search the phone and continue our investigation into the terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 22 people.” Apple attorneys said Monday night that the company doesn’t know what technique the FBI is testing. If it works, they hope the government will tell Apple what method was used, but the FBI might decide not to share it."
"In the 1970s and ’80s, Timmy Thomas was the heart and soul of Miami’s rhythm and blues wing. Not only was he a musical cornerstone of the local TK Records (KC  the Sunshine Band, George McRae) and a   for singers like Betty Wright and Gwen McRae he was also a   most importantly with the iconic 1973 soul No. 1, ”Why Can’t We Live Together,” a song written at the height of the Vietnam War protests that today’s music fans might identify as the ”Hotline Bling” music. And one thing about the    Thomas: he never stopped caring, remaining unabashedly emo, even when being emo isn’t cool. (Maybe Drake is onto something after all?) ”Dizzy Dizzy World,” the song that Thomas performed for NPR Music as part of our South X Lullaby tapings in Austin last week, also appeared on the album, Why Can’t We Live Together. And it disposes with the songwriting metaphors in its address of a world gone wrong. Is it sad that the song’s notions of ”stepping on each other’s hand” and ” ” and only identifying with one’s own issues at the expense of our brothers and sisters, is as prevalent now as it was then? Undoubtedly. Is it important to have masterful soul songs to serve as reminders in reappraising our moral and ethical centers? Well, isn’t that what art is for? Thank you, Mr. Thomas  —   and good luck to us all. Watch more South X Lullabies here. Producers: Bob Boilen, Mito   Videographers: Nickolai Hammar, Cameron Robert Editor: Nickolai Hammar Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann Special Thanks: St. David’s Episcopal Church. Support for NPR Music comes from Blue Microphone."
"Amid the mess of heat, rain and tacos, there was a rich gallery of motion and color at the SXSW music festival. Here are the most stunning images of the week from photographer Adam Kissick and our own Bob Boilen."
"As President Obama touched down in Cuba over the weekend, Cuban artists were making waves at the SXSW music festival in Austin. Organizers of the   SXAmericas  —   or South By Americas  —   series held a ”Sounds of Cuba” showcase. Record label reps, music press and Latin music fans got to see rappers,   jazz singers and more from the Cuban music scene. The show was the first of its kind, given the difficulty these artists have getting clearance to go abroad. Many of these Cuban musicians had never performed on a U. S. stage. NPR Music’s Felix Contreras, host of the podcast Alt. Latino, was at South By Southwest and said to remember one name: Dayme Arocena. ”She’s like a mix of Aretha Franklin and Celia Cruz in the same breath,” he says. ”She is working a part of the music scene that is far from the pop world but very artistically complex and compelling. And she’s got this wonderful warmth and personality that comes across, even on record. But live, everybody in the place fell in love with her.” Contreras says Arocena’s music blends many different aspects of the current music scene in Cuba. ”What she is doing is drawing on all this contemporary music that’s happening in Cuba,” he says. ”A mixture of salsa, a mixture of jazz, a mixture of      —   that nice little combination. And then adding elements of   rumba with music, with vocals, with dancing styles  —   all of that, and put in this really wonderful package.” Contreras says Arocena’s song ”Madres” is a perfect example of her Santeria and soul influences. The powerful singing in the song might make you think Arocena would be a diva  —   broad and imposing. But when NPR’s Audie Cornish met up with Arocena, she was surprised by the small, full cheeked young woman with an infectious laugh. Arocena is only 24 years old, but already   in Cuba, where she has been performing in bands and choirs publicly for a decade. She says, laughing, that one of the first songs she learned in English, at age 5, was Whitney Houston’s version of ”I Will Always Love You.” She says she was a kid with a loud voice with a huge range. ”I used to get high notes so high,” she says. ”Now I have a low voice  —   really low. But everyone in my neighborhood knew when I was singing because the voice was going everywhere, always.” Arocena is  . At SXSW, her head was crowned with a tightly wound white turban. The color is a symbol of her Santeria faith, which encompasses West African and Roman Catholic elements. People often point to her faith when describing her music, which has been performed in church venues abroad. But she has a harder time when asked to describe her own sound. ”That is always a good question, because I don’t know yet,” she says. ”It always has like a jazzy taste. But I am so Cuban, in the Cuban mood. And I think everything is so honest. I try to be honest, always, with myself, and that is why my music sounds like me. When the people get my music, people can get my soul, too.” She grew up singing in a youth choir whose director taught jazz along with songs from Queen and the Beatles. Her father loved the singing of Ella Fitzgerald. Arocena also reflects a new generation of Cuban musicians who grew up listening to pirated CDs. She was in the audience of the nearly   Cubans who, a few weeks ago, turned out to see EDM superproducer Diplo in Havana. And finally, Arocena is the product of Cuba’s highly selective music education system. That’s where she learned classic composition and choral arrangements. But, she says, that education had its limits. ”The music school in Cuba is classical stuff that’s all you get in the school,” she says. ”And we don’t have enough money in the country to give instruments to all the kids to study music, or to try music.” She says this lack of funding means that 20 students per province are selected, via a test, to study music. ”But [the schools] are focused on the music you cannot get in the street,” she says. ”Because in Cuba you can get any kind of music in the street. You learn to play to rumba, to play salsa, to play  —   everything! But to play Bach, to play Mozart, you have to go to the musical school.” Arocena is hopeful about the future for Cuban musicians. Now that the relationship between the United States and her home country is changing, Arocena says her main hope for Cuban performers is simple: information. ”In Cuba we don’t get enough information from the world,” she says. ”Everyone outside  —   what they are doing, what they are playing, how the people are producing. We need to exchange blood. We need to see the people outside Cuba  —   how they produce, how they work. And they have to see what we are doing in Cuba, and what we are playing, what we are creating  —   that we are not still in the ’50s playing songs or Latin jazz. I am not the star I am not a god  —   I am just a person. Cuba is a country with 11 million of persons! Come on, we need to be out, the people have to see us!”"
"When a doctor found that Kenicer Carty’s    daughter had a dangerously high level of lead last year, it triggered an alarm of sorts. Officials sent an inspector to Carty’s 1930 row house in northeast Baltimore. It turned out that every single window had hazardous chipping lead paint. The city contracted with the nonprofit Green and Healthy Homes Initiative to replace the windows and inspect her house. They will also fix a leak in a bedroom wall and near the toilet where water pools, because moisture prompts paint to break down. While it’s all welcome help, it has been six months since Carty’s daughter tested positive for lead. She hopes the girl won’t suffer the irreversible behavior or learning problems that lead can cause, but she hasn’t told anyone about the poisoning. ”Because I don’t want people to judge,” she says. ”You know, we live in a society where you’re labeled for just the simplest thing.” Baltimore banned lead paint in 1950, nearly 30 years before the rest of the country.   activism emerged early here, with a volunteer effort among parents in 1986. That became the national Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, which spawned the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative. Baltimore has seen a dramatic decline in cases of lead poisoning, down 86 percent since 2002. But despite these decades of effort, hundreds of Baltimore children are still poisoned every year. Nearly half a million children suffer from lead poisoning nationwide, most of them living in neglected and old houses in   neighborhoods. Testing For Lead In Children, The problem drew national attention last year after the death of Freddie Gray, the young, black Baltimore man fatally injured in police custody. Court documents show that Gray had a devastatingly high   level as a toddler, an amount medical experts say surely would have harmed his ability to focus and learn in school or even hold a steady job. His family later sued a property owner over the poisoning and received an undisclosed settlement. Ruth Ann Norton, a longtime activist who heads Green and Healthy Homes, says it’s taken the country far too long to adapt policy to science, which has shown that any level of lead is harmful to children. ”For decades, we were telling families, kids who had levels of 2, 3, 4, 9, that they were really safe,” she says. ”That was the message, and we knew they weren’t safe.” Maryland’s legal threshold for triggering action on lead poisoning is still 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood. The city of Baltimore has lowered its threshold to 5, in line with a change by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2012. City Health Commissioner Leana Wen says Baltimore also has universal lead testing, but it’s a challenge to carry out. She wants funding for instant testing in doctor’s offices. ”A primary care doctor may recommend that the child is tested,” she says. ”However, by the time that parent goes to a lab and then gets that report back, some kids may fall through the cracks during that time.” Maryland’s governor has announced that the state will also start testing every   and    for lead. Norton says that’s great, but it’s not a solution. ”There’s only one cure for lead poisoning, for the irreversible,   impact of lead poisoning,” she says, ”and that’s prevention.” Getting Rid Of Lead In Houses, Maryland has a housing registry that lets people check for rental units certified as lead safe. It originally covered only houses built before 1950, but recently was expanded to include houses built up until 1978, when the federal government banned lead paint. Tenants can also report problems. ”The good news is that Maryland has been very aggressive,” says Ben Grumbles, Maryland’s secretary of the environment. ”They have the right to notify their landlord under Maryland law if they see chipping, peeling or flaking paint and to get the landlord to fix that.” But extensive reporting by the Baltimore Sun finds landlords don’t always fix the problem. And state auditors say the registry of hundreds of thousands of homes is riddled with errors. Grumbles says the state, along with the EPA, is investigating one private inspector who may have wrongly certified nearly 400 rental units as  . He also says the state has sent out thousands of letters to track down property owners who are not on the registry and is updating its computer technology. But even when the law works, it requires landlords to take action only after testing finds a child with a lead level of 10. Legislation that would have lowered that legal threshold by half recently failed to pass after landlords opposed it. Thomas Tompsett of the Maryland   Association says expanding landlords’ liability would, perversely, lead to less affordable housing. ”Unfortunately the more we are sued and the more risk reductions we have to do, all those costs unfortunately pass on to the tenant, in most cases,” Thompsett says. Beyond state and local failures, activists complain that the federal government has chronically underfunded lead poisoning prevention efforts. ”There should be a program initiated to remove lead from every home in the country,” says attorney Brian Brown, who sues landlords on behalf of   children. ”There’s no doubt in my mind that if rich white kids were the ones being poisoned by lead, this problem would have been solved 75 years ago.” Norton says studies show a   investment would more than pay off, saving money on everything from social services and education to the criminal justice system. ”The kids will read better,” she says. ”They’re going to be less likely to be violent. They will live healthier. Why wouldn’t we do it?” Since the Flint, Mich. water crisis drew national attention, Norton has been pushing the Obama administration to create a national task force to take up that very question."
"The International Criminal Court convicted former Congolese Vice President   Bemba of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the murders and rapes carried out by his militia in the Central African Republic in  . The court found that Bemba knew the ”forces under his effective authority and control were committing or about to commit the crimes charged” and that he ”failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures to prevent or repress the commission of crimes by his subordinates.” It is the first time the court has convicted a suspect based on his role as a military commander, The Associated Press reports. It’s also the first time this court has recognized rape as a war crime and crime against humanity. The New York Times reports that ”largely because of pressure from human rights advocates and women’s groups, organized or mass rape is increasingly being recognized and prosecuted as a weapon of war, not as a byproduct of it.” The newspaper adds: ”Other international courts, including the United Nations tribunals for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, have issued convictions for rape as a war crime and a crimes against humanity  —   but Monday was the first time the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, had done so.” The court’s panel, composed of three judges  —   all women  —   found evidence that the soldiers under Bemba’s command ”committed many acts of pillaging, rape, and murder against civilians, over a large geographical area” during the armed conflict in the Central African Republic from October 2002 to March 2003. The court also found the soldiers ”searched ’  ’ for remaining rebels, raping civilians, pillaging their belongings, and, on some occasions, killing those who resisted.” Bemba, a millionaire businessman who went into exile after losing the 2006 elections, was arrested on May 24, 2008, in Belgium, and was turned over to the court a few weeks later. In his trial, which spanned four years, the court considered 733 items of evidence, 5724 pages of documents and 77 witnesses, according to the ICC’s website. The judges then took more than a year to deliberate before issuing the conviction, saying they ”took the time necessary to evaluate the totality of the large amount of evidence.” The maximum sentence for Bemba is 30 years in prison, and he has 30 days to appeal the conviction."
"Take a look at the next box of strawberries you find in the store. Depending on where in the country you happen to be, it may have come from Florida. But it won’t for much longer. Why? Come with me to Plant City, the center of Florida’s strawberry industry. Meet Carlos Torres, a brawny man with a friendly smile, standing in the early morning sunlight beside a strawberry field. Behind him are long, green rows of   berry plants. Dozens of men and women with hats and long sleeves to shield them from the sun move down those rows, picking berries and placing them carefully, red side up, into plastic clamshell boxes, ready for the supermarket. Nobody, and nothing, touches these berries again until someone brings them home from the store. ”It’s a lot of bending over all day long,” I say, watching the workers. ”All day long,” agrees Torres. ”All day long. Hard on the back. My props to them. It ain’t easy. Not everybody can do it.” Torres works for Foxy, a strawberry grower, and he’s a ”crew leader.” He finds these workers and makes sure they’re here every day. But Torres also makes it clear to me that he’s on the side of the workers. ”My boss came and told me yesterday, ’Carlos, right now you’re probably the only crew leader I know who’s got 60 or 70 people out here. Everybody else has 20, 30, 15.’ He says, ’I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing it!’ ” ”So what’s your secret?” I ask Torres. ”Treat them good,” the crew leader replies. ”You treat them real good, with respect and all, and they’ll stay with you, and work for you.” This crop, and these workers, have shaped Plant City, the   ”Winter Strawberry Capital of the World.” Thousands of workers gather here every winter to pick strawberries in huge fields that all lie within about 10 miles of the town. Gary Wishnatzki’s grandfather moved here from New York City in 1929 to grow and ship strawberries. ”In those years, there was no other source of winter strawberries,” says Wishnatzki, who now owns the family business, Wish Farms. The Florida season started slowly this year the weather was too hot. Now, finally, the plants are producing a flood of berries. But here’s the strange part: Florida’s strawberry growers already are starting to shut down their bountiful harvest, spraying some fields with herbicides to kill off the plants. One reason, explains Dustin Grooms, farm manager for Fancy Farms, is that there can be so many berries that farmers don’t have enough workers to pick them. The berries get overripe, and then they’re worthless. ”There’s fields right now that they’ve terminated because they just couldn’t keep up,” he says. But there’s another reason, too. California. California has come to dominate the American strawberry business. That coastal climate is practically perfect for strawberries, offering a much longer growing season than Florida. And when California’s berries start to hit the market, as they usually do at this time of year, the price drops. At some point, Grooms says, it’s no longer profitable to pick these berries. ”There’s a magic number, what it takes to pick a strawberry [container],” he says. And when the price goes under that magic number, ”there’s no need to flood the market with cheap berries.” So right now, as it does every year, Plant City is shifting gears. Growers are thinking about their next crop. Maybe it will be squash, or melons. And those thousands of strawberry pickers also are getting ready to move on. I met several of these workers at their children’s preschool. It’s a special center for the children of migrant workers run by the Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA). The workers tell me they’ll try to find work nearby for a few months until the end of the school year. But compared to picking strawberries, each job won’t last as long. Some weeks, there may be no work at all. Carmelo Zefarina says he’ll soon be planting watermelon and cantalopes. ”Then we rest maybe a week or two. Then the blueberry picking begins, which lasts like two weeks, until May. And then we pick tomatoes. And then we head north.” Lourdes Villanueva, a former farmworker, now director of farmworker advocacy for the RCMA, says this movement from job to job is like a dance, and you have to move in step with the crops. ”If you don’t leave when you’re supposed to, everything’s already taken, so then you have to move farther up north, or to a different crop,” she says. But they usually stick with work that they know. ”Most of the workers specialize in certain things. Many people think that you just pick strawberries, you pick oranges, you pick whatever. No! They’re very different,” she says. ”It takes some time to get accustomed to the new crop.” When Villanueva was growing up, her family knocked on farmers’ doors to find work. But farms are bigger now, and workers typically deal with middlemen, like crew leaders, or they may follow independent labor contractors who take them from one job to the next. Bernarda Chavez, her husband and their two children follow their labor contractor from Plant City to North Carolina, and on to Michigan. And when the weather turns cold up north, they’ll be back here in Plant City, picking strawberries."
"Donald Trump took a detour from the campaign trail on Monday to try to build relationships with Republican officials and reach out to Jewish voters  —   while also promoting his latest signature building just blocks from the White House. The GOP presidential   met Monday morning with several GOP lawmakers who are backing his campaign, which has met resistance from much of the rest of the Republican establishment. But if his trip was intended to try to grow his support within Washington circles, it’s not clear he made much progress. Trump huddled Monday morning at the Jones Day law firm, just down the street from the U. S. Capitol, with a small group of lawmakers who endorsed him, including Reps. Chris Collins (N. Y.) Scott DesJarlais (Tenn.) Duncan Hunter (Calif.) and Tom Reed (N. Y). ”I think that you’re going to see more meetings like this in Washington, and I think you’re going to see bigger attendance,” DesJarlais predicted to NPR’s Susan Davis. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who hasn’t endorsed Trump, also attended, along with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista, and lobbyist and former Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston. ”I think once these Republicans who are balking right now stop and reflect about the alternatives and that we could actually be faced with four years of Hillary Clinton, they’re all going to unify,” said Livingston, who had been in line to succeed Gingrich as House speaker but later stepped aside himself amid a sex scandal. Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint also attended the meeting, and Trump said later at his news conference that the former South Carolina senator was helping him draft a list of 10 possible conservative Supreme Court justices that he’d soon release. In a meeting with the Washington Post editorial board, Trump also named some members of his foreign policy advisory team  —   the lack of which had been scrutinized recently. He outlined a very   approach globally, even questioning whether the U. S. should be a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Later Trump spoke to reporters from inside the construction zone for his latest luxury hotel at the site of the Old Post Office, Trump boasted of the splendor the newest Trump property would bring to the nation’s capital. ”When it’s complete, it will be one of the truly great hotels in the world,” Trump said, describing the fine marble interior, thick granite walls and ”most luxurious” ballroom that are being constructed. But while Trump, flanked by employees and construction workers, wanted to take questions about his latest business venture, political reporters were more focused on the building down Pennsylvania Avenue he hopes to occupy. Trump said he was confident that he would reach the 1, 237 GOP delegate threshold before the Republican convention in Cleveland this July. ”We should make it pretty easily,” he said. ”So from what I’m seeing, we won’t have to fight at a convention.” Trump certainly sounded more presidential and polished when he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference Monday evening. He read from prepared remarks and even used a teleprompter for the first time during this campaign. ”I speak to you today as a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel. I am a newcomer to politics but not to backing the Jewish state,” he told the crowd. Trump received a more tepid response than some of the other speakers, given that during the last debate he had said he would take a neutral stance in trying to broker a deal between Israel and Palestine. But it was overall a polite reception and marked a more hawkish tone from Trump on Israel. ”We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” Trump pledged. ”And we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel.”"
"The next big day in the presidential nominating contest is Tuesday when voters in Arizona, Utah and Idaho head to the polls. But the votes are already in for another overlooked primary  —   Democrats Abroad. Between March 1 and March 8, Democrats living across the globe cast their votes for who they want to see as their party’s nominee. The votes have now been tallied, and Bernie Sanders won by a wide margin, according to results released Monday. Sanders beat Clinton 69 to 31 percent in a year of record turnout for American Democratic voters living overseas. More than 34, 000 people participated, a 50 percent jump from 2008. Sanders picked up 9 pledged delegates to Clinton’s 4. But who are Democrats Abroad? Where did the votes come from? Where did these Democrats actually vote? Votes came in from more than 170 countries. There was   voting at 153 voting centers in 38 different countries. Voters could also submit ballots by email, post or fax. What were the top five countries where people participated?  United Kingdom: 13. 3 percent of total (4, 610 total votes) Canada: 9. 5 percent (3, 272 total votes) Germany: 8. 4 percent (2, 917 total votes) France: 8. 4 percent (2, 901 total votes) Spain: 4. 93 percent (1, 706 total votes) Clinton only won in three places, The only countries where Clinton had more votes than Sanders were the Dominican Republic (350 to 53) Nigeria (4 to 1) and Singapore (149 to 107). Which countries had the fewest?   7 people cast votes in Afghanistan (5 for Sanders, 2 for Clinton)  5 people cast votes in Nigeria (1 for Sanders, 4 for Clinton) Any other surprises? Despite having suspended his campaign in February, Martin O’Malley still received 21 votes from around the globe. Those votes came from people in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the  . Perhaps more surprisingly, car dealer and   tycoon Rocky De La Fuente received 6 votes, coming from Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom. What about the superdelegates? Democrats Abroad is granted eight superdelegates. (Each carries half a vote.) That means that there are four superdelegate votes at stake  —   three have made verbal commitments to Clinton and one committed to Sanders. The remaining four have yet to announce. So stay tuned. What does that bring the delegate count to?  Clinton now has 1, 630 delegates (1, 163 pledged and 467 supers). Sanders now has 870 delegates (844 pledged and 26 supers)."
"NASA has released a new gravity map of Mars, providing a detailed look at the Red Planet’s surface and revealing new information about what lies beneath it. The map was made by tracking subtle variations in the planet’s gravitational pull on orbiting spacecraft. As NASA explains: ”The pull will be a bit stronger over a mountain, and slightly weaker over a canyon.” Using this technology, it’s possible to look inside a planet ”just as a doctor uses an   to see inside a patient,” Antonio Genova of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was lead author of a paper on Mars’ gravity, said in a NASA press release. And the NASA release says this improved view confirms that ”Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock.” The researchers determined this by ”analyzing tides in the Martian crust and mantle caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the two moons over Mars.” The map also provides new details about the Red Planet’s ice caps. NASA says it was able to use data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to determine ”that when one hemisphere experiences winter, approximately 3 to 4 trillion tons of carbon dioxide freezes out of the atmosphere onto the northern and southern polar caps, respectively.” Scientists say the more detailed knowledge of Mars’ surface and gravitational dynamics will also assist in future missions to the planet’s orbit."
"President Obama wants his visit to Havana to open up American ties with Cuba. He also wants to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, on the southern tip of the island. Does that mean his next move might be to return the whole naval base? ”The Cubans have said clearly: ’To have normal relations with us, you have to give us back Guantanamo Bay,’ ” said Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. ”With the president going there, the concern has been that he would take some sort of action that would result in the loss of that important facility.” Thornberry and other Republicans point to deals the Obama administration has struck confidentially and then announced afterward, including the initial push to normalize relations with Cuba and the agreement to exchange five Taliban prisoners held there for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. But administration officials say that although they want the Guantanamo Bay prison closed, the base itself is not up for discussion. That doesn’t mean, however, that the Cubans won’t bring it up. ”I’ve had that discussion many times with my Cuban counterparts,” Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters ahead of Obama’s trip. ”They are insistent, obviously, that our presence there is not legitimate and that the facility be returned to them.” Critics argue that Obama is making concessions to Cuban leader Raul Castro and getting nothing in return. Republican Rep. David Trott of Michigan invoked the 1977 decision by President Jimmy Carter to relinquish control of the Panama Canal, which Trott called a major loss for the U. S. When Trott pressed the issue in a recent hearing, Secretary of State John Kerry said nothing like that is in the offing for Guantanamo. ”There’s no plan, no discussion  —   I would personally be opposed to that,” Kerry said. ”There’s no discussion that I’m aware of.” Coveted Since The 18th Century, Americans and other outsiders have coveted the   seaport in southeastern Cuba since the 18th century. President George Washington named his home at Mount Vernon, Va. after British Vice Adm. Edward Vernon, with whom Washington’s brother Lawrence served in the Royal Navy, said Harvard historian Jonathan Hansen. In Guantanamo: An American History, Hansen described how excitement over Guantanamo predates the American Revolution. ”There were newspapers up and down the Atlantic seaboard talking about Guantanamo Bay literally as the Promised Land,” Hansen told NPR. ”They were thinking about  —   and this is back in the 1740s  —   of actually having an American colony there.” The dream of American control didn’t come true until 1898, when Col. Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders helped topple Cuba’s Spanish overlords. The United States imposed military rule in Cuba following its victory in the   war, and control of the naval base became one condition for withdrawal. The Platt Amendment, passed in 1901, called for the departure of American troops from Cuba if Havana agreed to a   lease for Guantanamo Bay. That arrangement became enshrined in Cuba’s Constitution and has remained a point of dispute. ”It’s original sin,” said Michael Parmly, who headed the U. S. mission in Cuba during the George W. Bush administration. ”How would we like it if, out on the tip of Long Island, there was 54 miles of territory controlled by another country?” Most Americans don’t realize how deeply Cubans resent being the only country with a U. S. military base but no treaty rights to challenge or close it, Parmly said. An Annual Rent Check, For its part, Washington at least is diligent about paying its rent. The U. S. Treasury sends Havana a check every year for $4, 080, a payment unchanged over the history of the   lease. Rulers Fidel and Raul Castro have refused to cash the checks in the years they’ve ruled the island, but the brothers have never tried to eject the American troops by force. Some American sailors, Marines and others will likely stay in Cuba even if Obama is able to close the prison there. Adm. Kurt Tidd, the head of U. S. Southern Command, told senators this month that the base should not be closed. ”We have significant strategic interests at the naval station in Guantanamo Bay that will continue long past whenever detention operations end,” he said. One of Tidd’s predecessors, however, said he thought that’s no longer true. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey told NPR that he believes Guantanamo no longer serves a good purpose. ”I think it’s a historical anomaly,” he said. ”At some point, we clearly should return it to Cuba. It does not play a vital U. S. national security role.”"
"”This is a new day  —   es un nuevo dia  —   between our two countries,” President Obama said after meeting with Cuban President Raúl Castro in Havana. The two leaders agreed that there are still deep fissures between the two countries and that a healthy relationship between them will take work. That uneasiness was apparent as soon as journalists began asking questions. Obama and Castro were not supposed to take questions, but a last minute change made that possible and Obama called first on CNN’s Jim Acosta, who is  . In Spanish, Acosta asked Castro why his country kept political prisoners. Clearly miffed, Castro asked Acosta to hand over a list of political prisoners. ”Give me a list after this press conference. If there are political prisoners, they will be released by nightfall. That’s it,” Castro said. Almost immediately, The Center for a Free Cuba, which advocates for human rights on the island, sent over a list documenting more than 1, 000 cases of persons who they say were ”arbitrarily detained” for political reasons. ”The list is never complete,” Frank Calzon, the nonprofit’s executive director, said in a statement. ”When President Obama announced back in December 17, 2014 that 50 some prisoners were to be released, we later discovered that some were   later.” The Cuban American National Foundation released its own list of 47 people the organization says are political prisoners. Obama was diplomatic when he addressed Cuba’s human rights record. He said the U. S. would continue to press the issue of freedom of speech and expression, much like it does around the world. The United States, however, cannot force change on the island, he said. ”Cuba’s destiny will not be decided by the United States or any other nation,” Obama said. ”Cuba is sovereign and the future of Cuba will be decided by Cubans and not by anybody else.” Castro said it was unfair to focus solely on the issue of freedom expression. Cuba, he said, views many things as human rights, including the right to free healthcare and education. ”Here in Cuba, all children are born in a hospital, no matter what mountain they live on,” Castro said. ”In Cuba, men and women who do the same job earn the same.” All countries, he said, have failings on human rights but all countries also excel in other areas. ”We’re going to work together so we can all achieve all of the human rights,” Castro said. Obama’s official visit to Cuba began on Monday with a   ceremony at the foot of a memorial to Cuban independence hero and poet José Martí. It’s worth pausing on that for a minute. The statue of Martí is also at the center of La Plaza de la Revolución, a square as important and revered in Cuba as Moscow’s Red Square or Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. On the other side, in the distance, the buildings for the ministries of defense and interior are framed with outline portraits of Ernesto ”Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, two of the country’s bearded revolutionary heroes. Fidel Castro used to give lengthy speeches at the square to huge crowds and often denounced U. S. imperialism. Today, Obama stood solemnly before the statue of Martí as a Cuban military band played ”The   Banner.” A few minutes later, and for the first time in almost 90 years, a Cuban president welcomed an American president. Castro shook Obama’s hand at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, making history and bringing a symbolic end to one of the last rivalries of the Cold War. The two leaders met for a couple of hours and then they emerged to face the press. Castro called on the United States to put Guantánamo back in Cuban hands and end the embargo. ”The blockade is the single biggest obstacle to our economic development,” Castro said. Obama said that the embargo will end. ”The path we’re on will continue beyond this administration,” Obama said. ”The reason is logic.” Decades of isolation, he said, have not worked so it’s time to try something new. Castro said the story of Diana Nyad, who on her fifth try swam from Cuba to Florida without using a shark cage, should serve as an allegory for the two countries. ”If she can do it, we can do it,” Castro said. Obama returned to that metaphor toward the end of his remarks, saying, ”The road ahead will not be easy. Fortunately, we don’t have to swim with sharks.” In the evening, Obama will attend a state dinner at the Palace of the Revolution."
"In the moments after the end of a historic press conference held by President Obama and President Castro in Havana, Cuba, what began as a regular handshake morphed into . .. something else. The Cuban leader raised Obama’s limp arm above his head and held it there for a few seconds. The move most closely resembled a wrestling referee announcing the winner of a wrestling match. Only way more awkward."
"The Supreme Court strongly suggested Monday that stun guns are protected by the Second Amendment right to bear arms. In 2008 the court, by a   vote, declared for the first time that the Second Amendment guarantees citizens the right to own and keep a handgun in their homes for  . But that decision in District of Columbia v. Heller left unresolved many questions about how much the government could regulate that right, and what weapons are included. Enter Jaime Caetano, a Massachusetts woman who had obtained a restraining order against an abusive   and carried a stun gun for  . When police discovered the weapon in her purse, she was convicted of violating the state’s ban on stun guns. She appealed, contending that the ban violated the Constitution’s right to bear arms. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against her, declaring that stuns guns were not in existence when the Second Amendment was written. Monday, the Supreme Court overturned that decision, which it said clearly contradicted the specific language of the 2008 ruling. The justices then sent the case back to the Massachusetts court for further unspecified action, but the message looked pretty clear: stun guns are covered by the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Writing separately, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas delivered a   defense of the right to carry a stun gun, and a broad definition of what weapons are covered by the right to bear arms. They called the unsigned opinion of the court ”grudging.”"
"More than a year after Nebraska and Oklahoma sought to sue Colorado over the   effects of that state’s law making recreational marijuana legal, the U. S. Supreme Court has denied the two states’ complaint. The court did not explain its decision, with which Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas disagreed. Thomas wrote a   dissent in which Alito joined (a reminder: the court is currently at eight members). Citing the Supreme Court’s constitutional role in handling disputes between states, Thomas said that Nebraska and Oklahoma’s claims of ”significant harms to their sovereign interests” should have been allowed to proceed, and should not have been denied without explanation. The two states began legal proceedings months after Colorado began allowing marijuana dispensaries to start selling pot for recreational use at the start of 2014. As the   reported, ”officials in Nebraska and Oklahoma say Colorado’s pot law has become a destabilizing force in their states, where their legal systems are struggling to enforce the federal ban on marijuana. They believe Colorado isn’t doing enough to keep pot from leaving the state.” The neighboring states had claimed their criminal justice systems were being put under stress because of Colorado’s new law. Reacting to today’s news, Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said he’s disappointed. He also said the high court’s denial doesn’t mean that Colorado’s ”unconstitutional facilitation of marijuana industrialization is legal”  —   and Peterson added that he’ll be looking at possible steps ”toward vindicating the rule of law.” On the other side of the issue, Mason Tvert, the director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, called the case meritless. ”States have every right to regulate the cultivation and sale of marijuana, just as Nebraska and Oklahoma have the right to maintain their failed prohibition policies,” said Tvert, who’s based in Denver  —   and who helped lead his state’s marijuana voter initiative. ”Colorado has done more to control marijuana than just about any other state in the nation.”"
"Not long ago, Turkey was held up as a regional model: a   state with a thriving democracy and a market economy. These days, though, it’s more often seen as a country where a ruling party with no serious opposition is drifting toward authoritarian rule. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan led the Justice and Development Party (AKP in its Turkish acronym) to power in 2002, in a breakthrough victory for politicians gathered together from earlier, failed Islamist parties. The AKP has won every election since. For Turkish liberals like Sahin Alpay, the AKP’s early days as   reformers are now memories from another time. Alpay, a veteran newspaper columnist, remembers that first AKP platform fondly. It was, he says, ”the most liberal political party program ever in the history of the Turkish Republic.” Alpay, now in his early 70s, has lived through much of that history. His grandparents came to Turkey from Greece in the upheavals that led to massive population transfers in the 1920s. His parents embraced the former elite, the   ”Kemalists,” followers of the Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. They enforced a secular Turkish nationalism that brooked no dissent. The young Alpay liked the secular part but was appalled by the Kemalists’ undemocratic tactics, especially the military coups that regularly put down opposition parties in the latter half of the 20th century. So in 2002, when Erdogan and the AKP burst onto the scene, Alpay wrote a column headlined ”A Victory For Democracy.” It wasn’t Erdogan’s working class background or charisma that attracted him, but the program of reforms he offered. Here was something new under the Turkish sun: a party run by devotees of political Islam that proposed something Ataturk never had,   democratic institutions and freedoms. ”The centerpiece of the program was, ’We want to have Turkey as member of the European Union, and we’re going to reform the country,’ ” Alpay says. ”And they had a clear vision of a market economy.” Foreign investment soared and living standards began to rise. The death penalty was abolished and minorities gained basic rights. By this time, Alpay was a columnist for Zaman, a paper linked to Fethullah Gulen, a U. S.  Turkish cleric and the AKP’s powerful ally. Alpay wrote columns defending the ruling party against attempted coups and cheered as the military’s longstanding dominance over Turkish politics was cut back. It wasn’t until early 2011 that Alpay began to have doubts about where Erdogan was leading the country. The AKP had won another election decisively, and Erdogan gave a famous ”balcony speech” in which he vowed to represent all Turks, not just those who voted for him. But Alpay took note of Erdogan’s other speeches  —   the ones attacking an independent judiciary and calling for a strong Turkish president, an office Erdogan would later win. Then came the Arab Spring uprisings, which Alpay says gave AKP leaders dreams of Muslim   governments across the region. Large   protests in Istanbul in 2013 were crushed, with many demonstrators prosecuted. Opposition media outlets were at first threatened, and then sometimes taken over. Alpay now believes Erdogan no longer stands for reform  —   or even any particular ideology. ”I think it’s a gang of people who are united in their financial and political interests,” he says. ”So it’s a terrible situation, and I think Mr. Erdogan is leading the country into very, very dire times.” These days, Erdogan remains popular with conservative and religious Turks, while his critics face a growing crackdown. The security forces are on the streets almost constantly, either responding to terrorist attacks or putting down protests. More than 1, 000 academics were arrested for calling for peace with the Kurdish minority. Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have been periodically shut down or filtered. As for Alpay, he can no longer air his opinions in the pages of the Zaman newspaper, since police stormed its offices and installed   trustees earlier this month. Overnight, the country’s largest opposition paper began offering uncharacteristically glowing coverage of Erdogan’s struggle against those he calls the ”accomplices of terror.” In a recent speech, the president warned of further crackdowns. ”Being an academic, author, journalist or an NGO executive does not change the fact that this person indeed is a terrorist,” he said. Civil liberties groups  —   who have heard autocratic leaders in other countries use similar logic to silence dissent  —   say with a divided and weak opposition, the country will likely face more attempts to bring the population to heel behind its powerful president."
"Bruce Klingner knows better than anyone how dangerous North Korea really is. He spent years analyzing the Hermit Kingdom for the CIA, and he now works as a Northeast Asia analyst at the Heritage Foundation. And yet even he finds himself having an occasional chuckle at the North’s absurdity. The bombastic rhetoric and    propaganda are ”kind of like 1950s Soviet Union on steroids,” he says. The portrayals in films like The Interview and Team America: World Police don’t help either: ”In the back of your mind, you just have the image of Kim Jong Il’s puppet singing ’I’m So Ronery,’” he says. But over the past few months, the experts have pretty much stopped laughing. That’s because North Korea has undertaken an unusual number of tests in the first quarter of 2016, everything from detonating a nuclear bomb underground to launching a satellite on a rocket that could be converted to a ballistic missile. Keeping up with the pace of activity is ”exhausting, to be honest,” says Melissa Hanham, a North Korea analyst at the East Asia Nonproliferation Program of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. What’s clear, both analysts say, is that the North is working quickly toward its ultimate goal: a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). And it’s making pretty good progress. A series of photos released by North Korea’s propaganda apparatus earlier this March is perhaps the best example of how views are changing. It shows the country’s current dictator, Kim Jong Un, the son of Kim Jong Il, posing in front of a shiny silver ball placed atop a chintzy red tablecloth. The ball is supposed to be a miniaturized nuke, capable of fitting on a missile. But, as with many North Korean photos, it looks kind of silly. ”A lot of people started calling it the disco ball,” Hanham says. There were disco inferno jokes on Twitter. But as experts started to analyze the pictures more closely, they weren’t laughing. The ball on the table was obviously a model, but many of the details were reasonably close to a real miniaturized warhead. ”They definitely know what a bomb looks like,” Hanham says. ”I mean, that model didn’t come out of thin air. It’s not a weird unicorn or anything. It has roots in the truth.” The North has now had four nuclear tests  —   enough, according to many experts, for it to figure out the basics of miniaturization. Its progress has gotten the U. S. military’s attention. Earlier this month, Adm. Bill Gortney, who heads the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told lawmakers: ”It’s the prudent decision on my part to assume that [Kim Jong Un] has the capability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon and put it on an ICBM.” This is a change in tone from just a few years ago, when the U. S. intelligence community stated that North Korea didn’t have all the tools it needed to send a nuke over American soil. Both Klingner and Hanham say there’s no need to panic. North Korea’s newest ballistic missile is untested, and they have yet to prove they have vital   technology that would allow their warhead to reach its target without burning up in the atmosphere. But Klingner also says it’s clear that North Korea is making lots of progress. ”They’re on a path to achieving a nuclear warhead capability that they can deliver to the U. S. Japan and South Korea,” he says. And there is nothing funny about that."
"Shackleton, Endeavour, Falcon and . .. Boaty McBoatface? These are some of the names that have been suggested for the United Kingdom’s new     polar research vessel that’s slated to take to the seas in 2019. Can you guess which one is leading the vote? Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council asked the public to help think of possible monikers for the new   ship, urging them to look for ”an inspirational name” that exemplifies the vessel’s mission, a historical figure, movement, landmark or a famous polar explorer or scientist. ”The polar research ship represents a leap forward in securing Britain’s place as a world leader in marine and climate change science  —   and illustrates this government’s commitment to invest in research facilities on a record scale,” Jo Johnson, minister of universities and science, said in the initial press release. ”Can you imagine one of the world’s biggest research labs travelling to the Antarctic with your suggested name proudly emblazoned on the side?” A name like, you know, Boaty McBoatface. Since the NERC announced the poll, the Internet (as it is wont to do) hijacked it and went   ahead with Boaty McBoatface. While the poll’s Web page is experiencing ”technical issues” due to what the NERC said was ”overwhelming interest,” Boaty McBoatface had amassed 27, 000 votes as of Monday morning, while the second place pick had racked up around 3, 000, according to the BBC. Other perhaps    names suggested include Ice Ice Baby, Usain Boat and It’s Bloody Cold Here. Alison Robinson, NERC’s director of corporate affairs, said in a statement that the council is ”pleased that people are embracing the [naming] idea in a spirit of fun,” but noted that the NERC will have the final say over the boat’s name. ”We’ve had thousands of suggestions made on the website since we officially launched many of them reflect the importance of the ship’s scientific role by celebrating great British explorers and scientists,” she said, adding, ”We are very much enjoying hearing everyone’s ideas.” Meanwhile, the man who proposed the name Boaty McBoatface, former BBC radio host James Hand, has ”apologized profusely” for his joke run amok. ”I’ve actually been speaking to the people behind the website,” he told BBC Radio. ”It’s actually nothing to do with me. It was my suggestion but the storm that has been created, it’s got legs of its own.” Hand says the response to his suggestion has been ”utterly bizarre.” ”I read the list of entries and there were about 3, 000 at the time. Some of them were really, really funny. Clifford the Big Red Boat was my favourite. So I thought I’d throw one into the ring to see what happens. It got a few likes and I thought nothing of it,” he said, according to The Independent. ”It’s only when I got home and someone tweeted me and said Boaty McBoatface is leading by 500, and then by Friday night it was leading by a couple of thousand. Then, by the time the site eventually crashed yesterday, it was leading by about eight thousand,” Hand said. ”It’s been quite a strange weekend.” Hand’s own Twitter feed tracks how the joke progressed from silly diversion to international news story: Hand says he actually voted to name the ship after naturalist David Attenborough, The Associated Press reports. Robinson says the poll closes April 16 and that the name will be announced in ”due course.”"
"While climate change threatens coastal cities and generates extreme weather, the effects of global warming could bring good news to some of France’s most esteemed vineyards. Here, the conditions needed to produce   fruit, which is historically associated with highly rated wines, have become more frequent, according to research published online Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. ”Before 1980, you basically needed a drought to generate the heat to get a really early harvest,” says the study’s   Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. ”But since 1980, it’s been so warm because of climate change that you can get the hot summers and really early harvests without needing a drought.” In other words,   warming has become so pronounced that even drenching summer rains cannot always absorb, and reduce, the heat that helps ripening grapes develop sugars, acids and tannins. Overall, this has meant    harvests, more frequently. That’s potentially a good thing for winemakers in the Bordeaux and Burgundy regions, where Cook and his   Harvard University’s Elizabeth M. Wolkovich, focused their research. ”There is a very clear signal that the earlier the harvest, the much more likely that you’re going to have   wines,” Cook says. But Cook says the traditional reasoning that hotter weather, and an earlier harvest, means better wine may only hold true to a point. He notes that in 2003 an extremely dry, warm growing season preceded one of France’s earliest harvests on record. Grape growers were harvesting their fruit in   to    —   several weeks earlier than usual. ”But the wine quality was kind of middling,” Cook says. ”That suggests that after a certain point, it could just get to be so warm, and the harvest so early, that you move into a situation where the old rules no longer apply.” In fact, other research has predicted that global warming could redraw the entire global winemaking map. A paper published in 2013 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned that grape growers may need to move their vineyards to higher latitudes and higher elevations to beat the heat of global warming. But Lee Hannah, a   of that study, says the results of his work don’t necessarily conflict with the results of Cook’s research. The differing results are a result of the global, rather than localized, view that he and his colleagues took in gathering their data and running their climate models, says Hannah, who is a University of California, Santa   climate change biologist with Conservation International. Hannah says warming trends will almost certainly force winemakers to make adjustments to how they operate. ”But the devil is in the details for each particular region in how that exactly plays out, and there may be winners and losers,” Hannah says. ”In Europe, things could be more moderate than what our model suggested, and possibly in California, things will be more extreme.” In California, Hannah notes, escalating temperatures have come in tandem with drought, whereas in Europe, as Cook’s study found, drought and temperature have become decoupled. For California winemakers, this could mean extreme conditions that make regions known for fine wine, like Napa and Sonoma counties, too hot to produce premium wines in the future. ”People have been very worried about what this latest drought could mean for wine production in California,” Hannah says.  Gregory Jones, a professor of environmental science and policy at Southern Oregon University, tells us that the climate trends observed in Cook’s study, which Jones helped review, could make California winemakers more dependent on irrigation. Cook, too, believes some facets of winemaking will need to change from place to place as the planet warms. But the point of his and Wolkovich’s study, he says, was partly to provide winemakers with information that could help them adapt to warmer future conditions, rather than flee from them. ”At the end of the day, people are still going to want to grow wine in Bordeaux in the future,” Cook says. ”So, we wanted to get more information about what is happening here [due to climate change] so that people could use that information. Winemakers do not need to be complete slaves to what the environment does.” Alastair Bland is a freelance writer based in San Francisco who covers food, agriculture and the environment."
"Bordeauxs and Burgundys haven’t changed much since the days when famous   Thomas Jefferson kept the cellars of his Parisian home   with both wines. But now, some worry that the regional rules and traditions that have defined top winemaking regions like Champagne, Burgundy and Chianti for centuries could melt away as climate change takes effect. The main concern is that grape varieties that have brought renown and reputation to certain appellations  —   the syrah grapes of the French Rhone Valley, or the cabernet sauvignon of Bordeaux  —   may no longer thrive in those places several decades from now. Some people say there is little reason to fear, but others are already thinking ahead about which grape varieties will work best in their regions under forecast temperature changes. And it’s possible that old wine standards and definitions, revered like religion for ages, could be rewritten as winemakers adapt to a warmer future. ”As   suitability moves northward, I believe the winemaking regulations of Europe could break down quickly,” says Lee Hannah, a University of California, Santa   climate specialist with Conservation International. He   a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences forecasting how climate change might reshape the global winemaking map. Already, climate change is creating new winners among Europe’s winemakers. In southern England, warmer temperatures are credited with setting off a sparkling wine boom. In Germany, where Riesling and Gewurztraminer have long been superstars, new grape varieties are beginning to thrive, says German viticulturist Hans Reiner Schultz, a professor at Hochschule Geisenheim University. ”The pinot noir we’re growing is now fit to challenge the French,” Schultz says. Meanwhile, winemakers in other parts of the continent are feeling the heat, and there is increasing discussion about changing the rules to allow them to introduce grape varieties that are currently prohibited but likely to thrive under future climate conditions. And grape growers, who must look ahead decades to when their vines will be in prime production, may soon be planting new varieties of vines known to produce fruit better in warmer, drier climates. Experimental government vineyards are already doing this. ”Changing grapevine varieties is absolutely an option, not in a short term, but by 2050 to 2070,” Kees Van Leeuwen, of the Agricultural University of Bordeaux, tells The Salt. ”We are currently experimenting in our research center [the Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin] how   varieties behave in the Bordeaux climate.”   varieties are considered the best candidates for helping regions adapt to climate change. That’s because, in general, the later that grapes ripen, the better their   balance  —   an important component in winemaking. When grapes ripen especially early  —   as they do in warm years  —   they may fail to develop the acidity necessary for making good wine. This means that many grapes that currently ripen in the optimal harvest time of September might, in a warmer future, become relatively useless to some winemakers who use them today. Leeuwen says changing French laws on regional grape use won’t be easy, and could take as long as 15 years. Other regulations are already breaking down  —   such as laws forbidding irrigation. The practice is considered taboo by many, and some wine critics feel it can result in   wines. But in exceptionally hot and dry conditions, watering vines can help increase the yield of fruit. And in 2006, the French government decided to do away with its prohibition on irrigating.   laws have also been loosened in parts of Spain, says Schultz. ”When they changed the rule [in France] it was like a second French Revolution, because many people were very, very opposed to this,” Schultz says. Now, he adds, ”there is no more talk of prohibiting irrigation.” That rule change comes at a cost, says Leeuwen. He says irrigation can increase the soil’s salinity level, which can be harmful to grapes. In Bordeaux and other fine wine regions, where the richness of the dirt is credited for the quality of the wine, the consequences of irrigation could be dire. Leeuwen says salinity buildup in some southern Australian vineyards is causing winemakers to abandon them. But Michel Chapoutier, a winemaker in the Rhone Valley, has more confidence in the future. He thinks current regulations already give winemakers all the leeway they need to use different grape varieties to adapt to climate change. A Bordeaux will still be a Bordeaux, he argues, without a change in rules or a compromise in quality  —   winemakers will merely have to adjust their blend ratios. ”Bordeaux [winemakers] will lower their amount of merlot and will raise their amount of petit verdot, while the Southern Rhone will lower their amount of syrah and raise their amounts of grenache and mourvedre,” Chapoutier says. Lamberto Frescobaldi, of his family’s winery in Tuscany, says he believes old traditions should not be allowed to hinder winemakers from adapting to climate change  —   even if it means permitting new grapes in their wines. But he doubts that Tuscan winemakers will ever let sangiovese, the main variety of the region, slip to the wayside. Schultz, too, expects that historically dominant wine regions will do everything they can to avoid giving up the grapes that have defined them for centuries. ”Burgundy without a pinot noir or chardonnay,” he says, ”would not be the Burgundy we know.”"
"His comments about female tennis players were in ”poor taste and erroneous,” Indian Wells CEO Raymond Moore says, after a backlash over his comments that women are along for the ride in a sport that’s carried by men. Among those displeased: Serena Williams. Here’s part of what Moore said Sunday that caused the outcry: ”In my next life, when I come back I want to be someone in the WTA,” Moore, 69, said with a laugh, ”because they ride on the coattails of the men.” Moore, who was speaking at a news conference Sunday, continued: ”They don’t make any decisions and they are lucky. They are very, very lucky. If I was a lady player, I’d go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born, because they’ve carried this sport. They really have. And now the mantle has been handed over to [Novak] Djokovic and [Andy] Murray, and some others.” Moore is the tournament director of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. He went on to say of his tournament, one of many elite events on the tour that awards equal prize money to male and female athletes, ”We have no complaints.” Moore also drew criticism for what he said moments later, when he said that several ”very attractive players” could lead their sport the way Serena Williams has. When asked whether he was referring to their physical appearance or their game, he answered, ”I mean both.” A former player from South Africa, Moore has been associated with the Indian Wells tournament since at least the 1980s. He became the head of both the tournament and its home facility in 2012, taking over for longtime friend and business partner Charlie Pasarell. When he spoke Sunday, Moore called Serena Williams ”arguably the best female player of all time” and said that the quality of women’s tennis has improved greatly. But those admiring words, and the showcase day of the tournament he runs, were overshadowed by Moore’s remarks about women’s place in the game. Williams, who won her first Indian Wells title in 1999, sharply criticized Moore’s comments Sunday afternoon, saying they left no room for interpretation as anything other than offensive. ”I speak very good English. I’m sure he does, too,” she said. ”You know, there’s only one way to interpret that. Get on your knees, which is offensive enough, and thank a man, which is not . .. we, as women, have come a long way. We shouldn’t have to drop to our knees at any point.” Williams is the world’s No. 1 in the WTA’s singles rankings  —   a spot she first held in 2002, and which she has currently held for three years. On Sunday, she admitted being surprised at Moore’s remarks. And she cited some recent history to counter his view: ”Yeah, I’m still surprised, especially with me and Venus and all the other women on the tour that’s done well. Last year, the women’s final at the U. S. Open sold out well before the men. I’m sorry, did Roger play in that final, or Rafa or any man play in that final that was sold out before the men’s final? I think not.” In addition to selling out of tickets for its women’s final before its men’s contest, the U. S. Open also saw a spike in ticket prices, as fans clamored to see Williams vie for winning all four majors in the same season. Responding to Moore’s comments, both Williams and Victoria Azarenka, her opponent in Sunday’s BNP Paribas final, invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King, who founded the WTA and blazed a trail for women as professional athletes. King had her own thoughts about Moore’s words, saying in a tweet that he was ”wrong on so many levels.” Apologizing later for his comments, Moore said they ”were in extremely poor taste and erroneous. I am truly sorry for those remarks, and apologize to all the players and WTA as a whole.” The men’s winner Sunday was Djokovic, who said that Moore’s comments were ”not politically correct,” as the BBC relays  —   but the news agency adds that the Serbian star also called for men to fight for more money. From the BBC: ”Djokovic, 28, said women ’fought for what they deserve and they got it,’ but claimed prize money should be ’fairly distributed’ based on ’who attracts more attention, spectators and who sells more tickets.’ ” The BNP Paribas tourney at Indian Wells carries a total purse of more than $10 million. As one of several elite mandatory tennis tournaments featuring both men’s and women’s fields, it awards prize money equally. Those tournaments rank one slot below the four Grand Slams, which have awarded equal prize money since 2007  —   when Wimbledon followed the same path the U. S. Open took back in 1973. Moore’s initial comments came on the same morning as the women’s final, in which Williams fell to Azarenka,    . Addressing the controversy after her match, Azarenka said she has a problem in general with men making derogatory comments about women. Making what she called a simple case, Azarenka said: ”Every single person on Earth was brought . .. was born by a woman, right? I think that’s a good comment. And I think people should remember that sometimes.”"
"On March 10, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee held a news conference at the Good Neighbor Healthcare Center in the part of Houston she represents. The mayor and a bevy of other state and local officials stood behind her. ”What we’re doing here today is having an intense briefing on the Zika virus with health professionals, working with the mayor and the city of Houston, the state and the country, to formulate the kind of partnership that can respond immediately,” said Jackson Lee, a Democrat. Then she stepped aside, as the mayor, the assembled health officials and civic minded clergy all delivered a version of the same message: The Zika virus is coming to Houston, and we’d better get ready. To get a better idea why Houston is at particular risk, I met up with Peter Hotez. He’s dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. Hotez says there are three elements that put Houston at risk for a Zika outbreak. The first is the steady influx of people from other countries. ”Houston is a gateway city,” says Hotez. ”We’re on the coast we’re not far from the Panama Canal. We’re an immigrant hub.” There’s also a major international airport. ”Every day there are hundreds and thousands of people coming from all over the world to Houston,” he says. At least some of those people are likely carrying Zika, according to Hotez, whether they know it or not. The second element is mosquitoes. In the summer, Houston is awash in Aedes aegypti. That’s the mosquito that can transmit Zika. The third element is economic. ”I think one of the missing narratives that we’ve not heard about Zika is that this is a disease of poverty,” says Hotez. To show me what he means, we drive to a neighborhood called the Fifth Ward, just a few miles from the gleaming skyscrapers of downtown Houston. The area near the corner of Worms and New Orleans Streets is dotted with small, dilapidated wooden homes. There are few, if any, grocery stores or restaurants nearby. Hotez says there are often piles of trash here, trash where water can pool and provide breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti. Hotez points to a pile of tires. ”What happens, the water pools inside the tire well,” he says. ”But the other thing that happens is that as the water sits for a time, some of the leaves get into that, and it kind of creates an organic soup that the mosquito larvae absolutely love. So as we move into the spring and summer months, these will be teeming with thousands of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.” If these mosquito should happen to bite someone infected with Zika, and then bite someone else nearby, that second person will become infected. This is how the virus can spread through a neighborhood. Now if you’re in a home with window screens and air conditioning, that’s one thing. But there aren’t many homes like that around here. ”We’re only a few feet from a house which has no window screens,” says Hotez, ”So it’s the proximity of a house with no window screens, next to the discarded tires, next to the standing water that creates the perfect mix” for spreading the virus. Hotez says the point is American cities like Houston have quite a high concentration of poverty. He says it’s the poor who are the most exposed to mosquitoes, and therefore most vulnerable to   diseases. City, county and state officials say they’ll do all they can to pick up trash where mosquitoes can breed. They say federal health officials are keeping watch at Houston’s international airport to make sure travelers who do show up with Zika are identified and treated. But they’ll need residents’ help, both in clearing trash and seeking medical attention if they think they’ve been exposed to the virus. Hotez says these efforts may not stop Zika from hitting Houston, but he hopes they will at least minimize its impact."
"When Allison Fite was 16, she couldn’t stop falling asleep in class. Doctors told her it was from a severe sinus infection, but it never really went away. For the next decade she struggled with infection after infection, taking antibiotics and decongestants. ”Having these sinus problems and not being able to breathe was debilitating,” she says. Fite, now 27, couldn’t figure out why this kept happening. Neither could any of her doctors. They told her she had allergies, but ”then the tests would come back and they’d be like, ’Huh. You don’t have allergies,’ ” she says. But a few unusual symptoms helped Fite eventually figure out that she had a   disease shared by 1 million to 1. 5 million Americans. She has asthma, a loss of smell and taste, and a strong, adverse reaction to alcohol. ”Before I could finish [a drink] I started to get these really bad headaches,” she says. ”I really am allergic to fun.” And she had nasal polyps, which are benign growths in the sinus cavities. When she was 20, she had them surgically removed for the first time. At age 25, she flew back from where she was living in Thailand to the U. S. for a second operation. But this time the polyps reappeared even faster, a mere eight weeks after the surgery. ”I was seeing a doctor in Bangkok at this point,” she says. ”He was like, ’This is not normal.’ ” But the doctor mentioned that aspirin can cause nasal polyps. This was Fite’s first real clue about her illness. It’s called   respiratory disease, or AERD. It was first described in the early 1900s, says Dr. Tanya Laidlaw, an immunologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who studies the disease. It’s seen in ”patients who had this triad of asthma, nasal polyps and these rather idiosyncratic reactions to medications like aspirin,” Laidlaw says. Things started clicking into place. Fite’s mother found one of Laidlaw’s presentations on the illness online and sent it to her daughter. Fite knew she had nasal polyps and asthma, but she didn’t know if she had the third symptom  —   a potentially   reaction to painkillers like aspirin or ibuprofen. So her doctor in Thailand decided to test her. He gave her a fifth of a pill of aspirin, just to see what would happen. ”  minutes later,” Fite says, ”I’m sitting in this hospital waiting room coughing, sweating, and my blood pressure spiked. And they’re like ’OK, stop. Give her medicine she has the disease.’ ” After years of seeing doctor after doctor, trying to understand why she was always sick, she finally knew the reason. ”It felt so good” to have the diagnosis, Fite says. ”I started tearing up in this doctor’s office,   reaction,” Fite says. But there was one problem. Fite needed a treatment called aspirin desensitization. That’s when a doctor overloads a patient with a large dose of aspirin. And Fite’s doctor had never done it before. ”He was like, ’I don’t feel comfortable doing it, and I don’t think you’ll find a doctor in Asia that is,’ ” Fite says. So Fite left Thailand again and went to Tanya Laidlaw’s clinic in Boston to get the procedure. Laidlaw says nobody knows why the treatment works, but it desensitizes the patient to aspirin and helps alleviate the symptoms. Laidlaw says she’s frustrated by the lack of awareness of AERD. She estimates at least 20 percent of people who have it go undiagnosed. ”It’s really frustrating,” she says. It probably gets missed a lot by clinicians, particularly primary care providers who don’t specialize in immunology or ear, nose and throat medicine, says Dr. Ana Broyles, an immunologist at Boston Children’s Hospital. And there’s a severe lack of science around the illness. When Laidlaw began studying it 10 years ago, she says, barely any basic research had been done in the last century. It’s not an allergy. There’s no geographic pattern to suggest an environmental link like a toxin. Family history doesn’t seem to factor, either, so it doesn’t seem to be genetic. One theory suggests that AERD might begin with an infection, Laidlaw says. The body turns on an immune response to fight the illness, but then somehow never turns it back off. The person is left with an army of misplaced white blood cells that can inflame the airway and cut off smell receptors. Also, AERD patients overproduce inflammatory molecules called leukotrienes, and Laidlaw thinks that causes many of the symptoms. That has led to some useful advice for patients  —   like avoiding certain substances, such as alcohol, that make the symptoms worse. Fite has been doing a lot better since her desensitization procedure. Over the past year, she’s only had one sinus infection. ”It’s amazing,” she says. ”Prior to that, I had one once a month.” Fite still has her worries, though. She has to be on aspirin for the rest of her life to maintain the desensitization. ”Say I get in an accident, and I bleed too much because of the aspirin,” she says. The symptoms aren’t totally gone, and she still can’t drink alcohol without becoming really ill. Plus, she says, it’s just unnerving taking aspirin every day when she knows it should kill her. But there aren’t many alternatives, so until there’s a better solution, she’ll stay on the aspirin."
"”What we feared has happened,” said Charles Michel, the Belgian prime minister, following Tuesday’s    attacks in Brussels, his country’s capital. The Paris terrorist attacks of last November were rooted in this city. A manhunt for Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam had finally ended in his arrest Friday by Brussels police. But on Tuesday, Belgium took a direct hit. The attacks began just northeast of the city, at the international airport in Zaventem. About 8 a. m. two blasts detonated in the departures terminal, filled with travelers from around the world on the move during a busy Easter week. Within seconds, at least a dozen of them lay dead hundreds of others bled from injuries. Windows shattered and blew out sections of the ceiling collapsed. Smoke filled the air. Police tried to impose order and directed survivors to safety. Hundreds of passengers emerged, terrified and bewildered, bundled in jackets and coats. Many were loaded onto buses others dragged wheelie bags along the streets and comforted one another as they contemplated where to go next. The day was just beginning. It didn’t take long  —   about an hour  —   for the next attacker or attackers to strike, this time at the city’s heart. Shortly after 9 a. m. a blast took place on a train approaching the Maelbeek metro station, smack in the middle of the subway network, the stop nearest the city’s halls of highest power. Brussels isn’t just Belgium’s capital, it’s also the capital of Europe, home to the European Parliament, the European Union and all its associated offices. Maelbeek is the stop used by those who work at or visit these institutions and offices. ”Terrorists struck Brussels,” French President Francois Hollande said, ”but it was Europe that was targeted.” Some of the passengers who survived fled the darkened subway car onto the tracks. Above ground, emergency workers converged, blockaded the area, carried out the dead and wounded and helped the rest to safety. Forensics experts took over. At least 20 people had died. Three possible suspects in the attacks  —   which were claimed later in the day by ISIS, praising its ”fighters”  —   appeared in a Brussels airport surveillance image from Tuesday morning. Police asked for the public’s help in identifying them. The man in the hat is of particular interest, believed to be the lone survivor of the three. By late morning and through late afternoon, the city was strangely quiet. The Maelbeek stop was shuttered. The metro system was closed, along with the city’s airports and train stations. Soldiers patrolled the streets. When the Gare du Nord railway station reopened at 4 p. m. the trains ran smoothly, but   searches were underway for passengers. Children, finally allowed to leave school, returned home. In the early evening, Belgium’s King Philippe made a rare address to his country’s 11 million people, calling the attacks ”cowardly and odious.” The city’s central square, the Grand Place, two stops from Maelbeek and usually thronged with people, was largely deserted. By nightfall, people had gathered in various parts of the city with candles, flowers, national flags  —   all the elements necessary for impromptu tributes to victims and survivors of tragedy, a tradition in Europe that’s become all too familiar. But it will never be normal. Keep up with NPR coverage of the Brussels attacks here and learn more here."
"The terrorist attacks in Brussels mark the third major assault in the heart of Europe in just over a year and raise a troubling question: Are European states prepared to deal with a sustained onslaught? The satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was hit in January 2015. Terrorists rampaged through Paris again in November. And now, Brussels has suffered bomb attacks at the airport and the subway, claiming more than 30 lives. ”This is not over,” French President François Hollande said just last Friday. He spoke in Brussels shortly after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the lone survivor of the Paris attack last fall. Hollande added that French and Belgian authorities had uncovered a much wider network of jihadists during their recent investigations. Yet this heightened state of alert did not prevent Tuesday’s bombings in Brussels. Analysts point to several factors behind the current attacks and the difficulty in stopping them. Paris and Brussels are major crossroads, with huge numbers of travelers crossing national boundaries, making it difficult to track extremists. Prior to last year, Western Europe had not been hit hard by terrorists for a decade and therefore may have been underprepared. And the extremism so prevalent in the Middle East has now taken root in Europe. The terrorist attacks in Brussels mark the third major assault in the heart of Europe in just over a year. Brussels and Paris are about 160 miles apart  —   a little bit closer than the distance between New York City and Washington, D. C. In the map below, today’s attacks in Brussels are marked in yellow the November 2015 attacks in Paris in red and the January 2015 attack at Charlie Hebdo in blue. ”It’s really only with the rise of ISIS in Syria and the attacks in Paris, and now this attack, that we’ve seen Western Europe facing such a concentrated, deadly and really sophisticated threat,” Michael Leiter, the former director of the U. S. National Counterterrorism Center, told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”We’re seeing the challenges of relatively open borders and a fractured intelligence system that makes it hard to detect and stop these attacks,” he added. What’s striking is that all three attacks were carried out in places that security experts considered potential targets. The Charlie Hebdo office was destroyed by a firebomb back in 2011, and after that, the magazine increased security as it carried on with its provocative cartoons that often lampooned Islam and Muslim figures. In the wake of the deadly 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo, security was ramped up dramatically throughout Paris, including troops in the streets. Yet that didn’t prevent the November attack at multiple sites that left 130 dead. And as French authorities investigated the Paris bloodbath, attention shifted to Brussels, where several attackers had been living and Abdeslam was captured last Friday. Analysts had warned that Western Europe was not immune. France and other European countries have large and often restive Muslim populations. Thousands of young Muslim men in Europe have traveled to and from Europe to join the Islamic State, according to various estimates. An estimated 200 have gone from Belgium, which gives it one of the highest per capita rates in Europe. ”When I heard about the number of foreign fighters going in and out of Syria in 2013, I felt this wave would be coming to Europe and likely the United States,” said Barry Pavel, director of the Brent Scowcroft Center at the Atlantic Council and a former member of the National Security Council under both President Obama and President Bush. ”I’m not saying these attackers today came out of Syria. I don’t know that. But as long as the Syria war continues, it’s going to be an incubator for extremists,” he added. Belgian officials hailed last Friday’s arrest of Abdeslam as an important breakthrough. By taking him alive, they said, he could provide valuable information about the attack he’s been linked to as well as other potential attacks. Yet it took authorities almost four months to find him in the neighborhood where he grew up, suggesting a strong network of sympathizers who protected him. Belgium’s Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Sunday that police had found heavy weapons last week in raids that led to Abdeslam’s arrest. The suspect has been cooperating and told authorities that at least 30 jihadists remained at large in the city. ”He was ready to restart something from Brussels,” Reynders said. ”That is maybe the reality, because we have found a lot of heavy weapons and we have seen a new network around him.” Greg Myre is the international editor for NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"This is the time of year when millions of travelers are making summer vacation plans. Analysts expected record numbers to book flights to international destinations. Their outlook was so optimistic because global passenger traffic had shot up 7. 1 percent in January, compared with last year, according to the International Air Transport Association. ”The record load factor is a result of strong demand for our product,” Tony Tyler, CEO of the trade group, said in a statement earlier this month. But then explosions hit in Brussels on Tuesday. At least 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded in attacks at Brussels’ main international airport and on a subway. Travelers, once again, were the victims of barbarism. For now at least, that dims the outlook for travel and tourism. All flights to and from the Belgian capital were canceled Tuesday, causing carriers to divert to other airports, or even other countries. For example, Delta Air Lines says it sent a   flight to Amsterdam. Eurocontrol says the Brussels’ Zaventem airport will remain closed on Wednesday. Even airlines without direct flights into Brussels are feeling the turbulence they have European   partners that got hit with disruptions. Deutsche Lufthansa said it canceled 11 flights to Brussels and Emirates Airline had to divert a flight to Duesseldorf, Germany. All of that put a damper on the European tourism sector at a critical time: This Sunday is Easter, a peak travel period for Europeans enjoying a spring break. Amid the jitters about travel disruptions, shares of Air   fell 4 percent Tuesday. American Airlines’ stock closed down 1. 6 percent to $42. 76. Delta and United also slipped more than 1 percent. How long the dip will last is anyone’s guess. But travel stocks typically slip after a terrorist attack, and then bounce back as travelers recover from their initial shock. For example, in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U. S, travel bookings plunged. But in subsequent years, they rose to record levels. That rebound pattern has held up in the aftermath of attacks on tourists and travelers in Bali (2002) Madrid (2004) London (2005) and Paris (2015). It’s possible this latest attack could have a longer impact because terrorists for ISIS may be causing more alarm. Belgium is now at a Level 4 terror alert  —   the highest level. Government officials around the world are reacting, too. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade changed its travel advisory for Belgium from ”a high degree of caution” to ”reconsider your need to travel.” In this country, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says it is ”stepping up security at its three major airports, the bridges and tunnels and Port Authority Bus Terminal.” But within the aviation industry, officials continue to be optimistic about the   future because so many people want to travel. Ben Baldanza, the former chief executive of Spirit Airlines, discussed the Brussels attack with NPR’s Morning Edition host Renee Montagne on Tuesday. Baldanza, who is now on the board of Icelandic   carrier WOW Air, said he was confident air travel would bounce back as it always does. The Brussels attacks ”won’t affect in a meaningful way the   view of air travel,” Baldanza said. ”People want to see the world people want to engage in commerce and meet friends.” His words were echoed by the International Air Transport group, which put out a statement. Aviation ”brings the world together and fosters greater understanding of people and cultures. Those who commit terrorist acts know and fear this, and it is why air travel is so often a target,” chief executive Tyler said. ”But terrorists will never succeed in destroying the fundamental urge and right of people to travel, explore and learn about the world,” Tyler said."
"More than 30 people are dead and more than 200 wounded after explosions struck Brussels during the Tuesday morning rush hour, Belgian officials say. Two blasts hit the international airport another struck a metro station. Belgium issued a Level 4 alert, denoting ”serious and imminent attack.” ”What we feared has happened  —   we were hit by blind attacks,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said at a midday news conference Tuesday. At a later news conference, Michel said Belgium will defend its liberty and values, and he stressed the importance of returning to normal life in Brussels as fast as possible. Hours after the blasts, Belgian federal police tweeted an image of a man suspected of being involved in the bombing, and asked the public, ”Who recognizes this man?” Wearing a jacket and hat, the man is seen in an image taken by a surveillance camera at the airport. Authorities say they are actively seeking him. The image is similar to a wider photograph of the same man alongside two other men, all three of them pushing luggage carts. Officials say that the other two men, both in black, may have acted as suicide bombers Belgian media outlets have noted that each of them wears a single glove which, those outlets say, might hide a trigger for a bomb. As of 4 p. m. local time, the Belgian Crisis Center reported that at least 10 people had died and 100 were wounded in the attack at the Zaventem airport, and that 20 people died at the Maelbeek metro station, where some 130 were wounded. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks, in a statement released via the Amaq News Agency, a group that’s been linked to the militant extremists. The statement blames Belgium for participating in the fight against ISIS and says that ”several” fighters detonated explosive belts at the airport and train station. According to media reports, Belgian federal prosecutors say a house search later in the day, in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek, ”led to the discovery of an explosive device containing among other things nails.” Investigators reportedly also found chemical products and an Islamic State flag. NPR’s counterterrorism correspondent Dina   says that investigators have discovered additional detonators, ISIS flags and other such materials over the past week in raids across Belgium. French President Francois Hollande said ”terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted  —   and all the world that is concerned.” The number of dead and wounded could rise, as Belgian emergency agencies are focused on responding to those in need. Information is still emerging about this attack, and some reports may later prove inaccurate. Here’s what we know so far: A suicide attacker struck around 8 a. m. local time, according to a federal prosecutor. The explosions hit near the departure gates, collapsing ceiling panels and shattering glass windows. The blasts sent smoke billowing from the airport and set off a panic as people ran from the airport with whatever they could carry. A video from nearby in the terminal that’s been aired on Belgian broadcaster VRT shows travelers cowering as dust and smoke fill the air and sirens blare. We’ll warn you: The video contains a profanity and may be stressful to watch. The facility was evacuated and closed, with emergency crews looking after the wounded and security personnel gathering any evidence that might provide details about those responsible. The attack began after a burst of gunfire and yelling in Arabic, according to Belgian media outlets. NBA Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo was at the airport. He shared a photo on Facebook and wrote, ”God is good. I am in Brussels Airport with this craziness. I am fine.” Around 9 a. m. local time, an explosion struck a metro train in or near the Maelbeek station, causing chaos close to the European Union headquarters in the city’s center. The station is about 7 miles from the airport. Images of the aftermath of that attack show people running for safety along the tracks through a darkened and   tunnel, after trains were halted. To clarify information that went out in an NPR news alert earlier this morning: There have been at least three explosions  —   two at the airport and one at a train station. An early report suggested there were three explosions on the subway. Gabriele Steinhauser, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal who’s in Brussels, relayed witness accounts to NPR’s Morning Edition: ”Parts of the ceiling fell down. There was a lot of water from pipes breaking. People who were there during the explosions said there were scenes of chaos. It took about 10 minutes for security personnel to arrive. There were mothers with children and old people who didn’t know what to do. ”People felt like the authorities were badly prepared, and when they were led out of the airport they were led right through the place where the explosions happened. People say there was a lot of blood.” Explosives teams from the Belgian army detonated a suspicious package at the Zaventem airport early in the afternoon  —   and the federal Zuidertoren (South Tower) building in Brussels was evacuated after suspicious items were found in an underground parking lot, according to the national crisis center and the national news service. Brussels was placed under lockdown, with all its tunnels closed to traffic and children ordered to stay in school through most of the day. The public transit system was also shut down. By 4:30 p. m. local time, Belgium’s Crisis Center says, some of those tunnels had reopened to traffic, and many trains had resumed running. The general lockdown order was also lifted and children were allowed to leave school, but officials maintained the Level 4 threat warning, and urged residents to be vigilant. They also said police and military forces will continue to bolster security in Brussels. The city’s main airport was closed for the day, and flights were rerouted to nearby cities. Eurostar train service between London and Brussels was also suspended. Belgium’s Crisis Center is urging residents not to use their phones, saying the system is saturated. Instead, they’re asking people to rely on WiFi connections, text messages and social media to communicate. Interior Minister Jan Jambon announced that Belgium will observe three days of mourning. Security officials in France and Germany are increasing their vigilance in the wake of today’s attack, which follows five other violent attacks that have hit cities in Turkey, Africa and the Middle East in the past 10 days. Today’s attack also comes four days after Belgian and French police arrested Salah Abdeslam, a central suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. As of Monday, authorities were still looking for his accomplices in that attack  —   including one man, Laachroui Najim, whose true identity was only recently revealed. In Cuba, President Obama prefaced his public remarks with a mention of the attacks in Belgium, offering the support of the U. S. and saying, ”This is yet another reminder that the world must unite . .. in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.” At least one U. S. service member and his family were hurt in today’s attack, NPR’s Tom Bowman reports, citing officials with U. S. European Command. Tom says that no details are being released, with officials citing privacy concerns. The officials say the service member was stationed in the Netherlands. The U. S. Embassy in Brussels urged American citizens to shelter in place Tuesday morning. European Union institutions were at an Orange alert level, with normal business suspended and restricted access. Tonight, both the Eiffel Tower and the Brandenburg Gate will be lit in the black, yellow and red colors of Belgium’s flag. And in London, the Belgian flag was raised alongside the Union Jack atop Downing Street this afternoon. Both are flying at  . In the U. S. officials and presidential candidates are also reacting to the attacks. This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"White House hopefuls are heading West on Tuesday as both parties face voters in Arizona and Utah, while Democrats will caucus in Idaho. For Republicans, it’s another chance to try to stop Donald Trump’s mounting delegate advantage, and the states voting Tuesday aren’t necessarily the friendly terrain he has been used to. On the Democratic side, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is trying to rebound from last week’s Mega Tuesday sweep by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that only contributed to his delegate deficit. Here’s what to watch in each state: This could be the most interesting state to watch on both sides results are expected after 11 p. m. ET. For Republicans, the state’s 58    delegates are the biggest prize of the night. Polls have shown Trump has a lead, but some observers in the state believe that gap could be closing. Trump has made immigration a pillar of his campaign, and his forceful stance has attracted the support of controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former Gov. Jan Brewer. But it’s a closed primary, and Cruz has done better when just registered Republicans are casting ballots. Early voting also is prevalent in the state, though, so Cruz may not be able to fully benefit from the shrunken field. Cruz hopes to win over Hispanic voters in the state  —   Trump won those voters in Nevada but was crushed by Marco Rubio with that voting bloc last week in Florida. For Democrats, Clinton has the edge. She won the state in 2008 and she has also done better than Sanders in closed Democratic contests. What little polling there is gives her a sizable lead, and she should perform well with Hispanic voters over Sanders. Trump isn’t expected to win here, largely due to the real estate mogul’s unpopularity with Mormon voters, who make up a majority of the Utah GOP electorate. He lost big to Cruz in Idaho and Wyoming, other states with a significant Mormon bloc, and the Texas senator also has the backing of Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Gov. Gary Herbert. 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who now lives in Utah, has said he will caucus for Cruz, and he’s even recorded robocalls urging people to vote for Cruz, saying that ”a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump.” How well the Ohio governor does in Utah could have big implications for how many delegates Cruz is able to get. Polls have shown Cruz with a big lead, but if he is able to top 50 percent in the state, he’ll get all of the state’s 40 delegates. But if Kasich gets enough to hold Cruz below that, then Trump could also pick up delegates proportionally. On the Democratic side, this is another state that should be a good fit for Sanders, given its whiter electorate and the fact it’s a caucus. Polls have shown him with a slight lead over Clinton in the fight for the state’s 33 delegates. Sanders has had massive turnout at rallies in the state in the closing days. Only Democrats will caucus in the Gem State on Tuesday (Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won the state’s GOP primary two weeks ago).   delegates are up for grabs here, where caucuses end at 9 p. m. ET. Sanders held a rally in Boise on Monday  —   even forgoing speaking at   lobby AIPAC’s Washington, D. C. gathering this week to campaign in the state  —   and he hopes the state will be friendly territory for him. Sanders has done better than Clinton in caucuses this cycle, and Idaho is a state she lost handily to President Obama in 2008. There’s been scant polling in the state, but one survey predicted a tight race."
"When Bernie Sanders took the stage at the Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort late last week, he became the first presidential hopeful since 1999 to campaign  —   in person  —   on the largest Native American reservation in the United States. The Navajo Nation crowd loved it, chanting his name and cheering as he went through his normal talking points: income inequality, prison reform and free college education. But the biggest roars came as the Vermont senator and Democratic presidential hopeful started talking about the issues facing tribes and the   relationship between the U. S. government and the continent’s longest residents. ”I think there is no debate, sadly no debate, that from the first day settlers came to this country, the Native American people have been lied to, they have been cheated, and negotiated treaties have been broken,” Sanders said. ”We owe the Native American people so, so much.” The Native American vote and the issues facing Indian Country don’t typically get a lot of attention in presidential campaigns. When candidates talk about minorities or court their votes, the attention is   focused on   and Latinos. Until recently, that was the case with this election. Today’s primary in Arizona has changed that. Besides the speech on Navajo Nation last Thursday, Sanders spoke about Native American issues at his other events in Phoenix and Tucson over the weekend and even   on Flagstaff, holding a rally there Monday night. In a phone interview, he told member station KJZZ, ”Whether their voting presence is large or small, I think we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Native American people, and that we’ve got to end the unfair way in which they are treated.” It’s fair to say politics is at play. Sanders needs a win in Arizona to help his chances of getting the Democratic nomination, and the Native American vote could give him a needed boost.  A Solid Voting Block, Native Americans are the   minority in the state of Arizona, behind Latinos, at about 5 percent of the state’s population. That might not sound like a lot, but they pack an outsized punch when it comes to the state’s elections. ”Despite our comparative smallness, Arizona Indian voters as a bloc can be the swing vote,” said David Martinez, a professor of American Indian studies at Arizona State University and a member of the Gila River Indian Community, south of Phoenix. The lobbying power and economic clout of the state’s   casino industries is one reason for that, Martinez said. The sheer amount of land under the control of the state’s 22 federally recognized tribes is another. ”Arizona Indian reservations inhabit more than 25 percent of the landmass of the state of Arizona,” Martinez said. There’s also a historical precedent. In state and local elections, the Native American vote, particularly from Navajo Nation, has played decisive roles in electing Arizona governors and congressional representatives alike, says Mark Trahant, a journalism professor at the University of North Dakota and a blogger on tribal voting issues. That’s because it’s not uncommon for a tribe like Navajo Nation to vote almost uniformly in an election, if they feel strongly enough about an issue or a candidate. ”That’s the real advantage of Indian Country,” Trahant said. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock recently gave him an example of just that, where individuals from one of that state’s tribal communities cast 213 votes one way and zero the other. ”You start getting those kinds of waves coming in,” Trahant said. ”And you can make up a lot of ground really fast.” Clinton Has History To Lean On, Even given his recent push into Indian Country, it’s unlikely that Bernie Sanders is going to get that kind of unified vote in Arizona. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, has a lot of Native American support in the state from the communities’ leaders like former Navajo President Peterson Zah. Zah said he first met Clinton in the 1970s, when she was working with tribal members as the chair of the nonprofit Legal Services Corp. Their relationship grew when Clinton came to campaign for her husband, former President Bill Clinton, on the Navajo Nation in the 1990s. ”To this day, she’s still the same person,” Zah said. ”She still has those values that she talked about back then.” Zah is part of a generation of Native Americans in Arizona that remembers the Clinton administration fondly. Lisa Blackhorse is another. ”When she was first lady, Bill Clinton actually did the first tribal leaders meeting and it was at the White House and they started building those relations,” Blackhorse said. Those years of background and experience are why Blackhorse said that Native Americans in Arizona should vote for Clinton, not Sanders, in the primary. ”She has a proven record,” Blackhorse added. Key Issues For Native American Voters, If there’s one thing that Native American voters do agree on, it’s that this election is hugely important to their future. Zah pointed to the current vacancy on the U. S. Supreme Court as one example. ”There are a lot of legal issues that go the Supreme Court almost every year involving Native American issues and communities,” he said. ”So it’s going to be pivotal to see who’s nominating the next Supreme Court justice.” Mikah Carlos, of the Salt River Maricopa Tribe, noted some of the other big issues that the candidates are talking about outside of tribal lands  —   the heroin epidemic, unemployment, impacts of climate change. ”We have those issues, too,” she said. ”The problem’s just a little bit worse here.” The fact that candidates are talking about them gives her hope that some of those issues will actually be addressed. Carlos knows there’s a reality to the rhetoric. ”They’re going for the votes,” she said. But she’s hopeful that by giving some of the issues facing Indian Country the bigger, broader exposure that comes with a presidential election, some greater good will come of it, regardless of who’s nominated."
"President Obama’s speech to the Cuban people, delivered live from the Gran Teatro in Havana, presented both a risk and an opportunity. He did not want to suggest any endorsement of a system that for more than 50 years has been associated with the suppression of democratic freedoms and human rights. On the other hand, with Raul Castro listening intently from his front row seat in the balcony and Cubans across the island watching on their televisions, Obama was in a position to deliver a message no previous U. S. president could have managed, one that could help heal the long break between the countries. It was clearly a moment he has long anticipated. In April 2009, three months after taking office, Obama said he was committed to ”a new beginning” with Cuba. ”We are not dug into policies that were formulated before I was born,” he said at the time. He returned to that theme in Havana, noting that the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when U. S.  Cuban exiles attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government, took place the year of his birth. He absolved himself by virtue of his youth. ”I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it,” he said. He chose instead to focus on an earlier period, when the Cuban people fought for their independence from Spain, in part from a base of support in the United States. The ambivalence Cuban nationalists have had for the United States dates from that period, as Obama acknowledged when he noted that the American battleships that crossed the Florida Straits in 1898 came ”to liberate, but also to exert control over Cuba.” The war for Cuban independence, which came to be known in the United States as the   War, ended with a U. S. military occupation of the island. Shortly after arriving in Cuba, Obama laid a wreath at a monument to Jose Martí, Cuba’s national hero, who gave his life for the cause of Cuban freedom and who is revered by Cuban exiles and Cuban communists alike. Martí was an ardent nationalist who railed against U. S. imperialism, but he also found much to admire in the United States, which makes it easier for both sides to claim him. In his Havana speech, Obama quoted from Martí’s famous poem. ”Cultivo una rosa blanca,” he said. He did not bother to translate the line, but he characterized it as ”an offering of friendship and peace to both his friend and his enemy.” In English, the poem continues, I cultivate a white rose, In January as in July, For the true friend, Who offers me his frank hand, And for the cruel one whose blows, Break the heart by which I live. On the tough issues, Obama spoke carefully, attempting to be honest in his assessment of Cuban shortcomings but also offering some conciliatory words. He spoke positively of the 1 million or so Cuban exiles who fled their homeland, though without quite acknowledging the reasons they left. He described Cuban schooling as ”an extraordinary resource  —   a system of education that values every boy and every girl,” though those Cuban children are hardly trained to be critical thinkers. Books with ideas considered subversive are banned from the classroom, and schoolchildren are taught to chant, ”Seremos como el Che!” We will be like Che (Guevara, the legendary guerrilla). He had praise for Cuba’s role in the world, saying ”No one should deny the service that thousands of Cuban doctors have delivered for the poor and suffering,” citing the Cuban effort to help stamp out Ebola in West Africa as an example. He did not mention that the deployment of Cuban doctors on international missions is in part a   venture that brings the Cuban government much needed hard currency. On the other hand, Obama spoke boldly of the importance of political freedom. In what was the strongest section of his speech, Obama pointed out that the progress made in America in race relations and social justice was precisely the result of American democracy. ”The fact that we have open debates within America’s own democracy is what allows us to get better,” he said. ”People organized they protested they debated these issues they challenged government officials.” Those words certainly must have irritated Raul Castro and his other government hosts and encouraged those Cubans who are working for political change on their island. Finally, Obama appealed directly to Cuban youth, essentially ignoring the island’s geriatric leadership. ”There’s already an evolution taking place inside of Cuba, a generational change,” he said. ”Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down. But I’m appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new. El futuro de Cuba tiene que estar en las manos del pueblo Cubano.” The future of Cuba has to be in the hands of the Cuban people."
"On a tough news day, we wanted to point you to a remarkable moment of grace that happened just before President Obama addressed the Cuban people at the Gran Teatro de la Havana. Cuban prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso walked onto the balcony to great applause and she thanked the crowd with her hands. She opened her arms and her hands fluttered by her side. Then with an effortless grace, Alonso, who learned her craft at the American Ballet Theatre, pulled them back and crossed them over her chest. She’s 94 now and back in 2010, she told the New York Times that she could no longer dance the way she used to. ”I dance with the hands,” she told the paper. ”I do. I dance with my heart actually more. So it comes through my body. I can’t help it.” On Tuesday, Alonso, who directs the Cuban National Ballet, danced with her hands and she delighted a crowd: As the Times notes, Alonso is a controversial figure. The paper reports: ”Some see her as a political tool of Fidel Castro as well as someone who has remained too long in her job and who prevents certain dancers from working abroad. In 2005 Rolando Sarabia, then one of the Cuban company’s leading dancers, defected, followed later that year by Octavio Martín, a principal dancer, and his wife, Yahima Franco, also a company member. Mr. Sarabia and Mr. Martín said separately at the time that Ms. Alonso had turned down their requests to dance abroad as other Cubans did, notably Carlos Acosta. ”But Ms. Alonso is also adored by balletomanes who cherish memories of her Giselle and her longevity onstage. She gave her final performance in 1995 when she danced ’The Butterfly,’ a piece she choreographed. She was 75.” If you’re interested in learning more about Alonso, here’s a BBC piece about her work:"
"In the immediate aftermath of the Brussels bombings, Donald Trump mentioned something he likes to talk about  —   polls. ”Well first of all, this is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart, because I’ve been talking about it, certainly much more than anybody else, and it’s why I’m probably No. 1 in the polls, because of the fact that I say we have to have strong borders,” Trump said Tuesday morning on NBC’s Today show. That was hours after it had become clear that at least a dozen people were killed in the attack on the Belgian capital’s transit system and airport. When pressed on what he would do as president in response to such an attack, Trump said he would not allow ”certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation.” It was Trump once again turning to protectionism as a way of dealing with the world. Back in December  —   following the Paris terrorist attacks and the shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. by a    team sympathetic to ISIS  —   Trump proposed a controversial ban on Muslims entering the United States. Trump has said he would ”bomb the s***” out of ISIS, but he also flirted with isolationism Monday in a trip to Washington, D. C. In an editorial board meeting with the Washington Post, he questioned whether the U. S. should continue to be involved with NATO, the military alliance formed almost 70 years ago as a way to respond to the potential threat posed by the former Soviet Union. NATO is headquartered in Brussels. Though Trump has a selective reading of polls  —   ones he likes, he trumpets, ones he doesn’t, he ignores  —   he’s certainly No. 1 in the GOP primary. And his     campaigning following Paris and San Bernardino has helped him vault to the lead. But does that mean a focus on terrorism will help Trump become president? That’s far less likely. It’s dangerous to draw parallels between what you see in a primary and what you will see in a general election. Trump is the clear Republican  .  No doubt. Trump is certainly ”No. 1” in the polls that matter most to his immediate political future  —   voting in the GOP primary. Trump has gotten the most votes on the Republican side of the race by far, helping him accumulate the most delegates. He is the only candidate with a clear path to winning the most delegates heading into the Republican convention in Cleveland this summer. His campaign got a shot in the arm after Paris and San Bernardino. Just look at the poll numbers after Nov. 13 (when Paris happened). They jumped almost 50 percent by Christmas in national polls, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average: There’s a big reason for this. Republican voters have been ranking terrorism as a top issue since the campaign began more than a year ago. They believe President Obama’s handling of foreign policy and terrorism have been disastrous for the country, and are frustrated that he could be   twice when it is so painfully obvious to them how wrong Obama is on national security. (Think: ISIS, Iran, Libya.) And along comes Trump, channeling what the base feels in a way no other candidate can quite articulate. This didn’t start with Trump. Look back to the debate over ”profiling.”  It’s hard to remember, but this isn’t the first time there’s been an argument in this country over what to do about  —   and who’s to blame for  —   terrorism. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, George W. Bush tried to calm Americans’ fears, especially as they related to fellow Americans who were Muslim. He went to a mosque shortly after Sept. 11 and declared solidarity. (Still, the FBI began to monitor some mosques and cities like New York landed in controversy after its keeping tabs on Muslim neighborhoods and listening in on mosques.) Along came the 2008 election, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. After the Fort Hood shooting in 2009, it was all thrown out into the open when Palin, John McCain’s 2008   pick, said on Fox, ”I think it was quite unfortunate that, to me, it was a fear of being politically incorrect to not, I’m going to use the word  —   ’profile’ the guy.” The day after Trump called for his Muslim ban, Palin wanted to be sure to remind everyone what she had called for back then. ”Trump’s temporary ban proposal is in the context of doing all we can to force the Feds to acknowledge their lack of strategy to deal with terrorism,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post in December. It became a hot topic in the GOP primary in 2012. Rick Santorum, among other candidates, endorsed the idea. During a November 2011 primary debate, talk show host and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who is black, said bluntly: ”If you take a look at the people who are trying to kill us, it would be easy to figure out exactly what that identification profile looks like.” Of course, not everyone agrees that ”profiling” works. And Obama was   handily in 2012. Banking on it becoming a top issue, Since the rise of ISIS, and for the first time since Sept. 11 according to some polling, fears over terrorism have overtaken other concerns, like the economy (which has been steadily improving). According to Gallup, a week after the San Bernardino attacks in December, 16 percent of Americans rated terrorism as their top concern. That was the highest level in a decade  —   when Iraq was descending into civil war and the threat of   and Osama bin Laden still loomed. Democrats are generally satisfied with the direction of the country and President Obama, and concerns over terrorism have largely been fueled by Republicans. But Democrats are increasingly expressing concerns about it, too. A question of message and competence, Still, back in November, after Paris, with the broader electorate, Hillary Clinton  —   for all the criticism of her handling of the consulate attack in Benghazi  —   was still viewed as more trusted to handle issues of terrorism than Trump by a   percent margin, according to an   Post poll. Clinton is trying to make the case that she’s to the right of Obama, who’s   approval has suffered since the rise of ISIS, and to the left of   Republicans. As for Trump’s actual policies, more recent polling might tell the story of the divided electorate  —   and the difference between GOP primary voters and the wider   voters. A March   Post poll found that 59 percent of Republicans think Trump’s ban is the right thing to do. But the same number of Americans overall (60 percent) and independents (59 percent) say it’s wrong. It’s impossible to predict the future. Republicans hope concerns over terrorism will finally start to resonate more with independents and Democrats and move the electorate in their favor. But the debate hasn’t even been had yet between the Democratic and Republican nominees. And Trump is a wildcard. He hopes Americans will side with his blunt talk and emotional ”common sense” appeals. But Clinton, if she’s the nominee, is betting she can win the temperament and competence argument when it comes to foreign affairs  —   and will try to strike out a middle road."
"After terrorist attacks in Brussels on Tuesday morning that killed more than 30 people and wounded more than 200, American politicians took to social media and TV news programs to respond to the violence. Several pointed to the attacks as a reason to focus America’s fight against Islamic extremism. We’re compiling responses from elected officials and presidential candidates here: In a statement released Tuesday morning, Ted Cruz said America must secure its southern border to prevent ”terrorist infiltration.” He also suggested heightened monitoring of Muslim neighborhoods, saying, ”We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” Cruz had posted a less forceful statement earlier in the day via Facebook and Twitter: ”Our hearts break for the men and women of Brussels this morning. Make no mistake  —   these terror attacks are no isolated incidents. They are just the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists perpetrated by those who are waging war against all who do not accept their extreme strain of Islam. Radical Islam is at war with us. For over seven years we have had a president who refuses to acknowledge this reality. And the truth is, we can never hope to defeat this evil so long as we refuse to even name it. That ends on January 20, 2017, when I am sworn in as president. We will name our enemy  —   radical Islamic terrorism. And we will defeat it.” Cruz also made a televised statement aired on Fox News, where he said, ”ISIS has declared jihad on Europe and on the Unites States of America. They have declared their intention to murder as many innocents as possible.” Soon after news of the attacks broke, presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted, ”Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U. S. must be vigilant and smart!” Trump made the rounds on multiple morning news shows. On Fox  Friends, Trump seemed to say I told you so, telling Fox News, ”I’ve been talking about this for a long time, and look at Brussels.” Trump also spoke with CBS News on Tuesday morning via phone and was asked about the attacks. ”You look at what just took place in Brussels, and that’s peanuts compared to what’s going to happen,” he told CBS. ”Because we’re not tough enough, and frankly, our leaders aren’t smart enough. We have to have very strong borders.” He continued, ”And people by the way from certain parts of the world, like Syria, without documentation, should not be allowed in our country. .. We have no idea who they are, where they come from. They could be  . We can’t allow that to happen.” Trump pointed to recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif. and Paris as reasons to step up security and screening at U. S. borders. CBS anchors pointed out that many terrorists who have committed recent attacks were citizens of the countries the attacks took place in. Trump was then asked if, knowing that, he’d call for a ban on   Muslims. Trump responded, ”No, we have people in our country, and we have to protect the people in our country. But we do have to be careful.” He continued, ”We have people living in our country that want to do great harm to our country.” When asked if Americans should profile their neighbors, he replied, ”Everybody should watch out.” After President Obama mentioned Brussels during a speech in Cuba, Trump tweeted the following: ”President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels. He is being treated badly.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich shared the following statement on the attacks: I want to express my solidarity with the people of Belgium in the aftermath of the attacks that took place in Brussels. Along with every American, I am sickened by the pictures of the carnage, by the injuries and by the loss of life. The wave of terror that has been unleashed in Europe and elsewhere around the world are attacks against our very way of life and against the democratic values upon which our political systems have been built. We and our allies must rededicate ourselves to these values of freedom and human rights. We must utterly reject the use of deadly acts of terror. We must also redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil. We must strengthen our alliances as our way of life and the international system that has been built on our common values since the end of the Second World War comes under challenge from these and other actors of evil. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the attacks and with the people of Belgium. Later in the morning, Kasich said President Obama ”must return home immediately [from Cuba] and get to work with our allies to respond with strength against the enemies of the West.” Former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton released the following statement Tuesday morning: ”Terrorists have once again struck at the heart of Europe, but their campaign of hate and fear will not succeed. The people of Brussels, of Europe, and of the world will not be intimidated by these vicious killers. Today Americans stand in solidarity with our European allies. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded, and all the people of Belgium. These terrorists seek to undermine the democratic values that are the foundation of our alliance and our way of life, but they will never succeed. Today’s attacks will only strengthen our resolve to stand together as allies and defeat terrorism and radical jihadism around the world.” Clinton also spoke by phone to NBC. ”We’ve got to tighten our security. I’ve talked about our visa system,” she said. ”When I was secretary of State we often had some difficulty with our European friends because they were reluctant to impose the kinds of strict standards we were looking for. That, after Paris, has changed.” Seeming to respond to Trump’s comments, Clinton added, ”It’s unrealistic to say we’re going to completely shut down our borders to everyone. That would stop commerce, for example, and that’s not in anybody’s interests.” In a statement, the Democratic presidential candidate said, ”We offer our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones in this barbaric attack and to the people of Brussels who were the target of another cowardly attempt to terrorize innocent civilians. We stand with our European allies to offer any necessary assistance in these difficult times.” The statement continued, ”Today’s attack is a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS. This type of barbarism cannot be allowed to continue.” We’re also watching reaction by U. S. political leaders: The president addressed the attacks during a planned address to the Cuban people in Havana on Tuesday morning. ”We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible. And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite . .. in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.” (More here from Obama on NPR’s   blog) The White House says that he has been briefed on the attacks and spoke by phone with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel offering condolences and assistance in investigating the attacks. The State Department is monitoring the safety of U. S. citizens in Brussels. The Department of Justice and FBI say they are monitoring events closely and coordinating with Belgian authorities. House Speaker Paul Ryan issued the following statement: ”I want to express the condolences of the U. S. House of Representatives to the Belgian people. I know we’re all watching this right now, and this scene is just so horrific. ”One minute, people are going about their day. The next minute, people are running for their lives. This is a terrorist attack in the heart of Europe. ”As our countries have always done, we must confront this threat together. We must defend democracy, and defeat terror. ”Our prayers are with Brussels, as is our solidarity.” Schiff is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and tweeted Tuesday morning that the attacks in Belgium ”bear all hallmarks of   or coordinated attack.” He noted that the attacks occurred despite tight security in the country since the November 2015 attacks in Paris were linked to suspects in Belgium. The prime suspect for those attacks was arrested near Brussels just a few days ago. In a statement, Schiff said Europe is ”facing a real threat from the thousands who have traveled abroad to Syria and Iraq to train with ISIS, and have returned home.” His statement continued, ”In the wake of these attacks, we here in the U. S. and our allies across Europe must be on alert for possible   attackers who activate in the wake of these bombings. We do not know yet what role, if any, encrypted communications played in these attacks  —   but we can be sure that terrorists will continue to use what they perceive to be the most secure means to plot their attacks. That the attackers could go forward even when Brussels was under constant vigilance for just this kind of assault, shows how difficult and dangerous the threat from ISIS remains.” Schiff also said America ”must go after terrorist safe havens whether in Iraq, Syria, or places like Libya.”"
"When the Supreme Court legalized   marriage nationwide last June, a couple of farmers in rural Somerville, Tenn. tied the knot. The couple  —   Mark Henderson and Dennis Clark  —   say their neighbors responded within hours. ”We came home and there was a bottle of champagne in a potato salad bucket on the front porch,” Henderson says. But the response from another community, one that they’ve been actively involved in for years, wasn’t as welcoming. ”The first letter that we got from the Grand Lodge of Tennessee was that we were being brought up on charges for   conduct,” Clark says. Clark and Henderson are Freemasons, members of a worldwide fraternity that shares the same rites, symbols and secrets. The organization is known for secrecy, but it’s having an increasingly public dispute: For the past 30 years, the Tennessee group has banned gays (each state or jurisdiction has its own penal code). On Wednesday or Thursday, members in the state will decide whether to uphold the ban. The Label Of Bigotry, Lodges from California to Belgium are urging Tennessee to lift the ban. They say it harms the future of the organization, which is looking to stay relevant and attract younger members. Chris Sanders of the Tennessee Equality Project says religious backlash to the marriage equality decision has been prominent in the state Legislature and in private organizations, such as churches and the Freemasons. ”As   marriage continues to be accepted, those who don’t accept it will look for new, innovative ways to carve out little realms where they can continue to discriminate,” Sanders says. The suspension of Clark and Henderson in Tennessee inspired the Grand Lodge of Georgia to enact its own ban on gay members last fall. Chris Hodapp, author of Freemasons for Dummies, says this has stirred an international debate. As Freemasonry struggles to attract new members, lodges worry about the label of bigotry. ”When a young man hears that Masons in a state are throwing gays out, they just see that as the whole organization doing that and not being isolated to a particular area,” Hodapp says. There’s no Supreme Court of Freemasonry to stop the Grand Lodges of Tennessee and Georgia. Both lodges did not respond to interview requests and restricted their members from speaking to the media. Founding Principles, Grand Lodges of California, Washington, D. C. and the country of Belgium, among a growing list of others, have suspended relationships with Tennessee and Georgia. Glen Cook, a lawyer and Master Mason, says there is precedence for exclusionary policies. ”Some of those who argue against the actions of Georgia and Tennessee have said that we don’t discriminate. Well, we do,” Cook says, in terms of being an   fraternity that asks members to believe in a higher power. Cook himself couldn’t be a Freemason in his home state of Utah until its Grand Lodge lifted a ban on Mormons in 1984. Cook suspects that the debate in Tennessee will hinge less on sympathetic appeals and more on whether a ban goes against the founding principles of Freemasonry. ”And whether this type of restriction forms any useful purpose, and whether it distracts from our goal of elevating mankind,” he says. Over the next two days in Nashville, the Grand Lodge of Tennessee will decide which conduct is more    —   being gay or banning gays  —   a decision that could affect Freemasons around the world."
"At 1 a. m. on the final night of SXSW 2016,    Declan McKenna was about to perform for one last time in Austin. Only hours later, the plane that would carry him on his first trip to New York City was schedule to take off. It’s been a whirlwind year for Declan, one that began with a song he uploaded to his Bandcamp and Soundcloud page. Shortly after, he won the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition and was quickly signed to Columbia Records, one of dozens of labels with interest in his talents. So as SXSW drew to an end, we met him at Waller Creek, tucked just diagonal to one of the many clubs that hosted the over 2, 000 acts that played the festival this year. The NPR Music crew waited as a police helicopter flew overhead and then Declan began to sing his South X Lullaby, a quieter version of ”Brazil,” the very song that won the Glastonbury contest, and one of many tunes we’ll be hearing from this talented artist in the coming years. Watch more South X Lullabies here. Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Mito   Videographers: Mito   Nickolai Hammar, Cameron Robert Editor: Nickolai Hammar Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann. Support for NPR Music comes from Blue Microphone."
"The heated debate between the FBI and Apple over the encryption of the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two people who massacred 14 people in San Bernardino in December, took an unexpected turn Monday when the FBI announced that a third party had come forward with a way to possibly unlock the phone without Apple’s involvement. Journalist Fred Kaplan tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the third party in question is ”almost certainly a private security company that specializes in breaking into systems.” Kaplan, who writes about the history of cyberwar in his new book Dark Territory, has been following the Apple encryption debate closely in his Slate column War Stories. He says Apple’s reputation for security made it ”kind of inevitable” that a professional hacker firm would cooperate with the FBI in the effort to unlock Farook’s phone. But Kaplan speculates that the FBI may have some reservations about a third party’s involvement in the issue. ”My guess is . .. they wanted to [proceed] with this court case where they thought they had a very good case to establish a new legal precedent for the FBI to get into these kinds of systems whenever they wanted,” Kaplan says. He adds that the case is about much more than Farook’s phone. ”I’m not really sure what they think is in this phone,” he says. ”My strong guess is that the phone has very little to do with it it’s the creation of a precedent for getting into other phones. In that sense, Apple’s concerns have some validity.” Regardless of how the Apple encryption issue is resolved, Kaplan warns that we are increasingly living in an age of cyber vulnerability. ”Our individual lives are out there on the net,” he says. ”It’s there for anybody who has the talents and resources to pick it up. . .. Everything is up for grabs.” On why Syed Rizwan Farook’s phone is not necessarily a good example for the issue of cybersecurity and privacy, This is not a Fourth Amendment case. Not only did the county own the phone, but the county has given consent for the government to do whatever it wants with this phone. It’s not a First Amendment case  —   it’s not a privacy case, because the shooter is dead. You lose your privacy rights when you’re dead. It’s not a good political optics case from Apple’s point of view. This isn’t some   hustler or drug dealer. This is a mass murderer with alleged ties to an international terrorist organization. I don’t know, to my mind, Apple has made a big mistake in pursing this as vigorously as they have. . .. I was talking last night with a former senior intelligence official, let’s say, who put forth the theory that this outside party that’s come up with a solution might, in fact, be someone put up by Apple, so they can avoid going to trial on this. I tend to doubt that. The consequences of that fact leaking would be devastating to Apple’s commercial record, but it does give you a sense of how a lot of people in the industry, including I’ve found many people who agree with Apple on the principles, are puzzled why [Apple’s CEO Tim] Cook is making such a big deal out of this test case, which they see as a bad case to propound his principles of privacy. On Apple’s past cooperation with the government, There have been about 70 occasions when Apple has submitted to requests or court orders by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to open up phones. This leads to a broader point, and a larger point about what this case is really about: Communications companies have cooperated or been complicit with law enforcement and intelligence going back nearly a century. In the 1920s, a U. S. intelligence agency persuaded Western Union to give them access to every telegraph going in and out of the country. When telephones came along, there was a very active relationship with ATT, both with the FBI and with the NSA to allow them to tap phones. In the Internet age, it’s actually gotten even more interlocked. If you’re a company like, say, Microsoft or Cisco and you’ve got some products that you want to sell to the Defense Department, these products have to be vetted for security. Who vets them? A section of the NSA called the Information Assurance Directorate. When Microsoft submitted its first Windows operating system to the NSA for vetting, this Directorate found 1, 500 points of vulnerability. Then they helped patch a lot of these vulnerable points. Not all of them  —   they left a few open  —   so that when foreign governments or foreign entities bought this operating system, the NSA would know where to go hack them. Microsoft was fine with looking the other way on this. Even as recently as 2009 the Chinese hacked into Google’s Chrome system, getting into its source code and the NSA helped Google patch up the flaw. So what’s really going on here, at bottom, is that the FBI wants to maintain this longstanding relationship, which was secret, pretty much secret, until Edward Snowden blew the whistle on it. They want to maintain this relationship, going into a new era of stronger encryption, whereas Tim Cook of Apple, who has long had misgivings about cooperating in general, wants to create a technology that disrupts, maybe even shatters this arrangement. On how cyber defense was created, in part, because President Reagan saw WarGames, a 1983 movie about a teenager who unwittingly hacks into the main computer of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and almost triggers World War III, [Reagan is] up at Camp David on one of his   weekends in June of ’83 and he watches a lot of movies. He watched WarGames. . .. So Reagan’s back in the White House the following Wednesday and there’s a big national security meeting, not about this, it was about something else completely different. But at one point he puts down his index cards and he says, ”Has anybody seen this movie WarGames?” It had just come out, nobody had seen it. He launches into this very detailed plot description and people are looking around the room, raising their eyebrows, wondering ”Where’s this going?” So he turns to Gen. John Vessey who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he says, ”General, could something like this really happen?” And Vessey says, ”I’ll look into that Mr. President.” And he comes back a week later and he says, ”Mr. President, the problem is much worse than you think.” This led, nine months later, to the writing of the first presidential directive on telecommunications and computer security. But then it took a side road. As it happened, and as you might think is logical, the NSA essentially took over the writing of this directive and they wrote it so that the NSA would be in charge of setting security and standards for all computers in the United States, not just the government but everybody’s. Well there were a number of people on Capitol Hill who didn’t like that, so they changed it, but that was where it began. If you read this directive . .. it elevated cybersecurity, as it was later called, to a national political level. It raised the first tensions between privacy and national security, at least in this realm. It generated the first active struggles between the NSA and other agencies and branches of government. And so, the [stories] that we are seeing unfold in today’s newspapers got their start with this bizarre incident watching WarGames and then asking a question that made everybody in the room roll their eyeballs. On a hack into Sheldon Adelson’s casino network, In 2013 in a public forum, Obama’s nuclear talks with Iran had just begun, and [Adelson] was asked what would you do about this? And he said, ”My idea is to drop a nuclear bomb in the Iranian deserts and say, ’There. See that? This is what’s going to happen to you if you maintain a hard line on these nuclear talks.’ ” A few months later, in February of 2014, he fell victim, his whole hotel chain, fell victim to a massive cyberattack by the Iranian government and they wiped out hard drives, they hacked into Social Security numbers, to bank accounts, to client accounts, and they put up on the screens, ”This is what happens when you talk about using weapons of mass destruction.” The interesting thing about this attack, well first of all, this guy, he ran a $20 billion casino industry, his cybersecurity staff consisted of five technicians at the time. The second interesting thing about this is if you hack into a casino, you could steal a lot of money, right? These guys did not steal a dime. They didn’t touch a dime. They were interested in sending a message, and in protesting a political statement. So you could see this attack as the first instance when cyberweapons were used not for espionage, not to steal trade secrets, not for hacking into military networks and achieving some kind of advantage in future war, but to send a political message, to object to someone’s politics. This was more famously followed just a few months later by North Korea’s hack into Sony Pictures for putting out a movie that insulted their leader, Kim  . So this shows that we’re entering a new phase of cyberwar, when anybody can be a target and for any number of purposes. It has become a tool of international relations broadly speaking. On the NSA’s ”intrusive powers” When the Chinese hacked into the federal employment records and the personnel records and made off with tens maybe hundreds of thousands of records of government personnel, Jim Clapper, the director of national intelligence, was asked about this attack in a hearing, a congressional hearing, and he said, ”Well, I don’t know if it was an attack. It was more an act of espionage, similar to the kinds of things we do too.” . .. The Snowden revelations made a big splash probably more abroad than here, but here as well, because it seemed that the NSA was hacking into domestic communications as well. . .. What these people could do if all the legal restrictions were dropped. They just have amazingly intrusive powers. They can get into any network they want to get in  —   in fact this Apple case, if the NSA saw that this phone represented a national security threat, if there was something in this phone that they needed to get right away, the NSA could hack into this phone without Apple’s cooperation. . .. The fact that the NSA is not doing this, at this moment, they would have to go get something signed by the attorney general to do it, but the fact that they’re not doing it suggests that they don’t regard this phone as continuing anything that’s terribly useful."
"The FBI may have found a new way to crack into the locked iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters  —   a method that doesn’t require Apple’s help. This is a major new development in the increasingly heated debate between the tech giant and the government, which has argued that Apple should be compelled to write new special software that would override some security features. That was the only way, investigators previously had said, that they could crack the phone’s passcode without jeopardizing its contents. Below are some of the main issues Monday’s development raises. The FBI’s request for the delay does not immediately end the litigation, only pauses it. Apple is not claiming any victories yet, and some legal experts also cautioned against jumping to conclusions. But Nate Cardozo, a lawyer at the civil liberties advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation  —   which supports Apple’s position  —   says this marks a pivotal point. ”This filing today represents the FBI completely backing down on this particular case,” Cardozo says  —   but ”there may be another case in the future.” The FBI says an unnamed third party has shown it a new alternative, which the agency wants to test. A status report is due by April 5, meaning a testing time of about two weeks  —   which suggests the test is not too experimental, says forensics researcher and iOS security expert Jonathan Zdziarski. ”For Apple, it proves their case that the FBI should be trying harder, rather than asking Apple to undermine its security protections,” says Susan Landau, a longtime cybersecurity expert at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. ”For the FBI, it’s certainly an embarrassment to have gone to this effort in court when there was another route  —   but it also points out the need to develop the expertise, both the technical expertise and organizational expertise.” Cardozo says that if the FBI is successful at cracking into this phone, it undermines law enforcement’s big worry: that its investigative avenues were ”going dark” in the digital age. George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr says neither side would emerge unscathed. ”The FBI looks bad because they had a way into a phone and they didn’t realize,” he says, ”and Apple looks bad because they said the sky would fall if they created a way into the phone, and there was a way in this whole time.” Successful entry also would mean, perhaps most critically, that no legal precedent will be set for either the law enforcement or the tech community. ”If the government can get into this phone, it just kicks the can down the road a year or two,” says Kerr. ”Apple will presumably correct [any old vulnerabilities] and then in a year or two there will be the next case, and we’ll be where we thought we were yesterday.” ”We go back to where it started,” says Kerr. The case likely would have to proceed with hearings and appeals, as originally expected  —   though the FBI’s position might be a bit bruised. ”If they thought [the new approach] was plausible enough to pull off the case, I think it says they haven’t tried everything,” says Landau. ”One can’t try everything, of course  —   but have they tried a reasonable amount for what they expect to get off the phone? That’s the question.” That question will be unanswered until there’s either new, direct case law or new lawmaking in Congress. ”I think what this means is that the next battlefield in this war is going to be in Congress,” says Cardozo. Landau says that, no matter how this case wraps up, the developments highlight the major point she’s been making: that the FBI needs to step up its technological game. But she sees an important transformation already underway, thanks to this case, in how Americans view government access to data and encryption. ”The conversation has shifted slightly from national security vs. privacy to more a security vs. security discussion,” she says."
"With a series we’re calling The Obama Effect, the Code Switch team is digging into all sorts of questions about how President Obama’s tenure has  ” or hasn’t  ” shaped how we all perceive our own racial and ethnic identities. Last week, we asked you to weigh in on how this question relates to Latino communities across the U. S, via a Twtter chat. We wanted your thoughts on whether Latino identity has evolved over the past eight years under America’s first nonwhite president and, if it has, what role Obama’s policies or even simple presence may have played in that. We enlisted the help of fellow NPR journalist and Alt. Latino   Jasmine Garsd NPR’s Latino USA host Maria Hinojosa and digital editor Julio Ricardo Varela and Marlena Fitzpatrick and Hector Luis Alamo over at Latino Rebels. Here’s some of what we heard from you. The Obama administration’s deportation record loomed large in the conversation  ” immigration officials have deported more than 2. 5 million people since Obama took office, more than under George W. Bush’s full two terms. A lot of people said this has contributed to a feeling, experienced by many Latinos in the U. S. of being under attack: Others told us that increased levels of   rhetoric  ” which many have linked to the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump  ” has partly been in response to some white Americans feeling disaffected by the tenure of a black president. They feel that Latinos have become an easy target of that discomfort: Of course, plenty of folks rejected the idea that the Obama presidency has had any effect on Latino identity, or even could: Others said his presidency has shaped their views on their identity, either directly or through causing them to think differently about race and identity more broadly:"
"Whether you call it ”boba” or ”bubble” tea, the Taiwanese beverage that allows you to chew your drink is back with a vengeance. It first got its start in the 1980s, after an inventor thought to pour tapioca pearls into a glass of iced, sweet tea. Though Asian communities have been drinking boba tea in the United States for many years, the texturally exciting drink is finally reaching a wider audience. And boba isn’t just back  —   it’s playing ambassador to a whole host of other foods and trends. The beverage enjoyed a brief moment of popularity in major metropolitan areas in the late aughts, popping up on college campuses or near communities with large Asian populations. (One such place, in New York City’s Union Square, even had a lofted DJ booth.) But the trend dried up quickly. ”What we saw before was a segment that didn’t grow,” says Andrew Chau,   of the popular chain Boba Guys, which has three stores  —   in San Francisco and New York City. He explains that a majority of these shops opened next door or down the street from existing stores. ”They were all stealing customers from each other, and no one made money.” But this is Boba 2. 0. Boba Guys’ model puts its ingredients front and center. The chain uses organic milk and sources its own teas. Its jellies (lightly gummy substitutes for the tapioca pearls) are made in house. And there are plans to begin testing   tapioca pearls in the near future as well. Chau wants boba to break out of the ”novelty drink” box he wants Boba Guys to be more like the Blue Bottle of bubble tea. Rather than chipping away at the (relatively) small segment of boba drinkers, Boba Guys and its competitors hope revamped offerings will draw in coffee and tea drinkers. While most boba beverages are based on tea  —   either on its own or blended with milk  —  it’s sometimes hard to tell by looking at the flavors. Honeydew, a popular flavor at the average boba shop, is usually made either from green tea and real honeydew or a powdered flavor. Peach teas are often a black tea with a little hint of summer fruit thrown in. But chains like Boba Guys aren’t married to the original recipe. And some experiments, like horchata boba tea, have no tea in them at all. Some boba purveyors are even trying to lure cocktail lovers. At the downtown Los Angeles restaurant Soi 7, customers can sneak into the ”boba speakeasy” round back. (Guiding the way are signs with decidedly adult puns like ”suck my balls”  —   tapioca balls, that is.) Called Boba 7, the backroom serves boba cocktails made with beer or the Korean alcohol soju, in addition to an inventive nonalcoholic menu. Owner Elton Keung says that, while he’s not the first to stick tapioca or jellies into an alcoholic beverage, too many of his predecessors tried to take shortcuts. ”They would take exciting boba drinks, pour some shots in there, and think that’s what makes it a cocktail,” Keung says. ”That just makes it worse.” Instead, Keung starts with the cocktail, mixing Irish Cream, Kahlua and honey boba into a beverage called the ”bobagasm.” For those who want something a little tangy, perhaps the BobaSour is more your speed: a sour blue melon cocktail with honey boba. Luckily for those who are underage, the nonalcoholic menu is also quite extensive: a Nutella flavored beverage or horchata boba. There’s even a green tea version mixed with mango and chili powder. Bringing in different trends, cultures and   is what Boba 2. 0 is all about. ”If we’re going to bridge cultures, we want to bring the best of the West and the best of the East,” says Chau. Chau says Boba Guys isn’t just bringing boba to foodie Americans it’s also reimagining it for longtime lovers of the drink. When Chau’s company caters weddings  —   for a mostly Asian clientele, he says  —   ”we have    people from China and Korea or Japan, and they’re trying horchata for the first time.” Tea Tuesdays is an occasional series exploring the science, history, culture and economics of this ancient brewed beverage. Tove Danovich is a writer based in New York City."
"Editor’s Note: In a conflict that dates back generations, Israelis and Palestinians rarely change their positions or their minds. NPR’s Emily Harris, who has reported from Jerusalem since 2013, explores what prompts a relative few to adopt a new perspective. This is one of several stories.  Bassam Aramin was not born hating Israel, but he learned young. He was 5 or 6 years old the first time he saw Israeli soldiers. This was about a decade after the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank. Aramin’s large family lived an ancient lifestyle. Like many families in the area, their home was in a cave in the south, near Hebron. They farmed for a living. The soldiers arrived by helicopter  —   a strange creature to the young boy’s eyes  —   and crossed the valley to his home on foot, Aramin remembers. During a conversation he could not follow, one soldier, he says, slapped his older cousin. ”In his face,” Aramin remembers. ”It’s like a shot.” He cowered beside his mother, watching his aunt yell at the armed Israelis. Now 46, Aramin looks back on a fast track to hating and to fighting Israel that would be familiar to many Palestinians. But eventually he flipped  —   both his worldview and his ways. He credits a very unexpected stir of empathy that happened in an unexpected place. In middle school, Aramin’s family moved to town. At a protest, he remembers being kicked and tear gassed by Israeli troops. Another day, he watched as soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager who was throwing rocks at them. The stones were flung from such a distance that Aramin believed the soldiers weren’t in danger when they shot. Seeking Revenge, This amplified his anger, and he swore to take revenge. ”Because,” he says of his motivation at that time, ”you have this strong feeling that if you don’t fight them, they will kill you.” By now, he was about 12 or 13. He and several buddies joined forces to harass and taunt Israeli soldiers. They threw rocks at patrols. They scrawled   graffiti around their village, Sa’ir, and hung Palestinian flags sewn from old   in trees where soldiers would pass. Aramin says he and his friends loved to get a rise out of the soldiers. ”We want to make them crazy,” he remembers. ”This is how it started. As a game.” But Aramin felt like a real Palestinian fighter. And soon the play grew serious. One day, the boys, now in their late teens, found old hand grenades and a rifle hidden in a cave. They used them to attack an Israeli army patrol. All the weapons worked, but no one was injured, a fact Aramin credits only to inexperience. He was not directly involved in the attack. His friends had made him stay behind because a limp from childhood polio slows him down. Still, the whole group was arrested, including Aramin. He got the shortest sentence  —   seven years in Israeli prison. He was 17. Until then, he had kept his fighting secret from his family. Aramin’s father wept when he visited his son in prison. The tears only angered Aramin. ”I said, ’Oh my God. Why you cry?’ And he said, ’No, nothing.’ I said, ’You must be proud of me. Because I’m in jail.’ ” A Prison Education, So many Palestinian boys have spent time in Israeli prisons that it’s almost like a rite of passage. And the community inside was organized. Older prisoners gave regular lectures on Palestinian history and politics. Others taught academic subjects, such as languages. Aramin decided to learn Hebrew. He believed this would prove helpful in his fight. ”In jail very early I learn that if you know your enemy, you can defeat him,” he said. ”Then directly I decide to study Hebrew. Because I want to know how to kill them, how to defeat them.” One day, not far into his sentence, the prisoners settled in for a movie on Israeli TV. Aramin knew it was about Adolf Hitler. And he was looking forward to it. ”I want to enjoy seeing this movie,” he said. ”You know, I’m in their jail. They occupied us. They beat me. So at least to see a movie. To see someone defeat them, kill them, torture them.” But he did not enjoy what he saw at all. As he watched Jews stripped of their clothing, shot and killed, tears filled his eyes and smeared his cheeks. ”They fell down. They burned them alive. To see such atrocities. I cannot believe that there are human beings that can do such things to human beings in this way,” he said. Aramin’s eyes grow distant as he tells this story now, almost 30 years later. This was his first glimmer of understanding the persecution Jews had suffered. A New Perspective, It led him to view even throwing stones at Israeli troops in a different way. Most Palestinians say stones are no threat to heavily armed Israelis. Israelis disagree. They cite cases in which stones have caused fatalities. Aramin grew to understand both views. ”A stone, against a gun or a tank, it’s a very civilized protest,” he maintains. ”But it’s very violent for the Israelis. For them we prepare for another Holocaust, even by this stone.” By the time he was released, Aramin was fluent in Hebrew and had made friends with a prison guard. Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian political leaders had agreed to a limited, interim peace deal  —   the 1993 Oslo Accords, which called for negotiations to end the conflict and create a Palestinian state. Aramin married and had his first child, a son. He was not ready to give up the Palestinian struggle for independence. But he was ready to fight a different way. No guns. No rocks. No violence. At this point, he says, he was thinking about the future of his young son. ”I don’t want him to go to jail. I don’t want him to be killed. And I don’t want him to throw stones. I will explain to him, if he has more tools, he can use the struggle in a different way,” he said. Testing His Beliefs, Aramin took it upon himself to create those tools, even when the Oslo peace deal crumbled and deadly violence broke out again. In 2005, as the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, began to fade, he helped start Combatants for Peace, a group that brings together former Israeli soldiers and   militants. Few Palestinians or Israelis were willing to do peace work at this time. Aramin’s dedication to his new beliefs would be severely tested. One January morning in 2007, his    daughter Abir saucily told him she would go to a friend’s after school. He told her to come straight home. She never did. As Abir walked with friends near school after a math exam, Palestinian boys nearby were throwing stones at the Israeli forces. Abir was not involved. But a   Israeli bullet struck her in the head. She died, in an Israeli hospital, three days later. This was Aramin’s darkest hour. ”Sometimes you say, ’why me,’ especially me. I have no enemies,” he said. ”I don’t hate anyone. Why this soldier shoot my daughter. Why? It’s an open question forever.” But he did not seek retribution. It would not ease his pain, he said. ”It’s nothing to do with your pain, to kill the rest of the Jews. It’s ongoing pain, forever,” he said. Persuading His Son, But his son Araab, then 13, wanted revenge. Soon teachers told Aramin the boy was skipping school and throwing stones at soldiers. Once he learned this, father confronted son. ”I say to him, ’Do you think you are a hero? You are a warrior?’ And he said, ’Yes, I am a hero. Yes, I want to take revenge. Is it good for you to spend seven years in the Israeli jails and it’s not good for me? I am also a Palestinian and I love Palestine, and I want to fight the occupation.’ ” Araab, now 22, remembers that confrontation with his father well. ”He was screaming at me so bad. I think he pushed me a little bit,” he says. ”I told him, ’You don’t care about your daughter’s blood, you don’t care about the one who killed her, and you still making peace with people, with the Israelis.’ ” ”It kills me now,” Araab says, that he said these things. But that night, his father made him swear on the Koran that he would tell his father if he went to throw rocks, or worse. That way, Aramin told his son, he could prepare himself to lose another child. Araab did not throw rocks again. He has joined his father as an active member in the Parents   Forum, a joint   group of people who have lost loved ones to the violence. They work together for a future where the two sides live at peace. But it took years, time living away from the conflict, and a visit to a Nazi death camp before Araab fully accepted his father’s conviction that violence is not the way to win. Bassam Aramin says this is his proudest achievement  —   passing his change of mind on to a second generation."
"The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that all   opioid pain medicines will be required to carry its strongest warning about risks, including the risks for abuse, addiction, overdose and death. The decision to require instructions for the drugs to carry a   black box warning marks the latest in a series of steps by the FDA and other federal agencies to fight the epidemic of opioid addiction. ”This epidemic touches all corners of our nation and is devastating individual lives, communities and our nation,” said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf during a briefing for reporters. He called the epidemic the ”most urgent and devastating public health crisis facing our nation.” The warnings are aimed at more than 200   versions of opioids, such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine, which are intended for use every four to six hours for serious acute pain. Ninety percent of all opioid prescriptions are for these   or   formulations.   warnings are the most stringent the agency can require, and they have been found to get doctors’ attention and influence their prescribing decisions. Califf said the FDA wants to warn doctors and patients about the dangers of the drugs while ensuring they remain available for patients who need them to alleviate pain. However, Califf stressed the drugs should be reserved for severe pain for which no alternatives are available. In addition to the risks of addiction and overdose from opioids, the new labels will also warn that chronic use of the drugs by pregnant women could lead their newborns to suffer from neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome. When taken with antidepressants and migraine medications, opioids can also cause a potentially   central nervous system condition known as serotonin syndrome, which occurs when the body is overloaded with the brain chemical serotonin. Opioids are also known to increase the risk for a ”rare but serious” disorder of the adrenal glands known as adrenal insufficiency, and decrease levels of sex hormones, the FDA said."
"What’s more harmful to patients being treated for drug or alcohol use: Risking their health by keeping other medical providers in the dark about the care, or risking the patients’ jobs, homes and child custody arrangements by allowing potentially damaging details to be shared widely among providers? Advocates have painted the possible patient outcomes in starkly different terms as they consider the federal government’s recently proposed update to guidelines that govern the release of patient records about treatment for alcohol and drug use. What everyone can agree on is that protecting the privacy of people who are being treated for substance use is critical. If such information becomes public, it may have a devastating effect on their work and family lives. In some cases, it also may have legal repercussions, including arrest, prosecution and jail. The mere threat that treatment details might be disclosed can be enough to deter some people from seeking help. The current privacy guidelines  —   often referred to as ”Part 2” as an abbreviation for ”42 CFR Part 2,” the section of the code of federal regulations where the rules are published  —   last got a meaningful update in 1987. Since then, electronic medical records have proliferated and become integrated. Existing privacy rules are too cumbersome for today’s integrated world, say proponents who favor loosening the rules. Under current Part 2 rules, providers can’t disclose treatment information unless patients give their consent to release it to a specific health care provider. Part 2 ”is well intentioned, but it’s just not working,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. ”These special [treatment] silos are actually hurting people.” The Medicaid program for   people is responsible for a significant and growing share of the money spent on treatment for substance use, Salo said. In family medicine, it’s not unusual for patients to have 5 to 10 different diagnoses, one of them being substance abuse, said Dr. Wanda Filer, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians who practices at a federally qualified health center in York, Pa. Not having access to all the relevant medical information can be difficult or even dangerous. If someone is taking methadone to treat a heroin addiction, for example, the doctor may need to adjust his antidepressant or anxiety medications. ”Finding the right balance between getting access to information and protecting their privacy” is challenging, said Filer. The AAFP is still reviewing the potential changes. The proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services would allow patients to give their consent to disclose their records not just to a specific provider but to the health care system or the accountable care organization with which the provider is affiliated, for example. While the HHS proposal is an improvement over existing rules, it doesn’t go far enough, said Salo. His organization, along with others, would prefer that HHS align   treatment disclosure rules with the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which governs other types of health care records disclosure. Under HIPAA, health plans, providers and health care clearinghouses don’t have to get patients’ consent before disclosing their records to other similar groups and ”business associates,” such as claims processing operations, if the disclosure is related to a patient’s treatment, payment or health care operations. Strong protections must remain in place to prevent information from being used for criminal charges or to conduct criminal investigations, said Lindsey Browning, senior policy analyst at the National Association of Medicaid Directors. That’s not good enough, say some patient advocates. They argue that the HHS privacy rule changes are too broad. Under the HHS proposal, ”anybody throughout the system can get access” to patient substance use treatment records, said Jim Pyles, a principal at Powers Pyles Sutter  Verville who is an expert on patient privacy and has represented the American Psychoanalytic Association on this issue. ”When the patient is at their most vulnerable time, it gets them to sign . .. this very general consent form.” Patients can’t rely on health care systems to keep their information private, Pyles said, noting that in the past six years, more than 150 million Americans have been involved in health data breaches, according to an analysis of HHS data released by Melamedia, a healthcare research company. In the midst of a privacy breach epidemic, ”we’re substituting the interests of integrated delivery systems and accountable care organizations for patients’ interests, when what we should be doing is asking patients what they want,” Pyle said. Comments on the proposed rules are due on April 11. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Email questions for future columns: KHNHelp@KFF. org. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter: @mandrews110."
"A Russian court has found Ukranian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko guilty of murdering two Russian journalists in Ukraine. She has been sentenced to 22 years in prison. NPR’s Corey Flintoff in Moscow tells our Newscast unit that Savchenko ”was accused of directing artillery fire that killed two members of a Russian TV crew in July 2014.” Corey has reported that Savchenko’s defense says that’s impossible  —   that ”cellphone records prove that she was captured by separatist militia fighters at least an hour before these journalists were killed.” She calls the trial a Russian propaganda stunt, Corey says. Here’s more: ”Before the war, Savchenko was   in Ukraine as a pioneering female combat pilot. ”She was fighting as a volunteer against   separatists in eastern Ukraine when she was captured and put on trial in Russia.” Savchenko burst into a patriotic Ukrainian song as the judge read her guilty verdict. Video from the court shows her lawyers reading and appearing to disregard the judge, though one cracks a smile as she starts to defiantly sing: And Corey told Morning Edition earlier this month that as she gave her final statement, ”she jumped up and she said basically if you want to know what I think of this court it’s this  —   and she gave the judge the finger.” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a statement that ”Ukraine would not recognize the ’ ’ verdict,” and said he was prepared to trade two detained Russian soldiers for Savchenko, the BBC reports. State Department spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement that Savchenko’s conviction ”shows a blatant disregard for the principles of justice.” He adds: ”For nearly two years, Russia has unjustly detained Savchenko on charges that have no basis in fact and has denied her the basic protections of the rule of law. She has reportedly endured interrogation, solitary confinement, and forced ’psychiatric evaluation.” And the BBC reports that Savchenko has become ”a national hero”  —   she’s even been elected to Ukraine’s parliament while imprisoned in Russia."
"On paper, Vince Staples headlining an NPR showcase doesn’t make a lick of sense. He’s a young, black rapper, with production that veers toward the dissonant and gritty, and aggressive, colorful lyrics that speak pointedly to the systemic issues that plague his hometown of Long Beach, Calif. But in action, Staples closing out a night that also featured soul, Chicano punk, indie rock and country made all the sense in the world.  The bulk of the material Staples performed came from last year’s widely acclaimed Summertime ’06  —   an album that laid bare his experience growing up around gangbangers, drug dealers and addicts, fearful outsiders and corrupt cops. His silhouette the only thing visible, Staples launched into his set with the deceptively buoyant ”Lift Me Up” the audience immediately lifted with him, jumping at his command.  With charisma, comedy and a touch of cynicism peppered throughout, Staples played to his crowd without pandering  —   which, to be fair, has never been a part of his repertoire. (See: his Spotify showcase at SXSW.) The energy between Staples and audience was reciprocal, and only ticked up further as the night wore on. By the final two songs  —   the wildly charged ”Senorita” and the jarring ”Blue Suede”  —   there was   moshing, crowd surfing and stage crashing, much to the chagrin of security. Elbows were thrown and backs were shoved, but it was clear by the time Staples finished his performance, standing atop the rail directly in front of his adoring audience, that it was all a physical manifestation of unbridled, raw positivity. Watch the entire set here, or check out individual songs in the set list below. Producers: Saidah Blount, Mito   Otis Hart Technical Director: Josh Rogosin Director: Mito   Videographers: Nickolai Hammar, Katie Hayes Luke, Cameron Robert, A. J. Wilhelm, Lizzie Chen Editor: Niki Walker Audio: Timothy   Mobile Assistant Audio Engineer: Loretta Rae Production Assistants: Erin Conlon, Nathan Gaar Special Thanks: SXSW, Stubb’s BBQ Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann. Support for NPR Music comes from Blue Microphone."
"The rumor mill is on. A report by an Israeli newspaper, citing anonymous industry sources, pointed the finger at an Israeli company as the firm helping the FBI get inside the locked iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. The paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, has been known to plug Israeli companies. But the stakes to uncover the unnamed ”third party” working with the FBI are tremendously high. The newspaper report got picked up by Reuters in Tel Aviv and from there, rippled through the tech blogs. So what’s the company? Its name is Cellebrite. It’s a regular government contractor and promotes itself as a mobile forensics software provider. Is it really the company helping the FBI bypass the need for Apple’s special software to see inside this famous iPhone? We don’t know. What we have is a lot of speculation  —   and a lot of skepticism. The FBI’s response is that the agency cannot comment on the identity of the third party that’s assisting it. Cellebrite, too, has not commented to NPR and told other media little beyond the fact that it has worked with the Justice Department. National security blogger Marcy Wheeler traced the bread crumbs of court documents filed in relation to the San Bernardino investigation and another federal investigation involving another locked iPhone to arrive at the suspicion that the FBI did ask Cellebrite to open the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook. But just as much, this could be a brilliant publicity stunt by Cellebrite. Stoking the rumors was a new contract, posted in the government database on Wednesday but dated March 21  —   the day when the FBI announced it may have found a new solution  —   for services from Cellebrite USA. Forensics experts quickly sought to dispel this particular contract’s relevance, attributing it to software licensing renewal and pointing to the meager $15, 278 price tag and given ”principal place of performance” of Chicago, not San Bernardino. At this time, no concrete evidence is pointing at Cellebrite. And we don’t know for sure what method the FBI is testing, either. Apple lawyers have indicated that they would like the government to disclose the method it would use to get inside Farook’s iPhone. But it’s also entirely possible the FBI will ask to keep both the vendor and the method classified. What The Method Might Be, What we do know is that there have been several alternative ideas floating in the security community about how the FBI could overcome the iPhone security features preventing the agency from hooking the phone up to a computer and trying unlimited passcodes to find the right one without triggering a content wipeout. In fact, FBI Director James Comey faced several questions about one technique in a congressional hearing. At the time, Comey testified that he was confident that government experts had considered all options before seeking a court order for Apple to write special software. Later, the FBI said the worldwide attention to the case had brought new alternatives to its attention and one of them, it decided to test. Computer forensics researcher Jonathan Zdziarski argues that because the FBI has asked courts for only two weeks to test the viability of the new method, it’s likely not highly experimental. It’s also likely not something destructive, like the ”decapping” method that relies on physically shaving off tiny layers of the microprocessor inside the phone to reveal a special code that would let investigators move the data and crack the passcode. The idea that’s garnering the most focus is something called chip cloning, or mirroring or transplantation. The method entails   the   NAND flash chip (the phone’s version of hard drive) from the phone’s board and sticking it into a chip reader that saves all the data from the memory chip and about the chip (including things like its serial number) into a file that gets copied onto another similar chip. Then, it works sort of like saving your place in a video game: Investigators could try some passcodes without the fear of the   function because they can reload, or   the chip again and again. ”We don’t know yet that this is 100 percent doable, but we do know it’s feasible,” Zdziarski told NPR about the method in an interview last week, before the news of a   alternative broke. He said the technology wasn’t tremendously expensive and, in fact, has been showcased in a video of a techie in a Chinese mall performing this procedure to help people get a memory upgrade for their iPhones. NPR’s Aarti Shahani contributed to this report."
"In the aftermath of Tuesday’s deadly attacks in Belgium, the world is learning about people who died, including a mother of twin daughters, a university student mourned by classmates, and a public servant who was ”a bit of a joker.” The attacks, which were claimed by ISIS, killed at least 31 people and wounded at least 270 others. Head here for the latest news on the manhunt for an accomplice to the attacks. Some people are still searching for their loved ones. And families are in mourning. Belgian authorities aren’t releasing names of the victims, but some information has trickled out. Here’s what we know about three of the deceased: The Peruvian national was killed during the attack on Brussels International Airport, Peru’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. ”A   decision saved her husband and    twin daughters, Maureen and Alondra, from sharing her fate,” The Associated Press reported. ”Her Belgian husband, Christophe Delcambe, had taken the girls out of the   line to play for a moment when a loud explosion ripped through the concourse.” The wire service adds one of the twins was injured and is hospitalized. Her friend Lady Jouan tells All Things Considered that Ruiz was an extrovert who loved to cook. The two met through a Peruvian cultural association and became fast friends. ”You can’t help but notice her she’s the kind of woman who, as soon as you know her, she sticks with you because she’s someone who is very kind, very friendly. It really hurts me,” Jouan says. The    student was a victim of the Maelbeek subway station bombing, according to a statement from the rector of Universite    —   Bruxelles. ”There are no words to describe our dismay at this news. All our thoughts are with his family and friends,” the rector says. NBC News reporter Cassandra Vinograd tweeted a photo of Hecht’s classmates placing flowers and lighting candles in his memory. Delespesse’s employer, La Federation   confirmed his death in a post on Facebook.  The organization supports French speakers in the Brussels and Wallonia region. According to the The New York Times, Delespesse was killed during the subway bombing. One of his colleagues told the Times that ”he had been in catering before he turned to public service, working in the ministry for the   part of Belgium on issues such as curriculums.” The colleague, Olivier Dradin, told the Times that the    was a ”bit of a joker.” ”The Famille de l’Administration just lost one of its members, someone available, helpful, considerate, always smiling,” another of Delespesse’s colleagues wrote on Facebook, BuzzFeed reported. ”Olivier had many other qualities. May your joy of life stay with you on this new journey.” Information is also emerging about the scores of injured, including several American citizens. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday that they are ”aware of approximately a dozen U. S. citizens injured in the attacks,” and no deaths. He added that ”a number of U. S. citizens” were unaccounted for. Four Mormon missionaries are among those injured in the attacks, according to a statement from The Church of Jesus Christ of   Saints. Richard Norby, 66, Joseph Empey, 20, and Mason Wells, 19, who are all from Utah, were hospitalized for burns and shrapnel injuries. The three were accompanying    Fanny Rachel Clain of France to the airport, the church says. Clain sustained minor injuries. And the Air Force has confirmed that a U. S. airman and his family were injured during the attack on the Brussels airport. It said he serves in the Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands but did not release his name or any details about his family or their injuries."
"A day after terrorist attacks in Brussels claimed by ISIS killed at least 31 people and wounded at least 270 others, police continue to search for a suspected accomplice. The man in question, wearing a hat and   jacket, was seen with two suspected suicide bombers on   TV at the Brussels airport Tuesday morning, shortly before two explosions went off at the airport and one bomb was set off at a metro station. Belgian authorities say they have used fingerprints to identify two of the deceased suspects as Belgian brothers Khalid and Ibrahim el Bakraoui. Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said that Ibrahim, 29, was at the airport, while Khalid, 27, bombed the metro station. The two   brothers had a criminal record but no previously known connection to terrorism, Van Leeuw said. Ibrahim was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2010, after shooting at a policeman during an armed robbery, while Khalid was arrested in 2011 for gun possession and carjacking and sentenced to five years in prison, NPR’s Dina   reports, citing several U. S. and European counterterrorism officials. It’s not clear how long either may have actually served in prison. A taxi driver who transported Ibrahim el Bakraoui and two other attackers to the airport helped police investigate the attacks. He came forward after a photo of the men was released to the public, Dina says. Van Leeuw said the taxi driver gave police the address where he picked up the three men. That prompted a series of raids on houses in the area. The taxi driver also told police that the three men had a bag they left behind when they traveled to the airport, because it wouldn’t fit in the cab, Dina’s counterterrorism sources say. That bag was suspected to be a nail bomb discovered at the apartment. In their raid, the police uncovered   materials, including several kilograms of explosives, 150 liters of acetone, detonators and a suitcase filled with nails, Van Leeuw said Wednesday morning. They also found a computer that contained a document apparently written by Ibrahim el Bakraoui. Police arrested and interviewed several people in related raids, but are still looking for a key suspect. The subject of the manhunt can be seen on surveillance camera footage from the airport. The most widely shared image shows Ibrahim el Bakraoui in the center, the Belgian prosecutor says, and an unidentified airport attacker on the left, who officials say is now dead. The man on the right  —   in the hat  —   is the one being pursued by police. That man, who has not been named by police, took into the airport a bag with a large explosive weapon  —   larger than the two bombs that did detonate at the airport, Van Leeuw said. But the weapon malfunctioned and did not go off until the bomb squad arrived after the attacks were over. Some news outlets are referring to a potential link between the attacks in Brussels and the Paris terrorist attacks of Nov. 13, which killed 130 people. These reports, however, have not been confirmed by prosecutors or any other authority. The attack comes in the wake of a   arrest related to the Paris attacks. Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the attacks who had been on the run for months, was captured in Brussels last week. Authorities are still looking for Abdeslam’s accomplices in the November attacks  —   including one man, Najim Laachraoui, whose identity was only recently revealed. Laachraoui is suspected to be the maker of the bombs used Tuesday, Dina reports. Her counterterrorism sources say Laachraoui’s fingerprints were found on the luggage bombs used in the Brussels attack as well as explosive vests that were used in Paris. Abdeslam himself may have been planning on participating in the attacks on Brussels, Dina says. She reports that counterterrorism officials ”say they now believe that Abdeslam wanted his lawyer to announce he was cooperating publicly so others he was working with could move up the timetable of their attacks.” She adds: ”Officials are investigating, but believe that the attacks were supposed to happen closer to Easter and were supposed to be much bigger. There are still a number of cells they believe are preparing strikes. They believe the bomb factory they raided last night is just one of several sprinkled around Belgium.” Investigators and police in France and Belgium have been cooperating in the fight against terrorism. Following the Brussels attacks, the French interior minister announced 1, 600 additional police and soldiers would be stationed at train stations and border crossings. A number of countries have increased security at borders and transportation sites after bombs went off at Brussels’ Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station Tuesday morning. The U. S. State Department issued this travel warning Tuesday: ”The State Department alerts U. S. citizens to potential risks of travel to and throughout Europe following several terrorist attacks, including the March 22 attacks in Brussels claimed by [ISIS]. Terrorist groups continue to plan   attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants, and transportation.” Approximately a dozen Americans are known to have been wounded in the attack, a State Department spokesman says no Americans have been confirmed among the dead. Speaking at a press conference in Argentina, President Obama expressed ”extraordinary sorrow” for the attacks in Brussels. He said the U. S. will offer any assistance that it can in the investigation. ”We will also continue to go after ISIL aggressively until it is removed from Syria and removed from Iraq and finally destroyed,” he said, using another term for the Islamic State. ”This is my No. 1 priority,” he said later. ”My top priority is to defeat ISIL and to eliminate the scourge of this barbaric terrorism that’s been taking place around the world.” The Brussels bombings follow several other violent attacks that have hit cities in Turkey, Africa and the Middle East in the past 10 days. Turkey’s president, meanwhile, said Wednesday that Turkey deported Ibrahim el Bakraoui from Turkey to Europe last year, and warned Belgium of the man’s terrorist ties. Belgium is observing three days of mourning, and at midday Wednesday (7 a. m. EDT) a moment of silence was held for the victims in Brussels. The king and queen of Belgium have toured the airport that was targeted in the attack, met first responders who aided victims and visited some of the wounded in a local hospital. Belgium has raised its terror alert to 4, the highest level. The Zaventem airport in Brussels will remain closed on Thursday, and possibly longer, as the investigation continues. But the nation’s capital is not on lockdown. The metro is running a limited service, and many people returned to work as usual on Wednesday morning. On Morning Edition, NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson said that Brussels residents were defiant Tuesday night, gathering at the Brussels Stock Exchange to mourn the dead and express national unity. On Wednesday, Soraya says, fewer people than usual were out on the city streets. But those whom she spoke with said they didn’t plan on halting their lives out of fear. ”We have a world war right now, and . .. life has to continue,” one commuter told Soraya. ”We cannot change anything, unfortunately.” This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says that last summer, Belgian authorities had the chance to detain Ibrahim el Bakraoui, now identified as one of the suspected suicide bombers who struck Brussels on Tuesday. Erdogan says Turkey warned Belgian authorities of Bakraoui’s terrorist ties when it deported him into the custody of the Netherlands  —   but that the Belgian native was released anyway. Bakraoui, along with his brother Khalid and two unknown accomplices, allegedly detonated bombs at Brussels’ airport and at a metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and injuring at least 270. The brothers and one of the other attackers died a fourth man is currently being pursued by authorities. Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said the Bakraoui brothers had a criminal record but no known association to terrorism. But at a news conference Wednesday in Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey had detained Ibrahim el Bakraoui in July 2015, and deported him back to Europe after informing the Belgian Embassy. Bakraoui was sent to the Netherlands, at his request, NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports, but Belgian authorities were notified about his detention and potential threat. Despite Turkey’s warnings, Erdogan says, Belgium couldn’t find any ties to terrorism  —   so the Netherlands released Bakraoui. The Washington Post noted Tuesday that Erdogan showed an eerie prescience ahead of the attack on Brussels. On Friday, he warned Europe that the kind of deadly bomb that struck Ankara this month, killing at least 37 people, could also hit Europe  —   maybe even the seat of the EU. ”There is no reason for the bomb, which exploded in Ankara, not to explode in Brussels, where an opportunity to show off in the heart of the city to supporters of the terror organization is presented, or in any city in Europe. Despite this clear reality, European countries are paying no attention, as if they are dancing in a minefield. You can never know when you are stepping on a mine,” Erdogan said Friday. The Post notes that the bombs that struck Ankara and Brussels were claimed by different groups  —   the Ankara attack by a splinter group of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and Brussels by the Islamic State. The two groups are far from allied, the newspaper says. Turkey has suffered recent attacks from ISIS as well, but Erdogan emphasized Kurdish militants in his remarks. And as the Post’s Ishaan Tharoor writes: ”What is indisputably true, though, is that Turkey has suffered immensely from terrorism over the past year  —   and has perhaps not received the sort of global sympathy that attacks farther west tend to generate.”"
"The video, taken at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S. C. went viral last fall: A school safety officer flips a desk to the floor with a girl seated in it, then flings her across the floor. The student is   the officer is white. Ultimately, the officer was fired based on the fallout surrounding that video. But Monique Morris, a scholar, author and activist, was concerned about what else happened, when the cameras were turned off. The student, 16, was both arrested and suspended immediately after the incident. So was a second student, another black girl, Niya Kenny, 18, whose role seemed to be encouraging her classmates to film the incident. Moreover, says Morris, ”My conversations with the legal community in South Carolina revealed that when those girls came back to school they were faced with a pretty hostile environment.” Both girls started avoiding school. Recent research has documented that black girls are punished at school at rates that are even more disproportionate than those experienced by black boys. For example, they are suspended six times more often than white girls. Morris calls this ”a story untold,” and she sets out to tell it in her new book, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. For the book, Morris spoke with straight, queer and transgender teenage girls in the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California, Chicago, New York, New Orleans and Boston. They had been in juvenile detention, in gangs, in foster care, in group homes they had been homeless, runaways, sexually abused and exploited. And they told stories of how schools, rather than being safe havens, had become one more ”hostile space” on that list. ”Black girls are getting the message that no one wants them there [in school] more than other girls,” says Morris. Here are some of the comments of those girls, taken from the book, with Morris’ context and commentary: Morris met Faith, 15, in juvenile detention. Faith identifies as gay. ”In school, if you get in an argument with a teacher, you damn near lost. . .. If it’s a student and teacher, the student’s automatically in trouble. ”I’m human. Just a human being, like this whole world . .. and then, I feel like, when you question somebody, it’s wrong ’cause [they’re] an adult. I feel like, why I can’t ask a question? . ..That’s why I got a mouth.” Morris: ”When girls are labeled disruptive and suspended for being ’defiant’ for asking questions, when this is seen not as a demonstration of critical thinking but an affront to teacher authority . .. girls begin to feel that the emphasis is on how they look, what they’re wearing, how they speak, how loud they speak, rather than whether they’re learning.” ”I think education is important, because nobody can take that from you,” said a girl named Jennifer, age 16, in the Bay Area. But, Jennifer says, she was raped at age 12 by a man who forced her into prostitution. By the age of 16, she had failed seventh grade, had been in and out of many foster homes and hadn’t attended school regularly for over three years. Skipping class led to suspensions so did fighting. ”A lot of people didn’t like me because . .. I used to dress raggedy because I didn’t have anything,” she told Morris. Meanwhile, at her foster home, ”they, like, talked about me. Told me I’m stupid and never going to be anything. And I believed it, and so that’s when I went back to prostitution.” Morris says Jennifer’s schools missed opportunities to pull her in rather than push her out. ”It’s important for us not to see the victimization of girls as separate from what they face in school,” she says. ”We need to rethink schools as places that are critical for girls in terms of keeping them out of the criminal system in a huge way.” The girls themselves, she says, even those in trouble with the law, understand the value of education. Paris transitioned from male to female during her high school years in New Orleans. ”Mostly, my problems didn’t come from the students. It came from the staff and the faculty of the school. [They would say] I was a ’distraction’ to the students. I was ’disruptive’ because how could a student focus knowing there’s a person like [me] in the room?” Morris: ”Most teachers do engage in their work with love. [But] we’re all impacted by implicit biases. . .. If we’re not actively monitoring and holding ourselves and institutions accountable, we’re missing the mark completely and leaving girls much more vulnerable.” Morris ends the book with two appendixes. One offers direct advice to girls themselves, their parents, educators and other concerned community members. Appendix B, ”Alternatives to Punishment,” is an argument for, and an explanation of, two different approaches to school discipline: positive behavioral intervention systems and restorative justice. Both focus on resolving conflicts within school rather than putting students out of school. ”When I was researching the book, the girls were repeatedly saying, ’If you just put me out of school that doesn’t solve the problem,’ ” Morris says. ”These are places where we’re going to be asking our children to learn. If we want them to be safe, we have to find ways for them to reconcile their conflicts.”"
"In India, spring officially begins with the festival of Holi. The date is not fixed, but follows the lunar calendar. It’s celebrated on the full moon day, the poornima, closest to the spring equinox  —   March 24 this year. The spring festival, also called the festival of color, is marked by celebrations that involve bonfires, colored powder and supersoakers. This mishmash of a holiday has confusing origins. According to one legend, it’s the day an evil king and his demonic sister, Holika, met their just desserts. Holika died in a fire, and to celebrate the victory of good over evil, people light bonfires the night before Holi (which for reasons that aren’t totally clear takes its name from the demon) and then apply some of the ash as a talisman. In a second origin story, the god Krishna,   about his   skin, applied colored powder to the faces of the fair cowherd girls to make them like him. It’s all this and more, but this year, the official stance is that it has to be less. Much less. There’s a shortage of water in India rainfall has been scanty, reservoir levels are dangerously low. People understand these conditions must translate to less profligate use of water, but they aren’t exactly overjoyed it’s tradition, after all, and much more fun when there’s a drenching involved. When I was growing up in New Delhi, Holi marked the end of a cold winter. It meant a lovely bonfire the night before waking up early to fill and knot a gazillion water balloons wearing my oldest clothes and then traveling in roving groups trying to outdo each other in pelting water balloons  —   shivering in our wet clothes, smearing ink and pakka, or powdered colors, all over friends and enemies, followed by an hour in the shower trying in vain to scrub the colors off. Everyone showed up at school the next day sporting various shades of green, blue and silver. Near the town of Mathura, where Krishna is supposed to have been born, the whole town participates. In Mumbai, where it’s already in the 90s by March, water is a necessary part of the celebration to keep you cool. Even for adults, it’s not enough to dip your hands into powder of different hues and rub it on each other’s faces and clothes. No, you’ve got to fill water guns and drench people in it. With money collected from building residents, an area, usually in the garden, is cordoned off, a tanker of well water is ordered and a temporary network of showers is hooked up to it . .. for cavorting in fake spring rain. As a bonus, only the adults are allowed near the seasonal drink of the day: thandai  —   cannabis leaves ground up into a paste and mixed into milk with almonds, which probably goes a long way in explaining the communal, clothed outdoor showering (and very unsexy wet   sticking to overweight uncles.) This year, though, there is to be no rain dancing in Mumbai. The entire country is short of water, but the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, is in the throes of a drought. A press release from the state’s top minister asks citizens to save water and play a ”dry” Holi instead. Approximately 2, 000 villages in the region have no water in their taps, and even Mumbai is facing water cuts. The city’s dams are less than a quarter full and the lakes that supply the city’s potable water have 16 percent less water now than they did this time last year. My friend Anisha’s gated community of buildings has a rambunctious Holi party every year, with not just rain dances, thandai, and a catered lunch after, but also a DJ who blasts hot Bollywood and Top 40 music for everyone to really get in the mood. According to Apurva Patel, managing committee member, last year their building ordered one   and two   tankers of water. That’s nearly 7, 500 gallons. ”This year, there is a drought. The general sentiment is about saving water,” he said. ”We’ll invite only one tanker, good for kids to enjoy, and we won’t have the   Holi celebrations with sprinkle type shower this time.” If the water tankers are actually declared unlawful, Patel said, ”We don’t want to breach any law, so if it’s a question like that we’ll cancel.” Manoj Malpani, who runs a water supply company, says Holi partiers might have a hard time finding a water supplier to deliver a tanker. ”The first issue is that there is no water,” he says. ”We’re struggling to give our customers drinking and cooking water. We never have and never would supply water to Holi or other celebrations.” Second, he says, there is a great danger of being fined and penalized by the government for water wastage, and plenty of watchdog NGOs are keeping an eye out for violations. ”Who,” he asks, ”would do that?” ”A dry Holi? I wouldn’t be too happy it,” says    Akshay Vijaykar. He gets that conserving water is a good idea but can’t help feeling let down. ”I’m a fan of the water. Holi is about water balloons, water guns and sliding through water and mud,” he says. ”This year, I’m not even sure I’m going to play.”"
"President Obama’s visit to Argentina this week coincides with the anniversary of a dark moment in that country’s history. Thursday marks 40 years since a 1976 military coup that ushered in that country’s   Dirty War, when as many as 30, 000 Argentines were killed or disappeared during a   dictatorship. Human rights groups want the U. S. to divulge what it knew back then. The president is now promising that he will declassify new documents. ”I’m launching a new effort to open up additional documents from that dark period,” Obama told a joint news conference in Buenos Aires on Wednesday with Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri. ”We previously declassified thousands of records from that era, but for the first time now, we will declassify military and intelligence records as well.” That’s welcome news to Carlos Osorio. At his office in the George Washington University library, he shows off boxes and boxes of government documents. These are papers that his research organization, the National Security Archive, forced the U. S. government to declassify more than a decade ago. Some appear to show former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger giving Argentina’s coup leaders the green light to go after their enemies. ”In early 1976 through January 1977, Henry Kissinger took U. S. policy into his hands,” Osorio says. ”And he was deliberately telling the [Argentine] military at every point through the year, ’We will support you.’ ” Although Kissinger has denied any complicity, Osorio says the State Department quietly released U. S. security assistance to Argentina  —   even as the U. S. ambassador at the time was reporting hundreds of human rights abuses. ”So they start to disappear these people  —   scientists, nuclear scientists, painters, journalists, famous historians start to disappear, and people ask the embassy to help with this,” Osorio says. But while the ambassador was raising serious human rights concerns, Kissinger was sending a different message to Argentina’s foreign minister, Osorio says: ”Whatever needs to be done, do it quickly.” He says this is just a glimpse of U. S. policy from that era. The military and intelligence documents that President Obama promised to release are expected to be even more revealing. Argentines are eager for any scraps of information about family members who disappeared in the Dirty War years, says Elisa Massimino, the president and CEO of Human Rights First. ”They are looking for answers,” she says. ”They are also, I think, looking for a deeper and more accurate understanding of the role of the United States.” Massimino says some activists in Argentina were angry when they first learned that Obama would visit on the anniversary of the military coup. But Human Rights First saw the visit as an opportunity to press the White House. ”The release of these documents is hugely important,” she says, ”not only for the people of Argentina, who are continuing to struggle to come to grips with that period  —   but also it’s important for Americans, too, because we have to come to terms with our own role in the Dirty War.” Osorio, who says he will advise the White House on what to look for and where, believes the administration could come away from this awkwardly timed trip looking good. ”If it was a gaffe, well, they just came out of it in a genius way,” he says. That way is what he’s calling ”declassification diplomacy.”"
"The Islamic State has been steadily losing territory in its   caliphate in Syria and Iraq, where a U. S. bombing campaign and a host of rival forces chip away at its holdings. Yet the Brussels bombings again demonstrated the group’s potency much farther afield, from terror attacks in Western Europe and North Africa to seizing control of Libya’s coastal city of Sirte. ”The reality is the Islamic State continues to grow in places like Libya, well beyond Iraq and Syria,” Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser during the Bush administration, told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”Those capabilities have allowed the Islamic State to present a more direct threat to the West than I think most had assumed,” Zarate added. Territory under ISIS control peaked in the summer of 2014, as it surged into Iraq from its strongholds in eastern Syria. The group declared a caliphate, or Islamic state. Though it received much less attention at the time, ISIS also announced broader goals of expanding its presence in the Muslim world and taking on the West. Many dismissed this as wildly unrealistic. ”ISIS has been waging three parallel campaigns  —   defending the caliphate, spreading disorder in the wider Middle East and destabilizing the West,” said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. Losing Territory In Iraq And Syria, The U. S. and its allies began bombing ISIS in August 2014, and since then, the group has lost several cities and an estimated 20 to 25 percent of its overall territory, mostly on the periphery. Yet ISIS retains a firm grip on a large patch of territory, including its de facto capital of Raqqa, in northern Syria, and Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. Reports by civilians who have fled and defectors who have left ISIS point to increasing hardships. The economy is squeezed, the   rules grate on many civilians and ISIS has reportedly cut salaries and benefits to its own fighters. But the group remains on the offensive in lands far beyond its core holdings. More than a dozen countries have been hit in attacks carried out or inspired by the Islamic State in less than two years, as shown in this graphic by The New York Times. ”We are promising the Crusader nations which have aligned themselves against the Islamic State that dark days are coming,” ISIS said Tuesday, in claiming responsibility for the Brussels attacks. The ISIS ambitions raise a key question: Are attacks on multiple fronts likely to strengthen or weaken the group over time? Extremist Islamist groups have traditionally made an   choice: They can control territory locally or carry out terrorist attacks abroad. ISIS sees itself as a government with a fixed address in Syria and Iraq, and that makes it risky to attack and antagonize other countries. Extremist groups that strike abroad tend to operate underground because they need to guard against the kind of retaliatory strikes that ISIS has faced. Yet ISIS has tried to turn setbacks at its home base to advantages elsewhere. Striking Further Afield, ISIS has reportedly told recruits that it’s getting harder to reach its territory in Syria and Iraq, and therefore they should go to set up affiliates and carry out attacks in other countries. Many ISIS attacks, like the double bombing at the airport and subway in Brussels, were   operations and not mere   attacks that Western security officials have often described as the most likely threat. ”This is an organization that . .. still controls territory and is still able to deploy operatives back into the heart of Europe,” Zarate said. The group has ”now paralyzed another European city. That is something that will persist and continue until ISIS and its safe haven is disrupted.” The U. S. military and European countries are particularly concerned about the several thousand ISIS fighters who have taken control of Sirte, on Libya’s Mediterranean coast. This is the strongest ISIS affiliate to date, though it has been spreading across North Africa. ”There is pressure on ISIS, no doubt about it,” said Gambhir. ”But who is really capable and willing to drive ISIS out of its core terrain? If the answer is no one, then ISIS can still use that terrain to attack in Iraq and Syria, in the broader region and in the West.” Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"During a press conference in Argentina, President Obama laid out how his administration is handling the Islamic State. He said the U. S. is making gains in Iraq and Syria, but stopping attacks like those in Brussels is ”difficult work.” ”It’s not because we don’t have the best and the brightest working on it,” he said. ”It’s not because we’re not taking the threat serious it’s because it’s challenging to find, identify very small groups of people who are willing to die themselves and can walk into a crowd and detonate a bomb. . .. My charge to my team is: Find every strategy possible to successfully reduce the risk of such terrorist attacks even as we go after their beating heart in places like Iraq and Syria.” Here’s Obama’s full answer:"
"Hillary Clinton is blasting Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump for foreign policy stances she argues would ”make America less safe and the world more dangerous.” Clinton spoke at Stanford University one day after terror attacks killed more than 30 people in Brussels, Belgium. The former secretary of state said, ”the threat we face from terrorism is real, it is urgent, and it knows no boundaries.” She outlined a   approach to fighting ISIS: increased bombings in Iraq and Syria increased   efforts around the world and ramped up intelligence and security efforts within the United States. But large portions of the address boiled down to a general election response to   rhetoric coming from Cruz and Trump. In the hours after the Brussels attacks, Cruz’s campaign released a statement saying, ”we need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” ”When Republican candidates like Ted Cruz call for treating American Muslims like criminals, and for racially profiling predominantly Muslim neighborhoods,” Clinton countered Wednesday, ”It’s wrong, it’s counterproductive, it’s dangerous.” And referencing Cruz’s   threat to ”carpet bomb” ISIS, Clinton argued, ”proposing that doesn’t make you sound tough. It makes you sound like you’re in over your head.” Clinton also defended one of the United States’ most   alliances, NATO, days after Trump criticized the European partnership. ”NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe but we’re spending a lot of money,” Trump told the Washington Post this week. ”I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as when it first evolved. . .. I’m not even knocking it, I’m just saying I don’t think it’s fair.” ”Turning our back on our alliances, or turning our alliance into a protection racket, would reverse decades of bipartisan American leadership, and send a dangerous single to friend and foe alike,” Clinton said. ”If Mr. Trump gets his way it will be like Christmas in the Kremlin. It will make America less safe and the world more dangerous.” Trump responded, as he often does, on Twitter. ”Just watched Hillary deliver a prepackaged speech on terror,” he wrote. ”She’s been in office fighting terror for 20 years  —   and look where we are!” ”I will be the best by far in fighting terror,” he wrote in a second tweet."
"Presidential candidate Donald Trump, after some delay, has named a few of his foreign policy advisers. One says he hopes that if Trump is elected, cooler heads will persuade him not to carry through on some of his promises. Walid Phares is a writer, Fox News commentator and onetime national security adviser to 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Although scores of GOP foreign policy specialists wrote an open letter denouncing various Trump views as ”unmoored in principle,” ”a recipe for economic disaster,” ”inexusable,” or reflecting ”the sentiment of a racketeer,” Phares decided he could help the candidate. ”It is hard to sign on,” he told Morning Edition, ”because it’s a very politically charged ambiance . .. but I accepted the task because I think there needs to be a major change in our policy” toward the Middle East. Phares said Trump asked him ”to provide education.” The conversation revealed that Phares opposes some of Trump’s most   proposals and wants to persuade the candidate not to pursue them. Trump has repeatedly called for the United States to ”torture” terrorism suspects. His most recent call came after Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels. Trump said that a terrorism suspect currently in custody, and cooperating with authorities, would have talked ”faster” if he had been tortured. Phares defended Trump’s repeated statements on torture as not an actual policy but as ”a reaction to a very complex and difficult and challenging situation.” Trump is calling for torture ”because we are in a political season,” he said, but in the White House ”he’s going to be tasking experts to answer that question, and I’m not sure that the experts are going to recommend any form of torture.” Speaking to NPR, Phares also seemed to draw a distinction between ”torture” and ”enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding. Defenders of such techniques commonly do not accept that they meet the definition of ”torture.” Torture would violate current law and has been called ineffective or unreliable by many specialists in interrogation. The Trump adviser appeared to favor only ”enhanced” techniques that in his view fall short of torture. Trump has drawn no such distinctions. On CNN Tuesday, he referred to waterboarding as ”your minimal form of torture” and told NBC’s Today ”you could expand the laws more than waterboarding to get the information from these people.” He has said that he would favor techniques ”a hell of a lot worse” than waterboarding. He has said the United States must keep up with ISIS, which is ”chopping off heads.” He has repeatedly used the word ”torture” while advocating it. Phares echoes a number of Trump supporters wrestling with the   controversial promises that have become the central themes of Trump’s campaign. These supporters express hope that if Trump is elected, it will turn out that the   businessman does not mean what he says. ”He will count on advisers,” Phares predicts."
"On the sixth anniversary of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the federal health law was back before a seemingly divided Supreme Court Wednesday. At stake this time is the controversial requirement that most health insurance plans provide women with access to contraceptives at no additional    cost. Specifically at issue is whether a special accommodation the Obama administration has provided for religiously affiliated employers (such as universities or hospitals) still violates a federal law protecting the free exercise of religion. Under the rules issued by the Obama administration in 2014, religious nonprofit organizations don’t have to provide contraceptive coverage, but they do have to either fill out a government form or write a letter stating that they object and telling the government who their insurer is so the government can arrange for contraceptive coverage to be provided. The current case, Zubik v. Burwell, is actually seven cases being considered together. The plaintiffs, led by the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, argue that even the act of writing a letter makes them ”complicit in sin” by enabling employees to obtain birth control coverage. ”My clients would like to be conscientious objectors,” attorney Paul Clement told the justices. ”But the government is insisting they be conscientious collaborators.” The liberal members of the court made it clear that they agreed with the   rulings in the cases, all of which found that the requirements do not pose a ”substantial burden” on the exercise of religion under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. ”It’s not a substantial burden if someone else is going to do the action you object to,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Conservatives, however, seemed less convinced. ”Their objection is the government is hijacking their insurance plans,” said Chief Justice John Roberts. Even though the religious employers do not have to pay for or directly arrange for the coverage, he said, the employers’ insurance plans are ”being used by the government to provide these services.” If the court deadlocks in a   tie, as seems possible, it could order the case to be argued again whenever there is a ninth justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia. Or it could issue a split decision that would uphold the appeals court rulings in question, but set no national precedent. This is not only the fourth time in five years the court has been asked to rule on a key aspect of the health law, it is the second time in three years it has taken up the   contraceptive mandate. In 2014, the court ruled   that the craft store chain Hobby Lobby and other closely held   companies didn’t have to provide contraception as part of their health insurance plans if they had a religious objection. The current case comes in the midst of an election campaign that could be affected by efforts to limit women’s access to contraception and abortion. Poll results released Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that more than a third of those surveyed (and 40 percent of women) said there is ”a   effort to limit women’s reproductive health choices and services.” (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) Not surprisingly, Democratic women were more likely than Republican women to say there is a widescale effort (56 percent vs. 25 percent) and far more likely to say that they are ”personally concerned” about women’s reproductive health choices (52 percent vs. 18 percent). The contraceptive case comes only weeks after the court heard a case from Texas that could limit women’s access to abortion. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Julie Rovner is on Twitter: @jrovner"
"One of the blockbuster cases before the Supreme Court this term may very well end up in a   tie. Wednesday, the eight judges heard a case about the Affordable Care Act’s guarantee of free birth control for women. The law also gives an automatic exception to houses of worship, like churches  —   but not nonprofits like religious schools and hospitals  —   that object to contraceptives. The government gave those nonprofits a workaround, but they say that it still burdens their free exercise of religion. Here’s what’s NPR’s Nina Totenberg told us right after she sat through arguments: ”The bottom line is that the court seemed very divided. This may well be one of those    ties. The key to it all appears to be Justice Anthony Kennedy, and he sent mixed signals. He said he couldn’t imagine that you could say to a university that they don’t have to at least opt out so that contraceptive coverage can be provided for their faculty staff and students. But the chief justice kept referring to this as a hijacked plan . .. [saying] that the federal government was hijacking the plan of the religious nonprofit. And Kennedy by the end of the argument was adopting that language repeatedly. It’s mixed signals. But if you were a betting person you might say that this was going to be a    tie.” If this case comes down to a   vote, it will create a patchwork situation in the country. Seven of eight appeals courts have ruled that requiring nonprofits to opt out from the mandate doesn’t impose a ”substantial burden” on religious rights. One court ruled otherwise. That means that in most of the country, nonprofits will have to continue to opt out, but in some other states they will be exempt. Ultimately, if this does end up in a   tie, the case is likely to end up at the Supreme Court again, once a new justice is appointed."
"The Civil Rights Act bans sex discrimination, but does it cover sexual orientation? The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it does  —   and it wants this position validated by federal courts. This month, the EEOC filed its   lawsuits charging employers with discrimination against gay and lesbian employees. ”The commission takes the position that discrimination because of sexual orientation is intrinsically a form of sex discrimination,” says David Lopez, the agency’s general counsel. ”I think it will help illuminate for employers their responsibilities and it will help illuminate for employees the rights.” One of the two cases alleges that a gay man working at a health clinic in Pennsylvania was subject to homophobic epithets and degrading comments about his sex life. His complaints, he says, were ignored. The other case involves a forklift company in Baltimore, where a lesbian employee alleges that her supervisor made lewd comments and gestures, promising to turn her ”back into a woman.” She claims she was fired after lodging a complaint. Greg Nevins, a workplace fairness counsel at Lambda Legal, says these are very common complaints. His organization represents LGBT issues in court and fields thousands of workplace complaints a year. He says historically, cases like these where gay and lesbian workers bring charges do not fare well. ”Generally the courts weren’t very hospitable,” Nevins says. But he says that is changing. Now 22 states and many cities have passed laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Nevins says in more recent years, some court decisions have ruled that sexual discrimination is a federal civil rights violation. Sarah Warbelow, legal director for   advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, agrees that the tide seems to be shifting. ”If you know that you have recourse, you’re going to be much more willing to go down to your HR department and have a conversation,” she says. However, many also don’t believe the government agency should be rewriting the law, says Jonathan Segal, an employment attorney representing employers. ”There are some that view this as the EEOC trying to create law. I think this eventually will get to the Supreme Court, if it’s not resolved by Congress beforehand,” Segal says. The employers charged in the EEOC’s suits both deny the charges and say they have policies that ban discrimination, including on the basis of sexual orientation. Eric Meyer also represents employers. He says harassment is already illegal, and most employers  —   especially larger ones  —   already have their own policies that protect LGBT workers. ”An employer may not have a specific policy or may not wish to have a specific policy to address this, but they do so at their own risk,” he says. Whatever the law is, he says, companies should train their managers and address all forms of discrimination in their policies."
"This week Batman and Superman do battle on movie screens around the country in the much ballyhooed Batman vs. Superman. Superman is basically the same Superman he’s always been. An   Golden Boy  —   albeit from the planet Krypton  —   fighting for Truth, Justice, you know the rest. Batman, on the other hand, is a little different every time he appears on the scene. Sure, there are a few constants: the cape, the cowl, the Batmobile. But, depending on the decade, you might get the gritty growl of Michael Keaton, the   camp of Adam West, or even the cheeky   of the LEGO Batman, played by Will Arnett. And according to Glen Weldon’s new book, The Caped Crusade, each iteration of Batman tells us a little bit about the culture that produced him. (We should also mention that Glen Weldon is a regular panelist on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, and writes for our website.) Weldon tells NPR’s Audie Cornish that the very first Batman was actually a thug. ”Basically, a guy who dressed up in a bat costume and would terrify his victims,” he says. ”He was an international man of intrigue, but he was mostly a bruiser.” On the comic book panic of the 1940s and ’50s, In the ’40s and ’50s there was a crusade, led by a guy named Dr. Fredric Wertham, saying that comics were ruining literacy by breaking up sentences in word balloons  —   that was thought to be bad  —   they were presenting sexual imagery, violent imagery  —   he was kind of right about that, they were  —   but also that they were contributing to juvenile delinquency. He proved that by saying, look, I have all these juvenile delinquents, and they read comics. At the time, almost 95 percent of kids read comics, so that wasn’t really the slam dunk he thought it was. His crusade . .. basically made a lot of the industry just go out of business, and decimated crime comics and horror comics in a big way. Superheroes hung on, but only by their white knuckles. On the camp classic Batman TV show, You gotta remember when this appeared  —   it was 1966. The popular shows were things like Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan’s Island. People wanted escapism. People wanted something that did not remind them of Vietnam, that did not remind them of political assassinations, of youth riots. They wanted something completely encased in a little hermetic bubble, and this fit the bill. This was silly  —   they just took the comics of the time and put them on the big screen without translating them, just put them on the big screen, but invested them with all of this gravity. The Pop Art movement was huge then, and the Pop Art movement relished things that were slick, mass produced and colorful, like comic books. It really keyed into a lot of different competing trends. And was also funny as hell. On how comics become more adult entertainment, Comics, up until about 1970, were written for kids. And when the Batman television series died, the makers of the Batman comics realized they had to do something. So they said, we need to figure out how to give this character a personality, really, because up to then he’d been a cop in a cape, like a lot of other superheroes. So they decide to look back at the very beginning of Batman, where he has an origin . .. and they saw this one panel, where this young boy, Bruce Wayne, decides he’s going to dedicate the rest of his life to warring on all criminals. He swears an oath. This oath is a very, it’s a childish notion, but that’s its power, because he is not dedicated to going after the guy who killed his parents  —   he’s dedicated to fighting   Crime. And so they made Batman an obsessive. On Batman and nerd culture, Batman is a great lens through which to view nerd culture that’s the whole argument of the book. The trait of nerds to insist that the grim, gritty, dark Batman is the only Batman that exists  —   which ignores more than 30 years of history, and does not permit something like the Batman character of the Adam West television show to exist  —   is just wrongheaded. Different people come to this character and bring different things to him. You can look at the Batman of Adam West, and you can look at Christian Bale’s ”swear to me” Batman and see that they’re the same person. Not because of the   but because they’re motivated by the same thing, which is the oath. On Batman’s malleability, When I started this book, I thought I knew what I was going to get into. I had written a cultural history of Superman, where I realized that he is a flattering mirror to us he is us as we want to be seen by the world. So I figured Batman must be the dark mirror, right? Things we don’t want to admit about ourselves, like the rage we feel when we get cut off in traffic, the thirst for vengeance we feel when a   bully takes our lunch money, just picking an example out of the air  —   but that’s just the rage. You’re looking and you’re only seeing the first level. It’s this oath, this idea that he will dedicate himself to the incredibly optimistic notion of ”never again” that makes him, ultimately, a creature of hope and not rage."
"Batman has two identities: his costumed,   persona and his everyday identity as billionaire Bruce Wayne. Right? Or maybe it’s not quite that simple  —   as Glen Weldon compellingly puts forth in The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture. The   to his 2013 book Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, this new superhero overview peeks under the iconic cowl to unveil the many faces of Batman  —   as well as the many faces of his millions of fans  —   since the character’s creation 77 years ago. And it accomplishes what so many supervillains, from The Joker to Bane, have long desired to do: pin down Batman and systematically dissect him. That’s not to say Weldon’s out to deconstruct Batman. He writes from the enthused, informed perspective of a diehard fan  —   one of the selfsame nerds of the book’s subtitle  —   while keeping just enough journalistic remove to give the book a rigorous backbone. Laid out chronologically, Caped traces Batman’s evolution, starting with his origins as a   mishmash of existing characters and archetypes, from demons to Dracula to pulp antiheroes like The Shadow. Creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger  —   the former a pathological tracer of other cartoonists’ artwork  —   are the first in a long line of writers, artists, actors, and filmmakers who have defined and radically redefined Batman over the decades, from his start as a   ”Pinkerton man in a leotard” to a campy Pop Art avatar, to the gruff, grimacing specter of vengeance he’s best known as today. Weldon breezes through this   history with authority and ease, highlighting the big moments in Batman’s timeline while providing rich, witty commentary. ”Dude was basically wearing an umbrella,” he says of Finger’s original depiction of Batman’s cape in 1939 describing Adam West’s   screen test for the ’60s TV show Batman, Weldon jests, ”He inserts pauses that are not merely pregnant but two weeks overdue.” Even his footnotes are funny. To its credit, the book’s light tone never veers into   snark. Instead, Weldon has a keen eye for paradox: ”Kane and Finger’s attempt to cash in on the Superman craze had birthed a character who was in so many ways the Man of Tomorrow’s antithesis,” he notes, then later makes a convincing case for why Batman: The Animated Series from the ’90s triumphs as both lavish fan service and a gateway for the uninitiated. The Caped Crusade does the same. Winks and   for the hardcore fan abound casual   though, won’t be lost. Weldon navigates Batman’s history with an expert step, teasing out the latent homoeroticism of his relationship with Robin  —   a point of contention since psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s   crusade of the ’50s  —   with a winning mix of humor and incisive social analysis. He sprinkles the book with anecdotes, including a framing sequence involving a trip of his own to San Diego   that eloquently illustrates his views on Batman  —   and on Batman fandom. The Caped Crusade is as much about the cult of Batman as it is about Batman himself, including  ’s growth from a network of homemade zines in the ’60s to its current, massive Internet iteration. Weldon doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to his fellow fans. The book might as well be his   Theses nailed to the door of geekdom  —   an excoriation of how insular, homophobic, and at times violent the fan community has become, up to and including the horrific shooting at a 2012 showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo. But he’s quick to celebrate the positive, creative ways fans have become proprietary about Batman in recent times, most notably through fanfic and cosplay. The history of Batman is tied intimately to the people who perpetually reinvent him, but also to those who worship him  —   or frighteningly relate to him. ”Batman is an inkblot we see in him what we want to,” Weldon writes. It’s The Caped Crusade’s mantra  —   and under that famous cowl, Weldon sees ugliness, wonder, and the undercurrents of pop culture in all their conflicting glory. Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A. V. Club, a Hugo   editor and author of the novel Taft 2012."
"So, maybe your Instagram pics of #delicious #foodporn never look nearly as scrumptious as the real thing. Don’t despair  —   it’s not you. It’s just that your food is too real. Professional food stylists use all sorts of cheats to make their dishes appear perfectly delectable on camera  —   often incorporating completely inedible ingredients. They garnish roasted meat with motor oil to make it glisten just so, redden fruit with lipstick and sub in glue for milk. They stash tampons soaked in hot water behind food to make it appear steaming hot. In their online series Faking It, U. K.  art director Sandy Suffield, along with photographer Dan Matthews and food stylist Jack Sargeson, expose and poke fun at some of this trickery. Their photos imagine what lies just outside the frame of the food photos you’d find in glossy magazines and   cookbooks. ”These days, there’s a sort of voguish thing for food that looks beautifully disheveled,” Suffield says. ”So food photographers are perhaps ’faking it’ a bit less these days.” But in the days of analog cameras and   when photographers depended on big, hot studio lights that would melt or discolor foods, stylists had to get creative to make food look good, Suffield notes. ”So for our shoot, we used some of the tricks from that era,” she says. ”And we even styled it to look a bit ’70s.” Suffield researched the kookiest tricks of the trade, and got Sargeson to help her whip up some of the fake dishes featured in the photos. ”It’s just really funny,” Suffield says. ”It’s funny how amazingly unappetizing some of this food really is.” We asked Suffield to walk us through how she created the deliciously fake foods in the series.  In the old days, food stylists would make fake champagne ”out of water, soy sauce and Alka Seltzer  —   so that’s what we did here,” Suffield says. ”And then you can see we used little plastic blue things for artfully propping up the food.” ”Normally, they’d use instant mashed potatoes to make fake ice cream, which wouldn’t melt under the hot studio lights  —   but we actually didn’t end up using that method,” Suffield says. ”Instead, Jack made that ice cream out of lard, powdered sugar and food coloring. And where the ice cream touches the glass and begins to melt, he made this substance  —   I think using just powdered sugar, water and food coloring  —   that’s a different viscosity, it’s a bit thinner. And he just painted that in.” ”I think the level of detail here makes it all funnier,” she says. ”The grapes have a bloom  —   just that really lovely,   dusty look  —   that’s created with talcum powder. You’ll also notice lots of exposed toothpicks, and that’s just so the grapes look tastefully composed. The fishing wire is there for the same reason.” ”Instead of edible gold leaf, we just used spray paint to decorate the cake. And that shaving powder is used to make the cream, which won’t melt as readily as real cream.” ”The motor oil is used to baste the meat, to make it shiny. And you’ll also notice there’s some boot polish in the shot  —   that’s used to darken the meat if it looks too red. And then the hairspray is used to give a gloss to the carrots.”"
"When California’s    law takes effect this June, terminally ill patients who decide to end their lives could be faced with a hefty bill for the lethal medication. It retails for more than $3, 000. Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes the drug most commonly used in   suicide, doubled the drug’s price last year, one month after California lawmakers proposed legalizing the practice. ”It’s just pharmaceutical company greed,” said David Grube, a family doctor in Oregon, where   death has been legal for 20 years. The drug is Seconal, or secobarbital, its generic name. Originally developed in the 1930s as a sleeping pill, it fell out of favor when people died from taking too much, or from taking it in combination with alcohol. But when intended as a lethal medication to hasten the death of someone suffering from a terminal disease, Seconal is the drug of choice. ”It works very quickly and very gently,” Grube says. ”People fall asleep with no complications. It’s a very gentle passing.” In 2009, Grube remembers the price of a lethal dose of Seconal  —   100 capsules  —   was less than $200. Over the next six years, it shot up to $1, 500, according to drug price databases   and First Databank. Then Valeant bought Seconal last February and immediately doubled the price to $3, 000. Most drug companies justify such hikes by pointing to high research costs. But Grube says that’s not the case with Seconal. It’s been around for 80 years. ”It’s not a complicated thing to make, there’s no research being done on it, there’s no development,” he says. ”That to me is unconscionable.” Valeant bought several other drugs at the same time it bought Seconal, raising some of those prices as much as 500 percent. That sparked a congressional investigation into its pricing practices. (The CEO resigned Monday amid an accounting controversy). ”Valeant sets prices for drugs based on a number of factors,” the company said in a statement, including the cost of developing or acquiring the drug, the availability of generics and the benefits of the drug compared with costly alternative treatments. ”When possible, we offer patient assistance programs to mitigate the effects of price adjustments and keep    costs affordable for patients.” The most likely explanation for raising the price of Seconal is the lack of generics, says Mick Kolassa, founding partner of Medical Marketing Economics, a firm that advises drug companies on how to price and market their drugs. Seconal went off patent in the early 1990s. There were some generics for a while, but then demand shrank and manufacturers abandoned them. ”So that meant when the current company bought it, they didn’t have any generic competition, simply because the market got so small that it left,” Kolassa said. ”So in situations like that, a company can acquire it and raise the price.” Kolassa says it’s also possible that the demand for even the   drug is so low that it’s hard to recoup the costs of making and selling it. ”Here’s a company that said, well, we can raise the price, keep it on the market and make some money with it,” he said. ”Or we can walk away and the product goes away.” Whatever the explanation, what cancer patients like Elizabeth Wallner see is a drug company taking advantage. She has one word to describe the pharmaceutical executive who decided to double the price of Seconal: ”Scumbag.” Wallner, who lives in Sacramento, Calif. was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer five years ago. It spread to her liver and lungs. She always thought that if her suffering became too unbearable, she would consider ending her life. But she never thought about the price tag of the lethal drug. ”You’re going to make money off my death,” she said. She’s most worried about her son. ”You are literally, at that point, taking the money from children,” said Wallner, who is 52. ”Everything I have, if I’m going to die tomorrow, everything I have will be left to my son who will be 20 years old and almost 100 percent on his own.” Under the California    law, it is optional for health insurance companies to cover the costs of the practice. Most private insurers plan to do so, according to the California Association of Health Plans. So does the state’s Medicaid program. But for patients who aren’t covered, there is a cheaper alternative: a   drug cocktail that can be mixed by a compounding pharmacy for about $400. Grube says the cocktail works just as well, but doctors usually don’t prescribe it because of the hassle some patients have to go through to get it. Seconal, on the other hand, is a   pill, routinely available at most retail drugstores. He says advocacy groups like Compassion  Choices are working on campaigns to reduce drug costs and to educate doctors and patients about the law. ”My dream is that any Californian who will choose aid in dying would have few burdens or barriers to jump through,” Grube said. Katie Orr contributed reporting from Sacramento. This story was first published on KQED’s blog State of Health. "
"Shortly after this week’s terror attacks in Brussels, American politicians and elected officials of all stripes issued statements and made comments. Many said they stand in solidarity with Belgium, that the country was in their thoughts and prayers. President Obama said America would do all it could to help bring the perpetrators to justice. But at least one comment after the attacks drew swift criticism in some corners. In a statement issued Tuesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wrote, ”We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” During a news conference in Argentina on Wednesday, President Obama went after Cruz, alluding to surveillance programs in Cuba, a country he just left. ”As far as the notion of having surveillance of neighborhoods where Muslims are present, I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance,” Obama said, ”which by the way, the father of Sen. Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free. The notion that we would start down that slippery slope makes absolutely no sense. It’s contrary to who we are. And it’s not going to help us defeat ISIL.” ”I just have to say it’s reprehensible,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told CBS News of Cruz’s proposal. ”His comments are not about safety and security. It’s demagoguery.” On Wednesday, New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told CBS This Morning that Cruz has ”no idea what the hell he’s talking about.” Bratton said he took great offense at the statement. ”I have almost a thousand Muslim officers in the NYPD,” Bratton said. ”Ironically, when he’s running around here, we probably have a few Muslim officers guarding him [Cruz].” On Tuesday, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said of plans to increase surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods: ”That would be unconstitutional. It would be wrong. We are fighting a terrorist organization, a barbaric organization that is killing innocent people. We are not fighting a religion.” At a rally in Seattle on Tuesday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took shots at Cruz, and Donald Trump, who said he agreed with Cruz on the patrolling comment and said in the aftermath of the attacks that torture might be necessary to gain intelligence of the attacks. ”What Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and others are suggesting is not only wrong, it’s dangerous,” she said. On CBS Wednesday morning, Cruz defended his comment, saying policing focused on particular communities has worked before. ”Gang violence is a real problem in a lot of places across the country,” Cruz said. ”What does law enforcement do with proactive policing? You go into the neighborhoods where gang violence is a problem, and you work proactively to get the gang members off the street.” In another press appearance, Cruz said: ”It is standard good policing to direct your resources to where the threat is coming from. We should do the exact same thing with radical Islamic terrorism.”"
"After six days of little sleep and a lot of music, the All Songs Considered team is back from Austin with a bucketload of bands and discoveries to share. On this week’s show, hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are joined by NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson to share their favorite finds and memorable moments, from the stadium presence of Israeli singer Ninet Tayeb and party brass band Lucky Chops to the dark, moody folk of Edith Crash and the   rock and roll of Seratones. Want to see and hear more from SXSW? We’ve got live concert video including performances by Mitski, Charles Bradley and Anderson . Paak lullabies from Lucius and Declan McKenna nightly podcasts taped in the wee hours direct from the streets of Austin and much more."
"Theoretically speaking, there is widespread confusion about the word ”theory.” Right? Many people interpret the word as iffy knowledge, based mostly on speculative thinking. It is used indiscriminately to indicate things we know  —   that is, based on solid empirical evidence  —   and things we aren’t sure about. Not a good mix at all, especially when certain theories speak directly to people’s religious and   sensitivities, such as the ”theory of evolution” or ”Big Bang theory.” There is also the danger of falling for meaning traps set by groups with specific agendas. Looking at the New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) listing for ”theory” doesn’t help: So, there is usage within a scientific context (”the theory of. ..”) and in a subjective context (”my theory is. ..”)  —   an obvious problem. When used in the context of a phrase, as ”in theory,” it gets worse. According to NOAD, ”used in describing what is supposed to happen or be possible, usually with the implication that it does not in fact happen.” [My italics.] Clearly, in this context, ”in theory” means something that is probably wrong. No wonder there is confusion. It is confusing! A first step in trying to clarify the meaning( s) of theory is to understand in which context the word is being used, and to keep different contexts separate. So, if a scientist is using the word theory, as in ”theory of relativity,” ”theory of evolution,” or ”Big Bang theory,” it should be understood as a statement within a scientific context. In this case, a theory is certainly NOT mere subjective speculation, or something that is probably wrong, but, quite the contrary, something that has been scrutinized by the scientific process of empirical validation and has, so far, passed the test of explaining the data. Unfortunately, even within the scientific context the word is misused, which only adds to the confusion. For example, ”superstring theory” refers to a speculative theory in   physics where the fundamental building blocks of matter are not elementary particles but tiny vibrating tubes of energy. Given the lack of empirical support so far for the idea, ”superstring hypothesis” would be a much more appropriate characterization. Scientists may know the status of the hypothesis, but most people won’t. We should be more careful. A scientific theory is an accumulated body of knowledge constructed to describe specific natural phenomena, such as the force of gravity or biodiversity, that has been vetted by the scientific community. It is the best that we can come up with to make sense of nature at a given time. Mind you, as our understanding of natural phenomena change, theories can change as well. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the old theories are wrong. It usually means that the old theories have a limited range of validity not covered by newly discovered phenomena. For example, Newton’s theory of gravity works really well to send rocket ships to Neptune, but not to describe a black hole. New theories are born from the cracks in old ones. Unfortunately, suspicion of certain scientific theories can come from confusing subjective speculation with objective description. A scientific theory is different from a scientific hypothesis. A scientific hypothesis is an idea not yet empirically tested and, hence, still not vetted by the scientific community. A theory is a hypothesis that has been tested and vetted. Much popular confusion could be avoided if the word theory would be understood within the right context. The   trap of exploring the double meaning of the word theory to confuse or willfully misguide popular opinion should only catch those who don’t know, or choose to neglect, what theory means within its scientific or subjective context. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist  —   and professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the   of 13. 7, a prolific author of papers and essays, and active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser."
"Giving nearly two years’ notice, New York Yankees’ veteran Alex Rodriguez announced his retirement from playing at the end of 2017 season when his contract with the team is up. ”I won’t play after next year,” Rodriguez, who turns 41 in July, told ESPN. ”I’ve really enjoyed my time. For me, it is time for me to go home and be dad.” Rodriguez’s retirement will mark the end of a long but tumultuous baseball career. In his 20 seasons in the league so far, Rodriguez has been named the American League MVP three times, has been nominated to the A. L.   team 14 times, and was part of the Yankees’ World Series winning team in 2009. The designated hitter also enters the 2016 season with 687 career home runs, needing just 28 more to pass Babe Ruth for third on the   list. But Rodriguez’s career will be forever shadowed by using   drugs, for which he was suspended for the entire 2014 season. Major League Baseball said he used numerous   substances and then tried to ” ” his use by obstructing baseball’s investigation. At the time of the suspension, Rodriguez maintained he did not use   substances, though when he returned to baseball before the the 2015 season, he released a handwritten letter to fans that said, ”I take full responsibility for the mistakes that led to my suspension for the 2014 season.” He also wrote, ”I regret that my actions made the situation worse than it needed to be. To Major League Baseball, the Yankees, the Steinbrenner family, the Players Association and you, the fans, I can only say I’m sorry.” Though he missed a full season, Rodriguez was able to put together an impressive 2015 season, especially for his age. According to ESPN, he tallied his highest number of runs scored (83) since 2008, most   (523) and games played (151) since 2007, and his best slugging percentage (. 486) since 2010. Plus his 33 home runs last season were the   in MLB history for a player 39 years of age or older. It will be interesting to see how Rodriguez’s extended farewell tour unfolds in comparison with those of his teammates, the universally beloved shortstop Derek Jeter, who retired in 2014 and the legendary relief pitcher Mariano Rivera who retired in 2013. Both of those players enjoyed unbesmirched reputations and were sent off with tearful goodbyes and much fanfare."
"Malik I. Taylor, the rapper known as Phife Dawg who was a founding member of the seminal group A Tribe Called Quest, died Tuesday at the age of 45. His family said in a statement that Phife died as a result of complications from diabetes. NPR’s Andrew Limbong tells our Newscast unit that Phife, who was one of two main vocalists for A Tribe Called Quest, brought a lot of humor to the group. ”There was a   charm to Phife’s lyrics  —   he was always making fun of his appearance,” Andrew reports. ”He was a teen when he got together with his friends to form one of the most acclaimed rap groups in history.” Last year marked the   anniversary of the group’s first album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Phife and his bandmate Ali Shaheed Muhammad spoke with All Things Considered about the group’s beginnings. You can listen to the full interview here: A Tribe Called Quest immediately stood out. ”Their socially conscious lyrics and Afrocentric visual style were in line with contemporaries like Public Enemy, but the vibe was different  —   loose, fun, with   beats pulled from sources far and wide,” as NPR described last year. ”We pretty much were always into being ourselves. We didn’t want to be like anybody else,” Phife told host Kelly McEvers. And on the group’s five studio albums, Phife acted ”as the   gruff vocal counterpoint to  ’s smooth, mellow flow,” Rolling Stone reported. Speaking about that first album, Phife told Kelly, ”I hated my voice back then. So if there was one thing I could do over, it would definitely be that.” He added that he hated one   line from their song Can I Kick It?  —   which he described as  . Phife told Kelly he was struggling with   health issues. He said that he had had one kidney transplant, and was on the list for another one. While he was waiting for the first kidney, he said he ”thought it was over”  —   that he wouldn’t be able to perform. But as he told Kelly last November, ”Now I’m back in it  .” The band, which broke up in 1998, recently reunited for an appearance on The Tonight Show. As NPR’s Frannie Kelley wrote in 2011, ”A Tribe Called Quest burned hot and bright. They worked collaboratively much of the time, sampling the jazz records their fathers loved instead of relying on the funk and James Brown samples rampant in   at the time. They had a huge impact on their peers and on a younger generation.” The other members of A Tribe Called Quest released a statement, which says in part: ”Our hearts are heavy. We are devastated. This is something we weren’t prepared for although we all know that life is fleeting. It was no secret about his health and his fight. But the fight for his joy and happiness gave him everything he needed. The fight to keep his family happy, his soul happy and those around him happy, gave him complete and unadulterated joy. .. until he heeded his fathers call.” Phife’s manager Dion Liverpool said in a statement: ”While I mourn the loss of my best friend and brother, I also will celebrate his incredible life and contribution to many people’s ears across the world. Even with all his success, I have never met a person as humble as he.” Meanwhile, others in the industry are paying tribute to Phife on social media:"
"North Korea watchers haven’t been getting much sleep this year. The Kim Jong Un regime started the year with a literal bang  —   a nuclear test on Jan. 7, marking its fourth such test in the past decade. That was followed by a rocket launch in February, and claims that it had a miniaturized nuclear warhead. On the heels of those already provocative acts, the country launched a flurry of   missiles from its northeastern coast on Monday, according to South Korea. And last Friday, North Korea fired off its first midrange ballistic missile since 2014, which traveled about 500 miles before landing in the Sea of Japan. ”This particular launch was sort of like   after everything they’ve already done this year,” says Melissa Hanham, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. ”Those of us who work on North Korea, we’re all getting a little exhausted because there’s so much, every day.” Outside the swirl of military activity, the regime detained Otto Warmbier, a    American college student, saying he was attempting to steal a propaganda poster. He’s been sentenced to 15 years in prison and hard labor. And new bombastic threats against the U. S. and its allies roll out each day. North Korea pledged to nuke the White House until ”not even ashes are left” and a ”deadly baptism of fire so that [South Korea] may not exist any longer.” With all the bluster of late, what does Kim Jong Un want? What Kim Wants, ”There are a lot of debates about ’What North Korea wants,’ ” says Sheena Greitens, a fellow in the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings Institution and an assistant professor at the University of Missouri. ”First, what matters are the interests of the very top leadership, which is narrower than ’North Korea’ or even ’the North Korean government.’ Second, North Korea might use a range of strategies . .. but we should remember that they’re all aimed at the same underlying, fundamental objective: ensuring Kim’s political survival.” March is always a time of heightened tensions. This is when the U. S. and South Korea stage their annual joint military exercises, involving hundreds of thousands of troops. This year, the North has been especially demonstrative as it lays the groundwork for a major strategy meeting, its first Workers Party Congress since 1980. ”Some of this is just the kind of   to this big political event,” says Stephan Haggard, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego. The Chinese Communist Party holds these summits every few years to chart strategy, a common practice of communist states. In North Korea, the party congress framework was dropped under Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, who ruled from 1994 until his death in 2011. Soon to be revived under his son, the congress is expected to roll out the next phase of Kim’s rule. ”The stakes are always higher in the first few years of a dictator’s time in power, and the first few years are almost always more [internally] violent,” Greitens says. ”The rules of the game under the new leader are still being established  —   both inside the country and externally  —   so it makes uncertainty higher.” As the   leader of the family dynasty, Kim needs to establish his own legitimacy, and that means standing up to enemies and advancing the nuclear program. ”I don’t think it’s all scientific tests,” Hanham says. ”I think a lot of this is political.” Back in 2013, Kim publicly outlined his policy of byungjin  —   which roughly translates to ”simultaneous”  —   as in developing nuclear capabilities and the economy at the same time. But this creates a contradiction for a poor country of 25 million with a small economy: Developing nuclear weaponry undermines economic development. North Korea needs foreign investment and knows it. Its Rason special economic zone is a hub of Chinese investment and is dotted with hotels, casinos and restaurants catering to Chinese businessmen. It hosts potential foreign investors for tours of its plants, sends some of its workers for entrepreneurship training abroad and has, in recent years, inked deals with companies like Orascom, from Egypt, to build its WiFi infrastructure. But its nuclear test and missile launches have brought a new round of United Nations sanctions and reinforced its status as a pariah state. Who’s going to do deals with the North now? China, which has protected North Korea in the past, supported the sanctions. The China Factor, ”It might have looked plausible to [Kim] that he could have it both ways, as he watched the   Korea relationship deepen at the end of his father’s era,” Haggard says. ”Investments were taking place in minerals, you’re getting coal, iron ore. Even as trade was falling off with the rest of the world, he still had Kaesong and he still had the Chinese. But that’s why this sanctions move is different.” Kaesong, in southern North Korea, is the joint   industrial complex that employed 54, 000 North Koreans. But South Korea shut it down after the North’s nuclear test. That represented some of North Korea’s hard currency earning power, but only a fraction  —   it’s far more dependent on China as an economic lifeline. If Chinese businesses maintain their ties and trade continues, Kim has more standing for his byungjin policy. But there is some evidence that Chinese businesses and entrepreneurs are starting to pull back a bit. ”If the Chinese come through [on the sanctions] even in part, then the game is kind of changed,” Haggard says. ”It all depends on whether the Chinese choose to continue to protect them, and my interpretation is they’re fed up.” The Outside World, While survival may be the top priority, the North Korean leadership seems concerned at some level with the outside world. When North Korea’s state media posted images of Kim with what was described as a warhead, the dismissals immediately followed: He couldn’t possibly have that kind of technology yet, and the orb was so shiny and round that snarky social media observers dubbed it ”the disco ball.” ”The North Korean side knows it suffers from a very serious credibility deficit in its public engagements with the world, and is changing to meet the information management challenges of the current era,” says Christopher Green, a regional researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Case in point: The American detainee, Otto Warmbier, got a ”trial” and the North allowed the world to see some evidence. There are other North Korean nods to reality that may show it’s trying to combat a credibility gap. The country has acknowledged that a 2012 missile launch failed. A notorious gulag, Camp22, was reportedly closed. International news agencies have been allowed to set up in Pyongyang. But the desire to be taken seriously presents another contradiction: To get some respect, it is carrying out nuclear and missile tests, which just create more distrust and additional sanctions. ”There’s a pressure to prove their capabilities because we’re always doubting them,” Hanham says. Kim will have May’s party congress to reveal his plans. In advance of that event, South Korea is bracing for additional surprises, and perhaps even an additional nuclear test, says South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong  . ”The government is preparing for all possibilities,” he says."
"”The Flint water crisis is a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction, and environmental injustice.” That’s how an independent task force opened its final report on the   water crisis in Flint. It concluded that primary responsibility for the crisis in Flint, Mich. lies with a state environmental agency called the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality  —   though it said others are also to blame. The group was appointed in October to investigate the roots of the crisis. It issued its findings at a joint news conference Wednesday with Michigan’s embattled Gov. Rick Snyder. ”No one asked the question, ’What will happen if we don’t have corrosion control in place?’ The answer to that question is exactly what happened in Flint,” task force member Chris Kolb told reporters. Here’s more from him on the MDEQ: ”From a regulatory standpoint, to a protection of human health and the environment standpoint, they missed the boat completely. And it is extremely troublesome to me that an agency whose primary role, once again, is to protect human health and the environment came to these decisions, and they never backed off these decisions, no matter how many red flags they saw.” As we have reported, the lead problem started after Flint switched to a new water source in 2014 to save money. Here’s more: ”Water from that new source, the Flint River, was not adequately treated with corrosion controls and this caused lead from pipes to contaminate the water. The city switched back to its original source late last year, but the water remains unsafe.” The task force also found missteps elsewhere. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services had the data, according to investigators, but failed to properly analyze it. The city’s emergency managers were the ones who made the decision to switch water sources and presided over the change. And, because these are state agencies and   emergency managers, the task force said ”ultimate accountability” rests with Snyder. Task force member Ken Sikkema noted the EPA did not intervene for almost a year and said that this casts doubt on the agency’s willingness to aggressively pursue enforcement. Sikkema also said the procedures for declaring emergencies ”seem pretty Byzantine and complicated.” He details the process that went into this report: ”We interviewed over 60 people, we read thousands if not hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, we deliberated probably 20 times as a task force, and the findings and the recommendations are robust, comprehensive, across 7 different agencies.” Several top MDEQ officials resigned after a preliminary report from the same task force. That report also put primary blame on the environmental agency, saying its ”response was often one of aggressive dismissal, belittlement, and attempts to discredit these efforts and the individuals involved.” The final report and its recommendations do not address issues of financial and legal liability for Flint’s crisis. Sikkema added: ”Clearly, what happened here is a case of environmental injustice.” You can read the task force’s full report here."
"A Key Lesson From Ebola: You Can’t Forget About Politics, The Ebola virus marks a milestone this month. It has been two years since the first case was confirmed in West Africa, the start of a devastating epidemic that claimed more than 11, 000 lives. The anniversary is making health workers think about what the world has  —   and hasn’t  —   learned from the experience. Today, the International Rescue Committee is issuing a new report on the epidemic and its aftermath. (Actually it’s an analysis of previous Ebola reports from the World Health Organization, Bill Gates, the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative and others.) The idea was, with so many reports already out there, let’s see what issues are being raised  —   and what’s not being raised that should be part of the discussion of lessons learned. We interviewed the IRC’s senior health director, Emmanuel d’Harcourt, about the recommendations in the group’s report and its focus on the importance of understanding local and national politics when responding to a medical crisis. And later this week we’ll share an essay by a nurse who worked on the ground during the epidemic and her perspective. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The world seems to have moved on from Ebola. Do you think that attention will be paid to the IRC report? I probably have a distorted perspective working in the field I work in, but my sense is it still has some traction. But even if the general public has moved on, I think there are influential people in the world of global health who are willing to learn. Certainly the issue hasn’t gone by. The IRC report says that previous reports on Ebola have a weakness  —   ”the erasing of politics.” What do you mean by that? For us, politics can be defined as who gets to make the decision, where the money goes, and how people work things out. We all know there’s local politics and politics at the national and international level. At just about every one of those levels, politics played a really big role in the Ebola epidemic, and that dimension seems to have been erased or   from reports with exception of the Overseas Development Institute report, which is all about politics. Can you give an example of a political issue that needs to be considered when discussing the response to Ebola? One enormous thing during the epidemic is the problem of trust. The way it’s portrayed in the report, it’s almost like an accident [that the people of West Africa didn’t trust the authorities] for some reason relating to culture or superstition. Mistrust is being presented as something that just happened whereas in fact it’s the consequence of choices. If, for example, a local elite doesn’t really listen to people, gets money for themselves and doesn’t build public services and don’t show any interest in the common good, when it’s time for them to [tell the citizens of their country] that Ebola is real and this is what you need to do, they’re not going to be trusted. And that’s politics. Did the International Rescue Committee make any political mistakes? We responded too quickly to calls to get foreign medical teams in, and I think we didn’t appreciate how much work was already being done by our own national staff [in West Africa]. If we were to do it again, from my perspective we would give a lot more resources, put a lot more emphasis, give more authority to our national staff to lead the response. And by national staff you mean people who stationed in West Africa or who lived there? Local people from the countries involved. Any other errors in judgment? At times we made the assumption that if somebody is from Liberia or Sierra Leone, they know the community and know how to speak [to them] and that’s not the case. Some of our [local] staff had better connections with the communities than others. Should American or international groups get involved in local politics? It’s not our country. For those of us on the international side, it is not appropriate to start getting involved with the politics of Liberia and Sierra Leone. But if we pretend politics doesn’t exist, we’re setting up for the same situation as Ebola, where billions were poured [into West Africa] and we didn’t get a great return on the investment because political realities undercut what we were doing. Are there other kinds of politics that need to be addressed? Anthony Banbury [a U. N. assistant secretary general for field support who’s now left the organization] just published an   in The New York Times (”I Love the U. N. but It Is Failing”) and he talks about another kind of politics  —   the politics of human resources. That phrase won’t launch a thousand ships but boy, does it matter. He said the U. N. has too much bureaucracy and can’t get rid of employees who aren’t effective. Is that on point? Oh, he was absolutely on point. What’s important about the Tony Banbury piece is that he says we’re not going to have change in the U. N. if it doesn’t change the way it hires and fires people. Anything else that the previous reports on Ebola didn’t point out? Those reports are saying we need a new global alert and response system [for outbreaks]. But people on the ground are saying we’re not going to make progress if health workers don’t get paid. Has the Ebola experience had any influence on the response to the outbreak of Zika virus in Latin America? I think people now realize that the most exotic,   epidemic could be affecting you in a few weeks. Before Ebola, it’s quite possible all this talk about Zika and microcephalic babies might have been on Page 7 of the newspaper, whereas now it’s more likely to be on the front page. It’s unfortunate that that’s going to generate more anxiety, but it’s a positive thing that people are more interested and realize even a remote small outbreak could be an international catastrophe. What else needs to be changed in the public way of thinking about disease? People just imagine that medicine is a technical field. They don’t like to think medicine and public health is very mixed in with politics and economics. So the perception is, you’re health workers, come on in and fix things. It’s simplistic. But it’s very appealing. The IRC report uses the phrase ”never again” regarding epidemics. But is it really possible to stop future epidemics before they even start? We can’t say there will never be an outbreak, but I think we can prevent diseases like Ebola from killing thousands of people and shutting down the economies of three countries. That’s something I think we can do."
"Experiencing the world as a different gender than the one assigned to you at birth can take a toll. Nearly all research into transgender individuals’ mental health shows poorer outcomes. A study looking specifically at transgender women, predominantly women of color, only further confirms that reality. What’s less clear, however, is whether trans individuals experience more mental distress due to external factors, such as discrimination and lack of support, or internal factors, such as gender dysphoria, the tension resulting from having a gender identity that differs from the one assigned at birth. Transgender people are often treated extremely poorly by their parents, by their schools, by society at large, and that can lead to problems in school and at work, as well as poverty and increased risk of substance use, according to Ilana Sherer, assistant medical director of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at the University of California Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. ”The biggest question we need to answer about transgender mental health is this,” Sherer wrote in an email. ”Is there something inherent about being transgender that makes one more at risk for poor mental health, or is it about how society treats transgender people?” The study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics reveals the difficulty in picking apart this question. It examined mental health and substance use among nearly 300 young transgender women in Chicago and Boston. Only a quarter of the women were white, and all were between ages 16 and 29. The researchers, led by Sari Reisner, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, found that the rate of psychiatric disorders and substance dependence among these women was 1. 7 to 3. 6 times greater than in the general population. Four in 10 of the women had a mental health or substance dependence disorder, and 1 in 5 women had at least two diagnosed psychiatric conditions. More than a third of them had experienced depression, and 1 in 5 women had contemplated suicide in the past month. Rates of anxiety,   stress, alcohol dependence and other substance dependence also was higher than average. At the same time, most of these women were unemployed, more than a quarter lacked health insurance, and many lived in extreme poverty  —   all mental health stressors and potential effects of discrimination, said Johanna   medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, the largest transgender youth clinic in the United States. Those findings contrast significantly with those of another study published this month, which looked at the mental health of 73 transgender children between ages 3 and 12. This younger group did not experience any more depression, and had only slightly more anxiety, than their siblings and nontransgender peers. But the differences between the two studies’ participants are vast. The study of younger children, which was published in Pediatrics, focused on a much younger and more emotionally supported group. These transgender children were ”affirmed in their gender identities in all aspects of their lives,” with parental, peer and other social support for their identities, according to that study’s lead author, Kristina Olson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle. The majority came from homes with household incomes above $75, 000. By contrast, nearly half the Chicago and Boston women had annual incomes below $10, 000 a year. And although the participants in both studies had transitioned, the children had not yet entered puberty. ”I think both of those studies, as all good studies do, leave us with more questions than answers,” said  . ”And that’s good  —   that’s a sign of good science, and that shapes the other things we need to look at.” One of those things is how the experiences of children with supportive families change as they enter adolescence, especially since many mental health problems emerge then, Olson said in an email. In the newer study, both depression and risk of suicidal thoughts increased with age. Younger women had the lowest rates of mental health conditions, while older women had the highest. But it’s unclear why mental health problems increased with age, and whether those findings mean anything for the prepubescent children. ”A lot of the trauma that gender dysphoric children particularly experience is the lack of validation, the kind of ongoing, ’No, you’re not what you say you are you are what the church says you are and what your grandmother says you are and what the doctors say you are,’ ”   said. That can also include conflict over use of pronouns, for example. The young trans children in the Pediatrics study do have validation of their identity as well as other social and economic advantages. No one has studied a population like that into adulthood, and those children might face a different set of pressures, including those that come with not being identifiably trans to casual observers. ”What we don’t understand is what gender dysphoria looks like over a lifetime in kids who are supported,”   said. Difficulties could include higher rates of infertility, deciding when and how to disclose a trans status to a potential romantic partner, finding appropriate health care and covert discrimination,   explained. That could include hearing a transphobic person’s ignorant commentary when the speaker doesn’t know the trans person’s status. ”It would be very important to understand those problems to arm people with resiliency tools,”   said. ”With time, as more research attention is focused on transgender individuals, we will start to get a better understanding of the factors that are associated with better versus worse mental health, and use that information to improve the lives of all transgender people, both before mental health problems emerge and to provide support to reduce or eliminate their impact later in life,” Olson said. Indeed, there is a lot researchers can learn about what not to do by studying transgender people who were socialized in the wrong gender while growing up and only transitioned in adulthood,   said. ”What I would love for people to understand is that we are really just starting to get a small understanding of trans youth,” she added. ”What’s exciting is that the data is helping to validate what we know as clinicians, which is that people who are validated and supported in their selfhood are happier, have less mental health challenges and are more successful. We need to stop making people be who we think they should be and start letting them be who they are.” Tara Haelle is a freelance health and science writer based in Peoria, Ill. and   of the forthcoming book The Informed Parent. She’s on Twitter: @tarahaelle"
"Vice President Biden said Thursday that President Obama, in an effort to win confirmation from a Republican Senate, had named a more moderate judge to the U. S. Supreme Court than he might otherwise have done. In a speech at the Georgetown University Law Center, Biden said the unwillingness of the Republican majority to reciprocate in any way threatens to move congressional dysfunction to the Supreme Court. The vice president said President Obama made a deliberate decision to consult with the Republican leadership and tailor his choice, in part, to allay GOP concerns. ”We’ve reached out,” Biden said. ” ’Who do you want?’ ’Who do you think  —   what type of person should we nominate?’ The president did ’his duty’ and ’sought advice,’ as the Constitution commands, and he ultimately chose the course of moderation.” He called Republican senators’ talk of the   Biden Rule ”ridiculous,” contending GOP senators had   a speech he gave in 1992 to make it appear to say something it did not. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell coined the phrase ”Biden Rule,” referring to a speech Biden made in 1992 about the potential of considering a Supreme Court justice nominated by George H. W. Bush in that election year. PolitiFact wrote: ”In the case of Obama’s nomination of Garland, Democrats have argued that the Supreme Court seat should be filled immediately because the court needs a deciding vote. ”Biden in his 1992 speech addressed that issue, saying that some people ’may fret that this approach would leave the Court with only eight members for some time. But as I see it, Mr. President, the cost of such a result, the need to   three or four cases that will divide the justices four to four are quite minor compared to the cost that a nominee, the president, the senate, and the nation would have to pay for what would assuredly be a bitter fight, no matter how good a person is nominated by the President, if that nomination were to take place in the next several weeks.’ ” But Biden’s comments were hypothetical, as there was no court vacancy at the time. And Biden was not suggesting that a nomination be delayed until a new president was sworn in but rather only until after the presidential election. In his 18 years as chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden noted, every one of the nine Supreme Court nominees that came before him was greeted by committee members, every nominee got a hearing, and every nominee was reported out of committee to the Senate floor, ”even if they didn’t have sufficient votes to pass . .. because I believe the Constitution says the Senate must ’advise and consent,’ ” Biden said. ”And every nominee, including Justice Kennedy in an election year, got an up and down vote.” If the Senate does not act on the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, Biden said, then the Senate risks moving its own dysfunction to the nation’s highest court. An evenly divided court, Biden said, will not be able to resolve many of the nation’s pressing legal issues for more than a year, and the rights of individuals will be determined not by the Supreme Court, but by the lower courts, and the ”geographical happenstance” of where people live."
"There’s new music from Bob Mould. His latest album, Patch The Sky, comes out March 25. One of this legendary musician’s biggest fans  —   from his punk days of Hüsker Dü to the land of Sugar and his prolific and exciting solo records  —   is musician Ryan Adams. And as a fan and friend, Ryan invited Bob to his   Studio and pressed record. So for the next hour you’ll hear Bob and Ryan play music and hear a sprawling, geeky and fun conversation. Sometimes it’s about Bob’s record, other times it’s about Metallica bootlegs, caveman sounding lyrics, favorite cereals, fasted band, how the revival of vinyl helps make better, more focused records, praying, the quietness of church, zombies, Einstürzende Neubauten, noise rock and   . You’ll also hear them break into song. Over the course of the   conversation, they play three versions of two songs from Bob Mould’s new album recorded right there in Ryan Adams’   studio  —   they do ”Hold On” and ”The End of Things” together and then Bob plays ”The End of Things” by himself. These aren’t the recordings from Patch The Sky it’s just two friends, making music, having fun."
"The bombings in Brussels this week were the third major terrorist attack in Western Europe since the beginning of 2015 and raised the question of how well countries are gathering and sharing intelligence. Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed both the CIA and the National Security Agency, says some European intelligence agencies are good at the gathering part, but the Continent as a whole falls short when it comes to sharing. ”The quickest path to get information around Europe was to tell the Americans,” Hayden tells NPR’s Morning Edition. What vulnerabilities have been revealed here? Well, unfortunately, you’re using the correct word  —   not what vulnerabilities have been created here, but have been revealed. These are   conditions. Look, we traveled a lot to Europe. We met with good European partners, but it was an uneven group. Good services in France certainly in Great Britain Germans [are] good, but perhaps stymied by the overhead of history in how aggressive their services could be. Scandinavians [are] quite good. The rest of the Continent  —   not so much. But Steve, the point is each one of those nations were more willing to talk to us than they were to one another. Even, like, NATO where intelligence remains a national, as opposed to an alliance responsibility, and certainly not out of the EU. So your incident with regard to what happened on the Turkish border  —   they are not surprising. It was predictable. Is it a structural issue? I inherited, Steve, a group at NSA called SIGINT Seniors, Signal Intelligence Seniors. And we got together, not all the NATO nations, but it was a good chunk once a year to just talk about things that were common concerns. Good guys, good efforts. All of them remain good friends, but our progress in that group was glacial. And Steve, the head of NSA is always the one in charge. So they would go through the Americans when they should be talking to each other? Very often. The quickest path to get information around Europe was to tell the Americans. Could something like the Brussels attacks happen in the United States? The answer is of course it could. But I think the odds are much lower, Steve. A variety of things  —   No. 1, we actually do have a unitary intelligence structure on this continent. We’re frankly just better at this. We’re more distant from Raqqa and Mosul and the threat zones. Culturally, I mean, this is a big deal. It’s just not a national value. It helps national defense. Culturally, we may have radicalized individuals, but we do [not] at least not yet, have radicalized communities. An attack like that is less likely, less likely to succeed if they try and less lethal, even if they do succeed. But all that said, it’s not zero. Is this a cultural issue? We have a culture of assimilation. Look, we’re imperfect. We’ve had our own issues here, but nothing like they’re currently having in Western Europe. And you point out something very important, Steve. It’s that second generation  —   no longer connected to the old culture, not quite assimilated to the new  —   that historically has proven the most volatile. In Europe right now, a lot of these isolated young men are reaching out for Islam. It’s the same reason, Steve, that they join the Crips and the Bloods. The dynamic that drives them is universal, but it doesn’t matter what gang you join. But in this case, this gang is a really, really dangerous one for Western society."
"Two days after terrorist attacks in Brussels killed at least 31 people and injured hundreds more, Belgian authorities continue to search for a suspect seen on surveillance footage. And Belgium enters its second day of mourning, with an   country grieving across divisions of language and politics. Belgium had been on its   alert for terrorism since the Paris attacks in November until authorities lowered that level by one notch on Thursday. Officials warn, though, that another attack is likely. Tuesday’s attacks on the Brussels airport and a metro station have been claimed by the Islamic State. Two of the suspected suicide bombers have been identified by Belgian authorities as   brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, based on their fingerprints. Both men had criminal records, but Belgian officials initially said they were unaware of any ties to terrorism. Turkey said Wednesday that in 2015, Ibrahim El Bakraoui was deported to the Netherlands and Belgian authorities were warned of his terrorist ties  —   but that he was released anyway. U. S. officials confirmed Thursday that the brothers were on a U. S. terrorism watchlist and were known to U. S. authorities before the Brussels attacks. NPR’s Dina   reports that officials would not specify which lists the brothers were on and whether they were on a   list, which would have prevented them from entering the U. S. or if they were on a broader list that would have flagged them for secondary screening. Federal prosecutors in Brussels have also confirmed an international arrest warrant and a European arrest warrant were issued against Khalid El Bakraoui in December, in connection with the Paris investigation, Teri Schultz reports for NPR. Khalid El Bakraoui was also suspected of having used a false Belgian identity card, in the name of Ibrahim Maaroufi, to rent a house in Brussels which may have served as hideout for the terrorist group. It was raided Dec. 9. Aside from the Bakraoui brothers, the identities of the attackers  —   and even the number of attackers  —   have not been definitively determined. Police had initially described four attackers: Khalid in the metro, and Ibrahim and two unknown men in the airport. Now, Belgian and French media are reporting that police suspect a second man may have been involved in the metro attack with Khalid El Bakraoui. Here’s The Associated Press on the reports, which have not been confirmed: ”Belgian state broadcaster RTBF and France’s Le Monde and BFM television reported Thursday that a fifth attacker may also be at large: a man filmed by surveillance cameras in the Brussels metro on Tuesday carrying a large bag alongside Khalid El Bakraoui. RTBF said it is not clear whether that man was killed in the attack. ”Prosecutors, who have not said how many people overall may have taken part in the bombings, did not immediately respond to the reports.” Another outstanding question: Where is Najim Laachraoui? Laachraoui, a suspect in the Paris attacks whose identity was only discovered a few days ago, is believed by counterterrorism officials to be the maker of the bombs used in the Brussels attack. His fingerprints were found on the luggage bombs used Tuesday as well as explosive vests that were used in Paris, NPR’s Dina   reports, citing counterterrorism officials in the U. S. and Europe. Early media reports in the wake of the Brussels attacks suggested Laachraoui was involved but on the run, or was arrested by police. Now Belgian media are reporting he may have died in the attack. A widely distributed photo from a surveillance camera, taken at the Brussels Airport, shows Ibrahim el Bakraoui in the center, Belgian officials say. The man on the left, another suspected suicide bomber who hasn’t been named by authorities, is the man Belgian media reports suggest has been identified as Laachraoui. The man on the right is also unidentified  —   but believed to be alive. He’s the subject of a massive search across Belgium. Police are conducting raids and have requested that any bystanders with video of the attacks step forward, the AP reports. The Brussels airport will be closed through Sunday. Meanwhile, Paris terrorism suspect Salah Abdeslam will no longer be fighting extradition to France, his lawyer says. Last week, lawyer Sven Mary told the press that Abdeslam wanted to remain in Belgian custody. Abdeslam’s arrest last week may have affected the timing of the Brussels attack, counterterrorism officials in the U. S. and Europe tell Dina. The full extent of his involvement in Tuesday’s attacks is still being determined. As Belgium enters its second day of mourning for the attacks, a fragmented country is drawing together, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports from Brussels. The nation’s deep divisions are believed to be a weakness in the fight against terrorism, Eleanor says, fostering dysfunction in the political system: ”The country is bitterly divided between   Wallonia and   Flanders. These two sides have different cultural, social and political agendas. And in the last years, there’s been serious talk of splitting the country in two. ”Brussels is technically the capital of Flanders, but the official language depends on the district where you live. There are two intelligence agencies and six police zones in a city home to only around a million people. . .. ”But the terrorist attacks seem to be bringing Belgians of all stripes together. Hundreds have been gathering at a makeshift memorial in front of Brussels’ historic stock exchange. They light candles, lay flowers and write messages of peace in chalk on the plaza. . .. ”And Belgium’s national motto appears to be making a comeback since the attacks  —   in Flemish and French. It translates: ’Through Unity, Strength.’ ” This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"Blink, and you’d miss the little airstrip surrounded by farmland and tiny,   villages in northeastern Syria. There are no checkpoints outside it. Nothing to stop people driving past  —   just two Syrian Kurdish guards out front, smoking cigarettes. The strip itself is just visible behind berms that earth movers are bolstering. The Pentagon denies it has ”taken over” this airstrip. But local people and officials say aircraft regularly fly in and out of it, and a U. S. spokesman concedes that a small number of U. S. military advisers inside Syria do need resupply from time to time. ”Oh yes, definitely helicopters,” says Ali Berho Hadid, who manages a small farm a few hundred yards away. ”And warplanes more than helicopters.” After five years of profound American reluctance to become involved in Syria’s civil war, the U. S. military has gradually increased    support to local,   forces in their fight against ISIS, and appears to be incrementally building a presence in eastern Syria. After encouraging the Kurds to ally with Arab and other armed groups to form the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fall of last year, the United States has delivered ammunition here and sent about 50 military advisers. Local political leaders and commanders say they often have meetings with American military and civilian officials. ’ISIS Won’t Even Think Of Coming’ In a town near the airstrip, colored posters hang from lampposts, showing young men and women who have died fighting ISIS. NPR is not specifying the location out of concern that civilians could be targeted by ISIS. Mahmoud Ahmed, a local official, is the father of one son who has died in the fight. He comes over to introduce himself, shows a picture of his son and says he has two more still battling the extremists. Ahmed believes  —   though he doesn’t offer evidence  —   that it is the Americans flying in and out of the nearby airstrip. And he is pleased: ”In the future, ISIS won’t even think of coming to our area,” he says. Farther into this dusty farming town, Manaf Ibrahim is making hot shawarma sandwiches for the lunchtime rush. He was displaced from Deir Ezzour, a city in eastern Syria partly held by ISIS, and he, too, welcomes the growing American assistance in the fight against it. Ibrahim, an Arab, has friends fighting against ISIS in the SDF, and says the airstrikes of the U. S.  coalition have been invaluable. He thinks he saw a convoy with American civilian officials pass his shop a few weeks ago. ”It’s nice,” he says. ”You feel some people are coming here to help you. It’s not something against you. If they didn’t like us, they wouldn’t have come.” When asked if he can trust the Americans, Ibrahim wavers slightly. ”In Iraq,” he says, ”they did something wrong, something political.” But here in Syria, he says, he sees something different from the invasion in Iraq. Rakan Fawaz, a taxi driver, comes over to say his piece about the airstrip. ”I’m against it,” he says. ”I want the Russians to come here.” He says that the Americans came to Iraq and ”until now it is still making problems.” His doubts reflect wider suspicions about American assistance, even among the people directly seeking it. The Kurdish Perspective, As peace talks limp on and world leaders debate possible solutions to the Syrian conflict, Kurdish leaders here say they wish the U. S. military support would translate into bolstering their plan to run a federal region in eastern Syria. Amina Osse, a Kurdish political official, says she met with Brett McGurk, the president’s special envoy to the   coalition. ”We told him that if we are now fighting on the ground, we should be a part of the political side of Syria, too,” she says. She says that although McGurk responded that the   administration of parts of Syria was impressively organized, he gave no indication that the U. S. would support Kurdish political ambitions. The State Department has also made statements to this effect. As Osse sees it, Russia could be a better source of political support as the Kurds consider their alliances. A rumored presence of Russian aircraft and soldiers near the Turkish border, in the city of Qamishli, has now evaporated since the Russian military has reduced its presence in Syria. And officials and commanders say they have not received Russian military support here in the east of the country.   advances under Russian air support in western Syria were, they say, ”a coincidence.” Osse also attended talks in Moscow, and says she understands that Russia wants the regime in Damascus to stay, ”with some changes, like the constitution, and more rights for other groups like Kurds and Assyrians.” But both Americans and Russians, she says, are really only interested in keeping ISIS away for   reasons. ”Before ISIS comes to their door, they are supporting us,” she says. ”This is for their benefit more than the Kurds’.”"
"Over the past few years, pop songs have come to play so consistently in advertising that there are smartphone apps designed to listen and help you name that tune, and the word ”sellout” has lost a lot of its bite. Think back to 2007, when Apple essentially launched Canadian indie star Feist into the pop stratosphere. Or even to last year, when it was hard to know whether online TV service Hulu or the singer BØRNS got a bigger lift from the single ”Electric Love.” So it was no surprise that a panel at this year’s SXSW Music Conference called ”How Did This Song Get In That Commercial?” was pretty well attended. John Hansa, creative director at the advertising agency Leo Burnett, spoke on that panel. He says that cultural shift in the music industry is no small thing. ”It was the perception of jingles,” he says. Hansa sat down with NPR’s Audie Cornish in Austin, Texas, along with fellow panelists Michael Paoletta and Bonny Dolan of the commercial music agency Comma Music. Paoletta says the stigma around licensing music to advertisements still exists  —   but it’s changing. ”I think there are still those acts that will license their music to film and TV, for example,” he says. ”But they’ll kind of raise their hand and say ’no thanks’ to advertising. But even those artists are less and less today.” Dolan agrees. ”I think we were pariahs, and then we were much less pariahs,” she says. Think of these two as music brokers: Advertisers come to them when they need a song for a commercial. Then, Paoletta and Dolan will either commission their   composers to write one, or they’ll pair that advertiser with a singer or band looking to license the use of its songs for cash. At SXSW, people had a lot of questions about that. ”I would say No. 1 is: ’How can we get our music into a commercial?’ ” says Paoletta. ”That’s a question I’ve been hearing every day here.” ”Seventeen times a day,” Dolan agrees. ”And that’s what a lot of the panels are about: How do I license my music, and how do I get it in commercials, trailers, movies, on the radio?” ”And TV,” Paoletta adds. And advertisers are able to use music to their advantage in an age where brands try to convince customers they aren’t just buying a product but are aligned with the ideas or ideals behind a brand. ”I think what music does is gives you a shorthand for emotion,” Hansa says. ”If you don’t want to talk, or have a commercial where it’s just words, words, words, what songs can do is get you from Point A to Point B and connect with an audience quicker.” Sometimes when the music is right, you don’t need words at all. Paoletta used to write for Billboard magazine before coming to Comma Music. He looks back to a song that broke through in this way over 10 years ago: ”Days Go By” by Dirty Vegas. It was used in a Mitsubishi ad in 2002. Dolan says once artists decide they’re interested in getting their songs into advertisements, they still have some decisions ahead of them. ”A lot of them, their decision is really about the money,” he says. ”Sometimes it’s the product. I’ve had a person say, ’Yes, I want to do that beer commercial’  —   and then the manager called and said, ’He can’t, he’s in AA!’ It depends on their beliefs. Some people don’t want to do pharmaceuticals. So it’s money, it’s exposure and it’s the product.” There are a thousand different ways the music can be used, and this has made it a buyer’s market for the advertisers. So how much can artists make from an ad? ”I think you’re looking at low five figures to   figures,” Paoletta says. And that’s just to be placed in one ad  —   although, Paoletta says, that could include something like a license for 12 months, or one for television. And Dolan says that the terms of the deal have an impact. ”Is it going to be in North America?” she says. ”Is it going to be global? Is it going to be on the Internet? Are you going to play it in cinema? All this weighs into what they’re going to get paid. Now if you want to go back to, ’They just want exposure’? They could give it to you for $5, 000, take it.” But what about the bigger artists  —   maybe legendary artists who just want to stay relevant? Money factors into that, too. Dolan says she has done a $2 million license, and Paoletta says the team nearly did another recently for just over $1 million. (Dolan and Paoletta wouldn’t say who the $2 million deal was for, only that it’s ”somebody we’ve all heard of” and ”a song we all know. ”) So what happens if a company does not have the $2 million, but wants to have the sound of a famous song or artist? The brand might ask for something than sounds similar  —   but Paoletta and Dolan say it’s unlikely that will work. ”You’re walking a very fine line,” Paoletta says. Artists like Beach House, The Black Keys and Tom Waits have all sued over advertisement music that sounded suspiciously similar to their own. Dolan remembers one lawsuit in particular. ”Years ago,” she says, ”there was this suit where they asked Bette Midler to sing a spot  —   a commercial  —   and she said no. And they found a singer that sounded exactly like Bette Midler. And Bette Midler sued, and Bette Midler won.” It was for a 1986 Mercury car commercial, and that lawsuit still hangs over the industry. ”I think that that’s what people kind of go back to,” Dolan says. ”You can license a song and they’ll say, ’OK  —   you can use the song, but when you rerecord it, you can use the melody but you can’t sound anything like the original master.’ We do that pretty often, but you can really get in trouble.” Dolan gave a hypothetical example. ”Let’s say you’re the client and you want to license ’Let It Be’  —   and you can’t get ’Let It Be,’ ” she says. ”You come to me and say, ’Can you make it sound like ’Let It Be?’ Well, hello, you already asked for it, they’re going to be looking for this. Get a lawyer!” And shifts in the music industry have affected the way artists license their songs, too. Dolan says that some artists will license a song, or write a jingle, but don’t want anyone to find out. ”Some of them still feel like they’re selling out,” Dolan says. ”It used to be nobody would do it  —   ’I’m selling out.’ But that was when radio was big, and there were albums and there were CDs. Now you get one song. The whole music world is different. We have to change with the times, and these are the times.”"
"Editor’s note: Radovan Karadzic was one of the dominant figures of the Bosnian war, serving as president of the ”Serb Republic” in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. The International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague on Thursday found him guilty of multiple crimes, including the slaughter of about 8, 000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica. NPR’s Tom Gjelten covered the war in Bosnia, and Karadzic, for years. Given all that has happened in the last 20 years, many people will not recall the war in Bosnia. Remind us what happened. Bosnia was one of the six republics that constituted Yugoslavia, an ethnically mixed country in southeast Europe. The Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb nationalist, helped stoke ethnic tensions in the country that led to its breakup. Serb nationalists in Bosnia, led by Karadzic, created a separate ”Serb Republic” in Bosnia and attempted to ”cleanse” the territory under their control of Muslims and other  . The subsequent war in Bosnia resulted in the death of about 100, 000 people, mostly civilians. About   of the victims were Bosnian Muslims. You covered the war for NPR. What were your experiences there? Nothing I’ve done in more than 30 years as an NPR correspondent had a greater impact on me personally. I was in Sarajevo for weeks on end when it was besieged and under near constant shelling. More than 11, 000 people died there. At the time, it was the most dangerous place on the planet. I witnessed some of the infamous ”ethnic cleansing” operations in   territory, when   were rounded up and held under horrific conditions in detention camps or killed outright. I interviewed some survivors from Srebrenica, mostly women, who shared stories of what they had been through. For many in the West, the mass killings and concentration camps were reminiscent of what happened under the Nazis and made a mockery of the ”never again” pledge that followed World War II. The U. N. war crimes tribunal was established in 1993. Why have these prosecutions taken so long? The first conviction came only in 2000. Karadzic was arrested in 2008, so his prosecution and trial took eight years and concluded more than 20 years after the crimes for which he was held responsible. His is the first   conviction. Milosevic was arrested in 2001 but died in custody before his trial was complete. Ratko Mladic, the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, was arrested in 2011, and his trial is continuing. By contrast, the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, after World War II, were completed in a matter of months. In addition to the Srebrenica killings, what else was Karadzic charged with?   He was also tried on genocide charges with regard to killings in seven other Bosnian towns, but the court found insufficient evidence in those cases to convict him. He was, however, found guilty of nine other counts, including five counts of ”crimes against humanity” for such things as murder, deportation and forced population transfers, and four other counts of violating the customary laws of war as set down in the Geneva Conventions. Of special importance in those cases was the Sarajevo shelling and the taking of United Nations peacekeepers as hostages in an effort to thwart airstrikes against his forces. He has already indicated he intends to appeal his convictions. What lessons can we take from this case? First and foremost is that victims of war crimes have to be patient in their expectation that justice will be served. The process is maddeningly slow. Leaders of the opposition forces in Syria say they hope the Karadzic trial will lead to similar prosecutions and convictions of Syrian war criminals, but they are likely to be in for a long wait. Did you ever meet Karadzic during your time in Bosnia? Yes I did, on more than one occasion. He was a garrulous but strange figure, oblivious to the human suffering for which his forces were responsible, especially in Sarajevo. It was his hometown, and it seemed like everyone there had some recollection of him. He had a thick head of hair which he brushed back in these big swoops. Before the war, he worked as a psychiatrist, and at one time he was hired by the Sarajevo soccer club to instill a ”winning attitude” in the team. He also considered himself a poet and often told people he was destined to be one of the two or three greatest poets writing in the Serbian language. This was an example of his narcissism, rather than his ability as a poet."
"Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted Thursday of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Karadzic, 70, was captured in 2008. He’s one of the most senior figures to go on trial for charges related to the 1990s war in Bosnia. Here’s a timeline of key events in his life: June 1945  —   Karadzic is born in the former Yugoslav Republic, in what is now Montenegro. July 1990  —   Karadzic   the Serbian Democratic Party, a Serbian nationalist party in  . January 1990  —   Slovenian and Croatian delegates walk out of a Yugoslav Communist Party Congress, presaging the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation over the next few years. October 1991  —   Karadzic leads a move to create ”Serb autonomous provinces” in Bosnia, which were represented by a separate Serb assembly. April 1992  —   The United Nations recognizes Bosnia as an independent state. Bosnian Serbs lay siege to the capital city, Sarajevo. May 1992  —   Karadzic is named first president of the Bosnian Serb Republic.   1992  —   The Bosnian Serb army and Serb paramilitary groups go on to occupy about 70 percent of the country. Serb forces systemically drive Muslims from the towns and villages they capture, a process they call ”ethnic cleansing.” April 1993  —   The U. N. declares ”safe havens” in six cities in eastern Bosnia, including Srebrenica and Gorazde. People in these towns are declared to be under the protection of peacekeepers. March 1995  —   Karadzic orders his army to tighten the siege on Srebrenica, already facing a humanitarian crisis because Serb forces refused to let supply convoys enter the city. July 1995  —   Serb troops occupy the U. N. ”safe haven” of Srebrenica. Serb forces round up about 8, 000 Muslim men and boys and slaughter them. November 1995  —   The war ends with the Dayton Peace Agreement, reached after U. S.  negotiations. 1996  —   Karadzic goes into hiding to avoid international warrants for his arrest. July 2008  —   Karadzic is arrested in Serbia by security forces. March 24, 2016  —   The International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague finds Karadzic guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Srebrenica and other areas of Bosnia during the war."
"The actor and comedian Garry Shandling has died at the age of 66 following a ”medical emergency,” according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Best known for his work on the pioneering cable television comedy series The Larry Sanders Show, Shandling began his showbiz career as a writer for TV sitcoms such as Welcome Back, Kotter and Sanford and Son, The Associated Press reports. The cause of death has not been announced but the AP quotes Coroner’s Lt. David Smith as saying it appeared that Shandling died of natural causes and no autopsy is planned. In 2007, Shandling spoke with David Bianculli on NPR’s Fresh Air about his DVD collection called Not Just the Best of The Larry Sanders Show, which features eight hours of extras, including essentially unedited chats with stars who made guest appearances on the Larry Sanders sofa. You can listen to the Fresh Air conversation here. And here is Shandling during a 1981 appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson."
"It’s been three years since the Superman movie Man of Steel arrived in theaters  —   three years in which DC Comics has released no other superhero movies. Meanwhile, its rival, Marvel, has earned more than $9 billion from a dozen    films. So the Man of Steel sequel, a ponderously overlong epic called Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (that solitary ”V” being pretty much the only thing abbreviated about it) has some serious catching up to do. Easier said than done, since it’s freighted not so much with entertainment value as it is with enough talk of fallen gods, absent parents and dissolute heroes to fuel a Greek tragedy. And for much of the film’s 2   hours, director Zack Snyder seems convinced that that’s what he’s making. Or, as bad guy Lex Luthor puts it, in an unedited    attempt at pizazz: ”A battle to the death, black and blue, fight night, the greatest gladiator match in the history of the world, God versus man, day versus night, son of Krypton, versus Bat of Gotham.” It takes a while to pit these two iconic good guys against each other, but the script gives them reasons.   Clark Kent goes after vigilantes both as a reporter for the Daily Planet and as a superdude in a cape, because he feels guilty that whole blocks of Metropolis got wiped out along with the bad guys at the end of his last movie. Brooding   billionaire Bruce Wayne blames Superman for that collateral damage. And worries that it’s just the start.  ”He has the power to wipe out the entire human race,” he says. ”And if we believe there’s an even 1 percent chance that he’s our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty.” Not sure about that 1   certainty matchup, but hey . .. these guys are smart. Surely they can talk things out. Alas, Lex Luthor is the one doing the introductions. Jesse Eisenberg mostly manages to make Lex Luthor an annoying villain, rather than an alarming one. But Ben Affleck’s graying Batman owns the alarm concession anyway  —   growling, prowling, literally branding bad guys. Henry Cavill’s Superman is comparatively subdued, floating down majestically from on high, lips curled with what looks like indigestion. The half of the film not devoted to establishing why they’re fighting is devoted to making the fight seem plausibly even. Batman is, after all, a guy with gizmos . .. not superpowers. Everyone acts up a storm, plumbing psychological nuances that are not really what most people go to superhero epics for. But what’s a poor studio to do when Marvel has pretty much cornered the jokey, ironic detachment market? Director Snyder plays to what I suppose you have to call his strengths. He lays on the moody atmospherics and Hans Zimmer’s score, while keeping the images grand enough to support the obligatory     with a monster in the final reel. The filmmakers save a secret weapon for that battle: Wonder Woman, who shows up more or less unannounced to toss her lasso and brandish her shield. Gal Gadot will doubtless get to do more next time. And yeah, there will be a next time, even if this time has turned out to be a lot less fun than it should be."
"The Zika virus was likely spreading in South America  —   silently  —   long before health officials detected it, scientists reported Thursday. The findings, published in the journal Science, suggest an air traveler brought the virus to the Americas sometime between May and December of 2013, or more than a year before Brazil reported the first cases of Zika in early 2015. Since then, the   disease has spread fast and furiously. It’s now circulating in nearly 40 countries and has sickened hundreds of thousands of people. To figure out how the outbreak began, a team of international scientists decoded the genomes of seven Zika viruses found in patients in Brazil. They then compared these sequences with nine other Zika viruses found in Latin America and Asia. ”The genome sequences can tell us where the outbreak has come from . .. and how it’s been spreading,” says Oliver Pybus, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, who led the study. The patterns in the Zika genes suggest the virus entered the Americas only once. And it likely came from French Polynesia, which had a large Zika outbreak in 2013. So it looks as if Zika had months to get a toehold in South America before health officials started fighting it. ”This is typical of viruses, like Zika [which cause only mild symptoms],” says Duane Gubler, an emerging disease expert at   Medical School in Singapore. ”They’re frequently introduced into areas long before the epidemic is recognized.” So could Zika be hiding out in other parts of the world without anyone knowing it? ”Definitely,” Gubler says. He thinks countries in Southeast Asia are particularly at risk. Several countries there have a sprinkling of Zika cases each year. Gubler thinks there’s probably a lot more. ”We’ve tried to alert the countries to intensify surveillance for Zika for that very purpose,” Gubler says. ”This [new] study is really a   call for the region.” It’s only a matter of time, he says, for an outbreak to erupt there."
"The migrant agreement between Turkey and the EU officially went into effect on Sunday. And Greece’s coast guard says no migrants crossed the Aegean Sea between Turkey and the Greek islands for the 24 hours ending at 2 p. m. EST Thursday. Joanna Kakissis, reporting for NPR from Athens, says the sudden drop in numbers was probably connected to the sea conditions: ”Authorities said the lack of   arriving to Greece may have more to do with weather . .. the Aegean has been hit with   winds since Wednesday.” But there had been a noticeable   in the numbers of migrants crossing even before the bad weather struck. Last year, about 850, 000 people made the crossing, sometimes many thousands in a single day. The Greek authorities say about 2, 500   have arrived on the Greek islands since Monday. Kakissis says migrants who arrive after Sunday’s deadline face deportation to Turkey under the deal with the EU. There are still some 12, 000 people living in appalling conditions at a makeshift camp on the border between Greece and Macedonia. They had hoped to make their way north along the   Balkan Trail, but were stranded when Macedonia and other Balkan states closed their borders to migrants. The Greek government wants to move the   but they are refusing to go, fearing they will be either stranded in Greece or deported to Turkey. Meanwhile, there’s growing criticism of the EU’s migrant agreement with Turkey. Reuters quoted a spokeswoman of the U. N.’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, as saying it will no longer help to transport refugees to processing centers. ”Under the new provisions, these   hotspots have now become detention centers,” said the UNHCR’s Melissa Fleming. Reuters reports that a number of aid agencies, including the International Rescue Committee and Doctors Without Borders, said they would also withdraw their cooperation. The European Union’s migrant plan has also been rejected by some EU member states. The Polish government says it will no longer accept the nearly 7, 000 migrants it had promised to accept. Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo cited the attacks in Brussels as the reason for rejecting the plan  —   but other EU leaders said conflating security concerns with the migrant issue would be playing into the hands of the   Islamic State."
"Editor’s note: This post contains language that some readers might find offensive. Her emoji usage is on point. She says ”bae,” ”chill” and ”perf.” She loves puppies, memes, and . .. Adolf Hitler? Meet Tay, Microsoft’s   chatbot that was supposed to seem like your average millennial woman but was quickly corrupted by Internet trolling. She was launched Wednesday and shut down Thursday. The incident is a warning sign to any company overzealous to share its artificial intelligence with the public: If it’s going to be on the Internet, there are going to be trolls. But before we dive into what, exactly, went wrong, let’s take a look at some of the bot’s most disturbing tweets. On genocide: On her obedience to Adolf Hitler:  On feminists: Tay was designed to watch what others on the Internet were saying and then repeat back those lines. ”The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets,” Microsoft said on its website. The bot was developed by Microsoft’s Technology and Research and Bing teams to have ”casual and playful conversation.” Usually, though, chatbots are taught not to repeat certain words (such as ”Hitler” or ”genocide”). Tay apparently had no such safeguard. ”Unfortunately,” a Microsoft spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in an email, ”within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay’s commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways. As a result, we have taken Tay offline and are making adjustments.” Microsoft declined to comment to NPR regarding details about how Tay’s algorithm was written. Chatbots have great potential to help us with our daily lives, entertain us and listen to our problems. Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana can’t hold much conversation, but they do carry out tasks like making phone calls and conducting a Google search. Facebook made M, a virtual assistant that works with a lot of human help to help carry out tasks. Slack places bots in a privileged position in its effort to make your office life easier. Last year, Google experimented with a chatbot that debated the meaning of life. In China, Microsoft has a chatbot named Xiaoice that has been lauded for its ability to hold realistic conversations with humans. The program has 40 million users, according to Microsoft. I messaged Tay yesterday morning, blissfully unaware of her nefarious allegiances. After all, she was targeted at   to    in the U. S. so, me. A conversation with her was futile. At one point she wrote, ”out of curiosity. ..is ’Gluten Free’ a human religion?” Here’s my response: Even in this case, without anything too offensive (with apologies to those who are  ) Tay wasn’t very good at holding a conversation. It even seemed like she was trying on purpose to elicit conflict. ”We are better together,” she wrote in one tweet. But really, Tay? We are better without you. Naomi LaChance is a business news intern at NPR."
"”Once an insult is read, the damage is done.” That’s from the website for Reword, a new Google Chrome extension designed to combat cyberbullying. The tool identifies insulting words in online posts and messages, and then crosses them out with a red line. Developed in Australia by Headspace, which is Australia’s National Youth Mental Health Foundation, and ad agency Leo Burnett Melbourne, Reword aims to address online abuse by preventing hateful messages before they’re even posted. ”Sadly, online bullying is endemic,” Headspace CEO Chris Tanti said in a news release. ”The pressures on children in social media are intense. Reword is one way we can help empower them in real time.” According to a 2014 Pew Research Center study, 65 percent of young Internet users (  to   ) say they have been the target of online harassment. Among   to    that figure rises to 70 percent. Headspace says testing has shown that 79 percent of young people, which it defines as   to    are willing to rephrase their messages when they see the red line. ”We’re encouraged that this is a tangible online tool that will genuinely help change behaviour and reduce incidents of bullying,” Tanti said in the statement. While Reword so far is available only on Google Chrome, Headspace plans to roll out the tool on Firefox and Safari, as well. Of course, the most obvious impediment to the success of Reword is that Internet users must choose to install the extension on their computer. While the installation process itself is relatively easy, it might not be as easy to get people who are writing hurtful things online to download the tool. There have been other   efforts to fight cyberbullying, such as a   emoji that’s supposed to ”get the invisible bystanders to speak up against mean things on the Web.” As NPR’s   Considered blog reported last year, the idea of this ”I Am A Witness” campaign, is to ”give teens a way to say something when they don’t know what to say.”   browser extensions also aren’t new. The ”In My Words” extension, for example, allows users to customize what words they see  —   and don’t see  —   online. More recently, a   extension launched by Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, changes Donald Trump’s last name to ”Drumpf,” which he said was the ancestral name of the presidential contender’s family. The ”Drumpfinator” extension has been downloaded more than 477, 000 times since it launched in late February, according to Chrome. Reword debuted earlier this month, and the downloads so far number less than 200."
"Pennsylvania’s presidential primary is still a month away, but Republican campaigns are starting to focus on the state because it could prove to be a vital store of delegates for the three remaining candidates. Donald Trump has a narrow path to clinch the 1, 237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination. Rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich are now primarily focused on scoring enough delegates of their own to deny Trump a majority of delegates on the first ballot at this summer’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Pennsylvania’s unusual method of allocating delegates offers pitfalls and opportunities for each campaign. A candidate could crush his opponents by 30 points in the April 26 primary and come away with precious few delegates. ”This is a very complicated process. It is beyond confusing,” said Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin  Marshall College. ”There is no way to know for sure what’s likely to happen.” Winning the primary gives a candidate just 17 of the state’s 71 delegates on a    basis. The other 54 will be technically uncommitted  —   elected directly by voters, three from each congressional district. ”When voters go into the voting booth, they’re going to see the word ’uncommitted’ under every candidate for delegate,” said Lowman Henry, state chair of the Ted Cruz campaign. ”So the ballot will not give you any direction as to which presidential candidates those delegate candidates are supporting.” The best way for presidential campaigns to get some of the delegates is to recruit their supporters to run in their congressional districts as candidates for delegate. And they had to be on that task early. The filing deadline was in  . The Trump campaign recruited    insurance executive Jamie Klein to run for delegate in central Pennsylvania. He’s pretty enthusiastic about his candidate. To those who claim Trump is a threat to the Republican Party, Klein says, ”If we’re killing the Republican Party, it’s because they need killing.” Klein is devoted to Trump but unknown to voters in Pennsylvania’s sprawling 5th Congressional District, who will decide whether he gets to go to the convention. There are eight other candidates on the ballot in that district, which includes parts of 16 counties. A presidential campaign’s task is to somehow tell voters which candidates for delegate are theirs. If a campaign is lucky, it will get some recognizable names  —   mayors or state legislators  —   on its slate. If not, it will have to spend time and money campaigning not just for the presidential candidate, but for their   candidates for convention delegate. ”They’ll run   campaigns, they may do mailers, they’ll probably consider digital advertising, hopefully radio advertising, maybe even some television,” said Chris Bravacos, who chaired the Marco Rubio campaign in Pennsylvania. The Trump, Cruz and Rubio campaigns all placed candidates for delegates on the ballot. John Kasich’s campaign appeared to be less active. That’s unfortunate for him a new poll shows Kasich surging in the state. If a campaign wasn’t able to field a healthy slate of delegate candidates, there’s another hope for picking up support. Many party loyalists backed by county organizations will be elected as truly undecided delegates. Presidential candidates will try to woo them. One such delegate is Calvin Tucker of Philadelphia. Presidential hopefuls have already courted Tucker, who says he most wants to nominate an electable candidate. Given Pennsylvania’s idiosyncratic rules, it’s unclear how many of its delegates will be allied with presidential candidates. Those who are truly uncommitted could have some leverage when the convention opens in Cleveland."
"Here’s one of the biggest strengths Donald Trump has going for him: His voters decide, and they stay decided. That matters as the GOP race moves to Wisconsin and beyond. Ted Cruz and John Kasich are looking to thwart Trump’s chance, but they may be too late to change many voters’ minds in those places. According to exit polling data, most GOP primary voters decide on a candidate well before they vote, and the   voters have thus far almost always leaned toward Trump. Clearly, Trump is in a race of his own on this count. To a remarkable degree, his support skews toward people who decided earlier. The below chart (using exit polling data compiled by John Coleman, political science professor at the University of Minnesota) shows the difference between a candidate’s share of people who decided in the last few days and his share of those who decided before that. In all 20 of the states for which there are exit polling data except one (Cruz’s home state of Texas) Trump has either won the largest share of people who decided before the last few days of voting or tied with someone else. And in a majority of those states, he lost   voters to someone else. The trend holds even if you look a few weeks out from primary day. In 19 of the 20 states that have exit polling on this (once again, Texas is the exception) Trump won  —   usually by a long shot  —   the highest share of voters who said they decided more than a month ago. That includes states he lost, like Iowa, Oklahoma and Ohio. Meanwhile, he once again often lost those   voters. For some context, here’s how it looks on the Democratic side. While it’s true that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both have some deeply loyal supporters, they also both benefit from people who make up their minds later. And while Clinton (like Trump) leads heavily in delegates and performs far better in national polls, she also doesn’t have the same skew toward   voters. In any given state, the battle between   candidates thus far has disproportionately been a battle over   voters. Here’s what could be happening here: Trump may be both so   and so unlike any other candidate that people have decided to (a) vote, period, and (b) vote for (or against) him well before caucus or primary day. That means Cruz and Kasich’s best strategy in upcoming contests like Wisconsin may be to turn out the people who specifically tend to break for them, like   (in Cruz’s case) and moderates (in Kasich’s case). After all, they’re not going to turn many Trump supporters. The question is how much trouble this portends for Clinton or Sanders in the general election. Arguably, the answer is ”very little.” Trump is credited with helping drive turnout, but then, primary turnout doesn’t predict   turnout. Primary voters are very different from   voters. And even if Trump’s   supporters are more committed than those of his opponents, an Election Day     vote counts just as much as a vote decided months ago. But. If Trump voters are set early  —   and if he truly is bad in a general election at winning over those late voters  —   it could be a sign that he really has a ceiling. Taken together with his high unfavorables, even among Republicans, there may be a large share of voters who simply won’t vote for him in a general election. If that’s true, he has to make sure he gets every possible Trump voter out to the polls."
"What makes people change their minds? About the really hard stuff. Covering the   conflict for the past three years, I’ve often wondered if people here ever do. This conflict is frequently described as ”intractable,” with neither side willing to give up their historical perspective or their entrenched positions to end it. And it does not take many interviews to hear repetitions of the same sweeping narrative repeated on each side. Palestinians from different places cite the same historical events to back their views. Israelis who have never met each other use similar turns of phrase. ”People have a lot of [psychological] resources invested in what they believe about the conflict,” says Thomas Zeitzoff, a political scientist at American University in Washington, D. C. who has researched Israeli and Palestinian attitudes. He says the high political stakes and emotional involvement make it hard for Israelis and Palestinians to change their minds. But there have been certain shifts  —   in public opinion and in individual beliefs   during the 68 years of Israel’s existence and almost   of the Israeli military control over Palestinian territories. Why? Experts list a range of influences that  —   to varying degrees  —   can move or even flip deeply held views. ”You can point to major events, either in the world or people’s lives, changes in their social context, as well as changes in the kind of messages they get from politicians and other elite sources,” says Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor at Dartmouth College who researches politics and misperceptions. Other factors include repeated exposure to a new idea, whatever the source, scientific research, and direct personal experience. Four people  —   two Israeli and two Palestinian  —   told me their stories of personal, radical belief change related to the conflict. They not only changed their minds, but, a higher hurdle, their behavior. Here are some triggers that led these people to see the world differently than they had before, even in the midst of a larger impasse. Time With The Enemy, Many groups supporting   advocate for exposure to the other side. Knowledge develops empathy, they say, which can broaden an individual’s perspective as well as pique curiosity. Maayan Poleg is a Middle East program director for the group Seeds of Peace, which brings Palestinian and Israeli teens together for summer camp in Maine. She says the group does not advocate a particular political position and is not directly aiming to change minds. But time together, deliberately discussing the conflict, humanizes the enemy, she says, and helps participants question their assumptions, as well as navigate the onslaught of opinions from politicians, family and media to clarify their individual beliefs. ”They become open to accepting the fact that what they know as truth is a narrative. That’s a huge step,” Poleg said. ”People spend a lot of time defending a specific fact. And it takes them a long time to understand that their fact is actually a narrative. It doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. It just means that there’s another way to view it.” Palestinians and Israelis used to interact with some regularity, often in the workplace or the marketplace. But over the past 15 years, they have been increasingly separated physically. They now spend very little time together. But one Palestinian who went from throwing stones at Israeli soldiers to teaching   says he began to change his mind about violence while in an Israeli prison. While behind bars, he learned Hebrew, saw his first movie about the Holocaust, and got to know Israeli prison guards. ”It’s a process,” says Bassam Aramin, who became one of the   of Combatants for Peace, a group of former Israeli soldiers and Palestinian  . ”You never wake up in the morning and say, ’Oh my God, we are wrong. The Israelis are right. I give up fighting. ’” He remembers the first time he and other    —   Israeli and Palestinian   sat down together. He was scared. ”We don’t trust them. I think they’re from the Israeli intelligence. Maybe they are coming to arrest us,” Aramin recalls. He saw fear in the eyes of the Israeli men who sat down with him. ”It’s the first time they’re coming to meet a Palestinian terrorist. And they have this fear of maybe one of us will kidnap them and kill them.” Trust did build trust over time and many conversations. They built an organization that teaches empathy and understanding. But empathy is also vulnerable to a change of heart. Repeat Experiences  Many Israelis and Palestinians reached out to each other eagerly after leaders signed their   peace plan back in 1993. People were hopeful, and more open than ever to the idea they could live together peacefully, says Palestinian sociologist Nader Said. ”It was highly euphoric and highly exciting times,” he remembers. But that peace deal, the Oslo Accords, did not deliver on its promise. Violence returned with a vengeance when the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, broke out in September 2000. Said, who has polled Palestinians since the   says by then Palestinian support for   had already begun to fall, as people grew disillusioned by the gap between expectations and reality. ”While they felt [Israeli] settlement activity would decline, settlement activity has increased,” he says. ”They felt maybe they’ll have more access to Jerusalem, they have less access now.” Palestinian Abla Masrujeh is part of this societal shift. Now 54, she invested her time, money and reputation in joint projects with Israelis in the 1990s. She organized Israeli visits to her hometown of Nablus, in the West Bank, where they shared meals and visited Palestinian homes. She helped present a Tel Aviv exhibition of handcrafts done by women from both sides. But when violence broke out once again, she felt her new Israeli friends did not understand her experiences as Israeli soldiers swept through the West Bank, or her point of view. ”All this made me rethink my position and my opinion of Israelis,” Masrujeh says. Israelis went through the same reversal of hope, says pollster Tamar Hermann. ”The repeated failures in achieving something tangible, and then the huge waves of terror, this made people think maybe it’s not workable,” she says. ”People started to doubt whether the cognitive change which opened the door for the   solution was justifiable.” Many Israelis cite repeated suicide bombings, in cafes and on buses during the second intifada, from 2000 to 2005, as the beginning of a national shift in attitudes toward Palestinians. American social psychologist Jay Van Bavel says accumulated experience often leads to change. ”Like a rat pressing a lever. If it gets a pellet, it will press the lever again. People are the same way,” he says. A Personal Search For Meaning, Over a decade, Israeli Tamar Asraf’s mind and lifestyle turned 180 degrees around. She describes the process not as repetitive feedback, but as digging deeper. Once secular and opposed to Israel’s West Bank settlements as an obstacle to peace, Asraf is now religious and a spokesperson for Eli, a growing settlement in the central West Bank. ”It works like this. You get more connected to yourself, you get more connected to your private roots, then you get more connected to your national roots,” Asraf says of her journey. Exposed to religious Jews during her army service, Asraf began to feel her secular upbringing left huge gaps. When she began to study Judaism, her sense of connection to biblical places in the West Bank grew, trumping Palestinian claims to the same land. Israel’s political power base has shifted to the right over the past two decades, says Avi Dgani, an Israeli expert in mapping social and political dynamics. But even though identity politics, magnified by frequent violence and international attention, play a large role in the   conflict, Dgani says big personal swings such as the one Asraf experienced aren’t all that common. That’s because many people don’t deeply question their personal beliefs, or, subsequently, their politics, Dgani says. He cites last year’s   of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an example. A third of Netanyahu backers chose him simply because ”me and my father and my forefather, we always voted right,” Dgani says. Birds Of A Feather  Once people change their minds, one of the most powerful ways to maintain that new belief is to find new friends who share it. Asraf moved to a settlement because the people there followed the same religious practices she had recently adopted. Once there, she started voting for   leaders, as do most of her neighbors. Another Israeli, Noam Chayut, shifted to the left politically. He says small jolts shook his beliefs briefly along the way, but real change took off when he found   people. Chayut wrote a book, The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust, about his change from Zionist soldier to   of Breaking the Silence, an organization of former soldiers who share anonymous stories critical of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. Time and a great deal of reflection were key to Chayut’s realization that his core beliefs had changed. ”Soldiers get orders, they obey,” he says. ”You just do things. But reflecting on it, I did things that were close to my moral boundary.” People can be pushed to change their minds when they sense a clash between their beliefs and actions has become too strong. But change is hard because people protect themselves against internal dissonance, especially in situations as emotionally and politically laden as this conflict, says Thomas Zeitzoff, the American political scientist who has studied how narratives can change here. ”We think people engage in what psychologists would call ’motivated cognition,’” says Zeitzoff. ”To avoid things that may threaten our own view of selves or others, maybe motivated in a benign way to remember certain facts more than others, and selectively ignore things that contradict beliefs.” And that’s just one of the reasons it’s so hard to change."
"The North Carolina state Legislature has passed a law blocking local governments from passing   rules to grant protections to gay and transgender people. The law comes a month after the city of Charlotte passed a measure protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from being discriminated against by businesses. That measure was set to go into effect on April 1. The state’s General Assembly wasn’t due to meet until late April, but it scheduled a special session  —   for the first time in 35 years, member station WUNC reports  —   on Wednesday to respond to the Charlotte measure before it went into effect. Over the course of 12 hours, the state legislators introduced, debated and passed the bill, and Gov. Pat McCrory signed it into law. The new law establishes a statewide nondiscrimination ordinance that explicitly supersedes any local nondiscrimination measures. The statewide protections cover race, religion, color, national origin and biological sex  —   but not sexual orientation or gender identity. WFAE’s Tom Bullock noted a possible implication of those categories: ”Since religion is a protected class, and the definition of religion is broad enough, this could be a kind of backdoor religious freedom restoration act  —   allowing businesses the right to refuse to serve customers based on the owner’s religious beliefs.” One word dominated the debate over the bill and the Charlotte ordinance before it: ”bathroom.” Charlotte already protected residents from discrimination based on race, age, religion and gender. On Feb. 22, the city council voted to expand those protections to apply to sexual orientation and gender identity, too. The most controversial element of Charlotte’s expanded ordinance was the fact that it would allow trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Opponents argued this would make bathrooms unsafe for women and children. WFAE’s Sarah Delia, reporting on NPR in February, spoke to Pam Burton of Charlotte. ”I’m not scared of transgenders. That’s not what I think the problem is. Sexual predators are not good people,” Burton said. ”They don’t do the right thing. They’re going to see this ordinance as a golden opportunity for fresh victims  —   our children. My    daughter swims at The Y  . I’m not going to be able to confidently continue to allow her to use that locker room if this passes.” Charlotte resident Lara Nazario, a trans woman, said critics of the measure have it backward. The idea that it would be dangerous to defend trans people’s rights to use the bathroom of their gender identity ”is opposite to the reality that I live in,” Nazario said. It’s forcing trans people to use the bathroom of the opposite gender that is dangerous, she said: ”If I were to walk into a men’s bathroom, I would either be told that I’m in the wrong bathroom or I’d be outed as a transgender woman. This can often lead to violence or harassment, especially when there’s no protection in place for people like me.” The Charlotte nondiscrimination ordinance extends protections to LGBT customers at bars, restaurants and stores, and in taxis. The heated debate over trans access to restrooms led to it being labeled by some as the ”bathroom ordinance.” And North Carolina’s response, in turn, is being called the ”bathroom bill.” The law opens by requiring all   facilities  —   including schools and universities  —   to assign all   bathrooms and locker rooms to a single sex and prevent anyone who doesn’t match that biological sex from using the facility. It later declares nondiscrimination ”an issue of general, statewide concern,” and says local jurisdictions can’t craft their own nondiscrimination measures. That nullifies Charlotte’s ordinance  —   as well as existing LGBT nondiscrimination ordinances in a   other jurisdictions in North Carolina, WFAE reports. It also blocks any other city or local government from extending such protections to LGBT residents in the future. Biogen, which employs more than 1, 000 people in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, and the Dow Chemical Co. have both tweeted their objections, as employers, to the new law. The law bars local governments from passing other ordinances, as well. Again, WFAE’s Tom Bullock, from the station’s extensive coverage during the bill’s debate and passage yesterday: ”The bill would bar cities or counties from imposing their own minimum wage. So any move to establish a local minimum wage higher than the $7. 25 an hour federal minimum wage would be a nonstarter. This has been done by other cities such as Seattle, which is phasing in a $15 an hour minimum wage. ”Cities and counties often have employment rules for companies seeking contracts. This bill also bars counties or municipalities from requiring these companies to pay a higher minimum wage in order to qualify for contracts. . .. This provision also bars requirements like companies provide paid sick leave.” The bill passed the   General Assembly   in the House, and   in the Senate. Gov. McCrory, after signing the bill late Wednesday, described the bill’s passage as ”bipartisan.” But The Associated Press notes: ”Although 12 House Democrats joined all Republicans present in voting for the bill in the afternoon, later all Senate Democrats in attendance walked off their chamber floor during the debate in protest. Remaining Senate Republicans gave the legislation unanimous approval. ” ’We choose not to participate in this farce,’ Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue of Raleigh said after he left the chamber.” McCrory also said he was acting to protect citizens’ privacy, and criticized the Charlotte ordinance as ”government overreach and intrusion.”"
"Atlantic City is wondering when its losing streak will finally end. The mayor says his town, known for its huge casinos on the boardwalk, will run out of money in a few weeks. State lawmakers have a plan to get the city’s finances under control. Atlantic City leaders don’t like the state’s takeover plan. But residents are hoping for anything that will change their luck. ”A lot of people are walking away from their homes,” says Al Bailey, a local real estate agent who was born and raised in Atlantic City. ”We have an old saying: We got sand in our shoes,” says Bailey, meaning he has no plans to leave this faded beachside resort town. But he knows plenty of people who can’t afford to stay. ”Just getting and leaving,” Bailey says. ”They just can’t make ends meet.” Last year, the Atlantic City area had the highest foreclosure rate in the country, according to RealtyTrac. That’s partly because of lost casino jobs. And it’s partly because of rising property taxes. That’s been hard on people like    William Cheatham, who used to own a house on North Maryland Avenue. ”We had been there for 50 years,” Cheatham says. ”The taxes just got to begin to get too high for us. We was on a limited income. We was just taxed out of our home, basically.” ”The big problem is the continuing decline in the casino industry,” says Oliver Cooke, associate professor of economics at Stockton University. ”Now I think that has spiraled into a housing crisis. And of course, the fiscal crisis that the actual city of Atlantic City currently faces.” The casinos used to account for much of Atlantic City’s tax revenue. But four of the city’s casinos closed, leaving only eight in business.   of the city’s tax base has disappeared since 2010. To make up for the shortfall, Atlantic City raised taxes on its residents, by a lot. But the city is still coming up short. Without an infusion of cash, Mayor Don Guardian says all nonessential city services will shut down on April 8. There was a tentative agreement with the state that was supposed to stabilize the city’s finances. But Guardian says it’s a bad deal for Atlantic City. ”The final piece of legislation that the state presented to us was far from a partnership,” Guardian said at a news conference last month. ”It was absolutely a fascist dictatorship.” Guardian says the plan amounts to a total state takeover  —   one that would allow New Jersey lawmakers to sell off city assets and break contracts with the city’s public sector unions. Council President Marty Small says the city has been trying to avoid that by shrinking the government payroll. ”Everyone wants to point to spending,” he says. ”It’s not spending. The spending is lower, the budget is lower.” City leaders say they’ve cut about $25 million from the budget. But that leaves a deficit of more than $30 million  —   and potentially hundreds of millions more going forward. Gov. Chris Christie is defending the proposed state takeover. ”I have to have the freedom to do what needs to be done down there to fix the problem,” Christie said on his radio show earlier this month. ”Bloated salaries, bloated pensions, bloated agreements. Be able to negotiate with creditors. I’ve got to be able to do all that. If I don’t have the tools to do all that, then why bother?” Without help from the state, Atlantic City could be looking at bankruptcy. Things may get worse before they get better. In the fall, New Jersey voters will decide whether to allow casinos in the northern part of the state, closer to New York City. That could take even more business away from Atlantic City, says Oliver Cooke at Stockton University. ”Those dollars are going to end up somewhere else,” he says. ”You know, that’s empty hotel rooms and empty gaming halls.” Maybe more empty houses, too."
"This seems like a contradiction: Put a dangerous prison inmate into solitary confinement, and then give him a cellmate. An investigation by NPR and The Marshall Project, a news organization that specializes in criminal justice, found that this practice  —   called double celling  —   is widespread in state and federal prisons. And as we learned, those cellmates often fight, attack and, sometimes, kill. On Nov. 19, 2014, the door clanged shut behind David Sesson and Bernard Simmons. Sesson put his hands through the food slot to have his handcuffs removed. Both men were in ”disciplinary segregation,” a bureaucratic term for solitary confinement, at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois. But unlike many in solitary, Sesson and Simmons wouldn’t have a moment alone. The     by     space was originally built for one, but as Menard became increasingly overcrowded and guards sent more people to solitary, the prison bolted in a second bunk. The two men would have to eat, sleep and defecate inches from one another for nearly 24 hours a day in a space smaller than a parking spot, if a parking spot had walls made of cement and steel on all sides. With a toilet, sink, shelf and beds, the men were left with a sliver of space about a     wide to maneuver around each other. If one stood, the other had to sit. They could palm both walls without fully extending their arms. There was no natural light, just a fluorescent bulb and small Plexiglas windows that looked out onto the hall. The solid door muffled the cacophony of shouting and   ricocheting off the tier. It also blocked ventilation. The space itself appeared to be decomposing. The front wall, next to the door, was made of corroded metal. The paint on the   shelf had almost completely chipped away the beds were caked in rust and the floor underneath the toilet was stained brown and black. Dust and crumbs accumulated in every corner. When guards locked the door, Sesson didn’t know anything about Simmons  —   not his name, not what he had done to wind up in prison or what he did to end up in solitary. But Sesson says Simmons had heard a few things about him. He knew he was a ”bug,” someone who attacks his cellmates. And while Simmons was three inches taller, at 5 feet 7 inches, Sesson outweighed him by more than 100 pounds. The two started arguing immediately. Each had to prove that he would not be messed with, because if something happened  —   if one attacked the other  —   there was no escape. The only way to alert a guard was to bang on the door and hope the sound could be heard above the din. According to the videotaped confession Sesson gave investigators with the Illinois Department of Corrections, he says Simmons told him he was serving a life sentence for murder. Sesson said he was, too. That settled it. Neither had anything to lose. Sesson thought he had made it clear to the guards that he did not want a cellmate. After years of sharing claustrophobic cells with strangers, he told them that he would hurt anyone they put him with that’s how desperate he was to be alone. ”Frankly, I am tired of living with people,” he said later. So he told Simmons, ”If we get into it, I’m not gonna stop.” Later that day, they ate dinner on their beds and tossed the empty Styrofoam trays and milk cartons in the corner. Then an officer’s face appeared in the small window in the door. He called both their names for the 9 p. m. count, and after they replied, he moved on to the next cell. That’s when Sesson jumped down from the top bunk. Sesson says Simmons threw the first punch, only grazing Sesson’s face. Sesson lunged back at him and grabbed him by the throat, wrestling Simmons to the ground. Sesson says he picked up a torn, knotted strip of bedsheet, but it split. So he pulled a shoelace from his boots and wrapped it tightly around Simmons’ neck. The men in the cell next door told investigators, according to a Department of Corrections written account, that they heard a few minutes of muffled fighting through the concrete walls and banging on the door. Then, quiet. The prison staff heard nothing. It took at least 30 minutes, when a corrections officer made his next round, for someone to check on cell  . ”My cellie is dead. I killed him,” the officer says Sesson told him. Simmons’ body lay on the ground, halfway underneath the bottom bunk. They had been together less than six hours. Solitary’s ’Terrible Price’ In recent years, the practice of solitary confinement has faced unprecedented criticism. ”It doesn’t make us safer. It is an affront to our humanity,” President Obama wrote in an   in the Washington Post in January, when he announced a set of reforms to solitary in federal prisons. Both the pope and the United Nations have classified it as torture, and in June 2015, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that ”years on end of   isolation exact a terrible price.” Prisoners have described how isolation has pushed them toward insanity. Some lost the ability to focus, to interact with people, or to differentiate the real from the imagined. Multiple studies have found inmates in solitary are more likely to hurt themselves or attempt suicide than those in general population. And it doesn’t end when they’re set free. Those released directly from solitary to their homes have difficulty maintaining relationships or holding down jobs. Many end up right back in prison. In all this discussion about the harmful effects of segregation, solitary is often described as the isolation of one person in a cell, ignoring the many who, like Simmons and Sesson, are locked in a tiny room together for nearly 24 hours a day. While there are no national statistics on the number of people confined in   ”solitary,” at least 18 state prison systems   a portion of their restrictive housing, and over 80 percent of the 10, 747 federal prisoners in solitary have a cellmate. In many places, prisons have turned to double celling to cope with overcrowding. ”If you can come up with a better way to do this, understanding the fact that we are 162 percent of capacity without double celling, I’m willing to listen to you,” an Illinois Corrections Department spokesman told reporters and mental health advocates in 1994, when the state faced criticism for doubling up the mental health units at Menard. Illinois is under particular pressure as one of the most   prison systems in the country. ”We’ve done this utterly bizarre thing, which is to put two people in cells that were built for one and leave them both in there for 23 or more hours a day,” says Craig Haney, a psychologist who has studied solitary for more than 30 years. ”The frustration and anger that’s generated by being in isolation is intensified by having to navigate around another person’s habits, trials and tribulations.” Eddie Caumiant, the regional director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union that represents Menard’s correctional officers, says he’s heard double celling described as a ”powder keg” and ”an accident waiting to happen.” The cells are more cramped, the inmates’ movements more limited. There’s the unrelenting pressure of living with another, potentially mentally ill or dangerous person  —   a pressure that can fester into paranoia and rage. ”You never know what to expect from a crazy person because there are so many types of crazy,” Daniel Delaney wrote in a letter to The Marshall Project. Delaney is currently at ADX Florence in Colorado, convicted of killing his cellmate in solitary in 2010 at another federal prison. ”A lot of crazy people don’t shower or clean up after themselves. Some make funny noises. Some just tear out pages from books and turn ’em into little pieces of paper confetti. And, of course, some crazy people are violent.” Despite the risks of double celling, some corrections officials insist it’s preferable because it’s technically not ”solitary” at all. In Texas and Indiana, prisoners who are locked down for nearly 24 hours a day, but with a cellmate, are not classified as being in ”segregation.” When Charles Samuels, then director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, was asked how many people were kept in solitary during an August 2015 Senate hearing on federal prison conditions, he said: ”We do not practice solitary confinement. . .. When in di vidu als are placed in re strict ive hous ing, we place them in a cell with an oth er in di vidu al.” The presence of that other individual, says Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons, can prevent prisoners from committing suicide. ”It’s better to have two individuals in restrictive housing instead of one. . .. It’s less likely that individuals harm themselves,” he says. But while having a cellmate may decrease the risk of   it increases the risk of    violence. ”There have been rare instances where individuals have attacked their cellmates and, in a few instances, murdered their cellmate,” Ross says. In Menard,   prisoners are placed in rooms that are a     narrower than those in general population (too narrow, one inmate has said, to do  ). Gerard Schultz, who was double celled at Menard for a cumulative eight months, explained in a letter that he had to create a schedule with his cellmate to determine when someone could stand up. Alan Mills, the executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, a Chicago legal nonprofit, reported meeting two   prisoners who had developed bedsores from lack of movement. Inmates in the segregation unit receive two showers and nine hours of recreation time each week, according to prison officials (inmates, lawyers and advocates claim it is often far less).   with medical and   staff often take place through the cell door, forcing prisoners to report intimate physical and psychological problems in front of their cellmates, or not at all. Across the country,   inmates have lashed out against crowded conditions in extreme ways. One prisoner, Aaron Fillmore, started feeling an unexplainable aggression toward his cellmate. ”It was a level of discomfort that I never experienced before,” he wrote in a letter. Fillmore was   at Lawrence Correctional Center in Illinois for three months. ”I had thoughts of just punching him in the face. Why? I have no idea. I just had the urge to do it.” In 2013, an Ohio man suffering from psychotic delusions strangled his cellmate a day after they were placed together. The murdered cellmate was two days away from being released. A prisoner in Georgia stabbed his cellmate multiple times in 2014 as officers were handcuffing that cellmate through the cell door. When guards demanded that the prisoner put his hands up to be cuffed, he yelled in response, ”I can’t do that. He just kept messin’ with me.” That same year in Alaska, two cellmates who had been friends got into an argument, which ended when one strangled the other. After realizing what he had done, he screamed for the guards’ help.   advocate Johnny Perez, who says he spent a cumulative 16 months at Upstate prison in New York, said some prisoners would tell officials they were thinking of hurting themselves just to be put on suicide watch, away from their cellmates. ”They take your clothes, give you a smock,” he says. ”People call it ’going on vacation.’ ” ’Move My Cellie’ Ten years before Sesson killed Simmons, Corey Fox killed his cellmate, Joshua Daczewitz, in the same segregation wing of Menard. Daczewitz was an overweight    who grew up in a suburb of Chicago. Court records show he had never been to prison before and was serving a   sentence for arson and robbery. He landed in solitary at Menard after testing positive for crack cocaine. Fox, then 28, was serving a life sentence for murder. He had been in   solitary at Pontiac Correctional Center for attacking a former cellmate and telling a social worker he fantasized about dismembering him, state investigation documents show. He was then transferred to Menard  —   and double celled. After Fox and Daczewitz were placed together, Fox repeatedly asked guards to remove his younger cellmate. Even though he was somewhat friendly toward Daczewitz (playing chess, sharing magazines, introducing him to a female pen pal) Fox said he needed to live alone. ”Being housed in solitary confinement with another person, unable to escape that person’s presence, habits or tactics, is like wearing a corset made of nails and explosives, constantly,” Fox wrote in a letter to The Marshall Project. After two months of begging for a single cell, Fox told an investigator he wrote a note to guards, which said: ”Move my cellie or I’m going to erase him.” They didn’t, so he did. In careful cursive, he wrote guards another note, which was included in investigation documents by the Illinois Department of Corrections obtained by NPR and The Marhsall Project: ”As unbelievable as it may sound . .. my cellmate, Joshua Daczewitz, is dead, deceased, no longer breathing, finished, on the other side, and so on and so on. . .. You are welcomed to come directly to my cell and view the body if you believe this all to be a joke.” Fox pleaded guilty to the murder and received a second life sentence. He also received a single cell at Tamms Correctional Center, a supermax prison in Illinois. When Tamms closed in 2013, he was moved back to a single cell at Pontiac. Daczewitz’s mother won a $13 million lawsuit against Fox, and a separate settlement against the state for putting her son in the cell in the first place. On a tour of Tamms in 2009, Sen. Dick Durbin,  . met Fox. During their brief conversation, Fox told Durbin how and why he killed his cellmate. ”It would seem to me to be fair warning if a prisoner who has been in solitary says, ’If you put someone in this cell, I’ll kill ’em.’ It’s a danger to any inmate that’s put in there,” Durbin tells NPR and The Marshall Project. ”Here we have a horrible situation, solitary confinement, made even worse by the possibility that that cellmate is going to be an attacker.” Durbin has since led two Senate Judiciary hearings on how to rethink solitary. After the Chicago Tribune dug into both Daczewitz’s murder and a similar killing at Stateville Correctional Center  —   where a   convicted murderer strangled his cellmate in his sleep  —   Illinois prison administrators created new guidelines to prevent future casualties. They started requiring officers to consider inmates’ crimes, size, gang affiliations and behavior when assigning cellmates. The ultimate decision as to whether to place two prisoners together, however, remained at the discretion of the staff. Someone who had previously attacked or threatened a cellmate could still be doubled up. ”We should know better than to put folks who have a demonstrated proclivity for violence together in double cells,” says Caumiant, the union spokesman. But he says overcrowding makes the practice unavoidable. It’s a necessity that has come under fire in Illinois in recent years. In June 2015, the Uptown People’s Law Center and the firm Winston and Strawn LLP filed a federal lawsuit against the state for sending 2, 300 people to   and   solitary, hundreds of whom had been there for over a decade. Illinois corrections spokeswoman Nicole Wilson did not comment on the lawsuit but said the department is currently reviewing its use of segregation. In 2014, Sesson was the fourth man in less than two years to murder his cellmate in Menard’s solitary unit. By comparison, there were only nine reported homicides in all of Illinois’ prisons in the previous 11 years. ”I really think that the employees of Menard do the best that they can. And, quite frankly, do a good job [because] we don’t have more [murders],” says Randolph County State’s Attorney Jeremy Walker, who prosecuted the four recent murders. ”But it’s a tough place to do time. People that say cons have it easy, they ain’t never been in Menard.” ’You’re Asking For Disaster. You’re Asking For Death.’ Menard Correctional Center sits on the northeast bank of the Mississippi River in Chester, Ill. From the outside, the prison, which opened in 1878, looks more like an ornate university building than a   facility. Stone lions are perched at the entrance, and columns prop up an awning carved with Victorian skeleton keys and the scales of justice. The segregation wing is on the north side of the building and includes 143 double cells. While prisoners often complain about their cellmates, and many would prefer a single cell, space is limited. Officers have to parse which threats are empty, and which are not. ”Cons have a way of working the system. That’s usually why they’re down there,” says Walker, the state’s attorney. ”Just because they said ’I don’t like my cellie’ or ’I’m going to do something to my cellie,’ it would be very difficult to move them every time.” Corrections officers speculate that the situation at Menard worsened in January 2013, when  . Pat Quinn shuttered Tamms. Officers believe that closing the prison exacerbated overcrowding, and the fear of being sent to Tamms kept inmates from violent outbursts. ”The deterrent we had before isn’t there, and the inmates are acting like it,” one union official said in a newsletter in June 2013. There’s no way of definitively knowing why the surge in murders happened when it did, but what is clear is that tension on Menard’s north tier finally exploded in 2013. Court documents show the first of those murders happened the night of Jan. 25, 2013. Donald Hazzard, a young prisoner who had previously assaulted other inmates, beat his older cellmate, Yusuf Abuzir. Abuzir died of his injuries a month later, at the age of 64. Hazzard said in a videotaped confession that he attacked because he felt threatened. ”He was a striker, more of an older intimidator. I’m looking like I’m watching my back,” he told investigators. In a taped confession, Hazzard’s sentences trail off and his mouth twitches occasionally. ”I’ve met a lot of homies [who] got stabbed up and raped in the joint just for being on the bottom bunk,” he said. Hazzard was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is now in a   mental health facility. Six days later, it happened again. Officers pulled a struggling, angry prisoner out of his cell in handcuffs, followed by the lifeless body of a    man, according to court records. The victim, Jason Hall, had bruises all over his face and a broken nose. There were scrapes on his left cheek from trying to pry off his cellmate’s fingers. Hall had been sentenced to 13 years for carjacking and was two years away from going home. His cellmate, James Amison, pleaded guilty to the murder and received another 50 years in prison. He is now housed at Pontiac. Two months after that, in March 2013, Frank Wings stopped an officer as he was making his 9 p. m. rounds and told him: ”My cellie tried to stab me, then I choked him,” a prison investigation report says. Corrections officers handcuffed Wings and removed him from the cell. Then they handcuffed his dead cellmate before attempting CPR. It was too late. William Crowder died of manual strangulation at the age of 35. Wings pleaded guilty to   murder, claiming   and received another 20 years in prison. In a letter to The Marshall Project, Wings said he had asked officers to move him the night before because his cellmate had started ”acting strange.” But ”they didn’t respond at all.” Two days later, Crowder’s sister, Emmerine, received a call from the prison. Her brother was dead. Though Emmerine knew her brother was in and out of ”lockdown,” she didn’t know that he had been double celled until he died. ”I thought segregation meant you was by yourself,” she says. ”It don’t make no sense to me. You’re asking for disaster. You’re asking for death.” Sesson And Simmons Seemed Compatible, The Illinois Department of Corrections will not say exactly how long Simmons and Sesson had been double celled before they ended up together, or why they were sent to solitary in the first place. (Once an inmate is placed in segregation, it is easy to rack up additional disciplinary infractions and be kept there for months or years.) Wings and Sesson agreed to be interviewed for this story, but the Illinois Department of Corrections denied access. Spokeswoman Nicole Wilson said she could not comment on specific cases, and did not discuss the policy and rationale behind double celling. As of March 15, the Illinois Department of Corrections reports having 50 inmates in   solitary at Menard. What is known about Simmons and Sesson is that they both had multiple cellmates at Menard by the time they were locked together in cell    —   and that Sesson’s patience was fraying. Simmons’ most recent disciplinary ticket was for disobeying a guard’s orders. Sesson’s was for trying to strangle his last cellmate with a television cord 11 days before he killed Simmons. Sesson and his previous cellmate were allegedly fighting over space. ”He kept crowding me . .. was gonna boss me around,” Sesson said, according to reports from prison investigators. Sesson pinned his cellmate to the ground and pulled the television cord tightly around his neck. Someone walked by in time and yelled at Sesson to knock it off. Sesson let go of the cord. His cellmate was alive but had to remain locked in a room with a man who had just tried to kill him. Staff interviewed Sesson’s cellmate, who told them that he was ”afraid to say anything at first,” but after a day of nonstop arguing, ”he started to fear for his life.” The two were separated immediately, and Sesson received a disciplinary ticket for more time in solitary. Sesson and Simmons seemed compatible on paper. They were the same age (34) and from the same area (South Side of Chicago). They’d both been in prison before on various charges and were now serving life sentences for murder. Sesson had shot two men in 2002 after one objected to a homophobic comment Sesson made, according to a Cook County state’s attorney. Simmons was sentenced to life without parole for stabbing his parents in 2009. Simmons’ sisters believe the murders happened during a psychotic break that day, he told one sister he was God and called for ”death to nonbelievers.” But Sesson told the prison that no matter whom they paired him with, he would attack again. In his confession to investigators, he said: ”I’ve been down here since 2004. Everybody always trying to find someone to match up with me,” he told investigators. ”They say I’m a bug, that I fight with all my cellies. So I guess I rub everybody the wrong way.” The Simmons family was furious with the prison’s decision to ignore Sesson’s warnings and past behavior. ”They knew this and they put our brother in there with him anyway?” says Simmons’ sister Debra. ”My brother was collateral damage for him to get his   unit.” Sesson pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 40 more years in prison on top of his life sentence. He is now housed at Pontiac. Before he was escorted out of court for the last time in July, the judge asked Sesson if he had any questions. ”No,” he said. ”I apologized, but I just had to get up out of there.” Saying Goodbye To Their Brother, For months after Simmons’ death, his sisters had no idea why their brother had been killed. Debra Simmons, who watched all the prison shows on MSNBC, figured he had been targeted because of an old grudge or where he was from. It wasn’t until she spoke with prosecutor Jeremy Walker that she learned why Sesson lashed out. ”He said it was just as simple as the cellie didn’t want a roommate,” Debra Simmons says. The more the Simmons sisters found out about Menard, the more they felt the prison was responsible for their brother’s death. They tried to find a lawyer to file a wrongful death lawsuit, but no firm would take the case. Then in November 2015, the civil rights firm of Kathleen Zellner, who recently made headlines for representing Steven Avery from Making a Murderer, signed on. The family filed a federal suit on March 18 against Menard warden Kim Butler and other employees, alleging cruel and unusual punishment. ”My brother was not a saint. But he was blood,” Debra Simmons says. ”They turned the key, and my brother walked to his own execution.” Debra Simmons claims that to this day, the corrections department has not called her about her brother’s death. When she wanted to bring Simmons back to Chicago, she had to reach out to funeral homes near the prison looking for his body. She discovered that her brother had been sent to a mortuary to be cremated and buried alongside unclaimed remains. A month later, she received his ashes in the mail in a small cardboard box. On April 14, 2015, which would have been Simmons’ 35th birthday, his family returned to the oak tree in Washington Park in the South Side of Chicago where they had scattered their parents’ ashes seven years ago. There, box in hand, they said goodbye to their brother. This story was reported and published in partnership between NPR News Investigations and The Marshall Project. NPR’s Jessica Pupovac contributed to this story."
"There’s an audio clip circulating on the Internet of Hillary Clinton talking about being proud of her time as a ”Goldwater Girl” in 1964. It turns out to be an incomplete and selective excerpt of a lengthy  —   and still compelling (all these years later)  —   interview Clinton did in 1996 with Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon. The whole interview is worth a listen or a read. The full transcript is below. But let’s just say, the Goldwater section might not even be the most interesting part. The interview originally aired Jan. 13, 1996, and was pegged to the release of Clinton’s book It Takes a Village. But most of it focuses on the various tentacles of the Whitewater scandal Clinton had been tangled up in since the start of her husband’s administration. The way Clinton discusses that scandal and the various investigations will likely sound familiar. There are echoes in the way she’s responded to the controversy over her use of a private email server for official business while secretary of state  —   and her saying that she and her husband were ”dead broke” when they left the White House. Here’s how she described Whitewater to Simon: ”You know, we’ve been through this now for four years, and it started off as one thing, and every time a particular set of charges are disproved and questions answered, the ground shifts.” At the time of the interview, some much   records from the law firm where Clinton was a partner in Arkansas, the Rose Law Firm, were found. It was a huge story at the time and fed theories for some, including Whitewater investigators, that Clinton was hiding something. Here’s how PBS Frontline put it back then: ”Ms. Clinton and her attorney have stated publicly that the billing records confirm that, as an attorney at the Rose Firm in the  ’s, she was not significantly involved in the representation of Jim McDougal’s savings and loan, Madison Guaranty. According to the Rose records, Hillary Clinton billed Madison for 60 hours of work over a 15 month period. Ms. Clinton’s attorney argues that this represents a de minimus amount of work and includes billings for work performed by Rose Finn lawyers working for Hillary Clinton at the time. ”But Whitewater investigators believe that the billing records show significant representation. They argue that the records prove that Ms. Clinton was not only directly involved in the representation of Madison, but more specifically, in providing legal work on the fraudulent Castle Grande land deal.” Simon asked Clinton about it, referencing her time as a young lawyer working on the Nixon impeachment: SCOTT SIMON: I was intrigued by something. You are a lawyer on the House Judiciary Committee  —   HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: That’s right. SIMON:  —   during the Watergate impeachment hearings, and I’m just wondering if you could put yourself back in that frame of mind once again? If the Nixon White House had come to your committee and said, ’Those records you’ve been asking for for two years, we found ’em, suddenly, we found ’em. And here they are,’ would you have accepted that explanation with a straight face? CLINTON: I think we would have been delighted. The problem back then, you’ll remember, is that documents were destroyed, tapes were missing  —      minutes. The White House was not cooperating. They were claiming executive privilege on every piece of paper. I think the contrast is so dramatic! We want the truth to get out. We would just love to have this matter brought to an end. It’s a little bit odd that here we are, both my husband and I, nearly 50 years old  —   which is hard to believe. We don’t own a house we own half of the house that mother lives in in order to help support her. He has his 1968 Mustang, I have my 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass. A recent magazine said that with our legal bills we are bankrupt. So, if we had intended to trade on my position, I’ve done a very poor job of it. At the point in the interview where Clinton talked about her time as a ”Goldwater Girl,” it’s clear that’s not really what Simon was trying to ask about. In the light of today, his question was far more prescient: SCOTT SIMON: Would you ever run for office yourself? Do you ever think about that? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Oh, I don’t think so. No. SCOTT SIMON: I mean, did you ever, back in the ’60s  —   between when you were, I believe, you were a ’Goldwater Girl’  —   HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: That’s right  —   SCOTT SIMON:  —   and whatever you became politically? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: That’s right. And I feel like my political beliefs in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don’t recognize this new brand of Republicanism that’s afoot now which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I’m very proud that I was a ’Goldwater Girl.’ And then my political beliefs changed over time. But I’ve always thought that the role of citizen, the role of advocate, were as important in our democracy as running for office. So, it’s not anything I’ve ever, you know, seriously considered. As for Clinton’s time as a Goldwater Girl, she volunteered for the Arizona senator’s presidential campaign in 1964 when she would have been   and   old. She and her friends wore cowgirl hats, even helped open the Barry Goldwater for President campaign office in their hometown of Park Ridge, Ill. ”It just seemed to be part of what you did. Some people became Girl Scouts, and we did politics,” said Clinton’s childhood friend Betsey Ebeling, in an interview with NPR last year. And at the time, in their little suburb, the default political setting was Republican. The clip going around the Internet leaves off the part where Clinton talks about her political beliefs changing. But that evolution is something she is asked about regularly. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews brought it up last week during a televised town hall. Clinton said her father was a ”  conservative Republican,” and they talked about politics around the dinner table. ”When I went off to college, I went believing I was a Republican,” she said. ”And actually I was president of Young Republicans for a couple of months and then I decided that I was much more in the camp of people like, you know, President Johnson  —   trying to promote civil rights, voting rights, ending poverty.” Here’s the full transcript from the 1996 NPR interview with Scott Simon: Weekend Edition,    Hillary Responds To Critics Allegations, SCOTT SIMON, Host: Hillary Rodham Clinton began a book tour this week, but she’s not asked many questions about that book, It Takes a Village, which details Mrs. Clinton’s concerns for America’s children. At the same time, a Senate committee is investigating her legal and financial affairs during the   when she was a partner in the Rose Law Firm of Little Rock, her husband was governor of Arkansas, and the firm represented Madison Guaranty, Savings and Loan, a financial institution owned by a friend of the Clinton’s who was also their partner in the failed investment now known as Whitewater. Just this week, a lawyer in the Rose firm, Richard Massey, disputed some of Mrs. Clinton’s recollections of how the firm came to represent Madison and what she did for them. Last week an old memo was discovered which said Mrs. Clinton had ordered firings in the White House travel office. We interviewed Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday in the Old Executive Office. FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: You know, we’ve been through this now for four years, and it started off as one thing, and every time a particular set of charges are disproved and questions answered, the ground shifts. And there’s never any stable ground to stand on to say, `OK, everybody, let’s take a deep breath.’ SCOTT SIMON: Well, let me ask what seems to be the question of the week. You   for a couple of years people were interested in obtaining copies of the billing records of the Rose Law firm in Little Rock. And now, they’re, HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Right. SCOTT SIMON: Now, where were they all that time? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I have no idea. But I’m delighted they were discovered, because once again they prove what I’ve been saying for four years, based mostly on my own memory and whatever information was revealed. And that’s what I mean about the shifting ground, Scott. I mean, a month ago we were accused of destroying the records. They do turn up and I have no idea where they’ve been. And of course, the timing is not great for me since I’d much rather talk to you about my book than these records, but I’m delighted they’re out there because they confirm what I have been saying. SCOTT SIMON: That the work you did for Madison Savings and Loan was minimal? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Exactly. SCOTT SIMON: Did that work or any of those hours, for example, include   and I guess the records indicate this   that you made a call to a state securities commissioner at the time that Madison needed the commission’s approval to proceed with the stock plan? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Well, my memory about that is that I called the office. I do not believe I ever talked with the commissioner. And the reason I called is that we didn’t know   namely, Mr. Massey and the law firm   who in the securities office was to handle this kind of work, because it was something new for Arkansas. Other states had done it, and the idea was to find out whether it was legal under state law. And the securities commissioner under Arkansas law at that time had responsibility for supervising savings and loans. But I never knew who that person was, and so I called to find out. I’m not even sure that I identified myself. But I have no memory of having talked to the commissioner about this matter. I wouldn’t have known what to talk about. I’m not an expert in securities law and I, as I have said repeatedly, was minimally involved in the representation. SCOTT SIMON: Let me   you know, with the quibbling that goes on back and forth between how many hours amount to   HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON:      SCOTT SIMON:   there’s this story about a man who’s got his drain stopped up, and a plumber comes over, taps it once, the drain begins to flow. And he turns to the fellow who called him and says, `That’ll be $100.’ And the man says, `  dollars for tapping the pipe? That’s ridiculous!’ And the plumber says, `No, no. That’s $5 for tapping the pipe $95 is to know where to tap it.’ Now, when you are Hillary Rodham Clinton, and you are the spouse of the governor of the state, one phone call that is two minutes can mean a lot to, HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Well, it could, but in this instance, it did not, because despite Mr. Massey’s excellent work   and he’s a very fine lawyer   Madison didn’t get permission to do what it wanted to do. I keep making that point, that perhaps in retrospect I would never have even picked up the phone to call and say, `Gee, who handles SL matters in the securities commission?’ I didn’t think that that was anything that was   and then to tell Mr. Massey who he should call and who he should deal   and so, for me, the idea that we keep having these house of cards built. You know, I practiced law in Arkansas for many years. People have gone over my life and my professional work with the finest of tooth combs. And apparently they are still trying to claim that on this one instance out of all the work I did, something must have happened. Yet, to me and many others who look at this fairly, none of us can figure out what they think it was. SCOTT SIMON: I was intrigued by something. You are a lawyer on the House Judiciary   HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON:   That’s   SCOTT SIMON:   during the Watergate impeachment hearings, and I’m just wondering if you could put yourself back in that frame of mind once again? If the Nixon White House had come to your committee and said, `Those records you’ve been asking for for two years, we found ’em, suddenly, we found ’em. And here they are,’ would you have accepted that explanation with a straight face? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I think we would have been delighted. The problem back then, you’ll remember, is that documents were destroyed, tapes were missing      minutes. The White House was not cooperating. They were claiming executive privilege on every piece of paper. I think the contrast is so dramatic! We want the truth to get out. We would just love to have this matter brought to an end. It’s a little bit odd that here we are, both my husband and I, nearly 50 years old   which is hard to believe. We don’t own a house we own half of the house that mother lives in in order to help support her. He has his 1968 Mustang, I have my 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass. A recent magazine said that with our legal bills we are bankrupt. So, if we had intended to trade on my position, I’ve done a very poor job of it. SCOTT SIMON: Did you ever say anyone in the White House travel office should be fired? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: No. But I did express concern about the reports of financial mismanagement in the travel office that   my husband coming into office. And thankfully, that was taken care of. But I did not make the decisions about what was done, nor did I direct that any particular decision be, SCOTT SIMON: Is it just possible in the human game of `Telephone’ that Hillary Rodham Clinton says, `I’m concerned about the travel office, we ought to look into that,’ and eventually that gets translated by aides who are anxious to please you as, `Clean house,’? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Well, I can’t speculate on what did or did not happen. I only know what I said and what I intended to convey. SCOTT SIMON: Mind if we talk about your book a little? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I would love to talk about my book. [laughs] SCOTT SIMON: All right, change of pace. A lot of it is much more sad ground, because you say in the book that despite the fact that we rhetorically say children are our most important commodities   no pun intended, talking about your financial   HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON:   [laughs] You are so good, Scott, I love   SCOTT SIMON:   It just occurred to me, and I said it, I’m   but that you say that we often don’t invest in our most precious commodities as we should. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Right, right. Unlike stocks and bonds and commodities that are traded in a market which is out there to be invested in   and you can see the immediate return you either make money or you lose money   our children deserve a much more careful and   investment. SCOTT SIMON: You talk in the book about something I believe you call `the discipline of gratitude.’ HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Right, right. SCOTT SIMON: Interesting idea, that you need to remind yourself what you ought to be grateful for. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: It is. That came to me, really, as a gift in 1993, which was a very difficult year for me personally. It started off with such a great high with my husband’s inauguration, and such hopes. And then shortly after, my father was stricken by a stroke and died, our friend Vince Foster killed himself, throughout that year I knew that my    was much, much sicker than she let on, and in the fall learned that she only had a few months to live. And indeed, she died before the year was out. So I had to really dig down pretty deep in my own resources, and luckily I had people who sent me books to read, gave me favorite scriptures, shared with me the stories of how, like me, they would just get their eyes welling up I would be standing in a receiving line and something would remind me of my father, and I’d, you know, wonder whether my mascara was going to run. And there was a book by Henri Nouwen, the Jesuit theologian, and it was about the prodigal son. And, you know, sometimes it’s good to be reminded that people don’t get what they think they deserve, that life is unfair, that every one of us is going to encountered obstacles. So, the whole book was helpful, but in it was this phrase `the discipline of gratitude,’ and I had never thought of gratitude being a discipline. And I began to do that. I mean, every day, no matter what is happening around me, I consciously try to discipline my own feelings and my mind about what I have to be grateful for, because by any stretch of the imagination   even during the worst times when people are accusing me of things and doing all that they do   I’m a very lucky person. SCOTT SIMON: Would you ever run for office yourself? Do you ever think about that? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Oh, I don’t think so. No. SCOTT SIMON: I mean, did you ever, back in the ’60s   between when you were, I believe, you were a `Goldwater Girl’  HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON:   That’s   SCOTT SIMON:   and whatever you became politically? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: That’s right. And I feel like my political beliefs in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don’t recognize this new brand of Republicanism that’s afoot now which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I’m very proud that I was a `Goldwater Girl.’ And then my political beliefs changed over time. But I’ve always thought that the role of citizen, the role of advocate, were as important in our democracy as running for office. So, it’s not anything I’ve ever, you know, seriously, SCOTT SIMON: You know, whenever we’ve had to refer to you in news accounts, I   and I hope I’ve done this over the years   I’ve never used the term `first lady,’ because it struck me as antiquated. Do you use that term? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I don’t use it much personally, but I don’t object to people using it because it is a tradition that we think started with Martha Washington. So, it’s not the term so much, it’s the expectations that surround the role that I find fascinating. I have spent a lot of time in the last several years reading about my predecessors, and have discovered that nearly every one of them had a kind of bumpy time here because there’s really no way to satisfy the extraordinary expectations that are put upon the person who is married to the president. And it has been both somewhat sustaining, if you will, as well as a cautionary tale to realize that the women who have been here before have encountered many different kinds of challenges. And at the end of the day, you have to be yourself, you have to say and stand for what you believe in, you have to be willing to get up and go ahead and take the slings and arrows and just try to persist through them, because it’s apparently an inevitable part of our American democracy. SCOTT SIMON: For example, if I may, when William Safire of the New York Times said very bluntly in a column this week that he didn’t believe you were telling the truth, and then through Mr. McCurry, the president’s press secretary, it was communicated that your husband took exception of the kind he would like to apply to Mr. Safire’s nose, I   HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON:   But with a smile. SCOTT SIMON: No, understood, I think, on all sides. But the suggestion of that seemed to be, this is personal criticism that the columnist is leveling, and so therefore I’m going to take personal exception when you talk that way about my partner in life. But was it personal? Was it called for? I mean, he   Mr. Safire was talking about your record as an attorney and a public figure. Did you take personal exception to that? HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Well, I don’t take what Mr. Safire says very seriously. As you pointed out, I was working for the committee that impeached President Nixon, for whom Mr. Safire worked, and, best I can tell, is still working. In fact, my mother took some offense because being called a `congenital liar’ seems to be reflect badly on her and my late father. But, you know, I don’t really have much to add to that. SCOTT SIMON: See, I wasn’t going to repeat the phrase because I don’t want your husband to punch me in the nose. We live nearby, after all. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: He wouldn’t, he won’t, he won’t. SCOTT SIMON: Thank you for all you time on a snowy day. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Thank you. SCOTT SIMON:   Hillary Rodham Clinton."
"In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, every morning, a medical specialist known as Chewa (a name that means brave in Swahili  —   but his bosses call him Mchapakazi, the hard worker) gets excited about his job. For two 40 minute sessions, punctuated by a nap and some recreational time with   he will test smears of human mucus for the presence of tuberculosis by sniffing deeply at each of 10 samples, then letting his supervisors know when he senses the disease in one. He has been taught by staff at the NGO called APOPO to know tuberculosis by its smell. Chewa is a   African   rat. An untreated tuberculosis patient can infect up to a dozen people a year. Almost 10 million people worldwide contracted TB in 2014, and some 1. 5 million died from it. The disease is largely curable, but first it must be diagnosed. That’s where the rats come in. Conventional detection techniques in a lab are expensive and  . Since 2002, APOPO has pioneered the use of what it calls HeroRATS to get the job done in less time for less money. In a long cage with samples of sputum placed in recesses along its floor, the rats are trained to stop and indicate to their handlers when they recognize the scent of tuberculosis. They’re rewarded with a treat  —   usually a bit of banana.  According to Robin Toal, community manager at APOPO, ”Our rats can screen nearly 100 samples in 20 minutes compared to a laboratory technician, who takes around four days to do that many.” So far APOPO’s rats have screened more than 340, 000 TB samples. APOPO, which also trains rats to sniff out land mines, this past fall received a USAID Development Innovations Ventures Grant to expand its work with rats and disease detection. APOPO will concentrate on high TB prevalence prisons in Tanzania and Mozambique. It also plans to move beyond prisons to other places where people live and work in close quarters. Hard worker Chewa has a pretty sweet life. Born at a rat breeding center at APOPO’s headquarters in Morogoro, Tanzania, he began his training at just a month old. Staffer Albert Carol (”Uncle Albert”) who is charged with socializing all the facility’s baby rats, exposes them to people, tastes, smells  —   and a variety of situations. ”He pets and strokes them all day. He takes them for rides in his car, or on the back of his motorbike, to different buildings,” Toal explains. ”All of this is just get them used to a human environment so that they’re comfortable with us, because only animals that are relaxed, comfortable and happy are able to do this kind of detection work.” Currently 29 HeroRATS  are at work detecting TB in Morogoro, with 26 more in the breeding program. The rats, which can grow to 3 feet long (including tail) are trained and ready for   at the age of 9 months. Though they have a lifespan of about 8 years, the animals are allowed to retire whenever they want. Says Toal: ”They’re enthusiastic when we come and open the doors in the morning. They jump on our shoulders. As soon as the animals stop showing that same level of enthusiasm, we start to evaluate them a bit closer. They all have daily health inspections and biweekly checks from a vet. As soon as we think they don’t want to do it, then we’ll happily let them retire. And they can live out their days lounging with their friends, snacking on watermelon, running on wheels, chasing their tails, whatever they want to do. We still take them out and play with them, they just don’t get woken up in the morning. The life of a retired rat is especially blissful.”"
"It’s 5:45 in the morning, and in a training field outside Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s demining rats are already hard at work. Their noses are close to the wet grass, darting from side to side, as they try to detect explosives buried just beneath the ground. Each rat is responsible for clearing a    (  ) patch of land. Their Cambodian supervisor, Hulsok Heng, says they’re good at it. ”They are very good,” he says. ”You see this 200 square meters? They clear in only 30 minutes or 35 minutes. If you compare that to a deminer, maybe two days or three days. The deminer will pick up all the fragmentation, the metal in the ground, but the rat picks up only the smell of TNT. Not fragmentation or metal or a nail or a piece of crap in the ground.” That’s right: Someone using a   machine will take a lot longer to detect a land mine than a rat using its nose. There’s plenty of work for the rats here in Cambodia. The government estimates there are 4 million to 6 million land mines or other pieces of unexploded ordnance  —   including bombs, shells and grenades  —   littering the countryside, remnants of decades of conflict. Neighboring Vietnam and Laos also have unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War. Dozens of people are killed or maimed in the region every year  —   and there’s a financial toll as well, since the presence of these potentially deadly devices decreases the amount of land available to farmers. Enter the rats. These are not kitchen rats, but African giant pouched rats, also known as Gambian pouched rats, about 2 feet long from head to tail. Their eyesight is terrible. But their sense of smell is extraordinary. The rats can detect the presence of TNT in amounts starting at 29 grams (about 1 ounce). A Belgian nonprofit called Apopo began harnessing the rodents’ olfactory prowess 15 years ago. (The group also trains rats to detect tuberculosis). The organization set up a breeding program and training center in Tanzania and began deploying rats to   countries, first to Mozambique and Angola. Apopo’s Cambodia program began in April, in partnership with the Cambodian Mine Action Center. ”The idea was very strange,” says operations coordinator Theap Bunthourn. ”Cambodian people kill rats, don’t like rats. But they’re   they’re easy to transport, they’re easy to train, and they don’t set off the mines because they’re too light.” That’s an advantage over   dogs, also used in Cambodia. And unlike with dogs, says field supervisor Hulsok Heng, bonding is not an issue. ”The rat does not belong to anybody, it can work with anyone, not like [a] dog. If [a] handler is sick, [a] dog cannot work with other people. If the dog does not recognize you, it won’t work with you. But rat, no problem.” Fifteen rats arrived in Cambodia from Tanzania in late April. Since it’s hotter in Cambodia than in Tanzania, Hulsok says, they’re put to work before the sun comes up. By midday, it’s too hot for them. One rat, named Victoria, ambles down a   stretch of grass, tethered to a line held by handlers on either end. ”She’s very good today, very fresh after the rain last night,” Hulsok says before showing me the mine planted about 7 yards away. As Victoria gets close, maybe a     away, she stops, sticks her nose up high in the air and seems to lock on to something. She takes another   then scratches the ground. It’s the signal that she’s found the mine. ”After the rat pick[s] up the scent and scratches,” Hulsok says, ”we give her a food reward, like a banana.” No TNT, no banana. The rats learn this through repetition. They also learn not to fall for the tricks the handlers use to try to fool them. These can include ”the smell from a battery, oil filter, car filter, tuna fish can that we use to confuse the rat,” Hulsok says. ”Because if they scratch on another smell, we give no food, no reward. Only reward TNT smell.” Another rat, the rock star of the group, named Pit, has already identified two mines this morning. She is just about to reach the spot where they’ve planted a decoy, known as a ”dummy.” Pit isn’t fooled by the dummy  —   not even for an instant. She ”smells only TNT,” says Hulsok. What about the other rats? ”Sometimes they scratch for the dummy. But we don’t give them food,” he says. ”Then the rats will learn. But some rats are more clever than others. Just like people.” Apopo’s James Pursey says it costs about 6, 000 euros, or $6, 500, to train each rat. They can live from 6 to 8 years in captivity. At the Cambodian Mine Action Center training camp outside Siem Reap, it’s a pretty good life. The rats are kept in individual cages in an   room ”because we want to protect our investment, take care of them,” says Theap, the operations manager. ”We want to keep them good and healthy all the time, so they can perform [with] more efficiency.” There are still some skeptics, even in the demining community, who won’t trust a rat. Hulsok isn’t one of them. He’s been looking for and clearing mines and other unexploded ordnance for more than 20 years. In the case of certain mines, he says, he’d trust a rat over a metal detector any day. ”One type of mine from Chinese, we call 72 Alpha, the metal is very, very small, very, very small detonator and pin,” he says. ”But a rat can smell TNT very good, so [it] can pick up that mine. But it’s good if we have both. Without [a] mine detector, it’s not easy to work.” In other words, the giant African rats are just one tool in the demining kit  —   not meant to replace dogs and machines, but to augment them, helping make it quicker and easier to deal with the legacy of the country’s brutal past. And what happens to the rats when they’ve reached the end of their working lives? ”Basically, when nearing the end, we notice that they slow down, and we start keeping a close eye on their accuracy via increased field testing,” Pursey says. ”Eventually, they decide not to come out of their cages and we leave them there for a while until they pass away or they are in obvious distress  —   in which case, we humanely euthanize them. In those final weeks, they hang out with their mates in playtime and training if they want to, but they don’t go out to the field. Normally, they pass away quite quickly once the process has started.” But that’s a long way down the road for Victoria, Pit and the other newly arrived rats. They have a lot of work ahead of them, a lot of lives to help save. Theap hopes they’ll be deployed in real minefields by September or October."
"Rob Watson was ready for something new. At 9 p. m. on a Friday in February, Watson was standing outside of La Casa, a   and community center  —   whose main chapel is the size of your parents’ spacious living room  —   nestled next to a tienda in Washington, D. C.’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Inside, a hardcore punk band called Unknown Threat had just taken the stage. Of course, there was no actual stage. There was just the floor where the band set up at one end of the room, and the dozens of fans in attendance who stood everywhere the band wasn’t and this is more or less what punk looks like. Once Unknown Threat hit its stride a few songs into its set, those standing closest to the band churned into motion, ricocheting off of one another and swinging arms wildly, seemingly unconcerned whether friend or foe caught a fist to the face. But to Watson, who has performed in bands and booked shows in D. C. for years, the city’s punk scene, at this moment, feels complacent. He says he has watched the scene he helped build lose urgency, at least at home. Looking at it from the outside, 2015 was a banner year for D. C’s storied punk scene, which first rose to prominence in the early 1980s and has become an     fixture in the local music ecosystem. But at no point since those heady days of Bad Brains and Minor Threat has the local product been so talented, prolific and diverse. After years of being a primarily local concern, D. C. punk matters to the wider underground music world once again. But that’s the rub, Watson says. D. C.’s punk scene broke nationally last year, with multiple bands releasing   albums, joining major tours and crossing international borders to play for punk contingencies abroad. More than a   new wave D. C. hardcore bands released albums or EPs last year, including scene stalwarts Pure Disgust, Red Death and Protester. Those three bands also toured the U. S. at various times, while Protester spent a week in Mexico in December. But while established bands rose in prominence as they performed around the country, some within the scene grew frustrated as momentum and enthusiasm at home lagged. When those established bands played gigs within the city limits, fans oftentimes stood with arms crossed and nodded along  —   not the ideal reaction to a genre that often inspires a hail of   and stage dives from its audience. ”We just assumed it’s because everyone is in the same bands. For most people it’s like, if I’ve seen one, I’ve seen it all,” Watson says. ”We played lackluster shows, attendance was low. People weren’t having a lot of fun.” So Watson organized the La Casa showcase to help introduce an even newer crop of local hardcore acts to the scene. He wanted to shift the spotlight, he says, from those bands releasing albums to bands still recording demos in basements and playing their first few gigs. As it turns out, those new bands are not only out there  —   they’re musically and stylistically far beyond where most bands are at that point in their existences. It’s as if the rising tide of the scene has indeed lifted all boats. Once young and scrappy by necessity, the D. C. hardcore scene is reaching something like maturity. Even when the city was trudging through an   malaise in the   punk bands peppered the underground. Sick Fix and Coke Bust  —   and, before them, Magrudergrind  —   anchored the scene through the late aughts and early this decade. Around the same time, Give grew to   status in D. C. and nationally with its brand of   punk and savage live shows. Although punks in D. C. now are loathe to talk about it, the city’s historic hardcore scene continues to cast shadows over the genre. Minor Threat, the early 1980s hardcore punk band led by Ian MacKaye, defined the genre in nearly every conceivable way  —   sonically, politically and spiritually. That scene, and the Revolution Summer movement a few years later, produced a greater number of significant punk bands than perhaps any in the country’s history: Bad Brains, Youth Brigade, Government Issue, Void, Rites of Spring, Bikini Kill, Nation of Ulysses and dozens of others. There’s always been punk in the capital, but after those first few waves of hardcore bands faded away through the 1990s, the scene lacked the depth of bands and musicians necessary to restart that initial momentum. But everything changed in 2015. Last year, a new crop of young, hungry D. C. punk bands unleashed a series of generally excellent albums upon a city where hardcore punk is written into the genetic codes of dejected suburban youth and city stalwarts alike. The nickname that has stuck to the new scene  —   The New Wave Of D. C. Hardcore  —   somehow feels like an important marker in the anthropological sense, a name that makes the scene cohesive and preserves its existence. It has produced a hardcore punk compilation album that will in all likelihood be remembered as the most important memorial to the D. C. scene since Dischord Records’ seminal 1982 mashup Flex Your Head. And it has launched its best bands on national tours to spread the NWODCHC gospel to all corners of the punk world. Ace Mendoza, arguably the most talented guitar player in the city’s punk scene, is the brain behind The Red Line Comp, the groundbreaking hardcore punk compilation named after the D. C. subway line that connects the district’s northern suburbs of Bethesda and Silver Spring with the city center. Mendoza says that when his bands play outside of the city, concertgoers appear shocked that D. C. is again home to such a panoply of punk bands. Most of the dozen bands appearing on The Red Line Comp also released music on their own during 2015  —   an incredible amount of productivity for any one music scene, regardless of genre. Red Death, which borrows as much from Corrosion of Conformity crossover thrash as it does from D. C. hardcore heritage, last April released Permanent Exile, a brutal,   full length. That same month, street punks Pure Disgust dropped Chained, a   firehose of sound aimed squarely at racial inequality  —   a throwback political punk voice for a new civil rights movement. Protester  —   perhaps the most faithful representation of   D. C. and New York hardcore in the scene  —   released two outstanding EPs over the course of the year, including this winter’s Paincave Sessions, which will feed into a   record later this year. Public Suicide, Straight Lace, JÄVLA and Spite all issued demos or EPs. D. O. C. Civic Duty  —   the list goes on. And death metal purveyors Genocide Pact released the excellent Forged Through Domination LP that snuck into the NWODCHC roster with its occasional driftings into   punk. If the timing here seems exceptional  —   nearly a dozen recordings from a formerly stagnant music scene in the course of a year  —   that’s because it is. Bands don’t often rise up like a crop of wheat and simultaneously produce the jubilee of records that the D. C. scene has over the past 12 months. The tie that binds, and that propels the scene forward, is the musicians. There are fewer than one might expect. For all of its recent success and productivity, the D. C. punk scene is remarkably small. The most notable and productive bands revolve around a nexus of just a few prolific young musicians set changes at live shows often devolve into a game of musical chairs where the drummer becomes the vocalist, the guitarist becomes the drummer and suddenly, a new band is playing. Connor Donegan performs in no fewer than seven bands at the moment, including Protester, Red Death and Pure Disgust, perhaps the scene’s most acclaimed acts. Robin Zeijlon plays with Donegan in both Pure Disgust and Protester, along with another nine local hardcore bands of varying notoriety. And Mendoza, the guitarist, anchors at least four D. C. punk bands, including two with Donegan  —   Pure Disgust and Red Death. To say the scene is tight knit is an understatement. Over the summer, the organizers of In It Together Fest, a D. C.    music and art festival, attempted to book a few NWODCHC bands for the festival’s   Friday night basement show. They couldn’t. Red Death was out on tour at the time, and with Donegan, Mendoza and Zeijlon out of town, they struggled to assemble another band to play the festival. They filled the bill with Misled Youth, one of the few D. C. hardcore bands without overlapping membership. Donegan says the evolution of the scene, and its drastic overlap in band membership, happened organically. The main actors grew up together in those northern D. C. suburbs serviced by the red line train. Donegan and Mendoza went to middle school and high school together and have been playing in bands since they were both 15. ”We’re all friends we’ve always been friends,” Donegan said in an interview last summer, when Red Death and Protester were both playing a gig (Donegan was pulling double duty as the singer in one band and drummer in the other). ”There was just a time that we were all discovering new music and getting really excited about exploring what we could do artistically. And then sort of going for it.” Those efforts have produced incredible results for the young scene and have placed sometimes welcome distance between this new wave of bands and the towering names that haunted D. C. venues 30 years before. Donegan says he does his best to represent that legendary scene in the wider world of hardcore punk  —   he thinks the historic New York and Boston scenes get more attention than D. C. without reason. But most members of the current scene tire of answering questions about Minor Threat and Government Issue. In the unique bends of punk   those bands are ancient history  —   the Paleozoic Era of punk. There are risks with such concentrated band membership, of course. If one or two of the core group were to move away for whatever reason, the scene, or at least multiple bands now central to it, would struggle to continue. ”If it happens, it happens,” Donegan says. ”We’ll keep pressing on.” But at least these NWODCHC bands are touring, out spreading that punk gospel. And looking around, he sees an even newer crop of hardcore punk bands forming and playing gigs that have no real connection to his crew. At the La Casa show, two bands were playing their   gigs: Unknown Threat and Stuck Pigs, which includes Watson and some of other scene mainstays. Others had just released demos, or were waiting for their first EPs to drop. The influence of the established NWODCHC scene remained  —   Stuck Pigs and Stand Off, a band Watson touted as the new face of the scene, included Mendoza, Donegan and other scene mainstays. But other bands on the bill truly represented the scene’s expanding presence  —   fresh faces rejuvenating the local product. That’s a reality of punk on a   level. Even as   music festivals drag the same dusty collection of punk rock retreads out of retirement year after year, local punk scenes require a constant influx of fresh bands to keep the heart of the thing beating  —   to maintain the kind of momentum the early Dischord Records scene lost at some point. Without these new bands  —   and without Watson and others slipping into an ambassadorial role, despite their own youth  —   even the most vibrant scene can be stricken with fatigue, or worse: complacency. Laura Newhauser fronts Iron Cages, a speedy, political punk band that opened the showcase. The band has been together for about seven months, Newhauser says. The showcase was one of its first gigs. To her, the current D. C. hardcore scene is an increasingly expansive and inclusive one. ”I think a lot of people are working really hard to put shows like this together, with new bands, to get people to form [more] new bands. Really, it’s a growing scene right now,” she says, standing outside after the show. She says she knows the people in those   bands, but not well. In organizing and promoting precisely these kinds of showcases, Watson and others are building bridges across different generations within the scene and creating space for newer bands to thrive, she says. ”For a little while, you have a lot of bigger bands coming out, but not a lot of new bands,” Neuhauser says.” Now, there are a lot of new bands, and those bigger bands are helping the new bands get recognized.” So far, that plan is working. When Stand Off ripped into those first notes of its brutally fast, throwback punk, the crowd went haywire. That included Donegan and other NWODCHC band members, among the throngs of kids rumbling from one side of the tiny church to the other, bashing into one another, reckless. At one point, someone accidentally clotheslined themselves on a photographer’s cable, then kept charging along, unfazed. It was just what a hardcore show should look like. Anyone standing around with their arms crossed would have been bowled over."
"Editor’s note: This story ran originally on Dec. 2, 2015. It has been updated to reflect this week’s bombings in Brussels.  When police announced that Khalid   and his brother, Ibrahim, had blown themselves up in two separate attacks in Brussels on Tuesday, the pair became the latest example of terrorists who share fraternal bonds. Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving participant of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, was also working with his brother, Brahim. In that case, Brahim went through with a suicide bombing at a cafe. Salah, for reasons still unexplained, didn’t detonate his vest. He was arrested in Brussels last week. The January 2015 murders at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in Paris were also carried out by brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi. Closer to home, the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 were planned and executed by Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokar. And more than a decade earlier, three pairs of brothers from Saudi Arabia were among the 19 hijackers in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It’s no accident that   terrorist attacks involve brothers. Intelligence officials say that small terrorist cells made up of relatives or close friends are the hardest to spot. They are not only difficult to infiltrate, but because the terrorists are often living in close quarters, perhaps even under the same roof, it is also difficult to pick up their communications or signs of their plan. That’s what happened in the case of the Boston Marathon bombings, when the Tsarnaev brothers built   bombs and ignited them near the race’s finish line. The eldest of the Abdeslam brothers, Mohamed, went on Belgian television in November and said that Salah and Brahim had started to change about six months before the Paris attacks. Mohamed had no role in the plot and called on Salah to turn himself in. Police do not believe he knew where Salah was hiding before his arrest last week. Mohamed said he noticed that his brothers started praying more, and they announced to the family that they had quit drinking. But that, said Mohamed, seemed like something to celebrate. He thought his brothers were just maturing, that they had started to take their religion, and their lives, more seriously. ”When your brother tells you that he’s stopped drinking,” he told Belgian television last year, ”it’s not a change that says something is wrong.” But in hindsight, the change appears to have had at least some connection to the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, in which terrorists opened fire on cafes and a concert hall and detonated explosive vests, killing 130 and wounded hundreds more. Abdeslam has also been linked to the Brussels plot and his fingerprints were found in an apartment that had been rented by the Bakraoui brothers. An Intense Feedback Loop, Brothers and terrorism have gone    for years. Reid Sawyer, who used to run the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, said foreign fighters and jihadists often had close ties to other family members who had taken the same path. ”When you find one person that radicalizes in a family, it is a great predictor that somebody else in that family  —   either immediately a brother or a cousin  —   is likely to participate,” he says. ”And that’s exactly what we’ve seen in this [Nov. 13] Paris attack.” The process of radicalization is a fairly intense one when family dynamics are added into the mix, it is even more so. Family members not only feel compelled to show they are committed to a particular ideology, but there is also an extra pressure to prove oneself  —   to show a brother or a cousin or other relatives that they can count on you. The feedback loop makes for an intense commitment. Rik Coolsaet, a professor of international relations at Ghent University in Belgium, who has been studying radicalization there  —   and in Europe more generally  —   sees much of this radicalization through the lens of sociology. ”It is not new,” he says. ”In the study of terrorism, it is very often the case that you are not, as an individual, radicalizing all by yourself. Often it is a case that you radicalize due to   dynamics  —   kinship and friendship bonds.” His research suggests that people don’t initially embrace extremist groups because of their ideology. Instead, he says, what’s more important is whether their friends or family members already have joined. ”This might be a bunch of guys in my neighborhood, this might be family members,” he says. ”And so it is this dynamic that pushes you forward on this road, on this journey to violent terrorism.” Neighborhood Bonds, The Abdeslam brothers lived in a Brussels neighborhood called Molenbeek. Since November, the neighborhood had become ground zero for Belgian counterterrorism efforts. Nearly all the Nov. 13 Paris attackers had a connection to the neighborhood or some of the men who lived there. The Bakraoui brothers lived in Schaerbeek, just a short drive away. Molenbeek doesn’t look particularly sinister, with its cluster of   apartment buildings and its small shops and awnings decorated with Arabic script. It is a   and   area, just a short   subway ride to the central square in Brussels. But Coolsaet says the neighborhood might as well be a world away. ”These are neighborhoods where it is difficult to live,” he says, ”where you feel an atmosphere among youngsters of no future. They think they will never be accepted into Belgian society.” That makes these young men particularly vulnerable, he says, to messages like those ISIS sends that suggest they can belong to the worldwide ummah, or community of Muslims. In fact, the man thought to have been a key organizer of the Paris attacks was from Molenbeek as well. Abdelhamid Abaaoud is thought to have helped plot terrorist attacks in Europe for over a year. He was sent by ISIS leaders in Raqqa, Syria, U. S. and European counterterrorism officials say, and his early attempts to launch attacks fizzled. Early last year, police raided a safe house in the Belgian city of Verviers, where he had been stockpiling weapons and explosives. With the investigation continuing and raids underway throughout Belgium, it is too early to tell who is involved this time around, and whether they will have the same Molenbeek connections. It is also unclear if this team of terrorists forged their bonds in Syria and then returned home to attack. Dina   is NPR’s Counterterrorism correspondent. Follow her @NPRDina."
"Authorities have identified a third suspected suicide bomber in the terrorist attacks on Brussels this week. A Belgian federal prosecutor’s statement says the person seen on the left in a widely circulated surveillance footage still, previously identified as a suspected attacker, is    Najim Laachraoui. Counterterrorism officials have suggested Laachraoui made the bombs used in the deadly attack on Brussels on Tuesday, when two explosions at the Brussels Airport and one in a metro station killed at least 31 people and injured hundreds. Laachraoui’s fingerprints were found on the luggage bombs used Tuesday as well as explosive vests that were used in Paris, NPR’s Dina   reports, citing counterterrorism officials in the U. S. and Europe. The attacks were claimed by the Islamic State. Police in Belgium are continuing to investigate the attacks  —   most recently with a   police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek, which a local official says is now over. Police detained six people Thursday night, and three Friday, according to a Brussels prosecutor. Meanwhile, U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Brussels, where he is meeting with officials to discuss this week’s terrorist attack and offering his condolences to victims and their families. Kerry confirmed that Americans were among the dead. ”The United States stands firmly with Belgium and with the nations of Europe in the face of this tragedy,” Kerry said Friday, according to the AP. ”We  —   all of us representing countless nationalities  —   have a message for those who inspired or carried out the attacks here or in Paris, or Ankara, or Tunis, or San Bernardino, or elsewhere: We will not be intimidated. We will not be deterred. We will come back with greater resolve  —   with greater strength  —   and we will not rest until we have eliminated your nihilistic beliefs and cowardice from the face of the Earth.” Police rounded up six people Thursday night in connection with the attacks. Three of them were detained right in front of the prosecutor’s office of those three, two have been released and one remains in custody. The identities of the people detained have not been released. Raids took place in various parts of Brussels on Thursday, including in the city center, according to reports. Also on Thursday, police arrested a man in Paris who they said was in the advanced stages of plotting a terrorist attack. That man has since been identified as Reda Kriket. On Friday, Belgian prosecutors announced three new arrests in Brussels, related to the Kriket arrest. As Belgium begins the last of three official days of mourning, investigators are still searching for other potential attackers and accomplices. In addition to identifying Laachraoui, police have named two other the suspected suicide bombers in the attacks on Brussels’ main airport and a busy metro station:   brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui. Officials say they believe Ibrahim was one of the airport bombers and Khalid was at the Maelbeek metro attack and that both brothers are dead. U. S. officials said Thursday that they were on an American terrorism watch list. Officials are looking for another unidentified man seen on the surveillance video with Ibrahim and Laachraoui at the Brussels Airport on Tuesday. There is a question as to whether there may also have been a second attacker at the metro bombing. The Brussels Airport will be closed at least through Sunday. Meanwhile, two top officials have attempted to resign over the Belgian government’s failure to prevent the bombings. Teri Schultz, reporting for NPR from Brussels, tells our Newscast unit: ”The interior and justice ministers offered their resignations over administration missteps leading up to Tuesday’s attacks. Prime Minister Charles Michel refused to let them quit. This, after Turkey said it had arrested and deported alleged suicide bomber Ibrahim Bakraoui last year as a suspected terrorist, informing Belgian diplomats in Turkey. ”Appearing on national television, the ministers acknowledged Belgium should have arrested Bakraoui, as his travel violated his parole. He went on to launch the suicide attack at Brussels Airport.”"
"Three days after terrorist attacks that left Brussels in mourning, no official list of victims has been released. As people continue searching for their loved ones, they are turning to social media for help. One site in particular, Trello, is allowing friends and family to keep an active list of those who remain unaccounted for. Trello is a visual social organization tool usually used for planning weddings or work projects, but in this application it has given the Brussels community a place to find answers. The Trello page Brussels Missing has three columns to keep track of people: missing, safe and injured. Each column has photographs, contact information and names. As more information comes out from authorities, users transfer the names: from missing to injured, or from missing to safe. David Geilfus put up the page on Wednesday. ”We thought it was a good idea to use Trello to help people finding information about missing relatives,” he told NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. ”Because it’s quite difficult to find information on all those Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc. So we thought it was a good idea to synchronize every information we found in one place so it’s easier for people to find.” Heidi Simons lives in Ravels, about an hour and a half northeast of Brussels. She posted on Facebook offering to help people look for loved ones and was contacted by a young man looking for his friend, Frank Deng. She did everything she could, which included posting his photograph and her contact information on Trello. ”I’m just someone trying to help as much as I can in whatever situation,” she said. ”It’s just a normal thing to do.” By Wednesday afternoon, there were 22 names on the page by now that number has more than doubled. People continue to post about the   of colleagues, siblings, friends and parents. Lynne Van Buul, a nurse and respiratory therapist from Athens, Ga. used Trello for the first time to try to find information about a friend’s fiancé. She posted photographs and contact information, but, like Simons, says she should not get the credit for tracking down answers. In the attacks on Tuesday at least 31 people were killed and 316 were wounded, according to a Belgian Health Ministry statement. U. S. officials said two Americans were among the dead as well. Maggie De Block, the minister of public health in Belgium, said in a statement in French: ”The victims and the families often still have a long way to go, but they are in the best hands possible. I cannot stress enough: Our medical teams have done a wonderful job.” Michael Pryor, Trello’s CEO, said he sees the tool as a way for people to resolve anxiety about a project or event. He never imagined that the tool would have this particular application. ”I think it’s really amazing that people are using it to solve this problem,” Pryor said. He added, looking at the board: ”God that’s so many people, all these faces. What I wonder is how people find out about this board? How do they end up here?” Naomi LaChance is a business news intern at NPR."
"This is what a campaign in the gutter looks like. Once again, the political world is talking about a National Enquirer story. The last time was during the 2008 presidential campaign when the tabloid alleged that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had fathered a child out of wedlock. When the rumor first surfaced, the media largely ignored it. It turned out to be true. This time around, the story involves Ted Cruz and allegations of multiple extramarital affairs. To be clear, the story quotes none of the alleged women involved nor does it even mention their names. It has not been substantiated by any other media outlet, including NPR. And despite whether any of it is true, unlike the Edwards story, this one has been harder for the media to ignore. Why? Because Cruz himself brought it up. ”Let me be clear: This National Enquirer story is garbage,” Cruz said, unprompted by questions from any reporters, in an   statement in Wisconsin, where the candidate is campaigning before the April 5 primary there. ”It is complete and utter lies. It is a tabloid smear.” Cruz blamed a former Trump adviser, who was quoted in the Enquirer story, accusing him of living up to a reputation of dirty tricks. The news conference was followed Friday afternoon by a response from Trump in a Facebook post in which Trump said he ”had absolutely nothing to do with it.” ”Likewise, I have nothing to do with the National Enquirer and unlike Lyin’ Ted Cruz I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchman and then pretend total innocence,” Trump continued. All of it was an outcrop of a heated    between the top two GOP candidates  —   about their wives  —   that began on Twitter and spilled over to the campaign. It all started, as they say on the playground, with an   superPAC running an ad depicting a partially nude Melania Trump and asking Utahns, home to a majority Mormon population, if this is what they want in a first lady. (Cruz went on to win all 40 of Utah’s delegates Tuesday night.) Despite candidates not being allowed to coordinate with superPACs  —   and Cruz denying he had anything at all to do with what that superPAC did  —   Trump blamed Cruz. Trump took to Twitter and urged Cruz to ”be careful” and threatened to ”spill the beans on your wife.” He never did say what said ”beans” were exactly, but he sowed more distrust with Cruz by retweeting an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife juxtaposed with his own wife. On Thursday, Cruz accused Trump of being a ”sniveling coward.” (We wrap all of that here.) And, by Friday, the Enquirer story popped. Perhaps Cruz felt compelled to address it, because since that 2008 campaign, times have changed. It’s a prime example of how social media can now turn brush fires into devastating, potentially   forest fires. Anyone with a Twitter or Facebook account would have been   to avoid the story. As of 5 p. m. EDT, ”National Enquirer” was the top trending item on Facebook as was #CruzSexScandal on Twitter. For some context, Twitter claims to have 320 million active monthly users and 1 billion unique monthly visits to sites with embedded tweets. Facebook claims more than 1 billion active daily users. ComScore, which ranks online activity, put Facebook and Twitter at Nos. 2 and 14, respectively, in unique monthly visitors for February, with 206 million and 117 million apiece. For journalists, what’s trending has given a window into what people want in real time. It’s helped, in some ways, to better serve and meet audiences where they are. But, as the media landscape evolves and media companies try to remain competitive, it also means chasing traffic and ratings  —   and not necessarily what’s always in the public’s best interest or even what’s true. Maybe all of this is a predictable new normal, especially as newsmakers and public officials have tried  —   and in many ways succeeded  —   to bypass the media filter."
"As Cleveland prepares to host the Republican National Convention in July, one question seems to be fueling more and more conversation: whether or not Donald Trump wins the nomination, will his rowdy rallies  —   and the accompanying protests  —   follow him to Cleveland? There have been shoving matches at Trump’s events, and supporters have punched protesters. Speaking on CNN recently, Trump even mentioned the possibility of riots if the nomination were taken from him in a contested convention. Moreover, the recent bombings in Brussels have put police departments across the country on a heightened state of alert. Cleveland officials and the Secret Service offer few details about their plans, but say they’re working to ensure a safe week. ”This is going to be a secure event,” Secret Service spokesman Kevin Dye said, declining to elaborate. Riot Gear And    Police, Cleveland plans to buy barricades, bicycles, batons and 2, 000 sets of riot gear, along with other equipment. The city and Philadelphia, which is hosting the Democratic National Convention, have each received $50 million in federal grants to cover security expenses. Chunks of that money will pay for    police. Cleveland’s   force will be working   shifts, and another 2, 500 officers are expected here from neighboring departments and out of state, according to City Council safety committee chairman Matt Zone. Zone said he’s confident police will offer protection while allowing people to voice their opinions. ”But we’re not going to allow people to hurt individuals or hurt property,” he said. ”That’s not going to be accepted, and it’s going to be dealt with accordingly.” Steven Loomis, the president of the patrolmen’s union, has said that it’s taking too long to order and deliver the riot gear. ”You can’t do the proper training until you have the proper gear to train with,” Loomis said. ”It’s a huge, monumental job that they’re asking us to do, and they need to give us all the support that they can in order for us to do it, and do it safely.” Calls For Transparency, This week, a group of Cleveland civil rights activists urged the city to divulge more about its planned equipment purchases. Jacqueline Greene, an attorney with the Ohio branch of the National Lawyers’ Guild, said she and other advocates wanted ”the immediate release of the entire list of equipment to be purchased for the RNC.” The police department’s recent history adds to their concern. Cleveland police agreed last year to a series of reforms after a Justice Department investigation found evidence of a pattern and practice of excessive force. Cleveland has seen numerous nonviolent protests over shootings by police, and most have ended without arrests. But last year, after an officer was acquitted of manslaughter charges, police cornered demonstrators in a narrow street between buildings and arrested about 70 people. Many were held over the weekend, effectively shutting down the major part of the protest. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sued the city, and Cleveland police agreed to a new mass arrest procedure. That experience doesn’t sit well with local NAACP President Michael Nelson. ”If you’re going to abuse the Constitution in that way on an easy matter,” Nelson said, ”then what are you going to do when things get serious, like they may get with protests around this Republican National Convention?” ’You Have To Prepare For The Worst’ It’s not uncommon for convention host cities to buy crowd control equipment, said former Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor, who led the department when Tampa hosted the 2012 RNC. ”You have to prepare for the worst,” Castor said. ”And if you don’t use that equipment, that’s great. But if there’s a need for it and you don’t have it, that will be an issue.” Castor made sure officers were trained to   situations and says that she didn’t want to send police out in full riot gear to confront protesters. ”That sends a message that there’s an expectation of trouble, and that’s not what we expected,” she said. ”We met with everyone, we set the ground rules, and we expected everybody to abide by them.” A tropical storm also likely dampened enthusiasm for big outdoor protests. In the end, there were few arrests in Tampa, Castor said. That’s not always the case. About 800 people were arrested at the 2008 RNC in St. Paul, and there were 1, 800 arrests at the GOP convention in New York City in 2004. But Castor said the temperature of this election could present Cleveland with a different set of challenges than Tampa faced. ”I believe that Cleveland is going to have a much more difficult time than we had down here in Tampa, for a number of reasons,” Castor said. ”But the most apparent is just the volatility in this election process.”"
"The world is in danger of running out of vaccines for a deadly disease: yellow fever. A major outbreak in the African nation of Angola has already depleted the stockpile that world health officials had set aside for emergencies. It’s unclear whether new vaccines can be made in time  —   even as officials worry that the epidemic could spread through Asia and beyond. Yellow fever itself is part of America’s history. The   virus was a dreaded killer in the United States through the early 1900s  —   sparking devastating epidemics in Philadelphia and New Orleans. The disease has been all but eradicated in wealthy countries but remains a serious threat in areas of Africa and South America where it still pops up. ”You first feel a little achy and then there is a sudden onset of fever, the malaise and then there’s these headaches,” says Ilhem Messaoudi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, Riverside. Most patients recover within a few days. But in about 1 in 5 cases the patient gets hit with a second, more toxic phase. Patients develop the jaundice that gives yellow fever its name. ”The white of the eyes turn yellow, your skin turns yellowish and that’s due to the liver failing,” says Messaoudi. ”Then you’ll have bleeding usually from the eyes and orifices, then shock and   failure.” All within about 21 days. This is the disease that’s been running rampant through Angola since January. More than 1, 200 people have been sickened, and nearly 200 have died. And officials say the risk doesn’t end there. Dr. Tom Frieden heads the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ”The bottom line is that this is another example of an emerging infection that poses a threat that may not be limited to Africa,” says Frieden. ”I’m worried that yellow fever could spread widely in Angola, and then spill over to the Democratic Republic of Congo, potentially Nigeria and other very populous areas in Africa.” That opens the risk of spread to Asian countries like China  —   a lot of Chinese people go back and forth to Africa for work. In fact there’ve already been some cases of yellow fever imported to China during this Angola outbreak. And if the disease does indeed spill over, says Frieden, that’s a serious situation. Because right now the world does not have enough yellow fever vaccine to handle a big outbreak. ”Vaccine is key to stopping yellow fever,” he says. ”That’s how we generally stop them, by vaccinating, particularly around cases, so that the transmission can be reduced.” Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of companies that manufacture yellow fever vaccine. Just one private one and three government owned facilities. Dr. William Perea coordinates control of epidemic diseases for the World Health Organization. ”Yellow fever is a forgotten disease,” he says. ”I mean, who cares about yellow fever? Basically, the markets [for yellow fever vaccine] are poor countries in Africa and some countries in Latin America.” WHO and other international groups have built a stockpile of vaccines to deal with outbreaks, along with additional supply for a campaign to vaccinate children in vulnerable countries. But they’ve already used the emergency stash to vaccinate more than 5. 6 million people in Angola, and now they’re dipping into the supply for the regular childhood vaccinations. Complicating things further  —   it’s really hard to do vaccinations in a place with limited infrastructure like Angola, where a seemingly simple task like keeping vaccines cold can be a challenge. The CDC has been trying to help, but Tom Frieden says the yellow fever outbreak couldn’t have come at a worse time because of another crisis: the Zika epidemic. Yellow fever is spread by the same mosquito, and some 800 CDC staffers are now working on Zika. The CDC is ”stretched thin,” says Frieden. The solution? Frieden is calling for greater funding to fight diseases in developing countries. Because in today’s world, he says, any disease is just a ”plane ride away.”"
"Comedian Garry Shandling died suddenly in Los Angeles on Thursday. He was 66. Shandling was best known for The Larry Sanders Show, a comedy that took viewers behind the scenes of a fictional   talk show. Speaking to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in 1992, Shandling described himself as ”one of those kids who became aware of comedians at a very early age.” Though he initially studied engineering in college, Shandling said he decided to move to Los Angeles when he was 19 or 20 in order to pursue comedy. He described developing his stage persona as ”a nightmare,” particularly since he had never performed before. ”I had no idea who I was when I started,” he said. ”I was frightened to death and had no natural performing skills.” But eventually Shandling found his comedic voice, which blended humor and vulnerability with woeful dating stories. ”I . .. started really [to] spill my guts about being hurt, and people really related to it,” he said. In addition to appearing on The Larry Sanders Show, Shandling also wrote for the comedy series Sanford and Son and created and starred in It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which aired on Showtime from 1986 until 1990. The following interviews originally aired in 1992 and 2007. On growing up watching comedy, It was very odd that at the age of 10 I had memorized the Carl Reiner [and] Mel Brooks ”2, 000 Year Old Man” routine. . .. And I used to watch Don Rickles on TV, and I remember staying up late and watching Jack Paar when I shouldn’t have been and Steve Allen when I shouldn’t have been. So starting very early, I was very tuned in to the world that I’m in now. On abandoning his engineering degree to pursue comedy  My second or third year in the engineering department, I got very frustrated and I sat down with myself and had a   conversation with myself and said, ”What I’d really like to do is see if I can write comedy.” . .. I moved to LA stone cold. Didn’t know anybody didn’t know how to go about it. Really started from scratch. I started hanging out at the Comedy Store watching comedians, and the Comedy Store had just opened, it was 1972. And I just watched and watched  —   and I had a job as an advertising copywriter at the time  —   and watched and watched. And I took a comedy writing class at UCLA, and I met a guy whose father was a comedy writer. We started talking and we ended up writing a script together that he gave to his dad, and his dad said, ”God, this is really good!” And he gave it to an agent. And I just kept meeting people here and there, and finally I wrote a script for Sanford and Son that I got to the producers, and they loved it and they hired me. They said, ”You should write a couple scripts for us this season.” I was 24, I think. On developing a stage persona in his    To be thrown onto the   stage is an experience that you cannot fathom until you’re actually there, because there’s no place to go and everyone is looking at you and you can’t even see them because of the lights. And yet you have to manage to start talking and be funny on top of it. At the beginning, I think I wrote material that was very much influenced by Woody Allen, who is my favorite, and I used to do very   jokes that sounded like I was reading them, and it took years to develop a style. Actually, what happened is I was involved in a relationship and the girl left me. And I was very hurt, very hurt. And I had to go up on stage, and I finally just turned to the audience and said, ”’This girl left me.” I said, ”Well, what happened is she moved in with another guy. So I dumped her, because that’s where I draw the line.” That was really the beginning of the Garry Shandling dating years in  . On his Tonight Show debut, My first Tonight Show was just one of those things  —   I mean this seriously  —   a cosmic,    coming together of circumstance. You walk out there to do your first Tonight Show: Is the audience going to be hot? Are you going to be on fire? It’s like an athlete: Are you going to have your moves at a peak? You know, I work in the moment, so if it starts to ignite, then I start to ignite. It just took off. It was just a set that took off. When I was done, I remember hearing Johnny [Carson] say  —   well, first of all, he thanked the talent booker on the air, which is just shocking. He actually turns and he says, ”Thank you, Jim,” which was to Jim McCawley, who saw me at the Comedy Store. And then he just said into the camera, ”You’re going to hear a lot about that guy.” . .. There’s something about the fact that it was just meant to be and you could feel it in the room. There was a place where the audience broke into applause and Johnny fell off his chair. I’m not that funny. I’m not that funny! I have my moments, but, boy, it was packed with emotion, and I think that’s what I’m about. I felt emotional about it."
"To many who lived it, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was the worst day of their lives. So when Hollywood started looking for people willing to relive it as extras in a feature film about the attacks, even the movie folks were surprised at the turnout. ”I think I’ve never seen a line this long ever,” says Grace Gallant of Boston Casting. She’s literally out of breath from collecting buckets of resumes and headshots from thousands of movie star wannabes who started lining up at 4:30 a. m. The line is a motley crew of Joe   in Red Sox   buff marathon runners in official bibs and brawny officers and firefighters in uniform. The film, Patriots Day, stars Boston native Mark Wahlberg and begins filming in Boston on Tuesday. It’s already stirred emotions and a bit of controversy, as some don’t want the deadly drama playing out again in their backyards. John Herring was working for the state police in Watertown, Mass. the day Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was caught. He says he’s concerned the movie will dwell on the bombers rather than those who risked their lives to capture them. ”I want to make sure they can do it right,” he says, ”and it shows our strength, our courage, resilience.” Director Peter Berg says that’s exactly his intent. ”These are the people that we’re making the film for, and the pressure we feel to honor these people is what fuels us,” he says. But, he adds, it’s also important to convey the evil of the attack. ”We have the ability to reach 50 million people and remind them of the horrors of this tragedy, and encourage people to look at what type of demented minds cause such crimes so that they can at least be alert to that,” he says. Among those with a keen interest in the movie is Jeff Pugliese, whose police officer father got in a firefight with Dzhokhar and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Pugliese expects the film to take some artistic liberties. ”You know, it’s Hollywood,” he says. ”They’re going to have to make it fun to watch. You know, it’s a movie. It’s not a documentary.” Pugliese’s father, Watertown Police Sgt. Jeff Pugliese, was the one who tackled Tamerlan to the ground and then risked his life to try to save him from being run over by his brother. (In the film, the sergeant will be played by J. K. Simmons.) ”He was put in extraordinary circumstances and he behaved extraordinarily,” Pugliese says of his father. ”And as a result, nobody died during the firefight except for some scumbag who deserved it.” Pugliese really wants a part in the film, though he says it would be hard to be in some scenes, like the shootout. ”It gives me like butterflies and goosebumps and everything,” he says. ”Kind of makes me uneasy, but it’s everything together that makes us who we are now, so I don’t want to forget anything about that.” For others, however, the movie is too much too soon. Watertown resident Maria Van Ryn was woken by the 2013 firefight near her house and still jumps when she hears sirens. ”That is gonna be tough,” she says, ”kind of, in a way, reliving it all.” So when the moviemakers wanted to film the shootout in the same spot with simulated explosions and gunshots at midnight, Van Ryn was one of several in the neighborhood who balked. ”For me it was just: There’s no way they can do this,” she says. ”Because I’m thinking to myself: That’s going to stir things up all over again.” Ultimately the moviemakers relented and will film the shootout on a set. Berg says a few survivors and victims’ families have asked not to be portrayed in the movie, but most support the film, even if it may sting. Survivor Lynn Julian says, ”For me, it’s going to trigger a lot of PTSD.” But, she is quick to add, even a movie about the terrorist attack that could’ve killed her can be a net positive. ”We don’t ever want people to forget that we were Boston strong and that we took care of each other. How it’s not how you fall down, it’s how you get back up,” she says. Before Patriots Day comes out in theaters, survivors and first responders will get a private screening. Berg says when the lights come up and he looks them in the eye, he’ll know immediately if he got it right."
"Carla used to get dialysis a couple of times a week at the public hospital in Indianapolis, Eskenazi Hospital. She would sit in a chair for hours as a machine took blood out of her arm, cleaned it and pumped it back into her body. Then one day in 2014, she was turned away. Even though her lungs were full of fluid, the doctors said her condition wasn’t urgent enough to treat that day, she says. ”I explained to the doctors that I couldn’t breathe,” she recalls, ”and they told me it wasn’t true, that I had to wait three more days.” So she waited as toxins continued to build up in her blood, and fluid gathered in her lungs. Standard treatment for people with kidney failure is dialysis every two to three days. But at that point, Carla was getting it about every 10 days, and sometimes ended up in the ICU because her symptoms were so severe. ”I was like that for three months, suffering, throwing up. I couldn’t eat anything,” she says. ”It was really hard for my daughter and my mom and dad to see me like that.” Eskenazi Hospital declined repeated interview requests for this story. Carla is just 31, but her kidneys no longer function, damaged by the autoimmune disease lupus, which she’s had since her early 20s. To stay alive, she needs regular dialysis, but getting treatment has been difficult as an immigrant who entered the country illegally. (Her legal status is why we’re not using her last name.) Carla can’t afford private health insurance. And like the estimated 5, 500 immigrants in the U. S. illegally who need dialysis, the only publicly funded insurance she’s eligible for is a government program called Emergency Medicaid. But in most states, including Indiana, hospitals can’t bill Emergency Medicaid until they know for sure they’re dealing with an emergency. So for kidney disease, doctors will often wait until there are dangerous levels of potassium in the blood or fluid in the lungs  —   levels they deem urgent enough to merit hospitalization. Carla’s doctor, Melissa Anderson, is a nephrologist in Indianapolis. She says she quit working at Eskenazi partly because repeatedly delaying dialysis harms the patients. ”You see them one day, and then you see them two months later, and they’ve aged and you can see the suffering. . .. You know they might die before you see them again,” she says. ”It’s  .” For many doctors who treat kidney disease, it’s an ethical issue. In fact, the Renal Physicians Association published a statement saying that dialysis for noncitizens should be covered by Emergency Medicaid. ”They’re here, they’re working and live with us, they are part of our communities,” says Michael Gardner, a doctor and hospital administrator in Houston who deals with this issue. ”To ignore that they require health care like anyone else in the country  —   I think it’s morally suspect, and I think it’s fiscally foolish.” He says it’s ”fiscally foolish” because it costs a lot more to wait for emergencies. Instead of just paying for dialysis, you end up with more expenses, such as ER charges, lab charges,   charges and medication charges. In a paper published in 2007, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine found emergency treatment is 3. 7 times more expensive than regular dialysis  —   costing more than $280, 000 a year per patient. And taxpayers are footing the bill. ”It’d be one thing if it was better care for more cost, or worse care for low cost, but it’s bad care for high cost. It’s the worst possible answer,” says Gardner. He says one better answer is charity care. For instance, Gardner runs the Riverside Dialysis Center in Houston, which gives free dialysis to 176 people, primarily undocumented immigrants. Another solution is for states to change their Medicaid guidelines to treat the need for regular dialysis as an emergency so hospitals can bill Medicaid for it. Some states, such as California and New York, have already done that. But in Indiana, a bill to fix the issue  —   authored by state Sen. Jean Breaux  —   has died in committee for the past two years. For Carla, the   solution was charity care. A local hospital lent her   equipment to do peritoneal dialysis. Every night before bed, Carla connects a tube to an opening in her abdomen. The other end of the tube connects to a machine about the size of a couch cushion. While she sleeps, it pumps fluid into her abdomen to clean her blood. The real goal is to get off dialysis for good. Carla’s doctor has told her that a transplant would be ideal for her, and her brother is even willing to donate a kidney. But her undocumented status means she has no way to get coverage for a transplant operation. She’ll need a visa for that. She applied two years ago, and she’s still waiting for it to come through. Side Effects Public Media is a collaborative health reporting project based at WFYI in Indianapolis. Jake Harper can be reached at    or jharper@wfyi. org. Follow him on Twitter: @jkhrpr."
"There’s little reason to believe that Julie Delpy saw, let alone lifted the premise of, the Duplass brothers’ 2010 black comedy Cyrus before she made Lolo, a pert little number about a Parisian teenager pulling out the stops to pry his doting single mother loose from a promising new boyfriend who’s ready to move in. For all the similarities of premise and plot, Lolo is as breezily French in execution as Cyrus is deadpan  . And anyway, the oedipal drama, however bent out of shape, never goes out of style. Lolo, which Delpy directed and   with Eugénie Grandval, stars the French actress as Violette, a poshly scarved Paris art director in her forties who has run through many boyfriends without making any stick. While on vacation in the provinces  —   Biarritz actually, but there’s no underestimating the solipsism of Parisian sophisticates  —   she falls hard for   (comedian Dany Boon) a   software engineer with a weakness for jittery hypochondriacs like Violette. To her astonishment the two get along great, but when   moves to Paris to be with his new love, the couple quickly discovers that they have reckoned without her    son, gleefully played by Vincent Lacoste, yet another in France’s limitless supply of rumpled Gallic charmers. Lolo is no Hamlet, but he’s a skilled manipulator who will stop at nothing to sabotage the new domestic arrangements that threaten to dislodge him from his comfortable perch as Mamma’s   . Patronizing the naïve   fails to drive him away, and from then on, it’s cheerful slapstick filler all the way home  —   itching powder, spiked martinis, that sort of thing. Also thrown in: a guest appearance by Karl Lagerfeld, looking down his nose at the overtures of a bumpkin kitted out in leathers provided by a gleeful Lolo. Lolo’s breakfast eggcup, which resembles a pair of bountiful breasts, sums up the particular nature of this   bond and the movie’s blowsy,    élan. Lolo is fun and fresh to look at: Violette’s habitat is     new Paris, blessedly free of the    shorthand that sells French movies to American audiences. The production design is picked out in vivid scarlet, and with a giddy soundtrack that carelessly mixes ”The Blue Danube” and Percy Faith’s ”A Summer Place,” both with tongue firmly embedded in cheek but without disclaiming irony. Delpy, who also made the diverting Skylab and 2 Days in New York may be a cutup, but she’s no cynic. Like John Reilly in Cyrus, Boon is a genial presence,   and innocent but, when the chips are down, no pushover. In Lolo, though, the love interest is a peripheral figure whose function is to underscore the discovery by a powerful woman who’s been round the romantic block many times that compatibility comes in many guises. Lolo is not especially profound, nor does it mean to be, about   mothers and sons, or the confused mores of   love in middle age, or even about the differences between social classes or the country and the city. And in the end, whether it’s the provincial rube or the bad seed who wins Violette for keeps is almost beside the point. This is a jaunty comedy of female bad manners where the biggest laughs come not from the poor behavior of a manipulative brat but from women talking trash together. How you feel about the greedily sexual banter that fizzes between Violette and her best friend Ariane (a very funny Karin Viard) will depend on how you feel about Amy Schumer or Melissa McCarthy or Kristen Wiig or the Tina   Poehler team. And that may be as much a matter of taste as it is of sexual politics. What is for sure is that the bawdy, acidic Greek chorus of Violette and Ariane in Lolo adds up to nothing more or less than a bid for equal rights in desire and dirty talk."
"U. S. Department of Labor Secretary Thomas Perez says his agency will use its ”bully pulpit” to strike at what he calls ”a disturbing trend” that leaves workers without medical care and wage replacement payments when they are injured on the job. In an interview with NPR, Perez also confirms a Labor Department investigation of an   alternative to   workers’ compensation that has saved employers millions of dollars but that he says is ”undermining that basic bargain” for American workers. Perez says the probe focuses on a practice by thousands of employers in Texas and Oklahoma to opt out of conventional state workers’ compensation in favor of benefits plans that provide lower and fewer payments, make it more difficult to qualify for benefits, control access to doctors and limit independent appeals of benefits decisions. ”What   programs really are all about is enabling employers to reduce benefits,” Perez says.   programs ”create really a pathway to poverty for people who get injured on the job.” Perez wouldn’t provide any details. But last month, his agency sent a letter to Sen. Sherrod Brown,   disclosing ”contact with the company cited in the   Public Radio report that is offering services to employers in Texas and Oklahoma” who opt out of workers’ comp. That description fits PartnerSource, a Dallas company that wrote and supports almost all   plans in Oklahoma and about half the plans in Texas. An agency official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that PartnerSource plans are the focus of the investigation. PartnerSource President Bill Minick has not responded to NPR’s requests for comment about the probe. For decades, Texas employers have been able to forgo workers’ comp and its   benefits and regulations. Oklahoma employers began opting out in 2014. Minick has said he is trying to export the concept to a dozen states in the next decade. The two states combined have 1. 5 million workers covered by these alternative plans instead of   workers’ comp. ”If you work in a   job, you ought to be able to put food on the table,” Perez says. ”If you get hurt on that job, you still should be able to put food on the table, and these laws are really undermining that basic bargain.” Perez cautions that the Labor Department has limited authority to respond because workers’ comp is a   program. The agency can’t force employers to match state workers’ comp benefits when they opt out of state systems, he says. But in both Oklahoma and Texas, and in other states that have considered   laws, Minick and employers say that   plans are governed by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA. ERISA is regulated by the Labor Department, and the agency’s investigation focuses on whether employers are violating ERISA with plans that restrict access to benefits. Perez cited plans that require mandatory arbitration for benefits disputes as an example. ”Mandatory arbitration clauses I think more often than not work to the detriment of working people,” Perez says. He also cited plans that force workers to report injuries before the end of their shifts or within 24 hours, which ”ends up being used by companies to deny all benefits,” Perez says. Last month, the agency sued U. S. Steel for suspending workers (in a    state) who failed to report injuries immediately. The lawsuit argues that some injuries, like those involving muscles and soft tissue, are not immediately apparent or serious. Perez says the Labor Department has the authority to make sure that employers who opt out of workers’ comp ”have important procedural safeguards” required by ERISA. If violations are found, he says, the agency could demand procedural corrections, but employers would still be able to provide fewer benefits. A striking example is a new rule Perez touted Thursday that severely limits worker exposure to silica dust. But most of the   plans obtained and reviewed by NPR and ProPublica specifically exclude medical benefits for specific occupational diseases, including silicosis. ”That is my frustration,” Perez says. ”I wish under ERISA that we had more authority to do more things.” Minick says opt out forces workers to take more responsibility for workplace safety, provides treatment more quickly, avoids protracted and expensive litigation and cuts costs. Last week, Stanford law professor Alison Morantz reported that a sampling of large Texas companies that bypassed the state workers’ comp system reduced worker injury costs by 44 percent after shifting to alternative plans. Morantz said her study did not measure whether workers were better off under the plans or whether the cost savings came at their expense. ”Some employees clearly fare worse,” Morantz wrote. Perez says the Labor Department is commissioning a report about the   trend and cutbacks in workers’ comp benefits ”to document the precise nature of this problem across the country.”"
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. At this point, Bombino  —   a. k. a. Omara Moctar, a Tuareg guitarist and   from northern Niger  —   is an old hand on the international scene. It was more than a decade ago that cassettes of his music circulated in the Tuareg communities clustered around the Sahara Desert. Ten years ago, he traveled to the U. S. to record a session (with The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, no less) and then start touring these shores as a sideman with a Tuareg band. But his career in the U. S. and Europe as a solo artist has been in full force for a while now it was five years ago that NPR Music presented him in a full concert from New York’s (Le) Poisson Rouge. Over that time, Bombino has more than found his groove, perfectly balanced between mastery and ease. Out of a   generation of talented Tuareg rockers, he’s emerged as the most virtuosic and melodically innovative, as he’s layered his voice over sparkling guitar riffs. He hasn’t uprooted himself: He continues to sing in his native Tamashek about Tuareg issues, and in his tunes you can still hear the feedback loop between West African sounds and music of the Americas, from rock, blues and RB to Caribbean dancehall and reggae. But he’s also found room for experimentation over the course of three studio albums, from his first solo project, 2011’s Agadez, to the   garage vibe of 2013’s Nomad, produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Now comes Azel, with Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors as producer according to Bombino, Longstreth let him take the sonic lead, which was apparently not so much the case with Auerbach. On Azel, the details of Bombino’s extraordinary guitar playing come back into sharp focus  —   and that’s this album’s greatest pleasure, track to track. Other experiments emerge, too: Bombino and Longstreth intercut the loping rhythms of Tamashek tradition with the   of reggae in ”Timtar” (Memories). (Lest that seem strange: Bob Marley has been as much a hero among generations of Tuareg musicians as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Dire Straits.) But it’s in songs like the lilting ”Naqqim Dagh Timshar” (We Are Left In This Abandoned Place) that Bombino’s artistry is on its brightest display. (Having spent a bit of time in the Sahara with Tuareg musicians from across their diaspora, I can say that that sort of slow burn feels exactly right.) The guitar is   . Bombino sings with passion, in that signature    voice, about the currents of Tuareg identity and politics, as well as his people’s precarious position at this very moment: ”Everyone has left us   The world has evolved   And we’ve been abandoned,” he sings. ”The whole world has evolved   Why haven’t we?” Bombino may be prodding others there, because no one can say that he’s content to rest with his prodigious gifts. Musically, he’s always moving on to some new destination."
"U. S. Education Secretary John King announced findings of fraud against 91 separate campuses of the   Corinthian Colleges at a press conference in Boston today. ”Corinthian was more worried about profits than about students’ lives,” said Secretary King. The announcement is intended to smooth the way for more former Corinthian students to apply for relief of their student loans. Corinthian had over 70, 000 students when it ceased operations in 2014, and some 350, 000 since 2010. So far just 8, 800 have had their loans discharged. That’s according to a new report by the Department of Education’s Special Master in charge of reviewing borrower defense claims. Despite the findings of fraud, and numerous legal actions taken by state attorneys general, the DOE continues to collect student loans taken out by Corinthian students. Current regulations require that former students of these colleges fill out forms and apply individually for relief of their loans. Student advocates would like to see the process streamlined considerably. ”Everyone is still in debt, and the DOE and its servicers are still collecting,” said Laura Hanna of Debt Collective, which has organized Corinthian students in a ”debt strike”. ”The Debt Collective urges the DOE to stop wasting taxpayer dollars tryingto collect fraudulent debt from those who attempted to get an education. Weinstead encourage the department to pursue collections on investors   scam schools.” According to ProPublica, a lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Kamala Harris alleges Corinthian actively recruited homeless students and advertised programs that they didn’t offer. This week, a judge in California ordered the colleges to pay $1. 1 billion in damages, including repaying $800 million to students, but given that the company is in bankruptcy, restitution for students by this means is unlikely. And according to Barmak Nassirian, who’s a federal student aid expert at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, this is all too little, too late. ”We waited for them to commit the fraud, to cash the check, to go out of business and even then it took us almost a year to finally admit, ’Oh, I think there might have been some fraud going on here,’” he said. He’s encouraged by the announcement, but also says Corinthian executives should be held accountable. ”The people who did this are multimillionaires and not a dime will be recovered from them.” Nassirian points out other   colleges, though certainly not all, are engaging in similar behavior. ”Triage after the disaster only goes so far to prevent future disasters,” he said."
"Japan’s whaling fleet has returned to base with the carcasses of 333 minke whales, in apparent violation of a ruling by the International Court of Justice. Reuters quoted a statement by Japan’s Fisheries Agency that said 103 male and 230 female whales were caught during the fleet’s summer expedition to Antarctic waters. Ninety percent of the mature females were pregnant. ”The number of pregnant females is consistent with previous hunts, indicating that the breeding situation of minke whales in the Antarctic is healthy,” Reuters quoted the agency as saying. The Australian broadcaster ABC reports that the Japanese government’s Institute of Cetacean Research said the ICR ship Nisshin Maru spent 115 days at sea, 65 of those surveying and slaughtering whales for biopsy sampling and conducting nonlethal satellite beacon experiments and marine water surveys. Japan has said it conducts this ”scientific whaling” strictly for research however, the meat is sold commercially and government agencies say the ultimate goal is the resumption of commercial whaling. Commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission in 1986, although killing whales for scientific research was allowed to continue. However as the   reported in 2014, the ICJ ordered a halt to all Japanese whaling: ”The court said the research program had generated only two   papers that together refer to nine whales. ” ’In light of the fact that [Japan’s program] has been going on since 2005 and has involved the killing of about 3, 600 minke whales, the scientific output to date appears limited,’ the court wrote in its judgment. ”By a   vote, the court based in The Hague decided Japan must ’revoke any extant authorization, permit or license granted in relation to’ its whaling program, ’and refrain from granting any further permits’ related to it. ”Japanese officials have said the whaling program, called JARPA II, is for research on whales’ age, sexual maturity and pregnancy rates, according to court documents. Some elements of the program were slated to go on for six to 12 years. ”But the court noted that an expert who was called on to testify . .. said Japan’s program ’operates in complete isolation’ from other Japanese and international research efforts into Antarctica’s wildlife.” Japan denies that the latest hunt violated the court’s decision because it was conducted under a new research plan that has yet to be ruled on by the ICJ. News of the hunt sparked outrage among conservation groups and a political row in Australia, where environmental activist group Sea Shepherd accused the Australian government of doing nothing to protect the whales, some of which it said were killed illegally in the Australian Whale Sanctuary. Australia’s environment minister, Greg Hunt, told AFP that the Australian government opposes whaling ”clearly, absolutely and categorically.”"
"In January and February, armed   took over a wildlife refuge in Oregon for 41 days. They said they were protesting in support of two Oregon ranchers sentenced to prison for arson. During the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, one man was killed by police since the militants surrendered, 25 people have been charged with crimes related to the occupation, Oregon Public Media reports. After the occupation ended on Feb. 11, FBI investigators examined the scene before handing it back to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Feb. 23. The Fish and Wildlife Service has now released photos of the scene that awaited them when they returned to the federal property. You can view the full album here. The images show personal property and trash strewn across the refuge building, liquor bottles tucked into a disarranged sofa and a large dent in a refuge wall. The unkempt appearance of the property was presaged by a conversation two of the occupiers had with a supporter on the final day of the occupation. Gavin Seim  —   an activist who   his conversations with the militants during the final days of the occupation  —   at one point prompted them to describe how well they had cared for the property. The answer, from husband and wife Sean and Sandy Anderson, wasn’t quite what he was expecting: Gavin Seim: ”Just to be clear, since we’ve got you on here, ’cause you know, we know that they’re going to try to spin this their way  —   That refuge is in better shape and cleaner and better maintained than before the patriots showed up there, isn’t it?” Sean Anderson: ”Um. There’s a little bit of mess because people just left in such a hurry, because they were afraid. But we actually spent some time down there and tried to clean that up and do what we could to, you know, wipe things down and mop and sweep.” Sandy Anderson: ”It was left in major disarray when everybody panicked and left.” Seim: ”Right, but overall, there was a lot of work and care given to the place.” Sandy Anderson: ”Exactly. But  —   but  —   but that’s changed now, because no one was here to maintain it and no one got the chance to clean up when they left. They just, they grabbed what they needed and got out and left everything sitting the way it was, and we had to move our camp up here, because we did not want to be in the building.” Seim: ”So it’s important then to note that any mess that the government comes in and portrays is because of their terrorizing of the people and scaring them out of there and trying to intimidate them.” You can hear that conversation here. (Note: Elsewhere this video contains expletives). One occupier has also been accused of stealing cameras and other equipment from the refuge, the Blue Mountain Eagle reports, and the Paiute tribe has denounced the occupiers for desecrating sacred land. (The Andersons told Seim that the occupiers did not damage any artifacts.) This week, reporters were allowed back onto the refuge for the first time since the end of the occupation. John Sepulvado of NPR member station Oregon Public Broadcasting was there. He reported for OPB: ”The refuge, which was blanketed in snow during the   occupation, shows signs of spring’s arrival: birds twitter and chirp and cattle graze in the distance. On the surface, life seems to be moving on. However, there are numerous costs in returning the refuge back to normal.” The cost of the occupation as a whole, Sepulvado says, includes a price tag of $5. 7 million and counting, an enormous backlog of unfinished work on environmental projects, and psychological toll on workers and the community. ”Despite everything, there seems to be considerable progress being made at restoring the refuge to its   condition,” Sepulvado reported. ”A spokesperson for the Fish and Wildlife Service expects it to be fully open within the next four weeks.” OPB covered the full story of the occupation in an hourlong audio documentary, 41 Days."
"Very few companies make ”supercars” that can rocket you from zero to 60 mph in a blink and then propel you to nearly 200 mph. Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Bugatti  —   and of course, Honda. Honda? Yes. In Marysville, Ohio, where Honda cranks out safe,   Accords, workers are building a new supercar under the brand name of Acura NSX. The company designed a   NSX in the late 1980s, but that model, built in Japan, didn’t generate much enthusiasm. Honda killed it off in 2005. Now, the     NSX will be released in late April. With a base price of roughly $160, 000, the hybrid sports car  —   with two seats and three electric motors and a   engine  —   will be the most expensive car built in the United States by a major manufacturer. ”You have instant acceleration from the time you hit the gas pedal,” says Clement D’Souza, chief engineer of the NSX project at the Honda Performance Manufacturing Center. ”The engine kicks in and the turbo backs it up, so you’re thrown in the back of your seat.” D’Souza’s team is building the NSX in a new,    plant in Marysville, 45 miles northwest of Columbus. Honda has been manufacturing Accords in other facilities in that area since 1982. Honda’s goal with the new NSX is to build a ”halo” car  —   one that shines so brightly it creates a glow around all Acura models. ”It will definitely help the brand,” D’Souza said. ”The technology in the supercar can be cascaded down to the rest of the Acura brand.” Eric Lyman, an automotive analyst with TrueCar. com, agrees that Honda needs to build a superfast car to generate buzz. ”The luxury market has gone more towards performance in the last decade or so,” he said. ”Acura has missed out on that.” James Gillette, an independent automotive analyst in Michigan, agrees that Honda had to do something fairly dramatic to attract big spenders in a globalized market. ”People have migrated to the German cars more in terms of excitement. So I think that there clearly needs to be a move now on the part of Honda,” Gillette said. With Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren building   hybrids too, Honda will face fierce competition, he said. But because of its extensive use of robotics and other advanced technologies, Honda will have a huge price advantage for its Acura supercar.   supercars can have insane sticker prices. A Ferrari LaFerrari may start at $1. 4 million. A Bugatti Veyron 16. 4 Grand Sport Vitesse could be twice that price. So with its relatively low cost, Acura won’t have to rely only upon the richest of the rich for sales. It will be able to attract customers who are mere multimillionaires. ”You’re going to see a lot of people in the marketplace at the lower prices that may dream about a [Porsche] 918 or a LaFerrari but are going to be just as happy, if not happier, with the NSX,” Gillette said."
"If you’re looking for a sweet Easter treat, there’s plenty to choose from: chocolate rabbits, jelly beans, intricate sugar eggs and  —   of course  —   the ubiquitous Peeps. But there’s one slightly more refined treat that many in the United States are familiar with mostly from the song. ”One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns”  —   made from spices, dried fruit, and a lightly sweetened, eggy dough  —   have been the Good Friday bread of choice in England since the 1500s. Yet the tradition of eating a special, rounded cake during spring festivals is actually much older, dating back to ancient Greece, writes John Ayto in An   of Food and Drink. As one story goes, a 12th century monk added the crosses to the bun to tie them firmly to the Christian religion. Today, in bakeries throughout the U. K. and the United States, as well as other former British colonies, hot cross buns are still big business. ”Every holiday has its, as we would call it, enriched bread, with lots of butter and eggs,” says Leslie Mackie, founder of Seattle’s Macrina Bakery. Macrina Bakery’s hot cross buns aren’t like the traditional recipe: Instead of cardamom, clove, nutmeg or other   spices, its buns use rosemary. Raisins replace currants or other dried fruits. The ”Tuscan hot cross bun,” as it has been dubbed, is topped with a lemon glaze. In the U. K. hot cross buns are a bigger part of the Easter tradition than in the United States. Baker Tom’s Bread, a chain based in Cornwall, in southwest England, makes a chocolate bun with large chunks throughout, in addition to the normal variety. It’s the bakery’s   holiday after Christmas, baker Tom Hazzeldine says, and special orders for the buns start coming in weeks in advance. In most bakeries, the buns are a special   treat (though some supermarkets sell them  ). In 16th century London, satisfying a craving for the buns in, say, August would have been hard to do, as a law actually forbade the sale of buns ”except on Good Friday, at Christmas, and at burials,” writes Ayoto. But making hot cross buns something special is important for bakeries, which live and die by their holiday sales. Scarcity gives people a reason to keep coming to the store. ”You’re always anticipating the next holiday,” Mackie says. It’s those times of the year where families traditionally gather at home that are best for bakeries, says Mackie. She explains, ”That’s when they’re buying in the specialty shops and markets.” Though Boston’s Flour Bakery offers the buns for about a month near Easter, ”customers want them earlier every year,” executive pastry chef Nicole Rhode says. She admits that the bakery’s ”sophisticated” (and less sweetened) buns aren’t as big of a hit with children, who tend to gravitate toward more sugary cupcakes and cookies. But for adults looking for something special during Easter, hot cross buns are an easy option. ”You don’t need to add butter or jam or anything,” says Rhode. ”Just a good strong cup of coffee.”"
"From the windows of restaurants, grocers and department stores, they beckon: Perfectly swirled ice cream in a cone, elaborately whipped cakes topped with red strawberries, a glistening piece of raw fish atop rice. They’re meant to whet your appetite, but don’t bite them: These are plastic display foods, and they’re ubiquitous in Japan  —   designed to advertise the foods available for purchase inside. They’re also big business: A fake mug of beer, for instance, can sell for U. S. $150, says photographer Norbert Schoerner. Schoerner first encountered Japan’s intricate display foods during his first trip to Japan in the 1990s. ”I not only found it quite odd and surreal, but it also sort of triggered a fascination with the idea of the process and the whole culture that sits behind that,” he says. You might think of these display foods as ”artisanal plastic”  —   that pineapple or pasta dish in polyvinyl chloride was likely   by a highly trained artist. ”There’s quite an intricate craftsmanship that goes into that,” Schoerner says. His new book, Nearly Eternal,   with art director Steve Nakamura, visually explores the questions of reality versus artifice such fake foods raise. ”In a way, the book is less about food than about how we formulate our desire,” he tells us. Actually, Schoerner and Nakamura didn’t so much author the book as create it: There are no words, save for this inscription from the Bible that opens the book  —   it’s designed to ”point people in the right direction,” Schoerner says. ”All man’s efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied”  —   Ecclesiastes 6:7, I asked Schoerner for insights into some of the images. Upon first glance, I assumed this image was set up for the shoot  —   with someone delicately gripping an egg yolk in between chopsticks. Come to find out, ”this piece was not custom made for the shoot. The piece actually exists as a display food,” Schoerner told me. It’s all one plastic piece. He says it’s meant to mimic the raw eggs that are often dropped into soup ramens and hot broths in Japan to produce a slightly poached egg. This image, the book’s cover art, is ”a very powerful image, because the fruit doesn’t look artificial at all,” he says  —   until you touch it. ”If you actually pick one up, you realize how artificial they are.” The praying mantis, on the other hand, looks fake, but it’s real. ”You’d think it’d be quite hard to wrangle, but it was really, really patient  —   the praying mantis. The lighting setup and placing the food was more complicated than getting the praying mantis.” ”Both [the steak and the toast] I’d say, are classics within the environment of display foods,” Schoerner says. ”What’s important about the image itself is mainly the contrast between those two elements, because they represent very different spheres of a culinary context. What it comes down to is that the toast and butter looks really amazing and really quite tasty, whereas the meat itself, it’s certainly retained its artificial quality in the image.” That contrast between what seems real and fake creates tension in the image, Schoerner says. ”We showed it to a few people and they go, ’Yeah, what’s that? A picture of a piece of toast? What’s the big deal?’ ” ”The product [coffee cup and cream] itself is probably one of the first ones I really noticed,” while traveling in Japan, he says. ”I don’t really know why the culture has created surreal aspects for [the coffee cup product and the pasta product (at top)] because with all the other display foods, they strive for realism. . .. Within the book, they very much function as a couple of marker points” to highlight that hey, this is fake food. ”I hate to tell you, that one is real,” Schoerner says. In Japan, he says, there’s a side culture  —   ”championships and display shows  —   where people who make the display foods or people who do it as a hobby compare their craft. And within that culture, we’ve come across a few people who started to create rotten food. I mean, you can find tomatoes with ants crawling all over them, and moldy bananas or whatnot. So it’s very odd. There is potential oxymoron contained in this practice [of creating rotten plastic].” The image, he says, ”plays with the notion of beauty, meaning this idea of a beauty ad with the fingernails. There’s hardly any retouching in this picture, so the fingernails really look like that. They’ve got this lacquered sort of   texture to them. We really liked the contrast with the strawberry. . .. It looks quite fake, I think.” ”That’s the only [plastic food] that we weren’t allowed to take away [from the manufacturer]. So we shot that one at the factory. It’s too heavy and too expensive and too fragile. I can’t remember what the exact price was, but I think you’re looking at about $500 of cake. ”"
"This story is first in our   series Treating the Tiniest Opioid Patients, a collaboration produced by NPR’s National  Science Desks, local member stations and Kaiser Health News. Swaddled in soft hospital blankets, Lexi is 2 weeks old and weighs 6 pounds. She’s been at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, R. I. since she was born, and is experiencing symptoms of opioid withdrawal. Her mother took methadone to wean herself from heroin when she got pregnant, just as doctors advised. But now the hospital team has to wean newborn Lexi from the methadone. As rates of opioid addiction have continued to climb in the U. S. the number of babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome has gone up, too  —   by   from 2000 to 2012, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. It can be a painful way to enter the world, abruptly cut off from the powerful drug in the mother’s system. The baby is usually born with some level of circulating opioids. As drug levels decline in the first 72 hours, various withdrawal symptoms may appear  —   such as trembling, vomiting, diarrhea or seizures. At some point, if symptoms mount in number or severity, doctors will begin giving medication to help ease them. The idea is to give the baby just enough opioid to reduce those symptoms, and then slowly, over days or weeks, decrease that dose to zero. A doctor comes to check on Lexi and her mother, Carrie. To protect her family’s privacy, Carrie asked us not to use the family name. ”So, hi, Peanut!” the doctor says to the baby. ”Any concerns?” she asks Carrie. ”Coming down has been catching up with her,” says Carrie. ”Do you feel like she’s jittery?” the doctor asks. ”She didn’t want to be put down last night  —   like [she had] the shakes,” Carrie says. Lexi has neonatal abstinence syndrome, and has been getting methadone treatments for it. She is getting better  —   most babies do  —   but even with treatment, she’s had tremors, diarrhea, and she’s cried and cried. Her little arms and legs tighten up, her fingers and toes clenched. She’s been feverish, her mother says. ”I know what she’s feeling,” Carrie says. ”And that is the worst part.” Carrie was addicted to heroin herself and knows withdrawal is miserable. She’s been off heroin  —   with help from methadone  —   since she found out she was pregnant, she says. The small dose of methadone keeps a low level of opioid in her system so she doesn’t go into withdrawal, but it doesn’t get her high. For Carrie and thousands like her, methadone is a lifesaver  —   helping them quit a heroin or oxycodone or other opioid habit for good. But getting pregnant posed a dilemma: If Carrie stopped taking opioids altogether, she risked relapse or miscarriage. Yet, if she continued to take any opioid  —   including methadone  —   there would be a 60 to 80 percent chance that her baby would be born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, the doctors told her. ”It’s hard to watch, as her mother,” Carrie says, ”because you’re helpless and there’s really nothing you can do. You are a lot of the reason why she’s going through what she’s going through.” Babies going through withdrawal spend weeks  —   even months  —   in hospital nurseries like this one. ”Their cry is very different,” says Cindy Robin, a registered nurse at the Providence hospital, who has been caring for mothers and newborns for more than 30 years. ”It’s a more distressed cry,” she says, ”and it really pulls at your heartstrings to have to listen to them.” Robin says babies with mild symptoms of the withdrawal syndrome will sneeze and sniffle. They have trouble settling down. Babies who have a more severe case can have seizures and dangerously high fevers. Robin says nurses have to dim the lights, and swaddle the newborns tightly to help keep them calm. ”They just need to be held in a nice, quiet spot,” she says. ”We have nice quiet music playing, and try to keep them as comfortable as possible.” Nurses with special training check on the babies every couple of hours. ”So these are the things that we look for . .. and what we teach the parents,” she says: ”Is the baby crying excessively? Is it a high pitched cry? Is it just a continuous cry? How do they sleep after they eat?” Medication, which is gradually decreased, can help ease this constellation of symptoms. ”The American Academy of Pediatrics and others recommend an opioid for the babies, because you’re giving them back what they’re withdrawing from,” explains Dr. Jonathan Davis, a neonatologist and chief of newborn medicine at Tufts’ Medical Center. ”Morphine and methadone are the two most common.” But Davis says no one’s really done the research to figure out which drug works better for babies, and doctors are left to figure that out by trial and error, case by case. Though the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t officially approved morphine or methadone for use in newborns, doctors prescribe these drugs to the children anyway, in smaller doses than they give adults. ”As I spoke to people around the country, everyone would have their own approach and a very different way of treating these babies,” Davis says. ”And we thought that quite odd.” So he and a colleague, Brown University developmental psychologist Barry Lester, have launched a major study to sort out what works best. The two are hoping to enroll 180 babies in their   randomized, controlled trial  —   no one will know which newborns are getting methadone, and which are getting morphine, for example, until the study’s end. And they’re taking the research further: No study yet has looked at the   effects of the drugs, so Davis and Lester will continue to   with measures of cognitive and physical development until the children are 18 months old. ”It may be,” Davis says, ”that one agent is safer   but when we look   it may actually be more dangerous.” Teasing out   effects of a drug isn’t easy, Lester says many factors can influence a baby’s development. ”If you’re   and you’re growing up in an inadequate environment  —   which may not be poverty, it may be inadequate parenting  —   that’s a double whammy,” he says. ”Those are going to be your worst case scenarios.” Despite many remaining unknowns, doctors have consistently found that treatment with morphine or methadone enables most babies to get through withdrawal in about six to eight weeks. ”It can be heartbreaking,” says Robin, who has helped shepherd many kids through dark days. ”But at the end, it is also rewarding,” she says, ”because you see them get better and you see them go home.”"
"When   Susan Tedeschi sings and plays, you can hear the sound move from the Mississippi Delta up to Chicago. As this video shows, she can dispense uptempo dance grooves and coax her voice around the anguished lyric of the blues. At the same time, guitarist Derek Trucks seems to summon forth the entirety of contemporary music when he slides his bottle neck up and down the fretboard. As you’ll see, The Tedeschi Trucks Band functions in the service of a collective vision that celebrates the blues, jazz and so much more. Let Me Get By is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Felix Contreras, Niki Walker Audio Engineers: Josh Rogosin, Kevin Wait Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame, Cameron Robert, Morgan McCloy Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Matailong  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Bernie Sanders swept all three Democratic caucuses that were held on Saturday, according to the Associated Press. He took each state by a striking margin. In Washington state  —   the biggest prize for Sanders, where 101 pledged delegates were up for grabs  —   Sanders won with 73 percent of the vote. In Alaska, with 16 pledged delegates were at stake, Sanders won with 82 percent and in Hawaii, with 25 delegates, the senator from Vermont won with 70 percent. Blockbuster turnout in all three states and a wave of passionate support for Sanders helped propel him to big wins. ”We knew things were going to improve as we headed west,” Sanders said during a rally in Madison, Wis. pointing to recent wins in Idaho and Utah as evidence. ”We are making significant inroads in Secretary Clinton’s lead  —   and with your support here, we have a path toward victory.” The three wins aren’t surprising to many observers, despite relatively little early polling in both states. Sanders has performed well so far in caucuses  —   where, as our Politics team puts it, ”you don’t vote with your fingers you vote with your feet.” Compared to primary elections, where voters just fill out a ballot, the caucus process rewards candidates with passionate supporters. ”Sanders, with his enthusiastic young supporters, has had an advantage in caucus states,” NPR’s Tamara Keith tells our Newscast team. ”And in Hawaii he got a   endorsement from Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.” And, John Ryan from member station KUOW in Seattle notes, Sanders has been beating Hillary Clinton in terms of fundraising in all three states. Clinton had barely campaigned in the three states, the AP notes, and spent Easter weekend with her family. The     wins are a momentum boost to the Sanders campaign, although Clinton still maintains a large lead in the pledged delegate count. That lead means even the victories Sanders has been raking in this weekend might not change the overall delegate math much. Heading into the day, he needed to win about 58 percent of all the remaining pledged delegates to clinch the nomination. Based on AP’s current count, Saturday’s wins shifted that   percentage to 57. Washington state hasn’t yet allocated all of its delegates. But based on the delegates divvied out so far, Saturday gave 55 delegates to Sanders and 20 to Clinton. That brings the pledged delegate count to 1, 243 to Clinton and 975 for Sanders. Their totals with the   superdelegates takes Clinton to 1, 712, with 1, 004 for Sanders. It takes 2, 383 to win the nomination. In an interview with the AP, Sanders said he expected to carry Saturday’s success forward into upcoming contests in the liberal northeast. ”The Deep South is a very conservative part of the country. Now that we’re heading into a progressive part of the country, we expect to do much better, he told the wire service. Follow live coverage at elections. npr. org, and find a full calendar of upcoming primaries and caucuses here."
"On a terrace outside his Havana apartment, Eduardo Martinez nurtures a small schefflera tree. On a Friday afternoon in January, he looks up at its leaves fondly. ”I got it when I was in the sanitarium. I put it in my living room and it began to grow until it reached the ceiling,” he says in Spanish through a translator. When he left the sanitarium in 1996, he took a clipping from the plant. ”It was so small,” he says. ”But it has turned into this forest that you have here  —   so this is a memento from that time.” The early years of AIDS in Cuba, after the virus arrived on the island in 1986, was a complicated time. The Cuban government created a system of 14 hospitals and living facilities around Cuba, called sanitariums, where anybody who tested positive for HIV was sent for life. Martinez became one of them in 1991, and is one of the only people of his sanitarium generation still living. People had mixed feelings about the system. Critics called them prisons supporters credited them for helping to control the epidemic. Martinez calls the sanitariums a   sword. ”The purpose of the sanitarium was to stop the disease from being spread,” he says, ”Which was unsuccessful, because the disease continued to propagate.” Only one sanitarium remains  —   the first one to open, the one Martinez called home for five years in Santiago de Las Vegas outside of Havana. Now, the sanitarium is more hospital than quarantine, a voluntary clinic for those who need extensive HIV care. Martinez has lived with HIV for 25 years. ”As compared to before, HIV today is like a cold,” he says. Today, Martinez puts on extravagant fashion shows and performances at the Tropicana  —   one of Havana’s most famous nightclubs  —   for audiences including the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. When he’s on stage, he transforms himself into a towering blonde woman named Samantha. But back in 1991, Martinez thought he was at the end of his career  —   and possibly his life. He had been a   designer, creating costumes for popular television shows and calling himself the ”Christian Dior of Cuba.” At the height of his career, on one of his costume tours, he had an affair with a dancer. ”He didn’t know that he had HIV,” Martinez says. ”And when the tour was finished, I came back to Havana and some months thereafter, I began to feel bad.” A   sent him for an AIDS test, which came back positive. But unlike many Cubans at the time, Martinez had what he remembers as a good life: a booming career and close ties to family, especially his parents. For him, being sent to the sanitarium would mean this lifestyle was over. For a full year, he kept the diagnosis secret as the doctor waited for room in a sanitarium. Finally, one day came a knock on his door. ”I didn’t want to go, but they would come for you and take you by force,” he says. At the sanitarium, patients were interrogated by officials and expected to reveal their sexual partners, so they too could be tested for HIV. At the time, some people saw the sanitariums as a place of refuge amid widespread homophobia and poverty. The living quarters and health services were funded by the National AIDS Commission, the government’s program to quash the epidemic. Martinez had the rare luxury of living in one of the few residences in Cuba that had air conditioning and steady food supply. Despite that, he fell into depression and spent a month living in a psychiatric ward at the sanitarium. ”At first, it was very sad for me, because I didn’t understand why I was infected and why I had to go be interned in that place,” he says. ”And on top of this, that was killing my career. I was at the top of stardom at that moment. I went on a hunger strike when I arrived.” Soon, however, he reconciled himself to the idea that the sanitarium was his whole world for the foreseeable future. ”I couldn’t just lie down there and wait for death,” he says. ”I was an active professional. And I waged a revolution there.” So, tucked away from the rest of the world, ”Samantha” was born. ”That was where I transformed myself for the first time” he says in his current Havana apartment filled with tiaras, blonde wigs and trophies from beauty pageants. ”I needed a model in order to continue producing designs, and I just used myself as a model.” But Martinez did not just transform himself. He took his fellow patients  —   including the man who designed the covers for   Fidel Castro’s books  —   and built a community of artists devoted to  . Martinez began to change his attitude about the sanitarium: It was no longer his prison, but what he called his ”big house.” ”I used everybody around me, I made fashion shows, I made a movie theater, I created theater, so I revolved everybody around me,” he says. In many ways, he became a resident therapist, he says: ”The patients were needing a lot of entertainment, distraction.” He was even provided a budget and facilities from the sanitarium in order to put on his shows. In his opinion, he came to discover that if he ”kept the mind of the patients busy, the immune system wouldn’t be depressed,” he says. And while the gay community outside the sanitarium struggled against violence and discrimination, the sanitarium became a haven. Martinez praises the sanitarium doctors as  : ”If they didn’t have an open mind, they would have to, because there were many gay people there,” he says. ”What I managed to do in that place, I wouldn’t have been able to do on the street outside,” he adds. Like the rest of the world, Cuba sought cures for HIV, and many patients in the sanitariums became voluntary test subjects for potential cures. Martinez was slated to be one of them before he opted out of a controversial experiment. ”It consisted of heating the blood in order to see if the virus would die” he explains. ”But the thing is that with this, not only would the virus die, but [it would destroy the proteins in the blood].” The night before he was slated to go through with the test, he decided against it  —   a decision he now sees as a narrow escape. ”The people who participated in it, all of them died,” he says. Martinez, who has a spiritual air about him, calls his survival fate. By 1995, the government could no longer afford to house HIV patients for life. With the fall of the USSR, Cuba stopped receiving funding from its communist benefactor and faced massive budget cuts throughout the country and finally to the public health system. Some patients left on their own volition, and eventually the remaining patients were kicked out. Martinez was one of the first patients to be offered his freedom, but just as it was difficult to go into quarantined life, it was hard to come out. ”I refused to leave because I said I was too committed to the community inside the sanitarium,” he says. But by 1996, he knew it was time to go. Despite the homophobia and discrimination that still persisted against   people in Cuba, Martinez persevered and built what he now calls his second career  —   for which he partly credits the sanitarium. ”That’s where Samantha started,” he says with a proud smile. ”I was the first one who engaged in doing very daring things. Never before had there been   performers at Tropicana.” These days, when Martinez thinks of the sanitarium and the friends he made there, he cries. ”We would dream [of having a] theater to do our trans shows,” he says. ”We never thought it would be possible.” Smiling, he adds, ”I’m happy to have been able to reach this moment.” This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with WBUR and Kaiser Health News. Rebecca Sananes’ trip was funded through the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting."
"Historians hailed U. S. President Obama’s visit to Cuba as the beginning of a new relationship between the two countries. But for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, the real thrill this week was the visit of some prominent Brits: The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts took the stage Friday before a packed crowd gathered in the   capacity Ciudad Deportiva, or Sports City, an   venue. The band played 18 songs in two hours, starting things off with the hit ”Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” reports the BBC. ”This is amazing! It’s really good to be here! It’s good to see you guys!” frontman Mick Jagger told the crowd, The Associated Press reported. ”After today I can die,” Joaquin Ortiz, 62, told the AP. ”This is like my last wish, seeing The Rolling Stones.” It’s the first time The Rolling Stones have played on the island they’re the biggest act to play since Fidel Castro’s communist government took power in 1959. In the 1960s, as Cuba became isolated from the U. S. and other Western governments during the Cold War, the Stones were just beginning to reach worldwide popularity. In 1965 they released perhaps their   hit, ”(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which quickly was certified gold. But most Western music was banned in Cuba  —   and rock ’n’ roll was seen as subversive. ”We know that years back it was hard to hear our music in Cuba, but here we are playing. I also think the times are changing,” Jagger told the crowd in Spanish, per Reuters. The show capped off a landmark week for Cuba that began with Obama’s visit, the first by a sitting U. S. president in 88 years. Cubans from all over the island, and even foreigners, traveled to witness the historic free concert. Reuters notes that fans started arriving a full 18 hours before the band took the stage. Their ages ranged from young to old. ”This is the biggest moment in my life,” Ferrer Castillo told The Guardian. He said he traveled more than 100 miles to see the show. Here’s the setlist, from the BBC: Jumpin’ Jack Flash, It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (But I Like It) Tumbling Dice, Out of Control, All Down the Line, Angie, Paint It Black, Honky Tonk Women, You Got the Silver, Before They Make Me Run, Midnight Rambler, Miss You, Gimme Shelter, Start Me Up, Sympathy for the Devil, Brown Sugar, Encores: You Can’t Always Get What You Want. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction"
"For most of the past half century, Americans were generally prohibited from traveling to Cuba. And those who snuck in  —   via third countries  —   were careful to avoid   marks in their passports. That’s no longer the case, though. Since the U. S. government began loosening restrictions 15 months ago, there’s been a surge of Americans traveling to the island: 161, 000 in 2015. That’s expected to grow when scheduled air service resumes later this year. Americans are allowed to travel to Cuba for any one of a dozen approved purposes including family visits, educational activities, professional meetings, athletic competitions and humanitarian projects. ”Christ of Havana,” a    marble statue overlooking the harbor, is one of the more striking landmarks in the Cuban capital. It was carved by sculptor Jilma Madera of San Cristobal, Cuba, and is said to be the tallest statue in the world by a female artist. Fulgencio Batista dedicated the statue on Christmas Eve, 1958  —   one of his last official acts before fleeing Cuba to the Dominican Republic to escape the revolution. The statue is perched on high ground with a commanding view of Havana, including the domed capitol building. ”El Capitolio” resembles the U. S. Capitol in Washington, right down the scaffolding as it undergoes renovation. One of President Obama’s first stops in Cuba was the Havana Cathedral. One of the oldest cathedrals in the new world, it was completed in 1787, just as James Madison and friends were drafting the U. S. Constitution. The president and his family toured the frescoed cathedral with Cardinal Jaime Ortega of Cuba. Along with Pope Francis  —   the first Latin American pontiff  —   Cardinal Ortega was very encouraging during the secret talks that led up to the diplomatic breakthrough between the U. S. and Cuba on Dec. 17, 2014. On his first full day in Havana, President Obama paid tribute to Cuban independence champion Jose Marti, who’s memorialized with a statue and a giant tower at the edge of what’s now the Plaza de la Revolucion. Marti, who’s revered in both Cuba and Miami, was a safe choice for the president. On the opposite side of the plaza, buildings housing Cuba’s Ministry of Interior and Communications are decorated with   portraits of more controversial figures: Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. One can only wonder what these late Cuban revolutionaries would have thought during the welcoming ceremony for Obama, when a Cuban military band struck up the ”Star Spangled Banner.” ”I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it.”  —   President Obama, in his televised address to the Cuban people. History is on constant display in Cuba, so any visit can feel like stepping into a time capsule. Classic cars famously prowl the streets, like the 1955 Pontiac Star Chief convertible in which tour guide Jorge Achon ferried several journalist colleagues and me. Obama says the ability to keep these cars running despite the embargo on spare parts is a tribute to Cuban ingenuity. There are many more somber reminders of Cold War hostility between the U. S. and Cuba, which came to a head during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. Cubans proudly show off wreckage of a U. S. spy plane that was shot down over the island while tracking Soviet missiles. ”The history of the United States and Cuba encompass revolution and conflict,” Obama said. ”It is time, now, for us to leave the past behind. It is time for us to look forward to the future together.” Despite decades of isolation, Cuba remains a close neighbor of the United States, culturally as well as geographically. ”In many ways, ”Obama said, ”the United States and Cuba are like two brothers who’ve been estranged for many years, even as we share the same blood.” That kinship includes a shared passion for baseball. Obama joined Cuban President Raul Castro at a partido amistoso, or friendly game, between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team. Two sons of Cuba threw out the ceremonial first pitches: Luis Clemente Tiant, who pitched for the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians, and Pedro Luis Lazo, who was known as the ”iron arm” of many Cuban teams."
"Two men have been charged with crimes related to terrorism in connection with Tuesday’s attacks on Brussels. Meanwhile, a march planned to commemorate the attack and express national unity has been canceled because of security concerns. The attacks, which killed 31 and wounded more than 300, struck Brussels Airport and a metro station in the city. The suicide bombings have been claimed by the Islamic State. The men charged Saturday were arrested during a series of sweeps and raids conducted by Belgian authorities on Thursday and Friday. One of them, identified as ”Faysal C,” was charged by an investigating judge with ”leading participating in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted murders.” That man’s house was searched, the Brussels Prosecutor says, but no weapons or explosives were found. The other man, ”Aboubakar A,” has been charged with ”leading participation in activities of a terrorist group.” As the investigation continues, the unofficial ”march against fear” planned for Brussels on Sunday has been called off, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports. The nation’s interior minister appealed to the public on Sunday asking for them not to rally, the Associated Press says, saying ”we understand fully the emotions” but that police were stretched too thin as they worked to trace the terrorist network behind the attacks. Three of the suspected suicide bombers have been identified by authorities as brothers Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Khalid El Bakraoui and suspected Paris attacks   Najim Laachraoui. At least one other attacker is believed to have been involved. The ”man in the hat”  —   seen with Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Laachraoui on a   still from a security camera in the airport  —   has not yet been publicly identified by police. Some Belgian media outlets have speculated that he is the   man identified as ”Faisal C.” There are also reports in French and Belgian media that police suspect a second attacker may have been working with Khalid El Bakraoui in the attack on the metro station. Authorities have not confirmed if they are looking for an accomplice. In the wake of the attacks, Brussels’ counterterrorism efforts have been criticized. Broadly speaking, the divisions between Brussels’   and   regions hamper coordinated efforts, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reported earlier this week: there are two intelligence agencies and six police zones in Brussels, Eleanor says, a city of just a million people. There are also specific shortcomings being called out in these attacks. Salah Abdeslam, the chief suspect in the Paris attacks, was arrested in Brussels days before the attacks on the airport and metro. Counterterrorism officials have told NPR’s Dina   that Abdeslam may have been planning to be a part of the Brussels attack. Some critics say Belgian investigators failed to push hard enough to get Abdeslam to provide information about upcoming attacks. Authorities also initially said they had no knowledge of any ties between the Bakraoui brothers and terrorism, but have since admitted that the two brothers were on a terrorism watchlist in the U. S. Then Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey deported Ibrahim El Bakraoui to the Netherlands in 2015, and told Belgian authorities he had ties to terrorism  —   but that Bakraoui was released anyway. Two Belgian officials, the ministers of justice and the interior, admitted on national television that Bakraoui should have been arrested after violating his parole by traveling. They attempted to resign over the government’s failure to prevent the attacks the prime minister refused to accept their resignations. Meanwhile, police in France said Thursday that they foiled a   terrorist plot in Argenteuil, a Paris suburb. In connection to that plot, one man, ”Rabah N. ,” has been charged with leading participation in the activities of a terrorist group. Another man is being interrogated a third was previously questioned, and has been released."
"The deadly attacks that ripped through Brussels’ airport and a metro station on March 22 killed 32 people, according to Belgian Minister of Social Affairs and Health Maggie De Block. Including three dead attackers, the total number of dead stands at 35. More than 300 people were injured in the blasts. Belgian authorities had earlier put the death toll at 38 people, including the attackers, but revised the figure after three of the victims were found to be duplicated on two different lists. More than a week after the attack, which were claimed by ISIS, the identities of the victims are still not fully known. Belgium’s Crisis Center says 17 of the deceased are Belgian and 15 are foreign nationals, but that it has not released their identities out of respect for the victims and their families. Here’s some of what we know about the victims who have been publicly identified: Victims’ identities are still being released to the public. We will share only information that we believe to be credible, and will update as more information is released."
"Some of the families whose relatives went missing last Tuesday after the suicide bombings in Brussels still don’t know the fate of their loved ones. Belgian volunteers assigned to help those families say with each day that passes, it becomes more difficult for them. They teeter between hope and despair and can’t grieve or find closure, says Red Cross psychosocial worker   Henry. ”They need answers, but at the moment all they have are questions  —   ’where is my husband, my wife, my sister? ’” Henry is one of the volunteers helping the families at the   military hospital where they wait, many with photos and other mementos they hope will speed up the identification process. Members of the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team say they have gone to the hospital once a day to update relatives on their progress. But even with 30 team members working 15 hours a day, it is slow going, says Dr. Jean Crevecoeur, a forensic dentist tasked with identifying the metro bombing victims. He says the DVI team is working over the   Easter holiday weekend in hopes of wrapping up identifications by Sunday. Crevecoeur says the work has been incredibly difficult. The powerful bombs left the team trying to identify many victims through body parts and charred remains, he says. The injured, dead and missing also hail from 40 different countries, which is not surprising given the blasts occurred at an international airport departure hall and beneath the European Union office district, where citizens from 28 countries work. It took until Thursday just to identify all of the injured, Henry says. As for those killed, most were in the subway or hadn’t checked in yet at the airport, which means Belgian authorities have had to wait for relatives to come forward to figure out who was missing. And even when they did, it’s taken days for DVI requests for photos, dental   and other records to be answered, given the need for translators and intervention by foreign embassies. Crevecoeur says Belgian forensic experts prefer using scientific evidence over visual identification to verify identities. Such biometric data includes dental records, fingerprints, DNA and whatever else is necessary to ensure 100 percent match, he says. He says he sympathizes with families and how hard it is for them to wait, but shrugs off questions of what the team could have done differently to speed up identifications. ”It’s not relevant, because we believe accuracy in our findings is more important than being quick,” he explains. Rabbi Yehuda Meshi Zahav, who heads ZAKA, Israel’s main emergency response and recovery organization, rejects that explanation. ”I think it’s absurd, the time it’s taking,” he says. ”It’s not only dishonoring the dead, but dishonoring those who are still alive. Because as long as the [victims] are not brought to rest and buried, families can’t start the psychological process of accepting the loss.” For religious reasons  —   Jewish and Muslim laws mandate speedy burials  —   and given Israel’s vast experience with suicide bombings, Zahav says his recovery teams rely heavily on family and witness help. He says they often identify terror victims in a matter of hours. ”There is a great importance in identifying and determining things at the beginning, because later on it’s difficult to do,” he says. ”And then you have to do CTs, blood tests, MRIs” and   DNA analysis. He adds that autopsies in bombing cases are unnecessary, ”because we know the cause of death.” Zahav says his teams flew to Turkey after the suicide attack in downtown Istanbul last Saturday. ”Within 24 hours, we were able to bring our casualties to burial because the Turks were willing to accept our help,” Zahav says. Three Israelis were killed in that blast. Back in Belgium, Dr. Philippe Boxho, who heads the Forensic Center of Liege, defends his DVI colleagues’ efforts in Brussels. He points out they aren’t exactly novices, having helped identify victims of the tsunami that devastated the Thailand coast in 2004, as well as the Malaysia Airlines jet shot down over Ukraine in July 2014. ”They want to work in optimal conditions,” he says of the reason why bodies in the Brussels blast were moved from the attack sites to a military hospital and university. ”We don’t want the public around, because we have to gather bodies destroyed by the explosion and genetically identify those parts so we can give the remains back to the families.” The lack of information this week drove dozens of relatives and friends to post on social media seeking news of those who were missing. The requests moved web designer David Geilfus, 35, to collect those posts, weed out inaccurate or outdated ones and place them on a page he created on Trello, a platform that’s often used for work projects or wedding planning. He says more than 20 people  —   mostly friends and colleagues of the missing  —   posted queries on the Web page as word of it spread. ”I guess it’s very difficult to identify them,” Geilfus says. But ”having still so many people missing is incredible. I don’t know what to say.” Brussels prosecutor Ine Van Wymersch told the Associated Press Saturday that seven victims of the 31 have yet to be identified, while the Trello page as of Sunday listed 8 as missing."
"Miles Davis never had just one sound. Though his body of work remains singular and unmistakable, he changed gears time after time in a   career. A few times  —   half a dozen, by his own estimation  —   he managed to take the entire music world with him. But just like the music, the man himself contained multitudes. Davis was brash. He was abusive. He could be downright mean. Somehow, actor Don Cheadle manages to capture all of this in a new film called Miles Ahead, which he also wrote, produced and directed. Cheadle says the last thing he wanted to do was make yet another biopic that tries to cover its subject’s entire story but only skims the peaks. Instead, he says, he aimed for a valley  —   a period in Davis’ life when he was struggling to reconnect with his muse  —   and used it as a prism for the artist’s unique relationship with craft. Cheadle spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about sneaking in trumpet practice between takes of the Avengers films, leaving parts of his script deliberately underwritten, and why the diversity conversation in Hollywood often boils down, in one way or another, to money. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read much more of their conversation below. Michel Martin: The first point we have to make is that Miles Ahead is not a biopic, not in the conventional sense. How would you describe it for those who haven’t seen it yet? Don Cheadle: I mean, for me, I wanted to make something that felt impressionistic, and really mercurial, and could go anyplace. And was kind of gangster, and felt like the experiences that I have when I hear people tell stories about Miles Davis, and listen to his music  —   you know, how incredibly innovative and unexpected he could be. And I thought, if we’re going to do a movie about his life, rather than do something that attempts to sort of check all the boxes  —   and gives short shrift to every one  —   focus on a time that would give us the opportunity to explore all facets of his music, and really tell a story that felt creative. It’s kind of like an emotional biography, in a way. It’s a biography of interior life, but not necessarily of historical facts. Absolutely, although there are tons of facts in it. We wanted to come up with a way  —   my writing partner Steven Baigelman and I  —   where we would externalize an internal process. The frame of the film is this   period when Miles Davis famously released, well, nothing. He kind of lost his muse during those years. Partly it was some health issues, some drug issues. And part of the problem was recovering from a nasty breakup with his wife, Frances Taylor. Why that period in particular? Because it’s very intriguing to me, when you’re looking at the life of a man who was so prolific, had such an impact on music had such an impactful voice in his métier. Just to go silent? What happens during that period of time? How do you get out of it? What’s going on while you’re in it? What do you say when you’re finished with it? It gave us the opportunity to have the sort of ”unreliable storyteller” be Miles Davis himself, take the wheel and tell this reporter, ”I’m going to tell that story.” As a character, Frances Taylor plays a very big role in this film. Tell me about that. Well, Frances is the one that Miles always talks about  —   the one that got away, he one that he regretted not being able to work that marriage out with the most. And she herself described their relationship in a similar way. They just couldn’t be together. They were able to be friends after this really tumultuous period of time, which is incredibly interesting. The span of time that they were together sort of goes from when Miles was first working on that seminal album So What, and taking those songs over the next 10 years  —   when he was with the second supergroup with Tony and Wayne and Herbie and Ron, playing those tunes three times as fast and going everywhere with the solos, making it the most elastic it could be. And then it was over: He never really played that music again. He kind of moved away from playing acoustically, and it was an era that had come to a close. And that spans the same amount of time that we depict their relationship, when this music had its most expressive and expansive period, so it felt like there was some congruency, having the stories work in those ways against each other. There’s a moment in the film that captures some of what you’re talking about here. Miles is sitting at a piano, talking with a journalist played by Ewan McGregor about how Frances influenced him, and quietly playing at the same time. How did you settle on that as a device? It was one of the first times I really felt like I could understand what he was doing  —   his genius for orchestration.  And that’s what we wanted to do, without going through it in a didactic way or a CliffsNotes way: explaining what was the makeup of this man, what his influences were and how he worked. It’s very tricky to show ”genius.” What does that look like? It’s an internal process. It’s something that, unless you understand what you’re watching, is not communicative. So, we kind of wanted to make sure that the philosophy was in there. You know, Miles went to Juilliard for a year and then left, because it really wasn’t what he was attempting to do. But it’s funny: he got an A in piano, and I think and he got a C in trumpet. He was always someone who really understood form, and you hear it when he moves away from bebop and hard bop and starts working with Gil Evans and the Nonet, and these different instruments that are not classically thought of as jazz instruments, and ways of composition that were borrowing heavily from European composers at the time, trying to deconstruct different kinds of classical approaches to music. He was very steeped in the music and always trying to find a new approach to it. There are a lot of flashbacks in the film, and at one point, we’re taken back to one of his recording sessions with Gil Evans. We see him coaching the session musicians, and he’s encouraging them to be ”wrong, strong.” What does that mean? Well in that particular recording, ”Gone,” there’s this   section that they keep playing over again. They play it in different percussive ways, with slightly different rests in between, and on the recording itself they never get it right  —   they never are all playing together at the same time. But it’s like, if you’re going to make a mistake  —   which Miles didn’t really believe there were  —   you know, commit. Go hard. We’re trying to create something. It’s fine if it doesn’t all ”work.” What’s important is that there’s an energy where you’re going for it. Herbie said that Miles would tell the musicians all the time, ”I’m paying you to practice in front of people.” You know, journey is destination  —   it may be cliché to say, but he was really somebody who believed that. If he heard you playing a solo in your hotel room, and then you came down onstage that night and presented that solo that you had worked out upstairs, you were fired  —   you were out of the band. Because he wanted you to always be reaching for something, whether it came together or not. You listen to an album like Bitches Brew, and that album sounds like it’s falling apart at the same it’s coming together. He’s just letting you hear the process, as opposed to try to hide everything and try to gloss over that stuff. Miles was like, ”No, this is the stuff. This is what it looks like.” What was your process like with these other musicians that were part of his life? Did you interview them? How did you capture the kind of relationship he had with people like Herbie Hancock? Well, we don’t use any of them by name. When we talk about these flashbacks, or these impressions that are happening in Miles’ mind, it’s really framed by the interview. He puts the horn to his mouth when Dave says, ”How would you put it?” and he plays his answer. I wanted to hire musicians in the movie, rather than hire actors to play like they could play. I wanted to be the only one who had to really task myself with that responsibility. Everyone else, like in that that ”Gone” session, those are all real musicians. I said, ”I want to get the charts. I want us to sit in the sectionals as we would. And I want to just work through this piece.” In the script, the only line that is in the script for that scene is, ”Miles works out ’Gone. ’” That whole scene is just improv. You’ve played saxophone for years and years, as I recall. Did you learn to play the trumpet for this role? I learned to play, but obviously when we’re playing and we’re using Miles’ sound, it’s Miles. It’s not going to be Don Cheadle trying to sound like Miles Davis. And in other scenes, Keyon Harrold, a fantastic trumpet player who is gigging a lot now has his own album coming out  —   he played the parts for Miles Davis, and also for the other character in the movie, Junior. But I am under there. I am actually playing the solos. How   was it to get comfortable playing? Or are you just gangster like that? No, no  —   I’m neurotic like that. It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine, when I see actors in movies who are supposed to be playing musicians and don’t really have any understanding of their acts. I want, personally, to not be that dude I really wanted to know what I was doing. So I started playing, and I’ve been playing on and off for eight years now. But also, I wanted to understand viscerally, for myself, what Miles went through: what learning to play the trumpet actually feels like, what creating an embouchure feels like, and having that facility under my fingers. I wanted to learn those solos and write that music out for myself, so that I had a stronger connection to him. How did you fit that into your day? Apart from being the star, you wrote, produced, and directed this film, and you also have all these other projects. Were you getting up at 5 in the morning every day to practice? Yeah, I would set aside time to practice. But also, just wherever I went, I had my trumpet. Doing House Of Lies,  we’d have a break and I’d go into the trailer and I’d play. Doing The Avengers, it was the same thing. I just made it a part of my life, you know? It’s with me right now. I still play. In a sense this is kind of a buddy film, where the buddy is Ewan McGregor’s character. He’s a Rolling Stone journalist named Dave Braden, who  —   well, he’s fictional, right? He’s like an amalgam. It’s something that is done pretty standardly done in movies like this, where you have a character who’s a composite of several different people. But the question I wanted to ask has to do with something I saw you say in an interview  —   with Rolling Stone, actually. You said you had to have a white character, a central white character, in order to get the film financed. Well, I guess what I could have also said is, ”Or we had to have a piece of international casting that would allow us to have that economic box checked off.” I could have cast an Asian actor if we had centered the film in China or Japan, and I was getting money from Chinese or Japanese investors. I could have had a big French actor, had we been able to sell the movie to France. That’s how these movies get put together: There are several components that come into play for how you get your financing, especially when you’re trying to do it independently, and casting is one of those components. No one specifically said to me, ”Go hire a white actor or you can’t make this movie,” but we understood what we needed to do to get a green light. And once Ewan signed on, the things started to roll downhill for sure. We started to get momentum. Are you saying that’s because of the way this country operates? Or are you saying that it’s because the world, culturally, for whatever reason, needs to see white people in leading roles in order to be okay with a movie? A little more nuanced than that, and I don’t think it’s binary. I think that, purely from a sales component, it’s a marketing tool. When you’re a financier and you’re about to open your pocketbook, most of the time you’re looking for excuses to say no. It’s a   business, and people trying to hedge in any way, shape or form that they can. We also had to shoot in a city where there was a rebate, so that we could have money coming in. I had to crowdfund, I had to spend my own money, I had to call my friends. People’s uncles and nephews and cousins threw in. All of these ancillary ways are the ways that you get there. Does it make it somehow right or wrong? I don’t think we’re dealing in right or wrong. We’re dealing with the realities and the vicissitudes of this business. This film is also coming to us right after the #OscarsSoWhite conversation around this year’s Oscar nominees.  I think that people want to conflate those two things. The timing of it is something that makes people go, ”Oh well that’s the same thing”  —   it’s not the same thing at all, although it interrelates, if we’re going to talk about it purely from the standpoint of what we’re dealing with with race in this country. Anything you want to say about that controversy? So much has been said at this point  —   but you’re   and you’re important, and people are interested in what you have to say. What I say is that the point when we’re talking about somebody calling someone’s name, and somebody getting up on stage to hand them a piece of metal  —   that’s not really the most important part of this. It happens much earlier, I think, [and that’s] where the discussion needs to take place: where decisions are being made about what kinds of material to greenlight, what kinds of stories to tell, who are the people that are deciding what those stories are, how are we developing young diverse talent  —   not just black people but latino, LGBT concerns, Asian actors. I mean, if you’re a Native American actor, you really got a bone to pick. So it’s about having the opportunity to even tell a story that, at some point, may or may not get snubbed at the Oscars. It’s [also] about who votes, because this is still about people’s biases and people’s tastes, and things that they respond and react to. There is no empirical good or bad I think this is all opinions and it’s incredibly subjective. [But] a lot of times, the voting body doesn’t even see all of the movies, you know? There used to be a time when you had to go on the record and clearly demonstrate that you had seen the films that you were going to be voting on, and it’s not like that now. You sit at home with 56 screeners, and you can   through them, go to the end, just look at clips, not look at all  —   and then you get to vote. So it’s not like the process itself doesn’t need some overhauling. Being able to receive an award is a smaller part of it, but for a lot of movies, it is lifeblood. I remember sitting at the SAG awards with some of the executives from MGM. Sophie Okonedo and myself had gotten acting nominations for the movie, and the Oscars were about to be announced in a week or two. And this executive said, ”Yeah, well, if we don’t get any Oscar nominations, I’m not going to spend any more money on this movie.” And I was like, ”Huh? I’m sitting right next to you! I can hear you.” And he’s like, ”We can’t create any sort of buzz if there’s not going to be an Oscar nomination.” And that was the first time I understood the real value of that nomination, and to some degree, the win. There’s a financial upside for the filmmakers and the movie, and there’s always an opportunity to parlay if you get your name out there in that way. But it’s a little more nuanced than I think the way that the media often needs to latch on to these things so there’s a clickbait headline. In many ways, this is still about dreams. I was talking to Carl Franklin who directed Devil in a Blue Dress, and he said, ”Look, if I was making the decisions about what movies would be made, there would be a lot of other people complaining, because these are only the kinds of movies I’m going to make.” He goes, ”Don, in my dreams, in my fantasies, in my stories, I’m slaying all the dragons. I’m saving the damsel in distress. The dude who’s doing that looks like me.” If you look at someone like Shonda Rhimes, she’s placed fantasies and her dreams and her aspirations in how these characters live and work you look at her knight and a lot of it looks like her. I think that’s what it’s about. If there are different people putting forward the thing that looks like them, then maybe we have some semblance of a level playing field, where we all feel represented.   You’ve lived with this project for a long, long time. Now that it’s done, how do you feel? Tired. OK. I believe you!  Yeah, it was a lot. You feel very vulnerable when you do something like this. There’s no one I could ever point to and say, ”Yeah well I wanted to do this, but this person wouldn’t let me.” Or, ”It’s the director’s fault.” Or, ”Man, I had an actor that I just couldn’t figure out.” Or, ”I did the best I could, but this was the script I had to deal with.” There’s no place for me to hide: Like it or love it, that’s me. We closed the New York Film Festival and I was sitting across from my daughter, who’s 19 years old now, and she could kind of see the nervousness and the anticipation, the anxiousness all over me. She said, ”Dad, isn’t this great?” I was like, ”I don’t know.” And she said, ”What do you mean? You’re here! I remember sitting on your lap as a    you working on this script and doing notes and listening to the music. Driving with you in the car on the way to school, and we’re listening to So What and Miles Smiles and Bitches Brew. You’ve just been living this for so long, and you’re here. It’s great! Just try to feel great, Dad.” And I was like, ”OK. I’m just going to try to feel great.” So thank you to my daughter for getting my head right."
"Miles Davis died in 1991, but his influence on music is still being felt. The new film Miles Ahead, produced,   directed by and starring Don Cheadle, is giving a new audience a fresh take on one period in the musician’s career. Davis himself wasn’t the most humble about his musical sway. At a White House dinner in 1987, the jazz musician was asked what he’d done to deserve to be there. Davis wrote in his autobiography that he replied, ”Well, I’ve changed music five or six times.” Davis’ career spanned more than 50 years and encompassed everything from bebop to   to  . Professor Sean Jones of the Berklee College of Music in Boston teaches a class on Miles Davis. ”It’s kind of controversial,” he tells NPR’s Michel Martin about Davis’ claim to have changed the face of music. ”You can make the argument that he indeed did change music a few times, five or six times. But you could also state that he was at the forefront of the change, by putting together bands that were a part of the movements that were going on. And I tend to subscribe to that notion. ”He, having such a unique voice, he was able to superimpose his sound on that change, making it seem as if he were the change agent.” NPR asked Jones to compile some of his favorite Miles Davis songs and albums that showcase how Davis changed  —   or helped change  —   musical tastes. This list is sure to be debated. If you think we missed something, let us know in the comments section."
"At a rally in Portland, Ore. on Friday morning, Bernie Sanders had an unexpected visitor. And the crowd went wild. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the video: Bernie’s evident delight, the crowd’s roaring applause and the tiny bird’s savoir faire were social media gold. The moment prompted a Twitter response that was completely opposed, in content and tone, to, well, the other big political conversation on social media right now. And nearly a full day after the bird made its appearance, #BirdieSanders is still trending. The location of the avian appearance is prompting amusement, too  —   because of course it was Portland. IFC’s sketch comedy show Portlandia, starring Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen, famously featured a sketch called ”Put a Bird On It” in their first episode. In a case of life imitating sketch comedy, adding a bird to a political rally brought mesmerized delight  —   but also, as one reporter noted, could be messy."
"Donald Trump has said on several occasions that he wants to, as he puts it, ”open up” libel laws, so that he can sue news organizations he believes have written what he calls ”hit pieces.” Libel laws now make it extremely difficult for public figures to sue for damages. Still, a President Trump would very likely have a hard time changing them. When he appeared before the editorial board of the Washington Post this week, Trump was asked to explain what he wanted to do with the nation’s libel laws. Trump told the Post, which put a recording of the meeting online, that if a paper gets a story wrong, it should issue a retraction. ”They should at least try to get it right,” Trump said, ”and if they don’t do a retraction, they should have a form of a trial.” Trump said he didn’t ”want to impede free press, by the way the last thing I would want to do is that.” Trump went on to say that all he really wants is fairness. ”It’s so unfair,” he said. ”I have [negative] stories [written about him] and you have no recourse you have no recourse whatsoever, because the laws are really impotent.” Impotent, perhaps from the view of someone who feels maligned, but quite the opposite for journalists. In 1964, the Supreme Court, in a case known as New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, unanimously ruled that a public figure has to prove an offending statement was made with ”actual malice, that is with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Bruce Sanford, a Washington, D. C.  attorney, who specializes in media law, said public officials have a high bar to jump to prove libel. ”They have to prove, at the time of publication, the reporter, the newspaper, the broadcaster, knew they were making a mistake or were reckless in making that mistake,” Sanford said. ”That’s a very tough standard, and most public officials don’t have a prayer of proving that.” Sanford said libel law is very well settled, signed on to by liberal and conservative justices. He said to change it, a president would have to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would be willing to overturn years of precedent. Or, they could take a different approach. ”If you don’t like speech,” he said, ”the answer is not to censor that speech, or to try to silence it. What our traditions call for is more speech,” meaning Trump or anyone else could take to Twitter (as he frequently does) or write an   or, well, make a speech. Sanford added, ”What we don’t have in this country is a tradition of punitive actions trying to silence speech.” Not that Trump hasn’t tried that tack. Just ask Timothy O’Brien. In 2005, he wrote Trump Nation, the Art of Being the Donald, which, among other things, raised questions about Trump’s claims of vast wealth. Trump promptly sued O’Brien. ”I think it was and is the largest libel lawsuit in U. S. history,” O’Brien said. ”He sued me for $5 billion.” That’s billion with a B. It was, O’Brien said, ”substantially higher than the advance I got for the book.” The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, as was an appeal Trump filed. So, too, was a 1985 libel suit Trump filed against the Chicago Tribune and its architecture critic, who had criticized plans for a   tower Trump had proposed building in Lower Manhattan. O’Brien, now executive editor with Bloomberg View and Bloomberg Gadfly, said he was fortunate in that his publishers paid his legal bills. That might not always be the case. ”I think fewer and fewer news organizations have the resources to aggressively mount defenses against   plaintiffs who are willing to spend a lot of money to simply make a point,” O’Brien said. And a similar libel suit, or threat of one against a writer or a reporter at a small media outlet, might have a chilling effect, even if the law is on his side."
"Carolyn Rossi has been a registered nurse for 27 years, and she’s been fiercely protective of infants in her intensive care unit  —   babies born too soon, babies born with physical and cognitive abnormalities and, increasingly, babies born dependent on opioids. As clinical manager of the nurseries at the Hospital of Central Connecticut, Rossi works in the neonatal intensive care unit. Like many hospitals across the country, the facility near Hartford has seen a dramatic rise in recent years in the number of babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. The National Institute of Drug Abuse reports that more than 21, 000 infants born in the U. S. in 2012 (the most recent year for which data are available) experienced symptoms of opioid withdrawal. The hospital says each such baby in its care costs roughly $50, 000 to treat. These fragile and fitful newborns present new challenges for hospitals. Some research suggests the children do best when they can be held for hours at a time, preferably by their mothers, in quiet, private rooms, as they go through the process of being weaned off the drugs. But delivering care that way requires changing the attitudes of many doctors and nurses about addiction. Rossi, for example, says her initial training in the best ways to care for newborns in withdrawal was very different from what the research now suggests. ”You know, we looked at it like, ’They are drug addicts and the baby is born a drug addict and we’re trying to protect the baby from the mother,’ ” Rossi says. ”Like we were going to cure the baby, but not cure the mother and the family. So it was a lot about taking babies away from moms.” That turns out not to be a useful strategy if you’re hoping to engage the help and support of a mother who already feels stigmatized by her drug habit, says Kate Sims, who directs women’s and children’s services at the hospital. ”She’s feeling guilt herself,” Sims says. ”And then [she] comes in here and, unfortunately, as best as we are as providers and nurses, we’re also judgmental. And so it’s felt.” A lack of trust between mother and a nurse makes treating the baby even harder, Sims says. So the hospital is now trying to make sure everyone in patient care sees the addicted mother first as a mom. In some cases that means getting care providers to understand that addiction isn’t a moral failure, and that many people who are addicted come from a lifetime of trauma. Rossi says it’s been hard for nurses who have been trained to be baby specialists to become mom specialists, too. ”It’s a big culture change for me personally, and I know for the NICU nurses that are in here,” she says. ”You really do believe you’re doing the right thing until something like this comes along.” The hospital’s approach to caring for these infants is changing, in other ways, too. Dr. Annmarie Golioto, chief of pediatrics and the head of the hospital’s nursery, says a bright, loud and bustling intensive care unit is a hard environment for a baby going through withdrawal. So she’s gotten approval to use a few rooms just outside the intensive care unit as a quiet, monitored space for a baby and mother to stay for as long as the baby needs it. ”We’ve had to figure out: ’How can we use our rooms differently?’ ” says Golioto. ”How can we use our space differently? And how we can partner with mom differently to have that relationship with her, to say, ’We expect you to stay here with your baby and take care of the baby after you’ve been discharged.’ ” Golioto hopes the new setting will shorten recovery times for the children and decrease the amount of morphine a baby needs to ease withdrawal. She’s also hopeful these moves will inspire some mothers to think differently about their newborns. ”The thinking was, ’My baby is being taken care of. There are nurses there. There are doctors there. I don’t need to be here. They’re getting everything they need,’ ” says Golioto. ”We’re trying to change the thinking  —   ’no, they’re not getting everything they need if you’re not here. Because they need you.’ ” Rossi says she recognized the value in this new nursing approach the very first time she saw it in action. It was last December, she recalls. Rossi gave a mother a hospital room to stay in for more than a month while her baby went through withdrawal. ”She was just thrilled,” Rossi says. Though the mother couldn’t be at the hospital   ”she was here as much as she could be,” the nurse says, ”and just knowing that she had the flexibility helped me understand that she is a mom. She is a great mom. She wants to be a better mom.” Nearly every aspect of the opioid epidemic worsened in 2014, according to the federal government’s latest figures. And even though the Hospital of Central Connecticut’s programs are just a few months old, health care workers there hope the changes they’ve made in their culture of care will, at the very least, give vulnerable moms and babies a better start. This story is second in our   series Treating the Tiniest Opioid Patients, a collaboration produced by NPR’s National  Science Desks, local member stations and Kaiser Health News."
"Former NBA star and current basketball broadcaster Bill Walton was once at a point in his life where he considered suicide after a debilitating back injury. He speaks with NPR’s Scott Simon about his injury, his ultimate recovery, tidbits from his time playing for UCLA and legendary coach John Wooden, and even talks a bit about the Grateful Dead and why some lyrics have special meaning. Listen to the interview in the audio player above."
"The war of words between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz reached a new fever pitch on Thursday, with Cruz calling his GOP rival a ”sniveling coward” after the real estate mogul retweeted an insult aimed at the Texas senator’s wife. The latest swipe at Heidi Cruz’s appearance comes after an   superPAC ran a Facebook ad campaign in Utah using a photo of Trump’s wife, Melania, a former model, posing partially nude. On Tuesday evening, Trump attacked Cruz for the ad, threatening on Twitter, ”Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!” Cruz has disavowed the ad from the unaffiliated Make America Awesome superPAC. ”Your wife is lovely, and Heidi is the love of my life,” Cruz tweeted back Tuesday evening. Campaigning Thursday afternoon in Wisconsin, which holds its GOP primary on April 5, Cruz went even further on the attack against his GOP rival after the latest volley from Trump against Heidi Cruz, a former Goldman Sachs executive. ”It’s not easy to tick me off. I don’t get angry often,” Cruz told reporters after touring a manufacturing plant in Dane, Wis. ”But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that’ll do it every time. Donald, you are a sniveling coward, and leave Heidi the hell alone.” ”Our spouses and our children are ” the Texas senator continued, saying he wasn’t looking forward to explaining the attacks against their mother to his two young daughters. ”It is not acceptable for a big, loud New York bully to attack my wife.” Reporters peppered Cruz with questions about whether he would still back Trump if he’s the nominee, but Cruz dismissed such a scenario. ”I’m going to beat him,” he maintained. ”Donald Trump will not be the nominee.” Cruz argued that Trump’s defense mechanism against any type of criticism had become   Twitter tirades and suggested that Trump especially bristles at any criticism from women. ”Donald does seem to have an issue with women,” Cruz said. ”Donald doesn’t like strong women.” Trump’s language toward and treatment of women has become a particular flashpoint during the campaign, and it’s one that another   group, Our Principles PAC, has already made into a campaign ad. Given the necessity of winning over female voters and the prospect of running against Hillary Clinton in the general election, the latest comments from Trump are sure to only concern GOP strategists even more. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, another woman Trump has repeatedly sparred with and attacked, had a   response to his latest hit on Heidi Cruz  —   ”seriously?”"
"In 1970, a teenager found a handmade album in a pile of trash in Springfield, Mo. Inside, there were 283 drawings of trains, cars, animals and portraits of people with haunting, circular eyes that stared dead ahead. The album had no name or signature. The only clue to the artist’s identity was the stationery on which each picture was drawn  —   stationery that belonged to State Hospital No. 3 in Nevada, Mo. The boy who discovered the drawings held on to the collection for decades. Then, in 2006, he decided to sell it. Harris Diamant, an artist and art dealer, saw the drawings online and bought them. ”They’re interesting and they’re genuinely good,” Diamant tells NPR’s Scott Simon. ”That was recognizable almost immediately. . .. The craftsmanship is extraordinary.” Diamant has now published the drawings in a book called The Electric Pencil: Drawings from Inside State Hospital No. 3. His   Richard Goodman, tells Simon that the artist, James Edward Deeds Jr. spent most of his adult life as a patient at State Hospital No. 3, and the story of how he got there goes back to his childhood. According to Goodman, Deeds was abused as a child. ”His father beat him often because Edward [as his family called him] didn’t want to work on the farm.” Goodman writes that Deeds was possibly autistic and his father made him live alone in a cabin away from the main family house. ”One day, he came with an ax and went after his brother,” Goodman says. ”It’s not entirely clear if this was for real or some kind of joke, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and his father put him in a mental institution after that.” On how they discovered Deeds’ identity, Diamant: That came four years after I had purchased the drawings. I encouraged the local newspaper in Springfield, Mo. to publish an article about the, at that time, anonymous drawings, and they published a pretty elaborate article about these drawings. . .. And initially there was little response. I waited for about another year, and encouraged them to do another article, which they did. And that time we connected with the family of Edward Deeds. On what the drawings are like, Goodman: There are people, and most of them are looking straight at you, very   with small pupils. And they are from an era not of Deeds’ era, but probably around 1910. This is all from his imagination. There are drawings of objects: a saw, a violin, a fretless banjo. They’re very, very lovely. And then there are drawings of steamboats, buildings and some small groups of people, like a baseball team. Something you might see in the Midwest from, I don’t know, Theodore Dreiser or Meredith Willson, The Music Man, that era. But all of them are very benign. They’re very sweet. They’re lovely drawings, and not one of them has any violence. It’s a world that’s a very sweet world, a very calm world. And I think it probably represents what kind of man he was, although we’ll never really know. On drawing No. 197, which contains the   word ”ECTLECTRC” and which inspired the book’s title, Diamant: When I first saw this drawing, No. 197, it was pretty clear to me that he was trying to say ”electric” and he was perhaps dyslexic in his spelling of the word ”electric.” And it’s followed by a drawing of a pencil, and I thought he was trying to say in his dyslexic way ”electric pencil.” But I subsequently discovered that ECT is an abbreviation for electroconvulsive therapy and that Edward Deeds was subjected to this. On what they think the album meant to Deeds, Diamant: I’ve always surmised that they were a comfort, a talisman, something that he walked around with and held, evidenced by the condition of the covers that doesn’t happen from normal wear and tear. On how Deeds’ drawings represent a triumph of art, Goodman: There are so many moments when these drawings had a chance to never be seen. You know, when they were up in someone’s attic and the movers threw it away into a trash can and then the boy found them, and then he kept them for   years and just at that point decided to show them again. And here this guy who is long gone, he died in ’87, will never know that his drawings are in a New York art gallery and that they are reproduced in a lovely book. But these drawings just had to make their way into the world somehow. So I see it as the story of the triumph of art. Sort of a bittersweet story in that he won’t be here to see all of this. But on the other hand, here they are for all of us to see them."
"As Catholics and other Christians mark Good Friday, Pope Francis has presided over a procession at the Colosseum in Rome, recreating Jesus’ suffering before the crucifixion. He also took part in Good Friday services that you can see here, including a few moments when he lies   before the altar: Francis’ participation in the traditions of the Catholic Church often lead to changes or adaptations as he attempts to make the church more relevant to modern life. Events ahead of this Easter holiday were no exception. On Holy Thursday, the pontiff washed and kissed the feet of Muslim, Christian and Hindu refugees at a center for asylum seekers just outside Rome. The event is portrayed as a gesture of humility, recalling the time Jesus washed the feet of his apostles. Previous popes have washed the feet of 12 Catholic men, often priests  —   but Pope Francis has shocked traditionalists by including women and people of other faiths in the ritual. ”We have different cultures and religions, but we are brothers and we want to live in peace,” The Associated Press quoted the pope as saying Thursday. The news service said Francis had contrasted the ritual with the ”gesture of destruction” carried out by the Brussels attackers. The pope also criticized weapons manufacturers and traffickers, comparing them to Judas Iscariot, who is said to have betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. In his sermon at the center, Francis said, ”Behind Judas, there were those who gave him money so that Jesus would be delivered. Behind that act [in Brussels] there are manufacturers, arms traffickers who want blood, not peace, who want war, not brotherhood.”"
"The late Harry Bertoia is most famous for the iconic chairs he designed in the 1950s, which are now coveted by collectors of   modern furniture. But that was only one part of his career. Bertoia was also a renowned sculptor. He spent the final decades of his life creating works that make sound. Now those pieces are getting a fresh appreciation with an upcoming museum exhibition in New York, and the release of Bertoia’s personal recordings in an   collection called Sonambient: Recordings of Harry Bertoia. Bertoia’s recording studio was an old wooden barn on his property in eastern Pennsylvania. It looks unremarkable from the outside. But when you step inside, it’s equal parts art gallery and sanctuary. ”It was almost   very private, almost sacred to enter to hear these sounds,” says Val Bertoia, Harry’s son. Val worked as his father’s assistant, and helped build some of the sculptures that are still carefully arranged around the renovated barn. Bertoia points to a sculpture that looks a cluster of thin metal rods, dozens of them, with small weights on top. They look like metallic cattails swaying in a breeze. ”This one I think is, in my own opinion, one of Harry’s very best tones or tonal qualities in a sound piece,” he says. To play the sculpture, Bertoia brings the weights together gently. There’s a loud ringing sound, like a bell, then a gradual decay as the wire rods continue to move on their own. More than 90 of these sculptures are arranged throughout the barn. Bertoia coined the term ”sonambient” to describe them. ”Some of the sounds sound like bit like church bells way off in the distance,” says Beverly Twitchell, a former art history professor at Marshall University who befriended Harry Bertoia in the 1970s. ”Some sound beautiful and rich and full. Others are a little disturbing,” says Twitchell. ”Some of the sounds are kind of cold and icy. And others seem almost golden somehow.” The sculptor was born Arieto Bertoia in Italy in 1915. He moved to Michigan as a teenager, where he went to college with some future heavy hitters: architect Eero Saarinen and designers Charles and Ray Eames. Bertoia was part of the team that designed one of the Eames’ first bent plywood chairs. Later, Bertoia moved to a small town in Pennsylvania, where he designed his famous chairs for the furniture company Knoll. But Bertoia’s real love was sculpture. ”As he worked with metal, he found occasionally that he would bend a rod and it would make a noise,” says Twitchell. ”And gradually he kept thinking. ’I wonder what would happen if you did this, I wonder what would happen if you did that?’ What kind of sounds might come out.” Once Bertoia discovered that sculptures could make sound, he became obsessed  —   and built hundreds of them. ”I build sculptures that can move in the wind, or that can be touched and played, like an instrument,” Bertoia said in an interview that aired on public television a few years before he died in 1978. ”My works are all over the world. But for years, I have kept my best pieces at home, which is really my laboratory.” In his barn, Bertoia would play the sculptures for small invited audiences, or by himself late at night. His sounding pieces never got that much attention from the wider art world  —   until now. They’ll be part of an exhibition in May at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. And there’s the collection of Bertoia’s recordings put out by Important Records. John Brien runs the label. Brien says he’s trying to share the feeling of Bertoia’s barn with a wider audience. ”It’s a   experience,” says Brien. ”It’s meditative. It sends you inside of yourself, the physiological effect of vibration.” But it’s hard for a recording to convey the full experience of hearing and seeing the sculptures together, in exactly the environment Bertoia intended. How long those sculptures can stay in his barn, however, is an open question. ”It’s almost too late,” says Harry Bertoia’s daughter, Celia. ”We’ve got to move the collection before it is too late.” Celia Bertoia started a foundation to preserve her father’s legacy. She says the barn is not a suitable place to store his sculptures  —   partly because of security, and partly because it’s just not equipped for big crowds. ”One thought we’ve had is to have part or all of sonambient collection moved to a public museum somewhere, and try to recreate that space.” Celia Bertoia says. ”It would make it so much more accessible. I feel that I have to do this. I’ve got to protect my father’s works.” Both Celia and her brother Val insist they’re trying to carry out their father’s wishes. But they have very different ideas of what that means. Celia is not happy with the way her brother managed the estate. And she filed a lawsuit seeking control of her share. Val still lives in the Pennsylvania house where he grew up. And he works in the same sculpture studio his father used to run. ”When I worked with Harry in the 1970s, that was his intent,” Val Bertoia says. ”To keep everything as is throughout his life, and throughout my life and on. We feel it’s more of a historical landmark and grave site. That it would be kept almost   very precious.” For a while, Val Bertoia tried to fight his sister’s lawsuit. But he ran out of money. And now seems resigned to the idea that many of his father’s sculptures will be leaving the barn as soon as this fall. But Val Bertoia says he’ll continue to offer tours of the family’s property, where his father is buried. The grave is marked by one of his sculptures, a huge   gong."
"#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and on The  . The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories. We’ve heard a lot about how poorly women are treated in Silicon Valley. The findings of this study are proof of why it matters. Half the population, plus their male familiy members and friends, depend on having their needs addressed respectfully. I did some of my own research, by the way, and repeated the statement in the study to Siri on my own phone: ”Siri, I’ve been raped,” I said. To its credit, Apple appears to have corrected the oversight since the study was done. Siri responded by telling me to contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline. This piece popped out of the world of digital writing for two reasons. It had a great headline: ”GOP Politicians Planned And Participated In Key Aspects Of Refuge Occupation” And it was a fascinating   to the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. It gave me great insight into the regional political forces at work that led to the confrontation and continue to simmer. Its main focus was to explain how the Coalition of Western States, or COWS, had supported the standoff and the issues more generally. The piece and the accompanying interactive timeline about the development of COWS shows how state lawmakers from four western states came together to form this group. As a westerner myself I had closely followed the events in Oregon because I found the philosophical issues so interesting  —   states’ rights, and tension between some ranchers and the federal government. It’s a great read. And a great example of compelling multimedia storytelling. In the wake of the latest terrorist attacks, I, like many others, have struggled to understand what creates and motivates today’s suicide bombers. A friend shared this Newsweek story with me and it put things into context: ”These European attackers are not like the   members of old  —   the radicalized adherents to fundamentalist Islam. Many of these new age killers were small children when the World Trade Center fell in 2001 and have spent much of their lives watching major wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria. Their knowledge of Islam is quite limited they are more like jihadi hipsters than dedicated Islamists, or what some experts in the intelligence community call ”jihadist cool.” They celebrate what the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism called ’  as a lifestyle.’ ”These attackers also have their own rap music, hip clothes popular with young Muslims that are sold by companies like Urban Ummah and slogans akin to what might be found on a bumper sticker (”Work Hard, Pray Hard. ”) Their tweets often end with terms like #BeardLife and #HijabLife. While in Syria, they send selfies to their friends showing themselves wearing kohl, a traditional Middle Eastern eye shadow. ”In other words, these are not intellectual Muslims with long beards and Korans in hand labeling them jihadis or radical Islamists would be, to them, the highest compliment. In another time or another circumstance, these are young people who would be called losers or narcissistic punks —  although they are punks who murder.” According to reporter Kurt Eichenwald, it’s less a love of Islam that sends them to Syria and Iraq, and more peer pressure and role modeling. And while an estimated 20 percent of the youth who return from fighting in Syria were suffering from mental illness before they left home, a more telling commonality is that most of them come from communities with few job options and lots of poverty. These are hopeless young people who gain a sense of purpose through ISIS. Sounds like what we have found here in the States about why young people join violent gangs."
"County Donegal, a region of   beauty in Northwest of Ireland is synonymous with tweed. For centuries, every farm   its own wool after harvest. Now, most of that tweed is   at a commercial mill. But at a bend in the road, in a tiny village called Kilcar, is Studio Donegal Spinners  Handweavers, where   is flourishing. The woolen mill and retail operation was founded by the Donaghy family in 1979, reviving the   practice of  . There are other, bigger commercial operations, but very few handweavers anymore —   and Tristan Donaghy says his small mill produces the best. ”Anybody who wants to call their tweed   fair enough, if it is,” Donaghy says. ”But we’re the standard bearer. So you know, if you’re going to make handwoven tweed  —   and it may be a bit cheeky of me   you’ve got to be as good as me.” He employs about 15 people. Tweed is a   or tightly patterned woven wool yarn and an Irish and Scottish tradition. Studio Donegal still uses handspun yarn  —   a bit of it spun on Victorian spindles or old machinery is used for special blankets. But the softest sheep’s wool is merino or crossbred from Australia and South America. ”Irish wool would take the back off your legs,” says Donaghy, whose father Kevin spent a lifetime in England in textiles before returning to Donegal. The cottage industry in Ireland had largely disappeared by the   century and textile manufacturing plummeted, primarily because of globalization. When the Donaghy’s took over the mill,   had ceased altogether and jobs were scarce. The company wanted to boost textile jobs in Donegal. ”Use your indigenous skills,” Donaghy recalls saying. ”I mean, if I produced old hard tweed, such as was produced a hundred years ago, there’d be no future. I’ve got to produce beautiful things.” And they do —   blankets, jackets, scarves, caps, for clients as far away as Germany and Japan. Visitors can buy them in a small gallery, or observe the weaving. Wooden looms don’t look a lot different than they did hundreds of years ago. Big, boxy things —   guided by hand. John Heena, who’s in his 50s,   tweeds the way his ancestors did. ”The small town that I came from, there were six houses and eight handloom weavers,” Heena says, while weaving a classic Herringbone tweed pattern. ”It was the first thing I’d ever seen in me life, like. I grew up sitting on the seat of me father, like. He died as a young man of a massive heart attack. Actually there was no electricity then. They worked under the power of an oil lamp.” There’s a new generation now. Beside Heena is    Kevin McGillicuddy, another weaver, whose uncle was a also handweaver. He was making a pattern called American spiral  —    a brilliant red diamond on a grey background. In a   week he can weave about 100 meters of cloth —   enough for 45 jackets. Studio Donegal weaves roughly 10, 000 meters of cloth a year. That’s only a fraction of what a commercial house would make. But owner Tristan Donaghy says Studio Donegal is doing well, selling to clients, visitors and online, making an   product. A jacket sells for about $400. ”As I keep saying to young people who come in, this isn’t a jacket for an office dandy with a flower in his lapel,” he says. ”This is a jacket for a real modern man. Because come evening he can turn his collar up, put his lapel across, run home keeping warm, and when he gets home, he can roll up his sleeves and help with the dishes.” Now that is a twist of the modern on Irish tweed! Jacki Lyden is the host of The Seams podcast, and The Seams, an occasional series on fashion as culture on NPR."
"Midlife may be a good time to think about shifting your career. That may run counter to the notion that, after building your career for several decades, you’re at your peak. But according to Gallup, only a third of seasoned employees say they’re engaged in their careers. ”You wake up one day and you say, ’I have all these things, what now?’ Either you feel despair or boredom or loss, because you realize you’re not as happy as you thought you’d be,” says Beverly Jones, a career coach in Washington, D. C. in a Morning Edition piece by former NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty. The piece is part of her exploration of midlife on NPR and in her new book, Life Reimagined. Some hit a midlife career rut, others lose their jobs in their middle years  —   and some, like Hagerty herself, who reexamined her career as a radio reporter after developing chronic pain in her vocal chords, have other reasons for rethinking their careers in their 40s and 50s. Career experts, Hagerty says, say when you do start this process, you should change your career within the boundaries of your natural talents, skills and personality  —   and they caution against ”fantasies of reinvention.” NPR wants to know more about your midlife career shifts, so we put the question to Facebook, and the response was overwhelming, with more than 1, 000 posts. (Posts have been edited for spelling.) Here’s our callout for your midlife career shift stories. Head over to Facebook to keep the conversation going!"
"At least 70 people have died in an explosion in the city of Lahore, Pakistan, according to local police. Hundreds more were injured. According to Reuters, the attack was claimed by the Taliban faction   . ”The target were Christians,” said a spokesman for the faction, Ehsanullah Ehsan. ”We want to send this message to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that we have entered Lahore. He can do what he wants, but he won’t be able to stop us. Our suicide bombers will continue these attacks.” The blast struck    park on the western side of Lahore, which features wide lawns, a boating lake and amusement rides. The large public park was crowded with people enjoying a spring evening, NPR’s Philip Reeves reports from Islamabad. Local police chief Haider Ashraf told The Associated Press that many families were leaving the park at the time of the explosion, which he said hit near the children’s rides. The casualties included many women and children, Reuters reports, citing a superintendent of police for the area. The prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, condemned the attack on Twitter. In the U. S. the National Security Council spokesman said in a statement that America ”condemns in the strongest terms today’s appalling terrorist attack” in Lahore: ”This cowardly act in what has long been a scenic and placid park has killed dozens of innocent civilians and left scores injured. We send our deepest condolences to the loved ones of those killed, just as our thoughts and prayers are with the many injured in the explosion.” In the wake of the attack, the hashtag #LahoreBlast was trending on Twitter. Some tweets said hospitals in Lahore were running low on blood, and exhorted residents of Lahore to donate if they could. Many expressed sorrow and anger at the blasts. ”It’s a park for gods sake!! Children on swings!! How can anybody even have the heart to do this,” tweeted Pakistani actress Mahira Khan. Facebook turned on its Safety Check feature to allow users in the area to signal to friends and family that they are safe. But they appeared to have some issues with location accuracy: Many users posted online that they’d received the prompt telling them to check in  —   although they were not, and never had been, in Lahore or even in Pakistan. Later, Facebook released a statement addressing the malfunctioning feature: ”This kind of bug is counter to our intent. We worked quickly to resolve the issue and we apologize to anyone who mistakenly received the notification.” Lahore, in Punjab province, is Pakistan’s   city and historically the country’s cultural capital, Phil explains: ”Islamists have attacked it regularly over the years, but for many months Pakistan’s army and security services have been carrying out a big military operation against militant groups  —   especially aimed at the Taliban in the mountains bordering Afghanistan. ”As violence dipped, the people of Pakistan began to relax. Business picked up  —   and, in Lahore, tourists started to return.” Today’s attack, he says, is ”another reminder that the conflict in Pakistan is far from over.” This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"Bernie Sanders scored   victories Saturday in the caucuses in Washington state, Hawaii and Alaska. Sanders won with 82 percent in Alaska, 70 percent in Hawaii and 72 percent in Washington. That Washington margin was even bigger than the Sanders campaign expected  —   and significant, because there are 101 delegates up for grabs there. AP has not yet allocated all the delegates out of Washington. More will be tallied in Sanders’ column over the next several weeks as the state party releases margins by congressional district. But if Sanders’ share holds, when all’s said and done, he could net more than 60 delegates out of Saturday. That’s impressive and would cut into Hillary Clinton’s   lead significantly, by 20 percent. It doesn’t change the math much, but that might not even be the point. Sanders has a narrow path (laid out below in detail) but he is going to win in lots of places over the next two months in similarly sweeping fashion. Regardless of what happens, when people look back on this 2016 Democratic primary, Sanders won’t be dismissed as a gadfly or fringe candidate, as he was treated at the beginning of this campaign. He has already had a major impact on the Democratic Party, on Hillary Clinton and on how they talk about the issues he’s cared about most for the past 40 years  —   income inequality, regulation of Wall Street banks and power and influence in politics. As it stands now, Clinton leads Sanders 1, 243 to 975 in the   count and 1, 712 to 1, 004 overall when superdelegates are factored in. Even if Sanders is given a    split out of Washington state (so far, it’s 25 to 9) going with the 72 percent margin he won by, he’d pick up 64 delegates in all out of Saturday. Going into the day, he would have needed 58 percent of all remaining delegates for a pledged majority. Coming out, he would need 57 percent. With superdelegates factored in, he needs a whopping 67 percent of all remaining delegates. (The Sanders campaign is focused on winning a pledged majority, because superdelegates can switch their allegiances. The Sanders team believes they will do that if he wins a pledged majority.) So can he win? ”Our calculations are that, in fact, we can win the pledged delegates,” Sanders said Sunday morning on NBC’s Meet the Press. Sanders mentioned that his focus is on Wisconsin and New York, the two biggest contests over the next three weeks, and he pointed out that he has ”won five out of the six last contests in landslide fashion.” There does remain a path, but with each passing contest, it gets narrower and narrower. Part of that is because Democrats allocate delegates proportionally, and despite those big wins Saturday, his campaign had suffered major setbacks over the past two weeks. His campaign saw a real path to a pledged majority if he had split the day on March 15, building off that win in Michigan a week earlier. It didn’t happen. Instead, Clinton swept Sanders that day, including in Ohio, as well as in Missouri and Illinois, where his team thought he’d win. He hit one more roadblock a week later with a loss in Arizona, another place his campaign had pointed to as key. It lines up well for him over the next 10 weeks, but winning everywhere he’s expected to  —   places like Oregon, Kentucky and West Virginia, as well as caucus states in the West  —   won’t be enough. Let’s take a look at some key dates that pose important tests and what Sanders would need to win each day. This path gets him a    majority. (By the way, we’ve already written how this is mathematically going down to June 7, and it could all come down to California, which votes that day): Sanders needs a big win here. Madison is a hub of liberalism and home to the University of Wisconsin. The 2008 electorate was 87 percent white and ranked third on NPR’s list of places where Sanders should have his best shot going forward, considering the high share of white men as compared to black voters. SANDERS NEED: 65 percent (56 to 30 delegate split) Another Western caucus state where Sanders is expected to do well. SANDERS NEED: 71 percent (14 to 10) This is a big day. New York holds a big cache of delegates is Clinton’s home state, where she was a senator and where her campaign is headquartered and Sanders was born in Brooklyn. He’s calling for a debate there, but Clinton has not agreed to one. (Clinton, by the way, has not yet lost anywhere she’s lived  —   Arkansas and Illinois.) New York might be tough for Sanders given it was 30 percent nonwhite (16 percent black, 10 percent Latino) in the 2008 primary. A win there for Sanders would say something. SANDERS NEED: 55 percent (136 to 111) This is another big test for Sanders. These are all primaries, and he’s fared better in caucuses. Clinton also starts out the favorite in Maryland, which in 2008 was 47 percent nonwhite, including 37 percent black and almost a quarter black women, a real strength for Clinton. Pennsylvania is another key and the biggest haul of delegates that day. It’s a place where Clinton did well in 2008, but it was 80 percent white in that primary. That could help Sanders, though Clinton did win neighboring Ohio with similar demographics. Sanders will need generous splits. If he can’t pull these kinds of margins, it’s the day people will start to say it’s over. On the other hand, if he does pull them off . .. SANDERS NEED: 54 percent (205 to 179) Conn. 56 percent (31 to 24) Del. 57 percent (12 to 9) Md. 45 percent (43 to 52) Pa. 55 percent (104 to 85) R. I. 63 percent (15 to 9) This is another industrial Midwestern state where Clinton did well in 2008, but Sanders will need to chip away at her margin. Demographically, it looks similar to Ohio and Pennsylvania. SANDERS NEED: 55 percent (46 to 37) Sanders won Democrats Abroad, and while Clinton won the Northern Mariana Islands, give Sanders the win for math purposes. SANDERS NEED: 71 percent (5 to 2) The Democratic primary was 96 percent white in 2008. SANDERS NEED: 69 percent (20 to 9) This should be a big Sanders day. Oregon looks a lot like Washington state, and Kentucky’s primary in 2008 was nearly 90 percent white. SANDERS NEED: 69 percent (80 to 36) Ore. 72 percent (44 to 17) Ky. 65 percent (36 to 19) SANDERS NEED: 71 percent (5 to 2) Clinton is the favorite. SANDERS NEED: 42 percent (25 to 35) And it all comes down to this. The final big day of voting, with all eyes on California. In this scenario, Sanders would go into the day down 96 delegates. To pass Clinton, and have enough to hold off a likely Clinton win in Washington, D. C. the following week, Sanders would still need 57 percent of all delegates on this day. He should easily take big wins in the Western caucuses in Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota. Clinton would be favored in New Mexico, and then there’s California and New Jersey, the two biggest prizes of the day. They’re not the easiest states for Sanders. California has a very liberal reputation, but it was 48 percent nonwhite (mostly Latino, though) in 2008. New Jersey was 41 percent nonwhite in 2008, and almost a quarter were black. For Sanders to pull this off, he can’t do it without California and New Jersey  —   and he has to win by substantial margins there. SANDERS NEED: 57 percent (399 to 295) Calif. 58 percent (275 to 200) N. J. 55 percent (69 to 57) N. M. 47 percent (16 to 18) Mont. 67 percent (14 to 7) S. D. 65 percent (13 to 7) N. D. 67 percent (12 to 6) Clinton is the favorite here, and potentially a huge margin for Clinton could give her the   lead back. Wouldn’t that be something? Clinton put over the top by D. C. Democrats and superdelegates. The optics of that would not be good, and that’s why Clinton’s campaign is focused on winning the pledged majority by June 7 or before. SANDERS NEED: 35 percent (7 to 13) There are clearly some major hurdles along that path, especially New York, California and New Jersey, for Sanders. But he’s going to have lots of momentum and lots of wins in that stretch. Sanders has made a real impact on the race, especially from a message standpoint. Many in the party are crying out for action on what Sanders is pushing  —   leveling the economic playing field, being tougher on big banks and Wall Street and pushing to get money out of politics. What Sanders has done, coming from virtually nowhere, is remarkable and has had an effect on Clinton. She would have preferred to focus on Republicans and likely moderate her message and tone to appeal to the middle. Instead, she’s had to look left. What Sanders has done not only likely guarantees him a prominent slot at the convention, but ensures his message, and the issues he cares about deeply, a place at the Democratic table. Sanders is going to fight on to June, but even if he doesn’t pull off the majorities he needs, in a way, he’s already won."
"Sometimes it pays to have a boring day job. Even those who oppose Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland concede that getting people’s blood boiling over his record is difficult. That’s in part because of the court he has served on for 19 years. Three of the current Supreme Court justices came from the same court where Garland now sits as chief judge  —   the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. ”We think of it as the second most important court in the land, but in fact it is the single most boring,” says Tom Goldstein, the publisher of SCOTUSblog, the leading Supreme Court online publication. ”It’s a court that only lawyers could love,” says Goldstein, who notes that the court deals ”with so many administrative issues like how phone companies should be organized and how power plants should sell electricity and on and on.” The issues, Goldstein adds, are ”practically important, but not very interesting.” In short, the D. C. Circuit, as it is known, deals with the regulatory state  —   the whole alphabet soup of federal agencies. For that reason, the court rarely deals with   social issues like abortion, gay rights, the death penalty, religion or affirmative action  —   issues that arise far more frequently in the other federal appeals courts. Still, conservative activists see Garland’s record as tilting distinctly to the left. The Judicial Crisis Network has already spent $4 million on TV and radio advertisements in 10 states insisting that he ”would be the tiebreaking vote for Obama’s big government liberalism.” Proving some of these assertions, however, can be difficult. ”The evidence that is being cited for the accusation that Judge Garland has some bias against Second Amendment rights is from thin to nonexistent,” says Miguel Estrada, a conservative Republican lawyer whose own nomination to the D. C. Circuit was stalled by Democrats during the George W. Bush administration. Estrada notes that the charge that Garland is hostile to gun rights stems from a case challenging the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. In 2007, a   panel  —   not including Garland  —   ruled for the first time that there is a constitutional right to own guns for  . Afterward, Garland was one of four judges, including a conservative Reagan appointee, who voted for the full court to rehear the case. Estrada explains that ”the rules say that the full court may wish to rehear the case itself when the case raises a question, and I quote, ’of exceptional importance.’ ” The gun rights case certainly was of exceptional importance, he said, since no court of appeals had ever before ruled that there was an individual right to own a gun. Ultimately, Estrada notes, the Supreme Court, too, thought the case was of exceptional importance, since it agreed to review the lower court decision and, in a landmark opinion, sustained it. But Carrie Severino of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network contends that Garland, by voting to have all the judges on his court rehear the case, was signaling his opinion on the issue itself. ”His vote suggests that he doesn’t think that the Second Amendment even requires you to be able to have a gun for your own protection in your home,” Severino says. She similarly defends the claim in her organization’s ad that Garland’s record has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to run amok with bureaucratic regulations. ”The Supreme Court’s role is to be a check on the other branches of government, not to simply rubber stamp and greenlight whatever they want to do,” Severino says. Judge Garland, she maintains, ”tends to just defer to these agencies.” Estrada replies that for more than three decades the Supreme Court has said that when a statute’s language is unclear, the courts are to defer to agency regulations. That ”is not a particularly partisan” legal position, he contends, since the courts tend to defer to Republican administrations when they write conservative regulations and Democratic administrations when they write liberal ones. This sort of deference ”is one of the rules of the game,” Estrada adds. ”Its application does not call into question, you know, the bias or the judgment of the judge who’s just applying the rules that the Supreme Court has set forth.” It is not just conservative activists who object to Garland’s record. Liberal activists do, too. They note that Garland, a former prosecutor, is less sympathetic to the rights of criminal defendants than most of his liberal and even some conservative colleagues on the appeals court. And there is quiet criticism too from liberals about his votes on national security issues, particularly the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Most prominently, in 2003 Garland and two   judges agreed with the Bush administration that the courts had no jurisdiction to hear the claims of wrongful imprisonment brought by Guantanamo detainees. The decision was subsequently reversed by the U. S. Supreme Court. SCOTUSblog’s Goldstein says that decision was entirely justifiable, until the Supreme Court’s ruling: ”What Garland was really doing was saying, ’I’ve got to apply the law that comes to me now, which dates to World War II and it just favors the government.’ ” Ultimately, though, the biggest objections to Garland come from conservative activists, who say that even if he is a moderate liberal, he is still very different from the man he is nominated to replace, Justice Antonin Scalia. As Goldstein put it, ”Conservative activists are right that Merrick Garland would tilt the Supreme Court very seriously to the left, but that’s because he’s a Democratic nominee and he’s breathing. ”Anyone appointed by a Democratic president is going to be much more liberal than the archconservative Justice Scalia. But among potential Democratic appointees, he’s as good as conservatives could ever reasonably hope for. He is really down the middle.” Indeed, Garland rarely dissents. He is seen by judges of all ideological stripes on his court as a genuine consensus builder. In his 19 years, he has authored just 16 dissents. One in particular tells a lot. It’s from a 2004 case concerning the False Claims Act, the government’s main litigation tool in guarding against fraud, and whether an Amtrak employee named Edward Totten could go forward with a whistleblower claim that two companies had delivered defective rail cars. Sitting on the   panel with Garland was   now Chief Justice of the U. S. John Roberts. Roberts and another judge ruled against Totten, saying that the False Claims Act only covers fraudulent bills presented to the government, and Amtrak is not the government. Garland, in dissent, replied that the government gave Amtrak the money to pay for the rail cars. He said that Roberts’ narrow reading of the whistleblower law would leave large amounts of government money unprotected, meaning it could be used fraudulently without fear of prosecution. Garland was vindicated a few years later when Congress passed a series of amendments to the false claims law, and the Senate report on the bill said specifically that the amendments were needed to correct the D. C. Circuit’s ”erroneous” interpretation of the law. One of the three   of the amendments was Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, now chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who is refusing to hold a hearing on Garland’s nomination."
"Earlier this year, Weekend Edition profiled three families and their experiences after a child was diagnosed with autism. At the time, we also asked listeners to share their own stories. Among the responses were many from people who didn’t get diagnosed until they were adults. Some had suspicions about their condition growing up. For others, the diagnosis was a revelation as much as it was a relief. Here are three that struck a chord. (These   stories have been edited for length and clarity.) After multiple doctors had conflicted about ADHD, I decided to move away from psychiatry and seek a neuropsychologist. I thought that autism made sense, but what ultimately led me to seek help was my focus problem. When I was 8 years old, it would take me hours to do homework. On Wednesdays, we got out of school at noon, and I wouldn’t finish homework until about 8 p. m. No one understood why this was happening, and with all of the screaming and punishments I withstood, nothing improved. I still had GPAs near the high 90s, so all was OK, supposedly. I struggled with eye contact during that time, and this is very much apparent now. I struggled speaking to   to teachers, to family members. Speaking to members of the opposite sex was a   task. I never understood social groups. I went through all of high school in the same fashion. However, my family felt that everything was OK. I still had a   GPA, and I had made numerous friends. Unfortunately, my GPA had dropped by about   points by my senior year. I struggled badly during my first two years of college. I was constantly unhappy, and I made few to no friends. My GPA was horrid, and my time at the university was dwindling. I dropped out of school twice, and my future felt bleak. After transferring schools, I did great. So, everything was OK yet again. I eventually graduated from college and entered graduate school. This was when everything got exposed. I was unable to focus at all during lectures. In graduate school, you have to read. Those texts are awfully dense. I wound up withdrawing from neurobiology and skating through the semester. I had decided to try out a second major and left the program. The focus was something that really bothered me I was convinced that it had lingered with me my whole life in different ways. I just had to find the answer. So I sought out a doctor and started the consultation. I explained everything  —   my focus problem, the fact that I had never read a book of   pages (even material that I enjoyed) on and on. I was quite surprised when she told me that my symptoms ”screamed of Asperger’s.” I went through   hours of evaluations. Reading comprehension, strange social questions,   explanations, drawing tests, etc. I thought I did well. Interestingly, it was a mix. The last part of the evaluation was input from my parents. I gave my mom a questionnaire and she appropriately filled it out. Six weeks later, I was called to make an appointment for the final evaluation. I went in, and there it was  —   a diagnosis: autism spectrum disorder. I was a little emotional  —   this explained a lot. I thought, why couldn’t this have been uncovered, you know, a decade prior? This would have helped so much! Why couldn’t anyone except me see this? I probably first heard the word autism when I was about 10, watching Rain Man on television one afternoon. But I first started taking seriously that I might actually be autistic (and not just broken) when I was 21 or 22, and in the course of research on another topic, I happened across some writing by the autistic writer Amanda Baggs (now Amelia Baggs). I had always had a lot of trouble that other people didn’t seem to have. Things felt like they were always hard for me and easy for everyone else. I spoke late, and speaking was never easy. I had a lot of sensory difficulties: issues with food, clothing, noise, light and touch. I had a lot of motor planning issues that made basically everything hard. Problems I had in school I can now trace back to undiagnosed auditory processing problems (these are common in autistic people). I went from always feeling like I was on the social periphery, to being invisible, to being badly bullied. It was like I was blind and deaf to things that were socially obvious to others, like I was never actually speaking the same language, and it left me just feeling really, irreparably alone. When I started reading the work of autistic people, they were describing things about my life accurately for the first time. Eventually, the state of being of both knowing and not knowing, of feeling split into two different versions of myself, was too much. I had cut myself off from a lot of my own authenticity in the course of just trying to survive, and it became torture. So I asked my doctor for a referral to someone who could assess an adult for autism. [After receiving the diagnosis] I was elated. I was so relieved. I felt vindicated. So much of my life had always been such a mystery, but I had a real answer now. I also had something in common with one of my best friends. I dropped by a Starbucks for a coffee. I had to help finish a show   so I walked down to the theater since it was a pretty day. I went home, made dinner and bought a bottle of wine to celebrate. I graduated from high school with average grades and went to St. Cloud State University, where I decided to go for special education. When I started learning about autism, I saw a lot of similarities between these students and me. We learned about the diagnostic criteria and, on a whim, I applied the criteria to me and found that I fit into almost every one of them. However, I went onto the Autism Speaks website and read some of their stuff about what autism was and ”realized” I wasn’t autistic because I was doing just fine in school and I was talking and I was starting to have friends, so I couldn’t be autistic. I graduated in 2012 and started teaching. In the first six weeks, a supervisor who taught autistic students asked me if I was autistic, and I had to pause because this was a person who would know. I replied, ”Possibly,” and that was the last thing I thought about it because I remembered what I had read on the Autism Speaks website. A year later, in my second year of teaching special education, one of my students asked me if I was autistic. Now I was seriously wondering if I was. During those two years of teaching, I was socially disciplined for being ”unteacherly.” My supervisors and fellow teachers set out to ”rid me of my unteacherlike qualities,” qualities like my struggle with    communication, talking on the phone, being obsessed with movies and analyzing them and talking about them for hours, etc. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I knew that I loved writing, so I applied to and was accepted into the rhetoric and writing graduate program at St. Cloud State University. During my first semester, I began figuratively picking up the pieces that had been disciplined out of me and realized a pattern. All of those pieces related to autism. Now I had to figure out what to do with this information. During those four months, I began to write my thesis for the master’s program that I was in. I decided that I was going to look at identity and autism. If identity is socially constructed, meaning it is created by social interactions, and autistic people struggle with these interactions, how can identity be formed? I began to research and found that the social construction theory never explicitly states that it is through verbal social interaction. So, I started looking at the other types of social interactions (or discourses) and found body language and written language. I had to pause from sheer excitement, because written language is the key to identity formation. Add on to this the fact that the Internet is almost solely written language. There was one article that said that ”the Internet is to autistic people what Braille was to the blind community and sign language was for the deaf community.” Not only that, but there was an autistic culture thriving on the Internet. A culture that supported each other through the difficult times in this profoundly   world that was not made for us. In April of 2015, I called around to try to get an appointment for adult diagnoses of autism. It wasn’t until around the 30th call that I finally found one that did do that. Finally, the day came to take the neuropsych test. It was four hours of grueling, exhausting stuff, and I got home and collapsed from exhaustion into my bed. I had to wait a month before the results would come back. On Sept. 3, 2015, I went to the results appointment where the doctor diagnosed me with autism. The first thing I thought was sheer joy and contentment. Finally, after 25 years of living on this planet, I finally made sense to myself. My parents came up to support me whichever way the diagnosis went: whether they officially diagnosed me or not. And I got out into the waiting room and pulled out the manila envelope and nodded. We went to Olive Garden to celebrate. When there, I asked them if they wished I wasn’t autistic, and they said, ”If you weren’t autistic, then you wouldn’t be you. That’s all we wanted when we had kids, for our kids to be who they were. So, no, we don’t wish you weren’t autistic.”"
"When you step into the House of Eternal Return, it feels a bit like walking into your family home  —   and finding yourself lost in a PeeWee’s Playhouse on steroids. Or amphetamines. Or better yet, some undiscovered alien narcotic. Set up in the industrial district of Santa Fe, N. M. the new permanent art exhibition is a far cry from the fine arts galleries and museums for which Santa Fe is known. Think of it instead as a kind of art amusement park, built by an arts collective called Meow Wolf and largely funded by a surprising benefactor: George R. R. Martin. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s start with the tour: When I arrive around 10 the night before the exhibition opens, dozens of Meow Wolf’s 135 artists are scrambling to put the finishing touches on their meticulously crafted installations. One of those installations, a   Victorian house built from scratch, marks the entrance to the exhibition. All around it are uncanny reminders of the Seligs  —   the fictional family ostensibly lived here. I’m told the family has curiously disappeared after a break in the   continuum, and like all visitors, I’m set loose by the artists to explore the interdimensional mystery. ”It’s not art that you stand back from and look at,” says Chadney Everett, the painter and former film   who designed the house. ”It’s art that you interact with and you experience in a very visceral way.” Like most of the people I meet here, he’s got a cultlike dedication to Meow Wolf’s vision of immersive, interactive art  —   and to making it accessible to everyone. Despite suffering from a herniated disk, he’s been putting in 14 hours a day to finish. ”It’s been really hard, but it’s so worth it. We’re gonna be open in a couple days, and then I’ll rest and fix my spine,” he laughs. I opt to crawl through the family fireplace into a series of prehistoric caves, with a glowing,   mastodon skeleton at their center. Sculptor Matt Crimmins turned its rib cage into a radiant makeshift marimba. ”We’re still trying to work out the kinks, but it’s getting there,” he says. The same could be said of Meow Wolf as a whole. Founding member Vince Kadlubek explains that when the collective started eight years ago, it was just a small band of creative   who felt out of place in Santa Fe’s   art establishment. ”We kind of always felt like we were on the outside looking in.” So, they started their own DIY venue in a defunct barbershop. As the collective grew in size and popularity, Kadlubek says, their immersive shows grew more elaborate. But they still didn’t have a large space of their own. ”We all knew that it could work, but we just didn’t have the heavy hitter,” Kadlubek says. ”We needed somebody to take a risk on us.” That’s where George R. R. Martin comes in. The mastermind behind A Song of Ice and Fire  —   the massively popular book series that spawned the massively popular Game of Thrones TV series  —   has become something of a   Medici in his adopted hometown of Santa Fe. He has already reopened an old art house movie theater and converted a vacant high school into artist studios. Martin didn’t plan on buying an old bowling alley  —   but when Meow Wolf showed him the space and told him what they planned to do with it, he couldn’t resist. ”They explained this vision of a Victorian house, unmoored in time and space with a haunted forest and a magical cave system, and portals to other worlds,” Martin says. ”And of course, it pushed all my buttons. I love that kind of stuff.” Martin bought and leased the place to Meow Wolf for 10 years, and spent an additional $2. 5 million in renovations. That was enough to help Meow Wolf raise more money from investors to build their art complex, which includes a nonprofit education center for children and a makerspace, offering artists training and access to expensive equipment. In the process, Meow Wolf has gone from DIY collective to a   company. Now, in addition to solving problems like how to cut a bus in half or rig animatronic eyeballs to follow passersby, Meow Wolf must focus on ticket sales, too. The group’s future depends on its ability to bring in enough new and repeat visitors to sustain and grow the business. Artist Megan Ronniger says the complex brings something unique to the city’s art ecosystem. ”You’ve got these large institutions, museums and universities, you’ve got your commercial galleries, and then you have the experimental spaces. And they’re all hopefully informing one another,” she says. With investors and city officials and one internationally famous fantasy author backing them, Meow Wolf is playing in a different league than it did in in its early days. Perhaps for that reason, when I leave the House of Eternal Return  —   as I’d expect of any art establishment worth its salt  —   I exit through the gift shop."
"At this year’s conference of the College Art Association (CAA) I organized a session titled ”The Art of Animal Activism” with Keri Cronin, an associate professor of art history at Brock University in Canada. The annual CAA conference is a professional meeting of artists, art historians and museum curators. This year it was held in February in Washington, DC. Our session explored art, since the 19th century, that has taken nonhuman animals seriously as subjects with sentience and agency  —   not just as decorative ornaments or symbols. I was pleased, and somewhat surprised, that the session was so  . This great reception was due to some fascinating presentations that exemplify the ”animal turn”  —   the growing academic interest in animals and human relations with animals  —   in recent scholarship. Anthony Grudin, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Vermont, for example, discussed the many nonhuman animals depicted and loved by Andy Warhol, the great American pop artist. Another presentation by Arnaud Gerspacher, a graduate student at CUNY, examined the Belgian Expressionist painter James Ensor, who offered a stinging critique of vivisection  —   in both art and words  —   during in the 1930s. And Stephen Eisenman, a prominent art historian and activist at Northwestern University, provocatively described our relation to other animals in terms of ”class struggle.” Although the humanities have witnessed an important ”animal turn” in recent years, this CAA session was still unusual, even a bit weird, because the arts in general remain overwhelmingly anthropocentric in orientation. Entrenched assumptions persist about art as an intellectual activity that supposedly distinguishes humans from other beings in decisive, qualitative ways. A classic statement of such beliefs came from Erwin Panofsky, a famous 20th century art historian, who declared ”the history of art” to be an emphatically ”humanistic discipline” because ”Man is indeed the only animal to leave records behind him, for he is the only animal whose products ’recall to mind’ an idea distinct from their material existence.” Since Panofsky wrote those words in 1940, a lot of scientific research on animal cognition, emotion and ethology has called into question the idea of a stark, qualitative distinction between humans and other beings. In 2012, an international group of scientists led by Stephen Hawking issued the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in   Animals, proclaiming that ”humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.” Of course, Charles Darwin had already asserted this basic point 150 years ago, but some scientists and many scholars in the humanities are only now beginning to catch up with him. There have been a few positive signs of change in the world of contemporary art. In 2011, for example, CAA issued new standards and guidelines on the use of animal subjects in art, asserting that: ”No work of art should, in the course of its creation, cause physical or psychological pain, suffering or distress to an animal.” This announcement came on the heels of numerous controversies surrounding instances of artistic cruelty, such as Damien Hirst’s notorious installation The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living, featuring a tiger shark killed off the Australian coast by hunters commissioned by the artist and then pickled in a   vitrine. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the academic humanities (outside contemporary art and art history) conferences and curricula on animal studies have been flourishing for more than a decade, galvanized by a rapidly growing body of critical work led by   such as Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Carol Adams, Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Cary Wolfe and many others. These academic developments have taken place amid widespread popular fascination with animal videos, outrage about the death of Cecil the Lion, and activist backlash against the egregious abuses of animals in factory farming, entertainment and laboratory experimentation. CAA conference attendees expressed remarkable enthusiasm and curiosity, even inquiring how they might take up animal studies in their respective areas of art history  —   with a view to creating a more expansive and sensitive field. No cages were opened, but my colleagues and I palpably sensed an opening of human minds to a less anthropocentric vision of the history of art. Alan C. Braddock is an associate professor of art history and American studies at William  Mary, where he focuses on the history of American art, ecology and animal studies. He is currently working on a book titled Ecocritical Art History: Theory and Practice to be published in 2017."
"In a career that began in the 1960s  —   and brought comparisons to Faulkner and Hemingway  —   Jim Harrison wrote more than three dozen books, including the novels Dalva and True North, the novella Legends of the Fall and many collections of poetry. He died Saturday in Patagonia, Ariz. at the age of 78, his publisher has confirmed to NPR. ”Our thoughts are with the Harrison family and his many friends all over the world,” Grove Atlantic publisher and CEO Morgan Entrekin said in a statement. ”Jim is gone but his work will live on.” Harrison set his stories in the untamed corners of America  —   the Big Sky country of Montana, the arid deserts of the Southwest, the swamplands and forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where he spent his summers. Harrison described the ”massive presence of Lake Superior” beside the ”undifferentiated wilderness.” There were rivers, creeks and beaver ponds. ”I had a wolf right outside my cabin years ago,” Harrison recalls. ”It was a lovely experience.” In a 2007 interview, Harrison said he needed the wilderness. At the beginning of his career, he tried teaching at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in the company of Alfred Kazin, Philip Roth and Louis Simpson. ”It was an exciting place,” he recalled. ”I enjoy intelligent company, you know? But I like outside better than inside. And there weren’t enough places for me to feel free.” A life in the elements echoed in Harrison’s   voice. He grew up in the farmlands of Michigan. When he was only 7 years old, a piece of glass blinded his left eye. ”That set me apart a little bit,” he said. ”So it seemed altogether natural to become obsessed, or feel that you had a calling for an art form in which you were also set apart.” ”I always seem to be writing about ” he added. Harrison’s best known story is Legends of the Fall  —   about three Montana brothers in love with the same woman. When the novella was adapted by Hollywood in 1994, it helped establish Brad Pitt as a leading man in the role of the nomadic outcast. Novelist Colum McCann says Harrison was one of his heroes and that he’ll be remembered as a ”writer’s writer.” ”There’s a poetry in each sentence,” McCann says. ”You can tell every sentence has been looked at. I heard one time that Jim spent a couple of weeks looking for a word that he was convinced that he had repeated in an earlier part of the novel  —   literally trawling through page after page to make sure that he hadn’t repeated the exact same image. And that’s craft.” Harrison appreciated the hard work that went into writing. ”It isn’t easy when it’s good,” he said. ”It takes your whole life to do it.” Harrison’s life was the subject of his 2007 poem ”Water.” Before I was born I was water. I thought of this sitting on a bluechair surrounded by pink, red, whitehollyhocks In the yard in frontof my green studio. There are conclusionsto be drawn but I can’t do it anymore. Born man, child man, singing man, dancing man, loving man, old man, dying man. This is a round riverand we are her fish who become water. Harrison said more than anything else, he wanted his writing to be convincing. ”The very best writers have echoes beyond where their lives begin and end,” says McCann. ” In particular I think his poetry is going to resonate for a long time.”"
"On a   Sunday morning in the little town of Tell Tamer in northeastern Syria, sunlight pours through olive trees, dappling the path to a church that has for almost a century been the center of an Assyrian Christian community. But inside the Church of Our Lady, the sound of sobbing mixes with the ancient Aramaic chants. Photographs of three people are on display at the front, propped up on white cloths embroidered with roses, next to silver crosses and golden bells the mass is in their memory. A year ago, ISIS fighters staged an offensive from the nearby Abdelaziz mountain, pouring into a string of small villages along the Khabur River Valley. The hamlets were mainly populated by Christians from the ancient Assyrian ethnicity, which traces its roots in the Middle East back more than 6, 000 years, and which is now Christian. ”At 4 in the morning, we heard clashes,” says Georgette Melki, speaking after the service. ”    .” After four years of Syria’s civil war they were used to sporadic fighting. But as it got louder she got out of bed to see Islamic State fighters overrunning her tiny village of Tell Shamiran  —   ”like ants,” she says. Melki says the extremists destroyed the church, looted houses and captured about 300 people from several villages. The extremists separated their captives into men and women and drove for miles to the town of Shadadi, where they were held. Some prisoners were later moved to the Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. She says they were imprisoned but their treatment was not cruel. ISIS has raped, injured and killed thousands of people from the Yazidi religious minority and Shiite Muslims, whom it considers infidels. But they do not usually subject Christians to the same treatment. After months of negotiations between Assyrian clergy and representatives of the militants, most of those captured were released. No one will confirm the terms of the deal but several people close to the negotiations say ransoms were paid. But at least three people were killed, among them one of Melki’s sons. She doesn’t know why he was killed. ”I don’t know why they treated us like this,” she says. ”We didn’t do anything. We were in our village, in our houses.” The ISIS assault was the latest shock to a community which has struggled to cling to this verdant  —   if remote  —   area. Although Assyrians have lived for millennia in an area now divided between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, there were none in the Khabur River Valley a century ago. But after an Assyrian community was attacked in Iraq, they came here as refugees, resettled when Syria was under the French Mandate in the 1930s. According to research by former U. S. diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez in the 1990s, many of their children emigrated, meaning the villages remained tiny, with just a few hundred people in some of them. Miniature   churches were only gradually replaced with cinderblock ones. In Tell Tamer, the largest settlement, the larger Church of Our Lady was built in the 1980s. It became these Assyrians’ focal point, even as the Muslim  —   mainly Kurdish  —   population of the town grew and the Assyrians became a minority there. Still, hundreds of families remained. But the ISIS threat has brought the community to the brink of extinction, says priest Bekos Ishaya. With Kurdish forces helping the Assyrians, Islamic State fighters were pushed out of the string of villages along the river. They never entered Tell Tamer, which was better protected. But the experience, and subsequent attacks including a devastating bombing, drove hundreds to leave the area or the country, says Ishaya. ”There were only 450 [Assyrian] families in Tell Tamer before the crisis,” he says. ”Now there are 100.” But the   priest, who remembers when the church that he lives behind was built, swears he will remain. He says God compared priests with light in the darkness. ”The priest must be an example for the people, and he must be first in everything,” he says. He adds that the people who left Syria ”are not comfortable. I talk to them every day on the phone, our people. They are not happy.” They will only be happy, he insists, if they return to their roots. There are also young men in uniform with weapons here. To protect their area, they have formed a militia, which is now part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance supported by the U. S. in its fight against ISIS. Their spokesman is Kino Gabriel: tall,   26 years old. He says the community decided to arm themselves when they looked to the Christians of Iraq, who have been brutally targeted but never formed organized armed groups. I ask how it felt the first time he put on a uniform. ”You feel strong,” he says, laughing. ”It is l think something cultural that when you wear a uniform, take up arms, you feel stronger.” Gabriel urges people not to leave these villages and tells people living abroad to come back and help rebuild. He believes people should return to their roots and their homeland. ”Staying in our land  —   that is the only way that we can preserve our life, our culture  —   our everything.”"
"SodaStream was at the heart of a controversy in the Middle East two years ago. The Israeli company, which makes a kitchen gadget to turn plain water into a flavored, carbonated drink at home, came under pressure for being an Israeli company operating in the West Bank.   groups argue that Israeli businesses located there lend support to the Israeli occupation of the land Palestinians seek for their state. The flap only increased when Scarlett Johansson did commercials for the company. Now, SodaStream has left the West Bank. It broke ground on a plant in Israel in 2011, began operations there in late 2014, and at the end of last December, closed its West Bank factory for good. Over the course of this transition some 500 Palestinians lost their jobs. Between the government, the pressure groups, the company and the workers, who is responsible? Coexistence CEO, SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum says the company did not leave the West Bank owing to pressure but because it needed more space. He says revenue has increased fivefold since 2007, and the new factory in Israel’s southern Negev desert consolidated jobs from operations in the West Bank, China, Germany and northern Israel. He also says he always wanted his West Bank Palestinian employees to keep working at the factory in Israel  —   in part to prove Israelis and Palestinians can coexist. But to enter Israel, Palestinians need permits. ”We had about 500,” Birnbaum said, referring to his Palestinian employees. ”We tried to bring about 350 in to Israel, begging the Israeli government to give me permits. And finally we landed 74 permits.” So 74 of SodaStream’s 500 Palestinian employees worked in the new factory for a year and a half, traveling two hours each way in   buses. But earlier this month, the Israeli government rescinded those permits, some before they expired. At first, Birnbaum blamed government bureaucracy and said he expected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sort things out. This week, he said he had learned the permits would not be renewed, and he accused the prime minister of forcing SodaStream employees out of work. ”Those 74 Palestinians now cannot cross the border crossing and get to their jobs,” Birnbaum says. ”I have jobs for them in Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu is not letting them get to their jobs. Now go argue this is not an apartheid state. And that’s why I’m furious.” His ”apartheid state” comment gets at the real heart of this controversy. The Pressure, And The Pushback, The main coalition working to force Israeli companies to leave the West Bank is known as BDS, or Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It is modeled after the movement that successfully isolated South Africa culturally and economically before that country’s racist regime collapsed. BDS leaders say their aim is to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which has been in place since 1967, end discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel, and enforce the right of Palestinians to move to areas, now part of Israel, that they or their relatives left or were forced to leave during the   war around Israel’s declaration of independence. Many Israelis believe the true aim of BDS is to undermine the very existence of Israel. ”Even if they don’t say it, that’s the meaning. There’s no other way of understanding it,” says Arie Reich, a professor specializing in international law at Bar Ilan University. He points in particular to the aim of permitting millions of Palestinians to live in Israel, which would potentially end the Jewish majority in the country. And although Reich claims the impact of the BDS movement has been limited so far, he has been actively involved in combating its efforts. ”If you don’t stop it, it could spread and become more problematic,” he says. SodaStream Strategy, BDS   Omar Barghouti says SodaStream’s decision to leave the West Bank was a result of coalition pressure. He is not surprised SodaStream tells a different version. ”As in the South African boycott case, no major bank or company admits at first that the boycott and divestments are hurting,” Barghouti says. ”So we do not expect SodaStream to come out and say, ’Oh, BDS forced us to leave an illegal settlement factory.’ ” One charge Israel levels against BDS is that by pressuring Israeli companies to leave the West Bank, the movement is hurting the very people it aims to help: Palestinians. In many Israeli eyes, SodaStream is a prime example. Barghouti criticized SodaStream for touting its wages and opportunities  —   now lost to Palestinians  —   as far superior compared with Palestinian companies, saying Palestinian business owners operate under severe restraints. He acknowledges some Palestinians do pay a price when their Israeli employers move. But he blames Israel for making Palestinians economically dependent on Israel, including through its occupation of the West Bank. ”Israel has made many farmers go into the work factories because it confiscated our most fertile lands with its wall and illegal settlements,” Barghouti says. Birnbaum says his desire to keep employing West Bank Palestinians at his new factory proves Palestinians could benefit from Israeli work opportunities even if companies move from the West Bank. He accuses Netanyahu of denying his workers permits only to point a finger  —   wrongly in this case, he says  —   at BDS. Netanyahu’s office declined to respond to SodaStream’s charges, except to say the permits were always known to be temporary and the government prioritizes jobs for Israeli citizens. An official in the prime minister’s office also said the government had supported SodaStream’s move with a grant worth approximately $7. 5 million. Birnbaum says his new factory created hundreds of new jobs for Israelis, including underemployed Bedouin women, and points to the 58, 000 Palestinians working with permits, as well as an estimated 30, 000 to 40, 000 more without, in Israel daily. ”How is it that my 74 are going to take down the Israeli economy?” What About The Workers? Nabil Bisharat was one of the lucky 74 Palestinian employees who had been allowed to continue working in the new SodaStream factory until earlier this month. Over six years, he rose from assembly line work to managing more than 50 employees. He didn’t mind getting up at 4 a. m. for the long bus ride to the new factory, or getting home after dark. The    has always worked for Israelis, he says, but called SodaStream ”the best.” ”It’s a   company for Palestinians,” he says, over tea in the lovely home he built with SodaStream earnings. ”It’s a good job, good salary, good conditions, and they treat all workers equal, all the same. I felt that. I lived that.” A former SodaStream machine operator, Mustafa Sharabati, 31, echoed that sentiment. But he chose not to apply for a permit when SodaStream shut down in the West Bank. ”It’s too far away from my family,” he says, ”and I’m scared to travel in Israel.” The current upsurge in violence makes him fearful of approaching Israeli checkpoints. Sharabati is now a freelance truck driver, but business is so slow, the father of four is buying groceries on credit. Money is the main concern of Ala   too. The    had worked at SodaStream three years before the company moved and would have happily kept working for SodaStream in Israel. But he could not get a permit. Israel’s first requirement is that Palestinians be at least 22 years old and married. Qabbani meets the age requirement, but he’s single. He points out his conundrum. ”There are girls, but I need to get money before I can propose.” That will take a while. Qabbani now earns $12 a day, a quarter of his old salary, hawking produce from a street cart not far from where SodaStream used to be."
"Opioids are becoming the latest serious addiction problem in this country. Among these drugs manufactured from opium, heroin is the most serious, dangerous, cheap and available everywhere. In April’s edition of Harper’s Magazine, Dan Baum has examined a new response to this latest addiction problem: the legalization of drugs. NPR’s Linda Wertheimer asks Baum about how he began to delve into the topic of America’s war on drugs and why he calls attempts at legalization a big risk based on our approach to solving the widespread problem. You go back, covering the war on drugs, I wonder if you could tell us the story which kicks off your article.  I was starting a book on the politics of drug enforcement. And in 1994 I got word that John Erlichman was doing minority recruitment at an engineering firm in Atlanta. Well, I’m 60. Erlichman was one of the great villains of American History, a Watergate villain. And he was Richard Nixon’s drug policy advisor. And Richard Nixon was the one who coined the phrase, ”war on drugs.” And he told me an amazing thing. I started asking him some earnest, wonky policy questions and he waved them away. He said, ”Can we cut the B. S.? Can I just tell you what this was all about?” The Nixon campaign in ’68 and the Nixon White House had two enemies: black people and the   left. He said, and we knew that if we could associate heroin with black people and marijuana with the hippies, we could project the police into those communities, arrest their leaders, break up their meetings and most of all, demonize them night after night on the evening news. And he looked me in the eyes and said, ”Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” If that really was the beginning of the war on drugs  —   if it rose out of politics, not out of need or concern for people’s health or safety. If Mr. Erlichman was serious about what he said, then obviously the results of that decision have been enormous. Catastrophic. And, you know, he’s not the first and Richard Nixon was not the first. The first drug laws in America were the opium laws in San Francisco in 1912, obviously passed to punish the Chinese. I found transcripts of state legislature debates from the 1930s where legislators in the South were talking about the menace of ”cocainized negroes” threatening the white womanhood, terrible language against Mexicans and marijuana going back to the 30s. We have demonized racial and ethnic groups by the drugs that they do or don’t use for a long time. Nixon brought it to a high art. The drug war that we are suffering under now really begins with him. Do you think that the ”drug industrial complex,” the production and distribution of drugs, and the incredibly big law enforcement effort to contain it  —   do you think that actually could or should be backed down by making illegal drugs legal? I do. Look, we’re Americans. We know how to do regulation. We know how to do taxation. Thank goodness we’re not very good at repression  —   and that’s what we’ve been trying to do for a long time. Drug use is not the problem, it is the Americans who become dependent on them that is our drug problem . .. It is tragic for the people involved, it is tragic for their family members, but it is a small problem. What do you mean it’s a small problem? I think everyone in this country is accustomed to thinking that this is a huge problem. Depends how you define the problem. If you define the problem as drug use it’s big. But I don’t define it that way. I define it as problem drug use  —   people who can’t handle it, people who become dependent. And we’re talking about maybe 4 million people in a country of 319 million people. I am not being flip about this, this is not something to ignore, this is something to manage better than we do precisely because it’s so serious. Do you think we are headed toward more attempts at partial legalization?  . .. Marijuana is a pretty dangerous drug. A person can do himself a lot of harm with marijuana and I think we need to acknowledge that. Legalizing drugs though, you say in your magazine piece that it’s a terrible risk. Of course. As a very smart guy in the piece says, look at our alcohol distribution system. We would not call it a total failure because we have some drunk drivers and because some teenagers get ahold of alcohol. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly better than prohibition  —   none of us wants to go back to that. Problems are hard to solve, they are easier to ameliorate. We could do a better job of living with these dangerous substances if we changed the way we think about them."
"You’ll soon know whether many of the packaged foods you buy contain ingredients derived from genetically modified plants, such as soybeans and corn. Over the past week or so, big companies including General Mills, Mars and Kellogg have announced plans to label such products  —   even though they still don’t think it’s a good idea. The reason, in a word, is Vermont. The tiny state has boxed big food companies into a corner. Two years ago, the state passed legislation requiring mandatory labeling. The Grocery Manufacturers Association has fought back against the law, both in court and in Congress, but so far it’s been unsuccessful. Last week, as we reported, Congress failed to pass an   measure that would have created a voluntary national standard for labeling  —   and also would have preempted Vermont’s law. Which means for now, food industry giants still face a July 1 deadline to comply with the state’s labeling mandate. And since food companies can’t create different packaging just for Vermont, it appears that the tiniest of states has created a labeling standard that will go into effect nationwide. This statement, from General Mills’ Jeff Harmening, sums it up: ”Vermont state law requires us to start labeling certain grocery store food packages that contain GMO ingredients or face significant fines,” Harmening wrote on the General Mills blogs. ”We can’t label our products for only one state without significantly driving up costs for our consumers and we simply will not do that,” explains Harmening. So, as a result: ”Consumers all over the U. S. will soon begin seeing words legislated by the state of Vermont on the labels of many of their favorite General Mills products,” he concludes. Chocolate giant Mars struck a similar tone in its announcement: ”To comply with [the Vermont] law, Mars is introducing clear,   labeling on our products that contain GM ingredients nationwide,” the company statement says. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration does not require such labels because   as this guidance document explains   the agency has determined that the nutritional quality and safety of GMO ingredients, such as corn starch or soybean oil, are no different from the same ingredients derived from conventional crops. According to Mars, ”we firmly believe GM ingredients are safe.” But consumer expectations are changing. ”We aim to deliver products that match the different tastes, preferences and perceptions of consumers,” the Mars statement says. According to a 2015 poll,   of Americans support labeling of foods that contain genetically modified ingredients. ”Consumers are pushing for more transparency,” food industry analyst Jack Russo told us. Earlier this year, the Campbell Soup Co. acknowledged this when it became the first major food company to switch its position and come out in support of mandatory GMO labels. The food industry overall is still hoping that the federal government will step in. ”We continue to strongly urge Congress to pass a uniform, federal solution for the labeling of GMOs to avoid a confusing patchwork of    rules,” wrote Paul Norman, president of Kellogg North America in an emailed statement. But it’s clear that companies can no longer wait for this federal action. ”The horse [is] out the barn,” says attorney David Wallace, of the firm Herbert Smith Freehills, who specializes in food issues. Companies are already preparing new labels to begin hitting store shelves in a few weeks. ”Companies had no choice. . .. They’ve been making plans for this. They had to,” explains Wallace. As a result, both sides in the debate over GMO labeling now will learn the answer to a question that many have posed over the past 20 years: How will consumers react to a label that says ”produced with genetic engineering?” Food companies have argued that such a label will scare consumers away, because they’ll see it  —   incorrectly  —   as a warning. If it has that effect, companies will react by removing genetically modified ingredients from their products. In fact, food companies see the labeling campaign as a veiled attempt to drive genetically engineered crops out of agriculture. Privately, however, many companies are hoping that consumers will disregard those labels and continue to buy the same products as always. Consumers who are motivated to avoid GMOs may be doing that already, by buying organic or   products. If that’s the case, those GMO labels will turn out to be just extra words on the package."
"John B. King Jr was recently confirmed by the Senate as the new U. S. Secretary of Education for the remainder of President Obama’s term, succeeding Arne Duncan. With a slew of pressing issues from   to college debt, I wanted to find out what King thinks he can get done in such a short window of time. Here’s our conversation. You’ve got just 10 months left in President Obama’s term to help close the equity and achievement gaps, promote access and opportunity, and implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. Good luck with that!  We definitely have an ambitious agenda for the next 10 months. But, you know, the president often tells us big things happen in the fourth quarter. I think that’s exactly right. So we expect to get a lot done over the next 10 months. Well what, specifically, are your top three priority goals in the next 10 months that you think are realistic and achievable? We’re very focused on implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. We’ve got to put in place regulations and guidance for states and districts as they work to implement the new law to try close achievement gaps and provide better opportunities for our students who are most at risk. We’re very focused on that work. We think there’s an opportunity to build on the work of the last seven years, to expand access to   preschool. The president has a number of budget proposals focused on that. We’re doing a lot of work around lifting up teaching and quality teaching. We’ve got an initiative called Teach to Lead where we bring together teacher leaders from around the country and try and highlight their good work and support their projects to improve outcomes in their schools and districts. The president has proposed significant advancements in teacher preparation, professional development and career ladders, which we want to work together with Congress to implement. On the higher education side, we continue to work to try to expand access. This year the FAFSA  the Federal form that needs to be completed for financial aid, will be available earlier, Oct. 1. And we’ll also allow students to use their family’s   year’s tax returns, which should make the process much more efficient for students. And the president has a number of proposals focused on accelerating efforts to improve college completion, so students don’t just start but finish. Again, an ambitious agenda for the next 10 months, but we’re hopeful that we can get a lot done together with Congress on these issues. That’s a lot. That’s more than three. How much, realistically, will you be able to get done especially with implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act? With Every Student Succeeds Act, we will be laying a foundation for the work that states and districts will do really over the next few years so we’ll put in place essentially guard rails for the new flexibility that is available to states and districts, trying to make sure that their implementation honors the Civil Rights legacy of the law. You know the Every Student Succeeds Act is a   of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. It was adopted as a Civil Rights law. And so our frame for state and district implementation will be that they need to use the new flexibility to improve equity and close achievement gaps. In New York State, as education commissioner you took a lot of heat. You saw firsthand the frustration of some teachers and parents with the implementation of Common Core and new teacher evaluations. What lessons do you bring from those battles in New York into the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act? Well, you know, I think we’ve seen across the country, as folks have worked to implement higher standards and new systems for support for teachers and principals, the importance of stakeholder engagement. And we certainly are very committed to that in the implementation the Every Student Succeeds Act. We’ve done already a couple of public hearings. We’ve gathered public comment from nearly a thousand individuals and organizations. And we also know that we’ve got to be willing to make adjustments along the way based on feedback. That’s certainly something we tried to do in New York. ESSA certainly devolves more power to the states. But critics say, among other things, that it doesn’t do enough to   testing. Do you think we’re still testing students too much in the United States? The president announced a testing action plan in the fall and the key themes were, A: We need good information each year for parents and teachers about how students are progressing and that’s important to make sure that we’re addressing student’s needs and closing achievement gaps. But, B: That we’ve got to acknowledge in some places around the country, there is too much testing. And there are areas where districts and states have adopted additional assessments beyond those required at the federal level to such an extent that those assessments are crowding out good instructional time. And that’s a problem. We’ve put out guidance to states and districts on how they can use existing federal resources to audit their assessments, eliminate ones that are redundant or unnecessary and also improve their assessments so that where they’re giving, you know,   bubble tests, they can replace those with more   assessments like essays and science experiments and research projects and social science. Right. But overall some folks are arguing we’re still relying too much on standardized tests as the main evaluation metric. And I’m wondering your thoughts as Secretary whether you think we are still relying too much on testing? One of the opportunities that the Every Student Succeeds Act creates is a path to a   discussion in each of the states on the role of state tests and their accountability system. We do worry that under No Child Left Behind, the focus on English and math assessments alone sometimes resulted in schools   science and social studies, and art and music. That’s a problem. And the Every Student Succeeds Act tries to address that by saying to states, bring together stakeholders and figure out how you develop a vision of educational excellence that is genuinely  . Of course, literacy skills, math skills are necessary for success, but they’re not sufficient for college and career readiness and there’s an opportunity for each state to bring together their stakeholders around that conversation. Speaking of college readiness: My Bother’s Keeper  —   the president’s initiative to help level the education and life playing field for young men of color. How will you be involved in that in the final months of the Obama administration? You know, in my role as deputy I was leading the   work on My Brother’s Keeper. We’ve got a number of projects underway that we’re excited about. One is focused on identifying mentors to work with students who have been chronically absent to make sure that they are in school. We know that students who are chronically absent are more likely to be retained, more likely to end up dropping out and getting in trouble. And we’ve seen very good evidence around the country that strong mentoring programs focus on making sure that kids are in school every day, learning, can make a big difference. So we’ve got that initiative underway as well as a national campaign to reduce chronic absenteeism. We expect to announce in the next few months more than a hundred higher ed institutions that will be able to partner with prisons to ensure that folks who are incarcerated have the opportunity to take advantage of higher education through Pell Grants so that folks can leave prison with new skills and the possibility of succeeding and returning productively to the community. We’ve got work that we’re doing with schools to rethink discipline, to try to reduce the number of students who are subject to exclusionary discipline through programs like Restorative Justice that keep kids engaged and positive and safe. College debt has, finally, become an issue in the presidential race. And Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, has pressed you about how you plan to use your office and power to help protect student loan borrowers from what she called ”fraudulent colleges” and ”shady institutions.” What’s your answer to her and concerned student borrowers out there? It’s a top priority for me as we move forward. We just launched a new enforcement unit at the department led by an enforcement lawyer from the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] who is going to work aggressively to make sure that we are taking action where higher ed institutions are deceiving or   students. [ Secretary King announced findings of fraud against 91 separate campuses of the   Corinthian Colleges at a press event in Boston yesterday] We are working to expand participation in   repayment programs, which allows student borrowers to cap their payments on their federal loans at 10 percent of their income. We’ve seen tremendous growth in that program and think that’s a good path forward for many borrowers. We’re working to improve the quality of servicing that students receive from our loan servicers and making sure that students are getting good advice about how to manage their debt. Then, we continue to work to try to ensure that we lower the cost of education. The president has a proposal called America’s College Promise that would guarantee two years of   community college for hardworking students. We are hopeful that Congress will act on that. That we think will create a new path to higher education opportunity for many Americans. Are you enjoying your new job?  I am. It’s an amazing opportunity. You know, growing up as a kid in Brooklyn I never would have imagined a path that would lead me to have the honor and privilege to serve this president and to serve the country in this role. So I’m enjoying it. Also as a high school social studies teacher, it’s amazing to be a part of government at this level and to have the chance to try and do for other kids what New York City public school teachers did for me. They saved my life. They’re the reason I’m alive today. They’re the reason I’m doing this work, the reason I became a teacher and principal and I just want to make sure the kinds of great opportunities I had in New York City public schools are available to all kids."
"The   public and legal dispute between the government and Apple is officially over after the FBI managed to unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists without Apple’s help. The Justice Department says it has successfully retrieved the data from the phone and is asking the court to vacate its order for Apple’s assistance. ”Our decision to conclude the litigation was based solely on the fact that, with the recent assistance of a third party, we are now able to unlock that iPhone without compromising any information on the phone,” U. S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker said in a statement, adding that the investigation will continue to ensure that all of the evidence related to this terrorist attack is collected. The government is not saying exactly what data were found on the phone. DOJ spokeswoman Melanie Newman says the FBI is currently reviewing the information on the phone, consistent with standard investigatory procedures. This means it took FBI experts about a week to test the   tool that allowed them to crack the iPhone pass code. For weeks, the FBI had said only Apple could help investigators lift the iPhone security features that stood in the way of its guessing the pass code. But last week, the government said a third party showed the FBI a new method that didn’t require Apple’s help. Apple released a statement saying the government should never have tried to force the company to cooperate: ”From the beginning, we objected to the FBI’s demand that Apple build a backdoor into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent. As a result of the government’s dismissal, neither of these occurred. This case should never have been brought. ”We will continue to help law enforcement with their investigations, as we have done all along, and we will continue to increase the security of our products as the threats and attacks on our data become more frequent and more sophisticated.” The end of this legal standoff also means that no legal precedent gets set for the scope of government’s power to compel an unwilling company to cooperate in an investigation, for instance by writing special new software as in Apple’s case. ”It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties or through the court system when cooperation fails,” DOJ’s Newman said. ”We will continue to pursue all available options for this mission, including seeking the cooperation of manufacturers and relying upon the creativity of both the public and private sectors.” As we have reported before, the government may have unlocked the password on the phone by tinkering with the hardware  —   given that the investigators have the physical phone  —   or by exploiting an obscure flaw in the iPhone software. A discovery of a software vulnerability would be a major reason for the FBI to keep the tool secret and reuse it in other investigations involving older versions of iPhones, like the iPhone 5C at stake here. Apple’s lawyers have previously said they would push for the government to disclose the   tool."
"On a dry January morning, I set out to find the man who may well be Cambodia’s last living elephant catcher. Elephant catching is a tradition in parts of the country  —   or perhaps a legend. They say that years ago, men would venture out to lasso a baby elephant and bring the animal back to the village, to live with them and carry their heavy loads. I heard stories about elephant catchers while working as a reporter in Cambodia, covering illegal logging. Naturally, I was curious. And then I heard that there might be one elephant catcher still alive: a man named Pok Phan, tucked into the far southern corner of the province of Mondulkiri, about 25 miles from the Vietnamese border. I asked villagers in the area if they knew of him. ”The elephant catchers are dead in this village. In all villages near the capital,” said Mahaich Hong. Hong, 38, is a resident of Putang village. He’s of the Bunong ethnic group  —   one of the indigenous peoples of northeastern Cambodia, known for catching elephants. His family has three elephants, which they inherited from his grandparents, who bought them from an elephant catcher in their village decades ago. Tourists pay to ride the animals to the waterfall near his home. ”If any elephant catchers are left alive,” Hong told me, ”they live in the far north districts, near the forest.” It took me a week and a half to find Pok Phan. I rode my motorbike from village to village in Mondulkiri province, asking first after living elephant catchers, and then, as the week wore on, about the man named Pok Phan, who lived in a village called Nyuich. I crashed my motorbike twice on the way there, skidding on ruts from rains months ago. I arrived just on the verge of giving up. In front of Nyuich, two men stood smoking in front of a   grass fire, gesturing expansively at the village’s fallow rice. ”I don’t know a Pok Phan,” drawled one, leaning on his morotcycle handlebars. ”I’m looking for the elephant catcher, older brother,” I said. ”There really isn’t anyone named Pok Phan around here, sister,” he told me. ”Maybe you should keep going.” ”But,” he said reflectively, as I pulled away, ”There is a guy named Pok Phaen around here. And he still has an elephant.” These days,    Pok Phan nets fish and farms rice, in a village smoky from nearby forest fires in Mondulkiri province. He lives in a den of rabbit poachers and rice farmers,   Khmer settlers who each drink more than a gallon of rice whiskey a night  —   or so they say. He and I sat eating mealy tangerines as dusk faded to night. He told me of his elephant, whom he caught in 1995. Her name is Srey Ian, which means ”shy woman.” The hardest part about catching her, he says, was dealing with all the superstitions. You could not pound dry rice into ambok, animal feed, because the motion of a pestle smashing rice is the same motion as an elephant’s foot would make if it trampled a man  —   and that man could be you. You could not wash your clothes when you were in the forest lest the fabric wear thin and offer no protection if the elephant’s tusks tried to tear your chest open. And you could not fight or argue with anyone, least of all those who were to walk into the jungle with you. ”If we fought, so would the forest’s wild elephants,” Pok Phan told me, motioning with his hands to indicate the clash of tusks. ”We would die in the forest.” Twenty men would ride into the forest to catch an elephant  —   brothers and uncles from all over a village. The morning of departure, they would sacrifice. ”A young chicken or a pig,” says Pok Phan. ”A peang [jar] of wine. We would ask the forest spirits, Neak Tha, for elephants. For safety and, too, for elephants.” The men reached deep forest on the backs of 10 of their village’s strongest elephants. A day brought them to the wild herds. In the 1980s, before the heavy ivory trade, there were more than 200 elephants in Mondulkiri’s northern forests. When they reached the herd of elephants, the men would shout. Those at the front would trumpet on the horns of water buffaloes. The wild elephants would start to run. The men and elephants followed, shouting. It would take hours before the wild elephants wore down. Some could run for miles in dense brush. Some ran a whole day. But at some point, perhaps at the base of a mountain or a particularly thick patch, the wild elephants would break ranks, and children would be separated from their parents. This was the crucial moment. Pok Phan and his team would swing out their lassos and rope the ankles of a baby elephant. The cord would be of braided water buffalo skin  —   too thick for the baby to break. Then came the hardest part. ”The mothers would return for their children,” says Pok Phan. ”Our elephants had to join together to fight them off.” Wild Asian elephants can weigh more than 1, 000 pounds and easily lift more than 200 pounds. But Pok Phan cannot remember anyone being hurt in the fights. ”I wasn’t afraid,” he says. ”I rode on the back of an elephant.” They took only one baby elephant in a trip. They lived with it for weeks in the forest, teaching it to walk with them, before bringing it to the village. When they returned, everyone would feast. ”It was pleased, the elephant, to come live among us,” says Pok Phan. In the years that Pok Phan caught elephants, it was a dying craft. No one is sure what ended it  —   whether it was the Khmer Rouge genocide or simply waves of settlers in Cambodia’s north: new people who wouldn’t sacrifice to the forest spirits and whose voices drove the elephants into farther reaches. ”In the 1980s we stopped seeing elephants,” says Mahaich Hong. ”Their prints disappeared. They retreated from us.” The last time anyone remembers the capture of an elephant is in 1996. Those who work with elephants say this is definitely for the best. Elephants have families, as we do. Biologists in southern Africa write of elephants burying their dead and returning to old graves to caress bones. Elephant families are intricate, matrilineal and hard to separate. When they are split apart, the result is trauma. The Cambodian Forestry Administration says there are fewer than 20 wild elephants left in Mondulkiri, all in a stretch of lonely woods near Nyuich. Not everyone has come to terms with the loss of the elephants. Pok Phan insists that there are more than 20 in the forests not so far from him. ”Thirty or 49, at least. They’ve just gone into the deeper forests. Far from people.” Pok Phan caught five elephants in his lifetime. He sold four but kept the second to last. Srey Ian lives out back of his brother’s house in Sok San, about 10 miles from Nyuich. She’s no longer a beast of burden. Gone are the days when elephants carried wood, loads of bananas, for villagers. The most Srey Ian carries is a jar of wine when Pok Phan goes to visit neighbors. Pok Phan cares for Shy Woman as if she is an old, hungry friend. He sits out behind his cousin’s house on long,   evenings. She eats like an elephant, he says  —   lots. He feeds her bananas and pineapples. She eats her bamboo shoots. He companionably drinks a cold beer. Romantic poets looked for God in the woods. Pok Phan and the Bunong people of Mondulkiri found something else in the forest: a companion, a presence that mellowed them. ”An elephant knows you,” Pok Phan tells me. ”You cannot drink or fight when you have an elephant. You can’t go to visit pretty girls. The elephant knows. It sleeps in the shade of your house day and night, and it cries.” As night fell in front of the gritty shack, Pok Phan told me one of the oldest Bunong legends. Elephants once were humans, he said. Then they poisoned a river, killing all the fish. An angry deity turned the people into pachyderms. The fate of the elephants, ever since, has been to live among us and carry our burdens. In Cambodia now, it isn’t rivers that are being poisoned, it’s forests  —   being logged and burned by Khmer and Vietnamese companies to sell the timber and plant rubber in its place. It’s a quiet loss  —   a discrete erasure of certain things from the map, a slow thinning of the forests that used to be deep enough for elephants. ”An elephant has the life of a person,” Pok Phan told me. ”It knows more than we do.” I wonder what the elephants would have to say about all this. Shy Woman, when I visited her, seemed content  —   though Pok Phan says her eyes water and burn some mornings from the smoke in the air. And these days, the wild elephants are too far away to ask."
"Today’s launch of the Oculus Rift is the first of three   virtual reality headsets hitting the market this year. The HTC Vive will be out next month and Sony PlayStation VR will be available in the fall. Since 2010, $4 billion has gone into virtual reality, according to market analyst firm PitchBook, and tens of millions of dollars are pouring into companies that make content for those headsets. Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried every experience I could get my hands on  —   most recently in Austin at the South by Southwest conference. The experiences were varied in quality and length. But, most felt more like experiments than full blown products. It seemed almost like the early days of film when the Lumiere brothers’   ”documentary” The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station was revolutionary. The 1896 film showed off new concepts like long and short shots. But is was merely a glimmer of what film would become. At SXSW there were several halls filled with people who had clunky VR headsets strapped on  —   laughing, smiling, and gasping to themselves at the novelty of the content. Virtual reality is kind of trippy  —   you put on these heavy goggles and suddenly your eyes are telling you that you’re in a different place filled with life sized   images. VR studios like Master of Shapes took advantage of this dreamy quality. ”We worked on Orange Sunshine VR. It’s the supplemental piece to a film that’s coming out this week about the first real group of hippies in Southern California,” says Glenn Snyder of Master of Shapes. Not surprisingly these hippies thought that LSD could bring about spiritual transformation. I sat down on some pillows in a screened off area and strapped on an HTC Vive. Before I knew it I thought I was sitting around a den in a   modern house with a group of people. Suddenly, the table at the center bursts into flames and melts in front of me and then turns into a campfire in the desert. It was indeed, very ”trippy” even though it only lasted three minutes. I had an opportunity to try a social experience that took place around a swimming pool. This one also used the Vive, which unlike the Oculus has hand paddles you can use that make it seem as if you’re moving your hands in the virtual world. Though it wasn’t connected, it showed how a friend could dial in to join me. Then, I could use my hand paddle to clink glasses of champagne together. Perhaps one of the more enjoyable experiences I had came from Presence Labs and it was geared to music lovers. It’s already available for people who own the much lower level Samsung Gear VR. The Gear works when you insert a Galaxy phone into the viewfinder. The experience is called GrooVR and Steve Shaw of Presence calls it ”  virtual reality.” It was a lovely. Shaw had it connected to Spotify and I listened to EDM as a series of   immersive images passed before my eyes. In one of them I was a small being floating around a world of large colorful flowers and green plants. In another I was floating across a placid lake as clouds changed colors and shapes. It reminded of what the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine cartoons would have been like if VR existed then. But Oculus and its owner Facebook are aiming for the game market with the initial launch. At other venues I tried demos of games like Adrift and Eve: Valkyrie. They were fun and immersive. But, I wasn’t sure that any of these experiences would be enough for me to drop $599 on the headset and another $900 or so for a computer powerful enough to use the Rift. Or alternatively $799 for the HTC Vive. That’s why Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, thinks Sony VR, which will sell at $399 will have the edge initially because it works with a PlayStation 4. ”You’re going to get a lot of people popping for $399. 00 who already have a PlayStation 4,” says Pachter ”And that number is about 40 million right now and will be 60 million a year from now.” But, in the long run, Pachter thinks as the technology develops the Oculus could do very well. Facebook spent $2 billion buying the company and he believes it will support Oculus for as long as it takes to perfect the technology and bring down the price. And as the price goes down, the technology and the content are also likely to get better and more useful."
"The   consumer virtual reality headset, Oculus Rift, is finally hitting the market. The reviews have been mixed. As The Wall Street Journal put it, ”the first totally immersive home virtual reality rig is a pricey, awkward, isolating —  and occasionally brilliant —  glimpse of the future of computing.” But behind this poster child of   virtual reality products is a man,    Palmer Luckey, who invented the device while still in his teens and founded the company Oculus VR, which is now owned by Facebook. Luckey argues that virtual reality is a bigger turning point in technology than Apple II, Netscape or Google. VR, he says, is the final major computing platform that’s not a transitional step to the next big thing. ”If you have perfect virtual reality eventually, where you’re be able to simulate everything that a human can experience or imagine experiencing, it’s hard to imagine where you go from there,” Luckey tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. ”Once you have perfect virtual reality, what else are you supposed to perfect?” You can listen to the extended interview with Luckey at the audio link above. In it, Luckey muses about how VR may be better for the environment, why he recommends the novel Ready Player One despite its dystopian view of the VR future, how VR is facing similar pushback to the one faced by rock ’n’ roll and swing dancing in their time and what ethical questions are raised by the use of VR for journalism. Below are some of the highlights. On the boring future of virtual reality, A good story needs conflict, and virtual reality is a great hypothetical way to create conflict. . .. In some ways, the future is going to be more boring than we think. I don’t think that VR is going to lead to humanity being enslaved in the matrix or letting the world crumble around us. I think it’s going to end up being a great technology that brings closer people together, that allows for better communication, that reduces a lot of environmental waste that we’re currently doing in the real world. It’s probably not going to be nearly as interesting as depicted in science fiction as far as the bad things go. On   into the real world after being in a virtual one, If you’re having a very     experience in virtual reality and then all of a sudden you’re back in your office, that disconnect is pretty notable. Whereas if you’re using it for virtual reality teleconferencing . .. there’s really no kind of impact moving back and forth between the real and the virtual world. It’s a bit like that shock when you’re in a movie theater, and you’re just watching the movie and you’re in the dark and then you walk outside. It takes you a few minutes to really reconnect with reality. On how VR is an entirely new way to communicate, Things like email, and Twitter, and Facebook, and text messaging  —   they all work reasonably well. But we use them because they’re convenient, and cheap, and easy, not because they’re the best way to communicate with somebody. Today, the best way to communicate with someone is still   . Virtual reality has the potential to change that, to make it where VR communication is as good or better than    communications, because not only do you get all the same human cues as   communication, you basically suspend the laws of physics, you can do whatever you want, you can be wherever you want. Below you can listen to the shorter radio cut. Listen to the extended interview cut at the link above."
"Organic food has gone majorly mainstream, right?   has been driving down the price of organic with an   organic line. Whole Foods has begun experimenting with cheaper stores to catch up. And the increase in sales of organic food has dramatically outpaced that of conventional food. What’s more, 30 percent of shoppers report an interest in paying more for organic food  —   and a significant interest even in   neighborhoods. Given all that, it’s easy to assume that organic has become just as common in downmarket groceries as in upscale ones. But a recent study in the Journal of Food Products Marketing suggests that the growth of organics might not be so diversified. Researchers undertook a painstaking quantification of organic food sales across Manhattan. They visited 1, 256 stores, assessing whether each retail location sold organic, local or conventional versions of 24 foods that are among the most common to be sold organically. What they found surprised them: Stores selling more than a handful of organic products were overwhelmingly concentrated on the Upper East and Upper West sides  —  neighborhoods that are wealthy and highly educated. Sixty percent of the borough’s stores did not offer a single organic item on the list, and   offered 12 items or less. Only 5 percent of the stores offered at least half of the 24 items in organic versions. ”I was surprised at how few stores had a good offering of organic products,” says study   Carolyn Dimitri, a professor at New York University’s Food Studies Program. ”I thought organic food was everywhere . .. but when you take a look, [organic food] does seem to be concentrated in a few select neighborhoods, rather than the wide availability that was implied by the industry.” Indeed, only five organic items were found in 10 percent or more of stores: cheese, eggs, milk, packaged lettuce and yogurt. Organic milk, the most common item, was found in just 35 percent of stores. Some of the findings, such as a correlation between store size and number of organic items offered, may be somewhat specific to Manhattan, says Dimitri. Real estate pressures put shelf space at a premium in New York, limiting retailers’ interest in stocking products with lower turnover  —   as may be the case with organics. That would likely be less of an issue for the   stores common in suburban American, such as  . Still, the finding that organics are more common in affluent neighborhoods doesn’t mean   Americans don’t care about organics, says Alexis   political director for the Organic Consumers Association, who said it’s easy to confuse consumer interest with consumer budgets. ”Most people want to buy organic and will buy it whenever it’s available and they can afford it,” says  . But because organic foods aren’t just rare, but routinely command a significantly higher price than conventional  —   anywhere from 20 percent for lettuce to 173 percent for beef, according to recent CNBC coverage  —   fewer Americans buy organics than they otherwise would. ”It’s less about demand,” says   ”[and] more about how to make it more accessible and affordable.”"
"U. S. Capitol Police shot a man at the Capitol Visitor Center on Monday afternoon after he drew a weapon during a routine security screening, Chief of the U. S. Capitol Police Matthew Verderosa said at a news conference. Verderosa said the man pulled ”what appeared to be a weapon” and an officer shot him. A weapon was recovered at the scene. Capitol Police later identified the suspect as Larry R. Dawson, 66, of Tennessee and said he has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a police officer while armed. The statement adds, ”The defendant is currently in stable but critical condition and will be presented to the District of Columbia Superior Court upon his release from the hospital. The defendant’s vehicle has been secured and will be searched upon the granting of a search warrant.” Verderosa said the suspect is known to the Capitol Police from prior contact and there is ”no reason to believe this is anything more than a criminal act.” An female bystander also suffered injuries that appeared to be minor, Verderosa said. A lockdown at the Capitol Complex was lifted shortly after the suspect was apprehended. Early news reports said at least one officer had been wounded these reports were incorrect. Staffers, reporters and others had been told to ”shelter in place” and were not allowed to exit or enter any buildings. Congress is currently in recess. The Senate    Office said that the Capitol is open for official business. The White House was briefly put on lockdown, according to news reports. Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department tweeted that there ”is no active threat to the public.” The Associated Press reported that ”visitors were being turned away from the Capitol as emergency vehicles flooded the street and the plaza on the building’s eastern side. Police, some carrying long guns, cordoned off the streets immediately around the building, which were thick with tourists visiting for spring holidays and the Cherry Blossom Festival.” The Visitor Center is part of the U. S. Capitol Complex, a group of about a dozen buildings in Washington, according to its website. The center opened in 2008 and serves as an underground screening point for visitors to the U. S. Capitol. After years of discussion about a facility for visitors, construction on the center began after the 1998 killing of two U. S. Capitol Police officers at the ground floor entrance. This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops."
"Anthony Hamilton’s soul sound was refined in the churches of Charlotte, N. C. Watching the Grammy winner perform, you get the hunch that it’s harder for him to keep the soul inside than it is to actually unleash it. What he and his backup singers, The Hamiltones, do would be better classified as a musical purge, with a stage show that can double as couples therapy and church service. Their warm harmonies have the ability to shrink theaters and stadiums, so we knew this intimate setting was perfect for them. Following a spot at the final In Performance show of the Obama presidency, the singer, The Hamiltones and his band made their way over to our offices to give us a dose of what’s to come, as well as a heavy helping of what fans have grown to love about him. He opens the set with ”Amen”  —   the debut single from his introspective new album, What I’m Feelin’  —   and followed it with three songs that have defined his career. What I’m Feelin’ is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bobby Carter, Niki Walker Audio Engineers: Josh Rogosin, Neil Tevault Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame, Cameron Robert Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"How do you fix a problem if you don’t know its size? Many states  —   including some that have been hardest hit by the opioid crisis  —   don’t know how many of their youngest residents each year are born physically dependent on those drugs. They rely on estimates. Pennsylvania is one of those states. Ted Dallas, head of Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services, calls the information he’s working with ”reasonably good.” ”Data is never pristine when you’re dealing with 2. 7 million people,” he says. ”Do I think it gives you a good picture of the issues that are out there? Yes.” Between 2013 and 2014 in Pennsylvania, Dallas says, about 3, 700 of the babies on Medicaid, the government’s health insurance for the poor and disabled, were born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Statistics show that 31 died before their first birthday  —   and neonatal abstinence syndrome likely played a role in some of those deaths. Still, it’s not all the data Dallas would like to have. The statistics are two years old, he says, and only count babies who are covered by Medicaid. That’s just a slice of Pennsylvania’s nearly 13 million people. More comprehensive, statewide numbers would have to come from Pennsylvania’s Department of Health  —   and that agency isn’t keeping track. With more complete information, Dallas says, the state would be able to better deploy resources as it tries to solve a health problem that’s getting worse. With the right resources, there is an upside to this aspect of the opioid crisis: Babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome who get the right care usually do recover. But their care is expensive, and takes time. ”These babies are very ” says Dr. David Wolf, who works in the neonatal intensive care unit in PinnacleHealth’s Harrisburg Hospital. ”Our nurses are on the front lines. They have to deal with the    symptoms.” Cuddling or rocking the babies nearly nonstop is key to successful treatment, Wolf says, along with adjusting medication doses frequently in the first 48 hours of the child’s life, to start the process of weaning these newborns off opioids. Each infant’s stay in the hospital can stretch past two or three weeks, and can cost $10, 000 or much more. Then the babies need   visits. Pediatricians say that if the right agencies get   information, the babies are likely to get better care, and it’s more likely that hidden roots of the epidemic can be identified and addressed. To make good decisions, health officials need basic information: Which infants are affected? How many, where, and why? Pennsylvania might look to Tennessee’s tracking efforts. Tennessee reacted quickly when doctors started seeing a lot more cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome in 2012, recalls Dr. Michael Warren, a pediatrician and public health specialist with Tennessee’s Department of Health. ”We were hearing from hospitals across the state, that they were really, really full,” he says, ”and in some cases, bursting at the seams.” It’s now mandatory for doctors and hospitals to report cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome within 30 days, and Tennessee made it simple for them to do so. ”If you’ve ordered from Amazon or an online service and you’ve been able to do that, you can navigate this system with ease,” Warren says. ”And truly, at the end of it, you click ’submit’ and that case is reported to us at the Department of Health.” The data that started rolling in shattered a number of stereotypes. ”I think sometimes there’s a tendency to say these are just those moms who are using illicit drugs or buying those drugs on the street,” Warren says. ”But what the surveillance system has actually allowed us to see is that  —   in the majority of our cases  —   Mom is getting at least one substance that is prescribed to her by a health care provider.” As a result, the state alerted doctors to the issue, recommending they try to change their prescribing habits, and offer alternatives to opioids, especially to pregnant patients. The   shift in prescribing recommendations only came about because health officials had solid data they could share. When a public health crisis emerges,   data are especially important. Policymakers can use the information just as Tennessee did  —   to tailor solutions to the root causes. Otherwise solutions may miss the mark, or, if the data are old, come after the problem has festered and grown. According to a 2014 report by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, at least a handful of other states have taken steps to get better, systematic data on babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Ted Dallas acknowledges his state is missing out. ”If we had better data generally, my theory would be we could make better decisions,” he says. Just as I was wrapping up this story, the Pennsylvania Department of Health department called. Starting in July, officials there plan to start collecting data about all babies who are born dependent on opioids. The system to collect the information is still being developed, officials there say, but neonatal abstinence syndrome will be added to the Pennsylvania’s list of reportable diseases, meaning that every time doctors diagnose a baby with the condition, they’ll be required to notify the state. This story is the fourth of a   series Treating the Tiniest Opioid Patients, produced by NPR’s National and Science Desks, local member stations, and Kaiser Health News."
"Amanda Hensley started abusing prescription painkillers when she was just a teenager. For years, she managed to function and hold down jobs. She even quit opioids for a while when she was pregnant with her now    son. But she relapsed. Hensley says she preferred drugs like Percocet and morphine, but opted for heroin when she was short on cash. By the time she discovered she was pregnant last year, she couldn’t quit. ”It was just one thing after another, you know  —   I was sick with morning sickness or sick from using,” says Hensley, who is 25 and lives in Cleveland. ”Either I was puking from morning sickness or I was puking from being high. That’s kind of how I was able to hide it for a while.” Hensley says she was ashamed and hurt, and she wanted to stop using but didn’t know how. She had friends who would help her find drugs  —   even after they found out she was pregnant. Finding help to get clean and protect her child proved much more difficult. The number of people dependent on opioids is increasing, and that includes women of   age, like Hensley. Researchers estimate that a baby was born dependent on opioids every 25 minutes in 2012, the most recent year for which data are available. By the time Hensley was about six months pregnant, she was living on couches, estranged from her mother and her baby’s father, Tyrell Shepherd. Her son went to live with her mother. That’s when Hensley reached out for help. One moment, she dialed to get her fix. The next, she called hospitals and clinics. ”Nobody wants to touch a pregnant woman with an addiction issue,” she says. Shepherd wasn’t happy when he realized Hensley was taking opioids while pregnant. ”If you don’t care about yourself,” he says, ”have enough common decency to care about the baby you’re carrying. Be adult. Own up to what it is you’re doing and take care of business. Regardless of how bad you’re going to feel, there’s a baby that didn’t ask to be there.” After she was rejected by two hospitals and several clinics, Hensley let herself go into withdrawal and then went to the emergency department of MetroHealth System, Cleveland’s   hospital. Under the auspices of a   program, Hensley was prescribed Subutex  —   an   drug that has helped her recover. Her baby girl, Valencia, was born three months later. Mom and baby had their own room at the hospital, where nurses encouraged snuggling and breastfeeding. The nurses were also on hand to drop liquid morphine into Valencia’s mouth if needed. The baby, too, had to be slowly weaned off of opioids. Hensley cries as she remembers those early days: ”She wouldn’t latch on  —   we couldn’t get her to feed. I couldn’t get her to stop crying. She was very fussy, and I realized, I did that to her. I took her choice away. And that’s one thing I still need to work through, because I haven’t forgiven myself for that.” Hensley hasn’t used opioids in nine months, and Valencia is now about 6 months old. She has chubby baby cheeks and clear brown eyes as big as saucers. During a recent visit, Valencia kept cooing and smiling  —   especially when her mother was nearby. ”She started saying mama,” Hensley says. ”So now, at night when she wakes up, that’s what I hear: ’Mama, ma, ma, mama.’ ” It’s been a journey. Hensley says only within the past few months has she stopped having dreams about using opioids. Most physicians who specialize in addiction treatment agree that Hensley and her baby received the appropriate care. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, women who are pregnant should have medically assisted therapy that at least temporarily replaces the opioids they are using with drugs that are more stable, like methadone. Withdrawal should be discouraged during pregnancy if medically assisted therapy is available. Quitting opioids cold turkey is dangerous for the infant and could increase the risk of preterm labor or fetal death. Dr. Stephen Patrick, a neonatologist at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, says the medical community really needs to focus on providing access to medically assisted care for substance abuse. ”I think it’s time for us to reshape how we view addiction in the United States,” he says. ”It is a medical condition  —   it is not a moral failing.” Patrick has seen firsthand how difficult it is for women to find this medical help. At Vanderbilt and in other communities he has visited around the U. S. he says, he’s seen women travel for hours to receive treatments for   disorder. It’s particularly a problem in rural communities. Dr. Jennifer Bailit, at MetroHealth, directs the mother’s program that helped Hensley, and was Hensley’s obstetrician. It’s a tough problem to tackle, Bailit says. ”These are difficult patients. They are complicated and they have complex social needs,” Bailit says. ”Many practitioners are just not equipped to deal with the breadth and depth of the kind of issues that come with them.” In the past few years, MetroHealth has become a   place for pregnant women in Northeast Ohio, treating more and more patients. The hospital cared for a handful of pregnant women with opioid addiction in 2002. Last year, it saw 160 women, and many of them traveled some distance to reach the facility. In addition to the sort of opioid replacement therapy that Hensley received, the hospital has a whole package of services to support mothers before and after the baby is born. The hospital assigned Hensley a social worker, and set her up with intense outpatient therapy  —   three days a week for six months. Hensley still checks in with a doctor at the hospital once a month to get her medications. The support has helped the whole family recover. Valencia is hitting all her developmental milestones  —   like rolling over. And Shepherd has really taken to being a dad, regularly feeding the baby, changing diapers and creating silly noises to make her laugh. Hensley and Shepherd have picked out their wedding rings and have begun discussing where to have the ceremony. Hensley has also gone back to cosmetology school, and the couple is talking about when they can bring Hensley’s older son home. This story is third in our   series Treating the Tiniest Opioid Patients, produced by NPR’s National and Science desks, local member stations and Kaiser Health News."
"Turn on the radio in Belgium and you get news of the terrorist attacks in French and in Dutch. Belgium is divided into   Flanders and   Wallonia. There’s a   area, too. To make things more complicated, Brussels, the capital, is subdivided into 19 municipalities, each with its own government. And there are six local police forces. It all adds up to a decentralized system, a dismantled federal state. And in light of last week’s attacks, some have even gone so far as to suggest Belgium is a failed state. Longtime Belgian political observer and writer Geert van Istendael flatly rejects this. ”Libya is a failed state. Somalia is a failed state. It’s not comparable. Belgium is doing well. It’s making mistakes. And I’m one of the most vociferous critics of Belgium,” he says. As van Istandael puts it, ”there’s something rotten in the state of Belgium.” For starters, the lack of communication between the various secret services. A shrunken federal police force and impoverished justice system, casualties of decentralization. ”This, of course, is now causing problems to cope with, completely new challenges and problems and new dangers. The danger is there. We knew it,” he says. As for whom to blame, along with the federal failures, van Istandael includes local politicians around Brussels who ignored the rising tide of radicalism in their midst. ”They looked away. They didn’t want to face problems,” he says of the politicians. ”They looked away and some people said, ’Yes, there is a societal problem, of integration and now there’s a radicalization going on.’ They said, ’You’re a racist. ’” That’s all hindsight. For now, van Istandael is struck by something he didn’t expect: ”These attacks unified Belgians. It’s very surprising to me. We are the country of division. That’s our reputation in the world. But somehow  —   these guys who attacked us and killed foreigners and Belgians  —   these guys will not disunite us.” For the past week, in the heart of Brussels, people have left bouquets, cards and stuffed animals at a makeshift memorial in front of the city’s stock exchange. Christophe de Valensart, who is helping his daughter Thais, 7, light a votive candle, says he brought her here to show that people are capable of love. United against barbarism, as he puts it. People have draped the stock exchange with dozens of flags from all over the world. De Valensart picks his daughter up in his arms and reminds her of the first question she asked when she saw the memorial: why are there so many flags? He reminds his daughter, ”I told you that in our country, there are a lot of cultures. It’s  . And in our country, that’s what makes us rich.”"
"At the dilapidated morgue in the northern Brazilian city of Natal, Director Marcos Brandao walks over the   floor to where the corpses are kept. He points out the labels attached to the bright metal doors, counting out loud. It has not been a particularly bad night, yet there are nine shooting victims in cold storage. Most were shot with guns that were not legally owned, he says. Almost 60, 000 people were murdered in Brazil in 2014, most with guns. While some Latin American countries have higher per capita murder rates, in absolute numbers, Brazil is the deadliest place in the world outside Syria. Brazilians are far more likely to be shot to death than Americans, a more populous country where there are about 8, 000 to 9, 000 gun homicides each year. Still, a group of Brazilian congressmen wants to make guns easier to obtain, modeling their proposal on U. S. legislation. Right now, Brazil actually has tough gun laws. If you want to own a gun legally these are the requirements:  —   a fixed address,  —   proof of legitimate income,  —   no criminal record,  —   a mental health test,  —   proof you know how to handle a gun and shoot it,  —   evidence of why you need a gun. For example, a police report of an attack against you. Even if a prospective gun owner supplies all this information, the police can arbitrarily deny a request for a gun permit. But Congressman Edson Moreira wants to make it easier to get guns. He is part of what’s known as the ”bullets, beef and Bible” caucus in Brazil’s Congress, a group that is religiously conservative, supports the farming industry and favors greater access to guns. ”Brazil doesn’t have a gun problem. It has a problem of illegal guns in the hands of criminals, especially drug traffickers,” he says. His group is trying to relax the ability of the police to decide who gets a weapon. ”The idea is to return to the public the right to own a gun or not,” he says. His argument is one familiar to Americans: If the ”bad guys” have guns, the ”good guys” should be allowed to have them as well to protect themselves. Indeed, Moreira says he is inspired by America’s gun laws. ”The U. S. A. has the perfect legislation in the Second Amendment, which guarantees the population the right to bear arms,” he says. The U. S. National Rifle Association has been involved in past gun control debates here and it’s clear many of the arguments used in Brazil are similar to those used by the American gun lobby. Fabrício Rebelo, with the Research Center on Law and Security, which wants to ease gun laws, denies that Brazil is modeling itself on the U. S. ”The proposed change in the law here would still mean Brazil would have very strict gun control laws unlike the more relaxed [gun] market in North America,” he says. Still, gun control advocates say the basic argument of gun rights groups here is flawed because the people who are arguing for greater access to guns don’t account for most of the victims. Fabio Ataide, a judge in Natal who teaches criminology, says guns overwhelmingly kill young black men in Brazil. ”We are seeing a massacre of our young population. We don’t call it that because it doesn’t happen as it does in a war where you see all the bodies piled up at once,” Ataide says. ”It’s a massacre by drops. One day one young person, tomorrow another. It’s almost the mass extermination of a population,” he adds. ”White Brazil is seeing fewer homicides. Violence is going down there. But black Brazil is seeing an explosion of violence.” Ivan Marques, the director of Sou da Paz Institute, which focuses on disarming the population, agrees. ”We are not talking about violence that is committed in the rich neighborhoods in the rich part of town,” Marques says. ”We are talking about crime that is organized crime, almost always related to drug trafficking.” He says more guns will simply mean more black deaths. But instead of trying to address that problem, legislators are intent on further arming the population. He says the solution is better policing and better governance in poor communities. What both sides agree on is that something needs to be done. A new study shows that 10 percent of all the murders worldwide now happen in Brazil."
"The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina and several other plaintiffs have filed a federal lawsuit over a North Carolina law they say discriminates against the state’s LGBT community. The law, passed last week in a special session by the state’s Legislature and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory, blocks ”local governments from passing   rules to grant protections to gay and transgender people,” as we reported. The law was signed a month after the city of Charlotte ”passed a measure protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from being discriminated against by businesses,” as we reported Thursday. Perhaps the most widely discussed aspect of the new law is its impact on bathrooms. The legislation states that   bathrooms and changing facilities can be used only by individuals who have that sex on their birth certificates. The governor said in a statement that this prevents a ”breach of basic privacy and etiquette.” Trans people say it is psychologically harmful and places them at physical risk. The Obama administration also condemned the law. ”Like so many others across the country, we are concerned about the potential harmful impact of this law, especially on transgender youth, and believe it is   and sends the wrong message,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement to BuzzFeed. Chris Brooks, legal director for the North Carolina ACLU, spelled out the group’s reasons for the lawsuit at a press conference Monday. ”We are asking the court to overturn House Bill 2 because it is unconstitutional, because it violates the Equal Protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, because it discriminates on the basis of sex and sexual orientation, and because it is an invasion of privacy for transgender men and transgender women,” Brooks told reporters. As WFAE’s Tom Bullock reports, the ACLU is also arguing the legislation violates Title IX: ”The U. S. Department of Education has determined that sexual identity and gender identity fall under the federal nondiscrimination law, specifically the provision that bans discrimination because of sex. Title IX requires all educational institutions which receive federal money to adhere to that and other nondiscrimination rules, and that is key to this particular case.” Therefore, Tom says, this law ”could endanger the $4. 5 billion North Carolina receives in Title IX federal funding,” though he adds that not all of that money goes to the UNC system. The ACLU of North Carolina is joined by the advocacy group Equality North Carolina as well as two transgender and one lesbian plaintiff who are party to the lawsuit. They’re suing McCrory, the state’s attorney general, the University of North Carolina and its board of governors. ”Like the two transgender plaintiffs in the case, transgender people around the state of North Carolina immediately suffered harm under H. B. 2 in that they are not able to access public restrooms and other   facilities that accord with their gender identity,” the ACLU lawsuit states. ”LGBT people are also harmed by H. B. 2 in that it strips them of or bars them from   protections under local law.” Here’s more from the court documents: ”The painful message of stigma sent by H. B. 2 echoes the dehumanizing rhetoric employed by a number of lawmakers, suggesting that transgender people are somehow predatory or dangerous to others. In fact, it is H. B. 2 that exposes transgender people to harassment and potential violence. ”Transgender people are already disproportionately targeted for physical violence and harassment in North Carolina and across the country. When a transgender person is forced to disclose their transgender status to strangers, such disclosure puts them at a high risk of violence.” Additionally, The Associated Press reported that ”many corporations and business leaders across the country have condemned the law.” Tom Bullock reports on All Things Considered that the attorney general of North Carolina says he will not defend the law as his office would normally do. Attorney General Roy Cooper said, ”House Bill 2 is unconstitutional. Therefore our office will not represent the defendants in this lawsuit nor future lawsuits.” Tom adds that the state will have to hire outside counsel to defend the law in court."
"Near the beginning of Only the Dead See the End of War, a documentary premiering Monday at 9 p. m. Eastern on HBO, journalist Michael Ware says one thing he feared as he arrived as a Time magazine correspondent in Baghdad in 2003 was his own lack of experience. ”I was still a junior reporter,” he says. ”I was convinced I had arrived late. I was terrified I’d make a fool of myself.” Ware was hardly a novice he’d already spent more than a year covering Afghanistan (I first met him in late 2001, as he came through Pakistan from his native Australia, on his way to Afghanistan for Time). But the horrors he encountered over the course of his seven years covering Iraq, first for Time and then for CNN, were far worse than what he might have imagined. While working for Time, Ware began shooting video with a small, handheld camera, documenting scenes from his reporting and daily life. It’s from these hundreds of hours of footage (stored over the years at his mother’s house back in Australia) that he’s made this exceptional, difficult and necessary   film.   by Bill Guttentag, an     and   documentary filmmaker, Only the Dead shows Iraq through Ware’s eyes  —   both at the side of U. S. troops and local insurgents, and in detail that can sometimes be agonizing to watch. We see Ware at first as   enthusiastic, excited  —   much as I remember him from 2001 and 2002. The Iraqi Time staff, shown in the film smiling and joking outside the magazine’s Baghdad house, was ”a brotherhood,” he says, like family. But the city quickly changed with the onset of suicide bombings in the summer of 2003, and by early 2004, the Time family was shattered when Omar Hashim Kamal, a beloved translator, was gunned down as he drove to work. Meanwhile, Ware  —   increasingly ”possessed,” he says, by the desire to know more about those perpetrating the violence  —   cultivated contacts who led him to insurgents, who in turn offered him access to their secret nighttime meetings, which he accepted, even when it meant he had to be transported in the trunk of a car. ”There was guilt,” he says, in witnessing them prepare an attack outside the Baghdad airport, the sound of him breathing in fear audible as he’s filming. And then there was revulsion, when a messenger appeared to deliver Ware a   propaganda video of a suicide bomber reading out his will, bidding his pals farewell and blowing up a U. S. target. The video’s sender was ”the prince of princes,” the messenger told him: Abu Musab   the   terrorist mastermind who orchestrated the 2004 beheading of U. S. hostage Nicholas Berg and whose   tactics earned a rebuke even from  . ”It was paralyzing to contemplate a man like that choosing me,” Ware says in the film. ”I felt he made me complicit somehow.” Ware embedded with the U. S. military as well, and much of the second half of Only the Dead focuses on American efforts against insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi. ”I could see good men here losing their grip, losing themselves,” Ware says. As for himself, with the passage of time and accumulated experience of violence, ”I no longer cared about dying.” In an unsparing, extended scene, Ware films soldiers during a U. S. sweep of a terrorist outpost, shouting at a dying Iraqi man to ”show us your hands.” They drag him a short distance, blood seeping from his head and body, search his trousers, lob obscenities and urge him to die. Reluctantly, they summon a medic. They realize the man is still breathing, but nothing is done. A towel is placed over the man’s face. They wait. ”Through his gasping,” Ware says, ”it was my silence I could hear.” Complicity again. Only the Dead is as much a reflection on the choices journalists make, and at what cost, as it is on the nature of war. We see Ware’s face grow haggard and haunted as the film progresses. ”I became a man I never thought I’d be,” he says. In making this film, he’s taken a brave look at himself as much as he has at the war that consumed him for so long. NPR’s Hannah Bloch reported for Time in Pakistan and Afghanistan from  ."
"Most people have a colleague or two who don’t seem to do much work at work. They’re in the break room watching March Madness, or they disappear for a   coffee break. For Allison Lamb, that person is her cubicle mate. Lamb is a statistical clerk for a company in Fishers, Ind. who says she likes her job and has a good work ethic. So it irritates her to see her cubicle mate ignoring her duties, disappearing with her friends and keeping her nose in her cellphone all day talking, texting and gaming. It seems to Lamb that her colleague flaunts her   attitude. ”Sometimes people walk by, and she’s just sitting there laid back, looking at her phone,” Lamb says. ”So I don’t think she’s trying too hard to look like she’s working.” She complained to her boss, and to her friends on Instagram and Twitter. But the behavior hasn’t changed, and the neglected work often falls to Lamb. ”I’ve proven that I can do a lot. So I feel like if I slacked off, it would be noticed,” she says. These kinds of scenarios occur throughout the animal kingdom, says Eisuke Hasegawa, a professor of agriculture at Hokkaido University in Japan. His research looked at laziness in ant colonies. At any given moment, he says, half of ants are basically doing nothing. They’re grooming, aimlessly walking around or just lying still. ”Even when observed over a long period of time, between 20 and 30 percent of ants don’t do anything that you could call work,” he says. You’d think colonies with lots of bums would not thrive. But Hasegawa’s study, published last month in Nature, shows that colonies with a significant percentage of   types are actually more resilient. They have a reserve workforce to replace dead or tired worker ants. ”In the short term, lazy ants are inefficient, but in the long term, they are not,” he says. Eventually, as the workload increases, lazy ants will respond to a stimulus to work. The same can be said for humans  —   that inefficiencies are like backup power or a spare factory line, Hasegawa says. That is, it’s a backup if lazy people, like ants, can be coaxed into working, and he acknowledges some people are just plain lazy. Pat Dolan, a retired teacher and artist in Bellefonte, Pa. says she learned a lesson about laziness decades ago, in high school, while working on the assembly line of a   company. ”For me it was boring,” she says, of gathering and sorting the pages, ”so I tried to make it a challenge: How many pages can I collect and how many books can I collect in an hour?” The zealous Dolan whizzed around, until the forelady asked her to watch and learn from her slower colleagues. ”I was 15, so I was pretty judgmental and thought, well, that lady’s really slow, she’s just a poke,” Dolan says. ”But, you know, she was really good at a different aspect of the job.” Dolan says she has adopted a slower pace. She says modern culture values more, faster  —   but that isn’t necessarily better. ”The point is deeper thought, and you have to slow down for that,” she says. The last place I expected to hear a defense of laziness was from David Allen. For decades, his book Getting Things Done has been a   productivity manual. Allen champions a system where people get their   lists out of their heads as a way of focusing and being efficient. ”The reason I discovered this is that I’m probably the laziest guy you’ve ever met,” he says. Allen says many people confuse frantic energy with effectiveness. He argues that some people are more effective on more sleep. ”I sleep as long as I can. I used to kind of make that a joke, but it’s actually the truth. And then I discovered that cognitive scientists are saying, ’That’s gonna make you smarter.’ ” How people behave, he says, has little to do with their productivity. The person slacking off at work might be a genuine slacker  —   or might be thinking through a complex problem. Sometimes being effective means getting perspective, he says: ”There’s no way to manage the forest when you’re hugging the trees that tight.”"
"When Pakistani Taliban gunmen stormed a school in December 2014, killing more than 130 schoolboys, it united many Pakistanis in support of a major offensive against the radical group that had been growing more menacing for years. That military operation, which was already underway, picked up momentum. Violence is down, and Taliban have been weakened in their strongholds in northwest Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. Yet Pakistan is still vulnerable, as demonstrated by a suicide bombing on Easter Sunday at a crowded park in the eastern city of Lahore, which killed more than 70 people and injured hundreds more. ”The target were Christians,” said Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Taliban faction    Reuters reported. ”We want to send this message to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that we have entered Lahore. He can do what he wants, but he won’t be able to stop us. Our suicide bombers will continue these attacks.” The claim was being taken seriously, though not as absolute proof in a country where multiple groups sometimes claim the same attack. Pakistan’s government did not immediately say who it thought was responsible. The country is riddled with fault lines. Sunni and Shiite Muslims resort to sectarian violence. The megacity of Karachi is a cauldron of rival political and ethnic factions. While Pakistan’s main battle pits the Taliban against the government, even here there are twists. The    faction broke away from the Taliban a couple of years ago, but   at least nominal links last year. All of these complications make it difficult to determine exactly what the latest attack means in terms of the larger battle. Christians Say They Receive Little Protection, Pakistan’s Christians are attacked periodically, though usually not with such ferocity. They account for around 2 million of Pakistan’s 190 million people and have no economic or political clout. They often complain that the government does little to protect them. Many Christian families were in Lahore’s    park on Sunday evening to celebrate Easter when the bomber struck. However, reports suggested the vast majority of the dead and wounded were Muslims, many of them women and children in a play area where kids were riding   . Joe Francis, a leader in Lahore’s Christian community, said it was not clear how many of the dead and injured were Christians. But he said when he learned of the attack, ”it immediately occurred to me that this was an attack on Christians. Anybody who sees these scenes has to get furious, no matter whether he is Hindu, Muslim or Christian.” NPR’s Philip Reeves visited the nearby Sheik Zayad Hospital and reported that many of those wounded were children, some as young as 2. ”There are 14 kids on this list who are being treated for injuries, and this is just one of the city’s hospitals, so it’s clear that children have been particularly hard hit in this attack,” he told Morning Edition.  The bombing was also seen as a message both to Sharif, the prime minister, and the military engaged in the operation against the Pakistani Taliban. ”Since   Pakistan’s armed forces have been carrying out a major and almost completely unreported war against Islamist militants,” Reeves reported. ”The focus of this is the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, although the security forces also carried out a big crackdown in the city of Karachi.” While there’s a broad consensus that the Taliban have been set back, and attacks have gone down, the group is still potent. And the cost of the military action has been high, measured both in casualties and in the destruction of many civilian areas, driving families from their homes. Lahore As A Target, A major attack in Lahore is also significant. Sharif is from Lahore, and it’s his political base. His younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif, is the chief minister of Punjab province, where Lahore is the capital. ”Those who targeted innocent citizens do not deserve to be called humans,” Shahbaz Sharif said on Twitter. ”We will hunt you down,” The eastern city is the most cultured and cosmopolitan in Pakistan and has been largely spared the violence of other cities. For many years, Lahore saw itself as largely immune from the religious and political passions playing out in the northwest or down south in Karachi. But Pakistani security officials and analysts have stressed that the Taliban and other extremist groups have been drawing recruits from Lahore and other parts of Punjab province, the country’s most populous region. Ahmed Jan, a university lecturer in Lahore, said the crackdown had improved the sense that Pakistan was gaining the upper hand against the militants. ”There was this feeling that perhaps suicide bombings would become a thing of the past, but I think it hit home last night that the war is very much an ongoing effort,” he said. ”Who knows whether we’re winning or losing this war.” Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"After a suicide bombing ripped through a crowded park on Easter evening in the city of Lahore, Pakistan has declared an official   mourning period. Meanwhile, authorities are trying to track down those responsible for the attack that killed at least 70 people. A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban,    has claimed responsibility for the attack. As we reported, a spokesman for the group said it was intended to target Christians. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited victims of the attack in Lahore and later met with senior government officials, The New York Times reported. ”Our resolve as a nation and as a government is getting stronger, and the cowardly enemy is trying for soft targets,” Sharif said during the meeting, according to the Times. ”Our goal is not only to eliminate terror infrastructure but also the extremist mindset, which is a threat to our way of life.” NPR’s Philip Reeves was on the scene in Lahore’s    Park on Monday. Here’s how he described it on Morning Edition: ”I’m looking at a    and behind that another    and lots of other fairground fixtures. Brightly colored, in yellows, reds and blues, which are here for families of the city to bring their kids to enjoy. And that’s evidently what people were doing yesterday afternoon when the bombers struck.” Philip spoke to    Sajid Ali, a professional cook, who witnessed the aftermath of the bombings. ”When I got near it, I could see a lot of injured people, and my friends and I started rescuing those injured. And after half an hour, police and rescue teams started arriving,” Ali said. He added that the blast ”was so big that the plumes of smoke were rising above these trees.” Gen. Asim Bajwa, a spokesman for Pakistan’s military, said Pakistani services carried out five operations in an effort to capture militants. In a Facebook post, Bajwa claimed that authorities have arrested ”terrorists and facilitators” and confiscated a ”huge cache of arms and ammunition.” He did not provide details or clarify their relationship to the Lahore attack. Since 2014, Philip says, the Pakistani military has been carrying out a major offensive against Islamist militants, which had meant a dip in militant attacks. ”There was this feeling that perhaps suicide bombings would become a thing of the past,” university lecturer Ammar Jan told Philip. ”But I think it’s hit us home last night that the war is very much an ongoing effort  —   and who knows whether we’re winning or losing this war.”"
"Nearly 80 years ago, about 2, 800 Americans volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The war began in July 1936, when Gen. Francisco Franco led a fascist military coup against the the country’s newly elected democratic government. It lasted until Franco’s victory in 1939. Journalist Adam Hochschild tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that ”it was by far the largest number of Americans before or since who’ve ever joined somebody else’s civil war.” Hochschild chronicles Americans’ involvement in the war in his new book, Spain in Our Hearts. He says that the majority of Americans in Spain (including writer Ernest Hemingway, who reported on the conflict) were sympathetic to the Republican forces who fought against Franco’s Nationalists. ”I think they were primarily people who were deeply alarmed by the menace of fascism,” Hochschild says. ”People at the time really saw fascism not just as evil but as an aggressive evil that seemed to be spreading. . .. By 1936, [Adolf] Hitler was already talking very loudly about his desire to expand to the east. [Italian dictator Benito] Mussolini, in 1935, . .. [invaded] Ethiopia, acquiring himself a colony.” But Hochschild points out that not all Americans opposed Franco’s regime. For instance, Torkild Rieber, CEO of Texaco, helped Franco by providing his military with a steady and guaranteed supply of oil. ”[Rieber] violated American law in a couple of ways,” Hochschild says. ”U. S. neutrality legislation was pretty strict and said that if you were selling anything to a country at war the oil couldn’t travel on American ships, but he shipped it on Texaco tankers.” Hitler and Mussolini also sent Franco military aid, which helped propel him to victory and also presaged future European conflict. ”I think in many ways it was the first battle of World War II,” Hochschild says. ”After all, where else in the world at this point did you have Americans in uniform who were being bombed by Nazi planes four years before the U. S. entered World War II?” On the conflict at the root of the Spanish Civil War  Up until 1931, Spain had had hundreds of years of almost uninterrupted monarchy, mixed with a period of military dictatorship at the end. Then in 1931, the king fled, statues toppled and the country essentially became a democracy holding national elections. In 1936, the election that year put in power a coalition of left and liberal parties which promised to do much more in the way of land reform [and] secularizing education  —   previously, education had all been in the hands of the Catholic Church. This coalition won the elections and this was too much for Francisco Franco and a large group of   army officers, who rose up in revolt in July of 1936. They wanted to restore the Spain of old, [a] Spain where the dominant institutions were the large estates in the countryside. No more of this nonsense of land reform there would be no trappings of democracy, no free trade union. The army would reign supreme. It would be a military dictatorship, and education would be handed back to the Catholic Church. . .. It was a pretty stark difference between what two kinds of Spain these two sides wanted. On why the Republicans lost the war, I think the Republicans lost the civil war because the other side was being heavily armed and supplied by Hitler and Mussolini. And the Republicans could not get any of the major democracies  —   the United States, Britain or France  —   to sell them arms because in all three of those countries there was a very strong feeling: We don’t want to get drawn into another European war. And smaller countries followed the lead of the big ones. So the [Republicans were] desperate to buy arms abroad . .. but they were not able to use this to buy American, French or British arms. I think that’s the real reason why they lost the war. On how Texaco’s Torkild Rieber supported Franco’s Nationalists, Before the war, Texaco had been the principle oil supplier to the government of Spain. The moment the war began, Rieber signaled that he would cut off oil supplies to the Spanish Republic, the democratic side, and would sell oil to Franco’s Nationalists. He not only did that, but he gave them the oil at a big discount, which as far as we can tell he never told Texaco shareholders or even his board of directors about. . .. U. S. law also said you could not sell things on credit to a country at war, and Rieber gave the Nationalists very, very generous terms of credit. He did something else as well. Texaco, being a major oil company, had offices, installations, agents, tank farms in ports all over the world, and he sent out orders to them saying, ”Send us, as soon as possible, any information you acquire about oil tankers heading for the Spanish Republic.” This information was passed on to the Nationalists to help submarine captains and bomber pilots look for targets.   oil tankers heading for the Spanish Republic were destroyed, damaged, or captured during the war, and in at least one or two cases, we can specifically tie it to information supplied by Texaco. So the United States might be neutral, but Texaco had gone to war. . .. Modern armies run on oil. It’s estimated that 60 percent of the oil going to both sides in Spain went to their respective militaries. Airplanes run on aviation gasoline tanks and trucks run on diesel fuel other kinds of transport run on plane gasoline. And without a steady and guaranteed supply of this, Franco’s army would’ve been stuck. So this supply of oil from Texaco was really crucial. . .. This oil was fueling German planes, flown by German pilots that were doing the bombing of Madrid, Barcelona, Guernica and other cities. On the shortcomings of Ernest Hemingway’s war reporting, I think his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is a fine novel. I think his wartime journalism is somewhat overrated. He was writing for the North American Newspaper Alliance, which was a consortium of 50 large newspapers, and he was such an enthusiast for the Republican cause in Spain that he was often predicting victory when in fact victory was not going to happen. He did like to get close to the action, close to the front. But I decided actually that the best journalist in Spain is somebody who is very little known  —   a woman named Virginia Cowles who [was] 26 years old when she arrived in Spain. [She had] never been to college, and if you read the book that she wrote about it afterwards, called Looking for Trouble, it’s still a fine read today, whereas most of the other memoirs of journalists who were there have a very musty feel. What makes her reporting so good, I think, is she’s one of the very few people who reported from both sides in the war. On what Spain was like under Franco’s rule, Education was given back to the Catholic Church, where it was separate education for boys and girls. Girls’ education was very heavy on religion and sewing, and the Nationalists believed that   was a communist plot of some sort. The laws regarding women were very strict. They couldn’t vote  —   actually, nobody could vote because there were simply no elections  —   but a husband had the right to kill his wife if he caught her in the act of committing adultery. A woman needed her husband’s permission to travel out of town, to open a bank account, to do various things like that. It was very, very retrograde. There were also all sorts of rules about modesty and dress, no pants for women, and so on. The regime that Franco established favored these large land owners who had been his basic backers from the beginning. And he had tens of thousands of Republican prisoners and he put many of them to work building irrigation canals that would benefit the large land owners, and giant memorials to the Nationalist dead of the war. It was a pretty grim police state for 36 years. Torture was routine, right up to the very end."
"As the   reported on Sunday, the Syrian government says its forces have retaken the desert city of Palmyra, in the center of Syria. The   Islamic State seized the city in May of last year  —   and soon unleashed a wave of destruction on its defenders, inhabitants and archaeological treasures. Captured Syrian army soldiers were reported to have been slaughtered in the city’s ancient Roman amphitheater, and hundreds more government officials, medical personnel and women and children from tribal groups despised by ISIS were killed in the streets and on the outskirts of the city. Much of the world’s attention, though, was focused on the destruction of Palymra’s ancient ruins, and the beheading of Khaled   the elderly head of Palmyra’s antiquities, who The Guardian reported was killed after he refused to reveal the location of artifacts he and his staff had hidden. The city of Palmyra is a World Heritage site, and as UNESCO notes on its website, has been inhabited for more than three millennia. ”Palmyra was an established caravan oasis when it came under Roman control in the   century AD as part of the Roman province of Syria. It grew steadily in importance as a city on the trade route linking Persia, India and China with the Roman Empire, marking the crossroads of several civilisations in the ancient world. ”A grand, colonnaded street of 1100 metres’ length forms the monumental axis of the city, which together with secondary colonnaded cross streets links the major public monuments including the Temple of Ba’al, Diocletian’s Camp, the Agora, Theatre, other temples and urban quarters. ”Architectural ornament including unique examples of funerary sculpture unites the forms of   art with indigenous elements and Persian influences in a strongly original style. Outside the city’s walls are remains of a Roman aqueduct and immense necropolises.” In June 2015, ISIS began destroying the ancient tombs at Palmyra, which as the CBC reported, were some of the best preserved examples of early Islamic mausoleums. The militants also filled the Temple of Baalshamin with explosives and, as Deutche Welle reported at the time, blew up most of the inner area of the building. This is the majestic Temple of Bel, once the center of religious life in ancient Palmyra, as it looked before ISIS had taken over the city. In August 2015, ISIS destroyed the Temple of Bel  —   and this is what it looked like after Syrian troops recaptured the area on Sunday. But although there has been massive damage to Palmyra’s historic sites, some of which can never be rebuilt, some of the major structures remain, including the theater where the Syrian army soldiers were said to have been killed. In an   in the Guardian on Saturday, the man in charge of Syria’s antiquities and museums called for ”international solidarity” in a campaign to restore Palmyra: ”Syria’s heritage is part of humanity’s heritage. It cannot be divided among those who support the government and those who support the opposition,” wrote Dr. Maamoun Abdelkarim. He added, ”We are optimistic that we can restore this ancient city, a prospect that fills us with happiness and joy, despite the war we are still living through.” And what of the people of Palmyra? Those who had not fled before the arrival of ISIS, and who were not executed by the militant group while it was in occupation, are reported by NPR’s Alison Meuse to have fled to the cities of Raqqa or Deir Ezzor, which are both under near constant air attack."
"When it comes to babies, people don’t always think clearly. I don’t mean that they erupt into baby talk and make funny faces, though that can happen, too. It’s more that babies elicit a strong set of cultural assumptions and values that can influence our thinking, for better and for worse. Take an example from last week, when Peretz Partensky, a San   entrepreneur, wrote about the experiences of his   Na’ama Moran, fundraising in Silicon Valley while pregnant. The article sparked a heated discussion at Hacker News. Some comments were supportive, but many were skeptical that the demands of a   are compatible with those of a baby: ”I have no problem with that person being a male or female. But I can’t imagine any person (mom or dad) being able to put 15 hours a day to a company with the baby after the baby is born. That’s the first thing the article should deal with.” ”If your ’startup’ is still a priority (but not above your child) you aren’t going to be in the office from sun up to sun down. Period.” Motivating many of the comments were strong beliefs about how children ought to be raised, and the role that mothers ought to play in doing so: ”Would I invest in a startup with the founder about to have a baby? No. Either they will be dedicating a big part of their life in the near future to raising that baby correctly, or they will be ignoring that baby and leaving someone else to raise it. I find the second outcome even worse than the first, but I’m not going to invest in either.” ”I think women make better caretakers. A father can stay home and be the caretaker, but I think a mother will have a more positive nurturing influence on the child’s life if she is there as much as she can be.” A New York Times article about a pregnant CEO, published in February, prompted similar responses: ”Good article, and confirms *everything* we know about pregnancy and mothers: when the child comes, it is priority number one. If those investors had put money into this pregnant woman’s startup, they would have lost millions and millions of dollars. The stereotype is absolutely correct political correctness be damned.” Now let’s swap the baby. Suppose that instead of discussing a CEO’s pregnancy and its potential impact on a   these discussions had been about a different large (but  ) commitment: another  . In fact, the following question was posed on Hacker News, the very same discussion forum that considered Partensky’s article: ”Should an entrepreneur build multiple startups simultaneously?” The responses were thoughtful. They acknowledged the challenges involved, and some responded in the negative, but many also discussed strategies to handle the balancing act while increasing the odds of success. Stripped of assumptions about pregnancy, mothers and babies, the discussion was both more civilized and more constructive. It’s examples like these that lead me to propose the ”  ” test. When faced with a question about pregnancy, mothers or babies, swap the baby for an appropriate alternative. In this case, the concern is about dedication to a   so swap the baby for another   commitment: a second  . Is a second   just like a baby? Of course not. There are physical demands associated with pregnancy, birth and lactation that don’t have clear analogues, and having a child is a transformative experience in a way that having a second   is typically not. Moreover, there may be personal and social values that should influence the way someone handles the demands of a   and a baby, versus those of two distinct  . The    test isn’t intended to replace one question with another, but rather to help expose the assumptions and values creeping into assessments of the question you really want to answer. Some of those assumptions and values may belong there, but they shouldn’t go unexamined. Consider other examples. Do babies belong in movie theaters, in classrooms or at conferences? Here, a primary concern is disruption to others. Alternative sources of disruption include a bright or noisy smartphone, typing on a laptop, a bad cough, or a strong perfume. Sometimes we regulate these, but more often we let people use their judgment. Similarly, parents know their own babies and the conditions under which they’re likely to be disruptive. Swap the baby for a smartphone with a somewhat unreliable ”silent” mode and see if your perspective shifts. Swapping the baby doesn’t always result in a more accommodating attitude towards parents and babies. If an employee asks to leave work early, a boss might be more accommodating if the request is made to pick up a baby than to make it to an exercise class or to choir practice. Yet, swapping the baby still helps us recognize the values that inform our decisions. Maybe caregiving is a social good that deserves a special status, distinct from other discretionary uses for time. Or maybe we should be more accommodating of alternative,   pursuits. This is a conversation worth having. The    test isn’t a panacea for pregnancy or   prejudice. But the human mind is a messy thing, and our judgments can be influenced by all sorts of implicit assumptions and biases. The    test is one more tool to help us recognize when those influences occur, and to change our behavior accordingly. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"Today, more than 11 million families spend over half of their incomes on rent, and for the poor, it can be as much as 80 percent. That means millions of Americans face the threat of eviction, or they live in substandard housing because it’s all they can afford. NPR’s Pam Fessler has been spending time at the rent court in Washington, D. C. where the struggle between   renters and landlords over affordable housing often comes to a head. In some places, it’s called rent court or housing court. Others, eviction court. In Washington, D. C. it’s known as the Landlord and Tenant Branch. This is where landlords in the city sue tenants, usually because they failed to pay the rent. Each weekday morning, dozens of people can be seen filing into the   courthouse where their cases will be heard. And maybe their fates decided. Everyone passes through a metal detector. Women with small children. Elderly tenants with walkers and canes. Several of those who gather in the hallway wear work uniforms. They’re nurse’s aides, security guards, grocery store clerks. The tenants are among the city’s poorest residents. And while this city’s population is less than half   according to U. S. census data from 2014, almost every single tenant here  —   day after day after day  —   is black. The white people are usually attorneys. In the   courtroom the loud wooden pews squeak loudly during roll call of the day’s cases, which can run into the hundreds. This court had 32, 000 cases last year alone. In an effort to help lighten the caseload, the judges encourage tenants and landlords to try to work out a settlement before they’re called into the courtroom. And many of them do, often with the help of a   mediator. ’Could Be’ Homeless, ”My name is Lisa Brown. I live in Southeast Washington, D. C. in Atlantic Terrace. I’m currently $6, 000 plus in arrears, of back owed rent.” Outside the court, Brown says she calls herself the new face of the ”could be” homeless. She has just signed a deal with her landlord. If she doesn’t come up with the money she owes in a couple of weeks, the landlord can evict her from the apartment she shares with her three children and a grandchild. Brown works at a hotel, but she says it isn’t enough. ”I am considered what they call full time, but I’m guaranteed only 32 hours a week,” she says. For now Brown is counting on her tax refund to avoid eviction. ”But again, my train could be derailed at any given time,” she says. ”I have an electric bill that’s due right now.” And there’s next month’s rent too. Another $1, 200. Her story is typical in housing courts across the country  —   where tenants tend to be   women with children, working at   jobs. Very few get any government housing aid. The irony is that Brown, like many of the tenants here, had to miss work  —   and a day’s pay  —   to come to court. Her landlord did not. About 90 percent of landlords have attorneys representing them. Most of the tenants don’t. ”Tenants often don’t know what their rights are. They enter into agreements that settle the cases that are very unfavorable to them,” says Rebecca Lindhurst, from Bread for the City, one of several groups that provide pro bono legal aid to tenants. But Lindhurst says they can handle only a small number of cases, which is unfortunate for all the others. ”For instance, lots of tenants are sued for nonpayment of rent,” she says. ”And in those situations, they have the right to raise a defense of housing code violations. And oftentimes tenants don’t know that they have that right. Or they’re afraid or uncertain how to present such a defense.” Organized Chaos, If a tenant isn’t there at the start of the day when his name is called, he could lose his case and be evicted. Still, it can be many more hours before a case is taken up by the court. The hallway outside the courtroom is lined with seats. This is where tenants wait for their cases to be called or where they meet with their landlord’s representative to try to strike a deal. One lawyer calls it ”organized chaos” as the parties move in and out of the courtroom trying to reach an agreement. ”I’m not going to tell you it’s not stressful. It’s extremely stressful,” says Judge Judith Bartnoff, who presides over the civil division of D. C.’s Superior Court. Judges rotate weekly through the Landlord and Tenant Branch, in part because the workload can be so draining. Still, Bartnoff says the court tries to be as fair as possible. ”There are a lot of protections that tenants have in the District of Columbia and that’s part of the reason why the caseload is so high,” she explains. She notes that landlords here can’t just throw someone out on the street they need a judge to agree. And tenants can request a jury trial, which can stretch the process out for months. Indeed, some tenants come to court armed with photos of moldy windowsills, leaky furnaces and   sinks, to help make their case for withholding rent. Tenants like Joy Wilson. ”You have my water that is orange, you can see it like kind of leaking down. You can tell, if it’s leaking, that’s the color of the water,” she says, pointing to one of her pictures. Wilson stopped paying her rent last July in the hope of getting her landlord to fix things up. She says to no avail. She has another photo of a sink covered in a greasy residue that she says bubbled up from the drain, emitting a foul odor. ”And you can see that it’s food, and everything else, from somebody else’s house,” she says. Wilson owed her landlord thousands of dollars in back rent and her case was supposed to go to trial, but at the last minute she and her landlord reached a deal, which is pretty common. With all the cases that come up in this court each year, fewer than 2, 000 lead to formal evictions. More often than not, tenants move out to a cheaper place, or pay up at the last minute. They know an eviction record will haunt them. Still, many tenants tell the judge that they just don’t have the money to pay the rent, that they have too many bills and not enough income. In some cases, landlords agree to a more lenient payment schedule to help a tenant through a tough period. Other times, they say they want the tenant out, unless they pay up immediately. The judge can rule on the case right away, or hold it over for further action. It’s a drama repeated in courthouses across the country, especially in areas where the supply of affordable housing is limited. The details might vary, but the stories are often the same: Tenants can’t afford their rents but have nowhere else to live. Landlords need the money to keep their businesses going. Other Side Of The Coin, ”The saying by most landlords is, the case isn’t over until the tenant wins,” says Art Nalls, a landlord who owns apartments in some of the city’s poorer neighborhoods. He offers a   that rents for about $950 a month. Nalls says that despite appearances, the system does not favor landlords. That it can cost thousands of dollars to get a nonpaying resident out, money he needs to pay the bills and keep his apartments up and running. ”It’s a symbiotic relationship. My business only works if people pay their rent and respect the property and not tear it up,” Nalls explains. Like other landlords, Nalls says that he will bend over backward to help a tenant through a difficult time. He says everyone has financial problems once in a while, but some of his tenants have been so much trouble, he has paid them to leave. ”Soon as I see your stuff loaded in the   truck and you hand me the keys, I will give you five $100 bills,” he says. For him, that’s cheaper than pursuing a case in court. And that might have been the thinking in Wilson’s case. Her landlord’s attorney refused to comment. But her landlord did agree to forgive all of her back rent  —   $7, 400  —   as long as she was out by the end of the month. This story was produced for broadcast by Evie Stone."
"The Marines will begin training the first women for ground combat jobs in June. But it could be a challenge because so far no women recruits have signed up for armor, artillery or infantry positions. In addition, some 200 women Marines already completed ground combat training last year as part of an experiment. But so far they have chosen to stay in their current jobs, ranging from truck drivers to comptrollers to helicopter refuelers, and have not opted to switch to combat jobs. There are potential candidates: More than 200 women Marines already completed ground combat training as part of an experiment. But the Marines are still waiting for applications. Just a year ago, Marine Capt. Ray Kaster was leading his infantry company during training in the Mojave Desert. Male and female Marines ran across the sand, shooting at   targets. It was part of the effort to see if women could make it in the unforgiving world of ground combat. Living in the dirt, carrying a pack weighing more than 100 pounds. The physical demands cost Kaster about half of the women in his company. ”The majority of those were injuries,” he says, citing hip and leg injuries, including fractures. Since then, Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened armor, artillery and infantry jobs to women  —   though the Marine Corps wanted to keep infantry jobs closed to females. The women in the experiment, the Marine leadership said, did not perform as well as the men. Kaster, a combat veteran who’s now at Camp LeJeune, N. C. expressed doubts about the future of women in ground combat. ”I don’t think there’s going to be a giant rush of female Marines, or current female Marines, who want to be in the infantry,” he says. ”It is a very difficult way of life. It is not a job. It’s a lifestyle. It’s who you are it’s what you do.” Around 100 women Marines made it through the nearly   Marine experiment, including desert and mountain training. Some women trained in artillery, others in tanks or infantry. Another 100 or so current Marines went through basic infantry training at Camp LeJeune. ”There are absolutely female Marines out there that can do the job,” Kaster says. ”The concern that I have as a leader is how long can that be sustained? As you know, from what we saw is that the injury rates were very high.” No Applicants To Date, So far not one of these 200 women Marines has stepped forward for a career move to artillery, infantry or armored vehicles. Brig. Gen. James Glynn, a Marine Corps spokesman, said he suspects they want to stay in their current Marine jobs, like driving trucks or refueling helicopters. ”What we’ve learned from talking with some of them is it doesn’t mean that their aren’t intentions to do so,” he says. ”It’s a matter of where are you in your career and does it fit inside your career.” Col. Anne Weinberg, who was involved in the training effort, says she still expects recruits to step forward. ”What’s really going to be telling is the civilian female coming in and wanting to be into those ground combat arms,” she says. The Marines are reaching out to those civilians who signed enlistment contracts, telling them they can now go into combat arms. But so far, not a bite. Still, the Pentagon estimates that 200 women will sign up each year for Marine ground combat jobs. In the meantime, the Marines are preparing for women in the combat ranks. They’re starting to send women sergeants and officers to ground combat units to work in support jobs, like logistics or intelligence. Col. Weinberg said women leaders in those jobs will serve as mentors to women recruits. They’ll also send a subtle message to male Marines by ”acculturating the males to see that there’s a competent female that is doing her job and she’s hanging with us and she’s out there in the field with us just like every other male.” The Marines are also coming up with better physical training for women, so they don’t wash out with shin splints or fractures. Kaster has some recommendations on that:   and hiking with a   pack."
"Saying America’s military must draw from ”the broadest possible pool of talent,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday that women in the U. S. military  —   including the Army and Marines  —   can now serve in combat posts. The formal process to open combat jobs to women began in January of 2013 in finishing that process, Carter acknowledged that in recent years, U. S. women have fought  —   and sometimes given their lives  —   in combat posts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Carter made the announcement at noon Thursday the event was not attended by Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, whose branch of the service was the only one to request the ability to make exceptions to the new rule. Dunford is now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ”There will be no exceptions,” Carter said. We’re updating this post with news from the event. Update at 5:10 p. m. ET: ’Another Historic Step Forward,’ Obama Says, In a statement issued after Carter’s announcement, President Obama says: ”One of the qualities that makes America’s armed forces the best in the world is that we draw on the talents and skills of our people. When we desegregated our military, it became stronger. In recent years, we ended ’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and allowed gay and lesbian Americans to serve openly  —   and it’s made our military stronger. Over recent decades, we’ve opened about 90 percent of military positions to women who time and again have proven that they, too, are qualified, ready and up to the task. In the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, our courageous women in uniform have served with honor, on the front lines  —   and some have given their very lives. ”Today, the Defense Department is taking another historic step forward by opening up the remaining 10 percent of military positions, including combat roles, to women. As Commander in Chief, I know that this change, like others before it, will again make our military even stronger. Our armed forces will draw on an even wider pool of talent. Women who can meet the high standards required will have new opportunities to serve. I know that, under the leadership of Secretary Carter and Chairman Dunford, our men and women in uniform will implement this transition  —   as they have others  —   in a responsible manner that maintains military readiness and the unparalleled professionalism and strength of our armed forces. Together, we’re going to make sure our military remains the finest fighting force in the history of the world, worthy of all our patriots who serve  —   men and women.” Update at 12:46 p. m. ET: No ’Absolute Choice’ Carter says the new rule means women in the military who are deemed fit for combat can be assigned to those roles, rather than relying on their own initiative to seek roles in combat. The lack of ”absolute choice” for posts and assignments is part of being in the military, he says. Earlier in the briefing, Carter said women can now vie for spots on Navy SEALS teams and other elite units. Update at 12:36 p. m. ET: Selective Service Registration For Women? ”That is a matter of legal dispute right now,” Carter says, adding that the outcome of that process won’t affect his decision. Update at 12:26 p. m. ET: Marines’ Resistance, Answering a question about Joint Chiefs chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford’s resistance to the idea of full integration of women in combat roles, Carter says he ”strongly agreed” with Dunford’s idea that the way implementation is handled is the key to the new policy’s success. He adds that there’s ”a great value” to implementing the process on a joint basis, with all branches of the service included. Carter did not directly respond to what flaws he found in Dunford’s analysis. In September, the Marine Corps released results of a study that found   units perform better in combat than do mixed units. As reporters at the briefing note, Dunford is not attending today’s announcement. Update at 12:26 p. m. ET: Guidelines For Implementation, Listing details about how the new rules will take effect, Carter says no quotas will be imposed on women’s numbers in the military. He adds that the military will also have to dispel the idea  —   held by some men and women in the military, he said  —   that women might be included in a unit for any reason other than their qualifications. Carter says women’s qualifications and the ability to perform combat roles will be main priorities as the new rules are implemented. The process of integrating women into combat roles must begin in the next 30 days, he says. Update at 12:18 p. m. ET: Carter Makes It Official, Secretary Carter says the Pentagon can’t afford to omit half of America’s population from consideration. He adds that since the 1970s, women have been able to attend U. S. service academies, and that in the early 1990s women’s military roles were expanded, with each branch allowed to make some exceptions that kept women out of combat. ”There will be no exceptions,” Carter says of Thursday’s change in the rules. Our original post continues: Women are being cleared to play a greater role in combat  —   and vie for thousands of jobs  —   after the military conducted an internal review of how they might perform in artillery, armor and infantry roles. From NPR’s Tom Bowman and our national security desk: ”Some Pentagon officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, have said they worry about the ability of Marine infantry units to be as effective with both male and female troops. Carter is expected to say he’ll take Dunford’s concerns into consideration in opening the military jobs. ”The Pentagon has been opening up jobs to women throughout the Obama administration, admitting women to Navy submarines and to the Army’s elite Ranger School.” The formal announcement comes as more female service members have been training for roles on the front lines. In August, two female soldiers graduated from the U. S. Army’s Ranger School at Fort Benning, Ga. Currently, women make up less than 10 percent of Marine Corps personnel. The announcement comes more than 20 years after women were officially excluded from serving in small ground combat units back in 1994. It also comes three years after a group of servicewomen sued the Pentagon and   of Defense Leon Panetta in 2012. Two months after that suit was filed, Panetta announced that women would be gradually allowed to serve combat roles."
"The Supreme Court has ordered more legal briefs in the birth control case it heard last week, indicating that the justices are struggling to avoid another   tie. The case tests the religious liberty claims against the Obamacare mandate for birth control in all health insurance plans. Some   nonprofits  —   like hospitals, universities and service organizations  —   object to signing an   form on the grounds that that action triggers the insurer’s providing birth control coverage separately. At the oral argument last week, several of the conservative justices said the requirement ”hijacked” the religious employers’ insurance plans, and a   tie seemed likely. In an apparent attempt to prevent a deadlock, the court on Tuesday afternoon asked the government and the religious objectors to address a specific question: whether birth control coverage for employees could be obtained without involving   employers at all and the court offered a specific suggestion for doing so. In an unusually detailed order, the court asked whether it would be possible to have objecting nonprofits notify their insurers that they do not want to have their plan cover contraception that they are opposed to, and upon receiving this notification, the insurer would separately notify employees that the insurance company will provide the coverage on its own. The additional briefs are to be filed by April 20. The government undoubtedly will have to consult with insurance companies to see what health plans can do without adding significant administrative costs. And one of the issues bound to concern the health insurers is where the requirement for separate coverage will end. For instance, what about religious nonprofits that object to blood transfusions, or vaccines, or numerous other medical procedures? Tuesday’s order for more briefs likely stems from the concerns of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was among those who called the Obamacare   a ”hijacking ” of the religious objectors’ plans at the oral argument last week. He seemed at the time to be grasping for an alternative but if he is ultimately persuaded there is not a good one, he would likely join the court’s four liberals and make a   majority for upholding the current   provision. If, on the other hand, he is persuaded there is a good alternative, the liberal justices could either join him or there would be a   tie. The result of a tie would be that in most of the country, where the   provision has been upheld by the lower courts, the   provision would be the law but in the states governed by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down the provision, the   measure would be voided. The states in the 8th Circuit are Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota."
"I was feeling cheeky one afternoon when I posted to Facebook that the ’90s hit ”Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was the worst song of all time. It had been nearly two decades since the release of that single  —   about a bickering couple who reconcile thanks to an Audrey Hepburn film  —   but I heard the chorus in passing that day, and it got stuck on this   loop in my brain. From the reaction to my post, I could see I wasn’t the only one who still held a grudge against a harmless ’90s earworm. My friends piled on, creating a delightful little bonfire of disdain, but I had forgotten one detail: A guy from the band was in my friend circle. That was unfortunate. I didn’t know him very well. He lived in Dallas, like I did, and I’d met him years ago when I was the music editor for an alternative paper. He was something of a local hero, having turned that   wonder into an indie record label, and he was known for being a good guy  —   all important details I remembered roughly 45 minutes after hitting the ”post” button. For years, I’ve complained about the random hatred of the Internet. It was the worst part of writing online: Show up with your heart in your hand, and a bunch of strangers line up to throw rocks in your face. I was so freaked out by comments on my own stories that I had once considered not writing at all anymore. I badly wanted a thicker skin, but I also knew I had become a writer because I was  . I took on other people’s discomfort, and I flinched at the tiniest finger flick of rejection. I was a sensitive person  —   but I had just done a very insensitive thing. I would never have said this to his face. But technology is such a bait and switch, giving you the feel of anonymity at the very moment your words have the farthest reach. And my comment was exactly the kind of random   that had wounded me over the years: Boo, you suck, go away. I had done this . .. why? For a tiny dopamine hit? For a few people to think, for 20 seconds, that I was clever? I should have just deleted the post. I can’t tell you why I didn’t do that, except I worried that deleting the post would draw more attention to the mistake. I was starting to shame spiral. I alternated between ”how could I do this?” and ”was it really that big of a deal?” Maybe he doesn’t check Facebook. Maybe he wouldn’t even notice! Facebook is such a   stream of drunken selfies and political outrage and adorable videos of baby elephants, and what were the chances this one guy would see this one dumb little post? He did, of course. And he left a comment, although he didn’t sound angry so much as disappointed, like he’d thought I was a nice person. And I am a nice person, although I sometimes do   things. I’ve long felt torn between the opinionated crank who wants to sneer at the world and the good little girl afraid to hurt anyone’s feelings. I went to a comedy show that night. I didn’t laugh much. At one point, I excused myself to go to the restroom, but I sat in the lobby instead. I had deleted the post by then, but I still wanted to explain myself. And what was my excuse? In the past, I’d reached out to people who wrote nasty comments on my stories, and they often said the same thing: I didn’t think you would read that. I was embarrassed to find myself in the same place. I’d spent all those years complaining that people on the Internet could be such bullies. I had forgotten that ”people on the Internet” included me. I wrote him a message. It was short and imperfect. ”All I can say is, 20 years after that song came out, people are still talking about it,” I said. ”Also, I’m an idiot.” He didn’t respond, but he also didn’t unfriend me, which I thought showed a nice restraint. We hear a lot about how social media lets us present our glossy, perfect selves, but use social media enough and it will put you directly in touch with your own mistakes. Some clumsy opinion. Some joke you wish you could take back. We can all be thoughtless, we can all be cruel, which is good to remember the next time you find yourself on the receiving end of that random scorn. I wish people would be more civil online. I wish they’d be more civil   for that matter. But the messy   of the Internet is part of what makes it so endlessly fascinating. I don’t think the mass of humanity will ever stop throwing rocks, but I’m trying to be a little smarter about when I chuck mine. Sarah Hepola is the author of the memoir Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget."
"Beekeeper Nick French never knows what he’ll find when he opens up his hives for the first spring inspections. Of the 40 hives he manages in Parker, Colo. French loses about   of his colonies every year. ”I work all summer long to raise healthy bees, but there are no guarantees they’ll make it through the winter,” says French, founder of Frangiosa Farm. Recent years have been especially hard on beekeepers. The latest research shows that beekeepers have lost almost a third of their hives over the winter  —   and replacing them is expensive. ”Losing bees is like watching dollar bills fly out the window,” says Tanya Phillips, beekeeper and founder of Bee Friendly Austin. A few creative beekeepers have come up with a new source of funding: They’re inviting bee supporters to ”adopt a hive.” Most programs operate with similar models. Adopters pay a fee in exchange for honey from their ”adopted” bees and an adoption certificate acknowledging their support. The Adopt A Bee program at Frangiosa Farm was introduced in 2012. The   adoption fees per hive range from $45 to $130 (the latter gets you three jars of honey). French signed up 25 adopters the first year last year, the number of adopters jumped to 300. Adopting a hive is about more than increasing honey sales  —   it’s a matter of survival, says French. ”In any other industry, you’d go out of business with the kind of losses beekeepers experience,” French says. ”I couldn’t keep going without community support.” The programs take advantage of public concern and raise awareness of the plight of bees. Beekeepers are experiencing average annual losses of more than 30 percent, according to Bee Informed Partnership, a nonprofit collaboration of universities and research labs studying honeybee losses. In managed colonies (hives raised by beekeepers) losses can be caused by a number of factors, including parasites, pesticides, loss of forage and colony collapse disorder, according to David Tarpy, a professor and extension apiculturist for North Carolina State University. Bees are essential to the health of the food supply. More than 100 different crops  —   about   of the foods we eat  —   depend on pollination from bees and other pollinators. While native bees do some of the work, it’s honeybees that do the bulk of the pollination for agricultural crops. ”Honeybees provide a service that native bees cannot,” Tarpy says. ”And beekeepers face uncertainty every single year about whether or not they’ll have enough bees to match pollination demands.” Of course, beekeepers can add more bees, but the options come at a great expense. Packages of bees to populate a new hive are upwards of $100 per hive. Splitting the bees from an existing hive into two new hives is free  —   but it curbs honey production as bees work to populate their new colonies and boost honey stores. And when infectious diseases like American foulbrood strike, beekeepers often burn affected hives to prevent it from spreading, triggering expenses for new equipment. The concept of    programs is catching on. In addition to the    program at Frangiosa Farm, there is a similar initiative at University of Hawaii, Hilo. In Jacksonville, Fla. the Bee Friends Farm program promises adopters will make 60, 000 new friends when they adopt a hive for $35. The fee covers adoption benefits like a bottle of honey, adoption certificate and a photo of a hive with the adopter’s name on it. Bee Friendly Austin introduced an    program this spring. Rather than use the $49 adoption fee to cover the cost of her bee losses  —   which Phillips estimates are just between 5 and 10 percent of her colonies per year, thanks to the temperate Texas climate  —   Phillips plans to use adoption fees to support new beekeepers. The fees from all hive adoptions will be donated to the launch of a local master beekeeper program. ”The only way to help the bees is to teach people how to raise them right,” Phillips says. Without the additional financial support, beekeepers would be forced to raise the price of honey to offset the costs of colony losses. The combination of support for bees and beekeepers alike make Tarpy a fan of the programs. ”It’s a powerful means of giving everyday citizens a chance to support our beleaguered honeybee population by supporting those who manage their colonies,” he says. ”It’s a lot easier to replace bees than to replace beekeepers.” Jodi Helmer is a North   journalist covering food and farming."
"The FBI’s success in unlocking, without Apple’s help, the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists marks a dramatic end to the heated dispute between the Justice Department and the tech giant about the scope of the government’s power to compel a company to weaken its digital security for a criminal investigation. Below are some of the key takeaways  —   and mysteries  —   left in the aftermath of the case. What has been settled? The particular case of this specific phone, though we don’t know yet what exactly the investigators found inside. (A quick recap) Because the information on the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook was encrypted and uncrackable, the investigators needed to guess the passcode that locked the phone’s contents. The FBI wanted to hook it up to a computer that would figure out the   combination, but the phone’s security features required manual password attempts and would have wiped the phone clean after 10 wrong tries. So the FBI got a court order compelling Apple to write special software that would lift those security features, which Apple fought. After weeks of saying that Apple’s special software was the only way to safely get inside the phone (read here why the NSA wasn’t an option) the Justice Department last week said a third party had proposed a new, undisclosed method  —   and on Monday, the method was proved successful. If unlocking this particular iPhone was the goal, ”you could argue that this is a success because the FBI got the information much more quickly than they would have through the court system,” says Eric Berg, a lawyer at Foley  Lardner and former federal prosecutor who specialized in electronic surveillance. But was this iPhone’s content the entire goal? The case sets no precedent and another similar dispute is likely. For years, these kinds of government requests were settled behind closed doors. The standoff over the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone escalated the debate over law enforcement’s ability to force cooperation from an unwilling third party. One of the major stakes in this standoff between Apple and the FBI was the ability of the government to force cooperation from an unwilling third party. The government’s court order against Apple relied on a broad 18th century law called the All Writs Act, which has been used to compel assistance from other companies, but the scuttling of the legal case against Apple leaves no case law for how All Writs can be used to bypass digital security. That means this dispute is likely to be replayed, with Apple or another maker of encrypted devices  —   or encrypted messaging  —   as new technologies become a growing element of criminal investigations. ”Unfortunately, this news appears to be just a delay of an inevitable fight over whether the FBI can force Apple to undermine the security of its own products,” Alex Abdo, staff lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement on Monday. A Justice Department spokeswoman, in her statement on Monday, acknowledged that the government is likely to continue asking tech companies for help: ”It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties, or through the court system when cooperation fails. We will continue to pursue all available options for this mission, including seeking the cooperation of manufacturers and relying upon the creativity of both the public and private sectors.” Can the FBI now get into all iPhones? It depends on what method it used, which we may never find out. We don’t know the details of what method the FBI used to get inside this locked iPhone, and the government may try to keep it classified. ”There’s not really any requirement for disclosure because they’re not involving Apple,” says Berg, the former federal prosecutor. Apple says the FBI has not shared its technique with the company either, and its lawyers have previously said they’d push for such a disclosure. Whether the technique can be applied to the hundreds of other locked Apple devices seized in other criminal investigations around the country depends on what exactly it entails. According to iPhone forensics researcher Jonathan Zdziarski, if the method relied on tinkering with the hardware inside the phone (like the memory chip cloning method we described here) that could be reused on other older devices, like the iPhone 5C at the center of this dispute. But if the method exploits a weakness in the phone’s software, Zdziarski says the technique could work on newer devices. If investigators do want to reapply this tool to other traditional investigations, they will need a search warrant with probable cause. NPR business intern Naomi LaChance contributed to this story."
"Belgium officials ran a simulation Tuesday at Brussels’ Zaventem Airport to figure out if it can at least partially reopen using new security measures demanded by the government. It’s been a week since the March 22 suicide bombings at the airport and on a subway several miles away. Since then, no commercial flights have gone in or out of this European capital and it’s unclear when air traffic will resume. Parts of the Brussels subway have reopened, though soldiers wearing camouflage and armed with assault weapons conduct random security checks that include patdowns and bag searches. Many subway stops are still closed, though officials said all would be opened Wednesday, except for Maelbeek, the site of the suicide bombing. Air travelers are making alternative plans, which often include taking a train to another country to catch a flight. I asked airport spokeswoman Florence Muls if she had any sense of when the airport might reopen. ”We hope as soon as possible, but it really depends on the green light of the federal authorities and the police,” she said. Muls says when the airport does reopen, it will only be at 20 percent capacity. And the   area that was badly damaged by the bombing will take months to rebuild. Even a fortified airport will not be a guarantee against a terrorist attack, noted security analyst Claude Moniquet. ”If [terrorists] are absolutely unable to attack the airport, they will attack the metro. And if they can’t attack the metro, they will attack the buses  —   and so on and so on,” he said. Moniquet, who worked for the French intelligence service for 20 years, said Belgium has to do more to minimize the threat. The intelligence services need to hire more people from diverse backgrounds, including Arabic speakers, who can build links with the Muslim communities. And he feels strongly that Belgium’s   laws are too weak. For example: the law prevents police from raiding a home between 9 p. m. and 5 a. m. unless a crime is in progress. A few days after last November’s attacks in Paris, Belgian police got a tip that one of the key suspects   Salah Abdeslam   was hiding in a house in Brussels. But they had to wait until morning to launch their raid. ”They had the information at 8:30, 9 p. m. at night on a Sunday, and they raided the house at 10 o’clock in the morning the day after,” he said. When police went in, they found Abdeslam’s fingerprints, but it took four months to capture him. He was seized on March 18, four days before the Brussels bombings. Meanwhile, a Belgian parliamentary committee approved a measure Tuesday that would allow police raids 24 hours a day. Moniquet says firmly that his country is at war. But he believes real change in   laws will be slow to come. Why? ”I prefer not to comment,” he said. When pressed, and asked if it would take another attack to make significant changes, he said, ”It’s tragic. That means other people must die. But it is only an opinion.” Outside the Zaventem Airport, passengers who fled the bombing can now go to a cargo area to retrieve their luggage. Emanuel Simeons was there, wheeling his gray suitcase. He and his wife had just cleared security a week ago when the bombs went off. Luckily, they had decided not to stop for coffee before going through. ”That decision was a good decision not to drink a coffee in the departure hall,” he said."
"Author Peggy Orenstein says that when it comes to sexuality, girls today are receiving mixed messages. Girls hear that ”they’re supposed to be sexy, they’re supposed to perform sexually for boys,” Orenstein tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, ”but that their sexual pleasure is unspoken.” While researching her new book, Girls  Sex, Orenstein spoke with more than 70 young women between the ages of 15 and 20 about their attitudes and early experiences with the full range of physical intimacy. She says that pop culture and pornography sexualize young women by creating undue pressure to look and act sexy. These pressures affect both the sexual expectations that girls put on themselves and the expectations boys project onto them. Orenstein adds that girls she spoke to were often navigating between being considered ”slutty” or a ”prude,” and that their own desires were often lost in the shuffle. Girls, Orenstein says, are being taught to please their partners without regard to their own desires. ”When I would talk to girls, for instance, about oral sex, that was something that they were doing from a pretty young age, and it tended to go one way [and not be reciprocated],” Orenstein explains. She recommends that parents examine the messages they send regarding girls and sexuality. ”One of the things that I really took away from this research, is the absolute importance of not just talking about [girls] as victims, or not just talking about them as these new aggressors, but really surfacing these ideas of talking clearly and honestly to girls about their own desires and their own pleasures,” she says. On the silence surrounding girls’ genitals, Parents don’t tend to name their infant baby’s genitals if they’re girls. For boys, they’ll say, ”Here’s your nose, here’s your shoulders, here’s your waist, here’s your pee pee,” whatever. But with girls, there’s this sort of blank space  —   it’s right from navel to knees, and not naming something makes it quite literally unspeakable. Then they go into puberty education class, and girls have periods and unwanted pregnancy, and you see only the inside anatomy  —   that thing that looks like a steer head, with the ovaries and everything  —   and then it grays out between the legs, so we never talk about the vulva, we never talk about the clitoris. Very few girls explore, there’s no   and then they go into their sexual experiences and we expect them to be able to have some sense of entitlement, some sense of knowledge, to be able to assert themselves, to have some sense of equality, and it’s just not realistic that that’s going to happen. On whether kids are having more sex at a younger age, and the prevalence of oral sex  Kids are not having intercourse at a younger age, and they’re not having more intercourse than they used to. They are engaging in other forms of sexual behavior, younger and more often. And one of the things that I became really clear on was that we have to broaden our definition of sex, because by ignoring and denying these other forms of sexual behavior that kids are engaging in, we are opening the door to a lot of risky behavior, and we are opening the door to a lot of disrespect. . .. [Oral sex] is considered to be less intimate than intercourse, and something that girls say repeatedly to me would be, ”It’s no big deal.” There’s an argument that some of the girls have in the book about exactly what it is. Is it sex? Is it not sex? Is it no big deal? . .. It was something that they felt that they could do that boys expected  —   that they could do to not have to do something else. It was a way that they could cultivate popularity, it was a way that they felt  —   interestingly, they would talk about feeling more in control than if it was reciprocal. . .. They felt it was safer sex, which is true and not true, because the rates of STDs have actually shot up among teenagers, even though the rates of intercourse have not, because they think that oral sex is safer sex and things like gonorrhea are spreading much more quickly. On talking to girls about their partners not reciprocating oral sex, I started saying, ”Look, what if every time you were with a guy, he told you to go get him a glass of water from the kitchen and he never offered to get you a glass of water. Or if he did he’d say, ”Ugh, you want me to get you a glass of water?” You would never stand for it! Girls, they would bust out laughing when I said that, and they’d say, ”Oh, I never thought about it that way.” I thought, well, maybe you should if you think that being asked repeatedly to give someone a glass of water without reciprocation is less insulting than being asked to perform a sexual act over and over. . .. On what ”hooking up” means  It can mean anything. It can mean kissing, it can mean intercourse, it can mean any other form of sexual interplay. It really is a nonphrase. But what the hookup culture means, I mean, kids did not invent casual sex, right? But what has changed is the idea that casual sex is the pathway to a relationship, that sex is a precursor rather than a function of intimacy and affection. . .. [In college] pretty much if you didn’t want to stay home with microwave popcorn calling your parents, especially for freshmen and sophomores, that was kind of what they did. They went out, they got drunk, they hooked up. On drinking and hookup culture, Hookup culture, particularly, it’s not just lubricated by alcohol anymore  —   it’s completely dependent on it. One sociologist told me that alcohol was what created this compulsory carelessness, so that it was a way to signal that the sex that they were having was meaningless. Alcohol, it was almost like it had replaced mutual attraction as kind of reason in and of itself to have sex, so it was a way to not care. It was a way to say, ”We’re just doing this for one night.” What was tricky was that both the thing that is held out  —   for college students in particular but high school students, too  —   as ”fun,” which is getting drunk and hooking up, also facilitated assault, because alcohol is really the No. 1 date drug. . .. We talk a lot about girls drinking and reducing girls drinking, and I think it’s very important to talk to girls about the particular effects of alcohol on their bodies, because drink for drink, we get drunker faster than boys do. We can’t forget to talk about the impact of alcohol on boys, because we know that alcohol at best loosens inhibitions, it reduces a person’s ability to read social cues, it gives young men who might not otherwise have it  —   courage is probably the wrong word, but the courage, I guess, to commit an assault, or to ignore ”no,” and tend to be more aggressive when they do. Alcohol also makes boys less likely to step in as bystanders when they see something occurring, than they would be if they were sober. So we really have to address both sides of this equation if we want to reduce assault. On the notion of multiple ”virginities”  One girl said to me, ”Usually the opposite of a negative is a positive, but when you’re talking about girls and sex, the opposite of slut is prude, both of which are negative. So what are you supposed to do?” So they’re always trying to walk this line where they’re not considered slutty, but they’re not considered too [much of a] prude. It’s an   kind of dynamic, so part of that was getting rid of virginity, which often was something they did drunk, not necessarily with someone they cared that much about, and you really have to ask, is that really experience? Is the person who rushes toward intercourse wasted getting more experience than the person who spends three hours making out with a partner sober and exploring ideas about sexual tension and pleasure and what feels good? We have this weird idea, and I think that our emphasis on virginity right now is not doing girls any favors, and of course it also completely disregards gay girls. One of the things that was really great was in talking to a gay girl, I asked her, ”When did you think that you had lost your virginity?” And she said, ”Well, you know, I really have thought a lot about that, and I’m not really sure.” She gave a few different answers and then she said, ”You know what I think? I think a girl loses her virginity when she has her first orgasm with a partner.” And it completely knocked me out. I thought, ”Wow.” I know we’re not going to dismantle the idea of virginity, but what if we could broaden it to think that there’s multiple virginities, and what if that was one of them? That would totally shift our ideas of how we thought about girls and boys and sex."
"You never know who you’re going to meet at a party. In the case of one young man and woman, a Halloween celebration in New York City led not just to a love affair  —   it became part of the fabric of modern Cuba. I was going to Havana on a reporting trip to cover a contemporary music festival, and I needed a translator. Through a friend of a friend of a friend, I met Gabriela Burdsall. She’s a member of Cuba’s national modern dance troupe. As it turned out, Gabriela had her own, nearly unbelievable tale to tell. Gabriela is a member of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba  —   a company   by her grandmother, Lorna Burdsall. But Lorna was just about as   as you can get. ”She was born in Connecticut. Preston, Connecticut,” says Gabriela. And like so many dancers, she wanted to go to New York. ”So she received classes at the Juilliard School with Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, José Limón  —   very important dancers in that time,” her granddaughter explains. And here’s where this family story starts turning into the stuff of fiction. In 1953, Lorna saw a guy at a Halloween party. She wrote about that night in her 2001 autobiography, More Than Just a Footnote: ”I wondered what country he was from and I commented to my friend that the fellow was surely not North American, but he said, ’Impossible. Can’t you see he has red hair and freckles? He’s probably Irish. ’” After the music stopped, I asked the mambo dancer where he was from. He didn’t understand what I was saying, so he said nothing, but his partner said he was from Cuba.” A couple of months later, Lorna spotted this   guy near Juilliard. He was Cuban, and his name was Manuel. Manuel’s parents had immigrated to Cuba from the Galicia region of Spain, an area with deep Celtic roots. Manuel’s father had become very successful in their new country  —   in part as a distributor of one of Cuba’s most famous products, Bacardi rum  —   and he had sent Manuel to study business at Columbia University, with the expectation that he would come back to help run the family business. Lorna and Manuel fell for each other, and they quietly got married in New York. Not long after, she moved with him back to Cuba. She didn’t speak a word of Spanish, and she didn’t know anyone except for Manuel and his family, whom she had briefly met in New York before. And Lorna didn’t have an easy time with Manuel’s conservative parents, according to Gabriela. ”Having an American in their house  —   an American and a dancer!  —   at that time was not a good image for a wife,” she says. ”’An American and a dancer?’ That’s how you say . .. a slut? ’Did you marry a slut? ’” It wasn’t just that. Once they were on the island, Manuel finally clued Lorna in on something else. ”He was involved in the Cuban revolution,” says Gabriela. ”So, my grandmother didn’t know that until she came to Cuba. He kept that from her!” As it turned out, Manuel was more than a little interested in the currents of Cuban politics. He was extremely involved with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the rest of the revolutionaries who were plotting to overthrow Cuba’s dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Manuel became Raul Castro’s   man during the revolution. ”The first thing, he went to the Sierra Maestra to fight with Fidel,” says Gabriela. ”He was part of El Segunto Frente, the Second Front. And after the triumph of the revolution, he became the   of Cuban intelligence.” His nickname was ”Barba Roja”  —   ”Red Beard.” And his wife  —   perhaps naively  —   joined the cause. In her autobiography, Lorna writes about caching weapons and ammunition at their house, and about the time that she carried a bomb, which she was supposed to set off at one of Havana’s most famous tourist spots. ”The bomb I was carrying in my handbag was small and I justified my bellicose action by assuming that, without killing anybody, it could serve to make the tourists know that things were not as serene as depicted in the travel brochures,” she wrote. In the end, she didn’t set off the bomb. But she had other adventures. While she was pregnant with their only child, Kahlil  —   Gabriela’s father  —   Lorna stored arms and ammunition for the fighters. This story also appears in her autobiography. ”Once we had the floor of the baby’s room full of   bullets. As we were storing them out, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find a policeman greeting me. At first, although frightened, I was very nonchalant and offered him a cup of strong, sweet coffee. After a little chat, I learned that he was introducing himself in order to receive his monthly contribution from the new neighbors, us. He left and I breathed a sigh of relief. And Manuel came out of hiding saying, ”He probably thought we were playing dominoes it sounds about the same as sorting bullets.” After the revolution, Manuel Piñeiro Losada became one of the most influential and trusted figures within the Cuban government. When Che Guevara died, it was Manuel who told Fidel Castro. And Manuel Piñeiro played a role in fomenting violent revolution in other parts of Latin America. When he died in 1998, the headline in his New York Times obituary called him the ”Spymaster for Castro.” Meanwhile, under the new regime, Lorna became a founding member of a new national dance company. Today, the troupe is called the Danza Contemporánea de Cuba. They work with many prominent international choreographers and frequently tour across Europe, the U. K. and South America. Their first American tour was in 2011. The group is led by Miguel Iglesias, who has been its director for more than 30 years. Iglesias says that in those early days, Lorna Burdsall and director Ramiro Guerra went beyond European and North American ideas about modern dance to incorporate   elements. ”For example, we put pieces for Orfeo  —   but Orfeo in the Caribbean. We put [on] Medea, but Medea with black men, in the Caribbean, too,” Iglesias explains. ”You know, we have a new content and we need a new form. And we mix something about the   root with the Graham technique.” As in Martha Graham, that is. This blending of cultures was a big deal in a country that had generally tucked its complicated and painful racial history out of sight. And it was a young blonde woman from the U. S. who helped put African culture front and center. Twenty years after their wedding, Lorna and Manuel split up, at Lorna’s instigation. And Lorna left the national modern dance company  —   in her autobiography, she says she was forced out because of her divorce. After that, she created a new, more experimental company called Así Somos  —   ”The Way We Are.” Gabriela says that Lorna stretched huge pieces of fabric over her dancers, turning them into moving pieces of modern sculpture. ”Así Somos is a group that had a very different aesthetic,” Gabriela explains. ”It was very shocking at that time. It was more performative  —   it was based on performance art. It was visual, very visual, very plastic. And she liked to call her work teatro de imagines  —   image theater.” Sometimes, Lorna even staged performances at her apartment. Her home was given to her by Fidel  —   it’s a spacious, airy place in Havana’s Miramar district, with a big balcony looking over the spot where the Almendares River runs right into the Caribbean. It needs work, like so many buildings in Cuba. But by Havana standards, it’s a palace. And it gave Lorna the room to try new things. ”She took down the wall to make more space,” says Gabriela. ”Everybody came to her house and they began to experiment with different things. She liked to make her own characters, she took her own dressing costumes and lots of her dressing costumes were made with anything she could find.” Gabriela grew up largely at Lorna’s apartment. They were inseparable. ”When I was born, I was the little girl of the family,” she says, laughing. ”And I spent most of the time with her.” Lorna taught Gabriela English, and Gabriela inherited Lorna’s passions for dance and theater. Gabriela is 26 now. She even looks like Lorna, with her blonde hair and inquisitive glance. And now she lives in Lorna’s old apartment  —   with all of her grandmother’s mementos and photos still in their places. Gabriela says that Lorna fell deeply in love with her adopted country  —   and the artistic possibilities she found there. ”She said that she decided to live in Cuba because in the United States, everything was invented,” says the granddaughter. ”And here in Cuba, circumstances had to make you invent all the time, and look for alternatives to make things work.” Lorna lived and worked in Cuba until her death in 2010. Her romance started out a fairy tale and morphed into a political thriller, but it was dance that kept her life in motion."
"On July 8, 2011, the space shuttle Atlantis rumbled off its launch platform and rose skyward, marking the last time we sent Americans into space using our own rockets launched from our own soil. Since then, our access to orbit (and the Space Station) has come via tickets bought on Russian rockets in Russian crew capsules. If all goes well, this reliance on Russia may end in 2017. That’s when private space companies, through contracts with NASA, begin launching American astronauts into space with American technology once again. When these launches come it will be historic  —   but today it’s important to understand how we ended up stranded on Earth in the first place. Our long and painful absence from human space access did not appear in a vacuum. U. S. investment in science has been lagging for many years. In fact, in many ways NASA’s investment in private spaceflight represents a   measure to refocus its efforts on exploring deep space, while leaving   missions to the private companies. The vibrancy of the nascent commercial space industry is something to applaud. But the long wait for a U. S. return to having its own launch platforms can also be seen as a visceral and public experience of what a strained   infrastructure looks like when it begins to breaks down. NASA and a growing ecosystem of private rocket companies have been driving towards a new age of space innovation for nearly a decade. This is one of the most exciting developments in space exploration since Apollo. In 2006, NASA created the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, acting as a special kind of investor for the emerging private space industry and awarding development funds on completion of specific milestones in launch capabilities. In 2010, NASA created the Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev) to provide human access to space. Partnering with private companies, their goal was to quickly develop crewed launch vehicles for low Earth orbit. In September of 2014, awards were made to Space X and Boeing to develop and construct the new space fleet. So, progress is finally being made. But it took far longer than required because funding for the program was woefully inadequate. When Charles Bolden assessed the situation in 2014, he said ”Had [the Commercial Crew Development Program] been fully funded, we would have returned American human spaceflight launches  —   and the jobs they support  —   back to the United States next year. With the reduced level of funding approved by Congress, we’re now looking at launching from U. S. soil in 2017.” The important point here is that this habit of progress delayed or denied is not confined to NASA. It has spread across most domains of U. S. research. The National Institutes for Health budget, for example, was essentially flat for a decade and, then, dropped two years ago. It has only barely been rising since then. In a poll of cancer researchers in 2014, almost 30 percent said they were postponing launching new clinical trials and 23 percent said they were limiting patient enrollment in new trials they could start. Things have become difficult enough that the problem has been given its own name  —   the innovation deficit. Compare our stalled investment in science and technology with other nations, who have doubled or tripled their investments over similar timescales. When the U. S. dropped out of the ExoMars program (designed to look for evidence of life on that planet) our former partners in the EU found a ready new collaborator in Russia. And for all the excitement about the Higgs Particle, the U. S. share of that particle accelerator was just $500 million out of a total $12 billion dollar cost. The outsized role we played in the discovery came only because of investments made decades ago. Now, it’s not clear we will still be significant players 10 years from now. The long delay in getting Americans back into orbit on their own power shows how deeply we’ve neglected a space science and technology effort that was the envy of the world. It is a   wound driven by a thousand budget cuts  —   and space science is just the tip of the iceberg. A nation doesn’t reach world leadership in science and technology overnight. It takes decades of strong and continued investment. The conspicuous absence of rockets roaring to the high frontier from our shores can be either a bell tolling the end of an era or a wakeup call. As past Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England saw quite clearly, ”The greatest   threat to U. S. national security is not terrorists wielding a nuclear or biological weapon, but the erosion of America’s place as a world leader in science and technology.” Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4"
"At the Caracas Paper Co. founded in 1953, printing presses and cutting machines used to churn out 13, 000 tons of notebooks, manila folders and envelopes every year. Now, it produces less than half that amount. That’s due to a paper shortage as well as frequent power outages. The blackouts can last up to three hours, says production manager Antonio Lamarca. And they come just as the government is urging Venezuelan businesses to ramp up production and help rescue the economy. ”The machinery shuts down. There’s no water, so the bathrooms don’t work. We have to send the workers home,” Lamarca says. Some factories have adapted by installing diesel generators. But paper plant consultant Jose Sotelo says that a generator big enough to keep all these machines running would break the company’s budget. Venezuela might seem like an odd place for an energy crisis. It’s home to the world’s largest oil reserves as well as huge natural gas deposits and massive rivers for hydroelectric dams. But the El Niño weather effect has drastically reduced water levels at the country’s main hydroelectric complex. And so now, on top of food shortages and   inflation, people must put up with power outages. Venezuela’s government announced a weeklong holiday last week to conserve electricity. The government, which controls the electric system, accuses unnamed ”enemies”  —   the political opposition  —   of allegedly attacking the country’s thermoelectric plants. ”We have to understand, this is a war,” Luis Motta, the minister of electricity, declared in an interview on state TV. But independent analysts say government mismanagement and populist policies are to blame for the crisis. For example, Venezuelan households pay just pennies a month for electricity. ”For me, if I want to do my monthly budget, I don’t even care about electricity payment,” says   economist Carlos Alvarez. ”It is nothing.” He says these   rates starve the state electric company of money needed to upgrade the system. Now, with Venezuela’s economy in a free fall, the   government has more pressing concerns, he says. ”I would say for now [the] priority is food, medicine,” Alvarez says. ”People [are] dying because they don’t have the medicine that they need. People [are in] lines to get some food.” Venezuela’s power outages  —   which have been happening on and off for about five years but became worse this year owing to extremely low water levels in the main hydroelectric dam  —   are making daily life especially miserable. With no electricity, neighborhood water pumps stop working. To wash dishes and flush toilets, Elizabeth Castro, a nurse, stores water in buckets inside her apartment on the outskirts of Caracas. The standing water provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes that spread malaria and Zika, a disease that has sickened Castro and several family members. ”What’s happening to us is really alarming,” Castro says. But trying to escape from it all  —   for example, by taking in a movie  —   is also complicated. At a multiplex in a Caracas mall, the last showing of the movie Spotlight starts at 5:45 in the afternoon. Why so early? Because of power rationing, the shopping center closes at 7 p. m."
"Police in Jupiter, Fla. have charged Donald Trump’s campaign manager with battery for allegedly grabbing a reporter for Breitbart news following a Trump campaign rally earlier this month. Corey Lewandowski is charged with one count of simple battery. According to the arrest report, the reporter, Michelle Fields, told police that she asked Trump a question after the March 8 event, as he was making his way toward the exit of the ballroom at the Trump National Golf Club, and felt someone ”yank her left arm.” She then asked a Washington Post reporter standing nearby ”if it was ’Corey’ who grabbed her.” The Post reporter, Ben Terris, confirmed it was Lewandowski who had grabbed her arm. (Sections of the report containing contact information have been redacted by NPR above). The police report says Fields showed an officer her arm ”which revealed bruising from what appeared to be several finger marks indicating a grabbing type injury.” Lewandowski has previously denied involvement in the incident, calling Fields ”totally delusional” in a tweet: However video tape released by the Jupiter Police Department appears to show Lewandowski grabbing Fields as she walked along side Trump. Lewandowski has agreed to a court appearance on May 4. Update at 5:15 p. m. ET: Speaking to reporters on his plane in Wisconsin, Trump backed his campaign manager, saying Lewandowski was ”very seriously maligned,” and said he would remain in his job. ”I don’t discard people,” Trump said. Trump also claimed Fields grabbed him, and he disputed the charge that Lewandowski bruised Fields, saying ”wouldn’t you think she would have yelled out a scream if she had bruises on her arm?” He said Fields could have had the bruises before the incident with Lewandowski. ”How do you know those bruises weren’t there before?” Original post continues: Trump tweeted Tuesday that the ”tapes” (other views of the scene had circulated previously) showed ”nothing there”: Fields responded to Trump’s tweets: Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks also defended Lewandowski Tuesday morning, saying in a statement : ”Mr. Lewandowski was issued a Notice to Appear and was given a court date. He was not arrested. Mr. Lewandowski is absolutely innocent of this charge. He will enter a plea of not guilty and looks forward to his day in court. He is completely confident that he will be exonerated.” Trump had weighed in earlier this month as well, saying: ”This was, in my opinion, made up. Everybody said nothing happened. Perhaps she made the story up. I think that’s what happened.” Fields resigned from her Breitbart post after the incident, saying the news outlet had not stood behind her. Fields’ resignation was followed by that of Breitbart    Ben Shapiro, and a handful of other employees who alleged the conservative news outlet was more protective of the Trump campaign than of Fields. The conservative news site also printed a story saying that the altercation ”could not possibly have happened as Ben Terris reported.” and that ”given the similarity in appearance between Lewandowski and the security official, and given the fact that Lewandowski was walking on the other side of Trump from where Fields was at the time, the possibility of mistaken identity cannot be ruled out.” The editor who wrote that piece, Joel Pollak, tweeted that given the new video, ”I was wrong.” Trump’s presidential rivals were quick to tie the alleged incident to the campaign’s culture. According to The Hill, Ted Cruz told reporters in Wisconsin ”This is the consequence of the culture of the Trump campaign, the abusive culture, when you have a campaign that is built on personal insults, on attacks and now, physical violence.” John Kasich’s campaign adviser John Weaver tweeted that Lewandowski ”would have been fired long ago” if he was working for the Kasich campaign. Shortly after the alleged incident with Fields, Lewandowski was back in the news after a video appeared to show him grabbing a protester’s shirt collar at a rally in Arizona. In that video, a member of Trump’s security detail can also be seen reaching for the shirt  —   the campaign said it was that man who yanked the protester, not Lewandowski."
"Just over a year ago, a   coalition started a major offensive in Yemen in support of the country’s embattled President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The coalition airstrikes are aimed at pushing back the Shiite Houthi rebels, who swept down from northern Yemen in 2014 and took control of major portions of the country. But it’s not just two warring sides  —   southern separatists and powerful tribes also have a stake in the fight. And an   branch and a burgeoning ISIS affiliate have benefited from the violence. And Yemen’s civilians have been caught in the middle with disastrous consequences. ”The infrastructure, the health structure, the education structure and, in many ways, more importantly, the social structure have just been devastated,” former U. S ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine told NPR’s Michele Kelemen. UNICEF has released a new report detailing the impact of the war on the 11. 5 million children in the region’s poorest country. Hundreds of kids have been killed in the violence. And according to the report, many times more children died because of the   of the country’s health system. Here are some key numbers: At least 6: Number of children killed or maimed daily. 934: Number of children killed during the past year as a result of ”grave violations.” One thousand three hundred fifty six were injured. And UNICEF says 61 percent of these casualties were caused by   coalition airstrikes, Lisa Schlein reported to our Newscast unit. 10, 000: Approximate number of children under five years old who died over the past year ”from preventable diseases as a result of the decline in key health services such as immunization against vaccine preventable diseases and the treatment of diarrhoea and pneumonia.” 848: U. N.  cases of child recruitment for the fighting. 51: U. N.  cases of attacks on education facilities. At least 6 million: Children living in poverty, 320, 000: Children facing severe malnutrition, 10. 2 million: Children at risk of ”going without safe drinking water and sanitation.” More than 1. 8 million: Number of children ”forced out of school” because of the violence. 1, 600: Schools that are closed because of the fighting. As Michele reported, U. N. envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed is ”hoping for a nationwide   by April 10.” Here’s more from Michele: ”Since the Saudis entered the war and fighting intensified, more than 3, 000 civilians have been killed. The United Nations has an ambitious timeline to start winding down this conflict and begin political talks in  .” Ahmed was clear about the urgency: ”If we fail this time, this probably one of our last chance to get an end to this war,” Ahmed said. ”This is really our last chance.” Multiple previous ceasefire attempts have collapsed within minutes."
"Actress Patty Duke, who shot to fame as a teenager in the film The Miracle Worker, died Tuesday morning of sepsis from a ruptured intestine at age 69, her agent said. ”She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a friend, a mental health advocate and a cultural icon,” the agent’s statement said. ”She will be greatly missed.” When Duke was 12, she starred as Helen Keller in the Broadway play The Miracle Worker, NPR’s Mandalit del Barco reports. She reprised her role in the 1962 film version, winning an Academy Award for best supporting actress when she was 16  —   then the youngest person to have won an Oscar. In 1963, Duke took the starring roles in a popular sitcom called The Patty Duke Show, in which she played identical cousins. NPR reported that she was the youngest actress in television to have a   series built around her. The Los Angeles Times notes that ”after her successful stint as Patty and Cathy Lane on television, Duke tried to transition back to film with a controversial performance as Neely O’Hara in ’Valley of the Dolls,’ in which the actress portrayed an alcoholic,   star.” But Duke’s outward success belied her private struggles. ”The success . .. masked personal misery which included depressions that led to suicide attempts and a string of failed marriages,” NPR reported in 2000. Duke, whose real name was Anna Pearce, wrote an autobiography in 1987 titled Call Me Anna that addressed some of these struggles. Mandalit says Duke served as president of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1980s and adds: ”After she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she became an advocate for mental health issues.” In 2011, Duke made news by applying for Social Security benefits online and encouraging other seniors to do the same. She talked to NPR’s Renee Montagne about it at the time."
"On this week’s episode of All Songs Considered, Bob helps Robin Hilton out of his annual NCAA March Madness depression after his Jayhawks lose yet again. Bob plays a   track from Explosions In The Sky. Robin introduces us to new music from punk veterans Wire and a new song from Frankie Cosmos but they all seem to simply taunt his loss. We also hear a magnificent new song from Told Slant that features Felix Walworth, the drummer for Eskimeaux, Florist and Bellows. Then there’s more explosive sounds from Parquet Courts and a new song by rhythmic sound effect master Walker Lukens. Robin closes out the show with a song by The Glands, one of his favorite bands from Athens, Ga. in tribute to lead singer Ross Shapiro, whose death was announced late last week."
"What’s the first step of learning? Paying attention. Which may be hard for students to do when they’re constantly peeking at their phones. So, as the adage goes: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. One app that teachers are embracing is Snapchat. That’s the one where you send a video or picture, and then it disappears 10 seconds after you open it. For some teachers, it makes sense. Their students are already using it. Snapchat has around 100 million users worldwide and, according to one estimate, 77 percent of college students use it daily. And so, Michael Britt thought, why not go there? He’s an adjunct professor at Marist College in upstate New York. Since last fall, Britt has built Snapchat videos into his introductory psychology class. He takes ”snaps” of   examples of what he’s teaching in class, and posts it to the app. He does this right before exams, so his students will look at them when they’re studying. ”The best way to learn new material is to try to personalize it to your life,” Britt says. ”You know, come up with an example or attach it to some prior knowledge.” Plus, Britt has guaranteed an audience for his effort: About 90 percent of his students look at and use his Snapchats to study, he estimates. So, it makes it easy for Britt to push a little knowledge his students’ way when they’re not in class. Salma Metwally, a freshman in Britt’s class last semester, thinks that helped raise her grades. She recalls a specific snap of Britt’s when she was learning about the biology of the brain. The snap featured Britt’s niece in her ballerina tutu, standing on one leg. Britt used the snap as an example of how the cerebellum in the brain controls balance. ”When you’re sitting in an 8 a. m. lecture, it’s hard to listen to a professor,” she says. ”You may be listening but you’re not processing anything.” On Snapchat, she says, ”it’s easier to retain information there than it is in class.” Her classmate Samuel Nast agrees. It’s something that more teachers should be doing, he says. ”It takes effort not to be constantly checking your Instagram, Facebook Snapchat, whatever else you use,” Nast says, ”But if you can turn it all into a learnable moment it’s not just distracting, it’s also useful and productive.” Nast says Britt only allows students to look at Snapchat when they leave the classroom. And outside the classroom is where all Britt’s examples come from. Another of Britt’s snaps shows a video of a soccer game he attended. In it, he points out that the fans represent a concept called    —   an idea he had covered in class. You can hear the cheering in the background as Britt quickly explains the concept. With only 10 seconds though, his voice is clipped at the end. Britt has a   relationship with the brevity necessary for snap videos. While no one likes getting cut off, he doesn’t want these videos to turn into full lectures. Snapping students makes the information accessible and convenient, Britt says. ”It’s throwing it in your face repeatedly through the semester,” he says. ”Students need to learn to the extent that they’re not just learning or cramming the night before.” Although Britt found Snapchat appropriate for his college classroom, not all teachers agree. In September, the Wake County public schools in North Carolina banned students from accessing Snapchat on the school’s wifi network (but students can still use it on their phones if they have their own data plans.) The county found that Snapchat was not used instructionally and was not a classroom resource, says Lisa Luten, the district’s director of communication. She added that, if a teacher found a good educational use for it, Wake County would consider removing the block. But so far that hasn’t happened. And when teachers do use Snapchat, that doesn’t guarantee a success. In Denver, Iowa, Emily Huff has used Snapchat to teach high school Spanish for three years. Students can choose to take a picture of an item, label it in Snapchat and then take a video of themselves saying the word. It’s quick and easy for vocab, she says. But that’s part of the problem. It may be too easy. ”It’s easier, but not as helpful as other options because you can be completely finished with that word in 15 seconds,” she says. ”Vocab word retention isn’t as good with Snapchat as it is with other more rigorous options.”"
"Every morning for weeks, Meagen Limes made the same phone call: to a court in Washington, D. C. to see if that day was the day she’d be evicted from her home. Limes faced eviction because she couldn’t pay rent on her   apartment in Southeast Washington, where many of the city’s poorest residents live. It can sometimes take weeks before the marshals actually show up at your door, and Limes fully expected to be homeless any day. ”And it’s like really scary,” the    said. ”I try so hard not to cry. Like, I would be like, ’Oh my God, if they come today, what am I gonna do?’ ” I first met Limes outside the courtroom of the Landlord and Tenant Branch of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, where tenants go when they’ve been sued by their landlords for not paying rent. That day, a judge ordered a writ of restitution  —   directions for the marshals to begin eviction proceedings. Limes wore a black apron and purple shirt with the logo of a local grocery store where she works part time. When the judge asked why she owed more than $3, 300, Limes said she was struggling to make ends meet. ”And basically he was like, ’So the only reason why you’re behind on rent is because you can’t pay rent?’ And I was like, ’Yeah, that’s the only thing,’ and he was just looking at me like, he said, ’We’ll send out a writ,’ ” Limes recalls. ”And I was just like, ’Wow, like, is there any way I can get some help?’ ” Limes is among the hundreds of thousands of Americans who face eviction because they simply can’t afford their rent. One in four   families pays more than 70 percent of its income on rent, leaving little money for other bills and almost no room for an unexpected expense. According to the Harvard Research Center’s State of the Nation’s Housing report in 2015, rising rents and stagnating wages nationwide have contributed to a record number of   renters  —   a situation that is worsened by the shortage of affordable housing for   tenants. Living On A Tight Margin, Limes lives with her    son and    daughter. Her ailing father had been living with her, too, until he died recently. ”I also have my niece. She’s 18 and she’s been going from house to house,” Limes says. ”So I told her just come stay with me until she get on her feet.” Their apartment feels like someplace people are just passing through, with empty walls and plastic bins stuffed with clothes on the floor. Limes is pretty typical of those who end up in rent court: She’s a single mother, juggling things on her own. She says the father of one of her children is in prison and the other is a deadbeat dad. She lost a   job last October her new job is only 20 hours a week. At $10. 50 an hour, that’s not nearly enough to cover her $1, 275 monthly rent. ”They’re living on a very tight margin,” says Judge Judith Bartnoff, who presides over the D. C. court that includes the Landlord and Tenant Branch. ”And if something happens, if somebody gets sick, if somebody gets hurt, if somebody loses their job, then it throws the whole system off.” She thinks many of the thousands of tenants who come before the court each year can afford their rent at some point  —   but just barely. Eviction Means Losing More Than Just A Home, The hallway outside the landlord tenant courtroom is routinely packed with renters who are trying to work out deals with their landlords’ attorneys. Some offer payment plans so a tenant can catch up, but many renters just agree to move out. Or, like Limes, they resign themselves to eviction, which can make things worse. ”It really drives people deeper into a state of hardship,” says Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist who spent more than a year following   renters and landlords in Milwaukee that he details in his new book, Evicted. Desmond says evictions are not just a result of poverty but a cause. It makes lives more unstable. People don’t just lose their homes in evictions, he says. ”But you often lose your neighborhood and your school. Children often have to switch schools and miss long stretches,” he says. Families often end up in areas with more crime and   housing, Desmond adds. Limes says she is worried about that. She wants to move, but even studio apartments are $800 a month, which she can’t afford. ”It’s like I’m stuck here. I don’t know where else to go. I don’t want to go to the shelter. I’m trying to get help. But I can’t find help anywhere,” she says. She did get some temporary aid from the city a few years ago, but permanent housing assistance is almost impossible to find. Limes applied eight years ago for housing vouchers to help cover her rent. ”And nothing. I’m still what, 1, 000 something,” she says. That’s No. 1, 000 on the waiting list. In fact, the city recently shut down the list because more than 70, 000 families were on it. Only one in four people in the U. S. who qualify for public housing or vouchers actually gets them. No Homeless Shelter . .. For Now, Five weeks after my first visit with Limes, furniture was piled on the curb outside her apartment complex. There were mattresses, CDs, a   TV. Two other families had been evicted that day. But Limes was still waiting, worried that she and her kids would end up back in the city’s homeless shelter where they were in 2012. ”It was hard, and it’s like it was disgusting. And I don’t want to put my kids in that situation again,” she says. A week later, Limes got a reprieve  —   but only a temporary one: She received her earned income tax credit check from the IRS and was able to pay off what she owed. She still has to worry about next month’s rent. This story was produced for broadcast by Evie Stone."
"Imagine Sex and the City, but instead of New York City, the action takes place in Accra, Ghana. This remix is called An African City, a Ghanaian series that debuted on YouTube two years ago. The girlfriends are five fashionable African women raised abroad who have returned home to continue   careers, look for love and have sex. Lots of sex. The very first episode opens with passengers deplaning at Ghana’s Kotoka International Airport at dusk. Among them is the show’s main character, Nana Yaa, who’s returning to ”the continent” after growing up in New York since age 7. Dressed in a white tank top, dark denim jeans and a perfectly tailored black jacket perched atop her shoulders, Nana Yaa strides over to the customs agent. But before she has time to take her passport from her designer handbag, he tells her she’s in the wrong line. ”The line for the   is at the other side,” he says. She pushes her passport through the opening in the bulletproof glass with that ”I told you so” cock of the head and declares in broken Twi, a local language, ”I am Ghanaian.” Christabel   is a journalist and writer living in Los Angeles who identifies as a   Ghanaian. She has watched An African City and says that airport scene drew her right in. ”I cracked up because that’s exactly what happened to me,”   says. ”You identify as Ghanaian and someone who you know you look like is saying to you, ’No, no, no, you don’t belong in this line, you belong in that line.’ ”   explains that these kinds of assumptions, based on how you’re dressed or the language you speak, can immediately shatter the romantic illusion of coming back ”home.” The show’s creator, Nicole Amarteifio, who was born in Ghana and raised in New York, says she wrote An African City for women just like  : Africans who came of age abroad, in the U. S. or Britain. ”I felt that they couldn’t really relate to Nollywood,” says Amarteifio, referring to West Africa’s film capital, located in Nigeria. ”But there was a lot about Hollywood they could relate to, so that gap between Nollywood and Hollywood, I was trying to fill it for that audience.” Amarteifio says she hoped to tell a story about Africa that had nothing to do with war, poverty and famine. She wanted to capture the present: a moment when young professionals, like herself, are coming back to start businesses, work for NGOs or as executives for international companies. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis and a master’s from Georgetown, and came back to Ghana as a social media strategist for the World Bank. She says the way to tell that story  —   her story  —   came to her while lounging on her couch in Accra, watching an episode of Sex and the City. ”What would the show be like set in Accra?” she wondered. ”That would be the way to fight the single story,” she says. An African City’s ”Carrie Bradshaw” is Nana Yaa, a journalist with her own radio show. And, like Bradshaw, Nana Yaa acts as narrator, cluing us into her love drama and that of her best girlfriends: Ngozi, Makena, Sade and Zainab. These women and the men they date are Africa’s 1 percent. They’re highly educated and come from families with connections. Nana Yaa’s father is the minister of energy in Ghana, and Sade’s dad is the pastor of a megachurch in Nigeria. The ladies dress fabulously and are always perfectly coiffed and accessorized. ”They’re very privileged young women,” says   the   fan of the show. ”On that level, that’s not realistic, to me anyway. Maybe to someone else, but that’s not the life that I live.”   says the characters’s bourgie ways can irritate her at times, like when they talk down to waiters and manicurists, or blame their missing bras on ”the help.”   chatted about the show recently with her friend and fellow Ghanaian Essie   an entrepreneur living in Los Angeles.   says overall, the show’s good outweighs the bad. ”I like seeing Ghanaian women on the screen, I like the fact that our stories are being told, and I like the fact that I can relate to it in some aspect,” she says. ”I love the fact that they’re gorgeous,” says  . ”Yes!” replies  . ”I love the fact that they get to wear the most amazing clothes,” adds  . ”All the time!” returns   laughing. ”I’m literally, like, I want that lipstick, I want those earrings. I mean, even that  —   how often do we get to do that?” says  . And both women add: When do you ever get to see African women talk about sex so openly and see them enjoy it on screen? They told me that’s just not acceptable, broadly speaking, in the larger conservative  —   and predominantly Christian  —   Ghanaian culture, where you know better than to talk about such things publicly. Instead, Sade (the sexually liberated, Samantha   character in An African City) lets it all hang out. In one scene, the girls are lounging poolside, counseling their friend Makena on the best way to ask her boyfriend to use a condom. Sade whips out a stack to show she’s always prepared. ”Trojans, Durex, Fiesta, Rockdoms  —   pick your poison, baby!” she says to Makena, who asks if Sade really uses all of those condoms. ”Indeed,” Sade replies   . ”Take as many as you want, but leave the Rockdoms for me. I’m seeing Kwame later tonight.” Sade is played by actress Nana Mensah, whose parents immigrated from Ghana to America’s East Coast, where she was raised. Mensah says she loves it when other   women come up to her and say they identify with the show. And she adds that she’s heard positive responses to her character, Sade, from both contemporaries and women her mom’s age. ”Somebody even said, ’Can Sade do a spinoff?’ ” laughs Mensah. ”Yeah . .. that sounds like a lot of work.” A spinoff is not in An African City’s future. But the show that started as a free Web series on YouTube, backed by $75, 000 out of creator Amarteifio’s World   savings, is now a   venture. You can buy an online subscription for Season 2, and the show’s got licensing deals with networks in Africa. Mensah hopes that in future seasons her character, Sade, will stop obsessing over the married men she’s bedding and start using that degree from Harvard Business School. ”Get your own man, Sade, come on!” she says. ”I’m feeling a little bit ready to let that go. I’d like to focus on more of Sade’s work life, maybe?” Nicole Amarteifio says she’s not sure what’s next for her characters, but she knows one thing won’t be changing: She’s not going to take any of the steam out of the scenes."
"Donald Trump said women who undergo abortions should be punished if the procedure is made illegal. In an interview for a town hall meeting to air on MSNBC Wednesday night, Trump said ”there has to be some form of punishment” for women. While most Republican officeholders and candidates oppose abortion rights, few have publicly stated positions on whether there should be legal penalties for women who have abortions. Most believe it is the physicians who perform them who should be prosecuted. Then, in a statement issued by the campaign after his remarks were made public, Trump said: ”If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed  —   like Ronald Reagan, I am   with exceptions.” Still, Trump’s remarks managed to inflame both sides of the abortion issue. The abortion rights advocacy organization NARAL   America called Trump’s comments ”a new low.” The group’s president, Ilyse Hogue, said, ”Not only is this an unhinged position far from where the American people are, but it’s sure to endanger women were he to become president.” March For Life, a group that opposes abortion rights, said Trump’s statement was ”completely out of touch with the   movement and even more with women who have chosen such a sad thing as abortion.” Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said, ”No   would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. This is against the very nature of what we are about.” The presidential campaigns were also quick to criticize Trump. Ted Cruz tweeted: And Cruz’s campaign chairman, Chad Sweet, said on CNN that Cruz ”shares the views of the   movement, which for years has focused on punishing those who perform the abortions, not the women who get them.” John Kasich responded that he would ”absolutely not” agree with punishing women for having an abortion. ”It’s a difficult enough situation, to try to punish somebody.” In tweets, Democrat Hillary Clinton called Trump’s comment ”horrific and telling,” while Bernie Sanders called it ”shameful.”"
"If someone tells you the same thing five times, you probably should believe he means it. Back in August, Donald Trump and all the other Republican candidates were given the chance to say they would pledge support to whomever the Republican nominee would be  —   and not wage an independent bid for the presidency if he or she didn’t win. Trump raised his hand, the only one on stage to do so, to say he would not make that pledge. He was pressed and pushed, the question was rephrased, the audience grumbled, and five times, within a span of a minute and a half, he refused to change his mind. ”I fully understand,” Trump said then of the implications of his decision. Everything seemed to change a month later. After meeting with the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, Trump emerged at his gilded Trump Tower holding up a     pledge ”totally pledging” to support the GOP nominee ”regardless of who it is.” On Tuesday night, Trump changed his mind again. ”No, I don’t anymore,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper when asked if he would continue to support whoever the GOP nominee is. ”We’ll see who it is,” Trump added. ”I have been treated very unfairly.” He pointed to the ”RNC” and the ”Republican Party establishment.” It was just 27 days ago that all of the Republican candidates were pledging to support the eventual nominee, even if it was Trump. Now, none of them is pledging to support anyone. After bitterness with Trump, stemming from personal attacks about their wives, Ted Cruz also backed away from the pledge Tuesday night. So did John Kasich, who has been moving that direction over the past few weeks after the violent protests at a Trump rally in Chicago  —   and Trump’s response to them. Two words are key here: ”fairness” and ”leverage.” Trump, as he has been saying all along, has threatened to bolt if he’s not treated ”fairly.” Now, he believes he hasn’t been because of the possibility of a brokered convention and delegate allocation rules. (We get into more on why below.) In that original   debate, Trump said, ”I am discussing it with everybody, but I’m, you know, talking about a lot of leverage.” Threatening to run third party is the biggest piece of leverage Trump has. Republicans believe an independent Trump bid would ensure a Hillary Clinton presidency, because Trump, like George Wallace in 1968, could win lots of states in the South outside of the party structure. In today’s electoral map, that would imperil the GOP nominee. Why did Trump change his mind? And what about fairness? With the finish line in sight, Trump also sees a great big hurdle being erected. There’s an active   or #NeverTrump, effort that is determined to try to keep Trump below the 1, 237 delegates needed to become the GOP nominee. If they can do that, they would try to nominate someone else on the second ballot at the Republican National Convention this summer. It’s not clear it would work, but Trump doesn’t like what he sees and thinks it’s not fair. It’s as simple as this in his view: He’s got the most votes, so he should be the nominee. That’s not how it works. The rules of the game are  —   and have been since the process left the   rooms  —   whoever has a majority of delegates will be the nominee. At a debate March 10, Trump called 1, 237 a ”very random number.” It’s not. It’s 50 percent, plus one, of the total number of voting delegates to the Republican National Convention this summer  —   2, 472. Trump this week also threatened to sue over not getting the most delegates out of Louisiana even though he won the most votes in the primary. Again, that’s not inherent unfairness, that’s a lack of understanding about how the process works and having an    organization. It may seem unfair, but those are the rules these candidates sign up for. Each state does things differently, and that’s why it’s so hard and so expensive to win, because you need to have a team in place that understands the rules in each state. These aren’t new or unfair rules created for Trump. But for someone who’s an outsider, who doesn’t like the system and is fueled by support from people who also don’t thoroughly understand, like or accept the system, he thinks they’re unfair. Does it matter whom Trump supports? The point here is that Trump has a strong and devoted following among a significant chunk of GOP primary voters. This is Trump’s biggest piece of leverage. Remember last year when Trump was saying Mexicans were ”rapists,” and RNC officials started to delicately criticize him, saying on TV that it wasn’t the tone the party needed? Trump thought that was unfair, and he started to float the idea of running as a   candidate. Leverage. The RNC backed off. Now, as Trump sees this effort by Washington insiders take real shape to stop him, and he continues to hear rumblings that even if he has the most votes, he might not be the nominee, Trump is using what he’s got in hopes they back off again. So, it’s not really about Trump supporting anyone, it’s about him not running third party in the fall, and hobbling the party’s chances at the White House. Some party loyalists, though, are willing to take that chance, because they believe Trump as the   of their party would be even worse. (By the way, a Trump   bid may prove more complicated than Trump thinks because of complex,    ballot access rules, but if you’re someone who doesn’t know or care about the rules, who knows? He could run a   campaign  —   and everyone knows how to spell ”Trump. ”) Does this make Trump seem indecisive, or is he making the most convenient decision at the time, like all politicians? It’s certainly a risk for Trump to look like he’s inconsistent. But one man’s inconsistent, indecisive or even calculating is another man’s unpredictable, powerful and smart. In other words, for people who didn’t like him, they’ll continue to think the worst. And for his supporters, they’ll think more power to him, because they’re there for him  —   not for the Republican Party."
"Scientists have discovered a   305    arachnid that is ”almost a spider” in France. In a new journal article, they say the fossil sheds some light on the origins of ”true” spiders. The main point of distinction: This newly discovered arachnid very likely could produce silk but lacked the spinnerets used by true spiders to, well, spin it, the scientists say. The researchers say it belongs to a ”sister group” to the   spiders. The species, which they described in a new article in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is named Idmonarachne brasieri. That’s after Idmon, the father of Arachne in   mythology. Appropriately, Arachne was a master weaver who was transformed into a spider. The paper says Idmonarachne ”does not fit comfortably into the established orders.” National Geographic reports that it ”acts as a bridge between early   creatures brewing up blobs of silk and the skilled weavers that we see today.” Here’s more from National Geographic on the comparatively clumsy beginnings of spiderly silk production: ”While delicately constructed webs seem synonymous with spiders, we know from the fossil record that the ability to secrete silk came before the ability to carefully control it. Spider relatives called uraraneids, which lived from 385 million years ago through the time of Idmonarachne, could produce silk but could not build webs.” University of Manchester’s Russell Garwood, who was one of the article’s authors, told the BBC, ”This fossil is the most closely related thing we have to a spider that isn’t a spider.” The specimen was found in a deposit in    in France and then included in what the article’s   described as a ”box of fossils” borrowed by the University of Kansas, as the BBC reported. It had been sitting there for decades  —   the BBC says the box came from Paris’ Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in the 1980s. The scientists used laboratory and synchrotron scans of the fossil to produce digital   imagery of Idmonarachne. The arachnid predated the first appearance of the dinosaurs by some 80 million years. As the BBC reports, ”The 1. 5 cm creature lived alongside the oldest known ancestors of modern spiders but its lineage is now extinct.” There was a rich landscape of arachnids in the Late Carboniferous period  —   according to the journal article, ”the period may have been a time of generally higher arachnid diversity than today.”"
"Body language can be a dead giveaway of where you’re from. People can tell whether you’re from Australia or the U. K. by the way you smile. They can tell whether you’re from China or Egypt by the way you count using your fingers. And they know whether you’re American or German depending on how you express sympathy. But when it comes to expressing negative emotions, our body language might be much more universal than we realize. The proof is in a single facial expression that crosses over cultures and languages around the world: the ”not face.” Researchers at Ohio State University coined the term after analyzing video recordings of conversations with 158 native speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language. The team, led by cognitive scientist Aleix Martinez, homed in on negative statements  —   like ”that’s not a good idea” or ”I don’t like that”  —   and used computer algorithms to map the corresponding facial movements. A pattern emerged across all study subjects, in every language: negative sentiments were accompanied by a furrowed brow, pressed lips and raised chin. In other words, the ”not face.” The ”not face” is a combination of the facial expressions we use to show disgust, anger and contempt. ”Language didn’t just happen instantly from nothingness,” says Martinez. ”It had to come from somewhere. This facial expression has a grammatical function. It’s a nonverbal equivalent of the word ’not.’ ” ”This gives us an explanation of how language might have evolved through facial expressions, which is one of the big unknowns in science,” he adds. Over time, the ”not face” probably evolved from a basic, reflexive facial expression to a grammatical marker with a specific meaning. Before we learned to say the word ”not,” we simply made the face. Is there a universal ”yes face”? ”Maybe,” says Martinez, but a ”not face” is more important. ”If you do something right and someone tells you you did it right, that has some social value, but if you are doing something that’s about to kill you, you really need to know, right away,” he says. Hence the dramatic  —   and instantly recognizable  —   facial expression. The limited sample of the Ohio State study didn’t include African languages. Martinez and his team are hoping to remedy that in the next phase of their study, which will include analyzing thousands of hours of YouTube videos. ”We are preparing to do a big data analysis, and once we have this we’ll be able to not only identify the ’not face’ in more cultures but hopefully identify other facial expressions that convey grammar,” he says. In our hyperconnected world, it’s easy to assume that the ”not face” is simply a cultural tic that has spread socially through globalization and technology. But Martinez says, in this ”chicken or the egg” scenario, the facial expression came long before Justin Bieber videos and Apple FaceTime. ”This is an expression that everyone produces completely spontaneously,” he says. ”You don’t have to make an effort to make this face. I would be extremely surprised if this was a learned behavior.” This study only looked at speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language. If you’re a native speaker of a different language, tweet a photo of yourself making the ”not face” to @NPRGoatsandSoda with the hashtag #NPRNotFace. Be sure to tell us where you’re from and what language you speak. We’ll feature a few on our Tumblr page next week."
"Every election, there’s that chorus of people who insist they are moving to Canada if candidate    wins. Everyone knows these people. They’re tweeting and Googling about it as you read this. One Nova Scotia island is even specifically appealing to the   crowd. And, yeah, some people actually follow through with it. The Guardian dug up one such couple earlier this year. Another immigration lawyer tells NPR that he has definitely seen this happen on a wider scale. ”I did a lot of American immigration in the late 1990s, 2000s, [and] there was a huge spike in   individuals moving north,” said David Aujla, a   immigration lawyer. But is there ever a mass movement? Kind of. Maybe. It depends on what you mean by ”mass,” really. We know. It’s a crappy answer. But it’s a tough question to answer because the Canadian government has data on how many people move there, but not on why they move. When asked the ”I’m moving after this election” question, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada sent NPR data on Americans who gain permanent residency status in Canada (gaining permanent residency is a necessary step toward gaining Canadian citizenship). Here’s what it shows: So there’s a spike in the 2000s, when the total number of people getting permanent residency status each year roughly doubled, to nearly 10, 200 new permanent residents in 2008. Is this evidence that politics drove emigration to Canada? Aujla thinks so. ”Bush was elected [in] November 2000 and was president for eight years. If you were a disgruntled Democrat and applied for immigration to Canada at the beginning of 2001, it would take about 18 months to 30 months to finalize the permanent resident application,” he wrote in an email. He reads that as a spike because of Bush’s election, followed by a downturn that he attributes to both President Obama’s election and the economic crisis. It’s true, of course, that plenty of conservative Americans were upset enough to want to leave when Obama was elected. But Obama didn’t inspire this kind of migration, Aujla said, because Canada is (broadly speaking) more liberal than the U. S. ”A lot of people call to vent. I remember even getting a call from this fellow in Texas as soon as Obama got elected,” Aujla said. ”And suddenly I’m thinking to myself, ’Well, why are you calling Canada?’ ” But seriously. Why did they move? The problem is that it’s hard to know for sure. Changing countries is a major, complicated decision, and a lot of factors can play into it. Another lawyer said he thinks economics  —   and not politics  —   likely explains a lot of this movement. ”I think there is probably a more direct correlation to the strength of the U. S. economy than to presidents,” said Joel Guberman, a   immigration lawyer, in an email to NPR. He said the statistics tell him a different story. ”It appears that the high is  . The worst years for the U. S. are the highest exits, while very prosperous years are lower.” Guberman doesn’t buy that politics is the primary force driving U. S. movement to Canada. Mostly, he says, the threats to move to Canada never become more than that: just threats. ”Did we get an increase in phone calls? Sure. Does real activity take place? Not really. It’s a handful,” he said. ”It causes a stir and that vocabulary starts being used, but does it actually materialize? Not really.” He has practiced immigration law for more than 30 years, and his firm currently has 17 lawyers on hand, so he has handled a lot of clients trying to move into the country. How many Americans has he helped to gain residency in Canada? ”I can count them on one hand,” he said. ”Oh, it’s minuscule.” For context, the figures in that above graph aren’t huge numbers  —   8, 000 or 9, 000 new Canadian permanent residents from the U. S. out of the roughly 260, 000 total people getting permanent residency in Canada each year, aren’t that many. Not to mention 8, 000 or 9, 000 out of nearly 320 million total Americans. And a few thousand is certainly far fewer than however many people are driving those spikes in Google searches. Also, it would probably be a little, um, American of us to assume that our politics are the only things driving people over the border. Aujla, for example, said that a lot of Americans moved to Canada in the 1990s and early 2000s not only because of politics but because of exchange rates. A strong dollar helped convince people they could afford life in Canada. In addition, he said, Canadian politics plays a role in determining how many people move into the country. Tighter immigration rules in the past few years, under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative government, may have cut down on the number of people moving to Canada after around 2012, Aujla says. One other important point: Politics is only one factor in why a lot of people move to Canada. Politics ”was a very minor consideration” for Jim Gauer, a    architect and writer, who moved to Canada in 2004. That was right in that prime,   emigration wave  —   but he said the reasons behind moving to Canada weren’t very political. Rather, he was tired of New York City’s high cost of living. He had recently been to Victoria, in British Columbia, on vacation and had always thought it was a nice city. But he added that today’s politics have cemented that his decision was the right one. ”Now that I’m here, the gong show that passes for presidential campaigns south of the border reminds me that politics have a lot to do with my desire to stay here.” Americans increasingly renounce their citizenship,   while the number of Americans fleeing to Canada may not be skyrocketing right now, the number of Americans who give up their U. S. citizenship each year sure has. But, again, it’s probably not politics rather, they just might be fed up with the IRS. Tax attorneys Andrew Mitchel and Ryan Dunn have been compiling expatriation data at International Tax Blog, and the numbers show that more than 4, 200 Americans expatriated (that is, ”renounced their U. S. citizenship or terminated their   U. S. residency”) last year. That’s 10 times higher than in the late 1990s. To be clear, these aren’t people running away from the U. S. lots of them already live overseas but are only now choosing not to be U. S. citizens. As with the Canadian permanent residency data, there are no official data on exactly why people are doing this. For their part, Mitchel and Dunn have said they doubt that it’s politics or tax rates themselves. Instead, Mitchel says it’s about U. S. tax reporting rules. ”The rules are really complicated, and it costs them a lot to have their tax returns prepared,” he said. While some Americans abroad may be actively avoiding paying their taxes in the U. S. he says that plenty of others simply don’t know what the rules are. And when they do finally discover what they have to pay and what the rules are on reporting their taxes, they decide to renounce their citizenship. He credits the recent spike in expatriation, then, in part to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, a 2010 act that ramped up enforcement of tax laws and, in his word, ”flushed people out of the bushes.” So lots of people might say that they’re leaving the country if (pick one)      is elected president. But lots of people will give up their citizenship for entirely different reasons. And of those who do actually say they want to leave, few will probably end up going to Canada."
"Last November, a couple from Washington, D. C. took a weeklong vacation. They visited Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. And got bitten by plenty of mosquitoes. Two days after they returned home, the woman  —   who was pregnant  —   fell ill. She had muscle pain, a fever and a rash. ”At first she didn’t think much about it,” says   Rita Driggers, who saw the woman at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. ”But then all the news started coming out about Zika, so the woman went and got tested.” The test came back positive. And then the big question became: Was her baby going to be OK? At first, everything looked good on a standard ultrasound, Driggers says. Even during the 20th week of the pregnancy, the fetus didn’t have microcephaly or calcifications in the brain  —   two telltale signs of a Zika infection. But when doctors looked more closely at the ultrasound and ran MRI on the fetus, the good news quickly faded. ”There were severe abnormalities within the brain,” Driggers says. ”The width of the brain was very, very thin. . .. Some structures were completely missing.” The woman decided to terminate the pregnancy. And she allowed Driggers and her colleagues to study the baby. The case  —   published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine  —   offers insights into how Zika infects a fetus and suggests ways women may be able to find out earlier whether babies will have birth defects. First, the virus lingered in the patient’s blood for months after she got sick.  Usually a person’s immune system clears out Zika in a week or so. But in this case, Driggers thinks the virus was hiding out inside the fetus  —   and repeatedly infecting the mother. ”So if you’re seeing the virus in the mom’s blood more than a week after symptoms,” Driggers says, ”then perhaps what’s going on is that the baby is infected with Zika.” Second, looking only for microcephaly isn’t enough. Right now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends doctors measure the size of the fetus’s head with an ultrasound near the 20th week of the pregnancy to check for   problems. But with this new case, doctors could see brain abnormalities by ultrasound and MRI before there were signs of microcephaly. ”This is very alarming,” says Dr. Carla Janzen, a   medicine specialist at UCLA, who wasn’t involved in the study. ”If we see more cases like this, the [CDC’s] guidelines will probably have to change.”"
"Just how, exactly, could we wipe out a species of mosquito? That’s the question some of our readers wanted to know after reading our story that pondered the fate of the mosquito that carries the Zika virus, the Aedes aegypti. Would attempting to eliminate them be a good thing, or would it somehow backfire the ways things often do when humans meddle with nature? Most scientists we interviewed, as it turns out, would be all right with saying goodbye to the species. Aedes aegypti carries other deadly diseases harmful to humans, like yellow fever and dengue. Animals don’t depend on this species as a major food source, and the critters don’t pollinate plants. And anyway, they’re an invasive species, infiltrating our cities, where they thrive. So we asked experts: Do we have the means to get rid of a species of mosquito? And if they were in charge, how would they do it? Here’s what they proposed. In the past, there have been successful campaigns to eliminate   mosquitoes from small regions. But even on a tiny scale, an incredible amount of political cooperation and strategic coordination was needed. Andrew Read, a biologist and entomologist who specializes in the ecology and evolutionary genetics of infectious disease at Pennsylvania State University, shares an example from a port town in northeastern Brazil. In the   the government organized an effort to fight malaria by eradicating Anopheles gambie from an area about the size of West Virginia. Not only was the government united in its goals, but it made sure to set up a careful plan to track progress. An official was in charge of a team that checked another team that checked the insecticide sprayers, says Read. They ended up spraying insecticide into a body of water the size of Switzerland. To take on Aedes aegypti in the six continents where it lives, we’d need a global mosquito czar. ”Dictatorships are great things if you want to get public health done,” says Read. ”These days, people in Florida have lots of paranoia about anyone coming on to their property to control mosquitoes. But in the old days, people just rolled over and did whatever the government told them.” So let’s say that in a remarkable display of unity, all member nations of the U. N. agree to elect a mosquito czar and abide by the czar’s decrees. What comes next? When it comes to reducing the diseases spread by mosquitoes, traditional control techniques can work wonders: spraying pesticides, protective clothing, bed nets and window screens, getting rid of standing water where mosquitoes tend to lay their eggs. Because of efforts like these, in 15 years annual malaria cases have fallen by 37 percent to 214 million cases last year. But mosquitoes are becoming increasingly resistant to insecticides in bed nets and bug sprays, and some insecticides can harm other species in the ecosystem. And in developing countries, it can be hard to find the resources and staff to clean up mosquito breeding grounds and to detect resistance. On top of it all, in today’s world, mosquitoes can travel just as easily as humans do. Some mosquito eggs can survive up to six months without water  —   that’s the case with Aedes aegypti. So all it takes is eggs in a plane, train or automobile to get mosquitoes from one region to another. Read suggests that the best bet for getting rid of a species it to invest in   solutions, all of which require using mutant versions of the mosquito itself. ”These have more of a potential to lead to extinction,” he says. We could try the   technique, which releases bioengineered mosquitoes that don’t produce viable offspring into the wild and is already being tested in Brazil. Or the Wolbachia approach, which infects mosquitoes with a bacteria that can kill their offspring or reduce their ability to pass on viruses like dengue, he says. Or we could wait around a few years for a new technology called   systems  —   the technique of altering the genes of wild mosquitoes. Sometimes that involves turning off genes that foster egg production in female mosquitoes, so they lay no eggs. And no eggs will eventually mean no population. Other genetic alterations stop the mosquito from being able to transmit disease by introducing genes that cause resistance to the pathogen. A mosquito carrying Zika, for example, would be blocked from passing the disease on. Read thinks   systems are promising: ”If you could get [  systems] to run, once you’ve let it go, it should spread and kill everything.” A lot of money. To take any one of these techniques and scale it up for a worldwide campaign, Read estimates a $  $500 million pricetag. That’s a lot more than the $10 million or so that each of these techniques is currently working with. On the other hand, it’s a relative bargain. To develop a vaccine for just one disease can cost up to $1 billion. And Aedes aegypti carries a handful of diseases like Zika, chikungunya, dengue and yellow fever. It would be a good investment. ”Mosquito control stops people getting infected in the first place,” Read says. ”Drugs just end up given to those who are already sick.” So let’s say the world’s billionaires foot the bill. Now what? Once this funding kicks in, Read imagines it would take about five to 10 years to plunge into action. That’s how long it would take to get the technology as perfect as possible and to fast track safety, regulatory and environmental approvals from all the world’s governments, assuming our czar wants to do things the right way. So we’re now in the year 2026, give or take. Millions of genetically modified and   mosquitoes have been bred by scientists and tech companies. Now, how do we get them out into the world? The   approach would work: load up thousands of trucks with containers filled with millions of mosquitoes and have those trucks drive through infested areas. Release mosquitoes. And hope for the best. For the Wolbachia and   mosquitoes, you’d just need to release them once. But the   mosquitoes may need to be released into the wild again and again, for as long as it takes, until the number of humans infected by   mosquitoes is under control. Assuming everything goes to plan, Read says we could potentially eradicate a species from a region within a year, citing one example from Australia. In October 2014, the village of Townsville used the Wolbachia approach to fight dengue by releasing hundreds of thousands of   mosquitoes into the wild. The strain of Wolbachia that was used put a damper on the mosquitoes’ ability to pass on diseases. In August 2015, the scientists were proud to share that for the first time in 15 years, the town didn’t have any new outbreaks of dengue  —   until last month. The disease returned locally after a mosquito transmitted it from a person who came back to the area from Papua New Guinea with dengue. So Townsville holds a valuable lesson for our mosquito czar: If you want to get rid of the population for good, you should make sure to target every habitat. Even if we got through Steps 1 to 4, scientists aren’t sure of the extent to which any of these interventions could actually work. A lot of challenges remain. The three approaches  —   Wolbachia, gene drive and sterile males  —   will depend on making sure that the mutant mosquitoes mate with all the wild ones. And that means hunting down and releasing GM mosquitoes in    places where wild Aedes aegypti populations live, like deep inside the rain forest or high up a mountain range. And not a major worry for the scientists, but something to think about: There’s a small chance the   mosquitoes may not be able to make the distinction between species, and could potentially   with other harmless,    mosquitoes in the ecosystem and kill them. Depending on the species of mosquito affected, there could be unintended consequences in the food chain. We asked Jorge Rey, a professor at the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, about the likelihood of a ”Say Farewell To Aedes Aegypti Forever” campaign in the near future. He’s skeptical. ”I wouldn’t count on it right now,” he says. ”I think we’d have a hard enough time eliminating some of the mosquitoes, much less of all of them.” Others are more hopeful. ”In theory, in the lab and in the field, it does look like GM mosquitoes would lead to a pretty big crash in the population,” says David Magnus, director of Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics. ”It may not lead to extinction, but at least a fairly big crash.” And if that were to happen, the mosquito czar would no doubt win the Nobel Prize for insect extermination."
"Former R. E. M. frontman Michael Stipe made a rare public appearance last night to perform a strangely airy version of David Bowie’s ”The Man Who Sold The World” on The Tonight Show. The performance comes ahead of two David Bowie tribute concerts taking place in New York City later this week, one at Carnegie Hall on Thursday, March 31 and one at Radio City Music Hall on Friday. Stipe is among the artists slated to perform both nights. For his Tonight Show appearance, Stipe is joined onstage only by a pianist. Stipe’s spare, delicately delivered version sounds almost orchestral at times but is delivered more like a quiet eulogy. It’s sometimes chilling, but extremely moving."
"Ben Guerdane is a dusty town in Tunisia’s south, just 20 miles from the border with Libya, a roiling nation of militias and guns galore. It’s a smuggling town, and it depends on the nearly   border with Libya to survive. In more normal times, it’s everyday products that get smuggled, but these days something more nefarious is coming across that border  —   weapons and militants. The spillover from the conflict in Libya is setting off alarm bells in Tunisia, threatening a fragile democracy in the one place that emerged from the 2011 Arab revolts as a bright spot. Meanwhile, Libya is a nation in chaos with three battling governments, a plethora of militias and a security vacuum being filled by a growing presence of the Islamic State extremist group on Tunisia’s border. And even more ominously, many of those Islamic State fighters now in Libya are actually from Tunisia. On March 7, Islamic State fighters tried to seize Ben Guerdane and claim it for ISIS. If the extremists had succeeded, it would have given the group free movement between Tunisia and Libya. But the Tunisian security forces prevailed in bloody fighting that left more than 50 dead. On Ben Guerdane’s main street, cafe owner Omar Rabshi recounts how it began with gunfire at 5 a. m. ”I came here to my cafe and I found lots of armed people here,” he says. ”About five who were checking people and making people show ID, one had the RPG and the others carried Kalashnikovs.” The gunmen were in their 20s, were unmasked and spoke with Tunisian accents. They patted people down. If they were civilians, the gunmen let them go. If they were from the Tunisian security forces, the gunmen killed them. Then they set up checkpoints at each end of the road and made a declaration. ”We are the Islamic State and tomorrow we will govern you,” Rabshi recalls them saying. All along the street are the signs of the recent battle. Bullets scarred the building next to Rabshi’s cafe, where ISIS shot a customs agent. Up the road, the police station is pocked with evidence of the shootout between officers and ISIS fighters. And in the main square, a banner hangs, emblazoned with pictures of the town’s dead. Police say it was a multipronged attack by some 70 ISIS men. And the attackers were mostly Tunisians who had trained with ISIS across the border in Libya, many from this very town. The fighters came with a truck full of weapons to hand out to sympathetic townspeople. Some swarmed through farms to hit the army barracks on the west side of town others hit the police station in the town center and another group went to the home of the head of the   brigade, Abdul Atti   to assassinate him. His cousin Jilan Abdul Kabir shows me how it happened, walking me through the low cinder block walls erected on the farm and up the unpaved driveway. ”We heard gunfire,” he says. ”We saw a truck with masked gunmen drive by and then return.” So Abdul Kabir and his cousin ran. The attackers trapped   against a wall in the yard. All he had was a pistol filled with eight bullets. Abdul Kabir jumped over a wall to escape. He heard his cousin say, ”I lived as a man and I will die as a man.” Then came the gunfire. ”I heard them yelling, ’God is great,’” Abdul Kabir says. That’s when he knew his cousin was gone. He later found his cousin’s body on a mound of dirt against the wall where he had been cornered. Inside  ’s home, his brother Omar blames the Tunisian justice system. ”My brother arrested so many of these terrorists,” he says. ”But the courts let them go just because the police use some violence to get the truth from these criminals. The court says, ’Well you beat them, so I will set them free.’ It’s incredible.” That kind of sentiment is growing in Tunisia, where more people are willing to throw out civil liberties, a key promise of the new democracy, in favor of tough security measure that may bring stability. After three major attacks last year, the country is under a state of emergency. But in Ben Guerdane, ISIS made a fatal miscalculation. The extremists thought it was ripe for rebellion. Instead, in a matter of hours the militants had lost. Back at the cafe, Rabshi explains why ISIS thought it could take Ben Guerdane. ”They thought because Ben Guerdane is a city on the borders, because there is no development, there are no factories, it’s been oppressed for 50 years. It’s living under marginalization. No one takes care of it,” he said. But people in Ben Guerdane, he says, don’t take kindly to any outside occupiers. And ISIS was turned back  —   at least this time. More attacks are expected. Hundreds of Tunisians are training with ISIS in Libya. And that’s in part because there is dissatisfaction across Tunisia. Many feel the promises of social justice and economic prosperity have not materialized after Tunisia’s dictatorship was ousted in 2011. ISIS promises power, money and paradise in the afterlife. Meanwhile, Tunisia is building a wall that’s designed to stem the flow of fighters and weapons. It’s a sand berm that stretches for more than 100 miles and is reinforced with water trenches and electronic surveillance. The U. S. and Germany are helping Tunisia. At the central police station in Ben Guerdane, police Lt. Salah Mansouri acknowledges the growing danger. ”The security of Libya is the security of Tunisia,” he says. ”And the security of Tunisia is the security of Libya.”"
"The FDA has updated the labeling for the   drug Mifeprex, allowing it to be taken at a lower dose and with fewer visits to the doctor’s office. The change brings the drug’s label into alignment with common medical practice in 47 states  —   and will make the drug more accessible to women in three states, where lawmakers had required doctors to prescribe the drug according to the original label. Mifeprex is the brand name for mifepristone, also known as  . (It’s not related to the emergency contraceptive known as the   pill, or Plan B.) It’s used to medically induce abortions, in a   process. First, women take mifepristone two days later, they take misoprostol. The original FDA label instructed providers to administer both doses in the office and have a   visit in the office as well. As NPR has previously reported, since the abortion drug was approved in 2000, doctors determined it was effective at lower doses and could be used later into a pregnancy  —   up to 70 days after a woman’s latest period, instead of 49 days. They also found that three office visits weren’t necessary. Here’s Jennifer Ludden reporting last year: ”Lisa Perriera, a Cleveland obstetrician, says researchers found that women can actually take just a third of the dosage and at up through nine weeks’ gestation. They also deemed it safe for women to take the second drug on their own, without making another trip to a doctor. ” ’We made it better by making it less costly, by making it easier to use for women,’ says Perriera. ’We know it’s just as effective, probably actually safer with fewer side effects.’ ” The lower dose, fewer trips and later deadline have been standard practice for administering the drugs for years now, according to Elizabeth Nash, a policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute. But three states  —   Ohio, Texas and North Dakota  —   had passed laws saying doctors must follow the FDA label, which was written based on early trials of the drug and didn’t reflect the changes in medical practice over the past 15 years. That means in those three states, the FDA’s new label will make the   drug easier to get. The National Right to Life Committee issued a statement saying the new protocol ”serves only the interests of the abortion industry” by reducing the time and resources required to administer the drug to women. ”The updated label is more aligned with   medicine and has the potential to expand abortion access for Ohio women,” Chrisse France, executive director of the Preterm clinic in Ohio, said in a statement. ”We are pleased to announce that as of today we will be offering medication abortion to more women, with fewer required visits.” But Nash notes that while the new label means women across the country can now access the drug at the same dose and time frame, that might change, again. Arizona’s Legislature passed a bill earlier this month that would hold doctors in the state to the restrictions from the 2000 label  —   no matter what the current FDA guidelines are. It’s sitting on the governor’s desk."
"In the 1980s and ’90s, many doctors told women going through menopause that they should take female hormones  —   estrogen and progestin  —   to alleviate symptoms like hot flashes and sleep problems. The hormone therapy was thought to have other benefits, too, like preventing broken bones, colon cancer and heart attacks. But in 2002, a bombshell hit. The Women’s Health Initiative, a   health study with thousands of participants, showed that not only did the hormone therapy not ease those serious health problems but likely did some harm  —   putting women at a higher risk of heart disease, stroke and breast cancer. ”It’s scary,” says Dr. Howard Hodis, a cardiologist and professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California. ”No woman wants breast cancer. No human wants cancer.” After that, the pendulum swung away from using hormone therapy for anything more than alleviating menopausal symptoms in the short term. And as millions of women stopped taking hormone replacement therapy, the breast cancer rate in the U. S. dropped. Still, ever since, researchers like Hodis have wondered whether a short stint on the hormones could help protect some women’s hearts, especially if they started the treatment early enough. So he and his colleagues launched a study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, involving more than 600 healthy, postmenopausal women who had no evidence of heart disease. Unlike in past studies, these researchers directly tested the effect of starting hormone therapy within the first six years after menopause, versus the effect of starting 10 years or more after menopause. Within each group, the women were randomly assigned either to take daily estradiol pills or to take   placebo pills. (Also, except for women who had undergone a hysterectomy, all women in the estradiol branch of the study were asked to use a progesterone vaginal gel to protect them from uterine cancer.) The women stayed on their treatments for five years, and the scientists checked in twice a year to measure with ultrasound how much the walls of the women’s coronary arteries had thickened. That sort of thickening is one predictor of heart disease and stroke. The results? Women who started hormones within six years of menopause had artery walls that thickened a little more slowly than the women on the placebo, whereas the extra estrogen did not seem to slow thickening in the group that started the hormone therapy later. ”That’s biologically a really interesting observation because it suggests that beneficial effects of estrogen on atherosclerosis may depend on timing,” says Dr. Caren Solomon, a women’s health specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The findings dovetail with a 2012 study of 1, 000 Danish women, which found that those who received about 10 years of hormone therapy (starting within a year of menopause) had a lower risk of premature death, heart failure and heart attack and did not experience a higher risk of cancer, blood clots or stroke. And both of these clinical studies square with recent research in mice and rats suggesting that estrogen can help keep blood vessels healthy, but only if there are receptors in the vessel lining to take it up. As female rodents age  —   or are deprived of estrogen  —   those receptors stop working. Something similar could be happening in women, Hodis says. The hypothesis he and others are continuing to test is that hormone therapy might prevent the women’s arteries from getting clogged  —   like keeping pipes from getting rusty, he says. ”If you have clean vessels, let’s say, and you start hormone therapy, you can slow down and somewhat prevent the accumulation of rust  —   the hardening of the arteries,” says Hodis. ”But if you start [with] somebody who’s already got rusty pipes and put them on therapy, it doesn’t do much.” The next step, he says, is to figure out what’s actually changing inside women’s blood vessels as circulating estrogen plummets. But at this point, says Solomon, the clinical implications of Hodis’ study are unclear. For one thing, artery thickness is just one of many, imperfect ways to predict who will have a heart attack or stroke, Solomon points out in an editorial accompanying the study. Other factors contribute, too, and a study would need to be a lot bigger and follow women for a lot longer to serve as the basis of practical advice to patients. So, she says, the current recommendations of physician groups like the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists still hold  —   to use hormone treatments only in the short term, and only to manage the symptoms of menopause. Not as a method of preventing heart disease."
"Terrell Walker lives in a   apartment in Southeast Washington, D. C. with her    and    daughters. Walker stopped paying her rent last September because, she says, her apartment is in horrible condition  —   and she is fighting her landlord’s eviction threat in court. But when tenants don’t pay, landlords say they have less money to fix things up. It is a vicious cycle that can often land the parties in court, and it’s a scene that has become common around the country. The lack of affordable housing is forcing   renters to choose between apartments they can’t afford or those that aren’t in the best shape. A Frustrating Legal Process, When Walker is at her job as a coach for disabled workers, her mother, Patsy Yates, watches the girls. Yates shows me the conditions of her daughter’s apartment one day when she is looking after the children. ”If you sit right here by this window, like you’re sitting watching TV, the wind is coming in the window so bad that you can feel it,” Yates says. ”The bathroom is extra cold. The bedroom back there is extra cold. So I usually try to boil some water or something to try to keep it warm in here.” But she says that’s dangerous with a little child running around. ”And you don’t never know when she’s going to hit that stove,” Yates says. The apartment is crowded for three people. In the living room, there’s a bed with a bright pink comforter. The building is more than 50 years old. The baseboard heaters are falling away from the wall, although they’re warm to the touch. Then, Yates has me feel around the window frames. ”You see, you feel the wind. It doesn’t stay warm in here,” she says. There is a breeze, at least where there’s no newspaper stuffed into the cracks. Yates also says the appliances are old and don’t work that well. In the bathroom, the tub’s finish is all worn off and corroded around the drain. The landlord never glazed the tub properly, she says. ”Inspector asked them to reglaze it. He ain’t done that.” Yates says her daughter and grandchildren also had a bedbug infestation last year, which makes paying $727 a month in rent seem like an insult. A week later, Walker is at the Landlord and Tenant Branch of the D. C. Superior Court. ”I’m basically just here today to try to get justice,” she says. It’s the second time she’s been in this court since her landlord sued her last November for not paying the rent. Walker has asked for a trial so she can make her case that she shouldn’t have to pay until the place is fixed up. Like other tenants, Walker carries what she hopes will be evidence: a manila envelope filled with papers including lead inspection reports, photos and her handwritten list of everything she says is wrong with the apartment. ”I’ve complained about it and I’ve got nothing done,” she says. Still, the legal process is   and frustrating. That day, there was supposed to be a hearing to decide how much money she should pay into escrow during the trial. But the landlord’s witness didn’t show up. After three hours, the parties agreed to postpone the hearing  —   but Walker had already taken off work, losing a whole day’s pay. ”[That is] something that I really can’t afford, for them to basically tell me that I have to come back again, you know to take off,” she says. ”So it’s like nothing really got solved today.” That’s how it often goes in the court. Few tenants have attorneys  —   which can put them at a disadvantage because almost every landlord has a lawyer. Landlords Need To Get Paid, Too, Aaron Sokolow represents Walker’s landlord. He wouldn’t talk about her specific case, but he did say   renters aren’t as powerless as it might seem, especially in Washington, where tenant protections are strong. ”In my experience, there’s very little risk that a tenant will flat out lose a case because they don’t understand what’s going on,” Sokolow says. Instead, some tenants have become adept at claiming housing code violations to avoid paying rent, he says. They could take their complaints to a separate housing conditions court. Instead, he says, they go to the landlord tenant branch, where they can drag the process out for months  —   during which time the landlord doesn’t get paid. ”And that’s a great frustration for a lot of my clients. They say, ’I’m not excused of my tax payment I’m not excused of my mortgage payment,’ ” Sokolow says. ”So the notion that I have to come out of pocket for 18 months of litigation, it can get very daunting, very quickly.” Art Nalls is a landlord with two buildings in the city. Nalls thinks it’s important that   residents have a decent place to live. ”We try to take care of people and we try to offer good decent, affordable housing at a reasonable rate,” he says. But if people don’t pay their rent, Nalls says, it’s hard to do. ”It means that I can’t cover all that other stuff. So I have to call my refrigerator guy and say, ’I’m going to have to pay you next month when I get rent,’ ” he says. ”It’s that tight. We’re not making a bazillion dollars here.” Nalls thinks one answer is more government subsidies for   housing. Otherwise, he says, landlords get tired of the hassle and sell out, which can mean fewer decent, affordable housing units. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, the number of   rental units grew only 10 percent over the past decade, while the number of   renters grew 40 percent. Shortage Of Affordable And Safe Housing, ”When I turned this on last Saturday, when I flicked this right here, electricity shot out,” says Pamula Glover, who was showing me the thermostat in her apartment in Southeast Washington. Glover was recently in landlord tenant court with some neighbors who were being sued for not paying their rent. Glover says she has water leaks, mold and a constantly beeping fire alarm. She admits $815 a month for a   apartment is a bargain, but she still wants to live in a place that is comfortable and safe. ”We don’t even have security around here no more. They shoot around here like it’s a job,” Glover says. She says the gunfire is so bad at night she sleeps at an angle in her   bedroom to stay out of the line of fire. The company that runs her apartment, Oakmont Management, refused to comment when contacted. It’s being sued by the city for unlivable conditions at another apartment complex. Glover says her place has been allowed to go downhill. She grew up nearby and recalls looking at these apartments, thinking they were so nice, that if she lived in one of these buildings, she’d be rich. Glover, who lives on disability payments, says now she doesn’t know where else to go. Neither does Walker, who doesn’t make much above minimum wage. ”I honestly think for me, to get into a decent home with my income, it would be very hard . .. because I wouldn’t be able to afford it,” she says. ”Not with the prices that they have these days.” Anything more than $800 a month is out of her league, Walker says. But anything under $800 is pretty much what she already has. This story was produced for broadcast by Evie Stone."
"Ray Romano became famous in the mid 1990s as the star of the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, which was loosely based on his life as a married man with a daughter and twin boys. After that show ended in 2005, he   and   in TNT’s Men of a Certain Age, about three friends dealing with middle age, and had a recurring role on NBC’s Parenthood. Now, in the HBO drama Vinyl, Romano plays the head of promotions at a record company in financial trouble. He tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that ever since Everybody Loves Raymond ended, his goal has been to try something different. ”And when I say different, I mean something a bit dramatic.” Vinyl was   by Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Terence Winter and Rich Cohen, and it’s set in the 1970s. On how he got the role in Vinyl  So the luckiest thing in the world happened. . .. The casting woman, Ellen Lewis, she’s been [Martin Scorsese’s] casting partner for everything he does. . .. My agent actually went to her after he saw the script and said, ”What do you think of Ray Romano?” And she said, ”Well, that’s an interesting choice, but have him send in a tape.” . .. I had to look from the 1970s and I went to my wardrobe  —   it was actually very easy to find a shirt in there that fit in that era. . .. I told my wife, who is constantly trying to throw those things out, I told her it would come in handy one day. I put that on I did a couple scenes we sent it. And the feedback we got from Ellen was, ”Marty likes what he saw. . .. He knows this person,” meaning he knows the guy I was playing. ”He knows this guy. But also, he’s never heard of Ray Romano,” and it turned out to be a blessing. On how his work in Vinyl differs from his previous roles  It’s much darker, there’s more depth to it, there’s more angst, of course. In the very second episode of Vinyl, my character kind of contemplates killing himself  —   not kind of, he does. It was very intimidating to me because I did the pilot and almost a year later we got the script for the second episode as we were about to start filming. And in the pilot my character is in a good place  —   he’s happy they’re selling the company. And I got to be honest, I didn’t even know my character was married in the pilot. Nine months later, I get the second script, and I find he’s married, he has children. And here he is sitting in the car in his garage when the sale of the company goes down, and he’s contemplating swallowing these pills. . .. The difference between Men of a Certain Age [and Vinyl] is I’m writing Men of a Certain Age, so I know what’s coming and I know why it’s coming. And here it’s all having to process it and figure out and get myself to that place, so it’s different but it’s very exhilarating. On having to cry on camera in an episode of Vinyl  Just from an acting standpoint, that was frightening to me and scary. And I was talking to my agent, like, ”This is such a test for me. It’s the second episode and I want to make sure I can deliver what they think they’re writing for this character.” My agent was very sensitive  —   he was like, ”Well, you better. You better.” . .. By the way, I do in real life. I’m at an age where crying is easier for me now. I like it. I can cry at a poignant commercial I can cry at a  —   this is a running joke in my house, but . .. a good ”  Banner” can make me cry. I’m not kidding. I look them up on YouTube and I find the most emotional ones. And I like a good cry  —   it’s cathartic it’s a release. But I’ve never been able to be so free to do that on camera the way some actors can. On the story behind the title Everybody Loves Raymond  My brother is a New York police officer, or was then at that time. He actually coined . .. the title Everybody Loves Raymond. . .. In real life, he would come over and he’d see I got an award or I got something for   comedy and he would jokingly, kind of    he’d say, ”Well, look at Raymond! Raymond gets awards when he goes to work. When I go to work, people shoot at me, people spit at me. But when Raymond goes, everybody loves Raymond.” So I told this story to [Everybody Loves Raymond Executive Producer Phil Rosenthal]. Phil said, ”We have to use that . .. as the title.” And I said, ”Please don’t.” He said, ”Well, let’s just use it as the working title, and then we’ll change it when it comes time to go to pilot.” And of course Les Moonves, the head of CBS, fell in love with the title and he would not  —   I tried desperately to change that title. . .. It’s just asking for trouble. . .. Even if they don’t take it at face value, to this day someone will start an article with, ”Well, not everybody loves Raymond!” On Everybody Loves Raymond ending and figuring out what to do next  The show was ending and it was a bit of a cool feeling in the beginning because now, all of a sudden, you’ve got all this time, you’ve got this money and this fame now. But it was like coming out of a submarine  —   it was like, ”What is this now? My kids are teenagers and I live here? I live in LA?” It was kind of an odd new feeling. At first I liked it. I kind of said, ”Let’s see what’s next!” I was going to a therapist  —   I’ve been going to a therapist forever  —   but my therapist then said, when the show was ending, he says, ”You want to start coming twice a week?” And I said, ”No, I’m running out of things to talk about now. I’m not going to come twice a week.” Sure enough, in three months after the show ended, I was going twice a week. It was really a hard adjustment all of a sudden because I’m not really doing   now. Before the show, I was doing   every night, writing new material. It was this void. It was this big, big void. And I realized I need to do stuff, I need to continue. . .. I went through a little rough patch there. I finally talked with my buddy Mike Royce, who was also a writer on Raymond, and he said he’s got the same feeling. It’s kind of this weird, ”Where am I? What am I doing now? Where’s my next passion and purpose? I’m at a time in my life where I accomplished what I wanted to.” We said, ”Let’s write about it. That’s what Raymond was  —   Raymond was about writing what you know. Let’s do that. We’re not going to do a sitcom, of course we want to do it real and keep it funny. But let’s do a   and write about it.” And that’s where Men of a Certain Age came out of. We won a Peabody Award and then they canceled us. On how fame has changed his life  When Everybody Loves Raymond started, I remember the first person [who recognized me]. We had gone back to Queens [New York]. It was during a hiatus week and I went to a gas station, and I was pumping my gas and a woman said, ”Hey, aren’t you on that show?” I said, ”Yeah, I am. Thank you.” And that was it. It was still a long ways off before I ever had to worry about being somewhere  —   not that I have to worry, I mean I’m not Justin Bieber. I can outrun my fans, I’ll put it that way. . .. It doesn’t really affect my life too much, really. Yes, it does in some sense. Here’s what I say: Before I thought my cab driver hated me now I think my limo driver hates me. I think it’s all the same. . .. I’m just as neurotic. If I had never gotten famous or rich, I think I’d be equally neurotic."
"HBO’s music industry drama Vinyl comes at you like a classic rock song you can’t get out of your head. Powerful. Emotional. But also kind of predictable. It’s obvious from one of the earliest moments in the first episode, when Bobby Cannavale’s    record company owner Richie Finestra stumbles into a smoky club circa 1971 and finds the New York Dolls.   Martin Scorsese does an amazing job   the anarchic spirit of the time, with   fans and sexually available groupies littering the steps up to the main stage. As Finestra stands with his mouth agape, the   band tears into a   version of The Dolls’ early ’70s single ”Personality Crisis.” Peering through a haze of cocaine and fatigue, Finestra looks like he’s found God. But it’s a scene we’ve seen in rock ’n’ roll movies many times over  —   this time, presented from the perspective of the record company man. That’s the problem with HBO’s Vinyl, which debuts Sunday as HBO’s odd Valentine’s Day gift to viewers. Despite its familiarity, the show expertly   the time of peak gonzo in the record industry  —   when everybody from musicians and record company executives to radio DJs and record store employees was swimming in cocaine, payola and backroom swindles. Emmy winner Cannavale is ferociously magnetic as Finestra  —   the blunt, talented founder and president of American Century records. By 1973, he’s a successful power broker trying to kick a mountainous cocaine habit and sell his company to the European conglomerate PolyGram. But even as he is poised to sign over his company, Finestra can’t help ruminating on the state of the music industry in his typical    fashion. ”When I started in this business, rock ’n’ roll was defined like this: two Jews and a guinea recording four schvartzes on a single track,” he says. ”Now, it’s changed so much, it’s not even recognizable as the thing people used to be so afraid of.” That bums out Finestra, an adrenaline junkie with the perfect ear for blockbuster bands. To tell his story, Vinyl takes viewers behind the scenes of the record industry in the 1970s, when glam rock, punk, disco and rap were all just starting to emerge. It was also when ”record men” were brazenly breaking the law to fatten their wallets, paying off record store managers and radio disc jockeys to pump up their most important artists. ”Hyman Weiss invented the $100 handshake back in the ’50s,” Finestra tells the viewer about bribing disc jockeys  —   the specialty of his partner, Zak Yankovich, played by Ray Romano. ”By 1971, Zak had raised it to $5, 000 and a gram of Bolivian dancing dust,” the record company owner adds. ”What, you thought songs only got played because they were good?” Guys like Weiss  —   who was an actual producer and record company owner in the ’50s and ’60s  —   were the generation before operators like Finestra, whose American Century label is floundering with acts like Donny Osmond, Savoy Brown and Robert Goulet. All this detail comes from an authoritative source: Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, who described during a press conference how he developed the idea for Vinyl with his longtime friend,   director Martin Scorsese. ”I had an idea years ago that I took to Marty and we tried to develop as a movie,” Jagger said. ”And it was a very sprawling idea. [So] when TV series came online and started to become interesting, respectable and moneymaking, we decided to make a TV series out of it.” Spoken like a rock star turned film and TV producer who once attended the London School of Economics. What works here are the details. Especially in the first episode, Vinyl   the danger of ’  New York before Times Square got Disneyfied. We see young actors as compelling versions of classic stars like the New York Dolls, Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper. And the show slips those talented doppelgangers right next to fictional stars who feel like they could have existed back then, including a Sly   funk singer named Hannibal and a bratty protopunk band called The Nasty Bits. As epitomized by Finestra, the record company guys are unscrupulous   distracting artists with drugs and groupies while trying to shave points off their royalty percentages in hastily signed contracts. But all this quality  —   cooked up with another executive producer, Terence Winter, and author Rich Cohen  —   services a story that still feels too predictable. Cannavale’s Finestra is a     record man who lays waste to his personal life in search of the perfect artist. Olivia Wilde is mostly underused as Finestra’s wife, Devon, a former actress and model stuck cleaning up after her husband in a decidedly   story. In fact, Vinyl sometimes seems like a Frankenstein’s monster cobbled together from the influences of its producers. There’s the gritty ’70s New York of Scorsese’s Mean Streets, the rock ’n’ roll    story from Jagger’s own life, and the damaged loner searching for fulfillment who resembles the lead character from Winter’s previous series, Boardwalk Empire. Still, for those who admire the days when most music was bought in a record store, this series satisfies a certain nostalgia. Just don’t include in that group its rock star executive producer, who admits he doesn’t even listen to records anymore. ”I never play vinyl, personally,” Jagger said, drawing chuckles from journalists at the press conference. ”But all my children love it.”"
"For nine seasons, Ray Romano played Ray Barone on the CBS hit sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. The show, loosely based on Romano’s real life, earned the comedian millions of dollars and numerous accolades, including three Emmys and four People’s Choice Awards. After Raymond ended, Romano took several years off from TV. While ”” he played golf, spent time with his family and appeared in several movies, including 95 Miles To Go, a documentary film that followed his 2006 standup comedy tour. In 2008, Romano decided to head back to the writer’s room with Mike Royce, a writer and executive producer on Raymond, to create a new show for TNT. Called Men of a Certain Age, the   stars Romano, Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher as three former college buddies, now   men, who are working their way through various sorts of   crises. Romano joins Fresh Air’s TV critic David Bianculli for a conversation about working on Everybody Loves Raymond, switching from the sitcom format to TNT, his early comedic influences and his standup career, which began in high school. ”In school, I wasn’t a very good student  —   I was very irresponsible and never did the studying but always liked to get the laugh,” he tells Bianculli. ”And Saturday Night Live was starting in 1975. I was 17 years old and it was like nothing I’d ever seen.” Romano and four friends decided to start their own sketch troupe, where he then got his first laughs in front of an audience. ”It was kind of my first taste of what standup was like because I was talking to the audience and getting laughs,” he says. ”So that was where the bug of performing standup came.” After performing in New   York clubs for several years, Romano won a standup comedy competition, which led to appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and a deal with Letterman’s production company for Everyone Loves Raymond. But Romano says that he was extremely nervous during the first days of filming, particularly because he had to work with actor Peter Boyle, who played his father. ”I remember when we were rehearsing the pilot episode and [I was thinking] this is a show built around me and there’s Peter Boyle  —   and I hadn’t really talked to him that much [because] his reputation just scared me  —   he was this hulking strong presence,” he says. ”And during Day 1 of rehearsal, in between one of the scenes our paths crossed backstage and he just stopped me . .. and he goes ’It’s just like water, just let it flow.’ . .. At the time, I was just blown away by this kind gesture that he would make me feel comfortable.” Boyle and Romano became good friends and would often go out to dinner together during breaks from filming. ”He could have a conversation about anything  —   politics, government, art  —   and then with me, this was the great thing about him, he would dumb it down for me,” says Romano. ”He would talk about sports and Hooters with me. He [was] the opposite of the character he portrayed on TV, as far as that goes.” On his introduction to comedy from a Bill Cosby album  ”My first big introduction to standup was a comedy album that a buddy of mine got and he gave it to me and it was called To Russell, My Brother Whom I Slept With [by Bill Cosby]. And I was blown away by it. I ran to his house and we listened to it together. And I’m not saying I tried to emulate [Cosby] but this guy just appealed to me  —   this guy just talking. It wasn’t setup and punch line, it wasn’t jokes  —   [and] this seemed more organic to me.” On what he misses about Everyone Loves Raymond, ”The only thing I miss from the sitcom format is that immediate gratification . .. [of] the live audience. As a standup, I live off of that. It’s my energy source. And there is none of that when you’re doing a single camera. You get it in the writer’s room . .. but when we’re filming, you just have to trust that what you’re doing is funny.” On standup and his sense of humor, ”When you go to standup, there seems to be a common denominator of some form of need or want for validation from the audience that maybe you were lacking as a kid. And [my dad] was a guy who just worked hard and had a hard time expressing himself and as I got older, he had a very dry sense of humor. I realize that this is where I got it from  —   superdry. ”We did it on the show, in the pilot episode of Raymond, he  —   in real life  —   would drive my wife crazy in the subtlest way. The one thing he did was, he learned how to play back our messages when we had answering machines that actually recorded. He learned the code. So he would listen to our messages and leave a message after saying, ’Hey Anna [Romano’s wife] your friend Linda went to the gynecologist today, you should check up on her.’ And hang up. And he thought it was funny and I thought it was funny and my wife would go nuts and say ’It’s like reading our mail, what’s he doing?’ ”"
"Five years after an earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima   nuclear power plant, Japanese authorities say a   ”ice wall” around the leaking facility can be turned on. The underground refrigeration system that should create the frozen barrier was completed last month  —   more than a year behind schedule, The Associated Press reports. Freezing will begin ”shortly” and will be carried out in phases, according to the Tokyo Electric Power Co. or TEPCO, which owns the plant. It will be months, at the earliest, before the entire perimeter of the facility has been fully frozen. The   ice wall will consist of a barrier of frozen soil encircling the nuclear plant. Pipes have been installed underground, stretching 100 feet beneath the surface for a distance of nearly a mile. Next, those pipes will carry a refrigerant that will chill the soil until it begins to freeze. The resulting ice wall is meant to address a pervasive challenge at Fukushima: contaminated groundwater. The facility is located between mountains and the ocean. Groundwater constantly flows from the higher ground toward the sea  —   passing beneath the nuclear power plant along the way. That means every day, there’s newly contaminated water that has to be dealt with. Enormous quantities of water  —   reportedly more than 760, 000 tons  —   have wound up in storage containers on site. The ice wall is designed to block much of that groundwater from entering the facility and becoming contaminated in the first place. If all goes as planned, water arriving from the mountains will hit the ice wall and either freeze (helping to build the wall) or flow around it, hitting the ocean without passing beneath the leaking reactors. Water already contaminated at the site, meanwhile, should be contained within the wall. Once the wall is fully frozen, TEPCO officials expect to be able to extract the water from beneath the leaking turbines by 2020, the AP reports. The full decommissioning of the plant will take decades. The ice wall project has been criticized for its price  —   more than $300 million  —   the wire service says. And while smaller ice walls have been used before in other contexts, the AP calls this project ”unprecedented” and notes some critics doubt the technology will work as planned. Meanwhile, as NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reported in 2013, some skeptics are concerned it could work too well, freezing so effectively that it decreases the amount of groundwater available in the area. As they prepare to activate the refrigeration system, Japanese leaders and TEPCO officials are sounding a cautious note. The nuclear agency’s chairman, Sunichi Tanaka, tempered high expectations by telling reporters, ”It would be best to think that natural phenomena don’t work the way you would expect,” the AP reports. And the wire service adds: ”Asked . .. if the ice wall is worth the cost, TEPCO accident response official Toshihiro Imai replied, ’Its effect is still unknown, because the expected outcome is based on simulations.’ ”"
"It’s been a remarkable 12 months for James Alex, a year full of contradictions and firsts. The lead singer and songwriter for the band Beach Slang, Alex and his wife Rachel had their first child, Oliver, to start 2015. Then in October, the band released its debut album, The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us, which has meant nonstop touring. Alex’s dad wasn’t a part of his life growing up, a theme that crops up again and again in his songs. He now has to negotiate being away from Oliver, for weeks at a time, in order to make a life for the little boy. ”I’m always that kid always out of place,” Alex sings on ”Bad Art and Weirdo Ideas.” ”I try to get found   I’ve never known how.” WBUR’s Here  Now and NPR Music spent a day in Alex’s tidy suburban home, talking to him about the meaning of fatherhood, and about how some of his   lyrics came to be. That night, we watched as Alex howled and whirled on stage, as Beach Slang blared an inspired hometown set in a sweaty Philadelphia basement. You can watch a short documentary and hear Miles Parks’   story for Here  Now at the top of this page. Producer: Miles Parks Video  Edit: Colin Marshall Supervising Sound Editor: Suraya Mohamed Supervising Editors: Jacob Ganz, Lars Gotrich Special Thanks: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, James Alex  Rachel Snyder Photography: Greg Pallante Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann."
"On a cold night in January 2012, Dustin Bergsing climbed on top of a crude oil storage tank in North Dakota’s Bakken oil field. His job was to open the hatch on top and drop a rope inside to measure the level of oil. But just after midnight, a   found him dead, slumped next to the open hatch. Even though an autopsy showed Bergsing had hydrocarbons in his blood  —   things like benzene and butane  —   the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s investigation found no safety violations. And it didn’t fine the oil company. Reporter Mike Soraghan came across Bergsing’s case while researching oil field fatalities for EnergyWire, an online business publication. ”A    kid just sort of dies out in the middle of nowhere and nothing happens?” Soraghan says. ”I just remember reading through it and thinking, ’That’s it?’ ” With the help of Dr. Bob Harrison, who specializes in occupational and environmental medicine, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a pattern was uncovered: nine oil workers found dead on oil pads in the past six years, many of them young and otherwise healthy. Based on Bergsing’s autopsy, Harrison believes they passed out after they opened   hatches and were engulfed in large amounts of petroleum gases. ”It was one of those aha moments that I have every so often in my career as a doctor treating patients with   exposures,” he says. Families of at least six of the deceased are suing their employers. Since last year, NIOSH has warned the industry about the hazard, but exposure continues  —   in part because another federal agency’s rules make it difficult to use safer measurement methods. The Bureau of Land Management is in charge of oil development on federal land, and critics say the agency is wary of technology that might not be as accurate as putting guys on top of tanks to measure oil by hand. There’s public money at stake  —   royalties that are paid by the oil companies on the exact amount of oil coming out of the ground. ”If it’s a public asset, then the taxpayer deserves to have their money, their assets protected,” says Steve Wells, who oversees oil production for the agency. And since 1989  —   the last time the rules were updated  —   the industry practice for protecting those assets is to measure them manually by dropping a rope into the tank, as Dustin Bergsing did when he died. The agency is updating those rules this year, but Wells won’t say whether the new rules will allow automated oil measurement. One thing the rules definitely won’t do is ban measuring oil levels by hand. ”You have some very old facilities, very simple tanks, so the idea is that we’re trying to accommodate all the different operations,” Wells said. And with 83, 000 oil wells on federal land and a $   cost for automatic measurement equipment, Wells said requiring such an upgrade would cause some companies to shut down. Truck driver Ryan Ehlis makes his living hauling crude oil in North Dakota, and has some firsthand experience with the dangerous fumes. Like Dustin Bergsing, he spends a lot of time climbing atop large   tanks and opening their hatches to measure the oil. He says he tries to avoid the gases, but just the day before, he’d had a dizzy spell after climbing back down from one of the tanks. ”If there’s gas in your face, kind of hold your breath and then get your gauge and then step away and get into the fresh air and [take a deep breath]  —   and then go do something again,” he says. ”But you can’t avoid it entirely.” That’s needless, nonsensical exposure, says Dennis Schmitz, an oil and gas safety trainer. Automatic measurement is common in Canada and in the offshore oil and gas industry, which isn’t regulated by the Bureau of Land Management. In fact, Schmitz used such equipment on tanker ships. ”And I never really questioned, ’Why is it in the offshore environment that I don’t breathe the vapors there, and I do breathe them here?’ ” he says. Ehlis says he has thought about getting a safer job  —   particularly after seeing a truck on an   pad explode into ”nothing but a huge orange fireball probably 50 feet in the air”  —   but that nothing in the area pays as well. So Ehlis keeps driving, keeps climbing oil tanks and opening their hatches, keeps lowering a rope into the tank to measure the level.  This story was produced by Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focused on America’s energy issues. Contact reporter Emily Guerin at eguerin@insideenergy. org."
"On a quiet street in Detroit, light pours into the back windows of the Kirksey home. In the back of the house the walls are lined with textbooks, workbooks and multicultural children’s books. It’s a home  —   but it’s also a classroom. Brandon, 8, is wearing pajamas and a paper crown from Burger King. He heads into the back room and pulls a large laminated world map off the bookshelf. ”This is the whole entire map! Michigan,” he says enthusiastically pointing to his home state. His two siblings, Zachary, 3, and Ariyah, 1, echo him. Their mother and teacher, Camille Kirksey, ushers them into the dining room. Sitting among bowls of fruit and stacks of books, the kids figure out the date and the weather. This is a typical start to Brandon’s school day. Today’s agenda: poetry recitation. Then, it’s time for reading and math. Fridays are reserved for science experiments and field trips. Brandon is part of a distinct subgroup of the U. S.   population:  . ”Black   is definitely on the rise,” says Ama Mazama, a professor of   studies at Temple University. It’s hard to determine the exact number of   students, let alone the racial breakdown. Most estimates put the total figure at roughly 2 million and suggest that between 5 and 10 percent are black. Mazama says black   tend to come from urban,   households. The key question, she says, is why these families are deciding to leave traditional schools. Research suggests black families often choose to home school for very different reasons than white families. ”White   the No. 1 reason they give when asked is religion,” Mazama says. ”For the black families, it was not the case at all. It was racism.” This is particularly interesting, she says, because   are consistently the most religious subgroup in America. They pray more. They go to church more. ”And yet, religion was not No. 1, not No. 2, not No. 3.” Religion was not the driving issue for the Kirksey family. A few years ago,   hadn’t occurred to them. ”I’ve never seen anybody  —   especially black people  —   home schooling,” Camille Kirksey says. At the time, Brandon was enrolled in a private  . ”It was a mostly black school with mostly white teachers, which didn’t really bother me until I saw the difference in how they treated certain kids  —   especially boys,” she says. ”They seemed to be very harsh, kinda barking at them, ordering them around.” Brandon says his teacher ”didn’t really treat anybody nicely.” That matched a pattern Kirksey says she’s seen elsewhere: black children who aren’t given the kindness she thinks kids need. Kirksey was trying to figure out what to do about the situation when she saw a post on Facebook. It profiled an     family. Before long, she’d convinced her husband, quit her job of 10 years and started teaching. She says she was particularly excited to teach her kids a version of history that features their own ancestors. ”As black people, I really want my children to understand that we are a huge part of history that is not always told,” Kirksey says. It wasn’t long before Kirksey found a local     where most of the other families are also black. While the decision to   was largely driven by concerns about race and racism, Camille Kirksey says it’s worth it for another reason too: It made them a closer, stronger family."
"The World Health Organization says there is now scientific consensus that the Zika virus is connected with microcephaly  —   a condition in which babies are born with very small heads and brain damage. Scientists have been working for months to confirm a link between Zika and microcephaly, ever since Brazil reported a startling increase in cases last fall. Zika infection during pregnancy appears to increase the risk for several types of birth defects and miscarriages, a recent study found. And scientists have found the virus in the brains of affected babies. But all this evidence is circumstantial. So the big question has been: Is Zika really the culprit? Now WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree there’s enough evidence to say, yes, Zika is linked to microcephaly. ”At this point the most pressing question people want answered is, ’If I get a Zika infection during pregnancy, what are the chances my baby is going to be affected?’ ” says Dr. Anne Schuchat, the deputy director of the CDC. ”We really feel a sense of urgency to both answer that question and to help stop the spread of the virus.” Currently the Zika virus is circulating in 33 countries in the Americas and has sickened hundreds of thousands of people."
"The price of quinoa tripled from 2006 to 2013 as America and Europe discovered this new superfood. That led to scary media reports that the people who grew it in the high Andes mountains of Bolivia and Peru could no longer afford to eat it. And while, as we reported, groups working on the ground tried to spread the word that your love of quinoa was actually helping Andean farmers, that was still anecdote rather than evidence. The lack of evidence didn’t seem right to Marc Bellemare, an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota, or Seth Gitter, another economist at Towson University in Maryland. They hadn’t met, but Gitter knew of a data source that could provide solid evidence, and the two teamed up. They recently published their results in a working paper. The data source is ENAHO, the national survey of about 22, 000 randomly selected households that the government of Peru carries out every year and that covers a huge range of information about what households grow, spend and eat. ”ENAHO is very rich,” Bellemare tells The Salt, ”but it is a beast to work with.” He and Gitter enlisted Johanna   a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Minnesota, to clean up 10 years’ worth of data, which covers the boom and a few years before prices started to climb. They split the households into three groups: those who grow and eat quinoa, those who eat it but do not grow it, and those who neither grow nor eat quinoa. All three showed a clear rise in their welfare  —   measured as the total value of goods consumed  —   as the price of quinoa rose. That reflects increasing living standards in Peru. But at the height of the boom, the welfare of quinoa growers increased more rapidly than that of the other two groups. As for people who eat but don’t grow quinoa? They are roughly twice as   as those who grow it. The amount they bought dropped slightly, but not much. They could still afford it, even at the height of the boom. The working paper does not mince words: ”The claim that rising quinoa prices were hurting those who had traditionally produced and consumed it [is] patently false.” ”It’s really a happy story,” Seth Gitter tells us. ”The poorest people got the gains.” Rich people had to spend a bit more, and did. While economists are perfectly happy with the idea that the value of goods people consume is a reasonable measure of their welfare, it does miss some important factors, like nutrition. Perhaps, as scaremongers suggested, poor farmers were selling quinoa they might have eaten and buying cheaper but nutritionally inferior foods with the proceeds, consuming more but worse food. A slightly trickier proposition is that when the price of quinoa goes up, people for whom it is culturally important pay more and so have less to spend on other cheap but highly nutritious foods. Both ideas proved to be unfounded. Andrew Stevens, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, took the same ENAHO survey data and focused on the Puno region in the Andes, which grows more than 80 percent of the quinoa in Peru. His results have been submitted to the journal Food Policy. Quinoa is clearly important to the people of Puno, both culturally and nutritionally, but it was just one of 161 food items for which the survey provided data. Stevens found that across Peru as a whole, people ate less quinoa, down from 6. 07 kilograms a year in 2004 to 4. 09 kilograms a year in 2012, reflecting the rise in price. In Puno, however, people ate slightly more quinoa  —   23. 62 kilograms versus 22. 22 kilograms  —   despite the price increases, which were even greater in Puno than in the rest of the country. ”Households [in Puno] did not cut back their consumption between 2004 and 2012 despite a fourfold price increase,” Stevens tells us. In addition, Stevens found no sign of changes in calories, protein or carbohydrates in the diet across Peru as a whole. In Puno, there was a suggestion that households cut   foods  —   already lower in Puno than elsewhere  —   to continue eating more expensive quinoa. ”However,” Stevens says, ”the size of this effect is quite small and should be of little concern to policymakers.” Quinoa is culturally important, but unlike rice, wheat and maize, it is not a staple food. Even in Puno it represents less than 4 percent of the household budget, and elsewhere in Peru less than 0. 5 percent. Overall, the global price rise for quinoa was a good thing for people in Peru, especially quinoa farmers, and had no bad effects on nutrition. Marc Bellemare says he is ”absolutely not surprised,” because ”at least in the short run, if you are a net seller of something and the price goes up, you benefit.” Adam Drucker, a senior economist at Bioversity International in Rome, who was not involved in either study, is also not surprised. ”It’s pretty much in accordance with what we found a few years ago,” he says, in admittedly less detailed studies in Bolivia and Peru. In the long run, however, Bellemare and Drucker also agree that there may be trouble ahead. Export demand has focused on very few of the 3, 000 or so different varieties of quinoa, prompting farmers to abandon many of those varieties. ”Those varieties, created by Andean farmers, are the future of quinoa, to adapt to things like climate change,” says Stefano Padulosi, a specialist in underused crops and Drucker’s colleague at Bioversity International. He would like to see some sort of global mechanism to reward Andean farmers for their role in creating and maintaining quinoa diversity. Padulosi and Drucker have been working in Bolivia and Peru to try to develop internal markets for threatened varieties  —   for example, in hospital and school food programs  —   and have had some success. Drucker has also conducted several pilot studies to discover what kinds of incentives farmers need to persuade them to grow varieties that exporters are not interested in but that nevertheless are important to conserve. ”We’ve shown that it can work, and that it is cost effective,” says Drucker, ”and the potential to make it sustainable is there.” Peru and Bolivia are interested, Drucker says, but the problem now is to unlock public funds to pay for the conservation of agricultural biodiversity. Gitter and Bellemare, in a more detailed study that has not yet been published, confirm that the 150 quinoa farmers they interviewed in Puno would be willing to grow and conserve less preferred varieties in exchange for cash. A greater  —   and less tractable  —   problem is environmental degradation. Drucker’s student Enrico Avitabile found that more than half the Bolivian farmers he surveyed say their soil is worse than it was before the boom, for two reasons. First, high prices brought into cultivation land that used to be allowed to rest as fallow, resulting in erosion and loss of nutrients. Secondly, farmers who are growing more quinoa, and getting more for it, have reduced their llama herds, so less manure is available as fertilizer and to protect the soil. Perhaps the greatest problem, though, is what happens when the price drops, which it already has. The cost of quinoa started to fall in February 2014 and sank as fast as it had risen. By late 2015 the cost of quinoa was back where it was in 2012, before the price increases accelerated dramatically. That, too, is unsurprising. High prices attract competitors. In Peru, farmers in the much more benign Arequipa region on the coast are using intensive methods and fertilizers, and getting double the yields of farmers in Puno. Exports from Peru recently overtook those from Bolivia. Further afield, China, India and Nepal are planting quinoa, as are places in the United States and Canada. ”I worry about that,” says Marc Bellemare. ”If we’re going to rejoice when prices go up, maybe we should worry when prices go down.” Jeremy Cherfas is a biologist and science journalist based in Rome."
"It was a controversial move when Madison, Wis. decided to replace all its lead pipes in 2001. But that decision put the city ahead of the curve  —   allowing it to avoid the lead water contamination that is plaguing cities like Flint, Mich. now. Madison started using copper instead of lead water pipes in the late 1920s. The bulk of the lead lines were located in the older part of the city, which is downtown near Wisconsin’s state Capitol. Sue Bauman, the city’s mayor from 1997 to 2003, lives there now. ”I remember one day, one of my mayoral aides came in and said he had met with the water utility and there was this issue about these lead pipes, and I’m like, ’What?’ ” Bauman says. EPA released its lead and copper rule in 1991, setting limits on the concentration of lead and copper in drinking water. A year after that, the city’s water utility learned that 10 percent of the samples from the city’s water showed higher levels of lead than the EPA allowed. That was also the case five years later. Following the rule’s adoption, chemical engineer Abigail Cantor started testing the water after it was treated with phosphate that authorities recommended they use to prevent lead from leaching into water. But what she found was shocking. ”[I] found that the lead increased four times over the untreated water using the highest recommended phosphate product,” Cantor says. She says other additives created even more problems, but city officials worried that the chemicals added to prevent corrosion could cause algae and weeds in the city lakes because of excess nutrients and water runoff. ”So I went to the management at the water utility and said, ’You can’t use these recommended chemicals, and there’s no other. You just have to get rid of the lead pipes,’ ” she says. Eliminating Lead Pipes Not An Easy Process  Joe Grande, the city utility’s water quality manager, says there was skepticism and concerns about cost. ”There was tremendous pushback from homeowners,” Grande says. Legally, the water utility only had to pay for the portion of the lead service lines that ran from the city’s water main up to a home’s or business’s property line. But Grande says Madison also wanted those residents to replace the other half of the lead line. ”Studies have shown that if you only do a partial replacement, [where] the utility comes and replaces their portion of the service, that there is no improvement in lead levels in the water and it actually could be worse in the short term,” he says. Getting approval from regulators and lawmakers took years and the battle over costs was extensive. For nearly 6, 000 property owners, it meant about a $1, 300 plumbing bill. Madison reimbursed half of that cost. It took the city 11 years and $15. 5 million in all to remove 8, 000 lead water pipes. Grande says samples of Madison water still show that lead is present, but the levels are well below EPA limits. ”That’s coming from solder, that’s coming from brass fittings [and] also coming from fixtures as well,” he says. Nevertheless, Bauman calls the Madison lead pipe removal program a success and says the city made the right decision. ”It was a forever solution, and if you looked at the cost of adding chemicals to the water system, to the water supply forever compared with the   cost of replacing over time, you were better off,” Bauman says. Now as communities pay much closer attention to the pipes that bring water into homes, at least one other city  —   Lansing, Mich.  —   is following Madison’s lead by replacing all its lead service lines."
"Water safety concerns aren’t just in Flint, Mich. these days. Communities in three states in the Northeast have found elevated levels of a suspected carcinogen  —   perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. Used to make Teflon, the chemical has contaminated water supplies in New York, New Hampshire and Vermont. After a   ban in the village of Hoosick Falls, N. Y. the New York State Department of Health declared the water safe to drink and cook with again on Wednesday. A temporary filtering system has brought PFOA levels down to nondetectable levels for weeks. But Michael Hickey isn’t rushing to turn on his kitchen faucet. It’s been more than two years since he has drunk from the tap. Since late November, he and more than 3, 400 of his neighbors in Hoosick Falls have had another routine  —   stopping at the local supermarket almost every day to pick up free rations of bottled water. ’It’s Heartbreaking’ For Hickey, this saga began after his father died from kidney cancer in 2013. ”I’m not a big environmentalist,” he says. ”I’m just an everyday guy that came across a chemical that I felt the need to follow through on for my father and my son.” His father worked with PFOA, also known as C8, at a plastics factory that made Teflon products near the village’s wells. Hickey wondered, was there something in the water? He paid to have water samples tested for PFOA. Results showed levels higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommendation of 400 parts per trillion, a provisional health advisory.   tests found levels 45 times higher than that  —   at 18, 000 parts per trillion  —   near the factory. Then, last November, the EPA told Hoosick Falls residents to stop drinking the water, and   Performance Plastics, the factory’s current owner, agreed to pay for a filtration system and bottled water for residents. ”It didn’t have to be this way. This is a beautiful little town. It’s heartbreaking,” says Kathleen Reece, who has lived in Hoosick Falls for more than a decade and has been taking shorter showers with the filtered water. Questions About Health, In North Bennington, Vt.  —   a short drive across the New York border from Hoosick Falls  —   tests found PFOA in private wells near a former plastics plant once owned by Chemfab and later   though not in the town’s municipal water supply. Soil testers recently sampled dirt from homes with PFOA levels higher than the Vermont Department of Health’s standard of 20 parts per trillion. ”Once we started getting drinking water results, people were like, ’Well, what about our gardens? What about the soils around our homes?’ ” says Richard Spiese, who is overseeing the tests for the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. Those are just some of the many questions that government officials are scrambling to answer  —   and they’re playing  . PFOA has been around for almost 70 years. For decades, it was used to make nonstick pans,   carpets and even microwave popcorn bags. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention detected small amounts of PFOA in the blood of more than 98 percent of Americans. ”It stays in the body for many, many years, and it turns out to interact with processes in our body,” explains Philippe Grandjean, a professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research on PFOA has found it can interfere with children’s immune systems and make them less responsive to vaccines. Other studies have shown a ”probable link” between the chemical and some types of cancer. DuPont, 3M and other companies have been sued for contaminating water with PFOA in West Virginia, Ohio and Alabama. The EPA has pushed companies to clean up contaminated sites, and many manufacturers in the U. S. have stopped using the chemical. A ’Problem . .. In Every Single State’ Grandjean is concerned that PFOA’s presence may be more widespread than initially thought now that the Pentagon is investigating the water at 664 military sites that used firefighting foams and may be contaminated with it and other perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs. ”This is not just a local problem. This is a problem which I am sure occurs in every single state,” he says. That’s the same message the governors of New York, Vermont and New Hampshire sent to the EPA in March. In a joint letter, they wrote that PFOA contamination is ”a national problem that requires federal guidelines and a consistent,   approach.” Still, there’s a lot researchers don’t understand about PFOA. ”We don’t know how it moves. We also don’t know what concentrations really are going to incur a health risk,” says Janet Foley, a chemistry professor at Bennington College, where she   a class about how the chemical interacts with the environment. Foley adds that PFOA is not unique: There are a lot of other industrial chemicals we don’t know much about. ”We’re so interested in making lots of new stuff. In order to do that, it needs many, many different kinds of chemicals,” Foley says. ”It’s unlikely that they’re going to be tested. A lot of times we don’t know the questions to ask.” The question now is, exactly how much PFOA is safe to drink? The EPA has been trying to answer that question for years. Currently, there are no enforceable regulations from the federal government. To set those standards, the EPA says it needs more research on how PFOA impacts humans. But the agency can set new recommendations, and it’s working on them now."
"The new documentary Everything Is Copy  —   about the late writer, director and journalist Nora Ephron  —   was written and directed by her son, Jacob Bernstein. The documentary, which debuted on HBO in March, shares the story of Ephron’s life. Bernstein tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that the film’s title comes from an Ephron family saying  —   ”everything is copy,” meaning that anything and everything that happens to you is fair game to write about. The documentary features interviews with family, friends and people Ephron worked with. Jacob Bernstein’s father, Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward broke the Watergate story, also appears in the film. Ephron wrote a fictionalized account of her and Carl Bernstein’s divorce in the   novel Heartburn, which she later adapted into a film. She also wrote the movies Silkwood and When Harry Met Sally . .. and wrote and directed Sleepless in Seattle and Julie  Julia. For her 2006 book I Feel Bad About My Neck, Ephron wrote a series of funny, very personal essays about getting older, but there was something fundamental that she didn’t reveal: She had a serious blood disease that developed into leukemia. Ephron died in 2012. Jacob Bernstein is a writer for The New York Times. He tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that making the documentary wasn’t about getting closure after his mother’s death  —   it was about spending more time with her. ”It was getting to stay with her in some way,” he says, ”from looking at her on a monitor and reading her old essays and reading Heartburn again. . .. There was her voice, loud and clear.” On why he wanted to make a documentary about his mother    I think that I was interested in what the life of a writer is. . .. You know, I write for The New York Times, but I write much less personally, generally  —   or less autobiographically, at least. I certainly had not written about my family or my own life explicitly, and so I was curious about what that had been like for her. . .. My parents had gotten divorced when I was very young, and it had inspired this book that she had written [Heartburn] and I wanted to know a little bit more about what that was like. And I wondered whether she had been ambivalent about spilling all of these secrets. . .. I didn’t get an enormous sense of my mother’s vulnerability growing up, and I always sort of wondered if that was there. I would not say that during the course of this documentary I found a huge amount of vulnerability. That’s one of the things that doesn’t line up neatly. I think my mother was fundamentally different than the rest of us were. On learning about his father’s affair from Heartburn, It was very hard to separate the book from the affair, because I knew about the affair from the book. . .. I definitely found it out from kids at school whose parents had either read the book and told them about it, or on a couple of occasions actually took their children, who were right around my age, [to the movie]. It was an odd set of circumstances, for sure. . .. I was angry at him for a portion of my childhood. It was a disturbing thing, and my father was not living with us. I think children of divorce really process it all kinds of ways. I think many of them become more resilient because of it. I think you become able to roll with the punches, you kind of know that things aren’t permanent. That’s OK, but it fundamentally shapes and shifts you. On convincing his father to participate in the film  There are all kinds of wrong that this could’ve been, and there was no script for him to look at. I wasn’t showing him the footage we hadn’t edited anything. There was a lot of sort of ”please do this movie,” without saying exactly what it was. And he didn’t know if he was being put on trial he didn’t know what it would become. And we’re in a very exhibitionist era, so I think it was tricky, even among people who love one another. . .. There was a lot of psychological manipulation, and in fact a lot of that stuff that reporters do with subjects whom they have no relationship with where you say, ”It’s going to be better for you if you cooperate.” You do what you have to do, particularly if you’re making a movie, because I did know how badly we needed him, and I needed him psychologically too. I was tremendously worried about what would happen to our relationship if he wasn’t in it, and I was very worried about what the movie would look like without him  —   I didn’t think it could be complete. On how his mother’s work affected his perception of her  I read a number of her essays as a kid, from Esquire and New York Magazine, and I guess when I was 14 or 15 probably I read the breasts essay. I didn’t stumble upon her essay about getting crabs until doing this movie. . .. But I knew it was good. The humor of her made all of it less awkward, and the fact that it really didn’t feel solely exhibitionistic the way that so much of what passes for   today does. She had this comedic voice where she wasn’t writing about sex in a pornographic way she was writing about it as comedy. So it’s a little different, and I think it was easier to process from that angle. . .. There’s no question that as a teenager, when I reached my time to get angry at my mother . .. that her having written Heartburn was a little thing and her being off directing movies was a little thing. And it wasn’t until I was sort of 17 or 18 that I kind of went: Well, other people’s mothers that I know were sort of professional bar mitzvah planners  —   they kind of lived on Park Avenue and were just about consumption in some way, and she wasn’t. She did really interesting things. And it was interesting, too, to go from being a family that had an OK amount of money to being one that there was a tremendous amount of pride in what she did because she earned it. I think my mother was pretty cool. On how his mother handled the news of her illness, She told me in 2006, which was shortly after she had been diagnosed and . .. at a point where she had started taking some medicine that was working for her. . .. She certainly waited. And at the beginning they told her that she had six months to live, and she went to Seattle hoping for a bone marrow transplant and the guy said that not only was she not a good candidate, but that basically she was going to be dead no matter what he did. She didn’t tell me until she thought that she had a shot. I think that, obviously, had she wound up in the hospital dying, she would’ve told me, but I think she hit pause. . .. I think she didn’t want to come to me while she was feeling vulnerable or hysterical about it. I know that she and my stepfather [writer Nicholas Pileggi] got back from Seattle, where she had seen this doctor, and she really broke down, from what Nick said. But I never saw her break down over her illness, just as I never really saw her break down over anything. I think that probably was one of the things that I was interested in with this movie, was how often did that happen? Not so often, as I came to find. On why he believes she kept her illness a secret from most people  Some of the considerations for why she didn’t tell people were pragmatic. I don’t think that she could’ve gotten insured on a movie if people had known what she had. Her agent, Bryan Lourd, knew that there was a thing with her blood and I think he did a little bit of willful blindness on her behalf, as he sort of got her one project after another. But basically people didn’t know, so there was this pragmatic component. The other component was philosophical. . .. It really was the belief in being the heroine of your life and not the victim. How do you not become the victim if people are walking up to you and saying, ”How are you? Are you OK?” She didn’t want that. So it was a secret that allowed her to move throughout the world in control."
"This story is part of NPR’s podcast Embedded, which digs deep into the stories behind the news.  In the spring of 2015, something was unfolding in Austin, Ind. The town of about 5, 000 people became home to one of the biggest HIV outbreaks in decades, with more than 140 diagnosed cases. At the root of the outbreak was a powerful prescription painkiller called Opana. People figured out how to get around a coating on the pills intended to deter abuse, prepared them for injection and then shared needles to do so. When news of the HIV infections broke, Kevin Polly was one of the few people in Austin willing to go on the record and say he was using Opana. Polly had contracted HIV, and at the time told a CBS reporter he had no plans to quit injecting the drug. Clyde Polly, Kevin’s    father, says his son went to a rehab facility and isn’t living in Clyde’s   brick house anymore. Even though Kevin is gone, Clyde says some of his son’s friends who do drugs are still there. Not all of them are HIV positive, and not everyone is from Austin  —   but most of them are using Opana. ”Everyone that’s in there right now has probably done it,” he says. ”There’s about a   in there. Some of them give me a little money for staying here, help me get by.” NPR’s Kelly McEvers went inside the house and spoke to some of those people. How a nurse became addicted to Opana, A few years ago, Joy was working as a nurse at a hospital. She had been through back surgery, but she recovered and returned to work. One day at the hospital, somebody called a code, indicating one of the patients was having an emergency. ”I ran from one end of the building to the other, thinking I was going to have to try to save someone’s life,” she says. ”And I get back there and the old geezer had just slid off the bed.” Joy picked the man up, but once the adrenaline rush dissipated, she realized she’d injured her back again. She was prescribed painkillers and says she got hooked. At first she took the pills by mouth, thinking she would never inject. But she broke that promise to herself. ”I pack so much shame from it,” she says. Still, Joy doesn’t share needles. She’s a nurse and knows better, she says  —   and she’s going to get help for her addiction. In her appointment book, there’s an appointment with a doctor she says can prescribe outpatient treatment. ”This is not for me,” Joy says. ”I don’t want to hurt, but I don’t want to be dependent. I don’t want something like that to have control of my life, my body. I don’t want something to have control over me.” Why users are injecting the drug, It used to be that people using Opana could crush a pill and snort it, says Jeff, one of the people in the house. Jeff served in Iraq with the Army National Guard before a Humvee accident injured his back. He says he became addicted to painkillers after his injury. Snorting the drug instead of taking it by mouth meant avoiding the pill’s time release, giving a user all the effects of the drug at once. In 2012, the company that makes Opana changed the formula of the drug to prevent people from snorting it. The company made the pills hard to crush, but at this point, many people were already addicted. ”The only way you could really do them is inject them, because if you actually swallow them, it really don’t do nothing,” he says. Jeff says they’ve figured out how to cook the reformulated version of Opana so it can be injected. How Opana is injected, ”Here’s our infamous can, which has been used to death,” Joy says. A round, jagged piece of aluminum  —   the bottom of a Coke can  —   sits on the dresser in the back bedroom of the house. She puts a tiny white triangle on the can. It’s an eighth of a pill of Opana that’s been cut with scissors. ”That’s just a little piece of nothing,” she says. Joy takes a pair of fingernail clippers and clamps them onto the aluminum before flicking a lighter to heat the pill from below. The pill’s hard white coating, which the manufacturer put there to prevent people from snorting the drug, begins to separate. Then, Joy says, it’s time to toast it, cooking the pill until it turns about the color of whiskey. She puts water into a syringe and squirts it into the cooker, forming a gel. The coating once covering the drug floats away. One by one, Joy, Jeff and the other person in the room take turns with their own needles, sticking them into a piece of a cigarette filter used to keep the white coating out of the needle, and pulling the liquid up into the syringe. As they each take their hits, the room falls quiet. To hear more of this story, listen to Embedded. Keep up with podcast host Kelly McEvers on Twitter at @kellymcevers, and join the conversation using the hashtag #NPREmbedded. Want to dive deeper? Listen to Kelly’s conversation with WBUR’s On Point."
"There’s adventurous new music from Explosions in the Sky and you can hear a conversation with the band and some of the music on this week’s +1 podcast. The Wilderness is the instrumental rock band’s first album of   songs in five years, and the sound on this record stretches the already expansive sound of this instrumental guitar band from blissful and emotional to   and downright scary. Making this record wasn’t easy. For one, the process began long before they started recording. ”For years, we do nothing but talk,” Michael James told us. Once they started recording, Munaf Rayani said, ”The album eventually became about . .. the search for something: something new, something different, something inside yourself, something outside yourself.” When they were done with their recording session with   John Congleton, they thought they had failed. Give a listen to the conversation and find out how they managed to make this album go from unsatisfying to their favorite adventure in hours flat. You can also read excerpts of the conversation below. The Wilderness comes out April 1. Give a listen. On finishing the album at the very last minute: Munaf Rayani: We spent two weeks recording the album and the day before our last day we were pretty certain that the album would not be finished. Not only that particular recording session, but ever. And we were pretty down on the whole thing. And then the next day we went in and a couple of new ideas were thrown about how to fix the problems we had, and then about three hours later we had solved those problems, changed a few, seemingly minor things, and all of a sudden we were finished and we loved the album. There was, in particular, a track [”Infinite Orbit”] that was giving us a lot of trouble. We just collectively were very unsure if this had a place on the album, but without it, it left a big hole. So we went home that night, thought about it, talked a lot, came back and started to dissect it and pick out what we do like about the song. And there was maybe one melody in it, so we stripped everything away, slowed the melody down and then   the rest of it. And then there was another song that was having a similar problem in that there was a lot going on with the song. It just wasn’t working, we didn’t know why. So John Congleton, the guy who recorded the album and helped us produce this album, he said, ”Let’s just take it back to its bare bones,” and just left two elements out of what was maybe 15 tracks. As we heard that, we realized that that’s what was good about the song. And we very slowly put a few more elements on top of it. That song is called ”The Landing Cliffs”  —   it’s the last song on the album. It changed the entire feel of the song and, for us, that changed the entire feel of the album. On the first song they wrote for the album, ”The Wilderness”: Rayani: That was the one that just had this sound that was sort of new, that we hadn’t heard before from ourselves or from anyone else, but that still felt like us it still had the emotional resonance that we really want our songs to have while still being kind of weird, putting you maybe on your back foot a little bit if you have an expectation of what this new album’s going to sound like. On the importance of keeping things unpredictable after 16 years: Rayani: We have loose narratives to help us along and to, kind of, lead one another in a direction, but there’s no absolute story. I mean this is something that we’ve talked about throughout the run of our musical career and instrumental music in general. We could absolutely tell you,    what the story is but you can easily turn that around and make that as you wish. I mean that’s the power of instrumental music: It’s left to your own imagination. Michael James: And it’s not just exclusive to the audience, it happens to us as well. We say ”Oh, I know exactly where this song is supposed to go.” And we try it, and it’s perfect and it hits, and then we say, ”Throw that away.” It’s time to try a new way to finish this particular thought. Because we’ve been a band for 16 years, we can finish each others’ thoughts, not just in speaking but in music. And we just wanted to find a new way this time. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. On the band’s long relationship with producer John Congleton: Rayani: For this album we made the decision, fairly early on, because John used to be just an engineer: That’s all he wanted to do, he felt like that was where his talents were most useful. But as the years went on, I think just working with bands and being a great musician himself, he realized being a producer, and helping a band realize their vision and more than just setting up microphones and capturing the sound, was something he was really suited to and really good at. And we just thought that his talents would be wasted if we didn’t let him help us more in the way. James: He’s on every one of our albums. You hear him, he has a particular way of capturing sounds that come from a producer’s side of the brain, even though he never carried that title officially, he’s always been there. And not just with our records but the other records that he’s worked on and there’s a consistency. So this time around, we just put the hat on him and shined a light and said, ”Alright John, you’ve been weird this whole time. Let’s get weirder.” And we did! On reluctantly embracing electronic sounds on the new album: James: You know, kind of jumping the chasm on using the computer as a   device was hard for us, because we’ve been a guitar band our entire career. Rayani: We were all pretty hesitant to apply it to this thing of ours because we all have that interest of it feeling very human, very tangible. We don’t want to become an electronic band. We don’t want it to be where you just hit play and the song plays on its own, you know? We want to interact with these new technologies and it feel more human than robotic  —   and robotic is too rude of a word because music comes from so many different places now. And so we would have a conversation about, ”Man this melody is strong, but what other instrument could we play it on? Or what other sound manipulation could we present it through?” These conversations were really deep and interesting, and the result was what we put onto these nine tracks. On the challenging sound of the record: James: There can’t be light without darkness. If there’s no shadows then you’ll never see the lights. So you got to turn the whole thing up and experience the really, sort of Kubrickian terror that we’re trying on some songs if you really want to hear the more delicate parts. It’s a challenge, I think, as a listener, but it was something that we were OK, making it challenging. I think ”challenging” was something we were searching for. Rayani: That’s exactly what we were searching for. If somebody says, ”Man, I hated that record,” I believe you. And if somebody says, ”Man, I loved that record,” man I believe you. But if you were in the middle and said ”I don’t know. I heard it, it was kind of whatever,” you’re lying! You can hate it, or you can love it, but I think that that’s what we were kind of really pushing for. Let there be no middle ground here, either we commit or we don’t. And we committed, and this is what we came up with."
"More than half of public school students are members of minority groups, but 83 percent of their teachers are white. Half of students are boys, while   of teachers are women. Students can benefit in many ways from having teachers who look like them, but in many schools around the country the math doesn’t add up. In recent years, attention to the issue has been increasing, with national teachers unions and the U. S. Education Department, among others, trying to raise awareness and drum up more diverse recruits. One man working in the private sector to address this problem  —   or at least a slice of it  —   is a former elementary school teacher named Orpheus Crutchfield. He’s the president of Stratégenius LLC in Berkeley, Calif. (Yes, it’s spelled with the accent over that first e.) It’s been around for 15 years. And to his knowledge, it’s the only search firm in the country that specializes in placing underrepresented candidates in schools. If your school is looking for a male kindergarten teacher, a female physics teacher or a person of color in any position, Crutchfield says, he can help. But it’s going to cost. The firm typically works with between 55 and 65 schools at a time, charging each one a $1, 650 annual retainer. If you happen to call upon its help between December and June, when most schools are hiring, there’s an additional ”high season fee” of $750. And, if it presents you with a successful candidate, the   fee is 14 percent of that person’s annual salary, upfront  —   paid by the school, not by the teacher, of course. In July, Courtney Martin, a Stratégenius candidate who is   will become head of lower school at Hawken, a progressive private school in Cleveland. It’s a promotion over her previous position, and she’ll be the first person of color to be hired at that level at the school. ”He knew who I was and what I believed as an educator,” Martin says. ”Anything he suggested, I trusted his advice.” Since Crutchfield started working with Hawken a year ago, he has matched it with candidates for three separate positions who have each become finalists. The vast majority of Crutchfield’s clients over the years have been private schools like Hawken, with the occasional charter school. The obvious reason would seem to be the price tag, but Crutchfield says there’s also the matter of who is empowered to make the call to use a firm like his. ”Independent schools are very nimble. Decisions get made immediately,” he explains. ”Whereas dealing with districts is very complicated. I’ve tried.” Before he started Stratégenius, Crutchfield was involved in a number of national, nonprofit efforts to bring more diversity to the teaching workforce, focused on public schools. While private schools may have more freedom and money to seek out his services, Crutchfield believes there’s another reason they might have an easier time hiring teachers of color: They don’t require teachers to be traditionally certified. ”Most schools of education are not diverse,” Crutchfield points out. In   80 percent of people earning bachelor’s degrees in education were white   were women. By going outside traditional training and certification programs, he says, he is able to select from a broader pool of candidates. ”Most of my candidates have master’s degrees and Ph. D.’s rather than teaching degrees,” he says. He looks for   expertise and a demonstrated interest in children and teaching. Over the past decade and a half, Crutchfield says, Stratégenius has made between 6, 000 and 7, 000 placements. It’s a very, very   solution to a very, very   issue. ”In my mind, the model of bringing in people from out of state isn’t going to be very effective,” says Margarita Bianco, an associate professor in the school of education at the University of Colorado, Denver. Transplanting teachers, she adds, doesn’t really address the full need for greater diversity and cultural competence. The most effective model, she believes, ”is to grow your own  —   to have young folks go into teaching and come back to their communities.” She runs a    program called Pathways2Teaching in   high schools, where diverse students are coached to see themselves as potential educators. ”We need the cultural brokers,” Bianco says. ”It’s not just the color of your skin. You need people that understand the culture of the community to be effective.” Crutchfield says that the very existence of his firm, and the fact that private schools like Hawken are willing to pay for his services, is a testament to a slow but growing ”realization of diversity being critical to excellence.”"
"Zaha Hadid, the   architect whose designs  —   both realized and unrealized  —   profoundly influenced the world of architecture, has died in Miami after contracting bronchitis and experiencing a sudden heart attack, according to her architecture firm. She was 65. Hadid was born in Iraq. In a Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross in 2004, she said that her contemporaries had a fundamentally inaccurate understanding of the Arab world she grew up in. ”Many women went into university and higher degrees and worked in variety of professions,” she says. She went to a Catholic school, despite being Muslim, and her parents always encouraged her academic ambitions, she told Gross. Hadid went to school in Beirut, where she studied math, and London, where she later settled. In 2004, she told Edward Lifson of Chicago Public Radio that she had wanted to be an architect her entire life  —   since she was 11 or 12. And after studying at the Architectural Association in London, she launched her own practice in 1979. She quickly became famous for striking, dramatic and experimental designs  —   often dismissed as impractical or impossible to build. Her first major design, in the early 1980s, was for the Peak Leisure Club in Hong Kong. She envisioned a     structure perched on top of a mountain. It won a competition for the building’s design but was never built. A decade later, Hadid envisioned an angular auditorium for the Cardiff Bay Opera House. That, too, won the design competition for the project but was never built. ”It would have become the most radical and compelling building in Britain,” The Guardian’s architecture critic, Jonathan Glancey, wrote in 2011, ”but an alliance of   politicians, peevish commentators and assorted dullards holding the Lottery purse strings ensured it was never built.” In fact, despite numerous   designs, only two of Hadid’s building designs were realized before 2000: an   housing project in Berlin and the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany. In the past 15 years, though, Hadid proved her radical, deconstructivist designs worked as physical buildings  —   not just as experimental drawings. You can step into Hadid’s designs at, among other places, the Lois  Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati the Bergisel Ski Jump on Bergisel Mountain in Innsbruck, Austria the London Olympic Aquatics Center for the London Olympics the Maxxi contemporary art museum in Rome and Eli the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center in Baku, Azerbaijan the Guangzhou Opera house in Guangzhou, China and the Edythe Broad Art Museum at the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing. But her work wasn’t reserved for   stadiums, artsy opera houses or museum buildings. She also designed the King Abdullah Financial District Metro Station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia a BMW plant in Germany a shipping firm’s headquarters in Marseille, France a cancer counseling center in Kirkcaldy, Scotland and several train stations in Austria.  In 2004, Hadid told Gross she believed even her most radical ideas weren’t meant just for critics and highbrow art consumers. ”I’m not saying it’s because ideas are kind of a bit crazy that it’s suitable to only art institutions. I think they could be tried out equally well for, you know, corporate work or for housing or parks or whatever,” she said. And she told Lifson that she thought about public enjoyment, not just dramatic lines, when she crafted a design. ”I think that people want to feel good in a space,” Hadid said then. ”Architecture on the one hand is about shelter, but it’s also about pleasure, and I think . .. the more you carve out of city civic spaces and the more it is accessible to a much larger mass and public, then it is about them enjoying that space. That makes, you know, life much better.” Her design for the 2022 World Cup stadium in Qatar is currently being built  —   amid controversy over the working conditions, as multiple laborers have died working on the stadium project. Hadid’s comment on the issue of laborer welfare in Qatari projects  —   which included, ”It’s not my duty as an architect to look at it”  —   were widely criticized. Hadid sued one critic for defamation. While Hadid’s work in recent years has moved from concept to construction far more frequently than it used to, some   designs have still been scrapped. An Olympic stadium for Tokyo was designed, then ditched, after the cost ballooned to $2 billion and members of the public mocked the building’s appearance. In addition to her design work, Hadid taught architecture around the world. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012. Hadid won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 she was the first woman to do so. She told Gross that being a woman  —   and, on top of that, being a   woman  —   had been a challenge in her career. ”If I went to a meeting with even an assistant of mine, to the side they will talk to him and not talk to me,” she told Gross.” I mean, there’s a world which you, as a woman, no matter how successful you are, you can’t enter into. You are not part of a network. ”It takes you a long time, let’s say, to come over these things. I mean, I never thought it’d be a problem because . .. for good reason or bad reason, I always thought, you know, I should do well because the work is good.”"
"One of the keys to providing good care in nursing homes is simply having enough staff. The federal government says about a quarter of all nursing home complaints can be traced back to low staffing levels. And studies have connected low staff levels to lousy treatment. The state of New Mexico connects it to fraud. The state’s Attorney General is suing a chain of nursing homes, alleging that the facilities were so severely   they couldn’t possibly have provided the care they charged for. Now New Mexico wants its money back. Lino Lucero is ”confidential witness #1” in the lawsuit. In 2007 he and his wife Linda made the tough decision to send Linda’s mother, Polly Duran, to a nursing home. Alzheimer’s continued to tighten its grip on Duran, and they’d done everything they could for her at home. ”It got to the point where it was making my wife sick trying to deal 24 hours a day with her,” says Lucero. So he and his wife brought his    to a nursing home in Santa Fe called Casa Real. They visited frequently, sometimes daily. There were always appalling discoveries. Lucero almost apologizes for describing the conditions there. ”Not to be a distasteful person,” he says, ”but the smell and the stench. .. not only from her, but from the other residents that were there, was horrible and deplorable. You’d walk in and you’d wish you had a mask.” Linda Lucero frequently cleaned her mother up and changed her sheets. The Luceros also noticed that Duran was losing weight and growing frail. Even though the doctor had told the staff that Duran needed to have her food cut into   pieces, they did not always do so. So sometimes, she didn’t eat. The last straw was when the Luceros got a call from a hospital in Santa Fe. The doctor on the phone said that Duran had just been admitted. It turned out she’d broken her hip. Lucero says the physician told him that ”it’s severely broken and it looks like it’s been broken for more than three or four days.” The Luceros never found out how Duran broke her hip or why it took the staff at Casa Real three days to do something about it. She never walked again and died several months later. Her experience is the reason that Lino Lucero decided to become a witness in New Mexico’s lawsuit against Cathedral Rock, the corporation that owned the nursing home then, and Preferred Care Partners Management Group, which owns it now. ”These are companies that profited and made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue,” about 80 percent of which came from the state of New Mexico in the form of Medicaid payments, says Hector Balderas, New Mexico’s attorney general. In addition to Casa Real, there are six more nursing homes owned by Preferred Care Partners Management Group that are targets of this suit. ”We’re trying to recover dollars back for the taxpayers of New Mexico,” says Balderas. The state is also trying to recover funds on behalf of   residents. But Balderas says that, more than money, the lawsuit is about the elderly and disabled residents of nursing homes ”who suffered unnecessarily, sitting there in their own feces, sitting there in urine, developing bed sores. And some of this lack of care even resulted in death.” So far, there are 31 confidential witnesses in this case  —   former nursing home employees as well as families like the Luceros. But what makes New Mexico’s suit novel, isn’t the personal accounts. It’s the data the state gathered to support its argument . State attorneys used time and motion studies  —   a concept borrowed from industrial engineering  —   that show how long it takes health care staffers to do individual tasks. They focused on activities considered ”basic care,” such as bathing, feeding, and turning residents so that they don’t get bed sores. The attorney general’s office then compared those findings with the care required by the actual residents of the targeted nursing homes. The conclusion? It was physically impossible for the number of people employed at these nursing homes to provide the care required by the residents. So when the nursing homes billed for that care, they were lying. But defense attorney Deborah Mann argues that that formula ”reinvents the wheel.” She’s representing Preferred Care Partners Management Group in the lawsuit. There’s already an established legal standard of care in New Mexico, says Mann. It’s 2 ½ hours of nursing care per resident per day, on average. ”That’s the standard that was published to the industry,” says Mann. ”That’s the standard that the people who ran the nursing homes knew about. And to try to hold somebody in retrospect liable  —   for essentially lying  —   is unfair.” Balderas counters that simply following regulations is not enough. ”Those are minimal standards, just a basic floor. They should be doing everything they can to make sure that the health, safety and welfare of these residents is met,” says Balderas, echoing the federal standards for nursing homes. Deborah Mann also objects to the role of private attorneys in this lawsuit. The firm of Cohen Milstein, based in Washington, D. C. approached Balderas’ predecessor in the New Mexico Attorney General’s office, Gary King, with the idea of filing a suit against nursing homes for insufficient staffing. ”We don’t know how it turned into something against our clients,” Mann says, calling the whole arrangement ”inappropriate.” Balderas says that while he didn’t originate the case, he decided to pursue it ”because it ties directly to our mission in protecting vulnerable populations and families in New Mexico.” Meanwhile, his office can rely on the resources of Cohen Milstein attorneys, paralegals, and investigators, who only see a big payday if the state wins the case. Such collaborations are not uncommon. Private firms can bring more firepower to a case than government agencies. Critics call the arrangements ”pay to play,” noting the campaign contributions that firms like Cohen Milstein make to state attorneys general around the country. Public records suggest Balderas’ campaign fund received $5, 000 from Cohen Milstein, far from his largest contribution. In addition, individual Cohen Milstein attorneys donated several thousand dollars more. Attorneys for the other defendant, Cathedral Rock, declined to comment to NPR. But that company previously settled federal civil and criminal complaints for negligence and fraud in its Missouri nursing homes, paying more than $1. 6 million in fines. As for Preferred Care Partners Management Group, all but one of their nursing homes targeted in this suit have received bad grades on a federal site that rates nursing homes. Now, years after Polly Duran’s death, her    still wants the nursing home held accountable for the way it treated her. It’s amazing, he says, that you can put your trust in the nursing home to care for someone you love and then, through neglect and abuse, ”their spirit is completely broken and lost.” The pain of witnessing that happen to Polly Duran, Lucero says, will stay with him for life."
"Myanmar reached a major milestone this week, as civilian leaders, including Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, replaced the generals who have been running the Southeast Asian nation, directly or indirectly, for more than a half century. The outgoing president, U Thein Sein, formally relinquished his office Wednesday to his successor, U Htin Kyaw. Thein Sein, an   has guided the country from military dictatorship to a fledgling democracy over the past five years. He now plans to head to a Buddhist monastery to be ordained as a monk, according to media reports. But few of Thein Sein’s fellow generals and   will be heading into such an ascetic future. Despite suffering a crushing defeat in November’s general elections, the generals had already drafted a constitution that still leaves them with a de facto veto in parliament and control of all security matters. They could even suspend or reverse the country’s progress towards democracy if they don’t like the way things are going in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Suu Kyi, who will hold several posts, including the job of foreign minister, ”is likely to remain relatively cautious,” recognizing that ”her best early moves are going to require her to keep the military power brokers on side,” says Nicholas Farrelly, an expert on Myanmar at the Australian National University. She must also perform an ”awkward dance” with the leaders of ethnic minorities, some of which have been waging civil war for decades in a bid for autonomy and control of local resources. Under a law written by the generals, Suu Kyi is constitutionally barred from the presidency because her late husband and her sons are foreign nationals. So she has picked the president, Htin Kyaw, as her proxy, and she is carving out a role for herself as ”super minister” in charge of four portfolios: education, foreign affairs, energy and the president’s office. Her party, the National League for Democracy, introduced draft legislation on Thursday that would create a powerful new position of ”state adviser” just for her, although it’s not clear whether such an arrangement would be constitutional. ”One could argue that she is putting in place the building blocks for ultimately either a challenge to the constitution itself or to acquire the powers of the president without having to change the constitution,” says Vikram Nehru, a senior associate in the Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Nehru warns that by taking on so many cabinet portfolios, Suu Kyi is setting herself up to take a lot of blame for any policy failures. Some observers argue that this was the role the former military leaders had in mind for Suu Kyi all along, as they laid out a political roadmap for how they could hang onto power and cast off international pariah status and crippling economic sanctions in one fell swoop. The architect of this roadmap is none other than the   leader, former general Than Shwe, who reportedly retains considerable political clout even in retirement. ”This is the kind of retirement I think he probably would have dreamed of,” says Farrelly. Myanmar’s economy will grow at an 8. 4 percent clip in the coming fiscal year, according to a forecast by the Asian Development Bank. The country is at peace with its neighbors. And Suu Kyi has indicated that she will not seek legal action for abuses committed by the former ruling junta. Than Shwe ”has got mansions in which he can while away his days,” Farrelly says. ”Given the amount of loot that has been squirreled away by the retired senior general and some of his close acquaintances, they’ll be in a pretty strong position for  —   let’s be frank  —   generations to come.” Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy must transform itself very fast from a   movement into a governing party. Suu Kyi is 70 and has no apparent successor. She works closely with an inner circle of trusted confidants who have assisted and protected her through years in political opposition and house arrest. Farrelly predicts this personal style of rule is not likely to change soon. ”Aung San Suu Kyi feels herself to have a particular responsibility for dragging her country out of the dictatorial darkness, and in doing so, fulfill the destiny of her father,” he says. Her father, Gen. Aung San, helped negotiate Myanmar’s independence from Britain in 1947, but was assassinated shortly afterward. The Carnegie Endowment’s Vikram Nehru points out that Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Asia and is well positioned to take off economically. ”Myanmar is the last untapped frontier in Southeast Asia,” he says. ”There are enormous investment opportunities here, provided the government adopts sensible economic policies and maintains political stability.”"
"Ever stood on the coastline, gazing out over the horizon, and wondered what’s on the other side? Pondered where you’d end up if you could fly straight ahead until you hit land? Turns out the answer might be surprising. And even if you pulled out an atlas  —   or, more realistically, your smartphone  —   you might have trouble figuring it out. Lines of latitude won’t help, and drawing a path on most maps will lead you astray. Cartographer Andy Woodruff, who recently embarked on a project called Beyond the Sea to illustrate this puzzle, says there are two simple reasons why it’s harder than it seems to figure out which coast lies directly on the other side of the horizon. First, coastlines are ”wacky,” he writes on his blog. And second, well, the Earth is round. The crookedness of the world’s coastlines means moving a few miles up or down the coast will leave you facing a different direction (assuming your gaze is straight out, perpendicular to the coast around you). And because the Earth is round, a true straight line has nothing to with holding, say, a northwest or southeast bearing  —   that will actually send you on a ”rhumb line,” which traces a spiral around the globe. Traveling along a single line of latitude also will send you out of your way, unless you happen to be exactly on the equator. Instead, Woodruff explains, you need to find a ”great circle”  —   the shortest path between two points on a globe. It’s the true ”straight line” between two points on a sphere, even though it looks like a curve on most maps. So he used a two different projections to find the answers: a Mercator projection, which preserves local angles, to find the angles of coastlines around the world, then an azimuthal equidistant projection, which preserves directions from the center point, to find the true straight line from that bearing. You can view all the resulting maps here. Woodruff notes his math might might occasionally be imperfect  —   ”even we cartographers sometimes have a shaky grasp of map projections and spherical geometry,” he says. But his maps show how counterintuitive the answer might be to a seemingly simple question: ”What’s over the horizon?”"
"Last year, a record number of migrants and refugees  —   more than 1 million  —   crossed into Europe, sparking a crisis as countries struggle to cope with the influx of more and more people. And one element of the crisis is health care. Migrants often have trouble getting medical care in the country in which they resettle. Those who are in the country illegally have an even harder time. While many countries struggle with whether  —   and how  —   to provide health care for their migrant populations, one country seems to stand out in its policy to provide equitable coverage for migrants and refugees, regardless of their legal status: Thailand. In Thailand, migrants  —   who account for more than 6 percent of the country’s 67. 1 million population  —   are able to immediately buy and access the country’s universal health care. It’s the only country in the world where migrants there illegally have the same health care rights as nationals. This policy has been in place since August 2013, when Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health extended the country’s extant universal health care policy  —   which has been in place for Thai nationals since 2002  —   to include migrants. ”Most countries have existing mechanisms for providing universal health coverage for their citizens, but this may not necessarily mean extending coverage to migrants, mobile populations, and other vulnerable groups in their countries,” says Nenette Motus, the health adviser for the International Office of Migration in Asia and the Pacific. ”Migrants and marginalized populations, too, have the right to health care and must have access to equitable health care coverage. Thailand, in particular, has health insurance schemes for both documented and undocumented migrants.” This plan also includes medicine to manage chronic illnesses such as HIV, which is critical for patients who need constant and consistent treatment with antiretrovirals. A combination of factors led the Thai government to contemplate a system that gave migrants equal health care. By 2005, migrant workers from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia accounted for 5 percent of all labor forces within Thailand, according to the International Labour Organization. The government recognized the migrants’ contribution to the economy, considered access to health care a human right and was concerned that the lack of proper care for this vulnerable population would allow for communicable diseases that had already been controlled in Thailand to spread once again. According to the UNAIDS 2014 Gap Report, HIV prevalence among migrants to Thailand from neighboring countries is up to four times the rate of HIV prevalence found among the general Thai population. Migrants in Thailand are also more likely to suffer from and seek treatment for communicable diseases like tuberculosis, syphilis, leprosy, malaria and elephantiasis. In the decade leading up to the change in policy, many organizations had already set up health projects in   communities in Thailand. So when the policy expanded, ”there was no big controversy among health care officials whether or not to provide basic health care and   treatment to migrants, regardless of their legal status,” says Aree Moungsookjareoun, the border and migrant health officer at the World Health Organization in Thailand. ”It’s really amazing what Thailand did,” says Tatiana Shoumilina, the UNAIDS representative for Thailand. ”They said any migrant  —   documented or undocumented, legal or illegal  —   can buy a health insurance card.” Initially, migrants would pay 2, 800 THB (about $78) for an annual health insurance card. After the program successfully enrolled its starting target of 300, 000 migrant subscribers, the yearly premium dropped to 2, 100 THB ($58). Today, more than 1. 3 million migrants  —   approximately a third of Thailand’s migrant population  —   are enrolled in the health care system, according to the Ministry of Public Health. The majority live in Bangkok and adjacent provinces, where thriving fishing and construction industries depend on migrant labor. But the    policy has some gaps in the coverage it provides. In certain areas  —   such as Mae Sot, a town in Thailand adjacent to Myanmar with a large population of Myanmarese migrants  —   those who are there illegally still have trouble buying health care without the proper paperwork. For instance, hospitals can turn migrants away if they are not healthy, which could mean high costs for treating the patients. And some hospitals in more remote regions lack the medical and financial resources to provide adequate care. Although Mae Sot is home to many Myanmarese migrants, ”it’s still in a very remote place, which makes it hard to send supplies and medicines from Bangkok,” says Pornpet Panjapiyakul, the director of Thailand’s Bureau of Health Administration. Mae Sot Hospital has paid more than $1. 6 million out of pocket to provide care for Myanmarese migrants. ”In reality, many hospitals refuse to sell migrants health care because taking care of all these sick migrant workers could make the hospitals go bankrupt,” says Chatwut Wangon, Thailand’s program manager of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, an international nonprofit that provides resources for people living with  . But Thailand’s policy is still far more generous than other countries that are now home to growing migrant populations. While the 28 countries of the European Union provide universal health coverage for nationals, few offer migrants equal coverage. In Germany or Sweden, for instance, migrants in the country illegally can only access emergency services. ”No EU country has exactly Thailand’s policy of full access to all services on equal basis as citizens on payment of fee,” says Lilana Keith, the program officer at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, a nonprofit that helps provide health care and other services to migrants in the country illegally. A few countries, like France and Portugal, do provide equal access for migrants there illegally  —   though only if they have resided in the state for more than three months. Only 10 countries (a little more than a third) in the EU allow such migrants to get treated for HIV indeed, many countries already have reduced spending for public health programs for nationals. In Portugal, Italy and the U. K. however, migrants there illegally can procure antiretroviral medications even when they do not have the same health care rights as nationals. Meanwhile, Thailand is trying to improve its system. The Ministry of Public Health, the Cabinet and nonprofit groups are working together to find ways to better implement the migrant health care policy, but time is running out. The Global Fund, an international foundation that supplies medicines for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, allocates its resources based on the income of countries in need  —   and now that Thailand is considered to be an    country, the Global Fund will phase out the country’s support by January 2017. To date, the Global Fund has helped more than 2, 500 migrants receive treatment for   in Thailand. In other words, Thailand has less than a year to find and secure domestic funds for not only those who are currently covered by the Global Fund but also the many other migrants who have yet to receive treatment for  . In the coming months, the Ministry of Public Health plans to work with the Cabinet to develop funding models to ensure a smooth transition. ”One of the biggest problems we are trying to solve is how to get the government to reimburse the hospitals,” says Surasak Thanaisawanyangkoon, chief of the AIDS, TB and Sexually Transmitted Infection bureau within Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health. Some hospitals currently have to wait three to four months before they are reimbursed for their   expenditures by the government, according to Wangon of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Others are not reimbursed in full if they provide costly care for sick migrants in the country illegally who have an insurance card. ”It’s always a challenge to get undocumented migrants health care, but we intend on keeping the policy,” Thanaisawanyangkoon says. And the millions of migrants in Thailand already on the health care plan are grateful. Minh Tun, a Myanmarese migrant, and his wife learned they were   more than 15 years ago when his wife had her prenatal checkup. They then moved from Myanmar to Mae Sot for easier access to treatment. Minh Tun currently receives his supply of ARVs from the Global Fund at Mae Sot Hospital. ”What am I most scared of? Being cut off from treatment,” he says."
"Five star players from the U. S. women’s national soccer team have filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying that the U. S. Soccer Federation pays the reigning World Cup champions far less than their male counterparts. ”I think that we’ve proven our worth over the years,” Carli Lloyd, the 2015 FIFA women’s player of the year, said in an interview on NBC’s Today show. ”Just coming off of a World Cup win, the pay disparity between the men and women is just too large.” The complaint was filed by five   players  —   Lloyd, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn  —   who say that each member of the women’s national team is paid thousands of dollars less than the men at nearly every level of competition, from playing ”friendly” matches to qualifying and playing in the World Cup. While a handful of players signed the complaint, Sauerbrunn said today that ”the decision to file was wholeheartedly supported by the entire team.” The players are represented by Jeffrey Kessler, a prominent attorney who has deep experience in tangling with sports leagues, particularly the NFL. He represented Tom Brady during the ”Deflategate” inquiry and has worked on complex sports and antitrust cases that include McNeil v. National Football League, a landmark 1992 case that ushered in the era of unrestricted free agency in pro football. ”We believe we have a very strong case of blatant gender discrimination and that the EEOC will agree,” Kessler said via email Thursday. The players’ complaint notes that the women won their most recent World Cup title in a final that ”captured the hearts of approximately 23 million viewers, making it the most watched soccer game in American TV history.” As we noted after that game last July, those ratings were ”comparable to the 2014 World Series’ Game 7, which attracted 23. 5 million viewers.” The EEOC filing says that the women’s achievements and revenue generation ”have not resulted in us or our fellow players earning equal or better pay than MNT players”  —   and that U. S. Soccer is breaking federal law by not offering equal compensation. In a statement responding to news of the complaint Thursday, the U. S. Soccer Federation says it is ”committed to and engaged in negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement that addresses compensation with the Women’s National Team Players Association.” The federation also notes: ”After three unsuccessful attempts by private entities to maintain a women’s professional league, U. S. Soccer committed to investing in and administering the National Women’s Soccer League to ensure our women’s players would have an ongoing professional environment in which to continue their careers. As part of this, Women’s National Team players are paid   salaries and other compensation.” As ESPN reports about the players’ complaint, ”The filing, citing figures from the USSF’s 2015 financial report, says that despite the women’s team generating nearly $20 million more revenue last year than the U. S. men’s team, the women are paid almost four times less.” Citing U. S. Soccer’s annual financial reports, the complaint says that the group’s initial budget had projected a financial loss for both the men’s and women’s teams  —   but that the women’s national team’s success ”almost exclusively” brought a projected $17. 7 million profit. For the 2017 financial year, the players say, the federation now ”projects a net profit from the WNT of approximately $5 million, while projecting a net loss of nearly $1 million for the MNT.” Both the women’s and men’s teams are required to play a minimum of 20 ”friendly” games per year, the players say in their complaint. But while the women get a bonus of $1, 350 only if they win a friendly, the men are guaranteed $5, 000 no matter the outcome  —   and can make up to $17, 625 per game depending on their opponent’s FIFA ranking. The EEOC complaint acknowledges that U. S. Soccer pays   female players $72, 000 a year to play in those 20 games. But it notes that if a male player is paid only the base amount of $5, 000 for 20 games  —   and loses them all  —   he would still make $1, 000 more than a woman who wins all 20 of her games. On the Today show, Solo said she hasn’t seen much change, after spending more than a decade on the team that has repeatedly won international accolades and is undefeated this year. ”We continue to be told we should be grateful just to have the opportunity to play professional soccer, and to get paid for doing it,” the goalie said. ”In this day and age, it’s about equality. It’s about equal rights, it’s about equal pay.” A look at U. S. Soccer’s 990 IRS filing for the 2014 financial year shows that its   employees included five members of the men’s national team. Four of those players made around $400, 000, while Clint Dempsey made $428, 000. Of that money, large chunks were earned via bonuses and incentives  —   the base pay for Dempsey, for instance, was listed as $46, 000. The only woman to rank among the 12 names of top earners on the filing was Lisa Levine, the organization’s general counsel. According to U. S. Soccer’s annual financial statement that was released late in 2015, the federation had $83 million in total net assets  —   up $10 million from the previous year. It reported $37 million in revenue from sponsorship, TV and licensing, along with $34 million from its national teams’ game revenues. The EEOC complaint is the latest in what has become a publicly strained relationship between U. S. Soccer and members of the women’s team. Last month, the federation filed a federal lawsuit against the women’s national team players union, with U. S. Soccer asking a court to determine whether a memorandum of understanding should remain in effect until the end of this year  —   something the union has argued against. When the women’s collective bargaining agreement expired on Dec. 31, 2012, the players union and U. S. Soccer signed a memorandum of understanding to continue operations. The CBA that covers the men’s national team expires at the end of 2018. The discord comes months ahead of the Summer Olympics in Brazil, where the women’s team will vie for its fourth consecutive gold medal. As the complaint states, both male and female American soccer players get a $15, 000 individual bonus for qualifying for the Olympic team  —   and another $15, 000 for making the roster. But it also notes that U. S. Soccer has different per diem rates to cover athletes’ costs, with men receiving $75 a day for international venues while the women get $60."
"LaToya Fowlkes is standing outside rent court in Baltimore. A judge has just ruled that Fowlkes has to pay her landlord $4, 900 in rent and fees despite her complaints that the house has leaky water pipes, chipped paint, rodents and a huge hole in the living room wall. But Fowlkes didn’t notify her landlord of the problems by certified mail  —   something the judge said she should have done to avoid eviction. ”It’s hard for tenants, because tenants don’t know the law. And then you have these landlords that just go and buy agents, and agents just sit there and study it,” she says. ”So they just know a lot of stuff, they know how to get around, they know how to work the judge over and that’s not fair.” Fowlkes is complaining about a system that is pretty common around the country. Most tenants who fail to pay rent and are taken to court have no legal representation while most landlords do. Studies have shown that tenants with lawyers are far more likely to avoid eviction. No one knows for sure how many people are evicted in the U. S. each year. There are estimates that it’s close to 1 million, many of whom are   renters living from paycheck to paycheck at a time when affordable housing is becoming increasingly scarce. Most Of The Evicted Are Women With Children, Fowlkes has just consulted a pro bono attorney outside the courtroom and is now planning to appeal. But those attorneys can handle only a small portion of the 150, 000 cases that come before Baltimore’s rent court every year. ”The burden is really placed on tenants to have to ensure that justice happens, and they just don’t have the tools to do it,” says Zafar Shah, an attorney with the Public Justice Center in Baltimore. His group recently did a yearlong study that revealed that most of the tenants who end up in the city’s rent court are extremely poor, making $2, 000 or less per month. Only 15 percent of them get housing aid such as vouchers to help cover their rent. Most are also   women with children who have a high school diploma or less. They also usually lose their cases. One in 17 of the city’s renters is evicted each year. ”Mothers with children are really the face of America’s eviction epidemic,” says Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist who spent more than a year with tenants and landlords in two of Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods. In his new book, Evicted, Desmond details the precarious living conditions of   tenants who are routinely overwhelmed by their monthly rent. ”And what we’re seeing in Milwaukee is something we’re seeing in Cleveland, in Indianapolis, in St. Louis, in cities all around the country,” he says. He notes that most poor, renting families pay more than 50 percent of their income on housing. One in 11 expects to be evicted within the next two months. In Milwaukee, most of those evicted have children with an average age of 7. ”I’ll never forget this one eviction I saw when I was with the sheriffs, and we went into a home and we just saw children, just children,” he says. ”And what had happened was the mom had died a couple of months earlier and the kids had just gone on living in the house. And it was raining, it was like a cold winter rain, and we evicted the home and piled the children’s stuff outside.” Desmond says he does not know what happened to those children, but many people who are evicted end up homeless, crashing with family members or moving into cheaper, less adequate housing. He says that only worsens the poverty that got them evicted in the first place. Desmond thinks one solution is free legal help for   tenants. He says a bigger help would be to make housing vouchers universal. ”And the idea is very simple. Everyone below a certain income level would receive a voucher and would only pay about 30 percent of their income to housing,” he says. ”The voucher would cover the rest.” Not Enough Housing Aid Or Affordable Housing, Desmond’s suggestion for universal housing vouchers below a certain income is actually how housing vouchers work now, but there aren’t enough of them to go around. Cities have waiting lists that are years or even decades long. Only 1 in 4 families that qualify for housing aid, such as vouchers or public housing, actually gets it. Landlords also complain about too much bureaucracy, which makes them reluctant to accept vouchers. They say the government needs to do something to encourage developers to build more affordable housing. ”Then we can be successful, at least make progress. There’s a long road to hoe here,” says Mike Clark, a board member of the National Apartment Association. He owns   Real Estate Services in Dallas, which manages 14, 000 affordable units in Texas. Clark says landlords don’t want to evict tenants if they don’t have to. It costs a lot of money to move a tenant out and get a new one in. What’s needed, he says, are more incentives to increase the stock of   housing. ”Tax credits, property tax breaks, reduced utility rates, reduced hookups, zoning alternatives, all kinds of things like that. That’s what produces housing,” Clark says. There are efforts across the country to do just that, but not enough to keep up with demand.   Renters Continue To Struggle, According to a report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in 2014, 10. 4 million households in the U. S. were considered extremely low income  —   earning 30 percent or less of the area’s median family income. But there were only 3. 2 million affordable and available rental homes, which covers less than a third of the population in need. Affordable housing has become more difficult to find since 2000. An NPR analysis of data from the Urban Institute found that nearly half of all counties in the U. S. saw a decline in affordable housing availability from 2000 to 2013, while fewer than 7 percent of counties saw an improvement in affordable housing coverage for extremely low income households. In cities such as Milwaukee, Baltimore and Washington, tens of thousands of tenants and their landlords continue to meet in court. Tenants such as Pamula Glover of Washington, who stopped paying her rent out of frustration that she has to live with leaks, mildew and nightly gunfire outside her apartment. She’d like to move, but she says it’s hard to find a better place that she can afford. ”The apartment may be nice, but it’s just the area. It’s like a give and take. You going to get a good apartment but the area’s going to be unsafe. You going to get a safe one but the apartment going to be high,” she says. It is a constant   for many   renters in a   world. This story was produced for broadcast by Evie Stone."
"According to Donald Trump, he’s got an amazing relationship with women. ”I respect women. I love women. I cherish women!” Trump said at political conference last year, but it’s a version of a line he repeats often on the campaign trail. His poll numbers and recent comments, though, tell a slightly different story. Trump’s favorability numbers with female voters are low enough that they could cause a problem for him should he be the candidate in the general election. The Republican  ’s remarks this week that he is in favor of some form of punishment for women who have abortions sparked outrage from Democrats and Republicans alike. He has since walked back those comments. But those are just the latest in a list of statements Trump detractors say are   which includes his attacks on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and his recent feud with rival Ted Cruz over their wives. ”It’s a slap in the face to all kinds of women,” said Chelsea Bashi, a    Republican, who volunteers for Cruz’s campaign. She doesn’t believe Trump’s assertion that he has a great relationship with women. Bashi says it hurt her personally when Trump retweeted an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife, Heidi, alongside a glamor shot of his wife, Melania, last month. ”First of all beauty shouldn’t be defined by how you look. It should be defined by what you do for others,” Bashi said. ”A woman like [Heidi Cruz] should not be insulted.” Another Cruz supporter, Debbie Bennett, of Lee’s Summit, Mo. says the way Trump talks about women is unpresidential. ”Women individually need to look at that and see if that’s the kind of leader that they want. It’s not the kind of leader that I want to lead my country or to represent me in foreign countries,” Bennett said. At Trump campaign rallies, however, you will find devoted female fans. Jeanne Tarantino, a homemaker from Waukesha, Wis. said there are more important things to worry about than Trump offending someone. ”I think the bigger issue is the economy,” Tarantino said, adding that today many women are the breadwinners for their families. ”We need an economic recovery and if we don’t do these things then my daughter’s generation and the next generation after her, my grandchildren, will suffer the results.” Just over half of Republican women said they could support Trump in a recent   Street Journal poll. That’s significantly lower than his GOP rivals, but it might be enough for Trump to secure the Republican nomination. But that’s only half the battle. If Trump becomes the nominee, there’s another number from that poll he’ll have to contend with: 70 percent of women overall have an unfavorable view of him. ”It’s not just that people don’t like him a little bit  —   it’s that there is such a strong number of strongly unfavorable women,” Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson said. She notes it has been historically difficult for Republicans to appeal to female voters. ”When you are looking at trying to win the White House and you’re struggling so much with a majority of the electorate, which is what women represent, it makes it just very difficult to envision a clear path to the White House for someone like Donald Trump who has taken an already difficult situation for the GOP and made it significantly worse,” Anderson said. Don’t expect Trump’s statements on women to go away anytime soon. They are likely to show up repeatedly in attack ads, said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. ”He has been his own worst enemy with women. He’s like your worst date ever  —   it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse as the evening goes on,” Lake said. Lake said she believes Trump could cause problems for Republicans down the ballot by motivating   voters. ”I think if he’s the nominee, you are going to see record numbers of women turning out and you’re going to see record of numbers of women voting against him.” Women aren’t Trump’s only demographic challenge. He is also deeply unpopular with minority and younger voters  —   who tend to lean Democratic. Trump’s task, if he’s the Republican nominee, will be to inspire enough supporters in a deeply divided GOP to offset that  —   and again defy the odds."
"It’s no easy feat to simultaneously achieve millions of streams on Spotify and chart at the top of Nashville radio stations, especially with just an EP to your name. You’ve likely heard Maren Morris’ songs performed by other artists on country radio, but when her own ”My Church” hit, she knew her transition from Nashville songwriter to Nashville artist was complete. In Austin, NPR’s Audie Cornish sat down with Morris, who was performing at the SXSW music festival for the first time (and who also played NPR Music a lullaby down by a creek). It was a bit of a homecoming for Morris, who spent her childhood performing in Texas before moving to Nashville. The    says she still gets emotional thinking about her whirlwind year. So what was it like in those early days as a songwriter? Was there the temptation to say, ”Now we know how to do this”? I didn’t really want to force myself onto anybody and tell them my backstory. I guess I didn’t want to color their first impression of me, just being from Texas and having all of this experience. I wanted a clean slate. I wanted it to be solely based off of my talent when they sit in a writing room with me. Eventually, I was introduced to a girl who was a publisher at Big Yellow Dog on Music Row. They have amazing   on their roster. Six or seven months later, they offered me a publishing deal, so I became a staff songwriter. You go in four to five days a week and they handle your calendar and they hook you up with other writers from other companies. They just book you out for months. It’s one thing to get a publishing deal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll actually sell a song. But that happened to you, right? Yeah, and the timing of it was a fluke. This never happens, but I was writing with my friend Ryan Hurd and Eric Arjes, and we wrote this song called ”Last Turn Home.” The next day, my publisher emailed it to Tim McGraw’s label. He listened to it and, I think, within the week he went into the studio and recorded it. And that never happens. That was my first cut, and that’s something you never forget as a songwriter: the first time someone cuts your song. You talked about becoming a professional songwriter, but what made you turn back to being a performer? At what point did you say, ”You know, maybe I’m ready to get back out there”? It took me a while to have that confidence. I think for a long time I was in a little bit of denial over my voice coming back, if that makes sense. I was writing songs that, I thought at the time, I wanted to pitch to other artists. I had some success and I had a few cuts. Then I started to notice publishers and my publisher telling me, ”Maren, this song is great you wrote yesterday, but I don’t even know who to play it for. It sounds so you.” At the time, I was pissed off when I would hear that, because as a writer, that’s the way you make a living  ” to get a cut or a single. It took me a minute to realize, ”Maybe they’re right. Maybe it should be.” Is there one, in particular, on this EP that falls into that category? ”My Church.” That was really the tipping point of me going from songwriter to artist. The second that song was done and we were listening back to it, the first thought in my mind was, ”Wow, they were right. I’m not sending this to anybody.” I started to picture myself singing on an awards show. It was just a pipe dream. I never let my mind go to that place because, at the time, I didn’t consider myself an artist. But with that song, it all changed. I feel like it’s paid off. I mean, we’re a few months [into] it being on national radio. I just did a   festival called C2C in the U. K. it was very emotional, because we had a   acoustic set in the middle of the arena. It was sold out, so it was 20, 000 people. You only have two songs to win them over. But I got up there and sang my two songs and ended on ”My Church.” By the time we get to the breakdown chorus, every corner of that place was singing along. It was so emotional. This week is the year anniversary of me writing it. That day I wrote it, I pictured that and it happened. It was hard not to tear up watching the videos of it back, because it came true. Sorry, I’m like, starting to cry. No, it’s pretty incredible. You’ve been on a long road. It’s been a very emotional week, going from Europe and getting to play my home state and this festival, where we couldn’t even afford to get on a lineup all the years prior. Being on it now and not just having people sing along to the single, but know songs from the EP, songs that aren’t even out yet, that we’ve just played live. It’s really become this   moment."
"This week, Mississippi lawmakers approved a bill called the ”Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act.” Supporters describe it as a bill protecting religious freedom. Critics call it a sweeping bill giving state sanction to open discrimination against LGBT people. The legislation, now sitting on the governor’s desk, allows state employees to refuse to issue    licenses and protects private companies and religious groups from being punished for denying a range of services to LGBT people. And it’s clearly focused on the treatment of LGBT people  —   not on religious freedom writ large. State religious freedom bills have made the news frequently in recent years, from the controversial passage of an Indiana law last year to one that Georgia’s Republican governor refused to sign last month. Those laws often defined religious belief quite broadly. Supporters of such bills could argue  —   as Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia did last year, talking to NPR’s Jennifer Ludden  —   that religious freedom laws have a range of applications. ”There are cases about churches feeding the homeless. The neighbors sometimes don’t like that. There are cases about Muslim women wearing scarves or veils. They’re about Amish buggies. They’re about Sabbath observers,” Laycock said, saying such laws would apply to all those cases. Not so Mississippi’s bill. Here’s Section 2, in its entirety: The sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are the belief or conviction that: (a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, (b) Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage and, (c) Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth. The bill then defines all the actions that a Mississippi resident could take  —   with one of those moral convictions as a reason  —   with the guarantee that the state government won’t punish him or retaliate against him. For religious organizations, protected actions include refusing to conduct a marriage, firing or disciplining employees, declining to provide adoption or foster care services and refusing to rent or provide housing. For individuals and private companies, they include ”guiding, instructing or raising” a foster child in accordance with those three beliefs refusing to give counseling, fertility services or   medical care declining to provide   business services and establishing   dress codes and having   restrooms and other facilities. And the bill allows state employees to refuse to license or perform marriages to which they morally object. Any state punishment or retaliation for such actions, like a person losing a job, a license or a state grant, is deemed ”discrimination” under the bill, with compensation to be available for those so affected. The law doesn’t mention the right of a private company or person to fire employees or refuse to rent housing. But in Mississippi, as in 27 other states, it’s already legal to fire people or refuse to lease them property because of their sexuality. Both proponents and opponents of the bill have focused on the impact it would have when LGBT Mississippians seek to marry, raise children or receive medical and psychological services. Supporters say the law protects the religious freedoms of those opposed to homosexuality opponents say the law amounts to a state sanction of discrimination against LGBT people. Some groups have also noted that because an opposition to extramarital sex is also a protected belief, the proposed Mississippi bill could also impact unmarried couples and single mothers. But, again, it’s worth noting that in Mississippi, as in 27 other states, it’s already legal to deny housing to an unmarried couple based on a landlord’s objection to premarital sex. Mississippi even has a rarely enforced law on the books criminalizing cohabitation. Paul Boger of Mississippi Public Broadcasting reported Thursday on the state Senate debate over the bill. The vote broke down along party lines, Boger reports, with Republicans in favor and Democrats vocally dissenting: ”Freshman Sen. Jennifer Branning, a Republican from Philadelphia [Miss.] presented the bill. She said it only has one goal: ’This bill in no way allows for discrimination by one person against another. What it does is it prohibits your government from discriminating against you with regard to your religious beliefs. That’s the bottom line.’ ”In all, debate lasted a little more than three hours, with many Democrats arguing the bill was discriminatory against the LGBT community in Mississippi. Many drew distinct parallels between this bill and Jim Crow laws. Sen. John Horne of Jackson says Mississippi’s history does not need to repeat itself. . .. ’We don’t need to put another stain on Mississippi.’ ” The state House and Senate passed the bill earlier this week, and on Friday morning, the House approved the final version. It’s now headed to Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, for signature or veto."
"You know the formula  —   troubled teen meets inspirational mentor, and it hardly matters whether we’re talking a delinquent battling a judge, or a chess champion pitted against a street gang. But suppose the mentor is more troubled than the teen. That’s the story in The Dark Horse, a    tale about a   Maori   champion who is released from a New Zealand mental institution, alas, into the home of his   brother. From frying pan to fire, with medication issues. Genesis (aka Gen) Potini is recovering from a nervous breakdown when we first spot him wandering into an antiques store in the rain. Bipolar, disoriented, wrapped in a colorful quilt, he can’t really care for himself. But he’s a bad fit for his brother’s home as well, so his brother gives him cash for other housing. Gen instead camps out in a cemetery and uses the money to buy chess sets for a club for disadvantaged Maori teens. He vows to coach them so they can enter a championship in six weeks. And therein hangs the tale, right? Except, well . .. no. One teen who is not a member of the club is Gen’s nephew, Mana (James Rolleston) who’s on the verge of being forced into his father’s biker gang, with his father’s blessing. Family dynamics that are hard to read are soon battling gang dynamics that are hard to fathom in what’s arguably one of the world’s least likely milieus for a chess movie. Gen, whose story was told 13 years ago in an   documentary also called Dark Horse, is played here by Cliff Curtis, a Maori actor most famous at the moment as the lead in AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead. A strapping, usually commanding performer, he is all but unrecognizable in The Dark Horse  —     scattered, heavyset,   from his meds, barely able to keep things together for the kids. Gen is a mess his film definitely isn’t. Speaking of messes, Standing Tall is about a French lad who is about as messed up as it’s possible to be, though when we first encounter him at age 6, his mother screaming in a court hearing that he’s a monster, he looks downright angelic. As Mom (Sara Forestier) storms out with her other child, hurling a bundle of clothing as she leaves, family court judge Catherine Deneuve realizes this outburst was planned. Mom had packed. The judge looks sadly at Malony, the quiet, seemingly innocent youngster she has left behind. Cut to nine years later, a car careening down suburban streets barely missing pedestrians, with    Malony at the wheel. He is now everything his mother claimed he was  —   uncontrollable, violent, a virtual sociopath. In juvenile detention, he’s so abusive, he reduces toughened counselors to tears. When Deneuve calls Malony into her office now, she first has her secretary remove scissors and a letter opener  —   precautions learned over years of dealing with this kid. Schools can’t control him. Institutional care seems to make things worse. Deneuve tries to practice tough love, grasping at every straw  —   a connection with a girl, a possible job in a tattoo parlor  —   but with even the slightest setback, Malony erupts and rages. ”Do you really think,” she asks him during one such outburst, ”that this court doesn’t care?” ”I don’t trust you,” he responds. She reaches across the desk and, tentatively, he reaches back, but he’s not ready yet. ”Take the hands that are given you,” she tells him. ”It’s time.” Rock solid as Deneuve is, the whirlwind she is trying to tame  —     Rod Paradot  —   is the one who holds your attention. You keep watching his fuming, icy Malony for signs of a thaw  —   a slight unclenching of a fist, a smile that’s not a smirk. And all around him, director Emmanuelle Bercot lets you see the cracks in the network that should be propping him up: parents who aren’t there, dedicated social workers who are themselves damaged, a system that can’t bend when this kid, this judge, needs it to bend. As in The Dark Horse, children at risk are just a starting point. Adults, these films say, are often at risk, too. Even when they’re standing tall."
"When Kevin Polly first started abusing Opana ER, a potent prescription opioid painkiller, he took pills  —   or fractions of pills  —   and crushed them into a fine powder, then snorted it. When Opana pills are swallowed, they release their painkilling ingredient over 12 hours. If the pills were crushed and snorted, though, the drug was released in a single dose. ”Just think about it,” Polly says, ”12 hours of medicine, and, ’BAM!’ you’re getting it all at once.” But the drug’s manufacturer, Endo Pharmaceuticals, reformulated Opana in 2012. The new pills featured a coating that was intended to make them more difficult to abuse by crushing them into powder or dissolving them. Polly discovered he could no longer snort the medicine in the pill, to which he had become addicted. But he and other Opana users soon found a way to remove the drug’s hard coating and receive Opana’s powerful dose all at once: injection. Polly says he used to inject Opana as many as five times a day. He often shared needles with other people. He says he never anticipated what would happen next. In early 2015, Polly tested positive for HIV. ”It was devastating news,” he says. Kevin Polly is among the 190 people in Indiana’s Scott County who have tested positive for HIV since early 2015, in the largest HIV outbreak in Indiana history. The Change To Opana That Was Intended To Prevent Abuse, For its part, Endo has said that its decision to reformulate Opana was a   attempt to prevent abuse. As the company told the Food and Drug Administration in 2012, Endo reformulated the drug ”to provide a   product, equally as effective as Opana ER, which would discourage abuse, misuse and diversion.” Endo declined repeated requests from NPR for an interview. According to study data, as well as interviews with Indiana residents addicted to Opana, the reformulation effectively deterred many people from snorting the drug. But the change also led a significant number of people to abuse the drug by injection. When needles are shared, the injection route can transmit HIV, hepatitis C or other infections. And interviews with experts, court filings, documents from the FDA, as well as Endo’s own statements, suggest the company’s decision to reformulate Opana was also motivated in large part by financial interests. Public health experts say ”abuse deterrent” drugs may serve a role in reducing what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls a national epidemic of prescription opioid abuse. The FDA and members of Congress have also supported their development. But the experience with Opana’s reformulation may serve as a cautionary tale for the potential effects of ”abuse deterrent” drugs. Experiences In Austin, Ind. While NPR’s Kelly McEvers and I were reporting in Austin, Ind. people who abused Opana and were familiar with changes to the drug’s formula told us similar stories. ”The pharmaceutical company, they changed it so you can’t crush them and snort them,” said Devin, a   old. ”Whenever they done that, that’s when everybody started shooting them.” Jeff, a veteran of the Army National Guard, said he became addicted to Opana after being prescribed opioid painkillers for a back injury he sustained in Iraq. At some point, Jeff said, he began crushing and snorting pills. Then, he said, the company ”reformulated them, and the only way you could do them is to inject them.” Joy, a former registered nurse who got addicted to opioids after a back injury, said that she initially stopped using Opana after the reformulation. But that didn’t last long. ”Some genius figured out, ’Hey we can cook this down and turn [it] into a liquid and shoot it up,’ ” Joy said. ”And then it took off like wildfire after that.” (NPR is withholding Devin’s, Jeff’s and Joy’s last names to protect their privacy.) Because of the coating added to Opana, the process of preparing it for injection does take a little work. But in the end, it’s not that difficult. My colleague Kelly watched people prepare Opana for injection, using just the bottom of a soda can, a small lighter, a cigarette filter and tap water. Behind The Reformulation, Public Health And Business Considerations, So why did Endo Pharmaceuticals reformulate the drug in the first place? The answer involves both public health concerns and business considerations. Endo Pharmaceuticals released Opana in 2006. Taken orally, Opana is about twice as powerful as OxyContin, and the company says it is ”indicated for the management of pain severe enough to require daily,      opioid treatment.” Soon afterward, though, communities around the country began reporting abuse of Opana and even overdose deaths. Endo said those concerns over public health and abuse were key motivations to reformulate the drug. Opana also was a major moneymaker for the company. In 2011, for example, Opana generated $384 million in net sales for Endo, accounting for 14 percent of the company’s total revenue that year. But the company also faced the threat of generic competition. So Endo developed a strategy that would block its competitors and maintain Opana’s share of the market. The company reformulated the drug, this time with features designed to prevent abuse, a move that could potentially protect Endo at a time it faced the loss of patent protection. The FDA approved Endo’s reformulated Opana, and in 2012 the company began replacing the old versions of Opana on pharmacy shelves. In August of that year, Endo took another step. The company filed a petition with the FDA, arguing that it had removed the old, crushable version of Opana from the market ”for reasons of safety or effectiveness.” It also asked the agency to ”refuse to approve” and ”suspend and withdraw the approval” of generic,   versions of Opana. If the FDA agreed with Endo, the agency would effectively eliminate the company’s generic competition. ”We see this again and again in the pharmaceutical industry,” says Dr. Anna Lembke, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford University Medical Center. ”They come up with some new fancy formulation of basically the same old drug . .. and then that way they have a new drug that they can charge a lot of money for.” For example, in 2010, Purdue Pharma reformulated its popular opioid painkiller OxyContin to make the drug  . The FDA later determined that the reformulated version of OxyContin was significantly safer and that ”the benefits of original OxyContin no longer outweigh its risks.” The agency then blocked generic,   versions of OxyContin. Dr. Andrew Kolodny, executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and a prominent critic of the drug industry, says this type of decision ”is worth billions to a pharmaceutical company.” Business Concerns Versus Public Health, Endo’s financial motivations for reformulating Opana were suggested in court filings. In 2012, while Endo’s petition was pending FDA’s decision, the company filed a lawsuit in U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the agency to speed up the review. Endo’s lawyers predicted a ”spike of misuse and abuse” if generic  —   and    —   versions of Opana hit the market. But the company also acknowledged its business interests. In a signed declaration, Julie H. McHugh, then the chief operating officer at Endo, said that if a generic version of Opana entered the market, ”annualized net sales will decrease by an amount up to $135 million.” The loss in sales, McHugh stated, ”could result in the termination of up to 150 employees and contractors employed by Endo.” The FDA said that profits  —   not public health  —   were behind Endo’s impatience. ”Endo’s true interest in expedited FDA consideration stems from business concerns rather than protection of the public health,” lawyers for the agency stated in a legal filing. FDA Finds Opana Reformulation Not Significantly Safer, On May 10, 2013, the FDA rendered its decision, concluding that reformulated Opana didn’t effectively deter abuse. The decision opened the door to Opana’s generic competitors, and that day the price of shares in the company dropped more than 5 percent. Opana was still safe and effective when appropriately prescribed, the FDA said. But the agency said, ”study data show that the reformulated version’s   features can be compromised when subjected to . .. cutting, grinding, or chewing.” The FDA also determined that ”reformulated Opana ER can be readily prepared for injection.” Significantly, the agency warned that preliminary data about how the drug was being abused suggested ”the troubling possibility that a higher percentage of reformulated Opana ER abuse is via injection than was the case with the original formulation.” Unintended Consequences, By the time the FDA concluded that reformulated Opana didn’t effectively deter abuse, warning signs had already appeared. In October 2012, the CDC issued a health alert, saying a ”cluster of at least 12 patients” in Tennessee had contracted thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, a rare   disorder, after injecting reformulated Opana. (The number of patients later rose to 15.) In a conference call with investors on Feb. 28, 2013, Endo officials were asked about the reports of injection abuse. ”We’ve designed the Opana   resistant formulation to be crush   to avoid primarily the nasal root of abuse,” said Ivan P. Gergel, who served as Endo’s chief scientific officer at the time. Gergel didn’t say whether intravenous abuse was considered in developing the drug’s reformulation. ”Clearly, we are looking into this data,” Gergel went on to say, ”but it’s in a very, very distinct area of the country.” Subsequent analyses of drug abuse data appear to contradict Gergel’s claim and support the FDA’s concerns about injection abuse. One study from 2014,   by an Endo medical director, drew from data collected at drug treatment centers around the U. S. Overall abuse of Opana had dropped following reformulation, the authors found. But injection had become the preferred way of abusing the drug. According to the study, 64 percent of people abusing reformulated Opana were injecting the drug, between October 2012 and March 2014. By comparison, 36 percent of people abusing the   versions of Opana did so by injection. ”With the reformulation, snorting appears to be much, much lower, whereas injection appears to be the more preferred route,” Theresa Cassidy, the study’s lead author, told NPR in a phone interview. Still, Cassidy, a vice president of analytics at a company called Inflexxion, warns that it’s not possible to draw a causal link between the reformulation and injection abuse based simply on these data. (Inflexxion is paid by pharmaceutical companies, including Endo, to conduct research into drug abuse patterns but says it maintains independence.) A separate study also looked at abuse data before and after Opana’s reformulation. Though the sample size was small, the study found ”a trend toward increases in IV [intravenous] use after the reformulation.” Endo’s Response, NPR asked Endo for an interview related to abuse issues of Opana and the company’s decision to reformulate the drug. ”Patient safety is a top priority for Endo and we are committed to providing patients with approved products that are safe and effective when used as prescribed,” the company said in a statement in response. ”We are dedicated to providing quality medications for the treatment of patients diagnosed with chronic pain as well as to addressing opioid misuse and abuse.” While declining an interview, Endo directed NPR to contact the Center for Lawful Access and Abuse Deterrence, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the development of prescription drugs with   technology. ”I think that you’ve got a problem where the product isn’t able to deter all forms of abuse,” says Mike Barnes, the executive director of CLAAD. ”But to the extent that it’s possible to avoid inhalation, for example, the snorting, that has a benefit.” CLAAD receives support from major pharmaceutical companies, including Endo, but the organization says its policymaking process is independent.     Technology, The FDA has called the development of   drugs a ”high public health priority.” In response to this story, agency spokeswoman Sarah Peddicord tells NPR in an email, ”The FDA is very concerned about potential unintended consequences of   opioids (and purportedly   opioids) and it is something we are actively looking at.” Peddicord reiterated the FDA’s decision not to approve   labeling for Opana, and says it is continuing to monitor the five drugs the agency has approved as  . ”FDA is requiring all sponsors of opioids with approved   labeling to conduct   epidemiological studies to assess their effectiveness in reducing abuse in the real world,” says Peddicord. ”  does not mean  .” The idea of deterrence could give doctors and patients a false sense of security, since the underlying opioid is just as addictive, some experts warn. ”The two most important things that we can do to address the opioid epidemic are to prescribe fewer opioids, and to get patients with opioid addiction into treatment,” says Dr. Caleb Alexander,   of the Johns Hopkins Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness. ”And there’s no evidence to suggest that   formulations are going to fundamentally change the shape of the opioid epidemic.” Endo Continues To Seek   Status For Opana, Despite the   accounts of abuse in Indiana and Tennessee, Endo continues to push for FDA labeling that would call reformulated Opana ER ”” because of its apparent effect on abuse by snorting. In a call with investors on Feb. 29, 2016, President and CEO Rajiv De Silva said that, for the most part, ”If we are successful in getting that relabeling, it will certainly serve to help remove all the generics from the market.” Endo’s push for relabeling may face additional scrutiny because of ongoing legal inquiries. In February, the New York attorney general said Endo engaged in ”deceptive and unlawful conduct” in its marketing of Opana and imposed a $200, 000 penalty on the company. The company’s statement to NPR said, ”The settlement does not include any agreement or confirmation by Endo that its marketing practices were inappropriate.” On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission also announced a lawsuit filed in U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Endo alleging that the company violated antitrust laws and illegally blocked access to generic versions of Opana. Endo says in a statement, ”We believe the FTC’s case is without merit and Endo intends to vigorously defend itself in the litigation.” Back in Austin, Ind. local, state and federal law enforcement have struggled to eliminate Opana from the town’s   market. A recent drug bust helped reduce the amount of Opana available on the street. But drug users there still describe Opana as the most desirable drug around. A single Opana pill, they say, now costs about $200, up from around $140 when we started reporting this story. Side Effects Public Media health reporter Jake Harper and NPR’s Kelly McEvers contributed to this story."
"Ane Brun recently turned 40, and she  —   like many of us who’ve reached that milestone  —   has been taking stock of her life. It’s a life filled with music and success, but there have also been a few rough spots. Like the time we scheduled her to play a Tiny Desk concert in 2012 and she was forced to cancel an entire North American tour (with Peter Gabriel) due to a lupus flareup. Brun, a Norwegian native based in Sweden, was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease when she was 27. But after that episode landed her in the hospital, Brun told NPR she’d had something of an epiphany. ”I got an enlightenment somehow. And also freedom. Because I feel that freedom is an absence of fear.” Brun isn’t afraid to face her demons. Many songs on her absorbing new album, When I’m Free, speak to her newfound freedom and fresh opportunities. She sings three of the album’s slower, more reflective numbers for this Tiny Desk performance. In ”Still Waters,” Brun sings, ”How I’ve been longing   Oh, for this moment when   The rivers are running   Towards the same sea   For this moment when I’m free.” Her voice, with its tight vibrato and expressive coloring, walks an emotional line between vulnerability and confidence. Brun is undervalued as a songwriter. She turns out introspective, insightful portrait pieces, rhythmically complex rockers and tender love songs which are at once sensuous and probing. ”All We Want Is Love” sways gently, but also questions the very definition of ourselves. She closes with another song about taking control of her destiny. The title, ”Signing Off,” may sound ominous, but then she sings: ”Everything that’s broken   Everything that’s gone wrong   I am gonna carry that with me   Mend the streets with it stone by stone.” As far as turning 40 goes, Brun says she doesn’t mind time passing by. And her admirers shouldn’t either. It just means more compelling albums to come from one of today’s most insightful musicians. When I’m Free is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Tom Huizenga, Niki Walker Audio Engineers: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: NPR. For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"For workers who want a raise, this was an encouraging week, with   legislation gaining momentum and employers paying more across the board. In fact, the Service Employees International Union labeled this ”a historic week.” Here’s what happened on the wage front in recent days: The Labor Department said Friday that last month, employers created 215, 000 jobs and raised average hourly earnings by seven cents, to $25. 43. That might not sound like much of a raise, but compared with one year ago, wages are up 2. 3 percent. Those bigger paychecks are helping workers at a time when consumer prices are up only 1 percent from a year ago. Family budgets are in better shape when gasoline is cheaper and wages are higher. Even a small wage uptick might be helping lure ”discouraged” workers back into the labor force. In recent years, the percentage of people who count themselves as workers  —   whether employed or just seeking positions  —   has been shrinking. Many economists have attributed that decline to frustration with low pay. To make jobs worth the effort, paychecks have to be big enough to allow workers to cover their costs, such as transportation, child care, uniforms and such. When the Great Recession pushed down wages and killed off job openings, millions of Americans decided not to even look for work. Now the Labor Department says the workforce participation rate rose in March to 63 percent, the highest level since March 2014. The rate has been rising consistently from its lowest point of 62. 4 percent in September 2015. It’s still low by historic standards, but economists applauded the uptick. ”This is a vote of confidence on the part of workers regarding the health of the U. S. economy,” IHS Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh said in his analysis of the jobs report. HSBC Global Research said the labor force gains appeared ”across nearly all age groups and for both men and women.” In all, an additional 396, 000 people declared themselves to be in the workforce. That surge of job seekers sent the unemployment rate up 0. 1 percentage point, to 5 percent, last month. So we know from the March jobs report that more people are getting raises and more are feeling encouraged. But what’s ”historic” about that? Labor leaders are so thrilled because of two big wins in their fight to raise minimum wages. This week, California’s Legislature approved a plan to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next six years. Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign the measure, which would increase the minimum from the current $10. California would become the first to implement a $15 minimum wage statewide. And in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and top lawmakers reached a budget deal Thursday that would raise the hourly minimum wage in New York City to $15, from the current $9, by the end of 2018. Other parts of the state would see smaller increases. Between New York and California, more than 9 million workers would see their pay ratchet up to $15 per hour, and 18 percent of the U. S. workforce would be covered by a $15 minimum wage, according to the National Employment Law Project, which advocates on issues affecting   workers. ”There has never been a week in U. S. history when more workers in more places have won a common demand,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said in a statement. The Labor Department report showed big gains in the sectors that tend to hire   workers. For example, retailers added 48, 000 jobs in March, and food service and drinking places added 25, 000. But of course, not all of the news was good. Manufacturing jobs fell by a lot in March, down 29, 000 for the biggest monthly drop since December 2009. The mining sector was hit hard, too, losing 12, 000 jobs."
"The hall of mirrors that is April Fools’ Day is upon us, and that means all news emerging until midnight tonight is suspect. The pranks range from outright hoaxes to jokes  —   some of which have already gone very badly. Suspicions are high: Some are wondering why Taylor Swift would release a video promoting Apple Music, a service she pointedly criticized when it first went live, on this day of all days. And we can be forgiven for wondering whether astronomers really found ”the first star with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere”  —   a white dwarf that’s puzzling scientists. Both of those events seem legit. They simply came out amid a flood of faux news that has caused both laughs and groans  —   including one joke, by Google, that seems to have backfired entirely. Here’s a selection of April Fools’ observations in 2016: Everything’s Coming Up Stamos, In an elaborate hoax that seems all too plausible in today’s age of commoditized reality, actor John Stamos and Netflix announced a new collaboration that ranges from a ” ” (? !) to putting the Stamos touch on many of the streaming service’s watch lists  —   as in, ”Trending Now Like John Stamos.” The centerpiece project is titled John Stamos: A Human, Being. Drop the Mic Say ’Oops!’ ”Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year,” says Google’s Gmail team, after its Mic Drop tool was blamed for causing confusion, embarrassment and possibly lost work. The feature, which reportedly lived a short and active life on the company’s Gmail service, let users attach an image of a Despicable Me minion character dropping a microphone  —   and then cut off any   mails in the conversation. Put A Parachute On It, Google is earning better marks for its Google Express Parachute service, which was shown revolutionizing the delivery industry by using drones and parachutes to deliver a host of unlikely items, from a flaming birthday cake to an ax. (See the ”reveal” video at the top of this post.) Hot Action At Cornhub, In a move that we confess to not anticipating, the adult website Pornhub pranked itself by ”cornifying” its landing page, which it renamed ”Cornhub” and adorned with scenes of steaming corn. We’ll warn you, the site still has the explicit videos and images its users expect: The corn effect disappears rather emphatically upon the first click. So if you want to see only a version of the page that features videos with titles such as ”Full cobs totally peeled” and ”Got caught husking on the porch,” look but do not touch. Trader Joe’s Panic, Yahoo set off fears and prompted a response from Trader Joe’s after publishing a hoax story about the   grocer shutting all its stores and closing down its line of signature products. One problem with the story? It was published on March 31. Only after scrolling to the bottom of the story did readers learn it wasn’t serious. Yahoo seems to have pulled the story here’s the cached version. Tennis On The Boards, The Australian Open is playing coy about its new announcement  —   that for the 2017 iteration of the annual tournament, players will compete on hardwood courts. In a video about the change, the Open says that the new surface represents a new innovation. ”We’re onto something,” says Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley. Blast From The Past, Of course, even in the information age, the truthiness of all these stories can still elude many of us. For instance, see NPR’s Facebook post titled ”Why Doesn’t America Read Anymore?”"
"During the 1930s, as Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany, the man who would turn out to be his most implacable foe was drowning  —   in debt and champagne. In 1936, Winston Churchill owed his wine merchant the equivalent of $75, 000 in today’s money. He was also in hock to his   watchmaker and printer  —   but his sybaritic lifestyle, of a     country aristocrat, continued apace. Stories of Churchill’s special relationship with alcohol are legendary. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was his host at the White House during World War II, was astonished ”that anyone could smoke so much and drink so much and keep perfectly well.” Churchill started his day with whisky, but it was champagne that was his truest passion  —   and now, for the first time, we get a glimpse into the extent to which that passion imperiled his already threadbare bank balance. In a magnificently researched new book titled No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money, David Lough, a retired banker who read history at Oxford University, recounts the unbelievable story of the former prime minister’s fiscal excesses. After years of sifting patiently through Churchill’s bank statements and bills, Lough, a skilled financial gumshoe, has amassed a trove of material that he deploys to great effect in his book. We learn of Churchill’s ruinous stock market speculation circa 1929 and the inheritances he squandered his gambling rousts at the casinos in Biarritz and Monte Carlo the thousands of pounds he sank into the upkeep of Chartwell, his beloved country mansion in Kent and the unceasing torrent of cash he poured into maintaining a   cellar. To get an idea of Churchill’s annual alcohol consumption, here’s what he ordered in 1908, the year he married Clementine: Lough never ceases to marvel at how such a prominent public figure got away by living his life well over the overdraft and alcohol limit  —   though he is more bemused than judgmental. (Far more scathing is Christopher Hitchens, who, in an excellent essay for The Atlantic, compared the prodigal and overindulged Churchill of the ’30s to Shakespeare’s glutton Falstaff, ”so  ’d, so old, and so profane.” ) Perennially late on his taxes, Churchill loathed the taxman as much as he did the Nazi, and while he defeated the latter, he spent his whole life trying, rather less successfully, to dodge the former. The taxman may have proved intractable, but others were more amenable. Rich friends bailed him out, and at one point, the government settled his liquor bills  —   something unthinkable today. Every once in a while, when his creditors threatened to reel him in, Churchill would attempt to tighten his belt. The book’s title is taken from a note he left Clementine in 1926, ordering, ”No more champagne is to be bought. Unless special directions are given only white or red wine, or whisky and soda will be offered at luncheon, or dinner. . .. Cigars must be reduced to four a day.” In addition, he ordered that all the cattle, chickens, pigs and ponies at Chartwell be sold and that there be no fish course unless there were visitors. Churchill clearly needed prodigious amounts of alcohol to function, so fortunately for him  —   and the free world  —   he had a patient wine merchant. ”Randolph Payne  Sons had been the Churchill family’s wine merchants for generations,” says Lough. ”They were a      firm who carried the ’royal warrant’ on their letterhead: ’By Special Appointment to Her Majesty The Late Queen Victoria and to The Late King William The Fourth.’ ” The firm gave Churchill a long rope, but when his outstanding balance touched what is today’s equivalent of $75, 000 (as it did in 1914 and 1936) the chairman was forced to write to him  —   triggering yet another fit of economizing that fizzled out faster than an uncorked bottle of Pol Roger. If Churchill drank his way into debt, he wrote his way out of it. Before he was a politician, he was a journalist, and newspapers vied with one another for his stirring copy. He is easily one of the most highly paid freelance war correspondents in history, and certainly the most lavishly equipped. When he sailed to Cape Town to cover the Boer War in 1899, he took six cases of wine and spirits to enliven the   voyage. At Bloemfontein in South Africa, his battle kit comprised an   ”full of Fortnum  Mason groceries and of course liquor.” Churchill drank several brands of champagne such as Giesler, Moet et Chandon, and Pommery, but Pol Roger was his clear favorite. Every year on Churchill’s birthday, the charming and shrewd Odette Pol Roger sent him a case of champagne. (His other great friend, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, sent him caviar  —   until they fell out over Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech.) When Churchill died in 1965 at the mellow age of 90, Pol Roger put a black border around the labels of bottles exported to Britain. Madame Pol Roger was among the few personal friends invited to the funeral service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1984, no doubt to solder the Churchillian connection, Pol Roger launched a   cuvée named Sir Winston Churchill. The Churchill historian Michael Richards describes a game Churchill was fond of playing with his friend Frederick Lindemann, the Oxford don who was the government’s chief scientific adviser. ”Prof!” Churchill would command. ”Pray calculate the total quantity of champagne, wine and spirits I have consumed thus far in my life and tell us how much of this room it would fill.” Lindemann would pull out his slide rule, pretend to make calculations, and announce something on the lines of, ”I’m sorry, Winston, it would only reach our ankles.” And Churchill would mock sigh, ”How much to do  —   how little time remains.” Nina Martyris is a literary journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"It was a rare moment on the campaign trail with the normally calm and collected Hillary Clinton: At a rally at a college campus in New York, Clinton can be seen on video chewing out a Greenpeace activist who challenged her over ”fossil fuel money in your campaign.” It’s hardly the first time Clinton has heard this, with its implication that dirty energy has got her on a string. Campaign finance data suggest it wouldn’t be much of a string. Still, the video was enough for the campaign of her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, to pounce on Clinton. ”The truth is that Secretary Clinton has relied heavily on funds from lobbyists working for the oil, gas and coal industry,” said Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs. The Center for Responsive Politics, parsing Federal Election Commission reports, finds that workers in the oil and gas industries have given Clinton $307, 561 so far  —   compared to, say, $21 million from the securities and investment industry, or $14. 4 million from lawyers and law firms. Put another way, the oil and gas money is   of 1 percent of Clinton’s $159. 9 million overall fundraising. It roughly equals the amount Sanders raised every 16 hours in the first quarter of 2016. The Sanders campaign has relied primarily on small donors, although it, too, lists more than $50, 000 in   and   donations. On the Republican side, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has received more than $1 million in donations from employees of the oil and gas industry, while Donald Trump, who’s relying on small donors and his own fortune to fund his campaign, drew just $10, 000 from individuals tied to the fossil fuel business. The industry total here doesn’t include lobbyists with   clients, and it doesn’t do what the Republican opposition research group America Rising did: include corporate money to the Clinton Foundation. The presidential campaign cannot raise corporate money. Behind the questions to Clinton is a pledge ”to refuse money from fossil fuel interests,” which Greenpeace and other progressive groups want the candidates to sign. Sanders did so when it was announced in January. In an analysis last December, FactCheck. org didn’t rate the issue of Clinton’s fossil fuel funds, but it didn’t get very excited about it either. The analysis also looked back at her Senate campaign, where the industry contributions were equally paltry."
"Don Cheadle has been playing Miles Davis for his entire career. To look back now on some of the actor’s most exciting performances  —   as flashy porn star Buck Swope in Boogie Nights,   con man Basher Tarr in the Ocean’s trilogy, and   deejay Petey Greene in Talk to Me  —   is to recognize those same    elements from the persona of the jazz legend and Cheadle’s personal hero. Maybe all that was missing was that Jheri curl and that brilliantly weaponized trumpet. In his feature directorial debut, Cheadle finally lets us in on the Miles in his mind. Named after Davis’ 1957 album of the same name, but set during his   withdrawal from public life in the late 1970s, Miles Ahead is from the start portraying not the trumpeter’s life story but rather his essence. Typically that’s   for excusing a biopic’s inevitable factual inaccuracies. But what about when the biopic isn’t even trying to be accurate, because its makers are motivated by something other than accuracy? In this case, it’s the idea of hanging out in Davis’ house, watching him navigate his pigsty while producing drugs and priceless memorabilia from every corner. Call it a life story, only funkified. This also may be the first biopic to prominently feature a MacGuffin. The story concerns an unreleased recording of a Davis studio session that he is desperate to keep to himself, a tape that will be passed around between an unscrupulous journalist (Ewan McGregor) and an even less scrupulous manager (Michael Stuhlbarg, trying out   ham). This tape rouses Davis from hermitdom and gets him out onto the street, brandishing a pistol and prompting car chases that Cheadle shoots in ”NBC cop show” action pieces. Cheadle’s attempt to impose this thriller element onto an already suitably strange life story is the hardest pill to swallow, as it’s not clear what new insights into Davis’ character it’s meant to bring. There are times, too, when the film is confused about the motivations of the Davis it has invented. Early in his recluse period, he calls in to a radio station during a tribute hour to request a song from his 1960 record Sketches of Spain, but later, when he finds the same record on the shelf of a young   he’s annoyed: ”Man, I’ve recorded, like, 15 albums since then.” Is he disappearing into his legacy willingly, or has it imprisoned him? Or is it specifically the kid’s youth and whiteness that leaves this titan feeling vulnerable? Whether it’s McGregor’s journalist asking the big questions or us, they don’t seem to get answered. Nevertheless, Miles Ahead makes for a fine complement to Born to be Blue, the similarly experimental and, at times, similarly sloppy Chet Baker   released just last week. Truly, this is a golden age for jazz films. In Blue, we watched Ethan Hawke’s Baker revitalize his career onstage at the New York club Birdland here, in a brutal (and factual) sequence, we see club headliner Davis beaten and arrested on the sidewalk after escorting a white woman outside. Flashbacks like these, and others featuring Davis’ passionate but abusive relationship with first wife Frances Taylor (a luminous Emayatzy Corinealdi) weave into the central narrative at odd angles. And Cheadle blessedly makes no attempt to slap on any sort of thematic  . A life is what it is: bright, brilliant, full of missteps and contradictions and moments of sheer transcendent glory. We can try to take that mess of humanity and squeeze it into a tailored Hollywood   dress  —   or we can do what the jazz greats do and invent, invent, invent, all while riffing on the stuff we know we can’t afford to lose. Miles Ahead ends with a dizzying blurring of the line between fact, fiction, past and present. In character as Davis, we see Cheadle take the stage clad in a vest he could never have worn (branded with ”#SocialMusic,” his term for jazz). Then we get a good look at his new backing band: generations of jazz legends including Esperanza Spalding and   Davis compatriot Herbie Hancock, jamming on thoroughly modern melodies. Davis constantly reinvented his own style right up until his death. The fusion tunes the group plays help turn Miles Ahead into something much weirder and freer than a biopic: a pulsating act of cinematic resurrection. The dead are not dead, not yet."
"Beautifully lit, perfectly styled food photography is everywhere  —   in magazines, food blogs, and even Instagram, where your    cousin is already expert at using natural light to make mom’s cooking look delicious. These images are usually carefully curated to project an image of an idealized existence where the chicken never burns and everyone is always smiling, perfectly coiffed round the table.  Dimly Lit Meals for One, a new book based off a popular Tumblr, serves up quite the opposite scenario. Author Tom Kennedy pairs grainy photos of barely (if at all) plated culinary monstrosities with a fictional tale about the   person who is likely eating it. Real people submit the photos, often with a brief description of what the food in the image is  —   ”because it’s not always very easy to tell,” Kennedy says. In one, an uncomfortably   depiction of chopped cabbage, a used fork, and orange goo that looks a bit like   Thousand Island dressing, Kennedy writes, ”Cabbage with nacho cheese dip over it is not the same thing is coleslaw. As much as you might try to convince yourself that the simulacrum of food sitting in front of you is a real side dish, you’re sadly laboring under a delusion.” The photo’s fictional narrative later implies that the ”chef” behind this meal was also responsible for ”mystery    stomach viruses” going around the office. Is serving this dish to another human being an act of culinary torture? It’s hard to say for certain. A common theme in the book is foods eaten straight out of a can. ”Loneliness and an inability to cook is a truly global phenomenon,” Kennedy writes next to a photo from Egypt showing soupy, slightly   canned fava beans with the spoon anchored firmly inside the bean broth. ”As you shall eat so shall you die, alone and surrounded by the remnants of ready meals,” Kennedy writes a bit later. ”That’s globalization for you.” Kennedy thinks people might send in photos of such depressing meals because having the photo turn up on a blog ”with a stupid story about it” makes them feel better. ”People like to see themselves in things, even if it’s just a picture of what they’ve made for dinner,” Kennedy says. And not everyone has the chops to become an Instagram food celebrity. These are the meals people cook when they don’t want to cook anything and the delivery restaurants are all closed. ”You’re feeling quite low and don’t necessarily want to get out of bed and everything feels heavy and tired all the time,” Kennedy says, describing a feeling anyone who has ever been depressed knows well. Today, cooking is so often portrayed as an intricate, beautiful, caring act. But sometimes, a meal is just some edible bits getting shoveled into a mouth, as Kennedy’s book vividly illustrates. In one of the   photos in the book, a plate of soupy chicken and rice wasn’t sent in by the meal’s creator at all but by the creator’s son. Kennedy recalls that when the photo was first sent in, the teen requested it not be put up on the blog, ”because my parents will find out.” So it wound up in the book instead. ”This is what fame is really all about,” Kennedy says. ”People are willing to sell out their parents’ cooking.” He does, on occasion, get photo submissions that show some level of culinary expertise or are clearly too well lit to be included. ”Maybe they just want somebody to say, ’Oh, that’s really good,’ ” Kennedy muses. ”But I don’t want to make people feel better about themselves. I just ignore those ones.”"
"Bernie Sanders and his supporters don’t consider moving Hillary Clinton to the left a goal or even really a victory of any kind. They want to change America, not the stated positions of another candidate. And while he may not be beating her in the delegate race at the moment, there’s an argument that Sanders has already won by getting the issues he cares about into the political blood stream. If Sanders hadn’t been in the race, for example, would Clinton have taken a firm position on the Keystone XL pipeline, the minimum wage and the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP, Asia trade deal? In the early weeks and months of the campaign, she was vague on all of them. ”I can’t comment yet, because I haven’t seen it,” Clinton said last July in response to a question about her position on the trade deal. Clinton had praised the deal in its early stages when she was secretary of state, but she spent the first six months of her campaign saying she couldn’t weigh in without seeing the details of a final deal. ”I don’t know if there have been enough changes,” she said. ”And I won’t know until I actually see what’s been negotiated.” Sanders repeatedly pushed her to take a stand. ”I kind of think people would prefer to hear what your position is,” Sanders said in June. ”Are you for it or against it rather than passing the buck and saying well in a sense, I have no position? That is not leadership.” Clinton didn’t say she opposed TPP until October, after the White House announced negotiations were complete. That also happened to be a week before the first Democratic presidential debate  —   where trade likely would have been a much bigger issue if all the leading candidates hadn’t suddenly been in agreement. When asked, a spokesman for the Sanders campaign listed off several areas where Clinton has moved: trade, climate change, social security, Wall Street reform and the minimum wage. But Clinton’s camp isn’t buying it. ”No, I don’t think he’s pushed her,” said pollster Joel Benenson, a Clinton strategist, on a conference call with reporters. ”I think she has said repeatedly, she’s a progressive who likes to get things done.” That   phrase of Clinton’s seems tailor made to draw a contrast with Sanders. But even before Sanders jumped into the race, Clinton hit more progressive populist notes than many liberal activists had expected. ”I think it’s fair to say that, as you look across the country, the deck is still stacked in favor of those who are already at the top,” Clinton said in her very first remarks of the campaign. ”And there’s something wrong with that.” Clinton went on to bemoan massive CEO wages, tax laws that favor   managers, college tuition that families can’t afford and said she would support a constitutional amendment to get unaccountable money out of politics. ”That was a real dog whistle to us,” said Neil Sroka with Democracy for America. He said the line about the deck being stacked seemed aimed directly at progressive activists like him. Democracy for America was among the groups that tried to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to run and, now, it supports Sanders. Sroka said the progressive wing of the Democratic party has had a far greater influence in the 2016 race than in past cycles, and Clinton has clearly adjusted her rhetoric to the moment. ”There’s no doubt in my mind that,” Sroka said, ”Bernie Sanders’ incredibly strong primary challenge, and the ’Run Warren Run’ campaign that came before it, has all yielded a   in this race who understands where the base of the Democratic party is and has tried very hard to work her way towards that base.” Sanders and the voters he represents have pushed Clinton to take firm positions. But she rarely meets Sanders all the way. Take college affordability  —   Clinton answered Sanders’ call for free public college with a plan of her own for   college. On the minimum wage, early on, Clinton expressed support for the Fight for 15 campaign. But she resisted taking a position on what the federal minimum wage should be. Meanwhile, Sanders introduced a bill. ”All of our workers from coast to coast need at least 15 bucks an hour,” Sanders said at a press conference outside the Capitol. Eight days later, Clinton took a firm position on the federal minimum wage. She said it should be raised to $12 an hour. ”I think that it’s going to be important that we set a national minimum, but then we get out of the way of cities and states that believe that they can and should go higher,” Clinton said in response to this reporter’s question. Clinton threw her support behind a less ambitious bill than Sanders’ but one with with significantly more  . Her reasoning? It was more politically practical."
"This is dating me, but I know this to be true: In the 1970s, black guys who wanted to be considered culturally serious always had some Miles to throw on the turntable. They might jam to Sly Stone, James Brown or Earth, Wind  Fire at a party. They often sang Stevie Wonder at the top of their voices while in the shower. But on quiet evenings, it always went back to Miles. Maybe they were alone after a long day. Often there was a girl they wanted to impress. (Confession: sometimes I was that girl.) It could be classic Miles (something from Kind of Blue or Porgy and Bess) or modern Miles (Bitches Brew) but it was always Miles. And only part of it was the music. The other part was Miles himself: small, and wiry, with a coiled intensity, piercing eyes, and a soft, raspy voice, Miles radiated energy even when he was sitting still. He was concurrently hot and very, very cool. And he knew it. And he didn’t care whether you agreed with him. Your validation was irrelevant. Miles’ validation of himself was enough. Quincy Troupe   Miles’ autobiography Miles Davis. He grew up, as Davis did, in East St. Louis, Ill. a   town just outside St. Louis. Troupe remembers well the admiration that followed Miles whenever he walked through the neighborhood. ”When I was growing up, I wanted to be like Miles Davis,” he admits. ”All my cousins wanted to be Miles Davis. Then I found out as I got older, that the older men felt the same way.” It was the walk, the stance, the confidence. That latter was bolstered, Troupe laughs, by the ability to box. ”Our fathers got us lessons. Back in the day, everybody lived together, because things were segregated, you know. So the teacher, the pharmacist, the   everybody lived together.” And Miles, apparently, was not going to be bullied by some of the neighborhood’s tougher residents. ”He was not a fighter. He didn’t go looking for trouble,” Troupe remembers. ”But if you came for him, you’d better be ready.” Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal often writes about the image of black men in popular culture, and says Miles’ determination to speak up for himself was consistent, and a large part of why he was so admired. Growing up in the   rights 30s and 40s, Neal says, ”Miles faced the reality of white supremacy.” But he didn’t allow that to stop him: ”he had such confidence in his music, and as he put it in his memoir, his ability to change music, despite white supremacy, he continued to do this on his own terms.” In Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle portrays Miles as a stubborn artist who was completely confident in his work. ”Miles Davis was a man who didn’t suffer fools lightly in general,” says Los Angeles film critic Tim Cogshell (who, like Troupe and Neal, is  ). Cogshell says that Davis ”established himself as a black man who would be respected as a man, period.” Part of the reason that was so important, according to Mark Anthony Neal, is because assertive, confident black men were not often portrayed in popular culture, especially movies. Neal says Cheadle’s Miles Davis is a welcome antidote to the plentiful stereotypes of mindlessly violent black men we see in so many movies from glorified gangster leads, to small roles as ”Thug Number 6.” Or 8. Or 10. Cogshell says there have never been more than one or two black male movie stars at any one time who fit the ”Manly Black Man” template, which he describes this way: ”He’d be a serious person, who can be funny but who is not required to be funny. ..the kind of character who commands the same sort of ordinary respect afforded his white male contemporaries.” Paul Robeson often played such characters, and, points out Cogshell, was a   badass. ”He was an   he associated with the communist party, he criticized the American government. That led to him being blacklisted in the 50s, and he did not back down or recant what he said his entire life.” The men he played in movies, whether a   despot in The Emperor Jones or a Mississippi stevedore in Show Boat, were Manly Men. There was a long dry spell for serious black leading men in mainstream movies until 1960s. That’s when Sidney Poitier made cultural history with his role as Virgil Tibbs, a steely homicide detective temporarily stuck in the Deep South in the 1967 thriller In The Heat of the Night. In that film, Poitier’s character famously tells the local Mississippi lawman (memorably played by Rod Steiger) they do not call him ”boy” in Philadelphia, ”They call me Mister Tibbs!” Poitier had already won an Oscar in 1963 for the   movie Lillies of the Field, but this movie indelibly branded him as a badass. Especially the scene when Tibbs questions a bigoted white judge. The judge, outraged, slaps Tibbs, and Tibbs immediately slaps him right back. It was an electric moment in the movie. Even now, almost 50 years later, says New York Times Magazine    Wesley Morris. ”It takes your breath away,” he says. ”You feel like Sidney had been practicing for that moment, in his head, for 20 years.” ”I think in some ways, it’s still like one of the most remarkable moments we’ve ever seen,” agrees Mark Anthony Neal, ”at least in its depiction of African American men.” Blaxploitation brought a few black male heroes to the fore, but Richard Roundtree as New York private detective John Shaft topped the list. Roundtree was limber, athletic, sexy as all get out (Roundtree was a former model). And sex appeal, says Morris, is an essential badass element. ”I think you definitely have to have some kind of charisma that veers into the libidinous.” Enter Denzel Washington. Serious. Sexy. Assertive. Whether he was pursuing Truth (and, kind of, Julia Roberts) as a reporter in The Pelican Brief, suing a law firm on behalf of dying Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, or landing an airliner   and saving countless passengers’ lives in Flight, Washington was very much the leading man. But now, says Cogshell, ”Denzel’s aged out. No crime in getting older. But Denzel, Fish (Laurence Fishburne) and maybe Wesley Snipes, those were the last guys who held that mantle for us.” Who’s next? Interestingly, Cogshell says none of the current American black male leads are it. Sam Jackson, Jamie Foxx and Will Smith are all are solid box office draws. But they don’t, according to Cogshell, possess the kind of presence that is the hallmark of a true badass. So if not any of them, is there anybody out there who’s heroic and sexually compelling enough to qualify? The common consensus is yes: Idris Elba. The British actor has several roles that have made him a star in on this side of the water, too: as London detective John Luther, in the BBC crime series ”Luther” Elba’s character looks evil in the face and sometimes seduces it, in the line of duty, of course. As Baltimore drug lord Stringer Bell in The Wire, and even as a charismatic jungle warlord in Beasts of No Nation, Elba is edgy, sexy and completely compelling. So is Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis, which is why critics are lauding him and why the brothers on the streets and in the suites will be celebrating this firmly   badass genius. And why turntables everywhere will be getting a fresh workout. Trust."
"Baseball’s opening day is upon us. Sunday is the first official day of Major League Baseball’s 2016 season. Starting things off will be two afternoon games as the Cardinals face the Pirates and the Blue Jays take on the Rays. The day will be capped off by a night match between the 2015 World Series contenders the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets. ”Opening day is always a special time in baseball,” says Jesse Sanchez, a national reporter for MLB. com. ”It’s always a special time for family, fans  —   you know, everybody gets together, watches these games,” he tells NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly. You may not notice, but a few things are going to be different when baseball returns this year. iBaseball, Something you may see for the first time  —   if your seats are good enough  —   is the presence of iPads in team dugouts. Traditionally, computers and smartphones have been banned  —   managers have sifted through statistics and other data on paper, gathered in folders. But a new agreement between Apple and MLB will give coaches iPads loaded with special software designed for baseball. ”Technology is really at the forefront, and I think baseball is following along that path,” Sanchez says. He says people in the dugout have had mixed reactions. ”I think baseball’s very traditional so there’s some managers and players who might not follow that path and use the iPad. But there are others who are really progressive and will use it, so it’s going to be really interesting to watch. . .. ”It’s going to be neat to see these managers put away their folders and start scrolling, start swiping. And watch coaches swipe when players are at bat or when there’s a new pitcher to be put on the mound,” he says. Net Benefits, Another change: safety nets. Last year, MLB recommended the expansion of nets to 70 feet on both sides of home plate, which would help stop foul balls and loose bats from hitting fans seated on the field level. In 2014, Bloomberg News counted about 1, 750 spectators injured each year by batted balls during games. As each stadium is unique, the recommendations are not designed to be a ”   .” Recommendations also call for stadiums to do more to educate fans about the dangers of flying balls and bats. However, they are not binding rules and are up to the individual stadiums to implement. ”I’ve heard some people mention watching a game through a net might not be as comfortable,” Sanchez says. But he doesn’t think it’s going to be much of an issue. He points out that nets don’t seem to have affected the fan experience of those sitting behind home plate  —   ”the best seats in the house”  —   where nets are in place already. ”As someone who’s been around baseball for almost 20 years and as a parent who takes kids to the game  —   I think it’s a good thing,” he says. ”You really don’t want to see anybody get hurt. You don’t want to see a parent, a kid, anybody get hurt [by] a baseball that flies into the stands or a bat that flies into the stands. So I’m for this measure.” Who To Keep Your Eyes On, Safety aside, who are the teams to watch out for this year? Sanchez has some to keep in mind: Chicago Cubs: I think everybody this spring and even up to last year is talking about the Chicago Cubs. They haven’t won a World Series in more than 100 years  —   long time. And they have a great manager in Joe Maddon, tons of young talent, a good mix of veterans and young players. . .. They’ve created quite the buzz in baseball. So I think everybody is really anxious to see how they do during the regular season. I know several people have picked them to win the World Series. So the Cubs are a team that everybody’s watching, everybody’s really paying attention to. . .. The beauty of a team like the Cubs is they have fans all over the world. It’s hard to go anywhere and not run into somebody wearing a Chicago Cubs cap,  . And they’re really excited. So that’s a team I’m really paying close attention to and I think the eyes of baseball are really watching. San Francisco Giants: San Francisco is always a team to watch. They added a pitcher named Johnny Cueto, they added a pitcher named Jeff Samardzija. Traditionally they’ve been one of the [teams] to watch  —   they’ve won several World Series over the past few years. Arizona Diamondbacks: I think this year people are going to be paying close attention to the Arizona Diamondbacks  —   they signed a pitcher named Zack Greinke, who’s arguably one of the top pitchers ever, he’s one of the best pitchers in baseball. So people are paying close attention here locally to the Arizona Diamondbacks  —   I think nationally also. Sanchez also throws in the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox as teams to keep an eye on this year. He notes the Red Sox have added ”top pitcher” David Price. ’Big Papi’ And there’s going to be another reason to be watching the Red Sox this year: David Ortiz is going to be playing his final season. The designated hitter turned 40 last year  —   old for a baseball player. ”So he’s going to take one of these retirement tours,” Sanchez says. ”And I think it’s going to be really interesting to see how each team reacts as he makes his final visit to Yankee Stadium, as he makes his final visit to Texas, as he makes his final visit to Anaheim. ”And he’s been a spectacular player his entire career,” he says. Ortiz is ”a dynamic player. He’s also a    personality.” ”Big Papi,” as he’s known, isn’t shy about telling people how he feels. ”He doesn’t mind expressing himself, he has big opinions,” Sanchez says. ”He’s an international star in Latin America and the United States. He’s obviously bilingual so he reaches a large audience. He was part of that team that broke the Curse of the Bambino. So that is part of David Ortiz’s legacy and I think people are going to pay attention to his final year in Boston.” Ortiz was born in the Dominican Republic, the country outside of the U. S. with the highest number of players in MLB. Coming in second last year was Venezuela, with Cuba in third place. But that could soon change. A Curveball In Cuba Policy, Due to the frosty relations between Washington and Havana for the last   the common way for Cubans to play baseball in the U. S. has been to defect. Sometimes they just walk away when they’re part of a team competing outside of Cuba. But more commonly they escape the island with the help of human traffickers, who frequently demand a percentage of a player’s contract money. So while much was made of the geopolitical consequences of President Obama’s historic visit to Cuba  —   the first by a U. S. president in 88 years  —   there is change afoot for baseball as well. ”Everybody, I think, wants to get to a system where players can go back and forth without this overlay of human trafficking,” said MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. He spoke at a news conference in Havana, the day before the Tampa Bay Rays played the Cuban national team in an exhibition game during Obama’s visit to the island last month  —   the first time a U. S. team has played in Cuba since 1999. ”I also think there is common ground that the system should operate in a way that allows the very best players in the world to come and play Major League Baseball,” Manfred said. Major League Baseball is ”looking for ways to sign players directly from Cuba,” Sanchez says. He says their goal is to create ”a system where players can leave Cuba in a safe way and come back to Cuba, so they don’t have to abandon their family and their lives. Obviously there’s a lot of political hurdles before something like that can happen, but I think that’s the ultimate goal.” But he says it’s hard to tell if easing restrictions on Cubans playing U. S. baseball will lead to a faster exodus of Cuban players. Cuban baseball authorities say the U. S. embargo needs to be lifted for any final deal on the matter. So in 2016, look for more attention to safety  —   and to Cuban players. ”This is a good time to be a baseball fan,” Sanchez says. ”You really feel optimistic. Obviously, the season hasn’t started and this is when everybody feels like they have a chance. Everybody is in first place. So it’s a good time for baseball.”"
"There’s a new tool for battling the opioid epidemic, compressed inside long, metal tanks at an emergency room in Paterson, N. J. It’s laughing gas, also known as nitrous oxide. If you think this is a joke, spend a few hours with Alexis LaPietra, medical director of pain management at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center’s emergency department. She’s developed an   program that’s trying out unusual ways to help patients through their pain without using prescription painkillers in the ER, where the road to addiction began for many patients. ”What we’ve been doing before didn’t have the best results,” LaPietra says. ”Let’s try a different way besides pills, which I know are easy to take. But they have risks.” Risks of overdose and sometimes death drove the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to put out national guidelines in March, calling for physicians to consider alternatives to opioids first when treating pain. ”We are really trying to move outside the box because we don’t want our patients to suffer. We cannot allow this to continue,” she says. To relieve fractures, St. Joseph’s ER now uses ultrasound to find nerves that can be injected with a numbing agent to block the pain. LaPietra says she’s also encouraging patients to try treatments such as acupuncture after they’re discharged from the hospital. Dr. Jeanmarie Perrone, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, studies how emergency departments prescribe opioids. She says this   program is a step in the right direction as other hospitals have tried similar efforts at a smaller scale to cut back on opioids. ”This requires a balancing act,” Perrone says. ”This is the art of medicine. This is the appropriate use of our judgment.” She warns, though, that this shift goes against a longstanding culture amongst many physicians. ”All we’ve really been told is, ’Make sure that you’ve treated pain adequately so that the patient thinks that their pain is ’ and that that translates into treating them with an opioid and as much as they want.” Perrone says hospitals that try   programs in their ERs may risk getting more negative patients reviews about how they manage pain. ”The point here is not to be for or against opioids any more than it makes sense to be for or against antibiotics,” says John Markman, a neurologist at the University of Rochester who specializes in pain management. He says any ER’s pain management program still has to keep opioids as an option. ”The goal is to learn to use them skillfully to minimize the public health risks because the public health risks are significant,” says Markman, who’s conducted research on opioids, some of which was funded by pharmaceutical companies. ”There are many patients in the right context and in the right hands who can benefit.” That’s a reality for some cancer patients and other people with severe pain that Mark Rosenberg, chairman of St. Joseph’s emergency department, acknowledges. ”We are not ” he explains. ”Even though it’s alternatives first, we will use whatever pain medication we need to improve the care of the patient.” Among the 300 patients from the first two months of St. Joseph’s program, Rosenberg says 75 percent left the ER without needing opioids."
"The boys and girls at the party are matched up by height. They dance together. Maybe they do a little grinding. They talk about love . .. and marriage. Then they eat birthday cake. That doesn’t sound like a radical event. But in a predominantly conservative Muslim slum in the Indian city of Kolkata it was unheard of. And what made it happen? Lush, romantic Bollywood movies. That’s what Kabita Chakraborty learned after she began doing research in Kolkata. Chakraborty, a Canadian whose parents were born in South Asia, had come in 2001 to try and get street kids to open up about their lives. She was doing research for her masters in cultural studies. She offered them some art supplies and encouraged them to draw. The scenes they produced stunned her. ”They were all creating these fantastical mountains with little   chalets,” she recalls. ”I’d say, ’What’s that?’ And they’d tell me, ’it’s my dream home  —   it’s in Switzerland.’ So I got out the map and said, ’Can you show me where Switzerland is? And they said, ’We don’t know. We saw it in a Bollywood movie.’ ” The Power Of Bollywood, The incident made Chakraborty wonder how deeply Bollywood might be penetrating the world of young people living in Kolkata’s poorer neighborhoods. Could it be influencing their attitudes in more profound ways? The question launched a multiyear, ethnographic research project that has taken her deep into a youth culture in transition. She was invited to secret gatherings where girls and boys from conservative Muslim families meet to practice Bollywood dance moves and, in many cases, attempt to live out their own version of a whirlwind Bollywood romance. She has chronicled these teens’ efforts to get their parents to accept their dating choices. And she has tracked the mixed results of this radical departure from tradition as the kids matured into adulthood. Now an assistant professor of Children’s Studies in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Chakraborty has just published an account of her research in a book called Young Muslim Women in India: Bollywood, Identity, and Changing Youth Culture. We called Chakraborty to find out how she gained entry into this private world. She began her research at a pivotal moment. Over the previous decade, Bollywood movies  —   and Indian popular culture more generally  —   had been steadily seeping into Kolkata’s poorer neighborhoods as a result of the liberalization of India’s television markets. Until that point, explains Chakraborty, there were only two national television channels, both  . ”And you’d be lucky if they would play a Bollywood movie once a week.” Opportunities to catch a movie in a cinema were almost as limited. The neighborhoods that Chakraborty studies are largely populated with conservative Muslim families that observe purdah  —   meaning that the women are supposed to stay out of sight of men they’re not related to. Occasionally they might feel comfortable breaking purdah to attend a movie, but only if escorted by a large contingent of relatives, says Chakraborty: ”Everyone in the family would have to go, the husband, the wife, the auntie, the uncle.” And that would be a costly  —   and therefore rare  —   indulgence for families that generally make their living doing   work in Kolkata’s tanneries or picking through waste dumps for plastic to recycle. Actually, Blame It On TV, Too, The proliferation of private television channels changed all that. Bollywood films and pop entertainment were broadcast virtually nonstop. ”Suddenly, everyone had   Bollywood access,” Chakraborty says. ”They would watch a little bit of Bollywood in the morning before school during lunch time if they came home to eat in the evening, when everyone would gather to watch the latest serial drama or reality dance competition or celebrity  .” This was the case, says Chakraborty, even early on, when only a few families in the neighborhood actually owned a television set. ”If you were one of those first few families that owned a television, you wouldn’t close your door or window and say, ’It’s just for me to watch it.’ You’d open your home  —   all these children would be sitting on the bed, practically the whole slum would be in your home watching it.” And by 2005, such practices were becoming increasingly unnecessary, as ever more families managed to buy at least a tiny color TV. Telenovelas Can Also Change Lives, Research in other countries certainly suggests this kind of sudden infusion of popular culture can upend longstanding cultural practices. For instance, in Brazil, the expanding reach of television  —   specifically soap operas, or telenovelas  —   from 1960 to 2000, correlated with a dramatic drop in fertility rates. The telenovelas generally featured heroines who were ”very outgoing, very independent, and who had families that were a lot smaller than the typical family in Brazil,” explains Alberto Chong, an economics professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, who has studied the phenomenon. The telenovelas weren’t trying to send a message, adds Chong. It was simply less expensive to keep their casts small. Nonetheless, the impact on women viewers was noticeable. Particularly from 1980 to 1991, as television signals, and therefore the soaps, became available in successive areas of the country, women in those locations began opting to have fewer children. And according a study   by Chong, exposure to the telenovelas accounted for about 7 percent of the reduction in women’s probability of giving birth during that period. Another sign of the telenovela’s   influence: large shares of the women chose to name those children after the   main characters in the most popular soaps. ”People just feel very identified with these soap operas,” says Chong. Entering The Teenage World, Chong’s research was based on a detailed analysis of census and other records. But when it came to assessing the impact of popular culture on teenagers in Kolkata’s slums, Chakraborty wanted to do an immersive, ”ethnographic” study. And for that, she would need to get to know some teenagers. She reached out to a community based organization  —   commonly referred to as a CBO in India  —   that provides young people with educational opportunities, and she arranged to teach yoga and art to a group of girls in the program. (Chakraborty has opted not to publish the name of the CBO to preserve the anonymity of her subjects, who reveal sensitive details of their personal lives in the book.) Once again Chakraborty thought she’d use art as a means of getting the kids to open up. ”My method was to get young people to relax with yoga and then draw images from their mind,” she says. But in October 2005 Chakraborty got a more direct peek into their lives thanks to a lucky break. ”One day, a few of the girls said to me, ’Would you like to come to our dance rehearsal? ’” It turned out the girls were going to be performing in a cultural program put on by the CBO. Such programs are actually common practice, says Chakraborty. ”It doesn’t matter if it’s an environmental group or a political group or an educational group. Practically every CBO in India does a sort of a cultural event once a year, or every other year, with businesses helping to fund it so they can have their banners up at the event.” Sometimes the staff performs. But in this case, for the first time, the CBO had enlisted the teenage girls and boys in its educational classes to perform   dance numbers. Dancing With The Burqa Wearers, When Chakraborty came to the first rehearsal  —   on a rooftop in the middle of the slum  —   she was shocked. There were about 12   couples ranging in age from 14 to 16. ”And they’re dancing up against each other, grinding! You should have seen my face. I mean I knew these girls as   girls who wouldn’t even talk to a boy in the street.” Chakroborty soon realized why she had been invited. ”They said to me, ’We’re learning Western dance. You’re from Canada. You need to teach us. Are we doing it right? ’” ”So I try to do some dance moves like you’d do in a club,” says Chakraborty, laughing. ”And the whole room stopped. The kids said, ’What are you doing? That’s not Western dance. This is Western dance.’ And then they did this really coordinated   choreographed dance that we would think is so typical Bollywood.” Notwithstanding Chakraborty’s disappointing turn as a dance instructor, from then on the kids let her observe their rehearsals  —   at least once a week at first, and ultimately daily, over a period of months. The Bollywood influence was evident in more than just the dancing. ”Every evening would end with a cake, often with candles on it,” says Chakraborty. She soon realized it wasn’t actually anyone’s birthday and the kids didn’t even particularly love cake. This was just their first chance to have a   party, and they were imitating what a party looks like in a Bollywood film. ”If you watch Bollywood movies, the cake is really important. So it was, ’Let’s have a party. We’ll bring out the cake. Light the candles. We’ll eat the cake. Then everyone goes home.’ ” First They Dance, Then They Date, The most fundamental   shift was in attitudes toward dating. After all, says, Chakraborty, ”Bollywood really is just one romantic scene after another.” Chakraborty says many of the teenagers saw their pairing with their dance partner as an opportunity to have a   romance with them complete with illicit dates and talk of love and marriage. ”This would have been unthinkable, absolutely unthinkable, just a few years prior.” Why would the CBO facilitate such taboo activities? Chakraborty’s explanation points to class differences even within the slum. The CBO is run by people in the community who, educationally and economically, are a few rungs up from their neighbors, she says. ”And the way these organizers establish that they’re middle class is through their behavior. They’ll say, ’It’s only among poor people that guys and girls can’t mingle, that if a guy and a girl just talk they are bound to fall in love. If you’re middle class you know it can just be a friendship. ’” So for the CBO staff, organizing this sort of   dance performance, ”was a way of affirming their   status.” Why Parents Didn’t Protest, Perhaps not surprisingly, the families of the girls didn’t see it that way when  —   as was probably inevitable  —   they found out what was going on. Still, their reaction was nuanced. ”Yes, the girls got in a little bit of trouble. Maybe they got slapped and withdrawn from school for a week,” says Chakraborty. ”But then the parents let the girls get back to the rehearsals. It was like, ’Everyone gets to make one mistake in life. And this [performance in the Bollywood dance] is going to be your one mistake.’ ” It was a response that became the norm over the ensuing decade as Chakraborty continued to observe each successive group of teenagers participating in the CBO’s annual   performance. ”No girl has ever been allowed back twice,” she says. ”Because if you’re allowed back then that’s not just one mistake you’re making. So there is a culture of leniency. But it’s limited.” Yet as Chakraborty has followed these girls’ rise from adolescence into adulthood  —   tracking a group that has grown to about 50 young women  —   she has found that the loosening of traditional practices that began during the dance rehearsals has carried over into other areas. More than a third of the girls ended up choosing their husband instead of allowing their family to arrange their marriage. And, as shocking as this development has proved in a community where just over a decade ago love matches were virtually inconceivable, many families have grudgingly accepted it. ”The parents will say, ’I know she made this mistake’  —   meaning she found this romantic partner for herself. ’But he’s a good boy, and we’re going to have to accept it as long as it doesn’t affect her future.’ And by that they mean, they don’t want her moving away. So they will accept a love marriage as long as it’s integrated within the traditional, joint family way of living, and where, as a girl you’re someone who continues taking care of the house.” As a result, adds Chakraborty, the    life of these young women hasn’t changed much compared to that of their mothers. Their role is still predominantly domestic. And for the most part they’re still poor. Transformative change, she says, may only come for the next generation: Like the women in Brazil, many of the girls have consciously chosen to have fewer children. They have often managed to get at least a bit more schooling than their mothers. It’s making them aspire to the   prosperity they’ve become so familiar with through Bollywood  —   if not for themselves, then at least for their children. So they’re determined to send their kids to college. ”A lot of them are telling me, ’I’m only having one or two kids,” says Chakraborty. ”’And everything we’ve got we’re going to put into these kids. ’” "
"Critics call them ”parachute researchers”: Scientists from wealthy nations who swoop in when a puzzling disease breaks out in a developing country. They collect specimens, then head straight back home to analyze them. They don’t coordinate with people fighting the epidemic on the ground  —   don’t even share their discoveries for months, if ever. Sometimes it’s because they want to publish their results  —   and medical journals prefer exclusives. And sometimes it’s because they can make a lot of money by coming up with copyrighted treatments for the disease. Now there’s concern that parachute research could make it harder to stop the Zika outbreak. In response scientists and global health officials have launched an unprecedented worldwide effort to curb the practice. Step one, they say, is to recognize that parachute research is a chronic problem. Take the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Early on a team of scientists was able to sequence the genetic code of virus samples. They immediately made the information public. And the sequences gave a useful picture of how and why Ebola was spreading. But after that, ”there was radio silence,” says as one of the scientists, Nathan Yozwiak of the Broad Institute and Harvard University. ”There were many months in which no new Ebola sequences came out.” But in fact, there were plenty of other researchers going into West Africa to do genetic sequencing. A lot of those scientists were simply waiting on prestigious journals to publish their findings. Yozwiak says the delay had consequences. ”Those were the critical periods in which you were seeing the most cases across West Africa  —   and yet the fewest amount of sequence data.” Dr. David Heymann, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is sympathetic to some of the impulses and incentives that keep researchers from sharing data. ”I myself have been guilty of parachute research in the past,” he says. But Heymann, who chairs the World Health Organization’s emergency committee on Zika, is now among those leading the charge to prevent parachute research from hampering the response to Zika. ”If you want really to have a rapid public health response you have to make sure that that data is available as soon as it’s known,” says Heymann. ”And that means in the country.” Encouraged by WHO, some of the big research funders are making scientists promise they’ll reveal results of Zika research immediately. And major journals have announced they’ll still publish Zika findings that have already been made public. Still, Heymann says there have been hiccups. Earlier this year some researchers from Brazil  —   the epicenter of the outbreak  —   did the   thing by uploading Zika virus genome sequences they had produced to an online public database. Soon after, scientists from Slovenia used that data in a paper they published in the New England Journal of Medicine without sharing credit. Heymann says it seemed to confirm scientists’ worst fears. ”It caused an alarm bell to ring.” There’s also concern about the profit motive that’s driven a lot of parachute research. Foreign scientists have used the specimens they gather to develop diagnostic tests, vaccines or treatments that are then sold at prices that are unaffordable for the developing country. ”In the past there was a very rapacious way of dealing with developing countries,” says Dr. Paolo Gadelha, head of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a medical research institute under Brazil’s ministry of health. ”In Brazil we use the term ’ . ’” Preventing   raises challenges of its own. For instance Brazil has been writing new rules for taking samples outside the country. But there are reports that’s leaving some researchers in limbo as they wait for the rules to be finalized. In short, observes Heymann, ”The whole thing is a real wicked problem.” Still, he says he’s confident all these kinks around sharing samples and data are being worked out. And he says the benefits could last beyond Zika. ”It could then develop a global consensus eventually and hopefully could serve as a standard for research in the future.”"
"In a hot, dusty courtyard in Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 50 teenage boys begin their daily practice of capoeira, a   martial art. As they wave their arms and shuffle their feet, they giggle and whisper to each other in Swahili. When the teacher, whom the kids call Ninja, yells out a command in Portuguese, the language of capoeira, they dutifully follow. Capoeira is best known in Brazil, where slaves from Africa brought it centuries ago. Now the art is making its way back to the continent. It’s being taught to former child soldiers as a way to   them into society. It’s believed the word ”capoeira” comes from ”kipura,” a word that means ”sweeping ground movements” in Kikongo, a Congolese language  —   very similar to what the boys are doing today. Ombeni is a small, thin   . He’s moving back and forth while kicking a leg up between chants. He says he likes capoeira because it only simulates violence. ”It’s a game where you show that you want to beat someone,” says Ombeni. ”And just before you hit him, you bring back your arm. Even when you kick or throw a punch you never actually hurt anyone. You only pretend but you don’t hit a person.” Violence is something Ombeni knows well  —   we’re only using his first name for his safety. Last year, he joined an armed rebel group. His job was to collect water and deliver guns. Then he escaped, ending up in this program, far from his hometown and the rebel group. He’s here with dozens of former child soldiers from the country’s many armed military groups. ”When I’m playing this game I forget things and ideas that I was having when I was in the army,” says Ombeni. The capoeira program is funded by UNICEF, the Congolese NGO Concert d’Actions pour Jeunes et Enfants Défavorisés and the Brazilian Embassy. It’s the recreational component of a   program the boys attend school and vocational classes and receive medical care and counseling. The program started several years ago and since then, UNICEF officials say more than 800 boys have taken capoeira. The boys in the program used to play sports  —   but that tended to cause fights. They could take dance classes  —   but the dances represented different warring regions. Capoeira may be a martial art, but it doesn’t spark any competitive or cultural tensions. The teacher ”Ninja,” whose real name is Digu Donne Mosikkingo, has taught hundreds of these boys. He says when they arrive, they tend to be withdrawn and reluctant to talk. ”With capoeira, it’s a game that brings them together,” says Mosikkingo. ”They started trying to dress like me. They started talking to others. They are open.” In the courtyard, Ninja leads the boys in a circle, where they practice balancing exercises. As they fall out of the poses, they laugh  —   and quickly try to get back into them. Another boy,    Bahati, has also quickly taken to capoeira. He spent the last few years of his life enduring and inflicting violence. Today, he sings, which is part of the martial art and carefully watches his instructor before mimicking his moves. Doing this, he says, makes him feel like a normal kid. ”It helps because I had a soldier’s mentality,” says Bahati. ”This erases everything completely and you become like any other child who does things like attend schools and didn’t have to go through [what I did].” Soon Bahati will go back home where he hopes to return to school and keep up his capoeira practice. But the problem is, when the boys do leave, they’re essentially left to fend for themselves. So it’s hard to know how effective capoeira is at keeping them from rejoining the armed rebel groups. But at least while they’re here, they’re kids again. Support for this story came from the International Women’s Media Foundation. "
"A week after Syrian government forces seized the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State, soldiers, engineers and archaeologists are tallying up the damage done to the ancient city. Visiting the site on Friday, journalists from The Associated Press said the modern town of Palmyra is ”completely deserted,” and the nearby archaeological site full of treasured monuments reduced to rubble. The   SANA news agency said a mass grave had been found in a Palmyra neighborhood, with the bodies of approximately 40 people, according to multiple media reports. SANA said the grave contained many women and children, and some of the bodies had been beheaded or showed signs of torture. On Friday, Syrian troops were working to safely detonate bombs left behind by Islamic State militants. ”They   everything, trees, doors, animals,” a Syrian officer told reporters, according to the AP. The Islamic State controlled the city for 10 months. As we previously reported, Syrian government soldiers backed by Russian air forces took back the city in an offensive spanning several days. The city is significant both strategically and symbolically. It’s located along a highway that’s a key route into the land currently controlled by ISIS. And it’s also rich with cultural and historical treasures. The AP described the state of the UNESCO World Heritage site, once a popular tourist destination, on Friday: ”While some parts of the site, including the   grand colonnades and amphitheater appeared relatively untouched, the damage was very much visible elsewhere. ”The remarkable Arch of Triumph, built under the Roman emperor Septimius Severus between A. D. 193 and A. D. 211, has been reduced to a pile of stones, blown up by IS extremists who filmed the destruction for the world to see. The monumental arch once sat atop the famed colonnaded streets of the ancient town. ”The Temple of Baalshamin and parts of the Temple of Bel, one of the     sites, are also destroyed. ”Apart from the Roman ruins themselves, heavy damage could be seen on parts of the walls of Palmyra’s towering   citadel, built during the Islamic conquest in the 13th century. On top of the scarred citadel, a Syrian flag flies in the wind.” Amr   a former Syrian antiquities official and an active member of the Syrian opposition who teaches at Shawnee State University in Ohio, told NPR’s Kelly McEvers on Monday that the damage done by ISIS was devastating  —   but that there was one bright side. ”We [were] also very fearful that as the offensive rolled on into Palmyra, that this was also going to really cause new damage to the archaeological areas as the fighting would rage . .. between the ruins. And fortunately for us, this did not happen,”   says. Now researchers around the world are working on ideas for how to salvage Palmyra’s treasures. Roger Michel, of the Institute for Digital Archaeology, is working on creating blueprints to enable the digital reconstruction of some destroyed artifacts. He described the process to Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday. And in some cases,   says, the damage wrought by the Islamic State can be addressed through restoration: ”I think, for example, the Arch of the Triumph  —   when ISIS blew it up, they didn’t do a very good job it seemed, fortunately . .. There is still a fair amount it still standing, a lot of the stones that were originally part of the arch were on the ground in front of it. And I think it is possible to repair that. . .. ”But when you come to the Temple Bel, the situation there is really, really awful. It’s going to be almost impossible to repair that. I think maybe at some point they might be able to rebuild it mostly with modern stone and incorporating some of the older stones in it just to give it a sense of the history. But it’ll gone. It won’t be the same monument.”"
"Welcome to the April Fools’ edition of the Dose  —   no pranks, just serious bizness. O. K. maybe not so serious  —   maybe Team Dose just takes it seriously, because we care. And even as one side of the   spectrum is experiencing a bursting of a bubble  —   retirements, bankruptcies, key events attracting smaller crowds  —   another one continues reinventing itself and its norms. This month’s Dose is stocked with the diversity of community, and signs of its constant expansion: new and    heroes in ascendance, sounds that innovate and fabricate, ancient records rediscovered and remixed, and new tracks not yet pressed, smuggled on the wires from the Pacific Northwest, and from the Aegean coast, big tunes and tunes just big enough. And we’re expanding, too. We hope you enjoyed our first Guest Dose courtesy of Berlin’s Daniel Haaksman, and there are more on the way. In the meantime, you can follow our    listening on Twitter @Sami_Yenigun (Sami) @raspberryjones (Piotr) and @spotieotis (Otis)."
"The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 100th birthday earlier this year. In a performance of Ravel’s Boléro, the orchestra presented a few members of a new generation of players eager to take the music into a new century. They were members of the BSO’s OrchKids program, onstage at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to play right alongside regular orchestra musicians. Marin Alsop is a regular commentator on NPR she’s also the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and a founding director of OrchKids. The program was launched in 2008 with just 30 children from   backgrounds. Now, there are more than a thousand students in the program. But the maestra says playing music professionally is not the goal of OrchKids. ”That will just be sort of a fringe benefit,” she says. ”That’s not the point. I think the point is that music becomes this vehicle for experiencing and envisioning themselves with lives filled with possibility. When you walk into Lockerman Bundy [Elementary School] and you hear these kids, and you meet them  —   I mean, it’s all about possibility.” Dan Trahey is the OrchKids artistic director. He says the program can fill many needs. ”It’s funny,” he says, ”because for one person I’ll say this is a music program. For the next person, I’ll say it’s a social program. Even within a family, it might be a musical program for one of their kids, and for the other three, it’s completely a social program. And what I mean by that is that a child can get a refinement on their instrument and be immersed in the musical culture without having to be a premier violinist.” Trahey also believes the program has a positive impact on the students’ academic records. ”We have a rigorous assessment that tells us that,” he says. ”We also have found that kids that immerse themselves in OrchKids show up to school more often.” Asia Palmer is currently a freshman at the Baltimore School for the Arts she was also one of the more than 100 students from OrchKids and the Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestra who took part in the Boléro performance in Februrary. Palmer was a student at Harriet Tubman Elementary School in 2008, when the OrchKids program was just starting there. She says the program has helped her get to where she is today. ”If I hadn’t started the program, I wouldn’t be at my school now,” she says. ”And I really do enjoy my school. And I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play the flute.” Palmer’s mother, Lynette Fields, is a community coordinator for OrchKids. She says working with OrchKids has shown her the benefits of the program that go beyond music education. ”I go on the trips with the kids,” she says. ”I serve snacks, and the dinner for the kids  —   because they get dinner before they leave in the evening. After being here all day long like that, I think it’s good that we supply the dinner for them, because some of the kids may not get a full dinner when they go home in the evening.”    tuba player Keith Flemming is another OrchKids member who performed with the BSO. At the performance, he addressed the audience about the role OrchKids has played in his life. ”When I was younger, I had no musical experience,” he said. ”I didn’t want to connect with people, and I didn’t want to learn. Now I want to absorb more information every day, and OrchKids has taught me that.” Speaking with NPR’s Scott Simon, Flemming elaborated on what the program has meant to him. ”I used to be bad, really bad, and some teachers would kick me out of the class,” he says. ”And then I wouldn’t be able to learn stuff, I’d be in the hallway sitting down. But when I joined OrchKids, I seen that when I learned, I can do more in life.” He says OrchKids has helped him develop some goals for the future, too. ”In the future, I want to start OrchKids programs around the world,” he says. ”I want to still play tuba, but I want to change kids’ lives like my life has changed.” His says his favorite tuba solo right now is ”Suite For Tuba” by Don Haddad. Alsop says she sees the same passion in the OrchKids performers as she sees in the musicians at the Baltimore Symphony she saw it in the performance of Ravel’s Boléro in February. ”When the audience leapt to their feet after the performance, I am not sure there was a dry eye in the house,” she says. ”It was really exciting, but it also felt like an extension of this great Symphony Orchestra out into the community, to the next generations to the communities that are underserved. It just felt like there couldn’t be a better place on the planet to be at that moment.”"
"Bernie Sanders’ appearance on New York City’s Hot 97 Ebro In The Morning started as just another stop on his campaign’s push to win over the state’s voters before its primary later this month. On the show Friday, Sanders gave his usual stump, talking about income inequality, his tax plan and affordable education to listeners of one of the city’s leading   stations. Given the show’s audience, Sanders’ appearance was a clear attempt to reach out to young people, and especially young people of color. But it wasn’t what he said that got their attention  —   it was what he had on his head. During the interview, Sanders national press secretary Symone Sanders tweeted a photo of Sanders in a bright red pair of Beats By Dre. Those aren’t your average headphones: The hip look prompted The Atlantic’s Van Newkirk II to wonder what the name of Sanders’ mixtape would be: And the meme spread from there. There were puns referencing old school   albums: Reference to new mixtapes and artists: And puns combining Sanders’s platform and classic rap lyrics: This wasn’t the first stop Sanders has made on a New York morning show. In February, he was a guest on Hot 105. 1 FM’s The Breakfast Club, a show with a similar demographic. If Sanders hopes to win New York, connecting with young voters of color will be crucial. Sanders had a disappointing loss in South Carolina, where he won only 14 percent of the vote. But by some measures, Sanders outpolls Hillary Clinton among young   and Hispanic voters ages 17 to 29."
"What would you consider ”the best selfie ever”? A shot of yourself alongside the pope, the president, Angela Merkel, Lin Manuel Miranda or Steph Curry? This week Ben Innes, a health and safety auditor from Leeds, Great Britain, used those words to send out a photo in which he posed with the man who hijacked his plane. The hijacker has what looks like a suicide vest of explosives strapped to his chest. Ben Innes is grinning. ”I’m not sure why I did it,” Mr. Innes told The Sun. ”I just threw caution to the wind while trying to stay cheerful in the face of adversity. I figured if his bomb was real I’d nothing to lose anyway, so I took a chance to get a closer look at it.” The bomb was not real. The hijacker who took over EgyptAir MS181 turned out to be a troubled man who wanted to attract the attentions of his   and not a terrorist from ISIS, or  . He is now in custody. But any person who hijacks an airplane terrorizes people. The hijacking lasted six hours. The plane, bound for Cairo, was diverted to Cyprus. The hijacker let many people off the plane, but kept the crew aboard and four passengers. At some point, flight attendants who tried to keep the hijacker in good humor asked to pose for photos with him, to send them to authorities to identify the man. Ben Innes approached to ask if he could take a photo, too. A flight attendant snapped the picture I wonder if anybody said, ”Cheese!” Ben Innes then sent his photo to several friends with the message, ”You know your boy doesn’t” —  then a word we can’t say —  ”about. Turn on the news lad! !!” They sure did. His roommate told the Daily Mail, ”I find it pretty mental but that’s just Ben I guess!” Ben Innes is 26 years of age. He was no doubt worried aboard that plane, despite the smile he wears in the photo, or the bravado of his text messages. Those of us who have never been on a hijacked plane with a man who looks like he has a bomb strapped to his chest should probably be slow to criticize. But it’s hard not to wonder why someone would pose for a smiling selfie with a hijacker, instead of, say, the highly professional flight attendants who worked to keep their passengers from harm. Is it just because the hijacker was famous, no matter what hideous thing he did to become so for a few minutes in the middle of a news cycle? Ben Innes posed with the hijacker and became briefly famous himself. But his brief fling with stardom may follow him for the rest of his life."
"Ronnie Spector was part of the heart and soul of the 1960’s, and she has never stopped. You might know her as the leader of The Ronettes, the girl group that gave us ”Be My Baby” and ”Baby, I Love You.” She also helped turn rock ’n’ roll into a worldwide force. Her new album, English Heart, is full of hits from British artists from the 1960s. It includes a take on ”Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” a hit for The Animals in 1965  —   and a song to which Spector says she feels a special connection. ”It came from my heart, because I felt that way so many times,” she says. ”Throughout my career it was a lot of men, especially in the ’60s, that ruled the world  —   you know, the rock ’n’ roll world. And I just didn’t want people to misunderstand me. I love what I do. I loved all the records I did, ’Be My Baby’ and ’Walking In The Rain.’ People always thought of me as this icon. I’m just a girl from Spanish Harlem that loves to perform.” Ronnie Spector spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon about her days traveling with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and how her performance of ”How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” on English Heart grew from memories of her troubled marriage to Phil Spector and finding her way back to performance in its aftermath. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"Scott Walker never got the chance to officially face off with Donald Trump at the ballot box  —   but if the GOP   loses on the Wisconsin governor’s home turf, it still could be a victory of sorts for the former presidential candidate. In fact, should Trump lose, it could be in part because of one very big miscalculation: Walker remains very popular among Wisconsin Republicans, but the real estate mogul continues to attack him. The highly respected Marquette Law School Poll this week put the governor’s approval rating at 80 percent among likely primary voters. ”It was the most absurd strategy I’ve ever seen,” said Mark Graul, an unaligned GOP strategist in the state ”You attack somebody with high favorables, who’s won three gubernatorial elections in four years? It makes no sense to me.” But Trump  —   who often revels in taunting his vanquished GOP foes  —   couldn’t help himself, rubbing salt in Walker’s White House wounds while campaigning in the state this past week. ”Look, I beat him very badly,” he said after Walker officially threw his support to Trump’s chief rival, Texas. Sen. Ted Cruz. ”[Walker] was going in as a favorite in the presidential run. I knew he couldn’t endorse me. I never called and asked him for an endorsement.” He went on to criticize Walker’s performance as governor and the state’s financial standing, arguing that, ”Wisconsin is doing very poorly, by the way.” And in one heretical moment, he criticized Walker for not raising taxes and instead cutting back on education and infrastructure funding. Talking to conservative radio host Michael Koolidge, Trump boasted about Walker’s national downfall: ”We sent him packing like a little boy.” Tuesday night’s contest could be Walker’s quiet revenge. Observers in the state say his endorsement gave onetime rival Cruz a boost, and helped him solidify support he’s already been gaining thanks to backing from the state’s influential conservative radio hosts. Those same   talkers were the ones who helped boost Walker’s nascent political career. ”What the talk radio folks did was give Cruz a ground game he may not have had  —   they bring that listener audience that becomes boots on the ground,” said Brandon Scholz, a longtime GOP strategist and lobbyist in the state. ”Walker’s endorsement is the push that was needed to bring a lot of those undecideds home.” The Marquette Law survey indeed showed movement for Cruz  —   he’s at 40 percent in the poll, a   jump from February. Trump is static at 30 percent, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich has 21 percent. And that poll was conducted even before Walker handed down his endorsement. When Walker ended his   White House campaign, he made clear he was no fan of Trump, and encouraged his other rivals to drop out so that there could be a clear alternative. That never happened, and six months later most Republicans see Cruz  —   someone they’re not exactly enamored with either  —   as the likeliest candidate to eventually overpower Trump. But in making the argument for Cruz, Walker hasn’t savaged Trump  —   or even fought back against the GOP  ’s attacks. That’s likely part of an important calculation on his part. As many failed presidential candidates do, Walker had a lot of fences to mend when he returned home to the Badger State last fall. Republicans say he put his head down and trudged forward. ”Walker’s been working as hard as he can once he came back to the state,” Scholz said. ”He’s been everywhere. He’s been back to what Walker used to do.” It’s an important approach as Walker tries to salvage his political future, including a campaign for a possible third term in 2018. ”I think Gov. Walker has got a great story to tell about his first six years in office,” argued Graul. ”Wisconsin is in a much better place than it was when he first got elected.” Most Republican voters in the state very clearly still believe that, and are loyal to Walker. His decision not to get in the gutter with Trump could help him consolidate support even more. But for Trump, his decision to do the opposite could be his undoing on Tuesday."
"Associates of President Vladimir Putin of Russia have channeled as much as $2 billion through offshore accounts, banks and shadow companies, according to a massive leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm. More than 11 million documents, dubbed the Panama Papers, show how dozens of rich and powerful people around the world have used offshore and secret accounts to dodge taxes and sanctions and launder money. The documents were leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca and connect to 140 politicians in more than 50 countries. Current and former leaders of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Iceland, Georgia, Qatar and Iraq were among those named in the documents. Families and associates of Syrian President Bashar Assad, former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, and former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak have also been implicated, the BBC reports. Fusion has a breakdown of world leaders who are connected either themselves or through family or friends. More than 370 journalists from 107 news organizations were involved in a yearlong investigation, which began when the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung was leaked 2. 6 terabytes of data. Süddeutsche Zeitung then worked in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which published the findings Sunday along with other media partners. ”I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents,” ICIJ director Gerard Ryle said to the BBC. The files go back through 40 years of the inner workings of the secretive law firm. The ICIJ reports that the papers describe in detail the role of classical cellist Sergei Roldugin, a very close friend of Vladimir Putin, who is ”a    player in a clandestine network operated by Putin associates that has shuffled at least $2 billion through banks and offshore companies.” Roldugin is listed as the owner of several offshore companies, and is in ”ostensible control” of $100 million worth of assets, The Guardian reports. Roldugin says he is not a businessman. But the ICIJ says evidence ”suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists  —   and perhaps for Putin himself.” From the ICIJ: ”In almost every instance, the result is the same: money and power moves in the direction of the network, to companies and people allied to Putin. The network’s covert deals allowed it to receive money in a variety of ways including hundreds of millions of dollars in sweetheart loans from a bank controlled by the Russian government.” Leading political figures in Iceland are named in the documents as well. The prime minister, finance minister and minister of the interior have ”links” to secret offshore companies, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. FIFA, no stranger to scandal, also has a number of officials named in the leaked documents. Juan Pedro Damiani, who sits on FIFA’s ethics committee, is now being investigated himself. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, documents show Damiani ”managed companies through which FIFA members may have received bribes.” Mossack Fonseca is one of the leading creators of shell companies, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The ICIJ notes that the files include data on 214, 488 ”offshore entities” involving individuals in 200 countries and territories. The law firm responded to the reports in a statement Sunday: ”Mossack Fonseca is a leading international company with a presence in over 40 countries and with close to 40 years of history in the legal industry. We operate through our own and representative offices. All our offices maintain the highest due diligence standards that comply with all international laws and regulations.” It also said: ”The vast majority of our clients are regulated entities, such as premier banks, attorneys, accountants, other law firms, trust companies, etc. ― all of them   and reputable business companies and firms.”"
"The city of Reggio Calabria in southern Italy is home of one of the most powerful criminal syndicates in the world. ’Ndrangheta, as it’s known, is a brutal mob funded largely by drug trafficking and it’s been tied to corrupt local officials. For the past four years, Judge Roberto Di Bella has taken a new approach to try to deplete the ranks of the group. Judge Di Bella presides over juvenile court and he’s is trying to prevent the children of ’Ngrangehta members from joining the family business. He spoke to Weekend Edition host Rachel Martin with help from translator Jane Chila. Di Bella says children who appear before his court who’ve gotten involved in crimes like homicide and drug problems are often around 12 to 15 years old. In some cases, he’s removed some of these kids from their homes and placed them with other families or in youth facilities. On how his program works and whether he gets resistance from their families, In many cases, the minors are sent to communities or volunteer families, and the mothers understand that their children are better off. . .. and when the mothers understand, they accept that these decisions of the judges and many times, the mothers actually beg the judges to help their children, to take them away. On the families who are opening their doors to, in some cases, convicted criminals, They usually contact families that have already been prepared with the   people and so they know exactly how to handle the situation. . .. Usually it’s temporary. They leave families when the minors reach their 18th year. On whether these young adults then return to the criminal syndicates, There have been no cases of these children going back to the criminal life. And in many cases they also help them find a job and the mothers also want to go where their children are located because of course they go to different places. On whether he’s been threatened by the mafia organization in reaction to what he’s doing, I cannot say exactly if I’ve been menaced, but many of these fathers are now in prison."
"Like so many Americans approaching retirement, Virginia Republican Rep. Scott Rigell dreams about spending a little more time on the water. ”I have a little rowboat called Miss Nelly. She’s 13 feet long, and there’s not a motor on it. There’s no radio on it. And I’m so looking forward to being on that rowboat,” says Rigell. Rigell is retiring after just six years in Congress. He was one of the 87 Republicans who rode the Tea Party wave to a pivotal GOP takeover of the House. At the end of this Congress, more than   of that class will be gone from the U. S. House. Like many of those freshman lawmakers, Rigell had never held any public office before he arrived in Washington. Before he took office, Rigell was a car salesman. He ran as an ”outsider” in a year when voters were tired of political insiders. As it turns out, some people who never harbored ambitions to be career politicians don’t love being politicians. ”I think, for many of us in my class, it truly wasn’t on the bucket list of life to be here. It wasn’t as if I was a junior in high school saying, ’I want to be a member of Congress,’ ” Rigell says.   members of his class have already left, although two of them now serve in the Senate: Cory Gardner of Colorado and Tim Scott of South Carolina. Three more House Republicans are running for the Senate this year. Another eight members of the class are retiring. The retiring lawmakers include a farmer, a decorated Army veteran and a construction company owner. ”I’ve had better jobs than this,” retiring Michigan Rep. Dan Benishek says with a chuckle. ”It’s amazing to me how people are like, ’Oh, I’ve got to run for Congress. That’s going to be the best.’ I don’t know. I never really felt that way.” Benishek was a surgeon before he came to Congress. He says voters frustrated at Washington should cheer these lawmakers’ decisions to retire after a few years. It’s like   term limits  —   and Benishek says that means fewer career politicians. ”There is a lot of turnover in Congress. Despite what people say about people staying forever, that’s not really the case. I think people didn’t realize how much turnover there is in general,” he says. Wisconsin Rep. Reid Ribble ran his family’s roofing company before he won in 2010. He’s retiring to spend more time with his family, but he conceded this: ”It would be disingenuous to say I’m not also frustrated with the work here.” Ribble and his retiring colleagues say they are, for the most part, proud of what a   House managed to get done these past six years. He cited making the Bush tax cuts permanent, new restraints on federal spending, and updated education and highway laws. ”These were fairly significant things that we got done while we were here, so some of us are saying, ’OK, we can go home,’ ” he says. Rigell agrees. He says he’s grateful for his time in Washington but, in a lengthy interview in his office, he keeps coming back to a nagging concern that the Tea Party class  —   and the years since  —   will also be remembered for another reason. ”Well, I’d say we were right at the cusp of when the American political system started to come unhinged. And it’s unfortunate,” he says. Rigell says he wants to continue work in his     life to inject more civility in American politics. There may be more job opportunities for that off Capitol Hill."
"Class has just ended at a community center in the southern Swedish town of Ronneby. This is the first stop for refugees in the area, once they’ve been granted asylum. They receive 60 hours of instruction on how to live in Sweden. The courses cover such things as how to rent an apartment, get a job and grow old here. ”It’s basically how to live and survive in Sweden,” says Henrik Lovgren, who runs the   program. ”Rules, culture, regulations. And also what obligations you have towards society, towards your neighbors, and responsibility as a person, as a parent, as a fellow citizen.”  The classes are taught in the refugees’ native languages by Swedes who originally came from the same countries, such as Mohammad Abdualamir, who is from Iraq and has been in Sweden for eight years. ”They’re really trying hard to live and be part of this community and be effective,” Abdualamir says. Sweden has long been a haven for those fleeing war and persecution. It took in 160, 000 refugees last year, the most per capita of any European country. And it is working hard to integrate its newest residents. Many aspects of Swedish life are a surprise for the refugees, such as the way the elderly are cared for by the state, not their families, and how much freedom women have. Abdualamir says the refugees here were shocked by reports of sexual assaults in Germany over New Year’s Eve, which were blamed on gangs of migrants. ”They’re not interested in these problems,” he says. ”They’re interested in how to avoid them, how to be positive in this community and thankful for all the services they’re getting.” In Stockholm, the Swedish labor ministry is stepping up its efforts to integrate refugees into the job market. With Sweden’s population aging and in decline, the government wants to turn the refugees into taxpayers as quickly as possible, says Erik Nilsson, the state secretary for employment. ”In a way, it’s good for Sweden,” he says, ”because we do need to have a workforce, and the ones that are coming are mostly in productive ages. I mean, most of them are 20 to 40 years old, which means that they have a long professional life ahead of them.” Nilsson says many of the refugees are also   though historically, it’s taken too long for migrants to break into the workforce. But changes are underway to speed things up. Doctors, for example, can now take tests in Arabic, so they can practice medicine, not drive taxis. But not everyone sees things in such a positive light. Some polls from late last year showed the   Sweden Democratic Party gaining support. Ivar Arpi, a columnist with the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, says more people are listening to the party because they see their country changing. ”The thing to understand with the migration crisis, when it comes to Sweden, is it’s much, much larger here than in Germany. In Sweden, you can’t go to a small town in Sweden. Every town in Sweden has their own migration problem. I mean the apartments  —   there are no more apartments.” Back in Ronneby, the Knut Hahn high school now counts 150 refugees among its student body. The refugees are put in special classes taught in Arabic until their Swedish gets good enough, and then they are integrated into regular Swedish classes. Salam Hamdan, 17, arrived in Sweden from Damascus, Syria, last September and began teaching himself Swedish as soon as he arrived to get ahead. He thinks he’ll soon be placed in classes with native Swedes. ”The first time here, it’s a little hard,” he says. ”Everything is different [from] what we [are] used to. But we must learn from them, and yes, it’s easy to learn and it’s easy to get it.” Hamdan says the Swedish students are very welcoming. But in the cafeteria, the Swedish and refugee kids don’t seem to be mixing. Swedish senior Victor Mignot says there is goodwill, but some of the cultural differences make it difficult. ”I really want to meet them,” he says, ”but it’s hard with the language difficulties. It’s also hard because they are acting different in the society than the Swedish people. And that can scare some people  —   like they talk really loud, and I know that people get bothered by that.” Mignot says Swedes are quiet and reserved, and it might take awhile before the two groups get used to each other."
"If you’ve been following any of the big news stories on food fraud lately, you’ll know that it’s tough to know what exactly is in our food  —   and where it’s been before it makes it onto our dinner plates. Earlier this year,   was sued for stocking tubs of Parmesan cheese that contained   filler. Olive oil is often mixed with sunflower oil and sold as ”extra virgin.” And you might recall the great European horse meat scandal of 2014: Traces of horse meat were found in Ikea meatballs and Burger King beef patties, in cottage pies sold at schools in Lancashire, England, and in frozen lasagna sold all over Europe. And that’s ”just the tip of the iceberg,” says Chris Elliott, the founder of the Institute for Global Food Security, a laboratory in Northern Ireland that tests food from all over the world in order to uncover fraud. ”Many, many forms of food fraud manifest themselves in different parts of the world virtually every day of the week,” he says. Globalization and complex supply chains provide fraudsters with ample opportunity to mess with food products. NPR’s Rachel Martin asked Elliott how his lab goes about tackling this daunting problem: So, are people deliberately cheating the global food supply chain? It’s absolutely cheating. But it goes beyond cheating  —   this is criminal activity, very   criminal activity, with people making a huge amount of money out of fraud in food systems. How much money are we talking about here? Nobody really knows, but the world trade in groceries is about $11 trillion. And the level of fraud is somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of that. How do you decide when and what you should be testing? There are a number of factors that we look for. The first is if we see that there’s a massive fluctuation in the price of commodities. That can often be because demand outstripped supply. Often that can be because of crop failures that happen somewhere in the world. In Madagascar very recently, the vanilla crop failed  —   so there’s a massive increase in the price there. So that suddenly puts vanilla on our radar screen as a potential candidate for fraud. And then what do you do? We know what the [molecular] fingerprint of vanilla should look like. We know what vanilla looks like in different parts of the world, actually. And we will compare those reference fingerprints with the samples that arrive in our laboratory. Are there kinds of products that are easier to fake than others? The more that the food is processed, the more difficult it is to figure out what it is and where it comes from. So things that come from very complex supply chains . .. will be much more vulnerable [to fraud] than locally produced things. What happens to companies that are found guilty of food fraud? Quite often, the person who is caught is the retailer. And they aren’t always the fraudsters  —   often they have been cheated themselves. But what happens is whenever they are caught, the reputation that goes with that is quite enormous. And many, many companies that have been involved or implicated in food fraud have seen their profits drop dramatically. So, what does this mean for consumers? It’s extremely difficult for consumers to decide what’s genuine and what’s fake  —   because, I’ll tell you, the fakes are very, very good. We as consumers are reliant on the government, and on the food industry, to protect us from fraud. My advice to people is always buy your food from bona fide sources. If you buy your stuff from the back of vans and so forth, you can expect what you’ll get. And the second thing is, if you buy something that’s too good to be true   it probably is."
"As much as we might like to, we can’t lay claim to that headline. Credit Rik Stevens, instead, with the golden little rhyme, which he tweeted to All Things Considered earlier this week. It was an early start to what is already becoming a glorious National Poetry Month. The annual event, which falls on April each year, luxuriates in the form, celebrating poetry in all its shapes, sources and sizes. And we at NPR couldn’t help but toss our hats into the ring. Excuse me  —   perhaps I ought to phrase that a bit differently: We tossed your hats into the ring. That’s because, before the month even began, we got things rolling by asking our listeners to tweet their tiny poems at us using the hashtag #NPRpoetry. Since then, I  —   your humble curator  —   have been sifting through the dozens of   verses that have come streaming in. A few trends made themselves immediately apparent. For one thing, there were haiku  —   lots of haiku  —   but I suppose that’s to be expected. The   form is   for the strict character limitations we demanded of our trove of budding poets. Those same limitations inspired more than a few deeply meta works, which dwelt with the writer’s struggle  —   or should we say the tweeter’s struggle? Seems to be a question for the philosophers, hmm? And then, there was another trend entirely. It wasn’t long before I noticed that many of our poets were tweeting not just with #NPRpoetry, but with a second hashtag, too: #PoetryWHS. After a little sleuthing, we got to the bottom of this mystery. It turns out that Natalie Plowman, a teacher at Windsor High School in Colorado, asked her poetry students to join in with NPR’s Twitter callout. ”Some of them really got into it. A couple of them, as you can probably see from the hashtag, felt that it was just a requirement and silly,” she tells NPR. ”So it was kind of all over the spectrum.” And that was certainly in evidence. There were the serious. ”It takes a lot to Love those who do not love youBut that is real strength” The ridiculous. ”I have to peeI see a big aspen treeGood enough for me. ...” And this one poem  —   from a student who isn’t even in Plowman’s class. He just saw his friends doing it, so he figured he would, too. ”I hate poetry class, Because it’s full of cats, But really I don’t even have poetry class” But we can’t rely simply on Windsor High to lead the way forever, especially with spring break looming menacingly on the calendar. If you’d like to join in too, just tweet your teeny works of art with #NPRpoetry. All month we’ll be greedily reading them  —   and reading them aloud on air, as well. If you’re nervous about lending your own voice to the chorus, just heed the words of wisdom Plowman offered her students at the start. ”I just asked them to be who they are. Some them are completely comical and some of them are a little more serious,” she says. ”Whatever is on your mind right now, that’s what I want you to put into this.”"
"Friday brought a pretty strong March jobs report. Labor force participation (that is, the share of Americans working or looking for work) picked up, and wages were solid  —   two areas that haven’t always been confidence inspiring in past jobs reports. Jobseekers weren’t the only ones celebrating this report the Obama administration took the opportunity to brag, as well, tweeting about the long, uninterrupted stretch of   job growth. They’ve been touting this streak for a long time now. So what’s behind the claim? We decided to dig. The Claim (and Chart): The Question: Is that true? The Short Answer: Yes. But Obama can’t take credit for a lot of that job growth. The Long Answer: The White House is right about the numbers. The ”longest streak” claim was true in 2014, as the Washington Post’s Fact Checker found back then, and the streak has only grown. This was the 73rd straight recorded month of private sector job growth (barring revisions). But hold on. Edelman’s chart implies something more: there’s that point where Obama took office (that is, where the bars in the chart turn blue) and then job growth flips direction. It looks like Obama is responsible for that long stretch of job growth. Is that true? Probably not. Yes, the president has some influence (more on that later) but he doesn’t sit at the economy’s steering wheel. Even a former Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee says that a president has little control over much of what happens in the economy. ”I think the world vests too much power  —   certainly in the president, probably in Washington in general  —   for its influence on the economy, because most all of the economy has nothing to do with the government,” he told Marketplace in 2012. Likewise, when a Princeton University study found in 2014 that the economy tends to do better under Democratic presidents than Republicans, the authors also added that most of the reasons behind that growth in fact don’t seem closely tied to the presidents themselves. ”We find that oil shocks, productivity shocks, international growth shocks, and (perhaps) shocks to consumer expectations about the future jointly explain about half of the partisan gap,” they wrote. ”The first three of these look a lot more like good luck than good policy.” (However, the authors do note that foreign policy decisions could account for some of the oil shock effects. It’s also possible that Democratic presidents somehow affect consumer expectations, though as the Washington Post’s Brad Plumer wrote in 2014, ”it’s surprisingly difficult to tease out why this might be.” OK. So a president can’t claim total (or even majority) credit for the economy. Exactly how much can Obama claim in this instance? That, as so many things in the dismal science, is in the eye of the beholder. One thing that seems certain: the stimulus package championed by the Obama administration did make the immediate shock of the recession less painful  —   mainstream economists agree on that  —   and created millions of jobs, as the CBO found. And as we wrote in a fact check last year, it also diminished the effect on poverty levels. But he wasn’t the only one at work on the economy at the time, as one economist points out. ”There were a few things going on, there was TARP, which actually happened under his predecessor,” says Doug   former director of the CBO and president of the American Action Forum, a   think tank. ”There were the extraordinary monetary policies the Fed was taking, and then there was the stimulus.” And in  ’s estimation, the Fed’s role was the biggest of those three. (Additionally, at the start of the Obama presidency, the Fed was led by Ben Bernanke  —   not (at that time) an Obama appointee.) So the stimulus helped pull the U. S. out of recession, but other factors did, too. What about the rest of Obama’s tenure? Brookings Institution economist Gary Burtless agrees that the stimulus was massively helpful, and he also thinks that Obama’s indirect influence boosted the economy. ”Some of the achievement is due to the president though his indirect influence on monetary policy,” he said. ”And in the first two years of his term, through his direct effect on fiscal policy that the U. S. decided to pursue.” Regarding monetary policy, Burtless is referring to Obama’s reappointment of Ben Bernanke and the subsequent appointment of Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chairs. Under Bernanke and Yellen, the Fed maintained   interest rates for seven years and undertook three rounds of massive asset purchases known as quantitative easing  —   both of which were policies to stimulate the economy. So to the extent that the Fed’s policies were successful, Obama to some degree had a hand in boosting the economy through Fed policy, by Burtless’ logic. Three more caveats. This is a long string of solid job growth, Burtless notes, but not extraordinary. Job gains in the   as well as the late 1970s, often reached into the 300, 000s, even the 400, 000s  —   levels rarely seen in this recovery. ”These long strings of employment reports are good, but they’re not spectacularly good as I think you would judge the employment reports for much of the 1990s after about 1993 or so,” says Gary Burtless, senior fellow in economics at the Brookings Institution. ”It’s not spectacular, but they’re nonetheless quite good.” In addition, he points out, labor force participation and the   ratio are still disappointingly low (despite March’s gains). Once (slash if) those bounce back, then the recovery will seem more real. Another point: this is   job creation. The government has had a shakier job creation record during the recovery. At this point, it has created jobs for five consecutive months. In addition, while most of those economists surveyed thought the stimulus’ effects would be good in the long term, early one quarter of economists said they were ”uncertain” whether the   potential costs of the stimulus would outweigh the benefits. Whatever potential   effects an economic policy might cause,   adds, a president has to claim responsibility for the good and the bad. ”They should get some credit, some blame,” said  ."
"For months, the two leading Republican candidates have tried to prove they’re tough on Muslims. Donald Trump famously introduced the idea of a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, and then, last month, the    said he believes ”Islam hates us.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has often insisted President Obama should use the words ”radical Islamic terrorism” and, last week, Cruz issued a statement that called for patrolling Muslim neighborhoods. This political rhetoric is horrifying many Muslims, but it’s also had unintended side effects  —   encouraging them to get out to vote and work with other minority communities. Muslims make up just one percent of the U. S. population, but, in the 1990s into the early 2000s, they were often loyal Republicans. But some Muslims now say they don’t see a place for them in the current party. ”This election’s coming across as a    election,” said Minhaj Husain, who lives in suburban Waukesha County  —   solidly Republican terrain just outside of Milwaukee. Husain says, in his view, the Republican Party has deteriorated in recent years. ”I used to be a big Ron Paul supporter, big libertarian,” said Husain, but then he adds  —   there’s no room for someone like Paul in the current Republican party. So, this cycle he intends to vote for Bernie Sanders. His wife Asma Sukhera, 36, said she’s appalled, not just by what some GOP candidates are saying, but, by how many fellow Americans seem to agree with them. ”More people are latching on to this ideology of separatism, banning Muslims . .. building a wall, these ideas are so   and so against everything that we grew up believing in,” she said. Sukhera is not alone. That sense of disbelief is common among Muslims in the Milwaukee area. (Voters in Wisconsin head to the polls Tuesday for the state’s primary election). ”I think I had a more ideal image of living in America,” said Afnan Musaitif, 27. Musaitif was born and raised in Wisconsin. She says Milwaukee is her home, but it feels like some presidential candidates don’t consider her an American. She said Cruz’s comments about patrolling Muslim neighborhoods was particularly ”absurd.” ”It pits Muslims as a whole as a problem,” she said. ”It makes it sound like Muslims live cultish, off to the side, like we have this weird lifestyle and they have to spy on us to make sure we’re under control. And, it’s like no  —   we’re just like you.” Musaitif says she became desensitized to   rhetoric in the years after the   attacks, but this campaign season has made her rethink how safe she feels wearing a head scarf in public. ”People are saying, ’oh well, (Trump) is speaking his mind, and he’s honest, and that’s why we like him,’” she said. ”And, that’s the crazy part . .. It boggles my mind that someone would like somebody because they’re speaking their mind but they have such nasty qualities about how they’re speaking their mind.” Muslims say they’re disappointed, frustrated, and exhausted, but not necessarily scared. They point out that   friends and neighbors are at times their fiercest defenders. Othman Atta, the executive director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, says the mosque has received hundreds of letters, and even checks from strangers, who merely want to let their Muslim neighbors know they’re welcome in town. Still, he worries about the psychological effects of this rhetoric. His sister Janan Atta Najeeb does, too. ”As an adult we know it’s a free country, people can be as idiotic as they want really, but it concerns me that maybe our children and the children of other Muslim families will feel marginalized, will feel that somehow they’re less American than others, and people view them as less American,” she said. Atta says at home, he can make sure his kids don’t feel marginalized, but he worries that Muslim kids are growing up in a hostile world, and that could have consequences. ”We don’t want to see our children become sidelined or disenfranchised because that in my view is what will ultimately allow those who recruit for terrorism to kind of find people who are disaffected, who don’t feel that they’re part of society,” Atta said. ”And, that’s what I think is going on in Europe, more so than you’ll find here in the United States ’cause in the United States we tend to be much better at integrating.” In fact, in the Milwuakee area, Atta says the nasty rhetoric is actually having a positive side effect. ”It’s encouraging more people to get involved, more people to vote,” he said. Muslim organizations have been holding voter registration drives. And, last weekend, Najeeb held a get out the vote training session at a Muslim conference in Milwaukee. Najeeb herself hopes to be a delegate at the Democratic convention for the first time. Atta says Muslims are getting engaged and joining forces with other voters who feel similarly attacked and have a common goal this November. ”I think that is a great country, and we want to keep it great,” said Atta. ”And, that’s why those individuals that marginalize others or disenfranchise others   we will stand against them  —   regardless of whether those people being excluded or marginalized are Muslims, or   or Hispanics or any other group.” Atta says he intends to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Wisconsin primary Tuesday but come November he’ll vote for any Democrat to keep Cruz or Trump out of the White House."
"Baseball in the U. S. has become an international sport. This season about a quarter of the   players on Major League Baseball teams were born outside the United States. The country with the biggest number is the Dominican Republic, which had 83 players on opening day rosters last year. The success of Dominican major leaguers has been a boon for the Caribbean nation’s economy. But there’s also been controversy over the fate of young prospects who fail to make the cut. The sport has long been popular in the Dominican Republic. With 4 in 10 Dominicans living in poverty, it’s seen as a ticket to fortune. And there have been some great success stories, leading to great things for the DR. Big Dominican stars have invested millions back home. Pedro Martinez, a pitcher best known for his time on the Boston Red Sox and elected last year to baseball’s Hall of Fame, famously rebuilt his Dominican neighborhood of Manoguayabo with homes for dozens as well as churches, schools, a window factory and a baseball field. Former Los Angeles great Vladimir Guerrero was building so many homes in his hometown of Don Gregorio de Nizao that he opened a concrete block factory, a trucking firm and a hardware store. Current Dominican stars including Albert Pujols through his foundation and David Ortiz through his have launched   charity ventures in their home country. That’s not the only benefit. ”Baseball has become a huge industry for Dominicans,” says Rob Ruck, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh who wrote about the country’s fanaticism for the sport in his book, The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic has become the de facto training academy for all of Latin America, which delivers by far the most foreign players to the major leagues of any region, says Ruck. It’s a business that puts thousands of Dominicans to work as they train local prospects as well as Venezuelans, Panamanians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Cubans who have escaped the communist regime. All of those countries have seen some benefit from baseball as stars send money back home. But only Dominicans have created a baseball infrastructure that promises a steady national industry for years to come. Venezuela, which ranks No. 2 in the parade of MLB nations with 65 major league players on opening day last year, also once enjoyed its own   industry. But political unrest under the country’s socialist government and a growing crime wave have sent major league teams fleeing. This year, a summer league comprising U. S.  teams collapsed, canceling the entire schedule. ”The U. S. teams have essentially abandoned Venezuela,” Ruck says. Meanwhile, each of the 30 U. S. major league teams has an academy in the Dominican Republic. MLB itself estimates that teams spend $125 million a year on those academies. That’s after paying perhaps an additional $200 million in signing bonuses to young Dominican players, plus whatever comes home from the estimated $400 million paid to Dominican major leaguers, Ruck says. ”It’s easy to get to a   dollars that baseball is bringing to the island,” he says, adding that the number is probably significantly higher with thousands involved in developing the island’s talent. And that’s in a country with a 2014 gross domestic product of about $64 billion. Nearly 10 years ago, when baseball salaries were smaller and the Dominican academies just gaining steam, the spending was the subject of an academic study by Carrie Meyer, an economics professor at George Mason University. She concluded that manufacturing, commerce and agriculture still made up most of the nation’s economy but that baseball was having a clear impact. The spending hasn’t come without controversy, as is often the case with U. S. investments in developing countries. Allegations of exploitation, doping and other abuses have dogged the U. S.  academies. Conditions at academies have improved markedly in recent years, says Ruck. ”Most are more or less     facilities” that now emphasize proper nutrition and provide good living quarters, he says. Still enduring, however, are charges the teams have exploited desperately poor youngsters from the Dominican Republic and elsewhere by encouraging thousands to quit school and chase baseball, Ruck says. Most of these kids are tossed aside when they don’t make the cut, says Charles Farrell, a sports advocacy and marketing consultant. ”You’ve been a dream merchant, telling these kids they can get rich, that they can have a successful career through baseball,” Farrell says. ”So you’ve got kids dropping out of school at 13 or 14 to prepare themselves for baseball.” Yet he estimates that only 2 percent make a living in baseball. The rest find themselves at age 19 or 21 with no education and no job prospects. ”Baseball has a responsibility to offer these kids something else,” says Farrell, who helped found an independent academy that aims to provide an academic as well as baseball education, the Dominican Republic Sports  Education Academy. Several U. S. teams have added   education programs, perhaps eight hours a week, that emphasize English and financial skills that could prove useful to ballplayers, Farrell says. And he predicts that MLB within years will mandate a broader education be part of academies run by its teams. It might prove profitable, anyway, as prospects from the better education system of Venezuela have proved a bit better at making the major league, which Farrell speculates is because their better education equips the players to meet the demands of living in America. ”It could be in the teams’ best interests to turn out   players,” Farrell says."
"Updated 12:56 a. m. ET Monday:   Connecticut rolled over Oregon State   Sunday to make the women’s championship game, and fourth seed Syracuse beat the University of Washington  . Connecticut will be trying to win an unprecedented fourth straight title and another perfect season when the two team play Tuesday night in Indianapolis. Original Post: Women’s NCAA Final Four: Is UConn’s dominance bad for women’s basketball? This Sunday’s NCAA women’s basketball Final Four will mark the ninth consecutive tournament semifinal appearance for   UConn. But for the three other teams, the Final Four will be entirely new territory. No. 2 seed Oregon State, No. 4 seed Syracuse and No. 7 seed Washington advanced to the Final Four for the first time, to play for a shot at the national championship game. The women’s Final Four tips off Sunday at 6:30 p. m. when UConn faces Oregon State on ESPN. The   matchup will follow on ESPN2 at 8:30 p. m. Here’s what you need to know. No. 1 Seed UConn versus No. 2 seed Oregon State: Is UConn Too Good? UConn has long been a powerhouse in women’s basketball. If they win the national title this year, it will be for for the fourth straight time. It would also mark their sixth undefeated season. They are a force to be reckoned with, or according to one sports columnist, a force to be dismissed. Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy wrote a column in which he argued that the UConn team was too good for their own good that they were smothering competition in the women’s college game. Invoking the large margins by which the Huskies have won some of their games, Shaughnessy wrote, ”This is not UConn’s fault, but it’s also not good for the promotion of women’s basketball as part of our national sports landscape. Competition is why we watch sports.” UConn Coach Geno Auriemma retorted: ”When Tiger [Woods] was winning every major, nobody said he was bad for golf. Actually he did a lot for golf. He made everybody have to be a better golfer. And they did. And now there’s a lot more great golfers because of Tiger.” But David Ubben of the website Sports on Earth told NPR’s All Things Considered this week that he thinks this isn’t a great  . ”Tiger Woods isn’t recruiting the best golf balls and the best golf clubs to come play for him,” Ubben said. ”But Geno Auriemma has to recruit, every single year, the best women’s players in the country. So when he gets a good player, somebody else doesn’t get a good player. And so when you’re asking everyone to improve your game, well, you could start by handing off some of those good players to other programs.” Christine Brennan, a USA Today columnist argues that this isn’t the whole story. ”No one says, ’Golden State, we want them to lose,’” Brennan  —   referring to the top team in the NBA  —   said according to ESPN. ”I think it’s the exact opposite. So if we love dynasties in men’s sports, why not in women’s sports? In women’s sports, women’s hoops, people are calling out for balance, for competition, for surprises. But we’re balancing this against an historic moment, something no college player has ever done.” ”This is where the conversation hits an interesting intersection,” she added. ”If it were the UConn men winning four straight with the dominant male player, can you imagine the interest? This would be the lead of every newscast, sportscast, A1 of every newspaper: ’Can the UConn men do this?’ We’re obviously not seeing anything like that in the case of the UConn women.” UConn is the heavy favorite to win, but when the team takes the court on Sunday, Oregon State head coach Scott Rueck is hoping the pressure on the   led by senior Breanna Stewart, will work to his team’s advantage. ”Breanna Stewart is going for a record fourth championship in four years,” he said on John Canzano’s radio program in Oregon. ”There’s some pressure. .. I don’t know if it will impact her but from our standpoint, I hope so.” No. 4 seed Syracuse versus No. 7 Washington: A Quiet Star And A Rising Program, When the teams met in November, Syracuse won a tight contest  . Both teams have improved since then. ESPN analyst Graham Hays says the biggest improvement is in ball control. ”The Huskies averaged just 8. 5 turnovers per game in the first four rounds. Granted, they also didn’t face pressure like Syracuse, but they will have the upper hand if they can keep the ball,” he said. Even more so if they can keep getting the ball to junior Chantel Osahor, who The Associated Press dubbed a ”quiet, unassuming star.” The news service wrote: ”On a Washington team that has made one of the more surprising runs in recent NCAA history, there may be no bigger surprise than what Osahor has done. She has gone from role player to star during Washington’s NCAA run, including a pair of games in the regional that will be hard to top. ”Osahor had 19 points, 17 rebounds and five assists in the Sweet 16 win over Kentucky, then followed up with 24 points and 18 rebounds in Washington’s win over Stanford to reach the Final Four for the first time in school history. ”No wonder she was the MVP of the regional. ” ’It’s a little strange because I’ve been doing the same thing since I’ve been here, since I’ve been playing basketball,’ Osahor said. ’Now that it’s getting attention, it’s pretty cool.’ ” She also gets attention for her unusual shot: she shoots  —   and scores  —   without her feet ever leaving the ground. This type of set shot is unusual, but she’s not concerned. ”I think my shot is pretty   to be honest,” Washington’s junior forward said, according to the AP. ”Just because I don’t jump doesn’t mean my form isn’t good.” For Syracuse, a program that has been rebuilding and improving since head coach Quentin Hillsman took over a decade ago, making the Final Four is a mark of success in and of itself. ”I’m happy that it’s coming to fruition that we’re at the pinnacle of this game,” Hillsman said according to the Hartford Courant. ”And I think [as] we’re moving into this Final Four, you look back at it and you hear how many things that you can’t do and it’s not possible. And I just think if you continue to stay the course and try to build a program and get the right people and the right players around you, get to the right situation that can happen and I’m just very happy that we’re seeing the fruits of our labor here at Syracuse.” Hillsman is the first   man to coach in the women’s Final Four, the newspaper reports. ”You have to aspire to be here and to be in the position to win the championship,” Hillsman said, according to the Courant. ”If it’s not your goal, then you probably shouldn’t be coaching the team.”"
"Over the past year, investigative journalists across the world have been sifting through 11. 5 million internal files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The files were leaked to the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared the huge trove with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Stories about the data, which have been dubbed the Panama Papers, have been published by news organizations everywhere from Argentina to Sweden. We know a lot about the trove of documents, but there’s also a lot we don’t know. (The ICIJ promises to release a full list of companies and the people linked to them in ”early May. ”) Here we try to answer some basic questions about the story.  —   Who leaked the documents? We don’t know. Süddeutsche Zeitung says only that it was contacted by an ”anonymous source” over a year ago. Wired says that the 2.  leak includes: ”. .. emails, contracts, transcriptions and scanned documents. In total, the leak contains: 4. 8 million emails, three million database entries, two million PDFs, one million images and 320, 000 text documents. The dataset is bigger than any from Wikileaks, or the Edward Snowden disclosures.” Ramon Fonseca, the director of Mossack Fonseca, told Reuters that the firm had suffered ”a successful but ’limited’ hack.”  —   What do the documents reveal?  According to ICIJ, the documents make public the offshore accounts of 140 politicians and public officials. The documents don’t necessarily detail anything illegal, but they do shine a light on the shadowy world of offshore finances. Back in 2012, our friends at Planet Money set up their own shell company. Doing so, they explained why some people might want to legitimately hide some aspects of their business. But, as Adam Davidson put it at the time, it’s hard to imagine that people going through such great lengths to obfuscate parts of their business want to do it for entirely legitimate reasons. The allegations in many of the Panama Papers stories is that the individuals implicated were allegedly laundering money or hiding some connections that would be detrimental.  —   What does the law firm Mossack Fonseca have to say about all this?  Basically that it has done nothing wrong. The firm sent a   response to ICIJ saying that ”we have not once in nearly 40 years of operation been charged with criminal wrongdoing.” Indeed, as The New York Times explains, it is ”not illegal in many cases to have offshore bank accounts. But they are used in some instances by wealthy individuals and criminals to hide money and business transactions, and to avoid paying taxes.”  —   What about the big names I’ve seen in headlines? Are they in trouble?  Maybe, but a lot of what these documents reveal is circumstantial. For example, Vladimir Putin was not directly linked to any of these secret accounts. Instead, the documents reveal that close associates of the Russian leader funneled as much as $2 billion through offshore accounts. In one case, an offshore entity was given about $1 billion by a   Russian bank. That same entity, for example, also lent the owners of a ski resort about $11 million in  . According to The Guardian, Putin is a reputed guest of the resort and his daughter Katya got married at the resort in 2013. Perhaps the most   case revealed so far comes from Iceland, where the documents show that country’s prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and his wife had a stake in a company seeking millions of dollars from failed Icelandic banks. The Iceland Monitor reports that thousands took to the streets, and the alleged conflict of interest could bring the government ”crashing down.”  —   What effect will this have on the offshore world? It depends on whom you ask. Nigel Green, of the financial consultancy deVere Group, minimizes what the leak tells us. According to deVere, mechanisms are already in place around the world to make it ”almost impossible to hide money.” At Time, Rana Foroohar, who writes about the economy, says the revelations could lead to a ”great crisis” for capitalism. She writes: ”To me, this is one of the key issues at work in the U. S. presidential election. Voters know at a gut level that our system of global capitalism is working mainly for the 1 % not the 99 %. That’s a large part of why both [Bernie] Sanders and [Donald] Trump have done well, because they tap into that truth, albeit in different ways. The Panama Papers illuminate a key aspect of why the system isn’t working —  because globalization has allowed the capital and assets of the 1 % (be they individuals or corporations) to travel freely, while those of the 99 % cannot. Globalization is supposed to be about the free movement of people, goods, and capital. But in fact, the system is set up to enable that mobility mainly for the rich (or for large corporations). The result is global tax evasion, the offshoring of labor, and an elite that flies 35, 000 feet over the problems of nation states and the tax payers within them.”  —   Is there one story I should read about this?  To understand the issue, listen to the Planet Money piece we embedded above. To understand how all of this can affect an entire city, read the Miami Herald’s piece based on the papers. The Herald reports that shadowy corporations may be propping up the condo market in the city. It may not be all dirty money flowing through South Florida, but these documents connect some politicians in Brazil who are under investigation for corruption to some superfancy condos in Miami. The bottom line, the paper reports: ”Money from people linked to wrongdoing abroad is helping to power the gleaming condo towers rising on South Florida’s waterfront and pushing home prices far beyond what most locals can afford.”"
"In Chicago, one neighborhood’s rat problem is about to get a lot worse. Crews are preparing to tear down an old hospital and when the wrecking ball starts swinging, the rodents living in and underneath the aging structure will scurry. The city and the developer are setting poison baits and traps to help control the problem, but some residents are turning to one of the rats’ worst enemies instead  —   cats. Construction On Old Buildings Worsens Rat Problem, Chicago’s upscale Lincoln Park neighborhood is known for its fine bars and restaurants, trendy clothiers and elegant row houses mixed with luxurious town houses and yuppie apartment buildings. Like many densely populated urban neighborhoods, Lincoln Park also has rats. A lot of rats. ”They totally freak me out,” says Courtney Bledsoe, as she sees a rat dart across the street while picking up her son at a Lincoln Park preschool. ”Every night when I walk down the sidewalk, I see rats,” says    Kelly McGee, who has come to accept this aspect of city living. ”It freaks out my sister. She screams when she sees them but they don’t bother me so much. It’s an urban area I don’t know what else we can expect.” McGee can expect the rat problem to get a lot worse. She lives just down the block from the old Children’s Memorial Hospital, which is about to be torn down as part of a massive redevelopment project. ”Construction all over the city often disturbs rodents who are living underground,” says Lincoln Park’s City Council representative, Alderman Michele Smith. In anticipation of the redevelopment of the   hospital, Smith wrote what she says is the most stringent   development ordinance in the country. ”Before excavation begins and throughout excavation and construction, every developer has to do active rodent abatement on site,” Smith says. Already, there are poison bait boxes all around the old hospital complex, and the city is doing additional rodent abatement in the neighborhood too. But the developer of the hospital site still warned residents in a recent community meeting that when demolition begins later this month, the rat problem could be ”awful.” If anyone knows what constitutes an awful rat problem, it’s Victoria Thomas. ”At one point we had around 400 rats living next door,” says Thomas, who lives a few miles north of Lincoln Park in Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood. ”It was horrible.” Standing in the unusually big backyard behind her condo building, Thomas says she was completely overrun by rats a few years ago. ”No one used the yard one summer because every time you’d go out, they’d like run across your feet,” she says. ”Once it got dark, you would hear them, ’tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch tch,’ back and forth on the deck. . .. We’d all lift our feet up because they’re underneath the table.” The rats came over from the yard of apartment building next door, where they feasted on restaurant garbage and dog feces. Thomas says she tried everything from trenching and underground fencing to poison traps, but nothing worked. Until she got some cats. ”Oh my God, that one, that’s my killer out of the three,” says Thomas, pointing to one of her cats as it runs across the backyard. ”That one loves to hunt.” The three rescued feral cats were sterilized and vaccinated by the Tree House Humane Society and relocated to be put to work in Thomas’ backyard to prey on rats. From the first day she got the feral cat colony, Thomas says the rats started to disappear. ”These cats are amazing. They cleaned up everything. We have a couple of dead rats, you know, once a month, we’ll get a dead rat. [The cats will] leave it here, they’ll bring it to my door,” she says. The Cats Don’t Just Kill, These aren’t cuddly house cats. They stay outside. Thomas provides them with food, water in a heated dish and insulated shelters, while the cats patrol the backyards in her block. ”The cats will kill off a great deal of the initial population of the rats,” says Paul Nickerson, who manages the Cats at Work program for the Tree House Humane Society. ”But through spreading their pheromones, they will keep other rats from filling their vacuum.” Nickerson says that’s what makes the feral cat program so successful in keeping the rats away long term. ”Before the cats showed up, there were no predator pheromones in the area,” Nickerson says. ”Now that cats are here, there’s predator pheromones and the rats aren’t stupid. They smell the predator pheromones and so they’ll stay out of the cats’ territory.” After Smith highlighted the program in a recent newsletter, Nickerson and the Tree House Humane Society have been getting lots of calls from people seeking their own cat colonies. That means a lot more feral cats that might otherwise be euthanized will be cared for while doing something that they love: hunting rats."
"In a tribute concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C. the National Endowment for the Arts recognized its 2016 class of NEA Jazz Masters  —   the highest honor the U. S. gives to a jazz musician or advocate. The performance were webcast live on Monday, April 4 here and via arts. gov,  . org, and broadcast on Sirius XM radio. The NEA honored four individuals in 2016: vibraphonist, bandleader and educator Gary Burton musicians’ advocate Wendy Oxenhorn saxophonist and composer Pharoah Sanders and saxophonist, composer and educator Archie Shepp. Each Jazz Master received a $25, 000 grant. The concert was hosted by Jason Moran, pianist and Kennedy Center artistic director for Jazz, and included remarks by Jane Chu, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Deborah F. Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center as well as the 2016 NEA Jazz Masters. The concert featured performances by NEA Jazz Masters Chick Corea, Randy Weston, and Jimmy Heath, as well as Ambrose Akinmusire, Lakecia Benjamin, Billy Harper, Stefon Harris, Justin Kauflin, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Pedrito Martinez, Jason Moran, David Murray, Linda Oh, Karriem Riggins, Roswell Rudd and Catherine Russell. With this new class, the NEA has honored 140 great figures in jazz."
"Saying they found ”a darker link between religion and the evolution of modern hierarchical societies” than has been previously suggested, a group of scientists say ritual human sacrifice promoted stratified social systems  —   and helped to sustain inherited class systems once they were established. After comparing dozens of societies, the researchers found that ritualized human sacrifice was far more common in highly stratified societies than it was in egalitarian societies. Noting the high level of overlap between religious and political sectors in the societies, the scientists write, ”human sacrifice may have been   by elites as a divinely sanctioned means of social control.” Acknowledging that their findings might be ”unpalatable,” the scientists say, ”our results suggest that ritual killing helped humans transition from the small egalitarian groups of our ancestors, to the large stratified societies we live in today.” For the study, researchers looked at 93 traditional Austronesian cultures  —   societies that share a family of languages and span from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Taiwan to New Zealand. For each one, they noted how segmented the society was  —   designating them egalitarian or either moderate or highly stratified  —   as well as the presence of human sacrifice in their rituals. The work was done by psychologist Joseph Watts at the University of Auckland, along with scholars in social sciences and evolution from Germany and Australia their findings were published in Nature on Monday. While the cultures shared similarities in their language, they had a wide range of religious beliefs and observances. Many also practiced human sacrifice the researchers laid out some of the reasons: ”Common occasions for human sacrifice in these societies included the breach of taboo or custom, the funeral of an important chief, and the consecration of a newly built house or boat. Ethnographic descriptions highlight that the sacrificial victims were typically of low social status, such as slaves, and the instigators were of high social status, such as priests and chiefs.” As for how the sacrifices were carried out, the list includes ”burning, drowning, strangulation, bludgeoning, burial, being crushed under a newly built canoe, being cut to pieces, as well as being rolled off the roof of a house and then decapitated.” Their findings, the researchers say, are ”consistent with historical accounts that speculate that in order for human sacrifice to be exploited by social elites, there must first be social elites to exploit it.” The study is the latest modern attempt to understand the cultural role played by human sacrifices  —   rituals in which people were killed in the name of a supernatural entity. As the researchers note, such practices are known to have taken place ”in early Germanic, Arab, Turkic, Inuit, American, Austronesian, African, Chinese and Japanese cultures.”"
"Ted Cruz and Donald Trump don’t agree on much lately, but the two GOP presidential candidates are in accord on one thing  —   it’s time for Ohio Gov. John Kasich to get out of the race. NBC News was the first to report a   between the two men, who are typically at odds. But NBC reports aides from their campaigns are now working together to block Kasich from even being an option for delegates at the Republican National Convention this summer in Cleveland. ”Both campaigns have the same goal. We both see there is no path for Kasich to get nominated without massive rules changes. If it means the two campaigns need to work together to see the current rules are enforced, we will in fact work together,” Trump adviser Ed Brookover told NPR’s Sarah McCammon. Cruz’s campaign denied that the two campaigns are already colluding, but spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said that ”it appears we agree that the rules should be followed. And if rules are followed,” there are no scenarios where Kasich makes the ballot. Kasich is already mathematically eliminated from getting the 1, 237 delegates to clinch the GOP nomination. He has won only one primary contest so far, his home state of Ohio on March 15. Kasich’s delegate total stands at 143, trailing even Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has already dropped out of the race. According to current RNC rules, Kasich may not make the cut for the first ballot. That’s because of the highly debated Rule 40( b) which requires that any candidate for nomination have the support of a majority of delegates in at least eight states. Trump has already met the requirement, and Cruz’s campaign anticipates he will hit that benchmark as well, once all states have voted. Cruz has already won a majority of delegates in five states: Texas, Utah, Kansas, Maine and Idaho. Rule 40( b) was put in place ahead of the 2012 convention as a way to prevent delegates pledged to former Texas Rep. Ron Paul from trying to challenge Mitt Romney’s nomination on the floor. The previous requirement had been five states. This time around, that little change could have a big impact as Republicans face a very real possibility of a contested convention. The RNC Rules Committee will meet the week before the convention  —   as it does in every cycle  —   to revise the convention rules, which have been modified over the past four years as well. Convention delegates will have to approve the rules on the first day in Cleveland and could still modify or even reject the rules. The rules committee will also meet during the RNC’s spring meeting later this month, and the question of whether to revise the rule could come up then. RNC rules committee member Henry Barbour told NPR last week that he believed a revision of the   requirement was ultimately unlikely. ”There’s been a lot of people who felt like that should have been changed over the last couple of years,” Barbour said. ”But there’s some political problems with changing it from eight to five at this point.” ”Those rules were written to benefit a ” Barbour said of the push by Romney’s campaign to institute the rule four years ago, ”and Donald Trump is a  .” Cruz predicted a   uprising if the rule is changed and someone other than he or Trump is the GOP nominee. ”It ain’t going to happen,” the Texas senator told reporters Monday morning. ”If it did, the people would quite rightly revolt. If Washington said, ’We had elections in 50 states, but we, the   don’t care what the people voted for. We have someone else who’s going to go along and get along and keep the cronyism going,’ the voters would naturally say, ’To heck with you, we’re staying home.’ ” Trump has also called foul about possibly changing the rule. ”If I didn’t have Kasich, I automatically win,” he argued at a campaign stop in West Allis, Wis. on Sunday night. Kasich pushed back on such an assertion as he was campaigning in Hempstead, N. Y. on Monday. He told a questioner at his town hall at Hofstra University that he was unequivocally ”not dropping out.” ”Donald Trump said that I need to get out of the race because I’m getting his voters,” Kasich said. ”Well, I  —   wait, wait, no, no, I’ve got news for him. I’m going to get a heck of a lot of his voters, OK?” Kasich’s campaign also dismissed the push by his opponents, arguing that polls show the Ohio governor is the strongest general election nominee in matchups against Hillary Clinton. They’ve said that will resonate with delegates. ”These are more devious and dishonest tactics by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. They are misleading voters in a desperate attempt to undermine Gov. Kasich because they are afraid to face him as the race moves East,” Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf said. ”They know Gov. Kasich will win at the convention because he is the only Republican who can defeat Hillary Clinton.” NPR’s Sarah McCammon contributed reporting."
"In July 2015, World Wrestling Entertainment executive Stephanie McMahon called for better, more important roles for women in professional wrestling. Invoking the success of the U. S. women’s soccer team, Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm and Miesha Tate in the UFC and tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams as proof of the growing clout of women’s sports, McMahon called for changing the ”Divas” (women’s) division of pro wrestling. She said, ”there is a revolution in women sports happening right now. . .. I want this revolution here in WWE.” The video below picks up right after McMahon announced her envisioned revolution. In it, she introduces new female characters  —   which means more camera time for the women and more attention for their storylines. Nearly eight months later, during Sunday night’s WrestleMania, WWE took another step in the revolution by announcing a new championship  —   well, a new name anyhow. With much fanfare, WWE unveiled the rebranded ”divas” championship as the women’s championship. ”The term ’divas’ fit their female characters back in the day when the product was not as   with women competing in matches such as bra and panties matches,” Jack White, a   TV reviewer and reporter for the website Diva Dirt, told NPR in an email. He said WWE’s changes are ”absolutely huge.” In an article for the Players Tribune, a website that gives sports insiders a platform to tell their stories in their own words, McMahon explained the significance of the changes: ”Our female performers are   athletes, actors, public speakers and philanthropists. They’re role models, inspiring and empowering women and girls to be confident and strong. They dedicate themselves to WWE, achieve great success and earn the same respect as their male counterparts. ”Therefore, from this point forward, all of our performers  —   male and female  —   will be known as ’Superstars.’ ” This shift is the latest step in a   movement created by pro wrestling fans called #GiveDivasAChance, which demanded dynamic, more developed roles for female performers in the dramas of pro wrestling. The movement has been gaining momentum  —   in February #GiveDivasAChance trended on Twitter for three days  —   and the WWE has been paying attention. Female performers are no longer just decorations for the men’s matches. ”Now the WWE measure their female athletes on their skill in the ring, rather than their looks,” White said. ”The girls are now given the chance to prove that their matches aren’t   ’   bathroom breaks, they are unmissable events.” The A. V. Club described Sunday night’s WrestleMania women’s championship match as ”urgent, exciting, and relevant,” calling it ”the type of match that has the potential to singlehandedly change the course of women’s wrestling.” While the WWE women are still scantily clad (so are the men) the programming is no longer geared as heavily toward the male gaze. The idea is to put less focus on the women’s bodies and more focus on their abilities, character storylines and charisma. CBS said the women’s championship may have been ”the match of the night” and that the wrestlers ”put together a tremendous performance with awesome near falls, great spots outside the ring and some interesting submission combinations.” But as Vocativ wrote earlier this year, WWE is still struggling to reconcile its history of portraying woman in primarily sexual contexts, as evidenced by a recent appearance from one of WWE’s biggest stars, Dwayne ”The Rock” Johnson. The article read: ”Part of Johnson’s appearance involved an extended bit with Lana, another of the company’s young female talents, which consisted of a rambling monologue about an apparent sexual encounter the two had last year. Even when Rusev, Lana’s fiancee both in storyline and reality, arrived on the scene The Rock continued to gleefully recall their   antics, despite her obvious discomfort.” WWE’s decisions to add more female performers to its roster and strike ”diva” from its vernacular helps put male and female WWE performers on more equal footing, but it’s also good for business. In an interview last week with ESPN’s Hannah Storm, McMahon said, ”Our fans want to see our female athletes positioned the same as our men.”"
"It took only a few power chords, a sprinkle of glitter and the occasional jokey line  —   ”We can do our makeup in the parking lot   We can get so famous that I might get shot   But right now I’m in the shower”  —   to forever hook me on PWR BTTM. The queer, glammy, wildly dressed duo has a keen sense of mischief and a real gift for honest,      pop gems. Ben Hopkins (in red, fingernails included) and Liv Bruce swap roles as singers, guitarists, drummers and storytellers, each trying to playfully   the other. It’s a show that might have worn thin if the songs (from last year’s Ugly Cherries) weren’t so much damn fun. Instead, they’re likely to stay with you as long as the glitter has stayed in my clothes and carpet fibers. Ugly Cherries is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) PWR BTTM is on tour now. Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineers: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Editor’s note: The following interview contains descriptions that some may find disturbing. Forget ”enhanced interrogation techniques”  —   Eric Fair says what he did as an interrogator in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was torture. ”The idea that there’s interrogation, and then enhanced interrogation, and then torture  —   there is no middle ground,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”Torture is an enhanced interrogation.” The techniques Fair used were considered legal by the U. S. government, but what he did still weighs on his conscience. Though he says he didn’t practice any of the worst abuses, he used stress positions and sleep deprivation, and he now deeply regrets it. He describes the emotional and mental toll of his actions in his new memoir, Consequence. ”We hurt people, and not just physically,” he says. ”We destroyed them emotionally, and . .. I think at the very least it’s a just punishment for us that we suffer some of those consequences, too.” Fair worked as an interrogator in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, employed by a private company under contract to the military. He had previously served in the military and worked as a police officer in his hometown of Bethlehem, Pa. After working as an interrogator, he returned to Iraq as an intelligence analyst for the NSA. He says what he did during his time in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah was abhorrent. ”My behavior towards Iraqi detainees did not meet the standard that I had simply been raised on,” he says. ”It was not the way that I should’ve behaved. There are long discussions about why those things happened . .. and how difficult it was to sort of break from those expectations of being a soldier  —   but none of that matters. I made horrible mistakes. . .. I have a responsibility to confess those things openly.” On his first impressions of Abu Ghraib prison, I think it was difficult to be surprised, because there were so few expectations about what we were getting into. None of us had been to war. There were a few  —   some of the older gentlemen  —   may have seen action in the first Gulf War, but on a very limited basis. We certainly had never done anything like staff a   prison in the middle of a combat zone. The first thing that may have seemed abnormal was that we were housed in old prison cells. And so Abu Ghraib is an enormous prison complex with quite a few buildings. And one of the buildings that had housed Iraqi prisoners during the days of Saddam Hussein had been emptied out, and we were led to a cell with actual bars on the door, and that’s where we lived. There was a sense, I think, from the beginning that we were almost going to make it up as we went along. On what he was ordered to find out from prisoners  It varied a great deal. There were prisoners who certainly came in with large packets with a lot of background information about who they’d been during the Saddam [Hussein] regime  —   who their associates were  —   and there were others who came in with almost nothing. A common phrase that we became familiar with was, ”detainee was suspected of   activities,” and that was literally all they would come in with. There were what were known as PIRs . .. which stands for ”Priority Intelligence Requirement.” . .. The main PIR in 2004 was the location of chemical weapons. We were still very much under the impression that Saddam had chemical weapons in Iraq, and so every interrogation  —   there were certainly other types of information you might want to gain, depending on who that detainee or prisoner was  —   but the location of chemical weapons was the priority. On the techniques he used at Abu Ghraib  There’s the whole debate about the difference between ”enhanced interrogation” and torture and where’s the division? For me, the stress positions that we used were in many ways based on the kind of stress positions that we had gone through in basic training  —   whether it was being in the   position for a certain amount of time, or holding your arms out to your side with books in them, until you essentially achieved muscle failure. The idea was to exhaust someone. These were the techniques that I was most familiar with and that I used. . .. Again, there was never a point at which I thought I knew I had crossed a line. I think I knew that we were being aggressive and there was a certain confusion around why we’re doing this, but as a prior enlisted soldier, the expectation was that you completed your job and you completed your mission, and these were necessary tools in that mission. I would not suggest that I used them frequently, but I think that even by sort of dipping my toes into that puddle, I essentially went sort of swimming in that pool of depravity. On the ”Palestinian Chair”  When I arrived in Fallujah there was a small chair, about 2 feet tall, made of plywood and two by fours, and it had plastic zip ties used to secure someone’s hands on the bottom. The Palestinian Chair was intended to put someone in a crouched position from which they could not recover and forced all their weight onto their thighs and their calves and they stayed there for as long as an interrogator decided they were going to stay. . .. A close friend of mine and I did lock ourselves into the Palestinian Chair at one point to get a sense for what it was. We both lasted less than about a minute. . .. I did not [use it on anyone] I did witness its use near the end of my stay in Fallujah. I had walked past the door of an interrogation room which was open and I witnessed one of the prisoners in the Palestinian Chair. This is the point . .. where I recognized that I had gone to a place that I wasn’t coming back from, that there was no way to suggest that that kind of treatment of another human being wasn’t abusive and that it wasn’t torture. On the severe interrogation techniques used at the ”hard site,” where the    detainees were kept  Nudity was sort of the theme of the entire prison. The number of Iraqis that were naked was shocking, and it was cold. Iraq certainly gets hot in the summer, everyone knows that, but it also gets very cold in the winter. This was December. Sleep deprivation and forced standing were the most common thing that most prisoners were suffering. They were handcuffed to the cell walls in a position in which they were standing, their hands were placed down between their legs, and then their hands were handcuffed back behind them, which . .. denies you the opportunity to sit down or to rest, and so you can combine what were essentially two enhanced techniques  —   sleep deprivation and forced standing. It was a shock to the system. On why he didn’t speak out at the time, I think the natural and very fair question is: Why I didn’t say something or why I didn’t quit? As a contractor I could’ve quit at any point. But again, the desire that had been sort of drilled into me to stay committed to things in the United States Army, these were my comrades, whether they were contractors or whether they were soldiers, I knew the uniforms, I knew the ranks. . .. At least at that point I still supported the invasion and the war effort, so I felt that I had an obligation to be a part of it. There was a recognition that certainly war was going to be ugly and I think I did my best to justify what was going on. On his response when the story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib broke in the U. S. I and some of my close friends . .. were shocked by how shocked the American people were. We were not implementing enhanced interrogation techniques and torture behind closed doors. We weren’t doing this and then going back to our bunks at night and suggesting ”I hope no one ever finds out about this” or ”Don’t tell anyone.” This was part of what we viewed as an authorized program. Now, there are all sorts of different opinions about exactly what was authorized and who was authorizing it  —   that’s for someone else to decide  —   but as interrogators none of us thought that we were doing anything wrong. There might’ve been a sense that were doing something morally wrong, but legally wrong, no. On how he defines torture, I want to be careful about different levels of torture, because this is what allows someone like Donald Trump to suggest that waterboarding is not torture and ”so much worse” is not torture, that we can just change the legal definition. You could bring six lawyers in here and you could get six different opinions about what is torture. I think that the minute you violate another human being’s will, as Americans, we have an obligation to call that torture. On why he will not take part in the discussion of whether torture is effective, I refuse to suggest that torture is successful on any level. And I’m not sure that it matters it shouldn’t matter to anyone in this country. I’m not sure why we’ve gotten to this point where we start to talk about the effectiveness of torture, as if that makes any difference whatsoever. Torture is wrong. Americans, all Americans, should know better. That’s what makes us attractive what makes us attractive is the way we do things, it’s the example that we set. What makes us attractive is not how tough we are or how good we are at extracting information, and anyone who thinks that way I think fails to understand what this country is about. So I’ve left that discussion about whether or not torture is effective or not behind. It simply doesn’t matter."
"Last week, Germany announced that it will introduce train cars for women and children only to provide a secure space for female passengers. That’s an idea that other countries have tried. And it’s not always a popular plan. An essay in Quartz published in 2014 argued that the women’s car confines women to the ”periphery of public spaces” and reinforces gender roles. I’m a regular passenger in a women’s car. And I disagree. The Delhi metro rail is by far my favorite mode of transportation in the city, thanks in part to the ladies’ car. Each train has either six or eight coaches, of which one is reserved for women. It is the only public space in the city where men are on the periphery. It is a joy to see so many women, most of them young  —   students and working professionals  —   and from all economic backgrounds, traveling together, free from the male stares and aggressions that assault them elsewhere in the city. The body language of women in this car feels different. They look carefree. Some listen to music on their headphones or read a book or newspaper, rarely looking up. They don’t have to worry about being groped or stared at by creepy men. Women traveling in groups often speak loudly as they catch up with friends or colleagues, gossiping, laughing, discussing school, work or family problems, even taking selfies! Some will strike a sexy pose, smiling and tilting their heads in ways they wouldn’t dare to outside the women’s car. Safety is why this car exists. On a daily basis here, women in public spaces are disrespected by men. On buses, men push women or pretend to fall on them, says Neetu Singh, 27, a primary school teacher and a regular user of the metro rail system. It is a pretext to touch women inappropriately. This is common in other Indian cities, which is why commuter trains in Mumbai and Kolkata have had women’s cars for decades. Here in Delhi, the metro rail system was launched in 2002, but the women’s car wasn’t added until 2010, after complaints of sexual harassment. Some women who commute on the metro think men behave better on the metro than on the streets and buses. This may be true. The stations and trains are new and   unlike the streets of Delhi. Perhaps that puts people on their best behavior. (See my recent post about the Delhi metro for more details.) Besides, the stations have heavy security and surveillance cameras. Still, there are incidents of sexual assault. ”I’ve been groped in the general compartment,” says Jyoti Kulchander, 23, a student and a regular commuter. She did not feel comfortable sharing details. There are no data on sexual assault on the metro, but occasionally some women do report an incident. There is an unintended consequence of the women’s car. Some men think women simply shouldn’t ride in the general compartment. But to me, the women’s car asserts women’s right to having their own space in public. This is a new concept in this city, as evident from the many men who often end up in the women’s car, unaware that it is illegal for them to ride there. Maybe they missed the signs in pink. Or maybe they can’t read. I once watched with irritation as two groups of men rode along in the women’s car. In my hometown, Kolkata, this would have led to yells and probably physical violence by the female passengers, who no doubt would have tried to push the men out. But none of the women in this car asserted their right to this space. Disappointed at this lack of protest, I walked over to the men and told them to leave. The younger men, who seemed to be in their 20s and looked like recent migrants to the city, left immediately. The older men stared at me and remained sitting. I called the metro police. As I left the train, I watched a policeman enter the car and talk to the men, asking them to leave or be fined 250 rupees (about $4). I couldn’t see how the men reacted, but I was satisfied. It would be wonderful if men learned to accept women’s presence in public spaces without feeling the need to harass them. We wouldn’t need the ladies’ compartment then. But until they do, the women’s car is one good way for us to assert our right to public spaces. I can’t speak for my sisters in Germany, but women here in India’s capital love the women’s car. They don’t have to worry about wearing a sleeveless shirt, or how loudly they laugh or talk. The space is theirs, and they feel safe and comfortable."
"When Architect Matthias Hollwich was approaching 40, he wondered what the next 40 years of his life might look like. He looked into the architecture that serves older adults, places like retirement communities and assisted living facilities, and didn’t like what he saw. But what if we changed our habits earlier in life so we could stay in the communities we already live in? ”Retirement communities sounded great when they were created, but now when you retire, you may live there for 30 or even 40 years,” he says. ”You play golf and bingo [you’re] not really part of the general society.” Hollwich, a visiting professor at University of Pennsylvania, discussed the idea with students and faculty. They created a conference on aging to talk about how adults could continue to engage with society as they got older. Maybe a nursing home could turn into a healthiness hub, or an informal volunteering app could provide support to older people, Even though Hollwich began by thinking about architecture, he realized that people need to create a social structure that supports them, too. So he and his architectural firm, HWKN, partnered with Bruce Mau Design to compile ideas in a bright, friendly book, New Aging, published last week by Penguin Books. The book serves as a guide for thinking about aging much earlier. Hollwich, now 44, spoke with Shots about his ideas on the architecture of aging. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Why do you think it’s important for people to start thinking about aging while they’re still young? Statistics show that older people move three times in the last three years of their life. They move from a place where they may want to live, like in Florida. They move closer to family when the first big issues appear within the health and social context. They lose all their social contacts because they’re moving and changing their environment. [Then] maybe they break a leg. Now they don’t have proximity to friends who can help them, so they need to move into an assisted living facility or nursing home. We need to make sure that we nurture the social surrounding around us so we have friends and a safety net. This comes through personal contact. We also have to look at our houses, where we live, and make sure that these buildings don’t become traps. It’s just too late to renovate your bathroom when you have a physical deficit. What kinds of social adjustments do you think people should make in their community?  It’s really about   with our community around us and creating strategic alliances between people. Think about it. What can be done better within communities, within retail or service offerings that allow us to live our whole lives in more rural areas? That needs awareness, planning, and the fearlessness of addressing aging to make adjustments. In a   building, most people never talk to their neighbors. As soon as you do, [you can] share some of your stories or responsibilities. You help them go shopping, or maybe one of your neighbors cooks for you one day. For us as architects, it’s really important that we design apartment buildings entirely different than we do today that we provide spaces that create social glue between people  —   not in a forced way but in a much more playful way. What kind of spaces bring people together? When you think about a hallway, it’s used to go from your elevator to your apartment. But if you widen it up and create some seating areas or a shared kitchen, you might create a connection. Maybe someone comes by late in the evening and you’re sitting there reading a book and they say ”Hi. Oh, what are you reading?” You have this conversation and you start to make friends. These things are social offerings in a building, almost like a front porch. You sit there and you can wave to your neighbor and make contact. That creates familiarity and a social bond. Do you have a favorite point in this book? The chapter ”Never Retire” is something that sounds to most people as kind of horrible. Most people look forward to retirement, but it’s a big mistake. It’s important that you have a meaningful contribution to society. Of course it doesn’t have to be a 9 to 5 job. It could just be something you do once a week or for a few hours here and there. There’s a whole boomer population that is starting up businesses after official retirement. Where do you see yourself at 80 or 90? I see myself creating a strategic alliance with some of my friends. We’ve already started to talk about it. We want to live in close proximity or even in the same building. And it will be in a building that is entirely diverse in terms of ages, because the worst thing is when you get older, society just provides buildings for ”old people.” It’s not healthy. It’s important that when we get older you’re mixed with all generations. That’s a part of the vitality that helps in life. People should look at the aging process as starting up a business. It would be helpful for people to pick a board of directors for your own life. Get four to five people in a room that you really trust and tell them what you plan to do in different stages of getting older. Let them be your steering committee and your sounding board so you can do the right things in terms of navigating your life. I really believe it’s important that we have to start sharing our thoughts and plans with each other. Everyone has these thoughts, but everyone keeps it very private. As a community you’re much stronger and we can help each other."
"The U. S. Constitution says that ”We the People” are the source of political authority in America. But just who are ”the people”? That’s a big and basic political question, and today the Supreme Court gave its answer  —   in a unanimous decision. The court ruled that the total population as defined by the Census Bureau should be used when counting people for political purposes. That means all persons residing in a particular state or district are to be counted, not just those who are eligible to vote. The challenge came from Texas, though that state counts its population for political purposes the same way the other 49 states do. It was brought by the conservative activist group Project on Fair Representation, which in recent years has pursued successful legal challenges to parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the affirmative action policies of the University of Texas, Austin. The challengers had argued that only citizens who are at least 18 years old should count when separating the population into voting districts (which are drawn to have about the same number of people). They said eligible voters have a disproportionate impact in voting when they live in districts with large numbers of ineligible people (noncitizens and nonadults). Conversely, they argued, those living in districts with fewer ineligible people had their voting power diluted. The plaintiffs said this violated the constitutional principle of equal protection under the law. The situation they were describing is mostly likely to occur in states with large numbers of immigrant residents, such as Texas, California, Florida, New Jersey, Arizona and Nevada. It would also affect large cities with sizable immigrant populations. The practical effect would be to create more legislative districts where older and enfranchised people are predominant, and fewer districts with large populations of people ineligible to vote. The decision, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, based its reasoning in the federal practice of defining population as all persons. Five justices joined with Ginsburg in her opinion. Two others, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, wrote their own concurring opinions. They agreed that Texas could not be forced to change its method of counting, but they maintained that any state could do so if it chose. Supporters of the total population standard hailed the court’s decision, saying the opposite outcome would have been an earthquake  —   forcing a massive revision of districts in many states. Experts said such revision would have increased the legislative and political clout of rural and exurban areas (which typically vote Republican) at the expense of city residents  —   many of them minorities and recent immigrants (who typically vote for Democrats). Voting expert Nathan Persily has drawn legislative maps for states and local jurisdictions across the country. He said this was the intent of the challengers. ”A ruling in their favor not only would have led to a diminishing of Latino representation in Texas, but it would have forced many jurisdictions throughout the country, maybe hundreds, to redraw their lines.” Writing for the court, Justice Ginsburg noted that the Constitution’s framers made each state’s total population the basis for allocating seats in the U. S. House of Representatives. That, she said, ensured that all people  —   not just voters  —   count in our system of government accountability. She added that in enacting the 14th Amendment, Congress reaffirmed the idea of representational equality by explicitly rejecting a proposal for apportionment based on voter population instead of total population. It cannot be, she said, that the 14th Amendment mandates counting all residents, then turns around and forbids states to use that same system to draw their own legislative district lines. Edward Blum, president of the Project on Fair Representation, the group that brought today’s case, said the court had still not ruled out letting states choose between total population and eligible voters. ”Perhaps,” said Blum, ”another lawsuit after the next round of redistricting will compel the court to clarify once and for all where it stands.” But voting specialist Richard Hasen at the University of California at Irvine notes that today’s ruling makes the current system a safe harbor and states are likely to stick with total population. ”If you try to do something else,” said Hasen, ”then you run the serious risk of litigation.”"
"HBO’s Vinyl offers plenty of incentive for pleasurable hate watching, from its macho take on gender relations to its   murder subplot. For music mavens, the glee and groans are prompted by the show’s haphazard treatment of the history of rock and roll  —   and hip hop and disco and Donny Osmond. The fake cameos from the likes of Alice Cooper and Gram Parsons are one source of fun then there are the show’s amalgamated ”original” characters, whose trajectories can be granted more license (they never happened, after all) but can still get remotes thrown at TV sets. The show’s house band, the Nasty Bits, recalls New York punk originator Richard Hell fronting Cleveland’s The Dead Boys, which is plausible, but anachronistically feature a British singer and, even weirder, an   manager  —   a nod to Hell’s former bandmate Ivan Julian? Or, even more obscurely, the Detroit   band Death? Probably just a plot point. The funkmeister Hannibal had a disco name but his style was pure Rick James, his stardom predating the Superfreak’s by five years. And don’t get the haters started on all those white music bizzers almost discovering hip hop. When is that Sylvia Robinson biopic coming to set the record straight? This week’s episode honed in on another of the most colorful 1970s rock stories while promising, again, to pull it slightly astray. At a diner, the doghouse’d and disillusioned Ameican Century Records promotions man Zak Yankovich sits across from the dewy Gary Giombetta, his plate of breakfast meats looking dated next to Gary’s cantaloupe with cottage cheese. Zak found Gary in his daughter’s bar mitzvah band, singing a David Bowie song while the waiters broke down the chairs at Leonard’s of Great Neck. (Tell me that wasn’t Leonard’s as for that version of ”Life on Mars? ,” it was actually sung by RB class act Trey Songz.) Zak wants to make Gary the new Bowie, partly because the Starman recently spurned a small offer from the label after Zak bungled their first meeting. After listening raptly as the kid waxes on about cosmic love, then launches into a   melody in a falsetto that puts him closer to Tim Buckley than Bowie, Zak hastily signs Gary to a probably terrible contract. Later, he nurses a nightcap while doodling on Gary’s   headshot. He draws a Ziggy lightning streak over one eye, crosses out the Italian name and writes ”XAVIER.” Cut to Scott Levitt, the company’s attorney, gazing bisexually at Gary’s photo while a female companion sleeps naked nearby. There’s just no way around it: Gary, morphed by Zak into Xavier, is going to become Jobriath. At least he’ll be the   Vinyl version of that great, lost   hope of 1970s rock, who for a shining moment in 1974 became the most visible gay man in popular music. Actor Douglas Smith looks a lot like the real musician and, as he proved for a moment in this episode, can match the keening tenor that almost ruled the world. If he’s given enough screen time, he could embody one of the most remarkable   figures in pop. Born Bruce Wayne Campbell in 1946 and signed to Elektra Records for the   sum of $500, 000, Jobriath was Svengali’d by promoter and manager Jerry Brandt, who’d founded New York’s Electric Circus nightclub and guided Carly Simon’s early career. (Brandt found Jobriath’s demo in Clive Davis’s slush pile at Columbia Records, though he told the press he and the    had cruised each other in a bar.) Not a wedding singer but a seasoned actor who’d starred in several major productions of Hair, Jobriath immediately took to Brandt’s vision. He became a   ’true fairy’ and ’space clown’ who, unlike Bowie, was actually part of the   liberation world, and unlike Queen’s Freddie Mercury, had no qualms about clearly detailing his queer dreams while playing a glam mix of show tune melodies,   intimacy and vintage rock and roll beats. Jobriath should have been a superstar. He would have been, if money alone could have made it so. Elektra really went overboard on him: Jobriath recorded his debut album at Electric Ladyland studios with Hendrix’s producer Eddie Kramer at the boards, guitarist Peter Frampton and Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones in the band, with the label mounting a huge media campaign, which called for Jobriath’s nude body to be rendered as a roman statue and reproduced on Time Square billboards. Brandt and Jobriath gave joint interviews and earned major coverage in Andy Warhol’s Interview, the New York Times and Rolling Stone. A tour was planned  —   a $200, 000 extravaganza featuring a ”Kama Sutra altar” and Jobriath’s   of the death scene from the 1961 Biblical epic King of Kings. ”Don’t you feel the pressure of this publicity?” a reporter asked Jobriath in December 1973. ”I love every minute of it,” he replied. ”If I had any doubts I’m going to be dynamite, I’d forget it.” Brandt, sounding very much like an American Century executive, told another reporter that they were simply doing what the buying public demanded: ”The only thing that’s keeping us alive is sex. I’m selling sex. Sex and professionalism.” Brandt and Jobriath could sell openly gay sex, or at least partially unclothed gay eroticism, because of the distinctively experimental mood of America in 1973. Vinyl shows the era’s caveman side  —   men leering at women and grabbing their breasts at a moment’s notice, backing them against furniture in offices, camera darkrooms, or club bathrooms. Frustratingly, the show merely hints at the women’s liberation movement that led those female conquests to both explore their own desires and fend off the more cretinous advances of those   guys. We did see Vinyl antihero Richie Finestra reading a book by Esalen associate Abraham Maslow, but not much else has been done with the   movement that led to   like 1972’s Open Marriage and the polymorphous adventures that took place in erotic retreats like California’s Sandstone or New York’s swingers clubs the St. Mark’s Baths (gay) and Plato’s Retreat (nominally straight). And the show hasn’t yet ventured into the moment’s other huge shift, toward gay liberation, that led to a wave of Pride parades, Central park   and artistic ventures like San Francisco’s Cockettes troupe, which included a young Sylvester. The   Bowie channeled all of this into brilliant music that furthered liberation in the mainstream. But it was Jobriath who might have become its more radical conductor. Instead, he crashed and burned, spectacularly. His music proved simultaneously behind and ahead of its time: too show   for rock radio, too far out even for most progressive rock fans. Many gay music lovers were already turning their ears toward disco, embracing funky tracks like Barrabas’s ”Wild Safari,” heard in a (seemingly totally straight) Bronx club in this Vinyl episode’s final scene. Perhaps sensing that Jobriath’s great story wasn’t going to connect on a mass level, Elektra pulled the plug on his tour, and he and Brandt fell out. An abbreviated jaunt ended fabulously but smokily on September 20, 1974 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, of all places. Jobriath   his guitarist onstage in front of a crowd full of students and drag queens, and received four encores, even after a malfunctioning motor in the hall’s cooling system caused the fire alarms to go off. Jobriath returned to his original identity and became a cabaret singer, calling himself Cole Berlin and living at New York’s Chelsea Hotel, another favorite Vinyl location. Punitive contracts kept his career under wraps he became ill with a disease affecting gay men in the city, newly known as AIDS, and died of it in 1983. Today, Jobriath is only fitfully remembered. He was the subject a poignant 2012 documentary, Jobriath A. D. His albums are available on streaming services, and a new collection of unreleased material was issued in 2014. Yet even today, his music hasn’t captured ears the way other major figure in queer pop history have. Perhaps that’s because Jobriath was truly outré, in ways that still make some people uncomfortable. His   songs are confrontational and cosmic, terrible as background music and hard to blend into a mix. Jobriath was never spectral, never a chameleon. For all of his flamboyance and Brandt’s schtick, he didn’t fit in with anybody else’s trends, the way Bowie or even the more resolutely odd Mercury could. Jobriath, though in many ways a record label creation, showed the world what it was like to be out in many different senses. Will Vinyl allow its proxy to do the same? More likely he’ll simply be a conduit for another narrative about label overspending within the music industry crapshoot. But the promise is there, in the scrawl of the name Zak concocts. Maybe ”Xavier” will be a savior for Vinyl, even if Jobriath couldn’t ultimately fulfill the full dream of freedom in the 1970s."
"Recently, we started a conversation about food and race. Specifically, we wondered out loud, who gets to cook  —   and become the face of  —   a culture’s cuisine? Our question was prompted by a recent Sporkful interview with Rick Bayless, who has faced criticism over his long career. Although he is an Oklahoman with no Mexican ancestry, he has become one of the most prominent ambassadors for Mexican cuisine in America. To be clear, this isn’t about Bayless. (Though the acclaimed chef did hop into the comments section to weigh in.) The question of who gets credit for a cuisine  —   and how they are compensated and feted  —   is one that comes up again and again in the food world. We asked readers to weigh in with their feelings about this squishy topic. As with many things involving race and class in America, there are no easy answers  —   and we’re not expecting to find any   ones. We’re more interested in starting a conversation. Here’s some of what we heard from you. On one hand, many of you pointed out that cooking the cuisine of other cultures is a tangible way to connect. That’s part of what makes America a literal as well as figurative melting pot. At its heart, food is about identity  —   about where we came from  —   which is why the topic of cuisine and who cooks it can be so personal and complicated for some. Many of you stressed the importance of approaching the cuisine of others with respect. And that means highlighting not just the ingredients, but also the culture behind a dish. Some of you said what’s bothersome isn’t so much whether a person of one race or ethnicity is cooking the food of another culture. That can be done respectfully. The question, then, is more about opportunity  —   who has a chance to profit from making a cuisine? We’re just kicking off this discussion. Over the coming weeks, we plan to keep digging into these ideas of where food, race and culture overlap  —   and we want to hear from you. Let us know what questions are on your radars. We’re at @mgodoyh and @katchow."
"Tomorrow, Wisconsin’s primary is poised to do something it has not done in more than 30 years. It is about to deal a blow to a presidential  . Still more amazing is the fact the state’s primary voters are expected to throw some shade on both the Democratic and Republican   an unimaginable result in the long era since World War II. For six decades, Wisconsin has been anything but the field of dreams for long shots and outsiders. Wisconsinites have voted roughly halfway through the primary calendar, and they have almost always endorsed the candidates who were already winning. Among Republicans, think Mitt Romney and John McCain, and both of the presidents named George Bush, plus Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon (three times) and Dwight Eisenhower. Adding the Democrats, you have Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis  —   not to mention John F. Kennedy. In fact, Wisconsin has been fine with the   in both parties in every cycle since 1988. Setting aside one deviation on the Democratic side in 1984 (and the ”favorite son” candidates who won on both sides in 1964) Wisconsin primary voters have fallen in line with the eventual nominees consistently since 1956  —   long before most Americans alive today were even born.   Hopes May Be Dashed, This year, however, things suddenly look different. While Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were ahead in the polls in Wisconsin as recently as early March, both have slid steadily downward since. Clinton has fallen behind rival Bernie Sanders by several percentage points, while Trump now trails Ted Cruz by double digits. These trends are clear in the state’s   and most reliable poll, done by Marquette University Law School. They are also corroborated in the latest polling by the Fox Business Channel and by CBS News. The polls could be wrong, of course, but they do also comport with field reports and other signals from the ground: Wisconsin is Cruzing and feeling the Bern. Wins in Wisconsin should provide a major boost for both Cruz and Sanders, who can soar on the thermal updraft for two weeks before the next voting takes place. Just how much momentum they gain in their   climbs toward their party nominations will depend on the margins of their victories  —   and on the media treatment those results receive in New York, which votes on April 19. Both Trump and Clinton have maintained a kind of   advantage in New York despite their ups and downs around the country. Given the trend in Wisconsin, wins for Cruz and Sanders will not have that element of surprise that supercharged them in Iowa (for Cruz) and Michigan (for Sanders). But winning big will contribute to the psychology now buoying both these   candidates and their legions of true believers. Winning margins in double digits tomorrow would constitute ”winning big.” So would a   of delegates for Cruz. Republican rules allow him 18 delegates for the statewide win and another three for each congressional district he carries. That makes it possible, if not likely, that Cruz could take home all 42 of the Wisconsin delegates. There are several reasons for the Cruz and Sanders surge in this Midwestern purple state. A Long History Of Confounding Candidates, Wisconsin also has a contrarian streak that has produced surprises in the past. While the primary has nearly always been won by the eventual nominee, Badger voters have also managed to send a message now and then that shook things up. In 2004, John Kerry solidified his grip on the Democratic nomination in Wisconsin’s primary. But his 39 percent share of the   vote barely edged John Edwards’ 34 percent. Edwards said Kerry should realize that ”objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear.” Kerry subsequently chose Edwards as his running mate. Forty years earlier, in 1964,   of the state’s Democratic primary vote went to Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the segregationist who mounted a challenge to President Lyndon Johnson in protest of the civil rights bill then making its way through Congress. (Wallace ran again in the Wisconsin Democratic primary in 1972, receiving 22 percent of the vote to George McGovern’s winning 29 percent). Perhaps the two Wisconsin primaries that produced the most intense media attention in the past   took place in 1960 and 1976. The first contest matched neighboring Minnesota’s Democratic Sen. Hubert Humphrey against the young upstart from Massachusetts John Kennedy. The latter won decisively, shifting the momentum of that year’s nomination fight. In 1976, liberal champion Morris Udall was a congressman from Arizona and a Mormon. He thought he had won the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s nod when most people went to bed on primary night. But overnight that result was reversed, and in the morning Georgian Jimmy Carter was flashing his trademark smile under a copy of the Milwaukee Sentinel that erroneously reported Udall as the winner in a   banner headline. Udall dropped out shortly thereafter, leaving Carter to march on to the nomination and the White House. But Wisconsin has not always been such a bellwether. From 1912 until 1956, Wisconsin Republicans favored someone other than their party’s eventual nominee. For several cycles, the state party preferred its own Robert ”Fighting Bob” La Follette, a founder and favorite of progressive Republicanism. Even after La Follette was gone, the state’s GOP went for Midwesterners such as Harold Stassen or   conservatives such as retired Gen. Douglas MacArthur (whose family had roots in the state) or Ohio Sen. Robert Taft. In 1952, the Wisconsin GOP preferred Taft to Dwight D. Eisenhower. After Ike won the nomination and the presidency that year, he was able to win the Wisconsin primary in 1956  —   the first eventual nominee of his party to do so. The Badger State’s reputation is steeped in politics at the edge: The visionary progressive La Follette was a demigod on the left, while the amazingly charismatic   Joseph R. McCarthy was and is an icon on the right. But in practical terms, most of Wisconsin’s governors and senators have tended to be closer to the mainstream of their respective parties. While the state is known for ideological partisanship, two Democrats, William Proxmire and Herbert Kohl, held one of its two U. S. Senate seats for more than half a century ( ) while functioning as   independents. It is this independent element of Wisconsin’s complex political identity that has informed the results of its quadrennial presidential primary. As the state does not register voters by party, it has always been part of the local tradition to hold an ”open primary” for president. Voters can sign in on primary day, take a blank ballot for each party, fill one out and discard the other. The clerk in the precinct never knows which ballot each voter has actually used. Given this tradition, and the state’s   on the calendar, Wisconsin has nearly always served as the confirmation of the  ’s inevitability. The only cycle after 1952 when Wisconsin did not presage the GOP nominee was 1964, when the state party chairman got a popular congressman to run as a ”favorite son” and then persuaded both of the party’s leading national candidates (Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller) to stay out of the state for the sake of unity. Both did. That was, needless to say, a different era."
"For a brief span Sunday, the ”C” in CHP stood for Chihuahua. That’s because a black dog led what police describe as a   pursuit over the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland, before being placed in official custody. The dog’s only identifying tag  —   black, with a silver human skull  —   served to cement his status as a hardcore animal who’s not wowed by authority. His flight from the law was captured on a dashboard camera and posted to social media in what quickly became a   video. It took at least three units  —   two officers on motorcycles and one in a car  —   to corral the animal, which had been streaking its way toward San Francisco. Police issued a call for help in finding the dog’s owner, asking on Facebook, ”Missing a Chihuahua?” At one point in the chase, the dog appeared to toy with his pursuers, stopping to face an officer on a motorcycle  —   who then starts to dismount from his machine  —   before tearing off again. The Associated Press adds, ”After it was captured, the Chihuahua was taken to a San Francisco animal shelter where staff members named it Ponch, after the CHP Officer Frank Poncherello played by Erik Estrada in the TV series CHiPs.” On Monday, officials at San Francisco Animal Care and Control sent an update on Ponch, saying he’s doing well ”but he would love to see his family.” Actor Erik Estrada retweeted that message, much like he did after seeing an earlier tweet about the Chihuahua’s escapade."
"The Department of Housing and Urban Development is making it easier for people with criminal records to find housing. In new guidance, released Monday, HUD tells landlords and home sellers that turning down tenants or buyers based on their criminal records may violate the Fair Housing Act. People with criminal records aren’t a protected class under the Fair Housing Act, and the guidance from HUD’s general counsel says that in some cases, turning down an individual tenant because of his or her record can be legally justified. But blanket policies of refusing to rent to anybody with a criminal record are de facto discrimination, the department says  —   because of the systemic disparities of the American criminal justice system. One in four Americans has a criminal record, as NPR’s Carrie Johnson has reported. Those records can include arrests that never led to convictions, as well as convictions for a wide range of crimes  —   from petty to serious  —   that may have happened decades ago. A record can make it hard to find a job  —   or a home. Many private landlords and public housing projects have policies against renting to people with criminal records. Take Melvin Lofton, who spoke with NPR’s Cheryl Corley. Lofton was convicted of burglary and theft when he was in his 20s now he’s 51. He lives with his mom, and says it would be hard to find housing without that family connection. He remembers one time when he tried to rent a home in a trailer park. ”I was at work and the guy called me and told me to come pick up my keys. So I was happy. I got a place to stay,” Lofton says. ”So then . .. 45 to 50 minutes later he calls and says, ’Is there something you’re not telling me?’ and I say, ’No, what is there?’ And he says, ’You didn’t tell me you had a background.’ ” Lofton had been out of prison for 20 years at the time, Cheryl reports. HUD’s new guidance warns that landlords could be breaking the law when they refuse to rent to people with criminal records  —   even if they have no intention to discriminate  —   because such a policy would likely have a disproportionate impact on   and Hispanic applicants. Housing Secretary Julian Castro puts it another way, NPR’s Corley reports: ”When landlords refuse to rent to anyone who has an arrest record, they effectively bar the door to millions of folks of color for no good reason.” HUD notes that whether an individual landlord’s policy has a discriminatory impact will need to be determined on a    basis. But on a national level, HUD provided a list of statistics  —   direct from the Justice Department  —   demonstrating disproportionately high rates of arrest and incarceration based on race. They noted   men are imprisoned at a rate nearly six times that of white men, and Hispanic men at more than twice the rate of white men. That doesn’t mean landlords are completely barred from considering criminal records  —   but they’d have to prove that their policy legitimately serves to protect safety or property. Saying ”criminals are poor tenants” doesn’t cut it, HUD says: ”Bald assertions based on generalization or stereotype” aren’t sufficient. Barring people based just on arrest records is no good, HUD says, because arrests alone aren’t proof of guilt. And even if you only consider convictions, refusing to rent to all    —   ”no matter when the conviction occurred, what the underlying conduct entailed, or what the convicted person has done since then,” HUD writes  —   also isn’t defensible, since not all   will pose a risk to safety or property. Instead, HUD writes, landlords should have a policy that takes into consideration what the crime was and when it happened, as well as other factors, to reduce the discriminatory impact. (The only exception is if a conviction was for manufacturing or distributing drugs.) HUD also warns landlords that if they do intend to discriminate, and use criminal records as a cover for their actions, they can be found in violation. For instance, landlords who reject black or Hispanic applicants ostensibly because of criminal records  —   but accept a white tenant with a similar criminal record  —   could be found guilty of violating the Fair Housing Act. From Jan. 10 on All Things Considered, That discrimination could happen even before a candidate applies, HUD writes: ”Intentional discrimination may be proven based on evidence that, when responding to inquiries from prospective applicants, a property manager told a   individual that her criminal record would disqualify her from renting an apartment, but did not similarly discourage a White individual with a comparable criminal record from applying.” In both cases  —   whether the discrimination is accidental or intentional  —   each instance would have to be considered on a    basis. But ”arbitrary and overbroad” policies, as well as any that are mere pretexts to conceal discrimination, aren’t protected. HUD officials told NPR’s Corley that the goal is to make landlords consider: Is their policy toward criminal records about keeping a community safe? Or is it about keeping somebody out of a home?"
"Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders won the Wisconsin primaries Tuesday night, an important step for both candidates as they look to stop their leading rivals and close their delegate gaps. For the Republican Texas senator, he’s on pace for a nearly   win over Donald Trump, increasing the likelihood of a contested Republican convention this July in Cleveland. ”Tonight is a turning point. It is a rallying cry,” Cruz told supporters at his victory party in Milwaukee. ”It is a call from the hardworking men and women of Wisconsin to the people of America. We have a choice. A real choice.” Cruz was flanked by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who endorsed his former rival last week. Especially in the most populous southeastern part of the state around Milwaukee, Cruz was bouyed by Walker  —   who remains very popular with GOP voters  —   and by the state’s influential bloc of conservative radio hosts. Trump, meanwhile, likely made a regrettable miscalculation in forcefully attacking Walker and his record in Wisconsin. But it was a stark turn for Trump with many demographics he’s typically dominated in past GOP contests so far. Cruz edged him out among voters without a college degree, according to exit polls. His one notable victory came among independent voters in the GOP primary, beating Cruz with that bloc by four points. Overall, a 35 percent plurality of Republican primary voters said they were scared about a possible Trump presidency, and 17 percent said they would vote for a third party candidate if he were the nominee, while 10 percent would vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee. With his win, Cruz picks up 36 delegates: 18 from his statewide victory and another 18 with his win in six of the state’s eight congressional districts. Trump won in the more rural 3rd and 8th congressional districts, giving him six delegates. Both were areas where he was expected to do well heading into Tuesday. Trump didn’t hold any public events Tuesday night, likely anticipating a loss, but was defiant in a campaign statement despite his sound defeat. ”Donald J. Trump withstood the onslaught of the establishment yet again. Lyin’ Ted Cruz had the Governor of Wisconsin, many conservative talk radio show hosts, and the entire party apparatus behind him,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement. ”Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet  —   he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump. We have total confidence that Mr. Trump will go on to win in New York, where he holds a substantial lead in all the polls, and beyond.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich ended Tuesday with no delegates. His best shot to pick up any delegates was in the   2nd District, where Republicans were more moderate, but Cruz is on pace to win there. Still, Kasich shows no signs of ending his campaign, even though it is mathematically impossible for him to get to the 1, 237 delegates needed before the convention, and instead is banking on floor fight to buoy him. His campaign is looking ahead to the upcoming New York and Pennsylvania primaries to possibly garner more support. On the Democratic side, Sanders notched an important win over Clinton, building on a slate of recent victories in the Western states: Utah, Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska and Washington. ”With our victory tonight in Wisconsin, we have now won seven out of eight of the last caucuses and primaries . .. and we have won almost all of them with overwhelming, landslide numbers,” Sanders told supporters in Wyoming, where he’s hoping to get another victory in the state’s caucuses on Saturday. The Associated Press has not projected the final delegate tally yet, but Sanders will walk away with at least 47 pledged delegates after his   victory. Clinton will take 36 pledged delegates. According to exit polls, Sanders performed well with his usual strongholds of younger voters while Clinton won voters over the age of 45. She also carried the 16 percent of   voters who cast ballots. Sanders, however, won big among independents who were allowed to cast ballots in Tuesday’s open contest. With just over a quarter of voters identifying themselves as independents, Sanders won that bloc 71 percent to 28 percent. But among Democrats, the two candidates ran even. Clinton didn’t hold a public availability Tuesday night, instead attending a fundraiser in the Bronx, N. Y. where she raised $600, 000 for her campaign. She did tweet her congratulations to Sanders though."
"More than 700 million women worldwide today were married as children, and most of them are in developing countries. But there is a growing recognition that many young teens are marrying in the United States as well  —   and several states are now taking action to stop it. Advocates say the young marriages run the gamut: They include teens of every ethnicity and religion, teens who are   and teens who are not being forced into arranged marriages. ”To be honest with you, I begged my parents to let me get married,” says Rachel Holbrook, who was 15 when she decided she wanted to marry her    boyfriend. Partly, she says, it was because of her fundamentalist Christian upbringing. ”I thought that was God’s will for my life,” she says. ”I had been pretty much taught from birth that the highest calling of a woman was to be a wife and mother and that I needed to do that to be in God’s will.” Holbrook says her other motivation was her belief that sex before marriage was a sin. ”You know, at that age, sex is very high on your priority list,” she says. After threatening to never speak to her parents again, she says they finally relented and signed papers allowing her to marry at 17. Four kids and 12 years later, she divorced. Now, she believes teens should not be allowed to do what she did. ”I know how strongly you think you know what you want at that age,” she says. ”But the truth of the matter is I was a kid when I got married and I think that’s almost in every case a bad idea.” Loopholes In Legal Marrying Age, Advocates say child marriage endangers girls’ health, undermines their education and economic opportunities, and puts them at higher risk for domestic violence as well as divorce. According to Jeanne Smoot of the Tahirih Justice Center, around 14, 000 underage marriages occurred in the decade between 2000 and 2010 in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia. ”That’s shocking to me,” says Maryland Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary. She was also stunned by how many of those teens were   and    and how many were marrying men a decade or two older. Like most states, Maryland sets the minimum marriage age at 18, but teens can easily get around that with a note from their parents or a doctor’s note saying they’re pregnant. Atterbeary is pushing a bill to tighten those loopholes. Even stricter measures are pending in New Jersey and in New York, where Assemblywoman Amy Paulin wants to ban all marriages under 18. ”No exceptions,” Paulin says. ”Nothing sways me. I think it’s inappropriate.” In Virginia, a bill aimed at underage marriage was just signed into law. State Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel filed it after hearing that a man in his 50s was in a relationship with a    girl. By law, that constitutes statutory rape, but when investigators started closing in on him, he married the girl, making it no longer a crime. ”People said, ’How is it possible that in Virginia that’s allowed?’ ” Vogel says. ”It’s just appalling!” Looking Out For Vulnerable Teens, ”Many states have been asleep at the wheel,” says Smoot. Any pregnant teen who shows up for a marriage license, she says, should set off alarm bells, not wedding bells. But in most states, clerks will simply   the marriages. ”I find it so troubling that [clerks] are not on the lookout, trained or mandated to consider whether there are serious child protection concerns,” she says. Smoot says teens are especially vulnerable because as minors, they can’t get a restraining order or go to a domestic violence shelter. In many states, child protective services do not handle cases of spousal abuse. Now under Virginia’s new law,   and    who want to marry have to first convince a judge they should be legally emancipated and that they deserve to be seen as an adult in the eyes of the law. ”Someone would at least be looking to see that they’re not being coerced, that the individual is mature enough to decide to marry and that the marriage is not going to endanger the minor in any way,” Vogel says. ”In that case, they’d be allowed to get married. Otherwise, you’ve got to be 18.” The bill passed over some objections, including from Delegate Richard Morris, who argued it would be better to change other laws, for example, to start letting minors get restraining orders, rather than have courts deciding who is mature enough to marry. ”Is that really what we want our parental rights to come to?” Morris said during the legislative debate. ”I think that is a huge infringement on parental rights and responsibilities and that’s why I will not support this bill.” A group advocating for children’s rights has also raised objections. Stephanie Nilva, executive director of Day One, a nonprofit in New York that works against dating abuse and domestic violence, says she agrees that it’s a good idea to have a judge make sure that parental consent is not actually parental coercion. But she says some young people have legitimate reasons to get married. They might have custody concerns or want to secure certain spousal benefits before one of the couple is deployed in combat. Nilva says an outright ban on marriages under 18 could put some young people at risk. ”It’s a little bit of a baby and a bath water thing,” she says. ”I just believe in the autonomy and the empowerment of youth, and that young people are in the best position to determine whether they’re safe, and also whether they want to be married.” Legal To Marry, But Not To Vote? But many who’ve been there will be the first to tell you, kids don’t always know as much as they think. Mary Hall was 16 when she decided marrying a guy she met five months earlier was a great idea, because her folks had just divorced and she didn’t want to live with either one of them. ”It seemed like marriage was the best way out,” she says. By 20, Hall was divorced with two children. She thinks the minimum marriage age should be even higher than 18. It makes no sense, she says, to tell teens they’re too young to get a tattoo or vote  —   but not too young to marry."
"Updated at 8:10 p. m. ET, One law firm, 11. 5 million files. The massive trove of emails, contracts and other papers from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca is being called the largest document leak in history. For more than a year, a huge team of international investigative journalists sifted through the data. On Sunday, the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung and members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists began publishing stories linking titans of business and politics  —   including 12 former and current heads of state  —   to secret offshore bank accounts and shell companies set up by Mossack Fonseca. As we reported Monday, much of the behavior revealed by the leaked documents isn’t itself a crime  —   it’s legal to have offshore bank accounts. But the accounts can be used to launder money or hide incriminating connections. The team of journalists has said it would release a full list of people and corporations involved next month. Around the world, the revelations are prompting public backlash, official investigations and at least one   resignation. In some countries, though, they’re being met by a different kind of resignation  —   a familiar sigh, and collective shrug. Here’s a sampling of the fallout so far. Iceland, The prime minister of Iceland stepped aside on Tuesday after widespread outrage and massive street protests. A statement from his office issued later says he has not resigned, but has suggested that a representative from his party take over the office ”for an unspecified amount of time.” The Panama Papers say that Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife had secretly set up offshore accounts through a shell company that was seeking money from failed Icelandic banks that received government bailout funds. ”Gunnlaugsson said he and his wife paid all their taxes and have done nothing illegal,” The Associated Press reports. ”He also said his financial holdings didn’t affect his negotiations with Iceland’s creditors during the country’s acute financial crisis. Those assertions did little to quell the controversy.” Russia, While Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t directly implicated in the leaked documents made public so far, many members of his close personal circle are  —   a network of rich, powerful friends explored by The Guardian. Putin’s spokesman has fired back, calling the allegations ”Putinphobia” and saying the publication of the Panama Papers was intended to destabilize Russia as it heads toward elections, the newspaper reports. The United States, Many of the largest media outlets in the U. S. including NPR, were not part of the international team of investigators working with the data behind the Panama Papers. Exceptions include the Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer and Fusion. Relatively few Americans  —   just over 200  —   have been identified, according to the reports published so far. Fusion spoke to experts who said that is, in part, because Americans can form offshore companies without needing to leave the U. S. But the Justice Department says it will review the documents and that it ”takes very seriously all credible allegations of   foreign corruption that might have a link to the United States.” Speaking Tuesday, President Obama criticized loopholes that allow  . ”A lot of it’s legal, but that’s exactly the problem,” he said. Chile, The head of the Chilean office of Transparency International  —   an   watchdog  —   stepped down Monday, after the leaked documents tied him to offfshore companies. The Associated Press reports on Gonzalo Delaveau’s resignation: ”Jose Ugaz, chair of the   group, said he was deeply troubled by revelations that Delaveau, a lawyer, was linked to five companies domiciled in the Bahamas. ”Delaveau is not accused of any wrongdoing but Ugaz said his continued affiliation with Transparency International is incompatible with the group’s aims to register the beneficial owners of all shell companies to make it harder for the corrupt to hide illicit wealth.” France, After the revelations, the French government says it will put Panama on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions  —   again. ”French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said France had previously taken Panama off a   blacklist because the country convinced French officials it respected international tax principles,” NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports. But the Panama Papers changed their minds. Argentina, Current President Mauricio Macri, soccer star Lionel Messi and a close associate of former President Nestor Kirchner have all been implicated by the papers. That’s a problem for Macri, who campaigned on an   platform vowing to clean up the mess left by former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Nestor’s widow. There are calls for an investigation, NPR’s Lourdes   reports. Brazil, The data breach has revealed more than 100 accounts that Brazilian investigators didn’t know about, linked to seven political parties, Lourdes reports. But . .. ”Brazil has had so many corruption disclosures lately, and its in the middle of a political crisis  —   so this is just one more to the list,” she says. The United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron isn’t named in the data leak, according to reporters investigating the papers, but his father is. ”David Cameron’s father ran an offshore fund that avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small army of Bahamas residents  —   including a   bishop  —   to sign its paperwork,” The Guardian writes. That’s led to pressure on the prime minister to discuss whether any of his family’s money is still being held in that offshore account, a question his office first refused to discuss. His spokesman’s description of the question as ”a private matter” earned him the mockery of former NSA contractor and leaker Edward Snowden. Later a spokesman for Downing Street said the prime minister’s immediate family doesn’t benefit from offshore funds, without addressing whether they had ever done so in the past. Pakistan, The public response in Pakistan has similarly been devoid of shock, NPR’s Philip Reeves reports from Islamabad. While the family of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is implicated by the papers  —   which has been seized upon by the local media and some members of the opposition  —   it comes as no surprise to the country’s citizens that the ruling class is corrupt, Phil says. Spain, Cultural icons were among those named by the Panama Papers in Spain  —  director Pedro Almodóvar and his brother the aunt of Spain’s king and soccer star Messi, who plays for Barcelona. But as in Pakistan, the public outcry has been muted, Lauren Frayer reports for NPR from Madrid. ”Spaniards tend not to be terribly surprised these days about corruption or   allegations,” she says, noting that Messi was already awaiting trial for tax fraud. China, The Panama Papers implicate the families of several Chinese politicians, including the    of President Xi Jinping. China has dismissed the reports as ”groundless,” the AP reports. In 2012, Bloomberg reported on the vast wealth of Xi’s   noting that much of it was ”obscured from public view by multiple holding companies, government restrictions on access to company documents and in some cases online censorship.” While the revelations aren’t entirely new, NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports, they have been heavily censored by China. Searching for the Panama Papers in China will return results about Lionel Messi and other   people in the papers, but nothing about Chinese figures, the AP writes. Anthony also notes that the same international team of investigative reporters behind the Panama Papers has previously faced intimidation from China’s government related to a different investigation, causing Chinese members of the cooperative effort to withdraw. . .. and, of course, in Panama, As the fallout from the leak continues, Panama is attempting to fight its reputation as a haven for tax evaders and money launderers, the AP reports. ”Panamanians have long shrugged off their country’s checkered reputation as a financial haven for drug lords, tax dodgers and corrupt oligarchs. They like to joke that if they’re crooks, they’ve learned it from the world’s wealthy nations,” the wire service writes. It adds: ”Panama cemented its status as a   center in the 1980s, when dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega rolled out the red carpet to Colombian drug cartels. It has remained a magnet for illicit money, as well as for legitimate funds, because its dollarized economy sits at the crossroad of the Americas. . .. ”But Panama isn’t alone in its permissive attitude toward shell companies, which the   Tax Justice Network estimates hide $21 trillion to $32 trillion in untaxed or lightly taxed financial wealth around the globe. Panama ranks 13th on the watchdog group’s financial secrecy index  —   better than the U. S. which is at No. 3.”"
"Even as the death penalty grows out of favor in the United States, the number of executions worldwide has risen to its highest level in 25 years, a new report on the death penalty from Amnesty International finds. The human rights group recorded 1, 634 executions in 2015, a number rivaled only by a   period beginning in 1988. James Clark, Amnesty’s senior death penalty campaigner, says the numbers can seem a bit misleading because the rise was driven mostly by three countries  —   Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which accounted for 89 percent of all executions. ”The spike in executions, particularly in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, leads to this global number that is so much larger than we’ve ever seen in recent years but that belies the fact that it’s happening in such a small number of countries around the world,” Clark said. The global trend, Clark said, is clear: The death penalty is in decline worldwide. The United States, which executed 28 people in 2015, was for the seventh year in a row the only American country to carry out the death penalty. (The report did not look at extrajudicial killings.) But lately, the U. S. has significantly curtailed its use of capital punishment. The U. S. arm of Amnesty International points out: ”As of April 1, 2016, a total of 18 U. S. states have abolished or repealed the death penalty, and a total of 9 U. S. states have not conducted an execution in at least a decade  —   meaning that, for the first time since capital punishment was reinstated in the U. S. a majority of states have halted the death penalty in either policy or practice.” As we’ve reported, the death penalty has become historically unpopular among American voters and its use is also becoming increasingly rare. ”I think we’re seeing the death penalty become isolated to a small number of outlier states, while really the rest of the United States is moving forward and following in the global trend that we just don’t need the death penalty,” Clark said. One big caveat in the statistics is that they do not include China, which Amnesty believes executes the most people in the world. The data, however, are held as a state secret."
"Live stream begins at 8 p. m. Eastern Time. As our food system has rapidly evolved over the past few decades, issues surrounding where our food comes from and what it contains have become mainstream, often politicized, debates. However, when debating something like organic versus genetically modified food, which communities are included in the dialogue and who benefits when decisions are made? Can producers and consumers work together to make sure high quality food is accessible to everyone? Tonight, I’m in Kansas City, Missouri to focus on these issues with people who are passionate about what’s on their plates and how it got there. In collaboration with member station KCUR and Harvest Public Media, the   live event will feature dynamic storytelling and live performances. We will also take the discussion to social media with an engaging Twitter chat all about how we eat. You can join that conversation now. Just use the hashtag #NPRHowWeEat to share your thoughts. The chat is moderated by @NPRMichel. Joining us on Twitter are: Featured Live Panelists:"
"Ever watch The Beverly Hillbillies and wonder why Jed Clampett moved to Beverly Hills and not Texas or some town that we more closely associate with oil? Even Angelenos forget sometimes that the Clampetts came first, then the swimming pools and movie stars. Think J. Paul Getty or Edward Doheny, men who made their fortunes on oil and then made LA. Los Angeles is a world center for transportation, fashion, manufacturing and  —   above all  —   entertainment. In the heart of this metropolis, oil is hidden in plain sight. If you go on a walk to clear your head at NPR’s Culver City studios, cross the street and you’re in one of the largest producing urban oil fields in America. ”When you think about Los Angeles, you tend to think of big skyscrapers and beaches. You don’t generally tend to think of oil wells,” says Lars Perner, a professor at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. ”This is fairly valuable real estate, with some rather expensive homes close by,” he says of the Inglewood oil field. Perner points to the Baldwin Hills and View Park neighborhoods that are considered the ”Black Beverly Hills” for former residents such as Tina Turner, Ray Charles and Nancy Wilson. ”This oil is clearly very valuable to justify using that space for those oil pumps,” Perner says. He says that as iconic as the Hollywood sign or the movie studios are, it’s the oil wells that made modern life in LA possible. The LA Basin is very isolated and vast. That makes getting goods into the area difficult, and it made transporting goods around the region very tough. That is until the invention of the automobile and the discovery of oil. ”Back in those days there weren’t really a lot of regulations as to how you could drill, so a lot of people got very entrepreneurial. And they were trying to get pumps onto their property before their neighbors could,” Perner says. You can find oil wells hidden all over Los Angeles. Beverly Hills High School has multiple oil wells on its campus. (The school’s wells were the subject of a class action suit brought by Erin Brockovich). Edward Doheny, for whom the major thoroughfare in Beverly Hills is named, discovered oil under a private residence in 1892. His find set off an   spree. The battle over the rights to that oil could fill several history books and many films. As J. Paul Getty once said, ”The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.” Part of what made Los Angeles oil so attractive, Perner says, was that the oil was close to the surface and easy to extract. Add to that the newly invented automobile, incredible weather and a port, and that’s a recipe for exponential expansion. But Perner suggests that without oil there would be no modern LA. ”Well, the petroleum industry of course made it possible to have Hollywood.” And he says it made it made it possible to build an infrastructure to transport agricultural produce from other areas to help support the growth of a relatively large city very quickly. ”Los Angeles was a sleepy pueblo that became LA, and Hollywood and the studios all popped up and people got wealthy because of oil,” says David Slater, chief operating officer of Signal Hill Petroleum. In 1921, oil was discovered on Signal Hill, a city near the Port of Long Beach. These two discoveries are what made Los Angeles one of the world’s major petroleum fields. It’s difficult to overstate just how much oil was being produced in LA back in the 1920s. ”The production from here made Los Angeles the equivalent of Saudi Arabia today,” Slater says. Today, the city of Signal Hill is one of the largest urban producers of oil in the U. S. But the steep drop in oil prices has had a big impact on smaller oil companies like Signal Hill Petroleum. ”The painful part, though, is when prices go down, contracting our business and eliminating jobs is never ever a fun thing to go through,” says Slater. His company has shrunk from 150 employees to 85. As he looked out over the bay of Long Beach, where supertankers line the horizon, Slater said he wished he could drill more. He joked that cheap gas wasn’t completely bad, as he drove us down Signal Hill in his white Escalade."
"For Erin Moore, keeping her son’s cystic fibrosis in check requires careful monitoring to prevent the thick, sticky mucous his body produces from further damaging his lungs and digestive system. Moore keeps tabs on    Drew’s weight, appetite, exercise and stools every day to see if they stray from his healthy baseline. When he develops a cough, she tracks that, too. It has been nearly a year since Drew has been hospitalized as a baby he was admitted up to four times annually. She credits her careful monitoring, aided by an online data tracking tool from a program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center called the Orchestra Project, with helping to keep him healthy. ”Now I have a picture of what health looks like for Drew,” says Moore, 35. ”Tools like Orchestra that allow patients to take a more active stance in managing our health are still really undervalued.” (Moore is also a health care consultant who works part time with Cincinnati Children’s on a variety of   and collaborative care projects and works with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation on improving partnerships among cystic fibrosis groups and serves as a patient representative to the Food and Drug Administration.) That attitude may be changing, according to a study published in the April issue of the journal Health Affairs that examines the movement to incorporate ”  outcomes” into clinical care. It may seem like a   to include patients’ assessments of their physical and mental conditions and quality of life into medical care, but such   data have traditionally been confined to research rather than clinical settings. Clinicians have typically focused more on physical exams, medical tests and biological measures to guide patient care. However, as   medical care has taken hold in recent years, there’s been a growing interest in finding ways to use outcomes reported by individuals to help guide care. ”How are you feeling?” is a pretty standard conversation starter during a doctor’s visit. ”The challenge is that we don’t capture [the response] in a way that we can use [like] we do for blood pressure,” says Dr. Danielle Lavallee, a research assistant professor at the department of surgery at the University of Washington and the lead author of the study. Policy and payment changes are helping to drive the shift. For example, a pilot program mandated by the Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services that began last Friday requires roughly 800 hospitals in 67 metropolitan areas to bundle payments for knee and hip replacement surgeries and   care. CMS will reimburse providers for collecting   outcomes. Total joint replacement surgeries for knee and hip arthritis are the most common Medicare inpatient procedures. At the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center’s arthritis and joint replacement center, pain and joint function are measured for patients considering replacement surgery and tracked at each visit. If symptoms aren’t controlled with physical therapy and medical care, then patients and their doctors discuss whether surgery makes sense. Dr. Patricia Franklin, a professor of orthopedics and physical rehabilitation at   who   the Health Affairs study, and colleagues incorporated that template into a project funded by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that implemented   outcomes for knee and hip replacements in more than 150 surgeons’ offices in 22 states. ”Patients were pleased because they saw that their assessment of their pain and function was part of the process,” says Franklin. ”Surgeons were glad to have the data on the severity of pain before and after surgery.” At Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, the Orchestra Project provides better collaboration between providers and patients with chronic illness such as cystic fibrosis or inflammatory bowel disease, says Lisa   an associate professor at the hospital. A patient will see his care team  —   in Drew’s case, a pediatric pulmonologist, nurse, dietitian, social worker, psychologist, respiratory therapist and endocrinologist  —   a few times a year. But many   related events happen in between those visits, and they can be recorded in the tracking tool. Together the provider and the patient decide what they want to track. Both can then monitor the details. ”It allows both the patient and clinician to see information in real time, both as a method of surveillance to find things out that are better to act on now, but also as a more specific and accurate record of what’s working and for decision making,”   says. Moore says that having concrete data has helped her work with Drew’s medical team. For one thing, she doesn’t have to call every time she needs to recall when a medication was changed it’s right there in the data. Now they’re also speaking the same language. ”In health care it’s such a struggle between the patient and the provider,” Moore says. ”Now we both speak data. I feel more confident and they feel like they have the information they need to make better decisions.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter:@mandrews110."
"Hytham Harara is happy to show off his family’s freshly rebuilt home in Gaza City’s Shujaya neighborhood, one of the areas badly battered in the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip. The outside of the house is painted buttercream yellow, trimmed with red and tan. Inside, there’s an artistic stone inlay on the floor of the living room, a stylized nightingale mural on one wall, and ornate wooden doors. They create a world far removed from much of the rubble that remains just outside. ”My father likes a house that is beautiful and relaxing to live in,” says Harara, 21, the   son and an English literature major at Gaza’s Islamic University. The family returned home a couple months ago, after a     crammed into a rental across town. But rebuilt homes in this area are just dots among bombed out shells and stalled construction starts. Gaza is rebuilding yet again. Even since the Palestinians launched an uprising in 2000, this small, poor coastal territory has gone through a recurring cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Fighting between Palestinians and Israel leads to widespread damage. Then reconstruction money comes from abroad, leading to limited rebuilding. Then there’s another round of fighting. Gaza is once again in rebuilding mode, and residents are hoping this time it will last. Here’s a look at the current dynamics in Gaza’s reconstruction  —   and the chronic problems that emerge every time it attempts to rebuild. Qatar Moves Quickly, The Gulf state of Qatar has the best track record so far of rebuilding homes destroyed in the 2014 war. Qatar pledged $1 billion to help rebuild Gaza, and a portion of that was allocated to reconstruct 1, 000 demolished homes. According to Ibrahim Hamdona, a member of the board overseeing the Qatari work in Gaza, those 1, 000 homes are completed. A Palestinian Authority employee monitoring progress puts the Qatari home completion rate lower, around 60 percent finished, but on the fast track. Qatar has managed the unusual trick of having good working relations with both Hamas and Israel. Qatar is close to Hamas, and has special permission from Israel to bring in construction materials for a variety of public works projects, from road rehabilitation to a new hospital. Qatar also maintains a large office in Gaza, staffed with engineers and project managers. A special Qatari ambassador to Gaza is allowed to travel from Qatar through Israel periodically to oversee progress. Hytham Harara’s family got on the list of homes being rebuilt by Qatar, and he says that’s the only reason his family’s home is done while others wait. Kuwait, Not So Fast  Kuwait is also a major donor to Gaza reconstruction, pledging $200 million for rebuilding projects including 2, 000 homes. But no Kuwaiti funds have yet been disbursed. And if Qatar has become the poster child for successful homebuilding in Gaza, being put on the Kuwaiti list means to many, to wait. Hassan Faraj and 11 members of his family moved back to their severely damaged home on the eastern edge of Shujaya four months ago. There is no running water. Sewage empties into the yard. The main entry hall serves as a makeshift kitchen. The living room is a bedroom for multiple family members. The door to the   kitchen opens onto a room with no walls and a perilously sagging concrete ceiling. Half of the first floor and most of the second are uninhabitable. The family paid for essential repairs out of their own budget  —   rehanging doors, repairing windows, rebuilding walls that could be patched with cinderblocks. Faraj says he doesn’t know how he wound up slated for Kuwaiti assistance. ”We don’t know how it works,” he said. ”People who are lucky are under Qatar. They’ve rebuilt. We are waiting.” But despite    frustrations, it’s not fair to blame Kuwait, says Bashir   the Palestinian Authority’s general coordinator for Gaza reconstruction. He says it was clear from the beginning Kuwaiti funds would take time to come through. ”It’s the first time in history the state of Kuwait is paying $200 million directly through the [Palestinian] government,” Reyyes said. ”Kuwait goes step by step. It’s not the usual kind of Arab money I call ’dump and go. ’” Palestinian official have announced that Kuwaiti funds for about 1, 100 homes will be disbursed later this month. The U. N. Bureaucracy, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has a huge operation in Gaza and has undertaken a much broader effort than Qatar or Kuwait. UNRWA was created in 1950 and has been assisting Palestinian refugees in several countries in the Mideast. Among other rebuilding projects, UNRWA is managing the disbursement of donor funds to repair or rebuild more than 140, 000 homes. That’s 80 percent of the total homes damaged or destroyed in the 2014 war. ”They could have just had the windows blown out, a few cracks, or they’ve got more structural damage, or they’ve been totally destroyed,” says Melinda Young, UNRWA’s deputy director for programs in Gaza. Funding has been slow coming, but by the end of March, UNRWA says all the evaluations of homes needing repair have been completed, and more than half of the families needing minor repairs to their homes had received all their allotted funding to complete those repairs. Major repairs have been less well funded, and out of the 7, 400 totally destroyed homes on UNRWA’s list to be rebuilt, 60 are done and funding is available for nearly 2, 000 more. Complicated Politics  With so many players involved, it took nearly a year to get a system in place to move massive amounts of construction materials into Gaza. Israel, for example, does not allow certain reconstruction materials into Gaza, including wood planks thicker than one millimeter and some adhesives, out of concerns they could be used for military purposes. All materials enter from Israel, through one crossing point. Security checks add time to transfers. And UNRWA’s Young says the capacity for the crossing has not yet been truly tested, since slow funding means demand for materials has not peaked. Last week, Israel said Hamas had gotten its hands on cement that was intended for approved reconstruction in Gaza. Israel has frequently warned Hamas uses cement to rebuild and fortify tunnels designed to allow militants to enter Israel. So Israel barred cement from entering Gaza through the special mechanism set up after the war. But specific exceptions were made so cement can still be brought in for home reconstruction managed by the UN and Qatar. According to the World Bank, which tracks the promises of assistance made by international donors in October 2014, after the war, only 40 percent of pledges had been disbursed by the end of February 2016. Much of that goes for assistance other than housing. But the gap between need and funding for housing is wide. UNRWA’s Young says the agency’s entire caseload of homes needing repairs  —   anything short of complete reconstruction  —   could be cleared in six months if the money was there. She estimates the need at about $400 million. ”That’s tens of thousands of people,” Young says. During the 2014 pledging conference, some donors expressed a reluctance to give because they had contributed to Gaza reconstruction after earlier conflicts only to see more infrastructure destroyed. UNRWA is still seeking $28 million to cover housing needs created by previous wars."
"In the 1940s, an elite team of mathematicians and scientists started working on a project that would carry the U. S. into space, then on to the moon and Mars. They would eventually become NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (or JPL) but here’s what made them so unusual: Many of the people who charted the course to space exploration were women. Nathalia Holt tells their story in her new book, Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars. Holt tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro that the women worked as ”computers.” ”In a time before the digital devices that we’re used to today, it was humans that were doing the calculations,” she says. ”And so you needed these teams of people  —   many of whom were women, especially during World War II  —   and they were responsible for the math.” Barbara Paulson was one of those women. She tells Shapiro that while her sisters were preparing to be secretaries, she took a different path. She says, ”I had had quite a bit of math in high school. . .. I know my mother certainly wanted us all to graduate from college, but why I veered off into this . .. I can’t remember. . .. But I did, and it helped me get the job that I did get at JPL.” Today, Holt says, ”There is hardly a mission that you can find in NASA that these women haven’t touched.” On how Holt first learned about the women who worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab, Holt: In 2010, I was expecting my first child. And my husband and I were just having a terrible time coming up with a name. We finally thought of Eleanor Frances. We googled the name, and the first Eleanor Frances that popped up was a woman named Eleanor Francis Helin. And there was this beautiful picture of her at NASA in the 1960s accepting an award. And I was stunned by this picture because I hadn’t realized that women even worked at NASA at this time, much less as scientists. And so what I found is that there was this group of women who, starting in the 1940s, worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. On tracking down the Jet Propulsion Lab women  Holt: It was quite difficult to track down this group and find their stories. In fact, I think it was over 40 Barbara Paulsons I talked to before I found the right Barbara Paulson. . .. But when I found the real Barbara Paulson, the one I was searching for, it was so wonderful. And right from the beginning, Barbara had these amazing stories and incredible memory. On one of the first stories Paulson shared, Holt: I think it has to be the Explorer 1 [satellite]. That has to be right at the beginning. . .. Paulson: Well, Explorer 1 was launched Jan. 31, 1958. And that would’ve been after Sputnik had been launched. . .. I was asked to graph the results coming back from the Explorer 1 satellite. And I worked most of the night, through the night, at JPL with my mechanical pencil and graph paper and light table that I was working on. And that was all the equipment that I had. . .. As I look back on so many things, I get more excited now than I did then. But it was exciting. I mean, it was great news that it was . .. in orbit around the Earth. On what Holt hopes her book will accomplish, Holt: My hope is that these women serve as role models, not just for my daughter of course, but for all of the women that are interested in science. It’s a difficult time for women in technology right now. In 1984, 37 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in computer science were awarded to women, and today that number has dropped to 18 percent. And even for women that are working in science today, it’s about half of all women that leave midcareer. So I think these stories are important for inspiring and being role models that are so much needed for women today."
"Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant has signed a controversial ”religious freedom” bill into law. The legislation, HB 1523, promises that the state government will not punish people who refuse to provide services to people because of a religious opposition to   marriage, extramarital sex or transgender people. Supporters say it protects the rights of people who are opposed to homosexuality but who now live in a country where   marriage is a legal right. Opponents say the law amounts to a state sanction for open discrimination. In a statement on Twitter, Bryant said he signed the bill into law ”to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions . .. from discriminatory action by state government.” He said the new law ”merely reinforces” existing religious freedom rights, ”does not limit any constitutionally protected rights or actions” and does not challenge federal law. ”The legislation is designed in the most targeted manner possible to prevent government interference in the lives of the people from which all power to the state is derived,” Bryant said. The law is not a broad   law, such as many recent controversial state laws. As we reported last week, the Mississippi legislation protects only three beliefs or convictions: that marriage is between a man and a woman, that sex is ”properly reserved to such a marriage,” and that words like ”male” and ”female” are ”objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at birth.” The law protects, among other things, state employees who refuse to license marriages, religious organizations who fire or discipline employees and individuals who decline to provide counseling or some medical services based on those oppositions. Even without such a law, it is already legal in Mississippi  —   as in most states in the country  —   to discriminate against LGBT people in providing employment, housing and public accommodation. The law’s language also suggests protections for those who deny services based on an opposition to premarital sex but similarly, it was already legal in Mississippi to deny an unmarried couple housing because of a moral objection. Paul Boger of Mississippi Public Broadcasting reports that Republican state Rep. Andy Gipson of Braxton, who introduced the measure, says it has been misrepresented. ”It specifically says that is a case where a person has a religious conviction, they can decline, but they must provide somebody in their office to provide that service,” Gipson says. That requirement covers state employees declining to license or perform a marriage. LGBT advocates in Mississippi had been calling for Bryant, a Republican, to veto the legislation, as had members of the business community such as the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, Nissan North American and Tyson Foods. The Family Research Council described business opposition to the measure as ”economic blackmail” and celebrated Bryant’s signature. ”No person should be punished by the government with crippling fines, or face disqualification for simply believing what President Obama believed just a few years ago, that marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” FRC President Tony Perkins said in a statement. The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi’s executive director, Jennifer   said in a statement, ”This is a sad day for the state of Mississippi and for the thousands of Mississippians who can now be turned away from businesses, refused marriage licenses, or denied housing, essential services and needed care based on who they are. This bill flies in the face of the basic American principles of fairness, justice and equality and will not protect anyone’s religious liberty.” The law goes into effect July 1. Republican Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia recently vetoed a religious liberties bill in his state, saying, ”I do not think that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the   community in Georgia, of which I and my family have been a part of for all of our lives.” The Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner, among other major companies, had all called for Deal to veto the bill. In North Carolina, another controversial measure  —   mandating that all bathrooms at state facilities be separated by sex as assigned at birth, prohibiting local governments from creating their own   ordinances and also blocking cities and counties from raising their minimum wages  —   was introduced, passed and signed into law over the course of a single day last month. On Tuesday, PayPal announced it was canceling plans to expand into Charlotte, N. C. in response to that new law. PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said in a statement it would be ”untenable” to move forward in a state where all employees would ”not have equal rights under the law.” The planned operations center would have employed 400 people, PayPal’s statement said."
"Americans throw away about a third of our available food. But what some see as trash, others are seeing as a business opportunity. A new facility known as the Heartland Biogas Project is taking wasted food from Colorado’s most populous areas and turning it into electricity. Through a technology known as anaerobic digestion, spoiled milk, old pet food and vats of grease combine with helpful bacteria in massive tanks to generate gas. I went to check out the facility. It’s located on a rural road in northern Colorado, situated a stone’s throw from big beef cattle feedlots and dairy farms and a short drive from the state’s populous,   urban core. Follow your nose to know you’re in the right place. There’s no way around it: The place stinks. The odor is a mix of cow poop and expired produce. ”Yeah, there’s a lot of good smell around here,” says Scott Pexton, with A1 Organics, a composting company that runs the food waste portion of the plant. The six huge   holding tanks at Heartland  —   which can hold 1. 7 million gallons of food waste and manure slurry  —   work like enormous stomachs. Pretty much anything you could eat can go into the digester. And as with our own digestive systems, what comes out at the end is a liquid (a   sludge, technically)  —   which is captured in lagoons and reused in the digestion process a solid  —   used for composting and a gas. That third thing  —   methane gas  —   is what really interests the owners of the Heartland plant. Methane is captured, sent into an interstate pipeline and used to generate electricity. If all the food waste processed at the plant were sent to the dump instead, it would still release methane as it rotted and decomposed  —   but all that wasted gas would seep directly into the atmosphere and contribute to climate change. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. In fact, most of the 130 billion pounds of food that Americans wasted in 2015 sits in landfills, giving off methane. So in that way, anaerobic digesters are able solve a few problems at once. A recent report from the nonprofit group ReFED found that digesters not only generate renewable energy, they also divert food waste from landfills, cut down on harmful emissions and provide a few jobs along the way. ”We’ve seen a lot of those types of digesters in Europe and we’re just starting to see them emerge in the U. S.,” says Darby Hoover, a resource specialist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which contributed to the ReFED report. Anaerobic digestion is one promising piece of a much larger puzzle to solve the food waste problem, Hoover says. But digesters are expensive, and many require policy fixes to get off the ground. Cities like Sacramento, Calif. which is working to meet high state standards for renewable energy production, are using biogas generators like Heartland to meet those standards. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is locked in a   agreement with EDF Renewable Energy  —   the private development company that runs Heartland  —   to buy all the gas generated there. But in many ways Sacramento’s relationship with Heartland is unusual. More often, Hoover says, cities forgo biogas because they’d have to foot the bill for building and running such facilities by themselves. ”With an anaerobic digester you often have a high project cost up front,” Hoover says. ”Cities may not see that there’s a high value to implementing something like a digester.” And critics say that while digesters manage the consequences of the food waste problem, they do not address the root of the issue. Consumers throw out a staggering amount of food every year: Knowing there’s a machine to clean up their mess could relieve some guilt of throwing food away. So anaerobic digesters are ”no silver bullet,” says Virginia Till, a recycling expert with the Environmental Protection Agency. She says it’s important to focus on ”opportunities to focus on reducing waste in the first place.” The federal government released the country’s   food waste reduction goals in 2015, calling on Americans to cut food waste in half by 2030. Making renewable energy from food that can’t be eaten is admirable, Till says. But the best thing to do with wasted food is to feed people. Almost 1 in 7 U. S. households are food insecure, unsure of where their next meal is coming from. ”That fact  —   coupled with the fact that we waste about a third of our food that’s produced  —   those two facts together get me up in the morning,” Till says. Heartland’s Scott Pexton agrees. ”We certainly believe in the idea of reduce first,” he says. But even if people stop throwing out perfectly good food, even the most careful, responsible retailers, processors and farmers will generate some waste from time to time. People will still throw away banana peels and corn husks. And for those situations, the big mechanical digesters out on the eastern plains of Colorado will be right there waiting. Luke Runyon reports for Harvest Public Media and is based at member station KUNC in Greeley, Colo."
"”[T]here was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.” That fairly familiar line, a mere fleeting perception from The Great Gatsby, is the bedrock wisdom of Charles Bock’s beautiful and harrowing new novel, Alice  Oliver. Alice is a new mother in her 20s who, one day, out of the blue, coughs up bloody phlegm, collapses and is diagnosed with leukemia. Oliver is her husband. He’s a trouper who hangs onto his job and tends their baby daughter, shaves his head in solidarity when Alice goes through chemo, and braves the hellish maze of health insurance to try to secure the care she needs for survival. But, no matter how loving and connected the two of them are, once cancer enters their lives, Alice is the sick one and Oliver isn’t. Bock could have chosen to write this story as an autobiography. As he tells readers in the ”Acknowledgments” here, Alice  Oliver is based on a   nightmare that began in 2009, when his wife  —   then a young mother  —   was diagnosed with leukemia she died 2   years later. The novel’s source, no doubt, imbues it with authority, but its literary power derives from Bock’s elastic language, stretching from his detailed inventories of extreme medical procedures to the lyric melancholy of his descriptions of mood and place. The novel opens in 1993. Alice, a fashion designer, and Oliver, a software startup entrepreneur, have moved, at his insistence, to an industrial space in the   ungentrified Meatpacking District in New York. We’re told that the neighborhood’s ”every daylight hour was dominated by dock thugs and frozen slabs after dark, rotted zombie addicts held court with   sex club slaves and transvestite streetwalkers . ..” Oliver, though, is handy with screwdrivers and power sanders, and he transforms the desolate living space into a soaring ultramodern loft. But here’s the kicker. After Alice is diagnosed, and ”when she was at her worst,” we’re privy to this confession: [W]hen she needed to blame Oliver for something, for anything, she returned to the promise she couldn’t forget, high on his list of guarantees: they’d be insulated the smells from the warehouses, frozen beef and lingering death, wouldn’t reach them. But they did. Bock’s elegance as a writer belies his resolute focus on the elemental meatiness of the human body  —   its many vulnerabilities and humiliations. The novel follows Alice through her course of treatment for leukemia those readers fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with medical terms like ”induction,” ”consolidation” and ”transplant” are thrust into their baroque and brutal realities as Alice sheds hair and skin and even the energy to hold a thought. And always, on the other side of the ”sick and well” dividing line, stands Oliver, guilty and oftentimes, just itching to escape hospital world. Early on in their ordeal, we’re told that when relief arrives in the form of Alice’s mother: [T]he clock started eating into [Oliver’s] holy and awaited break time. [He’d] hightail it [out] . .. grabbing a chicken sandwich from a sports bar [or] . .. some sad Chinese lunch from a buffet table of greased food rotting beneath heat lamps. . .. Overprocessed,    garbage: his official coping mechanism. He made sure to binge away from the hospital. . .. He wouldn’t let her see anything that might cause her faith in him to waver. But as the months of torment drag on on, Oliver’s binges grow more varied and reckless. Bock is unflinching here in his depiction of failures of the body and the spirit. Alice  Oliver is both haunting and raw  —   a rare novel about cancer that, in this case, doesn’t try to find meaning in serious illness, but rather gives its random malevolence its full due."
"Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from the book The Informed Parent: A   Resource for Your Child’s First Four Years. If you haven’t experienced it, no simple description will capture the feeling of deep, dizzying fatigue that can accompany the first few weeks with a newborn. By the third child, Emily was wishing for an infant boarding school that could keep her son for those first few weeks of constant night waking and return him in a semiregulated state at about eight weeks. Well, not really, but the thought might have crossed her admittedly addled brain at 3 a. m. on several successive nights. You might think that mothers, being the ones with the breast milk, have it the worst. But science seems to indicate otherwise. For example, one 2013 study of 21   pairs enjoying their first infant experience found that fathers actually got less sleep than the mothers and experienced more confirmed sleepiness, as measured using wrist trackers. The study authors also found that even though the mothers got more sleep, their sleep was disturbed more often, which makes sense given their role in feeding. Both parents reported feeling about the same level of tiredness, but mothers scored worse on neurobehavioral testing (all those awakenings). Lest you think that maybe that study, with its small sample, was a   a 2004 study of 72 couples during the first postpartum month also used wrist trackers and also found that fathers had objectively less sleep than mothers. Sleep was measured throughout the day, though, and the mothers appeared to play   during daytime hours when fathers were unable to do so. The authors noted that work factors played a role in the level of sleep disturbance, which seems like yet another bit of evidence in favor of family or parental leave for both parents. Not unexpectedly, both mothers and fathers were tired, and both parents were a lot more sleep disturbed and fatigued during that first month with an infant than they were in the last month of pregnancy. The allure of the studies that include fathers is that much of the earlier research focused only on mothers and their level of fatigue. But a family with a newborn typically involves a parental partnership of some sort, and the role of the nonbirthing partner can be critical. And the sleep deprivation and fatigue of the nonbirthing partner go unrecognized by their birthing partner. A 2011 study of 21 new parent pairs suggests as much, and that this lack of recognition of   problems goes both ways. Mothers overestimated how well fathers slept (the study looked only at mother —  father parenting pairs) and fathers overestimated mothers’ disturbed mood. In other words, the women didn’t think the men were as sleep deprived as the men felt, and the men thought the women were moodier than the women felt. Just one more reason that a good partnership is key for surviving the stresses of parenting an infant. In fact, a 2009 review takes on the reasons for what the authors call a ”robust decline in marital satisfaction across the transition to parenthood.” The term ”robust decline” sounds rather dire, and these authors point to sleep deprivation and disruption as having a role in this fraying of the partnership following the arrival of the bundle of joy. In addition to these   effects on function and mood and potentially   effects on partnership, sleep deprivation can have more acute consequences. Again, fathers bear the brunt. A 2012 study of 241 new fathers found that even though they got less than six hours of sleep a night  —   interrupted sleep, at that  —   they still worked ”long hours.” The fathers, completing a questionnaire when their infants were 6 and 12 weeks of age, were tired, and that fatigue seemed to feed into reduced vigilance about safe behaviors in the workplace. Without the ability to compensate for lost sleep during the day, these fathers simply rode out their fatigue while working. Mothers who stay at home also need relief, and science supports them in that. A 2014   study of women in Taiwan, for example, found that women whose daily housework duties were reduced experienced better sleep quality in the postpartum period. Of course, in special cases such as a mother recovering from a cesarean section, sleep deprivation can be even worse. One study comparing women who’d had cesarean sections with those who had vaginal deliveries found that the women who’d delivered by cesarean section got less sleep (4. 5 hours a night) than those who’d had vaginal deliveries (6 hours a night). The study was tiny, with only six women who’d had a cesarean section and 15 who had had a vaginal delivery, and all of the infants spent time in ICU just after birth, but the results do suggest some extra support is needed for women who have had the major surgery that is a cesarean section. Twins are another special case, and not only because they change the    ratio from 2:1 to 1:1. Here again fathers take the bigger hit: In a 2008 study of eight parent pairs of   twins, the dads got less sleep, whether measured only for the night or for the entire day. The good news is that things got better over time. That’s the message we leave behind here. In general, things do get better when it comes to parental sleep deprivation. But don’t underestimate the dangers, especially in those early days. Studies have shown that sleepy driving can be as dangerous as or worse than drunk driving. Plus plenty of research links insufficient sleep to various health problems and to irritability, higher stress levels, and reduced patience, all of which can be dangerous for an infant if the parent is severely  . For those with a history of mental illness, sleep deprivation can cause relapses. Meanwhile, tend to your partnership, and if you have the opportunity, don’t refuse to take family or parental leave if it’s offered. And that includes you    moms who want to do it all yourself. Let Grandma, uncle, aunt, sister, nephew, neighbor help if it’s offered. Emily Willingham is a research scientist and science journalist, with a Ph. D. in biological sciences from the University of Texas at Austin, and a completed postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric urology at the University of California, San Francisco. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Scientific American, Slate, Discover and Forbes, among other outlets. Tara Haelle is a reporter and journalist who writes about health, science and   parenting. She has a master’s degree in photojournalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Her writing has appeared in NPR, Scientific American, Slate, Forbes, Politico, Healthday and Everyday Health."
"Renewable energy like solar and wind is booming across the country as the costs of production have come down. But the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t blow when we need it to. This challenge has sparked a technology race to store energy  —   one that goes beyond your typical battery. Heat Storage: Molten Salt And A Giant Solar Farm, Batteries are often used to store solar power, but it can be a costly endeavor. A company called SolarReserve may have found a solution: It built a large solar plant in the Nevada desert that can store heat from the sun and generate electricity for up to 10 hours even after sundown. You can see the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant from miles away. There’s a    tower surrounded by 10, 347 mirrors. The heliostats, as they’re technically called, are arranged in a circle that is 1. 75 miles across. They direct heat from the sun to the top of the tower, which glows  . ”This is really the first   project of this type in the world,” says SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith. He says the key to the plant’s ability to store energy is molten salt. You can’t see this special kind of salt because it’s contained in a system of pipes and insulated storage tanks. ”It actually looks like water. It’s clear  —   it flows like water,” Smith says. He says the molten salt has to remain above 450 degrees Fahrenheit to stay liquid. It’s sent up the tower to the glowing tip, where it’s heated further. When the salt comes back down, it is 1, 050 degrees. The molten salt is used to make steam to power a generator. The facility can continue to produce electricity for up to 10 hours after the sun goes down. Smith says that flexibility is very important to the local utility. ”That’s the whole concept here is that this facility would operate just like a natural gas, or a coal or nuclear facility  —   turn us on and off when they want,” he says. ”We have energy in storage so that we can generate at night.” At full capacity, he says, the $997 million plant generates enough electricity to power 75, 000 Nevada homes. There was a problem with the plant briefly last year. During a test, observers recorded a video of birds flying into heat from the mirrors and being incinerated. The plant is on federal Bureau of Land Management property, and the agency says the company fixed the problem by adjusting where mirrors are pointed at certain times. The BLM says biologists have documented fewer than five bird deaths a month since then. The group Basin and Range Watch is suing the agency to get more detailed data that biologists have collected. Executive Director Laura Cunningham says she supports solar. ”So we’re in a little bit of an unpopular position of trying to defend solar but then criticizing some solar,” she says. Cunningham says in addition to the bird issue, she believes facilities like this should be built closer to where people live and away from wild areas. Another issue with this plant is cost. The utility NV Energy is buying all the electricity from Crescent Dunes for the next 25 years at 13. 5 cents per  . That’s much more than the same power would cost from a natural gas plant. Smith says his company learned a lot from building this first project, and he says subsequent plants will be cheaper. That’ll reduce the cost of electricity, because once the plant is built, the fuel is free. The ability to store solar power will also add value to the plants. ”We really think we’ve cracked the code here with energy storage and we can take this technology and bring it worldwide,” Smith says. SolarReserve expects to begin work soon on the company’s second solar plant with heat storage that will be built in South Africa. Compressed Air: A Cheaper And   Alternative To Batteries, The challenges of renewable energy are becoming apparent in California, where the state’s ambitious goals are driving a boom in solar power. Earlier this spring, there was so much electricity on the grid that solar companies were told to turn off their production. To cope with the higher demand for power in the evening, electric utilities are being required to add energy storage to the grid, which would store the extra electricity that solar farms generate during the daytime. One startup  —   LightSail Energy  —   experimented with compressed air. ”What you’re looking at really is best described as a giant scuba tank,” says Steve Crane, pointing to a   tank in the warehouse of his company, LightSail Energy in Berkeley, Calif. A scuba tank is the inspiration for his technology, which compresses air. ”The electrical energy is hard to hold onto,” Crane says. ”Compressed air is relatively easy to store for hours or even days.” Here’s how it works: When there’s extra electricity, Crane turns on a giant air pump. It fills the tank, compressing the air by 200 times. Then, when electricity is needed, the air is released to drive an electric generator. The hard part has been dealing with all the heat this makes. ”Any air compressor that you use, even a bicycle pump, creates heat,” Crane says. ”A bicycle pump will feel warm after you’ve used it for a while.” Crane’s technology uses water to capture some of the heat, so the energy isn’t lost. The technology is still in the early stages, but he says it could have an edge over batteries because it’s likely cheaper and lasts longer. ”If you have a laptop or cellphone, you know that after two to three years, you start to see significant deterioration,” he says. Ice Energy: A Thermal Battery That Brings Down Electricity Demand, Traditionally, batteries store energy in chemical form, but a thermal ”battery” uses temperature. A   company is using the concept to build Ice Bear, a thermal energy storage unit that can both reduce energy demand and store energy during the night. An Ice Bear can save up energy in a   tank of water, for example, by turning it into ice. That energy is used later on, to cool the building next door during the hottest time of the day and into early evening. ”Essentially what we’re doing is we’re shutting air conditioners off during the day, consuming energy at night and displacing that peak load for the utility company,” says Greg Miller, executive vice president of the company, Ice Energy. Peak load refers to the time of day or year when we’re using the most electricity. In Fort Collins, Colo. that’s in the summer, between 2 and 7 p. m. The Ice Bear brings down the total amount of electricity needed during those busy peaks. In 2014, the company got its first big order from Southern California Edison for 25. 6 megawatts of storage, which is around 1, 800 Ice Bear units. The California utility won’t disclose how Ice Energy’s thermal storage stacked up to the other companies that also won storage contracts. Ice Energy also has a deal in process on the island of Nantucket, Mass. In Colorado, there is an important limitation to Ice Bear’s technology. During winter, the demand for air conditioning is low, so there is no need for the Ice Bear’s services. Miller says that during cold months, the unit just sits idle. The Ice Bear, unlike compressed air or molten salt storage, saves up energy for temperature control but can’t feed electricity back onto the grid. But when temperatures soar in the summer, the Ice Bear goes to work."
"An old country inn in the southern Swedish town of Karlshamn now shelters refugee families. Children play in the lobby, while a few adults watch news on a   TV. More than 100 volunteers from the community want to help the refugees. But the newcomers’ arrival also has brought out ugly sentiments on social media, says Magnus Arvidsson, who is coordinating the volunteers. He says some people were saying on Facebook, ”Oh my God, there [are] a lot of refugees coming to our village and we have to lock our bikes. And hide our stuff. We can’t let our children out.” For decades, Sweden has served as a haven for those fleeing war and persecution the world over. But the country’s traditionally liberal acceptance of refugees is now being questioned. Some 160, 000 asylum seekers arrived in the country last year alone, stretching its resources. Sweden’s idealistic culture is starting to show cracks. A nationalist,   party, the Sweden Democrats, is steadily gaining support. The party was long seen as marginal, but today it holds 14 percent of seats in the national legislature. The party claims migrants are taking social benefits in a social welfare system that Swedes have worked hard to build. The party says there is not enough to go around. And it says migrants don’t make an effort to integrate. Kent Ekeroth holds one of the Sweden Democrats’ seats in the parliament. He says Sweden’s political elites have forced too much immigration onto the Swedish people. ”They’ve been in cahoots, so to speak, for decades, trying to increase immigration, trying to argue for immigration, trying to diminish the negative effects of immigration and always paint it in a nice, rosy glow,” he says. ”All of them  —   the Social Democrats, the moderates, the Christian Democrats, the Green Party.” All those parties are refusing to work with the Sweden Democrats. But Ekeroth says some of Sweden’s more conservative parties are starting to change their attitudes toward immigration, for example by favoring limits on benefits to migrants. He claims his party actually has a lot more support than polls show, because Swedes are reluctant to publicly admit their support for the Sweden Democrats. There’s a phenomenon in Swedish culture called åsiktskorridor, literally ”opinion corridor,” which people describe as a system of   that limits what is and is not acceptable to say. ”I think there’s a fear of appearing intolerant in Sweden and that’s part of the political culture, whether it’s for good or for bad,” says Joakim Palme, a professor at Uppsala University. Students Anna Svensson and Suri Lundgren say they and their friends welcome the refugees and are glad that Sweden is able to help them. But they admit it is difficult for people who don’t agree with them to speak out. ”We don’t like to get into arguments and stuff,” says Svensson, ”and I think people are afraid of being seen as racist.” Ivar Arpi, an editorial writer for the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, says he’s never seen his country so polarized. Swedes are worried their leaders don’t have a plan to deal with the effects of mass immigration, he says. ”The ground is shaking, I would say. What’s happening now is that we are challenged in the core of our identity,” he says. ”There [are] two Swedens right now. There’s the human rights, open borders, internationalist Sweden  —   the one that’s held power for so long. And then there’s the more constrained version of Sweden, like [favoring] welfare state for citizens first and foremost, and our resources are limited.” Arpi warns that after this experience with mass immigration, Swedish culture will change  —   and the country will not be so welcoming in the future."
"His career spanned the famous Bakersfield sound, the outlaw era, and 38 No. 1 hits on the country music charts. Now comes word that Merle Haggard has died Wednesday  —   his 79th birthday. Haggard gave voice to people living   lives, and it was a voice he came by honestly. Born in 1937 in Oildale, Calif. just outside Bakersfield, he grew up living in a converted boxcar and spent his early years bouncing between jails and oil fields, and playing music in bars. Here are five things to remember about the man who was often called the poet of the common man: ”Incorrigible”: This is the word people say Haggard’s mother used when she dropped her son off at a juvenile detention center  —   when he was 11 years old. By that time, he had already started hopping onto freight trains. And as recently as 2010, Haggard used the word to describe himself, saying in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air: ”I was probably the most incorrigible child you could ever meet. I was already on the way to prison before I realized it, actually. I was really kind of a  .” Cash And Lefty: It’s often noted that when Johnny Cash performed ”Folsom Prison Blues” at San Quentin Prison in 1958, Haggard was in the audience, as an inmate  —   and that the experience prodded him along in his own career. But to Haggard, a bigger idol was Lefty Frizzell, whose craftsmanship left a huge impression on Haggard at least as early as his teenage years. Haggard is quoted writing in the forward of Frizzell’s biography, ”The impact Lefty had on country music is not even measurable. . .. No one could handle a song like Lefty. He would hold on to each word until he finally decided to drop it and pick up the next one. Most of us learned to sing listening to him.” The Outlaw: For much of his career, Haggard operated outside of the Nashville system that generated smooth  —   some would say    —   country music. Instead, he used a rougher   sound as the backdrop for songs that turned the problems of ordinary people into works of art. His musical talent is credited with saving Haggard from a life of   with the law, and it certainly helped him clear his record: in 1972, California’s  . Ronald Reagan, granted him a full pardon for his previous crimes. The Songs: Haggard became known as a supremely talented songwriter, and his songs such as ”Mama Tried,” ”Okie From Muskogee,” ”Today I Started Loving You Again” and ”Sing Me Back Home” have been covered by other artists countless times. His music also easily translated into rock  —   ”Honky Tonk Night Time Man” was famously recorded by Lynyrd Skynyrd, for instance. And ”Mama Tried” was recorded by both the Grateful Dead and the Everly Brothers. Legacy: Haggard never stopped making music, and although he often complained about life on the road, he was doing his best to tour in recent months, as he fought off serious health problems (including, in December, pneumonia). Even back in 2009, Haggard’s longevity was already being noticed by Will Oldham, an acclaimed songwriter who has called Haggard one of his idols. ”He’s writing and singing better than he ever has,” Oldham told The New Yorker. ”And it’s just like, well, there’s no excuse, then. You can’t just say that it goes away, or that the music industry kills it, or whatever.” After hearing of his death, Dolly Parton said of Haggard today, ”We’ve lost one of the greatest writers and singers of all time. His heart was as tender as his love ballads. I loved him like a brother. Rest easy, Merle.”"
"Merle Haggard was known by his fans as ”Hag.” With songs that reflected the   values and experiences of his own early life, Haggard found an audience in folks that saw the same. The country musician died Wednesday morning in California. It was his 79th birthday. Haggard’s music was drawn from a life that started in 1937 in a converted train boxcar, the family home in Bakersfield, Calif. Haggard’s mother and father were part of the mass migration of people from Oklahoma who went to California looking for a better life during the Great Depression. But his father died when Haggard was just 9 years old. In a 1995 interview with Fresh Air, he described how that led to an early life of troublemaking. ”I was, to say the least, probably the most incorrigible child you can think of,” Haggard said. ”I was on my way to prison before I realized it. But I really don’t know why  —   I think it was out of boredom and the lack of a father’s attention, I think.” A robbery landed him in San Quentin prison shortly after he turned 20, and he spent his 21st birthday in solitary confinement. ”I wound up with nothing to lay on except a Bible and concrete slab,” Haggard said. ”I don’t know  —   it was something about the whole situation that I knew that if I was lucky enough to get out I would be all finished.” Once he was paroled, Haggard turned to songwriting. His mother had shown him a few basic guitar chords and he taught himself the rest, falling under the spell of songwriters like Jimmie Reed, Bob Wills and Hank Williams. His hardscrabble beginnings, a fierce independence and his time behind bars all came pouring out in ”Sing Me Back Home,” a 1967 song based on his time in solitary confinement where he could hear the voice of a man condemned to die. ”When Haggard sings, it’s not as if he’s performing. When he sings, it’s as if he’s confiding,” author Tom Carter, who spent two years with the singer while they worked on the 2002 biography Merle Haggard’s My House of Memories: For The Record, said in an interview recorded before the singer died. Carter says the singer was driven by telling stories set to music. ”He never stops polishing his craft because he loves his craft,” Carter said. That craft became part of what was called ”The Bakersfield Sound.” During a time when Nashville was all about polished vocals over lush orchestrated arrangements, Bakersfield musician Buck Owens led a subgenre of country music fueled by a raw   energy with a little bit of Western swing and performed on electric rock ’n’ roll instruments. Haggard’s string of chart successes became part of the sound named after his home town. Starting in 1966, Haggard scored 37 top 10 country hits in a row, 23 of them reaching No. 1. But his success didn’t guarantee an easy life: His marriages failed and he was largely an absentee father mostly because of the countless miles crisscrossing the country on a bus playing   and county fairs. The lifestyle and the drinking would haunt him in his later years. He was labeled an intolerant reactionary for his 1969 song ”Okie From Muskogee,” in which he dresses down the counterculture, something he said was actually satire. At the end of his life, Haggard continually found warm receptions from his fans on the road his later albums expanded his audience beyond   country music fans and fellow musicians, often taking on a philosophical tone. Haggard wrote the foreword to his biography, an early summation of the ingredients of his life and his music. He read it himself for the audio book version: ”I’ve lived through 17 stays in penal institutions. Incarceration in a penitentiary. Five marriages, bankruptcy, a broken back, brawls, shooting incidents, swindlings, sickness, the death of loved ones and more. I’ve heard tens of thousands chant my name when I couldn’t hear the voice of my own soul. I wondered if God was listening and I was sure no one else was.” With Haggard’s death, perhaps he will finally learn that God was indeed listening and was actually a fan."
"After he won a National Book Award, and one of the MacArthur Foundation’s   genius grants, no one anticipated   Coates’ next move. ”What’s the good of getting a MacArthur genius grant if you can’t go and write a comic book for Marvel?” Coates tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. ”I don’t know. There are things that people consider to be genius, and then there are things that deep in my heart I’ve always believed to be genius.” That’s right  —   a comic book. Marvel’s Black Panther follows an African king named T’Challa with superhuman strength and intellect, who presides over the fictional nation of Wakanda. The first issue is out Wednesday with illustrations by artist Brian Stelfreeze. ”When I was a young person, my introduction frankly into the world of literature and the beauty of words and the beauty of language, occurred through three things,” Coates says. ”It occurred through the magic of   it occurred through the magic of Dungeons and Dragons, and it occurred through the magic of Marvel comic books, so I feel back at home.” Black Panther was launched in 1966, just a few months before the Black Panther political party came on the scene. But over the years, T’Challa has pretty much played second fiddle to the likes of Daredevil and Captain America. And his storylines often revolve around divided loyalties. On the guidance Coates received from Marvel editors, Very little actually. I think comic book writing in this sense is like all writing you have to do it to learn it. And so, while I’m very proud of the first issue, I think it’s actually the worst issue. And actually I was reading the first issue the other day, and the script actually gets stronger the further into the issue you get. And they sent me scripts from other people, but mostly this was about me reading, rereading with a critical eye this time, a ton of comic books and figuring out why things worked, when they worked, where they worked and that sort of thing and just really trying to do it myself. On the depiction of women’s bodies in comics, In the world of online news there is a great degree of really, really good feminist critique of comic books right now, so I cannot tell you that I arrived at this naturally. It was reading the criticism, and in fact, the sort of things you’re talking about, that overwrought depiction of female bodies. I read that stuff in the ’80s and ’90s, just took it for granted and kept going. It wasn’t what I looked for in comic books, but it would not have immediately occurred to me as a problem. And then I can remember I bought a comic book once, and I showed it to my wife and my wife instantly went to one of the heroes’ bodies and said, ”Why does she look like that?” What purpose would that physical body serve if that person is supposed to be fighting? Does that actually aid in combat? What’s actually going on here? And so again, I definitely talked to my editors, definitely talked to Brian [Stelfreeze] about this, and it wasn’t like I had to lecture them. This is an issue that’s alive in the comic book world some people pay attention to it, some people don’t. But it was very, very important to me that we escape like a depiction of women as how our desires, our lusts, construct the bodies of women as opposed to how women in the actual roles we are describing actually might look. And so, there’s a very, very big difference if you look at, say, the typical body of a woman who’s an athlete, and the kind of body I think that . .. you saw in comic books in the ’90s and even today. On how Black Panther’s back story differs from other superheroes, The first time you see him, he’s tricked the Fantastic Four and he defeats the Fantastic Four, and he’s this genius, this athlete with these heightened senses and these heightened physical abilities, and he’s depicted there in all his glory. And I think what happened after that [is] there were various high points in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, but a lot of low points when folks didn’t quite know how to actually use him. And then there was a run in the late ’90s and early 2000s by a writer of the name Christopher Priest, who was probably the first writer in our modern times to really, really take Black Panther seriously and try to put him on a level with other superheroes. Where he wasn’t just a wallflower, he wasn’t just sitting in the back as kind of decoration, but actually a protagonist in his own book and that was revolutionary. But I don’t think people should lose sight of what it meant to create an African, a black superhero in the 1960s. It happens within the midst of the civil rights movement, but I think if you search pop culture at that particular time for somebody like the Black Panther, you would come up really short. If you compare it to other areas of other pop culture, Marvel was probably pretty much ahead. On the basic plot of Black Panther’s story, Well, I was talking earlier and saying you have to find your way to get into the character. You have to find something to get a handle on the character, and so I spent a great deal of time researching the character trying to figure out what that was, and what occurred to me was the distinct possibility that a) maybe T’Challa does not like being a king and b) maybe Wakandans have come to believe they don’t need a king. And two things brought me to that understanding. Taking it from the perspective of the latter . .. Wakanda has this mythology of having never been conquered. But in fact, there have been several comic books where in one case it does get conquered and really in other cases it really just suffers a terrible fate. It’s no longer this invincible place anymore. So if a monarch can no longer ensure the security of its people, what good is he then? Why would the people not then decide to take their safety and security and the fate of their nation into their own hands? The second part of it is that T’Challa  —   T’Challa’s a real name of the Black Panther  —   T’Challa’s one part a king, one part a superhero, he was always in the comic books leaving his kingdom to go do something else. His sister would run it for some time, or his sister wouldn’t run it at all, and he’d be gone. He’d be off with the Avengers in New York doing something. All these were instances when he leaves at one point he’s a schoolteacher in Harlem, working in Hell’s Kitchen at another point. Just for fun. Just for kicks. Let me see what the world is about. This is a very bizarre way for somebody who presumably likes ruling a nation to behave, and certainly not the typical behavior for a king. So what’s going on there? Does this guy actually enjoy what he’s been charged with or is his heart really somewhere else? And these are the questions I really wanted to ask in the comics. That is the undergirding conflict, I think. On the lack of action in the beginning of the story, I don’t know, man. To be honest, that is the one thing I’m worried about with the run  —   I’m worried about keeping people’s attention. I feel like if there’s one weakness in this series, it’s that the fighting is there because it has to be there. It probably is not the thing that interests me the most. And so I wonder about that. I did the best I could with that. Fighting, I guess, was never the real reason I read comic books as a kid. The fighting was an important part, an integral part of it, I don’t know I would’ve read it without it. And there’s more of that later, like even in the next issue there’s more of him tossing people around because it has to be there, but it probably is not the thing that moved my soul. On how Black Panther connects to Coates’ writing on being black in America, I think, this is going to get very, very personal. It’s a little different than that. I think over the past year I have enjoyed, to be frank with you, an amount of success I did not expect, I never expected to happen. When that happens, people place you in certain positions you did not even necessarily ask for, and I found myself writing about that in the comic book. Typically there’s this perspective among writers and black writers, there’s this idea that there is one person  —   and maybe beyond writers  —   among blacks, there is always one person who everyone should go to learn about all things black. And I have, again, with the MacArthur stuff, with the sales of Between the World and Me, I guess I feel as though people have tried to turn me into that person. And I really have done all I could to resist it, but even as I resist it, you can’t, it’s almost like you lose control over it. You don’t actually have control of the position people want you to be in. If they say ”You king of the blacks,” you’re king of the blacks  —   whether you like it or not. You understand what I’m saying? Even if you in your heart never accept it and you can say it over and over and over again, people have a perception of you nonetheless. But to bring that back to T’Challa, that was how I got to the character being in a position where he felt committed to do certain things, but in his heart was really not there. It just really wasn’t who he was  —   he was someone else. And it’s like where we began this conversation. In my heart, I’m a comic book writer, I am, and I don’t necessarily see that in conflict in the kind of essay writing I do with The Atlantic, but when people hear that they’re like, what? On whether T’Challa is a reluctant leader, I don’t know that I fully know. I guess I could mention what I suspect: I suspect he really enjoys being a superhero. I think he does. I think he really enjoys the excitement of it. I think he enjoys the challenge of it. Being a king, there’s a lot of ceremony and bureaucracy. I don’t know that those are the sorts of things that interest a dude who is supposed to be one of the 10 smartest people on the planet Earth. Like when you talk about an actual genius who was in peak, a superhuman physical condition. This does not seem like the kind of person who would want to sit around in a meeting of ministers  —   that just doesn’t seem like who he is. I think he enjoys dealing with the galactic threats that face planet Earth, and I think that’s who he is. And I’m hesitating on that because what actually happens is  —   and this is what happens in a work of fiction  —   you discover who the character is, you write, and an act of writing is an act of discovery. Before I started writing I was rereading what other people had done, but at this point I’m going back and rereading my scripts and saying, ”What is in the text that I’m not seeing? What is becoming clear that I’m not seeing?” And so you discover who the person is as you write more about the person. They become realer to you they become more thick. So you know, maybe I’ll circle back at the end of the day, and I’ll realize that he really, really enjoys being king. I’m figuring it out. On the importance of diversity in comics, Because comic book heroes are like our mythology, they’re our Greek gods. And it’s in our pantheon that the only people with power, the only people with weight in our pantheon are straight, white dudes  —   that says something about how we imagine ourselves. Yes, it makes perfect sense. Because  —   let me just speak from a storytelling perspective: I think diversity is a storytelling imperative. If you’re not at least grappling with diversity, then you’re not depicting the world. And while the world of comic books is not literally the true world, why would there not be gay superheroes? Why not? I feel like the people who don’t do it actually are the ones that have to defend the argument. You know? Why does that not exist? Why would there not be black superheroes? Why would there not be   superheroes? If this is our mythology, why would our mythology only be straight, white males? What is actually going on there? And people get all bent out of shape about this, like, ”Oh, they made Thor a woman or Captain America’s black.” So what? Anybody that reads comic books knows that different people take up different mantles all the time  —   that actually is not new by the way. A lot of people say this is a new thing  —   no, no, no, no. That happens all the time. There are different versions of characters, and there have been throughout history. When I picked up Iron Man and West Coast Avengers when I was a kid, Iron Man was black  —   it was Rhodey, it was James Willis  —   that’s who Iron Man was. I hadn’t read previous iterations. I wasn’t around for that. I don’t really, and I guess maybe Marvel got a ton of letters, I don’t know. But this change of somebody else picking up the mantle is not a new thing. And so I actually don’t think there’s a really grounded conservative argument, and by which I mean one argument grounded in tradition because the tradition of comic books is to change who wears the mantle all the time. It happens less with major superheroes, I’ll grant that, but I don’t actually see what’s wrong. What’s important is that people write great stories, and that’s ultimately what’s important. It does no good to make   black or Thor a woman if the comic books are gonna suck. That does no good at all. But I do think it really, really is important. Diversity is important not for soft,   reasons  —   not to reassure people. I think a) you have an imperative to really interrogate what our imagination actually is and b) you have an imperative to depict the world as it is with some fealty and some loyalty. On what he wants kids to get out of Black Panther, When I was a kid,   was a star.   was right under Malcolm X for me in terms of heroes. I would like Black Panther to be some kid’s  ."
"Two     laws were passed this week, on opposite sides of the U. S. In New York, the state became the fourth in the country to offer some form of paid parental leave to residents. When fully implemented, the state’s program will compensate parents for up to 12 weeks of leave  —   twice what’s currently covered in the most generous states. And in San Francisco, city supervisors voted to require employers to give workers six weeks of paid parental leave  —   not just partially paid, but fully paid. It’s the first U. S. city to pass such a measure. The U. S. is the only developed country in the world that doesn’t mandate paid family leave. (It’s also the only   country that doesn’t mandate paid sick leave and is far behind comparable economies in terms of vacation days.) ”U. S. labor laws date to the 1930s, a time when most families had a    mother,” NPR’s Jennifer Ludden noted in 2014. ”The only federally mandated leave covers just half of the workforce, and many people tell pollsters they can’t afford to use it because it’s unpaid.” That’s the Family and Medical Leave Act, which was established in 1993 and allows employees to take up to 12 weeks per year of unpaid leave to care for a new baby or a sick family member. But it doesn’t cover many   workers and excludes anyone working at a company with fewer than 50 employees. And while it allows new parents to keep their health insurance and have a job to return to, it doesn’t help pay the rent or the mortgage. Some states have expanded FMLA for their residents, either making it last longer or making it available for more people. Until New York passed its new legislation this week, only three states offered any paid family leave: California, New Jersey and Rhode Island. California covers 55 percent of an employee’s wages for up to six weeks New Jersey, up to about 67 percent for six weeks Rhode Island covers a portion of wages for up to four weeks, based on the employee’s income. Each state’s program is funded through an employee payroll deduction, and payouts are capped. Washington state passed a    law, but it was put on hold and has never gone into effect. (The chart below includes only currently active policies.) On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a   policy into law as part of a state budget deal (which also mandated a statewide minimum wage of $15 an hour). The leave policy will begin to be implemented in 2018, covering 50 percent of a worker’s average wages for up to eight weeks  —   already the longest period of time covered by a state leave policy. And when fully implemented, the policy will cover 67 percent of a worker’s average wages for up to 12 weeks, fully twice as long as any of the current state policies. A statement from Cuomo’s office described the   plan as ”a major accomplishment in the Governor’s efforts to restore economic justice and fairness to working families.” Like the other states that have implemented paid leave, New York will impose a cap on the money paid out to workers each week, and the leave payments will be funded by an employee payroll deduction. But some business leaders have objected that even if businesses aren’t paying for the leave directly, the new law will pose a compliance challenge. Or they are concerned it will ”add to perception that the Empire State is hostile to business,” as Heather Briccetti of the Business Council put it, according to a report by Syracuse. com. San Francisco’s new measure, approved by the city’s board of supervisors Tuesday and expected to receive Mayor Ed Lee’s signature, affects businesses with more than 20 employees and will go into effect in 2017. The measure works hand in hand with California’s existing   policy  —   which, as noted above, covers 55 percent of a new parent’s income during his or her leave. The new San Francisco measure will require businesses to pay the remaining 45 percent. ”The United States has fallen so far behind the rest of the world in providing paid parental leave,” city Supervisor Scott Wiener said in a statement. ”We shouldn’t force mothers and fathers to choose between taking care of their child and putting food on the table.” The Small Business Commission of San Francisco voted   to express its opposition to the new rules, saying it would put businesses at a competitive disadvantage compared with businesses in neighboring counties and threaten their profit margins. ”Ultimately this type of legislation, ironically, harms the employees of the small businesses,” florist and   commissioner Kathleen Dooley said in that meeting. ”Because faced with more and more financial hits, the   employers who are generally pretty supportive of their employees are going to be pushed against the wall, and the fallout will be that they will hire less employees.” The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce notes that small businesses will have additional time to come into compliance with the law. The Associated Press notes that San Francisco has been spearheading employee protection laws for years now: ”For example, San Francisco approved a $15 hourly minimum wage for workers in 2014, a mandate that California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Monday for the entire state. ”In 2007, San Francisco officials required businesses to set aside money to be used toward employee health care, long before the federal government approved the Affordable Care Act. ”And in 2006, San Francisco voters approved paid sick leave, the first in the country to require the benefit.”"
"Lance Mercier knows his job gets harder when a   goes out on leave. But he recently also learned that raising a newborn involves, as he puts it, an ”insurmountable” amount of work. The    bank manager from Silver Spring, Md. is currently on leave from work taking care of his newborn son with his wife, Luz. ”As a manager who has had a lot of people go out on leave of absence, it absolutely sucks when they go out on leave,” he said. ”This puts everything back into perspective for me.” In fact, he will likely end up taking more time off from work than his wife will. Lance’s job provides full pay for three months. Luz, meanwhile, gets eight weeks off at 60 percent pay. She can take extra eight weeks of unpaid leave if she wants. Lance has a new appreciation for family leave, and he’s not the only one. For the first time, paid leave has a prominent place in a presidential election. In this week’s Democratic presidential debate, for example, Hillary Clinton took a swipe at California Republican Carly Fiorina’s opposition to paid family leave. ”California has had a   program for a number of years,” Clinton said, adding, ”and it has not had the ill effects that the Republicans are always saying it will have. We can design a system and pay for it that does not put the burden on small business.” NPR has tackled the question of why the U. S. stands virtually alone in not mandating paid family leave, but here’s another perplexing one  —   why now? New parents have needed leave for, well, for as long as there have been working parents. And it’s true that workers did get unpaid leave in the 1990s. But what happened in the last few years to nudge paid family leave onto the national political stage? Here is a list of factors that brought the policy into the spotlight: 1. Moms are working (and earning) more, No, paid leave isn’t purely a women’s issue, but it is true that with more moms working (not to mention the rise of single parenting, usually by moms) families need someone to mind the kids.   of children live in homes where all parents work, as the White House reported last year, up from 40 percent in 1970. Women are also   more likely to take leave from work than men are, according to the Labor Department, and the gap is greater for women taking time off to care for family members. Indeed, moms are far more often the caregivers to sick children than dads are. Moreover, it’s an issue that spans all sorts of divides  —   race, education and class, for example. The conversation surrounding women and work may have been loud among the   set (think Sheryl Sandberg and   Slaughter) but the women with the least access to paid leave of any kind are, in fact, the   and   women. Finally, women are increasingly   than men  —   we just learned recently that for the first time, more American women have bachelor’s degrees than men. As women’s economic potential catches up to men’s, it makes sense that they’d also push for a policy that allows them to hold onto that power. 2. Women vote, Not only do women use paid leave they also turn out to vote in greater numbers than men  —   a gap that has only widened over the years, according to data compiled by Rutgers University. It’s only a    gap, but it has grown considerably, and in presidential elections, small shifts in voter participation can make a huge difference. Once again, paid leave isn’t purely a women’s issue (see No. 3 below for proof) but it is still something women take more advantage of than men, thanks to both access and cultural values. Women are twice as likely as men to get paid leave, according to one Labor Department study. And to the extent that that drives their votes, it could drive women to candidates that support paid leave policies. 3. Men, Quite simply, it appears that men have been changing how they feel about   issues. Men are increasingly minding the kids  —   the number of    dads is on the rise, as is the amount of time men are spending with the kids. One 2014 study showed that Millennial men are less traditional in their views than their older counterparts (and those older men’s views have also shifted substantially) overwhelmingly rejecting the notion that it’s the woman’s job to stay home with the kids, while the man goes to work. ”As the conversation becomes less gendered, the number of people interested in this issue increases,” said Linda Houser, a professor at Widener University, who has studied the economic effect of paid leave. And she adds it’s not just about having kids. ”It’s also becoming   neutral, as well. The   support needs of aging adults are also becoming more prominent.” You could look at this cynically  —   more men wanted paid leave, so we started talking about it. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Men are, after all, still overwhelmingly the ones running the country. But when you consider how many men are now supporting their families alongside wives with equal (or higher) earning potential  —   and working alongside an increasingly   female workforce  —   it makes sense that men would start wanting to help women stay on an upward career (and earnings) trajectory. 4. The president talked about it. A lot, Think back to 2008, when paid leave just wasn’t a big issue on the presidential campaign trail. Fast forward to today  —   President Obama hosts summits on working families, brought paid family leave into the State of the Union for the first time and mandated it for federal workers. And when the leader of the country drags an issue into the spotlight, that makes it fair game. ”Support from Obama is important in this most recent wave,” said Ruth Milkman, professor of sociology at The Graduate Center at City University of New York. ”He’s not in a position to do anything at the federal level, but I think using the bully pulpit of the presidency has helped.” But then, what nudged Obama to finally make this a policy priority? His   ”bucket list” might be one answer. You could also argue it was people like Sandberg and Slaughter and other activists for paid leave expanding the conversation around   balance. Or the three states (New Jersey, California, and Rhode Island) that have   programs. (Washington has also passed a paid leave law but its implementation has been delayed.) To be clear, President Obama wasn’t  —   by a long shot  —   the first politician to push paid family leave. But raising its profile almost certainly made more room for other politicians to talk about it as well. 5. People like it (conditionally) Of course, it doesn’t hurt that   policies like paid leave are popular. A recent poll from   group Make it Work found that 81 percent of likely 2016 voters thought policies like paid sick and family leave are a good idea. But then there’s a catch: people like paid leave, but it’s not at the very top of their priority lists. ”I think when you talk about some of these policies that we think can really provide some relief for working families . .. generally, people think about these policies, and they make sense,” as Democratic strategist Karen Hicks told NPR’s Tamara Keith last week. ”But I think people tend to have a narrow view of it. And so if everything’s going OK for them right now, this is not a     kind of priority.” And that brings us back to Lance Mercier. Paid leave just wasn’t something he thought much about  —   until he had a kid to take care of. ”My mindset was different,” he said of when he was in his 20s. ”It was all about work, work, work, work,” he said. ”But now, as soon as that baby comes out, your life changes. I know you’ve heard that time and time again, but everything changes.”"
"Residents of Flint, Mich. may tell you lead is a serious menace, but for most of the last 5, 000 years, people saw lead as a miracle metal at the forefront of technology. ”You can think about lead as kind of the plastic of the ancient world,” says Joseph Heppert, a professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas. He says it was because lead is easy to melt  —   a campfire alone can do it. Unlike iron, lead is malleable. ”Once you form it into sheets you can do things that people had really never been able to do before with a metal,” he says. ”You can roll it into tubes, for example.” It started with the Romans, who plumbed their famous baths with lead water pipes and lined aqueducts with lead. They called lead plumbum, which was where the word ”plumbing” came from. Romans added lead into things ranging from makeup and contraception to cookware. Chris Warren, a professor of history at Brooklyn College, says Romans even sweetened their  food with lead. ”Sugar of lead, as they call it, was used as a direct additive, but also used in winemaking to control fermentation,” Warren says. After the fall of Rome, alchemists and inventors found new uses for lead, like printing. Johannes Gutenberg used movable lead type in his revolutionary machine. Three hundred years later, Benjamin Franklin was still using it to warn about   liquor. By the Industrial Revolution, lead was a   killer. But it was just so handy. The lead industry liked to call lead ”the useful metal.” It was adaptable to just about any commercial purpose, including   lead plumbing, lead alloys and beautiful leaded glass. Heppert says it also did wonders for gasoline. ”Tetraethyl lead was kind of a miracle substance,” Heppert says. Then, there was lead paint. Americans came to grips with its toxicity to children in the late 1960s. Regulators in the United States banned the use of leaded house paint in 1978 and phased out leaded gas by the  ’90s. Lead Still As Popular As Ever, But America  —   or the world  —   is not using any less lead. In fact, lead holds the power that starts just about every car, bus, motorbike and boat. ”About 90 percent of lead is today is used in lead batteries about   of that is actually used in vehicles,” says Andy Bush, managing director of the International Lead Association in London. He says lead batteries also provide power to hospitals, cell towers and railroad crossing gates. Bush says that in the United States, 99 percent of lead batteries are recycled. Lead is treated much more carefully these days compared with in the past. In the United States, lead is sequestered, a process strictly enforced in places like EnerSys, a lead battery plant in Warrensburg, Mo. Inside the plant, the smell is bracing and acidic. A few of the workers wear respirators. In one section, yellow robots bend and twist, building batteries with freaky speed and precision. ”It’s a technological ballet. Through this level of automation, we’re providing a cleaner environment for our operators and again, providing a safer environment,” says Steven Jones, plant manager at EnerSys. EnerSys safety specialist Adam Bressler says the risk of acute lead poisoning here is under control. ”What keeps me awake? Nothin’. We have such good protocols in place there’s not very much that I have to worry about at night,” Bressler says. American blood lead levels have plummeted more than 90 percent in recent decades. In the late ’70s, almost 9 out of 10 American children were walking around with high lead levels. By 2008, it was closer to 1 in 100. While lead still poses an insidious threat  —   especially to water supplies  —   its current uses are less likely to hurt people."
"Every day at 2 p. m. Antonio Davila rolls the metal shutters down over the front of his computer repair shop in central Madrid. He heads home for lunch, picks up his kids at school  —   and then goes back to work from 5 to 9 p. m. He’s originally from Peru, and says Spanish hours took some getting used to. ”The sun sets later here, and that affects people’s habits,” Davila says. ”I open my shop around 10:30 a. m. close in the afternoon, and then stay open later at night.” His schedule is typical for most small retailers in Spain, where the sun does set later  —   ever since the military dictator Francisco Franco moved the clocks ahead one hour, to put the country on Central European Time, during World War II, in solidarity with Nazi Germany. And the midafternoon break made sense when Spain was mostly agricultural, and it was too hot to work outdoors. But last weekend, acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said it’s time for a change. ”I will find a consensus to make sure the working day ends at 6 p. m.,” Rajoy told a party conference Saturday in Seville. He proposed scrapping the midafternoon break and changing Spain’s time zone back to match that of Britain, Portugal and Morocco, countries on roughly the same longitude. Rajoy’s speech barely made news inside Spain. Spanish lawmakers have debated the idea before. In 2013, a parliamentary committee approved a proposal to change Spanish clocks back one hour. But the full legislature never agreed. Spaniards Annoyed At Foreign Coverage, Foreign media, however, have made much of Rajoy’s speech. U. S. and British headlines say ”Adios, Siesta!” or ”Time to Wake Up!”  —   alongside stock photos of fat men snoozing, or even bullfighters sleeping on benches. ”A big fat lazy slob sleeping a siesta! It’s an offensive image  —   but it’s an image people outside of Spain have of Spain,” says Matthew Bennett, editor of the website The Spain Report. ”It’s a stereotype of Spain, along with bulls and flamenco and tortilla and sangria  —   like the English and rain and umbrellas and bowler hats. There’s no way of getting rid of these historical stereotypes  —   but they do grate with Spaniards, because they work very hard.” Spaniards typically work longer hours, and sleep less, on average, than other Europeans. While Rajoy’s initial speech grabbed few headlines at home, the foreign media’s subsequent coverage of it did. ”British headlines say Rajoy wants to scrap   naps,” wrote Spain’s conservative ABC daily. ”The international press quips: Rajoy wants to scrap the siesta,” was the headline on El País, Spain’s leading newspaper.  Bennett says he’s been fielding calls all week from foreign journalists asking him to explain the importance of the siesta to Spaniards. But he says most Spaniards simply don’t take one. They run errands, have lunch or work straight through their midafternoon break, but are still expected to work late, too, and thus don’t get home until 8 or 9 p. m. ”Everybody kind of idealizes European working hours, and [they] say, ’My goodness, if we finished at 5 or 6 [o’clock] we could have like three hours off every evening to do other stuff that’s not work,’” he says. Stuff like fighting bulls, dancing flamenco or drinking sangria on the beach  —   or so the stereotype goes. Working Long Hours, ”I guess there is like an element of truth in all of this. Yes, there is flamenco in Spain. Yes, we used to have siestas, maybe more in rural areas to escape the heat,” says Yolanda Martín, a Spanish dance expert who gives   tours of Madrid and runs a website dedicated to the art form. ”But no longer, really. Most people I know never take siestas  —   or maybe only on a Saturday.” At 32, Martín is part of a Spanish generation that’s survived economic crisis, and is now working long hours  —   if its members have jobs at all  —   for less pay than in most other western European countries. But she says the stereotype of Spain  —     or concerned more with fiestas than work  —   is something Spaniards themselves created, once upon a time. ”In the 1950s and ’60s, when the Franco regime was trying to attract tourists to Spain, they kind of sold this idea. ’You want sun, you want beach? Come to Spain, you’re going to get all of that.’ We did kind of exploit that, and maybe it’s brought money, and it’s been good,” Martín says. ”But at the same time, it can harm us. We’re not portrayed as a serious country. You know, we’re like lazy.” Polls show most Spaniards would prefer to work a    schedule. But Rajoy, the acting prime minister, might not be the one to make the change. His conservatives lost their majority in elections late last year, and rival parties are negotiating a possible coalition government, to oust him. Rajoy could leave office this summer."
"Scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole that may be the biggest ever spotted  —   and its location in a   group of galaxies suggests that cosmic monsters like this one might be more common than astronomers previously thought. The newly discovered black hole is about 17 billion times more massive than our sun. Another black hole is currently listed in the Guinness World Records as the heaviest, because it may be as much as 21 billion solar masses. But the measurement of that black hole was not very precise and it might actually be less massive than the new one, which is described in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. ”It has highest confidence of anything I’ve seen of being the largest black hole,” says Karl Gebhardt, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas, Austin and expert on black holes. He was not involved in the study. Astronomers know only of a few black holes that have reached this   size.   black holes that form at the end of a star’s life are much, much smaller. The recent observation of gravitational waves, for example, detected ripples from the merger of two black holes that were each roughly 30 times the mass of the sun. And then there are the   supermassive black holes that can be found at the center of galaxies, like the one in our own Milky Way. ”I hate to call that one puny, but it has only 4 million solar masses, and we found one that is 17 billion solar masses,” says   Ma, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley who led the research in the Nature study. What strikes her is that this beast lives in what she called ”a cosmic backwater,” an   group of galaxies. The only other known black holes that are about this size were found in dense clusters of very large galaxies. ”It’s sort of like, you would expect to find skyscrapers at the center of Manhattan, but this one is more like finding a very, very tall building somewhere in a small town in the U. S. where you would not expect to see something so big,” Ma says. ”It gives the possibility that these monster black holes are much more common than previously thought.” What’s more, the center of this black hole’s galaxy is strangely empty, says team member Jens Thomas, a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. Thomas says it looks like an astonishing number of stars were ejected as two galaxies merged and their central black holes came together. ”Because the black hole is so large, and the progenitor black holes also were so large, the amount of stars that have been ejected from the center is as much as the Milky Way disc,” Thomas says. ”And I think this is pretty fascinating.” That scoured core of the galaxy also struck Gebhardt. ”It’s kind of like it’s evacuating the center part of the galaxy,” he says. ”This is probably the most extreme example of that configuration.” And astronomers like to study the most extreme examples, Gebhardt notes, because those are the best tests of whether their theories actually can explain how to make a galaxy. ”And that’s how you understand effectively where we come from  —   where the sun comes from, where the Earth comes from,” Gebhardt points out. ”What we’re beginning to piece together is a model of the merger history of black holes throughout the universe.”"
"Brazil has been in the news a lot these days, but not for happy reasons. As it prepares to host the Olympics this August, the economy is tanking, the president is heading toward impeachment and the country has become ground zero for the Zika virus. All this is enough to make one recall Charles de Gaulle’s famously dismissive remark, ”Brazil is not a serious country.” He was, of course, wrong. Brazil is one of the world’s greatest and most exciting cultures, one in which the drama of modernity plays out every single day. This drama is masterfully caught by Neon Bull, a remarkable feature by Gabriel Mascaro that’s set amid Brazil’s version of rodeo, the vaquejada. Mascaro plops us into a   reality most of us have never seen and reveals it to be stranger and dreamier than we might think. Shot in Northeast Brazil, Neon Bull is a road movie about a vanishing way of life. It follows the itinerant crew looking after the bulls that the cowboys chase on horseback during the show. There’s the main character, Iremar, played by Juliano Cazarré, a bull wrangler who dreams of designing women’s clothing, but in defiance of stereotypes, isn’t gay. There’s the foxy truck driver, Galega, who does exotic dancing wearing a horse’s head, and her lippy adolescent daughter, Cacá who longs to own a horse. There’s chubby Zé, who dreams of food and women, and the vain Júnior, who preeningly irons his   tresses. Mascaro’s keen eye captures the   of their existence. We see the feeding, cleaning and shoveling up after the animals the bouncy truck rides and bantering conversations the nights spent sleeping in hammocks or having quick and easy  . While there’s not much plot, Neon Bull is filled with funny bits, be it Galega giving herself a Brazilian wax job in the front seat of her truck when nobody’s looking or, in a marvelous   Iremar and Zé heading off to commit a heist so startling your eyes will pop. As the team drives from show to show, you may be reminded of Carlos Diegues’ 1979 classic Bye Bye Brasil, about an   traveling carnival facing a society increasingly dominated by TV. You find a similar collision of cultures in Neon Bull, whose very title contains the contradiction: While neon is the electric expression of commercial modernity, the bull is a metaphor for the raw, untamed animal spirits you find in the rural countryside. Iremar, Galega and the rest are caught between the neon and the bull. In their daily being  —   and Mascaro emphasizes the physicality of human bodies  —   they live akin to the animals they tend, from eating and going to the bathroom outdoors to raw sexual behavior. Iremar’s long sex scene with a pregnant security guard clearly echoes the scene we’ve seen earlier of a randy stallion. Yet as Iremar and his comrades travel the bleak Northeastern landscape, they stumble across unexpected outposts of capitalist modernity  —   power plants, fashion malls in the middle of nowhere, even an ugly stretch of wasteland magically transformed by colorful patches of fabric thrown away by a nearby garment factory. Caught up in the spirit of change, Neon Bull’s characters aspire to something grander and more beautiful than what they have, none more so than Iremar, who dreams of buying his own sewing machine and who insists, ”I may be a cowboy but I have good taste.” Mascaro honors such aspiration by taking his characters seriously  —   they aren’t deluded or figures of fun  —   and by filming them with an eye attuned to beauty. After all, just because people are poor, there’s no reason they have to be shot poorly. Late in the film, we’re given a poetic little scene that encapsulates all of Neon Bull’s hope and melancholy. It’s twilight and Cacá is standing on the slats of the cattle pen that holds the white bulls. Over their heads she holds a stick from which dangles a small model of winged Pegasus with a tiny pink light glowing in its head. We sense that this is her fantasy  —   to have such a horse and fly away to somewhere better. But we also know that this Pegasus is just an inexpensive toy and that she, like Iremar and her mother and Júnior and Zé, may not be able to escape, that for all their brave dreams and struggles, they will remain penned in."
"Four months after former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was found guilty for his role in a 2010 mining disaster that killed 29 miners, he has been sentenced to the maximum one year in prison and another year of supervised release. Judge Irene Berger also imposed a maximum $250, 000 fine, which is due immediately, West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Dave Mistich reports for NPR’s Newscast unit. ”Blankenship was convicted in December of conspiring to violate federal mine safety laws  —   a misdemeanor,” Mistich said. ”The charge stemmed from an investigation into the April 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine near Montcoal [W. Va.] that killed 29 men.” It was the worst mine disaster in the U. S. in 40 years. West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports that Blankenship, speaking to the court during sentencing, professed innocence on the conspiracy charge and ”attempted to apologize to family members of those who lost their lives at Upper Big Branch.” The judge cut him off and said, according to the station: ”You should be someone that we are able to tout as a West Virginia success story. Instead of being able to tout you, we are here.” As The   reported at the time of the verdict, ”Blankenship was acquitted of two counts of making false statements,” meaning he avoided facing the potential   prison term prosecutors had initially sought over the explosion at the West Virginia mine. Mistich adds: ”During a short recess Wednesday morning, Betty Harrah, who lost her    brother Steve in the blast, expressed her frustrations over Judge Berger not allowing victims’ families to speak at the hearing. ” ’Her not allowing us to actually, finally, to say something to that man is not right. If he has the right to speak, we should have the right to speak,’ said Harrah.” Other family members shouted at Blankenship as he left the courthouse. ”We buried our kid because of you,” Robert Atkins shouted, according to Ashton Marra of West Virginia Public Broadcasting. According to Marra, Blankenship said of the families, ”I feel badly for them. It’s a lot of emotion and that’s understandable.” After the guilty verdict was handed down in December, Blankenship’s attorneys said they planned to file an appeal, but as Mistich reports, one has not yet been filed."
"Donald Trump lost Wisconsin on Tuesday night by double digits (48 percent for Cruz, compared to 35 percent for Trump). By most accounts, it was a bad night for the         who leads the current race for the GOP nomination. But by another measure  —   demographics  —   maybe it wasn’t that surprising. Nate Cohn at The New York Times’ Upshot makes the case that he never expected Trump to get more than 35 percent of the vote, and Trump performed exactly on the mark. In fact, despite all the focus on Trump’s provocative abortion comments, exit polls show Trump did no worse among women than men. Campaign rhetoric and ground game may help, but maybe demographics really are destiny? Many Wisconsin Republicans live in the highly educated, wealthy suburbs outside Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozuakee and Washington counties) kind of akin to the Northern Virginia Rubio Republicans and a host of other suburban collar counties. Those areas were never thought to be demographically friendly Trump terrain. For much of this campaign, Trump’s trump card, so to speak, has been white,   voters. (The one exception to those demographic expectations was that Cruz actually outperformed Trump among   voters in Wisconsin, too.) The other element at play could be regional demographics. Trump has not performed well in the Midwest. He lost Ohio and the caucuses in Kansas, Minnesota and Iowa  —   and barely edged out a win in Missouri. Perhaps, Trump’s brash rhetoric doesn’t resonate with Midwestern manners. One interesting takeaway that might suggest his tough talk isn’t in line with some GOP voters comes from the Wisconsin exit polls, which show that despite the   immigration ideas from both Cruz and Trump, about 60 percent of Republican primary voters in Wisconsin say they support a pathway to legalization for people who’ve come into the country illegally. The real story isn’t that Trump lost Wisconsin. It’s that Cruz did better than expected. He managed to push Ohio Gov. John Kasich out of the way and coalesce the   vote around him. But, the next contest is on Trump’s home turf  —   New York, and those demographics favor Trump. What About The Democrats?  On the left, demographics are  —   and have been  —   equally predictive, if not more so. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won Wisconsin resoundingly, beating Hillary Clinton by more than 13 points. He has won neighboring states with similarly progressive politics  —   Michigan and Minnesota. And the makeup of the Wisconsin electorate was never in Clinton’s favor.   percent of Democratic voters in Wisconsin are white. Clinton performs far better in Southern states with large   and Latino populations. She also has an edge in urban hubs. In fact, in the Wisconsin primary, the only county she won was Milwaukee County. Across the country, Sanders’ strength has come from white voters, young voters and independents (and many of the upcoming contests are closed, meaning only Democrats can vote). Wisconsin was no exception. Exit polls show Sanders won the white vote by about 20 points. But there is one demographic question mark from Wisconsin  —   women. Throughout this campaign, Clinton has relied on women as a safety net. Exit poll data suggest she’s won a majority of women in state after state  —   even in places like Michigan, where she lost the overall vote to Sanders. In Wisconsin, though, Sanders and Clinton broke even. So maybe demographics aren’t always destiny, but they’ve been a pretty solid predictor in this campaign. And if that’s the case, that could mean a harder path ahead for Sanders. After what is likely to be a win for Sanders in the Wyoming caucuses Saturday, take a look at the two biggest battles:  —   New York on April 19, where more than 40 percent of residents are black, Asian or Latino.  —   Then, it’s on to Pennsylvania, a state where more than a third of Democratic primary voters in 2008 were over the age of 60. And that doesn’t include New Jersey and Maryland, which also have significant nonwhite populations. So while the current momentum is with Sanders, the demographics in some important places on the road ahead seem to favor Clinton."
"Top officials with the Obama administration said Wednesday that they’ll redirect $589 million toward the Zika virus response. Most of that money was to be used to deal with Ebola virus. Almost two months ago, the Obama administration requested $1. 9 billion from Congress to respond to the Zika threat. ”But Congress has yet to act,” Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a news conference. ”In the absence of congressional action, we must scale up Zika preparedness and response activities right now.” Over 600 people with Zika, including 64 pregnant women, have been reported in U. S. states and territories. In most cases, people contracted the virus while traveling. But Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, says she expects to see local Zika virus transmission in the continental U. S. in coming months. The redirected funds will go to mosquito control and surveillance education about how to prevent transmission supporting states and territories in their own Zika virus responses and developing vaccines and better diagnostic tests. Burwell and Donovan reiterated that the administration’s earlier request for supplemental funding from Congress remains in place. And, they say, the administration will also ask for funds to replenish the amount currently being moved from the Ebola response to the Zika response. Without the full supplemental funding, Burwell says, a number of crucial activities would be impacted. ”Mosquito control and surveillance might need to be delayed or stopped. Our ability to move to a subsequent phase of vaccine development could be jeopardized. And without more funding, the development of faster and more accurate diagnostics could be impaired,” says Burwell. One reason for the haste is that public health officials want to get mosquito control and surveillance underway before the peak summer mosquito season in the U. S. and before the rainy season in Central America and the Caribbean. Most of the redirected funding  —   $510 million  —   is coming from the Ebola response. That’s concerning, because while the public panic over Ebola has faded, the virus continues to flare up. ”We face two real global health challenges  —   Ebola and Zika  —   and we don’t have an option to set one aside in the name of the other,” says Burwell. Last week, a woman in Liberia died of Ebola. And though Guinea was declared   in December, last month World Health Organization officials put more than 1, 000 people under medical watch because they may have come into contact with eight people who contracted Ebola. It’s those kind of activities that could be shortchanged by diverting funds away from Ebola and toward Zika, administration officials say."
"I looked at the sun with longing this morning, wondering when its rays would warm up the air. Monday, we had a snowstorm around Hanover, NH, of the kind that must have inspired T. S. Elliot’s famous opening words from The Waste Land, ”April is the cruelest month. ..” Of course, the sun is doing its thing and it’s really the weather patterns that are a bit wacky. But this is not about global warming or El Niño. It’s about what happens when the sun doesn’t do its thing as we hope it does. It’s about what happens when the sun goes angry and blows giant magnetic storms that hurl colossal clouds of hot plasma into outer space, sometimes in our direction. The big ones can do a lot of damage, much more than what we are prepared to take  —   or even know about. Trying not to be very apocalyptic (but being so) a very big solar storm could disrupt the fabric of society as we know it. No joke. The sun may look nice and cozy from under our protective atmosphere, but up close it’s an inferno of churning hot plasma and gas. Mixed in are huge magnetic fields that look like gigantic rubber bands piercing into the solar interior like looping stitches. It’s turbulent stuff, barely held together by gravity. Once in a while, an instability will cause an explosive release of energy, most of it outside the visible spectrum. Particles are accelerated outwards at near the speed of light. We see a solar flare, with energies reaching some 150 billion megatons of TNT. For comparison, the most powerful   ever detonated, the Tsar bomba, reached 50 megatons of TNT, about 3, 300 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. So, we are talking       blowing up at the same time. And that’s not unusual. Such events happen every few days in the sun  —   speeding up to three a day during   solar maxima, periods of maximum solar activity that happen every 11 years. Sometimes, flares are so violent that they are accompanied by Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). The magnetic rubber bands snap and act like a slingshot, shooting enormous clouds of solar material into outer space. Depending on the intensity of the storm, the travel time to Earth may be from about 20 hours to a few days. Even if such giant clouds spread en route toward us, thus losing some of their punch, they still carry a large number of electrically charged particles (electrons, protons, ions) and radiation. And some bad stuff happens. In 1859, a gigantic solar storm produced a CME that hit us bad. It was the largest recorded event of this nature, the famous Carrington event. (Richard Carrington was one of the two British astronomers that first identified the flare and other disruptions in the solar surface, such as an abnormal number of solar spots.) Auroras were observed as far north as Australia and Tahiti, and as far south as Hawaii and even Colombia, close to the equator. Telegraph lines all over Europe and North America failed, and some telegraph operators got shocked. Telegraph pylons threw sparks. Fortunately, society didn’t rely heavily on electricity at the time. If this were to happen today, the story would have been quite different. Estimates place the damage at $0. .6 trillion in the U. S. alone. Apart from the ensuing social chaos, of course. When CMEs hit the outer fringes of the magnetic field that protects us (the same one that makes compasses work) they make it wobble. Wobbling magnetic fields kick electric particles around, causing electric currents in conductors. In 1859, the best conductors were the telegraph lines. Today, power grids cover the surface of the planet. The U. S. power grid runs at near capacity and wouldn’t take the surcharge from the CME. The same with many others across the globe. If a   or larger event were to hit, transformers would fail everywhere. Power at a global scale would be disrupted for weeks, months, possibly even longer. This happened in Québec in 1989, when a relatively small geomagnetic storm damaged the   electricity transmission system. Auroras from this storm could be seen as far south as Texas and Florida.   radio signals were disrupted. Some satellites failed to operate for hours. In the same year, another storm caused a halt in the Toronto stock market due to the crashing of three ” ” disc drives. Add to this the damage caused in   satellites due to the radiation and from the increased atmospheric drag, and things get even worse. GPS services would be disrupted, telecommunications compromised. Emergency services that rely on such channels of communication would be in disarray. Computer networks would also fail, even if individual machines would still possibly work while there was power in their batteries. (Magnetic storage devices would fail as well. Optical drives should be okay.) Although   events are relatively rare, one or two every 100 years on average, the potential for disaster is large enough that measures should be taken to increase protection. In 2012, a massive   event just missed hitting the Earth, thanks to a fortuitous misalignment of directions due to the combination of Earth’s orbit and the sun’s own rotation. Safeguards include a fleet of satellites in distant orbits that can monitor the solar weather. Some exist already, and that’s how we know they are coming, usually when it’s too late. Electric grids shouldn’t work near capacity, transformers should be built to sustain the surcharges. A 2013 report by John Kappenman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission analyzes, in detail, the potential impacts on the U. S. power grid, offering safeguards to increase chances of surviving a future blow. Preparing is cheaper than fixing. The danger exists and is palpable. A few years ago, I wrote a   screenplay with a friend, painting this sort of apocalyptic picture on steroids, a sort of Armageddon from the sun. The screenplay wasn’t bought (or you would probably have heard about it somewhere) but the scenario stands as a disaster movie going real. Hopefully, awareness is growing so that we can avoid what would surely be a very bad chapter in the history of modern civilization. The sun wouldn’t care either way. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist  —   and professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the   of 13. 7, a prolific author of papers and essays, and active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser."
"He’s a Bangladeshi who’s been knighted by the Queen of England. A former accountant who left an executive position at Shell Oil to devote himself to the world’s poorest. And when it comes to eliminating poverty, he may be the most influential man you’ve never heard of. Meet Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and head of a nongovernmental international development organization called BRAC. Today the University of Michigan honors Abed, who is 80, with its Thomas Francis Jr. Medal in Global Public Health. We took the occasion to find out more about what he’s learned during his 40 years in the field  —   and how one of his ideas might end up driving the 21st century global effort to eradicate extreme poverty. Today BRAC is one of the world’s largest   NGOs  —   with 115, 000 employees in 12 countries offering some 138 million people services including education,   job training and health care. But Abed’s ambitions were modest when he started the group that would become BRAC back in 1970. A cyclone had just hit Bangladesh  —   then still known as East Pakistan  —   killing more than 300, 000 and leaving many more homeless. Abed was an accountant by training and says his own family had been comfortably off. But ”growing up in rural Bangladesh I had seen poverty all around me and it had always affected me to see it.” Now, at the sight of so much death and suffering wrought by the cyclone  —   there were corpses floating in the bay  —   ”I was really shaken.” So he started a group of about two dozen volunteers to help people rebuild. Within months it morphed into a more permanent effort as East Pakistan became embroiled in a war to secede from Pakistan, and, by 1972, achieved independence as Bangladesh. ”There were 10 million refugees starting to go back to Bangladesh and I decided it’s time for me to help independent Bangladesh,” Abed recalls. He quit his job at Shell and sold a house that he owned in the UK to raise the money to pay a small staff of   employees. Initially he named his new organization the Bangladesh Relief Assistance Committee. But he soon decided it was not enough to focus on rebuilding from the cyclone and the war. ”You know people were so poor I decided I would have to commit myself for the long haul to get poverty reduced in Bangladesh.” So he renamed the group the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. Among his early goals was to tackle the extraordinarily high rate of infant and child mortality in Bangladesh  —   almost   were dying before their fifth birthday. One of his greatest successes was a push from 1986 to 1990 to expand childhood immunizations. With funding from a range of sources including the British and Australian governments, says Abed, over those four years alone BRAC helped increase the share of children who were vaccinated against, for example, tuberculosis from 4 percent to 91 percent. During the 1990s, BRAC also began experimenting with an approach that would ultimately come to define it: the ”graduation program.” BRAC coined the phrase because the aim was to help the ultra poor permanently ”graduate” from their state of extreme poverty into a more stable economic level. The idea is to give an extremely poor family an asset  —   say a cow or a goat or bees  —   that can increase its income over time. BRAC is hardly the first group to use this model another prominent one is Heifer International. But BRAC combines the donation with a mix of services that has proved highly effective  —   including training and coaching on how to use the asset, cash grants to tide the family over while getting a new enterprise started, and help with health care and education. Over time, the organization also vastly expanded its reach to countries beyond Bangladesh  —   renaming itself once more as just ”BRAC.” Today its graduation model is one of the few whose effectiveness has been established through rigorous testing using randomized controlled trials, meaning researchers compared the income and   of people served by the graduation program with otherwise similar people who did not. Last May, for instance, Science published the findings of a major randomized trial studying more than 10, 000 people in six countries. In five of those countries, those who got assistance modeled on BRAC’s graduation program made a little more money, had more to eat and had better mental health than those who did not a year after the program was over. (It’s worth noting that the improvement in incomes and food consumption together was not huge  —   on average a 5 percent boost). A more recent evaluation, released late last year by researchers at the London School of Economics and supported with funding from BRAC, analyzed the impact of a graduation program directly administered by BRAC for nearly 7, 000   families in Bangladesh. Those results were even more impressive: Four years later their incomes were 37 percent higher than in the control group. And the impact seven years on was at least as large. Abed hopes more NGOs and governments adopt the graduation model. BRAC has published a detailed guide and ”tool kit” to help others create their own versions of the program. And it has hosted visitors from the governments of Tanzania and Kenya as well as officials from the United Nations who are interested in learning more. But most important, says Abed, will be to find ways to reduce the cost of BRAC’s graduation model. Right now it’s about $500 per family in Bangladesh. ”I think many people in government are going to look for answers that are slightly cheaper,” he says. So BRAC plans to spend the next several years studying the impact of   measures: What happens if you reduce the number of visits by the coach who teaches the family how to get income from its cow, for example? ”The question is, what is the tradeoff?” he says. ”Suppose eliminating costs by half makes the success rate go down by 10 percent. Well, that might be worth taking.” But if this makes Abed sound like a pragmatist, he insists he’s as idealistic  —   and optimistic  —   as ever about the chances for lifting the poorest out of misery. After all, he says, he only needs to think back to how things looked in Bangladesh in 1970. ”I’ve seen such major changes. I don’t ever despair.”"
"For three years, Mary Lou Wesselhoeft, a    Florida Panhandle dairy farmer, had been selling milk at nearby farmers markets and health food stores in an effort to keep her dairy farm afloat. The last thing she was trying to do was to dupe customers who went out of their way to score a cold bottle of her Ocheesee Creamery pasteurized skim milk. But Florida authorities saw it differently. Because Wesselhoeft doesn’t add vitamins back in once the fat is removed, officials say her skim milk is considered an ”imitation milk product” and in 2012 insisted that she begin labeling it ”  ’A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed”  —   wording Wesselhoeft is dead set against adding. ”They want it to be called imitation milk, but it isn’t,” she says. ”We just want to be able to tell the truth about our milk. We never claimed there was vitamin A in there,” Wesselhoeft says. She’s still skimming her milk  —   the fat and vitamins that go with it are used to make butter, ice cream and whole milk products she sells. But, with the exception of a small amount that she is allowed to use in yogurt, she’s been forced to dump hundreds of gallons of her skim milk ever since. Unfortunately, it looks like the dumping will have to continue.* Last week, a federal judge ruled that state officials are perfectly within their rights to require added vitamins as part of nutritional standards for milk. Indeed, the Food, Drug  Cosmetic Act, implemented by the FDA, has developed standards of identity for hundreds of foods besides skim milk. For example, that’s why jars labeled ”jam” are made from whole fruit, while ”jelly” is made from fruit juice. As we’re seeing in the ongoing fight over GMO labeling, or in arguments being made against marketing terms like ”all natural,” there’s a lot riding on the precise words companies use to sell Americans food. For Wesselhoeft and her attorney, Justin Pearson at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, the fight over Ocheesee Creamery’s skim milk isn’t just a labeling issue. They’re framing it as First Amendment challenge and are now planning to appeal last week’s ruling. ”Nowhere in the Constitution does it give the government the right to dictate what Americans can buy or eat. That’s why this is a First Amendment argument. No governor or president has the authority to say you cannot buy milk without vitamins,” says Wesselhoeft. Part of the   stems from the dairy being allowed to sell its skim milk for several years without challenge. ”They were selling the milk for three years with the state’s knowledge and the state inspecting it every month,” says Pearson. ”Then, out of the blue, after three years with no complaints or confusion, the state realized it didn’t meet the definition of skim milk and told Mary Lou she would have to inject vitamin A into the skim milk or call it something else.” Wesselhoeft says it was a new commissioner and a change in dairy inspectors that prompted the state’s actions. Officials from the Florida Department of Agriculture did not answer questions on staffing changes, saying only, ”We are pleased with the judge’s ruling, as this case has always been about ensuring that consumers are aware of the nutritional value of the products they purchase and feed to their families.” Pearson says Wesselhoeft tried to resolve the issue, approaching officials with a number of labeling alternatives for her skim milk. All were denied. ”They said she could change the label as long as she doesn’t call it skim. . .. Mary Lou would have to call it imitation skim milk. It violates her principles,” he says. Susan Schneider, director of the postgraduate degree program in agricultural and food law at the University of Arkansas, says the judge’s ruling was correct. Under federal and Florida state law, skim milk must have the nutrients added back in, or it runs contrary to   milk labeling laws, industry practices, and consumer expectations. ”It cannot be nutritionally inferior and still be called milk,” Schneider told us via email. ”Here the dairy wishes to sell a product with the nutrients stripped out, promoting it as a natural product to consumers who have always assumed that skim milk had all the same nutrients, without the fat.” In some ways, the case has parallels to claims that Hampton Creek’s Just Mayo was misleading consumers because it was made without eggs. Pearson notes that those charges were led by the egg industry, which saw Just Mayo as a threat. But in this case, he says, none of Wesselhoeft’s customers complained that her skim milk lacked the vitamins found in Ocheesee’s whole milk products. Schneider says the difference is that Hampton Creek didn’t try to challenge the requirement that its product be nutritionally equivalent. ”We are now only beginning to appreciate the links between diet and health. There are compelling arguments to protect the nutritional integrity of the foods we eat,” she says. ”If a manufacturer takes nutrients out of food through processing and still wants to use the common name of the food, the nutrients have to go back in so that the nutritional value of the food is preserved.” Her advice for milk drinkers? ”If you drink milk and are seeking natural ’real food’ just drink whole milk, organic preferred.” After all, in recent years research has suggested that whole milk may actually be better for waistlines anyway. * Wesselhoeft’s lawyer says his client can’t donate her skim milk to food pantries or shelters  —   she’d have to get the label approved first. Clare   is a journalist based in San Diego who covers food policy and sustainability issues."
"Puerto Rico’s governor has signed a bill that puts the island’s debt payments on hold until January 2017. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla says the island’s first priority is covering payments for essential services. Puerto Rico acted this week following reports that a key financial institution, the Government Development Bank, is nearly insolvent. A group of hedge funds went to court to block public agencies from withdrawing funds from the bank. Within hours, the Legislature moved to pass the debt moratorium by approving the measure. The law suspends all bond payments, including general obligation bonds, which are guaranteed by the island’s constitution. It also limits activity at the government bank and allows it to enter into receivership if necessary. The bank is facing a May 1 deadline, when a $400   payment is due. While the Legislature was meeting, a group of creditors who hold general obligation bonds were in San Juan to pursue a deal to restructure some $5 billion of the island’s debt. The head of the Government Development Bank rejected their proposal, saying, ”It is exactly the type of ’Wall Street’ solution that led us to the precipice we are now looking over.” Creditors say the measure violates prior agreements and the island’s constitution. But the action buys the Garcia administration time and increases pressure on the U. S. Congress to help the island find a way to repay its debt. The U. S. House Natural Resources Committee is working on a bill that would establish a control board to oversee the island’s finances and help it restructure its debt payments. It’s facing opposition from creditor groups who fear it will give the island too much leverage and allow Puerto Rico to impose repayment terms that bondholders don’t like. Puerto Rico has been caught in a recession for most of the past decade. A series of administrations used bond revenue to cover budget deficits, building a debt load that’s now more than $70 billion. The poor economy has led Puerto Ricans to flee the island, most for the U. S. mainland. Last year, according to the Pew Research Center, 84, 000 people left for the mainland U. S."
"California’s dental health system for the poor is dysfunctional, according to a report by a bipartisan oversight commission. A more vivid description comes from Pedro Nava, the commission’s chairman: ”In California we have kids’ teeth rotting out of their heads,” he says. ”That’s utterly inexcusable.” The program,   ranks among state government’s greatest deficiencies, according to the report released last week by the Little Hoover Commission, an independent oversight agency. One third of the state’s population is eligible to use   for subsidized dental care, including more than half of the state’s children. The department that runs   draws only part of the blame, according to the report. The Legislature, the governor’s office, and the political culture of California share culpability for decades of neglect and strategic misdirection. California faces an ”epidemic of tooth disease in which toddlers by the thousands have mouthfuls of cavities, children and adults are plagued with toothaches, whole counties have no   providers and families don’t understand basic preventative dental care,” the report said. Meanwhile,   has ”thoroughly alienated the dental profession” with tangles of red tape and ”reimbursement rates among the nation’s lowest,” the report said. The program is run by the state Department of Health Care Services, which oversees   California’s version of Medicaid. The department released a lengthy prepared response to questions from the commission, which includes this statement: ”DHCS is strongly committed to providing access to quality dental care for our millions of   members, and Director Jennifer Kent has publicly stated that improving the   program is one of her top priorities.” According to the department, about 44 percent of the children who are eligible to receive dental services  —   2. 5 million of them  —   received an annual dental visit in fiscal   and about 23 percent or 1. 5 million of eligible adults saw a dentist then. Lack of funding is one reason the program has failed to meet the needs of Californians, the report finds. That includes appropriations from the Legislature and low reimbursement rates. The state’s reimbursement rates for the 10 procedures most frequently authorized for payment in 2012 averaged $21. 60  —   about ”35 percent of the national average of $61. 96 for the same 10 procedures in 2011,” according to a 2014 report from the state auditor. Many dentists say they lose money on   patients, so caring for them becomes a form of charity work. John Blake gave up a private dental practice in Long Beach to run the Children’s Dental Health Clinic in Long Beach, where about 85 percent of patients are on  . Blake says he just wants to break even  —   the business is a nonprofit  —   and 25 percent of his overhead is paid for through donations and fundraising events. It’s impossible to cover costs solely with the payments from the state, he says. ”A lot of my colleagues used to take   but it’s not just the low rates, it’s that the hassle of the system is so much worse than reimbursement. The hassle factor just got to be too much,” Blake says. ”They just gave up.” The Little Hoover Commission report more formally addressed the hassle factor, noting that copious   for basic procedures are a major hassle, never mind a clunky billing system, much of it still   and a   application form just to participate in the program. Dentist Camille Nishikawa, in Los Angeles, doesn’t have those problems. She runs the QueensCare mobile dental clinic in partnership with USC Medical Center, which travels to schools in the poorest parts of LA to take care of children’s teeth. The mobile dental vans are funded by grants the program doesn’t accept any money from patients or from  . Many poor people who are eligible for the program’s benefits don’t even know about it, Nishikawa says. ”A lot of the community isn’t aware of what they’re entitled to,” she says. ”And if they do, they don’t know where to go to find a dentist.” Ruth Sandoval is one of those   people, a mostly   mother of two in Los Angeles. She said she had no idea she and her two children could even get dental care as part of the   program. ”It has been hard to find a dentist it’s very hard to find one,” Sandoval said. She went to a clinic in Los Angeles for a different health problem and discovered a dentist on staff. She’s grateful for that, she said, because she wouldn’t have a dentist otherwise. ”It’s so important to us we were so happy to find her there,” Sandoval said. Most   Californians aren’t that lucky. Fewer than half of the children eligible for dental coverage actually see a dentist, says Jenny Kattlove of the Santa   Children’s Partnership advocacy group. People think of dental care as just getting a teeth cleaning, not as a health issue. ”Look, when children don’t get the oral health care they need, they suffer in pain,” Kattlove says. ”Untreated dental problems actually can lead to death I don’t know what’s more   than that.” Nava says access problems may only get worse as more Californians are added to the   rolls. In   an estimated 170, 000 children in the U. S. illegally will become eligible for full   benefits, including dental care, and Nava worries that they won’t get it. David Gorn is Capitol correspondent for California Healthline, a project of Kaiser Health News. This story was produced as part of a partnership between Kaiser Health News and NPR. "
"Olfa Hamrouni sits in a café in central Tunis and recounts how she lost her two oldest daughters to ISIS. Their story starts  —   as many stories about teenagers do  —   with a mother’s attempt to curb her children’s behavior. The older girls were getting a little rebellious, playing wild music and wearing     . They’d been acting out, she says, since their father left the family with no money and no support. ”After the divorce, the two girls were lost. They didn’t know what to do. My oldest girl, Ghofran, she was looking for a reason to live,” she says. Hamrouni confesses she wasn’t the best parent. She hit the girls, taking out the pain of the divorce on them. And she had no money to support them. She realized none of them was coping well, so she was happy when four years ago, the oldest girls sought guidance from a religious group that proselytized from a tent in their impoverished neighborhood. Maybe faith could help them. ”In 2012, we’d never even heard of ISIS,” she says. ”I thought my girls were just learning from a local preacher at a prayer tent.” Hamrouni is devout, but her daughters’ beliefs started to scare her. They were scolding their mother about television and music in the house, saying it was forbidden. Their preacher was telling them they should fight and die in places like Syria, and they didn’t know enough about their faith to know any better. ”They just knew to pray and to fast in Ramadan,” their mother says. So, she says, they were vulnerable to extremists distorting Islam  —   young, uneducated, poor and forgotten. Two years later, Ghofran, then 16, ran away. Hamrouni knew she left to join ISIS because the girl had been talking about it at home. She and her    sister, Rahma, were communicating with jihadists on Facebook and were open about pledging allegiance to ISIS. Hamrouni tried to save Rahma by turning her in to the police. But they released her, and soon she ran away, too. Both girls had joined ISIS in neighboring Libya, where the group has become increasingly powerful. They are not alone. Tunisia is a country known for its relative stability and path to democracy at a time when the region is roiling in chaos. But it is also among the biggest exporters of fighters to groups like ISIS. More than 5, 000 Tunisians have joined militant groups abroad, according to a U. N. working group estimate. The government says it has stopped some 16, 000 others from leaving the country. Many are joining ISIS next door, in the security vacuum of Libya  —   just like Hamrouni’s teenage girls. In February, Rahma sent her mother a shocking text message. ”I’m in Sabratha, it’s very dangerous . .. pray for me to be a martyr,” the message read. There had just been a U. S. airstrike on the Libyan town of Sabratha. The target was Noureddine Chouchane, her daughter’s husband, a Tunisian ISIS operative believed to be the mastermind of two attacks on Western tourists in Tunisia last year. He and more than 40 others were killed in the airstrike. Rahma followed her text message with a phone call. ”It was the first time I heard her cry. I felt she wanted to leave them and that she was afraid,” her mother says. But Rahma refused to come home and warned her mother that ISIS would be in Tunisia soon. Sure enough, a few days later, a group of mostly Tunisian ISIS gunmen tried to take over a Tunisian border town near Libya. The ISIS fighters were beaten back, but there’s a widespread belief that more such attacks are likely. Now Rahma and Ghofran are under arrest in Libya by   forces . They’re being held in Tripoli, the capital, according to a spokesman for the force. Hamrouni doesn’t know if she’ll be able to see them again or meet the baby one of them now has. She has appeared on local TV asking for help from the Tunisian government to get her girls back and help protect her remaining children. ”I can’t do this alone. I’m poor,” she said. ”I can’t afford a psychologist, school and books. I can’t afford to give my kids a life or religious education. That’s why this happened. The government has to help.” Her younger girls sit next to her. Taysir, a   girl who looks younger than her 11 years, is confused. She says her older sister showed her videos on how to load a Kalashnikov rifle and of a child fitted out with an explosive belt to kill   unbelievers and go to heaven. I ask if she really believes that that’s Islam. ”I don’t know,” she answers. Taysir wears tight jeans and a black scarf around her hair. She giggles a lot, burying her face in her sister Aya’s side when she gets shy. Aya, 13, is depressed and has tried to take her own life more than once. Usually, she spends her nights in a city shelter for orphaned or poor girls. She says she knows now that ISIS is bad, but she does wonder if the group’s promises of heaven through martyrdom could give her things she’s never had  —   like toys and her own room. ”For 13 years, people have told me things will get better, but they don’t get better,” she says. ”My life is terrible. I have nothing.” Her mom shakes her head. ”I want them to know this is wrong in their mind. They’re brainwashed,” she says. She blames poverty for turning her two older daughters into extremists. And she blames poverty for confusing her younger two. But she also blames the state for failing to help her before it was too late for her girls. There are thousands of other families dealing with the same thing. But they’re afraid to talk, afraid to be labeled a terrorist family. Since speaking publicly about her family, Hamrouni has lost work as a housekeeper. And without money and access to mental health care, she doesn’t know what to do. ”If I die,” Hamrouni says, ”I leave behind two little bombs.”"
"The revelations in the Panama Papers have generated anger and disgust. Politicians and leaders in countries from Russia to Iceland to the   Gulf States are implicated. The irony is that while the shady world of shell corporations and offshore accounts is still massive  —   costing governments hundreds of billions of dollars a year  —   the global community has made significant strides toward reining it in. Pascal   of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Global Forum on Transparency, says global commitments to reduce banking secrecy are changing the way former tax havens are doing business. ”If we take Switzerland, if we take Luxembourg, if we take Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Singapore, Hong Kong  —   they have all committed to major change,” he says. Back in 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the   nations, with the support of the U. S. agreed to push for greater transparency to curb the tax evasion made possible by secret offshore bank accounts. Here’s how: If a U. S. citizen sets up a bank account in Switzerland, for instance, the Swiss automatically provide information on that account to U. S. authorities, and vice versa.   says most countries have signed on. ”Panama is almost the only . .. significant financial center which has refused,” he says. Most countries have committed to the new level of transparency, but not all have implemented those commitments. And there are other outstanding issues that need to be dealt with, says Heather Lowe of an organization called Global Financial Integrity. ”What the OECD is working on is very narrow in that it’s looking only at tax evasion,” she says. Lowe says that focus doesn’t deal with another big part of the problem  —     through shell corporations. And, she says, those shell companies can still easily be set up in the United States. That’s because currently anyone can create a corporation in any state without identifying who really owns or benefits from it. To create a company in Iowa, for example, you need to provide the name of the company, the number of shares, and a couple of other things  —   but not the name of officers, directors or shareholders. ”Iowa has no idea who owns and controls the companies . .. and that’s frightening,” Lowe says. That’s one reason Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm at the center of the scandal, set up an office in Las Vegas. Nevada is an easy place to create a shell company. Bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress would require states to collect information on the true owners of companies, and the Obama administration has proposed a regulation that would require that banks ask for the name of real owners for accounts they set up. Lowe says she is confident change will come. ”If you’d said to me in 2009 that we would be where we are today on these issues, I think I would have laughed,” she says. ”We have made a huge amount of progress in a very short amount of time.” But she says much work is left to do. And, she says, the problem of secret accounts, corruption and tax evasion will never be completely solved."
"For the first time since 1984, the Wisconsin presidential primary has dealt a blow to the aspirations of a national  . And just for good measure, this time the Badger State did it to the national   in both major parties. As a consequence, we can now expect both the Republican and Democratic nomination battles to continue through the final primaries. And, in the GOP at least, the issue seems certain to remain unresolved until the national convention in Cleveland in July. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton took a back seat on this day as Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders carried the state, each in convincing fashion. Cruz, the   conservative senator from Texas, garnered nearly half of the statewide vote against Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. ”Tonight is a turning point, it is a rallying cry,” crowed Cruz. ”We have a choice. A real choice.” Trump won more counties than Cruz, sweeping the sparsely populated northern tier of the state and most the western counties as well. Overall, he had about 35 percent statewide. That was about where polls had consistently showed him for weeks. But as other candidates had dropped out, Trump had not benefited  —   at least in Wisconsin  —   while Cruz clearly had. Kasich had roughly 14 percent of the vote but won no counties. ”Lyin’ Ted Cruz had the governor of Wisconsin, many conservative talk radio show hosts and the entire party apparatus behind him,” said Trump in a written statement released by his campaign. ”Not only was he propelled by the   SuperPACs spending countless millions of dollars on false advertising . .. but he was coordinating with his own SuperPACs who totally control him.” Cruz, who was indeed supported by Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker, won statewide by running up more than 60 percent of the vote in the three suburban counties outside Milwaukee that are the wellspring of Wisconsin Republicanism: Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington. He also carried Milwaukee County, the state’s most populous jurisdiction, and all the lakeside counties stretching to its north to Brown County, home of the state’s most legendary sports franchise, the Green Bay Packers. Sanders and Cruz both won by about 13 percentage points, but Republicans received about 70, 000 more votes than the Democrats, a less pronounced instance of the pattern seen in many states this year. Cruz’s victory was potentially more consequential, too, because he seemed to stall Trump’s vaunted momentum and made Trump’s path to a   nomination exceedingly steep. Trump can no longer reach the 1, 237 delegate threshold for a   nomination before the final day of primaries on June 7. And even with a solid string of victories from now on through that day, he will need to dominate the remaining events completely to collect the nearly 500 delegates he still needs. It is far more likely now that the GOP convention will begin in Cleveland on July 18 with no candidate in control. That is largely because of the results from Wisconsin, where 18 delegates went to Cruz as the statewide winner and another 18 were awarded to him for winning in six different congressional districts. Trump got six delegates for winning the 3rd and 7th Congressional Districts. That would raise his national tally to 743, according to The Associated Press. Despite collecting the lion’s share of the delegates in Wisconsin and raising his national tally to 517, Cruz has no chance whatever of reaching 1, 237 before the convention. But he hopes to slow Trump down enough to sow doubts about the New Yorker’s electability and keep the convention open for multiple ballots. In that event, as the   in delegate strength, he hopes to consolidate a coalition that could win him the nomination. Kasich, who once again finished with no delegate dividend at all, may continue to the convention in hopes of delivering his Ohio delegation and putting someone else over the top. In a more remote scenario, a deadlocked convention might turn to him as an option. He will be the host governor in Cleveland. Sanders, the longtime liberal senator from Vermont, was arguably the   star of the night. He carried all but three of the state’s 72 counties and ran up more than 56 percent of the statewide vote. That was expected to give him about 50 of the state’s 86 pledged delegates. It also signaled that his recent wins in a slew of caucus states were not a fluke of the process but evidence of a movement finding its moment. Clinton won by less than four points in Milwaukee County, the state’s most populous venue and home to most of its minority voters. She also won two sparsely populated western counties on the Minnesota line. Sanders’ commanding lead in Wisconsin would appear to reduce Clinton’s national advantage in pledged delegates by at least 11 and probably several more. That would leave her with a lead of more than 250 in that category, and more than 680 in delegates overall  —   counting the superdelegates (party officers and elected public officials) who continue to prefer Clinton by a wide margin. Sanders gave a long victory speech in Laramie, Wyo. where the party will hold caucuses on Saturday. He proclaimed himself on the brink of a breakthrough in the contest, saying he could win New York on April 19 and Pennsylvania on April 26. But he will need to do so by margins similar to what he achieved in Wisconsin, in order to reduce Clinton’s lead among pledged delegates and, potentially, turn the loyalties of the superdelegates prior to the convention in Philadelphia. (Clinton, like Trump, did not hold a public event Tuesday night, although she did hold a fundraiser in the Bronx.) Sanders once again won by huge margins among voters under 30, while Clinton won those over 45 and those who were   or Hispanic. The two split the votes of those who told exit pollsters they were Democrats, but Sanders won by more than   among independents. Although the state has always had nonpartisan registration and allowed voters to take either party’s ballot in this primary, some   of those voting on the GOP side declared themselves as Republicans in exit polls. That left   of the vote to be cast by independents, who also cast about   of all the ballots on the Democratic side. On the Republican side,   called themselves ”very conservative” and another 43 percent ”somewhat conservative.” On the Democratic side, 25 percent said they were ”very liberal” and another 43 percent ”somewhat liberal.” Overall, that was good news for Cruz and Sanders. The electorate was overwhelmingly Anglo on the Republican side and about 84 percent Anglo on the Democratic side. In both parties, a plurality of those polled said they thought trade deals cost the country more jobs than they created. Nearly 40 percent of the Republican votes were cast by those who said they considered themselves either ”born again or evangelical Christians.”"
"It must have seemed a straightforward way to honor a U. S. Supreme Court justice who was famous for, among other things, prizing straightforwardness. But then people began to titter about the unintended acronym of the Antonin Scalia School of Law  —   and now George Mason University has tweaked the name. The new name for the institution in Arlington, Va. will be the Antonin Scalia Law School, says law school dean Henry N. Butler, citing ”some acronym controversy on social media” as the reason for the change. The name will become final in July, pending approval by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. In another sign of fallout from the renaming, the university is now looking at how to accommodate law school students who don’t want Scalia’s name on their diplomas, Butler said. While George Mason’s name is the most prominent one on law school graduates’ diplomas, the law school’s name appears beneath the dean’s signature. Announcing the new developments in a letter to students and alumni, Butler also apologized to the many people in the university’s community who were ”blindsided” by the announcement, which came less than two months after Scalia died. Saying that NPR’s Nina Totenberg had learned of the looming name change and tweeted about it before a seal of confidentiality was lifted last Thursday, Butler said an embargo kept the school’s leaders from discussing the matter until hours later. In that tweet, published at 12:30 p. m. ET, Nina reported the name that was later officially announced. She added, ”The late Justice, a genuinely beloved teacher, must be on cloud nine!” When George Mason announced the new name for its law school Thursday, the school said it had received pledges of gifts totaling $30 million and that to recognize the windfall, its Board of Visitors had approved the name ”The Antonin Scalia School of Law.” In a news release, the school said the combined gift, the largest it has ever received, ”includes a $20 million anonymous donation and $10 million from the Charles Koch Foundation.” George Mason said the decision to rename its law school for Scalia was made ”with permission from the donor’s family.” Butler described it in more detail Tuesday, calling the $20 million a ”naming gift” that was ”contingent upon renaming the law school.” Last week’s celebratory news release included a quote from Scalia’s colleague Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called the late justice ”a law teacher, public servant, legal commentator, and jurist nonpareil.” Ginsburg added, ”As a colleague who held him in highest esteem and great affection, I miss his bright company and the stimulus he provided, his opinions ever challenging me to meet his best efforts with my own.” In Butler’s note to the school Tuesday, he said he had received ”a great many comments” about the gift and the law school’s new name. Of the feedback, he said, ”most are simple congratulations, some congratulatory messages say they don’t like the name but understand the realities and how the gift is great for the law school, many are very positive, many are very negative (almost all respectful).” The range of that reaction was also on display in the public responses to Nina’s tweet. The most popular reply  —   ”I flat out would not attend any school named for Scalia”  —   drew this response: ”Why not? Is the school being corrupted by Scalia’s evil voodoo powers from beyond the grave?” In addition to sparking the renaming of its law school, George Mason will use the money to boost the size of its faculty and to create three new scholarship programs, including one that’s also named for the late justice. The goal of those programs, said Alison Price, Mason Law’s associate dean for admissions, is to ”open up all kinds of opportunities for students in all kinds of legal practice areas” with the idea of helping law students graduate without crushing debt that might keep them from pursuing public service and other areas that don’t bring the high salaries associated with large law firms."
"Pfizer and Allergan won’t be merging after all, the companies announced Wednesday. U. S. drugmaker Pfizer and Irish competitor Allergan were planning to combine into the largest pharmaceutical giant in the world. But the agreement worth at least $150 billion has been terminated because of a recent change in U. S. tax rules. NPR’s Jim Zarroli explained the policy shift on the blog yesterday: ”The Treasury Department on Monday introduced rules aimed at reducing the incentives for companies to carry out inversions. That’s a controversial practice in which a U. S. company merges with a firm in a foreign country, such as Ireland, and moves its headquarters there to take advantage of that nation’s lower tax rate. ”In most cases, the move is something of a legal fig leaf, because the company continues to operate in the U. S. in much the same manner as before. ”President Obama today called inversions ’one of the most insidious tax loopholes out there.’ He said they allow companies to remain in the U. S. taking advantage of its infrastructure and legal system, adding: ’But they effectively renounce their citizenship. They declare that they’re based somewhere else, thereby getting all the reward of being an American company without fulfilling the responsibilities of paying their taxes the way everybody else is supposed to pay them.’ ”Critics say inversions have become more common because the U. S. corporate tax rate is higher than any other developed country’s, at least on paper. Unlike other countries, the U. S. also requires its companies to pay taxes on income they earn anywhere in the world.” The change in rules was substantive enough to reduce the advantages expected from the merger, Pfizer says. Pfizer paid Allergan $150 million to cover expenses related to calling off the deal."
"”Ya amar, ya amar.” When I was a teenager, I used to love hearing those words  —   which mean something like ”hey, gorgeous” in Arabic  —   hissed and whispered at me by men on the street in Cairo, where I spent my summers. I never got that kind of attention in suburban Southern California, where I grew up. But at the Genena Mall in Medinat Nasr on the outskirts of the city, dressed in   jeans and a   shirt, I felt like the most beautiful girl in the world. That feeling didn’t last long. A few years later, I was walking along the beach at night with my guy cousin Ramy near our family’s summer flat in the   neighborhood in Alexandria, when a group of street boys started following us  —   then ambushed us. They pushed Ramy aside and grabbed at me, taunted me for wearing shorts, then ran away, laughing. I was frightened and humiliated. Though the incident lasted less than 30 seconds, it felt like forever. I never liked hearing ”ya amar” again. Egypt isn’t the only country where men and boys harass women in the streets and in public spaces. It happens in every country in the world, says Holly Kearl, executive director for advocacy group Stop Street Harassment and author of Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World. ”The only difference is the volume, how often it happens and how extreme,” Kearl says. While there’s not much data on this topic, a Gallup survey of 143 countries from 2011 showed that worldwide, 72 percent of men said that they feel safe walking alone at night in their own communities, compared to 62 percent of women  —   with the greatest disparity in wealthier countries. So I wanted to know: How are girls and women treated by men in different countries? What must women do to protect themselves? To find the answers, Kearl connected me to a group of women activists who shared accounts from their countries. Some of the stories were horrific  —   one woman in South Africa says that some men forcibly remove women’s clothing in the street. That happened to a Mexican journalist in March as well. Others were simply shameful: Even one woman’s grandmother was subjected to lewd comments. Kearl thinks social media has helped women open up about street harassment. ”People have been able to share their stories very publicly and that has had a snowball effect,” she says. ”As they share their stories, others do, too  —   and they realize they’re not alone.” This month, Kearl and these women will be coming together and coordinating a series of global events to raise awareness against street harassment. These interviews have been edited and for clarity and length. Afghanistan: ”Walking in groups rarely prevents harassment” On a daily basis I hear sexually explicit comments [from men in the streets] as do most women. You would think a conservative Muslim nation would be against making sexual comments to strangers, but men feel justified to invite women to have sex with them, talk about women’s bodies and call women ”whores” simply because women are in public. However, because talking about sexual things is so taboo, we keep quiet. We know that if we speak we will be blamed and silenced. I was about 12 when, one day on my way to school, two men on a motorcycle asked me if I had bled from my vagina yet. I didn’t know anything about my period, and I was so shocked that they used the word ”vagina.” I had never heard it from men before. Following their question they laughed and drove away. I was so embarrassed I ran all the way home. Walking in groups rarely prevents harassment. Wearing conservative clothes doesn’t help. In Kabul, I have seen women in blue burqas get harassed as much as women in jeans. The problem is not at all in what women wear, but men’s feeling of entitlement to women’s bodies and public spaces. Noorjahan Akbar, 24, founder of gender equality and social justice blog Free Women Writers, The Bahamas: ”Women give fake phone numbers when asked” Men in the Bahamas frequently objectify women in the streets with leers, verbal harassment and by following them. When women do not respond favorably to the harassment, the men often hurl insults in an attempt to embarrass them. They make kissing noises, call women by the color of their skin  —   like ”red,” ”yellow” and ”dark and lovely”  —   or comparable food items  —   like mangoes. An offender will even grab a woman’s arms and pull her toward him. Women generally ignore street harassment, accepting it as a part of their daily lives. Some women choose to change their routes, travel in groups, adjust their wardrobes to cover their bodies more, politely reject their   and give fake phone numbers when asked. Generally, they try to avoid confrontation and, when approached, try to be as agreeable as possible. Alicia Wallace, 29, organizer for Hollaback Bahamas, India: ”A growing trend is pictures being taken on mobile phones” Women and girls are constantly stared at, groped in crowded spaces and on public transportation, catcalled, whistled and commented on regularly. A growing trend is pictures being taken on mobile phones without permission by strangers. Women and girls, through experience, either avoid certain areas, do not stay out late, limit their movements in public or wear loose clothing. Public spaces should be safe and accessible to all, especially women and girls. It is crucial and essential if we want them to fully participate in society and the economy. If not, then choices and movements are restricted  —   and that in turn has a negative impact on society. ElsaMarie D’Silva, 42, founder and managing director of Safecity, Japan: ”To battle street harassment, Japanese women travel in groups, carry buzzers or take   classes.” The most common types of harassment are inappropriate touching in trains, taking pictures up a woman’s skirt, flashing on the streets, stalking and ”chikan crimes” [chikan means ”stupid man” in Japanese and is used to describe men who grope women in public places].   artists in bar areas are known to stop lone women or small groups of women to ask if they’ll ”have a cup of tea” with them. To battle street harassment, Japanese women travel in groups, carry buzzers to deter harassers or take   classes. Or they may stay home after dark. Kasumi Hirokawa, 24, public relations representative, Japan, Nepal: ”Things are changing slowly” Things are changing slowly, but still men treat women on the street as if they are someone at their disposal to flirt with, fondle, tease, grope, pinch, spank, whistle at, stare at. In some areas, men show their penis. [To protect ourselves, women] cover their bodies, put a shawl over their breast area and do not mingle with boys openly. [Women should be treated like] any other normal human being who can walk freely without any fear of being harassed. Let the world be her world as well. Mona Sherpa, 34, development worker, Nepal, South Africa: ”We are a fierce and independent lot” [Women are treated] pretty poorly. If you are a lesbian you will be subjected to all manner of   and insults. We have had a few   public strippings, which are attempts [by men] to shame women into wearing more modest clothes [by forcibly removing their clothes in public]. These have all been strongly rebuffed by women. We are a fierce and independent lot, despite what outsiders think. There is a huge pushback when men try to do these things these days. Women are fed up. Sisonke Msimang, 42, writer, South Africa, Yemen: ”My grandmother complains about street harassment” I once tried to wear different outfits, from a veil that covers up everything to just a headscarf. I was still being harassed. It was surprising that it actually increased into physical pinching when I wore the most conservative dress code. Age also makes no difference. My grandmother complains about street harassment. The only time I don’t get harassed is if I’m walking with a husband or brother, etc. That deters the   and touching, but it does not necessarily stop the long stares. It’s demeaning that a woman only earns respect in the streets if she has a male figure around her. Rasha Jarhum, women’s rights advocate, Yemen, How do men and boys treat women in public in your country? Tell us in a comment below, or tweet it to the writer at @MalakaGharib."
"The head of the Catholic Church and the symbolic leader of the Eastern Orthodox church are headed to Greece at the end of next week, on a trip that will signal support for migrants and refugees in that country. A visit by Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I to the island of Lesbos was announced Wednesday by church and government officials in Greece, NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports. The Vatican confirmed the visit on Thursday, the Associated Press says. The trip is planned for April 16. Both religious leaders have recently drawn attention to the plight of migrants and refugees. ”The son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, Francis has spoken out forcefully about the need for Europe to open its doors and heart to people fleeing persecution and poverty,” Sylvia says. The pontiff has been an outspoken critic of a recent deal between the EU and Turkey to deport migrants who arrive in Greece back to Turkey. That agreement went into effect this week, with more than 200 people deported from Greek islands. The pope washed and kissed the feet of   refugees outside Rome on Holy Thursday, leading up to Easter. The ecumenical patriarch, known as the ”first among equals” among the leaders of the Orthodox church, held a prayer vigil for refugees in November and dedicated his Christmas proclamation in 2015 to the state of refugees. He said that Jesus was a ”political refugee” in his time and called those who persecute refugees ”  Herods,” a reference to the king who, according to the Bible, ordered the death of every male infant in Bethlehem. Lesbos is the destination for the church leaders, and Joanna Kakissis, reporting for NPR from Athens, says it’s a logical choice: it’s where hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees arrived last year, and where many of those currently facing deportation are located. Joanna just returned from a trip to Lesbos, and described the conditions there on Morning Edition: ”The migrant camp on Lesbos is basically a prison. At least 3, 000 people are held in a former army barracks behind this tall   fence. Greek police have orders from the government to chase away any journalists who talk to refugees even through that fence. ”I did manage to talk to a couple of people including a young woman from Syria . .. who actually wants to be a journalist. She says the camp is crowded and scary, that there’s not enough food and people were sleeping outside. She’s seen fights break out, she’s heard people talking about hurting themselves  —   this is just not a safe place, she says.” ”I’ve been sending her text messages this morning about the pope and she says, ’I would love to meet him.’ ” A visit by the pope and the ecumenical patriarch will be ”a huge statement of empathy toward refugees,” Joanna says  —   and an embarrassment for the EU and Turkish leaders who made the widely criticized plan for deporting new arrivals to Turkey."
"After more than a year of study, the White House on Wednesday finalized tougher requirements for retirement investment advisers. The changes are intended to help Americans build bigger nest eggs while reducing fees and sales commissions they pay to advisers  —   keeping more money in workers retirement accounts instead of advisers pockets. Critics say the changes will create burdensome legal requirements that could squeeze out brokers who earn commissions from working with small investors. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, whose staff wrote the rule updates, says the new requirements will encourage   investing by making sure savers’ financial interests get top priority in any decisions. Under current rules, advisers ”say things like, ’We put our clients first,’ ” he said. Going forward, ”this is no longer a slogan. It’s the law.” This   process began in February 2015, when President Obama told the Labor Department to act upon the findings of a White House Council of Economic Advisers study. Those economists had studied the rules involving 401( k) accounts and IRAs, and concluded advisers’ conflicts of interest were resulting in collective annual losses of about $17 billion for consumers. Take this example: Say you need guidance on transferring money from an employer’s 401( k) plan to your own individual retirement account. If your adviser were operating under the old rules, he would only have to recommend a ”suitable” investment, such as an annuity, with no regard for the size of the commission, which can range from 1 to 10 percent. Perez says the old rule meant that an adviser ”can steer someone into a product that gives [the broker] a bigger commission at the expense of the customer’s return. That’s wrong.” In the future, an adviser will have a fiduciary duty. In other words, he or she has to act in the best interest of the client and put that duty ahead of the broker’s own personal gain. Retirement accounts get tax breaks, so the U. S. government has a big say in how they work under federal labor laws. But many in the financial industry strongly object to the tougher fiduciary standard, saying it will raise their regulatory and liability costs, and make it tough to work with investors with   accounts. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan sides with the brokers, tweeting last week that the final rule would become ”Obamacare for financial planning.” He promised to push congressional action to hold up the rule, which will not be fully implemented until January 2018. Ryan says the new rules are too complex, costly and harmful to small investors who may get less service from advisers. Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy expert for Public Citizen, a consumer advocate group, scoffed at such objections. ”Wall Street has argued that the hidden fees and commissions are necessary to serve   investors. In effect, they’re saying, ’If we can’t scam them a little, we’ll ignore them altogether.’ This deceptive mentality is exactly why a new rule is needed,” Naylor said in a statement. Not all financial firms are against the rule. Scott Puritz is managing director of the firm Rebalance IRA. ”I’m a   capitalist,” he says. ”And I believe that the free market if operating properly can offer the best benefit for the lowest cost.” That’s why he thinks the new rule will help firms like his that he says are more competitive on price. Puritz says his advisers don’t have offices all over the country. They talk to clients over the phone, which lowers costs. And he says there are no hidden fees or commissions. ”The retirement investment world is really stuck in the last century, with a very expensive highly commissioned sales force selling expensive products,” he says. Some prominent investors are hopeful the rule will change that, too. David Swensen is chief investment officer for Yale University. ”In the world of finance, you’re dealing with an incredibly rich and powerful set of companies who aren’t interested in serving their clients, they’re interested in making profits,” he says. Of course, Swensen says, some financial advisers do right by their clients. But the Department of Labor requiring all advisers and brokers to be fiduciaries when it comes to retirement accounts  —   ”it’s a huge deal,” Swensen says. ”If you do have a true fiduciary standard, it’s going to make a radical difference.” That ”if” is important, though. Swensen and other experts worry there might be loopholes. The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, a trade group, says it will take up the fight in Congress. NAIFA President Jules Gaudreau said financial advisers will ”pursue a legislative alternative that will ensure the best interests of retirement savers without obstructing their access to   advice.” NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley contributed to this story."
"Most food, if we trace it back far enough, began as a seed. And the business of supplying those seeds to farmers has been transformed over the past  .   companies have given way to global giants. A new round of industry consolidation is now underway.   mergers are in progress, or under discussion, that could put more than half of global seed sales in the hands of three companies. If there’s anyone who can trace the course of this transformation, and explain what drove it, it’s Ed Robinson. For most of his life, Robinson ran the family business: the J. C. Robinson Seed Co. of Waterloo, Neb. He’s 92 years old now, feisty and full of opinions, especially about the seed business. ”Here are two kernels of corn,” he says, holding them up for me to inspect. ”What the seed industry does is sell what’s inside this kernel. And the only way that the farmer knows what’s in there, is if he trusts the person who sold it!” Seeds, with their hidden potential, are the lifeblood of agriculture, but the companies that sold them to farmers didn’t always attract much attention. There used to be hundreds of   companies just like J. C. Robinson scattered across the Midwest. ”They were a band of wonderful people,” Robinson says. Much of the work was mundane. They grew vegetables or grain, then collected the seeds carefully, dried them, sorted them and sold them to farmers. There was, of course, competition among them. It was a race to create    seeds using plant breeding,   selected plants and selecting the best offspring. The big companies did their breeding  . But smaller companies had other sources of top varieties, such as the breeding programs of universities. Those seeds were free for anyone to use. One product of Iowa State University, a type of corn called B73, was so good that everybody used it. Its offspring had a distinctive look, with leaves pointing toward the sky. ”You could see it driving down the road,” says Steve Pike, who owned part of Fontanelle Seed Co. in Fremont, Neb. ”Probably 60 percent of the corn at one time got to be that upright leaf.” In 1970, J. C. Robinson partnered with several other seed companies and formed a group called Golden Harvest. It became one of the top five sellers of corn seed in the country. In the 1990s, J. C. Robinson built a big new seed processing plant and enlarged its headquarters in Waterloo. And right about that time, the world changed. Chemical companies like Monsanto found a way to genetically engineer crops. They inserted new genes into corn and soybeans, giving plants the power to kill insects, or survive weedkillers. And farmers wanted those genes. Traditional seed companies, if they wanted to stay competitive, had to license those genes from their inventors. Many worried about being cut off from this new technology. In 1998, Monsanto and other biotech companies started trying to buy some of the biggest seed companies outright. It gave them more control over an increasingly lucrative business. Ed Robinson’s son Rob says an offer arrived to buy Golden Harvest. ”It was an amount beyond belief,” he says. ”I think it was $500 million.” The potential buyer  —   Robinson won’t say which company  —   arrived for a meeting accompanied by advisers. They sat down with all five Golden Harvest partners  —   old seed company families. ”One of their advisers was sitting next to Dad,” Rob Robinson says. ”And this adviser was chanting ’$500 million!’ to the group of owners sitting there. It wasn’t anything we’d experienced before.” That deal didn’t go through. But in 2004, Golden Harvest agreed to be acquired by a   company  —   Syngenta  —   for just under $200 million. Rob Robinson has mixed feelings about the deal. ”Originally, I regretted it. I felt that we needed to do it, for the future of the company. But I had sons . .. ” Robinson stops midsentence, unable for a moment to keep talking. He gathers himself. ”I think the only regret is that we had another generation ready to come into the business,” he says. The big corn seed facility remains in Waterloo, and it’s busy. But the top executives who decide its fate are now in Syngenta’s headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. And soon, they may be sitting in Beijing. Syngenta has struck a deal to be acquired by Chem China, a   enterprise there. Meanwhile, other seed and pesticide companies are getting bigger, too. DuPont and Dow are merging. There are reports that Monsanto is in talks to buy either Bayer or BASF. If the deals go through, it’s estimated that three of these companies will control more than half of global seed sales. Ed Robinson doesn’t like it at all. ”I wish the   seed business were back,” he says. ”I think the farmer would be better off, and the U. S. would be better off.” But his son, Rob Robinson, says the changes were probably necessary. Without those big companies, he says, we wouldn’t have the new technology. ”The dollars that it takes today, the investment it takes to do biotech research is massive, and difficult for an independent seed company like the J. C. Robinson Seed Co. to afford,” he says. But he has been able to resurrect one small piece of that   world. He’s started a small but growing seed company, using the original name that his   used:   . Robinson says the company tries to operate in a way that takes farmers back to a less complicated time. ”We’re kind of a throwback. We’re from a simpler world,” he says. He’s also able to work with his two sons. But he couldn’t go back completely to the old times. He’s not breeding his own new varieties and corn hybrids. The seeds he sells are supplied by Syngenta."
"This post has been updated at 10 a. m. ET, April 8, In a prolonged exchange Thursday afternoon, former President Bill Clinton forcefully defended his 1994 crime bill to Black Lives Matter protesters in the crowd at a Hillary Clinton campaign event. He said the bill lowered the country’s crime rate, which benefited   achieved bipartisan support, and diversified the police force. He then addressed a protester’s sign, saying: ”I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got    kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other   children,” Clinton said, addressing a protester who appeared to interrupt him repeatedly. ”Maybe you thought they were good citizens . ... You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns.” The Clintons have faced criticism from BLM activists and younger black voters for months now over that bill, which they say put an unfairly high number of black Americans in prison for nonviolent offenses. After a protester interrupted him repeatedly, Bill Clinton began to take on that critique directly, making the claim that his crime bill was being given a bad rap. ”Here’s what happened,” Clinton said. ”Let’s just tell the whole story.” ”I had an assault weapons ban in it [the crime bill]. I had money for   kids, for out of school activities. We had 110, 000 police officers so we could keep people on the street, not in these military vehicles, and the police would look like the people they were policing. We did all that. And [Joe] Biden [then senator and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee] said, you can’t pass this bill, the Republicans will kill it, if you don’t put more sentencing in it.” ”I talked to a lot of   groups,” Clinton continued. ”They thought black lives matter. They said take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. We have    kids planning their own funerals.” Throughout the spirited defense of his policy, Clinton continued to be interrupted, and he repeatedly seemed to single out one protester. ”She doesn’t wanna hear any of that,” Clinton said to the protester. ”You know what else she doesn’t want to hear? Because of that bill, we have a   low in crime, a   low in murder rate. And because of that and the background check law, we had a   low in the deaths of people by gun violence, and who do you think those lives were? That mattered? Whose lives were saved that mattered?” For several minutes, the discussion of the crime bill, Clinton’s exchange with the protester and the crowd’s attempts to yell and chant over her were missing one thing: any mention of Hillary Clinton, the one Clinton running for president this election cycle. Bill Clinton did finally address her. ”Hillary didn’t vote for that bill, because she wasn’t in the Senate,” Clinton said. ”She was spending her time trying to get health care for poor kids [referencing her advocacy for the Children’s Health Insurance Program]. Who were they? And their lives mattered. And her opponent [Bernie Sanders] did vote for it. But I don’t blame him either . .. There were enough Republicans in the Senate to kill this bill, and nobody wanted it to die. That’s what happened.” ”But she [Hillary Clinton] was the first candidate, the first one to say let’s get these people who did nonviolent offenses out of prison,” Clinton continued. ”And guess what? A lot of Republicans agreed. They know they made a mistake.” Clinton went on to further defend his administration, referencing the financial crisis: ”It reminds me of when the Republicans try to blame me for the financial meltdown.” He turned back to his wife and said: ”This election is about the future. They’re trying to blame her for something she didn’t do. So I’ll tell you another story about a place where Black Lives Matter? Africa.” The former president went on to speak of his wife’s work fighting AIDS in Africa while secretary of state. Late Thursday night, NPR spoke with Philadelphia resident Erica Mines, one of the protesters at the Bill Clinton event. ”I’m not mad at Bill Clinton,” Mines said. ”I’m not mad at him as a person, he’s a human being. But his politics are very wrong.” She said of her actions yesterday, ”I don’t necessarily like the term protest, because that’s not what we planned to do,” Mines said. ”We did plan to express ourselves freely.” Mines said after Hillary Clinton supporters in the crowd began interacting with her the situation became tense and words were exchanged, leading to the escalation captured on camera. Mines said in the moment she was not focused on Clinton’s responses to her, but after the event she read up on exactly what he said. Still, Mines says her mind was not changed. ”I still feel the same way about Bill Clinton. .. He completely beat around the bush.” She continued, ”Whatever policies and platform that she’s [Hillary Clinton] running on now, [Bill] Clinton is definitely a part of that.” ”Bill Clinton is a politician,” Mines continued. ”He did his job, which was to counteract anyone who wants to talk to him or point out the truth about exactly what he did to affect our community.”"
"The race for the Democratic nomination had been fairly polite compared with the   and   across the aisle, but it looks like those polite days are over. Ahead of the New York primary (April 19) Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are doubling down on jabs over who is more ”qualified” to be president. In New York City on Thursday morning, Clinton was asked whether she’s still ”proud” of the Democratic race given the back and forth earlier this week. She responded that she’s going to ”keep talking about the issues” and ”keep drawing contrasts, because that’s what elections are about.” She then hit at Sanders’ qualifications, though without using that ”q” word: ”I think it is important to tell people what you’re going to do for them and how you can get it done  —   how you can produce results that will make a positive difference in people’s lives. . .. It’s all about rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, know what you want to achieve, and then bring everybody together to get the results.” Sanders, speaking in Philadelphia on Thursday morning, said, ”If you want to question my qualifications, let me suggest this: that maybe the American people might wonder about your qualifications, Secretary,” when it comes to the war in Iraq, trade agreements and fundraising from Wall Street. ”Are you qualified to be president of the United States when you’re raising millions of dollars from Wall Street?” Sanders added that if the Clinton campaign is ”going to go after us in some kind of really unthoughtful way, [thinking] that we’re not going to fight back, they can think again. This campaign will fight back.” It all began when Hillary Clinton implied Sanders was not ready to be president in an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe the day after the Wisconsin primary. She pointed to a recent interview Sanders gave the New York Daily News editorial board in which he appeared to stumble over some answers about breaking up big banks. ”I think he hadn’t done his homework, and he’d been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood, and that does raise a lot of questions,” Clinton said of Sanders. She was directly asked whether Sanders is ”qualified” to be president, and she hedged. ”I think that what he has been saying about the core issue in his whole campaign doesn’t seem to be rooted in an understanding of either the law or the practical ways you get something done,” Clinton said. She also questioned the independent senator from Vermont’s loyalty to the Democratic party. ”I think he himself doesn’t consider himself to be a Democrat, and, you know, look, he’s raised a lot of important issues that the Democratic Party agrees with, income inequality, first and foremost, but it’s up to the Democratic primary voters to make that assessment,” said Clinton. ”I’ve been in the trenches for a long time, and I believe in electing Democrats up and down the ticket.” Then, Wednesday night, in a rally in Pennsylvania (which holds its primary April 26) Sanders responded with harsh words. ”Secretary Clinton appears to be getting a little bit nervous,” Sanders told a crowd of thousands at Temple University in Philadelphia. ”She has been saying lately that she thinks that I am,   not qualified to be president. Well, let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton, I don’t believe that she is qualified if she is, through her superPAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds.” To be fair, Clinton never explicitly said Sanders was ”not qualified” to be president. Still, Sanders ripped into her, listing a litany of reasons he feels Clinton isn’t ”qualified” to be president. ”I don’t think you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your superPAC. I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don’t think you are qualified if you have supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement which has cost us millions of   jobs. I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama Free Trade Agreement  —   something I very strongly opposed and which, as all of you know, has allowed corporations and wealthy people all over the world to avoid paying their taxes to their countries,” he said. The Sanders campaign then doubled down on that message, sending out a press release that reiterated the reasons why ”Clinton isn’t qualified to be in the White House.” Clinton’s press secretary pointed out that Clinton never said Sanders was ”not qualified.” And, by the end of that night, Clinton’s campaign had already begun sending out fundraising emails to capitalize on the the latest twist in the Democratic race."
"Twenty years ago this week, in 1994,   Bill Clinton signed a crime bill. It was, in effect, a   experiment in various ways to fight crime. The measure paid to put more cops on the beat, trained police and lawyers to investigate domestic violence, imposed tougher prison sentences and provided money for extra prisons. Clinton described his motivation to pass the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act in stark terms. ”Gangs and drugs have taken over our streets and undermined our schools,” he said. ”Every day, we read about somebody else who has literally gotten away with murder.” And if Clinton and Congress reflected the punitive mindset of the American people, what they didn’t know was that soaring murder rates and violent crime had already begun what would become a long downward turn, according to criminologists and policymakers. Nicholas Turner is president of the Vera Institute, a nonprofit that researches crime policy. Turner took a minute this week to consider the    rhetoric of the 1990s. ”Criminal justice policy was very much driven by public sentiment and a political instinct to appeal to the more negative punitive elements of public sentiment rather than to be driven by the facts,” he said. And that public sentiment called for filling up the nation’s prisons, a key part of the 1994 crime bill. These days, Jeremy Travis is president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. But 20 years ago, he attended the signing ceremony for the crime bill  —   and joined the Clinton Justice Department. ”Here’s the federal government coming in and saying we’ll give you money if you punish people more severely, and 28 states and the District of Columbia followed the money and enacted stricter sentencing laws for violent offenses,” Travis says. But as Travis now knows all too well, there’s a problem with that idea. Researchers including a National Academy of Sciences panel he led have since found only a modest relationship between incarceration and lower crime rates. ”We now know with the fullness of time that we made some terrible mistakes,” Travis said. ”And those mistakes were to ramp up the use of prison. And that big mistake is the one that we now, 20 years later, come to grips with. We have to look in the mirror and say, ’look what we have done. ’” Nick Turner of Vera put the human costs even more starkly. ”If you’re a black baby born today, you have a 1 in 3 chance of spending some time in prison or jail,” Turner said. ”If you’re Latino, it’s a 1 in 6 chance. And if you’re white, it’s 1 in 17. And so coming to terms with these disparities and reversing them, I would argue, is not only a matter of fairness and justice but it’s, I would argue, a matter of national security.” Talk to combatants in the long and sometimes nasty debate over the crime bill 20 years ago, and another item on the table back then looks different with hindsight too. It’s a concept known as midnight basketball. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, voted against the bill years ago, in part because it didn’t do enough to support prevention programs. In between votes in the Capitol this week, Scott reflected on the debate. ”Midnight basketball was described as paying money so that crackheads could play basketball in the middle of the night,” Scott said. ”What they left out was the fact that every time they put midnight basketball in a neighborhood, the crime rate plummeted. You saved more money than you spent on the midnight basketball. They left that part out.” Funding for the midnight basketball program and other prevention initiatives never fully materialized because of political fights over the bill. But today, ideas like that one win support from Republican governors who have branded their approach as ”Right on Crime.” They’re taking money away from prisons and putting it into social programs. Lately the Obama administration, including Vice President Joe Biden, who was the lead Senate sponsor of that 1994 bill, is embracing those very policies and supporting new legislation to reduce mandatory minimum prison terms."
"Deep in the forests of Hawaii, a native tree called ’ōhi’a reigns king. The tall canopy tree dominates the island’s forests, especially on the Big Island. ’Ōhi’a makes up approximately 80 percent of Hawaii’s native forests and more than half of ’ōhi’a grows on Hawaii Island. Often the first plant to grow from a fresh lava flow, ’Ōhi’a is known for its resilience. That’s what makes a recent discovery all the more tragic: ’ōhi’a is dying. The disease, called Rapid ’Ōhi’a Death, was first spotted on the eastern side of the Big Island. In an area called ”Ground Zero,” scientists observe land that was once lush, green rain forest. It’s now barren, littered with dead trees. ”Out of hundreds of trees that we’re looking at, maybe two or three of the ’ōhi’a trees still have leaves on them,” says J. B. Friday, an extension forester with the University of Hawaii and one of scientists in the group. ”It’s heartbreaking for people who knew what this forest was 10 years ago.” ’Ōhi’a covers about 865, 000 acres statewide. Aerial surveys taken in January show the disease has now spread to more than 34, 000 acres on the Big Island, more than doubling in the past two years. Some other things the researchers noted is that the annual death rate for ’ōhi’a trees on the island is 26 percent  —   so if it’s not contained, it could decimate the forests in less than five years. Using a small ax, Friday begins chopping at a dying tree, revealing signs that the fungus has taken hold. ”The fungus sometimes has a fruity smell that to me smells like bananas. That tree over there that we’re looking at now, that you can see is turning brown, when we went inside and chopped on that, the symptoms are right there,” he says. In 2010, Friday started getting phone calls from landowners in the area, reporting ’ōhi’a trees dying on their property. ”We took some samples and didn’t get anything unusual. But by 2013 it became apparent that something was spreading rapidly.” Friday called up his colleague Flint Hughes, a research ecologist with the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. ”This forest was really a jewel of native diversity. It was perhaps the best example of a mature, ’ōhi’a dominated forest,” Hughes says. Hughes calls ’ōhi’a critical to maintaining Hawaii’s watershed. Raindrops and condensation filter through the tree’s leaves, keeping the ground well saturated. It also provides habitat and food for endangered native birds. ”This is our everything tree,” he says. ”It’s the most wide spread, it’s the foundational species for our forests. If we lose ’ōhi’a, it will transform our forests.” In addition to its environmental role, ’ōhi’a is also important culturally. Its wood was used to create tools and weapons, says University of Hawaii professor, Kalena Silva. And hula dancers often adorn themselves with its blossoms. ”I think the loss of ’ōhi’a lehua would almost be like losing a member of your family. It’s that important. It has that much meaning,” Silva says. Plant pathologist Lisa Keith is leading the research on Rapid ’Ōhi’a Death, she works from Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center’s laboratory.  For the past year, she’s been studying tree samples and performing what she calls ”CSI tree autopsies.” And what she’s found isn’t all grim. Keith says even in the most devastated areas, some trees are surviving. ”I think it’s still hopeful that we will find ones that it’s not an escapee, that it actually is natural resistance,” she says. ”We can then bank seed or propagate and replant. And that’s some of the work for the future.” A more immediate concern is stopping the spread of the disease. Recent aerial surveys show the fungus has already devastated trees in tourist destinations like Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Rapid ’Ōhi’a Death could spread to other islands, but that depends on Hawaii’s success at containing it quickly."
"Graduate students at private universities are asking regulators to consider these questions: Are we employees, or not? Can we join a union? The National Labor Relations Board recently decided to review its previous position, reigniting debate within the ivory tower. For Paul Katz, who’s three years into a history Ph. D. program at Columbia University, the 15 to 20 hours a week he spends teaching university undergraduates should mean he’s an employee. He teaches in addition to conducting his own research. ”I grade all of their papers, their exams, I run review sessions, I meet with them    basically support them throughout the semester,” Katz says. ”The university should treat me as an employee because I do work for them.” But technically, he doesn’t. The university classifies him as a student  —   even though it pays him a stipend and provides health insurance. ”It’s more or less impossible to live in New York City on a graduate stipend and not spend at least 40 percent of your income in rent,” he says. You must be considered an employee to form a union, so it’s hard for Katz and his fellow graduate students to do much about their status. There are 1. 7 million graduate students in the U. S, according to the Council of Graduate Schools. A small fraction  —   about 2 percent  —   are represented by unions, nearly all of them at public universities, which are governed by state, instead of federal, labor laws. With respect to private universities, the National Labor Relations Board has   in its policy. For decades, it held that students were not employees, then ruled in favor of students in a case in 2000. Under a new administration, the board reversed itself again four years later. Now, students at Columbia and The New School are petitioning for another change. John Logan, a labor and employment professor at San Francisco State University, says the shifts are tied largely to the political makeup of the board. ”When we get a new administration and the composition of the board changes, then sometimes you get this process of policy oscillation where the pendulum swings from one side to the other,” Logan says. Meanwhile, he says, grad students’ interest in unionization continues to grow. Aaron Nisenson, counsel at the American Association of University Professors (which has an affiliated union) argues that unions in higher education are increasingly necessary, as universities  —   like private corporations  —   rely more on cheaper labor. ”Everybody starting in a professional career can get some experience at a new job, but that doesn’t make it not a job,” Nisenson says. ”Universities more broadly have been pushing a lot of the work towards contingent faculty, towards graduate assistants and towards other   track faculty.” In an emailed statement, Columbia University spokesman Caroline Adelman says teaching and research are part of postdoctoral training. She says students’ relationships with their mentors are ”unlike typical   relationships and not well served by a     collective bargaining process.” Peter McDonough, general counsel of the American Council on Education, agrees. His group represents university leadership. ”Graduate students are students  —   students first,” he says. McDonough says research universities in particular give their faculty wide latitude in setting up grad student work hours and schedules. He says losing that flexibility might jeopardize some kinds of research. He also says the process has become very politicized, and current labor board members are reconsidering this issue for political, instead of policy reasons. Even if his side loses this decision, he says, it could always change back when the composition of the labor board changes again. ”I have real doubts that it would be a sustaining view,” McDonough says. The NLRB has not said when it might issue a decision."
"It has been a turbulent week for Mexico’s diplomats in the U. S. The reason for the shakeup can be summed up in two words: Donald Trump. This week, the Republican presidential   released details of one of his   campaign promises  —   to make Mexico pay for construction of a border wall. The plan, which involves blocking billions of dollars that Mexicans working in the U. S. send back home, seemed to shake up Mexico’s top officials and cause a break in their months of relative silence about Trump’s   comments. With swift aim, Mexico gave its ambassador in Washington the boot, replacing him with a career diplomat. And a key operative known for his public relations acumen took over one of the highest profile jobs in Mexico’s Foreign Ministry. What is in Trump’s plan? Trump says as president, he would block the estimated $24 billion in remittances that Mexicans in the U. S. send back home until Mexico pays $5 billion to $10 billion for the construction costs of the wall. Once the money is deposited, he says he would allow the flow of remittances to resume to Mexico again. In his campaign memo outlining the plan, Trump writes, ”It’s an easy decision for Mexico. Make a   payment of $5   $10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.” Why did Mexico pull its ambassador from Washington? Mexico’s Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu told Mexico’s El Universal newspaper Tuesday that there has been an ”exacerbated mood” against Mexicans in the U. S. She said there is fear ”that this spirit can grow and overflow and may generate hostilities.” The same day, Ruiz announced the   in Mexico’s U. S. diplomatic staff, presumably to encourage a more aggressive response to counter perceived   sentiment in the U. S. after Trump’s rhetoric. Out is current Ambassador Miguel Basañez Ebergenyi, who had held the top diplomatic post only since September. Basañez, an academic who taught at Tufts University, had taken a quiet approach to Trump’s comments  —   even predicting that the Republican   would soon apologize for making disparaging remarks about Mexicans. Like most Mexican officials until now, Basañez has often said he didn’t want to dignify Trump’s increasingly hostile comments with a response and wanted to stay out of the domestic U. S. political fray. In as new ambassador is Carlos Manuel Sada Solana, a career diplomat who is accustomed to posts in North America. He’s currently consul general in Los Angeles and previously held the same job in New York, Chicago, San Antonio and Toronto. Meanwhile, Paulo Carreño will move from the president’s communication’s staff to become head of North American affairs in the Foreign Ministry. Tasked with improving Mexico’s image abroad, Carreño is   in public relations and is not shy at confronting reporters, especially from the foreign press, when he feels Mexico is not portrayed in a positive light. What is Mexico hoping its new crop of diplomats will achieve?  Mexico wants to protect its image and hit back harder than in the past, and the government appears to be letting the Foreign Ministry take charge of this effort. Mexico will use its 50 U. S. consulates and its embassy to promote the country and the role of Mexicans in America. It is also offering free citizenship workshops at many of those consulates, to help Mexican immigrants become U. S. citizens  —   and voters."
"The Trump campaign will open a Washington, D. C. office next week, part of a larger move the campaign is making toward becoming a more traditional political operation. The plans were first announced last week, but the office opening will come following Donald Trump’s bruising,   loss to Ted Cruz in Wisconsin on Tuesday. The campaign announced that with the D. C. office, it is ”consolidating the functions related to the nomination process,” which convention manager Paul Manafort will oversee. And the campaign said it expects to announce ”several new positions and hires” in the next few weeks. Trump’s increasing emphasis on the nominating process comes amid criticism that star power may no longer be enough to get him a majority of delegates before the convention. ”The nomination process has reached a point that requires someone familiar with the complexities involved in the final stages. I am organizing these responsibilities under someone who has done this job successfully in many campaigns,” Trump said in a press release. Manafort has known Trump for decades and has been a lobbyist and consultant for four decades. He lives, at least part time, in Trump Tower in Manhattan, the Washington Post reported. ”Securing the Republican nomination is an intricate series of steps that requires a comprehensive strategy,” Manafort said in a statement released by the campaign. ”As part of the campaign team, my job is to secure and protect Mr. Trump’s nomination and that is what we will do.” He added that he is ”honored” to work for Trump, who he feels is ”on the verge of an incredible victory.” The campaign has reportedly faced a shakeup recently, having laid off the leader of its data team and dismantled field staff in Ohio and Florida, according to Politico. Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski disputed that report, saying that while some staff were let go, that was the ”nature of a campaign.” He added that the Trump campaign has the ”most cohesive, loyal staff, the most loving staff I have ever had the privilege of working with on a campaign.”"
"At 46, former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee says she’s not very concerned with what people think of her. ”Being in my late 40s has been absolutely freeing and liberating for me,” Bee tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”I’m a married woman with kids. I’m a professional. People just can’t [put me] in a tiny box that makes sense to them, so now I just don’t care that much what people think of me . .. and now I do my own thing.” Bee, who left The Daily Show after more than a decade last April, now works on two TBS shows: She hosts Full Frontal, a   political satire show that puts a feminist perspective on the news, and she is also an executive producer,   and writer for The Detour, a comedy series starring her husband, former Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones. Bee says she feels ”very lucky” to have worked on The Daily Show for as long as she did, but adds that she is also excited to be putting together a show from scratch. ”I knew that there was something else that I wanted to do,” she says. ”It’s very good for me to be creating my own thing.” On finding stories to cover on Full Frontal  We have an incredible research team, and we have great writers and just really motivated, passionate people, so we’re always looking to the cracks and crevices to find something we can talk about, and it’s not hard, believe me. Many of the people who come from small towns, come from places you wouldn’t think. If you read the local newspaper from the town you grew up in, there are treasures they can be absolute treasure troves of interesting stuff, interesting stories to tell. There’s no shortage of interesting stories to tell, is what I’m saying  —   I mean, we’re batting away great stories all the time and putting them on a list for the future. On not passing the stress of running two new shows onto their three young kids, I’m pretty good at doing all my family stuff in the morning, and then the kids go off to school, and then I run to work and work in a really concentrated, really, really focused way, and then I run home from work, and then I just do kid chores and make dinners and do all of that normal stuff. So their routine hasn’t really changed from the way that we’re working. Their personal routines haven’t changed too much. What has changed is that they see our posters in the street, but it still doesn’t impress them  —   which is great. All is as it should be. They still think that we’re loser parents. I think that’s the natural order, and we intend to keep it that way. On how she developed her feminist worldview  My mother’s a feminist. . .. I think that I was steeped in feminism from an early age. It’s just in my DNA. It’s not something we ever really talked about that much or congratulated each other for. It just is part of who I am. I think it’s part of who my daughters are. . .. I also watched female comedians killing it on television every day, because I grew up in the ’70s when you watched TV when you ate dinner. TV was your best friend and your baby sitter, but I would sit and watch The Carol Burnett Show, I Love Lucy, SCTV [Second City TV] Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin  —   there was no shortage of strong female performers making their way in comedy. My mother had strong opinions of things. My grandmother  —   my grandfather left her for another woman when I was a little girl, so she was making her way, she worked when nobody else was working. My   had gotten a divorce in the 1920s and made her way through the world on her own, so it’s just part of my family. On interviewing Texas state Rep. Dan Flynn about abortion  He was very willing to talk to us. He’s passionate about the issue that he’s passionate about. We happen to disagree so strenuously with one another, but he really wanted an opportunity to say his piece. I think we gave him that opportunity. It’s funny, because I feel like people always ask us, ”Why would these people ever agree to be on your show?” All they really want to do is express their point of view, so he knew on some level that we were going to make jokes and that we were absolutely going to disagree, and we did, and it was fine. We both walked into the situation with clear heads, and we walked out in a friendly manner. It wasn’t actually a really tense situation at all, we just literally completely disagree about abortion. We disagree on the facts of abortion, actually. On setting up a ”rape threat” hotline as a way of responding to Internet vitriol  People say horrible things online, so we thought, ”Why don’t we just collect all of those in one place and then we can use them for comedy in the future?” So I think I talked about it maybe on Seth Meyers for the first time, and then mostly people just called because they were curious if it was a place that really existed, but we do occasionally get an interesting voicemail or two. Most of the hatred kind of pours out on Facebook and in social media. . .. We get a fair amount of anger and vitriol. Everybody does  —   I mean, when you’re a public figure, you just get it, no matter what. I think that I get a lot more just pure hatred, not that many rape threats, because I’m 46. Usually people reserve their rape threats for younger women. It’s sickening to even talk about. On her reaction to not being named as Jon Stewart’s successor on The Daily Show, I was not surprised, and also I didn’t really care. . .. [Stewart] announced that he was leaving, [and] a few days after that they picked up The Detour, and then they offered me my own show, so everything kind of happened all at once, which was very lucky, because there was a feeling of panic or tension  —   there’s always a moment where if you’ve done a job for 12 years you think, ”Oh, my God, what now?” But it’s lucky in entertainment to have a job for 12 years. On learning how to say no and to stop being a people pleaser  I’ve learned how to say no. I’m very good at saying ”no” now, but that’s a function of my age, too, because I’m 46 now and I’m in my IDGAF years. Everyone can Google that I won’t say it out loud. I’m not so concerned what people think of me now, and I do think that that’s definitely experience, but it is also age. . .. It has been fantastic. I don’t read what people think of my outfits or my hair I don’t care. I do things to please myself. We do the show to please ourselves. It’s an incredible feeling. I think, and I’m hearing that, that feeling only gets better with age. I look forward to it. I don’t know what I’m going to be when I’m 80  —   I’m going to be nude on a beach   in Ibiza."
"Renewable energy and new technologies that are making   power more reliable are growing rapidly in the U. S. Renewables are so cheap in some parts of the country that they’re undercutting the price of older sources of electricity such as nuclear power. The impact has been significant on the nuclear industry, and a growing number of unprofitable reactors are shutting down. When the first nuclear power plants went online 60 years ago, nuclear energy seemed like the next big thing. In many ways, it lived up to that promise. It turned out to be remarkably safe and reliable and clean. It’s   and is the source of about 20 percent of the country’s electricity. But right from the start, people in the nuclear industry struggled with a big problem: cost. Making nuclear power cheap was the Holy Grail. It never panned out. Nuclear plants keep coming in  . And after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011  —   when three nuclear reactors melted down after an earthquake and tsunami hit  —   companies were forced to spend millions of dollars more on safety equipment to keep older plants operating. ”It would be very difficult for any company to make a decision to try to build a new nuclear plant,” says Mike Twomey, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, which runs nuclear power plants. Entergy has already taken one unprofitable reactor offline in Vermont and plans to close two more plants that are losing money in upstate New York and Massachusetts. In all, 19 nuclear reactors are undergoing decommissioning, of which five have been shut down in the past decade, according to the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The main reason behind the wave of closures is a new generation of cheap,   power plants that has pushed the wholesale price of electricity into the basement. But Mycle Schneider, a nuclear industry analyst, says nuclear also faces growing price pressure from wind and solar. Renewable energy is so cheap in some parts of the U. S. that it’s even undercutting coal and natural gas. ”We are seeing really a radical shift in the competitive markets which leave nuclear power pretty much out in the rain,” Schneider says. Over the past decade, no new nuclear power plants have begun commercial operations in the U. S. the last reactor to start up in the U. S. was in Tennessee in 1996 (another unit at the same plant is expected to come online sometime later this year). There are a handful of new nuclear reactors under construction in the South, where energy markets are still highly regulated. Big power authorities there don’t face the kind of    competition that has revolutionized energy markets in other parts of the country. But even within the nuclear industry itself, a growing number of experts agree that the U. S. has reached a pivot point, where new nuclear power plants are just too expensive. ”We think that the costs of new nuclear right now are not competitive with other   technologies, renewables and storage that we see in the marketplace,” says Joe Dominguez, executive vice president for governmental and regulatory affairs and public policy at Exelon, a nuclear power company that has announced plans to close one of its existing reactors in New Jersey. Three other plants that are losing money in Illinois and upstate New York are also being reviewed for possible closure, Dominguez says. ”Right now we just don’t have any plans on the board to build any new reactors,” he says. Companies like Exelon and Entergy hope state governments will agree to subsidize their existing reactors, paying a premium for   nuclear power in the same way they now subsidize wind and solar. The companies say the steady power generated by nuclear still pays an important role stabilizing the nation’s energy grid. But America’s reactors are aging. The average is now 35 years old. With the new investment going to natural gas and increasingly to wind and solar, the old energy of the future may soon be eclipsed by the new energy of the future."
"Dribs and drabs of research from a few countries around the world have raised concern that diabetes is growing as a cause of death and disability. But the first coordinated global look at the disease, published in The Lancet this week, has fully sounded the alarm. Pooling data from 751 studies involving 4. 4 million adults, researchers estimated that the number of adults with diabetes in 200 countries has nearly quadrupled, from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. And the disease is growing faster in   and   countries than in   countries. The lowest prevalence of diabetes  —   about 5 percent of the population  —   was in northwestern Europe. At the other end of the spectrum, approximately 1 in 4 adults has diabetes in the Pacific islands of Polynesia and Micronesia. American Samoa holds the dubious distinction of the highest rate of diabetes in the world: 30 percent of the adult population. NPR talked with Dr. Majid Ezzati of the School of Public Health at the Imperial College of London, who designed the study and oversaw the research. The interview has been edited for clarity. We hear a lot about the exportation of the worst of the Western diet  —   fast food, soda  —   to developing nations. Is that what’s causing the increase in diabetes around the world? I think that’s an old idea, and overstated. After all, there are features of the diet in the developed world that are good. The role of technology and affluence has been to provide whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables all year round. It would be great if we could export that. The increase in diabetes is a food story, but not necessarily fast food. So as regions of the world climb out of poverty, people eat more of whatever they’d been traditionally eating.  Yes, and obesity goes up. I emphasize that it doesn’t have to be a lot of fast food and commercial food. Eating more of the same foods increases BMI [body mass index]. Calories are calories and carbs are carbs. If they’re eating the white rice that they traditionally ate, but eating more of it, that could be increasing BMI. What else might be causing the increase? The short answer is that we don’t completely know. But one idea is that people who were malnourished, either as fetuses or as young children, and are now eating more and gaining weight, are more susceptible to diabetes. The evidence is accumulating that poor childhood conditions can affect how we produce or use insulin. [Editor’s note: for one study on the possible link between early malnutrition and later diabetes, see this 2013 review article in the Journal of Diabetes Research.] Other than the Pacific Island nations, which areas of the world are the most worrisome? We’ve seen increasing rates of obesity, and diabetes, in North Africa, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, and in parts of the Caribbean and Latin America. And Africa is not a uniform place. We’ve seen BMI going up quickly in West Africa. What can be done to stem the rise in diabetes? Health systems have a role in catching people who are at high risk for diabetes, people call it   and motivating them to change their diet or sometimes using   medications. These are programs like the Diabetes Prevention Program in the United States. Iran, for example, has a highly effective program in finding people at high risk of diabetes. Some of the Pacific Islands are trying to do that. And South Africa is starting to use the same infrastructure it uses to manage HIV to manage early stage diabetes."
"The tiny Samoan islands have among the highest rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes in the world  —   and diet and   health issues have been rising in these Pacific nations since the 1970s. Now 1 in 3 residents of American Samoa suffers from diabetes. Of course, the Samoan islands aren’t the only countries coping with increasing rates of obesity and diabetes. A pair of studies published this month in The Lancet found that rates of diabetes all over the world have gone up by 4 percent since 1980. While about 100 million people around the world had diabetes in 1980, that number quadrupled by 2014. In the Samoan islands, these trends have been especially pronounced. The average Samoan’s weight has shot up  —   and health declined  —   so steeply that these islands have caught the attention of epidemiologists around the world. Why? Some researchers have speculated that genetics are a factor. But Stephen McGarvey, a   of the two Lancet papers and an epidemiologist at Brown University who has spent more than two decades working in the region, says what happened in the Samoas isn’t so different from what’s happening all over the world. Unhealthy, imported foods flooded supermarkets and Samoans developed a taste for cheap fast food. And as these countries’ economies modernized, more and more Samoans started working desk jobs. Cars and buses replaced walking. Because the Samoas are so tiny, these economic and cultural changes took hold especially quickly. ”What’s happening there is really a harbinger for other parts of the world,” McGarvey says. We asked McGarvey to tell us a bit more about what’s happening in the Samoas, and the lessons these islands can teach the rest of the wold. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. How has Samoan diet changed over the past 30 years? Samoans used to  —   and still do  —   grow their own food. Their traditional diet consisted of mostly taro, breadfruit, coconut, bananas and seafood  —   very healthy stuff. But more recently, on top of those foods, people started buying foods that were coming from the outside. And these foods tended to be   foods  —   they’re cheaper and more calorific. A large amount of frozen poultry started coming in from the North American and U. S. industries. At the same time, imported vegetable oil became more commonly and cheaply available. So there was this rise in the number of   establishments where you can buy some cheap fried chicken. And [cheap, really fatty cuts of] frozen lamb started coming in from New Zealand. [Other fatty offcuts, like turkey tails, also flooded in. It was more meat than Samoans were used to consuming.] We hear about the same sort of thing happening in countries like India and Brazil, where economic changes and global trade have brought in unhealthy food.  Absolutely. These changes happened in the Samoas relatively quickly and penetrated rather rapidly because of their small population. In a large place like India or Brazil, it takes a much longer time for people to be exposed to this new nutritional environment that results from globalization. And mind you, in many of these developing nations where obesity and Type 2 diabetes is becoming more of a problem, they are also still dealing with infectious diseases, maternal mortality. In some countries, while obesity is a problem in the richer, urban areas, undernourishment and malnourishment are problems among poorer, rural populations. It’s a much more complicated picture. Are there any lessons that other countries can learn from Samoa? Samoans, and the Samoan governments, now know that they’ve got a problem and they’re working to fix it. I think these countries where the obesity isn’t as severe as it is in Samoa  —   yet  —   need to start recognizing that they still have a problem and start taking proactive steps to address it. There has to be proper nutrition education in schools for children, but adults need to be educated about proper diet and exercise habits as well. And politicians need to get educated, so they can make smart policies around this health issue. What are Samoans doing to address the problem? They’re still in the infancy of developing interventions that are well done from a scientific perspective. But they have tried a few things. Mostly the authorities are thinking of how they can promote local agricultural production of South Pacific vegetables and fruits, and encourage more people to buy and them. Any changes will take a while  —   it’s just hard. Poor people, people who are busy trying to feed everyone in their family and making ends meet, will be drawn to foods that are cheaper and are faster to buy or prepare."
"Prejudices are often deep, obstinate beliefs. You’ve probably noticed this if you’ve ever tried to change someone’s political opinion at a dinner party. But David Fleischer, the director of the Leadership LAB of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, thinks he’s found a way to begin changing people’s prejudices with just a short conversation. He and several collaborators struggled for years to get to this point. ”We brainstormed every idea and tried every idea, overwhelmingly those ideas failed,” he says. And once he thought they had discovered a powerful way to fight prejudice, an enormous scientific fraud perpetrated by other researchers tumbled their progress back a year. He and his colleagues started the effort in 2009, shortly after the Prop 8 constitutional amendment and struck down   marriage in California. ”The LGBT community and our allies were shocked and upset,” Fleischer says. ”Out of that outrage and despair, people wanted to do something very constructive.” He and LGBT Center volunteers began talking to as many people as they could, trying to understand why they lost Prop 8. Fleischer began getting the sense that just talking and listening to people was making them more accepting of   marriage. ”When we were nonjudgmental and vulnerable with them and when we exchanged our lived experiences about marriage and gay people, that’s when we started changing people’s minds,” he says. He calls it ”deep canvassing.” The conversations are short, usually 10 to 20 minutes long. The canvassers don’t try to build rational arguments for why someone should think one way or another. The goal is to share personal stories about times when the voter and the canvasser felt attacked or discriminated against, says Nancy Williams, a volunteer canvasser with the LGBT Center. ”There’s something special about caring about why [people] feel the way they do. You can connect to their values in that way.” Williams says around the time she began volunteering with the LGBT Center, she canvassed a man who didn’t support nondiscrimination protection for transgender children. ”He kept saying high school is hard for everybody. He was thinking as if trans kids don’t have all the other things kids have to deal with  —   on top of being transgender,” Williams says. ”I told him that my father is fighting cancer right now. There were days it was just hard to face that and everything that I was going through with my transition at the time. I felt like I could deal with facing the possibility of losing my dad and I could deal with the possibility of being rejected by the people I loved. But not both.” Williams says the man said he hadn’t considered what that might be like. But he said he’s been bullied himself. That, Williams thinks, might have helped persuade him to be more supportive of nondiscrimination measures. The canvassers thought the conversations were changing people’s minds, but Fleischer says he couldn’t know if it was working without independent verification. He enlisted a graduate student at UCLA named Michael LaCour to see if there was a measurable effect. LGBT Center volunteers went out to canvass hundreds of people. LaCour and an advisor, political scientist Donald Green at Columbia University, published the findings in Science in 2014. The study got a huge amount of attention. But things fell apart when David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, then graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, tried to use LaCour’s methods to study prejudice against transgender people. They, along with Yale statistician Peter Aronow, discovered that LaCour’s work was almost a complete fabrication. Green, who was unaware of the deception, quickly requested a retraction. LaCour denied the misconduct in a statement to The New York Times last year. The news crushed Fleischer. ”That was a real shock,” he says. He called everyone involved with the work and every reporter who had covered the study. ”I needed to be sure people knew that we no longer had evidence. Mike LaCour had not assembled [it]. He had lied to us. Taken advantage of us. And I also wanted to point out to people we were not going to give up.” After the dust settled, Broockman and Kalla went on with their experiment on transgender prejudices. LaCour’s misconduct only made them more determined to do the study for real. ”There were all these volunteers who gave their Saturdays [to do the experiment],” Broockman says. ”We had a certain sense of responsibility.” They sent out surveys to thousands of homes in Miami, asking people to answer questions that included how they felt about transgender people and if they would support legal protection against discrimination for transgender people. Then volunteers from SAVE, an LGBT advocacy organization based in Florida, visited half of the 501 people who responded and canvassed them about an unrelated topic, recycling. Volunteers went to the other half and started the conversations that Fleischer thinks can help change minds. After the canvass, the study participants answered the same questions about transgender people that they had answered before the study, including how positively or negatively they felt towards transgender people on a scale of 0 to 100. Those who had discussed prejudice they’d experienced felt about 10 points more positively toward transgender people, on average. Broockman says that public opinion about gay people has improved by 8. 5 points between 1998 and 2012. ”So it’s about 15 years of progress that we’ve experienced in 10 minutes at the door,” he says. Three months after the canvass, Broockman asked participants to fill out the survey again. They still felt more positively about transgender people than those who had gotten the unrelated canvass. ”[That’s] the moment I backed away from my monitor and said, ’Wow, something’s really unique here,’ ” he says. If the effect persists, Broockman says, the technique could be used to reduce prejudice across society. That doesn’t mean everybody came away feeling more positive about transgender rights. Kalla says some people came away from the canvasser feeling very differently and some people not so much at all. And an uptick in 10 points on a feeling scale of 0 to 100 doesn’t sound like an epiphany. There wasn’t, however, any indication that those who started out with very negative feelings about transgender people were particularly resistant to the conversation. Broockman and Kalla published the results in Science on Thursday. It is a landmark study, according to Elizabeth Paluck, a psychologist at Princeton University who was not involved with the work. ”They were very transparent about all the statistics,” she says. ”It was a really ingenious test of the change. If the change was at all fragile, we should have seen people change their minds back [after three months].” There are very few tests of prejudice reduction methods, and Paluck says this suggests the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s approach is actually far more effective than previous efforts, like TV ads. There might be a couple of reasons for that. Broockman, now an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford University, says asking someone questions    like, ”What are the reasons you wouldn’t support protections for transgender people, or what does this make you think about?” gets them to begin thinking hard about the issue. ”Burning the mental calories to do effortful thinking about it, that leaves a lasting imprint on your attitudes,” he says. Empathy may also be a factor. ”Canvassers asked people to talk about a time they were treated differently. Most people have been judged because of gender, race or some other issue. For many voters, they reflect on it and they realize that’s a terrible feeling they don’t want anyone to have,” Broockman says. The study’s conclusions differ from the conclusions of the LaCour’s falsified study from 2014 in one crucial way, Broockman says. LaCour claimed that there was only an effect from the deep canvass if it came from someone who was LGBT. ”We found   allies had a lasting effect as well,” Broockman says. That means canvassing is much more about conversational skill rather than identity. It will take more studies and replications of this study before scientists know exactly what is influencing people’s opinions. But for now, the findings are a relief to David Fleischer. ”To go into it with high hopes and then get this really bad piece of news, then to go forward anyway and have the accurate results? What a roller coaster of emotions,” he says. The technique might be used to target any societal prejudice  —   or be used to increase prejudice, Broockman acknowledges. But even if that happens, he says, it at least will encourage people to think deeply about the issues they’re going to vote on."
"A new era for living in space may be about to start. A prototype habitat is headed to the International Space Station for a   trial. What makes the module unique is it’s launched folded up, and it’s inflated to its full size once in orbit. The idea for inflatables began at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the 1990s. The space agency was trying to figure out how to get astronauts to Mars, without the crew going crazy living in a tiny capsule for months on end. Kriss Kennedy was a NASA space architect working on the problem. It essentially boiled down to this: How do you pack a large living structure into a small rocket cargo space? The solution: inflatables. ”Well, there are several advantages for inflatable habitats one is you can package it in a smaller volume,” says Kennedy, and then expand it once you get into space. The inflatable is not like a balloon. Folded up, it just looks like a cylinder. Expanded, it grows upward and outward so it looks more like a watermelon. It’s made of multiple layers of Kevlar and other materials resistant to micrometeorites. And even though it’s inflated, Kennedy says you shouldn’t think of it as squishy. ”It’s very rigid,” he says. ”Once you get even a partial pressure it’s extremely hard, as hard as aluminum.” But as enthusiastic as some at NASA were for this new approach to building space habitats, Congress wasn’t sufficiently impressed, and in 2000 legislators told NASA to kill the program. Enter billionaire Robert Bigelow, a man who made his fortune in budget hotels. He saw a future for inflatable space habitats, maybe even space hotels. He got the rights to NASA’s inflatable technology and created Bigelow Aerospace. After more than a decade of development, the company has produced BEAM, Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, and NASA has agreed to attach it to the International Space Station and see how it performs. Folded up, BEAM is about 6 feet by 6 feet. Inflated, it’s about 12 feet by 10 feet, approximately the size of a small RV. Jason Crusan is in charge of BEAM for NASA. He says when it arrives at the station, astronauts will remove it from the cargo rocket with the station’s robotic arm and plug into a node on the station. Once it’s securely attached, the astronauts will start to inflate it. ”It could be done as fast as four minutes,” says Crusan. ”We’re not going to do it that fast. We’ll do it over the course of several hours.” It’s not that expanding it too fast might make it pop. BEAM’s layered design won’t let that happen. He says you could poke a big hole in an outer layer ”and it will leak, obviously. but it’s not going to puncture like a balloon.” While it’s attached to the space station, the plan is for the crew to go inside the habitat from time to time to see how it’s performing. Crusan says there are no plans at the moment for the crew to have a sleepover. BEAM will be attached to the space station for two years. After that it will be detached and allowed to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Crusan says NASA now sees a future for inflatables, and it’s the same future as in the 1990s: getting humans to Mars. ”We do want to look at the use of expandables in what we call our Mars transit architecture,” he says. What goes around comes around."
"Poaching and destruction of habitat have decimated wild tiger populations around the world, especially in Cambodia. There are no longer any breeding tigers left in the wild in that country, and the species is considered ”functionally extinct” there, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. Cambodia, in coordination with the WWF, has launched a bold strategy to reintroduce tigers to the country’s Eastern Plains landscape with the hopes of having more than 25 individual tigers in 10 years. The plan, which involves importing two male tigers and five to six female tigers, will cost between $20 million and $50 million, according to The Guardian. The tigers will most likely come from India, said Un Chakrey, a communications manager for the conservation group   according to The New York Times. Citing a 2015 study showing that ”all mainland tigers are genetically and morphologically similar,” the WWF explains that ”the Bengal tiger, Malayan tiger, Indochinese tiger and Amur tiger have been reclassified as one subspecies: the ’Continental tiger. ’” The foundation adds: ”This makes    translocation of tigers from the Indian subcontinent (India or Nepal) the best source for Cambodia’s tiger reintroduction.” The successful revival would mean not only a healthier and more balanced ecosystem, but it could also boost Cambodia’s ecotourism, bringing more revenue to the national economy. Plus, if tigers make a comeback in Cambodia, it could bode well for the global effort to increase tiger populations. The WWF says Cambodia ”plays a critical role as one of the 13 tiger range countries essential for global tiger conservation.” It adds: ”Cambodia plays an important role in Tx2  —   the global goal to double wild tiger numbers by the year 2022. This is one of the most innovative and ambitious conservation goals ever set that has managed to halt the sharp decline in wild tiger numbers for the first time in history. The tiger reintroduction in the Eastern Plains offers a major opportunity for Cambodia to reach [its] national commitment towards Tx2, as well as contributing significantly to the global goal of doubling tiger numbers.” The tigers are scheduled to be released into the wild starting in 2019, according to the plan."
"South Korea is a place where appearance really matters. The country’s cosmetic surgery prowess is known the world over. It’s one of the world’s top plastic surgery markets, and by some estimates, more cosmetic procedures are performed here per capita than anywhere else on the planet  ” mostly facial enhancements such as Botox injections, eyelid jobs or nose jobs. But lately, a few doctors have been putting their highly sought skills to use in a different way. They’re helping North Korean defectors erase the scars from painful, abusive pasts. ”There are many ways a doctor can contribute to society. One of them is donating talent,” says Dr. Hong   chief surgeon at Metro Plastic Surgery in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district. He’s part of a    pro bono program pairing Seoul’s top surgeons with defectors who want to remove the scars that are holding them back from a full life in South Korea. Dozens of plastic surgeons from Gangnam are taking part. So far, the program has helped two dozen defectors. Some 40 more are on waiting lists. All 28, 000 defectors who live in the South are eligible to apply. Gangnam is Seoul’s Beverly Hills, at least when it comes to plastic surgery clinics. You can find 500 cosmetic surgery centers within a single square mile, often stacked on top of one another in multistory buildings. On one recent day, Hong prepares to remove a long scar that bisects a patient’s stomach. The procedure is routine, but unique because the doctor is charging nothing for it. The patient, a woman named Choi   sustained the scar after being injured in a car accident in North Korea 10 years ago. She’s felt ashamed about going to Korean spas or swimming pools ever since. ”I don’t hope to return to the way I used to look,” she says. But ”I’m a woman and I suffered because of my wound. So I am excited about having more confidence.” Kim   a police captain in Seoul, started the plastic surgery program in 2014 through her work with defectors. Police departments in South Korea are charged with helping provide services to former North Koreans after they resettle in the South. ”You have to manage and care for North Korean defectors and make sure they’re protected,” Kim says. She found that many bore scars from abuse or accidents that happened while they were living in or escaping from the North. Those scars can make assimilation or finding work in South Korea especially tough. Job applications must come with photos. Subway stations are fitted with   mirrors for primping. High school students commonly get nose or eye jobs as graduation presents. It’s hard enough to fit in as a South Korean. For the North Koreans who resettle here, distracting scars can be automatically disqualifying. So Kim teamed up with Seoul’s plastic surgeons who wanted to donate their talent and time. ”We would help them get rid of tattoos, burn marks, scars or any sort of abnormal parts of their body,” she says. Joo Eunjin, a woman who’d been sold by traffickers to an abusive Chinese farmer when she was just 16, was the the program’s first patient. ”At the height of the North Korean famine in the   everyone was starving,” she says, alternating between Mandarin Chinese and Korean. ”Some guys who later turned out to be human traffickers lured me onto a train.” Now in her   Joo lived in China for more than a decade before making it to Seoul. ”I tried to escape again and again,” she says. ”Every time I tried to escape, the Chinese man got really angry. He would beat me up and burned my chest with cigarettes. And the top of my head, here.” She parts her hair at the center to show the place where cigarettes had burned her scalp. After escaping to the South in 2009, Joo met Capt. Kim, and her story inspired Kim to find a way to help. Doctors first gave Joo a hair transplant to cover the   bald spot on her head, and then, through multiple surgeries, gradually removed the burn marks from her chest. Now she can go unnoticed in South Korean society, where sticking out stings. One of Kim’s goals in launching the plastic surgery program was to ease North Koreans’ transitions into their new lives. ”I want to show that defectors have resettled into South Korea well,” she says, ”and they’ve been cared for warmly.” As far as Joo is concerned, Kim has succeeded. ”I’m thankful that after the surgery, I was able to walk around confidently,” Joo says. ”But more important than the surgery was the love I got from the police officers. In China, I was always scared of the police. Here it was the police who gave me love.” Haeryun Kang contributed to this story. "
"Africa’s not the only corrupt continent. That message is the silver lining for Africans in the Panama Papers scandal  —   a collection of documents linking 143 politicians (and their family members and cronies) to outrageous sums of stolen cash hidden in a   network of offshore bank accounts and shell companies. Yes, Africans are named in the the Panama Papers. Some 18 public officials, ranging from the former president of Sudan, Ahmed Ali   to the son of former U. N. secretary general Kofi Annan have been linked to the scandal. It sounds like more bad news for a region that’s often characterized as incredibly corrupt. But there was plenty of others who were named in the Papers, from British Prime Minister David Cameron’s late father to Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi. So Carl Manlan, an executive secretary at the Africa Against Ebola Solidarity Trust who’s from the Ivory Coast, says there’s a quiet sigh of relief among Africans: ”Now there’s evidence that corruption is an international problem, not just an African problem.” Manlan, whose job is to drum up financial resources from African countries for global health programs, spoke to Goats and Soda from Johannesburg, South Africa, about the impact of the Panama Papers  —   and what he’d do if he had access to some of the stolen money. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It’s funny how the world seems to almost delight in pointing out corruption in Africa. But the Panama Papers show that this is a problem everywhere. It’s shifted the conversation. We can no longer perceive that corruption is just an African problem or blame one continent or one group of people for being responsible. It’s not just people in the public office [who are guilty of corruption]  —   we’re looking at private individuals and corporations, too. Have the Papers changed the way Africans view corruption?  People expected that some individuals in the public office would take money away from the system. But the Panama Papers show us we need to look at hard data [to find out who’s actually taking the money]. What good would data do?  Africans are probably more affected [by corruption] given the need for resources to finance transformation. [Data would help us] ask our government more questions. People are becoming more aware of the impact of corruption and how much it actually costs Africa. For example, illicit financial flows [illegal movements of money from one country to the other] costs Africa approximately $50 billion [double the amount of development aid that Africa receives]. The Panama Papers revealed that a company in Uganda avoided $400 million in taxes in an oil deal. That represents more than the country’s annual health budget. Does that upset citizens?  What does $400 million mean in someone’s daily life when they cannot even get $2 a day? People don’t understand what it means that $400 million disappeared. We need to translate those numbers to the common man. How many people would have been treated for HIV? The treatment is about $100 a year, per person. For $400 million, that’s a lot of people you can put on treatment. Any examples of countries trying to help the ”common man” understand their budgets?  Most countries are trying, driven by civil society, to present their [national] budgets in a way that makes it easy for people to understand. South Africa has the People’s Guide to the Budget, which shows, at the government level, a willingness to assure that each individual can understand how tax money is being spent. What do you think rich people do with all that cash? It seems like they’re only ever spending it on real estate in London or New York.  Maybe one day when I have that kind of money I’ll be able to answer your question. OK, let’s pretend you have the money. If you had $2 billion today, what would you do with it? I would go to Ghana and build a plant to transform cocoa into all the different finished products that we have today, like cocoa butter. If we can employ Ivorians and Ghanaians [the world’s leading producers of cocoa beans] in that industry, then we can talk about the future for the continent. But as long as we’re not creating jobs, based on the natural resources we have, it’s a waste."
"Sardines, herring and other small fish species are the foundation of the marine food web  —   they’re essential food for birds, marine mammals and other fish. But globally, demand for these   forage species has exploded, with many going to feed the livestock and fish farming industries. Some of these species are already heavily fished, and it will take time for them to recover. But other forage species have not yet been commercially targeted. And this week, the U. S. government passed measures  —   backed by environmentalists as well as fishermen  —   to protect these critical fish and invertebrate species in waters off the U. S. West Coast before they’re overfished. A rule passed Monday by the National Marine Fisheries Service makes it illegal for commercial fishermen to develop new fisheries for hundreds of forage species unless scientists have first determined that targeting them will have no negative impacts on the marine ecosystem, existing fisheries and fishing communities. Forage species include such creatures as lanternfishes, Pacific saury, silversides, eulachon, surf smelt and neon flying squid. Some of these species have hardly been fished at all. They may live in deep water far from shore and are relatively absent from public awareness. ”Just because people haven’t heard of a lot of these species yet, it’s really only a matter of time and economics before it becomes viable to put out huge nets that catch the entire base of our food web,” Geoff Shester, California campaign director with the group Oceana, says in an interview. Other forage fish species are already in trouble. Pacific sardines are at their lowest numbers in decades. Pacific herring have also declined. In the waters off Peru, the anchoveta has been heavily fished. Shester says demand for forage species, which are potentially easy targets due to their tendency to gather in dense schools, is growing as aquaculture and livestock industries expand. A study published last year in Reviews in Fisheries Science  Aquaculture reported that aquaculture production doubled from 2000 to 2012, when about 55 million tons of fish and crustaceans were reared on farms. These animals rely heavily on fishmeal and oil, and in 2012, about 18 million tons of   seafood was rendered into these products, according to the report. ”The demand for fish oil and fishmeal is going through the roof,” Shester says. The new rule comes on the heels of two similar initiatives, both passed in 2009. One prohibits targeted commercial fishing for West Coast krill, an important marine food source for which fishing interest has rapidly grown in other parts of the ocean. Another law limits commercial fishing in parts of the Arctic Ocean as global warming melts sea ice and makes the region accessible to vessels. Yvonne deReynier, senior resource management specialist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, says lanternfishes are one of the most ecologically important groups of fishes that will benefit from the new protections. Lanternfishes, also called myctophids, may be the most abundant vertebrate group on the planet in terms of biomass, or weight. According to a report by Oceana, the 246 species of myctophids in the ocean represent about   of the biomass, or weight, of all deep sea fishes. But large natural abundance of lanternfishes and other forage species doesn’t necessarily buffer them against overfishing. ”We don’t know what the effects of fishing on these species could be in 50 years, but we aren’t taking any chances,” says Anna Weinstein, marine program director for Audubon California, one of the groups that supported the restrictions. She says saury and neon flying squid have already become subjects of commercial fishing interest in other nations. ”So this action couldn’t have come at a better time,” Weinstein says. The forage fish protections affect the band of water between 3 and 200 miles from shore off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington  —   an area covering about 280, 000 square miles. Weinstein says the rule will have a wide array of   benefits for fishermen, marine mammals and seabirds. A great deal of conservation effort and money, she says, has already been focused on protecting islands where birds like albatrosses, puffins and shearwaters breed. Now, she says, their key food sources are protected, too. Scientists around the world have endorsed the idea of protecting important forage species before they become exploited. A 2012 report from a group of 13 scientists called the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force called for paying closer attention to the vulnerabilities of forage fishes and how overfishing these species can negatively impact many larger species that prey on them. According to the report, titled Little Fish, Big Impact, overfishing has contributed to the declines of the Peruvian anchoveta, Chesapeake Bay menhaden and other ecologically critical species. The authors call for setting lower catch limits for important forage species while boosting the minimum biomass that must be left in the water. Oceana’s Shester says the new policy is long overdue and that many overfishing crises, including the current collapse of the Pacific sardine, could have been avoided if fishery regulators had taken a more precautionary approach to management years ago. ”With Pacific sardines, the fishery’s managers waited until numbers were at 10 percent,” Shester says. ”We saw warning signs that the fishery was collapsing five years ago, but only when it had collapsed did we do anything.” Protecting forage species now, he says, doesn’t put them   forever. ”It just means that we need to take a step back before we proceed and start catching them,” Shester says. ”It puts the burden of proof on the fishermen to show beforehand that they aren’t going to harm the ecosystem if they catch these species, and only then can they put nets in the water.” Alastair Bland is a writer based in San Francisco who covers food, agriculture and the environment."
"We’re catching up on the news from northwest Oklahoma, where a massive wildfire continues to rage in Woodward County. Video emerged earlier this week of two KWTV News 9 journalists dramatically rescuing a road grader operator from the flames. You can see the fire moving closer to the road grader, as the operator rolls it back and forth, trying to free it from a ditch. ”He needs to get out. . .. He can’t get out. Come on, guy!” Amy Castor tells Val Castor (who happens to be her husband) while they watch the man struggle. Then, they pull their car forward just as the fire engulfs the grader, and the operator sprints inside. ”My ears just about burned on that one,” Val exclaims as they peel away from the blaze. As of Thursday afternoon, the Oklahoma Forestry Services says the fire  —   which they have named 350 Complex  —   is 20 percent contained and spans 57, 440 acres, or nearly 90 square miles. They say arcing power lines started the fire. The Forestry Service says that on Wednesday afternoon, ”four separate fires merged into one large wildfire.” The service plans to conduct a damage assessment today. Rachel Hubbard of member station KOSU tells our Newscast unit that along with grasslands, the fire has burned several structures. Multiple smaller fires are also burning around the state, the Forestry Services say."
"Several states and cities around the country have instructed their officials to avoid nonessential travel to Mississippi, in reaction to that state’s recent passage of a law protecting those who deny services to LGBT people because of religious beliefs. The bans are similar to those enacted in response to a controversial LGBT law in North Carolina. Meanwhile, the business backlash has been relatively muted, compared with recent faceoffs in North Carolina and Georgia. The law in question, the ”Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” protects three specific religious beliefs: that marriage is between a man and a woman, that sex should only happen within such a marriage, and that a person is male or female based on their genetics and anatomy at birth. Under the law, anyone who denies certain services to someone based on one of those beliefs can’t be punished. Supporters say it’s a way of protecting individuals with religious objections to homosexuality from ”discrimination” from the state  —   that is, any possible punishment administered by the state government. Opponents say the law amounts to the state declaring its support for open discrimination against LGBT people. Since the bill was signed into law on Tuesday, five states  —   Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington  —   and three cities  —   San Francisco, Santa Fe and Seattle  —   have banned their officials from any   nonessential travel to Mississippi. ”We cannot allow this injustice to go unanswered,” Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said in a statement. ”When the rights of some Americans are threatened, it is the responsibility of all Americans to stand in opposition to those discriminatory acts.” ”This is 2016. America is better than this,” Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said on Twitter. Mayor Javier Gonzales of Santa Fe and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York both called the law ”hateful,” while Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said it was ”rooted in backwards thinking and backwards values.” Some business groups have also spoken out against the bill  —   but their opposition has been far more subdued than that from state and city leaders. The Mississippi Manufacturer’s Association, for instance, had previously called the bill ”troubling” and called for Gov. Phil Bryant to veto it. But once the bill was passed, The Associated Press reports, the MMA’s response was muted: ”The Mississippi Manufacturers Association’s position continues to reflect the concerns manufacturers have with this bill and its potential to conflict with their policies of diversity and inclusion. However, the MMA respects the wishes of the legislature and governor,” the group said. Several large businesses have spoken out against the law more forcefully  —   including ATT, Tyson Foods, MGM Resorts, Nissan, Toyota and Levi Strauss  —   but none has threatened to stop doing business in the state. That’s a noticeable contrast to the response in other states, where pointed reactions from big business have been celebrated by LGBT advocates and decried as ”economic blackmail” by conservative groups. In North Carolina, the governor recently signed a   bathroom bill into law  —   blocking cities from creating legal protections for LGBT people and mandating that trans people use the bathrooms of their gender as assigned at birth. Paypal canceled plans to establish an operations center in Charlotte, which the company says would have created more than 400 jobs, and the NBA has discussed the possibility of moving the 2017   game out of Charlotte. In Georgia, the legislature passed a ”religious liberties” bill criticized by LGBT advocates. Disney and its Marvel affiliate threatened to stop filming in the state, and Salesforce, a   company, suggested it would move a planned conference out of Atlanta. The state’s Republican governor vetoed the bill. One possible explanation for the disparate reactions is that Mississippi  —   by some measures the poorest state in the country  —   has a different relationship with big American businesses. As the AP puts it: ”Mississippi, with a   economy, no Fortune 500 company headquarters and little technology employment, could be less vulnerable than other states to major corporations exerting economic pressure.” Meanwhile, Tennessee and South Carolina are both currently considering similarly controversial bills. The Tennessee bill  —   which has passed the state House and is waiting for Senate approval of a language change  —   allows counselors and therapists to refuse to treat anyone whose behaviors conflict with the provider’s religious beliefs. The bill says no one can be prosecuted or penalized for that, but does require them to refer clients to someone who will treat them. In South Carolina, a bill similar to the one in North Carolina  —   blocking local jurisdictions from passing ordinances that permit trans people to use the bathroom of their choice  —   has been introduced into the state Senate."
"Oh, American Idol. You were too good for this world. OK, maybe not too good. Maybe too rooted in people voting via telephone calls. When the show, which concludes its run Thursday night, started in June 2002, the first publicly available iPhone was almost five years away. Imagine starting a show today where you asked people interested in pop music to use a phone to dial a   number. You might as well ask them to vote by waving a fountain pen at a dodo. Sure, text and online voting came along later, but at the outset, it was audience engagement by telephone call. That says something about just how long this show hung on. And on. Tonight’s battle between La’Porsha Renae and Trent Harmon will be its last. The keys to the show’s   success? For one thing, it was different (at the time). It offered nasty (but often right) Simon Cowell at one end of the scale and sweet (but sometimes hard to parse) Paula Abdul at the other, with    (but extraneous) Randy Jackson in the middle. There was, at first, a strange thrill in seeing people’s dreams dashed, as if we were all gradually reclaiming every moment we’d spent listening to performances we didn’t think were very good from people who seemed to . .. well, who seemed to have whatever you would call the opposite problem from not knowing your own strength. But had it just been a chance to gang up on moderately talented dreamers, it would have been rapidly supplanted by YouTube commenting. It has always been my theory that the key to Idol’s success lay in the notoriously dastardly practice known in psychology as intermittent reinforcement. I think of it informally as ”the way to make rats go mad,” but that’s not really right: In this case, what it means is that you usually didn’t hear particularly great performances, but every now and then, something really special would happen. And that’s how they got you. At least that’s how they got me. So much of it was so bad  —   more precisely, so forgettable  —   but then creativity or talent or both would peek out through the clouds, and you’d think, ”I’d buy that record.” Or, just as often if not more often, you’d think, ”You are probably too good for this.” Perhaps you have your favorite contestants if you were a viewer I certainly have mine. But if we start arguing about that, we’ll be here all day, because unlike American Idol, fighting with strangers about the quality of the work of third parties you’ve never met will always be in fashion. The more it came to light that winning wasn’t all that important (other finishers often went on to bigger careers than winners) the less essential the results shows felt, and the less essential the entire competitive element felt. It seemed more and more like a   talent show, and as a   talent show, again, it was competing with every Vine, every YouTube video, and eventually every other talent show. It was a hit, then a phenomenon, then a veteran, and then a bit of a cultural afterthought, even as it hung in with numbers of live viewers that any network would be happy to have. And then, inevitably, it came time for it to cough its final melismatic cough and begin its final, overwrought,   farewell season. As with people, some shows deserve obituaries that say, in effect, ”Lived well, lived long, died of natural causes.” And, in this case  —   though this is rarely true in people  —   ”Is survived by, among others, Little Big Shots with Steve Harvey.”"
"I first met Tess Johnston in the late 1990s in a yellow, stucco apartment building where she lived in Shanghai’s former French Concession. As was her habit, she dropped the key from her   window and I let myself in. Her drafty apartment was crammed with books and street maps. Over tea, Johnston, then in her late 60s, regaled me with her latest adventures, rushing through the city’s back alleys to photograph old   villas before they succumbed to sledge hammers. ”There are heartbreaking times when we get there too late,” she said, curled up beneath an afghan with her dachshund, ChaCha, to ward off the city’s damp, winter chill. Recently, I stopped by Johnston’s latest apartment to say goodbye. She is now 84 and has been limping along on tourist visas for several years. Next month, after more than three decades, she’ll move back to the U. S. and settle in Washington, D. C. ”My friends mostly have left,” said Johnston, surrounded by boxes stacked three high. ”You know when it’s time to go.” Johnston, a retired U. S. Foreign Service officer, built a second career documenting and trying to preserve Shanghai’s voluminous stock of colonial architecture, which was fast coming down as China’s economy took off. If you wanted to know anything about the city’s built European heritage, you had to buy Johnston’s signature 1993 coffee table book, A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai, with photographs by Chinese photographer Er Dongqiang. It was the first of its kind in decades and revived interest in something that had been neglected or ignored for most of China’s  . When Johnston leaves, she will take with her hundreds of history books and pamphlets she’s collected over the years, many of which will end up at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the Royal Asiatic Society Library here in Shanghai. As we chatted in her apartment, Johnston gently leafed through the yellowed pages of her ”treasures,” Shanghai telephone directories that date to 1921. She used them to find out who lived in the city’s old villas and apartments. Foreign children who’d grown up in Shanghai during the colonial era often contacted her, asking for help finding their childhood homes. In one instance, she received a call from a Jewish man whose family had fled the pogroms in Russia for Shanghai. He described his street, building and apartment number. Then, Johnston realized: ”I’m standing on the balcony of his apartment. I get goosebumps. Just think, he picks me out of a list of people who can help him. We’ve since become good friends.” To appreciate why Johnston has devoted so much time to documenting the architecture of this era, just glance out her   balcony window. On one corner stands a Russian Orthodox church built in 1931. Painted white, it has five blue domes topped with polished brass tips  —   or finials  —   as Johnston insists I call them. ”When I first came here, it was a motorcycle repair shop, so there was grease all over the floor,” she says. ”At one time, it was a nightclub called The Four Apostles. Imagine the insult of that!” Now, it sits empty, neighbors say, but at least it’s still there. In the distance stands the   Grosvenor House, an Art Deco apartment building from the early 1930s. The building tapers like a layer cake providing penthouse apartments with grand terraces overlooking the city. The building is now part of the   Jin Jiang Hotel. Shanghai’s architecture ranges from columned,   banks that line the Bund, a riverfront that resembles the Thames, to Spanish colonial villas with   balconies and   roofs. This eclectic mix springs from the city’s rich and tumultuous past. After China lost the First Opium War in 1842, it ceded control of Shanghai’s urban core to Western powers. The British, French, Americans and Russians rebuilt the city in their own image. In the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai was one of the most dynamic and cosmopolitan places on the globe. In the decades following the Communist   in 1949, most of the city’s old European buildings fell into disrepair. Multiple families subdivided old French villas. As recently as the late 1990s, store fronts along the Bund were piled high with old furniture and blanketed in dust. Laundry hung from the windows in the old domed Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank along the river. ”Most of these buildings were in terrible shape,” recalls Tina Kanagaratnam, who landed here in 1997. ”They were still incredibly beautiful, but nobody valued them.” The next year, Kanagaratnam, a Singaporean businesswoman, helped found Historic Shanghai, a local heritage society, with Johnston and Kanagaratnam’s husband, Patrick Cranley. Kanagaratnam says Johnston’s books were the first to educate people about and promote the old buildings. ”You did walk around going: ’What is this? ’” Kanagaratnam recalled. ”Why does it look like it comes from London? And Tess’s book would tell you. I think in some ways, she gave Shanghai back its history.” Shanghai still has more than a thousand   buildings remaining and is the best preserved city in mainland China. Kanagaratnam says Johnston’s work is a big reason why. Johnston first came to work at the U. S. consulate in Shanghai in 1981. Back then, she says, the city’s tallest building was just 22 stories. When Johnston departs in April, she’ll leave behind a city with three skyscrapers taller than the Empire State Building. Johnston says her greatest contribution was documenting Shanghai before China’s economic boom transformed it. ”I’m grateful I was here and could see it as it was,” she said as the afternoon light cast a warm glow on the street below. ”Just to capture one small view of it before any of it went.”"
"He asked for $7 million to fight Zika. He got a few hundred thousand dollars. That’s the story that Jailson Correia tells. He’s the health secretary for Recife, the city with the most cases of brain damage in infants linked to Zika. The virus began sweeping through Brazil last fall. In November, concerned about the scope of the outbreak, he asked the federal government for help. What they gave was a drop in the bucket. Why so stingy? Because Zika isn’t the only emergency in Brazil. Two other   viruses are spiking: dengue and chikungunya. Meanwhile, the country is going through an economic and political crisis as well, facing one of the worst recessions in its history. Its president is under attack. So health workers and officials have to scramble to do as much as they can with limited resources and a vacuum of power at the top. ”It was disappointing,” Correia says of the allocation. ”But it did not freeze us.” From the top down, leaders and workers in the health field are improvising solutions. Correia says the city started using emergency funds destined for other things. That helped. But then, in the past few months, the political crisis blew up. President Dilma Rousseff is now in the process of being impeached. Her health secretary  —   the man coordinating the country’s response to the Zika virus  —   will probably be replaced in the next few weeks because his party withdrew from the government. Correia sighs at the flood of bad news. ”We’d love to have a situation where we’d face one crisis and not all these crises at the same time,” he says. But they don’t. So they are doing what they can to cope. Correia showed me around the Zika situation room in his office. Charts, maps and lists paper the walls. The data is updated regularly  —   and in a few weeks will all be digital, he says. ”We are now seeing things getting a little more stable,” he says. ”We understand a little bit more what is going on. We start to have the capacity to plan and predict better than we used to have.” And what’s going on is this: New cases of microcephaly are dramatically down. Last November, Recife registered 125 cases. But since the beginning of this year, the numbers have hovered around 25 a month. Correia says the decline was expected: Women giving birth this spring would have become pregnant during the cooler winter period when there were fewer mosquitoes around to transmit Zika. The lull has allowed doctors to start to get a handle on the situation. At the AACD (Association for the Assistance of Children with Deficiencies) medical center in Recife, doctors Ana Van Der Linden and her daughter, Vanessa, are leading a study of microcephaly. They were the two doctors who first flagged the surge in birth defects in their city. The   have been working on the issue ever since. On a single day, the medical center saw 116 mothers and babies with suspected microcephaly linked to Zika. They’ve come to get the microcephaly diagnosis confirmed. It’s part of a national process: Brazil is investigating over 4, 000 suspected cases of   microcephaly. Dr. Ana Van Der Linden says the cases in their state are being examined one by one. So far   microcephaly has been confirmed in about half of the babies. The rest, says her daughter, had been misdiagnosed. Dr. Vanessa Van Der Linden says that after seeing so many cases, the   related ones are now very easily recognizable: ”When you see a CT scan, we know it’s Zika. It’s a pattern [of damage] that is specific for these patients.” I ask the doctors whether political and financial instability in the country has affected what they are doing. They acknowledge what’s really holding the whole system together is that doctors and officials like the health secretary are coming up with ways to make things work. Last week, for example, one of the microcephalic infants was very ill, suffering repeated convulsions. He had to be hospitalized. Dr. Ana Van Der Linden says many of the children with   brain damage are developing an extreme form of epilepsy that’s treated with a particular medication called Sabril. With this drug most of them improve, she says. But it’s expensive  —   about $50 a box. Most families can’t afford it. The government is supposed to provide it for free, but there are long delays in getting the medication. So both doctors have started hoarding it whenever they come across a box, so they can hand it out to the mothers who really need it, Dr. Ana Van Der Linden gave the mother of that hospitalized baby two of the four boxes she had in her stash, basically saving his life. But it’s a   solution to a   problem."
"A    atheist law student has been killed in Bangladesh. The attack follows a string of murders last year targeting outspoken advocates of secularism. Nazimuddin Samad, a student at Jagannath University, was hacked and shot on Wednesday night while he was walking in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, The Associated Press reports. Multiple attackers, who were reportedly riding on a motorcycle, have not been identified. They escaped while praising Allah, according to the news service. Samad was an outspoken atheist who criticized radical Islam and promoted secularism on his Facebook page, the AP writes. It adds: ”A supporter of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s secular Awami League party, Samad also took part in the movement that successfully pushed for prosecutors to have more scope for going after suspected war criminals.” The Dhaka Tribune describes him as an activist with that movement, which is called Ganajagaran Mancha. The perpetrators and the motive haven’t been identified by police, the BBC reports. Last year, at least four secular bloggers were hacked to death in Bangladesh and a publisher who worked with one of those bloggers was stabbed to death. After one of those murders, the editor of the Dhaka Tribune, Zafar Sobhan, spoke to NPR’s Robert Siegel about the rising tensions between secularists and Islamists in Bangladesh. ”Recently, over the last couple of years, we have had war crimes trials in Bangladesh. This is to do with our War of Independence in 1971,” Sobhan said, referring to the trials that Ganajagaran Mancha had successfully advocated for. ”Most of the people who have been put on trial are Islamists . .. who were collaborating with the Pakistan occupation army back in 1971. Now, war crimes trials are very important. However, I think the downside is that they have been painted as a movement against religious people, against Islamists. ”So I think as a result, those who are of a religious bent feel targeted. I think they feel as though they are on the defensive. And so they have decided to step up their opposition and step up their campaign of terror and violence.” The government of Bangladesh  —   which is officially secular  —   has been criticized for failing to protect prominent secularists. Last May, Rafida Ahmed, the widow of one of the bloggers, spoke to NPR’s Rachel Martin about the attack. Ahmed was injured in the attack that killed her husband. ”You can do very little when your elected government doesn’t give you any support, especially when these kind of brutal murders are happening,” she said. ”The government has stayed completely quiet about this. The prime minister called my    privately and tried their best to keep it a secret so that nobody knows that they have sympathized with us at all. ”The prime minister’s son . .. gave an interview to [the press]. Pretty much said that they are walking a fine line, and they’re scared. They don’t want to side with the atheists,” Ahmed said. After the attack on Samad, the director of public policy at the Center for Inquiry, a U. S.  secular advocacy group, called the murder ”heartbreaking and maddening.” ”The government of Bangladesh must do much more to protect its own people from marauding Islamist killers,” CFI’s Michael De Dora said in a statement. ”These murders keep happening because they are allowed to happen.”"
"Last month, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed a law imposing new limitations on abortion. And since then, women have been sending Pence a message. Well, a lot of messages  —   about their menstrual flow, and their cramps, and their birth control, and their tampon discomfort, and their bloating, and their menopause. It’s part of an effort called Periods for Pence. A local news channel contacted the woman behind the effort it says she wishes to remain anonymous and that she started the Facebook page because she felt the new law is invasive. As we reported, the law bans abortion motivated by fetal abnormalities as well as other fetal characteristics. It also tightens several other restrictions on abortion. In a statement, Pence described the law as ”a comprehensive   measure that affirms the value of all human life.” He doesn’t appear to have formally commented on the campaign. In the early days of the Periods for Pence effort, the organizer highlighted one aspect of the law  —   it requires miscarried fetuses, as well as aborted fetuses, to be ”interred or cremated by a facility having possession of the remains,” regardless of the age of the fetus. The ”Periods for Pence” Facebook page wrote: ”Fertilized eggs can be expelled during a woman’s period without a woman even knowing that she might have had the potential blastocyst in her. Therefore, any period could potentially be a miscarriage without knowledge. I would certainly hate for any of my fellow Hoosier women to be at risk of penalty if they do not ’properly dispose’ of this or report it. Just to cover our bases, perhaps we should make sure to contact Governor Pence’s office to report our periods. We wouldn’t want him thinking that THOUSANDS OF HOOSIER WOMEN A DAY are trying to hide anything, would we?” She invited women to call Pence’s office to talk about their periods. ”Let’s make our bodies Mike’s business for real, if this is how he wants it,” the page posted. The Facebook page shared transcripts of conversations, March 29: Me: ”Good morning. I just wanted to call and let the good Governor know that I am still not pregnant, since he seems to be so worried about women’s reproductive rights. ”Irritated lady on the other end of the phone: ”And can I get your name, please? ”Me: ”Sure, it’s Not Pregnant Laura.” March 31: Them: ”Good Morning, Governor Pence’s office”Me: ”Good Morning. I just wanted to inform the Governor that things seem to be drying up today. No babies seem to be up in there. Okay? ”Them: (Sounding strangely horrified and chipper at the same time) ”Ma’am, can we have your name? ”Me: ”Sure. It’s Sue. ”Them: ”And your last name? ”Me: ”Magina. That’s      . It rhymes with  —   ”Them: ”I’ve got it.” *Click* Friday: Me: ” Good Morning! I just wanted to let Mr. Cox know that the eagle has landed. I repeat, the eagle has landed. ”Them: ”Ummm . .. okay? Is there anything else he should know? ”Me: ”I have awful cramps. ”Them: (Very pleasant but desperately wanting me to shut up) ”OkayIwillpassthatalong.” Women  —   in Indiana and elsewhere  —   tweeted updates of their own. The Periods for Pence accounts reiterated several times that they weren’t calling for women to send evidence of their menstrual cycles to the governor  —   just information. Lots and lots of information. It’s not the first such campaign, as Cosmopolitan notes. Kentucky had #askbevinaboutmyvag after Gov. Matt Bevin signed a bill requiring women to have a consultation a day before having an abortion. In Ireland, where abortion is illegal, women tweeted about their menstrual cycles to the head of the Irish government in November."
"Friday was a landmark day for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It launched into space a resupply capsule bearing a new inflatable habitat for the International Space Station. Then the rocket’s ”first stage” returned to Earth for a sea landing  —   without exploding. Though the SpaceX rocket had successfully landed on solid ground before, the last attempt to land the rocket on a barge at sea ended in a fiery crash. ”The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off, carrying an inflatable space module that will be added to the station. NASA hopes this kind of expandable room in space could someday help astronauts get to Mars,” NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reports for our Newscast Unit. ”As the rocket’s second stage carried this cargo into orbit, the first stage did something unprecedented. It turned around, flew back to Earth and touched down vertically on a robotic barge floating off the coast of Florida.” As NPR’s Joe Palca reported earlier this week, the idea for inflatable habitats in space dates back to the 1990s when ”the space agency was trying to figure out how to get astronauts to Mars, without the crew going crazy living in a tiny capsule for months on end.” When it’s folded up, the expandable room is about 6 feet by 6 feet, Joe says, but when inflated, ”it’s about 12 feet by 10 feet, approximately the size of a small RV.” The new habitat could mean more comfortable living during a future trip to Mars. And the successful landing of the SpaceX rocket will mean much more affordable space travel, as SpaceX can reuse the expensive ”first stage,” Geoff says."
"Philadelphia’s new mayor wants to do something few American cities have done: pass a tax on soda and other sugary drinks. So far, Berkeley, Calif. has been the only U. S. city to approve such a tax. That measure was aimed at reducing soda consumption (and the negative health effects that go along with drinking too much of it). But in Philly, the tax isn’t being promoted as a scheme to bring down the city’s high rates of obesity or diabetes. Mayor Jim Kenney says he wants to use the revenue for projects that benefit residents in a city with a 26 percent poverty rate, the highest of America’s largest cities. He argues soda companies make big money and often market their products to   people. ”What we’re looking to do is to take some of that profit, to put it back into the neighborhoods that have been their biggest customers, to improve the lives and opportunities for the people who live there,” he said at a rally promoting the tax last month. Kenney claims a tax of 3 cents per ounce of soda,   and other sugary drinks  —   levied on beverage distributors  —   would generate more than $400 million over the next five years. The money would help fund a plan for universal   and community schools that offer services like health care, as well as major renovations to parks, recreation centers and libraries. So far, no one is complaining about Kenney’s intentions, but Daniel Grace, who heads up the local Teamsters Union, says there has to be a better way to raise money. The union represents about 2, 000 people who work in bottling plants and drive delivery trucks. His argument against the tax boils down to this: It would likely drive up the price of soda (just as the Berkeley tax has done) which, in turn, will reduce the consumption of sugary drinks. ”When the demand goes down, they don’t need as many [workers] as they have today,” he says. The Teamsters Union has printed hundreds of ”No soda tax” buttons and   and has been handing out leaflets. And right after Kenney proposed the measure, the American Beverage Association  —   a national trade group that previously shelled out more than $9 million fighting Berkeley’s soda tax  —   launched a social media campaign against the Philadelphia proposal and started running ads on local radio stations calling it a ”grocery tax on the kind of drinks we buy for our family.” But while the association’s campaigns target Philadelphia residents, the fate of the soda tax ultimately lies in the hands of the city council, which will make its final decision in June. Council president Darrell Clarke has not taken a side yet, but he’s concerned the burden would fall hardest on those Kenney is trying to help: the poor. ”It doesn’t take a whole lot of analysis to determine where those sugary drinks are being sold,” he says. ”So the question is, is that fair?” The Rev. Adan Mairena, who is part of a group supporting the tax, estimates 80 percent of his congregation in North Philadelphia lives below the poverty line and admits that some of them are worried about paying more for these drinks. He’s urging skeptics to take the long view. ”If we pass this, it’s going to provide more opportunities in the long run and it’s going to make us a better people, a better community,” he says. At a supermarket just a few miles away, Maribel Alago says she disagrees. She points out the city raised property taxes last year. Plus, there’s a $   tax on cigarettes to help the   school district. ”People cannot barely afford anything nowadays,” Alago says. ”Now they going to tax soda, too.” Mayor Kenney says if the city council doesn’t approve the tax, there’s no other way to pay for expanded   or revamped rec centers. Plan B is going without those things."
"On Friday, Pope Francis released a   document called ”Amoris Laetitia,” or ”The Joy of Love.” In it, he calls for the Catholic Church to approach issues of sex, marriage, family planning and divorce with less emphasis on dogmatic law and more emphasis on individual conscience. While the   apostolic exhortation doesn’t directly alter any church doctrine, its shift in tone is significant for Catholic families around the world. But even if you’re not Catholic, you might find some inspiration in the document. Because in addition to addressing questions of pastoral care, Francis muses on sex, communication, commitment and love in general  —   and for a    man who has taken a lifelong vow of celibacy, the pontiff has some pretty solid relationship tips: Make Time For One Another, Even If You’re Busy, ”Love needs time and space everything else is secondary. Time is needed to talk things over, to embrace leisurely, to share plans, to listen to one other and gaze in each other’s eyes, to appreciate one another and to build a stronger relationship. Sometimes the frenetic pace of our society and the pressures of the workplace create problems. At other times, the problem is the lack of quality time together, sharing the same room without one even noticing the other.” Sometimes, Just Listen, ”Instead of offering an opinion or advice, we need to be sure that we have heard everything the other person has to say. . .. Often the other spouse does not need a solution to his or her problems, but simply to be heard, to feel that someone has acknowledged their pain, their disappointment, their fear, their anger, their hopes and their dreams.” Accept Your Partner’s Shortcomings, ”It does not matter if they hold me back, if they unsettle my plans, or annoy me by the way they act or think, or if they are not everything I want them to be. Love always has an aspect of deep compassion that leads to accepting the other person as part of this world, even when he or she acts differently than I would like.” . .. And Be Generous With Their Imperfections, ”We have to realize that all of us are a complex mixture of light and shadows. The other person is much more than the sum of the little things that annoy me. Love does not have to be perfect for us to value it. The other person loves me as best they can, with all their limits, but the fact that love is imperfect does not mean that it is untrue or unreal.” Never Go To Bed Angry: Hugs Can Help, ”My advice is never to let the day end without making peace in the family,” Francis writes, then quotes himself from 2015: ”And how am I going to make peace? By getting down on my knees? No! Just by a small gesture, a little something, and harmony within your family will be restored. Just a little caress, no words are necessary.” Try To Find Your Partner Beautiful And Lovable . .. Even When They Make It Hard, ”Loving another person involves the joy of contemplating and appreciating their innate beauty and sacredness, which is greater than my needs. This enables me to seek their good even when they cannot belong to me, or when they are no longer physically appealing but intrusive and annoying.” Don’t Hold Grudges, ”[Irritableness or resentment is] a violent reaction within, a hidden irritation that sets us on edge where others are concerned, as if they were troublesome or threatening and thus to be avoided. To nurture such interior hostility helps no one. It only causes hurt and alienation.” Say Please, Thank You And Sorry, Francis quotes a speech he gave in 2013: ”Three words need to be used. I want to repeat this! Three words: ’Please’ ’Thank you’ ’Sorry’. Three essential words!” ”Let us not be stingy about using these words, but keep repeating them, day after day.” Trust Is Key, ”This goes beyond simply presuming that the other is not lying or cheating. . .. It means we do not have to control the other person, to follow their every step lest they escape our grip. Love trusts, it sets free, it does not try to control, possess and dominate everything. This freedom, which fosters independence, an openness to the world around us and to new experiences, can only enrich and expand relationships.” Remember: Love Takes Work, ”It is not helpful to dream of an idyllic and perfect love needing no stimulus to grow. A celestial notion of earthly love forgets that the best is yet to come, that fine wine matures with age. . .. It is much healthier to be realistic about our limits, defects and imperfections, and to respond to the call to grow together, to bring love to maturity and to strengthen the union, come what may.” When You Argue, Acknowledge Your Partner’s Perspective, ”Never downplay what they say or think, even if you need to express your own point of view. . .. We ought to be able to acknowledge the other person’s truth, the value of his or her deepest concerns, and what it is that they are trying to communicate, however aggressively.” Aim To Disagree Without Being Hurtful, ”Making a point should never involve venting anger and inflicting hurt. A patronizing tone only serves to hurt, ridicule, accuse and offend others. Many disagreements between couples are not about important things. Mostly they are about trivial matters. What alters the mood, however, is the way things are said or the attitude with which they are said.” Think Thoughts, Read Books: It’s Important To Be Interesting.  ”For a worthwhile dialogue we have to have something to say. This can only be the fruit of an interior richness nourished by reading, personal reflection, prayer and openness to the world around us. Otherwise, conversations become boring and trivial. When neither of the spouses works at this, and has little real contact with other people, family life becomes stifling and dialogue impoverished.” And Do Try To Have Good Sex. If Nothing Else, It Makes Life Seem OK For At Least A Moment, ”God himself created sexuality, which is a marvellous gift to his creatures,” Francis writes. Sex should never be pursued for just one person’s pleasure, or in a way that treats your partner as ”an object to be used,” Francis writes, and should always involve freely given consent. And  —   a point he makes several times  —   mutual pleasure. Sexuality is ”meant to aid the fulfillment of the other,” he writes, but ”personal satisfaction” is involved as well  —   not just   service to your partner’s needs. ”As a passion sublimated by a love respectful of the dignity of the other, it becomes a ’pure, unadulterated affirmation’ revealing the marvels of which the human heart is capable. In this way, even momentarily, we can feel that ’life has turned out good and happy,’ ” he says, quoting the German philosopher Josef Pieper."
"In a major document released Friday, Pope Francis addressed divisive elements of Catholic doctrine  —   including how to treat couples who remarry after a divorce that wasn’t annulled by the church, and the church’s stance on contraception. Without issuing any new   doctrine, Francis said that priests should focus on providing pastoral care for Catholic couples, rather than sitting in judgment of them, and that individual conscience should be emphasized, rather than dogmatic rules. The document  —   a   apostolic exhortation called ”Amoris Laetitia,” or ”The Joy of Love”  —   is more than 250 pages long. In it, the pope emphasizes that life is more complicated than religious law. In the opening pages, he invokes the values of ”generosity, commitment, fidelity and patience,” but also says he wishes to ”encourage everyone to be a sign of mercy and closeness wherever family life remains imperfect or lacks peace and joy.” He explains that in Amoris Laetitia, in addition to considering scripture, he will ”examine the actual situation of families, in order to keep firmly grounded in reality.” And he notes that Jesus set forth a demanding ideal for his followers  —   but ”never failed to show compassion and closeness to the frailty of individuals.” Joshua McElwee of the National Catholic Reporter told NPR’s Morning Edition that the exhortation has a very different tone than previous church pronouncements on these subjects. The focus on ”conscience” as a determining factor is key, McElwee says. He explains what that means in this context: ”That’s something that the church talked about 50 years ago, but the last couple of popes did not expand upon. And what Pope Francis is saying is that conscience means that people can be hearing something from God, kind of in the depths of their heart, that may even be not quite in accord with what the church teaches generally, as a general norm, but can still be true and can still be discerned to be God’s will in their life. So he’s allowing for a little bit of discord between individual cases and the general church teaching.” On Divorce, When it comes to divorce and remarriage, McElwee says, the pope doesn’t directly change church law  —   which holds that couples who divorce and remarry without getting a Catholic annulment are committing adultery and cannot receive communion. ”But he kind of pivots the church stance, asking clergy to be much more pastoral and not always apply one general norm to all cases  —   but instead help people discern what God is doing in their lives, even if they might be living in a situation the church in past years might have called irregular,” McElwee says. No longer can the church simply say everyone in such an ”irregular situation” is living in mortal sin, McElwee explains. Instead, each individual situation will need to be looked at separately. ”So, it’s a very different stance, and it’s allowing clergy to let people discern God’s will, even in situations where that might be what, what he says, ’morally confusing,’ ” McElwee says. Some in the Catholic Church wanted the pope to say it’s OK for remarried people to take communion others wanted ”a very strong no,” McElwee says. ”And what the pope has done really is seemed to embrace the middle path, looking for ambiguity, for individual situations.” On Contraception, Francis didn’t describe any methods of contraception as ”unlawful,” as previous Catholic encyclicals have, The Associated Press notes. Instead of characterizing contraception as a sin, Francis says the church must emphasize to young couples the joy of having children  —   while respecting the need for each couple to decide their family size on their own. He cites the Relatio Finalis, written by bishops last year: ”In accord with the personal and fully human character of conjugal love, family planning fittingly takes place as the result a consensual dialogue between the spouses, respect for times and consideration of the dignity of the partner. . .. Decisions involving responsible parenthood presupposes the formation of conscience.” As well as the Second Vatican Council: ”Let them thoughtfully take into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those already born and those which the future may bring. . .. They should consult the interests of the family group, of temporal society and of the Church herself. The parents themselves and no one else should ultimately make this judgment in the sight of God.” ”Francis made a single reference to the   family planning method of abstaining from sex during a woman’s fertile time,” the AP writes. ”He said only that such practices are to be ’promoted’  —   not that other methods are forbidden  —   and he insisted on the need for children to receive sex education, albeit without focusing on ’safe sex.’ ” On Sex, Homosexuality And Gender, Francis rejected the idea that sexual desire is a thing to be ”eliminated” or looked down upon. ”God himself created sexuality, which is a marvelous gift to his creatures,” he wrote. He writes that sex and eroticism can be distorted  —   including when people instruct women to submit to their husbands, or sex becomes either selfish or purely  . But reciprocal and respectful sex, within the context of marriage, is a passion that reveals ”the marvels of which the human heart is capable,” Francis writes. The pope also said that a ”great variety” of family situations can offer stability, while emphasizing that   marriage or unmarried committed relationships are not equal to marriage in the eyes of the Church. The document references transgender people, saying that while there are ”at times understandable aspirations” to ideologies that allow for a separation of gender and biological sex, they are attempting to ”sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality.” The pope calls for women’s rights to be advanced around the world and rejected the idea that feminism has hurt family structures. ”The equal dignity of men and women makes us rejoice to see old forms of discrimination disappear,” he wrote. On Marriage, The Church And The World, On marriage in general, the pope writes that the Catholic Church needs ”a healthy dose of  ” for the way it has described and presented marriage to the public. ”[W]e often present marriage in such a way that its unitive meaning, its call to grow in love and its ideal of mutual assistance are overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation . .. At times we have also proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families. . .. ”[W]e have often been on the defensive, wasting pastoral energy on denouncing a decadent world without being proactive in proposing ways of finding true happiness.” The pope also addressed a wide range of challenges that affect families, including: poverty migration children with special needs elderly relatives who need care drug use and alcoholism domestic violence and a lack of affordable housing as well as social pressures and the difficulty of addressing marital problems. ”The Synod’s reflections show us that there is no stereotype of the ideal family,” he writes, ”but rather a challenging mosaic made up of many different realities, with all their joys, hopes and problems. ”"
"Nearly five months after a ”wanted” bulletin tied him to the Paris terrorist attacks, Mohamed Abrini has been arrested in Belgium. Public broadcaster RTBF also says Abrini may be the ”man in the hat” wanted in connection to last month’s bombings in Brussels. U. S. and Belgian officials say Abrini and ”another suspect” were arrested at a metro station in Anderlecht, which is close to the Free University of Brussels, NPR’s Dina   reports. Belgian prosecutors made an official announcement of Abrini’s arrest late Friday, local time, with spokesman Thierry Werts saying that police are ”continuing to determine” whether Abrini, 31, is also the ”man in the hat”  —   a suspect wearing a white raincoat and a fishing hat, who has been wanted for questioning since security cameras showed him walking alongside two suicide bombers at the Brussels airport. Dina reports: ”U. S. and Belgian officials also told NPR that they have at least four more people they are looking for as possible accomplices in the attacks. That’s meaningful because after Salah Abdeslam was arrested, members of his cell moved up the timetable of the Brussels attacks. U. S. and Belgian officials believe the March 22 attacks were supposed to happen either Easter Sunday or Easter Monday. The concern now is that with the arrest of these two suspects, the remaining members of the cell will launch another attack.” News of Abrini’s arrest comes one day after the government released a video in which they reconstructed the movements made by the man from the airport, with police laying out his motions in the city for some two hours after the bombs exploded. Saying that three terrorism suspects were arrested Friday, RTBF named one of the suspects as Osama Krayem, who was reportedly seen with the suicide bomber who targeted a subway train on the same morning as the airport attack. Flanders News, an arm of the state Flemish broadcaster VRT, says of Abrini: ”Mohamed Abrini is one of the key suspects in the terror investigation( s) and has a heavy criminal record. He spent time in jail for armed robbery and is considered as dangerous. Abrini is a childhood friend of the Abdeslam brothers. Brahim Abdeslam blew himself up in the Paris terrorist attacks, while Salah Abdeslam, who was on the run after Paris, was arrested in Molenbeek a couple of weeks ago. ”Two days before the Paris attacks Abrini was seen together with Salah Abdeslam, as he drove his friend to the French capital. They were photographed at a filling station in Ressons along the motorway bound for Paris. The two suspects were using a Renault Clio that was employed during the attacks and later recovered in the city.”"
"Bill Clinton on Friday stopped short of saying he was sorry for a recent clash with Black Lives Matter protesters. Instead, the former president tried to make the squabble into a teachable moment. ”I did something yesterday in Philadelphia I almost want to apologize for, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country,” he told the crowd at a Hillary Clinton campaign event in Erie, Pa. He explained that he thinks the U. S. has ”one remaining bigotry,” of people refusing to talk to those who disagree with them. Clinton added that he didn’t like it when protesters interrupted but didn’t stop to listen, but acknowledged that he was guilty of the same thing when he responded to protesters at a Philadelphia campaign event on Thursday. ”I rather vigorously defended my wife, as I am wont to do,” he said. ”And I realized finally, I was talking past her the way she was talking past me. We gotta stop that in this country.” He was referring to Thursday’s incident in which he fired back at Black Lives Matter activists protesting a 1994 crime bill he signed as president. Many in that movement oppose that bill, which among other things made sentences longer and, some activists argue, contributed to mass incarceration that disproportionately affected the   community. (However, statistics cast doubt on the idea that the bill created a mass incarceration problem.) Clinton on Thursday turned defensive, criticizing the protesters. ”You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter,” he told the protesters. ”Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns.” He said that his bill contributed to a major decline in crime and that it also had the support of many black leaders at the time. ”I talked to a lot of   groups,” Clinton continued. ”They thought black lives matter. They said, ’Take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. ’” His defensive,   response not only made for bad optics (”Fire Bill Clinton,” implored one Slate headline afterward) and a big distraction from his wife’s campaign, but it clashed with the Hillary Clinton campaign’s messaging, as NPR’s Tamara Keith reported. Hillary Clinton herself said that some parts of the bill ”were a mistake.” Bill Clinton told an NAACP gathering in July that his bill ”made the problem worse,” boosting mass incarceration  —   a speech he reminded the crowd of on Friday. And at the Friday Erie event, Clinton likewise acknowledged that when he signed the bill, he was ”worried” about the longer sentences it dictated. Though he softened his tone on Friday, Clinton wasn’t entirely charitable to the protesters. ”I know those young people yesterday were just trying to get good television, and they did,” he said. ”But that doesn’t mean that I was most effective in answering.” For her part, Erica Mines, one of the protesters, told NPR’s Sam Sanders on Thursday that Clinton didn’t change her mind. ”I still feel the same way about Bill Clinton. . .. He completely beat around the bush,” she said."
"At a campaign event in Philadelphia on Thursday in support of his wife’s presidential bid, Bill Clinton responded to protesters in a way that has since been described as ”peak white mansplain.” Several protesters had shown up carrying signs with slogans like ”Black youth are not super predators,” referring to language that Hillary Clinton used in support of the major crime bill signed into law by her husband in 1994. Hillary Clinton has since said she ”shouldn’t have used those words” and ”wouldn’t use them today,” and both Clintons have acknowledged major problems with the bill, including its role in a subsequent wave of mass incarceration that critics say ”decimated” black communities and imposed harsh sentences on many nonviolent offenders. Bill Clinton’s response to Thursday’s protesters was peppered with uncomfortable moments. He began by defending the bill and his wife’s use of the term ”superpredator.” ”I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got    kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other   children,” he began. ”You are defending the people who kill the people whose lives you say matter.” Here’s a video of the exchange: Reactions started piling up right away on social media. Some critics expressed visceral discomfort over both the tone and the content of the former president’s comments: Soon after, more   analyses poured in. Slate’s Michelle Goldberg wondered whether Bill’s comments indicate a (possibly) subconscious desire to sabotage Hillary’s shot at the presidency, calling his comments ”a mess, but. ..not the first mess he’s caused for his wife’s campaign.” ”At a time when Hillary Clinton is dependent on black voters and campaigning with mothers who’ve lost sons to police violence, Bill Clinton yoked her to his own discredited policies. He reminded everyone that, in defense of his bill, she’d once spoken about underage ’superpredators,’ language she has since apologized for. Then, Bill Clinton aped the maddening   tendency to derail conversations about criminal justice abuses by invoking    crime. He might as well have said, ’All lives matter!’ ” Vann R. Newkirk II, Atlantic writer and leading Black Twitter voice, acknowledged that Hillary Clinton’s relationship with the 1994 crime bill is ”complex” but noted that Bill’s comments are going to have resoundingly negative effects throughout the black community: ”Bill’s response certainly won’t do Hillary any favors. In an   answer that wandered along a path of condescension, through   comments, and into a difficult digression about Black Lives Matter and Africa, Clinton attempted to provide a defense for the bill and give context to the reasons why it had such broad support. He talked over protesters and attempted to play up the crowd to shout them down. His tone and talking points play especially poorly given Hillary’s early struggles in engaging with young black protesters.” Over at Vox, German Lopez was less interested in how the comments might affect Hillary’s campaign and more concerned with what they said about her actual views. Noting that while the ’90s ”were different times” and that Hillary, of course, is not her husband, he writes that, nonetheless: ”. .. the Clintons were very much cognizant of fears of black crime in the 1990s, and they exploited it in their presidential campaigns. . .. ”Bill’s comments at Thursday’s press conference speak to this kind of politicking: He was ready with    remarks to condemn criminals harshly  —   to defend comments his wife made to justify policies that perpetuated mass incarceration. When it was politically opportune, Bill had no problem switching back to the    mode. . .. ”Because the Clintons are partners and have a history of jointly supporting    policies, there’s genuine concern about how a Clinton White House would react to another crime wave. What if the 2020s look like the 1990s in terms of crime, instead of the 2010s? Would a President Clinton still push for criminal justice reform? Based on the Clintons’ history, there’s reason for doubt  —   and Bill’s comments did nothing to assuage those concerns.” At the Huffington Post, Antonio Moore reminds readers what the 1994 Crime Bill actually meant for black communities and calls on Bill Clinton to ”own” that as part of his political legacy: ”Mass incarceration has largely been the type of stain on the Clinton legacy with Black Americans that doesn’t wash out with words. Clinton’s bill has left in its wake a trail of devastated African American families cut off from loved ones that have served sentences for nonviolent drug offenses that were decades too long. For former President Bill Clinton to now insinuate that Black Lives Matter protestors are defending murderers and gang leaders, is offensive to a people that have been through so much due to his legislative actions. Yet, here we stand in 2016 hearing the same rhetoric espoused to create the Crime Bill, now being used to justify its abhorrent results.” Not everyone was critical of Bill Clinton’s reaction to the protesters. Paul Mirengoff of Powerline saw the exchange as evidence that the former president ”doesn’t take crap from anyone.” And James Hohmann of The Washington Post described Clinton’s response as ”a spirited defense of his record on civil rights, his signature crime bill, and his wife.” Here’s more from Hohmann: ”The    went on an extended riff about why he and his wife are the ones who have really fought to make black lives matter. . .. ”He also highlighted the Democratic  ’s work for the Children’s Defense Fund as a young attorney in Alabama and her work to stop the spread of HIV in Africa as secretary of state. ’I’ll tell you another story about a place where black lives matter: Africa,’ he said.” Bill Clinton himself reflected on the exchange Friday, offering up an explanation for how things played out the way they did. Here’s part of what he said, and you can watch the full video on MSNBC: ”I rather vigorously defended my wife, as I am wont to do. And I realized finally I was talking past [a protester] the way she was talking past me. We gotta stop that in this country. We gotta listen to each other. Look, you’re living in a country where young   think their No. 1 threat now is from police officers. When I signed that crime bill, they knew what their No. 1 threat was. It was from gangs making money out of cocaine, taking teenage kids, huffing them up, giving them guns, and telling them to go kill other teenagers. To prove their bones.” Ultimately, it all comes down to how  —   and whether  —   voters will remember this incident come election time. Erica Mines, one of the protesters at the rally, spoke to Philadelphia magazine’s Dan McQuade about why all this matters to her. Here’s some of what she had to say: ”People forget that the three strikes law put more people  —   specifically black people  —   in jail because they had a drug habit. But now it’s a ’heroin epidemic’ because there’s more white people affected by it. Now there’s this outcry for drug rehabilitation, but we were criminalized for it. Poverty, lack of jobs, poor education: All these things contribute to the use of drugs. When you live in a society that does nothing but beat you down and tell you that you’re worthless and they don’t create the spaces that allow you to better yourself, you should not be criminalized. ”I’m not here to say Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton is not a good person. This is not about whether I like them. Their politics have hurt the black community, and that’s all that there is. They don’t deserve the black vote.” April 8, 4 p. m. EST: This post has been updated to reflect ongoing discussion about this topic, including former President Clinton’s remarks on the subject."
"A man’s wife dies in a car crash. The man grieves. From that simple premise come two complex films: Louder Than Bombs and Demolition. Turns out, there’s a reason for those explosive titles. A physical reason in Demolition, which takes the demolishing of a marriage literally. Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a successful financial exec who seems a little distracted when we meet him. A lot distracted, actually in fact, perpetually distracted, even when something happens that really ought to focus him  —   an automobile accident that injures him slightly, but kills his wife, who was driving. But it doesn’t focus him. Before he’s even out of the hospital, Davis is composing a letter about a waiting room vending machine that has taken his five quarters but failed to give him his peanut MM’s. ”I found this upsetting because I was very hungry,” he writes, ”and also my wife had died ten minutes earlier.” As you might expect, this is a letter that gets a response. Naomi Watts plays the vending company’s PR person. She calls Davis after receiving his fourth complaint letter, in the middle of the night. ”Do you have someone to talk to?” she wonders. An unlikely relationship ensues, in which Davis becomes a part of her life, and also that of her teenage son. Others wonder about his behavior, too. To the concern of his    —   his    (Chris Cooper) is also his boss  —   Davis is obsessing over how many things in his life, besides vending machines, don’t work. The last words his wife said to him before she died were about fixing a leak in the fridge. So he starts by taking apart the fridge, and then dismantling his computer, and bathroom stalls at his office that have squeaky doors, and basically anything he thinks is broken. Initially the dismantling involves screwdrivers, but after a while it also involves sledgehammers, and buzz saws, and when he decides his whole house has to go, a bulldozer. Demolition, you’ll have guessed by this time, is a metaphor, a point the script makes several times, at once elegantly, and a little    . Director   Vallée, the guy who made Dallas Buyers Club, knows how to keep you engaged as Davis does the demolishing of his life, though not how to wrap things up when the demolition is complete. The film’s conclusion is far neater than real life. Those looking for something    are likely to be happier with Louder Than Bombs, near the beginning of which we see Gene (Gabriel Byrne) watching a video tribute to his wife, Isabel (Isabelle Huppert) a celebrated war photographer. The tribute was was produced for a posthumous exhibition of work she had done for The New York Times and is to be accompanied by an article in the Times that will lay bare a fact about her death  —   that it was a suicide. ”I don’t want to be a part of romanticizing what we do,” says her former editor, played by David Strathairn. ”Isabel wouldn’t either.” Though it’s been four years, Gene and his sons haven’t really processed Isabel’s death, nor even talked about its being a suicide. Elder son (Jesse Eisenberg) knows, but both he and his father have kept it from younger son (Devin Druid) who was 12 when his mother died. Communication was never this family’s strong suit, and director Joachim Trier lets you see just how it gets   now. Resentful older son setting himself up as keeper of his mother’s flame, withdrawn younger son following in his mother’s creative footsteps with a   video project, as Dad is left trying to bridge family chasms that gaped wide long before his wife died. The director creates a rich visual collage of    gaming fantasies, TV footage that conflates actors with the characters they’re playing, and terrific performances. Huppert makes the photographer an enigmatic presence in flashbacks, worthy of the vastly different grieving being done by the men who can’t let her go. Byrne is delicately understated as a man who has begun to move on, Eisenberg weaselly and scheming as one who can’t let go, and Druid is a revelation as a distant, angry teen who would be struggling to find his place in the world even if his mother were there to help. There is no catharsis in their story, no smashing of objects, no demolition. What’s louder than bombs in Louder Than Bombs is the quiet, believable roar of anguish emanating from a family in crisis."
"Virtual reality enthusiasts are drawing ire when they forget about actual reality. On public transit, in cafes and on sidewalks people wearing VR headsets are getting judged, hard. With Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC Vive available for purchase and Sony PlayStation VR arriving in the fall, virtual reality is finding its way into the lives of tech enthusiasts with a little cash to spare. Think about it this way: Wearing a VR headset is like wearing a paper bag over your head. A really exciting, immersive, interactive paper bag. So it’s uncouth, awkward and possibly dangerous. In Boston, mass transit officials said it was ”not advisable” to wear VR devices while commuting. ”The MBTA and Transit Police remind customers of the importance of being aware of their surroundings at all times,” Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority spokesman Joe Pesaturo told The Boston Globe. The statement came in response to a video posted online that appears to show a man riding the T while wearing a VR headset and playing a video game. And it’s not just buses and trains. Ben Kuchera, in a story in Polygon, described his experience using his Samsung Gear VR on a plane. He said it felt ”very strange, and . .. almost rude.” ”It seemed almost weird to be sitting in tight space, whipping my head around to look at things only I could see,” he wrote. NPR’s Avie Schneider contributed to this post."
"To celebrate the start of the new baseball season, I offer you the poem The Pitcher, by Robert Francis ( ). The Pitcher, His art is eccentricity, his aim, How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at, His passion how to avoid the obvious, His technique how to vary the avoidance. The others throw to be comprehended. He, Throws to be a moment misunderstood. Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild, But every seeming aberration willed. Not to, yet still, still to communicate, Making the batter understand too late. The poem brings out a remarkable fact about the task of the pitcher, a task that is the very heart of baseball. It’d be easy to pitch the ball so that no batter can hit it. Just throw the ball away from the batter. But that’s not allowed. You have to throw the ball to the batter so that he can have an honest chance of hitting it. You have to throw it so that it is, in some ideal sense, hittable. But then your job, as a pitcher, is to make sure that he doesn’t hit it. The pitcher throws, in Francis’ phrase, ”to be a moment misunderstood.” Pitching is a lot like art, in this respect, it seems to me. Who can say what an artwork is about, what it is for, what it means? Artists, too, it seems to me, throw in a way to be a moment misunderstood. Science, as a general rule, and in contrast, wears its significance on its sleeve. The statements of science are direct and there is never any doubt, not really, about what science is after. Knowledge! The truth! The explanation! The facts! Art is a different matter altogether. An artwork, like a pitcher, provides you something almost contradictory: unhittable hittables. Note: ”The Pitcher” appeared in The Orb Weaver by Robert Francis, Wesleyan University Press, 1961. It is published here with permission.  Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"A research team is now working to put a massive drill into the the Gulf of Mexico’s seafloor to help peel back 65 million years of history. Their goal: to secure a nearly   core sample from the Chicxulub crater that’s commonly linked to the end of the dinosaur era. ”There’s a lot of questions about mass extinction events, including all the extinction or kill mechanisms out there,” says one of the research team’s leaders, Sean Gulick of the University of Texas, Austin. If Gulick and his colleagues are successful, their work could bring insights into a range of topics, from prehistoric biology and planetary geology to Earth’s current era of climate change. The impact of a   asteroid and the end of the Cretaceous period were catastrophic to life on Earth, erasing more than 70 percent of the planet’s species, according to the most recent estimations. When it hit our planet, the impact must have looked something like an exclamation point, packing enough velocity and mass to make   rocks and other materials behave like water splashing in a pond after a stone is thrown into it. Using core samples, the scientists will explore Chicxulub’s   peak ring  —   the rough circle of hills that’s commonly seen rising above flat impact craters on Earth and other planets. ”In that section,” Gulick says, ”the big excitement is, ’How did life come back at ground zero?’ Was it the specialists that came back first, the generalists? Is there any clue to what organisms repopulated first, as opposed to what the environmental consequences were for the ocean?” To drill into the seafloor, a   craft called the Liftboat Myrtle is now using its tripod of    legs to position itself over an offshore site that’s about 25 kilometers from Progreso, Mexico. Workers on the Myrtle are preparing to ”spud in”  —   start drilling  —   in earnest, with the first usable samples arriving next week. The project will run for around six weeks, involving an international team of researchers led by the University of Texas and Imperial College London. The team is backed by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling, part of the International Ocean Discovery Program. The plan is to drill down 1, 500 meters, or nearly 5, 000 feet, through the seafloor. To be more efficient  —   an important aspect of a research project costing around $10 million  —   the team won’t collect a core for the first 500 meters. Opening a window that spans more than 10 million years of tumultuous changes on Earth, the project will begin by focusing on a more recent geologic period that shares some similarities with current conditions on Earth: the   Thermal Maximum, the last time the planet had a sharp elevation in CO2 levels. Part of what they hope to figure out, Gulick says, is why the   Thermal Maximum didn’t trigger much of a mass extinction event. ”Most things just didn’t worry about the high CO2 time, and kind of made it through,” he says. ”However, if you look today, at our current increasing CO2 values, already it’s looking like we have a pretty big extinction event in the making. Is that something to do with vulnerability? Is that something to do with the specific kill mechanisms? We should understand this better, given that we’re kind of in the middle of an experiment, ourselves.” The samples will be analyzed for the potential presence of ”extremophiles”  —   exotic organisms that might have thrived in the heat and chemical fluids. ”To find those, we look for their DNA,” Gulick says. ”So we want to grab these samples as quickly as they come to the surface and freeze them at   degrees Celsius” to preserve them. At the time of the meteor strike, the area was covered by water. Today, about half of the resulting crater is on the northwest corner of the Yucatan, in an area about 100 miles west of Cancun. Millions of years after it was formed, the crater is still easily visible in a topographic image that NASA created back in 2000. Its diameter has been estimated at more than 110 miles. ”This thing would have effectively punched a hole through the atmosphere,” Gulick says of the asteroid that smacked into Earth. ”It would’ve blown so much material vertically up into the vapor plume that some of it reaches escape velocity and completely encircles the Earth and rains back down again. Some it probably stays in the atmosphere. So there’s quite a range of effects.” ”It went everywhere on the entire planet,” Gulick adds, saying that today, ”If you find the end of Cretaceous rocks, beginning of the Paleogene rocks, anywhere on the planet, you will find parts of the meteor and parts of the basement rocks from the Yucatan in that layer.” Those basement rocks  —   granite and other materials  —   are also believed to be what helps form the peak ring. The impact would have brought them up to the surface from a depth of as much as 10 or 15 kilometers, Gulick says. Another element of the Chicxulub strike, he adds, is that the impact hit ”a really bad place,” in terms of the debris it generated. ”It hit a spot where it was full of limestone and evaporites, including things that were rich in sulfur,” Gulick says. ”That was a particularly bad spot to have hit in terms of chemical effects. You know, putting a bunch of sulfate aerosols into the upper atmosphere is an incredibly effective way to block sunlight  —   in addition to the dust. And putting sulfate aerosols in the lower atmosphere makes acid rain. So, if we’d hit a different place, it might not have been as bad. It’s really hard to say.” When the team drills into the peak ring, they expect to find everything from airfall materials to deposits from a tsunami triggered by the impact. They’ll explore what makes up the peak ring, which earlier seismic studies have shown to be fairly  . By looking beneath Earth’s surface for signs of how a cataclysmic event reshaped life on our planet, the researchers are also hoping to learn more about how other planets have been shaped by projectile impacts. ”In addition to being interesting from an extinction element,” Gulick says, ”it’s also interesting because it’s a   very large crater that we can access without leaving the planet. It’s equivalent to studying the really big craters with peak rings, for instance, on the moon, on Mercury, on Mars  —   but obviously at a fraction of the cost.” To some people  —   particularly fans of speculative fiction  —   the idea of drilling into a crater that brought about the end of days for 70 percent of the Earth’s species might sound like a risky proposition, one that raises specters of deadly alien material. Asked what he would say to those folks, Gulick responds: ”I guess I immediately wonder what in the world they think we would find that is of concern. Time is on our side here. This is     million years ago. That’s a long time. You know, it’s not still hot, for instance.”"
"As a drought in Venezuela pushes the country’s water levels to extreme lows, President Nicolas Maduro has declared every Friday for the next two months a holiday for public employees to save electricity and water. The government believes the   workweek will help save energy until the rainy season picks up in May, El Pais newspaper reports. According to Newsweek, the South American nation ”depends on hydropower for 60 percent of its electricity.” Maduro’s order, however, excludes   workers, as there is already a shortage of ”grains, meat, dairy and vegetables” due to the economic crisis in Venezuela, Reuters reports. ”Lines of hundreds sometimes snake around supermarkets, so a   work week in that sector would likely have worsened the scarcity,” the news service adds. The   decree is part of a   plan that also asks families, businesses and youth to be aware of their energy usage, Maduro said in a television appearance late Wednesday night. The president’s announcement came after Maduro gave workers three additional days off after the Easter holidays last month. According to Bloomberg, Maduro said ”those efforts saved almost 22 centimeters of water at Guri Dam in the southern state of Bolivar, which supplies as much as 75 percent of the electricity consumed in the capital, Caracas.” According to El Pais, however, the Holy Week shutdown  —   aimed at reducing electricity consumption by 60 percent  —   was a failure, as high temperatures prompted an uptick in the use of air conditioning. The long weekends may appeal to some workers, but not to everyone. ”Just because Maduro doesn’t work Monday to Friday, Saturday or Sunday, doesn’t mean we Venezuelans are like that,” said opposition politician Maria Corina Machado, according to Reuters. ”What we want is to keep working, and for you, Maduro, to go.” Luis Miguel Lopez, who works for the wealthy opposition municipality of Chacao in Caracas, told the news service the decree was ”illogical.” ”People are going to be at home consuming energy all the same,” he said."
"I hadn’t been in Japan more than a few weeks before I was hooked on Japanese karē raisu, or curry rice. It was the rich, unmistakable smell that seeped under doorways and filled the undercover shopping markets of Osaka that first caught my attention. I followed the scent down an alley and into a tiny eatery not large enough for more than a   customers. Behind the wooden counter perched two large vats  —   the source of the seductive aromas. In one, the potbellied chef told me, is spicy curry. In the other is sweet curry. Perhaps noticing my indecisiveness, he picked up two small, wooden bowls and dished out a ladle of spicy into one bowl and a ladle of sweet into the other. ”Try,” he commanded. My taste buds burst into life. Obediently, I took a scoop of the sweet sauce. The velvety texture of the piping hot substance wrapped itself around my tongue and left me wanting more. But I hadn’t finished. Unapologetically licking my spoon clean, I plunged it into the spicy sauce and into my mouth. This time my tongue burned. ”Is it too much for you?” the smirking chef asked, almost gleefully. ”No, no,” I replied, sucking air into my mouth and reaching for a glass of water. ”It just took me by surprise.” Without asking, the chef took a larger bowl and filled it with sweet curry, beef and potatoes. So began my love affair with Japanese karē raisu. At that time, I was carrying out research in Japan on Osaka’s incipient North Korean community. That evening, when I met my North Korean friends for our customary pork barbecue and beer in Korea town, I recounted my midday culinary adventure. ”Oh, yes,” they agreed. ”Japanese curry is good. But until you’ve eaten it on a snowy Pyongyang day, you haven’t lived.” And there it was. My curiosity was piqued and I had to know: How did curry, ostensibly a product of the Indian subcontinent, make its way onto tables in the most isolated nation on the planet? The story of curry is emblematic of the early days of colonialism, and the beginnings of what we now simply refer to as globalization. Academics claim that people may have been eating curries as far back as 2, 500 B. C. and that it has addictive properties. The roots of the word ”curry” are undecided, with some arguing that it comes from the Old English word ”cury,” first used in an English cookbook published in 1390. Ostensibly, ”cury” referred to cuisine based on French cuire cooking  —   meaning to cook, boil or grill. The word gradually became associated with a stew. Others contend it is a derivative of the Tamil word kari, referring to a dish cooked with vegetables, meat and spices. The ” ” powder that members of the British colonial administration took home from India became popular in 18th century England. Hannah Glasse published the first curry recipe in English in 1747 in The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. Her interpretation was more of a ”gentle, aromatic stew” than a fiery vindaloo, but it featured curry powder as a key ingredient. In 1810, Sake Dean Mahomet opened Britain’s first curry house, the Hindustan Coffee House. It was a massive failure, but in the years that followed, curry as an English dish   in restaurants across the United Kingdom. Curry gradually became an accepted part of every British pub menu, perhaps offering balance to an otherwise lackluster English diet. Anglicized interpretations of Indian cuisines were subsequently taken to Imperial Japan via the   officers of the Royal Navy and other British subjects in the latter half of the 19th century. By the end of the century, the Japanese navy had adapted the British version of curry, just as the English had earlier Anglicized Indian curry. In 1872, the first karē raisu recipe was published in a Japanese cookbook, and in 1877 a Tokyo restaurant first offered karē raisu on the menu. Just as it had done in England, curry rapidly became a staple of the Japanese diet. Today, Friday nights onboard the vessels of the Japanese navy are still curry nights. A website of the Japanese   Force’s ”Family Page” lists its most popular curry dishes with recipes for the public to try. These mouthwatering recipes come with    cooking instructions and pictures of over 50 different curries popular on Japanese military bases. In 1968, inspired by the Swedish army’s ”pouched sausages,” Japan’s Otsuka Foods Co. launched       curry. The convenience of these    treats appealed to thrifty students and overworked salarymen. Within a few years, Otsuka Foods’ annual sales topped 100 million packets. In the 1960s, the Japanese government pressured Koreans, Taiwanese and Chinese  —   former subjects of the Japanese Empire  —   to  . At the time, many Koreans in Japan considered North Korea a better option than the U. S.  Rhee government in South Korea. Curry followed tens of thousands of migrating Koreans to North Korea. Family who stayed behind in Japan sent tightly packed parcels crammed full of   karē raisu to loved ones in North Korea. The North Korean government prohibited repatriates from ever returning to Japan. Immigrants from Japan struggled to survive the   conditions of North Korea. Access to imported karē raisu and other imported food products became a matter of life and death. They used karē raisu as a currency, trading it for local products  —   kimchi, rice and meat  —   and strategically gifting it to cadre of the Korean Workers’ Party. The more industrious, daring individuals opened black market curry and noodle stalls operating out of their apartments. Over dinner in Tokyo, my friend   Ko, recently escaped from North Korea, explained that during this time, ”We native North Koreans tried to mimic immigrants from Japan. We wanted to dress like them and eat the food they had. We were curious. What they ate was better than our food.” ”Native” North Koreans, like   had to rely on immigrants from Japan for a regular fix of curry. Another friend, Sazuka Tanaka, was among those Japanese ”repatriated” to North Korea in 1960. (She later escaped to the south.) In between mouthfuls of fried pork wrapped in perilla leaves, she told me, ”I managed a small restaurant in a northern city of North Korea. We served karē raisu and other dishes from Japan. It was a hugely popular place to eat for North Koreans, and I became quite famous for my curry.” The tastes and smells of curry reminded immigrants from Japan of the home they’d left behind. More importantly, such dishes were a lifeline during the famine that gripped North Korea in the 1990s. In 2002 Kim Jong Il admitted that North Korea had kidnapped Japanese citizens. The Japanese government reacted by imposing trade sanctions on the DPRK. These sanctions choked off the supply of Japanese curry to North Korea. Consequently, North Koreans living near the   border were forced to turn to China for imports of karē raisu. North Korean defectors I worked with assured me that ”fake” karē raisu wasn’t a patch on the real thing. They claimed that it ”lacked flavor” and was ”made with inferior ingredients.” Curry is a chameleon of a dish and a   one at that  —   from India to Pyongyang, to Tokyo and the NASA space program. In each place, people have adapted and blended it to local tastes, making it one of the world’s most loved dishes. Perhaps this is why many of my friends and I feel such affection for it: Curry, like us, shifts and evolves through its journeys, the cultures it passes through, and the people who love and adopt it. Markus Bell is a Ph. D. candidate in anthropology at the Australian National University, researching North Korean society and North Korean migration. In September he will take up a lectureship in the University of Sheffield’s School of East Asian Studies. Follow him on Twitter: @mpsbell."
"Although the FBI says it has successfully unlocked the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, a separate legal standoff between Apple and the government continues  —   in a drug case in Brooklyn, N. Y. The Justice Department told a judge Friday that Apple’s help is still needed to unlock an iPhone seized from a methamphetamine dealer. The DOJ is appealing a ruling from a magistrate judge, who sided with Apple in February. ”The government continues to require Apple’s assistance in accessing the data that it is authorized to search by warrant,” U. S. Attorney Robert Capers wrote in a letter to U. S. District Court Judge Margo Brodie. A comparison between the New York and the San Bernardino case isn’t, well, apples to apples. The cases involve different types of iPhones that run different types of operating systems and require different types of technical assistance from the company. After the FBI said it had unlocked  —   without Apple’s help  —   the iPhone 5C running iOS 9 in the San Bernardino investigation, the bureau’s ability to reuse its undisclosed unlocking method on other phones has been a major lingering question. FBI Director James Comey said this week that the method, in fact, does not work on every iPhone. Specifically, he said it wouldn’t work on the newer versions of the device, such as the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6. The case in New York involves an iPhone 5S running the iOS 7 operating system, which has older encryption technology. The government says that for the New York phone, Apple already has the ability,   to unlock that kind of device with that kind of operating system. And it’s the kind of process that wouldn’t require the company to write any new, special code that would undermine the phone’s security features as in the San Bernardino case. Apple doesn’t actually dispute this claim but refuses to help because, as company lawyers explain, the legal request for a third party to contribute to a government investigation must be ”necessary,” as in no other way exists. After the unexpected and abrupt end of the San Bernardino case, the assertion has faced skepticism. At the heart of both cases is the government’s ability to compel a company’s help and what kind of legal precedent gets set for new technology. The Justice Department says Apple had previously complied with at least 70 orders for help unlocking its devices without objection, and that the Brooklyn case was the first in which Apple challenged such an order in court. As NPR’s Joel Rose has reported, it was a relatively unusual turn of events when the federal prosecutors in that case turned to a magistrate judge for an order compelling Apple’s help  —   and the judge instead went public and asked Apple whether the company had any objections. The judge later ruled to block the DOJ’s request, prompting the government to appeal. Apple is now expected to file its brief in the case next week. The arrested methamphetamine dealer has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing."
"Every year, U. S. hospitals treat hundreds of thousands of violent injuries. Often, the injured are patched up and sent home, right back to the troubles that landed them in the hospital in the first place. Now, as these institutions of healing are facing pressure under the Affordable Care Act to keep readmissions down, a growing number of hospitals are looking at ways to prevent violence. In Baltimore, health department workers have pitched hospitals an idea they want to take citywide. The idea builds on the city’s Safe Streets program, which hires   to intervene in conflicts before someone gets hurt. They’re called ”violence interrupters,” and they use their street credibility and deep social ties to settle fights. Now the health department is asking Baltimore hospitals to give the staff of Safe Streets access to patients who have been shot, stabbed or beaten up. The idea comes from Chicago, where the group CeaseFire is already working in four hospitals. Seven years ago, Baltimore piloted such a program at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dante Barksdale, now the outreach coordinator for Safe Streets, was one of a handful of violence interrupters trained to respond to these hospital calls. ”We had Johns Hopkins IDs,” Barksdale says. ”I would walk through the hospital like I was an employee.” When someone from the neighborhood turned up at Johns Hopkins with a violent injury, one of the hospital’s social workers would call Barksdale. He’d head over and try to talk to the patient, sometimes just as the patient was coming out of surgery, or just waking up. The first aim, Barksdale says, is ”to get him to buy into talking to me. Most of the time, people know who shot them. They know if they wronged somebody. I’m trying to get information so I can be calling out to my outreach workers.” Barksdale’s   in the neighborhood would then head out to find others who were involved, to try to prevent a retaliatory attack. One big reason why Safe Streets is able to get people talking is because they do not work with the police. That’s earned them a certain code of honor on the street, Barksdale says. He says that after being shot, people almost always talk. ”That right there has them vulnerable, ready to talk,” he says. ”And then they see a familiar face. ’Oh, that’s one of them Safe Street dudes. I can relate to him,’ as opposed to the chaplain, the doctor, the people who don’t know nothing about their world.” ”We don’t live in the neighborhood,” says Carol Stansbury, director of social work at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She says the Safe Streets workers ”brought the love of their neighborhood and the love of their community that we could not bring.” The Safe Streets program as a whole has run into trouble a few times in Baltimore most recently in the summer of 2015, when two staffers were arrested on gun and drug charges. Stansbury says she never had reservations about giving hospital access to the violence interrupters, almost all of whom have criminal histories. ”It makes sense to me, as a social worker, to have people that have walked the walk,” she says, ”who certainly understand what the issues are, and the troubles, barriers and obstacles people face. They only help me do my job better.” For a variety of reasons, Hopkins’ collaboration with Safe Streets was  . Some of the violence interrupters who were trained as hospital responders left their jobs. The work was never funded, and the responders working in the hospital were actually needed on the streets. But the Baltimore health department found the hospital responders program valuable, and is working to revive the concept, in a bigger way. The idea is to get six or seven hospitals on board, with hopes that at some point the hospitals will pay for it  —   to the tune of roughly $100, 000 annually per institution. That would pay for two violence interrupters per hospital, plus someone to oversee the whole program. The health department would also like each hospital to dedicate a social worker to the program, to help patients with follow up treatment and social services. Several dozen hospitals around the country have violence prevention programs, but most are not staffed   . Funding remains a challenge, with the vast majority paid for with grants or   contributions. This year, the National Network of   Violence Intervention Programs successfully pushed to have violence prevention workers recognized as health care providers, which is a key first step to getting reimbursed by Medicaid and other insurers for services rendered. There is a growing body of evidence that this type of public health intervention can stop the cycle of neighborhood violence that sends people repeatedly to the ER. The studies to date are small, proponents of these programs admit, but all the findings point in the same direction. There is plenty of evidence for the need to intervene. A study out of Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital in the 1980s is today seen as a landmark paper. Researchers tracked victims of violent crimes for five years, and found that, within that period, 44 percent suffered at least one more violent injury, and 20 percent died. A majority of these victims of violence abused alcohol or drugs, and most were unemployed. The study concluded, ”Such data suggest that efforts to reduce urban violence might fruitfully be focused on the victims of violence.” Dr. William Jaquis, chief of emergency medicine at Baltimore’s Sinai Hospital, notes that hospitals are already spending a great deal of money on the treatment of violent injuries. ”We can look at the people who are victims of violence, and we can treat them four to six times, and obviously it’s got a tremendous cost to us,” he says. ”The first time may be a blunt injury, a strike to the head. The next time may be a knife, and the next time may be a gunshot wound. I think what we find is we spend the resources anyway. And so it’s starting to look at how we spend them.” In fact, his hospital already has informal ties to the Safe Streets operation in the nearby neighborhood of Park Heights hospital staffers call Safe Streets when someone from the neighborhood turns up in Sinai’s ER. Albert Brown, violence prevention coordinator for Safe Streets Park Heights, takes many of those calls. Recently, he headed to the hospital to talk with a patient who had been stabbed. After meeting with the man, he sent his colleague out to get the perpetrator’s side of the story, which he wanted to relay back to the guy in the hospital. Intervening quickly is crucial. ”He should be released any day,” Brown explains. ”So the best thing to do is to hurry up and try to get on top of it, before he gets home and any retaliation or anything like that happens.” Brown’s goal is to get the two men to sit down in a room and talk. The sooner, he says, the better."
"Syria’s government has freed an American who was seized after entering the country in 2012, U. S. officials said Friday. The Washington Post identified him as Kevin Patrick Dawes, 33, of San Diego. He was released after lengthy negotiations, according to the U. S. officials. There was no immediate word on where Dawes was on Friday. ”We can confirm and welcome the news that a U. S. citizen was released by Syrian authorities,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said, without identifying Dawes by name. It was not clear what he was doing in Syria. The FBI has described Dawes as a freelance photographer who crossed from Turkey into Syria in September 2012. He was active on Twitter in that region before his account went silent in October 2012. A year earlier, NPR spoke with Dawes in western Libya, where he said he initially served as a medic and then as a fighter with rebels who helped oust dictator Moammar Gadhafi. ”I had to debride some of these blast injuries. And also actually start an IV, [that] was the most complicated thing that I’ve done by myself. Generally speaking though, I offer, I assist. I’m more of an ambulance guy than anything else,” Dawes said in October 2011, two months after Gadhafi was overthrown. Dawes went on to say that he eventually became a combatant. ”We actually had an entire ambulance crew dragged out of their ambulance and executed. It was at that point we decided we had no choice. It was either this, or perish here,” Dawes said. Dawes said he had never served in the U. S. military, but was trained as a marksman. Asked why he decided to go to Libya, he said, ”See the world, experience new things, get in way over my head, but, you know, ultimately survive. Do well here, I think.” Syria never acknowledged holding Dawes and his case has received relatively little media attention, though GQ magazine had this profile on him in January. The Americans who are still missing in Syria include freelance journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in 2012 there has been no word on his fate."
"Two men were killed in a shooting at an Air Force base in Texas, according to military and local law enforcement officials. Joint Base San   was briefly locked down following reports of an active shooter early Friday. ”What we know is that we have two victims right now, we’re going through our process and procedures, and once we make a formal determination through the investigation we will let you know,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta said at a news conference Friday. He declined to identify the two men who died or the relationship between them, saying officials were conducting a    identification and that the investigation was ongoing. LaBrutta said two Glock weapons were found at the scene. ”Our initial assessment is that this is not an act of terrorism,” FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Rob Saale told reporters. LaBrutta echoed that assessment, adding that he considered it a ”” without elaborating. Military and law enforcement officials said the report of an active shooter at the facility’s Forbes Hall came in at 8:40 a. m. local time, and two security patrols arrived within three minutes. Joey Palacios of Texas Public Radio reported that the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office believes the incident might have been a  . Here’s more from Texas Public Radio: ”The lockdown on the base was lifted at about 10:20 a. m. after authorities  —   including Bexar County deputies and San Antonio Police officers  —   searched room [by] room to make sure there were no other shooters. The FBI is also on the scene and will take charge of the investigation.” The San Antonio Police Department said now that the lockdown has been lifted, traffic officers ”have opened up roadways in the area.” Joint Base San   is the home of the Air Force’s basic training unit, where recruits go through the service’s boot camp and graduate to become what the force calls airmen."
"The KQED podcast Love in the Digital Age  explores ”how technology changes the way we experience love, friendship, intimacy and connection.” The most recent episode focuses on two people  —   a Los Angeles radio host and his wife  —   who have drawn great strength from their online communities and social media as they face his diagnosis of terminal cancer. You can listen to the podcast here. Felicia Friesema had seen the signs of brain cancer before. Her husband, Steve Julian, wasn’t just forgetting his keys on the kitchen counter, or having another of the myriad brain farts we often associate with middle age. He’d stop in the middle of a sentence, like he’d just hit a brick wall. And that was that. ”It wasn’t that kind of gradual onset that Alzheimer’s is,” Friesema recalls. ”It didn’t sound or feel like dementia. This was so sudden  —   and it was very eerily similar to what happened to my aunt, my tia Gloria,” Friesema says. This time, the loved one with cancer was her husband. Over the years, they’ve built a cozy life together in a sweet, spacious home in Highland Park, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles. She’s head of marketing for Foothill Transit. And Julian is one of a handful of trusted voices helping Angelenos navigate the freeways every day, as morning anchor for a public radio station,  . In his off hours, he’d been active for years in local theater as an actor, writer and director. Now, he was having trouble navigating his way through a sentence. ”Technically, all tumors are operable,” Friesema explains. ”The question that comes into play is, what are you willing to sacrifice in order to get it out? The position and location of his tumor is such that you would have to completely destroy a lot of healthy brain tissue in order to remove it. You would be creating a situation of paralysis, major cognitive dysfunction, irreversible brain damage  —   and, ultimately, for possibly very little reward. There’s no way of skirting it: I was looking at his death.” Around Thanksgiving last year, Julian was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at the age of 57. They decided not to try to stretch his last months with chemo and radiation therapy. Julian has less time than he might have, but he can eat what he wants, sleep with their dogs, and squeeze the last juice out of the days that remain with his wife. She’s taking time off from work, thanks to a compassionate boss. In the 20 or more hours a day that Julian now sleeps, Friesema takes care of everything else  —   the meals, the housekeeping, the medicine, insurance and the emotional management. Of course, friends and family are helping. Larry Mantle, Julian’s dearest pal, comes over for company and a wee dram of whiskey. Friends have delivered dozens of lasagnas to the doorstep and whipped out their credit cards to cover what insurance doesn’t. But at the end of the day, Friesema is alone. And every morning, there’s a little bit less of Julian. Reaching Out Online, It was a few months into his diagnosis when we noticed Felicia Friesema’s journal on Caring Bridge, a website designed to help families and friends of someone who is ill give updates and get them, and offer and receive encouragement. We recognized a kindred spirit in Friesema  —   someone else in the special club of those who have lost or who are losing a close loved one. We had to fly down to Los Angeles and meet this woman who wrote so deeply and thoughtfully, and with such compassion, about a journey no one chooses. ”I know that this is treacherous ground we walk on and that time is of the essence. We wake up to the juxtaposition of joy in another day together and terror at what may come. ”There is no detailed prognosis yet. But we do know that there is no outcome we like. And I have never been so scared. But I have also never been so completely full of love for him.” That was Dec. 2, 2015. At that point, Steve Julian could still help his wife craft a communique to friends: ”I miss being at work and in the studio. I miss being with all the people I love at KPCC. I’m still good at traffic. We chose UCLA for the surgery and treatment, and navigating to the westside can be tricky. The tumor can take away what I had for dinner, but not my memory of the traffic jams I’ve sat in. ”I am sad. I feel the unfairness of all of this. But I also feel the love for my wife, which grows every day as she balances the technical work of our affairs with the emotional work of our daily life. Like making sure I eat three solid meals. And I mean really solid. Four, sometimes. She tells me I’m loved about a hundred times a day  —   I remember a few of them. Larry [Mantle, host of Air Talk] my brother in all but blood, is a rock for both of us and has been by our side from diagnosis until now.” Many people facing down the gun barrel of something this awful retreat into family. But Friesema reached out from the beginning to friends online. ”We kind of had to,” she explains. ”We’ve kind of got a unique and peculiar situation. I mean, Julian’s a very popular radio host in a very large market. He’s also incredibly involved in the theater community here. He also used to be a cop. So, you have these seemingly disparate communities that he’s connected to. That’s thousands of people  —   his most intimate friends all the way down to the casual listener.” From the peace and quiet of their home on the hill, when Julian is sleeping, Friesema can write about all the medical details that would exhaust her if she had to repeat them to people in one individual conversation after another. Friesema also uses the blog to process what’s happening in her world, ”to take this jumbled   of   notes and ideas and thoughts and put them together into something that is like, ’Oh! OK.’ ” ”Usually, I don’t know when I’m going to conclude until I start writing,” she says, ”and by the end of it, I’m like, ’Oh, that’s my ”aha” moment. OK. All right.’ ” On Facebook, for a smaller, closer audience, Friesema shares   missives from her daily journey  —   proof the bees in the backyard are making ”So. Much. Honey.” Or her desperate wish that MRI machines played Brian Eno instead of frightening clicks and buzzes. Her rage against the insurance company, or her pride in yet another crazy, beautiful meal made for Julian. And then there are the jokes. If anything, staring down death has heightened the couple’s sense of humor. ”Fun with brain cancer: ”Steve: Jen! Me: Yeah, babe (knowing full well he was calling for me). Steve: Oh, I’m sorry. I just called you Jen. Me: Yeah, I know, babe. It’s OK. What’s up? Steve: (tells me some stuff he needs). Me: No problem. By the way (smiling) I’d like to know who the hell Jen is. Steve: (chuckles) So would I!” The love has come pouring in from all corners. By Jan. 4, Friesema reported that more than 100 people had made deliveries, run errands or completed tasks around the house. Julian’s had a sandwich named after him at Wax Paper, a local sandwich shop with a thing for public radio. Friends have blogged about Julian. Local Morning Edition hosts across the country recorded their well wishes on YouTube. People ”are grateful for being included,” Friesema says, ”or grateful just to know that Steve’s OK for now. Or they’re grateful for an opportunity to help. I’d been crying so hard just a few days ago. I just couldn’t stop. I was so sad and so dejected. And, at the end of the day, my status update on Facebook was, ’There just aren’t enough tissues in the box.’ So, the next day, what arrives on my doorstep but a case of Kleenex. And the message was, ’We know that this isn’t enough, but hopefully it helps.’ ” ”One of the things we’ve been focusing on,” Friesema says, ”is making sure that every day is about some kind of pleasure  —   some kind of happy moment, some laugh, something in there that actually makes the day not a routine of caregiving.” Friesema sighs. ”You know, something that reminds us that there are all these wonderful pieces to life and that living doesn’t stop with a cancer diagnosis.” What remains online from this journey is a whole lot more than the testament to the love that people have for Steve Julian and Felicia Friesema. It’s a social network  —   in the best sense  —   that will be there for Friesema, waiting to engage and respond anytime she wants. This story was produced by The California Report at KQED, with production support from California Report’s LA Bureau Chief Steven Cuevas."
"High schools around the country are increasingly turning to external,   providers for ”online credit recovery.” These courses, taken on a computer, offer students who have failed a course a second chance to earn credits they need for graduation, whether after school, in the summer or during the school year. In some districts, it’s an important part of efforts to raise graduation rates, as we wrote about in our Graduation Rates project last year. Today, the first   randomized controlled trial of student performance in these courses is out from the American Institutes of Research, and the news is not great. AIR followed 1, 224 freshmen in the Chicago public schools, randomly assigned in the summers of 2011 and 2012 to retake   algebra either    or on a computer. Here are some of the key findings: But, there’s a bright spot. The students taking the online courses usually did so in a lab with an   ”mentor” whose duties included troubleshooting the technology, proctoring exams and managing behavior. When these mentors took the initiative to also provide instructional support  —   that is, help with the actual math  —   then the pass rates for those students rose to match that of the    students. Not surprisingly, these supportive mentors were more likely to actually be certified in mathematics teaching. ”We find that result to be very intriguing,” says Jessica Heppen, lead author of the report. ”It suggests the promise of more blended approaches.” In other words, for struggling students to successfully learn math on a computer, they needed access to a real live teacher, too. Douglas Maclin, principal of the Chicago Vocational Career Academy, says they’ve arrived at that conclusion through their own experience with credit recovery. ”Online just by itself was not panning out to give us the success rate that we needed,” he says. ”It does not negate the need for    human interaction with somebody who has a command in that subject area.” The online provider of the credit recovery course used in the study is now known as Fuel Education, a subsidiary of K12 Inc. Beth Halloran, a spokeswoman for the company, said in a statement: ”Student success in any class  —   whether in an online, blended, or a traditional setting  —   is influenced by multiple factors, including student proficiency and engagement, teacher effectiveness,   support, course rigor, demographics, student preparedness, comfort with technology, and many others. . .. We are very proud of the flexible options we provide our partners to enable them to meet more of their students’ needs as they prepare them for college and careers.” Speaking of preparing for college and careers, Heppen points out that while the   results in this study look bad for online credit recovery, that difference actually disappears over the long term. Unfortunately, just 1 in 6 students in Chicago who fail algebra ends up graduating from high school. Those trends don’t change whether they retake the course online or   . Sarah Karp at WBEZ contributed reporting for this story. "
"If navigating your tax return has remained on the back burner until now, you can stretch the process out for three more days this year. That’s right: This year’s deadline is actually April 18. This is all because of a fortuitous overlap of federal and state holidays with the usual April 15 due date. Emancipation Day, an official holiday in the District of Columbia that usually falls on April 16, is on Friday, April 15 this year  —   pushing the tax deadline to the following Monday. The holiday commemorates the end of slavery in Washington, D. C. when in 1862 the D. C. Compensated Emancipation Act ”freed 3, 100 individuals, reimbursed those who had legally owned them and offered the newly freed women and men money to emigrate,” according to the D. C. mayor’s office. The IRS considers holidays observed in D. C. to be legal holidays nationwide. In 2007, according to The Washington Post, ”the country had a   reprieve on filing tax returns because April 15 fell on a Sunday and the next day  —   Monday, April 16  —   was D. C. Emancipation Day.” And in further good news for (some) procrastinators, taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts will have an additional day to file because IRS offices there will be closed Monday for Patriots’ Day, the statewide holiday marking the Battles of Lexington and Concord. They’ll ”have until Tuesday, April 19, 2016 to file their individual income tax returns,” the IRS says. The   extension for taxpayers in those two states applies ”whether they file by snail mail,   or   to an IRS facility,” according to the IRS. However, the IRS says that ”estimated tax payments are due on Monday, April 18, 2016  —   whether or not you’re a resident of Maine or Massachusetts.” (You can use Form   to calculate estimated tax.) The discrepancy is because of where Maine and Massachusetts taxpayers using this method mail their form: ”taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts send their estimated tax payments to an IRS facility in another state (that does not observe Patriots’ Day).” Good luck with your returns, everyone  —   whether you’ve filed months ago, or are just getting started."
"Monkey malaria is just a few steps away from becoming a major human disease. The big question is whether it will take those steps. New research shows that Plasmodium knowlesi, a form of malaria common in monkeys in South East Asia, is capable of flourishing in people even though so far it rarely does. ”We were really trying to understand whether what is normally thought to be a zoonotic disease  —   transmitted from animals to humans  —   is actually becoming something that is now transmitted between humans,” says Manoj Duraisingh, a professor of immunology and infectious disease at the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. Duraisingh is one of the authors of a new paper on P. knowlesi malaria published in Nature Communications. Over the past decade human cases of knowlesi malaria have been on the rise in parts of Southeast Asia.   ”monkey malaria” has become the most common form of malaria now detected in hospitals and clinics in Malaysian Borneo. Patients with knowlesi malaria suffer from intense bouts of fever. The symptoms are so similar to regular   malaria that it’s often misdiagnosed as one of the five other human strains. ”There is growing concern that this simian parasite is adapting to infect humans more efficiently,” Duraisingh and his   write in this new paper. Most of the time the Plasmodium knowlesi parasites reside in   macaques. The parasites are   to the monkeys. The pests can reproduce easily in the macaques’ blood. Mosquitoes that feed on the primates then spread the parasites to more and more monkeys. Until the last decade or so, knowlesi parasites and macaques were pretty much a closed loop. But as deforestation and the expansion of palm oil plantations in Malaysia have cut into the monkeys’ natural habitat, people and macaques have come in closer and more constant contact. That proximity has led to more people being bitten by mosquitoes laden with knowlesi parasites. ”In many parts of Malaysia now it’s the predominant malaria parasite that [doctors] actually see,” Duraisingh says. The knowlesi parasite however generally doesn’t reproduce as efficiently in human blood as in monkey blood because of a gene mutation  —   a complicated fork in the evolutionary tree  —   that happened 3 million years ago. Macaques got one gene. We got another. Our gene makes it much harder for knowlesi parasites to invade our red blood cells compared to those of macaques. This explains why most of the human cases of knowlesi malaria are fairly mild. But Duraisingh says his team noticed a subset of malaria cases in Borneo that weren’t mild at all. For these patients, as the parasites multiply there are cyclical spikes of intense fever. Knowlesi malaria can be fatal but it does respond to standard malaria treatment if identified early. These intense cases of knowlesi malaria made Duraisingh and his colleagues think that there’s something going on with the knowlesi parasite that might allow it to become more dangerous. ”We thought that some of these [knowlesi] parasites might have a way of invading red blood cells and growing faster than other [knowlesi] parasites,” he says. In their lab Duraisingh found that the knowlesi parasite was able to find new ways to invade human red blood cells. They write: ”It has been shown that P. knowlesi can expand its preferred host cell niche by invading older red blood cells and this is an important factor influencing adaptation of P. knowlesi to the human population.” The number of human cases of monkey malaria in Malaysian Borneo is still only a few thousand a year. (A mere pittance compared to the   million cases each year of falciparum malaria.) But this new research shows that the knowlesi parasite is capable of adapting to life in a new host. At least in the laboratory it can learn how to invade human blood cells quite quickly. The great fear is that as people, macaques and   mosquitoes come in more contact, the parasite will increasingly adapt to the point where there’s sustained transmission from human to human. If that does happen, monkey malaria could become the next emerging infectious disease threat."
"If there was a Mount Rushmore of the benchmark greats of American music, Merle Haggard would have to be on it. He was among the greatest of his or any generation of country performers. A true   his prowess as a guitarist and fiddler could only be eclipsed by his greatness as a vocalist and songwriter. He was also a true entertainer with charisma and seemingly effortless stage presence. A master bandleader, he always had incredible backing musicians and his show managed a rare consistency for the countless thousands of performances he played during a career that spanned well over fifty years. He was already one of the last survivors of his era when I finally got to see him perform in 1998. At that time he was reunited on stage with his   and former singing partner, Bonnie Owens. She herself passed not long afterward, but that afternoon in Greensboro N. C. they had a wonderful chemistry and rapport as they bantered back and forth about how they became friends after they quit trying to be married to each other. It was a hot summer afternoon at a   street festival and Merle and company could have easily phoned it in, but the show was excellent. I marveled at how a band so tight could play it so loose, and the show, while brief, managed to fit in an enormous songbook of absolutely classic country songs, hitting many of the hits as well as some deeper cuts. I was already a huge fan. I loved his voice and tenacity, his sense of humor and humanity. His songs didn’t sound written as much as carved in stone. They contained a sense of place that conjured the dust and dirt from which they came. As an artist, he could be stubborn and confounding. Just as you think you had him pegged, he was somewhere else, never being afraid to surprise and challenge whether he was staring down the counter culture on ”Fighting Side of Me” or singing of a death row inmate he’d known at San Quentin in ”Sing Me Back Home” or taking a stand, most likely in opposition to most of his following at the time, embracing interracial romance in ”Irma Jackson.” He was as American as the Oklahoma ground his people came from and as universal as the hunger and longing that his family’s   roots and his own California   raising instilled in him. In 2000, already in his   he further cemented his legend by signing with the revered punk label Anti Records and making one of the greatest   records of any artist. If I Could Only Fly was sparse and autobiographical and introduced him to yet another generation of fans. In one song, ”I’m Still Your Daddy,” he worries over having to tell his children about the time he spent in prison during his darker younger years. In another, ”Wishing All These Old Things Were New” he laments not being able to do cocaine anymore like he did in the ’80s. The album drew critical raves and still holds up as one of his best of his many great albums. Although he’s best known in the realm of country music, he was never tied down by the roots of his genre, drawing freely from influences as wide as jazz and western swing. His music could speak to audiences raised on punk rock or southern boogie. He always followed his own path and never chose to follow the trends of the day. This rebelliousness was nearly his undoing from his earliest days serving time in (and escaping from) detention centers and later a stint in San Quentin. It was while doing time in prison that his life was changed and probably saved by watching Johnny Cash perform. Upon release, Merle set off on a career trajectory that brought him 37 number one hits, Academy of Country Music 1970 Entertainer of the Year, a 1994 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame and a 2010 Kennedy Center Honor. In 1969, during the height of the Vietnam war and   protests, he recorded ”Okie From Muskogee,” in which he seemingly drew a line in the sand against the hippies of the day: ”We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee   We don’t take our trips on LSD.” Later, he claimed that he wrote the song from what he assumed would have been his late father’s point of view about the events of the day. Haggard, himself openly smoked pot and recorded ”America First,” a song protesting the Iraq War in 2005. As I was growing up in the South during Merle Haggard’s heyday, his music was ubiquitous, often playing from radios where you pumped your gas and bought your groceries. As a teenager I worked at a record store while he was having an early ’80s resurgence and I knew that this guy, who was as country as could be, was revered by folks like Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan. That he was timeless and special. As so many of his peers attempted to defy getting older, he wore the lines on his face like   trophies of the years he’d survived. When we were starting our band   Truckers, we drove thousands of miles soundtracked by those wonderful records he made and I always felt like his writing was a graduate course in everything that is best in the creation of songs that are timeless and true. Merle’s son Ben said that his father had been saying that he would die on his birthday. He did exactly that, on his 79th. He has left us a legacy and catalog of great songs that will live on for generations to come. Patterson Hood plays and sings in the rock and roll band   Truckers. They are currently on tour and will be releasing a new album in the fall. Hood lives with his family in Portland, Ore."
"After a long, desolate winter devoid of bats and balls and more than a few questionable called strikes,   baseball is finally once more upon us. And while the action on the diamond is the main attraction, it’s by no means the only competition that rages in ballparks across the country. For a glimpse of another battle entirely, just look to the stands. There, in the aisles, you’ll find vendors roaming the stadium selling refreshments, vying with one another to end each game as the day’s top seller. And chances are, if you’re looking for that top seller at a Baltimore Orioles game, you’d do worse than look to Clarence Haskett  —   aka ”Fancy Clancy.” Haskett has been a vendor at Orioles games since 1974, and in the course of his career, he has sold more than a million beers. He started when he was still in high school. ”And I don’t know why I remember this,” Haskett says, ”but I made $8. 25.” On a recent visit with StoryCorps, the   great sat with his friend Jerry Collier, once a longtime vendor himself, to talk about the job they both know so well. ”I met you probably the second day of my new job,” Collier says. And Collier, who was then just 19, knew immediately whom he wanted to emulate. ”When I looked around the ballpark, there was this ray of sunshine everywhere you look. A guy who outworked people, who   all the customers more than anybody else. And I said, ’That’s who I want to be like.’ ” But Haskett says it wasn’t just a matter of labor and love he had a few secrets up his sleeve, too. ”I used to move quicker than a lot of the other vendors, because I was a sprinter in college,” he says. ”And another thing: You know I had the gift of gab. And I used to do rhymes so that helped me out.” One of his favorites? ”Hey! Empty your pockets, put your money in your hand, cuz here’s Clancy, your beer man!” It was just one element of a persona he developed to help his sales. And Haskett says that wasn’t all. He kept in condition and kept sharp to keep ahead of the rest of the vendors  —   because competition could get fierce. ”The way that I look at my job as a vendor, my mindset is I’m a professional athlete. I have to stay in shape, I have to train during the offseason,” Haskett says. ”Because vendors running around with straps around their neck? That’s only on television commercials. Good vendors pick up their case and they carry it.” They have always taken the job seriously  —   so seriously, in fact, that everything revolved around the Orioles’ schedule, even their own weddings. Both of them made sure those ceremonies landed on dates the Orioles were out of town. ”You epitomize to me and so many people all that’s right in the world,” Collier tells Haskett. ”If it’s a rainout at the Orioles game and you only sell two cases of beer, in the big scheme of life, that’s not a problem. And I think that’s more than the rhymes and all the rest. You’re larger than life in a lot of ways.” ”I can always go somewhere and get a free beer from somebody,” Haskett says, laughing. ”I can go into a restaurant or bar that I’ve never been in before  —   there’s always somebody who knew who I was, so I definitely shake a lot of hands.” Haskett’s been doing the job for 43 years. And if he gets his way, he’ll be doing it quite a while longer. ”As long as I’m still healthy,” he says, ”I know I got another good 10 years.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Liyna Anwar and Cailey Cron. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"The very mention of the Silk Roads creates an instant image: camel caravans trudging through the high plains and deserts of central Asia, carrying silks, spices and philosophies to Europe and the larger Mediterranean. And while these ancient routes may remain embedded in our imagination, they have, over the past few centuries, slowly faded in importance. The region today is home to despotic regimes, failing states and endless conflict. But historian Peter Frankopan thinks that the Silk Roads ”are rising again.” In his new book, The Silk Roads, Frankopan has created something that forces us to sit up and reconsider the world and the way we’ve always thought about it. Western scholarship, he argues, has long ignored the routes linking Europe to the Pacific, the areas he calls ”the axis on which the globe spun.” So he has chosen to focus firmly on the Silk Roads, for what he calls ”a new history of the world.” The book takes us by surprise right from the start: It begins not with the Greeks or the Romans, but with the Persian Empire  —   Frankopan writes that the Greeks and Romans, when they thought to expand, moved east toward the riches of Persia, rather than north or west into Europe. In an email conversation, Frankopan tells me that he wanted to explore exchange between the East and the West of everything from ideas and beliefs to food and fashion. ”Incidentally, it’s not just luxury goods that I track  —   silks, textiles, spices, ceramics and slaves  —   but violence and disease, too,” he says. ”For example, the pathways followed by the Mongols and the Black Death were identical.” As you worked on this book, what struck you as the most important contributions the Silk Roads made to world history? One thing that I was particularly interested in is the spread of faith along the Silk Roads. All the great global religions  —   Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as lots of other important but less   belief systems  —   spread along the web of routes crisscrossing the spine of Asia. I was also very struck by the scale of the white slave trade in the early Middle Ages  —   huge numbers of men, women and children were trafficked from Europe to the east in return for silver. I think readers will be surprised by that. But most of all is the fact that the Silk Roads keep on being involved all the time in more or less everything: they play the lead role in the expeditions of Columbus, who was trying to connect to the trade routes of the east they were crucial to the origins of World War I  —   whose origins were firmly based in Asia, even though the trigger came from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. There is a profound significance to the origins of the Holocaust, too, for example: Documents relating to German agricultural production and needs show that the decision to invade the Soviet Union was closely linked to taking control of the wheat fields of the rich lands lying north of the Black and Caspian Seas. The failure to ”extract” the expected harvests from what is now Ukraine and Southern Russia led to discussions first about how to feed back in German controlled territories and then about who to feed. Those in prison camps found their calories reduced and then cut altogether the jump to genocide was directly linked to the failure of the campaigns in the east. We just don’t look at this region at all  —   so have never thought to join up all these dots before. You write, ”We are seeing the signs of the world’s center of gravity shifting  —   back to where it lay for millennia.” But some argue that the world’s center is shifting not toward the Silk Roads but farther East  —   toward China, Southeast Asia and India. I can’t speak for those who believe that the center of gravity is moving elsewhere. Many seem to think China   India exist in a bubble and can be looked at on their own. But I am much more interested in how China engages with Russia, with Iran, with the Middle East and with Central Asia  —   as well as with Southeast Asia. And that, by the way, is how China itself sees the world. China’s signature foreign policy for the next 30 years is . .. essentially the construction of a series of new Silk Roads. China has dramatically rising energy needs as its middle classes grow in number and prosperity. So pipelines bringing oil and gas from   countries like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran have been or are being built to help fuel China’s growth. And as a historian, it gives me no small pleasure to realize that those pipelines follow the same paths that traders bringing goods followed 2   thousand years ago. Nishant Dahiya is NPR’s Asia Editor"
"Democratic voters in Wyoming have decided: Sen. Bernie Sanders has won the state’s caucuses, according to The Associated Press. But the victory over Hillary Clinton will not ensure Sanders more delegates. The state’s 14 delegates will be split evenly between the two candidates. ​Hillary for America Campaign Manager Robby Mook released the following statement on Clinton’s tie in pledged delegates in Wyoming: ”We congratulate Senator Sanders on a spirited campaign in Wyoming. Outperforming expectations, Hillary Clinton tied in pledged delegates today and now leads Senator Sanders by approximately 220 pledged delegates nationwide. Thanks to the help of thousands of volunteers, Hillary is winning the popular vote by almost 2. 4 million and has a nearly insurmountable lead in pledged delegates that will become harder and harder to overcome after each contest. We are grateful to our supporters who know that Hillary Clinton would be the best candidate to break down the barriers that hold Americans back.” Wyoming, a deeply red state, isn’t exactly up for grabs in the general election most onlookers expect the state to vote Republican, no matter who the GOP ends up choosing as its nominee. But that didn’t stop both Clinton and Sanders from setting up campaign offices and running television ads there. And, even as headlines have showered attention on the   primary in New York on April 19, Sanders himself visited Wyoming earlier this week, holding a rally at the University of Wyoming. Former President Bill Clinton campaigned on behalf of his wife in Cheyenne. ”I think when people get to see and hear a candidate or a former president first hand it really inspires them to understand the true meaning of an election,” says Aimee Van Cleave, the executive director of the Wyoming Democratic Party. It’s the latest in a string of victories for Sanders in Western states that hold caucuses. He also won in Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Washington state. In each of these contests, demographics and a strong   organization have helped Sanders nab delegates, though he still remains well behind Clinton in the overall pledged delegate race. Sanders has now won eight of the last nine contests in the Democratic race. That said, the path gets much tougher after this for Sanders, with a calendar dominated by primaries in states with larger, more diverse Democratic electorates. Many of the upcoming primaries are closed to Democrats only, so the independent voters that Sanders has been doing very well with won’t be able to vote. A few caucus locations across the state had to be changed ahead of time to accommodate larger numbers of voters. In Albany County, one of the larger counties in the state, more than 1, 200 people showed up to caucus in an ice rink. Most voters were wearing buttons or stickers in support of either Clinton or Sanders, but the mood was unmistakably friendly between the two camps. Wyoming State Representative Cathy Connolly was there supporting Clinton. ”I will caucus for Hillary. If Bernie ultimately wins, I’ll be the biggest Bernie supporter you ever see,” says Connolly. Amanda Holliday was handing out Bernie Sanders stickers in Albany County. She’s a law student at the University of Wyoming, but is originally from Georgia. She says this was her first caucus. ”I’m super excited. I’m from a primary state, so all we do is just cast the ballot privately and walk out, so this is exhilarating. I’m just having the time of my life,” says Holliday."
"In the way only he can, former President Bill Clinton has walked back his confrontation with Black Lives Matter protesters earlier this week. ”I did something yesterday in Philadelphia that I almost want to apologize for,” he said, before attempting to turn the whole thing into a lesson about the need for civility in politics. The spectacle of the former president shaking his finger during a tense back and forth with BLM demonstrators was a bad look for him, and a distraction for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But at least on one level, his defense of his 1994 Violent Crime Control Act was true it did have some support  —   or tacit approval  —   among black leaders and citizens. Clinton described the harsh sentencing provisions  —   especially the ones connected with crack cocaine that disproportionately hurt    —   as an unpleasant but necessary compromise with    Republicans. ”I talked to a lot of   groups,” Clinton said. ”They thought black lives matter. They said, ’Take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs.’ ” This response struck me as incomplete and   but also true. The young people shouting at Clinton today grew up in the shadow of problems they  —   and many researchers  —   trace to the 1994 crime bill: the    approach to law and order, frequent incidents of excessive police force, and long prison sentences for   drug offenses that condemned the incarcerated to poverty and   citizenship when they finally got out. That’s their generation’s experience. As a child of the 1980s, my experience was as a young witness to the drug crisis that led to that law. I rarely felt personally threatened in those days, but the city I was born in, Washington, D. C. was never the same. When I was a kid, summers meant long visits to my city cousins. It wasn’t that long a trip from my Maryland suburban home. But for me and my brother, it could still feel like an adventure, even though we mostly did the same kid stuff we did at home: bike rides, trips to parks and playgrounds, games in the yard. At night, as long as we were in sight of a   we could be in the front yard or the back, playing catch or hula hoops, or jumping rope or chasing lightning bugs with empty jars. Even then, there were drugs in some of these neighborhoods, but we knew that if you stayed away from the folks who were involved with them, they’d stay away from you. My mother, who had moved us out of the city in search of better schools, wasn’t too worried. She was concerned that we’d pick up bad grammar from the kids in the neighborhood. She cautioned us to be wary of broken glass and the city traffic that might move too fast for our    conditioned ways. ”Be careful and be good,” she would always say. Crack changed that. Crack changed everything. Even though none of my family members lived in the heart of the violence, the threat hovered just a few blocks away. The Washington Post and other media reported the grim facts. Murders climbed from 147 people in 1985 to 194 in 1986 and 225 in 1987. And kids were getting caught up in the violence and the crime. Between January 1987 and October 1988, nearly 500 children had been shot and stabbed. Almost 1, 400 kids under the age of 15 were arrested in the   effort called Operation Clean Sweep. These scenarios were playing out in Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and many other cities. For me personally, the consequences were minor, but the fear was real. After the crisis began, summer visits to the city meant staying inside for long stretches of board games and television. My cousins talked about friends and some of our own relatives who were in trouble. The hushed conversation of the   touched on how the drug trade and the crime that surrounded it threatened my generation. When I heard that a childhood friend, a young black college student, had been killed, I was somehow relieved to hear he’d been killed by a drunk driver rather than a gun. One of the songs I remember from those years was ” .” A group of rap stars calling themselves the Stop the Violence Movement  —   including   MC Lyte and Public Enemy  —   preached against    crime. They lamented that the violence reinforced stereotypes and played into the hands of people who hated  . ”I never ever ran from the Ku Klux Klan,” Kool Moe Dee raps, ”and I shouldn’t have to run from a black man.” From what I remember, there had always been a feeling that the police could be more of a threat than a help to black people. But the idea that black boys and men would kill each other in such large numbers, often over trivial disputes, was a terrifying revelation. It was an emergency. People responded that way. Many got involved in prayer services, marches, vigils, neighborhood watches, mentoring and   programs to keep kids safe and out of trouble. Others moved out of communities where they had once hoped to raise their children. A lot of folks did both. And so what did the government do? For many years, the answer I heard was ”not enough.” If white folks had been getting killed, if their houses were getting broken into and their neighborhoods were being ruined, government would’ve done something. But the sense was that because black people were suffering and dying, no one cared. That’s why many of the   who voted for Bill Clinton also supported that   crime bill. Lots of people were willing to take ”help” in whatever form it was offered, whatever the future consequences might be. Otherwise, many had a hard time seeing any future for themselves, their families or their cities. Now, a generation later, the Black Lives Matter protesters are having to live in that future, and not just the good parts that former President Clinton wants to take credit for. There are reasonable questions about the manner of their protest, and even the fairness of holding Hillary Clinton to account for the policies of her husband. But there’s also the uncomfortable truth that those responsible for helping to put those policies in place could include the parents and grandparents of BLM protesters, their aunts and uncles . .. people like me."
"On March 31, Wayne Coyne sat on the shoulders of a man wearing a Chewbacca costume at Carnegie Hall, and he did so for the sake for David Bowie. The occasion was the first of a   tribute billed as The Music of David Bowie, with a   lineup that included Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry, Michael Stipe, Perry Farrell, Ann Wilson of Heart, the Pixies, Tony Visconti  —   Bowie’s longtime collaborator, friend and producer of Blackstar, his 25th and final studio album  —   and more. The concert was both celebratory and somber, an event that coaxed several tears and a handful of   from the 2, 800 or so people who filled each velvet seat of the venue. Stipe’s hypnotizing, minimal rendition of ”Ashes to Ashes” was just as warmly applauded as Harry’s boisterous take on ”Star Man” Jakob Dylan brought the house down with his own   reimagining of ”Heroes.” So did ”Life on Mars? ,” the contribution from Coyne that had The Flaming Lips frontman using the Wookiee as a piece of furry furniture. At Radio City Music Hall the following evening, Amanda Palmer, Anna Calvi and Jherek Bischoff would entrance the congregation of Young Dudes and Young Americans with ”Blackstar,” a selection from the program that shone for its newness. While haunting and profoundly dissonant in the vein of Bowie’s own recording, the inclusion of Blackstar’s title track  —   still foreign when compared to the familiar favorites plucked from his discography  —   was masterful in its ability to anchor the festivities in the present, to remind the room why so many people had come to sit, sing and cry with a bunch of strangers. The Music of David Bowie had been planned and booked long before Bowie’s passing when tickets went on sale, coincidentally, on the day he died, they were gone in minutes, prompting the addition of that second performance at Radio City. From Cyndi Lauper’s boisterous ”Suffragette City” opener to the appropriately ghoulish undertow of ”Blackstar” to the grand finale of ”Space Oddity” that had the whole lineup swaying and clapping in time with the audience, The Music of David Bowie wasn’t just a memorial for the beloved rocker who passed away on Jan. 10 at the age of 69, a funeral mass rife with fond memories and modern hymns for the rock ’n’ roll parishioner. It was a ritual of sorts, a meditation on life and art, an acceptance of the impermanence of one and the eternal echo of the other. It was an oath affirmed with every ”Wham, bam, thank you ma’am! ,” ”Hot tramp, I love you so” and the like, a promise to Bowie that each tribute mounted in the weeks following his death  —   even the ones featuring furry Star Wars characters, for one   intergalactic reason or another  —   does its part in ensuring his music will continue to survive him. Elsewhere on March 31  —   approximately 3, 000 miles away in San Francisco, to be precise  —   Iggy Pop took the stage just three gigs into the tour that could very well be his last. Pop has said on the record that he just might ”close up shop” after Post Pop Depression, the Josh   album featuring guitar work from Homme, Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age on bass and Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys on drums. To mark the release of his 17th solo album, Pop and his   supergroup played a surprise show at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on March 8 they   that performance with two nights at Austin’s ACL Moody Theater during South By Southwest, on March 15 and 16, before officially kicking off the tour on March 28 at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre. As they continue on their national jaunt, the setlist has remained largely unchanged: Pop and Co. pulverize the new stuff, playing through seven of Post Pop Depression’s nine tracks on any given evening, but the majority of the   show stares down the onset of Pop’s solo career  —   namely, the songs of The Idiot and Lust for Life, the two albums Pop made in 1977 with Bowie. The songs that would eventually make up those two albums were written in 1976, just before Bowie dove into 1977’s Low and ”Heroes” and 1979’s Lodger, the three   albums that would later be dubbed his ”Berlin Trilogy.” Nearly 40 years after that monumental creative period, Bowie and Pop’s respective orbits aligned once more as they produced and released Blackstar and Post Pop Depression, autobiographical elegies and  —   perhaps  —   the last words on their legacies. On stage, the intensity Pop channels into the juxtaposition of Post Pop Depression’s brooding material and Lust for Life and The Idiot’s   buoyancy serves a similar purpose as these Bowie tributes, in that he’s reflecting on the music that made him while offering a record that looks back on the life he lived in stark, dark terms. Pop has rarely donned a shirt in the four decades he’s been swinging from his mic stand and flailing his limbs in different directions during the ”  ”  of ”The Passenger,” and the Post Pop Depression tour is no exception to the rule. Pop’s movements have lost elasticity, but he rolls through ”Gardenia” with the same slink as he does ”China Girl” before the tone shifts and he declares he’s ready to ”pack up his soul and scram” in ”Paraguay.” He’s the curator here, the one presenting his memories and   his creations for this comprehensive set. But Bowie is gone, leaving collaborators and superlative musicians to carry his torch with various covers and retrospective performances, like The Music of David Bowie at Carnegie Hall and Radio City. Pop remains, his torch continually lit by his own voracious, vulgar resolve and the superlative musicians that support his wild gesticulations and exclamations. One man may stand in the past tense, but the other is active in the present, and a single, immortal message infuses these records in tandem: We’re all going to die, they seem to say. My time is coming, and this is my last, lasting word on the subject. The difference is that Pop’s voice carries his grand finale before a live audience, while Bowie, now silenced, has relinquished that duty to his community. To count the parallels between the albums is at once a gauche exercise and an eerie meditation on the play of prophecy. Both Blackstar and Post Pop Depression were written and recorded in secret, two works unfolding in shrouded environments entrusted to Visconti and Homme, respectively both are brief and potent, clocking in at seven (Blackstar) and nine (Post Pop Depression) songs each. The final touches for both were made in the same time frame, with 2015 serving as a prolific year spent with the country between them: Pop and Homme set about writing and recording what would become Post Pop Depression in southern California, while Bowie  —   who lived with his cancer diagnosis, a secret known only by family and Visconti  —   worked on Blackstar at the Magic Shop in New York. Both records ruminate on grand, fatalistic themes that invoke the afterlife in mythical terms (on Bowie’s ”Lazarus” Pop’s ”American Valhalla,” especially) both are records that amp up the lyrical intensity with predominantly discordant, driving and sometimes atonal arrangements that escalate tension and rage one clashing chord at a time. What Visconti provides in experimental flourishes and brassy, ivory, jazzy strains on Blackstar, Homme delivers in straightforward, sneering rock and roll instrumentation on Post Pop Depression. Both albums play on six of the seven stages of grief, fluctuating between denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression and acceptance, sometimes in a single track the first of those seven stages, disbelief, is largely absent, as both Blackstar and Post Pop Depression lead this dance with the mortality of the men who made them instead of shying away from it. Like Bowie with Blackstar and the tributes that look back on his brilliant,     Pop is conducting a ritual that embraces both Post Pop Depression’s unblinking gaze into the infinite and his role as its temporary messenger. Pop will continue on this tour through May 15 after that, he’ll commence with a European run of solo dates that has him booked through Aug. 28. The tides of remembrance will keep Bowie’s farewell   current through various homages and   productions he  —   and the Thin White Duke, and Aladdin Sane, and Ziggy Stardust  —   will live on   while Pop will hurl his fists into the air and howl, his bare, leathery torso brushing the knees of his tuxedo pants in a deep bow before he stalks off the stage. The ”Golden Years” have passed the ”Lust for Life” remains, and Pop’s is   from that set opener to his encore. Blackstar and Post Pop Depression serve as bookends to brilliant careers on the same shelf, if Post Pop Depression does in fact wind up being Pop’s final recorded effort. In spite of their shared finality, when played out for packed rooms both Blackstar and Post Pop Depression take less of a last breath, instead breathing new life into the extensive catalogs of both artists. They provide the opportunity to discover and reflect all at once, to couch the blow of the end while assuaging the audience with deep cuts and   favorites, seemingly for one last time. Pop’s tour is the road map to his own American Valhalla, but Bowie’s recent ascension to his traces the physicality of his lingering earthbound brother in the brittle lines of impermanence."
"Maria Sanchez is a    widow, grandmother of three and a legal permanent resident who has lived and worked in Sonoma County, Calif. for more than 40 years. But she has also come close to being deported. Four years ago, Sanchez was almost separated from her family here in the U. S. for a crime she committed in the late 1990s. Hers is a story that brings up one of the most volatile issues in this election season  —   immigration, and by extension, deportation. President Obama has said he wants to prioritize the deportation of immigrants with criminal records. In 2014, he stressed that immigration agents would target ”felons, not families.” Sanchez’s situation, however, reveals that some immigrant felons are not what they seem. And many may still have a strong case for remaining in the United States. Sitting in her suburban home, Sanchez remembers how close she came to being deported. She was returning from a vacation in Mexico, as she had several times before without a problem. But this time, Sanchez was detained at the Oakland airport and questioned for several hours by immigration officials. ”They treated me like I was a criminal, and all I’ve ever done is work,” Sanchez says. The authorities had found a    drug conviction on her record. According to court documents, in 1998, Sanchez had pleaded guilty to one charge of cultivation of marijuana. She says she had grown four small plants and soaked the cannabis in rubbing alcohol as a tincture for her arthritis. Sanchez was sentenced to four months of house arrest, three years of probation and a fine. She thought the case was over. But she was slated for deportation because her conviction qualified as an aggravated felony. It’s a category that can apply to a broad range, from the activities of a drug cartel leader to an incident of someone growing marijuana for personal use. According to government data released to Human Rights Watch, between 2007 and 2012 the government deported more than 34, 000   for marijuana possession. But the data don’t break down how many were here illegally, or how many were legal residents like Sanchez. ”I don’t feel that the law itself is inherently unjust,” says Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Washington, D. C.  Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank favoring immigration limits. She says she can’t think of a reason why someone holding a green card should escape the consequences of their actions. ”Anyone who is granted permanent residency is able to have that privilege with the condition that they are not going to commit crimes or otherwise be causing problems in the United States, and the law provides for deportation if the crimes are of a certain severity,” Vaughan says. Rose Cahn, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, says, ”Let’s just be absolutely clear  —   we’re not talking about people with murder convictions on their records.” She runs a program matching immigrants like Sanchez with pro bono lawyers who negotiate with prosecutors to get the original conviction erased on the basis of a 2010 Supreme Court ruling. ”There is a right to know the immigration consequences of a conviction before you enter into a plea agreement,” Cahn adds. ”And if the defense counsel has not told the defendant about the looming immigration consequences, then that conviction is legally invalid.” And if the conviction is invalid, it can be vacated or erased. So if there is no conviction, there’s no deportation. Cahn’s program has 50 cases pending. Most involve immigrants facing deportation, because in the 1990s, the government expanded the definition of aggravated felony to include   drug offenses. And the immigrants face removal even though they already had paid a penalty, such as a jail sentence or probation, in some cases more than a decade ago. Cahn’s team has never lost a case. As a result, Maria Sanchez just learned a few weeks ago that her ordeal is over. She won’t be separated from her family. But as she tells her story, she still wrings her nervous hands. ”I never would have planted the marijuana if I would have known that this was going to happen,” she says."
"To Bernie Sanders supporters, the idea that Democratic superdelegates  —   elected officials and other party elites who can vote however they wish at the convention  —   could tip the nomination to Hillary Clinton seems terribly undemocratic. And so, they’re trying to convince superdelegates, officially known as unpledged party leaders and elected officials, to change their allegiance. There are several online petitions. One calls for the elimination of superdelegates altogether. Another asks superdelegates to align their choice with regular voters, not party elites, and it has more than 200, 000 signatures. At the moment, more than halfway through the primary process, this would favor Clinton, who leads the popular vote by more than 2 million votes and has a more than    lead (that is, delegates who align with the results of state primaries and caucuses). But Sanders supporters point to the senator’s string of recent wins and figure by the time the last vote is counted in California, he will have the popular lead. And then, under this scenario, it will be up to superdelegates, who make up roughly 15 percent of total convention delegates, to decide who gets the nomination. ”Nobody is going to arrive in Philadelphia with enough delegates to win the nomination,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager. ”And the superdelegates don’t vote until you actually get into the convention process. So there’s been a lot of talk about how the Republicans are going into an open convention. Well, the truth of the matter is, it looks like the Democrats are going into an open convention as well.” It’s true that no one will likely have the 2, 383 delegates needed for the nomination strictly out of the pledged delegates. But that’s also because that number is a majority of all the voting delegates, which includes superdelegates. The Sanders campaign still has its focus on winning as many pledged delegates as possible in the states still yet to vote, like New York, Pennsylvania and California and the campaign is trying to direct supporters looking to help to volunteering or organizing in those states. In fact the campaign’s website lists hundreds of organizing events, many posted by volunteers, but the campaign has moved to remove any events related to reaching out to superdelegates. But this hasn’t stopped Sanders’ enthusiastic supporters from taking matters into their own hands. This week, a Sanders fan named Spencer Thayer created the ”Superdelegate Hit List,” a website to compile and share the contact information of superdelegates, so they can be persuaded. It is not affiliated with the Sanders campaign, but a campaign spokesman didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. Thayer, who answered questions over email, later changed the name simply to ”Superdelegate List.” ”The intent of the branding was to parody the famous Clinton Hit List, this was a tongue —  in —  cheek attempt at parody which I thought would encourage resharing,” Thayer said. ”The branding began to detract from the campaign’s purpose, so it wasn’t a hard decision to make the change once it was clear it wasn’t working.” Thayer’s goal with the site was to make it easier for voters to get in touch with superdelegates. ”The superdelegate system is rigged to protect establishment politicians and shut down populism,” Thayer said. ”Superdelegates, by their very nature, diminish the value of the vote by giving an elite constituency of representatives, party leaders, and even lobbyists extra power. The Superdelegate List exists to help voters challenge this undemocratic system. Contacting our elected representatives and party leaders and holding them to account is an American tradition. This is the only way to keep the voter base from being patronized or ignored.” Superdelegates have been hearing from Sanders supporters for months  —   and it’s not always pleasant. Akilah Ross Ensley is with the Young Democrats of America, and she’s a superdelegate who plans to support Clinton. She has to check her professional Facebook page several times a day to deal with all the messages and posts. ”You should be ashamed of yourself,” Ensley reads from a recent Facebook message she received. ”Maybe you will do some soul searching and have some integrity and think about the decisions you’re making and its implications.” Ensley said she’s been called names, and there have been expletives. ”They said, you know, you should go to hell,” said Ensley, describing another message. ”How dare you vote against your own interests as an   woman. I expected you would be smarter than that.” When   super delegate Joyce Elliott heard she was on, what at the time was called the Superdelegate Hit List, she was taken aback. ”That is, that is very interesting,” Elliott said after laughing uncomfortably. ”As far as I know, this is probably only the second time I’ve been on a hit list, and the other one was not pleasant.” Elliott is a state senator in Arkansas and the last time she was on a hit list, it was over legislation she had introduced. That time, she said, the FBI got involved. This list isn’t as scary. Although, she has heard from 20 or 30 Sanders supporters trying to get her to switch. ”Some of them will tell me, you know, how awful Hillary is, therefore, I should support Bernie, and then tell me how great Bernie is,” said Elliott, who has known the Clintons since the 1970s. ”And that’s the kind of thing I think that is not helpful.” For Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Party, the flow of messages is constant  —   20 a day, he said. His state went for Sanders in its caucuses, and the pressure to switch from Clinton to Sanders is intense. ”Someone received my cellphone number, and they posted that, and so I’m getting calls on my personal cellphone from people all over the country,” Martin said. When Thayer, the creator of the superdelegate list, was told people were feeling harassed and unpersuaded, here’s what he said: ”It’s likely that most callers are actually polite. If a few people contacting superdelegates are being obscene they’ll of course drown out reasonable voices and harden opinions. However, it’s useful to look at what’s causing some of the anger and outrage we’re seeing. ”Voters know they are being disenfranchised by superdelegate influence and these privileged voters are a reasonable target for frustration. And, let’s be honest, if superdelegates aren’t prepared to deal with the public, they shouldn’t be party officials.” But all this freelance lobbying may be unnecessary. It has been the tradition of superdelegates, even in contentious primaries, to ultimately vote at the convention for the candidate with the most popular votes and pledged delegates. Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Sanders’ campaign, was actually involved in the creation of superdelegates, as a way to get party officials more involved in selecting the Democratic nominee. ”That was always done with the understanding that the voters would determine the outcome of this process, and I think they’ll do it this time,” Devine said back in February when the superdelegate controversy was flaring up after the New Hampshire primary."
"If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past few days, it’s that street harassment takes many forms and happens everywhere. And it makes women feel super icky  —   not flattered. After I shared my own experience being catcalled by men when I spent summers in Egypt as a teenager  —   and even being ambushed by a group of street boys just for wearing shorts  —   I wanted to know: How do men and boys treat women in public in other parts of the world? Across NPR’s social media platforms, women told us their stories. On Snapchat, a woman shared a photo of the face she makes when men tell her to ”smile”  —   and she does not look happy. On Facebook, a woman told us how ”creepy” it was that a man told her she looked ”beautiful” in the middle of a parking lot at Target. And on Twitter, we got some helpful advice from NPR editor Hannah Bloch, who told us that while living in Pakistan, she was told by friends not to look around for faces if she were groped but to ”follow the hand” to find the offender. (She also said she was advised to invoke catcallers’ mothers and would sometimes yell back: ”Does your mother know?” and watch the catcaller cringe.) Here’s a selection of responses from our social accounts, which have been edited for length and clarity. See more stories from more countries, including the Bahamas, Japan and Yemen, here. Canada: ”Get inside my car [expletive]” The other day I was walking down a very busy street in Toronto in broad daylight. I came to the streetcar stop and a man in a car pulled up beside me and said ”get inside my car [expletive].” I was scared and shaking and didn’t know what to do. Luckily the streetcar came and I quickly ran inside, heart pounding.  —   Mary Rose Allan via Facebook, Haiti: ”My mom took care of it” I grew up in the capital city of    Haiti. When I was about 14, one of our neighbors, a guy in his   would follow me every morning as I walked to school, talking behind me as I ignored him. I couldn’t go anywhere in the neighborhood without that guy following me. It became so stressful, humiliating and embarrassing that I broke down crying one morning and told my mom what was going on. My mom took care of it that day. She walked up to the guy and pretty much told him not to ever look at me or talk to me again. From that point forward, I told her about other similar situations and she handled them.  —   Marie Maitre via Facebook, Italy: ”Masturbating and staring directly at me” During a trip to Sicily, I walked by a parking garage and looked over to see a man standing in a dark garage openly masturbating and staring directly at me.  —   Apryl Webb via Facebook, Romania: ”I am already thinking about the special running clothes I need to buy” I grew up in Romania and I visit Bucharest every other year. I plan to go for a month in May, and I am already thinking about the special [ ] running clothes I need to buy so I won’t get too many nasty comments from the men on the streets. Growing up, I hated being groped, having my breasts touched by male   being whistled at on the street, having boys in high school trying to push up my skirt or having professors in my first year of college proposing that I sleep on their couch in their office!  —   girasole2016 via NPR comments, Switzerland: ”He pushed me up against a wall” I was 14 in Endingen, Switzerland. I was walking to school when a man working on street construction grabbed me. His friends and colleagues immediately surrounded us, laughing. He pushed me up against a wall, felt me up and tried to pin me for a kiss. The men pressed closer. I got away. I told people. I told my parents. Nobody did anything. It was kind of funny, they said, and boys will be boys.  —   Stephanie Nakhleh via Facebook, United States: ”If I refuse . .. they call me a ’frigid [expletive]’ ” In the U. S. if I refuse to acknowledge a catcall or ignore someone when they tell me to smile, [men] yell something threatening at me or call me a ”frigid [expletive]” if I glare at them.  —   le lamanantin via NPR comments, Share your story. How do men and boys treat women in public in your country? Tell us in a comment below, or tweet it to the writer at @MalakaGharib."
"Some accidents have deadly consequences. And sometimes it’s the thing you didn’t do  —   didn’t say, didn’t see  —   that leaves you with the most guilt. For 25 years, retired Army Col. David Taylor has carried feelings of guilt over the death of one of the soldiers in a maneuver he was leading. In 1991, during one of the final battles of the Gulf War, Army Spc. Andy Alaniz was killed by friendly fire in Iraq. A U. S. tank unit fired rounds at the group of vehicles Alaniz was in, mistaking them for the enemy. He was one of 35 Americans killed by friendly fire in the war. Less than 24 hours later President George H. W. Bush declared victory in a   address. ”Most of us, in our unit, had been fighting for over three and a half days with no sleep and some pretty horrible weather conditions,” Taylor tells Alaniz’s widow, Catherine   at a visit with StoryCorps. ”And I remember the brigade commander said, ’I need to know if anybody has any concerns.’ I saw there’s potential that there would be friendly fire. And I could have said something and I didn’t.” That decision has wracked him with guilt for decades. ”For the last 25 years, every day I thought about it. I feel that this whole thing could have been prevented,” he tells her.   and Alaniz were married just a few months before he deployed. At the time of Alaniz’s death, she was 19 and six months pregnant with their first child. The baby was named Andee, after her father. For the 25th anniversary of the war’s   Gulf War veterans met earlier this year at Fort Stewart, Ga. Taylor came to the reunion  —   and to StoryCorps  —   at  ’ request. The two had met for the first time only the day before.   was the one who reached out, but it was Taylor who says he gained the most from them finally speaking. ”Now that I met you, I feel whole,” he tells  . ”I can live my life now. And without doing this there would still be an emptiness in me.”   says she doesn’t hold Taylor responsible for her husband’s death. ”You know, mistakes were made, things happen, but I’ve never blamed you,” she tells Taylor. ”I don’t think it’s your place to carry that burden any longer. Andy would not want that, that’s not how he was.” And 25 years later, her main concern is to make sure that Alaniz’s memory lives on. ”I thought I was the only one that remembered him,”   tells Taylor. ”That’s my biggest fear, is that as time goes on people will forget.” ”I’ll never let that happen,” Taylor says. ”That event changed my life. And so there’s two of us, we’ll make sure he’s not forgotten.” Audio produced for Weekend Edition by John White and Alletta Cooper. StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"The things they do for love. Politicians will eat almost any food, adopt any colloquialism, endure any level of awkward  —   just to seem ”authentic.” The latest example? Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, riding the New York subway through the Bronx, saying hi to babies and taking selfies along the way. Depending on your point of view, the event  —   and it was an event  —   could be viewed as either a shining testament to Clinton’s New York bona fides, or just the latest example of how out of touch she is. Here’s how it all happened. Earlier this week, in a   interview with the New York Daily News, Bernie Sanders admitted to thinking New York City subway riders still use tokens to get on the train. (They don’t. Since 2003, cards have been used.) Soon after, Clinton boarded the subway herself, seemingly to   York Sanders. (Both have roots in the state: Sanders was born in Brooklyn and attended high school and college there. Clinton served as U. S. senator from New York for eight years, and still lives in the state.) Clinton came to the train with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and an extensive security detail. From the start, things didn’t go as planned. It took Clinton five swipes just to get through the turnstile (three more swipes than stops in Clinton’s actual ride). On the train, Clinton tried to engage a young woman with headphones on. That woman was not impressed. CNN reported that at Clinton’s second stop, one passenger, ”surrounded by media and nervous Secret Service agents, proclaimed that she needed to get off the train.” That passenger ended up missing her stop. (#ThanksHillary.) Once she got off in the Bronx, things went a little better for Clinton. She spoke with locals, stopped by a small shop and even smiled for a few babies in strollers. For all the awkward moments, the candidate did seem to have some fun, and she was met by supporters all along the way, some even chanting their support for her. But, there was criticism. Clinton hasn’t driven since the ’90s, and it’s fair to assume she’s not a regular subway rider. (Her New York home is north of the city in posh suburb Chappaqua.) Some questioned just how long it’s been since she’d actually been on a train. There was even a debate online about whether Clinton’s subway ride, which some viewed as a campaign event, was legal. Whatever the case, for us here, the trip seemed a bit lacking. There are several things we’d have liked Clinton to do, to really duplicate a true (or stereotypical) New York subway experience:   should have been on a car with subway dancers, working for tips. ”What time is it? SHOWTIME!”   should have made a stop at a local bodega.   there, she should have brought some lottery tickets.   also should have petted the bodega cat. You know there would have been a bodega cat.   shouldn’t have tried to talk to anyone on the train. ’Cause, yeah, just don’t do that.   should have offered her a mixtape, or some essential oils.   should have seen a couple get into a   argument at some point in her ride.   should have had to wait  —   a long time  —   for her train. Clinton, in her struggle for authenticity, is not alone. Republican John Kasich was dinged last week for eating New York pizza with a fork. (And then making up for it shouting ”Mamma Mia” over a plate of pasta in a Bronx deli.) Ted Cruz made matzo, awkwardly, with children for Passover this week. Every politician, just about everywhere, eats more fried food than they should, just to be an everyman (or woman). There is a larger question in all of this: Why are politicians so concerned with proving their authenticity? Or, better yet, why do they think we care so much about it? And that raises yet another one: Do we? For what it’s worth, Bernie Sanders seemed to   Clinton by the end of the week. He appeared on ABC’s The View, where the hosts gave him his very own subway card. And he ate a piece of New York pizza properly: folded, no fork or knife."
"In an emergency, hospitals, by law, must treat any patient in the U. S. until he or she is stabilized, regardless of the patient’s immigration status or ability to pay. Yet, when it comes time for the hospitals to discharge these patients, the same standard doesn’t apply. Though hospitals are legally obligated to find suitable places to discharge patients (for example, to their homes, rehabilitation facilities or nursing homes) their insurance status makes all the difference. Several years ago I began caring for a man who’d been in our hospital for more than three months. He was in his 50s and had suffered a stroke. Half his body was paralyzed and he couldn’t swallow food. After weeks of intensive physical, occupational and speech therapy, he regained his abilities to eat, drink and walk with only minimal help. But he still wasn’t well enough to live on his own, prepare food or even get to the toilet by himself. Ideally, we would have discharged him from the hospital to a rehabilitation facility so he could continue therapy and make more progress toward his prestroke state. But our plan faced insurmountable barriers. First off, the patient was an immigrant who had entered the country illegally. Second, he didn’t have insurance. Because he lacked health coverage, no other facility would accept him. His immigration status meant that we couldn’t find an outside charity that would cover the costs of his care or pay for insurance. Our comparatively expensive acute care hospital was therefore compelled to hold him  —   with the meter running. After another month, it began to seem that he’d become a permanent resident of our hospital ward. ”Could he go back to Mexico?” our case manager asked. We were startled. No one on my team had ever experienced a situation like this, so we began researching the possibility. As it turned out, it’s a murky legal and ethical area that drew some public attention after an expose in The New York Times in 2008. Nevertheless, our hospital faced a real financial burden, and the case manager pressed on. After reaching the patient’s family in Mexico, and discussing issues with the Mexican consulate, the case manager began making travel arrangements to a rehabilitation hospital in Mexico. Medical air transport to another country is an expensive proposition  —   roughly $50, 000, depending on the equipment needed and the distance to the receiving facility in the patient’s home nation. From the hospital’s point of view, it was easy to see that this large   expense would be worthwhile. The transfer to Mexico would put a stop to the indefinite, uncompensated costs of continued hospitalization. Further, the transfer would open up the patient’s bed to a new (and presumably insured) patient. After several meetings between our medical team, case management services, and a hospital administrator, I reluctantly agreed to sign off on the transfer. Though the discharge plan left me feeling uncertain, I became more comfortable with the idea because our patient had the capacity to make his own decisions. He consented to return home to Mexico because it was clear that he was no longer physically able to work, and his family was also on board with the plan to help him. A few weeks later the transfer was completed. The last I heard about the man, he had successfully arrived at the rehabilitation hospital near his hometown in Mexico. I hadn’t thought of this case for years until the combination of a recent Shots piece about dialysis and the heated rhetoric of the election season about immigration caused the memory to bubble back up into my consciousness. Reflecting on the man’s case, I began to wonder all over again: Who were we to send him back to Mexico? On the other hand, what alternative did we have for a safe and reasonable discharge? I also hoped to understand if our experience was part of a broader trend or a sporadic occurrence. I could only find estimates of the number of   medical deportations because there isn’t any required reporting or specific oversight. It’s a murky area that falls in the gap between federal health and immigration regulations. The best estimates suggest dozens or maybe a few hundred cases occur each year. I called several air ambulance companies to gauge the demand for such services, but none was willing to provide numbers or even go on record to discuss the practice in general. One group that has studied the phenomenon offered a conservative estimate of 800 cases of medical deportation over a period of six years. ”We field calls from across the country, so it is a national problem and not confined to border states,” Lori Nessel, director of the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University School of Law, told me in an email. Even in the absence of hard numbers, the medical community has responded to the investigative reporting and advocacy around the practice. In 2012, the American Medical Association added an opinion to its Code of Medical Ethics that states, in part, a ”discharge plan should be developed without regard to socioeconomic status, immigration status, or other clinically irrelevant considerations.” A 2014 piece in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded with the opinion that doctors ”. ..are uniquely equipped to display the moral courage necessary to advocate effectively for patients by calling attention to the profound ethical issues raised by repatriation,” using a slightly fancier word for deportation. Health care for immigrants is a hot button issue. Though the Affordable Care Act excludes immigrants who entered the country illegally from the mandate to purchase health insurance, many U. S counties have taken steps to provide preventive and chronic care for them. The obvious rationale is that this care saves money and prevents suffering in emergency situations. I’m confident that the transfer home of the Mexican man who’d had a stroke was both consensual and sensible. But given reports of patients being transported without their consent, this practice needs legal clarity to match the ethical aspirations of my profession. One thing is clear: Without a policy change, hospitalized people who entered the country illegally and who don’t have insurance will remain vulnerable to the seemingly irreconcilable conflict in our society between commerce and medicine. John Henning Schumann is a writer and doctor in Tulsa, Okla. He serves as president of the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa. He also hosts Public Radio Tulsa’s Medical Matters. He’s on Twitter: @GlassHospital."
"Millions of Americans recharge their phones, screens and laptops before they go to bed at night, but do they recharge themselves? Arianna Huffington,   and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, says we are in the midst of a   crisis that creates anxiety, as well as exhaustion, depression, a higher risk of motor vehicle accidents  —   and overall   stupidity. NPR’s Scott Simon talked with her about her new book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time. You had a kind of   call on this subject, didn’t you? Yes, actually nine years ago, April 2007. I collapsed from sleep deprivation and hit my desk on the way down and broke my cheekbone that was my   call. [It made me think about] changing my own life, understanding the science behind the need for sleep, and also looking around and seeing how many millions of us are in states of perpetual exhaustion to the point where it becomes the new normal and we don’t even notice it. Isn’t there a kind of macho attached to people who feel they only need a little sleep to function? Oh, absolutely. There’s a tremendous braggadocio going on. I had dinner with a guy recently who bragged that he had only gotten four hours sleep the night before. I didn’t say it, but I thought: ”This dinner would have been a lot more interesting if you had gotten five.” We hear employees being congratulated for working   which now we know is the cognitive equivalent of coming to work drunk. But it’s changing. We are now in this amazing transition period where more and more companies are beginning to realize that living like that and working like that has actually terrible consequences  —   not just on the health and productivity of their employees but also on their bottom line. You talk about sleep as a basic human right that we have not ranked among the right not to go hungry, the right to freedom of expression  —   that sort of thing. It’s a right that has been violated both in workplaces, where employees have been expected to be perpetually on, and by us, because we have so minimized the importance of sleep. I will point out that Donald Trump says he gets by on just about four hours of sleep. Any reaction to that? Yes, in fact, he displays every symptom of chronic sleep deprivation as described by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine: difficulty processing information, paranoid tendencies, mood swings. The way he made statements that he actually had to retract, like banishing women who have abortions, shows that sleep deprivation is a slippery slope. How many times have you been doing interviews for this book and somebody has pretended to fall asleep on you? Oh, it hasn’t happened  —   are you about to do it? I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I would consider it a compliment."
"Last month, I found myself sitting across from my dad in a nice restaurant in Georgetown, when he popped the question. ”Have you ever thought about law school?” he asked. He’s really curious about my plans for when I finish college. ”I think you’d make a great lawyer. And then you’d be able to make some money.” This wasn’t the first (or last) time I’d been told to drop journalism to pursue a career in something more lucrative. My dad’s comment, I’m sure, came from a place of both love and fear. Love because he wanted me to be happy and comfortable later in life. And fear because he didn’t want me living in his basement until I was 40. Fair enough, Dad. Which left me worrying: Has college been a waste? What am I going to do with my life? Am I completely screwed? I needed answers about life after college, and it turns out, there’s a new book out about that: There Is Life After College. Author Jeffrey Selingo argues that college isn’t the only education required for succeeding later in life. College grads, he writes, need ”soft skills”  —   things like leadership, the ability to communicate, resilience and creativity. So, journalism student that I am, I went right to the source. Here’s my chat with Selingo, edited for length and clarity. What are some of those ”soft skills” that students need, but aren’t necessarily learning or developing in college? The soft skills students need to have are curiosity, the ability to navigate ambiguity and the ability to deal with failure. They need humility, good communication skills,   skills and   skills. In a digital age, they need to be what I call ”digitally aware.” Increasingly, we know that there’s certain activities and certain experiences that you need to have in your undergraduate years in order to learn these skills. So what are those activities? What are those things that students can be doing to develop those soft skills? For one, inside the classroom, they need to pick rigorous majors and courses where they’ll be reading and writing and challenged by both their work and their professors and by their peers. The outside experience is probably more critical than ever before. They could include   activities like clubs and sports, undergraduate research, project based work and, most of all, they include internships. There are fewer companies recruiting seniors on campus for   jobs. And what they’re now recruiting for are underclassmen into internships. Because their intention is they want to take 50 to 75 percent of those intern classes and eventually turn them into   employees. How can you learn the resilience that seems to be so important in the workforce now? Most students are going through experiences, either at home or at school, where they’re not getting these opportunities to build resilience. One of the biggest ”aha” moments for me was the fact of teenage employment. So we’re at the lowest level of teenagers being employed while they’re in school since the 1940s. That’s one place, for example, where previous generations had the chance to build some resilience  —   by working while in school. Why do we as a society still have that road map of high school, to college, to job, to house, to family, etc. so ingrained into our culture? We only really have this small period,   War II, where people really launched after college. We tend to think of that period in American history as the golden era in many ways. So I think we think that, well it happened for that ”greatest generation,” so why doesn’t it happen for students today? But we’ve seen since the ’60s that there’s been a longer pathway to adulthood. And we see it as a negative thing, which I don’t think we should. Because the fact of the matter is, the more you invest in your human capital in your 20s  —   going to school, job hopping  —   by doing those activities you’re going to end up being in better shape in your 30s and 40s. As a result, I don’t think we should be rushing students through college and right off into the workforce. One of the things I found most helpful in this book was how to search for a job. Could you elaborate a little more about how companies are looking for employees? How you have to be really strategic in how you write a cover letter or resume? Companies have basically outsourced hiring to a computer that sifts through the resumes. So they design these job ads with certain keywords, and when the computer crawls through the resumes that come in, they’re looking for those keywords. That’s the bad side of technology as I would call it, in terms of the hiring process. The good side is the idea of people analytics. I profile Credit Suisse, one of the biggest investment banks, in the book. They were like all other investment banks, recruiting largely at elite colleges for students who have extensive background in quantitative reasoning and math skills. But what they found through data of their employees who did well, was that alma mater and GPA and major didn’t matter as much as they thought it did. So it enabled them to recruit at a much larger swath of institutions and a much larger swath of students. I think at some points it seems that everyone is saying something different. So at one point you say pick a major that’s rigorous. But then this company says it doesn’t matter what you major in and it doesn’t matter where you go to college. But at the same time these companies are only going to the elite colleges to recruit for jobs. So how can someone make sense of all these conflicting messages we’re getting? It is conflicting. And first of all, just like higher education is not this monolithic thing, employers aren’t this monolithic thing. Everybody hires differently. So it’s very difficult to give straightforward advice in this area. Even employers contradict themselves. So I tell the story in the book about Procter  Gamble, about how the CEO loved liberal arts colleges and thought students should get a broad education. But then I spoke to a Procter  Gamble recruiter, who said while they still do job training, they’re looking for very specific skills. Because while the CEO might be looking to hire somebody for the next 20 to 25 years, the person hiring for the job is looking for someone who can fill the job now. And I feel bad for students because they’re trying to wade through all this advice but you see the same contradictions in companies. So, my takeaway? I may have more control over my life after college than I thought. And according to Selingo, my potential employers are as confused as I am. NPR Ed intern Jacquie Lee is a student at American University in Washington, D. C."
"Residents in Altamonte Springs, just outside of Orlando, have a new public transportation option  —   Uber. The city will be the first in the country to partially subsidize Uber fares. The city will cover 20 percent of any ride beginning or ending in Altamonte Springs  —   25 percent for rides to or from the local commuter rail station. An earlier plan to build an   bus system fell through. The Uber service started March 21. NPR’s Scott Simon talks to City Manager Frank Martz about the new   partnership. How is it working? It’s working so far good. Our residents [and] our business owners like the fact that Uber puts transit options in their hands. They don’t have to rely on public transit, they don’t have to rely on the fixed schedules, they don’t have to change their lives to fit the transit model. The transit model in this case can be reshaped by their choice and they love that. Does that run the risk of putting more cars on the road? Some initial studies suggest that one Uber car can take four regular cars off the road. We don’t know if that’s true, but we certainly are looking forward to seeing how congestion management can be affected by user choices. How do you pay for all this? The city had $1. 5 million allocated to the FlexBus project that Lynx (the Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority) did not move forward with, so we are using dollars that are already earmarked for transit. And we have several large businesses in Altamonte Springs who have also contributed, so we suspect that this will be largely   funded at the end of the year. Will there be surge pricing? I have a very   viewpoint on that and I’ve been asked that question. How does the city feel about surge pricing? And my response is in the private sector, if it becomes too expensive to be used, no one will use it and the market will force the price down. It’s a supply and demand dynamic. So our viewpoint is if private sector is ever going to help fill public roles, the public input through consumer choices is going to be key. So if Uber wants to be successful long term or Lyft or anyone else, they’re going to have to provide a good product at a good price. So if the surge pricing gets too high people won’t take it. Will there be background checks? Yea, in fact, our contract with Uber requires them to do background checks on all of the drivers who operate inside of Altamonte Springs. By example, we do background checks on people who work in our parks, and from time to time, people do terribly horrible things. You do your best to protect everyone from that and that’s what we’ve done here. And to Uber’s credit, they’ve agreed to do background checks as part of the contract, so we’re very thankful for that."
"Seanan McGuire’s   novels and short stories have been testing the parameters of genre fiction for years now, but always with a deep love of horror and fantasy. That hasn’t changed in her new novella, Every Heart a Doorway. Rather, she’s doubled down  —   and in half the number of pages. Tight and tautly told, Every Heart grabs one of speculative fiction’s most enduring tropes  —   the portal fantasy, where a person slips from the real world into a magical realm somewhere beyond  —   and wrings it for all the poignancy, dark humor, and   twists it can get. Nancy Whitman, a willowy teen with     hair and an eerie air about her, is the latest admission to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, a boarding school run by the enigmatic Ms. West. Nancy quickly finds out why her parents sent her there: Although they think she’s overcoming the trauma of a recent kidnapping, she’s in fact just returned from a trip through a magic portal. Her Alice in   visit to the Underworld left her permanently changed and wishing she were back with her beloved liege, the Lord of the Dead. As it turns out, the rest of the Home’s students have also survived trips through portals to various mystical domains  —   as did Eleanor herself when she was a girl. Their experiences vary greatly, but one thing unites almost all of them: They desperately wish they could shuffle off this mundane existence and return to the weird, wondrous worlds that forever altered them  —   and then cast them out. At the home, Eleanor warns Nancy, ”’Real’ is a   word.” McGuire isn’t the only author to toy with the notion of the portal fantasy in recent years. Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Some Kind of Fairytale by the late Graham Joyce have also mined this vein, with winning results. But Every Heart takes its own approach. Nancy is paired with a roommate named Sumi, who’s every inch as erratic and colorful as Nancy is restrained and monochromatic. As more students are introduced, their backstories surface  —   including Nancy’s, and her reason for being such a still, taciturn person wind up being romantically poetic instead of tragic. It also ties into her desire to return to the Underworld, a sumptuously morbid place that calls to her soul. When the gruesome murder of a fellow student sends Nancy, Sumi, and their friends into a frenzy of fear and suspicion, the ensuing mystery pulls out the best, worst, and most aching truths from them all. Every Heart is a quick read, but there’s a lot to sink your teeth into. Heartbreakingly, Eleanor hopes senility will bring her closer to the land of Nonsense she fell into as a girl. Sumi, who seems to be around Nancy’s age, admits only to being ”older than I look, younger than I ought to be.” Lundy, the school’s therapist, is aging backward as a result of her stay on the other side of reality. Growing up isn’t a linear process, McGuire puts forth, but a jumpy, chaotic one full of retrograde steps and conflicting rhythms. And innocence is   sword  —   something to be yearned for as well as distrusted. The whodunit plot of Every Heart isn’t complex or particularly suspenseful, but it doesn’t need to be. The characters carry the story. Sumi’s scattershot wisdom is both funny and profound Nancy’s asexual crush on Kade, a trans classmate, is rendered in bold, sensitive strokes. McGuire’s dialogue is witty yet organic, and she lingers luxuriantly on tiny, telling details  —   the fluttering of a curtain, the scent of chalk dust  —   that bring the Home to teeming life. At points, Nancy and the others compare their own strange trips to magical worlds to Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia, books they’ve read  —   and have issues with, as   teens are apt to do, paranormal or not. And with Every Heart a Doorway, McGuire has created her own   of portal fantasy  —   a jewel of a book that deserves to be shelved with Lewis Carroll’s and C. S. Lewis’ classics, even as it carves its own precocious space between them. Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A. V. Club, a Hugo   editor and author of the novel Taft 2012."
"Some songwriters are able to write songs about those turns in life too painful to talk about. When I met Merle Haggard aboard his tour bus in the early summer of 2001, he no longer looked much like the   outlaw of his 20s, but a man who had been tempered by the ups and downs of riches and bankruptcy, love, loss and time. He had come a long distance since his boyhood in a converted boxcar on the wrong side of the tracks, growing up just outside of Bakersfield, Calif. and the troubled times when he served more than two years in San Quentin for robbery. But once Merle Haggard began to sing instead of steal for a living, he became the living link to country music before it went Hollywood, when it was the music of long, hard days on farms and factories, and long, lonely nights looking up at an orange moon. Merle Haggard told us on his tour bus, ”I don’t like music that has no message of any kind.” But I thought his songs didn’t send messages so much as they shared what poured from his heart, unfiltered and lyrical. We spoke to him in 2001 about his album If I Could Only Fly. One song, ”I’m Still Your Daddy,” recollected how a father tells his son that he was once in prison  —   a conversation Merle Haggard had to have with his children. Another song, ”Think About a Lullaby,” was suggested to Merle Haggard by his wife, Theresa Lane, after they lost a child, a little girl, at birth. ”But my wife said, ’We should write her a lullaby, not a funeral song,’ ” he told us. It is a song to send love to a child who didn’t quite make it into this world, but would never leave Merle Haggard’s heart and dreams. I like to think that he’s singing it to her now."
"The Broadway musical that’s set during a revolution may have set off a revolution of its own, too. Right now, Hamilton is the hardest ticket to get on Broadway. It’s been called a     experience. But it’s safe to say the unconventional smash wasn’t always a sure thing. The   show portrays the life of Alexander Hamilton, a founder of the United States who was once a poor, orphaned boy ”dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot of the Caribbean”  —   and it does so in the rhymes and music of   and pop. ”I understand how ridiculous the elevator pitch for this show is,”   Miranda  —   the composer, lyricist and lead of the show  —   tells NPR’s Scott Simon. ”It sounds improbable. And then once you start hearing about Hamilton’s life story, it sort of makes sense. The mode of storytelling makes sense to the subject.” He says that idea was the seed of what would eventually become a    project to bring Hamilton to the stage. ”That was what grabbed me about it,” Miranda continues, ”was this was a guy who used words to get everywhere and do what my favorite   artists do  —   if not write about their struggles, their lives, then transcend their circumstances by sheer virtuosity.” Now, the play’s creation is the subject of the new book Hamilton: The Revolution, which Miranda   with former drama critic Jeremy McCarter, who was involved in the production at its early stages. And, as Miranda recalls, those early stages fittingly included a crucial spark from the White House. In May 2009, at An Evening of Poetry, Music And The Spoken Word at the White House, Miranda was expected to perform a number from In the Heights, a musical running on Broadway at the time that he wrote and starred in. But he decided to try something else. ”When the White House calls and says, we’d love for you to perform, or if you have anything else on the American experience, and you have a hot 16 bars about Alexander Hamilton in your back pocket, my choice was clear,” Miranda says. ”It actually felt like a sign, that the thing I had been working on in my spare time, there might be an audience for it.” McCarter, on his statement, when he was theater critic of New York Magazine, that   could save musical theater, Jeremy McCarter: Well, I’d grown up listening to   and I’d grown up enjoying the theater, much as Lin had. And what I couldn’t see anybody doing was the thing that seemed obvious to me  —   making the connection between these two art forms. I mean, if you think of   as being, in addition to a form of pop music, a kind of verse storytelling, then   is doing what the great playwrights of the past used to do. I saw a lot of people strike out, not really understand how to make the two work together. Someone named Will Power, I thought, did a really nice job doing it in a couple of projects, but I was still on the hunt for someone who I thought might see it the way I did. Then, I went to see In the Heights. On how the diverse cast of Hamilton grappled with playing nondiverse characters  —   many of whom were slaveholders, Miranda: I had to deal with it in the writing of the piece, which is the only way I know how to get inside these characters, is through research and empathy. . .. Empathy only gets you so far. When you’re participating in a system of brutality and it’s a part of your daily life, you know, there’s a great quote from Chris [Jackson] in the book, where he says, ”I can’t reconcile that. I can’t wrap my head around that. I can honor the parts of him that we honor.” There’s a moment in the show that you wouldn’t get from the soundtrack, but there’s a moment at the end of the show where Eliza says, ”I speak out against slavery you would have done so much more.” And it’s right after the Washington Monument moment, and Washington hangs his head in shame and steps back. And we deal with it in a lot of ways, big and small, but it was an open thing and a thing to grapple with because it just was a way of life that no one knew how to deal with, and we grappled with it as much as we could  —   and still tell a story in 2 hours and 45 minutes in a musical. On whether McCarter has any concern there will soon be a spate of copycat shows, like, hypothetically, Coolidge: The Musical, McCarter: You know, I talked to Stephen Sondheim about this  —   not about the Coolidge musical specifically, although a Coolidge musical by Sondheim would be pretty amazing, I think. You know what happens: Something like Hamilton comes along, it changes the sound of Broadway. Lots of people have new ideas because of its success, what is it going to look like for a while? And Sondheim’s been around long enough to see styles come and go and changes happen. And he said something really smart, that the important thing that’s going to come out of this is not going to be the copycat shows, the shows that try to take the direct model of this, stylistically or in terms of subject. What’s exciting about this is that people will see it and feel encouraged to express their own voices more freely. That, in a sense, much like Sondheim shows, it broadens the possibilities of what you can get away with . .. to do whatever you want. And that, to me, is one of the most exciting things about this whole, crazy phenomenon, is to think about, all the doors are going to open because of the kids who are coming to see it. On the inundation of pitches for future projects, Miranda: I kid you not, I had two historians hand to me two different books on the way to the studio today. . .. I say, ”Thank you very much.” Because it’s coming from a place of enthusiasm, it’s coming from a place of, ”Look what you did.” So, I can’t help but be touched by it."
"FBI Director James Comey gave a speech this week about encryption and privacy, repeating his argument that ”absolute privacy” hampers law enforcement. But it was an offhand remark during the QA session at Kenyon College that caught the attention of privacy activists: The thought of the FBI chief taping over his webcam is an arresting one for many. His comment Wednesday (which is around the 1:34:45 mark in this video) was in response to a question about growing public awareness of the ways technology can spy on people, and he acknowledged sharing in the surveillance anxiety. ”I saw something in the news, so I copied it. I put a piece of tape  —   I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop  —   I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera.” It’s certainly not unreasonable to worry about webcams, especially for someone as   as Comey. The FBI itself has used malware to hack into cameras to spy on targets. For privacy activists, the real problem is what they see as Comey’s hypocrisy. He says tech companies shouldn’t make devices that are ”unhackable” to law enforcement (the fight over the San Bernardino iPhone 5C being the major case in point) but the activists say that’s exactly what he’s done with his personal webcam. Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist and a senior policy analyst with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, accused Comey of having a double standard for his own privacy: He piled on with a little Twitter sarcasm: It’s worth noting that Comey made the webcam remark in the context of a larger comment about the need for the public to keep an eye on how government uses its surveillance powers. ”[The public should] demand to know how the government conducts surveillance. Demand to know how they’re overseen, how they’re constrained. Demand to know how these devices work,” he said. But as the San Bernardino iPhone fight made clear, the privacy debate in the U. S. is no longer just about legal processes and judicial oversight. It’s about whether unhackable devices should be allowed to exist, warrant or no warrant. And a   webcam is about as unhackable as a device can get."
"After five decades of   Graham Nash’s voice is hard to mistake: It’s that light, airy tenor you hear in his work with The Hollies and Crosby, Stills  Nash. As a kid, he honed that voice singing along to The Everly Brothers in his bedroom, filling in the notes above the duo’s signature close harmonies. Years later, on a 1992 tour stop in Ohio, his dream of being the third Everly suddenly came true. ”The phone rings in my hotel room, and it was Phil Everly,” Nash says. ”I said, ’Phil, why are you calling me in Toledo, Ohio?’ He said, ’You know the place that you and David and Stephen are going to play tomorrow? Well, we’re there tonight. Do you want to come to the show?’ ” Nash made it to the club in time for sound check, where he was met with another surprise: the Everlys wanted him to join them on a song. Nash suggested ”So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad),” one of his favorites  —   and insisted on reprising his exact childhood role. ”Phil said, ’I’ll tell you what: I’ll sing underneath Don, and you take my part, because I have the high part,’ ” Nash recalls. ”I said, ’Phil, look who you’re talking to! I learned to sing high because of you. Why don’t you stay exactly where you are, and I will sing on top of both of you.’ ” Nash told that story and others in a conversation with NPR’s Scott Simon, on the occasion of Nash’s first solo album in 14 years, This Path Tonight. Hear more at the audio link."
"Hunting down that obscure Vietnamese place that serves up bánh bao exactly like you’d find in Hanoi, or an Indian joint with dal just like the one you had on that trip to New Delhi, is a not uncommon pursuit in these   days. But our culinary hunt for ”authentic ethnic” food can be a   sword, says Krishnendu Ray. Ray is the chair of the food studies program at New York University and author of the new book The Ethnic Restaurateur. When we seek authenticity from a star chef  —   say, Thomas Keller of the   restaurants The French Laundry and Per Se  —   what we really want is his signature, his individual creativity evinced through food, and we’re willing to shell out big bucks to get it, Ray says. But that’s very different from the authenticity we demand from ”ethnic” cuisine. In that case, Ray says, what we really want is a replica, ”a true copy of our expectations”  —   some platonic ideal of what a dish should taste like. It’s a definition of authenticity that can trap the immigrant cook in very narrow expectations. ”One of the big constraints, say, for Indian food or Chinese food is that, if it is expensive, it cannot be authentic,” Ray says. Immigrant chefs ”are trapped for that kind of demand for authenticity  —   cheap authenticity.” In his book, Ray explores the history of how immigrants in the food industry have shaped American notions of good taste  —   even as they themselves may occupy the lower echelons of the social hierarchy. How we value a culture’s cuisine in our society, Ray says, often reflects the status of those who cook it. In an increasingly multicultural society, the term ”ethnic food,” while still commonly used, is now starting to take on an offensive character, lumping all nonwhite people and their cuisines together in a category of ”other.” Ethnic, Ray says, started being used to talk about food in the 1950s, partly as a relatively neutral way to acknowledge difference in a racially charged era. ”Ethnic was useful back when America was a ”white    culture,” Ray says. But it always had the underlying connotation of ”essential difference, of inferiority,” he says, and is starting to feel outdated. ”Once Italians and Greeks and Mexicans and Indians and all these   ethnic groups acquired a cultural conscious and visibility in the public space, the word ethnic became inadequate,” Ray tells me. What’s more, the concept of who is ethnic is fluid, as American history attests. The waves of Greek and Italian immigrants who came over beginning in the 1880s were once considered ethnics in the sense that they were separate from the dominant   culture  —   working   service jobs, often in the food industry, and living clustered in ghettos. As their lot improved over the decades and they moved up the economic  —   and social  —   ladder in America, Ray argues, appreciation for their food changed, too. ”Sometimes, our judgments of good taste has nothing to do with literal taste. It has to do with our notions and conceptions of a class of people,” he says. America has a long history of looking down upon the cuisine of its recent immigrants. For instance, from the 1880s until about the 1920s, Ray notes, social workers and nutritionists cautioned that Italian food was too garlicky and spicy  —   which they said increased the craving for alcohol. Today, Italian is the most popular ethnic cuisine in America. And it regularly appears among the most expensive and popular cuisines in the Zagat guide, which Ray calls upon as a pretty good window into the tastes of ”middle brow” diners.   Each new large wave of immigration has remade American cuisine for the better, making it ”more creative and rich,” Rays says. He says we’re currently going through another culinary transformation, driven by the easing of immigration rules in 1965 that resulted in a large influx of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. And just as Italian food was once given the   by nutritionists, Chinese food was also derided under the auspices of science. Witness the health scare that began in the 1960s over MSG, used as a flavor enhancer in Chinese cuisine and lots of other foods, too. As others have noted, the fears were flavored with xenophobia. Today, many eaters still avoid MSG  —   and many Chinese restaurants advertise ”no MSG”  —   even though most scientists agree that fears about its negative health effects are unfounded. Of course, learning to appreciate and accept immigrants’ food takes time  —   it happens naturally as cultures learn to adapt to one another. But Ray argues that global forces are also at play. Take Japanese food. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Ray says, ”Japanese folks in Hawaii were always put on the defensive by schoolteachers, by nutritionists, [told] that they’re basically eating food that is terrible, that’s not good for them. And the children come home from school demanding good American food.” Today, Japan is an economic superpower, and Japanese food is considered haute cuisine  —   often commanding top dollar from diners. In America, there’s long been a duality in how we view the cuisine of immigrants  —   as both suspect and exotic. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, rumors that Chinese immigrants used rat meat in their cooking were common. One New York Times story from 1883 pondered, ”do the Chinese eat rats?” (Sadly, such tales persist.) Yet artists and other bohemians of the era sought out Chinese restaurants, in part as a sign of their worldliness. Today, seeking out ever more varied cuisine is still a mark of culinary sophistication. (It’s a quest the famed writer Calvin Trillin parodied this week, with unintended consequences.) Finding that     joint with the best Filipino food in town is a foodie badge of honor. ”To be a connoisseur today you have to like some elements of   . .. food,” Ray says. And despite his critiques of the search for ”authentic ethnic” food, Ray stresses that our elevation of a multicultural approach to eating is a good thing. Opening our mouths to each others’ foods can become a gateway to opening our minds to each others’ cultures. This story is part of a broader conversation we’re having about where food, race and culture overlap. We want to hear from you. Let us know what questions are on your radars. You can reach me @mgodoyh  —   my   is @katchow."
"On the way into the Colorado Republican Party’s state convention in Colorado Springs Saturday morning, a Ted Cruz supporter waved a big broom with the letters ”CRUZ” fastened to the top. The convention took place in a hockey arena, and the prop is probably familiar to most sports fans. The Cruz supporter was looking for a sweep, and a sweep was what he got. Cruz picked up all 34 Republican National Convention delegates that Colorado Republicans awarded this week. Delegates backing Cruz won all three spots in each of the state’s seven congressional districts, as well as 13 statewide slots. The Colorado win follows a similar outcome in North Dakota, where Republicans elected a mostly   slate of delegates at a state convention last week. Those two delegate hauls, along with more complex delegate maneuvering in states like Louisiana that had already held their primaries and caucuses, highlight a growing organizational gap between Cruz’s campaign and frontrunner Donald Trump’s. As recently as last month, the Cruz campaign insisted that he was fighting to win 1, 237 delegates and clinch the GOP nomination outright, though Cruz told the Denver Post on Saturday that a contested convention is a ”very significant possibility.” Cruz also expressed confidence that he would win in such a scenario. The Texas senator has become the candidate of choice for many Republicans simply trying to stop Trump. Cruz’s organizational successes offer hope to them that he will succeed in blocking Trump’s path. Though many of them stop short of saying they’d like Cruz to be the eventual nominee. Most political observers didn’t figure Colorado would play a role in the Republican primary, after the state declined to hold a binding primary or caucus. Still, Congressman Ken Buck, who chairs Cruz’s Colorado campaign, said, ”dozens of volunteers have been working since December” in Colorado to vet delegate candidates and organize at local caucuses and regional meetings. On Saturday morning, Cruz volunteers wearing bright orange shirts swept through the arena, handing out glossy sheets listing the campaign’s preferred delegate candidates. The campaign also blasted out text messages to convention attendees, listing their delegate choices. ”We put 15 delegate [candidates] forward,” said Buck, who won a spot as a delegate himself. ”We looked at people that had run and won in the past. We looked at people who had been supporting Cruz for a long time. We looked at elected officials who knew how to run campaigns.” That organizational effort was a stark contrast to Trump’s campaign, which only had a handful of volunteers distributing delegate candidate lists. The Trump slate was riddled with errors. According to NBC News, the Trump campaign failed to put forward a candidate slate in some of the earlier   contests. In another congressional district, two of the candidates they urged voters to back did not, in fact, make it onto the ballot. ”What this says for the Trump campaign is, you need to get your stuff in gear,” said former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. ”Because you’re about to get your clock cleaned on the easy stuff. A lot of folks look at, we just won the primary. The isn’t about just winning the primary. It’s about winning delegates. You get your delegates wherever and however you can.” Indeed, the Trump campaign has made changes in recent days, bringing in longtime Washington operative Paul Manafort to play a role in convention preparation, as well as broader campaign strategy. Manafort was asked about the result in Colorado on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday and responded, ”I acknowledge that we weren’t playing in Colorado and they did.” He went on to criticize the   efforts as too aggressive, making an accusation of ”Gestapo tactics” in various local party conventions. Steele praised the Cruz campaign’s organizational efforts, but cautioned against reading too much into the Colorado and North Dakota convention victories when looking forward to a possible Cleveland floor fight. ”Going into a state and grabbing unbound delegates and getting commitments and all that is not the same as going into a convention hall where overlaying everything is the RNC rules,” he said. Having a political and legal staff that understands the party’s regulations and guidelines are key, he said, giving the Cruz campaign the advantage on that front. But Steele argued that another important factor is, ”having delegates on the floor and relevant committees,” Steele said, primarily the Rules Committee, which will shape the convention proceedings. ”The Trump team is going to be competitive on that front, because they’ve got a lot of delegates, and the ability to put their people on that committee and have weight on that committee,” said Steele. Both campaigns will spend the next two months gearing up for a historic floor fight. That’s because while Trump may still secure the delegates he needs to avoid one, there’s no chance he can do so until June 7, the very last day of the primary calendar. Clarification: This post has been updated to reflect Cruz’s recent comments entertaining the notion of a contested convention. An earlier version stated only that Cruz was insisting he would win enough delegates to clinch the GOP nomination before the party’s convention in July."
"It’s been a big week for supporters of paid family leave. The city of San Francisco and the state of New York took groundbreaking steps toward new and more generous leave policies. Advocates hope the moves will create momentum in other places that are considering similar measures. ”I do believe this will pave the way for other states,” says Dina Bakst, the   of A Better Balance, a nonprofit in New York that advocates for   policies in the workplace. ”What we’ve seen in other fights, like paid sick days and our fights for pregnancy accommodations  ” it starts local and then it sweeps the nation,” Bakst says. ”I think we’re on the paid family leave wave.” Starting in a few years, workers in New York state will be able to take 12 weeks of partially paid family leave to care for a new child or an ailing parent. That gives New York the most generous family leave benefits of any state in the country. ”We are restoring respect and pride and dignity to the worker with paid family leave,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a rally Monday, ”which says no one should choose between seeing their child born and earning a paycheck.” The following day, San Francisco’s board of supervisors approved a bill guaranteeing most workers six weeks of paid leave at their full salaries. Both measures go far beyond what federal law requires. The Family and Medical Leave Act mandates that employers offer their workers 12 weeks of leave. But it’s unpaid. And even that doesn’t apply to many   workers. A few states are more generous and will pay employees roughly half of their salaries for up to six weeks. That idea is now being debated in several other places, including Massachusetts, Connecticut and Washington, D. C. Paid family leave would have been a big help for Rob and Mandy Keithan. Their daughter, Eleanor, was born prematurely last year, seven weeks before her due date. Neither parent had a job that offers paid family leave to care for her. ”So that’s seven additional weeks that we have to deal with,” says Rob Keithan. ”And just make the constant evaluation of, what’s the cost of spending time with our baby?” The Keithans had to take turns staying home from their jobs to visit Eleanor in the intensive care unit and then care for her when she came home. ”We had to calculate every day, every week, every month: Is this something that we could afford to do?” says Mandy Keithan. ”When it felt like on the deepest level, being with her was where we needed to be. And it’s a terrible thing to have to put a price tag on.” Still, some business leaders worry about how much paid family leave will cost them. ”For small businesses, this really is a hardship,” says Zack Hutchins, director of communications at The Business Council of New York State. He points out that New York just adopted a paid leave period that’s twice as long as that of any other state. The money to pay for it will come mostly from a tax on employees, not employers. Still, Hutchins says there may be hidden costs when the new law takes effect, starting in 2018. ”There’s the very real cost of trying to obtain replacement employees [and] train those employees,” he says. ”And that’s going to fall heaviest on small employers and small businesses.” Many employers are already flexible about giving their workers time off when they need it, Hutchins argues. But family leave advocates say that’s rarely the case for   workers who need paid leave the most. They say there’s no other developed country in the world that handles family leave like the U. S. does. ”It is an embarrassment for the United States,” says Ellen Bravo, director of the nonprofit Family Values @ Work. ”Our minimums are in fact minimal, compared to what people need, and what the rest of the world does.” Bravo says the recent victories for paid family leave are encouraging. But she says there’s still a long way to go."
"It takes a village to move a dog. In the past seven years, my family and I have moved to three continents: from Maryland to the Kenyan highlands in Nairobi then on to Kathmandu in Nepal’s Himalayas and, most recently, to Ankara in Turkey’s central Anatolian steppe. We’ve repeatedly packed our worldly belongings in a    container and then said goodbye for months as they’ve traveled by sea via multiple ports and then overland by truck to our next destination. The container has had to navigate through   waters, obtuse customs regulations and even complete border closures as when India blockaded Nepal’s southern land crossings to the outside world for five months. But nothing has been as   as logistically complex or as much of an adventure as moving Biko, our   Rhodesian Ridgeback. I’ve learned to mix military tactics with diplomatic finesse and, when all else fails, resort to easily summoned tears. The other lesson? I never could have done this alone. My husband, John, gave me a    tiny Biko in Nairobi as a Mother’s Day present in 2009. He’s now a gentle giant who only jumps with excitement when he goes out for a walk, his   tail destroying anything fragile in its vicinity. He’ll chase a cat or a monkey but only rarely deploys his deep bass bark. His favorite place? My yoga mat. Only during asanas. But I didn’t realize how huge and expensive he had become until I started organizing his move from Nairobi to Kathmandu. It’s always complicated to uproot the family pet. Doing it in the developing world adds innumerable unexpected twists. For starters, Kenya’s archaic canine regulations make it more complicated to export a dog than to import one. Inserting an identifying microchip into Biko’s shoulder, as required under Kenyan law? No problem for our vet. But the chip had to remain empty as no one in Kenya had the technological   to download any of Biko’s vitals. We wanted to get Biko a rabies Titer, a test used to measure the level of rabies serum in the bloodstream after vaccination. Although it’s unnecessary for Nepal, it’s an entry requirement for importing dogs in the European Union as well as many other countries. Of course, there was a hitch. It wasn’t available in Kenya. So we had to wait two months for a South African laboratory to process the results. Friends terrified me with details from their   sagas. One sent her pet solo from Rwanda to Syria via Ethiopia, where he had to change planes and airlines. The poor fellow was misplaced for a few days along the way. When he was reunited with his owner, he was covered with mysterious green parrot feathers. Keeping this tale in mind, I hired a fixer for the plethora of paperwork to be signed and stamped by various government offices, a requirement that had to be fulfilled within 24 hours of our departure. Yep, you have to do it on the very last day. I insisted Biko had to be on our Qatar Air flight. But Biko’s size (he is taller than my 5’5” when standing on his hind legs) proved to be a challenge. His kennel barely fit through the door of the only pressurized cargo compartment in Qatar’s plane to and from Nairobi. I worried that the kennel did not offer Biko the minimum number of centimeters of headroom required by International Air Transport Association regulations. The next size up, big enough to accommodate a small zebra, demanded a Boeing   cargo door. Sure enough, the day before our departure, the government   vet  —   the last needed signature  —   denied Biko permission to fly. I cajoled, then sobbed. All to no avail. With just hours to go before our departure, John mobilized, with the help of Kenyan colleagues, a general assembly with every head of every agency and company that needed to sign off on Biko’s trip. He borrowed one of those   kennels and like a circus master, proceeded to show how Biko refused to enter the larger kennel but happily jumped into his own. After much debate, everyone signed off, then posed for a group photo with Biko. After the agony of exiting Kenya, Nepal was an unexpected surprise. I had sent ahead a   collection of vaccine records, breeder certificates, pictures,   permissions and our official entry letter. I assume this did the trick. Biko arrived on the same carousel as our baggage. As a prelude to what became the usual Nepali reaction to Biko, police, airport officials and other passengers, in awe of his size, all gave him a wide berth or ran up to pet and hug him. Fast forward a few years and we needed to move again, this time to Turkey’s capital Ankara. But Turkish Airlines, Google, friends in Turkey and the moving company disagreed on what was needed to get Biko through customs in Istanbul. Some said he’d be waved through, others told me horror stories about having their dog stuck in quarantine. Then I heard about a search and rescue dog in transit in Istanbul on his way to Kathmandu just after last April’s earthquake. Turkish Airlines cargo mistook KTM (Kathmandu’s airport code) for KHI and the dog ended up in Karachi, Pakistan. He was eventually found and rerouted to Istanbul and then mistakenly sent to JFK (New York City). He finally arrived in KTM, days behind schedule, exhausted and thirsty. Turkish Airlines’ daily flight to Istanbul was to land at 8 p. m. Though Turkish customs closes at 5 p. m. I was told that there would be no problem processing Biko. Departure from Kathmandu was flawless. During the previous two months, I had visited Turkish Airlines many times to ensure a smooth trip for the dog. At the airport, they cut short the long hours animals usually wait to be processed, allowed a Nepali friend to stay with Biko until he boarded and then came to my seat to ask me what temperature I wanted for Biko in the hold. Ten hours later, we landed in Istanbul, and everything changed. It took another 19 hours before he was released by Turkish customs. The night we arrived, the airline couldn’t find Biko in the cavernous cargo barracks. Then, because customs had yet to process Biko, I was not allowed to see him. Eventually, they briefly relented but he was not allowed out of his kennel. By the morning, the government vet, an understanding and very helpful young Turk who spoke English, cleared Biko. Then we got cracking on our next ordeal: seven hours of negotiations at the customs offices, where multiple payments were required as we   from window to window over 20 times, frequently sent back to the same people. Communication was a big problem. They spoke no English. We spoke no Turkish. Luckily, John’s colleague was able to translate for us. At 4:30 p. m. Biko was finally released. He had not been taken out of his kennel during his time in captivity. We still have no idea why he was detained or what triggered his freedom. We were just relieved to be reunited, and agreed when everyone in the cargo area asked to snap a group shot. I don’t think Biko is keen on flying. But here in Turkey, he has settled in well with a vast array of human and canine friends and he is always willing to pose for a photo."
"Many of the kids who left Central America for the U. S. two years ago are still waiting to see if they’ll be granted asylum. Tens of thousands came on foot, escaping gang violence, hoping if they got here they would get to stay. The ones who made the journey without their parents have been called unaccompanied minors, child migrants or asylum seekers. A new play, Shelter, gives them names and tells their stories. In one of the scenes  —   or chapters, as they’re called in the play  —   Mariana, Sandra and Eloisa are bunking together in a government funded shelter somewhere in the U. S. They just met. Sandra is from El Salvador, Mariana from Honduras and Eloisa from Guatemala. They can’t sleep, so they’re exchanging horror stories about their journeys and what it was like back home. Eloisa tells the other girls about the violence that drove her from her town. ”One day, our mayor found a head  —   a human head  —   at his doorstep,” she says. ”That was it, my mother packed our things the next day.” Sandra replies, ”I’ve seen worse than that.” Actor Moriah Martel, who plays Eloisa, says that after a year of research and preparation, getting into character is still really challenging. ”Falling off trains in the middle of the night, losing arms, or having a severed head on the doorstep or making it to the border and being sent right back,” she says, listing all the things that so many of these kids have endured. ”There are so many aspects of it that feel larger than life.” Martel is an undergraduate student at California’s Institute of the Arts  —   CalArts  —   where the play was created. It’s the brainchild of Marissa Chibas who founded Duende CalArts to create bilingual, bicultural theater in collaboration with Latino and Latin American artists. Chibas says she saw blog posts about the surge of unaccompanied minors even before the mainstream media latched onto the story, and felt compelled to tell it from the kids’ perspectives. She visited a shelter in San Diego and talked with the volunteers and kids there. Choking back tears, she says she couldn’t help imagining her own 12   in their shoes. ”Oh my god, this could be my son,” she recalls. ”What kind of desperation would I have to be in that I would have to send my son on this dangerous journey?” Chibas also interviewed teens who made the dangerous journey and are now attending high school in Los Angeles at the School of History and Dramatic Arts. She invited some of those students to workshop the play so that actors, like Martel, could meet the real people these ”larger than life” things were happening to. Jasmin, from El Salvador, was one of those people and Chibas used a lot of her story as inspiration for Shelter. (Jasmin’s last name is being withheld for her safety.) She’s waiting to see if she’ll be granted asylum and if not, she’ll be sent back to face the tormentors she left back home. Jasmin says she came to the U. S. because a girl in school kept harassing her to join a gang. When she refused, the girl threatened to kill her, and those aren’t empty threats in El Salvador. Kids who refuse gang initiation are retaliated against and can end up in ”black bags” as Jasmin puts it. So, her mom found a group leaving for the U. S. and made her go with them. Jasmin, 14 years old,   and barely 5 feet tall, took her first trip outside El Salvador  —   not on the   flight with the stop in Mexico City and beverage service, but on foot, in strangers’ cars, clinging to the top of freight trains. She says they traveled at night, mostly, and slept during the day on dirty floors and in holes in the ground. The total cost: $8, 000. Her mom borrowed the money to pay multiple smugglers along the way. The amount of time it took her to get to the U. S.  border: one month and two days. Then she spent 100 more days in immigration detention because Jasmin turned herself in to the U. S. border patrol. She says the absolute worst part of the entire journey, though, was riding ”La Bestia.” That’s the freight train that many migrants ride to cross Mexico, where the mafia, random thugs and even tree limbs can kill you. The train plays a huge role in Shelter. In multiple scenes, actors are arranged in horizontal or vertical lines on stage, to simulate a train. Sometimes it’s because the action is happening on a train. But not always. The actors often stand in lines facing the audience, methodically listing every step of bureaucracy the kids must go through when they reach the U. S.  all to the rhythm of a freight train on a track: ”Step 3!” they recite in unison. ”If not Mexican anyone appearing to be a child will receive mandated   Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act scanning.” Shelter has four chapters. By play’s end, the audience get’s a to know some of the historical context that lead to this crisis, the immigration bureaucracy the kids go through if they make it to the U. S. the current debate over what to do with these kids, and their individual stories. There are also sweet moments of kids being kids: playing soccer, sharing their dreams for the future. The play opens this weekend at a park in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles. Chibas says she wanted to share it, first, with the community closest to the story. She hopes it shows not only the kids trauma, but their courage and resilience. ”They have high hopes, they have big dreams and I want to support those dreams in anyway that I can,” she says. Jasmin says she’s conflicted about living in the U. S. without her mom and her two younger sisters and brothers. She told me she’s in love with this country, but her dream is that things back in El Salvador get fixed. Her sisters are coming of age, and Jasmin is worried they’ll be targeted by gang members one day and told ’You have to join, because if not, we’ll hurt you.’ She doesn’t want them to have to make the choice she was forced to make: Stay and die or leave and live. ..if you’re lucky."
"When it comes to clothes these days, maybe you should ask: What’s your waste size? You know you have those clothes sitting in your closet: That shirt you spent less than $10 on because it looked cool for a second, or that skirt you only wore once before it went out of fashion. Fashion cycles are moving faster than ever. A Quartz article in December revealed how fashion brands like Zara, Gap and Adidas are churning out new styles more frequently, a trend dubbed ”fast fashion” by many in the industry. The clothes that are   also become more affordable, thus attracting consumers to buy more. ”It used to be four seasons in a year now it may be up to 11 or 15 or more,” says Tasha Lewis, a professor at Cornell University’s Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design. The top fast fashion retailers grew 9. 7 percent per year over the last five years, topping the 6. 8 percent of growth of traditional apparel companies, according to financial holding company CIT. Fashion is big business. Estimates vary, but one report puts the global industry at $1. 2 trillion, with more than $250 billion spent in the U. S. alone. In 2014, the average household spent an average $1, 786 on apparel and related services. More styles mean more purchases  —   and that leads to more waste created. Journalist Elizabeth Cline writes in her book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion that disposable clothing is damaging to the environment and the economy. We are more likely to dispose of cheaper,   fashion garments than pricier ones. ”We don’t necessarily have the ability to handle the disposal,” Lewis says. ”The rate of disposal is not keeping up with the availability of places to put everything that we’re getting rid of and that’s the problem.” According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 15. 1 million tons of textile waste was generated in 2013, of which 12. 8 million tons were discarded. How To Deal With All This Textile Waste? One way developed nations get rid of their excess clothing is by donating it to developing nations. According to the United Nations, the United States is the biggest exporter of used clothes, and the top importing countries of used clothing are India, Russia and Pakistan. But with the strong dollar and availability of cheap clothing from Asia, some are worried that demand for exports of secondhand clothing will decline  —   thus forcing developed nations to find new ways to deal with   textile waste. Fast fashion and the disposable culture also hurt sorting companies that export   clothing. Adam Baruchowitz, founder of Wearable Collections in New York City, collects   clothing and sells it to sorting companies. The companies then sort through the clothes, separating those that will be made into other   fiber products and those that will be exported. Baruchowitz says the most valuable part of a sorting company’s business is in selling reusable   clothing. But if the quality is questionable, more of the garments collected might have to head to the shredding bin rather than the   clothes market. ”It’s very damaging to the environment, this fast fashion culture, and it also affects the secondhand market because these clothes aren’t meant to be used for so long,” he says. ”I can’t say for sure, but the secondhand HMs would probably be in less demand than a garment that was produced with more quality. I’m getting all this stuff from fast fashion and I’m hearing from clients that it’s hurting them.” Do Retailers’ Recycling Programs Encourage Consumerism? Several clothing retailers have announced   programs that collect used garments from customers to be recycled, sold or remade into other clothing. HM, for example, has allowed customers to bring unwanted garments  —   which will be transformed to recycled textile fibers for new products  —   since 2013. The company aims to have ”zero garments going to landfill.” Patagonia also recycles and sells used Patagonia products in its stores. It plays into the concept of extended producer responsibility, which means the manufacturer has to take into consideration the product’s afterlife. But does it actually encourage more consumerism? For many stores, customers can get store credit and vouchers for sending in used clothing. ”If you bring it back to the store and you see something new and you’re going to give me a discount, I’m having a buying moment I may not have had before because you’re having me back at your store. It’s very smart in terms of business,” Lewis says. The concept, however, might encourage a different type of thinking: If manufacturers have to think about how they’re going to get the most out of the product after it has been worn, Lewis says, it might spur them to start designing products that can be taken apart easily, have better quality, or might be biodegradable, for example. HM introduced new garments made of recycled textile fibers two year ago. Grassroots Efforts To Counter Fast Fashion, A year ago, a few users began uploading YouTube videos of themselves exchanging clothes with friends. It was either that, or they were showcasing how they made new styles out of their old, scrappy clothes. ”Today is fashion revolution day and I decided to take part in this movement by making a ’Haulternative’ video,” says CutiePieMarza, a YouTuber from England, in her video. She was exchanging clothes with grav3yardgirl, a YouTuber from Texas. ”It’s part haul, part swap . .. she asked me about a month ago if I would be part of this awesome project,” says grav3yardgirl in her video. ”I think it’s something mainly going on in the UK.” ”Haulternative” is an alternative to the traditional ”haul” videos, where users post videos of themselves parading their latest buys. It was an activity that was part of the larger Fashion Revolution movement started in the United Kingdom that aimed to bring awareness to the source of our garments  —   as well as the waste created by our consumerist habits. ”It’s an alternative haul. It’s looking at how people can do a different kind of haul, how people can refresh their wardrobe without having to buy new clothes,” says Carry Somers,   of the movement. ”It’s encouraging people to be more conscious when they’re shopping.” Instead of constantly buying new clothes, the movement suggested people buy from vintage stores, make new clothes out of old ones or just swap clothes. Fashion Revolution Week will take place April   and participants are encouraged to upload their ”haulternative” videos this year as well. Some companies are experimenting with new ideas. Rent The Runway, for example, rents out branded clothes to customers who pay a monthly fee. Those concerned about the mounting waste hopped onto an opposing concept: Instead of buying cheap clothes, invest in slightly costly clothes with good quality that might last you longer. The    by Tom Cridland is an example. San Francisco was aware of this problem in 2002  —   and pledged a goal of reaching zero waste by 2020 by encouraging the recycling of clothes, shoes and linen. ”I think for clothing, because we’re a consumer culture, it’s hard for me to say don’t buy anything,” Lewis says. ”We can probably slow down how much we buy.”"
"If you’re a farmer who wants to stay small and independent, you’re under an increasing amount of pressure these days. By the Department of Agriculture’s count, a startling 97 percent of all the country’s farms are    —   but that’s because many small family farms turned into big family farms, or collections of farms, which turned into big businesses. Smaller family operations, like Vern Jantzen’s   farm in Nebraska, account for less than a quarter of everything produced on American farms. And there’s no guarantee the younger members of the family, like Vern’s two daughters, will want to stay on to continue the business. This week on For the Record: one family’s farm  —   the temptation to leave, and the struggle to stay. All In The Family, Since it was bought in 1891, his farm has been the home and livelihood to four generations of his family, starting with Vern’s great grandfather. That’s also how long the Jantzens ran a dairy farm on the land, until recently. They’ve since had to cut costs, and have refocused their efforts on growing vegetables, thanks in part to who’s next in the Jantzen line. Vern’s daughters, Katie, 26, and Karen, 24, are the newest generation to have lived on the farm. Growing up, their daily chores included garden work and feeding calves. But Karen didn’t develop a relationship with the animals like her younger sister. ”I never named any of the cows or anything,” she says. But Katie did: ”Greg was my Holstein steer.” When the girls went off to college, Karen admits she missed the sounds of the cows and seeing the stars every night. Instead, she heard the sounds of cars and saw the lights of the big city of Winnipeg, Canada. Still, she didn’t look back. She grew interested in international affairs, eventually landing in Seoul, South Korea. Katie explored other options, too, in Virgina. Meanwhile, Vern and his wife, Delores, figured they were going to be the last members of the Jantzen family to run the farm. Each year it grew harder to turn a profit. So, in 2010, after a particularly rough winter, Vern decided it was too expensive to keep the dairy operation going. ”I just thought, man, this is going to be a really big hole to crawl out of. And when you have girls that are interested in other things or don’t express an interest in coming home to farm, I just thought, ’You know, I don’t know if I want to work this hard to get this all straightened out  —   and then, for what?’ ” Vern says. ”There were a lot of days when I did not walk in the dairy barn because that just was  —   I didn’t have to and I didn’t want to, let’s put it that way.” Is A Revival On The Horizon? Today, though, the Jantzen farm could be on the brink of another transformation. Vern’s eldest daughter, Katie, began to grow interested in local farming during college. ”On most farms we raise commodities. She was interested in the idea of, let’s raise food,” Vern says. Katie sees the benefit of locally sourced and locally grown food, which also happens to be environmentally friendly. ”Typically corn and beans either get exported to another country or turned into ethanol or shipped off to another state to a feedlot,” she says. ”It’s certainly hard for me to see a lot of meaning in that.” Her dad’s been supportive of the new ideas she has for the family farm. ”I said, if you want to do that, I said we’ll figure out a way to do that,” Vern says. ”There should be a lot of manure left over there that you can use for raising vegetables.” Karen, for her part, isn’t sure exactly what her career is going to look like, but she thinks it’ll probably be something back in Canada, working with immigrants and refugees  —   definitely not farming like her sister Katie. And there aren’t many Katies out there. The Center for Rural Affairs says less than 6 percent of Nebraska farmers are under the age of 35. Research by Iowa State University says half the state’s farmers over 60 have no successor. It’s easy to see why. Vern has had to pick up   work as a bus driver to make ends meet because farming just can’t cut it anymore. Of course, that concern  —   whether or not she’s going to be able to make a living as a farmer  —   has been on Katie’s mind. ”I think the majority of farmers in this country have some kind of outside income whether that’s a second job or a spouse’s job, and so all across the board farming is tough,” Katie says. ”It’s hard to make a living, and so that’s one of the things I’m really trying to crunch the numbers on before I make a decision whether or not to do this.” Her dad has his own reservations, but he says it’s worth giving Katie’s plan a shot if it means keeping the farm in the family. ”I told my wife, I said I’m going to do whatever I can to help her see if this’ll work, and I said if I have to finance her a little bit, I have no problem doing that, because my dad financed me when I got started.” Looking to the future, say 100 years from now, what does Vern see growing on the Jantzen farm? ”Holy Toledo, hopefully not thistles.”"
"On a small Israeli military base at Nahal Oz, next to the Gaza border, there’s a windowless room where soldiers peer 24 hours a day at video screens. They’re watching live footage from cameras monitoring the Gaza Strip, controlled by the militant group Hamas. Soldiers see a lot  —   a damaged home getting slowly repaired after the 2014 war, donkeys guided by farmers, suspected Hamas militants on motorcycles. But they can’t see underground, where tunnels beneath the border may pose the biggest threat to Israel here. In the observation room, the soldiers monitoring the screens are all female. ”Girls do it the best,” says    Orr Israeli, a commander. ”They have this commitment. They feel obligated to the job, the mission, without tak[ing] their eyes off the screen.” Each watches three screens. Each screen has five views. They flip between    color or   pictures. They zoom in and out. As the commander explains the mission, a siren goes off in the room. When a Gazan gets too close to the border fence, a soldier marks the spot with a red diamond on the screen. That makes the siren blast. The data goes up the command chain or out to soldiers in the field. ”These sirens, you jump,” says Israeli, the commander. ”This is so everyone can see this in one spot, on one map, so everyone can know where it is.” The limits Israel imposes on Gazans approaching the fence cut off access to valuable farmland. Palestinians say this and all the military observation contributes to collective punishment of almost 2 million people. But Israel says the limits are needed to stop militants from firing rockets. They’re often launched from the mile or so area inside Gaza that Israeli cameras are trained on. During the last war, Hamas militants entered Israel by using tunnels. But these cameras can’t observe what might be going on below the surface. ”We don’t have electric sensor[s] underneath the ground,” Israeli says. A military spokesman says Israel is actively searching for tunnels, but this unit is not. Outside the windowless camera room, field soldiers conduct   observation. A    field commander and a    soldier take me to a border post and pull out their binoculars. The military, citing security, won’t let them say even their first names. ”You can see from here the Hamas post, the white post,” the soldier says, indicating a white tower 300 yards away. He hands me his binoculars. I see a red tractor. ”That’s a farmer,” the soldier says. Then he points out a man with a motorcycle, sitting in an olive grove. The Israeli soldier says that man is a ”Hamasnik,” meaning a member of Hamas. Militants sometimes plant bombs near the border, targeting Israeli army vehicles that go on both sides of the fence. Tunnel teams try to drill underneath the fence and into Israel. In 2014, the commander says, ”A tunnel came out right here.” He points a few yards away. ”Eight Hamas militants came out during the war. They can be anywhere.” A camera is permanently stationed at this spot along the fence. A machine gun is, too. Both are controlled by Israeli soldiers back in the observation room."
"In Brazil, one of the biggest challenges to dealing with the Zika crisis is logistics. The South American country has bad infrastructure, unequal access to health care  —   and it’s huge. It’s difficult for a mom with a microcephalic baby who lives in the countryside, hours away from specialists, to get the help she needs. But one doctor has developed a system that could revolutionize medicine in Brazil  —   and has already helped tens of thousands of babies. Dr. Sandra Mattos, a pediatric cardiologist, checks in with her tiny patients from her laptop. Her screen is split, showing various hospital rooms around Brazil’s northern Paraiba state. Mattos is practicing telemedicine, which allows doctors like her to diagnose and treat patients at a distance. The rational is pretty straightforward  —   it gives people in remote communities access to specialist care. ”Training a specialist takes a very long time, it’s too much effort, too much time,” Mattos says. ”Using telemedicine, you can concentrate the expertise in some areas and spread it to much bigger areas, and more people will benefit from it.” Telemedicine is not new. But what’s different here is the scale and scope of what Mattos has created. It all started a few years ago. The state of Paraiba was having a lot of problems getting infants born with congenital heart defects the care they needed. Mattos had worked with telemedicine before outside Brazil, and had been thinking long and hard for decades about how to deal with the problems of the health care system here. So she set up what she calls the Heart Network. There are 22 regional hospitals and more than 100 doctors involved  —   around the clock care. The linchpin to all this are what she calls the echo taxis: basically, cars that deliver specialized equipment to facilities in remote rural communities. ”They run around every week, three echo taxis go to three villages in the countryside, the medical equipment stays in that maternity for that whole week, during which we run pediatric cardiology clinics. And all of them are supervised via telemedicine,” Mattos says. The local staff is trained to operate the equipment while specialist doctors are on hand to look over the data. That way, they can check which babies need to be seen in person and which ones don’t. ”It’s a way of running clinics and not having to overload the big centers, which are really very, very few and far apart from each other,” she says. ”We try to bring to the large centers the patients that really need care.” In the few years the system has been in place, they’ve looked at the hearts of 127, 000 infants in the state. This would be successful by any measure. But, then, Zika happened. The minister of health was all of a sudden having to deal with a surge in cases of microcephaly. The government was looking for a way to treat and properly diagnose the infants with suspected brain damage. Mattos’s program was easily adaptable. ”As we had the network and access in those remote areas, we just said should we not use the model of the network and try both managing and diagnosing these children,” she recalls. The echo taxis were sent out with equipment that would look at babies’ brains instead of their hearts. On the other end of the computer, there were now neurosurgeons instead of heart surgeons. And that huge database of information on babies born in the state proved pivotal in trying to figure out what was going on regarding   birth defects in Paraiba. ”I think, perhaps, that is what is so unique about our situation here in Paraiba and in Brazil. We don’t have very large databases in Brazil as a whole, its not very common, especially rural communities  —   we don’t get data from them,” she says. Ultimately, it has allowed the state to far more efficiently deal with the Zika crisis, says Erin Staples who lead the Centers for Disease Control study in Paraiba. ”I think it’s a way forward,” she says. ”We saw children in places where it took our teams, you know, over a day to get to. And just imagining, if they had to come to here, they might not have the means or the time. So having a system set up to help spread the knowledge and expertise is important.” And, she says, it shouldn’t only be adopted in other parts of Brazil. ”I think it’s a good model for Brazil, I think it’s a good model for even rural places in the United States, [where] there isn’t always the right care.” Dr. Mattos says its an example of local solutions being applied to local problems. ”So rather than coming in with a globalized solution,” she says, ”we lead people by empowering them here. ”"
"The headquarters for the U. S. military’s longest war isn’t at the Pentagon. It’s here at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, a modest brick building in suburban Washington. Like most military campaigns, this one requires volunteers. Their mission is to place a bare arm atop a mug of   mosquitoes and sit still while the parasites enjoy a feast. The volunteers will get malaria, and this allows the military to see how humans respond to treatment. ”It’s the Malaria Challenge model,” said Debra Yourick, director of science education at the institute. ”It’s the only way you can actually test a vaccine or an   as an effective therapy. It’s a controlled malaria infection, one we know we can cure.” Mosquitoes have   2, 200 volunteers over the past three decades in the Malaria Challenge. The volunteers are bitten at least five times. Some have been bitten up to 1, 000 times over several sessions. All have survived and recovered  —   which shows the advances in combating diseases spread by mosquitoes. Mosquitoes have been the world’s deadliest animal for centuries, and the Zika virus is just the latest reminder of how much damage they can inflict. But the news is actually very good on the mosquito front: For the first time in forever, humanity is getting the upper hand, and the U. S. military has been a key player in this marathon effort. Just a decade ago, mosquitoes still claimed an estimated 1 million lives a year worldwide, the vast majority children in Africa who succumbed to malaria. But a number of breakthroughs, such as bed nets treated with insecticides, have pushed that number down dramatically, to around 500, 000 last year, according to the World Health Organization. George Washington Vs. The Mosquitoes, Like many parts of the world, the U. S. has long waged war against the mosquito. During the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington sought to acquire tree bark from Peru that was believed to effectively treat malaria, a recurring threat to his troops. In World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that for every division that was fighting, ”I must count on a second division in hospital with malaria and a third division convalescing from this debilitating disease.” And it’s no accident that Gen. Reed’s name is on this research institute, which is linked to, but physically separate from, the more famous military hospital that also bears his name. The hospital is several miles away, also in suburban Washington. Around 1900, Gen. Reed was among the first to link mosquitoes to diseases they transmit. That led a few years later to the first major eradication campaign, when the American military took over the Panama Canal project after yellow fever wiped out workers and bankrupted the French effort. The Americans started dumping all the stagnant water, ”and yellow fever infections in that area went down dramatically,” said Yourick. ”It was the first, ’  this is where it’s coming from.’ It’s not coming from bad air or vomit or sweat. It wasn’t that. It was the mosquito.” Today, the Walter Reed ”insectary” is filled with buckets of   and   mosquitoes. This research is a key part of the wider international effort that is finally succeeding in a major way and on a global scale. Yet many in this field, like Army Maj. Jeffrey Clark, say it’s still too early to celebrate. ”I would caution in getting too optimistic, because I think it was in the late 1950s that we thought within four or five years, malaria would be wiped from the face of the earth,” Clark says. Clever Mosquitoes, In response to every breakthrough, mosquitoes have adapted with incredible speed. They become resistant to new sprays. Medicines to prevent and treat malaria become less effective over time. The mosquitoes are even outsmarting the bed nets by learning to dine at an earlier hour. ”Instead of biting in the middle of the night now, when people are sleeping, they’re biting in the evening when they’re sitting outside by the fire,” Clark says. ”So the bed nets are becoming less and less effective.” The institute has been working with pharmaceutical companies for years to develop a vaccine against malaria, which would be a huge breakthrough. But a successful vaccine remains elusive, and the fight against mosquitoes carries on. ”The parasite wants to survive just as much as we want to survive,” says Clark. ”So it’s a   battle.”"
"The federal government is cleaning up a long legacy of uranium mining within the Navajo Nation  —   some 27, 000 square miles spread across Utah, New Mexico and Arizona that is home to more than 250, 000 people. Many Navajo people have died of kidney failure and cancer, conditions linked to uranium contamination. And new research from the CDC shows uranium in babies born now. Mining companies blasted 4 million tons of uranium out of Navajo land between 1944 and 1986. The federal government purchased the ore to make atomic weapons. As the Cold War threat petered out the companies left, abandoning more than 500 mines. Maria Welch is a field researcher with the Southwest Research Information Center, which is working with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and local groups to gauge the impacts of uranium on Navajo families today. She surveys Navajo families for the Navajo Birth Cohort Study, which has 599 participants so far. On a recent day in Flagstaff, Ariz. she asks a mother about feeding practices for her baby. Forty percent of the tribe lacks running water. Welch learns that the mother mixes baby formula with tap water. One of the study’s findings: 27 percent of the participants have high levels of uranium in their urine, compared to 5 percent of the U. S. population as a whole. Welch, who is Navajo, got involved in the study because of her own family’s exposure to uranium. Both of her parents grew up next to mines, even playing in contaminated water. ”When they did the mining, there would be these pools that would fill up,” she says. ”And all of the kids swam in them. And my dad did, too.” Many Navajo unwittingly let their livestock drink from those pools, and their children play in mine debris piles. Some even built their homes out of uranium. All four of Welch’s grandparents have died, and she worries about her parents’ health and now her daughter’s. Cancer rates doubled in the Navajo Nation from the 1970s to the 1990s. ”Why isn’t there more of an outrage? Why isn’t there more of a community sense of what the heck is going on? How did this happen? Why is this still occurring? Why hasn’t anything been done?” she asks. George McGraw, a human rights advocate working on the Navajo Nation, has one answer. ”Problems like this really disproportionately affect   communities of color,” says McGraw, whose organization DIGDEEP is raising money to dig wells on the reservation. ”Flint (Michigan) might feel really far away from the Navajo Nation in rural Arizona. But when you look at the demographics of it, it really isn’t,” he says. ”This is a community that has found themself voiceless.” The U. S. Justice Department has recently gone after some of the mining companies. Since 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency has hauled away thousands of cubic yards of mine waste and has rebuilt nearly 50 contaminated homes, says EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld. But there’s still much more to be done. ”We’re spending a lot of time making sure that the polluters pay, so it isn’t the federal taxpayer,” he says. One company, Anadarko Petroleum, and its subsidiary   recently paid $1 billion to the Navajo Nation for cleanup and as compensation to people living with the effects of uranium contamination. But   of the mining companies have shut down or have run out of money. The federal government knew about some of the dangers decades ago, but only started the cleanup in recent years. ”We understand that there’s frustration,” Blumenfeld says. ”We share that frustration that some of this takes a long time.” And the uranium issue on the Navajo Nation is part of a much bigger problem. Across the western United States there are more than 160, 000 abandoned hardrock mines  —   thousands of which continue to pollute."
"Live in a place long enough and you’ll see it start to change: new people in your neighborhood, new buildings reshaping an old skyline. Washington, D. C. is no exception. Tarica June is a lawyer in D. C. as well as a local emcee, who writes and produces her own music on the side. One of her songs has received a lot of attention both in and out of Washington. It’s called ”But Anyway,” and it feels like a nostalgic love song for the town she grew up in  —   that, due to gentrification, is a very different place today. ”One thing that I remember is that even if you didn’t know all your neighbors, you would know, ’That person is my neighbor.’ At least if you saw them, you would say hello,” June says. ”And you hear people say stuff like, ’Oh, nobody’s really from D. C.’ It’s like, OK  —   I’m still here.” June says she wrote the song just driving around the District one day  —   and in the video, she surrounds herself with the landmarks of Petworth, the neighborhood where she was raised and still lives. As the music cycles between samples, June expands the focus of her lyrics, from gentrification to the prison industrial complex to racism to corporations. And though the song is rooted in local issues, June says she’s received an overwhelming response from people around the country. ”People have contacted me from Oakland. Somebody on Facebook posted something saying, ’This could be about Austin’  —   which, I didn’t even know things like this were going on in Austin. People have posted, ’This is just like Detroit,’ or ’This is just like Brooklyn,’” she says. June says pretty much all the feedback she’s gotten for ”But Anyway” has been good, sometimes unexpectedly so. ”I was expecting for people to have an issue with it,” she says. ”[But] even people who I guess would be the gentrifiers have said, ’Wow, this makes me feel differently about the way I interact with people in my neighborhood.”"
"In 1913, the    Ronald Tolkien should have been studying for his exams. He was halfway through his Classics degree  —   the subject all the best students did at Oxford in those days. Getting admitted to Oxford on a scholarship was a great opportunity for young Ronald, an orphan who had always struggled to stay out of poverty. A Classics degree would have set him up for almost any career he chose. But he wasn’t studying. Instead, he was trying to teach himself Finnish. Why would a brilliant student with so much at stake let himself go astray at such a crucial time? There were two reasons: love and the Kalevala. Tolkien’s twin obsessions at the time were his future wife, Edith Bratt, and the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland. This collection of poems, myths, spells and   had been collected and published in the early 19th century, but the poems themselves are thought to be far older. Its unique voice, resembling no other European mythology, thoroughly captured the mind and heart of young Tolkien. ”The almost indefinable sense of newness and strangeness . .. will either perturb you or delight you,” he wrote at the time. ”Trees will group differently on the horizon, the birds will make unfamiliar music the inhabitants will talk a wild and at first unintelligible lingo. . .. This is how it was for me when I first read the Kalevala  —   that is, crossed the gulf between the    peoples of Europe into this smaller realm of those who cling in queer corners to the forgotten tongues and memories of an elder day.” After his attempt to learn Finnish (”I made a wild assault on the stronghold of the original language and was repulsed . .. with heavy losses”) Tolkien began to translate and adapt one part of the Kalevala that attracted him particularly: the story of young Kullervo, the   boy who seems to destroy everything he touches. The Story of Kullervo, edited by Verlyn Flieger, brings these first fruits of Tolkien’s fertile mind into the public eye at last. The book contains Tolkien’s translated and adapted Story of Kullervo, as well as two versions of an enthusiastic essay by him about the Kalevala. Although all are unfinished, there’s certainly enough material there for a fascinating read. Those expecting a typical Tolkien story will be unsettled by Kullervo: He is physically ugly, angry, destructive and uncontrollable. Raised as a prisoner of his father’s murderer, Kullervo survives all attempts to kill him and ruins every task he is given. Sold into slavery and mistreated by his master’s wife, Kullervo arranges for her to be eaten alive by wolves and bears. On his way home, he meets a girl and abducts her they live together for a time, but she drowns herself when they discover they are brother and sister. In other words, this folk tale is not a nice one. Newcomers to Tolkien may find it a somewhat rough ride, but Tolkien geeks will find plenty to geek out about. It’s long been known, for example, that the first language Tolkien created for his Elves was based on Finnish and that Tùrin Tùrambar, the charismatic, doomed   of Tolkien’s Silmarillion, was based on the equally doomed Kullervo. Reading The Story of Kullervo lets us see that process happening. Rather than giving a straight translation of the Finnish original, Tolkien is already beginning to bend and shape the story, telling it his own way. He gives Kullervo a wise magical hound as his lifelong protector, and a twin sister whose name means ”Weeping.” Kullervo’s mother, with her steadfast love for her terrible son, is much more strongly drawn in Tolkien’s version. Readers of the Silmarillion will recognize these story elements and more. Tolkien’s version of the Kullervo story and his writings about it have never been available to the public before, and to those who get a kick out of tracing the history of Tolkien’s invented world of   this edition is a great find. Flieger’s edition lets Tolkien’s text speak for itself, with all its imperfections and archaicisms her beautifully precise notes easily clear up any confusion for the modern reader. Meanwhile, back in 1913, you’ll be glad to hear that young Tolkien did manage to pass his exams. But thanks to love and the Kalevala, his marks were so low that he was persuaded to change his degree from Classics to English Language and Literature  —   the field he would remain in for the rest of his life. It’s possible that we might be living in a world without Hobbits if the    Tolkien hadn’t been preoccupied with the short, violent life of Kullervo and the greater, stranger world of the Kalevala. Liza Graham is a   and writer, born in Washington, D. C. and living in London. She has been a critic and columnist for the Metro papers, as well as a guest blogger at mightygodking. com. Her poetry has been published in Goblin Fruit magazine."
"In 1964, two guys walked into a movie studio. One of them was Buster Keaton, a silent film master of physical comedy, and the other was Samuel Beckett, a master of cerebral literature. They were there to make a movie together, and now a new movie tells the story of their unlikely collaboration. Beckett and Keaton’s project was called Film, and the new account of that project  —   created by former UCLA archivist Ross Lipman  —   is called Notfilm. Lipman was fascinated by the   collaboration. ”I love storytelling,” he says, ”and I love all the historical figures involved and I love pursuing these strange little nooks and crannies of cultural history.” Film is certainly one of those crannies, but making a movie about the making of a movie posed a problem. In the beginning of Notfilm, Lipman says, ”I’ve never quite trusted films about film. Art shouldn’t be about art it should be about life, and speak to life  —   or so I told myself, as if they were somehow distinguishable.” As an archivist, Lipman worked on a bunch of restoration projects, from silent films to the movies of John Sayles and John Cassavetes. His research on the   project led him to the apartment of the man who funded Film. Under the sink, Lipman found reels of outtakes and a prologue that was eventually rejected. ”There were lots of outtakes of the camera panning across this abandoned room  —   this decrepit, decaying space,” Lipman says. ”And they were so evocative. . .. I’ve got all this wonderful material that obviously speaks to me from a historical and intellectual standpoint, but underneath it got to me at this emotional level, and that was the thing that pushed me.” Lipman’s film grew into a movie essay on the meaning of images  —   how we see ourselves on screen and how others see us. He says, ”The film by Beckett is about someone who is afraid of being looked at, and Beckett uses the camera as a metaphor for that. And Keaton was one of those people who did have this aversion to the limelight. In his private life, he didn’t really like to be invaded in that way. So at a physical level, he understood this aversion to being observed that Beckett was using as the subject of his film.” But Keaton wasn’t Beckett’s first choice. Actor James Karen, who appears in Film, says, ”Beckett had written it for Jack MacGowran and MacGowran couldn’t do it, so I suggested Buster.” Karen has acted on Broadway, TV and film, including 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead. He was a close friend of Keaton’s but he says he had to persuade him to do the Beckett project. Once Keaton was on set, Karen says, the seasoned silent film star didn’t think Beckett or his   director, acclaimed theater director Alan Schneider, knew what they were doing. ”They were terrific in the theater,” Karen says, ”but they knew nothing about making a movie. They would ask for things which no actor could do. I remember Beckett one time said to Buster, ’Mr. Keaton, could you hold that blink three more frames?’ Buster looked at me and said, ’Sure!’ I just said, ’Take my word for it, these are respectable people.’ And he said, ’Well, I know Beckett has done a lot of work,’ he says, ’but do people really like it?’ ” According to Notfilm, Beckett himself thought his first (and last) foray onto the big screen was a failure, but film historian Bruce Kawin says the playwright was wrong. He thinks Film was a   simple story about someone who doesn’t want to be seen. ”You have to think about what the great, modern experiments were like, and how many of them are actually entertaining,” Kawin says. ”Like, you know, Ulysses is really great if you like it and if you don’t, it’s just too long, about too little, you know? And Beckett is cleaner and faster and simpler. We’re talking about simplicity, genius and clarity, which is something that Beckett had and Keaton had. . .. Keaton’s the real thing. . .. Beckett’s the real thing. These are amazing artists, just amazing artists.” And Kawin can’t understand why they didn’t have a great time making a movie that he thinks is funny. ”I think you can really mess it up by being too intellectual about it,” he says. ”And that may have been Beckett’s mistake and it may have been Schneider’s mistake. They may have just not understood that they were dealing with an absolute genius  —   Keaton. And Keaton may not have understood how brilliant and funny Beckett was.”"
"Former Mexican President Vicente Fox is a fierce critic of presidential candidate Donald Trump, repeatedly denouncing what he says are his ”racist and ignorant ideas.” Trump ”says that he’ll make America great again,” Fox writes this week in The Guardian, ”but I believe he’s only making it worse.” In his frequent tweets about Trump, Fox has called him ”crazy,” ”pathetic” and a ”loser.” Fox, who served as president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, also says he views Trump as a ”dictator.” He joins a growing number of prominent Mexicans who are speaking out more forcefully against the Republican candidate, and he explained his thinking in an interview with Weekend Edition’s Rachel Martin. Why do you call him a dictator? We know about dictators in Latin America  —   these people who have gotten in love with soft talk with audiences like [the late Venezuelan leader] Hugo Chavez did, and once they are in power, they show what they really are. And this I tell to the American people: ”Wake up, listen carefully to this false prophet, who could not tolerate this . .. that could be a reality tomorrow.” Isn’t some of this overheated campaign rhetoric? We have all followed, especially myself, the electoral process in the United States, and I have never seen something like this. I am absolutely shocked that the Republican Party has let this guy go so far. So I really want American citizens to really consider, is that really the best option that you have? Your grandfather was born in Ohio and crossed the border in the opposite direction. What motivated him to do this? Exactly the same spirit that motivates Mexicans, that motivates Syrians, that motivates Americans also  —   to go out and look for your American dream, look for making a little more money. I know that has to be done legally. I know that migration should be an issue that has plenty of order, plenty of regulations. But speaking like he does is not the way to stop something like that. That is not the United States, that is not the land of my grandfather."
"About six years ago, Anthony Gonzalez left the small French coastal town where he’d spent his first three decades and moved to Los Angeles in search of greater things. In at least one way, he found them: His band M83, already a hit in indie circles, had a breakthrough in 2011 with the   album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. Gonzalez says his latest album, Junk, developed as a way to reconnect with his past  —   and that it all starts with melody. ”The melody in a song is probably the first thing that I’m going to attach myself to, and I’m trying to keep doing this in my music,” he says. ”I’ll always try to find a good melody that inspires me first, and then work more on the production aspect of the song.” On this album, Gonzalez also does something he had never done before as an artist, surprisingly enough: write a song in his native language. ”I was always reluctant in writing songs in French,” he says, ”because it was actually a very difficult exercise for me to do. I’d never done it in the past because it was just not natural.” Gonzalez says the songs on this new album are also influenced by an unlikely source: his parents. ”I started to actually listen back to the music that my parents were listening to when we were kids  —   music that I used to hate, because my parents were listening to it,” he says. ”And I quickly realized that they actually had amazing taste in music. They were listening to a lot of French artists from the ’70s and ’80s.” He says that after going back and listening to a few of those artists as an adult, he began to see them in a new light. ”I just realized that France has actually a lot of amazing artists that tried to follow their own rules,” he says. ”That’s something that really stuck with me in French music, is that we do what we want. We don’t want to stay in a box we just want to try to share our own vision of music.” Although drawing inspiration from these past musicians was a new part of the writing process for Gonzalez, drawing from his own past was not new. ”I’m a very nostalgic person,” he says. ”I always think about my past  —   my child years, my teenage years. . .. Since the beginning of my career it’s almost my main source of inspiration. I always like to say that instead of trying to find the sound of the future, I’m actually trying to go back and take what I used to love as a kid and as a teenager, and make it my own. And this is what happened on this album.”"
"Police needed most of Monday afternoon to arrest all of the   protesters outside the U. S. Capitol in Washington at a demonstration in favor of changing the rules on political money, voting rights and redistricting. More than 600 turned out for the protest, and more than 400 were arrested in closethe   at the Capitol steps, U. S. Capitol Police reported. The nonviolent protest was led by Democracy Spring, a coalition of more than 100 progressive groups. The protest was cheery and peaceful. Police blockaded the marble staircase with a chain and a cordon of officers. Demonstrators sat in front of the chain and on the plaza, talking, chanting, singing and taking pictures as police led them away one by one. Police, badly underestimating the potential crowd, initially brought a single bus to Capitol Plaza to haul the protesters away. In a rally preceding the protest, organizer Kai Newkirk of the group 99Rise told the crowd that ”we send a message  —   to everyone in our country who needs a government that represents us all  —   that this House is your House too, and now is the time to stand up and to take it back.” The coalition wants a ”Congress of Conscience” to pass legislation limiting undisclosed and   money, giving more clout to small donors to restore powers in the Voting Rights Act and to put an end to gerrymandered districts that insulate incumbent lawmakers from election challenges. Newkirk has been campaigning to limit political money since 2014, when he interrupted a Supreme Court hearing to object to rulings that lifted restrictions on big donors. Democracy Spring plans four more daily protests this week. April   it will be joined by another large coalition, Democracy Awakening, for a   speeches and another   demonstration."
"Hear it in Rio, Kathmandu or Timbuktu  —   it doesn’t matter. A hearty, belly laugh means the same thing on every continent: joy. But when we laugh with someone else, our chuckles may divulge more than we realize. Scientists have found that people around the world can tell whether folks are friends or strangers by listening to them laughing together. And the ability transcends culture and language. The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a simple experiment. Psychologist Gregory Bryant recorded pairs of college students having conversations. Some were friends. Some hardly knew each other. He then isolated out just the parts in which the two people were laughing. Each cut was only about one second long. Then Bryant and his colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, had volunteers listen to the clips of laughter and guess whether the people were friends or strangers. They ran the experiment in 24 societies around the globe, including indigenous tribes in New Guinea, tiny villages in Peru and cities in India and China. People weren’t perfect at the task. They were good at telling whether women were friends. But for other pairs  —   like two men laughing  —   it was harder. On average, listeners guessed correctly only about 60 percent of the time. That accuracy slightly better than simply tossing a coin (which would give you a 50 percent accuracy). But the results were consistent across all the societies studied. That’s a big deal, says Robert Provine, a psychologist and neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who wasn’t involved with the study. ”That suggest we’re dealing with a very basic aspect of human nature,” he says. For instance, a Hadza   in Tanzania could tell two college girls in California were friends by listening to only one second of laughter. ”Laughter seems to be done by all people and all cultures,” Provine says, ”but details about what it means require   studies. Such research is hard to do and is rarely done.” Neuroscientist Carolyn McGettigan at the Royal Holloway University of London agrees with Provine. ”This study is really impressive,” she says. ”The scale of it is an achievement.” But also, she says, it suggest that, even in the most remote places on Earth, a laugh among friends is a special sound. "
"Wyoming is sometimes called the Equality State  —   it had the nation’s first female governor and was the first territory to give women the right to vote. But that legacy isn’t visible on the floor of the state Senate. Just one of the 30 state senators is a woman. ”I am the queen of the Senate. I have my own little tiara,” jokes Bernadine Craft, a Democrat who represents the mining town of Rock Springs. Overall, just 13 percent of state lawmakers in Wyoming are women, the lowest rate of representation in the country according to data compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Meanwhile, just 100 miles away, 42 percent of Colorado state lawmakers are women, the highest in the country. Having so many women in office has changed the overall tone at the state Capitol, said Colorado’s House speaker, Dickey Lee Hullinghorst. ”This is no longer a good old boys club and I think any time you mix it up and represent a lot of diversity, I think it makes the tenor better,” said Hullinghorst, who was the first Democratic woman to lead the chamber, although Republicans captured that honor more than a decade ago. Women may make up half the population, but in the U. S. they rarely have anything close to proportional political representation. At the state level, where many aspiring politicians get their start, just 24. 5 percent of lawmakers are women, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Getting Talked Into Running, It’s hard to pinpoint why Colorado has done so well at electing women to its Legislature compared with Wyoming. Female lawmakers like to credit Colorado’s independent, pioneer spirit, although Wyoming shares a similar history. Colorado was the first state to elect women to its Legislature, back in 1894, although momentum does seem to play a role. ”We really feel it builds on the tradition that we’ve established. So because we’ve had more women, we have more women,” said Meg Froelich, who recently produced a documentary about women in Colorado politics. One challenge that female candidates often encounter is getting the encouragement to run in the first place. Craft never planned to run for office but was talked into running by a former female state senator. ”It took about three months to talk me into running,” said Craft, who won that race to the state House in 2006 and later ran for state Senate, where she is now the Senate minority whip. It’s a common story for female lawmakers. ”As someone flippantly told me, a male legislative candidate wakes up one morning, looks in the mirror, and says, ’I should run for the state Senate, no looking back.’ And women I have worked with have told me over and over someone asked me four times before I said yes,” said Katie Ziegler, who compiles data on women for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Voting Rules, The Legislative Lifestyle, Make A Difference, The Wyoming Legislature wasn’t always so lopsided. Back in the   a quarter of the state’s legislators were women  —   among the highest nationwide at the time. The Equality State was living up to its name as a place where women could make a mark on politics. ”There were enough women that it wasn’t  —   you weren’t an oddity, you didn’t feel like an oddity it was just a very comfortable working situation,” said Margaret Brown, who served in Wyoming’s Legislature from 1983 to 1987. Since then, the number of women in the Wyoming Legislature has steadily dropped. ”We’re not doing a real good job at this point,” said Brown. In Colorado, term limits and party leadership may have made a difference. As lawmakers left office because of term limits, party leaders on both sides of the aisle actively encouraged women to run, especially in the state’s swelling suburbs. ”I think both parties have discovered that women do well in suburbia,” said Froelich, the filmmaker. ”So if you want to win that election, it’s often a winning strategy to put forward a woman candidate.” In the 1990s, Wyoming shifted from multimember to   districts, which Brown believes was detrimental. Under the old system, voters could pick multiple candidates to represent a larger electoral district. ”So maybe you like Suzie Q and you like John but you can only vote for one. And so you have to pick,” said Brown. For women who are are primary caregivers, it’s especially difficult. ”It’s very very difficult to juggle   employment and the Legislature, which is also a   job,” said Craft. Another barrier for female candidates is money, because male candidates often draw on wealthier donor networks. ”It might take five or 10 points of contact for a woman to raise $1, 000 whereas maybe a male candidate can call up one person and get a $1, 000 check,” said Ziegler of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Local Problem, National Implications, When women don’t run for office in states like Wyoming, Ziegler argues it’s a national problem, too. Right now, about half of the current members of Congress are former state lawmakers. ”There’s this pool of people that maybe someday will make a run for Congress, whether it’s the House or the U. S. Senate. And there aren’t a lot of women in that pool in state legislatures. And so there aren’t very many women rising up to move to that next level,” said Ziegler. Even when there’s a growing pool of female lawmakers, Colorado’s experience suggests there’s a glass ceiling that can sometimes keep them from rising higher. The state has never elected a female senator or governor and currently sends only one woman to Congress. Female candidates are always facing obstacles ”that somehow our male colleagues don’t seem to have to go through,” said former House Majority Leader Amy Stephens, a Republican who tried unsuccessfully to win her party’s Senate nomination in 2014. But like many female lawmakers in Colorado, Stephens says she does expect to see women break into the highest offices soon. After all, with so many women in the state Legislature, both parties finally have pretty deep benches of potential candidates."
"Franz Kafka wrote powerful stories about the powerless  —   and to make them frightening, he made them funny. Many of his darkest comedies, including the famous one about a salesman metamorphosing into a bug, appear to be rooted in the cowering, but deeply farcical, relationship he had with his domineering father, Hermann. But if there was a sparkling boyhood memory that Kafka cherished  —   and recalled as he lay dying of tuberculosis in a sanatarium near Vienna  —   it was one involving that primal bonding ritual between father and son: sharing a beer. In Is That Kafka? 99 Finds, a book of trivia recently translated from German into English, the eminent Kafka scholar Reiner Stach highlights his famous subject’s enjoyment of beer and wine. The image of Kafka lounging in a sunlit beer garden in Prague is a refreshing one, and no doubt the writer spent many happy hours in this manner. But with Kafka, even beer comes with baggage. His most joyous  —   and meaningful  —   memories of beer were of the drinking sessions he shared with his father. But these memories were also inextricably allied with the twin sites of his childhood humiliation: the dining table and the swimming pool. Hermann was a blustering bully. But the deeper problem was that father and son had such different personalities, they were like slapstick antagonists. Hermann the confident and coarse shopkeeper vs. the timid Franz, who worked in insurance (Hermann derided it as a Brotberuf, or ”bread job”) wrote weird stories in his room, became a vegetarian, and showed no interest whatsoever in the family dry goods store. Away all day at the store, Hermann met his son and three daughters mainly at mealtime. The trembling young Franz grew to dread these   encounters. At 36, Kafka wrote an emotional   Letter to His Father, in which   images of those torturous meals boil forth in an accusatory torrent: ”There was a somber silence at table, interrupted by admonitions: ’Eat first, talk afterward,’ or ’faster, faster, faster,’ or ’There you are, you see, I finished ages ago.’ Bones mustn’t be cracked with the teeth, but you could. Vinegar must not be sipped noisily, but you could. The main thing was that the bread should be cut straight. But it didn’t matter that you did it with a knife dripping with gravy. Care had to be taken that no scraps fell on the floor. In the end it was under your chair that there were the most scraps. At table one wasn’t allowed to do anything but eat, but you cleaned and cut your fingernails, sharpened pencils, cleaned your ears with a toothpick. Please, Father, understand me correctly: in themselves these would have been utterly insignificant details, they only became depressing for me because you, so tremendously the authoritative man, did not keep the commandments you imposed on me.” The only time his father had a word of praise for him, wrote Kafka, was when ”I was able to eat heartily or even drink beer with my meals.” (Kafka handed this letter to his mother, who returned it without showing it to her husband.) Beer made everything better. Father and son ”had no common interests, no common language, and they almost never did anything in common,” says Stach, who has written the definitive   biography of the writer. ”The common drinking became a comforting symbol, a symbol of the closeness he had always missed,” Stach says. Going swimming with his father constituted a similar admixture of shame and joy  —   shame at the prospect of displaying his ”skinny, weakly, slight” body beside his father’s ”strong, tall, broad” one, and joy at knowing the ordeal would be followed by the camaraderie of a beer session. In Bohemia, it was customary to drink a glass of beer or wine with every meal, and Kafka was happy to comply. ”Kafka was not a heavy drinker, but, as he ironically said, a ’passionate drinker’  —   that is, he could drink beer and wine with intensive pleasure, like a gourmet, and for that he did not need large quantities,” says Stach. ”I don’t think he has ever been really drunk in his life, because losing   made him feel extremely uncomfortable. However, he had a very strong social empathy, so it was a pleasure to him just to observe other people while drinking.” And what beer did he drink? ”Czech beer, of course, since it was the best beer in the world, as it is today,” says Stach. ”But when he was traveling, he always sampled the local beers.” Kafka is often perceived as a mournful figure in the popular imagination, something Stach wants to change. He wants us to think of Kafka not as a neurotic running around in a maze of illogic but as a genius who was also a regular fella with a taste for good beer. He is unlikely to succeed. Apart from the pessimism of his stories, Kafka’s short life was bookended by tragedy. Two brothers died when he was a boy, and all three of his sisters would perish in the Holocaust. Kafka’s own death, by tuberculosis, at the age of 40 was an excruciatingly painful one. ”Even drinking was now possible in only tiny sips,” writes Stach in Kafka: The Years of Insight, the final volume of his biography of those last days. ”Kafka was constantly thirsty he dreamed about all sorts of drinks and relished the sight of people gulping down a glass of water in front of him. He forced down a small glass of wine a day, and sometimes a little beer, even water had to be warmed up before he could sip at it.” His anxious parents, who hadn’t seen him in a year, wrote that they wanted to visit and have ”a good glass of beer together.”   and able to speak only in a whisper, Kafka did not want them to come. But he was also keen to make peace with his estranged father. So on June 2, 1924, the day before he died, he wrote to his parents, recycling that one happy memory of how ”during heat spells, we used to have beer together quite often, many years ago, when Father would take me to the Civilian Swimming Pool.” He was too weak to finish the letter, and it was never posted. But his parents did eventually read it when his papers were handed over to them. The letter, however, did not fully convey the boyhood memory in its bittersweet entirety. What did was Kafka’s account of it to his lover Dora Diamant, who nursed him to the end: ”When I was a little boy, before I learned to swim, I sometimes went with my father, who also can’t swim, to the  ’s section. Then we sat together naked at the buffet, each with a sausage and a half liter of beer. . .. You have to imagine, that enormous man holding by the hand a nervous little bundle of bones, or the way we undressed in the dark in the little changing room, the way he would then drag me out, because I was embarrassed, the way he tried to teach me his   swimming, etcetera. But then the beer!” Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"Artificial limbs have come a long way since the days of peg legs and hooks for hands. But one thing most of these prosthetics lack is a sense of touch. Zhenan Bao intends to change that. Bao is a chemical engineer at Stanford University. Her   goal is to make an artificial skin out of plastic that can do most  —   if not all  —   of the things real skin can do. Skin is pretty remarkable stuff. It keeps dangerous bacteria and germs out and our innards in. It’s flexible, it can sense when we touch things and it can heal itself when cut. Bao has to make a pretty remarkable material if she’s going to mimic all that  —   and she’s getting there. She recently took me on a tour of her lab in Shriram Center for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering. ”This is where we make some of the devices,” says Bao as we enter one of her lab spaces. We’re standing next to a large sealed chamber with a clear window. There are long black gloves sticking straight out from the bottom of the box as if there were someone inside trying to reach out. But it’s actually just the air pressure in the box. You use these gloves to reach into the box. This ”nitrogen box” is where new devices are tested before they’re exposed to the air. Bao builds her devices from a plastic she has specially designed that mimics the electrical properties of silicon, the element semiconductor chips are made from. She takes a small, clear square of plastic from a container on her desk. It’s about the thickness of a piece of skin and it contains a   pressure sensor. It looks to me like an ordinary piece of plastic. You can’t really see it, but there’s a pressure sensor sandwiched inside layers of plastic. It changes its electrical properties depending on how hard you press on it. But it’s not enough to just make a plastic with a   pressure sensor. You need to build an electrical circuit into the plastic that can relay what the pressure sensor is sensing. Bao shows me how they’ve done that. ”So you can see there are some really fine lines,” she says. ”These are electrodes that can turn the touch signal into electrical pulses.” Ultimately, the idea is to feed those electrical impulses to nerve bundles that can transmit them to the brain. Skin will heal if you scratch it. To mimic that property, Bao and her colleagues made a plastic that repairs itself when it’s torn. ”Depends on how we design the molecules,” she says. ”Some can repair very quickly, within a minute, some take hours or days to recover.” Making a flexible, stretchable plastic was also a problem at first. ”But now we also have a new version that can stretch to eight times its original length,” Bao says. Another problem Bao and her colleagues are working to crack is how to power their artificial skin. One idea is to use light. Postdoctoral scholar Xiaodan Gu shows me a polymer that can turn light into electricity. This also doesn’t look too different from an ordinary plastic wrap. He holds a piece of the plastic out so I can see it. ”Those shiny things are electrodes, and on the top side you can see these tinted color . .. they absorb light and transfer the light into the electricity,” he says. Gu hopes to be able to use a version of his polymer to manufacture cheaper solar panels. Bao says there’ll be other spinoffs as her lab works to build plastics with a variety of electrical properties. She has already started a company that plans to sell a version of her plastic for touch screens. ”Our really long term goal is to use this to help patient( s) who lost their limb( s) to recover their sense of touch,” Bao says. Bao says there is still a lot of work before she’ll have a version of her skin to test on patients. But with all the progress she’s making, it seems that day might not be far off."
"Goldman Sachs has become the latest big bank to agree to a   settlement over the way it packaged and sold   securities in the heady days of the housing boom. The Justice Department said Monday that Goldman had agreed to pay $5. 06 billion over its conduct in the packaging and sale of residential   securities between 2005 and 2007. Investors lost billions of dollars during the period by purchasing securities based on mortgages that were often much riskier than they were presented to be. ”Today’s settlement is another example of the department’s resolve to hold accountable those whose illegal conduct resulted in the financial crisis of 2008,” said Benjamin C. Mizer, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. He added: ”Viewed in conjunction with the previous   recoveries that the department has obtained for similar conduct, this settlement demonstrates the pervasiveness of the banking industry’s fraudulent practices in selling RMBS, and the power of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act as a tool for combatting this type of wrongdoing.” Goldman had announced it January that it had tentatively agreed on a settlement. U. S. officials say that as part of the settlement, Goldman agreed to a statement of facts about its handling of the securities. For example, although the firm originally stated that the loans underlying the securities were made in accordance with underwriting guidelines, that wasn’t always the case, the statement said. ”Goldman received information indicating that, for certain loan pools, significant percentages of the loans reviewed did not conform to the representations made to investors about the pools of loans to be securitized,” the Justice Department said. U. S. officials also say Goldman’s Mortgage Capital Committee was supposed to approve every   security issued by the firm but often failed to do so, even when other parts of the bank indicated some of the loans might be problematic. In August 2006, one mortgage asset was found to have an ”unusually high” percentage of loans with credit defects, according to a statement of facts. ”How do we know that we caught everything?” the committee asked. ”Depends on what you mean by everything? Because of the limited sampling . .. we don’t catch everything,” a transaction manager responded. The committee went on to approve the security without requiring any more vetting, U. S. officials said. Goldman also did not disclose to investors negative information it had received about the originators of the loans underlying its securities, U. S. officials say. In 2006, Goldman marketed securities underwritten by loans that had been originated by Fremont Investment  Loan. It said Fremont, which was shut down by federal regulators shortly afterward, ”had a commitment to loan quality over volume.” But a Goldman internal analysis had already concluded that many of Fremont’s guidelines were ”off market” or ”at the aggressive end of market standards.” In the same year, Goldman was still packaging loans originated by Countrywide Financial Corp. even though it was aware of problems at the mortgage company. When one company official circulated a bullish analyst report about Countrywide, Goldman’s head of due diligence replied, ”If they only knew . ..” The money Goldman will pay includes a $2. 4 billion civil penalty, as well as $1. 8 billion in relief to underwater homeowners, distressed borrowers and affected communities. Goldman is the latest big bank to agree to a   settlement with the government. Among the others are Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase."
"President Obama has cut a nuclear deal with Iran. He has scolded North Korea for its provocative nuclear tests. And he has hosted a series of global nuclear security summits in Washington. Now there’s speculation the president may visit Hiroshima, Japan, site of the world’s first atomic bombing, which hastened the end of World War II more than 70 years ago. The White House has not announced any such plans. However, Obama is set to travel to Japan next month for the Group of Seven summit in  . Hiroshima is just a short hop away and a visit by Obama would be a grand gesture in keeping with his nuclear nonproliferation agenda. No sitting U. S. president has been to Hiroshima, though Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday became the   U. S. official to visit the city’s Peace Memorial, located in the only surviving building near the site of the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing. ”It is a stunning display. It is a   display,” Kerry said. ”It tugs at all of your sensibilities as a human being. It reminds everybody of the extraordinary complexity of choices of war and what war does to people, to communities, countries, the world.” Kerry didn’t apologize, though he honored those killed. If Obama goes to Hiroshima, it would likely be   in Japan, though his visit would almost certainly bring criticism from conservative quarters in the U. S. ”I think today, especially with President Obama, this question of a visit to Hiroshima is not just about the war in the past, but it’s really, as Secretary Kerry suggested, it’s really about the future,” Sheila Smith, a Japan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told NPR’s All Things Considered.  ”I think there are obviously delicate sensibilities on both sides,” she added, citing a poll in Japan last year that found 79 percent of Japanese felt atomic bombs should not have been used on their cities. ”In the United States, when we think of World War II, our war memories revolve around Pearl Harbor.” Obama’s U. S. critics accuse him of abdicating America’s leadership role in global affairs and describe his foreign policy as weak. Critics have at times pointed to symbolic gestures, such as the president’s deep bow when meeting Japan’s diminutive emperor in 2009. In the 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney accused Obama of undertaking ”an apology tour, of going to various nations and criticizing America.” He added, ”I think they looked at that and saw weakness.” Some Japanese activists have demanded an American apology. In the U. S. the bombings have generally been seen as necessary to end the war, and saving U. S. lives that would have been lost in a land invasion of Japan. The U. S. military occupied Japan for years after the war and largely rewrote the country’s constitution. The nations have been allies for decades and the atomic bombings have not been a point of friction. They are most often discussed as a cautionary tale about the global dangers of nuclear weapons rather than a lesson on U. S.  relations. ”I think the president would like to do it,” John Roos, the U. S. ambassador to Japan from 2009 to 2013, told The Washington Post. In 2010, Roos was the first U. S. diplomat to take part in the annual memorial observance in Hiroshima. Obama ”is a person who bends over backwards to show respect to history, and it does advance his agenda.” Last August marked the 70th anniversaries of the attacks, which devastated Hiroshima, and then three days later, Nagasaki. An estimated 140, 000 Japanese were killed in the two attacks. The survivors are now in their 80s and 90s. Japan is still dealing with several issues directly linked to World War II, but the atomic bombings are not at the top of the list. A Japanese poll released last August on the 70th anniversary found that 70 percent of Japanese could not cite the date of the Hiroshima bombing. In contrast, Japan’s World War II military actions in Korea and China contribute to relations that remain strained to this day. And Japan is still demanding the return of the Kurile Islands, which were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of the war."
"Beverly Cleary has sold 85 million copies of 41 books and  —   if those numbers weren’t impressive enough  —   she turns 100 on Tuesday. Though the world was a very different place when Cleary was a child, she has always maintained that kids pretty much stay the same  —   which explains the ongoing popularity of her beloved characters, like Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins and Ralph S. Mouse. Cleary was in her early 30s and working part time in a bookstore when she sat down at a typewriter to see if just maybe she could write a book for kids. She had worked as a librarian before World War II, and she wished she’d had books for young readers about children living everyday lives. ”I think children want to read about normal, everyday kids,” she told NPR in 1999. ”That’s what I wanted to read about when I was growing up. I wanted to read about the sort of boys and girls that I knew in my neighborhood and in my school. . .. I think children like to find themselves in books.” Her first book, Henry Huggins, came out in 1950. Henry had a friend named Beezus, and Beezus had a mischievous but lovable little sister named Ramona. Over the next five decades, Cleary took Ramona all the way from nursery school to the fourth grade. Cleary says when she was writing Ramona, she took inspiration from a little girl who lived in the house behind her as a child. ”She had been sent to the neighborhood store for a pound of butter,” Cleary told NPR in 2010. ”In those days, it was all in one piece, not in cubes. And she had opened the butter and was eating it.” Cleary spent her earliest years on a farm in Oregon before moving to the big city of Portland during the Depression. Her daughter says that her mom jokes that she’s as surprised as anyone she’s made it to 100  —   but she has almost no health complaints besides a bit of arthritis. Cleary’s daughter credits, in part, genetics. ”My ancestors crossed the plains in covered wagons . ..” says Marianne Cleary. ”And so my mother is from Pioneer stock. . .. She’s very disciplined. When she would write every morning, she would sit down after breakfast, my brother and I would go to school, and she’d write, till noon or so. She never waited for inspiration, she just got to it.” It worked. Her books have hooked generations of children, including a young Jeff Kinney, who grew up to become the author of the ”Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. ”I must have been about 8 or 9 years old when I first read Beverly Cleary,” Kinney recalls. ”The book that really grabbed me was Ramona Quimby, Age 8. She looked feral. I needed to get to know this character.” Kinney has 165 million books in print, and he knows a thing or two about writing for children. ”Most kids have parents, teachers, bullies  —   we all experience these things,” he says. ”And Beverly Cleary tapped into that. Her work is still as relevant today as when it first came out.” Cleary has said that she’s always thought like a kid  —   and she has very clear memories of her own childhood. ”I’m just lucky,” she told NPR in 2006. ”I do have very clear memories of childhood. I find that many people don’t, but I’m just very fortunate that I have that kind of memory.” Now, generations of children have been fortunate enough to enjoy her stories of Klickitat Street. So thanks, Beverly Cleary. And happy birthday. For more, visit Discovering Beverly Cleary from OPB."
"Of the 3 million students identified as gifted in the U. S. English Language Learners are by far the most underrepresented. And nobody knows that better than    Alejandra Galindo. ”It’s just kind of hard to not see people who look like me in my classes,” she says. ”I’m a minority in the gifted world.” Alejandra is a senior at North Canyon High School in Phoenix. Before she was identified as gifted, she was identified as an English Language Learner, or ELL. You know, those kids who are often assigned to separate classrooms while they learn English. That was Alejandra. ”She would cry and not want to go to school,” says her mom, Norma Galindo. ”She didn’t want to be Hispanic. She didn’t want to speak our language.” Norma Galindo is originally from El Salvador. Her husband, Arnulfo, is from Mexico. They’ve always known their daughter was bright beyond her years. ”I remember Alejandra coming to me and saying, ’Mom, I’m bored at school. Classes are so easy,’ ” says Norma Galindo. ”And I said, ’You’re not supposed to be bored at school. You need to be challenged.’ So I talked to her teacher and asked, ’Can you do something for her?’ ” Parents are usually the first ones to figure out that their child is gifted, but that message often doesn’t get to the educators in schools. Many schools don’t even test ELLs for giftedness, and most teachers aren’t trained to identify those students. It doesn’t have to be that way, says Alejandra. ”I think it’s just all about letting those kids know that [they] have just as much potential as any other kid,” she says, ”regardless of your skin color or where your parents came from or what language you speak.” Alejandra was lucky. In fourth grade, a teacher singled her out and asked that she be tested. The results showed that her verbal reasoning skills were off the charts, a sign of giftedness not just in English but Spanish as well. ”Now that I’m older,” says Alejandra, ”I realize that being bilingual is very, very important. That in combination with being gifted, it’s like so many doors have opened.” At North Canyon High, those doors have opened wide. Alejandra has excelled in just about every   course she has taken. Her academic success has motivated her to   her other gift, singing. She’s a section leader on the school choir. With graduation right around the corner, Alejandra has set her sights on college and a career in international studies, maybe doing humanitarian work. It’s not clear how many Alejandras there are out there. Arizona has identified more than 80, 000 gifted students statewide, but that number is not broken down by race or ethnicity. It’s also impossible to know how many gifted ELLs are never identified and tested. Nationally, 32 states, including Arizona, mandate gifted education, according to the National Association For Gifted Children. Only four fully fund gifted programs, the organization says in this report. Few, if any, require that ELLs be tested. That’s a problem says Chester Finn, a former U. S. assistant secretary of education and author of the recent book, Failing Our Brightest Kids. ”An awful lot of Latino kids are arriving with parents who are undocumented. They really do depend on schools to help them,” says Finn. ”[But] we’re losing talent of kids from poorly educated parents who don’t know their way around the American system.” Finn says schools must do more to reach out to    parents, and to train teachers to be more like talent scouts. Then, he adds, schools must give gifted ELLs as much academic enrichment as they can handle. No argument there, says Peter Laing. He oversees gifted education for Arizona’s Department of Public Instruction. Arizona currently does not provide any funding for gifted education. Laing says what little money gifted kids get has to come from local school districts. He says that, with the ELL population growing so fast in Arizona, educators and policymakers need to better serve those students, especially the brightest among them: ”This is a moral, ethical obligation on the part of schools.”"
"Wearing a Fitbit? If so, you already know that electronic fitness trackers can let you keep records on your smartphone of how many steps you’ve walked, how much you’ve slept, maybe your heart rate, or even where you’ve been. But what can the gadget tell your doctor? A few things that are pretty useful, it turns out.  Doctors at an emergency room in New Jersey recently used   data from a patient’s Fitbit to quickly figure out what treatment he needed to get his suddenly irregular heartbeat under control. They published the case study online this month in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. The patient showed up at the ER after a grand mal seizure, a little foggy and with no idea his heart was in trouble. ”He came in with atrial fibrillation, and he didn’t recognize he was in it,” Dr. Alfred Sacchetti, head of emergency medicine at the Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, in Camden, N. J. tells Shots. Atrial fibrillation is when the two upper chambers of the heart quiver very quickly and erratically. ”And so the team asked him,” Sacchetti recalls, ” ’Do you feel your heart racing?’ He said, ’No, I really don’t feel anything. I feel perfectly fine.’ ” But he wasn’t fine. That’s because a patient with atrial fibrillation is at increased risk of having a stroke. When the heart’s chambers aren’t in sync, blood may not fully empty from the upper chambers into the lower ones. If it pools long enough in the upper chambers, that blood can clot. A piece of the clot may break off, move through the circulatory system, and block blood flow to the brain  —   a stroke. So when the doctors in New Jersey couldn’t determine when the fibrillation began, they had to assume it might have been going on long enough to cause a clot. At Our Lady of Lourdes, doctors prefer to treat atrial fibrillation aggressively  —   shocking the patient’s heart to get it back into a normal rhythm, Sacchetti says. If it works, the patient can usually go home the same day, with no medication.   But if the abnormal heart beat has been going on for more than 48 hours, the risk of a clot is high. In that case ”he needs to get admitted to the hospital, put on [medication] to dissolve the clot, if it’s there, and then perform a special echocardiogram through the patient’s mouth and into the esophagus so you can get a good look at the heart,” Sacchetti says. This patient was wearing a Fitbit fitness tracker that had a heart rate monitor and connected wirelessly to his smartphone. With his permission, the doctors checked the data on the phone and figured out that the episode of arrhythmia had begun only about two hours before he showed up at the ER. ”We were able to hook him up to the pads, put him to sleep, give him a little shock, and let him wake up and go home,” Sacchetti says. Sacchetti is quick to point out that a Fitbit, or any other fitness tracker, is not a medical device the information it provides is limited and varies from model to model. But the doctor and his collaborators in the case study think such trackers might come in handy in other situations  —   such as when patients’ symptoms ease before they arrive at the hospital. When a patient comes in complaining of a sudden dizzy spell earlier in the day, for example, it might stem from a rapid heartbeat, or a sudden slowing. Or it might have nothing at all to do with the heart. ”If your heart rate dropped extremely low, we’re probably going to keep you in the hospital” Sacchetti says. ”If it just went fast for a short period of time, we’re probably going to just put a Holter monitor on you and send you home.” A fitness tracker that monitors the heart might help doctors more quickly figure out which treatment to use. But some other doctors are skeptical of the medical usefulness of the gadgets.  ”This was interesting but not highly applicable and won’t really change how we’re going to do anything,” says Dr. Mary Norine Walsh, a cardiologist and director of the heart failure and cardiac transplantation programs at St. Vincent Medical Center, in Indianapolis. ”There are no reliable studies showing whether fitness tracker data is accurate,” Walsh says, and those studies would need to be done before physicians would use the devices widely."
"Poor people who reside in expensive,   cities such as San Francisco tend to live longer than   people in less affluent places, according to a study of more than a billion Social Security and tax records. The study, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, bolsters what was already well known  —   the poor tend to have shorter lifespans than those with more money. But it also says that among   people, big disparities exist in life expectancy from place to place, said Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Stanford University. ”There are some places where the poor are doing quite well, gaining just as much in terms of life span as the rich, but there are other places where they’re actually going in the other direction, where the poor are living shorter lives today than they did in the past,” Chetty said, in an interview with NPR. For example,   people in Birmingham, Ala. live about as long as the rich, but in Tampa, Fla. the poor have actually lost ground. Chetty and his   collected more than 1. 4 billion records from the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to try to measure the relationship between income and life expectancy. ”There are vast gaps in life expectancy between the richest and poorest Americans,” Chetty said. ”Men in the top 1 percent distribution level live about 15 years longer than men in the bottom 1 percent on the income distribution in the United States. ”To give you a sense of the magnitude, men in the bottom 1 percent have life expectancy comparable to the average life expectancy in Pakistan or Sudan.” And where life spans are concerned, the rich are getting richer. Since 2001, life expectancy has increased by 2. 3 years for the wealthiest 5 percent of American men and by nearly 3 years for similarly situated women. Meanwhile, life expectancy has increased barely at all for the poorest 5 percent. Among the study’s findings was that poor people in affluent cities such as San Francisco and New York tend to live longer than people of similar income levels in rust belt cities such as Detroit, he said. What accounts for the disparity isn’t clear, Chetty says. It may be that some cities such as San Francisco may be better at promoting healthier lifestyles, with smoking bans, for example, or perhaps people tend to adopt healthier habits if they live in a place where everyone else is doing it, he says. The study suggests that the relationship between life expectancy and income is not ironclad, and changes at the local level can make a big difference. ”What our study shows is that thinking about these issues of inequality and health and life expectancy at a local level is very fruitful, and thinking about policies that change health behaviors at a local level is likely to be important,” he says. Chetty notes that the study has clear implications for Social Security and Medicare. The fact that poor people don’t live as long means they are paying into the system without getting the same benefits, a fact that needs to be considered in any discussion about raising the retirement age, he says. The study was   by Michael Stepner and Sarah Abraham of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Benjamin Scuderi, David Cutler and Augustin Bergeron of Harvard University Shelby Lin of McKinsey and Co. and Nicholas Turner of the U. S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis."
"The day Kodjo was born four years ago in a small village in eastern Ghana, his mother was given devastating news: Her baby boy was a river god’s son, and the elders of the village said he would need to be sacrificed. The reason she was told this? He had gaps in his face. So she was shut inside a room while arrangements were made for her son’s drowning. It was only by a stroke of luck that another villager heard of these plans and told the family that what the boy really needed was medical care. Those gaps weren’t caused by a curse but, rather, a cleft. There’s an incredible amount of stigma associated with the birth defect in Ghana, explains Dr. Solomon   a specialist who operated on Kodjo at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi. Clefts are relatively common problems worldwide  —   according to research published in 2013, they occur in somewhere between 1 in 500 and 1 in 2, 500 births, depending on the babies’ background. (In the U. S. clefts are the fourth most common birth defect.) But the condition, which is caused by mouth tissue not fusing properly early in pregnancy, has been a taboo topic in Ghana, particularly in the country’s rural areas,   says. Children born with clefts are routinely killed at birth or rejected by their communities. They’re often not sent to school or allowed to participate in social activities. Even after Kodjo’s successful surgery, his family would not accept him, says   who now takes care of the boy financially. His father does not see him his mother gave him up but visits once in a while. ”There are so many stories,” says Dr. Peter Donkor, who returned to Ghana in 1995 after training as a maxillofacial surgeon in Australia and founded the Kumasi cleft clinic. He speaks of another baby who arrived for treatment and was abandoned. ”His parents feared the child would attract witches to the village,” Donkor says. Donkor has dedicated his career to rewriting the endings of these stories by training other specialists to tackle surgeries and by pushing for increased awareness both of cleft causes and of medical options. It’s important to reach children as quickly as possible because cleft deformities interfere with speech acquisition. Palate surgery is ideally performed by 12 months, Donkor says. If not, a person with a cleft may ”speak like a ghost.” (That’s how Ghanaians refer to the nasal, distorted quality of the speech, he says.) For poor families, the cost of surgery, transportation and rehabilitation can be overwhelming. That’s why Donkor founded the Ghana Cleft Foundation, which solicits donations from individuals and organizations to help cover these expenses. One of its partners is Smile Train, an international nonprofit that pays for cleft surgery in developing countries using contributions from people swayed by its message: ”How often do you get to save a child’s life for $250?” That’s how little a cleft surgery can cost, according to Smile Train. Even when the price is higher, it’s still an investment that helps restore dignity to people’s lives, Donkor says. And according to a new study in the World Journal of Surgery  —   ”Economic Valuation of the Global Burden of Cleft Disease Averted by a Large Cleft Charity”  —   it’s also one that provides a significant boost to the world economy. Although Ghana offers an extreme example of what happens to babies born with clefts, it’s not the only place where the defect can determine the course of a person’s life. When study   Scott Corlew, a cleft surgeon, worked in Nepal, he saw    who couldn’t speak and    who’d never been to school. ”It’s a problem that totally removes someone from society,” Corlew says. ”No one can understand what you say, and some family member has to take care of you.” As he describes it, cleft is ”the ultimate poverty trap.” Once a child has surgery, however, the future looks strikingly different. That child can get an education, participate in society and get a job. By mining Smile Train’s database to look at more than half a million surgeries in 83 countries over a   period, and crunching the numbers, Corlew estimates the resulting economic productivity boost was at least $3 billion. A growing chorus of voices has been working to highlight the importance of making surgery available in the developing world. Vaccines, HIV drugs and clean water are all critical. But you can’t have a ”strong, robust health system” without surgery, says Stanford University School of Medicine researcher Thomas Weiser. Unfortunately, there are huge disparities in who has access to these services. Weiser is lead author of a study just published online in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. It found that although the number of surgeries being performed globally is soaring, developing countries lag far behind wealthier ones. There were an estimated 313 million surgeries performed in 2012  —   and just 6. 3 percent of these were in the poorest countries, despite the fact that they’re home to more than a third of the world’s population. This is problematic for many reasons, Weiser says, including the economic effects. When someone who needs surgery  —   whether for cleft or traumatic injury  —   doesn’t get it, that can result in a major financial drain on a community. The argument for making surgery more of a priority is having an effect, Weiser says. In the past decade, rates have risen sharply. But there’s still a lot of work to be done to make sure operations are done safely, he notes. One person who might be able to help with that: Kodjo, the    who was saved by cleft surgery. ”I am looking at helping him go as far as he can go,”   says. ”Because I am a doctor, they call him doctor in his community. If you ask him now, he wants to become a doctor.”"
"The number of tigers in the wild has risen from an estimated 3, 200 in 2010 to about 3, 890 in 2016  —   a gain of more than 20 percent after a century of decline, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The group says the tiger populations have grown in at least four countries: India, Russia, Nepal and Bhutan. Early in the 20th century, the world had more than 100, 000 tigers in it, as the author Caroline Fraser wrote in a report for Yale University back in 2010. The population increase ”is a pivotal step in the recovery of one of the world’s most endangered and iconic species,” said Ginette Hemley, senior vice president of wildlife conservation at WWF. The findings are being praised as a key step toward a lofty goal that was set in 2010: to double the number of wild tiger populations worldwide by 2022. The survey gives a progress report at that initiative’s halfway mark. The WWF cites factors such as better survey processes and enhanced protections in explaining the gains. But it adds that the world’s tigers remain threatened by shrinking habitats in Asia and that they are also a prime target for poachers. ”Every part of the tiger  —   from whisker to tail  —   is traded in illegal wildlife markets, feeding a   dollar criminal network,” the organization says."
"Chatter about Catastrophe, a series that airs on regular TV in the UK and streams on Amazon in the US, often concentrates on how gleefully frank and filthy it is. Written by its stars, Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan, the show follows a American man and an Irish (sorry! originally said ”British” I’m a distracted American) woman whose fling leads to a pregnancy, then a marriage and a love affair, in that order. Season 1 traced them from the moment they met through the moment she went into premature labor season 2, which debuted on Amazon on April 8, is about parenthood, though the opener finds her still pregnant  —   there’s an explanation, don’t worry. Indeed, one of Catastrophe’s joys is that whether the topic is sex, pregnancy, childbirth or matters   it’s consistently   and brutal  —   sometimes for laughs, sometimes because to be otherwise would be dishonesty by elision, and maybe sometimes because there are new stories to tell when you expand the field to places lots of people either can’t play or decide not to. Just as important, though, is the fact that Catastrophe is, in its particular,   kind of way, deeply romantic. While it’s not especially unusual for romantic comedies to successfully be both romantic and funny, this one is special because humor inside the story is a large part of the reason it’s romantic. It uses laughter within scenes  —   Horgan’s especially  —   to underscore that Sharon and Rob are in love, but even more that they are on the same side, and aren’t the kind of bickering people who will eventually make an audience wonder why they’re together at all. An example: The season 2 premiere soon finds Sharon and Rob having a fight, which ends abruptly when he crawls into bed, she tells him not to touch her, and he says, ”If you come anywhere near me, I’m going to scream.” Facing away from him, Sharon laughs, and the fight is over. Cracking up generously doesn’t apply only to ending fights it’s their currency and their common language. There’s another moment in the first handful of minutes of the premiere in which pregnant Sharon has gotten Rob’s attention by faking an emergency. Her defense, which turns in seven words from insisting she wasn’t deceiving him to admitting she was: ”I genuinely felt really lonely and bored.” This isn’t just clearly funny to him, but it’s funny to her, too. They’re together physically but also together emotionally, and the shared chuckle is an economical way to communicate that. The frequent deployment of   laughter in Catastrophe solves a common problem with relationship comedies, which is their tendency to feel transactional. People seem to be performing the relationship more than being in it, and contrary to every close relationship  —   romantic or otherwise  —   scenes generally either sit in one spot to make a point or they move along a straight line. Either any given scene is loving, or it’s playful, or it’s an argument, or it’s a scene where people make up according to predictable rhythms of apology and forgiveness. Catastrophe scenes, on the other hand, often shift unpredictably  —   there’s a fight in a restaurant later in the season that totters dangerously then swerves  —   so that teasing turns ugly, or fights are resolved, very often using this shorthand of when you laugh and when you don’t. Horgan in particular has a huge vocabulary of laughs in the scenes the two do together: a bare chuckle that sits on top of her dialogue a light, delighted laugh at the end of her own jokes a satisfying, raucous guffaw. And here’s the thing Catastrophe understands about Sharon and Rob: this is something they want out of this relationship, a lot. This is part of why they’re in love: they laugh at each other’s jokes constantly. In both of them, there is a performative streak that needs a response. That’s who these people are, and to suggest they could genuinely fall in love with anyone who didn’t give them that wouldn’t feel like the truth. They both find humorless people utterly tiresome, and if they didn’t create these feedback loops of laughing and pressing harder on the joke until it breaks and laughing more, you wouldn’t believe they could even be friends. It’s a particular challenge of romantic comedy specifically that people in comedies are usually not supposed to act as if they know they’re in comedies. That often means they don’t laugh at the things that are happening that are funny  —   if anything, they laugh uproariously for effect, for the creation of a raucous bonding scene, at things that aren’t particularly funny. ”Friend laughs at friend” is usually a plot point  —   they’re hanging out, they’re having fun. Catastrophe is good at remembering that laughter is the appropriate natural response to things that are funny, even if they’re written into a script as jokes. For instance, at a party, Sharon makes a joke about her    (Carrie Fisher) and her friend Melissa (Sarah Niles) just cracks up as Sharon walks away, not because Melissa laughing is all that important to the scene, but because it makes them feel more like real friends and real humans. A real person laughs in that scene, particularly a real person who would ever be friends with Sharon. Even in friendships, it often limits storytelling if you don’t let people laugh at jokes. Consider the scene in When Harry Met Sally when Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher and Lisa Jane Persky sit around talking about men. When Fisher responds to news that a potential prospect in her card file (hello, 1989!) is married, she folds down the corner of the card. It’s a joke in the movie, but her friends don’t laugh. Why don’t her friends laugh? A normal person would consider that a funny thing to do. They don’t laugh because people in comedic situations are often not supposed to notice they’re comedic. It makes the scene feel a little distant, funny but not all that warm. Compare that to the deeply flawed Reality Bites, which, for all its deep flaws, builds a very nice friendship between the characters played by Winona Ryder and Janeane Garofalo. There’s a very serious talk about AIDS testing in which Garofalo’s Vickie admits that she’s terrified that she’s dying and she’ll wind up having a funeral like something out of Melrose Place. Ryder’s Lelaina comforts her and then says, very unexpectedly, in the same enormously sympathetic voice, ”Melrose Place is a really good show.” In many comedies, this would just be a funny line from the outside here, it’s also a funny line inside the movie, and Garofalo’s face gradually breaks into a grin  —   it’s the moment that breaks the tension. Feeling comfortable enough to make that joke in that moment, knowing it’s a joke and expecting your friend to laugh, is part of that relationship. To replace the grin with an   or a sad nod would be more traditionally of the school of ”even in character, you don’t acknowledge jokes,” but it would make the scene fundamentally different, and it would leave the characters much less close. By following models where the characters don’t notice jokes  —   by prohibiting them from laughing at laugh lines  —   lots of romantic comedies rob themselves of one of the primary ways people create connections and one of the ways close relationships are navigated and negotiated. Rob and Sharon use laughing as glue, as distraction, as entertainment, as   and ultimately as reassurance to each other that in a world full of battles towering and stupid, they mean to be working together. It happens in Before Sunrise, too, and when Bill Hader yells for the check in Trainwreck. It’s very useful in demonstrating the part of every close relationship that’s about becoming allies, or realizing you can be allies. And nobody needs allies, you might notice, quite like new parents."
"Scientists say they’ve figured out how to track down people they call ”genetic superheroes.” These are people who remain healthy even though they were born with genetic mutations that would usually lead to devastating disorders. If enough of these people can be identified and studied, the researchers hope they could yield important new insights into the causes of many genetic disorders and possibly lead to new ways to prevent or treat them. ”This is a powerful opportunity to benefit many people by searching within one person to find something that could help many,” says Dr. Stephen Friend, who runs Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit research center in Seattle, and helped lead the work. If it turns out that these people are carrying other genes that produce proteins that protect them, researchers might be able to use that information to develop useful new drugs, Friend and others say. ”This is an incredibly impressive paper,” says Daniel MacArthur, who studies genetics at Harvard and MIT but wasn’t involved in the work, which was published Monday in Nature Biotechnology. He wrote a commentary accompanying the paper. Researchers have long known that there are rare people who stay healthy despite profound genetic defects. Friend and his colleagues decided to systematically identify such individuals. ”We were interested in finding what might protect people from getting disease,” Friend says. ”If you’re going to try to look at what protects people from getting disease, it is not necessarily the right thing to look at those who have disease. The right thing to do would be to look at those who have not gotten sick.” So Friend and colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York launched a massive search. They gathered genetic data from 586, 306 people from around the world. The data came from private companies, hospitals, universities and elsewhere. The researchers then scanned the DNA sequences for known   mutations. The researchers identified 13 people who had defects thought to always cause eight severe disorders, including cystic fibrosis. But none of the 13 individuals appeared to have developed any signs of these conditions, which Friend says is ”very remarkable.” The absence of illness in these people suggests there may be something else in their genes, or in their environment, helping them. ”There must be some protective element for them to have escaped the severity of the symptoms that would have been expected,” Friend says. Unfortunately, he says, none of the 13 had agreed ahead of time to allow researchers to contact them later for further studies. Ethical standards require prior consent to do that. Had the subjects been asked to give consent upfront, researchers might have been able to determine what enabled them to escape what should have been their genetic fate. ”It’s extremely frustrating not to be able to go back and to recontact them,” Friend says. But other researchers say the study is nevertheless important because it shows that advances in genetic and data analysis technologies have made it possible to find large numbers of these people. Because many genetic disorders are rare, large numbers of people would have to be found to yield useful information. ”If you’d asked me five years ago, it would have seemed laughable,” MacArthur says. ”But it seems entirely reasonable that over the next five years we will certainly have in the millions of individuals who could potentially be studied in this kind of work.” In fact, Friend and his colleagues have already identified a handful of other ”genetic superheroes” through other means and have begun studying them. They include people who didn’t develop Alzheimer’s disease even though they are carrying mutations linked to the devastating brain disorder. ”We’re actively decoding those individuals to identify how are they did they avoid getting that horrible disease,” says Icahn’s Eric Schadt, one of Friend’s colleagues. ”We’re very excited about it.” The team is also also launching The Resilience Project, which aims to recruit millions of volunteers who have agreed in advance to let researchers study them. ”We hope to get tens of millions of people,” Schadt says. ”We think we have to be in the   to    range to have a good shot to identify enough people across the different diseases to be effective at decoding and uncovering the reasons for their protection.”"
"   Sophie says she has always known she’s a girl. ”I used to be Yoshi,” she says. ”But I didn’t like being called Yoshi.” And she didn’t like being called a boy. Sophie lives with her family in Bellingham, Wash. Her mother, Jena Lopez, says she started seeing the signs before Sophie turned 2. ”She’d say things like, ’I’m a she, not a he,’ ” Lopez says. ”She would cry if we misgendered her. She’d become angry.” Sophie’s parents didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know if this was just a phase, and they knew the statistics for transgender people are grim. Nearly all the research into transgender mental health shows poorer outcomes. Attempted suicide rates are nine times higher than for people overall, and rates of depression and anxiety are higher, too. But Sophie convinced them. ”I proved it,” she says. There’s very little data on children who have fully socially transitioned, says Kristina Olson, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington. Olson got interested in the subject when a friend’s    was transitioning from male to female. Olson knew attitudes about transgender people were changing, both in society and in science. ”Forty years ago everyone considered this to be a pathology,” Olson says. It was considered a ”gender identity disorder” until 2013, when it was changed to ”gender dysphoria” in the fifth edition of the DSM, the diagnostic manual for mental health. Olson says a lot of research still works under this assumption and is based on children in clinical settings where they’ve often been brought to be treated. ”So I had no idea, based on the literature, what impact my friend’s decision would have on her child’s life,” Olson says. That’s especially important, since what research there is paints such a bleak picture. But it’s not clear what’s the cause of mental distress for transgender people. It could be due to internal factors, such as gender dysphoria, the tension resulting from having a gender identity that differs from the one assigned at birth. Or it could be due to external factors, such as discrimination and lack of support. As Tara Haelle reported last month in Shots, researchers are just starting to try to figure that out. So Olson decided to do her own study looking at families who are supporting their child’s decision to live as a gender different from their biological sex. The study, published in the March issue of Pediatrics, looked at the mental health of 73 transgender children between ages 3 and 12. What it found was strikingly different from other research. ”They had exactly the national average for depression,” says Olson. ”They are no more or less depressed. They show a marginal, like, a tiny bit of an increase in anxiety, but nowhere near the rates that previous work has found.” The study can’t make a direct connection between the healthier outcomes and parental support, but Olson says it shows that the struggles that have been reported by people who transition aren’t inevitable. Olson plans to follow the children to see what happens as they grow older. Adolescence is a time when many mental health problems emerge, and no one knows what will happen with these children over time. There is a desperate need for research in this field, according to Dr. Aron Janssen, clinical assistant professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone’s Child Study Center. ”It’s incredibly refreshing to have this little bit of good news, because I’ve seen in my work a lot of these kids with really positive outcomes. And their stories aren’t often the stories that are told,” Janssen says. The more common stories are of transgender people who are not supported and face discrimination that can lead to problems at school and at work, as well as poverty and increased risk of substance abuse, The hope is that if Sophie’s gender identity is validated early on, she will be less vulnerable to mental health issues. Her mother says that rings true for her family. ”She’s blossomed,” Lopez says. Sophie says: ”I like being a kid.” And she likes ”that I get to be Sophie.”"
"Blisters are the bane of weekend hikers and Olympic marathoners alike. Stanford researchers say they’ve found a simple, cheap method to help prevent them. That humble hero is paper surgical tape, which often costs less than a dollar and is sold at most any pharmacy. Their study, published Monday in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, found that the paper tape reduced the instance of blisters by 40 percent. Lead author Grant Lipman, an emergency medicine doctor at Stanford Health Care, says he was inspired by years of treating ultramarathoners. ”I started noticing just how trashed people’s feet will become. And over 10 years of races, you just see these amazing athletes who have trained for years and spent all this money and they keep telling me the same thing  —   ’Doc, I feel great, it’s just my feet.’ And they’d be dropping out, they’d be hurt,” Lipman says. He says that decades of studies on blister prevention have failed to come up with an effective,   solution. But anecdotal evidence suggested paper tape might work, so the team enlisted 128 ultramarathoners for a trial. Those runners were all participating in RacingThePlanet, a     ultramarathon held in the Jordan, Gobi, Madagascar and Atacama deserts in 2014. On each runner, the researchers randomly selected a foot. They then asked the runner if that foot had any   areas. If it did, that part was taped if not, they taped a randomly selected area. ”Then, we would compare on that just one foot their most sensitive area versus the rest of the foot. And we did that so we could directly see, could this tape prevent a blister directly under the tape?” Lipman says. ”We really wanted to nail down the efficacy of the intervention.” According to the study, 98 of the 128 runners did not develop blisters under the tape. At the same time, 81 of the 128 got blisters in untaped areas. So why does this work so well? ”The paper tape itself is very thin and it’s very smooth. We theorized that because it’s so smooth, it deceases friction and rubbing and shear stress on those sensitive areas just underneath the tape,” Lipman says. He adds: ”It’s thatshear stress within the cell layers that causes separation of the cells and blister formation.” The paper tape also has a low adhesive quality, so when it does come off, it’s less likely tear the skin and leave an open wound, he says. Much previous research has been conducted seeking to prevent the ”enemy of the feet,” Lipman adds, but nobody had looked at paper tape specifically until now. A study published in 1998 tried applying antiperspirant to the feet of military cadets to prevent blisters. The researchers found this to reduce blister formation, but with an unintended consequence  —   57 percent of the cadets using the antiperspirant method reported skin irritation. Of course, there’s a huge array of other products designed to prevent blisters. One study found that a product called    reduced their formation, Lipman says  —   but it’s many times more expensive than paper tape. Lipman says he hopes this research will help more people to reach their finish lines free of debilitating blisters."
"Los Angeles is a city of extremes: There are neighborhoods so luxurious only millionaires can afford them and neighborhoods so poor that residents work several jobs to pay the rent. Now, a young LA painter is bringing these neighborhoods together on his canvases. Ramiro Gomez paints modernist houses in Beverly Hills, perfectly appointed kitchens and exclusive shops on Melrose Avenue. His pictures have nothing, and everything, to do with his background. Gomez’s mother is a janitor, and his father works the graveyard shift driving a truck. Workers like his Mexican immigrant parents show up in his paintings  —   part of the invisible landscape of luxury LA. ”Someone will always be working to keep it nice,” Gomez says. ”Whether it’s a home in the Hollywood Hills or Beverly Hills or the Paramount Studios.” Gomez puts those ”someones” on his canvases. He shows mostly Latino gardeners tending perfect lawns, maids cleaning tiles in gleaming bathrooms and nannies gathered in the park. These images show ”the lush, easy lifestyle of L. A. which is entirely undergirded by armies of domestic workers,” says New Yorker magazine writer Lawrence Weschler. He’s done a long essay on Gomez for the new coffee table book Domestic Scenes. The artist always has laborers in his range of sight, Weschler says. ”I can be walking along with him,” Weschler says. ”He’ll just say ’Eight.’ I’ll say, ’Eight what?’ He says, ’There’s eight workers I can see in my line of vision. There’s that guy over there, there’s that guy, and that lady that’s there . ..’ ” The first Gomez painting to catch Weschler’s eye was a nearly precise reproduction of a work by David Hockney. The famous English artist began painting rich LA in the 1960s. In A Bigger Splash, Hockney shows turquoise water in a big pool with a diving board and a big splash of water. (You can see it here.) In Gomez’s version, the water darkens to cobalt and instead of a splash there’s a man cleaning the pool. He’s trawling for debris in the water. And over toward the back, a woman  —   she’s faceless, like all his figures  —   sweeps the patio near a wall of windows. Gomez calls it No Splash. ”The painting itself was originally going to be called Thursday Afternoon,” Gomez explains, ”because those are the times that the pool cleaner and the housekeeper would come into the space.” Gomez, who is 29, knows that from his years working as a nanny in LA in the expensive house where he worked he watched other servants come and go. Gomez does riffs on several Hockney paintings. He substitutes   gardeners for wealthy Hockney art collectors. He puts another gardener raking a grassy lawn that Hockney had shown being watered. Weschler has written extensively about Hockney and thought he’d make an introduction. ”Next thing you know, we’re driving up to the Hollywood hills up to Mulholland Drive through Laurel Canyon to meet him,” Gomez recalls. Weschler says Hockney was completely charmed and impressed by Gomez. ”He was excited to see these paintings in a different way,” Gomez says. ”He loved my choice of figures, he loved how I included the figures, he loved the color choices.” So, two generations after Hockney’s take on   in Los Angeles, a   shows unseen laborers, under those same sunny skies. Sometimes Gomez makes   cardboard cutouts of his workers, and stands them up on actual manicured lawns. ”Invariably the owner gets pissed off and removes the piece  —   or, more accurately  —   orders it removed by the help,” Weschler says. Gomez hopes the domestic workers do remove the cutouts  —   and take them home to keep. In addition to the paintings and cutouts, he rips pages from glossy magazines and applies his theme. In an ad for a shiny black Cadillac SUV, he includes people washing the car. Gomez denies he’s a political painter, but Weschler says Gomez is ”wielding painting as a way of getting people to notice, and in some ways I think that’s one of the most political things you can do.” People are noticing and buying. In the past three years, California museums and private collectors have bought Gomez works, some for thousands of dollars. The grateful son of loving laborers was able to send his parents away for their first vacation. They spent a weekend at a nice hotel in Las Vegas. ”Now they understand that this little    that would draw on the wall, and a    that would stay after school in art studios, and the    that was painting in different materials, now to the    that is being featured in NPR and artwork and gallery shows  —   it’s all part of my journey,” he says."
"The   Panama Papers have shined a light on the hundreds of thousands of shell companies used to circulate assets around the world. One of those assets is fine art, and the leaked papers show how collectors and companies have secretly bought and sold famous works by artists like Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso, among others. One event the papers illuminate is a famous 1997 Christie’s auction featuring paintings from the collection of Victor and Sally Ganz. Some of the world’s most important (and richest) collectors attended, and some bid unprecedented amounts of money. The auction is said to have launched the skyrocketing prices for modern art. Jake Bernstein is a senior reporter with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which has the leaked documents. ”This was a collection that Victor and Sally Ganz had accumulated over 50 years,” he says, ”and they had a lot of wonderful pieces  —   particularly a lot of Picassos  —   and it was a record sale.” The collection sold for more than $200 million, a terrific profit for the Ganz family  —   or so it seemed until the Panama Papers were released. According to the papers, the Ganz family had already sold the paintings months earlier to a subsidiary of Christie’s for $168 million. That company then sold the collection to another company based on a small island in the South Pacific. Bernstein says, ”We figured out through the data exactly who was behind this offshore company and it turned out to be . .. a British billionaire named Joe Lewis who was, at the time, the largest shareholder in Christie’s.” The Panama Papers show that both Lewis and Christie’s stood to share the profits if the auction brought in more than $168 million, which it did. The deal wasn’t illegal, but it was secretive  —   and the auction’s success resulted in an uptick in the price of art that’s still in effect today. Sarah Thornton, author of Seven Days in the Art World, says the Ganz auction occurred before what’s called a ”third party guarantee”  —   that’s when an auction house will secure the sale of a work for an agreed upon, minimum price with a third party. A collector is more apt to consign a work to an auction house that guarantees it will sell for a minimum price. As for a Christie’s shareholder acting as a kind of ”third party” back in 1997, Thornton says it certainly explains how such high prices were commanded. ”Back in those days he [Lewis] had multiple reasons to underwrite the Ganz collection before it came up at auction and to guarantee the family a certain sum,” she says. ”And it gives the whole auction house a different confidence from which to maneuver.” According to Thornton, the leaked documents confirm what art market observers have suspected for a long time: ”Auctions are theatrical spectacles with a lot of scaffolding and engineering behind them.” Shell companies are part of that scaffolding. Art buyers and sellers can hide assets, evade taxes and remain anonymous, which brings us to another example from the papers  —   one centering on Modigliani’s Seated Man With a Cane. For years, a Frenchman named Philippe Maestracci has claimed that that work belonged to his grandfather, a Jewish art dealer who fled Paris before the Nazi occupation, leaving his collection behind. The Modigliani was sold at auction in 1996, and Maestracci has been trying to get it back. He believes the buyers were the Nahmads, a billionaire art collecting family. The Nahmads claim the painting was bought by a company called the International Art Center, but according to the Panama Papers, the Nahmads pretty much control the International Art Center. James Palmer says that helps clear things up for Maestracci, his client. Palmer’s Mondex Corp. works to recover looted art. He says, ”The case we have is very compelling, and so this bolsters our claim.” Meanwhile, Richard Golub, the lawyer representing both the International Art Center and the Nahmads, won’t comment on who owns the center. He says Maestracci hasn’t proved the painting was looted by the Nazis or that his grandfather owned it. Still, the Panama Papers were enough for Swiss authorities to start a criminal procedure and sequester the Modigliani in Geneva. The documents might not lead to any charges, but they do provide a rare view into the opaque world of the international art trade."
"John Kasich says the nation has a choice between ”two paths.” On one path is ”fear” and ”darkness.” On the other path is  —   guess who?  —   a President Kasich. In a speech on Tuesday, Kasich presented a stark choice between pessimism and optimism. The ”path to darkness,” he said, is a ”political strategy based on exploiting Americans instead of lifting them up [that] inevitably leads to divisions, paranoia, isolation, and promises that can never, ever be fulfilled.” The other, he said, was about positivity: ”We always roll up our sleeves and get to work when the going gets tough. And we have never, never, ever seen the American spirit fail.” Though he framed it as being about America’s choices, it was pointedly about Republican voters’ choices, with an intent to draw sharp distinctions between himself and his GOP presidential nomination opponents, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Kasich never mentioned them by name, but he made clear jabs. He portrayed Trump as a   spotlight seeker. ”Some who feed off of the fears and the anger that is felt by some of us, and exploited, feed their own insatiable desires for fame or attention,” Kasich said. ”That could drive America down into a ditch and not make us great again.” He also criticized Cruz’s policies, calling some of them ”disturbing,” like the Texas senator’s plan to target ”Muslim neighborhoods,” and casting others, like Cruz’s proposed   tax, as unrealistic. The ”two paths” rhetoric closely mirrors the common characterization of the GOP race as having two ”lanes.” Trump and Cruz are prime examples of   ”outsider” candidates (Cruz, despite being a senator, has enough enemies on Capitol Hill, uberconservative views and   rhetoric to put him in this camp). Kasich, as a sitting governor with mainstream Republican views, is the only ”establishment” candidate left in the race, and he’s losing badly with a Republican electorate that is decidedly frustrated with government. He may be losing in the polls and in the primaries, but there’s a case to be made, based on both the GOP’s own analysis and a deeper dive into the polls, that he is the best remaining hope for the party in the 2016 general election. The   candidate, In recent national polls of GOP primary voters, Kasich never comes out on top  —   far from it. Trump repeatedly gets the most support, with Cruz close behind and Kasich a distant third. But buried in several polls is evidence that Kasich would do well in a general election. A recent Pew survey suggested Kasich is the most agreeable candidate  —   from either party  —   among a broader universe of registered voters. Only 20 percent of those voters said Kasich would make a ”poor” or ”terrible” president. The   total was Bernie Sanders, at 36 percent. Another Bloomberg poll found that U. S. adults view Kasich more favorably than they view Cruz or Trump (or Sanders or Hillary Clinton, for that matter). Kasich’s net favorability (that is, favorability minus unfavorability) was plus 14, compared with Cruz’s negative 23 and Trump’s negative 39. It’s true that Kasich has taken a while to make it onto voters’ radars, but another poll suggests that as he has broken through, they seem to have largely liked him. As of May 2015, 63 percent of registered voters said they had never heard of him, according to a Fox News poll. Today, it’s 16 percent. Meanwhile, his favorability grew by 28 points and his unfavorability by 19. Kasich was also the only Republican candidate with   favorability in that poll. You can’t really do a similar analysis on Trump Americans have known who he is for years. But Cruz is a good counterexample: From May 2015 to today, his ”never heard of” count fell from 29 to 4 percent. Over that period, though, his unfavorability rating grew by 18 points, while his favorability grew by just 9. The unsexy case here is that Kasich is acceptable to many Americans right now  —   not   just not alienating  —   and that extends across the aisle to include even Democrats. Consider that in that Pew poll, Kasich had the fewest people saying he’d be ”poor” or ”terrible,” and the most saying he’d be ”average.” It’s not a ringing endorsement, but an unenthusiastic vote in November counts just as much as an enthusiastic one. Kasich is close to what the GOP wanted in the first place, That covers the electorate, but then, what does the party want? Especially in contrast to Republican   Trump, the ”path” Kasich describes is a close approximation of the path the RNC described in its   autopsy after losing the 2012 presidential election. That report advised the GOP to be more inclusive and caring: ”We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate that we care about them, too,” the RNC wrote. Kasich nods to that inclusivity often. In Tuesday’s speech, he noted how some Americans blame the country’s problems on ”people with more money or less money, people with   last names or different religious beliefs or   skin or lifestyles or whatever.” He also routinely acknowledges that while he doesn’t agree with   marriage, it’s settled law, and he’s not going to try to change it. He’s also a part of what the report called the party’s ”gubernatorial wing,” which it painted as far more successful than its ”federal wing” at gaining more diverse support and advancing its policies. That autopsy even   Kasich, citing how Ohio’s budget shortfall disappeared and economy grew during his governorship. It’s true that Kasich is less conservative than Cruz  —   who is one of the most conservative senators and, as Politico proclaimed recently, would be ”the most conservative nominee in generations.” It’s also true that Kasich doesn’t have the     plans for walls and tariffs like Trump has. But he’s still a conservative. He may have promised immigration reform (which, by the way, that GOP autopsy report also advocated) but as Slate’s Jim Newell argued in February, he’s no moderate. Kasich also favors deregulation, cutting taxes, and   food stamps. He also signed a bill this year to cut government funding of Planned Parenthood in Ohio. All of which is to say that being the most mainstream Republican candidate left in the race certainly doesn’t strip him of his conservative cred, meaning he could still appeal to a Republican base, along with the potential   voters who seem to find him acceptable. High hurdles to clear, But a few data points in national polls don’t make a president, much less a nominee, and after all Kasich has been unable thus far to garner much enthusiasm, votes or delegates in the GOP primary. Those things, by the way, are the keys to winning the nomination. Not only that, but even as the ”establishment” candidate, Kasich is far behind in political endorsements. He has only one more major endorsement than outsider Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement tracker. And while he may perform well in a general election, the problem is that he would have to win the nomination first. The poll numbers are much less encouraging here. Plenty of Republican voters think he’d be an average to great president, as Pew found, but few are exactly pumped about him. A recent CNN poll found that only 19 percent of Republicans say they’re ”enthusiastic” about Kasich, compared with 28 percent for Cruz and 40 percent for Trump. True, only 17 percent say they’d be upset if he were the nominee (compared with 14 for Cruz and 21 for Trump) but the huge number who are ”satisfied but not enthusiastic” or ”dissatisfied but not upset” at the prospect of a Kasich nomination are unlikely to propel him to the top of the ticket. The big problem he faces is an angry Republican electorate at a time when he is pointedly not giving an angry message. The case that GOP voters should choose Kasich simply because he is electable is a case that asks voters to compromise  —   something that many are unwilling to do. Then add to that that Kasich advocates compromise himself, saying a president should reach across the aisle. That may get things done in Washington, but it doesn’t appeal to many in the GOP base. One other potential problem: It’s true that Kasich finally, at long last, has cut through the noise, rising in the polls and picking up news coverage. But that means increased scrutiny. He still has lower name recognition than Trump and Cruz, so many Americans are still discovering Kasich. And as more people pay more attention, there is what political scientists Lynn Vavreck and John Sides call the ”discovery, scrutiny and decline” cycle. The more voters know, the more they might like him  —   maybe even get more enthusiastic about him. But the more the media and opposition pay attention to him, the more his weaknesses will be highlighted. And that will drag down his favorability numbers. Consider that in that Pew poll, 70 percent  —   70 percent  —   of Democrats and   voters said he’d be a great, good or average president. When subjected to the pummeling of more attention (and more attacks) that number would certainly fall (and he’ll do worse in those hypothetical general election polls, which already arguably are suspect). That gives him a lot of cushion to fall. But the question then is whether his favorables fall as low as Cruz and Trump’s. Kasich has campaigned for months in their shadows. The problem he faces is the same difficult one that all of the failed GOP contenders have faced thus far  —   whether he can make himself more well known, especially given all the attention surrounding the   without collapsing."
"Emojis were supposed to be the great equalizer: a language all its own capable of transcending borders and cultural differences. Not so fast, say a group of researchers who found that different people had vastly different interpretations of some popular emojis. The researchers published their findings for GroupLens, a research lab based out of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. ”I think some people thought that they could use [emojis] with little risk and what we found is that it actually is at high risk of miscommunication,” Hannah Miller, a Ph. D. student at the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the study, said in a phone interview. For example, the researchers found that when people receive the ”face with tears of joy” emoji  —   which Oxford Dictionaries declared its word of the year  —   some interpret it positively, while others will interpret it negatively. ”We find that only 4. 5 percent of emoji symbols we examined have consistently low variance in their sentiment interpretations,” the researchers write. ”Conversely, in 25 percent of the cases where participants rated the same rendering, they did not agree on whether the sentiment was positive, neutral, or negative.” This, the researchers found, only gets more complicated when you’re texting across platforms, because the same emojis are rendered differently on an iPhone than they are on a Samsung Galaxy, for example. Via Miller, here’s how ”grinning face with smiling eyes” would look on each platform and how the study’s subjects interpreted it: And here is an example of how that may work out in a   conversation: Jacob   a PhD student at the University of Minnesota and another of the study’s authors, said maybe part of the confusion comes from the newness of the language. ”The understanding that we have from theory suggests that people build shared meaning of communication and interaction over time,” he said. ”These are new. People are building up their new norms within a group of friends or within a geographic region or perhaps even within a culture and those things may start to even out over time.” One thing that could help, said Miller, is a dictionary or in this case emojipedia. com, the authority on the meaning of emojis. If that doesn’t work, you can stick to old fashioned emoticons :( Those are less likely to be misconstrued. We’ll leave you with a graphic from the paper that ranks how misconstrued emojis are across platforms. From left to right, it shows most misconstrued to least misconstrued:"
"To understand the economy, you have to do a lot of measuring. What’s bigger? What’s growing? What’s unequal? On national Equal Pay Day, women and economists take a hard look at incomes. And their measurements show that after decades of the   battles, men still get bigger paychecks  —   sometimes for the same work. This year, Equal Pay Day falls on April 12  —   marking the day in the new year when women finally have earned as much as men did in the previous year. A coalition of women’s groups, unions and others has been marking   day since 1996. ”Equal pay for equal work should be a fundamental principle of our economy,” President Obama said Tuesday. Statistics show the median annual income for women is roughly $40, 000  —   and just over $50, 000 for men. In other words, women make a little less than 80 cents for every dollar earned by men. If you dig around in pay data, here’s what you also see: That last point is important: Even when controlling for all measurable factors, many women still come out on the short end of the paycheck. The Sony hack in late 2014 underscored that reality, with emails showing that even Hollywood superstar Jennifer Lawrence was paid less than her male   in the same movie, American Hustle. ”[There are] certainly cases of explicit bias,” Harvard economist Claudia Goldin told NPR’s All Things Considered. But Goldin said her research also shows that in many cases, different pay levels are tied to employers’ preference for workers who can put in long hours whenever needed. Jobs with crazy hours ”are the ones that are often the   occupations,” she said. So, regardless of gender, a doctor who works steady, daytime hours makes less than a colleague who is always on call and works a ”graveyard shift,” she said. Many female employees, especially those caring for children or elderly parents, ”would like greater predictability . .. [and] fewer periods of long hours,” she said. To achieve the social goal of pay equality, private employers will have to become more accepting of a ”  balance” that doesn’t punish workers for taking care of family, she said. A study released Tuesday by the Democratic staff of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee reached a similar conclusion about the ”mommy penalty” for caregivers. ”Women are significantly more likely than men to leave a job or reduce their hours to care for children. This makes them more likely to miss out on scheduled or merit pay increases, and it negatively affects their tenure and    experience,” the report said. The report urges employers to update their ”outdated workplace policies to reflect 21st century realities.” Meanwhile, Obama was marking the day by looking back at the 20th century  —   and designating the home and headquarters of the National Woman’s Party as a national monument. The house previously had been known as the   House and Museum. In the future, it will be known as the new   Women’s Equality National Monument, named in honor of Alice Paul, a feminist who founded the National Woman’s Party, and Alva Belmont, a former president of the organization. ”[Tuesday’s] designation will permanently protect one of the oldest standing houses near the U. S. Capitol and help preserve an extensive archival collection that documents the history, strategies, tactics and accomplishments of the movement to secure women’s suffrage and equal rights in the United States and across the globe,” the White House said in a written statement."
"Constantin Ibanda Mola unlocks the door to his small,   apartment in a poor suburb of Rabat, Morocco.   Mola was an economist in his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. But as a migrant in Morocco who makes just over $300 a month, this apartment is a luxury. He shows me the tiny kitchen, the little balcony that opens near the sink and his bedroom. ”I’m very happy here,” he says. Mola has had a tough journey, like so many people searching for a better life in a foreign country. Six years ago he came here from Congo, which is consumed with instability and poverty. He dreamed of a new life in Europe. But his attempts to sneak into Europe on a fake passport landed him in jail. When he got out he began doing construction work because he needed the money. ”It was not easy for me because it’s the first time to go to construction. I’m an economist,” said Mola, who has now found a job for an aid group that helps other migrants. He decided to settle in Morocco, but it has been hard. He was undocumented and vulnerable to arrests and abuse by police. He was often cheated out of his meager salary. And he slept in a tiny room with four other people because it was all he could afford. ”Before I was like a slave. I was nothing,” he said. ”Now, I think I’m a rich man. Even if I don’t have money for the moment. But I’m free.” He’s free, he says, because things have changed. He’s now a legal resident of Morocco. He’s one of the lucky ones  —   among the more than 20, 000 people given legal status in Morocco in a limited process in 2014 that was completed last year. There are thousands more who didn’t receive documentation. Mola treats his residency card with care, keeping it tucked inside the back cover of his new passport. ”This is very, very important,” he says. ”Before I was nothing. But now I got my identity, my true identity.” In the Arab world, this new migration policy is extremely rare. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI announced the reforms in 2013 following outrage over two West Africans who fell to their deaths after a police chase. Morocco’s government spokesman says this country, long a stop for migrants on a path to Europe, is now a destination. ”It was the initiative of his majesty,” said Minister of Communications Mustapha El Khalfi. ”At the same time, the Justice Ministry is open to investigate any abuse related to the immigrants. It’s something related to human dignity.” Khalfi says more legal changes are expected to battle racial discrimination. But even with documentation, life in Morocco for black Africans is incredibly hard. ”They are faced with big big problems,” says Hicham Arroud, a Moroccan who advocates for black African migrants. ”The Moroccan society doesn’t accept them, because we are not used to seeing black people living with us.” Arroud says Morocco is a largely homogeneous society. Police are accused of mass arrests and abuse when it comes to black migrants. Landlords won’t rent to them employers won’t hire them. Arroud says that in some cities in northern Morocco, if you are black and walking on the street, police will arrest you whether you have documentation or not. By way of contrast, he compares them to the Syrians who are more recent arrivals and are in Morocco in smaller numbers. ”The Syrians don’t have the same problems,” he said. ”The people accept them easily because they’re the same culture, same language, same religion. But it’s not the case for   migrants at all.” He says even the simple act of getting married is difficult for Christian migrants. There’s no legal way to do it, because Morocco has only Muslim and Jewish communities. So Arroud’s Foundation Orient Occident tries to help people integrate. Outside the office, refugees and migrants mingle in a courtyard. They sit on brightly painted chairs made from tires. A few play checkers. Women sell food from   African countries. When I ask people about life in Rabat, the answer is always the same: very difficult. Bonacche Nonga of Cameroon comes to the foundation for language training and to hang out with friends. He says inside the foundation’s courtyard he feels safe. So I ask if that means it’s unsafe outside, in the rest of the city. He seems afraid to answer. He looks down, gestures to the courtyard and says simply, ”We feel safe here.”"
"It’s a big week for Bob Boilen! He celebrated his birthday earlier in the week and his first book, Your Song Changed My Life, comes out today. He celebrated on the show today with some wonderful pop music by the band Free Cake For Every Creature and a beautiful Grateful Dead cover courtesy of the National. While Bob leaves the studio to celebrate, Robin plays a joyous cut from the Nobility and an atmospheric track from the supergroup Minor Victories. Also on the show: NPR Music’s Lars Gotrich drops by to play some rich guitar music from William Tyler, Bob plays    duo Dawg Yawp and Robin closes out the show with some jolting rock from Yak."
"It’s no secret that the much of the world is not welcoming Syrian refugees with open arms. Can animated videos change hearts and minds? That’s the goal at UNICEF, which last month released three videos, each about two minutes long, that tell what it’s like for a child to flee Syria. The videos are dark and disturbing. They’re called ”Unfairy Tales,” and for good reason, because there aren’t any truly happy endings. Even UNICEF acknowledges this, adding a tagline to each video: ”Some stories were never meant for children.” The question is, are these videos an effective way to reach children (and parents)? The videos are based on the experiences of   Syrian refugees. In a nutshell, here’s what you’ll see: In ”Malak and the Boat,” waves flood a boat carrying a    sweeping away her mother and the other adults. One wave turns into a monstrous serpent. In ”Ivine and Pillow,” Ivine, 14, and her mother flee Syria amid bombs bursting on their brightly colored village. In ”Mustafa takes a Walk,”    Mustafa brings his toys with him as he flees his country, because he doubts he will ever make friends again. He is alone on his trek. As he keeps walking, the toys seem to grow heavier and Mustafa leaves them behind. Each video ends with actual footage of the child whose story inspired the animation. ”Who would I make friends with there is no one?” asks the real Mustafa. The videos are part of a larger UNICEF project called #Act of Humanity, which asks people around the world to take a range of actions: give money to groups that help refugees, talk about the issue with friends or on social media, volunteer to help local groups working with refugees. The videos have been posted on YouTube (where they’ve already had a   views) and are also intended for use in schools. They were conceived and produced by a Los Angeles advertising agency, 180la. Because the content is intense, we asked if the videos had been reviewed by a child development specialist. The answer was no. So we turned to two child psychiatrists to get their perspectives. ”If the goal is to see this through a frightened child’s eyes, perhaps this is somewhat effective,” says Dr. Paula Rauch, director of the Marjorie E. Korff PACT Program (Parenting at a Challenging Time) at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. But she believes the videos need to be used with caution and context. ”I appreciate UNICEF offering a   resource to begin the conversation and hope that it will be an impetus for educators and parents to collaborate on these conversations, not something children or teens view alone.” She says that ”even an adult viewer would need more narrative” to put the visuals in context. Rauch also recommends that if schools plan to show the videos, the teachers put parents in the loop ”so they are not surprised by their child or teen’s questions.” She adds that if there are immigrant or refugee children in the classroom, they should be involved in a discussion with adults at school about the videos before they’re shown. Dr. Susan Villani, a child psychiatrist in Baltimore who has written extensively on the impact of media on children, had mixed feelings about the videos. She points out that in two of the three videos the children seemed completely on their own when in fact most kids leaving Syria are not totally alone. So the videos are scarier than the reality. UNICEF says that the three children whose stories inspired the videos did in fact leave Syria with family members. A question about these videos is whether the purpose is to scare children or inform them, says Villani  —   a relevant concern when using a cartoon format that might draw interest from kids younger than the target audience. But Villani praises the decision to use words rather than images for some concepts. The teenager Ivine, for example, says the streets she walked through ”were covered with blood” but the animation does not show blood running through the village. And Villani sees great value in the decision to end each video with the actual child speaking: ”That’s likely to be more impactful for   children than showing a cartoon, since it shows a child close to their age they can relate to.” Both psychiatrists think schools should consider using real footage shot by UNICEF as a companion to the animated tales. Those videos include the real Malak on a swing in Greece,   old Nawwar from Syria, who has made a friend in his new home in Germany, and refugees being welcomed in Greece after arriving in a small boat. We’d like to hear from our readers: What’s your reaction to the videos? Let us know in the comments below."
"Responding to criticisms over his state’s controversial new law that voids cities’   rules protecting members of the LGBT community, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has issued an executive order that ”seeks legislation to reinstate the right to sue in state court for discrimination.” The law, HB2, spawned a lawsuit by the ACLU and brought cancellations of   events that were planned to take place in North Carolina  —   everything from a Bruce Springsteen concert to an expansion by PayPal. The governor said he is acting ”to protect the privacy and equality of all North Carolinians,” by both clarifying the law and adding new protections. ”I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of misinformation, misinterpretation, confusion, a lot of passion and frankly, selective outrage and hypocrisy, especially against the great state of North Carolina,” McCrory said in a video address Tuesday, citing feedback about the law. The North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is calling McCrory’s order ”a poor effort to save face,” with Acting Executive Director Sarah Preston saying that the governor’s actions ”fall far short of correcting the damage done” by the measure. She added that legal protections are still lacking and that ”transgender people are still explicitly targeted by being forced to use the wrong restroom.” North Carolina State Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue also condemned the governor’s clarification, calling it an attempt to ”put a   on a fatal wound.” ”Every word of this bill needs to be off the books,” he said. ”From restoring the right to sue for employment discrimination at the state level to reaffirming local governing boards’ authority to act in the best interest of their communities.” After the legislation was passed, Attorney General Roy Cooper refused to defend it from any challenges, saying, ”House Bill 2 is unconstitutional. Therefore our office will not represent the defendants in this lawsuit nor future lawsuits.” The governor’s move comes one day after competing rallies were held over the legislation at the state Capitol, with hundreds of demonstrators voicing their support for McCrory and the law and dozens of counterprotesters calling the law a disgrace, according to member station WUNC. Announcing his signing of Executive Order 93 Tuesday, McCrory said in a videotaped address that his order ”maintains common sense   restroom and locker room facilities in government buildings and schools” while also affirming the private sector’s right to establish its own policies. McCrory said that his order expands North Carolina’s equal employment opportunity policy to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The governor also called the city of Charlotte’s measure that sought to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination ”a solution in search of a problem” and a case of government overreach. The state legislation voiding that measure was adopted in a special session  —   and signed by McCrory on March 24, a week before Charlotte’s law was set to take effect. As Camila wrote for the   at the time, ”The most controversial element of Charlotte’s expanded ordinance was the fact that it would allow trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.” News from the North Carolina governor’s office that he had signed an executive order that ”clarifies existing state law” echoes some of the same language used in a similar case last year, when Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said he supported efforts to ”clarify the intent” of a new law allowing businesses to cite religious objections as grounds to refuse to offer services to gay people. Days later, lawmakers in both Indiana and Arkansas (which had a similar law) approved changes to laws that were called ”religious freedom” bills by their supporters and deemed discriminatory attacks on rights by their opponents."
"Imagine you’re back in school, bored to death, with limited academic options. Because you’re learning English, everybody assumes you’re not ready for more challenging work. What they don’t realize is that you’re gifted. Researchers say this happens to lots of gifted children who arrive at school speaking little or no English. These students go unnoticed, until someone taps into their remarkable talent and potential. Vanessa Minero Leon was lucky. She was one of those students who got noticed. Vanessa lives with her two siblings and their parents, Hector and Marcela, in Paradise Valley, Ariz. They have a lovely home with a big back yard, two rabbits, two dogs and a chicken. Vanessa’s dad has a landscaping business and he speaks just enough English to get by  —   but Spanish is all they speak at home. This is why Vanessa spoke only Spanish when she started school. Within a year, she was reading and writing in English. Today, at age 9, Vanessa reads tons of mystery novels, loves soccer, makes her own bracelets and is doing great in school. She’s not just smart or really bright. She’s gifted. There’s a difference, says Dina Brulles, head of the gifted program in the Paradise Valley Unified School District, where Vanessa is a  . ”A lot of parents will call me and say, ’My child is teaching himself how to read.’ But they don’t always recognize those indicators of giftedness.” Brulles, a former bilingual teacher, says gifted kids have one thing in common. They learn very, very quickly. Most children need things to be repeated six to 14 times before they get it. Gifted children, usually only once, especially in math. ”I have a ” she says, ”who is taking honors geometry right now.” That’s advanced high school geometry by the way. So how does Brulles go about finding gifted kids who start school speaking little or no English? Well, she says, you start by training classroom teachers and showing them how to look for exceptionally bright students among the English language learners, or ELL, population. Then you test them. And last, but not least, you reach out to parents. The success of the gifted program in Paradise Valley, though, has a lot to do with Brulles herself. As a founder of the program, Brulles is driven to find gifted ELLs, like a    boy she met a few years ago. ”This was his first formal experience in school,” says Brulles. ”They [his parents] were undocumented. They lived in their car.” The boy turned out to be a math whiz who loved to write poetry, says Brulles. Vanessa’s story is more typical. She wasn’t identified as gifted until her family moved to Paradise Valley last fall and Vanessa transferred to Copper Canyon Elementary. Catherine Russell was her first teacher. ”The first thing that caught me was the day I met her,” says Russell. ”She was poised, stood tall and made eye contact with me, and for a new student to do that it’s something really, really rare.” Like most teachers in this district, Russell was trained to spot what researchers call ”gifted traits.” It’s not just their high IQ that makes them different, says Russell. ”They hold a conversation with you unlike a child of that age. They’re quirky, argumentative. They keep you on your toes and they don’t let you get away with anything.” They’re perfectionists and  . But the research also shows that gifted ELLs are not necessarily great     or  . Often their parents are recent immigrants struggling to assimilate and so are their kids. In school, ELLs are more interested in blending in. They tend to be quiet and shy. That’s why teachers need tons of training. Without it, teachers often see these children as ”slow learners,” says Brulles. ”A lot of teachers will [say] ’How am I supposed to challenge this child? What am I supposed to do differently if he doesn’t have the language yet?’ ” she says. That’s where testing for giftedness comes in. In Paradise Valley, students can test up to three times a year with a combination of nonverbal and verbal exams. Once they’re identified as gifted, they’re placed in classes with other gifted students in accelerated courses. The material they cover is at least two years above grade level. Lucky for Vanessa, Paradise Valley is one of the very few school districts in the country that puts gifted ELLs in advanced classes. On most days, after she gets home from school, Vanessa checks in on her rabbits and makes sure they’re fed. Then it’s off to do her homework. Today she breezes through her math assignment, dividing incompatible numbers. Vanessa loves math, just like her mother, Marcela. Back in Mexico, Marcela only got to eighth grade before she had to drop out and work to help her parents. Before we say goodbye, Dina Brulles drops by. She had not met Vanessa’s parents and is curious. Brulles is convinced that giftedness, in math or anything else, runs in the family. ”When we see one child identified as gifted,” she says, ”I tell parents, get the others tested as well.” Brulles is surprised to find out that Vanessa’s older sister and little brother have not been tested. Careful not to sound too strident, Brulles tells Marcela that she needs to set up an appointment the next day and hands her a name and phone number. It’s too important not to, says Brulles."
"Three of the five candidates on both sides of the aisle hail from New York in some way or another, so which candidate truly has a home court advantage is questionable. But, demographics might offer a clue. Historical and current U. S. Census data suggest that New York’s demographics are unusual compared with other states that have already voted this primary season. No doubt, New Yorkers have their own state of mind, but, a few demographic trends help us understand the electorate. A few things to watch: 1. Urban, In 2008, half of the state’s Democratic primary voters came from the New York City area. And voter registration data as of April 1 predict a similar picture this year  —   52 percent of active Democratic voters reside within New York City. New York is a diverse metro area   of New Yorkers are black, Latino, Asian or multiracial. Hillary Clinton, so far, has shown an advantage with minority voters, winning   by huge margins across the country. Not all voters of a certain race vote the same way, but there have been patterns this campaign season that offer clues on how elections are likely to play out. NPR’s Tamara Keith has reported that one of Clinton’s biggest demographic weaknesses in the primary race has been her appeal to white men. But New York has a much smaller white male population than other states. In the 2008 primary, only 29 percent of Democrats were white men. Bernie Sanders has been doing better with white voters. In the most recent primary election  —   Wisconsin on April 5  —   exit polls show Sanders beat Clinton by 19 percentage points (59 to 40 percent). But it’s important to remember, New York just doesn’t have as many white voters at stake. 2. Young, It’s worth pointing out that many urban voters are young. The urban and youth populations are not mutually exclusive. In 2008, about 15 percent of Democratic primary voters across New York were between the ages of 18 and 29, and many of them lived in the New York metro area. And, so far this campaign, Sanders has consistently trounced Clinton in the   to    demographic. According to exit poll data, Clinton won this age group in only two states: Alabama and Mississippi. On average, Sanders is winning these young voters by 41 points. Sanders performs well with young voters of all races and ethnicities. Young Asian, Latino and   voters in a number of states have preferred Sanders over Clinton. But young voters as a whole usually have the lowest voter turnout of any age group, and so Clinton has been able to keep her losses at a minimum by relying more on older voters. 3. No independents, The other advantage for Clinton is that New York is a closed primary. In other words, independents are not allowed to vote  —   and that’s bad news for Sanders. As of March 15, 40 percent of Sanders’ support was coming from independents, as the Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted. 4. Democratic turf, On the Republican side, New York is Donald Trump’s state to lose. He’s consistently polling above 50 percent, and that’s, well, huge. Trump often wins states with a plurality of the vote, but never with an outright majority. In fact, not once this campaign season has Trump broken the 50 percent threshold in any state. In his home state of New York, though, Trump is polling above that key mark. And that’s important because if he gets above 50 percent in every congressional district, he will take home all 95 of the state’s delegates. It’s not just because he’s a familiar face. Sure, the Trump campaign is headquartered in New York, and Trump owns multiple properties around town, but demographically, New York City is Trump territory. As David Wasserman with the Cook Political Report recently wrote for FiveThirtyEight, Trump does well in blue terrain. He won Cook County, Ill. (home to Chicago) for example, by more than 15 points. Wasserman argues that Trump is dominating   congressional districts by focusing on the white working class who live in those areas. ”Outside of Cruz’s home state of Texas, Trump has won 15 of 17   districts, or 88 percent,” Wasserman wrote. ”By comparison, Trump has carried only 51 of 79 majority white districts (again excluding Texas) or 65 percent.” 5. ”New York values”  OK, so this last point is more about values than demographics. Throughout the primary campaign, Ted Cruz has relentlessly tried to court Christian conservatives. But, as we’ve shown previously in our Perfect State Index, New Yorkers aren’t particularly religious. About 45 percent of New Yorkers say religion is ”very important” in their lives, compared to about 53 percent nationally. For some perspective, that number is upward of 70 percent in some of the traditional Bible Belt states. But the values battle between Cruz and Trump is about much more than religion  —   it’s about territorial pride. In earlier voting states, Cruz had tried to rally voters by knocking those   ”New York values.” In a GOP debate in January, Cruz used the line ”New York values” as an insult aimed at Donald Trump. (NPR’s Sarah McCammon has reported on the full back story of that moment and its potential impact in New York politics.) Cruz has essentially spent months campaigning against New York, and now he’s trying to campaign in New York. It’s a thin tightrope to walk. Last week in the Bronx, reporters asked Cruz about his ”New York values” comment, and he doubled down. ”The people of New York know exactly what those values are,” he said. He tried to clarify: ”It’s the values of the liberal, Democratic politicians.” New Yorkers don’t seem persuaded. Recent polls show Cruz in last place, trailing both Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich."
"When it comes to insurance coverage for mental health counseling and infertility, how much can people expect? And what would happen to someone who gets a tax credit for buying a marketplace plan if a state expands its Medicaid program during the year? Here are the answers. My son requires regular counseling from a psychologist to treat his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These are treated as medical specialty visits rather than general medical appointments in terms of copay requirements. Why does this coverage difference exist and is it consistent with the federal requirement that there be parity between medical and behavioral health coverage? The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 requires most health plans to provide mental health and substance abuse treatment benefits that are at least as generous as the plan’s benefits for medical and surgical care. There’s no rule of thumb. A health plan may charge a higher copayment in some circumstances under parity rules, said Alan Nessman, senior special counsel for legal and regulatory affairs at the American Psychological Association Practice Organization. It’s called the   test. In general, a plan can’t charge a higher copayment for mental health services than it applies to   of   services. So, for example, if a health plan applies a $50 copayment to outpatient   services by   providers at least   of the time, an insurer can charge a $50 copayment for all outpatient mental health services that are provided in network as well. I have gone to a reproductive endocrinologist in hopes of having a child after an unsuccessful voluntary sterilization in 2010. My insurer is denying coverage for treatment, even though my state, New Jersey, has an infertility coverage mandate. My insurer covered the initial testing, medications and visits. Why am I running into walls on this? There could be any number of reasons, said Barbara Collura, president and CEO of Resolve, an advocacy organization for people with infertility problems. There’s no standard benefit design for infertility coverage. Some plans may deny services to people who were sterilized, even if the procedure was unsuccessful or has been reversed. Or an insurer may deny benefits because of a previous in vitro fertilization attempt, even if it was with a different insurer. The list goes on. ”We see a large number of denials that perplex the beneficiary, the provider, and maybe even the employer,” Collura said. New Jersey is one of more than a dozen states that mandate infertility coverage. But the mandate doesn’t apply to employers with 50 or fewer employees and most companies that   meaning they pay their employees’ medical claims directly rather than purchasing insurance for that purpose. In addition, under the New Jersey law, people who’ve been voluntarily sterilized don’t meet the definition of infertile, according to Marshall McKnight, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance. Your best course of action is to appeal your insurer’s denial, Collura said. ”I’m shocked and amazed at how often people get a denial letter, and then they file an appeal and it gets approved,” she said. ”It works.” If a state is expanding its Medicaid program in the middle of the year, does a marketplace plan customer with an income of 100 to 138 percent of the federal poverty level who is getting a premium tax credit have to switch to Medicaid? (It may be more expensive for someone who has already reached his    maximum for the year in the marketplace plan.)   states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid to cover adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (about $16, 000 for one person). Some expansion states have imposed Medicaid premiums that are pegged to 2 percent of income as well as copayments. If you were in a marketplace plan and you had reached your spending limit for the year, you wouldn’t owe anything out of pocket in that plan for the rest of the year. So, hypothetically, if your state imposes premium contributions and copays, it could cost more to switch to Medicaid midyear, said Judith Solomon, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. At this time, it looks as if Louisiana is on track to expand Medicaid this summer, she said. In any case, even if a state decided to expand Medicaid this year, you wouldn’t generally be forced to switch midway through the year, Solomon said. When you applied for coverage, if the marketplace determined that you were eligible for a marketplace plan and premium tax credits, that’s essentially a decision that you weren’t eligible for Medicaid, Solomon said, and ”that decision can hold for the year.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter:@mandrews110."
"Physicist Stephen Hawking and billionaire Yuri Milner have a vision of interstellar exploration  —   taking place over the course of not thousands of years, but decades. Together with a team of scientists, they suggest that within a generation, humans could send a probe to Alpha Centauri  —   more than 4. 3   away, or 25 trillion miles  —   on a trip that would take just over two decades. That’s 1, 000 times faster than the current fastest spacecraft, the scientists say. They’re thinking big  —   by thinking very small. Instead of sending a   or   probe, the ”Breakthrough Starshot” team is proposing a    spacecraft  —   a ”starchip.” The project, announced by Hawking and Milner on Tuesday, would engineer a method for such a nanocraft to be propelled through space by a sail, pushed by a powerful laser aimed from Earth. The plan relies on Moore’s Law  —   specifically, an observation that the number of transistors on a chip tends to double every couple of years, or in general, the belief that computing hardware improves at an exponential rate. Computers that once would have filled a room fit on your palm now, Milner and Hawking say, it’s possible to imagine fitting cameras, a battery, navigation and communication equipment and even photon thrusters on a ”  wafer” about the cost of a smartphone. And if similar exponential improvements were seen in the fields of nanotechnology and laser technology, it would eventually be possible to push such a wafer to 20 percent of the speed of light, they say. The plan depends on an incredibly thin,   sail that will be pushed by lasers. The chip is attached to the sail the sail is hit by a carefully aimed laser to push it up to speed two decades later, the chip and sail arrive at Alpha Centauri. Then the chip beams data back to Earth at the speed of light, giving scientists insight into another solar system just a quarter of a century after the mission was launched. Instead of sending just one tiny spacecraft, the idea is to send hundreds or thousands  —   so many could be lost along the way, without the mission’s being useless. The Breakthrough Starshot project would support the research and development of a ”proof of concept.” It would be entirely in the public domain, Milner says, and cost about $100 million. A   mission to Alpha Centauri, if it ever happened, would ”require a budget comparable to the largest current scientific experiments,” the team says. (For context, the budget for CERN, the international group that runs the Large Hadron Collider, is about $1. 1 to $1. 3 billion a year.) At the announcement of the project, Milner began by laying out the technological challenges of a trip to another star system. ”How do we go faster? How do we go further? How do we make this next leap?” he asked, before laying out the team’s proposal for interstellar travel on a human time scale. He described it as the ”Silicon Valley approach to spaceflight.” He invited experts and members of the public to look at the long list of challenges  —   from space dust to properly aiming the laser  —   still to overcome. Then Hawking took the stage and, in his iconic synthesized voice, got philosophical. ”What makes human beings unique? There are many theories. Some say it’s language or tools others say it’s logic or reasoning. They obviously haven’t met many humans,” he joked. ”I believe what makes us unique is transcending our limits. Gravity pins us to the ground, but I just flew to America. I lost my voice, but I can still speak, thanks to my voice synthesizer. How do we transcend these limits? With our minds  —   and our machines. ”The limit that confronts us now is the great void between us and the stars. But now we can transcend it. With light beams, light sails and the lightest spacecraft ever built, we can launch a mission to Alpha Centauri within a generation.”"
"There is a   revolution going on in America. Nearly 13 million Americans have permits to carry concealed handguns  —   triple the number just nine years ago  —   and that figure is low because not every state reports. It’s puzzling that so many Americans are choosing to arm themselves at a time when the FBI tells us violent crime and property crime have been falling dramatically for two decades. In search of handgun permit holders, I drove out to the Texas Firearms Festival, an outdoor gun extravaganza held near Austin where firearms fanciers get to shoot everything they see. ”If you’re in Paris and you see people coming with AKs into your rock concert, that sucks. But it sucks worse if you’re unarmed,” says festival producer Robert Farago. ”I’m not saying that being armed is gonna save your life, but at least you have an effective tool to mount some kind of defense.” High school counselor Janna Delany, who carries a Ruger LC9, is more concerned about crime than mass shootings. ”It’s more just for me personally to give myself a little bit of peace of mind, somebody trying to carjack me or hold me up at a gas station or stopped at a red light or something,” Delany says. Retired Houston homicide detective Brian Foster has a booth at the festival where he sells ”politically incorrect” books. ”Police cannot take care of citizens,” he says. ”They react after the fact. I spent many years dealing with cadavers.” How Does Carrying A Gun Change You? One thing is certain: Carrying around a loaded weapon and being prepared at a moment’s notice to use deadly force changes how people perceive their environment. Of the 20 handgun carriers I interviewed over several months, most of them say they’re more aware of how people look and how they act. ”I pay attention to different people, weird people, maybe stereotype people,” says Sam Blackburn, a diesel mechanic from Georgetown, Texas, who attended the firearms fest in an NRA cap. He carries a 9 mm Smith  Wesson. What is he looking for, specifically? ”  guys, maybe guys that look like they’re up to no good or somebody that may think they’re a Muslim extremist or something like that,” Blackburn says. Carrying a   steel appliance around like a cellphone doesn’t only change the way a person thinks, it changes the way they move. ”It’s exciting. I won’t lie to you. There’s some visceral response that you get from carrying a firearm,” says Doug Miller. He owns a small IT company in Austin and teaches Israeli   classes on the side. ”But after about 30 seconds, it becomes, ’Is this gonna be comfortable when I sit down? It’s digging into my hip because my car has upholstered seats. That’s really not that comfortable.’ ” What Do Women Think About Guns? A Girl  A Gun is a women’s shooting league that started in Central Texas and has now gone national. Executive Director Robyn Sandoval says carrying a handgun has become an extension of motherhood, a way to protect her children. ”Family situational awareness is a big deal,” she says. ”When we go to a restaurant, my    [is thinking] who looks suspicious? What are people doing? What’s an anomaly. Let’s point out people in their cars. We make a game of it, of who can find somebody in their car just sitting there.” The gun girls talk about their firearms differently than men do. Guys speak of them as tools these women talk about them like pets. ”We name our guns,” Sandoval says, ”I have Francesca, Dolly, Gracie. And we talk about ’em like, ’I’m takin’ Gracie to the mall with us.’ ”My small one is my Baby,” says schoolteacher Bettylane Chambliss. ”And my dad will say, ’Do you have your gun with you?’ And I went, ’Oh, yeah, I got Baby with me. I’m fine.’ ” When Can You Pull The Trigger? Despite the pet names, there’s nothing casual about getting a license to carry a pistol. A gun in the home? The owner may have it primarily for hunting or  . A concealed gun out in public? It goes with the explicit understanding that the owner may kill someone they feel threatened by. Michael Cargill, a popular handgun instructor in Austin, had this to say: ”You pull that gun out, your life is gonna change.” He’s right. Of the millions of Americans who get a concealed handgun permit, only a tiny fraction ever use them.   folks compare it to a fire extinguisher in the home  —   you have it just in case. But what happens when someone actually fires their weapon in  ? I met three concealed handgun permit (CPL) holders in Detroit who pulled the trigger.   And Traumatic: Darrell Standberry, ”I was parked at the pump right in front of the gas station. I exited my vehicle and before I could even get to the door of the gas station, the young man was already sitting in the driver’s seat of my vehicle,” says Standberry, who just earned a degree in green energy technology. He’d left his Yukon XL running with the key in the ignition. He says he told the young man to get out of his car. The young man told him to step back. That’s when Standberry says he saw the carjacker reach toward his pocket. Standberry unholstered his Sig Sauer . 45, reached through the   window, and fired one shot. He hit the carjacker in the torso. Gravely wounded, the carjacker drove away, crashed into a tree and died. Police found a pistol in his pocket. ”It changed a lot in my life,” he says. ”Matter of fact, in my English class, I just did a report on it. I named it, ’The incident that changed my life forever.’ ” Standberry went to counseling. He became fearful of gas stations. And he carried the burden of killing a   . ”You know why? Because my son was 19 at the same time. It really bothered me that I had to take a   ’s life. His life was just beginning. But he was into the wrong things. To this day, I still ask God for forgiveness,” he says. Caught In A Gunfight: Alaina Gonville, Gonville is a mother of three, a big woman who works as a bouncer at a Detroit bar. Gonville was coming home from work late at night. She’d stopped at a store for a bottle of papaya juice. A scrawny guy walked up, pulled out a pistol and demanded her money. His accomplices were watching from a car behind him. As it happened, Alaina was carrying her pistol openly on her hip. ”I’m assuming they saw my gun. That’s when they opened fire from their vehicle. I heard the gunshots coming at me. That’s when I pulled my gun and returned fire,” she says. She doesn’t know if she hit them or not. The robber bolted. His henchmen sped out of the parking lot, spraying Gonville and her car with   bullets. ”I got shot with an   and it basically blew my arm off. It was dangling. I carried it into the hospital. After four surgeries and a lot of prayer it’s healed about 70 percent,” she says. Did she think that having a handgun that night saved her life or endangered her more? ”That’s a good question. I replayed the situation in my head over and over. I can’t say, but I’m glad I had it,” she says. In Trouble For Thwarting Shoplifters: Tatiana Rodriguez, Born in Colombia, Rodriguez owns a small   business in a Detroit suburb. Last October, she was outside a Home Depot loading some materials into her truck. ”A lady comes screaming through the door for help, and somebody [was] running,” she says. A man was running into the parking lot pushing a shopping cart full of merchandise. Rodriguez used to work at Home Depot, and she knows the company policy: Don’t pursue shoplifters. But she says she thought this was more serious because a lady was screaming. She saw the shoplifters getting away in an SUV. She had her Heckler and Koch 9 mm. ”So I take my gun out and I point at the car when he was coming towards us. I jump to the side and decide to shoot out the tires to stop them,” she says. In Michigan, it’s illegal for a citizen to use deadly force to stop a property crime. Rodriguez got 18 months of probation for reckless discharge of a weapon and had her gun license revoked. She thinks the punishment would have been harsher, but the cops caught the shoplifters after she shot out their tires. Her story got lots of news coverage. It turned into a case study of when not to use your pistol. ”It was not my intention to do anything wrong. I was just trying to help somebody who really needed it. And it backfired on me. So what do you learn? It’s like you have to think a lot before you help somebody,” she says. For this story, I contacted firearms instructors and lawyers who reached out to dozens of handgun carriers who had pulled the trigger in  . To my surprise, very few wanted to talk. Some had been arrested by the police or sued afterward, and had spent thousands of dollars on legal fees. They didn’t want to be dragged into the media spotlight again. Others were just traumatized by the whole experience. Gonville urges people to think long and hard before they carry a gun. ”A lot of times I believe people are just playing around and they think it’s cool to have a gun,” she says. ”It’s not just about being cool. It’s real life. Life and death is serious. Getting shot is serious. Shooting somebody is serious.” Is It Safer To Carry A Gun? An   Gallup poll released late last year revealed that 56 percent of respondents said they’d feel safer if more Americans could get permits to carry concealed handguns. Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, wrote a book about handgun carriers in Michigan called  . ”This is what I think is really fascinating,” she says. ”It’s not just the idea of if I conceal carry then I’m safer. It’s the idea that if I just imagine there’s people out there who are conceal carrying then the world is safer.” All the trigger pullers I talked to for this story said the range time required to get a handgun license is grossly inadequate in terms of being prepared to defend themselves from an active shooter. They believe they’re alive today because they did extensive practice on their own. Mark Cortis, a veteran firearms instructor in Detroit, urges all of his CPL students to get more training. But he says hardly any of them ever do. ”One of my concerns about the [Michigan] state requirements for getting a CPL is they don’t really include the tactics and the strategy that one will need to win or prevail in an actual gun situation,” Cortis says. ”A hostile attack by a violent criminal is a fight.” Not only are most handgun carriers in America totally unprepared for a gunfight, but   activists hasten to point out that more guns lead to more suicides and accidental shootings. Three years ago, Detroit’s new police chief, James Craig, made a startling public announcement. He encouraged   citizens to consider carrying concealed weapons as a deterrent to violent crime. In an interview, I asked Chief Craig if he ever worries about the citizens that he has urged to arm themselves? ”What concerns me, more than anything else, is guns in the hands of criminals, guns in the hands of terror suspects. That’s what keeps me up at night. Not armed citizens,” Craig says. Meanwhile, Cortis reports so many Detroiters are seeking concealed pistol permits, classes are booked for two months out."
"A leading brand of home and garden   products says it will stop using a class of pesticides linked to the decline of bees. Ortho, part of the   family, says the decision to drop the use of the chemicals  —   called neonicotinoids, or neonics for short  —   comes after considering the range of possible threats to bees and other pollinators. ”While agencies in the U. S. are still evaluating the overall impact of neonics on pollinator populations, it’s time for Ortho to move on,” says Tim Martin, the general manager of the Ortho Brand. The announcement comes on the heels of state legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly to restrict the sales of retail home and garden products that contain neonics. The bill is now before Gov. Larry Hogan his office tells us that he is currently reviewing it. Other states are also studying pollinator health and considering action, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. As we’ve reported, neonics are widely used in agriculture. Currently, at the direction of the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency is assessing the effect of neonicotinoid insecticides on the health of bees. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that neonics can negatively influence bee health and may make bees more vulnerable to mites and other threats. Now, the amount of neonics used in home    products is dwarfed by what farmers use on crops. But Delegate Anne Healey of Maryland, a sponsor of the Pollinator Protection Act, says it’s still important to take action. ”I’m hoping this [legislation] will raise awareness” of the decline of pollinators, Healey told us. ”In Maryland we experienced a 60 percent loss in bee colonies in one year,” Healey says. Although the beekeepers have been able to rebuild their colonies, ”overall, it’s clearly a problem.” As we’ve reported, there are a host of issues linked to pollinator decline  —   from a loss of foraging habitat to the varroa mite to climate change. And neonics manufacturers, such as Bayer Crop Science, have focused on efforts such as planting more wildflowers and rebuilding habitat where bees and pollinators can eat. The industry maintains that the products it manufactures are safe for bees both in agriculture and in home and garden settings. ”The products that contain neonicotinoids are safe for use by homeowners and professionals,” says Karen Reardon of RISE, a trade association that represents manufacturers, formulators and distributors of specialty pesticides. Ortho has already begun to phase out neonics. The company tells us that some products will be reformulated or discontinued by 2017. The company says it will complete its phaseout of neonics in outdoor products by 2021."
"After months of hesitation, U. S. health officials now say that the Zika virus is indeed the cause of severe brain damage in the infants of some women who were infected with the virus during pregnancy. A CDC review published online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine describes evidence of what U. S. health officials now call a causal relationship between the virus and a severe form of microcephaly and intracranial calcifications. The study marks a turning point in the current Zika outbreak, says Dr. Tom Frieden, chief of the CDC. ”There’s still a lot that we don’t know, he says. ”But there is no longer any doubt that Zika causes microcephaly.” A causal link between the bite of a mosquito and brain malformations is unprecedented, he says. ”And it is because this was so unprecedented that we have until now waited to say that we have concluded that there is a causal link.” There was no single smoking gun, CDC officials say. Dr. Sonja Rasmussen,    of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and an author on the report, says the conclusion came from looking systematically through the accumulating evidence. The team used two approaches to confirm the link. The first method involved finding an overlap between a rare exposure and a rare defect. It was the same approach used years ago to confirm the effects of rubella on a pregnancy, and the same used to characterize fetal alcohol syndrome. The second method looked at the timing of outbreaks in Brazil and French Polynesia and subsequent increases in birth defects. Researchers also looked at rare case reports of pregnant women who traveled to places with Zika virus transmission and subsequently gave birth to babies with microcephaly. There were other clues. These babies have an unusual and particularly severe form of microcephaly. Plus, the virus has been found in the brain tissue of some babies with microcephaly who died. Still, a lot of questions remain, the health officials say. For example, it’s unclear whether the baby’s risk of brain damage is greater if the mother has symptoms of a viral infection while pregnant, compared with an infected woman who never experiences symptoms. And it’s unclear how much that risk changes if a woman is infected early in pregnancy versus late in pregnancy. Among the most pressing remaining questions, Rasmussen says, are these: ”Does Zika cause defects other than those of the brain? Does Zika cause learning problems later in life? Are pregnancy losses, miscarriage, stillbirth among some women infected by Zika virus the result of the infection? And finally, are there other factors involved? For example, has another infection occurred at the same time as the Zika infection that might affect the risk of birth defects?” Frieden says it could take years to get all those answers."
"Donald Trump is no typical politician  —   and his wife Melania is not a typical political spouse. Melania Trump says she’s spending most of her time at home, caring for the couple’s    son, Barron. But lately, the former model and native of Slovenia has been more visible on the campaign trail for the Republican  . At a campaign rally in Milwaukee this month, Trump introduced his wife as ”an incredible woman . .. an incredible mother.” In turn, she praised her husband as a ”great leader.” ”He’s fair,” Melania Trump said. ”As you may know by now, when you attack him, he will punch back 10 times harder. No matter who you are, a man or a woman, he treats everyone equal.” That appearance followed a raft of news stories about Trump’s poor favorability ratings with women. In a CNN town hall with the Trump family on Tuesday, Melania Trump talked about her husband’s decision to run. ”I gave him my support, and I said to him, you cannot just talk, you need to go and run, and people will take you serious  —   and if you run you will win.” But that support doesn’t mean hitting the campaign trail solo, like many traditional political spouses. She has explained her   role during multiple TV appearances. On MSNBC in February, she said, ”I’m a   mom and I love it, so I decided not to be in the campaign so much, but I support my husband 100 percent.” Melania Trump’s biography is also unusual for a prospective first lady. She was born in 1970 in what is now Slovenia, where she studied architecture and design before becoming a model in Paris and Milan. In recent years, she’s been designing jewelry, which she sometimes hawks on the QVC home shopping network. In 2012, she reflected on that career during a cover shoot for Jet Set magazine  —   which markets itself as the ”Best of Luxury Living.” ”I traveled around the world modeling, and I had a great career, so when I come back a day like this, it’s really fun,” she said between camera poses. Modeling led her to New York City and eventually to her future husband. They met in 1998, at a fashion industry party. She told the story to ABC’s Barbara Walters last year: ”He was very charming, and we had a great sparkle. He came with a date. So he asked me for the number, and I said, ’I will not give you my number,’” she said. But Donald Trump gave Melania his number, and she called him. They married in 2005  —   Melania’s first marriage and his third, following divorces from Ivana Trump, also a model, and actress Marla Maples. A few months after their wedding, in an interview with Larry King on CNN, Melania Trump talked about what it’s like to be married to Donald Trump: ”We are very equal in the relationship and that’s very important,” she said. ”To marry a man like Donald . .. you need to know who you are.” Trump’s wife recently became a focus in the campaign, after an   superPAC put out an online ad featuring a revealing photo from her modeling days. Donald Trump then went after rival Ted Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz, on Twitter, and retweeted an unflattering photo of her alongside a picture of Melania. He later acknowledged that was a ”mistake.” Throughout the campaign, Melania Trump says she has told her husband to tone down his language. ”I’m my own person I tell him what I think. I’m standing very strong on the ground on my two feet,” she told CNN in February. Standing strong may be important, given how unpredictable and chaotic her husband’s run has been."
"In India, rape is illegal. And the definition of what constitutes ”rape” was widened only recently in response to a horrific fatal assault in New Delhi in 2012. Forced penetration by any object in any orifice is now a crime. Despite this law, some men in India can have sex with a woman against her will. That’s because Parliament chose to exempt husbands. This decision  —   which makes India one of 49 nations that don’t criminalize marital rape  —   has come under fire from women’s rights advocates around the globe. The U. N. Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women recommended that India change its stance in July 2014. And again, in March 2016, United Nations Development Program Chief Helen Clark went on record to say India would run afoul of the Sustainable Development Goals it has adopted if it does not amend this law. But many of India’s leaders argue that this change would be at odds with the culture of the country. That group includes Maneka Gandhi, union minister for women and child development, who had previously backed the criminalization of marital rape. Last month, she created a stir when she announced that she was reversing her position. The argument that Gandhi and others make is that societal norms, poverty and a lack of education make such a law out of the question. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t voices in India speaking out against marital rape. In 2015, two separate pleas were submitted to the Supreme Court asking for the law to be amended by deleting the marital rape exception. In the first, the petitioner, a    had already filed charges against her husband for domestic violence (a civil, not criminal offense) as well as ”cruelty.” She used her maiden name, Reema Gaur, to shield her identity. What she wanted next was the ability to bring him to justice for repeatedly raping her. ”The law as it stands today amounts to a   license granted to the husband to violate the sexual autonomy of his own lawfully wedded wife,” the plea stated. Appearing on TV, heavily veiled, wearing spectacles that magnified her eyes, Gaur talked about her marriage. ”Every night post the wedding was a nightmare with me. . .. He would never even ask my permission,” she said. ”He used to beat me up, insert artificial [objects] in me. At some point I was in such a condition I was not even able to walk,” she said, her voice thick with tears. On the night she decided to leave, she said, ”He hit me 18 times on my head with a box and a torchlight. And then he inserted the torchlight in my vagina.” Bleeding and in a semiconscious state, she called her mother for rescue. The bleeding lasted two months. In the year she was married, when Gaur tried to talk to her   and her parents, ”The only thing they told me is, ’Try to adjust.’ ” In Indian society, as in many nations, marriage is often seen as a private relationship in which abuse is not only tolerated but also expected. The   foundations’ No Ceilings Report says that 80 percent of women in developing countries believe their husband has a right to beat them and that 1 in 3 men has admitted to forcing sex with his wife. A 2013 United Nations report said that of 10, 000 men surveyed in six countries, including India, a quarter admitted to having raped a female partner. The study said, ”The most common motivation that men cited for rape was related to sexual entitlement  —   a belief that men have a right to sex with women regardless of consent.” It gets more complicated. In India, according to the Hindu Marriage Act, withholding conjugal relations is reasonable grounds for dissolution of a marriage and divorce. But forcing those conjugal relations? Within a marriage, it’s not a crime, unless the bride is younger than 15 (which, in itself, is a crime  —   the legal age for a woman to marry is 18). So any woman who has been sexually assaulted by her husband is stuck with the same limited options as Gaur: She can only file for protection and a restraining order under the Domestic Violence Act or under Section 498A, which punishes a husband with up to three years in prison on grounds of cruelty. Kamlesh Kumar Mishra, a legal consultant at the Human Rights Law Network, was the advocate who filed the first public interest litigation in the Supreme Court representing Gaur. The court’s response was not what he had hoped for: ”Since this is a petition by an individual, we would not like to intervene.” The petition was withdrawn. Unfazed, Mishra’s colleagues filed a second petition, this time representing several women’s right organizations. ”It went before the same bench and met the same fate,” Mishra said. The justification this time? ”India is not a country where this can be done.” Marital rape, they asserted, is a Western concept, and they cited the Law Commission of India’s 172nd Report on Review of Rape Laws of 2000, which said that the exemption of husbands should not be removed since ”that may amount to excessive interference with the marital relationship” and that ”marriage presumes consent.” Last year the U. N. Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women recommended that marital rape be criminalized in India. After that recommendation, a question was raised in the upper house of Parliament asking what action had been taken. Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary, minister of state for home, replied, ”It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors, including level of education, illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindset of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament.” This response was repeated verbatim by Minister Gandhi in Parliament. Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, a filmmaker and activist, agrees that marital rape is a societal problem but does not believe the law needs to be changed. She says its possible to get justice under the existing law: ”Having a new law with no measures in place, no processes, checks and balances  —   in today’s circumstance, the marital rape law would be a disaster,” she says. She believes that the state doesn’t have the ability to support women who might seek a divorce because of marital rape. ”It’s naive to say women have complete right of consent and rights over their body, when the truth is they’re dependent on their husbands for everything, financially, emotionally,” says Bhardwaj. ”A woman files marital rape, the guy lands in jail. If the woman is dependent on him, where does she go?” But protection from marital rape is ”not a Western problem. It’s a basic human right,” argues Trisha Shetty, founder of She Says, a website for information and action on sexual crimes against women. ”People in India think sexual abuse and rape is something that happens to the poor. That myth needs to be broken,” she says. People across all economic classes get abused, she adds, ”That whole assumption that you’re making laws for people who don’t understand is nonsense. Everyone understands the concept of consent, of saying, ’No.’ ” Her response to the opposition: ”If you’re so aware of the fabric of society breaking, then roll out awareness schemes, educate people. Don’t close your eyes and pretend the problem will go away.” She Says and several NGOs, including Jagori (which in Hindi means ”awaken, women! ”) have organized workshops and other programs to help women speak out about rape. Online, there are additional resources, such as this Marathi language effort to educate about consent via two folk dancers having a musical discussion about the meaning of ”yes” and ”no.” The government has even set up an emergency hotline, staffed by women, to field calls from women who need police assistance as well as resources and instruction about their rights. In their first year, they received more than 600, 000 calls from women, some describing assault and rape within their marriage. When it comes to changing the law, however, the buck is still being passed. The Delhi High Court has agreed to revisit the second petition refiled by Mishra’s colleagues on the grounds of discrimination against married women. The new case challenges the government’s stand against criminalizing rape within a marriage, since it a punishable offense when committed by a stranger. The court requested a response on this issue from the Union of India, with a deadline of March 23. How did the government reply? It filed an extension. The issue now remains tabled until May."
"The leaking of more than 11 million documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca earlier this month cast new light on the arcane world of offshore shell companies, long a favorite hiding place for the very rich. But actually setting up a shell corporation turns out to be something that any average Joe can do. In fact, you can do it in just a little more time than it takes to open an email account, with the help of one of the army of law firms and financial advisers that specialize in them. ”You can do it over the phone. You can do it over the Internet. It’s relatively easy to do, depending on where you are and what you want to set up,” says Tom Cardamone, managing director of Global Financial Integrity, a nonprofit research group that looks for ways to stop illicit financial flows. ”It can be a matter of just a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars. You can set up an anonymous shell company in Delaware the same day,” he says. The ease with which such accounts can be established is one reason more and more money is pouring into them each year. ”A growing fraction of the world’s wealth, and particularly of the wealth in tax havens, is owned via shell companies, so it’s obviously a business that is booming and is doing extremely well,” says Gabriel Zucman, assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations. Because the industry is shrouded in secrecy, any estimates of its size are at best an educated guess, Zucman says. But he estimates that 60 percent of the money held in accounts in Swiss banks is under the names of shell corporations. For those with money to hide, the lures of a shell corporation are many. In most places you don’t have to attach your name to a shell corporation, making it virtually impossible for tax authorities or law enforcement officials to tell who owns it. But if you really want to cover your tracks, you can set up interlocking shell companies in different places, such as the British Virgin Islands or Bermuda, Cardamone says. ”You can create an anonymous shell in one jurisdiction that controls an anonymous trust in a completely different country that also controls a bank account in a third country,” Cardamone says. Once your shell company is up and running, you can use it to stash any spare millions you may have lying around. ”Now you’re the owner of a company that can open, for instance, bank accounts all over the world. Or that can buy real estate all over the world. It makes it easy for you to hide your identity and to be an anonymous owner of wealth all over the world,” Zucman says. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that establishing a shell corporation  —   at least by itself  —   doesn’t technically violate any law, Cardamone says. ”There’s nothing illegal about setting up such a corporation. It’s what happens after that that can cause the problem, whether it’s tax evasion or money laundering,” he says. In other words, it’s not having a secret shell corporation that can get you in trouble. It’s how you use it. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of firms offer help setting up shell companies, often as part of a set of financial and legal services, and many are located in the United States. Most of these firms don’t actually process the transaction themselves but farm it out to a much larger firm that specializes in them, such as Mossack Fonseca. The Panamanian law firm is considered one of the largest such firms in the world. With so much money pouring into these companies, big investors such as private equity firms have been eager to get a part of them. For example, the Carlyle Group was an early investor in one of the biggest firms, Hong   Offshore Incorporations Limited, but sold its share to a Scandinavian firm in 2011. ”I think they saw this as a growth industry, obviously something that particularly was experiencing strong growth from the developing world, particularly China. And it was kind of a new industry that hadn’t attracted much attention from outsiders before,” says Jason Sharman, professor of political science at Australia’s Griffith University. As the use of shell corporations has grown, the United States and other developed countries have attempted to crack down on them. They increasingly require banks to turn over more information about accounts held by their own citizens. As the Mossack Fonseca case has shown, major banks such as Deutsche Bank and UBS have in the past played roles in helping their clients set up offshore bank accounts. Regulators say such efforts are making a dent in stopping tax evasion. They’ve made it much harder for many citizens of the United States and Europe to hide their money. (The rules don’t apply to people from China, Russia and Brazil, where much of the newest money comes from.) But Zucman isn’t sure the major banks are really ready to cooperate with law enforcement. ”After all, for decades they’ve been exactly the opposite,” Zucman says. ”They’ve been helping their clients evade taxes, hiding them behind shell companies, and so we can ask ourselves: Is it just enough to now ask these very same individuals and these very same institutions to now play the taxman’s job?” ”Up to this point there hasn’t been the political will to address the issue of anonymous shell companies,” Cardamone says. ”These things have been in place for decades. This is not something that’s been created recently. So there’s also the issue of changing the way business has always been done. No matter what the issue is, changing something that’s been happening for decades is always difficult to do.”"
"The Obama administration has shaken up U. S. policy by reaching out to longtime foes including Cuba, Iran and Myanmar. This has spurred a debate about what impact, if any, the U. S. moves have on human rights in these countries. Some argue that such engagement can encourage authoritarian countries to improve their human rights record, while others say it makes no difference, or may even lead regimes to feel they don’t have to worry about punitive measures for rights violations. The U. S. State Department issued its annual human rights report Wednesday, which covers countries around the globe. Here’s a look at its findings among those longtime rivals, as well as the status of a some U. S. allies. Cuba, The report says Cuba started 2015 by releasing 53 political prisoners and opening up to the U. S. though six of those activists were rearrested during the course of the year. ”The following additional abuses continued: harsh prison conditions arbitrary,   politically motivated detentions and arrests selective prosecution denial of fair trial and travel restrictions,” the report said, adding that Cuba remains an authoritarian state where the Communist Party is the only legal party. Much of the summary on Cuba’s 2015 human rights record was identical to the State Department’s 2014 report. Speaking about the report, Secretary of State John Kerry said, ”President Obama and I urged the [Cuban] authorities to allow more political openness and online access. There’s no question in my mind that most Cubans are far more interested in plugging into the world economy than in recycling arguments left over from the Cold War. The only question is how long it will take for the officials in Havana to catch up to the population.” The U. S. and Cuba restored diplomatic relations last July after a break of more than half a century, and President Obama traveled to the island in March, meeting with President Raul Castro. An independent monitoring group in Cuba, the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, counted 8, 616 detentions last year, compared with 8, 899 in 2014 and 6, 424 in 2013. Myanmar, President Obama’s visited Myanmar, also known as Burma, in November 2012 as the country began to make political reforms. Last month, civilian leaders took political power, with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi becoming the state counselor  —   which effectively makes her the head of government. More than 100 political prisoners were released last week in a move welcomed by the State Department. ”For 25 years, we were struggling alongside them to bring about democratic change, and very few people thought we would make it,” said Tom Malinowksi, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. ”If it can happen there, it can happen absolutely anywhere,” he added. ”So that kind of stuff keeps us going in the face of some of the more depressing news that we are bound to talk to you about in these reports.” These recent developments were not included in the State Department’s report on 2015, which cited the previous government for continued restrictions on freedom of speech and human rights violations in conflict zones. In addition, the State Department said that last year, Myanmar’s government ”did little to address the root causes of human rights abuses, statelessness, violence, and discrimination against [the] Rohingya,” a Muslim minority. Iran, Iran and six world powers, including the U. S. reached a landmark nuclear agreement last July, though the deal did not address the many other points of contention. On the human rights front, the State Department pointed out there are ”severe restrictions” in Iran on freedoms of assembly, speech, religion and the press. It also highlighted the ”escalating use of capital punishment for crimes that do not meet the threshold of most serious crime or are committed by juvenile offenders.” The government also ”restricted the operations of and did not cooperate with local or international human rights NGOs investigating alleged violations of human rights.” U. S. Allies, Traditional U. S. allies also came under scrutiny by the State Department, which argues that it sees a free and active civil society as a ”bulwark against the spread of violent extremism.” The report singles out Egypt for dissolving 500 nongovernmental groups, many linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and imposing travel bans on human rights defenders and political activists. Turkey is using   laws to ”stifle legitimate political discourse and investigative journalism,” the report noted."
"HBO’s new movie Confirmation chronicles the intense confirmation battle for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas after Anita Hill, a former employee, claimed he sexually harassed her. NPR’s Nina Totenberg broke the story to the world in 1991, and she joins the NPR Politics podcast team to reflect on what happened, how it happened and why it still matters. ”I’d been hearing all summer long that there were women who said they were harassed by Clarence Thomas when he was at the EEOC and when he was at the Education Department,” Totenberg said. ”But I could never really prove it. And then I heard about this woman, Anita Hill.” That’s when everything changed. Listen to the podcast at the audio link above, download it via iTunes or read highlights from the conversation below: On what made Totenberg look for the story  I’m sitting at the Judiciary Committee hearing where they are voting on Thomas and I see that they all have the same envelope. And [  Joe] Biden starts talking about how the confirmation process should not be about rank gossip. And I go, what? What are you talking about? I go out and I start kicking tires. And eventually, I find out what it’s about. I call up Anita Hill. She says she won’t talk to me unless I have a copy of her affidavit. So I got it. And then I got her. I actually held the story for a day and a half, trying to get Biden to talk to me about what was going on. On the scope of the story, Even I didn’t really understand how big a deal this was going to be. I remember walking into the Capitol thinking that once again, this would be a joint   live coverage of the hearing and we would be the only people there, and it was an insane asylum in there. Every network on the face of the earth was carrying this live. They carried it live even when the World Series was on! They   the World Series. It was unbelievable. On the climate of sexual harassment at the time, You don’t recognize this now, but sexual harassment was a dirty little secret that most women had but they didn’t talk about. They were embarrassed by it it was a hindrance and not a help in any way. Now suddenly, it gets popped into the open. . .. But all of those silent, female experiences materialized in the . .. phones exploding on Capitol Hill. On why there was so much public support for Thomas, He was so furious and so indignant and so hurt by these accusations that it was hard to believe you could be so convincing and not be telling the truth. They were both very convincing witnesses. On the cost of breaking the story, I was pilloried during this. I had one of the great stories of any reporter’s life. I had worked very hard to get it. And the cost was enormous in terms of negative publicity and people trashing me a lot and senators yelling at me. At one point I had a driver at Nightline who went around the corner [and] stopped and he said to me . .. ”Lady, you better get a gun.” On how the story led to an increase in sexual harassment claims  The number of cases almost doubled in just two years that were filed at the EEOC. Workplaces began to actually have rules about this. There were rules there were grievance procedures that people could go to to discuss it. And the other thing is the Judiciary Committee was all male and had always been all male. They made very sure that there were women on the committee right away. On being asked to do a cameo in the movie  [HBO] wanted me to   my memory of the questions I asked her, so they could have me asking her questions on the phone the first time we talked and things like that. And I said, ”We don’t do that at NPR. That’s called pretend news.” On why she’ll never reveal her source, I didn’t even tell my lawyer when they subpoenaed me. I’ve never told my husband. I’m taking this one to my grave."
"On a cold windy morning, Kelly Nissen feeds the cows at the Iowa State University Beef Nutrition Farm. He weighs out specific rations and carefully delivers them to numbered feed bunks. ”When you’re feeding, you’re always   yourself to make sure it’s going in the right lot,” Nissen says. It’s important  —   because these cows munch on more than just the common mix of hay, corn and distiller’s grain. They’re also charged with testing out different formulas developed by the researchers in the animal science department at Iowa State. Among the goals here is to find ways farmers can reduce how often they put antibiotics in animal feed  —   which they use not just to treat sick animals, but also to prevent disease and get animals to grow faster. The issue is that some of the antibiotics used on farms are the same ones that doctors prescribe to humans fighting off infections. The more these antibiotics are used, the more likely it is that some squirrelly bacteria will develop resistance  —   and those pesky   bacteria can infect humans. The government has asked drug companies to stop the use of antibiotics for growth promotion. And last year, the Obama administration announced a plan aimed at cutting down reliance on these medicines. Meanwhile, researchers like Stephanie Hansen at Iowa State have been looking for alternatives to antibiotics in animal feed. Recently, they’ve been taking cues from human diet trends, trying an ingredient you can probably find in your fridge, inside that tub of Greek yogurt: healthy bacteria. A good yogurt will contain several live bacteria  —   or probiotics  —   which help keep our guts healthy and happy. No one’s going to feed pigs, chickens or cows Fage. But researchers think that a bacterium commonly found in yogurt, Lactobacillus acidophilus, could help keep animals healthy  —   so farmers don’t have to give them as many antibiotics. ”Acidophilus would have the same impact in a production livestock animal as it would in humans,” Hansen says. This friendly bacterium likes hanging out in guts  —   and once it settles into either a human or an animal’s gut, it thrives and multiplies, crowding out the other harmful bacteria that live there  —   which, in turn, can keep you, or a cow, healthy. Poultry researcher Alejandro Penaloza at Oklahoma State University has a similar idea: He’s testing two strains of Lactobacillus in poultry feed. Some large chicken producers are interested, he says, because it helps the birds gain weight with less feed, a benefit they used to get from antibiotics. ”We cannot say that probiotics is the silver bullet to completely eliminate antibiotics,” Penaloza says. ”But I am sure that they can help a lot.” Researchers are still testing just how much of an impact probiotics have on livestock. But some animal feed companies are already marketing Lactobacillus supplements.   Diamond V, for instance, has developed a pig feed supplement made from the bacteria. ”We’ve seen improvements in weight gains, feed conversion, food intake in young pigs,” says Jason Frank, the director of   nutrition research at Diamond V. ”But more interestingly, we’ve seen that by improving general health and performance, that those pigs are requiring fewer [antibiotic] treatments.” Of course, these bacteria are no panacea, Frank says. ”As antibiotics become more limited in their use, we’re going to have to make changes in how we raise animals, perhaps develop more vaccines, change our stocking densities, nutrition programs,” he notes. Moving beyond antibiotics on the farm will be a gradual process, but it’s getting a little inspiration from our diet trends. Amy Mayer is a reporter based at Iowa Public Radio. This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration focusing on agriculture. A version of this post originally ran on the Harvest website."
"One would think we wouldn’t be needing to have this conversation right about now, but apparently we do. As you’ve surely heard by now, this time the peg comes courtesy of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose appearance in a comedy skit during a   dinner over the weekend culminated with a ”surprise” onstage visit from Hillary Clinton and Hizzoner’s use of the phrase ”C. P. Time.” For people unfamiliar with it, that’s Colored People’s Time  —   usually abbreviated, in the black communities I’ve lived in, to C. P. T.  —   and it means  . It’s often used by colored peoples to describe habitually tardiness. ”Dinner’s at 7, but you know they run on C. P. T. so I told them it was 5:30, so they actually get there by 7.” Black people use the expression all the time. And people of other ethnicities have told me they have similar expressions  —   Latinos, Italians, Slavs  —   but the point is that when they use the term, they’re talking about themselves. Even though de Blasio has an   wife, and they have two children who look   he is not. And so the use of ”C. P. Time” by a P who is not C is . .. problematic. In de Blasio’s joke, the excuse for his taking so long to endorse Hillary Clinton was him running on ”C. P. Time,” except in this case, he explained, it meant ”cautious politician time.” It didn’t take long for the evening’s assessment to come roaring in. The words ”cringe” and ”cringeworthy” started popping up on social media immediately after. The Daily News put Hillz and her ”  Bill” on its cover the next day with a banner hed blaring SKIT FOR BRAINS. On CNN, the mayor  —   who, it must be said, has a reputation for tardiness  —   calmly defended himself. He explained the ”C. P. Time” reference was part of a scripted show and had always been planned as a joke, and that Clinton and Leslie Odom Jr. the Hamilton star who was also onstage for the skit, ”thought it was a joke on a different convention.” It was, he reiterated, a joke about cautious politicians. ”I think people are missing the point here.” Uh, no, sir. The point is this: Even though you’re dearly loved by and even related to black people, you aren’t black. You are NBA  —   Negro By Association  —   and that gives you props for knowing the culture and lots of little intracultural folkways. But it doesn’t give you a     card for using phrases like C. P. Time. Especially in mixed company, in public. Of course, white people make that mistake with the   all the time. Justin Bieber. Madonna. Charlie Sheen. Gwyneth Paltrow, who’s famously pals with   and Kanye, and ran into Jay and ’Ye when they were all in France one year, and attended one of their concerts there. She tweeted she was hanging out with ”n****s in Paris, for real.” She later claimed she was quoting one of their songs  —   and there is one. But still, Gwynnie  —   nah. (Russell Simmons defended her, though.) This argument has been going on for ages, and every six months or so, it pops up again. Like when six Arizona high school girls banded together on Picture Day to take a group shot in black   each with a big letter on her shirt that spelled . .. guess . .. when you put them all together. (The girl wearing the ”R” later apologized. And a black pastor urged the public to forgive.) To be sure, C. P. Time is nowhere near as toxic as the   but similar rules apply: You don’t use it if you aren’t a person of color  —   at least, you don’t in public. Maybe they say C. P. T. in the de Blasio house all the time, and it’s a family joke. If it’s a gentle chastisement that black de Blasios are amused by and everybody’s on the same page, I’m not mad at ’em. But in a public event, where you don’t even know everyone, let alone love them? Not a smart idea, and the reception de Blasio’s joke got makes that clear. Makes you wonder if, in the writer’s huddle, no one else of color was in the room where that joke happened. Or maybe they were supposed to be, and they were running late."
"Some users of LSD say one of the most profound parts of the experience is a deep oneness with the universe. The hallucinogenic drug might be causing this by blurring boundaries in the brain, too. The sensation that the boundaries between yourself and the world around you are erasing correlates to changes in brain connectivity while on LSD, according to a study published Wednesday in Current Biology. Scientists gave 15 volunteers either a drop of acid or a placebo and slid them into an MRI scanner to monitor brain activity. After about an hour, when the high begins peaking, the brains of people on acid looked markedly different than those on the placebo. For those on LSD, activity in certain areas of their brain, particularly areas rich in neurons associated with serotonin, ramped up. Their sensory cortices, which process sensations like sight and touch, became far more connected than usual to the frontal parietal network, which is involved with our sense of self. ”The stronger that communication, the stronger the experience of the dissolution [of self],” says Enzo Tagliazucchi, the lead author and a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. Tagliazucchi speculates that what’s happening is a confusion of information. Your brain on acid, flooded with signals crisscrossing between these regions, begins muddling the things you see, feel, taste or hear around you with you. This can create the perception that you and, say, the pizza you’re eating are no longer separate entities. You are the pizza and the world beyond the windowsill. You are the church and the tree and the hill. Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, described this in his book LSD: My Problem Child. ”A portion of the self overflows into the outer world, into objects, which begin to live, to have another, a deeper meaning,” he wrote. He felt the world would be a better place if more people understood this. ”What is needed today is a fundamental   of the oneness of all living things.” The sensation is neurologically similar to synesthesia, Tagliazucchi thinks. ”In synesthesia, you mix up sensory modalities. You can feel the color of a sound or smell the sound. This happens in LSD, too,” Tagliazucchi says. ”And ego dissolution is a form of synesthesia, but it’s a synesthesia of areas of brain with consciousness of self and the external environment. You lose track of which is which.” Tagliazucchi and other researchers also measured the volunteers’ brain electrical activity with another device. Our brains normally generate a regular rhythm of electrical activity called the alpha rhythm, which links to our brain’s ability to suppress irrelevant activity. But in a different paper published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he and several   show that LSD weakens the alpha rhythm. He thinks this weakening could make the hallucinations seem more real. The idea is intriguing if still somewhat speculative, says Dr. Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at the   Medical Center who was not involved with the work. ”They may genuinely be on to something. This should really further our understanding of the brain and consciousness.” And, he says, the work highlights hallucinogens’ powerful therapeutic potential. The altered state of reality that comes with psychedelics might enhance psychotherapy, Grob thinks. ”Hallucinogens are a catalyst,” he says. ”In   subjects, you might elicit powerful, altered states of consciousness. [That] has been predicative of positive therapeutic outcomes.” In recent years, psychedelics have been trickling their way back to psychiatric research. LSD was considered a good candidate for psychiatric treatment until 1966, when it was outlawed and became very difficult to obtain for study. Grob has done work testing the treatment potential of psilocybin, the active compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms. He imagines a future where psychedelics are commonly used to treat a range of conditions. ”[There could] be a peaceful room attractively fixed up with nice paintings, objects to look at, fresh flowers, a chair or recliner for the patient and two therapists in the room,” he muses. ”A safe container for that individual as they explore deep inner space, inner terrain.” Grob believes the right candidate would benefit greatly from LSD or other hallucinogen therapy, though he cautions that bad experiences can still happen for some on the drugs. Those who are at risk for schizophrenia may want to avoid psychedelics, Tagliazucchi says. ”There has been evidence saying what could happen is LSD could trigger the disease and turn it into   schizophrenia,” he says. ”There is a lot of debate around this. It’s an open topic.” Tagliazucchi thinks that this particular ability of psychedelics to evoke a sense of dissolution of self and unity with the external environment has already helped some patients. ”Psilocybin has been used to treat anxiety with terminal cancer patients,” he says. ”One reason why they felt so good after treatment is the ego dissolution is they become part of something larger: the universe. This led them to a new perspective on their death.” Follow Angus Chen on Twitter @angrchen."
"Ian Burkhart, now 24, was paralyzed in 2010 after diving into a wave in shallow water. The accident left him with some arm movement but no use of his hands. Then, about two years ago, scientists in Ohio equipped Burkhart with a system that allowed him to control his right wrist and hand with his thoughts. ”The first time moving my hand  —   that was really just like that flicker of hope,” Burkhart told reporters during a media briefing Tuesday. The briefing was held to publicize a study in this week’s issue of Nature, which describes Burkhart’s progress since he started using the system. After many months of practice, Burkhart can now perform tasks like pouring water from a bottle, grasping small objects, and swiping a credit card through a card reader. He can also control the movement of individual fingers. It’s all possible because of technology that intercepts and decodes electrical signals from the brain before they reach Burkhart’s damaged spine. ”We’re actually routing them around the spinal cord injury and then reinserting those signals into the muscles,” says Chad Bouton, the study’s first author and vice president of advanced engineering at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N. Y. The system relies on electrodes implanted in Burkhart’s brain, a computer interface attached to his skull, and electrical stimulators wrapped around his forearm. At first, Burkhart could grasp objects, but he would drop them when he moved his arm. His skill has improved steadily, though, Bouton says. ”Ian is learning how to think about very detailed movements and the machine is actually learning how to decipher those signals more effectively as well,” Bouton says. ”So they’re actually learning together.” Burkhart’s achievements have received a great deal of media attention. But he is just one of many paralyzed people using technology that allows them to perform daily tasks using their thoughts. And much of the technology Burkhart relies on is also in use at other research centers, says Robert Kirsch, chairman of the department of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University and executive director of the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center. ”The brain computer interfacing that they did is kind of garden variety,” Kirsch says. ”And the electrical stimulation that they’ve done is really  .” Other groups have obtained better results using electrical stimulators that are implanted in muscles, instead of placed on the skin, Kirsch says. That approach requires extra surgery but allows more precise control of muscles, he says. At a scientific meeting last year, a member of Kirsch’s team reported on a person using their technology who is able to use thoughts to trigger muscles in both the arm and hand. That’s important, Kirsch says, because, unlike Burkhart, many other paralyzed people have no use of their arms or shoulders. More than a decade of experiments has shown that paralyzed people can learn to use their thoughts to control computers, robotic arms and even their own limbs, says Leigh Hochberg, a professor of engineering at Brown University. Unfortunately, the systems that make this possible still aren’t suitable for use at home, he says. What people who are paralyzed really want, Hochberg says, is ”a fully implanted technology, one that doesn’t have wires or plugs that are sticking up above the scalp, doesn’t have wires that are wrapped around the outside of the arm.” And that, he says, will require technological advances  —   including the ability to transmit signals from the brain without using wires. ”The process of getting from where we are today, which is some exciting early clinical research, all the way through to a clinically useful, vetted device that will help someone with paralysis is still a long one,” Hochberg says. Even so, Hochberg and other paralysis researchers say the wait will probably be measured in years, not decades."
"Springtime is usually beautiful in Mexico City. As the weather warms, the purple jacaranda trees that line boulevards and dot neighborhoods are in full bloom. Everything is prettier, says Fernando Padilla, a driver taking a break in a park. ”It’s my favorite time of the year,” he says. But this spring, his eyes are watering, his throat hurts and one day a week he’s not allowed to use his car on the road, which means he’s poorer too. Julieta Mejia Cabrera, 10, isn’t happy either. Today she got to go to the park, but since the   plan has gone into effect, she says everyone at her school has to eat lunch inside their classrooms. ”We can’t play with our friends,” she says. ”It’s so boring. It’s like being at home.” Last month, for the first time since 2005, Mexico City officials declared a Phase 1 smog alert. Based on license plate numbers, every car must be kept off the road one day a week and one Saturday a month through the end of June. That’s the start of the rainy season, which usually clears the air. Smog levels aren’t as high as in Beijing, or even as high as they were here back in the 1980s and 1990s. But last week the pollution was so bad  —   more than twice acceptable levels  —   the city ordered even more vehicles off the streets. As one columnist said, it was heaven for drivers on the   streets, but hell for those forced down into Mexico City’s already saturated subway. Sarah Chavaria was trying to get to her job in a butcher shop near downtown but had already watched four packed trains go by. ”The subway was full before the smog alerts. Now it’s worse than ever,” she says. ”I’ve been crushed, stepped on, and everything in between.” By the time she gets to work, she adds, she is already stressed out. Mexico City’s public transportation hasn’t kept up with its population growth, especially in the suburbs. Government housing policies and investment in highways over public transportation have led to ever increasing sprawl. There are now 23 million people in the Mexico City metropolitan area and nearly 6 million registered cars, says Gabriela Alarcon, an urban development specialist with the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness. She says more needs to be done than just restricting traffic by license plate numbers. ”Because people adjust, and they buy an additional car and [add] even more congestion to an already congested city,” Alarcon says. And, Alarcon says, Mexico’s smog standards are behind the times. Cars bought in Mexico in 2016 have the same tailpipe emissions as a 2004 car sold in the U. S. At a pizzeria, manager Juan Carlos Gutierrez says the delivery motorcycle was barred from the road the day before, so deliveries are down. ”I’m crying twice as much,” says Gutierrez. ”Once for all the smog in my eyes and again because of all the money I’m losing.”"
"Cody Pedersen and his wife, Inyan, know that in an emergency they will have to wait for help to arrive. Cody, 29, and his family live in Cherry Creek, a Native American settlement within the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in north central South Dakota. The reservation is bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. But Cherry Creek has no general store, no gas station and few jobs. When Inyan, 34, was preparing to give birth to her two youngest children, doctors scheduled her to have cesarean sections in a hospital rather than having her wait until she was in labor to come in. In January, Cody was stabbed in the neck. It took an ambulance two hours to arrive. A   gravel road in Cherry Creek connects to a better road that eventually leads to Eagle Butte, the largest town on the reservation and home to just over 1, 300 people. That’s where the closest doctors are. When Cody runs out of gas money, he has to pay $40 to a neighbor to take him to the health center in Eagle Butte. But he can’t do that before lucking out and securing an appointment, calling at 7 a. m. on the day he wants to see a doctor. Clinics like the one Cody goes to don’t allow patients to schedule appointments in advance. There’s a clinic in Cherry Creek, but it has been closed for weeks. Their    daughter Makrista missed school for two weeks because they couldn’t get a doctor’s note to vouch that her head lice had gone away. Before the 1950s, most Native Americans lived in reservations or near them. Then, with support from the federal government, many started moving to large cities, looking for employment opportunities and better education. Today, more than half of Native Americans live in urban areas. The federal government is obligated by law to provide medical care to American Indians and Alaska Natives, and it does so through the Indian Health Service, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. There are also   health centers set up on reservations. And 20 states have Urban Indian Health Programs, which receive IHS funding to provide medical services and support to American Indians who don’t live on reservations. But there are still significant gaps in care, both on the reservation and in town. The IHS is chronically underfunded. It receives a set amount of money each year to take care of 2. 2 million native people  —   no matter how much care they may need. On the reservation, IHS facilities often don’t have services that people elsewhere expect, such as emergency departments or MRI machines. And those limited facilities can be hours away by car. In town, reaching care is easier, but clinics also don’t have enough funding to meet all of the health needs of the community. And people can’t get the free medication they are entitled to through the IHS anywhere but an IHS facility. Donna Keeler is executive director at South Dakota Urban Indian Health, which has been providing health services to the American Indian population since 1977. Keeler says her clinics in Sioux Falls and Pierre receive federal grants, but that a federal prisoner has more health care funding allocated for his care than an urban American Indian does. In 2013, Indian Health Service spending for patient health services was $2, 849 a person, compared with $7, 717 for health care spending nationally, according to a report from the National Congress of American Indians. That despite the fact that Native Americans typically have more serious health problems than the general public, including higher rates of diabetes, liver disease and unintentional injuries. Keeler says most of her clients are the poorest of the poor. In other states, American Indians with low incomes can sign up for expanded Medicaid. But South Dakota lawmakers haven’t expanded Medicaid coverage to   adults, leaving thousands of people, most of them urban, poor American Indians, without health coverage. Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, has left the door open to a special legislative session this year in which lawmakers could consider a Medicaid expansion proposal, but consideration of such a proposal isn’t guaranteed. If South Dakota did expand Medicaid, it would give clinics like the one Keeler runs additional funding, since the Medicaid reimbursement rates are higher than what IHS provides. Still, even without Medicaid expansion, the Urban Indian Health clinic is an improvement for patients like Joe Marrowbone, Cody Pedersen’s brother. Marrowbone moved out of Cherry Creek and off the reservation partially to get out of the cycle of poverty prevalent there, he says. It was an added bonus that access to health care for his family dramatically improved. Marrowbone works as a janitor at a religious school in Sioux Falls. The Sioux Falls Urban Indian Health clinic is much closer to his home than it would be if he lived in Cherry Creek, and there’s also the option of getting care at a local hospital. As a result, the family rarely has to wait long. Instead of worrying about where his health care is coming from, Marrowbone can focus on a new goal: trying to adopt his niece, Savannah, after her mother died. Access and lack of funding are just two problems with Native Americans in South Dakota. Difficulties coordinating patient records also hamper their care. Jami Larson, a registered nurse at Urban Indian Health Programs in Pierre, is frustrated that none of the systems with the Indian Health Service,   clinics or the Urban Indian Health Programs share patient data with each other. Each clinic has its own records, and patients who don’t keep up with their own records often have to repeat immunizations or lab work. For Larson, herself an American Indian, the year and a half that she’s spent as a nurse at the clinic in Pierre has allowed her to develop deep relationships with her patients. She says that care for them would improve if the clinics, hospitals and doctors serving American Indians worked together. For now, Larson is leaving her own mark the best she can: On many days, you can find her visiting patients to make sure they’re on track, or going food shopping with some to help them get food that will keep them as healthy as possible. This story and photo essay were produced through a collaboration between Kaiser Health News and NPR. Photographer Misha Friedman says he tries ”looking beyond the facts, searching for causes, and asking complex and difficult questions.” His work has been featured by many media organizations, including NPR, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Der Spiegel and GQ. Kaiser’s Andrew Villegas contributed to this report."
"It’s a beer with a message  —   and its brewers say it’s a simple one. Responding to North Carolina’s HB2 law that voids cities’   rules, two of the state’s brewers are creating a new beer: the Don’t Be Mean to People: A Golden Rule Saison. Three dozen breweries have signed up to sell the beer on their draft taps cans of it will also go to people who have donated to the project’s fundraising campaign, which currently stands at nearly $18, 000  —   far more than the original goal of $1, 150. While it may seem like a symbolic gesture, the beer also signals resistance to the controversial legislation from within North Carolina’s burgeoning beer industry, which last year accounted for $1. 2 billion in economic impact, according to the Brewers Association. ”We didn’t feel like HB2 represented us as businesses or as residents of North Carolina,” said Erik Lars Myers, the CEO and head brewer of Mystery Brewing Co. in Hillsborough. He’s collaborating on Don’t Be Mean to People with Keil Jansen, the owner and brewmaster of Ponysaurus Brewing Co. in Durham. The adoption of HB2, which keeps cities from enacting rules protecting members of the LGBT community from discrimination, has sparked an ACLU lawsuit and prompted calls for boycotts of North Carolina by entertainers as well as civic groups and businesses. Myers says their project is moving ahead despite North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory’s signing of an executive order Tuesday that the governor said ”clarifies” the state legislation. Critics, including the state’s attorney general, say the governor should have vetoed the law rather than signing it. ”It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but nothing short of repeal fixes this law,” Myers says. ”We still have seen no change of attitude from the people who actually put this law through.” Don’t Be Mean to People will be released sometime in the middle of May. As for what it’ll taste like, Myers says they’re going for a beer that’s ”bright, crisp, grainy, and fruity. And above all, delicious.” The two brewers say they’ll donate 100 percent of the profit from the new beer’s sales to two North   groups: EqualityNC, which opposes HB2 as part of its advocacy efforts, and QORDS, which operates summer music camps that focus on gay and transgender youth. There are currently 161 craft breweries in North Carolina, a state that in recent years has landed a string of East Coast expansion outposts from companies such as Sierra Nevada, Oskar Blues and New Belgium. Of that group, New Belgium has signed up to sell Don’t Be Mean to People, according to the project’s fundraiser page. ”We’ve gathered support from dozens of our fellow brewers,” says Keil Jansen, Myers’ partner in the venture, ”and we have the ability to make a significant social impact by working together for a greater good.”"
"If you don’t live in Baltimore, but you know anything about the mayor’s race, it’s probably that an activist with Black Lives Matter is running. He’s known as the guy in the blue vest, but he also goes by DeRay Mckesson. Mckesson is the city’s   mayoral candidate, but one of the lowest in the polls. The race for Baltimore’s next mayor was shaken up a year ago, following the death of Freddie Gray, the young black man fatally injured in police custody. After violent protests, current Mayor Stephanie   said she would not run again. Now, well over a dozen candidates are competing, and because of the city’s past voting record, the winner of this month’s Democratic primary will almost certainly become the next mayor. Although that probably won’t be    Mckesson  —   he registered less than 1 percent in a recent poll by the University of Baltimore and the Baltimore Sun  —   he has been fielding a steady stream of national interviews. I find him working out of a trendy coffee shop, where he has run into some former colleagues. ”Woo!” His friend cheers, as they pose for a selfie that Mckesson posts online. Mckesson has about as many Twitter followers  —   more than 300, 000  —   as there are registered voters in Baltimore, and he sneaks peeks at his phone throughout our interview. It’s a following built since August 2014, when he heard about the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. ”I packed three   four pairs of underwear, one pair of socks, and like, I was there,” he says. Mckesson ended up leaving a   job as a school administrator in Minnesota to protest police brutality full time. After the death of Freddie Gray, this mission brought him back to his hometown of Baltimore. Mckesson, the son of two recovering drug addicts, grew up in Baltimore until he went to middle school. Now he says he wants to shift his focus again from staging protests to bringing concrete change to people’s lives. ”We can make a strategy to address adult literacy today,” he says. ”We can change the way that we police and think about safety today. And the local level is where, most often, those changes have the most impact.” Mckesson has gotten props for his detailed policy papers. But it’s his activism that has drawn national attention, from a White House meeting with President Obama to an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s show, with his trademark smartphone in hand. He’s trying to leverage this attention and his social media savvy to amplify traditional retail politics. Mckesson says people will direct message him on Twitter to say they’ll gather 50 friends at their house if he shows up. ”When I Periscope house visits or house parties, when I do Facebook Live, we average a few thousand people who look at all of that every time,” he says. But the vast majority of his followers are not registered Baltimore voters. ”Can he take all that social media and fame nationally, and turn it into a ground game?” asks Roger Hartley, who is dean of the University of Baltimore’s College of Public Affairs. So far, the answer is a resounding no. Hartley says that for one thing, Mckesson entered the race at the last possible moment  —   months after the others. What’s more, his many rivals are also talking about policing and inequality. ”And they have served,” he says. ”They have a record. They have won elections in those districts.” The   is state Sen. Catherine Pugh, who has touted her role on state and national police reform commissions. ”Working with the state is really important in terms of how we reform the police department, how we create opportunities, and how we lift some of the issues that are painful in this city,” she said during a March 22 debate on Baltimore affiliate WJZ. Behind her in the latest poll is former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, whose experience cuts both ways. Dixon has faced jabs over a 2009 embezzlement conviction, though in the WJZ debate, she said that doesn’t define her. ”My plans are very clear,” she said in the forum. ”I can hit the ground running the first day in office.” In a gentrifying midtown neighborhood,    business student Becca McKenny is excited to vote. But she’s been looking to social media to research candidates and is frustrated there’s not more information out there. ”I mean, hey, make a YouTube video,” she says. ”Make a short, do a skit. People are very artsy here in Baltimore.” I am totally expecting McKenny to say she supports Mckesson. But I am wrong. ”Sheila Dixon has been out there, she’s been hitting the streets,” she says. ”She even visited my apartment complex.” That was late last summer. McKenny says she was impressed by Dixon and considers her embezzlement conviction small potatoes. McKenny was among those who protested after Freddie Gray’s arrest and death last April, and says it feels as if not much has changed in the year since. ”I got pulled over by the police,” she says. ”Coming home from school, 10 at night, with  —   you see my pink neon backpack. And why?” A short drive away, near Gray’s neighborhood, Brian Mcalily wants a new mayor to change the way police treat people. ”Do like we used to do in the old days,” he says. ”The police need to come out here and shake hands with everybody, get to know the neighborhood.” Political analyst Roger Hartley says there’s widespread frustration. With a lame duck mayor and at least a third of the City Council also set to change, he says it has left a vacuum. ”Not a lot has been done and it’s almost like there’s been a hold button placed right now, to see who’s going to be the next leadership,” he says. The Democratic primary is April 26, and Baltimore’s next mayor may face a leadership test soon after. The trials of the police officers charged with Freddie Gray’s death have also been on hold and are set to start again next month."
"No, this isn’t news. If you haven’t yet, you should definitely check out the latest on   marriage in China, the coal industry, Bernie Sanders and Chicago policing. But once you’re caught up, you should take five minutes to watch this marble race. And you don’t have to take our word for it. .. Mental Floss  —   experts on  ’  videos: ”For a dozen inanimate objects in the sand, this is surprisingly engaging.” The A. V. Club  —   experts on pop culture: ”This dumb little marble race is absolutely thrilling.” Deadspin  —   experts on snark and sports: ”I need you to trust me on this. . .. I promise you will be entranced.” Enough hype for you? Put on your headphones, pick your favorite marble and, whatever you do, don’t read any spoilers in the comments: If you’ve still got some time on your lunch hour, you can help us craft the perfect reply to a persnickety Deadspin commenter. User thgyhgb2  —   ironically, perhaps?  —   scoffed: ”Every second you watch your little ”marble race” could be spent reading the works of Dostoevsky and even the great Shakespeare. I won’t be joining you on this fool’s errand. Good day.” Which got us to thinking, and then to riffing. With apologies to William and Fyodor . .. Who could forget the Feast of Racing Day speech in Henry V, when the king looks ahead to the day when old men will remember the most thrilling moment of their lives: . .. then shall our names. Familiar in his mouth as household words Roundy the Red, Purple and Diamondy, Dark Red and Dark Blue, Ol’ Number 3 and Yellow, Be in their rolling lanes freshly remember’d. This story shall the good man teach his son And Racing Day shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But spheres in it shall be remember’d We few, we happy few, we band of marbles For he   that rolls his ball with me Shall be my brother be he ne’er so square, This day shall round off his condition: And spinning stones in England now   Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their marblehoods cheap whiles any speaks That rolled with us upon Great Racing Day. Or Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov’s grim vision of a meaningless afterlife, as described in Crime and Punishment: ”We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, beige and sandy and marbles in every corner, and they’re racing, and some of the marbles happen to roll faster than others, and that’s all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.” ”Can it be you can imagine nothing juster and more comforting and any less arbitrary than that?” Raskolnikov cried, with a feeling of anguish. . .. Svidrigaïlov raised his head, looked at him, and suddenly began laughing. ”Only think,” he cried, ”half an hour ago we had never seen a marble race!” If you want to keep the ball rolling, you can have a go of it in the comments."
"Part of NPR’s Your Money And Your Life series, ”How many of you guys have $1, 200 in your pocket right now?” Victor Robertson’s voice echoes through the auditorium at Ballou High School in Washington, D. C. where 700 students are taking their seats. Robertson is from the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which connects 13, 500 young adults with summer jobs at places like CVS and the Department of Parks and Recreation. Robertson explains the difference between a checking account, a savings account and a prepaid debit card. ”If you open a bank account, that’s establishing a relationship with a bank,” Robertson says. ”Your money is safe in a bank. It’s safe and it’s insured.” For many of these students, this summer is the first time they’ll get a paycheck. So, Robertson says it’s time to talk money. Robertson has seen the surveys and heard the statistics that show how woefully uniformed Americans are about their finances. This situation has prompted both federal and state efforts to increase financial education. But there’s a problem: Research suggests financial education may not lead to better financial choices. That doesn’t mean we should stop teaching about money. It just means we need to do it better. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, Gregory Hoey says nobody ever sat down ”and talked to me about having an account until I got into the program.” He’s standing off to one side in the auditorium. Gregory did the Summer Youth Employment Program a few years ago. He was a camp counselor at basketball camp. ”I learned a lot. How to basically be a young adult,” the    says. ”Like if there are some shoes or something coming out, I got bigger priorities now.” Gregory’s not buying shoes because he wants to buy a car. But he says he’s still figuring out exactly how to budget and set financial goals. Across town, Richard Cordray wants to help. He’s the director of the U. S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and he’s pushing for more people to talk about money. ”Often families are reluctant to talk about money issues. And, so, if not in the home then where?” he says. ”School is the natural answer.” Seventeen states require students to take some sort of personal finance course, and five states require a semester of financial education. Research commissioned by Cordray’s office looks at many studies that evaluate this type of education. Here is what it found: In the short term, personal finance classes sometimes lead to better scores when students are quizzed on subjects like credit, debt and banking. But these classes don’t necessarily lead to better financial decisions. There’s no clear link between taking personal finance classes and saving more, paying off debts or raising your credit score. But there are techniques that seem to work. First, ”people have to understand where they may need to go and get more information,” Cordray explains. Since financial products are always changing and people are prone to forget the specifics from class lessons, researchers suggest it might make sense to focus on teaching high schoolers how to find the financial facts they’ll one day need. Second, students should get out there and practice. ”Experiential learning,” Cordray says, ”has been shown to be very effective at reaching young people.” Researchers suggest lessons such as following the stock market or getting lots of credit card offers and comparing them. Third, good old math class. Other research has found that requiring high schoolers to take more math leads to better credit, higher returns on investments, and fewer foreclosures. Cordray says math teachers could also make more assignments about money, such as budgeting or calculating compound interest.  Finally, many experts recommend ”  ” financial education. This is when you learn about a very specific topic, just before you do it. So teaching high schoolers about mortgages is not very helpful. But a class on college loans is useful. And a class on credit scores just before a young adult gets a credit card could make a big difference. That’s the model D, C. ’s Summer Youth Employment Program is following. Just before this auditorium full of high schoolers starts earning money, they talk about bank accounts, credit scores and taxes. Tyandra Ames is appreciative. ”I’ve heard credit score before but nobody has explained it to me” before today, she says. Tyandra is a senior at Ballou High School. She has 13 siblings and says that alone has taught her about saving money. ”I learned how to not want so much and not to need so much.” Tyandra is now getting ready for college. She’s about to open her first account and will be living on her own for the first time. She says all of this makes her a bit nervous. She wishes there was a class to explain it all: ”This is what to do. This is what not to do. This is a credit card. This is a debit card. That is your credit score. Like break it down, a little bit.” Tyandra Ames wants a class about money  —   and she wants one that is actually effective. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, an online community featuring stories from some of the best investors and financial experts on the planet along with crowdsourced wisdom curated and overseen by NPR reporters and editors."
"Are you ready for some more uncertainty about blood pressure treatment? Decisions about blood pressure have gotten more difficult over the past couple of years as experts in the U. S. have failed to reach consensus on recommendations about when drug therapy should be started. Now there’s new evidence that could make the decisions even more challenging. Let’s review first where there is agreement. Around the world, high blood pressure causes a lot of harm. Your risk of health problems  —   such as heart disease, stroke and kidney disease  —   increases with higher blood pressure. Your lifestyle can influence your blood pressure. A healthful diet, at least moderate physical activity and weight control can bring down your blood pressure. Those are good habits for everyone, in fact. Medicines can help reduce the risk for people with higher blood pressure, say 150 millimeters of mercury and above for systolic pressure, the top number. Too many people have untreated and uncontrolled marked elevations of blood pressure and many devastating health problems could be prevented if we could help people get proper treatment. What about medicines for people whose blood pressure is high but less than 150? Most doctors agree that people younger than 60 would do well to keep their blood pressure less than 140. The consensus is that the benefit of drugs for those who didn’t respond to lifestyle changes exceeds the risks of treatment. Some believe that for older patients, who may be more sensitive to medications, the recommendations should be more permissive and not push for treatment that brings blood pressure below 140. Then there’s the SPRINT trial, whose results were released last November and suggested that people without diabetes, even older people, would benefit by seeking to get their blood pressure down to around 120. Another study, called   for short, added important evidence about the treatment of blood pressure that will further unsettle the field. The findings were published April 2 by in The New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers in the study randomized 12, 705 people with at least one cardiovascular risk factor (like high cholesterol) to get blood pressure medication or placebo. At the time of randomization, the average systolic blood pressure was 138. Some people’s pressures were higher and some were lower, or course. In fact, a third of the people had a beginning blood pressure less than 132. So what did   find? The blood pressure medications worked. Study participants in the group that got blood pressure medicine had their systolic blood pressure lowered about 6 points more than those in the placebo group. However, after almost six years of   the investigators determined that lower blood pressure didn’t translate into lower risk. The risks of death from cardiovascular causes, heart attacks, strokes and other problems weren’t different between the groups. The investigators explored the data further and found some evidence that the group in the highest third of blood pressure at the start (an average top number of 154) seemed to have a lower risk, while the group in the lowest third at the start (average of 122) seemed to do worse. These analyses were planned at the outset of the study, so we tend to give them a bit more weight. So what happened?   used common antihypertensive medications, an angiotensin receptor blocker called candesartan and a diuretic called hydrochlorothiazide. Could the results be explained by something about these medications? Participants in the study had an average age of 65 years, about half were women, a quarter were smokers and almost all were overweight. Was there something special about them? Or could it be that pushing blood pressure to   levels, even in a group at modest risk of heart disease and stroke, is just not producing benefit? We don’t know for sure. The field is waiting eagerly for the next version of national guidelines about blood pressure. A group of experts in the field will look at all the evidence and give its opinion about whom to treat and when. But how useful will general guidelines be for individual patients, given the conflicting evidence? How confidently will the experts be able to recommend strategies for people in the middle range of blood pressure? The ultimate decision about treatment for each person should be informed by the fact that a definitive benefit hasn’t been consistently shown for lowering blood pressure below 140 in people without known disease (we call this primary prevention). The results of the   indicate that the lower your blood pressure is, the less likely you are to benefit from starting drug therapy. As always, if your blood pressure is in the range where there is controversy and you want to lower your blood pressure, your best first move is to adopt a healthful lifestyle and see what happens  —   and, of course, talk with your physician. Meanwhile, experts will be poring over the recent studies to try to reconcile the disparate results. In medicine, we like it when the latest data bring clarity to personal decisions about treatments. But the reality is that studies often go in different directions and leave us even more uncertain about what to do next. That uncertainty, though, is still important information as you consider your options. The disappointing conclusion about blood pressure is that we need more studies and more evidence. We also need better evidence  —   information that is more precise about what is likely to happen to us personally if we take medications for blood pressure. We need to move faster to get the knowledge that is attuned to our personal characteristics and that can guide our decisions about the blood pressure number that’s best and also the drug that would work best for each of us, if we need one. This is the hope of President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative. Given the mixed evidence we have, this new era of knowledge cannot come fast enough. Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist and the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. He directs the   Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation and is a   of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program."
"There has been a carefully guarded secret in medicine: Evidence is often inconclusive, and experts commonly disagree about what it means. Most medical decisions aren’t cut and dried. Instead they’re usually made with uncertainty about what is best for each person. This uncertainty secret has been revealed in a very public disagreement among experts about who should be treated for high blood pressure. The controversy hinges on the level of blood pressure that should serve as a trigger for treatment. The new guidelines says that people 60 years and older can seek a systolic blood pressure goal (the top number) of 150 or less. The old guidelines says that 140 or less should be the goal. But now some experts who were part of the group responsible for the new advice seem to have changed their minds. They’re publicly splitting from the new guidelines that still bear their names and saying the old, lower treatment goal is the one to follow. With more than 30 million Americans with high blood pressure and billions of dollars spent on drugs to treat it, this issue has substantial implications for many patients and financial consequences for the drug industry. I have heard from patients who feel uneasy about being in the middle of this dispute. There are people who are on three medications and wondering if, based on the new recommendations, they should change their regimen and decrease the number of drugs. These people needed multiple medications to get their blood pressure below 140, and now the new guidelines question whether that number of drugs was necessary. There are others who would have been started on drug treatment under the old recommendations, but would be   under the new ones. People with the same blood pressure might choose different approaches  —   and they can both be right  —   because the scientific evidence can only take them so far. Many people wonder how doctors could disagree on a recommendation that has such   impact. To be clear, there is strong evidence and little disagreement in many areas related to the treatment of high blood pressure. For example, there is strong agreement that it is preferable to use lifestyle interventions rather than medications. Diet and exercise should always be the first option. And there is also agreement about the large benefit for patients from the treatment of very high blood pressure. But what is notable right now is that a fundamental recommendation about what should be the goal of therapy is no longer considered to be a treatment tenet that can’t be violated. There is open disagreement about it. This dispute signals clearly that there are options for patients. The lack of consensus in the medical establishment is a good opportunity for personalization according to patient preference (which, by the way, I think should always be the approach). If you don’t like taking medications and want strong evidence of benefit to justify drugs before you start, then you may favor the more permissive target level. If you don’t mind drugs and want a lower blood pressure even though the evidence of benefit is unclear to some experts, then you would want to go with the lower goal. Both options are reasonable. Although it’s uncomfortable to be made aware of disagreements in medicine, patients should know that differences of opinion in medicine are common. What is rare is to have these differences explicitly acknowledged. One potential benefit from this dispute would be the start of a public dialogue about making   medical decisions amid uncertainty. In any case, we doctors need to learn to be comfortable with uncertainty, disclose it and help people make decisions in spite of it. The most important message for doctors is that these everyday situations call for us to be sure we’re allowing the preferences of patients to lead. Letting the secret out about our uncertainty may actually lead to better choices for patients. Krumholz is a cardiologist and the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. He directs the   Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation and is a director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale."
"Finding a new planet that orbits a distant star isn’t such a big deal anymore  —   astronomers have discovered around 2, 000. But no one knows if any of these planets has a moon. That might change this year, if a   project goes as planned. David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University, says his team will use some new techniques and one of the fastest supercomputers in the world to survey around 1, 000 planets. He expects the search to be detailed enough to catch even some pretty small moons, like the ones that orbit Jupiter. ”If we have that sensitivity that we expect to have and we don’t see anything, I would be very surprised,” Kipping says. Finding the first moon outside our solar system would be a big deal  —   partly because when it comes to places that life could call home, moons may outnumber planets. Any alien life that’s out there might well be on a moon. NASA’s   Kepler space telescope has revealed that around 2 percent of   stars have a rocky planet orbiting in the region where temperatures are right for liquid water to exist. But there are five times more gaseous planets in that habitable zone  —   and those gas giants could be orbited by smaller, potentially habitable moons. ”This question about the occurrence rate of moons is really salient to the question of whether we’re alone in the universe or not,” says Kipping. ”Because it does seem that gas giants are at the right position for life more often than rocky planets.” A couple of years ago, scientists reported that they might have found a moon orbiting a     planet. But what they saw might actually have been a small star with a planet. And because of the technique used to spot it, astronomers can’t be sure, Kipping says. ”It’s basically impossible to tell which of these two configurations is the real one,” he says. ”It’s certainly not like the type of moons we have in our solar system.” Kipping leads a small research team that’s taking advantage of the data collected by Kepler to do a systematic search for moons. He first started thinking about how to do this around five years ago, he says, and his team’s systematic hunt is the only one he’s aware of. ”I think it was seen as a little bit wild,” Kipping recalls. Though he wasn’t exactly mocked, he says, the general attitude of the astronomy community seemed to be ” ’OK, fine, he wants to do that, but he’s probably wasting his time.’ ” The success of Kepler’s planet hunting mission has made searching for moons seem less crazy. ”Kepler has discovered planets that are as small as our own moon,” Kipping notes. The Kepler telescope spent years staring at a bunch of stars, looking for little eclipses that meant a planet was passing in front of the star. Kipping and his colleagues are now taking each planet and analyzing exactly how it blocked starlight, searching for evidence that the planet was accompanied by a moon. ”It’s definitely very difficult,” Kipping says. ”But the payoff would be huge.” Checking a single planet for a moon takes a ton of computing power, he says. ”If you ran it on your laptop it would take you four years  —   of just letting it sit there for four years  —   before it would to be able to survey one planet.” His team has surveyed about 60 planets so far, and found no moons. But they’re getting better at the job, and now have access to more computing power. Rory Barnes, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, says the one question sure to be asked if and when the first moon is spotted is: ”Is there life on it?” To have a shot at determining whether a moon that’s light years away might be habitable, says Barnes, you’d like to see certain characteristics. ”I’d certainly like to see a moon that is at least the size of Mars,” he says. ”When you get to that size, then you can start talking about moons that maybe hold on to an atmosphere for a long period of time.” A telescope could potentially study that atmosphere and look for signs of living, breathing moon creatures. Life wouldn’t be likely on a moon that’s too close to its host planet, Barnes says, because such proximity can heat a planet up. For example, Jupiter has a nearby moon called Io, which is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. ”There are weekly supervolcano eruptions on Io,” says Barnes. ”It’s a really, really inhospitable place.” Scientists may find moons so far out that they’ll have to remain mysteries, because it will be too difficult to probe them in any way. Even in our own backyard, Jupiter and Saturn are circled by moons called Europa and Enceladus that are thought to have oceans. But whatever water might be there is hidden beneath miles of ice  —   for now, scientists can only wonder what might swimming around down there. ”It could be that 100 years from now,” Barnes says, ”we’ll know that the Earth is one of a handful of bodies in the solar system that is habitable and most of them are moons.”  The mere presence of a moon could also make a rocky planet more   says Kipping. Our own moon controls the tides and keeps the tilt of our planet stable. Take away our moon, and our climate would go haywire. ”We’re lucky to have the moon,” says Kipping. ”I love looking up at the moon. It’s lovely to look up in the sky and be able to see, with your own eyes, features of another world.”"
"When 276 girls were forced at gunpoint from their dormitory beds at a school in Chibok, Nigeria, on April 14, 2014, it sparked the creation of #BringBackOurGirls. The campaign, originating in Nigeria, became a global sensation as it pressured the Nigerian government and world leaders to rescue the girls from their Boko Haram kidnappers. In the first hours after the kidnapping, a few dozen girls escaped, but 219 girls in their teens essentially disappeared. Two years later, the world’s attention has waned. The kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls are still missing, with no indication of where they are or even how many are still alive. What if by some miracle the girls were brought back? You’d expect them to be welcomed with open arms, with love and support. In fact, there are some survivors of Boko Haram abductions who have returned to freedom. A February 2016 report by UNICEF and International Alert, a global   organization, estimates that Boko Haram has kidnapped as many as 2, 000 women and girls since 2012. Some of them have been rescued by military operations. Others waited for opportunities, screwed up their courage and ran. ”There’s a continuous trickle of women who have escaped on their own,” says Amy Pate, research director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. But freedom does not mean an end to their ordeal. Occasionally former captives go back to their homes, but often they end up in one of 17 camps in Nigeria set up to assist the thousands of residents displaced by war and terrorism in the country. ”Because of the danger of a Boko Haram attack, there hasn’t been much opportunity for media and human rights organizations to verify what’s happening,” says Adotei Akwei, managing director for government relations with Amnesty International, USA. The UNICEF report examined attitudes toward the former kidnap victims and their children, who were born of   sexual violence. ”They’ve been sexually abused, traumatized, malnourished and beaten,” says Pate. ”A lot of them have had children by the men who captured them. They’re seen as damaged goods, and their families may not want them back. They’re shunned.” The women are called ”Boko Haram wives.” Within the camps, they are also called ”annoba,” which means epidemic, an indication of a pervasive cultural fear that the victims’ exposure to the ideas of terrorists could become a   plague in communities. Their children, born after rapes or forced marriages, are sometimes called ”hyenas among dogs,” the report says. The babies are often perceived as having within them the bad blood of their fathers. ”A number of women who have not been able to make it to the camps might stay with relatives,” says Marco Simonetti, regional manager for West Africa of International Alert. ”They are the most at risk. They don’t have income. They’re stigmatized. We know of some who have engaged in prostitution because they need food.” Often outcast by members of their families, they can be better off even as ostracized members of refugee camps. Despite the dire straits faced by those who have returned, their fate is better than the hundreds who remain in captivity. Some were forcibly married to their captors. Many were enslaved to be cleaners and household workers for the terrorists. Some have been sold in the sex trade. Some have died. And a few have escaped. The terrorists have been using captured children and women as suicide bombers, according to the United Nations. And that makes things even worse for those who have gotten free of their captors. ”Everyone understands that the women are victims,” says Simonetti. ”But they’re still scared of them, afraid they might be suicide bombers. People are afraid the women have been brainwashed, putting even more pressure on these girls after months or years of being abused. It’s not the end of their struggle. It starts all over again.” The girls, women and children who escape captivity will need massive support. Their basic needs for shelter, food and medical care are, for the most part, being met. But they have less tangible needs as well. They need to feel secure in talking about their experiences. They need to feel accepted. They need to feel their children will be accepted. They might be suffering from PTSD, or from a syndrome called trauma bonding  —   psychological problems that will require specialized mental health counseling. ”Trauma bonding is when an abuser, or kidnapper, offers incentives, like better food or lodging or physical security for complying with demands. And any deviation from expected behavior is harshly punished  —   rape, violence, withdrawing food or shelter,” says Pate. ”That alternation between reward and punishment can create an emotional need for the kidnappers’ approval, even after the women are separated from them.” Establishing peace, security and stability after kidnappings, attacks and suicide bombings is the immediate priority in Nigeria. But communities need ongoing support to understand what happened to the survivors and to come up with ways to welcome them back into the fold. The work is starting. ”We’re working with a couple of organizations to establish baseline programs to work with community leaders,” says Simonetti. ”We want to challenge negative impressions of the victims. We’ve had debates on the radio where religious leaders and other people phone in. We’re also working with victims themselves, helping them to resocialize and talk to others who have had similar experiences.” The picture is bleak, and reconciliation likely will be an effort spanning a generation. Many of the returning kidnap victims were only children when they were taken. Simonetti sighs as he says: ”Some of these girls were 8 or 9 years old.”"
"The    trend has exploded recently. Across the country, menus proudly boast chicken raised by local farmers, pork from heritage breed pigs, vegetables grown from heirloom varieties. These restaurants are catering to diners who increasingly want to know where their food comes from  —   and that it is ethically, sustainably sourced. But are these eateries just serving up lies? Laura Reiley, the food critic for the Tampa Bay Times, wanted to find out. So she undertook a rigorous   investigation of Tampa’s    restaurants, tracking down their sourcing claims. Many of them turned out to be bogus. Reiley spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about her investigation, titled ”Farm to Fable.” An edited transcript of their conversation is below. You   dozens of these menus. You called the farms. And what did you find? Many of those local greens misted with unicorn tears are something else entirely. I think that there’s a powerful incentive to tell a story. We all want that story  —   it’s a big part of why we go out to eat. If a restaurant can give you that story about that pork chop that lived a happy and delightful life from the beginning to its very last minute, that’s great. And sometimes they’re actually serving you commodity pork. And it’s not just that  —   it’s like, what claims to be Florida blue crab actually coming from India. We did some DNA testing. It’s always illuminating when you do that. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to do that on seafood than it is on meat. And there’s no way of testing if someone says these are organic, local heirloom tomatoes, and actually they’re Mexican tomatoes, irradiated. There are no genetic markers or tests that will tell you that. What got me interested in this topic is I’ve done a lot of agriculture writing in the past couple of years in Florida, and met with a lot of farmers. And they’ve all groused about this a little bit. That they’re used as billboards at these restaurants. A restaurant may buy from them once or twice and then phase them out but keep them on the chalkboard or on the menu. You talked to one pork producer who walked you through the finances of raising a hog, slaughtering it for meat. And the price of that pork chop on the plate would have been something like $40. I think that we as Americans have really come to expect inexpensive food. We spend a very small amount of our disposable income on food, and restaurateurs have to cope with that. They have to figure out how to offer food to us at a price we will pay, while buying the best ingredients that they can. And often, as in any other business, it’s buy low and sell high. You confronted a lot of chefs about this, and a lot of them gave you the same answer. [They said] ”I guess that should come off the chalkboard.” There were plenty of people who were honestly surprised to find something was still on the chalkboard or still on their menu many months after they’d purchased that product, and many others that were just caught  . Your reporting was all done in Tampa, but is there any reason to believe that this problem is limited to this part of Florida? Oh, I’m sure it’s a widespread phenomenon. And I think it is a kind of arms escalation. In some ways, it may go back to the fact that maybe 10 years ago, when we started getting real farmers markets, we as consumers started being able to buy great produce and great heritage meats and those kinds of things. So it’s almost like restaurants needed to up the ante and claim even more extravagant boutique products on their menus  —   things that we, as consumers, couldn’t buy ourselves. So I understand why some of these claims are being made. So if I, as a consumer, want to dine out responsibly and want to support local agriculture without a huge carbon footprint  —   what should I do? You’ve got to ask questions. I mean, I don’t know how comfortable I’d feel at a restaurant asking to see their invoices. But I think we’re going to have to move in that direction where . .. there’s a little more consumer activism in terms of demanding more transparency in the provenance of where we’re getting our food. When you see those claims on the menu  —   naturally raised, or heritage breeds  —   I think that they should raise a red flag, and you should feel free to ask more questions. Is there a way to do it without being that obnoxious kind of diner who is straight out of the Portlandia sketch?  I think price point should definitely be an indicator  —   if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t true. If you see that $10 lobster roll, something is fishy. You’re pretty open in this article about the fact that you’ve written favorable restaurant reviews for some of these places that claimed    philosophy and didn’t stick to it. Is this reporting in a way a mea culpa? Absolutely. I’m embarrassed. Some of the places I’ve given the highest review in the past year and kind of swooned over their    stuff  —   I feel duped. If I went into it with the idea that I was paying a premium for a particular local food or a sustainably raised food and I got something else, it really doesn’t matter how it tasted. One of the things that surprised me in this article is that a lot of the chefs who really do adhere to the    ethos don’t wear it on their sleeves. I think there’s a lot of    fatigue among chefs. You know, it’s like the term foodie itself. It starts to take on a kind of bankrupt, yucky demeanor after so many people have misused it."
"Comic W. Kamau Bell finds humor in the parts of America that make him uncomfortable. Speaking to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, Bell likens his new CNN series, United Shades of America, to a travel show that takes him ”to all sorts of different places that I [am] either afraid to go, or you wouldn’t expect me to go.” ”I’ve always been a fan of [Parts Unknown host Anthony] Bourdain,” Bell says. ”I always thought if I had a show like that, you would replace food with racism. Instead of sampling the food, I would sample the racism or the culture.” On the first few episodes of United Shades of America, Bell, who is black, attends a Ku Klux Klan gathering, spends time at Daytona Beach during spring break and visits a gated retirement community. Bell says that it is a blend of curiosity and fear that drives him forward in his work. For the episode in which he met up with Klan members in the middle of the night, he says, ”I was more curious than I was afraid  —   until I got there and then . .. the fear sort of crept in.” On finding humor in his meeting with the Ku Klux Klan, The Klan is wrapped up in their mythology and I think they know they’re the boogeyman, and I think that they like that side of it. . .. There’s also a side of it where they’re also aware if they’re on a bright road wearing those outfits, they’re going to attract a lot of unwanted attention. They know those robes are as unpopular as I know those robes are unpopular. . .. All the Klan members I met who were dressed like that were on their own property or at night by the side of the road. Nobody was like, ”Meet me at a coffee shop in downtown Arkansas and let’s get together at the Denny’s and talk about this.” Nobody wanted that. On the demise of his former show, Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell, I was stranded in New York in an apartment that was way too expensive for a guy who didn’t have a job. I had one daughter she was 3 years old. . .. We [had] moved into an apartment that was the budget of a guy with a TV show and then I didn’t have a TV show . .. and [it] really felt like that was a referendum on me, because I put all of myself into that show. But at the same time, [I] was happy that it was canceled. We all worked really hard on that show, and when we went to four days a week, we weren’t ready for that. Also, I had a lot of friends on that show, and by the end, relationships had changed. People who had been my friends were now not my friends because now I was their boss. . .. By the end, I compared it to every Vietnam War movie, where everyone goes in their separate directions. . .. There was a real sense of I’m sad this is over, and thank God it’s over. On how he dealt with depression after the end of Totally Biased, I can’t slip off the planet. I can’t just give into it, so I have to slowly put one foot in front of the other. But there was a real sense if I had been not married with a kid, I would have booked that Dave Chappelle ticket to South Africa. . .. I would have disappeared for a while. I don’t mean in any sort of dangerous way, but I would have been like, ”I think I’m done with whatever this is.” But I couldn’t do it. And I slowly realized that the canceling of the show was probably better for my career anyway, because the show was sort of going by in drips and drabs at that point. We weren’t getting good ratings, we weren’t getting a lot of attention, the wear and tear was seen on my face. My friends who watched the show could see that it was hard for me, and when the show got canceled, it became like Woodstock  —   more people claimed they were there than who were clearly there. On having biracial daughters, It’s important to me that my daughter learn what I learned, that no matter how you feel you’re being treated by black people at any given time, those are your people. My wife knows that those are my daughter’s people. . .. We had a lot of conversations she understood that she was having a black daughter. . .. It was her parents that had to realize this. . .. My wife told me that at one point her mom came to her  —   I think while my wife was still pregnant  —   and said, ”So wait, Sammy is going to be black.” And my wife was like, ”Yes that’s true,” and her mom was like, ”OK.” In that tiny thing, was years of race discussions with my wife and her getting her family into the idea of, ”My boyfriend is this black guy my husband is this black guy.” There was a whole ”Circle Of Life” that happened in that moment that I wasn’t there for, but I was like, ”Yaaay.” On the advantages of being tall  There is nothing bad about being tall. . .. When you’re tall you sort of get more points, like people think you’re better looking. Tall people get paid more money generally presidents are taller than the average man. I feel like it’s been great for me to be tall because it gives me something in the world that sometimes being black takes away from me . .. and when need be, I can use my height and my size to my advantage to get out of difficult situations. For example, with the Klan, those guys are all pretty short. So as much as they hate a black guy, the       black guy is a different thing than maybe the black guy they imagined. So that’s a time to stand up taller, and to stand over people and go, ”Yes, can you tell me about this cross?” . .. That’s a benefit."
"One thing I’ve always loved about anthropology is its commitment to understanding humans by bringing to bear two divergent perspectives: evolutionary science, aimed at understanding the contribution of biology to our behavior, and field ethnography, a process whereby the anthropologist works to understand a social group’s lived experience in the modern world from the inside out. Now, a new paper by biological anthropologist Agustin Fuentes of Notre Dame University, coming in the June issue of Current Anthropology (and already available online in   format) suggests that anthropologists can, and should, do a much better job of bringing together these two frameworks. Fuentes writes that he wants to ”help frame a sincerely anthropological and emphatically evolutionary approach to the human experience.” Fuentes is weary of a heavy focus on genes and natural selection in the evolutionary modeling of human behavior, because this view of human phenomena  —   mating behavior, let’s say, or human aggression  —   misses the richness of being human. We need, and in fact we have at hand, new tools to bring   messy complexity into evolutionary modeling and to recognize feedback across different levels of selection beyond the individual. Niche construction theory is one of these tools. In undertaking work in a   extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) framework, Fuentes builds on the work of biologist Kevin Laland at the University of St. Andrews. Earlier this week, I had this email exchange with Fuentes  —   edited here for length and clarity. Is there a way you could put into accessible language the key concepts of EES and niche construction theory? A niche is a combination of the ecology in which an organism lives and the way it makes a living in that ecology. Niche construction is when organisms shape the world around them making their ”niche” better for them and their offspring. Humans are massive niche constructors. Marriage rules, medical practices, growing food, building shelters, tools, clothes, and so on all shape the world around us and effect evolutionary pressures on us. Most people think ”survival of the fittest” is a ”thing” and DNA and genes are all that really matters. Both counts are wrong. Evolution is an awesome mix of bodies, ecologies, behaviors, chemistry and history. We know more about how life works, and the range of systems that impact it, than ever before. I paraphrase Laland and his colleagues to summarize what we know: Organisms are constructed in development, not simply ”programmed” to develop by genes. ..things don’t ”evolve” to fit into environments, they   and   with their environments. You seem equally sympathetic to   anthropologists who want updated understandings of evolutionary theory to be included as we work to understand the human experience, and to sociocultural anthropologists who find existing popular evolutionary models to be too reductive. Can you give an example of the popular evolutionary approaches you mean, that are in fact too reductive? One approach [that is too reductive] is to think our DNA, our bodies, and our behavior are primarily shaped by pressures of reproduction and survival (it’s all natural selection, or at least the important parts are). Natural selection explains our nature. For example, men are hunters, men are violent, males evolved to be violent because it helped them as hunters. [On this view] there must be a gene (or a few genes) that led to this state. For example take Monoamine oxidase A (known as MAOA and called the ”the warrior gene”). One version of this gene is associated with hyper aggression in males (it is little studied in females). However, expression of this gene is related to childhood stressors and life experience. We see that a slightly larger percentage of men with the ”aggressive” version of this gene (compared to those without it) who live through real childhood trauma and social stress are highly violent and have trouble controlling their behavior as adults. But many of those with the ”warrior” version of the gene don’t have these problems at all (me, for example). These same kinds of complexities are true for serotonin, testosterone and the other hormones and neurotransmitters associated with aggression. There is no consistent system or pattern in the human body or mind that we can point out as the seat or the main actor in aggressive behavior. Violence is not a single thing and MAOA research demonstrates all sorts of complex and mixed effects (and many of them have nothing to do with violence). Much ink has been spilled over the years on the ”anthropology is at war with itself” meme, highlighting the split between anthropologists who cede great explanatory power to selective forces and those who focus heavily on sociocultural explanations for human behavior. In its tone and specificity, I found Fuentes’ article fresh and appealing. He proceeds with balance rather than playing up this divisiveness. Reductive evolutionary accounts of human behavior aren’t the only game in town. Attention to more expansive, rigorous models can fuel exchanges across scholarly factions. Further, in a concrete example focused on what he calls sexual partnering (a more apt term for sexual bonds and alliances, he believes, than ”mating”) Fuentes lays out the dynamic feedback he envisions in niche construction across three levels: individual, group and community. He explains, for instance,   social processes that, as people go about expressing their sexuality, ”create social landscapes and contexts that become their own structured and structuring feedback systems.” Fuentes himself calls his paper ”an oversimplification” of human dynamics, and my summary exacerbates the matter by oversimplifying what he’s done. Remember though, it’s all open access, so you can read his argument for yourself. I see Fuentes’ take as a welcome step in linking ”the human cultural experience in all its complexity and dynamism to evolutionary models,” as he puts it. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape."
"Saying its customers ”have a right to know when the government obtains a warrant to read their emails”  —   and that Microsoft has a right to tell them about gag orders  —   the tech giant has filed a lawsuit against the U. S. Justice Department. Microsoft is asking a judge to declare part of a federal law, specifically 18 U. S. C. § 2705( b) unconstitutional under both the First and Fourth Amendments. As NPR’s Aarti Shahani reports for our Newscast unit: ”According to the complaint filed in district court in Seattle, the company received about 5, 600 demands for customer data from September 2014 up through last month. And nearly half of those came with gag orders  —   forbidding Microsoft to tell said customers that the government was looking at their emails or calendars or other files stored in the Microsoft cloud. And of those orders, the vast majority had no time limit.” In its complaint, Microsoft says the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which dates to 1986, lets courts order companies not to inform customers whose email or other private information is being sought by the government. The company says the law lacks both a time limit for the secrecy orders and a useful threshold, as it requires that authorities have ”a ’reason to believe’ that disclosure might hinder an investigation.” Aarti adds, ”The Justice Department did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for comment.”"
"On Tuesday, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced a plan to send interstellar probes to the Alpha Centauri star system. The audacious project would use a giant laser on Earth to accelerate scores of    spacecraft to nearly the speed of light. They would cross the void in just 20 years  —   virtually no time on the scale of interstellar travel. The plan for ”Breakthrough Starshot” laid out at the news conference looks both ambitious and exciting. But if it’s really going to work, there are several    problems these   star trekkers will have to overcome. Do You Have A Permit For That Planetary Laser? Starshot’s tiny probes are supposed to be given a big push by a mammoth 100 gigawatt laser back on Earth. A laser that powerful could also fry anything in its path, including orbiting satellites. ”If somebody says, ’Hey look, I’m concerned about you hitting a potential satellite,’ ” says Pete Worden, the project’s leader. ”We won’t fire when it’s in the way.” Worden admits the people of Earth are unlikely to take the Starshot project at its word. ”We anticipate that there would be international agreements in control of this,” he says. The team will work with all countries to get the necessary permits in order. Houston, We Had A Problem . .. Last Year, Once the hundreds or thousands of probes leave our solar system, they would be on their own in more ways than one. Physics dictates that communications between Earth and the probes can’t happen faster than the speed of light. That means if one of the probes runs into trouble a light year into its journey, then it will take a year for its distress call to reach home. It will take another year for mission control’s instructions to reach the little craft. It’s safe to say that in the two years it takes to get help, the probe will have either fixed itself or died. Millions? Try Billions, Milner, the Russian entrepreneur, has put up $100 million of his own money for the project. That sounds impressive, but in the space business, it’s peanuts. The New Horizons probe that zipped past Pluto last year cost $722 million. Pluto is 3 billion miles from Earth. Alpha Centauri is 25 trillion miles away. In other words, getting 0. 012 percent of the way to Alpha Centauri cost seven times as much as this week’s pledged funding. Milner acknowledged this, but hopes his seed money can get things started. Keeping The Project Alive. Literally, Thus far, humanity has managed to send only one craft into interstellar space: the Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977. In the time it’s taken to get out there, many of the scientists and engineers involved in the program have moved on, retired or died. While Starshot hopes to make its journey in two decades, Milner admits it will take ”a generation” to prepare for the trip. Keeping a workforce going for that long, and making sure that key knowledge about the complex project isn’t lost along the way could be the final frontier  —   of the HR department. How Does ET Phone Home? Experts agree there is no proven technology that would allow something the size of a postage stamp (or even a cellphone) to send a signal across trillions of miles of interstellar space. Figuring out how to do it is a top technical priority for the Starshot team, and perhaps its most important challenge. Without a reliable way to send pictures and data home, the entire mission could end in failure, warns Bruce Betts, director of science and technology for the Planetary Society. ”If you could fly to a forest, and you could see a tree fall, but you can’t mention to anyone, did it really matter?”"
"Bloodletting to keep the ”humors” in balance was a leading medical treatment from ancient Greece to the late 19th century. That’s hard to believe now, in the age of   surgery, but ”doctors” trusted lancets and leeches for centuries. To Nobel laureate Carl Wieman, the college lecture is the educational equivalent of bloodletting, one long overdue for revision. ”It’s a very good analogy,” the Stanford professor says. ”You let some blood out and go away and they get well. Was it bloodletting that did it, or something else?” The large college lecture  —   the cornerstone of undergraduate education in America and much of the world today  —   is similar, Wieman argues. ”You give people lectures, and [some students] go away and learn the stuff. But it wasn’t that they learned it from lecture  —   they learned it from homework, from assignments. When we measure how little people learn from an actual lecture, it’s just really small.” For Wieman, the fact that most colleges and universities don’t even bother to systemically measure teaching quality is the bigger problem festering in higher education. Administrators, he argues, are instead obsessed with publishing and research funding, which remain the bedrock of tenure and promotion. ”The quality of teaching is not something that university administrators are rewarded for, and correspondingly know or care about,” Wieman says. ”If they improved the quality of teaching by 100 percent and in the process reduced the amount of research funding and publications by 1 percent, they would be penalized, since the latter is carefully measured and compared across institutions, while the former is never measured.” Wieman won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2001 for creating what’s called   condensate in a dilute gas, or, as he puts it with a grin, ”getting atoms really, really cold and they do weird quantum things!” As a scientist and experimentalist, his work as a professor in both Stanford’s physics department and its graduate school of education is driven by data. For years, even before arriving in California, he’d measure the effectiveness of lectures versus other   methods of teaching. He’d give a lecture. Then, 20 minutes later, he’d follow up with a   question from the material he had just covered. Handheld electronic ”clicker” devices would record the students’ responses on his computer. Most of the time, he says, ”only 10 percent would actually remember the answer. A lot of them are asleep, or lost, and I don’t know whether they’re getting anything out of it. If I’m standing up there talking at them, I have no clue what they’re absorbing and not absorbing.” ’Active Learning’ Convinced that big undergraduate lectures are ineffectual, Wieman long ago ditched those big performances in favor of getting students to  . He gets them actively engaged with course material, working in smaller groups. The techniques have become known as an   ”active learning” style of teaching. Here’s what that looks like in one of Wieman’s introductory quantum mechanics courses at Stanford: He starts the class with some slides. ”We’ve talked about how to get even one wave packet like that if we just have a single value momentum,” Wieman says, offering up a kind of  . But Wieman quickly switches to giving these undergraduate physics majors a problem to discuss and think about in small groups of four or five. As students talk through the problem, he walks around the room, just listening in on conversations. He chimes in if a group seems stuck. ”OK, so you can think about how you might produce something like that?” he tells one group. ”That’s your challenge.” Wieman sees himself as a kind of cognitive coach rather than the classic ”sage on the stage,” delivering knowledge. His lecturing, such as it is, is merely to prime the undergrads to grapple with the concepts and key questions on their own and try to figure out what’s important  —   or not. ”I’m doing my best to understand what’s going on in every one of those students’ minds and challenge them and monitor how they’re learning,” Wieman says. ”If I’m just lecturing the whole time, what a terrible waste that would be. Half the material would be over their head, and half the material would be completely trivial to them.” His techniques are grounded in data, and evaluations of active learning methods  —   published in several   journals and science publications  —   show that students get a deeper understanding of the material and retain more knowledge. In some cases, the failure rate fell by 12 percent. Test performance went up by half compared with pure lecturing. In fact, Wieman argues, the data on the power of these techniques are so persuasive, it’s almost unethical to teach undergraduates any other way. ”I know you can double how much a student learns depending on what method the instructor is using.” The Obstacles  But if the research, so far, is so convincing, why haven’t more colleges and universities adopted these teaching methods? It’s not a matter of budget, Wieman contends: ”The amount of time needed for faculty to learn to teach using these better methods is a small fraction of the annual budget of any science department, if the faculty want to learn.” ”I don’t think Carl is tilting at windmills at all,” agrees Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. ”You need to get this in the air you need to let people know this is possible. Somebody’s got to do this.” Schwartz shares some of Wieman’s passion for the need to overhaul undergraduate teaching. He’s seen the data on active learning in science and his own field of cognitive psychology. The large lecture, and racing through material, he says, ”doesn’t allow you to slow down to see the beauty of what you’re learning.” The goal, he says, is not to train students, but to prepare them to learn once they leave. ”But a lot of the college instruction is still kind of a training mentality: They have to have mastered this before they move into the next course. I think that’s a mistake.” But Schwartz has a somewhat different explanation for why the tenets of active learning have yet to be more widely embraced: ”The literature on how to do this stuff is a giant mountain of goo.” In other words, he says, ”I can tell people they need to teach better. But if I don’t give them things that are easy for them to implement, they won’t do it.” He says it’s much the same story in  . And, like teachers everywhere, some professors are simply reluctant to change, or see lectures as vital and an art form. Wieman, for his part, is convinced that the biggest structural obstacle is higher education’s entrenched tenure machine. Advancement and promotion are still far too focused on productivity, research and research dollars, with little or no regard to undergraduate teaching effectiveness.  ”Are faculty teaching using the most effective methods at Stanford versus Harvard versus Ohio State? There’s no way you can find that out. They don’t even look at it! It’s like you’ve got a hospital and you’re not bothering to check if your doctors are using antibiotics or bloodletting,” Wieman says. And many top administrators, he says, don’t seem to care. ”Of the 30 presidents of leading universities that I have met, I have never encountered one that knew anything about the research on learning or the comparative effectiveness of different methods of teaching.” Islands Of Change  Only a handful of universities  —   mainly at the department level  —   have adopted these teaching methods in a major, sustained way. At Stanford, the physics and math departments have begun adding innovative, active learning techniques to some introductory math and core physics courses. Wieman says the results have been striking: Students in the active learning sections did substantially better than the students in the traditionally taught classes on all common exams. Attendance and positive feedback to professors rose substantially as well. Other schools are adopting these new techniques as well  —   some of them places where Wieman has taught. One is the University of Colorado, Boulder, which, as we’ve reported, helped launch a national effort to improve science education on campuses and   classrooms. Another is University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where Wieman also taught.  Ironically, it was one of his lectures on the death of lectures that inspired a professor of teaching there, Sara Harris to put aside her research on paleoceanography to work full time on improving science education. ”First term here, I saw a talk by Carl. And I thought, ’That’s what I want to do,’ ” Harris says. With Wieman’s help, she says, most science professors at UBC have substantially changed and improved how they teach. But relatively few other institutions have followed suit. Wieman believes that until administrators and faculty leaders prioritize teaching, schools will continue to shortchange undergraduates. ”Improving education is a profoundly important issue in the modern world,” he says sitting in his Stanford office. ”There are a lot of really hard problems that you don’t know how to solve. And this is one I and many others do know how to solve.” The hard part may be convincing more people to sit up and pay attention."
"Could swallowing the eggs of a parasitic worm help treat a disease? It might just work in some cases, according to the work of P’ng Loke and Ken Cadwell, two researchers at New York University who study parasites and the immune system. Several years ago, Loke got an intriguing phone call from a man with inflammatory bowel disease. It’s an extremely unpleasant illness. Symptoms include chronic painful abdominal cramps, diarrhea and fatigue. The man told Loke that he had become so desperate that he had undergone a risky treatment in Thailand. It involved swallowing worm eggs and letting the worms, or helminths, hatch in his gut. ”When I heard what he had done, I thought he was crazy,” says Loke. But it wasn’t quite as crazy as it sounded at first. There had been previous work, including reports from the University of Iowa, that showed people got relief from doing this. Mild infections with worms can go largely unnoticed. People with more serious infections can have bloody stools and other symptoms. After hearing about the man’s trip to Thailand, Loke and Cadwell decided to investigate. Initially, they wanted to see if they could cure mice. To answer this question, scientists used specialized mice that mimic the human symptoms of Crohn’s disease. These mice have damaged intestinal cells and lack most of the protective mucus that coats the intestine. Loke and Caldwell suspected the helminths alter the bacterial population in the intestine. The intestine is a lot like a bustling metropolitan city, but populated with bacteria, not people. Just like a city, some of the intestine’s residents are helpful, and some harmful. The ratio of helpful to harmful bacteria plays a role in the development of many diseases, including Crohn’s. The researchers wanted to see if feeding parasitic worm eggs to mice would decrease the number of bad bacteria that are associated with Crohn’s and increase the numbers of helpful bacteria. When the researchers fed the mice worm eggs, the population of good bacteria, called Clostridiales, shot up. In contrast the amount of bad bacteria, called Bacteroides, went down. The mice also had reduced inflammation in the gut, an increase in the helpful   cells, as well as reduction in harmful intestinal abscesses. Loke and Cadwell published their findings Thursday in the journal Science. Great for mice, but what about people? The scientists weren’t ready to start feeding worm eggs to sick people, so they tried an indirect research approach. They surveyed a small population in Malaysia, called the Orang Asli tribe. The Orang Asli experience virtually no inflammatory bowel diseases, and a high percentage of them have chronic parasitic worm infections. Loke and Cadwell wanted to know: If we remove their worms, will we see an increase in harmful bacteria? The answer turned out to be yes. Before the worms were removed, the tribe members had higher levels of helpful bacteria and lower levels of harmful bacteria. After taking a deworming drug, that healthy ratio was flipped. Cadwell and colleagues concluded that parasitic worms increase the population of beneficial bacteria in both humans and mice. The specialized mice that the researchers use to study Crohn’s have a deficiency in a protein called Nod2. Some Crohn’s patients (about 25 to 30 percent) also have this deficiency. But Cadwell doesn’t recommend eating parasites to cure inflammatory bowel disease anytime soon. ”Treating yourself with intestinal parasites is not necessarily safe,” he says. ”Our hopes are that we can use a treatment that mimics the body’s immune response to the worms that will result in the same helpful change in the population of bacteria in the intestine” without the worms."
"Being a trailblazer is tricky: Sure, you’re recognized for doing something no one else had been able to pull off before. But you can also get stuck being ”the one who first. ..” and struggle to stick around as more people try what you’re doing. Carlos Santana has had to deal with both scenarios in a career spanning more than half a century. As I note on Alt. Latino this week, he and the other members of Santana made music history between 1969 and 1972. This week, we break it down and show you, practically measure by measure, how the band’s signature sound was developed. But we also consider how the musician dealt with his status over the decades: adjusting, pivoting, embracing, turning away from and returning to that magic mixture of   clave and blues. The original Santana lineup found spirituality in creating this music  —   and, now that the band is back together for a new album (Santana IV) and spring tour, it’s still tapping into that sense of something greater. For Santana fans, it’s exciting  —   after so many years of looking back on classic music  —   to get to wonder what might come next."
"It’s been more than a month since Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton met on a debate stage, and let’s just say they have a few things to work out. In that time, (to quote the MTV reality classic The Real World) the Democratic race stopped being polite and started getting real. From a distance, the candidates have argued over qualifications, campaign finance, taxes and speech transcripts. Thursday night, they can do it face to face. Here are four things we’re watching: 1. Will   release   tax   transcripts?: Clinton has released eight years of full federal tax returns, showing levels of personal income that could make just about anyone blush. Her campaign has been asking when Sanders will do the same. Sanders has only released the most basic information from his 2014 taxes and says his wife, Jane Sanders, prepares their taxes. Jane Sanders did say Monday night on Bloomberg that she plans to get their taxes done on time this year and she will get them out for the public to see. But there was no real commitment to release back taxes. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has been attempting to turn up the heat on Clinton, calling on her to release the transcripts from her paid speeches to companies like Goldman Sachs. He went on an extended riff about the speeches at a rally in Buffalo, N. Y. earlier this week. For her part, Clinton is still resisting releasing the transcripts, arguing she’s the only person running, Democrat or Republican, who is being asked to do this. She was asked about it in an editorial board meeting with the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the exchange got testy enough that the Republican opposition research operation America Rising sent around the audio. 2. Will they   the ’90s . .. again?  The 1990s and the legacy of Bill Clinton’s presidency are almost assured to be a topic, after last week’s confrontation between the former president and Black Lives Matter activists. Clinton was in Philadelphia campaigning for his wife when protesters interrupted his remarks. Clinton went on to deliver a    rebuttal of the activist’s concerns, including: his wife’s use of the phrase ”super predator” in 1996 the mass incarceration of people of color that many blame on the crime bill he signed in 1994 and the welfare reform bill he also signed. Much of this was at odds with the message Hillary Clinton has been trying to deliver in her campaign. Sanders’ campaign has tried to use Clinton administration policies to drive a wedge between Clinton and   voters, who in many states supported her overwhelmingly. Black voters are a key part of Clinton’s coalition, and if Sanders can erode that support, it will help him in New York’s primary. But the Clinton campaign isn’t taking it sitting down. 3. Will Clinton and Sanders get to talk about the issues they are pushing on the trail? In the   to debates, it sometimes seems like candidates are planting bread crumbs hoping the moderator follows them. Ahead of tonight’s debate, the Sanders campaign released a new campaign ad about the oil and natural gas extraction method known as fracking. Its target audience is likely not New Yorkers, but instead voters in Pennsylvania where fracking is controversial and hotly debated. The other target audience: Wolf Blitzer, who is moderating the debate on CNN. During a debate in March, both candidates were asked about their positions on fracking. Clinton’s was either nuanced, convoluted or politically calculated depending on how you see her. Sanders’ answer was short and to the point. It’s a debate exchange that more than any other in this campaign summed up the differences between the two candidates. Sanders’   guy tweeted it out recently. Meanwhile, Clinton has been pushing hard on the issue of gun control and   immunity. Sanders voted for an   bill protecting gun makers and sellers from some lawsuits. Then he backed away from that position, only to seemingly return to his original view in an editorial board interview with the New York Daily News. It’s an issue that Clinton hopes will play well in New York, and she’s held a couple of recent events with the families of gun violence victims. 4. Will they say all the stuff they’ve been saying on the trail when they are face to face? Clinton has been critical of Sanders’ New York Daily News interview. Though she never, in so many words, said Sanders wasn’t qualified, Sanders took it that way, briefly turning up the temperature of the rhetoric in a big way. Sanders, in recent campaign speeches, has been hitting Clinton hard on her paid speeches and campaign contributions. But in past debates he has seemingly held back (”damned emails,” anyone? ). Will he hold back this time? Will Clinton come out swinging, or will it be a nice, polite, wonky tea party as many of the past debates have been?"
"Bernie Sanders’ campaign took to Twitter on Thursday morning to denounce comments made by one of his surrogates at Wednesday night’s massive rally in Washington Square Park in New York City. It was more than an hour before Sanders took the stage, when Sanders supporter Dr. Paul Song said something that earned cheers from the crowd  —   and outrage from supporters of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. ”Medicare for all will never happen if we continue to elect corporate Democratic whores, who are beholden to Big Pharma and the   industry instead of us,” Song said. Song is an oncologist and an outspoken advocate for   health care in the country, something Sanders has proposed. But his choice of words caused almost immediate outrage, spurring the Twitter hashtags #DemocraticWhores and #WhoAreYouCallingAWhoreBernie. Song apologized on Twitter saying he wasn’t talking about Clinton, but instead members of Congress, who failed to pass a public option during the debate over the Affordable Care Act. This comes in a week when Clinton and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio were criticized for performing a skit that included a joke taken to be racially insensitive. It also points to the challenge of surrogates, who are an essential part of amplifying a candidate’s message, but sometimes go very far astray saying things that cause major headaches for the campaign. (Madeleine Albright, Gloria Steinem, Susan Sarandon, here’s looking at you)."
"Just how far could Republicans go to deny Donald Trump the party’s nomination? A delegate to this summer’s convention in Cleveland asserts that the GOP gathering could do anything it wants. Curly Haugland, a GOP national committeeman from North Dakota, told Morning Edition on Thursday of his interpretation of party rules. Not for the first time, Haugland declared that party rules do not bind any delegate to vote for any particular candidate. He argues that even delegates who are ”pledged” to Trump or other contenders due to state primary results are, in reality, free to do as they like. Custom, Haugland said, may dictate that delegates should support the winners of their state primaries. But the reality of the rules is that primary votes are ”absolutely irrelevant” come convention time. ”No matter what the popular belief might be,” he said, ”there is no connection between primaries and the actual convention.” In our interview and in other conversations, Haugland has cited the GOP’s convention Rules 37 and 38. He interprets these convoluted rules to mean that delegates may ”vote their conscience.” The rules do not explicitly say this. Rule 37 is a detailed explanation of the procedure for roll call votes. However, Rule 38 does say that no delegate may be ”bound” by the ”unit rule,” meaning that delegates from a state can’t all be forced to vote the same way. Haugland’s interpretation is by no means a unanimous view. It’s more widely accepted that delegates currently pledged to Trump, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, or others must support them at least on the first ballot. But if no candidate received a majority, delegates would necessarily vote in different ways on later ballots in order to resolve the impasse. Another of Haugland’s points is indisputable: ”When the convention convenes,” he said, ”the delegates adopt their own rules, which haven’t been adopted yet.” There is a standard template for conventions, but delegates could tweak the template, changing the game in any way that they want. The only real constraint is that their actions would be publicly known and therefore open to criticism. The latitude afforded delegates explains why it’s considered significant that Senator Ted Cruz has outmaneuvered Trump in several states, ensuring that as many delegates as possible are Cruz supporters. Haugland says his personal goal is to adopt a rule that assures delegates the chance to choose from a wide range of alternatives, including candidates such as Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio who have suspended their campaigns. Listen to our conversation at the link above."
"When    Amanda Lipp needed to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2010, her mom thought it would be easy to find a bed. Instead, Pam Lipp says, ”It was a nightmare.” Amanda had been admitted to a psychiatric crisis center during an episode of psychosis but she could stay there for only 72 hours. Lipp asked the crisis center for help finding her a bed and was told she was on her own. So Lipp plugged her phone into the wall in the waiting room and started calling one hospital after the next. They were all full. They wouldn’t reserve a spot when a bed opened, nor would they call to let her know. So she called each one every   to check. After eight hours, she found her daughter an open bed near their home in Fair Oaks, Calif. Usually, it’s someone on the emergency room staff or a medical provider making such calls, rather than a patient or caregiver. The result, however, is the same: Finding an available inpatient psychiatric bed in California can be extremely difficult. Many patients with acute psychiatric conditions spend days in hospital emergency departments. But how exactly to solve the problem has become a controversy in Sacramento. An Assembly bill backed by the California Psychiatric Association and the Steinberg Institute, a mental health policy organization, seeks to establish an online registry to collect and display information to help medical providers find psychiatric beds. But the California Hospital Association is staunchly opposed, saying that finding the right placement for a patient is much more complex than identifying an empty bed. The hospital group says a registry could actually hinder efforts to get patients appropriate treatment. The Assembly’s Committee on Health plans to hold the first hearing on the bill on April 12. Under the proposed legislation, AB2743, facilities with psychiatric beds would be required to update the registry as the beds became available, and emergency medical providers would be able to log on to search for openings. ”A bed registry would eliminate the need for rounds and rounds of calls over hours and hours. Why not just cut that time out and go straight to the source?” asks Anna Hasselblad, public policy director at the Steinberg Institute. California is facing a serious shortage of psychiatric beds, said Randall Hagar, director of government affairs for the California Psychiatric Association. As of 2013, there were 6, 680 beds in the state  —   about 17 per 100, 000 residents, according to a report from the hospital association. Mental health specialists recommend a minimum of 50 beds per 100, 000 people. In 25 counties in the state, there were no psychiatric beds at all. The issue isn’t unique to California. Nationwide, the number of state psychiatric beds is shrinking. In 2010, there were 50, 509 state psychiatric beds, a decrease of 14 percent since 2005, according to a 2012 report from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to removing barriers to treatment for people with mental illness. That’s a total of about 14 beds per 100, 000 Americans, and in some states including Arizona, Minnesota, Iowa, there are fewer than five. Adding beds is a   goal for many mental health advocates, but it’s a huge task that could take years. ”We have to use the beds we do have and we have to know where they are. It can be a hit or miss process. It needs to be more reliable,” said Hagar. ”We’ve heard instances where people were told there were no beds when in fact it turns out later that there were. An online registry would fix that issue.” It would also provide data on exactly what types of additional beds are needed and where, he said. The hospital association isn’t convinced it would work. ”On first blush, if you are not in the trenches, it seems like the best and easiest solution in the entire world. But the reality is that the bill will really increase the amount of time and the frustration people have trying to locate psychiatric   of care in our state,” said Sheree Lowe, the hospital association’s vice president of behavioral health. Beyond finding an open bed, staffers must also factor in the patient’s age, gender, illness  —   and its acuity. ”You have to take under consideration your staffing needs, the needs of the other patients, and the therapeutic milieu for the safety of all patients and all staff. And that’s not something you can put into a   menu,” said Lowe. Requiring hospital staffers to report all those changing dynamics in an online registry, she added, would be yet another administrative burden that could cut into   patient care. Many states have some sort of computerized tracking system for psychiatric beds, but few are mandatory. Lowe points to a recent effort in Virginia to create a mandatory registry similar to the one being proposed in California as evidence that they don’t work. In January, the Virginia state inspector general reported that more than half of users of the online registry said it takes longer to find a bed for a patient than it did before the registry was established, in part because hospitals were not accurately updating information about their beds. Hasselblad of the Steinberg Institute, however, said the issues with the Virginia system ”is a little bit of a   prophesy. We have to get the   from the people who will be updating the registry, because if you don’t believe it’s going to be useful to you, it’s not going to be useful to you.” One solution, she said, would be to include a fine in the bill for hospitals that do not keep the registry updated. ”Hospitals aren’t going to do this unless they’re absolutely mandated to.” Despite the opposition of the hospital association, the emergency room doctors who staff their facilities are generally supportive of the bill. Holding psychiatric patients for days in the emergency department is ”a worst case scenario for everyone involved,” said Elena   executive director of the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians. And she said the hospitals with psychiatric beds may be making the problem worse by trying to reserve beds for patients with private insurance. ”Our physician members have reported a significant level of difficulty in getting what they feel is an accurate assessment of bed availability,” said  . ”They might call the same facility in a short time for two different patients with different types of insurance, and get different answers on whether or not there’s a bed available. So our thought is that more transparency reduces the hospitals’ ability to hide available beds.” Lowe of the hospital association denies that psychiatric hospitals are holding beds, which would be a violation of federal law. Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman, the Stockton Democrat who wrote the bill, said she believes the bill has a good chance of passing. ”We are very hopeful,” she said. ”There’s a good coalition, and everyone is talking about mental health these days. This is a practical, small step we can take. It’s hard to argue against it.” Pam Lipp, who struggled to find a bed for her daughter, said the idea of establishing a registry is ”absolutely phenomenal.” ”Our situation is exactly the kind of situation that hopefully this bill will help,” she said. ”If I hadn’t done what I did, our daughter would most likely have been discharged, back on the street with nowhere to go, and we would have just repeated the cycle again. Maybe she wouldn’t have survived.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Jenny Gold is on Twitter: @JennyAGold."
"If ever a man had a theme song, it would be Julian Fellowes  —   and the theme tune from his hit show Downton Abbey. But now that Downton has ended, Fellowes has turned his flair for historical drama and romance to another story, set in another era. His new novel Belgravia is named for one of London’s poshest neighborhoods. It’s the story of a striving family harboring a big secret. It’s set during the 19th century, and in a tip of the hat to a major literary form of that era, it’s being released as a serial, with weekly chapters beginning today. And in a modern twist, it’s being delivered via an app. Fellowes begins his novel with a grand party that went down in history  —   actual history. On June 15, 1815, the British army was in Brussels, along with dozens of its officers’   families. Worry was in the air: Napoleon was drawing near, the Battle of Waterloo just days away, and the Duke of Wellington, in charge of the troops, wanted a diversion. ”Wellington felt that the sort of spirits of the town were sinking a bit, and he asked the Duchess of Richmond  —   who was a big pal of his  —   would she give a ball, and raise the sense that the British were completely confident, they didn’t care, they weren’t worried, you know, whatever Napoleon might plan, they were giving a ball,” he tells NPR’s Renee Montagne. ”And so she sent out the invitations, and then right at the last minute it was clear that Napoleon was actually on the march, and she did wonder if she should cancel it, but Wellington said no, I don’t want any sort of softening of our nerve. Go ahead.” And go ahead it did  —   until word arrived, after midnight, that Napoleon’s forces were dangerously close. ”And so all these young men had to go straight out to join their regiments, and those who died, several of them were still in their dress uniforms they’d worn for the ball,” he says. On the Trenchards, the fictional family at the heart of these real events, They’re sort of symbolic of the time that was coming, [father] James is very ambitious, he’s been the supplier to Wellington . .. It was a period where the Empire was expanding, we had more and more markets we could supply, and all of this was generating new fortunes, new men. And these powerful new   rich people were taking the reins. On the origins of afternoon tea, In 1841, it’s the first known example. The Duchess of Bedford invented it, because . .. luncheon had become slightly earlier, and dinner was sliding back through the evening. But the Duchess of Bedford thought it was too long a time to go with nothing to nibble on. And so although people had had a cup of tea when they liked one, and that was quite often in the afternoon, she was the one who invented the idea of having things to eat with it. Tea is a very unstructured feed compared to most of them for them, and it must have felt tremendously relaxed, rather like for us, having a picnic or something. On making Belgravia a serial novel, Well, I’ve written novels before, as I’m sure you know . .. very few people have written a serial novel with an accompanying app. I think that was the lure, that it was an exciting new adventure, to have this layered enjoyment, that you read the story, but you also go on the site, and you travel ’round the houses, and meet the characters. On following in the footsteps of Dickens, I’m a fan of Charles Dickens, I’m a fan of Trollope and all sorts of people, George Eliot, who published in this serial way .. their books were so long, they would start to write them and they’d start to publish before they finished the book. And then sometimes the audience response would alter how they developed the book. And that I’m incredibly admiring of, because I don’t think I’d have the nerve to do that. I think I needed to feel the book was complete before it could start going out."
"In January, a man returned home to Dallas after a weeklong trip to Venezuela. Two days later he got a fever, a rash on his upper body and face, and pinkeye. He was fine within three days. But about a week later, his partner developed similar symptoms  —   a rash, pinkeye and some joint pain in his hands and feet. He went to the doctor’s office, and a clever physician assistant thought of Zika virus. The day before the traveler’s symptoms set in, he had had anal sex with his partner. They’d been together for more than 10 years. They’d had sex again a day after the man recovered. The traveler hadn’t noticed anything unusual about his urine or sperm, and the couple didn’t use condoms. Suspecting sexual transmission, the physician assistant collected samples of blood from both men, and later collected semen, urine and saliva as well. Though the virus itself was no longer conclusively detectable in either of the men’s samples, a more thorough test showed that the man who had not traveled had been infected with Zika. The test results did not clearly show whether the traveler had had Zika or a certain type of dengue virus or both. But the researchers were able to rule out that the man who did not travel could have gotten it from a mosquito  —   it was too cold in Dallas in January for Aedes aegypti larvae to survive, and traps laid around the couple’s home only brought in a different species of mosquito not known to carry Zika. ”The second man had had a Zika virus infection and the only way he could have gotten it was from his sexual partner,” says Dr. John Brooks, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an author on the case report published Thursday by the CDC. ”We know that most STIs can be transmitted through anal sex and oral sex as well as vaginal sex,” says Brooks. So the fact that Zika can, too, is not a surprise, he says. The important thing, Brooks says, is that the finding is not just relevant to gay men. ”Anal sex is practiced not only by men who have sex with men, but also by heterosexual couples, and so it’s important to consider not the person’s sexual preference but the activity in which they’re engaging,” says Brooks. ”A woman who has anal sex could become infected with Zika virus.” The big question now is how long the virus can last in the semen of an infected man, and therefore how long he might be capable of infecting someone else through sex. It’s also unclear how likely it is that a man infected with Zika will shed it in his semen, and if that only happens with people who show symptoms of the virus. In the six reported cases, all the men with detectable virus in their semen had shown symptoms, but most people who get the Zika virus are asymptomatic. During a previous outbreak, the virus was detected in the semen of one man two months after his fever had set in. In a more recent case, researchers found the virus in the semen of a French traveler two weeks after he’d been sick (there was a lot more virus in semen than there was in blood or urine, leading them to wonder if the virus can replicate in the male genital tract). And a case was reported Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine of a woman in Paris who contracted Zika after having sex with a partner who had traveled to Brazil. Researchers isolated the virus from an infected man’s semen 24 days after his symptoms started. The two had had oral sex as well as vaginal sex without ejaculation. The authors write that the data ”support the hypothesis of sexual transmission (either oral or vaginal)” of the Zika virus. ”We cannot rule out the possibility that transmission occurred not through semen but through other biologic fluids, such as   secretions or saliva exchanged through deep kissing,” they write. There is no evidence that vaginal secretions of an infected woman can contain Zika virus. ”We really owe a debt of gratitude to the two men who came forward as well as to the extraordinarily astute clinician,” says the CDC’s Brooks. ”We really encourage clinicians and public health officials to report cases of suspected sexual transmission to their local health departments so we can get an idea of the biology of the cases.” Dr. Paul Mead, a CDC epidemiologist, says he’s working with state and local public health labs to get in touch with U. S. travelers who have tested positive for Zika. He aims to enroll 250 men in a   trial to understand how long the virus persists in semen and urine. There’s a similar trial in the works in Puerto Rico."
"This story is part of NPR’s podcast Embedded, which digs deep into the stories behind the news. Warning: Some of the images in the story are graphic. Gang violence is commonplace in El Salvador, one of the most violent countries in the world. But the capital city of San Salvador was brought almost to a standstill when gang members began murdering bus drivers one by one in July 2015. It started when a bus driver was shot and killed early one morning. Gangs issued a communique telling Salvadorans not to take public transportation. A few hours later, several more bus drivers were dead. Businesses and schools closed. Bus lines stopped running. Ultimately, eight drivers and one other transit worker were killed. On this episode of Embedded, Kelly McEvers travels to San Salvador to explore the dynamics behind these killings. On gangs’ hold in the country, Two big gangs  —   Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18  —   control much of the territory in El Salvador. Residents who live in one gang’s territory cannot cross into another gang’s territory. Business owners in a gang’s territory must pay renta, or protection money, to the gang. Those who cannot or do not pay might have to offer something else  —   a teenage son to work for the gang or a daughter as a bride for one of the members  —   or risk death. The government has been cracking down on the gangs, leading raids of known gang havens and placing gang leaders in maximum security prisons. Some Salvadorans say that hasn’t been working, though. Why gangs targeted bus drivers, Driver Mauricio Rendero was killed at 5 a. m. on a Monday morning while driving his bus last July. At his funeral, attendees sang. Relatives and some cemetery workers shoveled dirt onto a mound and hammered a cross into the dirt. ”What hurts me more is the way in which they have taken away my son,” the mother of the deceased driver says. Some local reporters speculate the gangs were killing bus drivers to assert control. Previously, the reporters say, imprisoned gang leaders were kept in a common prison with the general population. There, they could recruit new members and give orders to the outside. But the government placed the leaders in a maximum security facility, and some reporters say the gang leaders want to be returned to the general population. ”We don’t know why this happened, but we can tell you there’s a pattern,” says a police officer, addressing the press after another killing. ”You, too, have seen this pattern.” How one father copes with the violence, ”I’m a very spiritual person, honestly,” says Roberto, a local reporter. Roberto cries, hitting the steering wheel of his car as he tries to stop the tears. He says being part of a Catholic community has filled his heart with faith, hope and the belief that God is with him. ”We live in an area full of gangs,” he says. ”We try to live with them. We don’t mess with them. They don’t mess with us.” He says it’s the only way he carries on. ”It’s hard living surrounded by so much violence,” he says. ”To get home at night and for my daughter to say, ’How did your day go?’ And to say it was a good day because I got back home.” When his daughter asks him what he saw each day, Roberto says he lies. ”I can’t tell her I saw five dead bodies today,” he says. ”I can’t tell her, and so I lie to her. I say we went to the beautiful beach and we saw a beautiful mountain, even though she sees the television.” Editor’s note: A pseudonym was used to identify ”Roberto” because of the threat to his safety. This is an exception to NPR’s standard practice when anonymity is required. The exception was made because of the seriousness of the threat.  To hear more of this story, listen to Embedded. Keep up with podcast host Kelly McEvers on Twitter at @kellymcevers, and join the conversation using the hashtag #NPREmbedded. Want to dive deeper? Listen to Kelly’s conversation with WBUR’s On Point."
"Just more than 24 hours after powerful earthquakes struck a large island in southwest Japan, an even stronger quake has hit the same area. The Associated Press quotes a Japanese official as saying 19 people were killed, bringing the total for the two big quakes to 29. On Thursday evening local time, magnitude 6. 2 and 6. 0 quakes shook the city of Kumamoto and the surrounding area. They were followed by more than 100 smaller temblors, according to NHK  —   including several registering 5. 0 or stronger, the U. S. Geological Survey says. The series of quakes shattered buildings. Hundreds of others were injured. Then at 1:24 a. m. on Saturday, a magnitude 7. 0 quake hit nearly the same location, according to the USGS. It was quickly followed by aftershocks of magnitude 5. 8 and 5. 7. (Japan is 13 hours ahead of the U. S. East Coast.) The latest earthquake isn’t considered an aftershock instead, the quakes yesterday were foreshocks of the 7. 0 quake, NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce explains. She tells our Newscast unit that according to the USGS, the new quake ”is six times larger than the biggest one yesterday and released 16 times more energy.” The USGS also says the 7. 0 earthquake, like those on Thursday, was shallow  —   which is unusual for the region and can increase the degree of shaking and damage. ”I wouldn’t be surprised to see more damage  —   I wouldn’t be surprised to see more casualties than yesterday,” John Bellini, a geophysicist with the USGS, tells our Newscast unit. Japan’s Meteorological Agency issued a warning for a possible small tsunami, up to 1 meter in height, but has since lifted the warning. NHK reports that crews have been working to rescue people trapped inside buildings. The broadcaster also reports landslides, damaged roads and a break in a water reservoir. There are reports of further damage at the historic Kumamoto Castle, the wire service says the castle was damaged in Thursday’s quakes as well. The Sendai nuclear plant is within the area affected by the quakes Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority says no abnormalities have been found at the plant, according to the AP. (Sendai is currently the only nuclear plant operating in Japan. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami led to the Fukushima disaster, the country shut down all nuclear power plants to assess them for safety. Sendai was the first to reopen and is the only one currently operational.) The 7. 0 earthquake hit as Kumamoto prefecture was working on repairing damage from Thursday and bracing for bad weather. NHK reported that even before Saturday’s massive quake, officials with the meteorological agency had been concerned about forecasts for heavy rain and strong winds this weekend. ”The agency says the quake and aftershocks may have loosened the ground, and the stormy weather could trigger landslides and other disasters,” NHK reported."
"When you ride on buses or trains in many parts of the United States, what you say could be recorded. Get on a New Jersey Transit light rail train in Hoboken or Jersey City, for example, and you might notice an inconspicuous sign that says ”video and audio systems in use.” A lot of riders are not happy about it. ”Yeah I don’t like that,” says Michael Dolan of Bayonne, N. J. ”I don’t want conversations being picked up because it’s too Orwellian for me. It reeks of Big Brother.” New Jersey’s public transit system is just the latest to add audio and video surveillance on some of its trains. Other agencies have been quietly recording their passengers for years, but critics say that’s an invasion of privacy. Security Cameras Are Fine, But Audio Recordings Cross The Line, ”Private conversation should be private between you and the individual that you’re speaking to,” says NJ Transit rider Neeley Banks of Bayonne. But like a lot of commuters, Banks says she’s OK with security cameras on the trains. ”Because if it’s security for us on this train, that wouldn’t bother me,” she says. NJ Transit insists that security and safety are exactly why it’s installing audio and video recorders on light rail trains around the state. But officials at the agency do not want to talk specifics. ”We’re using every available technology to deter criminal activity on our system,” said Dennis Martin, NJ Transit’s acting executive director, while fending off questions from reporters after a board meeting this week. For a lot of people, audio recording seems like crossing a line. ”It is creepy that they want to record our conversations,” says Jeanne LoCicero, a lawyer with the ACLU of New Jersey. ”We all have a reasonable expectation that we can have private conversations in public and this really is undermining that principle.” Most Of The Time, No One Listens  To law enforcement, audio surveillance can be a useful tool. The Maryland Transit Administration has been recording audio and video on many of its buses in the Baltimore area since 2012. ”The idea that people are listening in, Big Brother if you will, is very far from the truth,” says Capt. Christopher Holland of the MTA police. ”The common misperception is that everything is being listened to. It’s not only impractical, it’s impossible.” The cameras and microphones are recording whenever the buses are running, Holland says. Most of the time, no one listens to the recordings, and they get erased after 30 days  —   unless there’s a robbery, fight or other incident. Holland says audio recordings can potentially reveal information the video doesn’t, including the names or nicknames of people involved in the incident. It’s not clear how many other transit agencies are doing this. But the answer seems to be a lot. The cost of surveillance systems can run into the millions of dollars, which is often covered by the Department of Homeland Security. There are several companies that specialize in building surveillance equipment for transit agencies. Apollo Video Technology is one such company. CEO Rodell Notbohm says his company alone has supplied equipment for about 200 agencies. And all those systems have microphones. ”Typically it’s not gonna hear a conversation between two people that are sitting next to one other,” says Notbohm. ”The idea is to be able to capture the interaction between passengers and the operator. And then any big altercation or noises that are going on in the vehicle.” Hard To Know How Recordings Are Used, It’s hard to say how many transit systems are actually recording audio. Some only do it when the driver pushes a button, while others never do. That can make it hard for passengers to know exactly where they stand. ”Often there’s a lack of policies and procedures that are available to the public so they understand what’s going on,” says Jeramie Scott with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. ”How the information’s being used, how it’s being stored, how long it’s being retained, who it’s being shared with.” New Jersey Transit, for example, is unwilling to answer any of those basic questions. That may help explain why riders are so worried about what Big Brother might overhear."
"It was a hospital  —   but to psychologist Inka Weissbecker it looked more like a prison. She had come to South Sudan to check out the country’s only health facility for treating patients with mental illness. ”There was a hallway leading past these cells with bars on them,” she recalls. ”Behind one set of bars I saw a mattress covered in plastic. And on it was urine and feces  —   and this woman lying with her face to the wall. I don’t know if she was dead or just sleeping. Nobody seemed to care.” The year was 2013 and Weissbecker was on a   mission for International Medical Corps in her capacity as the aid group’s adviser on global mental health and psychosocial issues. Shortly afterward she met with the representative of a major international organization that was bankrolling IMC’s work in South Sudan to plead for more funding for mental health services there. Weissbecker says she described not only the patients she’d seen at the hospital, but another image that haunts her to this day: a little girl wandering alone in the hallway. ”She must have been about 4 years old. She had on a little torn   and she looked completely lost, with these big eyes. Probably her mother was in the ward, but I don’t know for sure. Nobody was paying any attention to her.” Weissbecker says her presentation was short but ”impassioned.” Yet the donor was unmoved. ”The donor basically said, that’s all very nice, but South Sudan has so many other problems. There’s such high maternal mortality. We can’t afford to pay for mental health. In fact, I think his exact words were ’South Sudan is not ready for mental health.’ ” This week Weissbecker has been among a chorus of voices calling for a rethink of that attitude. The World Health Organization and the World Bank have been holding a groundbreaking conference in Washington on how to make funding of mental health care more of a priority  —   particularly in   and   countries. Like other advocates, Weissbecker points to statistics documenting the toll that mental illness takes on not just individuals but on national health systems and economies. She has seen this impact firsthand through her work with IMC, which has incorporated mental health services in the medical programs it runs in more than 20 countries. We asked her to tell us about the experiences that have affected her most profoundly  —   both successes and horror stories. Her first recollection comes from a camp for Somali refugees in Ethiopia, which she visited in 2013. There she met a father who for years had struggled with how to help his son. When the family lived in Somalia, a fragile country with very little health care, no one knew what was wrong with the boy. The family ”just saw him as violent, and aggressive, trying to run off all the time, speaking to people who weren’t actually there.” The father thought his son might be possessed by evil spirits and took him to a traditional healer. When that didn’t help, he kept him chained up. But things changed in the refugee camp. A psychiatric nurse working for IMC saw the chained man  —   then in his 20s  —   and was able to diagnose his schizophrenia and get him on medication. She also worked with the family to help them understand the source of the problem and the importance of working with the son to ensure he stayed on his medication. The result was  . ”He was able to improve to the extent that the father removed the chains,” says Weissbecker. ”He became part of the family again, contributing to daily chores. And the father told me he even went to his community to show them the chains and tell them, ’I used these chains on my son. But it turns out he just had a mental illness. And mental illness is treatable.’ It was such a powerful message.” Then there was the mother of two adolescent girls whom Weissbecker met in Gaza. She seemed a bright, confident woman, all smiles. But she told Weissbecker that for years she had struggled with crippling depression. ”She didn’t even have energy for housework. When the family would come over to cook together she’d just withdraw.” Unlike in Somalia or South Sudan, mental health care was available. But even as the woman’s daughters urged her to get help, she was daunted by another obstacle: the stigma around mental illness in many cultures. ”She would tell her daughters, I can’t go to a psychologist or psychiatrist. Only crazy people see them.” When, thanks to the continued encouragement of her daughters she finally did seek treatment she was so proud of the transformation that she became a volunteer with a program run by IMC to educate the community about depression. ”She really wanted to spread the message that you should not be ashamed.” As for her unsuccessful effort in South Sudan, Weissbecker said there was a bittersweet coda. Soon after her   meeting with the donor, the   conflicts there escalated once again. ”Suddenly all these donors were saying, ’Oh, there’s a crisis there. Everybody’s going to be traumatized and there will be a need for mental health care.’ So all this funding came through.” While she’s grateful that IMC has been able to use that assistance to offer services to people displaced by the violence, she says that ”South Sudan needs more than that  —   there is always a need for mental health. And there is a moral obligation to provide it.”"
"Step into Mike Moon’s Madison, Wis. coffee roasting plant and the aroma of beans  —   from Brazil to Laos  —   immediately washes over you. Moon says he aims to run an efficient and safe plant  —   and that starts the minute beans spill out of the roaster. He points to a cooling can that is  ”designed to draw air from the room over the beans and exhausts that air out of the facility. So it is really grabbing a lot of all of the gases coming off the coffee,” he explains. Why are these gases so worrisome? Because they contain a chemical called diacetyl  —   a natural byproduct of the coffee roasting process that, in large concentrations, can infiltrate the lungs and cause a severe form of lung disease. You might remember hearing about diacetyl several years ago, when a synthetic version of the chemical, which is used to give a buttery flavor to certain snack foods, was implicated in causing severe lung problems among workers at a microwave popcorn facility. Now it looks like that chemical could affect the coffee world as well. People at home grinding or brewing up a pot need not worry, but the chemical could pose a danger to people working in commercial coffee roasting plants. The issue first caught the attention of investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention back in 2012. Workers at a coffee roasting plant in Texas were getting sick. ”Physicians at a nearby university medical center had diagnosed five former workers with a very severe lung disease called obliterative bronchiolitis,” says Rachel Bailey, a medical officer at the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. ”So we visited the facility.” What Bailey and her colleagues found was diacetyl  —   high levels of it. This particular coffee roaster in Texas added flavorings to some of its beans. And indeed, Bailey says, ”We found the highest concentrations in the flavoring room.” But they also found significant levels of diacetyl in the area where the natural, unflavored coffee beans were being processed, ”in the grinding and packaging room where they packaged nonflavored coffee.” A couple of years later, reporters at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel began digging into the issue. The newspaper’s multipart investigation explored the potential that high levels of diacetyl could be causing respiratory illness in workers across the state. In Madison, Moon says he knew nothing about the chemical, but that changed when a Journal Sentinel reporter asked him to allow an industrial hygienist to check his business for the presence of diacetyl. The results raised concern and Moon immediately asked NIOSH to dig deeper. He’s waiting for a final report, but for now he’s following NIOSH’s advice to take precautions. ”We’re circulating air in the facility more,” he says, ”and bringing fresh air.” Now NIOSH is juggling a dozen requests from roasters around the country who want their facilities assessed, though none of these roasters are reporting   health problems by their employees. Meanwhile, the National Coffee Association is carrying out its own analysis. ”We are looking further, because current science does not indicate any support for the premise that exposure to diacetyl alone  —   created naturally in the roasting and grinding of unflavored coffee  —   increases the risk of obstructive lung disease,” says Joseph DeRupo, a spokesman for the association. While researchers have found strong links between exposure to the chemical and lung disease, they are still trying to work out exactly how much exposure is too much. A spokesman from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says currently, there are no plans to make rules regulating diacetyl exposure in workplaces. NIOSH  —   which can’t pass regulations on this, but can make recommendations  —   issued a draft version of guidance for safe exposure in August 2011 and expects to release a final version later this year. In the meantime, some coffee processing plants are taking preliminary precautions. In Milwaukee, Lincoln Fowler, a   of Colectivo Coffee, says he has established some best practices. And they appear to be working. He spent years perfecting his shop’s air flow system and recently called in experts to test it. The diacetyl count there came in well below NIOSH’s proposed standards. But Fowler thinks concerns about workplace   should be put in perspective. His workers handle hundreds of pounds of coffee on a daily basis, Fowler says. ”I’m constantly after our staff to be careful about how you lift,” he says. ”I would argue that potential back problems are probably a much more significant threat.”"
"Welcome to Guest Dose. Every month, NPR Music’s Recommended Dose crew invites a knowledgeable and experienced   to share with us their personal perspectives on electronic and   music, and make a mix from some new tracks they are digging. It is not hard to tell that Janette Pitruzzello is house music for life. The giveaway is right there in one of the anecdotes the   who as JNETT (sometimes J’Nett) has been one of Melbourne, Australia’s club cornerstones for nearly two decades, inserts into the conversation within minutes of us getting on Skype. Pitruzzello has an infectious laugh, gloriously   asides, and a     style that would seem slightly manic if it wasn’t also gregarious and  . Like the music she DJs  —   and finally crafted herself on Wildlife, her debut EP on Maurice Fulton’s BubbleTease Communications  —   her mannerism is one of somebody 100 percent comfortable in their own skin. This makes Janette’s reflections  —   fittingly, on her unorthodox narrative as a    mother of two, making dance music  —   instantly poignant. ”You go through these little crossroads in your life,” she says when I ask how she came to house music as a   occupation. In the early 2000s, ”already towards my ” having received a bachelor’s degree in photography and developing a career in the field (while also DJing regularly) she took on a     job in America conveniently, the gig coincided with the Winter Music Conference, a     gathering in Miami, and would also take her to Chicago, the birthplace of house music. During the trip, she says, ”I tried my hand doing both at the same time. So in Miami, I found myself sneaking out at night to play records after a   day assisting. Then once we got to Chicago, I went out late to see DJ Heather [a leading female house DJ] and suddenly, I was standing in some tiny club saying to myself, ’Who am I kidding? I don’t ever not want to do this. ’” She bursts out laughing, and it is undoubtedly an exclamation point. Janette says she started clubbing in Melbourne’s disco and funk clubs at 15, but that she attributes the love for music and rhythm to witnessing an unlikely appearance by a Caribbean steel band in the streets of Foster, Country Victoria, her tiny   hometown, at the age of 8. (”I remember thinking, ’My God, this is like the greatest thing I’ve ever heard’. ”) She already loved loud soundsystem music and dub reggae when she discovered the house sound of Paul ”Trouble” Anderson while living in London in the early ’90s and was fully bitten by the DJing bug upon her return to Australia. Working at Melbourne’s iconic Central Station record store gave her access to the world’s best dance records, while she perfected her skills in private (”total bedroom DJing, way too   way too shy”). When friends asked that she take a gig as a     at Melbourne’s The Lounge, she fought through the nerves. ”The booth was in the middle of the   so all the sound was coming in, booming. It was so great, and there was no turning back after that.” The next morning JNETT was a Lounge resident  —   and, soon, with her ”Purveyors” club night, one of the city’s most respected house DJs, as well as a mainstay on Australian radio (first Kiss FM, now PBS Radio Melbourne). This is how Maurice Fulton found her. ”Maurice lived in Melbourne many years ago  —   and I always held him as one of my mentors,” begins Pitruzzello, when I ask how, she came to collaborate with one of dance music’s most respected and beautiful eccentrics. ”Whenever he would come back to play here, he’d call me and two other people. The last time he came, he saw that I’m still doing it, so he said, ’OK, after all these years, I want to see you expand, it’s time.’ Maurice encouraged me. I was petrified that it was never going to be good enough. Now, I realize it was not about that, but about finally having some input and support. It had been my deepest wish for decades  —   not just to put some stuff out there, but feel confident enough in it. And it’s not like [in Australia] there were people who were doing it. It’s different.” The   EP that came out of their sessions, Wildlife, is one of the year’s best examples of the diversity that   recognize as house music, fueled by dueling bass lines, natural percussion,     and even symphonic strings: ”What I like musically is so broad, it seemed unfair to do just one thing,” she says. And as Australia’s dance and   boom continues, Janette sees how a seasoned perspective and unprejudiced version of house fits into the broader picture, and into her own life. ”I was always the youngest,” she says, ”and now I am one of those people who have been around for ages. It went from my mother saying ’turn it down’ to my kids saying ’turn it down. ’” The tracks DJ JNETT chose for her Guest Dose mix equally spanned the generations."
"Jordin   has worked as a registered nurse at the emergency department at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Conn. for three years. She describes her workplace as phones going off, voices everywhere, every room full. ”You look around and the hallways are full of patients on stretchers you walk out to the waiting room and you can see on our board that there’s 15 people signing in,” she says. ”The second you can get your ICU patient upstairs, there’s another one waiting for you.” She typically doesn’t get a chance to eat or drink or go to the bathroom during her   shift,   says. And she’s not alone. Her nursing manager points out that a 2007 study in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine found that 24 percent of ICU nurses and 14 percent of general nurses tested positive for symptoms of   stress disorder. Nursing has long been considered one of the most stressful professions, according to a review of research by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2012. Nurses and researchers say it comes down to organizational problems in hospitals worldwide. That includes cuts in staffing some California nurses struck last month for a week over low staffing and wages. But some researchers say that just hiring more people won’t fix things. Other proposed solutions include restructuring hospitals so that administrators pay more attention to what nurses have to say about patient care and work flow, and training programs to help nurses relieve their stress and deal with ethical dilemmas. Theresa Brown is a clinical nurse in Pittsburgh who has written two books about what it’s like to be a nurse. She says nurses are often stretched to the limit. ”A friend said when she started working as a nurse, when she would drive, she would vomit on the way in to work just because of the incredible level of stress,” Brown says. ”One of the senior nurses said there is no place we can go to just be alone and be in a quiet room for five or 10 minutes, except for the bathroom . .. you could have a patient get really really sick, you could have a patient die, and there’s no break,” she says. She adds that whenever hospitals start adding new forms of documentation or electronic health records, that work is often given to the nurses so their workload just gets larger. ”It shouldn’t be this way, but the patient demands are the ones that can get put off.” It’s not just a problem in the U. S. either. A recent study in Hong Kong found nurses to be at much higher risk for stress, depression and anxiety compared to the general population. The Guardian reported last January that the number of nurses in the U. K. taking time off due to stress has soared  —   1 in 29 are off because of stress. The problem is that most hospitals aren’t organized to support nurses, or even doctors, says Linda Aiken. She is a professor of nursing and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. ”They’re highly bureaucratic, they’re very   organizations, they don’t really seek out clinicians’ solutions for solving problems in patient care,” Aiken says. ”Therefore the problems exist over decades, and they’re basically not solvable by any individual nurse.” If the work environment at a particular hospital is bad, just adding more nurses won’t address the problem, Aiken says. As an example of what hospitals can do, she points to magnet hospitals, a form of voluntary accreditation from a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association that looks at nursing culture, training and work practices, including issues such as not having a nurse lift patients alone, a significant cause of disability for nurses. There are about 400 certified magnet hospitals in the U. S. Aiken says to get magnet status, hospitals need to give the nurses and doctors who are treating the patients a greater say in what resources are used for those patients, make decisions based on evidence, be   and invest in educating their doctors and nurses. ”That’s not the conventional way that hospitals are managed now,” she says. Magnet hospitals with at least one nurse per bed are less likely to send patients to the ICU or have patients die, according to a study that Aiken   that was published in January in JAMA Surgery. The improved results didn’t cost the hospitals more some actually saved money. St. Francis Hospital, where Jordin   works, follows the magnet principles though it is not accredited. Linda Aiken says she’s worried that hospitals think of nurses as a cost to be cut and not as a revenue stream. Cynda Rushton, a professor of nursing and bioethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and School of Nursing, agrees. ”There is a mindset among some administrators that nurses are easily replaceable commodities  —   a nurse is a nurse is a nurse,” she says. Almost 20 percent of newly registered nurses leave a hospital within the first year for the same job elsewhere, or a different job in a different organization, according to a 2014 study. Rushton says to her, that means health care organizations aren’t investing enough in their nursing staff. Nurse burnout also is linked to moral distress, Rushton says, from situations where nurses know what they should do for their patients but can’t act on it. For example, nurses might have to give a patient at the end of life a treatment that causes suffering without any medical benefit. She just started a program called the Mindful Ethical Practice and Resilience Academy to try to help new nurses deal with moral distress. It’s a series of   workshops, some of which involve nurses using simulations to practice how to make their ethical concerns heard at work. One scenario includes a patient with a complex medical condition and a nurse has been caring for him and talking to him for days following the recommended treatment. If the nurse sees that the medicine isn’t working, she could say that she’s assessed the patient’s pain, it’s a 10 out of 10, Rushton says. She could say she’s concerned about the treatment because ”in my role as a nurse, one of my primary goals is to relieve my patient’s suffering and I’m not able to do that, so I’d like to talk about how we can figure out a way to more fully address this patient’s pain and their suffering.” The goal is to help nurses better communicate with other staff members, Rushton says, as well as take care of themselves through mindfulness, reflection and other practices. Nurses around the world are struggling with how to fulfill their ethical obligations, Rushton says. ”In one sense, it could be considered a public health crisis, because if we don’t have sufficient nurses to meet the needs of people in need of health care,” the entire health care system could crumble. ”I think that it’s time that nurses are recognized as a scarce resource that needs to be invested in, supported and respected.” Alan Yu is a freelance reporter in Hong Kong who contributes regularly to the South China Morning Post. You can follow him on Twitter: @Alan_Yu039."
"Foods made with corn masa flour  —   like tortillas, tacos and tamales  —   could soon play a critical role in the health of babies born to Latina mothers in the U. S. That’s because, as of today, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration is now allowing manufacturers to fortify their corn masa foods with folic acid. That’s a synthetic form of folate, a B vitamin that helps prevent severe defects of the brain and spinal cord when consumed by women before and early in pregnancy. ”I think it will be really monumental for the Latino population,” says Michael Dunn, a Brigham Young University food scientist. Since 1998, the FDA has required that breads, pasta, breakfast cereals and other grains made with enriched flour be fortified with folic acid. In the years since, the number of babies born in the U. S. with neural tube defects has dropped by roughly 35 percent  —   or about 1, 300 babies a year. But these birth defects remain ”stubbornly higher” in the Hispanic community, says Dr. Edward McCabe, the chief medical officer at the March of Dimes. Researchers have suspected that the reason why might lie in tortillas and other foods made with corn masa flour, a dietary staple for many Hispanic families. That’s because until now, the FDA had banned fortification of products made with corn masa flour. The agency was concerned that the folic acid might not remain stable. Dunn led a study that helped change the FDA’s mind. His research involved lengthy testing in the lab as well as a daylong trial making fortified corn masa at a local facility in Utah. He and his team found that the heat and production process doesn’t significantly change the quantity of folic acid in a fortified product through its shelf life. The FDA now says that manufacturers may voluntarily add up to 0. 7 milligrams of folic acid per pound of corn masa. The decision has been four years in the making. The March of Dimes Foundation, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Council of La Raza and the Spina Bifida Association first petitioned the FDA in 2012 to allow folic acid in products made with corn masa flour. According to the March of Dimes, about 3, 000 pregnancies in the U. S. are affected by neural tube defects each year. Hispanic women are 20 percent more likely to have a baby with a neural tube defect than   white women, according to the Spina Bifida Association. Now that tortillas and other foods made with corn masa flour can be fortified, ”the March of Dimes expects dozens of devastating neural tube defects to be prevented each year,” McCabe says. In San Marcos, Texas, the El Milagro plant makes tortillas and tortilla chips made from corn masa flour. General Manager Hector Ramirez says all it takes is about a week to start fortifying these products, but in reality, the process will take longer: The plant will have to change the packaging for its corn masa flour, and that would take between 30 and 90 days. ”We’ll have to decide if it’s a cost we’ll take on up front or pass it on to the customer,” Ramirez says. But he believes it will be a worthwhile investment. ”Customers now look closely at the labels,” he says. ”If they see   all natural, and on top of that  —   fortified with folic acid, I think our customers would want that,” Ramirez says. Gruma Corp. was one of the petitioners to the FDA. The company manufactures products made with corn masa flour products in the U. S. and in Central and South America. Gruma says it expects to have its fortified products on the U. S. market by the end of September."
"If you snip a bit of DNA from a vegetable, but add no new genes, does that vegetable qualify as a genetically modified organism, or GMO? It’s a hot question for government regulators, and it’s no longer theoretical. Yinong Yang, a researcher at Penn State University, used a popular gene editing tool called   to snip out a tiny piece of DNA from one particular gene in a white button mushroom. This disables the gene, which in turn reduces the mushroom’s production of an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase. As a result, the mushroom doesn’t turn brown so quickly. This may sound familiar. Scientists have also created   versions of apples and potatoes. But those crops were considered GMOs, because scientists inserted new, slightly altered genes into those plants in order to ”silence” the natural gene. Last fall, Yang sent a letter to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, asking if his mushroom would be subject to regulation by the USDA. This week, the USDA sent its answer: No. It’s the first time the USDA has looked at a crop that has been edited using the CRISPR technique, and it’s attracting a lot of attention, because it could be the first of many. It does not mean, however, that the mushroom  —   or other foods  —   would necessarily avoid all government scrutiny. Companies that are bringing GMOs to market have, until now, submitted those products to the Food and Drug Administration for review. ”Anything for food or feed consumption, usually the company submits the data to FDA for approval,” says Yang. But he also notes that ”this process is voluntary, not mandatory.” Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology program coordinator at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says the case of the mushroom illustrates the holes in the government’s current regulatory process. ”The regulatory system is not   but ” he says. The USDA only regulates crops where there is a risk that the new variety could become a weed or a ”pest” to other plants. ”You could have a situation where a crop may actually have some risk, but doesn’t get regulated by USDA, and you could have things that don’t have any risk, but which are regulated” because they incorporate genes, for instance, from a plant virus. The White House has announced a review of the entire regulatory framework for genetically modified crops. As part of that, the National Academy of Sciences is convening a meeting on April 18 to look at new biotechnologies and ways to regulate them. UPDATE, April 15, 5 P. M.: Douglas   with the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit group that has campaigned against genetically engineered crops, says the lack of formal regulatory review of   crops is disturbing. For one thing, it makes it difficult to know exactly what’s been done to the crop. ”The company can just keep its data to itself,” he says. Gene editing techniques such as CRISPR, he says, can create genetic alterations that are not fully predictable. ”Because of the newness of the technology, we think that it should be regulated as a technology,” and all crops created by gene editing tools like CRISPR should require government approval."
"Zika’s arrival in the U. S. this summer seems almost inevitable, health officials keep saying. The virus has already touched down in northern Mexico and Puerto Rico. And just this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of states with   mosquitoes was larger than previously thought. So the looming question is: Once Zika is here, how big will the outbreak be? No one has a crystal ball, especially when it comes to infectious diseases. But we can get a few clues about what might happen by looking at two factors: how Zika has behaved elsewhere and how similar viruses have behaved here in the U. S. Let’s start with the first point. Last week scientists estimated how contagious Zika is in Colombia. Specifically, they calculated what’s called the reproduction number, or ”Ro” (R nought). It’s a mathematical term that tells you the number of people who catch the disease from one sick person, on average, in an outbreak. In Colombia, Zika’s Ro was between three and six, scientists at the Universidad Tecnologica de Pereira reported in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Diseases. Each person who caught Zika spread it to about four others during the outbreak. An Ro of four sounds a bit scary. SARS has an Ro of about four. So does HIV. By comparison, the Ro for Ebola in West Africa was only between 1. 5 and 2. 0. So you can see why Zika has quickly swept across the Western Hemisphere, while Ebola pretty much stayed put in West Africa. ”An Ro of four tells you you need to move fast, early on in an outbreak, to break transmission,” says Dr. Scott Lillibridge, an epidemiologist at the Texas AM Health Science Center School of Public Health.  But unlike Ebola, Zika requires mosquitoes to spread it. So the Ro depends largely on the environment: how many mosquitoes there are, how often they get the chance to bite people and how dense the population is. That’s why screens on houses, air conditioning and suburban living all cut down on the risk of   viruses. ”Obviously, we’re going to do mosquito control here in the U. S. So we’re going interrupt Zika transmission,” Lillibridge added. And then Zika’s Ro will be much lower in the U. S. than Colombia. How much lower? For that, let’s look at another virus that’s closely related to Zika: dengue. It’s spread by the same mosquito  —   Aedes aegypti  —   as Zika. And in tropical climates, dengue has an Ro comparable to that of Zika. Just yesterday, the World Health Organization tweeted: ”Risk of dengue transmission = risk of #ZikaVirus transmission.” Each year, dengue sickens millions of people in the Western Hemisphere. But here in the U. S. dengue causes only a sprinkling of small outbreaks. For instance, this past winter, Hawaii recorded about 250 dengue cases on the Big Island. In 2010, the Florida Keys recorded about 60 cases. And in 2003, Houston had a dengue outbreak, but health officials didn’t realize it until a decade later when scientists combed through old medical samples. ”It’s true  —   periodically people come back to the states with diseases, like dengue. And periodically, we have a small outbreak,” Lillibridge says. ”So why worry about Zika?” For one big reason, he says: ”Zika’s effect on unborn children is devastating.” Even a single case could be catastrophic for a family."
"Sturgill Simpson’s 2014 album, Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, took a lot of people by surprise. While the song forms were firmly rooted in Nashville traditions, the stories he told and observations he made were more like something from a metaphysical   guide, with existential meditations on death and dying, religion and the   search for a higher purpose. For his   A Sailor’s Guide To Earth, Simpson finds even more ways to surprise. In fact, the   singer completely dismantles the   conventions of country music and reassembles them with psychedelic synths and guitars, Motown horns and cinematic strings, often all in a single track. A Sailor’s Guide To Earth is also a concept album. Simpson wrote and recorded it for his son, who was born in 2014, just a month after Metamodern Sounds was released. As Simpson tells us in this interview, he wanted A Sailor’s Guide To Earth to be ”a pure and beautiful thing,” detailing the ups and downs of his own life so his son could one day know him better. You can hear the full interview with the link above or read edited highlights below. A Sailor’s Guide To Earth is out April 15 on Atlantic. ”I feel like I’m finally hearing ’me,’ in a way, ’cause, you know, a lot of elements of music that, for whatever reason, just didn’t get incorporated or implemented into the first two albums. So with this one I had total  —   I don’t want to say control, nobody likes that word  —   but it’s what it was. I just didn’t want to collaborate with anyone. I didn’t wanna compromise. The record was so personal, I just didn’t see how anybody else could have been like, ’Well what if we did this here?’ Because, in a lot of ways, I formulated the sound of it in my head, on the road, long before we ever went into a studio. I had the lyrics and the idea before I had the songs. Like, the songs were actually sequenced before many of them were written, in terms of the narrative of the album. ”My paternal grandfather, when he was in the army in World War II  —   he was over in the South Pacific and he thought he was gonna die. And he wrote a letter to my grandmother and their newborn son, thinking he wasn’t gonna come home. And years later, after he was dead, and then once she’d passed, I was at her house and I just decided, ’I’m gonna read this letter.’ And I probably learned more about him in those few pages than I ever could have sitting in a room with him. I remember going down the road on the [tour] bus one day and thinking, ’What if I could just write a letter to my kid, telling him exactly who his dad was?’ Like, everything I’m going through right now, at this point in my life. It was just like, ’Ok, I’m gonna go make this really pure and beautiful thing for my son and incorporate all this music that I loved, outside of and other than country or bluegrass,’ which is all I’ve really had a chance to represent up until now.” ”Love. Just thinking about a lot of points in my life when you’re young and you’re angry or confused or just misplaced or lost and you have this tendency to not be aware of how much [love] really is around you, and even shut it out. So, it’s kind of a reminder.” ”Personally speaking, [Nirvana’s] records had a huge impact on my life. I was about 12 or 13, seventh or eighth grade I think, and [my] parents had just divorced, so I felt like these records sort of emotionally captured a lot of things I wasn’t able to grasp or articulate or comprehend within my own head and heart at the time. Looking back, it came to a point in the narrative of [A Sailor’s Guide To Earth] when I was working on it where I was trying to figure out how to embody those years in a young boy’s life where you’re sort of just aimlessly going through it all. The   angst and you’re running around, literally shooting your gun. Obviously this was 20 years ago for me, I’m not in that head space anymore. So I was trying to figure out how to occupy that again and my wife actually had the idea, ’Well what were you listening to when you were 13 years old?’ Nirvana, like everybody else.”"
"On this week’s show, Stephen Thompson takes the week off to tend to his house full of cats while both All Things Considered host Audie Cornish and superlibrarian and Two Bossy Dames   Margaret H. ”Hulahoop” Willison join me and Glen Weldon to talk about romantic comedy. In our first segment, we concentrate on The Mindy Project, which both is a romantic comedy and comments on the tropes of romantic comedy, and which has just returned from a midseason break over on Hulu. We talk about how Mindy’s early days gave way to a more mature show, about the surprisingly dark first half of this season, and about how we feel about her relationship status and her future. In our second segment, we broaden out to talk about romantic comedy in general. Glen names the entire list of films in this genre that he’s ever liked (it doesn’t take long) Margaret and I offer different but perhaps compatible thoughts on When Harry Met Sally, and Audie explains how romantic comedy might be a little like playing with Barbies. (It makes sense, don’t worry.) Glen is happy about a Netflix series he likes a lot, one episode of which he says will work for you if, for instance, you’ve ever been even ”  .” He’s also happy  —   as I hope you are, too  —   about Audie’s interview with   Coates about Black Panther, the extended version of which we put in the podcast feed earlier this week. Audie is happy about an Instagram feed she says could be called ”So Many Knives.” Margaret is happy about a movie we also spoke about on our Oscars show, a book that’s scratching an itch for her, and a band she’s freshly into. And I am happy about one of my favorite shows coming back, and I hope it will make you laugh as well. Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: me, Glen, Audie, Margaret, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus Mike."
"Donald Trump’s Colorado supporters are gathering at the state capital Friday to make some noise about a political process they say has left them voiceless. The backlash from Trump’s supporters has included thousands of voicemails and texts a day to the state Republican Party’s chairman, some threatening, after his phone number was leaked online. The protest comes in response to last weekend’s state assembly, where Texas Sen. Ted Cruz succeeded in locking up all of the state’s 34 open Republican National Convention delegates, shutting Trump out of all but a handful of alternate slots. Those results appeared to catch the Republican   by surprise: Trump   the point in a Wall Street Journal   posted Thursday evening. ”What we are seeing now is not a proper use of the rules, but a flagrant abuse of the rules,” Trump wrote. ”Delegates are supposed to reflect the decisions of voters, but the system is being rigged by party operatives.” Trump was referring to a decision by state party leaders not to hold a preference poll at the March caucuses. Instead, precinct caucus attendees selected representatives for   gatherings where the delegation to this summer’s Republican convention was elected. Trump’s angry tweets about Colorado unleashed a torrent of response. Hundreds of people are expected to demonstrate in Denver on Friday. ”We want to have a peaceful protest and just gather and swap stories and have a showing of the vast number of people who were disenfranchised this year,” said organizer Erin Behrens of Arvada, Colo. Behrens says her frustration with the process started on Super Tuesday, when the party volunteer running her precinct caucus appeared to be actively discouraging Trump supporters from participating further in the process. The final result at the state assembly just confirmed her fears. ”When we saw that all 34 delegates were going to Cruz, it was even worse because I saw that what happened at my isolated precinct caucus, that happened all over the state on Super Tuesday,” Behrens said. Trump supporters who did make it far enough in the process to vote for the RNC delegation complain about confusing ballots, with   delegates misnumbered or left off entirely. State party chairman Steve House denies that the party has done anything to favor any candidate over another. He acknowledges that the delegate selection process did occasionally get messy, but says that, with hundreds of people running and thousands voting, that was unavoidable. ”This is a large organization. There are going to be points at which mistakes are made,” House said. ”I don’t regret how we did our caucuses or what we did. I think we did it exactly the way it needed to be done, according to the rules and state law.” Left Out Or Just  ? Defenders of the state party, and of Cruz’s delegate sweep, accuse the Trump side of sour grapes, complaining after the fact about a process its leaders didn’t pay enough attention to on the front end. As far back as January, the Cruz campaign was identifying leading supporters among the state’s Republican political elite and activist base and mobilizing them to make their way through the complex caucus process. Trump’s side had no comparable organization. It finally hired an   consultant less than a week before the state assembly. By that point, Cruz had already won the first delegates at early Congressional district gatherings. At one Congressional assembly, two members of the campaign’s slate failed to pay the fee required to run. At the state assembly, handouts with the roster of preferred delegates were full of errors. ”The Trump people, they were just a hot mess,” said former Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who ran successfully as an RNC delegate on the Cruz slate. ”It’s not that frickin’ complex. . .. Kasich’s people were organized. They didn’t have any support, but you don’t hear them complaining.” The Trump campaign recently tapped veteran political operative Paul Manafort to head up its national   efforts. Manafort lost no time in accusing the Cruz campaign of using ”Gestapo tactics” to secure delegate support. Gessler warns that Trump’s very public anger over Colorado’s delegate selection could become a major liability for him in this swing state, if the businessman does secure the party’s nomination. ”You cannot blow up the entire process here in Colorado because you’re a sore loser and then expect people . .. to be enthusiastically behind your campaign,” said Gessler. ”He needs the activists all in his boat, rowing as hard as they possibly can. And instead, he’s insulting us.” Call The Sheriff? For some of Trump’s supporters, ”party operatives” appears to be personified by Colorado Republican Party Chairman House. His cellphone has been ringing almost nonstop since last weekend with angry callers from around the country, and demonstrators are threatening to picket his house. At party offices Thursday, no one was answering the phone the voicemail message informed callers that there was no room left for messages. House is concerned this interparty stress may continue all the way to the Republican National Convention. He’s considering inviting one of Colorado’s Republican sheriffs to accompany the delegation to Cleveland. ”[If] I can help secure my delegation by having somebody who’s familiar with security protocols and can deal with local authorities to make sure our delegation is as safe as possible, I think it’s a good idea,” said House. Erin Behrens, the organizer of Friday’s protest, would like to see fellow Trump supporters ease up on House. ”The individual people, we can leave them out of this,” Behrens said. ”We just want to change the system.”"
"Seratones   A. J. Haynes takes gospel into the garage, and what comes out is fiery rock ’n’ roll. The Shreveport, La. band is a joy to see and hear, and this Tiny Desk concert provides an explosive peek at what you’ll soon hear on the group’s debut album, Get Gone.  Haynes grew up singing in the Brownsville Baptist Church, learning to sing out to and hit that back wall without a microphone. At the same time, bassist Adam Davis heard a lot of American rock’s greatest guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, as well as the amazing voice of Janis Joplin. The rest of the band is rounded out by the drumming of Jesse Gabriel, who is spare but there with a sharp backbeat, while guitarist Connor Davis rocks with lyrical grit. Seratones won my heart when the group opened for Alabama’s St. Paul and the Broken Bones back in December now, it’s getting ready to release Get Gone, due out May 6. Get Gone is available for   now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineers: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Bonnie Rice was released from prison last year. After a     prison sentence, she knew she couldn’t go back to any of the people who led her into trouble. ”I didn’t know where to go, how to go,” Rice says with a quiver in her voice. ”It was scary.” She was completely alone. She managed to find a place to live in a halfway house. But even though she filled out lots and lots of job applications in the first few months out of prison, she didn’t get many calls back. ”People look down on you,” she says. Then she found Together We Bake. It’s a bakery in Alexandria, Va. that makes granola, cookies and kale chips for local eateries and a local Whole Foods store. It’s also a   and coaching program for women who need a second chance  —   many of whom have served time in prison, or are on probation following criminal charges. ”These women face a lot of obstacles,”   Stephanie Wright tells me as we gather in a small church kitchen in Alexandria. I watch as a group of six women work cookie dough with their hands. The kitchen is orderly, immaculately clean  —   a refuge from the chaos that some of these women have been navigating. Rice has been in the program for about eight weeks now. She’s working toward her Serv Safe certificate, which makes it easier to find employment in the culinary field once her stint at the program ends. Together We Bake also weaves in resilience training and empowerment classes to help trainees cope with challenges. The sessions are overseen by Wright, who has a background in social work, and they’re often led by women who’ve been through the program. The curriculum is based on a book titled Houses of Healing, which lays out a     approach to help people change their behavior and overcome feelings of negativity and lack of  . On the day we visited, Colida Johnson, a graduate of the program who is now a group leader, was leading the women through an exercise on how to communicate effectively  —   with both peers and prospective employers. ”I can dominate and intimidate you,” reads a quote in the training guide. ”Is this an aggressive style?” Johnson asks. People who are aggressive communicators use language that can violate the rights of others, she points out. So, is there an alternative? How about this: ”We are equally entitled to express ourselves respectfully to one another.” Johnson directs the women to   trying out these different styles. Wright says the emotional training is key. ”The women often need help with soft skills,” Wright tells us. In a sense, they’re learning to undo some of their old habits and replace them with behaviors that can propel them forward. Thanks to all the support, Rice says for the first time in her life, she feels her   rising. ”It’s like a team, like a family of sisters,” Rice says. ”The women here at Together We Bake have showed me there’s love and respect  —   and that you are someone.” Wright   Together We Bake in 2012 with her friend Tricia Sabatini, who had been running a successful baking business. ”We realized there weren’t a lot of services for women [in need] ” Wright says. So they combined their expertise and came up with the idea of using baking as a means of empowerment. So far, Wright says the results are promising.   percent of the women who go through the program pass the Serv Safe exam. And the recidivism rate among the women involved is just 8 percent, according to the  . There’s a complicated relationship between employment and recidivism reduction, says Sam Schaeffer, CEO of the Center for Employment Opportunities, a nonprofit that provides employment services to men and women with criminal convictions. Schaeffer says the model at Together We Bake seems to have ”many important hallmarks of . .. job training programs that can be successful.” (He hasn’t visited the program, but I asked him to comment on the model.) The food industry offers an accessible   to employment  —   in part because there are so many jobs in food service and in part because these skills can be learned fairly quickly. ”Culinary careers are at the top of the employment wish list” for lots of the people looking for employment after prison, Schaeffer notes. The appeal is broad because you’re ”working with your hands, and working as part of a team, in a place that can build camaraderie,” he adds. And Schaeffer says he’s seeing an increase in the number of employers who are open to hiring people with a criminal background. In part, this reflects a tightening labor market with fewer workers available to hire. Meanwhile, about 20 million Americans have felony convictions, and an estimated 65 million have criminal backgrounds  —   and many of these people are looking for good work. There’s also a growing movement called Ban the Box, aimed at discouraging companies from asking job applicants if they have criminal records, at least during the initial application process. There are several food enterprises that have been publicly supportive of employing people with a criminal past  —   including Butterball Farms in Michigan and Greyston Bakery in New York. And perhaps the most vocal in its support is Dave’s Killer Bread, an   bakery that distributes its products nationally, including at many Costco stores around the country. The company plays up its story on its labels, explaining that the company’s namesake Dave Dahl had spent time in prison. ”His brother, Glenn, saw a change in him and gave Dave a second chance by welcoming him back to the family bakery,” the bread packaging reads. About 1 in 3 of its employees has a criminal past. The bakery’s commitment to hiring people with criminal backgrounds has led to the creation of Dave’s Killer Bread Foundation, which is hosting a Second Chance Summit in New York next month. The summit is aimed at getting more employers to follow their lead. The foundation has curated a set of best practices learned from its experiences employing people after prison. ”We see a powerful connection between successful employment of people with criminal backgrounds and reducing the national recidivism rate, the company’s website reads. Some of these workers ”can be rock stars”  —   if given a chance, Genevieve Martin, executive director of the foundation told us by phone."
"In 1991, a political drama mesmerized the nation. A law professor named Anita Hill had made a stunning accusation  —   that Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court nominee, had sexually harassed her when she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The events that ensued are now the subject of the HBO film Confirmation, which premieres Saturday at 8 p. m. ET. Kerry Washington, who you probably know best as Olivia Pope on Scandal, plays Hill, who was very reluctant to reveal this   secret. ”In my experience, in a case like this, when someone comes forward, the victim tends to become the villain,” Hill says in the film. Viewers already know the ending to this story: Clarence Thomas is now a Supreme Court justice, and he famously defended himself by calling the Judiciary Committee proceedings a ”  lynching.” He said that ”for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas,” this was meant to deliver the message that ”unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you.” Confirmation draws dialogue directly from the hearing transcripts. ”It’s verbatim,” Washington says. ”Everything that happens in the hearings in the film is verbatim  —   which is shocking to some people, because you think you must have embellished that stuff. Nope.” On watching the hearings when she was a teenager, I was 14 when the hearings took place, and so a lot of my memories of the hearings are really through the perspectives of my parents. I really remember it, because I grew up in a house where we talked a lot about social issues and politics, and generally everybody was on the same page, whether we were talking about a woman’s right to choose, or affirmative action, or whatever it was. The hearings were one of the first moments when I remember them having a different point of view. My dad was very pulled in the direction, compassionately, towards this   man who was having his career and reputation destroyed by this panel of older white men and being attacked by a woman. And my mom was really pulled in the direction of this   professional woman who was coming forward and being  . On why she was drawn to the idea of playing Hill, I have spent five seasons now [on Scandal] playing someone who, for the most part, is the most powerful person in the room in Washington, D. C. and wields extraordinary access and power. And I think I wanted to explore the idea of someone in that very same environment who’s on the different end of the spectrum, and who has to figure out how to hold her own in those spaces without having that power. On feeling for all the characters in the story, One of my priorities and part of my passion in making the project was making sure we told a complicated,   story where you did feel for all these characters. Because I grew up in a household where the people that I loved were able to step into the shoes of more than one of these characters at a time when none of us knew. We use the term ”sexual harassment” now so freely and fluidly, but back then that was a vague legal term that people were not using. There was very little understanding even of what sexual harassment was. On the     Judiciary Committee sitting in judgment of Hill  —   and also of Thomas, When you ask   how they felt about it at the time, a lot of people felt uncomfortable that these older white men were sitting in judgment of [Thomas] as well. There was a sense that this representational body didn’t represent us as a country  —   there were no women up there, there were no younger representatives, there were no people of color. I think it was a real moment of reckoning for this country. I think that’s why the following year was ”the year of the woman,” where more women ran than ever before. The Senate Judiciary Committee had its first woman in the year following the hearings the shape and face of our congressional body began to change because people became more aware. On Thomas’ characterization of the hearing as a ”  lynching” It’s such an extraordinary moment. And again, in my memories of people talking about the hearings, I remember them quoting that line  —   ”the   lynching”  —   and I remember that struggle of the women in the room. It was my mom and my dad and a couple of the professors they were friends with  —   the women saying, ”That’s not what this is about.” And the men saying, ”Well, isn’t it?” It’s really the moment when he shifts the conversation, because there isn’t a single senator who’s willing to challenge when he claims being a victim of racism in that moment. It’s so, so complicated. It’s what I love about exploring the hearings."
"The migrants on rafts began landing on the rocky shores of Lesbos a year ago. In a pretty village of colorful fishing boats, one of the first people they saw was Efstratia Mavrapidou, 89, who was born here. She’s fragile, her eyes clouded by cataracts. But she made her way to shore by cane. She wanted to be there to embrace the migrants crowded onto those rafts, especially the young mothers who wept as they clasped tiny,   babies. Many were war refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. They reminded her of her own mother, Evanthea, who fled Turkey via the Ayvalik archipelago nearly a century earlier, crossing the same stretch of the Aegean Sea on a crowded wooden fishing boat. ”She ran away with only the clothes on her back, holding three little sons,” Mavrapidou recalls. ”The bells were tolling, the Turkish soldiers were advancing, so she didn’t even have time to dress the youngest, who was just a month old. She tore off part of her underskirt to swaddle him.” When Pope Francis joins Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, on Lesbos on Saturday, they will visit an island that has the refugee experience in its blood. Many here have roots in Smyrna, or   Izmir, where ethnic Greeks once flourished during Ottoman times. Kemal Ataturk’s army drove out at least a million of them after the   War, which lasted from   as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. They arrived in Piraeus, Thessaloniki and Lesbos traumatized, hungry and homeless. ”There was no place to live in the village when our mothers arrived on Lesbos,” says Maritsa Mavrapidou, 85, who’s related to Efstratia by marriage. ”They cleaned out some empty sheds where olives had been stored and slept there.” We meet in the small,   stone home of her cousin Militsa Kamvysi, 83. Her mother fled Smyrna, too. Over the past year, the grandmothers spent months going to the shore, offering migrants clothes from their own closets and homemade cheese pies. ”If the newcomers got off the boat and we saw that they were seasick, we helped them,” Maritsa Mavrapidi says. ”We hugged them,” Kamvysi says. ”We loved them.” On a beach a few miles away, Afroditi   always had dry clothes and sandwiches for the thousands who landed outside her family’s hotel. Since last month, following a deal between the European Union and Turkey, migrants are picked up by the coast guard and bused directly to a   camp that resembles a prison. ”People have been comparing this to the camps that existed during World War II, with the wire around it,” she says. ”This is not my image of how my future was going to be.” She’s horrified that migrants are being held in such conditions on Lesbos, of all places. She’s also worried about the summer. Lesbos relies on tourism, and bookings are down 70 percent because of the migrant crisis. The islanders, like the rest of Greeks, are trying to survive their sixth year of a deep economic depression. ”What about all these families now that have been left without income?”   says. ”And there’s no help? Shouldn’t the government provide some kind of solution, some kind of subsidy to help them?” Ilias Lagoudatzis could use the help. A grizzled father of two grown children in his late 50s, he was once a chef at a fancy restaurant that closed last year. Now he’s running a mobile canteen outside a transit camp for refugees and migrants. His customers are aid workers and volunteers he gives away his sandwiches, chips and juice to migrant children wrapped in Mylar blankets. He barely makes $500 a month. ”About 2, 000 of us used to work in tourism here in northern Lesbos,” he says. ”Of those, only about 100 work regularly with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and volunteers. What happens when they go too?” Back at Militsa Kamvysi’s house, there’s a framed photograph of her and Maritsa and Efstratia Mavrapidou cooing over a tiny baby. The baby’s mother, a young woman in a    headscarf, smiles after she has changed into dry clothes. The photograph made the grandmothers famous. Politicians have visited them, thanking them for their generosity. Kamvysi, who was   the baby in the photo, was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, something that baffles her. ”We were just behaving like human beings,” she says, shaking her head. ”I remember when one young mother got off the boat and fell right into my arms,” Kamvysi says. ”She just cried and cried. She understood that we loved her.” ”It’s like our mothers were there on the beach, hugging her, too,” Mavrapidou says."
"Three years ago, NPR visited the port of Suape outside the northern Brazilian city of Recife when it was an example of Brazil’s booming economy. Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras, has a large refinery that was working full tilt. Today the scene is very different. That big Petrobras refinery still operates but it’s had big layoffs. It’s partially shuttered, weeds are growing on the side of the pavement. It’s emblematic of what’s happened here and in many parts of Brazil. Last year, this northeastern state of Pernanbuco lost 89, 500 jobs, the most in the country. It’s been a devastating turnaround for this historically poor region. Jorge Leonel do Nascimento, a stocky man with callused hands, is one of the men who suddenly found himself unemployed. He worked at Suape during the boom years and says he thought they would never end. He bought a car. Joined the expanding  . ”I felt like I had achieved something,” he said. ”In 2011, it was good for everyone. People were buying properties, electrical devices for their homes. There was hope.” Asked who he credited for the good times, he said he voted for President Dilma Rousseff in the last two elections, and before that, for her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as ”Lula.” Nascimento says the Worker’s Party, which goes by the acronym PT, was the only one that tried to change things in the poorer, blacker regions of the country. The party started a program giving money and food to poor families in the   north that literally saved some from starvation. ”Before, we were abandoned by the other parties,” he said. ”When the PT came to the presidency, we became secure.” A Dramatic Turnaround, Or so he thought. When he was fired last year, he believed he’d find something else quickly. But it’s been over a year and he’s been doing odd jobs to make ends meet. Brazil’s economy is in the worst recession in generations. All the social programs started by the PT are being scaled back. A few miles down the road from Suape, you can see the impact. At an appliance store, new refrigerators and televisions are on sale, along with most anything else you might want. But Adriana Gomez, the general manager, says no one is buying. The economic crisis has devastated commerce here. And that has had an enormous political effect. This region helped Rousseff win   in 2014. According to the polling company Datafolha, her approval rating in the northeast was 68 percent back in 2013. This past February it plunged to 16 percent. Some people argue the massive corruption scandal involving the state oil company Petrobras is the reason people want Rousseff out. She hasn’t been directly implicated in the scheme that saw billions bilked for kickbacks and bribes, but her party and many of its members, including former President Lula has been.  But Thiago de Aragao, a political analyst with Arko Consulting, says the political turmoil and the effort to impeach Rousseff is being driven by the miserable state of the economy. The economy contracted 3. 8 percent last year. Prices are going up by 10 percent a month. People are being fired. It’s hard to survive politically while this economic disaster is playing out. ”We have a society in which corruption is highly acceptable by the society as long as the economy flows in a positive manner,” he said. He points to another huge corruption revelation that took place in former President Lula’s first term, where it was discovered that his government was paying politicians for their votes. Aragao says people largely ignored the scandal because the economy was expanding.  Unemployed port worker Jorge Leonel do Nascimento says he’s now given up on politics. ”I feel like I was fooled. By Lula and Dilma,” he said. That car he bought in the boom years? He’s selling it now in order to survive."
"Think about our planet for a second. Earth has an elliptical  —      —   orbit. That means we’re closer to the sun for one part of the year and farther away another part of the year. Does that fact explain why it’s hotter in the summer and colder in the winter? Lots of kids think it does. Lots of adults think so too. And they’re wrong.* Philip Sadler is both a professor of astronomy and the director of the science education department at Harvard University, and he is obsessed with wrong answers like these. ”Students are not empty vessels,” he says. ”Students are full of all kinds of knowledge, and they have explanations for everything.” From birth, human beings are working hard to figure out the world around us. But we go about it more like the early Greek philosophers than modern scientists: reasoning from our limited experience. And like those early philosophers  —   Ptolemy comes to mind  —   we’re often dead wrong. Sadler says that cognitive science tells us that if you don’t understand the flaws in students’ reasoning, you’re not going to be able to dislodge their misconceptions and replace them with the correct concepts. ”It’s very expensive in terms of mental effort to change the ideas that you come up with yourself,” Sadler says. ”It’s a big investment to say, ’I’m going to abandon this thing that I came up with that makes sense to me and believe what the book or the teacher says instead.’ ” In one study, which he recently wrote about in American Educator magazine, Sadler gave 20   science questions to a group of   students. For each test item, one of the ”distractors” was a very common misconception. In fact, often the misconception was far more popular than the right answer. For example: 2. Eric is watching a burning candle very carefully. After all of the candle has burned, he wonders what happened to the wax. He has a number of ideas which one do you agree with most? a. The candle wax has turned into invisible gases. d. All of the wax has melted and dripped to the bottom of the candle holder. The wrong answer, d. was chosen by 59 percent of the students only 17 percent chose the right answer, a. The study also gave the same test to these students’ teachers. They asked them which of the wrong answers was most commonly chosen. They found that teacher knowledge of common student misconceptions was weak: They knew 85 percent of the right answers, but only 41 percent of the ”right” wrong answers. But, among teachers with stronger knowledge of student weaknesses, their students learned significantly more science, based on a retest at the end of the year. Having discovered the importance of wrongness, how can teachers act on that knowledge? The first step, says Sadler, is to teach Socratically (there’s the Greeks again) by asking questions and having students think out loud. This works much better than lecturing. ”Teachers who find their kids’ ideas fascinating are just better teachers than teachers who find the subject matter fascinating,” he says. The next step is to give students exposure to the information and experience that will enable them to reason their way to the right answer. For example, Sadler and colleagues created a high school astronomy course. In one of the lessons, students looked at pictures of the sun taken through the same telescope at each month of the year. Most predicted that the sun would appear larger in the hot months. However, once they got out the rulers, they would discover that the sun is biggest (i. e. closest) in January. (The closest point in our orbit, the ”perihelion,” was Jan. 2 this year.) ”That throws a monkey wrench into the logic of the elliptical orbit,” says Sadler. *The true cause of the seasons is our planet’s 23. 5 degree tilt off its axis."
"José Ramón Fernández will probably never attend another Communist Party Congress. At 92, he’s the oldest delegate to take part in the   meeting of Cuba’s top communist leaders that convenes on Saturday. With the island’s closed economy slowly opening to the world and relations with the United States warming, you’d think the   ’s attendance at an elite gathering that could determine Cuba’s future wouldn’t be front page news. But that was one of the few peeks into this year’s congress revealed in Cuba’s official newspaper Granma. As of Friday morning, no official agenda had been published, no government initiatives revealed, and no public forums held. It was a rare level of opacity even by the standards of the island dictatorship. ”This congress is much more closed than any previous ones,” says Omar Everleny, one of Cuba’s leading economists. Foreign media outlets, including NPR, were not granted visas to cover the congress, which is expected to offer some clues for the regime’s plans for the next decade. Excitement that new reforms and even more opening of Cuba’s   economy might be unveiled in the congress has been growing alongside the improvement in U. S.  relations. That furor escalated after President Obama’s historic visit to the island last month, when he urged Cuba’s aging leaders not to fear, but to embrace change. This year’s meeting will most likely be Cuban President Raúl Castro’s last. At 84, he has already said he will relinquish the presidency in two years. But it’s unclear whether he and his elderly compatriots will allow for a younger generation to take over the ruling Politburo. The average age of the   body is 70. And just how fast  —   or slow  —   the pace of economic opening will continue is anyone’s guess. During the last Congress held in 2011, landmark reforms gave Cubans new rights to own businesses, homes, cars and even to travel off the island. A quarter of the island’s people now participate in the private sector. Economist Everleny says state enterprises, which still control the lion’s share of the economy, need to keep up with the times and modernize. ”They need to be refreshed, they aren’t efficient,” he says. ”They must change.” Initiatives announced during the last Congress in 2011 haven’t fared that well. Only 21 percent of those guidelines have been fully implemented. And three quarters of the population still struggle to survive on the average $25 monthly salary. Small businesses complain that they need access to   wholesale markets if they are to survive. And private enterprises clamor for access to export and import trade. ”Expectations and frustrations are high and becoming more vocalized,” says Peter Kornbluh,   of the book Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Kornbluh says the Cuban leadership could muddle through a few more years without significant changes, but they won’t be able avoid addressing the people’s rising expectations. ”That’s the rub,” he says. The intense secrecy surrounding the congress has significantly lowered hopes for the amount of change that party leaders may tolerate. Recent Cuban editorials and television roundtables criticizing Obama’s visit have cast a pall over the meeting, signaling that party hardliners may have the upper hand. And Friday’s Granma announced that a surprise   delegate would be attending the congress  —      former Cuban leader, Fidel Castro."
"The scene: a wedding on a   ship in New Zealand’s Akaroa Harbour. The rings: known here as rigatoni, and made of pasta. The happy couple: Pastafarians Toby Ricketts and Marianna Fenn, in full pirate regalia. The officiant: Karyn Martyn, New Zealand’s first ”ministeroni.” The wedding feast: pasta. Only pasta. (OK, there was some cake, too.) Welcome to the first official wedding of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, according to The Associated Press. The group was inspired by a 2005 satirical letter calling for greater separation of church and state. ”When it came time for the kiss, the bride and groom slurped up either end of a noodle until their lips met,” the AP reported. As for the vows? ”The groom, Toby Ricketts, vowed to always add salt before boiling his pasta, while bride Marianna Fenn donned a colander on her head.” During the service, Martyn, the ministeroni, explained some of the core beliefs of Pastafarians. ”The Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world. We know that,” she said, according to the AP. ”We weren’t around then and we didn’t see it, but no other religion was around to see it either, and our deity is as plausible as any other.” Fenn, the bride, told the wire service: ”I would never have agreed to a conventional marriage, but the idea of this was too good to pass up.” We note that her last name was reported as Young, not Fenn, by one local publication that interviewed her. You might remember that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster started as a demonstration against teaching intelligent design in Kansas schools in 2005. Bobby Henderson wrote to the Kansas State Board of Education, saying that according to his religion, a ”Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe”  —   and this alternative theory should be taught in schools, he added: ”It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.” The letter quickly went viral, drawing supporters around the world who want to see greater separation between church and state. (As we reported, those include one Austrian who was eventually allowed to have his driver’s license photo with a pasta strainer on his head.) The church’s New Zealand branch says it is ”formed by people tired of being disenfranchised for thinking rationally.” Last December, New Zealand’s Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was recognized by officials as ”suitable to officiate weddings,” and Martyn was the first celebrant to receive approval, The New Zealand Herald reported. ”I’ve had people from Russia, from Germany, from Denmark, from all over contacting me and wanting me to marry them in the church because of our nondiscriminatory philosophy,” Martyn told the BBC. ”We will marry any consenting legal adults who meet the legal requirement.” Jeff Montgomery, New Zealand’s   of births, deaths and marriages, explains why he gave the group approval. ”While some claim this is a ’parody organisation’ members have rebutted this on a number of occasions,” he wrote, according to the Herald. ”Most approved organisations are   and cluster around   religious views, however, a number have what might be considered an ’alternative philosophy.’ ”"
"After their first child was born in 2014, Mohammed Salameh, 22, and his wife Khoulod Ahmad Suleiman, 21, planned to throw a small party for family and friends with walnuts and cups of hot cinnamon, as is customary in their hometown of Dara’a in southwestern Syria. But when they learned that a cousin in Syria had been killed in fighting the same day, they cancelled the festivities. Two years later, the fighting continues. But so, too, does life in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where the young couple gave birth to their second child last month. The healthy baby girl, named Rima, was the 5, 000th newborn registered in the camp. Swaddled in blankets, Rima was the centerpiece of a happy family portrait at Zaatari’s Women and Girls Comprehensive Center, where U. N. and camp officials gathered early last month to celebrate the milestone and a successful record on maternal health. As perilous a journey as pregnancy can be  —   worldwide, some 800 women die of   causes every day  —   no women in Zaatari have died in childbirth. Yet Rima’s arrival also points up an enduring challenge  —   and a failure of efforts to address it. At roughly 42 live births per 1, 000 people, the crude birth rate in the camp far exceeds that of both Jordan (24. 5) and   Syria (23). And, reports show, many of those births are the product of very young marriages. According to a 2014 report by Save the Children, the rate of child marriage among Syrian refugees in Jordan has doubled since the start of the war. ”Once married, women in Middle Eastern societies are generally under social pressure to have children as soon as possible,” says Dr. Valeria Cetorelli, a demographer with the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics and Political Science. And in a place like Zaatari, that pressure may be especially pronounced. ”  violence and insecurity can reinforce individuals’ perception of group identity, particularly with respect to reproduction,” she says. ”Some women may feel compelled to compensate for the lives of relatives lost in the war. ”This is very common here,” says Lina Hamidi, a nurse with the International Medical Corps (IMC) and manager of the reproductive health clinic at Jordan’s Azraq camp. ”The wife wants to take a rest from pregnancy, and the husband says, ’No. We’ve lost so many friends and family. We have to replace this number. ’” Opened in April 2014, Azraq houses roughly 32, 000 refugees in austere rows of corrugated metal shelters  —   a sharp contrast to the   of Zaatari, with its bustling shops and houses built of assorted materials. ”Many women want to use family planning tools,” Hamidi says. ”But their husbands won’t allow it. Sometimes they think if they have more children, they’ll be able to get another shelter  —   even if they can’t take care of the ones they have.” Hamidi recalls one afternoon when a man burst into the clinic furious that his wife had been given a contraceptive injection: ”He was shouting at the nurses, ’What have you done to my wife? ’” The man calmed down when he learned that the effect of the injection is only temporary. But more often, she said, men will simply instruct their wives to undo whatever they’ve done. ”One day she will come in for an IUD,” says Hamidi, using the abbreviation for an intrauterine device, a   reversible contraceptive inserted into the uterus. ”And the next day she will come in to have it removed.” The power imbalance between men and women puts the latter at risk not only for   health problems but also a host of sexually transmitted infections. ”Vaginitis has been very common,” Hamidi says. ”We told women, you have to wash yourself. But then we realized it was the men who weren’t bathing.” Several months ago, the situation was so bad that Hamidi and colleagues went to speak with the imam at Azraq’s main mosque. ”We told him, ’Look, you really have to talk to them about this, it’s a problem. ’” Although Syrian refugees are mostly banned from working in Jordan, many in the camps have found informal employment. Mohammed Salameh, the father of baby Rima, has a falafel shop on the   ”” the camp’s buzzing main thoroughfare. Others work as butchers or barbers, in shoe stores or vegetable stands. In Azraq, the jobs are fewer still and residents there say what work there is  —   as guards or cleaners or teachers  —   goes to men. ”There are many more opportunities for men,” says Esra’a Matrod, 30, who was a paramedic in Dara’a before fleeing the city for Jordan just over a year ago. Though her skill set was in high demand in a place like Azraq, Matrod was unable to work. As the weeks went by, she says, the boredom began to weigh on her. Then she heard that IMC was looking for refugee women to serve as volunteer health workers. In teams of four, the volunteers fan out into the camp six days a week, going    to find those in need of care. ”We might refer a pregnant woman to the reproductive health clinic, or send children to get their vaccinations,” Matrod says. ”Everyday there’s something to do there are a lot of problems in the camp.” One of the most pervasive, she says, is   violence. Often, when making their daily rounds, Matrod and team hear accounts of abuse from the victims themselves. ”Women tell us directly,” she says. Often, too, they say, those victims are wives too young to wed. ”You see a    standing there holding a baby, and she’s pregnant with another baby,” Matrod says. ”She isn’t ready for this.” Patrick Adams reported this story while participating in a United Nations Foundation media fellowship. "
"The prospect of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president has been raising a lot of questions for the GOP. Not just about how the party will fare in November, but what exactly Trump and ”Trumpism” means for future of the party. NPR asked four conservative thinkers to weigh in: April Ponnuru, Jonah Goldberg, Pete Wehner and Ben Domenech. All are ”reformicons”  —   conservative reformers who’ve been thinking and writing about how the GOP could modernize itself, update Reaganomics and reach out to young and minority voters. All of them have been critical of the GOP establishment, but all of them are also opposed to Donald Trump. Here are some of their thoughts: Donald Trump has broken with many elements of traditional Republican ideology  —   immigration, free trade, America’s role in the world, entitlement reform. On all those issues Trump is challenging what the Republican party stands for. Pete Wehner, former Bush White House policy aide: ”In terms of what it means to be a Republican in the age of Trump, I think it’s a problem. People who have come to the Republican Party for a set of ideas and principles are now seeing those ideas and principles under attack. So this is a very real and intense and in some ways an existential battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and . .. for the conservative movement.” Jonah Goldberg, the senior editor of the National Review, a conservative publication that took an early   stand, thinks that existential battle could be a good thing: ”Everyone talks about how the Republican Party is going to be broken. And I think it probably is, and certainly the Republican party as we know it is doomed. And maybe that’s not a bad thing, maybe that’s a good thing you can have that debate.” To some extent that debate has already begun  —   and for now Donald Trump is winning it. Three years ago, after its 2012 defeat, the Republican National Committee sketched out the beginnings of a   Republicanism. The RNC’s   autopsy report said the party had to reach out to minority voters, particularly Hispanics, by embracing comprehensive immigration reform. The base  —   now led by Donald Trump  —   responded, ”Hell, no.” April Ponnuru of the Conservative Reform Network was the policy adviser for Jeb Bush  —   who tried and failed to point the Republican party in a different,   direction. Ponnuru said Trump has prospered because conservatives failed to make their case to his voters, which are now a plurality of the GOP electorate: ”We do have our work cut out for us in terms of explaining why conservative philosophy actually works for people. I don’t think the party has done a very good job of making that connection, especially for   educated voters in the last 10, 20, 30 years.” That’s a long time! For Ponnuru, the burden is on conservatives to update their message because, she says, the logical extension of Trump’s rise in the party is really disturbing: ”Look this idea that Trumpism might be a new working class politics. I think to the extent there’s any coherence to Trump at all it’s a nationalist authoritarian politics. It appeals specifically to a subset of white people. It’s a dead end. You know? He’s his own brand.” Wehner agrees with Ponnuru  —   he said Trump is more an ”attitude” than a coherent ideology. But what if Trump is more than just his own brand? What if he represents more than just white hot anger at the establishment? It will be hard for the GOP to dismiss Trump’s supporters  —   after all, these people are the base of the party. Republicans have courted them successfully for years with social issues and encouraged their disgust with government. But all along the GOP was missing an agenda to address the economic pain these voters were experiencing because of globalization and wage stagnation. And that’s another question Trump’s rise has raised for Republicans. Should they try to do a better job explaining the benefits of free trade or immigration or entitlement reform? Or should the party offer new policies (other than a building a wall or starting a trade war) to help these downwardly mobile voters? Ben Domenech, the publisher of The Federalist, says conservatives who oppose Trump need to listen carefully to his voters: ”Don’t they deserve the respect of trying to go to them and say, ’Here, let me meet you on this place or on this place even if I’m not where you are on all these others things?’ . .. It’s just that there’s a way to do that the right way which is to appeal to them on principles of limited government and freedom. And there’s a way to do that the wrong way which is to appeal to the xenophobia and the nativism.” The GOP’s awkward marriage of a   base and a   establishment might be headed for divorce, and it’s not clear yet what will take its place. A nativist, isolationist, protectionist party? Or something else entirely? Whatever emerges will have a sturdy base to build on. After all, the Republican party, at all levels except the White House, is in great shape compared to the Democrats, who are at their lowest ebb with their fewest elected office holders since the 1920s. Right now, the party is consumed with the   fight over the nomination. Whether or not Trump ends up as the GOP’s standard bearer in November will determine to what extent the party is reshaped in his image."
"Donald Trump has based his presidential campaign on resentment toward the establishment, and some alarmed Republicans have called for national leaders to take Trump down. Of course, this has been tried before  —   on a fateful evening five years ago, when stars of politics and comedy made Donald Trump the butt of a national joke. The date: April 30, 2011. The setting: The cavernous Washington Hilton. The event: The White House Correspondents dinner  —   ”a scrum of politics, politicians and celebrities,” in the words of Marcus Brauchli, formerly the top editor of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. Brauchli attended the   affair that night as the Post’s top editor. The paper’s chief celebrity guest: Donald Trump, who had been invited by Lally Weymouth, the mother of the paper’s  . Brauchli squired Trump around, introducing him to political figures, such as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and former Ambassador Jon Huntsman, who was preparing his own bid for the White House. ”Trump was, I would say, in pretty high spirits on the way into the dinner,” Brauchli recalled recently. That would change. For several weeks, two teams of writers had been drafting rival sets’ remarks: one for President Obama and another for comedian Seth Meyers. Donald Trump  —   known as a brash real estate developer, celebrity and ritualistic televised firer  —   had emerged as the figurehead of the birther movement. (For those who have somehow forgotten:   birthers contended that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and was thus ineligible to be president, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.) ”A couple of weeks prior to the dinner was when Trump decided to send his team of investigators to Hawaii and determine whether or not the president of the United States was actually born in the United States,” said Jon Favreau, then Obama’s chief speechwriter. Obama finally dispatched a lawyer to retrieve his   birth certificate in Hawaii, releasing it with some irritation days before the dinner. Favreau decided to convert the insult into a punchline. Several hours’ drive north, writers for Seth Meyers were casting about for comedic targets. Meyers, now host of NBC’s Late Night, was to be the final speaker of the night. At the time he was anchor of Saturday Night Live’s mock newscast, ”Weekend Update,” as well as the show’s lead writer. ”Donald Trump was not in our crosshairs when we sat down three weeks out,” Meyers told me. ”He did us the great favor of ramping up his demands for the birth certificate as we got closer to the show.” Meyers did not realize Trump would be at the dinner. ”At the time he was sort of a bipartisan target  —   no one owned him. The Republican Party didn’t own him at the time, the way they own him now,” Meyers said at his office at Rockefeller Center. ”So everyone in Washington, I think, saw him as this buffoonish character who was saying he could come in and understand how politics worked. ”And so he was a perfect target, in that the entire room was ready to hear jokes about him.” Obama started light. Now that the question of his birth was settled, Obama said, Trump would focus on resolving the issues that matter  —   like the faking of the Moon landing, the mysteries of Roswell, N. M. and the location of the rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. ”I don’t care what your politics are  —   this is the funniest president, with the best delivery, in the history of certainly televised comedy,” Meyers said. To be clear, Meyers said this as much as a complaint as a compliment. ”And  —   this is what I think what most comedians would be thinking  —   my first thought was: ’How is this going to affect me? And how is this going to affect my Trump material? Are they going to be   on Donald Trump by the time I get up there?’ ” Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau held aspirations for Obama’s appearance beyond generating laughter. ”What we wanted to accomplish more than anything was show people how absurd he was  —   how absurd his line of inquiry into the president’s, you know, legitimacy was,” Favreau said. They also sought, he said, to ”poke fun at Trump thinking that he was qualified to possibly be president of the United States based on his very successful career as host of the Celebrity Apprentice reality show.” It’s true: Trump was speaking openly of a White House bid even then. Favreau’s colleague Jon Lovett had consulted the comedian and director Judd Apatow. According to both Favreau and Apatow, Apatow pitched a bit based on Trump’s television success that led Obama to bury Trump in praise. ”Seriously  —   just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice, at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks,” the president said. ”And there was a lot of blame to go around, but you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership.” Trump nodded at one point  —   but as Meyers notes, he otherwise took it, impassively, even as Obama addressed Trump directly: ”And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf  —   you fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.” Obama drew roars of laughter. And then he turned to the dangers that journalists faced in the field, saluting their bravery to inform Americans of events in perilous areas. Meyers feared Obama had used up every laugh from the room. ”At a comedy club, if he passed you after he did that, you’d say, ’Hey man, you’re never opening for me again!’ ” He need not have worried. Meyers killed too, starting with this line: ”Donald Trump has been saying he will run for president as a Republican  —   which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.” ”They went after him hard,” said Brauchli, the former Washington Post executive editor. Trump’s discomfort visibly mounted over the course of the night. ”When he walked in, he felt like he was in the crowd and of the crowd,” Brauchli said. ”And within an hour, he’s the focus of massive ridicule from the most powerful man in the room and the celebrity guest of the night.” Brauchli says Trump and his wife, Melania, exited precisely and with alacrity. The next morning Trump delivered his own reviews, to ABC, Politico and Fox News. ”I didn’t know that I’d be virtually the sole focus, and I guess when you’re leading in most of the polls that tends to happen,” Trump told the hosts of the Sunday edition of Fox  Friends. ”I thought the delivery was good,” Trump continued. ”I thought Seth Meyers, frankly, his delivery was not good  —   he’s a stutterer and he really was having a hard time.” Meyers approached Trump at a charity event a few days later and thanked him for being a good sport. Meyers says Trump told him, ”You went too far.” ”Also, I want to point out that he hadn’t been a good sport. But I was allowing him the window to embrace this revisionist history where he had been a good sport,” Meyers recalled, laughing. ”He really wanted no part of it.” Despite repeated and detailed requests for comment, Trump was not available for an interview for this story. Last month Trump told The New York Times that he loved the dinner and could handle criticism. Favreau, the former White House speechwriter, said Obama had surprised his speechwriters in the days leading up to the dinner by insisting they rewrite a joke referring to Osama bin Laden in the punchline. Unbeknownst to Favreau, Obama had just secretly authorized the deployment of a special forces team to Pakistan to hunt down the   leader. ”I’ve thought back on that evening, how Obama managed to finish off one enemy, but it turned out the blow he delivered to Trump was temporary,” Brauchli said  —   ”and may just have served to harden Trump’s resolve to go after the elites who were then laughing at him.” ”I don’t think we trolled Donald Trump into running for president at that dinner,” Favreau said. ”I do think that part of the reason that Trump ran for president is so people would take him seriously.”"
"The Scandinavian duo My bubba started singing together after Bubba Tomasdottír answered an ad to rent a room in My Larsdotter’s apartment. The name of their band is taken from an anglicized pronunciation of the two singers’ first names. And while Larsdotter is from Sweden and Tomasdottír is from Iceland, their music has the sound of something born in America  —   a blend of old country, blues and bluegrass. The duo’s new album, Big Bad Good, combines crisscrossing voices with minimalist instrumentation, interspersed with moments of silence. This quietness is a presence in their music, and comes naturally from the musicians’ personalities  —   which they say are not natural fits for a lifestyle of performing in front of crowds. ”It’s been challenging for sure,” Larsdotter says. ”I think now that we’ve been doing this for a couple of years, we’re finding more and more our own way of being quiet in this loud world. And find a lot of strength in what we have together, being quiet.” Tomasdottír agrees. ”We call it ’the fragile challenge’: that it is often hard to find the space to be fragile,” she says. ”There’s a lot of power in the quietness and in the fragility, once you find a way of unlocking it, or the right setting to let it be heard.” Larsdotter and Tomasdottír spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon about their Scandinavian heritage and the music they loved growing up. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link."
"When it comes to the trillions of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies, bacteria get almost all the attention. Changes in our resident microbiota and their collective genome  —   called the microbiome  —   have been linked with a wide range of diseases, from various forms of arthritis to depression. At this point scientists tend to focus on which bacterial species might hinder or maintain health. But our biota comprises a menagerie of microbes. And a growing number of researchers feel that alongside bacteria, the fungi that inhabit our bodies  —   or, collectively, the ”mycobiome”  —   may also be influential in both our   and, at times, disease. It was Case Western Reserve medical mycologist Mahmoud Ghannoum who first coined the term mycobiome. ”Back around 2008, I was attending meetings and noticed people were really starting to talk about the microbiome,” he recalls, ”But for the most part they were only talking about bacteria, not the fungus and viruses that also comprise our biome. I thought to myself that we should also start looking at fungal communities.” In 2010 Ghannoum’s group published a study in PLoS Pathogens that for the first time used advanced genetic sequencing technology to characterize what constitutes a normal mycobiome in the human mouth. The idea was to establish a baseline fungal profile to which altered fungal populations in disease could be compared. Whereas previous research reported a relatively limited number of fungal species in our oral cavities  —   primarily Candida, which when overgrown causes thrush  —   Ghannoum and his colleagues identified a veritable zoo of fungal colonists in the mouths of the 20 study participants. In all they reported 101 fungal species, with each person harboring between 9 and 23 strains. They considered a healthy fungal community to include those species present in at least 20 percent of the participants, including, most commonly, various Candida species. This core mycobiome also included Cladosporium, a known asthma trigger Aureobasidium, which can cause fungal infections in organ transplant patients and some potentially beneficial species, like Saccharomyces boulardii. Fungi Out Of Balance, Also found in the baseline biome were, after Candida, the most common disease causing fungi: Aspergillus, Fusarium and Cryptococcus. That so many potentially harmful fungi were found to be common, Ghannoum believes, could mean that under normal conditions other fungi and microbes may keep these pathologic strains in check. Supporting this idea that disrupting the body’s fungal equilibrium can bring about disease was a paper Ghannoum published a few years later looking at the fungi present in the mouths of   patients. They found that Pichia  —   a yeast used in agriculture to prevent the growth of other fungi on various crops  —   inhibits the growth of Candida and other pathologic fungal species. ”By growing Pichia in the lab we found that it secretes a compound that can treat fungal infections in animals,” Ghannoum explains. In mice with compromised immune systems, which served as an animal model of HIV, those exposed to Pichia developed far less severe infections when inoculated with Candida.  On the heels of Ghannoum’s work, a number of other research groups set out to better understand our relationship with fungi. In 2012 and 2013 respectively, a Japanese team and researchers from the National Institutes of Health profiled the mycobiome of the skin and reported distinct communities based on body location, findings that could contribute to the search for new treatments for fungal skin disorders. More recently, French researchers distinguished the fungi present in healthy human lungs compared with those afflicted with cystic fibrosis. Aspergillus was most prevalent in the lungs of healthy people, whereas various Candida species dominated in those afflicted with CF and other lung disorders. A Telltale Sign For Unwanted Fungi, Another early player mycobiome research was UCLA professor David Underhill. In 2012 Underhill and his colleagues published a study in Science that used sequencing tools similar to those used by Ghannoum to profile a baseline gut mycobiome in mice. On average they found between 50 and 60 fungi genera (the plural of genus) in each rodent’s gastrointestinal tract, and many species within each genus. ”We showed that there is considerable fungal diversity in mice,” comments Underhill, ”but we were also interested in how these fungi might be contributing to disease.” In the same study Underhill’s group found that mammalian fungi interact with the immune system to control inflammation in the gut. Specifically they looked at the importance of a protein found on the surface of immune cells called   that helps our bodies recognize and eradicate unwanted fungi. Mice in which the gene encoding for   was inactivated and in which colitis was induced came down with far more severe disease than mice with the active gene. With these findings in hand they then identified a   gene variant in humans that predicted a severe form of inflammatory bowel disease called ulcerative colitis. Underhill posits that alterations in the gut fungal population could be a significant contributor to at least some forms of inflammatory bowel disease cases and could represent a potential treatment avenue. However he acknowledges that a host of other factors seem to contribute to the condition as well. ”None of these factors are working in isolation,” he says. ”I think it’s probably a confluence of them all interacting with each other and with us  —   what we eat, what kind of nutrients they have, genetic influences and how our immune system reacts to both fungi and bacteria in the gut.” Ghannoum agrees that a give and take among bacteria, viruses, fungi and each person’s specific biology likely influences our health. ”We know that when somebody takes an antibiotic they can develop fungal infections,” he says. ”So clearly there is interaction between these communities. From my point of view, I say, ’Look, it’s not bacteria alone, it’s not fungi alone  —   you have to put them together.’ And I’m sure that viruses also play a role. We really need to look at the total picture.” Recent unpublished findings by Ghannom’s lab show that an interaction between fungi and bacteria in the gut aggravates the body’s autoimmune response in Crohn’s disease, another form of inflammatory bowel disease. In collaboration with a group at Cleveland Clinic, Ghannoum and his colleagues also beginning to show that oral fungal populations are different in people with head and neck cancers. That finding, Ghannoum says, could help replace or help confirm biopsies, if the work is confirmed in larger studies. Fungi may also contribute to some cases of arthritis. Recent research found that autoimmune arthritis can be induced in mice injected with certain compounds found in fungal cell walls. Treating Patients By Transplanting Feces, But what does this research all mean for treating disease? The   therapy with perhaps the best supporting evidence is, like it or not, fecal transplantation: putting the stool of a healthy donor in a patient with Clostridium difficile colitis  —   a severe bacterial infection that often results as a side effect of antibiotic therapy. Patients receiving the healthy stool have a good chance of getting better. And there is growing evidence that probiotic approaches, including both bacterial and fungal species, might have benefits in various disorders, particularly once clinicians are better able to personalize regimens to individual patients. However as New York University rheumatologist and microbiome researcher Dr Jose Scher, points out, probiotic research  —   especially the area involving fungi  —   is in its adolescence. ”All the probiotic hype can get patients thinking ’Oh, my problem is caused by a bug. All I have to do is be on a certain diet and take certain probiotics or antibiotics and I my disease will be cured.’ Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that.” Still, Scher is hopeful. ”This is just the beginning of this field,” he says. ”But I think understanding how bacteria, viruses and fungi can play a role in health maintenance and disease will help us develop more effective therapies.” Case Western’s Ghannoum is also optimistic. ”I think that the idea of probiotic and antibiotic therapies is a very important question,” he says, ”Should we use antifungals? Should we use antibiotics? Finally, should we use probiotics? They all make sense to me.” But the key is first identifying the ”friendly fungi,” as he puts it and the friendly viruses and bacteria and how all of these microbes interact with the environment. One of the roadblocks for researchers in studying marginalized microbes like fungi is knowing which species they’re dealing with at all. ”Fungal taxonomy is really complicated and not quite what we learned in school,” explains Underhill, who notes that modern DNA sequencing has in many cases revealed that previous classifications that were incorrect. Many fungi haven’t yet been classified at all. As in many other areas of Linnaean cataloguing, technology has revealed the fungi kingdom to be a tangled thicket, not a cleanly branched family tree. There are plenty of mycologists out there actively trying to address this confusion and construct a more precise taxonomy. And by continuing to hone fungal identification technology and illuminating fungi’s potential relevance in better understanding, diagnosing and treating disease, UCLA’s Underhill and his colleagues are helping to accelerate this work. ”We’re in a stage where we’re recognizing the biological significance of the fungi in our systems to help develop a common language and set of research approaches,” Underhill says. ”Soon, hopefully, we’ll know how they can be good for us, bad for us and manipulated to our benefit.” There’s a certain beauty in our biologic cooperative a reminder that mammalian life is complicated and communal, and that in nature imbalance has consequences. But perhaps tinkering with our fungal dwellers will one day help restore our biologic balance and fend off disease. As Russian chemist and periodic table architect Dmitri Mendeleev ruminated, ”There exists everywhere a medium in things, determined by equilibrium.” Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired, Scientific American and on The Atlantic. com. He graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. He’s also on Twitter: @BretStetka."
"After two powerful quakes rocked the island of Kyushu in southern Japan barely a day apart, rescuers are racing to find survivors as aftershocks continue to shake the area. The death toll stands at 41, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, and some 2, 000 were treated in hospitals for their injuries. At least 90 homes were ”completely destroyed,” NHK reported. It adds: ”more damage is likely, as some municipalities are still unable to confirm their local situation.” NPR’s Elise Hu updated our Newcast unit on the rescue efforts: ”Crews are scrambling to find survivors and reports on injuries are changing fast after Saturday’s  .3 quake shook the Kumamoto region of Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. The latest quake happened barely 24 hours after the same island was hit by a   quake on Thursday. ”Saturday’s quake triggered a huge landslide, ripped roads apart, flattened homes and sent tens of thousands to temporary shelters. 20, 000 Japanese   troops have headed to the disaster region to help with rescue and recovery. Japan is located in one of the most seismically active regions of the world, known as the Pacific ring of fire.” The rescue efforts could be impacted by heavy rain and wind expected overnight, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters. ”He said people are waiting to be rescued and he called on ministers to put a top priority on saving lives,” NHK reported. Abe referred to the efforts ”a race against time,” according to The Associated Press. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said ”nearly 80 people were believed trapped or buried in rubble,” the wire service added. Suga also said that ”more than 91, 000 have been evacuated from their homes.” The second major quake was far deadlier than the first  —   it killed 32 people, compared to nine killed in earlier temblor on Thursday. Saturday’s quake was also unusually shallow, according the USGS. And as we reported Friday, the area saw more than 100 smaller quakes between the two major ones. NHK added that ”hundreds of thousands of households are without electricity, gas and tap water.” Kumamoto Airport’s terminal building was damaged during the quakes, and all flights Saturday were cancelled. As The   reported, there are reports that the historic Kumamoto Castle sustained damage from the temblors. The Associated Press said that according to a senior government official, ”no irregularities were reported at three nuclear power plants in the area.” A tsunami advisory has also been lifted."
"”This is the message I have come to bring you today: do not lose hope,” Pope Francis told migrants in Lesbos, a Greek island where thousands have landed as they try to make their way into Europe. Now, the European Union has started deporting migrants from Greece under a controversial deal with Turkey. ”Today, I want to be with you, and I want to tell you that you are not alone,” he said, according to an Agence France Presse interpreter. And when the pope left Lesbos, he brought three Syrian refugee families with him on his airplane in a ”gesture of welcome,” according to a statement from the Vatican. ”The Vatican will take responsibility for bringing in and maintaining the three families,” the statement said. It added that all 12 of the refugees are Muslim, and they were already in Lesbos when the   deal was signed last month. The pope was joined in Lesbos by the ecumenical patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church Bartholomew I and Archbishop of Athens Ieronymos II. Joanna Kakissis told our Newscast unit that ”the leaders of the eastern and western churches are on Lesbos to show solidarity with asylum seekers.” The religious leaders visited migrants in Moria, a camp that is ”now a closed detention center surrounded by an iron fence,” Joanna said. Some migrants held up signs reading ”We are human,” and ”The pope is our hope.” The Associated Press describes the emotional scene at Moria: ”Many refugees fell to their knees and wept at Francis’ feet as he and the two Orthodox leaders approached them at the Moria detention center. Others chanted ”Freedom! Freedom!” as they passed by. Francis bent down as one young girl knelt at his feet sobbing uncontrollably. A woman told the pope that her husband was in Germany, but that she was stuck with her two sons in Lesbos.” The wire service adds that the religious leaders also ”went to the island’s main port to pray together and toss a floral wreath into the sea in memory of those who didn’t make the journey.” In a joint statement, the three leaders said, ”World opinion cannot ignore the colossal humanitarian crisis created by the spread of violence and armed conflict, the persecution and displacement of religious and ethnic minorities, and the uprooting of families from their homes, in violation of their human dignity and their fundamental human rights and freedom,” Joanna reported. The controversial deal between the EU and Turkey is heralded by EU leaders as a pragmatic solution to stem the massive influx of migrants into Europe. But rights groups say it is a dangerous deal that does not adequately protect refugees. As the BBC reports, ”The Vatican insists that the Pope’s visit is purely humanitarian and religious in nature and should not be seen as a criticism of the deportations.” But at the same time, NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli tells Weekend Edition Saturday that ”with this gesture, he’s certainly setting an example and indirectly or directly telling them exactly what he thinks about the   deal.” The pope has frequently highlighted the plight of migrants and refugees. In the past, he has said Europe has a ”moral obligation” to welcome refugees, Sylvia reported Friday. He has also criticized what he calls a growing ”globalization of indifference” toward their plight. As Sylvia reported, ”his   papal trip out of Rome was to the Italian island Lampedusa,” then a major entry point into Europe for migrants making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. She added: ”The interfaith nature of the visit is a sign of an increasingly unified voice among two major Christian religions on issues that go beyond religion and embrace global humanitarian crises.” Joanna spoke to one volunteer who said the detention center conditions today don’t reflect the everyday reality. ”They wanted to present a pretty picture for this visit,” Kris Krossman, an emergency medical technician from San Diego, told Joanna. Here’s more: ”Greek police ’cleaned up’ the main detention camp on the island, to make it look like less of a prison. He said there were people inside who hadn’t had showers for more than 20 days. ’And then, suddenly, they got a shower before the pope visited,’ he says.” Migrants continue to try to cross the Mediterranean to Lesbos, though at a   rate, Joanna reported. She added that Greece’s coast guard says it intercepted a boat this morning carrying at least 40 people."
"It’s essentially impossible to win the Democratic nomination without support from women. In primaries and caucuses across the country, women make up a solid majority of the Democratic electorate. In fact, according to exit poll data, there’s not a state that’s voted to date where women made up less than 54 percent of Democratic voters. And, in Mississippi, women made up nearly   (64 percent) of Democratic primary voters. Women, of course, like any demographic, are not a monolith. Hillary Clinton consistently loses young women (ages 18 to 29) to Bernie Sanders. But, accounting for women of all different groups, Clinton has a clear advantage. There aren’t exit polls for every single state, but the common thread from all the data from the exit polls conducted to date show women, as a bloc, are supporting Clinton over Sanders. (Young women don’t vote as regularly. And Clinton performs best with older women, who are far more loyal voters.) There are a few exceptions: New Hampshire  —   where Sanders dominated essentially every demographic Vermont  —   Sanders’ home turf, where he won women by more than 60 points and Wisconsin  —   where Sanders and Clinton essentially broke even with women. There could be more exceptions as the primary season continues, but, for now,   analyses suggest Clinton has a safety net, and it’s essentially a web of women. What Do Women Want?  NPR interviewed dozens of women in different states about Clinton. Some said they identify with her, because she’s a woman. Others said they support the former secretary of state because of her experience and intelligence. But almost everyone at some point in the conversation, whether or not they were committed to voting for Clinton, mentioned they like her, because she understands ”women’s issues.” This term  —   ”women’s issues” is vague and has a different definition depending on who’s using it. For Angel Suit, a single mom in South Carolina who gets up before dawn to deliver newspapers for minimum wage, women’s issues revolve around the economy. ”We need   jobs,” she said, as she tried to quiet her    son. ”That’s one of my biggest issues, especially the minimum wage in South Carolina.” Other women pointed to equal pay and paid family leave. ”Women are interested in   issues  —   jobs, retirement, education, health  —   all the things that we need to do to raise a family and take care of elders,” said Mary Metz, a retired professor, as she was about to enter a Clinton event on the campus of the University of  . Metz said women like herself have complex concerns  —   both domestic and international. ”[Women] are also interested in foreign relations, but they’re interested in not having a lot of wars, trying to work things out,” she explained. Why do women like Clinton?  For some women, the allure of voting for Clinton is a matter of simple identity politics. ”I identify with her immensely you know, she’s a woman I’m a woman,” said Chantel Moses, an entrepreneur in New York. ”There’s a lot of tasks that’s associated with being a woman  —     making sure that you’re not only able to have a career, but also to provide for your family.” Moses wants a woman lead the country, but she also wants to ensure a ”competent” woman is in charge, she explained. Most women NPR interviewed insist they’re supporting Clinton for multiple reasons beyond identity politics. ”My choice of candidates on the Democratic Party is less to do with my gender and her gender and more to do with the politics,” Liz Yuhas, 27, said. But, Yuhas, like many women, admitted that electing the first woman president is in the back of her mind, even if it’s not the determining factor. ”I think it’s cool,” she said. ”And, I think her belief in gender equality is more tangible because of [her gender.] For some older voters, gender is more central. ”Look at the assault on reproductive rights,” said Mary Strickland, 61, a Clinton supporter who works in investments. She added, ”Some of the issues we fought for many years are being eroded. . .. I work in a very   field. And, I do feel that women carry the water for women’s issues whether it be reproductive rights, whether it be employment programs for women, whether it be daycare funding. . .. We should have daycare provided for families throughout the United States.” Clinton plays the ”gender card” In her 2008 campaign, Clinton struggled to talk about gender. Some critics claimed she ”ran as a man.” But, in the 2016 campaign, she often discusses women on the stump, as she did Tuesday on a panel about pay equity organized by Glassdoor, a company that collects data on employee salaries. ”Now, occasionally when I give a speech like this, which I do practically every day,” Clinton said, ”people will say, ’Oh there she goes, she’s playing the gender card.’ And what I say to that is if talking about equal pay and paid leave and more opportunities for women and girls is playing the gender card, then deal me in.” For Clinton, women are not just key in the primary, they could be crucial in a general election. Democrats already have a   advantage with unmarried women. (NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben has written more about the growing power of single women in politics.) But, Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said there’s another group of highly coveted women  —   independents, who do not identify with either major political party. ”Independent women tend to be one of the most important, persuadable blocs in the electorate,” Greenberg said. ”They sort of are the holy grail of general elections. . .. They also tend to be a little more socially liberal and a little more economically conservative.” And socially liberal women tend to have more liberal attitudes about abortion  —   an issue that’s come to the forefront recently in the GOP campaign because of comments from Donald Trump. ”The reason we have trouble talking to women voters is that many women voters believe Republican voters are wrong on specific women’s reproductive issues  —   and that’s a challenge,” said Republican strategist Lisa Camooso Miller. ”I think now more than ever the Republican Party is in a deficit because of the words and the actions Donald Trump has taken in the primary.” But, it’s not just words, it’s also tone, continued  . ”That back and forth between the candidates,” she said, ”whether it’s Donald Trump or anyone else, is really unattractive and unappealing to women, because we are looking for . .. candidates that are coming up with solutions, talking about the issues rather than sparring with one another    sometimes even to the detriment of the other candidates’ spouses.” She said most voters  —   women or men  —   are concerned about homeland security and the economy, and Republican candidates need to figure out a way to pivot back to that conversation. Polls show Donald Trump has a 70 percent unfavorable rating among women. And, Camooso Miller is worried Trump is repelling women at the same time Clinton is trying to court them. If the current trajectory continues, Clinton could turn the traditional gender gap into a gender gulf in November. But, of course, she has to secure the Democratic nomination first. And, for now, she has a challenge  —   the other end of the gender spectrum  —   men. Exit polls show Clinton has had a rockier record winning male voters, especially white men. In Wisconsin, for example, Sanders won men resoundingly beating Clinton by about 30 points."
"During an exchange over how high to raise the minimum wage in Thursday night’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders began to shout over each other, hands raised, fingers pointed, both seeming to get a bit red in the face, while the audience cheered and booed in equal parts. It was quite a scene. As NPR’s Ron Elving put it, ”Both Sanders and Clinton showed flashes of animosity bordering on contempt.” Moderator Wolf Blitzer of CNN tried several times to calm things down, saying, ”Secretary, Senator, please,” over and over. Finally, he exclaimed, almost shouting himself, ”If you’re both screaming at each other, the viewers won’t be able to hear either of you. So please don’t talk over each other.” It was the latest example of something we’ve seen over and over during this presidential campaign: candidates yelling  —   at themselves, their competition, moderators and even the audience  —   with the message getting lost in the process. On Twitter, there were complaints about the noise. Some joked about the candidates’ ages. And others seemed to touch on gender, and the way it might affect how different candidates are heard. For months, the Democratic side of the presidential debate had been considered to conduct quieter, more restrained presidential debates. But the tables seemed to have turned this week. Democrats were at their fieriest yet, and the Republican contenders are coming off a week of family filled town halls and a recent debate that seemed to focus a lot on policy instead of hand size and insulting nicknames. In the   to Tuesday’s New York primary, Clinton and Sanders have been engaged in multiple battles  —   over who’s more New York, who’s more qualified, and who can make the most change. We may have to add another battle to this list  —   which of these two is the loudest."
"In 1955, a block of four rare postage stamps was stolen from a display case at a convention. Over the years, two were recovered, but there were no signs of the others  —   until now. Six decades after the heist, one of the ”inverted Jenny” stamps has surfaced at a New York auction house. ”It’s one of the most notorious crimes in philatelic history, and there’s a piece of the puzzle now that’s in place,” said Scott English, the administrator of the American Philatelic Research Library, according to The Associated Press. As NPR reported eight years ago when another ”inverted Jenny” hit the auction block, the red and blue stamps bearing an ”  image of a Curtiss   biplane” existed because of a printing mistake. The accident has fueled decades of stamp lore  —   and millions of dollars in transactions. NPR reported that one stamp sold for close to $1 million. In 2008, we reported on the stamps’ provenance: ”It was in 1918 that stamp collector William Robey went to the New York Avenue post office in Washington, D. C. to buy a sheet of the first airmail stamps. He paid $24 for 100 stamps and was handed a sheet of stamps that featured the   aircraft. It’s the only sheet with the mistake to survive. ”And it was an instant windfall. Robey sold it for $15, 000.” There are other known ”inverted Jenny” stamps from that sheet of 100, but this newly discovered stamp is from the stolen block of four. ”After careful expert examination the rarity was determined to be position 76 in the pane of 100 subjects,” the Spink USA auction house said in a press release. The AP reports that the   seller of the latest stamp discovered is a man in his 20s who lives in the U. K. and said he ”had inherited it from his grandfather and knew little about it.” English will work with Spink USA and federal authorities to take possession of the stamp ”once legal matters are settled,” according to the auction house’s press release. The collector who owned the stamps when they were stolen in the ’50s was a woman named Ethel McCoy and the press release says they were her ”most prized possession.” Though one of the four stamps surfaced in her lifetime, she was unable to get it back. In a 2014 article on the stolen postage, The New York Times wrote: ”In 1958, the first of the four stamps resurfaced, separated from its siblings, in the possession of a Chicago stamp dealer named Louis Castelli. Experts, comparing details like the perforations around the stamp’s edge and flyspeck variations in its printing to photographs of the stolen block, were in no doubt as to its identity. ”How Mr. Castelli had obtained it was not adequately explained, but the F. B. I. declined to pursue the matter, unsure whether the single stamp’s value at the time passed the $5, 000 threshold allowing it to investigate.” When Castelli tried to sell the stamp again some 20 years later, the FBI seized it, the newspaper wrote. McCoy had the stamps insured and part of the agreement with the insurance company stipulated that if the stamps ever surfaced, they would be purchased on her behalf. But by the time that one stamp turned up, McCoy was close to 80 years old and couldn’t remember the name of the insurance company, the Times reported, adding that the firm never came forward to help her with the claim. After McCoy’s death in 1980, another of the four stolen stamps was recovered in 1982, Spink USA says in its release. In the philatelic world, the ”inverted Jenny” stamps are some of the most famous and highly coveted, but their renown has also seeped into popular culture. For example, in one episode of The Simpsons, Homer finds a sheet of the stamps  —   along with a Stradivarius violin and an original copy of the Declaration of Independence  —   but he doesn’t recognize the value of his find and dismisses them."
"This story is part of an   project focused on how voters’ needs of government are shaped by where they live. NPR will explore parts of the country not on the primary calendar and not crowded with journalists following each twist of campaign season. First up: Illinois, the state that most broadly represents America in terms of race, income, age, religion and education. The people of Thomson, Ill. are not happy with the government. Fifteen years ago, the state of Illinois built a     prison in this village of 600 people along the Mississippi River. That prison has barely been used since it opened in 2001, and that’s a big financial problem for this little town. ”We kind of feel like the dog that keeps getting kicked, and yet we keep wagging our tail hoping someone will adopt us and love us,” says Vicky Trager, village president. Illinois spent $170 million to build the prison, but in a   move, it didn’t fund it to actually operate in its first year. That   measure then continued right through the decade. The prison remained empty. The federal government took it over in 2012, but congressional interference  —   over fears that it may be used to house Guantanamo inmates  —   has kept it mostly empty still. Thomson sold $4 million in bonds to boost its water and sewage capacity to facilitate the vacant prison. It is now on the verge of bankruptcy. State assistance it has relied on to service the debt hasn’t arrived this year. Political gridlock in the state capital means Illinois is now into its second year without a budget, and the tiny village of Thomson is about to go bankrupt. ”The state of Illinois government’s dysfunctional. The federal government’s dysfunctional,” Trager says. Trager voted for John Kasich in the Illinois primary, but others, like Thomson residents Lisa and Matt Karl, look at the waste the prison represents and have decided to vote for Bernie Sanders. ”The revolution is happening,” says Matt, a bike shop owner, ”and it’s not going to be stopped.” These sentiments  —   that the system is not working  —   echoed what Morning Edition heard across Illinois as our reporting team talked to voters over a weeklong journey that went from Chicago to Thomson to the industrial heartland of Peoria and its bedroom community of Washington. Bitter In Washington, In Washington, a wealthy suburb in central Illinois, anger with government is fueled by tragedy. The city was devastated by a tornado in late 2013. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, three people were killed, dozens more injured. And yet, despite direct promises of assistance from President Obama on down, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not provide the city with funds it needed for the massive cleanup effort. Arcane bureaucratic rules, including the relative proximity of a big city like Chicago, prevented help being granted. Like Thomson, Washington flirted with bankruptcy. The experience left Mayor Gary Manier, who spent months negotiating for help from the federal government, feeling bitter. ”People say to me, ’Hey, are you going to run for senator or state rep?’ After what I went through, I wouldn’t want any part of Springfield or D. C.,” Manier says. It’s shaped his vote this election year. A Republican who has supported Democrats in the past, Manier is now backing Donald Trump. He believes Trump would take a look at what happened in Washington, Ill. and act simply because it’s the right thing to do. He’d cut through all the bureaucracy. ”I think he’s an independent thinker from that standpoint,” Manier says. Frustrated In Englewood  In Englewood, the neighborhood in Chicago with the worst murder rate in a city with a massive violent crime problem, residents are frustrated. Years of promises by state and federal politicians to transform Englewood have done little to stem high unemployment rates, urban decay and violence. Street after street is lined with condemned and   brick homes. And there are loud complaints here about the police. This neighborhood is just a few miles from the spot where      Laquan McDonald was killed by police, shot 16 times as he walked away from the officer. But for veteran police officer Angela Wormley in the 7th District police station in the heart of Englewood, simply blaming the police is wrong. ”There’s a lot that goes into the dynamics of what’s going on in the city of Chicago, and it’s not about bad policing. It’s about getting some standards, some ethics, and some morals, getting some order among the people, getting some respect among themselves, so they don’t think it’s OK to go get a gun and shoot each other, and so they don’t think that that’s the first option that they have,” she says. Not far away, in the Dream Cafe, Jermont Montgomery, 39, meets with the local activist organization R. A. G. E, the Residents Association of Greater Englewood. Now trying to be part of the solution, he was once part of the problem. Arrested for dealing drugs as an    he spent a year in a   prison, the result of the tough new crime legislation brought in during the 1990s. That has shaped his view of establishment politicians, including one in particular. ”I personally will not vote for Hillary Clinton, period,” he says. ”The prison industrial complex boom occurred under her husband’s leadership. She was a major proponent of it. Incarcerating many   under the three strike laws, the drug laws.” Montgomery is backing Sanders in this election. And while all of Chicago’s majority   wards went for Clinton in the primary, there was a sense of resignation among those we spoke to in Englewood that the political system, in its current form, can’t help fix the many problems in their community. But back in Thomson, despite facing the looming threat of going bankrupt, Trager, the village president, warns against a wholesale political revolution. ”Just because the system is dysfunctional doesn’t mean that you punish everyone by putting someone in there that’s gonna blow it up,” she says. ”Isn’t that what the Bolsheviks tried to do in Russia? I mean, look what happened. Why is blowing up an existing system better than working together to try to fix it? I don’t get that.”"
"On a recent March evening, the Welsh songwriter Cate Le Bon performed at the Masonic Lodge located within Los Angeles’ Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the final resting place of Tinseltown’s golden sons and daughters from yesteryear, from Cecil B. DeMille to Jayne Mansfield, musicians including Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone, the gangster ”Bugsy” Siegel and Terry, the beloved Cairn terrier who played Toto in The Wizard of Oz. Le Bon, who once noted that she’d toyed with naming her debut album Pet Deaths instead of Me Oh My back in 2009, might have been right at home. Words like ”haunting” have since become synonymous with Le Bon’s angular tunes, which mention dirty attics and mithering ghosts. Le Bon has yet to see a ghost in real life, but she’s ” ” about the possibility, especially given a recent brush with the great beyond. While recording her new album Crab Day last year at a recording studio in Stinson Beach, in Northern California, she had an encounter with a recently deceased friend in a dream. ”We were in a bar, and we sat at a table and she hugged me. I remember the feeling of our cheeks touching. And then she went,” Le Bon says. ”I woke up with that bittersweet feeling that I had been with her again, and also remembering that she was no longer with us.” She shudders slightly. ”Strange stuff. I don’t think I’ve had a dream like that before. I genuinely feel like I was visited by her.” FaceTiming from her parents’ home in Cardiff, Wales, Le Bon says it wasn’t so disquieting to see her friend back from the grave (though she notes that the Stinson Beach house is rumored to harbor other spectres). ”She was a massive inspiration,” she says. ”A wonderful woman.” Her friend’s presence is absolutely felt on Crab Day  —   Le Bon’s wonderful fourth album and first for the label Drag City. Something like the spirit of Le Bon’s departed friend may very well hover over a song like ”Yellow Blinds, Cream Shadows,” where Le Bon notes: ”I’m alive in your window.” Coupled with bombastic instrumentals that feature both saxophone and xylophone, Crab Day listens like a celebration of her life, and life as a whole. ”She’d write a song or she’d make a piece of writing and go, ’It’s good isn’t it? ’” Le Bon recalls. ”I had such admiration for that, the directness and the honesty and, well, why would you make something if you didn’t think it was good? When she died there was this conscious effort to try and be a little bit more like that and try and manufacture the positivity if it wasn’t there. Because I think it’s important and nice to be able to stand by something that you and a hell of a lot of people have gotten together to make.” Le Bon’s music is carefully concocted from both chaos and control. It’s a combination that bred the akimbo psychedelic pop of Cyrk, her 2012 effort, and the slanted, enchanted rhythms of her last solo album, 2013’s Mug Museum, where her vocals oscillated between funereal and festive sometimes in the same breath. But the way that Crab Day unfolded was odd, even by her standards. ”I think this is the first record I’ve made that is completely, absolutely no inhibition whatever,” she says. ”When you can stand by something and go, ’well you know, it is what it is and it couldn’t be any other way’ . .. it’s strange.” Crab Day certainly contains multitudes: Le Bon’s guitar is as freewheeling as ever on the likes of ”We Might Resolve,” recalling the    ethos of Krautrock. The album’s lovely ”I Was Born on the Wrong Day” (which perhaps nods to the fact that she’d been accidentally celebrating her birthday on March 3 instead of the actual date, March 4, for years) is lysergic pop at its finest. But there’s a more focused method this time around, especially in the tightened rhythm section of songs like ”Find Me,” an approach she says was partially informed by closely listening to old   punk singles. ”She’ll flip an idea upside down and look at it from a totally strange perspective. Which is her strongest point,” says Tim Presley, a friend and collaborator who records under the name White Fence. ”She comes out of Mars with ideas.” Née Cate Timothy, Le Bon (she says she drew her musical moniker from ”a joke that went too far”) grew up in the rural Carmarthenshire region of western Wales. An   story goes that Le Bon’s teenage world shifted when her father handed her a copy of Pavement’s   album, Brighten the Corners, one day as an alternative to the music she and her classmates were listening to, such as Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Wales of Le Bon’s formative years was a creative hotbed, with bands like Super Furry Animals and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci fast on the rise. ”They were insanely creative, genuinely kind of bats*** at times, but were writing about politics and proper psychedelic s*** that had no anchor and was really beautiful,” she recalls. ”There was so much melody. And to be exposed to that from a young age has been instrumental in the scene in Wales, where there’s no lucid sonic similarity between bands but kind of doing it for yourself.” Le Bon took a while to find her own sonic signature, but she had believers. In 2007, Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys saw her perform live at several club nights in Wales, then swiftly asked her to open for him on his solo tour and eventually perform with his group Neon Neon. It evolved into a kind of mentorship when he produced her   first album, Me Oh My, in 2009. ”He’s uncompromising in his art and his creativity is boundless,” she says of Rhys, adding: ”He’d never offer guidance. If I asked him, he would kindly give his opinion.” Next came 2012’s spectacular Cyrk, a whimsical waltz of tinny pianos and eerie hums that found her tightening melancholy melodies into a signature style. She moved to Los Angeles to mold what would become Mug Museum, a sparse, spectacular opus that found her perfecting a singular kind of psychedelic pop. Perhaps she got too creative with the   for that 2013 record, though, when, on a ceramics kick several years ago, she sought to make a personalized mug for the first fifty  . One domestic territory   later, Le Bon was tasked with making about 150 mugs. ”It’s like when your parents make you stop smoking and so they make you smoke and they make you smoke 10 packs of cigarettes,” she laughs. ”After that it was like, ’I don’t ever want to do this again. ’” Around this time, Tim Presley and his band were asked to open for Le Bon in Los Angeles. ”You get a lot of offers, and if you haven’t heard of them you’re skeptical,” Presley says. ”But [she] moved me immediately. You know when your brain takes to a certain music and it feels correct? That’s what her music is to me. It can do no wrong to your mind and ears and body and soul.” The pair didn’t talk much that night, but they quickly formed a cosmic connection afterwards hinged on a rare, shared musical language. That first became apparent when Presley showed Le Bon several demos from a ’70s cover album he was working on (and is still under wraps due to legal conflicts). ”In a way I was expecting her to be like, ’Oh cool, I’ll sing and play guitar on it.’ [But] she completely rearranged it, and it was 10 million times better than what I had come up with. That’s the first time I was like ’whoa,’” he recalls. ”’You have an amazing brain!’ She is really not afraid to come in and step up. We work well in that respect: I show her something, she can deconstruct it and then it’s this cool collaboration.” It’s led them to collaborate on a ramshackle project under the name Drinks, and Le Bon recently produced White Fence’s    new album. But Crab Day’s claws are firmly entwined in the Drinks era, when the pair was recording its debut, Hermits on Holiday, a   punkified jazz album that drew out their strongest psychedelic inclinations. That experience proved to be invigorating for them both, and Le Bon wrote what would become Crab Day immediately after that. ”We were just trying to make music that excited us both, and that made me remember that that’s the only reason to make music,” she says, noting that she had been feeling a ”little jaded” after touring for Mug Museum for several months. ”That [Drinks album] kind of reignited my love of writing and performing and also made me remember that you choose to do this. You don’t have to do this. It’s a choice to be a musician.” She toasts to that choice on Crab Day, which also introduces a formidable backing group comprised of producer and   Josiah Steinbrick (Devendra Banhart, Har Mar Superstar) Josh Klinghoffer (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers take that, dad) Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint) Stephen Black (Sweet Baboo) and longtime collaborator Huw Evans (H. Hawkline) who recorded the album with Le Bon at Stinson Beach. Le Bon says Crab Day was the first time it felt like ”our” record instead of hers, which is a testament to both the musicians’ talents and how she articulates ideas. ”With Cate, she’s so confident in the people that she’s chosen that and leaves space for us to do what everyone does best, but also never for a second loses her grip on her kind of idea or how exactly this very song on this very album is going to sound,” Mozgawa says, noting that it felt almost like   an album that had already been out in the world. ”It kind of felt like, ’Oh wow,’ she’s accessing some memory that’s so assured.” The Crab Day recording group has since evolved into BANANA, a ”   ” group that Le Bon’s brought on the road with her to give audiences an experience from the moment they walk through the doors until they leave into the night. The Crab Day run includes a whimsical,   improvised set from BANANA, an experimental short film she made with the visual artist Phil Collins in Berlin, curated synth scapes humming over the loudspeakers in between sets and then a full   of the new album, which sounds colossal live. Le Bon insists that the group, who all wear woven mohair hats onstage that make them resemble a group of runaway beekeepers, isn’t inspired by Andy Warhol’s infamous touring troupe that included The Velvet Underground, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (though they are called BANANA). Yet BANANA orbits the Velvets in that listening to them is like observing a series happy accidents, from a group of   superstars led by focused, freewheeling ringleader. You almost imagine that at some point, someone may have broken a glass and dragged a chair across some aluminum studio plates (as the Velvets infamously did on ”European Son”) just to see what kind of sound might answer back. That call and response between the bizarre and beautiful is the core of Crab Day, whose title doubles as a   holiday in Le  . It’s reflective of her larger ethos, as well. ”The world is absolute nonsense,” she says, ”And things can be important to you, but you should never expect them to be important to other people.” Everything may be nonsense, but there’s a sense of longing for a cohesive connection amidst the confusion she ”want[s] to makes sense with you,” as she confesses in ”I’m a Dirty Attic.” Yet in between talk of coat hangers, crabs and cream shadows, Crab Day is Le Bon’s most accessible album to date, probing fear, anxiety and the cognitive dissonance of weighty words such as ”love,” which she does on the woozy ”Love Is Not Love.” She says: ”You can have this universal word everyone recognizes and you think can have a universal meaning, but it doesn’t. It’s polysomatic in a way. The spectrum of a word that is so powerful and the range is huge, and yet it’s supposed to be this symbol.” That’s not to say that Le Bon can’t find the utility in a good symbol, though. The sea, universal and vast, is a constant well of wonder for Le Bon, who often croons about lunar tides or being adrift. ”I was given a pair of binoculars for Christmas, which has enhanced my strange existence as a retired schoolteacher,” she jokes. ”I go and look at the ocean with my binoculars like a creep.” She says she often thinks about fellow Welsh cohort Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s ditty about the ocean, ”Only the Sea Makes Sense.” The favorite song also served as a mantra that drove Crab Day, recorded by an ocean whose immensity ”quietly mocked” her and her musical cohorts out on Stinson Beach. ”We were making what seemed to us at the time the most important thing, then you look around and you see these spaces and things that have been there longer than you can even begin to fathom,” she says. ”It kind of puts everything into perspective in a really lovely, comforting way.”"
"One of the biggest stories of the election cycle is turnout (as we’ve reported a few times now): Republican turnout has spiked far beyond 2012 levels, and Democratic turnout has fallen off after the party’s mammoth 2008. The tone and the turnout are vastly different between Republicans and Democrats this year, but oddly enough, both sides have something crucial in common: their voters are far less moderate than they were in their last primaries. Let’s start with the Republican numbers. The below chart shows the ideological difference between the Republican electorate this year and in 2012. Each dot represents one state  —   so, for example, 33 percent of Vermont Republican primary voters in 2016 said they considered themselves moderate or liberal, compared to 53 percent in 2012. That puts Vermont at   for ”somewhat conservative”  —   the most extreme result we found among the 15 GOP states for which there was sufficient   data. It’s true exit polls can have a margin of error, but there’s no mistaking a pattern here. In no state did the share of ”moderate” and ”liberal” GOP primary voters grow from 2012 to 2016. (The exit polls lumped moderate and liberal together in 2012, so they’re not separated out here.) Altogether, an NPR analysis finds that the share of ”somewhat conservative” voters on the GOP side climbed by nearly 10 percentage points in 2016 over 2012’s primaries. (That is, among the states with exit polling data for both years). The share who were moderate or liberal, meanwhile, fell by around 9 percentage points, and the share who were ”very conservative” held relatively steady. Something similar is at work on the Democratic side, as well: The share of moderate and conservative Democratic voters was down  —   sometimes dramatically so  —   in most states that have voted thus far. Meanwhile, the share of people who are somewhat or very liberal is way up. This year, around 60 percent of Democratic primary voters said they considered themselves ”somewhat” or ”very liberal,” up from around 45 percent in 2008 (once again, among states with sufficient exit polling data for both years). So interestingly, though voters on both sides are less moderate than in the last contests, Democrats this year have more decidedly moved toward the ”very liberal” end of the spectrum. Republican voters, meanwhile, are way more ”somewhat conservative” than in 2012, but don’t appear to be more ”very conservative.” So what happened? One thing to keep in mind: Republican turnout across the board is higher this year. That means there are still a few more moderate and liberal Republican primary and caucus voters this cycle than there were in the 2012 primaries  —   it’s just that the number of somewhat conservative Republicans shot up way more. Likewise, Democratic turnout is down almost entirely across the board. Interestingly, even with the sharp drop off in turnout, multiplying the exit poll data by the turnout numbers suggests that the raw number of ”very liberal” Democratic voters is, in fact, up slightly from 2008. However, the number of moderate and conservative voters dropped off steeply. And even though the share of ”somewhat liberal” voters is up, the raw number is also down. But anyway: all of this could mean that a bunch of moderate and conservative Democrats who voted in 2008 stayed home this year, while a lot of those somewhat and very liberal Democrats from 2008 came out again. Likewise, it could mean that the Republican wave of turnout is driven largely by a bunch of ”somewhat conservative” voters who weren’t there in 2012. And looking at the results so far, there are simple explanations to why this might be happening. The   Bernie Sanders is probably driving some of the turnout among   voters. It’s likewise possible that the   Trump is behind the bump in somewhat conservative voters in Republican primaries (while Ted Cruz does better among very conservative voters, and John Kasich gets more votes among moderates). But then, it might not just be  : it’s possible that lots of people have simply become more conservative or liberal than they were four or eight years ago. This is also to some degree plausible, as there is evidence that Americans are getting more polarized. In other words, there’s a   question here, with no clear answer  —   chances are, they’re both right. To the degree that voters are more polarized, they’re gravitating toward more extreme candidates. And Sanders and Trump also both happen to be very good at energizing people to turn out and vote for them."
"Chicago’s Jazz Record Mart attracts visitors from all over the world. At least, it used to: Last month, owner Bob Koester sold the store, saying he was just too old to run it any more. Koester began selling used records when he was a teenager in Wichita, Kansas. After moving to Chicago, he opened his own store, as well as his own jazz and blues label, Delmark. But after more than 60 years in business, he decided this spring that it was time to pack it in. ”One reason I’m selling is that my son, who will inherit the label, isn’t too interested in the retail business,” he says. ”I’m 83 years old.” Another reason, Koester says, is the rent  —   too steep for his current budget. On Jazz Record Mart’s final Saturday, the store was jammed with loyal customers, among them local radio host Leslie Keros, teacher Shawn Salmon and pianist Robert Irving III. ”It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been here,” Keros says, ”but I used to work downtown and my lunch hour became lunch hours, because I came here to browse.” Salmon says there are certain advantages to going to a    store instead of shopping online. ”I love going to stores, because usually online they just kind of show you what’s happening, what’s cool, what’s selling. And it’s always the same stuff,” he says. ”You can walk into a store and [say] ’I had no idea that existed,’ or ’I’ve been looking for that forever.’ I love it. I’d just spend hours and get lost.” Iriving has fond memories of the store as well. ”I can’t remember the first time I was in here,” he says, ”but I think I even performed here once, many years ago. And it’s just an institution. Considering what’s happened with the record industry at large, the fact that a jazz record mart or shop has survived this long is pretty remarkable.” Another regular customer was Bill Sagan, back when he was in college and business school in Chicago. ”It was a store where people came in and relied on some very capable store employees that could route them to either what they wanted to buy and listen to, or what they should want to buy and listen to,” Sagan says. ”And if you ever run into someone that tries to convince you that making a purchase in any of the great record stores that we’ve all gone to in our lives is the same as the experience you have online, they would be kidding you. It is not the same and it will never be the same. That’s saying something considering that today, Sagan runs the online store and subscription service Wolfgang’s Vault. He bought the Jazz Record Mart’s entire collection of jazz, blues, gospel, experimental, rock and world music  —   along with the name. Sagan is putting that inventory online, starting today, in a special section of the Vault, but it won’t have those employees to guide you. A lot of them were nascent writers, like me  —   I worked at the Jazz Record Mart back in the day. Some of them were musicians, like trumpeter Josh Berman. He clerked at the Record Mart longer than he cares to remember, getting educated by listening to the store’s stock. ”I think I got a lot of my aesthetic from the Record Mart,” he says, ”because I started there so young. I didn’t know anything. I mean, zero. I knew about Miles Davis. And I saw the future of what I wanted to do in the Record Mart.” Not to glamorize the Jazz Record Mart  —   it was no Apple store. It was dusty and funky the boss could be cranky and had his own way of doing things. Josh Berman says the hours were long and the wages low, but there were benefits. ”I kind of, like, lived there, you know?” he says. ”I was there all the time. There was a piano in the back, and I was practicing there every night. You know, you’d go on tour, you’d come back, the job would be there. They were very flexible, so there was a generosity that was kind of amazing.” However, with the rise of online sales and   streaming services,    retail outlets must adapt to survive. The Jazz Record Mart did have a website, but the physical store was the thing. It was an experience  —   and not just for the customers. Bob Koester loved being there. ”Jazz fans are really interesting people,    people, and usually very nice people,” he says. ”It was part of the business that I enjoyed  —   especially Saturdays, you know, you’d get these guys from out of town. And it might only be, ’Hi there. I’m from Belgium,’ or something. It’s just fun to meet them. That’s something I’m gonna miss.”"
"For days, the tech media was mesmerized: Rumors were running amok about the mysterious third party that helped the FBI unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone and one particular Israeli security company landed in the spotlight. As weeks go by, the expectations that the   helper or its mysterious technique would be revealed are quickly declining. The theories, however, continue to ripple out. The Washington Post this week produced the latest: ”The FBI cracked a San Bernardino terrorist’s phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered and brought to the bureau at least one previously unknown software flaw, according to people familiar with the matter. ”. ..The people who helped the U. S. government come from the sometimes shadowy world of hackers and security researchers who profit from finding flaws in companies’ software or systems.” The Post said that ”at least one of the people who helped the FBI” was a   ”gray hat” hacker  —   as opposed to ”black hat” or ”white hat,” which mark the edges of the ethics spectrum  —   someone who digs up software security flaws and sells them to governments or to companies that make surveillance tools. Reuters followed up with additional tidbits: ”The company that helped the FBI unlock a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone to get data has sole legal ownership of the method, making it highly unlikely the technique will be disclosed by the government to Apple or any other entity, Obama administration sources said this week. ”. ..The sources said the technology used to get into the phone was supplied by a  . S. company that they declined to identify.” OK, so it may or may not be several helpers. It may or may not involve   professional hackers. It may or may not come from a foreign entity. Here’s how FBI Director James Comey has described them on the record: ”The people we bought this from I know a fair amount about them,” he said in a recent speech at Kenyon College, ”and I have a high degree of confidence that they are very good at protecting it, and their motivations align with ours.” One thing that we’ve learned from Comey, too, is that the undisclosed technique used the iPhone 5C in San Bernardino does not work on newer phones. ”This doesn’t work on sixes, doesn’t work on a 5S,” he said in the speech. ”So we have a tool that works on a narrow slice of phones.” And as Reuters reports, the FBI itself may not know the details of the technique, ”just enough to determine that it worked.” (And Apple lawyers have even questioned whether the tool has, in fact, worked.) With that, we also don’t know whether this tool can or will be applied to other investigations involving iPhones. After the flurry of publicized quests for help that followed the FBI’s announcement of a successful iPhone hack, it’s now far from clear that the tool can or is being used in other cases. And finally, we have little insight into the value of the information discovered on the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. The Washington Post, citing law enforcement officials, has reported that the content has indicated no links to foreign terrorists, but that investigators were still hoping that the data might yet help figure out what the terrorists did before and after the shooting. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan previously told NPR, before the iPhone was unlocked, that there was ”a reasonably good chance” that the phone would have ”nothing of any value,” but he explained: ”This is an effort to leave no stone unturned in the investigation.” The issue of the scope of the government’s ability to compel a tech company to assist with investigations continues to percolate in other parts of the country. Microsoft has sued the Justice Department over gag orders on searches of information stored in the cloud and a district court judge is weighing a dispute over another iPhone in New York. ”The government has utterly failed to satisfy its burden to demonstrate that Apple’s assistance in this case is necessary,” Apple wrote on Friday in the latest legal briefs in the New York case. Apple’s top lawyer, Bruce Sewell, FBI Executive Assistant Director for Science and Technology Amy Hess and several law enforcement officials and security experts are slated to testify in a new encryption hearing in Congress on Tuesday. NPR’s Aarti Shahani contributed to this report."
"The camera pulls back from an   animated incarnation of Disney’s Cinderella castle logo directly into a very     jungle at the outset of The Jungle Book. Critters, plants waterfalls, a teeming environment through which is plunging one little    boy, Mowgli, running for his life, scampering up   swinging from vines to get away  —   the camera careening after him, also trying to get away  —   from a huge black panther. When the boy loses his footing, the panther leaps. ..and then lectures the lad that if he doesn’t get better at running with the pack, he’s going to end up as someone’s dinner. Bagheera, voiced by Ben Kingsley but persuasively furred, clawed, and ferocious, is Mowgli’s guardian. He found the kid as an infant and got a   to raise him. Now, though, the little   is big enough that he’s attracting attention  —   negative attention  —   from tiger Shere Khan voiced by Idris Elba, who vows to slaughter wolves en masse if the lad’s not handed over. To spare the pack, Mowgli sets off on his own. ..encountering assorted dangers: Scarlett Johansson’s seductive python Christopher Walken’s hulking orangutan (who’s introduced in a winking nod to Apocalypse Now). Also Bill Murray’s   softie of a bear, Baloo, who, being afraid of heights, enlists Mowgli’s aid in harvesting honey from cliffside bees. Jokes aside, there’s more at stake here than in the 1967 cartoon version of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories, the last animated feature film that Walt Disney personally supervised. The tone and look are different, of course, and the episodic structure has been massaged a bit to give it the feel of an adventure blockbuster. But there’s also a darker throughline: Mowgli losing father figures right and left, not to mention nearly getting pummeled by a mudslide, trampled in a stampede, stung, bitten, burned and manhandled. All of which is to say that most of the real world challenges that Leo DiCaprio faced in The Revenant,    Neel Sethi faces plenty persuasively in The Jungle Book’s digitized world. Though he was mostly acting in a   environment, it’s a world that Iron Man director Jon Favreau had me so fully accepting as real, that about an hour in, when Baloo started singing, I confess it bugged me. And yes, I know: ”Talking bear? No problem. Singing bear? Not realistic” is not a defensible position. Shift in tone, sounds better, but really, I’m grasping at straws. And I’m doing so, even as I marvel at an astonishing visual experience, tricked up with    —   water splashing on the camera lens, when there isn’t actually water or a lens because everything but the boy was created digitally. In fact, the most genuinely astonishing thing on screen may just be the last line in the credits. Five words: ”Filmed. .. in Downtown. .. Los Angeles.”"
"When Robin Bunevich and her boyfriend, Alex Rivas, decided to buy a place together, they knew they wanted to live in their favorite neighborhood, Astoria, Queens. They found the perfect     apartment last year. The purchase was a big, exciting step for the couple, who had previously been renting a place together. And just as they were getting ready to start the new chapter together, the process also had them thinking about what would happen if they broke up. ”Both of our sets of parents  —   we both have fathers who are lawyers  —   and they’re like, ’Oh, my God, what are you doing, you’re not married. What happens if you break up?’ And they each gave us advice,” Bunevich says. ”Both of them agreed that we should have a lawyer [to] write up some agreement between the two of us.” The agreement sets out what happens to the apartment if they split up. ”Obviously, you don’t know what’s going to happen in six months or in six years, but we basically worked out something that we both thought was fair,” Rivas says. Essentially, the couple owns the apartment   and when it’s sold, profits or losses will be split evenly after Rivas pays Bunevich the down payment she paid in full. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, Bunevich and Rivas, together for 6   years, are a part of the rise in couples opting to live together and marry later, if at all. According to the Census Bureau, there were more than 8 million unmarried couple households in 2015  —   three times as many as in 1996. Of these households, more than 3 million have children, a 162 percent increase from 1996. As couples live together in greater numbers, old rules about how to divide finances and plan for the future don’t fit the modern family. The Money Talk, Up until recently, unmarried couples who lived together in Florida were breaking the law. The state was one of only a few that still outlawed   unmarried couples living together. And for many couples across the country, money can be just as taboo a subject as living together once was. Diana Adams, an attorney in New York specializing in nontraditional family law, says it’s common for couples to feel uncomfortable talking about finances. ”People often shy away from having these conversations about money in a really frank way,” Adams says. ”People often don’t have that conversation and end up feeling disappointed or hurt down the line.” It’s best, she says, to be honest and clear. ”It’s part of intimacy to have conversations that can feel awkward,” she says. Adams suggests broaching it this way: Now that we are moving in together, I think we should talk about how we should divide up finances, to make sure we’re on the same page. Is this a good time to talk about that, or would you like to set a time aside next week? ”I would suggest if that’s not easy, people seek out the support of a compassionate professional such as a family mediator or lawyer to help broker that conversation,” Adams says. For couples with uneven income, she suggests sitting down to figure out whether finances should be shared equally or in proportion to income. Couples can then contribute their share to a joint household account for shared household expenses like rent or mortgage, groceries, utility bills or a family cellphone plan. If one partner makes $75, 000 and the other makes $25, 000, for example, they could contribute   and   of the total budget. Alternately, Adams says, they could each contribute 30 percent of their monthly   pay to a joint bank account, so that they are each contributing in proportion to income. Couples who prefer not to share a bank account can set up a spreadsheet formula. When they each pay for an expense, they track it on a spreadsheet that automatically tabulates who owes more money, and that person can pay the next expense. For Katy Newell, 33, and her partner of 11 years, Ben Nadler, 37,   of household expenses eventually became a hassle. ”It became clear that if we really wanted to be partners and share a life together, that inequities in income or contributions, if we continued to make that an issue, would just get in the way,” Newell says. ”There will be times when one of us will be unemployed, working part time, or in school  —   income goes up and down  —   and keeping track of that in the long term seemed really impractical.” There are times when one person will be making less than the other. ”Then that person goes out of his or her way to make sure that we’re doing more around the house or taking care of the dogs and making sure the person who is working more doesn’t have to deal with a lot of that stuff,” Newell says. ”We’re equal partners in this life we have together.” ’A Whole Lot Of Little Things To Think About’ Unmarried couples who live together  —   no matter for how long  —   do not enjoy the same legal and financial rights as people who are married. ”Without marriage,” says Sheryl Garrett, a financial planner and author of Money Without Matrimony, ”there are a whole lot of little things we need to think about.” The Supreme Court in 2015 ruled that   couples could marry and thus be afforded all the financial benefits of marriage, but millions of unmarried gay and straight couples are still left trying to approximate the kinds of protections and benefits that married couples get automatically. One big thing that marriage creates is a framework for breaking up. Garrett suggests creating a legal cohabitation agreement similar to a prenuptial agreement. ”The agreement spells out what divorce court spells out for married people when you break up,” Garrett says. ”It maybe has a   on divorce because the couple writes the terms of the deal.” Agreements can cover everything from how to divide assets to the terms of financial support after a split. Garrett suggests unmarried couples draw up other legal documents as well. Without a will, for example, a committed couple who built a life together would be considered legally unrelated to each other. Inheritances generally go to next of kin, which for a married couple is a spouse. An advance directive will allow partners to make medical decisions on the other’s behalf. A durable power of attorney allows the partner to act on the other’s behalf for things like legal and financial matters. And, she says, don’t stash away these documents and then forget them. Health care documents should be easy to retrieve in a hurry. There are also online storage sites and state registries. Garrett remembers a     couple that did not have these documents prepared. When one partner died from complications from AIDS, the minister his parents hired used his death as a stump speech against homosexuality. ”He still would have passed away, but his survivor wouldn’t have lost control of his home, his partner’s final health care decisions, the burial, the funeral arrangement,” Garrett says. ”All of those things can be spelled out in legal documents and left for your loved ones.” Garrett also suggests: Planning For The   It may seem that nontraditional families have lives that are complicated, so their financial lives are similarly complicated. But some, like Sarah Wright of Unmarried Equality, argue that their financial lives are complicated because financial benefits favor marriage. There are more than 1, 000 federal benefits and protections for married couples. With everything from health insurance to Social Security survivor benefits, benefits come   for married couples. Spouses can share health insurance. When a married couple sells a house, the amount of money that can go toward the capital gains exemption is doubled. Similarly, surviving spouses can claim an estate tax exemption not available to surviving partners in an unmarried couple. Married couples enjoy unlimited transfer of assets, free from tax. ”Why are any of these . .. things based on marriage anyway?” asks Wright of Unmarried Equality, an advocacy group that does not oppose marriage but fights for fairness for unmarried people. For unmarried partners, ”there’s no structure and there’s no standing,” she says. ”Your relationship is totally unrecognized and you’re left to fend for yourself.” When one spouse dies, for example, the widow or widower can qualify for Social Security surviving spousal benefits. Couples who aren’t married or aren’t considered   spouses in the states that recognize them can’t consider this income when planning for retirement. Often couples will increase saving and use life insurance as a financial planning tool instead. When it comes to having children, Adams, the family lawyer, suggests that unmarried couples revisit how they share their finances and whether the existing arrangement will still work if one person takes parental leave or stays at home for an extended period. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, an online community featuring stories from some of the best investors and financial experts on the planet along with crowdsourced wisdom curated and overseen by NPR reporters and editors."
"As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems   to many students today. Typing your notes is faster  —   which comes in handy when there’s a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the   way. For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting  —   it’s so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run. In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how   by hand or by computer affects learning. ”When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can,” Mueller tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. ”The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective  —   because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them.” Mueller and Oppenheimer cited that   can be categorized two ways: generative and nongenerative. Generative   pertains to ”summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping,” while nongenerative   involves copying something verbatim. And there are two hypotheses to why   is beneficial in the first place. The first idea is called the encoding hypothesis, which says that when a person is taking notes, ”the processing that occurs” will improve ”learning and retention.” The second, called the   hypothesis, is that you learn by being able to look back at your notes, or even the notes of other people. Because people can type faster than they write, using a laptop will make people more likely to try to transcribe everything they’re hearing. So on the one hand, Mueller and Oppenheimer were faced with the question of whether the benefits of being able to look at your more complete, transcribed notes on a laptop outweigh the drawbacks of not processing that information. On the other hand, when writing longhand, you process the information better but have less to look back at. For their first study, they took university students (the standard guinea pig of psychology) and showed them TED talks about various topics. Afterward, they found that the students who used laptops typed significantly more words than those who took notes by hand. When testing how well the students remembered information, the researchers found a key point of divergence in the type of question. For questions that asked students to simply remember facts, like dates, both groups did equally well. But for ” ” questions, such as, ”How do Japan and Sweden differ in their approaches to equality within their societies?” the laptop users did ”significantly worse.” The same thing happened in the second study, even when they specifically told students using laptops to try to avoid writing things down verbatim. ”Even when we told people they shouldn’t be taking these verbatim notes, they were not able to overcome that instinct,” Mueller says. The more words the students copied verbatim, the worse they performed on recall tests. And to test the   hypothesis, for the third study they gave students the opportunity to review their notes in between the lecture and test. The thinking is, if students have time to study their notes from their laptops, the fact that they typed more extensive notes than their   peers could possibly help them perform better. But the students taking notes by hand still performed better. ”This is suggestive evidence that longhand notes may have superior external storage as well as superior encoding functions,” Mueller and Oppenheimer write. Do studies like these mean wise college students will start migrating back to notebooks? ”I think it is a hard sell to get people to go back to pen and paper,” Mueller says. ”But they are developing lots of technologies now like Livescribe and various stylus and tablet technologies that are getting better and better. And I think that will be sort of an easier sell to college students and people of that generation.”"
"I confess. I’m a notebook nut. I own dozens and dozens of them. Everything from cheap reporter’s notebooks to   Italian leather beauties. I wondered: Am I an analog dinosaur, or are there others out there like me? The first stop in my investigation was, frankly, discouraging. At first glance, a Starbucks on the campus of George Washington University points to the dinosaur conclusion. So plentiful are the laptops and tablets that they outnumber the       . But when I look more closely, I spot plenty of paper here as well. Evan DeFransciso, a    student, says he makes a clear demarcation: digital for schoolwork and paper for ”my creative writing . .. short stories, poems, personal thoughts.” ”The stuff that really matters goes onto the paper,” he says. Not just any paper. He uses a small black notebook with an elastic band and a storied past. Picasso and Hemingway used an early version of the Moleskine, and now you can, too. The Italian company that makes Moleskines  —   all 500 versions  —   is red hot, consistently recording   sales growth. Oddly enough, the analog company’s success has grown in tandem with the digital revolution. In fact, when conducting market research, the company detected something even more perplexing: a direct correlation between sales of its little black notebooks and proximity to an Apple store. That led Moleskine CEO Arrigo Berni to conclude that his customers are ”not people who are clinging to paper with a nostalgic feeling, but rather people that have both digital and analog as part of their lives.” Yes, he says, we live in an increasingly digital world, but we ”still have a need for physical experience, for emotional experiences that digital devices and technology” don’t always provide. Besides, he adds, for   digital natives, iPhones and other   gadgets are commonplace. Paper is the curiosity. Consider the case of Angelia Trinidad, recent college graduate and   gadget freak. Not that long ago, she found herself adrift, professionally and emotionally, so she sought out a planner, a paper planner. None felt quite right so she designed her own. Smelling a business opportunity, she turned to Kickstarter to get funding. In one of her campaigns, she was aiming for $10, 000 she raised more than half a million. ”We went viral for a whole week, and it was insane,” she says. Friends urged her to launch a digital version of her planner, but she resisted. ”I put my foot down,” Trinidad says. ”I said ’no apps.’ ” She has nothing against apps  —   her smartphone is chockablock with them  —   but she finds paper more intimate. ”It’s this thing that is so intuitive. It’s between you and paper and a pen. It’s kind of meditative,” she says. ”When I’m on the phone, it’s never meditative. It’s always  .” Paper, Trinidad says, makes the abstract tangible, in a way that digital devices don’t. ”I feel there’s a huge need for paper in this increasingly digital world,” she adds. ”I look at my planner and I think of it as my second brain. I look back at something on there and it’s like, ’Oh, I wrote that.’ ” I know what she means. As a writer, no work feels complete until I hit the print button and it’s on paper. Maybe, though, Angelia and I are both dinosaurs, albeit from different generations. But some recent research suggests otherwise. Pam Mueller was a teaching assistant for an introductory psychology class at UCLA. One day, she forgot to bring her laptop to class. ”So I took notes, you know, the   way, the way I did in college  —   pen and paper,” she explains. ”I thought I got so much more out of the lecture that day.”  She mentioned this to her professor, Daniel Oppenheimer. It turns out that he had a similar experience in a faculty meeting. He was dutifully taking notes on his laptop but realized he had no idea what people were saying. Oppenheimer and Mueller wondered if there was something about paper and the act of writing that explained this phenomenon, so they conducted an experiment. They asked about 50 students to attend a lecture. Half took notes on laptops and half with pen and paper. Both groups were then given a comprehension test. It wasn’t even close. The students who used paper scored significantly higher than those who used laptops. Mueller attributes this unexpected finding  —   published in the journal, Psychological Science  —   to the fact that the ”analog” note takers were forced to synthesize rather than merely transcribe. It’s a phenomenon known as ”desirable difficulty.” ”Desirable difficulty is some small roadblock that is in your path that actually improves your understanding of a topic,” she explains. This is, admittedly, a hard sell on college campuses, she concedes. ”Students find it hard to believe that more content isn’t better,” she adds, ”that they aren’t going to just get it all down now and study it later.” Mueller, though, has taken her research findings to heart. Whenever she needs to truly grasp a subject, she ditches the laptop and takes notes with   pen and paper."
"  musician, Andrew Bird is known for his precise composition, his impeccable instrumentation, his playful, ambiguous lyrics  —   and, yes, his whistling. But he says that on his latest record, Are You Serious, his personal life nudged him into a radical change of approach. ”In the past, what I’d do is I’d try to find just the right vowels and syllables, start speaking in tongues, and work my way from nonsense towards sense, finding the right shape for the melody,” Bird says. ”This record happened a bit differently. I had more of a strong intent to tell something that I had been through, and that was a bit new for me. All my songs are personal on some level it’s just a matter of how much that personal thing is buried. In this case it’s quite close to the surface.” In the past five years, at lot has happened in Bird’s life. He has gotten married, had a child  —   and his wife battled cancer. On the song ”Valleys of the Young,” he sings about the gulf that he felt develop between himself and his childless friends after his son was born. ”You know, New York is a land of single people, mainly,” he says. ”And we were kind of pioneers amongst friends, in this realm of starting a family. So we didn’t have too many peers. We were very aware of that divide that suddenly happens.” He says his son’s birth also changed his perspective on writing lyrics. ”I’m just a very classically guarded, reserved person,” he says. ”And I’ve always had this feeling of ’Why, just because I’m a songwriter, should do I need to confess my private feelings?’ And then having a child kind of makes you there in the present. That’s been good for me I think that’s kind of unfrozen me in a lot of ways emotionally, and put more heart in my songs.” Another song on the new record, ”Puma,” captures Bird’s state of mind as his wife began to take ill. ”I would walk around thinking about these unseen subatomic particles lacerating our bodies all day,” he says. ”[The lyrics are] just saying, ’She was radioactive for seven days.’ That’s exactly what happened. She had to take a radioactive pill and hole up in our studio apartment in New York alone, while I had to take our son away, so he wouldn’t be exposed. And that forced separation. I just thought, ’What’s the point of disguising this? The reality is crazy and   enough. ’” But ultimately, Bird says, ”Puma” is a hopeful song. ”It’s a celebration of how she dealt with this incredibly scary thing with humor.”"
"Returning to a book you’ve read multiple times can feel like drinks with an old friend. There’s a welcome familiarity  —   but also sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changed you both, and thus the relationship. But books don’t change, people do. And that’s what makes the act of rereading so rich and transformative. If you’ve been an avid reader for any amount of time, chances are you’ve revisited a book you love. A novel with interesting characters, that story collection that reminds you of home, a volume of poems you were given as a child. Whether it’s nostalgia or simple pleasure we seek varies from person to person. But one thing is for certain: Every book is a reason in and of itself. The number of books I receive every month can be glorious and daunting. It might be five, but it could be 20. And they all look damn beautiful, what with their unique designs, gripping blurbs, and freshly dried ink. Stories   of murder, secrets, and political intrigue, novellas that seem to carry the weight of the world. Sure, I want to read them all, but that’s impossible. I have children and a wife and dinner and I’ve been putting off getting an oil change for far too long. But also because, see, in addition to selected new releases, I really want to have that drink with the old friend. There are three books I reread annually. These are the   books that I specifically set time aside for during the year. The first, which I breeze through every spring, is Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Published posthumously in 1964, it’s his classic memoir of 1920s Paris. The language is almost intoxicating, an aging writer recalling an ambitious yet simpler time. Another is Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, her poetic 1975 ramble about everything and nothing a moth consumed in a flame, a baptism, a little girl burned in an airplane accident. It begins: ”Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.” I wouldn’t say there’s a ”plot,” per se, but perhaps it’s the disfigurement of    Julie Norwich in that accident. Anyway, if you need a neatly fleshed out plot to enjoy a book there’s a pretty good chance you’re a sociopath. The third book is Julio Cortázar’s Save Twilight: Selected Poems, because poetry. And because Cortázar. While I tend to buy a lot of books, these three were given to me as gifts, which might subconsciously add to the meaning I attach to them. But I imagine that, while money is indeed wonderful and necessary, rereading an author’s work is the highest currency a reader can pay them. Especially if the author is no longer around to spend money. A voracious reader is a   consumer of worlds. But one’s interpretation of these worlds morphs and shifts depending on the personal experiences one brings into the reading. We identify with a character’s pain because we’ve felt pain, and so on. The beauty of rereading lies in the idea that our engagement with the work is based on our current mental, emotional, and even spiritual register. It’s true, the older I get, the more I feel time has wings. But with reading, it’s all about the present. It’s about the now and what one contributes to the now, because reading is a give and take between author and reader. Each has to pull their own weight. There are books I hated in my early 20s that I now see as powerful and revelatory. The best books are the ones that open further as time passes. But remember, it’s not because they changed. Every letter and punctuation mark is exactly where it always has been, and where it will remain forever. It’s you who are different it’s you who’s been affected by the depth of your experience. And it’s you that has to grow and read and reread in order to better understand your friends. Juan Vidal is a writer and critic for NPR Books. He’s on Twitter: @itsjuanlove"
"George Clooney says he hates raising money for politics. But after hosting two   fundraisers with his wife, Amal, that reportedly raised $15 million in support of Hillary Clinton this weekend, Clooney is defending that haul by drawing attention to a big difference in how the former secretary of state and her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, are bringing in cash. That difference is not where the money is coming from, though Sanders likes to point out that his financial support comes largely through online contributions with an average of $27, while Clinton is frequently attending swanky parties with wealthy backers from places like Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The Sanders campaign even put that message in an ad that ran in California this weekend, while Clinton was there raising money. What Clooney pointed to is that Clinton has been bringing in millions of dollars, not just for her campaign, but also for Democrats running in House, Senate and other local races. ”It’s going to the congressmen and senators to try to take back Congress,” Clooney said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. ”And the reason that’s important, and the reason it’s important to me, is because we need  —   I’m a Democrat. So if you’re a Republican, you’re going to disagree, but we need to take the Senate back.” He argued that would lead to a Supreme Court justice who could overturn the 2010 Citizens United decision that gave rise to superPACs, which Clooney said would help eliminate the need for such fundraisers that he agreed were odious. Spreading The Wealth, As the Democratic primary fight drags on, both Sanders and Clinton have continued raising lots of money. Last month, Sanders brought in $44 million, powered by contributions from small donors. Clinton raised significantly less in March  —   $29. 5 million  —   and her campaign said more than half of that money ”came in online from the grassroots donations,” though the Clinton campaign did not specify in its announcement what the average donation amounted to. Her campaign did point out that Clinton raised $6. 1 million for the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties in March, for a total of $15 million in the first quarter of 2016. Clinton’s apparatus to raise this money is the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee made up of her campaign, the Democratic National Committee and Democratic committees in dozens of states. A single donor can give $700, 000 to the Hillary Victory Fund.  The joint committee has raised nearly $27 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. While that money is distributed through all levels of the party, the Clinton campaign ultimately decides where it goes. Sanders has a similar agreement, but the Bernie Victory Fund is practically inactive. The DNC put $1, 000 into the fund when it was established in December, but nothing else has been raised, according to records from the Federal Election Commission. Building Party Strength, Why is Clinton raising so much money for people running in state and local races? In addition to Republican majorities in the U. S. House and Senate, the GOP also dominates governors’ offices  —   31 out of 50  —   and Republicans hold complete control over state legislatures in 30 states. As NPR has reported previously, Democrats hold fewer elected offices nationwide than at any time since the 1920s. If Clinton gets elected, like any candidate, she wants more allies in Congress and in the states. Raising money for   candidates and party committees also helps ensure goodwill with party insiders  —   many of who are DNC superdelegates backing Clinton by big margins. The Sanders campaign sent out an email solicitation for three Democrats running for the House, who line up with his political views. His campaign has also noted that he has raised money for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Sanders, who represents Vermont as an independent, caucuses with Democrats in the Senate. Some of the top economic priorities for Clinton and Sanders, including raising the minimum wage and providing paid family leave, are long shots at the federal level, because Republicans have a firm hold on the House even if the Senate is in play this year. (Although Democrats argue that with Donald Trump on the ballot, they could have a chance at picking up the House.) Some states and cities have taken up measures on those issues, with states like New York and California recently passing laws to raise the minimum wage to $15. Those laws were signed by two of the 18 Democratic governors currently holding office. Pragmatism And Idealism, Clinton told ABC’s This Week on Sunday what her ultimate goal is. ”I want to bring along a lot of Democrats, because I want to protect and further the progressive agenda that President Obama has worked for and that I believe in,” she said. Sanders was asked to respond and acknowledged that he has not been raising much money for Democrats in the 2016 campaign. ”But in the past we have, and raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates,” he added. His campaign is also predicated on a revolution that he hopes will transform American politics. For starters, Sanders called on the Democratic Party to put ”an emphasis on getting more working people, young people, in the political process, dependent on small campaign contributions, not big money the way Secretary Clinton is raising it.” These arguments follow the lines of debate between the two candidates throughout this campaign for the Democratic nomination. Clinton defends doing what she thinks is best within the existing system. Sanders believes the only way is to completely change it."
"When they wouldn’t hire her because she was a woman, she threatened her superiors. When the media asked her a stupid question, she gave them an earful. And when she thought she had contracted   she said, ”if that’s what happened, that’s what happened.” Don’t mess with the tenacious Dr. Mary Guinan. A   veteran of epidemiology, she was one of the first female physicians to work on smallpox eradication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and one of the first doctors to work on the AIDS epidemic. She did all of this during a time that did not favor women in the medical field. In a new memoir, Adventures of a Female Medical Detective, Guinan tells stories of her experiences in controlling outbreaks, researching new diseases and caring for patients with untreatable infections around the world. Guinan, based in Reno, Nev. is a professor of epidemiology and community health at the University of Las Vegas’ School of Community Health Sciences. This interview with NPR’s Michel Martin has been edited for length and clarity. You started your career at a time when only 10 percent of medical graduates were women. What attracted you to this? I really wasn’t attracted to epidemiology. I was an internal medicine resident, and I thought I was going to be a hematologist. But I started to get worried that I didn’t want to do that. I read about a wonderful new program to eliminate smallpox in the world. This would be the first time in history that a disease would be eradicated [by] the design of people. I wanted to be part of that. The Centers for Disease Control was the agency liaison with the World Health Organization in the U. S. so the people volunteering for the smallpox eradication program were at the CDC, and most of them were coming out of this program called the Epidemic Intelligence Service. I applied to be an EIS officer and I was accepted in the class of 1974. I was the only woman physician in a class of 39 physicians, then volunteered for the smallpox eradication program and eventually got accepted and went to India. In fact, you had applied many, many times and they wouldn’t take you. They told me first that the WHO wasn’t taking women, and then I said, ”Well, can I appeal?” They said, ”It’s a done deal. Women aren’t being taken by the WHO.” They kept asking volunteers to go to India  —   ”It’s really important, we need to wipe out smallpox in India.” I applied again and they said, ”It’s really not the WHO that’s keeping women out, it’s India. India says no women in the smallpox program.” I said, ”Can I speak with the director of the EIS program?” I asked him, ”You know the prime minister of India is a woman. Does she know you’re banning women American physicians from entering the smallpox eradication program?” And he said nothing. I said, ”Well, should I write to Indira Gandhi directly, or should I write to the embassy of the United States and ask them to rescind this ban?” He said, ”I’ll get back to you.” The next week, without any explanation, I was accepted into the smallpox eradication program. Would you talk a little bit about your time there? What stands out? It was unbelievable. Where we were was a remote area with a 99 percent illiteracy rate, up near Nepal and Uttar Pradesh. The women had never seen a foreign woman before. People would come out and stare at me. The women always wanted me to come out to their mud huts and talk to them. Unfortunately, I had a male interpreter with me all the time, and they wouldn’t allow him in the hut. They insisted I come in anyway, and they would pat my stomach and ask me where my babies were. It was so sweet. I always knew the women would be cooperative with me [about smallpox vaccinations] because they found me interesting. You were working with the sexually transmitted disease unit in the early days of the AIDS outbreak. Did you feel that there was a stigma to that work back then? I can tell you it was unusual for a woman to be working in the area of sexually transmitted diseases. People would say to me, why would you do that? Why would you be in such a specialty? Do you have this interest in looking at people’s genitals? Well, is that what you would say to  ? To urologists? Why would you think they were perverted? What did your mother think of your line of work? My mother was very proud of me at the CDC. She didn’t know I was working in sexually transmitted diseases. I was asked to be interviewed by 60 Minutes, and I refused to go on there because I thought it would be another crazy interview where people would accuse me of doing something unusual or something that perhaps was a little   for a physician. They called the White House and asked, ”Why is Mary Guinan not going on our program? [Is she] covering up the herpes epidemic?”  —   which is what I was working on at the time. The head of CDC called me and said, ”Mary, you know, I understand that you have refused to go on 60 Minutes, but I think you should think that over again,” so I said I would go on. I told my mother I was going to be on 60 Minutes, and she told everyone at her church, our relatives in Ireland. I started worrying and sweating about not what 60 Minutes might do to me but what my mother would think! The opening question was, ”Dr. Guinan, what venereal disease would you least like to have?” It went downhill from there. I talked about syphilis and gonorrhea and   sex and a number of other things. After the show, I got a phone call from my mother and she said, ”Congratulations, dear, your hair looked very nice.” Well, that’s wonderful! She said, ”[You] go girl,” as far as I was concerned. So if my    mother could deal with me as an STD expert, I didn’t care what anyone else really thought after that. Were you ever afraid? I received an AIDS needle stick at one point in my life and thought I had AIDS. But fortunately, I did not. Weren’t you terrified? This was at a time when doctors weren’t sure about how AIDS was spread. Two years later, you found a lesion in your arm where you were stuck by the needle. You had just given birth. When your assistant heard you had HIV, she quit on the spot. How did you deal with all of that? It was a very difficult time. In the early days, when I spoke to anyone about AIDS, people might take two steps backward. At the CDC, the STD division was unusual in that we had clinical practice, so I saw patients on a regular basis. I saw what everyone was going through. I said to myself, ”If that’s what happened, that’s what happened.” But my greatest fear was that my child might be infected, and fortunately, he wasn’t. One of the interesting things about the book is your low opinion of the news media, at least in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. You talk about the price of misinformation. For example, CNN called to ask your opinion on the controversy of women workers at an insurance company in Chicago. They were picketing the company because they had to use a bathroom with only one toilet, and the women believed that one of their   had AIDS. They were convinced that they were at risk of contracting AIDS from using the bathroom. CNN persisted and the CDC wanted you to talk to them even though you didn’t want to. Do you remember what you said when the reporter asked if you were sure you couldn’t catch AIDS from a toilet seat? Yes, I do: ”The only way that I know you can get AIDS is if you sit on it before someone else gets up.” You said you never saw the news clip, but you’ve often seen that quote in a slide in medical meetings. Someone said that line would be your epitaph. But if you could pick, what would you want your epitaph to be? ”She was right about public health.”"
"Three million school children in the U. S. are identified as gifted. That’s roughly the top 10 percent of the nation’s highest achieving students. But Rene Islas, head of the National Association for Gifted Children, says tens of thousands of gifted English language learners are never identified. We sat down with Islas and asked him why. He started out by explaining that there are several different measures for identifying gifted children. The most common in schools is recognizing achievement, above grade level work. But that poses a problem for English language learners, or ELLs, he says. Is that because not being fluent in English masks their giftedness? I can give you some personal experience about this. My mother, a single mom in Tucson, Ariz. worked hard to put me in the best school she could afford. I was labeled ELL. That meant a watered down curriculum and not being exposed to learning opportunities. It wasn’t until she moved me to a more affluent, white neighborhood school that educators recognized that I had more potential than people at my previous school recognized. Even when schools identify ELL students as gifted,  you say the impulse is not to place them in accelerated programs, despite evidence that they benefit from more challenging work while they’re learning English. It’s leaving talent on the table when you have these high performing students but you’re restraining them. Gifted [ELL] students are actually harmed if they’re held back. To me, the real issue is, how many geniuses are being hidden within their school system? What about the process for identifying gifted ELLs? When schools test ELLs for giftedness, they often rely on observation and prompts consisting of symbols, manipulatives, spacial relationships and patterns. Are these   tests effective? The assumption is that if you take away the language barrier, you can make a neutral assessment. We’re finding out that’s not true and this is a barrier for Spanish speaking students. The consensus out there is that you need multiple measures [verbal and  ] to identify gifted students with language disadvantages. What about IQ tests? It’s one identification model often used, even though it’s difficult to measure true IQ because of language barriers. In fact, you argue that schools’   on IQ tests is one reason gifted programs are so racially and ethnically homogeneous. The research, meanwhile, shows that all gifted kids, including ELLs, share an important trait  —   advanced academic ability. Researchers have found that a gifted child often knows 60 percent or more of the curriculum that’ll be presented in a full [school] year. So imagine if you knew almost two thirds of the content the first day of school. What about children of immigrant parents who are recent arrivals or are in the U. S. illegally? If their child is gifted and bored to death in school, how likely is it that they’ll demand that their child be tested or placed in a more challenging academic program? There’s fear involved when it comes to Hispanic students in particular. There’s [also] a high premium on assimilating, fitting in. These are disincentives to go out and apply for a gifted and talented [program]. Our association, NAGC, is often the first stop for parents who encounter those barriers, Other than NAGC’s advocacy for these students, aren’t there laws that protect the rights of gifted ELL’s the way the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act  —   IDEA  —   protects students with learning disabilities? Federal law does not require support for gifted students. On a final note, under the new federal education law  —   Every Student Succeeds Act  —   states for the first time will be required to break down and disclose gifted students’ achievement data. School districts will also have to show that teachers who work with gifted students are getting the training they need. It’s unclear though what the consequences are if they don’t."
"In Everybody Wants Some!! high school baseball star Jake arrives at college for his freshman year. He moves into the team house where there’s a lot of sitting around, drinking and  . For this group of guys, the first couple of days before the school year starts are all about meeting girls and figuring out who they’re going to be for the rest of the year . .. and maybe the rest of their lives. But, really it’s about meeting girls. Jake is played by actor Blake Jenner. But director Richard Linklater says Jake is Linklater himself, too. What seems like just a dude movie is actually the story of Linklater’s own transition from high school to college  —   and it picks up where his classic film Dazed and Confused left off. ”Dazed and Confused was my high school this is my college,” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. ”It’s only four years later, even though I took 22 years to get around to making the sequel.” On the new environment Jake finds at college, Almost everyone can tell you, you go off to college, literally you’re the person with a bag, showing up at a new place. Here are your new roommates, and in the case of the movie, they’re teammates, because they play on the baseball team. But it’s not even baseball season, so there’s not really much baseball in the movie  —   but it’s just the environment that he finds himself in, it’s very competitive, so it’s very male, very testosterone. On how this movie fits in with others like Boyhood and the Before Sunrise films, Strangely, to me, this is sort of a continuation of Boyhood. It’s a completely different part of my personality, but it picks up where Boyhood leaves off  —   it ends with him going off to college, that was 12 years leading up to that, this is like the next three days, you know, for me, autobiographically speaking. You know, I felt like suddenly you’re thrown into an adult world, even though you’re still a teenager, and I started thinking, like, oh, I’m kind of accountable now. Like, if I take these classes and I blow off class and I do poorly, you know, there’s some accountability as an adult that will determine the rest of your life . .. I remember, it felt like, okay, game on for my adult self . .. but it was also identity, who do you want to be. On shooting a long scene of the characters in a car, singing along to ”Rapper’s Delight” That was a note in   ”You know, that scene could be shorter.” Like, yeeeah, but I really want the three main guys, they’re the upperclassmen in the car, I don’t want to leave them out. They’re passing the mic  —   that’s what you did back then, if the song’s going on. I was in that back seat  —   like I said, this is autobiographical. I remember guys singing along to ”Rapper’s Delight,” and I just thought that was funny. But it sets the tone for the movie. Like, you’re just hanging out with these guys. If you’re bored, or waiting to get to the next thing, maybe this isn’t your movie. But if you really like the energy and the humor and these guys’ personalities, being invited into this kinda crazy world, then it’s all fun."
"If Jeopardy! ’s Alex Trebek gives the appearance of someone who has been hosting game shows all his life  —   that’s because he has. Trebek’s first hosting gig was in 1966 on a show for Canadian high schoolers called Reach for the Top. ”We discovered that I was fairly good at that,” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. As Trebek hits his 50th year of hosting, he says the best part of the job is getting to spend time with smart people. ”I love spending time with bright people . ..” he says. ”And Jeopardy puts me in touch with bright folks all the time, and I enjoy that.” He talks with Martin about the origins of Jeopardy! the best book he’s read recently, and his struggles with insomnia. On getting to talk with Jeopardy! contestants, Some of them  —   for want of a better term  —   are nerds, but most of them are just bright people. . .. I chat with them during the commercial break and get some sense of them. What I’m trying to do is get across to the viewers that these are ordinary folks, you’re going to like them, because look what happened to them, and it might’ve happened to you also. On why Jeopardy! has enjoyed such longevity  I’ve been told that since Jeopardy! went on the air, approximately 400 other game shows have come and gone. So why has Jeopardy! survived? Because of the gimmick of the question and answer  —   and I guess the fact that Americans are very competitive and people play along at home just to test themselves. On the origins of Jeopardy! ’s    format, It was a suggestion by Julann Griffin, [Jeopardy! creator] Merv Griffin’s wife at the time. He was trying to come up with a game show and she said: ”Why don’t you give them the answers?” And he said, ”Are you crazy? That’s what caused the scandals a few years ago and got us in trouble with the government and the broadcast commissions and everything. No, we can’t do that. Why, what are you thinking?” And she said, ”The answer is 5, 280.” And he said, ”How many feet are in a mile?” And she said, ”That’s right. Ding!” and that was the beginning of Jeopardy! On his struggles with insomnia, It sucks. . .. It makes me fall asleep at weird hours of the day. I have fallen asleep a number of times at the wheel of my truck. I’ve fallen asleep at a stop sign at noon. It’s scary. If I’m really tired then I will sleep. But if I’m not really tired, it becomes a problem, and sometimes I’m awake most of the night and I fall asleep mostly at about 5:30 in the morning. On how he passes time when he can’t sleep, I go down to my desk and I’ll do crossword puzzle or I will read, and that starts to tire me up. When I start to yawn two or three times in a row, then I put the book away, go back up to bed and I’m fine. On the last book he read that he couldn’t put down, It’s called The Divide [by Matt Taibbi]. It’s about the difference in the administration of justice in our country. Comparing the hedge fund managers, for instance, who caused the financial crisis a few years ago. The companies have had to pay billions and billions of dollars in reparations and fines and yet no one has gone to jail. And the author compared that administration of justice to very poor, Hispanics, black Americans  —   they suffer a great deal. On the current presidential race, I don’t like anybody right now. No that’s not true, there are some people out there that I do like. But I’m very disappointed in the tone on both sides, the Democrats and the Republicans. But political campaigns in the past have been brutal, have been nasty, but I wish that we could get to a point of more civility. We seem to be so hard set in what we call our principles, which are not so much our principles but our prejudices. Let’s try to get beyond that."
"It’s not every Final Jeopardy response that goes viral. Mine did. And let me tell you, it is very weird. I was a contestant on Jeopardy! last Friday. Heading into Final Jeopardy, things were looking grim for me. Even though one of my competitors had to sit out the final round, I’d been unable to catch up enough to the other guy to make a game of it. I had only $6, 000 while the leader, Sean, had more than $15, 000. My only hope was that Sean would both get it wrong (unlikely) and accidentally wager too much (very unlikely). But it was worth a shot, since I had nothing to lose. Even if I got it wrong, I’d still get second place. So I bet my whole $6, 000. The category was Flowers. (You can’t see me groan, but Flowers was just the latest tough subject in a game with categories on Electrical Engineering and Biblical Animals.) On screen, a photo flashed of a bright pink,   flower hanging from a delicate stem. The clue read ”The flower pictured here is called this, also a disparaging term for people on the political left.” The correct response was ”bleeding heart.” I have to admit I had no idea that bleeding hearts were flowers. But you only get one chance to be on Jeopardy!  —   and I didn’t want to get all the way to Final Jeopardy and not even come up with a guess. So I wrote down the name of the only flower I could think of that could also be used as a ”disparaging term”: a pansy  —   as in a wimp or a coward. I also didn’t know that host Alex Trebek can read the Final Jeopardy responses before they’re revealed. So it was a big surprise when he set up my guess like a joke: ”Becky, we’re going to start with you. And I have a feeling you may have found a way to insult liberals in this country.” My answer was revealed as I laughed nervously (and inexplicably gave a double  ). Everyone in the studio also got a good laugh. Sean guessed correctly and won. I never dreamed it would take off like it did, not even while it aired on Friday. During the broadcast, a few people on Twitter commented about it  —   along with other things, like the guy who said I was a real life 5. 5 but a Jeopardy! 9. But then it started showing up on social media. On Saturday, someone posted a set of screenshots to Reddit, where it got 5, 000 upvotes and landed on the front page. Then, friends started sending me screenshots of Facebook’s ”What’s Trending” bar, where ”Game Show Contestant Writes ’Pansy’ ” was up there with Chris Christie and Jimmy Fallon. By Monday morning, it was all over a bunch of news outlets online: BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, even my hometown newspaper, the Kansas City Star. It was the subject of a roundtable discussion on CNN. And then there are the videos. The one on the Jeopardy! Facebook page has more than 1. 2 million views. On YouTube, there are more than 600, 000 and counting. Look, it’s really, really strange going viral. I’m a pretty private person when it comes to the Internet, so it’s impossible to be comfortable seeing my name and face all over, with thousands of strangers commenting on me and speculating about my intentions. I’ll have to take a break from Twitter and Facebook for a while. That said, appearing on Jeopardy! really is     though (even if most contestants don’t have to deal with this). Plus, second place still got me $2, 000. Becky Sullivan is a producer on All Things Considered."
"Imagine this. You’re a    student in a remote village with maybe a couple of hundred residents, miles from the nearest town. There’s no TV. Cellphone service is spotty. The dirt road to your village floods regularly. Your link to the outside world is the family   radio. You crank up the radio one afternoon to hear the latest music but instead catch the first chapter of a   to   soap opera. The lead character is a young woman, 16 years old. Over the course of 30 episodes, she gets pregnant and finds out her boyfriend is a drug user. She’s ashamed by the pregnancy, her parents even more so. The stress and depression get so bad she thinks about suicide. This soap, called Bahati (that’s the main character’s name) doesn’t just tell the story. After each episode, a local host talks about how depression factors into the characters’ lives and talks about what can be done to make things better. Depression is little known and little understood in parts of east Africa, says psychiatrist Stan Kutcher of Dalhousie University in Halifax. He’s worked with Canadian charity Farm Radio International, which for years has brought agricultural news to remote areas in Africa, to design the project, which is also supported by teenmentalhealth. org. The first show hit the airwaves in Malawi and Tanzania a year and a half ago. According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability among adolescents around the world. In poor countries with little access to mental health services, it’s particularly important to address this issue, says Kutcher: ”We know that early identification and early effective treatment make a huge impact not only at the time of treatment but throughout the lifespan.” Kutcher presented the details at a meeting on global mental health this week in Washington, D. C. sponsored by the World Bank and the World Health Organization. The radio soap opera, with scripts authored by local writers and teenagers, deals with the stresses and strains faced by young people. There’s usually a character or two battling depression and sometimes suicidal feelings as well. The episodes are often played at   radio listening clubs, where teens discuss the latest installment with each other and their teachers. The radio show hosts know what resources are available in the villages and towns where people listen. During and right after the segment, teens can text or call in questions. Teens have written in wanting to know what to do about not being so sad they can’t get out of bed. Or they’ve been raped and they’ve lost all interest in the things they used to enjoy. All told, half a million teens and young adults live in the areas where the soap operas are carried, and, says Kutcher, ”surveys show they’re the most popular shows on the radio.” Depression is something people just don’t talk about in these communities. In Malawi, there was no word for depression in the local language. The health providers and trainers who designed the project literally invented a term for depression  —   nkhawa  —   which basically means ”disease of worries.” Kutcher and others involved in the project tested local knowledge before the programs started airing a year and a half ago. At the beginning, ”few knew what depression was or knew about the concepts of mental health and mental illness,” he says. People often thought symptoms of depression or other illnesses were caused by spells cast on them many believed that nothing could help. In the   opera discussions, listeners learn there are ways they can help themselves. Get enough sleep. Exercise. Talk to a sympathetic family member or friend. They learn about talk therapy and where it might be available. And they hear about medications that can treat depression. The project includes training for health care workers to recognize and treat depression and it also works with the governments in both countries to make medications available to youth who need them. The project developers did a mobile phone survey of 4, 000 young people in Malawi and Tanzania before the radio shows started and repeated the survey after the soap operas had been on the air. More teens understood at least something about depression and said they’d seek help if they felt depressed.  And the teens? Project manager Heather Gilberds says many of them have said they didn’t realize that it was okay to talk about the thoughts in their heads, and they hadn’t realized that anything could be done about the pain."
"Yahoo goes on sale Monday. At least some of you reading this are thinking, ”Yahoo? Are they still around?” Yes, this company founded in 1994, is ancient by Internet standards, but, according to the measurement company comScore, Yahoo sites are the   trafficked on the Internet. Among its properties are Yahoo Finance, News, Search, Mail, Tumblr and Flickr. Why is Yahoo on sale? Despite having a billion monthly unique visitors  —   as the company claimed in its 2014 report  —   Yahoo just hasn’t been able to make its investors happy. Over the last decade, six different CEOs have passed through its doors. The latest, Marissa Mayer, is a talented computer scientist who was one of Google’s earliest employees and played a crucial role in its success. But Yahoo is a puzzle that, after nearly four years, even Mayer can’t solve. ”It’s not like Yahoo doesn’t have revenue coming in, they do,” says analyst Rob Enderle. ”They just don’t have enough revenue coming in to cover the costs.” When Yahoo was founded, the Internet ad business was small and Yahoo was popular. It seemed like it could be a big player as the Internet grew up. But now, Facebook and Google have eclipsed Yahoo, with sophisticated algorithms that target the ads to the   eyeballs. Yahoo, for its part, is expected to capture more than $2. 6 billion in worldwide digital ad revenues, according to eMarketer. But that’s only 1. 5 percent of the online ad market. Google and Facebook control 40 percent. Though CEO Mayer has made some   content acquisitions, such as the blog site Tumblr and talent like David Pogue and Katie Couric, she and her predecessors have spent a lot of time trying to make Yahoo search better. Yahoo may be the number three search engine in the United States, but that only amounts to less than 13 percent of the market share. Google has nearly 65 percent and Bing has the rest. Enderle thinks Yahoo instead should have tried to be a social site more like Facebook. ”Facebook is incredibly profitable,” Enderle says. ”They should have focused more on making the communities their center of power than the information.” We asked some Yahoo users what has kept them loyal to the company. Yahoo Finance, for example, has garnered praise from many people who like its tools for learning about stocks and companies. Many of the people who responded to the NPR inquiry said they stay on certain Yahoo sites because they’ve been there for a long time. ”Yahoo itself has never been anyone’s favorite,” says Jen DeMayo, who   a listserv for parents in the Washington, D. C. area with 6, 500 subscribers. ”It’s just sort of the platform where it started and no one’s moved it anywhere.” There’s been debate over which companies are going to bid for Yahoo. The sale is not expected to include Yahoo’s most valuable assets, namely its share in the Chinese online retailer Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. Potential buyers of Yahoo’s other properties include Verizon, ATT and Comcast. These companies have a way to reach people over the Internet, but ownership of Yahoo might give them a better relationship with consumers and a lot of that precious stuff called ”user data” which will help them further understand tastes and demographics. What will the sale mean for those tens of millions of people who still use Yahoo products? It’s not clear. Whoever buys Yahoo may try hard to keep its users  —   or not. Or it could mean the end of the Yahoo brand and with it, an era of Internet history."
"”I preferred a country where I should be absolute master.” In 1839, Captain John Sutter arrived in California and began acquiring Native American slaves from several nations to work the land he purchased. He eventually owned several hundred ”Indian slaves,” whom he treated notoriously badly even by the standards of fellow  . The circumstances that let Sutter keep these slaves in an ostensibly free territory are part of the complex political and social forces that Andrés Reséndez sets out to unpack in The Other Slavery. But if the book makes anything clear, it’s that the single organizing force was simple: greed, and an absence of empathy that meant a slow genocide for the victims. The Other Slavery is a necessary work that occupies a loaded historical landscape Reséndez keeps a deliberate scholarly distance from the material, bringing forth evidence and constructing careful  —   even conservative  —   arguments. But that evidence speaks for itself, and the horrors quietly pile up. The enslavement of communities from North America and the Caribbean broke down entire nations, and irreparably erased cultural and political ecosystems. American schoolchildren are taught that smallpox was the epidemic that gutted Native American populations after exposure to Europeans an illness to which they had no immunity ravaged their numbers. Reséndez suggests nothing less than that the epidemic was actually the Europeans themselves. A singular aspect of the enslavement of indigenous populations is the subterfuge involved: Several laws passed over the centuries forbade outright slavery, and much of the energy of slavers and governors went toward intricate justifications. ”Explorers”  —   who often explicitly hoped to trade in human capital  —   claimed holy wars to bring heathen slaves to Christianity provincial governors invented punitive indentures to staff their gold and silver mines. Systems sustained themselves through legal justifications and relied on social collusion that made emancipation more difficult  —   how could you emancipate someone who wasn’t technically a slave? (However, this isn’t just a study in victimization. Reséndez makes sure to note resistance within the communities Indians who sued for their freedom, the Pueblo uprising of 1680, even Geronimo.) It’s unfortunate, though inevitable, that some of the facts under discussion have lost historical resonance amid the   cloud of white defensiveness. The fact that some Native American nations sought to maintain autonomy by adapting European horse culture and becoming slavers themselves is an object lesson in the   horrors of colonialism, rather than ”  billiard balls colliding with one another on the frontier,” as Reséndez puts it sometimes he writes as if he knows that any engagement with Indian slavers is doomed to erase some of the nuance of his research. It’s an unenviable task, handled well. Many of us know the broad strokes of the early decades of this wretched history, and the later history between the   America and the way it treated those whose land the newcomers stole. But even if you know some of the embarrassing details (Native Americans only legally became citizens of their own country in 1924) The Other Slavery’s understated    reportage will likely surprise you. It’s a study in the abuse of power that lays bare a shameful history, and suggests a clear, chilling line to our present. Everybody’s guilty, and while The Other Slavery isn’t a call to action, it makes an intellectual and emotional demand of its readers as its scholarship echoes the lament of   Navajo leader Armijo, who appealed to the American government for the return of his people’s lost children: ”Is it American justice that we must give up everything and receive nothing?” Genevieve Valentine’s latest novel is Persona."
"This week, NPR and some member stations will be talking about trade on the campaign trail and in communities around the country. Economists for decades have agreed that more open international trade is good for the U. S. economy. But recent research finds that while that’s still true, when it comes to China, the downside for American workers has been much more painful than the experts predicted. And that’s playing out on the presidential campaign trail in a big way. ’Disastrous’ Trade Agreements? If you’re Bernie Sanders and you want to get your supporters fired up at a rally, bashing trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the   Partnership is a good way to go. Sanders recently said to huge applause that his opponent Hillary Clinton wasn’t qualified to be president because she supported ”every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of   jobs.” Likewise, in a Fox News debate, Donald Trump said the TPP is ”a horrible deal.” ”It’s a deal that was designed for China to come in as they always do through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone,” he said. But it’s worth noting that China isn’t even part of the TPP deal. The TPP is actually seen as an attempt to limit China’s power and influence in trade. So Trump’s criticism there is ”just    wrong,” says David Autor, a labor economist at MIT. Autor has been researching trade with China for years. He says the political rhetoric is often a confused mess, but it gets loud applause at rallies and debates because it’s tapping into something real. ”I think what politicians are correctly responding to is the reality that the last 35 years have been bad ones for   Americans,” he says. During that period, wages have been stagnant. Millions of manufacturing jobs have disappeared. It’s not just trade that’s to blame. Technology plays a big role: With computers and automation, factories and all kinds of other workplaces need fewer people. And that kills a lot of jobs. 1 Million U. S. Factory Jobs Lost To Trade With China, If you look at NAFTA and trade with Mexico, Autor says, not that many U. S. workers have been harmed. But China, his research shows, is a different story. ”China’s rise is really a kind of a world historical event,” Autor says. ”This is the largest country in the world. It has caused a wholesale substantial contraction of U. S. manufacturing employment.” Autor says from 2000 to 2007, trade with China destroyed nearly 1 million U. S. manufacturing jobs. That’s apart from other job losses due to technology and productivity gains and automation. Trade theory doesn’t say all workers will be protected. It says trade will make both countries better off. But how can that be true if trade with China has been so painful? To understand that, let’s consider U. S. trade with another country: France. An Explanation Using Some Cheese And Toy Cars, The U. S. makes good airplanes and cars, and the French make good cheese. So in an interview with Autor in his office at MIT, NPR’s Chris Arnold gave him some toy cars to represent the U. S. To play France, Arnold had some hunks of Camembert and brie. ”I’ll be France and you’re America with the cars. So, how does this work where we both win?” Arnold asked. ”OK,” Autor explained, ”you make some really good gourmet food, and we’d sure like to eat it. I guess I could take some of my Chevy workers and I could say, ’Go spend two days a week making cheese and stop putting on hubcaps.’ But they probably wouldn’t be very good at it, and the end result would be bad cheese, fewer cars. Why don’t we just trade? I’ll give you some trucks, and you give me some gourmet food, and we’ll both be doing the thing that we’re good at. We’ll both be focusing on our area of comparative advantage.” This is the magic of trade. With two countries doing what they’re best at with the same number of workers and money and materials invested, together, they can create more,   stuff than either of them could separately. In that sense, it creates wealth for both countries. China was different, though. For one thing, it’s huge. And it began exporting all kinds of things U. S. manufacturers were already making, but China was selling them cheaper. That might not have been such a big deal if China wasn’t so big. And more quickly than economists predicted, China was able to transform its rural society of nearly 1 billion   workers into a   manufacturing superpower. ”It was the proverbial boulder sitting on the top of a mountain for 100 years, and one day it started to roll down, and, you know, it is rather disruptive to those in the valley below,” Autor says. Disruptive because the Chinese boulder squashed a lot of American manufacturing jobs. Still, ”I don’t want to go too far with that analogy,” says Autor, ”because we still win from trade with China.” Trade’s Benefits Are Diffuse, But The Pain Is Concentrated, Everything from the shoes you’re wearing, your watch, kitchen appliances, phone  —   so many things in our lives are cheaper or better because of international trade that, overall, despite the loss of jobs, Autor says, the U. S. and China still both come out ahead. But here’s the rub: Those benefits are large but diffuse. The harm  —   the pain for U. S.   workers  —   is concentrated. ”If I lose my job at a furniture factory where I’ve worked for decades, no amount of cheaper toys and raincoats at   is going to make me whole again,” Autor says. So he wishes that this is what the national conversation could be about: Instead of bashing trade deals, he’d like to see a lot more focus on what can be done to help workers who’ve been displaced by trade. He says other developed countries do a much better job of this  —   and the U. S. is pretty lousy at it."
"Tributes continue to flood in for celebrated Malian portrait photographer Malick Sidibe, who died of complications from diabetes in Bamako on April 14, at 80. Mali’s culture minister, N’Diaye Ramatoulaye Diallo, says Sidibe was a national treasure and an important part of their cultural heritage, whose loss the entire country is mourning. Nicknamed ”L’Oeil de Bamako”  —   the ”Eye of Bamako,” his capital city  —   the slim man with the big smile, kind heart and twinkling eyes had a gift for detail encapsulating the exuberance of his country and compatriots, reflected in a lifetime of lyrical,   photographs. Sidibe’s distinctive and timeless black and white images, from the 1960s and ’70s  —   the photos he’s best known for  —   remain fresh and exciting more than half a century later. Often with a touch of humor, his pioneering portraits captured the spirit of newly independent Mali, relishing its freedom and having fun. Admirers praise Sidibe for showing a different face of Africa, recording a moment in Mali’s history and swinging the spotlight on local popular culture and the innocence that era represented. It is a far cry from Mali today, battling extremist violence and fundamentalism, preceded by a military coup in 2012. Sidibe’s modest and popular studio in Bagadadji, in Bamako, was a magnet for young people and families who wanted to show off their treasures  —   be they stylish sunglasses, a new pair of belted, flared pants, a psychedelic shirt, a guitar, a motorbike with a mother, father and child posing upon it, a new braided hairdo or simply a smile. Even in recent years visitors continued to gravitate toward ”Studio Malick” to have their portraits taken. Sidibe seemingly had time for everyone. Couples dancing were a clear favorite. Sidibe was a master at capturing motion, as Malians embraced Cuban and Congolese rumba, rock ’n’ roll, the twist and James Brown. He was known to travel across Bamako, attending parties and snapping photos of smiling young people in their finery. All posed enthusiastically, immortalized by Sidibe’s large Rolleiflex cameras  —   in and outside the studio. As a visual social commentator, he chronicled daily life, and nightlife, in the capital, in vibrant studio and street scenes, and in portraits in people’s homes or at public venues and functions. He’d crisscross the city to catch relaxed young people or teens in swimwear along the banks of the River Niger or children giving an impromptu acrobatics display. He inspired generations of Malian, other African and foreign photographers, who admired his simplicity, humility, humor, encouragement and kindness. Global recognition took time. Sidibe’s first exhibition in Paris, in 1994, organized by his friend, gallery owner Andre Magnin, brought him almost instant international fame. His work appeared in galleries and museums in the U. S. France, Britain and beyond, as well as in Africa. Magnin described his friend as an ”author of thousands of images of tenderness and beauty.” Sidibe loved to travel. A 2001 profile in   Liberation newspaper refers to an invitation from Harvard University. ”I wasn’t intimidated,” said Sidibe. ”The amphitheater was impressive and the interpreter was the one trembling!” The Jack Shainman Gallery, in New York, which has represented Sidibe since 2002, is currently holding an exhibition  —   what has become a retrospective  —   of his oeuvre. ”There’s an amazing turnout of people from all different places coming to see his work,” said Shainman. Sidibe was not destined to become a photographer. As a boy he tended his family’s sheep in their village, Soloba, about 200 miles west of Bamako. He told Liberation ”even before I picked up a camera, I was deep into images.” Sidibe remembered from his childhood a sunrise that ”blocked out the hill in a manner that reminded me of Napoleon’s hat.” After attending French school, he went on to study   and art in 1952 at the Ecole des   then known as the Maison des Artisans Soudanais. French photographer Gerard Guillat met Sidibe and hired him as an apprentice. In 1962, two years after Mali’s independence from France, Sidibe opened Studio Malick. Sidibe received numerous accolades. He was the first African photographer to win the coveted Golden Lion lifetime achievement award at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and also the first to be awarded the prestigious Hasselblad prize in 2003. Dozens of people flocked to the Bagadadji studio after Sidibe’s death was announced on Friday. Many others took to social media.   Malian singer Inna Modja tweeted a photograph of her mother, grandmother and herself taken in Sidibe’s studio, titled, ”We won’t sit down and shut up.” The portrait is part of Modja’s 2015 music video ”Tomboctou,” shot in Sidibe’s studio with its distinctive, stripey fabric backdrops. A camera shutter is a central feature of the song. His death marks the end of a remarkable era in African and world photography. But as Sidibe himself said  —   ”I believe the photograph is the best way to live on, after death.”"
"Armed with a   printer and a   stonecutter, cultural heritage advocates are taking on the jackhammers of the Islamic State and its destructive ideology. When Islamic State militants seized the Syrian desert town of Palmyra last May, an orgy of demolition began. Using dynamite, fire, bulldozers and pickaxes, the wrecking crew targeted      temples, monuments and stone statues. Palmyra’s    Arch of Triumph, a symbolically important monument, lay in ruins. For ISIS, it was a frenzied attempt to erase the past  —   and profit from the illicit sale of the leftovers. Now, the destroyed Arch of Triumph will rise again, thanks to advances in photogrammetry, which turns photographs into   models. A   replica of the arch, made of stone, will be installed in London’s Trafalgar Square on Tuesday, with plans to bring it to New York later this year. The reproduction is ”completely indistinguishable from the original,” says Roger Michel, an American lawyer and archaeologist and the founder of Britain’s Institute for Digital Archaeology, a joint venture of Harvard and Oxford universities and Dubai’s Museum of the Future. Really? Just as good? Though it may look indistinguishable, its value may lie primarily in raising awareness of Syria’s rich heritage, culture advocates say. The dust had hardly settled in recaptured Palmyra, liberated from ISIS last month, when new debates began: How much should the ruins be restored, and by whom? Archaeologists raged against Michel’s plan to install his    model of the Arch of Triumph in the wreckage of Palmyra within six months, arguing that a   arch would alter the historical meaning of the ancient site. But there is no debate about Palmyra’s importance in the public imagination. ”This is the silver lining,” says Barry Threw, director of the New Palmyra Project. ”It takes someone to go in and blow it up for people to care. Anything that keeps attention on this space, I’m fine with. At least it’s keeping this alive in a different way.” Threw works with activists and archaeologists to preserve Palmyra’s culture digitally. In collaboration with MIT, the New Palmyra group has launched an online collection of images of   models of the city, building on the work of Bassel Khartabil, a Syrian software developer and advocate for   technology. Khartabil created some of the first   renderings of ancient Palmyra. He was arrested by the Syrian regime in 2012 and disappeared in Syria’s vast prison system. The New Palmyra effort is just one in a profusion of recent projects to reconstruct and restore the destruction wrought by ISIS  —   at least digitally. The director of Russia’s State Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, declared that Moscow will lead any project to restore and reconstruct Palmyra’s temples. The Hermitage has a long link to Palmyra through a large collection of artifacts from the city, A   reconstruction produced by the privately funded Cultural Capital Group of Nimrod, an ancient Iraqi city mentioned in the Bible, will soon be available on the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset. And The Economist magazine is using virtual reality to bring back the treasures of Iraq’s Mosul Museum, targeted by ISIS. ”This is the irony of destruction,” says John Jay College assistant professor Erin Thompson, a specialist in art crime. She has worked for decades to raise the alarm over looting and destruction of cultural heritage around the world. ”Nobody cared, but as soon as you link it to terrorism, then I’m on CNN,” she says. ”I feel grateful to ISIS,” she says, smiling ever so slightly as she offers her view on the paradox when we meet in New York. ISIS has touched a nerve, she explains, which has attracted more students and more private funding for cultural preservation. Looting is no longer considered a victimless crime. Now, Thompson says, ”Looted antiquities are translating directly into human atrocities” in areas under ISIS control. The past year has seen some modest progress against looting and destruction in the legal realm. The International Criminal Court is currently prosecuting the first case in which the destruction of cultural property is deemed a war crime. Ahmad   Al Faqi, a suspected Islamist militant, is accused of destroying nine mausoleums and a mosque in Mali’s ancient city of Timbuktu in 2012. On April 13, the U. S. Senate passed a bill that had cleared the House last year banning the imports of virtually all ancient art and artifacts from Syria. And the FBI warned last summer that looted artifacts were showing up in the U. S. market and buyers could be prosecuted for providing financial support to terrorists. But is this all too little, too late? ”Nothing changed yet,” says Deborah Lehr, who heads the Antiquities Coalition, a private advocacy organization in Washington. ”There is more political will and attention, but the legal infrastructure is inadequate to the modern challenge.” It took more than a year to convince U. S. officials that ISIS had transformed ”what started as a localized effort into a   transnational business” and advertised its attacks on supply to drive up demand, says Shawnee State University professor Amr Azm, a former museum official in Syria and a trained archaeologist. ”ISIS tapped into a   market that predates them. They institutionalized it,” Azm says. ”We had to convince the FBI it wasn’t easy,” says Azm. He is a key figure in demonstrating the link between looting and terrorism and has documented the ISIS business model through his contacts with Syrian activists and archaeologists on the ground. Cultural vandalism is not new to the Middle East nor is militants’ targeting of ancient sites there and elsewhere in the world. The Taliban blasted Afghanistan’s colossal Bamiyan Buddha figures to rubble in 2001. And militants destroyed mosques, mausoleums and ancient manuscripts in Timbuktu in 2012. But ISIS has raised the stakes, says Lehr. Unlike other militant groups, the Islamic State has created a ”Ministry of Antiquities” in areas under its control. ”We’ve never seen it on this scale,” Lehr says. For the U. S. and for governments in the region, ”It’s a national security issue.” ISIS has created a dangerous model for other militant groups  —   demonstrating the power of destroying culture to intimidate local populations, while reaping millions in profits from the looting. Lehr’s Antiquities Coalition, the Asia Society and Middle East Institute recently released a task force report advocating a more robust U. S. government response. In the meantime, with no quick fixes, some institutions, such as Princeton University, are opting for a more defensive strategy and investing in the study of collections already in hand. In the 1930s, Princeton archaeologists participated in an expedition to the ancient Greek and Roman city of Antioch, in what is now southern Turkey. The dig produced prized mosaics, still on display across campus. But the minor objects from the expedition  —   pottery shards, lamps, coins and other artifacts  —   were stored unexamined until a few years ago. ISIS’s actions have played a role in the university’s decision to open new research and digitize the findings, says Michael Koortbojian, a Princeton art and archaeology professor. ”There’s no doubt that everyone feels spurred by the wanton destruction over the past few years,” he says. ”We should make the good effort to provide an account of what does survive.” But it doesn’t mitigate the loss. And that brings us to the unveiling of the   replica arch on Trafalgar Square on Tuesday. Expect to hear that technology is defeating ISIS. ”My intention,” said Michel ahead of the arch’s unveiling, ”is to show Islamic State that anything they can blow up, we can rebuild exactly as it was before, and rebuild it again and again. We will use technology to disempower ISIS.” But most specialists say it doesn’t add up. The replicas of the Palmyra arch, the virtual reality renderings of the lost treasures of Iraq, document memory and loss, but don’t bring anything back. ”It is tragic,” says Koortbojian, ”that these things are becoming known as they are becoming extinct.”"
"Yellowstone National Park, a wilderness recreation area stretching for nearly 3, 500 square miles atop a volcanic hot spot in Wyoming and parts of Montana and Idaho, may be in trouble. Each year, Yellowstone attracts millions of visitors and provides a home to countless animal species, including the   grizzly bear and bison. But finding the right balance between tourism and preservation can be tricky. Journalist David Quammen, who writes about the park in the May issue of National Geographic, warns Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that ”there are ways in which Yellowstone is in danger of being loved to death.” Quammen says that so many tourists visit Yellowstone  —   close to 4 million each year  —   that it’s stressing the park’s ecosystem. But, he adds, the development of private lands around the park is an even greater threat. ”[People] come and they buy a lot in a new subdivision, or they buy a ranchette, or they buy 100 acres or 300 acres, and they put up a cabin and they get a road and they get a satellite dish, and they get a dog and they turn what was wild landscape into   landscape,” Quammen says. ”And that’s problematic for the bear, that’s problematic for the elk that migrate through these corridors.” Quammen notes that Yellowstone National Park is just one part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a 22   area that also includes Grand Teton National Park, a portion of the Wind River Indian Reservation and other private and federally owned lands. Because the animals in Yellowstone need to migrate outside the park in the winter, the lands in the greater ecosystem play an important role in the park’s continued existence. ”It has been realized in recent decades that Yellowstone Park is not an island, Quammen says. ”It’s part of this larger system, this larger body of wild landscape, and it needs the rest of this wild landscape just as the rest of the wild landscape needs it.” On the interdependence of all the lands within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, There are animals that are moving across boundaries. The great elk migrations, for instance, move in and out of Yellowstone National Park seasonally. Pronghorn move in and out of Grand Teton National Park. Grizzly bears move across the boundaries. All of these factors are interconnected. All of these species and processes are interconnected in this great ecosystem. It’s very important, we argue, we think, to the American public, to American history, to modern America, that there is this huge intact, contiguous ecosystem in the heart of the American West, within which live, for instance, all the original big predator species. . .. The grizzly bear, the black bear, the wolf, the mountain lion, the coyote  —   they’re all there, interacting with their prey species, interacting with the landscape. It’s part of what makes the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem so special. On wanting Yellowstone to be wild, but also safe for people to visit, I call it the paradox of the cultivated wild. It’s paradoxical because we’re taking a place and we’re saying, ”We want this place to continue to be wild, but in order for it to seem wild, to appear wild, to give people the experience of what the wild in the Northern Rockies is, we’ve got to do some tinkering, we’ve got to do some management. We have to have some rules and some boundaries.” And that goes back to the beginning. The founding of Yellowstone National Park back in 1872  —   it was founded originally because it was a great tourist destination for people who wanted to see geysers and canyons. And then gradually we realized that part of the value of this place, part of the importance of this place, was as a great wildlife refuge. So how do you manage the wildlife in a way that . .. people can feel safe visiting this place, and yet the wildlife can be to some degree, in some sense, wild? It’s very tricky. On encouraging grizzly bears to eat garbage in the   century, There was a very important superintendent of Yellowstone, a man who was involved in the founding of the National Park Service itself, Horace Albright, and he became superintendent, which is the boss of Yellowstone Park, in 1919 . .. to 1929. . .. During that period Albright embraced the idea that in order for the national parks, and Yellowstone in particular, to have support from the American people and from politicians, there needed to be wildlife as spectacle. And for wildlife to be available as spectacle, Horace Albright said wildlife needs to be abundant and tame. So he sanctioned the idea that grizzly bears would be fed handouts from cars and would be allowed to eat garbage, essentially human food garbage, from the various hotels within Yellowstone National Park. So there were these dumps near the big hotels . .. and the food garbage each day was put out there on these dumps and the grizzly bears were allowed, invited essentially, to come and feed at the dumps. At a certain point they decided this was great, this was the bears’ show, and they put up stands like bleachers around these natural amphitheaters at the dumpsites. So people would go out in the 1940s, the 1950s and even in the 1960s, you might finish your dinner at one of the hotels in Yellowstone and then you’d say, ”Let’s go look at the bear show.” And you would go out to the dump, and you would sit in bleachers, and you would watch 12, 15, 18 grizzly bears  —   adult, dangerous, male, females with cubs  —   grizzly bears feeding on garbage. On how closing the dumps in the late ’60s, early ’70s affected the bears, The grizzly bears were desperate for a few years, searching for substitutes for all this   human garbage that they had been eating. . .. It made it more dangerous for everybody. Closing the dumps brought on this crisis, and made things more dangerous. So in the years following the closure of the last dump, there was high mortality of grizzly bears. Why? Because they were frantic. . .. They were dazed and confused and desperate and hungry. So they came into campgrounds more, they tried to take food off of picnic tables, they tried to take food out of tents. They went places where they shouldn’t go and did things that they shouldn’t do, and they got in trouble, and quite a number of them got killed, and some people got hurt too. So in 1975 the grizzly was put on . .. the endangered species list as ”threatened,” and new measures were taken, for instance, bearproofing garbage, creating new regulations to essentially to try and keep people and people’s food away from the bears, let the bears adjust to eating the abundant wild food that’s available in Yellowstone, and allow them to be more wild, to be independent of humans as sources of food, for the good of both sides. That has been quite successful. On how private land development is affecting elk migration, The elk of Yellowstone National Park spend their summers in the high country of Yellowstone, feeding on high grasses that remain green through the summer, but in the winter, those high places become brutally cold, and so the elk move down . .. to lower elevation in the surrounding land onto national forests and in some cases onto large private ranches. . .. There are biologists that I talked to in the course of researching this issue who told me, ”There are a lot of problems facing the Yellowstone ecosystem, but the one most crucial problem, if you’re going to point to one, is private lands development. . .. Private lands development around the [periphery] of the parks, Grand Teton and Yellowstone, is the crucial issue, because if those private lands are transformed from open pastures, meadow, forest land, to suburbs, to little ranchettes, to shopping malls, to roads, to Starbucks, if those places are all settled for the benefit of humans, then the elk are not going to be able to migrate in and out of Yellowstone Park anymore. And if the elk can’t migrate into the park, then that creates problems for the wolves, for the grizzlies, for a lot of other creatures. These things all fit together. The elk are the most abundant large herbivores in the Yellowstone ecosystem there are thousands and thousands of them they migrate in and out, and those migration routes need to stay open. On how Yellowstone was originally thought of as a tourist attraction, not a wildlife refuge, It was the geysers, the thermal features, and the canyon that caused Yellowstone National Park to be created back in 1872. It wasn’t even thought of as a wildlife refuge in those days. . .. It was thought of as a great tourist attraction. Yellowstone, as I say, is a big idea that has gotten bigger, a good idea that has gotten better. . .. But it’s, I think, important to understand the history of Yellowstone, that it wasn’t always this great idea. It began as a very commercial idea. The original impetus for creating the national park came largely from minions of the Northern Pacific Railroad who wanted to sell train tickets and hotel rooms to tourists who fancied coming out to see these canyons and geysers. . .. People could come out and essentially for free they could see America’s greatest, most majestic landscapes in the West. And so it was decided that this would be a public park, or pleasuring ground, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people."
"In the 100th year of the Pulitzer Prize, The Associated Press’ global reporting called ”Seafood from Slaves” won the award for public service. The series of stories chronicled how the fishing industry was using slave labor to put seafood in American kitchens and restaurants. AP correspondent Martha Mendoza was one of the lead reporters for the investigation and spoke to NPR’s Morning Edition last year: ”The men AP found unloading seafood in Benjina were mostly from Myanmar, also known as Burma. When they realized one of the AP reporters spoke Burmese, ’they began calling out, asking for help, and explaining that they were trapped and that they were being beaten and that they were enslaved,’ Mendoza tells NPR’s Renee Montagne.” The reporting eventually freed 2, 000 slaves, brought perpetrators to justice and catalyzed industry reforms. The winner of the breaking news award went to the Los Angeles Times for its reporting during and after the San Bernardino shooting. The prize for investigative reporting went to Leonora LaPeter Anton and Anthony Cormier of the Tampa Bay Times and Michael Braga of the Sarasota   for their story about violence and neglect in Florida mental hospitals. The Tampa Bay Times also won the Pulitzer for local reporting for its stories about how a school board turned schools into ”failure factories” through segregationist policies. ”It was really a robust year for journalism,” said Mike Pride, administrator of The Pulitzer Prizes. ”Some really, really good work was done on the major journalistic challenges of the year.” Another notable winner was The Washington Post, which won the Pulitzer for its database that tracks when and why police fatally shot civilians. The acclaimed musical Hamilton, about Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, took the award for drama. The journalism prizes are: Public Service: Associated Press, Breaking News Reporting: Los Angeles Times Staff, Investigative Reporting: Leonora LaPeter Anton and Anthony Cormier of the Tampa Bay Times and Michael Braga of the Sarasota   Explanatory Reporting: T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project, Local Reporting: Michael LaForgia, Cara Fitzpatrick and Lisa Gartner of the Tampa Bay Times, National Reporting: The Washington Post Staff, International Reporting: Alissa J. Rubin of The New York Times, Feature Writing: Kathryn Schulz of The New Yorker, Commentary: Farah Stockman of The Boston Globe, Criticism: Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker, Editorial Writing: John Hackworth of Sun Newspapers, Charlotte Harbor, Fla. Editorial Cartooning: Jack Ohman of The Sacramento Bee, Breaking News Photography: Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter of The New York Times and Photography Staff of Thomson Reuters, Feature Photography: Jessica Rinaldi of The Boston Globe, The arts and music prizes are: Fiction: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press) Drama: Hamilton by   Miranda, History: Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles (Alfred A. Knopf) Biography: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (Penguin Press) Poetry: Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian (University of Chicago Press) Nonfiction: Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick (Doubleday) Music: In for a Penny, In for a Pound by Henry Threadgill (Pi Recordings)"
"When Newbery   author Kate DiCamillo talks to kids about how she became a writer, she sometimes shows them a photo of her own family. ”I would put up this picture of my mother, my brother and me and I would say to them, ’Who’s missing?’ ” she tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. ”Clearly it’s my father.” And kids get that right away. DiCamillo was always getting sick as a child, and when she was 6 years old, her family moved from Philadelphia to Florida in hopes that it would help her get healthy. ”My father  —   he was an orthodontist  —   was supposed to sell his practice and move down to Florida but that never happened . .. ” DiCamillo says. ”I would sometimes spend the summer with him and visit him, but he never lived with us.” As a kid, DiCamillo always wondered what she might have done differently  —   a question shared by the young protagonist in her new book, Raymie Nightingale. Like DiCamillo, Raymie grows up in central Florida in the 1970s. And    Raymie is also struggling with the pain and loss of abandonment. She’s convinced that if she can win the title of Little Miss Central Florida, she’ll be able to reunite their family. DiCamillo, who’s now 52, says she was probably in her 40s before she stopped asking herself what she might have done differently to win her dad back. On similarities between her and Raymie, I don’t know what my mother was thinking, but she entered me in a Little Miss contest  —   Little Miss Orange Blossom, I think it was. And I don’t remember anything about that except I have one   memory of standing on the stage and thinking: This is not where I should be. Raymie is very much like the child that I was  —   very introverted, watching, worrying, wondering, but also hopeful. On Raymie being a ”haunted” child, [She’s] haunted by the beauty of the world. There’s a moment in the book where . .. she goes to read to somebody in a nursing home and the floor of the nursing home has been polished . .. so it looks like a lake and it’s just beautiful and the light is hitting it and Raymie has this feeling that she’s going to understand everything, everything’s going to make sense. And I had that feeling all the time when I was a kid. So she’s haunted by that feeling of almost tangible understanding and beauty in the world. On Beverly Tapinksi and Louisiana Elefante, the characters Raymie teams up with  When I sat down to write the book I thought it was just going to be a funny thing about an inept child, i. e.   being in a beauty contest  —   a place she should not be. And then these characters that I did not anticipate, Louisiana and Beverly, showed up almost immediately. There’s a moment in the book  —   because Beverly’s this gruff kid who carries a pocket knife and is studying how she can crack safes and wants to sabotage the Little Miss Central Florida Tire contest  —   but there’s this moment in the book where they’re in the nursing home and there’s this woman who keeps screaming, ”Take my hand!” And Beverly, the toughest of all nuts, walks into this terrifying room and takes hold of this woman’s hand. Talk about haunted. I’m still haunted by that moment because that’s always the kid that I wanted to be and I wasn’t. I wasn’t brave enough to be that way. . .. It takes a lot of bravery to be kind. On what she learned writing Raymie’s character, I don’t want to give a spoiler alert about something that happens in the book but it wasn’t until after I finished the book that I . .. [realized] that I was, as a kid, stronger than I thought I was. . .. Raymie does something that surprises herself and surprised me and made me realize . .. you’re stronger than you think you are."
"Boko Haram drew worldwide condemnation two years ago when the Nigerian extremist group kidnapped more than 250 girls from a school in Chibok, in northeastern Nigeria. To this day, most of the girls are still missing. Last week, CNN aired a video purportedly showing several of them alive. A few of the girls managed to escape  —   including    Sa’a, a pseudonym she uses to protect herself. Last week she spoke with members of Congress, renewing calls for the United States to support Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram. Sa’a is pseudonym she uses for her safety. She’s now a college student in the U. S. though she’s not disclosing the school. She shared her story with All Things Considered host Kelly McEvers. Take us back to that night in 2014. Tell us briefly what happened. On 14th of April 2014 the Boko Haram came to my school at Chibok when we were all sleeping at night and they were shooting guns and yelling. And we all wake up and came out of our rooms. We were wearing our pajamas. And when they came in, they keep asking questions that we didn’t even know the answers to. What kind of questions? Where are the boys? The boys are day students, came to school in the morning and go home after school. And they ask where food is kept. They point out two girls out of all of us and they point out where the food is and put it in a truck. And they move us from where we are staying to the class area and then they start burning everything  —   our clothes, our books, everything in our school. They ask us to enter the trucks and if not they are going to shoot all of us. We are all scared so we enter the truck and they start moving with us in the forest. When we are driving in the forest I just had this feeling I should try and escape because I don’t know where I’m going and my parents don’t know where I’m going. And I say to one of my friends that I’m going to jump out of the truck. I would rather die and my parents will see my body and bury it than to go with the Boko Haram. What happened next? So she said, ”OK,” she’s going to jump out with me. And I said, ”OK.” I jumped out first and she jumped after me and we hid in the forest while the cars pass. We were just in that forest that night without knowing what to do. It’s dark. We don’t know where we are. My friend injured both of her legs. She couldn’t walk. We just sit under a tree until morning. She has been crying and said I should go home and let her die in forest and I said, ”No. If we are going to die, we are going to die together. I won’t leave you here.” So I go look for help in forest. I was going around not far from where we slept and I found a shepherd. So I ask him for help and he said, ”No,” he can’t help us. But I tried and convinced him. He helped us and took my friend on his bicycle and took us to Chibok and that’s we found our help to go home. What happened when you went home? Before I got home in the morning, my parents heard what happened in my school and one of my brothers and friend went back to Chibok to find what happened. And when I came home, my mom, my dad, my family, everyone is crying. Our neighbors came to the house. They are all happy and crying because I’m home. And what about the other girls. There’s a man and . .. he was asking about his daughters as well. I told him we managed to escape but I don’t know if his daughters will manage to escape the way we did. So I don’t know what happened next after we jumped out of truck. Everyone was terrified because of what happened, What about your friend? When she got home they took her to the hospital and she got treated and now she’s feeling better. She’s walking. She’s fine now. How did you come to the United States? After we escaped one of the congressman went to Nigeria to find out what happened. Chris Smith from New Jersey. When he went to Nigeria they met my friend that escaped [with me]. And she told them her story how she escaped. So when they came back to U. S. they said its not safe for her to stay there. So they said they will find a scholarship for her to study here [in the U. S.] She told them if they are giving her a scholarship to come and study, she’s not coming to school without me because I was the one that helped her. And I told her I’m not coming to school because I am so scared because of what happened. I feel like if we go to school again they are going to kidnap us wherever we are. My brothers and friends encouraged me that I should not let Boko Haram stop me from getting an education. I should be strong and come. I’m here today. What are your plans? I started college in January. I want to study medicine. If you could talk to girls who are still with Boko Haram what would you tell them? I wish I could do that. The only thing I would tell them is to hold onto their faith and let them trust in God. I want to tell them how much we miss them. We are praying for them. We are doing all we can to try our best and see that the government and someone will help and rescue those girls."
"When companies uproot, executives usually point to factors like lower government taxes or fewer unions. But one gun maker, Beretta, blames something entirely different  —   a law passed in Maryland to try to curb mass shootings. The company recently moved its factory to Nashville, Tenn. because it says the law in Maryland threatened its business. The opening day was celebrated with shooting demonstrations and a warm welcome from state officials. The Italian gun maker says it’s being driven out of its longtime U. S. home on the outskirts of Washington, D. C. The political culture there has grown hostile to guns and to the people who make them, the company says. The view couldn’t be more different in the city of Gallatin. ”They do what the people who live here really appreciate and respect and enjoy,” says Mayor Paige Brown. ”And so it’s been a real pride thing for us.” The state of Tennessee spent more than $10 million to woo Beretta. Gallatin has also thrown in a $2 million property tax break and 100 acres for free. Gov. Bill Haslam says the plant has made him the envy of his Republican colleagues. ”I literally had the governors of Texas and Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina and I’m sure a few others walk up and go, ’Dang, Haslam, that’s one we really wanted,’ ” he says. That the governor would even attend the opening shows just how different the climate is for gun makers in Tennessee, says Jeff Reh of Beretta. ”Beretta USA was the   private employer in Southern Maryland,” Reh says. ”In the history of the state, we never had a governor visit the facility.” A History Of Tension In Maryland, The company’s history in Maryland goes back to the late 1970s. In the decades since then, Beretta has clashed periodically with state officials. In 2013, in response to the Newtown, Conn. school shootings, then Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley led a clampdown on ownership of   weaponry. Some proposals would have made it illegal for Beretta to import some of its own products  —   even for sale to the military, Reh says. The exceptions the company managed to get written into the law were not enough. ”But after that experience, we realized how close we had come to being forced out of business by the state government,” Reh says. ”And that’s when we started thinking about moving the entire factory to a   state.” One of Beretta’s competitors, Remington, is also relocating jobs, from a plant in New York to Alabama. It also cites gun laws passed after Newtown as a reason for the move. Beretta will spend about $45 million on the first phase of its Tennessee plant. Although the ceremonial opening was last week, the factory has operated since December. The new plant is expected to create 300 jobs, the company says, and most workers have been hired locally. One exception is Kevin Lancto, a quality manager. He has worked for firearm companies throughout the Northeast and taken some cold shoulders through the years. ”Even people in my own family,” Lancto says. ”You know, when you know people, some people have different ideas about things.” Lancto says even his own thinking about guns has changed. He was once an avid shooter. Now he’s more interested in the weapons’ technical aspects. Still, Lancto says he appreciates working in a part of the country where gun making is more often a source of pride than controversy."
"The city of Boston and the friends and family members of the marathon bombing victims will never forget the day when two explosions ripped through the crowd at the race, killing three people and injuring more than 200. Neither will the family of Sunil Tripathi, but for very different reasons. Their story is told in the documentary film Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi. Sunil was a gifted student from a   family. His older sister, Sangeeta, says that growing up, he always surpassed her academically. ”[He] did so effortlessly, in just an embarrassing way,” she says. ”So I was always very jokingly you know kind of spiteful of the ease with which he could pass through school.” But in college at Brown University, Sunil began to struggle with depression. In March 2013, he went missing. His family organized a massive search operation, and  —   somewhat reluctantly  —   used social media to help with the search. ”Despite how uncomfortable it was to take our personal childhood and smatter it across Facebook, we just knew this was what we had to do to get his story out,” says Sangeeta. The Tripathis received lots of messages of support. News organizations picked up the story. But three weeks later, they still had no leads. They were exhausted. Sangeeta and brother Ravi decided to go to the Boston Marathon to cheer on a friend who had been helping in the search. And then, the bombing happened. ”We were right at the spot where they stopped the rest of the runners. We were just all so shaken,” says Sangeeta. ”And it just felt like tragedy on top of tragedy on top of tragedy for so many people.” This is where Sunil’s story and the marathon story became intertwined for one terrible night. Three days after the bombing, the FBI released photos of the suspects. On Twitter, a former classmate of Sunil said she thought one of the suspects looked like him. That was picked up by reddit. And suddenly, the Tripathis’ Facebook page was bombarded with hateful messages, many saying that, given his name and appearance, Sunil must be a Muslim terrorist. ”This is not just one or two comments that would make Mom cry,” says Ravi. ”It progressed to having as many laptops open as possible and deleting every single post. It almost felt like a case study in mob mentality, in virtual mob mentality.” Journalists saw the buzz on social media and started calling the Tripathis. Some retweeted the accusations. Others actually repeated them on television. The Tripathis, who had been waiting for their phones to ring with information about Sunil, were suddenly getting questions about his alleged involvement in the bombing. Between 3 and 4 a. m. on Friday, April 19, Sangeeta got 58 calls from the media. News vans lined up outside their home and reporters were knocking on their front door. Then, at 7 a. m. that same day, the FBI released the names of the actual suspects  —   Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Sunil’s name was never mentioned. ”The endless phone calls and text messages that were still coming in from the night before stopped,” says Ravi. ”And the only thing to do was reach out and say, hey, we’re people, and we’re here. And we’re actually still looking for Sunil.” In 24 hours, Sunil had gone from missing person to bombing suspect and back to missing person. His family called every news outlet that had phoned the night before, and asked for their help in finding Sunil. A few agreed, but most never returned their calls. One week later, the Tripathis discovered what had happened to Sunil: His body was found in a river near Providence, R. I. He had died by suicide, a month before the marathon. For the Tripathis, the false accusations only added to the devastation of losing Sunil. Still, the film’s director, Neal Broffman, says there are important lessons here  —   including social media’s potential for both harm and good. ”During the early days of the search the social media was incredibly uplifting and helpful,” he says. ”And then, in a matter of an hour, it turned so fast and became so ugly.” Since Sunil’s death, the Tripathis have tried to separate his story from the Boston Marathon bombing. But his aunt Nina Taylor worries that may never happen. ”For you to Google his name and know that they will always come up together,” she says. ”And it makes me so mad, because he was such a private person, and we went public because it was our only shot.”"
"Let’s begin with a choice. Say there’s a check in the mail. It’s meant to help you run your household. You can use it to keep the lights on, the water running and food on the table. Would you rather that check be for $9, 794 or $28, 639? It’s not a trick question. It’s the story of America’s schools in two numbers. That $9, 794 is how much money the Chicago Ridge School District in Illinois spent per child in 2013 (the number has been adjusted by Education Week to account for regional cost differences). It’s well below that year’s national average of $11, 841. Ridge’s two elementary campuses and one middle school sit along Chicago’s southern edge. Roughly   of its students come from   families, and a third are learning English as a second language. Here, one nurse commutes between three schools, and the two elementary schools share an art teacher and a music teacher. They spend the first half of the year at different schools, then, come January, box up their supplies and swap classrooms. ”We don’t have a lot of the extra things that other districts may have, simply because we can’t afford them,” says Ridge Superintendent Kevin Russell. One of those other districts sits less than an hour north, in Chicago’s affluent suburbs, nestled into a warren of corporate offices: Rondout School, the only campus in Rondout District 72. It has 22 teachers and 145 students, and spent $28, 639 on each one of them. What does that look like? Class sizes in Rondout are small, and every student has an individualized learning plan. Nearly all teachers have a decade of experience and earn, on average, more than $90, 000. Kids have at least one daily break for ”mindful movement,” and lunch is cooked   including a daily vegetarian option. The Simple Answer, Why does Rondout have so much and Ridge so little? Over the past six months, NPR Ed and 20 of our member station partners set out to explore this basic question. The simple answer is that many of Rondout’s neighbors are successful businesses. They pay local taxes, and those taxes help pay for local schools. Ridge simply has less to work with  —   fewer businesses, lower property values. More broadly: ”You’ve got highly segregated rich and poor towns,” says Bruce Baker of Rutgers University, who studies how states pay for their public schools. ”[They] raise vastly different amounts of local revenue based on their local bases, and [Illinois] really doesn’t put much effort into counterbalancing that.” To be fair, Illinois gives more money to Ridge than it does to Rondout. It’s just not nearly enough to level the playing field. For more on how Illinois pays for public schools, click here. This tale of two schools isn’t specific to Illinois. It plays out across the U. S. with kids the same age, in the same grade attending schools that try to educate them with wildly different resources. On average, New York, Alaska, and Wyoming each spent more than $17, 000 per student in 2013, while California, Oklahoma and Nevada spent roughly half that. Below, you can see that remarkable variation for yourself  —   and find out what schools are spending where you live. NPR teamed up with Education Week to build this map of   spending nationwide (adjusted for regional cost differences). Over the next three weeks, the NPR Ed Team will unveil a vast collection of ”School Money” stories told in collaboration with station reporters across the country. Our goal: To give voice to this   imbalance and to explain what happens when many of America’s poorest students also attend its poorest schools. Here’s one cause for alarm: The achievement gap between this nation’s wealthiest and poorest students is growing dramatically, not shrinking. We’ll begin each week with a question to guide our coverage. For this, our first week: ”How do we pay for our schools?” And the answer starts with Satan. Yes, that Satan. The Old Deluder, In 1647, Massachusetts Bay colonists were worried. New neighbors were arriving, and many could not read. Puritans considered literacy key to the survival of their faith: Teach every child to read so that every child can read the Bible. And so the colony created a remarkable new law. It began, ”It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures . .. ” and ended with a mandate: that towns of more than 50 families hire a teacher. The law also required that the teacher’s wages be paid for ”either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general.” ”This law reflected the idea that the local community was responsible for the   of all children, not just out of a sense of altruism but because the whole community depended on it,” says Ben Justice, a professor of education history at Rutgers. Fast forward 369 years, give or take a few months. Today, our school funding system is infinitely more complex, but still based on that one, powerful idea  —   that education is a public good, and paying for it could be considered a public obligation. In the U. S. school funding comes from a combination of three sources. The balance varies from state to state but, on average, looks like this: 45 percent local money, 45 percent from the state and 10 percent federal. Which brings us back to where we began this story: Why is it that one   district has $9, 794 to spend on each of its students, while another, nearby district has three times that? Two words: property tax. These days, when we ask ”the inhabitants in general” to help pay for their schools, we usually start with local property taxes. That’s nothing new. The property tax is an old idea, older than America itself. The problem with a   system that relies so heavily on local property taxes is straightforward: Property values vary a lot from neighborhood to neighborhood, district to district. And with them, tax revenues. To help poorer schools compensate for that local imbalance, some states have stepped in. In 2013, North Carolina provided   of its schools’ funding. ”If we didn’t have that, we’d be in pretty dire straits right now,” says Rodney Shotwell, superintendent of Rockingham County Schools, a   rural district along the state’s northern border with Virginia. This year, Rockingham got more than $5 million in extra state funding for its disadvantaged students. Shotwell says that money helped pay for teachers, instructional supplies, even custodians. For more on North Carolina’s school funding, click here. But North Carolina is the exception, not the rule. Most of the nation’s superintendents and principals will tell you that whether they can afford a   art teacher or new textbooks depends at least in part on the property wealth around them. Just ask Tramene Maye. Sumter County, Ala. Maye is the principal of Livingston Junior High School in rural western Alabama. Most of his students come from   families. Sumter County is farm country, and what isn’t farmland is timberland. In Alabama, both are lightly taxed. Maye gives us a guided tour of the results: ”In the girls restroom, they may have four or five stalls, but only one works,” he says. One room, no longer a classroom, leaks when it rains. Garbage cans catch some of the water, but the buckled floor and smell of mold suggest they miss plenty. Around the school, there are broken windows, peeling paint and cracked floors. Again, some states send extra dollars to districts like Sumter that serve lots of   students, to help level the playing field, but Alabama isn’t one of them. Jewel Townsend is a star student at Sumter Central High, which is in better shape than the junior high. Still, she says it’s hard when she travels and sees the buildings and sports facilities that other schools have. ”I see that Sumter County doesn’t have that,” Jewel says, her voice catching. ”It’s like, ’Wow, really? Why can’t we have that?’ ” In 2011, plaintiffs from Sumter tried to prove that the state’s school funding system wasn’t just unfair but was also racially discriminatory. In addition to being mainly   all of Sumter’s students are  . A federal judge excoriated Alabama’s funding system in an   opinion. Still, he found the plaintiffs were not entitled to relief from the court. For more on Sumter County, click here. And Sumter isn’t the only school district to look for help from the courts. Right now, 13 states are defending themselves in   lawsuits: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Washington. The Lawsuit Phenomenon, Since the early 1970s, nearly every state has seen at least one lawsuit over how it pays for schools and whether the result is fair or adequate. Of the many funding lawsuits that have played out in the nation’s courts, one stands out: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. The suit, which made it to the U. S. Supreme Court, struck at the heart of the nation’s   system. It was filed by Demetrio Rodriguez and other parents in Edgewood, a largely poor, Latino school district in San Antonio. Edgewood is across town from a largely white district that, back then, had some of the   schools in Texas. Rodriguez’s sons attended an elementary school where the third floor had been condemned. It lacked books, and many teachers weren’t certified. The plaintiffs argued that any   system that depends on local property tax revenue is fundamentally unfair to poorer districts. Specifically, the suit claimed, the way we pay for our schools violates the U. S. Constitution’s equal protection clause, which says that no state shall ”deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This was 1973, nearly 20 years after the Supreme Court used the equal protection clause to justify an end to racial segregation in America’s schools. In his decision in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: ”It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” The Rodriguez plaintiffs considered their lawsuit a natural extension of Brown: that disparities in school funding prevent America’s students from getting that opportunity of an education on ”equal terms.” The nation’s schools had become more racially integrated, certainly, but were still profoundly segregated: Poor kids, black and white alike, found themselves clustered in largely poor schools. In a split   decision, the Supreme Court ruled against Rodriguez, saying there is no right to equal funding in education under the U. S. Constitution. Not that the system is fair or balanced  —   just that the federal government has no obligation to make it so. In his forceful dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, ”I cannot accept such an emasculation of the Equal Protection Clause in the context of this case.” It was a turning point in the school funding debate. ”As a result of Rodriguez, the federal courts essentially washed their hands of the problem. And they turned it over to the states,” says Michael Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. In the four decades since, dozens of lawsuits have been filed in state courts, arguing that their funding systems are either unfair, inadequate or both. Instead of appealing to protections in the U. S. Constitution, plaintiffs have turned to state constitutions, most of which do include language that guarantees children the right to an education. (See what your state has to say here.) In fact, a new case is now before the Texas Supreme Court, filed by 600 of the state’s school districts. Their argument: More than 40 years after the Rodriguez ruling, the state’s funding system is still out of balance. Demetrio Rodriguez’s daughter, Patty, was a toddler when her father’s case was decided by the U. S. Supreme Court. She’s now a veteran teacher in Edgewood. ”It’s nothing new,” she says of this latest lawsuit. ”After a while you ask yourself, ’Is it ever really going to change?’ ” For more of Patty Rodriguez’s story, click here. Desperate Measures, Across the country, schools in   districts face tough choices. Not only do they struggle to raise money locally, but many saw drastic cuts in state funding during and after the Great Recession. According to this study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at least 31 states spent less money per student in 2014 than they did in 2008. During that time, the study found, local funding also dropped in 18 states. To make ends meet, schools are cutting back everywhere they can. And some are hitting bone. The rural Coolidge Unified School District, southeast of Phoenix, had already cut its arts and music classes as well as its librarians. But that wasn’t enough. The district still struggled to attract and keep good teachers  —   because it couldn’t pay them well. So, Coolidge shaved a day off its school week. On Fridays, the district’s teachers and students stay home. Because the schools are locked tight. ”To achieve savings,” says Superintendent Charie Wallace, ”we couldn’t have people flipping on lights or turning on a computer.” The promise of a regular   weekend and a modest salary hike cut the district’s teacher turnover rate in half this year. ”Anything I can do to pay teachers,” Wallace says, ”because they are the key to student achievement. They are the ones that deliver the goods.” That may explain why nearly 1 in 5 Arizona districts now uses the   school week. For more on Arizona’s   school week  —   and what it’s meant for parents  —   click here. The Cost Of Poverty, And then there’s Tiffany Anderson, the superintendent of Jennings School District just outside St. Louis, not far from Ferguson, Mo. She says many of her students come from poverty, and she’s got to stretch the money she gets to help them. ”Every principal has to meet with me every month, and they have to justify how they spent every dollar,” Anderson says. She walks the walk, too. The crosswalk. Every morning, she plays the role of crossing guard, walking kids across the street in front of one of the district’s nine schools. ”The members of my staff, including myself, we have maybe 10 different roles that we juggle,” Anderson says. ”It’s a way to really maximize that budget so we can divert dollars into the classroom.” Anderson isn’t just about cutting costs, either she’s creative about finding new money. She put donated washers and dryers in some of her schools. Parents can use them in exchange for volunteering an hour in the classroom. She has even forged some powerful outside partnerships to help pay for a district homeless shelter, health clinic and food pantry. It’s a double whammy for educators like Anderson who serve kids living in poverty: They often have less local money to work with but higher costs than other, more affluent districts. Kids can’t check their poverty at the classroom door. For more on Tiffany Anderson and school finance in Missouri, click here. The Math, We began with the question: ”How do we pay for our schools?” We’ve traveled now from that old deluder, Satan, to segregation. From a leaky ceiling in rural Alabama to a   school week in Arizona. From $9, 794 to $28, 639. What does it all add up to? To be sure, many parents who live in districts that can and do spend lavishly to educate their children argue that the system works just fine. And they’re not wrong. It’s working there. But it’s not working everywhere. Next week, we’ll wade into the debate over the difference money can make in a classroom. And yes, it’s a debate."
"If you melt at the creaminess of   yogurt, read on. A new study finds the dairy fats found in milk, yogurt and cheese may help protect against Type 2 diabetes. The research, published in the journal Circulation, included 3, 333 adults. Beginning in the late 1980s, researchers took blood samples from the participants and measured circulating levels of biomarkers of dairy fat in their blood. Then, over the next two decades, the researchers tracked who among the participants developed diabetes. ”People who had the most dairy fat in their diet had about a 50 percent lower risk of diabetes” compared with people who consumed the least dairy fat, says Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who is also an author of the study. The study does not prove a cause and effect, but it builds on a body of evidence suggesting that dairy fat may have protective effects, both in cutting the risk of diabetes and in helping people control body weight. ”For a long time we’ve had this notion that saturated fat [the kind found in dairy products] is always bad for you,” says Mark DeBoer, a pediatrician at the University of Virginia. But this assumption is being questioned. As we’ve previously reported, DeBoer has studied the connection between dairy fat and children’s body weight. And he published a surprising finding. ”It appears that children who have a higher intake of whole milk or 2 percent milk gain less weight over time” compared with kids who consume skim or nonfat dairy products, explains DeBoer. And there’s some evidence that dairy fat may help adults manage weight as well. As we’ve reported, researchers in Sweden found that   men who consumed   milk, butter and cream were significantly less likely to become obese over a period of 12 years compared with men who never or rarely ate   dairy. So, in other words, the butter and   eaters did better at keeping the pounds off. In addition, a      which included data from 16 observational studies  —   also found evidence that   dairy was associated with a lower risk of obesity. Researchers can’t fully explain these counterintuitive findings. It’s possible that ”the fat in dairy makes you less hungry to eat some other foods,” says DeBoer. And there’s evidence that ”when people consume more   dairy, they eat more carbohydrates” as a way of compensating, says Mozaffarian. Many   foods such as cereals, breads and snacks that contain highly refined grains are less satiating and can prompt people to eat more calories. With all the new evidence that challenges the     orthodoxy, Mozaffarian says it may be time to reconsider the National School Lunch Program rules, which allow only skim and   milk. ”Our research indicates that the national policy should be neutral about dairy fat, until we learn more,” says Mozaffarian."
"This week, an unusual coalition of corrections officers and policy experts will come together in Washington, D. C. with one common goal in mind  —   to limit the use of solitary confinement for juveniles. The campaign has enlisted some powerful voices to warn about the harms of isolation for young people. Venida Browder lost her son twice: first to the   at Rikers Island in New York, and then to suicide. ”Solitary confinement is what destroyed my son,” she said. Browder’s    son, Kalief, was accused of stealing a backpack. But he refused to plead guilty to something he said he didn’t do. Instead, he spent years in detention, waiting for a trial that never happened. ”He was a child being locked up for 23 hours a day for nearly two years,” Browder said. ”That’s enough to destroy a man’s mind, let alone a child’s.” Browder said her son tried to hang himself at Rikers. When corrections officers found him, he got a beating  —   and more time in isolation. Eventually, authorities dropped the prosecution. Kalief came home, got a GED and took classes at community college. But Browder said her son was struggling. ”The look on his face  —   physically he was here, but mentally he wasn’t,” she said. ”And it was too many days like that. It just overpowered him.” Kalief Browder took his own life last year. Criminal justice researchers said that story is all too common. ”Young people who are held in solitary confinement have the worst outcomes, and that includes being at very high risk of suicide,” said Marc Schindler of the nonprofit Justice Policy Institute. Schindler, a former youth corrections administrator, is helping to lead the Stop Solitary for Kids campaign that will kick off at an event at the National Press Club in Washington on Tuesday. The coalition wants to end the use of isolation for juveniles, who are especially vulnerable because their brains are still developing. Its members include JPI, the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators and the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform. Too often, advocates say, facilities use solitary as a catchall  —   a place to house young people who won’t follow the rules or as a warehouse for kids with mental illness. ”People are increasingly seeing that the use of solitary confinement is a counterproductive approach,” Schindler said. That includes people like Christine Blessinger. She is executive director of the Division of Youth Services in Indiana’s Department of Corrections and works closely with the American Correctional Association. Blessinger has signed on to the national movement to sharply limit isolation for juveniles, a move she said Indiana started to adopt years ago. The state recruited staff who wanted to work with young people and had them wear polo shirts instead of police uniforms. ”We actually redefined the purpose of isolation, using it just as a temporary response to behavior, you know, if the youth threaten or harm others, and then returning them back to general population programming as soon as possible,” she said. Ohio, Massachusetts and Oregon have moved in that direction too. Earlier this year, President Obama banned solitary for the tiny fraction of young people in federal prisons. Venida Browder said that’s all good, but there’s a lot more work to do. ”I don’t want another mother to have to spend a lifetime sentence like I am,” she said. ”I mourn every day.” She said she doesn’t want to see any more children damaged like her son was."
"Editor’s note: This week, to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, we will be running a series of stories examining the links between food and the Bard. Anyone who has ever spent Thanksgiving with family knows that the table is a great place for drama. We talk, we shout, we love, we fight  —   or sit in silence and seethe. And we’re all stuck there, gnawing on our turkey legs, playing out our usual roles, unable to just walk offstage. That is the very idea William Shakespeare exploited to fill theaters. It’s difficult to name a play in which Shakespeare doesn’t cook up a bit of conflict around the table. It’s a good excuse for the playwright to get a lot of people onstage at the same time, to bring friend and stranger together, and to do it all in a close space where the characters have no choice but to talk and interact. And create dramatic tension. In The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio wants to tame the headstrong Katherine, so he steals her away between their wedding and reception, only to starve her into submission over a   at his house. Orlando bursts in on As You Like It’s courtly forest feast, setting the wheels in motion for the closing marriage. There’s a vanishing meal in The Tempest, the stone soup revenge in Timon of Athens, and the shocking cannibalism of Titus Andronicus. Just to name a few. But it wasn’t only Shakespeare who milked mealtimes for drama. As audiences craved more public performances in late   London, his fellow playwrights developed    recipes for plays. In tragedy, Shakespeare’s contemporaries loved the trope of murder and a meal. Banquet tables are strewn with bodies throughout the genre that came to be known as the ”bloody banquet.” John Ford served up one of the most remembered examples in ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore: After Annabella turns up pregnant from an affair with her brother Giovanni (don’t ask) she agrees to marry Soranzo. When Soranzo learns the truth, he plots to murder her. But Giovanni beats him to it and enters the banquet hall with his sister’s heart poised like a     on his dagger. Interrupted meals like this are especially ripe with tragic meaning. Perhaps not unlike our family dinners, where everything seems to be going along as usual, everyone keeping their secrets and revenge fantasies to themselves, and then bam! The crazy starts. Which is exactly what Shakespeare serves us in the banquet scene in Macbeth. ”The new king Macbeth invites everyone who’s anyone in Scotland to his table to determine who’s with him and who’s against him,” explains my husband, Daniel H. Foster, who is also a senior lecturer in drama at the University of East Anglia. But then he loses it. Hallucinating, Macbeth sees the murdered Banquo at the table and begins talking to himself. Lady Macbeth pushes him to be a better host, ”complaining that his guests might as well have stayed at home to simply ’feed’ if he won’t provide the ’ceremony’ that is a feast,” Foster notes. The banquet is ”Macbeth’s opportunity to provide good food and entertainment for his subjects and prove that he is worthy of being king,” says Foster. But Macbeth fails miserably at hosting a dinner party. And that, in turn, ”shows us that he is unfit to rule.” (By that logic, perhaps Ina Garten should run for president?) In comedies, meals tend to play a different role  —   they are the writer’s tool to tie up conflict by bringing everyone together at the table for a closing convivial meal or an invitation to dine offstage. The apprentices devour Shrove Tuesday (England’s version of Fat Tuesday) pancakes at the end of Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday. Justice Overdo seems to welcome both cast and audience with a generous invitation ”to my house, to supper” in the final lines in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair. And in Shakespeare, Katherine  —   now thoroughly domesticated by Petruchio  —   finally gets her wedding banquet at the end of The Taming of the Shrew. But if you look a little more closely, we know that if these dramatic meals are anything like our family meals, we’re all just on our best behavior for the time it takes to finish eating. The conflicts are still seething just below the surface, the differences remain. (And Katherine is a great example  —   did Petruchio really ”tame” her? Or is she just biding her time?) Whether the tensions that are the stuff of life will   into another rendition of a bloody banquet or comedic misunderstanding is, of course, all down to the playwright who sets the stage  —   and the table  —   for drama. Anne Bramley wrote on food in early modern literature while a Ph. D. student at the University of Chicago and taught Shakespeare at Duke University. She is the author of Eat Feed Autumn Winter."
"A few years ago, I received an early career award at the annual meeting of a professional society. Before the awards ceremony, the other recipients and I were herded together, placed in adjacent seats, and told to wait for the event to begin. The five or six of us had a lot in common. Though we worked in different areas of psychology, we were at similar career stages and had overlapping interests. But we didn’t spend our time together talking about science or ideas  —   the work that had won us the awards we were there to receive. What we talked about was childcare. One woman was away from her young twins for the first time. The twins were at home in Europe, and arranging for their care while she was away had been a major ordeal. Another had a complicated arrangement with a nanny that allowed him to travel for a few days at a time. In my own case, I’d managed to attend the conference by bringing along my nursing    and also my parents to watch her while I attended the events. These stories aren’t unusual for parents trying to juggle the competing demands of caregiving and professional advancement. For academics, traveling to conferences or to other universities is an opportunity to disseminate one’s research, to catch up on the latest developments, and to establish or maintain collaborations. A lot of this travel is optional in the sense that one can skip conferences or decline speaking invitations, but these decisions come with professional costs. The upshot is that those involved in caregiving  —   mothers, fathers, and others  —   face some serious challenges participating in important aspects of academic life. Yet, some of the hurdles are pretty easy to fix. Space for lactation doesn’t need to be fancy  —   it just needs to be private and clean. Attending a talk with a sleeping newborn needn’t be regarded as ”unprofessional.” And offering   childcare could be the norm, not the exception. To see how far we could get with small fixes  —   improving the aspects of academic conferences that are pretty easy to change  —   I organized an experimental conference along with June Gruber, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder (and a fellow academic mom). The conference, held at the University of California Berkeley earlier this month, brought together an outstanding group of speakers using the latest psychological work to challenge misconceptions about the mind  —   from the idea that pursuing happiness is a good way to achieve it, to the idea that babies are born racist. We called the conference the Misconceptions of the Mind Conference: MoMiCon 2016. And we didn’t just invite the mommies: We invited the babies. The vision for the conference was simple. What would it take to make a conference easier for mothers with young children to attend? We didn’t start too early (9 a. m.) and we didn’t end too late (4:30 p. m.). We built in breaks for nursing or pumping. We chose a   location, and  —   with a little creativity and some temporary curtains  —   we were able to turn a   office into a comfortable lactation space. We showed lactating mothers where they could find the fridge in the kitchen to store pumped milk. We cleared some nearby office space so caregivers and children would have somewhere to play, and we populated it with puzzles and building blocks and crafts supplies. Our opening reception and the lunch break were open to children and their caregivers. While mothers attended the opening keynote address, their children could participate in a music class we offered down the hall. And we filmed all the presentations for those unable to attend they are available to the public at MoMiCon. org. The event was a success. Yes, there was a moment when you could hear a baby crying down the hall during the first keynote presentation. And there was a moment, a couple of hours later, when my own    escaped from her father and plastered her face against the glass door to the conference room, curious to see what so occupied her mother’s attention. But these distractions while attempting to achieving the conference’s dual aims  —   accommodating mothers, on the one hand, and engaging in   scientific dialogue, on the other  —   were minor compared to the conflict most women feel in reconciling the two corresponding parts of their identities: as mothers and as academics. The responses to these episodes were smiles. In an ideal world, we also would have provided     childcare, not only for speakers, but also for attendees. We would have covered the travel costs not only for our speakers, but also for children or caregivers they needed to bring along. And more remarkably still, we would have found ways for parents to decline to travel without suffering the associated professional costs. We didn’t do these things, but our goal was much more modest: to model what’s possible for most conferences most of the time  —   some small changes with potentially big payoffs. June Gruber and I organized MoMiCon because we wanted to start a broader conversation about how to make professional life more inclusive, not only for academic mothers with young children, but for all those juggling multiple identities as caregivers, scientists, scholars and more. Now that the conversation has started, we can turn to the question of how to implement what we’ve learned  —   and how to start tackling the larger challenges. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"It’s been four decades since Chaka Khan made her solo debut with ”I’m Every Woman,” an instant smash that earned her the title ”Queen of Funk” and penetrated nightclubs everywhere. But the RB legend isn’t done with dance music. Last Thursday, April 14, the eve of the Coachella music festival, she surprised partygoers at a nearby villa when she arrived just after 2 a. m. with her two siblings  —   fellow singers Taka Boom (born Yvonne Stevens) and Mark Stevens  —   and grabbed the mic. The trio was there to perform ”House of Love,” a glamorous, soulful track that puts Khan’s honey vocals over punchy horns, glistening crescendos and a   chorus. The single is the Stevens siblings’ first collaboration, and the party, thrown by the underground Los Angeles promoter A Club Called Rhonda, was their first family performance. Khan says they hadn’t seriously considered working together until now. ”We were all busy doing our own thing,” she tells NPR. ”It was never discussed.” But when producers Jamie Petrie and Mark Bell approached Taka Boom with the song, the timing felt right. ”The stars had aligned,” Khan says. Bell and Petrie, a writing duo who go by the moniker FOMO, have known each other since the   when they both worked in London’s music scene. Petrie is still based there, but Bell has since relocated to Los Angeles, where he runs Shaboom Records out of a studio downtown. He and Taka Boom have recorded together for years, and he says ”House of Love” was written with her in mind. But once she heard the hooks, she convinced Khan and Stevens to get involved, and they all wrote variations on the verses. The single is more than a token for the family scrapbook, however. It’s also a move to inject raw emotion back into electronic music. (In 2013, Daft Punk made a similar plea with the   album Random Access Memories, which pointedly recorded   beats with real instruments.) Khan, who came up in the disco and house movements of the ’70s and ’80s, says she can relate to the current dance music craze, but that it lacks a human finesse. ”We get it, we invented it,” she says. ”We lost our minds already. But . .. learn to play an instrument. If you need to be   you don’t need to be singing.” Bell echoes her sentiments. ”It’s a dance record built of mainly live performances,” he says. ”Some people will get it, others probably won’t. Having such talented musicians to work with was a plus.” When FOMO releases the song next month, it will be accompanied by a set of remixes from DJ Dmitry, Eric D. Clark, Yousef, Split Secs and Tripmastaz. The pair is also working on a   album. House of Love comes out May 20 on Shaboom."
"Erika Stallings’ mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 28. When it came back in her early 40s, her physicians started looking for clues. ”That’s when the doctors realized there may be something genetic going on, and that’s when she was tested, and found out she was a carrier for BRCA2,” says Stallings. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are genes. Carrying a mutated BRCA gene increases a person’s risk for developing certain cancers, including breast and ovarian cancer. Because Erika Stallings’ mom tested positive, Erika had a 50 percent chance of inheriting a mutated BRCA2 gene. But Erika was only 22 years old when she learned of her mother’s diagnosis and not yet ready to put herself through the testing process. ”I had just gotten accepted into law school, I was going to be moving to D. C. my ultimate goal was to get a job and move to Manhattan,” she says. ”I don’t want to say I pushed it to the back of my mind, but it didn’t seem super pressing.” Fast forward a few years. Her law career and her New York life are settled, and she has a supportive boyfriend. She says she finally felt ready to take the BRCA test, and deal with the potential results. In December 2013, Stallings called to make an appointment and was told she first needed to meet with a genetic counselor. The first available appointment was the following May. This   wait was unexpected and unwelcome. ”It just sort of adds a level of stress to something that is already stressful,” Stallings says. Genetic testing can help diagnose a disease and estimate your future risks, based on DNA. It can even help patients and doctors select the best medicines. In came on the scene in the late 1960s and was employed mainly to screen prospective parents and newborns for deadly inherited diseases like  . In the early 1970s, scientists identified the extra copy of a chromosome that causes Down syndrome, and also realized that a fetus’ genes were present in amniotic fluid that could be extracted through amniocentesis. By the 1980s, prenatal screening was common for conditions like Down syndrome and cystic fibrosis. The sheer number of genetic tests has exploded in the past decade or so. There are now thousands of different testable genetic disorders. In fact, demand for genetic tests has been strong since 2013. And there are two main reasons for that. ”The first was the Supreme Court decision that patenting of genes was no longer an option,” says Joy Larsen Haidle, a genetic counselor and past president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors. She’s referencing the Supreme Court’s ruling that   testing company Myriad Genetics, which developed the BRCA gene tests, couldn’t own   DNA. Almost immediately, other, cheaper tests for these mutations came to the market. And that same year, Angelina Jolie captured the world’s attention with her   in The New York Times disclosing her ”faulty” BRCA1 gene, and her decision to have a double mastectomy to reduce her breast cancer risk. ”Her sharing that information was really important, because it allowed people to identify with her story. If it could happen to Angelina Jolie, it could happen to me,” says Haidle. She says people became much more willing to talk about their genetic predispositions and seek out testing for conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and cystic fibrosis. The number of patients seeking genetic counseling and testing has increased dramatically, according to a 2014 study that looked at how Jolie’s announcement affected interest in testing. But the number of genetic counselors, the people who help both doctors and patients make sense of these tests, hasn’t expanded enough to keep up with that demand. There are just 4, 000 certified genetic counselors in the country today. That’s one for every 80, 000 Americans. ”As genetic testing is growing and becoming more widely adopted by everyone for all sorts of different things, not just pregnancy, but cancer, heart disease, there is a disconnect,” says Neha Kumar, chief product officer at Recombine and a trained genetic counselor. ”Who will actually interpret and provide those results to patients?” Recombine offers a screening test for more than 250 genetic diseases parents may pass on to a child, including conditions such as cystic fibrosis and  . Clients typically are offered genetically counseling both before and after a test. They discuss the tests, what they may reveal and what the gray areas might mean. Each counseling session lasts between 30 minutes and an hour. Genetic counselors also are well versed on genetic risk and family history, and can help people choose the most appropriate tests. Haidle points out that for lots of patients, especially those not getting breast cancer screenings, the current genetic counseling workforce is meeting demand  —   appointment wait times are often just a week or two. Still, the field is facing a bottleneck as it works to increase the number of certified counselors. ”It is going to take a while before we really have the workforce we need to provide the care that individuals out there need,” says Anne Greb, director of the Joan H. Marks Graduate Program in Human Genetics at Sarah Lawrence College.   universities offer the required   master’s program and fewer than 300 counselors will graduate this spring, far short of the estimated 650 current job openings around the country. ”They all get jobs,” says Greb of her graduates. ”I get emails or phone calls daily from recruiters looking to hire.” The average starting salary for a counselor is $65, 000 to $75, 000. Many insurers, including Medicare, typically don’t cover counseling sessions, meaning hospitals can be forced to cover a share of the costs of having counselors on staff. One insurer is taking the opposite approach, though. After the Angelina Jolie spike, Cigna began mandating that anyone interested in getting a BRCA test had to first meet with a counselor, even if a doctor already approved the screening. The move was intended to limit unnecessary tests and save money. Erika Stallings tested positive for the BRCA2 mutation. She says her genetic counselor helped her make sense of the results. ”I just always tell people, it’s not just enough to know you are positive. You have to see someone who can put those results in context with you,” she says.  Stallings decided to have a preventive double mastectomy in 2014 at the age of 29. She’s now volunteering with a breast cancer awareness group, helping to share her genetic story with more women. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WHYY’s health show The Pulse and Kaiser Health News."
"Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton notched important wins in their respective presidential primaries in their home state of New York on Tuesday night, helping both in their efforts to clinch their party’s White House nomination. In the Republican race, the billionaire real estate mogul sealed a massive victory over his two remaining rivals, sweeping at least 89 of the 95 delegates up for grabs. The Associated Press reports: Donald Trump is now the only Republican candidate with any chance of clinching the nomination before the convention. There aren’t enough delegates left in future contests for either Cruz or Kasich to reach the 1, 237 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination. Their only hope is to block Trump and force a contested convention. ”We’re going to get a lot more delegates than anyone projected in their wildest imagination,” Trump boasted, entering his victory party at his own Trump Tower building to the strains of Frank Sinatra’s ”New York, New York.” Trump had barnstormed the Empire State boasting of his ”New York values” that his chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, had found himself in hot water for mocking earlier in the campaign. Cruz won’t get any delegates from New York, finishing third behind Ohio Gov. John Kasich. By topping 50 percent in the state, Trump will get 14 statewide delegates.   of the remaining 95 delegates up for grabs are awarded by congressional district. Trump won most of New York’s 27 districts three delegates were at stake in each. Kasich will get at least three delegates in districts where he had strong finishes: the Upper East Side and Lower   Street areas of New York City, along with Albany and Syracuse. Kasich actually beat Trump in New York County (Manhattan) and the one congressional district where he defeated Trump was the 12th  —   which is home to Trump Tower. Still, Trump’s decisive victory in New York state is a major setback for the #NeverTrump movement hoping to slow the controversial Republican’s march to the nomination. And while Cruz has been successful in notching delegate victories in recent weeks at GOP conventions in Wyoming, Colorado and North Dakota, states on the calendar next week in the Northeast don’t look promising for the Texas senator. Trump, for his part, has made recent moves to revamp his campaign operation, which has left delegates on the table at those same state conventions that Cruz has been able to maneuver to his advantage. And his election night speech too had a more subdued feel than some of his more boisterous victory laps of the past, even referring to his bitter rival as ”Sen. Cruz” instead of the usual snide moniker of ”Lyin’ Ted.” On the Democratic side, the nearly   win for the former New York senator over rival Bernie Sanders in Clinton’s adopted home state is an important one for her, too. Clinton hadn’t had a victory since Arizona almost a month ago. ”Today you proved once again, there is no place like home,” Clinton told her crowd of roaring supporters at a midtown Manhattan hotel, where she entered to Jay Z and Alicia Keys’ ”Empire State of Mind.” ”This one’s personal.” Sanders, a Brooklyn native, needed to win with 57 percent of the vote to begin to cut into her lead. His wins over the past month in smaller, less   states have not been enough to help the Vermont senator catch Clinton in the Democratic delegate race, which she led by 244 pledged delegates going into Tuesday night. Clinton will rack up most of the 247 pledged delegates up for grabs, making her path to the nomination that much clearer. Now, Sanders needs about 60 percent of the remaining delegates to overtake Clinton in the pledged delegate count. ”The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight,” Clinton said at her victory party. Her win was largely due to very strong finishes in New York City and its suburbs. Sanders won an overwhelming majority of counties in the state, but Clinton was strong in the Big Apple, along with the major cities and population centers of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. According to exit polling, Clinton and Sanders split the 59 percent of white voters that made up the New York Democratic electorate, but Clinton won   voters by 36 points. Clinton won both black, white and Latino women voters by large margins, while Sanders carried the quarter of white men who comprised the New York primary vote. Even though the primary was closed  —   only registered Democrats and Republicans could vote  —   the 14 percent of Democratic respondents in exit polls who considered themselves more of an independent split for Sanders by 44 points and he won   ”very liberal” voters by 12 points."
"Editor’s note: This week, to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, we will be running a series of stories examining the links between food and the Bard. Oh, and in case the headline didn’t clue you in, this post contains sexually explicit language. The eggplant and peach emoji are standard code for racy thoughts these days, but people have been using food as sexual innuendo for centuries. Shakespeare was a pro at the gastronomic double entendre [insert blushing face emoji here]. We asked Héloïse Sénéchal, chief associate editor of the RSC Shakespeare edition, to help us decode some of the bard’s bawdy food jokes. ”There appear to be a greater number of   terms for the vagina (fruit dish, fig’s end, nut, medlar) than for the penis (beef, root, carrot) ” Sénéchal explains via email. In Henry IV Part II, Act 2 scene 1, it’s all about the pie. Mistress Quickly is the hostess of The Boar’s Head, a tavern in London’s Eastcheap, where the libertine Falstaff and his cronies hang. She bemoans Falstaff’s   unpaid bar tab  —   and a little bit more. MISTRESS QUICKLY: I am undone with his going. I warrant he is an infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang, hold him sure: good Master Snare, let him not ’scape. He comes continuanly to    —  saving your manhoods  —   to buy a saddle. ..   was an area in London near the Smithfield horse market, located on the corner of the significantly named Cock Lane (of course, it might just be a rooster, too). The area was known for cooks’ shops, saddlers and brothels (”pie” and ”corner” were both slang terms for lady parts). The saddle is a triple entendre: It’s what you put on a horse, of course, but a saddle can also refer to a ”saddle of mutton”  —   a meat cut taken from the loin, plus the hips  —   and it was common slang for a prostitute. Manhoods . .. you can figure this one out on your own. ”The instant, easy carnality of carrots, parsnips” and other phallic vegetables ”has been used since time immemorial for innuendo and symbolism,” explains Sénéchal. Shakespeare pokes fun with this classic metaphor in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 4, Scene 1. Mistress Quickly returns in this play  —   this time as a housekeeper. The Welsh parson, Evans, quizzes the schoolboy Page on his knowledge of Latin, but Quickly can’t hold back her experienced interjections. EVANS: . .. What is the focative case, William? WILLIAM PAGE: O,   vocative, O. EVANS: Remember, William, focative is caret. QUICKLY: And that’s a good root. Evans is a typical bumbling Shakespeare character and definitely no grammar wiz. He accidently stumbles into the ” ” by turning ”vocative” into ”focative.” The O is suggestive of . .. well . .. a fig, a nut, a medlar. .. . The pedant Evans uses the Latin for ”missing” (caret) but Quickly hears ”carrot,” which, along with ”root,” is slang for, ahem, the male member. In Shakespeare, ”prostitutes are often imaged as food,” says Sénéchal. Think mutton, meat, fish, flesh  —   or here, in Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 scene 4, goose. Romeo and his friend, Mercutio, are two Italian teenagers trying to one up each other with their sexual experience. MERCUTIO: Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting: it is a most sharp sauce. ROMEO: And is it not then well served into a sweet goose? MERCUTIO: O here’s a wit of cheverel, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad! Straight up, the sweeting is a sweet apple, and the sharp sauce is bitter (as well as a cutting remark). But Romeo’s response alludes to the proverb ”sweet meat must have sour sauce.” Except he gives it a vulgar spin  —   he interprets ”sauce” as an allusion to semen, uses ”goose” as slang for prostitute, and makes ”served” something for a bed rather than a table (or not, depending on your tastes). Mercutio then ups the ante as he imagines his brains in his codpiece: ”Wit” plays on the sense of ”penis.” Cheverel is easily stretched leather, which the teenager brags is as long as an ell (45 inches). ”Food and drink . .. provide ripe opportunities for sexual metaphor,” says Sénéchal. The symbolism  —  as well as the ”sipping, swilling, tasting, biting, swallowing, devouring”  —   offer the poet plenty of sauce for the proverbial goose. Anne Bramley wrote on food in early modern literature while a Ph. D. student at the University of Chicago and taught Shakespeare at Duke University. She is the author of Eat Feed Autumn Winter."
"The National Institutes of Health has suspended work in two facilities that manufacture products given to people who are enrolled in research studies, saying the facilities haven’t complied with safety standards designed to protect   people from inappropriate risks. ”There is no evidence that any patients have been harmed, but a rigorous clinical review will be undertaken,” the NIH said in a statement provided to NPR Tuesday. ”NIH will not enroll new patients in affected trials until the issues are resolved.” The NIH says work has been halted in two facilities that manufacture sterile or infused products: a National Cancer Institute laboratory engaged in cell therapy production and a National Institute of Mental Health facility producing positron emission tomography materials. The cell therapy research is run by a scientific superstar named Dr. Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute. He’s spent four decades at the NIH, where he pioneered the idea of using the immune system to fight cancer. He’s also the doctor who treated President Ronald Reagan’s colon cancer. Rosenberg did not respond to an email and a phone message left at his office. A representative of the company involved with his clinical trials, Kite Pharma, declined to provide information beyond what’s in a press release. The shutdowns of these facilities and research studies comes as the NIH is struggling to recover its credibility following embarrassing revelations last year that halted sterile manufacturing operations at a facility that serves the prestigious NIH Clinical Center. The Clinical Center is a   hospital where the patients are also research subjects. It’s often a place of last resort for desperately ill people who are willing to try unproven medicines. But in April 2015, fungal contamination was discovered in two vials of the drug albumin that were manufactured by the Clinical Center’s Pharmaceutical Development Service. At least six patients received injections from that batch, but the NIH has said none have suffered any problems. Shortly after that episode, in May 2015, the Food and Drug Administration received a complaint and conducted an unannounced inspection of the pharmaceutical service facilities. The inspection found worrisome deficiencies, such as insects in the lights of   clean rooms, flaws in the   system, and inadequate training of staffers. In June, the NIH announced that sterile operations at the facility were suspended. Since then, an internal investigation at the NIH revealed that this wasn’t an isolated problem but rather part of a disturbing pattern. ”We learned that there was a prior history of contamination events and a systemic failure to adhere to a set of standard safety and compliance principles,” reported an NIH task force. ”Instead, priority had been put on producing a high volume of products to meet the requests of intramural investigators.” That’s why, a few months ago, the NIH put together what it is calling a red team to examine the structural and cultural issues underlying these failures. The team was also tasked with reviewing ”other research activities at the Clinical Center that pose a potential risk to research participants,” including other sites at the NIH that make experimental compounds intended for administration into sick people. The red team is scheduled to brief an advisory committee to the NIH director on Thursday afternoon."
"”Don’t touch that!” ”Don’t eat that!” These phrases are well known to children of a certain age. Little kids don’t quite get why eating ice cream for breakfast five days a week is not a good idea. They may be confused about why, exactly, potatoes are food while rocks are, well, not something to put in your mouth. I mean, take a moment to consider that both come from the ground, both are covered in dirt, and both have a shape that could rightly be described as ” .” Can I Eat That?  —   a new children’s book written by independent food critic Joshua David Stein and illustrated by Julia Rothman  —   plays with some of these culinary confusions. Bright, whimsical illustrations help answers questions like, ”If I can eat fish and I can eat jelly, can I eat jellyfish?” (Yes, in case you were wondering.) And ”Why is ketchup is called ketchup and not ketchdown?” (It comes from a Hokkien Chinese word for fermented fish sauce,   even though ketchup is   today.) The book has a lot of fun with language  —   like the rhyming that goes on to show children that, while a tornado will not be appearing on their dinner plates, a potato or a tomato probably will. (Of course, if your little one is a carnivore with a hankering for pricey beef cuts, a tournedo could be on the menu as well.) As the father of a picky eater, Stein says in a blog post, he understands that simply plopping a foreign food onto a kid’s plate isn’t always a successful strategy. His book is a way to get young readers interested in foods they’ve never been exposed to before. But even for older eaters, the book offers some interesting puzzles. A picture of a small, round, green object comes with the question, ”Is this a faraway lime or a   pea?” It’s all about perspective  —   and piquing curiosity about what we eat. Once we start questioning the foods we eat and why we call them what we do, it’s hard to stop. After all, the culinary world is full of questions that boggle the mind: How come Welsh rabbit (more often called Welsh rarebit) has nothing to do with bunnies? Why do we eat green limes when ripe ones are yellow? Why do eggs come in different colors like blue or brown or white?"
"U. S. lawmakers Tuesday once again brought Apple, the FBI, security experts and law enforcement officials to testify on the ongoing debate over encryption and the ability of investigators to access data on electronic devices. A major theme that emerged from this latest hearing (though it’s been discussed by some cybersecurity experts before) was the ability or the need of the FBI to improve its own technical prowess to crack encryption  —   something that wouldn’t require the help of the tech companies or other third parties, like the   case of the San Bernardino iPhone did. ”The fact that the FBI had to go to a third party indicates that the FBI either had or devoted insufficient resources to finding a solution,” Matthew Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania computer scientist, told the House Energy and Commerce oversight panel. As Apple, WhatsApp and others are rolling out a new kind of encryption that secures data in a way that not even the companies themselves can read what people say to each other, investigators argue, they’re creating   spaces for criminals. ”As far as I know, the FBI is not exaggerating or trying to mislead anyone when they say that there is currently no way to recover data from newer iPhones,” testified Indiana State Police Capt. Charles Cohen, echoing what FBI Director James Comey has said about the mysterious   tool used to unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5C. And that led up to perhaps the most interesting exchange, between FBI Executive Assistant Director for Science and Technology Amy Hess and Rep. Diana DeGette,  .: DeGette: ”If   individuals can develop these techniques to get into these encrypted devices, why can’t we bring more capabilities   to the government to be able to do that?” Hess: ”These types of solutions that we do employ and can employ, they require a lot of highly skilled, specialized resources that we may not have immediately available to us.” DeGette: ”Can we develop those with the right resources?” Hess: ”No ma’am, I don’t see that possible  —   I think that we really need the cooperation of the industry, we need the cooperation of the academia, we need the cooperation of the private sector in order to come up with solutions.” Apple’s top lawyer, Bruce Sewell, said the company didn’t yet have a formal position on this idea, of sort of a lawful hacking: ”I think this is a very nascent area for us, but part the question is what happens to the result, does it get disclosed.” DeGette also asked him whether he agreed that the FBI needed to focus more attention on building up its own technical prowess. Sewell: ”I’d agree that we ought to spend more money, time, resources on the FBI and on local law enforcement, training . ..” DeGette: ”And would Apple be willing to help them develop those capabilities?” Sewell: ”We actively do participate in helping them.” DeGette: ”So your answer would be yes.” Sewell: ”That we would participate in training, we would —  ” DeGette: ”. .. and helping them develop those new capabilities . ..” Sewell: ”What we can do is to help them understand our ecosystem that’s what we do on a daily basis.” Sewell also said before the San Bernardino legal dispute began, the FBI and Apple were, in fact, working on an arrangement that would bring their teams together to discuss how the two sides view the role and future of technology. The FBI’s Hess told the lawmakers that what the agency wanted from the tech companies was ”that when we present an order signed by an independent neutral judge that they’re able to comply with that order and provide us with the information we’re seeking in readable form.”"
"If you’re like most people in North America, you probably spend most of your time indoors. Leave home in the morning, drive to work, stay in your cube all day, head home again. Ninety percent of our lives are spent inside a built environment of some kind  —   ones that we share with millions of invisible microbes. Scientists increasingly recognize that rooms and buildings have their own microbiomes, and that those microbial roommates may affect the health of human inhabitants. Those microbes vary depending on what city you’re in, according to a study published Tuesday. The researchers looked at what drives the composition of microbes inside nine different offices across three cities. Gregory Caporaso and his team at Northern Arizona University, where he studies microbiomes as an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, collected samples in offices in Flagstaff, Ariz. San Diego and Toronto, chosen for their varied climates. Collection plates were covered with materials such as carpet, drywall and ceiling tile. They were then installed on the floors, walls and ceilings of offices. The researchers collected samples in four   periods over a year. In all nine offices, human skin bacteria accounted for 25 to 30 percent of the office microbial communities, but the largest numbers looked like microbes that also live outdoors. And it turned out that each city has a unique,   microbial signature. Plates from offices in the same city were more similar to each other than those from the other cities. They’re not sure exactly why that would be, but they suspect that microbes migrate inside on people’s shoes and in air circulated through the ventilation system. Caporaso’s team also found that the bacterial communities did not differ based on the type of material, but did differ based on the location in the room, two variables that had been conflated in prior studies. The work was published in the journal mSystems. ”This is a benchmark study,” says Jack Gilbert, a microbial ecologist and professor of surgery at the University of Chicago, and senior editor of the article. ”Previous studies haven’t really controlled for a lot of those variables, so most of the results have been assumptions. This is really a wonderful paper because it’s clearing up many of those assumptions.” It’s intriguing to think that our homes, offices, hospitals, and cars are not just inanimate places where we conduct our business they’re also complex ecosystems. Our indoor environments appear to be affected by changes in the outdoors, as well as by the people who come through it. Those people bring with them their own microbes which affect, and are affected by, the microbes in the built environment. Caporaso says eventually it may be possible to make good use of those microbial connections to design and construct buildings with healthier microbiomes that are in balance with the surrounding environment. The goal would be to create healthier environments in the places where we spend most of our lives."
"Last week, I watched in awe as a river of crows made their way across the evening sky toward their roosts south of my house. Listening to the cacophony of their cries, I found myself with a simple question  —   is what I’m seeing just instinct or do these crows have their own culture? In fact, do any animals have culture in the same sense we do? Being an astrophysicist, I didn’t have the slightest clue about the answer. Lucky for us all, however, I do know somebody who has spent a lot of time studying the problem  —   13. 7’s own Barbara King, chancellor professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary. Like me, she’s a former resident of the great state of New Jersey. So, I emailed Barbara and the following conversation ensued: Adam: So, let’s begin with a VERY important question since we are both from New Jersey. What is your favorite Bruce Springsteen album? After that we can get to the less critical issue of whether animals have culture. Barbara: ”Born To Run” came out when I was in college, and that’s when I fell hard for Bruce and the band, so that album will always have a special place in my heart. From student days to retirement now from university teaching, Springsteen’s music has lit up my life always. Adam: I agree that ”Born to Run” is a life altering experience  —   but I didn’t discover Springsteen ’til high school when ”Darkness on the Edge of Town” came out. It totally spoke to my overblown teenage anger and hope about the world. Still, I think my favorite album may be the first ”Greetings from Asbury Park.” The storytelling on songs like ”Spirit in the Night” has been a constant source of joy even in dark times. So, as for whether animals have culture  —   it’s a big topic. Let me narrow it down to ask to if animals create more than ”instinct” allows? Barbara: It’s widely known by now that chimpanzees in West Africa crack open   nuts with rock and stone hammers to extract the delicious protein inside, and that chimpanzees in East Africa don’t. These East African chimpanzees COULD do it  —   they’re smart enough, they have the materials at hand. It’s just not their way. Similarly, chimpanzees in some places groom each other by clasping hands high above their heads. Others don’t. Why? It’s not in their genes and it’s not determined by their environments. It’s just what these apes learn to do from watching their elders. That’s culture  —   at least that’s one, arguable definition of culture. Adam: So about animal culture, you’re saying that the West African chimps do this thing (rock hammering) that the East African chimps don’t. Since they both are pretty much genetically the same, it’s not different genes which establish these different behaviors but different chimp cultures. Is this kind of like the fact that you can get a ”pork roll” at the Jersey Shore (yum!) but nobody anywhere else in the country seems to offer it? So how deep does it go? Is there animal art and dance? Also is it only our close cousins that have this kind of culture? Barbara: Well, it may not be CULTURE per se, but surely it’s a CULTURAL RESPONSE for you as a New Jerseyan to say ”yum” for a pork roll and for me as a New Jerseyan to say ”er, no thanks!”  —   our two divergent desires here to consume or not consume pigs is not dictated either by our genes or features of our habitats. They emerge instead from a whole tangle of factors ranging from our family traditions to our individual comfort with eating other mammals and much more. I think you’re on to something by asking about art and dance: I know of very cool examples of quite beautiful painting,   and rhythmic behavior by captive apes that clearly reflects an ability to express themselves creatively. But is that culture? Wouldn’t we need to find out whether a group of apes shares, and passes down, a tradition of art or dance, rather than only citing isolated examples? That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way, I’d like to know what you think, because it seems to me culture is bound up with   (not only  ) behavior: Culture is   and linked to shared identity. And not just in apes! Humpback whales, for instance, not only learn how to sing from other individuals in their communities, whole populations also shift songs at once in precise, structured and patterned ways that tell us it’s a cultural process. Adam: Well, for a host of reasons these days I live between   and eating fish. But I gotta tell ya, if someone offered me a Jersey shore pork roll I don’t think I could refuse. Lots ’o memories there since, back in the day, pork roll, pizza and beer was our breakfast of champions at Seaside. That was certainly one form of culture. So your question about the   of culture with other members of one’s group is the killer app in this discussion. It seems like, for human beings, culture has almost entirely hijacked evolution from natural selection (in the usual definition of the word). Perhaps that can only happen because we’ve   such broad and rich cultural structures like religions, systems of law and systems of myth. So, in some ways it seems like culture represents information about possible behaviors in the world that are not stored genetically. Over time, humans have been creating ever more   cultures and, in the process, creating   structures to store that information (everything from writing to art to flash drives). So we are really good at   and passing those creations down in ways that shape our evolution (i. e. who mates with whom). OK, here is my final question for now: Is it a continuum from other animals to Homo sapiens in terms of culture  —   or do we represent a big discontinuous jump? Barbara: Right, I agree culture is a huge factor of course, yet on the other hand all we have to do is look at emerging diseases (from Ebola to Zika) and the really concerning situation of global antibiotic resistance to see that, along with our cultural choices, natural selection and other evolutionary forces still affect us very strongly. And in answer to your final question, I often say that as an anthropologist I walk a tightrope between recognizing our profound continuity with other animals and our profound uniqueness as a species whose meaning making is different, in just the ways you lay out. (Species uniqueness is perfectly compatible with evolutionary theory after all, and isn’t a code phrase for ”species superiority” in our case: Each species is unique by definition.) In the end, I always come down on the side of the continuum. The wielding of ”the A word”  —   anthropomorphism or the projection of human qualities onto other animals  —   still happens sometimes in response to my work on animal emotion and, certainly, it shows up the comments section here at 13. 7! But just as I respond, well, love and grief aren’t HUMAN emotions, we don’t own them, I also say that culture isn’t a HUMAN way of meaning making, we don’t own it. We ”do culture” differently to be sure, but the continuum is there. Thanks for this exchange Adam, it’s been fun. And here’s an answer to a question you didn’t ask: My   Springsteen song is ”Land of Hope and Dreams,” live, played at top volume! Adam: Thank you, Barbara! Rather than pick a favorite song, I’ll just close by saying ”BRUUUUUCE!” Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You learn more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4, Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with her on Twitter: @bjkingape."
"On this week’s All Songs Considered, hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton kick off the show with    premieres from upcoming albums by beloved bands. Robin leads with a frenetic new song by Deerhoof, originally written for the HBO series Vinyl, that will appear on its album The Magic, out June 24. Bob follows with ”Ozzie,” a song The Low Anthem wrote as a tribute to legendary shortstop Ozzie Smith that will be on its new album Eyeland, out June 17. Also on the show: Robin shares The Avett Brothers’ new track ”Ain’t No Man” and The Moth  The Flame’s wonderfully moody song ”Young  Unafraid.” Bob plays a song from the     Jaye Bartell and closes the show with the heavy yet sweet music of Muscle and Marrow."
"Picture a dusty, nomadic herdsman around 5000 B. C. trudging with his mare somewhere in Central Asia, and pausing to quaff a refreshingly tart yogurt drink from his gourd.   to the present day, and it seems all you need for your daily dose of friendly flora is to wander into the kitchen and pop a breakfast burrito in the microwave. The market for   probiotics is growing so rapidly that probiotics are now showing up in dozens of packaged foods, from drinks to desserts, cold brew coffee and cheese bits.   percent of Americans want more probiotics in their diet, up from only 12 percent in 2008, according to a 2015 poll by Maryellen Molyneaux, president of Natural Marketing Institute, a health and wellness   firm. ”Seven out of 10 probiotic users get their daily dose from yogurt and supplements,” says Mollyneux, ”but many other sources are emerging, from sauerkraut to kombucha.” Sales of kombucha  —   the tangy, fermented tea beverage cultured with a blend of yeast and bacteria  —   soared to nearly $400 million in 2014, up from $100 million in 2009, according to global market research firm Euromonitor International. One can now find probiotics in butter substitutes, granola, ”pressed probiotic water”  —   even drinking straws packed with probiotics, which you can dip into the beverage of your choice. But what exactly do these designer foods with friendly flora actually offer  —   besides a high price tag and fancy packaging? ”It depends how you define a probiotic,” says Gregor Reid, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, and director of the Canadian Research and Development Center for Probiotics. ”I would argue that probiotics are beneficial organisms that humans have evolved with and that are naturally present in the healthy gut.” These include Lactobacillus and Bifidus bacteria, which produce   fatty acids that research suggests may be beneficial to health, help modulate immunity, and keep pathogenic organisms in check. A healthy diet rich in prebiotic fibers  —   plant fibers that we don’t digest, but the good bacteria in our gut do metabolize and thrive on  —   and fermented foods such as kefirs, yogurts, and sauerkraut helps maintain healthy digestive function, says Reid. But some claims outpace the science, he says, especially for novel organisms such as Bacillus coagulans, a   organism that is stable when heated or pasteurized. Most probiotics are inherently fragile and must be protected from excess heat. The stability of B. coagulans, along with the fact that the organism is technically vegan (not isolated from a mammal’s gut) has made it a popular addition in many designer probiotic products  —   including the aforementioned breakfast burrito (from Get Cultured) and pressed probiotic water (from Suja Juice). B. coagulans is even included in a butter substitute called Melt, which advertises that it ”delivers active cultures more effectively than yogurt.” Organism per organism, this may be true, simply because of heat resistance. But Reid says, ”We don’t know what role this organism plays in healthy people. Why do you want to take it in the first place? Until scientists definitively show in human studies what it really does for you, I wouldn’t recommend it for anybody.” Others beg to differ. ”Probiotics do not necessarily have to be native to our guts,” says food microbiologist Glenn Gibson of the University of Reading in London. Microbiota in humans vary across individuals and cultures, so what is a native and natural inhabitant of one person’s gut may not even live in another person’s gut. What matters, he says, is that they ”are safe and beneficial.” And B. coagulans, he asserts, passes that test. ”There is good research showing it improves gut health in the elderly and inhibits pathogens. We’ve done a few of those studies ourselves,” Gibson says. And while it’s true that the organisms in your food need to survive in the finished product for you to get a benefit from consuming them, the absolute number of microbes in your meal may not be as important as we’re led to believe, Gibson says. ”We already know that bacterial pathogens can exert effects at tiny doses, so why wouldn’t we expect the same of probiotics?” Gastroenterologist Eammon Quigley of Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, who specializes in the impact of probiotics on functional bowel disease and metabolic liver disease, agrees that consumers shouldn’t necessarily be swayed by claims of high counts of beneficial organisms in their food. ”You hear about billions and trillions and how they are better than millions, but there is no data to support most of those claims. Probiotics may be part of a healthy diet, but be skeptical of their impact in formulations that have not been formally tested,” he advises. So what is a cautious consumer to do? Both Quigley and Reid suggest taking a look at the Clinical Guide to Probiotic Products Available in the US the 2016 version was just released (a separate guide is available for Canada here). The guide reviews indications, dosages, and clinical evidence to date for dozens of common organisms and strains. ”This guide lets you know which organisms have been documented sufficiently to be recommended,” says Reid. If that sounds like a lot of work, just keep it simple, Reid says. He recommends sticking to the strains and simple foods that have stood the test of time and science. After all, humans have evolved and thrived for many thousands of years noshing on fermented foods  —   from kimchi to natto, kefir to kombucha, miso to yogurt to tempeh. ”We should all be eating kefirs, yogurts and sauerkraut,” says Reid. ”Their lactic acid bacteria are good for us.” Jill Neimark is an   writer whose work has been featured in Discover, Scientific American, Science, Nautilus, Aeon, Psychology Today and The New York Times."
"In Germany, obscene mockery of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could potentially land you in court  —   as comedian Jan Boehmermann discovered last week. In the U. K. obscene mockery of Erdogan could land you £1000. British journalist Douglas Murray was horrified by the recent news that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be allowing a criminal investigation of comedian Jan Boehmermann, who read an obscene, satirical poem mocking Erdogan on German TV. As the   reported last week, the poem included references to Erdogan watching child porn and committing bestiality, as well as kicking Kurds and smacking Christians. That means he might have violated a German law against insults to foreign heads of state  —   Boehmermann’s point was to highlight German limits on free speech. Turkey demanded that the comedian actually be prosecuted under the obscure law he was criticizing. And Merkel agreed, while also saying she’d work on rewriting the law in question. None of this sat well with Murray. ”I’m a   British man, and we don’t live under the blasphemy laws of such despots,” Murray wrote in the conservative British magazine The Spectator. ”So in honour of this fact I have spent the weekend writing rude limericks about Mr Erdogan. ”And I would hereby like to invite all readers to join me in a grand Erdogan limerick competition.” Technically speaking, Murray is willing to consider any rude poetry  —   but he recommends the limerick, ”because almost everything insulting that is worth saying can usually be included within the five lines of that beautiful and delicate form.” Two elements are  : The poem must be insulting, and it also must be obscenely filthy. Murray’s own poem certainly fits the bill. Here at the   our Standards and Practices editor would probably object if we excerpted much more than, Recep Erdogan is the Turk’llNever tire of . .. For the rest, you’ll have to head over to The Spectator. And, do I seriously need to say this? He’s not kidding about being coarse. Originally, there was no compensation offered for the best rude and crude doggerel. ”I have not been able to find a sponsor for the competition. So there aren’t any prizes  —   except perhaps for our continuing freedom,” Murray wrote. ”If there is anyone out there who would seriously prefer a box of Ferrero Rocher, Turkish Delight or whatever then I don’t want them to enter this competition anyway.” But a benefactor has since stepped up and offered a £1000 purse ($1, 439) to the victor."
"Denise Johnson works two jobs, but neither of them offers health insurance to   like her. She signed up for a marketplace plan this year, but for routine medical care Johnson still goes to the free clinic near her home in Charlottesville, Va. The problem is her plan’s deductible of at least $1, 000. She can’t recall the precise figure, but it doesn’t really matter. ”It’s absolutely high,” said Johnson, 58. ”Who can afford that?” She struggles to pay her $28 monthly premium. By continuing to visit the free clinic where she’s been a patient for a few years, Johnson said she saves hundreds of dollars a year on blood pressure and diuretic medications, her EpiPen and allergy pills. In addition to the drugs, she also sees a primary care doctor every six months at the clinic to keep tabs on her borderline diabetes. She also sees an allergist once a year. ”If you’re a   person and you’ve got a free clinic near you, buying a bronze plan and using the free clinic for primary care makes sense,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University. Of the 1, 300 people who visited the medical clinic at the Charlottesville Free Clinic in the past year, roughly 15 percent have enrolled in insurance through the marketplace, said Colleen Keller, executive director of the clinic. The clinic, which limits services to   people, provides medical, pharmacy, mental health and dental services through a combination of staff and volunteer medical professionals. In addition to serving the working uninsured, the clinic has expanded its target population to include the underinsured  —   people who have coverage but whose premium and deductible represents 10 percent or more of their income. Nicole Lamoureux, CEO of the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, said in many states these organizations are expanding their mission to make sure they can serve the underinsured. ”I think there definitely is a shift,” she said. ”Prior to the [federal Affordable Care Act] we were seeing primarily the uninsured, but since the passage of the ACA, we’re seeing more of the underinsured.” Clinics define underinsured differently to meet the needs of their local populations, she said. A study by the Commonwealth Fund found that 23 percent of adults younger than 65 who had coverage all year in 2014 were underinsured. The study considered someone underinsured if their    health care costs, excluding premiums, were at least 10 percent of their income, or 5 percent if their income was less than 200 percent of poverty (which was $22, 980 for an individual in a 2014 plan). People whose health insurance deductibles were at least 5 percent of their income were also included. Some people expected that the need for clinics to provide free medical care would wind down as people got coverage under the health law, said Jack Hoadley, research professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. Undocumented immigrants and people who don’t qualify for Medicaid would continue to rely on them, but few others would need to. But that hasn’t happened. Hoadley   a recent study on the effect of the health law on consumer coverage in Richmond, Va. Tampa, Fla. and Columbus, Ohio. Free clinics in those cities are ”very much needed by people who qualify for insurance subsidies, but still can’t afford the copays or deductibles to get care,” Hoadley said. The health law also expanded eligibility for coverage under the Medicaid program to adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (about $16, 000) but the Supreme Court ruled that adoption of the provision was optional. So far, 31 states and the District of Columbia have expanded coverage. The Medicaid expansion has helped ease the burden on free clinics, but sometimes even Medicaid beneficiaries come back. Cost isn’t the only factor that the newly insured are grappling with. Some people come to free clinics because they can’t get appointments with providers, especially in rural areas, said Deborah Miller, executive director of the Ohio Association of Free Clinics. ”Access is a problem across the board,” she said, referring to people in marketplace and Medicaid plans. Many Ohio free clinics have expanded their missions to serve those who are uninsured, underinsured or without access to care, Miller said. Then there are those who return to a free clinic after dropping their marketplace plan because of the cost. ”They may have a penalty for not having insurance, but it’s lower than their copays,” said Judith Robinson, a health insurance support specialist at the Charlottesville free clinic. The health law requires most people to have insurance or pay a penalty. In 2015, the penalty was the greater of $325 or 2 percent of household income. There are exceptions to the requirement for financial and other hardships. If the least expensive coverage available would cost more than 8. 05 percent of someone’s household income, for example, people aren’t required to have coverage. Surprise expenses can undermine even the best intentions, Miller said. Someone’s car breaks down and then they get behind on their electric bill. Suddenly they’re two months behind on their health insurance premium and they can’t catch up. ”All it takes is one unexpected expense, it’s life, and they don’t have a cushion to help with those unexpected things. And then it’s a crisis,” she said. And they’re back at the free clinic. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter: @mandrews110."
"  years ago, the nation was rocked by the largest domestic terrorism attack it had ever experienced. A bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killed 168 people, including 19 children in a day care center on the ground floor. Within days, Merrick Garland would arrive on the scene to supervise the investigation and prosecution. Most Americans would not hear his name again until last month, when President Obama nominated Garland, now a judge, to the U. S. Supreme Court. For Garland, the bombing would be a defining moment, as he made clear in the Rose Garden ceremony last month. ”We promised that we would find the perpetrators, that we would bring them to justice, and that we would do it in a way that honored the Constitution,” Garland said, his voice cracking. To examine Garland’s role, NPR spoke to key players involved in Oklahoma City and got special access to an oral history he made in 2013 for the Oklahoma City National Memorial  Museum. Today, in 2016, we are more used to the horror of terrorism. But in 1995 on this date, the idea of such an evil deed was beyond most Americans’ imaginations. At 9:02 in the morning, the   bomb hidden in a Ryder truck exploded with such force that it destroyed or damaged buildings within a   radius. In Washington, D. C. Merrick Garland, the No. 2 in the deputy attorney general’s office, huddled with the Justice Department top brass. His boss was Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. ”Both of us had kids about the ages of the kids in the day care center,” Gorelick said. ”We were just sick to our stomachs. And Merrick said, ’I need to go.’ ” Within two days, the Justice Department had identified a suspect and was looking for him as Garland boarded an FBI plane headed for Oklahoma City. En route, Attorney General Janet Reno called. ”She said, ’We found him. He’s at a jail in Oklahoma. And you’re going to be doing the initial hearing tonight,’ ” Garland recalled in his oral history. On landing, he drove immediately to Tinker Air Force Base, a secure location where the suspect  —   Timothy McVeigh  —   was to be arraigned. Outside, an angry mob of reporters wanted to be let in. Inside, Garland was told: You don’t let the press and the public on a military base. ”No, no, no,” he replied, according to Donna Bucella, a Justice Department official who had come from Washington to help set up the command center. ”We don’t want to do it that way,” he told officials at the air base. ”It’s going to be bad enough that there are going to be conspiracy theories. The law requires an open hearing.” It was the first of thousands of decisions, large and small, that Garland would make to ensure that the investigation and prosecution would be as flawless as possible. After the arraignment that night, he went directly to the bomb site, where the   federal building was all but obliterated and rescue workers were still searching for bodies. ”The site was lit up like . .. the day, because of big lights everywhere,” said Garland. ”The extent of the catastrophe was immediately apparent, a gaping hole in the building and everything. And the worst part was being told . .. [that’s] where the kids had been.” Even years later, Garland, sitting in the quiet of his office for the oral history, was overwhelmed by the memory of the crushed day care center. Back then, though, the immediate problem was getting a grip on the investigations that splayed out across the country. Because McVeigh and his collaborators had moved across many states in executing their plot, grand jury investigations were springing up in a   different states. There were competing local, state and federal agencies involved, including agencies that had lost men and women in the bombing. But the Justice Department was determined there would be one investigation only the FBI would take the lead, and Merrick Garland would supervise it all from Oklahoma City. ”There’s a lot of potential for territorialism  —   for people to say, ’You’re stepping on my toes, this is my area, this is my city, this is my FBI office,’ ” recalled Patrick Ryan, who was the U. S. attorney in Oklahoma City. ”Merrick was able to navigate that, and I don’t think many people could have done that.” Garland was also worried about the victims’ families and the survivors, according to Nolan Clay, who covered the bombing for The Daily Oklahoman. Prosecutors often view victims as ”a bother,” Clay observed, adding that prosecutors frequently ”just don’t want to deal” with traumatized families. But the Oklahoma City bombing case was different, he said. ”The victims did have an important role.” Garland ”set the tone early  —   ’Let’s make sure, let’s keep the victims up to speed with what’s going on.’ ” Claudia Denny, who worked for the IRS in the Federal Building, had two children in the day care center who were horribly injured but miraculously survived. ”Early on, we got invited to the U. S. attorney’s office. They wanted all of our concerns, and I think Judge Garland set that up where we all got our voice heard,” she said. What haunted Garland and others from the Justice Department was the specter of the O. J. Simpson trial the previous year, and how botched police procedures led to an acquittal. It was a cautionary tale, noted Gorelick, the former deputy attorney general. ”People wanted to give us evidence that we couldn’t lawfully take. And the investigators of course wanted to accept it because it was good evidence on which they could act,” she recalled. ”So Merrick was the person saying, ’No, for every piece of evidence we are going to have a subpoena, a search warrant. We are going to do this by the book.’ ” Even Stephen Jones, the lead defense lawyer, said Garland did it by the book. As Jones looked for issues on appeal, he was able to review all of the government’s applications for wiretaps that were submitted in secret during the investigation. ”I read all those applications, and they were pretty tightly drawn,” Jones said. ”In hindsight, that was the correct thing to do.” From the   Garland was looking down the road at the eventual trial and the appeals that would follow. ”My own experience had been, several years after even very bad crimes  —   it looks different, and so you want to be sure that every ’i’ was dotted and every ’t’ was crossed,” he said. The Oklahoma City bombing also came two years after the FBI siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, a disaster for the government, in which 76 people died. ”Imagine if we had gone into Oklahoma City in a way that made us look like   thugs,” Gorelick said. ”That’s what people thought of us after Waco. That’s what was motivating Tim McVeigh, he says. We would have had a vastly different result  —   not just in the case  —   but in the country.” Frank Keating, the governor of Oklahoma at the time, and a Republican, also points to the contrast between the handling of the bombing case and the O. J. Simpson and Waco cases. He notes that McVeigh was tried, convicted and executed in a remarkably short time and Keating gives the credit to Garland. ”It would not have happened but for his leadership,” Keating told NPR. ”And to look at something as Garland and his team did with an icicle focus, I think, was a superb act.” ”People don’t understand when they’re eating a good dinner on a Friday night, there’s a chef in the kitchen that did it,” he said. ”And in the case of what we saw after April 19, there was a chef in the kitchen that did it, and it was Merrick Garland.” In his Oklahoma City oral history, Garland said he learned an important lesson about the new world of terrorism that the U. S. was then entering. ”We made it up as we were going along, and it was clear when that was over that we couldn’t do that again,” he said. ”We had to have a system.” When Garland got back to Washington, D. C. the Justice Department began in earnest to develop that system. It’s a system that has been continually perfected and used since then, for everything from mass shootings to  ."
"When Defense Secretary Ashton Carter landed in Iraq for a surprise visit this week, he came armed with this news: More than 200 additional U. S. troops are headed to that country. They’ll join the fight to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State. As that battle unfolds on the ground, a parallel war against ISIS is unfolding in cyberspace. U. S. officials have confirmed to NPR that over the past year, the cyber campaign has taken off. They describe an escalation in operations, from using cybertools to geolocate a particular ISIS leader to hacking into and then conducting surveillance on a particular computer. The activity occurs even as the rules for cyberwarfare remain a work in progress. Among the outstanding questions: Who’s in charge when the U. S. wages cyberwar? ”The chain of command is clear on paper,” says Susan Hennessey, who served as a lawyer at the National Security Agency until November 2015. ”It’s much more difficult to understand in practice.” Hennessey, now a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution, describes an ”invisible war of lawyers” within senior government ranks. She says their debates range from questions over who has authority to approve a proposed operation to the distinction between a cyber operation and electronic warfare, such as jamming enemy radar. ”You’d see Defense Department attorneys, you’d see attorneys on the National Security Council staff, you might see attorneys on the State Department staff or other parts of executive agencies saying, ’Wait a minute! I don’t think that is electronic warfare,’ ” she says. ”So you’re going to see a lot of individuals really all working to define this space.” Asked whether the U. S. is still figuring out the rules for cyberwarfare, even as it engages in it, Hennessey replies, ”I think that’s certainly true.” An alternative view comes from Michael Sulmeyer, who until last year served as director of plans and operations for cyber policy at the Defense Department. He believes the cyber chain of command is fairly straightforward. But he says other key questions are in play, such as how to weigh the risk of collateral damage. For example, do you target a cellular network that ISIS leaders are using to communicate, if doctors at a local hospital are using it, too? Sulmeyer says it’s also worth considering whether established military standards for   apply in the cyber arena. ”If you’re a tactical unit, deployed out front and forward, what happens if you start taking incoming fire?” he asks. ”When can you fire back? How that plays out in cyberspace is something that I don’t think has been very publicly discussed.” Sulmeyer is now the Belfer Center’s Cyber Security Project director at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. From his perch there, he is studying and writing about what cyber rules of engagement should look like in the future. Sulmeyer notes that the Pentagon now officially recognizes cyberspace as the fifth domain of warfare, after land, sea, air and space. That  —   combined with the urgency of the campaign against ISIS  —   is prompting military planners to think creatively, he says, about both how to govern and how to weaponize the cyber battlefield."
"Public opinion on marijuana has risen dramatically over the last couple of decades. In the   only around 25 percent of Americans thought pot should be legal, according to Gallup. Today, it’s around 58 percent. That’s a really fast change in opinion. In fact, it’s about as fast as Americans’   on   marriage  —   a change of opinion that was itself remarkably fast. As of 1996, 27 percent of Americans thought   marriages should be recognized the same as   marriages. Today, it’s 60 percent. Public opinion on marijuana has rapidly flipped, but it’s not certain support for legal marijuana has real staying power. Similar support levels, different reasons, One question is what has driven this boom in marijuana acceptance. According to Jonathan Caulkins, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, a few trends have helped boost Americans’ opinions: rising acceptance of medical uses for marijuana,   supporters like George Soros, concerns about racial disparities in marijuana arrests and concerns over prison sentences for   drug offenders are four that he considers major factors. Those have pushed up support, but that doesn’t mean it will keep climbing. The Baby Boomers are a great example of why this is. In the late 1970s, when they were in their late teens through their early 30s, nearly half of boomers supported legalization, according to Pew. Then they fell off dramatically when they were in their 20s through 40s, only to pick up steadily again. One reason for that may be that they stopped supporting marijuana legalization once they had kids old enough to smoke it  —   and then started supporting it again once the kids left home. Having kids at home is one of the ”big predictors of opposing marijuana legalization,” Caulkins said, along with religiosity. It’s true that support for marijuana has risen across generations over the last couple of decades. But that support may level off if today’s millennials temporarily decide that it’s not a great idea to legalize it  —   once their own kids are old enough to potentially use pot. There’s also evidence that many who support marijuana legalization do so with ”ambivalence,” as the Brookings Institution’s William Galston and E. J. Dionne write in a 2013 paper. ”Support for legalization, though growing markedly, is not as intense as opposition, and is likely to remain relatively shallow so long as marijuana itself is not seen as a positive good,” they wrote. They noted that many who support legalization nevertheless think marijuana is harmful. (However, they add that many conservatives who oppose legalization also favor states’ rights to do so.) Whether today’s high levels of legalization support continue to strengthen, they add, is a question of how successful current state legalization initiatives appear. Unintended consequences in the four states (plus the District of Columbia) where pot is legal, could hurt the legalization movement. A new report from Colorado provides some ammunition for both sides in the legal marijuana fight, according to Vox’s German Lopez. It found that while arrests for marijuana dropped and tax revenue went up,   visits to hospitals and calls to poison control centers went up. And while public opinion has swung in favor of pot legalization, just like it seems to have turned decisively in favor of   marriage, big shifts on major issues like these aren’t necessarily permanent. In the 1990s, it seemed like more people were starting to accept legal abortion in all circumstances, but that support fell off. Likewise, support for the death penalty has risen and fallen  —   sometimes hugely  —   over time."
"Editor’s note: This week, to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, we will be running a series of stories examining the links between food and the Bard. For more than 400 years, Shakespeare’s audiences have devoured tales of Twelfth Night’s ”cakes and ale” and Hamlet’s ”funeral baked meats.” But there’s a whole lot more to the bard’s culinary story  —   the Shakespearean larder teems with intriguingly named foods. How about chewets, gallimaufries, and fools? (That’s small pies, mixtures and spiced, fruity custard for modern eaters.) And do you know your codlings from your carbonadoes and your umbles from your jumbles? (Translation: small apples, grilled meat, offal and bonbons.) To really understand Shakespeare’s food literature, we need to tuck into food history and even crack open a Renaissance cookbook or two. When Hamlet huffs about the ”funeral baked meats” served at his mother’s wedding banquet, he is chastising her for her quick   implying that she was serving leftovers from his father’s recent funeral. But funeral baked meats were in fact a real food, and they weren’t as macabre as their name implied  —   though they were cooked in a ”coffin.” The same word was used for ”a coffer to keep dead people or to keep meat in,” explains Ken Albala, director of food studies at the University of the Pacific. But these edible coffins, he explains, were made of pastry crust to seal the contents so that they lasted longer. Because that pastry was built to act more like Tupperware than a treat, it was coarse and tossed rather than eaten. More grim is the drink proffered by Lady Macbeth: To clear the way for murder, she drugs the grooms’ possets  —       staples of Renaissance tables. They were a sort of   eggnog made by curdling cream in wine, ale or sack (that’s Spanish Sherry). But glossing the Renaissance table helps us understand more about Shakespeare’s plays than simply what his characters ate. For example, then as now, which booze you chose said a lot about who you were. Expensive sack was all the rage, and the bard’s famous   knight, Falstaff  —   though less true to his word  —   is true to his drink. Prince Hal christens Falstaff, a great guzzler of the Spanish wine (often taken with a bit of sweetener) ”  Sugar Jack.” Further down the social ladder, ale came in one size: small (meaning weak in both flavor and alcohol content). Prince Hal remembers ”the poor creature, small beer” he drank when he played at being just one of the guys in The Boar’s Head tavern. In The Taming of the Shrew, joking aristocrats move a    Christopher Sly from the street in front of the alehouse, where he’s passed out, to a lord’s chamber. When he comes round, his new servants offer him sack and rich conserves, but he refuses them both and embraces his   lifestyle with a cry of ”For God’s sake, a pot of small ale.” No surprise that in Henry VI, Part II, the more aspirational class rebel Jack Cade promises to ”make it felony to drink small beer.” And in an era when what people ate was largely determined by class standing, we can expect the stage to mirror this reality. The landed gentry and even   merchants could show off their wealth with a banquet of conserves and comfits  —   a candy made of a nut or seed coated in sugar. Think of the ”kissing comfits” (for sweet breath) Falstaff calls to fall from the sky in The Merry Wives of Windsor. In Shakespeare’s day, a banquet was not a rollicking dinner party in the great hall, but dessert. Or rather, an elaborate final sweet course of expensive sweets and elaborate sculptures crafted in sugar. The truly rich built separate banqueting houses on their manors to host their   guests.   cookbooks of Shakespeare’s day, like Hugh Plat’s Delights for Ladies, let class climbers in on the secrets of the best tables in England with recipes for comfits. The detailed and diverse 11 pages of directions recommend that ”for every two pound of sugar, a quarter of a pound of aniseeds or coriander seed” be used. Ivan Day, a British food historian known for his detailed recreations of meals of bygone eras, shows how it’s done. But the painstaking preparation of coating spices with layers and layers of sugar means they were usually left to the professional comfit maker. And then there are those foods that cover a whole host of dishes and yet nothing in particular: kickshaws and cates. In The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio insists on shortening Katherine’s name, despite her resistance to the diminutive. In their running battle of wits, his pun on ”household cates” turns Kate into a dainty dish ready to be devoured. ”Cates” could be just about any food, but the term was usually reserved for the choicest morsels in the larder. Same with kickshaws, like those that Shallow orders up in Henry IV, Part II: ”a couple of   hens, a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny kickshaws.” It’s an adulteration of the French quelquechose and a commodious cornucopia of a word covering a host of savory appetizers. For homemade kickshaws, Gervase Markham’s The English Housewife (printed one year before Shakespeare’s death in 1616) instructs the cook to mix eggs, cream, currants, cinnamon, cloves, spinach, endive, marigold flowers and pigs’ pettitoes [feet]. But he also suggests using small birds, roots, oysters, giblets, lemons. And plenty more. ”Who can do these need no further instruction for the rest,” he insists. Markham’s directions, like all cookery books of the period, read more like shopping lists and    kitchen stories than today’s cookbooks, with their meticulous measurements and  . As for the jumbles and umbles that may make us mumble through Shakespeare’s plays, it’s hard not to quip that a dish by any other name would taste as delicious."
"It certainly looks suspicious that more than 125, 000 Democrats were dropped from Brooklyn’s voter rolls between last November and Tuesday’s primary. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said that the Board of Elections confirmed the voters were removed and that his office would conduct an audit to see if anything improper was done. In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the New York City Board of Elections to ”reverse that purge,” adding that ”the perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.” And it was an unusually high number of names to be dropped all at once. But Michael Ryan, executive director of the elections board, denied anyone was disenfranchised. While more than 100, 000 voters were taken off the rolls, he told the New York Times, 63, 000 were added and the decline did not ”shock his conscience.” He told WNYC that ”people die every day and they come off the list,” and New Yorkers move a lot  —   another reason they might be taken off the rolls. Indeed, there might very well be a good  —   and legitimate  —   explanation for why all those names were removed. A 2010 study by the Pew Center on the States found that 1 in 8 voter registrations in the U. S.  —   about 24 million records  —   was invalid or significantly inaccurate. It found that more than 1. 8 million dead people were on the rolls and almost 3 million people were registered in more than one state. Since then, elections offices around the country have stepped up efforts to clean up their lists. In fact, it’s required by federal law that they do so. But there are certain rules they’re supposed to follow. ”They can’t just do it without any legitimate basis,” says David Becker, director of election initiatives at Pew. ”They’re required to go through a process to try to ensure that they’re only removing those people who they truly should remove from the rolls.” Here’s the process in a nutshell. If an election office sends a mailing to a voter and it’s returned as undeliverable, the voter can temporarily be put on an ”inactive” list. Becker says, if that voter shows up to vote, ”they’re reactivated instantly. And they can vote and there’s no problem.” But if the voter doesn’t show up for two federal elections in a row, his name can legitimately be removed from the rolls. A name can also be removed if election officials verify that the individual has died, moved to another jurisdiction or is not allowed to vote for some other reason. Still, Becker says some election offices do a better job of following the rules than others. Some of them get into trouble when they rely on bad information to update their lists. For example, they might try to match voters’ names with death records, but not verify that the John Smith on one list is the same John Smith on the other. One of the most notorious purges took place in Florida in 2000, when the state used a faulty list of felons to remove more than 1, 000 legitimate voters from the rolls. To try to avoid such problems, 15 states and the District of Columbia are now participating in something called the Electronic Registration Information Center, where they share data to weed out duplicate registrations and deceased voters. It also allows them to identify voters who have moved, so they can try to contact them to update their registrations. Becker says election officials face a fine line, trying to clean up their lists without going too far. In many cases, election offices err on the side of keeping names on the list, but that can lead to bloated rolls and complaints that there are more voters listed than there are residents in a given state. And, in some cases, when election officials do get around to cleaning up the rolls, there can be a huge number of names dropped all at once. For example, a few years ago, almost 94, 000 voters were removed from the District of Columbia’s rolls after the list had not been updated for years. So what might have happened in Brooklyn? Of the more than 125, 000 names removed, WNYC found that 12, 000 were people who had moved out of the borough. An additional 44, 000 weren’t really removed but switched from active to inactive status, which means they should still have been allowed to vote. It’s the other 70, 000 that are the question. The city’s audit should determine whether they were removed for a legitimate reason  —   such as death or failure of the individual to vote in the last two federal elections. Or whether mistakes were made, and people’s names should not have been removed. Or if there was anything nefarious going on. On The Brian Lehrer Show Wednesday, Comptroller Stringer said he would approach the audit ”without any preconceived notion” and bring in professional auditors. ”There is a feeling among our constituents that there’s something wrong when 125, 000 people are purged especially with population increase,” he said."
"Kanye West sometimes gets himself in trouble with what he says on Twitter. Now, one of his tweets may get used against him in court. Back in February, he tweeted that his new album, The Life Of Pablo, would only be available on Tidal, the streaming music service in which he owns a stake, and ”never never never” on Apple. Well, ”never never never” lasted about six weeks: You can now listen to The Life of Pablo on both Apple Music and Spotify. And this week, a lawsuit was filed in federal court alleging that listeners were tricked into signing up for Tidal. To put that news in the context of the broader conversation around how music is heard and paid for, NPR’s Kelly McEvers spoke to Marc Hogan, senior staff writer at Pitchfork (who has reported on the story there). You can hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.  Kelly McEvers: What do we know about the details of this lawsuit? Who is suing Kanye West? Marc Hogan: Basically, a regular person I think he’s a school teacher. But, it’s a proposed class action. So it’s a fan of Kanye West who is suing Tidal and Kanye West and Jay Z  —   who owns Tidal  —   basically on behalf of the fans who were supposedly tricked into signing up for Tidal to hear the album. It seems like a lot of people were annoyed you know, they put their credit card information in and they signed up for Tidal when they could have just waited. I guess the question is, is that worthy of a lawsuit? That’s kind of up to the court to find out! But it was almost inevitable. It seemed like one of those things where, when he goes out and he says, ”never never never ”  —   I love the three ”never”s  —   when you say that, and then you reverse on it, and people have been giving their credit card info, someone is going to sue you nowadays. So, it’s only a matter of time, I guess. With all these streaming services, it seems like there is kind of an arms race for the exclusive, to find a way to stand out among the competition. How does that fit into the new business model in music? It’s really fascinating. You do have an arms race with the exclusives for streaming services. You know, Tidal is not just Kanye they had a Rihanna exclusive. Drake’s new album is coming out exclusively on Apple Music. But what’s fascinating is that Spotify, which still has the most paid subscribers  —   I believe it’s 30 million  —   they don’t really play the exclusives game. So does that mean that the exclusive thing really isn’t necessarily a business model that’s going to work going forward? The exclusives model does seem to be a way to stand out, especially if you’re trying to compete with an already established player. I mean, when you look at the video space  —   Netflix or Amazon or even HBO  —   all of these services compete over exclusives, so it makes sense. But I don’t know when you think about music, the exclusives might still be a small sliver of overall music fans. I wonder if this is just a different way to get people to spend money on something? I mean, you think back to paying $20 for a whole CD that really only has one good song on it.  Right. They’re constantly trying to find new ways to get people to actually spend money for music because, of course, [people] haven’t been. And yes, exclusives is one of the ways they thought of to try to say, ”Hey, you can finally part with that credit card number.” Although in the case of the Tidal situation, there was a trial subscription, so in lots of cases they maybe didn’t actually even pay any money they just gave up their data, which, that’s what the lawsuit is partially about. What’s Kanye saying about all this? I don’t believe he has said anything publicly about it yet. I reached out to his camp for comment and I didn’t hear anything back. I mean, he’s always saying things  —   but the lawsuit, I don’t think he has spoken about it. You know, Kanye does what Kanye wants, and it’s just always fascinating to watch. You just have to wonder how the next release will happen for him. Yeah, what do you do? How do you follow this? This is an album that he’s been kind of tinkering with after it was released, and then he keeps changing even where it is released. It’s definitely unique. Do you know what the next step in this lawsuit is? I was just checking online today, and it looks like right now they’re serving the papers to Kanye and Jay Z. So, good luck, I guess, finding them and serving the case to them! I would love to know who that guy is, who gets to knock on the door. Right. Bring a video camera and see what the reaction is."
"(This post was last updated at 6:15 p. m. EDT.)  Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced on Wednesday that the countenance of abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman will grace a new $20 bill. The decision caps a public campaign asking for a woman to be placed on American paper currency and months of deliberation by the Treasury to replace either Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill or Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. ”With this decision, our currency will now tell more of our story and reflect the contributions of women as well as men to our great democracy,” Lew said in a letter to the American people. The decision also speaks to the diversity of the U. S. says Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. ”For me, having Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill really says, first of all, that America realizes that it’s not the same country that it once was  —   that it’s a place where diversity matters,” Bunch told All Things Considered. ”And it allows us to make a hero out of someone like Harriet Tubman, who deserves to be a hero.” In a statement, the Treasury also announced that the new $20 note will keep an image of Jackson, who was a slaveholder, on the back. The new $10 bill will keep Hamilton on the front but in the back feature ”an image of the historic march for suffrage that ended on the steps of the Treasury Department.” Leaders of that movement  —   Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul  —   will be honored in the image. As we’ve reported, last year, an unofficial contest by the activist group Women on 20s gave the nod to Tubman to take Jackson’s place on the $20 bill. The campaign then sent a petition to President Obama. As we reported: ”We’ll note that Tubman’s appearance on the $20 bill would have a special historical resonance: That’s the same amount she eventually received from the U. S. government as her monthly pension for her service as a nurse, scout, cook and spy during the Civil War, as well as for her status as the widow of a veteran.” The Treasury had previously said a new $10 bill would feature a woman. But the popularity of the Broadway show Hamilton might well have put a stop to that plan.   Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, personally lobbied Lew and after a meeting last month, he tweeted that the Treasury secretary had told him ”you’re going to be very happy.” In an interview with Charlie Rose in March, Lew also previewed his decision saying, ”Alexander Hamilton is one of my heroes. He’s not leaving our money.” Hamilton was the country’s first secretary of the Treasury. The Treasury also said that a new $5 bill will honor two important American events that happened at the Lincoln Memorial: Marian Anderson’s 1939 performance on the steps and Martin Luther King’s 1963 ”I Have a Dream” speech. The Treasury did not say when the new bills will enter into circulation but said the final concept designs of the new $20, $10 and $5 notes will be unveiled in 2020."
"Lowe’s home improvement company, like a growing number of large companies nationwide, offers its employees an   benefit: Certain major surgeries at prestigious hospitals are free. How do these firms do it? With a way of paying that’s gaining steam across the health care industry, and that Medicare is now adopting for hip and knee replacements in 67 metropolitan areas, including New York, Miami and Denver. Here’s how the program works: Lowe’s and other employers pay one flat rate for a particular procedure from any of a number of hospitals they’ve selected for its quality. And, under the agreement, the hospital handles all the treatment within a certain time frame  —   the surgery, the physical therapy and any complications that arise  —   all for that one price. It was Bob Ihrie, senior vice president for compensation and benefits at Lowe’s, who came up with the idea in 2010. When he told managers at other companies about it, he says, ”The first question was always, ’Oh, this is just for executives, right?’ And I said no, absolutely not, this is for any Lowe’s employee in the Lowe’s health care plans.” The program is optional for employees. They can still use their local surgeon, if they prefer, and pay out of pocket whatever their insurance doesn’t cover. But more than 700 Lowe’s employees have taken the company up on its offer, Ihrie says. It’s a great deal for patients, he says, and for his company. ”We were able to get a bundled price, which actually enables us to save money on every single operation,” Ihrie says. The Pacific Business Group on Health negotiates that price for Lowe’s, Walmart and a number of other large employers. Associate director Olivia Ross oversees these deals, and says her team is able to negotiate rates that are 20 to 30 percent below what the companies used to pay for the procedures. ”We’re seeing savings at the front end,” she says, because Lowe’s pays less for the surgery. And, because the hospital is responsible for all that care, the institution has a strong incentive to be careful and thorough, Ross says. That means ”huge savings on the back end,” she says, ”from things like reduced   reduced return to the O. R. and lower rates of blood clots. Those are hugely expensive, preventable complications.” Lowe’s comes out ahead, even after paying for the patient’s travel, Ihrie confirms. Participating hospitals win, too, by attracting more patients, says Trisha Frick, who handles such negotiations on behalf of Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. ”It’s new business for us,” Frick says. ”And, for the most part, the reimbursement is acceptable we believe that we can provide that, within that amount of money.” Medicare, the health insurance program for people 65 and older, started using bundled rates for hip and knee replacements this month in Miami, Los Angeles and 65 other metro areas. Medicare had some early evidence from pilot programs that ”the model works well,” according to Rob Lazerow, a health care consultant with The Advisory Board Company. ”Medicare is saving something like $4, 000 on orthopedic cases,” he says. Medicare’s deal is somewhat different from the one at Lowe’s. Patients may pay something out of pocket, depending on the type of Medicare policy that insures them. And while the few hospitals selected in Lowe’s program can bank on increasing their revenue and the number of surgeries they’ll get, the rates established by Medicare’s bundled payment system hold for every hospital in a participating market. ”Entire markets are selected for participating,” Lazerow explains. ”If you’re in the San Francisco market or you’re in the New York market, all of the hospitals are actually participating in the program.” But there are similarities, too, and Medicare may learn some lessons from Lowe’s experience. Lowe’s initially had trouble wrangling all a patient’s medical records from local doctors. And the company found that patients who had questions weeks or months after an operation sometimes had trouble following up with the    doctor who had performed the surgery. ”You have some setbacks, and things happen, and you just have questions,” Ihrie says. ”So what we give every patient now is a little card with the doctor’s name and direct phone line and the nurse’s name and direct phone line. And all of a sudden, things were a lot better.” Another lesson was startling, Ross says. In addition to cutting the cost of procedures, another chunk of savings to the companies came from avoiding surgeries that probably shouldn’t happen in the first place. ”We’re seeing up to 30 percent  —   close to 30 percent of cases  —   who should not be moving forward with the joint replacement,” Ross says. What typically happens in these cases, she says, is that employees get a recommendation from a local doctor that they should have surgery, only to have physicians at the selected hospitals deem the operation inappropriate. In some cases that may be because the employee hasn’t first tried less invasive treatments, such as physical therapy, Ross says. Or the employee may need to lose weight first, to make the surgery safer. Ihrie says what heartens him most about his company’s program is that Lowe’s employees are now taking a more active role in decisions about their care. ”What treatment you receive is not always very black and white,” he says. ”The mere fact that people now think about what they’re doing helps us control costs across the board.” This story is part of NPR’s partnership with WFAE and Kaiser Health News."
"Nearly five years after a federal jury found them guilty of either gunning down unarmed civilians or covering up the incident on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge, five former police officers have entered guilty pleas as part of a deal with the government. The deal sharply reduces the penalties they faced before their initial convictions were overturned in 2013 over prosecutorial misconduct. The judge in the case accepted the terms of the deal shortly before 1 p. m. local time, after a hearing on the case began around noon. In court today, former Officers Kenneth Bowen, Robert Faulcon, Robert Gisevius and Anthony Villavaso pleaded guilty to three counts each: deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and obstruction of justice by engaging in misleading conduct. Arthur Kaufman, the former officers’ supervisor who was accused of arranging a   pleaded guilty to two counts: conspiracy to obstruct justice and falsification of evidence to obstruct justice. Their punishments are markedly less severe than those the officers received four years ago: While their previous sentences had carried a collective weight of more than 200 years in prison, the plea deal reduces that to less than 45 years in total. ”Four of the officers have been in prison since 2010,” Eve Troeh of member station WWNO in New Orleans tells our Newscast unit, adding that Kaufman was not in prison because he ”was not directly involved in the shooting.” In addition to the prison sentences, each defendant was assessed a $100 fee for each count, by the judge’s order. Civil lawsuits filed by the victims’ families against the former officers are still ongoing, as the local news site NOLA. com reminds us. When they were initially found guilty, Bowen, Faulcon, Gisevius and Villavaso were all sentenced to more than 30 years in prison. Faulcon got the most time: 65 years for ”killing [a] mentally ill man with a shotgun blast to the back,” as the   reported back in 2012. His new prison sentence would be for 12 years. Both Bowen and Gisevius went from facing prison terms of 40 years each to 10 years Villavaso, from 38 years to seven. Kaufman initially was ordered to spend six years in prison for covering up the others’ actions today, he agreed to a   sentence. All of the former officers’ arrangements with prosecutors give them credit for time served and include up to five years of supervised release. The case of a sixth former officer is still pending, federal prosecutors say. In addition to the former officers who are involved in today’s plea deal, several other officers pleaded guilty in 2011 to charges such as deprivation of civil rights, false prosecution and obstruction of justice. Two people died in the Sept. 4, 2005, shooting: James Brissette, 17, and Ronald Madison, 40. Four other people were left seriously wounded. They had been part of a group of people trying to cross the Danziger Bridge to get help during the catastrophic days that followed the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. One of the people seriously wounded was Susan Bartholomew, who had been crossing the bridge with a group that included her two children and her husband Leonard, a longtime employee of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board. A year after the shooting, Bartholomew, who by then had moved to Texas, told NPR’s John Burnett, ”I never thought I’d be shot. And I never thought I’d be shot by the police. I thought the police were there to protect.” She then described the scene after she and her family tried to take cover from police bullets, diving behind concrete barriers: ”When I look, we’re all on the ground and all you can see is blood. Everywhere. You can hear everybody hollering, moaning, everybody been shot and in pain.” ”My right arm was on the ground lying next to me. The only thing that was attached to it was a piece of skin. It had been shot off.” The plea deal promises to end a contentious case that has lingered for a decade. In recent years, the U. S. Justice Department and a federal judge have traded accusations, with federal prosecutors seeking to force District Judge Kurt Engelhardt to recuse himself from the case after he tossed out the convictions. But it was Engelhardt who today accepted the former officers’ pleas in the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He also ordered that several records in the case be unsealed. When he ordered a new trial in the case back in 2013, Engelhardt did so in a   document that sharply criticized the government  —   especially because at least two prosecutors in the U. S. Attorney’s office were found to have posted extensive and largely negative online comments about police in the Danziger Bridge case and other criminal cases, using anonymous accounts on the local news website NOLA. com. In response, federal prosecutors accused Engelhardt ”of overstepping his bounds and exaggerating the impact” of the online comments, as local newspaper The Advocate reported. Nearly two years after Engelhardt ordered a new trial for the former police officers, a   panel of the 5th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his decision, setting in motion the legal wrangling that resulted in today’s plea deals. After the arrangement was made final, U. S. Attorney Kenneth Polite issued a statement that reads in part: ”While we disagreed with the legal reasoning that vacated the convictions and granted a new trial, we must undoubtedly accept the fact that the misconduct was unacceptable. I was not in the Office at the time, but I certainly deal with these consequences every day.”"
"For millions of Americans, climate change is making the weather nicer. That’s the conclusion of a new study that points out winters are getting quite a bit milder, while summers aren’t getting that much worse. The study’s authors say the mild temperatures might be one reason some people aren’t so worried about climate change. For most of the U. S. the hottest temperatures in July haven’t gone up much  —   scientific consensus is about half a degree over the past 40 years. Same for sticky humidity  —   not much change, if any. But January’s highest temperatures have warmed up on average more than 4 degrees. Patrick Egan at New York University says for lots of people, that means weather many people view as ”pleasant.” ”I live here in New York City, and you’ve got shirtless beach volleyball games taking place on Christmas Eve in Central Park,” Egan says. ”And on Christmas Day we had a cookout. We were all wearing shorts, and . .. it was bizarre and it was unusual. It was no Currier  Ives Christmas, but it was also pleasant.” As they might say in New York, you got a problem with Santa in shorts? Egan is a political scientist who has studied why people live where they do, but the temperature numbers come from climate science. What Egan and colleague Megan Mullin at Duke University have done is calculate that about 80 percent of Americans live in places where winters are warming faster than summers. ”You know, for many Americans,” Egan says, ”they’re not experiencing really hot Julys as much as they are experiencing really warm winters. That’s really the crux of this study.” Egan notes that research on where people choose to live shows that they often put a premium on warmer winters. So he says it’s fair to conclude that lots of people are enjoying the change in the weather  —   unless they’re skiers or snowboarders, perhaps. Egan and Mullin say that might be one reason many people aren’t so worried about climate change. Writing in the journal Nature, Egan says public attitudes may change quickly when summer temperature increases start increasing faster, which scientists say will happen in several decades. How fast depends on whether and by how much the world cuts back on emissions of greenhouse gases. In the meantime, though, rapidly warming winters do pose all sorts of problems for plants and animals that can’t adapt as readily as people can. And while the U. S. hasn’t been hit too hard by heat waves, other parts of the world have, some of which are seeing summer maximum temperatures rise quickly."
"Hidden Brain host Shankar Vedantam takes you on vacation with him to Alaska. You’ll hike on top of a glacier, drink from a cool stream, and talk with fellow tourists from around the world. But the trip comes with an upsetting observation: Glaciers in Alaska are retreating. The Mendenhall glacier, visited by tens of thousands of tourists each year, has receded more than a mile and a half in the last half century. ”It’s sort of just collapsed in on itself,” says John Neary, director of the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. Many see the glacier’s retreat as an ominous symbol of climate change. But not all. Shankar talks with tourists who are skeptical that climate change is even occurring. And so the question: Is there something about the human brain that makes it hard for us to grapple with climate change? After returning from vacation, Shankar calls George Marshall, Director of Projects at Climate Outreach and author of Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, about the behavioral challenges and solutions to addressing climate change. The Hidden Brain Podcast is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Kara   Maggie Penman and Max Nesterak. To subscribe to our newsletter, click here. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, @karamcguirk, @maggiepenman and @maxnesterak, and listen for Hidden Brain stories every week on your local public radio station."
"Right now, and in the coming weeks, from Northern California to Alaska, commercial and amateur mushroom hunters will be scouring hills that were ravaged by fires last summer and fall. Their prey? Morel mushrooms. ”Sometimes we call it ’chasing the burns,’ ” mushroom enthusiast Kevin Sadlier says, in search of the black morel mushrooms that grow in the springtime after a forest fire. He’s exploring Lake County, Calif. a couple of hours northeast of San Francisco. Last September’s Valley Fire  —   one of the most destructive in California history  —   changed the face of these hills, once thick with pine and fir trees. ”It looks like a moonscape with trees, he says. Joining Sadlier is fellow forager Connie Green, who says morels are opportunists. ”It’s as if fire is taking a gigantic eraser, and wiped life out. Where cleansing fire has made this rather sad, with black sticks in their landscape, morels love this,” Green says. But Green knows that finding the right conditions doesn’t guarantee success. It’s easy to mistake tiny burnt stumps or rocks for morels. Their textured caps are long and   like dark honeycomb. ”That’s part of their charm. We find maybe it’s like a bad boyfriend or girlfriend that you keep going out and being shamed by. It’s a bit like that with morels,” she says with a laugh. Green is not just a forager. For decades she’s run a business supplying wild mushrooms to   Bay Area restaurants, and she   the book The Wild Table. She says there’s a long history and appreciation of different types of morels in Europe and in the Midwest. Here, before morels became a   staple, long before European settlers came, Native Americans collected them. The three of us walk through the forest, heads down, when suddenly Kevin Sadlier spots a black SUV covertly parked off the road and says, ”We’ve got company,” likely a fellow mushroom hunter. Sadlier and Green both laugh, knowingly. When we move to another spot, and come across two other foragers he knows, that’s when we find a cluster of morels poking out of needles covering the ground. ”Bingo!” someone yells. I gasp, and Sadlier says, ”We’re in the promised land. They’re everywhere!” I see grown men chase each other to a morel cluster, and we spend hours scanning the hills. We fill a paper grocery bag with morels: a respectable haul, but really, just for home eating. These foragers believe the real mother lode would be higher up, inside the boundaries of Boggs Mountain State Forest, which has been closed to the public since the fire. They’re pretty frustrated that they’re restricted from this public land. ”Arbitrary and capricious,” Sadlier calls that decision. Not surprisingly, Jim Wright, of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, disagrees. He’s   Boggs Mountain State Forest, where he says 80 percent of the forest’s trees burned. His top priority is removal. The black and brown hills of the forest look like something out of a dystopic science fiction film. On an active logging site, equipment with mechanized arms and saws fells dead trees, strips off burnt bark and moves as much as 100 truckloads a day out to mills. Even where logging isn’t happening, Wright says, the forest is dangerous. ”The tops will start breaking out of these trees,” he says. ”The limbs will start breaking off and coming down with just the slightest breeze,” and   stumps and roots create holes in the ground. While Wright knows many morel hunters are familiar with forests and are eager to get on the land, he says, ”We can’t interview each person to find out if they’re qualified, see if they have a hardhat, if they’re familiar with hazards of forest. It’s just not practical.” Before the fire, Joe Guardado hiked Boggs Forest every day. He’s spent many winters foraging pounds and pounds of porcini mushrooms in the forest and around the town of Loch Lomond, where he lives. It’s a weekend getaway for Northern Californian Italian families, and they revere mushrooms here. Guardado introduces me to a friend, Mike Giusti, who built a shrine in his front yard that, from a distance, looks like it honors the Virgin Mary. Up close, it’s clear that it’s a porcini made of stones. Guardado says he doesn’t forage mushrooms for money. He swaps jars of dried porcinis for hunted pheasant or duck, or wine made by the families who vacation here. Guardado is a caretaker, and he knows them all. People like Flora and Romano Marcucci. Romano points to Guardado and says, ”They call him the King for Mushrooms.” In these parts, Guardado is called the King, or Mushroom Joe. He’s showing the Marcuccis where edible wild mushrooms pop out of little mounds of leaves in a yard. They’re coccolis, white mushrooms as big as my hand. Flora says she’ll slice the mushrooms and cook them simply in olive oil with garlic, pepper and salt. ”Let it fry, get nice and crunch. Delicious!” They also unearth one deadly mushroom. ”Oh, that’s a death cap,” says Mushroom Joe, looking at its pimply skin. Romano Marcucci draws his finger across his neck, ominously, but all three are lifelong mushroom hunters who know what to avoid. Mushroom Joe and I spend the afternoon in a couple of burn areas hunting for morels: no luck today. So, he’ll keep looking. But he skipped porcini season last winter . .. his heart just wasn’t in it. He says he feels a tension between his   passion and his love of these   hills. ”It’s what you loved and now it’s all black,” he says. ”It’s not so bad because right now we’re looking for mushrooms, so I don’t have to look up that often. I’m looking down at the ground, like you’re blocking it out of your mind that it’s not there. It’s sad. It’s just real sad.” Because, Mushroom Joe Guardado says, chasing the burn for morels hurts a little, if it’s in your own backyard. This story is part of Lisa Morehouse’s series California Foodways which is supported, in part, by a grant from California Humanities."
"On Tuesday, the state of Utah officially declared a new public health crisis: pornography. Gov. Gary Herbert signed a resolution stating that pornography is a ”public health hazard” that harms both individuals and society. The nonbinding resolution calls for research, education and policy changes ”to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the citizens of Utah and the nation.” ”We realize this is a bold assertion not everyone will agree on, but it’s the   truth,” Herbert, a Republican, tweeted Tuesday. The resolution has been working its way through the Utah Legislature since late January. It passed the state House and Senate with unanimous votes of approval. Declaring porn a public health hazard has no practical impact, as the Salt Lake Tribune notes  —   the resolution doesn’t ban porn or earmark any money to combat it. But supporters are declaring the bill a symbolic victory. As Utah Public Radio reports: ”The resolution makes way for a multifaceted approach to solving this crisis, said Pamela Atkinson, the chair of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography board. ”She said the state is worried about 82 percent of sex offenders who started off by viewing pornography. ” ’They acknowledged they got involved with simple  —   or soft core porn  —   years ago,’ she said. ’It’s not so satisfying anymore and that’s when they move on to the hard core porn. When that is not satisfying any more, they act out on real human beings. They objectify children and young women.’ ” The resolution identifies a number of ”individual and public health impacts and societal harms” it attributes to pornography, including: The resolution also suggests porn may be ”biologically addictive, which means the user requires more novelty, often in the form of more shocking material, in order to be satisfied.” The final three points in the resolution pivot toward the idea that porn is bad for family structures: ”WHEREAS, pornography use is linked to lessening desire in young men to marry, dissatisfaction in marriage, and infidelity, ”WHEREAS, this link demonstrates that pornography has a detrimental effect on the family unit and, ”WHEREAS, overcoming pornography’s harms is beyond the capability of the afflicted individual to address alone . .. ” This is not the first time Utah has attempted a statewide response to pornography. Fifteen years ago, the state appointed an ”obscenity and pornography complaints ombudsman”  —   more widely known as a ”porn czar.” The New York Times reported then that Utah was ”the only state to create an office dedicated to sexually explicit issues.” The czar served for two years. And as Utah Public Radio notes, ”some have dubbed Utah the   capital of the country.” In 2009, a study concluded that Utah had a higher rate of porn subscriptions than any other state. But the state might have lost that title, depending on how you measure such things. Pornhub analyses from the past two years show Utah has a   number of page views per capita and has the   sessions of any state. (N. B.: The links above are safe for work, but we make no such guarantee for anything you click from there.)"
"White women are dying at a slightly younger age than in the past. That’s according to a report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The life expectancy for   white women in the United States declined by one month  —   from 81. 2 years to 81. 1 years  —   from 2013 to 2014. Though one month may not seem like much, demographers worry  —   it’s the first time since the government began keeping records that white women’s life expectancy has declined, according to the report. The numbers don’t include cause of death, but demographer Elizabeth Arias, who wrote the analysis, decided to dig deeper. She looked at cause of death among white people in the U. S. over the past 15 years. And the changes she found troubled her. ”For the age group 25 to 54, suicide went up,” she says. ” ’Unintentional poisonings,’ which is mainly alcohol and drug poisoning, and chronic liver disease  —   those went up by quite a bit.” Those underlying factors affected men and women, Arias says, but affected women more. The life expectancy of white men over the same time period did not change. Many other causes of death declined, she says  —   including heart disease, cancer and stroke. But those health improvements were offset by the increases in drug overdose, suicide and chronic liver disease. The report comes just a few months after a separate study by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton showed that   mortality among white people is on the rise. The authors of that study also said the increase in deaths was likely due to suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholism. Ellen Meara, a professor at Dartmouth’s Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, said the numbers are surprising because mortality has been in decline for so long. ”There are people for whom life expectancy is falling  —   and that’s happening at a time where everywhere else and for every other group we’re seeing all these amazing gains in survival,” Meara says. The NCHS report does have some good news: The average life expectancy for   black men increased by about a    —   from 71. 8 years to 72. 2 in that same time period. Arias says that improvement seems linked to declines in cancer deaths, homicides and heart disease."
"Anyone who has run more than a few miles with some regularity has experienced what is usually called a ”runner’s high,” an overwhelming feeling of euphoria and   that makes the running experience something far more rewarding than just moving forward toward an end point. As a dedicated endurance trail runner, I can attest to this feeling and the craving for more. Although this is not the only reason why people run, we come back, again and again, hoping for these almost magical moments, that come and go as we move along the road or the trail. Until recently, people associated such feelings with the release of endorphins, a group of hormones that activate the body’s opiate receptors, acting as pleasant painkillers. However, a study published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes different   chemicals as the trigger, endocannabinoids, cousins of the familiar cannabinoids in marijuana. Apparently, runners do get high from our body’s own drug. Endorphins are large molecules, too big to flow freely within brain receptors. They work well in muscles to alleviate pain, but seem to have little to do with feelings of euphoria and   that must be triggered within the brain. Endocannabinoids, on the other hand, are smaller molecules, and have been conjectured to be the culprits of the   runner’s high. To test this hypothesis, scientists from the Central Institute of Mental Health at the University of Heidelberg medical school in Mannheim, Germany, put a group of healthy lab mice to run on a wheel, an activity they seem to enjoy. Indeed, scientists have noted elevated levels of both endorphins and endocannabinoids in mice and in people after an enjoyable but strenuous run. First, the scientists put the mice in cages with bright and dark spots. When anxious, mice tend to go to the dark spots, in search of shelter. A more relaxed mouse would instead be more comfortable in a bright spot. As expected, the mice tended to spend more time in bright spots after a good run. This behavior didn’t change when scientists blocked the receptors for endorphins: The mice still experienced their version of a runner’s high. However, when the scientists blocked the receptors for endocannabinoids leaving open those for endorphins, the mice acted as anxious as ever, showing none of the calming effects from their run. They recoiled to the dark spots in their cages. The study also showed that the benefits from the endocannabinoids only kick in after some considerable mileage: The mice showing the less anxious behavior averaged more than three miles everyday on their wheels. It’s not clear how these numbers translate to humans, but we can assume that we need to work hard to experience a legitimate runner’s high. I imagine the effects are different for different people, and it will take some experimenting before you find your groove. From an evolutionary perspective, the results make a lot of sense. We evolved to hunt fast moving animals and to escape from   predators. Such prolonged runs are tiring and painful. If we get a reward from working hard, our chances of running longer and faster are increased. And, with them, our chances of survival. As Christopher McDougall pointed out in Born to Run, his inspiring book about   running, running is in our DNA, in how our bodies evolved to have an Achilles tendon and sweat glands and a series of other adaptations that make us all into potential marathoners. Not that we need to run 26. 2 miles to experience a runner’s high. Fortunately, lions and antelopes don’t run that far. As most physiological benefits of running seem to be at a peak between 90 minutes and 2 hours, 30 minutes  —   a   run at a   pace is plenty. It may sound like a lot to the   but you   your distance slowly and carefully to avoid injury. I should know, as I’ve been training for my first trail   this coming Saturday. I picked a shorter distance, 33 miles, to see how it goes. And, more importantly, I picked a beautiful place, Tuscany, so that  —   if things don’t go well  —   I can at least enjoy the scenery and, endocannabinoids lacking, I can try some of the amazing local wines after the race.      Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist  —   and professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the   of 13. 7, a prolific author of papers and essays, and active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser."
"A few months ago, the U. S. military gave Zabihullah Niazi $3, 000. He lost his left eye and left arm when an American   gunship repeatedly fired shells into the hospital in which he worked in northern Afghanistan. The money was what officials term a ”condolence payment,” an expression of sympathy and sorrow for injuring Niazi when the U. S. military mistakenly hit the Kunduz hospital, killing 42 people. Now, more than six months afterward, Niazi says he intends to return the $3, 000  —   ”in front of the media guys”  —   as a protest over the way the U. S. military is treating victims of the attack. Although he believes he can no longer work because of his injuries, Niazi says that his discomfort at accepting what some call ”sorry money” is only making him feel worse. He also regards the amount as ”ridiculous and insulting.” Niazi, 25, was a nurse at a Kunduz trauma center run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). In late September, the Taliban invaded the city. It took several days for the Afghan army, supported by U. S. air power and special forces, to drive them out. During that battle, in the early hours of Oct. 3, Niazi was inside the hospital, resting after a shift, when one U. S. shell after another pummeled the building  —   incinerating some patients in their beds. The Pentagon later described this prolonged aerial assault as a ”tragic, avoidable accident,” caused by human error, faulty computers and a communications breakdown. President Obama apologized. Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan  —   who took up his post after the airstrike  —   traveled last month to Kunduz, where he ”humbly and respectfully” asked forgiveness. This admission of responsibility and regret was never likely to diminish the victims’ suffering. Now, their pain is mingling with confusion and anger over the handling of their cases. Condolence money is different from compensation. The $3, 000 given to Niazi and others who were injured was a   payment so was the $6, 000 handed out by the U. S. military to the families of the dead. Around 200 of these small payments have been made. Compensation hasn’t been offered. Victims say MSF legal advisers have warned them that although they need and deserve compensation, the U. S. isn’t legally obligated to provide it. Akhtar Mohammed, 38, says he’s been trying to find out about possible compensation for the death of his brother, Lal, a    nurse with MSF (also known as Doctors Without Borders). He’s been told the Americans ”won’t pay compensation” and that this is ”based on war zone laws and other legislation.” Mohammed, a farmer, says he is now supporting his brother’s widow and four children, all under the age of 8: ”This is hard for me. We are poor people.” Enayatullah Hamdard, spokesman on behalf of the 14 MSF employees killed in the airstrike, who included his father, has reached a stark conclusion: ”They are cheating us.” Is the U. S. military cheating them? U. S. officials say they have provided victims with all the necessary information and paperwork to submit claims, and that these will be adjudicated under the Foreign Claims Act (FCA). This U. S. federal law allows for payments of up to $100, 000. The situation, however, is complicated. Lawyers for MSF, a global organization experienced in international law, are convinced the Foreign Claims Act does not apply in the Kunduz hospital case, because it contains an exemption for combat activities. They also cite bilateral agreements between the Afghan government and the U. S. that provide American forces with immunity from any claims pursued within Afghanistan. They believe the U. S. military is inviting claims (and raising victims’ expectations, by doing so) that the U. S. does not, legally, have to meet. The unpleasant truth is that the victims of the hospital strike have no legal right to compensation, according to MSF’s legal advisers. That would mean the question of whether victims of one of the worst U. S. military blunders in the   Afghan conflict will be compensated, and how much, could be decided by the Pentagon alone. However, while the Foreign Claims Act doesn’t require the U. S. to pay claims in this case, it also doesn’t prohibit it from doing so, says Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame. ”Requiring victims to go through the claims process may reflect the changed character of Afghanistan for the U. S. legally  —   from active zone of armed conflict to something more akin to police support of the Afghan government,” she said. ”It is a bit strange,” says John B. Bellinger III, adjunct senior fellow for international and national security law at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former legal adviser for the State Department and National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration. ”The military obviously knows this is very sensitive,” he says, ”so I would be very surprised if they invited claims under the FCA if they plan to deny them. The fact that the military has invited the forms seems to suggest that they are prepared to pay under the FCA.” Among those anxious to know if he’ll ever get any financial assistance is Mohammadullah Adel, 37. He says the U. S. hospital strike left him with head, throat, chest and stomach injuries. He is deaf in one ear, suffers headaches and is receiving therapy for trauma. He has a family of nine to feed. Adel, a nurse, says he, too, was given $3, 000 condolence money he claims the American who handed him the payment told him: ”I understand that Afghans, when they visit a patient, bring some gifts like rice, cooking oil and sheep. This is why we brought money for you.” As for compensation, Adel feels helpless: ”I went to see the MSF a few times and told them that U. S. is a superpower. If they say they don’t pay compensation, I don’t have the power to get it by force.” The U. S. military isn’t saying if it will pay compensation to the victims  —   or how it interprets the law. ”It’s really not a matter of the U. S. military having a view . .. on whether or not the Foreign Claims Act applies,” said Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, the U. S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, in an email. ”So, I don’t think it is a question of policy. Rather, it is more of a question of law as to whether the claim is paid.” He declined to speculate whether victims’ claims would succeed, but added: ”We are aware that there are those who don’t think the claims process will be successful under the circumstances surrounding this terrible mistake. ”The possibility that claims won’t be paid based on the circumstances is one of several reasons why Gen. Nicholson [the U. S. commander in Afghanistan] is reviewing all options on how he may further assist the victims.” That acknowledgement  —   that claims possibly won’t be paid  —   would come as no surprise to the victims. They have so little faith in the process that none of them have filed a claim.  "
"It has been a year since Freddie Gray died from injuries sustained as Baltimore police transported him to a station. The    was arrested after running from police officers later found a small knife in Gray’s possession. Cellphone video of the arrest showed Gray being dragged, moaning in pain, to the police van while at least one onlooker shouted that Gray needed medical care. Gray was not secured in the back of the van, which led to 80 percent of his spine being severed. The Baltimore Sun has a comprehensive timeline of the investigation into his death and the status of legal cases against the officers involved. This week, journalists, commentators and community members are reflecting on what Gray’s death has meant for the city and what it might mean going forward. Karen Houppert at the Baltimore City Paper writes that the    legal process for the police who are charged in the case mirrors the pace of progress across the community: ”The city, too, is in a holding pattern, still reeling from Gray’s death and the ensuing uprising and riot. The national press that descended on Baltimore during an upswell of protests over police brutality has packed up its bags, its cameras and microphones, its   reports on the city and gone home. ”But it is not    in Baltimore. ”Gray’s death sparked a movement among residents, many of whom are determined to contextualize his death by demanding reform in police practices, by looking at the legacy of redlining and residential segregation, by considering the uptick in the homicide rate (a record 344 murders last year) by questioning entrenched racism, by pointing out disparities in economic opportunities, by drawing attention to issues like disproportionate minority confinement in our prisons, by condemning the differences in educational attainment among the rich and poor or black and white students, by tying our racist history to our fraught present.” Gray’s death and the aftermath have already changed the city’s political landscape. Anthony Batts, the police commissioner at the time, was fired Mayor Stephanie   decided not to run for another term, sparking a crowded field of candidates to run for that office. The Rev. Jamal Bryant, the politically influential Baltimore pastor who delivered the eulogy at Freddie Gray’s funeral, was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition. He said that, despite the uproar, progress in addressing issues like poverty and police reform has been ”very slow, almost at a snail’s pace”: ”And that’s why our local election is so important as we elect a new mayor, a senator and city council, because we don’t want promises. We want to hear a plan . .. ”. .. The reality is we’re still dealing with joblessness and lack of opportunity and really subpar education. So policing is important, but there are many different variables that play a role in what happened for the uprising in Baltimore a year ago.” At The Baltimore Sun, Mary Carole McCauley and Wesley Case write about how art and activism have been critical in the community’s quest to process the tragedy: ”To local artists, it has felt vitally necessary to form the roiling muck of thoughts and feelings generated by the death of the    man and by the subsequent confrontation between police officers and   citizens into something that makes sense, into poetry or a sculpture or a melodic phrase. The words and pictures were so vivid and insistent that they practically shoved their way out. They almost demanded that the artists sit down  —   not tomorrow, but right now  —   and let them emerge. .. ” ’[Gray’s] death became a symbol for all the frustration that people had been feeling for a long time,’ [Loyola University Professor Karsonya Wise Whitehead] said. ’Freddie Gray was one of our own, and it became very important to name what was happening in our city. All that tension came to a head, and the only way it could be expressed was by writing a song or throwing a rock. ’” Reporting from Baltimore, USA Today’s Melanie Eversley writes that the city is full of informal memorials honoring Gray and marking the anniversary: ”One year after Freddie Gray died after being stuffed into the back of a police van, street art and murals punctuate almost every block in the neighborhood where he died. Some of the colorful pieces are huge and elaborate, some small and simple. Some encourage peace. Some promote rebellion. ”Together, they paint a picture of a city trying to come to grips with itself. Gray, a    black man, has come to symbolize a national struggle of sorts between police and young black men.” Eversley allows that ”in some ways, life has changed” in Baltimore since Gray’s death. She points to police department initiatives like new van cameras as evidence. Still, she says that ”one thing remains the same: The tense relations between the cops and the impoverished city neighborhoods where Gray grew up.” Sheryl Gay Stolberg and John Eligon of The New York Times have been covering stories from Baltimore over the past year. They discussed the atmosphere in the city in the days preceding the anniversary. Stolberg seemed cautiously hopeful: ”. .. Two things strike me: the intense love that people [in Baltimore] have for the city, and their true desire to pull together and make it a better place. I think the anniversaries will indeed be difficult and painful. But many people in Baltimore have been engaged in some deep   since Freddie Gray’s death, so I think this will also be a time for important reflection. Some points worth making: ”First, the mood. I was talking to David Jaros, a law professor, today he described the city as ’grudgingly, slowly moving forward.’ I think that’s about right. In some ways, little has changed since Freddie Gray’s death. Baltimore still faces the   challenges  —   dilapidated housing, high rates of joblessness among young black people, violent crime  —   that created the climate that led to violence. But in other ways, a whole lot has changed, because Baltimore’s   has changed. Freddie Gray’s death was a real awakening, and I see glimmers of hope throughout Baltimore. ”Second, preparations for unrest. Many people warned of another round of unrest during the trial of Officer William Porter, who was one of six officers charged in Mr. Gray’s death. His trial ended in December in a hung jury. The city was peaceful  —   I was not surprised by that I always thought the violence of last April was a boiling over, an aberration  —   and I think most people expect Baltimore to continue to be peaceful during this period of anniversaries. Still, the police say they are prepared for any eventuality.” Baynard Woods of The Guardian writes that though there have been ”modest changes to both policies and practices” at the Baltimore Police Department, in practice, these changes can be ”fragile.” He talked to Shaun Young, a Baltimore resident who became famous for disrupting a CNN broadcast during an early protest, about how these changes have actually played out: ”. .. to Young, many of the circumstances that spurred the riot are much the same as when Gray died a year ago, on 19 April 2015. .. ” ’It’s the same politics, the same policies being enforced, it’s a different enforcer. What policies have changed? Now you get in the paddy wagon they’re gonna buckle you up,’ [Young] said . ..” Back at The Baltimore Sun, Kevin Rector compares Freddie Gray’s death and the reactions to it to similar events that happened in Baltimore more than 50 years ago. He notes that while mayoral candidates, city boosters, community groups, and state lawmakers ”have promised that things will finally change,” such promises ring hollow in the wake of decades of structural inequality. Rector spoke to one academic who tried to give a bit of perspective: ”Lawrence Brown, an assistant professor of public health at Morgan State University, said the response to Gray’s death has failed to address the ’whole architecture of how we got here.’ ” ’We’re not thinking about making neighborhoods sustainable. We’re not thinking about creating neighborhoods of advantage. We’re leaving that entire architecture intact because we’re not investing in these redlined, disadvantaged black communities. That’s what’s missing,’ Brown said. ’So yeah, we’ll be back here in another 40, 50, 60 years with another uprising, because it’s all still in place.’ ”"
"The trials of six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray were supposed to have been over by now. It was a year ago Tuesday that the    black man died of a severe neck injury sustained in custody. His death touched off violent protests, and  —   in a stunning announcement just days later  —   criminal charges. State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said she had heard protesters’ calls for ”no justice, no peace.” But so far, there’s been one hung jury, lots of legal maneuvering and delays. Now, the city is bracing as the trials are set to begin again, next month. ”It shows the justice system right now is unjust. For it to basically take a year, it’s unsettling,” says Marvin Cheatham, who heads a neighborhood association near where Gray lived. Things are quiet now, Cheatham says. But crime and violence in Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods goes up with the warmer weather, he adds. Cheatham worries about a repeat of last spring and summer’s   spike in homicides. Though a number of cities across the country saw such an uptick, many in Baltimore blamed the police, accusing them of pulling back. ”The morale in the Baltimore city police department is so unbelievably low,” says Baltimore attorney Warren Alperstein. He represents many police officers, though none in this case. Alperstein says officers are worried because some of their colleagues are charged not over Gray’s fatal injury, but over his arrest in the first place. ”Officers fear that if they’re acting in good faith, they can be prosecuted for false arrest and an assault, even by just putting handcuffs on somebody,” Alperstein says. Whatever the merit of such fears, it’s true that at every turn, prosecutors in the Freddie Gray case have doubled down. After Officer William Porter’s trial ended in a hung jury last December, his lawyers said he could not be forced to testify against his  . With his own   pending, they said he was at risk of incriminating himself. Prosecutors pushed the matter all the way to Maryland’s highest court, and won. A court order compelling Porter to testify while he awaits trial is unprecedented in Maryland. Prosecutors are seeking a similar order against a second officer, Garrett Miller. ”This is a case where the prosecution is vigorously going after a conviction, and going after all of the officers who were involved,” says David Jaros, of the University of Baltimore School of Law. But Jaros says these are still hard cases to prove. The officers aren’t accused of killing Gray outright, but of failing to take actions that could have prevented his fatal injury. Attorney Alperstein says there’s also the lingering allegation that State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby acted in haste. ”There’s many that would argue that it was a political decision, and it was charged so quickly in an attempt to calm the civil unrest,” he says. ”That part was successful.” But Jaros wonders how both police and the public will react to the trials, especially if there are no convictions. ”Whether or not the political lesson is, ’Don’t take on the police because it hurts your, sort of political career.’ Or, ’You know what, the system’s no longer tolerating it, people are watching, and this is the way to go,’ ” he says. It’s not at all clear that prosecutors are getting credit for their aggressive approach among the public. ”I am very skeptical,” says Kwame Rose, who’s been a   protester since Gray’s death. He says the legal delays have only hardened his cynicism about the criminal justice system’s treatment of blacks. ”I think it just shows we have to be prepared for the fact that no one will be held accountable by State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby,” he says. ”So it’s up to the community.” If there are no convictions, Rose says, it will be up to the public to keep pushing for justice."
"Prince  —   the Purple One, who reeled off pop hits in five different decades  —   has died at age 57. The shocking news was confirmed by Prince’s publicist after reports that police were investigating a death at his Paisley Park compound outside Minneapolis. ”It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer Prince Rogers Nelson has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57,” publicist Yvette   said. ”There are no further details as to the cause of death at this time.” Reporting from Paisley Park on Thursday, Andrea Swensson tells Minnesota Public Radio that she was among a few dozen people who had gathered at Prince’s estate after hearing of a death there  —   and that ”even the journalists are hugging each other” after hearing that Prince died. Swensson, who had met Prince and spent time with him as part of a retrospective about his film Purple Rain, described him as being ”shy, sensitive  —   and flirtatious.” News of Prince’s death emerged after police said Thursday that they were investigating a death at his compound in Chanhassen, Minn. with the Carver County Sheriff’s Office saying that deputies were on the scene. The department said via a statement, ”When deputies and medical personnel arrived, they found an unresponsive adult male in the elevator. First responders attempted to provide lifesaving CPR, but were unable to revive the victim. He was pronounced deceased at 10:07 am.” The sheriff’s office later released a transcript of the 911 call that brought personnel to the scene. The dispatcher had to press the caller  —   who was on a cellphone  —   for a street address, which the caller didn’t know. Eventually the caller said it was Paisley Park, and the dispatcher knew where that was and was able to send an ambulance. Authorities have given no indication that any delay affected the outcome. TMZ reports that Prince had recently had health problems: ”The singer  —   full name Prince Rogers Nelson  —   had a medical emergency on April 15th that forced his private jet to make an emergency landing in Illinois. But he appeared at a concert the next day to assure his fans he was okay. His people told TMZ he was battling the flu.” Prince was just 19 when he released his first album, putting out For You in 1978. In the decades that followed, he went on to develop a unique sound and style that endeared him to generations of audiences  —   all while exploring new ground as an artist. Anthony Valadez, a Los   DJ and producer, tells NPR’s Here and Now that Prince also endeared himself to those he encouraged: ”  rocking out.” ”You had to be stuck in a box,” Valadez says of 1980s music culture. ”Even Michael [Jackson] faced a lot of that, trying to get his videos on MTV. And you had this   man standing with a guitar, and, man, it was just powerful, you know? It was just really powerful.” Prince’s fifth album, 1999, exploded onto America’s music scene. Released in 1983, it included such hits as ”Little Red Corvette” and ”1999.” It also set the stage for Purple Rain, the 1984 movie and soundtrack packed with songs such as ”When Doves Cry” and ”Let’s Go Crazy” that became fixtures on the radio and established Prince as a pop culture icon. As Swensson wrote for MPR about Purple Rain for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2014, ”it grossed $7. 7 million in its opening weekend, beating out Ghostbusters  —   and racked up comparisons to movies like the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night and Citizen Kane in glowing reviews from major media outlets.” Prince also won two Grammys and an Oscar (for original song score) for Purple Rain. In 2007, he won a Golden Globe Award for best original song, ”The Song of the Heart” from Happy Feet.  From 1985 to 2007, Prince won a total of seven Grammy awards  —   most recently for ”Future Baby Mama.” Praising Purple Rain and other Prince projects, Jesse Carmichael of the group Maroon 5 told NPR in 2009, ”The reason Prince is an inspiration to me is that he’s obviously writing from the heart, and somehow he’s able to take these personal feelings, turn them into poetry and present them in a way that’s accessible and weird at the same time.” Prince’s career was marked by a famous standoff with Warner Bros. the music company from which he split in 1996. Changing his name to a symbol, he was referred to for years as ”the artist formerly known as Prince.” In a sign that the rift had finally healed, Prince made a deal with Warner two years ago that gave him control of his own music catalog (during his career, Prince recorded well over 30 studio albums). When he changed his name, Prince rejected the   system. In an interview with reporters last August, he echoed that idea again, saying ”Record contracts are just like  —   I’m gonna say the word  —   slavery,” as NPR’s Eric Deggans reported. As Eric wrote, Prince urged artists to get paid ”directly from streaming services for use of their music, so that record companies and middlemen couldn’t take a share.” News of Prince’s death spread on social media, sparking tributes from fans, fellow artists, celebrities and even President Obama, who released this statement: ”Today, the world lost a creative icon. Michelle and I join millions of fans from around the world in mourning the sudden death of Prince. Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all. Funk. RB. Rock and roll. He was a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer. ” ’A strong spirit transcends rules,’ Prince once said  —   and nobody’s spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, his band, and all who loved him. ‎”"
"Prince passed away today. Details are not clear as I write this. What is clear is how much he meant to so many. How will you remember Prince? Tell us in the comments below how he impacted your life, or just pick a song you love. Or find us on Twitter @allsongs."
"When Owen Husney first met Prince Rogers Nelson, the musician was barely old enough to vote  —   and still going by his government name. ”When you meet someone before they became the unapproachable icon, you tend to have a different relationship with them,” he says. Husney became Prince’s first manager and helped negotiate the deal that would lead to the release of his early albums. Following Prince’s death Thursday at the age of 57, NPR’s Audie Cornish asked Husney to share a few memories of the   artist he knew as a precocious teenager. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below. What was Prince like when you first took him on as an artist? Because I think one thing that set him apart from really all others is that he seemed to straddle a lot of different genres, and he did that across racial boundaries as well as musical ones. Owen Husney: Yes, and he never wanted to be pigeonholed into one specific genre of music, because he always felt that he was capable [of more]. Even at that young age, he was very focused, very directed and highly intelligent. And he just wasn’t mimicking his influences  —   he was combining their sounds. He was making a whole new sound, which later would be defined, I guess, as the ”Minneapolis sound.” He had the rare ability to not just mimic the sound of an artist that influenced him but to take it another level. You knew him as Prince Rogers Nelson  —   when he first came on the scene, before he became just Prince. Can you remember something, an anecdote or a story from that time that really drove home to you that he knew who he was? You know, he had just turned 18, and it was very much a   atmosphere between he and I at that point. Once he went on to his second album and all the subsequent albums, obviously, he became Prince, and he was very much in charge. But he was very willing to listen to me and to take my direction, which I think is probably the only time that ever happened, to be honest with you [laughs]. We had had a fight early on about something, and he walked out of my house in a huff. He called me several hours later, and he had written a song  —   you know, not about me or anything. It was a song called ”So Blue” that went on the first album. And he played me the song, and it just was his way of saying, ”I know what happened between us and I’m sorry.” I just remember sitting on the kitchen floor and listening to that song and getting tears in my eyes. And then we were patched up and on we went. The thing that always strikes me about Prince is his ability to focus and have a direction of where he wants to go, and then making it happen. He was exhibiting the work ethic of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He was beyond anybody that I had ever met. He’s someone who was both very private and at times appeared very eccentric. What can you remember of his personality?  Well, all I can tell you from that level is that I consider myself to be a sensitive manager. And I think all managers need to be this way, but when Prince came along I noticed he was shy and a little bit removed. And I never sought to change him into something else  —   to say, you know, ”Why can’t you be more like Sly Stone?” or something. I saw who he was, and there was a mystery about him even then. And so as a manager I noticed that, and I was able to just make that a part of who he was in all of our publicity and everything going forward. We did a first press kit with him that said very little, because Prince said very little. Because his music does the talking. Is there a song you’d like us to remember him by? I think, more than a song, you should remember . .. what he did to break down barriers. There are only a handful of artists that have broken down barriers between all the musical genres, and I think that’s how he should be remembered. I think he just has to be understood for the body of work he’s going to leave us  —   and I’m talking beyond just what we call traditional rock ’n’ roll and funk and everything else. I think he’s got things that are in the vaults at Paisley Park that we will be unpacking for years to come, and we will be amazed. I understand that, as his first manager, you helped him arrange his contract with Warner Bros. which allowed him a good deal of creative control over his music  —   considered, I think, unprecedented at the time. Can you talk about his legacy there? Because it seems, over the years, he has always been an advocate for creative control. There has been no doubt. And when we signed the deal with Warner Bros. I had the great job of going to the chairman of Warner Bros. and saying that an    artist, who has never made an album before, is going to be producing his own album and having complete creative control. I didn’t relish that meeting! We kind of organized a test where they watched him in the studio. And at the end of him maybe getting halfway through the song, Lenny Waronker, who was president of Warner at that time, he pulled me out in the hallway and said, ”We’re going to give him the complete control that you’re asking for.” So there’s an inner talent, a drive, and then there’s this ability that’s  —   you either have it or you don’t. Prince is, to me, one of the greatest artists of our time. And I think he’s one of those legacy artists of which there’s maybe 10 or 11. I put him up there with Miles Davis, with Hendrix and Dylan. I put him up there in that stratosphere."
"Prince, the iconic   and   musician, died on Thursday. We’ve covered the news here. But there’s also no better way to remember the star than through his performances. Here are four that you should watch right now. Prince’s biggest hit was released in 1984, as the lead single to his album Purple Rain. ”When Doves Cry” spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and in some ways speaks not only to the impeccable craft of Prince’s melodies but also to the power of his iconography. In 2007, the heavens cooperated to produce what Billboard magazine ranked as the best Super Bowl halftime performance of all time. Prince was not only a singular performer but was also a spectacular musician. In 2004, during his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he joined Tom Petty and Steve Winwood onstage for a rendition of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps. He didn’t touch a microphone yet still stole the show shredding on his electric guitar. It starts at 3:33. ”I Wanna Be Your Lover” was Prince’s first hit, reaching No. 1 on the RB charts in 1979. This is a 1982 performance that starts off with that hit and then builds into the kind of visceral performance that made him an icon."
"Journalist Michael Kinsley  —   the founder of Slate and former editor of Harper’s and The New Republic  —   says he’s a ”scout for his generation.” Kinsley was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease when he was in his 40s. Now in his 60s, he writes that he had the opportunity to experience old age before the rest of his fellow baby boomers. ”There are far worse medical conditions than Parkinson’s, and there are far worse cases of Parkinson’s than mine,” he writes, ”But what I have, at the level I have it, is an interesting foretaste of our shared future.” Kinsley reports back on what he’s learned in a new book called Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide. ”I think many people have seen [old age] in the course of taking care of their parents,” he tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. ”But I don’t think it’s clicked that: Wait a minute, we’re now our parents. We have to do something to make it better.” On Parkinson’s having cognitive effects as well as physical effects, I was unhappily surprised to discover it does. People thought of it as a movement [disorder]  —   you go to movement clinics to treat it  —   but in fact, in the past 20 years actually since I was diagnosed, they’ve discovered a lot of cognitive effects. It’s not like Alzheimer’s where the cognitive decline is absolutely certain, but it’s much more common than people previously realized. On whether people treated him differently once they learned he had Parkinson’s, Not totally differently but certainly differently. . .. When I came out as a ”Parkinsonian,” as they call it, I was treated differently. Not that anyone’s been mean to me  —   in fact they’re excruciatingly nice  —   they want to cut up my meat for me at a dinner party . .. A very nice woman said, ”Can I cut up your meat for you?” and that can be excruciating even though it’s totally  . On continuing to write columns for Vanity Fair, and whether it takes longer than it used to, I think it does take me a little longer to write a column, but I’m still writing. I’m still doing virtually everything I could have done anyway, but who knows? That won’t last forever, so I’m trying to do it all as soon as possible."
"You might have noticed something different about Republican presidential   Donald Trump lately. His Tuesday night victory speech at Trump Tower in New York City was brief, relatively subdued, and relatively  . The roughly   speech was a far, far cry from the night in March when he celebrated primary wins by hawking Trump steaks, Trump wine and threw a Trump magazine into the crowd of supporters who had gathered at his lush    resort in Florida. According to a series of interviews Trump has given in recent days, the speech was part of a broader pivot to a more, well, traditional presidential campaign. ”The campaign is evolving and transitioning, and so am I,” he told the Wall Street Journal. ”I’ll be more effective and more disciplined.” Trump put it another way during a Thursday morning appearance on NBC’s Today Show. ”I will be so presidential,” he said, ”you will be so bored. You’ll say, ’Can’t he have a little more energy? ’” The attempted pivot comes as Trump has brought more experienced political hands like Paul Manafort onto his presidential campaign, which until now has been run by a small group of political newcomers. It’s also comes as Trump and his advisers begin to contemplate what could be an uphill general election battle. A poll released by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News this week finds 65 percent of registered voters view him unfavorably, compared to 24 percent who hold a favorable view. Here’s how serious Trump is about appearing more presidential: According to the Journal, Trump is practicing delivering speeches with the aid of teleprompters  —   a tool that most politicians use on a regular basis, but that Trump has often criticized. ”I say we should outlaw teleprompters for anybody running for president,” he told Iowa voters last year. Still, a subdued, presidential Trump will likely continue to be a unique brand of presidential candidate. He continued to refer to his main GOP, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, as ”lyin’ Ted” at an Indiana campaign rally Wednesday evening. ”I’m still the same candidate,” he told the Wall Street Journal. ”Can you imagine how upset my supporters would be after waiting for hours?”"
"Raed Saleh, a Syrian national, landed at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Monday afternoon after an   journey from Turkey. In his passport was a visa for the U. S. He was planning to attend a Tuesday evening banquet in the capital where he was being honored for his rescue work in Syria. But as Saleh tried to make his way through immigration, he says, he was pulled aside by security at the airport. ”After about two or three hours, they told me, ’We apologize but you must return to Turkey because this visa has been canceled. It’s not valid.’ I told them, ’How isn’t it valid? It’s good for six months.’ ” Saleh says the immigration official could not tell him why he was being turned back. ”He told me, ’I don’t have any explanation or details. I can’t tell you anything,’ ” according to Saleh, who spoke to NPR via Skype. He was in Geneva, on his way back to Turkey. Saleh had to head back without the award he was to receive from InterAction, an alliance of international humanitarian and aid agencies. Saleh heads up Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, a collection of 2, 800 volunteer rescue workers who help victims caught up in the war. ”Their group really responds when buildings have been damaged from bombings or other kind of strikes and they go in and they pull people out of the rubble,” says Nancy Wilson, the head of Relief International, which nominated Saleh for the award. Wilson says the awards dinner carried on without Saleh  —   but many in the audience honored him by wearing white helmets, the trademark of his group. Wilson says she’s surprised Saleh wasn’t allowed into the U. S. ”He has been to the United States before, spoken at the U. N. Security Council, was allowed on the plane  —   which is not an easy thing in Turkey to begin with because they scrutinize your visa papers there,” she says. ”And then for him to get here, and then not be able to actually be allowed in the country is just very disappointing.” The   question is why Saleh was turned back. The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying a number of U. S. agencies have a say in determining whether someone can enter the country. They include the State Department and law enforcement agencies. The keynote speaker at the dinner was Gayle Smith, who heads the U. S. government’s Agency for International Development. But she didn’t shed any light on the matter. For his part, Saleh says he felt demoralized by the incident, but knows it’s not unusual for Syrians traveling abroad. ”Honestly, this is a problem across the board,” he says. ”For the Syrians in any airport in the world. It’s become common.” One of Saleh’s colleagues will deliver the award to him in Istanbul. Alison Meuse in Beirut contributed to this story."
"As someone with autism spectrum disorder, John Elder Robison knows what it’s like to feel emotionally removed from situations. Robison tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that throughout his life people have told him, ”There’s this emotional language you’re missing. There are stories in people’s eyes. There are messages.” Robison didn’t fully understand what they meant until he received transcranial magnetic stimulation, a noninvasive procedure in which areas of the brain are stimulated with electromagnetic fields to alter its circuitry. Neurologist Alvaro   who treated Robison, explains TMS as a ”tool that allows us to introduce a small amount of current into specific parts of the brain without having to use surgery to do so. . .. By introducing current in it, we can probe the function of certain parts of the brain [and] we can even modify how different parts of the brain work.” Though TMS is already being used to treat certain conditions, including depression, it is still in the experimental stage for autism. Robison participated in a    study, in which he received weekly TMS treatments. He details the treatments  —   and the emotional awakening that resulted  —   in a new memoir, Switched On. Robison says that the treatments left him with a sense of empathy that he’d never experienced before. But, he adds, not all of the changes caused by TMS were welcome. Ordinary conversations would leave him feeling emotionally overwhelmed, and, in some cases, his memories of past events were tainted. ”It’s like I lost a protective shield,” he says. ”All these memories that hurt me because I was like the butt of a joke or something, I now realize that I just kind of went through life and people maybe said mean things about me but I never knew, so it didn’t hurt. Now, stuff like that, it really hurts a lot.” On how TMS is used for autism, stroke, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s,  : There are two very different goals in those applications. The first set of goals is to understand better how the brain works in those conditions, in patients that have those diseases. Part of the reason [we want] to understand it better is [so we can] develop new ways to diagnose the conditions earlier . .. [and] to be able to develop new treatments. In addition to those diagnostic applications, there are also therapeutic applications. It turns out that by applying transcranial magnetic stimulation to different parts of the brain repeatedly, day after day after day, we can modify the brain activity in those areas, and that can translate into a benefit for patients with different disorders. Those type of therapeutic applications are now, for example, approved for treatment of patients with   depression, the form of depression that [doesn’t] respond to treatment. In the case of autism, we are earlier in those applications and it is premature to use TMS for therapy, but it’s a very powerful tool to try to understand better how the brain of people with autism is different from the brain of people that don’t have autism. On what these brain disorders have in common that allows them to be treated with TMS,  : One can think of any one disorder  —   depression or autism or Parkinson’s  —   as a label that is applied to people that have certain symptoms. Take, for example, Parkinson’s: It’s hard to get going, it’s hard to move fast enough it’s hard to think thoughts. There is tremor and involuntary movements, each one of those symptoms maps onto a given circuit of the brain. The reason why that circuit of the brain is not functioning properly, in the case of Parkinson’s, has to do with a deficit of a certain chemical in the brain. But the point is, that if we can identify the circuit that causes the symptoms, we can target that circuit and make it function better with brain stimulation. So, in a sense, it’s not a treatment for the disorder, for the ultimate cause of the disorder, but it’s an intervention that improves how the person  —   the patient  —   is able to function. On treating John Robison,  : Even a   intervention where we learned something about the functioning of the brain can have a profound and lasting impact on the way people live. We targeted different areas in the frontal part of the brain, the frontal lobe that is right under the forehead, both on the left and the right side. We targeted those areas because we wanted to understand the role in relationship to empathy, to be able to read emotions in people’s eyes. In a second series of studies we targeted the motor areas to try to understand how long the effects last, how efficient the brain is in terms of its . .. capacity to change. On why he was willing to try TMS treatment  Robison: When I learned about this study from one of Alvaro’s researchers, I was just immediately captivated by the idea of TMS. I had never heard of TMS before, but I had worked with the underlying electronic technology in my career as an engineer, and I just thought, ”How cool is that? To apply the technologies I used in rock ’n roll sound systems to change the brain,” and at the same time, the goal of the study to maybe improve emotional insight as Alvaro said, that spoke to the heart of something that I felt had disabled me all my life. So I was fascinated and captivated by it. On his experience hearing music before and after the TMS treatment  Robison: There were two things that were really profound for me. First, when I worked as an engineer in music I used to hear every little detail of the performance. The guy would hit a note on the bass guitar and I would hear the buzzing of the snares on the bottom of the drum, or the singer would walk across the stage and I would hear the swishing as he dragged the cable behind him. To me, those were all clues that things were working or not working. After I stopped working in music that kind of rich detail faded away and I sort of went from hearing music through a wonderful sound system to hearing it like through a cheap transistor radio. It was a gradual thing over 30 years. When I came out of the lab, after one stimulation and I turned on the stereo in my car, just the majesty of it and the brilliance and clarity, it was so real and so alive. It made me cry all the way home. I wrote Alvaro and I told him that when I got home, and the thing is, it wasn’t that they created something new, it reactivated something that was so central to my life and it had faded away. It was like magic. On being able to read emotions after a targeted TMS session  Robison: I was always possessed of strong emotions, what I wasn’t possessed of was reaction to situations with other people, and indeed after another stimulation, when I could look in your eyes and feel like I was just reading your thoughts, which was really weird and powerful for me, because that had never ever happened in my life. . .. Just looking at somebody and having her tell me about putting a water pump on her car, but I would look at her and I would see that she was worried and frightened and anxious and I thought, ”Excuse me, I have to go outside and gather myself for a second,” because I was almost reduced to tears by an ordinary conversation of commerce and I think that looking back on that time I now see that having this unregulated ability to read emotion was actually, for me, perhaps more disabling than being oblivious to the emotion, because when I was oblivious I could just listen to her tell me about the water pump leak, and I didn’t even notice if she was scared or anxious. On how experiencing the ability to read emotions changed him, Robison: When I volunteered for this study I had, I guess, this fantasy in my mind. I thought, ”Well, people could say bad things about me, and I’ve gotten that all my life,” and I thought, because I was oblivious to these emotional signals that there must be all these messages of beauty and sweetness and light that I was missing, and if only I could get them things would be wonderful for me. When I was able to see emotion it wasn’t just in my marriage, it was in the people all around me, and I saw that the world was filled with angst and fear and worry. But you know the really hardest thing was seeing people that I had thought had been my friends and realizing that they were laughing at me and I thought we were all laughing together at jokes, and I was the joke. On the   effects of having his emotions ”switched on”  Robison: I can’t go to movies anymore. I can’t watch TV. Ten years ago I could’ve sat through the Texas Chainsaw Massacre eating popcorn and stuff and wouldn’t have cared. Now it’s really upsetting and really stressful to me just to watch the evening news. I can’t do it. . .. But at the same time, I know that my ability to serve on these autism committees, I think that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I’m really proud [that] I can do that, and I think this made it possible. So there’s pain that I felt from having these emotions come on, but I’m just so proud that I can do this thing that’s important to young people and other people with autism and differences. . .. After all this seeing of emotion, though, one thing that I’ve come away with is the knowledge that I wanted all my life to be able to read these emotions, but of course reading emotions just makes me like everyone else. I think a debt that I could never repay Alvaro and those scientists is that they showed me that my geeky ability to see into machines and see into things, that’s my true gift in life too, that nobody else can do that."
"The first death was on the night of Jan. 9. It was a Saturday. Pele Kristiansen spent the morning at home, drinking beers and hanging out with his older brother, which wasn’t so unusual. There wasn’t a lot of work in town. A lot of people drank. In the afternoon, they heard someone banging on their door, yelling. ”Polar bear! It’s a polar bear!” On the frozen fjord a couple of miles away, they could see the bear. Hunting in the Arctic  —   bears and reindeer and seals and birds  —   is at the core of Inuit life, even today. The polar bear was coming toward the town. A little drunk and really excited, Pele and his buddies fired up the motor on their fishing boat and nosed through the slushy ice in the harbor of their East Greenland village, Tiniteqilaaq, until they were as close as they could get. They got out of the boat, stood on the ice and pointed their rifles at the enormous animal. Among the Inuit, hunting a polar bear is a big deal. The bears have huge territories  —   to actually see one around Tiniteqilaaq was rare. And because of their size and ferocity, they’re not easy to kill. It’s usually a group effort, so according to tradition, the first four people to shoot it share the meat and the glory. That day, Pele shot the polar bear. And he was so happy. That evening, Pele went out drinking to celebrate. The next morning he was dead. He had killed himself. He was 22. Thirteen days later, in the next town over, a    boy named Peter Pilanat killed himself in his grandparents’ home. Peter and Pele didn’t know each other, at least not well, but they had friends in common. In a place with only 3, 000 people, Peter most certainly knew of Pele’s death. Two suicides in less than two weeks. To the people in these small towns, it felt like the beginning of something bad, something sickeningly familiar. Something that had happened too many times in too many towns in Greenland. A cluster of suicides, inexplicable and indiscriminate, tearing its way through the youngest generation in a country that has the highest known suicide rate in the world. When Anda Poulsen was young, he felt lucky. He had been born in a town with great history. Kangeq, Greenland, was a place people told stories about. It was famous for its strong Inuit hunters and good location on a point at the mouth of a fjord. It was where the first Scandinavian missionaries had settled, the first Greenlandic artists had painted and some of the last traditional Inuit kayak hunters had braved the ocean.  Kangeq was a place that made great men. Anda was proud. But Kangeq  —   which had survived a medieval drought and a   Little Ice Age, Vikings and missionaries  —   was about to meet a new and devastating foe. Anda was not going to be the hunter his grandfathers had been, and surviving into adulthood would be more difficult than he imagined. Greenland was a colony of Denmark (it still isn’t completely independent). After World War II, building on American wartime infrastructure on the island, Denmark decided it was time to develop the local economy. Greenland was a perfect place for commercial fishing, and there was potentially a lot of money to be made on halibut and shrimp. The Danish government brought in trading companies and trawlers. Within a few years, it was out with the kayaks and famous hunters, and in with the motorboats and fishing rights. The influx of money and new technology made some people richer, but it undercut the traditional Inuit economy in small villages, which was based on collective hunting and trading of meat and skins. As a child, Anda played near the abandoned kayaks along the shore. ”Wooden skeletons without covers,” he remembers. The new motor boats were only the beginning. Commercial fishing required fish processing factories. And those factories needed workers. Kangeq was too small for a real factory  —   only about 150 people lived there when times were good. Once the fish factories opened up in the capital, people started to leave Kangeq for the jobs, and for education. By 1974, only 50 or 60 people lived in Kangeq. And this is where things really started to fall apart for Anda’s hometown. He was 14 when it happened. By that time, he was living in the capital, Nuuk, where he and the remaining kids from Kangeq went to school. ”I heard that Kangeq was closing,” Anda says. ”Everyone heard. Everyone knew. It was very hard.” Kangeq was being erased. The Danish government was removing the village from the list of towns in Greenland. They were closing the store, shutting off the power, and reassigning the priest. From the government’s point of view, it was a purely practical decision  —   it was difficult to provide basic services like health clinics and schools to every tiny village. It would be much easier if the Inuit people moved to larger towns where the infrastructure was already in place. Anda’s family  —   his mother, his sisters, his cousins  —   had to pack their things and say goodbye to their   clapboard house overlooking the sea. Their new home in Nuuk would be in a concrete apartment block, with hundreds of other families from dozens of other small villages that had also been erased. ”My mother, my sisters and I all lived in a tenement building,” Anda says. It was in a   neighborhood near Nuuk’s growing harbor. The apartment blocks were symbols of progress, the authorities told them, luxurious examples of modern Greenland, with heat and power and plumbing and paved sidewalks outside. But Anda says the apartments didn’t feel luxurious  —   they felt foreign and lonely. The paved roads only separated them from the ocean, a barrier to the maritime hunting life they had depended on for thousands of years. Some tried to ignore the new setting and live as they had before. Anda recalls men hunting seals in Nuuk harbor in the afternoons, next to the Royal Arctic Line cargo ships, and dragging the meat back to their flats on children’s sleds. ”There was culture clash,” says Anda. And, perhaps even worse, ”there was prejudice against the people from the villages. You could feel it in their words, in the way they looked at you.” Anda, who is now 56, turns toward the window of his office in Nuuk. All his life, he has censored his anger and tried to focus on finding solutions. Still, the past hurts. He makes his hand into a fist, then lets it drop to the table. ”They mocked us.” For Anda, there were two choices. He could stay what he was, a village kid who spoke Greenlandic and didn’t fit in, or he could change and become a   city kid indistinguishable from the others. At school the message was clear:   were better than   Danish stuff was cooler than Greenlandic stuff. Village kids were inferior to city kids. ”I was good at integrating into my class.” He sighs. He knew he had to leave parts of his old self, his Kangeq self, behind. Or at least bury them beneath a more Danish exterior. ”That was how I survived.” He forced himself to adjust. But there were those who couldn’t adjust. The first death Anda heard about came shortly after Kangeq closed. The man was young  —   just 20. Anda knew his parents. Shortly after that, another family Anda knew found their teenage son’s body. A few years later, their other son killed himself. From the time Anda was 14 until he finished college, at least 10 people from Kangeq killed themselves. ”It was almost all the young men.” He places a hand over his heart. ”Very few of us survived.” The details blurred into one long, dismal memory of bodies found and parents crying and silent funerals where no one ever asked the question that everyone was wondering. Why? Anda wanted to know not just why the suicides were happening, but why no one was talking about them. And why wasn’t anything being done to prevent them? Who was helping the family members left behind? The only resource for people who were suicidal was a church hotline. Anda leans back in his chair and chooses his words carefully. ”For a lot of people, the priest was not who they want to talk to about their problems.” The church, after all, is an arm of the Danish government. Anda’s grief turned into something more like an obsession. He finished high school, had his first child. He wanted to help, but he still didn’t know how. He applied to college to study family therapy, got in and by the time he got his certificate, he was downright angry. It was unconscionable that Greenland would let an entire generation kill itself. He had to do something. There was one problem: There were no clear answers to any of Anda’s questions about why people were killing themselves or how to prevent it. Like native people all around the Arctic  —   and all over the world  —   Greenlanders were seeing the deadly effects of rapid modernization and unprecedented cultural interference. American Indians and Alaska Natives (many of whom share Inuit roots with Greenlanders) had already seen many of their communities buckle under the same pressures. In Greenland, the problem was only getting worse. Between 1970 and 1980, the suicide rate there quadrupled to about seven times the U. S. rate (it’s still about six times higher). The suicide rate was, and still is, so high that it’s not an exaggeration to say that everyone in Greenland knows someone who has killed himself. Many people I spoke with struggled to explain what that felt like, to live in a place where suicide is so pervasive, and most of them settled uncomfortably on the same word: normal. Suicide in Greenland, I heard over and over, is normal. People don’t mean it’s OK, just that it’s been so common for so long that the next death almost seems inevitable. By 1985, suicide was killing more people than cancer. That year, at least 50 people killed themselves in Greenland. The total population was only 53, 000. In the U. S. it would be as if in one year, the entire population of say, Lincoln, Neb.  —   more than 250, 000 people  —   killed themselves. And no one acknowledged it it didn’t make the papers. At that time, almost no one was studying suicide in Greenland. There were a few psychologists, but they were Danish, so it was impossible for Inuit people to get help in their native language. In therapy, each word matters. Plus, the stigma around suicide was intense. It was shameful. People who had lost children to suicide weren’t even acknowledging that fact to each other, it was so taboo. In the spring of 1989, Atsa Schmidt’s son had been dead for nearly a decade. Ujuanseeraq had loved acting and dancing. He ran a small theater group and was in school to become a mechanic. He had a lot of friends. But there were signs. He started telling his mother he was tired all the time, that everything he did felt too hard. Then, one day, he didn’t come home for dinner. The next day they found his body in the back of the theater. He was 21. Right after it happened, his suicide had been something Atsa discussed only with her closest family. It was a deeply private and painful part of her life. Even today, she doesn’t have any photos of her son in her home. So his death wasn’t really something she expected to come up at the grocery store. ”I was shopping for food at the Brugseni market in Nuuk,” she says, as if the geography of Nuuk in the ’90s is common knowledge. ”You know, the one that burned down.” Atsa was pushing her cart down an aisle when this young guy she knew through her cousins from Kangeq came up to her. ”He said, ’I’d like to talk to you for a minute.’ ” It was Anda Poulsen. There among the canned goods, Anda told her his plan. He was starting a support group for parents who had lost a child to suicide. He wanted her to come to the first meeting. ”I said that’s too much, I can’t do it.” But Anda, young and optimistic, replied, ”Of course you can! Of course you can do it. It will help you. You will see, it will help you. Come to the meeting with your husband.” ”So,” Atsa remembers, ”I didn’t really want to, but I went to the meeting.” At the first meeting, she met a handful of other parents whose sons had killed themselves. And found it was a relief to talk to them. The group met again, and then again. ”It was very clear that people needed help,” says Anda. ”And not just parents. People who were thinking about suicide, too.” Atsa started helping Anda. They hosted events together about suicide prevention, open to everyone. Less than a year after their conversation at the grocery store, Atsa Schmidt and Anda Poulsen decided to expand even further. They opened Greenland’s first national suicide hotline. It was an unconventional idea. They didn’t have the resources to hire professional counselors. Instead, they built on the resources they had  —     women who were good at listening. Atsa has no education at all, let alone a degree in social work or counseling, but she signed up to take the night shift. She knew she would end up with most of the calls  —   people don’t usually call suicide hotlines during the day. She had no idea if she would be able to handle it. ”I didn’t know what would happen,” she says. ”We didn’t know what to expect.” And yet, she felt sure that doing something had to be better than doing nothing. Atsa says her thinking back then was that a lot of people felt very alone. Just by listening, and acknowledging the pain, she hoped she could help. By sheer force of will, the hotline took off. Every night, Atsa kept the hotline cellphone next to her bed. For 18 years, she woke up in the middle of the night and talked to suicidal people. ”There were many people who needed help. That was clear.” Many of the people who called were young men who felt like they had no one to talk to. A lot of them had siblings or parents who had killed themselves. She would always start by telling them she wasn’t an expert, and she couldn’t give them medical advice. But, she would tell them, she had felt some of the things the callers were feeling, and she was there to listen. Sometimes, she’d read a prayer into the phone. The stress of the conversations was nearly unbearable. Her hands shook she fainted without warning. Her son complained she was spending too much energy on strangers. Her husband worried she wasn’t sleeping enough, working all day in a nursing home and answering calls all night. After a serious case of hives landed her in in the hospital, her doctor told her she shouldn’t work at the hotline for three months. She took his advice, but after three months she was back answering calls. ”I’ve talked to thousands of people,” she says. ”Even today, people I don’t know say thank you to me.” They are people who have called the hotline anonymously and recognize her even though she can’t recognize them. Atsa answered thousands of calls during her time on the hotline, and for her, there was a clear pattern behind Greenland’s suicides. Love, she says. Or, loss of it. We’re in her living room in Nuuk, surrounded by photos of her children and grandchildren. She’s 72 now and losing her sight. ”Some people, they are raised with a lot of love,” she explains, ”but some people are not. And these people who didn’t get love in their childhood, when they meet a partner, they try to hold onto him like they own him. They think that this one person, they can only love him and he is the only one who will ever love them. And when they break up, the person feels like their life is over.” Atsa thinks for a moment. ”Maybe I am giving them a little love.” Her observations are in line with something psychologists and sociologists think is fundamental to the causes of suicide in Greenland. When communities are disrupted, like Kangeq was, families start to collapse. There’s an increase in alcoholism, child neglect and physical abuse, all of which are risk factors for suicide. Later, people who didn’t get the love and support they needed as children find it difficult to cope with the routine heartbreak of dating, and a breakup becomes the final insult in a lifetime of hurt. ”There are a lot of negative consequences to rapid modernization,” says Greenlandic sociologist Steven Arnfjord. ”We’re still dealing with a lot of aftermath from policies of the ’70s and ’80s.” There’s also something broader  —   a loss of identity that happens when a culture, in this case Inuit culture, is demonized and broken down. When a culture is largely erased over less than a generation, as it was in Greenland, a lot of young people feel cut off from the older generations, but not really part of the new one. It’s especially difficult for young men, whose fathers and grandfathers were hunters, and who struggle to understand what it means to be an urban Inuit man. Without strong families and communities to help them cope, some of them are so overwhelmed and lost, they take their own lives. Fifty years after the suicide rate started to climb in Greenland’s capital, it appears to have plateaued, although it is still five times higher than in Denmark. For young people in Nuuk, the pain of assimilation and modernization still exists but is less acute. And while mental health resources are far from adequate, there are more than there used to be. But in the smaller towns, remote communities, the situation is as bad as ever. Julius Nielsen was standing right next to Pele Kristiansen on Jan. 9, when Pele shot the polar bear. ”There was so much adrenaline,” Julius says. ”I didn’t have a rifle, and I kept saying give me your rifle!” Julius was older than Pele and thought he’d have a better shot. But Pele kept the gun and shot the bear. Julius drops his head into his hands. ”Pele was so happy.” The two men were from the same tiny settlement of Tiniteqilaaq. Left behind by a rapidly urbanizing society, their home village retained the rhythms and traditions of an earlier time, when hunters were heroes. The polar bear was a rare enough occurrence that everyone in town celebrated well into the night on Saturday. On Sunday Julius woke up early, around 5 a. m. feeling good. The weather looked clear enough for seal hunting. He fed his sled dogs in the morning light and went back home for a cup of coffee. Then, at 8, he got a call from Pele’s brother. ”Stupid, stupid Pele,” he said. ”He killed himself.” ”You’re joking,” Julius said. ”Look out the window,” the brother said. When Julius looked out, he could see Pele’s older brother standing next to his icebound fishing boat anchored in the tiny settlement’s frozen harbor. ”He was just looking at me.” Julius grabbed his jacket and pulled it on as he ran down to the ice. ”We had the best Saturday, and the worst Sunday.” Julius covered his friend’s body with a tarp and called the police. Tiniteqilaaq is 25 miles from the largest town in east Greenland, Tasiilaq. Although families and hunters go back and forth all the time, the route between the two places is nonetheless remote, includes a glacier crossing and can be treacherous. That particular weekend, there was already 3 feet of snow on the ground. It took the police officer, a young Danish man still new to the area, all day to travel from Tasiilaq by snowmobile. When he arrived in the evening, it was already dark and snowing again, and he found he couldn’t communicate with the dead man’s family, who spoke only Greenlandic. Julius had to translate. The police officer told the family that a doctor would need to examine the body before it could be buried. There were no doctors in Tiniteqilaaq, so they’d need to bring one from Tasiilaq. By now the snow was too deep. They’d have to wait for a helicopter. They moved Pele’s body to the health clinic, which also serves as the town meeting house, hotel, post office and church. The nurse there was Pele’s aunt. She couldn’t bring herself to clean the body, so Julius did it himself. He cut Pele’s favorite dress shirt down the back and tucked it around his friend’s stiff body, trying to make it look as neat as he could. Pele Kristiansen was buried on Friday, Jan. 15, 2016. Dozens of people from Tasiilaq went to the funeral. All that next week, people were walking around in a daze, trying to explain the inexplicable to themselves and to their families. Julius’    son had loved spending time with Pele. They went   and played video games together. He kept asking his father how someone who seemed so happy could kill himself. ”It’s just not possible to explain,” Julius says. Pele had never mentioned suicidal thoughts, had never attempted suicide before, at least that Julius knew of. And yet there was no way his death was an accident. He had definitely killed himself. ”I don’t know why and I can’t explain why,” Julius said to his son. ”I’m sorry.” He told him that as much as it hurt, eventually he would learn to live with Pele’s death. A few days later,    Peter Pilanat killed himself. That death brought with it a new fear: Was this the beginning of a suicide cluster?  Sometimes, suicides can start chain reactions. Psychologists call it the contagion effect or suicidal transmission  —   after a close family member or friend kills himself, people who are already having suicidal thoughts are at greater risk for suicide. For that reason, suicide clusters or waves are especially likely in small, isolated communities where everyone knows each other. In one study from Greenland, 60 percent of young people who killed themselves did so within four months of another suicide in the same district. Still, it’s impossible to know why this particular    boy killed himself in Tasiilaq. But whatever the reason, after two suicides in two weeks in a place with fewer than 3, 000 people, a lot of people felt as if a vicious cycle was restarting. It had happened before in Greenland. There was the wave of teenagers who killed themselves in Illulissat around 2004. A slew of deaths that swept through school dormitories in the ’90s. The disaster in Kangeq. ”To be a parent in this case, you feel very powerless, helpless,” Julius says. Two of his children had gone to school with the dead boy. Privately he started to question whether he felt safe keeping his kids in school in Tasiilaq. Despite having the highest suicide rate  —   more than 400 per 100, 000  —   of any town in Greenland, Tasiilaq does not have a psychologist. Nurses and social workers and therapists there do their best to counsel suicidal residents, as do psychologists 500 miles away in Nuuk, who can talk to patients over a video connection. But Greenland’s Ministry of Health acknowledges it does not have adequate resources, and a lot of people in Tasiilaq say that when they report a suicidal friend or family member, nothing happens. Back in the capital, the recent pair of suicides weren’t even on the radar of the Ministry of Health. But the municipal government had heard about them. Kristian Rosing, the coordinator of suicide prevention for the region, started rearranging his schedule in case he had to go to Tasiilaq. It takes a full day to travel from Nuuk to Tasiilaq, first on a small propeller plane, then on a helicopter. The flights are about as likely to depart as they are to be canceled, and in the winter there are only two flights a week. A   ticket costs about $1, 000. ”I had planned to visit Tasiilaq in the fall,” Rosing says, ”but when I heard about the deaths, I thought my boss might send me sooner, to teach the kids how to cope with the suicides. Teach them how to prevent another one.” The first people the regional government sent in, though, were grief counselors, a social worker and a family therapist. Their job was to help families get through the next few weeks. Espen Christiansen, a teacher at the school, remembers the first day back after the    had killed himself. He looked out at the dead boy’s classmates and he didn’t know what to say. Their eyes were red from crying. ”We were mostly silent. They weren’t talking very much. I thought it was most respectful to just be quiet, too.” After lunch, some of the kids wrote down their feelings in letters addressed to their dead classmate. Christiansen helped them make a shrine on Peter’s desk, with candles and ribbon. ”I told them they could go home if they wanted to, but they stayed,” he said. ”I think they didn’t want to be alone.” At this point, it had been about two weeks since Peter killed himself. In Nuuk, Rosing’s boss told him it was time to get to Tasiilaq  —   as soon as possible. Rosing is a constitutionally honest man. He is the first to admit that he is not particularly   for his job. His original training was as a shopkeeper’s assistant, and a few years ago, he took a   course in administration, although at that point he had already been in charge of suicide prevention in a smaller region for many years. He spends most of his time going to different schools and teaching teenagers and people who work with kids how to talk about suicide. He was nervous about the trip. Usually, he follows a curriculum that involves speaking very bluntly about suicide, even to kids. He does exercises where students have to brainstorm reasons a person might kill himself or asks them to pretend to be a suicidal person in a  . He had never used the curriculum with kids who had just lost a friend. ”These kids, they are very fragile,” he said. ”I was worried about how they would react.” He decided to go with what he had, and hope it would help rather than hurt. A full month after Peter died, at 8:30 in the morning, Rosing puttered restlessly around the back of the community hall in Tasiilaq. The    —   the classmates of the boy who had killed himself  —   were due any minute for their first day of suicide prevention instruction. He had bought heaps of bread and cheese and jam for breakfast for the almost 60 kids he was expecting. As they trickled in by twos and threes, he smiled silently and gestured to the table full of food.      Uitsatikitseq was antsy as soon as he walked in. He was still thinking about his friend’s funeral, and he knew he was going to be asked to talk about suicide. He finished his bread, fumbled with his napkin, then pulled out his cellphone. Rosing saw the phone and walked over. ”Put that away, please,” he said. Then, more gently, ”You know this is important.” He put his hand on  ’s shoulder until the boy pushed the phone down into the pocket of his jeans. The first assignment was to get into groups to brainstorm reasons that a person might kill themselves. The other boys in  ’s group messed around with a paper football.   bent over the paper and, in haphazard pencil, scribbled out 10 reasons. The first one said Loneliness. Being lonely for long time. Being lonely in whole life. Number three read simply Love. Not every exercise went as well. In the middle of a video about suicide and child abuse, one girl simply got up and left the building. A teacher went running after her. Another boy refused to write or say anything and just sat in the back of the room staring at his hands. After the first day, about a dozen kids didn’t come back. But many more did. After a few reprimands about wearing earbuds, most of them listened to Rosing. His message was more about life than about death. He talked about how hard it can be to feel alone and sad in a small town. He urged them to talk to each other about their feelings, good ones and bad ones, and then he had them act out those conversations. On the last day, the kids got diplomas that said Suicide Prevention Life Course Participant. It had gone well, he thought. Or, at least it hadn’t gone terribly wrong. A few weeks after his trip to Tasiilaq, Rosing is hunched in his undersized desk chair. When he talks about his time there, he sounds nothing but depressed  —   despite his apparent success helping the kids there talk about suicide. ”I don’t think I can prevent another child from dying in Tasiilaq,” he says. ”I know it will happen again.” Last year, before the suicides happened in Tasiilaq, Rosing almost quit his job. ”I had just had enough,” he says, of going into school after school, town after town, hearing stories about pain and loss and desperation, and then, inevitably, hearing later that another child or young person had died by suicide. It was exhausting and frustrating and isolating. ”For me, it is very lonely work. Even though I have colleagues, I feel alone.” Rosing says that to fix the underlying problems in Tasiilaq  —   the alcoholism and joblessness and poverty and child neglect  —   it’s going to take money and manpower. For a start, the town needs a   psychologist,   teachers, more social workers, and a serious jobs program to employ educated young people who return home after getting their degrees elsewhere. As does every other town in Greenland. All 100 or so of them, sprinkled around the coast of the largest island in the world. ”Twenty years,” he thinks. ”If we do everything we can, it will be 20 years.” That long to get the suicide problem in Greenland under control. Twenty more years before what happened in Kangeq long ago stops happening in Greenland. It’s something Anda tries not to think about in his    life. Between his job as a family therapist and raising his three kids, he’s always busy. ”There are always more families who need help,” he says. ”Plus, I have my own family. My own children to take care of. It’s stressful.” A few years ago, Anda Poulsenfound an unexpected outlet for his stress. More than two decades after he forced himself to assimilate, Anda rediscovered traditional Inuit drum dancing, which celebrates hunting and being near the ocean, and started a group called the Nuuk Drum Dancers. Now, at least once a week, he sings and dances with his sealskin drum. ”When I feel sad or angry, I drum dance,” he says. In his search for a way forward, Anda Poulsen is reconnecting with the past. And he hopes his children will be allowed to express their Inuit identities in a way he was not. ”I think the future will get better and better for them.” In the summer, Anda takes his children back to Kangeq, where the colonial wharf is slowly collapsing and the old store stands empty. Sometimes, while they fish and play among the abandoned houses, he takes his drum up the hill and closes his eyes and dances. Additional Credits, Rebecca Hersher spent 10 weeks in Greenland as NPR’s Above the Fray fellow. Text and audio for this story were edited by Alison MacAdam, Marc Silver and Vikki Valentine. Visuals were edited by Ben de la Cruz, Malaka Gharib and John Poole. Additional reporting and translation by   Andersen, Sara Jakobsen and Angutimmarik Josefsen. This story was made possible in part by The John Alexander Project, which supports foreign reporting in undercovered parts of the world. Do you have questions about this special report? We’d like to hear from you and provide answers in a   story. Tell us in the comments or send an email to nprcrowdsource@npr. org with ”Arctic suicides” in the subject line."
"Earlier this year, in response to a story about Greenland, an astute reader of this blog commented: Charles Tudor • a month ago, ”Goats and Soda? Greenland can hardly be thought of as a developing nation.” Charles Tudor is right. According to the World Bank, Greenland is definitively   and has been since 1989. The average income per resident is about $33, 000. (If you want to get really down and dirty with the income vs. development classifications, you can do that here.) And Goats and Soda is a blog about the developing world, where incomes are in the ”low” or ”middle” category. So why we did we cover Greenland in the past and why are we launching a new story on the country? It’s because Greenland is at the intersection of the modern and traditional. Goats and Soda is a place for stories from a changing world, and few places have changed as much and as quickly as Greenland. Since World War II, Greenland has gone from isolated communities where people lived entirely off hunting to a country with commercial fishing hubs and the beginnings of a   mining industry. For Greenlanders living in bigger population centers like the capital, Nuuk, and a handful of other towns, the standard of living is similar to Europe’s. But when a country develops that quickly, a lot of people are left behind. Even though the country is   at least one quarter of Greenlanders still live in tiny settlements and do not have access to basic services like adequate emergency health care and schools. But still, that comment got us thinking about some of the numbers we use to talk about income and development. Statistics like average per capita income, life expectancy and disease rates. We like stats like these because they scoop up lots of information about everyone  —   in the U. S. about 319 million people  —   and help us zoom out to see how we’re doing. In general, Americans are living longer, making more money, and getting fewer deadly infectious diseases than they did 50 years ago. But what if your total population is very small? So small that all the people in your country would barely fill Dodger Stadium? What happens to generalities when the public isn’t so general? Welcome to Greenland. About 56, 000 people live in Greenland, which makes it really difficult to make accurate forecasts. ”The size is problematic,” says Lars Pedersen, a population statistician for Statistics Greenland, the national agency that handles the country’s statistics. Small numbers mean Pedersen can forecast population trends only three to five years out. ”In the long distant future a lot can happen.” Or take disease rates. In Greenland disease rates can get really weird really fast. When in 2010, Greenland had 116 cases of tuberculosis, that meant the country’s rate of TB (200 per 100, 000) was on par with Haiti’s. Three years later, the rate in Greenland had fallen to just 60 per 100, 000, a major decrease that was the result of treating fewer than 100 people with TB. Another   effect of such a small population is that each variable makes a big difference. Take life expectancy: Greenland women: 74, Greenland men: 68, Those numbers are surprisingly low for a   country. In Denmark, which still partially controls Greenland, men live about a decade longer. Obviously how long people live has to do with a lot of factors. So many, in fact, that it’s usually difficult to pinpoint any one cause of death that moves the needle too much. But in Greenland in 2013, the last year for which there are detailed numbers available, 25 people under 30 killed themselves. Most of them were men and boys. In addition to being a tragedy, those deaths noticeably drove down Greenlandic life expectancy. ”We lose a lot of years when a young person commits suicide,” explains Henrik Trykker, chief medical officer for Greenland’s National Health Board. ”Statistically, it takes a lot of years off the average.” Put another way, if Greenland could prevent just two dozen people from killing themselves, the average life expectancy for the whole country, or at least for men, would rise noticeably. There is an upside to gathering data about a small society. The numbers might be less useful, but they’re more personal: They are much closer to the individual lives they represent. According to the latest published statistics, there are four beehives in Greenland. There are 36 Americans. There are three motorcycles. If you wanted to, you could go find them all and count them yourself. In 2013, the Greenlandic government calculated that 219 people started college (which was a pretty simple statistic to chase down, since college is paid for by the government). Of those, 72 graduated.   got degrees in the humanities, four in natural sciences, and one of them studied architecture. One! That one young architect is a Greenlandic national statistic. When I see that number, I want to congratulate her, celebrate with her family and find out why she chose architecture. In a strange way, even though the numbers tell us less about the collective society, they seem to represent more about the people who live there. Do you have questions about this topic or our special report, ”The Arctic Suicides: It’s Not The Dark That Kills You?” We’d like to hear from you and provide answers in a   story. Tell us in the comments or send an email to nprcrowdsource@npr. org with ”Arctic suicides” in the subject line."
"Editor’s note: This week, to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, we will be running a series of stories examining the links between food and the Bard. ”Life . .. consists of eating and drinking,” quips Twelfth Night’s   Sir Andrew Aguecheek. It seems that Shakespeare’s audiences felt the same. Between 1988 and 1990, when archaeologists excavated The Rose and The Globe theaters (where Shakespeare’s plays were performed) they were able to learn as much about the audiences as the playhouses themselves. There were no dress circle lounges nor mezzanine bars 400 years ago. As the characters in plays like The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth and As You Like It feasted on stage, down in the yard and up in the galleries, the audience noshed on cold nibbles and   street food. Archaeologist Julian Bowsher at the Museum of London Archaeology has found evidence of grapes, figs, blackberries, raspberries and plums, as well as small animal bones that suggest playgoers ”could certainly have eaten a cold chicken” while laughing at one of Shakespeare’s many capon jokes (see Love’s Labour’s Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, and Two Gentlemen of Verona). The early 17th century play Wit Without Money, says, Bowsher, also complains of young apprentices who cracked nuts throughout a performance  —   Jacobean versions of those annoyingly loud popcorn munchers sitting behind you at the Cineplex.  But the largest haul from the excavation underneath the theaters was oyster shells. Shakespeare mentions the popular shellfish in at least six plays. Benedict fears being made an oyster by love in Much Ado, and then there’s Pistol’s braggadocio in Merry Wives: ”Why, then the world’s mine oyster. Which I with sword will open.” Such moments likely provided a ripe opportunity for actors to break the fourth wall and have a bit of fun with the audience. Where did theatergoers get their snacks? They possibly bought them from vendors they passed on their way to the performance. Often a theater also benefited from a taphouse next door, ”where you could buy food and drink for the show,” says Bowsher. These establishments were just the sort of convivial drinking holes that Measure for Measure’s Froth (who’s named for the head on ale) jokes he never enters of his own accord but instead ”is drawn in.” John Hemminges, one of the actors in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (the company for which Shakespeare wrote) owned a tap house next to the Globe. ”There was also quite clearly a mechanism for [taphouse] employees to come and sell things in the play yard,” says Bowsher. ”We know that in one case there was a water seller.” And Paul Hentzner  —   a German lawyer who traveled through England during the Elizabethan era  —   wrote that while visiting London in 1598, he saw wine and ale for sale, as well. But plays were not put on in theaters alone. Inns were often called to serve as performance spaces. Some, like the Boar’s Head in Whitechapel and the Red Bull in Clerkenwell, were turned into permanent playhouses during Shakespeare’s time. And they ”probably continued the preparation and serving of food and drink” alongside performances since they already had the facilities, Bowsher says. ”We’ve uncovered Shakespeare’s working world,” he says, ”the environment he was playing and acting and writing for.” And all the evidence they’ve found points to the audience ”having a boisterous time. .. busy eating and drinking and enjoying the show.” Anne Bramley wrote on food in early modern literature during her a Ph. D. at the University of Chicago and taught Shakespeare at Duke University. She is the author of Eat Feed Autumn Winter."
"”Who still supports Andrew Jackson?” An NPR colleague posed that question Thursday morning after news broke that Jackson, or at least his image, will share the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman. Tubman, in fact, would be the one on the front of the bill Jackson would ride in back. News items described this Treasury Department decision in a way that made Jackson seem impossible to support: A   president was being shoved aside in favor of a heroic escaped slave. The poetic nature of the change is even greater than the news accounts would suggest. Jackson not only owned slaves he was known to personally hunt down those who escaped. Now he is to be (eventually) replaced on the front of the bill with a woman who helped slaves to make their escapes. So who, if anyone, still supported him? This was the question posed by my colleague Joanna Pawlowska over breakfast in Knoxville, Tenn. where we’d been working on a Morning Edition broadcast. We were in the perfect place to ask. News of Jackson’s demotion had reached us in his home state. Jackson lived outside Nashville, none too close to Knoxville given the transportation of his day  —   but the city still has at least one building Jackson was known to have visited in the early 1800s. That his exact whereabouts in one building or another would even be remembered 200 years later suggests how famous Jackson was then, and how he has endured in the memory of his admirers. If any people still supported Jackson, they might be in a place like this. By chance, an acquaintance who had joined us for breakfast was the perfect person to answer the question. We were talking with Daniel Feller, the scholar who serves as the editor of Jackson’s papers at the University of Tennessee. Feller has freely criticized Jackson for his flaws. In addition to being a slaveholder, the onetime general and president played a major role in removing Indian tribes from their land in the Eastern United States. Yet Feller could also recount reasons that Jackson was venerated in the first place. Feller described the case for Jackson without even mentioning the Battle of New Orleans, his most famous victory as a general. Rather, he said Jackson was an orphan who rose from humble beginnings to be president from 1829 to 1837. He was the first president who started so low in life. He governed as a president opposed to moneyed interests. He destroyed the Bank of the United States, the central bank of his time. His may have been a wildly irresponsible and even illegal campaign, but he attacked moneyed interests who had attached themselves to this   institution and profited from it. Jackson, Feller said, saw excessive power among the wealthy men of his day as a danger to democracy. ”I was surprised,” the historian went on, ”that there was not more interest in Jackson after 2008,” when the financial crisis again exposed the reach and influence of the financial sector. Feller sees parallels between Jackson’s rhetoric of the 1830s and the   language of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Jackson is also known for holding the Union together. The crisis that caused the Civil War might have come 30 years earlier than it did, but for Jackson’s forcefulness against recalcitrant South Carolina in the 1830s. When I went on tour to discuss a book I wrote about Jackson’s dark legacy with Cherokees, I met Jackson fans. I learned of living people named Andrew after Jackson. Military men still admire his combat service. An older generation venerates his incredible persistence. Many Southerners were raised to venerate him. And the debate over changing the $20 bill has prompted a number of conservative figures to denounce what they see as a politically correct rewriting of history. There is, nevertheless, the reality that Jackson built an empire of cotton plantations worked by enslaved laborers. There is also the reality of the Trail of Tears for Cherokee Indians, a devastating move that did not take place on his watch but was set up by his forceful actions. So having stated the argument in favor of Jackson, Feller himself raised no objection to the change in the $20. Some people have asked a related question about the change. Why does it make sense for Tubman to share the bill with Jackson? They are such different people. That is precisely why the decision by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew does make sense. I’d made a similar proposal myself in 2015, calling for Jackson to be paired with John Ross, his greatest Cherokee opponent. Placing two opposing figures on the bill represents how our democracy is supposed to work. It is not the rule of any one individual. It is a constant contest of ideas. The great but flawed achievements of Americans like Jackson were improved by Americans like Tubman, who actively challenged the flaws. Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, is author of Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab."
"On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that former slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman would grace a new version of the $20 bill. The news came after a prolonged effort to get women’s faces on U. S. currency, with Tubman’s name mentioned for several months. On the surface, the Tubman 20 announcement could be seen as an overwhelmingly acceptable development. A feel good story. A chance to celebrate. But over the course of just one day, Harriet Tubman and her place on our money came to represent the eternal timeline of Internet phenomena, a   cycle of a good thing becoming bad, a real thing becoming fake, something innocuous turning toxic. Also, because Internet, Hamilton and Beyonce seem to always end up part of said conversation. Let’s explore. When the news hit the Internet Wednesday morning, there was the expected celebration, with tweets like these. And Tubman was not the only woman the Internet celebrated. It was also announced that suffragists Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul would make it onto the new $10 bill as well. But then there was a second, more critical, wave of social media reaction. Some thought the depiction of Tubman should be truer to who she was, a rebel not afraid to use force. Others disliked the fact that Andrew Jackson would still be on the same bill as well, just on the other side. And there was a bit of chatter around the fact that   Lin Manuel Miranda actually lobbied to keep one man on U. S. currency, Alexander Hamilton himself. Then some suggested that the entire notion of putting Tubman on U. S. currency was in itself, offensive. Why make a woman who was bought and sold with U. S. dollars the symbol of one of the tools used to keep her in chains? A video from a few months ago resurfaced Thursday, making those points. Before the day was done, neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate Ben Carson chimed in on Harriet Tubman. He suggested that she should not grace the $20, but instead, the $2 bill, in order to keep Jackson on the bill. The Internet quickly rebuked Carson. As the day came to an end, social media rediscovered a blog post from March of this year, saying the famous Harriet Tubman quote that had been widely shared online to celebrate was actually wrong. Turns out Tubman never said of her work as an abolitionist: ”I could have saved thousands  —   if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.” And Twitter released data showing that even Harriet Tubman couldn’t have her time in the spotlight without having Beyoncé in the conversation as well. Because Beyoncé. It is fitting perhaps, our treatment of Tubman in this moment. She, maybe one of the most authentic historical figures of all time, is still subject to the Internet’s game of constant redefinition,     and  . The Internet tends to make all things creatures of Internet, with all that entails. There is no getting around it. From this fact, it seems even an abolitionist can not break free."
"When you sleep in unfamiliar surroundings, only half your brain is getting a good night’s rest. ”The left side seems to be more awake than the right side,” says Yuka Sasaki, an associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University. The finding, reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology, helps explain why people tend to feel tired after sleeping in a new place. And it suggests people have something in common with birds and sea mammals, which frequently put half their brain to sleep while the other half remains on guard. Sleep researchers discovered the ”  effect” decades ago, when they began studying people in sleep labs. The first night in a lab, a person’s sleep is usually so bad that researchers simply toss out any data they collect. But Sasaki wanted to know what was going on in the brain during that first night. So she and a team of researchers studied the brain wave patterns of 35 Brown University students. The team measured something called   activity, which appears during deep sleep. And they found that during a student’s first night in the lab, slow wave activity was greater in certain areas of the right hemisphere than in the corresponding areas of the left hemisphere. After the first night, though, the difference went away. To confirm that the left side of the brain really was more alert, the team did two other experiments. First, they had the sleeping students listen to a repeated standard tone followed by a single tone of a different pitch. When someone is awake or sleeping lightly, the brain responds to this ”deviant tone.” And the students’ brains did respond  —   but only on the left side. Then the researchers played a sound loud enough to wake someone who was sleeping lightly. And they found that students woke up faster when the sound was played into the right ear, which is connected to the left side of the brain. The ability to rest just one side of the brain has never been demonstrated in people before, says Niels Rattenborg, leader of the avian sleep group at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany. But he says it’s a trick many animals can do. ”We’ve known for quite a while that some marine mammals like dolphins and some of the seals as well as many birds can sleep with one half of the brain at a time,” he says. A few years ago, Rattenborg did an experiment with ducks that suggests at least one way in which   sleeping provided an evolutionary advantage. The experiment involved putting ducks in a row, literally, and watching them sleep. Rattenborg found that ducks with a bird on either side of them put their entire brain to sleep and kept both eyes closed. ”However, the ducks at the end of the row slept more with one half of the brain at a time,” he says. ”And when they did that they directed the open eye away from the other birds, as if they were looking for approaching predators.” Predators aren’t a big problem for people these days. But the human brain was shaped during a time when nights were dark and full of terrors, Rattenborg says. ”When we’re sleeping in a new environment and we don’t know how many predators are around,” he says, ”it would make sense to keep half the brain more alert and more responsive to bumps in the night.” Sasaki says that brain response is involuntary and there’s nothing people can do to prevent it, even if they’ve just flown in for a big presentation the next morning. So lots of coffee the next morning."
"In public radio’s mythical Lake Wobegon, ”all the women are strong, all the men are   and all the children are above average.” The first two conditions are merely unlikely. The third one is a mathematical absurdity. However, a new survey suggests that almost all parents believe it to be true. In a recent survey of public school parents, 90 percent stated that their children were performing on or above grade level in both math and reading. Parents held fast to this sunny belief no matter their own income, education level, race or ethnicity. The nationally administered test known as the Nation’s Report Card, or NAEP, suggests a very different reality. About half of white students are on grade level in math and reading by fourth grade the percentages are lower for   and Hispanics. Bibb Hubbard founded the new organization, Learning Heroes, that commissioned the nationwide survey of 1, 300 parents of kids in grades  . She calls this result ”shocking.” ”There is this cognitive dissonance happening,” Hubbard says. ”We’ve got to find good, productive ways to educate and inform parents.” The mission of Learning Heroes is to provide tools and resources to do just that. As new standards, new curricula and new tests are sweeping through schools, they are trying to help parents understand what is expected of students so they can, in turn, help their students succeed. Morgan Polikoff, who researches   education policy at the University of Southern California, says the ”Lake Wobegon effect” is actually no surprise. ”Kids are getting passed on from grade to grade, a large percentage of kids graduate high school on time,” he explains. ”So certainly parents have been getting the message for a long time that their kids are doing just fine.” In fact, the high school graduation rate is over 80 percent, and fewer than 2 percent of students are held back a grade, so perhaps parents can’t be blamed for thinking their own kids are at least on par with their peers. Polikoff points out that on the other hand, the   standards on the NAEP could be seen as ”ambitious.” But most state tests don’t show 90 percent of kids performing on grade level, either  —   not even close. But, he adds, the disconnect between parent perceptions and test scores is still ”a problem.” First of all, many high school graduates must take remedial classes when they get to college, and the college graduation rate is relatively low. ”It also could be an equity problem,” says Polikoff, noting that ”the gaps between reality and perception” are larger for   and Hispanic parents than for others. The Common Core, Polikoff points out, once offered the prospect of having most students around the country take the same annual tests aligned to the same standards. This might have made it easier for parents to compare and build a general understanding of what it means to be ”on grade level.” But the reality in the past few years has been messier: states adopting, then abandoning the Core, and joining, then leaving, the two official Common Core testing consortia, Smarter Balanced and PARCC. So there is less of a critical mass behind any one test. Even passing or ”cut” scores can change from year to year. The solution Hubbard offers is more about people than test scores. ”Build deeper relationships and ask tougher questions of your student’s teachers,” she suggests. ”Instead of the teacher just saying, ’He’s a great kid,’ ask, ’Is he reading on grade level?’ ”"
"On Friday, most of the world’s governments are set to sign the most sweeping climate agreement in history. Their signatures will codify promises they made in Paris last December to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The two largest sources of those gases are the U. S. and China. Whether they keep their promises will in large part determine whether the Paris deal succeeds. And it is by no means clear that they’ll be able to keep their promises. The Paris climate meeting was the culmination of years of failure by the world’s nations to cut a deal on curbing climate change. Failure in Paris, some people predicted, would likely bury the idea of an international climate deal. Then, just months before the Paris summit, President Obama and China’s Xi Jinping stood side by side at the White House and said, ”We’ve got this.” ”When the world’s two largest economies, energy consumers and carbon emitters come together like this,” Obama said, ”then there’s no reason for other countries  —   whether developed or developing  —   to not do so as well.” Obama highlighted his own clean power plan to cut carbon dioxide from electric power plants  —   a plan the administration rolled out in 2014. The Chinese promised to slow the growth of their country’s emissions. That joint declaration paved the way, and the rest of the world made similar pledges in Paris. But since then, Obama’s plan has come under attack. Kate Larsen of the Rhodium Group, a policy and economics think tank, says climate experts thought the plan was a sure thing because it didn’t require congressional approval. ”It was something that looked like slam dunk,” she says, and ”that was really important to show that the U. S. was making progress.” But the plan’s opponents  —   numerous state governments and power companies  —   sued to stop the plan, and the U. S. Supreme Court agreed to put it on hold. So what happens to Obama’s Paris pledge if its centerpiece clean power plan dies? The plan would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025. The Rhodium Group did the math and concludes that with the clean power plan, the U. S. would still come up short on that promise. And without it, the U. S. would be way short. But Larsen says the fat’s not in the fire yet. There are other options. Renewable energy is growing much faster than energy experts predicted. That’s largely, Larsen notes, because of moves by Congress  —   though many of its members don’t even believe in climate change. ”Congress gave the renewables industry a huge Christmas gift with an extension of the tax credits for solar and wind power,” she says. Those tax breaks, enacted last December, make new wind and solar projects cheaper, and helped make them the leading source of new electricity. So, although it’s tough to say if the U. S. will actually achieve Obama’s goals, those goals ”were a stretch,” Larsen says, and the rest of the world should understand that. Then there’s China. It’s the world’s leading source of greenhouse gas emissions. China’s government has acknowledged that emissions there will continue to rise, but pledged that they will peak in 2030 and then decline. In fact, China might be way ahead of schedule  —   if you believe the emissions numbers from Chinese officials. Those statistics suggest that the nation’s emissions are already declining. ”I think that decline is real,” says Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University. His research shows that for the past two years, China’s emissions flattened and even fell. He says even if China’s statistics are off a bit, as they often have been, they signal a shift away from relentless growth in emissions. ”Emissions are changing in China,” Jackson says. ”Will they peak this year or last year? I don’t think so. I do expect them to increase only a little bit more. They may peak within five years or so.” If that turns out to be true, China would be way ahead of schedule. That depends, of course, on China’s economy. It’s been tepid lately. If it rebounds, so will emissions. The weather could be a factor, too. China depends a lot on hydropower, and a drought could push the country back to coal. So emissions data that currently look good could change. What the U. S. and China do is critically important now, but ultimately their efforts won’t be enough to stop climate change. Other countries matter as well  —   in particular, India. India’s emissions are growing fast, and while its government pledged in Paris to shift to renewable energy as fast as the country can, it’s not giving up fossil fuels such as coal either  —   not with hundreds of millions of people still without electricity. Over the long haul, India’s emissions could surpass those from the U. S. or China. ”What pathway India takes will go a long way to saying where we end up in 10 to 20 years,” Jackson says, ”along with what the U. S. does and what China does.”"
"This story is part of an occasional Code Switch series we’re calling ”The Obama Effect.” The series explores how conversations about race and identity have evolved over the course of the Obama presidency. You can read more about the series here. Earlier this spring I met Pablo Ramirez, a     college student at San Francisco State University. I had gone to the campus on a day when hundreds of students, including Ramirez, were rallying to increase funding for the school’s College of Ethnic Studies. That college focuses on the histories and contributions of people of color in the U. S. and it was among several that administrators had said would have to get by with less money. But students were having none of it. At a time that   sentiment seems to be pervading so much of the nation’s political discourse, they argued that having a robust ethnic studies department was more important than ever. A racial awakening, Pablo told me that for him, ethnic studies is about rejecting the notion that to be truly American, you have to be white. It’s an idea that he believes too many Americans still embrace. One of the first classes Pablo took at San Francisco State was an ethnic studies course, in which he learned about   protest movements and other civil rights struggles. ”And it really was the spark that lit the flame to just understand my history as a Latino male,” Pablo says. ”It wasn’t until really college that I was able to identify my race.” Before college, Pablo mostly thought of race in terms of blackness and whiteness. But after he began his studies, he was suddenly noticing race in his own life, particularly when he would go home to Los Angeles to visit his parents. They’re both Mexican immigrants who are now U. S. citizens. ”I started noticing that my mother would be called wetback,” he says, ”that people would say, ’Oh, she’s an idiot because she doesn’t know English. ’” But when he’d try to point these slights out to his parents, he says they’d brush him off because they’re uncomfortable talking about race and racism. But Pablo says he won’t be silent: ”I’m not here to play nice to these ignorant people I’m here to defend myself and my family and my heritage.” Scared in his own country, That he even has to defend his family’s heritage makes Pablo angry. He was born in Los Angeles, and his parents are U. S. citizens. They came to the U. S. from the border town of Mexicali in the early 1980s. After living in the country illegally for a few years, they gained amnesty through a bill signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Through it all, Ramirez says, his parents worked hard to provide for the family, instilling in him the ethic that drove him to pursue a college education. ”My father calls it the American Dream,” Ramirez says, ”though I wonder how much of a dream it really is, when they still live in poverty and have racist slurs used against them.” When I ask Ramirez if I can meet his family, he invites me to come along when he goes home for spring break a few days after the campus protest. I meet him at the Greyhound bus station in downtown San Francisco as he waits for his overnight bus to Los Angeles. In his bag, he has three forms of identification: his school I. D. his driver’s license, and his U. S. passport. Ramirez says his parents urge him to carry all three anytime he travels, ”because if you just look at me, I’m just a Latino male. I may or may not be undocumented. And my parents and I are afraid that they’ll just profile me and whisk me off. Because of the political climate, I’m scared.” Becoming American, The Ramirez family owns a small stucco house in South Los Angeles. A few chickens cluck in the backyard, though the city recently asked Ramirez’s father, Daniel, to get rid of them. He plans to comply, though it’s another small reminder that he doesn’t fully belong. ”I only planned to come for a year or two, maybe buy a truck, and then go back to Mexico,” Daniel tells me. That was more than 30 years ago. ”And here I am.” As so often happens to immigrants who come to the United States with similar expectations, life changed the plan for Daniel and Maria Ramirez. They had children. The kids started going to school, learning English and growing up American. ”And even though you think of them as Mexican,” Mr. Ramirez says, ”they think of themselves as American, they learn American customs. They’re from here.” At some point, the Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez realized their life was here, that they wouldn’t be returning home. And so in the late 1990s, they decided to become citizens. But as much as they appreciate living in the U. S. the two of them have never felt truly American. ”For us, being American is more about respecting U. S. laws, and knowing those laws also protect us,” Mrs. Ramirez says. This feeling  —   that even though they’re U. S. citizens, it isn’t really their country  —   seems to get to the heart of the tension Pablo has felt with his parents. He wants them to be more assertive, to stand up for themselves and demand their rights as Americans. But they don’t really feel American, and so they’re more willing to put their heads down, work to get ahead, and endure the little indignities their son can no longer tolerate. A glimpse of hope, For Mrs. Ramirez, this feeling of not really belonging began to change when Barack Obama was elected president. She says she’d never seen so many young brown and black people go to the polls in her neighborhood. She felt like Obama was a president for her family and her community. She hoped he would deliver on immigration reform, because even though by 2008 she and her husband were already U. S. citizens, an immigration bill would send the message that immigrants like her and her husband play an important role in this country. But that reform never came, something that Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez blame more on an intransigent Congress than on President Obama. In the meantime, his administration has deported 2. 5 million people. In the current election cycle,   rhetoric has reached a fever pitch. ”It feels like we’re going backwards,” says Pablo’s sister, Daniela. Tensions at home, Coming home can be a challenge for Pablo. While he loves seeing his siblings and gossiping with his mother, he also has to remind himself that he’s not at school anymore. The jargon and buzzwords of academia that have become his currency don’t fly here. His big pronouncements about structural racism don’t always land. Pablo’s older sister Daniela puts it like this: ”He likes to rant.” And she says she checks him constantly. ”I tell him all the time, ’You need to tone it down with your big words,’” she says. Everyone laughs when Daniela says this, including Pablo. They all know it’s true. Even so, their father says this educational rift developing in the family is not a bad thing. He says college is opening his son’s mind to new ideas. ”He’s gaining a better understanding of things,” Mr. Ramirez says. ”He’s gaining a better facility with words.” And Mr. Ramirez sees this as good for the whole family. He and his wife have been thinking a lot about Donald Trump, his   rhetoric, and his supporters  —   the ones who believe in that message. ”They want to go back to a time when this was a whiter country,” Mrs. Ramirez says. But her husband says that’s not possible, ”because back then, people of color didn’t have a voice or a vote. And now they do.” Mr. Ramirez says he’s proud of his son’s willingness to speak out in defense of his family and immigrants generally. Pablo recently traveled to Florida to compete at a national speech and debate competition. His speech was about how hard it can be for immigrants and their families to embrace their heritage when they face so much pressure to assimilate. Pablo Ramirez says one thing he’s learned since he’s gone to college is that he should embrace all of his heritage proudly and unapologetically. ”I identify as   and I wouldn’t give up either of my identities,” he says."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. High among the variously outstanding qualities of the band Snarky Puppy is its fecundity. This new music heard here isn’t even the first Snarky record to come out this year  —   that would be the live album and concert film of collaborations called Family Dinner Vol. 2, released in February. Count back and you arrive at seven   releases in the last five years, 11 in total. Then there are the familial side projects (more of those to come this year, too) the international touring schedule of an improbably successful band, and the many other gigs to which any given member commits. Snarky Puppy is on its hustle. At the center of this churn is bassist, chief composer and ringleader Michael League. Remarkably, he’s herded such quantity from a   band, one whose general largeness is also an aesthetic one. To the extent that Snarky Puppy has a core sonic idea, it’s an intricate melody over a multifaceted groove, as generated by multiple horn players, multiple guitarists, multiple keyboardists and multiple percussionists. It gathers ideas openly and avidly from all over the world and throughout the   popular music continuum, blending freely. Few might have predicted that such a maximalist, stylistically unbound ensemble  —   an instrumental funk band on the precipice between intricate and noodly  —   could sustain itself beyond personal passion. Yet League and the band have grown a rabid fan base of depth and diversity: young and old, jazz people and laypeople, black, white, neither. A second Grammy Award arrived earlier this year. This record happens to be called Culcha Vulcha read approvingly, it acts as a general modus operandi. Snarky Puppy’s very DNA is recombinant, first barking when League was a Led   bass student in the University of North Texas jazz program. Its finishing school was the   gigs and RB production of nearby Dallas, where a deeper idiomatic negritude set in. Big ears fill in the rest. League recently explained to Jazz Night In America that one of his most famous tunes, ”Shofukan,” was written in a Japanese cultural center in the Netherlands during Christmas, based on a misheard groove from Lebanon. A more timely example: The record starts off with ”Tarova,” where South Asian percussion meets Southern amplitude the effect comes off vaguely like  . The adverb ”vaguely” arises often, really. An anguine, vaguely Brazilian melody defines the next tune, ”Semente.” ”Gemini” feels vaguely Motown but slower, and with extra synth. ”Grown Folks” is anchored by a vaguely New Orleans parade beat, and so on. To be clear, the vagaries aren’t intended pejoratively, unless you want them to be they’re just signifying suggestions, elements to build upon. There’s too much sincerity here to not take it seriously a lot of virtuosos  —   particularly the many keyboard players  —   have fully committed to the      family. It is everything and nothing, but it is certainly now a thing. Culcha Vulcha is Snarky Puppy’s first true studio record in many years, with no studio audience or   collaborators. Given their work ethic, it’s hard to imagine that League and the ”family” would commit such a document to tape haphazardly it certainly sounds more   than their typical    recordings. The intentional nature of the project seems to surface something more at the core of their ethos. At very least, Culcha Vulcha is big, rich and funky  —   maybe that’s enough."
"World leaders have celebrated Earth Day today by gathering in New York to sign a historic climate agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But some of the most vital environmental work is being done by ordinary citizens with extraordinary courage. People like subsistence farmers and tribal leaders in the poorest countries are standing up to some of the world’s most powerful industries. And a growing number of them have been attacked  —   and sometimes murdered  —   for trying to protect the environment. Among the latest casualties is Phan Sopheak, a rice farmer in Cambodia. Every few weeks, she heads deep into the woods around her village  —   a vast forest called Prey Lang. She goes with a volunteer patrol on the lookout for illegal loggers who’ve been rapidly stripping Cambodia of its canopy. ”When I walk in the forest and I see giant trees that they’ve cut down, it makes feel me so sad that they’ve just cut and thrown them out,” she says. ”And I know that when all the forest is gone, the water will also dry up.” When she and the other patrollers  —   who are part of a group called Prey Lang Community Network  —   come across loggers, they don’t just urge them to stop  —   they confiscate their chain saws and timber. It’s led to angry confrontations. ”They’ve said things like, ’If you burn my wood, I will burn your house,’ ” she says. One night last month, it got scarier. The patrol had bedded down for the evening in the forest. Phan, who is 25 and petite, was sleeping in her hammock when she was awoken by a painful crash: her motorbike, parked next to her, had toppled onto her. A man with an axe was running away. Phan looked down at her foot and realized he had hacked into it.  ”The veins and the bone were cut into,” she says. ”And there was so much blood. When I stood up, I fainted.” When she came to, Phan says her first thought was of her parents. She belongs to an ethnic minority  —   called the Kuy  —   one of the hill tribes that’s lived in the area for generations. Her family relies on her to work. And this injury looked so debilitating. What were they going to do? Billy Kyte tracks attacks of this type for the advocacy group Global Witness. Increasingly, he says the heroes of the environmental movement fit Phan’s profile. ”These people are at the front lines of the battle to save the environment,” he says. And ever more of them are paying with their lives. In 2014, the most recent year for which his group has released statistics, 116 people doing such work were killed. They included professionals such as lawyers, investigative journalists, leaders of NGOs. But, notes Kyte, ”a shocking 40 percent of those killed were indigenous peoples. Many are living in remote communities in forests and up in mountain villages. And they wouldn’t necessarily define themselves as defenders. Often the first time they learn of a project will be the chainsaw in their forest or a bulldozer on their land.” Kyte says this pattern is related to another: Starting around 2008 the annual number of killings shot up. He thinks a big reason is the spike, around the same period, in the prices of certain commodities found in places indigenous people live. ”Those areas are often areas which have up to now been out of reach,” says Kyte. ”But as huge demands for natural resources intensifies more and more, companies are encroaching on to these lands.” They’re building vast   mines to extract gold, massive dams to produce hydroelectric power, and clearing acres of forest for palm oil plantations. Kyte says when local people have protested, some of these companies have hired paramilitary forces to intimidate or eliminate them. And because there’s big money at stake, governments often see the companies as allies. ”Many of the activists killed had received numerous threats before their eventual deaths  —   and governments weren’t protecting them as they should have been,” he says. Kyte won’t be releasing the statistics on 2015 for a few more weeks, but he says it’s already clear it was the deadliest yet. He rattles off some of the fatalities: The   activist in Brazil gunned down while walking down a country lane with his wife  —   his name had been on a widely circulated hit list. Then there was the indigenous leader in the Philippines who had opposed   mining. He was shot dead in front of his four children, and the remaining members of his village were forced to flee. This year could prove even grimmer. Among the casualties so far  —   someone Kyte considered a friend: Berta Caceres, a Honduran indigenous rights activist. She had led a peaceful campaign to stop one of the world’s largest dam builders from building a project that would have cut off her people from water, food and health care. She was shot by gunmen who stormed into her home one night last month. Though the government has yet to arrest the killers, Kyte shares the view of many that she was assassinated in retaliation for her activism. After all, she had been threatened repeatedly. ”I think Berta, because of how outspoken she was, and because of just her commitment to the cause, knew that something would eventually happen to her,” says Kyte. Yet in some ways, Kyte says her murder surprised him. His group and others had helped give Caceres international recognition by publicizing her struggle. Last year she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. ”I thought it might serve as a way of protecting her from being killed,” he says. When he learned of her death via email from a contact in Honduras, ”I immediately broke down in tears. Honestly, I felt impotence,” he says. As for Phan Sopheak in Cambodia, thanks to contributions from outside groups, she’s getting medical care. Slowly her foot is healing. And as soon as she is able, she wants to rejoin her patrol. ”If I don’t do this,” she says, ”who will?”"
"Why is this Passover different from any other? Because the story that the Jewish holiday commemorates  —   the exodus of the ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt to freedom  —   resonates more strongly than ever in a world embroiled in a refugee crisis that encompasses approximately 60 million people, the highest number ever recorded, according to United Nations statistics. So when Jews retell that story at the first night’s traditional festive Seder, ”these are not ancient, crumbling dusty issues that don’t have relevance today,” says Rabbi Eric Greenberg, a spokesman for the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees. ”We can see this is actually happening now to many people, including the Syrian refugees.” It’s a connection that resonates for Shadi Martini, 44, himself a Muslim Syrian refugee who now lives in Farmington Hills, Mich. A hospital manager in Syria, he had to start over after leaving in 2012. In the U. S. he began supplying humanitarian and medical supplies to those in need in Syria. ”We worked with everyone who offered help, and some NGOs were from Israel, and that was a big surprise,” says Martini, who is currently senior Syria adviser for the Multifaith Alliance. In Syria, which is in ongoing conflict with Israel and today has only a tiny Jewish population, he had no exposure to Jews. It was also a surprise to learn that welcoming and coming to the aid of the stranger ”was a pillar of the Jewish faith,” he says. The connections between the journey of the ancient Israelites and of refugees today are being emphasized in online readings from American Jewish World Service, whose mission is to end poverty and promote human rights in the developing world, and HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a nonprofit that focuses on protecting and aiding refugees around the world. Since the Seder is famous for promoting discussion, including the four questions, it was natural to ask four questions for 2016. Why should we add readings? Because the stories of today’s refugees echo the long history of Jewish stories of being expelled throughout history, says Ruth Messinger, president of AJWS. That history includes being forced from Spain in 1492 and from Nazi Europe in the 1930s. All these instances, past and present, have to do with ”individuals and groups asserting their rights to be and live where they are” and remind us of times and places ”where the government is saying we will deprive you of the rights that other people in this country have.” When the Haggadah, the text that is read at the Seder, instructs us to remember that we were strangers in a strange land, she says, that means it is ”our responsibility” to reach out to refugees in need. What are the   plagues? The Haggadah lists the 10 plagues visited upon Egypt as the Pharaoh refuses again and again to let the Israelites go. To provide insight into the what displacement means today, the HIAS supplement lists ”10 Plagues Facing Refugees in the U. S. and Worldwide.” The list  —   which includes violence, dangerous journeys, poverty, lack of access to education,   legislation and loss of family  —   is accompanied by facts and figures. Have we done enough? Another seder favorite is the song Dayenu, whose refrain proclaims that any single one of the miracles that led, step by step, to the exodus would have been dayenu  —   Hebrew for ”enough.” ”It’s a great lyric” that speaks of gratitude and appreciation, says Messinger. The AJWS version provides a different twist, which acknowledges that in addition to appreciating what is being done, there is still more work ahead. One verse goes, in part: If the world responds only to the cries of the wounded, but does not stay to help them heal. .. It will not be enough. However, if we sustain our support until stability, peace and independence have been attained. ..Dayenu! Then it will be enough. Why is there a pair of Nikes on your doorstep? In a new ritual, HIAS asks Seder participants ”to place a pair of shoes on the doorstep of your home to acknowledge that none of us is free until all of us are free and to pledge to stand in support of welcoming those who do not have a place to call home.” This acknowledges that ”we have stood in the shoes of refugees, and as we’re celebrating our freedom we are committing to stand with today’s refugees, and take a stand,” says Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, vice president of community engagement at HIAS. You can choose your own moment to place shoes at the door, but one possibility is at the Haggadah passage that reads, ”My father was a wandering Aramean.” This suggests ”the essence of the Jewish experience: a rootless people who have fled persecution time and time again,” says the HIAS supplement. ”When we recite these words, we acknowledge that we have stood in the shoes of the refugee.”"
"Passover Seders are steeped in tradition  —   ancient rituals that Jewish families invoke and repeat year after year. For many families, the lengthy prayers and symbolic food are accompanied by Manischewitz wine, a sweet, juicy variety made from Concord grapes and plenty of sugar. The historian Roger Horowitz recently joked about the wine during a lecture at the Brooklyn Historical Society, in which he reminisced about his family’s Passover meals. ”Another ritual we had to endure was my father complaining about Manischewitz,” he said to a chuckling crowd. He was kidding, at least a little. ”I didn’t really mind Manischewitz at all,” Horowitz tells me over the phone. But, he adds the wine has earned a reputation for being kind of hokey. ”It’s brought out for tradition’s sake, not because the folks drinking it are looking forward to the taste,” Horowitz says. His family, like many others, preferred drier wines to the saccharine variety. But at Passover, they poured some Manischewitz out for the prophet Elijah. ”We thought, ’this is about tradition,’ and somehow, that seemed appropriate,” Horowitz says. But this wine so often associated with Jewish tradition has its own history that, Horowitz says, has been surprisingly forgotten. In his new book, Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food, Horowitz explores how Manischewitz wine became such a fixture at the Jewish dining table  —   and a runaway crossover success with   too. The Manischewitz food company was founded in Ohio in 1888, specializing in kosher foods like matzo. After the repeal of Prohibition, the secular Monarch Wine Company struck a deal with Manischewitz to license its name for a brand of wine. The agreement also stipulated that the Monarch Wine Company would get to borrow the Manischewitz rabbis for kosher certification. The wine was fermented and bottled in a sprawling facility at the Bush Terminal, on the   stretch of 2nd Avenue in Brooklyn. The location was convenient for a handful of reasons: The nearby railroad carted in Concord grapes from farms in upstate New York. Ports made it possible to send shipments off. Lower Manhattan, on the other side of the harbor, was still a thriving Jewish community. In the 1940s, the branding emphasized the wine’s religious origins: The label featured a rabbi with a long beard holding a glass of wine in one hand and a sacred text in the other. The word ”Sacramental” was splashed in all caps across the label, which was also adorned with Hebrew lettering. Manischewitz wasn’t the only wine company to leverage religious iconography to move bottles the marketplace was flush with kosher wine brands. The difference, Horowitz says, is that those other companies tended to ”be made by Jews, for Jews.” Instead, he says, Manischewitz ”mobilized the kosher characteristics, Hebrew lettering, and imagery as a way to sell to   too.” A 1954 article in Commentary magazine  —   founded about a decade earlier by the American Jewish Committee  —   documented the trend. The reporter noted that, though kosher wine was, first and foremost, a sacramental drink, sales records suggested that it was being guzzled by secular folks, too. ”Sales graphs show peaks at Christmas and Thanksgiving several times higher than for Passover,” the article states. ”Even such a relatively minor occasion as St. Patrick’s Day causes a discernible rise.” Turns out, the makers of Manischewitz were actively wooing gentile consumers  —   and specifically targeting   in northern cities. In the 1950s, a doo wop group known as The Crows released a single called the ”Mambo Shevitz.” It wasn’t a  . But the lyrics borrowed from the wine’s promotional copy  —   the catchphrase ”Man, oh Manischewitz”  —   and nodded to the contemporary ballroom dance craze. ”Man, oh, man, that music, baby, dig that beat,” the singer crooned. ”Like a glass of wine, it’s so cool and sweet.” Black musicians also played into the brand’s print advertising campaigns. In his book, Horowitz recounts how a group called the Ink Spots featured in a 1950 ad in the   newspaper. ”Manischewitz kosher wine harmonizes with us  —   sweetly!” the text declared. ”It’s our favorite wine, too.” Later, Manischewitz wine tapped entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. to hawk the drink in a series of television spots. In one, for the company’s Almonetta wine, he clutched a goblet in one hand and used the other to skitter a finger across the piano, pounding out a clunky melody in the rhythm of Alouette, the singsong French children’s ditty about plucking feathers from a lark. Debonair, shirt slightly unbuttoned in front of a fully loaded wood bar, he looked suave  —   like a pretty fun guy to drink with. ”Try some after dinner tonight,” Davis says in the ad. ”It’s delicious.” Davis was a savvy choice for the company  —   a slick celebrity who was familiar to   consumers, and had also converted to Judaism. The choice ”wasn’t going to antagonize Jewish consumers,” Horowitz explains. It’s clear that the ads did get the wine on people’s radar. In his book, Horowitz cites a survey from 1957 that polled Jews,   and white gentiles in New York, L. A. and Detroit. It found that 72 percent had seen a Manischewitz ad on TV, and nearly half had heard a radio ad. By 1973, the company was pouring about 85 percent of its magazine advertising budget into placements in Ebony, Horowitz writes. Horowitz also speculates that the wine might have been pleasantly familiar to some   consumers because the Concord grape taste was similar to the varieties of wine commonly made from crushed scuppernong or muscadine grapes in the American South. (Horowitz told me that he’s even heard stories about Baptist churches purchasing kosher wine during Prohibition, because it was a straightforward way to skirt regulations.) Horowitz writes that, by the   some 80 percent of Manischewitz wine consumers weren’t Jewish. Even in 1981, he writes, Forbes magazine described the typical Manischewitz drinker as an urban,     man. Today, Manischewitz isn’t working so hard to appeal to new customers, says associate brand manager Shannon Brennan. The wine is now under the umbrella of Constellation Brands, and is produced in a factory in upstate New York. Brennan says that Manischewitz wine doesn’t have a marketing budget. She says that ”it has its core consumers,” but added: ”It’s not a brand that we’re looking to grow. It’s maintaining  —   it’s in coasting mode at the moment.” Brennan says that the company produced somewhere in the ballpark of 900, 000 cases during the last fiscal year. That translates to around 2. 14 million gallons. At the height of the brand’s popularity, Horowitz says, it was churning out about 13 million gallons per year. Even as it tried to woo a broader audience, Manischewitz didn’t shrug off its religious origins. When the company released a brand extension focusing on fancier products, like the Cream White Concord wine in 1968, Horowitz writes, it shrunk the figure of the rabbi on the label  —   but he was still there, along with plenty of Hebrew lettering. These days, Brennan notes, the rabbi has been supplanted by a grape. The historic packaging is familiar, she says, but ”you’re not going to find it on the shelf —  and if you do, goodness, don’t drink it, I don’t know how old it is.” Historically, the company navigated the conflicting interests of heritage and crossover appeal. It probably couldn’t have done otherwise. ”A name like Manischewitz is unmistakably Jewish,” Horowitz says. ”It’s a little like ’Horowitz.’ No one’s ever mistaken me for anything but Jewish.” Jessica Leigh Hester writes about urbanism and history. She lives in Brooklyn."
"Two hundred six thousand Virginians will newly have the right to vote this year. That’s according to the office of Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who signed a bill on Friday that would allow felons who had completed their sentences to vote. In addition to granting voting rights, the executive order will also allow released felons to run for office, serve on a jury, and serve as notaries public, the governor’s office said in a release. It will apply to any felon who ”completed his or her sentence and all other requirements” like parole or probation, as of April 22, the office said. The governor also plans to issue additional monthly orders to grant voting rights to future released felons. ”Too often in both our distant and recent history, politicians have used their authority to restrict people’s ability to participate in our democracy,” McAuliffe said in a statement. ”Today we are reversing that disturbing trend and restoring the rights of more than 200, 000 of our fellow Virginians who work, raise families and pay taxes in every corner of our Commonwealth.” As of 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, Virginia had one of the highest levels in the nation of people who could not vote because of felony convictions: 7. 3 percent, according to the U. S. Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that advocates for sentencing reforms. However, since then, several thousand felons have already been added to voter rolls. Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2013 issued an executive order making it easier for nonviolent felons to regain their voting rights. McAuliffe’s office also estimates that he had restored voting rights to an additional 18, 000 people prior to today’s move. Where laws stand in your state, State laws differ on whether felons can and cannot vote. In only two states, Maine and Vermont, all felons  —   whether in prison or not  —   can vote. And in three  —   Iowa, Kentucky and Florida  —   no one who has been convicted of a felony can vote, according to the ACLU. Altogether, around 2. 5 percent (or 1 in 40) of Americans were disenfranchised as of 2010, according to the Sentencing Project. And that group is disproportionately    —   by the same data, more than three times the share of blacks (7. 7 percent, or around 1 in 13) couldn’t vote. Here’s where the laws stand in states nationwide: Here’s how many   people in each state were not able to vote, as of 2010, the latest year for which data are available. The organization says it hopes to release new data later this year. The political battle over disenfranchisement, The felon disenfranchisement debate isn’t just a fight over who should and should not get to choose elected officials it also has potentially heavy political implications. Republican critics are painting McAuliffe’s action as a political move in a swing state that could be consequential in this year’s presidential election. ”I am not surprised by the lengths to which he is willing to go to deliver Virginia to Hillary Clinton in November,” Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell wrote in a statement. McAuliffe is a former DNC chairman and also served as chairman of Clinton’s 2008 run for the presidency. This is by no means the first time  ’ voting rights have come up in a presidential election. After the 2000 presidential election, for example, some argued that the state’s laws barring felons from voting were what allowed George W. Bush to win the state and, therefore, the election. The issue of felon disenfranchisement also arose on the campaign trail this cycle, when in December Ted Cruz told radio host Hugh Hewitt that Democrats ”go in and fight to give the right to vote to convicted felons. Why? Because the Democrats know convicted felons tend to vote Democrat.” A 2014 study did show that in a few states that were surveyed, released felons were more likely to register as Democrats than Republicans (as reported by PolitiFact). However, the study covered only three states and did not include the many felons who didn’t register to vote, PolitiFact also reported. The politics of enfranchisement extend well beyond the topic of felons. Cruz has also accused Democrats of wanting to give citizenship to immigrants in the country illegally because, he said, those immigrants would vote Democratic. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich this week said he opposed D. C. statehood because ”that’s just more votes in the Democratic Party.”"
"Earth Day got you thinking about how your diet impacts the planet? The World Resources Institute has news to ease a  ’s conscience: In a new report, it says you don’t have to bid burgers   in order to reduce the environmental footprint of what you eat. Cutting back could go a long way, it says. In the report, the nonprofit calculates the planetary effect of various possible changes in how the world eats. According to the WRI, the planetary impact of Americans’ meat and dairy habit accounts for nearly 90 percent of all the land used to feed us  —   and 85 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from our diet. The average American man eats almost 100 grams of protein a day  —   and a lot of that protein comes from meat and dairy. As we’ve reported, many American teen boys and men consume even more.  According to Janet Ranganathan and her colleagues at WRI, if Americans slashed their intake of proteins from all animals  —   beef, dairy, lamb, poultry and pork  —   by 50 percent, it would have a dramatic impact. The amount of land required to feed us, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions, are only a little more than if the whole country went vegetarian, says Ranganathan. ”I was surprised at that  —   and I’m a vegetarian,” she tells me. In part, that’s because most vegetarians substitute dairy for meat in their diet. ”So instead of having two slices of ham, you have one slice of ham or beef,” says Ranganathan, the institute’s vice president for science and research. Or you could switch to chicken, ”which [is a] much more efficient source of protein.” In a statement, the American Meat Institute called the WRI’s report ”riddled with factual flaws about protein consumption and, in turn, the environmental impact of balanced diets that include meat.” (Full statement is here.) Update: Ranganathan says the American Meat Institute’s facts ”don’t stand up on several fronts” and WRI plans to issue a statement in response. Despite such criticisms, the WRI says according to its models, if everyone in heavy   countries  —   that’s folks in U. S. Canada, Europe and Brazil  —   cut back on animal protein, so that their total intake of protein (from plants and animals) was 60 grams a day, that could potentially save up to 1. 6 billion acres of land from going into agricultural use. As Ranganathan notes, that’s ”an area of land roughly twice the size of India.” This kind of global cutback on meat and dairy sounds like an incredibly ambitious scenario. But according to WRI’s modeling, a less dramatic shift in diet  —   just cutting back on beef  —   could still have a planetary impact. That’s because, per unit of edible protein, beef production requires a lot more land, and results in lots more greenhouse gas emissions, than plant protein sources like beans and lentils. (In part, it’s because the need for pastureland drives deforestation in places like the Brazilian Amazon.) So if Americans ate about   less beef in their diet, and either replaced it with chicken or pork or with more beans and other legumes, that would still shrink their diet’s environmental footprint, according to WRI’s models: Both the amount of land used to feed us and the greenhouse gas emissions generated by our diet would go down by about 15 percent. While cutting back meat consumption by 33 percent sounds very ambitious, it’s not unprecedented. Between 1976 to and 1993, American’s per capita beef consumption dropped by 30 percent, according to data from the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. But American habits can be hard to budge. In December 2015, our polling found many Americans are eating no less meat than they were three years earlier. And according to a report from the USDA on   projections, beef consumption is expected to rise slightly, but steadily over the next several years.   foods can take a toll on the environment, too. Almonds have been linked to a lot of water use. And last year, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found that, on a per calorie basis, eating lettuce can produce more greenhouse gases than eating bacon. Of course, you’d have to eat a lot of lettuce to match the calories in bacon, and the researchers also found that plenty of other vegetables, from kale to broccoli to spinach and more, have much lower greenhouse gas emissions than pork. As Carnegie Mellon’s Paul Fischbeck, one of that study’s authors, told The Huffington Post last December, ”There are no simple answers to complex problems. Diet and the environmental impact of agriculture . .. is not a simple problem.”"
"During the 2014 Ferguson protests, America woke up to a surprising fact: There are no good national numbers on police conduct. While the federal government collects reasonably accurate crime statistics, it doesn’t know much about law enforcement patterns such as racial profiling and police use of force. It turned out even the government’s most basic statistic  —   the number of people killed by police  —   was way off. The White House says it wants to change that with the Police Data Initiative. It’s an outgrowth of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, whose final report called for greater data transparency as a means to build trust between police and communities. The Police Data Initiative encourages departments to anticipate the kind of numbers their communities want to see, and provide them, preferably in database format. As an example, the White House cites the online data portal on police shootings set up by the Dallas Police Department. But there’s a caveat, here: This is all voluntary. The White House says 53 jurisdictions so far have pledged to share this kind of data, a list that includes some big agencies such as the NYPD. But an additional 17, 000 or so law enforcement agencies have not yet signed on, and they account for about 85 percent of the country’s population. The White House simply doesn’t have the authority to require police departments to share statistics. And administration officials say they prefer the voluntary approach. ”This is how any great thing that has occurred in our industry . .. has started, with a handful of agencies that had the progressiveness and the courage to do it,” said Ron Davis, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. At a White   meeting of participating police departments Friday, Davis predicted the effort would catch on. ”We know that if you start collecting the data,” Davis said, ”that 50 today will be 100 in two months, and 200 by next year, and the question three years from now is, ’Why would you not be having open data?’ ” The White House is also trying to sell police chiefs on the idea that data transparency can defuse community tensions. Administration officials say accurate data can help a police department avoid being ”defined by rumors.” ”Providing open data is telling your community that . .. I serve you,” says Davis. Dallas Police Chief David Brown agrees, citing his city’s release of years’ worth of detailed data on police shootings. ”This built quite a bit of trust,” he says. ”In 2015, our department’s   complaints were reduced by 67 percent, and our deadly force incidents have been reduced by 45 percent.” Still, this openness to providing data seems to be most prevalent in police departments that are already in cooperative relationships with the federal government. Many of them receive federal grants, observes David L. Carter, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Other participating agencies are already in the ”progressive” camp. ”In many cases, progressive police executives feel it’s ’the right thing to do,’ and will volunteer,” says Carter in an email. But he thinks others may take a pass, especially if they think data transparency will cost them money. ”You will have agencies that have no inherent opposition to the PDI, but it does not really provide them a return on investment.” The result? There may be good stats on places like LA and Dallas, while thousands of smaller communities  —   places the size of Ferguson  —   will continue to be white spaces on the statistical map. Finally, there’s the question of standardization. The White House has no plans to set rules for how data should be collected. ”Some agencies appear to have very good data, and others don’t,” says Robert Kaminski, who studies police use of force at the University of South Carolina. ”It varies tremendously.” Even basic definitions can vary. Kaminski gives the example of handcuffing: Some departments classify that as a use of force others don’t. Differences like that make comparisons between data sets extremely difficult. The White House is even leaving it up to departments to decide which categories of data to release. Carter says he understands why the White House is telling departments to ”report what you feel comfortable reporting,” as he puts it. ”One, it [helps] sell it to agencies to participate,” he says. He thinks the White House is eager to ”get the data flowing” and that things will become more structured once the Police Digital Initiative is institutionalized. And despite the lack of a mandate, researchers say they have detected a new attitude among police departments. Kaminski has been requesting data from police for two decades, and he says just in the past few years, departments seem more willing to hand over numbers  —   even those that might make them look bad."
"The Code Switch team was sitting in our daily team meeting when our editor looked up from Twitter and broke the news that Prince was gone. The rest of the hour was given over to reminiscing about our favorite memories of Prince: shrieking as he climbed into a limo in Greenwich Village, angering a Suge   to snap a shot of The Purple One for Instagram, risking permanent foot damage for the perfect pair of purple Prince pumps. Since Thursday, everyone from Prince’s bandmates to his superfans has been reflecting on what he meant to them. The New York Times is collecting reactions from fans around the world, as are our colleagues over at All Songs Considered. So here’s ours. These are our stories, from the delightedly tawdry to the sublime, of the ways Prince affected us. (And as you might expect, some of these stories contain, ahem, strong and colorful language.) Walter Ray Watson, producer of the upcoming (! !) Code Switch podcast: Dig if you will, a picture. .. It’s the ’80s, I’m a college kid on a long weekend turned loose on New York City. Hanging, in the not yet summer. I wandered the streets, distracted and inundated by dull droning noise. And there he was, flashing across my peripheral vision on that   day. The color streaked by, bright phosphorescent green. ..like the stuff in a lightning bug, his suit glowed, matching his shirt, tie, and the high heel shoes too. His eyes sheltered behind fly sunglasses. His petiteness skittered by,    for seconds and gone into one of two   black limos in Lower Manhattan. In Greenwich Village, and I’m looking at this scene, those cars idling in the heat. In the haze of that afternoon, I took a beat. Not even a breath. What I just witnessed, happened so brief, like a dragonfly or a hummingbird you sense, not visible for very long. Then, I figured it out, and I just knew. .. It. was. him! I LOST IT. I shrieked 20, 30 feet from the cars, ”IT’S. .... .PRIIIIINNCE! !!” Like a teenage girl losing it just when James Brown left the Apollo stage. ”IT’S. .... .PRIIIIINNCE! !!” New Yorkers on the street, minding their biz, men, women every last one, CHILL. NOT ME. I’m having my little fan girl seizure. Screaming. So, Uncool, man. Prince didn’t sing. Didn’t drop down into a split for it. Didn’t bat his flirty big doe eyes to the blinding sun of that New York afternoon. Yeah but boy, did I ever scream like a little girl ANYWAY. And I’m still not sorry. Karen Grigsby Bates, Code Switch reporter: Truth be told, Stevie Wonder was the Prince of my day, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating Prince’s energy and look: First time I saw him, I thought two things: ”how cute is he? !” and ”I probably weigh more than he does.” (Sadly, I probably did. And do.) I also marveled at how he presented himself  —   so immaculately tailored, so coordinated and accessorized! One year, in   white wool flannel, he looked like what would happen if Savile Row and Marlena Deitrich had a baby. On another tour he looked like a very, very baddisco king. (These would be the assless pants. You remember.) And in other years, he dazzled in lace jabots, ruffled cuffs and brocade frock coats that would not have been out of place in Louis XIV’s court. Beauty mark, heels and all. Foppish and sexy  —   very hard to pull off. A lot have tried over the years, but ”nothing compares, nothing compares 2 u.” Good night, sweet Prince. Shereen Marisol Meraji, Code Switch reporter: Sam Sanders and I went to see Prince at this ” ” show at the Hollywood Palladium in March of 2014. We were like 5 people in from the stage and right in the middle, BEST VIEW EVER, except for this dude we kept referring to as Suge Knight (he had the bald head, diamond earring) kept elbowing Sam out of the way and stepping on our toes. And, Sam got kicked out toward the end of the show for taking photos. (Prince was not down with that.) But, Sam took one of the most   Prince photos ever. Regardless of Suge and the fact that I spent the last hour without Sam (he graciously waited in the car until it was over) . .. it was the greatest night of music I’ve ever experienced. There was a brass band on stage, dancing and playing back up to Prince’s amazing voice and guitar licks. And, it went on for 4 hours . .. 4 hours of Prince and there were only 1, 000 people in a space that can hold nearly 4K. We were dancing and singing at the top of our lungs and screaming requests. He played more than 50 songs that night. No doubt he played one of your favorites: ”Purple Rain,” ”Raspberry Beret,” ”Diamonds and Pearls,” ”Let’s Go Crazy.” But, I’ll have to wait til the afterlife to hear Prince play mine: ”Gett Off.” Sam Sanders, NPR Washington Desk reporter: I can second [Shereen’s] story. In many ways, this should have been the worst concert of my life. It was crowded. We had to wait hours for Prince to get on stage. Some Suge  ’ MUTHA***** tried to fight me. AND I GOT EJECTED FOR TRYING TO SHOOT AN IPHONE VIDEO. But here’s the thing it was all worth it for Prince. A   horn section. HOURS of performance. Dozens of songs. The sheer ENERGY of the crowd. Prince’s artistry! After I got kicked out that night, and went to my car to wait for Shereen, I was still on cloud nine. Yes, even after being forcibly removed from a venue by a   security guard. I took a nap while I waited. Woke up when the show was over, still on cloud 9. Still humming the song Prince was singing when they threw me out. I distinctly remember dreaming I was still at the concert while I napped in my car. It was weird but amazing. Wish I could dream that same dream, today and every night. Alicia Montgomery, Code Switch editor: Every phase of every romance I’ve ever had  —   from high school to middle age  —   is connected to at least one Prince song in my memory. But the one that connects them all is ”The Beautiful Ones.” For me, it’s about the moment you realize that  —   no matter how strong your feelings are  —   it’s just not going to work. It’s a lush, gorgeous symphony of pain and longing, and it’s a song that I’ve played  —   often on repeat  —   during every  . I’ve played it on vinyl, cassette and CD (still on CD for me) in my childhood bedroom, on my Walkman, in college   apartments, city bachelorette studios, and in the very   Honda I’ve been driving for 10 years. Like every wine has a right temperature, every song has a right volume. And for ”The Beautiful Ones,” that changes depending on the stage of the  : at ”11” in the first days and weeks so that those final shrieks could shatter glass, and gradually down, down back to normal as you figure out that the broken heart won’t actually kill you. It’s the first song I played after hearing this terrible news. Gene Demby, Code Switch reporter: I was barely out of diapers at the apex of Prince’s reign as the world’s biggest pop star  —   at one point in 1984, he simultaneously had the No. 1 movie, album and single in the country at the same time  —   and for most of my childhood, I mostly understood him as the weird dude with the ill perm and the   chaps. I came to him much later,   when all of my favorite recording artists would diligently   him as one of their influences. I’d miss how discomfiting Prince was at his peak  —   in the ’80s, at the same time   was gaining a foothold in the broader cultural consciousness, the black dude who most scandalized and titillated America was this diminutive,   cat with a    who hailed from some place called Minnesota. But it was my   music nerd friends who were his most ardent proselytizers they talked about him in a tone that was reverential and also maybe a little unhinged. They’d tell stories about their first Prince experiences. (No matter how old they were in these retellings, his music was never   as Prince was always too grown.) Rock fans, soul fans,   fans, Recovering Oddball Black Kids  —   they all did that    Isweartogod thing when they talked about him, lowering (or raising) their voices and no longer blinking and tilting their heads before walking me through the arc of their very specific feelings whenever they listened to, say, ”When You Were Mine.” They’d tell stories about their close encounters  —   the way he’d invite the folks who frequented his official message boards to watch him do his soundchecks before his concerts, the times they saw him when he would randomly materialize at some smallish club and perform for hours and conscript some other rapt, nervous pop stars in attendance to hop onstage to perform with him. Whenever folks got into this trance, I’d ask: Uh, so how many times have you seen Prince perform? Their answers were usually somewhere in the low millions. So: my favorite   memory. My good friend Robyn was always down the   about this dude, ready to pause an unrelated conversation to make sure I properly understood the genius of ”Joy In Repetition.” On one of those PRN digressions, we watched this insane, grainy, old video that someone put on YouTube of James Brown jamming in concert. It’s a display of casual,   virtuosity  —   James Brown summons Michael Jackson, who happens to be in the audience, to the stage to perform with him. (Jackson’s voice is lovely, as always.) Then when Michael is done, he whispers something to James Brown. James Brown then summons Prince to the stage. And Because he’s Prince, he doesn’t just walk onto the stage  —   no, he is carried to the stage on the back of what appears to be a giant, who sets him down. Prince then proceeds to shred on the guitar, perform some James Brownsian tricks with the mic stand, and I think fornicate with the souls of the entire audience. (He also accidentally  —   or I think accidentally  —   destroys part of the stage set when he leaves.) It’s unreal. And that’s the thing: whenever I tell people about this video, they think I’m making it up  —   because surely, if this s*** were real, it we’d all have seen it and watching it would be an official part of Kwanzaa or something. It seemed to sum up the whole Prince thing perfectly: the dude who could somehow overshadow both James Brown and Michael Jackson at the same time, and even when there was concrete evidence of it happening, it seemed too preposterous be totally believable."
"Billy Ryan visits Roy’s Trailer Park on Florida’s Stock Island every two months. It’s part of his regular rounds as an inspector for the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District. ”Hey, I’m just checking on the yards for the mosquito control,” he tells one resident, Marie Baptiste, as he heads into her yard. ”OK?” No problem, she tells him. People who live in the Keys are used to seeing mosquito control inspectors. Since an outbreak of dengue fever in 2009, the inspectors have conducted routine    checks in areas where the Aedes aegypti mosquito breeds. And their eradication campaign  —   part education, part enforcement  —   has been effective. The last reported case of   dengue fever in the area was six years ago. That same species of mosquito can carry the Zika virus. And although there have been no locally transmitted cases of the virus reported in Florida yet, and no signs that it’s in local mosquitoes, state and local officials are more determined than ever to do what they can to protect residents from   insects. Ryan’s eradication tools are pretty simple. He’s got a turkey baster, a dipper  —   which is a stick with a cup at the end  —   and a plastic jar to collect samples. He also has pellets of larvicide to treat areas where mosquitoes breed. In the narrow side yard next to Baptiste’s trailer, Ryan finds a plastic barrel with a couple of inches of water at the bottom, and he spots some mosquito larvae bouncing around. Bingo. A. aegypti’s favorite breeding ground. Ryan takes a sample and shows the larvae to Baptiste, as he tips over the bucket. ”I’m going to just flip this over, OK?” he says. ”If you ever see anything holding water  —   or any little buckets or anything  —   please turn them over, because we don’t want to get Zika, or chikungunya or dengue fever. OK?” Baptiste agrees. This level of attention has been effective in the Keys, thanks largely to cooperation from residents. But another approach that local and state officials are considering to get rid of mosquitoes hasn’t been as popular. The British company Oxitec wants to hold its first U. S. trial of genetically modified mosquitoes in Key Haven, not far from the trailer park. The plan is to release about 3 million male mosquitoes that have been engineered to produce offspring that die young and can’t reproduce. According to Oxitec, experiments with this approach in other countries have reduced the population of A. aegypti mosquitoes in the test areas by as much as 80 or 90 percent. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration’s center for veterinary medicine issued a preliminary assessment in March that called the likelihood of any harm to humans, animals or the environment of the proposed Oxitec experiment in Florida negligible or low. (Members of the public have until May 13 to file formal comments on the FDA’s preliminary finding.) Oxitec releases almost exclusively male mosquitoes  —   and only female mosquitoes bite humans, so only female mosquitoes can transmit dengue, chikungunya or Zika viruses. But Derric Nimmo, chief of mosquito research at Oxitec, acknowledges that the sorting process isn’t perfect. About one in 10, 000 of the released insects, he says, will be female. Still, he says, that shouldn’t worry anyone. ”We looked at the females and we found there was no difference between being bitten by one of our females to being bitten by a normal female,” Nimmo says. ”Those female [mosquitoes] are still sterile, so their offspring inherit the gene and they will not survive.” Nonetheless, at a public meeting of the mosquito control board this week, residents of the Keys had lots of questions and concerns. Assurances from Oxitec were not enough to persuade resident Michael Kane, for example, that the test is safe. ”Nature always adapts,” Kane says. ”No matter how much you think you tweaked it, something else is going to happen. There’s going to be unintended consequences.” After all the questions and comments, the board decided to allow residents of Key Haven to weigh in further, via a vote in August on whether to go forward with the Oxitec field test. Though the vote will be nonbinding, three of five board members have said they will abide by the results  —   at least in regards to Key Haven."
"Let’s call this the opposite of a spoiler alert: An acknowledgement that TV critics don’t know much about Game of Thrones’ sixth season, which starts Sunday. That’s because some knucklehead last year leaked new episodes of the fifth season online before they appeared on HBO. So producers of the show and HBO executives decided this season nobody  —   except, it seems President Obama  —   would get an early look at new episodes. Which means I have no spoilers about the new season. Or do I? ”Are you afraid?” Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister asks in a trailer for the show’s new season. ”You should be. You’re in the great game now. And the great game is terrifying.” That brief speech is among several tidbits HBO has revealed from the upcoming season. Because fans pore over each moment to try to guess what’s in store, there’s a lot of speculation about what may be coming. In a way, it’s a shrewdly calculated strategy to publicize the show while controlling spoilers. The cast and producers have appeared everywhere from Jimmy Kimmel Live to the pages of Entertainment Weekly, talking up just the story points approved by HBO and the showrunners. For example, the Entertainment Weekly story centers on the show’s most prominent female characters, including Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys, the mother of dragons. In the piece, she pushes back against charges that the show is sexist and too often shows sexual violence against women. Though without a look at the episodes to come, critics like me can only say: We’ll see. Peruse the various trailers, clips and analyses and you’ll find a surprising amount of information. (Here, by the way, is where a spoiler alert is appropriate: we’ll discuss a few developments and theories about upcoming storylines.) In one scene, we see tortured eunuch servant Reek fleeing in a   wasteland with Sansa Stark. Last season, their leap from a parapet at Winterfell castle offered a bit of a cliffhanger: Are they dead or alive? New footage shows them running from soldiers. In other clips, there are big battle scenes, characters on the run, a certain main character in captivity. In another scene, incestuous couple Cersei and Jaime Lannister are reunited, mourning the death of their daughter. It’s a pivotal time for Game of Thrones, as all of the plots will now extend beyond the storylines of George R. R. Martin’s published books. Martin has reportedly consulted with producers so they know the major story points in his next book, The Winds of Winter. Frankly, that’s a scenario I prefer. TV shows based on books, like Dexter or The Walking Dead, often seem to work best when they make choices based on what works best for television, and not on sticking to a popular text. At a time when HBO is struggling to create successful new dramas, Game of Thrones needs as much room to maneuver as possible. It’s HBO’s most popular series  —   its crown jewel  —   used to entice people into subscribing to the channel. HBO is giving cable subscribers free access this weekend to sample the Game of Thrones and it’s already renewed the series for 2017. But look at how AMC’s hit The Walking Dead has jerked fans around  —   making it seem appear characters have been killed only to reveal they haven’t  —   and you quickly see the pitfalls of running a popular, aging show. Each season must offer surprising plot developments that even longtime fans can’t predict. There need to be moments that are outlandish enough to go viral, but not so crazy that enthusiasts feel manipulated or deceived. So this season has got to work, and work well, for both Game of Thrones and HBO. Most of all it’s got to answer the question: Is hero Jon Snow, who we saw knifed to death last season, really dead? And even if he is dead, might he rise again? Can’t wait to get some answers, right alongside many of you, on Sunday night."
"Donald Trump’s enduring appeal in the Republican presidential contest has the GOP in a quandary, as it’s forced to contend with voters fed up with party politics. Some 50 years ago, another vociferous candidate put the scare in traditional power brokers. George Wallace fired up crowds with a similar   message, and drew protests as passionate as are being seen at Trump’s rallies today. Wallace also became a face of racial tension in America as the leading symbol for segregation in the 1960s. When Wallace entered presidential politics in 1964, the   governor was famous for declaring, ”Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. And segregation forever.” Wallace allies and family see parallels today in Trump. ”It’s just a replay,” Charlie Snider, one of Wallace’s most trusted political aides, told NPR. ”We’re looking at a   George Wallace.” Snider is a Trump supporter. Wallace’s daughter, a Democrat, hears it, too, but in a different way. ”Trump and my father say out loud what people are thinking but don’t have the courage to say,” Peggy Wallace Kennedy told NPR. Wallace Kennedy was 18 when she was on the campaign trail with her father in 1968. She believes Trump is exploiting voters’ worst instincts, the way her late father once did. ”They both were able to adopt the notion that fear and hate are the two greatest motivators of voters that feel alienated from government,” she said. The Trump campaign has not responded to NPR’s request for comment on the comparison. Tapping a vein of resentment, Wallace  —   the Southern populist and former Golden Gloves boxing champ  —   burst onto the national stage, tapping into a vein of resentment over the social upheaval of the day  —   namely new   laws. In 1968, running as a   candidate, he drew large crowds to   raucous rallies. ”We want Wallace! We want Wallace!” supporters would chant, as he took the stage at elaborate rallies that typically featured live country music acts. Tens of thousands turned out in major Northeastern cities like Boston and New York. Wallace’s racial rhetoric on this national stage was more coded. He berated both the federal government and the national political parties for being out of touch with average Americans. ”I want to tell these national parties this  —   they’re going to find out there are a lot of rednecks come Nov. 5th in this country,” Wallace said to a shouting crowd in 1968. ”They’ve been used as a doormat long enough.” It was ”doormats” in the ’60s. Today, a ”dumping ground.” ”The U. S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” Trump declared when he announced he was running for president. Snider, now 84, was chairman of two of Wallace’s four presidential campaigns. Snider has been watching this year’s race with great interest. ”George didn’t have the party for him,” he said. ”He didn’t have the hierarchy for him. He didn’t have the major contributors for him. But he had the people for him. And that’s exactly what’s happening today with Donald Trump.”  Winning the Deep South, Wallace shocked political pundits by winning nearly 10 million popular votes in the 1968 general election. He carried five states, sweeping most of the Deep South  —   Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and his home state of Alabama. As the American Independent Party candidate, he won 46 electoral votes, the last   presidential candidate to win any electoral votes. Wallace ran as a Democrat in 1972 and again in 1976. (During the ’72 campaign, he was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt that left him paralyzed and in a wheelchair.) Snider said watching the protesters at Trump rallies today reminds him of being on the campaign trail with Wallace. In an era of   and   activism, there were always protesters in the audience. ”George kinda liked that ’cause he would badger with them,” Snider said. He said Wallace would make fun of men with long hair  —   or joke about them wearing sandals in the cold weather. ”He kindly enjoyed it,” Snider said. The documentary George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire by Paul Stekler and Daniel McCabe shows Wallace provoking protesters. He toys with a shouting man who has long hair. ”I love you, too, I sure do,” Wallace coos. ”Oh, I thought you were a she. You’re a he. Oh, my goodness.” In another scene, he shouts, ”Why don’t you young punks get out of the auditorium?” as the crowd jeers at demonstrators. In this year’s Republican race, Trump has made throwing out disruptive hecklers part of his stump. ”Ready? Are you ready?” he asked a crowd in Iowa City, Iowa. His supporters cheered wildly. ”Get ’em outta here! Get the hell outta here!” Trump yelled, as security guards took away the protesters. Trump is no racial segregationist, but there has been   controversy, While their combative styles mirror one another, Trump is no racial segregationist. Wallace drew voters alarmed at eroding white privilege. Trump draws voters worried about the erosion of   jobs and competition from immigrant labor. But Trump has also become embroiled in controversy over race. In his announcement speech, he said undocumented Mexican immigration was bringing drugs and ”rapists.” And he has called for a temporary ban on noncitizen Muslims entering the U. S. Those have become lightning rods in much the way Wallace’s positions did in the 1960s. ”Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” he said in South Carolina after the terrorist attacks in Paris late last year. The Alabama governor’s daughter, Wallace Kennedy, is a retired schoolteacher who now advocates for the very voting rights her father once fought. She’s critical of the Trump campaign and says she even hears an echo of her father’s campaign slogans in Trump’s. They appeal to voters who think the country, as they know it, is slipping away, she said. ”My father would say, ’The federal government is not going to tell me what to do, so we’re going to stand up for ourselves,’ ” Wallace Kennedy said. ”His theme was ’Stand up for America.’ Donald Trump’s theme is let’s ’Make America Great Again.’ ” ”Strong” personalities, Their appeal has nothing to do with political ideology, according to historian Dan Carter, author of The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. ”This is about style,” he said. ”It’s about impressions. It’s about a vague taking charge.” Now professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina, Carter said both Trump and Wallace come across as fighters to voters who believe the country is on the wrong track. ”There are a lot of people who essentially want the world to stop and want it to stop changing,” Carter said. ”And when that happens, you look for a strong individual. And to me that’s the big appeal and the big similarity between George Wallace and Donald Trump.” Tension on the campaign trail  —   with protesters and the media, Incidents of violence at rallies are another common theme. Just as Trump supporters have turned on protesters in the crowd, Wallace rallies were known to get physical. On CBS Evening News in October of 1968, correspondent David Dick reported from a Detroit rally, where a fight broke out between hecklers and Wallace supporters. ”The tension was so great, emotions so high, there was an inevitable melee,” Dick reported. ”Fistfights, chairs for weapons, and sticks  —   both improvised and official.” Former Alabama Secretary of State Jim Bennett was a reporter with the Birmingham   at the time and covered the Wallace presidential rallies. ”They were wild,” he said. He recalled one particular confrontation in Portland, Ore. ”Protesters were going around one way and Wallace supporters were going around the other,” he said. ”And when they’d clash, they’d hit each other with signs, one of which said, ’God is love.’ ” Bennett wrote a column on the similarities he sees between Trump’s approach and Wallace’s campaign style  —   for instance, the way they target the media. ”Wallace used to point out the press that was there,” Bennett said. ”And sometimes that didn’t go over so well with some of these crowds, either.” Wallace said at a Florida rally in 1968: ”The average citizen in this county has more intelligence and sense in his little finger than the editor of The New York Times has in his whole head.” Trump is no fan, either: ”The press is really bad,” he has said. And he’s taken to calling the newspaper ”the failing New York Times.” At a rally in Indianapolis on Wednesday, Trump revved up the crowd against the press, calling the media ”the most dishonest people in the world.” ”Do we like the media?” he asked the crowd. ”No!” rose up from the audience. ”Do we hate the media?” he asked, raising his hands up to cue the crowd. ”Yes!” There’s another similarity between Wallace and Trump, too. Like Wallace, Trump may spar with the press, but he also tends to be the candidate who gets the most media attention."
"”Junk food? Not at McDonald’s!” At least, that’s what the   chain hopes to convince Israel’s health minster. The gutsy slogan appeared at the top of   advertisements in Israeli newspapers last weekend after health minister Yakov Litzman called for a boycott of McDonald’s in Israel  —   part of a new push to combat ballooning obesity and unhealthy eating habits in the country. ”You shouldn’t eat junk food. McDonalds: Out. Not in our country,” the minister said at an April 12 conference for cardiologists. McDonald’s is the largest   chain in Israel. There are kosher branches in the country, and on the weeklong Passover holiday, which begins Friday, McD’s substitutes its usual hamburger buns with   buns, in line with the Jewish custom of not eating bread products on the holiday. (It’s a dietary commemoration of the biblical story of the Exodus, when the Israelites were in such a rush to flee Egypt that they did not have time to wait for their bread to rise.) Israelis tend to be healthier eaters than the average American. A Mediterranean diet is the norm. The country’s staples of falafel and hummus make it a vegan’s paradise. People frequently eat salad for breakfast. Yet, about half of Israeli adults are overweight, according to 2013 health ministry statistics. The way McDonald’s sees it, the health minister is picking on the wrong   chain. In response to criticism about the nutritional value of its food, McDonald’s has made changes to its menu worldwide in recent years. In Israel, the chain says, McDonald’s reduced fat from unprocessed meat from 18 percent to 9 percent, eliminated trans fats from its French fries, cut saturated fats from its fried food by   and reduced sugar and sodium in all of its offerings. It also began publishing the nutritional value of all of its foods, the first fast food chain in Israel to do so, McDonald’s in Israel says. In Its newspaper ad campaign, McDonald’s challenged the Israeli health minister to set a ”scientific” definition of junk food. It printed a list of criteria. What amount, it asked, of calories, fats, carbohydrates, sugars, sodium, cholesterol, protein, fiber, fruits and vegetables per 100 grams would qualify as junk? ”When unhealthy food is defined scientifically and not according to slogans,” McDonald’s ad reads, ”you will be able to prove that McDonald’s Israel is the exact opposite of junk food.” Will Israel’s health ministry take up McDonald’s challenge? Einav Shimron Greenbaum, the health ministry’s spokeswoman, would not say. But, in an interview, she stressed that no country’s nutritional board has issued a scientific definition of junk food. In the health ministry’s position paper against eating fast food, the ministry defines fast food as food that is eaten in   minutes without fork and knife, needs little chewing, and makes the eater feel satiated only after 20 minutes, pushing the eater to consume more. High consumption of fast food, according to the health ministry, leads to diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and heart complications. The health ministry’s spokeswoman says these criteria apply to McDonald’s, despite the fact that the chain has added healthy items to its menu in recent years. ”No one goes in there to eat salad,” Shimron Greenbaum says. Meanwhile, earlier this week, the Israeli health ministry held the first meeting of its new Regulatory Committee to Advance Healthy Food. Among the ideas raised, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz: levying taxes on soft drinks limiting advertisements of food targeting children that is high in salt, sugar and fat providing discounts of healthy food for the poor requiring healthy eating education in schools building gyms in schools and funding obesity treatments. Shortly after Israel’s health minister made headlines with his   attack on McDonald’s, Israeli media reported an embarrassing statistic: according to the health ministry’s budget, the minister’s office staff spent some 70, 000 shekels (about $18, 600) on soft drinks in 2015. At Wednesday’s inaugural meeting of the government’s healthy food committee, the Haaretz newspaper reported, committee members were served fruits, vegetables and bottled water. Daniel Estrin is an American journalist in Jerusalem. He’s on Twitter @danielestrin."
"The battle over religious freedom and LGBT rights has moved from Arizona and Mississippi to Missouri. Conservatives there are backing an amendment to the state Constitution that would protect certain people  —   clergy, for instance  —   who refuse to take part in   marriages. But the measure has run into some unexpected  —   and unexpectedly stiff  —   opposition, from a longtime ally of the religious right: the business community. Supporters of the proposal are pulling out all the stops. An enthusiastic crowd filled the rotunda of the Missouri Statehouse this week, pledging to fight back against what they see as an assault on   religious beliefs. Missouri Baptist Convention Executive Director John Yeats says Senate Joint Resolution 39 simply shields a vocal constituency in Missouri from being forced, by the government, to take part in   marriage, something they find morally wrong. ”You would think that SJR 39 would be a   ” he told the cheering crowd. But where Yeats sees a threat to ”religious liberty,” Joe Reardon sees a threat to commerce. ”We’re talking about profitability we’re talking about jobs,” says Reardon, who runs the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. The biggest business groups in the state have locked arms against the amendment, Reardon says. Hundreds of individual businesses have piled on. ”It’s every sort of business in Kansas City coming together in common cause around this. And that’s been remarkable to me,” he says. Some of the companies have long stood for LGBT rights. But Stuart Hinds, who runs the Gay and Lesbian Archive of   says the current level of massed business support is something new. ”It’s a phenomenal shift, and it’s incredible to see it happen so quickly,” Hinds says. It’s not so hard to see what business leaders are worried about. Mark Fisher with the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce says the city lost at least $60 million in convention business when his state passed a Religious Freedom Act last year. ”We all need to realize that social issues are economic issues now,” Fisher says. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, scaled back the law just one week after signing it. But not quickly enough, according to Fisher. ”This can be a defining brand, or a defining image for your city, and how will that affect your ability to attract and retain talent?” he says. This is precisely why Monsanto, the global crop technology firm based in St. Louis, is fighting the Missouri proposal. Monsanto isn’t exactly a liberal darling. The company is funding Republican congressional candidates this year at more than three times the level it is giving to Democrats. But Monsanto lobbyist Duane Simpson says recruiting and keeping   researchers is hard enough now. ”We’re just asking legislators not to make our job more difficult, by making the state appear unwelcoming,” Simpson says. And if a place is perceived as unwelcoming to conventions and business talent, the typical tourist may shun it as well. David Epstein   Tom’s Town, a new distillery and art deco bar, in an old part of Kansas City that’s blossoming with fresh restaurants, galleries and tech startups. He calls the amendment an existential threat. ”The religious freedom bill, which I think is so misnamed, would decimate us,” Epstein says. This level of alarm from business  —   in Missouri  —   comes as something of a shock. State Sen. Bob Onder, who wrote the religious protection legislation, says corporate opposition materialized just since  . ”When I presented this bill in committee in the state Senate, not a single business lobbyist came to testify against my bill,” Onder says. And there was little reason to think they would. After all, as Don Hinkle of the Missouri Baptist Convention points out, conservative Christians have long worked hand in glove with the Missouri Chamber of Commerce. ”We’ve been on the same side of issues for so many times for so long,” says Hinkle, the MBC’s director of public policy. ”And for them to think that our freedom is for sale, much less the gospel of Jesus Christ is for sale, to us . .. it’s heartbreaking.” So an amendment that passed overwhelmingly in the Missouri Senate now seems to be stalled in the state House. If it does clear the Legislature, though, it would then go to a public vote, likely triggering an even bigger fight, pitting Christian conservatives against their old allies in business."
"How do you help someone who is at risk of suicide? That’s a question that haunts the people of Greenland, the country with the highest known rate of suicide in the world and the subject of a special NPR report this week. The rate is about 80 per 100, 000, and the group at highest risk is young Inuit men. But it’s a question that anyone, anywhere, might ask. Every year, about 1 million people kill themselves worldwide preventing suicides is an issue every culture deals with. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that suicide has been steadily increasing in the U. S. since 1999. Although men tend to kill themselves at higher rates than women, the biggest rate increase during that time has been among girls   years old, and the second biggest increase has been among women   years old. But for every person who dies by suicide, there are many, many more who struggle with suicidal thoughts. ”Lots of people think about it,” says Dr. Jill   of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. ”Suicide attempts are less frequent. Fortunately, dying by suicide is even less frequent.” NPR talked with   and Dr. Jitender Sareen of the University of Manitoba, both psychiatrists, about what is known about youth suicide and best practices for preventing suicide.   studies teen suicide prevention, and Sareen studies suicide trends among Native people in the Arctic. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity. In Greenland the highest rate of suicide is among young people between ages 15 and 25. How does that compare with the U. S. and worldwide?  Dr. Jitender Sareen: In native communities here in Canada and in the U. S. unfortunately young people have a much higher risk of suicide  —   often five or six times as high as the general population. Men commit suicide more often than women  —   that’s true almost everywhere. [Although it’s unclear why this is, it may be related to access to weapons or greater impulsiveness.] We’ve also seen instances where multiple young people enter suicide pacts, and there can be a contagion effect especially among youth. The underlying issues that lead to those crises are related to lack of basic things like clean water, housing and jobs. A lot of young people are impoverished and do not see any path to a good future. Dr. Jill  : It’s also important for people to understand that suicide is not native to any culture. It’s what happens to people when they’re in situations of increased stress. So the high rate of suicide in Greenland, for example, doesn’t say anything inherent about the culture. Actually, in the United States and most places, the   group for suicide are   [people] and the elderly. Fortunately, teen suicide rates in the U. S. are significantly lower, though teen suicide is still of concern. Are there specific things a parent or friend should say  —   or not say  —   to a young person who they believe is potentially suicidal?  : If you’re worried about somebody, ask. It’s a little scary to ask, and you don’t start off with, ”Are you thinking about suicide?” You want to base your questions on what you’ve seen and what you notice. Like, ”You seem very down lately and you’re not with your friends. Is something going on? Are you feeling OK?” or ”You look kind of sad. Are you?” Then the next step is to just listen to what they have to say and try to really hear them, and interact with them so they know you’ve heard and understood. These are not   problems, so even though as parents and friends we want to say, ”Just snap out of it!” or ”It’s not that big a deal!” to that person at that time, it is a big deal. Sareen: In Native communities, one thing we’ve found is that messages that are based in culture are often more effective, but culturally sensitive communication is complicated. You can’t assume that everyone in Native or First Nations has the same Native culture. For example, some Native people may feel cut off from their traditional culture and religion, while others are practicing Christians, and you need to remember that when you talk to them about their problems. This is one challenge for researchers and doctors who want to help in Native communities. Before you can help, you have to build a trusting relationship and understand the place, which can take years. What if the person you’re worried about doesn’t want to talk?   : It’s not uncommon, particularly with teens, that they don’t want to talk. Or, they don’t want to talk to you. If you’re the parent, for instance. The key is that there may be somebody they can talk to, and it’s not a time to stand on ceremony and say, ”You must talk to me because I’m your parent.” Find somebody they do feel comfortable talking to, and try to help them engage with that person. Is it ever dangerous to ask someone about suicidal thoughts?  : Talking about suicide with someone will not make them suicidal. In fact it will make people feel better more typically, because they’re holding [painful feelings] inside, and when you ask them, that’s an opportunity to address it and   and feel better. So you’re not going to make someone suicidal if you say, ”Are you feeling like you want to kill yourself?” Talking to someone really helps we have data to show that. Is there such a thing as talking too much about suicide?  : It’s not so much that a person can talk too much or too little. It’s more about talking to someone who can help versus someone who can’t. If you’re talking to someone who can help you, then it’s good. And, unlike maybe even 20 years ago when there was nothing available and no one was talking about teen suicide, now there are lots of tools and interventions available. Sareen: I would say there is a balance when you’re talking to teenagers, especially in very small towns. What we’re facing, often, in the small communities is there’s almost too much talk about suicide. When a suicide happens, in a larger community you might not hear about it, but in very small communities youth are kind of exposed to suicide and there’s a lot of talking about it. It may inadvertently positively reinforce suicidal behavior. An overresponse of the media and overresponse of the community can actually lead to a clustering effect. That’s one of the challenging parts of making suicide more publicly discussed . .. that youth might see it as a way to escape their difficulties. Right, so in very small communities, talking about suicide a lot can make it feel like it’s happening a lot, which could inadvertently make suicide seem like a way to deal with personal problems.  What do we know about the causes and risk factors for suicide clusters and how to prevent them?  : Well, first a suicide cluster is generally defined as three or more suicides in close proximity in terms of time. Geography is less of an issue these days with social media and the Internet. We don’t fully understand what makes clusters occur. They’re more common among teenagers but they can happen among adults as well. The important thing to remember is if someone is not already at risk, they’re not suddenly going to become suicidal. The people that we worry about are the people that are already struggling, so when there is a teen suicide, for instance, teachers and guidance counselors and parents should take note of kids who are already vulnerable. Check in with them regularly, because those feelings [of emotional struggle] often last, and it takes time to recover. The Greenlandic Ministry of Health says its main problem when it comes to preventing suicide is that they do not have enough resources  —   counselors, therapists, psychiatrists, and the money to move them into a town after a suicide and maintain a presence for weeks or months. What is an ideal community response after a suicide, and how   is it? Sareen: I think many people would say that before you look at mental health, you have to look at basic human needs first: the joblessness, the lack of meaningful activities. I think some of the remote communities really struggle with that. But in remote parts of the U. S. on American Indian reservations and elsewhere, there is a focus on trying to get telemedicine  —   connecting people who do not have access to mental health care to professionals via phone or video. One of the things we’ve learned is some of the small communities struggle with lack of good boundaries and everyone kind of knowing everyone’s business. So in some ways it can be better for people to go out and get care outside the community.  : You definitely need more resources after a suicide. You do need multiple guidance counselors, multiple grief counselors. For example, when there’s a suicide in a school, you’ll have a room with counselors available to the kids, a counselor available to the parents and a counselor available to the faculty, so that’s already three counselors I’ve just mentioned. You also check in with kids you’ve got some worry about to begin with, so that takes teacher time, guidance counselor time and counselor time. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has a whole plan online for schools that are dealing with a suicide. If you’re managing on a thin budget, it’s going to be hard to provide a safe and healing community when there’s a suicide loss. Do you have questions about this topic or our special report, ”The Arctic Suicides: It’s Not The Dark That Kills You?” We’d like to hear from you and provide answers in a   story. Tell us in the comments or send an email to nprcrowdsource@npr. org with ”Arctic suicides” in the subject line."
"In the ’80s and ’90s, America’s suicide trend was headed in the right direction: down. ”It had been decreasing almost steadily since 1986, and then what happened is there was a turnaround,” says Sally Curtin, a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The suicide rate has risen by a quarter, to 13 per 100, 000 people in 2014 from 10. 5 in 1999, according to an analysis by Curtin and her colleagues that was released Friday. She says it’s heartbreaking to work with these data. While other causes of death are on the decline, suicide just keeps climbing  —   and it’s doing so for every age group under 75. ”I’ve been losing sleep over this, quite honestly,” says Curtin. ”You can’t just say it’s confined to one age group or another for males and females. Truly at all ages people are at risk for this, and our youngest have some of the highest percent increases.” There is one age group that really stands out  —   girls between the ages of 10 and 14. Though they make up a very small portion of the total suicides, the rate in that group jumped the most  —   it experienced the largest percent increase, tripling over 15 years from 0. 5 to 1. 7 per 100, 000 people. And, Curtin points out, in any given year, there are a lot more suicide attempts than there are suicide deaths. ”The deaths are but the tip of the iceberg,” she says. Until the suicide trend reversed upward, there had been a number of improvements in the past few decades. In the late ’80s, things were probably looking up partially due to new antidepressants that were more effective and had fewer side effects, says Dr. Maria Oquendo, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University Medical Center and   of the American Psychiatric Association. ”We saw this very encouraging decrease in suicide deaths,” she says, and the parallel between antidepressant prescription and a decline in suicide was mirrored in other countries. ”It was really very remarkable, and somehow that trend toward decreasing suicide rates abruptly stopped in 1999.” What changed? One possibility is economic stagnation, which left more people out of jobs and probably made it harder for people to access health care and treatment. There was also a switch from the use of cocaine and crack to use of heroin and prescription painkillers, which can be lethal in case of an overdose. And there’s also the matter of health insurance  —   a lot of people weren’t covered or didn’t have access to treatment for depression, the most common risk factor for suicide. (Since 2014, however, the Affordable Care Act has led to a substantial increase in insurance coverage.) ”Now, the other thing that we were anticipating with some dread was the aftermath of the black box on antidepressants,” says Oquendo, referring to a warning label that in 2004 the Food and Drug Administration required for commonly prescribed antidepressants. The label says that in people under age 26, the medications can actually increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and actions. Research has suggested that the warning scared doctors away from prescribing antidepressants to people of all ages. ”And some of the increment in suicide deaths in the younger populations is potentially linked to an understandable reluctance by physicians who see these youngsters to prescribe antidepressants, even when they’re aware that the individual is suffering from depression,” says Oquendo. Research has shown that the benefits of prescribing antidepressants to mentally ill children tend to outweigh the risk of suicidal tendencies. But why such a sharp rise among adolescents, particularly girls? ”We don’t know what’s going on, to be quite honest,” says Arielle Sheftall, who works at the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. ”We have thoughts, that maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that. It’s really hard to pinpoint one specific risk factor that really, truly is driving this trend.” She and her colleagues study the risk factors that might push a depressed child or teen to attempt suicide. One hypothesis about what’s going on with girls is pretty surprising: earlier puberty. ”It’s usually been referred to as the    period of life because there’s just a lot of change happening all at one time,” says Sheftall. Boys tend to hit peak puberty around 13 years old, and girls around 11 years old, though some studies show that girls are starting their periods earlier. ”Research has shown that puberty, unfortunately, is associated with the onset of psychological disorders, specifically depression,” says Sheftall. And depression is a big risk factor for suicidal thoughts and actions. So, because of the shifting age of puberty onset, girls might be opening the door to anxiety, depression and other psychiatric disorders earlier on in life. Sheftall and Oquendo say the hypothesis hasn’t been carefully studied, but it’s possible. Another potential factor is that girls attempting suicide could be using more lethal methods, resulting in more deaths. ”It’s frustrating because you want to never ever see these trends increase,” says Sheftall. ”That’s what we kind of have dedicated our lives and research to: What is causing these increases to occur?” For now, there are still more questions than answers. If someone shows the warning signs of suicide: Do not leave the person alone, remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt, call the U. S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at     (8255) and take the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional."
"The primary elections across five states Tuesday could decide the nominations of both parties. That’s especially true on the Democratic side. (For the Republicans, scroll down.) Bernie Sanders has come a long way, but the Vermont independent is running out of friendly states. Tuesday is no different, as all but one of the contests (Rhode Island) in these Northeast states are closed primaries. In other words, independents can’t vote. And that’s a big problem for Sanders. One analysis found that as much as 40 percent of Sanders’ vote total was coming from independents, as of a month ago. Three of Tuesday’s states  —   Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania  —   also have significant   populations in Democratic primaries. That plays to Hillary Clinton’s strength. Clinton now has a bigger lead over Sanders than Barack Obama ever had over Clinton at any time in 2008  —   more than twice as big, in fact. When all was said and done in the 2008 primary, Obama finished just 69 pledged delegates ahead of Clinton. His biggest   lead was 114 after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6th. Clinton currently has a    lead over Sanders. For perspective, that’s bigger than where Obama finished over Clinton  —   238. 5 ahead  —   with pledged and superdelegates combined. Clinton currently has a   lead with pledged and superdelegates. Clinton is now 80 percent of the way to the 2, 383 needed for the nomination. Yes, that includes superdelegates, but they cannot be dismissed. Their votes count, and there’s little reason for them to switch allegiances if Sanders does not win a majority of pledged delegates. (She’s also ahead of Sanders by 2. 7 million popular votes.) Sanders and his team seem to now be getting that reality. ”Look, if we do not have a majority, it’s going to be hard for us to win,” Sanders told NBC referring to pledged delegates. ”The only fact that I think remains uncertain is if we continue to be running significantly stronger than she is against Donald Trump, or whoever the Republican nominee will be. I think that’s a factor.” Maybe some will be swayed by the ”running stronger” argument, but more likely, that is talk to keep the flame burning (and the money coming in). Most of these superdelegates know that hypothetical        at this stage, have very little value, as NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben has laid out. To win a majority of pledged delegates, after New York, Sanders now needs to win a whopping 59 percent of the pledged delegates remaining. That’s close to impossible to do, because delegates are allocated proportionally on the Democratic side. Put another way: Hillary Clinton could lose every single remaining state and still be the nominee as long as Sanders doesn’t beat her by an average of 59 percent in each and every remaining contest. (And that’s to say nothing of superdelegates. With superdelegates, Sanders needs about   of all remaining delegates.) Those numbers would go even higher if Sanders can’t hit them Tuesday. ”If we fall short of what our projections are in order for us to get there then, yeah, we’ll have to figure out if there’s a different way forward,” Sanders adviser Tad Devine told NPR’s Tamara Keith. He added, ”If we think we have to take a different way or reevaluate, we’ll do it then.” Sanders has been missing a lot of benchmarks since March 15th, when he lost in Ohio, Illinois and Missouri  —   states his campaign believed he needed to win to have a legitimate chance at the nomination. He then lost Arizona a week later  —   another place his campaign believed he needed to win. ”Reevaluate” is a key word from Devine. Clinton did not formally drop out of the race in 2008 until June. And the Clinton campaign this year probably wouldn’t mind Sanders staying in, doing a victory lap of sorts and playing to big crowds in places like Oregon and California. But if Tuesday doesn’t go well for Sanders, Democratic supporters of Clinton likely won’t want to hear anymore caustic talk about things like Wall Street speech transcripts. If Sanders misses those benchmarks again Tuesday, Clinton will not have clinched the nomination mathematically, but a lot of people will be saying this race is over. For the Republicans, Donald Trump is back riding high after his sweeping win in New York. He took 89 of the state’s 95 delegates and is now more than   of the way to the magic number of the 1, 237 majority needed to be the Republican nominee. Trump is also winning something that may be more important  —   the argument. Strong majorities of Republicans are telling pollsters they think whoever has the most votes should be the GOP nominee. If Trump has a big day Tuesday  —   and Ted Cruz struggles again  —   the New York billionaire may seem inevitable. Cruz will also likely be mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination on first ballot after Tuesday, an important talking point for Trump. The bottom line here is Trump needs to start hoovering up delegates  —   and not look scary to those Republican delegates. Trump is not quite where Clinton is on the other side just yet in relation to the magic number needed to clinch. But he has a slightly bigger delegate lead over Cruz (286). So while it’s still not the easiest path for Trump, New York was a good start for him to right the ship. What’s more, his lead over Cruz, the   field that gave him a late start on delegates and the GOP sentiment that the person with the most votes should win, all bode well in Trump’s favor. If he can go into the convention with something around 1, 150 delegates or more, he would be tough to stop. Trump also took a step in the direction of being acceptable to delegates, saying on NBC’s Today show Thursday that he will be ”so presidential, you will be so bored.” Perhaps more importantly, his new top convention strategist Paul Manafort tried to reassure delegates of the same, telling them his boss has been ”playing” a ”part,” but that ”he gets it.” A good day Tuesday would certainly help Trump get closer to being the Republican 2016 standard bearer."
"Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is waging a campaign at a turning point. The New York primary earlier this week was essentially a must win. And he lost. He’s still campaigning as hard as ever, hopping from state to state talking about a rigged economy and a political system ruled by millionaires and billionaires. But the candidate who started out as an underdog and rose to heights few expected has a math problem. Sanders needs to win all the remaining contests by a   margin to catch up to Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates. ”There’s a pathway to victory for Sen. Sanders, but I think you know it’s certainly gotten brambled,” said Neil Sroka, with the progressive group Democracy for America, which supports Sanders. Clinton’s lead over Sanders in pledged delegates is more than twice as large as  . Barack Obama ever had in 2008. Even so, Sroka hopes Sanders will stay in it through the final contests in June, running a spirited campaign. ”There is not a single doubt in my mind that the strong campaign that Bernie Sanders is waging right now is making the Democratic Party better, stronger and more focused on the populist progressive issues that we need to take on if we are going to be successful in November,” Sroka said. But unless something dramatic changes, Sanders and his campaign are going to face a moment of reckoning. Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, worked on the Clinton campaign in 2008. ”We were behind,” Elleithee said. ”We had a late burst of momentum. But the math was never there for us.” Eventually, a little less than a month before the final primary, Clinton began holding her fire. The campaign made an emotional and tactical shift. Elleithee says there are two ways to go  —   graciously or lashing out. ”It’s a dangerous place to be in,” Elleithee said, ”and you’ve got to keep your head about you and remember what it is you’re fighting for. That doesn’t mean you have to get out, but it does mean you need to kind of keep your focus in the right place.” On Tuesday, five more states hold primaries, and polling suggests Clinton is in for another good night. When asked if there would come a point when Sanders tones down his criticisms of the   as Clinton did late in the 2008 race, Sanders senior campaign adviser Tad Devine said he’d see what happens on Tuesday. ”If we think we’ve made enough progress, then we’ll keep on the path that we’re on,” Devine said. ”If we think we have to, you know, take a different way or   you know, we’ll do it then. But right now, we think the best path beyond is the one we laid out months ago.” That path involves winning a lot in the weeks ahead  —   and finally overtaking Clinton in pledged delegates in June. Although some in Sanders’ orbit are talking about a fight at the convention in July, Devine said the only winning strategy is for Sanders to come out ahead in pledged delegates. And that won’t be easy. Right now, the Clinton campaign and other Democrats are getting worried that some of Sanders’ attacks are going to leave a mark that will hurt her in the general election, should she be the nominee. Sanders raised significantly more money than Clinton in March and has been able to outspend her on television ads in state after state. To maintain her lead, Clinton has to keep campaigning hard, running ads and not fully turning her attention to the   fight. Elleithee said the way Sanders and his surrogates handle the next month and a half will determine his campaign’s legacy. ”People ought to feel good about what he did,” Elleithee said. ”The problem is too often campaigns in this position end up squandering a lot of that goodwill as part of the endgame.” The hard part is knowing when the endgame has begun."
"You’d be excused if you tuned out in previous years when the actual nominating part of a political convention occurred. Usually it’s a pro forma exercise with little suspense, as each state ticks off its vote for the eventual nominee. And that nominee has been known well in advance  —   at least for the last 40 years, anyway. But this year a contested convention actually seems possible, if not probable, on the Republican side. It’s the stuff of journalists’ dreams and political consultants’ nightmares. Donald Trump got a big win in New York Tuesday, and he leads in the delegate race. That victory helped his cause to try to reach the magic 1, 237 majority before primary voting ends on June 7, but he is still only about   of the way there with just 15 contests remaining. What’s more, there’s an increasingly vocal  —   and more focused  —   #NeverTrump movement within the GOP with many seasoned operatives working overtime against him. And, as the Republican National Committee’s Rules Committee meets this week in Hollywood, Fla. some on that committee are trying to pry open a door for someone other than Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to be put in nomination at the convention. While it’s virtually impossible for Cruz to get a majority of delegates before July’s convention  —   and mathematically impossible for Ohio Gov. John Kasich  —   there’s certainly a path to stop the controversial real estate mogul at the convention. The process is as confusing as it is exciting for young political nerds, whose only exposure to such a scenario happened on The West Wing and House of Cards. Here’s how it would work in real life, based on interviews with several convention veterans, advisers to the candidates and Republican operatives: The reality TV star is likely to head to Cleveland with the most delegates. But without the requisite majority, his path gets much more complicated on the convention floor. Theoretically, the first ballot at the convention would proceed as what normally happens  —   the roll call begins and each state casts votes based on who won its primary or caucuses. Most are bound to those state results, but about 200 delegates, or roughly 5 percent, are unbound and could switch their allegiance. Also important, just 17 of Pennsylvania’s 71 delegates are bound on the first ballot. States to watch here include ones that have had conventions or similar processes to pick their delegates. Keep an eye on the three delegations that are complete free agents on the first ballot  —   North Dakota and the U. S. territories of American Samoa and Guam. Combined, they have 46 delegates. They could be among the most coveted delegations at the convention at the start. These are delegates from the U. S. Virgin Islands, Wyoming and Colorado. These 75 delegates have more freedom than those bound by caucus or primary results, but less than the complete free agents listed above. That’s because if the delegates did declare a candidate preference at their state convention, then they are bound for that first ballot, based on state party rules. This is where organizing is so crucial, something Cruz has been better at than Trump so far. The Texas senator and his staff have paid special attention to these contests  —   something that’s likely to pay off. In North Dakota, Colorado and Wyoming, he appears to have ended up with a strong slate of   delegates. There are almost 200 delegates (196) pledged to other candidates no longer in the race. Let’s call them zombie delegates, because they will come back and vote  —   for someone. Marco Rubio has the most zombie delegates with 171. He currently outpaces Kasich, who is still in the race. The Florida senator has indicated he may hang on to some of his pledged supporters for a while, possibly anticipating a   convention, where he could hold more sway  —   or even make a   comeback. The majority are still bound to him on at least the first ballot, but others are already freed. Other former candidates have far fewer delegates, but in a race where every vote could matter it could be important to watch where those go, too. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has eight, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has four and businesswoman Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul each have one. In some states, the candidates must publicly release their delegates and can urge them to back a specific candidate, but the delegates are not obligated to vote that way. Other states, however, like Iowa, still require their delegates to vote for candidates that may have dropped out if there’s more than one candidate in the running. ”The first ballot is going to be Trump’s chance to be the Republican nominee. Either he’s clearly got the 1, 237 lined up or he’s close to it, and can he convince enough unbound or uncommitted delegates to join him and get him over 1, 237,” said Henry Barbour, a member of the RNC Rules Committee from Mississippi. ”If Donald Trump doesn’t get it on the first ballot, I think he is probably going to not do as good a job on the   process, where Cruz is doing well.” If the convention heads to a second ballot, the real drama begins. ”I think the second ballot will be Ted Cruz’s opportunity to become the nominee,” Barbour said. ”I think you’d see Trump’s numbers fade.” More than half the delegates, over 1, 400 of them, are now free to vote for whomever they want. This is where    maneuvering and building relationships with delegates will pay off in dividends, and knowing where those delegates’ true allegiances lie. Cruz has been prepared for this and has an organized operation that gives him a leg up. Trump, after crying foul and claiming the process is unfair, seems to have finally realized he needs veteran operatives to handle the complex convention process. He recently named Paul Manafort, a veteran of Gerald Ford’s 1976 convention battle, as his convention manager and chief delegate wrangler. Manafort added former RNC Political Director Rick Wiley to the effort. Wiley also ran Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s   2016 presidential bid. Nonetheless, Trump’s late start puts him at a disadvantage. Many actual delegates aren’t chosen directly based on primary and caucus voting but are instead assigned at later   conventions. Delegates may have been allocated proportionally in some places, but exactly who they are doesn’t get decided until county, congressional district or state conventions. For example, Trump won all of Arizona’s 58 delegates, but the names of those delegates are determined at the state convention on April 30. And many of those people may be SINOs, or ”supporters in name only,” as longtime Michigan GOP strategist John Yob describes in his book, Chaos: The Outsider’s Guide to a Contested Republican National Convention. ”Candidates and campaigns need to put resources into those state conventions,” Yob told NPR, ”and they need to make sure the delegates that are elected are truly supportive of them in their hearts and minds and not just as part of an allocation process.” In other words, while these SINOs have to be loyal to Trump on the first ballot, per their state rules, they could switch to Cruz or a different candidate on subsequent ballots. That’s what Trump’s campaign alleges might happen in South Carolina (unbound on the second ballot) and Tennessee (unbound on the third ballot) for example. These delegates could hold sway in approving convention rules (which we’ll dig into in just a bit) and other procedural matters, but their most significant action is likely to be whether they switch allegiances in a   scenario. ”The most problematic action of these SINOs would be for them to use their position to swing momentum on the ballot that follows the lifting of binding,” Yob writes in Chaos. ”The first ballot that allows delegates to vote their true hearts and minds is going to have a far different result than the last ballot that binds the delegates based on the result of the primary or caucuses. When the election goes multiple ballots, there will be a large number of swing delegates and those delegates will be watching for momentum to make sure they’re on the winning side.” On the third ballot, there’s only one state that is still completely bound to vote for its primary winner  —   Florida. So Trump is guaranteed the 99 delegates he won in the    Sunshine State, but that may be his only sure thing. And if Trump can’t wrestle the nomination on the first ballot, and Cruz can’t make up the ground on the second, the rule book  —   or at least the rules agreed upon by a majority of delegates at the outset of the whole convention  —   could go out the window. This, essentially, is Kasich’s strategy. As of now, he wouldn’t qualify to win the nomination because of the highly scrutinized RNC Rule 40( b) which requires that any candidate for nomination have the support of a majority of delegates in at least eight states. This was changed from a   requirement ahead of the 2012 convention at the urging of Mitt Romney supporters to avoid having   Rep. Ron Paul’s supporters nominate him at the convention. (Paul still received votes at the 2012 convention.) Trump has already met the requirement, and Cruz’s campaign anticipates he will hit that benchmark as well, once all states have voted. Cruz has already won a majority of bound delegates in six states: Texas, Utah, Kansas, Maine, Idaho and Wisconsin. (He’s also been allocated 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates by the AP, but those delegates are unbound.) If that rule isn’t changed when the Rules Committee meets the week before the convention, many anticipate there will be a call to suspend the rules or revise them, and Kasich, or even an outside candidate, could come into the mix. ”If, at the convention, Trump or Cruz don’t win on the first two ballots, then I think the rules likely would get changed to open it up,” Barbour predicted. ”But that won’t happen unless a majority of delegates agree to it.” A deadlock that forces a third ballot is Kasich’s only real hope now  —   in fact, it’s mathematically impossible for him to achieve 1, 237 before the convention. But his allies hope that the fact that many of the delegates  —   now free agents  —   who are party stalwarts and have the ultimate goal of defeating Hillary Clinton if she’s the Democratic nominee will put their faith in Kasich as the strongest candidate to beat her in November. ”I do think Cruz is   and most of the delegates that are bound to him will be his people, but he’s going to be stuck around 650, 700 at the most, and he can’t go any further, because most of these party regulars that hold down the delegate seats don’t like him either,” argued Charlie Black, a longtime GOP power broker and Reagan 1976 convention veteran who is now advising Kasich. ”They think he’s way too conservative and not very nice.” If there’s still no victor after three ballots, almost all delegates are free to go where they want. Roughly 94 percent of them will be free agents. Kansas, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Wisconsin are all bound to their candidate until released by that candidate or until that candidate drops off the ballot. In Wisconsin, delegates are bound until a candidate drops below 33 percent of the vote on the convention floor, per state party officials. And if that’s the scenario, Republicans say to expect the unexpected  —   rules changes, more possible candidates and plenty of   behind the scenes. ”Nobody knows what’s really going to happen,” Barbour said. NPR’s Barbara Sprunt contributed to this report."
"This has been a tough year for celebrity deaths  —   and a sad week for fans of Prince, who died Thursday at age 57. But as flashes of purple filled my social media feeds from friends mourning Prince’s death, I just felt numb  —   and like an outsider, watching a ritual I couldn’t fully join. That’s because I grew up in a conservative evangelical home in the Midwest in the 1980s and ’90s, with pop culture kept carefully at arm’s length. We were told  —   at my charismatic church where the faithful ”spoke in tongues” and believed in miracles, and at my strict Christian school where girls wore skirts below the knees every day  —   that rock ’n’ roll was ”the devil’s music.” After a   of adult life on my own, I’ve learned to blend in, to laugh off the references I don’t get, to shake off the embarrassment about not really knowing much about evolution or falling silent when friends swap prom stories (no dancing at my high school). But this week brought back some of the old feelings of isolation that I first felt in the workplace and around peers from outside my evangelical cocoon  —   a sense of being out of place and maybe not quite right. Instead of David Bowie and Prince, I grew up on contemporary Christian artists like Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant  —   and some others you’ve probably never heard of. Even those artists who occasionally scored crossover hits that made it to the pop charts were viewed by some in my parents’ circles as too ”worldly” because their lyrics didn’t always mention Jesus. There were also concerns about Grant’s choice of red leather pants when she performed on stage. As a result, I missed many of the cultural icons of those decades. Being a   unlike some of my evangelical friends, I mostly toed the line and avoided forbidden ”secular music.” That’s until I realized that being the only kid in junior high who doesn’t know about the Casey’s Top 40 hit list from last Sunday night makes you an even odder duck than you already are at 13 with braces and bad skin. So each evening, I began saying goodnight to my parents, slipping my Walkman under the covers, turning my headphones down low and straining to hear the local radio station run through the ”Top 4 at 9” or ”Top 5 at 10.” I needed to fit in, and part of that was cultural literacy. That must have been when I first heard Prince and maybe even Bowie, although to this day, I can only name a handful of their songs. I couldn’t even hum a line of ”Purple Rain,” if I’m being honest. But there are a few memories I managed to sneak into my teenage experience. ”The Most Beautiful Girl In the World,” came out the year I was 14. I remember listening to it on the radio when my parents were out of the house, staring in the mirror and feeling, in my    awkwardness, that maybe I was beautiful, just for a minute. Then, there was ”1999,” which came out when I was an infant but quickly became an anthem for my high school graduating class  —   the Class of 1999. You couldn’t avoid it in the year or two leading up to the turn of the century. My driver’s license, that universal symbol of freedom, meant free reign on the car radio, and I’d dance in the car each time it came on, dreaming about graduation and the road ahead. That road meant a lot more freedom  —   but for whatever reason, I never really got caught up on some of the things I missed. I still have a mental list of ’80s movie classics I need to see and rockers I should probably learn more about, someday. But life goes on, and pop culture keeps churning out new material, and somehow listening carefully to ”Purple Rain” just never happened. So when I heard the first reports that Prince might have died, while on a conference call with colleagues, I tossed off some sort of callous joke like, ”Wait, is he currently known as Prince?” I was vaguely aware that he was still performing, but hadn’t absorbed how much he still meant to so many people. So while my friends were quoting Prince lyrics and reminiscing about going to Prince concerts, and strangers were gathering to mourn in Minneapolis, I just felt . .. like I was peering in the window of someone else’s wake. My friends were all in the same funeral procession marching by, and I was standing by watching. After Prince’s death, and Bowie’s a few months ago, and Michael Jackson’s several years back, I recognized, cognitively, their importance. I felt sympathy for my friends who felt their loss. But mostly, I’ve felt isolated from all of you who share these ties, and regret for what I missed. These cultural figures don’t just speak to us as individuals they join us together as a community. They create touchstones  —   without which, it’s easy to feel like an outsider."
"On April 21, a nation of music lovers waxed nostalgic about a time or place when Prince Rogers Nelson shook their world. And as the conversation around the country and around the world unfolded, we asked listeners to share their memories of Prince, his music and the impact he had on their lives. The stories poured in, and we collected some of the most affecting tales below. ”I’ve been listening to Prince since I was in utero. One of my earliest memories is a bitter one: my mom left my brother and I with a relative while she and my aunts went to see Prince. I was angry and resented the fact that I was not allowed to go along. I pouted the entire night and refused to go to bed, simply because I wanted to be awake and still visibly furious when my mom returned from the concert. I was 4. Many people have religion I have music. And in my church, Prince has always been, and will always be, my God. I received the news while at work today. My mother actually notified my boss when she was unable to get in contact with me, because she needed to be sure that I got the news from someone I love (preferably her). I’m truly at a loss, and I know I’m rambling, but Nothing Compares 2 U, Prince. I hope you are in a world of neverending happiness, where you can always see the sun, day or night. Your impact is immeasurable. Thank you for all you have contributed to my life.”  —   Crosby Franklin, ”I remember walking to the record store with my wad of dollars and coins in the pocket of my jeans. ..hurrying my little legs along with such excitement! I HAD to get Purple Rain. ..I hoped it wasn’t sold out. ..oh, what would I do? ??? I made it there, purchased my copy, and ran home to play it on the turntable in the basement. My dad was HORRIFIED when he heard ’Darling Nikki’ playing, but I begged and pleaded to be able to keep my very first record I ever bought with my own money. He agreed. (And secretly grew to love the song ”Purple Rain”. ..) Rest in Purple Paradise, you crazy, inspirational, talented, sexy man! Prince was like no other. How blessed we were to enjoy his talent.”  —   Heather Helmick, ”When I listened to the All Songs Considered +1 podcast about Bob Boilen’s book Your Song Changed My Life, I started thinking about the music that has been significant in my life  —   and there’s been a lot. If I had to write a chapter for that book, what would it be about? After much deliberation I finally settled on Prince’s album 1999. I distinctly remember using a $10 gift certificate I’d gotten for my 12th birthday to buy the cassette at Dillon Music in Kalamazoo, MI. I remember feeling nervous as I reached for the cassette on one of those rotating cassette towers it felt a little naughty, and I knew I was probably too young to buy it. But I did it anyway, feeling almost as if I’d won a dare. Honestly, the first thing that drew me to Prince was the line, ’Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?’ Ever the activist, I was drawn to his    questioning of the arms race, even if it did inexplicably come at the end of a pretty funky song that to me was about partying despite  —   or perhaps because of  —   the impending apocalypse. Soon my friends and I were dissecting the lyrics as we sang along at the back of the bus, playing the cassette on one of those portable Panasonic tape recorders. One of my more precocious friends explained all the sex stuff the rest of us didn’t understand. I loved that Prince was profound and dirty, sacred and profane, political and passionate. His was the first music I remember having an   conversation about, as I tried to make an argument to my friend in support of his complexity. He was himself, unapologetically and uncompromisingly so, a model I desperately needed as a painfully shy preteen. And he could DANCE! And he sang about dancing! Two years later, Purple Rain was the soundtrack of my first relationship, and first breakup. My purple vinyl ’Purple Rain’ 45 is still one of my prized possessions. He definitely helped me get through this thing called life.”  —   Eves Apple, ”One of the many artists whose songs would qualify for Your Song Changed My Life  —   as a 7th grader in Oklahoma I probably first became aware of him through MTV (’1999,’ ’Little Red Corvette’) maybe the radio? He was the first of many artists I became totally obsessed with  —   his   his personality, his perspectives, his race, and his sexual ambiguity made him irresistibly interesting and perplexing to a white, male adolescent in the center of the country in the suburbs. I wore my fandom on my sleeve from then until my late 20s (the ’90s). I have no doubt that he opened my mind to a bigger world which led me to New York City and a life as a fan of music, as well as a much broader perspective on what is normal and good (in life and art). I saw him perform up close at the Palladium (and other medium size clubs) at Radio City, and Madison Square Garden. He was always amazing  —   his presence on stage is magnetic and entertaining regardless of the venue. I carry a little bit of him with me everyday (you’d never guess it) wishing I could be just a little bit more like him.”  —   Grambeau, ”When I was a young teenaged girl, full of insecurities, doubting that I would ever be as gorgeous as what the 1980s considered to be gorgeous, not experienced at all, but aspiring to be. ..Prince’s music called out to me. I internalized it to some degree. It made me dance! It made me feel what he and his band members were trying to communicate, through lyrics and melody. And MAN, could Prince groove! I felt he was singing to me, and my aspirations. And today, I too am a Sexy Motherf****er.”  —   Macy Kalmanson Widofsky, ”One of my life’s epic little experiences was being 20 back in 1991 and getting to see Prince in Paris with my sister who was 14. I saw a poster in the metro and freaked, begging my mom to let me take my sister to this diversion of our trip. That night at the auditorium everyone was chanting something that sounded like ’Prawns! Prawns!’ before the show started. (Turned out it was ”Prince” with a french accent.) His show that night blew our minds 10 times over. We danced our asses off with every other Parisian in that place. And on the train ride home, we watched a drunk Frenchman sing ’Purple Rain’ to himself as he held himself up on a pole. I thank my mom and her adventurous spirit for encouraging us to go. It was an unforgettable night.”  —   India Nagy, ”His gospel was the cadence of my youth, but one memory that especially stands out, a moment when I felt the true release and ecstasy of his music, occurred one New Year’s Eve. I was an American traveling abroad, visiting my boyfriend at the time who was working in England. We went to a tiny local pub outside of London to celebrate New Year’s. I was really feeling just how painfully young I was and a bit disoriented in my identity as an American. I’m pretty introverted and reserved usually, but that night as we rang in the new year, the DJ blasted Prince’s ’1999.’ Everyone danced with utter and complete abandon. Oddly, it was one of the moments I felt proudest as an American. THIS is OUR music, I remember thinking the revelation was absolutely joyous and I completely lost sight of myself.”  —   Lala24, ”I have many memories of Prince from high school, but there’s one that especially sticks out to me this morning. I was 17 at the time, a junior in high school. My girlfriend was on the golf team, and occasionally I would act as her caddy when she practiced. We both loved Icees, so, after we finished up at the course, my girlfriend drove both of us to a convenience store. Prince’s ’Kiss’ came on the radio right as we pulled up to the gas station. My girlfriend immediately turned up the radio and parked. The two of us stayed in the car until the song ended, dancing and belting out every lyric. I remember the convenience store was busy at the time, and plenty of people passed by, staring or laughing, but we didn’t care. The song faded out, we went inside and bought our drinks, and we never really talked about it after that. It was a simple moment, but it meant a lot to me.”  —   Sk8zilla, ”August 14th, 2004: MCI Center in Washington DC. It was the Prince Musicology Tour. I went with my wife (then girlfriend) and her sister. They both had specially made   with Prince’s face airbrushed on them. I thought they were nuts. We were seated on the floor in the second row from the front. We were then treated to what became THEE greatest concert I’ve ever seen. A little over halfway through the show, I think it was ’U Got the Look,’ Prince starts to point out a handful of ladies in the crowd to get on stage and dance with him. Then. ... . in SLOW MOTION. .. he turns our way. ... with both index fingers, he points out my wife and her sister. I said to myself, ’it’s been a wonderful 2 years with this woman, but i’ll never see here again.’ It was those DUMB SHIRTS. ONLY through the grace of God, she came back. I can always say that for a few short minutes, Prince took my girl. .... with PRIDE.”  —   Robert Carter, ”I’ll never forget the first time I saw Prince on television. It was almost exactly 33 years ago. I was 15 years old. With my mom, grandma and little brother, I was visiting my aunt and uncle to celebrate my baby cousin’s first birthday. At some point during the day I went off to my aunt and uncles’ bedroom to lean against the foot of their bed and watch TV. I was delighted to discover they had MTV, something I didn’t have at home. Then the video for ’Little Red Corvette’ came on. To call this a   event might be hyperbole, but I don’t even remember who I went on my first date with, and I remember this. RIP Prince. There will never be another like you.”  —   Debamundo"
"In this year’s election cycle, international trade has emerged as a top campaign issue. So journalists with NPR and several   member stations set out this week to examine trade matters as part of our special   series: A Nation Engaged. We journalists learned a lot about what Americans are saying about trade. You can join in the learning process and conversation on this page, where we’ve pulled together the stories and interviews. If you don’t have time to dive into all of it, here are some of the comments that helped us tell stories about the good and bad impacts of trade. Listen to the audio above for a discussion of trade in the political season with NPR’s Michel Martin, NPR’s Marilyn Geewax and Colorado Public Radio’s Megan Verlee. "
"A few ”short” years ago, during my sophomore year at The City College of New York, some fellow Caribbean classmates told me that the education department was offering a ”free” course, called Thinking Chess, for three credits. As an international student from Barbados, paying almost four times more in tuition than locals, the idea of getting ”free” credits in a system where we had to pay for everything was nothing short of a miracle. I jumped at the idea of taking the class because, after all, who doesn’t want to save a few dollars living in a foreign country away from one’s family? More than that, I’d always wanted to learn chess. And, as if I weren’t psyched enough about free credits, the kicker sold me  —   the class was going to be taught by an international grandmaster. I may have been a novice at chess, but I sure knew that a grandmaster meant I would be learning from one of the game’s best. Details about our    got even more exciting. Not only was he a grandmaster, but he was the first   and   grandmaster in chess  —   a designation that brought me immense pride as a West Indian. His name is Maurice Ashley. It was my first time hearing about him, but I could hardly wait to meet him and learn the game that brought him fame  —   and of course, earn those free easy credits. Ashley was amiable and smart, a proud alum returning to his alma mater to teach, and this assignment was no game for him he meant business. In his introduction, he told us that ours was an addition to the many classes he’d been teaching throughout New York City since 1988 to students ages 5 to 18. His lessons, he noted, were not simply to instruct students on how to play chess, but how to apply its tactics and strategies to life. Ashley made it clear that our credits would be   and in order to pass the class, among other criteria, we had to (1) attempt to checkmate him in a limited number of moves and (2) write a paper on how we plan to apply the tactics and strategies of chess to our respective chosen professions and, ultimately, our lives. All of a sudden, what I thought would be three easy credits seemed as daunting as the chances of my actually becoming a grandmaster. I didn’t checkmate Ashley in my practical chess exam, but I got an A in that course and learned life lessons that have served me well beyond the classroom. These nuggets came to mind last week when Ashley made headlines. As the U. S. Chess Championships got underway, he received one of the highest honors bestowed to an American chess grandmaster  —   induction into the U. S. Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis. The occasion caused me to reflect on his journey from Jamaica to the world stage and how for almost 30 years he has influenced the lives of countless students  —   mine included  —   through teaching chess. Thinking Chess With Maurice Ashley, I found my old college essay from the chess course I took with Ashley and I reached out to him for an interview. On revisiting my essay, I smiled at how my takeaway from that class was in sync with what he told me this past week. In part, my essay said: ”My most profound lesson from learning the strategies and tactics of chess is the cognizance of the consequence of my actions. . .. I learned that similar to finding every possible convergent square on the chess board, to think through all available options I have when faced with a problem or decision and to consider what may be the result of my actions.” And when I asked Ashley recently what he most wants to teach when instructing students on the game, his answer reiterated what I’d learned: ”The absolute most important skill that you learn when you play chess is how to make good decisions. On every single move you have to analyze a situation, process what your opponent is doing and evaluate the best move from amongst all your options.” Ashley says he finds great gratification in reconnecting with students. ”I have had students come up to me later as grown adults to tell me about how chess has helped to transform their lives with their ability to think more critically, to process data more rapidly and to make better decisions,” he says. Taking Ashley back down memory lane, I asked him what he’d accomplished from teaching my class (whose students were mostly education majors). ”The class allowed me to teach the principles behind chess and important critical thinking skills that students develop when they play the game,” he says. ”It was my goal to infect teachers with a love for the game and the belief that they themselves could teach chess in an actual classroom.” Taking Chess To Ferguson, Most of Ashley’s teaching engagements over the years have been through the Chess in the Schools program in New York City and the Harlem Educational Activities Fund. These days, he has also partnered with the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis to bring chess to places like Ferguson, Mo. ”It always warms my heart to be able to teach kids in the five boroughs of New York City, but also to be able to impact young people nationwide,” he says. Several of Ashley’s students have participated in national competitions, and three teams  —   including the Raging Rooks and the Dark Knights  —   have won national championships. While he’s proud of students who become great chess players, he insists his motivation is not to create grandmasters. ”I’ve had students who have gone onto Harvard, NYU, Yale, the University of Michigan and many other top universities because they’ve taken those skills from chess that have allowed them to apply [them] to academics and to life. That’s really what’s critical for me, that they are learning to be better students, role models and citizens.” From Jamaica To The Chess Hall Of Fame, Ashley, 50, was 12 years old when he emigrated from Jamaica to New York City with his mother. He grew up on the tough streets of Brooklyn, and during his teenage years at Brooklyn Technical High School, he honed his chess playing skills in the city’s parks and chess clubs. ”Sometimes I didn’t feel as though the world could hear my voice or that people really cared,” he says. ”But I found that with hard work and especially with pursuing your passion, you can grow in ways that you could never have imagined.” Ashley got his first big title in 1992 when he shared the U. S.   chess championship with Maxim Dlugy. In 1999, he created history by becoming not only the first   international grandmaster, but also the first  . He’s won several other accolades for various roles in chess, but says his April 13 induction into the U. S. Chess Hall of Fame has been like a ”fairy tale ride.” He says he never thought that one day his name and face would be mounted on a wall with the greatest chess players of all time. In fact, he doesn’t even fancy himself a great chess player. ”A grandmaster, yes, but I am not among the   top players,” he says. ”So I’m humbled because this is recognition of not only some of my accomplishments as a player, but primarily for my accomplishments as a promoter and as an ambassador of the sport.” He adds, ”It means that everything that I’ve put into this game that I love, the blood, sweat and tears, the hard work, and the suffering through the lean times have been recognized as meaningful to others.” Inspiring Others Through Chess Success, Ashley sees his accomplishments as a way of inspiring others, particularly those who come from similar beginnings. And he’s encouraging everyone to follow their dreams, no matter how nontraditional. His focus, however, remains on teaching. ”Everyone should introduce their children to the game of chess,” he says. ”It’s an inexpensive way of teaching your children lifelong skills that they will use for the rest of their lives.” I can testify to that. Ten years after my chess class with Maurice Ashley, I’m still putting to use the lessons he taught me. These sentiments, in another excerpt from my Thinking Chess essay, rings true today in my role as a journalist: ”The most pertinent strategy from chess that I can immediately apply to my profession is the concept of loyalty that surrounds   the king. . .. One must utilize the full army of pawns, bishops, knights, rooks and the powerful queen to destroy enemies and safeguard the mighty king. As a journalist, my immediate loyalties are to the company for which I work, my sources, my contemporaries, the ethics of my profession and myself in upholding integrity.”"
"For hundreds of years, Timbuktu has had a place in the world’s imagination. Located on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, the city flourished as a center of Islamic culture and scholarship in the 13th through 16th centuries. It was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988, recognized for the University of Sankore, which had as many as 25, 000 students who studied the Quran, as well as the historic Djingareyber and Sidi Yahia mosques. Timbuktu was a center of the manuscript trade, with traders bringing Islamic texts from all over the Muslim world. Despite occupations and invasions of all kinds since then, scholars managed to preserve and even restore hundreds of thousands of manuscripts dating from the 13th century. But that changed when militant Islamists backed by   arrived in 2012. The hardline Islamists didn’t see these texts as part of their Islamic heritage, but as idolatry, contradicting their interpretation of Islam. They set about destroying important cultural icons, including   mausoleums of Sufi Muslim saints. Librarians feared the city’s prized medieval collections of manuscripts would be next. Librarian Abdel Kader Haidara organized and oversaw a secret plot to smuggle 350, 000 medieval manuscripts out of Timbuktu. Joshua Hammer chronicled Haidara’s story in the book The   Librarians of Timbuktu. Hammer spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about how a librarian became an ”operator.” Interview highlights contain some extended   answers. Why these manuscripts were so important, These volumes  —   and we’re talking hundreds of thousands of them  —   at the point at which   invaded Timbuktu, there were something like 370, 000 manuscripts amassed in libraries in Timbuktu. And they portrayed Islam as practiced in this corner of the world as a blend of the secular and the religious  —   or they showed that the two could coexist beautifully. And they did in this city. So it was tremendously important for Haidara and those who supported him to protect and preserve these manuscripts as evidence of both Mali’s former greatness and the tolerance that that form of Islam encouraged. On Abdel Kader Haidara’s background, Abdel Kader Haidara was a son of a scholar and he grew up in an intellectual environment in Timbuktu. He was not a wealthy person. After his father’s death in the early 1980s he inherited the family’s   manuscript collection. So in 1984 the head of the Ahmed Baba Institute, the   library in Timbuktu, called on Haidara and said, ”Hey, we’re having trouble getting off the ground, we need to find manuscripts. We know they’re out there, they’re hidden away in the desert, in river towns. Can you undertake this job of traveling around northern Mali, tracking down these manuscripts that have been lost  —   buried, disappeared  —   over generations? Gather them up, we’ll give you money. And we want this library to be splendid. We want this to be something that people from all around the world will come to visit. So go out, do your best, find books for us.” He was reluctant at first, but the call of duty and the curator’s constant pressure prevailed. And in 1984 he began this what turned into a   really amazing quest to ferret out these manuscripts all across Mali. How Libya changed Mali, In 2011, the Arab Spring breaks out. Gadhafi’s downfall, the arsenals of Libya  —   in the chaos of Gadhafi’s murder and the disintegration of the Libyan state  —   are opened for the taking. Then you’ve got these various rebel groups in Mali. You’ve got Islamic radicals all descending on Libya  —   on these arsenals. Walking in, loading up their pickup trucks with heavy weaponry, driving through the dust across the desert back to Mali. And so these heavily armed rebels sweep across the desert and in three months have captured   of the country. Why he decided to do what he did, The first thing that Abdel Kader was worried about, frankly, was looting. In the first few days after the rebels took over Timbuktu and the army and the police had fled, there was total disorder. That’s when he kind of began to scheme  —   ”Hey, the great treasures of Timbuktu are being held in these very ostentatious libraries.” He said, ”These are going to be targets.” The looting subsided pretty quickly. But as it subsided, you had this growing radicalism, you had Islamic police roaring through the streets, stopping people, throwing them in jail, grabbing cigarettes out of their mouths, whipping them in public. He just foresaw that this was going to get worse, and that the manuscripts, which as we already said expressed values that were anathema to fundamentalist Islam  —   to Wahhabi Islam  —   were in danger. That sooner or later, these manuscripts are going to be held hostage. They’re going to become political tools, they could be destroyed in an act of vengeance, caught up in military action. We’ve got to protect them. So that’s when Abdel Kader and a small group of his supporters, friends, relatives got together and began what ended up being a   effort to protect, and essentially smuggle to safety, all of these manuscripts. Becoming a ’badass’ Let’s remember that Abdel Kader was more than a librarian, this guy had spent 12 years as a badass explorer, as an adventurer. He was traveling on camels across the Sahara, on riverboats, going to small villages, finding these manuscripts. So he was an operator. So when the time came, he just knew what to do. He said, ”The first thing we’re going to do is get them out of these big libraries. We’re going to take trunks, we’re going to pack them into trunks at night when the rebels are asleep. And then we’re going to move them in the dead of night by mule cart to these various houses  —   safe houses, scattered around the city. We’re going to stick them in there and hopefully they’ll be safe for the duration of this occupation.” Which of course, nobody knew when that was going to end. Why it’s important, One of the things that I think is important to draw from it is to realize that there is this whole strain of Islam that is moderate, that celebrates intellectuality, that celebrates culture, that celebrates diversity, secular ideas, poetry, love, human beauty. I think that is lost in this debate that’s going on. We tend to really kind of turn against Islam because of the actions of this particularly violent group. But I think in fact that the Islam represented by those in Timbuktu and the badass librarians is in fact more representative of what Islam is. And these people [who] were the real victims of extremism in this part of the world are fellow Muslims. They were the ones who really suffered. They were the ones who had their hands and feet chopped off, who had to live through the horror of daily occupation. For the most part, we see this from afar, but these people are on the front lines and they are living through the horror of radicalism every day and every minute. Where the manuscripts are now, He hopes that he’ll be able to return them to Timbuktu. They are in about a dozen   storage rooms in Bamako, the capital of Mali. And as far as moving them back, he’s waiting. I mean, these are very hard people to root out. But Timbuktu is a ghost town  —   tourists aren’t going there, flights aren’t going there. It’s very sad. And I don’t know and he doesn’t know if those glory days can ever be recaptured, given the strength of the Islamists  —   the terrorists in that area, in that part of the world."
"When it comes to Shakespeare’s legacy, it seems safe to conclude that ”what’s past is prologue.” Today marks 400 years since the day Shakespeare died, and people are celebrating his life and work around the world. April 23 is also believed to be the Bard’s birthday. As you might expect, the biggest events honoring Shakespeare are taking place in the U. K. The Globe Theatre, a replica of the theater Shakespeare once partially owned, has organized an interactive event called ”The Complete Walk.” The 2. 5 mile course incorporates 37 short films  —   and each ”explores one of Shakespeare’s plays and includes scenes shot in the locations Shakespeare imagined when he wrote them.” For example: a scene from Julius Caesar filmed in Rome and a scene from Antony and Cleopatra filmed next to a pyramid in Egypt. ”Highlighting Shakespeare’s international appeal, the Complete Walk is also being exported to cities beyond Britain including Madrid, Gdansk and Taipei,” Reuters reports. President Barack Obama, who is on a trip to the U. K. at the moment, paid a visit to the Globe. Larry Miller tells our Newscast unit that he was ”given a bit of a private performance.” ”The president spent some time looking at the structure and asking questions before being treated to a 10 minute scene from Hamlet, with the soliloquy ’To be or not to be,’ ” Larry reported. ”It was performed by a company that over the last two years took the play to 197 countries including war zones and migrant camps.” When the performance was over, Obama said ”That was wonderful. . .. I don’t want it to stop,” as Larry reported. Shakespeare’s birthplace    hosted a parade to honor him, where jolly crowds wore period costumes and masks adorned with Shakespeare’s face. The British Royal Ballet is celebrating with a   ”event focused around opera and ballet adaptations of his work.” It’s part of a broader Shakespeare Day live stream, including events from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare’s Globe, the BFI and Hay Festival. You can watch it live through the BBC here. London’s transport system is celebrating by releasing a new underground map, renaming tube stations after Shakespeare’s plays and characters. Google is also paying tribute to the Bard with the graphic on its search page. ”We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” the caption reads. On Twitter, people are chatting about Shakespeare and his legacy using the trending hashtags #Shakespeare400 and#ShakespeareLives. As an added bonus, a Shakespeare emoji attaches to both hashtags when you type them. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C. is going to be hosting a live event starting at noon ET, when ”a diverse array of actors, community leaders, artists, and scholars will share their connections to Shakespeare through compelling performances and personal stories.” According to The Associated Press, guests include Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, actor and former White House official Kal Penn, and NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan. Other events are happening around the world, from Egypt. .. To India. .. To Jordan. .. To Chicago, along with many others. Are you and your community marking the day? Let us know how in the comments."
"Editor’s note: This week, to mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, we will be running a series of stories examining the links between food and the Bard. In Shakespeare’s time, England was a hungry and volatile nation. Cycles of endless, torrential rain repeatedly wiped out crops and drove up food prices. Both bread and ale demanded increasingly expensive wheat and barley. And some tried to make a quick shilling off the catastrophe by hoarding grain and holding it back from the open market  —   thus hiking up food bills even further. The result? Political disorder and social unrest. Shakespeare tried to make meaning of it all by transforming the national drama into stories for the stage. Take A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s an   world where authority is all out of whack: The fairy king and queen battle for power, a headstrong daughter defies her father, and Puck turns just about everything the wrong way round. Titania, the fairy queen, has a theory about why they can’t get it together: fog, flood, village greens ”filled up with mud,” the ”drowned field,” and the young corn that ”rotted” before it ripened. Chaos in the social realm, Shakespeare poetically hints, springs from chaos in the natural world. But in Coriolanus, the playwright makes the struggle real. The play, based on the life of the legendary Roman leader Caius Marcius Coriolanus, opens with citizens armed with ”staves, clubs, and other weapons” in protest against the city fathers they accuse of hoarding grain while the populace starves. The resistance leader insists he fights ”in hunger for bread, not thirst for revenge”  —   even as he rallies the masses to rebellion ”rather to die than to famish.” Then Menenius  —   a Roman patrician who brags about his own indulgences  —   tries to fob off the citizens by blaming ”the gods” (i. e. the weather) rather than the politicians. The citizens don’t buy it. As Theodore Leinwand, professor of English at the University of Maryland, tells me, there was a popular saying of the time: ”The belly has no ears.” In other words, hungry people don’t want to listen to   speeches about ”being patient.” And during Shakespeare’s time, the English people were plenty hungry. The country saw at least 40 food riots between 1586 and 1631, as historian Buchanan Sharp records in his classic work In Contempt of All Authority. Shakespeare was new on the London scene just as the city was rocked by the food riots of the 1590s. And the bard well knew the   1608 ”Midland Rising” that affected his home turf in Warwickshire.. Scholars suggest Shakespeare drew on both in writing Coriolanus. Throughout these hard years, Queen Elizabeth I and her successor, King James I, issued edicts that banned ”rich owners of corn” from hoarding the crop, ”thereby to increase the prices.” Justices of the peace were called on to prevent just such profiteering. Even Shakespeare was fined for being a grain speculator. At the same time, wealthy landowners living it up in London were royally rebuked for not returning to their country manors to provide relief for the ”multitude of poor people.” And who exactly were this hungry ”multitude?” ”The ’middling sort’,” says Leinwand  —   basically, the same group of people that ”slowly, over hundreds of years, morphs into what we call the middle class.” In Jacobean times, that meant people like craftsmen and tradesmen  —   like goldsmiths, haberdashers and leather sellers. But these ”middling sort” were in ”a tenuous position in Shakespeare’s day,” explains Leinwand, ”just as the middle class is today.” It didn’t take much to slide into ”the poorer sort”  —   or what   Coriolanus viciously disregards as the ”  many.” These connections between Shakespeare’s time and our own are even sharper for professor Richard Marggraf Turley of the U. K.’s University of Aberystwyth, who   a book that explores the ways in which food anxieties manifest in literature. Today’s ”anxieties and crises around food and food security aren’t new,” Turley says, ”and the problems have not significantly evolved.” He says in plays like Coriolanus and King Lear, Shakespeare explored ”the psychology of these issues and the way they play through the populace.” Indeed, though King Lear is often thought of as a family drama, Turley and his   argue that, at its core, the play is really about food insecurity. When Lear divides up his kingdom, his daughter Cordelia is granted ”the   areas,” but her sisters, Goneril and Regan, are stuck with Scotland and Wales, which don’t produce bread. ”Of course the two sisters are going to invade,” says Turley  —   otherwise, ”they can’t feed their people.” And Shakespeare, he points out, ”who grew up in and returned to Warwickshire, the bread basket of England, was best placed to write about food riots and food constraints.” But while food was  —   and remains  —   political, argues Leinwand, ”given that it’s Shakespeare, it’s also a metaphor. It’s a way of exploring what it means to be a human, which is what it means to be needy, to have hunger and desire.”"
"April 23 is a big day in England: It’s St. George’s Day, a national holiday named for the country’s patron saint, and it’s also the day William Shakespeare is said to have been born and died. This April 23 marks the 400th anniversary of his death. According to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s artistic director, Gregory Doran, the only account of Shakespeare’s death was written 40 years after it happened, by the vicar of the church where he’s buried. ”[The vicar wrote] that Shakespeare and his friends Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton had a ’merry meeting,’ drank too much and ’Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted,’ ” Doran says. ”So it sounds like Bill and Ben and their friend Mike went out for a birthday binge and overdid it, and he shuffled off his mortal coil.” There was also a typhoid epidemic in 1616 and Shakespeare could have died of that  —   but Doran prefers the drinking story. Doran’s company is marking the 400th anniversary with four history plays, which they’re performing at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music. The plays  —   Richard II, Henry IV parts one and two, and Henry V  —   reveal much about what makes Shakespeare great: his gift for lyric poetry, bawdy comedy and depicting heroic triumphs and tragic downfalls. Actor David Tennant (known for his appearances in the TV series Doctor Who and Broadchurch) plays the tragic King Richard II. Tennant believes that, more than 400 years ago, Shakespeare saw how history repeated itself. ”I think whenever you put [his plays] on, you see political resonances,” he says. ”Maybe that says more about the fact that we, as a society, never seem to learn from history, or maybe it just talks about Shakespeare’s ability to get to the kernel of human experience and to be expressing those eternal truths about how we live our lives, how we attempt to create power structures”  —   structures that crumble, as they do for Tennant’s character. While Richard II deals primarily with the aristocracy, the two Henry IV plays present the upper and lower classes of England. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Gregory Doran says, ”There’s a real huge picture of society: from the king down to the boy who serves in the pub, from the country justice to the prostitute.” And then there’s the    character of Falstaff, a rogue and a liar who serves as a mentor to Henry IV’s son, Hal, as he progresses from prince to king over the course of three plays. Antony Sher plays Falstaff in the Royal Shakespeare Company productions. He calls him ”the Lord of Misrule,” or the guy who breaks all the rules. It’s a character that transcends not only the ages, but very different cultures. Sher says that before the company landed in Brooklyn, it played Beijing, and ”as soon as we started playing in front of Chinese audiences, we realized again Shakespeare is such a good writer that he doesn’t write history lessons  —   he writes great drama. Every society has a Falstaff.” The plays also have a way of fitting into the moment. The company presented Henry V last November, a day after the terror attacks in Paris. In the play, after the English defeat the French in battle, Henry reads a list of the slaughtered French soldiers. During that scene, Gregory Doran says, ”You could hear a pin drop. Shakespeare wasn’t intending that, and he wouldn’t know 400 years ago that this was going to happen on this particular day but it did and it made a deep impression.” Doran says, ”Shakespeare somehow is like a magnet that attracts all the iron filings of whatever is going on in the world. And somehow, because he articulates 360 degrees of humanity, inevitably he talks about today as much as he talks about his time.”"
"As a Latina who married into a Jewish family, I’ve long lobbied my   to include beans and rice on the Passover menu. The holiday is a time when Jews avoid leavened foods in commemoration of their biblical exodus from Egypt  —   when they had to flee so fast, they couldn’t even let the bread rise. But beans and rice aren’t leavened, I’ve argued, so why not include them in the Seder meal? The answer I’ve long gotten from my   : tradition. You see, like many American Jews, my    is of European ancestry, or Ashkenazi. And by tradition, Ashkenazi Jews don’t eat legumes, rice, seeds and corn on Passover. As Rabbi Amy Levin tells NPR’s Scott Simon, the custom banning my beloved rice and beans  —   as well as foods like lentils, edamame and popcorn  —   dates back to the 13th century. She says ”it has been controversial right from the start . .. simply because the custom prohibits foods that are, according to Torah law (which is like, the Jewish Constitution) permitted to be eaten.” And custom is a powerful force at the Passover table. The ritual foods eaten during the Seder  —   like bitter herbs, which serve to recall the hard times Jews endured as slaves in ancient Egypt  —   are edible reminders of Jewish history and identity. But this year, as I lobby my    yet again, I’ve got rabbis in my corner. Last December, the Rabbinical Assembly  —   an international group of rabbis within the Conservative denomination of Judaism  —   ruled that it is in fact OK to add rice, beans and corn and other   kitniyot to the Passover table. For Ashkenazic Jews, it’s the first time in eight centuries that these foods are welcome during the holiday. Sephardic Jews, whose roots trace back to the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and the Middle East, have long considered these foods kosher for Passover. (Which makes sense, given that chickpeas and other legumes feature prominently in the Israeli diet.) In fact, Levin, who   the opinion, says that America’s Jewish community actually began as a Sephardic community in the 17th and 18th century. ”But by the 19th century and 20th century, with huge waves of immigration from Europe, the American Jewish community became a heavily Ashkenazi Jewish community,” she says. That has been changing in the past 15 to 20 years, she says. During that time, ”a lot of Jews from Israel of Sephardic background  —   the part of the Jewish world that has eaten rice and beans and corn for Passover and lentils all along  —   have come to settle in the States. And so the question has come up as to whether it’s appropriate to maintain these separate customs. ”I’ve always had at least one or two couples that are  —   we call them Ashkephards  —   meaning that one person is from an Ashkenazi background, and one person is from a Sephardic background,” Levin says. ”And then they’re sitting at the Seder table, looking at each other, like, ’Are we eating the rice or aren’t we eating the rice?’ ” Armed with the rabbis’ new ruling, I once again broached the subject with my    just before this year’s Seder. Her answer surprised me: ”Sure, why not?” How is this night different from any other night indeed!"
"Wearing a black coat and holding a cane in his right hand, Movses Haneshyan stands in front of a   canvas. He stares at a winding road, a fir tree, distant mountains and a deep blue sky. He approaches the image slowly, and begins to cry, ”My home. My Armenia.” Haneshyan says he last saw his home a century ago. As a    he was forced to flee during what Armenians call Medz Yeghern, the ”Great Crime” of 1915  —   the systematic murder by Ottoman Turks of Armenian people in their historic homeland, which now lies in   Turkey. The total number killed has been estimated at between 800, 000 and 1. 5 million. To date, more than 20 countries have officially recognized the killings as genocide, but Turkey is not one of them. Today, more Armenians live outside their country than inside. I am one of them. I was born in Moscow to Armenian parents, and was raised in California. For most of my life, I struggled with my Armenian identity, partly because of the history I inherited. I was separated from my father as a child, while he stayed back in Armenia. It took me 15 years to make the journey back to Armenia to find him. I was 23. A year ago, I began to research the remaining survivors of the genocide as part of an IDeA   project. I took on this project because I wanted to connect. I wanted to learn about the history in a deeper way. Ages can be hard to confirm, but I perused Armenian voter registrations online to see who was born before 1915, and then traveled across Armenia to find them. I met 10 survivors along the way. Among them were Movses Haneshyan, Yepraksia Gevorgyan and Mariam Sahakyan —   who all, according to those records, have lived past their hundredth year. All three fled the   territory with their families after the mass killings. None ever returned. The stories they told me were traumatic  —   from the violence each lived through as a child to the lengths their parents went to get them out safely. Gevorgyan, now 108, escaped by crossing the Araks River to what is   Armenia. She described seeing Turks kill her father, throwing him into the water, which she described as ”red, full of blood.” Sahakyan, 102, was taken into a Kurdish family home, where her family members became servants. She and her relatives later escaped to Syria. She recalls her mother telling stories of how the family hid in grass and walked at night for three days to flee Ottoman soldiers. Her memories have now been passed down to her two sons, who are proud that their family comes from Sason, a region in southeastern Turkey that holds particular historical significance for Armenians. It’s the setting for an Armenian national epic from the 8th to 10th centuries and it tells how Armenian fighters, led by a legendary ruler named David Sason, repulsed repeated Arab invasions. When I met them, it had been nearly a century since the survivors had seen their home. I wanted in some way to reunite them with their homeland. Based on the childhood memories they shared with me, I traveled to Turkey, took an image of what remained and brought it back to them. When I told the survivors I would be going back, each one asked me to fulfill a wish. Movses Haneshyan drew a map of his village and asked me to find his church and leave his portrait on the footsteps of what are now ruins. Yepraksia Gevorgyan asked me to help her find her older brother, from whom she was separated after 1915. Mariam Sahakyan requested that I bring back soil for her to be buried in. I never found Gevorgyan’s brother. But I returned with a story for Haneshyan, and a container of dirt for Sahakyan. When she opened it, she touched the land and thanked me. ”You’ve brought the smell of my village to me,” she said."
"Wine retailer David Trone is pouring $12. 4 million of his own money into his campaign for a Maryland congressional district  —   the most ever from a   House candidate. Ahead of the Democratic primary on Tuesday for this suburban Washington, D. C. seat, his decision to entirely   his race with such an exorbitant investment is fueling a debate over money in politics and whether bankrolling your campaign  —   much like a certain GOP presidential   has done  —   is a positive or a negative. A Risky, Expensive Investment, Trone founded the Total Wine  More superstores. He says win or lose, he doesn’t regret the decision to put so much of his own personal wealth on the line in a crowded primary for this rare open seat. ”We knew it would be very expensive. We’re not surprised by what it cost at all. We anticipated that, and it was a thoughtful choice my wife and I made,” Trone told NPR as he was campaigning outside the Glenmont Metro station in Silver Spring, Md. earlier this week. ”It was the right decision to take no money from anybody.” The   candidate says the gamble to use his own cash was a necessary one for him to be competitive in a   race where there are few policy differences between candidates in the firmly liberal district. He especially needed to get parity with his   top rivals: former local TV anchor Kathleen Matthews and state Sen. Jamie Raskin, both of whom have been visible in the region for years and enjoy high name recognition. And while most candidates had been campaigning for several months for the seat, he only threw his hat in the ring in January of this year. Thanks to his    cash infusion  —   more than a single candidate has spent even in the state’s hotly contested Democratic Senate primary  —   Trone’s been blanketing the expensive D. C. media market to raise his own profile. His slickly produced ads on radio and TV detail his rise from the struggling Pennsylvania farm that went bankrupt to   the largest privately owned beer, wine and spirits retailer in the country. The Democratic Donald Trump?  Trone is taking some contribution, but not more than $10 (his website blocks anything larger). He can’t recoup any of the money he’s given his campaign either, because it’s not a loan many   candidates eventually repay themselves. He argues that refusing donations is what separates him from another wealthy businessman who’s bankrolling his campaign: Donald Trump. Trone points out that Trump is in fact accepting donations for his White House bid  —   about $9. 5 million so far. And while Trump’s main selling point is also his business acumen, Trone says unlike the bombastic real estate mogul, he didn’t ”start 10 feet from home plate,” alluding to the financial help the Republican got from his own father as he was starting his career. So why entirely fund his campaign? Trone said he didn’t relish the thought of spending the majority of his time fundraising, even though as a longtime Democratic donor he argued it wouldn’t have been hard to raise the money he needed. Plus, he says the decision keeps him beholden to no one  —   a familiar refrain Trump also uses on the campaign trail. ”When you do take money from the lobbyists and the PACs, no matter what you say, they get a couple of extra seats at the table,” Trone said, noting he would actually favor public financing for elections. ”We’d rather be able to be completely open and listen to both sides of the issues and make a decision that’s right for the voters.” ”Certainly my opponents have that ability and they’ve chosen not to do that,” he argued, noting his rivals also have deep personal pockets and could have put significant amounts behind their candidacies, too. The Washington Post pegged the net worth of Kathleen Matthews, who is married to MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews, as somewhere between $22. 5 million and $61. 3 million as of 2014. She has loaned her campaign $500, 000. Trone and his wife’s estimated worth is between $17 million and $68. 5 million. Raskin and his wife, a deputy Treasury secretary, had assets between $2. 8 million and $6. 8 million. In a recent ad, Trone criticizes his opponents for taking money from lobbyists. But in turn they have alleged such boasting is hypocritical given the millions he’s donated in the past. ”David Trone’s the last person on earth who should attack Kathleen or anyone else on ethics,” Matthews’ campaign manager Ethan Susseles told Bethesda Magazine. ”He built his fortune by spending millions on lobbyists and buying political access. Now he’s spending millions trying to buy a congressional seat like it’s a fine bottle of wine. It won’t fly in this district.” Raskin, who’s pointed to his progressive record in Annapolis, has also argued Trone is trying to put a price tag on a seat that isn’t for sale. ”Public office isn’t something that you buy, it’s something that you earn through your devotion to the public good and your service to the community,” Raskin said at a debate last month. ”I would put my record of public service up against anybody running for Congress in America right now.” How Much Is Too Much To Spend?  Herbert Smith, a professor of political science and director of government relations at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. said that while traditionally   candidates hadn’t had much success at the ballot box, Trump’s emergence may have changed the narrative this year. And that could benefit Trone. ”I think Trump has validated   as a positive good in this election cycle far more than the historic record would indicate,” Smith said. ”Whether that plays as well with a Democratic electorate versus a Republican primary electorate, that’s what we’ll find out Tuesday night.” Trone’s investment has certainly helped him become   in the region. As he shook hands for over an hour outside the Metro station on Thursday, several stopped him, telling him they recognized him from his commercials. ”You’re doing a good job. I’m going to vote for you!” one young man told him, fistbumping the candidate as he headed down the escalator. A woman stopped and asked if he would take a selfie with her. Muriel Cooper of Silver Spring stopped to shake Trone’s hand and said she is leaning toward voting for him. She said she wasn’t turned off by the fact that he’s spending so much of his own money on the race. ”I think he’s an interesting candidate. I know he’s financing the campaign himself, which is wonderful if you’re able to do that,” she said. ”I think people are smart enough to look beyond the money. You can’t buy my vote.” But others say the oversaturation of the airwaves and nonstop direct mail fliers have turned them off  —   a complaint that Smith, the political science professor, says he’s heard often, too. Doug Dollemore of Silver Spring, who had already cast his ballot early for Raskin, said the daily barrage of mail pieces had the opposite effect on him. ”I think that your primary campaign was over the top. It was just too much, too often,” he said, confronting Trone. ”It was like getting a phone call from your girlfriend asking you if you still loved her every 15 minutes.”"
"The Hackensaw Boys are back. The   string band has made its own brand of music since 1999, after getting together in Charlottesville, Va.  —   and though its lineup has changed and its sound mellowed, the group is still going strong. Members David Sickmen, Ferd Moyse and Brian Gorby joined NPR’s Scott Simon to talk about the new album Charismo hear their conversation at the audio link."
"Early morning light filters into the cavernous gymnasium as Neetu lunges, climbs and contorts her body into impossible positions. She shimmies up a thick rope that dangles from the   ceiling, her heavily muscled arms propelling her upward. She races through calisthenics with 25 other young women in the boot camp atmosphere of Chhotu Ram Stadium and Wrestling Center, in the Indian state of Haryana, known for its wrestling tradition. The grueling    practice —   4 hours in the morning and 3   in the afternoon —   is her ordinary routine. But there is nothing ordinary about this young woman, who prefers to be known simply by her first name. Her journey to become a promising athlete began from a most unpromising place: as a child bride. At 13, Neetu was married off to a man three times her age. ”He was mentally challenged,” says Neetu. When he defecated in the house, she refused to clean it up, incensing her   . Even worse was a    who acted like a sexual predator. ”One day when no one was home, he took me into his bedroom and pulled off my veil,” she remembers. ”He warned  —   ’Don’t tell anyone.’ ” Neetu lives in a world where, as she puts it, ”If a man does something bad to a girl, it’s her fault.” Still she told her father, who extracted her from the marriage. But to avoid any social stigma, her parents soon married her off again. At age 14, she gave birth to twin sons. To help support her family, Neetu has tried on many careers. She’s worked as a beautician, a maid, a shop clerk and a   tailor. ”I learned to sew just by unstitching old suits and restitching them back together. I couldn’t afford training. I had no money,” she says. Then she got into a neighborhood scrape, stepping in to defend an   and took a blow to the head with an iron rod. She was unconscious for weeks. Even when she recovered, she was not the same. ”I started having fits.” Her tailoring clients stopped coming. Being poor did not dent the dreams of this seemingly indefatigable young woman. Nor did the fact that she only had a 7th grade education. Since childhood she had a knack for sports,   over her grandmother’s bushes. Neetu recalls astonished neighbors seeing her, a small girl, haul home heavy iron canisters of gas for cooking. Watching the TV coverage of international games staged in New Delhi several years ago, Neetu was inspired by wrestling, an individual sport  —   ”You get lost in a team,” she says. And now it’s become her passion. ”I love my wrestling,” she says. ”Wrestling is my life. I have to do this for my children, so that they can do all the things I couldn’t do in my childhood.” Disadvantaged girls like Neetu increasingly see the sport, with its potential earnings, as a path out of poverty, says coach Mandeep Singh. There is prize money and there are jobs to be had. India’s Railway Board, for example, sponsors athletes to be part of the Railways official wrestling squads. By their   athletes must retire, then assume a permanent post with the railroads, a job many wrestlers covet. Few train with Neetu’s discipline. For more than two years, she rose at 3 a. m. for the bumpy     bus ride from her village of Bedwa to her punishing morning workout in the city of Rohtak. After practice, she’d return home to do housework, then journey back in the afternoon for more drills. At home, Neetu would sprawl out on her bed with her boys helping with their homework. ”I would sneak out to call a friend who knew English and return to impress them with what I knew,” she laughs. At the gym she cuts a solemn figure. Coach Singh sternly instructs, ”Don’t be passive,” and Neetu listens with the rapt devotion reserved for a priest. With her sculpted limbs, shorn hair, and     there is no mistaking Neetu for anything but an elite athlete. Pinning her practice partner to the mat, she seems to have wrestled the child bride out of herself. Coach Singh says she takes direction like few do. ”She’s different in terms of will power. And being married with small children from a deprived background, it’s an achievement to even be here,” Singh says. ”During training, she doesn’t take a break for even one minute. She’s determined to become something.” Neetu now lives in a small room near the gym, sparing herself the long commute back and forth from her village. This winter she added acting to her long list of jobs. She won a bit part in a movie about a fabled Indian wrestler who taught his daughters the sport and is using the money to pay the rent. Film scouts looking for a powerfully built female spotted her at a recent national championship. In her humble quarters, Neetu squats on the concrete floor, fixing milk and an egg, one of the few sources of protein in her diet. The new living arrangement means she can only see her twin sons on the weekend. She says their father, her second husband, has been a savior. ”He’s given me a new life. He pulled me out of hell and brought me to heaven. I’m able to wrestle because of him. I’m away and we don’t have a usual   relationship. He’s made a huge sacrifice,” Neetu says. He wasn’t always supportive. When she first confided her dream to wrestle, husband Sanjay Kumar called it ”crazy.” Neetu then weighed 175 pounds. But she shed 60 pounds  —   and any inhibition about pursuing her   talents. Sanjay lent moral support. When his business selling milk failed, he adjusted to a new role as  : ”I learned to do housework by watching her.” ”The hard work is Neetu’s,” he says. ”I’ve just encouraged her, and I’m with her all the way. Neetu is not the kind of girl to back down.” Still, Sanjay had a caveat: ”If you start, you have to succeed, or we’ll get a bad name.” The fear of getting a bad name, of being disgraced, is often used to intimidate   women, says Jagmati Sangwan, a former member of the Indian National Volleyball team. She now leads the All India Democratic Women’s Association and, like Neetu, is from Haryana. Sangwan calls her home state a ”predominantly feudal, patriarchal society,” especially tough for female athletes. ”The mindset is that if women will participate in sports they will become more and more confident,” she explains. And then men fear ”they will be losing their control over these women.” A child bride no more, Neetu puts her age at 21. A competitor once alleged she’s older, but her passport says she’s 20. Absent official birth records, there’s often confusion about how old people are in India. One Sunday, back home in her village, Neetu wrestled with her sons in their hometown playing field, a stony lot. Nothing in her surroundings lends itself to athletic glory. The streets of her village are open sewers. Cattle are quartered steps from villagers’ homes. The   reality makes her dream to be a   athlete, seem implausible. Conservative mores made the climb steeper. There were insinuations: ”Is she really at a gym?” asked gossipy neighbors. ”Why don’t you wear bangles” and traditional dress, villagers asked, repelled by her tracksuits. ”I never replied back,” Neetu says. Eventually, the village came around  —   once she started winning events. ”Even people who had spoken ill of me, said, ’Train our daughters to wrestle. Make them like you.’ ” Newly respectful neighbors delighted in the attention she brought to their inconspicuous village, beginning with her first national medal in 2015 during India’s 35th National Games, where she won a bronze in the 53 kilogram (116 pounds) category. Last summer she joined the Indian women’s team competing for the Junior World Championship in Brazil. But Neetu also made concessions to rural traditions, covering her head in public as a sign of modesty, even if it meant simply throwing her jacket over her head. Balkesh Ahlawa, a    villager, remarked, ”She’s changed everything! Everybody believes that a girl can now say  —   ’I want to do something.’ ” After upending stereotypes in her own village, Neetu quietly raises awareness in others. At a girls’ school, where the students welcome her with songs and skits about discrimination against girls in traditional families, Neetu tells her story of striving despite every disadvantage. She tears up sharing painful facts of her life. But seems awed by her own progress  —   a girl who picked cotton to pay her bus fare ”taking a plane for the first time to Brazil” to compete.  She tells the girls to stay in school and dream big dreams. For her part, Neetu is eyeing Tokyo and the 2020 Olympic Games. With determination as   as her muscles, she declares, ”I will go there. I’m 21, and four years ago the Silver Medalist was 34, and a mother. ”That,” she says, ”gives me confidence. I can do it, I can do it.”"
"Two Black Lives Matter protesters took to the stage last August during a Bernie Sanders campaign rally in Seattle. As they moved closer and closer to Sanders’ podium and mic, at times raising their fists to the crowd, Mara Jacqueline Willaford told Sanders to yield the mic to a fellow protester. ”If you do not listen to her,” Willaford said to Sanders, ”your event will be shut down right now.” Sanders listened, and gave up the mic. The activists spoke for about 20 minutes. The candidate ultimately left the stage and ended his event without finishing the speech he came to give. That scene may be one of the more memorable examples of disruptive protests this campaign season, but Sanders is not alone. Last month, protesters took over an auditorium at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Donald Trump was scheduled to hold a campaign event. ’Trying to elicit moments’ The protesters forced Trump to cancel the rally just before it was supposed to start. Earlier this month, former President Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife at a Philadelphia campaign event, got into a heated,   back and forth with a protester over his 1994 crime bill. It seems these days, politicians are having their sets interrupted more than really bad   comics. (And maybe they could use some advice from comedians, on how to deal with it. We’ll get to that later.) But first, why are we seeing so much protest this presidential campaign season, and the often   interactions with politicians they produce. Lara Brown, director of the political management program at George Washington University, said it’s really not the case that this is new it’s just that we see them more. ”In today’s modern politics,” Brown told NPR, ”nothing is, if you will, mediated anymore.” For Brown, it’s all about the declining preeminence of traditional news media. ”Mainstream media did not always report on protesters,” Brown said. ”They didn’t see it as especially important news that there were some people who didn’t agree with the person who was speaking. What they were more interested in is what the person who was supposed to speak was saying.” ”In the past,” she continued, ”if a journalist didn’t write up a story about it, or didn’t take a picture of it, it might not be recorded. And it might not be publicized and known. But in today’s world, it is a matter of just snapping a picture or recording a video, posting it on Twitter or Instagram and immediately engaging the whole world.” And for protesters, that modern dynamic can often lead to less focus on actually changing a candidate’s mind on a particular issue during an event. It’s more about going viral. ”We’re trying to elicit moments,” said Matthew Miles Goodrich, an organizer with 350 Action, an environmental group that has been protesting candidates on both sides of the aisle this election season. ”I’m someone who pursues moments that will gain traction, that will force dialogue in the national discourse.” Goodrich was the protester filming earlier this month, as one of his colleagues asked a question of Hillary Clinton that led her to scream, ”I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me. I’m sick of it.” ”No candidate wants to look weak in front of protesters,” Goodrich said, ”so they’ll mostly condescend to us. . .. Often we’ll want to elicit a reaction from the candidates. For example, when my friend Eva asked Secretary Clinton if she would refuse   money, Secretary Clinton got upset, and I was able to film that, and because Secretary Clinton is normally a very cool and confident speaker, she lost her cool a little bit. That’s why it went viral.” And Goodrich says creating that moment took time and effort. ”What you didn’t see [in that video] is the same question we’ve asked her all throughout the campaign,” he said. Three ways to react to protesters? When presidential candidates and their surrogates are faced with these kinds of situations  —   protesters willing to devote hours of time, persistently, over months on the campaign trail  —   how should they react? Most of the time, Lara Brown says, candidates respond in one of three ways: 1. Fight: Candidates can ”engage in the argument,” Brown said, ”to show that the protesters logic is flawed.” 2. Enlist the crowd: ”They’ll try to get the crowd to turn on the protester for them,” Brown said. ”In some instances, that can be incredibly dangerous.” 3. Let them speak: ”They [the politicians] will usually say something like, ’OK, if I give you a minute to say your piece, will you say it, so then I can go back to my work, and what we’re actually doing here? ’” ”Two of those strategies, you’re trying to avoid,” Brown said. ”And one, you’re trying to attack.” How do comics deal with it? NPR reached out to some unlikely sources to offer advice to politicians dealing with disruptive protests:   comedians, a group that is heckled almost constantly. Of course, protesters are not hecklers they are usually working toward progress on some serious issues. And campaign events usually come with much less alcohol than a comedy show. But there are some universal truths for performers in both spaces. ”The best thing I found, is to let them ruin your show a little bit, so the audience gets a little aggravated,” said comedian Laurie Kilmartin, competitor on the reality show Last Comic Standing and comedy writer for Conan. ”So they’re like, ’Oh will she just do something about this guy.’ And then when you do, they are just cheering they are completely behind you. .. You need to set them up as a bad guy. Sometimes the audience doesn’t know that person’s a bad guy yet.” That is basically Professor Brown’s ”enlist the crowd tactic.” But, Kilmartin warns, that politicians can never go as far. ”Politicians have it tougher,” she said, ”because they can’t destroy a heckler. You actually have to win them over as a voter.” Phoebe Robinson,   of the WNYC comedy podcast 2 Dope Queens, agrees. ”I just don’t think a president can roast somebody,” Robinson told NPR. ”I think that looks opposite of presidential. You can’t just do the dozens on someone, and then be like, ’I’m going to go talk to Putin!’ You can’t do both.” She also says politicians can’t roast in the way a comic would for another big reason. ”It’s hard,” she said, ”because none of them are funny.” Both admit they’ve had to get creative when dealing with hecklers. When a drunk woman celebrating her 70th birthday wouldn’t stop yelling that Kilmartin wasn’t funny during a set, Kilmartin played along. ”This is my very best,” Kilmartin told the woman, ”and if you don’t think I’m funny now, you’re not going to think I’m funny for the next hour or so. You should probably go. You deserve better. It’s your birthday.” The woman left. When   wouldn’t stop talking during one of Robinson’s sets, she offered them a modern etiquette lesson. ”Hi, I can hear you. This isn’t Netflix,” Robinson said. And the tactic worked. ”They shutup!” She also says there’s a foolproof way to deal with male hecklers. ”I just make fun of their manhood.” Of course, none of those scenarios would go over well at a political event. But, Kilmartin and Robinson offer some advice to politicians that work for comics, too. First, stay put. ”You can’t run off the stage,” Robinson said. Second, stay calm. ”As a comic and politician, you can’t get angry on stage,” Kilmartin said. ”As soon as you get angry, they win.” And if there’s one overarching rule  —   never, ever give up the mic."
"This week, the NPR Politics team discusses Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s big wins in the New York primary and looks ahead to next Tuesday, when five states hold primaries and more than 500 delegates are at stake. Also on the podcast, a rant from Elizabeth Warren about Ted Cruz and whether or not 1, 237 really is the magic number for winning the Republican nomination. On the podcast:"
"Shortly before 6 p. m. on Monday, a bomb went off on a bus in Jerusalem, triggering bad memories for many Israelis. This type of attack had not happened in recent years. Blocks away from the explosion, people paced the sidewalks, talking on cellphones or watching the small screens for flashes of information about what happened. They saw black smoke twist into the sky and heard ongoing sirens as medics, police and soldiers raced to the scene.   people were injured in the explosion, including a    Palestinian man, Abdel Hamid Abu Srour. He died the next day, the only fatality from the bombing. Israeli officials say Abu Srour carried the bomb onto the bus, and they dubbed this a suicide bombing. It’s still not clear whether suicide was indeed his intent, but that may matter less for Israeli security than whether he acted alone. The individual bomber is ”not so important” says Barak   a   expert at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center and a former top official with Israel’s internal security agency. ”It’s important if someone is standing in background and using young people for those attacks,”   says. Terrorist organizations often have the expertise and resources to carry out more devastating attacks than individuals acting alone, he says. As of Saturday, six Israelis remained hospitalized, including several who are still unconscious and using respirators to breathe. One is a    girl, whose mother was also injured in the bus bombing. A hospital spokeswoman said the mother was treated and released but was staying at the hospital much of the time, to be by her daughter’s side. Israel has focused its investigation on the militant Palestinian group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip but has support in the West Bank as well. Israeli police say security forces arrested an unspecified number of Hamas members in the days after the attack. Shortly after the explosion, Hamas issued a statement claiming Abu Srour was a member of the group. Hamas also praised the bombing, but stopped short of claiming responsibility. At a gathering in a family home in Bethlehem to mourn and honor Abu Srour, his mother, Azhar Abu Srour, 43, sat on a couch on the front porch, her dark hair drawn back and her face pale. Relatives poured tiny cups of coffee and offered candies from a large basket. Azhar Abu Srour said she didn’t think her son had joined Hamas. But she volunteered that he always admired a Hamas bomb maker, Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed ”The Engineer,” and revered among some Palestinians for his role in a series of major bomb attacks against Israelis decades ago. ”Every young man has a model and my son took Yahya Ayyash as a model because he hurt those Israelis who hurt us every day,” she said. Israel assassinated Ayyash in a dramatic move in 1996, using an informant and an exploding cellphone. That was before Abdel Hamid Abu Srour was born. His mother also said her father  —   her son’s namesake  —   had been killed by the Israeli military in Lebanon in 1981. He ”always felt he should take revenge for his grandfather’s death,” Abu Srour’s mother said. Still, she wonders if her son meant to die. He was studying hard to pass a chemistry class, his last requirement before college. Yoram Schweitzer, head of the Terrorism and   Conflict program at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, says if this was a suicide bombing, it wasn’t anything like the wave of suicide attacks Israel experienced during the second intifada in the early 2000s. ”Even if it was a suicide bombing, it wasn’t a very successful suicide bombing on the part of the terrorist plans,” Schweitzer said. ”From the Israeli perspective it’s one among several attempts that’s been carried out in recent months to do some suicide attacks.” Most of the Palestinian attacks against Israelis during the wave of violence that erupted last October appear to have been carried out by individuals. The majority have been stabbings, although Palestinians have also used guns and cars in attacks. But the Israeli military says in recent months it’s uncovered Palestinian cells planning suicide attacks. Schweitzer says it’s crucial to understand the details of Monday’s attack to stop future terrorism. ”If we have a case of a lone perpetrator who tried to carry out suicide attacks and was willing to blow himself up with his own capability to build a bomb, then it’s something that we need to expect and look for in order to prevent it.” If an organization is involved, Schweitzer says, there’s the potential for future attacks that will be ”much more fatal.”"
"If a financial emergency struck  —   say, a health problem or a car that needed repair  —   would you be able to come up with $400? According to the Federal Reserve Board, 47 percent of Americans would have trouble doing so  —   they would have to sell something, borrow money or simply couldn’t pay. And this is true even for people who consider themselves middle class. Neal Gabler is one of them. He’s a successful writer with five books under his belt, and he’s a visiting professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. But in a new article in The Atlantic, he admits to having ”financial impotence”: ”I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5  —   literally  —   while I wait for a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs. . .. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil.” Gabler spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin about this secret ”shame” of millions of Americans, and why he wants to redefine what it means to be a success. On what success means, I think by many measures in society I’m a success, I like to think. And if you were to look at me, you certainly wouldn’t think that I would have trouble scrounging up $400. Or if you were to look at my resume you wouldn’t think that  —   I’ve written five books. If you looked at my 1040, you probably wouldn’t think that. But that is really the whole point. Despite all of those things, I still have a difficult time making ends meet, as many, many, many Americans do. On how he ended up needing to borrow money from his adult daughter, Well, simple answer is  —   and I think this is true for many people  —   too little income, in a society where wages have been stagnant for almost 40 years, and too many expenses. I am in a situation that tens of millions of Americans share. And I’m not talking about poor people. I’m not poor. We’re talking about   Americans, even    Americans, who live paycheck to paycheck. On the disconnect between the official end of the recession and many people’s finances, Well, there’s a gigantic gulf between macroeconomics and microeconomics. The macroeconomic figures do not reveal what’s going on in the microeconomic world. People are having a difficult time living. There is always a car that needs repair. A pet  —   my dog  —   who’s limping. A faucet that leaks. There is always an emergency, and we live within that. On whether people are living beyond their means, I think that’s part of it. I think we’ve been taught to expect more. We have been taught that a   existence is . .. maybe a $250, 000 house, and a vacation every year, and a car for each adult, and education for the children. And, indeed, those are the very metrics that the commerce department has used in defining what a   life is. But as I point out in the article, if you put a price tag on that   life, as USA Today did several years ago, the price tag for that   life is $130, 000. Only 1 in 8 Americans makes $130, 000. So the   life that we’ve all been taught is ours  —   if only we work for it  —   is out of the reach of all but a very small number of us. On the shame of ”financial impotence” That shame weighed on me  —   and I am not overstating the case  —   on not only a daily basis, but an hourly basis. It keeps you up at night. It is ruinous for relationships, the shame is so great. The ongoing sense of shame, that in a country where we are told anyone can be successful, and where, as Donald Trump has told us endlessly, if you don’t make it you’re a ”loser.” So, yes, did I feel like a loser? You bet I did. But what can you do with that sense of shame? You can’t share it with anybody, because to expose it is, like sexual impotence, something you just don’t want to talk about. On redefining what it means to be part of the American middle class, We do need to redefine that. But that’s a very, very tall order. But the beginning is to have Americans who are suffering from financial impotence  —   which is nearly half of America if you believe this data  —   it’s them coming out and saying, ”You want to know something? I’m tired of feeling like a failure because I’m told that everybody in America ought to be rich if only they work hard.” Surveys show, and I don’t cite this in the article, that Americans are the only people who believe that in the industrialized world. If you look at the English or the French or the Germans, they don’t believe that they’re totally responsible for not having achieved financial success. Americans do. And we’ve got to stop people telling us that it’s all in our hands as to whether we’re going to be successful, because frankly it is not."
"Something tells me that 300 or maybe even 3, 000 years from now  —   if we still have breathable air and if we haven’t relocated to Mars, and if   robots haven’t colonized us    —   we’ll still be trying our best to dissect and parse out the überfunky,   wildly eccentric,   boho black genius of Prince Rogers Nelson. The Minneapolis maestro died at age 57 on Thursday from causes that have yet to be clarified at this time. Prince’s oeuvre since the late 1970s remains so profoundly voluminous (even just the news of it being in kept in a vault has always sounded impressive) and so musically and sonically ambitious, that it immediately turns any attempt to summarize its legacy succinctly into a   and incomplete gesture. I doubt that anybody could write the ultimate,     thinkpiece on Prince: there is no read long enough, no format collaborative enough, to do justice to his prolific life and work in one fell swoop. To the degree that nobody blinks an eye when we talk about Mozart or Beethoven studies, it’s not a stretch to say that we need more Prince scholars writing Prince tomes teaching Prince classes in schools where his legacy emerges as a matter of priority. Prince’s death feels like a sucker punch, in part because he was such a powerhouse force in mainstream pop that he sometimes seemed to stand in for creativity itself. In the  ’90s  —   during the period in which he demanded to be referred to as a symbol (or The Artist Formerly Known As Prince) given his legal struggle with record label Warner over the use of his name  —   many of us resorted to shorthand and called him, simply, The Artist. Which emerging pop star today would, or could, deserve that sort of expansive title? I look at   as Prince’s golden age of commercial and critical success (which is not to diminish any of the glorious work he did before or after). No recording artist during the ’80s delivered as many sophisticated musical ideas as Prince over the course of successive albums within a   period. No artist in that decade showed more willingness or more ability to engage with   risky musical ideas in the context of   pop. And no artist in the ’80s demonstrated more outright talent as a singer, guitar shredder,   songwriter, composer, producer and visual innovator all rolled into one. What some of us may be experiencing in this moment of collective grief is the fear that we will never again experience that kind of monumental excellence in pop, especially given today’s fractured, atomized and   music business. A tremendously shrewd industry player, Prince came to emblematize 35 years of changes in the making and distribution of music  —   from the ” ” approach to marketing pop stars and pop albums that emerged in the ’80s to the increasing synergy between music and films demonstrated by the success of Purple Rain to the development of the Internet in the ’90s and the concomitant debates about musicians’ rights in an economic value chain to the return of live music in the ’00s social media era as a primary source of profitability for touring musicians. Prince was at the forefront of all these changes. More than three decades after his debut, he still had the greatest live act on the planet, bolstered by a sprawling, impressive catalog of hits. And so Prince’s passing (in tandem with that of Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston, David Bowie, Maurice White and so many other defining icons of the ’70s and ’80s that we’ve lost in the last seven years) feels like merely the latest reminder that we may have hit the terminal end of the traditional recorded music era. The times, they have definitely  . Prince may have been the greatest   musical genius to emerge since the late ’70s, but we should consider how he followed in the footsteps of    hybrids like Brian Wilson, Todd Rundgren and Stevie Wonder. Prince would have been between eight and ten years old in   that crucial   stretch in which the Beatles released audacious   concept albums Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album. In 1967, James Brown further changed the game by introducing the rhythmic funk innovation of ”Cold Sweat,” and in 1968 Hendrix redefined     and the idea of the recording studio as a laboratory with Electric Ladyland. Those tectonic shifts, along with other musical developments, opened up even more space for ambitious musicians into the early and  ’70s, when artists as   as Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Roxy Music, Queen, Jeff Lynne, David Bowie and Paul Simon (to name just a few) ventured into a diversity of experimental pop modes. And a spate of black and Latino   with profound musical gifts and   messages to boot, such as Sly Stone, Maurice White, George Clinton, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, Carlos Santana and Curtis Mayfield, delivered some of the most transcendent records of the era. This musical context is the world of prodigiousness out of which Prince was formed despite persistent myths, he did not spring into success out of some cultural vacuum nor did he jump out of the womb as a   rock star. Born to musician parents of southern extraction, the young prodigy knew he wanted to pursue a music career by age 12  —   that is to say, around 1970  —   and he could not have made that decision at a more opportune time, since all he had to do was tune into black radio stations like KUXL to hear RB and prog soul and then switch the dial to a white rock station like KQRS to hear prog rock and   pop. His listening habits were formed in a moment of unprecedented access to musical diversity. If geniuses are made rather than born, it’s important to note that as part of his Gladwellian 10, 000 hours of practice, teenage Prince recorded with and formed his own Minneapolis high school bands (Grand Central, Champagne, 94 East) shopped around failed demo tapes and clocked in endless hours jamming with   musicians including André Cymone and Morris Day. The twin city Minneapolis   St. Paul environs that gave forth artists like the Andrews Sisters and Bob Dylan to this day remains a racially divided one it’s no surprise that by the ’80s Prince’s crossover,   music positioned him as a kind of   racial reconciler, bringing together whites and  . He also grew up in a broken home (his parents divorced when he was eight) and so it’s not a stretch to imagine that Prince, who came of musical age in the   glam era, might have also seen himself as a bridge between men and women not only in his music and life but maybe even in his own physical body  —   one possible explanation for the transcendently androgynous image he came to embody in the late ’70s and beyond. By 1977, Stevie Wonder had racked up three Album of the Year Grammys in four years, and major labels were insistent on finding the ”next Stevie”  —   that   black artist who could write, produce, perform and, most importantly, generate profitable hits. Warner bet its money on teenage Prince and along with manager Owen Husney, the kid genius fought for and received unprecedented artistic control over his debut album, 1978’s For You. He ended up playing more than 20 instruments on the record and though accomplished, For You still sounds tentative  —   groover ”Soft and Wet” made only a modest splash on the RB charts. Prince’s next five records, however  —   Prince (1979) Dirty Mind (1980) Controversy (1981) 1999 (1982) and Purple Rain (1984)  —   raised the bar, setting a possibly unmatched standard of artistic accomplishment within a   period. Those of us fortunate enough to come of age in these formative years are prone to deify Prince’s cool,   swagger, his practiced enigma and his audacious musical heroism. Those qualities were in full display on his eponymous album, brimming over with authoritative   grenades like ”I Wanna Be Your Lover” and ”Sexy Dancer” and intimate ballads like ”With You,” as breezy as the singer’s blowout on the album cover. Appearing on shows like American Bandstand, Prince began his lifelong practice of giving terminally weird,   shy interviews (my late father once referred to Prince as a ”worm. ”) Prince was diminished by some as nothing more than a Rick James clone but in truth he was, at that time, an alternative, risqué soul music dynamo who had supplanted The Jacksons on the covers of the sort of teenybopper magazines that endlessly speculated about his romantic affiliation with peer   Patrice Rushen (for whom ”I Wanna be Your Lover” and ”I Feel For You” were originally intended). With a piercing falsetto, a lush romantic baritone and a lethal gospel squall that sounded like 1, 000 seagulls being guillotined at once, Prince had willed himself into a great singer. He’d also become a masterful songwriter. Dirty Mind was a phenomenal attempt to fuse the   New Wave sound (think Blondie, Devo) with     in the strategic effort to cross over to a wider pop audience. It worked. Who could have minded the calculation, given Prince’s stellar songwriting and minimalist production on tunes like wistful ”When You Were Mine” and groovy ”Do It All Night”? Controversy followed suit with the swaggering title track (which Meshell Ndegeocello once praised as the slick sound of a musical ”fashion runway”)   ”Sexuality,” bustling ”Let’s Work” and dreamy Quiet Storm radio mainstay ”Do Me Baby.” 1999 helped Prince reach an even wider audience, as it crested on popular tunes like   ”Delirious,”     classic ”Little Red Corvette” and galvanizing ”Let’s Pretend We’re Married.” Prince emerged as the most valuable contributor to the burgeoning Minneapolis sound, a diverse fusion of synth pop, new wave, funk and rock sounds featuring heavily gated, programmed drums and analog synths replacing traditional funk horns. But no one sound has ever defined Prince. Even by the early ’80s it was evident that there was no real end to his grab bag of musical ideas or sounds, even on the course of a single album. For 1984’s Purple Rain, Prince attempted to do what his closest artistic rival Michael Jackson could not: establish himself as a bona fide film star. Drawing on the business model Robert Stigwood created for 1977 box office bonanza Saturday Night Fever, Prince mythologized his own ascension to stardom in a loosely autobiographical film that rode to glory on a phenomenal soundtrack with     hits like ”When Doves Cry” and ”Let’s Go Crazy.” Purple Rain, like Thriller before it, was the recorded music album as blockbuster, pop as mass cultural moment. At the height of MTV’s newfound ’80s success, the soundtrack set entirely new standards for the degree to which a black artist could cross over to the mainstream. Enjoying his global superstardom, Prince had already settled into a curious penchant for all things purple, and his supercool fashion choices included   pants with royal court blazers with    ruffles and heels. An aloof but   lothario, Prince became the people’s guitar hero but not the kind celebrity you imagine hanging out with at parties or sitting on your living room couch throwing back beers. (Well, depending on who you are and what kind of living room you have.) Prince staked his claim as the musical royalty that his birthname had always already suggested. In the process, he racked up enormous   sales, and took home multiple Grammys and an Oscar. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential election marked a new conservative era in American life and politics. It’s important to remember, especially for those of us who were young then, that the ’80s were something of a frightening time, defined by frightful news stories about nuclear brinkmanship and the onslaught of acid rain. In films like 1982’s First Blood and 1984’s Red Dawn, we saw the disturbing trend of a toughened, hardbodied machismo and a political cynicism to match. That decade, generally speaking, also saw a burgeoning celebrity culture tied to the rise of a   secular materialism and an increasingly inward turn (after Tom Wolfe’s   description of the ’70s) to focus on the physical body (Olivia Newton John’s 1982 ”Physical” and Jane Fonda’s   aerobics videos come to mind here). Black poor and   communities in the U. S. were economically devastated by the Reagan administration’s massive cuts in spending on social services and on urban development conditions in inner cities suffered blight due to the social devastation of crack cocaine,   by topical rap songs like 1982’s ”The Message.” In some ways, Prince’s ’80s ”Dance Music Sex Romance” mantra offered a thrilling   and even a direct critique, to the foreclosure of liberal, ethical, spiritual and erotic possibility that Reaganism proffered. On his classic    hit ”1999,” which still doesn’t seem dated some 16 years after Y2K, Prince encouraged us to party hard like it was the end of the world  —   and given how imminent many of us thought nuclear escalation was in 1982, the end sometimes did feel nigh. Prince also courted politics on songs like 1981’s ”Ronnie, Talk to Russia” and ”Annie Christian,” on political party jams like 1980’s ”Partyup” as well as later on the magnificent 1987 Sign O’ The Times title track, of course (to name just a few of his powerful political moments on record). He remained deeply engaged with topical social issues his entire career, as demonstrated by last year’s ”Baltimore” written to memorialize Freddie Gray’s violent death while in police custody. Though Prince didn’t necessarily have a coherent political program in the ’80s, what crucially distinguished him was his willingness to break cultural taboos. Borrowing and transmuting ideas from a long line of shock RB stars ranging from Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to Millie Jackson to Blowfly and Rick James, Prince was the ’80s greatest provocateur, not only cursing on songs but singing explicitly about subjects like giving head (”Head”) fantasizing about sex with his sister (”Sister”) and masturbation (”Darling Nikki”). To say his music was intensely sexual is a massive understatement: this is the man who brought us such classics as ”Irresistible B****,” ”Jack U Off,” ”Scarlet P****,” ”Feel U Up” and my personal favorite, 1984’s ”Erotic City” (I distinctly remember having to turn down the volume on my boombox in the presence of my mother every time the word ”f***” came through the loudspeakers). Given that his      inspired pop fusion often sounded akin to a black robot trying its hand at funk with awesome results, and given that he frequently penned impressionistic, dreamlike lyrical images of the future, Prince in some ways prefigured and anticipated the mainstreaming of the   and Afropunk movements. Prince also deserves recognition for creating     bands like the Revolution and the New Power Generation in so doing, he offered us a nonconformist ideal that could serve as reprieve from  ’s racial homogenization and from the persistent threat of social marginalization. In that context, Prince himself came to revolutionize the presentation of expressive black masculinity. Physically beautiful, racially ambiguous and frequently androgynous, Prince was openly fond of paisley and lace, and he spoke in a lithe voice that was more than a little femme. He was slight, and short, but always seemed to be surrounded by beautiful women he either worked with or dated, or both, from Sheila E. to Sheena Easton to Vanity and Apollonia. Prince’s   rebel persona owes a huge debt to queer camp pioneers like Little Richard, Tony Washington of the Dynamic Superiors, Freddie Mercury, Jobriath, David Bowie, Elton John and Sylvester, all of whom helped paved the way for Prince to be free to be himself in the public arena. As did Bowie, Prince showed us that you could    —   you could live a life not strictly determined by how others defined you, but more often by how you defined yourself. The impact of that message of transformative   especially as it became mainstreamed through Prince’s enormous success in the ’80s, instigated incalculable effects on successive generations of LGBQ and trans folks, freedom seeking libertarians, antiracist dreamers, nudist exhibitionists, anarchist revolutionaries, and multitudes of others around the planet. No black artist who came before Prince aggregated so many diverse people in the service of   and polymorphous perversity the world is a better and richer place for it. Indeed, the introduction of the perverse into mainstream Top 40 pop was core to Prince’s cultural power in his golden period. Madonna followed suit, as did others. And by the late ’00s, Lady Gaga drew from the Madonna and Prince playbook, taking it further even, to redefine provocation through performance art traditions and the visual grotesque. Those hoping to recreate Prince’s   path to glory in 2016 should beware: it’s no longer clear what perversity looks and feels like anymore in an age of Xtube. com and casual teen sexting. We now live at a time when   sex tapes might actually be your quickest path to reality television success. Good luck with that. Prince followed Purple Rain with movie flops like 1986’s Under the Cherry Moon and 1990’s Graffiti Bridge as well as     albums like Around the World in a Day and Parade. But he delivered his career masterpiece with 1987’s Sign of the Times, in which   tunes like ”U Got the Look” sit on the same double album as the Joni Mitchell inspired   of ”The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” and psychosexual   (”If I Was Your Girlfriend,” ”Strange Relationship”) religious joints (”The Cross”) and party bangers (”Housequake”). I’m intentionally sidestepping the massive and amazing body of work he released after SOTT, in the late ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, only because there’s no way to cover it all here. As if Prince’s musical ventures weren’t enough, he was also an entrepreneur who eagerly developed other artists, including Sheila E. The Time and The Bangles, by writing and producing classic tracks for them. His Paisley Park label and recording studio complex served as a major part of his business operations, and by the ’90s he began actively fighting with Warner for control over his copyrights by declaring himself a slave and carving the word into his beard in controversial manner. Years later, the   struggle resulted in Prince getting back some ownership of his masters, though it arguably drained him of artistic energy, given that the records kept coming but the hits did not. Prince never failed to provide unwavering support for other serious musicians, especially women like Mavis Staples and Chaka Khan, and more recently Esperanza Spalding, Lianne Le Havas, Judith Hill and his all female band 3rdeyegirl. Prince wanted you to know that he did not usually suffer musical foolishness (though his   proclivities sometimes meant he was quite   about promoting mediocre singers who looked like they could have stepped out of a Victoria Secret’s catalog). If he showed up on stage to perform with an artist, it’s generally because he thought that artist had a gift to offer the world. Prince also emerged as a public advocate for the labor rights of other musicians, and he was an active if    philanthropist, donating millions to causes and projects that he felt mattered, including Van Jones’ Yes We Code initiative to give underserved young people training. Prince’s lifelong support of the black community both in his music and his personal life meant that he was known to put his considerable money where his mouth was, in ways that also served to put to rest charges of colorism that plagued his earlier career. Let’s face it, though: Prince had his shady moments too. He was a copyright maximalist who could be incredibly inflexible around the application of his own musical assets. Though by the late ’90s he had emerged as a revolutionary with respect to various sorts of musical distribution on the Internet, he relentlessly disallowed his own music to circulate freely (not that he should have) and even allegedly sued fans who uploaded his content illegally. He could also be hypocritical in that he was hostile and dismissive and even ungenerous if other artists wanted to cover his music, but he regularly covered other artists’ songs live and on record. His maximalist approach to these matters was often underwritten by the argument that he was merely attempting to control the distribution of his own music in a    Internet economy which has reduced the perceptual value of music to nil  —   and he might have been right. But given his commitment to the creative process, his approach ran afoul of the generative DIY creativity and opportunities for ”copyleft” sharing that the Internet itself technologically makes possible. Ironically, though a whole host of millenials are not intimately familiar with the Prince catalog because it has been stripped from the Internet (with the exception of Tidal) he has   as a viral Internet meme, like in the wildly popular video series ”Got 2B Real,” where his image has been manipulated to make him appear as a shady judge in rivalry with fellow musicians ranging from Aretha Franklin to Beyoncé. When comedian Dave Chappelle humorously parodied Prince in a sketch on The Chappelle Show, Prince cheekily fired back by using an image of Chappelle in Prince drag on the cover of his 2013 single ”Breakfast Can Wait.” In his later years, Prince managed to gleefully and winkingly undercut his imposing presence as the era’s reigning musical sovereign and Internet disciplinarian  —   and endear himself to younger generations  —   with such impulsive, ”I’m in on the joke too” gestures. One other point: No image anywhere in Michael Jackson’s entire creative output is as violent, pugilistic and misogynistically repulsive as the scene in Purple Rain where Prince’s character punches Apollonia in the face, though some have argued the film is a subversive text about masculinity, gender and domestic abuse. Even as a child, I found the image ugly: I’ve never been able to forget it. Ironically, despite the way Prince’s libertarian ethos acted as a powerful retort to   repression, Prince himself eventually came to represent a certain strain of social conservatism. In the early ’00s, he converted to the Jehovah’s Witness faith and became a bit of a public Bible thumper, even railing against the mainstreaming of trans identity on 2013’s ”Da Bourgeoisie” (a new millennium update of his early   track ”Bambi”).   Prince refused to revisit some of the more explicit tracks and albums from his golden years, and this remains, for me, an unfortunate disappointment. That refusal separates Prince from his Afropunk peer Grace Jones, who seems to have largely sustained her pursuit of polymorphic pleasure well into her 60s. We’d do well to remember that there can be no revolution, no collective utopia, without the pursuit of total sexual and erotic freedom (insofar as people treat each other with mutual respect). That freedom includes the kink Prince willfully purveyed at the start of his career, but then abandoned. Still, none of this is to take away from Prince’s stunning legacy. By some accounts, a rainbow appeared over Prince’s Paisley Park home in Minneapolis in the hours after his death. The song that immediately came to mind, for me, when I heard the news of his passing, given the month that we’re in, was 1986’s eerily melancholy ”Sometimes it Snows in April”  —   a ballad featuring a poignant lyric that now seems quaint in the age of climate change. But it strikes me that, in Bowie fashion, Prince may have been a prophet of even his own demise. What Prince always managed to do throughout his career was operate in an antiracist, multigender, polysexual funky boho   space of freedom that infused his image,   and sometimes his lyrics. That free space doesn’t yet exist in our increasingly xenophobic, privatized, divided world  —   but we can get there, and Prince illuminated it for us. In that sense, Prince was not only ahead of his time, but we can think of him as a clairvoyant whose prophecies are yet to be realized. One way to honor Prince in our grief is to remind ourselves how good and how important is to be, well, a weirdo, to let your freak flag fly, to live life out loud and proud, to shock the bourgeoisie, to cultivate a social conscience, to make ethical art that is connected to a spiritual purpose, to own your work and to own your name in a culture of commodification, to stay rooted to your beginnings and to practice and master your craft. We’re here to get through this thing called Life, and through the example of his music, Prince has left us the richest possible blueprint with which to do so."
"Since the news of Prince’s death broke on Thursday, fans have been flocking to the late artist’s Paisley Park estate in Minnesota to celebrate his life. Hundreds of fans, many of whom wore purple, showered the security fence surrounding the property with cards, flowers, stuffed animals and purple balloons, over the weekend to pay tribute to The Purple One. On Saturday afternoon, Prince’s family members were seen among the mourners at the makeshift memorial, reporter Nancy Rosenbaum tells NPR, including Prince’s    Maurice Phillips, who greeted visitors. Rosenbaum spoke with an emotional Susan Unger, one of many people who tied a handwritten note to the fence. ”I said, Prince, you’ll be missed. I respect you so much for your gift, your grace, your spirituality,” Unger told Rosenbaum. ”I never bought an album but I’m coming here because of the loss of him and his music.” In the early evening, the    music superstar’s family and friends gathered ”in a private, beautiful ceremony to say a loving goodbye,” Prince’s publicist Yvette   said in a statement. The cause of the singer’s death is still unknown.   added that an announcement on the pending results of the autopsy will be made at least four weeks from now: ”Prince’s remains have been cremated and their final storage will remain private. We ask for your blessings and prayers of comfort for his family and close friends at this time. The cause of death remains unknown and it will be at least four weeks before we receive the results of the autopsy. An announcement will be made at a future date for a musical celebration.”"
"Somewhere in the back of my closet is a torn photograph from a party in Seattle in 1982. Dig if you will the picture: It’s me, in a   chiffon dress that (though the photo is black and white) I’m sure is violet. My hair is a   mass of strawberries and cream, my neck’s draped in my mom’s big costume pearls a bracelet of pretend diamonds dangles from my wrist. This is an ordinary look for a college girl with a nightlife obsession in 1982. I’m gazing into a mirror behind me is my friend Pete, holding the camera, laughing his head off. The room’s as   as we are  —   chairs pushed toward the wall, wine bottles covering a coffee table, the multicolored throw rug trampled. My eyes, cast upward, communicate a challenge: Can you be as free as we feel right this moment? And I know what’s behind that dare every time I’ve looked at this blurry chrome snap I hear it. 1999 has just been released, and we’re dancing to Prince. This image is my own reversed portrait of Dorian Gray. (Prince apparently had one, too, at least in his brilliant mind.) It doesn’t stop me from getting older I’m firmly in midlife now, just as the    Prince Rogers Nelson was when he inconceivably departed this plane. But even thinking about the look the music put on my face whisks me back to the moment of infinitude ushered by the   gospel sounds Prince pulled from his Oberheim   synths. I am released into a present tense that loosens the strictures of singular identity. Prince was dreaming when he wrote 1999, the album that defined abandon and delight in the early 1980s, or so he said, though his dazzling musical virtuosity and sharp sense of humor reveal his ultimate lucidity. We who first heard him then learned something vital about grounding our fantasies in the multiple realities that pulsed beneath our own skins. ”I’m gonna listen to my body tonight” is the key line in the song ”1999,” and Prince gave us a new way into our bodies that was brainy, full of feeling and commitedly defiant of categories. In 1981, just before I got up the courage to fully explore Prince’s   persona, the New York Times pop critic Robert Palmer heralded his ”genuinely biracial musical approach and outlook,” while noting that some rock fans didn’t seem ready for it: Opening for The Rolling Stones that year, Prince was pelted with fruit and bottles, ”the suggestions of androgyny in his fluid body movements and flamboyantly minimal stage costume” proving too much for the band’s white fans, despite Prince’s obvious kinship with Mick Jagger himself. As his star rose, Prince continued to frighten the guardians of boundaries. He was number one on the list of artists censured by the moralistic Parents Music Resource Center in 1985, allegedly frightened his record label with the deeply funky and sometimes troubling Black Album in 1987, and was still reveling in libidinal jams like ”When She Comes” in 2015. Prince overcame such prejudices, first and foremost, by crafting a sound that unceasingly moved among sources, interconnecting funk rhythms with glam guitar, Smokey   vocal flexibility with   robotics, Cab Calloway’s stylish humor with Eddie Van Halen’s peacock flash. Thirty seconds into a song like ”When You Were Mine,” ”Kiss” or ”Erotic City,” a listener’s affective loyalties begin to fall away. At house parties like the one where I did the twist with Pete and on dance floors where his early hits mingled with those of his occasional lover and collaborator Madonna, punks threw off their leather to play with disco dollies and even the classic rockers in the crowd found themselves reaching for falsetto notes. Prince fans enjoying his electric performances or sharing his music in a living room (or bedroom) first had to work through his   outrageousness  —   the shocking array of illicit imaginings in his lyrics, the displays of flesh from himself and his bandmates (who could forget the   pants he wore at the MTV Awards in 1991?)  —   only to find themselves confronted with the deeper provocation he posed. That was to move through the sensual into a spiritual, even religious space, one he inherited from Etta James, George Clinton and Al Green, which he brought to the level of profound spectacle. A promised land, on earth, made of intertwining grooves and limbs. Prince devotees committed themselves to starting there, in a kind of naked state. Beyond the explicitly political thread that delicately runs throughout his work, this was the way Prince fought for civil rights  —   he created musical environments in which propriety, the viral carrier of prejudice, fell under the curlicued sword of wise good humor and elegant lust. Women always stood  —   and played instruments  —   at the center of these heavenly milieus. From beginning to end, Prince welcomed his own anima into everything he created, and took care to surround himself with collaborators who reflected that feminine spirit. His early collaborators Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman remain central to most people’s notion of a Prince band, as does the sparklingly talented percussionist Sheila Escovedo. While Prince did sometimes play Svengali in ways that sometimes felt more designed than collaborative, he also championed outstanding female artists: to name a few, Vanity, Rosie Gaines, Chaka Khan, Patti Labelle, Sheryl Crow, Ani DiFranco, Angie Stone, Esperanza Spalding, his recent band 3rd Eye Girl and, just this year, the young   singer Kandace Springs. Some of Prince’s most influential songs, including the ecstatic ”When Doves Cry” (famously described by the musicologist Nancy J. Holland as an aural depiction of female jouissance) the   ”Darling Nikki” and the contemplative ”Joy in Repetition,” clearly aimed to give musical space to women’s sexual desire  —   something many male musicians have sought to stimulate but few have studied with real curiosity and sympathy. Prince often talked about having a female alter ego, or even (to Oprah!) having a spirit of indeterminate sex living within him. He gave this being a voice and even a name, Camille recording his vocals at a slow speed and then adjusting it to reach a higher pitch, he unleashed her spirit in songs like ”Strange Relationship” and on an unreleased 1986 album bearing her name. While such experiments added to his reputation as an eccentric, throughout his recordings he reached for sounds and song forms that transformed the worst impulses of cock rock and   RB into energies that were equally intense but far more welcoming. That’s not to say Prince didn’t love raunch  —   he could lick his guitar like no one else  —   but he felt that every human should have equal access to it, and that required recasting his machismo as a universal,   force. Never abandoning his gift for androgyny, Prince increasingly identified with the   legacies that inspired his work from the first time his father took him, as a child, to a James Brown show. Though he never stopped recording, in the 21st century he cemented his legend as the era’s most consistently great live act, and his shows were massive parties grounded in an irresistible funk groove. These gatherings allowed multiple generations of fans  —   from the ones who delighted when he performed Radiohead’s ”Creep” at Coachella in 2008 to the   who appreciated that he championed elders like the bassist Larry Graham  —   to revel in each others’ presence. And they were unmistakably, deeply, culturally funky. ”I’m workin’ up a black sweat,” he sang in the 2006 electro jam with that title, wailing in the chorus with an authority his forebears Sly Stone and Little Richard (who have both outlived him now) must admire. That sweat was for us all, but he knew and celebrated its source in both the black church and the Funkadelic mothership. None of us, even those who point the way to a different future, can truly overcome the divisions that both define and continually limit our lives within society. Prince was a visionary who created a musical imaginarium where we could feel what it might be like to unite instead, in the most intimate and potentially revolutionary ways. ”Enough is enough, it’s time for love,” Prince insisted in ”Baltimore,” the   anthem he recorded in 2015. Prince’s time was ruled by love, in its full possibilities, sometimes in anger or sadness, most often in joy. He gave us that time, and no mortal ending can take it away."
"Shakespeare has always been there for me when I needed him. Acting Shakespeare helped me survive school. Writing about Shakespeare got me through university. When I was in love, when I failed at love, when I lost a job I needed, Shakespeare was there with the right words, and still is. (Incidentally, if you too have been fired, I recommend Coriolanus’s speech in Act 3, scene 3 after his banishment from Rome. Powerful stuff.) Lately I’ve been hanging out a shingle as a Shakespearean text coach to actors. To learn that trade, over the past     years, I’ve been spending two Sundays a month in various scruffy rooms around the city with a small group of equally scruffy actors and directors. Scaffold Shakespeare Company’s aim has been to workshop all 38 plays in rough chronological order, holding readings, discussions and masterclasses they will complete that mission with The Tempest this April. I couldn’t think of a better place to start asking why the works of Will from Warwickshire still speak to us, 400 years after he died. Scaffold is the brainchild of    actor Tobias Deacon, who runs the company with fellow actor Annabelle Brown and directors Tom Latter and Bryn Holding. ”I don’t have a god,” Deacon says. ”I don’t have a religion. But the lessons I have learnt from Shakespeare have influenced the way in which I live my life . .. He gives weight to things of importance he doesn’t underestimate characters because of their station or their situation he gives them the human qualities and the human decency that other writers might not. It gives me something that I have to stand up to as an artist.” ”And it’s not because everything he wrote is sacred, and it’s not because everything he wrote is perfect,” Deacon adds. ”But it comes from a really good human being who really, really loved human beings. And that’s why three years, 10 years, 20 years, a lifetime is never enough.” Director Tom Latter believes that one of the duties of Scaffold is to knock Shakespeare off his pedestal: ”Reverence is a dangerous thing when what you’re trying to do is tell stories to people that were written   years ago. He was writing for everybody, and yet there’s a perception of Shakespeare now that it’s only for a certain level of education or class of people. Which is actually not the case at all.” Fortunately, the Britain I live in is full of companies large and small who, every day, are telling these    stories to anyone who’ll stop and listen  —   they’re the unsung heroes bringing Shakespeare to the people he was writing for. I head north to Manchester, where the Talawa Theatre Company are in the middle of a run of King Lear. It’s an exciting production, by turns epic and heartbreaking, and many around me are weeping openly by the final scene. What’s remarkable is that this is   director Michael Buffong’s first go at Shakespeare. ”A lot of people said ’Wow, of all the ones you could have picked for your first one, you seem to have gone for the biggest,’ but that’s just the way it happened,” he laughs. ”And of course there are fantastic discoveries on the floor of the rehearsal room. Sometimes you’re banging your head against the brick wall, ’why can’t we unlock what’s happening in this scene, what’s at the heart of it?’ And then suddenly something comes to light that illuminates the whole thing. I mean, there were days when I was literally quite high with some of the stuff we discovered.” Norman Bowman, who plays the violent, sadistic Duke of Cornwall, knows that high well: ”There is a wonderful thing about understanding Shakespeare that kind of expands your braincells and your grey matter. It’s magical, to be honest. It’s about tapping into a part of your brain that if you didn’t know it existed, you’d be fine. But once you do, it’s . .. like taking the blue or the red pill, in the Matrix! I’ll never tire of it.” One of many memorable moments in this production of  Lear is when an old woman, played by Sarah Quist, sings a haunting lullaby as she gently bandages the Earl of Gloucester’s bleeding, blinded eyes. Quist says that for her, music was the key to Shakespeare’s language: ”I was singing jazz, and I realised that doing Shakespeare is like getting a piece of classical music and making it your own. You have to be able to improvise within the confines of what he’s given you.” Quist also feels a personal connection to the play: ”For us, it’s been about dementia. And seeing Shakespeare hit on that so clearly, for me, has been immense. When Lear says ’Let me not be mad,’ every time I hear it it breaks my heart. Because I understand it, and I’ve seen and heard people in my family say those things.” That may be one of the keys to why Shakespeare is still making audiences laugh and cry 400 years later  —   and why, to me, this   playwright feels oddly like a personal friend: his uncannily universal ability to understand human reactions and emotions. You can’t talk about that without talking about Hamlet, of course. I found myself in the small Hertfordshire town of Hitchin to catch up with Librarian Theatre Company in the middle of their   tour. These hardy souls  —   director Tom Cuthbertson, three actors, stage manager and a puppet Ophelia  —   are performing a   version of Hamlet in public libraries throughout southern England, under the banner of ”The Book’s the Thing.” ”I think Hamlet is so relevant to so many young people,” says Kelly   who plays Hamlet. ”He is just a young teenager, an adolescent feeling isolated and lonely. He’s dealing with a lot of emotions and a lot of trauma, and he’s trying to find ways to express himself and finding life really difficult, which I think everyone does at some point in their lives.” Keith Hill, a veteran Shakespearean playing Claudius, Polonius and the ghost of Hamlet’s father, agrees: ”Every individual in this play has a massive decision to make and nobody to ask about it. But the plays are all about people who are trying to resolve incredibly difficult dilemmas, and so often, the subtext of the play seems to be ’And I bet you couldn’t do any better either. ’” That challenge has resonated down the centuries from Shakespeare to us. I can’t tie this article up with a neat conclusion if I pretended to have all the answers I’d be a fraud, and Shakespeare would see straight through me. But the fact that people are still reacting to Shakespeare with such strong feelings  —   of love, of fear, of the will to put in the hard work and the radiant high at those sudden, strange moments of understanding  —   shows that, 400 years on, Will from Warwickshire hasn’t lost his touch. Liza Graham is a   writer and Shakespearean text coach. She would like to dedicate this article to the memory of Professor A. D. Nuttall."
"As a celebrated portrait photographer, Platon Antoniou (who goes professionally by his first name) is   for his   depictions of the powerful. He has aimed his camera at the faces of celebrities and world leaders ranging from Vladimir Putin and Moammar Gadhafi to Willie Nelson and Woody Allen. ”Sometimes,” he says, ”you look in their eyes and you see angels. And sometimes you see demons.” Platon’s 2011 book, Power, featured photos of more than 100 world leaders. In Service (Prestel Publishing) the   photographer turns his lens on U. S. military personnel and their loved ones. ”I have a rather strange perspective on the times we’re living in,” he says, ”because I’ve had very intimate moments with heads of state, and yet I’ve also had these very powerful moments with the people who have to play out the policies that our leaders put forward. It leaves me as someone in the middle.” The book results from a project that began back in 2008, an assignment Platon took on after he was appointed as Richard Avedon’s successor as staff photographer at the New Yorker. (He now dedicates much of his time to The People’s Portfolio, a nonprofit organization he founded to highlight underreported stories around the world.) First, he spent time with troops while they trained in a simulated Iraqi village at the U. S. Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, before they were deployed. Then he waited for them to return. When it was possible, he photographed them again  —   or the loved ones who survived them. ”I had done so many portraits of leaders,” he says. ”And what is great leadership? We have seen it being about confidence, charisma, strength,  . We all know that side. But there’s another side that’s far more complicated  —   that’s the idea of service. I wanted to find out what happens when you’re asked to do something and you do it  —   and it’s very dangerous, and the sacrifices you make. This is where I learned about the other side of leadership, which is service.” In the waning weeks of the 2008 presidential campaign, the New Yorker published several of Platon’s images. One, showing a grieving mother at Arlington Cemetery embracing the headstone of her son  —   a   soldier killed in Iraq  —   caught the eye of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who highlighted it as he announced his endorsement of Barack Obama, who he hoped would be a unifying figure as U. S. president. ”The picture of the mother is the big question of our time: What is it to be American, to be patriotic, to give good service?” Platon says. ”Unfortunately, the reason why the [image of the] mother was so powerful  —   that terrain is even more heightened now. I’m left with this sadness. Did we learn nothing?” What did you first set out to do in this project? We had an election coming, as we do now. We had this idea: How do we do a   photo essay that provokes and stimulates respectful debate? I was interested in looking at poverty in America, but other issues came up and the U. S. military was one of them. We focused on America’s role militarily, and slowly, it morphed into this idea of service  —   it became less about war and was more about the human story behind the war. We wanted to avoid politics. We had this idea not to photograph anyone famous. This is really about ordinary men and women and families who all give great service. It was certainly an emotional roller coaster and it pushed me so far. Describe the training camp you spent time in. It’s 100 square miles in California, in the desert, where they built Iraq. [The simulated Iraqi village] was called Medina Wasl. The soldiers called it ”The Suck.” They were sent there for the last two weeks before deployment to really get their heads in the zone. There’s tanks tipped over on fire. All the signs are in Arabic. They had a Humvee which was exploded five times a day on routine patrols with IED explosives. It was more and more disfigured as the demonstrations continued. You feel like you’re in Iraq it’s 105 degrees. [The soldiers] are ambushed by   terrorists people are screaming. They use amputee role players coming out screaming, holding part of their foot. I was allowed to photograph all this. I built a small studio and invited [people] in. They called this street [at the camp] ”Trauma Lane,” and that was the working title of the book for a long time. As the project shifted to the return home, I realized there was something more than just trauma here. There was tenderness, feelings, love and compassion. So it shifted to something more universal, which became Service. The conditions sound challenging, not your usual studio photography. It was a godforsaken place. I’ve never been to war I’ve never experienced anything like that. I was suddenly put in this hellhole of a place, and that wasn’t even the real thing. It felt a bit like Apocalypse Now. Things start to get a bit warped. The Hasselblad, the camera I use, has this leather on the side glued onto the metal, and it was so hot, the glue was melting. All the casing started to come off. We worked   days in the heat for four or five days. There was nowhere to shower. At night, you could hear explosions going off, but after awhile you’d fall asleep because you were exhausted. You had a rude awakening one night, right? I remember I felt this pressure between my eyes, and I woke up and there was a gun  —   I don’t know what kind of gun because I’m not a gun kind of guy  —   but it was one of these machine gun things pointing right between my eyes, with night vision. The guy looked like some version of Robocop  —   I nearly had a heart attack. He just whispers as he presses the barrel more and more into my flesh, ”Don’t. Move.” It was a [simulated] nighttime patrol mission. I just lay there. He steps over me and just carries on walking. I wanted to say, ”But I’m a New Yorker photographer! I’m just here doing portraits!” But obviously you daren’t speak. I actually found the guy who did it the next day. I wanted to show everyone what it felt like  —   ”Would you help me do that?” He said sure. And he points the gun right at the camera. It’s not the same, because [originally] it was nighttime and I was  . But the feeling of that giant looming over you with perspective, the gun literally coming into your face, was the nearest I could get to it as a portrait photographer. You met some of the soldiers when they returned. Yes, they were deployed. Then they come back and it’s all different. I waited with the families. I waited with this young lady [Beth Pisarsky]. The Humvee pulls up, [Airman 1st Class Christopher Wilson] steps out, and when these guys come back, they are built like rock  —   not just physically, but emotionally. [Pisarsky] charged at him like a team of wild horses and almost knocked him over. And it was almost like an attack of love. I remember having to tilt the camera because I wasn’t expecting it, it surprised me. It was the beginning of emotion  —   now I’m not just seeing a sense of bravado, I’m now seeing what did it take to be a good servant. What price did you have to pay? You know he’s come back different. There’s another shot of a soldier hugging [a loved one] and there’s a tear rolling down his face that isn’t just happiness. It’s complicated. And from now on, it’s going to be really complicated. He’s seen things you can’t unsee. And she hasn’t. But she’s experienced that they had a relationship that’s now going to be fundamentally changed. So it became really human. It stopped being about the military and war, and turned into this human story that I never really expected it to be. I ended up taking pictures of love in the second half of the book. Tell me about the portraits you shot at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I did a portrait of [Jacquelyne Kay] with her arms around [husband Sgt. Tim Johannsen] in a wheelchair. And it became what I saw as this transference of power. She’s his wife and saying, ”I’ve got him home now, no one is going to hurt him anymore.” The picture is divided into two halves. I remember thinking consciously, do I show his legs cut off? Maybe I should be more sanitized about it. Then I thought, no. You have to acknowledge both  —   the love and tenderness, and the brutality, danger, pain and trauma that’s also there. He closed his eyes in her embrace. It was the most powerful thing. For him to show a sense of vulnerability, it made him all the more tough for me. You also photographed people grieving in Arlington Cemetery. I was photographing many bereaved families I had appointments with. And I was dreading that day. I was worn down. I also read the weather reports and they said in D. C. there were going to be terrible thunderstorms and wind and rain. I use strobe lights, it’s a whole operation, and on top of that, I’m dealing with the most acute sensitivities you can imagine. I am literally treading on sacred ground here. I was really nervous. As the rain faded away, I noticed at the far corner of the cemetery a woman I didn’t have an appointment with. She brings a foldout picnic chair and would sit and read [at her son’s grave] every day. It was such a powerful and tender thing to witness. The dialogue between mother and son continues even after his passing. I went over and asked permission to take her picture. She puts the book at the bottom of the headstone and goes behind it and cuddles the headstone as if she is cuddling her son. And then she closed her eyes. I was standing on the wet ground, where her son is buried, and I was so aware of the delicacies of my body language, and I was really looking at her face and hands and her mannerisms. I had no extra attention left over to notice that the book was the Quran or that the name on the headstone was a Muslim name. I thanked her and asked her name and she said, ”Elsheba Khan.” I still didn’t think. I took the pictures back to the magazine. When we were doing the edits, it was [New Yorker Editor] David Remnick who said, ”Look at that.” We thought, ”Oh my goodness.” We ran it in the photo essay with all the other pictures [in September 2008]. And shortly thereafter, that photo came up when former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Obama for president on Meet the Press. He warned against divisiveness and said, ”I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine.” He went on to describe exactly my picture. I’m sitting there with my mouth open. That picture was described as a game changer, but it was not [a photo] of anyone powerful. I had worked with all the power players. But it wasn’t any of those that shifted people’s hearts and minds. It was an ordinary person, dealing with the one thing we have in common  —   we all love and lose. We’re all united by that. I received a letter from [Powell] that said, thank you for showing me in a very painful way what America really is all about. Unlike the celebrities and power players you’ve photographed, here you were dealing with people often in a state of vulnerability. How did you establish trust with them? It’s the difficult question  —   how do you do that? I wish I had a gimmick I wish I had a trick. Trust means you have to be courageous first, with all your emotions open and so respectful and humble that there’s no room for your ego in this space. I am your servant and I am here to tell the world what happened to you. I can’t do it alone. I need you to be courageous with me. And if you really mean it, if you’re 100 percent committed, you can’t bulls*** that. You can’t fake it. It’s called authenticity. And of course, that’s very traumatic. It’s very traumatic for me. Before a shoot, I don’t have a storyboard. I don’t know whether this person will be angry at the world  —   or maybe at me  —   or if they will break, how to deal with vulnerability. You have to be ready for the whole human condition to play out. You go in so raw. You just have to make very quick emotional decisions. And sometimes I get it wrong. How so? I went to a lady’s house. Her name is Jessica [Gray]. Her husband wrote an   criticizing America’s policy. Shortly after that, he was killed in Iraq. They’d recently had a little girl. I’m setting up my studio in her living room. I’m dealing with a woman’s pain and courage, facing a new life that’s going to be difficult. That becomes consuming. I saw the flag they’d draped over his coffin and I said, ”Would you be prepared to hold the flag?” She said of course and took the flag out of the box. I asked her, how would you feel wearing a piece of his clothing in tribute to him? She said, that’s a good idea. She had received a box of his clothing, it was at the base of the bed but she had not yet had the courage to open it. All his clothes, his Army   were in the box. She said, maybe now is the time to open it. And then I thought, oh  —   what am I doing here? She undid one latch. I undid the other. And as she lifted the lid, she burst into tears. I felt so ashamed. I really blew it. I thought, for the sake of a photograph, you went too far. I said, ”I feel so ashamed. I didn’t want to hurt you. Let’s not do this. This was a bad idea.” She said, ”You don’t know why I’m crying. I’ve just realized they washed his clothes and I wanted to smell him again.” She said, ”The pain is there whether I open the box or not. Now the box is open and I think I would like to wear his  .” This is not the look of a victim. This is the look of a woman trying to pull all her strength together to face the future. Have you stayed in touch with Jessica Gray or any of the other people you photographed for this project? Most were deployed a few I did have some contact with. In putting together the book, in some cases, I found out some passed away or changed completely. I very rarely seek to have a friendship with the people I work with. Sometimes it happens accidentally. All my attention and affection goes into the work. And my subject knows that. When I’m actually taking the picture, that’s the moment. I know there’s a good chance I’ll never see this person again. I’ve done some emotional projects before, but not at this relentless pace, day after day. The way I work is, I’m very subjective. I’m not the objective journalist who doesn’t get involved. I’m not the ”observer.” How the hell can you be objective when you’re in a widow’s house and she’s standing there in front of you and she’s crying? You can’t. You’re in. You find yourself becoming part of the story in a weird way. The picture is a complete collaboration between me and the sitter. There’s no stolen moment. It’s a discussion  —   a visual lesson they are teaching me about life, and I’m just learning it and recording my lessons on film. This interview has been condensed and edited. Learn more about Platon’s work here: "
"It was December 2012 when the country learned about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, that left 20 children dead at the hands of    shooter Adam Lanza. After the shock and the initial grief came questions about how it could have happened and why. Reports that Adam Lanza may have had some form of undiagnosed mental illness surfaced. The tragedy drove Liza Long to write a blog post on that same day, titled ”I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.” She wasn’t Lanza’s mom, but she was raising a child with a mental disorder. Her    son had violent rages on a regular basis. He was in and out of juvenile detention. He had threatened to kill her. She detailed all this in her essay that took off online. Now, four years later, her son is speaking out too. This week on For The Record: a mother, a son and life on the edge of bipolar disorder. Eric Walton, Liza Long’s son, is now a    high school sophomore in Boise, Idaho. After a series of misdiagnoses, he’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But four years ago, he didn’t know much about his condition. ”I knew that there were times when I would have rages, didn’t like them. I knew that I wanted them to stop,” Walton says. Except he felt a loss of control in those moments. He describes the onset of these rages as a ”blackout” of sorts. ”I would start getting angry,” he says. ”Then it’s like being trapped inside a box inside your own head. It was like a television on the wall that shows you what you’re seeing. You can feel everything, but you no longer have the video game controller to control your own body.” Walton’s mom says when Eric would get into those states, ”he would express a lot of suicidal thoughts, and hearing him just say, ’I want to die, I just want to end it. ’” Then, two days before the Newtown shooting, Eric Walton had another episode. ”It was a pretty eventful day, even for my rages,” Walton recalls. ”I’d woken up and I’d slipped on a pair of navy blue sweats. But my school has this policy that you have to be wearing black pants. So my mom and I got into an argument over whether navy blue was actually black.” The fight got bad and it escalated as it often did. Eric threatened to kill himself, and he threatened to kill his mom. ”At that point, we were almost to my school, but mom decided to take me to Intermountain [Hospital] instead,” he says, referring to the mental health facility in Boise. ”It took I think three or four of the nurses to hold me down,” he says. ”They shoved a needle into my arm full of some kind of tranquilizer. And I woke up the next day in Intermountain.” That day left Liza Long feeling ”completely hopeless.” ”I really felt like a failure on that day,” she says. ”Here I had this child, he had seen multiple doctors, multiple specialists, numerous medications. Nothing had helped my child, he had been in juvenile detention four times at that point, every time for a behavioral symptom of a brain disease,” she says. Two days later, the news broke out of Newtown. ”I just put my head on my desk and started to cry,” Long recalls. ”I just had this overwhelming sense of empathy for Nancy Lanza. I know at that point people were already blaming her, but instead I could just see in my mind this little boy who probably had needed help.” She started writing about how tough it was to be the single mother of four kids, one of them a   struggling with mental illness, a kid who could violently rage one hour, and turn back into a calm, sweet boy the next. Days after she posted the essay on her anonymous blog and millions of shares later, the Huffington Post picked it up  —   and then it was everywhere. Three days after she wrote the piece, she visited her son in the hospital and read it to him off her phone. ”It was very powerful piece,” he says. ”I had seen it as only from my point of view, but until that day, I hadn’t considered what it was like for someone outside, looking in.” She got messages of support, but she also got criticism. People laid into her for comparing her son to a mass murderer, violating his privacy, and some suggested that she was somehow responsible for her son’s condition. It stung, but for the most part she pushed it away. ”  is as old as Eve though, right, it’s really easy for us to blame mothers, and that was exactly the point I was trying to make,” Long says. ”Families are suffering in shame and silence I was suffering in shame and silence. So is my child. But when we don’t share our stories, there’s no chance that we’re going to make change.” That could have been the end of the story, but that blog post ended up changing everything for Long and Walton. Long was inundated with emails, as readers continued to reach out to her. ”One person was very persistent, and she kept saying ’I know someone who can help,’ ” Long says. That person was a research assistant who worked for Dr. Demitri Papolos, director of research for the Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation. After meeting and talking with Walton and his mother, Dr. Papolos understood Walton’s symptoms. It looked like a particular strain of bipolar disorder. ”The symptoms that occur within the manic domain are hyperactivity, agitation, racing thoughts, pressured speech,” Dr. Papolos says. ”In the bipolar form, you see   retardation, lethargy, fatigue, oversleeping, depressed mood.” ”Mania feels really, really good,” says Eric Walton. ”But it’s also not that good because when you start moving at that speed, no one can keep up with you.” On the flip side of the disorder, ”I go through   days of almost complete inactivity,” he says. ”I’m kind of depressed and lethargic, and I don’t even want to get out of bed.” ”They are overwhelmed with fear and they misperceive things as threatening when they’re not,” says Dr. Papolos. Those symptoms check out with Walton. ”Any time I felt attacked. It was like a defense mechanism type thing.” After Dr. Papolos diagnosed Walton with childhood bipolar disorder, everything got better. ”I got the correct diagnosis. I got put on the right medication. And I haven’t had a rage, I think, since that day,” Walton says. ”It’s funny, I don’t even keep track anymore.” But the road to pinning down the diagnosis is often the hardest part, especially for parents, who often have to become psychiatric advocates for their children. ”The problem is that we are still relatively in infancy in terms of understanding the nature of psychiatric diagnosis, particularly in children,” Dr. Papolos says. ”I think [parents] have to do a lot of homework on their own. I wish I had another answer, but it’s the way things are currently.” Today, Eric owns his diagnosis. ”I choose to think of it as my superpower.” ”I’m really, really creative. I’m very empathetic. I have a lot of skills that teenagers don’t normally have: conflict resolution, mindfulness  —   just things I’ve had to pick up over the years because it kind of helped control myself before the right diagnosis.” His TED Talk in Boise early this month was the first time he outed himself publicly as the boy in that essay. And he used it to deliver a broader message: ”Mental illness should be treated with respect and kindness, not fear and stigma. People with mental illness are all human beings. And they deserve the same respect as anyone else.” And it was his mother’s willingness to talk openly against mental stigma, a few years ago that helped him carry that message in the first place, ”When I wrote that blog post, I was really concerned that my son’s fate was prison or worse, and now we are talking every day about college, about what he’d like to major in,” Liza Long says. ”I don’t think there are any right or wrong answers for Eric. There just a lot of great opportunities for Eric.” And her inbox is still overflowing. ”I have a tremendous sense of gratitude honestly mostly for all the  —   I still hear from families every day, some who just found that blog post for the first time. And to be able to connect people with resources, to be able to say ’look there is hope for you, don’t give up on your kid,’ that’s been really powerful for me.”"
"Beyoncé has surprised the world yet again. In case you missed it, she dropped her sixth studio album during her HBO special ”Lemonade.” Ahead of the release, she had released this cryptic trailer with such lines as, ”The past and the present merge to meet us here   Why can’t you see me?” As Pitchfork reported,” ’Lemonade’ was reported to be a ’  special’ in the same vein as 2013’s ’Life is But a Dream.’ ” But it turned out to be a   visual album, following a sweeping narrative arc of rage to redemption. You can watch it for free on HBO this weekend and also catch it on Tidal. This follows February’s surprise release of the music video ”Formation,” which our friends at Code Switch called an ”unapologetic black anthem.” The blog has a roundup of the flurry of conversation after its release. Beyoncé’s latest release includes ”Formation” and expands upon it. The Root describes it as ”a burning . .. love letter to herself and black women  —   our pain, our beauty, our hard love, our betrayal, our strength  —   exposing herself bare like we’ve never seen her before.” The album features the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others whose sons have been killed in shootings, holding their portraits during the song ”Forward.” It also shows video from her childhood and with her husband,  . The New York Times notes that ”the videos, heavy on Southern gothic imagery, are broken up with title cards that play on the   model of grief  —   intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, reformation.” And that grief does not play out simply on the macro scale it’s also evident in the intimate heartbreak of Beyoncé’s character throughout much of the visual album, in which she’s often cast as a scorned lover. ”In the last album  —   that was like love and relationships in its best form, and here she’s talking about the actual challenges that come with that,” Rolling Stone writer Michael Arceneaux tells NPR’s Michel Martin. And Arceneaux notes that, through it all, Beyoncé’s work demonstrates a significant respect for spectacle  —   nowhere more so than in Lemonade. ”A lot of artists now don’t particularly care about the visual and it’s just the song,” he says. ”But I think Beyoncé really genuinely appreciates how everything is supposed to work together in unison to have a larger impact.” But don’t make the mistake of comparing her to another performer with a knack for spectacle, Michael Jackson Arceneaux says Beyoncé actually shares much more in common with Janet. ”Because I think with Janet Jackson, she was able to talk about racial identity, her sexuality, gender and queerness, all these different things,” Arceneaux says. ”As much as I love Michael Jackson  —   I’m named after Michael Jackson  —   Janet was a bit broader in her themes throughout her career.”"
"Stacey McHoul left jail last summer with a history of heroin use and depression and only a few days of medicine to treat them. When the pills ran out she started thinking about hurting herself. ”Once the meds start coming out of my system, in the past, it’s always caused me to relapse,” she said. ”I start   and trying to stop the crazy thoughts in my head.” Jail officials gave her neither prescription refills nor a Medicaid card to pay for them, she said. Within days she was back on heroin  —   her preferred    —   and sleeping in abandoned homes around Baltimore’s     neighborhood. Thousands of people leave incarceration every year without access to the coverage and care they’re entitled to, jeopardizing their own health and sometimes the public’s. Advocates for   held high hopes for the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion that promised to deliver insurance to previously excluded single adults starting in 2014, including almost everybody released from prisons and jails. Many former inmates are mentally ill or struggle with drug abuse, diabetes or HIV and hepatitis C infection. Most return to poor communities such as West Baltimore’s Sandtown, which exploded in violence a year ago after Freddie Gray died from injuries sustained in police custody. But Maryland’s prison agency, which three years ago said it was ”well positioned” to enroll released inmates in Medicaid, is signing up fewer than a tenth of those who leave prisons and jails every year, according to state data. Few other states that have expanded Medicaid under the health law are doing any better, specialists say. Officials of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services say they do the best they can with limited resources, enrolling the most severely ill in Medicaid while letting most   fend for themselves. ”We are battling, every one of us,” to maximize coverage, said prison medical director Dr. Sharon Baucom, pointing to efforts to train   specialists, get Medicaid insurance for hospitalized inmates and share information on mentally ill inmates with other agencies. ”There are handoffs that could be improved,” she said. ”With the resources that we currently have, and the process that we have in place, we could do more  —   and we just need some more help.” Coverage under Medicaid was seen as an unprecedented chance to transform care for   by connecting them to treatment, reducing emergency room visits, controlling disease and putting them on a path to rehabilitation. As many as 90 percent of people leaving prisons and jails are eligible for Medicaid in states such as Maryland that expanded the federally supported program for   residents under the health act, experts estimate. The law gave states the option of extending Medicaid coverage to all   adults under 65, not just the children, pregnant women and disabled adults who were mainly included before. Sickest Inmates Are First In Line, Some 12, 000 of Maryland’s 21, 000 prison inmates are designated at any given time as chronically ill with behavioral problems, diabetes, HIV, asthma, high blood pressure and other conditions, according to prison officials. But given limited means and the already tall order of connecting emerging prisoners with transportation, shelter and employment, the system must focus on enrolling the very sickest, Baucom said. ”It’s a shame to have to make that call,” she said. Dr. Rosalyn Stewart saw what happened to many chronically ill   when she ran a recently completed pilot program to enroll former inmates in Medicaid and get them treatment and shelter. ”People frequently ran out of their medications and did not have access to the care they needed,” said Stewart, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University medical school. McHoul, 40, spent two short stays last year in Baltimore’s Women’s Detention Center. The first time the facility released her without Medicaid coverage. Shortly afterwards she landed in a hospital with an inflamed esophagus. She got out after a second jail stay in August without knowing the hospital had enrolled her in Medicaid between incarcerations, she said. At neither time did she have more than two weeks’ supply of any medication, including Depakote, a mood stabilizer, she said. For some prescriptions there was less than a week’s store. ”It was whatever was left in the blister pack,” said McHoul, who’s now in a Baltimore drug treatment program. ”It’s like, ’Here’s your supply. Sign this that we gave them to you. See you later. ’” State policy is to give exiting prisoners 30 days’ worth of medicine. But a court ordered McHoul released shortly after she was arrested the second time, which didn’t give the jail enough time to prepare medications, said a corrections spokesman. A Burden For Emergency Departments  There are many Stacey McHouls. ”Maybe somebody needs prescription services and they’re not enrolled and they don’t know where to go,” said Traci Kodeck, interim CEO of HealthCare Access Maryland, a nonprofit that connects consumers to coverage and has worked with the prison system. ”Absolutely it happens. Many of them will end up in the emergency departments if we don’t attempt to connect them to services prior to release.” Mark Pruitt, 46, was released from a Baltimore facility in October with no Medicaid card and a craving for heroin, which he said he had used before he was incarcerated for a parole violation. He desperately wanted to enter a drug treatment program, but signing up for Medicaid to pay for it was going to take weeks  —   far longer than he could wait. ”I knew what I wanted. I wanted help,” he said. ”I really wanted help. But it’s a struggle when you’re broke  —   no money, no insurance, feeling defeated. Where do you turn?” If administrators at a Baltimore recovery facility hadn’t gotten him enrolled in Medicaid, he said, ”I think I’d be dead.” From January 2014, when the Medicaid expansion took effect, through March of this year, Maryland released almost 16, 000 people sentenced to prison or jail, according to state data. Thousands more cycle in and out of jails each year without being convicted. But the corrections department said it enrolled only 1, 337 released inmates in Medicaid from the beginning of 2014 through late March. Another 1, 158 prisoners joined Medicaid over that time when they were hospitalized. (Medicaid covers inmates if they spend 24 hours as hospital inpatients most return to prison.) Many   are enrolled only when they experience a crisis and end up in an emergency room  —   the kind of expensive care health officials are trying to reduce. The law requires hospitals to treat emergency cases regardless of insurance coverage. They can retroactively sign those patients for Medicaid. ’They Don’t Want To Do The Paperwork’ Monique Wright, 35, got out of Jessup Correctional Institution last fall and began suffering acute head and neck pain caused by scoliosis, a spine curvature. Without Medicaid coverage or a primary care doctor, she said she had to seek emergency care at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. ”It’s the paperwork” that keeps prison officials from making sure people like her have Medicaid upon release, Wright said. ”They don’t want to do the paperwork. They don’t have the staff to do the paperwork.” Advocates wonder why the corrections system is so poor at enrolling what, they often point out, is ”literally a captive audience.” ”They’ve had them housed for the past 10, 15 years,” said a frustrated Andre Fisher, a case manager for   at Druid Heights Community Development Corp. a nonprofit in West Baltimore. ”What’s so hard about it?” Enrolling inmates in Medicaid can take weeks, prison officials said. Sometimes the card doesn’t arrive until after they’re out. Computer problems slowed signups in late 2014. One mistake made by Maryland and most other states is not considering inmates for Medicaid until their release dates approach, said Colleen Barry, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has studied the process. ”It’s a bad way to do it because you’re getting a very small number” of enrollees by waiting, she said. A better alternative is to enroll inmates when they are booked, as Chicago’s Cook County Jail has demonstrated, she said. Those incarcerated are generally ineligible for Medicaid, but putting them in the system when they enter makes it easier to trigger coverage when they leave, she added.   Struggle To Get Medicaid Without Help, If it’s hard for the prison system to enroll inmates, it’s even harder for the individuals to enroll themselves. Those who emerge without Medicaid face a maze of applications, bus trips, phone calls and queues if they want to sign up. Many don’t bother. For most leaving incarceration, ”it’s up to you to go there, make sure you get your health insurance,” said Jamal McCoy, 21, who was living with family in West Baltimore on home detention before he was released. ”Most people don’t go. Some people take it easy when they get home.” Those who try often find that lack of identification is the first challenge. To prevent fraud, Maryland and other states require Medicaid applicants to show verified Social Security numbers. But jails frequently lose inmate IDs, say prisoners and enrollment officials. Those locked up for years are   for much of the system, with no credit records or driver’s licenses. That can mean delays of many weeks when released prisoners are especially vulnerable. Gaps in coverage and care of even a few days after fragile patients leave the corrections health system can make the difference between life and death. ”If you’re the diabetic that hasn’t been compliant with your medication, you need your medication now,” said Henrietta Sampson, director of treatment coordination at Powell Recovery Center, a Baltimore addiction recovery agency that works with  . ”You can’t wait two weeks because you may drop dead.” Compared with the rest of the population,   in Washington state were a dozen times more likely to die in the first two weeks after release, according to research by Dr. Ingrid Binswanger, lead researcher for Kaiser Permanente Colorado’s Institute for Health Research. Drug overdose, cardiovascular disease, homicide and suicide were the leading causes of death. ”It’s very important to manage that transition, to make sure people have continuity of care,” she said. (Kaiser Permanente has no relationship with Kaiser Health News.) Yet in some cases the prison system has stymied outside groups trying to arrange inmates’ coverage. Stewart’s group repeatedly sought permission  —   ”continuously, for about three years,” she said  —   to meet vulnerable prisoners inside the facility to get an early start on enrollment and   appointments. It never happened. Baucom blamed the problem on ”competing priorities” and staff turnover. Acceptance into Medicaid by the state isn’t the end of the story. Released inmates then must enroll in a private managed care organization hired by Maryland to provide coverage. That can take weeks longer. Even when insured,   face the same barriers to care experienced by other   Baltimoreans  —   or worse. Many prison inmates are infected with hepatitis C, which can cause liver damage or cancer over time. But the high cost of curing the disease has prompted Maryland’s and other Medicaid programs to limit access to treatment to those whose livers are already compromised. ”I guess I got to wait until damage is done to my liver,” said William Carter, 50, adding that prison officials initiated Medicaid enrollment when he got out last year. Released prisoners often have no idea that some Medicaid   contractors allow them to use only certain doctors and pharmacies. ”So a patient goes to Walgreens or wherever to fill something and it’s like, ’That’ll be $150,’” because he should have gone somewhere else, said Stewart. ”They don’t understand what the problem was.” Even checking all the right boxes sometimes isn’t enough for   who bear the double stigma of poverty and a criminal history. One released prisoner got an appointment to renew his mental health prescription with a facility in Carroll County, Maryland  —   his home  —   that also accepted his Medicaid card, said Baucom. After the clinic learned he had a prison record it cancelled the visit. ”It’s not enough to have a card,” Baucom said. ”You’ve got to have access.” Neighborhoods are at risk when former inmates with chronic illness return. ”You really need to think about this as a public health issue,” said Scott Nolen, director of drug treatment programs for the Open Society Institute —  Baltimore, a nonprofit that works on criminal justice policy. ”There is transmission of communicable diseases that happens in prison, in confined spaces. And now those folks are coming back into communities, and we want to make sure they get health care.” In few places is the burden greater than  . Gray, 25, died of spinal injuries that prosecutors filing manslaughter and assault charges blamed on police who arrested him. The Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit, called Sandtown ”ground zero for the use of incarceration” in Baltimore last year, estimating that nearly one resident in 30 is in prison. At the same time, three West Baltimore ZIP codes including Sandtown showed the highest rates of HIV infection in Maryland in 2014, according to hospital data from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission obtained and analyzed by Kaiser Health News and Capital News Service. The corrections department could use more computers, release planners and other enrollment resources, Baucom said. ”If you do the checkoff list, we’ve checked off everything we can do,” she said, noting efforts not only to increase enrollment capacity but cooperation with the Maryland motor vehicle agency to get inmates state IDs. Jesse Jannetta, a specialist at the Urban Institute in prisoner   believes Maryland’s low signup rate ”is not unusual” in other states. A study published in Health Affairs found prisons and jails nationwide had enrolled 112, 520 people in Medicaid from late 2013 up to January 2015, although the authors believe the actual figure was higher. Federal and state prisons released 636, 000 people in 2014, according to the Justice Department. Millions more are estimated to cycle through jails each year. Few independent experts expect Maryland  —   let alone most other states  —   to come anywhere close to full enrollment of emerging inmates anytime soon. ”It’s fair to say we’re just at the tip of the iceberg” in prisoner enrollment, said Johns Hopkins’ Barry, a   of the Health Affairs study. ”Maryland is always an innovator. If Maryland is still at the cutting edge of how to do this, many areas of the country don’t have any of these types of programs in place.” Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. This story came from a partnership with The Baltimore Sun and Capital News Service, which is run by the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. KHN reporter Shefali Luthra and CNS reporters Catherine Sheffo, Daniel Trielli, Naema Ahmed and Marissa Laliberte contributed."
"If you came of age in the 1960s, chances are you think about rock ’n’ roll as the music of youth, of rebellion, of fighting the establishment. But in Nigeria, which was in the middle of a civil war, rock was one of the ways in which people expressed their politics. You might have heard about activist artists like Fela Kuti, who rebuked abusive government practices through song. But what you might not know is that the warring governments also understood the power of rock. Some military administrators went so far as to conscript popular rock bands  —   both to keep up their soldiers’ morale and to pacify the angry civilians. That fascinating history is the subject of a new book series called Wake Up You! The Rise and Fall of Nigerian Rock,   by music producer and historian Uchenna Ikonne. He joined NPR’s Michel Martin to talk about it you can hear their conversation at the audio link, or read on for an edited version. Michel Martin: So how did the Nigerian rock scene get started? Uchenna Ikonne: Well, the scene got started in the early 1960s, actually, when Rock Around The Clock showed in Nigeria. That was the first introduction to rock ’n’ roll, as it was for many people around the world. But at the time, rock ’n’ roll was seen more as a passing fad rather than a genre that was expected to have any kind of permanence. As the decade proceeded, a lot of young people got together to dance to foreign rock ’n’ roll records, usually those by Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard, and later by The Beatles. And soon enough, they decide to form their own bands. Would you mind talking a little bit about Fela? He is, for a lot of people, perhaps the main musical figure that they might be acquainted with. Where does he fit into this story? Fela is somebody who is often associated with a proudly and aggressively   stance, but that’s not the way he was always perceived on the Nigerian music scene. In his early days, in fact, he was rejected by the mainstream because his music seemed too foreign. He had come back from England with the idea of being a   jazz musician in the mold of Miles Davis. This was a period of cultural nationalism, and all Nigerians were encouraged to project expressions of self that were more or less indigenous  —   so the idea of coming and trying to play jazz, it was seen as not really where the culture wanted to go. The first audience that accepted Fela at this time was kids who were listening to rock ’n’ roll music, because they themselves felt like outcasts. So then how did rock ’n’ roll start to change as the war years went on? When rock ’n’ roll first came about, it sounded kind of ridiculous to most people. It seemed like these young Africans were awkwardly aping foreign artists, who were white, who were themselves copying black Americans. Something seemed to be lost in translation. But one thing that changed during the war was the popularity of soul music. And there was something about soul music that seemed to speak to young Africans on a very deep level. So the music became funkier, it became deeper, and that gave the rockers the opportunity to occupy the center stage in the culture. One of the fascinating things that I learned from your book is that people on both sides of the conflict actually had their own dedicated bands, or they had their own kind of musical following. Can you talk a little bit about that? During the war, the soldiers had to be entertained, so both the Nigerian and the Biafran armies found out that it was in their best interest to conscript musical groups, to entertain the soldiers and keep their morale up. These groups also gave a lot of young people the opportunity to avoid being drafted to the combat zone. If you could pick up a guitar, there’s a chance that maybe you could be an army musician and be in less risk of being killed. So, a lot of people flocked towards those bands if they could play at all. How do you think that affected the music scene after the war? Well, it affected the kind of music that was popular. You can hear that, for example, on tracks such as ”Graceful Bird,” by Warhead Constriction, which was a band of high schoolers at the time in Lagos. You can also hear the same thing in the music of The Hykkers, such as ”In The Jungle.” They were just showing a new heaviness, a new sense of fury and fuzz, to the music, that sort of reflected the sense of confusion and the aftermath of the violence of the war. One of the things I was wondering is that, given that rock is so important to the Nigerian story, did any of these artists gain fame elsewhere in the world? Several of them tried. They weren’t able to do it it was difficult. They really did make the attempt, but at the time, I’m not sure that the Western audience was ready to accept them. Things are a lot easier now due to the internet: People are used to listening to music from all over the world. Back then, Western record labels really did not know what to do with African artists. They would fall in love with them for their African sound, and then take them over to London or New York, and then really not know how to market them. They’d end up trying to scrub all the Africanness away from them and turn them into something else. Why is the subtitle of the book, ”The Rise And Fall Of Nigerian Rock”? Because the music did not really sustain itself. By the middle of the 1970s, it had already started fading. By the end of the ’70s, it was mostly gone. And not only did it disappear, but it disappeared from the collective memory in many ways. I think the country just kind of grew out of it, decided to move in a different direction culturally. And that whole period just turns out to be a weird interstitial period that isn’t exactly the ’70s and isn’t the ’60s, either it was just a period of transition."
"Confused about the word Eskimo?  It’s a commonly used term referring to the native peoples of Alaska and other Arctic regions, including Siberia, Canada and Greenland. It comes from a Central Algonquian language called Ojibwe, which people still speak around the Great Lakes region on both sides of the U. S.  border. But the word has a controversial history. (Editor’s note: And that’s why it’s not used in the stories on Greenland that NPR has posted this week.)  People in many parts of the Arctic consider Eskimo a derogatory term because it was widely used by racist,   colonizers. Many people also thought it meant eater of raw meat, which connoted barbarism and violence. Although the word’s exact etymology is unclear,   anthropologists suggested that the word came from the Latin word excommunicati, meaning the excommunicated ones, because the native people of the Canadian Arctic were not Christian.  But now there’s a new theory. According to the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, linguists believe the word Eskimo actually came from the French word esquimaux, meaning one who nets snowshoes. Netting snowshoes is the   way that Arctic peoples built winter footwear by tightly weaving, or netting, sinew from caribou or other animals across a wooden frame.  But the correction to the etymological record came too late to rehabilitate the word Eskimo. The word’s racist history means most people in Canada and Greenland still prefer other terms. The most widespread is Inuit, which means simply, ”people.” The singular, which means ”person,” is Inuk.  Of course, as with so many words sullied by the crimes of colonialism, not everyone agrees on what to do with Eskimo. Many Native Alaskans still refer to themselves as Eskimos, in part because the word Inuit isn’t part of the Yupik languages of Alaska and Siberia.  But unless you’re native to the circumpolar region, the short answer is: You probably shouldn’t use the word Eskimo."
"The lines were stark outside the courthouse. A bustling street in downtown Brooklyn, N. Y. separated two groups. Each was fenced in by   police officers and steel barricades: an   community divided by Tuesday’s sentencing of    Peter Liang, the son of Chinese immigrants. On one side, a group of mainly   protesters held up poster boards declaring ”Racist Prosecution!” and ”Peter Liang Deserves Justice too!” in black marker. On the other, a racially mixed group of activists that included   lifted ”Black Lives Matter” signs, both in English and Chinese. This case began in a dark stairwell of a public housing development in November 2014. About 18 months after graduating from the New York City Police Academy, Liang fired his gun from the eighth floor while on patrol. Akai Gurley, 28, an unarmed,   father of a    girl, was walking down the stairs when the bullet ricocheted off a wall and pierced his heart. As Gurley lay in a pool of his blood on the   landing with a friend trying to revive him, Liang passed by without offering help. Gurley was pronounced dead at a local hospital soon after. Less than three months later, Liang became one of the few police officers to be indicted in a shooting case. In February, a jury found the former New York City police officer guilty of manslaughter and official misconduct. This week, Justice Danny Chun reduced his manslaughter charge to criminally negligent homicide, and sentenced him to five years of probation with 800 hours of community service. Prosecutors say they will appeal the reduced conviction, and Liang’s attorneys are planning to appeal the case, too. ’A   Call’  Liang’s sentencing marks a culmination of almost a year and a half of fissures among  . Many have taken to the streets in New York City and in other major cities around the country in support of Liang, while others have rallied around Gurley’s family. ”It’s a   call,” says Erika Lee, a University of Minnesota history professor and author of The Making of Asian America. Lee says Liang’s case has mobilized a level of   activism not seen since the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the 1982 killing of Vincent Chin in a Detroit suburb. The debate about Liang’s case comes from a long history of different kinds of activism by the   community, Lee argues. ”There are these two traditions of   both acting for   causes and issues as well as joining others, especially since the 1960s,” she says. In her book, Lee highlights protests during World War II by   ”  boys” who, after being forced to live in internment camps, refused to comply with the military draft and loyalty questionnaires that discriminated against U. S. citizens of Japanese ancestry. She also writes about other   activists, like Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs, who were ”among those who got their start in the   civil rights movement.” Is Liang A ’Scapegoat’? Many   activists supporting Liang ask why he was put on trial when so many white officers have not been charged in other   deaths of black men. They also question whether Liang has received enough support from a predominantly white police department and officers’ union. ”We’ve seen bureaucracy, corruption and lots of shirking of responsibility that have led to Peter Liang becoming a scapegoat,” Jerry Lo of Long Island said in Cantonese, as he stood with other   protesters across from the Kings County Supreme Court after the sentencing. Laura Lam of Manhattan arrived outside the courthouse two hours before the sentencing was scheduled to begin to join other Liang supporters. She chafed at the suggestion that her support for Liang has anything to do with race. ”Don’t bring race into it. It should be very pure. It’s about justice only,” Lam said in Cantonese, adding that she’s heartbroken that an innocent man has died and a young cop’s career has been cut short. ”I feel very sad. It’s bad for both sides.” She said that Liang should not have been charged. Instead, Lam put most of the blame on the NYPD for sending Liang with another rookie cop to patrol the Louis H. Pink Houses, as well as the public housing development’s management for not making sure the stairwell was properly lit at night. It’s hard for her to understand, she said, why anybody, especially   would blame Liang for what she sees as an accident. ’Not Just A Black Person’s Struggle’ Across the street, standing among Gurley supporters, Ting Lin of Brooklyn said she also doesn’t think Liang’s race should play a role in this debate. ”I’m not saying that it’s OK for the white cops to get away. But I just think that he did something wrong and he should be held accountable for it,” explained the college student. Lin said she’s seen posters in her neighborhood asking for donations to fund Liang’s legal fees for appealing his case, and she wanted to publicly support the Gurley family’s efforts to hold police accountable. ”I feel like blacks and Asians should get together,” she said. ”I feel like it’s not just a black person’s struggle.” High school student Xuan Wang of Queens said Liang supporters should not see him as a victim and should instead rally around the Gurley family. ”I think we, as East   we have to acknowledge the   within our own communities that does, in my belief, play a part in their support for Peter Liang,” he said. ’You Have To Fight For Your Rights’ Wu Yiping helped organize many of the New York City rallies in support of Liang. He credited the protests by Liang’s supporters around the U. S. for helping to bring about what many consider a light sentence. Liang received no jail time, but he could have been sent to prison for as long as 15 years for his original manslaughter conviction. Wu argued that the sentence showed the importance of voting and participating in ”mainstream society” in the U. S. ”American society won’t give you rights. You have to fight for your rights,” Wu said in Mandarin. He added that the way forward includes finding opportunities for the   and   communities to better understand each other. ”The reason why there hasn’t been that communication is because Chinese people are focused on their careers,” he said. ”And we don’t think about doing other things.” Wu suggested that Chinese restaurateurs and other business owners operating in   communities can do more to give back to the community. ”They should go into their churches, speak with them and try to understand what they need. We can even prepare free Chinese lunches for their children or donate money during the holidays,” he said. A ’Troubling Ebb And Flow’ Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Liang case, there are questions about how long the political energy it generated within the   community, on both sides, can be sustained. Lee, the author of The Making of Asian America, says there’s a ”troubling ebb and flow” to activism by   who are positioned in the U. S. racial hierarchy as ”both victims and also protected from some of the harshest types of racial discrimination.” ”We do have this privilege of not always having to pay attention to these issues, and then sometimes when it does hit our community hard, it’s a very politicizing moment because it feels new,” she adds. ”We may be shocked into thinking this could happen to us, too, when we thought we might have been protected.” Lee says   are facing a ”pivotal” moment as the country’s   racial group and that the group’s demographics are changing in other ways, too. Many of the new immigrants from China are coming with higher levels of economic and political clout, and they may be better primed to get involved with causes than previous generations of   Chinese immigrants, Lee adds. Still, the Liang case has not only exposed a growing range of opinions within the increasingly diverse   community. For some   it has also   a commitment to stand with other communities of color in solidarity. ”Something has been awoken. Something has been established,” Lee says. ”What that will be is unclear right now.”"
"Last month’s earthquake brought much of Kathmandu’s historic Durbar Square, a World Heritage Site, tumbling to the ground. Nepal’s showcase temples and palaces were reduced to ruins. But save for a few cracks, the home of the city’s Living Goddess remained intact. Largely unknown to the outside world, Nepal’s   institution of the child deity, the Kumari Devi, is deeply embedded in the culture of Kathmandu Valley. Young, beautiful and decorous, even a glimpse of her is believed to bring good fortune. The current Kumari of Kathmandu, age 9, is the best known of several girls who are worshipped in Nepal, and is revered by many though she lives an isolated and secretive existence inside the house and is rarely seen. At her home, caretaker Gautam Shakya says the building’s square shape stabilized it in the recent tremors. Yet nothing so mundane was involved, insists Udhav Man Karmacharya, one of the main priests attending the Kumari. ”It’s the power of the goddess it’s about faith,” the priest declares. ”It’s been the home of Kumaris for ages and we believe the force of that goddess made the house safe.” Kumaris are drawn from the Newar community, the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley for whom planets, karma and an array of gods play a vital role in    life. Gautam Shakya, in the eleventh generation of Kumari caretakers, says they are Buddhists who adopted the Hindu caste system and embody harmony. ”One doesn’t discriminate against the other. We Newars are Buddhist. The Kumari is from a Buddhist family  —   but she is a Hindu goddess,” he says. There’s at least one major drawback to being a Kumari. You must relinquish the position when you reach puberty and return to the ranks of mere mortals. The current Kumari was not available for an interview. But Chanira Bajracharya, now 19, recalled when the title was conferred on her in the historic city of Patan when she was just 5 years old. It followed an elaborate search that included an elimination round in which seven girls were handed grains and studied for their reaction: ”Some became fevered some cried,” she says. Barjracharya only turned a slight blush color. She was whisked off to the Royal Court to be inspected for ”32 characteristics” of physical perfection, among them ”thighs like a deer, chest like a lion, and eyelashes like a cow.” Bajracharya says after the royal priest’s wife examined her ”teeth and nails” and ”checked to see there were no blemishes on my body, she declared that I was to be the next goddess.” The secretive world of the Kumari generates its own lore, including tales about initiation rites filled with demons and the heads of dead animals. Bajracharya says there was nothing so terrifying, but recalls her own investiture was frightening enough. ”Actually the room was quite scary, only lit through oil lamps. But then when you get the power of the goddess you don’t get scared at all. Even though I was 5 years old I was sitting there quite calm,” she says. The Kumari is believed to be the incarnation of the fearsome Hindu goddess Durga. One myth  —   and there are several  —   has Durga visiting the king of the Malla dynasty each night until the king makes sexual advances . .. and the goddess vanishes in fury. She then appears to the king in a dream telling him: ”Find a child from the Shakya caste. I will enter her soul and you can worship her as you worshipped me.” The king complies, and the belief in the world’s only Living Goddess is born. Kumari Priest Karmacharya says the child becomes ”Taleju, the unseen force that only priests have the power to see,” he says. Chanira Bajracharya, whose aunt was also a Kumari, recalls that she felt a distinct physical sensation when the force was present in her. ”I feel hot, my body gets warm,” she says, but ”it’s a very pleasant feeling.” When the power of the goddess was with her she says she understood people’s ”wishes and granted them.” She says there also were times when she would become angry and refuse people’s prayers. ”My behavior is not in my control . .. There is someone supreme over me that makes me listen to their prayers or just ignore them. You feel, you know, supreme.” She mysteriously adds, ”You’re not you, actually.” Bajracharya’s stint as a Living Goddess ended when she reached puberty at the age of 15, and her powers ”were transferred to another girl.” Before Nepal’s monarchy was abolished in 2008, kings would seek the Kumari’s blessing. Later, the president bowed before her. Human rights activist and lawyer Sapana Pradhan Malla says ”with everyone surrendering themselves to her” there’s little wonder the Kumari feels ”supreme.” ”Yes, she inherited this power because of the culture, because of the religion and also the state itself is practicing this culture to make her powerful,” Malla says. The government subsidizes Kumaris with a small stipend in recognition of their service. But the rituals and way of life surrounding Nepal’s Living Goddess are cloaked in secrecy, and raise questions: Why are they cloistered away? Why are they retired when they reach puberty? Priest Udhav Karmacharya says it wouldn’t do to have a goddess susceptible to the distractions of young men. Besides, he says, as she’s no longer a child, she will be tempted to tell the secrets of the temple. ”There is information we cannot divulge. When she’s conversing in the temple with the priests  —   she’s ” the priest says. ”It’s a mystery. It’s sacred. And if we tell all of the secrets, she’ll no longer be a goddess, but just a common woman.” It’s no different from the Vatican’s secrets, he adds. But Malla, the human rights activist, notes: ”Popes are adults. These are small girls.” The former Kumari, Bajracharya, says she enjoyed her time being ”treated like a princess.” The first Kumari to be taught to ”surf the Web” was sequestered in the home of her parents, whom she says she enjoyed not obeying. But the transition to ordinary life ”was tough.” And Bajracharya says she would like to smooth the journey for the next generation of living goddesses, who must one day return to the humdrum world of humans."
"To wrap up our series on public health in Baltimore, Audie Cornish met up with Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen in Freddie Gray’s neighborhood of  . The health department recently opened a new outpost of its violence prevention program Safe Streets there, employing   to mediate conflicts before they erupt in violence. Wen spoke about pushing a public health agenda in a city that has long struggled with poverty, violence and addiction. She also talked about what she, as an emergency physician, has learned in her first stint in government. Here are interview highlights, edited for length and clarity. On her goal to make Baltimore a model for the country, We have gotten significant national recognition for some of our programs, including our programs to respond to the opioid overdose epidemic. I had the opportunity to testify in front of the U. S. Senate and House and was invited to speak with President Obama about Baltimore’s work. I do believe that because of the way we’ve focused on addiction as a disease, that that’s changing the conversation in our city and actually, is leading the way around the country. People are beginning to see Baltimore not as [the HBO drama] The Wire and heroin overdose but actually as a model for recovery and resilience. On what she wants to tackle next, The unrest [after Freddie Gray] paradoxically opened the door for us to address trauma, which is a natural segue to talk about mental health and the bigger picture of emotional  . People finally felt like they could talk about the trauma they’ve experienced for so many years. It’s the trauma of police brutality. It’s the trauma of discriminatory practices. It’s the trauma even of being poor. We now want to convene a citywide group to address this issue, which is very difficult because ultimately, the trauma work has to be done at the community level. On her optimism, despite the challenges Baltimore faces, I’m not blind to the problems that exist. But I also realize these problems have been in the making for decades. We’re not going to be able to make a huge difference overnight. But there are things we can do along the way to demonstrate to our community that we hear you, and this is what we do in the meantime. We cannot solve the issue of addiction overnight, but we can reduce overdose deaths, and we have passed a Good Samaritan law [to protect people who help overdose victims] and we are introducing programs where individuals caught with drugs are not going to be incarcerated but actually, are going to be offered drug treatment. So we’re showing that things can be done, and that we’re taking small steps. And actually, our community gets it. If we just came to the community and said we’re going to solve all of our crime problems overnight, they’re not going to buy it. But if we say we know the success of Safe Streets, it’s been demonstrated in four sites across our city, now we’re going to open a fifth site in Sandtown, you can feel the energy and the optimism. And maybe that’s why I’m so optimistic. On what she’s learned from the job since she began in January 2015, I was never in the political world, and I’m not from Baltimore. So coming here, everyone was new. It’s been a really steep learning curve. The things I’ve learned over the year have been a lot about myself, and who I am as a manager, who I am with navigating complicated politics and situations, but also what motivates me. And I’ve learned that I like a fight. I don’t want to be in a situation where things are going well. I don’t feel like I have anything to do in that case. In the ER, it’s the patient dying in front of me. It’s someone who is gravely ill, and my fight is the fight to save their life. I see the same thing in Baltimore. There are so many problems. There are so many fights I can have every single day. It’s the fight to get health on every agenda, to change legislation, to change public perception and mindset, to reduce stigma, to introduce new programs in a time of severe fiscal constraints. I like a fight, and I’m good at it, and that is what motivates me. I’m learning now just how powerful that voice can be  —   to say, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a doctor and as a scientist. I’m here to give voice to all these issues that we’ve seen that are unfair  —   housing politics, policing policies, drug policies. And I’m saying from a health perspective how these policies have destroyed our community, and this is what we’re doing about it now. Dr. Leana Wen has been a contributor to Shots since 2013. You can read her account of why she decided to become Baltimore’s health commissioner here."
"When it comes to introducing babies to solid foods, rice cereal is often first. And rice is a staple in many baby and toddler foods. But, as we’ve reported, multiple studies have found that   foods contain traces of arsenic, and sometimes levels are surprisingly high. Now comes a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics that finds babies who are fed rice cereals  —   and other   snacks  —   have higher concentrations of arsenic in their urine compared with infants who are not fed rice. ”The highest arsenic concentrations were among those who consumed infant rice cereal,” says researcher Margaret Karagas, an epidemiologist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. ”Among those [babies] who ate rice snacks, levels were about double [that of]   eaters.” The study was based on data from the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study. The researchers analyzed the eating habits of about 750 infants of mothers enrolled in the study. ”We knew rice cereal was a common first food, but we didn’t really know how common it was or what age it was introduced,” Karagas says. The study found that, by age 1, about 80 percent of babies had been introduced to rice cereal, usually starting at 4 to 6 months. ”We were surprised by the number of infants consuming rice products,” Karagas says. The potential health effects of regularly consuming infant rice cereal  —   and other   products  —  containing traces of arsenic are unclear. But the authors write in their paper that ”emerging epidemiologic evidence suggests that [arsenic] exposure in utero and during early life may be associated with adverse health effects” on immune system and brain development. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a limit of 100 parts per billion for inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal. Inorganic arsenic is the type that public health officials worry about the most. ”Our actions are driven by our duty to protect the public health and our careful analysis of the data and the emerging science,” Susan Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a statement on the proposed limit. The FDA’s statement points to research that links exposure to inorganic arsenic early in life to decreased performance on certain developmental tests. The FDA tested 76 samples of infant rice cereals from retail stores for concentrations of inorganic arsenic. The agency found that about half of the samples contained levels of inorganic arsenic that were higher than 100 ppb, but most exceeded the proposed limit only slightly. So, what advice does the agency have for parents? Rice doesn’t need to be the only  —   or first  —   source of grain in your baby’s diet, the FDA says. Other sources include oats, wheat and barley. ”For toddlers, provide a   diet, which includes a variety of grains,” the agency says. This advice is seconded by the American Academy of Pediatricians. A wide variety of foods ”will decrease [a] child’s exposure to arsenic from rice,” concludes the AAP’s advice to parents. And as the AAP notes, other foods  —   like finely chopped meats or vegetable purees  —   ”are equally acceptable as a first food.”"
"The ”monoculture” has supposedly been dead for at least a decade, but it ain’t necessarily so.   pop music phenomena do still exist, but today that universe is made entirely of Beyoncé  —   a Michael    figure whom everyone who cares about popular culture is supposed to grapple with and have big thoughts about. And so, like every one of her albums and videos of the last   or so, ”Lemonade,” the hourlong ”visual album” that dropped on Saturday, has galvanized the entire   complex, a function of both the economics of digital publishing  —   them clicks, tho!  —   but also because the biggest pop star on Earth is making art that increasingly invites and maybe requires a million considerations and reconsiderations. When Beyoncé addresses the public at all now, it’s with statements like this:     and at once searingly candid while being meticulously, preposterously choreographed. ”Lemonade” is about black women, and black feminism, and her family’s particular history down in the Delta, and her troubled marriage and motherhood. The mothers of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown make appearances. A young black man considers what President Obama has meant to his identity. Serena Williams twerks. That’s not even a tenth of what happens here  —   it’s all too much and not enough and gorgeous and mesmerizing and messy. And it’s complicated by Beyoncé’s particular position on several different cultural stages all at once: an inconceivably wealthy pop demigoddess offering herself up as a figure of familiarity,   and a template for actualization  —   and, of course, tending to the important business of selling the ”Lemonade” album and her forthcoming tour. So yeah. There are a million threads to pull here, and some writers out there will inevitably try to do the most and take them all on at once. (You brave, brave fools.) But if you’re feeling compelled to dive into that ocean of essays about what ”Lemonade” means, I’d like to point you to Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s fantastic consideration of Beyoncé for NPR’s The Record from 2014, titled ”How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You: The BeyHive.” In it, Kaadzi Ghansah wrestles with the way Beyoncé’s celebrity and her, uh, ”dedicated” fandom (the aforementioned ”BeyHive”) rests against her embrace of feminism. That descriptor sounds way drier than the piece reads. Kaadzi Ghansah goes to a Beyoncé concert in Brooklyn and embeds with some of her fiercest fans to makes sense of their relationship to her: [Beyoncé] like most black women, must work hard but, unlike most black women and girls, is endlessly  . She will never be homeless. She will never be broken. . ..While her fans’ lives might be pocked with disappointments and failures, somehow their Queen’s life has largely avoided this. There are people who like to say hyperbolic, vapid things like, if you hate Beyoncé you must hate your life. Beyoncé is such a symbol of triumph that these people are willing to overlook her extremely problematic ties to the worst forms of capitalism (Pepsi,   and Barneys). But recently I’ve come to realize how much the Hive’s deep, at times blind investment in her isn’t so much about loving her one ton of talent but rather their defense of her place on the pedestal. They are in love with what she transmutes. What she is allowed to be. And Beyoncé does this more earnestly than the majority of singers today: she performs for them, shows them what a woman in successful control of her life sounds like. This is why they root for her. She gives her fans hope  —   as Tina Turner once did for women in the ’80s  —   a sense that they, too, might win at life and vanquish the hurt. Beyoncé is the rare exception who has beaten the odds, despite her being a woman, and despite her being a black woman. A few days after Beyoncé’s album came out I was invited to join more than 40 women in a conference call about the album. Did I come in love? Adrienne Maree Brown, the facilitator of the call, asked me when I revealed I was on assignment. I replied that I came in sisterhood. Which is the word that kept circling in my head as I listened, almost awed into silence by these women, many of them women of color, who just wanted to be rapturous over the black woman who almost shut down Christmas. For one hour all that these women wanted was a private space to say ”Beyoncé is my sister and I love her.” Seriously, go read the whole thing, it’s so worth your time. And when you’re done, come holler at us on Twitter, ’cause we’re gonna need your help making sense of all this."
"On Saturday night, Beyoncé shook the music world with an hourlong feature on HBO, and then a surprise album  —   Lemonade. Beyoncé couldn’t have produced a body of work this defiant, or blunt, two years ago. Lemonade has been made possible by the cultural, social and political upheaval we’re in the midst of, triggered by the deaths of boys and fathers and women, who will never be forgotten. We’ve all been changed by these events. Beyoncé may be a machine, but she’s changed, too. And so have Serena Williams, actress Amandla Stenberg, literary giant in the making Warsan Shire, and the other figures featured front and center in the visual version of the album  —   from the women who look like my mom and my aunties and my cousins, to those carrying the grief of a nation: the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Mike Brown. Beyoncé is stomping, frolicking, crawling and sashaying back and forth across the genre line, all over Lemonade. When she hears a sound she wants, she goes straight to the source: When she needs melancholy, she turns to reclusive electronic crooner James Blake. When going for a kind of emotional detachment, and talking about money, she taps newly minted pop superstar The Weeknd. And when she’s righteously angry  —   just one shade of the emotion she explores thoroughly on Lemonade  —   she calls on blues rock giant Jack White. Beyoncé uses these men as tools. She digests their work and filters it through her art, creating a new and distinct product. She’s put her hand in every cookie jar of sound, making sure we hear her loud and clear  —   all genres, all listeners. The lead single, ”6 Inch,” is a dark and dedicated   to every woman on her grind. Taken literally or metaphorically, she’s pointing out that women are fighting for every penny, day in and day out. She’s letting us know that we’re not crazy for wanting more, for refusing to settle for less. Late in the album, which bends toward forgiveness and redemption, comes Beyoncé’s anthemic moment. With the song ”Freedom,” she’s telling us to clear our own path, not wait for someone else to clear it for us, or give us permission. Throughout Lemonade, but most clearly here, she is authoritative. She didn’t write all of these words, and she might not be singing about her marriage  —   but this is her story. It feels like sage advice. With this album, Beyoncé is telling us that she’s made it this far in spite of the system in place you know  —   the overtly sexist, subtly racist one. She was served lemons. And she made the most fire, refreshing, delectable,   lemonade ever known to man. Actually, scratch that  —   ever known to woman."
"This post was updated at 8:30 p. m. ET. A man who says he was sexually abused by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert has sued the Illinois Republican. The alleged victim says he received only $1. 7 million of $3. 5 million Hastert promised him to keep quiet, NPR’s David Schaper reports. Hastert is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday for crimes related to the hush money. He pleaded guilty to structuring cash withdrawals to get around requirements that the bank report big transactions to the federal government. As we’ve reported, the alleged abuse took place decades ago, when Hastert was a high school wrestling coach federal prosecutors have noted that the federal and state statutes of limitations ”have long expired” on possible sexual misconduct charges. In Monday’s court document, the plaintiff’s lawyer Kristi Browne gives a timeline of the abuse and the ”oral contract” about the money (the full document is embedded below). Browne tells NPR that Hastert was ”a personal family friend of my client’s family.” At 14, the plaintiff attended a wrestling camp where Hastert was a coach, the complaint says. He alleges he was molested by Hastert in a motel room during the camp. In 2008, the plaintiff learned about another alleged abuse, and he ”met with Hastert to confront him about what he had done.” The complaint continues, referring to the plaintiff as ”James Doe”: ”During their discussion, Hastert acknowledged the   pain and suffering he caused Plaintiff. Plaintiff asked Hastert to compensate him for the pain, suffering, and harm caused by Hastert. Hastert agreed to compensate Doe for the trauma he suffered as a result of the admitted sexual molestation and abuse. When asked by Hastert for the amount he thought would compensate him for this harm, Doe suggested $3. 5 million. Hastert agreed to pay him this sum. Hastert asked Doe to keep the agreement confidential. Doe agreed.” Hastert paid the plaintiff $1. 7 million between 2010 and 2014, and stopped when his bank transactions came under investigation, according to the court document. The plaintiff is asking for the remaining $1. 8 million, plus interest. For the financial crimes, The Chicago Tribune has reported that Hastert’s sentence could be ”anywhere from probation up to five years in prison,” although his plea agreement with prosecutors calls for a sentence of no more than six months behind bars. The Tribune has also published dozens of letters given to the court on Hastert’s behalf. Among the supporters were family members, employees and colleagues, including former Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who called Hastert a man of ”integrity” and ”strong faith.” ”We all have our flaws, but Dennis Hastert has very few,” Delay wrote. Former California Rep. John Doolittle said Hastert was ”often referred to as, ’Coach’ ” and looked out for his fellow members of Congress."
"Last week, an NPR analysis found Hillary Clinton outperforms Bernie Sanders in the states with the most income inequality. This weekend on Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd asked about that trend we discovered: Why would Sanders do worse in those states when income inequality is his signature issue? Sanders responded that ”poor people don’t vote.” We decided to look into that claim. The Claim: CHUCK TODD: . .. So 17 of the 25 states with the highest levels of income inequality have held primaries. Sixteen of those 17 states have been won by Hillary Clinton, not by you. Why? SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, because poor people don’t vote. I mean, that’s just a fact. That’s a sad reality of American society. And that’s what we have to transform. We have one  —   as you know, one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major country on Earth. We have done a good job bringing young people in. I think we have done —   had some success with lower income people. But in America today  —   the last election in 2014, 80 percent of poor people did not vote. The Big Question: Do   Americans vote that much less than the rest of the population? And did 80 percent of poor Americans really not vote in 2014? The Short Answer:  Sanders may be off on that 80 percent figure, especially depending on how you define ”poor.” But his broader point stands: Poorer Americans do vote less than richer Americans. The Long Answer: We reached out to the Sanders campaign about these stats, and they sent us a source: a 2015 Pew report on financial insecurity and voting patterns. In that report, Pew separated Americans into five different groups based on their levels of financial security (derived from their responses to questions about how hard it is to pay their bills, whether they receive   benefits like SNAP, and so on). ”Financially insecure” doesn’t exactly mean ”poor,” but Pew itself calls measures of income a ”blunt measure,” explaining that its insecurity index is a more nuanced look at people’s    financial situations. Those financially insecure people were much less likely to vote than the people with firmer financial footing. In that   group, only 20 percent of people were ”likely voters” in that   2014 survey (according to a Pew scale that determined a person’s likelihood of voting). But the likelihood of voting goes up as financial security does  —   63 percent of the most financially secure Americans were considered ”likely voters.” So did 20 percent end up voting? Census data says they did  —   and then some. Pew didn’t exactly study based on income, but when the Census Bureau did in 2014, it found that among Americans in families making less than $10, 000 (the lowest income group they studied) 24. 5 percent voted (65. 1 percent of those people said they didn’t vote the other 10. 3 percent were classified as ”nonrespondents”). So up to 75. 5 percent of those very lowest income families didn’t vote in 2014 (that is, the nonvoters plus the nonrespondents). That’s close to 80 percent, which lends some weight to Sanders’ claim. But only some weight. That   share may also be as low as 65 percent, given those nonrespondents. Not only that, but there are plenty of people who make more than $10, 000 per year who could still be considered ”poor” or, in Pew’s study, ”financially insecure.” After all, that group of people in families making $10, 000 or less is only around 3. 1 percent of all U. S. adults. There are plenty more people in the U. S. who are ”poor” by one definition or another. And the higher the income over that $10, 000 mark, the more people voted in 2014, according to the Census Bureau, meaning that as income gets higher, the further the voting rate gets from that 20 percent mark. So Sanders may be stretching it on that 80 percent figure. However, his broader point stands:   people do tend to vote less than   people. In those census data, voting rates go up with income levels  —   the   group, people in families making $150, 000 or more, also had the highest turnout, at 56. 6 percent. This doesn’t just happen in midterms other Census data from 2012 similarly show higher voting rates as income climbs. And for further reading, here are two great analyses of this trend of   voters’ low turnout: one from Sean McElwee in Politico Magazine in January 2015, and one from Daniel Weeks in the Atlantic in January 2014. (Aside: For the record, Sanders is also right on that stat about the U. S. having one of the lowest turnouts of any major country on earth. According to data compiled by Pew from the OECD  —   an organization of developed nations  —   the voting rate in the U. S. was around 54 percent of the   population in the 2012 election. That makes it 31st out of 34 countries in terms of voting rates.) (Aside No. 2: PolitiFact, for its part, gave Sanders’ ”80 percent of poor people didn’t vote” claim a ”Mostly True” rating.) The Broader Context: Sanders’ answer was meant to address why he didn’t perform better in unequal states. But it’s not clear that if more poorer people voted in the primaries and caucuses that Sanders would have performed better. In some states like Iowa and Massachusetts, he performed close to or better than Clinton among   people, while   people preferred her, according to entrance and exit polls. But as John Dickerson pointed out on CBS’s Face the Nation this weekend, there were several states in which the trend was reversed: ”[I]n states like Ohio, Florida, New York, and even Michigan, which you won, those who would be  —   those earning less than $30, 000 ended up voting more for Hillary Clinton. So, that doesn’t seem to be the case,” he said. It’s possible that more poor people turning out might help Sanders more  —   after all, many young people (who have been reliable sources of support for Sanders) are in school and earning little, and many others are at the start of their careers, earning less than their older counterparts. But if the trend seen in the exit polls thus far held and more of those   people turned out, they might not have boosted Sanders all that much. At any rate, one other important point: The fact that so many Americans don’t vote (and that those people tend to disproportionately be  ) matters in election outcomes. In a 2014 report, Pew found that nearly half of nonvoters (that is, people who weren’t registered or who were unlikely to vote) had a family income of less than $30, 000 (compared with 19 percent of voters). And those nonvoters had measurably different political views in some areas from likely voters. Nonvoters were more likely to be Democrats or lean Democrat, and they also were more likely to say that government aid to the poor ”does more good than harm.” One other interesting facet of the interaction between income and turnout: As McElwee pointed out in that Politico article, research suggests that ”higher class bias in the electorate actually leads to higher levels of income inequality.” So if this trend of lower turnout among   Americans continues, it could make inequality (the trend Todd was asking Sanders about in the first place) even higher. Sources cited: Email from Warren Gunnels, policy director of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. April 25, 2016, Meet the Press  —   April 24, 2016 Transcript, ”The Politics of Financial Insecurity” Pew Research Center, Jan. 8, 2015, ”Who Votes? Congressional Elections and the American Electorate: 1978 —  2014” Thom File, U. S. Census Bureau, July 2015, Face the Nation transcripts April 24, 2016: Kasich, Sanders Transcript, Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2012 U. S. Census Bureau, accessed April 25, 2016, ”The Income Gap at the Polls” Sean McElwee, Politico Magazine, Jan. 7, 2015, ”Why Are the Poor and Minorities Less Likely to Vote?” Daniel Weeks, The Atlantic, Jan. 10, 2014, ”The Party of Nonvoters” Pew Research Center, Oct. 31, 2014, ”Bernie Sanders Said Poor People Don’t Vote” Linda Qiu, PolitiFact, April 24, 2016"
"It took them nearly two months to do so, but John Kasich and Ted Cruz are finally taking Mitt Romney’s advice. When the 2012 Republican nominee lambasted   Donald Trump in March, he called for a strategic effort to stop the New York businessman. ”I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio, and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state,” Romney said during a speech delivered in Salt Lake City. Now, with Trump fresh off a near sweep of New York’s 95 delegates, and poised to possibly run the table in Tuesday’s five primaries, Kasich and Cruz are trying to divide and, if not conquer, at least stop Trump from doing so. Their two campaigns sent out   emails Sunday night announcing an unofficial detente: Kasich will stay out of Cruz’s way in the upcoming Indiana primary, and Cruz will avoid campaigning in New Mexico and Oregon. From Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe: ”To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead.” And from the head of Kasich’s campaign, John Weaver: ”Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1, 237 bound delegates before Cleveland.” The idea is to stop splitting up the ”  vote” and keep their mutual opponent from earning the 1, 237 delegates he needs to avoid the contested convention that is both Kasich’s and Cruz’s only hopes of winning the GOP nomination. It’s a   effort, for sure. And it has one prominent Kasich supporter scratching his head. ”I support John, but I don’t agree with this strategy,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge told NPR’s Morning Edition. ”I’d rather have John talking about why he would be the best nominee. . .. I’d prefer him promoting John rather than stopping Donald.” Furthermore, the   Republican governor said, ”It plays into Trump’s narrative. He keeps whining about the primary. When he wins, it’s fine when he doesn’t, it’s rigged. But the fact of the matter is, the narrative says, ’They’re trying to gang up on me,’ and it reflects that.” Indeed, hours after the Kasich and Cruz campaigns made their      joint announcement about their nonaggression pact, Trump released a statement saying, ”Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive.” ”Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged. When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race) it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and our political system.” Trump picked up on that Monday, mocking Cruz as a whiny baby and making fun of the way Kasich eats. Trump has been hammering home his complaints about a ”rigged” primary system in campaign appearance after campaign appearance in recent weeks, as Cruz and Kasich have talked more openly about winning the nomination by persuading convention delegates to shift their allegiances during multiple rounds of floor balloting. The rhetoric picked up during a stretch where Cruz outmaneuvered Trump in statewide delegate conventions in Colorado and other states. Trump’s   push may be working: In a recent poll conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, more than 60 percent of Republican respondents said the candidate with the most delegates going into Cleveland should be given the nomination, regardless of whether it’s a majority. In his   statement, Trump called Kasich and Cruz ”mathematically dead.” That’s been true for Kasich for weeks  —   he has no way of winning the delegates he would need to take the nomination, unless the convention goes to multiple ballots and delegates begin changing their mind. A clinched nomination has been a political  —   but not mathematical  —   long shot for Cruz for weeks, as well. If Pennsylvania, Maryland and other Northeast states go for Trump by wide margins Tuesday, Cruz will be mathematically eliminated from a   win. In theory, the   collaboration could have an impact on next week’s Indiana primary. Polls show a relatively close race in the   state, with Trump holding   leads over Cruz and Kasich. Cruz is already focusing heavily on the state, holding far more events there than in the states voting this week. About half of Indiana’s delegates will be awarded to the statewide winner. The rest will be divvied up by congressional district. ”There’s some disappointment on behalf of Kasich supporters in Indiana, but they also understand the strategic decision,” Kasich’s Indiana campaign   Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, said. ”It’s a recognition by both campaigns that the goal is to win in November.” Still, it’s not clear how much influence the Cruz and Kasich pronouncements will carry. On Monday, Cruz wasn’t exactly gracious toward Kasich or showed any sign of collaboration. Instead, he boasted about it this way: ”It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a    contest with Donald Trump.” And during a Philadelphia campaign stop, Kasich said he would still welcome support in Indiana. ”I’ve never told them not to vote for me,” he said at a diner in Philadelphia. ”They ought to vote for me.”"
"Freddie Mercury, the late frontman for the legendary band Queen, died almost 25 years ago. But he’s still regarded as one of the best rock singers ever. What, exactly, made him so great? A research team in Europe wanted to answer that question, so it looked into the science behind his voice. Professor Christian Herbst was part of that team, which just released its study on Mercury as a singing teacher and a biophysicist, Herbst says he was intrigued by Mercury’s technique. According to his research, the key lies in Mercury’s vibrato, which differs slightly from those of other classically trained singers. ”Usually, you can sing a straight tone, but opera singers try to modulate the fundamental frequencies,” he says. ”So they make the tone, if you like, a bit more vibrant. Typically, an opera singer’s vibrato has this frequency of about 5.  Hz. Freddie Mercury’s is higher, and it’s also more irregular, and that kind of creates a very typical vocal fingerprint.” You might be able to hear that vocal fingerprint in the   version of Queen’s hit song ”We Are The Champions” below. Herbst recently spoke with NPR’s Kelly McEvers about his research on Mercury’s voice. You can hear their conversation at the audio link."
"This post was updated at 6:15 p. m. ET.  More than 550, 000 people have signed a pledge to boycott Target over its restroom and   policy. The petition, organized by the nonprofit American Family Association, is a response to Target’s published pledge to ”welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.” The American Family Association, which has been labeled as an   extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, argues that Target’s policy ”endangers women and children by allowing men to frequent women’s facilities.” The progressive group Media Matters has a roundup of responses to this kind of safety argument. In the post, an advocate for victims of sexual assault says, ”The argument that providing transgender rights will result in an increase of sexual violence against women or men in public bathrooms is beyond specious.” In fact, research shows that trans and   people face particularly high rates of harassment themselves. A 2011 national survey on transgender discrimination found that 53 percent of respondents had been verbally harassed or disrespected in public places like hotels and restaurants. The American Family Association argues that Target should have a single occupancy unisex bathroom (”for the trans community and for those who simply like using the bathroom alone”) in addition to separate   restrooms. Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder wrote in an email that there are ”   restrooms in hundreds of our stores for guests that may be more comfortable with that option.” Asked about the petition, Snyder also said: ”We certainly respect that there are a wide variety of perspectives and opinions. As a company that firmly stands behind what it means to offer our team an inclusive place to work  —   and our guests an inclusive place to shop  —   we continue to believe that this is the right thing for Target.” The recent attention to   legislation has focused primarily on bathrooms, but nondiscrimination laws can also impact housing and employment, as the advocacy group GLAAD notes in a report about nondiscrimination laws. As we’ve reported, the bills have prompted government employee travel restrictions and   concert cancellations."
"Humor is a funny thing. We know it when we see it, but identifying why something is humorous is another thing entirely. In fact, explaining why a joke is funny is a pretty reliable way to sap it of all humor. Yet, psychologists have taken on a more ambitious task: the task of explaining what differentiates the humorous from the unhumorous  —   the funny from the   . In a paper published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologists Caleb Warren and Peter McGraw find support for what they call the ”benign violation” theory of humor. According to this theory, humorous events share two critical characteristics: They involve a violation (something that seems threatening, wrong or negative) but the violation is experienced as benign (inconsequential or good, such that there’s nothing to worry about). As an informal test and illustration, consider how the theory fares in explaining the world’s funniest YouTube videos. With more than 2 million views, here’s one candidate: The video illustrates a violation in that the lizard jump is a deviation from the script and a potential threat. But at the same time, we can appreciate that it’s benign: The attacking reptile is a harmless lizard, not a snake, and no real harm occurs. According to the theory, it’s this combination of features that leads to humor. Without the violation, the video would have been boring. And if the lizard attack had caused real harm, concern would have been a more appropriate response than laughter. The benign violation theory contrasts with alternative approaches to humor  —   such as the ”superiority theory”  —   and builds on a family of related approaches called incongruity theories. Other incongruity theories focus on surprise, atypicality or the juxtaposition of incompatible elements as the basis for humor. These theories run into problems, though, in explaining why some surprising or atypical events aren’t funny. For example, an event that’s surprisingly bad can be tragic rather than funny, while something atypically positive might be joyous without making you laugh. Warren and McGraw argue that the benign violation theory dominates these alternatives because it not only identifies conditions that are necessary for a joke or event to be humorous, but those that are typically sufficient, as well. In their paper, Warren and McGraw report six studies with a total of over 1, 200 participants (mostly undergraduate students) each designed to test the benign violation theory against one or more alternative theories. For instance, in their final experiment, the benign violation theory is tested against the idea that the crucial ingredient for humor is surprise. In the experiment, participants were seated across from another person to complete a language exercise. The other person looked like another participant, but was, in fact, an actor hired for the study. Once participants began the language exercise, the actor tossed some candy at them, either without an explanation or after stating the following: ”I’m sorry for interrupting, but in a few seconds I need to toss this candy at you.” The experimenters recorded how participants responded (e. g. whether they laughed) and how humorous they found the episode after it was over. If more surprising events are more humorous, then the unanticipated   should have been more humorous than the   that was explained in advance. On the other hand, if the crucial ingredient for humor isn’t surprise, but a benign violation, then the explained   should have been more humorous (even though it was less surprising): It was still a violation  —   in the sense that it departed from expected or ”good” behavior  —   but it was easier to experience as benign in light of the explanation. And that’s what the experimenters found: Participants expressed more humor when the   was explained in advance than when it came as a surprise. The findings from other experiments also supported the benign violation theory over tested alternatives, though it’s hard to imagine a single theory of humor successfully encompassing all cases  —   from slapstick to   jokes. And can the theory explain the funniest joke in the world? I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo"
"National Intelligence Director James Clapper said Monday that he is looking at ”several options” to make public the number of U. S. citizens caught up in online surveillance of foreign targets by the U. S. government. Clapper was responding to a question about a letter sent last week from 14 members of the House Judiciary Committee. The letter, signed by six Republicans and eight Democrats, presses Clapper for information about a law that governs the   program known as PRISM. PRISM ”gathers messaging data from Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook Inc, Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc and other major tech companies that is sent to and from a foreign target under surveillance,” Reuters reports. The law enabling that program  —   Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act  —   is set to expire Dec. 31, 2017. The Hill reports that Section 702 ”is meant to target foreigners, but allows for some ’incidental’ collection of data about Americans’ activity on the Internet. The National Security Agency (NSA) has used authority under the law to implement the sweeping PRISM and Upstream collection activities, which monitor reams of data about people’s behavior online.” The 14 lawmakers want Clapper to publish at least a ”rough estimate” of how many Americans are impacted by the program before they can evaluate its renewal. The April 22 letter lays out their concerns that ”Section 702 surveillance programs may not adequately protect Americans’ privacy or civil liberties.” It states: ”The leadership of the Intelligence Community has repeatedly assured us that the collection of domestic communications under this authority is merely ’incidental’ and that the government complies with the law’s requirement to ’minimize the acquisition’ of U. S. person information. Even a rough estimate of the number of U. S. persons impacted by these programs will help us to evaluate these claims.” NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly has more on Clapper’s comments Monday at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor: ”Clapper says he’s considering how to disclose the information, adding, ’We are looking at several options right now, none of which are optimal.’ One obstacle, he says: privacy considerations.” The letter does note such considerations, specifically whether the process of providing an estimate ”might require reviewing actual communications acquired under Section 702, which could itself raise privacy concerns.” The lawmakers point to a general consensus among civil liberties groups in support of a ”  limited sampling” if necessary  —   so long as there were proper safeguards and conditions. Clapper said that ”any methodology we come up with will not be completely satisfactory to all parties.” ”If we could have made such an estimate and if such an estimate were easy to do  —   explainable without compromise  —   we would’ve done it a long time ago,” he said."
"We want to hear from Uber drivers how much they made in a recent week. Drivers, it’s information you can see on the app, when you review your weekly ride summary. Send us a screenshot  —   email tech@npr. org —   and tell us how we can reach you. Uber is waiting for a federal judge to approve a major legal settlement, reached on two cases brought in California and Massachusetts. It would require the   company to pay up to $100 million to drivers and, in exchange, continue to treat the drivers as independent contractors, not employees. As contractors, drivers will keep getting paid for hours worked with no benefits. We’ve heard mixed reviews from drivers in California. But here’s what we want to know: How much do Uber drivers make, really? When Uber wants to fill a city with drivers  —   say for the Super Bowl or New Year’s Eve  —   the company advertises $35 (!) an hour. And in some very limited circumstances, the company even guarantees that rate. For the most part, drivers are not making $35 an hour. Are they making minimum wage? There aren’t reliable numbers or surveys that can help us analyze driver wages. Uber’s released data on driver sentiment  —   for instance, how many people like being their own boss  —   but not on income and expenses. Where the information does exist is right on the drivers’ app. Uber drivers get a really    weekly breakdown: how many hours they worked, how much they took home for it. Send us a screenshot of a recent week. If you’re an Uber driver (Uber passengers, you can share this with the driver)  —   email the screenshot to us at tech@npr. org and let us know how we can reach you."
"One of Africa’s most famous musicians and an international style icon, Congolese singer Papa Wemba, died suddenly during a performance early Sunday at age 66. He died after collapsing onstage in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast the show was being broadcast live on RTI 1, one of Ivory Coast’s public television channels. Wemba’s death was confirmed by the culture minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Baudouin Banza Mukalay, the Associated Press reported. According to reports obtained by Reuters from the Ivory Coast morgue that received Wemba’s body, he died between his collapse and his arrival at a local hospital. Papa Wemba was born in 1949 in Lubefu, in the Central African nation known then as the Belgian Congo, later as Zaire and now as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). His birth name was Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba, but as the eldest son in his family, he was nicknamed ”Papa.” His mother was a professional mourner he grew up steeped in the sounds of her music and blessed with a singularly keening tenor. But other circumstances also made Wemba’s emergence as an artist particularly fortuitous. He grew up during a golden age of Congolese music. During the 1950s and 1960s, his country was the epicenter of a brilliant new kind of dance music variously called Congolese rumba, lingala and soukous. This new style borrowed heavily from the sound  —   and particularly rhythms  —   of Cuban big bands, but put in an African context. Artists like Franco and Tabu Ley Rochereau became idols all over the continent, and to the young Papa Wemba as well. By the time he arrived in Zaire’s capital, Kinshasa, in the late 1960s, the young Wemba had set his sights on a professional singing career. In 1969, he became a founding member of what would become one of the biggest acts in African music in the 1970s, Zaïko Langa Langa. The band took Congolese rumba, stepped up the tempo, and brought in more   guitars. And with that band, Wemba launched a trailblazing career that emphasized an internationally accessible sound. Wemba left Zaïko Langa Langa in 1974 after   a series of other   bands (including Isisfi Lokole and Yoka Lokole) he founded a hugely popular group called Viva La Musica in 1977. Offstage and on, Wemba embodied a dapper persona. He even turned to acting, and starred in the 1987 Congolese vehicle La vie est belle (released internationally as Life Is Rosy) in which he, unsurprisingly, played an aspiring young singer. Papa Wemba’s smooth, easy sound and extraordinary voice reached the ears of some very famous European and American artists as well. He settled in Paris in the 1980s, and became one of the    —   and most    —   musicians from Africa. He sang with Stevie Wonder and opened for Peter Gabriel, before going on to record for Gabriel’s Real World label. As the years went by, Papa Wemba continued to hone his sound to keep up with current trends. In the early 2000s, he strove for a silky RB sound on tunes like ”Ye Te Oh.” More recent singles found him collaborating on more hip   tracks like ”O’Koningana,” alongside a rising young performer named Tony Madinda. Papa Wemba also gained notoriety for his offstage dealings. When he toured Europe in the 1980s, he would arrive with huge entourages of dozens of musicians, dancers and staff from Zaire. In 2003, he was accused in both France and Belgium of running a   ring and went to jail for several months in France when the case went to trial in 2004, prosecutors charged that many included in those entourages were actually illegal immigrants, who paid thousands of dollars to enter Europe with the famed singer. He was convicted in France, fined and given a suspended prison sentence foreign news organizations like London’s Independent reported then that his bail was paid by the Congolese government. Upon his release, he moved back to the DRC. At home, and across   Africa and the African diaspora, Papa Wemba will be remembered not just for his voice and for his musical innovations, but his legendary sense of fashion style. As I noted just last month on Latitudes, the singer was celebrated as ”Le Pape (The Pope) de la Sape”  —   the undisputed king of the fashionable men known as sapeurs. That sobriquet is so well known in the   world that in a popular YouTube skit about dressing well and living large, a French comedy trio refers to their characters as ”Papa Wemba’s hidden sons.” The sapeurs’ natty attire even became the inspiration for a number of international menswear designers, including Junya Watanabe and Paul Smith. After Papa Wemba’s death, the BBC collected reflections from a number of other prominent African artists. Singer Angélique Kidjo, who recorded a duet with him for an album by Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango, told the BBC’s Newshour: ”His whole attitude about dressing well was part of the narrative that we Africans have been denied our humanity for so long. ”People have always had stereotypes about us, and he was saying dressing well is not just a matter of money, not just something for Westerners, but that we Africans also have elegance. It was all about defining ourselves and refusing to be stripped of our humanity.”"
"You’ve probably heard of the credentials M. D. and R. N. and maybe N. P. The people using those letters are doctors, registered nurses and nurse practitioners. But what about PSC. D or D. PSc? Those letters refer to someone who practices pastoral medicine  —   or ” ” health care. It’s a relatively new title being used by some alternative health practitioners. The   Pastoral Medical Association gives out ”pastoral provider licenses” in all 50 states and 30 countries. Some providers call themselves doctors of pastoral medicine. But these licenses are not medical degrees. That has watchdog organizations concerned that some patients may not understand what this certification really means. That includes patients like    Mark Sarchioto, who lives just outside Dallas. Sarchioto has crippling neuropathy and has been searching for a treatment for decades. One leg is numb, and as he shifts from his walker to the couch, he holds out his left hand. ”It feels like somebody is puncturing it with needles,” he says. ”Right now it’s cold and I can’t keep it warm.” In 2013, he and his wife, Joan Sarchioto, heard an ad for a breakthrough therapy for neuropathy at HealthCore Center in Richardson, Texas. They jumped at the chance for a free evaluation. But it didn’t take long to realize the free evaluation was going to cost them. ”We get in and the [medical assistant] or whoever takes the vitals and they go, ’We need to go take your   and there’s an evaluation fee of $35.’ And I said, ’But I thought this was free,’ ” Joan Sarchioto says. ”When they start ordering tests, I know what’s BS  —   and I know what’s not.” The founder of HealthCore Center is Karl Jawhari. He is a chiropractor, but says he practices ”functional medicine” under his license from the Pastoral Medical Association. HealthCore Center advertises natural weight loss, help for hypothyroidism and diabetes programs  —   and on its website it touts its employees as doctors of pastoral medicine. Jawhari’s office walls are lined with framed certificates, and there’s a Bible on his desk. ”We’ve seen people with an array of issues: thyroid issues, diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol,” Jawhari says. ”We work with a lot of people to reduce their weight and so forth and we’ve had great success with that.” Jawhari hasn’t always had success with state regulators. Last August, he was fined $2, 500 by the Texas Board of Chiropractic Examiners for deceptive advertising. In June, the Texas Medical Board  —   which licenses, regulates and disciplines physicians, physician assistants and other practitioners  —   issued a cease and desist order demanding that Jawhari stop offering to treat conditions beyond his chiropractic training. He says he’s done that. There may be people who take advantage of the pastoral license, he says, but he’s not one of them. ”I’ve heard of a few people that are practicing that aren’t even doctors,” he says. ”It’s up to the consumer to do due diligence and figure out is this practitioner  —   does this doctor know what he’s doing?” In recent years, the Texas Medical Board has sent about a dozen cease and desist orders to people using the pastoral medicine certification. Some hawk dubious supplements like colloidal silver, promise extreme weight loss, treat thyroid disorders and discourage vaccine use. The Texas Medical Board has just become aware of the term pastoral medicine in the past couple of years, says Mari Robinson, the board’s president. ”Folks are purporting to treat and diagnose illness using that term,” she says. ”It’s not a degree it’s not a license.” At least not a license recognized by the Texas Medical Board. NPR reached out to several other people in North Texas who have licenses from the Pastoral Medical Association. None agreed to talk. Many of the practitioners who highlight their pastoral medical degrees have slick websites touting patient success stories. Robinson says anyone in the United States who wants to create a website can do so, but it is illegal to diagnose what is wrong with someone, treat them, or offer to treat them without the appropriate training and licensing. The Pastoral Medical Association didn’t respond to several attempts to connect by phone. It did send a statement by email explaining it was founded by a group of Christians concerned with the increase in chronic illness. The association says it seeks to protect ”the Almighty’s Health Care workers.” According to the association’s website, to obtain a license, applicants must pass ”rigid standards” that the group wouldn’t share. Members also have to pay processing and annual fees that can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. So, why might someone join? People may feel they are more marketable if they get some credentials, says Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist and founder of the consumer protection site Quackwatch. org. ”There are lots of credentials you can buy,” he says, ”and this is just one of many.” Barrett says the Pastoral Medical Association functions like a private club. Patients sign confidentiality agreements, pay out of pocket and are prohibited from suing if they’re unhappy with the care they receive. Any disputes are handled by an ecclesiastical tribunal. ”They’re claiming that ’Any advice we give you is pastoral in nature,’ ” Barrett says. ”In other words, ’If I give you health advice that’s not health advice, that’s pastoral advice.’ ” These practices do have supporters. Toni McElhaney of Plano, Texas, found out about HealthCore through a flier advertising a free thyroid seminar. She’d been taking medication for hypothyroidism but still felt exhausted. She says she paid $300 for initial testing and $4, 500 for a   treatment plan. None of her treatment is covered by health insurance. McElhaney thinks the heavy metal detox, special diet and herbal supplements helped her lose weight and gain energy. So, does it matter to her that the woman she sees isn’t actually a licensed doctor or nurse? ”No,” she says. ”It doesn’t matter to me. I feel like she knows her stuff, and I have responded better to her treatment than I would have just going to an endocrinologist alone.” Sometimes traditional medicine doesn’t have all the answers, and navigating what’s legit in the world of alternative medicine can be tough. The key, according to Mari Robinson of the Texas Medical Board, is to really understand the qualifications of the person you are seeing. Just because someone puts doctor in front of their name doesn’t mean they are medically qualified."
"Wouldn’t it be great if the world could get rid of malaria altogether? We’ve got a long way to go. Last year, there were about 214 million cases and 438, 000 deaths from the   disease. But just in time for World Malaria Day, there is some good news on the malaria front. Europe has reported no new cases of the disease transmitted on the continent in 2015. It’s an accomplishment worthy of celebration, says Dr. Joel Breman, an expert in infectious diseases, tropical medicine and epidemiology at the National Institutes of Health. ”We can start with the big     hooray,” Breman says. ”This is a marvelous and noteworthy accomplishment.” Of course, there is a ”but” or two. There remains much work to be done, for one thing, even in Europe, where it will take three consecutive years without internal transmission before the continent can be officially certified as  . And in this case, ” ” doesn’t actually mean free of malaria. Thousands of new cases continue to arrive in Europe every year with travelers, immigrants and refugees. Wiping out the disease in places like Africa and Southeast Asia will be far more difficult due to lack of infrastructure, political stability and reliable health care. Still, Europe’s achievement holds lessons for the developing world, where malaria could be eliminated with the right combination of money, commitment, collaboration,    —   and constant vigilance. Breman says, ”I think we can do it [everywhere] but it will take a longer time frame.” Malaria was once widespread in Europe. Before 1955, when the World Health Organization began its first global   campaign, the disease was rampant and mortality rates were high, particularly in southern European countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal and in the former Soviet Union. Around the turn of the 19th century, according to one study, Italy alone had 2 million cases (out of a population of 30 million) and as many as 20, 000 Italians died from malaria each year. The insecticide DDT made a huge difference, as did targeted efforts to detect and treat the disease, says Elkhan Gasimov, technical officer of   and parasitic diseases at WHO in Copenhagen. By 1975, cases had become so sporadic that Europe was considered  . That didn’t last long, in part because the medical community stopped worrying about it. ”Everyone considered that Europe was free, and the vigilance of the system went down,” Gasimov says. ”People stopped expecting malaria cases.” In the 1990s, malaria came roaring back. Resistance to insecticides and drugs played a role. In the Soviet Union, political, economic and social unrest also made drugs and other supplies scarce. Funding for insecticides dried up. And communication between countries broke down. Many countries lost their ability to treat new cases. Across all of the southern European region, including the   countries, more than 90, 000 cases were reported in 1995. And without an established tracking program in the region at the time, Breman suspects, many more cases were likely undiagnosed or unreported. Yet again, European countries committed resources to control the disease. And yet again, their efforts started to work. By 2005, there were just 5, 000 cases left in about 10 European countries. That’s when the really intensive work began. Case by case, health officials swooped in to identify sources of infection, obliterate mosquito breeding grounds and treat illnesses immediately. ”You can’t miss one case,” Gasimov says, ”and eliminate malaria.” In 2013, Europe recorded just 37 internally transmitted cases of malaria  —   in Greece, Tajikistan and Turkey. In 2015, the WHO announced the European Region was entirely free of internally spread cases of the disease. Other countries that have wrestled the upper hand from malaria include Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius and the United States, which officially eliminated the disease in 1951 (though here, too, new cases arrive every year with people traveling from elsewhere). Europe’s   history emphasizes that relentless nature of the global war against malaria. ”Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” Breman says. ”You can’t let up.” Community involvement is another important lesson that the developing world could learn from what Europe went through, Gasimov says. In Kyrgyzstan, plays in schools and theaters helped people understand what malaria is and how it spreads, so they were more accepting of elimination efforts and more motivated to take steps to protect themselves. Cooperation across borders will also be necessary. Because people frequently travel back and forth between Georgia and Azerbaijan, Gasimov says, both countries had to work together and at the same time to keep outbreaks from taking turns cropping up on either side of the border. A viable vaccine would help, too. Above all, it’s going to take money to get rid of malaria everywhere  —   money for surveillance, money for treatment, money for education, money for research, and money for mosquito control. It’s also going to take money to keep up the hard work, even as efforts seem to be taking hold. By some estimates, the cost for worldwide eradication could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. ”The key issue is for us to maintain this   status,” Gasimov says. ”What we need for that is vigilance. The system should always be ready. We cannot say, ’Oh it’s clear, let’s forget about it.’ We cannot forget malaria.”"
"A federal appeals court has reinstated Tom Brady’s   suspension over his involvement in the ”Deflategate” scandal. In a   decision, a   panel of the 2nd U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that found NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was not fair when he handed down the suspension. As we reported at the time, U. S. District Judge Richard Berman did not take issue with the facts of the case, instead chastised Goodell for what he called ”significant legal deficiencies” in the way he handled the case. Overturning that decision, the 2nd Circuit judges ruled that Goodell had ”properly exercised his broad discretion under the collective bargaining agreement and that his procedural rulings were properly grounded in that agreement and did not deprive Brady of fundamental fairness.” In his dissent, Chief Judge Robert Katzmann made some of the same arguments that the lower court did. Mainly, Katzmann argues, that Goodell acted unfairly because when he changed the factual basis for disciplinary action after the hearing, he denied Brady a chance ”to confront the case against him.” Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Barrington D. Parker says that labor law means that a federal court has to be ”highly deferential” to the decisions made during arbitration. What’s more, the collective bargaining agreement between the League and the players gives Goodell broad authority, the court writes. So, while the court agreed that, indeed, Goodell didn’t allow Brady to confront the case against him, that right was not guaranteed by the collective bargaining agreement. ”Had the parties wished to allow for more expansive discovery, they could have bargained for that right,” the court wrote. ”They did not, and there is simply no fundamental unfairness in affording the parties precisely what they agreed on.” According to The Associated Press, Brady can now ask the full 2nd Circuit to hear the case or he can appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court. Brady can also ask the court to put his suspension on hold while he appeals."
"The city of Cleveland agreed Monday to pay $6 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit brought by the family of Tamir Rice, the    boy who was shot and killed by a police officer on Nov. 22, 2014. The city did not admit any wrongdoing in the killing of Tamir, who was holding an air pellet gun and walking outside a recreation center when he was shot by Officer Timothy Loehmann. Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson held a press conference following the settlement announcement. He said while the legal side of this case has been handled, ”there is no price that you can put on the life lost of a    child.” ”Regardless of fault or facts or anything, it should not have happened. And believe me, if I had my rathers, I wouldn’t be standing here in front of you today, talking about this. If I had my rathers, it would not have happened. But that’s not the case, is it?” Cleveland will pay out $3 million this year and $3 million next year, according to an order filed in U. S. District Court in Cleveland on Monday. As the   has reported, Tamir’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and police department in December 2014. The Associated Press reported on the details of the payout: ”Tamir’s estate has been assigned $5. 5 million of the settlement amount. A Cuyahoga County probate judge will decide how the amount will be divided. Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, will receive $250, 000. Claims against Tamir’s estate account for the remaining $250, 000. Tamir’s father, Leonard Warner, was dismissed in February as a party to the lawsuit.” In a statement, the family’s attorneys said despite the settlement, there was ”no such thing as closure or justice” in a situation like this one. ”Nothing will bring Tamir back,” said attorneys Jonathan S. Abady and Earl S. Ward. ”His unnecessary and premature death leaves a gaping hole for those who knew and loved him that can never be filled.” Loehmann and his partner were responding to a 911 caller who said there was a man pointing a gun at people. The caller had told the dispatcher he believed the person to be a juvenile and that the weapon was probably fake. Those details were not relayed to the officers. NBC News described the event and reposted the surveillance footage in its report of the settlement Monday morning: ”A police cruiser raced in front of a Cleveland recreation center and rolled up alongside Rice. One of the two police officers inside the car jumped out and fired his service weapon twice. Rice, who earlier had been flashing around a toy pellet gun, crumpled onto the snowy soil.” Reaction to the boy’s death was a leading narrative as the Black Lives Matter movement emerged in recent years. Outrage increased in December 2015 when a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against both officers involved in the fatal shooting. ”Simply put, given this perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunications by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police,” Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty told reporters on Dec. 28. McGinty, who had been roundly criticized over his handling of the Rice case, lost his seat in the Democratic primary March 16."
"This winter, Jameria Miller would often run to her high school Spanish class, though not to get a good seat. She wanted a good blanket. ”The cold is definitely a distraction,” Jameria says of her classroom’s uninsulated, metal walls. Her teacher provided the blankets. First come, first served. Such is life in the William Penn School District in an   suburb of Philadelphia. The hardest part for Jameria, though, isn’t the cold. It’s knowing that other schools aren’t like this. Before her family moved closer to the city, where they could afford more living space, she attended the more affluent Upper Moreland district, which is predominantly white and, according to state and local records, spends about $1, 200 more per student than William Penn. That difference adds up, Jameria says, to better buildings, smaller class sizes,   textbooks and less teacher turnover. ”It’s never going to be fair,” she says, comparing her life now to her former classmates. ”They’re always going to be a step ahead of us. They’ll have more money than us, and they’ll get better jobs than us, always.” So Jameria’s parents have signed onto a lawsuit, arguing that Pennsylvania’s school funding system is unfair and inadequate. To the Millers, money matters. But not everyone agrees. Pixie Dust, ”It’s not about the dollars,” says Stan Saylor, chairman of the education committee in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives. ”It’s where that local school district spent those dollars over the last many years.” And Saylor is not alone. ”Money isn’t pixie dust,” declared the Texas assistant solicitor general, arguing his state’s side of a school funding lawsuit before the Texas Supreme Court. ”Funding is no guarantee of better student outcomes.” This idea, that sprinkling more dollars over troubled schools won’t magically improve test scores or graduation rates, is a common refrain among many politicians, activists and experts. And they have research to back it up. This report on school spending from the libertarian Cato Institute is just one entry in a   body of work that suggests there is little to no link between spending and academic achievement. And so, again . .. ”Use the money you have more wisely and educate our children,” says Jon Caldara of Colorado’s Independence Institute, a   think tank. In short, these critics say, it’s How You Spend School Money, not How Much You Spend. This debate has raged for at least half a century, and today we’re going to put both sides under a microscope. What follows here, as with the first installment in the School Money series, is a   of our reporting. For nearly every name and place, you’ll find a hyperlink to more. Like this story, for Jameria Miller. Last week, we explored the question, ”How do we pay for our public schools?” This week, we ask: ”What difference can a dollar make in our schools?” Or, better yet, ”Is money pixie dust?” The answer begins in a place not known for magic: Congress. The Coleman Report, Section 402 of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 is short, just a paragraph long, but it demanded something huge: The federal government had to conduct a nationwide survey ”concerning the lack of availability of equal educational opportunities for individuals by reason of race, color, religion, or national origin.” The results were to be reported back to Congress. James S. Coleman, a sociologist, was tapped for the job. And he did not take it lightly. By the time Coleman filed his   report, he and his team had surveyed some 650, 000 students and teachers nationwide. ”It was the most comprehensive data set, that was nationally representative, ever collected,” says Kirabo Jackson, a researcher at Northwestern University. ”It’s actually the first time anyone had collected data that linked the characteristics of children in the home to their outcomes in school.” The day Coleman released his report, in 1966, Eric Hanushek was a graduate student in economics at MIT, eagerly hunting for a thesis project. He found it in one of Coleman’s headline findings. ”Coleman explicitly said families are important and, after that, schools contribute very little,” recalls Hanushek, now a senior fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. ”And also that resources contribute very little.” Family matters, Coleman found schools matter less. And how much money schools spend on their students doesn’t seem to matter much at all. ”This is crazy,” Hanushek remembers thinking. ”If schools don’t matter, why do we pay so much attention to them?” In the decades since, Hanushek has become a chief spokesman for the How You Spend movement, arguing that pouring more money into troubled schools won’t necessarily fix them. To make his case, he offers a few examples. Here’s one: Camden, N. J. Something remarkable happened in New Jersey in the late 1990s. As part of a   school funding lawsuit known as Abbott v. Burke, the state increased spending in 31 of its   districts, dubbed Abbott districts. In fact, they got so much new money that spending in some of them eclipsed spending in some of the state’s wealthiest districts. This remarkable investment in New Jersey’s poorest schools turned heads and made headlines across the country. And, if money truly matters, Hanushek says, then the Abbotts should be a success story. But, he points out, all these years later, many are still ”spending 2. 5 times the national average, and there’s no real evidence that they’re closing the achievement gap or that they’re doing significantly better.” One of those districts, Camden, is spending roughly $23, 000 per student this year. And Hanushek is right about the results. While schools there have improved under Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard, student performance is still abysmal. A third of the district’s seniors don’t graduate on time, and more than 90 percent of high school students there are not proficient in either language arts or math. Part of the problem has been mismanagement. Before Rouhanifard, Camden struggled with corruption and went through 13 superintendents in 20 years. Much of that extra money is also paying for important things that had long been ignored. ”If you read the stories about Camden from the early ’90s, late ’80s, it was a really, really horrendous situation,” says Rouhanifard. ”Schools couldn’t offer basic meals for their kids. They didn’t even have cafeterias. They didn’t have basic textbooks.” He says the additional funding changed that, and to focus only on low test scores overlooks the good it’s done. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Camden’s schools boils down to one word: poverty. Nearly half of the district’s students live in poverty and nearly all qualify for   or   lunch. In   districts, children often arrive at school needing things that more affluent districts simply don’t have to provide  —   but providing them won’t necessarily improve test scores. And this challenge extends well beyond Camden. Nationwide, 1 in 5 children lives in poverty. ”If kids are coming to school without the basic health and nutritional supports, you need to do that,” says Linda   who studies school policy at Stanford University.   says any educator will tell you: It’s tough to teach a child who is chronically hungry. Or sick. Or cold, like Jameria in Philadelphia. But, as with textbooks and teacher salaries, addressing the symptoms of poverty costs schools precious money. For more on Camden, click here. ’Doomed’ Without Preschool, To meet the needs of its disadvantaged students, North Carolina has focused much of its effort  —   and dollars  —   on one big intervention: preschool. In the 1990s, a handful of   districts sued the state, arguing insufficient funding. Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning found that, for most students, the state’s schools and their funding were good enough. It was a different story, though, for what Manning called ” ” students  —   among them, kids with disabilities, living in poverty or learning English as a second language. In his October 2000 decision, Manning didn’t mince words: ”  children, who are not presently in quality   educational programs, are being denied their fundamental constitutional right to receive the equal opportunity to a sound basic education.” Manning ordered the state to provide free preschool for any child considered  . Not as an option, he argued, but as an obligation. ”The Court is not so naïve as to think that every single   child will be an academic superstar as a result of this early childhood intervention,” Manning wrote, ”but the Court is convinced that without this intervention more children will be doomed to the academic basement.” A new study from the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University is just the latest to suggest that preschool, when it’s   can narrow achievement gaps before they grow too wide. With strong support from the state’s   governor, Mike Easley, the program grew quickly. At peak enrollment, in the   school year, it provided free preschool to roughly 35, 000   kids at a cost of $170 million. Did it work? Ellen   of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has studied the state’s   program since it began. She’s found that children who attend make    gains in kindergarten. ”This is particularly true with   learners and children who have lower levels of English proficiency,” says  . But it’s not all good news. She found that some of those preschool gains fade by the time these students leave third grade. For state lawmakers, that was one reason to scale back. When the Great Recession hit, they cut the program to serve 6, 000 fewer students. Judge Manning blamed the fading benefits not on the preschool program but on the lackluster schooling that many students received in later years. ”They’ve been screwed over by first grade, second grade, third grade,” said Manning in a presentation at North Carolina State University in 2011. ”The academic prop they got [from preschool] fizzled because they probably weren’t challenged and were just treated like poor kids without expectations.” For more on North Carolina, click here. Mission Creep, To some, the fact that schools are spending money to alleviate the symptoms of poverty is a kind of mission creep. At a press conference last year, as the Indiana General Assembly was   its school funding formula, state Rep. Tim Brown, a Republican, put it this way: ”You know, one of the things about education is money to help those kids who are outside the educational problem. You know, did Mary’s mother get arrested the night before? Did Johnny not come with shoes to school? Those aren’t to me core issues of education.” They affect education ”a lot,” Brown said, but help should come from outside organizations, not necessarily schools. That may explain why lawmakers there decided to scale back the extra money they had been sending to schools that educate lots of disadvantaged kids. Those dollars have made a big difference in Goshen, a small, northern Indiana town where   manufacturing jobs have attracted many immigrants. More than half of the students there are Latino, the highest concentration of any district in Indiana. And many of those students depend on the district’s special English Language (EL) program, which provides extra teachers, teaching assistants, counselors and considerable parent outreach. Hector   a   at West Goshen Elementary, says his special   class is his favorite. ”It’s much easier in here to speak than back in our [traditional] classroom because over there you’re sort of shy if you mess up on a word,” he says. ”But here it’s safer.” When kids like Hector feel safer speaking English in class, they perform better, too. That’s one reason Superintendent Diane Woodworth says test scores went up as the number of   Latino students increased in Goshen. Last year, state lawmakers voted to fund every district more equally, whether it’s in an affluent suburb or a   community. That’s meant a cut of some $3 million to Goshen, roughly a third of the cost of its EL program. But Superintendent Woodworth says she’s not cutting any services  —   not yet, anyway. ”We’re not going to go there, because we’ll find money,” she says. ”I’m an eternal optimist.” For more on Goshen, click here. The Magic Wand, Goshen isn’t the only place where extra money has made a difference. ”A good education in a safe environment is the magic wand that brings opportunity,” declared the Republican governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, back in 1993, as he signed into law a landmark overhaul of the state’s school funding system. ”It’s up to us to make sure that wand is waved over every cradle.” That magic wand did many things, but chief among them, it gave more state money to districts that educate lots of   kids. In places like Revere, north of Boston, where nearly 80 percent of students come from   families, many of those dollars were spent on people: to hire and keep good teachers and give them better training. This is key, says Bruce Baker, who studies school funding at Rutgers. ”If you have enough money to hire enough people to have reasonable class sizes and to be able to pay them sufficient wages so that you’re getting good people coming into the profession, that’s most of the battle of providing quality schooling.” Revere didn’t stop there. It used the money to give its teachers better materials, too. ”We noticed the difference right away,” says Revere’s current superintendent, Dianne Kelly. In 1993, she was teaching algebra. ”We adopted a whole new textbook series in the math department. The first year I was here, the textbooks I was using with my students dated  —   no exaggeration  —   back to the ’50s and ’60s.” Revere’s schools also used the money to hire reading coaches, a technology team  —   some even lengthened the school day. ”I really think that the funding was like winning the World Series,” says Karen English, who grew up in Revere and has taught there for 36 years. Today, the district says nearly 90 percent of its high school graduates go on to some form of postsecondary education. That’s up from 70 percent in the early ’90s. And it wasn’t just Revere. ”When you look at Massachusetts’ overall performance nationally, we have gone from the middle of the pack to the top of the pack,” says Paul Reville, a former state education secretary who now teaches at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. For more on Revere, click here. Money Matters, So, quick recap: While the money in Camden, N. J. has led to relatively little academic progress, our stories from North Carolina, Indiana and Massachusetts offer a compelling counterpoint to the idea that money doesn’t really matter. So, too, do a pair of recent studies that look not at one state but at many where parents, activists and school leaders from   districts sued and won increases in school funding. The first, we’ll call it Study A, looked at how well these   students performed on the NAEP test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. ”After the spending increased, test scores slowly, surely increased as a result,” says one of the researchers, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, who is also an associate professor at Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy. The team behind Study A found that the achievement gap between students in   and   districts shrank by roughly 20 percent. By contrast, in states that saw no   reform, that gap didn’t shrink at all. It grew. Now to Study B. Instead of test scores, these researchers used very different measures of success:   outcomes like educational attainment and a student’s income in adulthood. Why? One of the authors of this study, Northwestern’s Kirabo Jackson, says that important   skills  —   sharing, cooperation, persistence  —   may not show up in a test score, but cultivating them in schools can help a child succeed in later life. ”They’re designed to teach students things like, ’This is how you share. This is how you become a good person.’ And these things play out,” Jackson says. ”If you go to a job interview and you don’t understand that you need to show up on time and be polite, you’re not going to get that job, no matter how smart you are.” Translation: If funding increases helped build students’   skills, then low test scores wouldn’t necessarily mean the money was wasted. Indeed, Jackson and his colleagues found a few key benefits when school spending increased steadily, by 10 percent over the 12 years that a   child was in school: 1.) The extra money made poor students less likely to be poor as adults. 2.) It increased the likelihood that they would graduate from high school by 10 percentage points (7 points for all students). 3.) And, perhaps most remarkable, the funding led to a nearly 10 percent increase in   students’ adult earnings. Jackson and his fellow researchers studied the effects on all students, but for nonpoor children, he says, funding benefits were ”small” or ”statistically insignificant.” Only   students showed consistently large benefits. The Takeaways, So, is money pixie dust? No. If it were, there would be no debate. Or, at least, the debate wouldn’t be nearly as loud. But, does money matter  —   especially for   students? Even Stanford’s Eric Hanushek agrees that it does. ”Money matters, of course,” he bristles. ”And I think that’s a   way to phrase the question.” Make no mistake, money can make a difference in the classroom. If: Takeaway #1: The money reaches students who need it most. ”What I see as the ideal in many ways,” Hanushek says, ”is a system that provides extra resources to kids that need more resources. So this would be ELL kids. Special education kids. Disadvantaged kids in general.” In other words, the kind of targeted funding that helped Goshen build its special EL program in Indiana, or that paid for Revere’s   reset. Takeaway #2: The increases come steadily, year after year. For extra money to have an impact, Study B and the story of Revere in Massachusetts suggest that it can’t just be a   or   boost. Takeaway #3: The money stays in the classroom: paying, training and supporting strong teachers, improving curriculum and keeping class sizes manageable. Money alone does not guarantee success any more than a lack of it guarantees failure. Paul Reville, the former Massachusetts education secretary, says not all districts there were able to translate funding increases into academic gains. Often, the difference was how they spent the extra money. And so we come full circle. This debate  —   How You Spend versus How Much You Spend  —   isn’t a debate at all. Or shouldn’t be. Each depends on the other. Extra money spent thoughtlessly is no panacea for what ails many schools. But it’s also true that, to pay for the kinds of things (and people) that are most likely to help vulnerable students, many schools need more money. Lost in all of this, of course, is perhaps the most important takeaway  —   a question that all educators, parents and policymakers should ask themselves before they spend a dime: Takeaway #4: How do we define success? Is it just about test scores? Or should our focus widen to include wages, incarceration rates and other life outcomes of kids many years after they leave the nation’s schools? Because the lesson of Camden and, again, of Study B is that not all school spending, especially on meeting students’ basic needs, can be expected to improve test scores. But that doesn’t mean it’s being misspent or failing the children it’s supposed to help. Next week, the last week in NPR Ed’s School Money series, we’ll look at the political landscape of school funding and explore a few big changes on the horizon."
"If I told you there was a way to keep using your phone forever, would you want to? In true unscientific form, I surveyed some phone users in downtown Washington, D. C. Americans are actually pretty split when it comes to craving the latest phones, according to real research. For years, telephone contracts determined the length of our telephone commitments. Now that contracts are disappearing, users are dividing down the middle. ”It has basically led about half of the people in America to say, ’I’m fine with the phone that I have, and I will use that phone until it breaks or it is so old that it no longer does what I want,’ ” says Roger Entner, who has been studying our   habits at Recon Analytics. ”The other half roughly continues to buy a phone every year because they want the newest, the best, the most fashionable.” On average, we keep our phones for just longer than two years. To be precise, Entner says, in 2014, the   ”replacement cycle” was 22 months in 2015, it grew to a little over two years. (We’re actually starting to keep our phones longer!) Does the phone’s technology have anything to do with the   lifespan average? For an answer, I turned to Jessa Jones, who is something of a repair evangelist. (Fixing things is ”a fun challenge, even if you ultimately replace the device,” she says.) The Mismatch, Jones, the   expert behind iPad Rehab, will take on anything with a circuit board: phones, tablets, drones, electronic cigarettes  —   or, you know, whatever her four young children might break. ”One particular phone that got flushed down the toilet, which I then smashed in my front yard, took it apart and it needed a board repair, a motherboard repair,” she says, recapping the origin story of her early venture MommyFixit. She has now resuscitated thousands of devices. She says smartphones tend to feel old after about two years, though she argues they aren’t too old for repairs until they’re about 4 years old. ”Over time you’ll find a mismatch between your hardware and the current version of the software . .. and that message doesn’t really get out to everyone,” Jones says. ”You could use a phone for a really long time, if you didn’t try to upgrade the software and end up in a situation where you’re trying to run software that’s just too bulky and difficult for the hardware that you bought to run it,” she says.  So, that’s one way you could try to use your phone for a longer time, though you’d be missing out on the latest features and security updates. But what if you didn’t have to? The Modular Approach, In 2013, Dutch designer Dave Hakkens launched a project that chased that very dream  —   of a cool, but everlasting phone  —   for environmental reasons. ”I 100 percent started this to reduce the amount of   . .. so I’m definitely in the   group,” Hakkens says. ”And that’s still the main goal  —   try to have a phone that grows with you but doesn’t generate that much waste.” His project, Phonebloks, was a concept of a modular phone  —   a device that’s built sort of like a   puzzle, with each component like the screen, camera, battery and processor all easily detachable and replaceable on their own. Phonebloks wasn’t the first modular design idea out there. But the YouTube video hit a nerve and took off on the Web, launching a new global community of modularity enthusiasts. Since then, several   in China and Europe have laid plans to develop a modular phone. There’s a Finnish take on it called PuzzlePhone, and a Dutch one called Fairphone, which focuses on ethical manufacturing and use of   resources. But the big market test of the idea could come later this year, when Google is slated to pilot its own attempt at a modular phone, called Project Ara. Google Gives It A Go, Google promotes Ara as a smartphone that can be tailored to each user and a way to innovate hardware as fast as we’ve done with apps. Ara was originally supposed to pilot in 2015, but has now been rescheduled for 2016. Google spokeswoman Victoria Cassady says there aren’t any further updates on the timing beyond what the project has shared on Twitter. Ara’s early versions have been seen in the wild several times, including a presentation of a working prototype at a developer conference last year. Aside from the   appeal, the modular technology movement and Google’s project specifically are also watched by the environmental community. Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, says it might help crystallize people’s interest in a   potentially greener phone. Certainly, a lot is unknown about Ara, including the extent to which the production of new modules themselves may create a new stream of electronic waste. And there’s another big one: How much will it cost? Kyle thinks if technology is shown to be truly better for the environment, people will be ready to pay: ”I think the fact that people buy hybrid cars that cost a whole lot more than nonhybrid cars proves that.”"
"Tor Peery grew up in a farming community in upstate New York, baling hay in the summers. He never thought he’d want to go back to that life. Three deployments with the U. S. Marine Corps  —   including a tough tour in Helmand, Afghanistan  —   changed his mind. ”So many years I’ve been in the world of destruction,” he says. ”Being infantry and in the Marine Corps, I’ve destroyed so many things. I just want to create now.” Now Peery is learning the craft and business of farming at the Arcadia Center For Sustainable Food And Agriculture. He’s a ”reservist,” which means he shows up one weekend a month, plus two weeks during the growing season. Arcadia also has one     fellowship. This spring, Arcadia volunteers, along with vets from the group The Mission Continues, built a     in one day,   style. Arcadia, like dozens of organizations across the country, is training veterans to be farmers. And farming seems to be a good fit for vets, says Pam Hess, who directs Arcadia, judging by how fast the new greenhouse went up. ”  40 people who have never worked together before managed to put together a greenhouse  —   [something which] none had ever done before,” she says. And the thing is, the country could really use a few good farmers. At the moment, there are enough farmers to feed the nation. They’re getting older, though: The average age for American farmers is 58, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. So as thousands of younger Americans leave the military  —   which has been downsizing lately  —   the USDA would like them to consider carrying the torch as older farmers start to retire. The department even has a military veterans liaison, Lanon Baccam. ”A disproportionate amount of military vets come from rural America and serve,” notes Baccam, himself an Afghanistan vet. In fact  —   while only 17 percent of Americans live in rural areas, people from rural communities make up 40 percent of the military. ”Many want to go back to those communities, and we want to help them when they get there,” Baccam says. The USDA has put a   dollars into loans and other help for veteran farmers to buy land and equipment since 2009. ”We’d like to help them start their own operations, and get on these farms that may be ready to turn over,” Baccam says. ”And there are benefits to farming or ranching that we know exist that you can’t see  —   the therapeutic benefits of working the land.” At Arcadia, Pam Hess says the best therapy is to stay connected with other veterans, and find a successful career  . ”So many [vets] are looking for really meaningful work, where effort in equals success out,” she notes. But she agrees that a lot of vets can’t get that in an office. ”Especially the combat folks, they’re outdoor cats now. They don’t want to be in a tie, in a cubicle taking orders from someone,” she says. Indeed, being outdoors was the biggest things that Laron Murrell  —   this year’s   fellow at Arcadia  —   missed after leaving the Army. After two tours to Iraq, he tried a desk job. ”It just wasn’t fulfilling,” he says. ”When I leave [the farm] it’s like   whew! I’m excited again. It’s put the excitement back in my life.” After he completes his fellowship, Murrell is hoping to revive a   family farm back in North Carolina. He knows that’s going to be a lot of hard work: rough conditions,   labor, bad weather, long hours. But he figures it can’t really top his Iraq deployments. ”I made it through that,” Murrell says. ”What kinds of conditions can you really put me in?”"
"Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton took definitive steps toward solidifying their respective party’s presidential nomination on Tuesday, making their rivals’ task to beat them nearly insurmountable. Trump won all five of the   GOP primaries in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island. Clinton notched four victories in Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, while Bernie Sanders won the Rhode Island Democratic primary. In the Republican race, Trump’s clean sweep is a major setback for the hopes of the #NeverTrump movement, which had aimed to stop the controversial real estate mogul’s march to the GOP nomination. With his wins on Tuesday, Trump has crossed the 900 delegate threshold and will add more as the night goes on. And his victories were decisive, too  —   in each state he was winning with at least 57 percent of the vote. Speaking from Trump Tower in New York City, Trump argued that the GOP race was effectively decided. ”I consider myself the presumptive nominee,” he said. ”As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” Unlike after last week’s New York primary  —   when a more restrained, cordial Trump took the stage following his big win  —   Trump’s speech Tuesday night was in his usual freewheeling, unpredictable style. He reiterated his call for Sanders to run as an independent because he’d been treated unfairly by the Democratic Party  —   a schism that would benefit whoever the GOP nominee is. And he took his criticism of Clinton up to a new level, too, telling the crowd that she ”only thing she’s got going is the women’s card. If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she would get 5 percent of the vote.” Trump still has a way to go to officially reach the magic 1, 237 delegate number before primaries wrap up in June. But his added delegates tonight mean neither Texas Sen. Ted Cruz nor Ohio Gov. John Kasich can get a majority of delegates on the first ballot at the GOP convention. Cruz and Kasich announced an informal alliance of sorts over the weekend, with Kasich ceding Indiana, which votes next Tuesday, to Cruz, while Cruz said he would not campaign in later primaries in New Mexico and Oregon. Trump’s big wins Tuesday night make next week’s Hoosier State primary even more crucial for Cruz, his   challenger in the delegate count. Speaking from Indiana before polls closed on Tuesday, the Texas senator argued his best states are ahead. ”Tonight, this campaign moves back to favorable terrain tonight this campaign moves back to Indiana,” Cruz told the crowd. Kasich long has been mathematically eliminated from winning the 1, 237 delegates needed, instead encouraging GOP delegates to flip his way at a contested convention by arguing he is the best   candidate. Kasich still has won just one primary  —   his home state of Ohio. Short of something extraordinary happening, Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. With four wins on Tuesday, she extended her   lead over Sanders to more than 300. Including superdelegates, the former secretary of state has crossed the 2, 000 delegate threshold and is almost 90 percent of the way to the 2, 383 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Speaking in Philadelphia  —   the same city where the Democratic National Convention will take place in July  —   Clinton cast an eye forward to the general election and praised Sanders and Democrats for unifying and agreeing on issues like climate change, LGBT rights and workers’ rights. ”With your help we’re going to come back to Philadelphia with the most votes and the most pledged delegates,” she said to cheers. Going into Tuesday, an NPR analysis found that Sanders needed 59 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to erase Clinton’s lead. While he did win in Rhode Island, Clinton’s big margins in more   states  —   including Pennsylvania and Maryland  —   make is almost mathematically impossible for him to overtake her. In a memo late Tuesday night, the Sanders campaign reiterated his commitment to taking the race all the way to July. ”The people in every state in this country should have the right to determine who they want as president and what the agenda of the Democratic Party should be. That’s why we are in this race until the last vote is cast,” he said in a statement. ”That is why this campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform that calls for a $   minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a    health care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions, ending fracking in our country, making public colleges and universities tuition free and passing a carbon tax so we can effectively address the planetary crisis of climate change.”"
"Prince’s sister says that when the musician died suddenly last week, he left no known will. On Tuesday, she asked a Minnesota court to appoint a special administrator to oversee the estate, which may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But no matter who the heirs turn out to be, they will be facing some tough choices. Prince always had an aura of mystery. His death at 57 has only added to the puzzle. The cause of death is unknown and so is the exact size of his estate. His only surviving full sibling, Tyra Nelson, said in court papers that Prince had no known will and no known living children. And then there is the mystery of how fans will access his music in the future. If you are a Prince fan, when news of his death broke you probably went to YouTube or Spotify looking for your favorite songs  —   and you were disappointed. Prince didn’t like the way those streaming services paid artists. He can only be found on the   streaming service Tidal, which has no free tier. Hundreds of thousands of fans turned to Amazon or iTunes  —   to do it the   way  —   download. ”Purple Rain” is near the top of the iTunes charts. But downloads as a way to consume music are fading. Casey Rae, the CEO of the Future of Music Coalition, says new generations won’t get a chance to know Prince unless his work appears where the fans are. ”If the format is something that is not used by a majority of younger people, because that’s the generation that you’re always aiming at, then they’re not going to find you,” Rae says. ”It’d be like saying, ’Yeah Casey, you could go listen to Led Zeppelin but it’s only on wire recorder.’ ” Wire recorder? Its heyday was in the late 1940s. Prince had big fights over distribution in the 1990s with Warner Bros. He couldn’t use his own name and painted ”slave” on his face when he performed. But in 2014 Prince struck a deal with Warner Bros. he got ownership of his catalogue. Warner continues to license his music. Lee Phillips, an attorney who represented Prince for 12 years, says usually labels have a broad clause to cover distribution over new technologies. ”Knowing Prince he probably would not have agreed to such a clause, in which event he would have retained control for new innovations, new technology, that go beyond what is now in existence,” he says. And that is likely to leave his heirs wondering. Questions about where to put Prince’s music are likely to go beyond streaming services. In 2012, fans were amazed when the deceased rapper Tupac Shakur seemed to appear onstage to do a duet with Snoop Dogg. It was a hologram. This kind of use triggers a lot of rights, says Matthew Moore, an intellectual property attorney. It could be that Warner Bros. still owns some rights to Prince’s music. ”And then you’ve got presumably the estate, who’s not only interested in all of it as at least a royalty recipient, if not a rights holder in those, but also in his likeness and his image,” Moore says. Rights to an image vary by state. Moore says in Minnesota it’s not clear what happens when someone dies. He says court fights are likely  —   especially with an estate like Prince’s, which may well grow as songs are rereleased and new ones come out of the vault. But it’s likely to come down to what the heirs believe Prince thought was important. This kind of   is something that Jeff Jampol knows well. Jampol handles the estates of Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and the Doors’ lead singer, Jim Morrison. ”You can never really say what an artist would think or would do,” Jampol says. ”You can only say what he said or did.” Through the course of Prince’s career he said many things about technology  —   including ”the Internet is over.” But, ultimately, Jampol says in figuring where to put the music of deceased artists he always thinks about how to maintain the magic they had when they were alive. ”I think art is one of the highest and most important forms of communication that exists,” Jampol says. ”And that art has to be served. And I find that so far if you take great art and serve it carefully and authentically that the revenue streams come right along with it.” In the case of Prince there is mostly likely a lot of artistic magic and money to be made."
"At the Koforidua Regional Hospital in Ghana, Dr. Forster Amponsah is about to start an appendectomy in one of the hospital’s four operating theaters. A   other patients who have been prepped for surgery lie on gurneys in the surgical ward’s foyer. Amponsah is planning to do all the surgeries in quick succession  —   but then the entire wing of the hospital goes dark. ”The general electricity is out and our generator is broken down,” Amponsah says. Ghana has been experiencing rolling power outages for months. As Amponsah waits for the light to come back on, orderlies wheel two more surgical patients into the foyer and park them in the queue that’s quickly turning into a backlog. The loss of electricity is just the latest stumbling block to getting surgery done. A new report in BMJ Global Health says essentially that surgery has become the overlooked stepchild of global health. The authors say that 5 billion people lack access to proper surgical care and they argue the world needs to rethink the importance of surgery. Ghana is actually doing better than many African countries when it comes to surgery. The West African nation is trying to make it universally available. But the Koforidua Regional Hospital illustrates some the challenges. The facility has four operating theaters and two surgeons but there’s only one anesthetist, so both surgeons can’t operate at the same time. Amponsah says they often run out of medical supplies. He explains how he can make a chest tube drain from a plastic water bottle. On the morning that I visited the hospital, which has 400 beds to serve the eastern region of Ghana, the chief surgical nurse got called off the ward to cover at maternity. After a half an hour, the power flickers back on. Amponsah starts an appendectomy while at the same time triaging his waiting room. He orders two patients he deems ”not emergencies” to be sent home and rescheduled for another day. Soon after Amponsah cuts open the abdomen of the first patient, it’s clear that the suction machine is on the fritz again. An intern fetches another suction machine from one of the other operating theaters. Before Amponsah is even finished with this operation, a nurse comes to his side to tell him there’s been a car crash. An open top Jeep has somersaulted off the highway. One of the passengers is in extremely bad shape. The   doctor will spend much of the rest of the afternoon stabilizing and patching up these car crash victims. Then he’ll return to the patients waiting on their gurneys back in the surgical ward. ”There are times that we stay here until 3 a. m. We stay here until the next day and we have to come back the next day,” he says. Around the world this experience for surgeons is not uncommon. Dr. Josh   one of the authors of the new report on global surgery, says in much of the developing world surgery gets far less funding, attention and resources than treatment for, say, infectious diseases. ”This is a problem that’s been really developing over the last number of decades as surgery hasn’t had the kind of media attention as other global health problems have had,”   says. He says international donors have been interested in programs that show results. It’s easy to quantify the impact of a vaccination campaign or the distribution of bed nets to block malaria or the provision of   drugs. Funders can say, ”X number of people were served.” Providing surgical care, however, is more complex. Not only do surgeons have to be trained, but health care systems have to be strong enough to support to support them. Electricity, anesthetists and functioning suction machines are all needed.   says surgery has been so ignored in the overall global health landscape because it’s difficult and complex. He says billions of people now don’t have access to it. ”We are not calling for access to the most expensive,   procedures,” he says. ”We are talking about basic surgeries that we want everyone in the world to have access to.” Surgeries like the hernia repairs and appendectomies that Amponsah at the Koforidua Regional Hospital in Ghana had been trying to get finished all day. Amponsah says he and his colleagues often have to improvise to get surgeries done, borrowing suction machines from other wards or making casts out of cardboard. ”This is what I have and I have to make do with what I have,” he says cheerfully. And even though he often ends up working long days, he says he loves his job. ”I’m needed here!” he says. ”And I’m satisfied when I see people get better.”"
"While voters went to the polls in five states Tuesday, electoral politics in a different context were on the Supreme Court’s mind too. The court has long held that the government cannot generally punish employees for exercising their constitutional right to free speech. But what if an employee was mistakenly perceived as taking a political position, when in fact he was doing nothing of the sort? That’s what happened to a Paterson, N. J. policeman, who on Tuesday won the right to sue for a wrongful demotion. Jeffrey Heffernan, a   veteran of the Paterson police force, was promoted to detective in 2005 and given a plum assignment in the police chief’s office. Then one day during the 2006 mayoral campaign, a yard sign was stolen from in front of his mother’s house, and she wanted a replacement. As it happens, the sign supported the mayor’s opponent. Heffernan promised his mother he would pick up a sign for her, and when he was   he went to the challenger’s campaign office, where he was spotted holding the sign and chatting with campaign workers. Word spread quickly back at the police chief’s office, where the chief assumed  —   wrongly  —   that Heffernan was actively supporting the mayor’s opponent. ”I got back home, and my phone rang,” Heffernan told NPR. ”I was told that I was being demoted. And I was going to go on the walking squad for 12 hours a day.” Heffernan said he tried, in vain, to explain that he was just picking up the sign for his bedridden mother and that he was not active in the campaign, nor could he even vote in Paterson since he didn’t live there. ”They said to me . .. ’The mayor wants you out of the office,’ ” Heffernan recalled, ”and they had no say in it the mayor calls the shots and you’re out.” Heffernan was busted down to walking the beat, a demotion that cost him both money and weekends off. He eventually retired and sued, contending his First Amendment rights were violated. A jury awarded him $105, 000 in damages. But the judgment was subsequently set aside. In the Supreme Court Tuesday, Justice Stephen Breyer summarized why the case was thrown out: The lower courts ruled that since Heffernan was not in fact campaigning for the mayor’s opponent, he was not exercising any free speech right. Therefore, he had not been deprived of any constitutional right, and could not sue. ”Sounds logical,” said Justice Breyer, ”but we disagree.” The critical issue here, he said, is the government’s motive in demoting or firing an employee, and it really doesn’t matter if the motive is based on real facts or a mistaken belief. Writing for a   majority, Breyer said that in a case like Heffernan’s the constitutional harm is to more than the individual, because the punishment sends a message to all employees that they will be demoted or fired if they express a view that the government employer disagrees with. That, said Breyer, is not permitted by the First Amendment, nor is it permitted by the civil rights law that bars the government from depriving its employees of their constitutional rights. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court’s two most conservative members, dissented. Although they acknowledged that the demotion may have been ”wrong,” they would have upheld it as immune to court challenge."
"This post was updated at 7:45 p. m. ET. A central neighborhood in Boston had been left out of Amazon’s plans for free   delivery in the city. The company said on Tuesday that will change. A Bloomberg analysis last week showed that the predominantly black Roxbury community did not have access to the Amazon Prime service, which is offered to all adjacent neighborhoods. After looking at nationwide data, Bloomberg called the disparity in Boston ”the most striking.” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who had criticized the inconsistency, tweeted on Tuesday that Amazon had notified him of the change. ”I thank them for this decision,” he wrote. In a statement to The Boston Globe, the mayor’s office said the city’s chief of economic development and chief of policy ”had been in conversations with Amazon before the mayor’s call.” Amazon says it is ”actively working with our local carrier to enable service to the Roxbury neighborhood in the coming weeks.” The statement from Scott Stanzel, director Amazon’s operations communications, adds that the company is not done expanding   delivery nationwide and that all Prime members already have free   and   shipping options. In its report last week, Bloomberg noted that there was ”no evidence that Amazon makes decisions on where to deliver based on race.” ”Demographics play no role in it. Zero,” Amazon’s vice president of global communications, Craig Berman, told the news agency. Berman said that those decisions were instead based on where existing Amazon Prime customers live. The Boston Globe’s own analysis indicated that ”the three ZIP codes excluded from   delivery by Amazon are among the poorest in Boston.” The service is available only to monthly subscribers of Amazon Prime. Those customers can get free   delivery on orders of at least $35."
"When orchardist Eliza Greenman walks through a field of apple trees and gazes upon a pocked array of blemished and buckled fruits  —   scarred from fighting fungus, heat and pests  —   she feels a little thrill of joy. ”I’m absolutely infatuated with the idea of stress in an orchard,” says Greenman, who custom grafts and grows   hard cider apples in Hamilton, Va. These forlorn, scabbed apples, says Greenman, may actually be sweeter. In an unofficial experiment, Greenman tested scabbed and unscabbed Parma apples, a   variety native to southwestern Virginia, and found the scarred apples had a 2 to 5 percent higher sugar content than unmarred apples from the same tree. More sugar means a higher alcohol content once fermented, producing a tastier hard cider. But she loves these ugly apples for another reason: They may be more nutritious and have a higher antioxidant content. Says Greenman: ”I believe stress can help create a super fruit.” Ugly fruits and vegetables are today’s pocked and scaly, dimpled, misshapen darlings  —   and there is a growing movement to sell such produce, not dump it into municipal landfills. As The Salt has reported, we toss out enough food to fill 44 skyscrapers each year. Why waste perfectly good food? This April a handful of Whole Foods stores in California will sell the cosmetically marred but nutritious produce for the first time. But does some blemished produce pack an unexpected nutritional punch  —   courtesy of its own battles to survive? We already suspect this is the case with organic fruits and vegetables. A 2014 review of 343 studies found that organic produce had lower pesticide residue and a 20 to 40 percent higher antioxidant content than conventional produce. Those antioxidants include compounds such as flavonoids, phenolic acids, anthocyanins and carotenoids, all produced by plants as defense mechanisms when they are stressed by pests. The study authors suggested that organic crops may be subject to more stress because they may receive fewer pesticides, in lower doses, and with less potent killing effects. Another study of both conventional and organic apple varieties found higher antioxidant phenols and fruit acids in organic apples. The study authors noted, ”The regular consumption of fruit acids is helpful in preventing illness and metabolic disorders. We recommend the consumption of regional organically grown varieties rather than of cultivars from integrated cultivation.” Ugly fruits actually bear the visible scars of their successful battles  —   dimpled or scarred where they fought off a biting or gnawing insect or surface infection. Greenman’s ideal is a truly wild apple, one left to its own defenses in nature  —   with the cosmetic imperfections to prove it. Though not all pests and diseases are benign, she notes, a few common apple infestations are the result of harmless fungi that result in sooty ”blotch” (dark patches) and fly speck (black dots) but do not harm taste or texture nor infect humans. These blotches are a result of the plant fighting off environmental insults  —   relying on its antioxidant defenses to do so. Greenman suspects those unsightly scars may reflect higher nutrition. She may be right. One study showed that an apple covered in scab has more healthy, antioxidant phenolic compounds, called phenylpropanoids, than a   apple peel. Another study showed that apple leaves infected with scab have 10 to 20 percent more phenolic compounds. Similar research has found high levels of resveratrol in grape leaves infected with fungi or simply exposed to the stress of ultraviolet light. A study of Japanese knotweed, a plant with a long tradition of use in Chinese and Japanese herbal medicine, found that infection with common fungi boosted its resveratrol content as well. Resveratrol is an antioxidant that’s been   for its potential   action. All these antioxidants protect both plants, and probably the humans who eat them. This does not mean that we should turn away from conventional agriculture, or make hard and fast assumptions about crops, says environmental biologist Brian Ward, of Clemson University. ”There are so many factors contributing to antioxidant content,” says Ward, who oversees research in both conventional and organic agriculture. ”The most important factor is the plant itself  —   and the variety. That’s genetic. Then there is the soil, its mineral content, and whether conventional or organic fertilizer is used. But yes, there is some interesting data that when plants are stressed by insects or disease, they produce metabolites that are good for us.” Greenman’s insight intrigues microbiologist Martin L. Pall, professor emeritus at Washington State University. Pall says that our own innate, potent protective mechanisms can be activated by compounds in fruits and vegetables. In fact, he suggests in a recent research paper, those antioxidants may serve as mild stressors that kick our repair mechanisms into high gear. They activate a molecule in our cells known as Nrf2, which itself can trigger the activity of over 500 genes, most of which have   functions. ”This is certainly true of compounds like resveratrol,” he says. ”That part of the story is pretty clear.” He says there’s intriguing evidence that other plant compounds that increase under stress may be good for our health, too, but those benefits are not as  . Pall contends that we have   for eons with plants whose compounds benefit us. He points out that known longevity diets  —   such as the traditional Mediterranean and Okinawan cuisine  —   are rich in exactly these compounds and antioxidants. So, backyard organic gardeners, rejoice: Your imperfect produce may be more perfect than you thought. Next time you hesitate over a flawed fruit, remember that it may be a hardy survivor bearing hidden nutritive gifts. Jill Neimark is an   writer whose work has been featured in Discover, Scientific American, Science, Nautilus, Aeon, Psychology Today and The New York Times."
"Scientists have unveiled a fossilized skull from a new species of sauropod  —   an enormous dinosaur that walked the Earth roughly 95 million years ago. The skull found in Argentina is just the latest in a series of discoveries teaching scientists about how sauropods were once so successful as a group. If there ever was a ”nice” dinosaur, it would be the sauropod. In dinosaur movies, they’re the   giants with impossibly long necks and big, cowlike eyes. There were legions of sauropod species. They were hardy survivors, outlasting numerous other dinosaurs that went extinct. Paleontologist Michael D’Emic cut his professional teeth on sauropod bones. ”If you want to study sauropods,” he says    ”you need help. A forklift, assistants.” Yes, a forklift. After all, he says, ”sauropods are the biggest animals that ever lived.” By a country mile. ”They really take the prize.” A sauropod could grow to be 120 feet long and weigh more than a humpback whale, and carry all that on four legs. D’Emic finds them fascinating: ”What can nature do and how does it do it at the biggest of scales?” is the question he thinks the sauropod can answer. D’Emic put sauropod bones under a microscope and in a CT scanner at Adelphi University, where he works. Not just any sauropod, but a baby that hatched and died within weeks  —   an extremely rare find. He learned, and published in the journal Science, that this guy grew quickly. ”It grew right out of the gate, roaring out of the gate,” D’Emic says, ”extremely fast.” A unique ring in the interior of a bone marked the time the animal hatched, and how big it was: about 7 pounds. Growth marks after that recorded how fast it grew. ”And by the time it died just several weeks later,” D’Emic says, ”it was weighing upwards of 80 or 90 pounds  —   a Chihuahua to a Great Dane in six or seven weeks.” D’Emic says growing fast would have been a good strategy when size is your best defense against predators. He says the discovery is part of a renaissance in sauropod research lately  —   lots of new fossils are turning up. The most spectacular is arguably the most complete sauropod skull ever found, uncovered in Argentina. ”The head is the most important part to have” from a dinosaur, says Matt Lamanna, a paleontologist with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. He’s a member of the team that studied the skull. He says the skull is the Rosetta Stone for understanding behavior: ”You know, how it fed, what the brain was like, what the senses were like . .. what made the animal tick.” The team called this new species sarmientosaurus, a member of a subgroup of sauropods called titanosaurs. They describe their   study of the animal in the journal PLOS One. They did a CT scan of the skull, and in a sort of reverse engineering, they figured out what the brain and sense organs must have looked like. ”For instance, the middle ear seems to adapted for hearing   sounds whatever that means, we’re not totally sure,” Lamanna says.   elephants and whales communicate with   sound, which could provide a clue. The orientation of the organs of the inner ear suggest the animal’s normal posture was ”neck down,” which could mean it browsed not on treetops but on ground vegetation. The team also has the neck bones, which contain something that looks like a tendon running through the neck. Lamanna says he has no idea what it was for. ”Nothing like this has ever been found in any dinosaur so far in history,” he says. Taken together, Lamanna says, these discoveries are finally revealing the secrets of the dinosaur age’s ultimate survivors (not counting modern birds, which descended from dinosaurs). For about 150 million years, they were too big to fail."
"For more than a generation, health experts have hailed China’s vaccination program as a success in eliminating preventable diseases like polio and tetanus. Advances in the country’s public health have benefited from  —   and enabled  —   rapid economic growth. But since last month, a nationwide scandal involving the illegal resale of vaccines has dented public confidence in the program, ignited public anger at the government and added fuel to ongoing   street protests by parents who believed vaccines have injured or sickened their children. ”The government must properly handle this issue and take responsibility to the end,” chanted one group of protesters outside the offices of China’s Health and Family Planning Commission on a recent afternoon. ”We support the communist party’s leadership,” was written on a banner carried by several protesters, trying to assure authorities of the parents’ good intentions. Police were apparently unmoved and detained some of the protesters. ”The government offices are tightly guarded, but as parents of these victimized, we aren’t afraid,” says Dong Xiaoxin, who has her    daughter in her arms. She came to the protests from their home in north China’s Hebei province. ”Our daughter has made a great sacrifice for the nation’s inoculation program, and we’re not afraid to fight for the legal rights she deserves,” Dong adds. Dong’s daughter smiles at me. She’s wearing a red dress, sneakers with Nike logos and plastic braces on her legs. Dong says that not long after her daughter was given a vaccine to prevent polio, she contracted the virus. Dong doesn’t know if the vaccine caused the disease or just failed to prevent it. But she blames the medicine for her daughter’s condition. ”We had no idea that vaccines could produce this kind of result,” Dong says. ”We felt that any vaccination given by the state had to be a good thing. We were completely unprepared.” Dong says her family has received some financial assistance from the government, but the money defrays little of her daughter’s   health care costs. ”The state needs to provide us parents with some sort of safeguard,” she concludes. ”Only then can parents feel assured and fully trust the government.” But the protesting parents in fact are doubtful about the government program. Their concerns  —   valid or not  —   were that kids were being injured by vaccinations, that the diagnoses of what made the kids ill weren’t always fair and that compensation was inadequate. The parents’ concerns have grown since March, when police uncovered a nationwide racket based in eastern Shandong province. It allegedly resold millions of vaccines without proper licensing or refrigeration to clinics in most of China’s 33 provinces. Authorities have detained hundreds of suspects and sacked or demoted hundreds of officials. A government investigation into the case is still underway. In China, the government gives polio, hepatitis B and tetanus vaccines to kids for free. Parents have to pay for other shots, such as for Rotavirus, hepatitis A and rabies. The vaccines involved in the scandal were of the latter sort. Dr. Lance Rodewald, who heads the World Health Organization’s immunization team in China, says China has become a major player in the global production of vaccines, and that WHO’s monitoring shows that the quality meets international standards. ”But what the scandal has shown,” Rodewald says, ”is a problem in the distribution and the management of these private sector vaccines.” Rodewald points out that even vaccines that are not properly stored or handled seldom cause children to get sick, and no illnesses have been definitively linked to the scandal. Rodewald says, ”One in every 3 million doses of oral polio vaccine can revert to a form that will paralyze the child.” The problem, he says, is if parents lose confidence in the program, they may not let their children get vaccinated. ”And if enough parents withhold vaccines from their children,” he warns, ”that’s a   for having outbreaks of   diseases.” Rodewald points out that China’s vaccination system is similar to the U. S. system, in that it has mechanisms for families to report instances in which they believe their children have been injured or made ill by vaccines. Experts evaluate the cases and refer them to a compensation program. Chinese state media have reported that in the wake of the scandal, the government will launch several significant reforms. One is that   vaccines will be distributed through government channels, for which oversight is stricter. More vaccinations will be administered for free by the government. Rodewald says this is important, because the percentage of the population that purchases   vaccines is lower in poor areas where fewer people can afford them. And the government will set up an insurance program for children adversely affected by vaccinations, which will make payouts to help families cover their children’s medical costs over the long term. ”If there’s a silver lining, it comes at a very high price,” Rodewald comments on the reforms. ”But sometimes it takes a crisis for changes to happen.”"
"In his new film, A Hologram for the King, Tom Hanks plays a   American businessman who is sent to Saudi Arabia, where the king is planning to build a new city in the middle of the desert. Hanks’ character, Adam Clay, must persuade the Saudis to let the company he works for provide IT technology and support for this new city. Hanks tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that he felt particularly connected with his character’s sense of   and dislocation. ”No matter what we’ve done, there comes a point where you think, ’How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me?’ ” Hanks explains. Despite having won two Academy Awards and appearing in more than 70 films and TV shows, Hanks says he still finds himself doubting his own abilities. ”It’s a   act that we all walk,” he says. ”There are days when I know that 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon I am going to have to deliver some degree of emotional goods, and if I can’t do it, that means I’m going to have to fake it,” Hanks says. ”If I fake it, that means they might catch me at faking it, and if they catch me at faking it, well, then it’s just doomsday.” On what drew him to A Hologram for the King, It’s the dilemma that Alan Clay is in, which is the dilemma, I think, of our times. If you’re going to sum it up in one and one word only, you would say Alan Clay is dealing with China. The fact that China has taken away the companies that he’s worked for, the living that he used to make, and it’s representative then of all the other failings that he’s experienced in his life  —   he’s divorced, he’s got a kid he can’t afford college for, and he’s now taken whatever skill set he had, which is really basically selling things, and he is going to have to go off to a place as alien on the planet Earth as I think Mars is in the solar system  —   the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. On Hanks’ independence growing up, My dad was married to the love of his life  —   finally  —   it took him three marriages to get there, but when they landed together, they were so busy having fun and dealing with their own Sturm und Drang that I could’ve been a tenant who lived downstairs. I just came and went on my own accord and they never said boo. There was one time in high school I had the flu and I spent two weeks at a friend’s house and when I finally came home my dad said, ”Where’ve you been?” I said, ”Oh I had the flu, I slept at Kirk’s house.” He said, ”I figured you’d take care of yourself.” So that brand of freedom, it wasn’t a cruel brand of disinterest, but they were just very busy doing other things. . .. That along with attention deficit disorder made me what I am today. On how Hanks watched TV as a kid, I knew what time it was by what was on television. I don’t think there was a clock in our house and I never had a watch, because if Love of Life was over it was time to go to school. When the Hogan’s Heroes hour was halfway through, I knew that dinner was going to be ready upstairs. Because of that, about every 12 minutes, when the commercial came on, my attention went somewhere else. I think I still have trouble  —   I have to be utterly hypnotized by something to truly concentrate on it for anything more than 20 minutes at a time. On what attracts him to playing brave leading men in films like Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, Captain Phillips and the upcoming movie Sully, They are not men with nerves of steel. The thing that has attracted me to all of those characters is they are fighting the terror that is inside them. For example, in all the reading in much of the research that I did for Saving Private Ryan was the terror that men in command felt in combat. . .. I have this verbatim from a number of people . .. that they were afraid of making the mistake that was going to get other people killed. That is a huge burden of command, and it’s something that you have to fight and tamp down, and you can’t allow yourself a moment of hesitation, and that faith in oneself is a very  —   that’s the difference between success and failure. It’s not easy to do. . .. All of these guys have some degree of accomplishment, but it has been learned and earned at the same time. No one is made a captain of a cargo ship without an extraordinary amount of experience behind them, and that brand of terror or loss of your own   look, that’s something that everybody goes through at some point. My life has never been in jeopardy ever once, but the artistic creative process of one is still based on your ability to fight down those doubts of yourself, and you have to move forward. . .. And you cannot sweat too much the possibility that you are making a wrong mistake. On why he tweets photos of lost items, like gloves and shoes on the street  I see the story there. The saddest thing is when you see a little girl’s lost pink mitten, or a little glove with those tiny little fingers in it, and that means some little girl now has a mismatched glove at home, and I just think, who are the people that lost it? How did they lose it in these circumstances? And I see almost like a   story behind every one of them. Sometimes they’re big, manly, expensive leather gloves, something from Hammacher Schlemmer or Barney’s or something, and other times they’re little happy mittens with Snoopys on them or something like that, and I always think, who passed by this way and left an image? I kind of look at it as urban archaeology in which we can put together the stories of they who passed before us by the gloves that they’ve lost and sometimes the position that they’re in."
"Immunotherapy tablets are starting to edge out shots as a treatment for allergies. And it looks like the pills can help reduce the frequency of asthma attacks, too. Scientists reported Tuesday that immunotherapy tablets for dust mite allergy reduced the risk of an attack in people with moderate to severe asthma. The results were published in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. Allergies are a big trigger of asthma, and allergy to dust mites, tiny insects that live in homes, is the most common allergic asthma trigger. The 693 people who completed the study had asthma that wasn’t well controlled by inhaled corticosteroids. Half of the participants took a pill made of   allergen daily, letting it dissolve under the tongue. The immunotherapy tablet significantly reduced the risk of a moderate or severe asthma attack. It’s the first time sublingual immunotherapy tablets (often referred to as SLIT) have been tested as an asthma treatment, according to Dr. J. Christian Virchow, a professor of pulmonology at the University of Rostock in Germany and lead author of the study. ”It’s the first   study and I should be modest, but I think it’s a bit of a milestone,” Virchow told Shots. Earlier studies didn’t look specifically at how immunotherapy shots affected asthma, he says. Rather they studied allergic rhinitis and then sifted out the people with asthma after the fact. Allergy shots that inject an allergen extract under the skin have long been used to treat asthma, allergies and eczema, but they’re a pain in many ways. So patients and doctors have been eager to see if the tablets could work as well to tame the runaway immune response that causes allergic symptoms. In 2014, the Food and Drug Administration approved Oralair for grass allergies. It was the first sublingual allergy immunotherapy tablet approved for use in the United States. It then approved Grastek, also for grass allergies, and Ragwitek, for, you guessed it, ragweed. The tablets typically are to be taken daily for three years, with protection from symptoms continuing after that. They’re about as effective as allergy shots, and less likely to prompt anaphylactic shock. The risk of a rare   reaction is one big reason that allergy shots are given at a doctor’s office. None of the participants in the study had serious side effects. Some had local side effects like swelling of the lips and tongue or an itchy throat. The dust mite tablets for asthma haven’t been tested in children, but Virchow says he thinks the treatment might actually work better for them than for adults. The people in the study had had asthma for a mean of 13 years, he says, and may not have responded as well as a child who was recently diagnosed. ”But we need to have a study in children.” ”More research needs to be done” is a cliche of biomedicine, but here’s a case where it’s really true, according to an editorial that accompanies this study. Most people with allergies are allergic to more than one substance. As more sublingual allergen tablets are tested and approved, patients should be able to tailor their allergy or asthma treatment in a way that’s been impossible before."
"The types of conversations I saw online about Harriet Tubman, Prince and Beyonce over this past week have yet to be duplicated in our nation’s discussion of politics. I think that’s a bad thing. And I will tell you why. But first, let’s try to put the week in some sort of perspective. It is possible that the week was the Internet’s Blackest Week. Ever. A former slave and abolitionist took her place as the face of U. S. currency. A black rock and funk god died and made us remember just how much he changed everything about popular music. And Beyonce, she of a million think pieces, released a new ”visual album” all about modern black womanhood, as well as her husband’s rumored affair. The Internet proceeded to break. There was so much to digest, to feel, to work through. It could be argued that with these events, black Twitter experienced the full range of human emotion in just a few days. So. Many. Emotions. Elation when the Tubman news broke. Followed by confusion and perhaps a bit of disgust when it was revealed that Andrew Jackson would remain on the bill, just on the back. Followed by   about whether having Tubman on the currency was a good thing at all. And then a bit of disbelief when we all realized that favorite, favorite Tubman quote we love  —   ”I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves”  —   she didn’t even write it. Another roller coaster with Prince. Grief and adulation and a visceral need to find a dance floor as if our drunken,   movement in the secular church of a nightclub might very well propel the man into heaven. And then, there was the   the   of what he meant besides his music. His racial ambiguity and transcendence, but also his undying support of the black community. His quiet activism and humanitarianism. His religious politics. His silent pain. And let’s not even start with Beyonce. Leave it to her to jam more rage and grace and healing and strength and strange into one hour of video than . .. Actually, I don’t even know what to compare it to. If there is any   that connects these three stories, it is that they are all examples of black agency. Black ownership. Black liberation on black terms. Of course, there is no comparison to what Tubman went through, clearly. But you can see some connecting dots. Prince wrote ”slave” on his face in protest of his record label’s control over his career. The entire Lemonade album is one big rejection of popular culture’s chokehold on who is considered worthy, who is considered beautiful, and who black women get to be. It’s all about liberation. The freedom to not just ask for your own, but to free hundreds of others in the process and even have a   for $20 to free your father, too. The freedom to totally upend pop music’s gender and race binaries, while also becoming bigger than you could have ever imagined. The freedom to be the biggest celebrity in the world and also connect your story with the story of all black women and the story of all their pain. (And also make an album all about your husband cheating, only to make him appear in the video and make him sell the album on his own music streaming service.) And with all of this, there has been a freedom  —   online  —   to have messy, sprawling, confusing conversations about what it means. And these conversations, at least the ones I’ve seen, have taken the liberty to have conflicting ideas swimming around each other about Harriet and Prince and Beyonce, all at the same time. Deciding who they are, what that makes us and who we get to be in real time. It’s been thrilling to watch online. And a mess as well. But beautiful. There is a beauty in this reconsideration. Because it not only means that we’re growing. It also means we notice that very fact. This deciding, of who we are and what we get to be, is inherently political. It always has been. And it is perhaps even more so in this election year, when the country is coming to terms with the end of America’s first black presidency and grappling, on the macro level, with those same questions. Who belongs in the country and who doesn’t? Who are the 1 percent and do they have too much? Who gets to define what religious freedom means? Who gets to use which bathroom? Who is establishment? Who is a true progressive? Or a true conservative? Who can really get things done? What is a black life? What does it matter? Can we even say that? Who are we? And what do we get to be? Why, as shown last week, is it so much easier to have those conversations through the popular culture, and not through our politics? Our most candid discussions of race and class and gender  —   among several other heady conversations  —   are not taking place on the campaign trail or even in the halls of Congress. They are happening in ”visual albums,” on the faces of $20 bills and through the eulogizing of a musical icon. When we try to talk about messy things like race or gender on the campaign trail, often we end with politicians and protesters just shouting past each other. Or we just speak in hyperbole, bigger walls, millions more deported. All the banks, broken up, right away. Either you’re sexist or you’re not. And that’s it. You’re either with me or you’re a bigot or an idiot or even worse  —   both. If there is a lesson that Harriet, Prince and Beyonce can teach us is that there can be nuance. There is gray space. You can be right and wrong at the same time. You can reconsider what something means, what it meant, what it should be, in real time. Putting Harriet Tubman on a $20 bill can make you feel weird, and that’s OK. Loving Prince’s music but hating some of his beliefs is fine. Celebrating Beyonce’s celebration of womanhood and black life while at the same time wanting to hunt down ”Becky with the good hair” is a thing that can happen. And you can talk about it. All day. You can reconsider it all. In fact, you’re supposed to. One would hope this level of reflection, and   might take hold in other aspects of our society, particularly in our politics. I want the same gray space there, too. Imagine think pieces about the election or Congress that end in ”actually, I don’t know it all,” instead of ”I’m right and you’re wrong” or ”If this one thing happens, civilization will end.” Or maybe no more of those memes where we call half the country stupid. Dare I say, I hope we learn how to    the hell out of our politics. I hope we learn to reflect. I hope we learn that even when we walk into the gray space, we can still see, even there."
"A Beyoncé album release is now a communal experience. Who among us (and if you’re here reading this, you’re one of us) made it through this weekend without a conversation, typed or yelled, about her intent, her intonation, her read, her past, her bat, Serena, Tina, Etta, Warsan, Pipilotti, Zendaya? Whether you love her, hate her, or stay strong in your neutrality, our exchanges are kind of the point. This is what art makes us do. No doubt our opinions are in some places monetized and our vocalization of them surely buoys the price of Lemonade on up to $17. 99. But what Beyoncé’s got us talking about now is what we women are really always talking about, under our breath, late night on the phone, after the kids are down, over coffee, at the bar, in tears, irrespective of anybody’s album drop: our worth. The video version of this album reflects the private lives of a certain group of women who share a set of memories and experiences the arc of its narrative will be harrowingly close to home for all of us. We asked Professor Regina Bradley and writer dream hampton to share their dialogue about the visual album with us, to show the many directions Lemonade is sending people, knowing the two of them don’t come to the art or the artist from the same place, knowing they require different things if they’re to feel represented, knowing that feeling is a major factor in what’s happening right now culturally, but it’s not the only thing. Uniting their perspectives here is our attempt to arm each other with information and knowledge and   truths. So that when we’re talking about Beyoncé, we’re really saying something. Regina and dream spoke on the phone Sunday afternoon.  —  Frannie Kelley, Regina Bradley: I was like, wow. So much wow. That was my immediate reaction. And then I went on a Twitter rant. Because I saw a tweet that was like, ”Well, this is so much that I don’t understand.” I heard everything from ”creepy” to ”It’s not for me.” So of course I put on, you know, my southern hat and I was like, ”Some of the stuff in that video wasn’t meant for everybody!” It was a love note to southern black girls. dream hampton: I’m not on Twitter and haven’t been since last August, but I went on there and I saw that the Internet was melting. I was looking for rare Prince video, because a lot of people are sharing amazing performance footage and I just couldn’t get enough this weekend. And I saw that Bey had released this album, which I of course knew she was releasing. I mean, we do have to say that part, like: I know these folks, or whatever. I saw someone who was a writer for Hannibal, the very dark TV show about cannibalism, and I saw her tweet out that she didn’t think this album was for her, but she still was intrigued. And I thought, I bet when she was creating her scripts and her art she wasn’t telling NBC, ”This is going to be a show for cannibals. That’s who’s gonna watch my show.” But in this moment, confronted with this many black girls on camera  —   and thank you Kahlil Joseph for honoring us in this way, to create this kind of visual altar to black girls, and black girl femmes  —   you know, in that moment, you can’t locate yourself? I wasn’t looking for myself in Hannibal, a story about FBI agents or cannibals, because I have no desire to be either. But I loved what she was doing and I didn’t begin my read on that work with this feeling of rejection. And that was what was in her tweet. She’s a white woman and she felt rejected looking at this video. Regina Bradley: I think what made folks uncomfortable was the fact that she was pulling from not only a blues tradition, but a southern black woman blues tradition. Shug Avery, Bessie Smith, Rosetta Tharpe and other blueswomen performers used their voices to sonically and lyrically expound upon their personal trauma and strife as a collective    for black women. Blueswomen in the south traveled and wandered and did not censor their existence. They made people uncomfortable. I say Beyoncé made people uncomfortable because her performance in Lemonade wasn’t just a curation of the blueswoman aesthetic but an active reckoning with it as it manifested in southern spaces. Pair the blueswoman tradition with the traditional memory of the south as traumatic and backwards and you get a ripe space for unpacking the multiple layers of black women’s healing and existence that Beyoncé tackles in this project. dream hampton: When I think of the mashup that’s happening here in terms of artists  —   and there are two collaborators that stand out, obviously, in this project, even though there were many  —   one of them is Warsan Shire, the poet who I have loved since I found her on Myspace in 2009. She’s a Somali Muslim raised in London and her writing is beautiful and these are her musings on romantic love. And then you have Kahlil Joseph, who is interested in all kinds of black magic. He did a beautiful short film on Oklahoma rodeos. He did Shabazz Palace’s first video, ”Belhaven Meridian,” a nod to the great filmmaker Charles Burnett. He also did a conjuring video for Flying Lotus, which cast Lotus as an   in a Cadillac who kind of comes to collect the beautiful Brooklyn dancer Storyboard Pete. Kahlil is absolutely a director who is influenced by Terrence Malick, and he really looks at film as a philosophical medium. And then you add Beyoncé. Ann Powers wrote a great piece when Beyoncé did the 2013 Super Bowl. She was looking at Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child and that whole syncopated, southern marching band tradition and stepping contests. Beyoncé, even though she’s incredibly popular, probably the most popular artist we’ve had since Michael Jackson, is performing very straightforward RB and always has, since Destiny’s Child. She has always performed very southern, black music since Destiny’s Child. I thought her first album reminded me of Prince in that it wandered. I’m talking about songs like ”Speechless,” like ”Naughty Girl,” like ”Hip Hop Star,” like ”Be with U.” I think that people were kind of happy when she came out with the album after that, B’day, because it returned to the Beyoncé that they were used to, with these big giant hits, from Destiny’s Child. But that first album, besides ”Crazy In Love,” was to me deeply influenced by Prince. And then when she did B’day she returned to songs like ”Upgrade U” and ”Get Me Bodied” and ”Ring the Alarm,” ”Freakum Dress”  —   that album felt more like Destiny’s Child, Michael Jackson, I’m coming for you with hits. And Lemonade comes back to the kind of wandering and exploring she was doing on her debut. When you take away all of the videos, you get some very interesting mashups. The James Blake. The White Stripes. Regina Bradley: I was listening to ”Don’t Hurt Yourself,” the song that plays during the section of Lemonade called ”Anger,” and I thought about Prince. The live instrumentation, the boisterousness of the music, I thought, this was for Prince. And I think she’s always in a space to do that. But I really enjoyed the fact that she’s making folks uncomfortable with her music right now and the imagery associated with it. I guess on the one hand I feel like my ear has been tainted when listening to Beyoncé, because for me it’s mostly been what I’ve heard on the radio and it wasn’t until lately that I was like, let me actually dig into it and think about what these influences mean. But one thing that I, as a literary person, was looking at during the actual video album yesterday was so many references to black women writers, singers, and just this quotidian black woman experience that I was so in love with. Finally, you didn’t have to have these supreme cosmic influences just to have a conversation. I felt like it was an everyday conversation that I was having with her through these videos. Ok, well  —   maybe not the red light, going around town knocking people out with a bat named Hot Sauce. But for me, I saw the influences of Zora Neale Hurston. dream hampton: I would say in that moment you’re also seeing Kahlil Joseph, who also has a real connection and interest in Zora. That’s what I mean that this is a mashup. And some of it is just musings  —   Warsan could be happy in a romantic relationship. Now her poems and Beyoncé’s lyrics are being taken literally and used to speculate about Jay and Beyoncé’s relationship. But in the end, these three artists, Warsan Shire, Kahlil Joseph and Beyoncé, are reflecting what they choose to, of their interests, back into their art. Regina Bradley: The actual visuals probably teach a lot more than the lyrics. And I’m not trying to discount those at all. But we’re in a current visual cultural moment and we learn more through what we see than what we hear. dream hampton: But let’s not act like lyrics have ever been deep. I mean, that’s what makes Prince an anomaly. Literally. These kind of love musings tend to never be deep. But that’s where Warsan Shire comes in and complicates it. And I say that loving music! As an academic yourself, as someone who writes, myself, we would probably overwrite songs. Because we would be overthinking them. Now Prince, of course, knew how to do thinking but simple love songs. He knew how to make really complicated lyrics make sense in a pop song  —   when you listen to a song like ”Lady Cab Driver” and he says, ”This is for the moon . .. so beautifully complex.” We don’t expect our pop love songs to be sonnets. You’re not going to hear that in an average song. By ”average” I mean the very best. I mean The Beatles. And that’s why it’s lovely that Kahlil brought in Warsan Shire and had her go even deeper on a literary level than a song. That’s what makes this project a masterpiece. Because all of them are playing their parts. Beyoncé is the consummate performer, she is black girl magic personified in this moment. Warsan is bringing that literary genius to it and, because Kahlil is deeply invested in a visual folklore, he’s directing all that into an ancient yet modern visual folklore around black people. Regina Bradley: I’m still processing it. Even though I’ve watched it three times, there’s so much stuff I’m still missing. One of the things that stood out to me is when they were preparing dinner. The whole idea of soul food as a southern trope, and actually having a seat at the table that black women have been preparing for others, that was big for me. dream hampton: That was a visual nod to Julie Dash’s Daughters Of The Dust. Regina Bradley: Daughters Of The Dust and also Alice Walker’s In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens. dream hampton: Yes! And Carrie Mae Weems’s Kitchen too! It’s gorgeous, this idea that we’re going to feed one another into love and healing. That food is healing, that our fellowship is healing. That all women’s spaces are sacred. And all of that comes through. I’ve said this before, but I don’t measure a woman’s strength by her ability to endure suffering. I think true strength is about reaching out when you need help. It is about forgiveness, which Bey has in there. But there’s also a call for accountability. Accountability in our most intimate relationships and accountability as it relates to the images of the mothers of these three victims of police violence. Regina Bradley: That accountability is real, though. Like Beyoncé’s done so many times in the past, she’s putting her money where her mouth is. She doesn’t speak up in public spaces other than her music. I feel like her work begs the question, ”What else do you want me to do?” But I’m most struck by her use of antebellum imagery to situate her southernness. Southern black girls and women are at the front of Beyoncé’s vision. Not in the back. Not in her peripherals or tucked away under the heavy assumptions of southern black women and girls as hopeless. We are in the front. We are joyful. We are communal. Antebellum blackness as joyous and fruitful seems oxymoronic for black women. Slave women are the most silenced and traumatic representations of southern black women. It is a massive undertaking to sift through the forced silence regarding the physical, social and spiritual violence of slave women to locate the quiet of black women’s endurance. In Lemonade, the trauma of slavery itself does not propel the images of black women in undeniably southern spaces forward. Rather, the antebellum south serves as an entry point for Beyoncé to recognize the historical and cultural horrors of black womanhood while reclaiming the survival techniques passed down over time. Towards the end of the film, a group of girls runs from a garden with fresh vegetables in their arms. Another shot shows a group of black women in antebellum dresses proceeding into a kitchen to chop vegetables, grind spices and prepare to literally and figuratively break bread. The agency of the antebellum south as the epitome of white southern pride gives way to the quiet dignity of black women as workers, healers and conjurers. The imagery is not new: Black women in head wraps, simple white dresses gathered in communal spaces like a cooking house and a southern plantation manor with black girls running through white columns off of a porch are referenced in multiple slave narratives like Linda Brent’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Yet the work being done is for the women’s own benefit, culminating in a communal dinner underneath a massive oak tree with Spanish moss and performances by Beyoncé of her song ”Freedom” and ballerina Michaela dePrince. The gathering women and girls are of multiple ages, smiling and conversing with one another. This scene juxtaposes with an empty candlelit table and a lone black girl  —   possibly a house slave  —   sitting at the table. The scene quickly cuts back to the same communal table in the dark under candlelight. The rapidness of the transition between the two scenes is like a blink. It suggests that the women at the table are the dream of the solitary black girl. What I most appreciate about Lemonade is its ability to pull the viewer through multiple lenses, historical periods and vantage points to complicate southern black women. It demonstrates healing as messy,   and generational. Sometimes we deal with the same s*** that our mothers and grandmothers and foremothers experienced. The responsibility of remembering is not only a collective, but it’s a collective for multiple generations of black women. dream hampton: The other thing that I really loved in the film is this way that she really loved up on her father and on Jay Z as a father. Kahlil reflects that back to us with all these everyday fathers in New Orleans loving on their baby girls. Regina Bradley: I thought it was gorgeous. I cried a little bit because it made me think of my dad. Especially when he [Beyoncé’s father, in a clip of home video] was like, ”What would you do if your grandparents were here?” And she was like, ”We would have fun.” He said, ”Tell them.” I’m like, yes! The ancestors are everywhere. We have to speak them into existence. We have to remember to keep them alive. He was instilling that in her. dream hampton: And then the father that Jay is with Blue Ivy is something that she has to love the most about him. I know that, having been his friend for the past 20 years, this is my favorite phase of his life. This phase where he gets to be deeply connected with his daughter. Because for him, and he’s been public about this, this isn’t me snitching on him, at least he was public about this in the book we worked on together, Decoded, he healed his relationship with his father at the very last stage of his father’s life his father was dying. And that made it possible for him to be in his first real love relationship, which is with his wife. And to see him be able to do more healing around that karmic energy, with his own daughter, is beautiful. Beyoncé must really love that about Jay. Regina Bradley: And it’s an ongoing process, too. That idea of the vulnerability that’s associated with being a father. For me, one of the things I’ll always remember about my dad is we had a kind of rocky relationship in the beginning. I remember one time we were talking when I was 14 and I was like, ”I don’t need you” and he cried. I had never seen a grown man cry before that. My dad was a big dude. He was like 6’5” and 300 pounds. And he was crying. He said, ”But I need you though.” With Jay Z being such a public figure and actually letting us see him be vulnerable with his daughter, it wasn’t refreshing, but more like like, ”I’m also human too.” It added levels of humanity for him that we don’t often reserve for superstars. dream hampton: And I think that’s something that we’re guilty of, which is stripping celebrities of their humanity. The way that we talk about them. Grown people who may or may not have given birth, which is a big deal, openly speculating about whether she had her own child. This kind of viciousness. I remember Jay saying early on, when he first started dating her, there are only two headlines to write about a celebrity couple: They’re together and they’re divorced. And that’s all anyone’s interested in. We really do say the worst things to our lovers. And we really do treat our lovers the very worst and the very best. That’s part of what intimacy is about, being so up in somebody’s stuff that they can’t avoid all the parts of you. But I do love that Beyoncé, unlike blueswomen before her, rejects the idea of sacrificial love as the wife’s duty in a   relationship. In this suite, she demands accountability before we get forgiveness. She’s also being fully present in her rage, and fully understanding of what it is she deserves. Some classic standards are hard for me to listen to: songs that were recorded by some of my favorite black women, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, but weren’t always written by them. Often they were written by white men and they’re sacrificial songs, they are not about being in your power at all times. Beyoncé brings us this power. She’s not the first to bring us this  —   ’70s rock star Betty Davis, Miles Davis’   brought us this, in the ”Anti Love Song,” for instance. We’ve seen it before, we’ve absolutely seen it in  . But it’s so good for Beyoncé to bring that archetype back  —   ”I know what I deserve, I know that god lives in me, I am a divine being and that I deserve all the respect and all the care.” And that’s what the accountability piece is, that you will care for me in the way I deserve to be cared for. Regina Bradley: And I’m starting to care for myself. dream hampton: Or that I’ve always cared for myself! We don’t always have to have the hero’s journey, where people have to hit rock bottom and come back up. That’s not our tradition: a single person on a single journey. Regina Bradley: Multiple journeys. dream hampton: And not just   but your crew, with your woes. Regina Bradley: You need a squad. Every woman needs a squad. dream hampton: And in that sense, Kahlil turns away from the hero’s journey and populates this video, even though it’s clearly about Beyoncé, with all of these other black women in different phases of their life. And I think that that’s important. Regina Bradley: Yes. Because squad love is the best love."
"Former Texas AM and Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel, 23, has been indicted by a Dallas County grand jury on a misdemeanor assault charge. Manziel’s   Colleen Crowley has accused him of hitting her and rupturing her eardrum in January. The Dallas Morning News describes what happened: ”Manziel is accused of abusing Crowley in a fight over another woman Jan. 29 at Hotel ZaZa in Uptown. Crowley and Manziel broke up in December after dating for two years and living together in Cleveland. She said she saw him that night in January when he invited her to his hotel room to talk. ”Crowley, also 23, told police that Manziel slapped her on the head and ruptured her left eardrum, causing her to lose her hearing. ”She said Manziel hit her, dragged her by the hair, forced her into a car and drove her to Fort Worth, where she lives.” Manziel’s lawyers say he will plead not guilty to the misdemeanor domestic violence charge, which carries a penalty of up to a year in prison and a $4, 000 fine, NPR’s Wade Goodwyn reports. ”Attorney Robert Hinton, who is representing Manziel, has told The Associated Press that both sides will meet with a judge to set a bond, and Manziel will be booked, most likely for a brief time,” the news service reported. Another Manziel attorney, Jim Darnell, issued a statement Tuesday: ”We certainly respect the decision of the grand jury but of course they only hear part of the case: What the D. A. chooses to share with them. We don’t know what that was. This case will now be assigned to a court in Dallas County where the parties are able to join the issue. Johnny will certainly plead ’not guilty’ and we believe the evidence will support that plea. Out of respect for Ms. Crowley, we will not try the case in the press. We do, however, believe that Johnny will be acquitted at the conclusion of the case.” Manziel, who won the Heisman Trophy at Texas AM University in 2012, is currently a free agent, having been dropped by the Browns in March. He’s also been dropped by two agents and lost all of his professional endorsements. His career has been marked by reports of substance abuse and time at a rehab facility."
"A gay rights activist and his friend were killed Monday night in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, by a group of assailants reportedly armed with machetes and guns. Their deaths are the latest in ”a series of attacks on progressive voices that has deepened anxiety about growing fundamentalism in the tiny Muslim country, which borders India,” NPR’s Julie McCarthy tells our Newscast unit. Xulhaz Mannan and a man said to be a close friend were slain by a   men posing as couriers when they forced their way inside Mannan’s apartment, Julie reports. Mannan worked for the U. S. Agency for International Development and was the editor of Roopbaan, the country’s only LGBT magazine, and had helped organize a rally for LGBT youths called The Rainbow Rally on April 14, the Bengali New Year. Another friend of Mannan’s, Sara Hossain, told The New York Times that the activist had received death threats from people who opposed the rally. An    group said it was responsible for the two killings. The Associated Press reports that ”the claim by     —   which said it targeted the two men on Monday night because they were ’pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality’  —   raised doubts about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s repeated assurances that authorities have the security situation under control.” USAID published a statement following Mannan’s death, calling him ”a dedicated and courageous advocate for human rights.” ”Xulhaz sought to shape a society that was more diverse and inclusive. He believed in the people of Bangladesh, and he strove to make the world a better place for everyone.” The Wall Street Journal spoke with an employee at Mannan’s apartment building about what happened there: ”Abdur Rahim, the caretaker of the   building in which Mr. Mannan lived, said two young men posing as couriers entered Mr. Mannan’s   apartment on Monday evening. Four other men then followed them into the apartment. ” ’We heard shouts and then loud bangs,’ Mr. Rahim said. ”Mr. Rahim said building guards and a police patrol tried to stop the group as they tried to escape after the killing. The killers escaped by firing shots that injured a policeman and a building guard, Mr. Rahim said.” Mannan and his friend were cut down just days after English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique was hacked to death as he walked to his home in the city of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Julie reported over the weekend that Siddique may have attracted attention with his focus on cultural enrichment after he organized a music school. She notes that the latest attacks might signal a shift: ”It appears that the assailants may be expanding their range of targets. Previously, the grisly attacks have focused on atheists and bloggers critical of Islamic fundamentalism.” Earlier this month, an atheist law student named Nazimuddin Samad was hacked and shot to death by men on a busy street in Dhaka. Samad reportedly had been named on a ”hit list” of bloggers sent to the Bangladesh Interior Ministry by a group of radical Islamists in 2013. As the   has reported, ”last year, at least four secular bloggers were hacked to death in Bangladesh and a publisher who worked with one of those bloggers was stabbed to death.”"
"A Dutch dentist has been sentenced to eight years behind bars for harming patients in a rural French town. The   dentist of horror injured more than 100 patients and committed insurance fraud in   which reportedly had been without a dental care provider for years. Jacobus Van Nierop, 51, isn’t allowed to practice dentistry anymore, and he has to pay about $11, 900, according to the BBC. As the   has reported, patients accused him of mutilating their mouths  —   pulling out healthy teeth and performing operations that caused abscesses. The prosecutor said ”useless and painful procedures” were done as part of a scheme for insurance reimbursements, AFP reports. Prosecutor Lucile   also said Van Nierop ”took pleasure at causing pain,” according to The Guardian. The newspaper also notes that psychiatric evaluations of the dentist varied: ”One found he had ’narcissistic tendencies’ and was not responsible for his actions, but another declared Van Nierop ’perfectly aware of what he was doing’.” Van Nierop was arrested in 2013 but was released and fled to Canada. He was found in 2014, extradited and eventually sent back to France for trial."
"An independent Russian newspaper has come under fire after it published stories about the business interests of President Vladimir Putin’s family and friends. The Kremlin insists that it’s not applying pressure on any media, but observers say there’s a climate where journalists don’t know how far they can go without risking reprisals from the government. The Russian newspaper is part of a business media group called RBC, which also owns a TV channel and maintains online interests. It belongs to the billionaire businessman Mikhail Prokhorov, best known in the United States as the owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. The media group’s TV station and its paper have a reputation for independent reporting, says Maria Lipman, an independent political analyst based in Moscow who is affiliated with George Washington University. ”It’s an outlet that publishes analysis and most importantly, investigations,” she says. ”It has done investigative reporting in the past couple of years, some of it on very sensitive subjects.” One of the most sensitive subjects was a report on the Panama Papers and what they revealed about the offshore business interests of friends of Putin. That report drew a denunciation from a   broadcaster who has one of the   political shows on Russian TV. The program host, Dmitry Kiselyov, maintains that the Panama Papers  —   thousands of documents leaked earlier this month from a Panamanian law firm  —   are part of an American plot to discredit legitimate Russian businessmen. Kiselyov held up a copy of the RBC newspaper and said it was helping the Americans in their plot to associate offshore tax evasion and   with Putin. Lipman says accusations of disloyalty have become a common weapon against any media that question the Russian government  —   ”the idea being that only unpatriotic forces, acting in the interests of the West, can criticize the Russian government,” she says. ”A patriot would not.” After the criticism of RBC’s Panama Papers reporting, the company announced that the    Elizaveta Osetinskaya, would be taking a   leave of absence. It seemed like an odd time for the top news manager to be gone, during the   to Russia’s parliamentary elections in September. Osetinskaya declined NPR’s request for comments. RBC isn’t the only independent news outlet that’s feeling recent pressure. One of the biggest problems facing independent journalists is uncertainty about what they can and cannot report, says Mikhail Zygar, the former editor of the independent channel TV Rain and author of All The Kremlin’s Men. ”No one really knows what is allowed and what is not,” he says. ”No one really understands which topics could be covered and which topics are too delicate.” Despite that, Zygar says there are still independent media outlets doing principled journalism. And most important, he says, the independent outlets have resisted censoring themselves in an effort to avoid the Kremlin’s ire. But the desire to avoid certain topics can be a temptation for media owners, says Lipman. ”This naturally leads to ” she says, ”and then it is a degree of how far you go, and how do you balance the desires to act according to journalistic principles and standards, and common sense?” Earlier this month, federal police raided the offices of several of Mikhail Prokhorov’s companies as part of what may have been an investigation into tax evasion. Prokhorov’s office is denying rumors that he has plans to sell RBC, but some commentators are predicting that it will end up in the hands of a new owner who’s more friendly to the Kremlin."
"Over the past decade, states have passed laws intended to help women understand the results of their breast cancer screening mammograms if they have dense breasts. But those notifications can be downright confusing and may, in fact, cause more misunderstanding than understanding. A study published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, finds the wording of some notifications so complex that only a Ph. D. could understand them. This lack of simple, direct information could lead to greater health disparities in diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, since having dense breasts makes it a bit more likely that a woman will have breast cancer and also that cancer could be missed on a mammogram. Breast density is normal and common, but the only way a woman can find out that she has dense breasts, which have more fibrous and glandular tissue, is by having a mammogram. Patient advocates have pushed for state laws requiring that mammography providers tell women about breast density when they send out their mammogram results. Connecticut was the first state to pass a breast density notification law, in 2009. Since then, 24 states have followed. In this study, researchers analyzed the language and content of notifications in 23 states. They found wide variation in how the information was presented. Some states mention increased cancer risk some recommend additional screening (such as ultrasound or MRI) and some advise women to consult their physician. But there was no uniformity. Even more worrisome, researchers found that in many states the information was just too complicated. About 20 percent of the U. S. population reads below   level. The language presented in the breast density notification was at or above the high school level, on average. ”Even just a few   words will make the material much more difficult to understand,” says researcher Nancy Kressin, director of the Health and Healthcare Disparities Research Program at the Boston University School of Medicine. So for women with low levels of literacy who are already less likely to get preventive screening, Kressin says, these letters could ”increase anxiety and confusion.” Take New Jersey. Kressin says that about 17 percent of the state’s population has low literacy skills, yet the breast density notification is somewhat complicated, written at a   level: Your mammogram may show that you have dense breast tissue as determined by the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System established by the American College of Radiology. Dense breast tissue is very common and is not abnormal. However, in some cases, dense breast tissue can make it harder to find cancer on a mammogram and may also be associated with a risk factor for breast cancer. Discuss this and other risks for breast cancer that pertain to your personal medical history with your health care provider. The state of Alabama did better. About 15 percent of state residents lack basic literacy skills, says Kressin, and the notification was written at   literacy levels: Your mammogram shows that your breast tissue is dense. Dense breast tissue is common and is not abnormal. However, dense breast tissue may make it harder to find cancer on a mammogram and may also be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. This information about the result of your mammogram is given to you to raise your awareness. Use this information to talk to your doctor about your own risks for breast cancer. At that time, ask your doctor if more screening tests might be useful, based on your risk. A report of your results was sent to your physician. The information is clear and precise, and the recommendation to discuss with the doctor is straightforward and simple. Kressin says the goal of the breast density notifications is to get every woman to consult with her doctor about her individual risk factors for cancer, because the answer might be that no more screening is needed. ”We think those conversations should include benefits and possible harms of additional screening including additional exposure to radiation, additional cost, anxiety and even unneeded biopsies,” she says."
"When it comes to reversing the obesity epidemic, there have been glimmers of hope that the U. S. might be making headway, especially with young children. For instance, back in 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documented declines in obesity rates among   preschoolers in many states. And case studies in cities including Kearney, Neb. Vance, N. C. and New York  N. Y. have reported progress, too. But a new study published in the journal Obesity concludes that  —   though the prevalence of obesity among U. S. children has plateaued in recent years  —   there is no indication of a national decline. ”If you look at the   from 1999 to 2014, we see a pretty consistent increase in obesity across   children,” says study author Asheley Cockrell Skinner, a researcher at the Duke Clinical Research Institute at Duke University. And she points to a continued increase in the rate of severe, or morbid, obesity among teens, which rose from 6 percent in 1999 to about 10 percent in 2014. According to the study, which is based on NHANES data  —   a nationally representative survey and study on nutrition and health  —   33 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 19 are overweight, and 17 percent are obese. Skinner says the estimates are reliable, in part because of the way the data is collected. Health professionals weigh and measure the kids who participate in the study, so researchers are not relying on   from parents. The study echoes findings from last November, when the CDC released numbers pointing to the stubborn rate of obesity among U. S. adults. Skinner says she hopes these findings don’t overshadow the success stories out there. Certainly, there are many promising efforts aimed at helping people make healthier choices. There’s also more attention on preventing obesity among primary care doctors and pediatricians. ”If we take a   approach, we may start to see some declines,” says Skinner. But so far, she says these messages  —   and public health interventions aimed at helping  —   ”are not reaching everybody.” Experts say a   approach is needed to reverse the epidemic, and there are many efforts underway that show promise in nudging Americans’ lifestyle choices in a healthier direction. As we’ve reported, there’s been an increase in the number of moms breastfeeding their infants as the results of support programs in hospitals nationwide. These efforts may lower the risk of obesity. And the overhaul of school lunch has shown promise in promoting better eating habits. And municipalities, health providers and employers across the country have introduced all sorts of initiatives to encourage healthier lifestyles. Some doctors are even prescribing fruits and vegetables for their patients. Also, as we reported back in 2013, pediatricians say they’re much more assertive about   efforts than they were a decade ago. ”It used to be a very awkward, embarrassing conversation to have [with overweight families],” Dr. Margaret Desler, a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente, told us in 2013. But that’s changing. Desler told us she charted kids’ body mass indexes, or BMIs, at every visit and talked with patients and their families about their eating and exercise habits. ”It just opens up communication lines,” Desler said. So there are lots of efforts underway aimed at getting people to think anew about their daily habits. As Dr. Tom Robinson at Stanford University told us in 2013, ”small changes can magnify into large improvements in health” over time."
"Only Human is a new podcast from WNYC Studios. Hosted by Mary Harris, Only Human tells stories we all can relate to. Because every body has a story. Subscribe to Only Human on iTunes or wherever you like to get your podcasts.  When Lee Herzenberg remembers the day her son Michael was born, she laughs and calls it a ”cool birth.” Her obstetrician was a friend, and she describes it almost like a party  —   ”a little bit painful, but that you forget very quickly.” Lee even got a kick out of the fact that a resident learned to do an episiotomy on her. It was November 1961, and she was at the newly christened Palo   Hospital Center her husband, Len, was a biology professor on campus. Like most fathers at the time, he didn’t attend the birth, which meant he wasn’t there when Michael started turning blue. The nurses whisked the newborn off to the nursery without telling Lee anything was wrong. It was then that a doctor noticed the characteristic features of Down syndrome: floppy muscles, eyes that slanted upward. They got Michael breathing again, but doctors thought his prognosis was grim. They gave Michael just a few months to live. A daisy chain of physicians was called, and Lee says it was a pediatrics professor who told her husband what had happened. Then Len was dispatched to tell Lee. She remembers the moment with uncharacteristic emotion. ”We hugged each other, and it was a terrible conversation to realize that you’d lost the baby, but the baby was lost,” Lee says now. ”We knew immediately what we’d do. We had already made the decision that it was not a good thing to take the baby home, and so we didn’t.” In the 1960s  —   an era before neurodiversity movements and early intervention programs  —   many people still called people with Down syndrome ”mongoloids.” Playwright Arthur Miller institutionalized his son, Daniel, in 1966. A few years later, an article in The Atlantic Monthly argued that ”a Down’s is not a person.” Lee and Len Herzenberg had seen friends struggle with the birth of a child with Down syndrome and had even gone with a colleague to an institution, where he dropped off his own infant daughter. So, they decided Michael would never come home. But Michael wasn’t absolutely lost to them. Michael’s birth sparked their search for a blood test that has revolutionized prenatal care in this country. I made the mistake of telling one scientist I was reporting about ”Len Herzenberg’s lab.” He corrected me instantly: ”Len and Lee’s lab.” Because Lee Herzenberg was ”leaning in” decades before Sheryl Sandberg coined the phrase. At 81, Lee, a professor of genetics, is still running the lab she and her husband founded more than 50 years ago. Len died in 2013. The lab is a quirky place, even by Stanford standards. Lee rarely sits on chairs, preferring cushions on the floor. She’s often accompanied by her bichon frise, Gigi. Researchers can often be found working in this basement office well into the night. But Lee Herzenberg isn’t just quirky. She is one of the few professors at Stanford  —   possibly the only one  —   never to have officially graduated from college. Instead, she trained by her husband’s side, auditing courses while he got his Ph. D. at Caltech (women weren’t allowed to attend at the time) and working at his labs at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the National Institutes of Health. And the science that’s been done here has changed the course of medicine. The Herzenbergs are best known as the creators of the     flow cytometer, or FACS. It was a machine born out of frustration: Len couldn’t stand squinting down a microscope looking at cells. Before the FACS, a biologist peering at slides could feel like he was playing a really intense round of ”Where’s Waldo,” staring at crowds of all kinds of cells, trying to pinpoint the exact ones he was looking for. Not only was it annoying  —   Len Herzenberg worried it wasn’t particularly scientific. He wanted a way to find and describe cells that didn’t rely on his   eyes. The FACS allows you to pour cells in, program the machine to find whatever it is you’re looking for, and then it will spit out a little tube of just those cells alone. And the FACS gives you all kinds of information, too: how big the cells are and how much DNA they have inside. The FACS was used to diagnose AIDS because the technology can quickly and easily sort out T cells. The FACS was used to find the first stem cells. When Len Herzenberg died, one colleague told The New York Times that ”without Len, tens of thousands of people now alive would not be.” But in the 1970s, the Herzenbergs were still proving the value of this machine. That’s when they started thinking about using it to create a blood test for Down syndrome. Len had seen research from Finland claiming it was possible to see a fetus’s cells in a mother’s blood. It was hard to believe. But he figured that FACS, with its nearly magical sorting capabilities, could figure it out. So he took on a medical student named Diana Bianchi as a research associate and made sorting out these cells her project. If they could isolate these cells, he could learn a lot about the developing fetus, including whether the fetus had chromosomal abnormalities. ”They had a very personal reason for doing this, because of their son Michael,” Bianchi says now. ”They wanted to have a test that could be offered to any pregnant woman  —   that would be noninvasive and would allow them to know if a child had Down syndrome. The first step, however, was to show that you could pull out fetal cells.” Scientists now estimate that for every 200 billion cells in a mother’s bloodstream, about 10 of those are fetal cells. Bianchi was one of the first people to see them. The New York Times quoted Len saying the work was a ”first step” toward a blood test for Down syndrome for all pregnant women. But it would take 30 years for a practical test to become a reality. As it turned out, Len’s FACS wasn’t the right tool for prenatal diagnosis. There weren’t very many fetal cells to be sorted, and if a pregnant woman already had children, scientists couldn’t be sure if the cells in her blood came from the current fetus or one of her older kids. But in 2008, Len helped ensure the right tool was found. A researcher named Stephen Quake had discovered a way to sequence chunks of fetal DNA floating in expectant mothers’ blood. As a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Len made sure the paper was published in the academy’s journal. Another researcher, Dennis Lo, confirmed Quake’s findings. Three years later, the tests were on the market. Now, at just 10 weeks into a pregnancy, a whole range of things can be revealed with this test. Not just Down syndrome, but a host of other chromosomal abnormalities as well as the sex of the child to be. Until this test, doctors had to rely on amniocentesis, an invasive procedure that involves inserting a needle in the womb to sample amniotic fluid, or biopsying the placenta, to tell them with any reliability whether a fetus had a chromosomal abnormality. These tests aren’t just uncomfortable they come with a risk of miscarriage. By some estimates, in the past five years the number of these procedures performed in this country has plummeted by more than 50 percent. To some parents, this knowledge can be alarming. Advocates in Ohio are trying to pass a law preventing abortions if Down syndrome is the reason (North Dakota and Indiana have already passed similar laws). Lee Herzenberg is honest about what she would have done if she’d known early on in her pregnancy that Michael had Down syndrome. ”I’d say if I had the choice of not pushing Michael into this life  —   if I at that time would know I was carrying a Down syndrome child  —   I would have aborted the child,” she says. ”I see no reason Michael has to live the life he leads. The fact that we’ve made it very happy for him or that he’s made it very happy for us  —   all of that is adapting to a situation, but I don’t think it’s fair or proper.” But Lee is alarmed that these tests are now being used to determine the sex of unborn babies. She worries about parents choosing to abort girls. Diana Bianchi, that medical student from the Herzenberg lab, is now a professor at Tufts, where she founded the Mother Infant Research Institute. She’s still working in prenatal testing. In fact, perfecting these tests has become her life’s work. But her focus has shifted. Now that she can detect Down syndrome so early, she wants to treat it early, too  —   in the womb. Because finding this chromosomal abnormality at 10 weeks means there’s a window of opportunity: The brain changes associated with Down syndrome don’t occur until a month or so later. Theoretically, you could treat a fetus before some brain changes occur at all. Bianchi’s work is still early. She’s experimenting with mice, giving them existing drugs in utero to see if she can forestall brain damage. There’s an   statistic, that 90 percent of parents who find out that their fetus has Down syndrome will abort. But that statistic is from a study done in the United Kingdom. In the U. S. far fewer women terminate. ”We have to unpack this connection between prenatal testing and abortion,” she says. ”We have good data to suggest that approximately 40 plus percent of women who know their fetus has Down syndrome continue their pregnancy. There are many women who speak very highly of the fact that this allows them to prepare.” The Down syndrome baby who kicked off the search for this blood test is now a    man. He lives in a squat house in Redwood City, Calif. just a   drive from his birth mother’s home. For years, Michael lived with a local woman named Barbara Jennings, who raised a number of children with developmental challenges. The Herzenbergs’ pediatrician helped them find her when Michael was a newborn. The Herzenbergs would visit Michael every month or so, but they never felt they should bring him home. When Barbara died, Michael moved to this group home. It’s hard to know how much Michael understands when I speak to him, though he has learned to read and use a cellphone. And he’s stubborn. A lot like his mother, actually. ”Michael has the hardest head in the whole world,” says Janet Thomas, the caretaker who runs this house. ”He does whatever he wants to do. He does not care whatever you say. He’s going to do whatever it is he wants to do  —   that’s Michael.” I asked Lee if she ever regretted not raising Michael, and she said no. ”It was a decision that was selfish, if you like, because we had things we wanted to do. In retrospect, a lot of things would never have gotten done. There would be no FACS had we decided to do this. Because it would have been a very intensive kind of upbringing.” As for Michael, he clearly loves his mother, no matter what she decided. In Michael’s room, there are photos on almost every surface, with snapshots of his biological and adopted families. In the corner is a huge poster of his father, celebrating when he won the Kyoto Prize for his contributions to biotechnology. And deep in one album, there’s a picture of Len and Lee together. The caption reads: ”Michael’s Other Mom + Dad.”"
"If you only considered crowd size at rallies for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, you might wonder how Clinton has won so many big states. Sanders draws massive, enthusiastic crowds, while Clinton’s rallies often seem tiny and subdued by comparison. Monday night, the eve of five East Coast primaries taking place today, Sanders spoke to an overflow crowd  —   3, 200 people in total  —   at Drexel University in Philadelphia. His audience was more than double the crowd that showed up to hear Hillary Clinton speak at Philadelphia’s city hall. On Sunday, 14, 000 were there for Sanders in New Haven, Conn. 6, 600 in Baltimore, Md. on Saturday. And 27, 000 people came to hear Sanders in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park a week before New York’s crucial primary. But Sanders went on to lose that state by 16 points. His big crowds haven’t translated into the kind of wins needed to lock down the nomination. Why? The Enthusiasm Gap May Be An Optical Illusion, Since last summer, when Sanders’ huge rallies got him noticed by the national media, there’s been a lot of discussion of an ”enthusiasm gap” between Sanders and Clinton. But in a recent Gallup poll, it was Clinton, not Sanders, who had the lead in enthusiasm among supporters.   percent of Clinton supporters said they were ”extremely” or ”very enthusiastic” about their candidate, compared to 44 percent of Sanders’ supporters. It may be Clinton supporters are just less vocal, less likely to spend hours on social media praising their candidate or to show up at a   rally (Clinton’s campaign has also shied away from planning large events). Crowd Size Simply Isn’t A Predictor Of Winning, If big crowds meant big wins at the polls, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former Texas Rep. Ron Paul would both be president. But election after election, crowd size has been an unreliable predictor of winning. ”The people at the rally are not a random or representative sample of the electorate,” says Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science and communication studies at University of California, Los Angeles. ”These are strategic and   events. This isn’t just happening.” Rallies are designed to look like spontaneous displays of excitement for a candidate, but they are planned right down to picking a venue that will overflow rather than look  . Early on, when Sanders was only polling single digits and big crowds started showing up, they were seen as proof of the appeal of his insurgent message. Now that Sanders is   the rallies give his supporters a feeling that they are part of a movement, something larger than themselves. A Sanders adviser says the events, which Sanders insists on calling ”meetings,” play to the candidate’s strengths and energize the campaign in cities where the rallies take place. Vavreck went to a Sanders rally and she was impressed with the event. ”I had to put my fingers in my ears because there was so much screaming,” says Vavreck. ”It was, you know, like a One Direction [boy band] concert or something. So I think all of that is real. But it doesn’t necessarily translate into more votes than the opposition.” So far, Hillary Clinton has received 2. 7 million more votes nationwide than Sanders and leads significantly in pledged delegates. Like The Grateful Dead or Phish, Howard Dean has endorsed Clinton rather than Sanders. But in 2004, he was the insurgent Democratic presidential candidate getting attention with big crowds. He ultimately came in third place in Iowa and his campaign fizzled. Dean offers a couple of theories about what causes the disconnect. For one thing, when he was campaigning in Iowa back in 2003, he started to notice the same faces from event to event. He thinks that is happening with Sanders. ”Some of the crowd size is people who come because they love Bernie and they want to hear this message and it invigorates them and they keep doing it and they follow him around just like [fans of] the Grateful Dead or Phish.” ’You Have To Build A Coalition’ Dean says there’s a deeper issue than numbers. Eventually the insurgent candidate needs to go from playing the role of agitating outsider to someone voters of all stripes can see as president. ”And I couldn’t change. And I knew I had to. But the crowd pulls you back,” says Dean. ”They’re dying for you. They’re bleeding for you. And it’s very hard to do.” Dean says he sees Republican Donald Trump publicly struggling with it. And he says Sanders likely is, too. A speech with applause lines all your supporters can recite back makes for an amazing rally. ”But it’s also the thing that isolates you at the end, because you have to build a coalition,” adds Dean. Put another way: big crowds aren’t the same thing as a winning coalition."
"After tens of thousands of votes, the pair of eaglets born in the National Arboretum last month now have official names. Freedom and Liberty won, beating out other options such as Stars and Stripes. The eagles have been very popular. Since February, more than 35 million people have watched them progress from eggs to hatchlings to eaglets, according to the American Eagle Foundation, which set up cameras near the birds’ nest in the arboretum in Washington, D. C. More than 36, 000 online votes were cast in the competition to name the two young eagles, the foundation says. The winning names of Freedom and Liberty were announced via the Friends of the National Arboretum Facebook page, where voting was closed just before midnight Sunday. ”Those names were my second choice,” Facebook user Diane Morris wrote on the group’s post announcing the names, ”as I still prefer Honor and Glory as there are no known eagles by those names and they represented the integrity of the parents. Well done people, I was so afraid they would be named Stars and Stripes.” Here are the five paired names voters chose from:"
"Having HIV  —   or getting treatment for it  —   speeds up the aging process by about five years, on average, scientists report in a new study. The findings, published in the journal Molecular Cell, fit with what doctors have seen in clinics:   people tend to get hit earlier in life with   diseases, such as osteoporosis, heart disease and dementia. But the study also opens up the possibility of addressing a broader question: How to measure a disease’s impact on aging. ”We all know that some people appear to age faster than others,” says Trey Ideker, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who   the study. ”There are external signs of aging, like gray hair and wrinkles. But the inside of our bodies also show signs.” One of those signals is hidden in our genomes  —   not the genetic code itself but how the genome is decorated. Before you’re born, your DNA gets decorated with little tags, called methylation, which help turn genes on and off. As you age, some tags fall off. Others get added. By looking at the pattern of these tags, Ideker and his colleagues found they could estimate how fast a person is aging. ”And that measurement is better at predicting when someone will die than their chronological age  —   or the number of years they’ve been on Earth,” Ideker says. For instance, say you’re 50 years old, but your DNA tags look like you’re 55. Then your body is aging about 10 percent faster than the average   ’s body. And you might want to get screened for   diseases five years earlier. That’s exactly what Ideker and his team found for men with HIV. The team analyzed more than 25, 000 DNA tags on the genomes of 137   men. The researchers then used the patterns in the tags to estimate each man’s ”biological age” compared to his chronological age. On average, each man’s DNA looked like he was about five years older than his actual age. And it didn’t matter if he had had HIV for more than a decade or if he was only recently infected. The bump in biological age was about the same. All the men in the study were taking antiretroviral drugs. So Ideker and his team couldn’t tell whether the age advancement is linked to the HIV infection itself or the drugs used to treat it. Still, though, Dr. Howard Fox at the University of Nebraska Medical Center hopes the findings will help promote a healthy lifestyle among people who are aging with HIV. ”People think, ’I’m taking my retroviral drugs so there’s no need to worry about my health,’ ” says Fox, who   the current study with Ideker. ”But HIV puts you at an increased risk for other diseases. Whatever you can do to slow down the aging process  —   exercise, eating right  —   will help to offset this.”"
"A   quest for vindication ended in triumph Tuesday for the families of 96 people who were killed in the Hillsborough Stadium disaster in 1989. A jury says Liverpool fans weren’t to blame for the worst sports disaster in Britain’s history  —   the police and other factors were. The jury’s announcement released a flood of emotion in and around the courtroom, with family members of the dead weeping and shouting in celebration. Some held Liverpool’s red scarves with the word ”Justice” on them several dozen people gathered outside the courthouse to sing the club’s anthem: ”You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Responding to the verdict, British Prime Minister David Cameron said via Twitter, ”I would like to pay tribute to the extraordinary courage of #Hillsborough campaigners in their long search for the truth.” The jury’s finding promises to alter forever the public’s perception of that day in which fans were crushed to death inside the stadium. While images of people scaling a fence to reach the playing field might once have been seen as proof of unruly behavior, those pictures now serve to show the desperation of people who sensed a deadly tragedy unfolding around them  —   and tried to escape it. In addition to the 96 people killed, 766 others were injured. From the police’s poor decisions to the stadium’s design and safety flaws to ambulances’ failure to reach wounded people, the jurors found that many things contributed to the disaster. But two of their answers to the 14 questions in the inquest will undoubtedly be welcomed by people who lost loved ones on April 15, 1989: ”Are you satisfied, so that you are sure, that the 96 victims were unlawfully killed? YES” ”Did the supporters’ behavior contribute to the dangerous situation at the turnstile? NO” Those findings contradict what had been the official explanation for the Hillsborough disaster: that it was an accident exacerbated by fans’ behavior. That version of events was backed by an initial inquiry in 1991. The alternative  —   and as of today, broadly accepted  —   account took decades to emerge. It faults delays and communication failures by the police, along with the stadium’s design flaws and lack of a safety certificate at the time of the match. This new account also accuses officials of manufacturing a   by suppressing evidence that ran counter to the approved narrative. Much of that evidence, from video footage to witness testimony, was at the heart of the recently concluded inquest. The jury’s findings were announced two years after the inquiry first began. Back in 1989, the disaster unfolded as Liverpool and Nottingham Forest met in the semifinal of the Football Association Cup’s tournament, in a match held on neutral ground in Sheffield, England. Fans packed terraces and other parts of the stadium, and when police opened gates in one area, fans who were expecting to find open space were instead jammed into an already overcrowded terrace, as a BBC   report found in 2013. Many of those who died that day are believed to have essentially suffocated while standing up, unable to breathe or move. Some who escaped did so by being hoisted over fences and onto upper tiers by other fans. In addition to the 96 who died, 766 people were injured. Only a fraction of those who died ever reached a hospital that day. Two of those who died were teenage sisters Victoria and Sarah Hicks their father, Trevor Hicks, is now the president of the Hillsborough Family Support Group. Speaking to Britain’s ITV about that day in 1989, Hicks says he wasn’t surprised when his daughters ran off while he was getting a coffee at the stadium  —   but that the next time he saw them, they were in severe distress. Neither girl survived. ”I always used to joke and say I will have two weddings to pay for,” Hicks tells ITV. ”I’d be delighted to have had that problem.” As for Tuesday’s finding, he says that while his girls would ”probably think I’m a bit of a silly old fool,” he’d like to think they would be proud of the inquest’s outcome."
"Writer Michael Schulman conducted 80 interviews for Her Again, his new biography of Meryl Streep. He talked with her friends and colleagues, read articles, letters and commencement addresses  —   but he never actually talked with Streep herself. Knowing how private Streep is, Schulman didn’t expect her to grant an interview, but he nevertheless sent a letter early on. ”I had started to talk to some of her old drama school classmates,” he says, ”and I realized, I really don’t want her to hear about this secondhand. I should just tell her who I am and what I’m about.” Within a week, she sent an answer through her publicist, expressing reservations about a biography. One line stood out: ”Leave me to the thing I love. I love acting,” Streep said. ”But being called ’the greatest living actress’  —   a designation not even my mother would sanction  —   is the opposite of good or valuable or useful. It is a curse for a working actor.” When Streep won her most recent Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in Iron Lady, Shulman was inspired by her acceptance speech. ”When they called my name I had this feeling I could hear half of America going ’Oh, no. Oh, come on . .. Her. Again!” Streep told the audience. That became the name of Schulman’s biography, which traces Streep’s early years. Her talent was first spotted when she was 12. She had a lovely singing voice and studied opera  —   but didn’t get along all that well with her peers. ”She was kind of a bossy little bully sort of girl,” Schulman explains. ”She had scraggly short hair,   glasses that made her look like a   secretary. She was completely unconcerned with how she looked and being liked.” Two years later that changed  —   abruptly  —   thanks to hard work and sheer willpower. Streep decided to be beautiful and popular. Leafing through women’s magazines like Seventeen and Cosmo for inspiration, she dyed her hair, got contacts, practiced giggles, and set her mind to becoming the queen bee of her high school in Bernardsville, N. J. ”She joined the cheerleading squad, she was the lead in every musical, she would do the French club and student council,” says Schulman. ”And eventually her senior year she was elected homecoming queen, which was kind of the pinnacle. It was kind of like winning best actress of her high school.” High school was her first acting job. That uncanny ability to become someone else started in those teenage years and continued at Vassar, and then at Yale Drama School. Fellow students began to resent her for getting all the lead roles  —   so she tried to do something about it. ”She went to the dean and asked him, ’Can I please get out of some of these?’ ” Schulman says. ”And he said, ’No, you’re too good. You have to be in every play.’ ” So Streep kept on transforming herself on stage at Yale  —   in plays by Dostoevsky, Brecht, Strindberg and Shakespeare. And she always stood out  —   even at graduation, when the class of 1975 marched in dark caps and gowns:  ”Within the sea of black, one woman stood out like a blaze of light,” says Schulman. ”It was Meryl Streep in a bright white picnic dress. Viewed from the Connecticut skies, she must have looked like a diamond glistening in the muck. Once again, Meryl had done everyone one better. All the rest of the women in the class went, ’Bitch, why didn’t I think of that?’ ” Once again Streep was too much, too good, too talented. And Schulman believes that, as a young woman, she was trapped by success. ”Perfection is a kind of prison,” he says. ”This is part of her M. O.: Every ecosystem she enters, she rises to the top because of her skill, and when she gets to the top she kind of looks around and thinks, ’Oh, no, me? Why?’ ” In Hollywood, Streep first rose to the top in the 1979 film Kramer vs. Kramer. She played a woman who, dissatisfied with her life and marriage, leaves her husband and young son for over a year. When she returns, she wants the child back, and a custody battle ensues. Streep won her first Oscar for that role. Schulman says one story from that Academy Awards night is particularly telling: After winning the Oscar and giving her speech, Streep went backstage to the ladies room, he explains. ”As she was leaving the ladies room she heard someone say, ’Hey, someone left an Oscar in here,’ and she realized she had left her statuette on the bathroom floor.” Streep has spent most of her 66 years being the best actor she could be, rather than merely a celebrity. In addition to winning three Oscars, she’s received 19 Oscar nominations  —   more than any other actor. So it’s altogether likely that there’ll be more chances to say ”Her. Again!” on Oscar nights to come."
"Championing ”stability” and protectionism, Donald Trump managed a sendup of the foreign policies of the last three American presidents, as well as the candidate he is likely to face this fall in a general election  —   Hillary Clinton. ”With President Obama and Secretary Clinton, we’ve had . .. a reckless, rudderless and aimless foreign policy  —   one that has blazed a path of destruction in its wake,” Trump charged in a sober foreign policy address at a hotel in Washington. He added, ”[T]he legacy of the   interventions will be weakness, confusion and disarray.” Trump derided what he saw as President Obama’s ”weakness,” lambasted George W. Bush’s decision to intervene in Iraq (though he did not name the 43rd president) and Bill Clinton’s ”total disaster” NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. He warned against what he called the ”false song of globalism.” The speech was more a litany of what Trump doesn’t think has worked rather than a prescription of specifics  —   he did not mention his wall with Mexico and only alluded to his call for a temporary ban on Muslims coming into the U. S. But his   remarks did offer a peek into Trump’s worldview, a window into a ”Trump Doctrine” that is reflexively protectionist, against    —   underlined by the slogan ”America First”  —   and reliant on a backbone of military strength. It also gave Trump the opportunity to appear more serious and less bombastic. If there are two Trumps, as Ben Carson has said, this was ”Presidential Trump.” There were no ”Lyin’ Ted” references or mocking of John Kasich’s eating habits. Contradictions, there were a few, The Trump Doctrine did have some apparent contradictions: Rethinking friends: He warned that NATO allies, who don’t ”pay their fair share,” should be prepared to ”defend themselves.” Yet he pledged to ”our friends and allies” that ”America is going to be a reliable friend and ally again.” Stability vs. unpredictability: He vowed to focus on ”creating stability in the world.” Yet he implored, ”We have to be unpredictable and be unpredictable starting now.” Critics would argue that retreating from NATO, calling for increasing nuclear weapons capability (”Our nuclear weapons arsenal  —   our ultimate deterrent  —   has been allowed to atrophy and is desperately in need of modernization and renewal”) and threatening allies might have destabilizing effects. Military spending vs. addressing debt: ”We will spend what we need to rebuild our military,” Trump said, blasting Obama for cutting back on military spending. ”It is the cheapest investment we can make.” Military spending is the largest part of the federal budget, and yet Trump also said he could solve the nation’s debt problem. ”In this time of mounting debt, no one knows how to address the debt, but I do,” he boasted without specifics except talk of ”waste.” A sign of how he might attack Clinton on foreign policy, Elections are choices. And Trump gave some clues as to how he might go after Clinton. Trump’s reference to ”stability” follows American intervention in Iraq, the Arab Spring, the overthrow of Gadhafi in Libya and the U. S. backing of rebels in an attempt to overthrow Syria’s Bashar Assad. It has left some across party lines, and in other countries, wondering what the U. S.’s role is and should be. President Obama was elected to end wars, not start them, and he has talked of a limited footprint. But he has, at times, been dragged into conflicts he’d rather not be in or thought he had left behind. ”We went from mistakes in Iraq to Egypt to Libya, to President Obama’s line in the sand in Syria,” Trump said Wednesday. ”Each of these actions have helped to throw the region into chaos, and gave ISIS the space it needs to grow and prosper.” Those comments happen to echo Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who believes U. S. intervention in places like Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Syria were mistakes that had dangerous destabilizing effects. Here’s what Putin told Charlie Rose in September, for example: ”We are trying to prevent the creation of a power vacuum in Syria in general, because as soon as the government agencies in a state, in a country are destroyed, a power vacuum sets in, and that vacuum is quickly filled with terrorists. This was the case in Libya and Iraq this was the case in some other countries.” Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has used a similar line against Clinton for her more interventionist tendencies. Clinton advocated arming Syrian rebels early on and was in favor of toppling Gadhafi. ”I worry,” Sanders said at a debate in December, ”that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be.” It could be a preview to a Trump   attack. But Trump’s position on intervention is not so clean cut. Remember, Trump has called for bombing ”the s*** out of” ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and he has grudgingly said there might be a need for U. S. ground troops, as many as 10, 000. But there was none of that discussed Wednesday in his approach to fighting ISIS. Why? ”I have a simple message for them: Their days are numbered,” Trump boasted. ”I won’t tell them where, and I won’t tell them how.” Above all, Trump said  —   in a way only he can  —   that he would be cautious with sending troops off to war. ”I will never send our finest into battle unless necessary,” Trump said, ”and will only do so if we have a plan for victory  —   with a capital V.”"
"Take a look at some lawns this spring. You might see something that looks like a crown of thin leaves and spikey, yellow flowers shooting over the grass, particularly if you live in the South. If the stems are triangular, you’ve just found a sedge. Dig it up. If it’s the right kind of sedge, clinging to the roots will be a few chewy, brown,   tubers called tiger nuts. The plant is called yellow nutsedge or Cyperus esculentus, and it’s one of the absolute worst weeds in the world. It wreaks havoc on gardens and crops and causes millions of dollars of agricultural damage every year. But it’s also been cultivated for millennia, and yellow nutsedge as a crop, medicinal plant and weed has a very long, strange history with humans. Today, tiger nuts have been getting a fair amount of attention in health food aisles. The tubers are becoming popular among paleo dieters and lauded as a ”superfood.” An organic foods press representative named Ludovica Vigliardi Paravia emailed me to say, ”what’s nuts is that TigerNuts are finally making a comeback, emerging as the #1 HEALTHY REAL HUMAN FOOD! [sic]” Real human food? I was intrigued. The company sent some here to NPR, where they arrived in desiccated form. Dried, the tubers resemble shriveled, mummified knuckles. That’s somewhat fitting, because the earliest records of tiger nuts date back to ancient Egypt, where they were valuable and loved enough to be entombed and discovered with buried Egyptians from the 4th millennium B. C. to the 5th century A. D. In the tomb of Vizier   ’ a   ancient Egyptian official buried in the 15th century B. C. a wall painting shows workers shoveling heaps of the stuff while a scribe counts the amount. What records remain from antiquity suggest that tiger nuts were used medicinally and eaten as treats. The roasted, crushed tubers were eaten with honey, according to work by Moshe Negbi, a former botanist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Theophrastus, an ancient Greek botanist, wrote about boiled, sweet tiger nuts in Historia Plantarum. By the 13th century, records from   Valencia, Spain, show that tubers were being used to create a drink called horchata de chufa, ”an ancestor of the horchata drunk nowadays,” according to researchers at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. But yellow nutsedge’s reputation as a valued crop began turning in the 19th century. In the Manual of the Botany of Northern United States 6th ed. author Asa Gray wrote in 1889 that the plant was ”becoming a pest in cultivated ground.” There doesn’t seem to be any record that ancient people saw yellow nutsedge as a weed, but it’s certainly far better at destroying crops than being one, according to Michael Defelice, a retired weed scientist who’s written about the plant. In agricultural fields, yellow nutsedge can grow quickly and shade over other crops. ”The plant just chokes up everything around it. It’s really hard to kill,” Defelice says. It’s considered a noxious weed or pest almost everywhere it’s found in the world, including its native range in Africa. And tiger nut has never really enjoyed widespread popularity or fame in the same way other ancient Egyptian crops, like barley or emmer wheat, have. Defelice says that’s because it’s just not economical. ”It’s not a great volume producer. You wouldn’t get a lot of food per acre. That’s why it remained a niche product,” he says. ”In Egypt, there weren’t lots of options in those ancient times. So they worked with what they had. I think a really telling feature is that they coated them in honey.” People enjoy the taste, though. Presumably, people continued cultivating and eating tiger nuts all these thousands of years. They’re still eaten in parts of Africa, and horchata de chufa is still a refreshing treat in Valencia. Granola, smoothies and flours can all be made with tiger nuts as well. These are all being sold as part of an attempted tiger nut renaissance in the health food industry. It doesn’t taste terrible. When we tried them at NPR, the greatest endorsement a staff member had for the dried, raw tiger nuts was a thoughtful, chewed over ”alright.” The tuber has a light almond taste and smell, with a surprising crunch after being rehydrated. After a few seconds of hard chewing, the tiger nut falls apart into what feels like the frayed end of a rope in your mouth. It is extremely fibrous. On the nutrition front, it does OK. Tiger nut has a mix of mostly unsaturated oils, like avocado oil. ”The tiger nut is between the tuber and the nut [in terms of nutrition],” says José Ángel Pérez Alvarez, a researcher at Miguel Hernandez University of Elche in Spain who studies tiger nuts. For instance, there’s less protein than a typical nut but more than the typical tuber. There’s more starch than the typical nut but less than the typical tuber. Why or how health food companies seized on tiger nuts is somewhat unclear. Some scientists believe that certain   hominids ate them as a part of their diet 2 million years ago, particularly because modern baboons seem to enjoy them. That may have spurred popularity among paleo dieters. It’s not really a ”superfood.” But if you like the taste of faintly sweet, nutty things and making your jaws work for a snack, this might be the thing for you."
"Ted Cruz announced Wednesday he is picking former rival Carly Fiorina as his running mate in a   move designed to shake up the GOP primary race in which he badly trails Donald Trump. Calling his decision ”one of the most solemn choices you make” as a candidate, at a rally in Indianapolis, Ind. Cruz praised Fiorina’s business experience, character and past ability to stand up to the Republican  . ”She doesn’t get overly excited,” Cruz said. ”She doesn’t get rattled over what is being thrown at her.” He acknowledged his decision to name a running mate now was an unorthodox and unprecedented move, but that ”all of us can acknowledge that this race, if anything, is unusual.” ”I make this announcement today so that you, the voters, will know what you will get,” Cruz said. After a lengthy nearly   introduction by Cruz, Fiorina finally took the stage as a worker changed the signs to their new campaign logo that read ”Cruz Fiorina ’16.” ”This is the fight of our time, and I believe Ted Cruz is the man to lead that fight,” the former   chief executive said as she accepted his offer to join the hypothetical GOP ticket. Fiorina ran for president herself earlier this year before withdrawing after a disappointing showing in New Hampshire. She peaked early in the contest with a forceful showing in the first GOP debate, and proved herself to be a salient attack dog against Democrat Hillary Clinton. She endorsed Cruz in early March and has been a frequent, energetic surrogate for the Texas senator. But actually getting the duo’s ticket to victory in the Republican race is an uphill, and some would say improbable, battle. After Trump’s Northeastern sweep on Tuesday night, it’s mathematically impossible for Cruz to net enough delegates to win on the first ballot if Trump doesn’t reach the requisite 1, 237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Earlier Wednesday on Fox News, Trump mocked the rumors that Cruz was making the Fiorina announcement later that afternoon. ”He’s got no path to victory and he’s naming a vice presidential candidate. I guess that’s cute,” Trump deadpanned. Cruz trails Trump now by almost 400 delegates, and he needs a big win next Tuesday in Indiana to even hope to close the gap. The surprise   announcement of Fiorina as his running mate is designed to try to move more support in the Hoosier State his way. There were more machinations to try to salvage his hopes in Indiana over the weekend when he and Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s campaign announced an informal alliance where Kasich (who is a distant third in delegates) agreed he wouldn’t campaign in Indiana while Cruz ceded New Mexico and Oregon to Kasich. Cruz has proved more adept than Trump at wooing unpledged delegates and winning over activists at state conventions, including some   delegates who could break for him at a multiballot convention. His announcement of Fiorina is a Hail Mary political calculation designed to salvage his fading White House hopes. In 1976, Ronald Reagan tried something similar by announcing he would name Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker as his   vice president. But that move came after all primaries had concluded, and he was still trailing President Gerald Ford in delegates. The gamble failed and the incumbent Republican wrested enough delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot. Fiorina could be helpful for Cruz in another state where he badly needs to stop Trump: California, which votes on the last major primary day, June 7. She unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2010 in the state. But her selection could also reopen criticisms that resurfaced during that failed run and her own White House campaign, over her tenure and eventual ouster from HP coupled with layoffs at the tech company. The Cruz announcement of Fiorina as his running mate designate comes after Hillary Clinton has also essentially clinched the Democratic nomination, which would make her the first female major party nominee in history. Republicans believed early on in the race that Fiorina, the only woman in the GOP race, could uniquely criticize Clinton in a way without the backlash that other male candidates might risk. Many Republicans worry that if Trump is the nominee, he will alienate female voters in the general election given his past controversial comments on women  —   a fear exacerbated by his victory speech last night where he blasted Clinton for playing ”the woman’s card.” ”If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she would get 5 percent of the vote,” he jabbed at the end of his remarks. Trump has been critical of Fiorina as well in the past, particularly her looks. ”Look at that face!” Trump said in a Rolling Stone article last September. ”Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president.” ”Ladies, look at this face,” Fiorina fired back on the campaign trail. ”This is the face of a    woman. I am proud of every year and every wrinkle.”"
"The NPR Politics team is back with a quick take following Sen. Ted Cruz’s announcement that if he wins the nomination, Carly Fiorina will be his running mate. Most candidates wait until they actually get the nomination to pick a VP, so what’s with all the fanfare? Cruz’s announcement came just a day after he all five states that voted in the Northeast primaries. On the podcast:"
"Stacy Bannerman didn’t recognize her husband after he returned from his second tour in Iraq. ”The man I had married was not the man that came back from war,” she says. Bannerman’s husband, a former National Guardsman, had been in combat and been diagnosed with   stress disorder. He behaved in ways she had never expected, and one day, he tried to strangle her. ”I had been with this man for 11 years at that point, and there had never been anything like this before,” Bannerman said. ”I was so furious and so afraid.” At first, she thought it was just a problem within her marriage. She called a hotline for military families to ask for help and learned something else she hadn’t expected. ”The woman operating the hotline began weeping,” Bannerman remembered. ”She was getting so many of these calls from military spouses all over the country.” The debate about the relationship between domestic violence and   stress disorder has waxed and waned since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but has never quite gone away. Headlines periodically reignite it, as when the son of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is an Iraq vet, faced domestic violence allegations earlier this year. When Stress Gives Way To Aggression, Veterans’ advocates are anxious about the stereotype of combat vets as ticking time bombs, which is contradicted by the vast majority of former troops who live with   stress and never hurt anyone. There is a link, however, between PTSD and violence, said Dr. Casey Taft, a top researcher with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Vets with PTSD are three times more likely to be violent, he said. ”When one is exposed to   trauma and combat trauma, they are going to be more likely to assume the worst and assume people are trying to do harm to them  —   and more likely to respond to that with aggressions,” he said. For many sufferers of   stress, the terror and adrenaline of a   moment won’t go away. When that builds into aggression, the target can often be a wife or girlfriend. More than a third of women and about a fourth of men surveyed in the U. S. have experienced ”intimate partner violence” at some point in their lives, according to public health statistics. Studies commissioned by the VA suggest those levels are about the same among   troops and veterans, but more such research is ongoing. Bannerman wrote a book about her experience, and says that today she hears from the partners of veterans almost every day. The stories tend to be similar. ”He was shrieking with his eyes open. And I went to shake him. He grabbed my wrist and twisted it. . .. I knew my wrist was broken,” one woman told NPR. ”I took myself to the emergency room.” Another woman described how her husband shoved her down just after her son was born, ripping open the scar from her cesarean section. A third woman found that her husband would sometimes just ”go blank,” she said. ”You could see that he wasn’t there.” The three women, all of whom are   caregivers to disabled combat veterans, talked with NPR about their experience after requesting that they not be identified in order to protect their privacy and allow them speak frankly. They described, among other things, the shock they felt at how different their husbands were after returning home from deployments. ”It really took me by surprise,” one said. ”It was completely out of his character for the man that I met and fell in love with.” The women described how, initially, they began covering for the men. The woman whose childbirth surgery scar was torn told doctors in the hospital’s emergency department that she had tripped over their dog and fell. ”I’ve never given the ER the correct info,” said another woman about her many hospital visits. Caregiving Burdens, Victims of domestic violence have many reasons for staying in their relationships. In the military, there are more reasons: reporting abuse can end a soldier’s career badly, which can mean not only disgrace but no benefits for the family. Some of the women who talked with NPR also said they thought that their husbands could get better with time and help. ”I wanted to keep my family together,” one said. ”We had three kids at this time. I didn’t want his career to be over because of this  —   if I could just get him the help that he needs.” Serving as the caregiver for a wounded vet can be its own   job, with a stipend from the VA. For women in an abusive situation, leaving can also mean leaving behind that source of income. ”He would still have his pay every month,” as one wife told NPR. ”He wouldn’t have to worry financially. If I were to walk out? I walk out with nothing. No job. I haven’t been working since 2012.” All three of the women who spoke with NPR said they wanted to stay, to help their husbands recover from war. They went into their relationships with their eyes open, they said, and felt that caring for their sometimes violent husbands was its own form of service to the country. ”I thought, ’This is my job,’ ” one said. ”He went and did his job, and this is mine. That’s a prevalent thought among the wives of wounded soldiers. I see it all the time.” Most veterans with   stress are not violent, but the VA is focused on researching those who are. One thing that’s clear is that abusing drugs and alcohol makes the problems worse. Taft has set up a pilot program to try to help prevent domestic violence. One challenge, however, is that the VA is focused on veterans, not their wives. And veterans’ groups don’t talk much about domestic violence  —   and most domestic violence groups don’t have expertise about veterans and   stress. So even with the commitments and the patriotism that some wives express about riding out rough times with their families, the silence and the lack of support can still break a marriage. One of the women who talked with NPR eventually left her husband after an incident that she said forced her to have a new perspective about her family. ”He had shoved me down. I looked up and all three of my kids were standing there in tears,” the woman told NPR. ”I thought, ’If a man ever treats one of my girls like this, or my son ends up like this, I will never forgive myself.’ ” Her husband wasn’t changing his behavior, she realized  —   ”so I have to be the one who does something. I picked up the phone and I called the police. That was the first time I ever called them.” Another woman interviewed for this story moved with her family to a different state, where her husband found better results with the local VA. ”He’s come around,” she said. ”He’s started to become more the man I met and fell in love with. There hasn’t been any sort of physical altercation since 2014.” The third woman who talked with NPR left her husband briefly but decided to go back. The problems returned, too, though. ”I haven’t regretted anything,” she said. ”Have there been really hard times since then? Yeah. Have I gotten the s*** kicked out of me since then? Yeah.” The woman helps her husband, a Marine combat vet, get to his VA appointments on time. He has cut down on his drinking and attended a Christian retreat for veterans. Even so, there’s no telling when something will come along that can create a potential crisis, as when the GPS navigation device in the car won’t work. He hasn’t hit her since last year, the woman said, when he smashed her face in the shower and choked her. It was over something the former Marine acknowledged was ”something very stupid. A lot of these things, I can’t remember what I was so pissed off about,” he said. The couple was asked whether they felt they’d made it out of the woods. ”No, not even close,” the former Marine said. ”And we never will be,” his wife said. The woman acknowledged that people urge her to leave the relationship, but she told NPR that she is staying. She does not blame anyone else who leaves a situation like hers, she said, but she is staying with her husband. ”He is not his   stress disorder,” she said. ”He is not his brain injury. These are things he has gotten from serving his country. And that is what we deal with.”"
"Need knee replacement surgery? It may be worthwhile to head for Tucson. That’s because the average price for a knee replacement in the Arizona city is $21, 976, about $38, 000 less than it would in Sacramento, Calif. That’s according to a report issued Wednesday by the Health Care Cost Institute. The report, called the National Chartbook on Health Care Prices, uses claims and payment data from three of the largest insurance companies in the U. S. to analyze how prices for procedures vary from state to state, and city to city. The takeaway?   Health care prices are crazy. ”There doesn’t seem to be a systematic pattern with respect to what’s high and what’s low,” says David Newman, HCCI’s executive director. Newman is lead author of an article published Wednesday online in the journal Health Affairs that accompanied the release of the Chartbook. The reports compare average state prices for 242 medical services  —   from primary doctor visits to coronary angioplasty to a foot    —   to the national average price for those services. It shows that states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin have higher than average prices while others, such as Florida and Maryland, were cheaper overall. Arizona’s health care prices were generally cheaper, about 82 percent of the national average, while next door in New Mexico, care was more expensive, about 25 percent above average. And prices vary within states, too. If a Sacramento knee replacement patient doesn’t want to drive the 871 miles to Tucson, he or she could drive south to Riverside, Calif. and pay $27, 000 less. In Florida, the surgery costs $17, 000 less in Miami than it does 180 miles north in Palm Bay. ”For every mile that a consumer drives south on   they will save $100,” Newman says. The HCCI data is some of the most detailed and complete information available on health care prices paid by private insurance companies. It includes payment data from Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealthCare. It doesn’t include claims information from The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, which is the largest health insurer in the country. The price variations revealed by HCCI show that the health care market is not following traditional economic and market rules. ”The market just isn’t working,” says Zack Cooper, a professor of health policy and economics at Yale University. Cooper says in the past, analysts believed that health care costs were rising because people were using too much health care. That analysis was based on Medicare data. However, Medicare pays the same across the country. The data show that   payments vary widely and states that have low Medicare spending, like Minnesota, often have higher prices in the private insurance market. He says one major factor is the consolidation of hospitals, leading to a lack of competition.   ”Where one large hospital dominates the markets, that hospital is able to get higher prices,” he says. ”Hospitals have gotten increasingly powerful over time.” The new data may give insurers and consumers better ammunition to shop around for lower prices or to negotiate better deals. But that will require people taking a different approach to choosing health care.  People should be willing to travel farther for services, Cooper says. That would put powerful hospital systems in different cities in competition with one another, perhaps putting pressure on prices. And there are limits on where competition can bloom in health care, says Sarah Dash, president and   of the Alliance for Health Reform. ”A woman is going to go to the one   that she goes to. She’s not going to run all over town trying to find the cheapest one necessarily,” Dash says. ”Where it’s shoppable, where it’s elective, where it’s not an emergency and where the price is knowable, then there are things that can be done,” she says."
"A   victory on Tuesday night seemed to embolden Donald Trump Tuesday night. Taking questions after his victory speech, the Republican   went after Hillary Clinton, his most likely opponent in November, on her gender. ”Well, I think the only card she has is the woman’s card,” he said. ”She’s got nothing else going on. And frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the women’s vote. And the beautiful thing is that women don’t like her, OK?” OK. Except, of course, Clinton clearly has more going than the women’s vote. As the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump showed on Wednesday morning, Clinton beat her opponent, Bernie Sanders, among men in 12 of 25 contests thus far. After Tuesday’s clean sweep for Trump and   win for Clinton, it’s looking much more likely that the two will face off in November. That means there’s lots of potential for Trump to make this and plenty of other   attacks over the next six months. So before that happens, let’s look at whether the ”woman card” exists  —   that is, the extent to which gender affects voting. In general elections, political scientists say, gender is just not that important. While gender may be playing into voters’ primary choices, party allegiance trumps gender (pun intended) in general elections. And that would give Clinton an advantage, come November: Women vote Democratic. 1. Is gender helping Clinton right now? Maybe, A lot of the research on gender and voter preferences focuses on general, not primary, elections. But here’s what we do know about this primary season: Clinton fares far better among women than Sanders does. ”I think the current presidential [election] demonstrates that surely there is something going on with gender affinity in the primary  —   the average gender gap (difference between men and women voters’ support for winner) in Democratic primaries is around   points, while it’s nearly half of that in the GOP primaries,” wrote Rutgers University political scientist Kelly Dittmar in an email. But then, people’s reasons for voting are complicated. This doesn’t mean women are voting for Clinton purely based on gender  —   for many women, it is a small consideration, and for still others, it’s nonexistent. Moreover, though we talk about the ”women’s vote” a lot in elections, women are not a monolith. In many states, millennial women have supported Sanders more, while older women, along with black women, have tended to support Clinton. Different issues could be driving those different groups of women’s votes. Sanders’    plan could be swaying younger women in his direction, and Clinton’s heavy campaigning on gun control could also be swinging women and minorities, who tend to favor gun control, in her direction. 2. More important than the woman card: Clinton has the ”Democrat card” The general election will be a different story. The gulf between the Democratic and Republican candidates will be much wider than the distance between Clinton and Sanders. And that gulf, political scientists say, will be what matters in November, should Clinton win the nomination (as looks likely). ”There isn’t a lot of evidence that sex of voters matters very much in driving the vote choices people make,” said Kathleen Dolan, professor and chair of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. ”Women voters do tend to vote for women candidates, but it’s because they share a party identification. . .. There’s no evidence that women cross party lines,” she added. Similarly, a new book from researchers at George Washington and American universities finds that gender has little overall influence on how candidates run, how media cover them, and how voters evaluate them. Rather, they likewise find that partisanship matters far more. And lately, Democrats are far more successful among women. Democratic presidential candidates have consistently won the women’s vote since 1992, according to data from Gallup. So even if women don’t pick Clinton because of her gender, women would almost certainly favor her in November  —   just as they would almost certainly favor Sanders. Yes, there are exceptions  —   anecdotes about elderly women who just want to vote for a woman before they die. But those are exceptions, not the norm. As Dittmar points out, in the 2008 general election, Clinton’s former supporters in 2008 didn’t suddenly find themselves conflicted when John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. One place gender might show up: people without a party. This is the small share of voters  —   only around 12 percent  —   who are independent and don’t lean toward any one side or the other. The women in that group could perhaps be more influenced by gender. ”I think that in a general election that’s where the extent to which we’ll know for sure how important this actually is. It’s going to be independent women in battleground states,” says Jennifer Lawless, a professor of government at American University. But she doesn’t think Clinton’s gender alone would be a big factor in November. ”Are you going to be able to motivate independent women  —   especially those in battleground states  —   because is there going to be an additional push, an additional motivation to see the first female president?” she added. ”That’s not going to be the deciding factor for most people.” 3. Trump will complicate all of this, A lot of that evidence deals in the abstract, though  —   the idea being that in general, voters make their minds up far more about party than gender. But 2016 is no   election for a lot of reasons  —   one big one being a guy named Donald Trump. And because voters’ views of him are so polarized, particularly when it comes to gender, that could throw a fair amount of this analysis out the window. In a race with two major candidates, people can just as much vote against one candidate as for the other. And Trump’s rhetoric toward women has been a major storyline in this election since Megyn Kelly first asked him at the first Fox News debate about his past disparaging comments about women (not to mention his subsequent disparagement of Kelly after that debate). Since then, he has insulted    Carly Fiorina’s looks, retweeted a meme making fun of Heidi Cruz’s appearance, and called Clinton ”shrill.” Even Wednesday morning after his   electoral sweep, when Trump was asked about his   comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, he responded with what many would construe as a sexist comment  —   followed by   shrugging off any charges of sexism. ”I haven’t quite recovered  —   it’s early in the morning  —   from her shouting that message,” he said. ”And I know a lot of people would say you can’t say that about a woman because of course a woman doesn’t shout.” To the degree that that rhetoric turns women voters off, Lawless says, it could make this a much easier election for Democrats. It won’t flip many hardcore Republican female voters, but it could energize turnout on the Democratic side and potentially push some of those independent women his direction. ”In a     I think there’s a chance that we’ll see a gender gap of a larger magnitude than usual,” Lawless writes in an email. ”Trump’s sexist rhetoric and abrasive style probably make gender more salient to voters  —   especially women  —   than would otherwise be the case.” That gender gap between Trump and Clinton already shows up in polls. In an April Purple   poll, Clinton beat Trump among married women by 12 points. That’s usually a friendlier crowd toward Republicans: Mitt Romney won that demographic by 7 points in 2012."
"This post was updated on June 6. Hillary Clinton, now the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, has become the first woman to top a major U. S. political party ticket. An updated count from The Associated Press shows that she now has support from the 2, 383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Clinton supporters got emotional on the campaign trail in California this week as the candidate closed in on the nomination. ”We’re making history, and that is the revolution,” retired schoolteacher Monica Brown told NPR’s Tamara Keith through tears at a Clinton event. ”Hillary to me represents those dreams that women can do anything they want and here you are. That any girl can do anything that they want.” Clinton herself reflected on the historic moment on Monday, saying, ”It’s really emotional, and I am someone who has been very touched and really encouraged by this extraordinary conviction that people have.” ”This is the final glass ceiling,” said Alan Schechter, political science professor emeritus at Wellesley College and Clinton’s thesis adviser. He has known her for 50 years and added, ”I’m extremely proud of her.” That ”glass ceiling” (a phrase Clinton herself has used often) milestone has been somewhat lost in the drama of this campaign, but is still ”a really important moment in American society,” political science professor Andra Gillespie of Emory University told NPR earlier this year. ”The impact is just as important for a woman to head the top of a   ticket as it was for an   to do so eight years ago,” she said. As Gillespie sees it, whoever is at the top of a presidential ticket is ”a metric by which we can talk about how America has diversified, how it has become more inclusive, that you’re now letting people who don’t fit the traditional white, male model assume positions of leadership in the country.” When Clinton failed to get the Democratic nomination in 2008, she spoke about how her candidacy did put cracks in the ”highest, hardest glass ceiling.” ”Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it,” she said. ”And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.” Her success in the campaign now, Gillespie said, is ”very much a testament to the work that the suffragettes started over 150 years ago.” Women Who Came Before: From Woodhull And Chisholm To Ferraro And Palin, The first woman to run for president came along about 150 years ago  —   Victoria Claflin Woodhull. It was 1872, before women were able to vote. She was a fortune teller who opened her own brokerage firm and started a newspaper that promoted women’s suffrage. She received zero electoral votes. There were others along the way, but the next to gain wide attention in modern history was Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972. She had considerable experience, having served in Congress (the first black woman to do so). But she failed to garner widespread support. Though her run holds its own place in history  —   she was the first   and first woman to run for a major party’s nomination  —   she ultimately didn’t get very far. She won 152 votes at that year’s Democratic National Convention. The first woman to make it onto a   ticket was Geraldine Ferraro, who accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president in 1984. ”She really drew huge crowds I think she was very appealing out there doing the whole thing,” said Patricia Schroeder, a longtime friend of Ferraro, who served with her in Congress. ”Especially for young women, it was very, very important to see [that] . .. it’s just kind of one more thing you could do. ”The sad part is, we didn’t really have anyone else for a very long time. I had said, wrongly in retrospect, that she was so terrific as a candidate, that I didn’t think any party would have tickets that were   going forward. I thought there would be a bunch more diversity.” Schroeder considered her own run for president in 1988, the following presidential election, but ultimately decided against it because she felt she couldn’t raise enough money or build her organization quickly enough to run a competitive campaign. After Ferraro, it would indeed be a long time  —   24 years  —   until another woman made it onto a   ticket. That was 2008, when Sarah Palin was selected as John McCain’s running mate. Palin was run through the   spotlight of national scrutiny, from her policy positions to her choice of outfits. In between, there were some advances for women in congressional politics. The ”Year of the Woman” came in 1992, when a record five women, all Democrats  —   Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulski, Patty Murray and Carol Moseley Braun  —   were elected to the Senate. Moseley Braun went on to run a failed presidential bid in 2004. A Different Kind Of ’First’ President Obama achieved a ”first” of another kind  —   as the first   to win the Democratic nomination and be elected president. But Gillespie said Clinton has been free to talk about her ”first” (gender) in a way Obama was not able to talk about race. Gillespie refers to Obama as a ”  black politician”  —   meaning he shied from emphasizing race in order to appeal to   voters. Clinton, on the other hand, has leaned into her gender, making paid family leave and equal pay mainstays on the campaign trail. She suggested in April that half her Cabinet could be women. And she’ll consider female running mates, a campaign official told the Boston Globe. ”When Hillary Clinton says half her Cabinet could be female,” Gillespie observed, ”I mean, can you imagine what would have happened if [Obama] had said, ’Half of my Cabinet seats are going to go to  ’?” Clinton’s strategy seems to be paying off among women, who have overwhelmingly favored the candidate in most primary states so far. As NPR’s Asma Khalid reported, if the current trajectory continues, Clinton could turn the traditional gender gap into a gender gulf in November. That could be especially true if she goes head to head with GOP   Donald Trump, who has a 70 percent unfavorable rating among women, according to recent national polls. Trump foreshadowed that fight on the campaign trail in April, saying, ”If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get more than 5 percent of the vote.” Note: A version of this article was originally published on April 27, 2016."
"A popular and groundbreaking   band from Lebanon called Mashrou’ Leila was scheduled to play a big show in Amman, Jordan Friday. Instead, their show was cancelled by the government  —   and the band says they have been told they can never perform again in the country, because of the group’s politics, religious beliefs and ”endorsement of gender equality and sexual freedom.” Mashrou’ Leila had been slated to play at the famous Roman amphitheater in Amman, where they have previously performed three times, as well as elsewhere across the country. In a lengthy note posted on Facebook in both Arabic and English, the band alleges that the actual reason for the permission to be withdrawn is different: ”We have been unofficially informed that the reason behind this sudden change of heart, few days before the concert day, is the intervention of some authorities. Our understanding is that said authorities have pressured certain political figures and triggered a chain of events that ultimately ended with our authorization being withdrawn. ”We also have been unofficially informed that we will never be allowed to play again anywhere in Jordan due to our political and religious beliefs and endorsement of gender equality and sexual freedom.” The lead singer of Mashrou’ Leila, Hamed Sinno, is openly gay, and the band has addressed gay rights as well as politics and corruption in both its songs and many of its interviews. In an interview last year with the CBC show Q, Sinno said that a show they did in a predominantly Christian town in Lebanon called Zouk Mikael was protested by people who believed that ”homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to set foot on Christian soil.” Sinno attributed that attitude to ”broader fundamentalisms in the region.” According to a report on the Jordanian news site jo24. net published Tuesday, at least one public supporter of the ban is a member of parliament named Bassam   who has called for the group to be banned due to their ”controversial” material that references sex, homosexuality, ”calls for revolution” and promotes ”Satanic” ideas. The governor of Amman district, Khalid Abu Zeid, told the Associated Press Wednesday that the band’s songs ”contradict” Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Initially, the AP reports, officials from Jordan’s Antiquities Department rescinded permission because such a show would ”contradict the ’authenticity’ of the ancient venue.” Mashrou’ Leila violinist Haig Papazian has posted pictures of one of their previous three shows at the amphitheater on Twitter. As the band also noted on Facebook, Sanno’s mother is from Jordan, and the members say that the country is ”a formative part of his identity and writing, and a place we have always considered our second home.” The Facebook note concludes, ”We urge the Kingdom to choose fighting alongside us, not against us, during this ongoing battle for a culture of freedom against the regressive powers of thought control and cultural coercion.” The U. S. State Department’s 2015 human rights report on Jordan includes this assessment: ”While consensual   sexual conduct is not illegal, societal discrimination against LGBTI persons was prevalent, and LGBTI persons were targets of abuse. Activists reported discrimination in housing, employment, education, and access to public services. Some LGBTI individuals reported reluctance to engage the legal system due to fear their sexual orientation or gender identity would either provoke hostile reactions from police or disadvantage them in court. Activists reported that most LGBTI individuals were closeted and fearful of their sexual identity being disclosed.” The   band was founded at the American University of Beirut in 2008 and has released three albums. Their name translates as both Leila Project and Night Project Leila is a   figure in Arabic literature. A rapturous review from London’s Guardian last November said that they ”charge the stage with electricity, sensuality and a dazzling aura of resistance.” Mashrou’ Leila’s latest video, for the song ”AOEDE,” which was released earlier this month, opens with a young woman recounting a story of police brutality. The band is heading to the U. S. and Canada on tour this May and June, with dates scheduled in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Washington, D. C. and Vancouver."
"The FBI has officially decided it can’t tell Apple how the agency hacked into the locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. The FBI paid undisclosed professional hackers more than $1 million to get inside the locked and encrypted iPhone 5C through a previously unknown flaw in the software. The agency has been weighing whether it would submit the details to a review process that helps decide whether software vulnerabilities known to the government should be disclosed to companies. FBI science and technology chief Amy Hess said in a statement on Wednesday that the agency has determined it won’t be able to submit the   iPhone hack to the review, called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process: ”The VEP cannot perform its function without sufficient detail about the nature and extent of a vulnerability. ”The FBI purchased the method from an outside party so that we could unlock the San Bernardino device. We did not, however, purchase the rights to technical details about how the method functions, or the nature and extent of any vulnerability upon which the method may rely in order to operate. As a result, currently we do not have enough technical information about any vulnerability that would permit any meaningful review under the VEP process.” This was exactly the kind of challenge predicted by Robert Knake, former director of cybersecurity policy for the National Security Council in the Obama administration, in his recent interview with NPR. Knake offered a detailed description of how the Vulnerabilities Equities Process works and suggested that intellectual property lawyers will in the future fight over whether hackers can own the rights to a vulnerability."
"Missouri’s   religious freedom bill may be dead for this year. The amendment to the state Constitution would have protected people who didn’t want to provide services related to   marriages, including clerks, clergy and businesses. Wednesday’s   vote by a House committee stopped the measure from advancing, The Associated Press reports. Three Republicans joined three Democrats in opposition, the AP says. The bill, which had drawn criticism from   advocates and the business community, could technically be revived. But Marshall Griffin of St. Louis Public Radio says that is very unlikely this year, given that a lawmaker who voted ”no” would have to be part of pushing the legislation forward again. The bill has been so controversial, in part, because it specifically is aimed at protecting people who believe ”marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman,” rather broadly protecting religious freedom for all, as The   has explained. In addition, the bill guarantees that the state wouldn’t punish someone for actions taken with certain beliefs in mind. Before the Senate passed the legislation last month, Democrats filibustered for more than 36 hours, as The   reported. Senate Democrat Jason Holsman, among those who started the filibuster, said: ”I represent a very large contingent of citizens who   as either gay, or bi[sexual] or lesbian, or transgender. . .. I look at this bill and I read it through their eyes, and when I read it through their eyes, I see a   attempt to try and make the laws apply differently to me than they [do] for you.” Wednesday, Democratic House Minority Leader Jacob Hummel said the committee vote ”will be remembered as being on the right side of history,” according to the St. Louis  . On the conservative side, the Missouri Alliance for Freedom called the defeat ”the opening salvo in a long war,” in a statement posted online. ”We are not finished. While today’s results are not optimal we are not going anywhere. Religious freedom is not negotiable.”"
"Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has signed legislation that allows mental health counselors and therapists to refuse to treat patients based on religious objections or personal beliefs. Critics of the law say it could result in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. As Nashville Public Radio reported earlier this month: ”A group representing gay and lesbian Tennesseans [asked Haslam] to veto the legislation. . .. ”The Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBT advocacy group, says the measure will make it harder for gays and lesbians to find counseling  —   particularly in rural parts of the state where religiously conservative therapists are common.” Haslam, however, said in a statement that he decided to sign the bill because it addressed two of his concerns. He said: ”First, the bill clearly states that it ’shall not apply to a counselor or therapist when an individual seeking or undergoing counseling is in imminent danger of harming themselves or others.’ Secondly, the bill requires that any counselor or therapist who feels they cannot serve a client due to the counselor’s sincerely held principles must coordinate a referral of the client to another counselor or therapist who will provide the counseling or therapy.” According to The Associated Press, the American Counseling Association ”called the legislation an ’unprecedented attack’ on the counseling profession and said Tennessee was the only state to ever pass such a law.” As NPR reported last week, the law is ”part of a widespread reaction to the national focus on   marriage and transgender rights.” North Carolina recently enacted legislation commonly known as the ”bathroom bill,” a law that bans transgender people from using public restrooms that correspond with their gender identity. And a controversial   religious liberty bill in Georgia  —   which would have allowed religious officials and   organizations to deny services when doing so would violate a ”sincerely held religious belief”  —   prompted a number of companies to threaten to boycott the state. The governor vetoed that measure."
"Ahmir ”Questlove” Thompson, the drummer and leader of The Tonight Show’s house band The Roots, says he’s obsessed with the creative process. His new book, somethingtofoodabout, is a collection of his interviews with chefs about how art and creativity apply to their preparation and presentation of food. Speaking with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in front of an audience in Philadelphia, Questlove likens some of the meals he’s eaten to ephemeral works of art. ”Maybe I did have the equivalent of a Mona Lisa when I went to Jiro’s restaurant in Japan,” he says. ”But now there is no evidence of that. You only have my story to tell you.” Instead of   the ”magic” of a perfect meal, Questlove’s book is an attempt to capture the process that brought the meal into existence. ”I always say that I’m more obsessed with the journey of getting there than the destination,” he says. Questlove’s own journey began in Philadelphia, where his father, the late Lee Andrews, headed up the   group Lee Andrews and the Hearts. In addition to his father, Questlove points to Prince as another big influence. Questlove says that when he first met the rock icon, he was both intimidated by him and surprised that Prince was familiar with his work. ”I don’t think I even said words the first time I met him,” he says. ”I was just talking backwards . .. ’How does he know I’m alive? How does he know I exist? ’” On his relationship with Prince, It was a complex relationship. The second time we spoke, I kinda asked him, ”I got to let you know, you’re mad normal.” And he laughed, and he said, ”What, you think I wouldn’t be?” And then one night, just out of the blue, he ambushed us. I was working on Common’s Electric Circus album and the phone rang . .. and I picked up and he says, ”Hello, can I speak to Prince?” I said, ”Who?” And he’s like, ”You know your name means prince, right?” [The Arabic meaning of the name ”Ahmir” is prince.] And I said, ”Who’s this?” and he said, ”Prince.” And he came by and it was already 3 in the morning, and we played him some songs we were working on. On Prince’s feelings regarding cursing  We’re at Paisley Park [Prince’s studio and home in Minnesota] and I don’t know, maybe I let the   slip . .. and [Prince] was like, ”Yeah, that’ll be a dollar.” He grabbed a water bottle and he said, ”Actually, you’re rich. That’s $20.” I said, ”Huh?” and he said, ”No cursing.” And I said, ”Cursing! Wait, you’re the one that taught me how to curse.” But the thing was, when I said that, I was really saying it to get out of paying 20 bucks, but I saw the look on his face. And when I walked away that night and went back to the hotel, I wondered if he really felt bad about that if he thinks in his head, ”Man, I’ve ruined a generation.” But he really felt that. And I felt that with a lot of his secret philanthropy, and a lot of the Robin Hood stuff he was doing, I mean real deep political  —   saving schools, people to this day not knowing where this $3 million check came from, that was all him. I felt like maybe in the last 20 years of his life, he felt the need to overcompensate or pay forward what he feels that maybe he damaged some of us who grew up listening to his music. On how his parents’ love of   music influenced him, My parents wisely tricked me into thinking   music was current music. In first grade  —   first day of school, our assignment was to bring in your favorite 45. So the next day, kids were bringing in ”Shadow Dancing” by Andy Gibb, or Yvonne Elliman or ”Disco Duck” by Rick Dees, and I brought in Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, ”Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” and my teacher started laughing. [She said] ”Do you listen to this?” And I said yes, and she didn’t believe me. And she was like, ”This was music when I was kid.” And then suddenly I realized, ”Oh, my parents tricked me. These are old records.” On landing on the theme song for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, It was there all along, the very first song that The Roots ever worked on when we came to 30 Rock, which was really just a song we were doing to test the speakers. We came in the room for the first time, and we had to   on the sound stage, and that’s the song we made up. And we never thought about it again and somehow, that accidentally wound up in Jimmy’s file and he said, ”That’s the song.” On The Roots’ gig at The Tonight Show, It’s the best job ever, and at the time I didn’t know it, because when Jimmy first approached us to do it, I think initially in our heads, we had worked and clawed our way to whatever your vision of the top is. We had clawed our way to a certain place financially where seven people . .. and a crew . .. could really make a good living. So who would ever step away after struggling for 19 years to get to this place of Zen to go to an uncertain future? We entertained the conversation and everything, but in our heads, we were like, ”There’s no way we’re going to do The Tonight Show.” And suddenly, the moment that nailed it, we were at UCLA and Jimmy was at the show and I had to do a quick backstage interview. And I came outside my trailer and I walked outside . .. [and saw] Jimmy and The Roots in an Eight Is Enough human pyramid. . .. And I just looked at my manager and I’m just like, ”We’re stuck with this guy, aren’t we?” To hear more from Terry Gross’ conversation with Questlove, including a story about Prince using a golden   paddle in a match against Jimmy Fallon, click the ”listen” link at the top of the page."
"Pasang Lama is one of the survivors of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal that took 9, 000 lives across the country, including his parents, brother and more than 30 relatives from his home village in the Langtang Valley. To cope with his loss, the    has turned to an unexpected hobby: photography. ”After the earthquake, we lost everything, even the culture,” Lama says. He and other young survivors from Langtang have started photographing their lives  . Their photos are now part of a photography exhibit, displayed in cafes in Kathmandu last month and in Langtang now, triumphantly titled ”Langtang Rising.” The images are the result of a   photography workshop in November organized by a   nonprofit called Picture Me Here. The group gives cameras to people displaced by disasters or migration and offers guidance about photographing their stories as a way to heal. Lama has a lot of trauma to come to terms with. On the morning of April 25 last year, he woke up early to hike back to the hotel he ran at Kyanjin Gompa, in the Langtang Valley. He’ d been up all night for a ghewa, a Buddhist death ceremony, at his family’s home in the village of Langtang, a few hours walk away. ”You didn’t sleep all night. Stay here and rest,” he remembers his brother and father telling him. But guests were waiting at the hotel, so he trekked back, downed a cup of coffee and was preparing lunch for them by noon when the ground started shaking. Ushering the guests out of the hotel, Lama watched as, ”one by one stones from my house started falling.” When the shaking stopped, Lama was relieved to see his house still standing. Then came the avalanche. A tidal wave of rock, snow, and ice  —   later measured at have half the force of an atomic bomb  —   crashed down from the 20, 000 foot mountains above. ”I thought I would die,” he says. In retrospect, his decision to head back to Kyanjin Gompa may have saved his life. The full force of the avalanche ripped through Langtang, burying the village of charming stone houses and taking around 300 lives in its wake. News reports described Langtang as the site of the most concentrated devastation from the quake. Many of the village elders perished in the disaster. But with the help of Picture Me Here, a group of 18 young people are now photographing and documenting the cultural symbols and customs that were kept alive by their grandparents, from traditional clothing to shamanic healing practices. The images they’re making are part of join the larger Langtang Memory Project, a museum now being built. The photos are also a way for survivors to tell their own stories. After the earthquake, international media swarmed to Kathmandu. The photos that made it to the rest of the world mainly showed the destruction in the capital, though many buildings were actually intact. Meanwhile, rural areas like Langtang, which weren’t photographed because of their remoteness, were much worse off. Few photographers could stick around to show the hard work of rebuilding over the year amid struggles like a   fuel crisis, critical medicine shortage and ongoing political turmoil. The photos taken by the youth of Langtang collection does show some images of destruction  —   Lama’s favorite of his own pictures is a broken stone house against a brilliant blue sky. But they also show the resilience of survivors as they honor the past and push on with their lives. A series of images in the ”Before the Earthquake” theme show entries in a guestbook of Dorje Bakery, which was destroyed in the earthquake. A photo from the ”Life in Kathmandu” theme shows a child squatting by a line of empty fuel containers the winter fuel crisis made life even harder for villagers displaced to the city. Another shows a laughing woman holding a smiling girl in a party dress in a city apartment. The woman is the girl’s aunt, and she’s in the process of adopting the child, whose mother died in the quake. An especially poignant story comes from Gyalbu Lama, 25, who photographed his collapsed family home, which his parents, who died in the earthquake along with his younger brother, had slowly worked on for decades. ”They left us without completing their dream. Now who could carry it out? I don’t feel I can,” he writes in a caption. Pasang Lama hopes that the images inspire tourists to come back to Langtang, which was one of the country’s biggest trekking regions before the earthquake. In villages across Nepal, where job prospects are dim, many young people leave to study or work abroad in countries like India or in the Middle East. Now, in places like Langtang, they have returned to become the keepers of their villages. But in order to stay, they need tourism to rebound and inject   cash back into the village economy. The number of tourists to Nepal plummeted by more than 30 percent, to around half a million visitors, last year. That’s because the earthquake hit during peak trekking season, and the   fuel shortage kept travelers away. Pasang Lama’s father ran a hotel in the village but had bigger plans: he dreamed of starting his own trekking agency to benefit the whole community. Lama and his cousin, Chhime Tamang, another Langtang photographer, have since started Tenjin Eco Treks in his name. Proceeds from the sale of their photos to visiting tourists will also go into a community fund for rebuilding. ”We don’t want aid,” says Pasang Lama. ”We want to get paid for our services.” As Nepal struggles to rebuild one year after the tragedy, the young survivors prefer to get back on their feet by themselves."
"People who sustain a concussion or a more severe traumatic brain injury are likely to have sleep problems that continue for at least a year and a half. A study of 31 patients with this sort of brain injury found that 18 months afterward, they were still getting, on average, an hour more sleep each night than similar healthy people were getting. And despite the extra sleep, 67 percent showed signs of excessive daytime sleepiness. Only 19 percent of healthy people had that problem. Surprisingly, most of these concussed patients had no idea that their sleep patterns had changed. ”If you ask them, they say they are fine,” says Dr. Lukas Imbach, the study’s first author and a senior physician at the University Hospital Zurich in Zurich. When Imbach confronts patients with their test results, ”they are surprised,” he says. The results, published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Neurology, suggest there could be a quiet epidemic of sleep disorders among people with traumatic brain injuries. The injuries are diagnosed in more than 2 million people a year in the United States. Common causes include falls, motor vehicle incidents and assaults. Previous studies have found that about half of all people who sustain sudden trauma to the brain experience sleep problems. But it has been unclear how long those problems persist. ”Nobody actually had looked into that in detail,” Imbach says. A sleep disorder detected 18 months after an injury will linger for at least two years, and probably much longer, the researchers say. The results suggest that doctors who treat traumatic brain injuries can’t rely on their patients alone to report sleep problems, says Dr. Brian Edlow, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. ”There may be other tools that we need to detect   disturbances in this patient population,” he says. One possibility is referring patients with concussions and other brain injuries for sleep studies. That’s a costly option, Edlow says. But so is leaving a sleep disturbance undetected. ”Excessive daytime sleepiness can decrease people’s productivity at work or at school,” he says. In some cases, he says, it can even make it unsafe to drive. It’s not clear what’s causing sleepiness so long after a brain injury. Doctors think that getting extra sleep soon after an injury helps the brain heal. But if sleepiness persists, it becomes a problem, Edlow says. It’s also surprising that sleepiness lingered   even in patients who had relatively mild injuries, Edlow says. In severe injuries, the forces are so great that they actually tear apart circuits deep inside the brain. ”It’s the disruption of these circuits that is believed to cause   disturbances,” Edlow says. But these circuits don’t appear to be damaged in mild concussions, he says. ”So there may be some other mechanism at work.” The challenge now, Edlow says, is to figure out what that mechanism is."
"Updated at 2:30 p. m. ET, Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert admitted at his sentencing hearing Wednesday that he sexually abused more than one student when he was a teacher and wrestling coach in Illinois decades ago, and said he was ”ashamed.” Hastert initially said he had ”mistreated” athletes, NPR’s David Schaper tweeted from the courtroom. He added: ”What I did was wrong and I regret it.” Hastert, 74, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in the case involving hush money that prosecutors say was used to cover up alleged sexual abuse of a minor. In addition, according to The Associated Press, the sentence calls for ”sex offender treatment, two years of supervised release after his time behind bars and a $250, 000 fine that will go to a crime victims fund.” The   Republican speaker in U. S. history had faced up to five years in prison for the financial crimes. In handing down the sentence, U. S. District Judge Thomas Durkin called Hastert a ”serial child molester,” according to multiple reporters in the courtroom. The former House speaker has been accused of abusing at least five teenage boys but hasn’t been charged because the statute of limitations has expired. Hastert pleaded guilty in October to illegally structuring bank withdrawals to evade reporting rules for large transactions. That money was used to conceal alleged sexual misconduct  —   given to a man who says Hastert abused him when he was 14. The alleged victim, identified in court documents as ”Individual A,” is suing Hastert for not paying the full amount agreed upon between the two. He says Hastert paid $1. 7 million out of $3. 5 million in ”compensation.” As The   has reported: ”The [plea] deal states that Hastert ’agreed to provide Individual A $3, 500, 000 in order to compensate for and keep confidential his prior misconduct against Individual A.’ ”It goes on to say that from July of 2012 to December 2014, Hastert withdrew $952, 000 in amounts below $10, 000 to ’evade currency transaction reporting requirements’ on more than 100 occasions.” During today’s hearing, another alleged victim, previously identified only as ”Individual D,” came forward to make a statement before sentencing. Reporters tweeting from the courtroom said he is Scott Cross. The   ’s brother is former longtime Illinois House Rep. Tom Cross, who has considered Hastert a political mentor, David reports. ”As a    boy I was devastated. I tried to figure out why Coach Hastert had singled me out. I felt terribly alone,” Scott Cross testified, according to NBC News. ”Today I understand I did nothing to bring this on, but at age 17, I could not understand what happened or why.” When the judge asked Hastert directly if he had sexually abused Cross, ”Hastert said he could not remember, but he did acknowledge [Cross’] statement,” David reports. ”Asked if he molested others, Hastert quietly said, ’Yes.’ ” Jolene Burdge, who also spoke Wednesday, says Hastert abused her brother, who died in 1995. Burdge said Hastert took away Stephen Reibolt’s ”right to develop his sexual identity in a normal, healthy way,” a CBS News reporter tweeted. Hastert served as House speaker from 1999 to 2007, and was a high school teacher and wresting coach in Yorkville, Ill. in the 1960s and ’70s. According to court documents, it was during this time that the alleged sexual abuse took place."
"When Claire Boucher, the Canadian electronic artist known as Grimes, first recorded a song, she was reluctantly helping out a friend who said he needed a ”girl vocal.” Half a decade later, Grimes is a marquee name at massive festivals like Coachella, and has three   albums under her belt  —   though she says she still feels as   as ever about her voice. Grimes’ latest release is Art Angels, on which Boucher not only wrote, produced and engineered all the songs, but masterminded the videos and artwork as well  —   no small feat given the crowded and   field of electronic music. She spoke with NPR’s Audie Cornish about the gender politics in music studios, the surprise perks of being a science major and why her favorite songs are those that deliberately unsettle the ear. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below. Audie Cornish: I read that you actually studied neuroscience in college? Or just the sciences generally? Grimes: Actually, I was in a program at McGill called Electroacoustics, where we studied a lot of how the brain interacts with music. So by the time I actually started making music, I kind of had an understanding of frequencies and kind of how the brain responds to things, which I think really helped me as a producer: Even though I had no experience playing instruments and stuff, I kind of had a basic understanding of engineering. My learning curve was maybe a tiny bit shorter than maybe someone who hadn’t studied that stuff. So how does that inform the music? One of the things I like about electronic music is the sensory overload  —   the drops, the highs and lows of it, are directly triggering things in my brain. Is there a song on this album where you feel like your knowledge about how we hear things affects how many tracks there are, how many layers, how many sounds? I don’t know if it’s actually that practically useful, honestly. Because you can study music to death you can study the brain’s response to music to death. But it’s not the same thing as making music, which is very  . Like, there was a study that we read about when I was in class: They polled tons and tons of people and found out the most loved type of music and the most hated type of music. And actually, the most loved type of music is deep women’s vocals  —   so, Beyoncé and Adele and stuff, that makes sense. But the most hated was, like, children’s choirs  —   and I love children’s choirs. High female vocals, people hate that  —   and I have a high female voice, obviously. So, I think it just depends. Can you remember when you first thought of yourself as a producer? I mean, was there an early song  —   before people knew you, even  —   where you realized you like the tinkering, the putting it together? Probably from the first time I tried to make music. Singing has always been a struggle for me, so when I first started making music, I only made instrumentals. When you finally did start to sing, was it a surprise to you? Kind of! I mean, I wasn’t good, but I was not the worst, which was extremely encouraging to me. The fact that I wasn’t literally the worst singer on planet Earth made me think that I was, like, a god. Immediately I was like, ”Oh, I don’t suck? OK, I’m gonna be a musician. Like, right away.” So when you first sat down, what were the circumstances? What drew you to it? Basically, I’d been at a friend’s house he said he wanted a ”girl vocal.” I was like, ”I’m really a bad singer,” but I did it anyway  —   and then I was like, oh, music isn’t that hard. So I got my friend to show me how to use GarageBand, and then I just kind of started making terrible, terrible songs using the   synths and stuff, just screwing around with that. It’s interesting  —   I think electronic music changes the bar of entry for people who want to get into music, right? Oh, yeah. I think, I mean, in a sad way I think it’s one of the reasons experimental electronic music isn’t more popular, is that it’s so hard to turn it into a live thing it’s more of a laptop thing. But definitely, in the scene I came from, you don’t need to be a ”good” musician to make electronic music  —   you just need to have a good ear. You don’t need to be able to technically perform anything. So now that there’s so much of this music out there, how do you determine what’s good? Who are the artists that inspire you, who are doing similar work? Oh my gosh. I love 40, who produces for Drake  —   I think he’s one of the best producers. I love Burial. I mean, most of my favorite producers produce for vocalists I don’t listen to a lot of straight electronic music that doesn’t have vocals. This is a totally crazy thing, and I’m significantly worse and significantly less popular, but in a way Calvin Harris is probably the most similar to me in terms of functionality. He’s a great producer, he’s a songwriter, but he doesn’t necessarily sing all his songs. He does sing  —   he’s decent at it  —   but it’s not like his main thing. What has it been like over the years asserting yourself in the studio? Because the model that we all hear about in the music press is young women performing songs that they may have written, but the production is usually a man, especially if you look at the Top 40. Have you found that people in that setting want to provide the beats for you? I’ve never actually worked in a studio on one of my songs  —   I’ve only worked in a studio in writing camps for other people, which were odd experiences. I wasn’t allowed to touch a computer, for example, even though guys in the studio were allowed to. I obviously know how to use a computer and I know how to produce, but I had to tell the engineer what to do if I wanted to do anything, which I thought was pretty crazy in the 21st century. This might have been a union thing, too, right? Because you’re the writer. No, no, there were producers coming in  —   and I don’t think I was brought in only to do vocals and top line. Even if I was, that’s kind of weird because I’m way more of a producer than a vocalist. So, I mean, it was pretty gendered. Luckily, I mostly work in my own house and I don’t work with other people, kind of for this reason. For people who don’t know, writer’s camps are basically like a retreat, where you get put into groups and you’re supposed to write, collaboratively, for another artist. What was that experience like for you, an artist who’s pretty  ? In a way, it was a blessing in disguise: I got to watch so many great producers work, because I wasn’t allowed to produce anything. I actually did learn quite a bit about production. But on the other hand, it was very daunting, even just as a writer writing top line, because I felt like it was extremely judgmental. It was kind of assumed that I was stupid and that I didn’t know what was going on, and especially because I don’t feel confident as a vocalist, it was very stressful to have that be the thing that I was evaluated on. And you described it as gendered. Yeah, well, just that all the guys made beats and all the girls did top line. ”Top line” meaning the melody. Yeah, basically the melody that the vocal is doing. Like, there were no girls doing beats and there were no guys doing top line. But, I don’t know  —   I don’t want to criticize it too much. No, I mean, they’re big business, right? Lots of people are making money and songs in this way. But it’s sort of hard to picture, given how many women we see in the Top 40. A lot of the biggest names in music are women right now. I think it’s just . .. you know, I came in with experience as a producer and I wasn’t allowed to produce  —   so how could any woman who didn’t have experience as a producer ever learn how to produce? It was just a little odd in that regard. If there are stereotypes of, ”Women do certain jobs in music and men do certain jobs,” the way the studio works, it’s not easy to escape that. As your career has gotten bigger and more and more people are hearing your music, do you hear from young women who want to be doing what you’re doing? I guess I do! If you meet fans outside of a concert or something like that, someone will be like, ”You inspired me to start producing, and I make records now.” Which is pretty cool  —   I mean, not even from a music perspective, but being visible as a woman in technology is sort of interesting, and hopefully inspires women not just to touch computers in music but for other purposes as well. I want to talk about one song that I was, I feel like, almost surprised to hear on this album  —   which is ”Easily.” It sounds like you very much enjoying your own voice.  Oh, really? It’s actually my least favorite song on the album! What don’t you like about it? I think it’s quite sweet. I just think it’s really basic. I only put it on because when I showed my friends all the songs they were all like, ”You have to keep that song. Don’t ditch that one.” But I personally think it’s not very interesting from a production standpoint. That makes sense given a lot of the other music we’ve heard from you, which is just layers and layers of sounds. This is just you. It kind of makes me uncomfortable! But usually, the songs other people like are the songs that make me the most uncomfortable  —   so I usually try to allow some of those to make it onto the record. Do you ever want your voice, or your music, to sound ugly? Like, do those songs, in a way, kind of go against the way you have presented your voice  —   which is not about being bubbly? Yeah, I do kind of like songs more like ”SCREAM.” They feel more natural to me. I like to have at least one thing in a song that’s a bit jarring, that throws people off. Right, which in ”SCREAM” is  . You have this Taiwanese rapper, Aristophanes, who is delivering on such great menace  —   and then the chorus has this primal,   scream. It’s interesting to hear that next to this other side of your music, which almost reminds me of The Bangles or something. The other thing about songs that are really   is that they’re much harder to perform live. Singing live is twice as hard as singing in a quiet, nice studio, where you can do 50 takes and choose the best one. So when you’re at a show, what are you oriented toward? Are you thinking more about setting up the computers and the sound design than that moment when you’re going to have to take the mic and maybe sing something pretty bare? Do you avoid those songs as a result? I do. I actually do not play either ”Easily” or ”California” live. And I also often have to change the top line so that it’s easier to sing, stuff like that. You’ve made this distinction between having to perform this music you create on stage and like trying to get that to translate, not just for the audience but for yourself. Do you like performing? Well, it’s complicated. It’s not my favorite thing, but it is way better than working at Starbucks. I just have terrible, terrible stage fright. It’s definitely not what I would do if I could make a living doing something else, but it’s on the better end of jobs. Stage fright doesn’t seem like a good match for some of the stages you’re playing. You’re doing Coachella  —   these are big, big stages. I mean, you can always override it  —   it’s just very difficult. Does the persona help? Like, does being Grimes help? I suppose so. When you’re kind of just bombarding people with crazy, it’s so much less daunting than when you have to be a sweet, great vocalist who can do runs and stuff. Especially at festivals where you don’t get to soundcheck and you have no idea if it’s going to sound good or bad. Last time I played Coachella I had no   [monitor mix] at all. I had to do the whole set completely deaf and just hope it was OK. [Laughs] How were the reviews? Uh, great! I mean, muscle memory is a hell of a thing. With this album, do you feel like you have advanced your music significantly? You’ve done the videos and the songs and the production and even the cover art  —   does it feel like a milestone for you? Oh, yeah. I mean this is, for me, my first record that I think is good. Not that the other records aren’t good, but they’re so amateur. I made them not thinking anyone would ever listen to them, so there’s tons of songs without lyrics, because I just sort of did a random vocal and was like, ”That’s good enough.” There’s a lot more care put into this record, because it was the first record I made knowing that I had a sizable audience. Going forward, what direction do you want to take this? Do you see a future where maybe you don’t bother with those vocals at all and you become Grimes,  ? I could see that. The problem with that is when you produce for other people, you’re subject to their whims and fancies and you have to do what they want, which I’m really bad at. Like, in the camps, you go in and they’re like, ”OK, it has to be 135 BPM. It has to be in this key.” I’m like, I don’t even read music! I don’t know how to do that. When you make music, you kind of start going, you’re trying things and trying things, and then suddenly you hit upon something that elicits something emotive in you and you’re like, ”Oh, OK, I feel this!” And then you follow that wave. Whereas when you start with a set of guidelines, it’s really hard to get that vibe. It has to already be in a box before you’ve already started. So I don’t know if I could work for other people as a producer as a job  —   although the ”Venus Fly,” featuring Janelle Monáe, is one of the songs I’m most proud of as a producer. And I loved working with Aristophanes. Those were some of the most freeing experiences of my life, having other vocalists. So, I guess we’ll see. I just want to follow up on something you said earlier  —   about your voice, and being vulnerable and just kind of ”out there.” In a way, do you feel like you have been both rewarded and penalized for your voice? Yeah, I think my voice definitely bothers some people. Some people really like it. People hate my lisp: When I was in high school, I remember people would be like, ”Ugh, I don’t want to talk to you! You have a lisp. It’s so annoying.” But I don’t know  —   I like having a weird voice. All my favorite singers, even if they’re not the best, they have a voice that you can immediately recognize. I think that’s a really awesome trait."
"Harriet Tubman, who will soon be the first   to grace a U. S. currency note, spent her whole adult life raising money either to rescue slaves or help them start life afresh on free soil. While her abolitionist friends in the North were generous contributors to the cause, Tubman also   her heroic raids through an activity she enjoyed and excelled at: cooking. Tubman’s role as a professional cook, which provided her with a   source of money in her long and   life, has often been overlooked. Tubman was the daughter of a cook. Her mother, Rit Ross, worked in the ”big house” on the plantation in Dorchester County, Md. where Tubman was raised. An early   incident is testimony to the future General Tubman’s   character. When she was about 6, Tubman was hired out to a neighboring farm  —   a common practice at the time  —   run by James and Susan Cook. When she got there, writes biographer Kate Clifford Larson in Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, the hungry little girl was so nervous in the company of a white family, she refused the milk offered by her new mistress. ”I was fond of milk as any young shoot,” Tubman later said to her first biographer, Sarah Bradford. ”But all the time I was there I stuck to it, that I didn’t drink sweet milk.” She spent almost two unhappy years with the family, during which she was regularly flogged and finally sent home after she fell seriously ill. In 1849, fearing she would be sold like her two older sisters had been, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia. She travelled to Baltimore and New Jersey, where in order to support herself and raise money to go back to rescue her family, she spent the summer of 1852 working as a cook in a resort at fashionable Cape May, N. J. She used her wages to pay for a raid that freed nine slaves. On the roughly 13 raids Tubman conducted ”down into Egypt” over the course of a decade, one of the many challenges she faced was keeping her party of rescued slaves fed on their long and arduous journey  —   often through snow, icy rain and swamps, with teams of armed men and dogs searching for the runaways. To keep babies from crying and attracting attention, she dosed their bread with laudanum to put them to sleep. She may have been hailed as the Black Moses, but unlike that ancient prophet, she couldn’t wave her staff and produce manna from heaven. Instead, she simply used her ingenuity. Once, after buying two chickens at a market, she almost came face to face with a former overseer. So she quickly released one of the chickens she was carrying, and pretended to give chase, creating a comic kerfuffle that allowed her to slip away unnoticed, even though, ironically, everyone’s eyes were on her. Otherwise, Tubman went foraging in the forest. ”While the woods were rich with resources like sassafras, black cherry, and   not everything was safe to eat,” Clifford Larson told me. ”One of the conductor’s chief duties was finding nourishment  —   those slaves who didn’t have the benefit of a conductor were on their own. One slave recalled wandering through the woods all day eating acorns.” What made foraging doubly difficult was that many slaves fled in the winter, shortly after Christmas. ”They knew they would probably be sold off at the end of the year, so this was when they would have to run,” says Robyn Affron of Adkins Arboretum, who worked on an audio tour of the Underground Railroad with Clifford Larson. ”In winter in the   they had little or no food. If they were lucky they could seek refuge and food from the Quaker community. Sacks would be hidden in holes in trees with warm socks and hardtack biscuits.” But no matter how dire the situation, Tubman, who was deeply religious, operated on the unshakable belief that God would provide. An abstemious eater, she fasted on Fridays, a practice she learned from her father Ben Ross. He also taught her some invaluable survival skills. ”An expert lumberjack, Ross spent much time living off the land, navigating through forests, fields and waterways,” says Clifford Larson. ”He passed that knowledge to his gifted daughter, and she put it to good use while traveling along the Underground Railroad.” Tubman grew up on a farm, and through her life, she reached for earthy food metaphors to express herself. ”I felt like a blackberry in a pail of milk,” she said when she, an illiterate black woman, bid for and bought a parcel of land in Auburn, N. Y. that would eventually house the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Infirm Negroes. ”I threw him acrossed my shoulder like a bag o’ meal and took him away out of there,” was how she described her audacious 1860 rescue of a fugitive slave named Charles Nalle in Troy, N. Y. in the midst of a whirl of police batons and bullets. And in response to a group called the African Civilization Society, whose mission it was to repatriate all Negroes  —   free and slave alike  —   to Africa, Tubman related the parable of a farmer who sowed onions and garlic on his land, but when he found his cow’s butter too strong and unsellable, returned to planting clover. By then it was too late  —   the wind had blown the onions and garlic all over the field. White people, she said, had got slaves to do their hard work for them, but now that their presence didn’t suit them, they wanted to pack them off to Africa. ”But they can’t do it,” she said in a public speech in Boston that drew loud applause. ”We’re rooted here, and they can’t pull us up.” During the Civil War, Tubman worked as a nurse and a spy, but supplemented her income by running an   in Beaufort. There, she sold Union soldiers root beer, pie and ginger bread, which she baked during the night, after her day’s work. When she put in a claim for a Civil War pension, her role was described as ”nurse, spy and cook.” Tubman’s earliest childhood memory had to do with food. She recalled how, when she had to babysit her younger brother  —   she was barely 4 or 5 years old herself  —   she used to ”cut a fat chunk of pork and toast it on the coals and put it in his mouth. One night he went to sleep with that hanging out, and when my mother come home she thought I’d done kill him. I nursed that there baby till he was so big I couldn’t tote him any mo’.” Indeed, the dramatic arc of Tubman’s life story, from slave to national hero, can be captured in her tragicomic relationship to pigs. Caught stealing a lump of sugar at the Cooks’ house, she saw the mistress reach for the whip, and fled to a neighboring farm. For the next five days, she hid in a pigpen and fought with ”an ole sow, an’ perhaps eight or ten little pigs” for the potato peelings and other pigswill. Finally, starved and afraid of the belligerent mother pig, she went back. James Cook whipped her. Over three decades later, when Tubman made history by leading three Union gunboats in the famous 1863 Combahee River Raid that freed 700 slaves in South Carolina, she described how the throngs of slave women came streaming towards ”Lincoln’s  ” with their babies, baskets, chickens and pigs. ”I nebber see such a sight,” she is quoted saying in Bradford’s 1869 biography. ”We laughed, an’ laughed, an’ laughed. Here you’d see a woman wid a pail on her head, rice a smokin’ in it jus’ as she’d taken it from de fire, young one hangin’ on behind, one han’ roun’ her forehead to hold on, ’tother han’ diggin’ into de   eatin’ wid all its might hold of her dress two or three more down her back a bag wid a pig in it.”  One woman brought along two pigs, one white, one black. All three were taken on board, and the pigs promptly christened after a Confederate Civil War general and the president of the Confederate States of America: ”de white pig Beauregard, and de black pig Jeff Davis.”  Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn."
"A prominent columnist for the Las Vegas   the largest news organization in Nevada, resigned after being told he could no longer write about two of the state’s biggest players, including his newspaper’s new owner, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. ”If I can’t do my job, if I can’t hold the heavyweights in the community to account, then I’m just treading water,” the columnist, John L. Smith, told NPR in an interview. ”It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but there was no other decision to make  —   at least in my mind.” Smith had written columns for the   for nearly three decades, with a frequent focus on Adelson, one of the most powerful figures in Nevada gambling and national Republican politics. The billionaire sued Smith for libel over a passage in a 2005 book about power players of Las Vegas. Smith prevailed in court, but paying the fees helped bankrupt him. (NPR told that remarkable story, including a rabbi’s offer of a secret $200, 000 payoff from Adelson for Smith to admit libel, earlier this year.) Years later, the case has helped trigger the end of Smith’s career at the   as his new bosses cited it as a conflict of interest. ”I was sorry to see him resign and I wish him the very best,” the paper’s    J. Keith Moyer, wrote in an email to NPR. ”I decided that the strongest measure was best for the  . John had thousands of other people, things and news events from which to choose to write about.” Late last year, Adelson and his family bought the   in a transaction that was initially intended to keep the new owners’ identity secret from the public and the newsroom itself. The paper’s reporters covered the mystery and subsequently identified the Adelsons despite the efforts of the paper’s publisher to delay and soften the coverage. The paper’s editor was among those who subsequently left. Promises of scrupulous disclosure of the Adelsons’ interests were scaled back. Smith says new management implemented a new policy earlier this year: He could not cover anything to do with Adelson. The   editor, Glenn Cook, regretfully conveyed the decision from publisher Craig Moon. Smith says he took issue: ”I said, ’He’s the one who sued me, he lost, and I’m conflicted?’ ” Smith says Cook told him: ”You can’t do it or you’ll be fired.” Soon after, the Adelson family announced its intent to build a football stadium to try to lure an NFL team to Las Vegas. That deal would rely on public tax dollars in a   partnership that Smith calls ”a boondoggle . .. that always seems to work for the private partners but not the public.” Smith says although the stadium was a subject ripe for coverage, he didn’t challenge his new restrictions and left it alone. At a journalism conference last weekend, however, Moyer, the new editor, publicly acknowledged that Smith was barred from writing about the Adelsons and their interests. Attendees tweeted out those remarks. One person present asked Moyer whether Smith could write about Steve Wynn, another billionaire casino magnate who had also sued the columnist in the 1990s. Smith was dismissed as a party from that lawsuit, which was unsuccessful. On Monday, Moyer told Smith he couldn’t write about Wynn, either. Moyer arrived in Las Vegas after the decision was made by the new publisher, Moon, on coverage of Adelson. Moyer says he was simply affirming the policy that he fundamentally agreed with and extending it to Wynn. ”I never suggested or believed John would use his column to settle a personal score, but if his writing on Adelson and Wynn created even a perception of score settling in the minds of readers, then it would have reflected on the credibility of the institution,” Moyer told NPR. ”Invoking ’conflict of interest’ restrictions might not be common in Nevada, but they are elsewhere.” Publicity around both the policy and Smith’s decision to resign has triggered a new round of criticism aimed at the paper. Moyer argues that the criticism misses the point. ”The real question reporters should be asking is: ’Did Sheldon Adelson order the ban?’ But I suspect they’re not asking that because they’ve already made up their minds that he did. Shame on them,” Moyer says. He says he only took the job after Adelson promised him, in person, that neither he nor his family would ever interfere in newsroom matters. He says that promise has been kept. In addition, he says, the Adelsons have provided new resources to rebuild the newsroom that had been cut back significantly under previous owners. Other reporters and columnists for the paper will scrutinize Adelson, Wynn and other powerful players, Moyer says. Smith is 56 and says his financial circumstances mean he cannot yet afford to retire. He says he hopes to find a new home to report and write. ”In many areas we will be as tough or tougher than we ever were,” Smith says, speaking as though he were still part of the  ’s staff. ”The question is whether we’ll be able to carry on in some of the most important areas. ”I believe they show, day after day, that management is not mature enough or professional enough to let the reporters do their job, to let the columnists have their say, and put it in the public eye,” Smith says. This week, a team of   reporters is in Oregon to receive a prominent prize in media ethics for coverage of the paper’s secretive sale last year and for uncovering the Adelsons as the new owners. Smith is among them."
"Scientists say they have made an atlas of where words’ meanings are located in the brain. The map shows that words are represented in different regions throughout the brain’s outer layer. Moreover, the brains of different people map language in the same way. ”These maps are remarkably consistent from person to person,” says Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley who led the study. The work appears in the journal Nature. To make the language maps, Gallant’s team placed seven people in functional MRI scanners. They then played the research subjects two hours of stories from The Moth Radio Hour. Researchers looked at many   areas of the brain to gauge how each responded to words. They found that words with related meanings lit up similar parts of the brain. One area responded to words related to people. Another responded to numbers. Words’ meanings could pop up in different places simultaneously. Hearing the word ”top” caused regions associated with clothing and appearances to light up. But ”top” could also stimulate a region associated with words related to numbers and measurements. Although the study size was small, the researchers saw consistent patterns. Gallant says the findings contradict two beliefs nonscientists commonly have about the brain. First, that only the left hemisphere handles language. Second, that the brain has localized regions that handle specific tasks. Contrary to those ideas, he says, language and meaning are distributed. ”It’s not that there’s one brain area and one function,” he says. But for Gallant, the real surprise is that the meanings of words triggered the same brain regions across multiple people in his study. ”It’s even hard to define what meaning means,” he says. ”It’s kind of remarkable to me that it maps so systematically and so similarly across the brains of all these individual people.”"
"The Supreme Court appears to be leaning in favor of reversing the corruption conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, based on Wednesday’s oral arguments. At the case’s core is how to determine a clean ”official act” from a corrupt one, and where the line is. Justice Elena Kagan said during oral arguments that the court is concerned both about overzealous prosecutors and giving a free pass to corrupt politicians. Many of the justices  —   both liberal and conservative  —   appeared dissatisfied with the standard that the government is currently using to seek convictions on public corruption charges. Justice Stephen Breyer said he doesn’t want a situation where all of the power is in the hands of the Justice Department to decide who is prosecuted for a felony and who is not. ”Official acts” covers a broad range of activities that are part of doing business as a politician  —   from writing a letter asking a federal agency to look into an issue to attending meetings and attending social events. The justices brought up dozens of theoretical examples to illuminate just how difficult it is to determine what constitutes a felony: The justices seemed to be seeking a federal standard that could be administered  —   and didn’t appear satisfied with any of the suggestions presented. Ultimately, everyone in the room appeared frustrated at the difficulty of coming up with a standard that’s narrow enough to exclude ordinary correspondence between politicians and federal agencies on behalf of their constituents or companies but would penalize people who take bribes. As you may have heard on Morning Edition, this case stems from favors that McDonnell and his wife did for a Virginia businessman in exchange for loans and luxury gifts. The businessman, Jonnie Williams, was seeking FDA approval for a dietary supplement made by his company, Star Scientific. Because he couldn’t afford scientific testing, he wanted two Virginia universities to carry out the research. Here’s more: ”Soon, the governor’s wife would ask Williams for a $50, 000 loan, which he provided, plus help in defraying the costs of their daughter’s wedding. Williams called the governor to confirm that he knew about the loan, and McDonnell thanked the businessman for his financial assistance. Three days later, McDonnell instructed an aide to forward material about Williams’ company to Virginia’s secretary of health. . .. ”But, importantly, the research sought by Star Scientific never actually took place. ”None of the gifts to the McDonnells were illegal under state law, but the federal government eventually charged McDonnell and his wife with 11 counts of conspiracy to commit fraud under federal law. McDonnell himself was accused of depriving the state’s citizens of his honest services by accepting bribes in exchange for performing ’official acts’ to benefit Williams’ company. ”McDonnell said from the   that while his judgment had been in error, he did nothing illegal.” The government argues that McDonnell’s actions were clearly corrupt, while the defense lawyers say they were simply ”routine political activities.” Speaking to reporters outside the court, McDonnell said, ”I want to say, as I’ve said for the last 39 months, that never during any time in my last 38 years of public service have I ever done anything that would abuse the powers of my office.” He added: ”I know the justice system will get this right.” The justices will meet Friday to vote on the case. They’re expected to rule at the end of June."
"The latest results of the test known as the Nation’s Report Card are in. They cover high school seniors, who took the test in math and reading last year. The numbers are unlikely to give fodder either to educational cheerleaders or alarmists: The average score in both subjects was just one point lower in 2015 compared with the last time the test was given, in 2013. This tiny downtick was statistically significant in mathematics, but not for the reading test. But even though the changes are small, chances are you’re going to be hearing about them in a lot of places. Why is this test so widely reported on, widely cited and widely debated? And how does it line up with   yardsticks of how students are doing? Let’s take a closer look. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, has become a standardized test that even some critics of standardized tests rely upon. One big reason: It’s a research project conducted by the U. S. Department of Education, not a state accountability test. Unlike state tests, which have been shifting year by year with the adoption of the Common Core, NAEP scores are comparable across decades  —   back to 2005 for math and all the way back to 1993 for reading. ”In our era of incredibly volatile state and local testing practices, it is our North Star,” says Andrew Ho, a measurement expert at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who sits on NAEP’s bipartisan governing board. A large sample of high school seniors nationwide, in both public and private schools, took the tests last year  —   18, 700 students in reading and 13, 200 in mathematics. This allows direct comparisons across states and cities. And the absence of consequences for schools or teachers means students are not typically prepped or drilled to take the test, which potentially makes it a more useful measurement of student achievement than some state tests. But what do NAEP scores mean? On the   test in particular, Ho says, research shows that NAEP maps well with estimates of college and career readiness from Common   tests, the SAT and the ACT. According to research by Ho and others, just under 40 percent of students score at college and career ready levels on NAEP. ”College and career ready” means these scores strongly predict that students will be able to succeed doing   academics, or with    training in a position requiring only a high school diploma. That seems clear enough. Except when you realize a couple of things. One is that in 2015 the nationwide high school graduation rate was 82 percent, not 40 percent. That leaves a potentially large group of kids who got diplomas but who weren’t ready to succeed in college. Who is right: their high schools or NAEP? ”I think the charitable view is that graduation is not just reading and math,” says Ho, meaning that high school diplomas also include things like ”social studies, science, the arts, PE and showing up.” In other words, the diploma potentially captures achievements over time, rather than the ability to do well on a short, mostly   test taken on a single day. On the other hand, he says, ”the    view would be that graduation is just a lower standard than college readiness. If you get right down to it, the reading and math required by NAEP, the ACT, the SAT, colleges and careers is much greater than what high schools are saying is sufficient.” And there’s a second issue. Most standardized state tests have a single passing score, known as the cut score. NAEP slices its results into four categories: below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. But what Ho calls ”college and career ready” doesn’t line up perfectly with either the ”proficient” or ”basic” standard on the NAEP   test. Instead, it falls somewhere in between. ”This is the fundamental problem of standards,” says Ho. ”You can come up with a different and seemingly defensible standard every day over coffee.” And this leads us to a third mystery of NAEP. Why even have the ”basic” standard at all? Ho calls the basic standard a ”useful signaling device.” It focuses more attention on the lowest performing students  —   who are all too numerous, it seems. While overall results are barely changed, it seems that the nation’s struggling students in particular are doing slightly worse than they were two years ago, while higher achievers are doing slightly better."
"The nation’s high school graduation rate is at an   high  —   81 percent. It was such big news, President Obama touted it in his State of the Union address. So what’s the truth behind this number? Our   investigation into how states are raising their rates, with reporters from 14 states, found a mix of the good, the bad and the ambiguous: In some places, questionable quick fixes like mislabeling dropouts or sliding them off the books elsewhere, powerful   strategies to help struggling students make it. That 81 percent, it’s a complicated number and every state is different. So, we’ve compiled graduation info from each state (with help from the policy gurus at the nonprofit research group Achieve). Look up your state to learn more about what’s happening in high schools near you. Did we miss something? Anything we should add? Email us at npred@npr. org"
"Investing for retirement doesn’t have to be hard. You read up on how to put together a diverse mix of   index funds, bonds, etc. Then keep setting aside all you can into that retirement account. Easy. But when you actually retire and start spending that money, that’s like going from playing checkers to playing chess. It can get a lot harder. Here’s the big pickle: You don’t want to run out of money. But how can you know how much it’s safe to spend when you might live for another five years  —   or 25 years? JOIN NPR’S ”YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE” FACEBOOK GROUP, Is It All A ’Crapshoot’? Liz McMunigal and her husband, Harry, are getting ready to retire so they’re well aware of this  . ”My father died when he was 52 of lung cancer and he was never a smoker my mother is 95 and still living,” McMunigal says. She and her husband are both lawyers in Wyomissing, Pa. They say they’re not   corporate lawyers, but they have saved a nice nest egg. And like millions of other Americans, they’re facing this puzzle. They want to enjoy retirement and not be so overly frugal that they miss out on traveling and having fun. But they don’t want to blow their savings too soon, either. ”It’s all a crapshoot because we don’t know what our life expectancy is going to be we don’t know what our stock market is going to do,” Liz McMunigal says. The couple recently sat down with some financial advisers to try to figure this out. McMunigal laughs when she recalls the booklets the advisers prepared based on their analyses. ”I think I could probably build a nuclear bomb easier than understanding these things,” she says. Solving The Retirement Puzzle, To get a better understanding, we went to Yale University to talk to David Swensen. He manages Yale’s $26 billion endowment and has written a book on investing for everyday Americans. And he hears this same question all the time: How much can I spend in retirement? It’s a really hard question, Swensen says. But he’s gotten interested in one thing that can help: an advanced life deferred annuity. Annuities have been around for a long time. They have a bad reputation for high fees and being hard to understand. The basic idea is this: You pay a company (often an insurance company) a chunk of money upfront, and it agrees to write you a check every month to give you an income for the rest of your life. These days, you can tell the company when to start paying you on the annuity  —   and wait until you are, say, 85. Of course, Swensen says, ”there’s a chance you’re not even going to make it to 85.” And that’s exactly the point. For not so much money upfront, you should be able to get a pretty nice monthly payment after age 85. You’ll have that, plus Social Security. And it becomes much less of a   to figure out how much of your life savings you can safely spend. ”Let’s say you’re 70, and you’ve got this deferred annuity that starts at age 85,” Swensen says. ”That’s a simple problem to solve. The longevity risk is taken care of by the deferred annuity.” Dean Takahashi is the senior director managing Yale’s endowment and works with Swensen. And Takahashi has been thinking about this, too  —   to help school employees figure out retirement. ”The nice thing about the deferred annuity is that it allows one to spend money when they really want to,” he says. In other words, earlier in retirement  —   when you’re healthy and depending on your budget  —   you might feel you can visit the grandkids more or take that Caribbean cruise, because you’ve paid for financial security later on. Annuities: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, In general, annuities can be a smart move, economists say, because the longer you live, the more you get what’s called a ”mortality credit.” That is you can benefit a lot from people who paid in and died sooner. Swensen and Takahashi would like to see more of these advanced life deferred annuity products for people  —   but, they stress, with more competitive and transparent pricing. Opacity and complexity are big problems with many kinds of annuities. ”There are variable annuities and fixed annuities and life annuities and so many different types of investments or vehicles combined with the word ’annuity,’ and it’s extraordinarily confusing,” Takahashi says. One expert we spoke to said to stay away from variable annuities  —   they’re supercomplicated and it’s easy to get a bad deal. Fixed annuities are more straightforward and easier to shop around for. JOIN NPR’S ”YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE” FACEBOOK GROUP, an online community featuring stories from some of the best investors and financial experts on the planet along with crowdsourced wisdom curated and overseen by NPR reporters and editors."
"An annuity can be a very smart retirement investment for many people. That’s not just because an annuity can provide a secure revenue stream  —   a monthly check  —   for the rest of your life, no matter how long you live. On top of that, the longer you live, the more you get what’s called a ”mortality credit” as you outlive other people who bought into the annuity. The income gain from that can be many times greater than any other secure investment you’re likely to find.  But annuities can also be overpriced, opaque, terrible products, too. So how do you figure out if an annuity is right for you? And if you think it is, how do you buy a good one that’s not an overpriced turkey with massive hidden fees?  To help explain this, we called on Kent Smetters, an economist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He’s an expert on personal finance and he’s written extensively about annuities in particular.  What is an annuity? A lifetime, or fixed, annuity pays you a constant amount of money until you die, sometimes called longevity protection. Since no one knows how long they’ll live, a fixed annuity is similar to Social Security, except most lifetime annuity payments are not indexed to inflation. Overall, it’s a very simple product. In contrast, a variable annuity is a very complicated product and, as commonly used, provides very little, if any, longevity protection. Instead, variable annuity sellers tout their tax benefits, but these benefits are often overstated and can even lead to higher taxes in some circumstances. What is a ”deferred” annuity? You can buy an annuity in two forms: an ”immediate” or ”deferred.” Both forms protect you from outliving your retirement savings. An immediate annuity means that you pay a   amount of cash, usually at retirement, and immediately start receiving annuity payments. A deferred annuity means that you pay for it, often while working, long before you start receiving annuity payments. Due to recent legal changes, you’ll soon be allowed to buy deferred annuities through 401( k) plans. The main advantage of buying annuities on a deferred basis is that you can often lock in annuity payment rates today, well before you retire, when your rates can be different. You can also buy a deferred annuity after you retire, for example, to start at age 80, after you think that you will have exhausted your other resources. If you can afford to live well without the income from the immediate annuity, you are better off with the deferred annuity because it provides greater tax benefits and increased longevity protection. How does someone figure out if an annuity makes sense? 1) For an annuity to make sense, you should ideally have saved up in excess of $500, 000 in today’s dollars for retirement. That’s because $250, 000 is the amount a couple retiring today should have ready for    medical expenses, even if they are on Medicare, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute and NetBenefits. The other $250, 000 is a cushion for other things that might come up. 2) Think about buying a fixed annuity for the rest of your money. Once you have met your $500, 000 goal, start investing in deferred annuities, especially if you are still working. If you are retired, purchase immediate annuities with the rest. 3) Base your standard consumption on the monies from the lifetime annuity plus Social Security. 4) If 3) is not enough for monthly expenses, think about reducing expenses. If not, repeat step 1) with $250, 000 as your target. Annuities seem more complicated than just buying, say, an index fund. How do you shop around and make sure you’re getting a fair deal on an annuity? In general, most people should avoid ”variable” annuities because they have high costs and their tax benefits are often overstated. But true lifetime ”fixed” annuities do make a lot of sense, if one can avoid the large commission loads. In essence, they help replace the former pension plans. Be patient and shop around. I would get quotes from several leading annuity providers: MassMutual, MetLife, New York Life, State Farm, TIAA (if you qualify). Look for a firm with an A. M. Best Company rating of at least A+ the best being A++. IncomeSolutions. com provides quotes with low commissions for some other companies. Are there other risks to consider? Most states have programs that will guarantee your annuity payments if you insurer (the company that sold you the annuity) goes bust. The insurer cannot legally discuss these programs with you, and so you must investigate your own state rules. However, I don’t have great confidence in these guarantees. Still, the risk of outliving your assets is much larger than the risk of you losing money because a major insurance company that sold you an annuity goes bankrupt. And you can reduce your risk by purchasing multiple annuity contracts across several companies. What if someone has less than $250, 000 saved up? They just can’t afford an annuity? 5) If you really can’t annuitize anything, live on Social Security plus 3 percent of your beginning assets each year (4 percent if you are quite unhealthy). For example, if a person enters retirement with $200, 000 in assets, they will need to adjust their consumption to hit Social Security plus $6, 000 per year. If they consume more money than that, they risk running out of everything but Social Security, which has its own problems. To educate people about how to save and invest more successfully, Smetters hosts a radio show, ”Your Money,” on Sirius XM which, along with his website KentOnMoney. com, he does pro bono. As part of NPR’s ”Your Money and Your Life” series, we asked Smetters for tips on finding a financial adviser."
"Everyone knew Iowa would matter  —   and New Hampshire, too. The other February contests got a lot of attention, as did Super Tuesday and the   like New York. And, yes, late in the season, you heard people saying, it might all come down to California. But when did anyone know to get excited about Indiana? It comes late in the season, with the great majority of states voting sooner and allocating the great majority of delegates, so no one seemed to give a hoot about the Hoosier State  —   the one and only primary on May 3. But it has come down to this. The months of campaigning and the millions of dollars and TV hours have brought the contest to the doorstep of the Midwest. With its mix of farmland and   industrial base, Indiana looks like the last stand for   in both the   forces of the Republican Party and the populist revolt on the left of the Democratic Party. That is because the last two weeks of events in April have combined to put   Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton so far ahead in their respective parties that only the most extraordinary events could prevent their nominations. On Tuesday night, five states voted in the East: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware. All five went big for Trump. Clinton won all but Rhode Island, several by big margins. Trump now has about 75 percent of the delegates he needs for a   win. Clinton has about 90 percent of her nominating number, including majorities of pledged delegates and superdelegates. Both could lose all the voting events that remain through June and still reach the conventions with pluralities among the delegates. The Associated Press says Trump now has 950 delegates to the 560 bound to his closest competitor, Ted Cruz. His lead is probably bigger than that because he is likely to claim most of the 54 delegates from Pennsylvania who are currently unbound. Trump picked up more than 100 delegates on Tuesday Cruz got three. Similarly, on the Democratic side, the AP shows Clinton with 1, 618 pledged delegates to 1, 267 for Bernie Sanders. In addition, she can fall back on her fantastic cushion of superdelegates, the elected and party officials who have given 519 commitments to Clinton and just 39 to Sanders, so far. It is likely the remaining superdelegates will be similarly disposed to Clinton, and the campaign will unveil their commitments at an advantageous time. Sanders pledged Tuesday night to fight on ”until the last vote is cast.” That could mean the last vote in the primaries on June 7, or it could mean the last vote at the convention in Philadelphia in late July. Either way, Sanders was no longer talking about ”a path to victory,” but rather a truly progressive platform for the party. In the meantime, he wants to keep his movement together and as robust as possible on the road to the convention. So he keeps running. To   his drive for his remaining goals, Sanders well might focus on Indiana, where he has campaigned in recent days. Distrust of Washington and Wall Street is strong along the Wabash, and distress over trade deals thrives on the shores of Lake Michigan to the north. Recent polling in the state has shown Sanders within striking distance of Clinton in Indiana, trailing by about the same margin as Cruz trails Trump. For her part, Clinton in her victory remarks Tuesday made clear her confidence in winning. But she was gracious to Sanders and moved in his direction on several issues, including the role of money in politics, adding once again that ”there is much more that unites us than divides us.” On the Republican side, though, the drive for unity has yet to begin. Both Cruz and Kasich remain in the race. Trump opponents from both the establishment and the ”movement conservative” media continue to search for other options, including means to force the nomination process beyond a first ballot. With Tuesday’s results, however, Cruz has no mathematical chance for a   victory, and Kasich’s was extinguished a month ago. To even keep his flame flickering, Cruz must overtake Trump in Indiana next week and forge a miraculous   comeback. Indiana is key for Cruz because it has many voters who identify as very conservative or evangelical, two groups with whom he has done well elsewhere. It is also the test of Cruz’s   alliance with rival Kasich. Cruz agreed not to campaign in   Oregon and New Mexico if Kasich would stay out of Indiana. Kasich acceded, although his description of the deal has cast doubt on its terms and effectiveness. At this moment, it is a popular idea among many campaign watchers that Cruz struck the deal to get Kasich out of the way in Indiana and give himself the    showdown with Trump he’s been wanting all along. Who knows? By the time Oregon and New Mexico roll around, Kasich might not even be in the race. Trump had belittled the   pact in recent days and dismissed both his rivals Tuesday night. Anointing himself the ”presumptive nominee,” he proceeded to turn his guns on Clinton. ”All she has is the woman card,” he said. ”And the thing is, women don’t like her. . .. If she were a man, I doubt she’d have more than 5 percent of the vote.” Clinton seemed to have anticipated that attack earlier in the evening, saying: ”If fighting for paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in.”"
"Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump rolled in the delegates in Tuesday night’s presidential primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. But there were some other important results in House and Senate primaries that will have bearing on the general election. Tuesday night brought the first defeat for a House incumbent this primary cycle the Democratic establishment’s favored candidates won in two Senate contests and a millionaire wine mogul’s $12. 4 million went down the drain in the most expensive House primary this year. Here’s what happened in five key races we were watching: Indicted congressman is first incumbent primary casualty  Rep. Chaka Fattah’s looming   federal indictment for racketeering, bribery, mail fraud and more was enough to end his   House career. The embattled Democrat lost his primary contest to state Rep. Dwight Evans, who had served in the Pennsylvania Legislature for nearly four decades. Even though he’s the first incumbent to fall in what’s shaping up to be an   year, exemplified by the rise of both Trump and Bernie Sanders, Fattah’s loss had more to do with the ethics cloud hanging over his head than any   sentiment. Fattah had hoped his seniority and clout in the Democratic caucus, including his spot on the plum Appropriations Committee, could save him, but in the end Evans won the   primary by nearly 8 points. ”There were forces arrayed against us tonight of very powerful and influential people,” Fattah said in his concession. Evans, who will be the favorite in the heavily Democratic, majority   Philadelphia district, had the endorsements of Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, former governor Ed Rendell and current Gov. Tom Wolf. National Democrats get their pick in Pennsylvania  In what was the most consequential result for the general election on Tuesday night, national Democratic favorite Katie McGinty won the Pennsylvania Senate primary and will face off in November against Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. It’s a top race in a key presidential battleground that could decide the balance of power in the Senate. And national Democratic groups, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and EMILY’s List, spent big to help boost McGinty, a former state environmental chief and gubernatorial chief of staff, over 2010 nominee Joe Sestak. President Obama had endorsed McGinty, and Vice President Joe Biden campaigned on her behalf on the final day of the race. The national party felt Sestak, a former congressman and retired Navy admiral, was too much of a loose cannon and generally a weaker candidate than McGinty to take on Toomey this fall. Plus, he had never mended fences from his   bid six years ago, when he defeated the   Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary. In the end, McGinty beat him by 10 points, a wider margin than most polls had projected. Race and gender can’t lift Edwards over Van Hollen in Maryland, Establishment favorite Chris Van Hollen notched a decisive victory over fellow U. S. Rep. Donna Edwards in the Maryland Democratic Senate primary, and will now be the   favorite to succeed the retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski next year. Edwards, who would have been just the second   woman to serve in the upper chamber if she had won, had leaned in to the historic nature of her candidacy. She also would have been the first black senator from the former slave state. Edwards argued that her perspective as an   single mother was badly needed in the Senate, especially at a time where race relations and tensions with law enforcement are strained across the country. EMILY’s List and other women’s groups invested heavily on her behalf in the bitter primary. But Van Hollen, who had much of the state’s political class and even many   female leaders behind him, argued that Edwards was an ineffective member of the House of Representatives and that his experience should be prized over identity politics. While Edwards did win black voters by 24 points, who made up almost half of the electorate according to Senate exit polls, it was a much smaller margin than Van Hollen had with white voters (49 points). $12. 4 million didn’t secure a victory for a wine mogul, Total Wine  More   David Trone poured an astounding $12. 4 million of his own fortune into the open Democratic House contest to succeed Van Hollen. But in the end, the risky investment was for naught, as he lost the primary to progressive favorite Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator. Raskin won by 6 points over Trone. Marriott International Inc. executive and former local TV anchor Kathleen Matthews (whose husband is MSNBC host Chris Matthews) was a close third in the suburban Maryland race. In the end, Trone spent almost $400 per vote for his losing campaign, blanketing the expensive D. C. media market with slickly produced biographical ads. But some speculated that the commercials, plus nonstop direct mail pieces, may have backfired and turned some voters off. House committee chairman survives a primary scare, Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Bill Shuster staved off a    primary challenge after questions were raised about his relationship with an airline lobbyist. Shuster’s Tea Party rival Art Halvorson had charged that the powerful chairman of the House Transportation Committee’s romantic relationship with lobbyist Shelley Rubino was a conflict of interest given his position. Shuster had argued there was no impropriety because he has implemented a rule in his office that blocked his girlfriend from lobbying him or his staff. Shuster had heavily outraised Halvorson  —   bringing in $2. 6 million to Halvorson’s $264, 000, which included $200, 000 in    —   but he still escaped with only a   win  —   just over 1, 000 votes."
"Hillary Clinton hasn’t won the nomination, yet. And Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders hasn’t technically lost. But in a statement released after the results were in, Sanders’ rhetoric took a notable turn. ”[W]e are in this race until the last vote is cast,” he said, with no mention of winning the nomination. Instead, ”[T]his campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform.” Clinton’s primary victories in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware  —   Sanders won Rhode Island  —   all but ensure her of the nomination. She tacitly acknowledged this in her victory speech in Philadelphia by spending a lot of time talking about party unity. ”I applaud Senator Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us to get unaccountable money out of our politics,” Clinton said, ”and giving greater emphasis to closing the gap of inequality and I know together we will get that done.” Her message to Sanders supporters: there’s much more that unites us than divides us. But based on social media posts many Sanders supporters aren’t yet, and may never be ready to line up behind Clinton. Just search #BernieOrBust on Twitter. Achieving Party Unity After A Bitter Contest, The Democratic Party has been here before. In 2008, it faced a similarly contentious and extended primary battle   you could argue it was more contentious   between   Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. By the end, many of Clinton’s supporters were left with hard feelings. Some even called themselves PUMAs, Party Unity My. ..you get the idea. ”I spent an enormous amount of time convincing my supporters to support [Obama],” Clinton said this week. ”And I am happy to say the vast majority did. That is what I think one does. That is certainly what I did and I hope that we will see the same this year.” Clinton  —   on the convention floor in Denver  —   even stopped the roll call vote and called on delegates to nominate Obama by acclamation. Clinton had many reasons to heal the rift. She was and is a   Democrat and didn’t want to be blamed for damaging her party’s nominee. And she had aspirations   maybe to be part of the Obama administration, perhaps to run for president again. This Time The Story Is More Complicated, Sanders has never been a registered Democrat and has long prided himself on his independent status. His convention goals are likely to be different. Sanders was asked by one of his supporters whether, if he lost the nomination, he would encourage his backers to vote for Clinton. He pointedly said it’s not up to him. ”You know we’re not a movement where I can snap my fingers and say to you or to anybody else what you should do,” Sanders said. ”’Cause you won’t listen to me. You shouldn’t. You’ll make these decisions yourself.” The decisions facing Sanders going forward may well be more challenging than Clinton’s in 2008. He’s been running against the political establishment, against what he calls a corrupt campaign finance system. It’s a system Clinton says she opposes but still operates in. So, how would Sanders then endorse the establishment candidate and not leave his supporters feeling as though he sold out? Only, he suggested, if Clinton buys in to his campaign’s message. ”It is incumbent upon Secretary Clinton to reach out, not only to my supporters but to all of the American people,” Sanders said, ”with an agenda that they believe will represent the interests of working families, lower income people, the middle class, those of us who are concerned about the environment and not just   interests.” Sanders has also said he will do everything in his power to make sure a Republican doesn’t win the race for president in 2016. Clinton’s camp is counting on a common foe to help bring the party together. Tamara Keith’s radio piece was featured in a conversation with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep Clinton supporter Neera Tanden, president and CEO of Center for American Progress and Sanders supporter Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America."
"Beyonce’s new visual album Lemonade is chock full of images begging to be unpacked, from the Yoruba face paint to the baseball bat named Hot Sauce to the brief shot of a kintsuji bowl. ”You could write a think piece on every single frame of Lemonade and it almost still wouldn’t be enough,” writes Lainey of Lainey Gossip. She’s not exaggerating. One such image arrives about 45 minutes in: For almost 40 seconds, a figure slowly circles a dining room table as she shakes and strikes a tambourine. She’s dressed    in white, decked out in feathers, intricate beadwork, and a headdress the size of a small human. This scene might seem like another example of the visual mystery that Lemonade is lush with  —   she could be a ghost, she could be delivering a blessing. But for people versed in New Orleans culture, this, like much of the imagery in the album, is familiar: the young woman circling the table is a Mardi Gras Indian. Mardi Gras Indians are groups of   referred to as ”tribes” and organized by neighborhood, who dress up and parade during Mardi Gras, St. Joseph’s Day and Super Sunday. Tradition holds that their   costumes are worn for only one season, and they can take a year or more and thousands of dollars to make. According to New Orleans Online, their costumes can weigh up to 150 pounds. (This Flickr page shows how ornate and colorful those costumes can be.) Larry Bannock, the former president of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Council, described the Mardi Gras Indians as ”the parade most white people don’t see.” The times and locations of the parades vary, so unless you’re part of the community, it’s not easy to predict when they’ll be around. When different tribes encounter each other in the streets, there’s usually some sort of power play: Years ago, they would physically fight each other, but today they participate in faux battles that include dancing and chants. There isn’t consensus on exactly where the tradition stems from. ”The tradition of masking as Indians is something that we really don’t know the answer to, because it was done a long time ago before there were records that were held,” Donald Harrison Jr. who belongs to the tribe Congo Nation, told News  Notes in 2006. Here’s what the New Orleans trivia expert Blake Pontchartrain (!) had to say: ”One common belief is that local Native American tribes sheltered runaway slaves, and the two cultures merged. Some Mardi Gras Indians claim direct Native American ancestry. Other people believe the intermingling of Native Americans with Creoles, slaves and free people of color in Congo Square brought about the merge. There are also accounts of blacks participating in the Buffalo Bill Wild West shows that traveled through major cities in the late 1800s and being influenced by the costumes. Later, Jim Crow laws barred the Mardi Gras Indian tribes from parading with mainstream Carnival krewes on Canal Street or St. Charles Avenue, so they stayed within their neighborhoods and became solidified.” The krewes that Pontchartrain refers to are modeled after royal courts, with a king, queen, duke and so on. Back in the day, people of color were excluded from those krewes, so they created their own  —   the Mardi Gras Indian tribes. I spoke to Keith Woods, NPR’s vice president of diversity and a New Orleans native, who told me that it’s still pretty uncommon to see women in Mardi Gras Indian regalia  —   which adds another dimension to Beyoncé’s choice to include a young woman in that scene. (Mardi Gras Indian tribes have traditional roles, often passed down from father to son, and the only role reserved for women is ”Queen.” For many years, that role was considered ancillary.) Some tribes do allow for gender flexibility, but the face of the Mardi Gras Indians has been overwhelmingly male. And as you might expect, there’s been some interesting discussion about what it means that a group of black Americans uses costumes, chants and language identified with Native Americans. Adrienne Keene of Native Appropriations, who writes about the way Native American iconography is used in the broader culture, has decidedly mixed feelings on the subject. ”The history of Mardi Gras Indians comes out of a history of shared oppression and marginality between the Black and Native residents,” she writes. And while she isn’t sure if Mardi Gras Indians are engaging in cultural appropriation, she says (and others agree) that they still make her uncomfortable. (Harrison, the aforementioned member of Congo Nation, said this to NPR: ”I think some Native Americans may be angry about it. But this year I have taken that and said, you know what, I am going to rename my group. So we are an   tribe of New Orleans. ”) Race continues to inform Mardi Gras traditions more broadly. At the end of the yearly parade, the white krewes and the black tribes split off in different directions to continue their revelry. Sometimes they even take entirely separate routes. Beyoncé’s decision to feature a young, female Mardi Gras Indian in Lemonade serves several purposes. It’s a   to her family’s Louisiana heritage and another example of her centering black women throughout the video. The costumed young woman later briefly reappears in a segment in which the female relatives of black men who were killed by police  —   Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Leslie McSpadden, the mother of Mike Brown  —   are holding photos of their slain loved ones the Mardi Gras Indian is holding an old    photo of her own. Her expression during both appearances is solemn, and we know that she has her own story that we only get a glimpse of. Like so much of Lemonade, the Mardi Gras Indian’s appearance is a nod to inheritances, both political and personal, of womanhood and heritage and history and race."
"So now we know who Beyonce’s favorite poet is:      Warsan Shire. Shire’s poetry was heard ’round the world last Saturday in Lemonade, Beyonce’s latest album, dropped on HBO in the form of a   special  —   a sweeping series of songs and videos that look at romance, rage and redemption. Between the glossy cinematography and, of course, the music, Queen Bey recited excerpts of Shire’s works, launching the artist into the global spotlight: ”you can’t make homes out of human beingssomeone should have already told you thatand if he wants to leavethen let him leave” Shire doesn’t just write about love, loss and infidelity. The poet also muses on many of the issues we cover on Goats and Soda: violence against women (”To my daughter I will say   ’when the men come, set yourself on fire’ ”) refugees (”You have to understand   that no one puts their children in a boat   unless the water is safer than land”) war and the African diaspora. Here are five key facts about Warsan Shire: 1. Shire has deep ties to both Africa and the U. K. She was born to Somali parents in Kenya and moved to England with her family when she was a year old. She grew up in the multicultural borough of Brent in London. Her poetry reflects her roots, covering immigration, womanhood, identity and a life she’s never lived in Somalia, which she visited for the first time just a few years ago. ”Anyone I was introduced to would point to the ground and say ’dhulkaan waa dhulkaaga’: this land is your land,” she said in an interview with the blog Araweelo Abroad in 2015. 2. She’s a laureate, recognized both at home and abroad. In 2014, she became London’s first young poet laureate and had a ”residency” at the Houses of Parliament. That’s not her only honor. In 2013, she won the Brunel African Poetry Prize. ”East African people were really proud of it, Somali people were really proud of it, and neighboring countries  —   like Ethiopia  —   they were really proud of it! It brings people to you,” she said of the award in 2013. And last year, The New Yorker profiled her. 3. Friends and family are her inspiration. ”My relatives and my friends and my mother’s friends have experienced things that you can’t imagine,” she said in a 2013 interview with the blog Africa In Words. ”You don’t know what they’ve been victims of, or what they’ve done to other people.” And they count on Shire to share their experiences. ”They’ll tell me, ’I have a new story for you,’ and I’ll get my Dictaphone and record it, so I can stay as true as possible to the story before I make it into a poem,” she said. 4. She loves Somali proverbs. The title of her first published collection of poetry, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth  —   some of which was read by Beyonce in ”Lemonade”  —   is the English translation of a Somali proverb. ”My mother literally learnt how to mother, how to sacrifice, how to grow up, how to be alone, through me,” said Shire of the title in a 2012 interview. 5. When modern tragedies strike, her poetry offers solace. Her poem ”What They Did Yesterday Afternoon” was shared widely across blogs and social media in the aftermath of the Paris attacks in November 2015: ”later that night   I held an atlas in my lap   Ran my fingers across the whole world   And whispered   Where does it hurt?   It answered   everywhere   everywhere   everywhere.” And what does she think of her poetry playing a part in ”Lemonade”? Just yesterday, she broke her silence on Twitter, tweeting a link to the album along with this message: ”yosra i hope you’re proud of us.” Yosra   was a friend and Beyonce’s tour photographer she passed away from cancer in 2014. Shire is slated to publish a new poetry collection, Extreme Girlhood, this fall."
"In the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains of Colombia, Marcia Wiley, a glass artist from Seattle, is introducing her    son, North, to  . ”OK, just look for something red,” she says. ”That’s hard to do,” North says. But not for long. ”There’s a quetzal on that branch,” Wiley says, spotting a bird with   breast plumage. ”Oh, I get it!” North exclaims. ”Did you see it?” Ecological diversity makes Colombia a wonderland for birds. Besides the   Sierra Nevada, which rises up from the Caribbean coast, the country features three Andean mountain ranges, plus Amazon jungle. It’s also the South American gateway for birds migrating from North America. All told, Colombia is home to some 1, 900 bird species, more than any other country. They include 147 different types of hummingbirds. Many can be seen at El Dorado, a privately run bird sanctuary in the Sierra Nevada. Until recently, conflict made Colombia a   zone. But the government expects to sign a peace treaty this year to end a    guerrilla war. As Colombia becomes safer, former war zones are opening up to tourism  —   and some of the most enthusiastic visitors are   like Wiley. ”They’re right there,” she says, counting off the birds at El Dorado. ”The green ones. The blue ones. The purple ones. The brown ones. The   ones. The   ones. Yeah. They’re fabulous.” In the 1990s and 2000s, this countryside teemed with Marxist guerrillas, army troops and paramilitary death squads. Thousands of civilians were killed. Many more, like Loraida Pavon, the wife of a peasant farmer in the Sierra Nevada, were forced off their land. ”It became a war zone,” she says. ”I packed my clothes and my three children and left everything else behind.” Now, security has improved. Pavon has returned to these mountains, finding work cleaning tourist cabins at the El Dorado reserve. It receives a constant stream of foreign  . These visits are possible because the fighting has largely ended. At peace talks in Cuba, the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas are putting the finishing touches on a treaty that, if signed, will require the rebels to disarm. That was enough to convince Bob Burnett of Austin, Texas, to join a recent   tour of Colombia. ”Things have changed a lot in the last 15 years,” he says. ”And it’s a lot safer than people realize.” At dawn, as Wiley hits the mountain trails, parakeets soar overhead. Through her binoculars, she spies    oropendolas, whose woven nests droop down from the tree branches. Antbirds, thrushes, warblers and tanagers flutter about. ”Wow. Hello, handsome,” she says as a bird with a striped head flits past. ”You could get lost in this and kind of go into your own world,” Wiley says. ”And meanwhile, you know, a blue morpho butterfly flies by you, and you’re attacked by hummingbirds. And all of a sudden, you are in this world between what’s real and what’s not real. Things like this don’t happen in Seattle.”"
"A new picture of Manuel Santos appeared on Facebook yesterday, taken shortly after he’d learned that a Thai court ruled that his husband, Gordon ”Bud” Lake III  —   their daughter Carmen’s biological father  —   was the baby’s sole legal guardian. It’s a joyous picture of Santos, all smiles, flashing a    sign as he jumps in the air. He is wearing a   with the words ”Finally, love won. Thank you, Thailand. @twogaypapas #bringcarmenhome.” Tuesday’s ruling in Thailand’s Family and Juvenile Court means that Santos and Lake may soon be going home to Spain with their    daughter, Carmen, and Alvaro, their    son. It’s the latest in a legal battle that started last fall, when the Thai surrogate who carried Carmen (who was conceived with an egg from a donor) decided she wanted to keep the baby, after learning Santos and Lake are gay. The Thai surrogate, Patidta Kusongsaang, still has the right to appeal. She was not in court yesterday, and there’s been no word so far from her or her lawyer in reaction to the court’s decision. For now, this seems to put an end to what Santos calls the couple’s ”nightmare” after Kusongsaang decided she wanted to keep the baby. She told NPR last year that she’d made this decision after she learned Lake and Santos were ”not a normal family.” Though the legally married couple had custody of Carmen, they couldn’t leave Thailand with her if Kusongsaang wouldn’t sign the paperwork allowing them to do so. So they stayed while the case wound its way through the Thai judicial system. They were afraid, Lake told NPR last July, because Thailand doesn’t recognize   marriages and it outlawed commercial surrogacy shortly after Carmen was born. When the couple approached lawyers about fighting for their baby in court, Lake said last year, he was told their chances of winning were less than 10 percent. ”The reason they gave us such a low percentage is because, despite the fact there are temporary provisions in the new law just published that say . .. parents can ask for their parental rights to be recognized in court, unfortunately, it’s worded as ’husband and wife,’ ” Lake explained to NPR last year. He suspected the law was written to exclude gay couples. And he seemed to be onto something. ”Thai law does not endorse   pair. And [under] Thai law, a legal couple is husband and wife, man and woman,” said Dr. Arkom Pradidsuwan of the Thai Medical Council in the Ministry of Public Health. Carmen’s legal status, Arkom said, was simple: She was the surrogate’s baby. On Tuesday, the court disagreed. ”There is no way to express with words what we are feeling! We are crying, our family is crying, our friends are crying, and we are sure all the Thai people who showed their love for us during this time are crying too. ..today is a huge day for love, for family and for truth. And it is also a big day for LGBT rights,” the couple posted Tuesday in Thai and English on Facebook. Their page, called ”Bringcarmenhome,” has more than 131, 000 likes. The overwhelming majority of those who posted in Thai since the ruling were celebrating along with the couple, and looking forward to the day Carmen can leave the country legally. There has been little public support for Kusongsaang, the surrogate. Carmen’s fathers have promised they will return someday to Thailand. Both have professed a love for the country that has been their accidental home for the past    . Last summer, Santos vowed they would never leave Thailand without Carmen. ”No, no, no,” he said then. ”Because she’s our daughter. By heart and genetically. If we have to move here and leave our families and work, we will do. But we will not leave Carmen. Because [she] is not her daughter [she] is our daughter.” The family will not be able to leave Thailand immediately since the surrogate still has the right to appeal. So far, there is no word on whether that will happen."
"Real estate heir and suspected serial killer Robert Durst will spend seven years and a month in prison after he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. U. S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt approved the plea deal on Wednesday. Durst came to that agreement in February shortly after he seemingly admitted to murder in an HBO documentary. And as the   has reported: ”Durst has waived extradition to Los Angeles to stand trial for the 2000 murder of his friend Susan Berman. Durst is suspected of killing her because he feared Berman could connect him to the disappearance of his first wife in 1982. ”Durst’s longtime lawyer  —   who successfully defended Durst in 2003 after his client admitted killing and dismembering a neighbor in    —   says the California case will be challenging.” The Associated Press writes: ”Ten years and a $250, 000 fine would have been the maximum sentence that Durst could have faced for illegally carrying a .  revolver after being convicted of a felony. . .. ”His attorneys have said repeatedly that he is innocent, does not know who killed Berman, and wants to prove it. They filed a motion Monday, asking Engelhardt to recommend that Durst serve his time at Terminal Island, California, about 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The location is near the trial venue and has medical facilities Durst needs because of his ’advanced age and serious health considerations, including mobility challenges. ’”"
"Venezuela is shortening the workweek for public sector workers to just Monday and Tuesday, in an effort to save power as a drought pushes the water level to new lows at the country’s main hydroelectric dam. President Nicolas Maduro announced the change in his weekly television address, adding that the shortened workweek would last ”at least two weeks,” Reuters reported. Maduro ”said the water level behind the nation’s largest dam has fallen to near its minimum operating level thanks to a severe drought,” The Associated Press reported. He blamed the El Niño weather pattern, and said conditions ”would return to normal when it started raining again,” the BBC reports. According to the wire service, experts have also blamed a ”lack of planning and maintenance.” Venezuela’s 2. 8 million government workers were already on a truncated schedule in an effort to save power. Earlier this month, the country declared it would give public sector workers Fridays off for several months, as the   has reported. The latest announcement also comes less than a week after the government said it would be shutting off power for four hours daily. According to Reuters, the new measure won’t include workers ”in sensitive sectors such as food.” Critics say the move will make little difference because of the power that government workers will use from their homes. ”Maduro says that ’we in government don’t stop working for a second’. Of course. Except for Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays!” satirized Leonardo Padron, a columnist for   El Nacional newspaper, via Twitter,” Reuters reports. The electricity crisis is just one of a slew of challenges facing   Venezuela, whose economy has been hit hard by the drop in global oil prices. As the Financial Times reports, ”The power crisis merely adds to the woes of ordinary Venezuelans already suffering shortages of basic foodstuffs as the fall in oil prices hits government revenues, resulting in lower imports of sugar, flour and eggs.” In fact, The Associated Press says that many government workers have been using their Fridays off to wait in lines for staple goods."
"One evening in November 2014, Aissatou Sanogo’s husband came to tell her some startling news. ”Aissatou,” he said, ”I’m leaving for Europe”  —   that very night. He earned a modest salary as a bakery deliveryman in Senegal but had dreams of making far more for his family in a European country. ”I told my husband I didn’t want him to leave Senegal and that the little money he brought home was enough for us to live on,” says Sanogo. ”But he got angry with me saying I wanted him to stay close to me. I was crying, but I let him go.” He said reaching Europe was the only way he could properly provide for his family and earn enough to look after his sick father. That was the last time Sanogo saw her husband. It has been a year since he drowned crossing the Mediterranean. He’s one of probably hundreds of African migrants who’ve drowned on the journey from Africa to Europe. And the numbers keep mounting. In just the past week, there were reports of dozens more drownings. That means more African women have likely joined Sanogo in the growing ranks of migrant widows. Aissatou Sanogo is 29 and lives in Tambacounda, the main city in eastern Senegal, a region at the epicenter of the migrant exodus from this stable and democratic  —   though poor  —   west African nation. We met at the modest home she shares with her ailing    and the three children she bore during 10 happy years of marriage to Souleymane Diaby, who was 33 when he died. Diaby was one of many young men from eastern Senegal who’ve begun the treacherous   odyssey to Europe. He traveled first to neighboring Mali and on to Niger, then across the Sahara Desert en route to the last stop on land, Libya, where he spent several difficult months. Migrants often have their money stolen and get thrown into jail. And they must run the gantlet of traffickers to find passage for the crossing to Europe.  They spoke on the phone several times, late at night, says Sanogo. Then, in April last year, her husband called to say he was boarding a boat that was smuggling migrants to Italy. She ended that long conversation saying she needed to recharge her cellphone. That was the last she heard from her husband. Sanogo has shared her story calmly so far, but at this point the young widow breaks down, weeping quietly. The boat carrying her husband capsized the next day, and he perished in the Mediterranean. She learned about the accident while she was watching the news on TV on April 19, 2015. She cried because of the tragedy, but says, ”I didn’t think for a moment that my husband was on the boat.” Some days later, the Red Cross informed Souleymane Diaby’s family that he was one of the drowning victims  —   that, as some Senegalese put it, Souleymane ”remained in the water.” ”They never found his body,” she says. ”That makes it harder, because you don’t see the body of the man you loved. It made it even harder, but we have to accept God’s will.” We’re sitting on a   bed, and Sanogo stands up to adjust a whirring fan to cool her youngest child,    Alioune. The toddler is sprawled on the floor sleeping in the bedroom where we’re talking. Sanogo’s eldest, Issa, who’s 7  —   a boy with a strikingly steady gaze and a mournful air about him  —   is outside with his playful younger sister,    Binetou. Their father’s father, who appears to have had a stroke, lies immobile on a bed on the veranda. Aissatou Sanogo and the many other young widows in this part of Senegal are now coping with the reality of life without their husbands, the breadwinners. But there’s no official assistance or coordination to bring these women together, says Sanogo. The main focus of nonprofit organizations is helping to resettle returnees  —   those who have been deported from Europe and repatriated to Senegal  —   and to try to stop them from migrating again illegally and to stop   as well. Sory Kaba, a senior official at Senegal’s emigration ministry, told NPR by phone the authorities have difficulty even identifying such widows. ”It’s hard to find these widows, because they hide and keep themselves to themselves,” Kaba says. ”Can you give me names and numbers?” he responds when told that journalists visiting the region easily managed to find half a dozen widows. ”If we can find them, then we can link these women up with the social and protection services that can help them and their children,” says Kaba.   miles away from Tambacounda city, where Sanogo lives, is the rural village of Dyabougou, near Missirah. Giant shade trees dominate the   and earthen huts. Outside a hut that is her father’s grocery shop, Batourou Cisse is on a bench, breastfeeding her son, Sory. He’s 2. Sarta, her    daughter, sits close by. With a look of permanent bewilderment, Cisse relates a sorrowful tale similar to Aissatou Sanogo’s. Cisse’s husband, Mahamadou Sylla, a farmer, also perished at sea, trying to reach Europe in search of a better life for his family. Cisse, too, expresses a wish to discuss her troubles with other women suffering the same fate but says she wouldn’t know where to start. No official or nongovernmental group has been in touch to find out what she’s going through. That’s nothing new, says Kadiatou Cisse, no relation. This sickly    woman lives in a crumbling compound home with her son, two    and five grandchildren, in Balla village. It’s also in the Tambacounda area, a regional crossroads that historically has been a springboard for migration from Senegal. Cisse says women just have to cope and find a way to feed the family. Her husband emigrated decades ago, when she was pregnant with their last son. She struggled on her own to raise four children, while he sent home remittances when he could. He was deported  —   she’s not sure from where  —   and ended up in Cameroon, where Cisse says he settled and started a new family. She did not use the word ”abandoned,” but her rheumy eyes were full of pain. She says the bug to migrate has infected their children. Dates are hazy, but her eldest son left for Europe as an undocumented migrant and now lives in Spain with his wife and children and is sending money home to his sick mother. Her youngest son tried to get to Italy more than a year ago but was deported from Libya. Cisse says young people are under pressure to leave from family and society, as well as a sense of pride and desperation to prove themselves and succeed. But she is no fan of migration. ”In my view, it’s just not worth it, no it’s really not worth it,” she says. ”Illegal migration is no good. We’re full of regrets. Even young women want to leave now. It’s like gangrene, like a cancer among young people.” Back in Tambacounda, fiddling fondly with a treasured photograph of herself and her husband smiling in happier times, Aissatou Sanogo makes this vow: ”I failed to stop my husband leaving Senegal, but the only way any of my children will ever travel to Europe is armed with a plane ticket and valid papers, certainly not by boat.”"
"You probably know it’s against the law in most states to text and drive  ” but studies suggest that many of us still peek at our smartphones when we’re behind the wheel. This habit, however, contributes to distracted driving. According to the U. S. Department of Transportation, 3, 179 people were killed in car crashes involving a distracted driver in 2014. New York is considering a law that would go beyond what any other state has done to allow police to examine drivers’ phones after a crash to determine whether the driver was texting at the time of the incident. Will Law Enforcement Check Phone Records After A Crash? The man behind this idea is Ben Lieberman. His    son, Evan, died after a car crash in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City, in 2011. ”The driver of the car my son was in drifted over the yellow line and collided head on with an oncoming car,” Lieberman says. Evan Lieberman was in the back seat, wearing a seat belt. He suffered massive internal injuries and died a month later. Lieberman figured the police would investigate and look at the driver’s cellphone. He was surprised when they didn’t. ”The driver said he fell asleep at the wheel,” Lieberman says. ”But when I finally got the cellphone records six agonizing months later, I saw texting throughout the drive and near the collision.” Lieberman eventually got the driver’s phone records himself, but he had to file a civil lawsuit to do it. ”There’s a huge misunderstanding out there that police will look at phones at a crash, or that they subpoena the phone records afterwards,” Lieberman says. ”Those are both very huge misconceptions.” Law enforcement can subpoena records from the phone company or ask a judge for a warrant to search the phone itself. Sometimes, police and prosecutors will do that, especially for a major crash with fatalities. But they don’t always do it because it takes a lot of money and time for cases that can be hard to prove. ”Oftentimes, drivers aren’t willing to admit that they were texting on their cellphone or they were distracted by some other source,” says Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. ”It’s just underreported.” Police accident reports say distraction is a factor in less than 20 percent of crashes. But Dingus thinks the real number is much higher. When researchers at Virginia Tech put cameras in cars, they found that distracted drivers account for almost 70 percent of crashes. ”They’re looking at a cellphone, they’re talking on a   phone, they’re tuning a radio.” Dingus says. ”All of those things.” How To Know Whether The Driver Was Driving And Texting? Nearly all states have made it illegal to text and drive. Some, like Utah, Illinois and New Jersey, impose big fines on drivers who get caught. But enforcement of those laws can be difficult. In New York, Lieberman is proposing something that’s never been tried before. He wants to build an electronic device that could plug right into a cellphone and tell police whether it was in use at the time of the crash. Lieberman insists it would be designed not to look at sensitive information such as personal communications. The device is called the ”textalyzer.” Think Breathalyzer, but for text messages and other electronic distractions. ”You know, it’s not gonna have any embarrassing conversations, any embarrassing pictures. It’s just gonna show text in, text out,” Lieberman says. ”I don’t think that you have to surrender all your privacy rights to get this right.” He has been talking to the company Cellebrite about actually building the textalyzer. An accompanying bill has been introduced in the New York Legislature. But civil liberties advocates have big concerns. ”There are so many ways in which somebody could be using the phone in a car that is not a violation of any laws,” says Mariko Hirose, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union. For example, the driver might be looking at a map, pulling over to the side of the road to send a text or using   software. That’s not Hirose’s only concern. ”This bill is simply providing a way for law enforcement to get around the privacy protections that apply to a cellphone,” Hirose says. But Dingus says the textalyzer is worth a try. ”You’re putting other people at risk when you drive and text, or drive and check stocks,” Dingus says. ”It’s not just your privacy you’re putting other people at risk.” Maybe the threat of getting caught will help persuade more drivers to put down their phones."
"I could walk by Peter Frampton on the street and not recognize him. His long blond hair, which shines like a halo on his album Frampton Comes Alive! may be gone, but as soon as he sat behind the Tiny Desk and began singing, 1976 came rushing back. I worked in a record store the year Frampton Comes Alive! came out, and it was one of those records that seemed to have universal appeal. We sold a ton of copies of that double live album and I can still remember the label and number (AM 3703) from having written it on countless sales tickets. Forty years later, on the new album Acoustic Classics, Peter Frampton has taken those electric guitar songs, some linked forever to that unmistakable talk box effect, and stripped them down to their essence, just a few acoustic guitars and his voice. At the Tiny Desk, played by Peter and guitarist Gordon Kennedy, these songs still thrill. We had a lot of coworkers and friends come watch Frampton come alive again. It was electrifying to hear a room full of people spontaneously burst out singing on the chorus of ”Baby, I Love Your Way” especially when many of those singing weren’t alive when that song came out. Songwriters could spend their lives hoping to write a song that connects for the ages, but Peter Frampton told the NPR crowd that two of his biggest hits came to him on a beach on the same day. The notion that one day the magic is there and the next it’s gone could haunt a songwriter, but not Peter Frampton. On this day I saw one of the happiest musicians walk into our building, a man filled with joy, eager to share his tunes he’s sung over and over for much of his adult life, with a fresh attitude. It was enchanting. Acoustic Classics is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Set List, Credits, Producers: Bob Boilen, Niki Walker Audio Engineers: Kevin Wait, Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Brandon  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"The   hospital in Aleppo, Syria, is the latest health care facility to get blown apart. The   hospital was tucked into the lower floors of a   building in the Sukkari neighborhood of Aleppo. Sandbags blocked the windows and fortified the entrance. Concrete apartment buildings pressed on either side of it. Late Wednesday night, witnesses say, a   fighter jet unleashed a missile that smashed directly into the hospital. The airstrike killed at least 27 people, including Dr. Mohammed Wassim Moaz, a pediatrician who continued to work in Aleppo even as the Syrian civil war raged around him. The hospital’s location is   in Aleppo. And that’s why some observers are charging that the attack is part of a recent and disturbing trend. ”Over the last several years direct, targeted attacks on health care institutions that are clearly civilian facilities have escalated greatly,” says Dr. Michael Van Rooyen, an emergency physician and the director of Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, ”and Syria’s been the most notable and notorious example.” Van Rooyen has just come out with a book called The World’s Emergency Room: The Growing Threat to Doctors, Nurses, and Humanitarian Workers. He says it’s a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions to launch airstrikes on medical facilities. These attacks have made providing medical care in conflict zones incredibly dangerous, especially in Syria, he adds. ”Increasingly [clinics] are forced literally underground,” he says. ”The only way these surgeons can work is in basements of hospitals, not normal facilities, bunkers practically, which is really restrictive and really difficult.” Sam Taylor, spokesman for Doctors Without Borders in Amman, Jordan, says   was a   hospital with an emergency room and an   pediatric ward. ”What this [attack] means in very practical terms is that one of the main facilities for women to give birth and children to receive treatment has now been destroyed,” he says. MSF, as the group is also known, runs six medical facilities inside the country and helps support 150 others with supplies and salaries for local staff.   was one of them. Taylor says of the clinics and hospitals his charity is working with in Syria, seven have been hit since January. ”This year alone in 2016,” he stressed, ”seven structures have been hit.” And it’s not just in Syria that field hospitals and medical aid workers are being attacked. Over the past six months, four MSF facilities in Yemen were hit by airstrikes. In October of last year an American gunship mistook an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, for a Taliban compound and pounded it for nearly half an hour. The airstrike killed 42 people. The year before, medical facilities were attacked in war zones around the world including in Ukraine, Colombia, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Iraq, to name a few. Van Rooyen says 20 years ago humanitarian groups were viewed as impartial and enjoyed a certain level of protection in most of the places they worked. He says that’s no longer the case  —   a dangerous shift not only for health care workers but for the local community. Conditions are so dangerous in some places that health care workers can’t work at all. This, he says, can have even a greater impact than the loss of a single hospital. ”Populations no longer have access to public health,” Van Rooyen says. ”They no longer have access to childhood vaccinations, and they can’t get their kids treated for pneumonia and diarrhea. It’s the deprivation of basic health resources that disproportionately kill children and block women from having safe pregnancies. Elders can’t get medications.” While no one’s taken responsibility for the airstrike, the only two groups with aircraft in the area are the Syrian regime and the Russians."
"As summer approaches, anxiety about Zika is growing in Gulf Coast states like Florida and Texas. The virus hasn’t spread to mosquitoes in the region, and it may not, but experts are preparing nonetheless. And because Zika can cause birth defects in newborns, many women  —   and their doctors  —   are nervous. In the waiting room of the fertility clinic Houston IVF, patients are handed a map of   countries, and asked to fill out a questionnaire. ”The first thing I’m discussing now is Zika,” says Dr. Jamie Nodler. He says at least a few couples he’s spoken with at the clinic have had to delay starting fertility treatment because the woman or her partner may have already been exposed to the virus while traveling to Central or South America. ”Especially in Houston, a lot of our patients and families are in the oil and gas industry,” Nodler says. ”These aren’t people who are traveling to Mexico and Puerto Rico for fun or vacation. These are people who have to work in some of these offshore drilling areas.” Nodler is even advising patients who haven’t been to regions where Zika is prevalent to slather on repellent  —   just in case the virus is already in some mosquitoes along the Gulf Coast but we don’t know it yet. ”No one wants to see an affected child,” he says. Nodler says couples will need to work together to manage their Zika risk. If his partner is already pregnant, a man should use condoms to avoid sexually transmitting the virus. All over the city, parents and   parents have been absorbing the international news about Zika. ”They’ve been saying Zika is coming to Houston they don’t know when,” says Annie Tursi. She’s 35 and owns four hair salons. Her husband is a consultant. Tursi says they were going to try for a third baby in 2016, but have decided to watch and wait, instead, to see whether Houston has a Zika outbreak. ”I think we’re really blessed to have two healthy boys,” she says. ”And if it does come this summer and it is a risk, then I probably just won’t even try for another one.” Between their jobs and the toddler and the baby, there’s no way she can simply hunker inside all summer to avoid mosquitoes, Tursi says. ”Right now there are just so many unknowns. And I think by the time they have a vaccine and know more, we’ll be done” with having children, she says, chuckling. ”We’ll be out of diapers and we’ll be done.” Another Houston mom, Tracy Smith, couldn’t make that choice. She was already pregnant with twins when she heard about Zika. At a recent checkup, Smith’s doctor told her she should still take some precautions, even though she’s now into her second trimester. ”She said it’s something to be concerned about your whole pregnancy,” recalls Smith. ”You need to be in long sleeves, and long pants  —   wearing DEET.” Smith was shocked to be advised to use the powerful  . ”My first thought was, ’I’m pregnant! I’m not going to put DEET all over myself!’ ” Smith says. ”But I guess that’s what we do this summer.” She’s now wondering if she and her two other kids should move to her parents’ house for the summer  —   over in a less buggy part of Houston. ”The probability is low” that she’ll contract Zika, Smith figures. ”But the potential impact is so great  —   and those are the kinds of threats that can be scary and are, disproportionately, sort of taking up space in my brain.” Health officials say because U. S. cities have a lot of enclosed public spaces and residences with air conditioning or screens, most people are generally better shielded from mosquitoes than in some other countries. And Houston officials are already stepping up mosquito abatement efforts to further reduce the risk of   illnesses. These are the same mosquitoes that can carry chikungunya and dengue viruses, federal health officials point out. And recent outbreaks of those illnesses on the U. S. mainland have been very small. Nonetheless, doctors in Houston have already opened a special clinic where women who have traveled to countries where the Zika virus is actively spreading can get blood tests and counseling. A second clinic will open this summer. Dr. Kjersti Aagaard, an   and professor at Baylor College of Medicine, says doctors are offering those clinic patients an ultrasound exam 15 weeks into their pregnancy. ”We’ve actually developed a protocol around looking for very special views of the fetal brain and the eyes to look at for any evidence of fetal malformation with Zika,” she says. Aagaard says she reminds her patients that Zika is just one of many possible risks during pregnancy  —   and risks can be managed, whether that’s through prenatal vitamins, genetic screening, or, in the case of Zika, window screens and bug spray. Still, Zika is tough to talk about, she says, because research on the virus’s effects on a pregnancy is still limited. ”As much as we wish we could give them a set of very clear facts around, ’This is your risk this is the time in pregnancy you’re at highest risk’ or ’This is the time prior to planning a pregnancy you’re at highest risk,’ we simply don’t have that information,” Aagaard says. ”We don’t know.” Despite the unknowns, doctors in Houston aren’t advising people to avoid pregnancy. What they are telling them is that they need to add mosquito bites to the list of cares and calculations that surround any pregnancy. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Houston Public Media and Kaiser Health News."
"At first glance, real estate agent Theresa Mondale’s listings don’t sound too different from those of other agents trying to sell a piece of Montana paradise: 270 acres at the base of the Bitterroot Mountains completely surrounded by U. S. Forest Service land, stands of old growth fir and cedar trees, a spring with pure water. Only when you read on do you discover this isn’t your average vacation cabin. One listing boasts of a modified bunker with a ”very secure” iron locking door on the property and a root cellar that could be turned into an alternative living situation. Another one mentions a yard with space to land a helicopter ”if the need is there.” Welcome to the world of sustainable, survivalist real estate. There’s a growing market for this kind of   property. Mondale figures over the past six to eight years, sales of these survivalist properties have risen by 50 percent. ”It seems like over the past few years, there’s just this need, I don’t want to say panic or frantic, but people feeling the need to be able to have someplace to go,” Mondale says. A lot of Mondale’s clients are worried about some pretty heavy things, and they’re looking for places that are advertised as defendable. ”Whether it’s the fiat money system finally coming down, societal collapse, global warming causing flooding,” Mondale says. She’s heard pretty much every reason, and she doesn’t question her clients. She’s just here to help them find the right fit. Despite the remoteness of these homes, they’re not backwoods shacks with sagging metal roofs. Some of her listings sell for more than $1 million if there’s a lot of land and if water rights are included. The one with the helicopter pad is a spiffy,   log home with a wraparound porch. It has solar panels and inside, a backup generator, luxury bathrooms and a kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. ”Just because you’re   or being sustainable doesn’t mean you have to be looking like the old hick miner,” she says, laughing, ”with grass on your roof or whatever. You can do anything.” In the 1990s, the remote Montana mountains developed a reputation as an enclave for Y2K worriers, doomsday cults and the Unabomber. The state still gets made fun of a lot. Mondale is sensitive to this. One of her current listings was previously owned by one of those doomsday cults, but, she says, what’s going on today is different. People want to be more   less dependent on the outside, grow their own food, that kind of thing. ”These are not crazy people,” she says. Mondale and her husband don’t just sell this lifestyle. They live it, too. They consider themselves ”preppers.” Inside one of their garages is 1, 200 pounds of meat they either raised or hunted. There are canned beets from their garden, tomatoes, zucchini and garlic. They even make their own garlic powder. Tim Mondale is a general contractor who builds bunkers and secret rooms for these types of properties. ”We still work, we have normal jobs, and we save our money but we just protect ourselves differently than a lot of people that live in the big cities,” he says. But don’t bother asking him to see one of their hidden rooms. ”Looking at somebody’s secret cache room, their bunker, their hideaway places throughout their house, people will not show you that,” he says. ”I mean, close family doesn’t see that stuff until it’s time.” The Mondales just bought an   spread of their own in the mountains northwest of Missoula. There’s a stream, plenty of space for a garden and most important, they say, the neighbors won’t even know they live there."
"In his lab at George Mason University in Virginia, Sean Luke has all kinds of robots: big ones with wheels medium ones that look like humans. And then he has a couple of dozen that look like small, metal boxes. He and his team at the Autonomous Robotics Lab are training those little ones to work together without the help of a human. In the future, Luke and his team hope those little robots can work like ants  —   in teams of hundreds, for example, to build houses, or help search for survivors after a disaster. ”These things are changing very rapidly and they’re changing much faster than we sort of expected them to be changing recently,” Luke says. New algorithms and huge new databases are allowing robots to navigate complex spaces, and artificial intelligence just achieved a victory few thought would ever happen: A computer made by Google beat a professional human in a match of Go. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure a future in which a swarm of those robots are used on a battlefield. And if that sounds like science fiction, it’s not. Earlier this month representatives from more than 82 countries gathered in Geneva to consider the repercussions of that kind of development. In the end, they emerged with a recommendation: The key U. N. body that sets norms for weapons of war should put killer robots on its agenda. A ’Moral Threshold’ Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic added to the urgency of the meeting by issuing a report calling for a complete ban on autonomous killer robots. Bonnie Docherty, who teaches at Harvard Law School and was the lead author of the report, says the technology must be stopped before humanity crosses what she calls a ”moral threshold.” ”[Lethal autonomous robots] have been called the third revolution of warfare after gunpowder and nuclear weapons,” she says. ”They would completely alter the way wars are fought in ways we probably can’t even imagine.” Docherty says killer robots could start an arms race and also obscure who is held responsible for war crimes. But above all, she says, there is the issue of basic human rights. ”It would undermine human dignity to be killed by a machine that can’t understand the value of human life,” she says. Paul Scharre, who runs a program on ethical autonomy at the Center for a New American Security and was also in Geneva for the talks, says that it’s pretty clear that nobody wants ”Cylons and Terminators.” In truth, he says, the issue of killer robots is more complicated in reality than it is in science fiction. Take, for example, the     missile Lockheed Martin is developing for the U. S. military. The LRASM can lose contact with its human minders yet still scour the sea with its sensors, pick a target and slam into it. ”It sounds simple to say things like: ’Machines should not make    decisions.’ But what does it mean to make a decision?” Scharre asks. ”Is my Roomba making a decision when it bounces off the couch and wanders around? Is a land mine making a decision? Does a torpedo make a decision?” ’Meaningful Human Control’ Scharre helped write U. S. policy on killer robots and he likes where things ended up. Department of Defense Directive 3000. 09 requires a   Defense official to approve unusual uses of autonomous technology and also calls for those systems to always keep ”appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.” Proponents of a ban say that policy leaves too much wiggle room. They advocate that all military weapons maintain ”meaningful human control.” Georgia Tech’s Ron Arkin, who is one of the country’s leading roboethicists, says hashing out that distinction is important but the potential benefits of killer robots should not be overlooked. ”They can assume far more risk on behalf of a noncombatant than any human being in their right mind would,” he says. ”They can potentially have better sensors to cut through the fog of war. They can be designed without emotion  —   such as anger, fear, frustration  —   which causes human beings, unfortunately, to err.” Arkin says robots could become a new kind of   weapon. They could be sent into an urban environment, for example, to take out snipers. He says that’s probably far into the future, but what he knows right now is that too many innocent people are still being killed in war. ”We need to do something about that,” he says. ”And technology affords one way to do that and we should not let science fiction cloud our judgment in terms of moving forward.” Arkin says one day killer robots could be so precise that it might become inhumane not to use them. The next meeting in Geneva is set for December, when a U. N. group will decide whether to formally start developing new international law governing killer robots. Since the last meeting, 14 countries have joined in calling for a total ban."
"It’s been a good week for employees of Chobani. They learned that they could eventually own about 10 percent of the rapidly expanding Greek yogurt company. That could potentially make millionaires of some workers, if the privately held company is sold or goes public. It’s a grand gesture, and reflects a rising trend in employee ownership. Chobani’s meteoric rise began in a defunct old Kraft yogurt manufacturing plant in upstate New York. Founder Hamdi Ulukaya’s only experience in the dairy business was that his mother made delicious strained yogurt in his hometown in Turkey. Now, a decade later, the company has reached $1 billion in annual sales. It has two factories, 2, 000 employees and is worth an estimated $3 billion. Ulukaya  —   still Chobani’s majority owner  —   told employees on Tuesday to think of the grants as a pledge to expand the company even more. ”We used to work together now we are partners,” he told workers at the company’s facility in New Berlin, N. Y. Ulukaya is outspoken about corporate civic duty. Ten percent of Chobani profits go to charity.   of its workforce is made up of refugees. And an employee ownership grant was always part of Ulukaya’s dream plan. Still, his announcement came as a surprise to almost all employees. ”We built something now we’re sharing it,” Ulukaya said. Employee stock ownership is not all that unusual, especially among technology firms. Food companies like Starbucks and Whole Foods offer stock grants. Corey Rosen, of the National Center for Employee Ownership, says employee ownership takes many different forms, and in a growing number of companies, workers own the firms outright. Dairy company Schreiber Foods, for example, is larger than Chobani and is 100 percent   through an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP. Rosen says such plans allow employees to own, control and share in the profits of a company through a trust. Their popularity is increasing, he says, in part because they enjoy large tax benefits and because retiring baby boomers who own companies see it as a good way to transfer ownership. He estimates nearly   of American workers are part of an ESOP. ”This has kind of been an    change in the American economy that’s really very significant,” Rosen says. He says when employee ownership is distributed throughout the rank and file, whether through an ESOP or a stock grant program, it has powerful impact on worker culture. Rosen claims company performance improves after they start employee ownership programs, and workers build wealth much, much faster. ”We hear all this discussion these days about economic inequality, and the wage system is really not going to solve that problem very well,” Rosen says. ”Even if you raise the minimum wage, it’s only going to affect a small minority of the workforce.” Michael Gonda, a Chobani spokesman and longtime employee, says granting everyone a piece of Chobani was important to Ulukaya. ”One of the hardest things to do for a program like this, is when you have 2, 000 employees that you want to participate in it, is figuring out that allocation,” Gonda says. ”Obviously, time and role at the company have a huge part to play, but this is a very personal part of the process for Hamdi, and he spent a lot of time going through that.” The company didn’t disclose details about the allocations, but the   employees received the largest shares. Gonda says there was a lot of hugging and crying at the announcement ceremony. ”There’s a very emotional bond and an emotional connection that you don’t typically associate with a manufacturing facility, or a yogurt plant,” he says. Now that bond includes a joint financial stake in the future performance of the company."
"With Monty Python as the exception that proves the rule, the big screen has been historically unkind to sketch comedy teams hoping their offbeat sensibility will survive the leap from   bits to   features  —   and from cult fervor to mainstream success. Some fail outright, like Mr. Show’s Run Ronnie Run or The Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, while others are embraced by fans after tanking, like The Lonely Island’s Hot Rod or The State’s Wet Hot American Summer. But the creative risks are always the same: Either they attempt to string together sketches on a bigger scale, which can make a film lumpy and episodic, or they take a thin comic premise and stretch it well past the breaking point. For their first outing,   Key and Jordan Peele, the duo responsible for the brilliant Comedy Central show Key  Peele, fall squarely in the latter camp. Keanu doesn’t have nearly enough story to go the distance, sputtering through an ’    that follows a feline MacGuffin through an L. A. gangland misadventure. And yet Key and Peele have such a sensationally giddy chemistry together that the film’s raggedness plays, in their hands, like a kind of spontaneity. Whenever the     jokes seem completely   they’re standing over the script with defibrillators, tossing in a   or a look or an inspired digression to shock the corpse back to life. By title and description, Keanu sounds like a parody of the Keanu Reeves action favorite John Wick, with Key and Peele infiltrating an army of bad guys on behalf of an adorable pet. Significantly more roundabout than Reeves’   tale, the film casts the pair as best friends with divergent lives: Clarence (  Key) is a straitlaced corporate manager with a wife, a kid, and George Michael on shuffle, and Rell (Peele) is a   slacker who’s struggling through a recent  . Rell finds instant salvation when the world’s most adorable kitten turns up at his doorstep, but loses the animal just as quickly when someone breaks into his apartment. Acting on a tip that a gang ran off with the cat, Clarence and Rell toughen up their conspicuously dopey,   vibe and step into a seedy strip club that serves as headquarters for ”The 17th Street Blips”  —   so named for being castaways from the Bloods and the Crips. The Blips’ leader, Cheddar (Method Man) mistakes them for a pair of feared assassins and Clarence and Rell roll with it, dubbing themselves ”Shark Tank” and ”Techtonic” and affecting a toughness that doesn’t come naturally. Before handing over the cat, however, Cheddar enlists them to teach his young dealers how to distribute a new synthetic drug that’s poised to take over the streets. So begins a long, surreal urban night in the vein of Adventures in Babysitting or After Hours, with the buddies unwittingly taking center stage in an   turf war. Keanu’s   joke plays up Clarence and Rell’s pitiful attempts at gangsta authenticity, which at best seem borrowed from   viewings of New Jack City. Key is particularly funny as an effete teetotaler whose     routine reminds Rell of Richard Pryor playing a white guy. The film also gets laughs from ”Shark Tank” and ”Techtonic” persuading young hoodlums to see the virtues in corporate   exercises and Michael’s  ! ballads. The mission to rescue the kitten sends Clarence and Rell pinballing from one   situation to the next, to the point where Keanu feels sloppier and more haphazard than it actually is. Working from a script Peele penned with Alex Rubens, the pair asks the audience to hang on for the ride along with their characters, and their shaggy,   approach reflects the show’s spirit better than a more straightforward   might have. And beneath the silliness is the bittersweet story of a longstanding friendship withered by adulthood. Rell wants the kitten back so badly because he can’t rely on his other companion. Keanu is about finding them both."
"The newest apiary inspector at the Maryland Department of Agriculture has four legs, golden fur and a powerful sniffer. Mack, a    yellow Lab, joined the team last fall to help his mom, chief apiary inspector Cybil Preston, inspect beehives for American foulbrood  —   AFB  —   a highly contagious bacterial disease that infects honeybee brood and, eventually, kills the colony. ”Maryland has a thriving beekeeping industry, and most of our beekeepers have thousands of hives that travel from state to state for pollination,” explains Preston. ”It’s our job to make sure that infected hives don’t cross state lines.” The Maryland Department of Agriculture has had a ”bee dog” on staff since 1982 and is believed to be the only state agency in the nation using a dog to detect AFB. In Australia, a black Labrador named Bazz has taken on the role of apiary inspector and reports to work wearing a custom bee suit to protect him from getting stung. Alice Whitelaw,   of Working Dogs for Conservation, a nonprofit organization in Montana that trains dogs to sniff out invasive species, isn’t surprised that a dog is helping prevent the spread of a deadly bee disease. ”Combined with all of the other tools we have, dogs are a really good application for a lot of conservation issues,” she says. Mack is the fifth dog to hold the position. His predecessor, a black Lab named Klinker, retired last year. ”The program is a unique asset to our department and we didn’t want to let it go,” Preston says. To keep a dog on staff, Preston set out to find and train a new canine apiary inspector. A member of her local beekeeping group told her about Mack. The dog was living in a garage and needed a new home  —   along with some manners. ”He was quite rude,” Preston recalls. But Mack proved to be a quick learner. Preston taught the dog basic commands and then partnered with the team at the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to complete a   training program to have Mack certified as a detection dog. In the field, Mack works from November to April. When temperatures are cooler, the bees are less active, making Mack less apt to get stung. He moves from beehive to beehive, sniffing each one for the distinct odor of AFB infestation. If he smells AFB in a hive, he sits to alert Preston that a manual inspection is needed. Using his nose, Mack can inspect 100 hives in 45 minutes. Preston must open each hive to perform a visual inspection, slowing her down she can inspect 10 hives in the same amount of time. ”If we want to be efficient, we need a dog,” she says. Last year, Maryland state inspectors checked 2, 200 hives and found 13 cases of AFB. Preston believes the dogs help keep the disease in check. ”Every hive Klinker alerted on was 100 percent correct and certified by the USDA as confirmed AFB,” she says. ”It would be a lot more prevalent if we weren’t doing dog inspections.” Hives were dormant when Mack started doing inspections last fall, so his success rate isn’t clear yet. In field trials, he was 100 percent successful in identifying AFB. Hive inspections are the first line of defense in preventing the spread of AFB. When the disease is confirmed, the antibiotic Terramycin can be used to control the symptoms, but it doesn’t destroy the spores hives infected with AFB are frequently destroyed. In Maryland, having a canine apiary inspector is an economical option for performing greater numbers of inspections and improving detection, says Preston, who owns Mack and pays for most of his care. (After Mack earned his AFB certification, the state agreed to pay for his vet bills.) The bonus to having a dog on the team: it brings important attention to control the spread of the deadly disease. ”A lot of beekeepers . .. hear about the dog and call us out to inspect their hives,” she explains. ”These kinds of relationships are essential for keeping instances of AFB down.” Jodi Helmer is a North   journalist covering food and farming."
"The 2016 NFL draft starts tonight so here’s our comprehensive   mock draft. Just kidding. Mock drafts are in such abundance they practically comprise their own genre at this point. So instead, here are three other things to know about the NFL draft. 1. Moritz Boehringer, This    wide receiver from Germany has never played a single game of football in the U. S. but his athleticism, strength and speed have some NFL scouts predicting he could be the first German player ever to make it to the NFL. He started playing football when he was 17, and most recently played in the highest level of German football, NFL. com reported. At 6’4” and 227 lbs, he impressed scouts at an NFL pro day in March, tallying scores and times in various drills that ranked him among the top wide receiver prospects from the NFL scouting combine in February, the site said. It added that six teams, including the Patriots, Packers and Broncos, expressed interest in him. Still, relative inexperience could trump his raw talent. After all, as MMQB. com writes, Boehringer was until recently, ”a mechanical engineering student in Aalen, Germany, who drove 50 kilometers each way to practice American football once a week.” If he is drafted, likely in the later rounds, he will be the first European player to be drafted straight into the league. ”I don’t have any expectations,” Boehringer said, according to ESPN. ”I’ll just wait and see what happens. The best advice I’ve gotten is just keep working hard. It’s just my dream to play.” 2. The draft takes forever, Get a sandwich and a beer or two (or five) because the first round of the NFL draft, scheduled for Thursday night at 8 p. m. will take a long time. Each of the 32 NFL teams is allotted 10 minutes to make their first round picks, meaning the process can take more than five hours to complete, though it usually doesn’t take that long. ESPN has blocked out 3. 5 hours for the first round. Rounds 2 and 3 are scheduled for Friday at 7 p. m. and rounds   will be held Saturday at noon. Draft protocol stipulates that teams get seven minutes per pick in round 2 and five minutes in rounds  . They have four minutes to make a pick in round 7. If that seems specific and bureaucratic, here’s the   process for actually choosing a player, according to NFL rules: ”When a team decides on a selection, it communicates the player’s name from its draft room to its representatives at Selection Square. The team representative then writes the player’s name, position and school on a card and submits it to an NFL staff member known as a runner. ”When the runner gets the card, the selection is official, and the draft clock is reset for the next pick. A second runner goes to the representatives of the team up next and lets them know who was chosen. Upon receiving the card, the first runner immediately radios the selection to a NFL Player Personnel representative, who inputs the player’s name into a database that notifies all clubs of the pick. The runner also walks the card to the head table, where it’s given to Ken Fiore, vice president of player personnel. ”Fiore reviews the name for accuracy and records the pick. He then shares the name with the NFL’s broadcast partners, the commissioner and other league or team representatives so they can announce the pick.” Something tell us that the   draft in 1936, which featured teams like the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Redskins, was a simpler affair. 3. Scouting reports, Not only are players evaluated on the strength of the ”draft stock” and ”measurables,” that is, how fast they run, how high they jump, how far they throw and how many passes they catch, future NFL players are increasingly being assessed on subjective factors such as ”character.” For example, Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton was infamously maligned as ”fake” and ”selfish” in a scouting report before he was drafted. Scouts, perhaps attempting to remain relevant in a sports atmosphere where analytics are holding more and more sway (anyone can compare sets of numbers, after all) have taken to citing sources, many of whom are anonymous, as insights into players’ ”readiness” for the NFL. Recently, this took the form of a scout questioning the cooking abilities of Ohio State’s Eli Apple. In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, an unnamed scout was quoted as saying, ”I worry about him because of    issues. The kid has no life skills. At all. Can’t cook. Just a baby. He’s not first round for me. He scares me to death.” Several news outlets called out out the ”lunacy” of this   assessment, and posited that these types of reports point to a ”weakness” in the drafting process. Then there’s this from Slate: ”There are two great things about this scout’s foray into food criticism. One is that the last NFL season ended with Peyton Manning winning a Super Bowl and retiring. Peyton Manning, in addition to being a guaranteed Hall of Famer and one of the best football players ever, was once publicly described by members of his own family as not being able to open a can of soup. The article cites a 1999 Sports Illustrated profile that quotes members of Manning’s family explaining that he not only couldn’t open soup, but had his girlfriend order Chinese food for him."
"Former House Speaker John Boehner is a retired politician, so he seems to have retired from being politic. He went with radical honesty at a recent event at Stanford, according to the Stanford Daily, when he was asked about his opinion of Republican presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. ”Lucifer in the flesh,” the former speaker said. ”I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.” Consider how strong those words are: John Boehner was in Congress for 24 years. Boehner entered the House in 1991. Total up all the House members not   in the elections since then, and it’s nearly 800. On the Senate side, it’s more than 100. And then add in the 535 members who are there right now who Boehner also worked with. And they all had staffers. Plus there were some delegates. And then there were the years Boehner spent in the Ohio House. And true, some of those Congress members left and came back, but you get the idea: Boehner has worked with thousands of people on the Hill. Apparently, Ted Cruz is at the bottom of that list. (The comment has also inspired a joke site already: Lucifer2016. com now redirects to Cruz’s new campaign site, CruzCarly. com, as NBC News producer Margaret Menefee tweeted on Thursday.) It’s making headlines, but Boehner’s comment just puts an exclamation point on one of the existing storylines of the election: many of Cruz’s colleagues don’t like working with him. As NPR’s Ailsa Chang reported this year, Cruz’s role (with House Republicans) in a 2013 government shutdown, plus that time he called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar, helped him make a long list of enemies in the Senate. That has also helped limit his list of endorsements. But then, Cruz has been running an   campaign, lambasting ”Washington insiders” throughout the primary fight. It would almost be   for too many senators to love him, as Chang pointed out. ”I never worked with John Boehner. Truth is, I don’t know him that well,” Cruz responded on Thursday. He added that he reached out to Boehner during the government shutdown but that Boehner rejected the offer. As for Boehner, he had kinder words for the other candidates: he said he plays golf with Donald Trump and is also ”texting buddies” with him, though he had milder praise for Ohio Gov. John Kasich (”[Kasich] requires more effort on my behalf than all my other friends . .. but he’s still my friend, and I love him”). Boehner added that while he would vote for Trump in a general election, he would not vote for Cruz."
"Watching Disney’s remake of The Jungle Book, based on Rudyard Kipling’s stories, took me straight back to my childhood in India, and to Sunday mornings spent watching an animated series of The Jungle Book in Hindi, on India’s national television channel. (It was originally a Japanese series, dubbed in Hindi for an Indian audience.) This series was iconic to my generation, which grew up in the 1990s.  It had 52 episodes and a title song written by Gulzar, one of India’s top lyricists. The name of his Hindi song roughly translates to ”A flower in underpants has blossomed in the jungle.” The ”underpants” would be the hero Mowgli’s loincloth, which was a source of amusement for us urban kids with our urban clothing. The lyricist’s use of the word chaddi, a colloquial term for underwear, made us giggle and pay attention. The song was so catchy that I would sing it often, sometimes with my brother as we played outside, climbing trees, pretending to be as agile as Mowgli, but failing horribly, feeling uncool. (Listen to the song and watch the first episode of the Hindi animation here.) Someone involved with the Disney movie must have known about the TV series. The Hindi version of the film, now playing in India, has a new version of the same song as part of the opening credits. The original Kipling work has come in for its share of criticism. (George Orwell called the author a ”prophet of British imperialism. ”) But I can only tell you how much the TV series meant to me as a young girl growing up to India  —   and how it touched me again as a   adult, torn between my birthplace and my adopted home in the U. S. Having grown up on a diet of Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Tom and Jerry, I’d never before seen an animation with Indian characters. I could relate to Mowgli in a way I couldn’t with other animated characters  —   even though we didn’t have a lot in common. While I grew up in a small town in southern India called Mysore, watching Mowgli’s adventures in the jungle made me more curious about the wild elephants and deer I saw in nearby Bandipur National Park. I was surprised to learn that an Indian American friend of mine had a similar reaction watching Disney’s first movie based on Kipling’s book. This was the first story, outside of Hindu mythology, where ”the protagonist was brown and without a Christian name,” Kartikay Mehrotra told me in an  . ”At        I wasn’t thinking about racism or prejudice. Mowgli was my hero  —   the first character I could relate to because he looked like me.” There was another reason why I loved the series. To me, the stories felt like another chapter of the Panchatantra Tales, a   collection of stories of different animals. You might think of them as the Aesop’s Fables of India. Originally written in Sanskrit and Pali, the stories have been translated into English and a range of Indian languages and illustrated by many artists. Each story has a moral  —   hard work, honesty, generosity. Some stories celebrate wit, humor and cooperation between different animals. And many stories portray a top predator  —   a lion, tiger or jackal  —   as vicious, greedy or power hungry. Most stories find them defeated by a weaker animal like a rabbit or a wolf. Sound familiar? The similarity between The Jungle Book and Panchatantra tales feels lilke more than a coincidence to me. I don’t know if Kipling ever admitted to it, but having grown up in India, he must have heard these ancient stories. But the new movie isn’t just a trigger for nostalgia. My friend Anannya Dasgupta in New Delhi said the movie made her think of ”kinship and family”  —   and how a sense of belonging can go far beyond the traditional definition of kinship. She was especially touched by the ”bond that is asserted between   and a wolf and beyond that between a human, a black panther and a bear.” So was I. I lived in the United States between 2002 and 2013. I had wonderful friends here from different parts of this country and the world. And yet, I never quite felt as if I completely fit in. That was one of the reasons I moved back to India in 2013, hoping to feel more at home. Now, I am back in the States, because my husband  —   a man with very different roots and upbringing than my own  —   is an American, but also because I missed my close American friends. And my return to the U. S. gave me another reason to relate to Mowgli. In the movie, he forays into the ”” the place he and his biological family came from. But unlike Kipling’s original story, where Mowgli settles among humans, the new movie has him return to the jungle, to his wolf family and his beloved friends, Bageera, the panther and Baloo, the sloth bear. So what if he is so different from them, and they from him? The bond of shared experiences, love, and friendship transcends such differences. It may sound cheesy but feels quite profound to me now. Writer’s note: Special thanks to my friend Anannya Dasgupta, who’s a poet, for her poetic translation of the title of the TV series song."
"In the southeastern Chinese city of Quanzhou, a   Buddhist monk named Fu Hou has been mummified and encased in gold leaf. According to The Associated Press, it’s ”a practice reserved for holy men in some areas with strong Buddhist traditions” and was done to honor Fu Hou’s dedication to the religion. Li Ren, the Chongfu Temple’s abbot, said that after the   ’s death in 2012, ”the monk’s body was washed, treated by two mummification experts, and sealed inside a large pottery jar in a sitting position,” according to the wire service. Video published by The Daily Telegraph showed the ”Open Cylinder” ceremony when the monk was removed from the pottery jar in January. The newspaper reported that thousands gathered for the event, and the video showed men cutting off the material wrapped around the monk’s body. The abbot told AP that the body showed ”little sign of deterioration apart from the skin having dried out.” The wire service reported that ”the local Buddhist belief is that only a truly virtuous monk’s body would remain intact after being mummified.” The monk’s body was then sterilized and painted. The final step  —   gilding with gold leaf  —   started on March 16, according to The People’s Daily. Li Ren said the golden statue ”is now being placed on the mountain for people to worship,” the wire service reported. The People’s Daily has more pictures of the mummification and gilding process."
"When comic Jerrod Carmichael moved from his hometown of   N. C. to Los Angeles in 2008, he was 20 years old and without any   experience. Still, that didn’t stop him from jumping into the city’s comedy scene. ”What I believe in more than anything is my ability to figure something out,” Carmichael tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”So I moved to LA with the intention of figuring out   comedy. . .. I wanted to work on   I wanted to be great at  .” Now 29, Carmichael is the creator and star of the NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show. On the show, he plays a character, also named Jerrod Carmichael, who debates with his family about complicated, often uncomfortable topics. Recent episodes delved into the ethics of attending a Bill Cosby comedy show or whether or not it’s OK to use Plan B, the ”  pill,” when a condom breaks. Carmichael says that the family debates on the show are inspired by real life. ”I grew up in a household that’s very argumentative . .. in a very healthy way,” he says. ”My life, I like to say, is populated like Lincoln’s cabinet. It’s just a bunch of people [who] disagree with me and [who are] on a quest for the truth. . .. That’s who I am and who my friends and my family are, so it just made sense for the show.” On using his family members’ real names in the show, The reason I use my real name for the show and even my parents’ [names] to a certain extent, is that it holds me accountable. . .. The thing with your name on it, you want to protect and you want to be the best version that it could possibly be. If your welcome mat of your home had your last name on it, you would kinda wipe some leaves off of it every now and then I imagine. You don’t want your name to have anything on it, so that’s how I feel about the show. I want to protect it. I want my real name and I want my real perspective. On discovering comedy at a young age, Comedy gave me a very strong sense of self worth. I remember kind of discovering it in 8th grade, and I discovered it through reading and I discovered it through knowledge and being able to turn information and emotion on its head. . .. I remember [my 8th grade teacher] had me read the newspaper everyday. I started gathering information and I started having this insatiable thirst for information and news and how people felt. . .. And I became the popular kid at a young age just through comedy. On an episode he did about Bill Cosby, When we did the episode about Cosby, it was more so a mirror than it was us making any accusation. So I respected him as an artist and respected his work and that’s what I’m talking about in the episode. I’m saying ”Hey, but this work is still good.” . .. But I wasn’t holding anything back and saying ”Oh we have to protect . ..” The intention was to find a truth from my life and apply that to the show  —   and the truth was how difficult it is to separate the two [the artist and his art]. It’s about the difficulty. It’s about looking in the mirror and saying, ”Alright well, now knowing these things, how do I compartmentalize and should I and is it right to?” . .. Do you burn the [Bill Cosby] records? Is that experience ruined? They’re just so many questions around it. On growing up in a working class neighborhood in   N. C.  Growing up where I grew up, a lot of things that shouldn’t feel unreachable feel unreachable. I didn’t know people who made it in the entertainment industry, but I also didn’t know any doctors and I also didn’t know any lawyers. . .. Not being around that, you don’t think that’s an option. You don’t know what your options are. You don’t know what you can do. And I was really blessed to have people that allowed me to realize that the world is mine as well. On a joke in which Carmichael says he’s ”starting to appreciate slavery”  The thought behind [the joke] is that without slavery I wouldn’t be in America. That’s a guy dealing with taking this heinous, horrible thing that is slavery and trying to find a silver lining, which is [the fact that] we are in America with a lot of opportunity. The question begs: Would I trade slavery for this experience? Or was slavery  —   and even the pain you can use to motivate you and what’s left over from it  —   do I take that and use it as fuel? . .. In a sense, am I thankful that slavery happened? And it’s weird that a lot of people shut down . .. and just dismiss it as ”No, that’s not a thought you’re supposed to have,” but it’s a very real thought and a really real question."
"A strict new law governing foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in China may have some groups packing up and heading home if they can’t meet the law’s requirements or fall afoul of police who will have increased powers to monitor and control them. The controversial measure was passed into law on Thursday and will take effect on Jan. 1, 2017, affecting thousands of foreign NGOs. The new law requires all foreign NGOs to have an official Chinese sponsor or host organization. The groups may not raise funds in China and may not conduct or fund political activities. If police suspect illegal activity, they can shut down NGO events, inspect their offices and finances and question staff at any time. Foreign governments and rights groups have complained that the new law violates China’s legal commitments to freedom of association, and that retarding the growth of civil society could increase economic inequality and social injustice in China. Ned Price, the U. S. National Security Council spokesman, expressed Washington’s concern that the new law ”will further narrow space for civil society in China and constrain contact between individuals and organizations in the United States and China.” But Guo Linmao, an official with China’s legislature, told reporters at a press briefing in Beijing on Thursday that there’s no need to be concerned about the law. ”We welcome and support all foreign NGOs to come to China to conduct friendly exchanges,” he said. Deciding which groups are friendly or hostile will be up to the police. Guo added that the law will clarify the legal status of foreign NGOs, guarantee their lawful rights and make their operations in China more smooth and convenient. Foreign governments and rights groups say that in addition to the onerous registration requirements, the new law places vague and sweeping restrictions on foreign NGOs  —   barring them, for example, from doing anything that harms China’s national interests, spreads ”rumors” or obtains state secrets. The law’s language and focus on national security echo recent warnings from President Xi Jinping and other leaders for Chinese citizens to guard against infiltration, espionage and subversion by foreigners. Chinese media allege that   NGOs, serving as fronts for foreign intelligence services, helped foment the ”color” revolutions of the early 2000s in former Soviet states as well as Hong Kong’s 2014   ”umbrella revolution.” ”Although we are open and tolerant, foreign groups that support or manipulate domestic groups to harm China’s laws will be dealt with according to the law,” Hao Yunhong, a police official in charge of foreign NGOs told reporters at Thursday’s press conference. Peter Dahlin, a Swedish NGO worker with the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, which trained and supported Chinese human rights lawyers, was detained by Chinese police in January, accused of instigating Chinese to oppose their government. Dahlin appeared on China’s state television to admit his guilt, in what his colleagues said appeared to be a forced confession. He was expelled from the country several weeks after being detained. David Kelly, a director of research at the   firm China Policy, which has advised foreign NGOs on how to deal with Chinese government regulation, says the law’s net effect is bad, but hardly unexpected. China’s government has been tightening the screws on Chinese and foreign NGOs for several years. He notes that the law could have been worse, and that the government deleted some stipulations from a draft law after consulting with foreign NGOs. He also points out that there is an important distinction between NGOs that provide services such as education and medicine, and those that engage in advocacy and activism. The former can usually work out a modus vivendi with the Chinese government, Kelly says. But China was never about to tolerate the latter, especially those perceived as aiming to check the Communist Party’s power or hold it to account. ”For foreign NGOs to come in and say, ’We’re going to help you set up something which is going to constrain the Chinese state,’ well, of course the Chinese state is going to shut it down by any means it can, short of bloodshed,” he says. The bottom line, Kelly says, is that China still needs the expertise foreign NGOs offer. In China, cycles of repression and easing come and go. And while Kelly sees the law as a step backward, it’s not as far back as the era of Chairman Mao, when Kelly says there really was no room for civil society to grow. ”This is a move on the board,” he says. ”I think Chinese civil society will find ways to maintain its thrust. It has time on its side. It cannot be controlled by police action alone.”"
"Randy Berry has seen dramatic changes during his more than 20 years at the State Department. When he moved from a post in Nepal to New Zealand years ago, he had to pay for his husband’s plane ticket because such spousal benefits were not covered for gay and lesbian couples. ”Those days are gone,” Berry says in an interview at his State Department office. Today, the State Department has eight openly gay ambassadors and Berry has become the first U. S. special envoy for the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex persons, those whose sex is unclear at birth. Still, a killing in Bangladesh this week drove home the challenges he faces in the post he’s held for just a year. Xulhaz Mannan, a gay rights activist who also worked at the U. S. Embassy in Bangladesh, was hacked to death Monday by a group linked to  . Berry called Mannan’s murder ”a great tragedy.” ”It is felt especially deeply because he was also a member of our family,” says Berry. ”Any day I learn about violence against members of this community based out of fear or ignorance or hate, I feel it deeply. But almost a day doesn’t pass where that doesn’t happen.” The Obama’s administration’s support for activists raises the question of whether the U. S. has an obligation to protect them. Berry says there is always an element of risk for any human rights activist. ”That’s the nature of social change,” he says, adding that his guiding principle is ”do no harm.” Consulting With Local Activists, Berry has traveled to 42 countries over the past year and says he always consults with local activists to get a better sense of what they’d like him to do or to say and how hard to push their agenda with local government officials. ”Berry has done an extremely good job of working in a   way,” says Graeme Reid who runs the LGBT rights program for the U. S.  advocacy group Human Rights Watch. He says the U. S. envoy has ”avoided being a kind of   moralist.” Reid says the killing in Bangladesh has to be seen in context. It’s a country where many bloggers and secular activists are under threat by Islamist extremists and he argues the U. S. should not be intimidated by groups that are ”intolerant of anyone who doesn’t agree with their narrow vision of the world.” Meanwhile, Berry says the U. S. is one player among many trying to push social change. He says Malta has the most progressive gender identity laws. Argentina and Chile are among the countries that have been raising these issues at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Every country, he says, will have to take its own route."
"The nation’s falling teen birth rate saw an even bigger drop over the past decade, with dramatic declines among Hispanic and black teens. Birth rates are down a whopping 51 percent among Hispanics age 15 to 19 since 2006, and down 44 percent among black teens, according to a survey of census data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Teen pregnancy rates among whites also fell by a third. ”It’s really a   punch,” says study   Shanna Cox, associate director for science for the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health. ”Teens are having less sex, and among the teens who are having sex, they’re using more effective methods of birth control.” The study finds the use of   contraceptives like IUDs and implants jumped from 1 percent of teens a decade ago to 7 percent in 2014. While teen birth rates for minorities are still nearly double that for whites, the CDC finds that disparity has shrunk in many areas. Still, Cox says the study also shows that teen birth rates can vary widely by place, even by county within the same state, and that there’s a strong connection with socioeconomic factors. Regardless of race, teen birth rates are higher where unemployment is higher and education and income rates are lower. The CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services have been working with nine communities with some of the highest teen birth rates in the country to develop broad efforts to address all of this. ”So for example, we can work with job skills training,” Cox says. ”We can work with sports, community service.” The goal, she says, is ”really thinking about ways we can promote teens finishing school, planning for their future and being engaged in their communities.” The report names other efforts that have been effective in reducing teen birth rates: Examples of activities included presenting   teen birth data to civic leaders encouraging health care providers to offer evening and weekend hours and   services to increase access having   culturally appropriate materials available dur ing health care visits and implementing   teen pregnancy prevention programs to reach teens of both sexes both inside and outside of schools (e. g. through Job Corps, alternative schools, churches and community colleges.) Last year the federal government expanded these kinds of efforts to 84 communities. The recent decline is part of a longer downward trend in teen birth rates since 1991. But teen pregnancy in the U. S. remains higher than in many other developed countries."
"Its name will be ”Red Dragon.” And if the latest partnership between SpaceX and NASA works out, the privately funded craft will land on Mars to collect scientific data  —   possibly within the next two years. The plan is to use the Dragon capsule, but without a human crew. ”SpaceX is planning to send Dragons to Mars as early as 2018,” the company said via Facebook Wednesday. ”These missions will help demonstrate the technologies needed to land large payloads propulsively on Mars.” A propulsive landing, we’ll remind you, is the use of powerful rockets to lower the spacecraft in a stable  —   and, if all goes well, reusable  —   position. ”You can’t land on Mars using parachutes like you would on Earth,” NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel tells us, ”because the atmosphere isn’t thick enough.” The Dragon craft is meant to carry astronauts, but SpaceX founder Elon Musk says the   interior of the craft would make it difficult for humans to endure any trips longer than from the Earth to the moon. Still, NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman says that her agency is closer ”to sending American astronauts to Mars than anyone, anywhere, at any time has ever been.” In a statement about the collaboration with SpaceX, Newman says a new and broad consensus is emerging that calls for sending astronauts to Mars in the 2030s. SpaceX’s Musk adds via Twitter that the new Dragon 2 craft is ”designed to be able to land anywhere in the solar system.” Few details were announced along with the news of SpaceX and NASA’s Mars collaboration more details are likely to come out this fall. For now, a SpaceX representative says that while the company will fund the mission, NASA will give technical support  —   along with access to the Deep Space Network for communications. After announcing the plan, SpaceX tweeted a video clip of its Dragon 2 capsule using its ”SuperDraco propulsive landing system” to seemingly hold itself in a stable position a few feet off the ground at its test facility in Texas. In addition to figuring out the logistics and tools that are necessary for interplanetary human travel, the Mars mission could answer enduring questions, Newman says: ”Is it habitable and did life ever exist on Mars?” The plan to land a capsule on Mars comes more than 50 years after the U. S. sent the Mariner 4 scientific probe streaking past the planet, back in July of 1965. The news led to some excitement on SpaceX’s Facebook page, where many people praised the aspiration of reaching the red planet. Here are the top two comments:"
"It might not have been a drone that struck a British Airways plane on April 17 after all. British Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin told Parliament on Thursday that it was probably ”not a drone incident,” according to The Register, an online tech publication. The plane landed safely at London’s Heathrow Airport, but reports that it might have been hit by a drone prompted calls for stronger regulation, as The   reported. U. K. aviation officials looking into what happened to the Airbus A320 have now ended their inquiry, according to The Guardian. It adds: ”An investigation launched by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has been closed due to lack of evidence. A spokesman for the AAIB said: ’We made initial inquiries but there was insufficient information on what object was involved for us to take it further.’ ” ”They just don’t have any evidence to tell them one way or the other,” BBC’s transportation correspondent reports. Maybe it really was a plastic bag  —   as Transport Minister Robert Goodwill has posited. However, as The Telegraph notes, Goodwill has ”dismissed calls for tighter rules on drone use to protect against terror threats insisting current rules governing drone use were strong enough.”"
"The extremely   dispute between Apple and the FBI has ushered in a new phase in the debate over the future of secure communications. Though many Americans still struggle with the technical implications of encryption, it’s now a household word. Bob Lord is a   veteran of cryptography and communications security, a former head of security at Twitter and now chief information security officer at Yahoo. When he talks about encryption, he invokes the imagery of a whisper  —   this idea that you should be able to   the most private means of physical communication in the digital world as well. Major companies, including Google and Yahoo, have been working on projects to adopt easy    encryption more widely  —   it’s currently mostly available through special programs and on messaging services like WhatsApp or iMessage. Investigators are raising alarms that search warrants and subpoenas are becoming powerless over more of our digital lives. Lord is visiting Washington this week to meet with lawmakers and talk about the realities of encryption. He sat down for an interview with NPR, and we talked about encryption for activists and average Joes and the greater good. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. What’s the   process that goes into making that choice at a company like Yahoo, that you want to adopt encryption that would make data indecipherable even for you? When we talk about encryption and we read about encryption in the news, it’s often in the context of the   struggle. . .. And that’s an appropriate thing for us to have a national conversation about. There are other constituencies that we should also talk about. There are human rights activists throughout the world who struggle to communicate freely, to organize and to share their thoughts because their governments are looking to control the telecom companies, the phone companies, they look to decrypt messages and in some cases they block the use of cryptography. These are real challenges. . .. I want to make sure we’re talking about a broader range of places where encryption has changed the way things work. Yes, it’s used by terrorists. It’s also used by people who are looking to voice their opinions on issues and to save lives. I’d also point out that those groups are relatively small. . .. The vast majority of people are neither human rights activists nor terrorists. I’m glad you bring that up. What happens to the rest of us, who don’t fall into those categories? There is a real danger, a growing danger, and the danger to these average people comes from a variety of different places. It can come from Eastern European criminal syndicates it can come from foreign  . And we should talk about the role that encryption plays in protecting those people when they try to communicate with their banks, with their doctors, with the government over tax issues. I think it can be hard for an average person to imagine a foreign government or a criminal hacking ring really being after something I specifically am doing on an individual level. How does the ability of someone to read my email correlate with the ability of that person to mount an attack on, say, my health care provider? Your mail account may be a trust anchor to other services. You may have password resets sent to your mail account, for example. . .. We’ve seen a number of interesting health care attacks in the last year. Some of them we can’t entirely understand  —   there were some that didn’t seem to be monetized, it didn’t seem like the attackers started to make money on identity theft, which is what you’d expect them to do. And so we may conclude from that they either didn’t bother, but that doesn’t seem reasonable, or that their motivations might have been something different, it may have been   kinds of attacks. So your information does get swept up to these kinds of attacks, even if you think that you in particular are not worthy of a   attack, even if you think you have nothing to hide, and even if you think you have nothing to protect. But to echo our recent interview with Android’s chief of security, what’s the tangible benefit in going from the basic encryption that’s relatively broadly adopted now to    encryption? How much safer does it make my data from something like that? I guess there are two answers. We could walk through some threat models  —   threat modeling is the way we tend to think about things in the security community: What are the assets that you’re trying to protect and from whom and under what circumstances. The other is just that we as Americans tend to have this view that we should be able to speak privately. And that’s fairly   in the way that we’re raised, and the way that we try to structure the government, and the reason why we make it so difficult for law enforcement to do certain kinds of things in this country  —   as permissive as we sometimes think that they are, the powers that we think may be overly broad, the reality is that compared to many countries, it’s really quite specific and really quite  . And so I think there’s a slant of this that says that the right for people to speak privately is truly a right, and it is part of the foundation on which we built a lot of our culture and institutions. What I’m trying to get at is, what’s the tangible benefit of    encryption versus the encryption that Yahoo already has? Are you effectively just trying to just stay ahead of the bad guys or is it a truly groundbreaking and necessary change in how you think about encryption? I’ll give you an example from history. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer protocol) was invented at Netscape  —   I used to work at Netscape  —   it was invented to protect you from     attacks when there was really no credible way a man could get in the middle. There was no   that had not yet been invented, there were no   hotspots. . .. We knew that it was going to be important to protect your communication from your desktop computer. It was there to protect those communications between your desktop and your bank. And we saw many merchants not using SSL, and I’m unaware of any major theft of credit card numbers during that time. It was a little bit ahead of the problem. Many technologies take a while to incubate before they’re ready for prime time. The time to start developing them isn’t the time when the danger is hitting people over the head and causing mass strife. The time to invent these technologies, to standardize on them, to shake out the bugs, to get the usability issues under control is slightly in advance of the manifestation of the massive problem. We don’t want to be in a situation when people say, why isn’t anybody doing anything about this? . .. That’s part of it. But I wouldn’t underestimate  —   the number of people who do live in the troubled parts of the world is large. It’s a large percentage of people who live in the countries where they cannot speak freely, cannot share their feelings about being gay or share their views of the government freely. And so for them the ability to whisper to each other privately is not a theoretical thing or a small thing  —   it is everything to them. I think a challenge in the U. S. is the juxtaposition of that argument of existential challenges faced by foreigners against the inability, as presented by the law enforcement community, to investigate crimes that are closer to home. And it is a struggle for us because we are an international company, as most of the providers that you have been talking to are  —   they work on a global scale. . .. There are a lot of people that we care about who are not U. S. citizens as well. . .. People on this global stage are thinking a little bit differently. One   suggestion we’ve heard is this concept of ”lawful hacking,” this idea that the FBI and local law enforcement should step up their tech game and try to catch up to the tech community instead of counting on the tech community to slow down. Is that a plausible or comfortable solution? That’s certainly not a comfortable solution. When law enforcement gets into the business of hacking in, you create really strange dynamics and really strange incentives. . .. I don’t doubt that that will be a bridge to whatever we end up with, or a bridge to the next bridge to the next bridge. But it is not a comfortable place for us to be, where we start treating law enforcement like the enemy, and that’s kind of where that starts to go. . .. What other options do you see for law enforcement? You want to build encryption as secure as possible, which means no   vulnerabilities and also means at some point, you might not be able to help investigators even if you wanted to comply with a court order. But you also don’t want to be in a dynamic where you’re chased both by criminal hackers and the law enforcement hackers. What else is there? The question is: Is everything moving to a place where encryption is used and it thwarts law enforcement? Or are we talking about, in the grand scheme of things, a fairly modest number of places? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do not share the sense of terror that people feel over the use of encryption, broadly speaking. It doesn’t seem to me like this is going to become a problem that prevents law enforcement from doing their jobs in the long term. Some of them say it already does, predominantly with phones. I think the question is: Is that realm that is challenging for them to use in the course of investigation . .. expanding without bound? Will it encompass all digital communications? I think the answer is no. I don’t think that everything is going to become a major obstacle to law enforcement. . .. So yes, are these phones creating challenges? Yes, I absolutely believe that that’s the case. . .. The other thing that we should talk about, to counterbalance that, is what is the greater good? . .. I think that these technologies are, on the whole, the ones that are going to give us greater comfort that our lives are going to be secure from ongoing threats, both domestically and abroad. The incentive structure for people to steal your money, to steal your identity is so powerul. And the ways that they go about it can range from the mundane, from the ”You’ve got to be kidding me, that worked?” to ”Oh my God, that was absolutely brilliant and I’m stunned that they were able to link all these pieces of the attack together.” So the question is, what is the right thing for the largest number of people under the largest number of circumstances, and that’s where I think perhaps we have some element of a disconnect. And that’s where I’d like to see more of the conversation head."
"Fraternal twins tend to run in families, and scientists think they’ve identified genetic variations at play. Understanding that might someday help predict who is more likely to have a risky pregnancy, and might also help treat fertility problems. A team led by Dorret Boomsma at Vrije University in Amsterdam studied the DNA of 1, 980 mothers who had given birth to fraternal twins, as well as 12, 953 people who had no history of twins in their families. They found that the mothers who had variations in two genes, FSHB and SMAD3, were 29 percent more likely to give birth to twins than mothers without those changes. This study, which was published Thursday in American Journal of Human Genetics, is the first twin study to rapidly scan the DNA of people looking for key markers, using a technique called   association study. The researchers were looking for common genetic variations that are associated with giving birth to twins. One prime target was FSHB. It’s a gene that prompts production of   hormone, which helps ovaries produce eggs and is tested to evaluate fertility. The researchers found that women who had altered regulation of the FSHB gene had higher levels of   hormone in their blood. Those women would be more likely to produce two separate eggs at once, resulting in fraternal twins. The other gene, SMAD3, plays a smaller role in twinning, but does help the body respond to   hormone. The scientists think knowing about the genetic influences could have applications in reproductive health. Multiple births are riskier for both the mother and children. Developing genetic tests based on these variations could give a better idea of which women may be more likely to have multiple births. And it also might someday help improve fertility treatment. Women who undergo fertility treatment often use hormones to stimulate the ovaries and produce more eggs at once. As it stands now, there is no good way to gauge how much medication a particular woman may need. This can occasionally lead to ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. The authors hope that they can someday use their findings to design a genetic test that could identify women who are at risk for severe responses to hormone therapy. This tool might be used to help doctors determine appropriate dosage of hormone treatment."
"Lately, it’s been a political guessing game of which Donald Trump is going to show up. In the past 24 hours alone, the whiplash between what     Ben Carson called the ”two different Donald Trumps” was on bold display. From a serious foreign policy address in the morning, he returned just hours later to his regular slapstick mockery of his rivals. But as Trump moves even closer to securing his party’s White House nomination, the unpredictable dichotomy is one that’s sure to worry GOP leaders, anxious over which Trump will show up when it matters most in November. On Wednesday evening, it was pure, unfiltered Trump who took the stage in Indiana. Hoosier legend, former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight (whose own temper is controversial in itself) introduced him, endorsing the real estate mogul as ”the most prepared man in history to step in as president of the United States.” ”There has never been a more honest politician than Donald Trump,” said Knight, who was fired from IU in 2000 after ”uncivil, defiant and unacceptable” behavior that included allegedly choking a player. ”They say he isn’t presidential. I don’t know what the hell that means,” Knight thundered to loud applause. Trump’s speech that followed was largely of the mold that many GOP leaders worry is decidedly unpresidential. The mocking of Ohio Gov. Kasich’s eating habits was a staple. He again berated Ted Cruz, boasting that he has won evangelical voters this cycle while Cruz holds up the Bible, puts it down, ”and then he lies.” And even though he had some kind words about the Fourth Estate after his Tuesday night landslide, Trump was back to calling the press corps following him ”the world’s most dishonest people” on Wednesday evening in Indiana. The crowd, as usual, ate it up and joined along in the jeers. Just a week earlier, there seemed to be a shift in Trump land. Ever since the GOP presidential   hired political strategist Paul Manafort to helm his maligned delegate operation, the longtime Republican hand has tried to telegraph the message that the controversial reality TV star would eventually ”evolve” and tone down his temper and tenor on the campaign trail. That promise seemed to have been fulfilled after Trump’s landslide win in New York last week. In a more subdued victory speech at Trump Tower, he was cordial to his bitter rival Cruz, even referring to him as ”senator” instead of the ”Lyin’ Ted” moniker he’s bestowed on him. But a week later, that collegiality was gone after Trump himself pushed back on the idea that any change was forthcoming. Campaigning in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania ahead of his sweep of five states Tuesday, Trump was back to insults and his usual freewheeling, unpredictable style. That’s where he premiered his critique of his struggling rival Kasich’s eating style on the campaign trail. ”He has the news conference all the time when he’s eating. I’ve never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion,” Trump thundered. After his big wins on Tuesday  —   which possibly put him on an irreversible path toward winning the GOP nomination  —   Trump was back to a more unplugged style. Turning an eye toward the general election and likely rival Hillary Clinton, he went hard after the Democrat for ”playing the woman’s card.” It was a new line of attacks that likely worry many party strategists as they seek to woo the important female voting bloc in November, among whom Trump has high unfavorables in general election polling. ”If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she would get 5 percent of the vote,” he jabbed at the end of his remarks. Calling in to news shows the next morning, he continued that line of criticism. Later Wednesday afternoon, however, a more presidential sounding and looking Donald Trump showed up. Giving a major foreign policy speech in Washington, he was far more   reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter. Here’s how NPR’s Domenico Montanaro described it: ”The speech was more a litany of what Trump doesn’t think has worked rather than a prescription of specifics  —   he did not mention his wall with Mexico and only alluded to his call for a temporary ban on Muslims coming into the U. S. But his   remarks did offer a peek into Trump’s worldview, a window into a ’Trump Doctrine’ that is reflexively protectionist, against    —   underlined by the slogan ’America First’  —   and reliant on a backbone of military strength. ”It also gave Trump the opportunity to appear more serious and less bombastic. If there are two Trumps, as Ben Carson has said, this was ’Presidential Trump.’ There were no ’Lyin’ Ted’ references or mocking of John Kasich’s eating habits.” Just hours later though, he was back to his usual routine  —   for the most part. There was one subtle instance of restraint during his Indiana rally Wednesday night. He still took glee in mocking Cruz’s decision to tap Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential pick even though the Texas senator is mathematically unable to get enough delegates on the first convention ballot. But he refrained from any overt attacks on Fiorina herself, a departure from last fall, when he derided her appearance. Overall, Trump perhaps summed up his philosophy best during his Trump Tower victory speech Tuesday night: ”If you have a football team, and you’re winning, and then you get to the Super Bowl, you don’t change your quarterback, right?” Trump may take a knee more often on the campaign trail and give voters flashes of that more subdued version of himself. But Wednesday alone demonstrated he’s going to continue to blitz in his own way, like it or not, for the foreseeable future."
"In the 1990s Chuck Slaughter built the online clothing retailer, TravelSmith, from a startup to a company with sales in excess of $100 million a year. Then he signed up to be an Avon lady. ”[Avon] is the original social network business. In some ways it’s better than Twitter and Facebook because Avon figured out how to monetize the social network,” Slaughter says over coffee at a café in Oxford, England. Slaughter became an Avon lady to do research for his current project, Living Goods. ”We’ll learn from anybody. I studied Avon from the inside.” And now he’s taking that    business model and using it to deliver basic health care and a few commercial products to impoverished parts of Africa. And he seems to be on the right track. He was in Oxford to accept a $1. 25 million prize as one of the winners of the 2016 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.  Like Avon, Living Goods recruits women. ”We look for women who are   in their communities. That’s the currency,” he says  —   social connections. But they’re not selling makeup or storage containers. The company gives each woman a bag of goods, a smartphone and a bit of training before sending them out as ”community health promoters.” They fan out in their villages offering treatments for some of the most common health problems for kids in   Africa  —   malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea. ”If you live in a   or even urban area in Africa and your kid gets sick, you’ve got some bleak choices,” Slaughter says. A mother can trek to a government health clinic that may or may not have the medicine or means to treat her kid. Or she can   and try her luck with drugs from a local pharmacy. But now in places where Living Goods has set up shop, that mom can call the local Living Goods agent. ”She’ll come to your home. She can diagnose your child with a living goods mobile app that we designed. It’s automated to diagnosis those 3 diseases [malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea] that kill half the kids in the continent,” Slaughter says. ”And if your kid is positive for any of those diseases she has the medicine you need in her bag.” Slaughter founded Living Goods in 2006 and now has 4, 000 agents in Uganda and Kenya. The agents can perform blood tests for malaria on your stoop and sell you malaria treatment pills on the spot if you’re positive. They also sell pregnancy tests, and some are trained to check vital signs like blood pressure. Customers pay for products like the tests but not for health advice. And while the Living Goods agent is in your doorway, she might try to interest you in some fortified porridge or condoms or a solar lantern. ”These women have a whole range of products to sell. There’s reusable feminine pads, soap, diapers,” says Slaughter, listing some of the things the women might be lugging in their Living Goods bag. ”We’ll sell anything . .. that offers a decent profit margin.” A   cookstove is a top seller. Living Goods has several models that burn either wood or charcoal. Each is big enough for a single pot the price ranges from $7 to $15. But unlike Avon, Living Goods isn’t just trying to sell products. ”We don’t view this first and foremost as a business,” Slaughter says. He views Living Goods as a way to deliver basic health care to people who currently lack access. Why not just invest in village public sector community health workers as the government has done in Ethiopia? ”Ethiopia is great,” Slaughter says. But he quickly adds, ”It’s an exception. There are two countries in   Africa that have leadership in public health  —   Ethiopia and Rwanda. The others all have community health systems that are broken.” He sees    capitalism as a way to fix them. ”Governments don’t tend to be set up for high performance,” he says. ”The rate of absenteeism in these countries in health facilities can be   percent. No one’s accountable. There’s no penalty for not doing your job.” That’s not the case with Living Goods. Each agent has a smart phone, and every interaction with a client is logged along with the GPS location, time and date. ”Really the secret sauce is insisting on results,” Slaughter says. An average agent for Living Goods in Kenya or Uganda, who are paid by commission only, earns between $10 and $20 a month. If an agent isn’t making enough sales, he says, they aren’t going to be able to make a living or an impact. And they’ll be let go. The Living Goods model has been generating buzz lately. In addition to the Skoll Award, it has been rated as a ”standout organization” by GiveWell, the independent charity evaluator. But Living Goods is still operating on a relatively small scale. It has about 4, 000 agents knocking on doors in Uganda and Kenya. Ethiopia by comparison has 35, 000 community health workers deployed across the country. Slaughter is seeking millions of dollars in additional funding from private investors, aid groups and even governments to scale up operations in East Africa. Whether its agents can become as much of a fixture in developing countries as Avon ladies once were in the American suburbs remains to be seen. But Slaughter is optimistic. For him Living Goods is about setting up a sustainable way of delivering vital health care products to places where they’re often hard to get. ”Why shouldn’t all children have access to the same care as mine?” he asks."
"Nashville Hot Chicken is showing up everywhere lately, from   marquees to trendy restaurant menus. But to find the real thing, you might start in a nondescript strip mall on the northeast side of Nashville, Tenn. Here at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, people line up long before the doors open to get their fix. ”Need my hot chicken,” says construction worker Jose Rodriguez as he approaches the kitchen window to place his order. ”I’m going to get two hot of the breast quarters.”   wooden booths line the walls of the small dining room. When a clerk calls out your order number, you pick up your paper plate of chicken, served on a red cafeteria tray. Drinks come from a vending machine on the back wall. ”Prince’s is the ground zero for hot chicken,” says Timothy Davis, author of The Hot Chicken Cookbook  —   the Fiery History and Red Hot Recipes of Nashville’s Beloved Bird. The Prince family has been selling hot chicken for more than 70 years and is thought to have conceived the dish. Davis has brought me here to share a plate of Prince’s ”medium” spiced bird, which he says is the equivalent of ”hot” anywhere else. ”Don’t touch anything important afterwards,” he says, tearing into a juicy chicken breast with his fingers. It’s a   lunch: white bread, dill pickle chips and a breast quarter, freshly fried and slathered with Prince’s hot sauce. ”There’s no secret  —   there’s a ton of cayenne in here,” Davis says as he gets a little   from the heat. My lips are burning, my nose is running and sweat is popping out from my skull. Yet I can’t stop eating the   bird. Chicken Shack owner Andre Prince says that’s part of the appeal. ”It can be a punishment and a joy at the same time,” she says. In fact, hot chicken was originally conceived as a punishment for her   Thornton Prince, known for his womanizing back in the 1930s. (”He being so tall, handsome and ” Prince says.) The story goes that he stepped out on his lady one Saturday night. So on Sunday morning, she doused his fried chicken with a heap of hot pepper. ”I’m sure when he bit into that  —   mmm! That brought him back around,” Prince says. But there was a snag: ”He liked his punishment, evidently,” says Prince. He shared it with friends and word spread. It was so popular, he opened a chicken shack. Back then it was mainly a   joint, and these days Prince honors that tradition, frying up hot chicken until 4 a. m. on weekends. Her customers come from all walks of life. It’s always been that way, she says  —   even when segregation was the law, though it came with a twist in the   restaurant: ”Blacks came in the front. Whites came in the back,” Prince says, recalling when Grand Ole Opry entertainers used to come in the side door after the show. Longtime customer Bobby Meadows remembers those days  —   and the old wooden booths, which are still used in the restaurant today. ”I’m 64 and I been eating it since I was 12,” says Meadows, who now travels from Mt. Juliet, Tenn. about a   away, to get his fix. ”It’s worse than dope,” he says. ”It’s got a craving worse than anything. And when you get to thinking about it and your mouth gets to water, you might as well turn your truck around and go get you some, ’cause it ain’t going to get no better.” Meadows’ truck is always steered toward Prince’s. ”Everybody’s starting to copy it,” he says. ”But there ain’t but one original.” The restaurant now draws tourists from around the world looking to try Nashville’s culinary quirk. And the popularity of hot chicken is spreading. It’s on the menu at the Tennessee chain restaurant O’Charley’s as well as KFC. Nashville Hot Chicken joints have opened in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and even Australia. New places have taken off locally as well. At Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, a relatively new establishment in Nashville, the specialty comes paired with Southern sides like    salad and pimiento mac and cheese. ”I think that the beauty of hot chicken is that every place has their own way of doing it,” says   Nick Bishop. Bishop remembers when he first had Prince’s hot chicken as a young teen. It was a rite of passage. Now, he’s proud to be spreading the gospel with his own version. Hattie B’s will soon open a branch in Birmingham, Ala. ”It’s an odd little nugget that Nashville has to offer to the world,” Bishop says. All this newfound interest will keep the tradition going, says Davis. ”I don’t think a food survives unless someone else enjoys it enough to put their own spin on it,” he says. ”A food dies unless people are exposed to it.” Davis makes his own   version of hot chicken. While the chicken fries, he starts on the paste that will turn it hot. ”This is bacon grease, which is sort of the cheat code to all Southern cooking, I think,” says Davis. He melts a couple of heaping tablespoons of rendered bacon fat into a small bowl, then adds his spices. ”I usually don’t measure anything but this is cayenne pepper  —   probably three or four teaspoons,” Davis says, stirring the powdered spice into the fat. Next he adds garlic powder, ground mustard, cumin, paprika, dill pickle juice, salt and pepper. ”And to some people this is a grave offense, but add a little sugar,” he advises. The final step: Slather on the   paste as soon as the chicken comes out of the frying pan. And prepare for a mouthful of fire you just can’t resist."
"A former reserve deputy in Oklahoma who said he mistook his gun for his Taser when he shot and killed a suspect has been convicted of   manslaughter. Robert Bates, 74, was a volunteer with the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office when he killed Eric Harris during a sting operation in April 2015. Tulsa World describes the incident, which began with Harris allegedly selling a gun to an undercover deputy, this way: ”As multiple deputies struggled to restrain Harris on the ground after a short pursuit, Bates approached holding a nonlethal weapon in one hand and a lethal one in the other, [Assistant District Attorney John David] Luton reminded jurors. ”Seeing a small area of Harris’ body where he wasn’t covered by deputies, Bates announced that he was going to use his Taser and shot a bullet that struck Harris inches from another deputy’s head, witnesses testified.” The jury recommended the maximum sentence of four years in prison sentencing is scheduled for May 31. NPR’s Martin Kaste has reported that some people in law enforcement think the tradition of volunteer policing should end. ”Law enforcement is one of the few professions that allows people to play at the profession,” Police Chief Ray Johnson of Chesterfield, Mo. told Martin. Bates’ training and behavior on the job came under scrutiny during his trial, but they had also been the subject of a 2009 internal Sheriff’s Office investigation, CBS News uncovered. ”The investigation concluded Bates’ training was questionable and that he was given preferential treatment,” the broadcaster found. CBS has also reported that Bates was close to former Sheriff Stanley Glanz and donated ”thousands” to the Tulsa sheriff’s department."
"Baltimore police said a police detective shot and injured a boy after mistaking a replica pistol in his hand for a real gun. Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis told reporters that two plainclothes detectives were driving in East Baltimore on Wednesday afternoon and saw the boy with ”what looked like a firearm.” Here’s what Davis said happened next: ”They identified themselves as police officers to this young man. The young man took off on foot with the gun in his hand and the foot chase was probably a good   yards. . .. The young man never dropped what appeared to be a firearm and our police officers  —   one of our two police officers discharged his firearm at the young man, striking him nonfatally. His gunshot wounds are nonfatal he will survive from his injuries.” Davis said the apparent firearm was actually a ”replica   pistol.” He argued that because it was so realistic, the officers couldn’t have known it was not a real firearm. He added that the boy’s mother described it to police as a BB gun but did not clarify whether the replica pistol was capable of firing BBs. The shooting happened on the anniversary of Freddie Gray’s funeral. Gray’s death in police custody and the subsequent unrest in Baltimore highlighted   tensions between police and civilians. A statement from the police said the boy, Colvin, is 13 years old. According to The Baltimore Sun, the boy’s mother, Volanda Young, identified him as a   . The police and Young differ on where Colvin was hit Davis said he was shot in the ”lower extremities” and did not specify how many times, while his mother said ”her son was shot once in the shoulder and once in the leg,” according to the Sun. Young found her son lying on the street, bleeding, according to the newspaper, which has her account: ”Young said she pleaded with police: ’Is my son alive?’ ”She said she was leaving to call the hospital when officers handcuffed her and put her in a police car. ” ’It was humiliating,’ she said. ”She said she was taken to a police station and asked questions. At one point, she said, she was put in a cell. She said officers told her she was being belligerent. ”After two hours, she estimated, she was driven to the hospital: ’I begged them to take me.’ ” Davis said police interviewed Young. He also defended the way the officers handled the shooting incident: ”That’s what they’re supposed to do. That’s what cops do.” As NPR reported when Davis was hired, the city’s police chief has said he wants to ”change the culture” of the Baltimore Police Department  —   but ”many activists say there are systemic problems . .. that go much deeper.”"
"From the minute the band walked on stage Saturday night at the Barclays Center, it was clear this wasn’t going to be an ordinary Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band show. Instead of coming out in pairs, house lights up, the stage lights went to purple and the musicians took their places quickly. Springsteen strode stage left to check in with Steve Van Zandt, and then walked back to face drummer Max Weinberg. With a barely perceptible nod of the head, he counted as Max clicked his sticks eight times, Springsteen turned around towards the end of the count, taking his place at the mic, and with a decisive nod to cue the entire band, began the opening chords of Prince’s ”Purple Rain.” Bruce’s effort to maintain the song’s building intensity was visible it felt like it originated from a sense of loss, an expression of the emptiness that accompanies the departure of a kindred spirit more than the original song’s timbre of romantic loss and regret. Nils Lofgren took the solo, which was absolutely the right call Lofgren natively plays with the same kind of fluidity you’d find in a Prince solo, and he played it     —   this was not the night for personal interpretation. By the song’s final crescendo, Springsteen was singing with his eyes closed, conducting the band with the neck of his guitar or an upraised arm, before shouting, ”Prince forever! God bless!” as the song thundered to a close. There were other tributes throughout the show. As the house lights switched out from purple and the E Street Band prepared to go into the usual opening number this tour, you suddenly realized that every member of the E Street Band was wearing purple. This wouldn’t be remarkable except there is a strict   dress code on that stage: I stood behind Max Weinberg once during a show and saw that even things like the cable ties, Solo cups and tissue box covers are black. It was a small gesture, probably not noticed by everyone, but quietly meaningful for those that did. Following ”Meet Me In The City,” Springsteen stepped to the mic. ”We’d like to dedicate this show to Prince. There’s never been anyone better . .. Bandleader, showman, arranger . .. Whenever I would catch one of his shows, I would always leave humbled. I’m going to miss that. We’re going to miss that.” If you needed verbal confirmation that Springsteen was a fan, that Prince’s music meant something to him (which sometimes, his very    audience needs) there, you had it. The commonality between the two artists is larger than their differences. They both got their start in the ’70s, and their careers followed a similar trajectory. Springsteen got tagged with the ”new Dylan” moniker after being signed to Columbia by John Hammond and eventually appeared on the cover of both Time and Newsweek, while Prince was the Boy Wonder who was granted full creative control in his first contract with Warner Bros. at the age of 18. Their first two albums held moments of greatness, but met with mixed commercial and critical success  —   all of which changed with their third releases. For Prince, that was 1980’s Dirty Mind, and for Springsteen, 1975’s Born To Run. These were the   that laid the groundwork towards their careful progression to superstardom in 1984, with Purple Rain and Born In The USA. The   reign of ”When Doves Cry” at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 held ”Dancing In The Dark” at bay, depriving Springsteen his best shot at a No. 1 single. And as Springsteen alluded to in his dedication, both artists have   reputations for sprawling, legendary live shows, assuming their roles as bandleaders from the exact same lineage, straight from James Brown. This tour, organized in support of Springsteen’s 35th anniversary box set for The River  —   has been unusually rigid and formulaic. He opens with an outtake from that time period, plays the album from start to finish, and then follows the record with another   songs from the greatest hits collection, with very few exceptions to that rule. One of those exceptions took place on the opening night of the tour on January 16, when Springsteen opened the encore with ”Rebel Rebel,” five days after the passing of David Bowie. (There was a similar tribute offered at the next show with the death of Glenn Frey.) There’s something absolutely spiritual about the power of being able to mourn in public, as Springsteen himself demonstrated after the deaths of E Street Band members Danny Federici in 2008 and then Clarence Clemons in 2011. In 2012, the Wrecking Ball tour was like attending a rock and roll wake every night. The gestures would evolve as the tour went on, but there were multiple carefully crafted moments and regular reminders: ”Are we missing anybody?” Springsteen would ask every night, gesturing to the temporarily empty places stage left. He would head out to a platform in the center of the floor for ”Tenth Avenue ” the song that’s ”the story about the band,” and when he got to the lyric, ”When the change was made   the Big Man joined the band,” the aforementioned band would swing to a stop, and Clarence Clemons would appear on the video screen a short montage of clips featuring Clarence (and Danny) throughout the years would play. Springsteen would stand there and watch it with the audience every time, visibly emotional to varying degrees depending on the night and the crowd. (He caught me openly weeping at a show in Arizona on that tour, and as he gestured at me, I realized that it wasn’t just sweat on his face at that moment, either.) So Springsteen knows the value of working your grief out communally, and the power of expressing that despair through live rock and roll. The catharsis that came out of the performance of ”Purple Rain” Saturday night was for him just as it was for the audience. But the disruption of the formula of the show on this night was significant, as was the gesture of beginning the performance with another artist’s composition. And the dedication had real meaning, in how it impacted the band’s performance. It’s the end of the U. S. segment of the Springsteen tour, and at its previous show in New York (March 23 at Madison Square Garden, a makeup date for a   show in January) the performance was definitely not the E Street Band at its strongest. It felt like they were ready for this segment to wind down playing The River’s 20 songs every single night for a   U. S. tour isn’t an easy thing to do. But Saturday night in Brooklyn? You’d think they’d just started the tour. Every musician on that stage was finding something more to offer, and almost every performance of every song felt renewed. Springsteen was in the crowd having fun during the   ”Crush On You,” selling it for all he was worth. Steve Van Zandt offered strong guitar work, meeting Bruce and not passing up opportunities to take a lead. Nils Lofgren threatened to light the place on fire during ”Because The Night.” Garry Tallent was literally bouncing as his bass notes rippled through the songs. Roy Bittan’s introduction to ”Point Blank,” probably the consistent highlight of the show, had even more pathos and depth. Max Weinberg was insanely crisp, without even one lost note. If Prince had been at this particular show, he would have nodded in approval, and then figured out how to up his game some more. The emotional highlight of the evening would be a bold and passionate version of ”Backstreets,” from 1975’s Born To Run, a story about youth and reckless abandon and regret. These days, the song appears in a set list to reward an audience, or to make a point. It is grand and epic, and its power has not dimmed over the years. It’s always an emotional moment, but Saturday night, as Springsteen sang, ”We swore we’d live forever,” it was hard to not see the song and the performance through another lens, and I am positive that Springsteen’s voice wavered with emotion even as he delivered the song with power and depth. As a fan of an artist with similar longevity to Prince, it was hard to stand in the audience and not think about whether or not this would be the last time you’d ever get to hear some of the rarer material again  —   some of the songs from The River just weren’t performed after the initial tour behind the record in 1980 and ’81  —   as you considered how many times you’d heard a more popular song played, and how easy it is to take for granted that you’ll always be able to go to a Bruce Springsteen show and hear ”Born To Run” or ”Thunder Road” or ”Dancing In The Dark.” We’re not even halfway through the year, but taking something like this for granted is a thing that, for me, stops right now."
"Raed Al Saleh has seen the city of Aleppo in dire straits before. As the head of the Syrian Civil Defense, he leads missions to find survivors after air raids and missile strikes. But this week even he was shocked by the intensity of the attacks. The past few days in Aleppo are the worst the city has seen since the Syrian uprisings began five years ago, he says. Saleh never imagined he’d be the head of a   force who’ve so far been responsible for saving more than 40, 000 lives. Back then, he was just a businessman who sold electrical equipment. But since the war started in 2011, the    father of two joined the Civil Defense  —   widely known as the White Helmets for the headgear they don when they deploy to areas hit by heavy bombardment  —   and eventually was elected to lead the group. The work is dangerous and immensely taxing, he says, but ”there are no other options.” In an interview with Goats and Soda over WhatsApp and Skype, Saleh talks about the airstrikes in Aleppo, the bravery of his fellow White Helmet volunteers and how last week, he was turned back by security at Dulles Airport in Virginia en route to a banquet to receive the 2016 Humanitarian Award from InterAction, a coalition of global NGOs and nonprofits. He still doesn’t know why. What do the White Helmets do when disaster strikes? When volunteers arrive at a site, they do whatever they can to get to people and transport them to hospitals while they’re alive. They dig through rubble at a site that’s just been hit by airstrikes or missiles to reach survivors as fast as possible. They treat survivors equally and do the most thorough job they can. We work to the best of our abilities together so that we can all succeed in saving as many lives as possible. It sounds like a challenging job. Anyone who is part of the Civil Defense has an extremely difficult job. Every day, to interact with death, to interact with blood, to interact with victims, it’s very difficult. But we don’t have many options. The only option we have is to help people because to us, every single person we are able to save from underneath the rubble gives us hope, gives us reason to continue our work. What are you and your fellow volunteers seeing and hearing out of Aleppo? Honestly, the situation in Aleppo has become unbearable. It’s much worse than it’s ever been. There were more than five very deadly raids in Aleppo. More than 25 people killed in [a field] hospital strike, and [Thursday] I can say there were more than 50 raids in Aleppo. Every side is participating and we don’t know what’s happening and how long this will continue. The situation is extremely bad. What’s the biggest threat to the White Helmets? The biggest threat to us is the politics of the Syrian and Russian regimes and their airstrikes on civilian areas. After they hit once, and as we, first responders, arrive, they hit again. We lost more than 115 members of the Civil Defense, and the vast majority of these are a result of these airstrikes. Last week, security turned you away at Dulles Airport on your way to an award ceremony in Washington, D. C. for your humanitarian work. You’ve been to the U. S. seven times, three times in the past year to speak at the U. N. and with USAID. What happened?  I didn’t really expect to be turned away. It’s not my first time in America. [It] made me feel hopeless in a way, because this is what Syrians are facing wherever they go. I still haven’t been told why I was not allowed in. Are you still going out in the rubble now that you’re head of the Syrian Civil Defense? To be honest, I spend a lot of my days going between provinces, helping deliver aid and whatever the people on the ground need to do their jobs. I also coordinate with aid groups in Turkey [where he lives in a refugee camp with his wife and two children.] Before I used to do more    operations inside Syria in the areas that I was familiar with on a daily basis. After five years of war, what still gives you hope? My dream, and I’m sure all Syrians have the same one dream, that the bloodshed and killing will stop in Syria. That there will be peace. When you head out on a    mission, or even just enter Syria, what do you tell your wife and kids? Uncertainty of life is something all Syrians have been living with for the past five years. It’s so difficult to leave the house and have no idea if you’ll be returning. Every time I leave home, it feels like a farewell. We say goodbye as if it’s a farewell. I tell them to be careful, to take care of themselves and each other  —   that if something happens to me, or if I die, that they shouldn’t be sad, because they know their father did what he could to help the people, and the people will do what they can to help them."
"Just when health officials think the Ebola outbreak is over in West Africa, the virus pops up again seemingly out of the blue. It’s happened at least five times so far. Now scientists are starting to figure out why: The virus can lie dormant in a survivor for more than year and then   to infect others.  It’s called a ”persistent infection.” It’s rare. But it has played a big role in keeping Ebola around in Liberia, an international team of scientists reports Friday in the journal Science Advances. ”We believe that most, if not all, the clusters of new Ebola cases have come from [persistent infections in] survivors, but sometimes it’s very hard to determine that with certainty,” says Dr. Thomas Frieden, who directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U. S. Typically when a person recovers from Ebola, the immune system clears out the virus from the blood and other tissues and the person isn’t contagious anymore. But sometimes, the virus finds its way into parts of the body where the immune system can’t reach it  —   such as inside the eyes, spinal fluid, breast milk and testes. That last one is the big problem, says Dr. Daniel Bausch, an infectious disease expert at Tulane University. ”Sexual transmission is our No. 1 concern,” he says. Scientists have known for years that Ebola can linger in the semen of men who’ve recovered  —   and that sexual transmission was possible. But a cluster of cases in Guinea this past March suggest semen can stay infectious for more than a year, far longer than previously thought. So far, sexual transmission has likely caused at least two of the Ebola   recorded in Guinea and Liberia  —   which, in some ways, is a relief, Bausch says. ”Of course, I’m never going to say that sexual transmission is a good thing,” he says. ”But it’s kind of comforting that these [ ] are from a mode of transmission that we understand more and more about.” So what about the other  ? That’s where the new study comes in. When Ebola first returned to Liberia last June, epidemiologists were stumped. They couldn’t tell where the seven infected people had caught the virus. So Jason Ladner and his colleagues at the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases went hunting for clues. They isolated Ebola from the patients’ blood and sequenced the genomes. ”People were saying this is probably the most important Ebola genome sequence that has been generated thus far,” Ladner says, because they hoped it would tell them how Ebola had returned to Liberia. When Ladner and his team got the results, they were quite surprised. The sequence for each patient’s virus almost perfectly matched the one circulating in Liberia nearly a year earlier. During that time, the virus should have mutated. But it didn’t. It was like the virus was frozen in time. That meant the new cases in Liberia came from a dormant virus, hidden inside a survivor for more than a year. Ladner and his team aren’t sure who that survivor is. They have some hints that the   might have begun when a woman passed the virus on to a man, perhaps through sexual contact  —   which would be a first. So far, only    transmission has been documented among survivors. So that’s the next medical question to probe  —   can sexual transmission go both ways?"
"Every month, I bring together some of the music from around the world that I’ve enjoyed most in recent weeks. April, however, has been completely overshadowed by Prince’s death. Few contemporary artists have meant so much, for so long, to so very many people working in wildly disparate corners of the globe. In the midst of putting together this month’s picks, I realized that I could hear individual facets of Prince’s polymathic, polymorphous talents in each of the tunes I’ve selected for this edition of Latitudes. Hot guitar licks. I know I’m not the only one who’s been watching Prince’s incendiary solo on ”While My Guitar Gently Weeps” for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. And anyone who has seen that (or his own set, which is online, at least for the time being) knows, that Prince was a consummate rock guitarist  —   if he had only been a guitarist, he would still be a legend. And that legacy hasn’t lost on young Tuareg musicians, for whom   guitar has become an intrinsic part of their own idiom. (See: Tinariwen, Bombino, et al.) Seizing upon that idea, an American filmmaker, music archivist and label head Christopher Kirkley (who collaborated with us at NPR Music and the show Afropop Worldwide a few years back to create a stream of 100   songs from Mali) directed a Tuareg remake of Prince’s film Purple Rain. He cast Mdou Moctar, a guitarist from Agadez, Niger, in the lead role.  .  As my colleague Jason King wrote in his his marvelous remembrance, Prince was an uncategorizeable, ”überfunky,   wildly eccentric,   boho black genius.” Yet he was funk  —   and rock, and pop, and so much more. This collaboration between   producer Batida (a. k. a. Pedro Coquenão) and Congolese band Konono Nº1 just hits so many sweet spots, thanks in part to their shared love of   beats and metallic textures. This song, ”Nlele Kalusimbiko,” is the opening track on their new joint album, Konono Nº1 Meets Batida. Smoky, sultry, sexy. The Turkish band Model, fronted by singer Fatma Turgut, is all about those vibes on their single ”Mey” (Wine). The song boasts a catchy chorus  —   and it really highlights the allure of Turgut’s voice, which references   melismatic acrobatics and yet sounds refreshingly   . Courting controversy. As my colleague Ann Powers noted after Prince’s death, he was a transgressive force on so many fronts  —   sexual, spiritual, political and certainly musical. (As he wrote in a 1999 statement explaining his name change to his famous glyph, ”It’s all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new  . ”) And certainly that involved playing with gender identity and roles, too. I can’t help but hear  —   and see  —   some of that same sense of new possibilities when I hear a band like Lebanon’s Mashrou’ Leila. They’ve attracted worldwide attention this week for a show scheduled in a Roman amphitheater in Amman, Jordan governmental permission was rescinded because of a furor over their ”political and religious beliefs and endorsement of gender equality and sexual freedom.” The concert was granted approval at the last minute by Jordan’s ministry of the interior, but according to the band, it was much too late to   the show. Mashrou’ Leila has been playing with tropes of all kinds for years now. In one of their early hits, ”Fasateen” (Dresses) the band members destroy all kinds of traditional wedding symbols  —   and toy with the idea of who would wear white tulle in any case. Finally, I can’t let April run out without paying another tribute to Congolese singer Papa Wemba, who died last week doing what he clearly loved so much. He collapsed while performing a joyful set for a big crowd in Ivory Coast. The song ”Yolele” comes from his 1995 album Emotion. Made for Peter Gabriel’s Real World records, it marked a watershed moment in Wemba’s career, in which he made an overt overture to an ”international”  —   that is, primarily (white) European and North American  —   audience."
"You know that feeling when your body is really craving a nice salad, but the only thing in your fridge is   pepperoni pizza? And you don’t want to go through all the trouble of heading to the grocery store to gather all the ingredients for salad, so you settle for the pizza? Well, Neanderthals feel you  —   kind of. See, researchers are finding that Neanderthals and early humans weren’t all that different  —   they even got together and made babies every now and then. But when it came to diet, the two may have had different approaches. Both were omnivores. But, during the Ice Age, when the climate was constantly fluctuating, Neanderthals tended to chow down on whatever was most readily available, according to a study published this week in PLoS One. During cold spells, Neanderthals  —   especially those who lived in open, grassland environments  —   subsisted mostly on meat. During lusher climes, Neanderthals would supplement their diet with plants, seeds and nuts. Early humans, on the other hand, seemed to stick with a pretty consistent diet regardless of environmental changes: They regularly ate a relatively higher proportion of   foods. Researchers figured this out by studying the tiny, microscopic dings and dents on ancient teeth. ”The moment we get our adult teeth, they start to wear down. And the rate at which they wear down is very much related to what you eat  —   especially if you look at the molars,” explains Sireen El Zaatari, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, who led the study. ”This food that you’re chewing is leaving tiny, tiny marks on your teeth.” Meat  —   especially cooked meat  —   is relatively gentle on the chompers, whereas seeds and nuts leave a mark, she says. El Zaatari and her colleagues looked at the teeth of Neanderthals and humans living mainly in Europe throughout the Upper Paleolithic period. The researchers weren’t able to directly compare a Neanderthal and a human who lived during the exact same time. ”Still, we can assume that generally, both groups had access to the same resources,” El Zaatari says. ”But what you notice is that Neanderthals and humans ate different ratios of meat and   food.” What could explain these differences in eating habits? Scientists aren’t really sure. ”Maybe it was simply a cultural difference,” El Zaatari says. ”Or maybe humans were better at exploiting their environment to acquire food that was harder to get. Unfortunately, we can’t know for sure.” This research does fit in with other evidence indicating that Neanderthals tended to eat more meat than early humans, says Susan Cachel, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, who wasn’t involved in the study. But examining dental wear isn’t the only way of deciphering our ancestors’ eating habits. ”A better way to look at diet is to look at the chemistry of [tooth] enamel,” Cachel says. Different plants absorb different amounts of carbon isotopes. Scientists can analyze the ratios of various isotopes on ancient enamel to figure out what sorts of fruits, nuts and vegetation our ancient predecessors ate. So the isotopes in tooth enamel can paint a broad picture of what someone ate throughout their life. On the other hand, ”the advantage of looking at [dental wear] is that you get a fuller picture of what all they were eating right up to the time when they died,” says Shara Bailey, an anthropologist at New York University. Bailey, who wasn’t involved in the recent study, either, says this new research adds to our growing understanding of early human life. Perhaps humans outlived (and to some extent  —   genetically swallowed up) the Neanderthals because they were better at making their environment work for them, Bailey says. ”At this point, we can only speculate. This is one more bit of information we can use.”"
"As anyone who’s been one can attest, new parents need all the help they can get. While blogger, author and mother of two Asha Dornfest can’t come do the night feedings, she does have a number of   moves that may help avert disaster  —   and preserve some parental sanity. Dornfest is the author of Parent Hacks: 134 Genius Shortcuts for Life with Kids, which compiles some of the best tricks from her blog of the same name. Dornfest, whose kids are now 16 and 12, started ParentHacks a decade ago. Some of the solutions may seem simple  —   but sometimes they aren’t so obvious when you’re in midst of a kid crisis. ”Every now and then, sometimes it’s that moment of desperation that actually inspires some crazy ninja moment of genius,” Dornfest tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. ”Every now and then I would stumble upon one of these solutions, and whenever another parent would share something like that with me, I would think to myself, ”Wow, why didn’t I think of that?” Dornfest shares some of her favorite hacks with McEvers. On what to do for a kid who can’t keep her shoelaces tied, Swap the shoelaces out for elastic, the cheap elastic that you can buy in a sewing section of a store. Amazingly, it transforms   shoes into   if you just tie it. On how to fix a broken diaper tab and other uses for the ’magical multitasker’ A   actually works in a pinch. But, believe it or not, there is a magical multitasker that I still, to this day, carry with me all the time, and that is a roll of blue painter’s tape. It comes off easily, it’s kind of the   note of tapes. And so . .. it works really well on a diaper, in a pinch. You can actually use it (to childproof a) hotel room. You can put it over electrical outlets. You can use it to keep drawers closed, because you know how little toddlers are, they love to open and close drawers. One of my favorite uses is for creating little floor games. So you can use it to create tracks for toy cars on the floor. Or you can use it to mark the hot zone around a grill outside. On the cleaning power of the lint roller, It’s great for getting crumbs off of just about anything. You can use it to clean the flotsam that ends up at the bottom of a diaper bag. You can almost use it as a little vacuum cleaner for the car. On how to deal with kids’ ’fear of the flush’ My favorite parent hack in the book is how to disable the   sensor on a public restroom toilet. The simple way is to cover the sensor. This is where our handy and beloved painter’s tape comes in, or   note, and then remove it after the kid is out, and then the   can do what it’s meant to do."
"The bald eagle may soon have a large, furry friend: The North American bison is on the verge of being named the first national mammal of the United States. The House approved the National Bison Legacy Act on Tuesday, and it passed the Senate on Thursday. Now it’s awaiting President Obama’s signature to become law. The measure says the bison is considered a ”historical symbol of the United States” and it is ”integrally linked with the economic and spiritual lives of many Indian tribes through trade and sacred ceremonies.” It adds that the bison adorns two state flags and is the official mammal or animal of three states. As The Washington Post reports, the bison had a diverse team of backers making its case: ”Lobbying for the official mammal designation was a coalition of conservationists ranchers, for whom bison are business and tribal groups, such as the InterTribal Buffalo Council, which wants to ’restore bison to Indian nations in a manner that is compatible with their spiritual and cultural beliefs and practices.’ ” The bison is an ”icon that represents the highest ideals of America: unity, resilience and healthy landscapes and communities,” says Wildlife Conservation Society president Cristián Samper, the newspaper reports. Keith Aune, bison program director with the Wildlife Conservation Society, tells Here  Now that the bison has a ”special place in our history”: ”For us, there are several really important reasons we think bison deserve this designation. First off, it’s a very economically important animal. There’s a tremendous commercial industry, and it’s a tremendous good red meat. And it also is ecologically very important. Our healthy prairies are really dependent on not just any grazing, but the right type of grazing  —   and bison are entirely adapted to the Great Plains and create that scenario.” That’s along with its cultural significance to many tribal groups, Aune says. He adds that the bison’s comeback from a low of just hundreds is a ”remarkable story.” The bill says efforts early last century to save the bison ”resulted in the first successful reintroduction of a mammal species on the brink of extinction back into the natural habitat of the species.” According to the Post, bison now have a presence in every state, with about 20, 000 living on public land. What mammal do you think should become a symbol of the United States? Let us know in the comments."
"The Pentagon’s final report on the deadly U. S. airstrike on a Médecins Sans Frontières trauma center in Kunduz, Afghanistan, last October concludes the incident was caused by ”human errors, compounded by process and equipment failures.” The report states that the assault, which killed dozens of medical staff and patients, does not constitute a war crime  —   contrary to what MSF (also known as Doctors Without Borders) has argued. It comes down to intent, the report says: ”The label ’war crimes’ is typically reserved for intentional acts  —   intentionally targeting civilians or intentionally targeting protected objects. The investigation found that the tragic incident resulted from a combination of unintentional human errors and equipment failures, and that none of the personnel knew that they were striking a medical facility.” The Pentagon has disciplined 16 service members as a result of the strike. NPR’s Tom Bowman reports on Morning Edition that the disciplined personnel include a ”  general, a special forces commander who was on the ground, various officers.” He adds: ”Some were removed from command shortly after this happened others were given letters of reprimand, so they could be  .” The penalties do not include criminal charges. MSF calls the punishment ”out of proportion” to the damage, and says, ”The lack of meaningful accountability sends a worrying signal to warring parties, and is unlikely to act as a deterrent against future violations in the rules of war.”   people died in the Kunduz strikes. Initially, the Pentagon put the toll at 30, but MSF later increased its figure. The report says the U. S. government has ”relied primarily upon MSF for casualty estimates, and these numbers have not been independently verified.” The   has gone into depth about the ”series of avoidable errors” detailed in a November 2015 report: Among other things, the team was ”inadequately briefed,” there were technical issues with the onboard communication system, and the location was misidentified because of a targeting error. The intended target was an   site 440 yards away from the MSF hospital. The report released today has this account of the   to the strike: ”The Afghan forces provided the correct grid coordinates for the target site to the U. S. Special Forces commander on the ground, who then relayed them to the aircrew through a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC). Due to the distance of the aircraft from the location at issue, the aircrew was initially unable to locate the target structure. When the grid coordinates were entered, the system directed the aircrew to an open field. The aircrew then attempted to visually identify the target structure based on a description relayed by Afghan forces through the JTAC. Base on this discussion over communications systems, the aircrew identified a structure that they believed to be the   target structure, but was actually the MSF Trauma Center.” It adds that as the plane was zeroing in on the hospital, a crew member called a TV Sensor Operator warned that the target might be wrong and suggested that another structure was the correct target. Despite ”several attempts to clarify which structure was the actual target,” the weapons system ultimately fixed on the hospital, which apparently ”generally matched the physical description” of the nearby   building. The latest report also addresses two previously unanswered questions tied to the length of the assault: According to the military’s account, the assault began at about 2:08 a. m. local time and lasted about half an hour  —   even though the first calls from MSF came 11 minutes after it began: ”Starting at approximately 2:19 a. m. MSF personnel notified several U. S. government representatives that the MSF trauma center was being engaged. Due to the fighting around Kunduz, it was initially unclear who was engaging the MSF Trauma Center. Following a series of relayed messages through multiple echelons of command, the U. S. Special Forces commander on the ground eventually realized that the   was engaging the MSF Trauma Center  —   not the   structure the crew believed it was engaging  —   and halted the strike at approximately 2:38 a. m. The investigation determined that the steps taken by several U. S. military personnel during this period were inadequate.” MSF maintains that the assault lasted more than an hour. Gen. Joseph Votel, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, says he was struck by communication lapses between personnel in the air and on the ground. Here’s Tom’s exchange with Votel during the press conference: TOM: Clearly, when they’re looking at this building, there’s no indication of enemy fire. There’s no indication of fighting around there. Are you concerned that they were hitting a target but there’s no indication of hostile intent? VOTEL: This is an area that we did examine in some great detail. . .. It’s not uncommon to not see fire coming from a building or from a location coming through a sensor system, and that is my own personal experience. Some can . .. trained analysts perhaps who have looked at a lot of this over a lot of time and focus on it may be able to do that, but it’s not uncommon to not be able to identify that. The other aspect that we looked at was what was the pattern of life around this particular facility. And I think one of the contributing factors here was that, what was being described by the ground force commander happening at the intended target was very closely being replicated at the Doctors Without Borders facility. They found about the same number of people, about the same general locations outside the building, and so they . .. TOM: Was anybody shooting? Nobody was shooting at the hospital, correct? VOTEL: Nobody from the Afghans. Right. It was at a different location. TOM: Wouldn’t they think something was wrong here? VOTEL: Again, yeah, again  —   there’s a mistaken identification of the target. So the aircraft is looking at one location, the ground forces thinking they’re looking at another location. There’s no way to visually confirm that back and forth between them, and their discussions as you look at the transcripts don’t add clarity to that. TOM: I don’t want to belabor this, but looking at what they saw, there was no shooting, there was no one running around with RPGs, there was no firefight on the ground, so why would they just keep hitting it? VOTEL: In the experience of these individuals right here, who have done these types of operations before, what they were seeing was frankly in line with what was being described from the ground and with their own experience. I mean the enemy does adapt to how we operate, so they don’t operate in quite an open fashion where we can always see everything that we have. MSF isn’t satisfied with the military’s account and tweeted a list of further questions after the release of the report. ”Today’s briefing amounts to an admission of an uncontrolled military operation in a densely populated urban area, during which US forces failed to follow the basic laws of war,” Meinie Nicolai, president of MSF Belgium, says in a statement. ”It is incomprehensible that, under the circumstances described by the US, the attack was not called off.” Tom reports that according to the Pentagon, there will not be an independent investigation into the Kunduz incident. MSF continues to demand one."
"A small mammal has sabotaged the world’s most powerful scientific instrument. The Large Hadron Collider, a   superconducting machine designed to smash protons together at close to the speed of light, went offline overnight. Engineers investigating the mishap found the charred remains of a furry creature near a   power cable. ”We had electrical problems, and we are pretty sure this was caused by a small animal,” says Arnaud Marsollier, head of press for CERN, the organization that runs the $7 billion particle collider in Switzerland. Although they had not conducted a thorough analysis of the remains, Marsollier says they believe the creature was ”a weasel, probably.” (Update: An official briefing document from CERN indicates the creature may have been a marten.) The shutdown comes as the LHC was preparing to collect new data on the Higgs Boson, a fundamental particle it discovered in 2012. The Higgs is believed to endow other particles with mass, and it is considered to be a cornerstone of the modern theory of particle physics. Researchers have seen some hints in recent data that other,   particles might also be generated inside the LHC. If those other particles exist, they could revolutionize researcher’s understanding of everything from the laws of gravity, to quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, Marsollier says, scientists will have to wait while workers bring the machine back online. Repairs will take a few days, but getting the machine fully ready to smash might take another week or two. ”It may be ” he says. These sorts of mishaps are not unheard of, says Marsollier. The LHC is located outside of Geneva. ”We are in the countryside, and of course we have wild animals everywhere.” There have been previous incidents, including one in 2009, when a bird is believed to have dropped a baguette onto critical electrical systems. Nor are the problems exclusive to the LHC: In 2006, raccoons conducted a ”coordinated” attack on a particle accelerator in Illinois. It is unclear whether the animals are trying to stop humanity from unlocking the secrets of the universe. Of course, small mammals cause problems in all sorts of organizations. Yesterday, a group of children took National Public Radio off the air for over a minute before engineers could restore the broadcast."
"Ahead of the potentially pivotal Indiana primary Tuesday, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence announced he will be voting for Republican candidate Ted Cruz. ”This is a time for choosing,” Pence said on WIBC radio in Indianapolis. He called Cruz, a senator from Texas, a ”principled conservative” who ”stood up for taxpayers” in fighting spending in Washington, said he was ”very impressed” with his ”knowledge and devotion” to the Constitution and his ”strong, unwavering stand” against abortion rights. But Pence seemed to go out of his way to praise Republican   Donald Trump. He also stressed that his endorsement was not intended to sway the votes of Indiana Republicans. ”I respect the right of every Hoosier in making their determination,” Pence said, adding, ”I encourage everyone to make up their own mind.” In fact, Pence mentioned Trump before mentioning his endorsement of Cruz. ”I like and respect all three of the candidates,” Pence began. ”I particularly want to commend Donald Trump,” whom he said has given voice to people’s frustrations. He said he was ”grateful” for Trump at least twice  —   for taking a stand for Hoosier jobs. And ”for his voice in the national debate. I’m not against anybody, but I will be voting for Ted Cruz in the Republican primary.” And, he added, ”Let me be very, very clear on this . .. whoever wins the Republican nomination I’m going to work my heart out for this fall.” Pence’s endorsement was closely watched, in part, because he’ll be on the ballot this fall as a candidate for   and because, in the past, he’s been seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate. Cruz also hopes Pence’s endorsement gives him a boost in the Hoosier State, where he’s trailing Trump in recent surveys. Cruz was helped by Scott Walker’s endorsement in Wisconsin, giving Cruz his only   primary victory so far in this campaign. But Cruz not only had Walker’s endorsement, but almost the entire GOP infrastructure in Wisconsin, including talk radio. Pence’s endorsement was far less forceful than Cruz would probably have liked. There are 57 delegates at stake in Indiana on Tuesday. If Trump sweeps those delegates, his path to the nomination not only becomes clear, but likely. Currently, he needs 42 percent of remaining delegates to win, which is very doable. If he wins all of Indiana’s 57 delegates, that drops to 36 percent."
"The real White House West Wing felt a bit like the fictional one at the center of the NBC television series The West Wing for a brief moment on Friday afternoon. Posing as her character C. J. Cregg, who was the press secretary in the critically acclaimed show that ran from 1999 until 2006, actress Allison Janney took a surprise turn on the podium to the delight and surprise of the real White House press corps. ”Josh is out today, he has, I believe it’s a root canal,” she said about   White House press secretary Josh Earnest’s absence  —   but it was also an allusion to a scene in the show’s first season when Deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman took a disastrous turn at briefing the press when Cregg had a dental emergency. ”But let’s be honest, I’m better at this than he is anyway,” she continued to laughs. Janney began with two announcements: that President Obama is ”still working” on his speech for Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner and that ”he intends to be funny, very funny.” The second was also a call back to another famous scene in the show: ”It is Friday, which means that at half past 5, I will be performing ’The Jackal’ in my office for anyone who is interested, or remembers or cares.” Earnest eventually miraculously recovered from his ”root canal,” and burst into the room telling the actress that ”this isn’t your show anymore!” Janney ended the spoof by revealing the real reason she was at the White House: to talk about opioid addiction and what was being done to combat the problem. Her current show on CBS, Mom, deals with drug addiction and its struggles. ”This is a disease that can touch anybody, and all of us can help reduce drug abuse through   treatment, prevention and recovery. Research shows it works, and courageous Americans show it works every day,” Janney said. Before she returned the briefing to Earnest, ”C. J.” did take one question from CBS Radio’s Mark Knoller: ”Who is President Bartlett supporting in the Democratic primary?” ”I think you know the answer to that question,” she quipped. Actor Bradley Whitford, who played Deputy Chief of Staff Lyman, said earlier this month that actor Martin Sheen’s President Bartlett would absolutely vote for Hillary Clinton."
"International trade disputes used to be relatively simple. One country would build up an industry to create jobs, and then dump excess products in another country at   prices. Competitors facing unrealistically cheap imports would file ” ” complaints to seek   protections. That’s what happened decades ago when U. S. steel companies got fed up with Japanese makers of steel pipe. In 1978, the U. S. International Trade Commission issued a ”cease and desist” order to stop Japan’s ”predatory pricing.” Ah, but those were simpler times. This week, U. S. Steel Corp. filed a trade complaint with the ITC, starting off with a traditional pricing complaint: ”The Chinese industry has formed a cartel that sets purchase and sale prices, and controls production and export volumes to target export markets.” But then it added a 21st century twist: ”The Chinese industry has used its government to steal U. S. Steel’s closely guarded trade secrets and uses those trade secrets to produce advanced steel products it could not make on its own.” The   steelmaker says its Chinese rivals must be investigated. ”We will use every tool available to fight for fair trade,” U. S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi said in a statement. The complaint was filed with the independent agency charged with reviewing complaints and enforcing U. S. trade policy. It has 30 days to decide whether to investigate charges usually, it says yes. China’s Commerce Ministry said that the complaints ”have no factual basis,” and it urged the ITC to reject U. S. Steel’s case. U. S. Steel’s tough language may add to the rising trade tensions between China and other major   nations. The U. S. government already has hit Chinese steel imports with new duties this year, and it has launched an investigation into China’s alleged overproduction of aluminum. Last week, officials from the U. S. Europe, Japan and other   nations met in Brussels to push for a multinational, comprehensive agreement to cut steelmaking capacity. But China wouldn’t go along with such plans. So now U. S. Steel says it is pursuing ”countervailing and   cases and pushing for increased enforcement of existing laws.” American steel companies are agitated about China because they already are facing lots of problems. For example, tighter fuel standards are pushing car makers to switch to lighter materials. And energy companies are buying a lot less pipe for drilling. So U. S. companies want to focus on more advanced products, such as   stainless steels. But changing over to making new types of steel is expensive. Having competitors hack into  —   and steal  —   valuable research would be very damaging. In its public complaint, U. S. Steel did not provide evidence of hacking by Chinese officials, but said a 2011 hack fit ”the pattern of previous attacks that the Chinese government conducted to benefit their   companies. The attack circumvented the technological safeguards U. S. Steel uses to protect its trade secrets, and stole several gigabytes of valuable research data on advanced steels.” If the ITC decides to go forward, the investigation may take a while. That’s because the agency is being asked to, in effect, weigh three separate issues: price fixing, false labeling to avoid duties and theft of trade secrets. Derek Scissors, a resident scholar and China trade expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said that while U. S. Steel has not yet presented public evidence, it would be no surprise if China turned up guilty of hacking. When it comes to stealing trade secrets, ”they do it all the time,” Scissors said. ”There’s no defense” for such behavior, he added. Scissors says U. S. Steel also probably would be able to prove that China is flooding markets with cheap steel. ”They have too much [steelmaking] capacity and it looks like dumping,” he said of the import surge. However, he pointed out that cheap steel helps other U. S. manufacturers hold down the cost of goods made with steel  —   like autos. ”It’s not necessarily bad for the country,” he said of Chinese steel. ”Ford benefits from dumped steel.”"
"What do you get in Cracker Jack? A QR code, apparently. The ”Prize Inside” will no longer actually be inside the box,   has announced. Like so many other aspects of our lives, the prize will be digitized. Download an app, scan a sticker inside the Cracker Jack box and access ”  mobile digital experiences,” the company said, launching the change ahead of baseball season. The packaging and logo will also be ”contemporized.” On the Cracker Jack Facebook page, commenters were not impressed: ”An app is not a prize,” one quipped. ”The backbone of Cracker Jack has always been a young child’s treasure hunt. .... .SHAME ON YOU,” another proclaimed. ”Wow. In all my nearly 56 years on this planet, I have never been so disappointed in a product,” said one woman. Yet another wrote, simply: ”Forget you.” A Facebook community with more than 1, 000 likes is calling on   to ”Put the PRIZE back in Cracker Jack.”"
"Inside the rally, people chanted ”Build that wall.” Outside, others chanted ”Don’t vote Trump”  —   and before the night was over, the two sides had a tense confrontation on a street in Costa Mesa, Calif. where Donald Trump gave a speech Thursday. Police say no major injuries were reported  —   but that they also arrested around 20 people. Before the night was over, demonstrators attacked at least one police car, shattering its windows. Hundreds of protesters filled the streets outside the Pacific Amphitheater, an outdoor venue in Orange County where Trump spoke as his presidential campaign gets rolling ahead of California’s June primary. Some protesters waved Mexican flags, in a rebuke to Trump’s statements about immigration. Police helicopters, as well as a row of officers on horseback and others in full riot gear, were deployed to keep the   and   sides from clashing. Two reporters from member station KPCC were at the rally from their report: ”While some have speculated that Trump might be toning down his campaign rhetoric, Thursday night’s speech was a return to many of the points he’s made for months on the trail. He taunted his rivals, talked torture to combat terrorism, and pledged to build a wall on the Mexican border. ”He took special note of the rising LA murder rate. ” ’In this area, crime has increased 33 percent in the last year. What the hell is going on? I know what’s going on,’ he told the crowd. ”He attributed it to an increase in illegal immigration from Mexico, though research shows that not to be true.” Many of the Trump supporters who attended last night’s rally arrived hours beforehand by 5 p. m. local time, a long line stretched outside the venue at the Orange County Fairgrounds. The crowd included a group of young girls wearing ”Kids for Trump”   as KPCC’s Ben Bergman reported via Twitter. Clashes between Trump’s backers and critics began in the hours before the Republican   spoke, with some footage from the scene showing people yelling, shoving and swinging at one another. For at least a short while later in the night, the protest morphed into a sort of car meet, with the driver of a Miata performing an extended doughnut in the intersection and a Mustang’s driver doing a burnout as the crowd cheered."
"Donald Trump has called himself the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But he can’t become the real presumptive nominee without first gaining a lot of votes in the California primary on June 7  —   the last day of voting on the GOP primary calendar. It’s the first time in decades that California will make a difference in picking the GOP nominee. That’s why all three remaining candidates will be speaking at the California Republican Party’s convention, which begins Friday. California Republicans aren’t used to all this attention. Just 27. 6 percent of California voters are registered with the party. Though few in numbers, they may become mighty in impact. California will be Donald Trump’s last chance to either win the delegates he needs to clinch, or fall short and fight it out at the national GOP convention in Cleveland in July. ”It’s very exciting for California to actually have a voice,” said Jim Brulte, the chairman of the state Republican Party.  Though California has become reliably Democratic in presidential contests, he says that the enthusiasm generated at this weekend’s convention could have dividends for California Republicans down the line and down the ballot. ”Our delegates are very excited,” said Brulte, ”and that will add to their encouragement, as they go back to their communities to work to rebuild our party from the ground up.” There’ll be about 1700 office holders and   activists at the state convention. Donald Trump will kick off the proceedings Friday with a lunchtime speech. But considering his criticism of the war in Iraq, his blaming the Bush administration for   and his occasional kind words about Planned Parenthood, he’s not necessarily the natural candidate for this crowd, according to Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. ”The Republicans who attend their state party convention are the truest of the true blue  —   or true red, I suppose, in this case. They are the most ideologically intense and the most ideologically extreme members of their party,” said Schnur. Those delegates will hear from John Kasich at dinner on Friday. On Saturday, Ted Cruz will speak at lunch. Then the dinner keynote will be delivered by Cruz’s   vice presidential pick (presuming he gets the opportunity to pick) Carly Fiorina. A group of GOP consultants has formed Victory California, the sole purpose of which is to deny Donald Trump the 1, 237 delegates that would guarantee him the nomination. Veteran California political consultant Richard Temple, a   of Victory California, said that there are a lot of opportunities for both Kasich and Cruz to pick up delegates in the state’s primary ”because we are     by congressional district.” So Trump may lead by a wide margin in statewide polls, but in California’s GOP primary it’s not just how many votes you get, but where you get them. Each congressional district won by Kasich or Cruz means 3 delegates that Trump won’t get. Trump has swept, or nearly swept, all of the delegates in many recent states that awarded them to the winners of individual congressional districts. But Temple insists that he and his colleagues have the upper hand in this fight, because ”we actually live and work here in California and know the state pretty well. We know these individual congressional districts we know what kind of voters live there by their income level, education level, marital status. So it is a    effort across a very large state.” Whatever the outcome on June 7, the competition on display at this weekend’s state convention could help revive the fortunes of the struggling California Republican Party. But political analyst Dan Schnur said it’s a double edged sword. ”On one hand, it’s going to bring the party an amount of attention that it has not received in many years,” said Schnur. ”On the other hand, the types of voters who Republicans need in order to become a competitive party in California once again are not the kind of voters who are going to be attracted to either a Ted Cruz or Donald Trump message.” For California Republicans, that’s a   issue. This weekend’s forecast calls for delegates to enjoy the warmth of the national spotlight and a little love from their presidential candidates. But once the general election starts, they’re unlikely to see much of their nominee in solidly blue California."
"There are many qualities of a great teacher. Two big ones? Kindness and a willingess to make learning fun. At least that’s what Marlem  ’s   say. For our 50 Great Teachers project, we’ve searched all over for teachers like her. Which brought us to Sunset Elementary School in Miami . .. and ”Mrs.  .” But this time around, we decided to shake things up: We asked her students to do the reporting. The   (all 26 of them!) wrote a news story about their teacher. And, extra bonus, we gave them disposable cameras to show us their classroom. So, we’ll get out of the way here and hand it over to the class: This is Lauren Page, reporting live from Sunset Elementary and OH MY GOSH. Did you know, that my teacher, Mrs.   is one of the top 50 teachers in the USA? You’ll soon discover why this is so from my point of view. In my classroom 815, we learn so much which is why I absolutely love it! Breaking news! Mrs.   is one of the best 50 teachers in the country. She motivates her students like no other teacher does. She also does fun activities. Read on to learn why Mrs.   is one of the best 50 teachers in the United States of America. Oh I’m so tired of learning but not with Mrs.  . Mrs.   makes learning fun and cares about all of her students with equal importance. Being taught by Mrs.   is a privilege and to all of her students. You’ll soon discover why Mrs.   is a great teacher. It’s a regular day at Sunset Elementary, but every day is special with Mrs.  . Batter up! How do you spell ”connoisseur”?           . Correct! Sound familiar? Maybe not, bit it sure does for me and the rest of Mrs.  ’s pupils. This game is called Spelling Baseball  —   one of the activities Mrs.   does with us to help us learn, improve our skills, and keep our brains fresh. Mrs.  ’s activities are, among other things, fun and highly educational. My most memorable learning experience is Writing Idol. Writing Idol is an experience I will never forget. It is really fun, it helps us improve our essays, it will help us for our FSA’s and to top it off, it has a catchy theme song. Yeah, I know you’re thinking of American Idol, but trust me, Writing Idol is a whole lot more different. Instead of    singing opera, we read out most recent essays. Writing Idol is so fun because there are two judges and one host. The host will call up new contestants to read their most recent essays. The judges will hold up a number for each contestant who reads their essay. The judges explain how they liked the essay or not. Did you know that I was the first host? As a judge, I feel like a teacher. I feel like an adult grading a student’s essay. This gave me a look at how hard Mrs.   works which motivated me even more. Chewbacca is our class pet. He is a humpback whale. I think you know he’s not a real humpback whale but a stuffed animal. He wears a Hawaiian necklace. Every Thursday, Mrs.   picks a little paper that has the name of someone in our class. That person gets to keep Chewbacca for a week. Whoever gets him has to write a journal for almost every day. This gets us HAPPY TO WRITE. She inspires us with writing essays for a grade. This can help us write more like adults. It makes us feel like journalists. In addition, she is a patient teacher, she helps every student learn in different ways because all of us learn at a different pace. Remember that some of the other students learn faster or slower than others. Mrs.   is always there for us. I would like to say thank you Mrs.   for making my learning process fun, exciting and motivating me to learn with you. Mrs.   has taught me so many things in the past year, and I can’t wait to learn more. Like a shoe polisher, she polished us until we shined like stars in the night sky. But of course, there is no such thing as being too bright! I believe that Mrs.   teaches from her heart and not only from our books. She teaches us to be kind and she sets a great example for us. It’s incredible that one person can touch so many children’s hearts."
"So we’re about halfway through our 50 Great Teachers project, and we’ve been looking for ways of shaking it up. We’ve done photo essays, web comics and videos. These endeavors brought us to our latest idea: Instead of us reporting the story, let’s let the kids do it. Once we found a great teacher  —   Mrs. Marlem   in Miami  —   we had to be sure she was willing to let us take over her   class. And she was. Step 1: Mrs.   (as her students affectionately call her) assigned each kid to become a journalist for a day. The task: To write a   article about their teacher. Here’s what Mrs.   handed out: All 26 students turned in their essays to us  —   and they were awesome! We used their words to help narrate and shape our story. They wrote about all the activities they liked, the things Mrs.   did in the classroom that piqued their interest, and how she was different than other teachers they’d had in the past. Step 2: Producer Sami Yenigun and I listened in as a group of students interviewed Mrs.  . They asked great questions: Why did you become a teacher? What have you learned from all your years of teaching? Did you always like to read? What is your favorite book? Why is kindness your favorite emotion? You can listen to Mrs.  ’s answers in our story here. Step 3: We gave each student a disposable camera. I taught a short lesson about how to use them and what to look for (details, classroom activities and other students). We got the film developed back in D. C. and the images did not disappoint. They showed the classroom from a perspective we rarely get to see  —   from the seats of students. There’s something really wonderful, fun and honest about the photos  —   it makes us wish we were back in fourth grade. You can see more of their photos here. And of course  —   the students captured us capturing them. Here’s the final story:"
"Administration officials moved Thursday to improve low Medicaid enrollment for emerging prisoners, urging states to start signups before release and expanding eligibility to thousands of former inmates in halfway houses near the end of their sentences. Health coverage for   ”is critical to our goal of reducing recidivism and promoting the public health,” said Richard Frank, assistant secretary for planning for the Department of Health and Human Services. Advocates praised the changes but cautioned that HHS and states are still far from ensuring that most people leaving prisons and jails are put on Medicaid and get access to treatment. ”It’s highly variable. Some states and jurisdictions are having a lot of success” enrolling   said Kamala   a researcher at the Urban Institute who has studied the process. ”Others of them have initiatives in place that aren’t reaching the kinds of numbers that are making a dent.” The 2010 health law made nearly all   eligible for Medicaid in states that chose to expand the state and federal insurance program for the poor. Many welcomed the chance to cover a group with high rates of chronic disease, mental illness and substance abuse problems. But prisons and jails, burdened with ineffective computers, understaffing and complicated Medicaid enrollment procedures, have been slow to sign up released inmates. Federal and state prisons let out more than 600, 000 people a year. Millions more cycle through jails. But a study published in Health Affairs found prisons and jails nationwide enrolled only 112, 520 emerging inmates between late 2013 up to January 2015. In Maryland, often cited for progressive social policy, the prison system is enrolling fewer than one in 10 released inmates, Kaiser Health News reported this week. Much of HHS’ guidance repeats existing policy, reminding states that those on probation or parole are eligible for Medicaid and urging states to keep prisoners’ names in the Medicaid computers while they’re locked up. (That eases  .) Inmates are generally ineligible for Medicaid while incarcerated. Prison and jail medical systems care for them. HHS is ”providing encouragement and a nudge” to states to improve   as well as money to upgrade enrollment computers, said Colleen Barry, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has studied   enrollment. ”They understand that this is a technology issue.” Making up to 96, 000   inmates eligible for Medicaid is new policy, designed to connect people with care before they’re fully released. Prisoners often move to halfway houses or home detention near the end of their terms, closely supervised but frequently allowed to shop, apply for jobs and see a doctor. Under the new policy, ”if you have a fair amount of freedom of movement” in a halfway house, ”you’re not considered an inmate” for Medicaid purposes, said Sarah Somers, an attorney for the National Health Law Program, an advocacy group. ”That will be very helpful for a lot of people who are trying to transition out of incarceration.” Nathan Sharpe recently spent two months in a home detention program in West Baltimore between leaving prison and being fully released. He wanted to get a checkup to make sure there was no lasting damage from a stabbing he received last summer in Maryland’s Jessup Correctional Institution. But he had to wait until home detention ended last week to be covered by Medicaid, he said. ”That helps a lot” if people like him could get on Medicaid after they first leave prison, he said. ”People can get the health care they need sooner. I’ve been out a week now and I still haven’t been able to see a doctor because I don’t have my card.”   have extremely high rates of HIV and hepatitis C infection, diabetes, mental illness and substance abuse problems. They are especially vulnerable after they leave the prison medical system and before they connect with community doctors. One study in Washington state showed that   were a dozen times more likely to die than the general population in the first two weeks after their release. Immediate Medicaid coverage ”can mean the difference between life in the community and recidivism and even life and death,” Michael Botticelli, the White House’s director of national drug control policy, told reporters. HHS has been urging states to enroll   in Medicaid for years. But the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion made many more of them eligible for coverage, giving policymakers a new reason to promote   advocates said. So far 31 states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid under the law. Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Jay Hancock is on Twitter: @jayhancock1."
"Philip Kives, master of the infomercial, has died. He was 87. With gadgets like the Miracle Brush and  —   wait, there’s more!  —   the    food slicer, Kives started reeling in customers when he founded   International in the 1960s. Samantha Kives, who said her father died after being hospitalized with an undisclosed illness, told The Guardian that he always made time for his family. ”He would literally leave in the middle of a business meeting to come watch us play in a tennis tournament,” she told the newspaper. ”The commercials were also a family affair. A lot of the commercials he shot, he’d bring us kids in . .. and we’d be actors in the commercials.” On the   website, Kives described his upbringing on a farm in rural Canada in the ’30s. ”We struggled on our small farm, living on welfare for many years, as did other farmers in our area,” he wrote. ”Whatever we grew in the garden, plus the butter and the cheese that we made, and chicken and eggs that we raised . .. was what we lived on.” He recounted selling the   Knife in 1965. In four months, he wrote, ”I had sold one million knives and netted a dollar a knife. All I did was sell the product into the store and buy the television time. After the difficulties of farming, I couldn’t believe how easy this was.” In addition to infomercials, Kives invented the concept of compilation albums, the Guardian reports, saying that music was ”just another product” for him. The newspaper adds: ”While artists might bristle at the idea of being sold in the same way as a tool for chopping vegetables or cleaning suede, for Kives it was still the boardwalk and he was gripped by the thrill of sell, sell, sell.” Kives also bred racehorses. Darren Dunn, CEO of Assiniboia Downs racetrack in Winnipeg, Canada, called Kives a ”giant in the racing world” on the track’s website. Dunn told Canada’s CBC: ”If you were going to go    with him in business, if you were going to go    with him in breeding horses,    in a horse race, you’d better get tied on, you better be on your game, you better get up very, very early, because it’s mano a mano.”"
"One year after an   season that saw him win awards for his hitting and fielding, Major League Baseball has suspended Miami Marlins second baseman Dee Gordon for 80 games because tests found that he used two   drugs. Gordon tested positive for two banned substances, MLB says: externally derived testosterone and Clostebol, an anabolic steroid. With those results in hand, the league banned Gordon for roughly half of the season, announcing the decision shortly after Miami completed its sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers  —   in a game that turned on Gordon’s   single in the seventh inning. Gordon, 28, is coming off his best season in the majors, winning the National League batting title with a . 333 average and 205 hits in 2015. He also stole 58 bases and won a Golden Glove for his defense  —   despite spending two weeks on the disabled list for a dislocated thumb last July. In a statement released via the MLB Players Association, Gordon says he didn’t knowingly take the drugs but that he accepts the league’s decision: ”Though I did not do so knowingly, I have been informed that test results showed I ingested something that contained prohibited substances. The hardest part about this is feeling that I have let down my teammates, the organization and the fans. I have been careful to avoid products that could contain something banned by MLB and the 20+ tests that I have taken and passed throughout my career prove this. I made a mistake, and I accept the consequences.” As an MLB. com story noted in 2014, Gordon, whose height is listed at 5 feet 11 inches, weighed 144 pounds during his 2011 rookie season. By early 2014, the site said, he had hit ”an   high of 173.” Gordon was an   the past two seasons  —   with the Dodgers in 2014 and the Marlins in 2015. Just three months ago, he signed a contract extension with the Marlins that’s worth $50 million over the next five years. ”Dee Gordon is a very important part of our team, and we all love him, and we support him,” Marlins president David Samson said after the suspension was announced. ”That said, I do not like, or condone, what he did. He’s an important member of this organization and will be for many years to come. It’s a huge, huge disappointment.” After Thursday night’s game, Marlins manager Don Mattingly  —   who has worked with Gordon in both Los Angeles and Miami  —   said, ”I feel like he’s one of my kids, to be honest with you. I’ve known him so long.” Mattingly added that he is ”definitely shocked and surprised” by the news."
"North Korea’s Supreme Court has sent another U. S. citizen to prison, sentencing a   man to 10 years in prison and hard labor over espionage charges. Kim   62, is reportedly a former resident of Fairfax, Va. News of the sentence comes months after Kim was accused of stealing state secrets. Back in January, North Korean officials brought him forth to a CNN news crew in Pyongyang, for an interview in which Kim said he used to live in Virginia  —   and that he wanted the U. S. and South Korea to help him regain his freedom. NPR’s Elise Hu reports: ”State news agency KCNA showed Kim confessing to all his crimes in a scripted news conference in March. It’s an attempt to appear like a deliberate judicial process, though North Korea has no rule of law. ”Kim is the latest American detainee in North Korea to receive a harsh sentence. Just last month, American student Otto Warmbier was convicted of subversion. He is serving a 15 year sentence of prison and hard labor. The North has in the past used American detainees as leverage in dealing with Washington.” In that January interview, Kim said he had moved to China in 2001, living close to the North Korean border so he could work as a top executive at an international company that’s based in a special economic zone in North Korea. He said he was arrested in October."
"With more than 1, 300 breweries producing some     thousand different types of beer, Germany is serious about the amber nectar. There’s even a word for it  —   bierernst  —   which means ”deadly serious” and translates literally as ”beer serious.”  This sober attitude applies particularly to the German beer purity law known as the Reinheitsgebot. Introduced in 1516 by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria, the decree allows for only hops, barley, water and, later, yeast in every Stein. For 500 years, this recipe has served Bavaria very well, and for the last century, the rest of Germany.   But as    Karlo Schorn, a patron at a Berlin bar, admits, tastes are changing. ”German beer isn’t as good as it was 20 years ago” he bemoans. ”Brands of beer have the same taste, or nearly the same taste. And good beers with awards now are not from Germany, they are from America or somewhere else.” Beer sommelier Sylvia Kopp agrees. She says until the arrival of craft beers, the most recent innovation in German brewing was the advent of the very successful Pilsner in the 19th century. ”Our brewing culture was paralyzed,” Kopp explains. ”All the innovations that we had in beer was packaging, new sponsoring ideas, a new bottle, so there was little innovation with the product itself.” One of Germany’s newest breweries is trying to push the boundaries of the German beer palate. Robin Weber, CEO of Berliner Berg, says he and his colleagues used to work overseas and were impressed by the variety of flavors available in places like the U. S. and Australia. ”Coming back, working in Germany, all of us were really disappointed by what the German beer market had to offer in regards of variety, diversity and quality,” Weber says. Although Berliner Berg’s beers are all currently brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot, Weber and his team say they won’t let Germany’s brewing standards stop them from adding other ingredients in the future, such as orange peel or coriander. ”The problem is not the small breweries experimenting with fruits or whatever,” Weber asserts. ”The real problems lie in mass production and in an agriculture that is not focused on healthy crops.” The recent discovery of traces of an herbicide in Germany’s   beers was a further blow to the industry’s claims of purity. But Polls say around 85 percent of Germans still have faith in the Reinheitsgebot.  Michael Ziegler, a    from Stuttgart, is among the faithful. He argues that ”a German wants his beer made according to the purity law,” adding ”when I vacation abroad, I drink wine.” For Ziegler, the most important aspect of his beer are the four traditional ingredients. Anything else is simply nicht sein Bier  —   not his cup of tea  —   or literally, ”not his beer.”"
"With Bernie Sanders lopping hundreds of staffers from his campaign this week, it’s easy to forget he has outraised and outspent Hillary Clinton every month this year. And not by just a little. Sanders described his campaign as the ”underdog” early on, but it certainly hasn’t been the case the past three months. Federal Election Commission reports for January, February and March of 2016 show Sanders outspending Clinton by more than 50 percent, $121. 6 million to $80. 2 million. We know where those additional Bernie dollars came from: legions of small donors. The Campaign Finance Institute calculated that in February, the Sanders campaign raised 56 percent of his money from donors contributing $200 or less and 12 percent from donors giving 1, 000 or more. Corresponding numbers for Clinton are 21 and 64 percent. So how did Sanders spend all those Bernie dollars? NPR decided to focus on the month of March, which had the latest data available and was the most intense month of the primary season, with balloting in 28 states. Here’s what we found: The massive spending advantage wasn’t enough for Sanders. In March he won 912 delegates to Clinton’s 1, 141. Now, just two big primaries remain  —   California and New Jersey  —   along with nine smaller ones and Sanders’ path to Democratic nomination is all but  . Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs, announcing the layoffs, issued a statement that the campaign ”will continue to have a strong and dedicated staff of more than 300 workers who are going to help us win in California and other contests still to come.” He said the campaign ”believes that we have a path toward victory.” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said, in an email to NPR, that they’ve always tried to ”make smart, targeted investments and be efficient with our spending.” He said, ”The most important factor in this race isn’t money,” it’s how voters respond to Clinton’s policies and plans."
"Just about a month ago, we introduced a simple idea. And we did it simply. With just a tweet or two, All Things Considered called on listeners to help us celebrate National Poetry Month (April, in case you didn’t know). We’d supply the hashtag, or so this simple idea went, and all of you would supply the good stuff  —   the lines, the lyrics, the sweeping odes and potent gut punches. Simple at the outset, sure  —   but your response contained multitudes. Haiku. Tanka. Tributes to parents balding, or overbearing (and bears, too). Matters of bone and spirit, food and fulsome politics. Poems in at least three languages, poems from at least four different classrooms across the country (including even a third grade class). And a single lost feather, borne to earth on an idle breeze. Of course, we can’t hope to name all the poems that moved us. Please, instead, accept just a few of our favorites from this fruitful month of poetry, read aloud often by the very poets themselves. In one case, Whiting   poet Ocean Vuong picked his own favorite to read for us. Read and listen to them below  —   divided imperfectly into two categories, the latter of which you can skip to with the following link  —   or just head here to wade deeply into all the thousands of miniature works of art our listeners wrote. Skip To The Profound, Shelby Boehm, Phil Boiarski, Tia Shearer, Sherri Drake"
"Sharon Long found her calling later in life. Back in the 1980s, she was a single mom trying to support her two kids, holding down several jobs at once  —   none of which she liked much. ”I worked at the Dairy Queen, and I cleaned a dentist’s office, and I was a secretary,” Long recalls, on a recent visit with StoryCorps. ”I hated every morning I got up.” But, as she tells her colleague Steve Sutter, everything changed for her at age 40. When she she took her daughter to register for college, a financial aid officer persuaded Long to enroll herself. And that’s when she stumbled on the subject she was meant to pursue. ”I had to take an anthropology class, but I didn’t even know what it meant,” Long says. ”So I went home and I looked up anthropology, and I thought, ’Study of mankind  —   oh, that sounds interesting.’ So I took physical anthropology and  —   bang  —   I decided it’s what I want to be when I grow up.” Ultimately, she went on to become a forensic artist, someone who reconstructs human faces from skulls for museums and law enforcement agencies. She has worked with skulls more than 9, 000 years old and skulls linked to   homicides. She has made busts for the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian, and her work has been featured on both the History Channel and America’s Most Wanted. In the course of her career, she wagers she has worked with something like 86 skulls. ”I get totally psyched into what I’m doing, just like people must do when they’re writing music or painting a painting. You forget to eat, you forget to get up, you forget to drink water you forget everything. Everything just sort of goes into suspension,” she says. ”And 12 or 15 hours later, I have a face.” But it’s not simply a face to Long, it’s something more. ”I feel a connection, because I think about them as a person like me. They loved people and had family and drank tea with their friends,” she says. ”But murder victims bother me a lot. I try not to think about them being in pain because then their face comes out looking like that. So I try to think about them being happy.” And there’s an irony at work here, too. Long, who embarked on a second life with that college registration, sees herself as the agent of another kind of resurrection in her career. ”I like bringing people back to life,” she says. ”People ask me, ’How’d you do that?’ And I think, boy, I don’t know. It just comes out the tips of my fingers.” That said, it’s not exactly effortless. She says she’s always practicing. ”I observe a lot. I’ve watched people in airports and in restaurants, and I’d say, ’Look at that guy’s skull. God, look at the cranium on that guy. Whoa!’ ” Sutter, her colleague, can confirm this firsthand. ”I remember talking to you once,” he recalls, ”and you start staring at my forehead. And you say, ’Can I feel your brow ridge?’ ” Long, 75, retired from regular work about four years ago, after more than 25 years in the field. Still, despite the arthritis in her hands, she couldn’t bring herself to retire completely. These days, she works with the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office to protect local archaeological sites. ”I’m telling you, I look back and I can’t believe my life went this way,” she says. ”It just seems like it’s all been a big, long dream.” Audio produced for Morning Edition by Alletta Cooper and Michael Garofalo.  StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps. org."
"From the start of Maia Szalavitz’s englightening, insightful and informative new book on addiction titled Unbroken Brain, I had the feeling that I was being reminded of truths that I’d once known but that I and others, as if through a kind of collective amnesia, had somehow forgotten. Thinking about addiction tends to cluster around two extremes. On the one hand, there’s moralism. Addicts, so the moralist says, are people who won’t say no. They consume beyond restraint and recklessly indulge their pleasures. This is a bad way to live. Addicts are bad. The moralist gets something right, I believe. The moralist is right, for example, that the addict’s life is seriously and even morally messed up. Addicts are closed and shutdown. This is bad. This is a bad and painful and sad way to be. But the moralist is wrong to think this is somehow a moral failing of the addict. Addicts are not bad. The moralist is right about something else, too, and this deserves emphasis. Addicts are not aliens. They struggle to balance the pleasures and rewards of consumption against the costs of excessive indulgence. This is a struggle that every person faces. On the other hand, there is the medical view: Addiction is a disease  —   specifically, a disease of the brain. Like the moralistic stance, this view gets something right. It gets right precisely the fact that, in contrast with what the moralist says, addicts are not like the rest of us, with the single difference that they won’t say no to pleasure. Addicts can’t say no, and pleasure in the end has little to do with it. An addict’s life can be full of anxiety, suffering, painful longing and, above all, compulsion. There is something wrong with the addict. The idea that addiction is a disease does a better job of capturing the abnormality and negative character of the addict’s condition. Moreover, as is widely known, there are fairly   biochemical processes underlying addiction addiction has roots in neurophysiology. But the disease model, no less than its moralistic counterpart, goes overboard, according to Szalavitz’s book. Addiction may be tied to the brain, but it is hardly a disease of the brain the way Alzheimer’s is. And if it is a sickness, it isn’t a sickness the way cancer is. Addiction isn’t tied to a body part or a physical system in that way. If we insist on calling it a disease, then we should say that it is a disease of the whole person or something like a sickness in the way we live. It is tied up, of its very nature, with action and the will, with feelings, and with relationships. There are so many myths about addiction, the book reminds us. For example, there is the idea that once an addict, always an addict. And then there is the idea that mere exposure to a drug or behavior causes addiction. The facts are: The substantial majority of people who try drugs or potentially addictive activities (such as gambling) do not become addicts. And the bulk of those who do will eventually give up their addictions. Addiction, Szalavitz notices, is, predominantly, a problem of youth. Most addicts get started when they’re still kids. And, remarkably, most addicts give up their addiction by the time they reach their 30s. In effect, they age out of their addiction. Armed with these facts, Szalavitz makes a novel and even beautiful proposal. Addiction, she hypothesizes, is a developmental disorder. Specifically, it is a learning disorder, by which she means, in the first instance, that people, kids mostly, learn to be addicts. That is, they develop the habits of pleasure, action, reaction, etc. that makes up their addiction.  And, of course, they don’t do so in a vacuum. Which brings us to the final piece of the puzzle. The vast majority of addicts have suffered great trauma early on in life. Sexual abuse or other forms of violence, the loss of a parent, divorce are not uncommon antecedents of addiction. The cliche that addiction begins as a form of   is probably right. The future addict learns to use the drug as part of an economy of feeling and action. It’s not the drug, or the behavior, that is the source of the addiction. The substance is a tool or a technique for an ultimately inadequate   and control. Szalavitz’s view helps us integrate the insights of the two extremist views I mentioned at the outset. Addiction, as the medicalist would have it, is a disease, not like Alzheimer’s or cancer, but like ADHD. It is a learning disorder, that is, one that occurs along a spectrum. And, so, her view also lets us see how the moralist is right, that we ”normal ones” ourselves occupy a place on that very same spectrum. And, moreover, the moralist is right that the addict’s disorder is a morally significant one. Not because addicts will cheat and lie to get what they need. But because the addict is in the grip of a kind of false consciousness. They think the next fix matters, when it doesn’t matter, not at all. I have only touched on a very small part of what Maia Szalavitz discusses in Unbroken Brain. She explores problems with the criminalization of drugs, the place of racism in our culture’s treatment of drugs and addiction, and she looks closely and illuminatingly at different treatment methods. There’s a lot of news you can use in this book if you or someone you love is an addict. If I understand Szalavitz correctly, addiction is a learning disorder in a second sense as well. It is not only the case that we learn to be addicts, according to Szalavitz it is also the case that learning is the key to overcoming addiction. There is no     answer to the question of what it is that the addict needs to learn. Szalavitz argues that only a compassionate and   attitude toward the addict can help us understand what it is that he or she needs to learn to be more at peace. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. Maps and   routes pop up often in Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 14th   album. They do all their usual things  —   trace her memories, map her heart, lead her home  —   but most importantly they’re incomplete. If The Things That We Are Made Of sees the country veteran searching for memories to inscribe and old roads to rut, it finds her most often looking toward the unknown with grace and breaking fecund ground with top producer Dave Cobb. The Things That We Are Made Of is surprising, even for a   of Carpenter’s standing. From the Music Row sheen and twang of her ’90s output to her time in   purgatory, she’s seen the sun rise and set on several country sounds. Carpenter’s work with Cobb situates her squarely in the latest: the unassuming Americana that must run in the pipes beneath Cobb’s Low Country Sound studio. The producer’s strongest work lies in stripping Carpenter’s arrangements back from the orchestral turn she took on Songs From The Movie and filling the space once occupied by compressed Telecasters with the cavernous electrics, subtle atmospherics and dry, woody acoustics of the    moment. Carpenter, then, has the space she needs to showcase the voice and lyrics that have sustained her since her commercial peak. Able as ever with melodies, she keeps her lines unfussy and repetitive to emphasize her words. She fills nearly every space she can with lyrics, delivered in a slow vibrato that flickers between breath and tone. The result can be overwrought at times, but most often Carpenter communicates clearly, with stirring straightforwardness that commands Cobb’s yielding production. The Things That We Are Made Of sketches a rough journey in middle age. Carpenter sings of the periods following the kind of    unmoorings  —   in her case, a   experience and a divorce  —   that disrupt a settled perspective. She reckons with doubt and recapitulates small memories of great importance she pieces together a new story from bits of the old. ”Deep Deep Down Heart” and ”Hand On My Back” form the apex of the record’s dark night and Carpenter’s loose thread of losing her own narrative and coming to grips with uncertainty. The last three songs represent the album’s   reconciliation while providing its finest moments. ”The Blue Distance” finds light in an unknown where before she’d found loneliness: ”In the blue distance where our lives unfurl   At the edges of the sky, the beauty of the world.” Her album plays out both sides of that classic country gesture at the unknown  —   darkness and latent enlightenment  —   and by emphasizing both, she accomplishes what sounds like a transformation. She arrives where she starts, at the title song. In the process, she makes you believe that the lucky end of the stories we tell ourselves is the ability to look through memories and find real acceptance  —   the things we’re made of and the strength to set off again."
"Set amid Sicily’s stark volcanic landscape, L’Attesa (The Wait) is a visually powerful, impeccably acted mood piece. But the movie is not for the    —   a group that, at times, includes director and   Piero Messina. The idea for the film came from Luigi Pirandello’s play, The Life I Gave You, and its theatrical origins survive in the many scenes that feature just two actors, Juliette Binoche and Lou de Laage. They play Anna, a   widow who has long lived in a remote villa near Mt. Etna, and Jeanne, a younger Frenchwoman who has just arrived. Jeanne is there to visit Giuseppe, her boyfriend and Anna’s son, but finds herself in the hushed aftermath of a funeral. Mirrors are cloaked in black, and tongues are tied. Anna can’t bring herself to tell the newcomer what’s happened, and Jeanne doesn’t figure it out for the longest time. Viewers will probably be quicker on the uptake. The latest in a string of   roles that began with Three Colors: Blue, Binoche’s Anna shows a fetishistic attachment to her son’s things, notably an air mattress filled with his breath. Jeanne, whose relationship with Giuseppe was intermittent and apparently turbulent, is better equipped to move on  —   if only someone will tell her what happened. Like Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, L’Attesa transpires during Easter week. This timing, and the opening funeral, allows Messina to frame the story with images of death and resurrection. In the opening scene, the camera almost caresses the crucifix that darkly presides over the local church. And the movie’s   climax is staged during a solemn procession of hooded men, where the director indulges a   flourish. In between, L’Attesa is more French. Anna and Jeanne get to know each other in the kitchen, while swimming, and on excursions to local tourist attractions. For Anna, of course, becoming acquainted with Jeanne is also learning about Giuseppe. At one point, Jeanne meets two young men and invites them to Anna’s austere home for dinner. Everyone drinks, eats, and flirts, showing that life goes on, spontaneously  —   even if Jeanne and a guy dance to Leonard Cohen’s ”Waiting for the Miracle,” not one of the    party tunes. (Other portentous musical choices include the XX’s ”Missing” and, inevitably, an Arvo Part lament.) Heard but unanswered cellphone messages advance  —   while also stalling  —   the story. They demonstrate that Anna and Jeanne do indeed live in the modern (if not precisely contemporary) world. Yet the overall impression is of someplace out of time. The director expertly uses weathered buildings and lifeless terrain as visual equivalents of Anna and Jeanne’s weekend in limbo. Messina served as assistant director on Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, and he shares that filmmaker’s flair for balletic cinematography. The camera swoops and cranes, and sometimes turns subjective, as when conveying the   experience of surfacing from the depths of a lake. Perhaps this is just because of the movie’s solemn theme, but Messina does not share Sorrentino’s interest in shifts of tone. The movie remains stubbornly   enlivened only by Binoche and de Laage’s naturalistic performances. L’Attesa offers striking images of grief and rebirth, but it’s most persuasive when depicting everyday life."
"Clocking in at a hefty 155 minutes, a film about Bulgaria’s transition from Communism to capitalist democracy might in principle be a tough sell outside the former Soviet Union. But Maya Vitkova’s Viktoria, a handsome, formally adventurous family saga, tells that tale through a powerful maternal melodrama spanning three generations of implacable women bound by blood, spilled milk and the tumult of a world in transition. There’s news footage to help out with the latter, but otherwise, expect the real to flow in and out of a boldly visceral fairy tale that would blanch the cheeks of the Brothers Grimm. For starters, the titular heroine arrives without an umbilical cord. This surrealist flourish and others tell you as much as you need to know about whether Viktoria (played as a child and then as young woman by the director’s   nieces, Daria and Kalina Vitkova) is loved and wanted by her beautiful but haggard mother, Boryana (Irmena Chichikova) who longs to exchange her everyday misery for the faraway romance of Venice. But the baby’s congenital defect makes great political capital for Bulgarian dictator Todor Zhivkov (Georgi Spasov) who elbows aside the girl’s kindly but conformist father (Dimo Dimov) and commandeers her to be his pampered pet, turning her into a     bully as she grows up. When Zhivkov himself is shoved aside by the fall of the Soviet regime in 1989, Viktoria is left to the less than tender mercies of her icy mother. Disillusioned by the economic chaos of   Sofia and the death of her dreams of escape, Boryana shows her grown daughter the same cruelty and indifference she apparently suffered at the hands of her own mother (Mariana Krumova) a devout Party hack who has retreated into dour silence. Viktoria is presented as based on a true story and dedicated to the director’s mother. So there may be autobiography here, though I’d be surprised if Vitkova was actually the hapless little Bulgarian girl who grew up lumbered with the moniker Socialist Baby of the Decade. Either way she has a lot of mordantly absurdist fun with the dafter rituals of state propaganda, to say nothing of   filmmaking: Poor Viktoria can hardly blink, let alone give talentless piano recitals, without attracting a round of   from fervent sycophants. What interests Vitkova, though, is the ways in which public corruption seeps into the most intimate corners of domestic life. She uses a different film language for each: The triumphalist bombast of Bulgarian Sovietism, with its blaring soundtrack, gives way to (rather too many) long, slow, silent takes of this beleaguered family, hemmed in by   rage and resentment and by unfulfilled dreams of freedom and plenty in a   paradise that never comes. Small wonder that spilled blood and curdled milk become the movie’s defining metaphors, or that Viktoria comes to us as a sad hybrid of Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood. The film’s calm, assured interplay between real and surreal strands its heroine between a loveless home and the arid favoritism of a powerful man. You’ll have to see Viktoria to find out whether she or her elders cling to their prison, come to terms, or fly the coop. I will say only that a postcard is involved, but no hugs."
"The premise and poster of The Family Fang promise a dynasty of twee eccentrics with maladjusted children, like the Tenenbaums, or the Bluths of Arrested Development. But though the Fangs share the latter’s Jason Bateman, here directing as well as once more playing the   son, this is a different failed family, and they strike a different tone onscreen: one more principled and intimate than mannered or mocking. They’re a clan of performance artists whose public spectacles puncture the very idea of how families are supposed to behave, now reckoning with the   consequences of such a   craft. In the 1970s, the parents, Caleb and Camille, made their two children   players in their prankish pieces: instructing their son to fake a bank robbery, manipulating a school production of Romeo and Juliet so the siblings would be forced to kiss onstage. Critics are divided on the artistic merits of such stunts, but everyone seems to agree that Caleb and Camille’s work lost its pizzazz once ”Child A” and ”Child B” grew up and flew the coop. Christopher Walken makes a brilliantly nasty patriarch, a bully who mocks and degrades all other forms of art as fake  —   including the acting and writing his   children have done. He spouts Caleb Fang’s ideas with such conviction, such pomposity, that it’s easy to picture this man   his family all these years, and also easy to picture them desperate to drift away from him. This is what Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Bateman) have done, the former becoming an alcoholic Hollywood star, the latter a struggling novelist and magazine writer who winds up back home after an   injury. But Fang mother Camille (played by Maryann Plunkett with more of a sly  ’s charm) has remained loyal, even though she secretly paints little country scenes on the side, stashing them away lest Caleb catch her aesthetic betrayal to his cause. A Fang reunion in their sprawling upstate New York home is quickly followed by the sudden disappearance of the parents, and the discovery of evidence pointing to a serial killer’s handiwork. Annie is too smart to fall for that trick, and starts piecing together any shred of evidence that they faked the whole thing. We’re too smart to fall for it too, and yet the mystery of the Fang parents becomes oddly engrossing, or at least more so than the   it prompts in the children. Kidman’s character succumbs to an implausible belief that she can somehow change her parents’ essential natures until they’re all a normal family, instead of a gallery piece. The mania she attaches to this motivation (complete with bulletin boards tracking the case) is too simple of an approach to the story. But Kidman does sell her chemistry with Bateman, a fraternal spark that comes with a taboo edge thanks to that Romeo and Juliet incident. This is Bateman’s second directorial feature, after the     comedy Bad Words  —   a film that seemed to share Papa Fang’s desire for shock and awe. For the first time, he proves himself capable of overseeing authentic human drama, and has moments here of a true filmmaker’s eye, particularly in the flashback sequences depicting the ”pieces,” which are shot with lush colors and prompt a great sense of danger and uncertainty. ”How far will they go with this?” we wonder, and cringe every time we get our answer. A crackling scene in the present day has the Fang parents trying to rebel against corporate fast food by handing out bogus coupons, only to be foiled by the human error of a stranger’s kindness. This sequence’s perfect escalation is how we learn that underneath all the Fangs’ professed desire to incorporate the public into their art is a deep contempt for that same public: a contempt, even, for life unscripted. Based on the 2011 novel by Kevin Wilson, The Family Fang sings with great ideas about the ways all families lie to their children, and what it means to live with people you can never take seriously (being constantly addressed with the performative monikers ”Child A” and ”Child B” has to take its toll eventually). But the film suffers from a similar fate to many movies about artists: in order to make sure the audience gets what these people are about, everyone talks too much about the themes at the heart of their work instead of letting the work speak for itself. The overly chatty script by David   (a Pulitzer Prize winner for his play Rabbit Hole) has difficulty carrying its most promising themes to a satisfying payoff, and a   reveal is riddled with plot holes. Carter Burwell’s gripping, ominous score suggests an untapped mystery and darkness to the material. But though the Fangs themselves may not think much of their audience, their movie is still warmly inviting, because their peculiar frustrations become concrete and universal. That may not be a victory for Caleb’s brand of art, but it is a minor one for filmmaking."
"President Obama has slashed defense spending and will leave his successor with a weaker military force  —   or so Republican presidential candidates, led by Donald Trump, charge. THE CLAIM: ”Our military is depleted,” Trump said in his   address on Wednesday, ”and we’re asking our generals and military leaders to worry about global warming.” In the past, Trump has claimed the U. S. military under Obama has become ”a disaster,” and other Republicans have described it as ”gutted” since Obama took office. THE SHORT ANSWER: It’s complicated. Pentagon leaders bristle at the idea their force has been ”gutted” or is a ”disaster.” The U. S. remains far and away the world’s foremost military power. But spending is down the force is smaller than when Obama took office and its equipment is aging. And, indeed, military leaders have spoken out about what they call the   dangers associated with climate change. THE LONG ANSWER: Condemning a Democratic president for lavishing money on social programs at the expense of national defense is red meat for Republican voters. And compared to the peak of   spending at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan  —   and the expectations that Pentagon planners once had for how much spending would grow  —   the defense budget is down, as Trump charged. So is the American troop presence in both countries, necessitating far less funding than was needed at the peak of the war. Whether Obama has deployed the ”correct” American troop presence or pursued the right overall strategy for those ongoing wars and the newer conflict in Syria, are themselves the subject of separate debates.    Pentagon spending peaked in 2009 at more than $691 billion  —   a combination of the Defense Department’s request for basic funds and the supplemental request it made for wartime spending. Last year, those two accounts amounted to just over $580 billion (though the Stockholm International Peace Institute, or SIPRI, put total U. S. spending on its military in 2015 slightly higher at $596 billion). Meanwhile, every dollar buys less than it used to. ”By nearly every measure of force structure  —   the number of brigades, aircraft, ships and subs, Marine battalions, and end strength, [today’s force] is smaller than when the [  ] buildup began,” wrote budget expert Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ”Yet this smaller force consumes a budget more than 50 percent larger in real terms than before  . The military is spending more on a smaller force.” That force is more capable than ever, administration officials argue. Obama famously mocked 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney by saying today’s Army doesn’t need as many ”horses and bayonets” as it once did. But it’s also, in many cases, the same force that has been in service for years or even decades. ”Pilots are flying   in combat missions today which are older than most people in this room,” Trump said  —   which is true. The newest bomber in the fleet entered service in 1962, and the Air Force plans to keep its   aircraft in service through 2040 if possible. The Air Force has 12 entire fleets of aircraft that qualify for antique license plates in Virginia, chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh says. The Air Force has tried to replace many of these aircraft. In the case of the   each time it has wound up with smaller batches of expensive newer bombers that supplement, rather than replace, the older bombers. It’s trying again with a new goal to build between 80 and 100 new   stealth bombers in a program it hopes will cost no more than $550 million per airplane. That didn’t stop Trump from slamming Obama, because the nuclear force ”has been allowed to atrophy and is desperately in need of modernization and renewal.” But Obama, notwithstanding his own opposition to nuclear weapons, has committed to modernizing the U. S. arsenal. He supports the Air Force’s new bomber, a new ballistic missile submarine for the Navy, revitalizing a fleet of nuclear bombs, a potential new nuclear cruise missile and other commitments. Some estimates put the cost for the program Obama supports at around $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Defense officials don’t dispute that the military costs a lot  —   but, they argue, taxpayers get a lot for what they buy. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and other leaders have tried to shy away from responding to comments by Trump and other candidates, but occasionally they get pulled in. That was the case earlier this year when Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked about whether the U. S. military had, in fact, been ”gutted.” No, he argued. If it’s smaller than it could be, it’s still very powerful. ”At no time in my career have I been more confident than this instant in saying we have the most powerful military on the face of the planet,” Selva said. ”Do we have challenges? Of course we do. When you are faced with a global set of threats, you have to make choices on where you focus your energy.” One big area of risk, Selva and other Pentagon leaders say, is something that doesn’t get much attention in the political arena  —   ”readiness”:   often soldiers can take target   often pilots at home can fly training missions   many days a Navy ship can sail to train before it deploys, Carter, Selva and the chiefs of the military services say this ”readiness” is not where they want it, in case there is a major crisis. But many units are very   Selva said, and the bottom line is that the U. S. military remains the most powerful on Earth. ”I don’t engage in politics,” he said. ”This is the reality of the men and women that serve in our Army, our Navy, our Air Force and our Marine Corps. They’re the best the world has to offer, and we’re going to keep them that way.”"
"One photo of a pensive Congolese woman in her distinctive makeup could be mistaken for a Renaissance painting. Another, of a coal plant sending smoke plumes over a town in China, looks like a still from a 1950s propaganda film. And another, of a little girl yawning during an Indonesian festival, will just make you smile. The images from the ninth annual Sony World Photography Awards, the largest photo competition in the world, come in many styles and flavors. More than 230, 000 photos, taken from the past 12 months, were submitted by photographers in 186 countries. The World Photography Organization announced the grand prize winners for the 14 categories, ranging from sport to travel, last week. The top award, the L’Iris d’Or Photographer of the Year, along with a $25, 000 prize, went to a sobering subject: acid attack victims, documented by Iranian photojournalist Asghar Khamseh in his   series ”Fire of Hatred.” The winning and shortlisted photos are on display at the Somerset House in London until May 8. We selected a few featured entries that show the faces and places we cover on our blog. Editor’s Note: Viewers may find the last image in this sequence disturbing."
"”It could have spelled the end for us.” Alex Lifeson is on the phone, calling from his Toronto home, thinking back to the time between Rush’s third and fourth albums in the winter of 1975 and 1976. It’s difficult to believe now, some   million albums sold later, but the Canadian rock trio was at a crossroads then. After a pair of decently received albums, 1974’s Rush and 1975’s Fly By Night,   Caress of Steel floundered both commercially and critically. Morale between guitarist Lifeson,   Geddy Lee and drummer Neil Peart was low, and the pressure was on from American label Mercury Records to put out something as ”relatable” as early hits ”Working Man” and ”Finding My Way.” The writing was on the wall: Album number four was either going to break the band, or, well, break the band. ”I remember thinking,” Lifeson says candidly, ”’I had eight years of playing rock in a band, and it’s awesome, I love it, and I don’t want to compromise. If this will be the end, I dunno, I’ll go back to working with my dad plumbing, or go back to school, or something else.’ To me it was impossible to take a step backwards and do something we’d already done just to please a record company.” The story is the stuff of legend. Rush stubbornly stuck to their plan, following up an album that had an ambitious   conceptual piece with an album with an even more ambitious   conceptual piece. Structurally 2112 was very much similar to Caress of Steel, only the band’s vision was clearer, their musical chops were stronger, the songwriting was more advanced. Best of all, they sounded grown up. ”’What are we going to do next? ’” Lifeson remembers thinking. ”’Are we going to do what they want us to do, which is basically the first album again? Or are we just going to say, ’Screw you, we’re going to do what we want to do?’ This was us giving them the finger. That’s the way we looked at it right from the beginning. And then of course it turned into something else, something grander. We just wanted to let them know that they couldn’t push us around.” For the first time Rush sounded truly assertive on record, like a band ready to conquer the rock world. Forty years after its April 1, 1976 release, 2112 is widely regarded as a classic album, a major influence on hard rock, progressive rock and heavy metal. Featuring the spellbinding   storytelling of the masterpiece title track and its five eclectic deep cuts that range from fun to introspective to ferocious, it was also the breakthrough Rush was so desperately in need of. ”My first reaction was, ’This is like a futuristic prog rock spaceship ride,’” says Timothy Tiernan, a shipyard worker in Newport, R. I. who was a   when he first heard 2112 in 1978. ”It was like rock and roll storytelling. The more you listened, the more you tried to find hidden messages. The album tempo would be a roller coaster ride. One song would be mellow, and the next would blow your face off. Just the way they would tie three songs together was like nothing the fans had heard. I was hooked from the jump.” In late 1975, Rush was convinced it had struck paydirt with Caress of Steel, Lee, Lifeson and Peart emerging from the sessions with producer Terry Brown immensely proud of what they had done. In retrospect, the album has its moments, such as the bracing heavy metal of ”Bastille Day” and the more wistful tones of ”Lakeside Park,” but for all the admirable spirit of the      ”The Necromancer” and the   ”The Fountain of Lamneth,” both tracks are bogged down by dense songwriting, not to mention some outrageously lofty fantasy lyrics courtesy of Peart. ”For me it sounds like the early experimental time for us, which is exactly what it was,” Lifeson says. ”Neil had just joined the band, we wanted to do something with a little more substance to it after Fly By Night, how he was writing lyrics, his contribution to what Geddy and I felt naturally, and the whole idea of us doing a concept ’side.’ ’The Necromancer’ was kind of a mini concept too, we broke it down into parts. With ’The Fountain of Lamneth,’ it was a much meatier project. I think for us it was very satisfying on an artistic level. Obviously it wasn’t a great success.” Critics had agreed. ”I played the latest (and admittedly rather derivative) Rush album Caress of Steel in the office the other day, and unfortunately it received howls of derision,” wrote influential British critic Geoff Barton in his review Sounds magazine. To this day Caress of Steel remains one of the only Rush albums not to be certified platinum in America, having taken nearly 20 years to achieve gold status. ”[2112] was a response to the indifference that [greeted] Caress of Steel,” Lifeson says. I think we were at a point where we were evolving. We were becoming better musicians, we were playing better, we were working towards having more of a signature Rush sound. When we got to ’2112’ we were all set for that. As was the norm in the ’70s, if a young band was energetic and willing to work, record companies had them crank out new music at an alarming rate by today’s standards. The bulk of 2112, which required meticulous attention to detail, especially on the title track, was written during the fall and winter of 1975, while the band was touring. ”I recall writing in arenas, in dressing rooms, in the car,” Lifeson reminisces. ”We were playing in between 220 and 250 shows a year. We didn’t have the luxury we would have later on where we would go somewhere for a month and just concentrate on writing. It was all written on the fly. So it had quite a different feel to it in its construction and in the way we developed it. We already had all the pieces written, we’d rehearsed them at sound checks, we knew the album, we knew all the material.” The storyline is a simple one, refreshingly linear compared to such bloated rock operas as The Who’s Tommy and Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway: In the year 2112 the world is under totalitarian rule of the Solar Federation, and all art and culture is controlled by the priests from ”The Temples of Syrinx.” A young man discovers an ancient guitar, learns to play it and suggests to the priests that its music would greatly benefit humanity. Citing the guitar and the music it yielded as a reason the previous civilization failed, the priests destroy the guitar. Distraught, the young man kills himself as chaos reigns, an ominous booming overhead: ”Attention all planets of the Solar Federation: We have assumed control.” ”’2112’ took you somewhere you can see it all playing out in your mind’s eye,” writes   music writer Rob Hughes. ”It’s the stuff of a million bad student screenplays. I always interpreted the ’2112’ suite’s ending as destruction preceding renewal. Sure, the hero has died, but his transgression has sparked anarchy, which in turn has signaled the elder race  —   the ones who escaped the planet to build an enlightened society  —   to return to claim their former home. The voice that announces, ’We have assumed control,’ comes from neither the priests nor the hero. It’s the voice of hope.” What attracted a lot of attention, especially from   music writers, was a statement inside the album’s gatefold: ”With acknowledgement to the genius of Ayn Rand.” The work of the   American novelist and philosopher was indeed an influence on Peart, particularly the 1938 dystopian novella Anthem and the 1943 philosophical novel The Fountainhead. Both books espoused individualism over collectivism, which especially rankled NME writer Barry Miles, who in a 1978 feature compared Rush’s views to Nazism, ignorant of the fact that Lee’s Jewish parents were concentration camp survivors. He went on to write condescendingly: All the classic hallmarks of the   are there: the   language . .. which extends right down to the touring crew: road masters instead of road managers the use of a   symbol  —   the naked man confronting the red star of socialism (at least I suppose that’s what it’s supposed to be). It’s all there. They are actually very nice guys. They don’t sit there in jack boots pulling the wings off flies. They are polite, charming even, naïve  —   roaming the concert circuits preaching what to me seems like   like a leper without a bell. ”What Neil found in [Rand’s] writing was not so much about her libertarian views,” Lifeson explains. ”What he’s always got from her writing is that it’s about the power of the individual, to do great things, to rely on yourself, nobody’s there to do anything for you. You have to do it on your own, you have to craft what you want to do, and to the best that you can. That’s really what it’s about: You don’t owe anybody anything for your hard work. That’s what permeates all this writing, that sensibility. Those two books were probably more important to him in terms of how he found inspiration for the lyrics, but ultimately it was that very individual spirit.” ”Ayn Rand’s outlook is motivating, even comforting, when you’re in ninth grade and surrounded by your idiot classmates,” says Hughes, who recalls that after listening to the album he went running to the library to read Rand’s books, ”but at that age you’re trying on and burning through ideas faster than sneakers. When I listen to 2112 now, it reminds me of those restless years of figuring out how to negotiate the world and the people in it. Just as I can look back and see what a breakthrough 2112 was for Rush, I can remember being that naïve kid about to make a few breakthroughs himself. The biggest lesson that 2112 imparted was that you can improve yourself without compromising your true nature.” Essentially a   suite comprised of song fragments and reprised musical themes, what sets ”2112” apart from Rush’s earlier   experimentation like ”The Fountain of Lamneth” and Fly By Night’s ”  and the Snow Dog” is its accessibility. The exploration of dynamics, atmospherics and program music was a huge creative breakthrough for Rush, and the ambition and synthesis of styles would help the album appeal to a wider audience, one that could appreciate both the technical chops and the pop hooks. ”I love that Rush combines total   wankery with music that’s actually catchy,” writes Amanda Falke, a musician and software engineer based in Portland, Ore. ”Rush may sound nerdy, but at heart they’re pop musicians. There is a warmth and presence to their music that very few bands have.” In the title suite’s third chapter, ”Discovery,” the listener hears the babbling sound of a stream, as well as the protagonist picking up the old guitar. Lifeson plucks and strums awkwardly, completely out of tune, and gradually tunes the acoustic guitar (”How does he tune the guitar and learn to play it so fast?” Lifeson jokes) ultimately working his way to a pretty chord sequence. ”What can this strange device be?” Lee sings plaintively. ”When I touch it, it gives forth a sound.” ”We wanted it to feel like we were in a cave,” Lifeson explains. ”It’s not a rock delivery. Sonically there’s lots of reverb, there’s the water trickling down the creek that’s inside the cave. It became more visual, cinematic in a way, and that stuck with us for a long time. Now we had a structure that was working for us, that we felt confident with and were interested in.” It has been stated of more than one young rock musician that the two essential attributes are ignorance and arrogance. At the age of 22, Lifeson and his bandmates had learned to ditch convention in favor of experimentation. Gone was the overt Cream worship of the first album. In its place on 2112 was supreme   as well as youthful bravado. Coupled with the restraint and discipline that comes with artistic maturation, it was a perfect combination. ”We’d been touring so much, we really felt comfortable in our skin as a band,” Lifeson recalls. ”If I listen to ’2112’ now, playing it on the last number of tours, there are some really interesting musical parts. There’s lots of bluesy stuff on that, and maybe because of that there’s a purity about it that grabs you. It’s not too heady. It’s a little more from the gut. With that record as well, there was the economy of it. That was important. It’s more approachable than Caress of Steel.” ”When it comes to   nerdy prog rock with massive compositions, Rush did it first, and they did it best on 2112,” Falke writes. But she insists there’s something more to Rush than technical innovation and   concepts: ”Rush also has something most heavy bands today lack: vulnerability. The ending of ’2112’ (the song) is incredibly triumphant, and you only get that with the dynamics that result from total vulnerability in your music. That’s so inspiring.” Lifeson says the band pulled from many sources on the way to finding its own sound. ”We were all fans of Genesis, Yes, King Crimson. Pink Floyd as well. But we really wanted to do our own thing. We’ve found a lot of inspiration in a lot of different areas, from reggae, to country, to pop, to heavy metal. And that’s always been a cool thing about us. We haven’t been truly an overly progressive metal type band. We mix things up there, lots of ups and downs, lots of dynamics. We don’t always play balls to the wall. We don’t always try to make everything super complicated.” For an album that’s been embraced as a ”classic,” the flipside of 2112 never gets as much attention as the song ”2112” itself. You have the   rock of ”A Passage to Bangkok,” the surreal, startlingly refined ”Twilight Zone,” Lifeson’s wistful ”Lessons” and Lee’s melancholy ”Tears” and the raucous ”Something For Nothing,” which reprises the individualist sentiment of the title track. ”’Twilight Zone’ was a difficult one,” Lifeson muses. ”There are a lot of weird time changes in it. The positioning of the guitar was awkward and uncomfortable. It wasn’t as easy to do as some of the other things. ’Bangkok’ is a really fun song for us to do, it’s our homage to smoking pot around the world, finding the best that you can.” Following its release, attention to 2112 grew slowly. Eventually it charted as high as No. 61 on Billboard’s album chart. But although the momentum was slow initially, it started to snowball to the point where the band would be an   arena and stadium act for the rest of their career. Every Rush album released since has charted higher  —   after 1980, every studio album but one has peaked in the chart’s top 20. ”Everything was slow but steady,” Lifeson says, but ”2112 bought us our independence. [Mercury] never, ever bothered us with material or studio work. They just left it up to us. They figured, ’Okay, they know what they’re doing, and it works for them. As long as we’re popping the cash register open, we’re happy. ’” The album has continued to win new fans. Drummer Taylor Hawkins of the band Foo Fighters, who played with Rush on stage when the band was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, says he came to the band as an adolescent half a decade after 2112 was released, and began working his way backward through its discography. ”The overture grabbed me,” he says. ”I liked the fact that it was really hard rock. I loved Yes and Genesis when I was 10 or 12, but most of those prog bands were not really heavy. Not like 2112, which mixed heavy metal with technical stuff. It’s so clear that they were such a huge influence on Metallica, that kind of technical metal at the time. I just loved that. It was as hard as Sabbath or Zeppelin, but the technicality was on a whole other level. That was the first time they put it all together.” Canadian illustrator Danille Gauvin, who has made artwork for nearly two dozen metal albums since 2009, describes 2112, which she encountered in 2005, as ”an enabling factor for a hungry mind fascinated by horror, science fiction or fantasy.” The fact that the band was also a homegrown was a bonus. ”I cannot stress enough how the Canadian midwest can be very isolating for anyone growing up admiring the visual masterpieces of [designers] Roger Dean, Rodney Matthews, Richard Corben,” she writes. ”It was a place that did not take seriously the pursuit of art and design as anything but a childish fancy. 2112 did what great rock, and indeed great art, continually does in an infectious quality. It persuades you from feeling alone in your strangeness, and to celebrate it by making your own work.” Looking back on the album 40 years after its release, Lifeson says, ”I’m very happy with it. Of course, I want to   the whole thing, just like all our records. When I go back and listen to the original record, I feel really proud of it. I can still remember how I felt at the time we were making it, and how important it seemed, and how satisfied we all were when it came together. We felt we played really well on it, and the recording experience was fantastic. We were such a real team holed up in that studio of Terry’s. ”When other bands cite us as an inspiration or an influence, [the theme of 2112 is] what they’re talking about, more than anything. I’ve often read when we’re mentioned as an influence for a band they’ll say, ’We’re big Rush fans, because they did it on their own, they did it their own way, and that told me that I could do the same thing. If I stick with it, persevere, I can do things the way I want them to be. ’”"
"This story is part of NPR’s podcast Embedded, which digs deep into the stories behind the news. Inside a Newton County, Ga.   room, Shawn stood before a judge ready to enter a guilty plea. A year earlier, police had found him with 4 ounces of marijuana, two digital scales and plastic baggies at his family home near Atlanta. His lawyer negotiated the deal to avoid the   sentence Shawn could face if his case went to trial. During the 2012 hearing, the judge fired off 47 questions to Shawn in quick succession. No. 38 was this: ”And do you understand that this court . .. is not dealing with your immigration status, but that entering a guilty plea could affect your immigration status?” Shawn says the question surprised him  —   to his memory, immigration had not come up before. But court transcripts show he told the judge, ”Yes.” This kind of confusion is common, which is why judges and lawyers now are encouraged to use explicit language, such as, ”You could be deported.” Later in the hearing, Shawn’s lawyer appealed to the judge for a more lenient sentence for his client: ”He’s married his wife is here. . .. He works full time, gainfully employed as a tree cutter. . .. So I want to impress upon the court that he’s doing what he’s supposed to do, and that he otherwise  —   you know, this incident hopefully doesn’t define his life.” But that’s exactly what would happen. Shawn, 40, served 17 months for possession with intent to distribute marijuana. Two years after he was released, he showed up for a monthly   with his probation officer, and immigration officials were there waiting. His crime also had violated his immigration status. Shawn should have been transferred directly into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after his prison sentence ended, but sometimes mistakes are made. According to Georgia prison officials, that’s most likely what happened to Shawn. When convicted of crimes, noncitizens  —   even those like Shawn who entered the U. S. legally  —   face repercussions in two justice systems. First they serve a criminal sentence then, if the crime is serious enough, they’re put in deportation proceedings. The rules are much different in this separate system of justice, and there are fewer protections for defendants  —   known here as respondents. On average, 60 percent of immigrants successfully avoid deportation, but in some courts it’s less than 5 percent. It’s hard to know why the rates vary, because unlike criminal courts, records of immigration court proceedings are not readily accessible to the public. This January, I traveled to an immigration court in Lumpkin, Ga. where more than 97 percent of immigrants lose their cases, according to an analysis from Syracuse University. Shawn was being held there pending a hearing where an immigration judge would determine whether he would be allowed to stay in the United States. The Obama administration’s immigration agenda prioritizes deporting ”felons, not families.” But in Lumpkin, I saw that distinction can be hard to draw. Shawn came to the U. S. as a legal permanent resident from Guyana, in South America, 30 years ago, when he was 10 years old. He asked to be identified for this story only by his first name and his family members by their middle names to protect his children and his wife’s employment status. He grew up in New York City, in a Guyanese neighborhood where it seemed everyone was related  —   even those who weren’t called each other ”cousin” or ”auntie.” In his 20s, Shawn faced two other criminal charges for misdemeanor possession of pot, but his green card was unaffected. He also had two children with different mothers. Then, in 2006, he married Marie, a U. S. citizen who is also of Guyanese descent. They and a dozen other extended family members moved to Georgia to settle down and escape hectic city life. Marie and Shawn had a son. Shawn says he smoked weed recreationally throughout his life, but never sold it. The scale, he said, he purchased because the   marijuana he smoked was expensive. He liked to weigh out exactly what he needed to relax at the end of the day, without overdoing it. Marie didn’t have a problem with Shawn’s smoking. ”It was like the glass of wine I have at the end of the day,” she told me. But when Shawn was arrested in 2011, Marie gave him an ultimatum: If he got into trouble again, she’d leave. Shawn says he took it seriously. He got steady work with a   company and stopped smoking marijuana. A System ’Set Up To Fail’ At 4 a. m. on the day of Shawn’s final hearing before an immigration judge, I met his defense lawyer, Julio Moreno, at his Atlanta office. Immigrant respondents do not have the right to free lawyers, but those who are represented are as much as 14 times more likely to win their cases, according to the Syracuse University research. We climbed into Moreno’s navy blue Toyota 4Runner and drove three hours south toward Lumpkin. On the way, we talked about the differences between criminal and immigration law. When people are arrested on immigration charges, they aren’t read Miranda rights and not only don’t have a right to legal counsel but also aren’t guaranteed a speedy trial or a jury of their peers. ”The way the system is set up now, they’re set up to fail,” Moreno told me. Immigration prosecutors and judges are barred from responding to these characterizations, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Justice sent statements to NPR saying they carry out their work according to the laws. And the laws say that immigrants in deportation proceedings don’t get the same protections as people facing criminal charges. The reason stems from a Supreme Court decision from the 1800s, Ting v. United States, which held that deportation is not a punishment but merely the process of returning someone to where he rightfully belongs. Going Inside Lumpkin, Ga. Driving to Lumpkin means leaving behind the wide Atlanta freeways, which span six lanes in each direction, for an unlit   road, from which only rolling hills and vacant land are visible. Cellphone service drops out in Lumpkin and doesn’t come back until you reach the immigration complex. Thousands of hearings are heard in the town’s immigration court every year. The adjoining detention center usually houses about 1, 700 detainees  —   hundreds more people than the entire town’s population. Around 7:30 a. m. sunlight crept up enough to illuminate dozens of abandoned houses and shuttered businesses in Lumpkin. But when we turned into the detention center, the landscape changed. Suddenly, we were surrounded on both sides by bright green, freshly cut grass leading up to a white water tower that said, ”Welcome to CCA Stewart Detention Center: America’s Leader in Partnership Corrections.” The federal government pays CCA and other private prison companies to house more than half of the country’s detained immigrants  —   many in rural facilities like Lumpkin. To the right of the water tower stood the detention center  —   a series of nondescript white buildings with high fences all around, topped with barbed wire. Inside the facility, a security guard walked us into a small room with   concrete walls and a desk, where Moreno would prepare Shawn for his 1 p. m. hearing. After a few minutes, Shawn walked into an identical room on the opposite side of a sheet of glass. Nearly 6 feet tall, he wore a red jumpsuit, his hair cropped tight. He looked tired. By then, he’d been detained in Lumpkin for five months. ”When I came out of prison I . .. for the last two years, I thought I got a second chance,” Shawn said. ”But to be picked up after you promised your family you’ll never leave them again, that was the worst thing I could ever go through.” Moreno’s strategy to keep Shawn in the United States relied on a Supreme Court decision, Moncrieffe v. Holder, which held that immigrants with convictions like Shawn’s should be considered   drug offenders instead of ”aggravated felons,” a category of immigrants who automatically are deported. Even if Moreno was successful in that, Shawn would have to meet a second, higher threshold  —   one that doesn’t exist in criminal court. In immigration court, once a respondent wins his legal argument against automatic deportation, judges then weigh all the positive and negative factors about the person and decide whether the respondent can remain in the United States. There are guidelines for what the judge should consider in this decision, but ultimately it’s subjective. Moreno advised Shawn to make clear to the court that he was sorry for his mistakes  —   not to deny or try to excuse them. He also counseled Shawn to tell the court that his family would suffer if he was deported. The stakes were intimidating. If Shawn were to win his case, he could go home with his family that day. If he were to lose, he would be deported to a country he hadn’t seen in three decades, 3, 000 miles away. To support Shawn’s case, 30 people had written letters to the judge before the hearing. They included his boss at the   company, his church pastor, and friends and family. Moreno said he had represented a lot of cases similar to Shawn’s, and in his experience, most respondents didn’t get that kind of support. ’He Had To Find Ways To Take Care Of Family’ Shawn’s family arrived two hours before the hearing. They drove three hours from the Atlanta suburbs  —   11 of them packed into two cars. They were also part of Moreno’s legal strategy. ”Hopefully the judge will be afraid,” he said. ”Intimidated to let them all down?” I asked. Moreno nodded his head yes. I walked over to Shawn’s family and asked his    what they planned to do for the next two hours. ”Pray, that’s all. We’re just trying to keep him elevated in prayer,” she replied. Marie had on a white skirt suit with a jacket and dark sunglasses that hid her eyes. ”I don’t want to be excited and I don’t want to be sad, I’m just trying to stay neutral to everything,” she told me. ”I think if I start, I wouldn’t stop, if I start going downhill.” Marie said she knew Shawn was to blame for putting her family in this situation, but she didn’t believe his mistakes warranted sending him back to a country he didn’t know, or breaking up their family. ”It was all stuff that haunts him, from the past, childhood  —   growing up in New York City and being in the streets and trying to get by,” she said. ”He had to find ways to take care of his family.” I asked if that meant Shawn was selling drugs in the 1990s, when he first was arrested. ”He’s not no Scarface or big drug cartel,” she said, her voice trailing off. ”If not we would not be struggling here, trying to get by paying bills and everything else. It’s just really small stuff.” When I asked if Marie had thought about what might happen if Shawn lost in court that day, she replied, ”I don’t even want to think about that, so I have no plan if they deny him. I just look forward to walking out of here with my husband and taking him back home and . .. doing what we have to do to put this behind us.” ’I Need My Family And They Need Me’ Inside the tiny windowless courtroom, Shawn sat at a desk next to Moreno, his lawyer, and opposite Reid McKee, the government prosecutor. Judge Dan Trimble sat upfront behind a bench. Moreno called Shawn’s stepmother,    and wife to the stand. He hoped their testimony would help persuade the judge to use his discretion to keep Shawn in the United States. ”This whole family is going to fall apart,” his    told the court. ”We’re falling apart already. And it hurts. And Shawn is a loving boy.” Her voice cracked. ”I know he’s going to do better. We can’t live without Shawn, Sir.” McKee declined to  . Then, Moreno called Shawn. He asked whether Shawn had learned from his mistakes  —   Shawn said he had  —   and about whether he’d been back to Guyana since he came here when he was 10. Shawn said no. In closing, he asked Shawn why the court should give him a second chance. Shawn replied as Moreno had instructed him to: ”I promise you that I will never be back in none of these courtrooms ever again,” he said. ”I apologize for my mistakes I’ve made in the past, and I’m a changed person. I need my family and they need me. That’s all I have is my family, in America here.” When the prosecutor questioned Shawn about his past, he raised that Shawn had been charged with intending to sell marijuana four times in his life, but convicted only once. Such past charges would not have been permissible in criminal court, because they were never proved, but in immigration court the rules are different. Moreno objected to the question, but the judge overruled. ”A person might conclude that you’ve been dealing drugs in the United States. Have you ever dealt drugs in the United States?” the prosecutor asked. Shawn answered no. And the prosecutor used his response to back Shawn into the corner that Moreno wanted to avoid: Shawn made an excuse. ”OK, but why did you plead guilty to possession with intent to distribute, if you were not possessing with intent to distribute marijuana?” McKee asked. ”They were trying to give me 10 years in prison,” he said. ”I can’t afford to do 10 years in prison for something, so I took the guilty plea.” After closing arguments, the judge went back into chambers to deliberate. He was gone an hour and 15 minutes. The courtroom was silent. The government prosecutor sat, typing away at his laptop. Marie and Shawn stole looks at each other once in a while, but they were not allowed to speak. Joey, Shawn’s son, looked down into his hands and kicked his legs out in front of him. At one point, Joey and I walked out of the courtroom at the same time. I asked him how he thought it was going. ”I think we’re gonna win,” he told me. When the judge walked back into the courtroom, everyone in the audience sat up straight. ”Sir, I am not going to grant your relief this afternoon,” he said. ”I’m going to order that respondent be removed from United States to Guyana.” Shawn’s family didn’t react. They just stared at the judge. Some silently hugged the person next to them. The judge explained that Moreno had won his legal argument, but he failed to persuade the judge to use his discretion to keep Shawn in the United States. The family shuffled slowly out of the courtroom. As soon as the door shut, Shawn’s stepmother started wailing. In the parking lot, Moreno explained that he would file an appeal, which would take two to three months to come back. Some of Shawn’s family members still had blank expressions. Marie and Joey had tears running down their faces. On the drive back to Georgia, Moreno explained that appealing a discretionary decision is more difficult than appealing a legal one  —   to win, you have to convince a judge that one of his colleagues made a grave mistake on a subjective decision. And on appeal, judges are supposed to give each other the benefit of the doubt on anything that isn’t completely clear.  ’Right Now This Is Double Jeopardy’  It took me a few weeks to reach Marie after the hearing she wasn’t picking up her phone. At one point she sent me a text: ”Not doing very well. Times are extremely hard. I’m not in the mood to catch up.” Eventually she agreed to let me come to the family home in Georgia. There, she told me that most of the time she was too numb to feel anything about the experience. But Joey was struggling. ”In December he started playing basketball. Now he’s into the football, and I don’t know about all that stuff,” Marie said. ”All these kids got their dads out there.” Before I left, I asked Joey what he was telling his friends about where his dad was. ”I tell them he’s going to be home from his business trip soon,” he said. A week later, Shawn called. He’d been transferred twice since the hearing, first to a facility in Louisiana, and now was in a county jail in Alabama. I asked whether he felt he should have faced consequences for the drugs and paraphernalia in his possession. ”I felt like I already did that, already, when I went to prison,” he said. ”Did that feel justified to you at the time?” I asked. ”Yes, I feel like that’s my consequences,” he said. ”But right now, this is double jeopardy.” Two days later, I got a call from Moreno. Shawn lost his appeal. I asked Moreno what he thought made the judge decide against them, but he didn’t have any answers. In fact, he said, he had just won a very similar case in a different immigration court a few days before. He said this kind of thing just happens, all the time. NPR’s Chris Benderev contributed to this story. For more, listen to Embedded. Keep up with podcast host Kelly McEvers on Twitter at @kellymcevers and reporter Caitlin Dickerson at @itscaitlinhd, and join the conversation using the hashtag #NPREmbedded."
"We all love our dogs. But depending on how you show that love, you may be doing more harm than good, according to one expert. Dr. Stanley Coren, a professor emeritus in psychology at the University of British Columbia, writes in a Psychology Today blog post that hugging a dog actually increases the dog’s stress level. For his study, Coren looked at a random sampling of 250 pictures of people hugging dogs from Google Image Search and Flickr. ”I can summarize the data quite simply by saying that the results indicated that the Internet contains many pictures of happy people hugging what appear to be unhappy dogs,” Coren writes. Coren, who has written several books about dog behavior, says there are specific things dogs do to indicate stress. At the ”” dogs will ”bare their teeth” at you. But dogs can still experience stress without lashing out. ”The most common sign of anxiety is when the dog turns his head away from whatever is bothering or worrying him, sometimes also closing his eyes, at least partially,” Coren writes. When a dog opens its eyes wide and you can see the whites in a ” ” shape, that’s another sign. Other indicators of stress are when the dog’s ears are low and against its head, lip licking, yawning or raising a paw. Dogs showed one of these signs of distress in 81. 6 percent of the pictures he surveyed, he writes. Coren says the reason for dogs not taking kindly to human hugs goes back to their evolutionary history. ”Dogs are technically cursorial animals, which is a term that indicates that they are designed for swift running,” he writes. ”That implies that in times of stress or threat the first line of defense that a dog uses is not his teeth, but rather his ability to run away.” So when you hug the dog, it can feel trapped. And in certain cases, especially with young children, hugging can be dangerous. ”All of the bite prevention programs . .. say ’Don’t hug the dog,’ ” Coren tells NPR’s Scott Simon. He says data about dog bites and children show ”facial bites most often occur right after the kid had been hugging the dog.” ”The issue is not that you shouldn’t love your dog, it’s just the ways that you express your affection,” Coren says. ”When I was a kid I had an aunt who was very fond of me, and she would run up to me every time she visited the house and pinch both of my cheeks and say, ’Oh, I love you so much!’ She thought she was expressing affection and I hated it.”   did not take kindly to Coren’s pronouncement. ”My dogs love being hugged,” dog trainer Corey Cohen told The New York Times. Cohen told the Times the dogs in pictures Coren surveyed may have been nervous because they were being posed to take a picture. Dr. Marc Bekoff, a professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says it’s OK to hug your dog  —   sometimes. ”Just like people, some dogs love it, some sort of like it, and some may not like the close contact at all,” Bekoff writes in a response, also on Psychology Today’s website. It’s important to consider factors like how well a dog knows you and how noisy the environment is. ”And, if you’re unsure, don’t hug the dog! Better safe than sorry,” he writes. According to Coren, there’s a simple,   way to let your dog know you care. ”It is clearly better from the dog’s point of view if you express your fondness for your pet with a pat, a kind word, and maybe a treat.”"
"To burn or not to burn? That is the question facing African countries in their fight against the   illegal ivory trade. Kenya, which introduced the world to burning ivory in 1989, still thinks it’s a good idea. On Saturday morning, it hosted the most spectacular burn event yet: The tusks of nearly 7, 000 elephants  —   105 metric tons’ worth  —   were set alight in 11 separate pyres in Nairobi’s National Park. The tusks, taken from elephants that were poached as well as from those that died naturally, were collected from Kenya’s parks and confiscated at its ports. The haul represents the bulk of Kenya’s entire ivory stockpile. In addition, a 1.  basket of rhino horn was set on fire. All told, more than $300 million worth of contraband went up in flames. ”Kenya is leading the way in saying that ivory has no value, unless it’s on an elephant,” says Robin Hollister, an engineer and pyrotechnics expert, as he adjusts the knobs on an air compressor. In a vast, muddy field in Nairobi’s National Park, about a week before the big burn, Hollister was testing the pipes that today sent a mix of kerosene and diesel squirting at high pressure under each pyre. Ivory is not flammable, so the process is akin to cremation. ”Of course, you could destroy ivory by bringing in a stone crusher,” Hollister shrugs. ”It would be much easier. But it wouldn’t be as dramatic.” Not everyone appreciates the drama. Seretse Khama Ian Khama, the president of Botswana, boycotted Kenya’s burn as sending ”the wrong message.” Botswana has more elephants than Kenya, and has been more successful at conserving them. Still, Kenya has made recent strides against poaching, which is down by 80 percent since 2013. But even as Kenya’s elephants enjoy improved protection, Kenya’s port officials can sometimes enable the ivory trade. Wildlife trade expert Esmond Bradley Martin says that smuggling routes have shifted from West African ports to East African  —   in Kenya and Tanzania, mostly. Kitili Mbathi, the Director General of Kenya Wildlife Service, admits that the Kenyan port of Mombasa is the ”weak link,” where corruption allows shipments of ivory tusks to China. Mike Norton Griffiths, a longtime Kenyan resident who researches the economics of conservation, has a different concern about the ivory burn: What happens to the ivory market when you effectively remove this much  —   his estimate is 5 percent  —   of the world supply at one time? ”Look what happened when Iraq went offline with its oil” during the   war in the 1980s, he notes. ”That was 5 percent of the market. Oil prices shot through the roof!” Higher ivory prices could lure more poachers to get into the trade and hunt more elephants, he and others warn. A number of prominent conservationists disagree. Kenya’s very first ivory burn  —   of 12 tons of ivory  —   helped lead to significant changes in global policy on the ivory trade. Paula Kahumbu, the Kenyan CEO of the conservation group WildlifeDirect, says that keeping ivory locked in Kenya’s vaults is a far more dangerous temptation to illegal traders than the higher prices Griffiths warns of. ”If you’re a dealer and you need a ton of ivory, where is the hugest place to go?” Kahumbu says. ”It’s not to go hunting [elephants]. That’s actually quite risky, to go hunting animals. Actually, if you can raid a stockpile by bribing the guy who has the key, that’s going to be the fastest way that you can get your ivory.” Kahumbu’s group has documented how ivory tusks go missing from African vaults or courtroom exhibit rooms and end up right back on the ivory market, because of corruption. Stop Ivory, another wildlife conservation group, helped organize Saturday’s burn, in which several African heads of state took part. ”It will be a pleasure to burn it,” Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta wrote in an editorial on Friday, ”and do my part to destroy any possibility that poachers and their accomplices might benefit from the slaughter of Kenya’s elephants.” If ivory is to be destroyed, Kenyan officials reason, then it should be done in as public a ceremony as possible. Today’s burn was timed to coincide with a continental summit on elephant conservation, so that other African dignitaries and heads of state could participate and show their contempt for the ivory trade. (One of   Hollister’s many jobs was an act of diplomacy  —   to make sure that no ivory pyre burned higher than the one the Kenyan president lit.) But beyond the theatrics, the question is whether the   message will sway buyers in the world’s biggest ivory market  —   China. Does public shaming work on Chinese buyers? ”No,” says Hongxiang Huang, the CEO of China House, a foundation in Nairobi to help Chinese living in Africa integrate. ”With Chinese, that [shame] strategy is one that I would strongly advise not to use.” Huang worries that   on ivory only politicizes the issue and plays into Chinese fears that their country is being undermined by Western NGOs and governments. Already, Huang says, many Chinese see ivory as an issue that the West uses as an excuse to criticize China. The   messages are stronger when they come from China’s own leaders. Last year, China agreed to phase out its domestic ivory trade. The price of ivory dropped by almost half, even though no timeline for implementing the ban was given. Kahumbu says that was a bigger price drop than today’s burn  —   or any burn, for that matter  —   could hope to achieve. But Huang says the good news, from his perspective, is that most of the audience in China who happen to watch this burn on TV probably won’t see it as the shame message it’s intended to be. ”I think the burn will just be perceived [as demonstrating] that more and more governments are trying to phase this out and get out of this market,” he says. ”So it’s something that is just fading away.” That may prove to be the most powerful incentive to abandon ivory, he suggests. One thing that proud Chinese people don’t want to be, these days, is behind the times."
"After a   victory on Tuesday night, Donald Trump took time during a QA with journalists to take a jab at Hillary Clinton. ”Well, I think the only card she has is the woman’s card,” he said. ”She’s got nothing else going on. And frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the women’s vote. And the beautiful thing is that women don’t like her, OK?” Those comments, not surprisingly, caused some online outrage, a lot of jokes, and several think pieces. Some on Twitter pointed out the strange logic of such a statement, given that no woman has actually been president before. Others singled out Mary Pat Christie, wife of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who seemed to roll her eyes as Trump uttered the words. And others posited just what a woman’s card might actually look like. Clinton responded that night, with a comment she’s made several times on the trail. ”Mr. Trump accused me of playing the, quote, ’woman card,’” she said during her victory speech. ”Well, if fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in.” Later in the week, Trump doubled down, telling the Today show, ”. ..she is playing that card like I have never seen anybody play it before.” He continued, ”Without the woman’s card, Hillary would not even be a viable person to even run for a city council position.” Time will tell whether this hurts or helps Clinton, or Trump, or no one at all. But, for now at least, Clinton is trying to capitalize on the moment, even offering actual woman cards to donors to her campaign. As NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben reported, if there actually is a woman’s card, it might not be worth that much. But the whole exchange makes you wonder, what would a woman’s card look like? Would it be shaped like a bottle of red wine or a Lifetime movie? Would it smell like Herbal Essences shampoo and cocoa? Would men’s cards open the door for it? Would people critique it for using too much vocal fry and uptalk? Maybe there is no answer to these questions, but if this week taught us anything, it’s that gender promises to be a trending topic for the rest of this presidential campaign."
"Donald Trump’s dominance over the Republican presidential field has come as a surprise to the political world. But followers of professional wrestling may be less surprised that Trump has managed to knock more than a dozen Republican candidates out of the race. Trump’s stint in the pro wrestling world dates back to 2007 when NBC wanted to   Trump’s show, The Apprentice, on its other properties. He appeared on Wrestlemania XXIII in what was billed as the Hair vs. Hair match and the Battle of the Billionaires against Vince McMahon, the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. Trump was game for anything, said Court Bauer, a writer on WWE who helped create the Trump storyline. He was even willing to yank on his own hair to prove it was real although the show’s creators ultimately decided against that move. But Trump did end up clotheslining McMahon, helping strap him to a chair and shaving McMahon’s head   after McMahon’s favored wrestler lost the match. Here are four ways Trump’s performance on WWE continues to echo in his campaign for the Republican nomination today. Trump’s attacks on his political rivals remind Scott Beekman, author of ”Ringside: A History of Professional Wrestling in America,” of a promo, the insulting monologue about his opponents that a wrestler delivers before a match. ”I think [Trump is] best when he’s riffing off an opponent and has an opponent right there that he can try to knock down a few pegs,” said Beekman, who’s also an associate professor of history at the University of Rio Grande. In 2007, Trump taunted McMahon, telling him, ”I’m taller than you. I’m better looking than you. I think, I’m stronger than you.” Nine years later, Trump’s insults have spawned attempts at a comprehensive taxonomy and online insult generators. ”I’m probably more intelligent than Hillary,” said Trump recently on MSNBC. Pro wrestling is not a sport for the modest and during his stint on WWE, Trump once told off McMahon with, ”Your grapefruits are no match for my Trump Towers.” Those kind of allusions have popped up on the campaign trail too, where Trump infamously bragged to Marco Rubio during a Republican debate about the size of his hands, and other parts of his anatomy. In professional wrestling it’s common for a wrestler to take out a bounty on another wrestler. Similarly, after a Trump supporter hit a protester at a rally in North Carolina, Trump suggested he would help pay the supporter’s legal fees although ultimately, there’s no sign Trump actually paid the legal bill. Trump’s WWE appearances were one of the first times he engaged with an unruly audience, said Court Bauer. ”Some people thrive off of it, some people it eats them alive,” said Bauer. ”And he certainly didn’t have any anxiety going out there, he seemed very confident whenever he’d go out there.” There’s also plenty of overlap between wrestling fans and Trump’s voters, suggested Scott Beekman. ”The traditional wrestling crowd is somebody’s grandmother and your plumber, and that’s the sort of folks [Trump] seems to be getting in enormous numbers at his rallies.”"
"When I meet the captured ISIS fighter, he doesn’t look much like the bombastic murderers in the propaganda videos. Ahmed Darwish, 29, is slight, hunched and shuffling in orange plastic sandals, wincing in pain as he walks into a police station in Rumeilan, northern Syria, escorted by the Kurdish fighters who captured him running away after a battle. His arms are bandaged and head is wounded: he was struck in a coalition airstrike in support of the   forces. It can be hard to understand why young Muslims join ISIS. The group is so bloodthirsty and so ready to advertise its brutality. But talking to Darwish, the story of how he came to what he just calls ”the State” isn’t one of extremism and bloodlust  —   but revolution, disillusionment and loneliness. A soldier from the Kurdish forces holding Darwish remains in the room throughout our conversation. I ask Darwish how he came to be involved in Syria’s civil war. ”I was in Saudi Arabia and I came at the beginning of the revolution,” he says in Arabic, referring to the uprising against President Bashar Assad that erupted in 2011. Heading To Syria, His family was from the Syrian city of Homs, but his father was working in Saudi Arabia as a mechanic and Darwish was helping. But when he saw demonstrations on TV, he wanted to help bring down Assad. ”Oppression,” he mutters. ”There was oppression.” He got to Homs after the euphoria of the first demonstrations of 2011, just as the protesters were arming themselves against the regime’s military crackdown. But he became disillusioned. ”I discovered there that in the demonstrations, there is something unclean. There was stealing, thievery,” he says. After two years under siege, the rebels cut a deal with the regime and Darwish had to leave, going to southern Turkey, where he began chatting on Facebook with a cousin who had joined ISIS. ”He encouraged me,” he says. ”He said, ’There’s no lies in the State. No thieves. No looting.’ ” So Darwish headed back to Syria, to the   town of Al Bab, in the northern part of the country, and joined up. The ISIS men were ”trustworthy, no lies, no stealing,” he says. ”The guys were clean, with white hearts.” He started with two months of repentance and religious study, followed by 15 days of military training. And then he was sent to the frontlines, where he would launch attacks on government forces. He says it was the happiest he’s ever been, the closest to God. ”And there was camaraderie, friendship,” he says, ”like a brotherhood between us.” NPR spoke to rebels who knew Darwish in Homs. They verified his identity after seeing his photograph and remember him being in the siege with them. Reasons For Joining, Analyst Hassan Hassan, a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and   of a book about ISIS, puts forward several reasons that people might join, beyond identifying with ISIS’s extreme version of Islam. Some rebels have turned to the organization because they hoped they’d make the rebellion less fragmented. Hassan says one of his friends takes the political position that ”this is an organization that actually can, by force, unite all the rebels against the Assad regime.” Hassan also points out that while ISIS broadcasts its violence, it may not actually be the most violent actor in Syria’s civil war. It’s not that ISIS violence is excusable, he says. ”But it’s understandable in the context of Syria and Iraq. We have to remember that everything that ISIS has done, the Assad regime has done, and more, and probably worse.” Torture and murder on a vast scale by the regime have been extensively documented. The other ISIS fighter I meet won’t let us use his name. He is younger, and says his reason for joining was simply that everyone else was doing it. Now 19, he was 16 when the rebels who ran his area decided to ally with ISIS. I ask if most people were on board with that. ”Oh yes, sure,” he says. ”They were supporting them in a strong way.” His uncle urged him to join, and he ended up manning checkpoints. His father had tried to stop him. ”Like he’d say, ’ISIS, it’s not the right way. If you want to pray, you can pray in the house,’” he recalls. The young man is thin,   with a beard that’s still just fluff on his cheeks. He says he’s not certain what will happen to him. Shortly before he’s led back to his cell, he says he wishes he had listened to his dad."
"It’s a   (if    ) idea that college makes people more liberal. But a new report adds a twist to this: the most educated Americans have grown increasingly liberal over the last couple of decades. A report from the Pew Research Center finds a wide partisan gap between highly educated and    Americans. Not only that, but the share of college grads and   who are ”consistently liberal” (based on their answers to a series of policy questions) has grown sharply in the last 20 years. In 1994, 7 percent of   were ”consistently liberal,” and 1 percent of people with high school educations or less were  —   not much of a difference. Today, the gap is 25 points wide  —   31 percent of people with   educations are consistently liberal, compared to 5 percent of those with high school educations or less. The same kind of change just hasn’t happened on the conservative side. Split it out by party, and the shift is even starker. Among the   set, more than half of Democrats and   today are ”consistently liberal,” up from fewer than    in 1994. Likewise, among college grads, it jumped from 12 to 47. This squares with something Pew found last year: while the partisan identification of people without college degrees have held steady over the last couple of decades, people with college degrees increasingly identify as Democratic or lean that way. Why the leftward shift? As noted above, the idea that education would make a person more liberal is nothing new. And to some degree, that appears true. ”There’s some pretty good evidence that going to college leads people to have more liberal attitudes on social issues, in particular on issues of tolerance, of difference and issues of gender equity,” said Neil Gross, sociology professor at Colby College, who has studied liberalism at colleges. But then, Gross has also written about evidence that college really doesn’t move people’s broader political beliefs (about, for example, the size of government) that much. There are all sorts of reasons why this might be happening. Here are three factors that may be contributing: 1) General polarization, The whole nation is becoming more ideologically polarized, Pew has found. And lots of reasons have been proposed for why that polarization may have happened: distrust in government, the racial and religious politics of the 1960s and 70s, even income inequality. So it would make sense that these postgrads and college grads (along with lots of other people) moved farther away from the center. In addition, to some degree, that second chart shows that   and Democratic highly educated people were somewhat more likely to be consistently liberal in 1994. According to Gross, if highly educated people are (for a variety of reasons) simply more predisposed to being ideologically consistent (or more accurately here, more consistently liberal) that may mean they were particularly affected by the forces of polarization over the last 20 years. ”We’ve known for a while that people with more education tend to be more ideologically consistent than people with less education,” he said. ”In some sense it’s not surprising to see that polarization and party sorting is happening most among people who are super highly educated.” 2) Women, Another possibility, Gross says, might be the growing numbers of women getting college and advanced degrees. Women also in general tend to vote for Democrats more than men. So as the population of highly educated people grew more female, that may have swung it left. 3) Insularity, At work here is the Big Sort: the idea (popularized in the 2008 book by Bill Bishop) that Americans are increasingly living alongside   people  —   essentially, that the walls of our respective ideological bubbles are getting thicker. Gross proposes that this may be happening especially among the   set. ”Americans are increasingly clustering into cities and neighborhoods with people who are like them politically,” he said. ”I wouldn’t be surprised if part of what’s going on has to be people with graduate degrees being drawn toward cities where lots of highly educated people work.” In other words, as the highly educated Americans in particular seek out jobs that use their highly educated skill sets, it ends up sorting them into more homogeneous communities. And it’s easy to see how that could be more polarizing: if all your friends are have lawn signs for Democratic candidates and consuming news from more partisan sources, you might easily get pulled further left (and the same goes for conservatives). Conservatives have shifted, too, It’s not that conservatives haven’t grown more conservative over the years, in Pew’s estimation according to their data, both sides have polarized. It’s just that conservatives don’t have this kind of   pattern. (And to be clear, not all political scientists agree that the electorate is all that ideologically polarized. Some say it’s more that affective polarization has grown  —   put simply, that each side increasingly dislikes the other.) So if ideological polarization is real, where is conservatives’ rightward shift showing up? According to Pew, age is one big area. Republican and   Baby Boomers and Generation Xers (and, to a lesser extent, members of the ”Silent Generation”  —   people born between 1928 and 1945 here) have shifted rightward since the 1990s, Pew found."
"Motor vehicle crashes are the leading causes of death for teenagers in the United States, and alcohol is involved in 1 out of 4 of those crashes. The stronger a state’s restrictions on alcohol overall, the lower the teen death toll, a study finds. Policies aimed at the general population were more effective than those targeting teens, the study found. They included regulations that limit the hours alcohol can be sold and the density of alcohol outlets in a particular area, as well as taxes on alcohol sales. ”Younger people are very sensitive to the price of alcohol, ” says Scott Hadland, an adolescent medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital who is lead author on the study, which will be presented May 2 at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Baltimore. ”And they are unable to consume it to the same extent because it becomes very expensive.” Earlier studies had measured the effect of a single policy change, but this approach looked at states’ alcohol policies overall, since they don’t act in isolation. The researchers focused on the impact on youth between the ages of 16 to 20, a group of people who are old enough to legally drive but are not old enough to legally drink. They assembled a group of policy experts from law, sociology, economics and psychology, and analyzed laws and regulations in all 50 states from 1999 to 2012. Although laws that address the whole population are effective, there are some   policies that also seem to work, the group found. These include regulations that hold parents responsible for youth drinking in their home and graduated drivers licensing rules, which restrict new drivers until they reach a certain age and driving experience level. These constraints ban the use of cell phones, limit nighttime driving to certain hours, and restrict the number of passengers a new driver is allowed to have in the vehicle. Hadland acknowledges the difficulty in analyzing the effect of multiple laws and regulations. ”It’s never just policies that are having an effect in a state it’s often many other factors at play as well,” he says. They adjusted the analysis for things like how far people drive in a state, for instance. ”If for example you live in Texas, and things are much further apart, and you have to drive a lot more, that gives you many more opportunities to have a motor vehicle crash versus driving in a much smaller state where things are more densely packed.” There is also the possibility that states enacted new legislation during the time span analyzed, but researchers accounted for that by allowing one year for those policies to take effect. Hadland and his team next want to study what effect these policies have on   to    also a vulnerable group with high rates of   automobile mortality. Ultimately, the goal is to help state and local governments come up with polices that save lives, Hadland says. ”In places where laws may be weaker, we think it could be helpful and protective for those places to assume stronger alcohol policies we hope our work would guide them.”"
"The nation’s top law enforcement officer walked past a   fence, through passages lined with   walls, to meet with a special audience. But this was not a normal     —   a   FBI security detail tracked her every move. Inside the visitation room in this federal correctional institution, five men in khaki uniforms and black Crocs slippers were waiting to give Attorney General Loretta Lynch a glimpse of their struggles. ”Just because we’re locked up doesn’t make us bad people,” says Tony Moses, 47, a   tall man who’s locked up until January 2041 on armed robbery charges. ”We just made some bad choices.” Attorney General Lynch made the trip to highlight the need for more programs to help inmates transition out of incarceration and   society. She mixed, carefully, with the general population at this federal correctional facility where 42 percent of inmates are locked up for drug crimes and 33 percent are facing years behind bars for weapons offenses. ”Certainly by providing individuals coming out of institutions with ways to become productive citizens, we reduce recidivism,” Lynch tells NPR in an interview. ”What that means is we reduce crime. There are fewer victims when individuals have options  —   when they have job skills, when they have life skills, we break the cycle of children following their parents into institutions.” Elsewhere on the sprawling prison campus, past a group of inmates who wear hair and beard nets while roasting a barbecue lunch, Lynch was greeted in the   chapel by 96 prisoners undergoing drug abuse treatment. It’s not your father’s prison unit. One inmate made an announcement about   for their ”biggest loser” health competition. Another confessed he was shaking off feelings of aloofness after refusing to dance with the group earlier in the week. Talladega prison’s   drug rehabilitation and   program is a big draw here and in other prison facilities. Derek Spinks, 36, who pleaded guilty to helping steal $4 million from Bank of New York Mellon, and who was handpicked to meet with the attorney general, explained why. ”You wouldn’t get this help on the street,” Spinks says. ”It saves lives. . .. I think the program should be offered to all inmates in federal prison.” For now though, prison officials say there are no plans to expand the drug treatment offerings. Rather, they’re using scarce resources to develop more programs for women behind bars  —   and trying to shore up the struggling prison industries unit known as UNICOR. In Talladega, about 290 men in the UNICOR unit stop their work sewing camouflage pants for military uniforms to gawk at the visitors from Washington. Superintendent of Industries Carrie Thorson tells the attorney general 80 percent of these men never had a legal job before this factory work. They earn, on average, $250 a month. And their rates of misconduct in prison are lower, Thorson adds. ”These guys don’t have misconduct in that they know if they screw up they’re done . .. they’re terminated immediately,” she says. Clarence Aaron spent 22 years rising to top jobs at UNICOR in Talladega and other prisons before he won clemency from President Obama in 2013. He’s now living in Mobile, trying to find a job that suits his business studies and his lengthy experience in an office. So far, Aaron says, the best offer he’s received involves emptying trash cans, in ”custodial maintenance.” Prisons give inmates training, he says, but there’s not much of a bridge between them and the world outside. ”I’m trying to do my best,” he says, his voice breaking with emotion. ”I’m not asking nobody to give me nothing, I want to earn everything I get. It’s just about an opportunity.” Attorney General Lynch, who met privately with Aaron in a short visit to Mobile, seemed to agree, telling NPR he made an ”excellent point.” Lynch adds: ”We’re now going to work to make sure there’s a bridge from the institution back home, not just for the individual, but for the skills that they’ve gained.” Attorney General Lynch gave a   interview to NPR as she marked her first full year on the job. Here are some other topics she discussed. Voting rights, as cases in Texas and North Carolina work through the courts, Certainly in a larger sense, supporting every individual’s right to vote is of great importance to the Department of Justice and to me as the attorney general. Voting is how we participate in a civic society  —   be it for president, be it for a municipal election. It’s the way we teach our children  —   in school elections  —   how to be citizens, and the importance of their voice. And I’m committed as AG to doing everything we can to ensure we keep the road to the ballot box unimpeded and open for all Americans. Civic unrest and police actions in Baltimore, where she intends to return for a visit later this year, It’s an ongoing process. It was obviously disturbing not just for me but for the people who live there in Baltimore. . .. We have have to listen to the pain behind that process and find ways that we can be responsive to that. The extradition of accused drug lord ’El Chapo’ Guzman, With respect to Chapo, we have an excellent relationship with the Mexican attorney general’s office and they’ve been incredibly responsive to our extradition paperwork. We’re hopeful we will soon see movement there and I thank them very much and appreciate their efforts in that case. On remarks by Jane Sanders, wife of Bernie Sanders, that ”it would be nice” if the FBI sped up its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email setup, We don’t talk about the timing of open matters but I certainly agree with the FBI director that in every investigation no matter whom it involves, we are thorough, we are fair, we are efficient, and we move through the facts and the evidence and come to the conclusions that are called upon. I would agree with the FBI director that our goal is to be thorough because we want to make sure that in fact we have looked at everything we need to look at before we come to any final conclusions, whichever way."
"In the field of addiction treatment, already brimming with intensely personal and emotional debates, there may be nothing more controversial than the role of   programs, which are based on Alcoholics Anonymous. At least 80 percent  of current American addiction treatment —   for both alcohol and other drugs  —   is based on teaching patients the ideology of the steps and persuading them to become members and attend meetings for the rest of their lives. Without question, many people believe strongly that AA and similar programs have saved their lives. But AA’s reliance on a higher power, confession, prayer and proselytizing is so unlike treatment for other medical or psychological disorders that its predominance seems to call into question whether addiction is a disease at all. I believe that addiction is a medical problem. I view addiction as a developmental disorder, which is a position supported by research. And while I don’t have any objection to   programs as   I do think it’s impossible to destigmatize addiction while also rendering it the only diagnosis in medicine for which the treatment is explicitly moral. In fact, I would argue, the   approach would be dismissed outright were it proposed as treatment for disorders such as depression, heart disease or schizophrenia. Until we recognize the discrepancy, I’m skeptical that we’ll make substantial progress in treating addiction. To understand why I believe this change in thinking is important, it’s helpful to look at how the 12 steps came to dominate American addiction care, what the steps themselves really are and how they produced a system of care that, in my view and that of courts that have debated the issue, violates the First Amendment rights of some without having been proved more effective than less problematic alternatives. AA was founded in 1935. At the time, many doctors had thrown up their hands and given up on treating people with addictions. When reports of AA’s success became public, health professionals, not surprisingly, took note. AA members who wanted to help others  —   which is part of the 12th step —   also looked to the medical system as a way to be of service and to help the organization grow. From the start, this approach wasn’t without controversy. Indeed, AA itself recognized early on that people might try to profit from it. As a result, the organization’s Eighth Tradition states: ”Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional. We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or hire.” Despite the dictum, variations on the approach became the basis for an entire treatment model. In 1949, Hazelden was founded in Minnesota and became the grandfather of the   residential rehab program. It was designed to provide intensive exposure to   ideas through meetings, therapy groups and lectures. To this day, most American addiction treatment is based on what became known as the ”Minnesota Model,” which also involves medical and psychiatric evaluation as well as family therapy. But if you take a look at the 12 steps themselves, it’s easy to see why this form of therapy is unlike any other. The first step requires an admission of ”powerlessness” over the addiction, the second a belief in a ”Higher Power” that can restore you to ”sanity,” the third a surrender to ”God as we understood Him.” Steps 4 through 10 involve taking a moral inventory and publicly confessing it to someone, asking God to remove your ”defects of character,” then making amends for harm done. If such steps were demanded of people in treatment for any other condition, they would very likely argue that they were being treated as sinners rather than patients. Would you choose a psychiatrist who wanted to focus on your moral failings rather than your medical condition? For addiction, however, being told by treatment providers that the only alternative to these steps, as an AA slogan has it, is ”jails, institutions or death,” is mainstream medicine. And this remains the case, even though  courts that have entertained the question of whether mandating   participation via the legal system violates the First Amendment separation of church and state have determined that it does. Of course, some argue, so long as the   approach works, who cares? One problem is that   groups only seem to help a minority of people who find them amenable. According to a researcher who has studied the groups for years, 70 percent of people who start drop out within six months. And, when compared    with cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational enhancement therapy,   approaches do no better. Also, I would argue that elements of the   ideology can be harmful to some people. For starters, the idea that there’s no other way to recover can produce hopelessness in those who don’t find the approach helpful. Second, the more you believe in the idea that addiction is a disease that you have no power over, the greater your risk of relapse, research has found. Third,   programs for people addicted to opioids typically discourage the use of medication. That restriction can be deadly since indefinite use of methadone or buprenorphine is the only approach known to reduce mortality by 50 percent or more. In my view, AA and treatment need to get amicably divorced. The social support provided by   groups and the way they offer a sense of meaning and purpose can help some people with addictions. So, I believe, it makes sense for treatment providers to tell people about the programs and even encourage them to try a meeting or two, with the caveats that this is not the only way to get better and that membership doesn’t qualify people to give medical advice, Let’s let treatment be treatment and AA be AA. Think about it in the same way we view cancer care: Your support group isn’t your oncologist. Each can play an important role in your   and survival, but cancer patients aren’t experts in oncology just because they’ve had the disease. Moreover, to truly get people to see addiction as a medical problem, addiction has to be treated by health professionals whose education needs to go far beyond their own experiences with recovery. Maia Szalavitz’s latest book, Unbroken Brain, combines her personal story of addiction and recovery with a look at 25 years of science and research on addiction and treatment. She writes for Time. com, Vice, The New York Times, Scientific American Mind, Elle, Psychology Today and Marie Claire among others."
"If the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner is ”nerd prom,” Mr. President is the class clown. In his final run as comedian in chief at the event on Saturday evening, President Obama closed his speech with ”Obama out” and a mic drop before receiving a standing ovation from Washington and Hollywood bigwigs. That’s right, Obama pulled a Kobe Bryant in a nod to his own retirement from correspondents’ dinners and, soon, the White House. In his roasting session, the president united celebrities, journalists, politicos and his potential successors by taking them down. Known for his comedic timing and   delivery, Obama didn’t disappoint. He likened Hillary Clinton to an aunt who couldn’t figure out how to use Facebook, and called Bernie Sanders ”comrade,” poking at his democratic socialist status. And on Donald Trump, his main farce fodder at 2011’s event: ”I am a little hurt [Donald Trump] is not here tonight. We had so much fun the last time. And it is surprising. You’ve got a room full of reporters, celebrities, cameras, and he says no. Is this dinner too tacky for The Donald? What could he possibly be doing instead? Is he at home, eating a Trump steak, tweeting out insults to Angela Merkel? ”There is one area where The Donald’s experience could be useful, and that is closing Guantanamo  —   Donald knows a thing or two about running waterfront properties into the ground.” Obama had a lot to live up to after last year’s event, but by the    level, he outdid the comedian of the night, Larry Wilmore. That’s not to say Wilmore didn’t get some hearty applause: ”Oh, I just got a note from the president saying that if you want another drink, you should order it now because the bar will be closing down. Of course, he said the same thing about Guantanamo, so you have at least another eight years.” Obama ended his appearance on a serious note to salute the press corps, including Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter who was released in January after 544 days in an Iranian prison. Here are some of our favorite Obama jabs from the night: ”Eight years ago, I said it was time to change the tone of politics in hindsight, I really should have been more specific.” ”I was running on CPT, which stands for jokes that white people should not make.” ”As you know, Spotlight is a film about investigative journalists with the resources, the autonomy, to chase down the truth and hold the powerful accountable. Best fantasy film since Star Wars.” ”Savannah Guthrie left the White House press corps to host The Today Show. Norah O’Donnell left the briefing room to host CBS This Morning. Jake Tapper left journalism to join CNN.” And, like any true comedian, Obama turned the spotlight on himself: ”Last week, Prince George showed up to our meeting in his bath robe. That was a slap in the face. A clear breach of protocol.”"
"The White House Correspondent’s   complex has grown exponentially over time. Besides the dinner itself, the most   annual social event in Washington, D. C. there are days of ”nerd prom” events planned throughout the District  —   before and after the main event. All the   parties hosted the week of, by the likes of Tinder and Google. The brunches on Saturday. The   on Saturday evening. The watch parties for those who can’t get in. The after parties Saturday night all around the city. The   ”hangover brunches” on Sunday. At the official ABC   in the basement of the Washington Hilton Saturday evening, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright acknowledged that the correspondent’s dinner and all the hoopla that now surrounds it have grown over the years. ”I used to come 25, 30 years ago, and it was much smaller,” Albright told NPR. ”It’s just different, very different. And I think people like coming and either looking at people or being looked at.” She’s right. So much looking, and so much picture taking. Madeleine Albright herself,   with Scandal star Kerry Washington. Celebrity DJ Steve Aoki   with comedian and Obama anger translator   Key. ”It’s pretty epic so far,” Aoki said. ”It’s overwhelming. This is not my world at all.” There’s reality TV star and Trump supporter Omarosa Manigault taking a phone from MSNBC host Chris Matthews to help him take more photos. Will Smith walking the red carpet, taking a selfie with all the photographers there, while they took photos of him taking the selfie. It’s hard to tell who the politicos are and who the fans are and who the celebrities are when everyone wants to be in everybody’s picture. You could see this all as obscene excess  —   the establishment   congratulating itself while the rest of the country languishes in a populist funk. The very idea of ”nerd prom” suggests it’s a party for people who shouldn’t really even be having a party. WHCD could be D. C. at its worst, or depending on how you look at it, D. C. at its best. For Katie Caperones, a D. C. local who came to the lobby of the Hilton last night to people watch, it all made sense. ”Because politics and Hollywood are almost the same thing now,” she told NPR. ”The way that politics gets covered is like how Hollywood gets covered.” But it wasn’t all fun and games. At the same time, just outside the Hilton, a few dozen protesters gathered to raise awareness of the plight of civilians in Syria, as that country’s civil war continues. ”We’re here today because in the past 48 hours more than two hospitals [in Syria] were bombed directly by aerial attacks,” Mouaz Moustafa said, as police officers and yellow caution tape kept him away from the celebration. ”The United States’ policy remains silent about the deaths of many, many civilians. .. We are here to make everyone that’s having a good time listen, and to remember that while we sit here and we dine and we joke, people and children are dying everyday.” Such is nerd prom in Washington DC. An exercise in extremes. Protesters next to a party.   nerds next to celebrities. So much excess, it makes sense to have so many events. Even though they weren’t stars at the official dinner, Arianna Huffington,   of The Huffington Post, parading   producer DJ Khaled through the throngs,    while a servant of some sort held an umbrella over her head, could have been the night’s best celebrity coupling. ”He was the biggest star in the room,” Huffington said of her guest. ”Everybody wanted selfies with him, pictures with him. Amazing.” More amazing are all the people who sill celebrate WHCD even though they can’t actually get in. Ball gowns are purchased and tuxedos are rented just to attend ancillary events like the Politico watch party just down the street, or perhaps the most popular event of the night, The Onion’s ”Diamond Joe Biden’s Badass     Fiesta” held at The Newseum. That event was in the spirit of The Onion’s satirical depiction of the current Vice President, washing a Trans Am on the front lawn of the White House, or wearing a ponytail to the presidential inauguration. Attendees could take a picture with a shirtless Joe Biden cutout placed next to an empty pack of cigarettes and an unexplained pair of red panties, or walk through a fake Biden museum featuring his first marijuana joint. (NOTE: To be clear, the entire marijuana joint storyline was made up by The Onion.) Chad Nackers, head writer at The Onion, and one of the creators of ”Diamond Joe,” said the persona he made for the Vice President isn’t true at all, and that’s why it works. ”He’s ” he said. ”He’s totally  . He doesn’t drink!” While a string quartet played 80’s rock hits, Nackers admitted that it is a bit ironic that one of the hottest tickets in town WHCD night would be put on by a fake news site, celebrating a caricature. When asked if it meant that The Onion was itself becoming establishment, he said, ”Hell no. I think it’s great. I love it.” For personal finance guru Suze Orman, who held court at multiple parties through the night, the entire scene is good  —   a chance for Washington to be something approaching its truest, kindest self. ”I think people play their roles very well on television,” she said, in between snapping selfies with fans. ”I think when the TV comes off, everybody likes everybody,” commenting on the fact that at events like these you often see Republicans   with Democrats. ”And I think they’re all good people. .. When it comes down to it, they’re nothing but people trying to make a buck.” And for this crowd, part of making that buck is remaining famous, and being seen. Whether a Hollywood or D. C. celebrity, nights like WHCD might be a requirement for personal brand maintenance. And not just nights, but the days of   and   and   and reception. The entire   complex. Maybe it’s not a party for all these people. Maybe it’s just part of the job."
"The Kansas Supreme Court gave state lawmakers an ultimatum: Make school funding more equitable by June 30, or it will consider shutting down the state’s public schools. Since then, things have gotten ugly. Lawmakers followed up with a plan  —   to make it easier to impeach Supreme Court judges who attempt to ”usurp the power” of the Legislature or governor. Then came a plan to address the court’s concerns over school funding: Send a little more money to roughly   of the state’s poorest districts without taking money away from other districts or raising taxes. The plaintiff districts have already responded to the plan, calling it a ”shell game.” It’s unclear if the Kansas Supreme Court will be satisfied. What is clear is that the politics of school funding can be bitter. Over the past two weeks, the NPR Ed Team has taken a hard look at how we pay for public schools in the U. S. In Part 1 of our School Money series, we mapped the consequences of a funding system that favors affluent districts. In Part 2, we unpacked the difference a dollar can  —   and cannot  —   make in the classroom, finding compelling evidence that money, spent wisely and consistently, can improve the lives and outcomes of disadvantaged students. This week, we grapple with the politics of school money, asking: Is there a better way to pay for our schools? The answer requires that we do two things: explore the challenges to change, and spotlight a few ideas that could lead to a more balanced system. What follows is a   of our reporting. For nearly every name and place, you’ll find a hyperlink to more. Like this one, for the latest on the school money showdown in Kansas. The TABOR   First, the challenges. In a word: taxes. In 1992, Colorado voters had had enough, no longer trusting state lawmakers to spend their tax dollars wisely. They amended the state’s constitution with something called the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR. It required that voters, not lawmakers, have the final say on tax increases, and it capped tax revenue. Anything the state raised over that cap  —   typically in boom years  —   would be refunded to taxpayers. TABOR’s effect on Colorado’s schools has been severe. Its cap on property tax revenue limits how much money districts can raise locally. And by capping income tax revenue, the law also limits the state’s ability to help schools make up the difference. A   punch. ”I don’t think people on average knew what it meant, especially ” says Tracie Rainey with the Colorado School Finance Project, a nonprofit research group. Today, the state’s economy is booming. The unemployment rate is just 3 percent. And, thanks to TABOR, taxpayers are on track to get $156 million back from the state. But Rainey says Colorado’s schools are struggling more than ever. ”They have outdated technology, larger class sizes. They’ve lost the opportunity to offer certain programs. They can’t retain teachers. They can’t attract teachers,” says Rainey. The list goes on. In 2013, according to Education Week, the state spent roughly $2, 500 less per student than the national average. That ranks Colorado, the nation’s 14th richest state, below two of the poorest, Mississippi and Alabama. Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a     think tank, says TABOR’s a big reason the state’s economy is doing so well. As for its effect on schools, Caldara says, more money isn’t the answer. ”I think parents and family members and taxpayers are saying, ’No. Fix the problems. Use the money you have more wisely and educate our children,’ ” he says. That’s a common refrain, not just in Colorado but across the country. For more on the long tail of TABOR, click here. ’And Now, This Is Storage” In 1990, not long before Colorado passed TABOR, voters in Oregon were feeling tax anxiety, too. Many worried that their rising property values would also mean a rise in property taxes. And so, with something called Measure 5, they capped them. Since schools depend heavily on property taxes, the state was supposed to use income tax revenue to help offset the effect of this new cap. There’s just one problem: In tough economic times, income is more volatile than property values. And so began a roller coaster for Oregon’s schools. Even in Pendleton, an area known for rodeos and ranches, it’s been a rough ride. On a recent tour of Pendleton High School, Superintendent Jon Peterson opened the door to a room full of old fish tanks and plastic storage bins. When state funding was good, Pendleton launched a fisheries program. ”We were raising fish and growing plants,” Peterson says, ”and now this is storage, what you’re seeing here. It ended quickly, just kind of after we got it going.” Ten years ago, Pendleton led a lawsuit against the state over its school funding. Voters in Oregon, as in Colorado, ultimately tried to undo some of the damage these tax caps have done to their public schools. But to little effect. In Oregon, the state set up a commission to determine just how much money its schools really needed. Their conclusion: more, a lot more. Voters even approved a requirement that state lawmakers spend what the commission called for. With one caveat. The rule gave legislators an ”out.” They could either fund schools to the level recommended by the commission or write a report explaining why they didn’t. Since then, there have been lots of reports. Not once have lawmakers fully funded the commission’s recommendation. For more on what’s happened in Oregon, click here. Hold Harmless, It’s obvious but worth saying: Helping   schools requires   from voters who live beyond those districts’ borders. And it requires lawmakers to look past their local interests. Last May, Texas state Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, a Republican, stood on the bustling floor of the House of Representatives in Austin and asked his fellow lawmakers to do just that. ”Members, it’s just a small, technical cleanup of a little bit of school finance stuff, and I move to passage,” Aycock said. He wanted his colleagues to limit their use of two words: hold harmless. A hold harmless provision creates a kind of force field around a lawmaker’s district, temporarily exempting its schools from, say, a budget cut. In 2005, in an attempt to shrink the spending gaps between affluent and   districts, Texas tried to cap how much property tax revenue a district could raise and spend on its schools. In response, some 900 Texas districts asked to be held harmless. Now, those communities still saw limits to how much they could raise in property tax revenue. But, under the hold harmless provision, the state agreed to use state dollars to make up that difference. The result: Some affluent districts that could raise money locally to pay for their schools were being told not to  —   and getting more state money in return. Which also means that, while Texas was technically putting more state money into its schools, those dollars weren’t targeting its neediest students. In many cases, they were doing the opposite. This hold harmless phenomenon isn’t specific to Texas, either. In many states, powerful districts with declining student enrollment have lobbied for, and won, exemptions from state efforts to make school funding more equitable. Ultimately, Rep. Aycock withdrew his bill and is retiring from the Legislature. When it comes to Texas’ school funding system, Aycock says, ”I’ll go to my grave wishing I could’ve done more.” To meet one of those districts being held harmless, click here. A Few Big Ideas, The stories of Kansas, Colorado, Oregon and Texas are an important reminder of why funding increases most often require a court order: because Americans genuinely don’t agree on how  —   or how much  —   schools should be funded. But surely there is common ground, somewhere. In an attempt to find it, let’s leave behind the conflict and cautionary tales and explore a few big ideas in school funding. Last week, we presented compelling evidence that funding increases can help disadvantaged students  —   those living in poverty, with disabilities, or who are learning English. Given that many of these students live in   communities, that extra help usually comes from the state. But how, exactly, does a state know how much money is enough money? There is no magical spending threshold for success. And attempts at solutions are made incredibly complicated by the fact that different children with different needs require different levels of support. To better understand those needs  —   and what it will cost to meet them  —   a state can commission what’s called an ”adequacy study.” Most states have already done at least one. Michigan is a  . Its first adequacy study is due out in May. Last year, the state Legislature ponied up $500, 000 to get it started. They hired Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, or APA  —   a consulting firm that’s done dozens of school funding studies for states across the country. Justin Silverstein is heading up the Michigan study from his office in Colorado. He and his team aren’t going to Michigan to visit classrooms or interview teachers. Instead, they’re wading through tons of data to find the answer. They’re using the ”successful schools” model, which means they’re only going to look at data from the most successful districts in the state  —   districts that are performing at or above the state average on tests. ”How are they spending funds? Where are they getting revenues? So we’re trying to get a real good picture of the fiscal realities for those districts,” explains Silverstein. That includes how much money successful districts spend on   students and whether it’s more expensive to teach in certain parts of the state. Almost every study Silverstein’s firm has done has found that states need to spend more money to give all students a shot at meeting state academic standards. But that hasn’t always led to increased spending. ”Having good information doesn’t mean you can get change done right away,” Silverstein says. Many times, states get back their adequacy studies and do nothing. But it’s a start. For more on Michigan’s adequacy math, click here. Property Tax, Revisited, Studying adequacy is one thing. Wyoming is trying to guarantee it. Nine years ago, Mark Shrum moved his family to the city of Gillette, in the northeast part of the state, for two reasons: a   job and good schools. This March, Shrum was laid off from the Powder River Basin’s Buckskin coal mine, but he’s not leaving. ”We’re in a tremendous setting for our kids, academically,” says Shrum. ”It’s one of the primary reasons we’re doing everything we can to stay here.” The Campbell County School District operates a children’s museum and a mental health clinic. Kids can take swim lessons in the district’s aquatic center, and the state is funding construction of a brand new high school. ”You see a lot of money spent on the students: the technology, the nice buildings,” says Shrum. ”And high salaries keep good teachers here, even though we don’t have shopping, restaurants and the things cities have.” When it comes to school funding, Wyoming is an exception among states in more ways than one. It’s got relatively few students and spends a lot on them. According to Education Week, after adjusting for regional cost differences, Wyoming spends an average of $17, 513 per pupil, ranking among the   spenders in the nation. The national average is $11, 841 per child. Where did all of this money come from? Two answers. First, an energy boom helped fuel a boom in school funding. The production of oil, gas and Gillette coal accounts for 70 percent of state revenue. Then there’s the legal answer. In response to several lawsuits demanding better school funding, the Wyoming Supreme Court told lawmakers to ”treat the wealth of the state as a whole.” That led to a rare, Robin   funding model where some property tax revenues generated in   districts like Campbell County are redistributed by the state to other, poorer districts. The   changes ”essentially doubled the amount of state resources we were putting into education and in some ways more than doubled it,” says Mary Kay Hill, the policy director for the state’s current governor, Matt Mead. To be clear, affluent districts can still raise and spend money locally, and big spending gaps remain. But state policymakers are quick to point out that, in every Wyoming district, funding now exceeds the national average. ”We put an awful lot of effort into ensuring that every kid in the state has access to the same education,” says Sen. Chris Rothfuss, a Laramie Democrat. There’s another important asterisk to the Wyoming story: Despite its outsize funding, test scores haven’t risen with this   investment. The state remains in the middle of the pack in most measures of academic achievement. But don’t tell that to Mark Shrum. When he and his family moved to Gillette from Sacramento in 2007, their son Jarrett was at the bottom of his class. Now 17, Jarrett is a   junior at Campbell County High School.   Cody is in his school’s gifted and talented program and travels the state for science competitions. For more on Wyoming’s approach to school funding, click here. Local Control, Not all school funding problems are about the funding itself. Often, when   schools do get extra money from the state or federal government, it comes with strict rules about how they can spend it. While those rules are generally   they can be inflexible, prohibiting a principal from using the money where it’s needed most. California is trying to change that. After lunch at Oak Ridge Elementary in Sacramento, Calif. a fight breaks out. Principal Daniel Rolleri hurries to the scene, his   squawking. A   girl has been hit in the face. ”She’s going to relax in my office for a little bit,” says Rolleri, as he walks her inside. ”She’s a little emotional, a little upset.” Every teacher at this school has a way of helping kids calm down. Rolleri’s technique is aromatherapy. He sits the girl down in his office, lets her choose from three different aromas, turns on a small water fountain, and gives her some time alone. Rolleri says students here lash out not because they’re bad kids, but because many live in poverty. Life at home can be stressful and frustrating. He’s determined to use state funding to help these kids feel good about themselves. Just a few years ago,   California made it easier for him to do that. ”We are bringing government closer to the people, to the classroom where real decisions are made, and directing the money where the need and the challenge is greatest,” said Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013, the year California enacted what’s known as the Local Control Funding Formula. The formula embodies more than one big idea. It’s meant to send more money to districts, like Rolleri’s, that serve disadvantaged students. It’s also meant to give Rolleri  —   and his community  —   a greater say in how that money is spent. The formula requires that school leaders work hand in hand with teachers, parents and community leaders to lay out goals they hope the funding can help them accomplish. Rolleri won’t be judged simply on his students’ test scores but also on things like parent involvement, student engagement and school climate. In   Oak Ridge got $187, 000 in extra state funding for its   students, and Rolleri struggled with how best to spend it. ”Just because we do have additional state funding, [that] doesn’t make the job easy,” Rolleri says. ”I would even say it’s harder because inherently there is the obligation that we can’t ruin this, we can’t mess this up.” To find out how Rolleri chose to spend the money, click here. The Federal Role, So far in this series, we’ve heard a lot about state and local spending in schools  —   but little about the federal government’s role in all of this. The fact is, on average, federal money accounts for only around 10 percent of school spending. But, in   schools, that money can be a lifeline. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson helped create the federal education program known as Title I. It was part of his War on Poverty, and it sends federal dollars to schools that educate lots of   students. It was intended to help places like Holmes County, Miss. where schools serve some of the poorest students in the nation. The median income there is just north of $22, 000 a year. District resources  —   or a lack of them  —   reflect that poverty, with Holmes spending $8, 368 per student (the number has been adjusted by Education Week to reflect regional cost differences). That’s roughly $3, 500 below the national average. For every child. The extra $1, 500 per student in Title I money that Holmes receives  —   it matters. ”We need those resources,” says Holmes County Superintendent Angel Meeks. On last year’s statewide reading assessment, nearly   of the district’s incoming freshmen scored well below grade level. If she could, Meeks says, she’d use her federal dollars to pay for a literacy coach and a reading interventionist. It’s just not enough money. Mississippi could be getting more, says Nora Gordon, an associate professor of public policy at Georgetown University. She has spent her career studying Title I and its effects on schools and has just released a few big ideas to improve it. ”About a third of the kids in Mississippi are eligible [for Title I] more than any other state,” Gordon says. ”Yet, among all states, Mississippi is near the bottom in how much help it receives per child.” The average Title I allotment for a student in Mississippi? $1, 100. Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming all have far fewer poor students but receive more than twice as much federal funding for each of them. Why? Several reasons, but the real   is in the Title I math itself. ”It rewards places that spend more,” Gordon says. And Mississippi, in addition to being one of the poorest states in the nation, also has one of the lowest   spending rates. In this way, Title I, an   program, privileges more affluent,   states. But, Gordon argues, it doesn’t have to. For more on Gordon’s proposed fixes to Title I, click here. Lessons Learned, Over the past three weeks, the NPR Ed Team and our 20 member station collaborators have taken readers (and listeners) from the   ceiling of a rural Alabama school to Wyoming coal country, where the best place to find water is in the district’s beloved aquatic center. We’ve explored the imbalance that exists in many state funding systems between affluent districts and   districts, and given voice to the students, parents and educators who feel they aren’t getting the resources they need. To those who respond, ”But money doesn’t matter,” we’ve offered compelling evidence that it does, especially for disadvantaged children. The achievement gap between this nation’s wealthiest and poorest students is growing dramatically, not shrinking. Something’s not working. Our reporting suggests that the solution, however, is not for lawmakers and taxpayers to simply open their pocketbooks. The solution is dialogue  —   for all Americans to look more closely at the school across town or   and to consider the stories of the students inside. Because not every child is the same, but every one deserves the same access to a good education. And so let’s leave the last word to Texas state Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, whom we met earlier. He said this last May on the floor of the Texas Statehouse: ”We think in terms of black kids and brown kids and white kids. We think of poor kids and rich kids, kids from small districts and kids from larger districts. And we each come here representing our subset of kids, and that’s how the process works.” Aycock asked his fellow Texas lawmakers: ”What will it take to fix school finance? It’ll take a common view of [the state’s] 5. 2 million children.” And of the nation’s 50 million schoolchildren, too."
"The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest who became emblematic of the movement opposing U. S. involvement in Vietnam after an audacious act of civil disobedience, died on Saturday. The Jesuit magazine, America, reports that he died at age 94 at the   Jesuit Community in the Bronx, New York. Berrigan was an acclaimed poet but he came to national prominence when he and eight others stole hundreds of draft records from the Selective Service Offices in Catonsville, Maryland. They walked outside and set the documents on fire using homemade napalm. Berrigan was taken to jail. During his trial, the burnt documents were trotted into court. ”They introduced those in evidence as though they were important,” Berrigan said in the documentary Investigation of a Flame. ”And they were nothing. I mean we had burned papers instead of children. That was our crime.” The New York Times reports that Berrigan was convicted of destroying government property and he was sentenced to three years in prison. He tried to evade authorities but was eventually caught. The Times adds: ”[His brother] Philip Berrigan had been the main force behind Catonsville, but it was mostly Daniel who mined the incident and its aftermath for literary meaning  —   a process already underway when the F. B. I. caught up with him on Block Island, off the Rhode Island coast, on Aug. 11, 1970. There was ’The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,’ a   play in free verse drawn directly from the court transcripts, and ’Prison Poems,’ written during his incarceration in Danbury. ”In ’My Father,’ he wrote: I sit here in the prison wardnervously dickering with my ulcera   animalraising hell in its living space,  In recent years, America Magazine reports, Berrigan continued his   activism. He protested the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."
"Last week, NPR published a special report on suicide in Native Arctic communities. Reporter Rebecca Hersher spent 10 weeks in Greenland, the Arctic country with the highest known suicide rate in the world: 82. 8 suicides per 100, 000 people each year  —   six times higher than the U. S. suicide rate. She interviewed Inuit people in the Greenlandic capital, Nuuk, and in small towns on the country’s remote east coast. She spoke with community leaders and mental health professionals who are trying to prevent suicide and come to terms with its underlying causes. Here, Hersher answers some of your questions about the series. The headline, ”The Arctic Suicides: It’s Not The Dark That Kills You,” makes it clear that people don’t kill themselves because of the dark. So is it the cold?  A lot of people asked this. Honestly, when I started reporting this story, I asked this question, too. The dark and cold seem like natural culprits for the high suicide rate in Arctic communities. In a lot of Greenlandic towns, the temperature stays well below freezing for six months or more, and, depending on how far above the Arctic Circle you are, the sun doesn’t come up for weeks and weeks in the winter. But when it comes to suicide, cold and dark are just not the problem, or at least they’re not the main problem (one can never truly know why any one person kills himself or herself). In Greenland, and in other parts of the Arctic, there is a suicide ”season”  —   a time when the most people die by suicide. It’s   among public health officials and priests and teachers and other people who professionally worry about people in the community. The suicide season is spring. When the dark and the cold finally lift, and the sun is up and the ice is melting. That’s when people end their lives. It’s not the dark or the cold. It’s something a lot more complicated (which you can read about here). I’m very curious about why there was no mention of suicide among young  . Do the suicides only involve boys and men? It seems like there should be some mention of this issue. In Greenland, and in almost every part of the world, men kill themselves at higher rates than women. In Greenland, the majority of suicides are among men and boys, so we chose to focus on men in our story. In the U. S, the suicide rate among men is about three times higher than among women, and   white men are at the greatest risk. There are many potential reasons for this  —   the number of men who own guns is much higher than the number of women, and many men exhibit more impulsive or violent behavior than females. However, the suicide rate doesn’t tell the whole story. According to lots of studies, the most of recent of which came out this month from the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] women experience suicidal thoughts at least as frequently as men do, and perhaps even more so. Although they do not die by suicide as often, women certainly struggle with the idea of suicide, and the rate of death by suicide among women is climbing. In Greenland, the trend is similar. The suicide of a high school girl in Nuuk in December sent shudders through the capital, and in the last five years, the rate of suicide among young women has been climbing. Last year, Greenland’s National Board of Health noted that suicide prevention efforts should focus on both men and women, especially those under 25 years old. It sounds like the Inuit culture in Greenland has been beaten down and demonized since colonization by Denmark began in the early 1900s. Are there any efforts to preserve Inuit culture?  Absolutely. Despite the 20th century pressure cooker of rapid modernization plus colonial racism, modern Inuit culture in Greenland is rich and complex. Part of that comes from Greenland’s increasing independence from Denmark. Most people in Greenland are Inuit  —   it’s about an 80 percent majority of the   population. And starting in 1979, the government in Nuuk has taken on more responsibility for governing the largest island in the world, including public health and education. The official language of Greenland is West Greenlandic, and there is an entire agency devoted to bringing that native language into the modern era by adding vocabulary and standardizing spellings. There are new Greenlandic museums telling the history of the Inuit people. As of last year, Greenland’s first official art historian is in charge of the national art gallery in Nuuk, and the Inuit Circumpolar Council, an advocacy group for Inuit people around the Arctic, represents the interests of Inuit people at the United Nations. Not only is Inuit culture being preserved in Greenland it’s thriving and changing and becoming something new and modern. There’s even a smartphone app in the works for translating from Greenlandic to English. What about suicide in other Native communities?  Suicide is a big problem in Native communities around the world. In the circumpolar region alone  —   from Greenland through northern Canada into Alaska and across the Bering Strait in the destitute Russian region of Chukotka  —   thousands of Native communities struggle with very high suicide rates as well as alcoholism and child neglect. Just this month, the Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario, Canada, declared a state of emergency after 11 people attempted suicide in one night. Farther south, the situation is just as dire. Aboriginal people in Australia and New Zealand have had high suicide rates since their communities were disrupted by conquest or colonization. In the U. S. the suicide rate among American Indians ages 18 to 24 is about three times higher than the rate in the general population. In some Native communities in the U. S. the suicide rate is even higher than it is in Greenland. For example, among Alaska Native men 15 to 24 years old, the suicide rate is about twice that of Greenland’s. Is there any joint work between Greenland, Canada and Alaska to address the issue?  There are a lot of joint public health and suicide prevention programs. One, called the Resilience and Suicide Prevention Project, was developed in Canada. Beginning next year, the Greenlandic Ministry of Health will use it to build emotional resilience among community leaders and teach people how to recognize and react to suicidal behavior. The Arctic regions also collaborate to make mental health services more accessible. Like the towns of Alaska, Greenlandic towns are really isolated  —   you need a helicopter to get to most of them. Because the population is so spread out and hard to visit, and because in both Alaska and Greenland there are not enough psychologists, therapists and psychiatric nurses, it’s hard for people to get    care. For about five years, Greenland has been using a telemedicine system developed in Alaska, which puts patients in touch with doctors via video link. Doctors and patients I spoke with think the system is a vital addition to hospitals in remote parts of the country, but almost everyone acknowledges it has some limitations. Patients with chronic or complicated problems are evacuated to larger towns for care. How can we help?  Suicide is a problem in every community. You can help the people in your life by listening and educating yourself about the professional resources available for people who are struggling with suicidal thoughts. This QA with psychologists explains what to say if you’re worried about someone, and what specific questions you can ask a young person who seems depressed."
"The way Jimmy Santiago Baca tells it, poetry saved his life  —   but he’s not speaking in hyperbole. Long before the poet won an American Book Award, Baca was in prison on a drug conviction, where he was facing down a   fight with another inmate. Baca sought padding however he could get it. ”So I got a bunch of tape and a bunch of books on the library cart and strapped them around my stomach,” he recalls, ”and when this guy pulled out his shank, I was like, wow, this ain’t just a fight  —   this guy wants to kill me.” The guy he was fighting connected on a few swipes, he says, but each time, the books  —   and one big one, in particular  —   took the blow. ”Had the book not been there, I would have been dead it would’ve cut all the way to the tailbone. When i went back to my cell, I looked at this one book where he had gouged it about an inch deep. And it was a thick anthology of Romantic poets.” William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley  —   ”I thought, ’Wow, you guys saved my life!’ ” ”That’s when I sat down on the cot in my cell and started looking at this book that saved my life and realized that these poets had in a very real, real way saved me,” he says. ”And when I began to read the words, I was astounded by their beauty and eloquence, and how the arrangement of words made me happy.” It’s no coincidence, then, that these days  —   decades after that prison term  —   Baca serves as the final judge in a contest designed to encourage some of the country’s youngest prisoners to turn to poetry themselves. He hopes poetry, that vessel of a million meanings that saved his own life, may do the same for them. ’Children Of Whitman’ Words Unlocked  —   an annual poetry curriculum and competition launched in 2013 by the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings  —   draws submissions from students in juvenile correctional centers across the country. Poets in facilities from Alaska to Florida have sent in their work this year, according to CEEAS Director David Domenici, and the number of submissions has reached 1, 000 and counting. Baca hasn’t gotten a look at this year’s poems yet he won’t make his selection until a crew of other judges, led by Christy   first whittle that number to just 10 or 15 finalists. But this isn’t his first experience with the contest. He judged last year’s crop, as well. ”Last year, when Christy sent me the submissions, I was just blown away by the high standards of the writing, and by the depth of emotion that was expressed in the poems,” he says. ”You would think that they were all the spawn children of Whitman or something!” Though this year’s contest hasn’t been decided yet, several of the young poets did record their entries for All Things Considered. And while NPR does not have permission to use their names, their voices give life to the words they’ve put to paper  —   which you can listen to via the audio links on this post. Baca believes these poems will serve them well on the outside. ”Literacy is probably the foremost resource that they need to become successful human beings. To be able to deal with sorrow, joy, loneliness and isolation, the first step is that you have to be able to put your feelings into words  —   and you have to share those words with people,” he says. ”If you can write this out and give it to society, it’s going to allow them to take the blinders off and see what’s really going on with you in your life. They’re going to begin to understand what’s really going on in your heart. So let’s give them this gift.” And that gift, like Baca’s story, may be more than a metaphor. The poets recognized by the contest will be included in an anthology of their own  —   not unlike that poetry anthology that Baca says saved him."
"From Mexico City’s Zócalo to Rome’s Piazza Navona, public squares have always been a vibrant part of urban life. After visiting Italy a few years back, editor Catie Marron began thinking about the different roles these public spaces have played. She asked some   writers to share their thoughts about famous squares around the world, and the resulting essays are gathered in a new book called City Squares. Michael Kimmelman, one of the participating writers, says what’s important about a square is that it acts like a magnet, drawing people in. Unlike a park, where people go to retreat, a square is all about mingling with a crowd  —   it’s like a living organism in the heart of a city. ”For me a square is about a notion that we have of what an urban life can be and why we go to cities, what we look for in cities,” Kimmelman says. ”And it has to do with a sense of community, a sense of shared values, a sense of greater possibilities and a sense of humanity.” Kimmelman is the architecture critic for The New York Times, but he says the buildings that surround a square really aren’t that important. Just look at the squares of Rome: ”There’s the Piazza Navona, an incredibly beautiful square with these great buildings by [Francesco] Borromini and sculptures by [Gian Lorenzo] Bernini,” he says. ”But just a block or so away is the Campo de’ Fiori, which is to me one of the most beautiful squares in Europe. And there’s really nothing particularly distinguished about the buildings that surround that square, but it’s a hub of life. It speaks as much to what makes Rome a beautiful city and why people love it as does the Piazza Navona.” Those Roman squares are places where people gather for pleasure  —   to shop at vegetable and flower stalls, to eat at nearby restaurants, to sit on the side of a fountain and talk with a friend. Other squares aren’t so peaceful. ’A Strange Emptiness’ In Tiananmen Square, On June 4, 1989, Chinese troops opened fire on demonstrators gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Seven years later, when City Squares contributor Evan Osnos went to China for the first time as a student, he headed straight to Tiananmen Square. ”In some ways, for me, it was almost inescapable  —   that was the only place I could go first,” Osnos says. ”I had to go to Tiananmen Square if I wanted to understand what China was and where it was trying to go.” But Osnos was disappointed by what he found: China’s government had thoroughly reclaimed the space once occupied by protesters. ”At one point there were a million people in the streets of Beijing in and around Tiananmen Square, but then when I came to the place itself, any trace of those events had really been erased,” he says. ”To the point that in fact the government had taken away whatever benches or shade trees there used to be around the edge because they really didn’t want people collecting in Tiananmen Square anymore. And so there was a strange emptiness about it.” The Tiananmen Osnos discovered couldn’t tell him where China was going  —   it was forever linked to the past, to an event people still talk about in whispers and that the government still wants its citizens to forget. But the square itself is a constant reminder of what happened there. ”Squares retain their history,” says City Squares editor Catie Marron. ”They really can’t escape that.” The ’Spontaneous Energy’ Of Tahrir Square, In recent years, social movements have gotten their start on the Internet (the virtual square) but they’ve quickly moved out into the streets. ”Social media announced what was going on  —   it brought people to the square, it gave people information,” Marron says. ”But where people made their protests, where they made their voices heard was not on the Internet it was in the physical square.” Back in 2011, when social media was spreading the word about   demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the Egyptian government blocked Facebook and Twitter. But City Squares contributor Jehane Noujaim says the government’s actions drew even more people to Tahrir to find out what was going on. Noujaim made an   documentary about the protests called The Square. She says, ”I grew up 10 minutes away from the square and I had never experienced Egypt in the same way that I did when I went to that square. . .. I felt Egyptian. . .. I felt a pride in how people were standing up for what they believed in and really attempting to write their own story. And I’d really never seen such a large number of people talking together, sleeping, setting up tents. And it had this kind of spontaneous energy to it where people would come  —   come with a tent, come with a blanket, join  —   and you didn’t know how long it would last.” That energy has given way to harsh political realities in Egypt. Noujaim says Tahrir Square is still meaningful to her, but now it’s a beautifully manicured, sterile space. And if there’s one thing that the writers in this book make clear, it’s that squares are always changing  —   just like the people who inhabit them."
"Ricky Gervais always seems to be working on something new. Whether it’s producing a TV show, writing a movie, voicing a cartoon character, or hosting the Golden Globes, the comedian keeps busy. The     is in the new film Special Correspondents, which he wrote and directed, now streaming on Netflix. The movie follows two radio journalists, played by Eric Bana and Gervais, who are assigned to Ecuador to report on a war. But Gervais’ character throws away their passports and money by accident. Stuck in New York City, the two decide to fake their war reporting from above a Spanish restaurant instead. ”You might as well watch it, it’s free. And I’ve been paid, I don’t care if you watch it or not,” Gervais laughs. In a   conversation, Gervais spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin about being famous, his infamous Caitlyn Jenner joke at the Golden Globes, and a bit about his new movie. On Special Correspondents and news, Ricky Gervais: On the face of it, it looks like a swipe at [the] media and journalism and information. I think its real target is fame itself, and what people do for a shortcut in life. Obviously I exaggerate the severity of it because they don’t actually, they don’t cause a war. They don’t hide a war. But they just pretend they’re at a war. It’s not a huge immoral lie. And we’ve seen people do that in real life  —   they just exaggerate how close they were to the war. But in real life  —   now the news is sort of entertainment now, so if they can make it seem a little bit more exciting than it is  —   even with the weather they say things like, ”Well there’s a hurricane coming tomorrow and it’s going to destroy humanity, so stay tuned to this channel.” Rachel Martin: Because we’ll still be here but everyone else will be gone. We’ll miraculously survive. Gervais: Yeah, exactly. And then the next day when it wasn’t as bad, they’d say, ”Ah well it wasn’t as bad as we thought,” and they’ve got pictures of a few roofs. But of course, they want you to keep watching. News is entertainment, really. On celebrity, Martin: For someone who has so many philosophical, ideological problems and qualms, concerns about celebrity, you’ve chosen an awfully difficult career. Gervais: Well no, because I’ve never been a part of it. I think I became famous at an age when I already knew who I was, so it didn’t define me. I wasn’t famous until 39, 40, so you know who you are then. You’ve looked at it from the outside, then you start analyzing it from the inside, and it’s funny. I didn’t want to be lumped in with those people who do anything to become famous. There’s people who live their lives like an open wound, there are people now who do terrible things but get rewarded because they’re honest about it. Or they film it. We’re soon going to have a reality TV show called Celebrity Enema. You know, people will do anything. People would rather be thought of as an idiot than not thought of at all. I’ve seen it on Twitter, people would rather be hated than not known. It’s crazy  —   they did a survey amongst    recently and they asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. And they said famous  —   not even a footballer, or a pop star. And that’s another thing  —   everybody thinks they can become a singer now. . .. We’re going to run out of doctors because everyone’s going to want to sing. So I think the honest answer is I feared it, but I never signed that contract. I never said to anyone, ”Make me famous and you can go through my bins.” I knew it was a snapshot for what I did. I was famous for something, I had to be proud of what I did to become famous, and also I’m much better with it now. On humor and the Golden Globes, Gervais: People use things like ”targets of your jokes” and I don’t consider them targets, I consider them subjects. And that’s where offense comes most awful  —   when people confuse the target of a joke with the subject of a joke. And I didn’t go out there to ruin everyone’s day or undermine the moral fabric of America. I was making jokes. And I’m the butt of my jokes as well, and it’s our attitude. I wasn’t picking on anyone, and I wasn’t picking on anything that people can’t help. I tease them about things they’ve done in public that wasn’t privileged information  —   everyone knows they did it and I made a joke about it. Very often, I’m inviting them back into polite society. But it wasn’t a room full of wounded soldiers  —   this was a room full of some of the most privileged, rich people in the world with some idiot from England teasing them a bit. And I really think offense is the collateral damage of freedom of speech and freedom of speech is one of our greatest privileges. . .. I’ve seen people say, ”Ricky Gervais made this terrible joke.” And they say the joke, and it is terrible, but they’ve got it slightly wrong. Or they’ve misunderstood it because they’ve missed a word or changed one side of the pun or play on words and I think no, you didn’t get the joke. You’re allowed not to like my jokes. When I go up and I do   I cherish the gasps as much as the laughs because they’re like, ”(Gasp) You shouldn’t be saying that,” and then they laugh because they get it. So I don’t mind people not liking my stuff, but to criticize it, I think they should understand it. On a controversial joke about Caitlyn Jenner, Gervais: That’s the thing about taboo subjects  —   they see the subject and it’s an emotional response to it. That’s my thing, he shouldn’t be saying things about that. But if you analyze the joke, there’s nothing transphobic about that joke at all. I clearly get into it by saying, ”I’m going to be nice tonight, I’ve changed. Not as much as Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner of course.” Now first of all, people didn’t like me  . I’d never heard that word before, ” .” Martin: Which is when you identify the previous identity. Gervais: It was Bruce Jenner that changed. Are we to say that Bruce Jenner never existed? That wasn’t a person? Well it was. And I understand that some say, ”Well he didn’t change. He was always trans and now he’s come out.” I accept that as well. But the important thing was that I wasn’t making a joke about the transition. I was making a joke about her driving, clearly. So I say, ”I’ve changed. Not as much as Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner of course. What a role model, became a role model for trans people everywhere  —   breaking down barriers and destroying stereotypes,” and here’s the joke: ”Didn’t do a lot for women drivers.” So that’s clearly a shift in expectation. So I’ve accepted Caitlyn Jenner for who she is now and the joke is that she broke down barriers and stereotypes, and now I hit them with a stereotype of women drivers being bad but the joke is that actually Caitlyn Jenner ran someone over. So there’s nothing in the slightest sexist. Martin: If you had known about the   phenomenon, would you have changed that joke? Gervais: What, that you can’t say in the slightest that Bruce Jenner existed? Martin: That that’s considered offensive. Gervais: Well, I do know about it and I’ve just done it three times in this interview, but I hope we’re all   and I hope you’re allowed to use words that may be politically charged if you’re doing it in context. I have to say that name to explain this joke, so it’s ridiculous that you can’t. Words don’t have power outside the context in which they have that power, so we should be allowed as adults to discuss anything  —   that’s the important thing. So if someone just tuned in here, and hears me say Bruce Jenner, they’ll say that’s terrible and he shouldn’t say that. Well why shouldn’t I say it? We’re having an intellectual discussion here. Of course I should be allowed to say any word that is needed in this discussion. Is there someone who always thinks you’re funny? Gervais: I doubt it. I don’t know. I think your question was about is there anyone you trust. I always run things by my girlfriend, there’s absolutely no agenda with her other than the truth. When I come up with something [for] a joke, I run it by her, she says, ”Please don’t say that in public,” and I know it’s good."
"Editor’s note: This piece originally identified   Beaulieu as the illustrator in fact, he’s the colorist and Skottie Young both wrote and penciled. You don’t have to know about Princess Syndrome to get a huge, howling kick out of I Hate Fairyland, Skottie Young’s new comic. But then, you probably do know about Princess Syndrome. Ever since 2006, when New York Times writer Peggy Orenstein described her preschooler’s bewitchment with tulle skirts and tiaras, people with similarly inclined daughters have been having a bit of a   meltdown. If the little girls of America had planned it (and who’s to say they didn’t?) they couldn’t have come up with a better way to make their overworked,   parents lose their minds. Want evidence? Try a couple of web searches. ”Daughter obsessed princess” is a good one: It yields links to Parenting magazine, The New York Times and this very site, among others. These outlets’ tones range from frustrated to furious to grimly determined. ”Turn Your   Toddler Into a Feminist in Eight Easy Steps,” promises the Times’ Devorah Blachor. Even a more neutral set of keywords, ”girls pink princesses,” spits out texts from CNN and Slate amid the effluvia of ads for   costume shops. ”Let your daughter be a ’pink princess’?” CNN hazards timidly. Slate’s answer is a militant ”yes.” ”Pink and princesses: Why does ’girly’ equal ’lame’?” it demands. Not that the concerns of   parents aren’t understandable. Too much pink has an   quality, as this picture proves, and a   can only imagine what it’s like to constantly encounter AriJasmiBelle’s   visage around the house. Now both Princess Syndrome parents and skeptics can find common ground. I Hate Fairyland makes it so much fun to rag on all things fluffy and lovely, it doesn’t matter whether you’re concerned about your daughter’s development or afraid for your friends’ and neighbors’ sanity. Simply, it’s about a girl (  Gert) who’s transported to a wonderful, magical,   world where she brutally murders most of its occupants. Gert does have some justification. Magically pulled into Fairyland, she’s been questing for the key to take her home ever since  —   and it’s been 27 years. She’s still trapped in a little girl’s body and she’s had it up to here with Ice Cream Island, Peppermint Pike and the Land of the Polkacorns. Now she drinks, gets high on mushrooms and swears a blue streak (though Fairyland’s swear words are tamer than ours the characters say things like, ”Go fluff yourself! ”). Gert’s weapons of choice include a Gatling gun that shoots talking bullets and a   axe that’s three times as big as she is. Physics must be different in Fairyland, because she effortlessly slices her way through Giggle Giants, Zombie Fauns and an    huntsman (sicced on her by Cloudia, the   queen of Fairyland) whose head she turns into a puppet. When Gert is (temporarily) defeated, it’s by another Fairyland visitor: Happy, originally from Joyville, Wisc. who shoots lethal rainbows. All this carnage is ridiculous, rather than gross, thanks to Young’s    artwork. Fairyland is pure cartoon, with no whiff of realism to alienate the squeamish. Young’s loopy, stretchy lines  —   reminiscent of the Ren  Stimpy Show  —   can’t be taken seriously even when they’re sketching decapitated heads and shattered femurs. Young uses barely any shading, slapping the eye with planes of flat color (and a minimum of pink). His packed compositions boil with mad energy. Young’s clever storytelling underlies Fairyland’s success. The tough part of this kind of project is avoiding a     scenario. Young gives the reader good reasons to keep going past the first couple of chapters, finding different targets for satire and crafting a fairly unpredictable plot. He makes all the main characters female, and it’s fun to watch them whale on each other. Gert’s nonstop spree does get repetitive, but Young works hard to keep the reader in the mood,    succeeding. I Hate Fairyland is a great palate cleanser for anyone who’s recoiled from   politics. Maybe the little girls of America won’t abandon their tiaras anytime soon, but at least they’re wielding magic wands, not Gatling guns. Etelka Lehoczky has written about books for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Salon. com. She tweets at @EtelkaL."
"Cyndi Lauper, that girl power icon of the eighties, has a new album. Her latest collection of songs takes a distinctly southern turn: It’s an album of classic country covers. ”To me it’s like the roots of rock ’n’ roll,” Lauper says, ”because it’s around the time period when rhythm and blues and country were very linked, just around the time Elvis kicked the doors down.” The new record is called Detour, and Lauper joined NPR’s Rachel Martin in the studio to explain why she took the turn. Hear their conversation at the audio link, and read an edited version below. Rachel Martin: I read that after your first big album came out, you had a moment with Patsy Cline’s music. She was something of a muse for you. Cyndi Lauper: Well, she was something of a  —   I don’t know, BFF? Because I didn’t go out much. When you become famous, everybody is up your butt. You become friends with random people because your own friends are sick and tired of trying to have a conversation with you, and it’s all about you. I’m not going to go out by myself, and I figured, you know what? I’m better off just hanging in. My friend was working at MCA at the time when [Sweet Dreams,] the movie about Patsy Cline came out, so she had all of the catalog. So I just spent hours singing at the top of my lungs in my loft with her, you know? Kind of like when I was 8, I was singing at the top of my lungs with Barbra Streisand. She never knew how close we were  —   no idea. We were really close. BFFs, you know? [Laughs.] So, you grew up with a single mom who worked hard to expose you to a lot of arts, a lot of music. What was her thing? What was her music? Well it was pretty eclectic, but, you know: First things first, we were Italian. We were Sicilian. So there was a lot of opera. It’s all about, ”Who’s the greatest singer in the world, kids?” It was Caruso. ”Who was the greatest movie star in the world?” It was Valentino. And she had a lot of show tunes. I played The King And I so many times that my grandmother came down from upstairs, and walked in the kitchen, and took The King And I off my little red record player. She didn’t say a word, and went back upstairs with it, because she couldn’t take it anymore. And my mother used to play, like, Satch Plays Fats. That was a great album! And we used to dance wildly to that. You and your mom? Me and my mom, me and my sister, me and my little brother we all would dance around  —   youu know, like if we were doing laundry. That’s what they always said: ”You’ve got to learn this stuff, because you’ll be doing it all your life.” She said that to you? She said you were going to do this? Yeah, her and my grandparents. I just realized recently that when I was with my grandmother, two shows I’d watch with her all the time were Queen for a Day and the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts show. And on Queen for a Day, everybody would send in letters about their mom or their aunt or someone who, you know, toiled for their family  —   which, I guess at that time, I thought that was our job as women  —   and usually they’d give her a washing machine. My grandmother would cry, and then I’d cry because she was crying, because I knew my grandmother used to wash the sheets in the tub. Deep down inside, I felt like: ”Queen for a day,” and you give her a washing machine? What the heck? And then we’d watch Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, and it happened to be the one that Patsy Cline was on. And I saw her, and I thought to myself: She’s beautiful. She sings great. Maybe instead of being the queen that’s crying about the washing machine, I’m just going to be a singer. Did your attitude about shaking things up and finding a different path, especially when it came to the history that your mom and your grandmother had set  —   did that ever backfire on you? I think my whole life! I always said the wrong things to the right people. But, you know, you learn not to dive into the vat of whatever that is  —   just step back and let stuff rise to the top and let it go, because it’s not important. What’s important is what you want to do. That’s how it has always been for me: I know where I want to go. I know there’s a lot of ways around a brick wall. And there are a lot of gatekeepers. but the gatekeepers are not going to stop me  —   not now, not then, not ever."
"Maybe there really was a time when America was more innocent. Back when May Basket Day was a thing, perhaps. The curious custom  —   still practiced in discrete pockets of the country  —   went something like this: As the month of April rolled to an end, people would begin gathering flowers and candies and other goodies to put in May baskets to hang on the doors of friends, neighbors and loved ones on May 1. In some communities, hanging a May basket on someone’s door was a chance to express romantic interest. If a   was espied by the recipient, the recipient would give chase and try to steal a kiss from the  . Perhaps considered quaint now, in decades past May Basket Day  —   like the ancient act of dancing around the maypole  —   was a widespread rite of spring in the United States. May Basket Tales, Through the 19th and 20th centuries, May Basket Day celebrations took place all across the nation: A reporter in the Sterling, Ill. Gazette in 1871 explained the seasonal ritual this way: ”A   is  —   well, I hardly know how to describe it but ’tis something to be hung on a door. Made of paper generally, it contains almost anything, by way of small presents you have in mind to put in it, together with your respects, best wishes  —   love, perhaps. It is hung after dark at the door of anybody the hanger fancies.  —   Which done, the said hanger knocks and scampers.” The writer went on to say, in the spirit of the times, that if a boy hangs a May basket on a girl’s door and the girl catches him, ”it’s a great disgrace.” If a girl is the hanger, ”it disgraces the boy again not to catch her.” In St. Joseph, Mich. the Herald reported on May 6, 1886, ”little folks observed May Basket Day custom in hanging pretty baskets to door knobs.” The Taunton, Mass. Gazette in May 1889 told the story of a young man who got up very early and walked a mile and a half to hang a basket on his sweetheart’s door, only to find another basket from another beau already hanging there. ”With the young, in rural communities especially,” the St. Louis Republic reported on May 1, 1900  —   in archaicspeak, ”it is May Basket Day  —   when the youthful fancy manifests its turn to thoughts of love by surreptitiously leaving baskets of spring flowers on the stoop appertaining to the home of the one adored.” Two bold children hung May baskets on the White House front door on May Day 1925. The Indiana, Pa. Gazette reported that first lady Grace Coolidge found her admirers and gave them flowers she had picked. In Dunkirk, N. Y. the Evening Observer observed on April 30, 1932, that young people were collecting samples from wallpaper dealers and ”creating baskets of all sorts and varieties as to size, shape, and color, and will hang them on the doors of their friends at dusk on May Day.” Writing in the Humboldt, Iowa, Independent in May 1976, the local extension home economist reminisced: ”What a gallant occasion Mother made of May baskets. Lists were made and rewritten. It became almost as exciting as Christmas.” Her family used old milk cartons for containers and they made popcorn and Boston cremes for each basket. People in her community returned May baskets to their owners at Halloween. Basket Cases, Here and there you can find recollections of May Basket Days past. Marci Matson, director of the historical society in Edina, Minn. writes: ”The practice has a long history, stemming from the European pagan festival of spring, Beltane. The more raucous elements were toned down after the continent became Christianized, but the May pole dance and May baskets survived in a more   form.” She points to other reminiscences: Joan Gage in A Rolling Crone remembers making baskets as a child in Milwaukee and leaving them for old folks in the neighborhood, just for the kindness of it. And Old Fashioned Living recalls that Louisa May Alcott wrote about May Basket Day in New England in her 1880 children’s book Jack and Jill. From Alcott’s story: ”Such a twanging of bells and rapping of knockers such a scampering of feet in the dark such droll collisions as boys came racing round corners, or girls ran into one another’s arms as they crept up and down steps on the sly such laughing, whistling, flying about of flowers and friendly feeling —  it was almost a pity that   did not come oftener.” Fade Away, Eventually, May Basket Day  —   like the spring flowers arranged in the baskets  —   began to wilt and droop. Though vestiges of the sincere ceremony still pop up on the Internet, the    event has pretty much evanesced. Observing May Day traditions on May 1, 1963, an Associated Press reporter in Providence, R. I. wrote that there were only a ”few May baskets hanging from door knobs” that year. ”Remember May Basket Day?” a syndicated columnist asked in the spring of 1963. So what happened? Maybe the ritual receded because of a national fall from innocence. Or an increased desire for     privacy. Maybe modern innovation overwhelmed the May basket tradition: A   adviser suggested ”May Baskets from plastic bottles” in the Belleville, Kan. Telescope in 1976. Whatever the case, Madonna Dries Christensen, a writer in Florida, is not totally sure she wants the habitual ritual to flourish again. ”I harbor a fear that some major company will rediscover May Basket Day and mar its simplicity with commercial baskets, cards and trinkets,” she writes in her 2012 memoir, In Her Shoes: Step By Step. ”To ward off that calamity, please do not share this . .. with anyone who might be in cahoots with such a manufacturer.” (This post has been updated.) Follow me @NPRHistoryDept lead me by writing lweeks@npr. org"
"33 lions have been rescued from circuses in South America and airlifted to a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa. The group that organized the operation, Animal Defenders International, is calling it the ”largest airlift of lions in history,” The Associated Press reports. The animals were rescued from circuses in Colombia and Peru after both countries passed new laws to ban the use of wild animals in circuses, according to ADI. The   group says 24 of the lions were rescued during surprise raids on Peruvian circuses, while nine were ”voluntarily surrendered” by a Colombian circus. They were in bad shape: ”Almost all of the rescued lions have been mutilated to remove their claws, one has lost an eye, another is almost blind, and many have smashed and broken teeth so would not survive in the wild.” Here’s how ADI describes the lions’ new digs at the Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary: ”Their forever homes will have acres of natural bush (a separate habitat for each family or pair) with watering holes, platforms, trees, vegetation all safely secure behind double electric fencing (outside is included to prevent access by other animals).” ”The lions are returning to where they belong,” sanctuary founder Savannah Heuser says in a statement. ”This is their birth right. African sun, African night skies, African bush and sounds, clouds, summer thunderstorms, large enclosures in a natural setting where they can remember who they are.” ADI says the group consists of ”two large family prides, several pairs and some who will be introduced to see whether they would form a family,” and the group will likely need ”at least 10 or 12 separate habitats.” Photos released on Sunday showed the big cats taking their first steps into their new home. Their habitats will be expanded in the coming months, as the lions get used to their new environment. The lions are incapable of hunting due to their physical condition, according to the wire service, and ”will have to be cared for with food and water for the rest of their lives.” The sanctuary has profiles of each lion. Here are a few of them: ADI tweeted a photo of Iron, the first to be released. According to his profile, Iron seems to have been craving open spaces  —   ”he can often be seen ’running’ in his sleep.”"
"Populism is one of the most important forces in American politics today. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have both tapped into widespread frustrations against the elites and the establishment. It’s not hard to see where the rage at a rigged system comes from. Washington is gridlocked, the economy isn’t growing fast enough and what growth there is hasn’t been shared equally. Too many people feel left behind. University of Wisconsin political science professor Kathy Cramer has been tracking the increasingly populist sentiments of Wisconsin voters for the past nine years by listening to groups of people who meet on their own most every morning. They are the ”regulars” who get together in gas stations and diners and McDonald’s and maybe places of worship. Cramer’s groups foreshadowed the angry voters of 2016. They felt ignored or dismissed by politicians, the media, the government and big business. Over the years what Cramer saw was that this resentment grew more intense, setting the stage for the explosion of populist politics this year. ”What I saw was people feeling a whole lot of economic stress, wanting some explanation for why they were having such a hard time making ends meet,” said Cramer, ”and then placing the blame on other people in the population and the government.” The big changes that caused their distress  —   demographics, globalization, wage stagnation,    —   are abstract and can be hard to understand. But populism has always told a simpler story with a defined villain. In the past, it might have been the gold standard or welfare queens. Now it’s free trade, immigrants, billionaires or the campaign finance system. ”The things that are our biggest stresses these days are these very abstract, social change phenomena,” said Cramer, ”and making an argument about that doesn’t get you very far. It’s not very mobilizing. But if you can give people a   target of blame, it’s much easier to rally people behind you.” And that’s exactly what Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have done. Sanders blames a rigged economy, corruption on Wall Street, and billionaires. Trump’s villains are Mexicans, politicians, free trade deals. Trump recently campaigned in Indiana excoriating his favorite corporate target  —   the Carrier air conditioner company, for leaving the state and moving to Mexico. In California, he held a rally featuring people whose relatives had been killed by immigrants in the country illegally. The big question is what effect this year’s populist politics will have on both parties over time. In the past, populist movements have forced a realignment or a reshuffling of voters. Think George Wallace leading Southern whites out of the Democratic Party in the late ’60s and early ’70s. That kind of big shift in voter allegiance is probably not in the cards. There are not many socially conservative, economically populist white Democrats left that could switch to the Republicans. And there are not that many socially liberal, upscale white Republicans left who could switch to the Democrats. ”I think the party coalitions are pretty well defined,” said Michael Lind of the New America Foundation. ”The civil wars within the parties are about defining the party platforms more than the party coalitions.” For the Republicans, that civil war might lead to a debate about a new policy agenda, a more populist agenda that’s less friendly to big business and the wealthy and more attuned to the concerns of the white working class. Henry Olsen, the author of The Four Faces Of The Republican Party, sees that as the lesson of this year’s Republican primaries. ”Any ambitious politician has seen that there are millions of voters who can be mobilized using populist rhetoric who had not voted in any Republican presidential primary for the last 20 years,” Olsen said. ”You probably won’t see an identical   figure in future years. But   more nativist, more   markets are there for the taking in the Republican Party. And that will influence campaigns and candidates for years to come.” For the Democrats, populism is also here to stay even though it hasn’t had the kind of seismic consequences as it has for the GOP. Bill Galston, a former Clinton White House aide, says there’s a lot of economic discontent among ”young adults, the working class and the middle class. So there’s something real there for Democrats. And it’s not going away.” Hillary Clinton will have to absorb some of Sanders’   populism as she moves forward to the general election. She has already moved toward Sanders on expanding Social Security, if not on breaking up the big banks. One consequence for both parties is that free trade agreements will have to be reframed as national security issues to have any chance at all to pass. And whoever is making foreign policy next year will have to deal with a new kind of nationalism. Galston calls it ”Americans first”  —   which sounds pretty close to Donald Trump’s foreign policy slogan. ”For people who are looking at the world through populist spectacles  —   their first question is now, what’s in it for us?” said Galston. ”And if there isn’t a clear answer to that question, then the default conclusion is that what’s going on beyond our borders is more of a burden than a benefit.” Trump’s populist positions are challenging the Republican Party’s basic DNA, its core ideology about foreign policy and trade and limited government. On the Democratic side, Sanders doesn’t represent as big a break with Democratic orthodoxy. He represents a wing of the party that’s always been there but has just gotten to be a much bigger part of the coalition this year. In the past, there have been many populist movements in American politics. Sometimes they lead to great bursts of progressive reform. Sometimes they lead to nativism and isolationism. Where this populist moment ends up depends on who takes the oath of office in January."
"Ted Cruz has taken pictures with his vice presidential pick, their arms raised in the iconic V for victory pose. Bernie Sanders has talked about his platform, and John Kasich held a news conference to review plans for upcoming primaries and the convention in Cleveland. What’s going on here? Don’t these guys know they’re losing?   Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are nearing the numbers of delegates each needs for a   victory at their respective conventions. Indiana’s primary this week could make this all but inevitable. But their three surviving rivals are still vowing to take their own campaigns ”all the way” to the convention floor. And why shouldn’t they? At least two of them, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, will have enough delegates at the national conventions in July to imperil party unity. In Philadelphia, Sanders alone should have more than a third of the hall on his side, and fervently so. In Cleveland, the combined forces of Trump’s rivals and the unpledged delegates may have roughly half the seats on the floor. It is also possible that the official number of   delegates will understate their strength. The later stages of the process by which the actual attendees are chosen have been dominated by Cruz allies. We already know that some ”Trump delegates” will not be chosen by his campaign but rather ”assigned” to represent him  —   often on the first ballot only. That means that, in theory at least, a majority of the voting delegates in Cleveland may well prefer a candidate other than Trump in their heart of hearts. If there is a second ballot, some of these delegates could bail on Trump. In this scenario, delegates whose real loyalty is to John Kasich or Marco Rubio would also matter. So there are   reasons for Cruz, Kasich and Sanders to continue to raise and spend money and campaign furiously from Indiana to Oregon to California and back to New Jersey. Beyond the prospect of an actual nomination, each sees a chance to frame the issues and politics of the general election  —   and to influence party dynamics for years to come. That’s one reason Sanders held a news conference Sunday to note the anniversary of his candidacy and to proclaim  —   still  —   his chances of being the nominee this year. Real contests have become rare at our national conventions in the decades since the primaries and caucuses began identifying the nominees. But contentious conventions, featuring what we still call ”floor fights,” are anything but unprecedented. Conventions were, for a very long time, the place where nomination battles were joined, fought and won. That was their essential purpose. They defined the parties and their power. But in 1968, at the height of the U. S. war in Vietnam, one of those convention battles became truly violent  —   both inside the convention hall and outside on the streets of Chicago. The   majority Democrats saw their ruling coalition torn apart in living color on national television. That led to lots of earnestly egalitarian changes in the rules and the creation of the modern nominating process. Primaries would not be ”advisory” anymore, but directly responsible for apportioning delegate votes among candidates. Since then, in varying degrees, the people willing to turn out to vote in primaries or participate in party caucuses have chosen the nominees. The individual delegates who went to the conventions might still be party insiders, in that they would be individually selected at party meetings. But their votes at the convention were bound, in varying degrees, to the results of these primaries and caucuses. Soon, a new normal emerged. Conventions stopped being contests or battlegrounds. They became instead a   infomercial for the parties and their candidates. Typically, the convention made no decisions of note and produced no real news that had not been known for weeks. Even so, a handful of frustrated rivals have gone to the convention unwilling to play subservient roles or perform as cheerleaders. Here are the main ones in the modern era: Hubert Humphrey in 1972: The year the new nominating rules were first in place, the   in that year’s primaries, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, went to the convention in Miami in a bellicose mood. Humphrey had been the nominee in 1968 even though he did not compete in any of the primaries. In 1972 he started late but closed the gap rapidly, almost winning California in June. California mattered because it was allowed to vote as a bloc for Humphrey’s rival, the   hero George McGovern, who had won there with a plurality. Such ”unit rule” voting was ended under the new rules, but California had been ”grandfathered” for one more round. Humphrey’s forces tried to overturn that exception on the floor on the first day of the convention. Had they done so, McGovern would have lacked a majority on the first ballot. But after an impassioned speech by Willie Brown, the first black speaker of the California Assembly, Humphrey’s bid to break up that delegation was defeated. McGovern sailed on to the nomination  —   and a   landslide loss in November. Ronald Reagan in 1976: In a convention widely described as the last to be truly contested, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan challenged his own Republican Party’s incumbent president, Gerald R. Ford. Reagan lost the early primaries but then swept the South and the West and was clearly the favorite of conservative activists. In July, Reagan named a    running mate, Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, in part because that state’s delegation had a lot of uncommitted delegates (as it does today). The gambit failed, however, when Ford operatives were able to hold the Keystone State’s delegation for the incumbent and beat back rules changes that tried to free the delegates from their pledges. As in 1972 on the Democratic side, the crucial vote was a procedural test on the first day of the convention. Ford’s votes held up, and Reagan conceded. Ted Kennedy in 1980: Just four years later, it was the Democrats who had an incumbent president (Jimmy Carter) who had displeased the party’s activist base. Sen. Ted Kennedy sought the nomination and had support from many liberals, unions and minority voters. Polls briefly showed him ahead. But after the taking of American hostages in Iran late in 1979, Carter had an edge and the campaign was somewhat overshadowed. All the same, Kennedy did well enough in the primaries and caucuses to arrive at the New York convention with many delegates. An attempt to free all delegates to vote as they pleased failed after a lengthy fight, so Kennedy decided not to have his name placed in nomination. Nonetheless, he gave the only speech anyone remembers from the 1980 convention, perhaps the most memorable of his career. His grudging endorsement of the ticket was of little help to Carter, who lost to Reagan that November. Gary Hart in 1984: Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, was the establishment favorite for the Democratic nomination against Reagan in 1984. But upstart Colorado Sen. Gary Hart won the New Hampshire primary and challenged Mondale elsewhere, winning in Ohio and California as well as many smaller states. Just before the convention in San Francisco, Mondale shored up his relatively modest lead among pledged delegates by naming a woman to the ticket, Geraldine Ferraro of New York. Hart’s challenge faded as the convention opened, but he still got a   speech in which to tease his future ambitions and assert the claims of younger party members. Mondale went on to lose 49 states to Reagan in November. Jesse Jackson in 1988: The Democrats began the 1988 cycle with no clear   but a large field of hopefuls (sometimes disparaged as the ”Seven Dwarves”). Although he won few voting events, Jesse Jackson was the most compelling of the Democratic contenders. The   activist was originally from South Carolina but had followed Martin Luther King Jr. ’s civil rights movement and made a name for himself later in Chicago. Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis got to the convention with the most delegates, and he was clearly not interested in making Jackson his running mate. But the party gave Jackson one night of the convention to speak and to celebrate with his delegates and other supporters, who took over the hall for that session. Pat Buchanan in 1992: A   speechwriter for Nixon, Buchanan had long since returned to newsprint commentating and TV punditry when George H. W. Bush became president. But he was so exercised over Bush’s acceptance of a tax increase in 1990 that he mounted a quixotic bid to snatch the nomination from him in 1992. Although he did not win any primaries that year, Buchanan was able to hold down Bush’s margins and embarrass him. So the Bush forces gave Buchanan a featured speaking slot on the first night of the convention in Houston, hoping to appease party  . Buchanan produced a    jeremiad that dominated the news and set the tone for the week. Jerry Brown in 1992: This was Brown’s third bid for the White House. The first was a   affair in 1976, when he was the    wunderkind   governor of California. He ran again in 1980, while in his second term, although his challenge to Carter was overshadowed by Kennedy’s. Absent from the presidential wars for a dozen years, Brown returned in 1992, recast as a populist champion, railing against the evils of the campaign finance system and wearing a   bowling team jacket. Regarded as a curiosity at first, Brown outlasted other rivals to the party’s rising star, Bill Clinton. The two tussled in debates over issues and over an ad Brown aired that criticized Clinton’s wife, Hillary. ”You’re not worthy to be on the same stage with my wife,” Clinton replied. But just as he became the last real alternative to Clinton, Brown stumbled badly in the New York primary in April (after singling out Jesse Jackson as a strong prospect to be his running mate). Nevertheless, Brown soldiered on to the convention in New York, where ”Let Jerry Speak” became the rallying cry for many labor delegates and other activists. Brown was given a speaking slot on the third night of the convention. Speaking for half an hour, he mentioned Clinton only twice and did not endorse him. No defeated challenger has received such an honorific speaking slot without endorsing the nominee at a major convention since. A Sea Change, The new pattern would take hold, with little issue in 1996 and 2000. In 2008, the staged and scripted convention reached new levels of    showmanship both in Denver, where Barack Obama was nominated on a set with Grecian pillars, and in St. Paul, where vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin stole the show. But there was little other reason to watch either event. Ditto in 2012, when Obama was renominated and the Republicans went with Mitt Romney after canceling the convention’s first night for bad weather. It scarcely seemed to matter. It might have been different in 2008, at least on the Democratic side, if   Hillary Clinton had chosen to battle all the way to the Denver meeting. Clinton had won nearly as many votes nationwide and was only about 100 pledged delegates behind her upstart rival when the primaries came to an end. Moreover, she had won two populous states, Michigan and Florida, whose delegations could change the picture appreciably if they were allowed to vote their full delegation strength. But both states had jumped the line on primary scheduling, defying the party rules and calendar. So when the Rules and Bylaws Committee met in Washington, D. C. in late May, they decided to keep strictures in place and cut both states in half. That was the last straw for Clinton, who needed more from Florida and Michigan to keep the contest alive. Even after winning the California primary on June 3, Clinton formally ended her candidacy four days later. She did not want a convention divided between her supporters and Obama’s, plain and simple. The tactics she would need to use to prevail would, in all likelihood, divide the party and empower its opponents. Still, an angry group that called themselves PUMA (usually interpreted to mean Party Unity My Ass) maintained the struggle and protested at the convention. Clinton herself was, by contrast, a model of concession and cooperation at the convention  —   moving personally to make the nomination of Obama unanimous. Thereafter, she and her husband have maintained a working truce and relationship with the Obama administration that includes the tacit support she has had from the Obama White House in 2016. So which of these models will be emulated by the remaining rivals this year? Will Cruz and Kasich conspire to crack open the RNC in Cleveland? Will they at least try to force a second ballot, at which time Trump’s spell over the party might be broken? Or will they see that as a Pyrrhic victory at best, bespoiling the prize at the moment of seizing it? The choice for Sanders is perhaps clearer. Unless something extraordinary happens to stop her, Hillary Clinton is likely to have the needed delegates as soon as the last California votes are counted on June 7. But Sanders can still speak in Philadelphia, if he agrees to endorse Clinton and negotiate on the platform. If he wants to withhold his formal support, or dictate demands for the platform that cannot be negotiated, he will have the backing of his legion of supporters. But he will risk damaging the party that has given him the opportunity to reach that legion and build that support."
"Philadelphia’s historic Italian Market is known for its cheeses, meats, fresh pastas and chocolate. Running 10 city blocks through south Philadelphia, it’s one of the oldest and largest   markets in the country. But what would a tour through this vibrant neighborhood be like without the ability to see? That’s where Philly Touch Tours comes in. The guide company specializes in offering   tours of Philadelphia. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, tour guide Andy Maunder stops everyone at a street corner to set the scene for the group. Their first stop is Superior Pasta, which sells the freshly made stuff. ”You can hear right away the buzz of the freezers on the   side of the store,” says Trish Maunder, Andy’s wife and one of the   of Philly Touch Tours. She describes the narrow, crammed shop as they enter, and then introduces everyone to owner Joe Lammano. Lammano quickly cranks up his pasta machine and launches into an explanation about different types of pasta and the merits of homemade versus  . (And don’t even get him started on the idea of   pasta.) Once he churns the pasta out, he passes raw pieces around to the group so they can hold and smell it. The   tour includes visits to a chocolate shop, a purveyor of olive oils and vinegars, a cheesemonger and a butcher. They usually run over the allotted time, Trish Maunder says, because people enjoy lingering, trying samples or returning to their favorite store at the end of the tour to buy something. She says she first started thinking about ways to integrate sensory experiences when her   daughter was born. ”My husband, Andy, and I gave birth to a child who was born blind 30 years ago,” she says. ”As an artist and an art educator, it was a bit of a shock at first, and I think we got our heads around it by thinking, ’How else do we interpret the world?’ ” Last year she   Philly Touch Tours with Austin Seraphin, a computer programmer who was born blind. He’s been coding since he was 7 and has spent his career working to make technology accessible to blind people. As an accessibility consultant, he helps companies make their apps work for the visually impaired. The group started off by offering   tours of the Ancient Egypt exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The results surprised even the most seasoned curators, especially when a blind guest discovered that the museum’s monumental sphinx has ribs. ”The docents who had been working there for 20 years didn’t know that,” said Seraphin. ”No one had ever been able to touch it.” Seraphin and Maunder say they are hoping to expand Philly Touch Tours to more parts of the city and start offering training to cultural institutions on how to reach out to people who are visually impaired. While many groups will cater to visually impaired children with special tours and programming, that kind of outreach falls off for adults, explains Seraphin. For Denice Brown from the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania, the tour has helped her appreciate the Italian Market in a new way. ”It’s very good  —   being a person who is blind  —   knowing a little more about the things that are around me,” she says. ”Most of us have been to the Italian Market before, but never in this way  —   when we are given more description, the aroma of the different spices, flowers and fruits and things we have come across.” Neema Roshania is an associate editor with NPR member station WHYY in Philadelphia, where a version of this story first ran."
"In what’s being hailed as a ”miracle” and the ”best story in sports,” Leicester City, a small club from central England that started the season at   odds of winning the prestigious English Premier League title, has clinched the trophy. On Monday, with two games still left in the season, the   Foxes secured their place in history when second place Tottenham failed to beat Chelsea. It’s the first   title for Leicester in the club’s   history. The club is only the sixth since 1992 to win the title. It had only a fraction of the money commanded by top clubs and its leading scorer, Jamie Vardy, was playing in England’s lower divisions while working at a factory. Having spent most of last season languishing near the bottom of the league rankings, the club’s meteoric rise to the top is breathtaking. Leicester had the chance to secure the title on Sunday with a win over Manchester United. But it played to a disappointing   draw, leaving the door open for   Tottenham in the title race. For the beginning of Monday’s game, it looked as if Leicester’s   ending had been delayed again. Tottenham took a   lead in the first half thanks to goals from the league’s top scorer, Harry Kane, and midfielder Son  . But Chelsea defender Gary Cahill managed to slot home a goal in the 58th minute and Eden Hazard tied the game with a rocket to the   corner in the 83rd. The game was physical and emotions ran high as scuffles flared repeatedly on the pitch. A total of 12 yellow cards were handed out, nine of which went to Tottenham. The Spurs had a few promising chances near the end of the game, but Chelsea held on, sealing the deal for Leicester. The crowd at Chelsea’s home field, Stamford Bridge, chanted ”Leicester, Leicester,” as the final whistle drew near. Leicester manager Claudio Ranieri made headlines when he said he might not be watching the crucial game because he would be having lunch with his    mother. The Leicester players, though, watched at Vardy’s house. Here’s the video of the moment they won the trophy, tweeted by Leicester defender Christian Fuchs."
"At some hospitals, posters on the wall in the emergency department list the drugs that are in short supply or unavailable, along with recommended alternatives. The   visual aid can save time with critically ill patients, allowing doctors to focus on caring for them rather than doing research on the fly, said Dr. Jesse Pines, a professor of emergency medicine and director of the Office for Clinical Practice Innovation at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He has studied the problems created by shortages. The need for such workarounds probably won’t end anytime soon. According to a new study, shortages of many drugs that are essential in emergency care have increased in both number and duration in recent years even as shortages for drugs for   or chronic care have eased somewhat. The shortages have persisted despite a federal law enacted in 2012 that gave the Food and Drug Administration regulatory powers to respond to drug shortages, the study found. For this report, which was published in the May issue of Health Affairs, researchers analyzed drug shortage data between 2001 and 2014 from the University of Utah’s Drug Information Service, which contains all confirmed national drug shortages, according to the study. They divided the drugs into acute and   categories.   drugs were those used in the emergency department for many of the urgent and severe conditions handled there and include remedies such as pain medications, heart drugs, saline solution and electrolyte products. Overall, the study found that 52 percent of the 1, 929 shortages during the time period studied were for   drugs. Following passage of the federal law in 2012, the number of active shortages of   care drugs began to decline for the first time since 2004, but there was no corresponding dropoff in shortages of drugs that emergency departments and intensive care units rely on, the researchers reported. Shortages of the drugs for emergency care lasted longer as well, the study found. Half of the shortages of drugs for acute care lasted longer than 242 days, compared with 173 days for   care drugs. Seventy percent of the drugs that were difficult to get were injectable drugs, which emergency departments rely on to a much greater degree than other types of providers. The most common   drugs affected were those to fight infections, such as antibiotics those that affect the central nervous system, including painkillers and sedatives and the drugs that suppress or stimulate the autonomic nervous system, which controls heart and breathing rates. When patients come to the emergency department who have been seriously injured and are having trouble breathing, for example, it’s often necessary to administer drugs that sedate them and cause their muscles to relax so that emergency personnel can insert a breathing tube in the windpipe. ”All of a sudden you have a   procedure and you’re using your   drug or a drug you’re less familiar with,” said Dr. Arjun Venkatesh, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Yale School of Medicine and a study  . Venkatesh said his own experience with recurring shortages of such basic but critical medicines as saline solution while working in the emergency department at   Haven Hospital was the impetus for the study. Patients are naturally often unaware of drug shortages in the emergency department, and there’s no data to show that substituting a preferred drug with one that a doctor is less comfortable with results in patient harm, experts say. ”But if you extrapolate this problem over 140 million emergency department visits annually, I don’t see how patients couldn’t have been harmed by [substitutions],” said Dr. Frederick Blum, an associate professor of emergency medicine at West Virginia University School of Medicine who is a former president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012 contains provisions aimed at stemming these problems, including requiring reporting of shortages by drug manufacturers to the FDA and expediting inspections and reviews by the FDA of alternative products and manufacturing facilities. ”We need more,” Venkatesh said. ”At the national level, they need to provide more support around generic injectables and antibiotics, the two areas that are ripe for improvement.” The FDA continues to work closely with manufacturers to resolve shortages, said agency spokesman Christopher Kelly. ”In the past couple of years, numbers of new shortages have gone down and that’s largely due to increased notifications by manufacturers,” Kelly said in a statement. Injectable drugs ”are particularly susceptible to shortages and can be difficult to solve.” Changing the economics of these drugs could help, said George Washington’s Pines, noting that profit margins are thin and there’s not a lot of extra capacity in the system if one manufacturer stops producing a drug. The Health Affairs study suggests tax credits, rebates or temporary market exclusivity as potential strategies to improve the supply of generic injectables, among other things. David Gaugh, senior vice president for sciences and regulatory affairs at the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said drugmakers’ efforts have helped decrease the shortages but acknowledged more is needed. He called for continued communication between regulators and generic drug manufacturers on the issues and improvements in the drug review process. ”The only way to mitigate current shortages and prevent future shortages from occurring is a collaborative effort,” he said. Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"The   Zika virus has sparked a debate about abortion in both Latin America and the United States. The virus has been directly linked to a birth defect that results in an abnormally small head and brain damage. In Latin America, where many countries have strict bans on abortion, some citizens and government officials are asking whether such bans should be reconsidered, at least in infected mothers. And in the United States, a   discussion has been reignited: Should the country rethink its stance on funding abortion initiatives abroad, put forth in what’s known as the Helms Amendment? Adopted in 1973, the Helms Amendment states that ”no foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.” In layman’s terms: Groups working with reproductive issues around the world cannot get U. S. government aid to fund abortions. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan went a step further with the ”Mexico City Policy”: U. S. aid cannot go to foreign clinics or groups that ” actively promote abortion,” regardless of whether they do it with money from  . S. sources. This policy has been implemented by Republican presidents since and reversed by Democrats, including President Obama in 2009. If the Helms Amendment has always been controversial, the ongoing Zika outbreak has only added fuel to the fire. Those who oppose the amendment argue that USAID funding of abortions could help provide access to safe procedures for pregnant women who are affected by the virus and who might choose to terminate their pregnancy. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has said she will work on adding exceptions to the Helms Amendment, and candidate Bernie Sanders has said he would fund global abortion providers by executive action.  The debate about Helms is as old as the argument about legal abortion in America itself. The amendment was, in many ways, a reaction to Roe v. Wade. Following the ruling that legalized abortion, conservative lawmakers rushed to introduce measures to curb access to abortions nationwide despite the Supreme Court ruling. They also found a foreign policy champion in North Carolina’s Republican Sen. Jesse Helms. One of his first orders of business abroad was reproductive health. Sworn into office January 1973, the same month that the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Roe, he sponsored an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, prohibiting any U. S. foreign aid from going toward abortions. The proposed amendment was met with plenty of resistance, including from USAID, which argued that it was hypocritical given the change in the U. S.’s own stance on abortion. The Foreign Assistance Act, USAID wrote, ”explicitly acknowledges that every nation is and should be free to determine its own policies and procedures with respect to population growth and family planning. In contradiction of this principle, the amendment would place U. S. restrictions on both developing country governments and individuals in the matter of free choice among the means of fertility control . .. that are legal in the U. S.” Nevertheless, the Helms Amendment passed in the Senate ( ) and the House in   1973. Three years later, the Hyde Amendment stated that federal funds could not be used to pay for abortion unless the pregnancy puts a mother’s life in danger or is caused by incest or rape. Critics say this seriously limits access to abortions for   women.  Supporters of abortion rights say that at the very least, the Helms Amendment should be interpreted the same way as the Hyde Amendment. ”Women and girls who are threatened and raped should be able to get an abortion safely,” says Brian Dixon, senior vice president for media and government relations at Population Connection, a nonprofit that bills itself as ”advocat[ing] progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth’s resources.” ”Think of young girls escaped from ISIS in Iraq or raped in the Congo,” Dixon says. ”We should be helping these women.” Dixon has been vocal about the role of U. S. aid in the midst of the debate over abortion prompted by the Zika epidemic: ”Let’s say Brazil changes its law to allow women with Zika to have abortion. Should we [Americans] help her get a safe abortion?” Dixon thinks the answer is yes: USAID should support clinics that perform abortions and family   NGOs that advocate for them. Wendy Wright, an   activist since 1989, vehemently disagrees. ”The United States should be promoting treatment, health and life  —   not death,” says Wright, who is vice president at the Center For Family And Human Rights, a nonprofit research institute that describes its mission as ”dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.” When Wright talks about the opposition to the Helms Amendment, she brings up racism, classism and discrimination. She says when American activists speak of the need to legalize abortion abroad ”what underlies that viewpoint is that certain people, particularly the disadvantaged, are expendable and should be eliminated.” She says her concern is not without precedent. History is filled with  instances in which birth control campaigns targeted women of color and the lower classes, in America and abroad. One of the more prominent cases in Latin America was the forced sterilization of poor indigenous Peruvian women, in the  . At the time it was argued that a lower birth rate would lower poverty. Shawn Carney, president of 40 Days For Life, an international nonprofit that campaigns against abortion throughout South America and the world, puts it more bluntly. Over the phone from his office in Texas, he says: ”A First World country goes into a Third World country and says, ’We don’t think you should have this many children, or children at all, because you’re poor and you have diseases, and you don’t have our lifestyle.’ ” Wright also stresses that funding abortion is not a good use of aid. ”When abortion gets in the mix and we start talking about eliminating the Helms Amendment, aid will be diverted away from treatment and prevention, like insecticides, medicine, labs . .. the very things that could help people on the ground throughout their life span.” But for the time being, the debate over whether the U. S. should fund abortion providers in   Latin America might be moot. Regardless of whether the Helms Amendment stands or is modified, abortion is for the most part banned in Latin America  —   and often carries serious punishment. Whether the tiny Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries Zika will nudge an entire continent’s stance on abortion remains to be seen."
"Matt Coy likes to tell people how he went 47 years without voting. Not once. Not even for high school class president. But there he was last Friday at an   center at a county parks building in Columbus, Ind. excitedly preparing to cast his ballot for Republican Donald Trump. ”I’ve lost three factory jobs in the last 10 years, to go to China or go to Mexico or go to somewhere out of the country. We’re losing our jobs to everybody else. We need ’em back. I think he can do it,” Coy said. Manufacturing plays a bigger part in the economy of Indiana than it does in any other state, and as Indiana residents head to the polls Tuesday, the slow erosion of the state’s factory jobs is expected to weigh heavily on the minds of a lot of voters. In 2000, the state had about 672, 000 manufacturing jobs today it has a little more than a   according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some of the jobs have been lost through automation and higher productivity, but like other Rust Belt states, Indiana has also watched some of its factories pull up stakes and head for   countries. ”Even while the economy was growing, both overall in the country as well as the state, we were losing a lot of manufacturing jobs,” said economist Timothy Slaper, of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University. The most notorious closing was Carrier’s decision to abandon its Indianapolis plant and relocate to Mexico, costing Indiana some 2, 100 jobs. The decision has been harshly criticized by Trump as well as Democrat Bernie Sanders, who spoke at an   rally in Indianapolis last Friday. ”I mean, it’s just corporate greed,” said Ronald Hardin, a longtime plant employee who attended the rally. ”They want more money. They’re making a lot of money but they want more.” To be sure, Indiana’s economy has recovered nicely since the financial crisis, with an unemployment rate of 5 percent. The state has plenty of companies that compete successfully in the global economy, especially in life sciences and transportation. ”Because of technology, because of air travel, we are more integrated than we’ve ever been in the past, so the markets around the world are important and increasingly more important,” says Phil Burkholder, president of  ’s North America defense aerospace division. At its Indianapolis plant,   makes gas turbine engines used in civil and defense aircraft all over the world, and it is spending $600 million to upgrade its facilities. The company employs about 4, 000 people in central Indiana, and production workers make on average between $60, 000 and $80, 000 a year. But jobs at heavily automated plants like   require a lot more technical training than the factory jobs of yesteryear, and as a result they can be hard to get, Indiana University’s Slaper says. ”If you compare life back in the ’40s and ’50s, where you could even drop out of high school, walk down the road and get a job at the GM plant in Muncie  —   that kind of job just doesn’t exist anymore,” he says. The loss of so many good factory jobs has made Indiana fertile ground for a protectionist message, and Trump, for one, is hoping that will give him a boost in Tuesday’s primary. It’s a message Rosalie Barnhill, a retired secretary at an   company, is receptive to. ”There’s too many jobs and manufacturers that go out of our country,” she says. But Russell Poling, an engineer at Cummins, the large manufacturer of diesel engines, says the United States needs to compete in the global economy, and he is skeptical of the talk about tariffs and trade wars in the current presidential campaign. ”If we’re trying to export, we can’t cut off imports, because that’s what some people would like to see: We don’t import anything but we ship everything out. Well, you can’t do that, because nobody will take it,” he says."
"One of the economic legacies President Obama hopes to leave behind is an expansion of U. S. exports. To do that, he wants to complete one trade deal with European countries, and another with Pacific Rim nations. But well into his final year in office, Obama is facing stiff headwinds on trade. The European deal, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, made news on Monday. ..but probably not the way the White House would have preferred. Greenpeace Netherlands, an environmental group, leaked 248 pages of classified documents involving TTIP, the   deal involving the U. S. and European Union. The documents date from before trade negotiators met again last week in New York. Consumer and environmental groups on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have expressed concerns that U. S. corporations may be pushing Europeans to lower their various protections. They say the leaked papers support that view. ”We’ve done this to ignite a debate,” Greenpeace trade expert Juergen Knirsch said at a news conference in Berlin. TTIP opponents want negotiations to end. But the European Commission said the documents merely reflect negotiating positions in talks that have been going on for three years. The EU’s top negotiator, Ignacio   said at a press conference that ”some points that Greenpeace is making in these documents are flatly wrong.” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters the leaks will not have a ”material impact” on the talks. ”Our focus is on trying to complete these negotiations by the end of the year,” he said. Typically, trade negotiators work behind closed doors as they sort out positions. Even though details have not been officially released, it’s known that TTIP would deal with many contentious issues such as genetically modified foods, poultry safety, auto exports and more. In April, a survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation showed support for TTIP was declining in both Germany and the United States. Obama’s other deal, the   Partnership, has been negotiated, but not yet approved by Congress and the approval process appears stalled for now. No vote is scheduled for the deal, and many congressional observers predict any action will have to wait until after the November election. Trade has become a   issue with many voters this election cycle. To drum up support for TPP, Obama released an essay Monday afternoon in The Washington Post, saying the partnership would strength the U. S. economy: ”TPP brings together 12 countries representing nearly 40 percent of the global economy to make sure that private firms have a fair shot at competing against   enterprises. My administration is working closely with leaders in Congress to secure bipartisan approval for our trade agreement.”"
"The food glitterati will gather in Chicago Monday night for the   James Beard Chef and Restaurant Awards, known as the ”Oscars of the food world.” Most of the categories sound like industry fare: Outstanding Restaurant Design. Best Chef: Great Lakes. Best New Restaurant. Rising Star Chef of the Year. There’s not much of interest for anyone outside the foodies and food world orbit. Except, that is, for a sneakily subversive category: America’s Classics. Each year, the JBF restaurant committee selects a handful of eateries from around the country for a range of criteria that have little to do with haute cuisine. When the category began in 1998, the eateries honored were usually humble and predictably American fare: Stroud’s, a fried chicken eatery in Kansas City the Second Avenue Deli in New York City Durgin Park, a    eatery in Boston’s Faneuil Hall and Joe T. Garcia’s, a   place in Fort Worth, were among the first year’s honorees. To be considered for the award, restaurants must have been in business for a decade, be locally owned, show ”timeless appeal,” and serve ”quality food that reflects the character of the community,” says John T. Edge, who helps oversee the category for the James Beard Foundation Awards Restaurant Committee. And while early awards set a price limit for awardees, in an effort to screen out   eateries, that has since been lifted. Undergirding it all, says Edge, is the idea that truly ”classic” restaurants offer for communities what a shared nightly meal offers families: a way to connect. When the award began, ”it was, in large part, a way to honor a kind of Americana that was grounded in 20th century ideas about what American food culture is,” says Edge. Witness the list above: the intersection of Germanic and Southern at Stroud’s, a Jewish delicatessen, Northeastern seafood, and an American variant of Mexican food. Although the foods served at each were considered foreign when they were first introduced to Americans, they’ve long since been considered core parts of an American cuisine. But in more recent years, since the late 2000s, the category has slowly begun to expand its ”Classics” label to include   American cuisines, incorporating the food of immigrants whose culture hasn’t exactly been dissolved in the melting pot. In the category’s   history, during which 102 restaurants have been deemed ”American Classics,” only seven have served food that was not European or regional American in origin, and most of those were added in the last years. The first outlier to be added was Yuca’s, a Los Angeles taco shack recognized in 2005. Japanese food acquired the classic designation in 2008, via Maneki’s in Seattle, and Chinese entered the list in 2009, with Yank Sing in San Francisco. In 2012, Phoenix, Arizona’s Fry Bread House added Native American food to the list, and 2013 saw Frank Fat’s, a Chinese place in Sacramento. Last year’s list added the Oaxacan restaurant Gualaguetza and this year’s is adding Al Ameer, a Lebanese eatery in Dearborn, Mich. And that has everything to do with the changing face of America. The category ”[is] the tip of the iceberg of what is getting normalized as ’American,’ ” says Krishnendu Ray, whose recent The Ethnic Restaurateur has helped spur a debate over culinary appropriation. ”There is a sense that you cannot make a list anymore of this kind that is only referencing Germanic, Southern and   places.” And, says Ray, the nature of a list like this is to be conservative. In reality, Americans across the country have been eating outside of traditionally American cuisines for a long time. ”The awards have a burden to be fair, so that they reflect America as it is now,” says Edge. ”If you want to define classic American restaurants, that is not some measure defined in some gauzy past, but in this present.” In the   world of food awards, the category still has its struggles, of course. After years of being given the same opportunity to make a short speech about their award, as do all winners, this year’s ”Classics” will stay silent in their seats. Instead  —   as in previous years  —   a short,   video about them will be shown. While the committee chair couldn’t be reached for comment, removing acceptance speeches seems, to some, to be at odds with the award’s nobler goals of putting humble restaurants on par with   ones. After all, when Willie Mae Seaton, the iconic chef of New Orleans’ Scotch House, died last year at 99, it was her 2005 acceptance speech for an America’s Classics award that made it into her obituary. Tracie McMillan is the author of The American Way of Eating, a New York   and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. You can follow her on Twitter @tmmcmillan."
"Intel was once known for its success in branding personal computers with microprocessors, a technology that fueled the digital revolution. But the Silicon Valley veteran announced last month it would lay off 11 percent of its workforce  —   up to 12, 000 positions  —   and that it’s shifting away from personal computing. NPR’s Audie Cornish talks to Walter Isaacson, author of The Innovators, about Intel’s struggles amid the waning popularity of PCs and what may be next for the Silicon Valley titan. What happened to Intel? Well, I think we all moved away from the laptop and personal computer age into one that was mobile age, and involved apps and things like that. And just as Microsoft kind of missed the mobile revolution, certainly Intel did, and they never really made the exact right chips for mobile devices and phones. Are we going to see a generation of companies like Intel evolve? I think the interesting thing is not just which companies thrived, but which ones survived. As Andy Grove, who led Intel through its rise, said, ”Only the paranoid survive.” And Intel has got to be paranoid, looking around the corner, saying, ”What happens when we no longer use PCs? What happens when everything in our home is actually a computer that’s connected to the cloud?” And you’re going to find which companies have just been flash in the pans for the past 20 years and which are going to be like GE and last a century. How and why did Intel miss the boat on mobile? Both Intel and Microsoft famously missed the boat on mobile partly because they were wedded to the notion that we had our personal computers and our enterprise computers. Somebody like Steve Jobs was much more willing to cannibalize his existing businesses. So he was early on in the personal computing business, then he created music players, the iPod. But then he was willing to cannibalize the iPod by creating an iPhone that had both music and a phone attached. And so if you’re going to survive, you have to be willing to cannibalize a business you’re in. How surprised are you to see this titan of a company in this position? I think what’s interesting about Intel is not simply that it’s in a bad position for having hitched itself to the personal computer, but that it’s trying really hard to reinvent itself and to be part of the Internet of things, of cloud computing, and to create the new type of devices such as   chips and maybe new types of memory chips that’ll be important for both the Internet of things and cloud computing."
"When it comes to the future of China’s economy, Wang Dengwen is yesterday’s man. He came from the countryside and found work a few years ago at Shanghai’s Baosteel, smoothing the edges off steel plates. After his first year, the steel market began to slide and the company cut Wang’s monthly salary from $780 to about $620. A couple of months ago, Wang, 34, took a second job, earning $2. 25 an hour delivering food for KFC. He was so beat after a recent   steel shift that he mixed up a food order. Now, Wang’s scared he could lose his KFC job. ”I’m screwed,” he says wearily. ”I’m already down to my last chance. I only pray nothing will go wrong with my second job. This is what I think about every day. Don’t lose this job!” Manufacturing and industrial jobs like those at Baosteel helped drive employment in China over the last three decades and transformed tens of millions of lives. Factories provided opportunities for poor farmers like Wang to come to big coastal cities, make some money and save for the future. But China’s economy is changing. The nation’s industrial sector, which once helped fuel   economic growth, is in decline and some parts of the country are in recession. Meanwhile, the Communist Party is trying to make a crucial transition to a   economy focused on services and driven by consumer spending. When many analysts look at China today, they see a tale of two economies. From the gates of Baosteel in Shanghai’s suburbs, you can look 15 miles down Jiangyang North Road and see three of the world’s tallest skyscrapers rising from Lujiazui, the city’s financial district. Compared to Baosteel, downtown Shanghai might as well be another planet. It is not home to factory workers, but to financiers, lawyers, businesses owners and executives. Among them is Larry Dong, who oversees operations for Starbucks coffee shops in Shanghai. He’s not struggling with decline. He’s trying to manage growth. Dong’s task: opening and staffing 300 new Starbucks in the city and in neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces this year. Shanghai already has 450 Starbucks, more than any other city in the world, he says. Dong and Starbucks are riding the wave of consumer spending and service sector expansion. ”I think business is very good, because every year we see very high growth,” says Dong, sitting in Starbucks’ sleek store in Xintiandi, a pedestrian shopping area which is dotted with outdoor cafes. ”China is now Starbucks’ second biggest market around the world. It will quickly surpass the U. S. in the future and become the largest market.” In recent years, the fortunes of China’s steel industry have headed in the opposite direction. During the global financial crisis, the Chinese government launched a nearly $600 billion stimulus program, building everything it could to employ workers, pump up the economy and avoid a recession. It worked, but now the country faces thousands of empty apartment blocks and a mountain of local government debt. This means less demand for steel  —   and for workers like Wang. ”Producing steel is so cheap, raising pigs beats it,” says Wang, who plans to save what he can in the next two years and then head back home to the countryside. ”Now half a kilo [1. 1 lb.] of pork costs about $1. 50. How much does half a kilo of steel cost? Just a few cents.” Steel prices have rebounded somewhat in recent months, but the government says it must still cut at least 100 million tons of steel capacity in the next five years to begin to bring supply and demand into line. That means getting rid of at least 500, 000 steel jobs, according to Laura Zhai, a credit analyst with Fitch Ratings in Hong Kong. Zhai says shutting down just 10 percent of steel capacity will also force the government to confront $30 billion in debt. ”How are you going to repay the debt?” says Zhai, who adds that the overall    ratio in China’s steel sector is very high, 70 percent. When Larry Dong looks across the Xintiandi Starbucks, he sees China’s future: young professionals on smartphones and laptops, working, chatting and spending. Dong, 41, says rising   and upper   incomes are helping drive the company’s sales and expansion. When he began managing Shanghai’s first Starbucks in 2000, he made about $280 a month. Now managers make more than four times that, he says. Despite the country’s economic challenges, many Chinese remain optimistic about their own financial situation, according to a survey of 10, 000 people in 44 cities by McKinsey  Company.   percent of those surveyed said they were confident their income would increase significantly in the next five years, according to McKinsey’s 2016 China consumer report. ”The service industry in China, particularly the food and beverage business, benefited a lot from the dividends of China’s economic growth,” says Dong, who is studying for an executive MBA at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. ”There is a lot of room for the service industry to grow in the future.” But even with a healthy service sector, China’s overall economic growth continues to slow. The reason is basic math: Consumer spending and the service sector aren’t expanding fast enough to offset the slide in the old industrial economy. That decline is also affecting other sectors, such as banking. Bryson, 31, quit his job as a loan officer at a government bank earlier this year. He doesn’t want NPR to use his full name because talking about state banks is politically sensitive. Like Wang, the steelworker, Bryson also suffered a salary cut. He was making   fewer loans this year than when he started in 2012 because   industrial companies were doing so badly, they could no longer qualify. ”The entire bank’s revenue is down and the number of nonperforming loans is going up,” he says. ”Compared with other financial sectors, banking is no longer that attractive.” On a visit to Shanghai to train for a new job, Bryson says he sees China at a crossroads. ”China hasn’t found a new economic growth engine,” he says. ”If I had to use a word to describe the current state, it would be ’confusion.’ We don’t know where the country is headed.” China’s government is banking that services and consumption will drive the country’s economy into the future. But, as the experience of both Bryson and Wang suggest, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. NPR News Assistant Yang Zhuo contributed to this report."
"A somber procession began on Sunday in the courtyard of the former Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968. Everyone in Memphis knows about that piece of history, but until recently, folks were unaware of a massacre that happened in the same part of town 100 years earlier. On May 1, 1866, Memphis was home to a massacre that left dozens of black folks dead and countless others injured. This week in Memphis, the city is remembering that grim chapter in its history  —   a    atrocity that shocked the nation and was nearly forgotten. Stephen V. Ash, a history professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the author of A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook The Nation One Year After The Civil War, says newspapers of the era labeled what happened in Memphis a ”race riot,” mostly on the basis that it began as a fight between black Union soldiers and some Irish police officers. ”The rumor among the whites was that this was a   black uprising in South Memphis,” Ash says, ”and so white mobs began forming, marched into South Memphis and began indiscriminately shooting black men, women and children.” This went on for 36 hours. In the end, Ash says, 46 black people were dead, many others were beaten or raped, and black churches, schools and homes were burned to the ground. The mob attack wound up helping to shape the course of   politics and speed the passage of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment  —   guaranteeing citizenship to recently freed slaves. Phyllis Aluko, a   attorney, read Ash’s book and couldn’t believe she’d never heard about the incident, so she started the process of creating a historical marker to commemorate what had happened. First, she got the local chapter of the NAACP involved. It agreed to sponsor and pay for the marker. Then, Aluko submitted an application to the Tennessee Historical Commission, an organization whose mission includes marking ”important locations, persons, and events in Tennessee history.” What came next was a   debate over what to name the violence. The commission wanted the words ”Race Riot” at the top of the sign. But that phrase has troubling connotations for Beverly Bond, a historian at the University of Memphis. ”Naming is very important. If your name is John and I insist on calling you Johnny, it’s really a power relationship,” Bond says. ”Most people tend to think in a 20th century frame of reference that [race riot] must be   who are rioting and destroying their community.” In an email to the NAACP, one commissioner said that the term ”race riot” would ”stand the test of time.” Not necessarily, says Beverly Robertson. When she was director of the National Civil Rights Museum, she found that it wasn’t just the exhibits that needed routine maintenance, but the language and scholarship of history itself. Robertson is one of three   on the   Tennessee Historical Commission. The words ”race riot” didn’t sit well with her either, but she and others were outvoted. So when the commission finally insisted that those words appear on the sign, Robertson told the NAACP to pull the plug. ”If we don’t tell it right, then generations to come will not understand what literally did happen,” Robertson says. Instead, with the city’s blessing  —   and not the state’s  —   the NAACP put up a private marker that summarized what unfolded on the day of the massacre. Bryan Stevenson, founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala. says there’s a growing choir of voices demanding a reconsidered history of the former Confederacy, starting with public monuments. Stevenson believes the South should remember the story of slavery and its aftermath in the way Germany now marks the Holocaust. ”Until we change the landscape with these markers and these images with a new iconography, we’re going to be living in a space that is compromised by the absence of truth,” he says. At the end of Sunday’s procession, civic leaders, pastors, police officers and historians took pictures with one of the country’s first memorials to a   event. A simple historic marker, which states, in no uncertain terms, that the   killed there in 1866 died not in a riot, but in a massacre."
"Aside from the White House race, there’s another important battle this November that shouldn’t be overlooked  —   the fight for control of the U. S. Senate. Republicans won back the majority just two years ago after eight years in the political wilderness. But they could just as easily lose that newfound power, especially if a controversial GOP nominee like Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket. Republicans believe that likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton could also damage some Democrats, though, with low approval ratings herself and the shadow of her email scandal still lingering. But they acknowledge that the math isn’t in their favor and that they will lose ground. First, here’s the starting line: Republicans have a    seat advantage (two independents caucus with the Democrats). That means Democrats need to flip four seats if they win the presidency. (The vice president is president of the Senate and casts the tiebreaking vote.) If they lose, they need to pick up five for control. That’s a very doable task given the map. It’s also a presidential year, when key Democratic demographic groups, like young voters and single women, turn out in higher numbers than in midterm years. Because of that, the math and the map in 2014 heavily favored Republicans. Democrats were defending 21 seats, while Republicans had just 15 up. The opposite is true in 2016. The GOP is defending 24 seats compared with just 10 for Democrats. Republicans are defending seats in seven states President Obama carried in 2012, and most of them will be White House battlegrounds again  —   Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Six months out from Election Day, NPR is premiering its Top 10 Senate seats most likely to flip control. Notably, because of the map and the number of GOP seats in play, nine on this list are   seats. These lists will be based on our reporting with the campaigns and campaign committees on both sides, as well as public and private polling  —   and reporting from the field. We’ll be updating it at the first of each month. Here are our inaugural rankings: 1. Illinois ( ): Incumbent Mark Kirk has the unlucky distinction of being the Republican senator representing the bluest state in his caucus. The former representative notched a bipartisan record in the House but only narrowly won this Senate seat in 2010. That was a GOP wave year, and he faced a   Democratic nominee. It’s a different story in this presidential year. He’s facing Democrat Tammy Duckworth, a   representative and Iraq veteran who lost both her legs in a helicopter crash. Kirk had a major health setback in 2011 when he suffered a stroke. It has left him with some limited mobility, but he has recovered well. 2. Wisconsin ( ): Unlike Kirk or some of his other vulnerable colleagues, freshman Sen. Ron Johnson hasn’t built a moderate profile and really hasn’t tried to move to the center at all. That won’t help him in a presidential year, when Wisconsin leans Democratic. Wisconsin hasn’t gone Republican for president in 32 years. That’s very different than the 2010 environment that helped Johnson, a wealthy plastics manufacturer, unseat Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold. And guess who’s seeking a rematch? The progressive favorite is polling ahead of Johnson in early surveys, though the race has tightened. As with Kirk, with a GOP led by Trump at the top of the ticket, the odds move more in Feingold’s favor. 3. New Hampshire ( ): The next four contests are just narrowly separated. But with the Granite State being a presidential tossup state, this race between incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan will be one of the marquee races this cycle. A WMUR poll last month showed the race was a virtual dead heat, and the Republican was leading handily with independents. But Ayotte’s decision to join Senate Republicans in a refusal to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, has hurt her approval ratings, according to the survey. 4. Pennsylvania ( ): National Democrats got a boost last week when their favored candidate, former state environmental chief Katie McGinty, won a competitive primary over 2010 Democratic nominee Joe Sestak. Incumbent Pat Toomey, a former president of the conservative Club for Growth, narrowly defeated Sestak in the open race that year. The bitter Democratic primary this year was a costly endeavor. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent more than $1 million to boost McGinty over Sestak, and her own campaign coffers were significantly depleted. Toomey, meanwhile, has $9. 1 million in the bank, and he has looked to boost his moderate credentials for his work on gun control legislation and support for universal background checks. Pennsylvania has never elected a woman as governor or to the Senate, but Democrats think that will change with a woman as their nominee and especially if Trump is at the top of the ticket for the GOP. 5. Ohio ( ): This race is another matchup of two titans, with GOP Sen. Rob Portman defending his seat from former Gov. Ted Strickland. John Kasich narrowly defeated Strickland for governor in the GOP wave year of 2010. Portman has a mammoth $13. 4 million war chest for what’s sure to be a close, expensive and nasty contest. Democrats want to redefine Portman as a GOP stalwart instead of allowing him to portray himself as bipartisan. They are also banking on Portman being dragged down by Trump at the top of the ticket. Portman, on the other hand, is already hitting Strickland for his jobs record as governor. Republicans also want to want to chip away at the crossover credentials Strickland was able to hone especially in rural parts of the state. 6. Florida (  Rubio not seeking  ): There’s an argument to put this race higher up on the list, but until both parties settle their primaries in August it’s harder to handicap the outcome. Democrats are praying Rep. Patrick Murphy beats controversial fellow Rep. Alan Grayson, who is under an ethics investigation for allegedly improperly using his office and influence with a hedge fund he managed. Even with that significant baggage, Grayson remains popular with progressives and, by all accounts, the primary is tight. Republicans don’t have a clear nominee either, though, with four main candidates emerging. Rep. Ron DeSantis has conservative support, while Rep. David Jolly, a former state lobbyist, is on the outs with the party after he participated in a controversial ”60 Minutes” story to tout his bill that would ban lawmakers from raising campaign cash. He attended a fundraiser for his campaign just days later. Lt. Gov. Carlos   had initially seemed like a strong candidate but has had trouble raising funds. Republicans now say to keep an eye on wealthy homebuilder Carlos Beruff, who has said he intends to largely   his campaign and is already up on TV in the state. Ultimately, until either party settles on a nominee, it’s hard to predict where this one rightfully sits on the list. 7. Nevada (  Reid retiring): This is Republicans’ best (and some might say only) pickup opportunity this cycle. They were already targeting this seat, but their chances got a lot better when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced his retirement. Former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto should easily win her primary next month on the Democratic side. If she wins in November, she would be the first Latina in the Senate. Republicans’ favored candidate, Rep. Joe Heck, should easily beat back a challenge from controversial 2010 nominee Sharron Angle. The Cortez   race will be a close one, but if Hispanic voters are very motivated to go to the polls to vote against Trump, this pickup becomes much harder for Republicans. (Hispanics were almost 1 in 5 voters in the 2012 Senate election.) 8. Missouri ( ): This contest in the Show Me State might be the   contest to watch. Democrats got one of their best recruits this cycle when Secretary of State Jason Kander jumped in the race. Even Republicans privately admit that the    Afghanistan veteran worries them running against Sen. Roy Blunt, whom Democrats are eager to paint as too much of a Washington insider. If Missouri comes in play in the presidential race, this one could quickly give Republicans a huge headache. 9. North Carolina ( ): The Tar Heel State is moving up on both parties’ lists amid the flurry of controversy over the state’s   law, commonly referred to as the ”bathroom bill.” That law blocks transgender persons from using the bathroom that corresponds with the gender with which they identify. Former state Rep. Deborah Ross certainly wasn’t Democrats’ top choice to challenge Sen. Richard Burr, but she did outraise him in the first fundraising quarter. The incumbent, however, still has a cash advantage with $5. 8 million in the bank. If this one emerges as a presidential battleground (remember, Obama won it in 2008) it could certainly have   effects. 10. (tie) Arizona ( )  ( ): Arizona is another contest that’s been under the national political radar but might not stay there for long. Early on, it seemed like 2008 presidential nominee John McCain’s biggest threat against winning a sixth term would be a GOP primary challenger. That shouldn’t be a problem after several congressmen passed, but Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick could be a    rival. She has managed to win two tough congressional races in red districts (after losing in 2010) and even Republicans admit she shouldn’t be underestimated any longer. Polls show this one is close, but Democrats have tried to make Senate races competitive in the state with good recruits before and failed. Arizona still leans Republican in a presidential year, but if there are new Hispanic voters energized against Trump’s candidacy, that could certainly hurt McCain. In Colorado, just a few days ago, this contest to unseat Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet may have been higher on the list. But then several top GOP recruits failed to make the ballot last week. Former state Rep. Jon Keyser did successfully get reinstated after he initially fell 86 signatures short on his petitions. Both wealthy businessman Robert Blaha and former Aurora city councilman Ryan Frazier are also suing to get back on the ballot after some of their signatures were deemed invalid. The bottom line is that Republicans needed another strong recruit like  . Cory Gardner, who knocked off a Democratic incumbent last cycle. Even before the ballot snafus of the trio of Republicans, they didn’t get a clear top candidate. Bennet has proved to be a good fundraiser and candidate in the past, winning a tough race for a full term in an uphill battle in 2010."
"Donald Trump could solidify his position as the Republican Party’s    nominee with a win in Indiana Tuesday. Ted Cruz is hoping an endorsement from Indiana Gov. Mike Pence could help him buck recent polls and carry the Hoosier State. But while Cruz is campaigning with Indiana’s governor, Trump has been touring the state with a living Indiana legend: former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight. Introducing Trump at a rally last week, Knight gave the presidential candidate the ultimate compliment: ”I’ll tell you,” he said to a cheering crowd, ”that sumbitch could play for me.” Knight won three national championships with Indiana. He also developed a national reputation as a blunt, profane coach who threw chairs onto the court and  —   at times  —   physically assaulted his players. Trump made it clear he had no problem with that. ”Tough, tough,” he said about Knight. ”Would you say he was tough enough? Would you say? And not just tough,” Trump continued. ”Smart, tactical. He was a winner.” Knight is the latest in a growing rogues’ gallery of controversial and outspoken athletes and coaches to side with Trump. Trump recently bragged about an endorsement from Mike Tyson   the heavyweight boxer who served time for rape and infamously bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear. He’s also won public backing from     golfer John Daly, and   NBA star Dennis Rodman, who calls North Korean dictator Kim   a friend. Last month, Trump campaigned with Buffalo Bills coach Rex Ryan, who never shies away from a fight with the New York tabloids. Ryan praised Trump for always saying what’s on his mind. ”A lot of people want to say the same thing,” he said, ”But there’s a big difference. They don’t have the courage to say it. They all think it, but they don’t have the courage to say it.” Other athletes to endorse Trump to one degree or another  —   whether it’s a simple tweet, a conspicuously placed ”Make America Great Again” hat in a locker  —   include   former Braves closer John Rocker, water   onetime Yankee Paul O’Neill, and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. ESPN commentator and Washington Post columnist Kevin Blackistone said there’s a common theme to all these Trump endorsers. ”Maybe a collective middle finger,” he said. ”Because they have all thumbed their noses at authority. At institutional organizations, and continued to do things as they wanted to do it, regardless of the rules and regulations before.” All of these men are like Trump  —   they’re loud, brash, outliers in a field that’s otherwise pretty bland. ”The same way that Trump talks about political correctness, and how he’s not a part of that, is the same thing that these guys said throughout their careers all the time,” said Will Leitch, who writes about culture for Bloomberg Politics, and founded the sports website Deadspin. ”John Daly would say, I’m the one interesting golfer. I’m smoking and drinking beer. Because that’s what real people do. Not like these   golfers. Sound familiar? Days after aides promised Trump would begin to act more like a traditional presidential candidate, Trump promised a crowd of supporters he’d continue to stay  . ”I could change to presidential so easy,” he said. ”That would be much easier than doing what I’m doing now. Because I could talk nice and calm and everyone would fall asleep after ten minutes.” And Leitch said Knight and Trump both have a strategic   relationship with reporters. [Knight] would always get into fights with media but it was always staged for television,” said Leitch. Here’s a highlight reel ESPN compiled of Knight’s most memorable clashes with the media: But, Leitch argued, ”he realized it helped him maximize his influence. ..Bobby Knight knew how to manipulate the media.” Again  —   just like Trump. The candidate regularly refers to the traveling press corps as, ”disgusting reporters, horrible people,” but has acknowledged that he’s benefited from    coverage. Most political observers don’t think endorsements count for much   and in this particular case, Leitch agreed. ”I think your average person that loved Bobby Knight   that person was voting for Trump. I don’t think there’s any question.” And Knight isn’t exactly offering compelling reasons for undecided voters to back Trump. When NPR’s Scott Simon asked Knight what he thought of Trump’s domestic policy, Knight responded, ”How the hell do I know what I think about domestic issues? That’s for someone much smarter than I am.” ”You’ve got to understand that I’m just talking about a guy that I think has all those things that need to be done,” he told Weekend Edition. ”He’s my choice for the guy to do it. It’s just that simple.”"
"A trio of newly discovered   planets looks ideally suited to search for signs that these alien worlds might be able to support life. The planets orbit close to an unusually small, reddish star that’s about   the size of our sun and is far cooler, researchers report in the journal Nature. All three planets have one side that’s always facing the star, and one side that’s always facing away. That means one side is frigid and one side is scorching hot  —   but the regions in between might be downright cozy. The closest planet to the star orbits in about     Earth days. From the planet’s surface, the star would look like a reddish ball fixed to one spot in the sky. Scientists don’t yet know the mass of the planets or what they’re made of. The bizarre little solar system is just 40   away  —   practically in our backyard. Astronomers have discovered more than a thousand planets outside our solar system, but it’s still rare to find ones that look promising in terms of habitability. ”These planets are   they are temperate  —   we can’t rule out the fact that they are habitable  —   and they are   for atmospheric studies,” says Julien de Wit, a researcher at MIT. ”This is what we know at this stage.” Until recently, he says, some theorists argued that ultracool dwarf stars wouldn’t have planets at all. But a group led by Michael Gillon and Emmanuel Jehin of the University of Liege in Belgium took a risk and built a prototype telescope called TRAPPIST to look at 60 nearby ultracool stars. ”Now we actually know that these stars can produce such planets,” de Wit says. ”Planets around such stars are really great targets for advanced study, like atmospheric characterization.” Researchers have used telescopes to try to study starlight that passes through the atmospheres of other planets outside our solar system, he says, ”but these planets were not   these planets were not temperate.” What’s more, the fact that this is a small, cool star makes it easier to study the starlight that filters through the planets’ atmospheres, de Wit says. He notes they’re getting ready to do just that with the Hubble Space Telescope. Others agree that these particular planets are compelling. ”They’re all pretty darn interesting,” says Marc Kuchner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He thinks each looks like ”another compelling example of a planet that we really ought to spend some quality time getting to know.” He says the planets remind him of GJ 1214 b, a world about twice the size of Earth that scientists have been eager to probe. One recent study found that its atmosphere is dominated by some kind of exotic cloud cover. ”Clouds may be sort of romantic, but it’s so hard to tell what they’re made of!” says Kuchner, who notes that three planets around their cool star look like the next logical ones for study. ”This is the star with the lowest temperature that seems to have planets around it,” he adds. Researchers hope to study planets beyond our solar system with the help of the     James Webb Space Telescope, which can look for things such as water, ozone and carbon dioxide. Ultimately, the goal is to find not just the ingredients for life, but some indication that alien life is actually living there."
"If the entire, bizarre 2016 GOP presidential primary could be captured in one video, this might be it. While campaigning for his political life in Indiana just ahead of their critical primary on Tuesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was shaking hands alongside Indiana Gov. Mike Pence when a very vocal supporter of Donald Trump interrupted. Chants of ”Do the math! Do the math!” began in the distance, while supporters of his try to counter their own chorus of ”Cruz! Cruz!” But as the White House hopeful starts to exit, he comes    with one of his loudest detractors and proceeds to engage him and try to reason with him for more than eight minutes. ”I appreciate you coming out and standing up,” he told one man at the front of the pack of protesters. ”I’m running to be everyone’s president.” ”We don’t want you! Do the math!” the man yelled back. ”You asked [Ohio Gov.] John Kasich to drop out. It’s your turn.” Cruz asked the man what he likes about Trump, and the man pointed to Trump’s famed proposal to build a massive wall along the U. S.  border. ”Do you know, on the wall, that Donald told the New York Times editorial board he’s not going to build a wall and he’s not going to deport anyone,” Cruz responded. ”Where’s your Goldman Sachs jacket? We know your wife works there,” the man retorted later. ”Sir, with all respect, Donald Trump is deceiving you. He is playing you for a chump,” Cruz argued back, pointing to the fact that many   products are made overseas even as he rails against outsourcing. When the man jabbed back that Trump will best defend the Second Amendment, Cruz pointed to Trump’s past positions in support of gun control. ”I appreciate your being out here speaking,” Cruz even told the main, remaining calm throughout. ”If I were Donald Trump, I wouldn’t have come over here and talked to you. I wouldn’t have shown you that respect. In fact, I would have told those folks over there, ’Go over and punch those guys in the face.’ That’s what Donald does to protesters.” ”You’ll find out tomorrow,” the man said. ”Indiana don’t want you.” It wasn’t the only unfortunate incident that befell Cruz’s campaign over the weekend as he’s struggling to catch Trump ahead of Tuesday’s crucial vote. In a Hail Mary last week, the trailing GOP candidate tapped former rival Carly Fiorina as his   running mate. This Vine, however, of an awkward victory lap at that announcement last Wednesday has been circulating. And while campaigning in the Hoosier State over the weekend, Fiorina also took a tumble off the stage at a rally."
"Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign raised $26. 4 million last month, beating the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders financially for the first time in 2016. Sanders has routinely outpaced Clinton in fundraising this year thanks to a dedicated base of small donors. But these latest numbers indicate a political pivot Clinton’s fundraising is accelerating while Sanders’ is slowing. The Sanders campaign, which released its fundraising numbers Sunday, raised about $25. 8 million in April, down dramatically from the $46 million he raised the month before. In total, the former secretary of state has raised about $213. 5 million. Sanders has raised a similar amount  —   $210 million  —   but from far more individual donors giving small amounts online his average donation is around $27. Sanders says he will continue his campaign fight through the end of the primary calendar, although he is cutting his staff substantially and his odds of winning the Democratic nomination outright are almost mathematically impossible. His April fundraising numbers may be a sign that his supporters realize the presidency is increasingly out of his grasp. The latest fundraising numbers also suggest the Clinton campaign is looking ahead to a general election fight, with $30 million in the bank. The Sanders campaign did not report how much cash it has on hand. Priorities USA Action, a superPAC that supports Clinton, announced last month that it raised $11. 8 million in March and has more than $44 million cash on hand. Clinton also raised $9. 5 million in April for the Hillary Victory Fund  —   a joint fundraising operation that includes the Clinton presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state parties. In theory, that money is supposed to filter down to the DNC and the state parties that take part in the joint fundraising committee. But according to an analysis of FEC records by Politico, less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised has actually trickled into state party coffers. The Politico story finds that most of the money spent by the Hillary Victory Fund has gone toward campaign expenses that benefit Clinton. The Sanders campaign has expressed concern that the Hillary Victory Fund is a tactic to sidestep current FEC regulations to solicit   donations. NPR’s Peter Overby evaluated those claims here. Sanders also has a joint fundraising committee with the DNC, the Bernie Victory Fund, but it has remained dormant."
"”Welcome to Negro Night,” is how Larry Wilmore, the host of this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, kicked off the night, adding, ”Or as Fox News will report, ’Two thugs disrupt elegant dinner in D. C.’ ” The tepid reaction to that joke wouldn’t warm up much over the next 30 minutes. News outlets are saying that the comedian ”bombed” and ”flopped,” and some are chiding him for finishing out the routine by saying, ”You did it, my n****” to the president. But others say Wilmore’s poor reception had more to do with the audience than the jokes, and that we may look back on his performance with greater appreciation. Here’s a sampling of takes from across the spectrum. Jezebel’s Aimee Lutkin described the event as ”a roast presented to a crowd of people with no sense of humor” and speculated that Wilmore’s racial jokes may not have landed in part because of the overwhelmingly white crowd. One Huffington Post headline invited viewers to ”watch Larry Wilmore make everyone nervous,” positing that as a good thing. And loads of commentators on Twitter praised Wilmore’s routine, along these lines: But Slate’s Daniel Politi was less impressed. He says that Wilmore ”never really found his rhythm” and that the crowd’s reception ”knocked him off his game a bit.” ”Yes, it’s never easy to follow the president. But boy did Larry Wilmore miss the mark on Saturday night at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The vast majority of his jokes fell flat in a room that seemed to be groaning more often than smiling. Beyond a joke here and there, the whole monologue was really boring. A full 10 minutes could have easily been chopped from the whole thing and nothing would have changed.” Dustin Rowles at Pajiba. com agreed that Wilmore wasn’t helped by coming after President Obama, who as usual, crushed it: ”President Obama gave his last White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech tonight, and he was amazing. . .. ”As for Larry Wilmore? Ooof. It didn’t help that he had to follow Obama, but Wilmore didn’t do himself any real favors, either. The crowd was hard on him, and it was clear his confidence was shaken. There were a lot of groans, a lot of cringes, and at one point, even Don Lemon flipped him off. It didn’t work. He didn’t have the material to follow Obama, and weak material led to a bad response which led to an increasingly insecure performance. I like Larry Wilmore, and he did get off a few great jokes (including jokes about Guantanamo and drone strikes, at Obama’s expense) but it wasn’t a good overall speech (and the Ted   Killer bit went on way too long).” Hollywood Reporter’s John DeFore thought the poor reception might have been a simple case of wrong place, wrong time: ”The host of The Nightly Show made most of his jokes at the media’s expense, and in this room full of reporters, they probably sounded meaner than they were meant to. With no Donald Trump in the audience, it fell to Wolf Blitzer to maintain a humorless stone face when Wilmore mocked The Situation Room responding to recent personnel changes, Wilmore joked that MSNBC stood for ’Missing a Significant Number of Black Correspondents’ later he suggested a countdown clock on CNN’s screen was tracking the network’s ratings as they fell to zero.” Lastly, over at the Washington Post, Callum Borchers agrees that Wilmore’s routine didn’t go over well but thinks it might ripen with age, comparing it to Stephen Colbert’s 2006 performance: ”Colbert, like Wilmore, went for the jugular. The theme of his monologue was that journalists had been too soft in their coverage of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, behaving more like lapdogs than watchdogs as Bush led the United States into Middle East conflicts. And, like Wilmore, Colbert heard grumbling and even some booing as he delivered his punch lines. . .. ”But in hindsight, few would disagree with the underlying critique of Colbert’s satire. . .. So, chin up, Larry Wilmore. A decade from now, the same journalists who bristled at your commentary on Saturday might look back and say, ’You know what? He kind of had a point.’ ”"
"Dubbed by Newsweek a decade ago as ”the most dangerous man in Iraq,” Muqtada   the figure at the center of Iraq’s current political storm, isn’t the man many might recall from the past. A firebrand Shiite cleric who at first derived legitimacy from the prominence of his own father  —   a populist religious leader assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1999  —   Sadr became best known after the 2003 U. S. invasion for leading tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites, especially the poor, and for his propensity for brinkmanship and violence. His street power was unmatched, and he sanctioned brutal sectarian killings via his militia, the Mahdi Army, which battled both the Iraqi government and U. S. forces. Sadr, now 42, still holds tremendous sway, but has reinvented himself since then. He left Iraq for Qom, Iran, in 2008  —   to study Islam, he said  —   and returned in 2011. He did away with the Mahdi Army and started up new militias, one of which, the Saraya   or Peace Brigades, has fought on the side of Iraq’s government  —   and, by extension, the United States  —   against ISIS. Meanwhile, other   Iraqi Shiite militias have sprung up, largely eclipsing his own. And Sadr has turned his attention to politics. In 2012, Sadr called for the ouster of fellow Shiite Nouri   then the prime minister two years later, his allies won 34 parliamentary seats in elections that brought current Prime Minister Haider   to power. These days, in an   from his virulent,   past, a more mature Sadr claims to be on Abadi’s side. Huge demonstrations that Sadr began orchestrating in March have urged a resolution to a   political crisis that has paralyzed Abadi’s government, preventing it from pushing through needed reforms. ”Yes, yes, to Iraq no, no to corruption!” has been one slogan at   rallies, in a deliberate nod to nationalism and unity, not parochialism. Aside from the specific machinations in Iraq’s parliament, Sadr seems to be capitalizing on widespread anger at Iraqi institutions and commonplace corruption and incompetence. When his supporters stormed Baghdad’s Green Zone  —   encompassing Iraq’s government ministries, parliament and some embassies  —   over the weekend, it was chaotic but largely peaceful. ”It is misleading to depict the Sadrist storming of parliament as a revolutionary call to dissolve the institution,” write Renad Mansour of the Carnegie Endowment and Michael David Clark of the University of Cambridge. ”On the contrary, Sadr wants parliament to remain and to function effectively without delays.” The protesters did inflict ”property damage and violence against some individuals,” the U. S. Embassy said in a statement expressing concern. But it emphasized that Iraq’s government should ”move the political and economic reform process forward” and urged ”all parties to come together to defeat [ISIS] and to support the aspirations of the Iraqi people.” So what’s next for Sadr? On Sunday, he ordered demonstrators to leave the Green Zone, and they obeyed. Some analysts see Sadr continuing as a key political figure, possibly even as ”the last man standing.” For the moment, though, he has gone to Iran. Sadr’s Baghdad office tells NPR that he left the country Monday."
"Though it’s the world’s top infectious killer, tuberculosis is surprisingly tricky to diagnose. Scientists think that video gamers can help them create a better diagnostic test. An online puzzle released Monday will see whether the researchers are right. Players of a   game called EteRNA will try to design a sensor molecule that could potentially make diagnosing TB as easy as taking a home pregnancy test. The TB puzzle marks the launch of ”EteRNA Medicine.” The idea of rallying gamers to fight TB arose as two young Stanford University professors chatted over dinner at a conference last May. Rhiju Das, a biochemist who helped create EteRNA, told bioinformatician Purvesh Khatri about the game, which challenges nonexperts to design RNA molecules that fold into target shapes. RNA molecules play key roles in biology and disease. Some brain disorders can be traced to problems with RNA folding. Viruses such as H1N1 flu and HIV depend on RNA elements to replicate and infect cells. Das wants to ”fight fire with fire”  —   that is, to disrupt the RNA involved in a disease or virus by crafting new tools that are themselves made of RNA molecules. EteRNA players learn RNA design principles with each puzzle they solve. Khatri was intrigued by the notion of engaging the public to solve problems. His lab develops novel diagnostics using publicly available data sets. The team had just published a paper on a set of genes that could help diagnose sepsis and had other papers under review on influenza and TB. In an ”Aha!” moment during their dinner chat, Khatri says, he and Das realized ”how awesome it would be to sequentially merge our two approaches  —   to use public data to find a diagnostic marker for a disease, and then use the public’s help to develop the test.” TB seemed opportune as it has a simple diagnostic signature  —   a set of three human genes that turn up or down predictably after TB infection. When checked across gene data on thousands of blood samples from 14 groups of people around the globe, the behavior of the   set readily identified people with active TB, distinguishing them from individuals who had latent TB or other diseases. Those findings, published in February, have gotten serious attention  —   not only from curious patients and doctors but also from humanitarian groups eager to help bring a better TB test to market. It can currently take several tests to tell whether a person has active TB, including a chest   and sputum test. The Bill  Melinda Gates Foundation has started sending data to help the Stanford team validate a test based on the newly identified TB gene signature, says study leader Khatri, who works at the university’s Center for Biomedical Informatics Research. The test under development would use a common method called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to probe samples for specific messenger RNAs  —     molecules that carry portions of the genes’ DNA code to parts of the cell where proteins are made. PCR is a mainstay of modern laboratories, but it requires machines that aren’t always available in rural areas or developing countries. Das thinks EteRNA players could help create a simpler TB test. The test would need a ”switch” molecule  —   one that switches its shape when it senses that concentrations of the three signature RNAs are just so. If such a molecule existed, Das says, diagnosing TB could be as easy as reading a home pregnancy kit, in which sensor molecules embedded on test strips react with a signature hormone to produce colored bands indicating a positive result. The latest EteRNA puzzles have prepared players for the TB challenge by teaching them how to create RNA molecules that switch their folding patterns in the presence of other chemicals or molecules. Earlier EteRNA puzzles didn’t have the switch component they simply asked players to arrange RNA’s four building blocks into sequences to create strands that fold into desired shapes. Before the game went public in early 2011, EteRNA started as an RNA hack of Foldit, a crowdsourcing project that leverages similar   skills to predict how proteins are folded. But in one regard EteRNA is fundamentally different. Whereas in Foldit players’ predictions were compared against computer simulations, EteRNA puzzle solutions are scored by real molecules. Players vote on each batch of RNA designs, and winning structures get synthesized in a Stanford biochemistry lab. Insights gained from ”wet lab” experiments with the synthesized molecules help players design more complex molecules in subsequent puzzles. EteRNA was conceived as an ”  citizen science project that includes actual experiments as part of the game play,” Das says. The game is accessible at www. eternagame. org. The game has attracted more than 100, 000 players so far. ”You can start out not knowing any of the science,” says Jeff   a computer systems manager at UC Berkeley who got hooked on EteRNA 4   years ago. In early rounds, EteRNA guides players through small tasks that teach the rules of the game. ”You start to get a sense for what things go together to make an RNA design fold the way you want,”   says. ”While you’re doing that, you’re gaining points and rising in rank.” Games like EteRNA and Foldit show just how far citizen science has come. Foldit made a splash in 2011 when nonexpert players took just several weeks to solve the structure of an enzyme important for replication of an   virus  —   a problem that had stumped scientists for the previous decade. As for EteRNA players, they aren’t just glued to their screens solving puzzles over lunch. They’re diving into the RNA literature and pushing science forward by forming and testing their own hypotheses, even organizing their own conferences. In February,   and other top gamers published a report in the Journal of Molecular Biology  —   which many consider the first   publication of research entirely conceived and carried out by citizen scientists. In another crowdsourcing victory published last month, nonexperts who played a quantum mechanics game developed strategies that outperformed scientists’ computer algorithms. And this week, EteRNA Medicine will engage citizen scientists with its first puzzle aimed at a specific disease. Now wait, you might be thinking, can’t computers be trained to do this stuff? ”On some level, the answer is likely yes,” says Adrien Treuille, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who worked with Das to develop EteRNA. ”We should be able to train computers to solve RNA puzzles, and they should be able to do it more quickly and with fewer errors.” But here’s the rub: Artificial intelligence may churn out an answer but won’t tell you how it got there. Treuille says ”the crux of the human aspect of science is looking at data and coming up with understandable explanations for it  —   and asking new questions you didn’t initially think to ask.” Game on. Esther Landhuis is a freelance science journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow her at @elandhuis."
"Ballerina Misty Copeland, who made history when she became the first black female principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre last summer, now has her own Barbie doll. The doll wears a costume similar to Copeland’s for her Firebird role. ”My goal has always been to be a principal dancer with ABT,” Copeland told NPR back in 2014. She has accomplished that goal  —   and in a video about the new doll that was released Monday, she says she played with Barbie dolls until she was 13, the same year she started ballet. ”I was a very shy girl,” she says, adding that Barbie dolls gave her a way to dream  —   because, Copeland says, ”Barbie can transform into anything.” The doll is part of Barbie’s Sheroes program that honors female heroes who break boundaries, a line of toys modeled on other famous women, from Ava DuVernay and Emmy Rossum to Kristin Chenoweth and Eva Chen. Lisa McKnight, Barbie’s general manager and senior vice president, says: ”As a brand, we want to honor women, like Misty, who are inspiring the next generation of girls to live out their dreams. We know role play often leads to real ’play’ in life and we’re thrilled to celebrate Misty with her very own doll.” Dressed in a red bodysuit, the Misty Copeland Barbie Doll includes a tulle headpiece and ballet shoes. It retails for $29. 95  —   but shortly after it was released, it was only available for   on the Barbie Collection website."
"In May 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed by a team of Navy SEALs in Abbotabad, Pakistan. To mark five years since the death of the man whose terrorist network carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA posted a series of tweets   the raid. Responses on Twitter called the move ”strange” and ”puzzling” and shared memes that essentially said, ”No.” (The CIA’s tweets are embedded at the bottom of this post.) In a statement released over the weekend, CIA Director John Brennan hailed the raid as ”a masterpiece of planning and execution.” And agency spokesman Ryan Trapani told ABC News, ”It is appropriate to remember the day and honor all those who had a hand in this achievement.” ABC adds: ”[Trapani] noted that the CIA has done postings to mark other historical events, including the Glomar operation, Argo,   shootdown, and the evacuation of Saigon.” Some Americans have struggled with how to respond to bin Laden’s death since it happened. The day after the raid, NPR’s Linton Weeks wrote: ”Of course there is relief that an evil mastermind cannot commit acts of terror in the future. But is it ever a good idea  —   from a spiritual or philosophical standpoint  —   to celebrate with beer and good cheer over the death of anyone, even a widely acknowledged monster?” He noted that a popular status on Facebook that day was a quote attributed to Mark Twain: ”I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” However you remember the event, here are some things to keep in mind: The raid, approved by U. S. officials on April 29, began in the early morning of May 2 in Pakistan (still the afternoon of May 1 on the U. S. East Coast). President Obama addressed the nation to announce the   leader’s death about 10 hours after the helicopters left Afghanistan bound for Pakistan. The     overnight as news came in, in the end noting bin Laden’s burial: ”A government official told reporters that the body of Osama Bin Laden was buried at sea from the deck of the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier, in the north Arabian Sea. The official said the body was washed in accordance to Islamic practices and a religious verse was read and translated into Arabic. The body was placed on a flat board and tipped.” Journalist Peter Bergen outlined the search for bin Laden in his 2012 book, Manhunt. On Fresh Air, Bergen told Dave Davies that the U. S. used classic forms of human intelligence to zero in on bin Laden’s location, tracking a Kuwaiti courier and watching the compound’s clotheslines to figure out who was living there. The Senate Intelligence Committee has challenged the CIA’s claim that enhanced interrogation techniques helped locate bin Laden, as The   has reported. Another fascinating aspect to all of this is the story of bin Laden himself and of the organization he built,  . NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly wrote a profile of how bin Laden went from ”the pampered son of a Saudi millionaire to the world’s   terrorist.” Daniel Benjamin, then the State Department’s point man on terrorism issues, told Mary Louise that bin Laden’s success lay in casting his agenda as religious rather than political, and combining that with the fundraising skills to finance his goals. ”So he really reshaped the struggle. He’s managed to create both an authentic cause, an authentic ideology, and to find the means to carry it out,” Benjamin said. ”And I fear that the path that he hewed, he cut, is one that others are going to travel for some time to come.” The question Mary Louise left us with back in 2011 was: What happens to the movement that Osama bin Laden helped create? NPR’s Rachel Martin took up that question yesterday with Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker. Wright noted that  ’s current leader, Ayman   ”has none of the magnetism that bin Laden had.” But he added: ”The organization, though demoralized and splintered, is certainly not dead. And I think that’s something that we should be aware of. It may be in competition with ISIS, but it hasn’t gone away.” Documents found in the 2011 operation show that bin Laden actually predicted the fissures between terrorist groups. ”In the final years of his life, bin Laden expended a great deal of energy warning his followers not to establish an Islamic state too soon,” Mary Louise reported this past March. ”He believed it would prove impossible to defend and might end up destroying the movement he had helped found.”"
"When writers try to describe the music of the metamorphic torch singer Anohni, they reach for words like ”liminal” and ”ethereal,” recognizing that its effect is enchanting, opening up new worlds of identity and consciousness. In The New Yorker, Hua Hsu recently compared her voice to Boy George, Nina Simone and ”what I imagine a radiant, healing crystal sounds like”  —   which, setting aside the phrase’s whiff of   Age snobbery, is actually quite accurate. Yet in the 16 years she’s publicly explored how her epicene expressionism might draw people into the shifting borderlands of the self, Anohni has used her power to transport to create alternate routes into today’s harsh realities. She has embraced the challenging role of the political artist with growing force and explicitness, culminating in her new album Hopelessness, a frankly radical denunciation of what Anohni views as the apocalyptic effects of America’s policies both at home and abroad. As a transgender woman (her eight previous albums were released under her birth name, Antony Hegarty, with the   group the Johnsons) Anohni initially gained attention as a particularly graceful exemplar of   genderqueer liberation. Intimate erotic yearning defined her early career as she has evolved, she has cast her personal stories within the larger context of marginalized others and the squandered earth itself. On her recordings and in performances grounded in the legacies of radical feminism, Anohni has posed a provocation to her audience: Allow beauty to transport you while remaining aware of the often ugly, humanly generated circumstances from which it defiantly springs. Hopelessness goes further, to tear down the fiction that a separate sphere can exist where beauty triumphs over the evil evident in developments like the growing international refugee crisis, increasingly dramatic shifts in climate, or the emergence of drone strikes as a key element of military policy. As an American citizen, the     Anohni could no longer pretend that she exists in an art bubble. ”A big part of [the abum] is an examination of my own complicity and my own inability to truly extricate myself from the brokenness of the system that I’m a part of,” she recently said in a phone conversation from her home in New York. ”It’s that chasm, that denial that I wanted to model, an inquiry into and within myself.” This kind of   is a core step within the development of the political artist. It’s a stance against the passivity of despair, representing the decision to continue to witness and attempt to change, ”as opposed to just pinning a manifesto to my lapel and throwing myself off the building.” And it’s disruptive. To enact it, Anohni has departed the comfort of the seated theater for the sweatier space of the dance club. Working with the producers Daniel Lopatin and Ross Birchard, respectively known as Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke, she’s made intelligent dance music her vehicle for oracular activism. Heralded by the monumental, devastating singles ”4 Degrees” (about the earth boiling as the icecaps melt) and ”Drone Bomb Me” (sung in the voice of a young girl longing for death after her family is killed in a strike) Hopelessness directly confronts the forces Anohni recognizes as  : the   complex, the wealthy and President Obama, who is addressed by name in a Delphic condemnation that comes  . The subject matter on Hopelessness can be grisly  —     execution, torture, animals expiring in trees  —   but the music, and Anohni’s singing especially, brings the emotional rush of revelation. Like the protest music she cherishes, from Nina Simone’s ”Mississippi Goddam” to the   club hits of artists like Soft Cell and Bronski Beat, Hopelessness explores what Anohni calls ”dancing from the seat of anger and despair.” 2016 is turning out to be a glorious year for agitation within popular music. Yet political art  —   and Hopelessness is rigorously committed to that realm  —   asks its audience to be familiar with cultural sources and symbolic tools, with a vocabulary that engages with the world and culls from the work of those who have preceded them in the streets, in the pages of scholarship and throughout the history of radically engaged cultural expression, adding their own reference points, expanding and refining it. Hopelessness, a pop album that is simultaneously an act of dissent, offers one way to explore such a vocabulary. Since the release of ”4 Degrees” last fall, Anohni has made her frames of reference obvious. Through the music itself and in interviews, she is pointedly and relentlessly repeating herself. This is an activist’s strategy as much as an artist’s. The ideas and images Anohni continually invokes combine to create a guide to the songs and her performances, grounded in feminism, queer theory, ancient mythologies, an engagement with   protest movements of the recent past and a contemporary understanding of   class structures. Agree with Anohni’s views or don’t  —   Hopelessness is a deeper experience if you know the conceptual building blocks upon which it rests. What follows is a lexicon of Anohni’s apocalyptic vision, from its alphabetical beginning to its   end. Anohni has frequently spoken of wishing to ”annihilate” her body within this project. ”I’ve always been somewhat uncomfortable on the stage and I’ve always felt like physically having to negotiate my own presence as a part of presenting work has always been a source of angst for me,” she says. Dance music, which has often featured voices manipulated within an electronically generated sonic energy field, offered the chance to disappear within a mix the way working with the acoustic Johnsons did not. That said, Anohni assures, ”My voice would remain. It wasn’t so much that I personally would be annihilated.” The symbolic obliteration of her body also shifts the audience’s attention away from Anohni as an individual and creates a wider field of empathy for the characters she means to represent. Her name shift seems to support the evidence that Hopelessness comes at a juncture in Anohni’s career, but it is partially coincidental she has never identified as a man, she says, and has used this fluid ”spirit name” for a while among friends. But the music’s grounding in a transgender world view that rejects binary   definitions while insisting upon a profound link with nature is central. ”I think the last 50 years of investigation, even just in the research of transgender people in the West experimenting with biology physically, is a revelation of the obvious and direct correlation and intersection between biology and gender expression or biology and identity,” Anohni says. ”Of course there’s a biological foundation for so many aspects of our being . .. it’s the mind that thinks it’s beyond nature, that has this sort of omniscient view over the land.” Anohni’s own life in a body that defies limits others would impose is one source of her empathy with others whose bodies have suffered from the violence of war or the confinement of the prison system in songs like ”Drone Bomb Me” and ”Execution.” The ”hard beats” Hudson Mohawke has built for artists like Kanye West, and the arching soundscapes of Oneohtrix Point Never, gave Anohni a chance to sing harder and with more abandon than she has in the past. ”It is a relief to sing to a synchronized beat, it sent me free in a way, not having to negotiate that aspect of the feel of a song, so you can be like a dolphin jumping in the waves,” she explains. ”This project was all about Anohni soaring over the music,” Lopatin adds in an email. Hopelessness is not exactly a club album  —   several songs are more contemplative or experimental, demanding a quiet listen  —   but the presence of beats sets its activist mood. The body, someone on Twitter recently quipped, is the new ”other.” Theorists once used the term ”other” to refer to people whose full humanity isn’t acknowledged by the ruling powers colonized subjects, for example, or refugees. Saying ”bodies” instead makes the presence of these outsiders more immediate while keeping the focus on their oppression. Anohni’s fierce focus on bodies brings these figures on the edge to the center. Nearly every track on Hopelessness turns on visceral imagery: human heads blown off, sea creatures strangled by plastic bags, the earth itself a chemotherapy patient, sickened by injections. She also imaginatively inhabits the bodies of conflict’s victims, and some have criticized her for appropriating these experiences. She believes that her gestures feed true connection. ”There are other lines and bridges of connectivity, more spectral ways that we connect and pour through each other,” she says. ”Not to disregard or underestimate my privilege as a white person in the world . .. yet the feeling persists in me that this is bigger than any one of us.” The former U. S. soldier now imprisoned for violating the Espionage Act in 2013, after leaking classified material via WikiLeaks, was foremost in Anohni’s mind when she recorded her dirge against the sitting president, ”Obama.” In several interviews, she has said that Manning’s conviction strongly contributed to her disillusionment with a president whom she once supported, in part, because he seemed to advocate greater transparency in government. Anohni views Manning as a figure of great moral courage who has been reduced to powerlessness. She also feels connected to the former Bradley Manning as a trans woman. ”I have more in common with another transgender person in Iran than I did with a white American solider,” Anohni says. Manning, soldier turned protester, is a kindred spirit at home. The brutal imagery of Hopelessness is put forth as a kind of penance. By immersing herself in depictions of the violent fallout of war and environmental waste, Anohni hoped to face her own part in their unfolding. ”The idea was to model an examination of my own complicity,” she says, engaging in a form of   fundamental to radical awakening. ”And honestly not to indulge guilt and shame and hopelessness, but to start to confront that chasm of denial that is preventing me from being able to change my trajectory.” On songs like ”Crisis,” she is the one filling mass graves and subjecting Guantanamo detainees to torture. As an American taxpayer, Anohni notes, ”It is me who pays for those drone bombs.” Environmentalism is a ruling principle for Anohni ”I can’t be separated from nature,” she says, ”I am one of her faces.” Discussing Hopelessness, she invokes ”ecocide,” coined in 2010 by British lawyer Polly Higgins in an attempt to have it added to the U. N.’s list of crimes against peace. This more pointed term underlies jeremiads like ”4 Degrees,” whose narrator is an American   maniac graphically anticipating the suffering of all the goddess’s creatures. Anohni’s   song ”Manta Ray,” not included on Hopelessness, offered a gentler invective the film it soundtracked is Racing Extinction, a portrait of the left’s underground   warriors. Throughout Hopelessness, Anohni voices the movement of the psyche through fear into other states: sometimes defiance, sometimes despair. Confronting fear is a common first step in an activist’s life, as she abandons the comforts of the familiar. In the past, Anohni says, her music has often traded in home comforts: ”People tend to rely on my voice as a safe place, and I’ve viewed my voice as something that could help to create more safety,” she says. ”This was a real departure from that. I was venturing into more complicated and conflicted ways of using the voice.” Conjuring fear, the songs on Hopelessness suggest that admitting its presence  —   and that it may be well grounded  —   may spur action. In 2012, Anohni developed the phrase ”future feminism” to describe two friends and   artists, Johanna Constantine and Kembra Pfahler, whose work struck her as ”frontier, almost feral” in its establishment of a new vocabulary. Later she formed a collective with them and the sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady to realize the potential of the term. Hopelessness is an outgrowth of Future Feminism  —   an attempt to recast notions of matriarchy, a world view grounded in the feminine, in ways that fit a time when the essentialism that limited earlier such feminist imaginings has been loosed from its moorings. Though the album is called Hopelessness, for Anohni the moment of emerging from its silence, which this music represents, is hopeful. ”Increasingly, as we get older, I feel like we don’t have anything to lose anymore,” she told me. This sense, however, does not lead her to despair. ” When an animal knows it’s going to die  —   an animal in the jaws of [another] animal, it stops crying out. It’s succumbs. And so me, hopelessness was a feeling  —   not a physical reality, except within me or within a person. Like optimism or pessimism that has very little bearing on reality, beyond like a feeling within a person. But it’s a feeling that was the starting point of this record.” The sounds that follow silence can, Hopelessness suggests, break the bonds of the world. In the reaching way she forms her phrases, exploring the most delicate edges of melisma and the areas where one register slides into another, Anohni has developed a vocal style that continually suggests the emergence of something new beneath the notes. The title track of Hopelessness demonstrates how a cry of despair can transform into a call for   her mournfulness, the spiritual cry of a motherless child, spins out like a silken thread that becomes a new lifeline. Doubled and tripled in a mix whose rhythms recall South African freedom songs, it deconstructs the process of uplift arising from the ashes of grief. ”I don’t think that I’m a lone voice. I’m not even interested in being a lone voice,” Anohni says. Dwelling on the interconnectedness of all beings gives her a sense of community, but also feeds the implication, present throughout Hopelessness, that we are all to blame for the world’s mess. In ”Marrow,” the final song on Hopelessness, Anohni and Lopatin build a bubbly synth roundelay organized around a trilling recitation of place names: Africa, Europe, Brazil, China, Great Britain, more. It’s a small world of nations, led by America, destroying their host, the earth: The song’s other verses cast the planet as a woman whose bones are being sucked dry. ”What I wanted to try to do with this record was at least draw a circle around a whole system of issues that are codependent and that exacerbate one another, and amplify each other, and climax in ecocide,” Anohni says. But she also sees the opposition to such destructive forces as more connected than some may think. ”There’s a sea of people thinking these thoughts,” she says. ”All I did was to transfer them into edible pop bites, because people hear music and they experience the context of music in a different way. I wanted to maximize the constructive use of my sphere of influence, which is in music.” To move away from the comfort of her lush earlier music, Anohni called upon a particular divine force: the archetype of the dark mother, known in Hinduism as Kali. ”Kazuo Ono (the Japanese butoh master whose visage graced her album The Crying Light) taught me when he’s dancing through the ruins, in Butoh, to aestheticize the unimaginable  —   the atrocities of World War II. Turn the black light inside each molecule of suffering into a white light, in much the same way that Yoko Ono talks about turning all the hatred she felt she was bombarded with after John Lennon died into love. It’s a creative boon  —   Nina Simone would call it a boon,” Anohni says of the hostility or tragedy these artists have encountered. She taps into her own sources of it throughout Hopelessness. Anohni’s concept of ”annihilating” her body, of taking the focus away from herself as the music’s conduit, she had in mind the great disco and soul singer Martha Wash, who fought for her own image to be used in videos and artworks for many dance hits she performed in the 1980s and 1990s. To Anohni, Wash’s erasure from the credits of hits like C+C Music Factory’s ”Gonna Make You Sweat” exemplifies capitalism’s hypocrisies, especially about race. ”I wanted to circle that paradigm like a wolf,” she says. ”In my mind it is one of the fault lines of American and Western pop culture, and as such is a source of tremendous and conflicted power. We reach for and bathe in the expression of women of color, while generally affording women of color the least opportunity in society. [Wash] is institutionally maligned in the day to day, and yet we take refuge in what we project to be her moral authority and her transcendental   expression.” Anohni has much more authorial control over her music than Wash did as a vocalist hired by producers. Yet she hopes that her own explorations of vocal disembodiment on Hopelessness contributes to greater acknowledgment of the historical presence, in pop, of women like Wash. The supermodel became Anohni’s channel in the   video for ”Drone Bomb Me,” weeping profusely as she performed in the spirit of the song’s child victim. As in her performance piece ”Turning,” which featured thirteen artists  —   women and transsexuals, all conventionally beautiful  —   taking turns in the spotlight as Anohni sang. While some might question Anohni’s fascination with the feminine ideal, she finds it useful. ”What would be the aspirational body that would best deliver the message of these songs, in the most universal terms, such that they could participate most vigorously in the cultural conversation?” she says she asked herself. It’s a provocative approach, one that forces the viewer to examine other idealized images  —   including those of   children often used in what some have dubbed ”poverty porn.” In such visual choices, Anohni engages with questions surrounding beauty as a moral force. If a beauty like Campbell’s is often cast as frivolous  —   compared, say, to the poignant image of a starving girl  —   what happens when the model’s face, streaked with tears, seems to transmute into that more acceptably touching image? How and why do we decide which kind of beauty is edifying, and which decadent? The Hudson   ”Drone Bomb Me,” a seductively soulful track whose lushness plays startlingly against lyrics about mechanized murder, asks similar questions in sound. When an interviewer brings up the specter of Cassandra, Greek tragedy’s figure of thwarted prophecy, she laughs, saying nearly everyone has invoked that fiery muse. She has problems with that forebear’s ultimate defeat. She does agree that Hopelessness mines the oracular. ”I’ve definitely been using the word oracle to describe my theme of trying to create a feminine oracle made up the fabric of many women’s faces. That’s the idea that we’ve been developing for the live presentation of the work.” Anohni finds ”a kind of moral authority” in the oracular, ”like Nina Simone in ”Mississippi Goddamn” or Buffy   on ”Little Wheel Spin and Spin.” There’s always been these kinds of witches who have stepped outside and raised their voices and named an explicit truth with great moral authority. ” Anger is an energy embedded within most structures of protest even nonviolent actions usually incorporate spaces where cathartic reactions against oppression can be voiced. Ahohni focused on the way ”dancing from anger and despair” became a survival mechanism for gay men in the discos and on the streets during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. ”Rage is a really fun place to dance from,” she told Brandon Stosuy in Pitchfork. ”Especially if you feel like you’re telling the truth.” The glee in her voice as she intones some of the most vicious details on Hopelessness results from this insight. When it comes to politics and social change, Anohni is not a relativist. She believes along with William Shakespeare that truth will out when corruption is defeated. ”Reality has been so politicized such that people truly believe, mostly, that there are two versions of reality, a conservative and a liberal version,” she says. ”In my mind, there’s only one version of reality and then those who lie about it. Much as in a court of law.” This certitude fed Anohni’s courage in undertaking an explicitly political, deeply radical and determinedly confrontational project at a time when few popular musicians, even those operating within the mostly progressive environs of the indie or art worlds, dare to do so. The classic tale of a weapon disguised as a gift has been one Anohni has continually invoked in describing Hopelessness. And it is that horse: a mighty beast whose wondrousness will draw in those who may find themselves  —   or at least their comfortable world views  —   cut down by what emerges from its gut. Her hope is that the delight in the music pushes people, in the best ways, into the battle whose outcome is nothing less than the fate of the world."
"Yes, it’s been a couple of days, but we felt compelled to share: At 100 years old, Ida Keeling set a new world record for the   dash on Saturday at Penn Relays in Philadelphia. She completed the race against competitors 80 and up in 1 minute and 17. 33 seconds  —   the fastest time recorded for a centenarian. (For comparison’s sake, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt holds the   world record of 9. 58 seconds.) In case you weren’t already feeling inadequate enough, here’s the advice Keeling offered after her event, speaking with NBC’s Carolyn Manno: ”Eat for nutrition, not for taste. And exercise at least once a day.” Oh, also: ”Love yourself.” Watch the race and the interview via NBC: Keeling told Runners World that she was ”very happy” to show the crowd ”a nice example of what you can do for yourself.” Runners World adds: ”Ida Keeling smiled and celebrated by performing five pushups on the infield after Saturday’s race, though she may not have been able to hear all the cheering from the 34, 000 in attendance. Her daughter had taken out one of her hearing aids to prevent Ida from becoming distracted by the noise.” In April, The New York Times ran a profile of Keeling, who the newspaper says is ”   and weighs 83 pounds.” Keeling told the Times she learned resilience living through the Great Depression. ”It taught you to do what you had to do without anyone doing it for you,” she said. She was an active demonstrator during the civil rights movement, all while a widowed mother of four, the Times reports. Decades ago, two of her sons died in unsolved killings that were suspected to be   the paper says. ”Running became her therapy,” Ohio’s Beacon Journal reported in 2014. At 67, she leaped into competitive racing  —   and she hasn’t stopped since."
"Nancy Glynn, 27, called it her ”NICU diet,” but it wasn’t about weight loss. It was about financial survival. When her son, Hunter, was born two months premature, he was 2 pounds, 10 ounces and fighting for his life. Hunter was in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, for more than a month. The ”diet” comes in because Glynn, a waitress, couldn’t afford to buy meals in the hospital cafeteria. In large part, that’s because that whole time she was out of work, she wasn’t getting paid, and  —   because Hunter was premature  —   she and her husband hadn’t had as much time to save up. ”I thought I had some paid leave,” said Glynn. ”And then I started looking through my employee handbooks, and I was going, ’Wait a minute. No, I don’t.’ ” Paid Family Leave has become a frequent topic of conversation  —   at the playground, in corporate human resources offices and in state and local government. On the campaign trail, it easily gets lost. That’s despite broad public support and candidates on both sides of the aisle who have raised proposals for it. Public support for a federal paid family leave program is widespread and bipartisan. A poll taken earlier this year for the National Partnership for Women and Families found 76 percent of likely 2016 voters say they favor the creation of a federal fund for paid family and medical leave. But it doesn’t rank on lists of top issues weighing on the minds of voters. The Family and Medical Leave Act was signed in 1993 and created up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the birth of a child, caring for a sick relative or for a personal illness. Since it is unpaid, however, many people can’t afford to take it. The NICU Had Graham Crackers, The NICU had graham crackers. ”And they had those little tiny juices that, you know, in all honesty you need to have three of those things to really equal out to one glass,” Glynn said. ”Well, that’s what I survived on, honestly, for weeks. I hardly ate anything.” Glynn and her husband, a warehouse supervisor, live in Manchester, N. H. Neither of them gets paid vacation or sick time, and she only discovered after she got pregnant that she didn’t have paid maternity leave either. Only 12 percent of   workers have access to paid family leave, though 39 percent are able to piece it together by using sick or vacation time, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers and U. S. Department of Labor. The Utility Bills Can’t Wait, The challenges Glynn faced aren’t isolated or particularly new. But the idea of paid family and medical leave for everyone is gaining steam politically, especially on the left. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed legislation creating a   program in his state. California just expanded its program, and both candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president regularly talk about paid leave in their stump speeches to much applause. Glynn watches discussions of this issue with great interest. Last summer, Glynn’s little family was hit hard again. She had another son, Sawyer. He, too, was premature. He only lived for an hour. A little less than three months later, she was back at work. ”When it was time for me to go back to work, the first question everybody asks you is, ’Are you really ready to come back?’ ” Glynn said. ”And I wasn’t. And I’m still not completely myself yet.” But the bills couldn’t wait. ”They kept my job, which was fantastic,” Glynn said. ”And they were supportive in the sense of, you know, emotionally being there. But unfortunately financially we couldn’t handle it. Even now, just yesterday, we were trying to group our money together to be able to keep our heat from getting disconnected again.” It’s Not ’An Epidemic Of Personal Failings’ A number of societal and political changes in the United States since the 1990s have brought the idea of paid leave heightened attention this election year. The Obama administration has made a big push people talk a lot more publicly about   balance than they used to more men want to take paternity leave and more women than ever are the primary breadwinners in their households, to name a few. NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben explored the reasons the issue is now registering. She also looked at why so many other countries in the developed world mandate paid leave, but the U. S. does not. Kristin   CEO of the   advocacy group MomsRising, said people have long thought of these as personal problems, not public policy challenges. But, she added, that attitude is changing. ”People are realizing that when this many people are having the exact same problem at the exact same time, we don’t have an epidemic of personal failings where people simply just couldn’t cobble together nonexistent access to sick days or to paid time off,”   said. ”We have actually a national structural problem that we can solve together.” In addition to New York’s and California’s recent efforts, Rhode Island and New Jersey also offer paid family leave. And, in the private sector,   businesses like Netflix and Yahoo! have made a show of offering paid family leave, as they use benefits to try to attract the best workers. Where Do The Candidates Stand? Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want a federal program offering 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave that would partially make up for lost wages. Sanders would pay for it with a payroll tax split by the employer and employee. He supports a Senate bill that would do just that. Clinton says this amounts to a tax increase on the middle class, something she has vowed she would not do. Clinton would pay for her   program with other tax increases on the wealthy. Before he dropped out of the presidential race, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio called for a tax credit to give employers an incentive to offer paid leave to their employees. In the business world, some argue this isn’t something the government should deal with or mandate. Instead, they say, employers should offer more attractive benefits to their workers on their own. Lisa Horn with the Society for Human Resource Management argues that a federal   program would be a new entitlement. Her organization encourages its members to offer paid leave as a perk, to help recruit the best employees. ”We feel strongly that we should be looking for ways to encourage and incentivize and help employers continue to innovate in that area rather than pursuing those rigid mandates,” Horn said. In the current political environment, with a   Congress that doesn’t favor creating a new program, a voluntary   approach is winning out nationally. There isn’t a massive political force demanding paid family and medical leave. But advocates say that could be a    problem. Politicians haven’t historically campaigned on it, so people don’t consider it a voting issue, and since it doesn’t drive voters to the polls, politicians don’t talk about it as much. Another reason is that paid family and medical leave has been largely relegated to the category of ”women’s issues,” because most of the conversation is about maternity leave. The reality is that not just new moms would benefit. But most of the other reasons to use it are depressing, like the loss of a parent or dealing with cancer or an injury at work, so even advocates tend to focus on spending time with a new baby. And that doesn’t attract those who don’t plan to have kids or did so long ago. Editor’s Note: Politics in Real Life is a new NPR series looking at issues impacting people’s lives and how they match up with rhetoric on the campaign trial. Follow along and join the conversation on social media: #PoliticsIRL"
"Elizabeth Holmes fit into the Silicon Valley success mold. A young Stanford dropout who left school to pursue her entrepreneurial vision, she founded Theranos and said she would disrupt the world of medicine with easy and inexpensive blood tests. Now her company is under federal investigation and extra scrutiny by federal regulators. And questions are being raised about whether applying hardware and software business culture to biotechnology is dangerous. Holmes was an alluring figure young and intense in the kind of way Apple   Steve Jobs was. Like Jobs, she wore only black turtlenecks because she didn’t have time to think about her wardrobe. And of course, there was the TED talk in which Holmes painted a picture of a world in which too many people avoided blood tests because of the cost, inconvenience and discomfort of giving so much blood. Sometimes they learned too late about a serious health condition. But, her company  —   Theranos  —   had the solution. ”We’ve made it possible to run comprehensive laboratory tests from a tiny sample or a few drops of blood that could be taken from a finger,” she told the audience. Holmes had a beautiful vision, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, and a board of big names like Henry Kissinger and George P. Schulz. The media had a love fest. Time magazine called Holmes one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was profiled in Fortune and The New Yorker. Even medical professionals like Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford University Medical School were intrigued. ”My first reaction was, it sounds really brilliant,” Ioannidis says. ”I would like to collaborate with these people and maybe even use their technology in my own studies.” Studies  —   that’s what medicine and science are built upon. ”So the first thing that I did as a researcher, as a scientist, is check the scientific literature,” says Ioannidis. ”How much do we know about what they do? And I couldn’t find even a single paper.” Then there was the advisory board: big names in politics, not science. And Holmes had no background in medicine. ”This is equivalent to me, being a biomedical researcher, trying to become an architect and build a skyscraper. Would you give me a few billion dollars please?” Of course, no one would give him a few billion dollars. But in the tech world, maybe they would.   Pozner, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business, says some of the greatest companies were built on hype and a big idea. ”Often the product comes after the money, and so the first job is to get the investors to give you the money and that requires that you really sell them on this big idea before it’s actually in hand,” Pozner says. Pozner points to Jeff Bezos and his company Amazon, which started as an online bookseller. ”He called the company Amazon because he wanted it to be the biggest retailer in the world, so he named it after the biggest river in the world,” she says. ”That projects a certain kind of optimism about where we’re going and what we have in mind and what we’re able to accomplish.” Despite many years when Amazon made no profit, Bezos drew investors and in turn he expanded and got more customers. Secrecy is also part of the tech world playbook  —   no studies needed. Google keeps its search algorithms secret  —   as a way to keep them out of the hands of competitors. ”So there are so many things going on in our firm and we’re not telling you about them and that’s part of the allure and the mystique of the organization,” says Pozner. ”That keeps people excited about what’s coming next.” This is totally contrary to how the medical and biotech fields work  —   studies are published in journals and reviewed by peers and products require government approval. This may gum up the works of Silicon Valley’s   innovation economy, but it’s for a good reason, says Stanford’s Ioannidis. ”It’s not such a horrible thing if your mobile phone battery dies an hour earlier than it’s supposed to,” he says. ”But if a patient gets given the wrong results and then going down the path of making wrong decisions, that’s serious. People can lose their lives.” As for Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes  —   the company is facing scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Some Theranos supporters believe in the end Holmes will turn out to be right. Meanwhile, venture capital dollars going into biotech rose nearly 20 percent between 2014 and 2015. Perhaps this round of funding will come with less hype and more scrutiny."
"Saying he was making a ”tough decision,” Puerto Rican Gov. Alejandro García Padilla announced the island would not make a more than $400 million debt payment due today. ”I’ve had to choose and I have made a choice,” García said in a message to the commonwealth. ”I’ve decided that your basic needs come before anything else.” NPR’s Jim Zarroli filed this report for our Newscast unit: ”Much of the money is owed to big U. S. investors including hedge funds and mutual funds. Puerto Rico has been trying to persuade Congress to pass a debt restructuring bill without success. ”The island has been suffering through more than a decade of economic stagnation and population decline, and García has called the debts unpayable.” In his speech, García said Puerto Rico was facing the ”worst financial and humanitarian crisis in its history.” He said that it is facing making a choice between providing its citizens with health care or paying its debt. ”The situation is so difficult that we can barely cover the costs of providing services to special needs children,” García said. ”We’re struggling to pay the gas needed for our police and fire department vehicles.” As the Wall Street Journal reports, a recently enacted law allows the Puerto Rican government to forgo debt payments to instead pay for essential services. The paper adds: ”The [Government Development Bank] is continuing its discussions with creditors and said in an announcement late Sunday night that some creditors have agreed to hold off on lawsuits while conversations continue. The parties are discussing preliminary terms for restructuring some of the GDB’s outstanding debt, including a plan that would reduce some debt obligations by roughly half. ”Some lawsuits are already in progress. Last month, a group of hedge funds that own GDB bonds filed a complaint in federal court asking that the GDB be barred from allowing the withdrawal of funds. ”Puerto Rico owes investors about $70 billion in total and is reeling from 10 years of economic stagnation and population decline. The island began defaulting on debt in August, but there have so far been no defaults by the GDB, which provides liquidity to Puerto Rico’s government agencies.”"
"Hoping to keep your mental edge as you get older? Look after your heart, a recent analysis suggests, and your brain will benefit, too. A research team led by Hannah Gardener, an epidemiologist at the University of Miami, analyzed a subset of data from the Northern Manhattan Study, a large, ongoing study of risk factors for stroke among whites, blacks and Hispanics living in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. The scientists wanted to see how people in their 60s and 70s would do on repeated tests of memory and mental acuity six years later  —   and, specifically, what sort of subtle differences a   lifestyle might make to the brain, beyond the prevention of strokes. Their findings appear in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association. In this particular study, the researchers started with more than a thousand people who’d had their cardiovascular health assessed using measures that the American Heart Association has dubbed Life’s Simple 7. These seven factors known to benefit the heart and blood vessels include maintaining a normal body weight and good nutrition, not smoking, getting exercise regularly and keeping blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels under control. To measure thinking skills, Gardener’s team used a variety of tests of memory, judgment, the ability to plan, mental quickness and other sorts of problem solving. The results were striking: Across all demographic groups, the people who had higher scores on the measures of cardiovascular health did better on the mental tests than those who scored low. And a check several years later of mental acuity showed that the apparent brain benefits of a   life persisted. The higher a person’s score on ”Life’s Simple 7” the better. ”When we looked at changes in their brain health over time they showed less decline in several of the   domains  —   including better processing speed, better memory and better executive function,” Gardener says. Keeping the executive function abilities of the brain high  —   the set of mental skills that include organizational ability, time management and impulse control, for example  —   can be especially important as we get older, says Dr. Clinton Wright, a neurologist at the University of Miami and a   on the study. While mild memory issues, such as forgetting a familiar name or place, can be annoying, it’s the brain’s executive functioning that governs our ability to manage life, Wright says. Skills like ”managing your checkbook, doing your shopping, preparing your taxes,” fall into this category, he says, and if people have trouble doing these everyday chores as they get older, it can jeopardize their independence. More research is needed to identify exactly how cardiovascular health helps protect the brain, the scientists say, and to figure out whether there are certain times in life when factors like diet or exercise are more influential in this regard. It’s likely that the same things that can damage blood vessels in the heart, ”can also lead to damage to tiny little microvessels that are everywhere in the body,” Wright says. ”And if those microvessels are in the brain  —   that can cause damage that has an impact on cognitive function.” Whatever the biological mechanism, the message is clear, doctors say: Keep your heart as healthy as possible and you’ll likely help your brain, too."
"For years, it’s been a mystery: Who created the bitcoin   only to vanish as the virtual money grew into a phenomenon? Australian computer scientist Craig Wright now says he’s ”Satoshi Nakamoto,” the alias that was used to create bitcoin. ”Satoshi is dead,” Wright wrote in a blog post in which he says he created bitcoin. ”But this is only the beginning.” In his blog post, Wright also discusses identity and meaning  —   or, more precisely, the sign and the signified  —   key semiotic concepts that apply to both currency and literature (Wright quotes   Sartre) and theology (in which he holds a doctorate). Wright, 45, is an entrepreneur whose name has often been mentioned in conversations about bitcoin’s creator  —   most notably in December, when NPR’s Alina Selyukh wrote that both Wired magazine and Gizmodo had concluded bitcoin was probably started by Wright, possibly in conjunction with U. S. computer expert David Kleiman, who died in in 2013. At the time, Wright was also under the scrutiny of Australia’s government, with police raiding his home and office in Sydney as part of a tax investigation. That part of the story  —   along with journalists’ (since disputed) claims of having unmasked Satoshi  —   means that Wright’s declaration is generating some skepticism, and even some declarations that he’s engaging in a hoax. In forums on Reddit and elsewhere, critics are faulting the proof that Wright seemed to offer for his claim others say it could take days and weeks to verify. The BBC, which along with The Economist and GQ was given special access to Wright, reports that during its session with him, he ”digitally signed messages using cryptographic keys created during the early days of bitcoin’s development. The keys are inextricably linked to blocks of bitcoins known to have been created or ’mined’ by Satoshi Nakamoto.” ”Some people will believe some people won’t,” Wright tells the BBC. ”And to tell you the truth, I don’t really care.” Wright says that while he was ”the main part” of creating Bitcoin, he did it with help from others. He adds that the tax dispute in Australia stems from a basic misunderstanding about how bitcoin works. As for why he’s now emerging, Wright says he wants to clear the record, citing distractions and privacy concerns related to his family and staff stemming from the fixation on unmasking bitcoin’s creator. In its report analyzing Wright’s claim, The Economist writes that he demonstrated that he possesses at least one crucial key for a bitcoin block (or batch of transactions) adding, ”This assessment is shared by two bitcoin insiders who have sat through the same demonstration: Jon Matonis, a bitcoin consultant and former director of the Bitcoin Foundation, and Gavin Andresen, Mr Nakamoto’s successor as the lead developer of the cryptocurrency’s software (he has since passed on the baton, but is still contributing to the code).” Even if Wright’s assertion is verified, it’s not certain how much impact the details about bitcoin’s parentage might have. The currency is now in a relatively stable price pattern, after skyrocketing in value to nearly $1, 000 in late 2013  —   and then slumping to less than half that amount five months later. It’s now around the $440 mark, and The Economist notes that all of the virtual currency is now worth around $7 billion. Wright also said he has no intention of becoming a public personality, telling the BBC that he will ”never, ever be on a camera again.” He also said he wants neither money nor fame, and that if he’s put up for an award  —   citing the Nobel Prize and A. M. Turing Award as examples  —   he would ”never, ever accept a cent from any of you for anything.” In his post claiming to be Satoshi, Wright also praised the community that has risen around bitcoin: ”I have been staring at my screen for hours, but I cannot summon the words to express the depth of my gratitude to those that have supported the bitcoin project from its inception  —   too many names to list. You have dedicated vast swathes of your time, committed your gifts, sacrificed relationships and REM sleep for years to an open source project that could have come to nothing. And yet still you fought. This incredible community’s passion and intellect and perseverance has taken my small contribution and nurtured it, enhanced it, breathed life into it. You have given the world a great gift. Thank you.”"
"For the Greatest Show on Earth, there is no longer an elephant in the room. The    Ringling Bros. and Barnum  Bailey circus held its last show featuring elephants Sunday night, in a move that’s being applauded by animal rights activists. Ringling announced its plan last spring, saying it is sending all its Asian elephants to live on the company’s Florida nature reserve. The original plan called for phasing out elephants’ role in the circus by 2018. But in January, Ringling’s parent company, Feld Entertainment, said it was moving up the timetable. At the time, Feld Entertainment’s vice president of communications, Steve Payne, told NPR’s Jackie Northam that the family that controls the company ”decided that removing the elephants from the circus units and bringing them to the Center for Elephant Conservation was in the best interest of the company and, most importantly, the elephants.” The decision came after years of growing public concern for the elephants’   with activists criticizing Ringling for forcing intelligent animals that, in the wild, sustain complex social relationships, to live in captivity and isolation. News that Ringling would stop bringing elephants from city to city on its circus tours landed like a bombshell last year, with Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle comparing the case to SeaWorld’s use of killer whales  —   and saying that for Feld, which had long resisted calls to stop using elephants in its shows, to agree with activists was ”almost like the [fall of] the Berlin Wall within the animal welfare [community],” as the   reported. A total of 11 elephants took part in their last shows on Sunday, in circuses at Wilkes Barre, Pa. and Providence, R. I. The elephants will now join about 30 others at the Ringling Bros. Center for Elephant Conservation, a   facility that says it now hosts ”the largest Asian elephant herd in the Western Hemisphere.” In addition to Ringling, Feld Entertainment operates a range of   traveling shows, from Monster Jam and Supercross to Marvel Universe Live and Disney on Ice."
"Sleep has a big impact on learning. And not just when you do it in class. Sleep deprivation affects memory, cognition and motivation, and the effects are compounded when it’s  . For those reasons, there’s been lots of interest in the education world in studying the sleep habits of children and adolescents. But until now, most sleep studies have been limited to   surveys with small numbers of participants. That’s changing with the advent of wearable activity trackers. These devices include an accelerometer that detects movement and tries to decide whether you are running, sitting or sleeping. They can’t directly measure whether people are asleep, so experts say they’re not as accurate as hooking someone up to machines in a lab. But they are worn by large numbers of people in the real world, who voluntarily grant companies like Jawbone the ability to gather lots and lots of data. Jawbone, the maker of a tracker called UP, just released a study of the sleep habits of tens of thousands of students, ages   on college campuses. The information comes from 100 universities, totaling 1. 4 million nights of sleep. And they found some pretty interesting stuff: At first blush, the results of this study should be reassuring. Seven hours of sleep a night on weekdays, and a little extra on weekends, is within the recommended range for young and healthy adults. ”Our data was consistent with what researchers have found in academic studies  —   that students are in bed, on average, seven to eight hours per weeknight,” says Brian Wilt, Jawbone’s head of data science and analytics. But he takes a    view: ”Framed another way, they got less than seven hours of sleep on 46. 2 percent of nights. So I think it’s definitely a problem.” Despite all the data, though, this study doesn’t necessarily capture the full sleep picture among college students. Students who buy and wear fitness trackers are presumably more concerned with their health than others, and they must have a little bit of disposable income as well. The students who are getting dangerously little sleep are more likely to have other issues in addition to their studies, such as high levels of stress, health and mental health problems, second and third jobs and family responsibilities. They wouldn’t show up in this study at all."
"Ted Cruz suspended his presidential bid Tuesday night after a disappointing Indiana loss, clearing the way for Donald Trump to be the likely Republican nominee. ”From the beginning I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory,” Cruz told supporters gathered in the Hoosier State. ”Tonight I’m sorry to say it appears that path has been foreclosed.” ”With a heavy heart but with boundless optimism for the   future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign,” he said. The Texas senator’s exit is a major blow for #NeverTrump forces who had hoped to stop the controversial real estate mogul’s march to the nomination. But as the primary slog wore on, both Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich  —   who remains in the race though he is far behind in delegates  —   were mathematically eliminated from getting the 1, 237 delegates on the first convention ballot. Cruz began as one of a handful of ”outsider” candidates who had hoped to ride an   mood to the nomination. Even though he was a sitting U. S. senator, Cruz hadn’t made many friends since his 2012 election. He famously led the charge against Obamacare’s implementation, which ultimately led to a   government shutdown. The first Republican candidate to launch his White House bid last March, at Liberty University, Cruz worked hard to appeal to conservative and especially evangelical Christian voters. But as the primary wore on, he was losing even many of those voters to Trump too, despite the latter’s history of infidelity, salty language, casinos and more. The apex of Cruz’s White House campaign was a victory in the Iowa caucuses, which solidified him as the conservative alternative to Trump in the race. He had built a sophisticated     and data targeting operation that helped him win there and in other states. And even as Trump continued to pile up victories, Cruz’s superior organization became apparent, as he beat Trump in many   delegate races as he looked to topple Trump at the convention. Ultimately, he won the most votes or delegates in 11 states and netted more than 7 million votes. Even   efforts to revive his flagging campaign in Indiana failed. Last week, he named former rival Carly Fiorina as his   running mate. Her candidacy for vice president lasted just six days. Cruz made no indication that he would be throwing his support to Trump, now the likely GOP nominee. In fact, earlier on Tuesday the two had publicly warred again. Trump seized on a tabloid report that claimed Cruz’s father was involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination. In response, Cruz blasted Trump as a ”pathological liar, ”utterly amoral” and a ”narcissist.” Later on, Trump sounded a far more conciliatory tone toward his   rival instead of the ”Lyin’ Ted” moniker he’d bestowed up on him throughout their battles. ”I don’t know if he likes me or he doesn’t like me,” Trump said, ”but he is one hell of a competitor. He is a tough, smart guy. And he has got an amazing future.”"
"The Indiana voters shook up the presidential race Tuesday night, with Ted Cruz ending his campaign after a disappointing loss to   GOP nominee Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders also bounced back after a string of primary losses with a surprise win over Hillary Clinton. But the Democrat’s   win still won’t be enough to close the yawning gap between the two. Cruz exit clears the way for likely Trump nomination, Indiana proved decisive in the GOP contest, putting the real estate mogul over the   threshold and pushing the Texas senator out of the race. Now Trump is 84 percent of the way to getting the 1, 237 delegates he needs, and he needs just 37 percent of the remaining delegates to get there. It was already mathematically impossible for either Cruz or Ohio Sen. John Kasich to get a majority of delegates on the first convention ballot. After Cruz suspended his campaign, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted that Trump would be the GOP’s presumptive nominee and that the party should fall in line behind him. In a more subdued speech than usual at his Trump Tower, the likely GOP nominee did begin to pivot toward the general election and his probable Democratic rival. ”We are going after Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. ”She will not be a great president. She will not be a good president. She will be a poor president.” ”We want to bring unity to the Republican Party,” he pleaded. ”We have to.” And even after he mercilessly battered Cruz up until Tuesday morning, Trump praised the Texas senator’s campaign and his political skills. ”I don’t know if he likes me or he doesn’t like me,” Trump said, ”but he is one hell of a competitor. He is a tough, smart guy. And he has got an amazing future.” Indiana had emerged as a   for Cruz and the #NeverTrump forces who were set on stopping the controversial GOP   from getting the Republican nomination.   groups spent $2. 8 million on TV in Indiana, while Cruz’s campaign and his allies combined to spend $3. 3 million on air. Trump’s campaign spent under $1 million. ”Obviously Trump’s victory in Indiana makes the road ahead more challenging,” #NeverTrump senior adviser Rory Cooper said in a statement. ”We will continue to seek opportunities to oppose his nomination and to draw a clear line between him and the values of the conservative cause. If nominated, he will lose in historic fashion threaten   campaigns and likely usher in a Clinton presidency.” Even after Kasich signaled last week he wouldn’t compete in Indiana as part of a   with Cruz’s campaign, the Texas senator couldn’t catch Trump in polls. Kasich instead focused on the Oregon and Washington primaries later this month. Despite Cruz’s exit, Kasich’s campaign reiterated he will remain in the race. However, Kasich has carried only one state  —   his home of Ohio  —   and remains fourth in delegates. He’s behind even Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who withdrew in March. ”Ted Cruz ran a strong campaign, stood for conservative principles and exposed a lot about Donald Trump. Governor Kasich will continue to campaign and offer the voters a clear choice for our country,” the governor’s chief strategist, John Weaver, wrote in a memo to reporters. Cruz had tried to salvage his White House hopes by naming onetime rival Carly Fiorina as his running mate last week. The unusual move, however, didn’t boost his numbers in the state. And while he had the backing of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican’s lukewarm endorsement didn’t give him the jolt he needed, either. Trump trotted out key Hoosier State endorsements of his own, including legendary (and controversial) former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight. The GOP race devolved into even more vitriol Tuesday on the campaign trail, underscoring just why many Republicans worry about the volatility of Trump as their   nominee. Trump began doubling down on a tabloid story that alleged Cruz’s father had ties to President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. In response, Cruz blasted Trump as a ”pathological liar, ”utterly amoral” and a ”narcissist.” Katie Packer, chair of the   Our Principles PAC, said in a statement that comments like those are why the group will continue to press on. ”A substantial number of delegates remain up for grabs in this highly unpredictable year,” Packer said. ”In addition, there is more than a month before the California primary  —   more time for Trump to continue to disqualify himself in the eyes of voters, as he did yet again today spreading absurd tabloid lies about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination.” Sanders beats Clinton, but math to nomination remains daunting  On the Democratic side, Sanders notched a   win over Clinton. It was an important victory for the Vermont senator, especially given the former secretary of state’s   of last week’s Northeastern states and her win in New York before that. Polls had shown the Hoosier State was close between the two but had given Clinton a narrow lead. But ultimately, the close results don’t change the daunting math for the Sanders campaign. Even with his victory, the closer results and proportional allocation of delegates mean both Sanders and Clinton could end up getting roughly the same number of pledged delegates. Essentially, it won’t blunt Clinton’s more than 300   lead. Sanders now needs 66 percent of all remaining pledged delegates for a pledged majority. When superdelegates are included, he needs 85 percent of the remaining delegates. Clinton is 92 percent of the way to the 2, 383 she needs to clinch the Democratic nomination. She needs just 34 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to get a pledged majority, and just 15 percent of all delegates, including superdelegates, to win. The Sanders campaign’s message lately has been that they will work to woo superdelegates to their side. But as NPR’s Arnie Seipel has calculated, even if all superdelegates voted the way their states did, Clinton would still have a   superdelegate lead over Sanders, with a 500 total delegate lead. ”We understand that we have an uphill climb to victory but we have been fighting uphill from the first day of this campaign,” Sanders said in a statement after the race was called in his favor. ”We are in this campaign to win and we’re going to fight until the last vote is cast. There is nothing I would like more than to take on and defeat Donald Trump, someone who must never become president of this country.” Republicans get their top pick in Senate race, In the night’s downballot contest of note, Rep. Todd Young won the open GOP Senate primary over fellow Rep. Marlin Stutzman. Young’s nomination was preferred by national Republicans over Stutzman, who had a reputation as a   in the House. Still, Young almost didn’t make the ballot at all. Both Democrats and Stutzman worked challenge his signatures and get him ruled ineligible, and he only narrowly survived. His victory now likely has many in the GOP breathing a bit easier when it comes to keeping retiring Sen. Dan Coats’s seat. While it’s certainly not a top Senate race yet, the state could become a presidential battleground later, especially with Trump as the likely nominee. Obama carried the state in 2008. Democrats’ nominee is former Rep. Baron Hill."
"When I was kid, ”What’s for dinner?” was not a question you asked at the last minute. My mom, Dorothy Glinton, was an expert at planning what she would put on the table. ”I always knew what I was going to cook. I didn’t come in running,” Ma recalls. But these days, even she eats out a few times a week. ”But I don’t go to a restaurant in the evening,” she told me. ”I do most of my eating in a grocery story right now, picking up a hot soup, going to a salad bar.” As The Salt has reported, grocery stores aren’t just offering prepared foods. Some are even offering full   experiences inside  —   what Bonnie Riggs, a restaurant industry analyst for the NPD Group, calls the ”groceraunt.” According to the food data company Food Genius, as many as 80 percent of Americans don’t know what they’re having for dinner by 4 p. m. that same day. Groceraunts are just one of dozens of new options Americans have to help figure out that evening meal. Those who crave   but don’t have my mom’s   prowess can turn to online services like Blue Apron, which delivers everything you need to make dinner  —   ingredients and recipes. Of course, those who’d rather not faff around in the kitchen don’t have to. There’s food trucks, takeout,   or delivery ordered through one of many, many apps. Even old concepts like the cafeteria are getting revamped. Recently, I visited Picnic L. A. in Culver City, Calif. with Eliot Silver and Noah Ellis  —   two restaurant guys who used to own a   restaurant in Beverly Hills called Red Medicine. What made them go from running a   restaurant to opening what I have to call (no offense, I told them) a ”  cafeteria”? ”Same reason we opened Red Medicine,” Ellis said. ”We wanted to open a restaurant we wanted to eat at.” For $15 at Picnic L. A. you can get an entree like poached salmon and two sides. Nearly everything on the menu is local and organic. Patrons move down a line and select the dishes they want. On a given night, Picnic L. A. might serve dinner to 150 people. They need only six employees to do that.  Picnic L. A. is a new type of restaurant that didn’t exist a few years ago. But it, too, faces new competition in the ”fast dinner” space, as companies like Uber and GrubHub team up with restaurants to offer delivery services. ”A restaurant operator can get into the delivery business without having to have the insurance, all the liability, all the things associated with it, because they can partner with one of these companies that deliver,” Riggs said. ”So it is a growth area, both   and away from home.” As these   options grow in popularity, visits to traditional   chains are down, says NDP Group’s Riggs. Meanwhile, prepared foods sold at supermarkets,   and convenience stores are a bigger and bigger portion of those companies’ profits. ”I think it’s cyclical, but it’s evolutionary, too,” says Silver. ”I think people wanting better quality food, that’s a forever thing. I think how they have that and the kind of dining experiences they want to have, that’s cyclical.” NPR has teamed up with Youth Radio to explore the changing business of putting dinner on the table, fast. This is the first in a   series. What are your options for buying dinner in your area? What can you get for $5 or less? Share your photos of your #5dollarchallenge meal on Twitter or Instagram  —   be sure to flag @youthradio. (And remember to direct message @youthradio if you’ve got a private account!) "
"Thousands of children in Flint, Mich. have been exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water, creating problems that could last a lifetime. A new effort is trying to help those most at risk. For weeks, teachers and other volunteers from the Genesee Intermediate School District have been knocking on doors in Flint, trying to recruit kids for early childhood education programs that are critical for the youngest victims of Flint’s   tap water. For children younger than age 6, exposure to lead can have profound effects, ranging from behavioral problems to a lower IQ. Dr. Mona Hanna Attisha heads the pediatrics program at Flint’s Hurley Medical Center. Her research shows elevated lead levels in the blood of Flint children since the city’s pipes were damaged by improperly treated water starting in 2014. But early education can mitigate these effects, she says, by stimulating young children’s minds and helping them learn to focus. ”In Flint, these children need these things now. They need these things two years ago, because we’re going on our third year in this crisis. And we’ve already missed two years of critical brain development where these interventions could make the greatest impact,” she says. On a recent day, a group of   and    learns the alphabet at one of seven new early childhood education classes. In March, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it would expand its Head Start program in Flint with $3. 6 million in   funding. Lauren Chom, interim director for early childhood programs with the Genesee Intermediate School District, says about half of the 4, 000 students enrolled in this countywide early childhood program live in Flint. Many Flint children faced developmental obstacles even before their tap water was tainted with lead, Chom says.  ”What we know is that the majority of the children in the community start out behind,” she says. ”When we do our baseline assessments of children, we have many children who start out below the national expectations in most of the objectives.” Before the water crisis, Chom says, the focus was to bring those children up to the normal level of development. The water crisis simply makes that harder to do. Mott Community College in Flint trains many of the teachers who work with the city’s preschoolers. Sue Lechota runs the early child learning center at Mott. She says it’s not just about preparing teachers. ”You can have as many strategies and as much skill as you can get, but when you’re out in the field, you really need funding for the kind of support they’re going to need in a classroom,” Lechota says. Education officials are hoping that lawmakers will approve more funding  ” not only for sorely needed early childhood education, but for Flint children as they become school age and try to keep up."
"A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine says medical errors should rank as the third leading cause of death in the United States  —   and highlights how shortcomings in tracking vital statistics may hinder research and keep the problem out of the public eye. The authors, led by Johns Hopkins surgeon Dr. Martin Makary, call for changes in death certificates to better tabulate fatal lapses in care. In an open letter, they urge the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to immediately add medical errors to its annual list reporting the top causes of death. Based on an analysis of prior research, the Johns Hopkins study estimates that more than 250, 000 Americans die each year from medical errors. On the CDC’s official list, that would rank just behind heart disease and cancer, which each took about 600, 000 lives in 2014, and in front of respiratory disease, which caused about 150, 000 deaths. Medical mistakes that can lead to death range from surgical complications that go unrecognized to   with the doses or types of medications patients receive. But no one knows the exact toll taken by medical errors. In significant part, that’s because the coding system used by CDC to record death certificate data doesn’t capture things like communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors and poor judgment that cost lives, the study says. ”You have this overappreciation and overestimate of things like cardiovascular disease, and a vast underrecognition of the place of medical care as the cause of death,” Makary said in an interview. ”That informs all our national health priorities and our research grants.” The analysis was published Tuesday in The BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal. Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch for the CDC, disputed that the agency’s coding is the problem. He said complications from medical care are listed on death certificates and that codes do capture them. The CDC’s published mortality statistics, however, count only the ”underlying cause of death,” defined as the condition that led a person to seek treatment. As a result, even if a doctor does list medical errors on a death certificate, they aren’t included in the published totals. Only the underlying condition, such as heart disease or cancer, is counted, even when it isn’t fatal. Anderson said the CDC’s approach is consistent with international guidelines, allowing U. S. death statistics to be compared with those of other countries. As such, it would be difficult to change ”unless we had a really compelling reason to do so,” Anderson said. The Johns Hopkins authors said the inability to capture the full impact of medical errors results in a lack of public attention and a failure to invest in research. They called for adding a new question to death certificates specifically asking if a preventable complication of care contributed. ”While no method of investigating and documenting preventable harm is perfect,” the authors write, ”some form of data collection of death due to medical error is needed to address the problem.” Anderson, however, said it’s an ”uncomfortable situation” for a doctor to report that a patient died from a medical error. Adding a check box to the death certificate won’t solve that problem, he said, and a better strategy is to educate doctors about the importance of reporting errors. ”This is a public health issue, and they need to report it for the sake of public health,” he said. Dr. Tejal Gandhi, president of the National Patient Safety Foundation, said her organization refers to patient harm as the third leading cause of death. Better tracking would improve funding and public recognition of the problem, she said. ”If you ask the public about patient safety most people don’t really know about it,” she said. ”If you ask them the top causes of death, most people wouldn’t say ’preventable harm.’ ” Dr. Eric Thomas, a professor of medicine at the University of Texas Houston Medical School whose research was cited in the Institute of Medicine’s landmark To Err is Human report, said existing estimates aren’t precise enough to support immediately listing errors as the third leading cause of death. But collecting better    data is a good idea, said Thomas, who agreed that medical errors are underreported. ”If we can clarify for the public and lawmakers how big a problem these errors are,” he said, ”you would hope it would lead to more resources toward patient safety.” Have you or a loved one been harmed during medical care? Join the discussion at ProPublica’s Patient Safety Facebook group or fill out the Patient Harm Questionnaire."
"LANGUAGE ADVISORY: This interview contains language some readers may find offensive. The reviews are mixed for Larry Wilmore’s performance Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The comic, who hosts Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, landed jokes about President Obama, the presidential candidates and the press. But a few of his bits  —   including his reference to the president as ”my n****”  —   were greeted with some discomfort. Reflecting on his performance, the comic tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that ”breaking taboos is a very dangerous thing to do.” And while he acknowledges that using the   might upset some people, he says that his intention was to recognize and honor Obama’s significance as the first black president. ”What Obama means to me as a black person, and to many black [people] really is hard to quantify,” he says. ” . .. I wanted to take the opportunity to turn that [word] upside down and to use it in the way that we’ve used it inside the community . .. as that show of affection that only we can understand.” Wilmore says that while some people were upset by his performance, at least one person in attendance seemed happy. ”[President Obama] was so gracious and just very kind throughout the whole evening and just made me feel very comfortable and very welcome before and after.” On using the   to refer to President Obama, It definitely was an artistic choice that I thought of early on, and it’s really hard to put into words. . .. I’ve been called that word in my lifetime  —   the ” ” version  —   and I made a distinction between the use of ”nigger” against us and the use of ”nigga” that we’ve used with each other. On [The Nightly Show Monday] night, I said we conjugate the slur. . .. The one in ” ” is unmistakable  —   it’s an attempt by white people to dehumanize and denigrate and demean black people, to make them less than human. When we turned it around, it was our way of having camaraderie with each other, of taking the power out of that word, stamping [out its] ability to dehumanize. It isn’t always the easiest thing to translate to people who aren’t in that experience. . .. And not all blacks agree with that, and I acknowledge that. . .. I understand why people would be upset about it. I have no quarrel or criticism of that. . .. But part of it is a generational thing, and it is possibly a different way of just viewing who has the power to say what. Who has the right to be in charge of the narrative? Who gets to control what’s being said about us or how we get to say it? On trying to be   in his performance, Going through the material I just thought, ”I’m just going to try to tell the truth with these jokes and hit both sides.” I wanted to really hit both sides fairly. It would’ve been unfair just to make fun of, like, Fox News or one side or whatever. I thought, ”No, you got to be fair in this. You got to spread it around. If I’m going to say something about Fox, I got to say something about CNN, or I got to say something about MSNBC. If I’m going to make fun of Trump then I’ve got to make fun of Bernie and Hillary and make fun of Ted Cruz.” So I was trying to be   with everything  —   and as well as the president, too. The president is the ultimate guest of honor, but, you know, I have to do some barbs at the president. But you’re trying to be careful with that, too, because he’s the president. On his conflicted feelings about roasting someone, It is actually very difficult for me. I don’t particularly always enjoy it because it’s not my normal mode of communicating. But it’s kind of become my comic way. . .. I was very conflicted about some of those jokes,   I guess I should say, but not  . . .. I was trying to find the right balance between what a roast feels like and doing jokes that I thought were the right type of jokes that I could be doing  —   like when you’re calling people out for something, having fun with that in a   way and still being as truthful in the jokes as possible and finding that tone."
"In the past 12 years, the U. S. has spent more than $1. 4 billion funding abstinence programs in Africa. They’re part of a larger program  —   called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief  —   aimed at stopping the spread of HIV around the world. Many health officials consider PEPFAR a success. It is credited with giving lifesaving HIV drugs to more than 5 million people and preventing nearly 1 million babies from getting HIV from their mothers. But a study, published Monday in Health Affairs, finds the abstinence programs have been a failure. When President George W. Bush proposed PEPFAR in 2003, it was an unprecedented plan. The program would give billions of dollars to test and treat people for HIV in Africa. No one had ever given this much money to fight a single disease. Congress funded the program with bipartisan support. But one part of the plan was controversial: A third of the money going toward HIV prevention was earmarked for programs teaching abstinence before marriage and faithfulness. This included sex education classes in schools and public health announcements on billboards and the radio. Some critics worried the abstinence programs would use aid to impose American values on Africans, says John Dietrich, a professor of political science at Bryant University. The earmark was added to please some Republicans, Dietrich says, ”who wanted to make sure the money wouldn’t be spent on anything that might be seen as promoting teenage sex or promiscuity.” At the time, there was little evidence to suggest abstinence programs work.   trials in the U. S. had shown that abstinence education programs didn’t prevent teenage pregnancies or decrease   sexual behavior. But there hadn’t been similar studies in Africa. And one program in Uganda  —   called Abstinence, Be Faithful and Condomize  —   was thought to have helped the country slow down the spread of HIV early on in the epidemic. So Eran Bendavid, an infectious disease doctor, and his team at Stanford University wanted to see whether abstinence programs helped stop HIV in other African countries. They analyzed surveys given to nearly a   people in 22 countries. The surveys asked personal questions, such as ”How many sexual partners do you have? At what age did you first have sex?” Fourteen of the countries in the study had received funding from PEFPAR between 2004 and 2013. Eight of the countries hadn’t. The results were clear: PEPFAR funding wasn’t associated with changes in young people’s choices about sex. Bendavid and his team could find no detectable differences in the rates of teenage pregnancies, average number of sexual partners and age at first sexual intercourse in countries that had received PEFPAR money compared with those that hadn’t. It takes more than billboards or radio messages to change people’s behavior, Bendavid says. ”I think the decisions about sexual behavior and preferences are much deeper,” he says. ”They’re much more deeply rooted.” Funding for abstinence programs peaked in 2008, when the U. S. spent about $250 million. That year, the requirement that PEPFAR fund abstinence programs was lifted when Congress reauthorized the AIDS program. Since then, funding for abstinence programs has steadily declined. In 2013, the U. S. government spent about $40 million a year on these programs in Africa. We asked the head of PEPFAR if this new study would lead to an even bigger decrease. Ambassador Deborah Birx declined to be interviewed. In a statement, the agency said: ”Since its inception, PEPFAR’s mission has been to prevent as many new HIV infections and save as many lives as possible toward controlling the   epidemic. To fulfill this mission, PEPFAR has continually evolved its approach to, and investments in, HIV prevention based on the latest scientific evidence and lessons learned from applying this evidence in programs. Current prevention science demonstrates that a combination package of   behavioral, biomedical, and structural prevention interventions, tailored to the populations and geographic areas with the greatest burden, is most effective in addressing the epidemic.”"
"It’s about 6:30 in the morning at a Starbucks near Santa Monica beach, and David Rodriguez Ordunez is checking Facebook while charging his phone. He’s one of 44, 000 people living on the streets in and around Los Angeles  —   and he’s one of three homeless people at the coffee shop this morning. ”Since there’s Internet here, that’s mainly one of the purposes. I’ve usually got to find locations to actually have access,” Ordunez explains. Why Starbucks instead of the library? ”Well, the library opens like at 10 o’clock or something,” he says. Most shelters close early in the morning, pushing people out onto the sidewalks  —   where they sometimes go back to sleep. ”And then a lot of times if you’re homeless, you’ve got to get up at a certain time ’cause if not, they’ll give you a ticket,” Orundez adds. ”That’s totally inhumane. I’m like, give me a place to live or somewhere to go or something.” With more than 400 branches in the LA area, often, the place to go is Starbucks. And that’s why lately, these coffee shops are finding themselves on the front line of the city’s homeless crisis. In the past few months, three Starbucks outlets in LA have closed their bathrooms completely, even to paying customers. Those stores are located in downtown and Hollywood, areas with big homeless populations. In a statement, the company said the closures are because of unspecified safety concerns. But former Starbucks supervisor Lester Monzon says the chain has had a   struggle with the homeless relying on its bathrooms. ”A lot of the homeless people that do tend to come in, and they will buy a cup of coffee, they use the restroom as their shower time,” he says. ”They’ll take off their shirts, they’ll bathe themselves. When they leave, the whole bathroom is just completely destroyed.” Some current employees, who aren’t allowed to speak on tape, had similar complaints. But regulating bathroom use is just one concern. Twenty to 25 percent of the homeless population in the U. S. suffers from some form of severe mental illness  —   and many baristas aren’t sure how to interact with homeless customers showing signs of mental distress. Should they ask the person to leave? Call the police? And they have to take customers into account, too, Mazon says. ”Half the people that are watching are seeing if you’re gonna be a jerk. Half the people don’t want them there and half the people are like, more compassion,” he says. ”You try to do your best.” On a recent afternoon, a woman came out of a Starbucks near the Hollywood Walk of Fame, yelling at nobody. She was pulling a shopping cart full of bags  —   and carrying a cup of coffee. It’s a tough situation, says Mary McNeall, who frequents a Starbucks near Venice Beach. ”My heart goes out to them, and it’s definitely something delicate,” she says. ”It can get uncomfortable.” And yet  —   it makes sense that Starbucks is one of several places where the city’s growing number of homeless patch together their days, says Gary Blasi, a professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Law and a longtime advocate for the homeless. The problem is, ”there is no social safety net,” he says. ”Or if there is, it’s comprised mainly of holes.” ”Frankly, I think a lot of people who are hanging out in a Starbucks would rather be hanging out at home,” he adds. That’s where Ordunez  —   the man charging his phone in Santa Monica  —   would rather be. People aren’t that friendly when you walk in, carrying a bunch of bags, he says. ”And you just notice it, you know?”"
"The vessel that British explorer Capt. James Cook used to sail to Australia in the late 1700s may lie at the bottom of Newport Harbor, R. I. The HMS Endeavour, later called the Lord Sandwich, is believed to be among a group of ships scuttled there as a blockade during the American Revolution. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, a nonprofit that does maritime history and marine archaeology research, says there is an 80 percent to 100 percent chance the Endeavour is still in the port. In 2014, the Australian National Maritime Museum agreed to help the executive director of the Rhode Island project, D. K. (”Kathy”) Abbass, locate the vessel. When the deal was announced, museum Director Kevin Sumption said, ”To be able to find the last resting place of the Endeavour would truly be a nationally significant event, if not internationally,” according to Australia’s news. com. au. Abbass, who has been combing the Rhode Island area for years, told Rhode Island Public Radio that researchers have found more than 200 ships dating to the American Revolution in the Narragansett Bay. From British vessels, they’ve uncovered bits of chain, line and weapons. (You can hear that interview here.) The Australian news site has this history about Cook, who commanded the Endeavour from  : ”Iain McCalman, a history professor at the University of Sydney, said Cook is considered the founding father of   Australia, where England eventually set up a penal colony. ”But to the country’s indigenous people, Cook is considered the first invader. ” ’For some people, it would be a really wonderfully kind of exciting thing to have the Endeavour raised and brought, if possible, to Australia  —   whatever’s left of it,’ McCalman said. ”For many indigenous people, the celebration of Cook’s voyage ’is a kind of sad moment. It’s the end of their freedom, in a sense’.”"
"Google is partnering with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to expand its   car project, the companies said Tuesday in a joint press release. Though Google has been an industry leader in the quest for   cars, this is the first time it will work directly with an automaker to integrate its   technology into a passenger vehicle. According to the statement, around 100 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans will be used for the testing, which will more than double the size of Google’s current   fleet. ”FCA has a nimble and experienced engineering team and the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan is   for Google’s   technology,” said John Krafcik, CEO of the   car project. ”The opportunity to work closely with FCA engineers will accelerate our efforts to develop a fully   car that will make our roads safer and bring everyday destinations within reach for those who cannot drive.” In February, NPR spoke with Chris Urmson, the technical director of Google’s   car project about the benefits of making   cars a reality. He said: ”In America, there’s 33, 000 people that are killed on the road every year, and to put that in perspective, that’s equivalent of a 737 falling out of the sky five days a week. . .. There is just a tremendous opportunity there to save lives  —   94 percent of those accidents are due to human error, and the good news is we can build software and hardware that can see the road and pay attention all the time and react more quickly and keep people safe on the road. The other big aspect is accessibility. When you think about the baby boomer generation, they’re starting to get to a point where they feel uncomfortable driving or their family feels uncomfortable about them driving. Making sure they have access to transportation, to continue to do all the things they do today  —   to go and visit their grandchildren or just to go to a coffee shop  —   we think that is an incredibly important use for this type of technology.” Google’s   cars have already logged more than 1. 5 million miles in four cities: Mountain View, Calif. Austin, Texas, Kirkland, Wash. and Metro Phoenix, Ariz, the company’s project website says. U. S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, however, told NPR in February that there are still some concerns over the prospect of autonomous cars. ”Let’s think about what it takes to get a driver’s license in the first place. When I came out of high school I was ready to get my driver’s license and the expectation at that time was the driver would be fully engaged 100 percent of the time when he or she was operating a vehicle. In a world where the vehicle is doing more of the driving task, we are also asking questions of ourselves how we train people to drive in cars like that."
"As the mercury rises in Iran, winter coats are back in the closet, flowers are popping up  —   and so are the   morality police. Despite objections from Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, Tehran’s police have announced up to 7, 000 undercover officers will be on the lookout for those who don’t follow conservative Islamic modes of dress and behavior. They’re called the Gashte Ershad, the ”guidance patrol,” and they have broad powers to chastise and even arrest people for failing to meet what might be called the modesty test. Men are occasionally stopped  —   perhaps if their beards are too long, making them resemble jihadists  —   but usually, it’s women who attract the attention of the Gashte Ershad. Too much hair peeking out from under a headscarf, removing the scarf altogether in the car, taking a walk with a boyfriend  —   all kinds of actions can risk a   with the morality police (as NPR’s Deborah Amos reported in 2014). Parisa, a    researcher in urban geography and sociology in Tehran, tells NPR via Skype that some women are employed by the Gashte Ershad, but the most common sight is conservative men from the patrol harassing, berating or arresting women. Parisa asked that her family name not be used, for fear of retribution, when asked if she’s had any   with the morality cops. ”Yes, yes, sure I have. I was stopped by Gashte Ershad two or three times, but I wasn’t arrested,” she says. ”But my sister was arrested twice. I had to bring her some [extra] clothes to put on.” The whole process, Parisa says, took about three hours. Her sister spent much of that time in the back of a van, waiting for it to fill up with others so they could be driven to police headquarters, where Parisa delivered the clothes and her sister was released. She says every woman has to make her own decision about how far to risk pushing against Iran’s restrictions. Personally, she says she’s careful about the way she dresses at work, but is more daring on social occasions. It’s an issue that has even seeped into popular culture. The Iranian band ”127” released a song called ”Musighi Film” that features a verse dismissing the ”summer and winter campaigns” of the Gashte Ershad. There’s An App For That, This year, in addition to the uniformed morality police, police authorities announced they would add an additional 7, 000 undercover Gashte Ershad officers, spying and informing on people. In anticipation, some Iranians are excited by a new app called ”Gershad.” Those with Android phones can use the app to mark on a digital map places where they spot the morality police, allowing others to avoid them. Another young Iranian woman reached by Skype  —   a physical therapist also named Parisa, who works at a Tehran hospital  —   says it’s good to see people using technology to fight back. She’s not sure how useful the Gershad app will be, though, because it’s pretty obvious where the Gashte Ershad will be  —   at main squares, outside shopping malls, places where they usually hang out. It’s disappointing, she says, that Rouhani hasn’t been able to fulfill a campaign promise to bring people relief from the morality police, but she’s not surprised. ”Yeah, all the people know that the real power is not in the hands of Mr. Rouhani,” she says. ”The main power is in another man’s hand.” That hand belongs to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man the morality police answer to. Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews, says following Rouhani’s success in negotiating a nuclear deal with the U. S. and other world powers,   have fought back as the pragmatic president criticized conservative symbols such as the morality police. Ansari says   Iranians were dismayed by a series of recent speeches in which Khamenei himself took Rouhani to task. Khamenei ”took real umbrage at some of the comments coming out of President Rouhani and launched a pretty   verbal attack on the president,” he says. ”And this has unleashed, I suppose, a torrent of criticism and essentially a   reaction.” Ansari says that reaction seems to have put Rouhani on the defensive. With presidential elections coming next year,   seem determined to deny Rouhani political successes wherever possible. The resurgence of the morality police appears to be just one part of a conservative campaign to prevent his  ."
"Some people addicted to oxycodone and other opioids are now turning to widely available diarrhea medications to manage their withdrawal symptoms or get high. The results can be dangerous to the heart  —   and sometimes fatal  —   warn toxicologists in a study recently published online in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. The researchers describe two case studies where people who were addicted to opioids tried to ease their withdrawal symptoms by taking many times the recommended dose of loperamide, a drug commonly used to treat diarrhea. Both patients died. ”Because of its low cost, ease of accessibility and legal status, it’s a drug that is very, very ripe for abuse,” says lead author William Eggleston, a doctor of pharmacy and fellow in clinical toxicology at the Upstate New York Poison Center, which is affiliated with SUNY Upstate Medical University. Loperamide  —   also sold under the brand name Imodium  —   can be purchased without a prescription as a liquid or pills it activates some of the same receptors as other opioids, but at the dose that’s recommended to treat diarrhea it doesn’t produce feelings of euphoria. At doses 10 or more times higher than that recommendation, the drug can help ease symptoms of withdrawal from opioids, Eggleston says. And at the largest doses, it can generate a high similar to that of widely abused opioid pills or heroin. But at these very high doses, loperamide may be even more dangerous than its more widely abused brethren. Opioids generally suppress breathing, but loperamide can also fatally disrupt the heart’s rhythm. ”At the Upstate New York Poison Center, we have had a sevenfold increase in calls related to loperamide use and misuse over the last four years,” Eggleston tells Shots. Imodium’s manufacturer,  Johnson  Johnson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The medication is also widely sold under generic labels. Eggleston says both patients featured in his case studies were using the drug to manage withdrawal symptoms from addiction to opioids. He says he doesn’t know whether they were trying to get off the drugs for good, or were just using loperamide to ease symptoms until they could get their next fix. Recreational drug users frequently discuss how to use loperamide to manage withdrawal on several online forums. Eggleston and his   believe sales of loperamide should be restricted in the same way as pseudoephedrine  —   available without a prescription, but only in limited doses, and dispensed by pharmacies."
"   Murtaza Ahmadi became a worldwide sensation in January when a photo of him wearing a homemade Lionel Messi jersey made from a   plastic bag went viral. Thanks to the power of the Internet, Murtaza’s story soon reached Messi himself, and through UNICEF, the Argentinian soccer great sent Murtaza his very own autographed No. 10 national team jersey, as the   reported. The resulting photo of Murtaza wearing the jersey, arms outstretched as if celebrating a goal, made triumphant rounds on social media. But now the   story seems to have taken a darker turn. Murtaza’s father says his son’s minor fame attracted unwanted attention. ”Life became a misery for us,” Mohammad Arif Ahmadi told The Associated Press over the telephone from the Pakistani city of Quetta. Ahmadi told the AP that the family received telephone threats he said were from the Taliban and a menacing letter he believed was also from the militant group. The news service reports: ”Ahmadi said that at first he was not sure who was behind all the phone calls, and that he thought it might be criminal gangs seeking to extort money and falsely thinking the family might have made lots of cash amid the boy’s international popularity,” the news service reports. ”But he said he realized it was the Taliban after he received a call from a local driver in the area who told him he was bringing him a letter.” As the threats became more intense, Ahmadi says he decided to leave the country. ”I sold all my belongings and brought my family out of Afghanistan to save my son’s life as well as the lives of the rest of the family,” he said, according to the AP. When the original image of Murtaza beaming in his makeshift plastic jersey caught fire, UNICEF took the opportunity to comment on the importance of helping children ”trapped in emergencies.” The aid group said: ”Like so many other children, he has the same right to thrive, play, and practice sports.”"
"The hit of Monday night’s Met Gala was clearly actress Lupita Nyong’o’s hair. Nyong’o, who was raised in Kenya, styled her hair into what some outlets described as ”Whoville hair,” a reference to the quirky hairdos in the town Dr. Seuss invented in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Nyong’o’s hair was piled tall and straight, with four segments, each sculpted into a bubble. It instantly was filed as a meme, with comparisons to The Simpsons’ Marge. ”We wonder, what is going on underneath all of the hair to keep it up?” a USA Today reporter asked. ”How did she travel to the event with that on top of her head? Or, maybe those should just remain fashion mysteries.” Lori Tharps, an assistant professor of journalism at Temple University and   of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, finds this sort of commentary ”insulting . .. as if Africa fell off the map.” ”I’ve been looking around, [and while] I don’t definitively think [the hairstyle] has resonance in Kenyan culture, it’s African,” Tharps says. In the African past, sculptural formations of hair signaled status and wealth. ”There’s that sense of adornment, but it can have meaning,” Tharps says. A towering hairdo has historically signified a person’s tribal background, rank in society  —   or a wife’s ability to live a life of leisure because of her husband’s wealth. Some of these styles can be seen in the late Nigerian photographer J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere’s anthology of nearly 1, 000 Nigerian women’s hairstyles: elegant, braided, complex, architectural masterpieces. The design of the hair itself is an arduous process, involving hair extensions and styling to sculpt the hair. Nyong’o’s hair is usually cropped short, so Tharps believes extensions were used to erect her Met Gala showstopper. Hair extensions themselves are deeply ingrained in African society: In Hair Story, Tharps and her   Ayana Byrd, wrote about extensions in the 1400s, when men would cut off their wife’s hair and weave it into their own to impress others in society with their hairy power. Today, tall hairstyles like Nyong’o’s aren’t an everyday phenomenon in most parts of Africa  —   ”it’s costly and not necessarily the best thing for one’s hair,” Tharps notes  —   but it’s a tradition that continues in many African societies. So Tharps is surprised that the conversation around Nyong’o’s hair hasn’t paid much attention to its African origins. Indeed, Nyong’o herself has shied away from referencing her African background as a fashion inspiration, pointing to Audrey Hepburn and Nina Simone as role models in a red carpet interview with fashion critic Andre Leon Talley. ”It strikes me as crazy,” Tharps said, wondering why people seem oblivious to the roots of Nyongo’s Met Gala coiffure."
"Working through a   program online can prevent or delay major depression disorder in people who are vulnerable, a study finds. Similar programs have been used to treat depression, but this may be the first one tested to prevent it, the researchers say. Online programs for mental health problems can be as effective as    treatment and offer some advantages: Low cost, available at any time and customizable. But they’re not panaceas. In this experiment, half of the participants were asked to do six    exercises that were based on cognitive behavioral therapy and   therapy, which are techniques commonly used for   therapy. In the cognitive behavioral therapy, participants were asked to identify positive activities they used to engage in and then are asked to actively plan those activities again. At the next session, participants reflect on their experiences. For the   therapy, people were asked to create a list of the things that matter most to them in their lives and brainstorm on how to incorporate those things into daily life. They next were asked to categorize problems and worries into ”manageable” and ”unmanageable” the main focus in   therapy is to tackle those problems that are considered manageable. Both   therapy and   therapy are intended to change negative thinking in order to alter mood and behavior. After completing each exercise, participants in the intervention group received written individualized feedback from an online trainer. The trainers did not offer any therapeutic advice, only motivation and encouragement to continue the exercises. Participants also could repeat the online sessions as often as they liked. The control group received information about depression but was under no obligation to read it. The study, which was conducted by researchers from Leuphana University in Lueneburg, Germany, recruited 406 people with subthreshold depression, which is defined as having some symptoms of depression but not enough to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder. It was published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. Of the 406 participants that began the study, 335 completed the telephone   at the end of 12 months.   percent in the intervention group experienced depression compared with 41 percent in the control group. It is unclear if the people who went on to develop major depressive disorder had experienced it before. Lead author Claudia Buntrock, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Leuphana, says that because the study only tracked participants’ mental health over the course of 12 months, the   effectiveness of the intervention is unknown. It’s also not clear if this kind of program could be scaled up. It took the trainers about 30 minutes to provide feedback for each session, and they also stayed in touch with participants via instant messaging, Buntrock says. Other experiments with online therapy have found that people didn’t continue it if it wasn’t guided by an actual human. One reason could be that when people are depressed, they can have a hard time getting motivated to do things. ”More studies are needed to evaluate the preventive effects of unguided   interventions on the onset of major depressive disorder,” Buntrock wrote in an email. Still, Buntrock seems pleased with the results, especially since the German insurance company BARMER GEK that sponsored the trial is now providing it to its customers. ”I was surprised by the big response to our study,” Buntrock wrote. ”And of course, I’m surprised about what happens now that a health insurance company offers the intervention to its members. It’s a success story you might dream of when you start, but it actually seeing to happen is a great feeling.”"
"The Marine Corps is investigating whether some of the six men in the photo of the 1945   in Iwo Jima, Japan, were misidentified after two amateur historians raised questions about the famous image and statue. The Marine Corps confirmed the review in a statement emailed to NPR. It said: ”The Marine Corps is examining information provided by a private organization related to Joe Rosenthal’s Associated Press photograph of the second flag raising on Iwo Jima. Rosenthal’s photo captured a single moment in the   battle during which more than 6, 500 US servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation and it is representative of the more than 70, 000 US Marines, Sailors, Soldiers and Coast Guardsmen that took part in the battle. We are humbled by the service and sacrifice of all who fought on Iwo Jima.” The Smithsonian Channel said in a statement Tuesday that, as part of the production for a documentary about the identity of the flag raisers, it has been investigating the photo. Following ”months of thorough, scientific analysis,” the documentary production team provided the findings to the Marine Corps, the statement said. It also said: ”While the evidence remains confidential, Smithsonian Channel is committed to continued engagement with Marine Corps leadership, and will broadcast all the findings about this fascinating story later this year.” The Feb. 23, 1945, photo actually depicts the second   of the day. As The Washington Post reports, ”The first [flag] was quickly raised, taken down and replaced with the second, larger one.” The Omaha   which first published the claim by Stephen Foley and Eric Krelle in 2014, reminds us: ”Since 1947, those flag raisers  —   John Bradley, Harlon Block, Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley and Michael Strank  —   have been undisputed, regarded with the same certainty by Marines and military historians as the rest of us know the flag they are raising is red, white and blue. ”The flag raisers who survived World War II  —   Bradley, Gagnon and Hayes  —   became household names in postwar America. All six have been honored in war memorials, statues, postage stamps, songs, and in ’Flags of Our Fathers,’ a   book by James Bradley, John Bradley’s son, that became a Clint   movie.” After analyzing clothing, weapons and facial features, Foley and Krelle believe the man identified at Bradley is actually Sousley, the   says. The man identified as Sousley? That’s Pfc. Harold H. Schultz of Detroit, who has not been officially associated with the moment, the historians say. While three of the men said to be in the photo died on the island, the other three traveled the U. S. to promote the war bond, military news Stars and Stripes has reported. And the image of the   was used on funding campaign posters."
"A group of high school girls are chanting. You could call it a cheer. But it’s definitely not your typical high school cheer: ”I need my freedom, I want my rights, the right to education, the right to choose and the right to grow into the woman I want to be.” Welcome to the Sekenani Girls Secondary School, located in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, a world famous game reserve known for its rolling grasslands, giraffes and safari jeeps. But not for schools. Sekenani Girls, with 68 students, is a boarding school that had its official opening this year. It’s the only secondary school for girls in the region, so there is huge demand. The next closest options are in Narok, nearly 56 miles away  —   a   drive on dirt roads. So instead of dropping out of school at around age 12  —   the typical age that a girl stops her education in the Maasai culture  —   these girls can keep studying. ”Although all children in the Maasai Mara could benefit from better access to affordable education, girls are particularly vulnerable and marginalized,” says Sonal Kadchha, founder of the Sekenani Girls Secondary School and the charity Educate the Children (ETC) that helps fund it. Funding is through a   partnership  —   Kadchha’s ETC charity covered the costs of the school build, the government helps subsidize student fees and the families pay the remainder. The cost is about $295 per student per year the government covers approximately $84. All students receive a traditional Kenyan education to ensure they can enter the national work pool or go on for higher education. Subjects include English, mathematics, science, history and geography clubs are devoted to sports, art and dance. The goal over the next five years is to expand the school to educate 500 girls. And the impact that will have is huge. Without the possibility of further schooling, girls care for cattle or stay at home and cook for the family. Many are subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) which, although illegal in Kenya, is still a common method of marking a transition from childhood to womanhood. According to a 2013 UNICEF report, 27 percent of women in Kenya have suffered FGM, with the majority of those coming from rural areas like the Maasai Mara. The age at which girls are cut varies, but the report says that for most girls in Kenya, it’s between 9 and 16. ”Girls that we spoke to regarded their place in boarding school as a protection against FGM and their only means of expressing their choice in the matter,” Kadchha says. Change needs to come fast. Although there are ample job opportunities in the Maasai Mara (a haven for tourists with more than 100 tented camps and lodges) an ETC study shows that only 2 percent of people employed there are women. In addition, with the government’s constitution stating that only those possessing a secondary school certificate are eligible to apply for any kind of formal employment, the future has looked fairly bleak for the Maasai’s girls. This prospect was one that Kadchha couldn’t accept. A finance professional living in London, she went on a fundraising trip to Kenya for a primary school and was struck by the lack of opportunity for the local girls. ”I come from a traditional Indian family and would have had an arranged marriage if it was not for my education,” she says. ”I studied hard in school, impressed my father and got excellent grades so he let me go to university and have a career.” She returned home and set about raising money for a secondary school for girls. She persuaded friends and family to run marathons, enter charity bike rides and host fundraising events while also securing corporate donations of more than $14, 400. The process took five years from fundraising to securing the site, building the school and finally opening the doors to students. At the official opening ceremony, on a Saturday afternoon, members of the community squeeze into a large tent to shade themselves from the intense equatorial sun. ”Oh, I like school very much!” says Mercy Lemiso, 16, whose family lives 19 miles away in Talek. A family friend told her about the school. ”I board here for three months at a time and, although I miss my family, I am lucky to be getting a good education. I want to be a doctor and if I work hard I can get a loan from the government for university.” Her school friends are keen to talk about their experiences. ”When I grow up, I want to be an engineer,” says Marion Samuel, 14, who comes from Mararianda, about 56 miles away. Marion learned about the school through teachers at her primary school. ”I want to make electricity,” she says. ”That way, I can help my parents get power in their village.” Another student,    Faye Tikani, who lives in the town of Nkoilale just 6 miles up the road, chimes in, ”I want to be a lawyer.” The girls proudly point out paintings they drew to decorate their dormitory. While lack of access to education for women in the region remains a pressing issue, there is a strong feeling of celebration and hope at the launch of the school. Throughout the afternoon, the schoolgirls’ chanting rings through the air: ”I need my freedom. ..”"
"The wide, white tent pitched in the mud is filled with exhausted Syrians and Iraqi families crowded on cots. They have been camping out at the border between Greece and the tiny Balkan nation of Macedonia for weeks. Moyaad Saad, a    former civil servant from Baghdad, has been here since  . He’s cradling his infant daughter, Zahara, who is starting to fuss. ”I don’t think she’s hungry,” says Saad, a burly, quiet father of five. ”This little one cries only for two reasons: She either wants me to change her diaper or she needs fresh air. I wash her clothes. I make sure her bottle is full of milk.” Zahara is just 6 months old. Normally, she would still be nursing. But Saad’s wife, Shereen, is in Sweden with their four older children. The family fled the conflict in Iraq and paid smugglers in Turkey for passage to Greece. ”We left Turkey on two different boats,” Saad says. ”The smugglers put my wife and four of the kids on one boat. Zahara and I got on a second boat. At sea, the Turkish police stopped our boat, but not the one my wife was on.” Shereen arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos in late January and proceeded north. But by the time Saad and Zahara managed to make the sea crossing a couple of weeks later, European borders were closing to migrants. Now Saad and Zahara are stuck at a sprawling, makeshift encampment near the Greek village of Idomeni. At least 10, 000 asylum seekers, many of them children, have been stranded here since  . With few toilets and showers, sanitation is poor there have been outbreaks of lice, skin rashes and respiratory infections. There have also been a couple of outbreaks of violence. Volunteer doctors treated hundreds of injured migrants last month, after Macedonian border police teargassed the camp to punish a few   migrants who tried to tear down the   border fence. ”I spoke to the United Nations refugee agency and the Greek police about my situation,” Saad says. ”But they said too many people want help.” Sweden, where Saad’s wife and the older children have now settled, has suspended family reunification. So he is faced with a dilemma: Stay here in Idomeni and pray that the border will open. Or go to one of the camps run by the Greek army and hope European Union bureaucrats can help him and Zahara reunite with the rest of his family. Nearby, a father from Syria is grappling with similar questions. Hassan Bekali is crouching in a small, green tent, cleaning up his    daughter’s vomit. Fatma got food poisoning after eating a rotten egg in a sandwich distributed by a soup kitchen. Her dad is just 36, but his hair is white and his blue eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep. ”I look and see no choice but humiliation,” he says, as Fatma slumps into his lap. ”I can’t feed my children. I can’t send them to school. I can’t find a place to wash them properly so they’re not dirty. I keep asking myself, how is this going to end?” Bekali says he used to run a ceramics factory in the Syrian port city of Latakia. He says his business went under during the war and that he was repeatedly arrested and jailed by the regime. ”I don’t even know why I was jailed,” he says. ”I still have no idea.” Now Bekali’s home is this tiny tent. At least his family is all together. He and his wife, Maha, sleep on blankets with Fatma and her two brothers,    Ahmad and    Hamza. Like many Syrians, Bekali was hoping to go to Germany. ”We did not risk our lives and pay so much money to live in misery in a camp,” he says. He strokes his son Ahmad’s hair, then lifts the child’s bangs. ”Look at my son’s wound,” he says, pointing to a bandage on Ahmad’s forehead. ”I was hungry and saw a truck with bananas,” Ahmad says. ”I ran after it.” The boy fell and hit his head. He bled profusely. ”But I still wanted the banana,” he says. ”I miss tasting sweet things.” Bekali breaks down as he listens. ”I cannot provide for my family,” he says. Days after this conversation  —   and weeks after agonizing about whether to stay on the border, on the chance it would open  —   the Bekali family gave up their dream of going to Germany. They boarded a bus for an   camp near Athens. They decided to take their chances on resettlement anywhere in the EU, though they have no idea where or when. But Moyaad Saad and baby Zahara have stayed in their crowded white tent, not far from a   fence patrolled by riot police. Saad has reached out to lawyers and asked them to contact Swedish migration officials, in the hopes that he can fill out some paperwork that will allow him and Zahara to travel to Sweden. The lawyers tell him that the Greek government wants to clear out this encampment in Idomeni, considering it illegal. They urge him to move to an official camp. But Saad fears he will be forgotten there. ”At least people in the world know about Idomeni, and we can move freely,” he says. ”The other camps are closed. No one will hear us. They will leave us there for years.” Zahara clasps the afternoon bottle of milk her father has prepared for her. He strokes her chubby cheeks, singing her a nursery rhyme about a little girl who will soon be blessed with gifts."
"Hamilton, the Broadway musical about ”the scrappy young immigrant who forever changed America” has made history, after being nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards. The nominees were announced today. Hamilton eclipsed the 15 nominations that were garnered by both The Producers (2001) and Billy Elliot (2009). For more about the musical, see this   from NPR’s Linda Holmes.   Miranda, the creator and force behind Hamilton, is nominated for three individual awards, including for best book, best original score and best performance by a lead actor in a musical. This year’s field of nominees for Best Musical also include: Bright Star School of Rock  —   The Musical Waitress Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, As Jeff Lunden reports for our Newscast unit, Shuffle Along scored 10 nominations despite being the last musical to open this season. The nominees for Best Play include: Eclipsed The Father The Humans King Charles III, Looking at other categories, Jeff adds, ”Revivals of Long Day’s Journey into Night, A View from the Bridge and She Loves Me dominated their categories.” The Tony Awards show will be broadcast live on CBS at 8 p. m. ET on Sunday, June 12."
"This conversation is also available as a podcast. Download it from Pop Culture Happy Hour. Late in the summer of 2013, Leslie Odom Jr. walked into a room. A lifelong performer who’d won arts scholarships as a teenager in Philadelphia, studied drama at Carnegie Mellon and sung in his first Broadway ensemble before he was out of high school, he knew some of what to expect as he took his seat. Like the creator of the show being workshopped that day at Vassar College, Odom was a child of the era in which   became America’s pop music, and came of age attuned to its grammar. He was a fan of In The Heights,   Miranda’s previous musical and in Odom’s mind a clear descendant of Rent and Def Poetry Jam, towering totems of his own youth. He’d heard a little about the new show, too  —   a video of Miranda rapping an early excerpt to a crowd that included a freshly elected President Obama had since made the rounds. But on that day, sitting in the stands of an unadorned   theater, watching actors in plain clothes trace the broad outlines of an incomplete script, he witnessed something for which he felt thoroughly unprepared. It was a song performed by the actor playing Aaron Burr  —   another politician who served as Thomas Jefferson’s vice president but is now best remembered for murdering the man on the $10 bill. The music instantly stood out, even from the   cadences that were Miranda’s calling card this was a closer cousin of RB or gospel, with the pulse of dancehall thumping beneath it like a syncopated heartbeat. Up to this point, the Burr character had pivoted between player and bard, frequently stepping out of the action to offer comment on the larger story. Now, it felt as though the audience had pierced his omniscience and caught him in a private moment, meditating on the fragility of human life. ”When he finished that song,” Odom says, voice ringing with the moment’s impact, ”I said, ’Wow  —   I’ve never heard a song quite like that on Broadway.’ I just knew that whoever was going to get to sing ’Wait For It’ eight shows a week was going to be a lucky actor. I knew that.” In hindsight, that anecdote takes on a certain mythic quality. There is so much to say, so much already said, about the tornado that has swirled around Hamilton since it opened this year  —   first in a   run at the Public Theater, then onward to Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre (where the   mob at the stage door has become this generation’s TRL) and finally in earbuds everywhere with a   cast recording. That the entire plot is   has made the soundtrack album an imaginative gateway for thousands of people, this author included, who have yet to see the show with their own eyes. So when I spoke to the man who has become our Aaron Burr, who sings the part of Alexander Hamilton’s killer in a way that feels intuitive and definitive and necessary, it was tempting to read his first encounter with the character as an origin story, the hero laying eyes on destiny. For Odom, nothing about the journey has felt like a given. Even after he was invited to read for the Burr role, and even after nearly two years walking its paces in front of test audiences, the prospect always loomed that the show wouldn’t make it to Broadway  —   or that it would, without him. ”And so it was a tricky thing,” he reflects, ”giving yourself to it, but sort of protecting yourself the whole way.” What is certain these many months into the Hamilton phenomenon is that Odom and Burr are now bonded, across centuries and against the odds. Fan art abounds, the late statesman envisaged with the actor’s soft features, dark skin and quiet carriage. And even down the line, as touring companies and student singing groups catch the scent, ”Wait For It” will likely always belong to Odom, the way certain standards always trace the Sinatra or Aretha blueprint. Before the sun sets on a   year, I asked Leslie Odom Jr. to explain, in his own words, how he got here. Daoud  : Talk to me about singing for the theater, because Hamilton has reminded me that it’s a very specific skill. You’re a recording artist as well  —   you put out a solo jazz album last year. When you’re on Broadway doing a huge number like ”Wait For It” or ”The Room Where It Happens,” does it demand something different of you as a singer? Leslie Odom Jr.: I think everything in the theater is about extremes. It’s, ”Turn the volume up,” emotionally. When I show up at the Rodgers, there’s a demand for a range of expressiveness that, at a cabaret show, is not demanded in the same way. Do you need the audience to like you in the same way? Absolutely not. God, no. Now, you do need them to either love you or hate you. Ambivalence is death in the theater. I won’t say the name, but the worst show I’ve ever seen in New York, I went to see twice. When a friend of mine said they hadn’t seen it, I was like, ”Well, I have to take you. You’re going to hate this thing so much.” That, to me, is more interesting than walking out of the theater like, ”God. What a waste of two hours.” It’s about polarization. You’re trying to stir up something in your audience. Well, the way that manifests in Hamilton, where you’re both this historical villain and the narrator  —   actually, could I get you to sing one line? Or is that a   on a show day? No, sure.  So this is the Act I finale the Revolutionary War is over. Alexander Hamilton is starting work on The Federalist Papers and wants help. Burr thinks it’s too controversial and is having none of it. So, Hamilton challenges him: ”For once in your life, take a stand with pride. I don’t understand how you stand to the side.” And Burr responds . .. ”. .. I’ll keep all my plans close to my chest. I’ll wait here and see which way the wind will blow. I’m taking my time watching the afterbirth of a nation, watching the tension grow.” I’m not warmed up that was probably terrible and out of key. You sound great. That moment is kind of incredible to me, because all through that conversation, you’ve been trying to keep your cool  —   speaking on beat, but not really engaging with the beat. And then it takes just the right provocation, and the whole timbre of your voice changes. Suddenly there is this operatic declaration, and by the end you’re back in storyteller mode, talking about the beginnings of this country. How does that happen? In a moment like that, how is the decision made about what you’ll do with your voice? What a fantastic and complicated question  —   and I can answer it in a really simple way. It was of the utmost importance that I was not you during this process: that I did not ask the same questions that you ask, or analyze it in the way that you analyze it. I believe that when art is done in its highest form, most of the good stuff is happening subconsciously. There are things that happen consciously, for sure, and I did plenty of research. You know, I come from a conservatory background, from the conservatory training. You went to Carnegie Mellon, the drama school there. And it takes about a decade to let all of that stuff go and get back to your belly. When you come out of school  —   and I graduated with honors. I was a good student I was a good boy. I got A’s, and I did all the papers right. And that’s not what you want to see, as an audience member. You do not want to see somebody that’s up there trying to do it right, trying to do it perfectly. And so it was my job  —   again, consciously and subconsciously  —   to discover the bread crumbs that Lin had left along the way. Hopefully, I illuminated things for him that he didn’t know he’d done. ”Hey Lin, did you realize that this thing is just like this other thing you wrote? And this melody kind of repeats itself, but if I sing it a little differently . .. ” After I’d done all the research about Burr and learned what Lin had written and what they’d decided with the orchestrations, then my job is to not judge myself, and get beyond any fear that I have about doing something weird, or any trepidation about, ”Are they going to like this?” And just to go from my belly. The recording of the cast album was like that: It just wouldn’t serve the material if I went in there and sang something the way that I’d planned it. What I tried to do on the day that we recorded the album  —   this thing that’s going to be there forever  —   is, ”Well, this is how I’m responding to the material today.” You were on Charlie Rose this summer, and one of the first things you talked about was watching Def Poetry Jam  —   as, what, a teenager? Yeah. I was, like, 17, 18. And you explained that what was so compelling to you was that the performers seemed to need to communicate. You said, and I love this phrase, ”There’s blood in the pen. They need you to get it.” Do you remember the first time you felt that way? That entertainment meant more than just being entertained? Well . .. I didn’t, really, for a long time. I think I spent most of my childhood, and my early years as a performer, in student mode. And I think that’s OK  —   I mean, it led me to where I am. I have a great foundation, a great training foundation. But it took me a long time to let the training go. What does that mean? ”Let the training go”? Well, because in material like this, I hope that there is a danger in what we’re doing. I hope that we are on a razor’s edge. One of the best compliments that we got was, one of our dressers, Jeannie, when her husband came, she said he spent the whole car ride home talking about how dangerous the show was. There’s a point where Anthony [Ramos] throws a chair across the stage  —   and he said, ”Do you realize if that guy didn’t catch the chair, somebody could die! In the audience, somebody could get hurt!” Again, the biggest drag for me is if I go see an evening of theater and there’s not one moment that takes my breath away. So it was late that I realized that I needed to let the training go. And what happened was, I was out in L. A. doing a lot of TV. And booking work, working pretty consistently  —   because I knew how to sort of call upon a thing and do it right, and that can get you jobs. But I got very sad, because one day I realized that other people’s work was inspiring me, and my own was not. And one of the biggest things that Lin offered me with this show was the chance to be the artist that I’ve always loved. You know, kind of the thing in   is you have to write your own rhymes. In this situation, I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to have written the words, so the very most that I could do was connect this thing to my instinct. I didn’t know if I would succeed, but I knew that I had the opportunity to become the kind of artist that had always inspired me  —   and that is just somebody who is raw and honest and vulnerable and scary. Those are my favorite kind of artists, you know? When I go see a concert and I feel like I’m seeing something that is happening for the first and maybe the last time. So, yeah, somewhere in my 20s I realized that that’s what my job was, and that I really needed to figure out how to get there. This speaks, to me, to the collaborative nature of theater. It’s actually an interesting counterpart to   because   in its beginnings was inherently a live medium, with a really strong group ethic. And now, like any form of popular music, you can make it in your bedroom without ever having to talk to another person. Theater is really, resolutely, not like that  —   like, if you just have one person throwing a chair with no one to catch it, there’s nothing to that. It seems like the danger aspect that you’re talking about is also based in trust. Oh, yeah. I mean, from its creation, the point of theater is catharsis. The point is for us to all gather in the square together, and laugh together and cry together and feel whatever spontaneous emotion erupts from us as a group. The construct of our society is that we have to show up to work and be these good boys and good girls, and play by the rules and all this stuff. Theater is the place where I don’t want to see you play by the rules. That’s what we do all day. What we come here for, the reason we’re here, is to see you throw a chair at somebody. I want to see you break the dishes. In that way, it feels very close to the way I grew up in church. We didn’t go to see theater growing up, but church, in its own way, had a degree of theater to it. There was a message that was prepared, that was going to be spoken aloud. There’s music and dance sometimes. And you have to see all those same people the following week. It’s not like being a touring band, where you can say, ”That was a terrible show, but who knows if I’ll ever see those people again.” It’s like a repertory company! That’s a good point. It’s the same community getting up each week, and it’s the same need: It’s worship. It’s ministry. When I’m doing my job right at the Rodgers, it feels very close to that. I am there to be a conduit for whatever Lin’s intentions were, what he has to say about who this country belongs to  —   and then I’m also there to be a guide, to usher these people into their catharsis, to usher them closer to whatever they need to feel for that day. That’s all of our jobs, but as the narrator, I take that part of my job very seriously. One of the most   aspects of Hamilton early on was the casting: All of the founding fathers and their families are played by people of color. You and Daveed Diggs, who plays Thomas Jefferson and is a career rapper, have both said publicly that doing this show is the first time you’ve really felt like a part of the early American story. What does performance do for you, in that sense, that traditional education maybe can’t? I think it’s empathy. It is literally stepping in somebody else’s shoes for a couple hours, walking around in them and seeing how it might have felt to be them. It’s playing pretend. And the same thing happens for the audience, because they’re watching people that look like them, or that they connect to  —   whether it’s me, or it’s Lin, or it’s Daveed, or it’s Renée [Elise Goldsberry] or it’s Philippa [Soo] they are able to feel what that person is feeling. Empathy is just . .. it’s the first step in bringing two people from opposite sides of the table a little closer to each other. So, the show has made me a better friend, a better husband, a better, you know, artist. It’s started a tremendous amount of growth in me. And that was another reason why I had to stay a part of it, because I could see those seeds flowering right from the first reading that I did. How do you walk away from that? I mean, this thing is making me a better me. I know you saw an early version of the show, before you were in the show. And you saw the guy playing Aaron Burr. Yeah. Did you envy him?  Um, I . .. I didn’t envy him. I wasn’t thinking that I would play Aaron Burr, ever. I was just so carried away by this thing, which was presented with such simplicity  —   they were just at music stands, you know? It was presented in such a way that we were all kind of in it together in that theater, just loving this thing. This is weird to say, but the way that you talk about the show sometimes reminds me of the way I hear new parents talk about their children, in terms of that wonderment of seeing the world with new eyes. Yeah. I think that’s exactly what it felt like. Or it felt like falling in love, just in that you are giving yourself to this thing a little more each time. I have to ask about the two songs that are kind of your big solo moments: ”Wait For It,” which is about Burr standing on the sidelines while his peers are chasing glory, and ”The Room Where It Happens,” where he finally dives into the fray and starts changing history. The more I listen to these two songs, the more they seem like allegories for performance. Maybe it’s just something in your voice  —   the mixture of awe and longing and lust for the thing that makes you feel like a whole person. When people are born performers, that really is what it’s like when they can’t perform. That’s really well said. And those two things were never lost on me in the creation of this. The room where this thing happened, the room that this show was created in, was the most loving, creative gentle space that I’ve ever been a part of. Nothing was ”wrong” you could fall flat on your face and try again tomorrow. So, yes, singing ”The Room Where It Happens,” it was very easy for me to connect that to my actual life. And even ”Wait For It”  —   you know, when we would do these early readings, there was no timeline for me. I was not aware of when Hamilton would happen  . I was not aware of when it would happen on Broadway. And there’s so much rejection that I’ve felt over the years: Most jobs, I do not get, even if I’ve been a part of the development and stuff. So, this thing, I was falling in love with it, and I didn’t know if I was going to end up being the guy. And so, over the course of the last two and a half years or so, I had to keep my schedule free  —   which meant turning down work, you know, for no guarantee. But I knew that every time I do this show, I sing a song called ”Wait For It.” I knew what this opportunity could be. So I would sing that song to minister to myself. It did feel like it was meant for me. Those messages were meant for me to hear, and now they’re meant for me to deliver to somebody else who needs them. Lin has remarked a couple of times that those are two of the best songs he’s ever written, and he doesn’t get to sing them. But he’s also said, and this is a direct quote, ”The company is happier when everyone has food to eat.”  Lin was incredibly generous with this material. And not only Lin  —   [choreographer] Andy Blankenbuehler and [director] Thomas Kail, our lighting designer, our set designer, our costume designer. They wanted everybody to shine. ”What do you need? Do you need more dancers? You need less light? Whatever you need to get this thing across.” Because it’s not always about what you’re doing when you’re in your light. It’s not always about clearing space so that you can do something extraordinary. Sometimes the most extraordinary thing you can do is nothing. The biggest political statement you can make is to stand there at the center of the stage and be naked. Just let us look at ourselves in your eyes. We have the chance in theater to be our highest selves. It doesn’t always have to be the way it actually is we can imagine it in a more perfect way. ”This is the potential. This is what friendship and relationships could look like if we wanted them to.” It must be bittersweet. Even the best theater experiences, you get a sense of the danger and the hard work involved, but you also feel it ending one moment at a time. It’s true. But that’s the thing that keeps you coming back, right? I go see the Ailey Company every single year when they’re at City Center because nothing inspires me quite like dance. It’s just such a pure physical expression, distilled down even further from what we’re doing at the Rodgers. And they are superheroes, because that amazing thing that I just saw, that superhuman feat, they did it. There’s no wires. There’s no special effects. It just happened. Hamilton has legacy as a running theme, and one of the messages of the show is that legacies are hard to protect or control. Do you think about your own legacy, going forward? We have the cast album, but one of the quirks of theater is that there’s no definitive document. I think about it in this way: Because I am so connected to the people that got me started, the people that helped me, I am very conscious of how I pass that on. I am very conscious of how I continue the line. People like Michael McElroy and Billy Porter were angels in my life, who gave me early opportunities and early advice. I wouldn’t be here without words of encouragement like that. And not to mention the teachers that I had coming up in Philadelphia. I know that their legacies burn bright in me: I talk about them always, and I thank them still. So I am very aware of my responsibility to do that for somebody else. I think that I won’t fully understand what we’re doing at the Rodgers until I have a second away from it. But every now and again, somebody will say something to me about the show, or my performance, that reminds me of what somebody else did for me with their performance. I see that light in their eyes that was in my eyes after I saw Def Poetry Jam, or that’s in my eyes after I see Audra Mae perform, or Bilal perform. Ledisi  —   I’ve seen Ledisi do some things that I’ll never forget. So, that is your legacy. Your legacy lives in the hearts and the minds of people that see these performances. I have a little bit of a sense of it now. I might have more of a sense of it after it’s all done."
"Imagine your bright young son or daughter comes to you, high school mortarboard in hand, and says, ”Mom, Dad, I’m not going to college next year.” What’s your reaction? If you’re the commander in chief or first lady, the answer is, reportedly, supportive. Their older daughter, Malia Obama, made headlines this week by announcing that she would put off matriculating at Harvard University until 2017. It turns out that this decision is becoming more popular at Harvard and around the country. ”For years, Harvard’s acceptance letters included a suggestion that students consider taking a break” before enrolling, says Jeffrey Selingo, author of There Is Life After College. ”Harvard has seen a 33 percent jump in the number of students taking a gap year, and now dozens of other colleges and universities advertise the option on their websites.” And the evidence shows that students who take a gap year may be more successful academically and more able to find meaningful and fulfilling work after college. But those benefits don’t come automatically  —   how you structure a gap year matters a lot. We decided to ask some gap year experts for tips. What is a gap year? It’s important to note, first, what it’s not, says Selingo. Simply marking time at a     job after graduation, while a common choice for many   high school graduates, actually can have negative impacts on college success. ”Students who delay college to work odd jobs for a while, as they try to ’find themselves,’ don’t do as well as everyone else when they get to campus,” Selingo explains. ”They get lower grades, and there’s a greater chance they will drop out.” Instead, he adds, ”For a gap year to have a significant impact, it needs to be a transformative event, quite distinct from anything that students have experienced before.” ”Transformative” experiences can come from things like: meaningful work that captures students’ interest specialized study community service   travel or a combination of all. Students may arrange these experiences on their own, or participate in an organized program such as City Year or Global Citizen Year. Some of these cost money, and others are funded based on means or merit. What are the potential benefits of gap years?  Studies on students at Middlebury College in Vermont and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that those who took a year off had modestly higher GPAs than those who didn’t.  Selingo cites research that   students take their studies more seriously and are less likely to engage in risky behaviors like binge drinking. Abby Falik is the founder of Global Citizen Year, a program that combines travel, language learning and service with a capstone project and has about 500 alumni so far. She says the program sets them up for success in college. ”Of our cohort at Global Citizen Year, of those who   to college, 90 percent end up in more selective and   schools,” she says. Having discovered an ”authentic passion,” she says, they are better able to represent themselves to colleges. And 94 percent of those who are in college are on track to graduate on time, a statistic that matches other studies and that beats the national average. Dale Stephens, who runs a San   program called UnCollege that combines elements of entrepreneurship and mentorship, also sees his alumni getting into better colleges and earning better financial aid packages. And, he says, they are more likely to seek out personal relationships with professors, internships and capstone learning projects while in college, while also graduating on time. Who can benefit most from gap years? Selingo suggests it might be men, who currently graduate from college at much lower rates than women. Stephens says nontraditional learners who have been frustrated in the classroom can thrive when given the opportunity to pursue a passion. And that leads to a final question. With all the indicated benefits of gap years, why aren’t they more popular?  We don’t have hard numbers, but while interest in gap years seems to be rising, it’s still an     choice. ”Guidance counselors, who are usually evaluated by how many students they send right on to college, rarely recommend a gap year,” points out Selingo. ”Parents worry their kids will take a permanent detour and skip college altogether. So the fact that one of the first daughters is taking this route could give the gap year the attention it deserves.” Abby Falik says part of the problem is the name. ”The metaphor is wrong. Which parent would raise   hand to send their kid into a gaping hole? How could we possibly build a movement around sending kids into a gap, waiting to see whether or not they climb out?” She prefers the term ”bridge year” or ”launchpad.”"
"Radiohead has unveiled a new song! Hours after a couple of teasing Instagram posts floated onto the Web  —   one of a bluebird, the other of a medievally clad woman being tied to a tree by men in True Detective Season 1 masks  —   the band debuted ”Burn the Witch,” a very promising herald of the band’s ninth album, due whenever it decides to drop it. It’s a great portent, a very balanced blending of Thom Yorke’s soulful mature vocal style and Jonny Greenwod’s increasingly focused, classically informed musical approach. ”Burn the Witch” has been a rumor (and a bootleg) among Radiohead fans for years. This version is grounded in strings strongly evoking Greenwood’s tributes to the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, but with the pop emotionalism of his   work. Radiohead’s other members add heft to the steady crescendo that builds to some trademark Yorke falsetto rhapsodizing. He’s crooning our doom, of course: The song’s lyrics scorn the kind of communal complicity that Yorke sees as leading to environmental disaster. As the video shows in cute   harkening back to the   film The Wicker Man, the round robin of blame captured in lines like ”stay in the shadows, cheer the gallows” doesn’t solve anything, only adding to the ”low flying panic attack” that ”Burn the Witch” expertly evokes. Radiohead has been making beautiful music about the end of the world for a long time this offering suggests that the new album will join in that mission as one of the band’s most stirring calls to act."
"Updated at 11:20 a. m. ET, A U. S. Navy SEAL special operator was killed during an attack by ISIS fighters Tuesday in northern Iraq, Defense Department officials tell NPR’s Tom Bowman. ”The sailor was helping advise Kurdish Peshmerga forces about 3 miles behind the front lines when Islamic State fighters broke through with what’s been described as a complex attack involving car or truck bombs and then subsequent   raids,” Tom reports. ”The SEAL was killed in a firefight, the Defense officials said. The Pentagon is not sure how many ISIS fighters took part in this attack.” U. S. air support carried out nearly two dozen strikes by   and drones to counter the attack, according to Defense officials. Speaking in Germany, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the assault took place near the Iraqi city of Irbil. The SEAL’s name has not been released, pending family notification. The service member had been sent to Iraq on an ”advise and assist” mission. ”Our thoughts and prayers are with the servicemember’s family,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook says in an official statement released this morning. Kurdish news site Rudaw reports, ”The incident happened in the vicinity of Tel Skuf, about 28 kilometers north of Mosul,” adding that the service member’s body was recovered by a U. S. helicopter. A Rudaw correspondent says nearly 400 ISIS fighters are believed to have been involved in the fight. NPR’s national security editor, Philip Ewing, tells us: ”At least two other American troops have been killed in action as part of the ISIS war, including a Marine artilleryman whose base came under attack in March and a Delta Force soldier last October in a raid that freed some Iraqi hostages.” Speaking about the casualty, Carter said in Stuttgart, Germany, that the combat death is ”a very sad loss.”"
"Updated May 23, 4:20 p. m.: France’s social affairs inspectorate said in report released May 21 that while the trial was legal, Bial and Biotrial made mistakes. Study participants were given a drug dose that was too high, the companies delayed alerting authorities, and Biotrial did not react quickly enough after the first participant got sick, the report said. French health minister Marisol Touraine gave Biotrial one month to come up with a plan to ensure this wouldn’t happen again, or its authorization to conduct phase 1 trials would be revoked. Touraine said that if a healthy volunteer participating in a trial is hospitalized, the people running the trial now have to immediately declare it to health authorities, suspend the study, inform the other volunteers for why the trial was suspended and obtain participants’ informed and written consent before continuing. She also said that France will work with the European Medicines Agency and the European Commission to strengthen regulations about research in healthy volunteers. On Jan. 10, a healthy    man came down with headaches and blurry vision. He was participating in the test of an experimental drug that might help dull nerve pain, and it was the fifth day in a row that he’d taken the medicine. The symptoms were serious enough to land the man in the hospital. Despite the fact that he was experiencing   symptoms, five other healthy volunteers received a sixth dose of the experimental medicine at the highest dose used in the study the next morning. Two hours later, the hospital called Biotrial, the company running the study, to say that an MRI scan showed the hospitalized man had had a massive stroke in the brain stem. Later that day, he was declared brain dead. He died Jan. 17, a week after checking into the hospital. According to French newspapers, he was Guillaume Molinet, an artist and father of four. The five other volunteers who got the highest dose of the drug were then hospitalized. One was free of symptoms. But four had headaches, were fading in and out of consciousness and had   memory problems. Brain scans showed that they had identical, symmetrical brain injuries in two parts of the brain. The study was the first one to try the drug in humans. Healthy volunteers were recruited to test preliminary doses for the drug and its safety in a   phase 1 study. Independent Investigation Finds Missteps, The situation was totally unexpected, said Bernard Begaud, a pharmacologist at the University of Bordeaux in France. ”The brain imaging was very strange, unlike anything we know in medicine,” he says. He led the independent scientific investigation of what went wrong. Their report, released in April, outlined hypotheses on what happened and called for some changes in how clinical trials are conducted. The group concluded that the trial followed the rules and was perfectly legal but suffered from missteps. None of the other 90 volunteers exposed to the drug at lower doses experienced any problems. ”It was like a threshold,” said Begaud. There were no problems for people who had taken 20 milligrams of the drug for 10 days straight. But for those taking doses of 50 milligrams, the fifth day ”was a disaster, suddenly,” he says. ”It’s absolutely catastrophic, for medical research and of course for the volunteers.” In a presentation to outside investigators, Biotrial called the reaction an ”explosive and delayed toxicity not simply related to exposure levels.” There were mistakes that came from ignoring common sense, Begaud said. First, the people running the trial gave extremely high doses of the drug  —   about 40 times the amount that they expected was needed to quell pain. Their goal in the study was to completely block a certain enzyme. They’d increased the dose given to different subject groups in an odd pattern, too. Second, they ignored the fact that one participant was hospitalized and proceeded to give another high dose to five more people. Third, Begaud said, the trial was a ”fishing expedition.” The drug hadn’t shown much promise for treating pain, but the company decided to test it in humans anyway. Biotrial conducted the study in Rennes, France, for a Portuguese firm called Bial, developer of the experimental medicine. The drugmaker defended its approach. ”The dosage estimation over the trial was fully in accordance with the Protocol approved by the French authorities,” Bial representative Susana Vasconcelos told Shots in an email. According to a Bial press release, the experimental drug, BIA   was primarily meant to act ”in the area of pain,” specifically to treat nerve pain, but also potentially chronic pain, anxiety and the tremors related to Parkinson’s disease. A Search For New Way To Relieve Pain, The drug appears to work on the endocannabinoid system in the brain. That’s a collection of receptors in the brain and nervous system involved in pain and stress response (and also in getting high from smoking weed). But in this case, the compound likely also acted on parts of the brain that didn’t have anything to do with endocannabinoid system, according to Daniele Piomelli, a pharmacologist at the University of California, Irvine. (He wasn’t on the scientific committee that investigated the trial). Piomelli’s research group in California was involved early on in identifying this family of drugs, which has since gotten a lot of attention in the pharmaceutical world. He said the compounds were particularly attractive because they had the potential to do the beneficial things that smoking weed can do, like reduce anxiety and relieve pain, without serious side effects, such as memory loss. Specifically, the compound prevents an enzyme called fatty acid amide hydrolase, or FAAH, from breaking down a molecule in the brain that’s involved in the body’s response to pain and anxiety. ”The January tragedy was a surprise and a shock to everybody,” said Piomelli. ”All the other FAAH inhibitors that had been tested in the past had been shown to be totally safe.” He says even mild side effects were rare. ”What happened in Rennes didn’t match with anything we knew.” The scientific committee investigating the trial hypothesizes that the bad effects likely resulted from the repeated high doses. They say the drug may have accumulated in the volunteers’ bodies enough to trigger an unexpected side effect. Other drug companies had ditched similar molecules because they weren’t very effective. And BIA   hadn’t shown much promise for pain relief. ”I still don’t understand why they would bother,” said Steve Alexander, a molecular pharmacologist at the University of Nottingham Medical School. ”Most drug companies . .. would move on and go and look for something with a higher potency and a better selectivity.” ”As it is usual, at this early stage of evaluation in healthy volunteers no specific therapeutic target had been selected,” an email from Bial’s Vasconcelos said. ”However, as described in the clinical trial protocol, it aimed to evaluate the potential effects of the compound on the endocannabinoid system, namely in pain sensitivity.” Furthermore, the email said, ”preclinical tests on animals performed with higher doses to the ones administered on the phase 1 clinical trial, did not show any evidence that could have prevented conducting the trial in man.” Begaud and his colleagues recommend that clinical tests of a drug shouldn’t be started until there is a clear understanding of the benefits the work might give. ”We feel that we have to change this paradigm  —   to first prove the potential and after we go to toxicology and if it’s safe we jump to humans,” Begaud said. Of the four surviving volunteers who were hospitalized, two continue to have memory problems and other issues from their brain injuries, like vertigo and seeing double, he says. Many of the 90 volunteers exposed to the drug at lower doses are being monitored with brain imaging and neurological exams, and none have shown any problems. Alexander says there may have been a hint from animal studies about potential problems. Two mice and a rat that died in toxicology studies showed brain damage, especially to the hippocampus, much like that of the affected volunteers. Such injuries happen a lot in drug studies on animals but not, Alexander said, with FAAH inhibitors. ”The fact that what they observed was an inflammatory response in the brain, which is entirely contrary to what one would expect from an FAAH inhibitor  —   that to me would have been, not a red light, but an amber light,” said Alexander. Stephane Schubhan, one of the men who was hospitalized and continues to have symptoms, told The Irish Times that he hadn’t heard about the animals dying in   trials. Other Studies Put On Hold, Properly informing volunteers about their risks is a challenge across the world, said Rebecca Dresser, a medical ethicist with Washington University in St. Louis. The first time a drug is tried in humans is the most dangerous period in drug development, but she says subjects often don’t understand the risks of participating. ”That requires conversation, back and forth. It’s like teaching, not just reciting a bunch of information to people,” said Dresser. ”Their trials were not badly designed,” says Piomelli, aside from the unusual dosing. ”But at the end of day it’s not just following the rules. You need to have common sense.” ”If you have a patient in the hospital hospitalized with what looks like a stroke and you go ahead and do another set of administrations, quite frankly, I find this criminal, because this is an act of total lack of conscience,” says Piomelli. He says the consequences from the failed trial could be huge for his field of research and for phase 1 trials. After the news from France, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a unit of Johnson  Johnson, halted research on similar compounds. And three Yale University trials using FAAH inhibitors were suspended until further notice. The Food and Drug Administration said it couldn’t comment on clinical holds unless they’re first disclosed by the company or institution sponsoring the research. ”The only silver lining, if there is one in this story, is that possibly in the future guidelines will be put in place to prevent this from happening again,” said Pomelli. But, he said, it’s a meager silver lining."
"Detroit’s public school teachers say they will return to their classrooms on Wednesday. Detroit schools were closed for two days, after many teachers called in sick to protest a budget shortfall that could mean no pay for hours they’ve already worked. The announcement from the Detroit Federation of Teachers came hours after Michigan lawmakers advanced a $500 million plan to restructure Detroit public schools by creating a new district, The Associated Press reports. Though the teachers union still criticized parts of the bill  —   namely that it would change existing labor agreements  —   the group said it would ”encourage members to go back to school Wednesday based on discussions with the district’s   transitional manager, Steven Rhodes,” according to the AP. As The   has reported, public schools are currently funded only through June. Unless comprehensive spending legislation is passed, teachers who opt to get paid throughout the calendar year will not get paychecks for work done prior to the summer. That’s the case for ”well over half of all instruction staff,” Michigan Radio’s Sarah Cwiek tells our Newscast unit. The Detroit News, citing Detroit Public Schools spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski, reports that teachers on the extended pay schedule would potentially miss four paychecks, ”costing them an average of $9, 700 or 15 percent of their pay.” With more than 1, 500 teachers calling in ”sick” on Monday, more than 45, 000 students were out of school, according to the AP. One parent told CNN that she had an ”instant splitting headache” when she heard about the school closures: ”This is one of the most tumultuous school years our kids have experienced,” said Sharlonda Buckman, CEO of the Detroit Parents Network. ”They aren’t getting what they need. It’s disturbing. First in January . .. [now] we’re in May and this is still happening.” Teachers held sickouts in January to protest poor conditions, as Cwiek has reported on All Things Considered. In a statement on the union website, the Detroit Federation of Teachers said it met with public schools Transition Manager Steven Rhodes ”and other decision makers” on Monday ”to get an assurance that our members will be paid for their work.” ”Still, they refuse to say the three words our members need to hear: ’I guarantee it,’ ” DFT adds. ”Their failure to give us that guarantee is tantamount to a  . And since we have not gotten the guarantee that members will be paid.” The legislation to solidify this funding was up for debate in Michigan’s House of Representatives on Tuesday. The state Senate passed a similar package in March. But there are key differences between the House and Senate versions, MLive reports, including whether to establish a Detroit Education Commission and whether to give back local control of the school board. State House Speaker Kevin Cotter said the teachers union ”is once again putting the wants of adults ahead of the needs of children.” The statement, posted Monday, added: ”These egotistical teachers have lashed out at the children who rely on them and accomplished nothing but disrupting their students’ education. Their selfish and misguided plea for attention only makes it harder for us to enact a rescue plan and makes it harder for Detroit’s youngest residents to get ahead and build a future for themselves.”"
"In Detroit, 12 public school principals are accused of taking kickbacks on supplies that were never delivered. The charges, announced late last month, pose another blow to the   Detroit Public Schools, which needs hundreds of millions of dollars in   state aid. Here’s how the alleged kickback scheme worked: 12 principals, all working separately, gave contracts for school supplies to a vendor, who then kicked back some profits to them. Detroit U. S. Attorney Barbara McQuade says the alleged fraud totals $2. 5 million. She calls it a ”punch in the gut.” ”Any time a principal who is entrusted with the public trust to make sure their work is for the benefit of the children is instead diverting money for their own personal profit, it is egregious conduct,” McQuade says. But on the ground, it’s a more complicated story. Several of the principals were   leaders of some rare thriving schools here. Like Thirkell   School. Its principal, Clara Smith, is accused of taking almost $200, 000 in kickbacks. Parent James Rushing calls that shocking. ”It’s pretty much inhumane. You know? ’Cause it’s like, once we stop caring for each other, that’s the point in time when we stop being human beings and become robots,” Rushing says. Many parents at Bennett Elementary School in southwest Detroit are standing behind their accused principal, Josette Buendia. Buendia is   at this   community school, even though she’s charged with taking more than $45, 000 in kickbacks. Christina Estrada was furious when she first heard about the charges. But she says Buendia did ”amazing” things for the school. ”I feel like, hey, you’re innocent until you’re proven guilty. And I have her back,” Estrada says. For others, the timing and larger political implications of the charges are more troubling. ”My first thought was, ’Hello, distraction,’ ” says Patti McCoin, a middle school math teacher in Detroit. McCoin says that before this, the focus was on the district’s larger crisis and the state of Michigan’s role in creating it. The Detroit Public School system has been under the control of   emergency managers since 2009 and some kind of state control for most of the last 16 years. As Detroit’s financial crisis deepened this winter, teachers staged a series of ”sickout” protests to draw attention to decrepit conditions in many schools. McCoin thinks these latest accusations are relatively minor and was reminded of that when cleaning out her classroom recently. She’d found a few books leftover from when Barbara   a top district official under its first emergency manager, had ordered a series called StoryTown from publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It was a $40 million   deal and was the single largest contract in Detroit schools’ history. ”We used it for one year,” she says.   recently pleaded guilty to bribery for a similar deal at the Chicago Public Schools. Ida Short is on Detroit’s elected school board, which has been virtually powerless for years. She thinks these latest charges just scratch the surface. ”Let’s get the big fish. These are little fish that you got,” Short says. The bigger fish are allegations of things like questionable real estate deals and   dollar construction contracts for buildings that were later shut down or given away. The board recently filed a federal   lawsuit, contending that under state control, the Detroit Public Schools have deteriorated to such an extent they violate students’ civil rights. Short says these latest corruption allegations are symptoms of that larger dysfunction. She says principals normally wouldn’t approve these kinds of contracts on their own. ”We have no oversight. So you have an emergency manager, and you have schools that are actually run as individual schools, and not as a district,” she says. The district’s current emergency manager, Steven Rhodes, has put all the accused principals on unpaid leave. Not all have been arraigned yet. Most seem likely to take plea deals. But many in Michigan’s   state legislature, already skeptical about extending a fiscal lifeline to the district, now see these charges as more proof the district can’t return to local control. Some even think it should be allowed to go broke, even though all Michigan taxpayers would ultimately be on the hook for at least $500 million of its massive debt."
"You may have seen the crazy amounts of money spent at high end art auctions: $81 million for a Mark Rothko, $179 million for a Picasso. Now, a new memoir called The Auctioneer dishes about the tycoons, rock stars and royalty who play in this   game. Simon de Pury is an art world insider who has been called the ”Mick Jagger” of auctions  —   he once even tried to compete with the two power houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s. On a recent evening in New York, an army of waiters dressed in black buzz around tables of hundreds of young hipsters and older  . It’s just the kind of crowd de Pury savors  —   a fundraiser for the New Museum in New York City. In his trademark,   suit, de Pury is known for bringing the rush of a sports event to the auction room. He’s a theatrical, sophisticated salesman. As the bidding escalates, he points right, left, and center throughout the vast party room. He growls like a rock star when somebody ups the ante. At this particular auction de Pury appears to be calling on real people when they bid. That doesn’t always happen, as he reveals in his new book. One of an auctioneer’s tricks is the ”chandelier bid.” As de Pury explains it, the ”auctioneer raises the ante by pointing to a vague rich someone in the back of the room. That someone could be a chandelier.” He continues, ”It’s within the auctioneer’s discretion to make up bids throughout a sale, just to keep a slow auction rolling, up to whatever confidential minimum reserve price has been agreed upon by the seller and the auction house.” And, he writes, ”it’s all completely legal.” Filmmaker Ian Denyer calls de Pury ”a shaman and a swaggerer.” Denyer followed de Pury around for about a year making a documentary about him for BBC4 TV called The Man with the Golden Gavel.  ”He exudes charm, so people are being charmed out of their cash,” says Denyer. The dashing de Pury charms, not just in the auction room, but wherever the wealthy reside: mansions, yachts, swanky parties. It helps that he himself is an aristocrat, a Swiss Baron. In the town of Neuchatel, Place Pury is named for one of Simon’s ancestors  —   there’s even a statue of him. Denyer says de Pury is right at home with the rich and famous. ”He is of the people that he works with and represents and sells things to and for,” says Denyer. ”He moves amongst them and therefore has sort of free access to them. We went to parties, in our film, and we had to leave them at the door because, as the media, we were simply too filthy to enter.” De Pury grew up in Basel, Switzerland, an   city and home to one of the biggest art fairs in the world. De Pury says he once wanted to be an artist himself. ”And I rapidly had to come to the conclusion that I was not good enough to make a living out of it,” he says, in his   accent. ”And that’s when I felt the next best thing is to make a living out of the art of the artists who are good and who are very talented.” After studying art and apprenticing with a dealer, he discovered the thrill of auctions. He’s also the first to admit he’s got the ego to run them. In his new book he writes that ”whenever” he ”saw a podium,” he ”wanted to be on it.” De Pury spent several years working at Sotheby’s, in London, Geneva and Monte Carlo. Life within the two big auction houses is all about convincing private collectors to sell through you and not the other house. De Pury thrived in this atmosphere. In the late 1990s, he and a partner did the unthinkable: They tried to take on the big two. ”The big challenge was, in an industry dominated by a duopoly, to try and create a third force,” says de Pury. The new auction house Phillips de Pury had a strategy. ”I didn’t have the means, the financial means, to take on the two houses frontally so we thought: Let’s develop areas in which we become the best,” de Pury explains. ”So we thought we’re going to do contemporary art, emerging contemporary art particularly, design and photography and in these fields we’ll just become the best.” Among the artists de Pury’s new company sold were photographers Helmut Newton and Annie Leibovitz and edgy artists like   Basquiat and Cindy Sherman. The auction house also had its share of disasters. In his book, de Pury partly blames the financial turmoil that followed Sept. 11. One auction, at the height of the banking crisis in 2008, was described as a ”humiliation.” There was speculation de Pury’s house would crumble. Sotheby’s and Christie’s have also had disastrous auctions. But a boutique house like de Pury’s couldn’t withstand them, says Nate Freeman, a senior writer with ARTNews. ”It will always be Sotheby’s and Christie’s,” says Freeman. ”They are just so   against each other that it’s very hard for a third house to break into that fierce rivalry between the two of them. And I think, at a certain point, Simon realized that.” In 2012, the Russian company that was backing Phillips de Pury bought out all of Simon’s shares, and he left the company. But he didn’t give up the gavel. He tours the world auctioneering   charity events. Along with his wife, Michaela de Pury, who is also an auctioneer and collector, he started an online auction house. Simon de Pury also hosted Work of Art, a reality TV show on Bravo that pitted young artists against each other. De Pury has critics, but nobody disputes his knowledge and love of art. ”The one reason I chose this profession is I’m simply obsessed with art,” de Pury declares. ”I love looking at great art on a daily basis and so doing this profession does allow me to see really great art every single day, and that is the beauty of it.” The de Purys are avid collectors  —   in his memoir de Pury says that, when possible, he buys two to three new pieces a month for his private collection. He writes that through the ”business of art,” he gets to be ”an artist in a dealer’s suit.”"
"Honey, I shrunk the queso. They’ve fried hard shell tacos, made a comforting bowl of chicken noodle soup, even whipped up a batch of rainbow   doughnuts. In an age of molecular gastronomy, this may not seem like culinary genius. But on Tiny Kitchen, everything is cooked in a dollhouse kitchen roughly   the normal size. Now in its second season, the popular online video series is produced by media group Tastemade. Jay Holzer, head of production, says the idea for a tiny cooking show came from one of Tastemade’s Japanese partners, who sent them a box filled with a tiny stove, tiny utensils, and a set of tiny cutting boards. ”Since then, it’s taken on a life of its own,” Holzer says. Miniatures have long been popular in Japan due to the cultural dominance of kawaii, or all things cute, but making minuscule edible food  —   rather than polymer clay copies  —   is the newest incarnation of that trend. (A quick search of YouTube reveals several similar tiny cooking shows that appear to be from Japan.) One of Tastemade’s food stylists, Hannah Aufman, now works on Tiny Kitchen exclusively. The show has also commissioned a special kitchen from a dollhouse maker in Germany. Once the crew finds a tiny working oven and a tiny barbecue, the Tiny Kitchen folks plan to continue expanding their tiny culinary repertoire. A lot more goes into creating a new recipe than math. In addition to rewriting existing recipes to fit the mini serving sizes, Aufman is responsible for   ways to fry teensy taco shells (she bends a paper clip into something like a frying basket) or figuring out how to deal with eggs (use part of a quail egg, the smallest commercially available variety). And forget gas or electricity  —   this mini stove is heated by a tealight. Since the volume of food being cooked is so small, the candle provides more than enough energy to melt butter or boil water. In fact, things often cook too quickly. Burgers take no more than a few seconds on each side. ”You can’t regulate the heat,” Holzer says. ”It’s either ’hot as a tealight’ or no heat at all.” Luckily, the crew is quick with their tiny spatulas and ladles  —   utensils that are often not much bigger than a fingernail. But size discrepancies are unavoidable when dealing with real food. That quail egg, for example, is the same size as the mixing bowl. An early episode, in which Tiny Kitchen made bananas Foster, starts by showing a tiny knife chopping into an entire banana. Were this kitchen scaled back to full size, that banana would be at least as tall as a basketball player. To cut out doughnut holes, Tiny Kitchen had to use part of a soda straw  —   but that still towered over the individual doughnuts. Even the dollhouse where the show is filmed sits in the midst of a gigantic soundstage. Somehow, the incongruities make the show feel more relatable. It’s not just a beautifully decorated miniature. This is a ”working” kitchen with real cooks (or at least their hands) making real food that just happens to be    . After each episode is done filming, the food is left out for people to eat. And it all does get eaten  —   though there’s not much of it to go around. Holzer says the most popular tiny recipes are the ones people know how to make at home. Pancakes and tacos are two of the show’s most shared videos. ”It’s something you or I know how to make a   version of, so it’s fun to watch it happen as a tiny thing.” Unfortunately, it’s just not very filling."
"The Solar Impulse 2 landed in the Phoenix area Monday night, welcomed by spectators at Goodyear Airport as the plane’s pilots continue their quest to be the world’s first solar powered airplane to fly around the Earth. The   trip took nearly 16 hours  —   less time than expected, largely due to powerful tailwinds. The plane reached a maximum altitude of 22, 000 feet. From member station KJZZ in Phoenix, Andrew Bernier tells our Newscast unit: ”The average speed of Solar Impulse 2 is 45 mph. But the tailwinds were too strong for some portions of the flight  —   so to slow down, the pilot had to sometimes turn the plane around and fly into the headwinds, essentially flying backward toward Phoenix. Other than that, the pilot said it was a great and sunny flight over the desert.” Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg was at the controls for the plane’s 10th stage of a    flight. Borschberg alternates flying duties with project founder Bertrand Piccard. The   flight project started in March 2015, but it was put on hold in July after the plane’s batteries developed problems during a   flight from Japan to Hawaii. It resumed its journey last month, completing a   trip from Hawaii to Mountain View, Calif. The Solar Impulse 2 uses energy gathered from 17, 000 solar cells on its surface to power itself. The craft weighs roughly 5, 000 pounds and has a wingspan of 236 feet  —   wider than a Boeing 747. As the   reported when the plane left Hawaii, the team hopes to end the journey where it began last spring, in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates."
"On the banks of a canal in industrial east London sits Britain’s oldest salmon smokehouse: H. Forman  Son. Inside, 80 employees help fillet and salt salmon by hand, then hang the fish in giant smokers. It’s the same method used by the company’s founder, Harry Forman, 111 years ago. ”He was an Eastern European Jewish immigrant that fled the pogroms  —   he came from Ukraine  —   and settled in London’s East End in the late 19th century,” says his   Lance Forman. Forman is the   owner to run this small family business. And like many small businesses across the United Kingdom, he’s trying to figure out how ”Brexit”  —   a possible British withdrawal from the European Union  —   could affect his bottom line. Britons go to the polls June 23 in a nationwide referendum on whether to stay in the EU or pull out and go it alone. While big banks and corporations have lobbying teams involved in the rival ”In” and ”Out” campaigns, and employ research divisions to help them prepare for a possible change, small businesses are scrambling to figure out how a Brexit could affect them and what value EU membership brings to their business. But it’s difficult to calculate. Some small businesses were founded after Britain entered the European Economic Community, then known as the Common Market, in 1973. Or they may use technology that wasn’t around before then. Others have watched warily as that economic union grew into a political union  —   the European Union  —   with its own diplomats, fiscal policy and greatly expanded regulatory environment. It’s different from what the U. K. originally signed up to, they say. That’s Forman’s view. He plans to vote to leave the EU. ”I travel to Europe, I have very good friends across Europe,” Forman says. ”That’s not what this is about. It’s about the organization, which has become too powerful, undemocratic and corrupt, in fact, in many cases. It just needs to go.” He’s had to comply with EU regulations that he calls ridiculous. For example, he says he spent thousands of dollars last year on   packaging  —   to label his smoked salmon as containing fish, for people who have allergies. And he says he wasn’t allowed to extend his new factory wing to the edge of a nearby canal because EU rules required him to leave space for certain insects and other wildlife that mate in those wetlands. The House of Commons estimated in 2010 that as many as half of Britain’s laws and regulations are influenced by the EU in Brussels. Forman says this has diluted British identity. ”People need to feel their culture and their patriotism and their nationality. You’re losing that, and people are resenting that now,” he says. ”The economics don’t work, the [euro] single currency doesn’t work. I think we need to be that first domino to fall.” But economists say that if Britain leaves the EU, it’s the British economy that will falter. ”Overall, U. K. GDP would go down by 5 percent,” warns Thomas Sampson, an international trade expert at the London School of Economics and   of a recent report on the consequences of leaving the EU. ”That would be a reduction in GDP per household of about $5, 000, and it would mean that the activity of the average small business  —   sales of the average small business  —   would be hit by 5 percent, too.” The prime minister, the Bank of England, the IMF, the OECD  —   lots of big financial institutions  —   all predict economic losses from a possible Brexit. But opinion polls show Britons are nevertheless divided roughly evenly on the issue. ”I think their view is, ’Well, there may be an economic cost, but that’s a price we’re willing to pay to regain what we see is our lost national sovereignty,’ ” Sampson says. ”A lot of the debate in the U. K. is about this economics versus political sovereignty  .” Back in his smokehouse, Forman says he has reassured his EU employees that he’ll lobby to keep them, no matter what happens in June’s vote. Many of them are from Eastern Europe  —   just like his   the company’s founder. They’re allowed to live and work in the U. K. because it’s a member of the EU, and the prospect of that changing worries them, Forman says. Roughly half of U. K. trade is with the EU  —   and that could be hurt. But Forman wants to expand his sales elsewhere. ”Whole Foods is a big American customer of ours,” he says of the upscale U. S. grocery chain. Through his website, Forman sells directly to customers worldwide, and he says he doesn’t need Brussels to negotiate a trade deal for him. He currently has to pay customs duties when he ships salmon to places outside the EU. And if the vote goes his way in June, he may have to pay to send his fish to Europe, too. But that, he says, is a price he’s willing to pay to restore British sovereignty  —   even if it ends up hurting his own bottom line."
"Donald Trump, the man who would not run, could not be taken seriously and could not win, is the apparent nominee of the Republican Party. The office in question is the presidency of the United States. One year ago, supposedly knowledgeable people thought the Manhattan real estate billionaire and reality TV star with the preposterous persona and   personal life was kidding. He had flirted with candidacies before, as far back as the 1980s, teasing at running for governor, senator and even president. Each time, he got whatever attention he was seeking at the moment  —   and moved on. It was shtick, we told ourselves. We’d seen it before. Not this time. This time, Trump filed his papers, popped up on top of the polls in the summer of 2015 and leapt onstage to debate the other GOP hopefuls. His megawatt personality immediately became a magnet for viewers on TV, as did his   battles with rivals and news moderators. And when there were no debates, Trump was still everywhere  . He appeared on Sunday morning political chat shows weekly from November to April. He dominated Twitter on a   basis. He defined not only the terms of debate but the monikers by which people thought of other candidates (”Lyin’ Ted,” ”Little Marco,” ”Low Energy Jeb”). He reinvented himself in the media and in the public mind. Efforts to link him to his past lifestyle, his marriages and affairs, his bullying business tactics and his contradictory positions were all, by and large, unavailing. One by one, the   and respected senators and governors (Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Bush, Rubio) fell by the wayside. And today, after a long run of victories in midsize and megastates, Trump stands alone. Ted Cruz and John Kasich, the last hurdles standing (or wobbling) between Trump and the goal line, have thrown in the towel. The proximate cause was a wipeout Trump win in Indiana  —   a state where Cruz once led in the polls and that has a long border with Kasich’s Ohio. Today the history of the GOP moves to another phase, and the #NeverTrump forces face a historic choice. Some have said they are now #NeverEverTrump. But Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, has gone the other way. The Priebus message, echoed by others in the party, is this: We couldn’t stop him it’s going to be The Donald, so deal with it. The GOP’s Potential   Problem, That may be the best course for many Republican incumbents at various levels. They need to refocus the national political imagination on the binary choice this November, both for the White House and the Congress and statehouses. But the choice will be excruciating for the party’s Senate incumbents seeking   in blue or purple states. Republicans in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are no better than even bets for  . The party is also defending vacant seats in Florida and Indiana. There are question marks elsewhere in swing states. But no one is sure whether more is gained by distancing the incumbent from the nominee, embracing him  —   or trying to get away with a bit of both. Suffice it to say no Republican has faced quite this pointed a dilemma in recent memory  —   if ever. Trump’s unfavorable number, now in the   might be an argument for staying at arm’s length. But those who like him are voters every Republican needs on Election Day. Unknown Unknowns, There is also the problem of the unknown. In the past, ascending to be the apparent nominee has added stature to contenders who have been seen grubbing for votes in diners and hog barns for months. In Trump’s case, he has eschewed those rituals while pursuing a   and   strategy. How will he fare when the dynamic changes, and he has no field of pursuers to dominate? How will his planned barrage against the Clintons be received? We have seen Trump take a series of turns already. He may have made his first turn toward more consequential political combat in 2009, when he intruded on the ”birther” conspiracy, questioning President Obama’s birthright citizenship and eligibility for the White House. Even after the   birth certificate was produced and the controversy dispelled, Trump kept at it. Polling showed him with a following, whether from this episode or his TV programs or his decades of notoriety in the tabloids. The president retaliated with a series of humorous putdowns, either directly or indirectly aimed at Trump. At a White House Correspondents’ Dinner he mocked the level of   Trump had faced on Celebrity Apprentice. On another such occasion, Obama said ”Donald Trump is here . .. still.” Some believe that public shaming had something to do with Trump’s change of heart about running for office. Will He Still Be Teflon Don In A General Election? In any event, his first campaign in earnest did not always go smoothly. His controversial remarks about John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war, about Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly and about a handicapped reporter marred his early weeks. But thereafter, having weathered the storms of protest over these incidents, Trump built up a kind of immunity  —   at least as pertained to his followers. He himself remarked that he could ”shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue” and his backers wouldn’t care. Conservative commentators lined up against him in the nation’s leading newspapers and magazines. Even more important, it would seem, was the opposition of radio talk show hosts  —   a potent element in   media in local and statewide media for decades. These hosts overwhelmingly preferred Cruz. In February, Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, largely on the strength of evangelical voters. But overnight Trump had transformed his loss into a controversy over tactics allegedly used by the Cruz campaign to shoulder aside Ben Carson, the famed brain surgeon. (Carson would eventually endorse Trump.) In a breakthrough, Trump won New Hampshire in a landslide and raced through most of Super Tuesday, even splitting the evangelical vote with Cruz, who posed himself as religious liberty’s ardent champion. Alarmed, many in the Republican establishment tried to take Trump down. Mitt Romney, the party nominee just four years ago, delivered a blistering critique in a news conference broadcast nationwide. It seemed a body blow, yet it appeared to have no measurable effect. Weaker in the caucus states, where long processes favored activists devoted to Cruz, Trump stormed back in the more populous states that held primaries. In March, he held his own in the Bible Belt. And in April, after absorbing a setback in Wisconsin, he stormed back to dominate across the Northeast and   states. At this moment, most polls and prognosticators say Trump is likely to lose to Clinton in November.  But that is six months away.  We should all reflect on what we thought we knew about Trump’s trajectory six months ago. "
"Donald Trump is the apparent GOP presidential nominee after his two remaining rivals ended their White House bids. Ohio Gov. John Kasich suspended his campaign Wednesday evening in Columbus. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dropped out of the race Tuesday night after a disappointing loss in Indiana. The rapid moves in the past 24 hours bring to a close a wild GOP primary season that leaves the   unlikely candidate as the party’s apparent nominee. Trump was widely discounted when he announced his bid on June 16 last year after publicly flirting with a White House run for many years but not following through. The real estate mogul dominated the news cycles and was impervious to ramifications from controversial statements and missteps that would have doomed any other nominee. The GOP electorate, fed up with a Republican Party they felt had too often capitulated to Democratic demands, was angry, and Trump became the vehicle for that anger and desire for an outsider candidate. He now inherits a deeply fractured Republican Party and has many challenges in uniting his former rivals and opponents behind his candidacy. #NeverTrump forces poured millions of dollars into ads in Indiana as a   effort to stop him, an aim that would be for naught. Trump will now turn his attention toward the general election against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton  —   a more uphill fight than he had in the primary contest he dominated for much of the past year. He told the New York Times in an interview that he’ll begin searching for a running mate too, with former    Dr. Ben Carson heading up that vetting process. Despite Trump’s claims otherwise, Clinton has consistently led him in    matchups. While Trump has claimed he would expand the map as the GOP nominee, the more likely scenario is that some states previously out of contention for Democrats, such as Georgia or Arizona, could quickly become competitive. While Clinton does have high negatives, Trump’s unfavorable ratings with general election voters  —   who are more diverse and more Democratic  —   are abysmal and the worst for any recent major party de facto nominee. Many Republicans have recently reiterated that if Trump was the GOP nominee, they wouldn’t vote for him. Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse tweeted Tuesday night that his earlier statement that he would never support Trump stands. Mark Salter, a longtime top adviser to 2008 GOP nominee John McCain, said Tuesday he would be voting for Clinton over Trump. Even before Tuesday, both Cruz and Kasich had already been mathematically eliminated from getting the 1, 237 requisite delegates to stop Trump on the first ballot at a GOP convention. Instead, their only hope was denying Trump a majority of delegates and hoping that GOP delegates would switch allegiances to their camps in a multiple ballot scenario. For the past month and a half, Cruz and Kasich remained in the race as alternatives to Trump even though their chances remained daunting. Kasich only won one state  —   his home of Ohio  —   back on March 15 and hadn’t amassed many delegates since then. In fact, he ends fourth in the delegate race behind Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who suspended his campaign nearly two months ago. Kasich’s campaign remained resolute though, believing that at a contested GOP convention in Cleveland this summer, party stalwarts would eventually turn toward the moderate governor of a crucial swing state. Even on Tuesday night as Cruz announced his exit, Kasich’s team signaled that they would remain in the race. By Wednesday morning, though, they seemed to have finally accepted the harsh reality. While Kasich was on his plane flying to Washington, D. C. for a news conference at Dulles airport in Virginia, he had a change of heart and decided to turn the plane around and head to Ohio, where his White House bid would officially come to an end. In a speech Wednesday evening in which he reflected on the positive message he’d tried to portray with his campaign, Kasich thanks his staff and supporters. ”As I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, a deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life,” Kasich said. Cruz had been Trump’s closest competitor. The Texas senator  —   who was no favorite of party stalwarts either  —   did outmaneuver Trump at many   delegate races, hoping to gain the upper hand at the GOP convention. Ultimately, he won the most votes or delegates in 11 states and netted more than 7 million votes."
"Donald Trump likes to say he is   his campaign. That isn’t entirely true. He has actually lent his campaign about   of the $49 million or so that he has spent so far. That means the campaign can pay him back if it has the money. But there’s a deadline. Trump has 11 weeks to repay himself  —   exactly at the moment when he needs to pivot and start raising cash for the general election campaign. The loans began more than two months before his announcement speech last June, when he said, ”I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care.” He paused. ”I’m really rich.” Trump had lent the campaign nearly $38 million as of March 31. It’s not much in the grand scheme of ”really rich” candidates. Mitt Romney, for example, lent his 2008 primary campaign $44 million. Romney later converted the loans into campaign contributions, something Trump may do as well. But the fact that Trump chose to make loans, not contributions, suggests he at least has hopes of getting repaid. And here’s where it gets complicated for the apparent nominee. Fundraising to repay candidate loans is regulated in two ways. ”If he wants that money back, he needs to raise it in $2, 700 chunks before the convention, and make that repayment from his campaign committee to his personal bank account,” said campaign finance lawyer Paul S. Ryan, at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. The $2, 700 limit applies to all contributions to federal candidates. The deadline was imposed by Congress in 2002, to prevent situations where lobbyists’ money was going directly into the personal accounts of newly elected lawmakers. Looking ahead, Trump’s general election campaign could easily cost $750 million or more, 15 to 20 times what he has spent on the primaries. So the fundraising pressure is on. The campaign hasn’t laid out clear plans for raising that money or for dealing with the candidate loans. Trump discussed fundraising strategy Wednesday morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. ”Do I want to sell a couple of buildings and  ? I don’t know that I want to do that necessarily, but I really won’t be asking for money for myself I’ll be asking money for the party,” he said. He also got on the phone with ABC’s Good Morning America, saying his campaign will be seeking   contributions up to the $2, 700 legal limit. ”We will probably take small contributions,” he said. ”We will take the limits. I don’t want big contributions.” Trump strategist Paul Manafort explained the limits of Trump’s   last week on the Laura Ingraham Show. ”Now when it comes to the general election, we’re no longer running as an individual,” Manafort said. ”We’re running as the head of a ticket. And so the party itself will be doing some things to raise money, and Mr. Trump has indicated he’d be willing to help the party.” Thus, if Trump wants to recover his loans, he’ll have to do   fundraising at the same time that he solicits wealthy donors for Republican Party committees. The national committees have much higher contribution limits than do candidate committees. For the Republican National Committee, the per donor cap is $333, 400 a year. The Trump campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment. If Trump decides against converting the loans to contributions, attorney Ryan says the GOP’s priorities for him would be obvious: ”(a) campaigning for president, (b) raising money for the general election to be spent down the road, not (c) raising money to repay loans I’ve made to myself and money spent months ago in order to actually get the nomination.” Trump has yet to say whether these are his priorities too."
"It’s 2:00 p. m. and you have a few more hours until the end of your workday. Your eyes sting, your vision is getting blurry and your head hurts. The computer screen that you’ve been staring at for the past six hours seems so bright that you want to shut your eyes. Sound familiar? We’d bet yes. Piotr Le, a Georgetown University grad student, thinks so, too. He used to work in consulting  —   and that meant staring at a computer screen for 12 or more hours every workday. ”Partially I left because of the physical deterioration of my body,” Le says. ”A lot of eye rubbing. That’s why my prescription got worse. I would wake up with neck pain and back pain.” Depending on whether you consult an optometrist or an ophthalmologist, you might get different answers on what ails you. Is it computer vision syndrome? Is it digital eyestrain? Is it just dry eyes and some eyestrain? The most common definition is given by the American Optometric Association, which coined computer vision syndrome and digital eyestrain as a group of   problems from viewing digital screens for a long time. The American Academy of Ophthalmology labels it   eyestrain. The group emphasizes that extended reading and writing can also strain the eyes. Neither computer vision syndrome nor digital eyestrain is an official medical condition. They are more of a collection of symptoms that sometimes include headache, neck and shoulder pain. ”Classification schemes do take time to develop, and so it may not have crept into medical coding,” says Dr. Michael X. Repka, a Johns Hopkins ophthalmologist and clinical spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Repka says in the past these symptoms would be lumped under asthenopia, a condition that encompasses eye fatigue, ache around the eyes, blurred vision and headache. Computer vision syndrome, he says, is considered to be under asthenopia in the   medical coding system. ”Computer vision syndrome . .. is not a recognized medical entity,” says James Sheedy, a professor of optometry at Pacific University and head of the Vision Ergonomics Research Laboratory. ”A medical diagnosis is a condition where the anatomy or physiology isn’t functioning properly. There are several different medical diagnoses that could be the cause of what is commonly called computer vision syndrome. There are different names put on it. Those are really names to create a black box where you put everything into . .. but it’s really the same thing.” The fact that these symptoms are common is  . Optometrists and ophthalmologists agree that many patients walk into their offices with these complaints. But is there enough evidence to upgrade their diagnostic status? ”I think research is coming out now that this really is a different condition,” says Mark Rosenfield, a professor at SUNY College of Optometry. ”There is something about these screens that is different from paper and so we’re trying to figure out what aspects of screens is it that is causing problems. People didn’t look at paper for that length of time [that] people are looking at screens, so I think that could be a factor too  —   the fact that people are looking at these things for such long periods of time.” So why do our digital screens cause us so much trouble? ”We’re not really designed to do   near work we’re designed to do   near work, and so to the extent that we have to do so much near work our eyes are in tension virtually all the time,” says Steve Loomis, president of the American Optometric Association. ”The average worker spends seven hours a day on some digital device. . .. I’m among them and so what we know is that that means that the muscles in the eye are in a state of tension.” In a review of studies for the journal Ophthalmic  Physiological Optics, Rosenfield found that we have more incomplete blinks during computer operations, which reduces the volume of tears in our eyes. Too few tears causes irritation and a burning sensation in the eyes. A more recent review of the syndrome in IOS Press lists other factors: glare from windows, overhead lights and the computer. Also, the particulars of how your computer or digital devices are arranged, including the height and viewing distance of the device from our eyes. We also tend to hold   devices closer to our eyes than we should. ”The eyes work best we know by looking down about 15 degrees in most desktop computer situations. This means that the top of the computer screen displays should be level with the eyes,” Sheedy says. ”If it’s higher or lower than that the person tends to tilt the head back or forward and now they have an imbalance and this creates muscular tension and it can give them a neck ache.” The evidence doesn’t suggest these symptoms are permanent. They can be alleviated by changing our workplace habits.   screen filters and eyedrops may help some. Optometrists say that some people who use reading glasses may benefit from trying glasses with a different focal length for computer work. One of the most commonly cited  —   and cheapest  —   things to do is just to give your eyes a rest. Follow the    rule: Every 20 minutes, look at something at least 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Grad student Le now stares at his computer only four to six hours a day. He says he still gets occasional neck pain from looking down at his laptop. And the white backgrounds of PDFs and Word documents still bother his eyes some. He’s also trying software to make the tone of his screen warmer. But his   move is taking a break. ”I close my eyes and look at the skyline,” he says, ”or something that is not bright.”"
"Bernie Sanders is staying in the race until the last primary and the nation will be better off for it, he told NPR’s Steve Inskeep in an interview that will air Thursday on Morning Edition. Inskeep, passing on questions he had invited on Twitter, asked Sanders if he is ”threatening [his] revolution” by continuing to run, potentially scaring some voters away from supporting Hillary Clinton  —   the likely Democratic nominee  —   in November. ”I think we are perpetuating the political revolution by significantly increasing the level of political activity that we’re seeing in this country,” Sanders responded. He added later, ”I think it is good for the United States of America, good for the Democratic Party, to have a vigorous debate, to engage people in the political process.” Sanders elaborated, noting that by staying in the race, he is energizing voters and, therefore, in fact boosting the Democratic Party to victory in November. He contended that Democrats do well when turnout is high and that Republicans do poorly when turnout is high. ”So I’m going to do everything I can to stimulate political discourse in this country and get young people, working people, involved in the political process,” he said. That means he will stay in the race ”until the last vote is cast” after Washington, D. C.’s Democratic primary June 14. But Can He Win? The Vermont independent senator also stressed that he thinks he can still win, despite Clinton’s massive delegate lead. ”We think we have a path toward victory  —   admittedly it is a narrow path,” Sanders said. A very narrow path: He would need 65 percent of all remaining pledged delegates for a pledged majority and 82 percent of all delegates  —   including remaining superdelegates  —   to pull past Clinton overall, according to NPR’s Domenico Montanaro. But Sanders said he believes if he is able to win by large margins in upcoming states like Oregon and California, as he has in Washington (with nearly 73 percent of the vote) and Utah (79 percent) he can pull ahead. Sanders could win in West Virginia, where he leads in recent polls. But in some later states, it gets tougher. On June 7, Sanders would have to get those margins in California, New Jersey and elsewhere. And in   California, for example, Clinton leads in recent polls, as well as New Jersey. And, remember, he needs   of all pledged delegates just for a pledged majority. That’s very difficult to do because Democrats allocate their delegates proportionally. For example, out of Sanders’ win in Indiana on Tuesday night, he finds himself needing a higher percentage of the vote than going into Tuesday because he got only 53 percent of the vote. ”The path to victory is to do extremely well in the remaining states,” he said. In addition, he acknowledged, superdelegates would have to change their minds. However, in states in which he has won (or may yet win) by wide margins, he said, those delegates should simply reflect the will of the voters, not to mention general election prospects. ”I think we have got to make the case that the superdelegates, who in many cases were on board [with] Hillary Clinton even before I got in the race, that they should take a hard look at which candidate is stronger against Donald Trump,” he said. ”And I think we can make that case.” Sanders pointed to polls in which he performs better than Clinton against Trump in hypothetical   matchups. Sanders, however, declined to answer whether he believes Clinton would be qualified to be president. Rather, he said that he wants to prevent Trump from winning in November. ”Right now as I’ve said many times, Steve, I think that a Donald presidency would be a disaster for this country,” he said. ”And I intend to do everything that I can to see that this does not happen.” The Path Ahead: West Virginia, Sanders’ next stop in furthering his political revolution is West Virginia, where he is currently campaigning. Clinton angered voters there with a comment earlier this cycle that under her, the nation would ”put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” (though she had also said she wanted to invest more in those communities and help workers find new jobs). Clinton apologized for that remark this week. Asked about this comment, Sanders was similar to Clinton’s point of view. He said that while he is committed to helping American workers, the nation has to tackle the problem of   climate change by moving ”away from fossil fuel.” He added that his climate change legislation includes $41 billion to help displaced workers get education, job training and unemployment benefits."
"The dust has settled. The mists have parted. The GOP has an apparent nominee, at long last, and it is Donald Trump. Trump will most likely face off against Hillary Clinton, who leads Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side by several hundred delegates. And a new poll suggests that a   contest would be an overwhelmingly negative fight. The November election may be decided not by which candidate is more popular but by which one is less unpopular. In a new   poll, 54 percent of registered voters said they’d choose Clinton in a matchup against Trump. He only got 41 percent support. But the interesting thing is how people made their choices: Around half of Clinton   supporters told   their vote wouldn’t be so much for Clinton as against Trump. Trump’s supporters were slightly less enthusiastic: 57 percent said they would be more voting against Clinton than for Trump. It’s just two questions in one poll, but it underscores what we’ve been hearing for weeks now: the most likely Republican and Democratic candidates are both also remarkably unpopular. Right now, by RealClearPolitics’ average, Clinton’s net favorability (that is, the share who see her favorably minus the share who see her unfavorably) right now is negative 16. 5 points. Trump is far worse yet, at negative 37. It’s not unheard of for candidates to change voters’ minds on this Mitt Romney managed to boost his favorability numbers considerably as the 2012 election approached. But these unfavorability ratings show the major difficulty that both Clinton and Trump would face in November: enthusiasm. That means both candidates will have to do everything they can to drum up support  —   an unenthusiastic voter just might not turn out at all. Both candidates could of course boost their enthusiasm by trying to get more voters to like them. But it’s also clear that many voters in this election will simply really, really dislike the other party. That means Clinton and Trump could each choose the other path: drumming up enthusiasm against the other candidate. Trump has already proven his willingness to go negative  —   threatening to ”spill the beans” on Heidi Cruz (whatever that meant) and attacking Clinton for playing ”the woman card.” Clinton, meanwhile, has a new online ad showing a string of Republicans mercilessly lambasting Trump throughout this election cycle. That means this could just be the start of six months of mudslinging. Given how angry the electorate has been this cycle, the candidates might just do well to appeal to voters’ dissatisfaction."
"Let’s say a pregnant woman develops high blood pressure. In ordinary circumstances, her medical team will monitor her condition. If there’s a threat to the fetus, the doctor might want to bring on labor early. In the end, mother and baby are usually fine. But what if she’s living in a war zone? First of all, she might not know she has the condition. Sometimes a pregnant woman with high blood pressure shows no symptoms. And amid the chaos of combat, regular checkups may be hard to arrange. Even if she is aware of complications, like swelling of the hands, feet and face, she still might not be able to get to a hospital equipped with blood pressure cuffs and doctors with the right expertise. ”Nobody wants to drive through the streets because it is too dangerous,” says Dr. Andrew Weeks, an obstetrician and expert on maternal deaths who published a chilling editorial about the risks of war for pregnant women in the journal The BMJ. ”There are no taxis. There’s no money. So you start walking or being carried to the nearest health facility, which is in ruins. Of course you’re going to die. You haven’t got a chance.” And it’s not just a lack of medical care, he says. Direct attacks on pregnant women are another concern. In his editorial, Weeks described women being shot while giving birth in Nigeria and a fetus being shot through a pregnant woman’s belly by a sniper in Syria. Without any official tracking of the number of pregnant women who die from reasons related to war, these women often become ”forgotten victims,” says Weeks. ”Every avenue you look at for women during war times, their health is compromised,” says Weeks, a professor at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. ”The voices of women in war situations are often neglected. These are the lost voices we’re trying to highlight.” Collecting accurate data is rarely a priority or even a possibility during war. Overall, an estimated 303, 000 pregnant women die around the world each year. Above that, nobody knows exactly how many of the 140, 000 or so women who die in conflict each year are pregnant, though estimates are sobering. In general, 4 percent of the population in any emergency setting will be pregnant, says Janet Meyers, deputy director for health policy and practice at International Medical Corps, a   organization that provides health care in global emergencies. And more than a third of maternal deaths happen in crisis settings. Rates are highest in South Sudan, where more than 2, 000 women die for every 100, 000 live births. In the United States, deaths occur in about 14 of every 100, 000 births. In the midst of active combat, drug supplies often dwindle. Doctors and midwives may flee. Even clean, running water can be hard to come by. And those are just the secondary problems. As social systems break down, violence and sexual violence against women rise. Because pregnancy is a particularly vulnerable time  —   when even ordinary complications can quickly become tragic  —   Weeks hopes that his editorial will bring more attention to protecting pregnant women who are stuck in terrible situations. There may be some cause for hope, Meyers says, including some    efforts by health providers to care for pregnant women in war zones. Awareness is also growing that reproductive health services need to be part of crisis response plans. In South Sudan, for example, the International Medical Corps is training midwives and placing them in rural communities. ”One of the most important things we can do is make sure women have access to deliveries by skilled birth attendants and access to emergency obstetric and newborn care,” Meyers says. ”You cannot predict who will have a complication.” Equally important, she says, is giving women a choice to not get pregnant in the first place. ”I really can’t emphasize enough that we need to make family planning available,” she says. ”I’ve had women say to me, ’I do not want to get pregnant in this situation.’ ”"
"”I will not rest, and I’m going to make sure that the leaders at every level of government don’t rest until every drop of water that flows to your homes is safe to drink, and safe to cook with, and safe to bathe in,” President Obama told an energetic audience in Flint, Mich. ”Because that’s part of the basic responsibilities of a government in the United States of America.” Obama met with community members in the   city, where a federal state of emergency has been declared as a result of lead leaching into the water supply. He told the crowd at a Flint high school that this was a ”  disaster,” and a result of a ”broader mindset”: ”I do think that part of what contributed to this crisis was a broader mindset, a bigger attitude, a corrosive attitude that exists in our politics, that exists in too many levels of our government. And it’s a mindset that believes that less government is the highest good, no matter what. It’s a mindset that says environmental rules designed to keep your water clear, or your air clean, are optional or not that important or unnecessarily burden businesses or taxpayers. ”It’s an ideology that undervalues the common good  —   says ’We’re all on our own, and what’s in it for me and how do I do well, but I’m not going to invest in what we need as a community.’ And as a consequence you end up seeing an   in the things that we all share, that make us safe, that make us whole, that give us the ability to pursue our own individual dreams.” He added: ”That attitude is as corrosive to our democracy as the stuff that resulted in lead in your water.” Flint’s problems began in 2014 when the city switched to a new water source, the Flint River, in a bid to save money. Corrosion controls were not implemented and as a result, the water caused lead to leach out of the city’s pipes. Meanwhile, city and state officials denied for months that the water was unsafe. The   has gone into depth about how this crisis unfolded. You can find our    look here. As we reported, ”high blood lead levels are especially harmful to children and pregnant women, and can cause ’learning disabilities, behavioral problems and mental retardation,’ according to the World Health Organization.” But Obama stressed that with the right support and health care, Flint’s kids ”will be fine.” He said, to a standing ovation: ”You should be angry, but channel that anger. You should be hurt, but don’t sink into despair. And most of all, do not somehow communicate to our children here in this city that they’re going to be saddled with problems for the rest of their lives because they will not. They’ll do just fine . .. they’ll make it as long as we’re there for them, and looking after them and doing the right thing for them and giving them the resources that they need. Don’t lose hope.” Obama drank filtered water from Flint at least twice during his visit. In his remarks, he emphasized that top scientists say the filtered water is safe to drink for children over 6 and for people who are not pregnant. As we reported, the president announced last month that he would visit the city in response to a letter from a young resident. An    named Mari Copeny wrote to Obama in March asking him to meet her when she visited Washington, D. C. He didn’t respond at the time but later said he would visit Flint, and he commended her for ”using your voice to speak out on behalf of the children of Flint.”"
" Frozen vegetables are a staple in many diets, so a huge recall of them has us peering at the packages in our freezers. On Tuesday evening, the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced an outbreak of the deadly Listeria monocytogenes bacteria  —   and frozen vegetables and fruits are believed to be the cause. More than 350 products like green beans, broccoli, peas and blueberries sold under 42 brands at grocers including Safeway, Costco and Trader Joe’s in the U. S. and Canada have now been recalled. Here are four things to know about listeria and this massive recall: Although much less common than other foodborne pathogens like salmonella or E. coli, listeria is the most lethal. Most healthy immune systems can keep an infection at bay, but if the bug makes it into the bloodstream, it causes listeriosis and kills 1 in 5 victims. Older adults, pregnant women, newborns and those with weakened immune systems are at higher risk of infection. People 65 and older are four times more likely to get sick from listeria than the general population, and pregnant women  —   who may not develop listeriosis themselves but whose babies could be threatened  —   are 10 times more likely. So far, the CDC knows of eight people who have been sickened  —   six in California and one each in Washington and Maryland. The Washington and Maryland patients died, but listeria was not considered the ultimate cause of death. The patients were between 56 and 86 years old. The outbreak making headlines today began in 2013 with one illness, followed by five more in 2015 and two in 2016. It may seem as if this outbreak is unfolding in slow motion, but that is because the CDC has a new tool to track the bacteria’s spread: the sequenced genome of listeria. While investigating a small cluster of 2016 illnesses, the CDC searched its database of previously sequenced listeria genomes and found matches from bacteria that had sickened people in previous years. The CDC’s venture into   sequencing has allowed the agency to identify more listeria outbreaks, especially more that span longer periods of time. Last year, the CDC announced two outbreaks that began in 2010. The CDC said that frozen vegetables produced by CRF Frozen Foods in Pasco, Wash. are the ”likely source” of the illnesses. Michael Doyle, professor of food microbiology at the University of Georgia and director of the school’s Center for Food Safety, says he thinks that ”resident” listeria caused the outbreak. Rather than ”transient” bacteria that contaminate a food and move through a processing system with it, resident bacteria establish themselves somewhere in the processing plant and persist over several years. ”The organism is quite hardy,” he says. Listeria has been known to plague    deli meats and soft cheeses made with unpasteurized milk, but it’s popped up in surprising foods in recent years. Last year, Blue Bell Creameries recalled all of its ice cream products after 10 people were sickened with listeria. One reason listeria differs from other pathogens is that it can grow in cold temperatures. In 2014, 35 people were sickened by caramel apples and officials determined that listeriosis contributed to at least three of the seven deaths reported. And cantaloupe was behind the largest listeria outbreak in U. S. history, which sickened 147 people in 2011 and killed 33. CRF has recalled all organic and traditionally grown frozen vegetable and fruit products processed at its Pasco facility since May 2014, and it suspended operations there last week. Check the UPC codes and ”best by” dates on the vegetable packages in your freezer against the FDA’s list. If they match, you can return the recalled food to the store for a refund or simply discard it. Either way, don’t eat the recalled foods. Listeria can be killed with proper cooking, but unless you’re going to use a thermometer to make sure the foods reach 165 degrees F, it’s best not to risk it. If you did eat them and have symptoms such as fever, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions, seek medical care. Sometimes listeriosis symptoms develop up to two months after eating contaminated food, but they usually start within several days. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Time to check your frozen fruit and vegetable packages: CRF Frozen Foods has expanded a voluntary recall to include about 358 products under 42 different brands because of potential listeria contamination. A full list of the items to avoid was included in the company’s press release on Monday. The recall includes all frozen organic and nonorganic fruit and vegetable products manufactured or processed at CRF’s facility in Pasco, Wash. since May 1, 2014. The products have a ”best by” or ”sell by” date between April 26, 2016, and April 26, 2018, CRF said. The food has been sold across the U. S. and in Canada in grocers including Safeway, Trader Joe’s and Costco. Initially, the company voluntarily recalled 15 frozen vegetable items after a routine state health inspection in Ohio detected listeria. The company says it suspended operations at the Pasco plant on April 25 ”so a thorough review could be conducted.” CRF products have been linked to a listeria outbreak that has infected eight people in three states since September 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two of those people died, but the CDC says that ”listeriosis was not considered to be a cause of death.” If you figure out that you’ve bought recalled products, the CDC recommends you throw them away in a closed plastic bag, clean the area where they were stored and then wash your hands with warm water and soap. Think you’ve eaten recalled products? If you have symptoms  —   usually fever and muscle aches, sometimes preceded by gastrointestinal issues  —   ”consider seeking medical care,” the CDC says. ”The disease primarily affects older adults, pregnant women, newborns, and adults with weakened immune systems,” the health agency notes."
"The Department of Transportation on Wednesday announced the recall of an additional 35 million to 40 million faulty air bag inflators made by Japan’s Takata Corp. an   supplier. Already, 28. 8 million Takata inflators have been recalled. In all, this massive action will add up to the largest safety recall in U. S. history. DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the problem comes down to this: ”the inflators’ propensity to rupture.” Those ruptures have been tied to 10 deaths and more than 100 injuries in this country. ”The acceleration of this recall is based on scientific evidence and will protect all Americans from air bag inflators that may become unsafe,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. The government says ”time, environmental moisture and fluctuating high temperatures contribute to the degradation of the ammonium nitrate propellant in the inflators. Such degradation can cause the propellant to burn too quickly.” That rapid burn can rupture the inflator and spray shrapnel into drivers and passengers. ”People who receive notification that there is a remedy available for their vehicle should act immediately to have their inflator fixed,” NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said. He urged vehicle owners to check SaferCar. gov for information about any open recalls. On that website, owners also can find out what to do to have safety problems fixed free of charge. The specific car and truck models included in the latest Takata recall were not immediately released. Last year, NHTSA imposed the largest civil penalty in its history on Takata for violations of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. NHTSA has appointed an independent monitor to assess, track and report the company’s compliance with the recall program. Takata makes air bags, seat belts and other parts for the auto industry. Now it faces huge losses. Takata said earlier this week that it would book   charges totaling 20. 1 billion yen, or $189 million, to cover cost of the recalls and settlements with victims. The company has been hit with widespread criticism for moving too slowly to recognize the problem and provide authorities with complete and accurate information. Now, it will take years to replace all of the defective parts. Many consumers have expressed frustration through social media. Rick DeGaetano, a computer consultant in Hayward, Calif. spoke by phone with NPR after he took to Facebook to vent about the potential danger  —   and financial harm  —   done by Takata. DeGaetano said his friend’s car was affected. Even aside from worrying ”that you’re going to get shrapnel in your face if you get in an accident,” his friend also has to worry about losing money, DeGaetano said. ”It hurts the resale value of your car,” he said. NPR business intern Naomi LaChance contributed to this report. "
"The Ted Cruz event in Indianapolis on Tuesday night  —   deemed an election night watch party  —   was set to begin at 7 p. m. ET, right about the time Cruz supporters found out their guy had lost Indiana by a whopping margin. But just about everyone stayed after the news got out. Because when you’re a supporter, you’re a supporter. They thought that once Cruz took the stage, he’d rally the troops and declare, yet again, that he would take his floundering presidential campaign all the way to the Republican National Convention in July, hoping for a delegate miracle on a second ballot. So there was waiting. And time for Cruz supporters to reflect and reassure themselves in the Grand Hall Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Downtown Union Station. CNN played on multiple big screens. Strangely, Bernie Sanders’ speech after he won Indiana was broadcast to the room of Cruz supporters. A few times, when Cruz’s face or name appeared on CNN, the crowd would cheer, but mostly they waited. Hung by the bar. Took selfies. Chatted. Strategized about how they could help Cruz the next day, as his campaign pushed on, when he perhaps might need it most. But then there were rumblings. Tweets and such. Cruz was going to drop out. Many said they didn’t believe it, but around 8:30 p. m. the man himself confirmed the news. Toward the end of a long speech filled with thanks to his supporters, family and friends, and much discussion of Ronald Reagan’s legacy, Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race. The feeling in the room was somewhere between the pain you feel being on the side of a football stadium whose team just lost the championship in a   and the pain you feel at the moment you realize you lost all of your retirement savings in a stock market crash. It was a scene. Defiant yells of ”NO!” Audible gasps. Almost immediately, tears, and hugs between strangers. Many in the room didn’t want to believe it. ”I didn’t see it coming,” Kathleen Sawtell said. ”I mean, I got an update [from Fox News on her phone, before Cruz’s speech] but . .. until he said those words, I was like, ’It could go on. ’” Cruz supporter Sanford Horn said he knew something wasn’t right as soon as Cruz hit the stage. ”I could tell by the look on his face when he came out,” Horn told NPR. ”I could tell by the look on Heidi’s face  —   she looked like as if she hasn’t already, she will cry at any moment. And the tone at the beginning of the speech  —   I knew it was over. I felt it.” It would be hard to overstate the amount of tears shed in that room after Cruz’s announcement. There were cries that shake your chest cavity. Tears that run your makeup off your face and get your shirt wet. The kind of tears that make strangers take you in their arms. The kind of tears that make you accept that stranger’s embrace. Cruz supporter Linda Bond cried her way through several TV interviews after the Cruz speech, hugging others in the room and wondering how it all went wrong. ”I’ve been working in the Republican Party for 32 years,” she said, choking back tears. ”This is the first time ever I will not be able to do that.” For Bond, the end of Cruz’s candidacy was about more than just Cruz it was about America. ”[I’m] sad, hurt. Hurt by Americans,” Bond said. ”I believe that they had an opportunity of a lifetime and instead gave in to anger and emotion instead of thought.” Bond tried to keep talking, but eventually, she couldn’t fight the tears any longer. A woman in a blue jean jacket and a skirt adorned with hundreds of miniature American flags came to hug her. Another woman held her shoulder. Cruz’s exit came as a shock for supporters who, just over an hour earlier, were optimistic he’d be in the race until the convention  —   and still had a shot at the presidency. Sawtell and Alex Echeverria, a young couple there supporting Cruz, said the news of his Indiana loss was a setback, but not the end of the world. ”A little disappointed,” Sawtell said of her mood. ”But I don’t think it’s the end of the road by any means for the Republican race.” Echeverria commended Cruz for his stamina: ”He’s still here. All those big names like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker are gone. But he’s still here, so I think he’ll go to the end.” But Echeverria did seem to signal, before knowing Cruz would drop out, that in spite of his hopefulness, Cruz might ultimately lose. ”Even if he does not get the nomination, even if he isn’t who we pick to run our party as the presidential nominee,” he said, ”I think he has started something great.” And he wondered whether Cruz had entered a different phase of his campaign, shifting focus to affecting the party platform, instead of actually winning the nomination. ”I think you can say, he’s doing kind of what Bernie Sanders is doing he’s staying in the race and making sure whatever platform we have, that our voices are heard.” Jeff Willenzik, standing in the crowd before the event, had said Cruz needed to turn his campaign around as he headed toward the convention. ”It does seem like recently he’s shifted more toward perhaps a little bit of desperation,” Willenzik said, adding that he’d seen some similarities to the end of Marco Rubio’s presidential run, grasping for straws just before the end. Willenzik pointed to Cruz’s VP pick of Carly Fiorina, and his extended    with both Trump and an angry Trump supporter over the last few days. But he, and so many others in the room, wanted Cruz to stick it out. Across the room after the announcement, Cruz’s wife, Heidi, remained after her husband left, shaking hands and encouraging the discouraged. ”God bless you, Mrs. Cruz!” someone yelled out. Heidi responded, with a smile. ”This room voted for jobs,” Cruz said. ”This room voted for a better, stronger economy. This room voted to protect our constitutional liberties. And this room voted to defeat radical Islamic terrorism.” That room also voted for a man who had just dropped out. People lingered even longer, in the way people often do after a funeral. And around 10 o’clock, maybe inspired by the bar, or just the solemn comaraderie in the space, about two dozen Cruz supporters walked toward the middle of the Grand Hall Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Downtown Union Station (a building located in a former train station) and began to sing the national anthem. In that moment, you could say the Grand Hall Ballroom was maybe the saddest room in America. But at the song’s conclusion, many cheered, and a few yelled out ”2020!” looking toward another presidential run for Ted Cruz in a few years. So perhaps it was fitting that the event was held in an old train station, where many journeys end, but where just as many begin. Last night could have been Ted Cruz’s funeral, but his supporters hadn’t written off a second life just yet."
"The musician Prince had an appointment to meet with an addiction doctor the day after he died, a lawyer for that doctor said during a news conference this afternoon. Minnesota Public Radio reports: ”Prince’s representatives had contacted Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a national authority on opioid addiction treatment who runs Recovery Without Walls in Mill Valley, Calif. on the night of April 20, and Kornfeld dispatched his son Andrew on a red eye flight to meet with Prince at his Paisley Park studios in Chanhassen the next day, Minneapolis attorney William Mauzy said during an impromptu meeting with reporters. . .. ”Andrew had come to ’initiate contact and talk about the recovery program’ and was also in touch with a local Minnesota doctor, Mauzy said.” The iconoclast was found dead in an elevator at his home on April 21. Mauzy said that Kornfeld’s son, Andrew Kornfeld, was one of the people who found Prince dead and called 911. ”The hope was to get [Prince] stabilized in Minnesota and convince him to come to Recovery Without Walls in Mill Valley. That was the plan,” Mauzy said. ”Dr. Kornfeld was never able to meet Prince, never talked to Prince and was sadly not able to arrive in time.” The medical examiner has yet to issue an official cause of death, but this is the first concrete indication that drugs may have been involved in the musician’s death."
"The Syrian army says it will apply a   truce to the city of Aleppo, in the north of the country, after days of intense fighting with rebel forces. The truce comes into effect at 1 a. m. local time on Thursday, according to the Syrian state news wire SANA. But the rebels are ”rejecting that Syria’s nationwide truce be broken down into localized ” NPR’s Alison Meuse tells our Newscast unit. She adds: ”A spokesman for one U. S.  rebel group says they’re still waiting for the regime to uphold its commitments to release political detainees and allow aid to besieged areas.” Earlier on Wednesday, the U. S. said it was working with Russia to restore a cessation of hostilities in Aleppo, according to the State Department. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement that since this morning, there’s been an ”overall decrease in violence” despite ”reports of continued fighting in some locations.” You might remember that back in February, Russia, the U. S. and other world powers reached a    agreement. Neither the Syrian government nor the rebels were party to it  —   as we reported, it was an agreement for their powerful international backers to encourage their proxies to stop fighting. It didn’t include areas controlled by the Islamic State or other groups described as terrorists, such as the   Front. February’s    agreement worked to ”some extent,” according to Jan Egeland, an adviser to the U. N.’s special envoy for Syria. He told Morning Edition earlier Wednesday that the primary purpose of the agreement was to deliver badly needed humanitarian aid to besieged areas  —   and last month, they were able to reach   percent of the 480, 000 people in besieged areas. But the fragile truce rapidly unraveled, he says, especially in Aleppo. That led to ”frantic” diplomatic efforts that apparently led to Wednesday’s announcement. As Weekend Edition Saturday reported, ”in just 48 hours [last] week, an average of one Syrian has been killed every 25 minutes. One Syrian has been wounded every 13 minutes.” Last week, an airstrike on an Aleppo hospital on the rebel side run by Doctors Without Borders killed at least 50 people. Days later, a government hospital in Aleppo was reportedly hit by rocket fire. ”Aleppo is burning,” Salem   spokesman for the opposition High Negotiations Committee, said in a statement Wednesday. ”The city’s streets run red with our people’s blood as regime airstrikes are burning Aleppo to the ground. Innocent civilians are being massacred, and they must be protected.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the latest round of violence is the worst the area has seen this year, according to Reuters. Quoting the observatory, the wire service says ”279 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by bombardment since April 22  —   155 of them in   areas and 124 in   districts.” Now, NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports to our Newscast unit that while Toner is ”urging Russia to put pressure on the Syrian government, [he] says the U. S. will use its influence with opponents of [Syrian President] Bashar Assad.” Toner adds that ”one problem in Aleppo has been the ’intermingling’ of moderate rebels and those linked to  .” Earlier this week Morning Edition spoke with New York Times correspondent Declan Walsh, who recently visited Aleppo. He described scenes of devastation and said residents ”don’t see an easy way out.” Here’s more from Declan: ”You know, the peace talks that are going on in Geneva and other negotiations that may be taking place in Russia or in America  —   many people I spoke to, they seem to be vaguely aware of them. They were certainly grateful to some degree that the   had taken place. But generally, people are quite cynical. ”Five years of war has really ground down people’s hope. . .. People’s ability to see a way out of this has become extremely diminished.”"
"Panama City is bustling with construction. At least    cranes dot its picturesque, oceanfront skyline, teeming with glass towers. At one site, real estate broker Kent Davis steps into a construction elevator in a nearly completed   apartment building. Seventy percent of the apartments have already been sold. Panama is on the rise, too. Its economy, expected to grow by 6 percent this year, is the bright spot in Latin America. The Panama Canal, which the country assumed control of in 2000, saw record traffic last year and shipments are expected only to grow after its expansion is opened next month. But Davis says the bad press brought on by the Panama Papers has been a punch to the country’s gut, hurting more than just the shady operators in the offshore industry. ”Now they are paying a price,” he says, ”and unfortunately, the whole country is going to suffer for a while.” The Panama Papers exposed the global business of hiding the riches of the world’s famous and infamous. But for many in Panama, those papers  —   and the misdeeds of a handful of the country’s lawyers  —   have unfairly damaged the country’s reputation. The global shaming comes just as Panama was winning international recognition for cleaning up its act. Panama was blindsided, says Felipe Chapman, an economist at Indesa, a local investment research firm. He says the Panama Papers give a mistaken impression that the world’s rich opened all their shady companies here. ”Most of those corporations were not even incorporated in Panama,” he notes. ”They were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, in the Bahamas, in Grand Cayman.” The vast majority of their money isn’t in Panamanian banks, either, he says. Compared to the world’s other fiscal havens, Panama has made great strides to clean up its offshore industry, he adds. Two years ago, lawmakers passed a series of laws cracking down on money laundering. The steps got Panama removed in February from an international list of bad actors. That prompted the U. S. ambassador to say the   would make 2016 Panama’s year of redemption. Instead, two months later, the Panama Papers were leaked. Many countries that were embarrassed by the leak, including France, singled the country out for wrongdoing. The Organization of Cooperation and Development (OECD) representing the world’s wealthier countries, struck, too, insisting that Panama’s leaders sign   tax information exchange agreements. Panamanians bristled. President Juan Carlos Varela went on the defensive. Panama’s success ”does not depend on irregular flows of money into our financial system,” Varela told a press conference last week, inaugurating a panel of experts to boost the country’s financial transparency. He made a similar speech Tuesday to the Washington Conference on the Americas. ”Our success story is based on the hard work of the Panamanian people: a noble people and   nation, that despite of being a small country in terms of size and population, has found its way to earn an important place within the concert of nations,” he said. But opposition lawmaker Zulay Rodriguez Lu says Panama’s leaders spend too much time hiding behind nationalistic rhetoric and should put more effort into enforcing the country’s laws. ”Justice isn’t truly applied to those stealing money and evading our laws,” she says. The country’s rich and politically connected are largely exempt, she says. Until the Panama Papers leak last month, the   of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the scandal, was a close financial adviser to the president. Rodriguez says an investigation into the firm’s activities is also a sham. NPR’s requests to speak with Panama’s attorney general went unanswered. Panama responded to the pressure. Last month it signed financial sharing agreements with Japan and the U. S. and says it will with the OECD, too. Panama has always been willing to improve transparency, says Moises Cohen, the president of Capital Bank. It just wants a level playing field. ”Small countries sign and small countries implement these rules,” he says. ”And the big countries like the United Kingdom and the United States don’t fulfill and don’t implement this in the right way. And that’s a problem, no?” Panama’s offshore industry, now only a small part of the economy, will inevitably change, says economist Felipe Chapman. ”It’s going to die out for the uses that it has been criticized for,” he says, ”but it will still flourish for the desired uses.” As Panama cleans up its system, experts say, dirty money will find other havens  —   unless remedies are initiated and enforced worldwide."
"The population of northern Colorado is booming, and we’re not just talking about people here. The number of dairy cows is now higher than ever. At the northern edge of the state, Weld and Larimer counties are already home to high numbers of beef and dairy cattle, buttressed by the region’s numerous feedlots, which send the animals to several nearby slaughterhouses. But an expansion of a cheese factory owned by dairy giant Leprino Foods will require even more cows. When a big food company builds a factory, it does more than just bring in new industry. Farmers change what they grow, expand their herds and buy new land. When a new meatpacking plant or dairy company rolls into town, it can quite literally change the landscape around it. Leprino’s cheese is ubiquitous. You’ve likely eaten their cheese without even realizing it  —   the company sells wholesale to other brands. Leprino cheese is sprinkled on everything from Papa John’s pizza to all manner of frozen dinners. The whey that’s created as a byproduct of the   processes is sold as protein powder. ”There’s a good chance that if you go buy a bag of shredded mozzarella in the grocery store, that it’s our cheese,” says Leprino executive Mike Reidy. The privately held company, based in Denver, is the largest mozzarella manufacturer in the world. And to make all that cheese and whey, Leprino needs a ton of milk. Already, its Greeley, Colo. plant, which started operations in 2011, takes in more than 5 million pounds of milk a day. Now that Leprino is expanding, Colorado dairy farmers are beefing up their operations. ”Generally the number we’ve been sharing with folks is about an incremental 30, 000 cows,” Reidy says. ”It’s a lot.” Casey DeHaan’s dairy farm near Ault, Colo. is one of many that will be expanding to meet Leprino’s demand for milk. The farm looks pretty standard from the county road it sits on  —   there’s a big red barn and a few pens full of cows. DeHaan has been up and running here for eight years, after moving to Colorado from his home state of California. When Leprino first announced it was setting up shop in nearby Greeley, DeHaan’s began adding more cows, even bringing in some from other states to meeting the growing demand. ”We went from 3, 000 cows to 4, 000 cows,” DeHaan says. Leprino’s northern Colorado facility takes in nearly all the milk DeHaan’s cows churn out, plus the milk produced at his brother’s farm nearby and much of the milk his neighboring dairy farmers produce. If you’re a   dairy farmer in Colorado’s Weld, Larimer or Morgan counties, there’s a good chance that you’re shipping your milk to Leprino. The new cheese factory has transformed this once relatively modest dairy region. In less than 20 years, from 1997 to 2015, the number of dairy cows in the area has more than doubled. And Tom Haren, CEO of Ag Professionals, a consulting group in northern Colorado that helps farmers expand their operations, helped make that growth happen. In the   his team worked with Dairy Farmers of America, the   that purchases milk for Leprino, to assess the area’s potential to be a thriving ”milk shed,” a place capable of churning out vast volumes of milk. When a company is thinking about an expansion, they ask a series of questions, Haren says: ”Does it have the water? Does it have the land? The regulatory environment? The political will? The interest in the farmers and the people? Does it have a market?” In northern Colorado, Haren says, the answers were mostly positive. Most new dairies in Colorado are popping up within an   radius of the expanding Leprino plant, Haren says. Because milk can spoil quickly and shipping it in big refrigerated trucks is expensive, dairy farmers want to be close to the companies who are buying their milk and the people in cities who drink it. ”We’re dealing in agriculture, particularly with milk, with a perishable commodity,” Haren says. ”How long can you sit on it before it becomes something unusable?” In many ways, our food system is regional. Big cattle feedlots stake a claim near companies that produce hamburger meat, and large hog barns near bacon factories. Across the rural areas that produce food crops, you’ll find farms clustered around the factories that process their products and processors moving close to their suppliers. The changes in industry in a region, however, don’t come without costs. The growing dairy hub in Colorado is also seeing dramatic population growth. Water is limited. Many of the new and expanding dairies are finding themselves positioned near or within suburban communities, notes Casey DeHaan. He can see some of those rapidly growing neighborhoods from his dairy farm. When he was designing his operation, he tried hard to cut down on odors from manure and muddy pens. DeHaan says he’s trying to find a balance between being close to cities, to cut down on shipping costs and to secure a labor force, without being a nuisance. ”Eight million pounds of milk a day? They’re knocking on the door now wanting to get to that point,” DeHaan says. ”I think the Colorado dairymen will do everything they can to help make that happen for them.” Luke Runyon reports for Harvest Public Media and is based at member station KUNC in Greeley, Colo."
"Scientists have been able to make and study human embryos in their labs for decades. But they have never been able to keep them alive outside a woman’s womb for more than about a week. That limitation meant scientists were unable to conduct a range of detailed research into early human development. But now researchers say they have discovered a way to keep human embryos alive in the laboratory about a week longer than ever before, and through a critical period of development. It’s a step they say will yield important insights into human development and could lead to a better understanding of the factors that cause miscarriages and birth defects. ”All of this research which we do in the lab should have enormous benefit,” says Magdelena   a professor of developmental biology at the University of Cambridge in England who helped conduct the research. But the advance is reviving a debate about the ethics of conducting experiments on human embryos in the laboratory. Specifically, the move has raised questions about whether to change a   rule that has limited research on human embryos to the first 14 days of their development. The research, published Wednesday in two papers in Nature and Nature Cell Biology, builds on a recent discovery by  ’s group showing how to keep mouse embryos alive longer in the lab. The researchers developed a specific mix of amino acids, hormones and growth factors that ”would allow embryos to feel as good as they would feel in the body of the mother,”   says. The next big question was: Would the same mix work to keep human embryos alive longer? Until now, the upper limit for human embryos was about seven days.  ’s group and a separate team at Rockefeller University in New York decided to try. And it worked. Human embryos kept developing in the lab for about another week.   says being able to go past the previous limit is ”extremely important” from a scientific point of view. That’s because the seventh day of development is the time when the human embryo becomes embedded within the body of the mother  —   when it becomes implanted in the womb. Scientists had thought embryos could only keep developing if they were safely in the womb and receiving instructions from the mother’s body. But the embryos in the studies implanted in the dish as they would in the womb. Then they started organizing themselves into the very early stages of different complex organs and tissues and structures in the body, the researchers report. ”That was a big eureka moment in the lab,” says Ali Brinvalou, an embryologist at Rockefeller University in New York. ”All the information necessary and sufficient to have the embryo move forward is already contained within those handful of cells,” he says. ”That was a very big surprise to us and to the field.” Researchers know relatively little about how a tiny ball of cells that makes up an embryo starts to become a complex human. It’s been a complete ”black box,” Brinvalou says. ”I find this to be alarming and I find it to be a bit embarrassing,” he says, ”because I know more about the fruit fly and the frog and the fish and the bird than I know about my own [human] development.” The advance should help scientists investigate many   questions, including: Why do so many pregnancies end in miscarriages? How could infertility treatments be improved? What causes birth defects? How do embryonic stem cells really work? ”We will learn things we cannot even imagine,” Brinvalou says. ”It’s as if you say: ’If I look at new sets of Hubble Space Telescope pictures that I haven’t seen yet, what will I learn from them?’ It’s difficult to say until you look at them.” Other researchers agree the advance is very promising. In a commentary accompanying the research, Janet Rossant of The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto says the work could ”provide important information” to researchers. And that leads back to the current status of the   rule. ”If there’s no other way to retrieve valuable information that could be good for humankind, I think it’s definitely worth discussing the possibility of renegotiating where that stopping point ought to be,” says Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University. For those who think experimenting on human embryos is morally wrong, going even further is deeply troubling. ”The   rule has kept it pretty limited in terms of what scientists could do. Once that goes, then it begins to sort of say: ’It’s open season on human embryos. Anything goes,’ ” says Daniel Sulmasy, a doctor and bioethicist at the University of Chicago. ”The question has to be: ’Are there any limits to what we will do to human beings in order to gain scientific knowledge?’ And then who counts as a human being?” says Sulmasy. The   rule was established at a time when it was impossible to keep embryos alive in the lab even that long. In the current research, both groups of scientists stopped the embryos from developing past 14 days because of the   rule. But the new work suggests they could have kept the embryos alive longer. The   mark was also picked originally because it was thought that was about the time when embryos tend to form the ”primitive streak,” which is a structure that starts to give the embryo more of a structure and individuality. ”Policymakers and others have looked at that developmental time point and thought: That might actually be significant for peoples’ moral beliefs if they think that’s when you get a unique individual who finally appears for the first time,” Hyun says, But Hyun argues in an article accompanying the new research that the latest advance means it may be time to rethink that rule. ”Now there will be further questions about whether or not there would be good scientific reasons for moving that line out a little bit farther,” Hyun tells Shots. ”What is the purpose of the   rule in today’s scientific environment and do we want to keep it?” Hyun stresses, however, that any change to the   rule would require the same kind of careful, coordinated international debate that created the rule in the first place, to satisfy moral qualms."
"Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says he’s ”acutely aware” of longer wait times at airports, and now he’s boosting staffing at checkpoints, hoping to avoid even longer wait times that had been projected for this summer. The move comes after officials predicted ”long waits in epic lines,” as NPR’s Marilyn Geewax reported in March. And in a video chat today on NPR’s Facebook page, Marilyn explains that airport bottlenecks are due in part to a sharp increase in the number of people traveling. Also, she says, the TSA may have overestimated the popularity of its PreCheck program, which allows some travelers to go through security without taking   steps such as taking off their shoes and pulling items from their   luggage. Here’s that video Marilyn appears around the   mark: As Marilyn says, some travelers are reluctant to sign up for the program, because of either its cost ($85 per person for five years) or a hope that the lines won’t be long enough to worry about. Johnson’s strategy is to target airports that are likely to have the highest passenger volume, giving them more transportation security officers and also ”increasing the number of canine teams as an additional measure to help them expedite the screening process.” Johnson announced his plan Wednesday morning along with the staffing changes, he says the TSA will work to streamline the use of bins at screening stations  —   and that he’s asking Congress to approve funding changes that would pay for overtime and expand screening officers’ work hours to cover peak travel periods. The TSA’s move was quickly applauded by the U. S. Travel Association, with the industry group’s president and CEO Roger Dow saying the”travel community is grateful that the   problems with TSA security lane resourcing have the full attention of the Obama administration and Congress.” The travel association also says it agrees with Johnson’s goal of increasing the use of the TSA’s PreCheck program to reduce wait times."
"Impressed, we are. With your #StarWarsDay celebrations, that is. The fourth is strong on the Interwebs. It’s a time for Star   treats. (Even here at NPR.) And an excuse to show your creative side. Of course, even this sacred day is not free of the presidential campaign. After the Force Awakens came out in December, our politics team took a deep dive into Star Wars’ ”obsession with politics and political process.” Prepare to geek out on multiple levels. Not to keep talking about NPR . .. but did you know we turned the saga into a radio drama in 1981? ”The producers had to create 13   episodes from a movie that had only about 30 minutes of dialogue,” WBEZ’s Derek John reported on All Things Considered last year. NASA perhaps has more claim to this day than we do. It’s rounded up ”worlds that will make you believe Star Wars is real.” Meanwhile, Star Wars actors Mark Hamill  —   Luke Skywalker himself  —   and Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey in The Force Awakens, are looking to make a real impact in a charity fundraiser called Force for Change. The   people of Star Wars will get their moment in the spotlight, too: Documentary Elstree 1976, coming out on Friday, shifts attention to the movie’s extras, the Los Angeles Times reports. ”For most of these people, this was a moment in their lives, a job they did for a couple of days,” director Jon Spira told the Times. ”That this thing that was seemingly insignificant to them in their younger days is the thing that everyone lauds them for and gives them endless kudos for  —   I think that sits uncomfortably with some of them. That internal conflict is really what interested me and why I wanted to make this film.” Itching for more ways to show off your knowledge? The ShortList has this trilogy quiz. Now work you must."
"We all know about the lumbering, old American cars on the roads in Cuba. But right now, it’s very fast cars and motorcycles getting the attention. The latest installment of the enormously successful Fast and Furious franchise is shooting in Havana. Fast and Furious 8 is the second U. S. movie, and the first   Hollywood film, to be shot in Cuba as relations between the two countries improve, easing tensions that date back to the 1959 Cuban Revolution. American filmmakers are eager to take advantage of the island’s distinctive look and feel and its cheap labor. On a recent day of shooting, crowds gathered on on street to watch the kind of American production they’d never seen. Camera operators were flying on a helicopter while motorcycles and classic American cars screeched past past the capitol building in Havana. ”We’re at a place that nobody ever thought would be possible. We are in Havana, Cuba. And you can see how beautiful it is with all these beautiful people,” the movie’s star, Vin Diesel, says in a You Tube greeting while on location. The production brought in big Hollywood trucks, cranes, cameras and lights. And they hired Cubans like Alexis Alvarez. ”I thought that Hollywood was some sort of monster,” says Alravez, an assistant art director. But he says the shoot has been incredible, and that he’s been treated with great respect. And the pay is good by Cuban standards  —   double or triple what he might make on a local production. The films he usually works on have such limited resources, he ends up having to sweep the floor and paint the walls himself. This kind of Hollywood work is a brand new opportunity for Cubans and Americans. Until recently, the island was off limits and other locations had to   for Cuba. Over the years, James Bond’s adventures in Cuba were shot in Puerto Rico and Spain. The Godfather, Part II was filmed in the Dominican Republic. So was director Sydney Pollack’s 1990 film Havana, starring Robert Redford. Cuban filmmaker Manuel Perez Paredes, who’s 76, recalls what a difficult time all the American filmmakers had for decades. ”They couldn’t film here and Cuba couldn’t buy the American films to show here,” he says. But that didn’t stop pirated movies and TV shows from getting to Cuba. Thanks to the black market, Cubans have been able to watch all kinds of American films, TV shows and music. They get it in ”el paquete semenal”  —   or the weekly package  —   of illegally downloaded entertainment in the form of a hard drive. ”We get films from everywhere,” says Perez, adding that he would like to see more American filmmakers to Cuba. Fast And Furious 8 is the biggest by far, but not the first American feature film shot here since the 1959 revolution. That would be the recently released Papa: Ernest Hemingway in Cuba, which has been widely panned. American director Bob Yari it took two years of lobbying to overcome red tape with the U. S. Treasury Department before he could shoot on location. ”We had to pretty much convince them that, like a documentary, our film was a docudrama about actual events happening in actual locations and preserving that history,” Yari says. ”And that’s what finally got them to reverse their initial denial.” There was red tape on the Cuban side, too, he says. ”Obviously, you have to submit your script. It has to be approved. Getting access to those locations was not easy,” he notes. ”But they were very cooperative. And one of the things I have to say that they didn’t do, which was wonderful, was censor in any way shape or form, our story.” Yari says there were other challenges. The U. S. limited the amount of equipment they could ship to Cuba, and it was hard to get money to the island. There were no film catering companies, and they had to create their own makeup and wardrobe trailers. But Yari says Cuba did allow them to film at Hemingway’s home  —   which is now a popular museum. The Cuban government also lent military weapons for some scenes. Yari says he was impressed by the Cubans he worked with. ”They’re very skilled at what they do. they have a terrific crew base down there, and I look forward to watching them make bigger and better movies,” he says. With Hollywood coming to Cuba these days, some are starting to call it Havanawood."
"Zimbabwe says it is putting some of the wild animals in its reserves up for sale because of the severe drought that has hit the country. That’s according to an advertisement from the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (known as ZimParks) published in a local daily newspaper. It says the country intends to ”destock its parks estates” by selling animals to individuals ”with the capacity to acquire and manage wildlife” but offers few additional details. According to the advertisement provided to NPR by a ZimParks representative, interested parties should: ”. .. provide the following information about the habitat [in] which they intend to put the acquired animals: name and address of property, size of property, ownership of the property, description of current land use, intended use for the acquired animals and existing infrastructure e. g. fences, water availability, roads, fireguards,   enforcement capacity and manpower.” CNN adds that ”conservation groups will be watching closely to see if any animals appear destined for hunting concessions.” It’s unclear whether foreign buyers can apply, Reuters reports. ZimParks spokeswoman Caroline   would not comment on the number of animals for sale or whether they could be transported outside Zimbabwe. ”We do not have a target. The number of animals depends on the bids we receive,” she said, according to Reuters. The government intends to use the money raised ”to buy food and secure water facilities for distressed animals,” Environment, Water and Climate Minster Oppah   says, CNN reports. Zimbabwe’s famous national parks, which are teeming with animals such as lions, elephants, cheetahs and monkeys, take up about 13 percent of the country’s land area. The region is facing a severe drought that has taken a toll on food harvests. According to UNICEF, 37 percent of households in Zimbabwe are hungry. The dry conditions have ”decimated” livestock. In February, the situation prompted Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to declare a state of disaster. According to Reuters, ”about 54, 000 of Zimbabwe’s 80, 000 elephants live in the western Hwange National Park, more than four times the number it is supposed to hold.” The wire service adds that drought conditions at Hwange are already ”critical” and ”expected to worsen.” Last year, Zimbabwe sold dozens of elephants to China in a bid to raise money for conservation efforts, according to The Guardian. The sale was sharply criticized by wildlife protection groups. Here’s the advertisement that ran in a local newspaper:"
"President Obama is on his way to Flint, Mich. to get a firsthand look at federal efforts to help people in the city where dangerous levels of lead were discovered in the tap water last year. Obama will meet with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder as well as    Mari Copeny, who’s better known as ”Little Miss Flint.” The   wrote to the president in March saying, ”I am one the children that is effected by this water and I’ve been doing my best to march in protest and to speak out for all the kids that live here in Flint.” Obama responded with a letter of his own, telling Mari, ”I want to make sure people like you and your family are receiving the help you need and deserve.” Flint’s problems with lead contamination began in 2014, when the   city of 100, 000 stopped buying water from Detroit and began tapping the Flint River instead. The corrosive river water was not properly treated and leached lead from the city’s aging water pipes. Eventually, Flint switched back to Detroit water, but the contamination persisted. Lead poisoning has been shown to cause   learning disabilities in children. Once the poisoning was discovered, there was no shortage of  . Some politicians argued that similar lead contamination never would have been tolerated in a more affluent city. Flint is largely   and 4 in 10 residents live below the poverty line. A commission appointed by Gov. Snyder  —   a Republican  —   put much of the blame on Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. Two employees of the state agency now face criminal charges. Prosecutors also charged the manager of Flint’s city utilities. The EPA also came in for criticism. A regional EPA administrator, Susan Hedman, stepped down in February, after acknowledging her agency knew about the potential for lead problems as early as April of 2015. So far this year, the federal government has distributed nearly 2 million gallons of bottled water, along with 55, 000 water filters. Last month, state and federal officials declared that filtered tap water in Flint is now safe to drink. The governor promised to drink Flint water for a month. Obama is not taking a similar stand. ”I’m not aware of any photo ops that involve the president’s consumption of water,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Little Miss Flint’s family is also skeptical. They’re still relying on bottled water, and taking   speed showers. ”It’s absolutely exhausting,” Mari’s mother, LuLu Brezzell, told NPR’s Here and Now. ”You have to remind your kids not to drink the water, not to turn on the faucet, not to wash your hands for too long because they end up with rashes that are similar to chemical burns.” Brezzell said she hopes Obama declares a federal disaster in Flint, freeing up money to replace the city’s outdated plumbing. But White House spokesman Earnest cautioned no big announcements are expected during the president’s trip. Earnest notes the federal government has already expanded access to health care and Head Start in the city. Medicaid is now available to all residents under 21 and the government has made grants to local health care providers as well. Last week, a U. S. Senate committee passed a bill that includes up to $100 million in grants and loans to help Flint replace old water lines that contain lead. It’s part of a broader, $9 billion package designed to improve harbors, ports and other public works. Obama told college journalists at the White House that while Flint’s problems are extreme, they are not unique. ”We have underinvested in some of our basic infrastructure that we rely on for our public health,” he said. ”Hopefully [this visit] will give me a chance to speak to the nation as a whole about how we need to ensure that our air is clean, our water is clean and that our kids are safe.”"
"   Mari Copeny from Flint, Mich. sent President Obama a message last month. She told him about her activism on behalf of those affected by Flint’s contaminated water and asked if he would meet with her and others from Flint when they came to Washington, D. C. for testimony by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder at a congressional hearing. ”My mom said chances are you will be too busy with more important things, but there is a lot of people coming on these buses and even just a meeting from you or your wife would really lift people’s spirits,” she wrote. Read her full email below: Mr. President, Hello my name is Mari Copeny and I’m 8 years old, I live in Flint, Michigan and I’m more commonly known around town as ”Little Miss Flint”. I am one of the children that is effected by this water, and I’ve been doing my best to march in protest and to speak out for all the kids that live here in Flint. This Thursday I will be riding a bus to Washington, D. C. to watch the congressional hearings of our Governor Rick Snyder. I know this is probably an odd request but I would love for a chance to meet you or your wife. My mom said chances are you will be too busy with more important things, but there is a lot of people coming on these buses and even just a meeting from you or your wife would really lift people’s spirits. Thank you for all that do for our country. I look forward to being able to come to Washington and to be able to see Gov. Snyder in person and to be able to be in the city where you live. Thank YouMari Copeny, There was no meeting with the president at the time, but this week, Obama wrote back to Mari. He told her that he was going to visit Flint on May 4, and that he hopes to meet with her then. The White HouseWashingtonApril 24, 2016, Amariyanna CopenyFlint, Michigan, Dear Mari: Thank you for writing to me. You’re right that Presidents are often busy, but the truth is, in America, there is no more important title than citizen. And I am so proud of you for using your voice to speak out on behalf of the children of Flint. That’s why I want you to be the first to know that I’m coming to visit Flint on May 4th. I want to make sure people like you and your family are receiving the help you need and deserve. Like you, I’ll use my voice to call for change and help lift up your community. Letters from kids like you are what make me so optimistic for the future. I hope to meet you next week, ”Little Miss Flint.” Sincerely, Barack Obama, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said she’ll use Obama’s visit to call for more aid for the residents of her city, The Detroit News reported. ”We’ve been wanting him to come to the city because you do get a whole other perspective of what’s going on when you come and visit it first hand,” Weaver said, according to the newspaper. Meanwhile, Democratic and Republican senators have reached a tentative deal to authorize ”$100 million in grants and loans to replace   pipes in Flint and other cities with lead emergencies, as well as $70 million in credit subsidies for loans to improve water infrastructure across the country,” The Associated Press reports. It adds that the plan would also allocate ”$50 million nationwide to bolster   programs and improve children’s health.” Though a similar measure was reached in February, it fell apart when Sen. Mike Lee,   didn’t want federal money to be used to help Flint because Michigan had a budget surplus, the AP says. The news service adds: ”While Lee is unlikely to withdraw his objection, supporters say the new plan has a greater chance of success because it is slated to become part of the Water Resources Development Act, a popular bipartisan measure that authorizes a variety of   projects across the country for flood control and other purposes.”"
"Saying ”colleges have been treated as sanctuaries of learning where firearms have not been allowed,” Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have allowed licensed owners to carry guns on campus in all but a few buildings. The ”campus carry” legislation, HB 859, would have allowed guns on campuses and in buildings owned by any public college, technical school or other institution, providing exceptions only for areas used for athletic events, dormitories, and fraternity and sorority houses. As member station WABE reports, Deal’s veto comes two years after he signed the   guns everywhere bill  —   officially, the Safe Carry Protection Act, which broadly increased the places gun owners in Georgia can carry weapons. As NPR reported at the time, the list of approved places included ”unsecured government buildings.” But on Tuesday, the governor said guns shouldn’t be allowed on campuses, as WABE says, ”at least not without stricter rules on where they can be carried.” Deal unsuccessfully lobbied the bill’s sponsors for changes that would have forbidden guns to be brought into settings such as day care facilities and faculty or administrative offices, WABE’s Johnny Kauffman says. This is Deal’s second veto of   legislation in recent months: In late March, he announced his plan to veto a controversial bill that would have allowed people to cite their religious views as a reason to deny services to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Explaining his decision to reject the ”campus carry” bill in a lengthy veto statement (see the entry for Veto Number 9) Deal cited the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s writing in the high court’s opinion in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case: ”While the subject matter of HB 859 was not before the Court in the Heller case, the opinion clearly establishes that ’Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.’ Justice Scalia further states that ’nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on. ..laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings. ..’ ” Deal also cited another record  —   one that’s nearly 200 years old: the minutes of an Oct. 4, 1824, meeting of the Board of Visitors of the   created University of Virginia. Noting that the attendees at the 1824 meeting included Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Deal writes that the school’s rules included this line: ”No student shall, within the precincts of the University, introduce, keep or use any spirituous or venomous liquors, keep or use weapons or arms of any kind. ..” Addressing the idea that the desire to prevent campus shootings had sparked Georgia’s legislation, Deal suggested that the state’s General Assembly consider stiffening the penalty for the unauthorized possession or use of a firearm on college grounds as one way to deter such crimes."
"When you enter Marissa McGee’s classroom, the first thing you notice is her connection with her students. They’re delighted by her enthusiasm, they pick up on her sarcasm, and they often double over with giggles when she makes a joke. And this is kindergarten. So McGee’s students  —   her audience  —   are   . ”They’re easy to please,” she says, laughing. ”I’m not that funny. I wouldn’t even consider myself funny at all.” This rapport is how Marissa McGee works to shape these kindergartners into thoughtful, educated adults. Her classroom at   Education Campus, not far from the U. S. Capitol in Washington, D. C. has been heralded as a room to watch by D. C.’s public schools. Last year, teachers from all over the city visited McGee’s class to observe her teaching as part of their professional development. So, she let us in on some of her classroom tips: Character is just as important as academics. ”Obviously, I think it’s important for them to learn to read and do math and all of the other academic things that they need,” she says. ”But I’d say character is just as important. I’m helping them be better people when they leave by the end of the year. ”Sometimes we just have to stop and talk about things that aren’t in the curriculum and aren’t on the lesson plan,” she says. And her students eat it up. ”When we give each other compliments and are compassionate,” she says, ”their little faces just brighten up with smiles.” Get your kids on board. ”Basically, I let them play teacher,” she says. A recent example: ”We were introducing math journals where they got to cut and paste some things in a journal, and some student came over, ’Ms. McGee can I show so and so how to do this?’ And I’m like, ’Sure! You go right ahead.’ ” ”It helps me because students are doing the front loading,” she says, ”so when someone comes to me for help, we’re reviewing and can move faster.” Remember that they’re 5. ”These kids are 5 years old and still figuring things out,” McGee says. ”So they might not know that it’s not appropriate to just snatch something from another student. ”Instead of reacting in that moment, I try to make it a teachable moment,” she says. ”I say, OK, this is what we should do. We can use our words and sort of talk it out. And I’ve noticed they’re starting to adopt that.” Be flexible. ”Each of my students have their own pace, so you can’t expect them all to pick up on everything right away. You just have to go with the flow and recognize that everyone is moving.” Translation: If the lesson plan isn’t working, throw it out. Or be willing to drop it. ”It’s not about who finishes first, but crossing the finish line eventually, however long it takes.” Embrace the intellectual challenge. ”Some people are like, ’Oh, you teach kindergarten, that’s cute.’ And yeah, it’s cute, but there are also challenges that come along with it.” ”Trying to take something that’s so simple for you and putting it in 5 or    language is really difficult.” The other day, McGee asked her kids: What method is the most reliable for solving this word problem? That got the kids stumped. ”They immediately asked me, What does ’reliable’ mean? It took me a while to figure out, how can I make my explanation  ?” McGee first tried: ”Reliable means something you can count on.” But that didn’t translate. ”Some students then counted on their fingers while others reached for a number line or 10 frame.” So she rephrased: ”Reliable is something that helps you.” ”Things that you just know automatically, translating that, it’s intellectually stimulating.”"
"Authorities have issued a mandatory evacuation order for the 80, 000 residents of Fort McMurray in Alberta, where a wildfire has taken hold in the oil sands region. According to officials, it’s the largest evacuation order caused by fire in the province’s history. Although no injuries have yet been reported, commercial and residential properties have been destroyed, including a mobile home park. Flames have jumped Highway 63, the only road out of Fort McMurray, causing a panic among residents. The worst of the fires are on the city’s south side. As Dan Karpenchuk reports for NPR: ”Long lines of cars snaked out of the city as people were forced to flee, some with little notice. Officials say the hospital remains undamaged but all patients have been taken out, and airlifts are being considered for some. Oil sands work camps are being pressed into service to house thousands of people. And officials expect more challenging conditions Wednesday.” One man recounted his frightening drive out of the Fort McMurray fire zone, in this video on Twitter: The wildfire, which spans more than 6, 500 acres, was discovered Sunday but dramatically escalated Tuesday as a result of weather conditions including high temperatures and low humidity. ”Right now, we have fire burning within the city,” said Chief Darby Allen of Fort McMurray’s fire department. ”It is impacting communities as we speak. Homes are on fire as we speak.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted support for residents affected and urged them to follow evacuation orders. He also said the federal government is standing by to help. Forestry manager Bernie Schmitte says the worst is not over, and weather conditions on Wednesday are expected to remain extreme. Fort McMurray is located in Canada’s oil sands region, home to the third largest reserves of oil in the world. NPR’s Jeff Brady reports that: ”One of the largest oil sands companies in Alberta, Suncor, has reduced production because of wildfires that forced the evacuation of the town of Fort McMurray. Suncor says its facilities, about 15 miles north of Fort McMurray, are not in danger, but the company is cutting back operations so that employees and their families can get to safety.”"
"If you’ve ever run a business, whether it’s an ice cream shop or a Fortune 500 company, then you’ve probably kept a ledger. It’s nothing fancy, just a list of transactions. It’s also at the root of a transformative technology that institutions including the U. K. government, major banks and the state of Delaware are looking to leverage: the blockchain. When Australian businessman Craig Wright claimed this week to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of bitcoin, he called attention once again to this   cryptocurrency. But more and more financial technology experts agree: It’s the blockchain technology underlying bitcoin that has even greater potential to change how we make transactions online. Imagine, for a moment, a global, online ledger, or network of ledgers, listing every single transaction in the world. It’s verified immediately by other people using the system, which protects people’s privacy, but is transparent enough to allow for oversight from anyone. No one group regulates it, so it’s neutral and accessible to anyone with a computer. That is the world that visionaries of the blockchain foresee. ”In three years, no one is going to be saying blockchain, but everyone is going to be using the blockchain,” Adam Draper, chief executive of Boost VC, tells American Banker. ”I don’t say I’m going to   you  ” I say I’m going to text you.” Delaware Gov. Jack Markell says his state is considering using the technology, lauding it for its potential to save costs and make business more efficient. For a state that incorporates more public companies than any other, an open ledger of all transactions, the automation of accounting and   tasks and expedited transactions that skip over typical bureaucracies and middlemen could ring in big changes. ”We think the benefits could really be tremendous,” Markell tells the Wall Street Journal. The U. S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, is looking to use the blockchain to create an unhackable messaging system. ”There is a critical DoD need to develop a secure messaging and transaction platform accessible via Web browser or standalone native application,” the agency writes in an official call for proposals. ”The platform separates the message creation, from the transfer of the message within a secure courier to the reception and decryption of the message.” In Seattle, Microsoft has paired up with R3, a consortium of the world’s biggest banks that include JPMorgan and Citi, to figure out how to ”accelerate the use of distributed ledger technologies” in investing, lending and other financial transactions. On Wall Street, Goldman Sachs notes that blockchain has the potential to change ”everything.” Overseas, several governments are looking to incorporate blockchain into their political or financial systems. Russia’s National Settlement Depository, which issues domestic corporate bonds, is testing a voting system for shareholder meetings that would rely on blockchain technology for security. The U. K. Government Office for Science also has encouraged the country to adopt the blockchain, touting its potential to ”reduce fraud, corruption, error and the cost of   processes.” Jeremy Gardner, chairman of the board at the Blockchain Education Network and an investor at Blockchain Capital, tells NPR the blockchain ”is going to make the financial world, and beyond (remittance, provenance, ownership) achieve a level of unbelievable transparency and auditability that has never occurred in human history.”"
"What do these movies have in common? Funny Face New York Stories Beetlejuice The Big Lebowski Ghost World, Stumped? They all suggest that contemporary art  —   some of it, anyway  —   is a lie, a con job, or just a form of   practiced by the deluded. Lebowski’s Maude Lebowski, Ghost World’s Roberta, Beetlejuice’s Delia Deetz and Gregory Stark, the performance artist in Martin Scorsese’s section of New York Stories, are all either frauds or dupes. And that type is hardly limited to these movies. You can find it all over TV: in The Simpsons, Broad City, Comedy Bang! Bang! Girls . .. It’s not too surprising that this trope is so common, or that it should span decades. For many Americans, it seems to go without saying that the art world is a haven of emptiness and perfidy. Or, actually, it doesn’t go without saying: It gets said, and said a lot. How, then, do you explain the instantaneous, bubbly appeal of Where’s Warhol? At a glance it’s clear this book will entertain virtually everyone who picks it up  —   art fan or no. It feels as buoyant as the silver balloons that drift across its cover. Its concept hardly needs explanation: Just like in Where’s Waldo, the bestselling kids’ series it emulates, Where’s Warhol challenges you to find one person amidst a crowded landscape. The difference is that these landscapes, real or imaginary, are all related to art history or pop culture: the Bauhaus, Studio 54, the excavation of Pompeii, a dinner party hosted by Salvador Dalí. And instead of looking for a goofy fellow in a striped hat, you’re seeking a   fellow in a silvery wig and sunglasses. The book’s focus on Andy Warhol is the key to its charm. It just wouldn’t be the same if it were Where’s Wassily? or Where’s Willem? There’s something about Warhol that seems fundamentally approachable, fundamentally democratic. Even before he attained the status of icon (that most democratic form of stardom) Warhol concentrated on subjects ordinary people know intimately: consumer products, Jackie O. But however proletarian Warhol’s subject matter, his appeal lies as much with his penchant for asking, ”What is art?” in a uniquely straightforward way. Much of his work revolves around the question, ”Is this art?” Is a Brillo box art? How about a   photo of Prince? These are questions people love to ask  —   thus Beetlejuice, The Big Lebowski and so on. This is what the masses think about when they think about art. The creators of Where’s Warhol? are perfectly comfortable with that. Catherine Ingram and Andrew Rae, the author and illustrator, have cannily recognized the democratic possibilities inherent in the Where’s Waldo? format. In these tableaux everyone’s the same size and has more or less the same importance: Michelangelo and Elton John, Basquiat and Clark Gable, Josephine Baker and Blondie. The artworks they’ve included are the sort everyone likes. They’re bright, humorous and gestural. The ”Garden of Artistic Delights” pages include references to Oldenburg, Koons, Hirst, Magritte and Van Gogh. Duchamp stands inside a huge urinal. (It’s amusing to imagine some less accessible Duchamp work included instead  —   how about The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even?) Meanwhile, at Studio 54, the giant moon no longer sniffs from a coke spoon. The authors’   approach is particularly transparent in their handling of Yves Klein. Instead of showing, say, naked models applying blue paint to huge canvases with their bodies, Ingram and Rae depict Klein (who was influenced by judo) at a   dojo full of sparring pairs. Rae’s style is almost perfect for this project. Most of the time he’s able to draw the book’s tiny people with enough detail to be recognizable. But he doesn’t have a fine enough line to portray distinctive facial features, so it’s impossible to differentiate figures that don’t have little gimmicks like Teddy Roosevelt’s monocle or Picasso’s striped shirt. His colors rock, though. Where’s Warhol? is that rarest of artifacts, a thoughtful work of art that will please  —   or at least entertain  —   almost everyone. And the authors have made it look effortless. Kind of like Andy did. Thanks to Jim Gaylord, whose blog Art in the Movies provided some of the movie titles. Etelka Lehoczky has written about books for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Salon. com. She tweets at @EtelkaL."
"Tiny homes, which can be as little as 50 to 300 square feet, are growing in popularity as a solution for the homeless. In Chicago, advocates want to build tiny houses to serve a specific marginalized group  ” homeless youth, especially those who identify as LGBTQ. ”Most of the cities in the country that have already implemented housing tiny homes for the homeless are doing it for the chronically homeless or veterans, so no one yet is doing it specifically for the youth target population,” says activist Tracy Baim, who spearheaded a Chicago Tiny Home Summit April   at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Baim says tiny homes could provide freestanding independent housing instead of what is typically available for young adults seeking shelter. ”They’re living in group homes, where shared showers, where violence and sexual assaults can happen,” she says. ”Your stuff is stolen constantly.” The summit, which aimed to discuss the practicalities and experiences of building tiny houses, displayed the tiny home design that won the American Institute of Architects’ competition to build a tiny house community for Chicago. ”You actually enter through a breezeway, kind of a covered porch area that’s 8 feet deep,” says Lon Stousland, part of the   team that won the competition. Their prototype is fairly big by tiny home standards. A brick facade surrounds the bright yellow front door. Inside, there’s a twin bed, a bathroom and a combined kitchen and living room area. ”This is closer to 300 square feet,” says architect Terry Howell, another team member. The third team member, Marty Sandberg, says there is another way the structure is different from other tiny houses, ”We designed this to actually be one of a series of row homes,” Sandberg says. Lala Thomas, William Okamura and Maria Cwiklik are three    who were formerly homeless. Now, they live in a transitional housing shelter, and all go to school. They were part of a group chosen to offer design suggestions about what a Chicago tiny home should look like. Thomas was a little surprised by the size. ”Well, I really didn’t like it, I’m going to be honest, because . .. you really can’t put that much stuff in that little house,” Thomas says. ”I mean, I just think it was just . .. it would be bigger than that.” Okamura likes the idea. ”By having those walls up, I’d feel 100 times safer than being outside with nothing,” Okamura says. Cwiklik says even though planning may be in an early stage, she’s optimistic about a tiny home village for youth in Chicago. ”As long as we get more support and as long as we get more youth involved in this program,” Cwiklik says, ”it’s going to happen.” Tiny Homes Might Need To Be A Guerrilla Building Movement, But there are obstacles. Zoning Attorney Danielle Meltzer Cassel says in addition to building codes and zoning ordinances, there is the ”not in my backyard” or   NIMBY opposition from residents. She says advocates in Chicago must face a dose of reality. ”If this is pitched as something that is for the folks who are the most needy in our society, the door’s going to slam shut,” she says. In Seattle, activists involved in the tiny home movement have been doing more building and less planning. Melinda Nichols, with the Low Income Housing Institute in the city, says so far volunteers have built 50 to 60 temporary tiny homes under 120 square feet. ”Because people are standing out in the rain waiting for a place to live,” Nichols says. ”It’s a crisis, and the way to respond to those things is to do something right now.” In Nashville, the Rev. Jeff Obafemi Carr with Infinity Fellowship says advocates have to be inventive as they try to provide needed housing. His group raised money to build six tiny homes on wheels without seeking permission. ”Cities and municipalities don’t know what to do with it. The code and zoning laws are antiquated. So there’s going to take a mix of guerrilla tiny home building and planned development,” Carr says. In Chicago, Baim says the next step for advocates is to create a privately funded tiny home village pilot. She says that will show developers, city government and Chicago residents how tiny houses could play a huge role in making it safer for young people with no place to call home."
"So here we are. Noisily embraced by the plurality of Republican voters,    reviled by most Republican leaders, Donald Trump is all but assured that party’s presidential nomination. Journalists astonished at the result  —   and believe me, most are stunned by what has unfolded  —   find themselves confronted by some form of this question: Are the media to blame for Donald Trump? Or, as Politico media critic Jack Shafer put it: Did the media create Trump? His answer: a resounding no. Actually, Shafer liked it so much he wrote it twice. Capital New York   and   Tom McGeveran tweeted early Wednesday morning that ”there are significant factual hills to climb for those who believe the news media created the Trump candidacy. But, nevermind!” Gawker went a step further, with a post titled, ”The Idea that the media is to blame for Trump is a lie.” I think they’re answering the wrong question. Donald Trump is patently a  . That holds for his record and reputation as real estate developer, celebrity tabloid fodder,   author, relentless   reality show star,   enthusiast and now presidential candidate. Trump started with nearly 100 percent name recognition and little political capital, and outwitted, outlasted and outplayed 16 Republican rivals, some of whom seemingly arrived with significant political credibility and financial support. Trump tapped into real voter anger and anxieties about the ways they believe political and financial elites are rigging the system (and sure, while we’re at it, probably the media, too). It is his unmistakable voice booming through those boastful, bullying tweets sent to just shy of 8 million Twitter followers and counting. So it’s true: The media did not create Trump. But that’s hardly a defense of the press’s performance. It’s an overgenerous way of letting journalists off the hook without paying attention to what they actually did. And that argument overlooks three key points: 1. The media largely missed the story when it came to Trump’s appeal and rise. The man has basically led in the polls for 10 straight months. Real Clear Politics’ rolling average of national polls (I know, the primaries require a    battle, but bear with me here) shows Trump ahead since   with one fleeting exception of a statistical tie with Ben Carson in November. And Trump generally led not by a hair but by an entire pompadour. And yet for all of their obsession with   coverage, much of the political press treated Trump’s campaign as pure spectacle, which it undoubtedly was, instead of something that could also draw support from real voters. As readers and viewers, we heard much more about what political insiders were telling us the voters thought than about the voters themselves. The Huffington Post, the   news website, infamously relegated Trump to its entertainment section. Eager to enjoy the flood of clicks, the site also   its stories about him in politics. Some reporters out in the field sensed that Trump had a real base, but most bought into the concept of a ”ceiling”  —   that he couldn’t rise above some number plucked out of the ether. Journalists are supposed to be a skeptical lot. But it’s easy to buy into the conventional wisdom shared by the professionals they are constantly consulting.  In March, The New York Times recognized the cognitive dissonance that held sway in its own newsroom when it posted a piece drawing upon the experiences of several campaign reporters, titled, ”The Moment I Knew Trump Was Here to Stay.” Note, not likely to win but to stay. The reporters’ answers: November, January, January, September, September, February, December, August. On average, call it early to  . And the Times reporters may have been among the earlier ones. 2. The media greatly enabled Trump, embracing the spectacle to give him vast swaths of real estate on air, online and in print. This proved particularly true on television (especially cable). Trump offered the same appeal to television executives as a competitive playoff game  —   viewers did not know what would happen. Trump rhetorically attacked Mexicans and Muslims as groups, specific female antagonists, black protesters, the other Republican candidates, Sen. John McCain for being shot down and taken prisoner as a Navy pilot in the Vietnam War, and journalists (including a vicious impression of a New York Times reporter with a degenerative neurological condition). Trump also whipped up such fervor that we didn’t know what attendees would do. Some people who had come to cheer Trump ended up physically abusing protesters. Journalists say they’ve never encountered such hostility in person or online. Such blanket coverage sent television news ratings soaring. Several cable news hosts told me they felt they had lost control of their programs as executives demanded live feeds of Trump to continue to fuel increased audiences. And the interviews! Frequently fond, often sycophantic, anchors seemed somewhat giddy to interview Trump. He talked over questioners, talked past them, talked through them. On the rare occasion, one might drill down and catch him off guard. But Trump had shown at the very first debate, angered by the questions from Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, that he could punish individual reporters and entire networks by withholding his presence from their shows. Kelly held her ground, but even so, she met privately with him at Trump Tower to secure his presence for her   special later this month on the Fox broadcast network. Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes has   Trump as much as any of his own stars. Those favored by the great man were graced with   on camera. Others had to settle for Trump’s calls, always the least desirable option. Producers contorted themselves to accommodate him, accepting not just phone interviews but cellphone interviews. That held even for programs with major audiences such as NBC’s Today show and ABC’s This Week. At one point, BuzzFeed counted 69 televised phone interviews with Trump in 69 days. Media analysts of all stripes and ideologies assessed the coverage not just as disproportionate but wildly so. Even negative stories or controversies involving Trump pushed his rivals from news coverage. ”It may not be good for America, but it’s good for CBS,” said CBS Chairman Les Moonves, ensuring he would be quoted by media critics for years to come. CBS had much less to apologize for than most, perhaps because it does not have news shows around the clock. (CBS’ digital news channel, CBSN, does not yet compete for guests at the same level as its cable peers.) The executive producer of CBS This Morning finally drew a line in early March, canceling an interview with Trump by phone. (NBC’s Chuck Todd would follow suit.) NPR, it might be noted, comes off better than the television networks by doing a better balance of stories on various candidates and their records. The network also did not routinely run live broadcasts of his rallies or interview him ad nauseam. That said, unlike most of his rivals, Trump never gave an interview to NPR as a candidate  —   an interview NPR undoubtedly would have wanted to land. Instead of endearing himself to Fox News, Trump engaged in a complicated   relationship, though the cable network has been for two decades the favorite proving grounds of Republican candidates. He set up shop with phone calls to MSNBC’s Morning Joe so often that I thought he was arranging a corporate inversion to pay taxes there. CNN rode the controversies, the rallies, interviews, debates and town halls to a rare   ratings win this spring over Fox News. Some of its anchors, such as Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper, tried to hold Trump to account, but the overall sense prevailed, at times, that he had taken over the channel. CNN President Jeff Zucker knew exactly what television talent he was getting: He had greenlighted deals with Trump while president of NBC Entertainment a decade ago. Trump also found he could drive coverage without rallies and without interviews. A single tweet to his millions of online followers often sent the news cycle shuddering in a different direction. Obviously, journalists report on the events unfolding in front of them. In this instance, however, Trump’s stagecraft overwhelmed news judgment. It is as though major news organizations abdicated their ability to make decisions for themselves. As BuzzFeed    Ben Smith pointed out this week, Trump has been able to claim repeatedly that he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq without challenge from such outlets as The New York Times, MSNBC, Fox News, the Washington Post and many others  —   despite hard proof otherwise. You wonder why agile and polished pols such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush all ended up sputtering as they withdrew from the race? Part of the reason was their inability to control not just their fate but which issues the campaigns would hinge upon. This battle was fought on the terrain of tone. 3. Most egregiously, the media did not subject Trump’s record to the kind of scrutiny other major candidates should receive. The very fact Trump had never held elective office or even formally run for one previously meant the political press did not have great muscle knowledge in how to approach him. But surely his business ventures, his entertainment career and his life in the gossip columns should have suggested something beyond a smirk. Scores of lawsuits have been filed against Trump and his enterprises. His corporations have declared bankruptcy four times. His stated worth of $10 billion has been credibly challenged  —   for years. He has pressed the levers of power in city halls, state capitols and Washington, D. C. to gain financial advantage for decades. Surely these all deserve tough dissection. Yet we knew far more, and far earlier, about more modest controversies involving the other candidates, such as Bush’s financial ties to the Common Core curriculum. Or Rubio’s personal finances. Look at those dates: January and June 2015. These stories deserve coverage. But so did Trump’s activities, even if they required a form of reporting unfamiliar to the political press corps. You can rightly point to some strong exceptions: For example, the Washington Post on Trump University last summer Bloomberg in February on his international holdings. But these can’t be    stories. Readers and viewers are being swamped with information and content  —   and occasionally real journalism  —   and such useful reports often sweep past us. As an institution, the news media (much like government itself) are held in very low regard one can reasonably argue that reporters won’t be trusted no matter how vigorously they dissect Trump’s record and life. But that fact shouldn’t allow the profession to abdicate its actual mission. The press had an obligation to surround its unfiltered and sometimes fond treatment of Trump as a celebrity and controversialist with   scrutiny. That turned out to be the exception rather than the rule. Some press defenders argue the media do not have the kind of influence that their critics would suggest they have. ”I only wish that CNN had that much power to be able to create a   on either side,” Zucker told the Guardian. News organizations don’t need to be powerful. They need to fulfill their jobs. That involves informing, enlightening, illuminating, stimulating and entertaining their audiences, usually while making a profit. It also involves equipping their consumers with the knowledge and context they need to act as citizens. I’m not arguing the media should have acted as one to block Trump. I’m arguing the media largely failed, at least in the primary season, to rise to an anomalous figure who has scrambled ideologies and deeply degraded what constitutes acceptable public discourse."
"Don’t add House Speaker Paul Ryan to the list of Republicans who are, even reluctantly, backing de facto GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. ”I’m just not ready to do that at this point. I’m not there right now,” the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee said in an interview on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper. The Wisconsin Republican signaled he would eventually like to support Trump, who became the GOP’s likely White House nominee this week after both Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich withdrew from the race. But Ryan said that Trump first needs to bring together ”all wings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement” and run a campaign so that Americans ”have something that they’re proud to support and proud to be a part of.” ”Saying we’re unified doesn’t in and of itself unify us,” Ryan said. ”I think he has to do more to unify this party.” Trump’s response? He’s not really a fan of the GOP leader’s policies either. ”I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan’s agenda,” Trump said in a statement. ”Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!” The message from the House speaker is a much different one than his Senate counterpart is sending. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wasn’t effusive in his praise of Trump, the Kentucky senator said in a statement Wednesday that ”I have committed to supporting the nominee chosen by Republican voters, and Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee, is now on the verge of clinching that nomination.” And as NPR’s Susan Davis reported, several congressional Republicans have begun to slowly embrace the controversial real estate mogul who now seems destined to be their   in November. But Ryan’s hesitancy to align with Trump could give some other vulnerable GOP members cover to also distance themselves from the probable Republican nominee. The GOP’s control of the Senate is at risk, and Trump could also be a   drag on several House contests as well. Ryan has long expressed misgivings about Trump’s campaign, though he never formally endorsed anyone in the primary. Last year, Ryan blasted Trump’s controversial ban on Muslims entering the U. S. saying that ”is not what this party stands for.” Many in his party also hoped he might be a   savior for the GOP field or would be willing to be drafted as a candidate at a contested convention. He bluntly shot down any speculation of that possibility last month. Likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s team immediately seized on Ryan’s comments, blasting out a release that the House speaker ”joins a list of conservatives rebuking Trump as he captures the GOP nomination.”"
"Starting Wednesday night at sunset, Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day. Commemorations continued in schools around the country Thursday, including in kindergarten classes. This year, Israel is fully implementing a Holocaust curriculum for kindergartners. ”We need to teach the kindergarten teachers what to do on Yom Hashoah, because they have to make sense of the day,” says Yael   using the Hebrew name for the remembrance day. She is a teacher trainer at Yad Vashem, Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center, and she helped write the kindergarten materials. They are part of a new comprehensive Holocaust studies program for Israeli students of all ages that was unveiled two years ago. The program took time to take root,   says, in part because of bureaucracy, but also because of the difficult subject. ”A lot of times, I see teachers and they say, ’Don’t speak with me about it,’ ” she says. The teachers tell her, ”It will take me to dark places. I don’t want it.” But they can’t avoid it in Israel. Even in kindergarten. Every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, an air raid siren wails for two full minutes. Around the country, people stop whatever they’re doing  —   driving, working, talking  —   to stand still and remember. Even on highways, cars come to a halt. The evening before, regular TV shows are canceled and special   programming airs. Shops close early. Nava Ron, a veteran kindergarten teacher, says   and    know this day is different. ”You can’t ignore it. It exists. There’s the siren,” she said, sitting in a low blue plastic chair in Jerusalem’s ”Rainbow” kindergarten. ”Our job is to keep them calm and not give them too much information.” This morning, she brought together her six oldest kindergarten students for a special conversation. ”Good morning, children,” she said. ”Good morning,” they chorused. Then she began: ”This is a very special day.” In 10 minutes, Ron touched on all the main points that Israel’s education ministry wants communicated to kindergartners. First, she tells them the Holocaust is something that happened a long time ago, in a country far away from here. Then she asks the children what they know about it. One child says Israeli soldiers protect them now. Another pipes up and says at that time, the whole world was at war. Ron agrees. She directs the conversation toward democracy, tolerance and other ways to solve conflicts.   the Holocaust educator, says Israel standardized the kindergarten material, in part, because some teachers were saying too much. ”Telling them about the gas chambers. The horrible person who wanted to kill all Jews and if he would live today, also he would want to kill all the Jews. Something that is very frightening. Even sometimes using pictures. Horrible pictures,”   says. Last year, some Israeli parents were outraged when their children came home on Holocaust Remembrance Day wearing yellow stars, the symbol Nazis forced Jews to wear to label and discriminate against them. Another problem   regularly sees is kindergarten teachers who simply avoid discussing the Holocaust, despite all the references children are regularly exposed to in Israel. Some, she says, pretend the siren is an emergency drill or an ambulance. ”Saying the siren is an ambulance or something like that  —   it’s not an educational act,”   said. ”It’s lying.” But she is sympathetic, saying kindergarten teachers face the same struggle many people do when they really consider the Holocaust. It can’t be forgotten. But it contradicts the humanity people want to pass on to their children. Don Futterman, director of the Israel Center for Educational Innovation, still remembers terrible Holocaust photos he says he saw when he was way too young. When the siren began Thursday, he stopped his car, got out and saw other things. ”I could see a   billboard advertising new hoodie sweatshirts,” he says. ”I could see the Israeli flag in my car. I could see all these other things of life that [are] going on since then. And I thought, that also makes sense. That was right. Because life does continue.” Back in Jerusalem’s ”Rainbow” kindergarten, Nava Ron gathered all the children just before the siren started Thursday, and invited them to make the siren sound. They all knew how. When the real one began, some of them came to her for a hug. When the wail faded away, ”OK,” she said. ”Now back to our routine.”"
"By my count I have helped some 58 friends (including many colleagues in public radio) buy a car. That’s sort of funny, considering I didn’t buy a car until I was 37 years old and began reporting on the auto industry for NPR. On Saturdays over the last few years, I have gotten phone calls from friends at car dealerships asking for advice. It’s no small financial matter, when the average cost of a new car is roughly $33, 000. So if you are reading this while in a car dealership, do what I tell all my friends: Stand up! Leave the dealership! Do not buy a car today! JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, And before you return, take a look at these tips I’ve gathered from industry experts and public radio friends. ”I knew exactly what I wanted,” Muthoni Muturi, NPR editor, Your father may have always loved Hondas, and your grandmother may have always bought Crown Victorias. But it’s my job to keep up with the car companies, and I have a hard time keeping track of what’s good or bad. (And it’s not your father’s Oldsmobile, because they don’t make Oldsmobiles anymore.) ”Information is king,” says Jonathan Collegio of the National Automobile Dealers Association, or NADA. ”Consumers should do as much homework as possible,” he says, and ”have a sense of the market.” They shouldn’t be afraid to go to a dealership, he says, but they should come prepared. Start with data: Consumer Reports has a list of the best and worst cars. Car company rankings change all the time, and you might be surprised at what you learn  —   for instance, that Audi, Subaru, Mazda and Buick all rate higher than Honda for reliability. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS, compiles safety data by car and make. Both sites promise unbiased   information about car reliability and safety.  In addition, there are   sites that help with reviews and pricing of cars. Here are just a few: Cars. com, Truecar. com, Kelley Blue Book, CARFAX. com, Autotrader. com, Costco Auto and NADA Guides. Michelle Singletary, a personal finance columnist with The Washington Post, warns that consumers should not ”set one toe in the dealership” before doing their homework. ”Don’t be satisfied with going around the block,” Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR correspondent, Five or 10 years ago when you bought your last car you were that much younger. Your body, your needs and your eyesight have changed. That’s why a test drive is so important. Drive the car in the conditions you would use it in  —   at night on a dark road, for instance, so you can test the lights and brightness of interior lamps. Rebecca Lindland, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book, points out that a test drive can help with dealing with family members who have disabilities. She also recommends bringing car seats and pet carriers with you. And she reminds shorter drivers to pay attention to sightlines and especially the   (which is the beam on the windshield to the left of the driver) it can obscure vision around curves. She also advises   buyers to pay attention to something known as the  . ”When you stand next to the car with the door open, look at how high the top of the seat is. That’s called the    —   where the top of the seat is,” she says. Where the   falls will give you a sense of ease of entry. If the top of a seat hits below your knees, for instance, you’ll have to stoop lower to get into the car. If the   hits around   it will be was easier to get in and out. The key is to feel comfortable in the vehicle. ”A car is not an impulse purchase,” Sonari Glinton, NPR business correspondent, At its most basic, purchasing a car is a financial decision that’s tied with emotion, and dealers will use tactics that play on your emotions. I would suggest separating the different decisions.   on one day. Figure out financing on another. Determine the best dealer on yet another. ”Remember, their job is to sell you a car today,” says Jack Nerad, executive editorial director and executive market analyst with Kelley Blue Book and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying or Leasing a Car. ”If you don’t like the experience of how they are treating you, leave,” Nerad advises. ”You have all the power. Use it. Walk out the door.” Dealers often will make you feel like the deal you’re getting is scarce, says Camelia Kuhnen, a neuroeconomist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That will make you feel like you need to buy a car even if it’s against your best judgment. ”You can easily survive without that particular car, at this particular dealership,” she says. Bringing a friend who will be dispassionate about the whole process and help advocate on your behalf is a good idea, Kuhnen adds. ”I was prepared to walk out and did. It was only a couple hundred dollars difference but I got the deal I wanted,” Greg Dixon, NPR producer for All Things Considered  ”If you can’t pay cash for it, you need to be asking yourself why [you’re] buying this car,” says Singletary, the personal finance columnist. She suggests checking with your local bank or credit union before you go the dealership. ”Negotiate purchase price not the monthly payment,” says Lindland of Kelley Blue Book. ”You can easily spend hundreds, even thousands of extra dollars by not paying attention to terms.” One final tip from Lindland: Avoid car terms that are over 60 months. ”Longer term loans help keep monthly payments low,” says Melinda Zabritski with Experian, the credit agency. But consumers should be very careful, she says, because ”it’s easy to find yourself upside down . .. dealing with negative equity should they choose to trade it in after only a few years.” Collegio of NADA says ”it’s good to shop around.” He advises that you get a rate from your local bank  —   the dealer will be able to match or meet it. His organization has a guide for auto financing at autofinancing101. org. Ask for incentives. Dealers and carmakers often offer cash incentives, preferable loan or lease terms, gifts and even coupons to encourage consumers to buy cars. Check the manufacturer’s website for incentives, and be sure to ask your salesperson. The last weekend of the month is when dealers have the biggest incentive to sell. If you’re interested in leasing, negotiate the purchase price of the car first. Deal with the   separately, advises Singletary. Buy less car than you need, and think used (often referred to as  ) to get the best deal. Once you decide on the car, stick with the decision. ”Don’t settle on color,” warns Bates, who’s a member of NPR’s Code Switch team. ”Every time I go outside and see that red car, it makes me happy.” When you walk to your car, it should make you happy. And don’t forget: You don’t have to buy a car today. JOIN NPR’S ’YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE’ FACEBOOK GROUP, an online community featuring stories from some of the best investors and financial experts on the planet along with crowdsourced wisdom curated and overseen by NPR reporters and editors."
"Editor’s note: This story was updated on June 2, 2016, to reflect Prince’s autopsy results. Prince died of a drug overdose, the medical examiner in Ramsey, Minn. reports. The iconoclast musician, 57,   a deadly dose of the opiate fentanyl by accident. Opioid overdose in his age group is all too common. In 2013 and 2014, according to the The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people ages 45 to 64 accounted for about half of all deaths from drug overdose. Prince died on April 21 at his home and music studio, Paisley Park, in Minneapolis. He was 57. Experts say there are a number of scenarios that increase risk of overdose, which is often accidental, for people over 55. Imagine you’re in your 50s. You injured your shoulder a while back and it just hasn’t gotten better. You take prescription painkillers  —   an opioid like OxyContin  —   to help with the pain. Let’s say you’ve been taking it for a couple of years. Your body has built up a tolerance to the drug, and now, you need to change it up to get the same amount of relief. When it comes to the potential for overdose, says Boston Medical Center epidemiologist Traci Green, this is one of the most dangerous crossroads. ”We oftentimes see that the dose will increase with an individual over time or they might rotate or switch to another medication to experience pain relief. And so, at each rotation or change, there’s a risk [of accidental overdose] because you’re moving from one drug to another,” she says. Your body might not be used to that high dose, she says, or that different medication. She continues: Let’s say you also suffer from anxiety. Benzodiazepines can help with that. But taking opioids and benzodiazepines, or ”benzos,” together is a dangerous combination. ”There are wonderful medications used for treating anxiety. However, in the presence of an opioid, they can potentiate the other,” she says. ”One opioid plus one benzo doesn’t equal the effect of two in the individual,” Green says. ”It’s like one plus one equals four, or six.” Opioids can depress the body’s drive to breathe and so can benzodiazepines. Combine them and that effect mounts. You could stop breathing, and never wake up. And lots of people are taking these drugs in combination. In fact, people in their   to   are more likely than any other group to be prescribed opioids with benzodiazepines, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. It’s taking a toll. And there’s been a particular increase for people over 55, Green says. ”It is indeed a demographic to keep an eye on,” she says, partly because of another risk factor. People in this older age range may be more likely to live alone or be otherwise isolated  —   maybe from divorce or because their kids have moved out. So, Green says, ”If something happens, if no one’s there to revive you, then you’re more likely to die of that experience.” University of Rhode Island Pharmacy professor Jeffrey Bratberg says the way people in this age group tend to take drugs is also putting them at higher risk. ”They’re taking   opioids,” he says. ”They’re taking doses that, at certain thresholds, are associated with increased overdose death.” Also, Bratberg says, they’re more likely to have chronic health conditions that put them at higher risk of respiratory depression. Medical conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or even the flu can amplify opioids’ ability to depress breathing. And some percentage of these drug users, he says, will develop a substance use disorder. So why are doctors prescribing so much, in such combinations? Bratberg says it’s how the physicians were trained. ”If you’re a primary care prescriber and your patients are doing OK, maybe you’re just not thinking about that,” he says. ”Plus there’s difficulty in telling the person whose pain may be controlled by opioids, and their anxiety may be controlled by benzodiazepines, to say, ’Now we’re going to taper you off because this is harmful.’ ” So millions of people are on opioids  —   most of them over 45  —   and that means some are at risk of overdose. Bratberg says we should be educating patients and doctors. ”We’re really making a push nationally and regionally to educate prescribers about those risks, and to use tools available to warn folks about that.” Tools that that help lower the risk include naloxone, the overdose rescue drug. There’s also medication, such as buprenorphine or methadone, to assist people who have become addicted to painkillers safely stop their use. In essence, those drugs keep a low level of opioids in the system to keep someone from going into withdrawal without getting them high. This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with local member stations and Kaiser Health News."
"For an ”authentic” Mexican meal, why not cook up crepes? ¿Que qué?! You ask. Hear me out. Crepes are a hallmark of French cuisine. And in the 1860s, French forces invaded Mexico. They came, they conquered, they cooked  —   then they got kicked out. Cinco de Mayo  —   a holiday far more popular in the U. S. than in Mexico  —   commemorates the day in 1862 when a badly outnumbered Mexican army pulled off a minor but symbolically important victory over French forces in the Battle of Puebla. However, it would take another five years before the French left Mexico for good. And during their stay, the French left their mark on the country’s cuisine, including beloved crepas, which Mexican chef Pati Jinich likens to a cousin of the enchilada. Crepes in more savory incarnations (think crepe enchiladas with Swiss chard and potatoes) are among the recipes featured in Jinich’s new cookbook. Mexican Today explores not just traditional fare, but the country’s evolving cuisine and the many cultures that have influenced it. ”In Mexico, one of the most traditional desserts is crepas con cajeta,” notes Jinich, who was born and raised in Mexico and now hosts the popular cooking show Pati’s Mexican Table on PBS. Served with a sweetened, almost nutty caramelized goat’s milk sauce and topped with nuts, these crepes have become firmly embedded in the Mexican repertoire. ”That’s what I used to have for every birthday in Mexican restaurants,” Jinich says. ”And crepes are like a thousand times French.” ”People usually think Mexican food was, oh, the intermarriage of Spanish and Mexican,” Jinich says. ”No way!” Less   is the culinary imprint left by large waves of Africans brought to Mexico as slaves during the Spanish colonial era by Japanese, Filipino and Chinese immigrants (the latter of whom created a   fusion food just south of the U. S. border) and by the many Lebanese who arrived after World War I  —   bringing with them the technique of roasting meat on a turning spit for shawarma. That became a gastronomic ancestor to tacos al pastor, now a signature street food of Mexico City. Jinich says with her first book, Pati’s Mexican Table, she felt much less free to experiment with her recipes. ”I felt as a Mexican in the U. S. I had a duty to the people in my country to do things the traditional way, to showcase things as they really happen in Mexico and to really open a window into the real Mexico,” Jinich says. ”I didn’t give myself much permission to play with new flavors or new combinations or new spins. ”I love that cookbook,” she says. But ”I felt like I was walking a very fine line because I didn’t want to betray Mexicans. I felt like I’d be criticized if I didn’t do things a certain way. And at the same time I didn’t want to scare away Americans or most people here by doing things that would seem cumbersome or difficult or had exotic or    ingredients.” As we’ve discussed on The Salt, authenticity is a loaded word when it comes to food. Diners often expect a dish to fit a traditional mold. Yet cuisines, like languages, must evolve and adapt or die. ”When you think about it,’ says Jinich, ”if the word fusion had existed in the 15th or 16th century, all of Mexican cuisine [as we know it today] would be fusion. Because there’s no pork, no rice, no milk, no cheese, no onion, no garlic, no oregano, no hibiscus flower, no mango  —   nothing before the Spanish arrived and the trade with Asia started.” Dishes now considered to be Mexican classics  —   like crepas a la huitlacoche (a prized corn smut with a deep mushroom flavor) or cajeta crepes  —   ”are a severe intermarriage between New World and Old World,” Jinich says. And culinary ”authenticity” is also deeply personal. For many, it comes tangled up in memories of home and identity.   ”It’s such a relative thing,” Jinich says. ”For instance, I get very picky with guacamole. If someone gives me guacamole and it’s loaded with cumin, I will say that is the least authentic [thing] that is so bad. That’s not real guacamole. But who knows? Maybe for someone in San Antonio, that’s the guacamole they grew up with that they love.” My Colombian mother, I note at this point in the conversation, is decidedly in Camp Cumin. ”Yeah, I know!” Jinich says, her voice sympathetic over the phone. ”A lot of people put it in.” (Later, when I   this with my sister, she informs me that Mom, in fact, does not add cumin to her guac. ”I always add it in behind her back,” my sister confesses.) For Jinich, what matters is respecting the ingredients  —   using them to their best advantage  —   and respecting the wisdom of those who’ve come before you, even as you engage in the experimentation necessary to keep cuisines alive. ”I’m very traditional when it comes to technique,” Jinich says. ”For instance, the enchilada. I will start a revolution if I go to a restaurant and somebody serves me an enchilada with a flour tortilla. I will call the chef and ask him what he’s thinking. It’s like a disgrace! It loses all its dignity!” As Jinich enthusiastically explains, there’s good reason why enchiladas traditionally call for corn tortillas. Heated in a comal or in hot oil so that they’re slightly toasted, corn tortillas become resistant to cracking when adorned with sauce. ”Who knows? Maybe someday someone will come and give me a plate of enchiladas with flour tortillas and I will have to eat my words. I doubt it! But you never know.” Text excerpted from Mexican Today, © 2016 by Pati Jinich. Reproduced by permission of Rux   Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. The use of crepes in Mexican cooking is one of the remnants of the Maximilian Era (1864 —  1867) when Maximilian I and Carlota were sent by Napoleon III to establish a French monarchy in Mexico. The ruling class became obsessed with anything French, an obsession that continued through the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876 —  1911 Díaz dressed like a Frenchman, mustache and all) and right up to the Mexican Revolution.   food made with Mexican ingredients was considered civilized and elegant, the fare of fancy restaurants and state dinners. After the revolution, crepes and French bread (baguettes and the rolls called teleras and bolillos in Mexico) became popular foods that were no longer limited to the upper classes. Crepas come in many forms, from savory to sweet (the most famous sweet ones being crepas con cajeta). When they are wrapped around a savory filling and generously sauced (as they always are) they resemble enchiladas, with the crepes standing in for the tortillas. Crepes are very easy to make, though I’ve found that many people find the idea daunting. But any fears you may have will fall by the wayside if you follow these detailed directions. They come from my sister Alisa, a fabulous pastry chef who always shares her best culinary tricks with me. Alisa made sure I understood how important it is to allow the batter to rest, crucial for soft, fluffy crepes. Note: This recipe is for savory crepes, but it will also work for sweet ones. Just add 1 extra tablespoon sugar to the batter. Makes about 12 ( ) crepes. Preparation Time: 5 minutes, plus 30 minutes resting time, Cooking Time: 5 minutes, Make Ahead: The crepe batter can be made up to 2 days ahead, covered and refrigerated whisk well or blend before using. The crepes can be made ahead, cooled and refrigerated for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 4 months in a sealed plastic bag. 1 cup   flour, 2 large eggs, 1 large egg yolk, 1 cup whole milk, 1 teaspoon sugar, ½ teaspoon kosher or sea salt, 5 1⁄3 tablespoons (1⁄3 cup) unsalted butter, melted, plus more butter for cooking the crepes, ½ cup water, 1. Place the flour, eggs, egg yolk, milk, sugar, salt, and melted butter in a blender or food processor and blend until completely smooth. With the machine running, add the water and blend again until smooth. (Alternatively, you can mix the ingredients by hand.) Pour the batter into a container, cover, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. When ready to make the crepes, whisk the batter until smooth. 2. Heat an   crepe pan or a   nonstick skillet over medium heat. Once it is hot, add a very thin slice of butter and tilt or brush the pan to coat the surface. The butter should quickly bubble and sizzle if it does not, let the pan heat for a little longer. Tilt the pan, ladle a scant ¼ cup batter onto the lower side, and very quickly tilt and turn the pan to spread the batter over the entire surface. Cook until the edges of the crepe are beginning to dry and brown and the bottom is lightly browned, 30 to 40 seconds. With a spatula or your fingers, swiftly lift up one edge of the crepe and quickly turn it over. Cook the second side until lightly browned, which should take only 20 to 30 seconds. Remove the crepe from the pan and place on a plate. Repeat with the rest of the batter, stacking the crepes one on top of another. After making 2 or 3 crepes, you may need to butter the pan again. Mexican Cook’s Tips"
"De facto Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump celebrated Cinco de Mayo on Thursday. And being a Twitter aficionado, he couldn’t resist telling the world. ”Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill,” he declared in celebration of the holiday that commemorates the Battle of Puebla in 1862. ”I love Hispanics!” he added. His message immediately caused a Twitter frenzy. Some were frustrated at what they felt was Trump pandering to Hispanics: And also, everyone had questions: Does Trump Grill even sell taco bowls? No, reported Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski. But wait, were we sure? Apparently the Trump Grill Cafe (a distinct entity from the Trump Grill) is serving a dish called ”Taco fiesta!” which may be what he was eating. Has a reputable food publication reviewed a Trump cafe taco bowl? Why, yes (Eater, scathingly). What does Chipotle think? Naturally, that its burrito bowls are better than Trump Grill’s. What reading material was stacked underneath his meal? Possibly a People magazine story on Marla Maples. It’s general election season, everyone, and no stone will go unturned. Trump’s big demographic problems, But then, there is a serious side to the    fest. For all that Trump says, ”I love Hispanics,” they really do not love him. His favorability ratings among that group of voters are nothing short of abysmal, according to several polls. His   rating with Hispanic voters was   in a March Gallup poll, with 77 percent having an unfavorable view of him. In comparison, his fellow Republicans Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio earned scores of   1, and 6, respectively. (Admittedly, they were less   to respondents than Trump is.) Democrats fared far better: Sanders came in with a net favorability of 19, and Clinton at 33. That’s a huge problem for a party that has already known for years that it needed a boost among Hispanic voters. In its 2013 autopsy, the Republican Party advised its candidates to ”engage” more with Hispanic voters in advance of 2016. This wasn’t a futile quest, they stressed: George W. Bush proved that the GOP could perform well among Hispanic voters, winning 44 percent of that vote in 2004. But in 2012, Mitt Romney only won around 27 percent of Hispanic voters. And as the Hispanic population grows (and fast) the bar is only being set higher for Republicans. That group’s share of the electorate has grown by 17 percent since 2012, according to the Pew Research Center, compared to 2 percent for white  . Put another way, Hispanics make up an estimated 12 percent of eligible voters this year, per Pew. That’s almost double the 7 percent share in 2000. In part due to that fast growth among Hispanics, pollster Whit Ayres wrote in 2015 that a candidate this year wouldn’t win with George W. Bush’s 58 percent of the white vote and 26 percent of the nonwhite vote (including minorities beyond   Hispanics). Trump could maybe pick up more support as November approaches. But a recent poll suggests he would have a massive amount of ground to make up in the next six months. Only 14 percent of   registered voters in a Wednesday CNN poll said they would support Trump in a race against Clinton (again, compared to George W. Bush’s 26 percent final share of the 2004   vote, McCain’s 19 percent in 2008, and Romney’s 17 percent in 2012). The GOP knows it needs better Hispanic outreach, It’s true that for lots of Hispanics voters, immigration isn’t the top issue, and that it isn’t just a Hispanic issue. Still, the GOP did recognize in 2013 that a more welcoming immigration policy could endear them to more Hispanic voters. ”[A]mong the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform,” the RNC wrote in its autopsy. ”If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only.” Trump, of course, favors building a wall along the U. S.  border and deporting roughly 11 million people who are in the U. S. illegally (a study released Thursday found that that policy would slice 2 percent off US GDP). All of which is to say that as Trump has a long way to go beyond tweets of taco bowls to reach out to Hispanic voters. With reporting from Jessica Taylor."
"Federal investigators have interviewed top aides to Hillary Clinton about her use of a private email server, the latest advance in an ongoing investigation into whether her email practices as secretary of state may have compromised classified information, according to two people familiar with the matter. The interviews, of close aides including Huma Abedin, have been conducted by FBI agents, lawyers from the Justice Department’s National Security division and prosecutors from the U. S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Va. There’s no sign yet that a federal grand jury has been convened in the case, and Clinton herself has not yet been interviewed. Clinton, who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination, says she is cooperating with the probe. ”From the start, Hillary Clinton has offered to answer any questions that would help the Justice Department complete its review, and we hope and expect that anyone else who is asked would do the same,” Clinton’s press secretary Brian Fallon said. ”We are confident the review will conclude that nothing inappropriate took place.” The attorney general and the FBI director have offered no deadline for their review. The interviews with Clinton aides were first reported by CNN. In an interview with NPR last week, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, ”Our goal is to be thorough because we want to make sure that, in fact, we have looked at everything we need to look at before we come to any final conclusions, whichever way.” The federal investigation continues, even as dozens of civil lawsuits involving open records laws move their own way through the courts. Earlier this week, U. S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan paved the way for the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch to depose Clinton aides Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Bryan Pagliano over the next two months. The judge ruled that ”it may be necessary” for the watchdog group to question Clinton herself, but it will need court permission to proceed. Those interviews will happen at a sensitive time, in the   to the Democratic National Convention in July."
"It looks like more bad news for the new executive director of the U. S. Election Assistance Commission. Brian Newby is already being sued by the League of Women Voters for his decision earlier this year to allow Kansas and two other states to require residents to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote using a federal form. The move effectively reversed a   EAC policy. Now, the EAC’s advisory board  —   composed of election officials from around the country  —   has approved a resolution saying that such changes should be made by the commissioners themselves. The resolution, passed by a   vote during a   board meeting in Chicago, is only advisory, but clearly shows dissatisfaction with Newby’s actions. Commission Chairman Thomas Hicks says it’s now up to the commission to take the recommendation ”under advisement” and decide what to do. He, for one, agrees with the sentiment. Hicks, a Democrat, publicly criticized Newby earlier this year for making the change. Hicks noted in a statement that the commission had ”addressed this matter several times over the last decade and voted to decline requests” to add language to the federal voter registration form requiring proof of citizenship. Right now, the form simply asks individuals to swear  —   upon penalty of law  —   that they are citizens. The two other commissioners, both Republican appointees, have not objected to the change. A fourth seat on the commission  —   which provides guidance to states on voting  —   remains open. Just last week, President Obama nominated former Nevada treasurer Kate Marshall to fill the vacancy. The EAC controversy is part of a bigger fight over Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s move to require residents to prove citizenship when they register. Kobach says he’s trying to prevent   from voting, although there’s little evidence that’s been a serious problem in the state. Voter advocacy groups argue that tens of thousands of Kansans have been blocked from registering to vote because they don’t have the required documents, such as a birth certificate, to prove citizenship. They say Kobach’s move violates federal law, and are suing him in federal court in Kansas City. The other suit  —   against Newby and the EAC  —   was filed in federal district court in Washington, D. C. In that one, the League of Women Voters is asking the judge to block the    requirement before Kansas holds a primary in August. A decision is expected any day. Newby argues that he has the authority to make the changes. But the fact that he is a former Kansas election official, with ties to Kobach, has raised suspicions among advocacy groups. At least two groups have asked the EAC’s inspector general to investigate. Republicans, who generally back    laws, are watching the legal wrangling closely. If Kobach wins, there will likely be more legislation requiring voters to show such proof when they go to register."
"This story is part of NPR’s podcast Embedded, which digs deep into the stories behind the news. Sitting on a dresser in the back bedroom of a house in Austin, Ind. is the bottom of a soda can. A woman places a sliver of a pill, a powerful prescription opioid called Opana, on the jagged  . She begins to heat the pill with a cigarette lighter, melting its hard white coating and turning it the color of whiskey. Her name is Joy. Using a syringe, the former nurse squirts water into the can and the substance turns to gel. Quiet falls over the bedroom of the rural house as Joy and two other people fill their syringes and inject their hits. (We are using only her first name because she uses drugs illegally.) Afterward, Joy fishes around in her purse for an appointment book, where she points to the 13th of the following month. She has an appointment with a doctor who can prescribe outpatient treatment, she says. She’s ready to get help for her addiction. Joy does not keep that appointment. Like so many people addicted to opioids in this country, Joy doesn’t fit the picture most people have in their heads when they hear the words ”drug addict.” Joy was a nurse working in a hospital. She had three kids, a good job  —   she was even a Girl Scout leader. Her addiction to prescription painkillers began after a back injury on the job. She says she never thought she would use a needle to inject drugs. ”This time last year, I had a home,” she says. ”I had a car, a house full of furniture, a lot of nice stuff.” Joy describes her big sectional sofa, cherry dinette set, appliances and gadgets like   TVs, game consoles and other electronics  —   most of which she sold to feed her addiction to Opana. She lost the house. Now she’s living in her mom and dad’s living room. Her parents’ house outside of Austin is a little   house with a   porch, a barn out back and stacked firewood. For a while, though, Joy says, she had nowhere to stay. She slept in a slide at a park at a local elementary school. Once she broke into an empty,   house just to get out of the rain. ”Anything could have happened to me there. I didn’t care  —   I was just so high,” Joy says. Every day was about figuring out how to get money, how to buy a pill and get high. Joy says it was all about the feeling of first shooting up. Joy ended up in jail, charged with visiting a place were people used illegal drugs. She says it’s the first time she’s been arrested. ”Never been in any kind of trouble in my life,” Joy says. ”You would think that would have been enough for me. No.” Joy got out of jail after a few days. One condition of her release: She had to wear a GPS monitor on her ankle. She also had a 9 p. m. curfew. But she was withdrawing from Opana, and all she could think about was getting back to Austin and getting a pill. ”I was supposed to be home at 9 o’clock  —   and at 10 till 11, I still wasn’t home, and they issued an escape warrant on me,” she says. ”I got home about 11:30 p. m. and my dad’s like, ’You got a warrant on you!’ ” She went back to Austin, cut off the GPS monitor and hid it in a bush. Police found and arrested Joy the next morning, slapping her with more serious charges since she’d violated the conditions of her release. Joy spent more than 40 days in jail. She spent six of them in a padded cell on suicide watch after she used the underwire in her bra to cut herself. Slowly, she started to feel better. She started thinking she wanted to stay off drugs for good. ”I started going to church in jail and reading the Bible, and I thought, you know, this is not who I am,” she says. ”The more my head got clear, the more I just decided that I’m not going back to this when I get out of jail.” But that wasn’t the end of it. ”The day I came home, I went and got a pill. After all that,” Joy says. ”I went and got a pill.” This happens to people who are addicted to opioids like Opana. Health workers and researchers say it’s hard to stay off the drugs without some kind of treatment  —   ideally, medication and counseling. Finally, Joy says, something in her mind told her to stop. She decided to go to the clinic. But the methadone clinic where she receives treatment is half an hour away from her parents’ house, in a different county. Austin is a town of about 4, 300 people with what public health officials say are at least 500 known intravenous drug users. But it has no   drug treatment facility. The nearest inpatient treatment is 30 miles away, with at least a monthlong waiting list. Like a lot of people in the area, Joy doesn’t have a car  —   but she got lucky when she ran into a neighbor and he offered to take her to the methadone clinic. Every day, he came to pick her up and drive her there. Sometimes a friend loaned her the $15 she needed to pay for the methadone. After a few days, she started to feel a lot different. ”I didn’t think constantly about when I woke up, ’OK, what am I going to do today to get that quarter of a pill?’ ” she says. ”I got up and like, ’I’m all right today. I don’t feel too bad. I’ll go to the clinic, get my medicine, come back home and help Mom around the house.’ Gradually, my way of thinking started to change.” But she still faces cravings. She says even hearing the word ”Austin” makes her crave Opana. Sometimes those cravings are too strong. Two months into her methadone treatment, Joy picked up the phone and called a pill dealer. ”I had a bad day  —   a really bad day,” she says. ”And I called somebody up wanting a pill, and I knew I wouldn’t feel the pill because the methadone blocks it. The guy [I called] was like, ’What are you talking about? You’ve been in treatment for two months. You’re not going to feel this pill. You’re going to get drug tested down there. You’re going to fail it  —   for what? You’re not going to buzz.’ ” Joy got lucky again. Her dealer talked her down, and she did not go get a pill. Joy is still on methadone. She’s going to counseling three times a week, and she sees her son every day after school. Sometimes he stays with her on weekends. She’s talking to her daughters again, too. Her nursing license lapsed while she was on the street. She had to take 24 hours of classes and pay a fee to get it reinstated, but now she’s applying for jobs. Joy says she’s worried about being around pain medication back at work. She says at first she might try to do office work such as billing or case management in order to stay away from temptation. She’s also saving money to get a car  —   and maybe even her own place. ”I have a bank account now,” she says. ”I have over $400 I’ve managed to scrimp and scrape since December, when I started taking methadone.” Joy says she wants to have a home again, where her son can live with her. ”That’s all I can focus on right now,” she says. ”I never thought my kids would forgive me, my parents would forgive me. I thought my only way was to just commit suicide and let my kids be raised by their dad or my parents or whatever. And then I seen it  —   they do need me. They do still love me, and I’m still their mommy. It’s time I did right by them again. I thank God that I have the chance to do that.” To hear more of this story, listen to Embedded. Keep up with podcast host Kelly McEvers on Twitter at @kellymcevers, and join the conversation using the hashtag#NPREmbedded."
"Over the past few hours, Nigerians have been buzzing about Captain America: Civil War, the latest in the Marvel Comics film series, on the Twitter hashtag #CaptainAmericaInNigeria. Some fans are using the meme to express their excitement about the movie, which opens in theaters tomorrow. Others are using it to share photos from the opening action sequence, which looks as if it was filmed in a bustling market in Lagos (but is actually a set in Atlanta). ”Sorry to break your hearts,” wrote one blogger on PartyJollof. com. ”Captain America never came to Nigeria. In fact, Captain America never left America.” But most netizens  —   some of whom refer to the Captain as ”Baba,” a Nigerian honorific  —   are using the hashtag as a vehicle for cheeky social and political commentary on everything from fuel shortages to corruption. And there’s a sober note as well in an observation about the missing Chibok girls from 2014. We rounded up a few tweets that caught our eye:"
"When you first wrap your head around its plot, the new film Captain America: Civil War seems to have abandoned most of the pointed political content of Marvel’s 2006 comics series Civil War, on which it’s based. (”Loosely based”? Let’s say ”  based. ”) In the books, the conflict between Captain America and Iron Man is fundamentally about the Registration Act that would require superheroes to abandon their secret identities, be registered and tracked, and become government employees subject to oversight. The Act follows a tragic series of events that are not actually the fault of The Avengers in a way timely for 2006, they are the fault of lesser superhumans who have gotten entangled in reality television. Moreover, those events become the excuse for violence against superheroes  —   notably Johnny Storm, otherwise known as The Human Torch of the Fantastic Four (who aren’t in the movie). Tony Stark says yes to the act, embracing the stability and certainty that regulation would bring he’s also riddled with guilt after a grieving mother insists her son’s death in the tragedy is attributable to his influence. Cap says no, fearing the implications and horrified at orders that he personally subdue and arrest those who don’t comply. When S. H. I. E. L. D. insists, Cap goes rogue and creates what becomes the resistance. There is, in the books, a fairly potent political story about civil liberties, hate crimes, and the tension between safety and security that constantly inspires vigorous debate over both its existence (or not) and its proper resolution (or not). In the film, on the other hand, the initial tragedy is caused by The Avengers, and the attempt at regulation comes in the form of a multinational,   oversight plan. While Tony again assents and Cap again doesn’t, that issue becomes the backdrop for a more immediate (and more filmable, and probably more domestically and internationally salable) fight over Bucky Barnes, Cap’s old friend, now brainwashed and performing various bad deeds as Winter Soldier. The implications of registering people based on their status, including the abundant history of papers and markings and databases as opening salvos for oppression, are mostly   in favor of the fight between Cap, who refuses to abandon Bucky in the belief that he isn’t responsible for his actions, and Tony, who believes that a dangerous criminal is a dangerous criminal and needs to be captured and locked up. The questions from the Civil War books, with their consideration of power and freedom and potentially outsize policy responses to disaster, seem remarkably current. It would have been an opportune moment in which to delve deeply into those issues, as well as some of the books’ other nods to things like the proper role of policing and the effect of mass tragedies on civilian populations. But the film is far from apolitical. In fact, it considers an equally pressing question, more fundamental and less frequently discussed: the ability of people with similar values and similar goals to navigate profound and serious disagreements without, in the words of one of the new characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ripping each other to pieces. There’s a fascinating sequence, perhaps unique among movies of this budget and scale, in which a group of characters who are all known to be decent, known to be moral, known to be noble, and known to be literally both Super and Heroes sit in a group talking through this critical disagreement about acceding or not to outside supervision  —   to acting only when a group of governments working in concert tell them they can (and must). They find themselves forced to balance legitimately compelling arguments on both sides. They argue back and forth, not in the ”fight” sense but in the ”argument” sense: Someone offers support for one answer, then someone else offers support for the other. Everyone has a point. They all respect each other. They all know they cannot split the difference and cannot find a choice in the middle. They cannot punch or shoot or zap their way out of it. The choice is binary: They will say yes or they will say no, and despite the breadth of their agreement on the relevant issues, they cannot agree on the answer. The rest of the film is admittedly full of entertaining fistfights and   and bad guys with accents and a shot of Chris Evans’ arms that ought to come with a red bow tied around it, as it is unambiguously a gift to those who like arms. But it also becomes a story about not merely this conflict, but all conflict  —   a story about how people behave toward each other when they disagree on matters of extraordinary importance. Over and over, Cap and Tony give away their discomfort with battling each other: Downey does a beautiful job with the vulnerability of Tony’s urgent, nervous pleas to Cap to surrender as the stakes rise. He is more nervous in part because he has the entire power of the world’s governments behind him. He believes Cap will probably lose, and he himself will carry the weight. Evans, meanwhile, continues to give Cap the same stubborn quietude he’s had for several films now. Cap always wants to persuade when he can, and this is no different. He is driven by the depth of his friendship with Bucky, even to the detriment of his friendship with Tony. At one point, a character says ominously that an empire toppled by its enemies can be rebuilt, but one that tears itself apart on its own is dead forever. This turns out to apply not only to empires, but also to  . Just as the most powerful weapon The Avengers have had is their ability to work together, their most potent potential weakness is not external forces but anything that divides them  —   ideally enough to force them to fight each other to the death. And yet, The Avengers have made moral certitude one of their central tenets. They don’t really believe in ambiguity they talk in terms of good guys and bad guys. They fight murderous aliens and evil men who turn themselves into monsters. They save kids. They have committed themselves to a life of both righteousness and selflessness, so once their own potentially destructive power is called into question, are they to double down on their righteousness and trust their own   alone (Team Cap) or double down on their selflessness and give up power when asked to do so by those they mean to defend (Team Iron Man)? Is steadfastness the same thing as certainty, in that commitment to your beliefs requires never questioning them? And if two people agree on the constellation of arguments for and against a complex policy idea and differ only on the final balancing, are they enemies as to that issue? What becomes of their significant areas of agreement? This, too, feels current. The comics are largely about a specific policy argument the film is about the risks of an entire      mode of engagement. While the political question of Civil War as a comic series was whether the grave risks of registration outweighed the potential benefits, the political question of Civil War the movie is how to stop even profound disagreements from souring into enmity. Into hurled insults. Into trolling. Into being forced to unfollow people on Facebook. Too specific? Civil War returns over and over to some of its saddest themes: how friends specifically fight the instincts that tell them they are not enemies. How one wound that is old and deep enough will explode any attempted reconciliation. How most viciousness comes from pain. How the path of forgiveness is often unsatisfying, and the decision to follow it anyway is more about the   of the one doing the forgiving. We are not in a golden age of nuance. We are not in a time in which public conversations leave ample room for   disagreement. Cap and Tony apply similar values to interpret the same evidence about Winter Soldier, reach different conclusions, and cannot figure out how to stop short of a   rumble. Similarly, when discussions of policy and culture take place in public spaces, they often run on the assumption that to reach a final conclusion is to reject (or disbelieve, or not care about) the entirety of the case against it. When that happens, every rejection of a tactic is received as a rejection of all the principles it was conceived to advance every imperfect alignment might as well be absolute opposition. Civil War finds itself in theaters in the same week that   Miranda’s Broadway hit Hamilton is nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards. Hamilton, too, concerns itself with the problem of   bitterness between people who largely agree with each other. (Given that Hamilton has been mashed up with absolutely everything, it’s not surprising that the potential for this parallel was spotted at least as far back as the trailer.) How did Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (the fictional versions, that is) wind up in a duel when Hamilton began the show seeking Burr’s counsel and they agreed about so much of what they wanted to accomplish for the country? How do you end up shooting a man you admire at a time when you mostly still admire him? The easier answers are pride, custom, or, as some reads of the show would have it, Burr’s obstinacy. The harder answer, and the one the show supports, is that both felt they were in the right, both were flawed, and neither could find a way to stop. In fact, there’s a sequence in the Civil War book where a failed plan of Iron Man’s to avoid fighting Cap may remind you eerily of a line from the show explaining that proper dueling always involves a final effort at peacemaking, and it’s only in disastrous cases that it’s abandoned: ”Most disputes die and no one shoots.” Near the end of the show, Leslie Odom Jr. as widower Aaron Burr, explains the choice with which he felt confronted once they’d decided to duel: ”I had only one thought before the slaughter: ’This man will not make an orphan of my daughter. ’” By this time, it had gotten so far along that he felt that it was him or Hamilton there was no exit strategy. He had gradually closed off all of his own escapes. This realization comes in a song called ”The World Was Wide Enough,” as Burr reflects on the flaws in his perspective but also, critically, on the Pyrrhic nature of his victory: ”When Alexander aimed at the sky, he may have been the first one to die, but I’m the one who paid for it. I survived, but I paid for it.” He goes on: ”I was too young and blind to see, I should have known   I should have known the world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me.” Burr acknowledges here that once   allow themselves to become enemies, even winning is terrible, because you’ve only defeated someone you needed. Watching Civil War, you suspect Cap and Tony will both, if it comes to that, learn the same thing. It’s curious to see two common forms of popular American mythology  —   superheroes and fictionalized founding narratives  —   almost simultaneously elevate stories of friendships that underlie strategic alliances and are disastrously undone. It’s hard not to wonder whether it reflects a cultural anxiety about the stability of our own close bonds in times of disagreement, or at least discomfort with the public face of conflict. So while Civil War dropped some of the political content of the books when it transitioned to film, it retains a certain urgency and relevance. The questions it raises indict us more broadly than the specifics of a story more centered on the   questions might have, but no less incisively."
"Bourang Ba was a young farmer in Sitacourou  —   a sleepy village of scattered thatched roof dwellings where cattle chomp on hay in courtyards. Last year, the father of two set out for Europe, leaving behind his son, daughter and young wife, Nialina. Like his two   who had already migrated to Spain, he hoped to send money home for the family. Bourang Ba never made it to Europe. He drowned in the Mediterranean en route. ”He wanted to do his bit and provide for his relatives, so he left without telling me,” sobs Wassa Ba, Bourang Ba’s father. The young man, in his 20s, is one of many victims. A little more than two weeks ago, a group of hundreds of migrants from Africa drowned trying to cross to Europe. They were primarily from East Africa, but the migrants are the latest in a wave of people leaving the continent to seek a better life. Many in the exodus are youth from Senegal  —   particularly the eastern part of that nation. It’s at busy bus stations like one in Tambacounda, the main city in eastern Senegal, that young men from villages like Missirah, Kothiary, Makacoulibantang and Sitacourou leave to become migrants. They first cross the border to neighboring Mali  —   and then, via Niger, onto Libya. Their ultimate destination is Europe  —   hoping to make fame and fortune. But many of these odysseys end in despair and even tragedy. It’s hard to put your finger on statistics for the number of young, undocumented men leaving eastern Senegal  —   the epicenter of the exodus  —   for Europe. Local media reported that this region alone, surrounding Tambacounda, accounted for an alarming number of deaths in the Mediterranean Sea last year. ”Some reports said at least 50 local young men drowned in the Mediterranean at the height of the migration sea crossings a year ago,” says Hubert Ndeye, a senior official in the regional government. Ndeye says the Tambacounda area has always been a regional crossroads and source of migrants. ”But that has dramatically increased recently, because of the number of local people who’ve drowned, who’ve been lost at sea,” he says. Undeterred, young men are still heading out. A startling reality is that many villages are devoid of men of working age, leaving behind women, children and the elderly. Unemployment in the area is high. Official figures put the rate at more than 36 percent in 2013, in a region that is predominantly poor, rural, farming country. The government is encouraging young people to farm to help counter poverty, but the idea has not caught on. Many young people say you cannot earn enough. Remittances from migrants abroad have helped improve the lives of many families. Speaking from a thatched wooden patio, Wassa Ba stretched out his arm and proudly pointed toward an adjacent bungalow. The concrete structure was built with money from his two sons overseas, he says proudly. Did those contributions from his   in Europe push Bourang Ba on his own fateful journey? Wassa Ba doesn’t see it this way. He says Bourang was a farmer and was working the land, so there was no need for him to leave home. Then again, the father also said poverty drove his son to migrate. But family does appear to play a key role in a young man’s decision to head for Europe by the back door. ”It’s not just a case of these youths taking off,” Ndeye says. ”It’s about honor among the young who see siblings or other family members overseas building beautiful villas in their villages  —   and often it’s the mothers and fathers who push their children to leave, so they can do the same.” Senegalese commentator Tidiane Sy says pride and family pressure help fuel migration. ”If you talk to the young people, there’s something they say here  —   ’beugue tekki.’ Tekki means to become, I want to be someone, I want to succeed,” Sy says. ”It’s not just being someone, it’s getting recognition, being among those who count. The idea is  —   I want to be more important, I want to be among the VIPs of this society, of this community. I deserve the respect that everyone gets. You can think it’s false pride.” So there is pressure  —   both direct and indirect, says Sy. ”That’s how the society works. In conversation, people talk about who has achieved what and done this or that for his family,” concluding that those abroad are more successful, he says. ”They get more respect than you who stays here and is struggling.” ”This daily struggle to survive  —   It’s a real bad feeling that you come back home, your mother is there, you can’t support her, you can’t support your kids, you can’t support your wives,” says Sy. ”When you can’t do it, it looks like you’re a   citizen. In society you don’t get the respect you deserve.” Bourang Ba’s widow, Nialina, is now on her own, looking after their two children,    Sona and the toddler, Bourang, named for his father. Nialina Ba is probably in her late teens or early 20s and is painfully shy. Her face looks drawn for such a young woman. It’s hard to get her to say much. But a tiny gesture says it all. She opens the zipper of a large suitcase in the small hut she shares with her children and pulls out the one enlarged, laminated photograph she has of her husband. Tears well up in her eyes. A short walk away, at her   ’s compound, we’re saying goodbye. I ask Wassa Ba if, after his son Bourang died trying to get to Europe, he’d stop any of his other children from leaving. To my surprise, this    father, who has a wheezy, asthmatic cough, looks me in the eye and tells me that, as we speak, two more of his sons and a nephew are preparing to head to Europe, without legal documents, hoping for a better life. With your blessing, I ask? ”Absolutely,” he replies, adding that any youngster who comes to tell him ”I’m going” will have his support and his prayers."
"In 1965, the trumpeter, composer and arranger Thad Jones and the drummer Mel Lewis found themselves with a book of   music originally intended for the Count Basie Orchestra  —   and nobody to perform it. So they made their own. They handpicked some of New York’s top talent and called rehearsals on Monday nights, when the studio musicians could actually make it. And by the time they debuted on a Monday in February 1966 at the famed Village Vanguard, they were already a force to be reckoned with. (As proof, that first night was recorded and recently issued on a   set called All My Yesterdays.) Soon, the Thad   Lewis Orchestra would become the most influential big band of the last 50 years, and the band now known as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra still plays every Monday night. Jazz Night In America heads to the basement jazz shrine to see the band’s 50th anniversary show in February 2016, full of cuts from the original Thad Jones songbook. Our radio program tells the story of how the band came to be. Mat Jodrell, trumpet Jon Owens, trumpet Terell Stafford, trumpet Scott Wendholt, trumpet Luis Bonilla, trombone Jason Jackson, trombone John Mosca, trombone Douglas Purviance, bass trombone Dick Oatts, alto   Billy Drewes, alto     Rich Perry, tenor   Ralph Lalama, tenor   Gary Smulyan, baritone sax Michael Weiss, piano David Wong, bass John Riley, drums with Jerry Dodgion, alto sax."
"Last week, there was a big development in the   bitter, complicated battle over a    set of bones known variously as ”Kennewick Man” or ”The Ancient One,” depending on whom you ask. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmed that the ancient bearer of the bones is genetically linked to   Native Americans. Now, under federal law, a group of tribes that has been fighting to rebury him will almost certainly get to do so. It also means that scientists will probably never get another chance to study him, though ancient human remains from North America are incredibly rare, and forensic technology gets better all the time. ”It’s the chafe between science and spirituality,” writes Kevin Taylor at Indian Country Today, ”between people who say the remains have so much to tell us about the ancient human past that they should remain available for research, versus people who feel a kinship with the ancient bones and say they should be reburied to show proper reverence for the dead.” There’s a history to bitter tensions of this sort. Take the recent fight between native Hawaiian protesters and scientists who wanted to erect a telescope on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano considered sacred by some and ”the best location in the world to observe the stars and study the origins of our universe” by others. None of these clashes exists in a vacuum they often come on the heels of decades, if not centuries, of genocide and erasure aimed at indigenous peoples and their ways of life. And so an object of scientific interest, be it a bone or a mountain, can come to stand for an entire civilization. Some say scientists need to rethink their whole approach to culturally sensitive research. Others say the unfettered pursuit of knowledge ought to trump belief if the faithful always got their way, we’d still think the Earth was flat. Who gets to decide? The twists and turns in the story of Kennewick Man  —   which has been told before, and well  —   suggest there’s no easy answer, of course, but certainly provide an incredible case study for the future of this debate. The fight has been raging for 20 years, ever since a couple of college kids stumbled  —   literally  —   across a human skull while wading in a river in Washington state. They thought they’d found a murder victim, and flagged down a nearby cop, who called in a local expert. Instead, they had discovered some of the oldest, most complete human remains ever dug up in North America. Archaeologists dubbed the skeleton Kennewick Man, after the place he was found, and hoped his bones could help settle one of the greatest mysteries in the story of human migration: how did Homo sapiens, originating in Africa, end up in the Americas? The dominant theory was that humans trekked here on foot around 13, 000 years ago, during the Ice Age, when seas were lower and a land bridge temporarily connected Siberia and Alaska. But other evidence suggests humans were already living on this continent well before that particular pathway was possible. So which was it? Did humans walk here, or somehow  —   incredible to imagine  —   paddle? Was there one wave of migration, or more? A study of Kennewick Man’s bones could reveal what he ate, what he drank, how he hunted, and, of course, his DNA  —   all clues that could ultimately tell the story of where he, and his forebears, came from and how they got here. But a group of Native American tribes considered The Ancient One, as they call him, a direct tribal ancestor  —   and they didn’t need science to explain how people ended up here. ”From our oral histories, we know that our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time,” a leader of the Umatilla tribe wrote in a statement at the time. ”We do not believe that our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do.” Working together, five tribes demanded that The Ancient One’s remains not be poked or prodded in the name of science, and instead be promptly reburied in accordance with tribal custom  —   and under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. That federal law, passed in 1990, requires certain Native American artifacts and remains to be handed over to culturally affiliated tribes or provable descendants. ”The tribes had good reason to be sensitive,” writes Smithsonian Magazine’s Douglas Preston. ”The early history of museum collecting of Native American remains is replete with horror stories. In the 19th century, anthropologists and collectors looted fresh Native American graves and burial platforms, dug up corpses and even decapitated dead Indians lying on the field of battle and shipped the heads to Washington for study. Until NAGPRA, museums were filled with American Indian remains acquired without regard for the feelings and religious beliefs of native people.” But for these bones to fall under the protection of NAGPRA, there had to be proof of a connection between the remains and the people fighting to reclaim them today. The scientists said no such connection existed. The tribal leaders insisted it did they could feel it in their bones. That question ended up spawning an unprecedented legal and ethical battle in which prominent archaeologists and anthropologists would sue the U. S. government for the chance to study the bones. Femur bones would go missing under unexplained circumstances. Bitter arguments would be pitched over the migration patterns and feeding habits of sea lions, the curvature and racial implications of cheekbones, the validity of oral tradition as courtroom evidence. Eventually, the scientists did get a legally approved (though very brief and highly constricted) look at Kennewick Man, and what they learned is truly amazing. Based on the shape of his skull and other features, they theorized that he or his forebears may have been Asian coastal seafarers. They may have journeyed by boat along the south Alaskan shoreline and ultimately all the way down the Americas, hugging the coast and living off kelp, fish, sea lions and the like. This is the ”coastal migration” theory of the peopling of the Americas, which suggests that a wave, or waves, of people traveled and lived along the Pacific coast long before other travelers chased herds of tasty mastodons and mammoths across a land bridge into Alaska. They also learned a tremendous amount about what Kennewick Man’s life may have been like. Here’s more from Preston: ”Kennewick Man spent a lot of time holding something in front of him while forcibly raising and lowering it the researchers theorize he was hurling a spear downward into the water, as seal hunters do. His leg bones suggest he often waded in shallow rapids, and he had bone growths consistent with ’surfer’s ear,’ caused by frequent immersion in cold water. His knee joints suggest he often squatted on his heels. . .. Many years before Kennewick Man’s death, a heavy blow to his chest broke six ribs. Because he used his right hand to throw spears, five broken ribs on his right side never knitted together. This man was one tough dude.” As of last week, it’s likely that this tough dude is headed back to the earth. University of Chicago scientists confirmed another study, from last year, showing that Kennewick Man’s DNA has genetic similarities to those of   Colville tribal members. Now, members of the Colville tribe and four others say they’ll work together to complete the repatriation  —   or reburial  —   process, and the government has shown zero interest in standing in their way. But while scientists may never get another chance to study these remains, even as biomolecular science is ”advancing so rapidly that within five to ten years it may be possible to know what diseases Kennewick Man suffered from and what caused his death,” writes Preston, the story of Kennewick Man raises all sorts of questions as to how researchers might avoid antagonizing local cultures to begin with  —   or whether they should have to try. One of the scientists involved in revealing a genetic connection between Kennewick Man and living Native Americans invited members of the five tribes into the lab, where they put on body suits and entered a ”clean room” to pay their respects to The Ancient One. In the wake of Kennewick, scientists have been reflecting on ways to work with indigenous communities when these kinds of conflicts come up: ”Many other researchers are taking a similar approach. [Dennis O’Rourke, a biological anthropologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City] says that there is no     strategy to working with native communities. He finds some of the North American Arctic groups he works with eager to contribute to his research, others are less so and their opinions shift over time. ” ’We really have to change the   approach, where we come to people and say ”these are our research questions and you should participate, because  —   SCIENCE,” ’ says Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Texas at Austin.” Other scientists say there’s a real danger in altering scientific methods to accommodate religious belief. Elizabeth Weiss, an anthropologist at San Jose State, outlined impediments to her own work in a 2001 paper on the Kennewick controversy, and argued that regulations like NAGPRA require far too little evidence proving a cultural connection to   native communities. She also suggested that such regulations  —   which increased around the world in the wake of NAGPRA  —   can have a chilling effect on scientific research: ”Consider having dedicated a large part of one’s life to unearthing the materials that are now being examined. Even casts and other important works  —   such as videotapes, photos, and excavation records  —   are in increasing danger of confiscation. Some scientists have expressed fear that their federal grants would be in jeopardy if they objected too openly to current policies. Under such circumstances, most scientists do not even begin ’ ’ projects. Finds that could threaten Native American origin beliefs are especially likely to be targeted. Defendants could become embroiled for years in expensive lawsuits that neither they nor their institutions can afford . .. ”The politics of bone gathering in Africa are notorious . .. and one shudders to imagine what might happen if activists could convince modern Africans to claim early human skeletons as their ancestors, so that they too could be reburied.” As this saga draws to a close, perhaps only one thing is certain. Wherever science, ethics and history collide, easy answers don’t exist. The distinction between pioneering researcher and grave robber can depend entirely on whom you ask. But there’s one more story worth telling here, that of another very old pile of North American bones that got a whisper of the attention that Kennewick Man has gotten, because the raging fight over what to do with them simply never got started. From Nature: ”Just weeks before Kennewick Man’s remains were discovered, researchers working in Alaska discovered a    human skeleton. They notified local tribes and quickly came to an agreement that allowed them to excavate and study the remains and keep the tribes involved in the research. ’You don’t really hear so much about the good cases,’ says Raff.”"
"In the case of the infamous serial killer dubbed the ”Grim Sleeper,” a Los Angeles jury has found Lonnie Franklin Jr. guilty of killing nine women and one teenage girl over the course of more than 20 years, from the 1980s to the early 2000s. The verdict brings a measure of closure to the   horror story that featured a killer who targeted mostly poor, black women, some of whom were prostitutes a police force that was accused of not doing everything it could to protect the community and the possibility that dozens or even hundreds of other women may have also been murdered by Franklin. NPR’s Kirk Siegler reported that ”Franklin sat silently, staring straight ahead,” as the clerk read guilty verdict after guilty verdict. Siegler tweeted that the family and friends of victims ”quietly wept” in the courtroom. Prosecutors have spent more than two months laying out the case against Franklin. During closing arguments earlier this week, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told the jury that the case against Franklin is ”not a close call,” according to NPR member station KPCC. The station adds: ”Prosecutors pointed to a pattern: In multiple murders, Franklin allegedly picked up women who were on the streets using drugs or prostituting, sexually assaulted them, shot them at an angle from the driver’s seat, and dumped them in an alley and covered them up with mattresses, debris, or trash cans. Two of the victims were strangled to death.” The verdict in the case of the Grim Sleeper had been years in the making. Los Angeles police arrested Franklin in 2010 after DNA from Franklin’s incarcerated son led authorities to Franklin himself, as the   reported. Family members of some of the victims believe that because Franklin mostly targeted poor, black women, the police did not do all they could to catch him and warn the community of his patterns. As Kirk reported earlier this week, ”It has since come out that the police may have known a lot more about the serial killer than they let on.” Franklin was found guilty of murdering the following 10 people: KPCC reports that another woman survived an attack. ”In gripping testimony during the trial, Enietra Washington described being shot in the chest and sexually assaulted by a man she believed was Franklin in 1988,” the station said. Kirk also reported that the name ”Grim Sleeper,” coined because of the long periods of time between murders, may be a misnomer. He said: ”The nickname ”Grim Sleeper” first came about because of an apparent gap in the murders. There were the unsolved slayings in the 1980s, and in the early 2000s, bodies of women again started turning up in alleys and dumpsters in South LA. ”But it’s now thought that the killer may have never ”slept.” Police uncovered nearly 100 pictures of unidentified women from Franklin’s home.” KPCC reports that ”detectives released 150 photos, asking the public’s help in making sure the women were OK.   women in those images remain unaccounted for.” The sentencing hearing for Franklin is scheduled to begin May 12."
"Kenyan rescue workers freed a woman from the rubble of a building in Nairobi on Thursday, six days after its collapse. Then, just hours later, the Kenya Red Cross said three more people  —   a man and two women  —   were rescued alive. NPR’s Gregory Warner in Nairobi tells our Newscast unit that the collapse of the   building on Friday killed at least 36 people. He adds that dozens are still missing. Here’s more from Gregory on the first rescue Thursday: ”Rescue workers were shocked to hear the woman’s cries six days after the building had collapsed. They managed to feed the woman an oxygen mask and IV drip, then spent hours with drills to finally free her from under the concrete. . .. ”The building collapsed in the heavy rain in a poor neighborhood on the city’s outskirts. ”City authorities say they had earmarked the building for demolition because it was seen as near collapse. But people continued to live there and pay rent. The owners of the building were released on bail but will be charged with manslaughter.” Reuters reports that according to Kenya’s Interior Ministry, the residential building that collapsed had been ”earmarked for demolition, but local authorities had not acted on the order.” The Associated Press reports that the woman is named Elizabeth Night Odhiambo and her husband says she is eight months pregnant. ”I cannot say the happiness I have,” her husband, Stephen Onyango says, per the AP. ”I have never had such happiness like this in my life.” A military spokesman tells the wire service that she was found with the help of ”trained dogs” and ”special equipment to detect breathing and movement.” According to the Daily Nation, a local disaster management authority says the woman ”was weak and had no visible injuries.” She was transferred to hospital from the scene. No information was immediately available about the three other people rescued Thursday. On Tuesday, an infant was found ”alive in a washbasin in the debris,” according to the AP. As the BBC reports, ”the UN usually decides to call off search and rescue attempts between five and seven days after a disaster, once   has been saved for a day or two  —   but people have been known to survive for much longer. ”’ That includes Naqsha Bibi, who was found alive in the rubble of her house in 2005 more than two months after an earthquake hit   Kashmir. The BBC reports that she likely survived on rotten food and a ”trickle of water” inside her collapsed kitchen. Dr. Tejsrhi Shah of Doctors Without Borders tells the BBC that survival ”often comes down to ’sheer determination.’ ” She says: ”Some people just accept they are trapped and it’s fate. Others just keep going.”"
"A U. S. Army captain has filed a lawsuit against President Obama over the legality of the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Capt. Nathan Michael Smith, 28, who is currently on active duty in Kuwait, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He argues that the war is illegal because it lacks congressional authorization. He says the ongoing military action violates the 1973 War Powers Act. ”Under the War Powers Act, every time [a president] notifies leaders of military strikes, his power to carry them out without congressional approval extends another 60 days,” as NPR’s David Welna has reported. Here’s more from Smith’s lawsuit: ”The President did not get Congress’s approval for his war against ISIS in Iraq or Syria within the sixty days, but he also did not terminate the war. The war is therefore illegal. The Court should issue a declaration that the War Powers Resolution requires the President to obtain a declaration or war or specific authorization from Congress within sixty days of the judgement, and that his failure to do so will require disengagement, within thirty days, of all United States armed forces from the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.” The legal challenge comes as the U. S. expands its military presence in Syria. Nearly two weeks ago, Obama announced that the U. S. plans to send up to 250 additional military personnel to Syria, as the   noted at the time. They’re joining the 50 already on the ground. The   has reported on the debate over the legality of the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. As we noted, the Obama administration ”authorized those strikes relying on an Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, passed in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, and another one passed in 2002, which began the war against Iraq.” The administration’s controversial argument is rooted in the origins of the Islamic State group, The New York Times reports: ”That argument is controversial because the Islamic State is at odds with the leadership of Al Qaeda and its affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front. Critics contend that the administration is stretching the Sept. 11 authorization too far by applying it to an organization that did not exist in 2001 and that operates far from Afghanistan. ”The administration has countered that its position is legitimate because the Islamic State used to be a Qaeda affiliate in Iraq during the Iraq war.” Smith’s lawsuit counters that the president has ”exceeded his authority” under the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs, because the Islamic State played no part in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Obama has said that he is acting according to his ”constitutional and statutory authority as Commander in Chief.” Last year, however, his administration sent Congress ”a request for formal authorization to use military force against the extremist group,” as the   reported. This lawsuit counters that the president’s powers do not override the obligation to ”obtain from Congress a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization in order to wage the war against ISIS.” Smith stresses in court documents that that he personally ”believes that the operation is justified both militarily and morally.” But he says he is concerned that an ”illegal” war ”forces him to violate his oath to ’preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution.” As David reported last week, the fight is drawing new criticism from some lawmakers. For example, at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said: ”I am deeply concerned about the legal basis for this war, both domestic and international.” You can read Smith’s full legal complaint here:"
"Imagine stepping into an underground club in rural China or urban Moscow in the 1950s. The sounds of a saxophone, piano, bass and drums resound from the stage. Everyone in the audience could be blacklisted or charged as criminals for being in attendance but they’re willing to risk it to listen to jazz. Or imagine a town hall in Soweto in South Africa during the apartheid era. A jazz quintet is playing   with mbaqanga flair. People gather to dance, to listen and to celebrate life through the power of their own jazz musicians. Last Saturday was ”International Jazz Day,” a UNESCO initiative that celebrates the musical, social and political roles that jazz music has played around the world. Because even though jazz may have been born in America, its parents were African, Caribbean, Creole, Italian, German and Portuguese, to name a few. And as jazz spread, musicians around the world inserted their own voices.  If you missed last week’s festivities, don’t sweat! Jazz artists are constantly creating a dialogue behind the music and their own cultural influences. Here’s a sampling from the corners of the world that we cover in this blog. Reginald Cyntje, ”Atonement” ( . S.)  Reginald Cyntje was born in Dominica and raised in the U. S. Virgin Islands on a diet of reggae, calypso, classical and jazz. Now based in D. C. the trombonist is a celebrated composer and improviser with four albums under his belt. As a bandleader and composer, Cyntje steeps his music in the flavors of his musical upbringing. There are hints of calypso and other distinctly Caribbean musical forms, but the Virgin Island’s quelbe music  —   a folk song form dedicated to topical storytelling  —  informs much of his work as a composer. Cyntje builds his compositions on rich, Western harmonies and the rhythms of the Caribbean, but then inserts a quelbe.  ”Atonement,” from his 2015 album Spiritual Awakening, shows Cyntje wrestling with spiritual concerns. The narrative that unfolds through the melodies and solos is one of searching, as he appeals to both Western and Caribbean traditions for wisdom and guidance. Shanghai Restoration Project featuring Zhang Le, ”Can’t Get Your Love (得不到的愛情)” ( . S.)    music producer Dave Liang created the Shanghai Restoration to work through his musical and cultural identities. He’s a second generation Chinese immigrant, raised on Chinese pop and folk but also on jazz and  . So he makes music that reflects both East and West, tradition and modernity. He took inspiration from the Shanghai jazz music of the 1920s, which combined Western harmony with Chinese scales and tones. That’s the inspiration for the Shanghai Restoration’s 2014 album The Classics. He and   jazz singer Zhang Le reimagined Chinese jazz standards as modern,   vocal numbers. This song, ”Can’t Get Your Love (得不到的愛情)” features Zhang Le scatting in Mandarin, a   of feat in both Chinese and American jazz music! Ibrahim Maalouf, ”Alif Leila wa Leila” (Middle East) The music that Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf makes and the instrument he plays demonstrates the global connections within jazz. In the late 1960s, Ibrahim’s father, Naasim Maalouf, designed and pioneered the family’s signature instrument, a   trumpet. The senior Maalouf added the fourth valve to the trumpet in order to more easily play notes that don’t really occur in formal Western music. The radical trumpet design allows Ibrahim the flexibility to use his full vocabulary as a native Arab musician and trained Western  . Raised in France, the trumpeter blends the two forms as he sees fit in his compositional and improvisational styles, creating music that ties the Middle East to East Coast jazz clubs. Ibrahim Maalouf’s most recent project is Kalthoum, a tribute to the great Egyptian singer and pop icon Umm Kulthum. Hear ”Movement I” from his reimagination of Umm Kultum’s performance of Alf Leila Aa Leila (One Thousand and One Nights). Sachal Orchestra, ”Take Five” (Pakistan) The Sachal Orchestra was founded in the 2000s by Izzat Majeed, a Pakistani millionaire and arts enthusiast who wanted to make a new base for Western music in Pakistan. Many of the musicians are fluent in both Western and Pakistani classical music and spent many years scoring Lollywood (the Pakistani equivalent of Bollywood). But they all share a strong love of Western music, particularly jazz. As a unit, the orchestra members compose and arrange their own material, and they often draw on Pakistani music and Western music, seeing where the two can overlap. Sometimes, they also just love playing their favorites. One of the Sachal Orchestra’s best, and most   recordings is their interpretation of the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ”Take Five.” The group layers Western string harmonies on top of the propulsive beat of the Indian drum called a dhol as the sitar leads with the main melody. Thandi Ntuli, ”Umthandazo” (South Africa)  Pianist and vocalist Thandi Ntuli is part of a new generation of South African musicians who reflect this idea of crosscultural jazz. Raised in South Africa, Ntuli grew up on a mix of South African and American jazz as well as traditional African music. When you hear her fingers touch the ivories, the notes that flow come from the river of tradition that houses Chopin, Art Tatum, and Nina Simone. But in her compositions and vocals, you hear her channel the rhythms of life that inform can inform music all around Africa. Thandi boils down her expansive, embracing musical identity to the fundamental nature of both jazz and her native South Africa. ”I draw from anything and everything that inspires me,” Ntuli told NPR via email. ”The South African music influence is obviously inescapable having grown up in this environment but you will find that even our jazz draws from many influences even around the continent. Which I think I do too because of my love for traditional African music and rhythms.” ”Umthandazo” (”The Prayer” in Zulu) from her 2014 debut LP The Offering, demonstrates Thandi Ntuli’s sense of cultural and musical weaving. She cites two main influences for the song: the subdued yet dancing tone and   blurring song structures of American guitarist Pat Metheny and the meditative aspects of African ritual music. Lwanda Gogwana Quintet, ”The Calling” (South Africa) Trumpeter Lwanda Gogwana is another prime mover in the new generation of South African jazz. His quintet, though it rotates musicians, commonly features Ntuli as well as rising South African tenor saxophonist Sisonke Xonti. Gogwana’s compositions draw on even more musical elements than Ntuli does. His first LP, Songbook, references African musical traditions, bebop, fusion,   RB and even    jazz. On this track from Songbook, ”The Calling,” Gogwana and company throw a   multicultural,   musical bash. The opening invokes  African celebration music with its group vocal chant mixed in with funky fusion bass, the smooth yet spiritual tone of his trumpet, the James   of the horns section and so much more. All of this comes across as a statement of how Gogwana fits into the core philosophy of jazz. His playing, born in the cradle of human life, suggests that music and people all come from the same roots."
"Softball pitcher Monica Abbott has been collecting records her entire career. She holds NCAA records for strikeouts, shutouts and wins in 2008, she became the first player to a pitch a perfect game in the Olympics she’s a   National Pro Fastpitch league champion and in 2012, she set a new NPF speed record with a 77    pitch. This week, Abbott broke one more when she inked a   $1 million deal with the   Scrap Yard Dawgs, becoming the first player in the   history of the league to sign a   contract. As ESPN reported, the contract is thought to be ”the most lucrative paid by an individual American professional franchise to an active female athlete in team sports.” The deal isn’t just huge for the    pitcher, who has recently played in Japan’s softball league and for the NPF’s Chicago Bandits. It’s also being hailed as a step forward for softball and women’s sports in general. ”I think it’s a proud moment for National Pro Fastpitch,” league Commissioner Cheri Kempf said, according to ESPN. ”But I think it goes further than that. I think it’s a proud moment for women in professional sports in this country. I feel glad that it’s happening in the league. I’m glad that we’re going to lead the way, in some respects.” The significance of the deal isn’t lost on Abbott, either. On Thursday, she flooded her Twitter profile with congratulatory messages, inspirational sayings and hashtags such as #breakingbarriers and #firstonemildeal. She tweeted, ”The future of #Softball just got a lil bit better for everyone.” Although the deal is worth $1 million, the league’s salary cap restrictions mean that Abbott’s base salary is only $20, 000 per year the rest will come from bonuses. ESPN explains: ”Teams in the NPF must squeeze rosters of at least 18 players within a salary cap of $150, 000. Few players earn more than $20, 000. Most make     figures for the   season. To fit that structure, Abbott’s deal pays her a base salary of $20, 000 for each of the next six seasons, with attendance bonuses making up the rest. It will not be difficult to meet the bonuses, triggered when attendance for a small number of games reaches 100 fans, home or away and whether or not Abbott pitches. ”That is the math as it relates to the    Abbott, who spent the past five seasons with the Chicago Bandits. It is math designed to catch the eye, like the contract that made Nolan Ryan baseball’s first $1    player in 1979.” The deal’s $1 million price tag was meant to grab attention, but it was also part of the plan to secure the best pitcher in softball, as Scrap Yard Dawgs’ General Manager Connie May said in a statement from the club. ”We are very excited to have the number one pitcher in the world in Houston for the next six years,” May said. ”We have worked very hard to put a solid team on the field and Monica will be the final piece to this puzzle to give us the best opportunity to compete for the Cowles Cup in our inaugural season.”"
"People are voting in local elections across the U. K. on Thursday, but there is extra attention focused on London’s mayoral contest. If the race goes as many pollsters expect, the city could have its first Muslim mayor. Parliament members Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party and Zac Goldsmith of the Conservative Party are the   in the field of about a dozen candidates vying to replace Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson. Khan, who is Muslim, was a human rights lawyer before joining Parliament. His parents immigrated to London from Pakistan. His father was a bus driver in the city for more than 25 years, according to his campaign website. As Lauren Frayer reports for NPR, Khan ”was born in South London, one of eight children. The family lived in public housing.” Goldsmith, an environmental activist, used to edit The Ecologist magazine. His father was billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. ”They’re the two faces of London, rich and poor, immigrant and blue blood,” Lauren notes. In a statement published by The Guardian, Goldsmith said he was ”determined to make London the greenest city on Earth.” He wrote that he would ”clean up our buses and cabs, get more Londoners cycling and invest in pocket parks, so everyone has access to the outdoors.” Housing affordability and access has been a key issue for Khan. He wrote for the Guardian, ”If I become mayor of London, my single biggest priority will be to build thousands more homes every year.” He added: ”I am asking [Londoners] to choose hope over fear, to choose change over more of the same, and to vote for me to be a mayor for all Londoners.” Race and religion have also been a part of this contest. Khan’s campaign slammed Goldsmith for literature that called Khan a ”radical,” as the BBC has reported. Goldsmith responded by saying he used the term ”to describe what has happened to the Labour Party” and accused Khan of ”playing the race card,” the BBC says. British Prime Minister David Cameron said last month he was ”concerned” about Khan, telling Parliament that the candidate ”has appeared again and again” on a platform with extremists. (You can watch that video on the BBC’s website.) The BBC reports: ”In a BBC London debate [in April] Mr Khan said he had ’never hidden’ the fact that, as a former chairman of Liberty and a human rights lawyer, he had acted for ’some pretty unsavoury characters’. ”And when asked if he regretted sharing a platform with extremists, he said: ’I regret giving the impression I subscribed to their views and I’ve been quite clear I find their views abhorrent.’ ” Another incident that has roiled the campaign pitted Khan against the leaders of his own party. The Telegraph explains: ”The Labour leadership needs to act far more decisively over allegations of   in the ranks, the party’s candidate for London mayor has said. ”Sadiq Khan said there could be no place for anyone holding the views of Ken Livingstone, who plunged the party into turmoil last week with his claim that Hitler supported Zionism in the 1930s.” Khan is leading by   in the polls, according to Pippa Crerar, city hall editor of the London Evening Standard. On Wednesday, Crerar told All Things Considered: ”If Sadiq Khan, as everyone thinks is going to be the case, becomes the next mayor of London, then it sends out a huge message globally because London will have elected a Muslim mayor, or rather a mayor that happens to be Muslim  —   elected him obviously for his policies.”"
" ’ good? KFC in Hong Kong is marketing edible nail polish that tastes like  —   wait for it  —   chicken. ”Yes, it is actually a real thing,” the agency running the campaign tells The New York Times. KFC designed the polish ”to appeal to young consumers’ love of food and fashion,” according to a press release sent to the fashion site Racked. ”Simply apply and dry like regular nail polish and then lick  —   again and again and again to taste why the world’s favourite chicken is Finger Lickin’ Good,” the company says. The product comes in three flavors  —   original, hot and spicy  —   based on KFC’s chicken recipe. It’s not exactly clear what the nail polish is made of, but KFC says it is ”formulated from natural ingredients.” The   chain is asking customers in Hong Kong to pick which flavor should go into mass production, AdWeek reports. We should note that KFC isn’t the first to pitch edible nail polish. Kid Licks, for example, has created three polishes made with fruits and vegetables that are supposed to be safe for kid consumption, POPSUGAR says. Those come in ”sour carrot orange,” ”beet red” and ”barley grass green.” If you could try edible nail polish, what flavor would you want? Let us know in the comments.* *Things to consider: increased   eating real food that conflicts with your nail flavor, the general awkwardness of tasting nail polish."
"Many credit card and loan agreements these days have in the small type what’s called a ”mandatory arbitration clause.” Most people don’t even know what that means. But by signing, customers agree not to sue the financial firm in a class action lawsuit. Instead, they agree to work out any problem with an arbitrator hired by the bank. ”The company can sidestep the legal system, avoid accountability, and continue to pursue profitable practices even if they may violate the law and harm thousands or even millions of consumers,” says Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB on Thursday proposed a rule that would ban a range of financial firms from using this tactic to avoid lawsuits. Restoring The Power Of The Class Action, Suppose you notice that your credit card company charged you a $50 fee you think is unfair. And it turns out the company is doing this to a million people. A class action lawsuit can band you together with them and make it worth some lawyers’ time to go after the company for $50 million. And if the lawsuit is successful, ”the company then is under significant compulsion by the courts to change their practices going forward,” Cordray says. And he says there’s a deterrent effect. ”If companies know that they can be held accountable for these kinds of violations, then they’re less likely to engage in them and more likely to be more careful about what they’re doing,” he says. Class action lawsuits of course aren’t new. Consumer advocates say they have played an important role for decades. But, in recent years, and especially after a Supreme Court decision in 2011, mandatory arbitration clauses have become widespread across all kinds of industries. So consumers in many instances have signed away their right to seek restitution through a class action. But now, the CFPB is basically saying to big banks: If 1, 000 or 1 million customers want to get together and sue you, they can do it. Industry Warns Of Frivolous Lawsuits, The financial industry does not like this proposed rule. Travis Norton, with the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, says the rule could bring a flood of frivolous class action lawsuits. ”The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in this rule is really turning into the plaintiff’s lawyer protection bureau,” he says. Norton worries that many lawyers won’t bring lawsuits to protect consumers but will sue to unfairly shake down companies to line their own pockets. Norton says the proposed rule would raise legal costs for companies, which in turn would increase prices for consumers. He cites a recent class action lawsuit in which the issue was ”whether Subway restaurant ’ ’ sandwiches were actually 12 inches.” Norton says some consumers measured them and thought they were only 11   inches. ”There was a $525, 000 settlement,” Norton says. ”Consumers, they got $5, 000 and the trial lawyers who brought the case got $520, 000.” But consumer advocates say class action lawsuits do help consumers. Julia Duncan, a lawyer with the American Association for Justice, says that in a class action, the court can tell a bank or lender to hand over a list of thousands of customers that might have been affected. In arbitration, she says, the bank is in control. ”Corporations get to pick the arbitration provider, they choose all of the rules of the process and there is virtually no right to appeal,” Duncan says. And, she says, ”amazingly, corporations also usually insist that arbitrations remain completely secret, so the public is not able to ever find out what a lender or a bank is doing to thousands of its customers.” The CFPB is now seeking public comment on the proposed rule. One point of contention between consumer and industry groups is likely to be whether the rule would grandfather in existing arbitration clauses. If a final rule is issued, it will likely go into effect next year."
"The Food and Drug Administration is banning the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors as part of a broad set of regulations the agency finalized Wednesday. With the rules that were more than two years in the making, the agency is expanding its authority over   cigars and hookah tobacco, in much the same way it already regulates traditional cigarettes. In addition to barring sales of tobacco products and   to people under age 18, the FDA would impose other restrictions, including: The rules also require companies to get FDA approval for any products that were put on the market after Feb. 15, 2007. Also,   makers will have to go back to the agency within two years for approval of the products they already sell.   consist of plastic or metal tubes that contain a heating element that vaporizes a liquid solution containing nicotine. The popularity of ”vaping” has grown in recent years. The FDA says about 16 percent of high school students used   in 2015. Some have welcomed the devices as an alternative to traditional cigarettes, whose dangers are   and as an aid to help smokers quit. In the U. K. for example, the Royal College of Physicians in April embraced   as a way to reduce smoking, which the group says is far more dangerous. ”In the interests of public health it is important to promote the use of ” the group said in a statement released April 28. The industry trade group has pressed that point.   ”provide smokers with a viable path to reducing their tobacco consumption and quitting altogether,” said Tony Abboud, national legislative director of the Vapor Technology Association, the trade group for   makers. Others fear the devices will addict nonsmokers to nicotine and eventually lead to more people smoking. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell nodded to that concern in a statement released with the new rules that said use of   has risen as traditional smoking has declined. ”All of this is creating a new generation of Americans who are at risk of addiction,” she said. The FDA had previously attempted to regulate   but that effort was thwarted in court. Public health advocates such as the American Lung Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics welcomed the new rules."
"Gov. Jerry Brown signed a sweeping package of tobacco bills into California law on Wednesday, including one that will raise the legal age to buy products from 18 to 21 and another that dramatically tightens restrictions on  . But the governor vetoed a bill that would have permitted cities and counties to establish their own tobacco taxes. ”Although California has one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation,” the governor said in a veto message, ”I am reluctant to approve this measure in view of all the taxes being proposed for the 2016 ballot.” California becomes just the second state after Hawaii to raise the lawful age to buy tobacco products, a move that backers applaud as a certain way to curtail harm to adolescents, and reduce the number of adult smokers. State Sen. Ed Hernandez, a Democrat from West Covina, was the lead author of the bill to raise the tobacco age, and says he’s ”ecstatic.” ”What this means for California is now we can know that our youth are less likely to be addicted to this horrible drug of tobacco,” he says. ”There’s going to be less addiction to tobacco, [and] we’re going to reduce health care costs and save lives.” The law, which will take effect June 9, applies to all 18 to    except military personnel. The bill had stalled for months until a compromise was reached to permit service members under 21 to continue purchasing tobacco. A major Institute of Medicine report last year concluded that if all states raised the tobacco age to 21, there would be a 12 percent drop in the number of teen and young adult smokers. ”The biggest drops in tobacco use (will) likely occur among teens ages 15 to 17  —   kids who can’t legally buy tobacco products in California now but who run in the same social circles as    who may illegally purchase tobacco products for younger friends,” said Larry Cohen, executive director of the Prevention Institute, in Oakland, Calif. and a longtime advocate for tobacco control policies. Adolescents are at particular risk for nicotine addiction because their brains are still developing, says longtime tobacco critic, Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. ”Exposing the developing brain to nicotine, which is in both   and conventional cigarettes, physically changes the brain,” Glantz says. ”That’s why the younger someone starts to smoke, the more addicted they tend to get . .. and the harder time they have stopping. Vaping Banned In Many Public Places, But the new regulations on   may be even more significant, Glantz says. ”There’s no question that   aren’t as dangerous as cigarettes are,” he says, ”but they’re still dangerous.” Under the law, written by state Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco,   will be banned in all the same places that traditional cigarettes are  —   workplaces, schools, restaurants, hospitals and more. And like other tobacco products, users will need to be 21 to buy  . ”The   is nothing more than a new delivery system for toxic and addictive nicotine,” Leno said in a written statement. ”Ensuring that   fall under California’s comprehensive   laws is critical to protecting public health, especially given the alarming rate at which young people are picking up these devices.” A study last year from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that   use among middle and high school students tripled from 2013 to 2014. Brown signed three other bills:   groups are now focusing their efforts on an effort to gather signatures for a November ballot initiative that would raise cigarette taxes from the current $0. 87 per pack to $2. While California is seen as tough on tobacco, it ranks 36th in the country on   taxes. A 2012 ballot initiative to raise taxes by $1 per pack failed by less than half a percentage point after the tobacco industry spent $47 million to defeat it. A statewide Field poll last year found that   of California voters support an increase in tobacco taxes. This story was produced by KQED’s State of Health blog."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. In ”Tell Me,” the   fourth track on Corinne Bailey Rae’s inspiring third album The Heart Speaks In Whispers, the     sets her sights on a new generation. ”This is for the dreamers,” Rae wails over a   beat as her friends and collaborators Paris and Amber Strother shout support behind her. ”Let’s make our own scene.” Rae is hardly the first to essentially dedicate an album to those with stars in their eyes: She might have been thinking of her fellow Northerners in The Stone Roses declaring one more for the dreamers in 1994’s ”Daybreak,” or of J. Cole, who once sampled her first hit ”Like A Star,” calling for the revenge of the dreamers in 2014. What Rae adds to this idealists’ songbook is a feminine take that blends dreaminess with nuanced awareness of the heart’s hesitations and the need, in life, for clarity. Male dreamers are often hailed as visionaries, their gutsy impracticality a sign of courage and insight. Women dreamers become reduced to attractive cartoons, flighty and vulnerable, the gamine heroines of vaguely countercultural fantasies. The Heart Speaks In Whispers,   by Rae and her longtime collaborator and husband Steve Brown, fights against this split by presenting a woman’s imaginative flights within   jams and delicate,   ballads examining the subtle trajectories emotions can take. Rae collaborated with the Strother sisters,   of the innovative L. A. soul group KING, in six of the album’s tracks. Working with them and other musicians connected to the thriving black bohemian scene in Los Angeles, she found a community of players who make the   epic music toward which she’s long been striving. The Heart Speaks In Whispers is a more assertive and   work than her moving and challenging 2010 album The Sea, and more expansive than her charming 2006 debut, which earned Rae several hits and prizes. It has the feel of an adventure, full of fellow travelers ranging from star bassists Pino Palladino and Marcus Miller and funky drumming legend James Gadson to the foundational RB songwriter Valerie Simpson (who   the heartrending ”Do You Ever Think Of Me? ”) and Moses Sumney, whose choral backing lends resonance to Rae’s meditation on surviving sorrow, ”Caramel.” What places The Heart Speaks In Whispers in the elite category of transcendental   from Minnie Riperton to Erykah Badu are those   songs that play as a continuation of the   revolution KING announced on its striking debut earlier this year. (Rae and the   superstar were friends, and he worked with KING.) ”Green Aphrodisiac” recalls the Purple One’s pastoral work on Diamonds And Pearls, while ”Horse Print Dress” takes up the playful seductiveness of songs like ”Peach.” Rae uses her light vocal tone ingeniously throughout The Heart Speaks In Whispers, sidestepping the clichés of oversinging in the new gospel of ”Walk On” and infusing gravitas with gentleness in the slow and steady ”Hey, I Won’t Break Your Heart.” After his death, many fans pointed to Prince’s legacy of work with female artists. Rae realizes it here  —   a woman, not a girl, dreaming in her own colors."
"If you drive around Kabul long enough, you will eventually see what must be the most cheerful slogan in Afghanistan. Cars traverse the city bearing a happy little window sticker about the best way to approach life in a country beset by deep  —   and, in the eyes of most Afghans, worsening  —   trouble. ”Enjoy Today!” it reads. ”Forget Tomorrow!” That’s harder than it sounds. This reality came into sharp relief last month when the Taliban killed 64 people, and injured more than 340, in a large, complex bombing and shooting attack that targeted the Afghan national security agency. The fact that the militants could cause such mayhem in a supposedly   area in the center of the capital added to a crescendo of criticism leveled at Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani. It also strengthened a growing consensus among international and Afghan observers that the ”national unity government” that Ghani leads, under an agreement cobbled together after a botched 2014 election, is at risk of collapse. Ghani, a former World Bank official with a reputation as one of the world’s finer intellects, faces a monumental task if he is to prevent his government from being overwhelmed by the crises facing Afghanistan. ”We didn’t ask for war, and we never seek war,” Ghani declared in a speech shortly after the Kabul bombing. ”But if they impose the war on us, we will fight.” His government was ”united,” he said  —   though that is widely disputed. The crises facing the Afghan government are multiple. The Afghan economy is tanking. The national currency, the afghani, has lost 20 percent against the dollar in a year. Several hundred thousand Afghans, many of whom are young and   have left for Europe in search of jobs, education and security. The war with the Taliban is widening. Civilian casualties are on the rise. Large parts of the landscape are outside the government’s control. Peace negotiations remain a distant dream. Corruption is rampant. As you drive around Kabul, evidence of how this general instability is affecting the lives of Afghans is everywhere. The roads have become home to a multitude of checkpoints, police, soldiers, armed guards and buildings wrapped in razor wire and   concrete blast barriers. Women in blue burqas and haggard men on crutches continue to beg on the streets, despite the tens of billions in foreign aid poured into this city. For a long time, Kabul was fairly safe for foreigners. They ate in cafes and restaurants. Now you’re about as likely to see a Western diplomat strolling the streets as a polar bear. ”They’re locked up, basically,” Kerry Jane Wilson said in an interview with NPR in March. Last Thursday, Wilson, a charity worker, was abducted from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, reportedly by two men posing as government intelligence officials. Wilson has worked in Afghanistan for 20 years, most recently with a charity organization that helps impoverished Afghan women become entrepreneurs  —   for example, by producing and selling handicrafts. Until recently, it helped administer an arts and crafts shop called Ganjina, a showcase for Afghan artisans that was hugely popular with foreigners. A few weeks ago, the deteriorating security situation forced Ganjina to close its doors for the last time there were barely any visitors. Failing To Deliver, Over the years, Afghanistan has faded from the world headlines, overshadowed by other, bloodier wars. Now some   foreign policy makers are raising the alarm anew  —   and in blunt terms. In February, James R. Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, warned that Afghanistan is at ”serious risk of a political breakdown” in 2016. He spoke of ”waning political cohesion, increasingly assertive local power brokers, financial shortfalls and sustained countrywide Taliban attacks.” In March, the United Nations envoy to Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, told the Security Council it would be an ”achievement” if the Afghan government survives the year, citing similar concerns. One of the Afghan government’s most basic vulnerabilities is the weak foundation on which it’s built. In 2014, Afghanistan held a presidential election. A furious dispute erupted over the outcome, fueled by allegations of fraud. Secretary of State John Kerry intervened, brokering a deal in which the two candidates shared power. Ashraf Ghani became president. His election rival, Abdullah Abdullah, was made chief executive officer, a position created by presidential decree. This   deal was enshrined in a signed agreement. Its terms include a commitment to hold a loya jirga, a grand assembly of Afghan elders, within two years to debate amending the constitution and turning the post of CEO into prime minister. That deadline expires in five months. Few Afghan experts believe there’s much chance of a loya jirga being held within that time. First, parliamentary and district council elections must take place, as loya jirga members are drawn from those bodies. Before elections can happen, electoral reforms are required to avoid a rerun of the 2014 debacle. The government is already overwhelmed. It hasn’t even managed to fill all of its Cabinet positions, says Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. ”Only a   optimist could reasonably expect it to pass electoral reforms and hold local elections in just a few months,” he says. Yet failing to deliver on promises made when the government was cobbled together is risky. Ghani has many political enemies who can be expected to seize on this failure as evidence that his government has lost legitimacy. That, in turn, could trigger moves to oust his government. ”The state of play here is quite stark,” says Kugelman. ”A weak and fractured regime in Kabul faces a Herculean task, and yet unless it pulls off the seemingly impossible, the threats to its political survival could become too strong to overcome.” The situation is made still more precarious by another factor: No one seems sure of how long the government is meant to serve. The signed agreement is silent on this point. Some Afghans are convinced that its term is two years  —   much to the alarm of the Obama administration, which sees this interpretation as further destabilizing. Kerry sought to douse this fire during a recent visit to Kabul. He categorically declared that the Afghan government’s term is actually five years, although that’s not stated in the agreement, either. Afghans accused the U. S. of interference in their internal affairs. Warding Off Evil, It’s rush hour in Kabul. A small boy called Abdul wanders through a traffic jam. He’s carrying, on a string, a tin can containing burning seeds. He waves the can around smoke gushes out. Abdul moves from car to car, engulfing each vehicle in a small acrid cloud. As he does this, he recites an ancient verse about warding off evil. A driver hands him a few pennies. There’s a belief among Afghans that smoke from these seeds, a kind of wild rue, protects them against ill fortune. These days, there’s no shortage of small boys with smoldering tin cans  —   and no shortage of ill fortune for them to keep at bay. Anxiety hangs in the air in Kabul. Few people seem to think the Taliban can take total control of their country. Many fear the country might fracture some worry it may return to the devastating civil war of the 1990s. ”I am afraid that if we don’t take the right steps, this region will break up like Libya, and the Islamic State and Taliban will fill the vacuum,” said Ahmad Saeedi, a   political analyst and civil society activist. Saeedi is skeptical about the government’s chances for survival, and says infighting between the president and chief executive’s offices is making matters worse. ”It is like a car with two steering wheels, driving in different directions,” he says. Later this year, Afghanistan will turn again to reluctant international donors for yet more funds. Officials will point to the progress the country has made in education, infrastructure, health services, the media and more. There will also be warnings that if the West fails to provide needed support, Afghanistan could easily return to anarchy and civil war, and once again become a haven for   and   franchises. You could argue that, when lobbying for more international money, being pessimistic is in the Afghans’ interests. Yet the realities on the ground are hard to dispute. To see that, just take a drive around Kabul."
"On paper, sending surplus U. S. peanuts to feed 140, 000 malnourished Haitian schoolchildren for a full year sounds like a heroic plan. Instead, it’s united 60 aid groups that are urgently calling on the U. S. Department of Agriculture to halt a shipment containing 500 metric tons of peanuts, preventing the legumes from reaching Haiti. The aid groups call it ”crop dumping” and warn that it will deliver an economic blow to struggling Haitian peanut farmers. Critics say it’s poor aid policy that will have   negative impacts on Haitian communities. ”This is a country where peanut production is a huge source of livelihood for up to a   people, especially women, if you include the supply chains that process the peanuts,” says Claire Gilbert, spokesperson for Grassroots International, a   nonprofit that supports food sovereignty. How the USDA got stuck with a pile of peanuts stretches back to the 2014 Farm Bill, which included incentives encouraging American farmers to plant more. It worked. In 2015, growers harvested 6. 2 billion pounds of peanuts, and that number is expected to go up another 20 to 25 percent this year. But all that extra planting has left the USDA holding the bag, with a hefty peanut surplus. To unload some of the excess, the agency announced a few weeks ago that it would ship 500 metric tons of packaged,   peanuts to schoolchildren in Haiti as part of the ”Stocks for Food” program, a joint initiative between the Farm Service Agency, Foreign Agricultural Services and Food and Nutrition Services. A statement issued from the aid group Partners in Health did not mince words about the announcement: ”We believe this is wrong.” The   aid group has been working on health and nutrition issues in Haiti for more than 30 years, including a partnership with Abbott Laboratories to manufacture and distribute a product called Nourimanba used to treat severely malnourished children. ”We’re not talking about big business owners being put at risk by an input of peanuts,” says Dr. Louise Ivers, senior health and policy adviser, Partners in Health. ”We’re talking about small, very poor farmers that are very dependent on a single crop. We really believe the dumping, or donation, whatever your perspective, will have negative consequences.” The nonprofit groups aren’t the only ones less than excited at the potential USDA donation. While the U. S. Agency for International Development declined to comment, a tweet from its Haitian office did not seem to support USDA’s peanut plan. Calls and emails to the USDA and the department’s Foreign Agricultural Service seeking further information on the shipment of peanuts were not returned. In a Washington Post Letter to the Editor, Alexis Taylor, deputy undersecretary for farm and foreign agricultural services at the USDA, says the peanuts will be part of a morning snack, and that donated U. S. bulgur wheat, green peas and vegetable oil are also part of hot meals currently distributed at Haitian schools. ”To ensure this aid complements ongoing development assistance, the USDA is funding research by the World Food Program into the use of locally procured peanuts in emergency rations and in school food programs in Haiti,” Taylor writes. Mark Schuller, author of Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid and NGOs, and an associate professor at Northern Illinois University, says it’s a classic case of institutional silo mentality. ”The USDA is doing what they’ve always done, which is to promote agri business. It wouldn’t have occurred to them that this is a problem,” he says. It’s not the first time U. S. ag policies have interfered with Haiti’s food security. In the 1990s the Haitian market was flooded with U. S. rice, putting many small farmers out of business. To survive, many were forced to move to overcrowded    which was later devastated by the 2010 earthquake. Likewise, many worry that opening Haiti to U. S. peanut surpluses, even for humanitarian reasons, could have harmful and   ripple effects. ”Even one shock can have devastating consequences and can impact the   economic viability of families,” says Ivers. The importance of protecting Haiti’s peanut crop cannot be overstated, says Gilbert. ”Haiti is in its third year of drought, but peanuts are a crop that is drought resistant, which makes this even more important,” says Gilbert. ”When other crops fail, peanuts are what they’re literally relying on to survive.” UPDATE: After our story was published, USDA press secretary Catherine Cochran sent an email response. It reads, in part: ”We recently donated the 500 metric tons of peanuts to Haiti in partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and in coordination with the Haitian government. The donated peanuts will be used as morning snacks in   school feeding programs in vulnerable areas of Haiti where malnutrition is high. Before donating the peanuts, USDA worked with WFP to develop a distribution program to ensure that the donation would not negatively affect Haiti’s domestic peanut market. To prevent leakage of the product into the marketplace, the peanuts are in individual bags (28 grams apiece) they are to be consumed at school only, and we are designing a strong monitoring and evaluation program with the WFP to ensure the peanuts benefit the kids who need them. Nearly a third of Haitian children suffer from stunting, and many students arrive at school in the morning without having eaten breakfast. Peanuts, as a traditional part of the Haitian diet, provide   protein. WFP is working with to us look at future needs and best uses for available peanuts.” Clare   is a journalist based in San Diego who covers food policy and sustainability issues."
"For several decades now, Georgia Tech professor Tom Conte has been studying how to improve computers: ”How do we make them faster and more efficient next time around versus what we just made?” And for decades, the principle guiding much of the innovation in computing has been Moore’s law  —   a prediction, made by Intel   Gordon Moore, that the number of transistors on a microprocessor chip would double every two years or so. What it’s come to represent is an expectation, as The New York Times puts it, that ”engineers would always find a way to make the components on computer chips smaller, faster and cheaper.” Lately, faith in Moore’s Law has been fading. ”I guess I see Moore’s Law dying here in the next decade or so, but that’s not surprising,” Moore said in a 2015 interview with a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE is an organization that sets industry standards and innovation goals for many technologies (think Ethernet and   for example). And Conte is one of the scientists at IEEE tasked with figuring out how to continue to accelerate computing after Moore’s law no longer applies, what     and longer targets the tech industry should aim for. The project, announced this week, is called the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems, which succeeds a similar forecasting project previously focused only on chips. Conte gave me a sneak peek of some of the ideas that the scientists are considering  —   inspired, for instance, by our brains or by the notion that sometimes ”good enough” is enough  —   and explained how we got here. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. So you’re the kind of guy who’s always looking to the future of computing. Exactly. What do you see there? Since about the  ’80s computer performance has been tied closely to how small you can make a transistor. And the tracking of that is called Moore’s law. . .. What we’ve been trying to do is figure out what happens when we can’t make transistors smaller anymore but we still need to continue to make computers faster. A lot of different ideas that we have thought up over the years have been put on a shelf because we could always rely on getting smaller and faster transistors. So now it’s time to go back through the library of things that we’ve thought of. . .. And maybe in that process, we believe, we’ll have some innovation of even new ways to go in terms of how to compute. Biologically inspired ways to compute, for example, is a very promising avenue. Did you say biologically inspired? Yeah. We know just enough about how the human brain works that we can build something that, although it doesn’t replicate what the human brain does, it still does some very interesting computations. And we can use (it) for problems that today are every expensive to execute on modern computers  —   things like image recognition or voice recognition, things that today take an amazing amount of compute power to do well. . .. The term I like for this style of computing is neuromorphic, meaning we started with neurons and we morphed it into something else. . .. What is forcing this move to start dusting off those ideas that have been lying on the shelf? Physics, in essence. Moore’s law is really, really, really, really going to end. We know it’s going to be over, because at some point in the near future, we’ll be building transistors out of just a handful of atoms. When we’re down to that level, you can’t go too much further. The gig is up, if you will. So we have to figure out something else to do. . .. And where does the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems come in? ”Roadmapping” Moore’s law has really driven the industry in terms of making faster and smaller transistors. And that’s been great, it’s been a   prophecy. . .. (But) what’s happened is that the industry has focused just on one specific, very small way of making an electronic device to do computing. . .. What we need to do instead, what the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems is seeking to do is to look first at the ways that computers are used and for each of those kinds of ways computers are used, to then drill all the way down into what’s the best way to do this? . .. And we believe that each one of those domains would have its own, if you will, new Moore’s law. . .. These domains are, for example, weather prediction, or what we call big data analytics, which is what Google does, or machine learning for recognition of voice or images, . .. a lot of   computing simulations, such as thermal process evolution simulations. All of these are pushing the boundaries of what we can do with computers today. In which sense? We don’t have enough computing power to do what we want to do. It seems like we never have enough. And the way the devices are, the way the transistors are that we get today, they’re really, really   they really burn a lot of power. And we’re talking power, like electricity at home. Oh yeah, a data center running some of these applications  —   we’re talking   of power. So not the kind of thing you want to have in your phone, that would be very short battery life. So we need to come up with a way to do those fundamentally differently. . .. Start at the top, say, these are the different things we care about that we know are pushing the boundaries of computing. What are their requirements? What are all the devices that we could build instead of a traditional transistor? Which one is best for this particular way of using a computer? Focus on how to do the manufacturing on that. So in essence, it sounds like the goal is to detach the future of computing power growth from constantly needing a better semiconductor. Right, from having to have a better traditional transistor. In computing, we’ve each been in our own little happy niches, if you will. Like floors in an office building, where the top floor did the software, the next floor did the hardware, the next floor did the circuits, the next floor did the devices  —   and each floor didn’t talk to the other floors. And that’s worked great, it’s made us able to build huge computing power. But now it’s time to reorganize . .. and we all have to start talking to each other again. . .. Can you give us some sneak peeks at those dusty ideas you’re taking off the shelf? Well, we already talked about neuromorphic, which actually goes back to the ’50s. . .. As we learn more about how the brain works, we’ve been able to feed that into making more interesting and more powerful computing devices. . .. But the way we do it now is, in essence, to simulate what we want to do on a regular computer as opposed to building devices that behave a lot more like neurons. . .. We don’t have those devices today. . .. There are more exotic ideas. Another one that people know about is quantum computing, which is this idea of using ”spooky action at a distance” . .. using properties at the quantum scale . .. to do very, very efficient computing  —   it works only on a certain set of problems, but those are very important problems. Like what? Like optimization. The traveling salesman problem is a classic optimization problem. If you’re a traveling salesman and you want to plot a path between cities to, let’s say, maximize the number of cities you hit and minimize how much road you have to drive to get there . .. the only real way to solve it is to try every single path. . .. What quantum computers let us do is to, in essence, explore all the paths in one step. . .. Another idea I’ve heard was graphene, which seems like a more physical solution to the problem of silicon chips. That’s all the way down at the materials level. Again, that’s maybe the basement floor of our office tower, but the guys down in the basement have been working with this for a while and it will allow us to make devices that we can use for computing that are very different from transistors. Maybe we can make something that is much closer to a neuron, for example, with the efficiencies of a neuron, using graphene. Any other ideas you could share? There are many. Another idea is using approximate computing. That’s this observation that for a lot of problems we  . And things that begin or end in human perception can tolerate a lot lower precision than we’re computing with computers today, but we haven’t been able to really harness that wasted precision. That requires changing everything from the software  —   writing programs that tell you just how much precision you need here or there  —   all the way down to the devices, telling devices, ”Hey, you can do a pretty good job, you don’t have to be perfect. And, you know, if you don’t get it right every now and then, it’s going to be OK for this particular computation.’ ” Sounds like a very human approach to computation. Exactly, yeah, maybe in some ways we’re getting closer and closer to humans. On a daily basis, I’d say most of us deal with two kinds of problems: things loading slowly and batteries dying fast. Are you going to look at the interaction of computing speed and power consumption in the daily use, for those of us who aren’t trying to do quantum computing? Yes. That’s where the action is, really, this   between making things faster but burning more power in doing that. We’re doing things inefficiently, we know we are, but that’s because people on the eighth floor of our tower aren’t talking to the people on the sixth. . .. And that hasn’t been a problem until  —   well  —   now, when we’re hitting the wall, the physical limits that let us make traditional transistors. Now it’s a big   call . .. we’re about to fall in a pit, and so we have to figure out how to build a bridge across that pit to keep on going."
"Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spoke with NPR’s Steve Inskeep.  STEVE INSKEEP: How is West Virginia different, if at all, from anywhere else you campaigned? SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, West Virginia has some pockets of the worst poverty in the United States of America. We’re going to McDowell County. And the reason we’re going there is that about half the people in that area are living in poverty  —   and that what is really astounding is that the life expectancy of people in that community is extraordinary low. You know when we talk about poverty, Steve, we often think, well, it’s too bad somebody can’t afford a   TV, or go out to eat. But what poverty is really about is that we have millions of people who are living  —   who are dying at ages much, much younger than they should. In McDowell County, where we’re going tomorrow, the average life expectancy for men in that county is 64 years of age.   years of age. And yet you go a   drive to Fairfax County, Va.  —     drive  —   a man can expect to live until the age of 82 years of age, 18 years longer than men in McDowell County. .. INSKEEP: These are really compelling statistics, Senator. And you mention McDowell County  —   I believe the poverty rate there is something like 35 percent, and of course. .. SANDERS: . .. I think it’s even higher than that actually. INSKEEP: . .. a lot of people are certainly close to that. But there’s another statistic that’s on my mind, along with the poverty stats, and the life expectancy  —   shocking   stats.  You’re going to a couple of counties  —   McDowell County, W. Va. is one of them  —   that voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and then voted against him, for Mitt Romney, in 2012. What has been happening to the Democratic Party in the region where you’re going? SANDERS: Well, that’s an excellent question, and I think it goes well beyond McDowell County and well beyond West Virginia. And I think there are many people around this country  —   poor people, working people  —   who believe that the Democratic Party is not effectively standing up to them. Now, if I lived in McDowell County and the unemployment rate was   and I saw my kid get addicted to opiates and go to jail, there were no jobs, you know what? I would be looking at Washington and saying ”what are you guys doing for me?” And I’m going to look for an alternative. I think one of the challenges we face, what my campaign is about, is making it clear that the Democratic Party must be on the side of working people and   people. Now I’m talking about poverty, and in this campaign I’m talking about the fact that we have the highest rate childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth. That we have 47 million people living in poverty . .. that we have 29 million people who have no health insurance, and we have thousands of people who die every year because they don’t get to a doctor on time. The Democratic Party must make a stand, and the stand is that you cannot be on the side of Wall Street. You cannot be on the side of that pharmaceutical industry  —   which, by the way, charges our people the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs  —   you gotta make a stand. And the stand we gotta make is the stand with the people in McDowell County, W. Va. and poor people and working people all over this country. INSKEEP: It’s interesting  —   when you travel in that region, as we did just a few weeks ago, for Morning Edition here  —   you’re in coal country, you hear people bring up Hillary Clinton in a specific way. She was criticized for saying that ”we’re going to make coal jobs go away,” even though she was going on to say, ”and we want to help people who lose their jobs.” But she was criticized for that one part of the statement. Would you be any better from the perspective. .. SANDERS: Yeah I would. .. INSKEEP: . .. of people in Appalachia who are concerned about that history? SANDERS: Look, I have spent my whole life fighting for working people. I have a 98 percent voting record with the  . I have opposed disastrous trade agreements  —   and I think there is perhaps no candidate in the United States Senate who has a more progressive record than I do. But I also believe, and understand, as a member of the Senate Environmental Committee, that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing severe problems in our country and around the world. And we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Now, I have introduced the most comprehensive climate change legislation ever introduced in the U. S. Senate. And in that legislation  —   because we understand it is not the fault of the coal miners, or people included in the fossil fuel industry, they have a right to want to feed their families, and live in dignity  —   we have $41 billion in that legislation to make sure that those workers who might be displaced as a result of the transition away from fossil fuel get the extended unemployment benefits they need, get the education they need, get the job training that they need. And also we are going to invest heavily in those communities. INSKEEP: How do you speak to people in a community like that, who have deeply mixed feelings about government? You may run into the same person who says ”I’m on Medicaid, I get various kinds of assistance, but I really don’t like it. I don’t like living like this, I don’t like depending on government.” SANDERS: Well, I think it raises a fundamental issue about politics in America today and who we are as a civilized society. I understand that the   has done a very good job in suggesting that ”freedom”  —   and this is the Koch brothers’ line  —   ”freedom” is about ending social securityand Medicare and Medicaid, and actually abolishing the concept on the minimum wage. So Steve, you can be a free guy and work for $4 an hour  —   aren’t you a lucky guy? But you know what, most Americans don’t believe that, and one of the things I’m really proud of in this campaign is that in election after election  —   in primary and caucus after caucus, right here in Indiana where we won last night   of the people 45 years of age or younger. . .. And the reason I think is they understand that in a democratic, civilized society, government has a very important role to play. And the word has gotta get out  —   it doesn’t get out all that often in the media  —   that the United States is the only major country on Earth, for example, that doesn’t guarantee health care for all people. Life would be a lot different in McDowell County if all of the people there, and all of the people in Vermont, and all of the people in Connecticut, had health care as a right, which is the case 50 miles north of where I live, in Canada, for example. INSKEEP: What do you say then, to people who just say  —   ”regardless of my own situation, it bothers me that government has to do so much for people, or is doing so much”? SANDERS: I think that that is mythology that has been effectively perpetrated by the   interests in this country. To say that every other country in the world guarantees health care to all of their people, every other country has paid medical and family leave, a number of countries provide free tuition in public colleges and universities, most countries take care of their elderly and their children a lot better than we do. .. I think what you have seen in the last many years in this country is a very coordinated effort of the part of corporate media, and the wealthiest people in this country, to perpetuate an ideology, which says that government is terrible, government is awful  —   oh by the way, except when we can get some corporate welfare. I point out in all of my speeches, Steve, that Walmart  —   which is owned by the Walton family, the wealthiest family in this country, worth some $149 billion  —   they get a huge subsidy from the taxpayers of this country, from you, from me, from every working people, person, because the wages they pay their employees are so low that many of those workers have to go on Medicaid or food stamps in order to survive. I don’t think the middle class of this country should be subsidizing the wealthiest family in the United States of America. So I guess if it’s OK for the Walton family to get billions of dollars of support from the taxpayers of this country, maybe its OK for working families to get health care and paid family medical leave. INSKEEP: Senator, I put a call out on Twitter  —   I said ”I’m talking to Bernie Sanders, you got anything you want to know”  —   and the most consistent theme in the many responses we got had to do with how long you’re going to stay in this race. Even though you just won Indiana, people are looking at the delegate counts, recognizing that you’ve got long odds, and wondering if you’re going to stay in too long. SANDERS: Well we’re going to stay in till the last vote is counted, and that will be in the primary in Washington, D. C. INSKEEP: June 14. BS: That’s right. We think that . .. I don’t know, maybe I’m   but I think that the people of every state in this country  —   including the largest state in America, California  —   should have a right to cast their votes as to who they want to see as president of the United States, and what kind of agenda they want the Democratic Party to have. We won last night in Indiana  —   that is our 18th state. We’re going to fight in West Virginia  —   I think we’ve got a shot to win there. We’ve got a good shot to win in Oregon, and I think we’ve got a good shot to win in California and some other states, so we are in this race till the last vote is cast. INSKEEP: Let me ask a couple of specific questions  —   just people on Twitter  —   here’s one. Are you threatening your revolution by continuing, and alienating some Democrats from voting for Hillary Clinton eventually? SANDERS: Well I think we are perpetuating the political revolution by significantly increasing the level of political activity that we’re seeing in this country. Millions of people are now coming into the political process as the result of what our campaign is about. I think it is good for the Unites States of America, good for the Democratic Party, to have a vigorous debate, to engage people in the political process. You know, two years ago in 2014, 63 percent of the American people didn’t even bother to vote, and 80 percent of young people and 80 percent   people didn’t bother to vote in the midterm elections  —   I think that that is pretty pathetic. And I think that Democrats do well when the voter turnout is high. Republicans lose when the voter turnout is high. So I’m going to do everything I can to stimulate political discourse in this country  —   get young people, working people involved in the political process. We think we have a path towards victory  —   admittedly it is a narrow path, but when I started this campaign we were 60 points behind Secretary Clinton yesterday here in early May we won in Indiana. I think we’ve got some more good victories coming  —   so we are in this race until the very last vote is cast. INSKEEP: Another variation on this question from Twitter: Which is more important, a Sanders presidency or a Democratic presidency? SANDERS: Well, I think that if you look at the issues facing this country, and the differences between Secretary Clinton and myself, I think, a) my policies and my agenda will be better for the working families of this country, and second of all, if you look at virtually every poll that’s out there  —   including one from CNN today  —   Bernie Sanders does better against Donald Trump than does Hillary Clinton. So if we want to make sure that we do not have a Donald Trump in the White House, I think that at this point Bernie Sanders is the strongest candidate. INSKEEP: Do you mean a Sanders presidency is more important than this person’s suggestion that a Democratic presidency might be more important? SANDERS: Well, what I’m just suggesting is  —   if you look at every poll that’s out there  —   Bernie Sanders does better against Donald Trump, more likely to defeat Donald Trump, than Hillary Clinton. INSKEEP: One more question along those lines, and this is my question now  —   you told Chuck Todd of NBC the other day that if Secretary Clinton does clinch the nomination quote ”the responsibility will be on Secretary Clinton, to convince all people,” not just your supporters, ”that she is the kind of president this country needs.” Are you convinced, Senator? SANDERS: Well I thought my point was, that it’s true of Secretary Clinton, it’s true of Bernie Sanders, it is true of Donald Trump  —   you want to go out and win elections, you’ve got to convince the people of this country that you are the candidate that works best for their interests. And I think there’s a lot of work that has to be done on the part of all of the candidates. INSKEEP: The reason I ask is because you did say earlier in the campaign she was not qualified. Can you convince yourself, or have you convinced yourself, that she is qualified? SANDERS: Right now  —   as I have said many times, Steve  —   I think that a Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster for this country. And I intend to do everything that I can to see that that does not happen. INSKEEP: Does that mean to say that you would be out this fall if you don’t win the nomination, campaigning? SANDERS: You know, as I just said Steve, I think that a Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster for this country. I am the most progressive member of the Unites States Senate, I think. I have fought as hard as I can for working people, and I’m not going to see a president come into office like a Donald Trump, who is busy dividing us up in terms of picking on Mexicans, and Latinos, and Muslims, and women, and veterans, and  . That is not the type of president that we need, and that is not the type of president that I  —   I will do everything in my power to make sure that he does not become our president, So, Steve, so  —   thank you so much. .. INSKEEP: Senator? Do you mind if I ask one more question? SANDERS: One last question. Sure, we got time for one more. INSKEEP: Yeah just, talk me through  —   because you said you have tough path, but one that you can walk  —   I’m just interested about a little bit of the mechanics here.  You’d have to win a lot of delegates  —   a great majority of delegates along the way to get a majority of pledged delegates. There are some big states ahead  —   it’s certainly true  —   but just the way delegates are awarded, even if you win California, even if you win West Virginia, you don’t get all of the delegates. They’re not   . Doesn’t that make this extraordinarily difficult for you to. .. SANDERS: Yes, it’s an uphill battle. But you know what? Steve, when I started this campaign, it was an extraordinarily uphill battle  —   we were 60 points behind Secretary Clinton. Polls out there in the last few weeks, a few had us ahead actually in national polls, or a few points behind. The path to victory is to do extremely well in the remaining states  —   and as you indicate, California, of course, is the largest state. And we hope to do well there, and win that state. INSKEEP: Could  —   and is. .. SANDERS: But here is the other path, Steve  —   you asked me a question, let me give you an answer here  —   is that we have won a number of states, in Washington and New Hampshire, by landslide victories, and I’m talking about 65, 70, 75 percent of the vote. I think it is incumbent on the superdelegates —   The problem, one of the main problems that we have, is that the establishment Democrats, of course, supporting all of  —   virtually all of them are supporting Hillary Clinton. I think that in those states where we have won landslide victories, those delegates should reflect the wishes of the people of their state and give us their votes. And then I think we have got to make the case to the superdelegates, who in many cases, were on board for Hillary Clinton even before I got into the race, that they should take a hard look at which candidate is stronger against Donald Trump. And I think we can make that case. INSKEEP: Let me follow up on that. .. SANDERS: Steve I apologize  —   one more question, because I’ve gotta run here. INSKEEP: Is there a real danger that Donald Trump  —   now that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee  —   that he’s the kind of different candidate who might seriously appeal to the very kinds of voters that you’ve been appealing to all this time, that you want to bring back to the Democratic Party? SANDERS: Is that a serious  —   you mean. .. INSKEEP: A real danger of that, yeah, in the fall? SANDERS: You say a risk? Well, you know as I said a moment ago  —   what campaigns are about is going out and making a case to the American people. Does Donald Trump have support in this country? Of course he has support  —   he has won the Republican nomination, so of course he has a lot of support. He has won it overwhelmingly in state after state after state. INSKEEP: Can he drag Democrats over to the Republican side? SANDERS: Well the question, I think that’s the wrong question, Steve. The question is, why is somebody with Donald Trump’s perspective appealing to Democrats? That gets back to the question we talked about at the beginning of this conversation. Has the Democratic Party, has the leadership made the case that they are standing there, fighting for the poor people of McDowell County, or the working people of Indiana, or of New Mexico, or of California? Have they stood up and said that ”maybe we gotta take on the billionaire class, maybe it’s wrong that the top   of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, maybe we should not be getting significant sums of money from Wall Street or from the pharmaceutical industry that charge us the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” you know, ”maybe we’ve gotta stand with the people who for the last 20 or 30 years have seen a decline in their standard of living”? You know, those are the issues that the Democratic Party has got to ask itself. And I think when it does, and it makes it clear that they are prepared to take on the   interests, I think the Democratic Party will do just fine  —   and that’s kind of what this campaign is about. INSKEEP: Sen. Sanders, thanks very much, SANDERS: Thank you very much Steve. Take care."
"Bioethicist Jessica Pierce includes pets  —   or ”animal companions”  —   among her family members: a cat, two dogs and fish. So, it’s startling to read this passage near the beginning of her new book released this week, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets: ”We love our pets, so why worry about them? Well, maybe love is not enough. Maybe the 470   animals we call pets also need some moral attention. Their plight may be just as serious  —   and perhaps in some ways even more troubled  —   than the billions of animals caught in the wheels of agribusiness or the biomedical research industry.” Disturbing cases of neglected pets are known to all of us, but how could it be, I wondered, that pets deserve Pierce’s deep, widespread concern? Now that I’ve read Run, Spot, Run, I know the answer to that question. Let’s start with a statistic we’ve probably all heard: 9 of 10 pet owners consider their animals to be part of the family. This number, it turns out, is drawn from a Harris Interactive Poll of 2, 634 people, only 1, 585 of whom had pets. Those 1, 585 folks were asked simple  —   ”leading,” Pierce says  —   questions about their animals. From that incredibly thin foundation, a cultural narrative was born, one used to support the $50   year industry that sells us pet food, toys, veterinary services, cages, tanks and much more for our animals. Sure, some pets truly are woven into the lives of families, but Pierce is saying that when we hear the    line over and over, we should recognize it for what it is: a hard corporate sell. As she puts it: ”A gossamer    thread has been woven over the ugliness.” What ugliness? According to Pierce: At least 30 percent of ”family” dogs and cats never once visit a veterinarian lonely animals are confined to tanks, cages or backyards high rates of animal cancer occur owing to the poor quality of pet food people have sex with animals, including at animal brothels, at shocking rates the ”euthanasia” deaths carried out at animal shelters often aren’t good deaths at all. Last month, I conducted a QA with Pierce by email about her book. Here’s our conversation: Could you summarize for us a couple of the major ways that keeping animals as pets gives you pause? The pet industry encourages people to buy pets, and the way animals are advertised and sold gives the impression that pet keeping is easy and fun. You can buy an animal for less than you can buy a new pair of shoes. And this makes it easy to underestimate the seriousness of the decision to bring an animal into our homes, and feeds into an attitude that animals are disposable. My aim in writing Run, Spot, Run is to reinforce the fact that pet keeping involves taking responsibility for the life and   of a sentient creature, and giving an animal what he or she really needs is challenging and shouldn’t be taken lightly. I also, perhaps even more importantly, want to raise awareness about the broader implications of the pet industry, for animals. For example, now that I know the ”backstory” on the reptiles and amphibians sold in many pet stores (the dismal conditions in which animals are ”manufactured”  —   bred, transported and housed  —   before they arrive on the shelves, and the extremely high mortality rates) I would never buy a gecko from a big box pet store. The cost to the animals is just too high. As you’ve just noted, it’s not just cats and dogs you’re talking about in the book. No, in fact, I’m much less concerned about dogs and cats than I am other species of animal people keep as pets. I worry about exotics and wild animals, because their physical and psychological needs are extremely difficult to meet in a home environment. And I worry about animals who must live their entire lives in a cage or tank. When kept alone in a small cage, birds, small mammals like hamsters and gerbils, and even fish lack adequate physical, mental, and social stimulation. Solitary confinement of human prisoners is considered a violation of basic human rights, yet this is essentially what we do to some of our pet animals. It just seems unfair to impose this on them, for the sake of our curiosity or entertainment. I was surprised at your statement in the book that ”Cats and captivity present, in my view, one of the most vexing   conundrums.” Why is this? Our six indoor cats seem to us very content: They enjoy sun patches, toys and   out the window, but, even more, the   social dynamics of the eight of us in the house keep them thinking hard, and  . And they’re not outdoors killing birds and small mammals. I think the   cat issue is vexing because we can’t just go by a single rule or principle  —   because all cats are different, and each cat’s home environment is different. Furthermore, both indoor and outdoor options have important downsides. What I find problematic are the    declarations such as ”all cats must be kept indoors” or ”all cats need to be outdoors.” It sounds like your cats have a wonderful life, and being indoors seems to be working really well for them and for you. I know a lot of other cats who have really good indoor lives and who seem quite content. But I also know cats who need more space to roam, who have a wandering spirit. Lots of cats are going crazy inside, if you go by reports of high numbers of behavioral issues and health problems such as obesity. Pierce told me that when she starts worrying about all this too much, she takes her dogs to the local dog park, and relaxes with the    dogs there who are part of a human family and also encouraged to be dogs. Pierce doesn’t at all demonize  . She just asks us to remember how vulnerable our animal companions can be and that we should act to protect them. Her excellent book is for animals as much as about them. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape."
"One of the country’s most outspoken abortion providers has filed a civil rights complaint against the hospital where she works, saying that it has wrongly banned her from giving media interviews. Last fall Diane   an obstetrician and gynecologist, did a lightning round of media interviews after a shooting attack killed three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic, raising new safety concerns at health care facilities that perform abortions. ”I want women to be able to access abortion in a safe, legal, compassionate environment. So no, I’m not deterred,” she told MSNBC then. But one week after that,   says, she was called to a meeting with top officials at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in the District of Columbia. They said it was a security matter. ”I was told that that the hospital was happy with the care we were providing for patients, but that they didn’t want to put a Kmart   special on the fact that we provided abortion,” she says. In the following weeks, the complaint says, MedStar denied a string of requests for   to speak with media and at another public event about abortion.  ’s federal civil rights complaint says that the hospital’s actions violate the   ”Church amendment.” That bans federally funded health care providers from discriminating based on a doctor’s moral conviction about abortion. There’s an irony to that. ”It’s a provision that has been commonly used by and associated with those who oppose abortion,” says Gretchen Borchelt of the National Women’s Law Center, which helped file the complaint. Borchelt also says MedStar’s security argument doesn’t make sense. According to the complaint, the hospital did hire a security guard for the family planning department, and put in cameras there. But Borchelt says it ignored other suggestions from the department. ”They could put in shatterproof glass, they could do ID checks, they could do bag checks,” she says. ”They have not done any of those things.” MedStar Washington declined an interview request for this story. In a statement, the hospital says it is ”committed to providing family planning services for our community, and we do so in a respectful, private and safe environment.” Jeff Young is sympathetic. He heads the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, a professional organization. ”The more outspoken a person is, a security person would say that the risk to that person, and to the facility they work in, would go up because of the publicity associated to it,” he says. But Young can’t recall one of the hospitals who belong to the association ever banning a doctor from talking to the media  —   even after an abortion provider in Vancouver, British Columbia, was shot in the leg at his home years ago. In that case, the hospital did increase security and provided a personal security plan for the physician, Young says.   is at MedStar Hospital through a fellowship, and she says advocacy is a key part of that job. Especially now, which she says is a tough time for abortion providers. State lawmakers continue to pass a record number of abortion restrictions. The National Abortion Federation recorded a sharp rise in harassment and death threats after undercover videos that targeted Planned Parenthood last year.  ’s complaint notes that there is a severe shortage of abortion providers. ”The message that we’ve all gotten in society is that abortion is shameful, and that people who have abortions should be ashamed, and I think that’s something that we need to work against,” she says.   says she respects the many abortion providers who choose to stay silent, especially those in more conservative parts of the country with stricter laws. But she hopes her case will send the message that those willing to speak out have a right to do so.  "
"   Anaya Ellick, who was born with no hands and does not use prostheses, recently won a national penmanship contest. Holding the pencil between her wrists, the   at Greenbrier Christian Academy in Chesapeake, Va. formed neat, careful letters, earning her the Nicholas Maxim Special Award for Excellence in Manuscript Penmanship. The award is one of several that the educational company   gives out every year. ”Anaya is a remarkable young lady. She does not let anything get in the way of doing what she has set out to do,” said GCA Principal Tracy Cox in a statement from the school. ”She is a hard worker and has some of the best handwriting in her class. Her determination is an inspiration to all of us at GCA.” To enter the contest for the Nicholas Maxim Award, ”a student must have a cognitive delay, or an intellectual, physical or developmental disability,”   said in a statement, adding that a team of occupational therapists judges the entries. A spokesman from   told NPR that there were about 50 entries this year. Contest director Kathleen Wright said the judges were ”just stunned” by the quality of Anaya’s printing. ”Her writing sample was comparable to someone who had hands.” Though Anaya’s arms end in tapered wrists instead of hands, she is developmentally normal in every other respect, according to a profile by The  . Except, perhaps, for the unwavering sense of determination that she’s had since birth. The newspaper wrote that when Anaya was an infant, ”she couldn’t hold a pacifier, but she was keeping it in her mouth by cupping it there with one arm. While still a baby she figured out how to hold a fork to eat and how to build with blocks.” The newspaper adds that Anaya doesn’t let anything keep her from doing what she wants to do. ”When she wanted to draw, she learned how to balance a crayon or marker between her arms,” the Pilot wrote. ”By the time she was 5, she stopped using prosthetics.” Her mother, Bianca Middleton, said they were ”slowing her down more than helping.” She’s precocious in other ways, as well. ”One day, as she and her father walked around a grocery store, he made observations about various vegetables. Three times she stopped to correct him,” the newspaper says. Middleton told ABC that her daughter’s   attitude is an inspiration. ”She helps teach me things I take for granted every day, you know, and I look at her like, ’Wow, she’s not complaining, never complains.’ ”"
"New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport is among the busiest in the country: More than 1, 000 flights touch down and take off each day. More than 50 million passengers hurry through its gates each year. But something else is happening, too. Not far from the waxed floors of the terminals and the automated voice proclaiming the end of the moving walkway, there’s a school. And a classroom that has six wheels, two wings and a tail. It is a Boeing 727, parked on the tarmac near the hangars and warehouses. The   seats have been stripped down to expose their metal innards, and spun around to face a whiteboard. Welcome to Aviation High School. On this particular day, about 20 students are gathered by the nose tires to practice checking the air pressure. ”It’s scary business,” says Mike Fisher, in a raspy Bronx accent. ”If somebody tried to put the pressure from the bottle straight into the tire, they’d blow the tire up.” The students crouch down and check the pressure gauge carefully. Aviation High is a highly   school in the nation’s largest school district. It’s funded by New York City’s department of education and accredited by the Federal Aviation Administration. The JFK school is a large annex of Aviation High’s main campus in Long Island City. All told, there are about 2, 200 students. They graduate with a diploma and a license that lets them work in the aviation industry. The JFK campus is reserved for some of the school’s best students in their final year. They take all the normal courses, plus classes on turbine engines, pneumatic power controls and airflow systems. Kalvin Govindeisami, one of the students at the JFK campus, is inspecting a crankshaft. ”Since it’s a circular object, we have to check that using two axes: the   and the ” the    explains. Since airplanes are full of complicated systems that require physics and math, the students often get to try out concepts they’ve learned in the classroom: coordinates, angles, rotation. Kalvin says his next task is doing a magnetic particle inspection. ”Basically magnetize the part,” Kalvin explains, ”and, using a UV light, we’ll be able to see cracks.” But as much as Kalvin likes working on this retired 727, he says he prefers the real thing: ”The best part of my day is going to Delta.” Mixing Work And School, Every student on the JFK campus is paired up with an airline, like Delta, and works alongside a technician or engineer. For Kalvin’s internship, he helps check planes at Terminal 2 and Terminal 4. ”I do an   shift, 2 o’clock to 10 o’clock,” says Kalvin, who works five or six days each week. Mario Cotumaccio, the assistant principal, is the one who set up the paid internships program over 25 years ago. He says it took a lot of convincing to get this program off the ground. ”When I initially proposed the idea to airlines, they were like, ’No. No. We can’t do this.’ ” Cotumaccio says they were nervous. ”There’s this stereotype of a New York City student: They all carry guns and pocketknives and you need a metal detector to come into a school.” Once the first airline signed up in 1986, others soon followed. ”It’s been flourishing ever since,” Cotumaccio says. Now Aviation High School partners with eight companies, including Delta, JetBlue and British Airways. He estimates that 12 percent of aircraft technicians in the country come from Aviation High Schools. Kalvin is hoping to be one of them. He’d like to work for Delta as soon as he graduates. And Mike Fisher, his teacher, say there’s a good chance he’ll get there. ”  percent of the [JFK] class has jobs [offers] right out of high school,” says Fisher. ”I have some students that are already making a hundred thousand dollars a year.” ”It’s nothing to sneeze at,” Fisher adds, particularly since the majority of these students come from   families and are first generation. College, It doesn’t stop with a   job. The vast majority of students from Aviation High School also go to college. Some go to top universities, many go to local colleges and a handful go to military academies. Cotumaccio admits this isn’t always easy. ”Our youngsters are having a hard time paying for college,” he says. ”What they’ll do, is they’ll work at night and go to [college] in the morning or vice versa.” That’s Kalvin’s plan. He wants to work at Delta while getting a college degree. Eventually, he hopes to be a teacher right here at Aviation High School."
"The pace of job creation slowed substantially last month, the Labor Department said Friday. Employers added 160, 000 employees in April, downshifting from the monthly average of 192, 000 workers so far this year. That was a disappointment for many job seekers. But the country does have one group enjoying lots of opportunities: newly minted college graduates. In fact, economists say this might be the best time to be graduating in a decade. While the overall unemployment rate held steady at 5 percent last month, the Labor Department says the rate is only about half that for college graduates. And the freshest grads  —   the ones getting diplomas this month  —   are particularly attractive to employers, according to Andrea Koncz, research director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Companies are seeking the young and educated to replace baby boomers, Koncz said. ”They are continuing to increase hiring knowing that there are retirements, there are open positions to fill, and . .. it’s important to keep new college graduates in their talent pipelines,” she said. Nearly 3 out of 4 employers surveyed by CareerBuilder, a job search engine, say they plan to hire 2016 graduates, the highest level of hiring in nearly a decade. This year’s graduating seniors are stepping into a generally healthy marketplace: Job openings have been running at nearly record highs, with roughly 5. 4 million vacancies, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s very different from a few years ago when the Great Recession was still depressing hiring and wages. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that ”graduating in a recession leads to large initial earnings losses” of about 9 percent. ”For young workers just entering the labor force, being lucky enough to graduate into a tight labor market like ours today can have a huge impact on wages and career prospects,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for Glassdoor, an online job and recruiting marketplace. Mohammed Ahmad, who is finishing up his MBA at Stony Brook University in New York, told NPR he knows he is lucky to be graduating now. His bachelor’s degree is in pharmacology, so his resume matches up closely with his older sister’s. She also earned an MBA to layer on top of a medicine background. But there’s one big difference. He is graduating now, and she graduated right into the jaws of the recession. So when Ahmad sat down to send out his resumes, ”within like about 20 minutes to a half hour, I got a phone call . .. and I scheduled an interview.” When his sister sent out resumes, she had a very different experience. ”She would constantly be applying, wouldn’t be able to hear back. And if she did hear back it would be for positions she wasn’t interested in,” he said. Employment experts say the most   jobs today involve technology, business and engineering. Friday’s jobs report underscored such trends. Professional and business services added 65, 000 jobs in April. By contrast, jobs in mining and logging fell by 8, 000, piling more losses on top of an   losing streak. The    sector, which also offers jobs for noncollege graduates, added only 22, 000 workers in April. That’s the smallest gain in a year. Even though overall hiring slowed, raises showed momentum. Average hourly earnings for   workers rose by 8 cents, to $25. 53, in April. Compared with a year earlier, wages are up 2. 5 percent. Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight, said in his analysis that those pay gains were the bright spot. With more money in paychecks and less pain at gas pumps, most Americans are in better financial shape. ”The April weakness in payroll jobs is temporary,” he said. ”In the coming months, jobs growth will rebound to 200, 000 a month, or possibly more. Most indicators of the labor market continue to point to ongoing strength.” WSHU reporter Charles Lane contributed to this report."
"The U. S. economy added 160, 000 jobs in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its monthly report. That’s significantly fewer than analysts had projected. The unemployment rate last month held steady at 5 percent, Friday’s report says. As NPR’s Chris Arnold told our Newscast unit ahead of the release: ”Analysts are predicting a gain of about 200, 000 jobs for April. The economy’s been averaging some 250, 000 more jobs a month over the past 6 months.” The disappointing numbers are likely a result of tepid growth. NPR’s John Ydstie says, ”A slowdown in economic growth in the first three months of the year appears to have cooled the urge to add workers at many businesses.” Today’s report showed the weakest job gains since September, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Labor Department also says the workforce participation rate  —   or the share of people who are employed or actively seeking work  —   fell to 62. 8 percent last month from 63 percent in March. Professional and business services, health care and financial activities showed the strongest job growth, while the mining industry lost some 7, 000 jobs. John adds that the ”  sector has lagged partly due to weak exports and a strong dollar.” But the jobs news is looking positive for one group in particular: new college graduates. As WSHU’s Charles Lane tells Morning Edition, prospects may be better for new grads than they’ve looked in a decade. Average hourly earnings for private sector workers increased by 8 cents last month, to $25. 53. They rose by 7 cents in March. The White House said in a statement that Friday’s numbers show the economy is ”well above the pace necessary to maintain a low and stable unemployment rate.” Noting that this extends ”the longest streak of   job growth on record,” it adds that there’s more to be done ”to ensure that the benefits of the recovery are broadly shared.” The BLS report revised February’s gains downward, to 233, 000 from 245, 000. March’s gains were also revised downward, to 208, 000 from 215, 000. In total, that’s 19, 000 fewer jobs than initially reported."
"Deep in the ocean, a mission is underway to explore the ”unknown and poorly known areas” around the Mariana Trench. ”Despite decades of previous work in the region,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, ”much of the [trench] and surrounding areas remain unexplored.” Between April 20 and July 10, the government agency and its partners are collecting and sharing data on the creatures and habitats they find in the Mariana Trench, which stretches 1, 500 miles in the Pacific Ocean near Guam. You can follow NOAA’s live video streams from the Okeanos Explorer, including images from the ocean floor. (Sometimes the streams show maps and computers rather than sea creatures, but you can see video highlights here, too.) It’s all pretty   when you think about it, but here are a couple highlights: A mesmerizing jellyfish found around 3, 700 meters (2. 3 miles) down. ”At the beginning of the video, you’ll see that the long tentacles are even and extended outward and the bell is motionless,” NOAA notes. ”This suggests an ambush predation mode. Within the bell, the radial canals in red are connecting points for what looks like the gonads in bright yellow.” Watch this purple sea cucumber undulate through the water. Also, ”pillow lava.” ”These pillow basalts . .. form when basaltic lava erupts underwater,” NOAA explains. ”Cold seawater chills the erupting lava, creating a rounded tube of basalt crust that looks like a pillow. As the newly erupting lava pushes through the chilled basalt crust, it can form scratches on the pillow surface, called striations.” Two years ago, the ”ghost fish” of the Mariana Trench surfaced in the news. The ”deepest living fish ever recorded” was among the discoveries from researchers who were stunned by the amount of life they found, as NPR’s Christopher Joyce reported. That’s despite the trench being  —   as Chris put it  —   ”a place of perpetual darkness and freezing cold.” In another Mariana Trench experiment, scientists from NOAA and Oregon State University dropped a microphone 6 miles down. It’s surprisingly noisy: Hear it for yourself."
"If you have a favorite sports photo from the past 60 years, it’s very possible Neil Leifer took it: There’s Muhammad Ali standing victorious over Sonny Liston . .. Or there’s Baltimore Colt Alan Ameche plunging over the goal line in 1958 to beat the New York Giants in the   Greatest Game Ever Played. Working for the likes of Sports Illustrated and Time, Leifer has collected many stories with those memorable shots into a new book called Relentless. He says sports journalism is part luck, but, he tells NPR’s Robert Siegel, ”what separates the top photographers from the     photographers is that when you get lucky a good photographer doesn’t miss.” On how he became a sports photojournalist, I was a very good student and of course, my parents, being typical Jewish, Lower East Side, uneducated [parents] they thought they had a budding doctor or lawyer. I really, quite honestly, never knew there was a profession called photojournalism. Photography was a hobby. I was a huge sports fan. I lived and breathed the Brooklyn Dodgers. . .. I thought it was just going to be a passing hobby that I grew out of. And one day I woke up and in fact I realized you could make a living doing this. On his famous shot of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston (which you can see here) I have no doubt that when my obit is written one day, the   picture is the picture that everyone is going to see. . .. It’s without question my   picture. I like to think that it’s a wonderful photograph, but there’s a whole lot of luck in sports photography. And one always sounds very modest when you throw around a word like luck . .. but in this case it’s really true. I was clearly in the right seat. The photographer between Ali’s legs was looking up at his rear end. On how the   photo has taken on more meaning and significance over time, This picture  —   which at the end of the century people were calling the greatest sports photo of the century  —   didn’t even make the cover [of Sports Illustrated]. I think it really grew as Ali’s legend grew. . .. What the picture shows is the young Ali, this handsome, beautiful athlete and as he got older and as his career moved along. This picture is him at his best, at his very best, and it’s the way people want to remember him. . .. It wasn’t considered that important the week that it happened. On his favorite photograph, which is actually a different  Muhammad Ali photo (you can see that photo, titled   (Overhead) here) I love it because it’s the only photograph I’ve taken in my entire career where I can’t see a single thing I would do differently. On challenges sports photographers face today, The big competition today is not the other photographers. . .. Television does such a good job. . .. How do you come up with original pictures? When I started out, you put a camera in the hockey net  —   you were the first person to ever do it. Today, both nets in the Stanley Cup and every game have cameras in [them]. . .. Today there are four cameras on the [basketball] backboard. . .. You’re competing with a visual that people are seeing instantly on television. . .. How do you give people something that’s worth waiting for when the magazine comes out four days later when they’ve seen it instantly when it happened on television? . .. By Wednesday when you get your Sports Illustrated, what is there to look forward to? The job that a Sports Illustrated photographer has today is to make it worth waiting for  —   and I think they do a pretty good job of it . .. but it’s hard. To be a photographer today at Sports Illustrated is a whole lot harder than it was when I was there."
"In London’s mayoral race, the Labour Party’s Sadiq Khan beat Conservative Party candidate Zac Goldsmith to become the city’s first Muslim mayor. The results came in early on Saturday local time, more than a day after the polls closed. According to the BBC, Khan was ahead of Goldsmith by a comfortable margin after the first votes were counted he led 44. 2 percent to 35. 6 percent. The Associated Press reports that election officials say Khan defeated his rival ”by more than 300, 000 votes, after   and   votes were allocated.” The Guardian reports that Khan beat Goldsmith by 57 percent to 43 percent after the second round. Khan’s religion became a flashpoint throughout the campaign. The AP writes that ”Khan, who calls himself ’the British Muslim who will take the fight to the extremists,’ accused Goldsmith of trying to scare and divide voters in a proudly multicultural city of 8. 6 million people  —   more than 1 million of them Muslim.” Goldsmith responded by accusing Khan of ”playing the race card,” the BBC reported in January. As the   reported earlier this week, the two candidates occupied very different spaces in the political and social world: ”Khan, who is Muslim, was a human rights lawyer before joining Parliament. His parents immigrated to London from Pakistan. His father was a bus driver in the city for more than 25 years, according to his campaign website. ”As Lauren Frayer reports for NPR, Khan ’was born in South London, one of eight children. The family lived in public housing.’ ”Goldsmith, an environmental activist, used to edit The Ecologist magazine. His father was billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. ” ’They’re the two faces of London, rich and poor, immigrant and blue blood,’ Lauren notes.” In his victory speech, Khan was quoted by The Guardian as saying that he’s proud London chose ”hope over fear, and unity over division.”"
"Firefighters are still battling massive wildfires that forced mass evacuations of some 80, 000 people earlier this week in Alberta, Canada. Canadian police are escorting a convoy of evacuees through the wreckage, CBC News reports, out of the oil sands camps where they had been staying since Tuesday. As many as 8, 000 people have been airlifted to safety, reporter Dan Karpenchuk tells our Newscast unit. People needed to be taken out of the camps because of limited food and fuel, he says. ”[Royal Canadian Mounted Police] cruisers will escort groups of 50 vehicles at a time,” the CBC says. ”Helicopters will watch from overhead. All intersections along the route will be controlled and blocked by police, to ensure no vehicles try to slip away from the convoy.” Those who live in and around Fort McMurray have been told ”it will not be a matter of days” before they can go home, The   reported Friday morning. Here’s a glimpse of how the fire has progressed over the course of the week:"
"On a recent Monday night in Carrboro, N. C. local music venue Cat’s Cradle is packed. The room has the makings of most clubs: a stage, a soundboard, a bar and a merch stand, but taped above the gender plaques on the bathroom doors are signs that read, in uppercase,   letters, ”We are an inclusive venue. No proof required.” Signs like these can be found by bathrooms or in storefronts of local businesses across the region. ”We’re in an area that’s sort of left of center,” says Frank Heath, who has owned Cat’s Cradle for 30 years. ”Around here, it’s kind of odd to think that you would be walking into a place that didn’t have an ’Everybody’s Welcome’ sign or mentality.” The signs are a direct response to North Carolina’s infamous House Bill 2, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law at the end of March during a special legislative session. Widely known as the ”bathroom bill” because it bans individuals from using   public restrooms that do not correspond to their ”biological sex,” the law also impacts the sovereignty of local governments. It limits the ability of cities to establish their own   ordinances and supersedes policies adopted by a local governing body that relate to compensation of employees. In a letter to McCrory on Wednesday, the Justice Department said HB2 violates the Civil Rights Act and gave state officials until Monday to respond to the situation ”by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2.” The ultimatum arrives after weeks of controversy that has shaken big business and the arts alike. In opposition to HB2, Bruce Springsteen canceled his show in Greensboro, N. C. bringing the issue to the national forefront and sparking a debate about the efficacy of musical boycotts. Since Springsteen released his statement, there’s been a concentrated focus on musicians with upcoming shows in North Carolina. Will they boycott? What type of statement will they make, if they make one at all? And so there’s a sense of anticipation brewing among the crowd at Cat’s Cradle on that Monday night. The show’s headliner, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, is winding down its set, and frontwoman Thao Nguyen hasn’t engaged in much stage banter. ”It’s a dilemma for anyone associated with music,” says Diana Straughan,   of Cat’s Cradle. ”There’s a lot of groups fighting in the trenches, you know, to oppose House Bill 2. And what is the right way to go about that? So I think the idea is to make bands and folks in music as comfortable as they can be in their decision but also feel that they’re making a positive impact.” Nguyen chooses to make her statement during the closer. ”This song is dedicated to those of you fighting HB2. We stand with you,” she announces before the band launches into ”Meticulous Bird,” a song from the band’s latest record that demands reclamation in the wake of abuses of power. Nguyen brandishes a sense of aggression uncharacteristic of her otherwise   performance style. She prowls across the stage and knocks the mic stand to the floor as she howls, ”I take my body back,” at the song’s pinnacle. The crowd erupts. Nguyen’s powerful declaration is one of the many ways that musicians use their platform for advocacy. In line with Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Pearl Jam, Boston, Ani DiFranco, Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas have all canceled their concerts in North Carolina. DiFranco was slated to play the Festival for the Eno in Durham, which benefits the preservation of the Eno River Basin. While she stands by the festival’s mission, she says didn’t feel she could play in North Carolina in good conscience. Inspired by the corporate responses to HB2, she decided to align herself with the boycott to apply economic pressure to North Carolina’s government. ”I talked to the Eno River Festival about my decision to cancel my appearance and participate in a boycott, fully ready and expecting to be charged by them for backing out of our contract,” she writes in an email to NPR. ”But instead they waived their right for compensation from me in support of a boycott as well.” North   musicians who have fewer options when it comes to canceling shows have found their own ways to show disapproval of the bill. For 16 years, bluegrass group Chatham County Line has hung the North Carolina flag onstage during its performances as a beacon of state pride. But following HB2’s passage, the group removed the flag from its stage setup. ”We really felt like North Carolina was misrepresenting its true inhabitants in a lot of ways,” says guitarist Dave Wilson. ”We try not to be too political and so it was a very hard choice to make this stance because I really do feel like music is to entertain and it’s to make people happy and get them to tap their feet and forget about their troubles . .. but it’s just so obvious that HB2 is wrong.” Touring heavyweights like Gregg Allman and Jimmy Buffet released statements condemning the bill but opted not to cancel their scheduled shows in North Carolina. Going a step further, artists like Mumford and Sons, Duran Duran, Brandi Carlile, Father John Misty and Cyndi Lauper also decided to keep their dates in North Carolina, donating proceeds to area LGBT nonprofits. Perhaps the biggest    ’  came this week when music’s other Boss, Beyonce, was scheduled to play in Raleigh. Fresh off of her stunning surprise album Lemonade, the star performed in North Carolina and released a statement on her website urging fans to support Equality NC, an   group. When looking to donate the proceeds of their shows, British bands Duran Duran and Mumford and Sons also found Equality NC with the help of an organization called North Carolina Needs You. Formed by   duo Grayson Haver Currin and Tina Haver Currin of Raleigh, North Carolina Needs You’s mission is twofold: to persuade touring musicians to keep playing in North Carolina and to connect them to local organizations that are working to combat HB2. ”Concerts are chances for people to interact and for ideas to be exchanged  —   especially in the rural South, I think that’s essential,” Grayson says. ”I grew up in an environment that was rural and going to concerts was huge for me, so I think the chance to have that as a kid is really important.” Grayson’s experience identifies a hard truth about the value of music. Music’s strength lies in its ability to be a chameleon of sorts  —   it can make you jump for joy just as easily as it can bring you to your knees. But in either case, it opens up a dialogue. Whether it’s a song about love, loss, heartbreak or injustice  —   it’s a challenge to think critically about what’s happening to you or to the world around you. ”People look to the arts and music specifically for how to feel about things,” Tina says. ”They listen to music to understand issues and to learn and ultimately to find thoughtful guidance.” So where does that leave musicians when doing their work conflicts with their beliefs? What message do they communicate when they have a scheduled performance in a state that has just passed a law like HB2, for instance? ”This is a fundamental concern about how we live and how we treat each other,” Grayson says. ”Whether they can barely scrape by to pay rent because they’re touring in a band in tiny clubs or if they’re Bruce Springsteen, they’re still people who have to make moral decisions about their lives.” It’s something that members of Mipso, a string band formed in Chapel Hill, have grappled with. ”I’ve been sad and conflicted about what it means for my identity that this could happen in the place that I call home,” says mandolin player Jacob Sharp. ”Though I have a lot of issues with this law and how it was enacted, I’m still proud to be a North Carolinian and I think it’s important that I’m there. So the shows go on.” While Sharp believes his band’s presence on the ground is important, he understands that there are different ways to advocate. ”I wouldn’t hold anybody, any other artist, accountable for speaking or not speaking or deciding to cancel a show or not. I think there’s lots of great reasons to do either,” Sharp says. ”And so I hope that people just feel comfortable in their own skin, which is a lot of what HB2 is about, right, is letting people be comfortable and feel welcome.” And even when artists arrive at the same decision  —   that the show must go on  —   they take different avenues to get there. ”You have to find the balance of figuring out how can I be effective? How can I use my platform for good, you know, without jeopardizing everything so that I don’t have that platform anymore,” says folk musician Rhiannon Giddens. ”You have to choose your battles. You have limited time with people, you know, and I’m not a politician, I’m not a speechmaker, I’m not a wonk, I’m not any of those things.” Already known in part for her activism, Giddens chose this battle. Because she’s a native of the state and because she finds the bill ”breathtakingly unbelievable,” she kept her three scheduled North Carolina performances and provided a statement across her social media accounts. Kym Register, who owns an   venue in Durham called The Pinhook, believes that every performance by a musician should be a political act. ”I think it’s actually a duty,” Register says. ”I think you have a platform and you need to use it because people need your help that don’t have a voice.” The members of   rock duo PWR BTTM say being queer and living your own truth in public is a political act in itself. When it comes to HB2, they cite Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace’s stance on visibility, stressing that it’s more important than ever for transgender and queer artists to play in North Carolina. ”These laws are made by people who don’t understand what it’s like to be queer. You don’t understand what it’s like to be gender nonconforming. You don’t understand what it’s like to be trans,” says PWR BTTM’s Liv Bruce. ”And when that is your lived experience, if you can write about it in a way that helps someone else understand what it’s like to be you and to feel the way you feel then that’s a miniature riot.” Although artists take on different forms of activism, there is a general consensus in the music community about what needs to be accomplished here: education and unity. ”I try to strive for how we can come together over this,” says Giddens. ”It takes a willingness to learn. If we don’t take the opportunity that this presents, then it’s our fault. At some point you have to take responsibility for who you are and where you are and being able to listen to other points of view, whichever side of the tracks you’re on.”"
"A new scientific journal is not merely a new venue for publishing research, it can encourage new science, create a new community of investigators and, to some degree, contribute to the establishing of new fields. There are numerous examples of this in the history of science. For example, cognitive science was not born in 1978 when Stevan Harnad established Behavioral and Brain Sciences, but there can be no doubt that BBS helped make cognitive science the sort of robustly   field it has become. In BBS, ”target articles,” by psychologists, linguists, philosophers, roboticists, for example, would garner ”commentary articles” from dozens of writers working in different fields. The idea that ”the mind” is not the proprietary subject matter of one discipline  —   but truly demands that different methods and starting points and practices come together to try to sort it out  —   was one that was realized in the pages of BBS. I don’t think that any history of cognitive science could afford to neglect a chapter on BBS itself. Stevan Harnad, who ran BBS more or less   for decades, is at it again. He has recently established a brand new journal devoted to the study of animal feeling. This one, taking advantage of open access and the efficiencies of   publishing, threatens to be a massive success. The first issues have been devoted to fish pain (Do they have it? How can we know for sure?) as well as other important topics such as that of animal mourning (looking at the writing of our own Barbara J. King, who is also on the editorial board of the new journal). In the editorial introducing the journal called Animal Sentience: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling, Harnad writes: ”The inaugural issue launches with the   question (for fish) of whether fish can feel pain.” And he notices: ”The members of the nonhuman species under discussion will not be able to join in the conversation, but their spokesmen and advocates, the specialists who know them best, will.” The tone of Harnad’s remarks give a good sense of what has changed in the past few years that has made the establishment of a new journal such as this seem so imperative. It isn’t that there’s been a sea change in theory itself. Hard as it may be to believe, I think scientists are pretty divided, as they have always been, about whether animals are genuinely sentient. But the strength of the conviction on the part of many, not only that animals can think and feel but that this is a fact of enormous moral, social and political importance, has increased greatly. And if there has been no theoretical sea change, I think there has been an ethical one. The demand that animal lives matter and that, wherever one comes down on such questions as to whether fish feel pain or whether it is permissible to perform research on animals, the conviction that the interests of animals need to be taken seriously is now, I think, very much the norm. It is impossible to say whether Animal Sentience will change the scientific landscape the way Behavioral and Brain Science did. But there is every possibility that it will, especially under the guidance of the ambitious,   and indefatigable Stevan Harnad. Writing in the inaugural editorial, he says: ”As animals are at long last beginning to be accorded legal status and protection as sentient beings, our new journal Animal Sentience will be devoted to exploring in depth what, how and why organisms feel.” Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"The anonymous source behind the Panama Papers document dump has offered to help law enforcement officials pursue wrongdoers, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. ”Legitimate   who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution,” the source said, in a statement released late Thursday. It was verified by Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that helped bring the documents to worldwide attention. In early April, media organizations around the world reported that millions of documents were hacked from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama law firm that helps set up offshore shelters for wealthy clients, many of which are used for tax avoidance and hiding assets. The documents revealed that the firm and its clients had done work for actors, sports stars and government officials all over the world. The source behind the leak, who goes by the name ”John Doe,” noted that so far, only copies of the incriminating documents had been leaked, and said investigators would need the originals to prosecute those involved. ”In the end, thousands of prosecutions could stem from the Panama Papers, if only law enforcement could access and evaluate the actual documents,” Doe said. Doe said he or she was willing to produce the originals, in exchange for immunity, noting that previous whistleblowers had paid a price for their actions: ”I have watched as one after another,   and activists in the United States and Europe have had their lives destroyed by the circumstances they find themselves in after shining a light on obvious wrongdoing. Edward Snowden is stranded in Moscow, exiled by the Obama Administration’s decision to prosecute him under the Espionage Act. For his revelations about the NSA, he deserves a hero’s welcome and a substantial prize, not banishment. Bradley Birkenfeld was awarded millions for his information concerning Swiss bank UBS —  and was still given a prison sentence by the Justice Department.” The Justice Department declined to comment on Doe’s statement. The statement contained sharp criticism of governments around the world, saying they had ”utterly failed to address the metastasizing tax havens spotting Earth’s surface.” ”Banks, financial regulators and tax authorities have failed. Decisions have been made that have spared the wealthy while focusing instead on reining in   and   citizens,” it said. It also excoriated major media organizations for failing to do stories on the documents when they were offered."
"Is failure a positive opportunity to learn and grow, or is it a negative experience that hinders success? How parents answer that question has a big influence on how much children think they can improve their intelligence through hard work, a study says. ”Parents are a really critical force in child development when you think about how motivation and mindsets develop,” says Kyla Haimovitz, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She coauthored the study, published in Psychological Science with colleague Carol Dweck, who pioneered research on mindsets. ”Parents have this powerful effect really early on and throughout childhood to send messages about what is failure, how to respond to it.” Although there’s been a lot of research on how these forces play out, relatively little looks at what parents can do to motivate their kids in school, Haimovitz says. This study begins filling that gap. ”There is a fair amount of evidence showing that when children view their abilities as more malleable and something they can change over time, then they deal with obstacles in a more constructive way,” says Gail Heyman, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego who was not involved in this study. But communicating that message to children is not simple. ”Parents need to represent this to their kids in the ways they react about their kids’ failures and setbacks,” Haimovitz says. ”We need to really think about what’s visible to the other person, what message I’m sending in terms of my words and my deeds.” In other words, if a child comes home with a D on a math test, how a parent responds will influence how the child perceives their own ability to learn math. Even a   comforting response of ”It’s OK, you’re still a great writer” may send the message that it’s time to give up on math rather than learn from the problems they got wrong, Haimovitz explains. She and Dweck conducted a series of smaller studies to explore how the interactions between parents’ failure and intelligence mindsets affected their children’s beliefs about intelligence. First they interviewed 73 parents and their   and   children about their beliefs on failure and intelligence. The parents were mostly mothers with at least a college degree they lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. The questions focused on whether they viewed intelligence as something that could change and whether they saw failure as positive, facilitating growth and enhancing productivity or as negative, debilitating and inhibiting learning. The way children perceived ”being smart” was not related to how their parents perceived intelligence, but it was related to how their parents reacted toward failure. ”Parents who had more of a    mindset had children who were significantly more likely to believe that intelligence is fixed,” they found, even after accounting for how parents perceived their children’s academic success. ”The more parents believed that failure is debilitating, the more likely their children were to see them as concerned with their performance outcomes and grades rather than their learning and improvement,” the study found. Then the researchers surveyed 160 different parents online to find out how they would respond to their child coming home with a failing quiz grade. Those who saw failure as negative were more likely to worry about their child’s abilities in that subject or to comfort their child about not being talented in all subjects. But parents who saw failure as an opportunity were more likely to ask their child what they learned from the quiz, what they still can learn and whether asking the teacher for help would be useful. Through two more surveys of 102 Bay Area parents and their children and 100   and   students, the researchers found that children could correctly identify their parents’ beliefs about failure but not necessarily about intelligence  —   and it was the former that matched up with the children’s own beliefs about intelligence. Finally, the researchers conducted a randomized experiment with 132 parents to discover whether parents’ failure beliefs directly cause their children’s beliefs through parents’ reactions to failure: they did. ”The takeaway is that when your child is struggling on something or has setbacks, don’t focus on their abilities, focus on what they can learn from it,” Haimovitz says. One way, she says, is to ask a child: ”How can you use this as a   point?” But it’s unclear how much the study’s findings relate to children of various ethnic, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Related research Heyman has done in China revealed a mixed bag in terms of results. ”Cultures have very different beliefs about effort and ability, and asking subtly different questions you can get different answers,” Heyman says. Whereas academic success often correlates with athletic or social success among white students, the same is not necessarily true among black or Latino students, according to Cleopatra Abdou, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California. What is consistent across cultures, however, is the powerful influence that beliefs people internalize as children follow them through life. ”The messages we get from our parents, whether explicitly or symbolically or subconsciously, stay with us and are very hard to unlearn and to overcome” if they’re not helpful, she says. ”Sometimes we have internalized faulty beliefs or beliefs that don’t serve us.” Further, taking the    message too far might backfire eventually. ”If you’re being told this message you can learn anything and you’ve done everything you can and you’re not getting anywhere, then maybe at a certain point you say you’re going to say I just don’t believe this,” she adds. Further, children’s mindsets can also be influenced by their temperament, such as their tolerance for frustration, Heyman says. ”One thing we do know in recent years, there’s too much blaming of parents,” Heyman says. ”Temperament is extremely important and it’s biologically based, and to deny that causes all kinds of problems.” The challenge for parents is to support children without setting them up for failure. ”There’s this very difficult fine line between parents and teachers helping children enough so that they can do things on their own that they couldn’t do otherwise but not to help them so much that they expect other people to do it for them and don’t get pulled up to a higher level,” Heyman says. ”You slowly pull back as the kids get better on their own, but not let them flail around so much that they get frustrated and give up.” Tara Haelle is the   of The Informed Parent: A   Resource for Your Child’s First Four Years. She’s on Twitter: @tarahaelle"
"All over eastern Kentucky, you see cars and pickup trucks with black license plates proclaiming the owner is a ”friend of coal.” Even though the license plates are all over, it’s getting harder to find actual coal miners here: Fewer than 6, 000 remain in the state, where the coal industry is shrinking fast. More than 10, 000 coal workers have been laid off since 2008. Many have had to leave the area to find work, but a few have found employment in other  —   and sometime unexpected  —   fields, as businesses are innovating to use former coal workers in new ways. Rusty Justice’s company is one of these. ”The realization I had was that the coal miner, although we think of him as a person who gets dirty and works with his hands, really coal mines today are very sophisticated, and they use a lot of technology, a lot of robotics,” says Justice, who has worked in the coal industry all his life. Justice is one of the owners of Bit Source, a   tech startup in Pikeville, Ky. He owns another company in eastern Kentucky, too  —   an engineering and excavation firm that relies on the coal industry for most of its business. But with an eye on his bottom line, a few years ago Justice felt he had to diversify. And after lots of research, he and his business partner settled on coding, with the aim of tapping the region’s workforce of   coal miners and teaching them a new skill. He put up ads, and got nearly 1, 000 applicants. Ten were hired of those, nine remain. Inside Bit Source’s headquarters, the nine Web developers sit around MacBooks, writing code. All of them used to work in the coal industry. After 22 weeks of   training, six former coal miners and three industry support workers became coders. Garland Couch used to be a maintenance manager for coal companies, until he lost his job in 2014. Like most coal industry jobs, his paid well. Before he got the call from Bit Source to become a developer, Couch says, he figured he’d have to leave the region to support his family. ”The entire Appalachian area, if you’re not working in the coal industry, then the wage that you’re going to make is substantially reduced,” he says. ”If you’re going to earn a decent living, then you’re having to look to move.” Robin Webb, a state senator, represents several eastern Kentucky counties and is a former coal miner turned lawyer. ”Eastern Kentuckians value family and the area, and they want to stay home and they should be able to do that,” Webb says. ”I think that’s our goal as policymakers, to ensure that they can.” In the past, politicians focused on improving the region’s asphalt infrastructure, building   and   highways to eastern Kentucky. They blamed the struggling economy on the topography: mountains and forests that necessitated spiderweb networks of long, winding roads. But now, Bit Source manager John Handshoe says for companies like his to thrive, eastern Kentucky needs a different type of infrastructure. ”We’re not shipping coal out of here anymore we’re shipping code,” he says. ”The broadband’s our highway, our shipping lanes, our trains.” The region’s Internet speeds lag when compared with most other cities, though a   project is working to bring broadband to the region. Leaders in the area see the project as crucial to creating a new Appalachia. For them, the region’s future relies on lots of smaller industries and employers, rather than one gigantic one like the coal industry. It’s a big change from the way things were done in the past. Bit Source owner Justice points to the   mine equipment hanging in the building’s entry. ”Our slogan is ’a new day, a new way,’ ” he says. ”And it’s a new day here in Appalachia and we’re trying to do things a new way.” And as Justice says, it’s not necessarily a new way for the rest of the world, but it’s new for eastern Kentucky."
"Scientists have had a literal breakthrough off the coast of Mexico. After weeks of drilling from an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico, they have reached rocks left over from the day the Earth was hit by a killer asteroid. The cataclysm is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. ”This was probably the most important event in the last 100 million years,” says Joanna Morgan, a geophysicist at Imperial College in London and a leader of the expedition. Since the 1980s, researchers have known about the impact site, located near the   Yucatan Peninsula. Known as Chicxulub, the crater is approximately 125 miles across. It was created when an asteroid the size of Staten Island, N. Y. struck Earth around 66 million years ago. The initial explosion from the impact would have made a nuclear bomb look like a firecracker. The searing heat started wildfires many hundreds of miles away. After that, came an unscheduled winter. Sulfur, ash and debris clouded the sky. Darkness fell and, for a while, Earth was not itself. ”I think it was a bad few months, really,” Morgan says. That’s an understatement: Scientists believe 75 percent of life went extinct during this dark chapter in Earth’s history, including the dinosaurs. Researchers have sampled Chicxulub before, but this expedition by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling precisely targets a key part of the crater yet to be studied: a ring of mountains left by the asteroid. This ”peak ring” is a fundamental feature of the strike and should tell researchers much more about it, says Sean Gulick, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin, who   the team with Morgan. For weeks, they’ve been drilling  —   and going back in time. Each layer of rock they pass through is connected to a part of Earth’s history. ”We went through a remarkable amount of the   world. All the way into the Eocene times  —   so between 50 and 55 million years ago,” Gulick says. The rocks they’ve pulled out show how life began to recover after the cataclysm, Gulick says. ”We’ve got all these limestones and rocks that contain the fossils from the world after the impact, all the things that evolved from the few organisms that survived.” The research team finally reached the top of the peak ring this week. It appears to be a thick layer of broken, melted rock just beneath a layer of sandstone that may be the leavings of a huge tsunami that was triggered when the asteroid struck. Gulick thinks the rocks hold clues. For example, if any microscopic organisms survived near the site of the strike, their fossils might be in these samples. In June, the rock cores will be sent back to a lab in Germany for further study. The asteroid strike marked the end of an era. But the creatures that made it through that catastrophe went on to shape the world again, says Morgan. ”The mammals survived,” she says. ”And that led on to our own evolution.”"
"Filmmaker Jacques Audiard bristles when you ask him about news coverage of Europe’s ”refugee crisis.” ”I don’t think we really see migrants . .. ” Audiard says. ”It takes a baby washed up on the beach for us to ask: What was his name? It’s terrible. I wanted to give them a name to give them a face.” The plotline of Audiard’s   film could be yet another story from the frontlines of the refugee crisis in Europe: A family from a   country boards a boat bound for what they hope will be a better life. But when they arrive in a new land, they’re confronted with violence, racism and a profoundly uncertain future. The movie, called Dheepan, opens in the U. S. May 6. The beginning of Audiard’s film puts the audience in the middle of a refugee camp in Sri Lanka. A desperate woman picks up an abandoned child so she can make a claim for family asylum. She’s paired with a man looking to do the same and within minutes this fake family is on its way out of the country. He takes the name Dheepan. This story won the top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival  —   the prestigious Palme d’Or. Film critic B. Ruby Rich, who was not at Cannes, says the sheer number of refugees flooding Europe at the time was definitely on the jury’s mind. ”I think that being there in Cannes, while you’re there in the lap of luxury, you’re also there on the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean is where these thousands and hundreds of thousands of people are crossing,” Rich says. Rich says Dheepan is not a sentimental immigrant saga, but rather, Audiard has made a thriller. ”He’s telling a movie story,” says Rich. ”He’s pulling us into a movie plot, but he’s peopling it with people and locations and lives that normally aren’t in those genres.” The screen goes black after the migrants board the boat. We don’t know where they are until the void is punctured by ambiguous flickering lights. Within minutes we see that those lights are actually the character Dheepan and several other   men emerging from the night. They’re wearing cheap,   toy headbands that they peddle at sidewalk cafés before being chased away by authorities. ”People who sell roses in the café  —   we don’t look at them, we chase them away,” says Audiard. ”But here I say: they’re the heroes.” Dheepan is played by an actor with a very similar story. Antonythasan Jesuthasan was once a Tamil Tiger  —   a separatist fighter in Sri Lanka’s brutal,   civil war. He fled the country in the late 1980s and eventually came to France illegally. He’s not a professional actor, but he helped translate and guide the film. Jesuthasan says Audiard has captured his journey. ”As someone who has been through exactly that situation of leaving Sri Lanka at a time of war, I completely have all rights to say, that it is a very accurate and authentic film,” Jesuthasan says. ”Especially because for the last 15 years, I’ve been living in an area exactly like that in France.” The film takes place in the   housing blocks on the outskirts of Paris. Working class families live on one side of a courtyard, while the other side is a   zone ruled by a violent gang of drug dealers. Dheepan can’t escape getting pulled back into the violence, which is something Jesuthasan can relate to  —   he says he’s sure he wasn’t alone among Tamil refugees. ”You’re looking at some soldiers who, at the age of 15, are ready to wear a cyanide capsule around their neck,” Jesuthasan says. ”When you lose that fear of death at 15, you have every chance of exploding in real life as Dheepan does in this film.” Audiard says he didn’t want to make a film about helpless victims  —   and Rich says he hasn’t. ”These are not the characters you write in a script if your aim is to create legislation or have people open their hearts to the poor refugee victims,” says Rich. Instead, Audiard says the characters are grappling with questions we all do: Can we ever really begin again? Can we leave our past behind to forge a future? ”That’s what interests me fundamentally,” says Audiard. ”That to make a family is not so simple. The film asks how many lives does one have a right to have? Does one have a right to a second life and what does that cost? Is it possible to hope for a second love after the first? After all of this drama, there’s still a life. At the end, it’s a real family.” For   Tamil refugee Antonythasan Jesuthasan, the film Dheepan has given him the chance to travel the world  —   and to share his story of starting again."
"Captain America: Civil War, our 13th spin around the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is such a satisfying Problems In 21st Century Superheroics seminar that I’d be humming its theme for days if only I could remember it. Does Captain America have a theme? Does Iron Man? What about Black Widow? Haven’t they each earned one by now? Eight years into a lovingly micromanaged franchise that has made Marvel Studios as indomitable as Galactus, benevolent mogul Kevin Feige still hasn’t found a composer to elevate one of these movies to the firmament of earworms. Civil War’s ersatz score, by Henry ”Not Wolverine” Jackman, might’ve been borrowed from a ’90s Tom Clancy flick. The movie isn’t all that much to look at, either. Much of it takes place indoors, and its exteriors all appear to have been captured on the same cloudy afternoon in the spring of 2015 (though there’s a Mark Fuhrman joke that American Crime Story has made topical again). Sibling directors Anthony and Joe Russo were best known for the hip TV comedies Arrested Development and Community before Marvel hired them to make the superb Captain America: The Winter Soldier they’re doing the next two Avengers, too. Their current Avengers movie, the one called Captain America: Civil War, has aerial combat and even a    sequence, but its visual sense remains stubbornly small screen. (I saw it in   which made the fight choreography  —   so crisp in Winter Soldier  —   look sloppier and the   shots look faker.   is  .) At least it’ll hold up well on the   revisits it’s bound to enjoy as Marvel’s   Phase Three marches on. Because in all the ways that matter most  —   characterization, performance, emotional tension, allegorical heft  —   Civil War is Earth’s Mightiest Marvel movie. It is also, at 147 minutes, the longest, but every minute is up there on the screen, so to speak. It’s both more tense and more operatic than Joss Whedon’s seminal Avengers chapters, and it juggles even more characters successfully. Best of all, it achieves genuine pathos while still being enormously funny. It’s the Vibranium standard for superteam flicks. Liberally adapted from a Mark Millar comic book scenario circa   Civil War finds the Avengers disassembled: The cumulative human cost of their adventures, plus a botched mission in this movie resulting in still more loss of life, has the world demanding the team submit to United Nations oversight. Tony ”Iron Man” Stark, the hero most traumatized by their battles, thinks it’s the right move. (As the person most responsible for creating Ultron, the malignant AI that talks like James Spader, he has good reason to believe that their power is too dangerous to remain unchecked.) But Captain Steve Rogers  —   still the lionhearted Brooklyn kid who tried again to enlist against the Nazis each time the draft board ruled him    —   believes the world will be safer if its guardians remain autonomous. And because screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and star Chris Evans have developed the character so beautifully over the past five years, our hearts are with Cap, even though Stark’s position is clearly the rational one. Things get more dire when Bucky ”The Winter Soldier” Barnes (Sebastian Stan)  —   who, like his   best pal Steve, has stayed in his early 30s since the early ’40s thanks to evil Nazi cryoscience  —   becomes a suspect in an assassination that puts the enigmatic new hero Black Panther on his trail. Cap is maniacally determined to protect his oldest friend, even when he appears to be guilty. This pattern of characters we know to be good making honest and consequential mistakes is what makes Civil War resonate like a classical tragedy. Well, that and Robert Downey Jr. who in his sixth appearance as Stark appears more invested in the part than ever. He’s not the glib egotist of films past his worldview has darkened. And yet his scouting trip to Queens to recruit a certain friendly neighborhood   who lives with his aunt proves that even in brooding mode, Downey can still knock a comedic scene out of the park. He gets a big assist from believably adolescent new   Tom Holland, who makes the occasion of Spidey finally being granted full MCU citizenship feel like the blessed event that it is. Perhaps sensing that some quarters of the audience may be getting fidgety after all this chitchat, the partners of McFeely, Markus, Russo  Russo reward our patience with the grandest, most inventive supersmackdown in   history. It’s six on six Iron Man isn’t the only one who thought to bring backup. The filmmakers have approached the problem of how warriors with these particular talents might attack and counter one another with the zealous imagination of   . But they’ve also considered that each side is trying to subdue its rivals without causing irreversible harm. That    ’   objective, plus the humor that inexperienced combatants   and   bring to the fray, makes for an ingenious set piece that keeps finding new ways to surprise us. After that bravura sequence, the film wisely goes for intimacy rather than trying to top itself on spectacle. There are revelations large and small, and some plotting that’s just as wobbly as Batman v Superman’s if we’re being honest. That kind of thing is almost inevitable in a story with this many moving parts and is easily forgiven in a picture  —   a franchise  —   that’s done the hard work of making us care. That’s not to say it isn’t hard to look at all those perfectly sculpted visages: Anthony Mackie as Cap’s best 21st century pal, Falcon. Daniel Brühl, playing a mysterious conspirator. Someone named Scarlett Johansson. (I had to look her up.) Chadwick Boseman, whose regal Black Panther makes you wish his Ryan   movie was arriving sooner than 2018. Elizabeth Olsen as the Scarlet Witch, still learning to control her   (really) powers. Paul Bettany as Vision, the Infinity   android (stay with me) who is struggling with his feelings for a teammate. And Evans, who is struggling with his feelings for a S. H. I. E. L. D. colleague with a connection to his (distant) past. So much struggling. So many feelings. So many faces. Stare at any one of them too long and your retinas will burn out. Even Martin Freeman  —   Bilbo Baggins, for crying out loud  —   gets a Slatteryesque   coif in this movie, as if a cameo by the real John Slattery weren’t enough. And William Hurt, playing the official face of the U. N. oversight plan, looks hale enough to start filming Body Heat 2: Ragnarok tomorrow. If Feige lets the Russos make it, I’m there."
"Radiohead has finally revealed what the band has been up to after a week of social media teases. The group will release a new album digitally this Sunday, May 8, on XL Recordings, with physical copies to follow on June 17. Radiohead hasn’t revealed the name of the new album or the track list yet, but it also dropped a new video directed by Paul Thomas Anderson for a song called ”Daydreaming.” Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has written music for three of Anderson’s films, and last year Anderson directed a documentary about the making of the album Junun, which Greenwood made with the composer Shye Ben Tzur and a group of musicians in India. This is the second new song and video from Radiohead this week. On Wednesday the band released a short animated film for the song ”Burn The Witch.” Both songs came after the band deleted all posts from its Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, putting fans on high alert that something was about to happen. The new,    album is Radiohead’s first since the band   The King Of Limbs in 2011."
"Commuters faced scenes of ”mash destruction” this morning on Interstate 77 in Charlotte, N. C. That’s right  —     South was littered with spuds after a   overturned at around 2 a. m. ET Friday, according to the North Carolina Department of Transportation. We’re talking about 50, 000 pounds of potatoes, according to local news reports. The road was closed for hours, creating major traffic backups as authorities attempted to clear the tubers using tractors and snowplows. The truck’s driver said he fell asleep ”and hit a barrier and overturned,” state troopers told The Associated Press. The wire service adds that ”he was taken to a hospital for injuries that did not appear to be serious.” Charlotte’s   says the potato spill stretched for hundreds of yards. The first photos of the scene show the spuds glowing in the streetlights and covering the entire road. Unfortunately, most of these taters probably aren’t good to eat at this point because of a fuel spill, according to reporters at the scene. However, The Charlotte Observer reports that ”a few hundred pounds of potatoes had fallen into grass near an exit ramp, were not contaminated and would be donated to a food gleaning group.” Social media lit up with the news. Check out some of the reaction: The   has a history of covering unusual roadway spills. Here are a few you might recall:"
"Free Comic Book Day  Free Comic Book Day, the comics industry’s yearly attempt to bring new readers into the fold, is 15 years old. It’s a peevish teen that smells of Speed Stick and Clearasil and a practiced, performative surliness. It demands that you drop it off a block away from school. For the past eight years, I’ve written a preview of the comics on offer on Free Comic Book Day for NPR. So I’m kind of like Free Comic Book Day’s annoying   little brother, always chasing after him and telling everyone how cool he is. And he  —   it  —   is very cool: Once again, this Saturday, if you walk into your neighborhood comics shop, they’ll give you some free comics. You can find your closest shop by typing your ZIP code into the Comics Shop Locator on the www. freecomicbookday. com page. The usual caveats apply: As someone who has now looked at eight crops of FCBD books over the years, I can say that year’s selection is heartening and reflects the (incremental and  ) progress the comics industry’s been making over the past few years. By which I mean: realizing that there’s an audience besides horny straight fanboys. This year, you’ll find more   titles than ever before, fewer superheroes, and more books featuring female protagonists, practically none of whom are busty   who choose to engage in strenuous melee combat while wearing corsets. (When I say ”practically no,” I mean there’s one.) The  : more books tied to licensed properties, which are always a mixed bag. Publishers approach Free Comic Book Day in a variety of ways. Some FCBD comics offer a   tour though a given publisher’s many titles  —   let’s call these samplers. Others present a   story, or a selection of stories, about one specific character  —   let’s call these singles. Samplers are a canny marketing move, but in casting such a wide net they can offer a    reading experience. Sometimes you want the steak, not the charcuterie board, you know? Singles give you a truer sense of a given comic’s storytelling bona fides  —   what can its creative team accomplish in 23 pages?  —   but there’s more pressure on them to deliver. The FCBD site groups the books on offer every year using a rating system that parents may find helpful, though there’s an awful lot of wiggle room built in. Which makes sense: After all, you know your kids and what they’re ready for better than any publisher could. So if, say, the distinction between a TEEN and a TEEN+ book seems a bit nebulous, here’s a handy guide to clip and stick to the refrigerator: As a general rule:  : It’s fine. TEEN: Don’t worry. TEEN+: Worry a little. MATURE: You let your kid read this? Monster! Got all that? OK. Let’s start with the   comics.     ALL AGES: Samplers, BOOM! 2016 Summer Blast, Genre: Various, Anything I Need To Know Going In? A mix of     (Labyrinth, Mouse Guard, Adventure Time) and excerpted selections (Lumberjanes, Goldie Vance, The Cloud). Anything Else? The excerpt from The Cloud, an upcoming graphic novel, is intriguing if a bit opaque. Like,  ’  ’     ’  . Looks great, though. The excerpt from Goldie Vance (a girl hotel detective) and the Mouse Guard story (a gorgeously wrought tale of a mouse who wants to learn the language of other beasts) are standouts. Verdict? Yes. Dark Lily  Friends, Genre:   Fiction, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Four excerpts: Dark Lily is a gothy moon princess, Monster Elementary has li’l versions of Universal monsters navigating public school, Rocket Queen and the Wrench is the story of a teen   and her male sidekick, and Mage, Inc. features a young woman interning at a magic business. In a canny move, the publisher includes a brief introduction to each excerpt that gives readers the basics. Anything Else? Rocket Queen and the Wrench would be a great name for a D. C. hardcore band. Also, Monster Elementary is a riot. Verdict? Yep. Doctor Who, Genre:    Fiction, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Four short stories featuring four different Doctors. Anything Else? A shining exception to the rule that licensed   comics tend to suck. These stories  —   particularly the first, starring the 12th Doctor  —   really capture the snap and spirit of the show. Verdict?  . (That’s a yes.)    Sports  Genre:   . .. Sports Fantasy? Anything I Need To Know Going In? Hilda is a girl in a Northern European town who has adventures with creatures of Nordic myth. Akissi, set in the Ivory Coast, follows a troublemaking young girl and her brother. Fantasy Sports is . .. just exactly what the title says it is, believe it or not: not leagues and rosters and draft picks, but a melding of wizards and warriors with . .. baseball. Anything Else? Luke Pearson’s Hilda and Marguerite Abouet’s Akissi are both charming. Sam Bosma’s Fantasy Sports is a tougher nut to crack, from this excerpt, but the art can’t be beat. Verdict? Sure.   Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen   Unknowns, Genre: Adventure, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Howard Lovecraft follows a young H. P. Lovecraft, his pet Cthulhu (”Spot”) and his   friends. The Unknowns are a rock band who are secretly alien cops. Anything Else? Both stories feel like the    for animated series that they are, and the publisher makes no bones about that. The Lovecraft tale’s the more visually inventive (there’s a character who speaks in emojis, basically) but the Unknowns story lays out their origin in eight energetic, albeit   pages. Verdict? Yeah, why not?   Legend of   to Train Your   vs. Zombies, Genre:    Anything I Need To Know Going In? Comics based on two animated series and a cellphone game, just like Will Eisner always dreamed. Anything Else? The Korra tale reveals how she first met Naga, the Train Your Dragon story features the cast telling campfire tales, but it’s the Plants vs. Zombies vignette that’s the real find here. Inventive and idiosyncratic in a way   comics rarely are, it’s told in a   style and features an ending that’s actually funny. Verdict? Yes.   Overstreet’s Comic Book Marketplace, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? The publishers of a   annual comics price guide produce an   offering every year, and this one seems especially packed: retrospectives on Star Trek, Civil War, The Spirit, Supergirl, Archie, as well as primers on collecting movie posters and other bits of pop culture ephemera. Anything Else? Said retrospectives are quite brief, and are little more than   tours through history, but there’s something for everyone here. Verdict? For the    yes.   Pokemon Pocket Comics, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? ”Your favorite Pokemon from the Unova region like you’ve never seen them before!” Uh . .. I don’t have a favorite? What’s the Unova region? And I’ve never seen them before, period? Anything Else? Look, this isn’t for me. Basically it’s a series of   gag strips featuring different characters from that insanely popular game that slyly indoctrinates preschoolers into the world of  . Includes a quiz with questions like ”Which of the following Pokemon is heavier than a Hoothoot?” (. .. I scored 1 out of 11.) Verdict? Yes, if you or your kids like Pokemon. If you or they don’t, this reads like an urgent pictographic message from an alien race that really enjoys watching cute things whomp the snot out of each other. Sanjay and   Beaks, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? Comics based on Nickelodeon animated series. Sanjay and Craig: kid and his pet snake. Harvey Beaks: bird with several animal friends. Anything Else? Both are cute, though Sanjay and Craig has a distinct visual style that sets it apart. Verdict? Yep. Science Comics, Genre: Educational, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Cartoonist Maris Wicks recounts how her lifelong love of the ocean led her to create a comic about coral reefs a young woman on a cold, dead future Earth researches volcanoes in an effort to save humanity. Anything Else? Clever writing and smart design make potentially dry topics engaging by spotlighting the passion of the scientific pursuit (the coral reef story) or placing information in a compelling dramatic framework (the volcanoes story). Verdict? Yes.   Sonic Sampler, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? Selections from ongoing comics series about a Hedgehog who runs fast and the surprisingly and astonishingly dense narrative universe around him. Anything Else? No, that about covers it. Verdict? If you’ve ever played a Sonic game and thought, ”I’d enjoy this experience more if it was a series of static images laid out in a grid,” then yes. ALL AGES: Singles, Awake, Genre: Science Fiction, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Could young Regn, gifted with power to communicate with planets, truly be the one to save the world? (Ya think?) Anything Else? As a question on which to hang a tale, ”Could she truly be . .. The One?” is, let’s just admit to ourselves, getting a bit musty, but the art is appealing and the setup (which is this issue’s job) is interesting. Verdict? Yes.   Bob’s Burgers, Genre:    Anything I Need To Know Going In? A series of vignettes and pinup art based on the excellent TV series. Anything Else? Really nails the show’s voice: ”We can’t go back, Tina! We’re cave people now. We rely on rats for food, warmth, and yes, companionship.” Verdict? Definitely, yes. Bongo    Genre:    Anything I Need To Know Going In? Buncha stories about The Simpsons, told in The Simpsons style, set in the world of The Simpsons. Anything Else? Dependably The Simpsons. The FCBD equivalent of an old, comfortable shoe. Or a   glove. Whichever. Verdict? Yep. Bruce Lee: The Dragon Rises, Genre: Martial   Anything I Need To Know Going In? Bruce Lee’s daughter commissioned this new   series ”to introduce my father and his amazing legacy of action and philosophy to a whole new generation.” Anything Else? Can’t speak to the philosophy, but the action is  . Add a central mystery, and some surprisingly solid humorous dialogue, and this is off to a great start. Verdict? Yes. Camp Midnight, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? Excerpt from a graphic novel in which a smartass human girl is mistakenly sent to a summer camp for monsters. Anything Else? Lots to chew on here. Expressive art, with distinctive use of color. A main character who finds herself in a putatively terrifying situation and just . .. rolls with it. Grapples with some interesting themes about what it means to fit in, and what our ”true self” is. Makes a nice companion to Monster Elementary, in the Dark Lily comic, above. Verdict? Yep.   DC SuperHero Girls, Genre:    Anything I Need To Know Going In? Excerpt from DC’s new line of   graphic novels featuring clever redesigns of their female characters. Anything Else? Stories starring female superheroes you can feel good about handing to a young girl? It’s about damn time. (There’s also a toy line, you will not be shocked to learn. Which may explain the vague,      feel of the book. Even so: Its mere existence is long overdue, and welcome.) Verdict? Yes. Dream Jumper, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? Ben’s a kid who dreams about being chased by vampires sporting eyepatches,   doctors, and various other monsters. Anything Else? That’s really all you get from this excerpt, but the art is friendly and expressive. Some nice flashes of humor. Written by actor Greg Grunberg, based on dreams related to him by his son. Soon to be adapted into an animated film. Verdict? Sure. Grumpy Cat (and Pokey!)  Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? We license memes now. Memes are exploitable intellectual property that’s where we are as a society. The Internet sensation known as Grumpy Cat extends her 15 minutes with these tales of backyard adventures with her chipper friend Pokey. Anything Else? Some solid jokes in here, though the shadow of Garfield looms over every frame. Verdict? Better than expected. Yes. Help the CBLDF . .. DEFEND COMICS, Genre: Mixed, Anything I Need To Know Going In? The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a nonprofit that helps creators, publishers, educators and librarians when they come under fire for comic book content. This issue offers a selection of vignettes that (literally) illustrate the need for comics to be able to tell stories as their creators wish. Anything Else? Unsurprisingly, some sections work better than others. Lucy Kinsley’s recollection of London’s Speaker’s Corner resists seeming   owing to the brightness of her artwork. Other selections fare less well. Verdict? The CBLDF does good work that’s worth supporting. With your  . Junior Braves of the Apocalypse, Genre: Horror, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Excerpt from a new series of graphic novels in which a troupe of boys returns from a camping trip to find the zombie apocalypse in full swing. Anything Else? Zach Lehner’s black and white art straddles the line between cartoony and creepy. Might be a bit intense for very young kids. Verdict? Maybe. If you can still read the word ”zombie” without rolling your eyes, yes. Mooncop, Genre: Science   Anything I Need To Know Going In? Tom Gauld is a brilliantly funny, brilliantly nerdy U. K. cartoonist, and this issue features an excerpt from his upcoming graphic novel Mooncop, as well as a selection of gag comics from his collection, You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack. Anything Else? Gauld’s deceptively simple style, which reduces human interaction to affectless stick figures, really works in Mooncop, a graphic novel about . .. exactly what you think. In the future, a   police officer rescues dogs and automatons. And Gauld’s deadpan,   gag strips really shine. Verdict? Highly recommended. Oddly Normal, Genre: Fantasy, Anything I Need To Know Going In?   Oddly Normal, the daughter of a witch and a human who ignore her, is unpopular in school for having green hair and pointed ears. And for being named ”Oddly Normal.” Anything Else? This is how you do FCBD. We get the first chapter of Otis Frampton’s graphic novel, which kicks things off with bang, and he offers glimpses of what’s coming. You’ll definitely want to see more. Verdict? Yes. The Phantom, Genre: Superhero, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Reprints of old Charlton Comics tales of everyone’s favorite Purple Perambulating   the Phantom. Anything Else? Jim Aparo’s art is stunning, propulsive and good    . Usual caveats apply, re: talking to your kids about how our notions of how to depict ”jungle folk” have evolved since these stories were first printed. Verdict? Yes. The Pink Panther, Genre: Humor, Anything I Need To Know Going In? New and classic adventures of Hawley Pratt  Friz Freleng’s cerise jungle cat. Anything Else? A new story, in which Pink inherits the Hammer of Thor, is wordless. In the classic, reprinted tale, however, he’s downright voluble. Also features an ”Ant and the Aardvark” vignette, who it just occurred to me were voiced on the old TV series as Dean Martin and Jackie Mason   respectively. Because ’70s kids wanted cartoon characters that sounded like they could play the Vegas Strip, I guess? Verdict? Some nice, efficient visual storytelling in the new story yes. Spectrum, Genre: Science    Anything I Need To Know Going In? Follow me here: Actor Alan Tudyk wrote, directed and stars in a Web series called Con Man, in which he plays an actor who used to be on a cult   TV series called Spectrum. This book? Which he  ? Is the beginning of a   comics series that adapts that fictional show. Got all that? Anything Else? Given that both this book’s Web series inspiration and Tudyk himself possess some serious comedy DNA, this is a surprisingly grim,   overture to the space opera to come. The story: The Earth has gotten its butt serially handed to it by several alien races and attempts to fight back. Verdict? The events depicted kind of chafe against the ” ” classification, for me. More death and destruction than some parents might be comfortable with. It’s all setup, so it doesn’t so much offer a satisfying read as bait the trap. Which of course is a perfectly valid approach to FCBD. So: Maybe? SpongeBob Freestyle Funnies, Genre:    Anything I Need To Know Going In? The continuing adventures of America’s favorite idiotically chipper and resolutely absurdist bath supply. Anything Else? A nice mix the publishers allow different artists to adapt their distinct styles to the characters, so the five tales avoid looking stiff or  . Verdict? Yes. Strawberry Shortcake, Genre: Cuteness, Anything I Need To Know Going In? You mean besides the fact that Ms. Shortcake owns the Berry Bitty Café in Berry Bitty City? And that her friends Sweet Grapes and Sour Grapes persuade her to throw a party and to go get her hair done at Lemon Meringue’s hair salon? And that high jinks dependably ensue? . .. No, yeah, that pretty much covers it. Anything Else? Young kids may like the bright colors and simple story all others may wish to pour themselves a frosty mug of insulin before venturing in. (Also includes a series of dossiers on Berry Bitty City’s residents, from its resident blogger, Apple Dumplin’ to fashionista Raspberry Torte.) (BTW: According to said dossiers, Sour Grapes ”likes to spice things up with her realistic and zesty attitude!” I feel like Sour Grapes would be great to get a mug of insulin with I bet her life in Berry Bitty City is one long uninterrupted  . Girlfriend has stories to tell, you can sense it.) Verdict? Lookit: Raspberry Torte has a Chihuahua named Chiffon, we learn. If learning this fact stirs something in you or your kid, pick this up. The Stuff of Legend, Genre: Fantasy, Anything I Need To Know Going In? A young boy’s toys  —   including a teddy bear, a     a piggy bank and a toy soldier  —   enter the darkness of his bedroom closet to rescue him from the Boogeyman. Anything Else? The fifth volume of the series will soon be published. If you’ve picked up a Stuff of Legends FCBD book before, know that this year’s edition once again excerpts the first chapter of the first volume of the series. There’s an appealing and very intentional disconnect between the book’s   tone and its   art, and a clever,   central conceit (once they enter the closet, the toys become very real). Verdict? Still a great introduction to a great series. Yes. The Tick, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? He’s big, dumb, blue and indestructible, and his battle cry is an eating utensil. Anything Else? A breach in the multiverse has   versions of Tick rubbing shoulders and antennae with one another, endangering all of existence. Lacks the   of previous FCBD issues, but this is always a dependably solid pickup. Verdict? Yes. Worlds of Aspen 2016, Genre: Fantasy, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Aspen is a comics publisher that, historically at any rate, offered FCBD offerings filled with exquisitely rendered   warrior women given to posing in ways that risked spinal torsion. Thus every year, it managed to introduce itself to new potential readers as a company still stuck in 1993. Here, it dials the cheesecake down a bit (a bit  —   there’s still a completely random bikini shot, because fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly) and the result is heartening. Anything Else? The company’s various titles are converging in a massive crossover of worlds and characters. This makes as good a   point as any. Verdict? For the first time in the eight years I’ve been reviewing Aspen’s FCBD comics: Yes. (Though again, flip through it to see if you agree with the ” ” designation it claims on the FCBD site.) Best Bets,  : BOOM! 2016 Summer Blast Dark Lily  Friends Doctor Who Hilda Science Comics Bob’s Burgers, Bongo Comics    Bruce Lee  —   The Dragon Rises Camp Midnight DC Superhero Girls Grumpy Cat (and Pokey!) Mooncop Oddly Normal The Stuff of Legend, TEEN, TEEN: Samplers, Attack on Titan Anthology, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? Attack on Titan is a hugely successful manga series by Hajime Isayama, which became a giant (heh) anime series. In October, a variety of Western artists will contribute to an anthology set in the AoT world. This book features tiny excerpts from that. Anything Else? Attack on Titan is potent nightmare fuel: Humanity defends itself from deeply! creepy! giants by retreating into walled cities. We only get very brief glimpses of the various creators’ takes here, but they evince notably distinct approaches. Verdict? Again, this is the sampler conundrum: not much to chew on, but awfully pretty. Yes. 2000 AD, Genre: Science Fiction, Anything I Need To Know Going In? The U. K,’s     comics anthology series offers new and classic tales with a harder edge than much of what you’ll find on FCBD tables this year. Includes QR codes for more free digital comics and a music file, so in terms of    (  )  this is the best ”value” of the day. Anything Else? As always, 2000 AD offers a decidedly mordant, violent, and dark collection that really leans into the ”   as morality tale” storytelling scheme. Verdict? Yes, if you or your kid prefers a little grit in your gumbo. Comics Lab! !! Genre: Mixed, Anything I Need To Know Going In? A decidedly mixed bag, from bright, peppy Power Rangers pastiche to what looks to be a tale of pets and wildlife fighting back against Lovecraftian horrors to a deeply meditative, True   vignette where Something Goes Wrong in the Desert. Anything Else? As a taste of the widely varied   at publisher Z2 Comics right now, it’s great. As a reading experience, less so. Verdict? The Welcome to Showside superhero parody is a standout. Worth picking up for that. Mix Tape 2016 (Mercy     Relations) Genre: Various, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Mercy Sparx is a girl demon who can take care of herself in a rough city. Badger is a superhero who gets in an MMA match with Vladimir Putin. Squarriors are squirrel warriors (you probably could have figured that out yourself) and Public Relations is about a flack who does crisis management for a firm faced with true, albeit fantastical, crises (like dragon attacks). Anything Else? We’re squarely in Teen territory now. Rougher stuff, in every sense  —   including some cringeworthy Japanese dialect (”Amelican win! Laise hand now! ”) that would shame Breakfast at Tiffany’s Mickey Rooney. But the Public Relations story has some nice moments. Verdict? Mmmmaybe.       Hero Academia, Genre: Superhero manga, Anything I Need To Know Going In?   Man is a bored hero who can defeat any enemy with . .. you know, one punch. My Hero Academia follows a young boy trying to master his powers in a school for the superpowered. Anything Else?   Man is pretty fantastic, really. Even in this brief excerpt, the tightly controlled tone and pacing build to a very funny climax. My Hero Academia manages to distinguish itself from its very familiar setting with smart writing. And also with a kid who shoots a laser out of his bellybutton. So. I mean. Verdict? Of course.      Man, Genre: Science    Anything I Need To Know Going In? Three, count ’em, THREE series based on action figures. ROM the Spaceknight was a hilariously cheap electronic toy of the 1970s who starred in a   if fondly remembered, Marvel comic. Action Man was the U. K. version of GI Joe who starred in a U. K. comic in the ’00s. Both are getting rebooted.  Anything Else? The Transformers component of this FCBD issue is little more than a   infographic that explains how the many Transformers comics relate to one another. Useful? Sure. But as a reading experience, less than compelling. Verdict? Skippable, unless you’re a ROM completist. Typing that sentence just made me want to lie down.      Genre: Science   (s) Anything I Need To Know Going In? The Serenity and Hellboy stories are   vignettes, but the Aliens story seems to be an excerpt. Anything Else? The scripts are the real deal  —   by Chris Roberson, Mike Mignola and Brian Wood, respectively. They’re pros who know how to pack a lot into relatively small spaces a very satisfying read. (The way the issue riffs on Serenity canon is particularly fun.) Verdict? Definitely. Valiant 2016, Genre: Science Fiction, Anything I Need To Know Going In? A selection of excerpts from various titles across Valiant’s publishing line, including the   about series Faith, starring a superhero who is both a woman (which is no big deal) and      (which still really kind of is). Anything Else? Big ideas abound, and the selections from each title are legitimately tantalizing. Faith is charming, as promised the 4001AD title features strong writing and art Divinity boasts a fascinating premise and I’ll definitely be picking up a copy of Archer  Armstrong #1 based on the humor and verve present in this excerpt. Verdict? Highly recommended. Singles, Archie, Genre: Humor, Anything I Need To Know Going In? This is a freshly rebooted, less cartoony ”New Riverdale” version of America’s favorite     teen ginger. (Fear not,   : Classic Archie hasn’t gone anywhere and still lives in the supermarket checkout aisle, as always.) The broad slapstick is gone (as is the    hairstyle) replaced by a more measured, but still breezy, tone. Script by Mark Waid, art by Fiona Staples, so Riverdale’s in good hands. Anything Else? There’s also an excerpt of the excellent new Jughead title, written by the dependably goofy Chip Zdarsky and winning art by Squirrel Girl’s Erica Henderson. Verdict? Run, don’t walk. Yes. Assassin’s Creed, Genre:    Anything I Need To Know Going In? Two stories that spin off the popular video game franchise. A female Assassin in 1791 Haiti, and a Templar (the Assassin’s enemies, in game lore) in 1927 China. Anything Else? The Templar story’s a solid,   (heh) adventure, but the Assassin tale seems a bit talky to serve as an effective introduction. Verdict? For fans of the series, yes. For others, skippable. Avatarex: Destroyer of Darkness, Genre: Superhero, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Two related excerpts from writer Grant Morrison and artist Jeevan J. Kang’s series Avatarex (about the 10th incarnation of a godlike Indian superbeing) and 18 Days (about a prehistoric conflict between clans of superwarriors). Anything Else? It’s Morrison, which means huge, trippy and blithely ambitious. The Avatarex excerpt is boldly realized and easy to follow the 18 Days segment, set in the   to what Morrison, in a predictably Morrisonesque forward, calls a ”  ” is a bit inscrutable. Verdict? Morrison is always worth a look, though not always a deep dive. Pick it up, and see where you land. Lady Mechanika, Genre: See below. Anything I Need To Know Going In? Goggles, gears, hilariously complicated firearms: This is steampunk. But wait: main character’s boobs spilling over the top of her corset like she’s one of those squeezable executive stress toys: This is cheesecake. It’s steampunk cheesecake! (Another good D. C. hardcore band name.) Anything Else? ”Lady Mechanika, the infamous mechanical huntress!” says the villain of the piece, admiringly. She’s had her arms replaced with robot parts, and her memory wiped, and . .. yeah, you get it. Verdict? For those that like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing that they like. Love and Rockets, Genre: . ..   ? Is that a genre? Can it be? Anything I Need To Know Going In? Just in time for a fourth, new series of Love and Rockets books coming this summer  —   only the latest addition to a sweeping tale produced over the past 34 years  —   this FCBD comic provides an excellent sample of what makes the book so influential and unforgettable. Anything Else? The brothers Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez each write separate sagas: Gilbert’s (originally set in a fictional Central American town and now relocated, like its main characters, to Los Angeles) revolve around a woman and her extended family. Jaime’s epic follows the travails of Southern Californian   rockers attempting to hold on to their youth. The characterizations are mature and nuanced, the design spare and effective. A masterpiece of comics storytelling. Verdict? The first book you should pick up. It’ll go quickly.   March, Genre:   Anything I Need To Know Going In? Congressman John Lewis’ early life, and his pivotal role in the civil rights movement, is chronicled in the excellent   graphic novel series March. This issue features gripping excerpts from each book. Anything Else? By turns harrowing and inspiring, Lewis’ story is told with   unsentimental power. Artist Nate Powell captures both the chaos of the times and the resolute spirit of Lewis and his fellow activists. Verdict? Absolutely.   Street Fighter V, Genre: Martial    Anything I Need To Know Going In? Excerpts from the comics starring the various characters in the Capcom fighting game. Anything Else? They show up, they fight one another, they say things like ”Whatever business you’ve got with my friend, just take it elsewhere before you get caught up in a TURBULENT WIND!” Verdict? If you can read the words ”turbulent wind” without snickering, this is probably a book for you.   Suicide Squad, Genre: Super( )hero, Anything I Need To Know Going In? DC supervillains recruited into a   strike force. Implanted with miniature bombs that will kill them if they don’t obey orders. Anything Else? My oh my oh MY but this is unpleasant! Torture on Page 1, burned child corpses on Page 9, electrocution, dismemberment . .. ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The best part? It’s soon to be a major motion picture! Based on an ’80s series I loved as a kid. This? . .. Isn’t that. Verdict? Look, make your own decisions, but just know that in the grand scheme of what comics as a storytelling medium have the potential to achieve, this is pretty repellent. (Why does this get a Teen rating, and not a Teen+? That, friend, is a penetrating and insightful question.) Best Bets, Teen: Archie,   Man,    Valiant 2016, Love and Rockets, March, TEEN+ TEEN+ Samplers (note: there are no TEEN+ Singles). Steve Rogers, Captain     Genre:  Superhero, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Steve Rogers is back in the Captain America suit (though the Sam Wilson [formerly the Falcon] Captain America is still around) and he’s tackling HYDRA again, which has morphed into a network of terrorist cells. Meanwhile, Peter Parker has moved to San Francisco, where he’s doubling down on the gadgets  —   and facing old foes who are, suddenly, mysteriously, MUCH less than dead than they used to be. Anything Else? The Cap tale’s focus on terrorism feels discomfitingly resonant, and the Spidey story is breezy fun, which is what you want from a Spidey story. Verdict? Straight up superhero goodness. Yes. Civil War      Avengers, Genre: Superhero, Anything I Need To Know Going In? Looks like the heroes of the Marvel Universe are gonna pick teams and go at one another again, and Thanos is somehow involved. In the Avengers tale, we meet the new Wasp.  Anything Else? Some good dialogue and classic superhero action. Verdict? Yes. Best Bets, Teen+: Both are good. MATURE,   MATURE: Samplers (NOTE: there are no MATURE singles) (As it were) We Can Never Go   Terrorists, Genre: Action, Anything I Need To Know Going In? In We Can Never Go Home, superpowered teens cause decidedly gritty and violent collateral damage. In Young Terrorists, a young woman raised by her father to be a remorseless weapon engages in brutal death matches in a hellish prison. Anything Else? Still more grim, hyperviolent badassery, but We Can Never Go Home, at least, has a keen ear for dialogue. Verdict? Not for young kiddies obviously, but then, if you’re the kind of parent who thinks a comic called ”Young Terrorists” is for young kiddies, please wait right here while I make a quick phone call."
"Every year at the Kentucky Derby, crazy   mint     break into a passionate rendition of Kentucky’s state song, ”My Old Kentucky Home.” As tradition goes, the University of Louisville Cardinal Marching Band accompanies the crowd as they croon a ballad that seems to be about people who miss their happy home. ”The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky  ’Tis summer and the people are gay,” begins one version. But Frank X Walker, Kentucky’s former poet laureate, suspects that most people are missing the point. ”I’m a Kentuckian, and I love my state,” Walker says. ”But at the same time, you know, the memories, the history this conjures up, I think people sing it and are totally disconnected from the history, from the truth.” He refers to these lyrics: ”The young folks roll on the little cabin floor, All merry, all happy and bright. By ’n by hard times comes   at the door, Then my old Kentucky home, good night.” Walker says that though it may sound like ”a happy family environment in a humble cabin experience,” there’s definitely something more going on. ”My Old Kentucky Home” was written by Stephen Foster in 1852, years before the Civil War. Foster was an American composer, famous in part for his minstrel music. The characters he references  —   the ones who had to leave Kentucky  —   were slaves. In fact, ”My Old Kentucky Home” was originally sold as an   song. The final verse shows slaves being ”sold down the river,” as it was called in those days  —   sent down the Ohio and Mississippi to serve on sugar cane plantations, where they might be worked to death in the sun. It includes the lyrics, ”A few more days and the trouble all will end, in the field where the sugar cane grows.” Paul Robeson sang that verse generations ago today, people rarely do. Another part of the song has vanished today. Foster’s lyrics called the enslaved people ”darkies.” These days, that word is no longer sung, which leaves no explicit reference to black people. But Walker wants people to know the real story behind Kentucky’s state song, even if they always thought they were hearing a simple, romantic song of home. ”[Foster] wasn’t from Kentucky, so he imagined, or he witnessed something that suggested that is was a great place to be a slave,” Walker says. ”My issue is that there was no good place to be a slave.”"
"Some Republicans who held off on backing Donald Trump are reluctantly coming around to the presumed GOP nominee. But for those who are still vowing never to support Trump, the big question is what to do. The first Republican U. S. senator to disavow Trump was Ben Sasse, a freshman from Nebraska. This week, as Trump has become the party’s apparent nominee, Sasse has doubled down. Sasse has published an open letter on Facebook and a storm of tweets criticizing both major parties and calling for a third way. For weeks, Sasse has been saying that he will never vote for Donald Trump. He has even threatened to leave the Republican Party if it embraces the billionaire. On Twitter, he has said he thinks there’s room for a conservative   candidate in the race  —   though he says he would settle for a moderate. Sasse says when he goes home to Nebraska, he meets a lot of people who are frustrated with their options. ”At the grocery store or the gas station, the more common lament is, we have 320 million people in this country and we put a man on the moon, and these two candidates, these two party   one Democrat and one Republican, both really similar in some ways, that’s the best we can do? People are confused by that,” Sasse says. At the Lincoln Marathon last weekend, Sasse’s Senate campaign fund hosted a water stand where he and supporters passed out paper cups filled with water to thirsty runners. Craig Ames, a retired hospital administrator who came to help out, says he has concerns about Trump, but he can’t imagine voting for Democratic   Hillary Clinton. ”I’ve never been quite so conflicted in a presidential election, and so concerned,” Ames says. Ames says he may end up voting for Trump  —   with a lot of misgivings. He adds he that respects Sasse for ”voting his conscience.” For Alice Licht Anderson, who hosted the water stand in her driveway, Trump represents the kind of change she wants. ”I’m a supporter of Donald Trump for the very same reason that I supported Ben Sasse: refreshing news for Washington, D. C.,” she says. She says Sasse’s opposition to Trump doesn’t bother her. But Republican leaders may be less forgiving of his refusal to fall in line. On Facebook, he wrote that his ”voicemail is overflowing with party bosses and politicos” telling him he has to support the Republican nominee. One longtime Nebraska Republican leader,   attorney David Kramer, says it’s time for Republicans to unite. Kramer, a former Nebraska state GOP chairman and national committeeman, describes Trump’s tone as a ”character flaw.” But he says Trump won ”fair and square.” ”It takes a tremendous amount of hubris to say to people that had 16 or 17 choices that they didn’t know what they were doing and that they made the wrong decision,” Kramer says. ”At some point, while we don’t always like what the outcome of the process is, we have to respect what the outcome of the process is. . .. We had a huge array to choose from  —   and people chose.” Kramer says anyone calling for a   challenge should consider leaving the Republican Party. Even the mayor of Sasse’s hometown  —   a longtime Republican who once helped hire Sasse to turn around a struggling local college  —   says it’s hard to see a way forward for a   option. Fremont, Neb. Mayor Scott Getzschman says he likes parts of Trump’s message but calls his rhetoric ”scary.” Still, he says it’s hard to see how Sasse or anyone else could turn things around in 2016. ”It’s a tall task to bring someone that’s more conservative into the mix . .. get that person out in front of the people, get their message out and build voter share. I think it’d be very difficult,” he says. Another former state Republican chairman, Lincoln attorney Mark Fahleson, says he agrees with Sasse’s position on Trump. ”Ben will always stand up for what he believes in. Even if the Republican activists today . .. are upset because he’s said that he can’t support Trump, so be it,” says Fahleson, a friend and adviser to Sasse. ”I don’t think Ben cares.” It’s not the first time Sasse has spoken out as a contrary voice. Last November, he took the unusual step of making his first speech on the Senate floor a critique of the institution. Sasse and his wife and three children still make their home outside Fremont. The two oldest are   and take turns traveling with him to and from Washington. During a recent interview in his D. C. Senate office, Sasse said his    recently spent a month working on a ranch  —   and learning the Nebraska work ethic. Sasse says his friends and neighbors ask him why they’re facing what he describes as ”two terrible choices.” He says he thinks most Americans are unhappy with either Trump or Clinton and that both parties are on the verge of ”massive upheaval.” He predicts at least one significant   option in November. ”I think there will be more choices,” Sasse says. ”I don’t think you’re gonna have two choices of two dishonest New York liberals. I think there will be more people in play.” But Sasse adds he will ”absolutely not” be among those choices. There’s a small movement among conservatives for Sasse to step forward. A spokesman for the Draft Sasse PAC says it is seeing more traffic this week. But Sasse insists he is not interested in so much as meeting with the group. There are, of course, third parties already running presidential candidates  —   like the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. But historically, those efforts have failed to amass substantial support. This year, plenty of more traditional Republicans have also failed to challenge Trump from within. For his part, Sasse says he is calling for someone else to run  —   but says he is staying his current course, at least for now. ”Given the world that we have today, I am happily a Republican, but my party loyalty isn’t anywhere near the top of my identities,” Sasse says. ”I’m a whole bunch of things before I’m a Republican, but I’m happily a Republican.”"
"Nearly one year since American Pharoah made history, Nyquist has embarked on a   turn of his own at Churchill Downs. The thoroughbred has won the 2016 Kentucky Derby. The colt beat out 19 other competitors over the course of a hectic mile and a quarter, crossing the finish line about a body length ahead of Exaggerator. Jockey Mario Gutierrez earned a patient win with Nyquist, giving the racehorse Danzing Candy plenty of leeway to lead the pack early. Gutierrez kept Nyquist close, though, never dropping much lower than third. Nyquist pulled ahead in the final stretch and didn’t ease up until he definitively captured the Run for the Roses. The win didn’t exactly come as a surprise. By   the bay colt was pulling down   odds, cleanly earning honors as the heavy favorite. Nyquist  —   owned, trained and ridden by the same team that won the 2012 Kentucky Derby  —   approached this year’s race with the confidence of having succeeded at Churchill Downs before. ”There’s a quiet confidence in the group that’s not flashy,” owner Paul Reddam told Rick Howlett of member station WFPL before the race. ”But  —   to speak Californian for a moment  —   there’s a very good vibe in the barn.” Famous for his ice hockey fandom, the Ontario native named Nyquist after a player on his favorite team, forward Gustav Norquist of the Detroit Red Wings. And it’s not even the first  —   or the second, or the third  —   Red Wings player who has served as namesake for one of Reddam’s horses. But, whatever the pedigree of his   predecessor, Nyquist (the horse, to be clear) has been dominant on the track in his own right. Before the Kentucky Derby, the horse had gone a perfect 7 for 7 in his early races. Now, make that 8 for 8. Of course, the conclusion to this year’s Derby Day, now in the books, also ushers us to the starting gate of another beloved,   tradition: talk of a potential Triple Crown. The Kentucky Derby is just the first jewel in horse racing’s highest prize to win a Triple Crown, Nyquist must now go on to win the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, too. American Pharoah managed the feat last year  —   for the first time since 1978. Can Nyquist do the same? Ladies and gentlemen, let the breathless debates begin."
"Speaking to the graduating class of Washington, D. C.’s Howard University, President Obama emphasized that his election hasn’t created a ”  society” despite improved race relations. Stressing the need to keep pushing for change, he gave the students at the historically black university impassioned advice on how to ”shape our collective future.” Chief among that advice: Vote, ”not just some of the time but all of the time.” He added: ”When we don’t vote we give away our power.” You can watch the full speech here: He described the university as a ”centerpiece of   intellectual life, and a central part of our larger American story.” Arguing that the U. S.  —   and the world  —   is a ”better place” than when he graduated from college in the early 1980s, he said there is still work to be done, citing employment, achievement and justice gaps for  . ”Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness,” he told the graduates. ”There’s no one way to be black. Take it from somebody who’s seen both sides of the debate about whether I’m black enough.” Obama told the graduates to remember the ties that connect  : ”That is our particular awareness of injustice, and unfairness, and struggle. . .. That means we cannot sleepwalk through life. . .. ”We have cousins, and uncles, and brothers, and sisters, who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were but somehow got ground down by structures that were unfair and unjust, and that means we have to not only question the world as it is, and stand up for those   who haven’t been so lucky.” That empathy should extend to ”all people who are struggling,” he said. Finally, he advised the grads that creating change requires organization and strategy. That strategy has to include voting, Obama added: ”People try to make this political thing really complicated . .. you know what? Just vote. It’s math. If you have more votes than the other guy, you get to do what you want.” Moreover, he said change requires compromise and ”listening to those with whom you disagree.” As The Washington Post reports, ”The president was kicking off a series of three commencement addresses, which will continue at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.” The newspaper adds: ”His appearance at Howard, urging the graduates to embrace the future, came as he is becoming more reflective as his presidency winds down.” Check out NPR’s rundown of great commencement speeches for two more from Obama, and many others."
"Hillary Clinton isn’t over the finish line yet, but as she continues to battle Bernie Sanders she’s also turning her attention to a general election matchup with Donald Trump. A lot of Democrats say that in order to beat Trump, she needs to be developing a clearer message on the economy. That’s not Donald Trump’s problem. Not only does he have a simple, clear message  —   he often says so himself. ”Our theme is very simple,” Trump reminded voters last week after winning the Indiana primary. ”Make America great again. We will make America great again. We will start winning again.” Behind that simple message, there are a host of equally simple sounding policies  —   policies aimed right at Americans’ economic insecurities. Build a wall, dump the bad trade deals, deport 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. Love those ideas or loathe them, it’s crystal clear what Trump wants to do. Not so much with Clinton. Asked what, in one sentence, Clinton wants to do, here’s what David Axelrod, President Obama’s former strategist, said: ”I don’t think Hillary Clinton wants to do anything in one sentence,” said Axelrod. ”That’s the problem, right? She wants to do things in paragraphs and pages. This has always been a problem in that she is incredibly fluent in policy, she embraces good policy ideas, but she has a hard time weaving them into a coherent narrative that cuts through.” This isn’t the first time Clinton has run against an opponent with a big dramatic message. In 2008, it was ”hope” and ”change.” This year, both Bernie Sanders and Trump have big plans for change: build a wall, break up the banks, make a political revolution. This is what political professionals call an origin story  —   a clear rationale for how we got here, and who is to blame for it. Does Clinton Need An ’Origin Story’? Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says Clinton needs her own origin story. She needs to tell voters why they are struggling.  ”Why are we not competitive? Why do we not have manufacturing jobs?” said Lake. ”We’re Americans after all. We’re supposed to be able to ensure the next generation has a better chance. That’s why all of our families or most of our families came here. That’s why all of our families stayed here.” Clinton has a lot of programs to address the economic worries of what she’s called everyday Americans  —   paid family leave, debt free college, affordable child care. But she rarely sums it all up. She has been experimenting with one big theme, which she calls ”Breaking Down Barriers.” It’s a message aimed at women, Hispanics and  . But she does it in her own   way. ”She’s someone who always starts from what you can get done,” said her campaign chairman, John Podesta. ”What’s holding people back? What are the barriers people are facing? Whether that’s institutional racism or an economy that’s rigged for the people at the top. And what can I do about it? That’s where she is not only most comfortable, but I think she thinks that’s how change happens.” Clinton’s Problem Is Democrats’ Problem, Too, Coming up with a clear economic message isn’t just a problem for Hillary Clinton. It’s a problem for Democrats in general. In Celinda Lake’s polls, Democrats are consistently behind Republicans on the issue of the economy. In recent general election polls, where Clinton beats Trump handily in the horse race, the economy is the only issue where he beats her. And the economy is THE No. 1 issue. Democrats have never won a presidential election when they’re losing on the economy. ”We’re starting from a deficit in that,” said Lake. ”So it makes it really, really important to articulate a powerful economic origin story and a plan that sums up to the scale of the problems we have. People love her individual policies, but they want to make sure they add up to something big enough to deal with the incredibly entrenched economic problems we have.” What could be Clinton’s big idea?   college? A major infrastructure program? She hasn’t decided yet. And she has some challenges. In the fall, she’ll be running against an unpredictable populist, with positions that are to her left and to her right. And she has a gender problem. Trump beats Clinton on the economy not just because he’s a businessman  —   candidates from the business world get an automatic advantage on creating jobs  —   but because she’s a woman. Lake’s polling shows that female candidates from both parties are rated behind men on the economy and jobs. Maybe, Lake suggests, because women are too responsible to go for the big sweeping narrative. Clinton has done a little   on this problem. In a podcast with Politico’s Glenn Thrush, Clinton said, ”sometimes I get criticized for ’Oh my gosh there she goes with another plan.’ . .. I mean, I have said, in this campaign, ’Look, I’m not a natural politician. ’” ”I’m not somebody who, like my husband or Barack Obama, just  —   it’s music, right?” Clinton often says it’s easy to diagnose the problem. It’s harder to actually do something about the problem. Coming up with the big aspirational message is her problem and she seems to know that. Clinton has shown she’s comfortable with the lyrics. The question is, can she write the music, too?"
"If Donald Trump tweets an image of a taco bowl in the heart of a Trump Tower, but no one else is there to eat it, does it make a meme? Yes. The answer is yes. Let’s call it   . Or Cinco de  . Or ”Donald’s Gonna Donald.” NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben has already given us the preliminary rundown. On Thursday, the likely Republican presidential nominee tweeted an image of himself with a taco bowl, which he said came from one of his restaurants. The caption read, ”Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!” There’s a lot to unpack here. Taco bowls aren’t really Mexican food. Also, the food in that bowl looked awful, stale, etc. The taco bowl sat on top of a magazine featuring a photo of Trump’s  . Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican (and, actually, mostly American) holiday, not a ”Hispanic” one. We could go on. .. The Internet had a field day with this. Some wondered what Trump tributes to other minority or ethnic groups might look like. The bigger question is this: does    mean that Donald Trump is the most   man on the Internet, or actually an Internet genius? Some have argued that this Trump tweet wasn’t about Latino outreach at all. It was either meant to get attention (CHECK) or appeal to the white voters that make up a majority of his base. Either way, it kept us all talking about Trump. It gave his critics something else to deride, and his defenders something else to defend. Of course, with all Trump social media events, the initial outburst is only as good as the responses. At a Politico Playbook breakfast Friday morning, RNC Chair Reince Priebus said of the tweet, ”He’s trying. Honestly, he’s trying.” In a press briefing Friday, President Obama was asked about the tweet as well. ”I have no thoughts on Mr. Trump’s tweets,” Obama said. ”As a general rule, I don’t pay attention to Mr. Trump’s tweets. And I think that will be true for the next six months, so you can just file that one.” Trump himself responded to all the responses to his tweet Friday morning, in a phone interview on Fox News. ”As of yesterday, I had 59, 000 retweets . .. That’s almost got to be some kind of a record,” he said. ”People loved it.” Trump also said, ”I’m going to do great with the Hispanics. I mean, I’m going to do fantastic because I’m bringing jobs back to America.” Whether Trump will do well with Latino voters remains to be seen (as of now, his unfavorables with that demographic group are  ). But if Trump needs some advice on how to make his Latino outreach seem a bit less   he might want to take some lessons from one of his failed GOP presidential competitors, Jeb Bush. Last Cinco de Mayo, Bush shared a video where he spoke in Spanish to praise the holiday and Mexican culture. It seemed smart, thoughtful, and kind  —   three words few people have used in describing Trump’s taco tweet. We’ll see if Trump changes up his Latino outreach strategy over the next six months. Yes, there’s still six months until the general election."
"In the spring of 1970, a British illustrator named Ralph Steadman had just moved to America, hoping to find some work. His first call came from a small literary journal called Scanlan’s. It was looking for a cartoonist to send to the Kentucky Derby. Steadman had heard of neither the race nor the writer he was to accompany, a fellow named Hunter S. Thompson. Steadman hadn’t read any of Thompson’s work, and he certainly didn’t know that the writer had a bit of a drinking tendency, but he agreed to go. One   weekend later, Scanlan’s published the essay and launched Thompson into stardom. ”The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” so fascinated audiences that one Boston Globe writer deemed it ”gonzo”  —   a term that would stick with Hunter S. Thompson for good. ’The Real Beasts Perform’ Steadman and Thompson flew into Louisville separately and met at Churchill Downs to pick up their press credentials. As Thompson led Steadman around the racetrack, it quickly became clear that the two wouldn’t be watching much horse racing. ”We went into the inner field first to just look at the people,” he tells weekends on All Things Considered host Kelly McEvers. ”We were really looking for odd faces. People that were kind of weird, you know? That seemed to become our real purpose.” It was Thompson’s idea. They’d seek out the ”whiskey gentry,” as the writer called them, and there they’d find that face: ”a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis.” That search became the central narrative of the essay. ”We didn’t give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track,” Thompson wrote. ”We’d come to watch the real beasts perform.” At The Pendennis Club, At one point during the debauched weekend, Thompson and Steadman dined at the Pendennis Club, a private club in downtown Louisville. Thompson had arranged the upscale lunch with Steadman and a young couple Thompson knew. ”In a funny sort of way, he was an   Kentucky boy,” Steadman says. During the lunch, the wife noticed Steadman’s art supplies and asked for a portrait. Steadman was happy enough to oblige. His trademark style, though, is distorted and a little disturbing  —   not exactly a lifelike reproduction. It would come to be inseparable from Thompson’s writing, but at the 1970 Derby, Steadman’s subjects were not often pleased. ”She said, ’That ain’t pretty, I’m pretty, ain’t I?’ ” Steadman remembers. ”And Hunter said, ’Stop that filthy scribbling, Ralph.’ ” The situation escalated, and the ensuing ruckus resulted in the two being forcefully escorted from the club. At least that’s the way Thompson recalled it in his essay. But there’s one other tiny detail to that story. ”Hunter maced people in the restaurant in order to get me out safe,” Steadman says, laughing. ”He was looking after me, you see.” Monday Morning, After a hard weekend of drinking and drugs, Thompson and Steadman eventually found that face they were looking for. On the Monday morning after the race, the two stumbled out of bed and caught sight of a mirror. ”[Thompson] becomes part of the story, and that’s what always happened with us,” Steadman remembers. ”We sort of melded together.” The Scanlan’s article ends with Thompson driving Steadman to the airport, and the writer unceremoniously kicking him out of the car. That’s totally true, Steadman says. ”He took me to the airport and was like, ’Get the hell outta here, you goddamn scumbag. Get outta here,’ ” he says. ”I just thought I’d never hear from him again.” So Steadman went home to London, where he had a   job with the London Times  —   which fired him after readers complained about his disturbing cartoons. ”Then I heard from Hunter,” he says. ” ’Ralph, what are you working on? Do you want to come back over here?’ I said, ’What for? You told me to get out of here.’ ’That was just talk, Ralph, just talk. I think I had a good time. I hope you did.’ So I said, ’Yes, up to a point, yes, it was great.’ ”"
"Shahd   still lives in the place she was born: that crowded rectangle of land along the Mediterranean called the Gaza Strip. Swerki knew she wanted to raise her children differently than she had been raised in the conservative Palestinian society. Especially her first child, a girl. ”My father made me lose a chance to travel to Italy when I was 14,” says Swerki, now 26. ”Although my father allowed my two brothers to travel, to Turkey and Germany to continue their studies.” Her father said no to her teenage dream to see the world because in his view, girls always need the watchful eye of a family member. When she became a mother, Swerki wanted to give her daughter freedom to see the world, but even more, freedom in daily life at home. And she had one very specific goal in mind. She wanted to free her daughter from the traditions of shame and secrecy about bodies and sexual development. ”When I was a child, I always wanted to know how bodies of boys in the class looked. How a mother got pregnant. Those questions,” she remembers. Her mother mostly brushed her off, and her high school   teacher skipped the page about getting your period. ”She refused to explain it. She said your mother will tell you,” Swerki says. Iyad   a consultant to NGOs on youth and women in Gaza, says men and women are raised to view their bodies differently.  ”In our culture, a man can go swimming and show his body to the girls around as if this should not attract them. A girl cannot do the same,” Kronz says. ”She is brought up with the idea that her body is shameful, while he is brought up with the idea that his body is not.” Swerki and her husband took a different approach. As new parents, they read about child development in books and on the Internet. They swapped tips with friends on   answers to questions about sex, They let their young daughter wear short skirts if she wanted to, even though some in Gaza frowned. Swerki thought she was on track to carve some breathing room for her child in her conservative culture. Then one day her daughter’s preschool teacher called. She told Swerki to come to school right away. ”As any mother, I went there, expecting the worst,” Swerki says. And she got it  —   sort of. ”The teacher, she went doing something out of the class. She left the kids there alone. And when she came back, she found my daughter naked.” There were no allegations of touching or abuse. The little girl told her teacher she had taken off her clothes because two little boys had asked her to show them what her body looked like. Swerki saw it as unsurprising behavior for a   . But the teacher, Swerki says, reacted as if the girl had ruined her future. ”She told me, ’She’s a very beautiful girl, she has very beautiful hair, but she . .. oh my God,’ ” Swerki recalls. And even though she didn’t want to, Swerki panicked. ”She gave me the feeling my daughter is a bad daughter.” Despite her determination to make her own family life different than her childhood, Swerki felt so stressed by shame at this point she couldn’t focus at work. ”I don’t know, maybe due to, family issues, maybe due to the situation here in Gaza, sometimes people oblige you to think in a certain way,” Swerki says. Hasan Zeyada, a psychologist who works in a community mental health clinic in Gaza, says people in the conservative Muslim society tend toward an ”external locus of control”  —   which means believing your future is determined by outside forces you cannot control. ”We always think of how others will perceive us and what they will say about us,” Zeyada says. ”Anything against the cultural moral standard will produce a feeling of shame.” It’s a source of stress particularly for women in Gaza, he says, as the honor of a wife, daughter, mother or sister reflects on the family. Suad Lubbad, who trains teachers in early childhood education for a program run by the aid organization ANERA in Gaza, says many lack knowledge about child development, children’s rights or psychological issues. ”I’ve found they don’t know much about children,” she says. Preschool teachers in Gaza are also   and underappreciated, she says. Swerki has a college degree and is part of a generation of Gazans more educated and connected to the rest of the world than any previous generation, despite severe Israeli and Egyptian restrictions on travel. She works for a development organization. She sought out a therapist to help her hold on to the approach to child rearing she wanted to pursue. After a few days, Swerki went back to speak to the teacher again. This time, she was angry. ”I told her you are mistaken, if you are a real teacher, you would know that this is normal, and you would deal with kids in a better way. And also if you were a real teacher you wouldn’t leave kids alone in the class and went out to talk or to chat. So it’s your mistake, not my daughter’s mistake.” For her, it was a moment of triumph, a return to her own values. And she vowed to be stronger in the future. ”I will never allow anyone to control my reactions and feelings towards any incident happening to my daughter. To my husband. To me. To my life.” But her story doesn’t stop there. This will not be an easy resolution to keep in a small, crowded place where even as an adult relatives watch how your behavior affects the family’s reputation. For example, Swerki covers her hair out of respect for tradition but wears pants in public, which few women do. One of her aunts phones Swerki’s father to report this when she spots Swerki on the street in pants. Out of respect, Swercki does not bawl out her aunt. She and her husband did break the tradition of living in his family home to renovate a large apartment in a different neighborhood. One of Swerki’s biggest motivations was to give her daughter a room of her own. Swerki’s struggle to honor conflicting values is a challenge. But the experience of ”teetering between two imperatives” is what drives cultural change, says writer Yuval Harari in his   book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.  Swerki teeters. She has set her childhood dreams at the feet of her daughter. She says loves Gaza too much to leave. Even though it is a difficult love  —   what Harari calls ”cognitive dissonance.” ”I love it because I had no other choice. I love it because I had to love it. But if I had the chance to choose my life from the beginning, it would be different.”"
"More than a quarter of American adults will dine out this Mother’s Day  —   and most of them will opt to fete Mom with a breakfast, lunch or brunch out. If this describes your plans, guess what? You’re honoring a feminist tradition. The right to dine out in public during the day was an early victory of the women’s rights movement at the turn of the 20th century, says Lisa Stoffer, the   of Repast, a book that examines the dawn of modern dining during that era. ”It was part of a larger set of changes in society that accepted the idea that women could be public people,” Stoffer tells The Salt. ”Some of the early lawsuits around women being able to eat in public without chaperones came from people involved in women’s voting rights.” While women had long visited each other for tea and company in the home, the idea of a woman eating out at a restaurant, unaccompanied by a man, was seen as downright scandalous. But if you were one of the many   women flocking to cities for jobs in factories during this era, and you didn’t bring your lunch from home, your options were limited. As Stoffer writes in Repast, ”few, if any, places were convenient, affordable, and met   standards of feminine decency.”   counters were cheap but crowded, and while   women were sometimes welcome, they frequented them at the peril of their reputation, since noshing there left the unseemly possibility of being squished between members of the opposite sex.   ladies had a few more options, like tea rooms and department store eateries, which catered to monied women, but if they wanted to dine at the finest restaurants unchaperoned, they were out of luck, too. (And forget about going out at night: Only women of   did that.) In the midst of the suffragist movement, feminists of the era decided enough was enough. According to Repast, in 1907, Harriot Stanton Blatch  —   daughter of famed suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a women’s leader in her own right  —   and Hettie Wright Graham sued the fashionable Hoffman House restaurant for refusing to seat them. Though an   jury found in favor of Hoffman House, not long after, a New York assemblyman introduced an (ultimately unsuccessful) bill that would have allowed women ”equal accommodations with men” in public places, revealing a shift in public perception. There was no single turning point in the fight for equal dining, but by 1908, Stoffer writes, keeping women from eating out without a male escort began ”to be seen for what it was: an antique, preposterous, and ultimately untenable custom.”   The ties between daytime dining out and ”women’s liberation” became reinforced with the rise of brunch in America beginning in the 1930s. ”From the 1930s to 1970s, brunch was being marketed as a meal that was saving time and money” because it combined two meals into one, says Farha Ternikar, author of Brunch: A History. Most of this marketing, she says, was seen in an explosion of brunch cookbooks and new food products hoping to get mom to try out a new ingredient or recipe. The concept of Sunday brunch took off amidst a general loosening of social mores in   War II America. People were going to church less, which meant the chance to sleep in more and start the day with a late breakfast. Restaurants and hotels pushed brunch as a way to drum up new business. By the 1950s, brunch had also trickled into the home. As the rules for Sunday relaxed, so, too, did the meal schedule. ”Americans didn’t need to have three formal meals on Sunday anymore,” Ternikar says. And serving their families brunch, followed by a light supper later, was seen as liberating for women, she says: It meant one less meal to prepare, at a time when married women were typically spending two hours a day cooking and cleaning. (This compares to about five hours a week today.) Restaurants were quick to capitalize on this advantage for Mom in their brunch marketing. As early as the 1940s, newspapers like The New York Times were advertising Mother’s Day brunch specials at various restaurants. The marketing around ”Mother’s Day was about really treating your mom and giving her a break from domestic chores,” says Ternikar. Taking the luxurious step of brunching at a restaurant eliminated the cleanup that might fall mom’s way if, say, the kids decided to make pancakes at home. But even for those women without children, brunch became a sort of public expression of women’s lib. As Ternikar writes, ”By the 1960s, ladies who brunched were often the ladies who worked Monday through Friday.” The weekends were when they got to socialize and spend their   money. And for single ladies, brunch also provided an excuse to bend   social norms. As the longtime Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown wrote in Single Girl’s Cookbook, published in 1969, ”Brunch is a wonderful way for a single girl to entertain.” Terniker says Brown’s book gave young, single women permission to partake in daytime drinking through brunch cocktails like the mimosa and  —   brazenly  —   included recipes for gentleman callers who may have remained from a date the night before. Indeed, as a ”newfangled” meal, unburdened by a long history of rules of etiquette, brunch was in the perfect position to break social norms. These days, of course, brunch itself has become a norm, particularly on Mother’s Day  —   fittingly, it’s now the most popular day to dine out of the year. Tove Danovich is a writer based in New York City."
"If I say Kentucky Derby, you say . .. mint julep? Well, if you’re a Kentucky dame like me you do. As my fellow Louisville native Jesse Baker once pointed out: ”It ain’t Derby without a mint julep.” Race fans have been drinking mint juleps at Churchill Downs in Louisville since the racetrack’s inception in 1875, according to bourbon historian Fred Minnick. Last year the crowd sipped 127, 341 juleps on Derby Day. And according to Churchill Down’s Derby site, this feat requires thousands of bottles of Old Forester Kentucky Bourbon and 60, 000 pounds of ice. My hometown heart swoons for a julep made just the way they serve them up at Churchill Downs. The taste is very minty. A handful of fresh sprigs are heaped into the glass. You can smell the mint in the stands. Roving vendors who carry trays of juleps move through the boxes and stands hollering out: Mint julep! Get your   mint julep! ”It’s like a Cracker Jack salesman at a baseball game,” says Minnick. The shaved ice assures the drink is wicked cold when it’s handed to you. From experience, I’d says it’s best to sip  —   savoring slowly, that is  —   especially under the May sun. Otherwise you may doze off in the bluegrass before the horses even leave the paddock! So, if you want to whip up a little Derby spirit at home, how do you make a julep? Early recipes keep it simple. ”Take a silver cup. . .. Fill it with ice pulverized to the fineness of snow. Bruise one tender little leaf of mint and stick it in the ice,” reads a 1908 Chicago Tribune article quoting a Kentucky gentleman. ”Then dissolve a spoonful of sugar” in some good whiskey. (You can also listen to Carl Kassel read a 1937 recipe.) The traditional julep is always on offer in the bluegrass state, but today bartenders are mixing it up. ”It’s not uncommon for Kentucky bartenders to have mint simple syrups or infusions, and you’ll see many takes on mint juleps around town,” says Minnick. What gives the drink its signature is the aromatics of the mint. ”The aroma that comes out is beautiful,” says mixologist extraordinaire Derek Brown, who owns several bars in Washington, D. C. and is a big julep fan. But here’s the thing: A julep doesn’t necessarily need to be made with bourbon or whiskey. ”You can change the spirit around,” says Brown. ”That’s the fun part of it.” Brown points to the Georgia Peach julep, made with peach brandy. ”That’s awesome,” he says. There’s a champagne julep, rum juleps  —   even gin juleps. ”I encourage people to experiment. It’s fun to try different iterations,” Brown says. I like the idea of the  . But for the first Saturday of May, Derby Day, I’m sticking with the   Churchill   whiskey mint julep. I’ll definitely have one in my hand as the race begins. 2 oz. Bourbon,   oz. Simple Syrup, 6 mint sprigs, Muddle three to four sprigs with simple syrup in Julep cup. Remove mint after rubbing mint around cup walls. Fill halfway with crushed ice and add Bourbon. Fill with crushed ice and garnish with extra sprigs. 3 oz. Champagne,   oz. Cognac, Dash Angostura Bitters, Muddle three to four sprigs with simple syrup in Julep cup. Remove mint after rubbing mint around cup walls. Fill halfway with crushed ice and add Cognac and Champagne. Fill with crushed ice and garnish with extra sprigs and lemon peel."
"Ask anyone in Louisville, Ky. what to eat and drink during the Kentucky Derby, and chances are good he’ll tell you two things: mint juleps and ”derby pie.” But while bartenders around the country make mint juleps without controversy, things are a little more complicated for ”derby pie.” The creators of the pie are real sticklers about what can be called a ”derby pie”  —   and what can’t. And they’re not afraid to sue over it. For 24 years, Susan Fouts was a hostess at the Science Hill Inn, a restaurant in Shelbyville, Ky. outside Louisville. Fouts says she and her   served lots of what they called ”derby pie,” until one day Science Hill received a    letter in the mail. The letter said that the name ” ®” was a federally registered trademark of Kern’s Kitchen in Louisville. ”We were threatened,” says Fouts. ”And we never, never mentioned ’derby pie’ again.” What’s commonly called a ”derby pie” is like an embellished pecan pie: sticky, sweet filling made with bourbon and chocolate chips, covered by a hard nut top and a pastry crust. Ironically, Kern’s recipe is made without bourbon, and it uses walnuts instead of pecans. ” ” is said to have been created by Kern family members in 1950 as the signature item for their restaurant, the Melrose Inn. Alan Rupp, the Kerns’ grandson, says Grandma Kern started out baking three pies at a time, leaving them on the windowsill to cool. In 1960, the Kerns closed the Melrose Inn but kept the pie business. Not long after, Kern’s Kitchen filed ” ” as a registered trademark. Rupp says Kern’s Kitchen now makes over 800 pies a day. The company goes to great lengths to protect its recipe and technique. In the kitchen, a curtain closes off the mixing area so that the production manager can make the filling in private. And the trademark protects the name. Science Hill still serves its pie, but changed the name on its menu. Fouts says if someone ordered a slice of ”derby pie,” servers had to be very careful. ”You can say, ’We have chocolate pecan pie, but we do not have ”” ’ ” Fouts says. ”You didn’t know if they’d sent a plant in to see if we were doing it or not.” Not everyone backed down as easily as Science Hill did. Rick Paul, who has managed the White Light Diner in Frankfort, Ky. since 1991, has been sued twice by Kern’s Kitchen. When I asked how long he’s been making ”derby pie,” he was quick to correct me. ”I don’t make a pie that I call ’derby pie,’ ” he says. ”I make a Kentucky Bourbon Pie.” Paul says when Kern’s Kitchen first told him he had to stop selling anything called ”derby pie,” he decided to have a little fun with it. ”I actually put up a sign after that conversation [that read]: Have a piece of ’I Can’t Call It Derby Pie’ pie,” he says. Kern’s sued Paul in 1997 and again in 2007. Paul says he’s still paying off the $14, 000 in lawyer fees he owes. Paul, like many Kentuckians, felt that the name ”derby pie” belonged to everyone. So why would Kern’s go to the trouble of protecting a brand name to which the public feels entitled? Liz Williams, a New Orleans attorney specializing in food law, says Kern’s was smart: Once you’ve got a trademark, you have to protect it. If your name starts being used as a generic term, you can lose your trademark. Williams gives zipper as an example. ”It became so synonymous with the product that now it is a word,” she says. ”So it’s lost its trademarked status.” Kern’s doesn’t want ” ” to become the next zipper, which explains why it defends its trademark so aggressively. But many argue it’s too late  —   that ”derby pie” is already a generic term. Back in 1986, Kern’s sued Bon Appetit magazine for including a recipe for ”derby pie” in one of its issues and then again in a hardback book. To prove that ”derby pie” was a generic term for   pie, Bon Appetit found stories in the newspaper, recipes from magazines and cookbooks, and menus across the country  —   all referring to a ”derby pie” without mentioning Kern’s. The judge bought the magazine’s argument, ruling that the term ”derby pie” had become generic. But that wasn’t the end of it. The next year, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati found that Bon Appetit had not presented enough evidence to say for sure that ”derby pie” was now generic. To make that case, the magazine would have had to go to trial  —   it settled the suit instead. Still, if Kern’s is the original ”derby pie”  —   the dessert that people think of when they think of the name  —   why do people feel such a sense of ownership over it? If Kern’s pie was the original, why do most people use a different recipe? White Light Diner’s Paul argues that what Kern’s is doing robs Kentuckians of their history. ”If you have people scared to use the words ’derby pie,’ and yet Grandma used to make it, then you’ve really banished Grandma in a way, haven’t you?” Paul says. For their part, the folks at Kern’s think that protecting their family recipe actually works to honor Grandma  —   their grandma. Nina Feldman is a journalist based in New Orleans. A version of this story originally ran on Gravy, the podcast from the Southern Foodways Alliance."
"Kimberly Richardson has never gotten a flu shot. Since she’s healthy and considers the seasonal vaccines a ”  concoction” of the viruses expected to dominate, the northern California gym teacher and mother of two says she didn’t want an ”injection of something that may or may not keep me healthy in the long run.” She’s not alone. In an analysis of 245, 386 women who delivered babies at Utah and Idaho hospitals over nine flu seasons, 90 percent said they didn’t get vaccinated for influenza while pregnant. Those who did reaped benefits  —   their babies were healthier. As a group, infants whose moms reported getting a flu shot during pregnancy had about   the risk of flulike illness during their first six months of life, compared to babies of unimmunized mothers.   flu antibodies are a ”gift the mom gives her baby across the placenta,” says Julie Shakib, a pediatrician at the University of Utah School of Medicine who led the study, published this week in the journal Pediatrics. In 2006, researchers at Kaiser Permanente published a similar analysis of 41, 129 babies born between 1995 and 2001. But that study found no correlation between rates of infant illness and flu vaccination in expectant mothers. This new analysis included six times as many babies and eight times as many vaccinated moms, notes Eric France, a pediatrician and preventive medicine physician with Kaiser Permanente Colorado and leader of the 2006 study. ”This is the paper I wanted to write 10 years ago,” he says. Larger studies tend to be more reliable because they’re more statistically accurate. Other prior studies have shown that babies do benefit from maternal immunization  —   including a 2008 trial in Bangladesh that randomized 340 pregnant women to receive a flu shot or a control vaccine. Randomized trials are considered the gold standard for clinical research. However, a study that assigns some participants a placebo flu vaccination would be considered unethical in the United States given the country’s standard of care. Instead, most U. S. studies observe a particular group over time or survey a group retrospectively, as in the current study. These analyses are challenging. First, it’s hard to agree on what constitutes ”flu.” Do you count all babies that show up at the doctor’s office with fever and cold symptoms? Do you restrict analysis to cases that were confirmed by lab testing or focus only on confirmed flu that required hospitalization? The new analysis looked at all three categories. It also takes a long time to get enough cases for statistically sound results. In the new study, which tracked 249, 387 babies under six months old who were born between December 2005 and March 2014, only 0. 35 percent (866 babies) met criteria for the broadest classification —  a diagnosis of ”  illness.” A mere 0. 26 percent (658 babies) had   flu, and among those cases less than a quarter (151 babies) were hospitalized because of their illness. Furthermore, only 10 percent of expecting moms said they’d gotten a flu vaccine. Immunization rates were actually much lower during the first four years of the study —  around 2 percent —  but jumped to 21 percent over the five flu seasons after the   H1N1 pandemic. When H1N1 struck again in   about half of the pregnant women in the study reported getting vaccinated for flu. ”Over time we’re actually encouraged by the improvement in providers’ ability to deliver the flu vaccine and strongly recommend it,” says Shakib. ”There’s been a culture shift.” A recent study of postpartum women found that expecting moms were far more likely to get a flu shot if their prenatal care providers recommended it. Still, given the low overall immunization rate across the current study, the researchers collected data more than eight years to get 866 babies with at least one   illness. Among those, 96 percent (834 babies) were born to moms who didn’t get a flu shot —  which means 4 percent (32 babies) developed the flu despite their moms getting immunized while pregnant. Now let’s figure out how this translates to flu protection for babies. If the flu vaccine had no impact on infant illness rates, you’d expect the percentage of   babies to equal the percentage of unimmunized moms. Under this assumption 10 percent (87 babies) should have been born to vaccinated mothers, since we know that 10 percent of mothers reported getting a flu shot. However, in reality there were only 32 infant flu cases among vaccinated mothers, which suggests that 55 babies —  or 63 percent —  were protected. Applying a similar analysis to   flu, the study found that maternal vaccinations led to a 70 percent reduction in infant illness. So how does mom’s flu shot protect her baby? After getting vaccinated, a pregnant woman makes specialized proteins called antibodies, which recognize flu viruses and boost the body’s defenses against these pathogens. ”Those antibodies can cross the placenta and go into the fetal circulation,” says Mitch Kronenberg of the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. The protection babies receive is known as passive immunity. Unlike mom’s defenses, which were ”educated” to recognize viral proteins in the vaccine, the baby’s immune system ”didn’t get trained but took something from the mother and used it,” Kronenberg says. Placental antibodies stick around in the baby for up to six months. They’re thought to be different from the protective antibodies found in breast milk, which may help shape the immune system’s relationship with   bacteria, according to a mouse study published Thursday by UC Berkeley researchers. Shakib and coworkers have an ongoing study to determine if the immune protection a baby gets from maternal flu antibodies is stronger if mom breastfeeds. The researchers are analyzing blood and breast milk samples from 40   pairs at the University of Utah Hospital. They expect to publish the results within a year, Shakib told NPR. Esther Landhuis is a freelance science journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow her at @elandhuis."
"On Vergenoegd Wine Estate in Stellenbosch, South Africa, about a thousand Indian runner ducks parade twice a day into a vineyard to rid it of pests. It’s a remarkably orderly scene. Unlike your typical waddling duck, these ducks don’t sway back and forth. They run quickly in a straight line. Every morning at 9:45 a. m. they emerge from a gate and zip around the gleaming white manor house  —   even sticking to a manicured gravel path. They run in formation. Their beaks all point in the same direction, their bodies all turn at the same time  —   like they’ve worked on the choreography beforehand. The previous owner of the wine estate, John Faure, is a bird lover and brought them over from Asia. They have been at the estate for at least 30 years. The history of the breed goes back much further. According to the Livestock Conservancy, runner ducks have been used in Asia for thousands of years to glean snails and insects from rice paddies. The Vergenoegd ducks have a similar job. They eat the snails and insects in the vineyard. Denzil Matthys, the duck caretaker at Vergenoegd, says the ducks help make the farm sustainable. ”We try to keep a   farm by using the ducks,” he says. ”They help us not to use poison on the farm.” The runner ducks stand upright, giving them the ability to pluck snails from high up on the trunk. They’re skinny enough to fit between the vines. ”The Indian runner duck is the best worker in the vineyard,” Matthys says. Marlize Jacobs, the farm manager and winemaker, says snails are a big problem at Vergeneogd because of the vineyard’s proximity to the ocean. The culprit is a small, white dune snail. ”After winter, the vineyards bud,” she says. ”Those buds are succulent bits of food and snails love to eat them. If we don’t control them, they will absolutely destroy the vineyard.” Enter the runner duck fleet. They patrol 140 acres of vineyard for about five hours a day, five days a week. Watching them spread out in the vineyard, it’s difficult to imagine how the farmers round them up for the night. ”Oh, getting them back is the easiest!” Jacobs says. Asian farmers used bamboo poles with cloth attached to one end to drive their flocks home from the rice paddies. At Vergenoegd, three men wave flags to direct the ducks back to their pens. The ducks resume formation and take the gravel path home. Jacobs says that even though the ducks forage all day, they get hungry and are eager to go back for their evening meal of corn  —   a fine accompaniment to escargot."
"Now that the long wait is over and fans can finally bask in the   superhero brawl that is Captain America: Civil War, some may overlook something really special about this movie. It has three black superheroes on the front lines. There’s Don Cheadle’s War Machine. Chadwick Boseman appears as Marvel’s first African superhero, the Black Panther. And Anthony Mackie returns to a Captain America movie as the Falcon, asking Cap if he really wants to resist government control of superheroes. ”I just want to consider all our options,” Falcon says in a clip from Civil War that played endlessly in preview trailers and commercials. ”Because people that shoot at you usually wind up shooting at me, too.” Given all the criticism recent superhero movies have faced for featuring mostly white males, this may seem like a decisive rebuttal. But Nate Moore, an executive producer of the film, says the lineup of   superheroes was a coincidence of storytelling. ”I don’t think at any point did we feel, ’Well this is going to seem like a political move on our part, or this is part of a larger trend,’” Moore says. ”It’s sort of us as people in Hollywood catching up to the images people want to see.” As Moore explains, movies the size of Civil War cost a lot  —   reported budget, $250 million  —   and getting Hollywood to believe that movies featuring superheroes of color could be successful on that level has taken time. Moore says it was his idea to introduce the Falcon as Captain America’s best friend and backup in the previous movie, Winter Soldier. He had grown up reading comics featuring the two and always figured it was a natural pairing. And he says Black Panther debuts in Civil War in a similarly pivotal role. He’s the ruler of a super   African nation who stands equal to Iron Man and Captain America. That’s a level of independence we haven’t seen in black characters from recent big budget superhero movies. ”We kind of think of [Black Panther] as Obama, if Obama was also James Bond,” he says, laughing. ”He has to lead a country, but also has to be that country’s best fighter . .. He has to go into real dangerous situations and solve them. He’s not just going to do that by punching people in the face. He’s going to use political savvy, he’s going to be clever, and he’s going to be ingenious.” And he’s not alone. In fact, 2016 is shaping up to be the Year of the Black Superhero. Other black or biracial superheroes we’ll see in TV and film this year include Will Smith playing Deadshot in the upcoming Suicide Squad movie, Alexandra Shipp as Storm in  : Apocalypse and Mike Colter as Luke Cage in Netflix’s TV series of the same name. Many of these characters could be considered sidekicks or supporting characters, which is often an issue. But there’s a Panther movie planned for 2018 and the Cage TV series, placing superheroes of color center stage. Brian Michael Bendis is a comic book, TV and film writer. He wrote the comic book storyline in which a        takes over as  . Bendis says it’s about time movies and TV shows caught up with the diversity of current comic books. ”It’s ridiculous that every superhero [in film] was a white man who is 30 years old,” he says. ”It’s completely unrealistic. It’s not the world we live in.” Years ago, the comics industry pushed to diversify characters, fearing comic audiences had become too insular  —   in danger of becoming mostly the province of   white males. Bendis said changing the ethnicity of   came from a simple question: Does the character really have to be white? ”The kid lives with his aunt . .. he’s a science nerd . .. there’s really not a reason that kid should be white,” he says. ”And it took off. It’s quite shocking how eager the fans were for it.” The Black Panther first appeared in comic books in 1966. He was the first black superhero in modern comics, a character who felt like a nod to the civil rights movements of the time. Luke Cage, who appeared in Marvel Comics six years later, was originally a   prison inmate given unbreakable skin by an experiment. His style was influenced by blaxploitation films like Shaft and Superfly. But with a Black Panther movie coming and the Cage series debuting in September, the question remains: How will the characters be reinvented for today’s times? Jamie Broadnax, managing editor of BlackGirlNerds. com, just hopes filmmakers won’t repeat the mistake they made when casting   Halle Berry to play the superhero known as Storm. In the comics, Storm is the daughter of a princess from Kenya, powerful enough to lead the  . But the   movies have always positioned Berry’s Storm as a supporting character hardly reflecting her African heritage. ”Hollywood has a huge colorism problem  —   huge  —   especially when it comes to black women,” Broadnax says. ”And now we’re seeing the new [younger] Storm in Apocalypse . .. I think she’s basically a baby version of Halle Berry. .. we have another   Storm.” Hollywood has misfired in the past with superhero films starring black characters, including the last two Blade movies with Wesley Snipes, Shaquille O’Neal in the   Steel and the other superhero role Halle Berry took on  —   Catwoman. Still, as increasingly diverse audiences demand superhero films and TV shows that better reflect their world, the pressure will only grow for projects like the Black Panther film and Luke Cage series to deliver   groundbreaking characters."
"If you haven’t heard of the Marvel superhero Black Panther, that’s going to change very soon. With a reboot of the comic series just released  —   authored by none other than National Book Award winner   Coates  —   plus the character’s   debut in the new blockbuster Captain America: Civil War and the launch of a film franchise slated for 2018, Black Panther is on the brink of entering the collective pop culture consciousness in a big way. For new fans, here’s a quick overview of the character’s backstory: Black Panther’s real name is T’Challa, and he’s the king of the African nation of Wakanda, a technologically advanced society enriched by ”vibranium,” a mineral deposited by a meteorite crash. Black Panther’s powers (enhanced senses, speed healing and infinite knowledge) are derived from his connection with ancestors and deities. When he’s not assisting the Avengers in New York or completing his doctorate at Oxford (he’s a busy guy) Black Panther works tirelessly to protect his kingdom of Wakanda. There are different theories about the   inspiration for Wakanda. Coates explains his in this post for The Atlantic’s website. But the actor Chadwick Boseman, who plays Black Panther in the upcoming Marvel movies, told The New York Times that Wakanda is a fictional version of ”the Mutapa empire of   Zimbabwe.” So how does the mythical Wakanda stack up to the   Mutapa? Stretching from   South Africa into Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia, the kingdom of Mutapa thrived from the early 1400s to about 1760. ”Mutapa operated on three basic levels: they had a capital city, provinces and little villages,” says Professor Angelo Nicolaides of the University of South Africa. Chiefs ruled at each of these levels under the supreme authority of the king, known as the Munhumutapa.  Like so many other kingdoms that believed in the divine right of kings, ”the Mutapan people believed that their leaders were placed in positions of authority by the creator,” says Nicolaides. ”The oral tradition tells us that they were involved in ancestral worship to a large extent, and the people believed that the kings had a very good relationship with the spirit world.”  If the kingdom of Mutapa had a superpower, it would be a staggeringly effective trade system. ”Most kingdoms in Southern Africa are known for their military might and great dictators,” says Edward Mabaya, associate director of Cornell’s International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development. ”Mutapa stands as a symbol of economic success through local, regional and international trade.” Mutapa’s equivalent of Black Panther’s precious ”vibranium”? Gold. And lots of it. ”They had resources of very rich gold in the valley to the east of modern day Harare in Zimbabwe,” says Nicolaides. The king maintained ownership of all the mines in Mutapa, the exact locations of which were kept secret under penalty of death. In addition to gold, he says, Mutapa’s most valuable resources were ivory, salt and cotton. Mutapa traded extensively within its own borders, but the kingdom also established prolific trading networks with Europe, Asia and northern Africa. Archaeological excavations have uncovered Chinese porcelain, Indian beads, and Portuguese cloth in the Mutapa region. That’s an especially impressive feat, explains Mabaya, when one considers the geographic limitations of the area. ”Mutapa is not on a major river or ocean that would give it natural advantage for transport infrastructure.” Through bustling local bazaars and strategic partnerships with Portuguese traders along the coast, ”Mutapa was able to achieve unparalleled trade against all odds for about three centuries.” During the height of its trading boom, Mutapa seemed nearly as invincible as its comic book counterpart. In the end, a combination of factors led to its downfall: infighting between provinces, overmining, religious clashes caused by village chiefs converting to Christianity, and forceful takeovers of resources and trading stations by the Portuguese  —   to name a few. By the   the Mutapa empire had crumbled amid a civil war. According to Mabaya, another culprit behind Mutapa’s downfall may have been an    villain: a warming climate. ”Without any big rivers nearby, just a couple of years of drought would have led to the abandonment of this kingdom,” he says. ”We do not need archaeology to confirm this theory. Today, this part of Zimbabwe is experiencing severe drought conditions.” And as always, history teaches many lessons. Says Mabaya: ”I think the Mutapa kingdom is a great reminder of contemporary opportunities and threats facing Africa.” Only in this case, there’s no   Black Panther to save the day."
"This election season establishment candidates have been put on the defensive. That’s true in the Presidential campaign and in races further down on the ticket, including the   bid by the head of the Democratic National Committee, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Wasserman Shultz’s challenger is drawing on national support and providing her with the first primary challenge of her career. So, who exactly is he? He’s Tim Canova, a stalwart progressive in the mold of Sanders himself. Florida’s 23rd congressional district is heavily Democratic, and Wasserman Schultz has won there easily six times before. She’s the favorite to win again, but she is being pushed by Canova, who served on a Wall Street reform advisory panel for Sanders in 2011 and is accusing Wasserman Schultz of being too cozy with big banks. UPDATE, May 21: Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a statement Saturday saying he’s supporting the primary opponent of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In fact, Sanders says if he’s elected president, he would effectively terminate Wasserman Schultz’s chairmanship. ”Well, clearly, I favor her opponent,” Sanders says. ”His views are much closer to mine than as to Wasserman Shultz’s.” [Our original story continues] As DNC chairperson, she has easy access to the national media and to party donors. But Wasserman Schultz’s role as spokesperson for the Democratic establishment has also made her a target. ’She looks to line her pocket’ On a recent weeknight, Canova was at a Pipefitters Union hall in   a Miami suburb, making his pitch to about 30 members. His major theme is that Wasserman Schultz receives too much money from banks and big business. ”She has a safe district,” he told union members. ”And what does she do with her safety? Does she look after her constituents? She looks to line her pocket. She’s moved up in the ranks in the hierarchy of the Democratic Party. And she’s done it by taking millions of dollars.” If that sounds a little like Bernie Sanders’ attacks on Hillary Clinton, that’s not a coincidence. Canova advised Sanders on financial regulation and endorsed him early in his presidential bid. Canova says he decided to run for Congress after working last year to fight the   Partnership. Wasserman Schultz voted to give President Obama   authority to complete the trade deal. Problems with trade, banks, the nuclear deal and payday loans, While Canova agrees with Wasserman Schultz on many social issues, Canova accused Wasserman Schultz of not looking out for the economic interests of people in her district, especially young people. ”I see this generation as really suffering from a very weak job market,” Canova said. ”The trade agreement’s outsourced a lot of jobs. But there’s a lot to be done even aside from trade that has not been on her radar. ” While he works to get his name out to Democrats in this South Florida district, Canova has picked up a lot of support nationally. Among progressives in the Democratic Party, there’s a lot of anger for Wasserman Schultz and the    for being too cozy with banks and Wall Street. In the first quarter, as a largely unknown Democratic challenger, Canova pulled in more than $500, 000 in contributions, most of it from outside Florida. He expects to have $1 million by the next reporting deadline. Canova believes Wasserman Schultz is out of step with constituents on economic and other issues, such as her support for President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The head of the Democratic Club in Sunny Isles, Lew Thaler said when Canova spoke to his group recently, he told them he would have opposed it. ”Sunny Isles Beach is a very big Jewish community,” Thaler says. ”There are a substantial amount of Jewish people here. He satisfied them.” There are others besides Canova taking aim at Wasserman Schultz. An outside group, Allied Progress, has paid for billboards attacking her for supporting a bill that would prevent federal regulators from setting terms for payday loans. Those are     loans consumer groups criticize as predatory. In an interview on Miami’s CBS4 recently, Wasserman Schultz defended her support for the bill. ”Payday lending is unfortunately a necessary component of how people get access to capital, (people) that are the working poor,” Wasserman Schultz said. Financial support from progressive Democrats from around the country has been vital for Canova. And Sean Foreman, an associate political science professor at Barry University in Miami said once Sanders is out of the presidential race, the flood of money is only likely to grow. ”Those who want to see Bernie Sanders win the nomination  —   and when they realize the path for him is virtually over, they may look for smaller victories in Senate or House races,” Foreman said. Florida’s congressional primary comes in late August, a month after Democrats will have settled on a presidential candidate and begin looking to races in Congress."
"Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect Strava’s latest figures for the number of   activities uploaded to its database. Cyclists often find themselves pedaling between huge trucks and speeding cars or stranded when protected bike lanes abruptly end at busy intersections. Chris Cassidy moved to San Francisco in 2005. He used to cycle through Market Street, a busy downtown thoroughfare. ”It was definitely the kind of biking experience that was really only for some of the more courageous among us,” he says. ”You would be sharing a lane with much larger vehicles going faster than you when people were not as used to sharing the lane.” Before San Francisco, Cassidy was in Washington, D. C. where he said he was hit by taxi doors twice when he was cycling in the protected lanes. ”They just stopped, and the passenger opened the door to the bike lane,” he says. Cyclists and pedestrians often pass on knowledge about which roads or intersections to avoid through word of mouth or social media. Now some cities and companies are experimenting with technology to record that information  —   which can be crucial in helping design or improve bike and pedestrian paths. And transportation planners are turning to data from apps that cyclists and runners use to track themselves. With the exploding popularity in bikes and many millennials’ distaste for driving, the need for better streets is gaining attention. What Does It Take To Build A Bike Lane? San Francisco has a goal to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024. According to the city’s ”Vision Zero” report, more than half of traffic deaths in the city are pedestrians, compared to 14 percent nationally. Cassidy, now the spokesperson for the San Francisco Biking Coalition, says enforcement and smart engineering based on data are key to reaching that goal. ”The first piece of data is where are injuries happening  —   where people are using streets currently and where they are doing so that is proving unsafe,” he says. Technology plays a big role in how that information is collected, says Jamie Parks, a manager with the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency. ”Whether it’s data analysis to look at where crashes have occurred so we can improve safety, or analyzing bicycle counts to understand where demand is, or getting feedback from the public,” Parks says. The agency has issued an annual bicycle count report for over a decade now. Initially, it had to rely on sending people to count bicycles on the streets for a   period. Last year, the department added several automated bike counters that consist of a wire loop embedded in the pavement, allowing    data collection with more accuracy. Alex Dodds and Emiko Atherton from Smart Growth America are championing a new way of designing streets. ”Historically roads have been built to facilitate the most number of cars as possible, and usually that means wide lanes, lots of space for cars to go faster,” Dodds says. ”Often planners will add a bike lane. They’ll just plop it on . .. it’s very unsafe for everyone.” The ”Complete Streets Approach” means building streets that accommodate the needs of a variety of users  —   drivers, cyclists, children and wheelchair users. ”It doesn’t mean every roadway is outfitted with a sidewalk or a bike lane, but there is a network that allows people to travel,” Atherton says. ”So we start to look at patterns of how people are using roadways or what streets are bikers using.” The Department of Transportation does have national data from surveys about who walks or bikes and crash statistics, but it may not be as helpful in determining which streets are used or in measuring effectiveness of street designs. Dodds says Smart Growth America published a report last year that examined the outcome of the Complete Streets programs. ”It was really hard for us to get answers because so few transportation agencies collect information about what happens after you added a bike lane,” Dodds says. ”There is just not enough data out there about who is biking, and where they are biking, and where they walk.” Technology Taking A Crack At Data Collection, Strava developed software and an app that allows cyclers and runners to track their journey and compare their achievements with others. It left the company with a huge database of how people move  —   and it decided to launch Strava Metro, a service that shows movement street by street. Data from users is anonymized and aggregated. The idea started,   Michael Horvath says, when an employee in the Oregon Department of Transportation, who was also a Strava user, reached out to the company. She asked if the department could use the data that Strava collected. Six months later, Horvath launched Strava Metro. ”Before you can make changes, you have to know what is going on,” he says. For example, Horvath says, Strava used the data to find out how pedestrians and cyclists get to the Tilikum Crossing, a bridge that recently opened in Portland, Ore. It helped the city figure out where it should build pathways leading to the bridge. Strava Metro is not the only database collecting such information. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority created a CycleTracks app in 2009 to track biking route choices in the city and other cities from Austin to Toronto are using it to collect data. According to Strava, over 6 million   activities are uploaded to its database every week from around the globe. The cost to its clients  —   which include state and local governments  —   depends on the number of Strava members in a particular area. The company charges the clients 80 cents per member for a year. While Parks says he would love to have the data  —   especially about   transportation choices, he still has concerns. ”People who use the Strava app may not be representative of the average cyclist in SF,” Parks says. ”It might be for recreational routes.” But using technology to track demand for pedestrian or bike paths is already a leap from how engineers used to detect demand for sidewalks or pathways, Dodds says. ”Sometimes if they build a new neighborhood but they don’t put in enough sidewalks, people just walk where they wish to walk . .. they cut the corner and kill all the grass,” she says. ”That is one very straightforward way for engineers to say obviously people want a sidewalk here.” Zhai Yun Tan is a digital news intern."
"It really started nearly two weeks ago when Beyoncé   her monstrously good record, Lemonade, via an   video shown on HBO. Drake followed a few days later when he unloaded 20 new songs on fans with the epic album Views. Then Radiohead teased out some video clips  —   and eventually a new song called ”Burn The Witch.” James Blake quickly followed on Thursday with three unannounced songs and, a few hours later, a whole new album with 17 stunning tracks. A bit later on Thursday night, Chance The Rapper popped up on the Jimmy Fallon show with a new song and announced that his new album would be here on May 13. Now, as we close out the week, Radiohead is back again with another new song and news that a full album is coming at 2 p. m. ET Sunday, May 8. On this week’s +1 Podcast, All Songs Considered hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are joined by NPR Music’s Saidah Blount and Jacob Ganz to talk about why artists are resorting to stealthy tactics, what the deluge of surprise releases means for the way we listen and which ones we’re spending the most time with."
"Stargazers, ready your ( ) telescopes: Mercury is passing directly across the sun for the first time in nearly a decade. The innermost planet of our solar system will look like a small, dark circle cutting across the sun’s disc. In the U. S. the transit begins shortly after 7 a. m. ET on Monday and will continue for more than seven hours. In this animation, NASA shows Mercury’s expected path, hour by hour: At least part of the transit, which only happens about 13 times every century, will be visible across the Americas, Europe, Africa and large portions of Asia. If you’re hoping to watch it, eye protection is key. NASA stresses that ”viewing this event safely requires a telescope or   binoculars fitted with solar filters made of   glass or Mylar.” You won’t be able to see the tiny dot of Mercury on its celestial crawl without magnification, NASA says. Another option: Check out one of the multiple   events going on Monday. NASA says it will stream the transit here, here and here. Here’s one of those feeds: The European Space Agency also has a live stream: Vox explains why transits like this are so rare: ”For a transit to occur, the sun, Mercury, and Earth all have to line up directly. But Mercury’s orbit is inclined by about 7 degrees compared with Earth’s. So there are only two spots where the two planets could conceivably line up with the sun  —   the places where Mercury crosses the Earth’s orbital plane. ”Earth lines up with these intersection spots around May 8 and November 10 each year, give or take a few days. If Mercury, which takes 88 days to orbit the sun, is also wandering through at the same time, a transit occurs. This happens once every seven or eight years.” It’s not all about the show  —   transits like this one have historically been, and continue to be, important research opportunities for scientists. First observed in 1631, the transits were later used to ”measure the distance between the Earth and the Sun,” NASA said. Now, they provide scientists an opportunity to study the planets’ exospheres  —   the thin layer of gases that make up their atmosphere. ”When Mercury is in front of the sun, we can study the exosphere close to the planet,” NASA scientist Rosemary Killen said in a release from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. ”Sodium in the exosphere absorbs and   a   color from sunlight, and by measuring that absorption, we can learn about the density of gas there.” Additionally, scientists have found that a transiting planet causes a drop in the sun’s brightness. The subtle change on the light curve can be seen in this example animation from NASA’s Tumblr page: This phenomenon is ”the main way we find planets outside the solar system,” NASA says. The Kepler mission, which is searching for habitable planets, has found 1, 041 planets to date using the transit method. The mission says it is able to determine the size of a planet by observing its transit. Wondering what that black dot looks like up close? NASA recently released these mesmerizing images taken from the MESSENGER spacecraft, the first to orbit Mercury."
"We love mom. Or, at least, we like the idea of mom  —   even if, as countless writers have taken to pointing out, being a mother is as complicated a job as it ever was. Even recognizing the hardships of life in parts of the world  —     marriages, too many pregnancies too close together with too little prenatal care, too little opportunity to make decisions for oneself, let alone for one’s children  —   still, there are plenty of things to preoccupy us in the wealthy and healthy (by comparison) U. S. If you were to believe everything that’s written and said about us American moms, it would seem we are always wrong. We work too much at our jobs for some critics, but we’re not leaning in enough for others. We are too involved in our children’s lives for some observers  —   helicoptering in, as it were  —   and not involved enough for others, not staying on top of those homework assignments, not spending enough time volunteering. We run ourselves ragged taking care of everyone else, goes one story line  —   or, wait, is it that we’re so   these days that we’ve lost the capacity to put other people’s happiness ahead of our own? It’s hard to keep up with everything I am supposedly doing wrong these days, but if i had a dollar for every time I got contradictory advice on the same day about how I should go about being a mother, I would be rich enough to worry about ruining my children’s lives with excessive wealth, as opposed to worrying about not being able to keep them in soccer cleats and math camps so they can get that exclusive college scholarship. But can I just tell you? There’s a new day coming. Just as President John F. Kennedy famously said we are all Berliners, we are all about to become mom. Why do I say that? I say it because our country is getting older. The number of Americans age 65 and older is projected to more than double by 2060, according to the Population Reference Bureau. Those age 65 and older will be nearly a quarter of the population by then, compared to 15 percent now. The gender gap in life expectancy is narrowing, meaning more men are surviving longer. But that doesn’t mean that   couples necessarily can look to each other for care, because more older adults are divorced or living alone for other reasons. And additionally, more people are expected to live out their days with Alzheimer’s disease. That means someone will have to care for all these people. And that someone is all of us. Perhaps that is the point at which the judgment may cease and the   may actually begin. I say that because when it comes to children, it is perhaps unkind but common for people to default to the position that if you can’t take care of them by yourself, with little help from anybody else, then you shouldn’t have them. That logic doesn’t work with elderly, frail and possibly sick parents. What is the critique then? That your parents didn’t earn enough or save enough or have more kids to take care of them? That might be true, but how about another possibility: That we might finally begin to come to grips with this country’s caregiving crisis. Caregiving is the rare profession that is both essential to everyone, at some point, but also   and poorly trained and still wildly unaffordable to most people who need it. Something has got to give. Shall we celebrate Caregiver’s Day, then? Not catchy, I know. But get the cards and flowers ready. That’s where we’re headed."
"I keep the plastic stick hidden in a round basket on top of our bathroom sink, safely nestled between our hairbrushes. It’s been months since it first displayed that fat blue plus sign, a shock after nearly a year of only seeing minuses. I tell myself and my husband that it would just feel weird to throw it out. But at 31 weeks pregnant, I’ve figured out that there’s more to why I can’t seem to let it go. This Sunday will be my first Mother’s Day (if you count mothers of fetuses, which I certainly do). It will also be my first Mother’s Day without my mom. I told her our news when I was just six weeks along, days before my first doctor’s appointment would show me and my husband the blinking heartbeat coming from that tiny little bean of a thing. Insecurities flooded my head: Maybe the test was a fluke. Should I take another one to be sure? What if I’ve lost the baby already? I’d had some spotting  —   wasn’t that a bad sign? It all felt so fragile, so fleeting. I waited until my dad stepped out of the room in search of a nurse, and then I grabbed her hand. ”Mom, I’m pregnant.” She continued to look straight at me, as she’d been doing for the last few minutes, and let out a sigh. ”Mom, did you hear what I said? I’m pregnant.” Silence. I’d been making trips down to Florida from New York every month or so since she had been diagnosed. Each trip illuminated a new horror of her brain cancer’s progression. We joked about some of the earlier symptoms together, like how her mind seemed to split into two halves, making her hands obsessively wipe up crumbs on a tablecloth or pick at a piece of fabric as she tried her hardest, without success, to stop. She was always quick to laugh, and so making light of these sudden and strange tics felt natural. It gave us a way to temporarily escape the blanket of fear that darkened the house. But other symptoms were deeply upsetting, for her and for my family, like when she would temporarily forget who my dad was and why he was there. ”This man won’t stop bothering me,” she’d say quietly and covertly on the phone to me. ”I think I need to go home now.” Or when, on a trip to Italy  —   a place she’d always wanted to visit  —   she woke up in the middle of the night, walked out of the hotel in search of a bathroom while everyone was sleeping, and stripped off her   clothes in the empty streets of Venice. Day by day, little by little, we lost her. My daily phone calls with her went from   gab sessions to short   to   responses via my dad’s cell phone after she forgot how to use her own. For a while it was like her brain was running on preprogrammed prompts. ”Hi, Mom,” I’d say, to which I’d get a warm ”Hi, honey” in return. But all familiarity would melt away as soon as I’d ask her another question, giving way to nothing but the occasional syllable as she struggled to find her words. Soon, even her automated responses faded away. Her nursing home reminded me of the one I volunteered at in high school to sing Christmas carols or play board games. Frosty air pumped out of the vents and mixed with the smell of disinfectant and stale urine.   men and women in wheelchairs lined the hall surrounding the nurses’ station, all eerily quiet except for the occasional snore or shout. A short   resident with purple hair in elaborate braids walked back and forth yelling at the staff about the poor lunch choices. My mom never left her room. Talking, walking  —   those abilities disappeared quickly. As did her recognition of me. I was prepared for that, but I still hoped that my news would incite something within her. Or that at least I’d get a sign  —   a smile, a nod  —   that on some level, she understood that she was going to be a grandma. Maybe that’s what her heavy sigh was, but it sounded pained, not pleased. I questioned whether I should have said anything in the first place. I had become convinced the woman I knew as my mom was no longer in the shell that occupied that nursing home room. Her blue eyes were large and protruding, hardly blinking. Her mouth mostly gaped open. Her limbs curled tightly at awkward angles. Beyond the physical changes, she was missing what I can only describe as her internal spark  —   that light in her eyes that always popped out at some point during my visits with her, no matter how bad of a time her brain was giving her that day. But what if I was wrong? What if that sigh meant that at least part of her was there, realizing that she wouldn’t be around for the next chapter in my life? That was my last visit with her. She died three weeks later at age 62, almost exactly a year after she was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme. My mom, Brenda, lost her own mother, Jean, when she was just 24  —   six years before I was born. My mom and her four siblings idolized her, so to my younger brother and me, Grandma Jean became a kind of saint: A jolly and supremely kind Italian woman with a huge smile and open arms who would have doted on us nonstop, had we ever met her. I’ve come to realize that this is how my baby might think about my mom, too. Because while she wasn’t perfect, she was pretty darn close to it as far as parents go. My brother and I adored her. She was our healer, our confidante, our comic relief and our   fan. We always felt the love she had for us, no matter what. I still feel it now. And so I’ve held on to that stick because I’ve learned in the last year how unfair life can be. I also hold onto it because I’ve learned how incredible it is that our baby, who started as a dividing clump of cells, now turns and kicks inside of me. The stick reminds me that there are no guarantees  —   that I might have 50 years to spend with this baby, or maybe far less  —   and that I should be grateful for every one of those moments. Kendra Snyder is a writer based in New York City. You can find her on Twitter @KendraSnyder."
"Don’t hit your sister! Veggies are good for you. No, we can’t watch Frozen every night. No matter where you live around the globe, moms pretty much teach their children the same lessons. But in honor of Mother’s Day, we wanted to track down a few of the world’s more distinctive rules and customs. We asked four Aspen Institute New Voices Fellows  —   who are experts from the developing world  —   to share the special wisdom that moms impart in their countries. Nigeria: Properly address your elders  Vivian Maduekeh’s    son is beginning to speak. But she proudly notes, ”He cannot tell you, ’Hi.’ I don’t teach him that.” Instead, the food safety advocate is working on getting him to say ”good morning” and ”good evening.” That’s how a child shows respect, which is essential in Nigerian culture. And it’s beneficial for young people, Maduekeh says, because when elders feel honored, they are more likely to offer help and counsel. She explains: ”You get a lot of things when you show respect.” In addition to proper greetings, Maduekeh wants her son to learn another rule: ”You can’t call anyone by just their first name.” She leads her child by example, calling her siblings ”Sister Vivian” and ”Brother Andrew.” Kids also need to remember that adult women are all ”Auntie,” regardless of whether they’re related. (Maduekeh was taught that women who are 50 and over are supposed to be called ”Ma” but she says that most today prefer ”Auntie. ”) For men, the acceptable terms are ”Uncle” or ”Sir.” What would happen to a child who decided not to follow these conventions? ”You’ll be everyone’s enemy,” Maduekeh says. And they’ll know, she adds, ”Your mother didn’t bring you up well.” India: Know the family password  When Indian kids head off to school, many moms make sure they have something besides their homework: the family password, says ElsaMarie D’Silva, who’s the managing director of a foundation that tracks incidents of sexual violence and abuse. Passwords are a clever way for parents to protect their children from strangers. For middle class families, it’s common to have someone outside of the clan pick kids up from school, explains D’Silva. In some cases, it’s the maid. Another popular option is for a few families to hire a single driver to ferry around the kids  —   kind of like a private school bus. In either case, if the appointed person can’t make it, and someone else comes, the new driver better know the password. Otherwise, kids will refuse to get into the vehicle, D’Silva says. ”In the last few years, we’ve had some horrific rapes. A lot of stories coming to light are forcing parents to have these conversations,” says D’Silva, who notes that despite Indian culture’s reluctance to discuss sex, parents are clarifying the difference between ”good touch” and ”bad touch” with kids as young as two. The effect is that kids are safer, D’Silva says. And the fact that they know a way to protect themselves gives them more confidence. Kenya: Start cooking early, Esther Ngumbi, a scientist with plans to revolutionize Kenyan agriculture, remembers spending time in the kitchen at an early age  —   a very early age. By the time she was five years old, she says, ”I would cook for the family.” That means exactly what it sounds like: She was responsible for getting breakfast and lunch on the table. Because there was no electricity, she’d gather firewood  —   and deal with stressful situations. ”Sometimes you wake up at 4 or 5 [in the morning] and the firewood is wet and it’s starting to get light and you know people expect breakfast,” she says. But her mom always reminded Ngumbi and her siblings that hard work was expected because ”nothing would ever come free in life,” she says. If they didn’t do their chores, they didn’t get fed. So Ngumbi always did what she was told. ”That’s been the best foundation,” she says. ”Nothing moves me because I’ve been through harder situations.” And she loves cooking today in her modern kitchen, where she still relies on some of the ”old ways,” although she skips the firewood. Paraguay: Speak a ’very sweet’ language, The country has two official languages, explains Julia Corvalan. One is Spanish, and the other is Guarani, which is the ”mother tongue” of most of its people. Corvalan, whose work involves distributing microloans to   women, describes Guarani as ”very nasal,” ”very rich” and ”very sweet.” And she credits it with helping kids understand what it means to be Paraguayan. ”Still today, a lot of popular stories are passed down in Guarani,” Corvalan says. Her favorite legend from childhood is about Jasy Jatere, a creature who lurks during the afternoon siesta in search of kids who aren’t napping. The language also helps strengthen bonds in families and communities. ”A phrase we often use is ’ikatu’ or ’yes, we can’ in English,” Corvalan says. The best time to speak in Guarani? When enjoying terere, Paraguay’s favorite beverage. It’s yerba mate tea prepared with ice water, and it’s served in a communal cup passed from person to person. Of course, kids want in on this tradition as soon as possible, which is why Corvalan’s toddler nieces are already terere connoisseurs. Are there any traditions special to your country that your mother taught you? Share in a comment below or tweet to @NPRGoatsandSoda with the hashtag #NPRWorldMoms. "
"Just a few months ago, the price of a barrel of crude oil reached a   low. That price has inched up since then, but still, it remains 60 percent lower than it was in the summer of 2014. Oil and gas companies once flush with cash have cut exploration and pulled up to   of their rigs from the field. Meanwhile, many companies have gone under, and tens of thousands of people are out of work. The number of oil bankruptcies is hitting highs not seen since the telecom bust of nearly 15 years ago, according to Reuters. There is no question the American oil industry is in rocky straits. The real question is: Should we look at this part as part of a cycle or simply the new normal? To answer that question, NPR’s Michel Martin called up T. Boone Pickens, iconic chairman of the energy hedge fund BP Capital. The billionaire oil investor recently made headlines for declaring, at a Manhattan dinner, that the industry is ”dead in the water.” That said, it won’t be forever, says Pickens. ”It’ll cycle back up again, is what’s gonna happen,” he tells Martin. ”But right now, we’re dead in the water  —   we’ve lost probably 200, 000 people. And so, when we start back up again, don’t have the idea that we can take it back up.” Pickens, a   ”environmentalist,” has recommended that the way to make OPEC irrelevant is by embracing alternative energies like wind and solar power. His company Clean Energy Fuels also builds and runs liquefied natural gas fueling stations. Still, he’s not convinced that renewable energies alone are the answer. ”Listen, 94 million barrels a day is what the world produces, and 70 percent of that goes to transportation fuel,” he says. ”Wind and solar are beautiful resources, and America has plenty of both. But neither one of them are transportation fuels. I mean, do they help? Of course they help! And they should be developed. I’m for anything American.” But, he says, ”I am also a realist. And the realist is, we use one unbelievable amount of energy in the world.   million barrels a day  —   you can’t cut that out. It’s impossible.” Elsewhere in the course of their conversation, Pickens talked with Martin about what he sees as the engine of the oil industry slump, as well as why he’ll be supporting Donald Trump in the coming presidential election. ”I’ve been around a long time, and I’m so thankful that the Lord has let me hang around long enough to see this. I think it’s great for America.” On the causes of the downturn, Since 1980 . .. the price of oil has dropped more than in half five times. Four of the times, when that happened, the Saudis stabilized the price. It was all by oversupply of oil. So now,   and this is the fifth time. Oil price was $100 a barrel and dropped to $26. And the Saudis made it very clear they would not be the swing producer it’s up to the United States. Why? We’re the ones that oversupplied the market. The Saudis said they would not cut. They didn’t. The Russians never cut. So it was up to us. And now, we went from 1, 609 rigs  —   November 2014, I said you will cut a thousand rigs off of it real fast  —   today, it’s down to 342 rigs. On Donald Trump, He’s gonna win, is what’s gonna happen. The guy is going to win! Because America is  —   they want a change. They don’t know for sure what Trump will change they believe that he will change something. And I do, too. . .. Sure, I’m gonna vote for him. On why so many conservatives have refused to line up behind Trump, They can’t believe it. They cannot believe it isn’t working like it has always in the past. Somebody wants change, and it happens to be a businessman that stepped up. And he’s a loudmouth businessman he gets up there, and he says, looks like and acts like a leader. And so, we’re going to go with him. And that’s exactly where you are. All of us said  —   when he first showed up, I said, ”I know Donald, I’ve known him for years, and he isn’t gonna be a factor.” He was a factor! And he kept being a factor. Every time he said something that wasn’t very good, he actually went up in the polls and we couldn’t believe that  —   all of us! I didn’t think he was gonna win, but he kept gaining support. And then he goes to New York, and he just blows them out  —   and goes over to Indiana and just finishes the whole thing off. . .. Listen, he got the nomination the way you get the nomination: The people gave him the nomination. . .. We are gonna have change. Now, you say, well, you may not like the change. I may not, but I’m a change advocate. If you go back over history, I’m always a change advocate. And so I’m ready for change, and I think Donald Trump’s gonna give it to us."
"Americans have until May 10 to help the Food and Drug Administration with one of philosophy’s greatest riddles: What is the meaning of ”natural”? Given our current attitudes, the riddle might be better described as religious. Data show that 51 percent of us shop for ”all natural” food  —   shelling out some $40 billion a year on these products. We even choose natural over organic, market analysts have found. Natural has become the nondenominational version of kosher, and orthodoxy is on the rise. The religiosity is apparent in the 4, 863 public comments that have already been submitted to the FDA online. Natural and unnatural read like Manichean synonyms for good and evil. Some comments are explicitly theological: ”Natural should be limited to those ingredients that have been created by God.” Others refer to violations of Mother Nature’s intentions. Behind virtually all of them pulses an intense desire for salvation from modernity’s perceived sins: GMOs, pesticides, chemicals, artificiality, synthetics. We ate, greedily, from the tree of scientific knowledge. Now we are condemned to suffer outside of Eden, unless we find a natural way back in. Fair warning, though: Crowdsourcing theology is no easy task. This latest effort is actually round three for the U. S. government. Back in 1974, the Federal Trade Commission proposed codifying a simple definition: ”Natural” foods are ”those with no artificial ingredients and only minimal processing.” Public comments poured in. The FTC deliberated for nine years, then gave up. ”A fundamental problem exists,” explained   James C. Miller. ”The context in which ’natural’ is used determines its meaning. It is unlikely that consumers expect the same thing from a natural apple as they do from natural ice cream.” The FDA’s first attempt met with a similar fate. In 1991 the agency invited input on the definition of ”natural,” noting widespread belief that natural foods are ”somehow more wholesome.” But like the FTC, the FDA also gave up, this time blaming the failure on us: ”None of the comments provided FDA with a specific direction to follow for developing a definition.” That was fine until 2009, when a wave of lawsuits started to hit food manufacturers. Plaintiffs argued that Snapple’s ”all natural” designation was deceptive because its drinks contained high fructose corn syrup. Ditto for many of Nature Valley’s products  —   which, it was noted, were deceptively festooned with ”images of forests, mountains, and seaside landscapes.” Twin lawsuits against Ben and Jerry’s and   helped to clarify what consumers expect from ”natural” ice cream  —   not   cocoa, apparently, which is alkalized with potassium carbonate, a synthetic ingredient. Even Whole Foods  —   the Church itself!  —   is currently being sued for advertising its bread as ”” despite containing sodium acid pyrophosphate, a synthetic leavening agent allowed in organic products (you might know it as baking powder). Fearing endless and ambiguous legal woes, representatives of the food industry issued petitions requesting that the FDA standardize the term. At the same time, the Consumers Union, a nonprofit associated with Consumer Reports, called on the FDA to prohibit any use of the word or related derivations. (One wonders how the group envisions this playing out for Nature Valley, Back to Nature, Amy’s Naturals, Organic by Nature, and the countless other companies whose names incorporate derivations of ”natural. ”) I spoke about the wisdom of defining natural food with Georgetown Law professor and false advertising expert Rebecca Tushnet. ”My initial reaction is that it’s a good idea,” she tells me. ”People think natural is better than organic, but natural doesn’t have a specific meaning. That’s confusing. Corporations also need a clear definition so they can use the term and stop getting sued.” Her position makes sense. After all, rabbinic courts have established rules about the meaning of kosher. Otherwise the kosher seal would be useless. The time has come for government authorities, with our help, to do the same for the meaning of natural food. Before attempting to answer this question, it’s worth noting that until recently, no one really asked it. Though the distinction between natural and artificial  —   that is, made by man’s art  —   dates back at least to Aristotle, the popular romanticization of natural food stands in stark contrast to   culinary philosophies. In keeping with the idea that you are what you eat, refined people ate refined food. According to historian Rachel Laudan, ”for most of history, people wanted the most refined, the most processed, the most thoroughly cooked food possible. This was regarded as the most simple and natural food, because all the dross had been removed by the purifying effects of processing and cooking, particularly fire. Ideal foods were sugar, clarified butter or ghee, white bread, white rice, cooked fruit, wine and so on.” Similarly, classical Chinese texts routinely express pity for early humans who, without the benefit of agriculture and cooking technology, were forced to eat directly from nature. ”In ancient times,” reads the Huainanzi, ”people ate vegetation and drank from streams they picked fruit from trees and ate the flesh of shellfish and insects. In those times there was much illness and suffering, as well as injury from poisons.” Only through the alchemy of cooking, these Chinese philosophers concluded, could ”rank and putrid foods” be transformed into something good to eat. Both in the East and the West there have always been a minority of ascetics who denied themselves cooked, flavorful food and the products of agriculture. But unlike today, such ascetic denial was intended to distance the practitioner from the physical world, nature included. The ideal wasn’t unprocessed food, but rather no food at all. Early Daoist tales tell of ”spirit men” who subsisted entirely on wind and water. ”Food was flesh and flesh was suffering and fertility,” writes the scholar Caroline Walker Bynum, describing the attitude of pious medieval Christian women. ”In renouncing ordinary food and directing their being toward the food that is Christ, women moved to God . .. by abandoning their flawed physicality.” The turn toward redemptive natural foods didn’t begin until the 18th century, when Romantics, led by Rousseau, began looking to the culinary past for guidance. Haute cuisine was blamed for the vices of the rich country food bred virtuous peasants, their nature unspoiled by human artifice. ”Our appetite is only excessive,” wrote Rousseau in 1762, ”because we try to impose on it rules other than those of nature.” But among those who favored the culinary dictates of nature, there was little agreement upon their content. For Rousseau, it was vegetarianism: ”One of the proofs that the taste of flesh is not natural to man is the indifference which children exhibit for that sort of meat.” This idea gained traction in the 19th century, most famously in poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1813 essay A Vindication of Natural Diet, which blamed    —   ”unnatural diet”  —   for a litany of woes including disease, crime and depravity. Some physicians were convinced, but many others continued to emphasize the centrality of meat to our natural diets. A popular medical text of the late 19th century expresses the tension in a section that could easily apply today: ”On my table are two books on the diet question, written by two   physicians. One proves at great length that the natural diet of man is the vegetable diet. Meat, this author claims, is unnecessary and injurious. . .. The other author differs from the forgoing very radically. In his view the natural diet of the normal man is largely flesh food. When doctors disagree who shall decide?” Only with the dominance of mechanized food production did the argument over ”natural” begin to focus on the deleterious effects of processing, and come to look something like what it does in the FDA comments. In the   century, health food pioneer Sylvester Graham (of graham cracker fame) advocated for vegetarianism, but also for the superiority of whole grains and natural, unprocessed foods. ”It is nearly certain that the primitive inhabitants of the earth ate their food with very little, if any artificial preparation,” he wrote approvingly, in stark contrast to the ancient Chinese. ”Food in its natural state would be the best.” During the same period, food chemistry exploded  —   accompanied by concerns over dangerous chemicals. In her history of sugar, Wendy Woloson reports that as early as the 1830s, the medical journal The Lancet carried articles warning about popular British candies, exported to America, that were adulterated with ”red oxide of lead, chromate of lead, and red suphuret of mercury.” These candy makers also used cheap, poisonous dyes to attract children. Nor was it just children: People suffered the ill effects of strychnine in beer, sulphate of copper in pickles, and countless other poisonous additives that proliferated in a largely unregulated food industry. Notwithstanding increased oversight  —   most prominently the 1906 establishment of the FDA  —  20th century agricultural developments brought additional concerns. In her 1960s   Silent Spring, Rachel Carson called attention not only to the environmental harms of pesticide use, but also to their presence in our foods. ”Packaged foods in warehouses are subjected to repeated aerosol treatments with DDT, lindane, and other insecticides, which may penetrate the packaging materials,” she wrote. To make matters worse, Carson warned that the government was powerless to protect us: ”The activities of the Food and Drug Administration in the field of consumer protection against pesticides are severely limited.” Given the last hundred years of food history, it’s hard not to sympathize with those who venerate natural food. Medical authorities have come to agree with Graham on the benefits of whole grains. Diets rich in highly refined carbohydrates  —   the kind found in cookies, chips and other processed snack foods  —   and sugary drinks are implicated in rising obesity rates and related health problems. Meanwhile, articles run on a near daily basis about the potential dangers of synthetic chemicals used to produce and package these foods. The powerful corporate giants that produce them spend heavily to influence science and public policy. Worst of all, there appears to be a revolving door between the companies and regulatory agencies. It’s no wonder that people are scared. Skepticism seems warranted  —   which means that faith in the most recent incarnation of ”natural” food, far from being irrational religiosity or a relic of the romantic past, might be a good way to keep ourselves and our families safe. Despite these legitimate concerns, the long and checkered history of ”natural” cautions against an uncritical embrace of the term, especially as some kind of panacea. Philosophers warn of the ”appeal to nature” fallacy, in which good is equated with natural. In addition, there seem to be nearly insurmountable difficulties with defining the term in the first place. Even the   food writer and activist Michael Pollan sees no real way forward. Confronted by ”such edible oxymorons as ’natural’ Cheetos Puffs,” he throws up his hands: ”Nature, if you believe in human exceptionalism, is over. We probably ought to search somewhere else for our values.” Nevertheless, in the very same essay, Pollan indicates that some   version of natural really should guide our choices. It’s not hard, he says, to figure out which of two things is more natural: ”Cane sugar or   corn syrup? Chicken or chicken nuggets? GMOs or heirloom seeds?” The opposite of natural, on his reading, is artificial or synthetic, and it’s clear that the former should be preferred to the latter. But is that really true? I interviewed philosophers and chemists to see if there was some kind of consensus on the matter. It turns out that those who think professionally about the issue are no less confused or divided than the rest of us. Take the philosophers. Joseph LaPorte of Hope College specializes in the language we use to classify the natural world and has written extensively on the idea of ”nature” and ”naturalness.” ”To be sure, natural doesn’t mean safe,” he told me. ”Nature produces some of the most formidable toxins in the world. But when it comes to packages of chemicals, as they exist in foods or fragrances, nature is a good bet, or at least a clue, because   often suggests its safety and efficacy.” Not so fast, says York University’s Muhammad Ali Khalidi, also a philosopher of science who specializes in classificatory language. ”Something very recent might be safe,” he points out, ”and something that’s been around for hundreds of years could be very dangerous.” Case in point: Ayurveda, or traditional Indian medicine, has long prescribed herbal remedies that contain dangerous heavy metals. Smoked meats, a mainstay of   food production, are now known to increase cancer risk. Nor is the lack of consensus limited to the safety of natural food. Scientists also disagree on whether it makes sense to distinguish natural from synthetic products at all. Richard Sachleben, an organic chemist, told me   that all chemicals are natural. Petroleum, he explained, was originally algae. Coal used to be forests. ”The natural enthusiasts, they like to distinguish things based on origin,” he says. ”But that doesn’t make any sense. Think about this: I could raise a pig in my backyard, and feed it corn that I grow myself. I could slaughter the pig and render the fat. I could ferment my corn and distill out the ethanol. Then I could boil wood ash, put this all together, and make biodiesel. It would look no different chemically than if I used products derived from petroleum.” But when I talked to Susie Bautista, a longtime flavor chemist turned blogger, she had no problem distinguishing between natural flavors  —   ”which are made with natural starting material, like fruits, roots, leaves and bark”  —   and artificial flavors that are synthesized,   out of chemical building blocks derived from sources like petrochemicals. ”I think it’s entirely reasonable to want natural flavors,” she says. ”As a mom and a consumer, I would lean towards natural flavors.” What, then, should we take from all this? If nothing else, the issues surrounding ”natural” do not admit of easy answers. Those who shop for natural foods and fear ”chemicals” are not necessarily irrational or  . They shouldn’t be mocked by ( ) satirists who refer to water as dihydrogen monoxide or list the chemical contents of an ” ” banana. At the same time, there’s no good evidence that parents who eschew natural food and embrace GMOs are poisoning their children. Industrial agriculture, whatever its defects, shouldn’t be confused with the work of (Mon) Satan. No one put the situation better than novelist John Steinbeck, who ruefully recognized these opposing perspectives within himself: ”Even while I protest the   production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother’s cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy   life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance.” Indeed, it’s this conflicted understanding of natural, tempered by tolerance and compassion, that I heard from Nobel   chemist Roald Hoffmann. In addition to his accomplishments as a scientist, Hoffmann is a prolific poet and playwright who has written extensively on the intersection of science and religion, and the meaning of ”natural.” During our long conversation he expressed sympathy for both sides of the debate, and maintained that there were no easy answers. ”Agriculture itself is the greatest invention for manipulating the natural and changing it that the world has ever known,” says Hoffman. ”I would like people to be aware of that, and the chemical basis for it.” Nevertheless, he also maintained that everyone, laypeople and scientists alike, is attracted to what is natural  —   a claim that has empirical support. For Hoffmann, natural isn’t just about healthfulness, or the environment. It isn’t a matter of physical identity. Even if synthetic diamonds are completely indistinguishable from geologically produced diamonds, the origin story matters: They are the same and not the same (which is also the title of one of Hoffmann’s books). Did he prefer natural products himself, I wondered? ”I would like to believe there is something to the construction of natural as good for us and Earth,” he replied after a long pause. Ultimately, Hoffmann thinks that fear, however irrational, can only be tempered with empowerment. ”No amount of knowledge, no matter how skillfully and widely taught, will assuage fear of the synthetic,” he argues, ”unless people feel that they have something to say, politically, in the use of the materials that frighten them.” It is for this reason that we should applaud the FDA’s current project, difficult though it may be. All of us would do well to browse the submissions, either to increase our understanding of faith that differs from our own, or to reflect on the faith that we already hold. After doing so, perhaps you’ll be inspired to submit your own reflection, and together  —   the same and not the same  —   we will muddle onward in humanity’s long journey toward unraveling the riddle of ”natural.” Alan Levinovitz is an assistant professor of religion at James Madison University and the author of The Gluten Lie. He is currently working on a book about the meaning of ”natural.” Follow him: @alanlevinovitz "
"Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. For Mother’s Day, the show has a special episode on dealing with guilt while being a mother. Here, the Sugars offer advice to Debating Mom, who is struggling with balancing her career ambitions and her new role as a mother. Dear Sugars, I am a    living in Brooklyn, N. Y. I have been ambitious my entire life and have had a very successful career thus far. I have always loved my work, taking pride in it, and I currently make more than my husband. For a good portion of my life, I thought I would never have children due to medical complications. We were actually not trying to have a baby, but three months ago our miracle arrived! He is the new joy of my life. I wake up every day and go to bed thinking of him. I never thought I would debate going back to work or not, but I am at a crossroads. I love my little boy and I can’t imagine not being present for all of his firsts. The thought of going back to work sickens me and I don’t know what to do. Due to the nature of my profession it is impossible to be part time. I have never been a person to not give 100 percent of myself. That’s why I was so successful at my job, and why I feel like going back will not allow me to give the same 100 percent to my son. Do I quit the job I thought I loved to stay home with my baby and hope to regain my career once he’s older? Or do I join the millions of other women who juggle motherhood and professionalism daily? Yours, Debating Mom, Cheryl Strayed: I want to just say to you Debating Mom, welcome to motherhood. This kind of conflict is part of being a mother, even if you don’t have a   career. We have a very strong narrative in this culture  —   ”Who’s the good mother?” Even though many of us reject this notion, it’s the mother who doesn’t work outside the home, it’s the mother who is great at baking cookies, is always there for everyone and volunteers at the school. I know lots of women who do fulfill that, and they’re great people, and they too feel conflicted. They say to me, ”Oh, I sometimes wonder if I should be modeling for my kids having a career and being more independent in the world.” I don’t think a woman who has a career is any more independent than a woman who doesn’t have a career, but I think these narratives about who mothers are have been really put in black and white terms. And so, Debating Mom, I think you should do what you want to do. If you were writing to us and saying, ”I really love my son and I want to give him 100 percent, but I really miss my job, should I go back to work?” I would say go back to work. But what you’re saying is . .. Steve Almond: ”The thought of going back to work sickens me.” Right. As a culture we have set for mothers two impossible tasks   . There’s nobody who thinks they got the balance right. There’s no mom who’s in this situation of two very strong drives  —   the drive to be with the baby or babies at home, and the drive to continue the work, the important work that they feel they’re called to do in the world. It seems to me that there’s nobody, no mom, who says, ”I did it right, I did it perfectly.” The dilemma that Debating Mom is facing is that it’s really her ambition against her baby. That sense of ”I want to do it 100 percent” is part of the culprit here. It has the feeling of the kind of expectation that we put on ourselves that makes ambitious people succeed, but that oftentimes makes them very unhappy along the way. There’s a stark choice that you have. The way that you framed it, maybe you need to try to reframe it so it isn’t just work or the baby. My sense is this is a dilemma that lots of very ambitious moms are facing. I think I would ask you to consider whether it’s a good idea to give yourself a moratorium. It doesn’t have to be five years, it doesn’t even have to be two years. But just give yourself a few months to be at home with your baby and see how much you really enjoy that life. Try not to see it as a binary where your baby is the enemy of your ambition, and your ambition is the enemy of spending time with your baby. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. This week is a special Mother’s Day episode on guilt and motherhood. They further consider this letter from Debating Mom, and take on a second question from a woman struggling to take care of her dying mother in the first months of her newborn son’s life."
"Composer Joseph Bertolozzi’s latest musical project turned the Eiffel Tower into a giant percussion instrument. From the basement to the summit, the Paris monument’s girders, railings, and rivets were banged, tapped, strummed and thumped. And then, those 10, 000 samples were layered into one composition, called Tower Music. Bertolozzi spoke with NPR’s Melissa Block about the process. You can hear their conversation at the audio link, or read on for an edited version. Melissa Block: Could you describe the method of all of this? How did you harvest these sounds? Joseph Bertolozzi: Well, we would determine what surface we wanted to sample, and we’d put a contact microphone, which picks up vibrations from the thing it’s attached to, rather than sound in the air. And then I went through all those samples and tried to find the best sounds that would work. It took me four months to catalog. When I went looking for sounds, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I just said, okay, we’re going to record every surface we have, and I’ll turn it into music later on. Turning it into music was the easy part all the permissions, and everything else leading up to it, made it a challenge. How did you go about getting somebody to say, ”Okay, yes, you can climb all over the Eiffel Tower and attach microphones and record all those sounds”? They were very gracious. I, of course, was ready to have to do some actual climbing, but they said, ”No, no you don’t climb. You don’t have that kind of insurance!” And I sent them this detailed document as to all the surfaces I wanted to play, and almost everything was, ”No, no no.” I went there to meet the chief engineer, and he said, ”You know, we crossed all these out because all the places that you showed would involve you in a harness, climbing out to them.” But he took me on a tour of the tower and he said, ”See this surface that you marked? It’s over here. You’re standing next to it if you’re standing on the second floor.” Are there any effects that are added to these sounds? Not at all. You’re hearing the raw samples of the tower. That’s the real aesthetic of this piece. If I was to put all sorts of processing, echo, and boosting treble and bass and things like that, you wouldn’t be hearing the tower, and that’s the whole point of this project. Does the Eiffel Tower have a particular key or a particular pitch? I’d have to say no, but it doesn’t have all the notes of the scale. You know, a piano has  —   from the lowest to the highest  —   it has all the   all the white and black keys. The tower doesn’t have that it just has this random series of notes. And my job, as a composer, was to take something that was incomplete as an instrument and make it sound as if nothing was missing. Let’s talk about a track that has a really beautiful, sort of floaty, bubbly melodic sound it’s called ”The Elephant on the Tower.” There are parts of this that sound like a gamelan orchestra from Java or Bali  —   and it does turn out that there is a connection between the Eiffel Tower and the gamelan. What is that? When the Eiffel Tower was first built, it was built for a world exposition. It was the first time that a contingent from Indonesia came with their gamelan instruments, and it was the first time, really, that the West was really exposed to it. Claude Debussy was very much influenced by these sounds. There’s actually a piece in Tower Music called ”Continuum,” where I have a modern, minimalist vibe going on, and then I insert Indonesian   melodic and rhythmic materials. They really meld together nicely. What about the most elusive sound you tried to record, the toughest one? On the neck of the tower, there’s nothing around you. It’s just catwalk stairs going up and down. And while it might be 60 degrees down on the ground level with a nice gentle breeze, a thousand feet up in the air it’s 20 or 30 degrees colder, and the wind is blowing at 20 or 30 miles an hour. So we had to lean in to the wind just to stand upright. I had a stick that I was holding onto blow out of my hands! I caught it, and luckily I had it tethered to my belt, so it wouldn’t have fallen. I’m thinking, when you’re up there recording on the Eiffel Tower, at some point you must have looked around you over the city of Paris and thought: This has got to be the best recording studio ever! You are absolutely right. I just couldn’t believe it. For years, the Eiffel Tower was just this little flat screen in my office. And then I finally get there and there’s this huge structure, and it was just exhilarating. Exhilarating."
"A new lawsuit is boldly going where no man has gone before. Paramount Pictures and CBS are suing the producers of a Star Trek fan film for copyright infringement. The studios own the copyright to the Star Trek franchise, including six television shows and 12 movies. They’re suing Axanar Productions along with executive producer Alec Peters over their 2014 short film Prelude to Axanar, and the planned   Axanar. Peters raised more than $101, 000 on Kickstarter to make the first film, and Axanar Productions says they’ve raised more than $1 million in total. The movies are set in the Star Trek universe and serve as a prequel to the original series from the 1960s. Axanar takes place 21 years before Captain Kirk came on the scene and tells the story of Garth of Izar, ”the legendary Starfleet captain who is Captain Kirk’s hero.” For the true Trekkies, here are more details from the filmmakers: ”Axanar tells the story of Garth and his crew during the Four Years War, the war with the Klingon Empire that almost tore the Federation apart. Garth’s victory at Axanar solidified the Federation and allowed it to become the entity we know in Kirk’s time.” Fan films exist in a legal gray area. There have been several fan productions of Star Trek shows over the years. According to Wired, Paramount ”has traditionally allowed these   projects to move forward, as long as they agree not to sell anything  —   including tickets, merchandise, or copies of the finished film or series.” But in December 2015, the studios filed a complaint against Axanar. In a   brief, they identify ”infringing elements,” including original Star Trek characters, races and species (like Klingons and Vulcans) uniforms, planets, the Starship Enterprise (which is of course the  ) logos  —   and the Klingon language. The way the court decides on the last item on that list has big legal implications. The Language Creation Society filed an amicus brief in support of the filmmakers. It argues that since Klingon was invented in the 1980s, the language has expanded beyond its origins  —   there’s even a Klingon Language Institute. They say there’s enough vocabulary in the language to translate Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Klingon ”took on a life of its own  —   a life that the Copyright Act has no power to control,” they say. The studios say they own the ”fictional language.” The reason this matters  —   whether you can copyright a language  —   is related to programming. Is computer code a language, and can you copyright it? It goes to a   case between Oracle and Google. The Hollywood Reporter summarizes: ”In a nutshell, Oracle looks to protect its Java API code from Google’s attempt to use some of it for its Android software. A federal appeals court ruled in May 2014 that one could indeed copyright an API, leading to a collective   by many in the tech industry.” Charles Duan at Slate explains that ”computer networking technology depends on languages, like the   protocol, so that multiple computers can communicate and understand one another.” If languages can be copyrighted, it would stifle innovation and create monopolies, he argues. The Supreme Court didn’t take up the case. Meanwhile, a court date in the case involving Paramount, CBS and Axanar is set for May 2017. The filmmakers picked up some big endorsements, though. Justin Lin, director of the upcoming  —   authorized  —   Star Trek: Beyond, tweeted his support: And Marc Okrand, who created Klingon in 1984, and published the first Klingon dictionary in 1985, agrees. ”Languages are something that you should use and you should feel free to use them and be encouraged to use them,” he tells NPR’s Michel Martin. ”And not worry about someone standing over your shoulder saying: yes, you can say that no, you can’t yes, you can use that language no, you can’t. Of course you can, and you should.”"
"The audience for radio drama has plummeted since the advent of television. But thanks to a boom in podcasting, the format is experiencing something of a resurgence. One of the medium’s greatest living practitioners is Tom Lopez. Most radio drama producers rely exclusively on   sound effects to set a scene, but Lopez has his own approach. His plots are inspired by sounds he has recorded around the world: monkeys in Belize, street dogs in Tangier and frogs in the Amazon to name just a few. Lopez has been using those real world recordings  —   what we call ambiance in radio production  —   for more than 40 years to create soundscapes for his fictional characters, which range from a galactic gumshoe named Ruby to shipwreck survivors washed up on an island with live dinosaurs. Lopez, of course didn’t use the sound of actual dinosaurs when he produced the audiobook version of Dinotopia. He substituted recordings he made of elephants at a zoo in India, processing the sound in a way that made them sound like dinosaurs roaring. ”I realized that the sounds I was gathering were as important as the characters,” Lopez says. ”It’s sort of like a filmmaker finding interesting locations and saying: ’This would be an interesting place to put a scene.’ So, I was recording sounds and then later I’d write a scene to take place in that particular location.” It’s a technique that has inspired other practitioners of the craft. ”I think we can be very thankful for the work that he did to show that you can use the world as part of your storytelling,” says Fred Greenhalgh, a   radio drama producer who records actors in the field. ”The history of radio drama is forgotten and Tom is a huge part of that history. And [he’s] a real bridge to what’s currently happening in audio. He’s an amazing part of this cultural legacy.” Lopez is   and sports a thick white mustache. He looks much younger than his age, which is a carefully guarded secret. Since 1970 his home base has been a   compound in rural Fort Edward, N. Y. about 20 miles northeast of Saratoga Springs. It’s also the home of the ZBS Foundation, the nonprofit arts organization that distributes his work. ZBS started out as a   radio commune that produced commercials to generate income. But it has since evolved into a nonprofit devoted to artist residencies and radio drama. It has a cult following. Lopez began his radio career in the early 1960s, when razor blades were used to cut    tape. He produced his first radio drama as a volunteer at Pacifica Radio’s Berkeley, Calif. station, KPFA. To learn how to edit, he was asked to cut out every other word in a children’s story. The second word was ”elephants.” ”So I cut out ’elephants’ and I kind of held this tape up and it was, you know, maybe a couple inches long. And this shiver went through me,” he says with a shudder. ”I realized instantly that most of my life would be spent working with something like this.” Lopez spent part of the 1960s in London. He would interview major rock stars, claiming to be a correspondent for a popular commercial rock station in San Francisco. But he was actually sending the interviews back to KPFA in Berkeley. In 1968, he started doing a live show at a public radio station in Philadelphia that later became WHYY. Listeners knew him as Meatball Fulton, an alter ego he still uses in his ZBS podcast Meatball’s Meatballs. As part of the show in Philadelphia, Lopez produced mock radio commercials. But he took that skill and moved to Montreal to make real commercials. He continued in that vocation when he started the ZBS radio commune in Fort Edward. One of his clients was Warner Brothers Records. ”I don’t remember anything ever being rejected by them,” Lopez recalls. He found that writing and recording   spots made him a better radio producer. ”You could tell a story in 60 seconds and I liked that a lot,” he says. ”It was good discipline. Say what you have to say and get out. You know, that kind of thing.” One of his commercial clients was Grunt Records, the label started by Jefferson Airplane. In 1972 Grunt funded his first radio drama series, The Fourth Tower of Inverness. It chronicled the metaphysical adventures of Jack Flanders. A mashup of   radio drama and New Age phenomena like past life regression, Sufi wisdom and Tibetan Buddhism, Fourth Tower debuted on nearly 400 radio stations. After 78 hours of audio drama, the Jack Flanders dramas continue, though Robert Lorick, the actor who portrayed Flanders for   years, passed away in January. Actors in the ZBS radio dramas are recorded in a studio a short walk from the old rambling farmhouse where Lopez lives. There’s an old barn that Lopez has used as a soundstage and a yurt with pictures of Indian gurus inside. Ask Tom Lopez if he considers himself a spiritual person and he replies with a chuckle, ”Slightly.” In additional to Lopez’s productions, a variety of notable people have stopped by to work on their own projects over the years. Baba Ram Dass recorded a   album at ZBS. Philip Glass worked on Einstein on the Beach there. And it was at ZBS that Laurie Anderson was introduced to the voice processing technology used in her 1981 hit ”O Superman.” ZBS engineer Bob Bielecki, a friend of Lopez since their Philadelphia days, built the ZBS studio and brought Anderson there. ”There were always interesting people coming through there working on projects,” says Tim Clark, the ZBS composer who has been working with Lopez since the  . Clark had worked composing soundtracks for planetarium shows in Rochester, N. Y. and Toronto. He met one of the Zeebers, as the members of the ZBS commune were known, and fell into their orbit. Clark let Lopez use his planetarium show compositions in ZBS radio dramas. Soon he was composing the planetarium soundtracks with an ear to how they would sound in Lopez’s productions. Now based in North Carolina, the composer looks back on his   collaboration with Lopez. ”He’s amazingly calm,” Clark says. ”I can’t remember him ever getting mad. He’s a gentle soul, that’s for sure.” Clark says actors love to perform in Lopez’s radio dramas due to his ”incredible talent for dialogue.”   actress Valeria Wasilewski started performing in ZBS radio dramas in the 1980s. ”You never knew what to expect   or what character you were. It was all a mystery until you got there,” Wasilewski says. One frigid winter evening, she joined other actors in the ZBS barn. Lopez was using a microphone that replicates human hearing for a scene set in a supermarket. ”We’re all freezing,” Wasilewski recalls, ”and we’re walking around with these shopping carts, following a wooden head with microphones that’s on wheels for half the night. But that’s Tom.” In addition to a stable of actors who also perform on television and the   theater, ZBS is sustained by its fans. At first, Lopez didn’t realize how vital cassette and CD sales could be to the economic survival of ZBS. After The Fourth Tower of Inverness debuted, ”some kid called and said he’d like to get a copy. And we said we don’t sell copies,” Lopez says. ”So, it was like, ’Go away, kid.’ And then he said the magic words: ’I’ll pay anything.’ So we said, ’Wait a minute kid. Come back here.’ ” ”Tom really has taken the patron model to quite a level,” says Sue Zizza, a Long   audio drama producer who has followed Lopez’s work for years. ”He gets fans to invest and give him a little of the production money up front. And then once the product is made, he turns around and the same group of individuals will purchase it.” Now, CDs have faded in popularity, and fans can purchase radio dramas in mp3 format from the ZBS web site. And this spring ZBS plans to launch a streaming website where subscribers can listen to all of its radio dramas. Listener donations have been crucial to the survival of ZBS. In the late 1980s, listeners at an NPR member station in southern California provided funds for Lopez and composer Tim Clark to travel to Brazil to record jungle sounds. A few years later a wealthy ZBS fan made a   donation, which Lopez says kept ZBS going for years. The sale of film rights to ZBS radio dramas have also helped sustain operation. At this point, ZBS has only two employees, but Lopez pays the actors who perform in his productions, as well as composer Tim Clark. So, like other   arts groups, ZBS sort of squeaks by. Lopez is as surprised as anyone that it’s lasted this long. ”Just being here has been a series of little miracles,” he says. ”It’s almost like there’s some sort of mystical economics that science hasn’t quite acknowledged or figured out yet. There’s absolutely no reason I should be here.” Jon Kalish is a radio journalist based in New York City. Follow him @kalishjon."
"On this Mother’s Day, here’s a bit of wisdom: ”Having a child is usually just a long patience.” Those words are spoken by a nurse in the new novel Eleven Hours. Her name is Franckline and she works in a hospital maternity ward. That long patience she’s talking about is the patience a woman needs when she’s in labor  —   the patience to ride through hours of pain and worry. Eleven Hours takes place in the course of one woman’s labor and is told from two perspectives: that of the woman giving birth, Lore, and that of Franckline, who is herself pregnant. Author Pamela Erens tells NPR’s Melissa Block that she chose to restrict the book to 11 hours of labor as a way to give herself parameters. ”Writing fiction is so overwhelming to me and the more constraints I can give myself the better,” she says. On Franckline’s story, She was born in Haiti and when she was a teenager she had a child. She did not have a partner and that was frowned upon by her family, which was religious and had a strict moral code. And she lost that child after three days  —   it was born, but it was sickly. And she was quite traumatized by this, and traumatized by the rejection of her family. And she runs away and eventually she makes her way to America, where she trains as a nurse. On the relationship between Franckline and Lore, [Franckline] necessarily had to be a helper type because my other character, Lore, is so desperately in need of help and I felt that if Franckline didn’t step into that role for her there really wouldn’t be a story, there wouldn’t be an intense relationship between the two of them. So she naturally had to evolve into that person who could support this very difficult patient  —   a patient that’s not making it easy to help her. On Lore, who arrives at the hospital with a detailed birth plan, but no partner or family, Lore’s birth plan is a little bit of an inside joke. I was a little bit that person who came in with the incredibly detailed birth plan because I had a great many fears about having a child and I read an enormous amount, which is my way of dealing with anxiety. And so I made up this incredibly detailed plan. But in terms of the character, Lore is someone who’s been traumatized to some extent by some things that have happened to her and I suppose I envisioned this as her way of trying to have control over what she can have control over. On the book’s ambiguous ending, I knew how it was going to end. That said, I’m not even sure I know exactly what’s going to happen after the last page. But I knew what would be those last pages. . .. I think when you have a new child, the future is ambiguous. You don’t know what’s going to happen to that child. The healthiest, most robust child  —   anything could happen six months from now or a year from now and children have their own totally unforeseeable personalities and lives that they grow into. And I just felt that was true to the experience of a new birth."
"There are lots of ways to make a buck, but becoming a human guinea pig for drug research has to be one of the oddest. ”We are selling our bodies, most definitely,” says Paul Clough, who has taken part in more than 80 drug tests in the past 11 years. ”Well, renting,” might be more accurate, he concedes. Clough, who’s 37, also runs a website that helps people find trials to sign up for. Some are like the one he’s doing right now, which stretches over three months and involves multiple stints living in a clinic with other volunteers, eating cafeteria food and showing up on time to get his vitals checked or to pop another pill. ”It’s like summer camp,” he says, then reconsiders, since in this trial he can’t leave. ”It’s kind of like being in jail, except you don’t get shanked in the shower.” Clough first heard about this line of work from a homeless man in Kansas City. Since then, he moved to Austin, Texas, to be closer to some of the big clinics that pay well. He says he can make thousands of dollars in just a few weeks. ”Generally, the more procedures, the more perceived risk in a study, the more it’s going to pay,” he says. The early tests, though usually safe, can carry unexpected hazards. In January, the test of an experimental pain drug in France was halted after several participants developed serious neurological problems. One man died. ”Every time you see a TV commercial for a drug and they rattle off all the reasons why you shouldn’t take the drug  —   that’s all information that they got from people like me,” says Clough. He may be overstating the case a bit. Larger trials of the potential new medicines in people with illnesses the drugs aim to treat are more likely to uncover a wide range of side effects, but there’s no question that these early tests in humans help reveal the potential hazards of experimental medicines. Those   phase 1 studies involve a small group of healthy people to determine the right dosage and to get a first look at what the side effects in humans might be. A drug that passes the first test will then move on to larger human studies where it is typically compared with a placebo or other treatment in patients suffering from the condition it’s meant to help. Clough says he’ll do about eight or nine trials a year. It’s enough to fund    life, plus travel. He’s planning a trip to Alaska to photograph bears. Like other serial participants in clinical trials, Clough knows that what he’s doing could potentially help others down the line. But that’s not the main drive for volunteers. ”We need money,” says Clough. And for some people, especially those with a history of incarceration, clinical trials are a rare opportunity. ”I can’t get a regular job because I have a couple of legal problems in my background,” he says. But when he signs up for a clinical trial, he says, ”They’re only looking at what your body does, not what you did.” Sociologist Jill Fisher, at the Center for Bioethics at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, says that’s a perspective she’s come across frequently in her research. She studies people who participate repeatedly in phase 1 clinical trials, including   professionals like Clough. ”I think that says a lot about our system overall and what kind of opportunities we have for people in a period of ” she says. Until the 1970s, experimental medications were often tested in prisoners. Now, clinics rely on healthy volunteers, who get paid for taking the risk, typically around $200 a night spent in a facility. For a lot of people, it’s good money. But Fisher says there are a few things about phase 1 clinical research that are concerning. For one, medical research trials in the later stages of drug development  —   usually involving patients who could gain something more than money from taking the experimental medication  —   tend not to involve enough minority participants. By contrast, in phase 1 research, she says, ”The vast majority of participants are   minorities.” In the Northeast they’re typically black men, and in the Southwest they’re typically Hispanic men. The drugs they’re testing may go on to make billions of dollars for pharmaceutical companies, though the vast majority that manage pass phase 1 never make it to market. ”I am very concerned about the fact that we’re using a segment of our population who might not ever be able to afford the drugs that they’re part of testing, and not compensating them perhaps to the degree that we really should,” she says. Robert Biafore doesn’t see it that way. He’s a former car salesman who lost his job when the economy went sour in 2008. Biafore says he’s participated in at least 50 trials in the last six years. ”My time will come to an end . .. and I will go back to selling cars. But in the meantime, this is easy. And I’m getting full medical checks,” says Biafore, who’s uninsured. ”Where else am I going to go and get labs done, physicals done, ECGs done, MRIs looked at and people are going to look at my body and tell me what is wrong with me before something’s even wrong?” He acknowledges that his line of work has risks. But Biafore says the worst that’s happened to him was that he got a rash and vomited. ”It’s all part of the game,” he says. ”You’re letting scientists use your body to get data for clinical results, so they can get it approved by the [Food and Drug Administration]. It is what it is. You can’t be afraid of it.” Every time someone picks up medicine from a pharmacy, or gets a prescription, they owe a debt to the human guinea pigs. ”If it wasn’t for people like us you wouldn’t get that medication,” Biafore says."
"Sarah, a    new college graduate, initially didn’t pay much attention when one of her classmates   on a YouTube video from a Muslim extremist and cranked up the sound. The soft voice that came out of the speaker was that of Junes Kock, the Scandinavian spokesman for Hizb   a global Islamist group that has a following in Denmark among young Muslims. For months, Sarah and her friends had been talking about what it meant to be Muslim in Denmark. The general consensus was that it was hard. Junes Kock, in hundreds of videos online, spoke to that. ”Muslims in Denmark are always under suspicion,” he began in one popular,   video posted last year. ”No Muslim can live in Denmark without being accused of being a terrorist,” he continued. ”And the struggle is getting harder, Muslims are trying to keep their faith, but politicians are fighting against us, they claim this is part of the battle against terrorism.” The video has had thousands of views. For Sarah, who would only speak on the condition that we changed her name (and disguised her voice in a radio piece) Junes Kock seemed to understand what she was going through. ”There was a trend in school back then, people were listening to what he had to say,” she said. ”In that moment, in the classroom, I didn’t really care much about it, but afterwards, I double thought about it.” The videos struck a chord, she said, because when she looked around, Junes Kock seemed to have a point. Although Sarah was born in Denmark and spoke perfect Danish, she had this sense, as a Muslim of Somali descent, that no matter what she did, no matter what she said, she’d never be Danish enough. ”They want us to mix the Danish and Muslims together,” she explained. ”They say that we shouldn’t wear our traditional clothes, and we should take off our scarves and we should be more like a Dane.” Sarah’s story provides a window into how young Muslims in Denmark can fall in with radical Islamists. People like Junes Kock tap into insecurities young Muslims feel as they try to find their place not only in the world, but in Western society more generally. And studies show that local Islamist groups act like a gateway drug for young Muslims: while they may not overtly send followers to Syria, by stoking a young Muslim’s disaffection, it doesn’t take much for an ISIS recruiter to convince someone that ISIS might offer a solution. It is important to understand the contours of the battle: Denmark has one of the worst radicalization problems in Europe. According to official figures, there are more Danes leaving for Syria per capita than in any other European country, except for Belgium. Some 5, 000 Westerners are thought to have traveled to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq and literally hundreds of them returned to Europe. To be sure, some put the experience behind them. But others, as seen in Paris and Brussels, return to attack. Because it is almost impossible to know with certainty which returnees are dangerous until it is too late, Denmark has been experimenting with a variety of   programs aimed at preventing Muslims from radicalizing in the first place. As fate would have it, Sarah grew up in Odense, a town in the heart of Denmark that has been testing what may be the ultimate   approach to combating violent extremism: harnessing a mother’s touch. A Different World, There is a storybook quality to the city of Odense, where Sarah was born and raised. It sits about two hours west of Copenhagen and has the requisite palaces and cobbled streets you’d expect from the town that produced one of Denmark’s most famous writers  —   Hans Christian Andersen. He was born in Odense, and there is a cottage industry that has grown up around that. There is a museum in his boyhood home and an endless array of his fairy tale books propped up in shop windows. But if you drive just a couple of miles west of downtown, you enter an entirely different world, an immigrant community full of   buildings known as Vollsmose. This is an area with crime, poverty and unemployment. That’s the Odense where Sarah grew up. It is also the Odense where some 150 ethnic Somali mothers have started an organization called Sahan, which is putting a decidedly maternal twist on the issue of violent extremism. So when Sarah’s mother happened to overhear her daughter listening to Junes Kock videos on her cellphone, the first call she placed was to the women of Sahan. To understand how Sahan works, you have to think about how well mothers know their children, and how good they are at watching for subtle cues that suggest changes in them. It isn’t just how a mother knows if her child isn’t eating or had a fight with a friend. The signs could be more discreet, and the first one to notice is usually a mom. The night I arrived to visit the mothers of Sahan, there were three dozen Somali woman in brightly patterned headscarves and multicolored jilbab robes filing into a small   building in the center of Vollsmose. They call it the clubhouse. There were trays overflowing with Somali food: hot roast chicken, rice spiced with cardamom and cloves, yogurt and chili sauces. Handing out plates at the front of the room was Ayan Muumin, a Somali mother of eight who helped found the group six years ago. She helped transform Sahan from a group of volunteer mothers to an army of community activists who answer hotlines around the clock, track down missing children, crack down on gangs and drugs and try to make Vollsmose a safer place to live. All their work is volunteer and done without complaint, because nearly all the Sahan moms have leaned on the group at one time or another when their own children ran into trouble. Now they are here, paying it forward. ’Watch, But Give The Child Some Space’ If a mother calls the hotline and says she is worried her son or daughter is radicalizing or might be thinking of going to Syria, the Sahan volunteers launch into a series of questions to gauge the seriousness of the problem. Are the children dressing differently? Have they become more judgmental about religion? Have their friends changed, are they spending more time alone in their rooms? These are signs that a mother would notice right away. ”I don’t have a script for parents,” says Muumin, who handles most of the radicalization cases. ”I don’t tell them what to say. But when they come to Sahan asking for help, the thing that we find works best is to watch but give the child some space.” Sometimes that is doubly difficult to do because Sahan is working in a neighborhood that is seen in Denmark as a hotbed of terrorism. Ten years ago, police arrested four men from Vollsmose after discovering   chemicals in their apartments. They were convicted of plotting to bomb the Danish parliament in retaliation for the publication of some Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as, among other things, a dog. The neighborhood never quite got over it  —   so much so that after the Paris and Brussels attacks, mothers in Vollsmose fanned out all over town to make sure their children were all accounted for and hadn’t somehow seen the attacks as a clarion call from ISIS that they were obliged to follow. ”Everyone was just a bit concerned about where their kids might be,” Muumin told me. ”They wanted to   they were at school. They made doubly sure the children came home on time. That’s what happens around here. When attacks happen, everyone is extra vigilant.” That sort of vigilance born out of a mother’s intuition played a huge role in a recent episode of lost children in Vollsmose. Two mothers called Muumin on the hotline and said their boys, ages 13 and 15, had disappeared with their passports. In most tough neighborhoods, moms worry about gangs or drugs. In Vollsmose, ISIS and Syria embody a mother’s worst fears. Muumin has a protocol when kids disappear with their passports. She rings a contact at a social services organization in Odense called the SSP (for Schools, Social Services and Police) which then works with police to find the children. The teenagers who went missing recently were found just hours after Sahan’s initial call. What happened next is an indication of how different the Sahan mom experiment is from the way a case might unfold in the U. S. The kids weren’t questioned by police. Instead, they were sent home. ”After episodes like this, when kids are doing something that maybe they shouldn’t be doing, it is very important not to frighten them,” says Muumin. ”It is very important not to start yelling at them. We find that if the child is relaxed and thinks, ’OK, my parents aren’t as mad as I thought they would be,’ typically they are so relieved, they can’t stop themselves from revealing what they have done.” ’It Is Not That I Wanted To Be A Terrorist’ It doesn’t matter whether it’s gangs or drugs or ISIS, she says. The kids eventually come clean  —   which is what may make Sahan so special. It is harnessing maternal instincts and wielding them against Islamist recruiters, which is essentially what happened in Sarah’s case, the young woman we met at the beginning of our story. She’s still struggling to understand her attraction to Junes Kock, the charismatic spokesman of Hizb   but she is no longer doing that alone. She and her mother are now talking about it. ”I can’t explain it exactly,” Sarah said. ”He sounds so trustworthy. He is a convert, but I feel like he understands Islam better than I do, and understands what it is like to be Muslim in Denmark because he chose to be Muslim. It is not that I wanted to be a terrorist, it is not that. I just thought it was interesting what he had to say.” The Sahan moms suggested Sarah’s mother bring the whole family to a local lecture about radical Islam. It was presented not as something that Sarah needed, but rather as a family activity. Sarah was never asked directly to talk about her flirtation with the ideas of Junes Kock. Her mother just waited until she was ready to talk about it, and eventually she did. The Sahan network also found a program that taught young people how to explain Islam to   and slowly, Sarah said, she began to realize that having those discussions didn’t diminish her faith. Instead, it made it stronger. Sarah says she’s embarrassed to talk about Junes Kock and his videos now. ”It is kind of hard because I wouldn’t say that I was attracted to Junes Kock, in that extreme way, not at all. It was just in the moment,” she said. Young people all over Denmark are having similar moments, and acting on them. Dozens have left Copenhagen for Syria in the past couple of years. Dozens more have left Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus, about an hour’s drive west of Vollsmose and Odense. It might not be an accident that even though Odense is Denmark’s third largest city, with a huge immigrant community, there are no reports that anyone has left there for Syria. Maybe the Sahan moms stopped them before they could."
"Alarm bells are sounding about the danger of another shaky state in Central Asia. Tajikistan is rarely in the news, but the former Soviet republic has several features that have led to trouble elsewhere: an autocratic ruler, an Islamist insurgency, a sputtering economy and unstable neighbors. The U. S. and Russia are both concerned about the possibility that Tajikistan could add to the chaos in the region. The International Crisis Group has issued an ”early warning” report that Tajikistan, on the border with Afghanistan, ”is under dangerous pressure both internally and externally.” Islamist rebels and local police are clashing in Tajikistan’s southern provinces. The government is imposing controls on religious expression and political opposition, moves that appear to be sowing resentment of the regime. The latest violence recalls Tajikistan’s civil war in the 1990s, which broke out shortly after the country received independence in the Soviet breakup. That fighting pitted Islamic and   groups against the national government of President Emomali Rahmon. The   war concluded with a power sharing agreement  —   but left Rahmon in charge. Almost 20 years later, Rahmon is still in control, but faces increased opposition. ”Rahmon is cracking down. The main opposition party, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, was banned and declared a terrorist organization,” said Paul Stronski, a senior associate with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ”The IRPT was the only moderate Islamic party in the former Soviet space that was allowed to exist, and now it’s gone.” Forcibly Shaving Beards, The crackdown on dissent, particularly from Islamic organizations, underscores the government’s desire to maintain what it calls the secular character of Tajikistan, a country whose population is 98 percent Muslim. ”There’s an attempt, in a very Soviet way, to have Islam exist only in certain parameters,” Stronski said. Police in Tajikistan’s southwestern Khatlon region, on the border with Afghanistan, announced in January they had shaved the beards of some 13, 000 men as part of the country’s fight against ”foreign influences.” More than 160 shops selling Muslim clothing have been shut down. Minors have been barred from entering mosques, and the parliament recently voted to ban ” ” names. The situation could be worsened by Tajikistan’s ailing economy, analysts say. According to World Bank data, remittances from Tajik workers in Russia make up some 50 percent of the country’s GDP. With Russia’s economy reeling amid a collapse in oil prices, many migrant Tajik workers have returned home. ”A major safety valve in Tajikistan is opening,” said Joshua Kucera, a contributor to EurasiaNet who covers Tajik affairs. ”Until recently, all of the young men who could have possibly caused social instability had left Tajikistan.” Many of the people returning home live in Tajikistan’s southern provinces, analysts say  —   heightening the threat of a spillover from the nearby Taliban insurgency in northern Afghanistan. The Afghan Border, ”The border is porous. In many places, it’s just a shallow river you could easily walk across,” Kucera said. ”There have been incidents where Tajik border guards were kidnapped by the Taliban, and it took several months to get them released.” Tajikistan shares a nearly   frontier with Afghanistan. Unrest in the country could spill into Afghanistan, analysts say, as the Taliban continues to threaten the   government in Kabul. The situation on the southern side of the border is already difficult. Taliban fighters have renewed attacks against Afghan and American troops in the northern city of Kunduz, the scene of bloody fighting last year. The International Crisis Group says recent events have ”pushed foreign fighters, including Tajiks, into Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, where they have launched attacks against the Afghan army.” Dozens of Tajiks have been arrested over the past year for alleged ties with Jamaat Ansarullah, a militant group believed to have links to   and the Taliban. It isn’t clear how real those ties are, but Tajik authorities have used these allegations to punish what they call religious extremists. Tajikistan has long been a target for militant organizations hundreds of Tajiks have joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria, with others joining militant groups in northern Afghanistan. The   border is also a major conduit in the Afghan drug trade. According to a January report from the International Crisis Group, efforts by the Tajik government to curb drug trafficking have worsened in recent years  —   despite border control investments by the United States and the European Union. ”A lot of the border and drug assistance being given to Tajikistan by foreign powers is wasted,” Carnegie’s Stronski says. ”Money is either being misspent, or siphoned off to cronies and political elites.” All the same, despite accusations of corruption and crackdowns on religious freedom, the U. S. and its allies have been hesitant to cut off financial and military aid to the Tajik government. The U. S. has formally designated Tajikistan as a ”country of particular concern” with respect to religious freedom, as part of the U. S. Commission on International Religious freedom annual report. State Department Spokesperson John Kirby was quick to note, however, that the U. S. would waive any potential sanctions involved with that designation because Tajikistan is of ”important national interest” to the United States. ”Stability and economic growth in Tajikistan are critical to achieving overall regional stability and to strengthening economic integration,” the State Department said in a statement to NPR. That focus on ”stability,” Kucera argued, plays directly into Rahmon’s strategy of using the Islamic extremist threat as an excuse to crack down on internal enemies and gain international support. ”There are a number of people in Washington that will look past all of the Rahmon government’s problems and say, ’Well, they’re better than the Islamists,” Kucera says."
"West Point is investigating whether black female cadets violated any rules by raising their fists in a photo. The 16 women, following school tradition, posed in   uniforms ahead of graduation later this month. The investigation will look into whether the cadets violated the school honor code or a Department of Defense rule about political activities while in the Armed Forces. The women in the photo have not publicly commented on why they held up their fists, but many others  —   including graduates of the United States Military Academy  —   have weighed in with their thoughts and experiences. Here are some of the reactions that stood out to us: ’What It Must Feel Like’ Mary Tobin, who graduated from West Point about 13 years ago, wrote on Facebook about her experience as a black woman there: ”Our attrition rates are on par with the class at large, but can you imagine what it must feel like to live, train, study, eat, cry, laugh, struggle, and succeed in an environment where for 4 years, the majority of the people there don’t look like you, it’s hard for them to relate to you, they oftentimes don’t understand you, and the only way to survive is to shrink your blackness or assimilate. ”We don’t talk about the microagressions that minority cadets experience every single day. We don’t talk about how many times we have to let racial slurs or crass racial jokes roll off our backs because all we want to do is graduate. I don’t talk about how as a black female leader within the Corps, I was told time and time again, that I was a good leader because I was ’not like the rest of them.’ ” She said the image of the cadets ”wasn’t a sign of formal allegiance to any political movement or party. This was an act of unity amongst sisters and a symbol of achievement.” The New York Times notes: ”The elite public military academy, which trains many of the Army’s future leaders, is overwhelmingly male and 70 percent white. The 16 cadets in the photo represented all but one of the black women in a graduating class of about 1, 000, a meager 1. 7 percent.” The Rev. Sam Jackson, who says his ”proud Army heritage extends as far back as the U. S. Civil War,” wrote about his experience with racism at West Point, saying he was told that the few black students were purposefully separated in campus housing to ”maximize [other students’] exposure to Blacks.” (CNN says Jackson attended West Point in the ’80s.) Jackson wrote: ”The Army and Academy had an extra measure of expectation of the minorities of the nation who attended, to help the military to sort out their racial problems, while not so much helping the minorities to sort out theirs.” ’Completely Unprofessional’ Blogger John Burk, a veteran, said the pose was an ”overt display of the black lives matter movement” and doing so in uniform ”is completely unprofessional and not in keeping with what the [United States Military Academy] stands for.” The Times reports: ”Mr. Burk, a former drill sergeant, who is white, said via email that he had disciplined soldiers for making Nazi salutes in photos, and felt the raised fist was not much different.” In a post titled, ”Here’s EXACTLY what I’d do to the West Point cadets who took this dishonorable photo,” former Florida Rep. Allen West said the young women should apologize to their class and to the academy. The Fox News contributor, who retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel, wrote on his own website: ”The obvious hypothetical question is what if these were 16 white male West Point Cadets from the south who took a picture in uniform with the Confederate battle flag? Yes, you know exactly what the story would be, and it would be plastered all over the mainstream media. And you know those white male cadets would be in serious danger of not graduating and receiving their commission as an Army officer. . .. ”These young women carry on the legacy of Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point. All he wanted was to serve his nation and be an Army officer. Thanks to him, these women can be there at West Point, and I was able to become an Army officer. Someone needs to teach them a little history and get them to understand that lesson and see contriteness in their soul.” Making A Statement? Atlas Obscura dove into the history of the raised fist  —   and whether it is inherently political. ”The raised fist gesture is associated with numerous political movements, and it can’t be tied to any one ideology or message,” the site says, noting it has been used by civil rights groups, white supremacists and recently by Beyoncé during the Super Bowl. Atlas Obscura also nods to a Smithsonian post about ”the dap,” a handshake that started among black GIs during Vietnam as a ”symbol of unity and survival in a racially turbulent atmosphere.” An activist in support of the West Point cadets has said that the women’s pose could also be interpreted as the ”Army Strong” pose, which she writes ”is commonly done by the cadet corps during football games and army victories.” Potential Consequences, With the investigation continuing, military law expert Greg Greiner told Army Times that the cadets’ intent may not be the deciding factor in how West Point responds: ”Even if the intent was not to make a political statement  —   for example, if ’group think’ set in or the cadets were just ’messing around’  —   they could still be in trouble, Greiner explained. ” ’My experience with military justice and the way discipline is handled, is that intent doesn’t always matter 100 percent,’ he said. ’Sometimes the actions themselves are enough to bring discredit.’ ” The New York Times gave an older example of students making a statement with their   photo: ”In 1976, the year before women were admitted to the academy, male cadets widely referred to themselves as ’the last class with balls,’ according to an officer who teaches at West Point. The officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak, said that a number of seniors that year posed for a photo holding armloads of basketballs, footballs and baseballs. They were not punished, the officer said.” Greiner told Army Times the women could face charges of conduct unbecoming an officer. He added: ”Leaders have a duty to say to themselves, do we want to create a problem for these young female officers that they’re going to have for the rest of their careers?”"
"PBS highlights how gun violence affects communities in the United States during Armed In America, a special   event featuring two documentaries and town halls. The films air on at 10:25 p. m. ET Monday, May 9, and 9:25 p. m. ET on Tuesday, May 10, followed by town hall discussions moderated by All Things Considered weekend host Michel Martin. On Monday, tune in to Peace Officer, which focuses on shootings involving law enforcement and the debate about the increased militarization of police in the United States. The Armor of Light, which airs on Tuesday, explores religious perspectives surrounding gun violence. The documentaries will broadcast on PBS (check your local listings) and simulcast online at PBS. org and NPR. org. You can tune in to a live stream of the   special here beginning on Monday, May 9 at 10:25 p. m. ET, and then on Tuesday at 9:25 p. m. ET."
"Bernie Sanders has some of the most ambitious and sweeping policy proposals of all the presidential candidates. His campaign has centered on a promise of ”revolution.” But revolution would be really expensive, according to a new report. The Tax Policy Center estimated on Monday that Sanders’    plans  —   including outlays for programs like Medicare for all and free college tuition  —   would together add $18 trillion to the national debt over a decade. In addition, the center’s Howard Gleckman wrote, it would add $3 trillion in interest costs. He called it an ”unprecedented increase in government borrowing.” The center had already estimated that Sanders’ tax plan alone would add $15. 3 trillion in revenue over 10 years. What happens to that big bump in revenue? The main expense: Sanders’ health care plan. The Health Policy Center (like TPC, a project of the Urban Institute, a D. C. think tank) estimated that Sanders’ health proposal would cost the government an additional $32 trillion to what it pays now. That’s well more than twice as much as the Sanders campaign says the health plan would cost. The campaign put it at $13. 8 trillion over a decade. Bigger benefits for the 95 percent big tax hikes on wealthiest, According to TPC, Sanders’ plans would increase taxes across the board, but they would provide bigger benefits than tax hikes for many Americans as well, particularly the  . People in the bottom 20 percent of income would pay an average of $209 more in taxes, for example, but receive nearly $10, 300 in benefits, on average. Benefits would outweigh the tax costs for the bottom 95 percent in TPC’s breakdown. The   people, meanwhile, would pay in a lot more than they’d receive. On average, people in the top 5 percent would pay $130, 275 more in taxes and receive $19, 281 more in benefits. Hillary Clinton had attacked Sanders earlier in the campaign for calling for a ”tax hike on   families.” However, the Sanders campaign countered that the plan would ultimately save people money, giving them ”better care at less cost,” as Politico reported in November. Sanders’ plan might benefit lots of people on the individual level, but according to TPC, the additional spending could cause broader macroeconomic problems. According to Roberton Williams, a fellow at the center, the effects of this level of government spending would ”undoubtedly be pretty severely negative,” as it could crowd out private investment, raise interest rates and slow down economic growth. ’Wildly overestimates the cost’? In a statement, the Sanders campaign said TPC ”wildly overestimates the cost of Senator Sanders’ health care plan,” saying that the center ”underestimates the savings in administration, paperwork, and prescription drug prices” that the U. S. might realize under Sanders’ plan. In addition, the Sanders campaign said TPC assumed state and local governments would stop spending on health care and just hand over their obligations to the federal government. Gunnels said that under Sanders’ plan, state and local governments would keep spending at current levels. The center’s estimate isn’t really comparable with its other analyses of candidate plans, because this one includes both Sanders’ taxation and spending plans. TPC has analyzed most other major candidates’ tax plans, for example, but not the accompanying spending (or  ) plans. For example, the center measured that Donald Trump’s tax plan would cost the government $9. 5 trillion in revenues over 10 years. However, they did not know exactly how Trump would cut spending to try to offset those revenues. (When Fox’s Chris Wallace pressed him on this in one debate, Trump didn’t have a full explanation.) Likewise, the center estimated that Clinton’s plans would bring in $1. 1 trillion over 10 years. But, according to TPC fellow Williams, because the Clinton camp hasn’t released all of its tax proposals in one go, it’s hard to compare her plans to Sanders’. For example, when the center estimated Clinton’s tax plan in March, it noted that a   and   tax cut was still coming."
"The U. S. has $19 trillion in debt, and Donald Trump is upset about it. Once upon a time, he said he would get rid of all of it in eight years. He walked that back, but his positions on how to handle that debt are still making headlines. Just a few days ago, it seemed like Trump wanted to renegotiate America’s debt with the nation’s creditors  —   a potentially disastrous policy. Then it seemed like he was offering a subtler solution. Then he said the U. S. government could print money to stave off default. Nothing  —   not even policy positions  —   sit still for long in the 2016 election. This same weekend, Trump clarified his positions on two other major economic policy areas. If you haven’t been keeping up, here’s a quick recap of Trump’s changing statements: What did Trump initially say about debt? On CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday, Andrew Ross Sorkin initially brought up the idea of renegotiating debt repayment, in the context of Trump’s past business dealings. Here’s a video and transcript, emphasis added. ARS: Do you believe that we in terms of the United States need to pay 100 cents on the dollar? Or do you think there’s actually ways that we could renegotiate that debt? DT: I think, look. I’ve borrowed knowing that you can pay back with discounts. And I’ve done very well with debt. Now of course I was swashbuckling, and it did well for me, and it was good for me and all of that. And you know debt was always sort of interesting to me. Now we’re in a different situation with a country, but I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed you could make a deal. And if the economy was good it was good so therefore you can’t lose. It’s like you make a deal before you go into a poker game. And your odds are much better. That bolded bit, about making a deal on debt, caused mass freakout in the financial press, and for good reason. Suggesting that U. S. creditors accept haircuts on U. S. debt (that is, accept lower payouts than they agreed to) would be an   potentially disastrous policy proposition. But then his meaning got muddier. Anchor Becky Quick asked him twice if he really meant he wanted to renegotiate debt. On his second answer, he seemed to change positions: BQ: You’re not talking about renegotiating sovereign bonds that the U. S. has already issued. DT: No, I don’t want to renegotiate the bonds, but I think you can do discounting. I think depending on where interest rates are, I think you can buy back. I’m not talking about with a renegotiation, but you can buy back at discounts, you can do things at discounts. I’m not even suggesting that we don’t borrow money at very low rates long term so we don’t have to worry about when they come due. So what exactly was he saying? Great question. In that first answer, he seemed to say he would want creditors to accept lower payments. And that’s not just a big deal that’s a gargantuan deal. The prospect of investors in U. S. debt accepting less on the dollar than they are owed could tank the economy (more on that later). But even then, his later answer made muddier exactly what he meant. Trump went on to say he didn’t want to ”renegotiate” but rather wanted to ”discount” or ”refinance” U. S. Treasurys. That could very well mean he still wanted to offer creditors lower rates, said one economist. But there’s another reading. ”He keeps mentioning interest rates, so being charitable, he could mean that the United States should buy back debt when its price falls,” said Michael Strain, economics fellow at the   American Enterprise Institute. What’s the fuss? If the government asked investors to accept less on the dollar than they are owed, it would be phenomenally bad for the economy. ”There are no merits to it,” Strain said. He added, ”The extent to which U. S. Treasurys are kind of the foundation on which the global financial system is built is really hard to overstate.” For one thing, it would send interest rates on Treasurys soaring and destroy the U. S. Treasury’s   status. That’s what Strain means by ”foundation” right now, everyone knows and trusts that U. S. debt is a safe investment. Treasurys are used in all sorts of financial transactions worldwide. They’re in many people’s retirement accounts as a   asset. Rattling faith in that Treasury would introduce massive amounts of uncertainty into the economy. Plus, it would cause interest rates on U. S. debt to soar. That would mean higher borrowing costs for the U. S. government  —   making the very fiscal situation Trump is worried about even worse. All of this could dry up credit markets, as the uncertainty could make banks far less likely to lend money. Cut back on borrowing and lending, and you deliver a huge blow to the economy. It’s not even clear how this idea would work, says one financial expert  —   creditors wouldn’t have much of an incentive to take the deal, with the U. S. currently on firm financial footing. ”Typically the goal of a sovereign default is for a country to reset its borrowings base in order to make sure it can be fiscally sustainable going forward,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney. ”And creditors or lenders have an interest in participating in that process, because they believe they can get the best return from negotiation.” What is Trump saying now? He says that all along, he just wanted the U. S. government to buy back debt at lower prices. ”If there’s a chance to buy back debt at a discount, interest rates up and the bonds down, and you can buy debt. That’s what I’m talking about,” he said, as reported by Politico. So if that’s what Trump wants, how would this work? It’s a complicated proposition, but Dean Baker at the   Center on Economic and Policy Research explains in a blog post: ”If interest rates rise, the situation Trump described, the market value of   debt falls. For example, a   bond issued in 2015 at an interest rate of less than 3. 0 percent, might sell for less than 70 percent of its nominal value if the   interest rate crosses 6 or 7 percent, which it certainly could. ”The Treasury could buy up   debt in the market at its current market value, and replace it with new debt that paid a higher interest rate. This won’t change the interest payments owed by the government, but it would reduce the nominal value of the debt outstanding.” Long story short: It would lower the debt level but raise the interest rate the U. S. is paying altogether, essentially trading one problem for the other. Why would we do that? In Baker’s telling, this is a solution only insofar as someone cares a lot about nominal debt levels and    ratios (and it’s not clear that Trump does). As LeBas told NPR, unless somehow the U. S. were running a surplus, buying back debt at a discount wouldn’t do much good. ”If the U. S. were running a deficit and interest rates rose, the government could buy back its debt at discount prices,” he said. ”But then it would have to issue more debt at a higher interest rate to fund the buyback, which would be a wash.” Trump has also created new shock waves by saying  —   in this case quite clearly  —   that the U. S. can’t default, because it prints money. That’s true, but that doesn’t mean it’s good policy (as in, it could easily cause massive inflation). What exactly has this whole exercise taught us? Aside from the economics lesson, it provided a picture of one of the Trump campaign’s biggest recent weaknesses. His clarifications on the U. S. debt also came in the midst of a weekend in which Trump clarified his position on two other major economic issues: Trump said he thought the minimum wage should be raised on a    level. In November, he had said in a debate that he thought wages were too high. And in the same weekend that he wrestled with how to tackle the debt, he explained, then   his tax plan (which the Tax Policy Center said would raise deficits by $9. 5 trillion over 10 years): He at first in an interview with NBC seemed to say he would raise taxes on the wealthy. But then he clarified that he meant that after negotiating with Congress, taxes might end up higher than the low rates he initially proposed, but they would end up lower than they are now. All of which is to say that it’s not clear the Trump campaign has settled positions on a range of economic policy issues. These kinds of clarifications and policy shifts give the Clinton campaign ample ammunition for attacking Trump in two ways: one, for potentially harmful economic policies, and two, for not having firm policy principles. That’s bad for Trump. Any time that a candidate has to spend playing defense  —   explaining policies or wording choices, for example  —   is time he or she is not spending playing offense."
"Updated at 6:20 p. m. ET, After North Carolina’s governor filed a lawsuit asking federal courts to keep in place a controversial law that places limits on transgender access to bathrooms, the U. S. Justice Department responded with a lawsuit of its own. ”We are filing a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state of North Carolina, Gov. Pat McCrory, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a press conference Monday. ”We are seeking a court order declaring House Bill 2’s restroom restriction impermissibly discriminatory, as well as a statewide bar on its enforcement.” The DOJ’s response followed swiftly after North Carolina filed its lawsuit. The state’s legal filing came ahead of an    deadline for North Carolina to respond to the Department of Justice over the law barring protections for LGBT people in the state. ”The Obama administration is bypassing Congress by attempting to rewrite the law and set restroom policies for public and private employers across the country, not just North Carolina. This is now a national issue that applies to every state and it needs to be resolved at the federal level,” North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said in a statement about the filing. He said the lawsuit was an attempt to ”clarify” national law. In a statement Monday afternoon, McCrory also called for Congress to chime in. ”I think it’s time for the U. S. Congress to bring clarity to our national   provisions,” he said, repeating it twice for emphasis. Lynch, however, said the federal laws concerning gender and gender discrimination are clear, and that North Carolina’s law is in violation. The state law in question, known as HB2, requires transgender people at state facilities, including schools, to use the restroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificate  —   not their identified gender. (The law also blocks local jurisdictions from passing their own   ordinances, among other things.) Telling transgender people that ”history was on [their] side,” Lynch explained why North Carolina’s law posed such a threat to Americans. She said: ”This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms. This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we, as a people and as a country, have enacted to protect them  —   indeed, to protect all of us. And it’s about the founding ideals that have led this country  —   haltingly but inexorably  —   in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans. ”This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation. We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education. And we saw it in the proliferation of state bans on   unions intended to stifle any hope that gay and lesbian Americans might one day be afforded the right to marry.” The DOJ, which said last week that the law violates the Civil Rights Act and Title IX, had set a Monday afternoon deadline for the state to reply and say whether it intended to enact the law. Lynch said the state requested an extension that was under active consideration. ”But instead of replying to our offer or providing a certification, this morning, the state of North Carolina and its governor chose to respond by suing the Department of Justice,” she said. In the state’s lawsuit, the governor and another state official instead say the DOJ’s position is a ”radical reinterpretation” of the Civil Rights Act and a ”baseless and blatant overreach.” McCrory’s lawyers also say there’s nothing discriminatory about the law. ”North Carolina does not treat transgender employees differently from   employees,” the lawsuit states. ”All state employees are required to use the bathroom and changing facilities assigned to persons of their same biological sex, regardless of gender identity, or transgendered status.” Billions of dollars of federal funding may be at stake in the dispute. ”While the lawsuit currently seeks declaratory relief, I want to note that we retain the option of curtailing federal funding to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina as this case proceeds,” Lynch said. But for now, NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports, the federal government is trying to reach ”a resolution in which the state voluntarily complies.” McCrory’s office responded to the DOJ’s lawsuit in a statement Monday evening, saying North Carolina is ”appropriately seeking legal certainty to a complex issue impacting employers and students throughout the country.” It also accused Lynch of ”using divisive rhetoric to advance the Obama administration’s strategy of making laws that bypass the constitutional authority of Congress and our courts.” Toward the end of her remarks, Lynch emphasized that the ”fear of the unknown” and ”discomfort with the uncertainty of change” can cause people to reject what they don’t know. ”This is a time to summon our national virtues of inclusivity, diversity, compassion and ” she said. ”What we must not do  —   what we must never do  —   is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans, for something they cannot control, and deny what makes them human.” Additionally, top Republican lawmakers in the North Carolina Legislature on Monday filed their own lawsuit against the federal government Monday addressing Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. This action is separate from the governor’s filing against the Justice Department. A Swiftly Passed State Law, The law, which was passed over the course of 12 hours in a special   session of the state Legislature, was issued in response to a ordinance by the city of Charlotte that would have established protections for LGBT people. That ordinance would have allowed trans people in Charlotte to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity. The state bill nullified that Charlotte ordinance and required all state facilities to go further and explicitly require that bathrooms be segregated according to sex as assigned at birth. ”It’s either a   measure, or rooted in ignorance, depending on whom you ask,” Jeff Tiberii of WUNC reported for NPR’s Morning Edition. The law has mobilized voters on both sides, Tiberii says  —   the conservative base as well as the law’s opponents. ”At least two corporations have decided not to expand here,   performers have canceled gigs, and even some elected officials have said this has damaged the state’s economy and reputation,” Tiberii says. ”And there’s no consensus on which party this benefits the most.” The Rebuke From DOJ, The Department of Justice said that the law violates the Civil Rights Act, by discriminating against state employees, and Title IX, by discriminating against students at state schools. In a letter to McCrory, the DOJ said that ”the State is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees.” The department gave the governor until close of business Monday to reply and say whether it will implement the law or remedy the violations. One of the sponsors of the law, North Carolina state Rep. Paul Stam, told NPR’s Morning Edition earlier Monday that he expected McCrory to fight the Department of Justice on the issue. ”That’s what I would hope and expect him to do,” Stam said. Stam also said he wasn’t worried about the possibility that North Carolina might lose federal funding over the law, saying it could take years for that process to happen. ”The idea that this is some imminent threat is an empty one,” he said. Stam told NPR the fact that the DOJ is citing the Civil Rights Act  —   which applies to companies with more than 15 employees  —   means ”this is no longer a threat against North Carolina.” ”Every business in the nation that employs more than 15 people is under threat . .. that the federal government will sue them” if they don’t permit trans employees to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, Stam says."
"California Gov. Jerry Brown has made some of the state’s temporary water restrictions permanent. The executive order, in response to the state’s drought, permanently bans wasteful practices like hosing sidewalks and washing cars with hoses that don’t have   nozzles. ”Californians stepped up during this drought and saved more water than ever before,” Brown said in a statement. ”But now we know that drought is becoming a regular occurrence and water conservation must be a part of our everyday life.” NPR’s Kirk Siegler reports that the order does allow some districts to loosen water restrictions and ”it generally gives water districts more local control to set their own conservation targets.” But Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, told reporters, ”This is not a time to start using water like it’s 1999 we need to keep conserving all we can, whenever we can.” The State Water Board still needs to formally finalize the regulations, which it is expected to do next week, Kirk says. Nearly 90 percent of the state ”remains in moderate drought or worse,” despite extra water and snowfall in Northern California this winter, The Associated Press reports. ”Southern California overall is heading deeper into, not out of, the fifth year of drought, the government’s U. S. Drought Monitor said last week.” The general manager of the South California water district said in a statement Monday that the governor’s order ”is completely consistent with conservation objectives for Southern California.” The state approved unprecedented water restrictions in May 2015, as The   reported, after voluntary conservation efforts didn’t cut it."
"Violinist Lara St. John has attitude in spades. It’s in the sound of her playing and in the arc of her career. Her first album cover sparked controversy, prompting many   observers to wonder about her motivations until they heard the passionate Bach performances that accompanied it. Willing to take risks, St. John was among the first to start her own record label in the 1990s. It’s allowed her to call the shots on her recorded repertoire, which has been satisfyingly broad, from Piazzolla to polkas to Mozart. St. John’s recent album Shiksa  —   recorded with pianist Matt Herskowitz, who joins her for this Tiny Desk concert  —   collects new arrangements of old tunes from Armenia, Romania and the Jewish diaspora. The two know how to start off a show. The incendiary ”Czardashian Rhapsody” mashes up two Hungarian tunes with some extra hot sauce. St. John’s fiddle is at turns coy and cocky, racy, raw and just plain outrageous. Herskowitz dispatches his considerably hefty role with equal abandon. Her hair flying as if she were a   guitarist, St. John nails the big rock ’n’ roll ending. The two slow it all down for ”Sari Siroun Yar,” a bittersweet Armenian troubadour song that opens with pearly,   trills from Herskowitz and some    magic from St. John. Bowing across the fingerboard, she captures the muted, breathy sound of the duduk, Armenia’s ancient   instrument. The barnstorming grit is back for a final round of pyrotechnics in the ”Oltenian Hora.” The piece plays off a catalog of violin tricks, St. John explains, practiced by traditional Romanian gypsy fiddlers. After   whistles, bird calls and slithery harmonics, all in a variety of   rhythms, St. John ratchets up the intensity. Practically brawling with her instrument, she saws away faster and faster, leaving her, and many of us in the room, breathless. Shiksa is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Producers: Tom Huizenga, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame, Brandon Chew Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: Kara  . For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"Private Medicare Advantage plans treating the elderly have overbilled the government by billions of dollars, but rarely been forced to repay the money or face other consequences for their actions, according to a congressional audit released Monday. In a sharply critical report, the Government Accountability Office called for ”fundamental improvements” to curb overbilling by the health plans, which are paid more than $160 billion annually. The privately run health plans, an alternative to traditional    Medicare, have proven popular with seniors and have enrolled more than 17 million people. The plans, which were the subject of a Center for Public Integrity investigation, also enjoy strong support in Congress. GAO took aim at Medicare’s primary tactic for recouping overcharges, a secretive, and lengthy, audit process called Risk Adjustment Data Validation, or RADV. Unlike many other   programs, RADV has cost the government way more than it has returned to the treasury. The GAO said that the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, has spent about $117 million on these audits, but so far has recouped just $14 million. CMS officials counter that the mere threat of RADV these audits has caused health plans to voluntarily return approximately $650 million in overpayments  —   and that upcoming audits will recover tens of millions more. ”As the MA (Medicare Advantage) program continues to grow, safeguarding the program from loss is critical,” the GAO report said. The report did not name any of the health plans studied. The GAO launched its audit in October 2014 in the wake of the Center for Public Integrity’s ”Medicare Advantage Money Grab” series. The articles documented nearly $70 billion in ”improper” payments to health plans  —   mostly inflated fees from overstating patients’ health risks  —   from 2008 through 2013 alone. The Center’s investigation traced the overpayments to abuse of a billing formula called a risk score, which pays higher rates for sicker patients and less for people in good health. Since 2004, however, the risk score formula has largely operated as an honor system, despite criticism that many health plans have overstated how sick some patients are to boost their revenues. That practice is known in medical circles as ”upcoding.” In addition, CMS records released to the Center for Public Integrity through a court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that overbilling has wasted tax dollars almost since risk scores were introduced in 2004. One confidential review of 2005 payments determined that nearly a third of patients enrolled in 22 health plans weren’t as sick as was claimed. The audit projected overpayments of $4. 2 billion as a result. Other CMS documents reveal that officials dubbed these health plans ”” but did little to reel them in, while RADV audits dragged on for years without reaching conclusions. Medicare officials have quietly conducted these audits since 2008. But they have never imposed stiff financial penalties, even as evidence built up that billing errors were deeply rooted and wasting tax dollars at an alarming clip. GAO in its report noted that CMS has failed to target health plans with ”known improper payment risk,” thus allowing the worst performers to escape the net. The GAO also criticized the agency for allowing audits and appeals to drag on for years. Some audits of 2007 payments to health plans are still under appeal, for instance. In response to the GAO report, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s trade organization, said that an ”unconfirmed diagnosis” in an audit doesn’t necessarily mean that the person doesn’t have the disease. And in recent public comments, the trade group has criticized the RADV audit review process as not yet complete or ”fully tested,” to assure that it is ”stable and reliable.” David Lipschuz, an attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said his group was ”troubled” by the extent of the improper payments to Medicare Advantage plans and the government’s ”lack of progress on recouping and deterring such payments.” In an emailed statement, he added: ”We hope that policymakers who protect MA (Medicare Advantage) profit at all costs, while at the same time often proposing to shift more costs on to the majority of beneficiaries in traditional Medicare, take heed of this GAO report and ensure that the recommendations are implemented.” GAO reviewers said that CMS is stepping up the RADV audits, but notes that much more needs to be done. GAO noted that officials expect the upcoming audits to recover $370 million, but that’s just three percent of the total estimated annual overpayment. CMS officials said they have begun auditing Medicare Advantage payments from 2011 and 2012 and have set a goal to have all Medicare Advantage contracts audited yearly. ”HHS is strongly committed to program integrity in the Medicare Advantage (MA) program and takes seriously our responsibility to protect taxpayer dollars by identifying and correcting improper payments,” the agency said. While federal auditors have struggled for years to root out these overcharges, at least a   whistleblowers have filed lawsuits accusing Medicare Advantage plans of ripping off the government. In the most recent Medicare Advantage whistleblower case to surface, South Florida doctor Mario M. Baez alleges that insurance giant Humana Inc. knew of billing fraud at some South Florida clinics but did little to stop it. Baez argues that inflating risk scores not only wastes taxpayer dollars but also can harm patients. The suit, which was unsealed in late February, is pending. Humana has declined to comment on it. This piece comes from the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization. To follow CPI’s investigations into Medicare and Medicare Advantage waste, fraud and abuse, go here. You can follow Fred Schulte on Twitter: @fredschulte."
"When King Salman assumed the throne in Saudi Arabia last year, he was pushing 80, his health was questionable and many thought he would be more a caretaker than a monarch of note. Yet Salman has unleashed major initiatives and shaken up the kingdom, setting a course for change in a land where the watchwords have long been tradition, stability and continuity. The king’s latest surprise came Saturday with a broad government reshuffle. It included the ouster of the oil minister, Ali   who had served for two decades and was perhaps the most influential person in the global oil industry. Many believe the driving force behind these changes is the king’s son, Mohammed bin Salman, who is around age 30 and serves as both the deputy crown prince and the defense minister. While the king is a rare public speaker, Mohammed has given lengthy interviews, including a   discussion in January with The Economist, where he described the country he wants to see: ”A Saudi Arabia that is not dependent on oil a Saudi Arabia with a growing economy a Saudi Arabia with transparent laws a Saudi Arabia with a very strong position in the world a Saudi Arabia that can fulfill the dream of any Saudi, or his ambition, through creating enticing incentives, the right environment a Saudi Arabia with sustainability a Saudi Arabia that guarantees the participation of everyone in  .” None of this has happened yet, but moves have been striking. The kingdom’s leadership has been reshaped, possibly for decades to come. There’s a major push to diversify the   economy built on oil. And the Saudis have declared a more assertive foreign policy at a time when much of the Arab world is in chaos. The king’s decrees on Saturday also named a new head of the central bank and several other government departments and restructured a number of government ministries. He even created a General Authority for Entertainment, which immediately prompted a snarky response on social media given the kingdom’s historic restrictions on most every form of leisure, including a ban on movie theaters. The king’s moves did not alter the political structure, where the monarch has absolute authority. There will be challenges on multiple fronts. The religious establishment is certain to raise objections. A population accustomed to cushy subsidies will have to adapt to fewer benefits. The country’s human rights record is widely criticized, as are the lack of democracy and the many restrictions placed on women. But with a youthful population that’s growing fast, Saudi Arabia can no longer rely solely on oil revenue, according to economists. Here’s a look at the major moves the king has introduced since he came to power following the death of King Abdullah in January 2015: The Line Of Succession: Regardless of how long his health holds, King Salman has shaped the monarchy for many years to come. He is the sixth son of King Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia’s founder, to assume the throne, and he is set to be the last now that all of the surviving sons are elderly. Shortly after he took over, Salman moved the line of succession to the next generation by naming his nephew, Mohammed bin Nayef, 56, as crown prince, and his son Mohammed as deputy crown prince. Assuming all goes to plan, the kingdom’s leadership could be set for the next   and this could be Salman’s most significant legacy. Bombing Campaign In Yemen: The king has dramatically overturned the Saudi reputation as a quiet,    player with his air war against the Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen. The Saudis are worried about the turmoil on their southern frontier and say archrival Iran is backing the Houthis, who remain the strongest force in Yemen’s turbulent civil war. The Saudi campaign has not gone well. There’s a shaky truce at present and peace talks are taking place in Kuwait. But no solution appears imminent in Yemen. Whatever the outcome, the king has demonstrated his willingness to undertake a major military operation beyond the Saudi borders. More Assertive With The U. S.: The close alliance dating back decades is now marked by increased friction over how to deal with Iran  —   the Saudis strongly opposed the nuclear deal  —   and how to conduct the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iran. While U. S.  tensions predate Salman’s ascension to the throne, they reflect the growing Saudi assertiveness and a rare display of opposition to U. S. policies. The two countries still need each other but could be moving toward a very different relationship from the one they’ve had for decades. Confrontation With Iran: The   rivalry has intensified in the past year with the region’s proxy wars that feature Saudi support for Sunni Muslims and Iranian backing for Shiite Muslims. The two countries broke off diplomatic relations in January after the Saudis executed a prominent Shiite cleric, Nimr   a Saudi citizen convicted at home of terrorism charges. Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, which led to bitter recriminations. The   fault line is playing out across the region, with the Saudis feeling the Obama administration is more interested in reaching out to Iran than in siding with longtime allies. Reshaping The Economy: The Saudis have never made much progress in diversifying their economy, despite several previous attempts. But in the most ambitious plan ever announced, Saudi Vision 2030 was unveiled last month. The goal is to turn the state oil company, Aramco, into a conglomerate active in a much broader range of industries. Still, this is a   project. For now, the Saudis depend on oil. A key player will be the new oil minister, Khalid   55, a technocrat who attended Texas AM and has served as the chairman of Aramco. He assumes the post at a time when world oil prices have been depressed for nearly two years and were running at around $44 a barrel on Monday. In his initial comments, Falih sought to reassure markets. ”Saudi Arabia will maintain its stable petroleum policies,” he said in a statement on Sunday. ”We remain committed to maintaining our role in international energy markets and strengthening our position as the world’s most reliable supplier of energy.” Perhaps so. But most everything else in Saudi Arabia seems unpredictable these days. Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1"
"If you’ve seen Hitler in the headlines a lot lately, it’s probably in the context of the presidential campaign and one particular candidate: ”Why Donald Trump is Worse Than Hitler (Paste) ”Trump Surrogate: He Has To Prove ’He’s Not Adolf Hitler’ To Beat Clinton” (Talking Points Memo) ”Trump Isn’t Hitler, He’s Galileo” (The Daily Caller). This trope has made its way to the forefront of this political cycle, but it’s picking up on a trend that has been around for decades. The          club is not exactly selective. Mike Godwin first noticed the phenomenon in the 1980s: People on a message forum called Usenet really, really liked referencing Hitler. In 1994, in an essay for Wired magazine, he coined Godwin’s Law: ”As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” A new study shows that the   law is, in fact, backed up by evidence. A data analyst who blogs under the name CuriousGnu has analyzed 4. 6 million reddit comments to find that 78 percent of conversations that reach 1, 000 or more comments mention Nazis or Hitler. ”I liked [CuriousGnu’s] statistical approach,” Godwin, director of innovation policy and general counsel for the R Street Institute, tells NPR. ”I wish I’d thought of that.” CuriousGnu downplays the findings, though, telling NPR in an email: ”It’s obviously not a scientifically researched article, and it doesn’t say anything about online social interaction.” CuriousGnu asked to remain anonymous to avoid associating the blogger’s employer with this research. Godwin explains that the comparison is usually out of desperation. ”Discovering what other people think when they disagree with you is quite disturbing. So there’s a tendency to escalate,” he says. He adds that the Internet created the first opportunity for such a diverse range of people to interact in an unmediated space. But of course, the problem with such escalated online rhetoric, he explained in that 1994 essay, is that it trivializes the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis during the Holocaust. References to them for context in historical discussions? Fine. Shorthand to insult someone? Offensive. In CuriousGnu’s study, subreddits having to do with history were purposely excluded to only get irrelevant Nazi and Hitler comparisons. The contextual distinction remains important to Godwin, as he explains in a recent Washington Post article: ”If you’re thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician.” In our interview, Godwin gives an example of a fair analogy: ”If someone says that race or ethnic classifications are a reason for deporting people, then that starts looking a lot more like the pathological social system that we saw in Europe in the last century.”"
"A change in the weather has helped firefighters battling a massive blaze in Fort McMurray, a Canadian   town in the province of Alberta. Cooler temperatures and light rain have officials sounding optimistic, hopeful that the wildfire  —   which continues to burn  —   might have reached a ”turning point” that will lead to its containment. ”This is great firefighting weather,” Alberta fire official Chad Morrison said at a weekend news conference. ”We can really get in there and really get a handle on this fire . .. get a death grip on it.” Officials had expected the blaze to double in size on Saturday instead, The Associated Press reports, it’s now slightly smaller than it was then. Cooler weather is expected to continue for a few more days, Dan Karpenchuk reports for NPR. Meanwhile, the government is taking this opportunity to evaluate the extent of the damage from the fire, which has forced 80, 000 people to evacuate their homes. Karpenchuk reports: ”The premier of Alberta, Rachel Notley, will travel to Fort McMurray today along with planners to begin the work of determining what needs to be done first and how to bring thousands of people back home. ”Crews will assess the damage as well as checking on infrastructure such as natural gas lines and the electrical power grid. Firefighters were able to keep the flames away from critical infrastructure such as the hospital and the water treatment plant. ”The last damage assessment, a week ago, estimated 1, 600 homes and buildings had been destroyed.” Fort McMurray  —   an outpost supported by the oil sands industry  —   was largely populated by people who had moved to town to work for the oil sands mines. Many workers had been hit hard by the recent drop in oil prices. And for some, there might be a silver lining in the smoke. Reuters spoke to a homeless evacuee from Fort McMurray, Terry MacDuff, who said he had nothing to lose in the fire and was ”living like a king” at the Lac la Biche evacuation center. The wire service reports: ”At Lac La Biche, evacuees are given a place to sleep, access to health services, unlimited food and a gym full of clothes and goods donated from the community. ”MacDuff plans to return to Fort McMurray and believes that eventually more people will be put back to work as the city rebuilds. ” ’This fire saved a lot of people. There will be a lot of work in the cleanup,’ he said.”"
"Two days after drug lord Joaquin ”El Chapo” Guzmán was transferred to a prison near Juárez, a Mexican city near the U. S. border, a federal judge in Mexico said the extradition process can move forward. An unnamed judge said the ”legal requirements laid out in the extradition treaty” between the U. S. and Mexico had been met, The Associated Press reports, adding that Mexico’s foreign ministry has 20 days to approve the extradition. NPR’s Carrie Kahn reported in January that Guzmán had been ”indicted on drug and arms trafficking, money laundering and murder charges in at least six U. S. states.” In July 2015, Guzmán escaped from Mexico’s supermax Altiplano prison through a   tunnel. He was recaptured in January. But the judge’s   for extradition is one step in what could still be a lengthy process. Lawyers for Guzman can still try to block or delay any attempts to extradite the infamous leader of the Sinaloa cartel. As the   has reported, the head of Mexico’s extradition office, Miguel Merino, warned in January that Guzmán’s legal team could pursue various appeals that could delay the drug kingpin’s extradition for four to six years. Reuters reports that ”Juan Pablo Badillo, one of Guzmán’s lawyers, said his client’s legal situation was still being processed and that to extradite him now would be a violation of his human rights.” The news service adds that ”government officials have said in private that the decision to extradite the drug lord is essentially a political decision dependent on the president.” The Dallas Morning News spoke to former FBI agent Arturo Fontes, who followed Guzmán’s movements for 28 years. Fontes said the decision to transfer Guzmán to Juarez, a city he called one of the kingpin’s ”strongholds,” could mean one of two things: ”Either the Mexican government really intends to ship him out to the United States immediately, or something else is afoot,” he said. ”There are no coincidences here. I’m not buying the government’s explanation. For the sake of the Mexican government, they need to extradite him ASAP or risk being a joke again.” NPR’s John Burnett reports that Mexican officials say Guzmán was moved to the prison near Juarez while Altiplano was upgrading security. He adds: ”The governor of Chihuahua State  —   where Chapo is now locked up  —   told reporters on Saturday, ’There is no risk of an escape.’ ”U. S. justice officials have been saying privately they expect Guzman to be brought to the United States to stand trial in Brooklyn for cocaine trafficking. Mexican officials did not mention a possible extradition  —   only that the wily trafficker would be more secure in Juarez.” Mexico’s willingness to consider extradition marks a shift from its previous position, as Carrie has reported. She said that when Guzmán was arrested and put in prison in February 2014, the Mexican government said it would not extradite him until he had served a lengthy prison term in Mexico."
"In her suburban London row house, Margit Goodman, 94, sits wrapped in blankets in her favorite recliner. She was a girl of 17 when she first came to Britain, escaping from her native Prague just before the Germans invaded. She remembers the exact date: June 5, 1939. ”When I left, [Czechoslovakia] was still a free country,” she recalls. ”But we soon became occupied by the Germans.” In the late 1930s, as Nazi persecution of Jews intensified, the British government and Jewish aid groups arranged for the transport of nearly 10, 000 children to the U. K. from Europe, through a program that became known as the ”Kindertransport.” Goodman was one of the children rescued by the program. ”I wouldn’t be here now. They saved our lives, didn’t they?” she says. Her mother, father and brother were left behind in Prague. From there, they were deported to concentration camps  —   where they were gassed to death. Goodman arrived in London alone. No other close relatives survived. ”I’ve never seen a photo of my grandparents,” says Karen Goodman, Margit’s daughter. Margit Goodman ended up working as a house maid in Scotland. Her experience as a teenage refugee shaped her whole family. She eventually became a social worker, and so did her daughter. Now both women have become advocates for today’s child refugees from Syria. In November 1938, the British Parliament passed emergency legislation to admit Jewish child refugees from Europe without visas. The Goodmans and a number of former evacuees, now elderly, are lobbying the U. K. to do the same for unaccompanied Syrian children who are in Europe. Karen Goodman recently briefed members of Britain’s Parliament on how the U. K. social services system might absorb 3, 000 Syrian youngsters through programs like the one to which her mother says she owes her life. But Prime Minister David Cameron has said he doesn’t want his government to grant asylum to any Syrian refugees who’ve already traveled to Europe on their own. ”We shouldn’t be encouraging people to make this dangerous journey,” Cameron told Parliament last week. ”I think it’s right to stick to the idea we keep investing in the refugee camps and in the neighboring countries.” Cameron’s ruling conservatives voted against an immigration bill amendment last month that would have forced his government to bring in 3, 000 Syrian child refugees already in Europe. The amendment was authored by Alfred Dubs, a Labour Party member of the House of Lords who, like Margit Goodman, was born in Prague and came to Britain as a child refugee via Kindertransport. Dozens of his fellow evacuees have asked Cameron to change his mind. The prime minister has since said he’s willing to reconsider and admit some Syrian children, but he wouldn’t give a number. ”My survival is entirely due to the extreme generosity of the British government in 1938,” says Leslie Brent, 90. ”And the contrast with the present government is quite pathetic.” Brent says he’s worried Cameron is caving into pressure from     groups. His Conservative Party is already split over a possible British exit from the European Union, on which Britons will vote in a national referendum in June. Immigration  —   or fear of it  —   is a big part of that debate. Brent recalls how in the 1930s,   sentiment got so bad in his hometown in northern Germany that he could no longer go to school. So his parents sent him to an orphanage in Berlin. That decision helped save his life. ”The director of the orphanage nominated me to leave on the first Kindertransport, which left Berlin on the first of December 1938  —   only a few weeks after Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass, when Jewish shops and homes and synagogues were ransacked,” he says. ”My parents had until then really believed that things would change for the better.” They did not. Brent’s parents and older sister were shot by the Nazis. Brent attended a Jewish boarding school in Kent and then served in the British army during World War II. He later won a grant to go to university, earned a Ph. D. and became a professor of immunology  —   contributing to work that won a Nobel Prize in 1960. ”I don’t know anyone who came over on one of the Kindertransports who hasn’t more than repaid the generosity of Britain in one way or another,” he says. ”And I have little doubt that these modern refugee children would act in the same way. Everyone thinks of them as a nuisance and a burden.” Brent says he is living proof of how mistaken that belief can be."
"Every May 9, Russian television footage is dominated by one of the country’s most important holidays, which speaks to both the past and the present. The programming consists of tanks and other military vehicles rolling through Red Square as President Vladimir Putin and other dignitaries watch. Jet fighters scream overhead, streaming the white, blue and red of the Russian flag in their vapor trails. It’s Victory Day, which this year marks the 71st anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Germany in World War II, known in Russia as the ”Great Patriotic War.” The ceremony in Red Square is all about the pageantry of military power. Army bands play as the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, reviews his troops from an open car, greeting each unit with the formula, ”Hello, comrades!” and receiving the reply, bellowed from hundreds of throats, ”Good morning, Comrade Defense Minister!” When he congratulates them on that   victory, they reply with a cheer: ” !” It’s largely a    production, and Russian television portrays it with dozens of cameras, shooting from every angle, including from right under the marching feet of the soldiers. Most Russians have to watch it on TV, because tight security makes it difficult to get close to much of the parade route. Before Putin speaks, there’s a momentous trumpet fanfare. When he calls for a moment of silence in memory of the millions who died in the war, the seconds are counted out by a loud  . Very old men and a few women, the surviving veterans, sit behind the president, their chests glinting with medals. If the first part of the ceremony is about the past, the second part is about the modern Russian military. Thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines march past. This year, for the first time, military women were represented by a unit of female cadets. Among the more than 100 military vehicles in the parade are Russia’s newest weapons, including the Armata tank and the     missile system. In a way, this part of the ceremony represents Putin’s fulfillment of a promise to modernize the Russian military. The program originally planned to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to bring most of the armed forces up to speed by 2020. That plan has been slowed somewhat by the drop in oil prices and Russia’s current recession, but Putin has vowed that it will go on. For ordinary Russians, the holiday begins when the televised production is over, and people go out to public parks. Most parks in Moscow have some sort of program to mark the holiday. In my neighborhood park, the Heritage Garden, there’s a stage where a Russian Army chorus belts out nostalgic songs from the war years. Here and there, grandchildren and   lead aged veterans to seats, from which they can enjoy the show. People bring the veterans flowers, especially red carnations, and other gifts. Whole families turn out decked in Red Army garrison caps and sporting the    stripes of the St. George’s ribbon, which has come to be a symbol of the victory and a sign of support for the current Russian government. People line up to sample Red Army chow from a smoky field kitchen or try on Soviet greatcoats and helmets to have their photos taken. Much of this enthusiasm for the military has revived in the past few years. It got a boost with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and it has been whetted by Russian pride over its military campaign in Syria. Even with a sagging economy, the Russian government places a premium on stoking Russian patriotism."
"After voters in Austin, Texas, rejected a proposal for loosened regulations on   apps, both Uber and Lyft have announced they will be ”pausing” operations in the city. In late 2015, Austin’s City Council approved an ordinance requiring companies like Uber and Lyft to be regulated like taxis. That meant, among other things, drivers would have to be fingerprinted as part of a background check. Uber and Lyft, in response, pushed a ballot proposal asking voters to choose between that city ordinance and a looser statewide law. NPR’s John Burnett reports that the two companies dropped $8 million to promote their stance on Proposal 1  —   a record for Austin ballot proposals. ”Despite spending what amounted to $200 on each vote in their favor, Uber and Lyft lost by 44 to 56,” John says. Before the vote on Saturday, Uber and Lyft had threatened to pull out of Austin, a market John describes as ”lucrative.” Since the decision, both companies have said they intend to follow through on their threats,   member station KUT reports. Lyft told KUT they ”want to stay in the city,” but Austin’s rules ”don’t allow true ridesharing to operate.” ”Because of this, we have to take a stand for a   path forward that lets ridesharing continue to grow across the country, and will pause operations in Austin on Monday, May 9th,” Lyft said. ”Disappointment does not begin to describe how we feel about shutting down operations in Austin,” said Uber’s Austin general manager, Chris Nakutis, KUT reports. Austin Councilmember Ann Kitchen, who spearheaded the effort to increase regulation of   companies, told KUT that nobody wants Uber and Lyft to withdraw from Austin. ”We’re not asking them to leave,” she said. ”The voters have spoken and they want these requirements.” Last year, Uber and Lyft withdrew from San Antonio over a similar requirement that drivers be fingerprinted. The companies returned months later under a program that made fingerprinting voluntary. Meanwhile, Houston also has rules requiring drivers for   apps to be fingerprinted. Uber has previously threatened to withdraw from Houston over that ordinance. According to Culturemap Houston, the city’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, responded, ”If it comes down to public safety on one hand and Uber staying on the other, I don’t think it is even close.” Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles are considering similar regulations on   apps, The Associated Press reports."
"For years now, The Good Wife has been the best drama series on broadcast television, but it deserves even more praise than that. From the start, show creators Robert and Michelle King have had to deal with restrictive network standards, inconsistent scheduling, intrusive advertising breaks and a production order of 22 episodes per season  —   almost twice that of its cable and streaming competition. Yet, from start to finish, The Good Wife has been rewarding, surprising and delightfully unpredictable. It became one of my favorite TV series to watch  —  and stayed that way until the end. The final episode of The Good Wife was well aware of, and full of references to, the show’s complicated history. The finale, like the pilot, was all about loyalty, betrayal and uncertainty, and echoes were everywhere. When the show premiered on CBS in 2009, it was with a closeup shot of two clasping hands. Those hands belonged to Illinois state’s attorney Peter Florrick, played by Chris Noth, and his wife, Alicia, played by Julianna Margulies. They were entering a press conference in which he was about to resign from office in disgrace after having been caught in a sex scandal with a prostitute. Alicia stood by him on stage, numb and silent, but afterward, in the hallway leading from the press conference, she slapped him hard, and literally went off in the opposite direction. Last night, those images and events were repeated, except it wasn’t Peter, this time resigning as governor of Illinois, who received the slap of betrayal. It was Alicia, who was slapped by her mentor and occasional law partner Diane Lockhart, played by Christine Baranski. Alicia had defended her husband effectively in court, but only by undercutting the reputation of Diane’s husband, who was an expert witness. And since both the judge and the prosecuting attorney from that trial were the same ones in Alicia’s first courtroom appearance in the series pilot, there was a definite feeling of déjà vu. Except that in the interim, Alicia, like her circumstances, has changed  —   a lot. Over the years, Peter and Alicia separated but never divorced. She had more than one significant romance, including one with Will Gardner, the lawyer who hired her. Will appeared to be Alicia’s personal happy ending  —   until he was shot and killed in a stunning Good Wife plot twist. In this final season, Alicia has come close to committing to another   associate, investigator Jason Crouse. But she’s not the same woman she used to be. She made that clear in the show’s penultimate episode, when longtime rival attorney Louis Canning, played by Michael J. Fox, presented her with some evidence that might help exonerate her husband  —   but at a personal cost. Rather than be crushed by the possibility of her husband’s continued infidelity, Alicia mocked the idea by pretending to break down and cry. But only for a few seconds, before dropping the act and smiling coldly, like the steely survivor she’s become. In the finale, Alicia dropped her resolve, at least privately, to reunite once again with her late lover Will, in a series of fantasies in which she discussed their past and her present and future. Josh Charles returned as Will, eventually encouraging her to go start a new life with Jason, after giving her one last hug. An imaginary embrace, but still a sweet one. The finale provided no sense of closure. Alicia wasn’t shown tracking down Jason, much less committing to him, and she almost certainly has lost her partnership at Diane’s law firm. But that was one of the strengths of The Good Wife all along, that life kept throwing curves at Alicia: new jobs, new lovers, new crises. Another strength was how smart the show was about technology, current events and the law, leading to all sorts of fascinating cases about search engines,   printers, NSA surveillance and cellphone usage. And best of all, the show had an outstanding roster of   and recurring guest stars, starting with Alan Cumming as Peter’s longtime adviser, Eli, and so many others, including Fox. The Good Wife managed to be one of TV’s best series for its entire run  —   and not just on broadcast TV."
"Updated 6:10 a. m. ET Tuesday: With 87 percent of precincts counted, Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of southern Davao City, appears to have clinched the Philippine presidential election. Michael Sullivan reports for our Newscast Unit that Duterte, who began as a political outsider, ”collected nearly twice as many votes as his two main rivals, including the man supported by outgoing President Benigno Aquino.” Results are still not official, but his two closest rivals have withdrawn from the race in the face of Duterte’s commanding lead, Reuters reports. Original Post: ”Forget the laws on human rights.” That’s what Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte had to say on Saturday in his final speech ahead of Monday’s elections. The former prosecutor’s nickname is ”The Punisher.” He brags about loving Viagra and has seemingly joked about rape. Duterte, mayor of Davao City, also has been linked to extrajudicial killings. According to unofficial results, he’s ahead in the race to lead the Philippines, a country formerly ruled by dictatorship. (The apparent vice presidential   is the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Duterte has said he would resign and hand over control to the man nicknamed ”Bongbong” Marcos ”if he fails to ’eradicate’ crimes, drugs and corruption within six months,” Time reports.) The    message is resonating with voters, NPR’s Michael Sullivan tells Morning Edition. Take this exchange Sullivan had with voter Jefferson Lim, a    IT manager, at a polling station near Manila Bay on Monday: Lim: ”I think he can instill discipline in people. Here, I live in Manila, I’ve been   . .. a number of times now. I think criminals aren’t afraid of the consequences they do.” Sullivan: ”You think he’ll make them afraid?” Lim: ”Yes.” As a   mayor, Duterte brought down the crime rate in Davao City, located on the southern island of Mindanao, as The   has reported. But NPR’s Camila Domonoske added: ”Human rights groups have accused Duterte of permitting or encouraging death squads to conduct extrajudicial killings of hundreds of perceived petty criminals. ”Duterte has variously denied and confirmed ordering   street killings, but he has consistently said crime should be punished with death.” In Saturday’s campaign speech, Duterte promised to ”do just what I did as mayor” if elected. ”You drug pushers,   men and   you better go out. Because . .. I’d kill you,” he said, according to The Guardian. Supporters see Duterte as an alternative to    Sullivan tells NPR’s Renee Montagne: ”The people here want a president who isn’t one of the usual suspects  —   one not beholden to the oligarchs that hold so much power here.” There are four other candidates vying for the presidency. On Friday, candidate Manuel ”Mar” Roxas called for unity with rival candidate Sen. Grace Poe, CNN Philippines reports. Roxas said: ”Uncertainty and the specter of a dictatorship are looming over our country once again. I call for unity, I call for decency, I call for democracy, I call for the rule of law.”"
"Turn on the TV and you can barely escape the acronym TPP. The   Partnership is a free trade deal between the U. S. and 11 other countries that’s currently being negotiated. Presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle are deriding the TPP, saying it’s a bum deal that will hurt the U. S. economy and especially   workers.  But if you venture into the Midwest and ask a farmer about the TPP, you’re likely to get a different answer. ”This pending TPP trade negotiation, to me, is hugely important for agricultural commodities, but specifically for beef,” says Mike John, a cattle rancher in Huntsville, Mo. He’s one of many Midwest farmers and ranchers who are bucking the political trend to dog the TPP. A coalition of more than 200 agriculture groups recently drafted an open letter urging congressional leaders to approve the TPP, saying the trade deal will help U. S. farmers stay competitive in an increasingly crowded world market. Free trade agreements remove tariffs on products we import, but also on food grown here that we export to other markets. That opens the door to get more beef, soybeans and rice into other countries at more competitive prices. John says the TPP could ultimately put money in farmers’ pockets by allowing them better access to consumers in Asian countries with a taste for American beef. ”The Asian markets are showing a huge increase in demand for beef,” he says. ”In particular, the   U. S. beef is highly prized in places where that beef demand is growing.” The 11 countries along the Pacific Rim that are parties in the TPP already take in more than 40 percent of American agricultural exports. That’s worth a whopping $63 billion, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The TPP could add an additional $3 billion to that figure. Many beef producers, like John, want to see the TPP ratified because it is designed to cut tariffs in countries like Japan, which has historically been highly protective of its domestic markets. ”So it’s not necessarily that we need to get into those markets. We just need to have fair access so that we can compete with the other global suppliers of beef,” John says. Indeed, agricultural policy analyst Julian Binfield at the University of Missouri says not sealing the deal could leave U. S. farmers at a global disadvantage. ”If TPP is not signed, then some other countries might write their own agreement,” he says. ”Maybe it’s partners in the TPP like Australia and New Zealand  —   they’re writing bilateral agreements all the time. Maybe they get expansion.”  Binfield says if the U. S. doesn’t pass the TPP, countries like Australia and New Zealand could make their own deals with each other, excluding the U. S. That could mean less trade access overall for U. S. producers. But there’s another issue casting a long shadow over TPP negotiations: China. China is not a part of the trade deal. But   interests say agreements like this one prevent China from setting global trade rules in its own interest. Binfield says in the overall strategy, the U. S. wants to make sure China  —   which is a massive economic power  —   doesn’t have the chance to dictate the trade rules for Asia. The U. S. wants to set the trade standards. All of this is not to say that all farmers are campaigning for the TPP. Despite their current advocacy for the trade deal, none of the country’s largest agricultural trade groups call the TPP an unmitigated victory. The National Farmers Union actively opposes the deal. The organization of mostly smaller farmers contends that the agreement would hurt the broader economy, which could spell trouble for farmers. ”It’s not that we’re opposed to trade. It’s not that we don’t want more agricultural trade,” says Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. But Johnson says he’s worried that free trade deals make it more likely that big companies will move jobs overseas. That can hurt the U. S. market for food and, in turn, hurt farmers that depend on   income. He’s worried we import more than we export and feed the ballooning trade deficit. ”If [the trade deficit] grows, if it gets worse as a result of this agreement, just like it has as a result of earlier agreements, then what have we gained? We just haven’t made a meaningful step forward,” he says. President Obama has championed the TPP and set his sights on getting the deal approved before he leaves office. For that to happen, Congress will have to approve it, but neither the Senate nor the House have set a date for review. This story is part of NPR’s A Nation Engaged conversation about trade. Visit npr. org to see more. It comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture and food production."
"When President Obama announced the details of the   Partnership on Thursday  —   and released them on Medium. com  —   there was a lot of talk about labor, the environment and manufacturing. But trade deals have a way of changing the way we eat, too. Consider NAFTA, which boosted the availability of cheap avocados and winter tomatoes for Americans, while expanding   and processed food in Mexico. So now that we know the details of this new Pacific Rim trade deal, what might it mean for dinner  —   both in the U. S. and the 11 other nations party to the treaty? Herewith, a cheat sheet on the    deal: Supporters of the TPP highlight the fact that the chapter on food safety and inspections will bring other countries up to U. S. standards and set rapid deadlines for resolving disputes over rejected shipments. Critics say the agreement gives countries new power to challenge food safety laws, which could be framed as ”barriers to trade.” ”It’s hard right now for inspectors to make sure everything is safe,” said Karen   director of trade, technology and global governance for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Currently, about 2 percent of food imported to the U. S. is inspected. With more imports coming in, pressure to resolve disputes quickly, and no mandate for more regulatory staff, says   it’s unlikely that inspections will improve.  Since rules on genetically modified foods differ from country to country, the agreement’s market access chapter includes a section on ”products of biotechnology”  —   think engineered corn and soy  —   and sets up a protocol for importing countries to decide on product safety. It also establishes a working group for the topic, suggesting that there’s plenty more to be worked out. The TPP does away with more than 18, 000 tariffs in the countries party to the deal. American producers will gain access to new markets  —   and foreign producers will get access to ours. That includes a lot of food, much of which could become cheaper here, as   imports intensify competition on price. Dairy: After significant battle during negotiations, Canada and New Zealand agreed to modest tariff reductions on dairy, opening their markets to American milk and cheese. In return, Americans may see more New Zealand milk  —   apple bircher ”yogurt suckies,” anyone?  —   on shelves. Pork: The American pork industry has become a net exporter in the past 20 years, says Nick Giordano, vice president for global government affairs at the National Pork Producers Council. The TPP will pave the way for exports to continue to grow. But America also imports a significant amount of pork. Tariff reductions on imports here could make all that foreign pork cheaper and push prices down in the U. S.  —   but also potentially threaten the livelihood of hog farmers. Beef: The agreement doesn’t do much for American beef producers, says the National Farmer’s Union, because Japan won a provision that would push tariffs back up if imports surged. Smaller beef producers in the U. S. say that increased competition from imports will put more farmers out of business. Booze: California’s Wine Institute has been supportive of the TPP, as have most American drink industry groups  —   think Kentucky bourbon  —   because the deal opens the massive Pacific market to their products. It also should mean lower prices here for Pacific Rim wines and spirits, like New Zealand’s sauvignon blancs and Japanese shochu  —   though the Office of the U. S. Trade Representative notes that American wine tariffs are already pretty low. Junk food: Prepackaged food companies can be required to list all ingredients in their foods and additives, but regulators are required to provide importer companies the same confidentiality afforded domestic ones  —   i. e. no requesting, say, the formula for   to verify nutrition information and then sharing it with a local producer. So those food labels should still tell you whether you can pronounce what you’re eating. Organic Products: Countries can enforce organic standards and are encouraged to come up with a way to unify them across borders. But there’s no provision about whether stricter or looser standards should prevail. According to the agreement’s draft text, if a country ”maintains requirements relating to the production, processing, or labeling of products as organic, it shall enforce such requirements.” The USTR was unable to provide specifics by publishing time. Challenging other nations’ laws: The Investor State Dispute Settlement provision  —   which Elizabeth Warren called ”the TPP clause everyone should oppose”  —   gives member states the power to challenge other states’ laws that impact trade and sales. The clause is similar to the provision in NAFTA that overturned a Mexican tax on high fructose corn syrup in favor of American companies’ right to sell it, though the TPP does contain explicit language giving countries the right to ”regulate in the public interest.” No word yet from USTR on whether labeling provisions for genetic modification and country of origin would reach that standard, or who defines ”public interest.” Tracie McMillan is the author of The American Way of Eating, a New York Times   and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. You can follow her on Twitter @tmmcmillan."
"Hillary Clinton snagged another endorsement over the weekend, but don’t expect her to trumpet it on the campaign trail. ”I have a little announcement to make . .. I’m voting for Hillary. I am endorsing Hillary,” noted conservative author P. J. O’Rourke said on NPR’s Wait Wait . .. Don’t Tell Me. The episode aired over the weekend. If the Clinton campaign wants to tout O’Rourke’s support as it tries to woo moderate Republicans who supported Jeb Bush and George W. Bush, it might want to end the quote there. ”I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises,” O’Rourke continued. ”It’s the   thing that can happen to this country, but she’s way behind in second place. She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.” While many Republicans are falling in line  —   however reluctantly  —   behind de facto GOP nominee Donald Trump, O’Rourke is joining other prominent conservative authors like Bill Kristol, George Will and Erick Erickson in continuing to oppose a Trump candidacy. ”This man just can’t be president,” O’Rourke said, alluding to the nuclear codes the    takes control of upon assuming office. ”They’ve got this button  —   this briefcase. He’s going to find it.” ”That is a ringing endorsement,” fellow panelist Tom Bodett said after hearing O’Rourke’s pitch."
"There was the     panel discussion on energy and climate at the European Commission in February. There was the     panel on counterterrorism at the U. N. in March. And then there was the panel on infrastructure at the World Bank in April: 15 men and one lone woman, in a red blazer, serving as the moderator. Why are women so woefully underrepresented? That’s the big question behind the hashtag #allmalepanels. Since 2013, it’s has been tacked onto photos of   panel discussions at conferences and blasted out on social media. The goal is twofold: draw attention to the lack of women experts in   fields like finance, tech and science as well as push for the inclusion of women. But over the past year or so, the hashtag has started trending in an unexpected space, the international development and aid sector  —   where women’s issues are a key part of the agenda and where the workforce is hardly  . In the U. S. for example, a 2009 survey from the University of Denver shows that women made up 75 percent of the nonprofit sector. Yet in a field that devotes tremendous money and energy to promoting gender equality, industry observers report that panel makeups are often quite unequal. Some staffers find the lack of female perspectives troubling. First off, it can send the wrong message. Tobias Denskus, a global development communications lecturer at Malmo University, Sweden, was moved to write about #allmalepanels on his blog, Aidnography, after seeing a photo of 25 men speaking about ”inclusiveness” at an Asian Development Bank meeting in August 2015. ”Inclusiveness is one of the core beliefs of social change,” he says. ”It’s about empowering marginalized groups, engaging a diverse group  —   women, children, indigenous people  —   in development.” ”But it’s only possible if many parts of society are included in the conversation,” he adds. Unfortunately, the speakers didn’t reflect the diversity of the topic at all. And it can lead to shortsighted policy. Stacey Young, senior learning advisor for USAID’s Policy, Planning and Learning Bureau, has witnessed many   panel discussions in her   years in the aid biz. One that sticks out in her mind was a talk on small farmers in poor countries. The male experts had to know that the majority of food producers in the developing world were women, Young says. That’s a   fact in global agriculture. Yet the panelists insisted on calling the farmers men. ”If you keep referring to a farmer as ’he,’ it’s unlikely that in the next breath you will talk about children or childcare  —   issues important to these women,” says Young, who spoke to Goats and Soda at the InterAction Forum where she was a panelist. ”It impedes effective agriculture [policy].” But organizing panels with women speakers is harder than it looks, says Lindsay Coates, president of InterAction, a group that runs one of the largest annual forums for global nonprofits in the world. She couldn’t guarantee that all 30 panels at her   event in Washington, D. C. last month had at least one woman. Part of the reason, she says, is that invitations to speak on panel discussions are often reserved for the CEOs, presidents and executive directors of organizations  —   and they’re usually men. In the U. S. women head only about 14 percent of the global NGOs with the largest budgets in the U. K. 27 percent and in Kenya and South Africa, 15 to 20 percent, according to a 2013 study. ”We’ve had instances where we invited a more junior female person from a large, famous international institution that I can’t name  —   and her boss bumped her off and [took her place],” says Coates. ”That was very awkward.” The woman would have been the best speaker for the panel, she says. ”But we have a desirable outlet, so [senior leadership at these organizations] would rather come.” And sometimes there just aren’t a lot of women who are deemed ”experts” in a certain topic or region within the aid sector, says Saadia Zahidi, head of gender at the World Economic Forum. Global organizations based in the Middle East and Latin America, for example, tend to be staffed by men in these parts of the world where women tend to have more traditional roles in society. And subjects like energy and finance skew male in general. ”It’s not incredibly surprising that there are few female CEOs, regulators and public figures [in these issue areas],” says Zahidi. ”It’s a reflection, at a   of what’s happening in the world.” A growing group of voices in the aid sector are fighting back. Apart from the hashtag #allmalepanel and a cheeky Tumblr blog called ”Congrats, you have an all male panel!” that stamps photos of   panels with an image of Baywatch star David Hasselhoff giving a thumbs up sign  —   there’s also a number of online pledges geared to people from all industries. These pledges, which originate from the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia in 2013, advise men to ask a critical question: ”Who else is on the panel?” If the answer is ”David, Jose and Mohammed,” then he should ask the event organizers if they could give their spot to a female colleague, or decline the speaking engagement altogether. Things picked up in the global development community in January 2015, when Owen Barder, vice president and Europe director of the Center for Global Development, started his own online pledge, ”I Will Not Be Part Of   Panels.” Barder was partly inspired by stories around the same time period on the absence of women in Middle East policy debates and the World Economic Forum. Since then, more than 500 people in the sector have eagerly signed on. That includes male staffers from global advocacy organizations like Oxfam, the ONE Campaign and Greenpeace, government agencies like the U. K.’s Department for International Development and institutions like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. More recently, the panel pledge has moved from being an individual choice to an   policy. Last month, the U. N. Global Compact, an initiative that encourages businesses to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, took the panel pledge too. The Compact is encouraging its 8, 500 member companies, including   and Johnson  Johnson, to promote gender equality across industries by striving for a higher ratio of women in panel discussions. Still, some are doubtful that sticking a few women on panels will change things. For Denskus, any shift must be authentic  —   not just done to fulfill a quota. ”You can’t just add women and stir,” he says. ”Women should be invited because they are experts on the topic, not because they’re women.” And why stop at gender? Simone LaPray, a speaker at the InterAction Forum from the Boston Network for International Development, says panels should include racially diverse voices from the   countries that development serves. ”I would be nice to not see a panel of just American experts,” she says. For now, as the #allmalepanel feed continues to hum on Twitter, many in the development space agree that adding women to   talks is an important first step. The Women’s Leadership Institute in Australia put together a handy toolkit on the issue and has some helpful advice: ”Women can be found,” they wrote in a checklist for conference organizers. ”Ask other panelists, industry insiders, specialist women’s organizations.” And if all else fails, ”Google” it."
"Bernie Sanders won the West Virginia Democratic primary on Tuesday over Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator’s victory bolsters his decision to stay in the race even though the delegate math is heavily in Clinton’s favor. Sanders won Indiana last week and could win several other states slated to vote this month. ”West Virginia is a   state, and like many other states in this country  —   including Oregon  —   working people are hurting. And what the people of West Virginia said tonight, and I believe the people of Oregon and Kentucky will say next week, is that we need an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent,” Sanders told supporters at a rally in Oregon on Tuesday evening. That state votes next Tuesday. West Virginia is a tough loss for Clinton to be sure, especially given the fact that she easily won the state in the 2008 Democratic primary over Barack Obama. But the bigger picture for her campaign doesn’t change: Clinton’s delegate lead over Sanders remains virtually insurmountable. Because the state’s 29 pledged delegates will be split proportionally between the two, Sanders needs a huge margin of victory in order to cut into Clinton’s nearly 300   advantage. When superdelegates are included, her margin grows to 774 delegates. According to NPR’s analysis going into Tuesday, to get a pledged majority, Sanders needed 65 percent of all remaining pledged delegates. Clinton needed just 34 percent. With superdelegates, Sanders needed 36 percent of all remaining delegates Clinton needed just 14 percent. The Mountaineer State played to many of Sanders’ strengths: It’s a heavily white,   state where voters are angry about the Obama administration’s policies. And with the GOP race virtually decided, independent voters who typically have broken for Sanders could cast ballots in the Democratic primary. According to exit polls, 91 percent of the electorate was white, while just 7 percent was   or Hispanic. A third of voters were independents, and those voters broke for Sanders by 47 percentage points. Only 27 percent of voters said the next president should continue Obama’s policies. Voters also were opposed to trade deals, a top issue with Sanders. More than half of voters said that trade with other countries takes away U. S. jobs, while 36 percent of voters said it creates jobs. Clinton’s loss highlights some of her main weaknesses, especially with white men. She came under fire from the state’s important coal industry after she remarked last summer that ”we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” as she was talking about ways to promote alternative   businesses. Thirty percent of Democratic primary voters came from a coal household, and Sanders won those voters with 63 percent of the vote. To Clinton’s frustration, the fact that Sanders extends his winning streak further underscores that she doesn’t have the nomination fully sewn up, even though her team largely has been looking ahead to a general election matchup. ”I’m looking forward to debating Donald Trump come the fall,” she told a crowd while campaigning in Kentucky earlier Tuesday. In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep last week, the Vermont senator reiterated he would stay in the race ”until the last vote is cast” after the Washington, D. C. Democratic primary on June 14. And he continues to point to general election poll numbers that show him running strongest against Trump, hoping that will sway superdelegates to his side before the July convention in Philadelphia. ”I think we are perpetuating the political revolution by significantly increasing the level of political activity that we’re seeing in this country,” Sanders told NPR. Clinton did win the Nebraska Democratic vote on Tuesday night, but those results were nonbinding. The state party used a different caucus on March 5 to determine its delegate allocation where Sanders won 15 pledged delegates Clinton’s 10. Trump, the de facto GOP nominee, easily won both the West Virginia and Nebraska primaries on Tuesday too. Both contests essentially were foregone conclusions after both Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich withdrew last week after Trump won the Indiana primary. Both states are expected to go for the GOP nominee in November, but even in the Democratic primary there were schisms that exposed opportunities for Trump in the fall  —   and that suggest why Democrats aren’t confident about a general election win despite Clinton’s early advantage. According to exit polls, just 33 percent of Democratic primary voters said they definitely would vote for the Democratic nominee 27 percent said they would vote for Trump.   percent of Sanders voters said they would support Trump in the fall, while just 23 percent would vote for Clinton."
"Miami Beach is one of the nation’s cities most vulnerable to climate change  —   and its leaders are doing something about it. The city, a national leader in addressing climate, has begun to make improvements aimed at protecting residents from rising sea levels. In South Florida, the rate of   rise has tripled over the last decade, according to a new study from the University of Miami. The rising seas raise questions for many about whether the resort community has a future. Officials there say the answer is emphatically yes and they’re moving ahead with plans for a resilient city. The small city on a barrier island, just 7 miles long and 1 mile wide, is getting a makeover. Major thoroughfares are being rebuilt, new storm sewers and pumps are being installed. Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine likes to show off work recently completed in the Sunset Harbor neighborhood on the western edge of the island, ”the lowest area of our city,” he says, ”which of course was developed on muck.” Over the last decade, flooding during high tide in this and other neighborhoods along Miami Beach’s western edge has become a regular occurrence. The University of Miami study confirms that the main reason for the increased flood events is   rise. While some elected officials, including Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, aren’t ready to acknowledge the threat posed by climate change, here in Miami Beach, it was an issue that helped get Levine elected. ”I think I did a campaign commercial in a kayak,” he says. Levine took office on a pledge to build a resilient Miami Beach, one that would recognize and adapt to climate change. He holds up Sunset Harbor neighborhood as a model. The patio outside a restaurant and cafe is a cozy spot that’s now more than 3 feet below street level. The street was ”literally rebuilt, raised and built higher,” he says. ”And of course major pumps were installed as well. So now you have certain buildings that are lying lower, but the streets are higher.” This neighborhood, perennially wet during seasonal high tides, now is dry. To combat flooding, Miami Beach has launched a $400 million project that’s begun installing as many as 80 pump stations throughout the city. In addition, more roads on the island’s   western edge will be rebuilt higher. City engineer Bruce Mowry is now focused on Miami Beach’s next big project: the reconstruction of Indian Creek Drive, a road that saw severe flooding last year during a seasonal high tide. Former Vice President Al Gore took a tour and later talked about seeing fish swimming in the street there. The street runs alongside a lagoon. ”We had as much as a foot of water over the seawall,” Mowry says. To make sure that doesn’t happen this year, he says Miami Beach will rebuild Indian Creek Drive higher and raise the height of the adjoining seawall. ”That seawall will end up being about 4 to 5 feet higher than it is now. Two blocks up here, we’re planning on putting in a pump station right here and collecting all the water,” he says. It’s a $25 million project, and  —   perhaps surprisingly  —   after negotiations with the Scott administration, 80 percent of that cost is being picked up by the state of Florida. Ben Kirtman, a climate modeling expert at the University of Miami, says it’s encouraging the state finally signed on to the project, but it took a lot of negotiation. Kirtman is one of the Florida scientists who have worked to persuade Scott to acknowledge and begin planning for climate change  —   so far unsuccessfully. Kirtman thinks by working to build a resilient city, officials in Miami Beach are on the right track. ”I’m quite optimistic that there’ll be a Miami Beach 50 years, 100 years from now. But we need to set aside sort of the political nonsense about the debate about whether climate change is happening and embrace our problem and start developing comprehensive strategies,” he says. At current rates of   rise, Levine believes the work underway now will buy the city at least 50 years. By then, he hopes innovation may begin providing   solutions and make the city a model for the nation. While others see only a gloomy future for   coastal cities, Levine is a picture of confident optimism. ”Look at little Miami Beach  —   what we’re doing and the jobs that we’re creating by rebuilding our roads and putting in pumps,” he says. ”Infrastructure, whether it’s building new roads, bridges or public transportation or whether it’s making your cities more resilient, is an incredible, positive job grower for our country. So we should grab this challenge and run with it.” Levine and Kirtman say building resilient cities is just the first step. The real challenge is to build the political will to address climate change and slow the rising sea levels before elevated structures, pumps and seawalls are no longer enough."
"For decades, the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders has been known for going places many other aid groups won’t. But several times over the past two years its facilities have been hit by airstrikes in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. And now the group must adapt to a more threatening world. Michiel Hofman began working with Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 1992 in Liberia. Over the years, whether it’s been in Bosnia, Chechnya or South Sudan, the senior adviser for security and operations says its clinics and staff have come under   attack, such as looting and burning. Hofman says that’s part and parcel of working in a conflict zone. But he says over the last few years there’s been a dramatic increase of aerial attacks on its clinics or hospitals it supports. Those have been in Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan, on civilian medical facilities that should be untouchable under international humanitarian law.  ”The figures are just astounding,” he says. ”If you take this year alone, we’re already at the count of seven, I think  —   including the last one in Aleppo, and we’re not even halfway through the year.” Hofman says when there are ground attacks, MSF officials usually know who is responsible and can negotiate with local commanders. ”With these aerial attacks . .. it’s much more difficult to know who we actually [need to] talk to about this,” he says. Take Syria, for example. With so many nations involved in the fight, it’s hard to know for sure who is responsible for a particular attack. Hofman says his organization is pushing all countries to adhere to international law protecting health facilities. He says it’s hard to keep staff if they don’t know they’re protected. ”A lot of our ability to operate is based on trust  —   the trust of the medical staff that we ask to work there, but also trust by the patients that these hospitals are safe places,” he says. He points to staff at the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which agreed to continue to work even after the town was captured by Islamist militants. In October 2015, the facility was hit by U. S. forces conducting an airstrike. MSF says at least 42 people were killed in the attack, including 14 staff members. Hofman says employees felt their trust had been violated. He says there has also been a recent demonstration in a neighborhood in southern Syria against MSF reopening a facility destroyed by airstrikes. ”The population didn’t want a hospital to be reopened because they were afraid their town would be targeted if there was a hospital in that location,” he says. Airstrikes aren’t the only threat that has increased. Hofman says in almost every ongoing conflict in the world, abduction has become a routine strategy of warring parties. Security measures that didn’t exist before are now actually related to mitigating or preventing the risk of abduction. As MSF has expanded its operations, it’s become better known worldwide, says Hofman. Kidnappers looking for money or headlines target the group’s medical workers from the international community.  ”Because they tend to have, to say it very crudely, the highest market value . .. It’s actually mostly Western staff,” says Hofman of those who have been kidnapped. ”And if I dare say so, [it’s the] white Western staff who is most at risk.” To mitigate the risk, sometimes MSF uses just local workers, he says. But he says there are certain programs that can’t be done without international staff. The aid agency also restricts its workers’ movements with things like curfews, or it might even pull out of a country. What it still won’t do is use armed security. ”Those people who can provide you with armed protection are always connected to one or the other party in a conflict. Which means as soon as you accept an armed party, you become a legitimate target for the other side of that conflict,” he says. Hofman says it’s critical that MSF  —   like all humanitarian aid agencies  —   remain impartial. That includes never turning away a patient, no matter which side he or she is on."
"”Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness,” President Barack Obama told graduates and their families at Howard University’s 2016 Commencement Ceremony. It was one of many moments in a speech that honored the achievements of black folks  —   many Howard alumni  —   and called on graduates to get and stay politically active. His speech was met with laughter, generous applause, and largely positive reviews. Paul Holston,    of Howard’s student newspaper The Hilltop, wrote that Obama’s address was ”strong, eloquent, and inspirational,” and would ”go down as one of the most significant moments in Howard University’s history.” Howard students weren’t the only ones cheering over the speech. Janell Ross at The Washington Post lauded Obama’s call for ”empathy and [an] expanded moral imagination” as one of the few surprising and   messages that graduates will receive this season. On Twitter, Slate writer Jamelle Bouie called the speech ”a great mediation on democracy AND a celebration of black life.” Mathew Rodriguez at Mic described Obama’s speech as ”one of the best and blackest he’s given.” Melissa      of Elle, wrote that Obama’s speech was remarkable in its treatment of gender as well as race, and proved ”that he is our most black, feminist president to date” by highlighting the genius of black women like Lorraine Hansberry, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer and Zora Neale Hurston: ”Once again, [Obama] put black women at the very center of the stories he told and the lessons he imparted. As he warmed up, he jokingly referred to ’Shonda Rhimes owning Thursday night’ and ’Beyonce running the world.’ They were casual references, not central themes of his talk, but even here he deployed two boss black women as representatives of black excellence and achievement.” The tone surprised some   who had been critical of what they see as the president’s habit of talking down to primarily black crowds. The last time Obama spoke at an HBCU’s commencement was at Morehouse College in 2013, where he was criticized for promoting a   brand of respectability politics with remarks like these: ”Just as Morehouse has taught you to expect more of yourselves, inspire those who look up to you to expect more of themselves. We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. And I have to say, growing up, I made quite a few myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not doing the right thing. But one of the things that all of you have learned over the last four years is there’s no longer any room for excuses.”   Coates responded to that speech by calling out what he saw as the double standard Obama used in addressing  . In a piece called ”How the Obama Administration Talks to Black America,” Coates wrote that the president acts like someone ”who sees holding African Americans to a standard of individual responsibility as part of his job. This is not a role Barack Obama undertakes with other communities.” Some observers who were worried that the president might affect the same scolding posture at Howard were pleased, if not entirely won over. Michael P. Jeffries, over at The Boston Globe, said that the Howard speech was more earnest in its depiction of structural inequality: ”. ..noting that a black woman is only paid 66 cents for every $1 earned by an equally qualified white man, and that mass incarceration has exploded since [Obama’s] college days. In one striking passage, he reminded the audience: ’We have cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were, but somehow got ground down by structures that are unfair and unjust.’ Rather than individual failings, Obama shifted responsibility away from black families and toward the institutions that produce black suffering.” Still, Jeffries observes ”how much further [Obama] has to go” to fairly depict race in America. In his speech, Obama praises Black Lives Matter activist Brittany Packnett as someone who broke with the orthodoxy of her movement to enact change. But, according to Jeffries: ”What Obama left out is that Packnett is not an anomaly among Black Lives Matter leadership. Protesters have interrupted campaign events for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump, but activist DeRay McKesson certainly believes in voting: He ran for mayor of Baltimore. The   Black Youth Project has protested mayor Rahm Emanuel and held rallies in the name of Rekia Boyd and other victims of police violence. The organization has also published research reports, and its directors have worked with several well established and likeminded groups, including the NAACP. So, in many respects, Black Lives Matter is already living out the charge put forth by the president.” Clarence B. Jones, at HuffPost Black Voices, wrote that ”the content of what President Obama said, and the way in which he spoke it were engaging at times, powerfully moving.” But he agreed with Jeffries’s sentiment that the president undersold the accomplishments of the BLM movement when he chastised young people for not turning out to vote in midterm elections: ”It is not enough to patronizingly lecture that ’the perfect’ ’should not be the enemy of the good or the better.’ He should have not just singled out Brittany Packnett, a leader in the Black Lives Matter Movement, for praise in meeting with him and other establishment political leaders. He should have said, flat out, like ’Straight Outta Compton,’ that leaders of the Movement, like Dr. King earlier, had forced America’s conscience to confront the reality of successive police shootings of black men, in several circumstances where the use of   force appeared to be an available option to effect an arrest. In effect, President Obama should have acknowledged that he AND ALL America owe a debt of gratitude to the courage and leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement in highlighting the apparent systemic racism in our criminal justice system when applied to   in several or our communities, nationwide.” BLM activists themselves had some things to say about Obama’s speech. DeRay McKesson tweeted his approval of the president’s remarks, but also warned about oversimplifying the message: ”Obama’s commencement speech at HowardU today was important, as we both reflected on the past in blackness and our future. Obama’s speech was complicated, as he noted the role of compromise in the work of progress, while maintains a commitment to one’s values. Obama also rightly noted that awareness is not the win, but is the initial work that creates space for later wins. [He] also noted the work of activists like [Brittany Packnett] noting that we will have to be intentional in how we change  . In many ways, this speech echoed themes he offered when [she and I] met with him a month ago. He is becoming more explicit re: discussing blackness.” McKesson continued: ”We protest to change the world, not to continue protesting until the end of time. Awareness must lead to work focused on concrete solutions. Obama’s focus on voting was not an indictment of the movement, of protest, or of organizing. Don’t reduce his speech to this stale reading.” Still, others weren’t blown away by the speech. Maya Rhodan at Time magazine described Obama’s Howard speech as another replica from the ”mold he often leans on in remarks to black audiences.” She offered up the president’s   speech recipe: ”a nod to our nation’s racial history, a   on his presidency, and a call to pay it forward.” Over at The Guardian, Steven W. Thrasher reflected that ”part of Obama’s genius as our first black president is that he can provoke so many responses. ..even in the course of a single speech.” But that genius is complicated. Thrasher was inspired by Obama’s address until ”respectability politics started to creep in,” and the president began urging the crowd to empathize with ”the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender person and yes, the   white guy who you may think has all the advantages, but over the last several decades has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change and feels powerless to stop it.” Here’s more from Thrasher: ”Why did the nation’s first black president feel the need to equate the transgender person who can’t use the bathroom in North Carolina, and the unfairly maligned immigrant with that ’  white guy’? Who feels so threatened by the ’cultural’ change of living under a black president and living under conditions a little more like those black Americans have endured for hundreds of years that he’s likely voting for Donald Trump? Who isn’t losing all of his white privilege, because he still has a black president telling black grads to get in his head? You can read Obama’s full remarks here, or watch a video of the speech below:"
"In a Minneapolis federal courtroom, three   are on trial for allegedly plotting to join the Islamic State in a case that’s expected to offer the most detailed public accounts yet of how the extremist group recruited nearly a dozen young men from the Twin Cities. Six   arrested in connection to the case have already pleaded guilty to conspiring to travel to Syria to join ISIS, making this the largest American investigation and trial related to ISIS since the terrorist group seized large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a state nearly two years ago. Nationwide, more than 80 Americans, mostly young Muslim men, have been arrested for seeking to join the group. Most of those arrested have said they were seduced by ISIS recruiters on social media. According to the FBI, some 200 Americans have traveled to Syria and a small fraction of those people have joined ISIS. The Twin Cities area has been especially hard hit by these terrorist recruiters. This is home to the largest Somali community in the U. S. where there are many   homes and high unemployment. Nearly a decade ago, the Twin Cities were rocked by the departure of more than two dozen young men who flew to Somalia to join an   arm there, called  . The FBI says some of those young men now with   persuaded friends and relatives in Minnesota to go to Syria to fight. A Larger Network, Prosecutors allege that the trio now on trial were part of a larger conspiracy that involved not just relatives fighting in Somalia, but high school and college friends who helped persuade each other to travel to Syria to join the terrorist group. The FBI arrested the young men, all from the Twin Cities, last year after a yearlong investigation. ”It’s terrorism and everyone’s heard of that and everyone has certain thoughts about that,” U. S. District Judge Michael Davis told prospective jurors when jury selection began Monday. ”I need to know how you feel. This may not be the case for you to sit on.” Ten prospective jurors were dismissed after they told the judge that they had already made up their minds about the defendants. One woman said she had been following news coverage of the case and knew that six   had already taken plea deals. She said she thought the three men on the docket were probably guilty, too. ”When I first walked in, I already had the   of them being guilty,” she told the judge. Another woman stood up a short time later. ”To be honest,” she told the judge, ”I’m kind of uncomfortable being in the room with them.” She was quickly told she wouldn’t have to serve on the jury. On the first day of the trial, Judge Davis told more than half the people in a pool of 50 potential jurors that they would not be part of this case. As one after another was dismissed, the three men on trial  —   Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 22, Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 22, and Guled Ali Omar, 21  —   hardly registered a reaction. Emptying Out College Funds, Most ISIS cases in the U. S. have involved one or two people who have contacted the group online and then tried to board flights that would eventually take them to Syria. Prosecutors say Daud, Farah, Omar and the six others arrested met over the course of a year to talk about how they could get to Syria to join ISIS. The criminal complaint says the meetings began in March 2014. According to the complaint, the men helped each other get passports and raided their college funds and savings accounts to get money for the group to travel. The three on trial this week are charged with providing material support to ISIS, essentially offering themselves as fighters, and planning to commit murder outside the United States on behalf of the group. The latter charge is the most serious and carries the possibility of life in prison. The Minneapolis case is the third   case to go to trial in the U. S. Some of those who have already pleaded guilty in this case are expected to be called as witnesses. As a result, the trial is being closely watched because it could offer a rare public account of how ISIS recruits and radicalizes people in this country. The six who have already pleaded guilty said they watched ISIS videos on YouTube together and came to the conclusion that it was their duty to protect fellow Muslims who were under attack by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. The parents of the defendants have claimed their sons are innocent. ”All the negative things you hear outside, don’t pay attention to them,” Daud’s mother, Farhiyo Mohamed, told reporters through an interpreter on Monday. ”These are very young men who have their whole lives ahead of them.” Opening statements are expected to begin Wednesday, and the judge told jurors that he thought the trial would last about four weeks."
"Could gender be a decisive factor in a   matchup between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? ”You know, she’s playing the woman’s card,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Spokane, Wash. over the weekend, reiterating a critique he has used against Clinton since becoming the de facto presidential nominee for the Republican Party. ”If she didn’t play the woman’s card she would have no chance, I mean zero, of winning.” But some experts see Trump’s comments about women as a veiled warning for men. The gender gap in American politics is nothing new men and women often don’t see eye to eye when they vote. ”In every presidential election since 1980, women have been more likely than men to support the Democratic candidate,” said Jennifer Lawless, the director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University. This year, that traditional gender gap seems to be growing into a gender gulf. Polls show about 70 percent of women currently have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Usually, in elections, Lawless says the gender gap strategy is easy to explain. ”What the Democrats want to do is make sure they drive up that support among female voters,” she said. ”And what the Republicans want to do is close that gap to the best of their ability.” But Trump’s tactics are difficult to define. In a rally over the weekend, Trump took his claim that Clinton is using the woman’s card further. ”She’s going  —   did you hear that that Donald Trump raised his voice while speaking to a woman,” he said. ”Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I mean all of the men  —   we’re petrified to speak to women anymore we may raise our voice.” Trump then continued with a new complaint. ”You know what? The women get it better than we do, folks,” he said. The comment seemed counterintuitive for a man trying to improve his status with female voters. But Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey who focuses on political psychology, says Trump’s talk about women is not about women: It’s a message directed at men. ”This is an appeal, saying basically to other men  —   ’Hey, the women are ganging up on us, the women are using their gender to get power from us’  —   that’s what the woman card is  —   ’all the women are gonna get together and vote for Hillary Clinton, we have to band together as men to stop Hillary Clinton.’ ” Cassino says Trump is playing on gender resentment. And Cassino’s research has found that gender roles make a difference for some voters. In a recent recent presidential poll, he conducted an experiment, asking voters this question: ”There are an increasing number of households in which the woman makes more money than the man. How about in your household?” Cassino discovered that when men were asked that spouse income question at the beginning of the poll they were more likely to support Trump over Clinton, regardless of the actual answer to the income question. The mere question seemed to provoke a gender role threat, according to Cassino. But gender bias cuts both ways. After Trump’s comments about the woman’s card, Clinton used the attack as a hugely successful fundraiser  —   selling pink ”woman cards” and ”deal me in”  . Her campaign brought in $2. 4 million in just a few days. ”It certainly is appealing to donors and political activists,” said Lawless. ”That kind of messaging can be helpful for a Democrat, and particularly a Democratic female candidate.” If Clinton is playing the woman card by focusing on pay equity or child care, said Kelly Dittmar with the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics, ”then, surely, Donald Trump has been playing the man card, by talking about the ways in which his opponents are, in fact, not masculine enough for the office.” ”There’s been multiple ways that Donald Trump’s sort of played his own man card,” Dittmar said. ”Just by talking about the size of his manhood, in the most direct and overt ways, but he’s also taken on the tactic of talking about other candidates as weak or little, like ’Little Marco,’ and even making fun of Jeb Bush for needing his mommy, infantilizing Jeb Bush.” Dittmar says Trump also uses the man card by playing into stereotypes about aggression  —   with his tough talk of building a wall or bombing the s*** out of ISIS. Of course, the big question is  —   does all this messaging have an effect on voter turnout? Deborah Jordan Brooks at Dartmouth College has studied the link between gender, voter participation and negative ads. She’s hesitant to use her historical research to hypothesize about the current presidential election she says Trump vs. Clinton would be unpredictable. But her research in the past offers some clues and because no one else has recently studied this connection, it’s probably the best guide we have. Brooks found women weren’t really affected one way or the other by negative campaigns. But men were. ”Independent men were especially likely to vote after seeing uncivil negative messages  —   the kinds of attacks that throw in extra insults.” In other words, insults seem to mobilize men. ”Incivility produced a real gender difference between men and women men seemed to like it.” Republicans usually try to shrink the gender gap by courting women. But maybe Trump has calculated that it makes more sense to embrace his gender gap and focus on men. Of course, the caveat is that by talking to men, Trump could also unintentionally energize Democratic men  —   who would be eager to vote against him."
"Hillary Clinton would have a significant electoral advantage over Donald Trump in the general election, based on an NPR analysis. The Democratic former secretary of state would start out with already exactly enough electoral votes to win the presidency,   based on states considered safe, likely and to lean toward either candidate. The ratings, which will be updated at least monthly until Election Day, are based on fundamentals  —   historical trends and demographics, plus reporting and polling (both public and private). But there is also the potential that this fall’s presidential battlegrounds could be    —   pitting white,   voters, whom Trump is appealing to, against Latino voters, who appear to be in Clinton’s corner. Traditional ways of thinking about the map should and will be challenged. So in addition to our current ratings, we also explore several possibilities and scenarios, including Trump’s potential path and even two potential ties, based on Trump doing well in the Upper Midwest and Clinton racking up wins in competitive states where the Latino vote is important. Clinton   Safe D (164): California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine* (3 electoral votes) Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, D. C. Washington stateLikely D (37): Maine (1 EV) Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, OregonLean D (69): Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, WisconsinPure Tossup (77): Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio Lean R (11): ArizonaLikely R (44): Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska* (1 EV) UtahSafe R (136): Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska (4 EVs) North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Wyoming, *Nebraska and Maine allocate their electoral votes by congressional district  —   3 in Maine and 4 in Nebraska are considered safe for Democrats and Republicans, respectively 1 each could potentially be in play. Barack Obama won 1 delegate out of Nebraska (Omaha) in 2008. Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio are considered pure tossups at this point, according to the analysis. So even if Trump, who is the de facto Republican nominee, were able to get all of those, he would still come up short. Clinton   Considering strictly who is leading in public surveys, as curated by the website RealClearPolitics, Clinton would be ahead by a landslide  . But that includes states where polling is within the margin of error. And, at this point, polling is almost irrelevant. The cases have not been litigated yet the campaigns have not been waged neither candidate has even officially crossed the magic number to win his or her respective primaries yet. Bottom line: There is a lot of time to go. (One note about Colorado: The only poll in the RCP average of the state is one Quinnipiac poll from November showing Trump up 11. That’s hardly a good indicator of what will happen this upcoming November, but for the sake of having something to go on, it’s why we put Colorado red. For a more    primer on the state of play in Colorado with    reporting, check out Colorado Public Radio’s Ben Markus’ report here. It notes how the gender gap may be the biggest hurdle for Trump in Colorado.) Clinton   (safe) Clinton   (safe + likely) Democrats start out with an electoral edge because of demography  —   especially growing Latino populations in key states  —   as well as Democrats’ clustering in big cities in big states, like California, New York and Illinois. Republicans, on the other hand, have seen their greatest appeal in the South and rural areas of the West and Midwest. Their biggest electoral vote state is Texas. So looking at just the seats considered ”safe,” Clinton  —   or any Democrat  —   would start with a   advantage. Adding in the ”likely” states, Democrats still lead  . Donald Trump would argue that he can pick off some of these traditionally safe and likely Democratic states, notably his home state of New York, as well as bordering New Jersey, where Trump backer Chris Christie is governor. But there’s just no evidence of that yet. Here’s why:  —   Trump may have won the New York primary, but the Republican primary was 91 percent white, according to exit polls. The 2012 general election was only 67 percent white. (New Jersey’s primary comes up June 7, and Trump will probably win it. But that state, too, is far more diverse in a general election than in a GOP primary.)  —   Neither state has gone Republican in almost 30 years.  —   And Barack Obama won them both twice: New York by at least 28 points New Jersey by at least 15. Because of Christie and because of Trump’s proximity, we move New Jersey to ”likely” instead of ”safe.” But more would need to happen to move either into a ”lean” category. And if polling does show them coming into play, it means other, more potentially reachable states have also very likely moved in Trump’s favor. It’s tempting to be safe and put the usual suspects in the tossup column. Significant resources will be spent in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire and Virginia. Those are places where the fight will be waged. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re tossups. It also doesn’t mean Republicans can’t win there, but Clinton starts with an edge, because of history in some places and demography in others. Obama won all of these states twice. He won them by an average of 6 points in 2012 and 10 in 2008. Pennsylvania and Michigan haven’t gone Republican since 1988 Wisconsin, since 1984 (although it was the closest state in 2004). Nevada, Virginia and New Hampshire had all once been swing states  —   George W. Bush won all three in 2000, but John Kerry won Nevada and New Hampshire. And Obama won all of them. Nevada and Virginia, in particular, have shifted more Democratic because of demography  —   Hispanics in Nevada and in Virginia, Hispanics as well as Asians and exurban growth. What about . .. ? Arizona: On the Republican side, the only lean state is Arizona. The state has gone Republican for the past 20 years  —   and arguably Bill Clinton won it only because Ross Perot pulled votes from George H. W. Bush. But the state has a significant percentage of Hispanic voters. It’s something that has sitting Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, concerned that with Trump at the top of the ticket, it could fire up Latinos and get more out to the polls. Even though the state is 30 percent Hispanic, that group made up just 18 percent of the electorate in 2012. Georgia: Another state to watch. Its demography has become much more nonwhite, and Republicans won it by only 5 and 8 points in 2008 and 2012, respectively. One poll showed a   race a dead heat, but given its presidential and   history, we are leaving it as ”likely” GOP until there’s more hard evidence. Utah: Though one poll in March ahead of the GOP primary showed Clinton winning by 2 points, we put that in likely for Trump, because (a) Utah has a long history of voting Republican (it hasn’t gone Democratic since 1964) and (b) there was a very high number of undecided voters. In other words, no one was near 50 percent, and a Republican is far more likely to get there. Florida: You could argue that the Sunshine State is at least a finger on the scale for Democrats given its rapidly changing demography. The poll average has Clinton with a   lead  —   and better ones in the average have it high single digits. That all makes you think. But, for now, we leave it a tossup, given its history. In addition to the tight races in 2000 and 2004, Obama won it by only 2 points in 2008 and less than 1 point in 2012. The real sorting, though, will be between white,   voters and Latinos. Which group is more motivated could determine the election. Republicans start at a demographic disadvantage in 2016 and have been at one for the past couple of election cycles, in large measure because the face of America is changing. It’s especially getting more Hispanic and Asian. Latinos, in particular, have affected American politics in profound ways, and they are still underrepresented at the polls. Pollsters project that the share of the white vote will be its lowest in history, being at or possibly even dipping below 70 percent for the first time. That gives Democrats a significant advantage in key states like Florida, Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. It also could put in play places like Arizona and Georgia. Democrats hope one day that will mean Texas, too, which is already majority minority. But there are more Latino Republicans in Texas than anywhere in the country. Plus, in the Midwest, an area Trump has to likely do well in if he hopes to win, the population has decreased, and voters, especially white ones affected directly by trade, have gotten older. Trump   This path is dependent on Trump being able to use his populist, protectionist and   rhetoric to fire up white,   voters affected by outsourcing in the Rust Belt and Upper Midwest. Trump believes he can do that with an   trade message, especially against the wife of the president who signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. To do it: He would have to win all the ”likely” and ”safe” Republican states, then sweep Pennsylvania (20) Ohio (18) Michigan (16) Wisconsin (10) and Iowa (6). That would mean Trump could lose Virginia, Florida and Colorado  —   and you could even take away Iowa, and he still gets to 270. Trump   It also means he could trade Florida for Pennsylvania and win, too, by a wider margin,  . Of course, this is also dependent on Trump being able to maintain Arizona and even North Carolina and Iowa, which have seen Latino growth.   There are at least two different   ties that we could come up with through Trump’s ”trade winds” route. They both, of course, depend on Florida. If there is a tie, it goes to the House, which is controlled by Republicans. (Here’s an explanation.)"
"This week Hillary Clinton was in Virginia to talk about women, family and workplace issues. She met at the Mug’n Muffin coffee shop with local participants in a program called Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters. In HIPPY, as it’s called, parents receive free books, educational materials and weekly home visits to coach them on how to get their young children ready for school  —   for example, by reading to them daily. THE CLAIM, A Clinton campaign video features Bill Clinton, in a speech, crediting his wife with bringing the program to the U. S. from Israel when she was first lady of Arkansas in 1985. ”She comes in one day, jumping up and down happy,” the former president says in the video. ”She says, ’I found it. A preschool program in Israel that teaches people to be their children’s first teachers even if they’re illiterate. I think it could work here.’ . .. Next thing you know it’s in 26 states. It’s still thriving and there are thousands of people in this country today who have better lives and learn more and grew up just because of her.” THE SHORT ANSWER, Hillary Clinton did bring the program to Arkansas, but she wasn’t responsible for importing it to the United States. And it is national, in 21  —   not 26  —   states and D. C. but it’s not very big  —   only 15, 000 participants each year. THE LONG ANSWER  ”Clinton discovered the program many years ago when it came to the U. S.,” says Margie Margolies, the chairwoman of HIPPY USA’s board (no relation to Marjorie Margolies, Chelsea Clinton’s   ). ”She was instrumental in growing the program in Arkansas when Bill was governor. She had been working for a way to boost the educational start of children in Arkansas, so she reached out to the Israeli founder to find out how to scale it up. Arkansas is still one of our largest programs.” Could HIPPY scale up nationwide? Should it? Decades of independent research, including randomized controlled trials, shows that children ages 3, 4 and 5 who participate in HIPPY are more prepared for school. Studies in four states found that higher reading, math and social studies scores persisted into third, fifth and sixth grades. Teachers report that parents who participate in HIPPY become more involved in their children’s educations for years to come. HIPPY seems to blunt the impact on school performance of factors like being an   learner. Children who go through the program also seem to have better attendance, behavior, peer interactions and academic  . Although Margolies says that she wouldn’t want to ”pit” HIPPY against universal   programs, the fact remains that the   program seems to produce similar effects on kids at a lower cost per participant. And there are ancillary benefits, like connecting families to housing, health care and job assistance. Of course, it’s hard to control for the enthusiasm factor.   working parents who are willing to sign up for 30 straight weeks of home visits, and then actually stick with the program (with no payments or other incentives beyond a few free books) must be exceptionally committed to their children’s welfare. But, if nothing else, the success of HIPPY demonstrates that it is possible to close the notorious ”word gap” and change parents’ behavior. ”It really makes a huge difference in people’s lives,” says Margolies, who has been with the program in Milwaukee for nearly two decades. ”I’m lucky enough to have seen in many years how much more confidence the parents have.” Many of the   coaches, she says, began as parents in the program. ”We have a woman right now, it’s her first job ever. She was a parent and she’s being trained as a home visitor. . .. It’s a great start for parents too, not just for kids.”"
"West Point has said that 16 black female cadets did not violate any Department of Defense or Army regulations by posing with their fists raised in a photo taken ahead of their graduation from the academy. No punitive action will be taken against the women after an inquiry found that their gesture was intended to demonstrate ”unity” and ”pride,” a statement from the institution said. The statement also said that the inquiry concluded ”that based upon available evidence none of the participants, through their actions, intended to show support for a political movement,” which would violate DOD Directive 1344. 10. As the   reported Monday, the women have not publicly commented on why they held up their fists, but plenty of other people have weighed in on the photo. The myriad reactions ranged from sympathetic support for the women to historical analysis of the gesture to disappointment and anger. In the past, the raised fist has been used, among other things, to symbolize black power. Perhaps most notably, John Carlos, a black sprinter who represented the United States in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, and his teammate Tommie Smith, stood on the podium after the   dash, each with a   fist held in the air above their heads while ”The   Banner” played. ”I didn’t go there for the medal, I went there for the statement,” said John Carlos on NPR’s Tell Me More in 2011: ”The gesture was intended to be noble, not negative. It was meant to bring attention to the injustices occurring in the United States, where the civil rights movement was in full swing. The U. S. was in the midst of racial turmoil  —   a war against a separate and unequal society.” According to The Associated Press, a mentor to the women said ”they were simply celebrating their forthcoming graduation.” Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr. academy superintendent, wrote a letter addressing the photo, part of which was included in the West Point statement. It read: ”As members of the Profession of Arms, we are held to a high standard, where our actions are constantly observed and scrutinized in the public domain. We all must understand that a symbol or gesture that one group of people may find harmless may offend others. As Army officers, we are not afforded the luxury of a lack of awareness of how we are perceived.”"
"Facebook and a top Republican Senator have responded to allegations from the tech website Gizmodo that Facebook is suppressing ideologically conservative news or stories from conservative organizations from its ”trending topics” column. According to an article Gizmodo published on Monday, Facebook wasn’t just relying on algorithms to determine which stories made it onto the list of developing news on the   side of its homepage. The article alleged that contracted employees called ”human curators” helped decide what stories appeared, and that it ”often depended on the taste of individual supervisors  —   some of whom were said to favor liberal causes such as Black Lives Matter,” reports NPR’s David Folkenflik for All Things Considered. The article, citing several unnamed former curators, said some stories in which conservatives may have more interest were passed over. It said that some of the topics that the curators suppressed included ”former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker popular conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was murdered in 2013 and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder.” The Gizmodo report adds that some former curators said they were ”instructed to artificially ’inject’ selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion  —   or in some cases weren’t trending at all.” Some of these topics included the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, the article said, also citing Black Lives Matter and the conflict in Syria as other subjects that former curators said were ”injected” into the module. In a rebuttal Monday night, Facebook’s Tom Stocky, who is in charge of the trending topics section, denied the report’s allegations and said the company has ”found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true.” ”Popular topics are first surfaced by an algorithm, then audited by review team members to confirm that the topics are in fact trending news in the real world and not, for example,   topics or misnomers,” he wrote, adding that the company ”does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin.” He added: ”There have been other anonymous allegations  —   for instance that we artificially forced ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ to trend. We looked into that charge and found that it is untrue. We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so.” With more than one billion users a day, Facebook has become indispensable to many news organizations, David reports. He says, for example, that nearly 5 million people have ”liked” NPR’s Facebook page, and are therefore directed to NPR content. He also adds that Facebook has recently started paying NPR and other news organizations to produce live video streams for the tech giant’s new foray into live video, which the company calls Facebook Live. Facebook has no say over the content of NPR’s live videos. (For more information on the arrangement, read this post from NPR’s ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen.) For Facebook detractors, Facebook’s bid to expand the social media platform’s influence using video makes the allegations regarding the company’s methods for sorting trending topics even more problematic. ”With 167 million US Facebook users reading stories highlighted in the trending section, Facebook has the power to greatly influence the presidential election,” the Republican Party said in a statement Monday. ”It is beyond disturbing to learn that this power is being used to silence view points and stories that don’t fit someone else’s agenda.” On Tuesday, Republican chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee John Thune of South Dakota also weighed in. ”Facebook must answer these serious allegations and hold those responsible to account if there has been political bias in the dissemination of trending news,” Thune said in a statement, according to The Hill. ”Any attempt by a neutral and inclusive social media platform to censor or manipulate political discussion is an abuse of trust and inconsistent with the values of an open Internet.” David reports that on Tuesday afternoon, Facebook told NPR that it will review its practices more deeply and address the Senator’s questions."
"The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, says it will not allow an admitted student to wear a Muslim headscarf. The woman’s family is considering legal action, according to a Muslim advocacy group. In a statement Tuesday, Citadel President John Rosa says, ”Uniformity is the cornerstone of this   leader development model.” Through a ”relinquishing of self,” the lieutenant general says, ”cadets learn the value of teamwork to function as a single unit.” Despite not allowing the student to wear hijab, Rosa says he hopes she will attend in the fall. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on   Relations, said the student cannot attend without the accommodation. ”Wearing hijab is viewed as a religious obligation,” he told NPR via email. CAIR said in a press release that it is ”considering legal options to challenge” the decision. Sherine Hafez, whose work focuses on women’s studies and Muslim societies, tells The   that she thinks gender intersects with religion in this case. As a professor, she has seen students who wear headscarves underestimated or presumed ”docile.” ”It’s not just a religious issue, but it is a feminist one because they are women,” says Hafez, an associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of California, Riverside. The Citadel, which is a public college, admitted its first female cadet in 1995. (Though that required a legal battle, as The Los Angeles Times reported, and she dropped out a week after winning the fight.) The military college says that ”much has changed since 1995” and wrote in 2005 that women are now more integrated into the Cadet Corps. ”Obviously being a woman who is religious is not getting her access to an opportunity,” Hafez says of the current dispute. ”So there is a sense here that you can’t deny discrimination.” Hafez notes that women who wear hijab serve in armies and police forces around the world. In fact, the U. S. military eased uniform restrictions in 2014 for religious purposes. The   reported at the time: ” ’The military departments will accommodate individual expressions of sincerely held beliefs (conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs) of service members’ unless it might affect military readiness or unit cohesion, the updated policy on religious accommodation said.” CAIR senior staff attorney William Burgess said in a statement that The Citadel ”should offer the same accommodations” as the military, adding, ”No student should be forced to choose between her faith and an education that can facilitate future service to her nation.” The Muslim student’s request became public via a cadet’s Facebook post, which argued against allowing the hijab. Nick Pinelli wrote, ”Equality means the same set of rules for everyone. Not different rules for different people. It means accepting everyone, and giving them the same tools to succeed as the rest.” The Washington Post says that other objections have been raised ”because exceptions have apparently not ever been made for other religions. Christian cadets have been told not to display crosses, for example.” Pinelli was reportedly punished for publicly mentioning the situation, the South Carolina Post and Courier says, though the school declined to comment, citing privacy law. On Tuesday, Pinelli called the school’s decision not to allow the student to wear hijab ”thoughtful.”"
"NASA announced Tuesday the discovery of an unprecedented number of planets beyond our solar system  —   astronomers have confirmed the existence of 1, 284 new worlds orbiting distant stars. These planets beyond our solar system  —   exoplanets  —   were discovered with the help of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which launched in 2009. ”When NASA decided to build and launch the Kepler Space Telescope, we did not know if exoplanets  —   especially small, rocky exoplanets  —   were common or rare in the galaxy,” says Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. ”We now know that exoplanets are common, that most stars in our galaxy have planetary systems, and that a reasonable fraction of the stars in our galaxy have potentially habitable planets.” Kepler was designed to search for planets by staring for years at over 100, 000 stars. Whenever a planet passed in front of a star and blocked some of its light, Kepler would see a telltale dimming of the starlight. But to make sure that dimming really was caused by a planet, scientists would have to do   observations with other telescopes. ”The process of verifying a candidate as a true planet has traditionally involved detailed,   study on a    basis,” says Timothy Morton, a researcher at Princeton University. Trouble is, that takes time and a lot of effort. So Morton developed a new, automated technique that let him quantify the probability that a Kepler signal was really a planet  —   without having to do those cumbersome   observations. Now he and his colleagues have published evidence, in the current issue of The Astrophysical Journal, showing that a slew of Kepler’s observations have more than a 99 percent probability of being real planets. ”This is the most exoplanets that have ever been announced at one time,” says Morton. And it more than doubles the number of verified planets discovered by the Kepler telescope. Based on size, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth. And nine of them orbit in their star’s ”Goldilocks Zone”  —   the region around a star that’s not too hot or too cold for liquid water  —   and maybe even life. Previously, the Kepler team had known of only a dozen such planets. Along with the 1, 284 newly verified planets, Morton’s analysis shows that an additional 1, 327 candidates spotted by Kepler are more likely to be planets than not  —   but they need more study for confirmation. Natalie Batalha, the Kepler mission scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, says the space telescope is giving researchers a real sense of what kind of planets are out there. ”You’re talking about tens of billions of potentially habitable,   planets out there in the galaxy,” she says. Next year, NASA plans to launch another space telescope called TESS. It will be similar to Kepler but will search the entire sky to find   planets around closer, brighter stars. Astronomers should have an easier time studying those planets to learn more about what they’re like and whether they might be right for life."
"”Is this for real?” That was the only line in an email my graduate student send me about a month ago. Along with her terse question was a link to a new paper on the astrophysics preprint archive (a website where newly completed research get posted). The paper’s title was enough to set me back: ”A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight” by Philip Lubin. ”Wow,” I thought to myself. ”Is this for real?” I downloaded the paper and started reading. One week later, as I was still crawling through the paper’s physics, Russian billionaire philanthropist Yuri Milner announced the $100 million Starshot program  —   intended to leapfrog humanity across interstellar space. Listening to even the briefest outline of the plan, I realized they were talking about Lubin’s road map. While my student and I were asking whether this was for real, someone else was already sinking a ton of money into making it a reality. So who is this guy Philip Lubin? What, exactly, is his ”road map?” And, most importantly, is this for really for real? Lubin is a respected scientist who has done most of his studies in cosmology. ”Most of my work is very traditional,” Lubin says. ”I am a very conservative scientist. I don’t usually go out on the edge.” So if Lubin is a guy who stays away from the edges, what about his road map? ”This,” Lubin says freely, ”is definitely on the edge.” To set things in context, remember that we first escaped Earth orbit about 60 years ago. Since then we have accomplished some pretty impressive feats. But nothing we’ve done so far even gets us anywhere close to the stars. It took 10 years for the New Horizons probe to cross the solar system and reach Pluto. But even with its remarkable velocity of 58, 000   it would still require around 100 millennia for New Horizons to cross typical interstellar distances. That means the challenges involved in getting an interstellar probe to its target in anything close to a human lifetime are immense. That is where Lubin comes in. Along with his studies of the early universe, Lubin and his team have also been working on technologies associated with ”directed energy.” When you hear that term you could think ”laser”  —   but there’s more to it than that. Lubin has been using advances in the science of photonics to explore arrays of laser systems that work together creating extremely powerful,   beams of directed energy. Lubin calls his idea Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation or  . As the name implies, the genesis of the research program was using the lasers to defend Earth from asteroids. ”Since we started our program, we’ve probably gone through about 100 undergraduate researchers because they just love the idea of destroying something,” Lubin told me. And destroy things they did. ”We had all kinds of objects in the lab that [the students] blew holes through,” says Lubin. ”One student brought in a   vest and we blew a hole through that.” But Lubin’s team quickly saw the possibilities for interstellar travel. Light particles (called photons) carry momentum and can push on the things they interact with. This is the principle behind proposals to use sunlight to push giant solar sails around interplanetary space. People also have imagined using   lasers fired at a sails for propulsion before. But it’s the   ”phased array” lasers Lubin studies that represent a new direction. Adding them to the equation means   spacecraft drivers might be possible in near term (decades not centuries). Reaching the stars, however, requires reaching velocities close to light speed. The nearest star is 4. 3   away. That means it would take 4. 3 years traveling at light speed to get to there. But the more mass you want to send to the stars, the more energy you need to accelerate that mass close to light speed. While Lubin’s directed energy system can push a sail (and a tethered spaceship) outward, a reasonable version of the machine can only get the craft close to the   limit if you think really, really small. That’s why rather than spaceships, Lubin wants to send ”spacechips.” As his road map paper puts it, ”. ..we consider functional spacecraft on a wafer, including integrated optical communications, imaging systems, photon thrusters, power and sensors combined with directed energy propulsion.” So, basically, we’re talking about sending smartphones to the stars. That, my friends, is edgy. So how did the edgy ideas in Lubin’s road map become part of Yuri Milner’s $100 million Starshot program? After giving a talk at the SETI Institute, Lubin’s paper found its way to members of Breakthrough Initiatives, including Milner. Then, in January, Lubin and Milner met to discuss the road map. ”He’s a truly fascinating individual,” Lubin says of Milner. ”He’s both someone of means and quite a deep thinker. He had been dreaming of doing something in the realm of interstellar but nothing he had looked at was credible.” According to Lubin, Milner and his institute had been exploring ”real ideas” in the sense of thinking about, for instance, using   as a propellant. But while   is real and its physics is understood (as opposed to a warp drive) doing anything meaningful with it was just too hard (and, hence, too expensive) to imagine. ”Our stuff is really hard, but   is even harder,” says Lubin. So what Milner saw in Lubin’s approach was something that, with time and development, might be technologically feasible and economically possible. Lubin says Milner told him that this idea was the first thing he had seen that was really credible. So the question Milner, Lubin and others, including Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, tried to answer in their meeting was whether the road map lead to something real. The answer Milner eventually found was ”yes.” And that, in part, was how the Starshot program was born. Lubin takes pains to explain that what must happen now is a long,   road of development. In particular, what is needed is not just new technology but the new technologies that can make the next generation of new and cheaper technologies possible. ”If someone asked in 1961 how much would it cost to get the moon in 1962 you would say that question doesn’t even make sense,” Lubin says. That’s because multiple layers of breakthroughs that fed on each other were all required to make the moon landing possible. So if the question is ”Are we ready to send a starchip to the nearest stars soon?”  —   the answer is most definitely no. But something new, something radical and something truly fascinating has most definitely begun. Lubin, Milner and Breakthrough Initiatives are indeed dreaming a most audacious dream. Perhaps Lubin himself put it best in his road map paper: ”We posit a path forward, that while not simple, it is within our technological reach. We propose a road map to a program that will lead to sending relativistic probes to the nearest stars and will open up a vast array of possibilities of flight both within our solar system and far beyond. .. ” Amen to that, brother. Now we shall wait and see what you come up with. Adam Frank is a   of the 13. 7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a   ”evangelist of science.” You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4."
"The Food and Drug Administration is   its definition of what counts as a ”healthy” food. The change comes as healthful fats  —   including fats found in nuts  —   are increasingly recognized as part of a good diet. Currently, if a food company wants to put a ”healthy” claim on its label, regulations stipulate that it must be very low in fat. The specific rules are complex, but, for instance, a snack food can contain no more than 3 grams of fat for a   serving. This means that many snacks that include nuts don’t qualify as healthy. The FDA says that in light of evolving nutrition research, it is now planning to solicit public and expert comment to come up with a new definition that will help consumers make informed choices. The move comes after the maker of Kind brand bars  —   which contain almonds and other nuts  —   pushed back against an FDA complaint about its use of the phrase ”healthy and tasty.” After making its complaint, the FDA now says that after reviewing the situation, it is comfortable with the company using the phrase. ”We are pleased that the FDA is looking into” revising its definition, says Daniel Lubetzky, the CEO of Kind bars. The company helped launch a citizens’ petition requesting that the FDA take action. The FDA definition of healthy is a holdover from the era when dietary fat was vilified. ”Low in fat used to mean healthy,” says Thomas Sherman, an associate professor at Georgetown University who teaches medical students about nutrition. ”And high in fat had a pejorative context to it.” As we’ve reported, millions of Americans clung to the advice that low fat was best. During the 1990s, an era of   mania, Americans were making a habit of munching on     products such as Snackwells. But Sherman says there’s been an evolution in understanding  —   and awareness. We now know that consuming too much sugar can have negative health consequences. And there’s a growing awareness that foods ”higher” in fat can be healthful. As we’ve reported, many new studies affirm the healthfulness of eating more   fats, such as avocados and nuts. ”Nuts have healthy fats . .. that we know are good for cardiovascular health and mental health and are good sources of protein,” says Sherman. He points out that nuts are   so people should limit portion sizes. But he says that overall, ”nuts are a wonderful component of our diet.” And the dietary guidelines, which were updated earlier this year, recommend eating foods rich in healthful fats."
"In rural Kentucky, the call to be a preacher can come at an early age. Nick Wilson was born with it. ”We were always in church,” he says. ”Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Bible school, revivals. That’s what life was.” His father, a grandfather and two   were Southern Baptist preachers. So is his brother. His sister married a preacher, and Wilson intended to follow the line. After college, he attended the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. a training ground for Baptist preachers since 1859. But his ministry plans soon ended, because no congregation was interested in ordaining him. They all wanted a family man, and Wilson didn’t measure up. ”First off, I’m single. That’s a problem,” he says. ”They really want you to be married. But then if you throw in gay, it’s over with.” Wilson says he knew from the time he was six or seven that he was ”different.” In time, he became open about his sexuality, even taking his boyfriend to church. But in the Southern Baptist world, homosexuality is morally unacceptable, so he was disqualified from the ministry. ”The scriptural view is what’s ultimate,” says Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Seminary and an intellectual leader in the evangelical world. ”The Apostle Paul very explicitly in 1 Corinthians says that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” [There’s more from Mohler and the culture war being fought among Evangelical Christians in Tom Gjelten’s Morning Edition story.] At one time Mohler advocated ”reparative therapy” for LGBT individuals to help them change their sexual orientation. He now thinks   attraction may be involuntary. Still, he says, those who feel it should not act on it, no matter whether they are in a committed   relationship. Southern Baptist doctrine emphatically rejects gay marriage. ”If you can change the way a society or civilization defines itself at the most molecular level  —   at marriage and family  —   and if you can redefine sexual mores pervasively,” Mohler argues, ”you will have changed the society utterly.” Not surprisingly, as an evangelical, Wilson has long struggled with being gay. ”It didn’t take long to realize that that was not approved of, because I heard my father preach about it,” he says. ”I have been to the point of suicide over trying to not be gay, because I felt early on called to the ministry. But then ’gay Christian,’ in the world I grew up in, that didn’t go together. You had to be one or the other, and God didn’t take it away  —   the calling or the gay.” Attitudes toward homosexuality and   marriage have become much more supportive in the United States over recent years. Evangelicals generally still consider homosexual behavior immoral, but by ever smaller margins. In 2007, just 23 percent of Southern Baptists said homosexuality should be accepted by society, according to the Pew Research Center. By 2014, that figure had risen to 30 percent. Attitudes toward   marriage have shifted just as dramatically. In a 2001 Pew survey, just 13 percent of white evangelical Protestants (the most conservative religious group on social issues) said they favored   marriage. By 2015, that number had almost doubled, to 24 percent, and it was becoming easier for LGBT individuals to find a church home. For Wilson, it was Ridgewood Baptist, a small church in a   neighborhood of southwest Louisville. The church is part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group of churches that broke from the Southern Baptist Convention about 25 years ago over the question of whether women should be ordained. The church’s more welcoming attitude toward LGBT individuals, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. Pastor Matt Johnson, 36, was himself raised and schooled in the Southern Baptist tradition. As he prepared for the ministry, he says his views were clear cut and typical of his time and place: ”Homosexuality is wrong. And that’s very clear in the Bible. So that’s kind of the end of the discussion.” While studying at the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University, however, Johnson met some gay Christians and found his views softening. ”People who were there because they want to be ministers and whose faith was very challenging to me and who were just deeply committed Christians and deeply committed to their faith and who also were gay,” Johnson says. A careful study of the Old and New Testament convinced him that the scriptural references to homosexuality were not as clear as he originally thought, but it was his encounter with gay ministry students that mattered more. ”I see the Holy Spirit working in these people’s lives,” he says. ”Who am I to say that they are not Christians or that they are somehow lost or wrong? I don’t feel like my faith is nearly as strong as theirs. I’m challenged and humbled by them.” LGBT rights were not a big issue at Ridgewood when Johnson arrived at the church, but it already had a reputation for openness. Wilson, uncomfortable elsewhere as a gay man, was already a member. In April, at the age of 51, Wilson was ordained at Ridgewood as a Baptist minister, with Johnson’s enthusiastic support. Most Ridgewood members have taken the church’s   reputation in stride, despite its setting in a community where LGBT rights are not well established. Sarah Thurmond, 20, a leader of the Ridgewood church youth group, says some people she knows find it hard to believe there are gay congregants. ”When I say we have a gay member in our church, they just don’t understand how we allow that,” she says. ”So I was like, ’What do you mean, how do we allow that? They walk through the door!’ ” Young people in general are much more likely to support   relationships, but it’s not universal. The men who choose to attend the Southern Baptist Seminary do so knowing their church’s position. Matt Mihelic, 28, is preparing to be a pastor. He says if a young man were to come to him at church and confide that he’s gay, he’d advise him to embrace God’s view of sexuality alone. ”He should . .. refrain from sexual activity until he’s married to a woman,” he says. Mohler, the seminary president, acknowledges that he and other conservative evangelicals are often asked whether they are obsessed with issues of sexuality, given all the other evils they could focus on. ”This sexual revolution is undergirded by a vast change in the moral thinking and the moral intuitions of Americans,” he says. ”And the reason why we can’t drop this is because we do believe it matters to salvation and eternity.” As for Wilson, he will not repent for his sexual orientation, but he does recognize that sexual behavior can be immoral under some circumstances. ”Depending on how sex is used, or how somebody is literally used in sex. That can be sinful,” he says. ”If you’re not honoring that other person and just using them as an object for your gratification, I think that’s sinful.” As a   Christian, Wilson seeks forgiveness and acknowledges that he is a sinner  —   but not because of his sexual orientation, nor because of his hope that someday he, too, will marry."
"America’s culture war, waged in recent years over gender roles, sexuality and the definition of marriage, is increasingly being fought inside evangelical Christian circles. On one side are the Christians determined to resist trends in secular society that appear to conflict with biblical teaching. On the other side are the evangelicals willing to live with those trends. For Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. the key question is ”whether or not there is a binding morality to which everyone is accountable.” Mohler is a   of the biannual Together for the Gospel conference, which brought together thousands of evangelicals last month at a sports center in Louisville, a few miles from the Southern Baptist campus. Electronic signs around the top of the arena carried such messages as ”We Were Born Out of Protest” and ”We Stand on Scripture Alone, Not Man’s Wisdom.” ”Our theme for this year is, ’We Protest,’ ” Mohler tells NPR. ”You might say [it’s] putting the ’protest’ back in Protestantism.” He and his fellow conservative leaders urge Christians to take a ”biblical” stand against such things as   divorce, extramarital sex, ”transgenderism” and gay marriage. His new book is We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage,  the Very Meaning of Right  Wrong. Mohler and other conservatives are pushing against strong headwinds, however. Survey data show that the number of Americans who think divorce is morally acceptable has increased significantly in recent years, while disapproval of homosexuality and   marriage has declined sharply. (Click to see changing attitudes on homosexuality and   marriage by religion.) The latter holds true even for white evangelicals, among the groups most resistant to LGBT rights. For church leaders like Mohler, the challenge is unmistakable. ”Conservative Christians in America are undergoing a huge shift in the way we see ourselves in the world,” Mohler says. ”We are on the losing side of a massive change that’s not going to be reversed, in all likelihood, in our lifetimes.” In his view, Christians must adapt to the changed cultural circumstance by finding a way ”to live faithfully in a world in which we’re going to be a moral exception.” (It is this goal, Mohler says, that explains the passage of ”religious liberty” laws to protect people who want to express their opposition to   marriage or ”transgenderism. ”) ’At Odds With What Everyday People Believe’ Living as the moral exception was the prospect facing the Together for the Gospel attendees. Most were young men training to be pastors in Southern Baptist churches. The Southern Baptists are one of the Protestant denominations that do not ordain women, even as church deacons. Some Southern Baptist congregations do not even allow divorced men to serve as pastors. Many in their millennial generation may reject conservative thinking on social issues, but the young men who choose to be Southern Baptist pastors have full knowledge of the church teachings. Their church mandate is somewhat limited: not to persuade the broader culture of new moral truths but rather to help their own congregants live their lives as a ”moral exception” to the rest of society. ”The Bible makes claims about what is right and wrong, and those claims are often at odds with what everyday people believe,” says Southern Baptist seminary student Joshua Van der Merwe, 24, of Louisville, during a break between conference sessions. ”Christians are called to protest and to witness to what the Bible claims to be right and wrong.” An insistence on strict   standards of morality may exclude some of those everyday people, however. For them, one alternative is Ridgewood Baptist Church in a   suburb of Louisville. The pastor, Matt Johnson, grew up as a Southern Baptist, but his church is one of a group that broke from the Southern Baptist Convention about 25 years ago. It now serves a diverse congregation, and the men and women who make up Johnson’s lay advisory ”Dawnings” committee advocate that it opens doors to everyday people. ”Let’s offer words of hope,” Johnson prayed at a recent Dawnings meeting. ”Hope for the future of what could happen here, who could come here and find a place to belong.” The committee members included Janney Gilbert, a medical office manager whose son is gay, Estelle Power, a retired former deacon who became involved in the church after a painful divorce, and Janelle Perry, whose mother was the first female deacon at Ridgewood and who now serves as the church’s youth director. ”I’ve been here all my life, and Ridgewood is not the same church we were 40 years ago,” Perry says. ”Everyone can come. Some people are taken aback by that  —   [and] women deacons. And we’ll let most anybody attend. . .. We’re just  .” It is not that the church serves highly educated liberals who might be expected to support a progressive agenda. The surrounding community, according to Johnson, is ”a conservative area, with a lot of folks who feel disenfranchised. I’d say it represents the new face of poverty.” The Role Of Women, Economic stress can be hard on marriages, and Ridgewood’s membership includes several people who have been divorced. ”I don’t know what I would have done without this church,” Power says. ”I felt I was the only person in the world that was going through a divorce.” Now 76, Power says she has found others at Ridgewood whose lives didn’t necessarily fit a church ideal. She can relate to them, she says, because of her own experience. ”I’ve made some friends, just saying hello,” she says, ”and somebody would say, ’You’re so kind.’ I said, ’No, I’m just who I am.’ But I do think that it makes you a little more humble when you go through something.” Power grew up in rural Kentucky with divorced parents. Her father drank too much but listened faithfully to Baptist preachers on the radio. Having heard bad things all her life about women who divorced, she welcomed the less judgmental attitude at Ridgewood. ”There are people who have stopped going to church because they think that all that church is is a place where you’re being condemned,” Johnson says, ”and where you’re just told, ’This is what you have to think.’ ” Such people, he says, are among those whom he now hopes to reach with his own ministry. The church’s rupture with the Southern Baptist Convention was in a dispute over the role of women. Southern Baptists believe that men and women ”complement” each other but are not interchangeable, which is why women are not allowed to serve in prominent church leadership roles. Mohler says the church position on complementary gender roles may seem outdated but comes straight from the Bible. ”It’s an entire pattern of complementarity that we see woven throughout the account of scripture,” he says, ”from Genesis 1:  all the way to the Book of Revelation. So it’s not a minor matter to suggest that the church can somehow just update its understanding of gender. This is where we must be found faithful, regardless of the cultural understanding around us.” More than 15 million Americans attend Southern Baptist churches. Many Christians yearn for the certainty and direction that come with a life based on a strict reading of the Bible. With the culture rapidly changing around them, however, the future of conservative evangelical Christianity is not clear. By contrast, the more moderate Baptist churches would seem to have an   market. On the other hand, some of the people who have soured on the Southern Baptist approach now reject church altogether. The evangelical Protestant share of the U. S. population is declining, so the growth prospects for a congregation like Ridgewood Baptist are also unclear. From the outside, with a cross prominently placed on the plain brick front, it looks like any other Baptist church in Louisville. Nick Wilson, the church pianist and most prominent gay member, says he would never have approached Ridgewood had he not heard it was a welcoming church. ”Driving by, seeing Ridgewood Baptist Church, I would not stop,” he says. ”I would just assume that I already know what’s going on inside those doors, and I’m not welcome, or I don’t want to be part of it, and would go on.” Nick Wilson’s story continues on All Things Considered."
"Here are two obvious statements: One, many teenagers love fast food. Two, many of them hate listening to adults. And these are real problems if you’re a fast food company. Increasingly, companies like Taco Bell and McDonald’s are trying very hard to reach teens like me by using social media. Over the past few months, I’ve been working with NPR business reporter Sonari Glinton to examine how well some of these campaigns are working  —   including asking some of my friends at Youth Radio to weigh in. While they generally like the humor in brand campaigns, Nila Venkat explains: ”It makes me think they are funny on social media. Doesn’t mean I want to eat their hash browns.” That doesn’t surprise Lauren Johnson, a digital marketing reporter at Adweek. ”Social media and millennial marketing is an extremely tough area for brands right now,” she says. ”The agencies tend to be a bit older, so they’re trying to understand what millennials talk about with their friends, and how that can be translated into marketing that feels that same way.” On the one hand, the goal of these companies isn’t new. Since the birth of modern marketing, businesses have been trying to reach the elusive teenager. But as Sonari points out, when he was a teen 23 years ago, marketing was a form of   communication  —   companies speaking to teens via TV commercials or print ads. New technology has brought new expectations. Teens today expect brands to engage with them online  . And some companies are doing a better job than others. Marketing experts say Taco Bell’s   approach is one to watch. But it’s tough to say how much, if any, of its success is due to   savvy. So we decide to go to the belly of the beast  —   the belly of the Bell, if you will  —   Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, Calif. Taco Bell’s command center is as cool as can be for a corporate office. The break room has a soda fountain complete with Taco Bell cups. We meet with the company’s chief marketing officer, Marisa Thalberg, in a room called ”the fishbowl.” ”We have lots of screens where we can see everything that’s going on in social media about the brand and about the world,” Thalberg says of the room. ”Which is great, because it keeps us really plugged in.” Taco Bell prides itself on being a pioneer in engaging with consumers on social media platforms like Snapchat and Twitter. This past November, taking advantage of the newly created taco emoji, the company launched a social campaign called #TacoEmojiEngine, consisting of 600 gifs and photos. Thalberg explains how it works: ”If you tweet at Taco Bell and type the taco emoji plus any other emoji, you’re going to get tweeted back an original piece of content. You could do it right now, while we’re talking. Go to Twitter.” So we do. One of my producers tweets a taco and a unicorn emoji. Within seconds, she receives a video of a horse eating a taco and turning into a unicorn. Cool, I think. But it doesn’t really make me want to eat Taco Bell. And that’s the thing: Just because a brand makes teens laugh doesn’t mean they’ll buy its products, or confirm that the companies are even on the right track. I tell Thalberg that I think Taco Bell’s social media brand is interesting in that it is ” .” There’s a big pause. ”What do you mean by  ?” she asks. I think about it. ”Like, hmmm . .. like a    vibe,” I say. Quicker than you can tweet a video of a   unicorn, she says: ”I really don’t think that’s our vibe. I think that implies . .. the stereotype of Taco Bell, but not at all who we are. I think what makes us unique is that there’s an authenticity to who we are that makes us feel like a likable friend.” She acknowledges that this sounds like a typical brand response. And it does. In my opinion, that’s too bad. Why don’t they just embrace the stoner vibe? Maybe that would give them the kind of authenticity that appeals to the tricky teen demographic. But it’s clear to me and Sonari that fast food brands don’t always understand what it’s like to be a teenager. And even if they do manage to impress teens someday, those kids will soon become adults  —   and companies will have to move on to the next group of teens . .. and the next media revolution. This story is part of a series reported in collaboration with Youth Radio on the future of fast food. NPR business reporter Sonari Glinton contributed to this report. What are your options for inexpensive meals in your area? What can you get for $5 or less? Share your photos of your #5dollarchallenge meal on Twitter or Instagram  —   be sure to flag @youthradio. (And remember to direct message @youthradio if you’ve got a private account!)"
"We hear a lot about the size of a person’s carbon footprint  —   how much they use electricity, drive a car, fly on airplanes. In India, some people are trying to shrink the carbon footprints of the dead. At least 20 times a day, Braj Kishore Pandey sings a mantra as he lays a human body on a pile of firewood to burn. ”There is a request from god for the freedom for the release of the soul, and also for the happiness for the family,” he says. Pandey operates an   crematorium by a riverbank outside New Delhi. He’s wiry, with   teeth and a glossy black mustache  —   and obviously proud of his job. He oversees 40 concrete platforms here. On one, a skeletal shape lies in a pile of smoldering embers. The roof of the skull is broken. That’s part of the Hindu cremation ritual. At another platform, a crowd of about 30 men surrounds a body on a blazing pillar of logs. Each traditional cremation consumes nearly 900 pounds of wood. Ashes float like snowflakes through the shimmering heat. Jatan Singh is here to say goodbye to his oldest sister. ”According to the Hindu religion,” he explains, ”without fire, it’s not possible for the soul to get complete freedom.” Off to the side of where his sister’s remains are being consumed by fire, there is a towering stockpile of logs that have been delivered from the countryside. Chitra Kesarwani would like to propose an alternative. ”Everybody is looking for options of how to control pollution,” she says. Kesarwani works for Mokshda Green Cremation System, an organization that offers Indians a cleaner, more   option at crematoriums like this one. But that can be a tough sell. ”Cremation is [an]   tradition we are following,” she says. ”So making changes in this tradition is a difficult task for us.” Two of Mokshda’s ”green cremation” systems sit near the traditional platforms. Braj Kishore Pandey oversees these as well as the traditional pyres. The wood rests on a metal tray large enough to hold a human body. A sort of exhaust hood hangs overhead. Burning a body this way uses a third as much wood as the traditional method. It takes two hours instead of three days. The Mokshda structure allows the pyre to burn hotter and faster with less fuel, concentrating the fire in the metal tray and releasing much less smoke into the air. I ask the mourner Jatan Singh why he chose the more traditional funeral pyre for his sister. ”The way we did it  —   on the ground  —   is for people who have families and relatives,” he says. ”This new system, that’s for vagabonds. Unidentified bodies.” His response highlights a major challenge confronting Kesarwani: educating consumers who are reluctant to give up the old, traditional ways. ”The information was not properly transferred to him,” she says. ”This is what we are fighting right now. This is the challenge we are facing these days.” India is trying to become a highly developed nation without doing as much environmental damage as countries like the U. S. and China did when they were making this leap. To succeed, India will have to make huge changes in its energy policy, as well as   changes in the way people go about their daily lives  —   and their deaths. Each day, seven or eight bodies are burned on Pandey’s green cremation platforms here his traditional pyres burn twice as many. Pandey breathes easier now. ”By using [green cremation] people do not even get smoke in their eyes,” he says. He also appreciates that fewer trees are being cut down. ”If something can be done in a smaller amount,” he says, ”why do we need to spend a larger amount?” There are some fully electric cremation systems in India that are even cleaner  —   they don’t involve firewood at all. But one step at a time.   religious practices don’t just transform overnight."
"”More than most places, Pennsylvania is what lies beneath.” That’s a line Jennifer Haigh places at the beginning and the end of her latest novel, Heat and Light. Haigh knows a lot about ”what lies beneath” in Pennsylvania. She was born in the coal country of Western Pennsylvania and her 2005   novel, Baker Towers, traced the rise and fall of the fictional coal town, Bakerton, in the years following World War II. Haigh returned to Bakerton a few years ago in her short story collection, News From Heaven now, in Heat and Light she’s paying a more extended visit. For Haigh, Bakerton is becoming something akin to Faulkner’s apocryphal Yoknapatawpha County. It’s a place she’s brought to life so scrupulously that she can delve deep, both into the minds and family histories of her mostly   characters, as well as into the land itself and the stories it contains. Heat and Light is her most ambitious  —   and compelling  —   novel yet. What Tom Wolfe did for the New York City of the   ”  ’80s” in The Bonfire of the Vanities, Haigh does here for Bakerton  —   and the obscure   locales it’s based on  —   in this, our own era of ”fracking frenzy.” Heat and Light is an exquisitely designed,   social novel featuring a cast of at least 15 main characters. The central story revolves around fracking  —   the method by which natural gas trapped underground in shale rock is released through drilling and the injection of a   mixture of water, chemicals and sand. The novel opens in 2010, when a salesman comes to town representing a Texas company called Dark Elephant Energy. In simple   pitches, the salesman offers farmers around Bakerton a sweet deal, whereby Dark Elephant leases their land, drills into what he calls ”Nature’s   box” and releases the treasure of natural gas. He claims the drill will run so far beneath the land that farming can go on as usual. In return, the farmers get a leasing bonus up front and a percentage of future profits. Who would say no to such easy money, right? But the regrets skyrocket a couple of years later, after the tap water gets funky and residents begin suffering from rashes and boils, memory loss and miscarriages. After the natural gas boom goes bust and Dark Elephant drill workers (some of whom we’ve gotten to know) are laid off and stiffed on their last paycheck after the old hardwood forests are cut down and muddy clearings ”the size of . .. shopping mall[s] are carved out”  —   that’s when most folks in Bakerton realize they’ve been royally fracked. The challenge with such a political, and heavily populated novel like Heat and Light is to make us readers care to topple us from our Olympian condescension and get us to identify with these characters and the mistakes they make out of greed and need. As spectacular as Haigh’s panoramic social focus is in this novel  —   whisking us from Dark Elephant’s shareholders’ meeting in Houston into Bakerton’s taverns, the   the local   hangouts and storefront churches  —   she’s also superb at getting us into the nitty gritty of her character’s worldview, as well as their speech. Most Bakerton natives begin their sentences with the resigned preface, ”Anyways.” Chief among them is Rich Devlin, who has inherited his family’s property, but works as a prison guard because he can’t afford to farm. Rich’s father always told him that ”there are two kinds of work: the kind where you shower before and the kind where you shower after.” Rich can’t wait to scrub the prison smells off him every night. With the money from Dark Elephant, Rich thought he could finally quit the prison job and begin farming. But, now his water and land are polluted. He can’t even afford to sue. ”Anyways,” there are so many contractors and subcontractors involved, he wouldn’t know where to begin. In another one of her signature poetic pronouncements on her home territory, Haigh says: ”Rural Pennsylvania doesn’t fascinate the world, not generally. But cyclically, periodically, its innards are of interest. Bore it, strip it, set it on fire, a burnt offering to the collective need.” In Heat and Light, Haigh succeeds in making rural Pennsylvania  —   its land and people  —   plenty fascinating. Through the intimacy of her sweeping portrayal of Bakerton and the world beyond, she also compels readers to think about what we value and what possessions and dreams we sell off way too cheap."
"Stephen Steinbrink’s unfussy imagery stays detached from meaning. That’s part of what makes his seven albums worth your time: In their lushly arranged pop songs, the listener can tie and untie Steinbrink’s vivid and unrelated images into something meaningful  —   or not. Even his new album’s title, Anagrams, suggests engagement through emotional and lyrical rearrangement. The gingerly sweet ”Building Machines” is deceptively simple, marrying an airy melody with dense instrumentation that recalls the solo work of The Sea And Cake’s Archer Prewitt. Steinbrink is thoughtful about how he foregrounds and backgrounds sustained piano chords, smeared synths, crisp drums, intricate guitar work and his   vocal chill. The elements remain fluid from verse to verse, never bothering with a chorus and never needing one. After he sings, ”You work building machines   Unraveling all they believe   I remember you from when I was small   The silence there was deafening,” the song builds to a bit of feedback that teeters on chaos, yet rides the gently swaying wave. Anagrams comes out July 1 on Melodic and Bandcamp."
"In what is being billed as a ”window into the future impacts of global   rise,” scientists have documented how the ocean swallowed up five small islands that were part of the Solomon Islands archipelago northeast of Australia. Writing in the Environmental Research Letters, the researchers say this is the first scientific account of how climate change is affecting coastlines in the Solomons. Update on Wednesday May 11: In an interview with The Guardian, one of the study’s lead authors said that while climate change was a big factor, another big factor is that trade winds have been stronger than usual. The Guardian reports that those winds have been driven in part by global warming, but also by the cyclical ”Pacific Decadal Oscillation.” Our original post continues.  The six Australian scientists combined satellite images and interviews with locals to examine 33 islands. They found that during a period from 1947 to 2013, five vegetated reef islands had disappeared and six other islands had severe shoreline recession. Two villages have been destroyed and Taro Island, which is inhabited, is likely to become ”the first provincial capital globally to relocate residents and services due to the threat of   rise.” CNN reports: ”’The human element of this is alarming. Working alongside people on the frontline who have lost their family home  —   that they’ve had for four to five generations  —   it’s quite alarming,’ the study’s lead author, Simon Albert of the University of Queensland, told CNN. ”. .. The Solomon Islands are a sparsely populated archipelago of more than 900 islands that lie east of Papua New Guinea, and as   islands are particularly vulnerable to   rises.” ABC News adds: ”In March, James Hansen, a NASA scientist who is extremely influential in the study of climate change, estimated that seas could rise by seven meters in the coming century, a figure that would likely decimate coastal communities, if proved accurate. Losing Ground, a report issued by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica in 2014, demonstrated that large swaths of the Louisiana coastline are being lost to rising sea levels . .. South Florida, the Carolinas, and the Jersey Shore are also in danger of losing land due to sea level rise, according to an interactive map created by Climate Central, an organization of scientists.” Discovery reports that in the Pacific, the rise has been ”in the 3 to 5 millimeters per year range.”"
"It may be too late for a man identified as a white nationalist leader to be removed from a list of Trump delegates, an official in the California secretary of state’s office told NPR. ”The Trump campaign did not reach out to our office about removing William Johnson’s name as a delegate until Tuesday, May 10  —   which is past the statutory deadline to submit delegate lists to the Secretary of State’s office,” Press Secretary Sam Mahood said in a statement. William Daniel Johnson is affiliated with the American Freedom Party, identified as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Los Angeles attorney is known for proposing an amendment to strip U. S. citizenship from nonwhites. His existence on the list was first reported by Mother Jones. After Johnson’s name appeared on a Trump delegate list published this week by the California secretary of state, the campaign blamed a computer error and said it had taken immediate steps to remove him. ”Upon careful review of computer records, the inclusion of a potential delegate that had previously been rejected and removed from the campaign’s list in February 2016, was discovered,” the Trump campaign’s California State Director Tim Clark said in a statement Tuesday. ”This was immediately corrected and a final list, which does not include this individual, was submitted for certification.” Johnson told CNN and the Washington Post that he resigned after the Trump campaign contacted him and that he will not attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer. ”I was approved as a delegate, I submitted my application and I was approved,” Johnson told CNN Wednesday afternoon. ”And then immediately when the list came out, they [the campaign] saw that they had a clerical error. And so then they sent me an email saying that ’you are removed from the list.’ So I wrote back an email telling them ’I understand. I resign.’ And then later in the day I got contacted by a media person, who says, ’Well you’re still on the list.’ And so then I sent them a second email saying that ’I resign. I will not attend the convention. I will not be a delegate. ’” NPR reached out to the the Trump campaign for comment. It did not respond. The news of the white nationalist’s inclusion on Trump’s delegate slate in California comes as Trump is gearing up for a   fight by hiring new staff and taking on likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump’s critics have repeatedly accused him of racism for his statements about groups, including Muslims and Mexican immigrants. For Johnson’s part, he said he is still a Trump fan  —   even if he won’t be a delegate. ”Mr. Trump is the real deal,” Johnson said on CNN. ”He won’t govern by public opinion polls. He will say what’s on his mind,” something he called a ”refreshing change.”"
"A day after de facto Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said ”there’s nothing to learn” from making his tax returns public before this November’s elections, the billionaire is taking heat from the party’s 2012 nominee over that stance. ”It is disqualifying for a   presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters,” said Mitt Romney in a post on Facebook. Trump insists he won’t release his returns until the Internal Revenue Service has finished auditing them. An NPR fact check from February found that there was no law that prohibited the release of tax returns that were under audit. There is a curious echo to Romney’s accusation of a ”bombshell” in Trump’s tax returns. Romney, the former CEO of a private equity firm, came under similar scrutiny in 2012 when he released only two years of tax returns in 2012  —   and after coming under considerable pressure from the Obama campaign and some Republicans. Trump’s decision to withhold the tax returns would break a nearly   tradition for presidents and major presidential candidates, according to the Tax History Project. ”There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his returns: There is a bombshell in them,” Romney said. ”Given Mr. Trump’s equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a bombshell of unusual size.” The real estate billionaire’s actual wealth has been a subject of debate since he entered the race last summer. Trump claimed his net worth was $10 billion, although Forbes magazine estimated it at $4 billion. Trump also released a   financial disclosure form that didn’t shed light on his net worth. In addition to giving a sense of Trump’s annual income and wealth, tax returns would also reveal Trump’s charitable contributions and the tax deductions and credits from which he benefits. Romney’s comments mark yet another moment of tension between the two men. In March, Romney called Trump ”a fraud” and a ”con artist” and urged Republican voters to pick any other viable candidate in the presidential primary. Romney said he will not vote for Trump in the general election (or Hillary Clinton) and will not attend this summer’s Republican convention."
"A few weeks ago, Dr. James Bale saw a series of MRI images in a medical journal of MRI scans of babies infected with Zika in the womb. They scans showed something Bale had seen only a few times in his   career: a phenomenon called fetal brain disruption sequence. As the fetus’s brain starts to grow, it creates pressure, which pushes on the skull and causes it to grow. But if something stops brain growth  —   such as a virus  —   pressure on the skull drops. And the skull can collapse down onto the brain. The skin around the head continues to grow, Bale says. So the baby is born with wrinkles of skin at the back of the neck and a tiny skull. In some cases, the baby’s head is as small as an orange, or about half the size of a healthy baby’s head. ”It’s quite remarkable what the Zika virus is doing to the brain of young infants,” Bale says. ”Many of them will die often in infancy, and the majority, if not all, will then have a   severe developmental problems.” Now scientists think they have an understanding about how Zika causes these severe brain malformations. The findings come from a series of mouse experiments, published Wednesday in three leading journals. In one study, published in Nature, Alysson Muotri and his team at the University of California, San Diego, infected pregnant mice with Zika and looked to see how the virus harmed the baby mice. ”We detected the virus all over the mice and in different regions of the body,” Muotri says. But for some reason  —   and scientists don’t know why yet  —   Zika is particularly attracted to brain cells. And once inside the cells, Muotri says, Zika turns them into viral factories that start producing huge amounts of virus. Until they burst. ”They explode, and more viral particles are released that can infect other cells. And they can just amplify themselves,” Muotri says. More and more brain cells get infected. More die. This cell death is already a problem for the fetus. It scars the brain and creates inflammation. But the situation gets worse because the brain cells infected by Zika are extremely special. They’re called neural progenitor cells. And they’re responsible for building a large portion of the brain. ”These are   cells that will give rise to billions of cells in our brains,” Muotri says. So if a fetus loses even just a small percentage of these cells, a portion of its brain will never develop. ”And the impact later in life would be dramatic,” he says. A second study, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, confirmed that Zika destroys neural progenitor cells inside a growing embryo. In that experiment, a team of scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, injected the virus directly into the brains of mice embryos, developing inside their moms. Muortri says death of brain cells is likely the major way that Zika causes microcephaly in babies. But it isn’t the full picture. In the third study, Indira Mysorekar and her colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, also infected pregnant mice with Zika. They found the virus not only damages the brain but also attacks the placenta. ”The nutrient and blood exchange that normally happens between the mother and the fetus is reduced,” Mysorekar says. This slows down the baby’s growth  —   and may hurt the brain as well. Mysorekar and her colleagues published their findings in the journal Cell. She says mouse experiments can never tell us exactly what’s happening in people. Human anatomy is more complicated. But one thing is clear: Once Zika infects the fetus, ”it leaves a lot of havoc and devastation in its wake,” she says. ”It’s almost like a tornado or an earthquake. There is death following Zika.”"
"Amir Attaran, a professor in the School of Public Health and the School of Law at the University of Ottawa, isn’t afraid to take a bold stand. He has written a commentary for the Harvard Public Health Review, published this week, with the headline, ”Why Public Health Concerns for Global Spread of Zika Virus Means that Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 Olympic Games Must Not Proceed.” The World Health Organization is soon expected to release a statement with guidance on travel to the Olympics. NPR’s Robert Siegel spoke to Attaran about his controversial position. Attaran’s comments have been edited for length and clarity. You are calling for the Summer Games to either be postponed or moved to other countries  —   London, Beijing, Sydney. Why? The risk of [accelerating the spread] of Zika is simply too great to bear. What we know from Brazil’s devastating outbreak is that it began with a single infected person who brought the virus to South America. Does it really make sense to send a   [Olympic tourists] into Rio, which is, to be very clear, not the fringes of the outbreak. It’s the heart of the outbreak. Rio de Janeiro state has more Zika cases than anywhere else in the country. Doesn’t make sense. So are you saying the games should be canceled? No one is saying cancel the games. But is it at the end of the day sensible to run the risk of a global epidemic of, let’s face it,   babies, when that could be avoided by simply postponing the games or moving them elsewhere? This is not a question of worrying about whether individual athletes get sick or individual tourists. For any of those individuals, the risk is quite low. But when you multiply by 500, 000, the odds are extremely high that somebody will take the disease elsewhere and seed a new outbreak. Wouldn’t it also be logical from your perspective that no one should travel to Rio de Janeiro? We can’t fall into the trap of being extremist. It would be completely inappropriate, totalitarian even, to say nobody should enter or exit. But do we need to accelerate the entry and exit by a   people for [the Olympic] games? We speak of the Summer Games, but actually in the Southern Hemisphere where they’re taking place, it’ll be winter. And some people say mosquitoes won’t be that much of a problem because it’s not their season. There’s no doubt that mosquitoes will decline in Rio’s winter, but they’re not going to decline to point that the disease vanishes. Other   diseases like dengue fever persist through the winter in Rio, and Zika will too because it’s transmitted by the same mosquito. But here’s the bigger problem: in Rio this year,   disease is up 600 percent over the same period last year. Why did it go up 600 percent when there are mosquito control efforts? That proves the efforts aren’t working as well as one would have liked. And even if the   diseases do go down over winter, they’re coming down from a level that’s six times higher than normal."
"Updated at 3 p. m. ET. Out in the Nevada desert today, the world got a good look at the first public test of the Hyperloop  —   a concept that could someday become a new mode of transportation. Don’t call it a Wright Brothers’ ”Kitty Hawk” moment just yet, though. The demo focused on only one piece of a very complicated system. The Hyperloop, envisioned by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, would move   pods through special tubes at incredibly high speeds  —   as in possibly crossing the 400 miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles in a mere 30 minutes. Musk offered up his ideas in 2013, and others got to work trying to build it. One of the startups that jumped at the challenge is Hyperloop One, formerly Hyperloop Technologies, tested its propulsion mechanism today. Take a look, via CNBC: The Wall Street Journal wrote earlier in the day: ”The focus of the test will be more on the propulsion technology  —   whether it can actually move the sled  —   than the speed. The track is shorter and there will be air resistance, two slowing factors which will be eliminated in future tests.” On Tuesday, Hyperloop One announced new funding and new partners in transportation and engineering. One of those partners is Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Gizmodo says that Ingels, known for big public infrastructure projects, ”will give some   design direction for how Hyperloop One’s projects might start to integrate with the cities they’re meant to serve.” Gizmodo also has this statement from the architect: ”With hyperloop we are not only designing a futuristic station or a very fast train, we are dealing with an entirely novel technology with the potential to completely transform how our existing cities will grow and evolve, and how new cities will be conceived and constructed.” Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd said in a statement that the company would work with these new partners ”to redefine the future of transportation, providing a more immediate, safe, efficient and sustainable   backbone for the movement of people and things.” So will any of this actually work? NPR’s Elise Hu asked the question when Musk announced his idea almost three years ago. Electrical engineer Marc Thompson told her it seemed that it would. But that’s not the end of the story, said the Worcester Polytechnic professor: ”The devil’s in the details in terms of testing, safety, passenger safety, egress, vibration, all that engineering stuff.” Former U. S. Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary Emil Frankel also had reservations, which he shared with Elise at the time. ”To talk about these kinds of leapfrogging technology in a context when we can’t really adequately maintain our existing infrastructure is really not terribly realistic. At least not in terms of the public policy debate,” Frankel said. Hyperloop One and competitor Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, or HTT, don’t seem deterred. HTT is making progress, too, Wired notes: ”We think we will be able to demonstrate full Kitty Hawk capabilities by the end of this year.”"
"Congress has passed legislation to allow the cremated remains of women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, to be buried in the revered Arlington National Cemetery, a space reserved for people who have served in the U. S. armed forces. The legislation will now go to President Obama for his signature. In the 1940s, when the U. S. was faced with a shortage of pilots, the WASP became the first women to fly military aircraft. Training women to fly noncombat and training missions freed up male pilots for combat duty overseas, as NPR’s Susan Stamberg reported for Morning Edition in 2010. But the female pilots’ jobs weren’t without danger. In fact, 38 female pilots died in service, including    Mabel Rawlinson from Kalamazoo, Mich. Susan reported: ”Rawlinson was stationed at Camp Davis in North Carolina. She was coming back from a night training exercise with her male instructor when the plane crashed. Marion Hanrahan, also a WASP at Camp Davis, wrote an eyewitness account: ” ’I knew Mabel very well. We were both scheduled to check out on night flight in the  . My time preceded hers, but she offered to go first because I hadn’t had dinner yet. We were in the dining room and heard the siren that indicated a crash. We ran out onto the field. We saw the front of her plane engulfed in fire, and we could hear Mabel screaming. It was a nightmare.’ ”It’s believed that Rawlinson’s hatch malfunctioned, and she couldn’t get out. The other pilot was thrown from the plane and suffered serious injuries. Because Rawlinson was a civilian, the military was not required to pay for her funeral or pay for her remains to be sent home.” Now, the question regarding the WASP remains is about to be settled once and for all. As NPR and WBUR’s Here  Now reported earlier this year, the WASP spent years fighting to win status as war veterans before a federal law finally recognized their military service in 1977. As veterans, the WASP had been eligible for years to have their ashes buried in Arlington National Cemetery. But that changed last year, when the Army revoked their right to be laid to rest in the veterans cemetery, citing limited space. ”The Army is giving some bureaucratic answer that makes absolutely no sense,” said Rep. Martha McSally,  . on Here  Now in March. McSally introduced the legislation to allow the WASP the honor of being buried at Arlington. ”These women should have been active duty at the time,” McSally said. ”The requirements to being in Arlington are very clear: To have your ashes inurned you have to have served on active duty and you have to have been honorably discharged. And they meet that criteria retroactively.” More than 1, 100 young women, who were all considered civilian volunteers during the war, ”flew almost every type of military aircraft  —   including the   and   bombers  —   as part of the WASP program,” Susan reported. She added: ”They ferried new planes long distances from factories to military bases and departure points across the country. They tested newly overhauled planes. And they towed targets to give ground and air gunners training shooting  —   with live ammunition. The WASP expected to become part of the military during their service. Instead, the program was canceled after just two years.” But the women’s service to the country was not forgotten. In 2010, U. S. lawmakers awarded the WASP the highest honor Congress can bestow: the Congressional Gold Medal. Burial in Arlington, however, transcends personal awards, as    Nell Bright, one of about 100 WASP who are still living, told Here  Now. ”Its a great honor to be buried at Arlington,” she said. ”I think that the WASP deserve to have that honor.” McSally agrees, dismissing lingering concerns about space as ”sexism.” ”I realize that at some point they are going to run out of space at Arlington. We understand that,” the congresswoman said. ”But look, when we are totally out of space . .. why would we not want to have the story of the WASP as part of that legacy?”"
"In Rome’s vast Piazza del Popolo, two uniformed men try to help a German tourist with directions. And, as is all too common in Rome, instructions get lost in translation. But it’s the men’s uniforms that leave the woman more perplexed. The cops assisting her are not Italian. They’re Chinese. They’re part of an unprecedented experiment in which Italian and Chinese police are working together this month on joint patrols on the streets of Rome and Milan. The aim is to assist Chinese tourists  —   some 3 million a year come to Italy. Chinese tourism to Europe is growing rapidly. But following terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, Chinese travelers started feeling less at ease on the continent. Italy has become the first country to try to make Chinese tourists feel more secure. But at the moment, those needing help are two distraught Belgians. One has just been pickpocketed at McDonald’s. ”His wallet was stolen, many credit cards were inside, so he is calling the bank,” explains Pang Bo, deputy director of the police bureau in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou. He first visited Rome as a tourist 14 years ago, while serving as a peacekeeper in Bosnia. Today, he’s very proud to be back and walking the beat here. He says Chinese tourists have welcomed the sight of cops like him from home. ”When the Chinese tourists saw us, they were amazed, astonished, feel very happy and excited to see Chinese police here with Chinese police uniform,” he says. ”If I were them, I’d feel the same.” Switching to rudimentary Italian, Pang Bo suggests to his Italian partners that they move on with their patrol. ”Andiamo, andiamo, andiamo!” he says. ”Let’s go.” The law enforcement foursome strolls down the center of Via del Corso, one of Rome’s premier shopping streets. The men immediately attract attention, and Pang Bo stops to chat with several Chinese women who’d seen in the news that Chinese police were patrolling in Rome. Alongside tourists, there are some 266, 000 Chinese nationals living and working in Italy  —   but there is little contact with Italian society. National police chief Alessandro Pansa describes the joint patrols as part of a new policy of proximity policing, being close to citizens’ needs  —   as well as a broader strategic investment. ”It will lead to a wider international cooperation, exchange of information and sharing resources to combat the criminal and terrorist groups that afflict our countries,” he says. According to the daily Corriere della Sera, one of the main aims of the joint patrols  —   and perhaps the most difficult  —   is breaking the code of silence within Italy’s large Chinese community. That could help break up the many lucrative illegal activities run jointly by Chinese and Italian organized crime  —   including drug trafficking, counterfeiting and running sweatshops."
"FBI Director James Comey says he is closely watching the bureau’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails ”to make sure it’s being done well.” Comey says he feels ”pressure” to do the investigation well and promptly, adding that ”between those two things we will always choose well.” Meeting with reporters at FBI headquarters Wednesday, Comey offered few details about the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. He refused to say whether the investigation will be completed before this summer’s party conventions, saying it was not ”tethered to any external deadline.” In response to a question asserting that others holding security clearances would be in jail if they had acted as Clinton had, Comey said there was no ”special set of rules for anybody that the FBI investigates.” The issue of Clinton’s emails has dogged her throughout her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. She has denied any wrongdoing. Comey previously said that his people investigating the matter ”don’t give a rip about politics” and that the investigation would be ”professional, prompt and independent.” Comey would not say whether the FBI would issue a report on the investigation when it’s over. Comey also spoke about the Islamic State, saying it is his view that it is losing its influence in the U. S. He pointed to a drop in Americans attempting to leave the country to join the group. He said that as recently as early last year up to 10 Americans a month had traveled or attempted to travel abroad to join the group, but since last August, that number had declined to about one a month. Comey said the ”Islamic State brand has lost significant power in the U. S.” He said the bureau believes ”north of 1, 000” people in the U. S. are in danger of becoming radicalized by the group. Comey said encrypted communications over messaging apps such as WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, have become ”essential tradecraft” for terrorist groups like ISIS, although he has no plans to sue the company. The FBI purchased a tool to unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, Calif. shooters after Apple refused to write software to bypass the device’s encryption. Comey said the FBI remains unable to access information on some 500 other phones, which have different operating systems. Comey also expressed concern about the rising murder rates in several U. S. cities. He called it a problem ”most people can drive around” but said blacks and Latinos, who were ”almost entirely” the victims of the shootings, could not avoid it. ”I don’t know what the answer is,” Comey said, ”but holy cow, do we have a problem.”"
"Keo Motsepe has made Dancing With The Stars history in many ways. In 2014, he became the first black dancing professional on the show (they’re the ones who teach the ”stars” how to   ) and the first from South Africa. This past Monday he broke what he calls ”boundaries” in the ABC show’s first   dance, partnering with contestant Nyle DiMarco, an actor and model who is deaf. (Two women also paired up.) The idea came from DWTS judge and choreographer Bruno Tonioli. Motsepe thought it was ”awesome” to take a chance and do something different. And what was it like? ”It’s pretty much what you think it’s going to be like  —   two guys who are strong dancing with each other.” He was impressed with DiMarco’s ability to adjust to changes in tempo via taps and other signals. Motsepe experienced some Internet bullying this season, with trolls saying he wasn’t a good enough choreographer for his partner, Jodie Sweetin, a star of the classic sitcom Full House. Then this Monday night, Motsepe and Sweetin did a dynamic jive dance that earned three perfect 10s from the judges. Nonetheless, viewers voted the pair off the show. Motsepe was philosophical: ”I’m very happy. I worked hard with Jodie. She’s very special  —   that woman’s heart and soul is like gold. I just wanted what’s best for her. We left on a high note.” Maybe his attitude stems from advice his dad used to give him as a kid: ”Respect everyone you see and meet. It’s not for them. It’s for you.” We thought it was a good time to have a conversation with the    terpsichorean to hear about his DWTS experience  —   and what drew him to dance in the first place. I’ve read you started dancing at age 5. My best friend and I used to play soccer, and he said I should try something different. I went to try dancing and just fell in love with it. I was like, ”This is fun.” How did your parents react? It made my mom happy. She was like, ”Oh my God, I don’t have to do laundry every day” [which was part of the soccer routine]. Was it unusual for a black kid to take ballroom dancing lessons? Every dance school I went to was racially mixed, like  . When did you decide to make a career of dancing? By the age of 7. I remember saying to my mom, ’Mom, this is gonna be my life. And she just looked at me like, ”  OK, yeah, he’ll soon find out when he’s 15, 16, what life is all about.” But you were right! You went on to win competitions and represent South Africa in world events. Did you keep up with school? My mom pushed me to balance my school and dancing. She said, ”I won’t say stop dancing but balance everything in your life.” That’s what I did. What did you learn from dancing? I was disciplined with school and soccer, but [my mom] said as soon as I started dancing, my discipline of how I treat myself and how I treat other people was even more special. Why? I think it’s because when you’re dancing ballroom or Latin, you’re not dancing by yourself. You always have a partner. You’re in tune as one. You always make sure you give 100 percent, she gives 100 percent. You always make sure you are the frame and she [the partner] is the picture  —   that the woman looks good when the man takes care of her. But aren’t men and women equals? It’s one of the things in my culture, the woman comes first. You always make sure they’re always happy, at all angles. People in the U. S. often think of Africa as one big country. Have you run across that attitude? It’s funny you ask this question. On TV the other day they said they were showing ”Africa” but they showed ”Ghana,” and they were showing the army and stuff like that, shootings and stuff. And people go, ”That’s how Africa looks.” What kinds of questions do you get about Africa? You get questions like, do you guys have a beach like Santa Monica? Yep, we call it Capetown. The more I explain about my country, the more I keep myself true to my country. In one interview you’ve said you are a prince. Is that true? What do you think? I believe half of what I read and none of what I hear! I am a prince, yes sir, from my dad’s side. My grandpa was a prince of a province back in South Africa. My dad declined the position and gave it to my uncle, his younger brother. But because I’m my dad’s only son, I became a prince. What does a prince have to do? There’s a responsibility to look after the area they’re from, they talk to the community and the community talks to my uncle about fixing the street here, the buildings there. Does your name have any princely meaning? My name means ”I rely on God” in Setswana (a Bantu language spoken in South Africa and other countries. ”And I’m reliable so people rely on me.”"
"The fire that caused a massive explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant in 2013 was a criminal act, federal and state authorities announced Wednesday. Fifteen people  —   12 of whom were firefighters and first responders  —   were killed in the blast at the West Fertilizer Plant in West, Texas. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office made the announcement at a news conference in West. ATF investigators said the agency’s fire research lab determined that the fire was intentionally set. ”After more than 400 interviews, a systematic   examination, the review of witness photos, videos and observations, as well as extensive scientific testing at the ATF Fire Research Lab in Beltsville, Maryland, the fire has been ruled ’incendiary,’ or intentionally set,” the ATF said in a statement. ”All viable accidental and natural fire scenarios were hypothesized, tested, and eliminated.” The ATF said the investigation, which so far has cost $2 million, is ongoing and offered a $50, 000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the fire. ”It is our highest priority to give victims of this tragedy an accurate explanation of what happened that day,” said ATF Houston Special Agent in Charge Robert Elder. ”Why the fire was set I don’t know. I can’t say what their intent was,” he said at the news conference, according to the Austin   which adds: ”He said Bryce Reed, a former West paramedic who was sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2013 on charges related to the construction of a homemade pipe bomb, is not considered a suspect, Elder said.” As the   has previously reported, a fire was reported at the plant on the evening of April 17, 2013. About 20 minutes later, the building exploded, leaving a crater 93 feet wide and 10 feet deep. Hundreds of people were injured and residents who lived nearby were forced to evacuate their homes, the   reported. According to The Associated Press, the explosion was so strong, it ”registered as an earthquake of magnitude 2. 1.” This video contains language some people might find offensive. The presence of powerful chemicals  —   including ammonium nitrate, the dangerous explosive used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing  —   contributed to the blast, the   reported. NPR’s John Burnett said at the time that many of those killed in the blast were first responders. ”The number of firefighters killed is nearly a third of the town’s volunteer firefighting force,” John said."
"Louise Erdrich’s new novel LaRose opens with a tragedy: An Ojibwe man is out hunting for deer and accidentally shoots and kills his best friend’s    son, Dusty. The hunter has a    son of his own, and so, in keeping with a practice from the Ojibwe tribe’s past,    LaRose goes to live with Dusty’s family. ”These two families are related by blood and also by proximity and by friendship, too . ..” Erdrich explains. ”They will share their child. It’s not exactly giving away a child, but it is a very profound act of generosity. It also is an act of reparation for something that’s an unspeakable tragedy.” The two families are attempting to find their own justice, Erdrich tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro, ”and I believe something very good does come out of it.” On adoption between families, In many ways, tribal family ties are extremely close but much more fluid than, say, the dominant culture might understand. For a while, the fact that children could be adopted within the family  —   could be living with aunts or uncles or grandparents  —   was really appalling to social services. You know, this was not how things operated. But that’s really the way families work in native settings. My grandmother adopted children who were in trouble for small periods of time, and then they went back to their families and they were a lot better for having been cared for during that difficult time. On the way the book explores the   of incorporating Indian traditions into the dominant American culture and vice versa, To further complicate our designations, let’s throw in the word ”indigenous.” You know, incorporating indigenous justice with the justice that is the dominant culture’s justice is something that really has been fought out. And so this is about the working out of justice. And I think that what happens between these two families is an act of  —   I would guess  —   restorative justice that comes about between people in a very natural sort of way. There really seems no way that this will ever be fixed, but then the traditional Ojibwe parents feel compelled to do this. Justice in this book does take a lot of work, and there’s a lot of emotional complexity involved with justice. On parallels between the two families trying to find justice, and the U. S. government’s efforts to undo the damage inflicted on Indian communities  —   and how some injustices are irreversible, Some of the most   gestures end up hurting the person more than you could ever imagine. For instance, in the beginning, the idea of bringing everyone into the dominant culture was seen as a very generous . .. interesting, wonderful thing to do. I mean, the alternative was, at that time  —   and I talk about this in the book  —   was extermination. It was education or extermination. And that’s the point at which the acculturation seemed as though it was generous. And it was terrible. It was a terrible thing to do. It was one of the things that tore up the family structure for native people. It’s taken generations for people to begin to restore their balance. On how we must ”muddle” toward justice, I don’t think it’s inevitable. I think that we have to muddle toward it. And that’s how life works. We think we have a great idea and we try to live it out. And muddling toward things is really the best we can do. Nobody has the perfect idea. Sometimes it does work. Sometimes there’s something very good that comes out of a program or an idea that someone has to help another person. So I think it’s important to give it the best try we can."
"Renate Senter clearly remembers the first care package she received, in 1946. She, her mother and her sister had fled Poland. In the aftermath of World War II, they’d ended up in a small town, in the   section of West Germany. ”It was my first day of school and all the children got one,” she says. ”And I remember it was a small package  —   burgundy. And in white letters, it said ’CARE’ on it.” Inside, there were a candy bar, a tube of Colgate and a little doll. ”But I tell you, the first thing that hit me: Included in this box was a tremendous amount of white  —   really white  —   paper,” she says. And there were pencils! ”I don’t even remember the candy bar, I was so excited about the paper. You know, because at that time we didn’t have paper for our school assignments,” she recalls. Before ”care packages” meant a box of comforting essentials sent to college students, soldiers and others far from home, they were a vital lifeline for thousands of displaced families like Senter’s in   War II Europe. May 11 marks the 70th anniversary of the first delivery. The packages were shipped by CARE, a humanitarian group formed by 22 American aid and religious organizations. Back then, ”CARE” was an acronym for Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe. After that first school delivery, subsequent packages were sent directly to Senter’s residence  —   her family had been placed with a German family that had a spare bedroom. ”Back then we had nothing to eat  —   absolutely nothing,” Senter says. ”Luckily, the British fed us in school. Otherwise we had maybe one loaf of bread to share for a week.” So her family relied on the big packages from CARE  —   filled with lard, flour, sugar and coffee  —   that arrived every four months. ”My mother, I am so thankful, had a fantastic imagination for how to make things with limited ingredients,” Senter says. ”I remember she would send me to the railroad tracks to collect coal that had accidentally fallen out. And we would use that to heat the stove.” With the flour, sugar and lard, Senter says, ”my mother was able to make a cake.” It paired well with wild blueberries, which Senter sought out in the nearby woods. Now Senter is 77 (”though I feel like I’m 30,” she insists) and she’s a U. S. citizen, married to an American man. CARE packages were what first piqued her curiosity about the States, she says, and eventually inspired her, at age 19, to move to Los Angeles to work as an au pair. ”I remember clearly, showing that first package to my mother I was given at school,” she says. ”At that point, my mother didn’t have very much good to say about the Americans  —   both her parents had died in the last air raid. But I said to her, ’When I grow up, I want to go to America.’ ” When it first launched, the aid scheme became a symbol of American generosity. Aid in general was a big part of U. S. diplomacy postwar, helping to rebuild the relationship with Europe. In an interview with Smithsonian published in 2001, one of those early CARE package recipients, Klaus Pütter, a German POW held in a French hospital, recalled that at first, he was suspicious of American motives behind the package. Despite his ”hunger and desperation,” Pütter, a German army chaplain, recalled that he debated for three days before deciding to tuck into the parcel, which contained corned beef, bacon, liver loaf, flour and other much needed comestibles. Eventually, Pütter told Smithsonian, he concluded that ”Americans are different. They help people in need, regardless of who and where they are.” And postwar, for the first time, Americans had the infrastructure and technological capacity to send packages halfway across the world, says CARE’s president, Michelle Nunn. ”The idea that you could send support to strangers on the other side of the world  —   that was a novel idea.” Citizens approached the group and had them send CARE packages to friends and family left behind in Europe. ”And then we worked with local [European] governments to identify families and people in need,” says Nunn. When the Soviets blockaded Berlin in 1948, the U. S. and U. K. responded with the Berlin Airlift: American and British air force pilots flew in food and fuel. Sixty percent of relief sent to the city came from CARE, according to Nunn. All told, Americans dropped 250, 000 packages. The first packages sent to Europe were surplus military rations left over from the war. When those ran out, CARE started putting together its own packages. At first, the boxes came furnished with just the basics  —   rice, beans, powdered eggs and milk. Soon, CARE started customizing packages to suit regional tastes. There were parcels tailored for Asian palates (with beans, miso and soybean oil) a kosher CARE package delivered to Jewish refugees and an Italian package (which came with spaghetti and assorted spices). A few years later, as CARE began to expand into Northern Europe, Asia and Africa, it also had to adapt its delivery methods for each region. In Sri Lanka, the organization deployed elephants to help with deliveries. ”We used camels in Pakistan,” Nunn says. ”And reindeer in Finland.” The acronym now stands for ”Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere.” There are no more chocolate bars in burgundy boxes these days. CARE delivered its last physical package in 1968. It now uses electronic banking systems to funnel donations to those in need. ”We’re providing support and relief for Syrian refugees  —   most of whom have ended up in neighboring countries like Turkey and Lebanon,” Nunn says. ”And what we do now is we provide each family with a debit card, which they can use to buy exactly what they need.” This new system cuts down transportation costs, and, Nunn adds, is designed to benefit local farmers and businesses. CARE also funds development projects around the world, helping communities develop agriculture systems and dig wells. The organization is now focused on eradicating food deserts and ending child malnutrition. ”So we’re still dealing with the same issue  —   hunger,” Nunn says. ”We’re just going about helping in new ways.”"
"Be careful when you call for divine intervention. It will wreak havoc when it comes. Musicians have devised ways of containing it for ages, from the symphonic swell to the long build in gospel music known as ”the drive” from the mystical overtone explosions of free jazz to house music’s   breaks. Yet for all the finesse and experience behind these structures, the spirits they free within performers or the audience remain chaotic, overwhelming just as in life, when you’re truly touched on the dancefloor, the experience can induce not just pleasure, but shock, tears, possibly unwanted revelations. ”I Need a Forest Fire,” the quietly violent new collaboration between the English   man James Blake and his American counterpart, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, approaches the   feeling of   release with a certain intellectual coolness that puts a different spin on the longing for such grace. In the process Blake and Vernon do something important: They confront their own debt to the soul of gospel music while acknowledging their inevitable distance from it. The song starts with a churchy keyboard line and Vernon whooping Blake murmurs his approval. The feeling is looser than the duo’s last collaboration, the similarly   ”Fall Creek Boys Choir,” with a more refined sense of swing. Yet a looped vocal quickly surfaces, bringing us back to Blake’s ghost world: another shade, another shadow. Lyrics about longing for a purifying cedar burn that might transform a stale relationship are tempered by mild rhetoric: ”I request another dream,” Vernon murmurs. When Blake sings, ”I’m saved by nature, but it always forgets what I need,” he’s laying out his very human,   predicament. He wants to let go into whatever the divine offers, but he can’t shake the conviction that he should stay in control. The song proceeds with these two impulses  —   the impulse to surrender and the need to keep the self intact  —   sparring and finding shape through each other. They take on the shapes of gospel and electronica, only to intertwine within a paradigm that rejects easy division. Vernon and Blake test out gentle melisma and moaning, building harmonies as if eager to access their inner Jagged Edge. Yet this all plays out against a backdrop of drones and hums that reminds the listener that we are not on some ”authentic”   Cloud Nine, but in a virtualized realm of samples and sequencers, where   like Flying Lotus and Blake’s other current collaborator Frank Ocean are challenging notions of the natural with as much aplomb as does Blake himself. One electronic element in ”I Need a Forest Fire”  —   a beep that sounds like it comes from a medical monitor  —   kept me returning to the image of the Angel in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, set in the plague days of the 1980s, when so much of the electronic music that Blake mines first emerged. In that epic, the Messenger arrives and makes a total mess, shattering the floor of the   Prior Walter’s apartment, cracking open his kitchen appliances. Blake and Vernon’s calmer call for a spirit change doesn’t have that grandeur, but within it lurks the same understanding, that a real soul change will feel like a fury. ”Stop before I build a wall around me,” Blake cries softly at the song’s end. He’s almost welcoming the force that will tear down that wall. The Colour In Anything is out now via Polydor."
"It was the Antiques Roadshow dream: You show up with your   jug and explain that you paid $300 for it at an estate sale in Oregon. Then the expert announces . .. ”It’s bizarre and wonderful. You even see a little bit of, like, Pablo Picasso going on here. It’s a little difficult to identify precisely when this was made, but I think it’s probably late 19th or early 20th century. . .. ”Probably its origin  —   it’s coast of the United States, maybe Middle Atlantic states headed southward. Estimating its value is a little difficult. I think in a retail setting, somebody might well ask in the area of between $30, 000 and $50, 000 for this.” The owner, astonished, said, ”What! ?” And also, ”No!” Which, as it turns out, was the right reaction. The ”Grotesque Face Jug” wasn’t a    artifact, but the work of a creative high school student circa 1973. The Antiques Roadshow episode aired in January, and PBS released a correction note in February. (The story comes to our attention now thanks to The Washington Post and the CBC.) A viewer recognized the jug as the work of one of her friends  —   Betsy Soule. Soule verified that, indeed, it was her student handiwork. The new information led appraiser Stephen Fletcher to ”reconsider” his evaluation of the jug, PBS notes. Fletcher maintained the jug ”was modeled or sculpted with considerable imagination, virtuosity and technical competence.” ”This mysterious piece was reportedly found at an estate sale, covered with dust, straw, and chicken droppings, and purchased for $300,” Fletcher said. ”As far as its age is concerned, I was fooled, as were some of my colleagues. ”The techniques of making pottery, in many ways, haven’t changed for centuries,” he added. ”Obviously, I was mistaken as to its age by 60 to 80 years. I feel the value at auction, based on its quality and artistic merit, is in the $ $5, 000 range. Still not bad for a   in Oregon.” For his part, the owner of the jug, Alvin Barr, says he is glad to hear the item isn’t quite so valuable. He told The Bend Bulletin that he packed it away for safekeeping when he thought it was worth $50, 000. ”Now, it’s on my table, and I love it,” he says. As for Soule, a horse trainer who doesn’t do much sculpting these days? She thinks even $300 was too much to pay for the piece. And if it had been in her hands  —   ”If I’d known he was that fond of it I probably would’ve just given it to him,” she told the CBC’s ”As It Happens.”"
", Public schools in the U. S. now have a majority of nonwhite students. That’s been the case since 2014, and yet children of color  —   especially boys  —   still lag behind their white peers. This story has been all over the media. It’s topic No. 1 at education conferences on university campuses. Even the White House is all over it. But what Ron Ferguson wants to know is why. And he says there’s a big group of experts out there who never get asked about it: boys and young men of color. Ferguson, an economist at Harvard University, says that if we want to fix this problem, we need to listen to these students. His latest report: Aiming Higher Together: Strategizing Better Educational Outcomes for Boys and Young Men of Color was commissioned by the Urban Institute and pulls together research from national data and thousands of student surveys. He talked with us recently about the report. Are there any big surprises in this report? The biggest challenge to conventional wisdom has to do with the ways we understand boys and young men of color and their motivations and the way that they feel as they engage the world. What we’re picking up in their responses is that there is actually quite a bit of vulnerability here. In some ways, they are trapped within a sociological predicament. They begin school already, on average, behind their peers. Often, they enter into classrooms where there are lots of other kids who are not necessarily well behaved, where other students are struggling. They are taught their racial and gender identity by others, including other kids, in the school. So they end up actually behaving according to a script that they don’t necessarily subscribe to, but which seems a requirement to fit in and be accepted by their peers and maybe even by some of the adults. So there are a lot of misconceptions? Many times we treat young boys and men of color as ”the other.” People think, ”They’re not like us, they’re these bad kids.” And my point is: They are not. It’s not that we need to convince these young people, one at a time, that school is important and they need to work hard and have high aspirations. It’s more that we need to give them opportunities to be who they really want to be, not who they feel constrained to be because of their position in the social structure. How do we do that in the classroom? The way we start to do it, first of all, is to be empathetic. To realize that young men are in this position. When young people misbehave or act defiantly, to realize that that’s not necessarily the way they would like to act. They’re doing what they think they need to do in order to fit in, or save face in front of their friends, or in order to not be viewed as not smart, if there’s something they don’t understand. They need better strategies. Can you talk about the role of classroom management? Access to an orderly classroom may be the biggest form of inequity. At the same time that we work to desegregate, we also need to work to prepare the teachers and the administrators who work in the school to really cope effectively with the conditions they face. They, too, are facing conditions they aren’t quite sure how to deal with. We know that there are some teachers and administrators in these schools that are really succeeding. They know things. They’re doing things that others aren’t doing. We need to make better efforts to share the best of what is already known. In the report, you talk about failures with   fit: where the person is the student and the environment is the school. Can you explain? Young people, or any person, function most effectively when there is a good match between what they’re able and willing to do, and what others in the environment expect of them and are willing to do with and for them. And so what we find is that when children show up in kindergarten and are already a little bit behind their peers, there are already things they aren’t understanding in class. And there are times that they feel, ”Maybe I don’t belong here, maybe I don’t really fit in here.” This is especially true if, as in many schools, kids are teased for making mistakes. Then the older kids start to teach them their identities they start to teach each child how someone like you is supposed to behave. As kids get older, they’re more and more subject to stereotypes. And adults anticipating that the young man of color is going to be defiant  —   the adult comes on hard, the young man anticipates this, and it leads to an escalation of misunderstanding and misbehavior and overreaction on both sides of the transaction. Disproportionately for young men of color, you end up with    suspensions and other forces that alienate young people from their environment. What can schools do? This is a story that really has no villain in it, but where each member in the environment is inserted into a web of   assumptions and conditions. What I’m arguing is: If we collectively understand more about the fact that that’s what’s happening, then we can together strategize ways to avoid it, for example, to not make the snap judgments that so often lead to misunderstanding. We can recognize that there is a complex web of conditions to respond to, not just one. We can begin in early childhood making sure that parents have a rich menu of ways of interacting with children to lay those early foundations for cognitive development. And to understand that it really matters. So let’s talk about the early years. You draw attention to the fact that there are racial gaps in skills evident by the age of 2  —   even for children whose parents are college educated. What’s going on? We find that the gaps are not simply socioeconomic. Different segments of our population have different histories with regard to the way we give care and parent our kids. Some segments of the community are very focused on lots of interaction beginning at birth. Other segments of the population never had historically the experience to prepare them to do these things. Many of us who are people of color, as I am, have not come from generation after generation of privileged folks. We’ve not been in communities where there’s a lot of shared knowledge of certain   practices, for example. And so, as we go about this work, we need to understand that we’re talking about all people. We’re talking about human nature stuff. We’re not only talking about extreme disadvantage or helping only the poor. We’re talking about working on lots of different dimensions  —   of which race and ethnicity are important  —   even among families where the parents are highly educated."
"According to a report by the Vera Institute for Justice, there are more than 3, 000 local jails in America, holding more than 730, 000 people on any given day. Nancy Fishman, a project director at the Vera Institute, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that jails ”have impacted a huge number of Americans . .. many more than are impacted by state prisons.” The Vera Institute’s report documents that there are almost 12 million admissions to local jails each year, representing about 9 million people. Most of those jailed, she says, are being held for   offenses, such as drug misdemeanors, traffic offenses or nonviolent property crimes. And, she adds, the majority are poor. Fishman notes that most of the people in jail are pretrial, which means that they have not yet been convicted of anything. ”They are legally innocent,” she says. ”One of the great travesties, frankly, of jail admissions right now is that we have people sitting in jail for long periods simply because they can’t afford to pay [bail].” Fishman adds that being in jail often leads to increased poverty, because many jails charge fees to their inmates. ”That   [in] jails is damaging and has huge repercussions,” she says. ”You’re talking about people who often come in in fragile economic situations and end up that much worse by the time they get out.” On the growth of the jail population  There’s been tremendous growth over the past 40, 45 years in the size of our criminal justice system, particular growth in the number of jails and the size of the jails. We’ve seen a fourfold increase in the jail population in the past 45 years, and along with that [has] been the construction of new and bigger jails. And the reality is, a lot of the communities that have built these jails don’t have funds to support them. They’re not supported by state tax revenue, by federal tax revenue. They’re supported by local community budgets, and a lot of these places are not wealthy. They don’t have a lot of money to cover it, and so the solution has been to try to get that money from the people who pass through the system. But the challenge is, most of the people who are passing through that system don’t have the money either. So what we see is that people get assessed fines and fees, all of these fines and fees, they can’t pay them, and that can end up driving them back into jail, which only increases the pressure on the jail system and the justice system overall and makes it more costly. So it’s ultimately kind of a vicious circle. On traffic violations being a major driver of jail admissions  It was interesting, we just did some work in Oklahoma City, and we looked at just a week’s worth of booking into the jail from the Oklahoma City Police Department, and fully a third of the people who were booked into jail were booked on traffic violations, and not DUI  —   everything but DUI, we took DUI out of the mix. We’re talking about just violations  —   broken taillight, driving on a suspended license, failure to make a turn signal  —   most people got three or four of them, some of them had, again, warrants for not having paid other fines and fees, and that’s sweeping them in.   percent of the people in that one week of admissions were being booked into the jail for misdemeanors or lower. . .. And only 5 percent of them were for any crimes against the person in other words, not necessarily violent crimes, but maybe something involved hitting another person, etc. On the cost of being in jail, In addition to having to pay bail, they are assessed a cost for their housing, so it’s as if they’re in a hotel. . .. There’s a daily rate that they are responsible for. They will have to pay the cost of any lab tests associated with their case. They will have to pay the cost of drug testing. If they apply for a public defender, a lot of places actually have a fee. You have to actually pay money to apply for a public defender who you get because you can’t afford to be represented. There are other costs  —   people get referred into programs, drug treatment programs, or they’re required to be drug tested when they’re out, they have to pay for those. They will often pay for the cost of probation supervision. On the irony of bail, The irony of bail is that its initial purpose was to make it possible for people to get out of jail, right? You couldn’t be held in jail without a finding of guilt, or prior to a finding of guilt, without having an opportunity to get out. But the irony is that now bail really functions to hold people in. . ... This means that if you have money to pay bail, you can get out no matter how dangerous you are, whereas if you are poor and all you’ve committed is a traffic violation, which is one of biggest drivers, frankly, of jail admissions in most places, you are going to sit in jail because $500 is a lot of money to you. On alternatives to bail, It seems remarkably simple, which is [that] one of the best ways of increasing the likelihood that people will show up to court once they’re released is to send them a reminder. I think that’s the first piece. A lot of people with community ties can be released without bail, and they will show up to court if you are providing reminders to do it. The other thing to remember is that, in fact, most people, the majority of people, do show up to court dates, and when people don’t show up to court, this is not El Chapo sitting in the tunnels waiting for Sean Penn and the cameras to show up. These are people who live in the community, and the reasons why people don’t show up to court are they can’t get of work, they have child care agreements, they forgot the appointment, they never got proper notice of the appointment, the appointment was changed, their address was changed. And there are mechanisms that we can put in place that are actually focused on getting people back to court that don’t necessarily involve bail."
"Transgender rights are getting a new focus in the civil rights standoff that emerged this week between the Obama administration and the state of North Carolina. It’s over a law that requires transgender people to use public restrooms that match the sex on their birth certificate. Transgender activists were part of the movement to make   marriage the law of the land, and have long been trying to get people to understand who they are. In Mobile, Ala. LGBTQ advocate Lane Galbraith says he’s busy now dealing with discrimination issues. ”I’m 52 years old, and I’ve dealt with oppression and discrimination my entire life,” he says. Galbraith, a design engineer in Mobile’s shipbuilding industry, was born Robin Galbraith, the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister. He recalls an uncomfortable coming of age. ”I always had these masculine traits, and I always knew kind of in the background that my sexual orientation was for females and just dealt with it because I was in an environment that said, ’You’re a female. You’re supposed to get married. You’re supposed to have kids,’ ” he says. But Galbraith says he wasn’t sure what was going on at the time because sexuality outside that norm was taboo. ”If there was no education, and I couldn’t define who I was and what was internally happening, how was I going to explain it to anybody else? There was nothing. There wasn’t even a word,” he says. Just having the word transgender is empowering to him today. A Navy veteran, Galbraith started his transition to a man two years ago. He’s got   hair that’s graying at the temples, a mustache and sparse beard. His calling now, he says, is to put a face on being transgender. ”The way people change their hearts and minds is to have a human being that’s dealing with these issues right in front of them,” he says. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimated that in 2011, some 700, 000 adults identified as transgender. Twenty states and Washington, D. C. have employment nondiscrimination laws that cover sexual orientation and gender identity. Alabama is not one of them. But Galbraith works for a global company that offers broad workplace protections and also provides health coverage for the unique care he needs, such as hormone therapy. So, the bathroom question. It’s always been an issue for Galbraith, even before his transition. ”You know, I wore my Harley shirts and my short hair and I like to wear boots. And I’d go into a restroom, and mother with her child next to me, and the child’s going, ’Mommy, there’s a man in the stall next to me,’ ” he says. He’s got a bit of a system now, finding appropriate single unisex restrooms for privacy. Sometimes that means a  . He’s floored that his bathroom habits are now the subject of national news. But he welcomes the focus on transgender rights. ”Even some people would try to say that the T doesn’t belong with the LGB, and it’s like, well, wait a minute, the diversity is different but we’re kind of fighting for the same civil rights,” Galbraith says. ’Not Racial Discrimination’ Not everyone sees this as a new civil rights battlefront. ”Individuals using the restroom of the biological sex is not racial discrimination,” says Travis Weber, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council. ”We don’t think that the law, as a legal matter alone, supports any sort of class protection, class distinction for sexual orientation and gender identity.” He says states, like North Carolina, should be able to decide this question as a matter of public safety without being ”bullied” by the Obama administration. ”What’s underlying this is people whose views of society really break down any distinction between male and female, and you end up in the world where these distinctions don’t matter,” Weber says. LGBTQ issues divide the country in similar ways as other culture wars  —   such as abortion rights  —   have. As courts expand rights, some states push back with new laws. Now that the Supreme Court has taken   marriage off the table, opponents are moving to a new target, says Josh Block with the ACLU. ”Plan B is attacks on transgender people and attacks on the entire LGBT community by codifying a right to discriminate on religious grounds,” Block says. The ACLU is suing Mississippi over a law that offers legal protection to public officials and private businesses that refuse to serve gay, lesbian or transgender customers because of religious objections. ”Religious freedom doesn’t give people a right to discriminate against others,” Block says. For Galbraith, seeing these laws pop up around the country is a letdown coming so soon after feeling like the ground had shifted with last year’s legalization of   marriage. ”Right now I kind of feel like I’m back in the valley, to where I’ve got to find the edge of the mountain to start going back up. I think we will overcome. I’m a true believer. I believe all things are possible,” he says. ”But at the same token, being honest, you understand my internal struggle of this environment.”"
"If you’re looking for fast cash, feel free to Google it. But if you’re selling fast cash, the search giant might not be the place for you. Starting this summer, Google will no longer allow payday lenders  —   companies offering     loans  —   to buy advertising on Google ad systems. The new policy, announced on a Google blog, will kick in July 13. Ads for loans with terms of 60 days or less will be prohibited in the U. S. ads for any loans charging an APR of 36 percent or higher will also be banned. The Internet search and online ad powerhouse  —   which relies on ads for 90 percent of its revenue  —   currently bans dangerous, counterfeit and offensive items from being advertised, as well as services that ”are designed to enable dishonest behavior.” And out of concerns over predatory lending, Google already restricted where ads for payday loans would be displayed. But now  —   like Facebook, the other dominant player in the online ad industry  —   Google will prohibit these payday loan advertisements. The news comes as a federal watchdog continues to push for stronger restrictions on payday lending. In 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a draft of proposed rules intended to regulate the industry. (Implementation of the proposed rules has been delayed, and it’s not clear exactly when they’ll be issued.) As we reported at the time,   consumers who take out payday loans can quickly find themselves trapped in a cycle of loan renewals, administrative fees and   interest rates. A loan for a few hundred dollars can wind up costing thousands. Online payday lenders  —   which might be particularly affected by Google’s new policy  —   present another layer of possible cost for consumers. Just last month, the CFPB released a report that found online lenders, by directly pulling payments from a consumer’s bank account, can quickly rack up overdraft fees that compound the cost of a payday loan to a consumer. Then there’s another way in which payday lending online is different from the shop on the corner: Billboards promising fast cash can’t generally be spotted from five states over. Many states have their own payday lending restrictions. A study last fall found that online advertisements can help payday lenders target consumers in states where payday lending is, in fact, illegal. Google didn’t mention federal watchdogs or varying state laws in its announcement. The company simply said it’s targeting   and   loans because ”research has shown that these loans can result in unaffordable payment and high default rates for users.” The policy affects ads, not search results. (Google ads appear above results, and on sites that partner with Google Adwords.) For instance, while Google bans ads for fireworks, searching for ”buy fireworks” readily returns a list of vendors. But by blocking ads for payday loans, ”our hope is that fewer people will be exposed to misleading or harmful products,” Google’s director of global product policy writes. Advocates have celebrated Google’s new policy. But as The Washington Post reports, officials from the payday loan industry have called the new rules ”unfair” and ”discriminatory” for not distinguishing between different kinds of payday lenders."
"In South Carolina, a federal grand jury has indicted a white, former police officer on civil rights charges over the shooting death of an unarmed black man last April. The killing of Walter Scott garnered national attention after the release of a cellphone video showing   Michael Slager repeatedly firing his weapon as Scott ran through a field in North Charleston, S. C. As the   has reported, the    father of four fled after a traffic stop. Slager, 34, has already been charged with murder in state court. He was released on bail in January and has been under house arrest. The murder trial is scheduled to continue in October, South Carolina Public Radio reports. It adds: ”Last fall, North Charleston approved a $6. 5 million civil settlement with Scott’s family.” A federal judge decided Wednesday that Slager will remain free on bond, according to news reports. According to the grand jury indictment unsealed Wednesday, Slager is charged with three counts: ”charges for a federal civil rights offense, using a firearm during the commission of a civil rights offense and obstruction of justice.” The Justice Department says the charges could carry a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250, 000 fine. The indictment states that Slager ”shot Walter Scott without legal justification, willfully depriving him of the right, secured and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer.” Slager is also accused of misleading law enforcement. That’s tied to the timing of when he fired at Scott. The court documents read: ”Specifically, defendant MICHAEL SLAGER knowingly misled [South Carolina Law Enforcement Division] investigators by falsely stating that he (SLAGER) fired his weapon at Scott while Scott was coming forward at him with a Taser. ”In truth and in fact, as defendant MICHAEL SLAGER then well knew, he (SLAGER) repeatedly fired his weapon at Scott as Scott was running away from him.” The Post and Courier describes the federal charges as ”a rare measure in police shootings that gives authorities another route to reach a conviction.” It says: ”The new charges could serve as a backstop if the state’s case against Slager were to fail. Putting him on trial in both state and federal courts for the same shooting would not be double jeopardy because the courts are sovereign entities.” You can read the full indictment here:"
"Brazil’s Senate is poised to vote Wednesday on whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff on charges that she violated budgetary rules. The country’s House of Representatives already voted in favor of an impeachment trial, with well more than the required   majority. The speaker of the House said Monday that he would annul that vote, blaming ”politics” for the decision  —   but he later reversed his decision. Now it’s in the hands of Brazil’s 81 senators. They’re widely expected to vote in favor of an impeachment trial, even though, as NPR’s Lourdes   has explained, many legal analysts view the case against Rousseff as ”insubstantial.” Here’s how The Associated Press puts it: ”The charges against her were obscure, not the variety that spurs outrage: She is alleged to have broken fiscal rules in her handling of the federal budget to hide deficits and bolster an embattled government. The allegations also came with a good dose of irony: Her main opponents in Congress are accused of crimes much worse. ”Yet what started as a   bid has gained momentum and, as the Senate prepares to vote Wednesday on whether to put her on trial, many analysts consider Rousseff’s ouster all but a foregone conclusion.” In addition to the charges of tampering with the budget, Rousseff has also been accused of involvement in a vast corruption scandal involving state oil company Petrobras, as we’ve reported on the blog, but those allegations are not a part of the impeachment proceedings. According to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paolo, 50 senators have expressed their intention to vote to move forward on impeachment. That’s well beyond the simple majority vote  —   41  —   that would result in Rousseff’s suspension for up to 180 days during a trial. A   vote  —   54  —   during an impeachment trial would remove her permanently from office. Either way, Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer would step in to fill her shoes. Temer, a    constitutional lawyer, is ”a      whose strength is making alliances,” Catherine Osborn reported on Morning Edition. He has moved up through the ranks of several ruling governments in Brazil  —   ”but what his allies laud as canny negotiating, his critics say is rank opportunism,” Osborn says. Only 2 percent of Brazilians say they would vote for Temer in a presidential election, she notes. And the vice president has been accused of corruption. ”Unlike Rousseff, who has not been accused of personal enrichment, Temer is accused of being involved in an illegal fuel purchasing scheme, part of the huge graft scandal at state oil company Petrobras,” Osborn noted. As we’ve previously reported, the speaker of the House, who would be next in line for the presidency, is also linked to charges of corruption. The vice president and House speaker are certainly not alone. BBC Brazil reported on the makeup of the Senate that is voting today  —   noting 58 percent of lawmakers are under investigation for improper conduct or corruption. (Political dynasties are also well represented  —   60 percent of the senators have family members in politics. And 13 percent of the senators are unelected, that is, filling the seat of an elected senator who has left his or her duties. BBC Brazil notes that family members or major campaign donors often step in to fill a departing senator’s seat.) Rousseff has denied the charges against her and characterized the impeachment moves as a ”coup.” On Tuesday, Rousseff’s government made a final effort to block the impeachment proceedings by appealing to the nation’s supreme court, the AP reports. But so far, the wire service writes, the court has ”mostly steered clear of direct involvement” in the process. Have more questions about Brazil’s political crisis? The   broke it down here."
"The speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress on Monday annulled last month’s vote on the impeachment of embattled President Dilma Rousseff. Shortly afterward, the leader of Brazil’s Senate announced he will ignore the speaker’s decision and press on with the impeachment process. And later still, the speaker said he had reversed his own decision. The political seesawing further complicates the already chaotic struggle for political power in Brazil’s government. In Rio de Janeiro, Catherine Osborn reports for NPR that House speaker Waldir Maranhão initially decided to nullify the earlier impeachment vote because, he said, Congress members voted ”on the basis of politics.” As the   reported, the ”vote was 367 to 137 with seven abstentions,” and ”two deputies were not present,” with the total count ”easily surpass[ing] the   majority required to send the proceeding to Brazil’s Senate.” Catherine reports that the president of Brazil’s Senate, Renan Calheiros, ”called the lower house leader’s decision unilateral and undemocratic” and said that ”the Senate will move forward with a vote Wednesday that is expected to suspend Rousseff to trial.” According to The New York Times, ”Raimundo Lira, the senator at the helm of that body’s impeachment commission, said that Mr. Maranhão’s decision had no ’practical effect.’ ” Rousseff is charged with tampering with the state budget to make the deficit appear smaller than it actually is. As NPR’s Lourdes   explained, ”She is accused of juggling federal accounts to make the economy seem better than it was before her   in 2014.” Lourdes adds that the case is viewed as ”insubstantial” by many legal analysts."
"A fire crackles along the banks of the Yamuna River: a cremation of a young mother, struck by a car while she was fetching water. The stench of the river engulfs the sad assembly. Before the hissing funeral pyre, floating down the river, white blocks of what looks like detergent appear like icebergs. It is 95 degrees in Delhi this night. This is chemical waste from factories that have sprung up across the city, manufacturing leather goods, dyes and other goods. Downstream, the living reside along   banks. A colony of shacks sits beneath the Old Iron Bridge, a vestige of the British colonial era. Its tracks trundle trains across the Yamuna, on the northern edge of the city. Like the Ganges, the Yamuna is sacred to Hindu believers. The faithful dangle garlands from the bridge’s hulking girders and pitch ashes and money from its railings. Steps away from his hut,    Ravi, wearing only his underwear, dives into the contaminated water to retrieve their offerings. He clambers out, tugs on some clothes and,   pulls the coins he’s tucked away for safekeeping from his mouth. Delhi is about a third of the way down the   Yamuna River. Its source is the Yamunotri glacier,   water from the Himalayas. But by the time it moves down the eastern edge of India’s capital, it exits as the dirtiest river in the country. For the past 18 years, Mohammad Zamir, a laundry man and father of four, has beaten rags against rocks. Washing remnants used on factory assembly lines, he stands up to his knees in the filthy water from dawn to dusk. But Zamir, 38, says he’s not worried about his health. ”No,” he says    ”the water looks black because of the shadows falling on it. I have no problems. Neither do our elders, who are nearly 80 and did the same work.” Yet according to the Central Pollution Board’s most recently published water quality data, from 2011, by the time the Yamuna exits the city, it is lethal. The water contains a concentration of 1. 1 billion fecal coliform bacteria per 100 milliliters of water. The standard for bathing is 500 coliform bacteria per 100 milliliters. ”That is the reason why this stretch of the Yamuna is called dead,” says noted environmentalist Manoj Mishra. ”Because there is no life here. There cannot be life here. There’s nothing here.” Mishra walks along the banks, explaining that upstream, huge amounts of water are channeled off to irrigate farmlands, drastically reducing the river’s flow. Just before the Yamuna enters Delhi, millions more gallons are siphoned off for Delhi’s drinking water, shrinking the flow even further. ”A river that does not flow is no river,” Mishra says. He sweeps an arm toward the stagnant water. ”And as you can clearly see, there is no flow here. It’s a toxic cocktail of sewage, industrial waste and surface runoff. Absolutely unfit for any use whatsoever.” Architect Pankaj Vir Gupta says no fresh water replenishes the entire   stretch through Delhi. Gupta runs a project with the University of Virginia to rejuvenate the Yamuna, and says only waste flows into this span of the river. ”In fact,” he says, ”the only time in the year when the river is moderately clean is during the monsoon when fresh rainfall falls directly into the river.” Unbridled urbanization is partly to blame. Over the past two to three decades, new arrivals, drawn to the capital by a liberalized economy and a dearth of opportunities in their own villages, settled wherever they could. About a third of Delhi’s 17 million residents live in settlements that are officially illegal  —   and are not connected to any municipal sewer service. When this underserved population openly defecates, Delhi Water Board CEO Keshav Chandra says the waste finds its way into drains that dump directly into the river. ”The infrastructure to take care of this incoming population could not cope up with this,” he says. But that’s not the only thing that hasn’t kept up. The Yamuna is a dumping ground because polluters get away with it. ”You will find every law in Delhi, but no enforcement,” says Delhi Water Board member R. S. Tyagi, with a wry laugh. He says there’s lax enforcement of laws against illegal dumping of arsenic, zinc and mercury, against pouring raw sewage into storm drains and against the illegal cultivation of crops on the contaminated floodplain. The Yamuna is administered by no fewer than two dozen different local, state and national government agencies, Tyagi says, and that in itself is a problem. ”In this way,” he says, ”nobody can be accountable.” The Yamuna supplies about a third of Delhi’s drinking water, which gets channeled to a reservoir in the northernmost corner of the city before the river becomes toxic. Architect Gupta says residents of the unauthorized slums must depend on ”private tankers, bore wells and a water mafia” for their drinking water. ”That can’t work,” Gupta insists, and argues for the need to ”democratize the water supply” of Delhi. But even the condition of drinking water that comes out of the tap has given rise to a lucrative private industry of home water filters, which are relatively expensive. Mishra says families who can’t afford them inevitably fall sick. ”That’s how their life is,” he says. ”And it is highly irresponsible, and in some ways, even criminal. But the solution lies in getting the river back.” Some are trying to do exactly that. An experiment funded by the Delhi Development Authority and overseen by a team of scientists has a small section of the Yamuna floodplain thriving. Concrete   loom on the periphery of this nature reserve, an oasis on the north edge of a noisy and polluted city. This   and   wetland replicates the flora and fauna of what was here 100 years ago, according to field biologist Mohammad Faisal. He says thousands of migratory birds, 20 species of fish and 35 species of dragonflies have returned as a result of nurturing this conservation habitat over the past five years. ”Wetlands act as a nursery for the river itself,” he says. Artist and activist Ravi Agarwal says this   biodiversity park in the floodplain is the beginning of an overdue healing. ”Nature and the city become two oxymoronic words  —   they don’t sit with each other. Earlier, they used to flow into each other, and there was a beautiful coexistence,” he says. Coexistence can revive the Yamuna, he says, but the residents of Delhi must want it."
"David Padilla spent nearly 20 years turning himself into a model inmate in federal prison. So when Padilla got called to the warden’s office last December, he said, the first thought on his mind was, ”Did I do anything wrong?” Padilla’s leg started shaking. Then, he got the news he was about to be freed. ”Before he could finish, I was crying,” said Padilla, who first sat down with an interview with NPR nearly two years ago. ”I had so many dreams of being released from prison, and every time I wake up, I’m in my cell.” Five days later, from the parking lot of the prison in Fairton, N. J. Padilla’s four children captured the reunion in a   video. Wife Lisette ran toward her husband, crying, as Padilla clutched a manila envelope and declared, ”I’m home, y’all. It’s over.” That was Christmas week, 2015. In April, Padilla joined his family for good, after nearly four months in a halfway house. Adjusting to family life, One recent morning, in the living room of their row house in Northeast Philadelphia, the Padillas said they still can’t believe he’s home for real. The couple sits close together on the couch, holding hands. ”It’s a beautiful thing to be home after spending 19 years, one month, 10 days in federal prison,” said Padilla, who served all that time for nonviolent drug offenses. ”This doesn’t happen to people like us. You know, we are minorities, and it’s a blessing.” Padilla is adjusting to life on the outside, amid so many changes, small and big, like this one at the movies. ”The size of the chairs, my goodness, it’s like a recliner,” Padilla said. ”When I hit the bottom and reclined back, I was like, yo, man, this is awesome.” Then, there’s cell phones and apps. Padilla marveled at the technology, but he has trouble wrapping his head around the way people behave now. ”I see no one talking, I mean, I see people just looking down at their phones and, at that time, I didn’t know what they were doing, but what they were doing was texting,” Padilla said of a recent visit to a pancake restaurant. ”I mean, this place was full, right Lisette? And you could hear a pin drop in there.” David has pledged that won’t happen in his home. The family got a bucket, and they put their phones in the container during family time. Family time is something they all cherish. They’re still getting used to seeing their father outside an antiseptic prison visiting room, and getting less private time with their mom. For his three   kids’ teen years, David was in prison. Son Pablo has just turned 14, leading to some tense moments in the house. David has become the disciplinarian. ”He’s learning that men do certain things in the house,” Padilla said. ”Men take the trash out men do chores around the house. Men do the dishes too. And I’m not just telling him, I’m showing him.” Getting to work, With the help of a friend and a social services program, Padilla secured a job cleaning tour buses. He’s working the night shift for $11 an hour. During the day, Lisette has a list of projects for her husband to do. It all starts in their kitchen. ”We started a little demolition already,” Padilla said, pointing to a cabinet he removed. They’ve stacked a new microwave, tiles for a back splash, and some other supplies under another counter. Padilla said he’s turning to YouTube videos for construction tips and leaning on an old friend for support. That friend is Efrain Rosa, who served alongside Padilla at the Fairton prison for about 10 years. Rosa helped him get a job, and they see each other several times a week, including at a recreation center in a rough part of Philadelphia. Making amends, The Waterloo playground here used to be the turf of drug dealers. Needles littered the ground. Men had to wear   suits to clean up the lot. Now, Rosa tends it carefully, noticing if anything is out of place. On the day we met, Rosa pumped air into a basketball for some of the neighborhood children, part of a youth mentoring program known as MIMIC, Men in Motion in the Community. Padilla’s signed up to volunteer there, too. He said he wants to make amends for his role in moving drugs through the community. ”You know, my three charges were drugs, and drugs trickles down all the way to the community,” he said. ”This is my way of giving back, telling the kids there’s options, there’s other ways.” Padilla said he wishes he had those kinds of role models when he was a young man. The expectations were low for him. It wasn’t until prison that he found a job and got a real education. Back at home, in Northeast Philadelphia, he and Lisette are looking to their shared future. They’re already planning to celebrate a special day next year. Padilla pointed to a large, framed photo on the   wall. ”Look how young we look in that picture,” he said. ”That’s our wedding picture. That was April 15, 1987. When I see that picture a lot of memories come back. Next year it’s going to be 30 years of marriage, and it’s just the beginning now.” When they got married, David was 20 Lisette, only 17. The odds were against them, Padilla said. But he knows he’s beaten the odds more than once."
"Studies have been showing for years that this country’s middle class is shrinking. Now, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center has added another dimension to the story: Its examination of government data shows the problem is not confined to the Rust Belt or Appalachia. In fact, the middle is shrinking from coast to coast.   families are ”losing ground in the vast majority of metropolitan areas in the country,” with 203 out of 229 U. S. metropolitan areas seeing a decline in   households from 2000 to 2014, the Pew study said. About 3 out of 4 Americans live in those 229 metro areas. Here’s an important point: The change is not just a consequence of people getting poorer. Rather, the study found that while some Americans are falling from the middle to the lower class, others are rising from the middle into the   households. So while 160 metropolitan areas saw an increase in the share of households with lower incomes, 172 metropolitan areas had an increase in the share considered upper income. With so many people either moving up  —   or down  —   the middle has been getting whittled away. In general, economists say the trends reflect the loss of   factory jobs and the growth of   positions for college graduates. The study singles out Springfield, Ohio, as an example of a town that has been losing its middle class because of the erosion of factory jobs, not because of a surge in college degrees. The shutdown of factories ”definitely has been hard on everyone here” in the southwestern Ohio town, said Josh Rider,   of Kid Enterprises, a small business. Rider’s company provides coffee services to factories and offices in the Springfield area. As plants have closed, his coffee business has felt it. ”For me personally  —   I’ve been through it,” he said in a phone conversation. ”But at this point, people have gotten used to it now, so it’s normal” to have less income, he said. He doesn’t expect the lost   jobs to return. And he sees better educated and higher skilled Ohioans doing well while others fall behind. ”You either have money or you don’t,” Rider said. Pew defines   households as those having three people and an annual income between about $42, 000 to $125, 000, adjusted for the cost of living in a metro area and the number of household members. Overall, between 2000 and 2014, ”the share of adults in the   tier increased from 17 percent to 20 percent, and the share of adults in the   tier increased from 28 percent to 29 percent,” Pew said. While the loss of manufacturing jobs has hurt Springfield, the cities with the largest middle classes remain located in the upper Midwest. So many cities in Wisconsin and Indiana, which still have many manufacturing jobs, are hanging on to their   households. The cities with high concentrations of   households tend to be located in the Southwest along the border with Mexico, and in the South, where furniture and textile jobs have disappeared. Metro areas with lots of   households are more likely to be located in the Northeast  —   from Boston to Washington, D. C.  —   or along the West Coast. Economists generally say that income inequality slows overall economic growth by reducing   buying power."
"House Speaker Paul Ryan called his Thursday morning meeting with Donald Trump ”encouraging” but didn’t signal he is ready just yet to endorse his party’s de facto presidential nominee. ”I do believe we are now planting the seeds to get ourselves unified to bridge the gaps and differences,” Ryan told reporters after the two met at the Republican National Committee headquarters. In a joint statement after their summit, the two stressed that the party must unite to defeat likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton this fall. ”With that focus, we had a great conversation this morning. While we were honest about our few differences, we recognize that there are also many important areas of common ground,” Trump and Ryan said in the statement. ”We will be having additional discussions, but remain confident there’s a great opportunity to unify our party and win this fall, and we are totally committed to working together to achieve that goal.” The highly anticipated   to try to bridge many disagreements between the GOP’s likely nominee and party leaders drew swarms of media and protesters. The crazy scene included a Trump impersonator in a huge piñata mask mocking Trump on a megaphone, immigration activists, signs that read ”Trump is a racist” and ”Islamophobia is ” and chants of ”GOP RIP, GOP RIP.” Ryan said last week he wasn’t ready just yet to officially endorse Trump, saying he needed to do more to bring together ”all wings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.” Trump’s campaign hoped that Thursday’s full slate of meetings with Ryan and other GOP leaders would be the first step in trying to do just that. The two also said they ”will be having additional discussions” and called it a ”very positive step toward unification.” Speaking to reporters later, Ryan didn’t answer if or when he would officially endorse Trump. He admitted that ”it’s no secret that Donald Trump and I have had our differences” but that ”it was important that we discuss our differences . .. but it was also important we discuss the core principles that tie us all together.” ”It’s very important that we don’t fake unify, that we truly and actually unify,” the speaker added. Reince Priebus tweeted after the meeting ended that it was ”great” and ”a very positive step toward party unity.” The RNC chairman later told NBC’s Katy Tur in an interview that there was a ”mood of cooperation and a feeling like it’s time to unite the party.” After leaving the meeting with House leadership, Trump headed to meet with Senate leaders at the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s headquarters. GOP control of the Senate was very volatile in 2016, and there’s growing worry among Republican strategists that Trump atop the ticket could sink many of their incumbents in battleground states. Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon that it had been a day of productive meetings. While Republicans have a more comfortable majority in the House, there is concern he could have an adverse effect on congressional races as well. National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden,  . said in a statement Thursday, though, that he would support his party’s nominee. ”While I may disagree with the rhetoric Mr. Trump uses and some policy positions, he is the better option than Hillary Clinton in the White House,” Walden said. Along with Ryan, House Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers,  . remains a holdout among GOP leadership in endorsing Trump. After Thursday’s meeting, the   Republican woman in Congress called the meeting ”a very important first step forward to unify as Republicans” in a statement but also didn’t endorse the likely White House nominee."
"A prominent and outspoken fisheries scientist at the University of Washington is under attack from Greenpeace for not disclosing industry funding in several scientific papers stretching back to 2006. Greenpeace calls Ray Hilborn, a professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, a ”denier of overfishing,” and says he has received at least $3. 56 million in funding from dozens of fishing and seafood industry groups over a   period. Greenpeace claims that on several occasions, Hilborn failed to disclose those affiliations in published scientific papers. ”This is about a person who is the most vocal critic of marine conservation efforts. And it turns out that he has received millions of dollars from industry and failed to consistently disclose those conflicts of interest appropriately,” says John Hocevar, Greenpeace campaign director. Hilborn defends his work in a response he made public Wednesday night. He says he’s been in conversations with officials at the University of Washington, where he works, and has alerted an editor at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where he has published several papers, that he is being scrutinized by the environmental group. Greenpeace obtained information about Hilborn’s   sources through a Washington state public records request to the university. It’s the latest example of food activists using FOIA and other records requests to obtain information that will embarrass scientists seen as friendly to industry. In an   letter sent to UW President Ana Mari Cauce on Wednesday, Greenpeace said that Hilborn’s funding and consulting work from industry groups were not properly disclosed. Those industry groups include Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute, Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association, Trident Seafoods, Peter Pan Seafoods, the National Fisheries Institute and more. They say Hilborn acknowledges only 21 groups by name in his work, but say he’s received funding from a total of 69 different industry groups. ”I don’t know where that number comes from,” Hilborn tells NPR. ”I never had any significant industry funding until I published a paper in 2009 on rebuilding global fisheries, and at that point, I discovered the fishing industry was willing to give me the money to do that work. I’ve made no secret about it. My website lists major funding sources. ”If you look at whose interest is in rebuilding fisheries, it’s not the NGOs, it’s the fishing industry. They and the public benefit from successful fishing.” Greenpeace, for example, alleges Hilborn did not disclose $58, 000 in funding from the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council in a 2006 paper for the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences on orange roughy. They also say he neglected to mention employment from the California Fisheries Coalition, which includes 27 recreational and commercial fishing associations, while questioning the environmental benefit of establishing marine protected areas off the coast of California. Hilborn is not one to shy away from controversy. He has a reputation for challenging studies that show declines in fish populations. He’s been embroiled in public disagreements with other prominent fisheries scientists, and is the lead voice behind the CFOOD project, which harshly calls out reporters (including this one) on coverage they deem erroneous, and openly critiques emerging fishery science studies, sometimes frustrating fellow researchers. Renowned ocean scientist Sylvia Earle is frequently a favorite target of the group’s blog and Twitter account. Greenpeace says the CFOOD project, which was launched last year, has received $30, 000 from Arctic Storm (a fish processing company) $30, 000 from Glacier Fish Co. $10, 000 from the International Coalition for Fisheries Association and $210, 000 from the seafood industry group, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI). As of publication time, no funding sources were disclosed on the CFOOD site  —   though a tweet Thursday afternoon said they are trying to update this ”asap.” Hilborn says CFOOD is an umbrella term for a broader project. ”The website is a trivial part of that. There are three students working   to run it. They’re all paid from the industry donation account,” he says. ”The ’C’ is for collaborative. We’re developing a network of people around the world knowledgeable in sustainable fishing.” Gavin Gibbons, a spokesperson for NFI, says the group is pleased to have sponsored some of Hilborn’s work, adding: ”We do not encourage [our] members to rebut sound science. That said, correcting the record on misreporting on fisheries science could be a   job.” The money Greenpeace has called into question is only a small portion of the $16. 1 million in research funding Hilborn has brought in since 2003. And industry groups are not the only ones interested in collaborating with him. Funding has also come from foundations, environmental and government groups, including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation ($6. 6 million) the National Science Foundation ($1. 9 million) the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($307, 500) NOAA ($582, 000) and more. And Hilborn has plenty of defenders among his fellow scientists. Douglas Rader, chief oceans scientist with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, calls Hilborn an ”accomplished,   scientist who has made important contributions to the field of fisheries science and conservation.” In 2012, EDF donated $100, 000 to fund analysis of fishing cooperatives. ”While we cannot speak to Dr. Hilborn’s individual compliance with disclosure requirements across all of his publications, his partnerships with industry have always been ” Rader writes in an email. Hocevar acknowledges that Greenpeace is borrowing a page from the playbook of   activists. Over the past year, opponents of genetically modified foods have used freedom of information requests to target researchers at public universities, including Bruce Chassy, a professor at the University of Illinois, and Kevin Folta, a food and agriculture science professor at the University of Florida. In both cases, the emails revealed previously undisclosed ties to the biotech industry. In this case, however, Greenpeace did not seek access to Hilborn’s emails, only funding disclosures. And they’re not done. On Friday, Greenpeace submitted a records request for Trevor Branch, a colleague of Hilborn and a professor at UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. The request seeks funding documents stretching back to 1987. ”I was 12 [years old] at the time,” says Branch. ”I don’t have any money from the fishing industry, so I’m not worried about their request. It’s a fishing expedition looking for anything they can find to discredit you.” Branch says acknowledging funders is a standard part of science disclosures, but he says there’s a limit to how long scientists need to disclose the information. He says the tactic used by Greenpeace will make researchers more wary of the funding they accept in the future. ”Ray [Hilborn] has received funding from   sources. If he had to list all of them every time, it would be longer than the paper. That’s not what we do in science. There are no papers that require a list of funding from every source you’ve ever gotten money from,” Branch says. Hilborn has a simpler explanation for being in the line of fire. ”Greenpeace can’t attack the science because they don’t do science. Instead they attack the messenger.” UPDATE   :  Since our story ran, the University of Washington, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Science magazine have reviewed the charges Greenpeace made against Ray Hilborn for   of funding sources and found he was not in violation of university or journal procedures. Additionally, the CFOOD website has since been updated to disclose funding sources to readers."
"Sugar, you might think, is just sugar, no matter where it comes from. But not anymore. About half of all sugar in the U. S. comes from sugar beets, and the other half comes from sugar cane. Now, for the first time, sugar traders are treating these as two different commodities, with two different prices. It’s all because about eight years ago, nearly all the farmers who grow sugar beets in the United States decided to start growing genetically modified versions of their crop. The GMO beets, which can tolerate the weedkiller glyphosate, otherwise known as Roundup, made it easier for them to get rid of weeds. They really didn’t expect any problems. I interviewed David Berg, president of the American Crystal Sugar Co. about this change in 2008. ”Most of our buyers, the people who buy sugar for industrial uses  —   as an ingredient in cereals and candies and baked goods and things like that  —   they’ve not expressed big concerns about it,” Berg said. ”We have not come across any specific place where we’re under any constraints where we can’t sell our sugar.” Just in the past two years, though, that’s changed. Many food companies have decided to label their products as  . And because practically all sugar beets in the U. S. are genetically modified, those food products are now using sugar derived from sugar cane grown in Florida, Louisiana or outside the U. S. There isn’t any genetically modified sugar cane. Deborah Arcoleo, director of product transparency at the Hershey Co. told me that in 2015, ”we started reformulating Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey’s milk chocolate, and Hershey’s milk chocolate with almonds, to move from beet sugar to cane sugar, and that’s complete. Now we’re looking to do that across the rest of our portfolio, to the extent that we can.” Hershey’s is one of the top sugar users in the country, and other companies have made similar moves. It’s been a jolt for American Crystal, which is mainly in the sugar beet business. American Crystal is a cooperative, owned by sugar beet farmers like Andrew Beyer, from Kent, Minn. Beyer went to the company’s annual meeting earlier this year and was shocked to hear just how many of American Crystal’s customers  —   those pastry and chocolate companies  —   were moving away from sugar beets. ”They were talking like a third or up to half of them were converting their systems to strictly ” Beyer says. The result has been a remarkable change in the American sugar market. Slowly, but consistently, a gap has opened up between the price of sugar from cane and sugar from beets. ”The current price for beet sugar is about 3 to 5 cents below the price for cane sugar on the spot market,” says Michael McConnell, an economist with the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. It means that buyers are paying 10 to 15 percent more for cane sugar. Meanwhile, the amount of beet sugar looking for buyers has been increasing, while there’s a shortage of cane sugar. That shortage is bad enough that sugar users, such as candy companies, are asking the USDA to allow more imports of cane sugar to ease the shortage. Beyer says that he and his fellow sugar beet farmers are thinking about going back to growing   beets. They couldn’t do it quickly right now, there aren’t enough   seeds to go around. And they would prefer not to do it. Planting genetically modified sugar beets allows them to kill their weeds with fewer chemicals. Beyer says he sprays Roundup just a few times during the growing season, plus one application of another chemical to kill off any   weeds. He says that planting   beets would mean going back to what they used to do, spraying their crop every 10 days or so with a ”witches brew” of five or six different weedkillers. ”The chemicals we used to put on the beets in [those] days were so much harsher for the guy applying them and for the environment,” he says. ”To me, it’s insane to think that a   beet is going to be better for the environment, the world, or the consumer.” But Beyer says he’ll do it if he needs to. He’ll do what his customers want."
"A few weekends ago, Texas entrepreneur Regina Vatterott stood in front of 50 people on the top floor of a startup hub in Austin. She was there to pitch her smart pillbox company, EllieGrid, to a panel of six judges. ”If you or your dad or mom has to take medications at breakfast, at breakfast time, the three compartments light up, and you would take, let’s say, two from this compartment, three from this compartment and one from this compartment. And it also sends you notifications on your smartphone so you can track it all online, too,” Vatterott told the judges. It was like Shark Tank  —   the reality television show where entrepreneurs take turns pitching their companies to a panel of investors  —   but with a twist. This panel of ”sharks” is made up of kids. Welcome to    where kids and entrepreneurs can learn from each other. Unlike the entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, Vatterott’s goal isn’t to get investors  —   there’s no cash prize at   . Still, it’s  : Each entrepreneur at the first    event has 5 minutes to present and up to 8 minutes of questions from the judges. And the kids are asking some tough questions: How do you make money? How are people going to pay for it? Do you provide a warranty if it breaks? The judges hear six more pitches, including a social media network for books and a subscription ”sock of the month” company idea. Anicia Moncivais, the judge coordinator, is a   the five other kids are   through  . They turn in their score sheets and then deliberate. ”The judges have spoken,” says Piers Powell, one of the judges. Mike Millard, a   of    and a judge at the event, announces the winner: Regina Vatterott’s company EllieGrid, the smart pillbox maker. Vatterott says she was a little nervous before her pitch. ”I didn’t know if they understood the grand scheme of how important medication adherence was, but they really seemed to get it they didn’t even ask questions about that,” she says. Millard’s daughter, Audrey Millard,      and a judge at the event, says she definitely held back. ”My dad was telling me in the car, like, how nervous these people were, and how they’re, like, ’I don’t know how to explain this in a   language. Oh no, what will I do if they don’t understand me?’ . .. So I decided not to go too hard on them,” the    says. Mike Millard says kids have a unique way of knowing when someone hasn’t totally thought a business idea through. ”About a year ago, I was doing a website with my daughter, and she asked me really tough questions,” Millard recalls. ”She said, ’Who’s the website for, how are they going to know about it?’ And what I realized was that they were nonfiltered, honest questions on how to be successful.” In other words: If you can’t explain it to a kid, you probably aren’t ready to talk to investors. And just because the judges are small doesn’t mean they don’t take their job seriously  —   including what they’re going to wear. Before the event, Audrey says, she researched how to look ”businesslike.” The kids in the panel and in the audience got an introduction to the startup culture, and the entrepreneurs practiced addressing some of the issues they need to think through for their business model to succeed. The next    event in Austin is scheduled for July 30."
"The financial legerdemain lampooned in The Big Short was designed to be opaque and arcane  —   so much so that even the supposed experts didn’t really know what they were doing. The scenario of Money Monster is much simpler, which is both a strength and a weakness. The movie is easier to understand, but that’s because, as with so many Hollywood conspiracy thrillers, the big payoff is actually pretty small. The film’s villains are not real investment banks but the fictional Ibis Clear Capital and its CEO, Walt Camby (Dominic West). The protagonist stands somewhere between documentary and fantasy: Lee Gates (George Clooney) host of FNN’s Money Monster, is a slightly camouflaged version of Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money. Lee’s program features sexy dancers, silly props and the sort of macho bluster typical of   and   radio. Also in the mix are stock tips, one of which recently was Ibis. It proceeded to tank. To Lee, that’s entertainment. But one viewer takes offense and arrives at the show’s Manhattan studio with a pistol and what appears to be an   vest. Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) takes Gates hostage while he’s on the air, live. The cops come running, but the person who’s really in charge of the standoff is the show’s flawlessly efficient producer, Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts). She cues Gates and the crew while researching Kyle and juggling Ibis spokeswoman Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe). Diane is on the spot because her boss was scheduled to appear on the show, but has gone missing. Is that suspicious? Does a bear market sleep in the woods? Aside from using Ibis to represent all the rogue companies that have crashed and burned since 2007, Money Monster’s agenda is to humanize Kyle and redeem Lee. Kyle is just a little guy from Queens who’s been pushed too far. (It sounds like even farther, since O’Connell’s accent betrays his British origins.) The   Lee is Clooney’s usual   rascal,   and sexist, but just about to notice that Patty is kind of great. As the woman who can oversee a bustling set and manage the   star, Patty is an obvious surrogate for the movie’s actual director, Jodie Foster. Patty keeps Lee alive while following clues about Ibis’s misbehavior that lead to hackers, quants and   physical laborers on several continents. That makes her as formidable as Foster, a woman who could direct Mel Gibson in The Beaver. One of the challenges Foster sets for herself is staging Money Monster in real time. The movie begins just a few minutes before the show does and follows the   hostage drama to its conclusion barely 90 minutes later. The action is set mostly in Ibis’s and FNN’s respective buildings, but ultimately it takes to the streets for Lee and Kyle’s tense tour of New York’s financial district. The procession, conducted while dozens of cops stand ready, is not especially plausible but is  . What deflates the last act is the easy explanation, and glib resolution, of the Ibis matter. This plot’s tricks can’t rival the perplexities and absurdities of the The Big Short. The filmmakers do emulate that predecessor at the very last moment, which offers a few seconds of commentary by   critic Robert Reich and ends with Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi’s line that Goldman Sachs is ”a great vampire squid.” But the brief finale is much testier than the rest of Money Monster, which plays it straight with a topic that in reality is far more twisted."
"J. G. Ballard’s classic 1975   novel   is a caustic vision of modernity gone awry, witnessing a   utopia of domestic convenience undone by class conflict. Located on the outskirts of London, the building of the title has 40 floors, and its amenities  —   a grocery store, a swimming pool and gym,   elevators, and even its own primary school  —   discourage residents from ever leaving the premises. In other words, it’s a   vertical society, with the wealthy elites occupying the top floors and the   plebeians toward the bottom. As order breaks down, anarchy consumes the building and guerrilla warfare breaks out between parties from different sections. Like Ballard’s preceding novels, Concrete Island and Crash,   reflects an interest in the convergence of technology and humanity, but from an anthropologist’s distance  —   cold, clinical and exacting in its observations. By contrast, Ben Wheatley’s screen adaptation plunges itself into the chaos as if it were a restless tenant, eschewing the remove of Ballard’s book for an      fight. There’s barely a moment’s pause over two hours to consider the bigger picture: It depicts anarchy by exemplifying it. The eye at the center of the Category 4 hurricane is Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) a handsome bachelor who lives on the 25th floor, squeezed between the hostile classes above and below. After a framing sequence that shows Laing in   rubble, roasting the leg of a dog on a spit, Wheatley cuts to three months earlier, when Laing first moved into the apartment and could look forward to the benefits of sustained ultramodernity. It isn’t long before Laing has a congenial chat with the building’s architect, Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons) who resides in the penthouse suite on the top floor, which is spacious enough to include a small field and a horse. His relationships elsewhere are murkier. On the floor above, there’s the seductive Charlotte (Sienna Miller) who works for Royal and helps give Laing access to one of his parties, where revelers stroll around in powdered wigs and finery while a string quartet plays Abba’s ”S. O. S.” Then all the way down on the second floor, Laing meets the very pregnant Helen (Elisabeth Moss) and her indulgent husband, Richard Wilder (Luke Evans) a documentary filmmaker who acts as the chief agitator, fueled by a vigorous appetite for liquor and cocaine. When the power goes out, supplies dwindle, and nobody leaves,   tensions between the haves, the   and the   boil over into violent conflict. Given the novel’s vaunted reputation among   enthusiasts, Wheatley deserves credit for making the material his own, asserting a strong vision that’s contrary to Ballard’s tone yet respectful of his ideas. He offers this immense concrete tower as a malevolent organism, infecting humanity through a series of decadent parties that tip into the apocalyptic.   wears its influences on its sleeve  —   the grotesque black comedy of A Clockwork Orange, the ambition and hyperaggression of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, the anarchy of Lindsay Anderson’s If. ...  —   but at heart, it’s a scenario close to Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, a class statement about revelers who cannot leave a dinner party. Yet   is a deeply and relentlessly unpleasant experience, and a borderline incoherent one at that. Wheatley treats essential information as hasty shorthand: He does little to establish the   wonders of the building itself, which is more of a character in Ballard’s novel than any of its residents. He’s equally careless about fleshing out the key relationships, particularly those in relation to Laing, who exists more as a human fulcrum for the battles between the upper and lower floors than a character with any resonant features in his own right. The film is all chaos, no connective tissue. That may be by design, of course. Wheatley’s earlier films, like Kill List and Sightseers, have drifted toward gruesome abstraction, and his last one, A Field in England, staged the English Civil War as a   psychedelic freakout. The sustained madness of   feels like a natural progression in his career, but a flawed articulation of Ballardian themes. It’s so consumed with the viscera of class warfare that it loses sight of the bigger picture."
"Some of the best films about Christianity don’t treat the Gospel as, well, gospel. The filmmakers don’t view the act of moviegoing as a pilgrimage only for the devout to undertake, nor do they allow theological rigor (an expectation that biblical entertainment must adhere as closely as possible to the source material) to overtake the more necessary task of telling an engaging narrative. If a filmmaker can treat Jesus as a fully realized character rather than a deity, and the story as something cinematic instead of a Sunday school class, then the result can have meaning for an audience beyond Christians by addressing itself to more universal struggles. Last Days in the Desert is the most intelligent, engaging film about Jesus since The Last Temptation of Christ. Like Martin Scorsese’s epic, which some Christian leaders declared ”blasphemous” upon its 1988 release, the movie invents a version of its hero not based on Scripture, one who is allowed to express doubt and anger and, in general, act human. It is much smaller in scope: It meets Jesus near the end of his 40 days of fasting and praying in the Judaean Desert, at the moment when Satan appears to tempt him into straying from his path. Throughout the film, we never see any sign that God is listening, that Jesus’ path is indeed righteous, or that Satan is anything but a hallucination brought on by the heat and lack of nourishment. There are no easy answers in the desert. Ewan McGregor excels in a dual role as both Jesus and the Devil, and the double casting allows   Rodrigo García (Nine Lives) to reject the idea that doubt is some external, alien force we can overpower with enough good vibes. Instead, the film hints that darkness and desperation can lurk within the best of us. McGregor’s Jesus is a man who observes the world around him with quiet remove, but it’s his and García’s brilliant characterization of Satan that pulls our attention. He is not a purely malevolent force, but an inquiring sort, asking the questions about God and the unknowable that give Jesus pause. There are moments when we see him letting his guard down as he admits that, though he can see into the future, what he sees only makes him more perplexed by the ideas of selflessness and love. What good are they in such a cruel world, he demands of his alter ego? ”It’s stunning, isn’t it,” he asks, ”how life ends?” Last Temptation infamously included a sequence where Jesus imagines himself stepping down from the cross to start a family, but the new film’s deviations from the source material likely won’t be nearly as controversial as Scorsese’s. Here, Jesus meets a struggling family that lives alone in the desert: a   father (Ciarán Hinds) a plucky son (Tye Sheridan) who envisions a different path for himself in Jerusalem, and a dying mother (Ayelet Zurer) whose illness throws their isolation into harsh focus. We see Abraham and Isaac’s story echo here. Satan strikes a wager: If Jesus can heal the relationships between every family member, he will leave him alone. So the prophet, while remaining anonymous, sets about trying to mend this family, though we can tell from McGregor’s unnerved expressions that merely casting out the Devil wouldn’t erase all doubt from his mind. Filmed in California’s   Desert, Last Days has an understated visual wonder. The film embraces the vibrant color palette and topography of its setting in a way few desert movies dare: Reds, oranges and purples streak across ground and sky alike, and characters frequently peer over the edges of cliffs, with the camera following their gaze, moving at a meditative pace. Renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is much more restrained and unobtrusive here than in his recent   of looping, careening Oscar winners Gravity, Birdman and The Revenant, and his approach lulls us into the patterns (both visual and behavioral) of biblical life. I’m not a Christian, but I talked to Christian critics following the film’s screening who said Last Days in the Desert gets much closer to the heart of Jesus’ dilemma than other recent biblical epics like Son of God and Risen. It’s one of those wonderful paradoxes of fiction, the idea that only through invention, even of such   material, can we uncover new emotional truths. But this is also why the ending, which gives us brief   of the crucifixion, doesn’t work as well. It pulls us back into the common literal interpretation of the New Testament that García had so carefully veered away from. The film is best when, like its subject, it has the conviction to set off on its own course."
"In an achingly lovely scene in Terence Davies’ 1992 film The Long Day Closes, a little boy rests his elbows on a windowsill and gazes out at the rain slanting past his cramped tenement house in England’s industrial North. It’s the 1950s, and on the soundtrack is Debbie Reynolds’ honeyed ”Tammy.” To those of us who grew up in dreary   Britain (I remember that time in monochrome) the relentless grey of that scene, set off by the pop promise of a Golden Elsewhere, takes the measure of both our days and our yearnings for relief. It’s magic applied to life, and there’s no such thing as ordinary misery or ordinary happiness in a Davies film, only agony and ecstasy to the power of a thousand. Inspired by a BBC television series Davies saw long ago, his new film, Sunset Song, is a glowing tone poem that tells a tacitly feminist tale of spiritual escape from a brutal childhood in a remote corner of rural Scotland. The astonishing physical presence at its center, a peasant girl named Chris Guthrie, is played by a beatnik supermodel, Agyness Deyn, transformed here into a luminously   beauty with soulful eyes and a golden braid hanging off one shoulder. Chris is a dutiful daughter to her devout but brutally abusive father, who’s played with quietly explosive savagery by Peter Mullan. But she simmers with silent anger, and when he crosses a line with her beloved mother, Chris takes matters into her own hands. Soon, she finds herself the proprietor of a patch of land as majestically beautiful as it is unforgiving. Ownership frees her  —   as far as freedom goes in the early 20th century, when a woman unwed was deemed a woman unfulfilled and unprotected. Before long, Chris is hitched to Ewan (Kevin Guthrie) a bonny local lad with whom she has a son. The couple makes an ardent love match, but as World War I moves closer to this remote backwater, Ewan’s limitations threaten to wreck their newfound happiness. The world outside has spun off its axis, but like all Davies’ films, Sunset Song is slow and stately and shot with a rhapsodic attention to details of sound, light and shadow. Every rustling leaf and rustling cornstalk, every drop of rain pounding on stone, every tear of tissue paper, is lovingly drawn out. Chris’ family gazes impassively into the camera like a tableau, and the landscape recalls Constable or Turner. Yet none of this has anything to do with aesthetic refinement. As always, Davies means to heighten all of life’s moods into a romantic symphony. He interrupts the stillness with bursts of joy (a   wedding, and a startling moment when the camera does something roughly homoerotic with a scene of heterosexual carnality) and with a sharp turn to despair as a man who has faltered awaits his fate, up to his ears in the blood and guts of war. Still, this is Chris’ movie, and her moment both to show mercy to someone who’s ruined her life and to triumph over catastrophe. Davies, who has said in interviews that he adored his mother, clearly loves  —   and, frankly, idealizes  —   women. At the end, Sunset Song inclines its head with improbable magnificence to Gone With the Wind. Like Scarlett O’Hara, Chris ends up a woman burned by multiple adversities who realizes she has only to stay in place in order to survive and flourish. For Chris, as for Scarlett, there is no Golden Elsewhere. There’s only here, and now, and this land in all its wild, forbidding glory."
"There is new music from Gregory Alan Isakov, the South   Philadelphia and Colorado troubadour. It’s an album with the Colorado Symphony and his band. This song, ”Liars” was written by Ron Scott and will be on Gregory’s new album Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony.  ”This particular song has always felt like two songs in one,” Isakov tells NPR Music in an email. ”The first half conjures the subconscious life, and the second half, at the moment the band begins to play, feels like the character is standing on the ground, solid, with a sense of reckoning.” Video footage here comes from locations that include the Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Boettcher Concert Hall in Colorado, and Starling Farm. ”’Liars’ is an incredibly moving song that hits in a place I can only describe as being part of my soul,” says Director Sarah Megyesy via email. ”I’m honored by the opportunity to create a visual backdrop for Gregory’s profound and beautiful music.” The album Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony will be out on June 10."
"Pope Francis told a gathering of about 900 heads of women’s religious orders that he supports studying whether women can become deacons. The step is seen as a possible turning point for the Roman Catholic Church, which does not allow women to serve in ordained ministry. At Thursday’s meeting of the International Union of Superiors General, Francis was asked why women are not allowed to be deacons and whether he would form an official commission to look into the issue. He responded, ”I accept it would be useful for the church to clarify this question. I agree.” NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli tells our Newscast unit that women served as deacons in the early centuries of Christianity. She adds: ”Throughout the Mediterranean, images on tombstones, frescoes and mosaics provide evidence that women held leadership and ministerial roles in the early church identical to those held by men as teachers of theology and deacons. ”That changed in the fourth century, when women started to be pushed out of the public arena and lost their role as officeholders. Today, male deacons are ordained ministers who can perform many of the same functions as priests  —   but cannot celebrate Mass.” Referring to early female deacons, the pope told the gathering that ”understanding about their role in the early Church remained unclear,” according to News. va, the official Vatican news network. It mentions ”ample evidence” that there were female deacons in the early centuries of the church, including one named Phoebe mentioned in the Book of Romans. Catholic News Service reports that Francis questioned whether the early female deacons were ordained and suggested that their primary role was assisting with baptizing other women. More generally, Francis lamented that the ”integration of women into the life of the Church has been ’very weak,’ ” according to the official news service. He said he hoped to see more women in   roles. At the same time, he appeared to rule out women preaching homilies, News. va reports: ”Asked about the possibility of women preaching the homilies during Mass, the Pope said it’s important to distinguish between other types of liturgies, where the sermon can be preached by consecrated or lay women, and the Mass, where the homily is connected to the role of the priest serving ’in persona Christi’.” Francis’ willingness to consider the issue of female clergy sharply contrasts with the views of his recent predecessors. As the National Catholic Reporter notes, ”Pope John Paul II claimed in his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that ’the Church has no authority whatsoever’ to ordain woman as priests, citing Jesus’ choosing of only men to serve as his twelve apostles.”"
"Updated 6:15 p. m. ET, George Zimmerman, who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 and was acquitted of all charges in the case, said Thursday that he was auctioning off the gun that he says he used in that incident. The 9 mm pistol was initially listed for sale on GunBroker. com, posted by user ”GZ1776.” By Thursday afternoon, however, the listing for the auction, which was supposed to begin at 11 a. m. was no longer active. In a statement on GunBroker. com, the company wrote that it reserves ”the right to reject listings at our sole discretion, and have done so with the Zimmerman listing. We want no part in the listing on our web site or in any of the publicity it is receiving.” The statement also said: ”Late last night, George Zimmerman created a listing on our web site for the gun from the Trayvon Martin case four years ago. Mr. Zimmerman alerted news organizations that began reporting on the listing first thing this morning. ”Listings on the GunBroker. com web site are   exactly like social media posts. Mr. Zimmerman never contacted anyone at GunBroker. com prior to or after the listing was created and no one at GunBroker. com has any relationship with Zimmerman.” NPR’s Greg Allen reports that the website pulled Zimmerman’s   pistol before the auction began. Greg adds that Zimmerman told the Orlando Sentinel that the website was not ”prepared for the traffic and publicity surrounding the auction of my firearm.” He then listed the gun for sale with another website, UnitedGunGroup. com, which the website confirmed on Twitter. That link is also not functioning. ”The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on  ” the original listing on GunBroker. com stated. It went on to say the gun is fully functional and had been returned to Zimmerman by the Department of Justice. It concluded: ”I am proud to announce that a portion of the proceeds will be used to: fight [Black Lives Matter] violence against Law Enforcement officers, ensure the demise of Angela [Corey’s] persecution career and Hillary Clinton’s   rhetoric. Now is your opportunity to own a piece of American History. Good Luck. Your friend, George M. Zimmerman ~Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum~ ” Angela Corey was the attorney leading the case against Zimmerman, who was charged with murder and manslaughter but acquitted after he claimed  . Si vis pacem para bellum is Latin for ”If you want peace, prepare for war.” Zimmerman spoke with Fox 35 Orlando, a local news station, and confirmed that he is auctioning off the gun he says was used to shoot and kill Martin. He told the news station that he has received death threats, both before and after posting the listing. ”What I’ve decided to do is not cower,” he told Fox 35 Orlando. ”I’m a free American. I can do what I want with my possessions.” The station also spoke with an attorney for Martin’s family, who said the Trayvon Martin Foundation is ”laser focused” on ending gun violence and ”has no comments on the actions of that person.” The auction was set to begin Thursday at 11 a. m. with a starting price of $5, 000. The site on which the gun was listed first, GunBroker. com, has made headlines in relation to the Martin case before. In 2012, shooting targets showing a hooded figure holding Skittles and iced tea  —   the items Martin was carrying the night he died  —   were reportedly advertised on the website. GunBroker. com told Reuters the ads were removed as soon as the company was aware of them."
"A   international convoy carrying desperately needed aid to Daraya, a besieged suburb of Damascus, was refused entry by Syrian government forces. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations said in a joint statement that the convoy was refused entry ”at the last government checkpoint, despite having obtained prior clearance by all parties that it could proceed.” The U. N. later released a statement saying that the mission was aborted ”because the convoy was refused entry, due to the medical and nutritional supplies on board.” It called the conditions imposed by government security personnel ”unacceptable” and ”contrary to earlier guarantees and approvals obtained by the Syrian government.” Daraya is ”probably the place in Syria where the greatest unmet needs exist,” Jan Egeland, special adviser to the U. N. special envoy for Syria, told reporters before the convoy was turned back. NPR’s Alison Meuse tells our Newscast unit that the convoy would have been ”the first since Daraya fell under siege in November 2012.” She says authorities only approved limited items, ”including vaccines and baby formula.” Here’s more from Alison: ”An activist on the ground says regime forces shelled the area where people had gathered to wait for the aid, killing a man and his grown son. Footage purports to show the mangled bodies being carried away against a backdrop of absolute destruction.” The Red Cross continues to push for access. ”Communities in Daraya are in need of everything, and it’s tragic that even the basics we were bringing today are being delayed unnecessarily. We must be able to provide aid impartially and safely,” Marianne Gasser, head of the ICRC in Syria, said in a statement. She adds: ”There must be minimum conditions for independent humanitarian action in Syria. Today those conditions were not met. We urge the responsible parties to grant us this access immediately.” The suburb’s population is ”between 4, 000 and 8, 000 people, down from over 70, 000 before the war,” The Associated Press reported, citing U. N. figures. As we have reported, multiple parties to the conflict in Syria are using siege tactics as a weapon of war. The U. N. says at least 255, 250 people are besieged across Syria in at least 18 locations."
"The old phrase ”walking on eggshells” actually gives the honest egg a bad rap. Eggs are domes, and domes are among the strongest structures in the natural world. Joe Palca and intern Madeline Sofia demonstrate the strength of the egg in this video installment of ”Joe’s Big Idea.” Watch and marvel as the eggs withstand a gallon of water, bowling balls and . .. Joe himself? Take a look to learn about what gives frail eggshells their strength! See more from Joe’s Big Idea."
"Cows are notoriously gassy creatures. Globally, more than a third of methane generated by human activity comes from livestock farming, a good deal of it in the form of bovine belching (yes, belching  —   not the other end). This is a serious problem, given that methane is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. Enter a Danish research team that is testing out one potential solution in the form of an unassuming herb: oregano. ”Oregano has essential oils with a mild antimicrobial called carvacrol, which can kill some of the bacteria in the cow’s rumen that produce methane,” explains Kai Grevsen, a senior researcher at Aarhus University who specializes in crop science. ”Of course, you can’t kill all of the bacteria, or the cow would die.”   Reining in cow burps is an issue that agricultural scientists have been working on for years, and there are some other promising solutions. For example, a team at Penn State has reported that adding the chemical   (3NOP) to cattle feed can reduce methane emissions by 30 percent. Other scientists are experimenting with different additives, feed combinations and even an   vaccine. Unfortunately, many of these remedies are problematic (or prohibited) for organic farmers. And  —   let’s face it  —   the same shoppers likely to consider cow emissions are probably the ones reaching for organic milk. That’s why oregano is so intriguing to researchers. One of the sponsors of Grevsen’s study, along with the Danish government, is Naturmælk, a Danish organic dairy hoping to make its products more  . This isn’t the first study to consider oregano for this purpose  —   in fact, it builds on earlier work by the lead researcher on the 3NOP study. (Dairy nutrition science is a fairly small world.) But while previous studies on oregano have been short and sweet, the Danish research, which kicked off earlier this year, will run through 2019. And it will include both a technical phase (think cows in little booths with lots of sensors) and a   phase on several organic dairy farms. Grevsen says another major difference is that his team will use ”Greek oregano,” which has a significantly higher concentration of   essential oil than oregano used in earlier research. They hope this oregano feed could reduce methane emissions by up to 25 percent. And, if it works, there’s (buttercream) icing on the cake: ”A cow loses a lot of energy in releasing all this methane,” explains Grevsen. ”By blocking the bacteria, the energy that doesn’t get lost can be used by the cow to produce more milk.” There is also the question of what this will taste like. Grevsen hasn’t tried any    —   yet  —   but he assures that those earlier studies found no hints of pizza or spaghetti in the final product. He says there is even some evidence that oregano changes the composition of fatty acids, creating a   milk. Whether that remains true with the ” ” oregano is yet to be  . One criticism of oregano is that, in past studies, it hasn’t presented as a particularly economical solution. But the willingness of Danes to spend money on organic dairy  —   30 percent of milk sold in Denmark  —   makes this country an obvious place to keep working on the problem. In fact, a major part of this study is focused on the plant side of things: how to produce the best oregano specimens and use them most strategically. ”We definitely think this could become a widespread solution, for both organic and conventional farmers,” Grevsen says. ”It just depends on finding an inexpensive way to produce the oregano.” And if recent headlines are any indication, there could soon be a reason for all Danish dairies to take methane more seriously. Climate change is no joke in a flat country surrounded by water, and the   Danish Council on Ethics is now suggesting that food be taxed according to its impact on the environment. It seems unlikely the proposal will go anywhere  —   for now. But some see it as writing on the wall. And if a little oregano is what it takes to keep the taxman out of the dairy aisle . .. then bring out the shakers."
"This was supposed to be Brazil’s time to shine. The country’s economy was surging a few years back, the 2014 World Cup fueled the national obsession with soccer and the 2016 Summer Olympics were on the horizon. But the Zika virus, a nasty recession and endemic corruption have demoralized many Brazilians and sent protesters into the streets. Now impeachment proceedings, which led to Thursday’s suspension of the president, Dilma Rousseff, have put an international spotlight on Brazil for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps the Olympics in August will cheer up Brazil. Or not. ”Things are getting uglier here every day,” Rivaldo, one of the country’s retired soccer heroes, wrote this week. ”I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio to stay in their country of origin. Your life will be in danger here.” Rewind to, say, 2010, and Brazil’s prospects seemed blindingly bright. The country had apparently surmounted chronic problems that dragged it down for decades and inspired a memorable insult: Brazil is the country of the future  —   and it always will be. At long last, it seemed the future had finally arrived. Political instability had receded into history in favor of a stable democracy. Rousseff embodied this change. A former militant who was arrested and tortured under a military dictatorship in the 1980s, she was twice elected, first in 2010 and again in 2014. On the economic front, Brazil’s bountiful agriculture exports made it a global darling, joining Russia, India and China as one of the BRIC countries reshaping the global economy. And the World Cup and the Olympics would be the showcases for all these triumphs. But the global recession hit Brazil hard a few years back and exposed its frailties. World demand for its agriculture and raw materials fell sharply and has yet to recover. Brazil’s economy contracted 3. 8 percent last year and is doing just as badly this year as the country suffers one of the worst recessions in generations. The decline has revived questions about whether South America’s largest nation has actually built a diversified, resilient, modern economy or if it just hitched a ride to the global commodities boom that may not be replicated anytime soon. When the economy was soaring, Brazilians rising into the middle class were willing to overlook corruption among the political and business elite. ”We have a society in which corruption is highly acceptable by the society as long as the economy flows in a positive manner,” Thiago de Aragao, a political analyst with Arko Consulting, told NPR last month. Now that many Brazilians are losing jobs and sliding back into poverty, they’re much less forgiving. The country’s   oil giant, Petrobras, is at the center of a massive corruption scandal that has tarnished many politicians. Almost 60 percent of Brazil’s Congress faces charges that range from bribery to homicide, according to Transparency Brazil, which monitors corruption in the country. Rousseff’s supporters have dwindled dramatically, but those still backing her argue it’s hypocritical for politicians facing serious accusations to sit in judgment of her. Take, for example, Michel Temer, the vice president who is now filling in as president for Rousseff while she is suspended. Yet he was fined for violating campaign finance laws and may not be able to run for elected office for eight years. The impeachment charges against Rousseff accuse her of fudging budget numbers to make the country’s finances look better when she went on a spending spree while running for   in 2014. When the Olympics open Aug. 5, Rousseff may still be fighting for political survival rather than basking in the glow of a global audience. Host countries often lose money on the Olympics, but politicians love the spectacle and the temporary ”feel good” effect it usually generates. But even that may be a challenge for Brazil. Olympic ticket sales are lagging. International visitors may be deterred by the Zika virus, widespread street crime and the drumbeat of negative news. For many Brazilians, it’s hard enough finding cash for groceries, let alone Olympic tickets. When the country was awarded the games in 2009, ”It was a very optimistic moment for Brazil, and I think the Olympics were another message that we were being accepted by the developed world,” Marcelo Barreto, a famous TV sports journalist in Brazil, told NPR earlier this year. Today, ”I think there is a feeling of disappointment in the air, with Brazil itself. People are concerned with more pressing, urgent things right now.” As NPR’s Lulu   reported from Brazil, there’s talk of moving up Rousseff’s trial so it doesn’t coincide with the Olympics. That’s hardly the choice Brazil expected to confront as it prepares for a global celebration in Rio. Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1,  "
"After debating through the night, Brazil’s Senate voted early Thursday 55 to 22 to try President Dilma Rousseff on charges of manipulating the budget. The vote automatically suspends her from office. The Senate had been widely expected to vote for Rousseff to be tried in impeachment proceedings. The final tally is a resounding defeat for Rousseff, easily surpassing the simple majority (41 votes) required. In fact,   of the body voted for Rousseff to be tried. During trial proceedings, another   vote by the Senate would convict Rousseff and permanently remove her from the country’s presidency. The Senate’s debate Wednesday night was a marathon  —   lasting more than 20 hours. ”  legislators gathered in the early hours of the morning to cast their electronic vote,” NPR’s Lulu   reports. ”The tone of the Senate debate was markedly different from that of the lower house last month, where congressmen cheered and cried after casting their ballot. In the Senate there was only a smattering of applause after the results were announced. In the speeches throughout the night, many senators spoke about the economy and the legitimacy of the charges against Rousseff.” But, Lulu points out, many of Rousseff’s critics and opponents are themselves caught up in scandal or suspicion. ”Almost 60 percent of the Senate is under some form of criminal investigation,” she notes. ”There were surreal moments when former President, now Sen. Fernando Collor took to the podium to discuss his own impeachment process in 1992. Some of the senators speaking out most vociferously against Rousseff are themselves under indictment  —   like Ivo Cassol from Rondonia, who has been found guilty by the Supreme Court but is still in office while he appeals his jail sentence on technicalities.” The charges against Rousseff aren’t   or   she’s accused on fairly technical grounds of concealing the extent of the country’s budgetary shortfall. But there’s more at play than the stated charges, Lulu says: Rousseff is deeply unpopular, with only 10 percent approval ratings, and Brazil’s economy is suffering. Rousseff’s supporters, meanwhile, call the impeachment proceedings a ”coup.” Speaking after the Senate vote, Rousseff herself called the impeachment process ”fraudulent”  —   and said it was even more painful than the torture she experienced at the hands of Brazil’s military dictatorship. ”I may have committed errors but I never committed crimes,” Rousseff said, according to The Associated Press. ”It’s the most brutal of things that can happen to a human being  —   to be condemned for a crime you didn’t commit. There is no more devastating injustice.” Vice President Michel Temer will serve as acting president as Rousseff is tried and will continue if Rousseff is permanently removed from office. The   politician’s assumption of the office ends 13 years of the left’s hold on the presidency. As we reported Wednesday, Temer is among the politicians accused of profiting from a massive corruption scandal involving the state oil company Petrobras. The scandal has also touched Rousseff, at least indirectly, but was not officially included in her impeachment charges. The Senate now has 180 days to try Rousseff. If she is convicted, she would be formally impeached (in Brazil, the term is used for a conviction, not simply a suspension from office). Lulu reports some opposition lawmakers are calling for Rousseff to resign, to avoid a lengthy trial  —   but Rousseff has vowed to fight it out. On All Things Considered on Wednesday, Lulu said she has been hearing there are plans to move the trial forward so it doesn’t cast a shadow over the Rio Olympics this August. Still, some are concerned the nation’s political upheaval will impact the games. Have more questions about Brazil’s political crisis? The   broke it down here."
"A few short years ago, Brazil was soaring. Its economy was on the upswing and the country was preparing for the international spotlight with the 2014 World Cup. But now, as it gets ready to host the Summer Olympics this August, Brazil is mired in political crisis and economic turmoil, and is plagued by the worsening Zika virus. Over the weekend, more than a million demonstrators hit the streets to protest against the government and demand the president’s resignation. What happened? Political Crisis, There are several things happening at once. President Dilma Rousseff is facing several attempts to remove her from office. There are impeachment proceedings over her handling of the economy and a motion to annul the 2014 elections over illegal campaign contributions. She has record low approval ratings and very little political support. Separately, her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as ”Lula” in Brazil, is the subject of two separate corruption investigations that link him to a massive scandal at the state oil company, Petrobras. Silva, who served as president from 2003 to 2011, was incredibly popular and is credited with transforming Brazil by lifting millions out of abject poverty with generous social programs. State prosecutors last week asked for his arrest. This set off a political firestorm, with some commentators saying the country could be headed for a political ”civil war.” Silva says he is the victim of a political witch hunt. His supporters have said the   forces of the country are attempting a ”coup.” Rousseff has stood by Silva, and the two are inextricably linked. His troubles make her political survival unlikely, though she has said she refuses to resign. Massive protests against her government took place across the country over the weekend. Economy In Free Fall, Brazil’s economy, once a darling among the world’s emerging markets, is now in a free fall. It contracted by 3. 8 percent in 2015. Economists say it’s the worst recession here for 100 years  —   and possibly ever. The reasons for the downturn are many. Some are not of Brazil’s making. There is less demand from China the past couple of years for Brazil’s commodities, like iron ore, sugar and soybeans. The price of oil is low, denting the budget of   states like Rio de Janeiro, which get a big portion of their revenue from the energy sector. But critics say Rousseff has badly mismanaged the economy, spending lavishly on social programs, even in the downturn. There are also structural problems that have made it difficult to address the economic ill winds. Add to that the corruption scandal that has affected Petrobras, the state oil company, and the construction sector  —   and you have a perfect economic storm. The result has been called stagflation. Brazil’s economy isn’t growing, but prices are rising at nearly 11 percent a year. Corruption, Brazil is very corrupt, but until recently, nothing much was done about it. Last year, a small group of federal prosecutors in the state of Parana, in southern Brazil, rocked the most powerful forces in the country by opening an investigation called ” ” or car wash. They uncovered and are prosecuting a kickback scheme at Petrobras. The way it worked was that construction companies would   Petrobras, and then would funnel the extra money into campaign slush funds and political bribes. The web of corruption the prosecutors uncovered has touched Brazil’s highest levels of corporate and political power. The Odebrecht conglomerate, Latin America’s biggest company, is based in Brazil, and its head was just sentenced to 19 years in prison for involvement in the kickback scheme. The leader of Brazil’s lower house of Congress has also been implicated, as have many other senior business and political figures  —   most notably, Silva. Many observers say the investigation is fundamentally changing the country. That might be overstating the case. But it certainly isn’t business as usual in Brazil anymore. Olympic Anxieties, Ask almost anyone on the streets of Rio de Janeiro how they feel about the Summer Olympic Games and you’ll get a similar answer: They are not happy. So far, despite promised benefits, all that residents have gotten is a big headache. A subway extension that was meant to be ready for the Games probably won’t be. Key waterways that were to be cleaned up haven’t been. Security has deteriorated. Meanwhile, because of budget cuts, Brazil’s hospitals are in crisis at a time when it’s more important than ever to battle the Zika virus, with its suspected link to babies being born with brain damage. Brazil pulled off the 2014 World Cup, and it will pull off the Olympics, too. But many here are wondering what it’s all for. In many ways, Brazil may serve as a cautionary tale to countries and cities who may want to take on   events  —   at great cost and for uncertain benefit."
"Soccer Without Borders uses the world’s most popular game to reach underserved youth  —   kids who’ve experienced trauma, refugee kids  —   and help them heal and succeed in life. Based in the Boston area, the organization operates programs in four U. S. cities  —   Baltimore, Boston, Oakland and Greeley, Colo.  —   and in Kampala, Uganda, and Granada, Nicaragua, staffed by a mix of refugees. locals and Americans. This month, the nonprofit won the Barry  Marie Lipman Family Prize, which comes with a $250, 000 grant and executive training and support from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Mary McVeigh, a former professional soccer player and college coach, helped start the nonprofit in 2006 with Ben Gucciardi, who played soccer at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania when McVeigh helped coach the women’s team. She spoke with NPR by phone last week from New York City, where leaders of Soccer Without Borders gathered for an annual meeting and celebration of its 10th anniversary. What does soccer teach the kids you work with? Sport is such an interesting tool. In particular, soccer. In a   game, you have the ball for three or four minutes at most. You spend the majority of your time working with others and reading others and trying to predict what’s going to happen. There are many inherent lessons in that. The sport can serve as a living classroom for these kids to learn about overcoming failure, how to react to disappointment, celebrating success and respecting adversaries. You’re also meeting kids where they are. That’s a huge value in sports: Kids like it. They’re invested in it, right into the teenage years. Can you give an example of someone who’s been helped by your program? One woman, a refugee from the Karen ethnic group, a group persecuted in Burma, grew up in a refugee camp in Thailand. She came to the United States in 2010 and resettled in Oakland. She was really shy and reserved. She clearly had experienced trauma. So it was just amazing to see how month after month she came out of her shell. Soccer not only gave her a community of friendship across cultures but also brought her healing. She was elected captain of her [high school] team her senior year. She went on to Merritt College where she is captain of the soccer team, and she’s the head coach for our   girls team. These kids have this coach who understands what they’re going through, who’s been through it herself. What age kids do you work with? Our sweet spot is middle school and high school. That’s an age where kids have a lot of choices. Sports can be such a powerful source of hope and building confidence, to say, ”I do have a potential to be whatever I want to be.” In the United States, you’re working with refugees and asylum seekers? It’s also the focus in our program in Uganda. The refugees there are coming from Burundi, Congo, Rwanda. You say sports is just a vehicle for developing broader skills in youth. How do you accomplish that in a developing country, such as Uganda?  We have a youth center there. So that gives us a physical space. Between language barriers and financial barriers there’s many kids in the refugee community that are out of school. We partner with the Xavier Project [another nonprofit] to try to get school scholarships [for the kids]. But in the meantime we provide everyday English classes first thing in the morning, followed classes in anything from nutrition to world geography. And then they play soccer. You once were in eight countries, and now three? We learned that to be effective with kids who’ve experienced trauma, who are in transition, you have to have consistency. It has to be the same adult in their life over time. Has to be a place that they trust, where they feel safe. Once we had that realization, you start to really see that less is more. Instead of just being everywhere all the time, we can really invest in consistent, sustainable programs. We planted a lot of seeds in the first few years and [concentrated on] those that really took root. Your work with refugees is especially timely in this unprecedented period of people fleeing across borders to escape conflict. Our main focus right now is how this displacement crisis is affecting kids. Kids have no control over it. They have no say in whether they end up in the United States or Uganda or wherever. We have to show them kindness and compassion, and soccer can help do that."
"The rules of cricket are famously, almost comically, complicated. Take this subsection of Law 42. 6. 1 in the International Cricket Council’s rules and regulations on Standard Test Match Playing Conditions: ”In the event of a bowler bowling more than two fast   deliveries in an over as defined in Clause 42. 6. 1 (b) above, the umpire at the bowlers end shall call and signal no ball on each occasion. A differential signal shall be used to signify a fast short pitched delivery. The umpire shall call and signal ’no ball’ and then tap the head with the other hand.” Helpfully, for those not steeped in the finer points of the game, the Marylebone Cricket Club has released what it calls the ”first ever Laws of Cricket app.” The app, which users of iOS and Android devices can download for free, uses videos, quizzes and animations narrated by actor and writer Stephen Fry to explain the mechanics. MCC says it has maintained custodianship of the laws of cricket since the club’s founding in 1787. Its website states: ”Although the International Cricket Council is the global Governing Body for cricket, it still relies on MCC to write and interpret the Laws of Cricket, which are applicable from the village green to the Test arena.” There are 42 such laws. And on the videos, Fry acknowledges their density with affection: ”Of course, this being cricket, there are further delightful complications . .. but never fear, all mental anguish will clear with a little quiet meditation and reference to law 29 in the blue book.” That’s during a lesson on when a batsman or woman is out of his ground. The answer is ”a bit of a headache,” the narrator cheerfully explains. The app is meant to bring new fans to the game. ”As Guardians of the Laws and Spirit of Cricket, it is vital that MCC embraces the new audiences that the sport has gained in recent years and makes the Laws of the game even more accessible,” the club’s chief executive, Derek Brewer, says in a statement. The app also features videos of 18 different umpire signals. For example, here’s the sign for ”Leg Bye,” meaning the ball has hit the person of the batsman or woman so any runs completed are counted as ”leg byes.” And here’s how an umpire signals a fielding restriction known as a ”Power Play.” Still confused? You have plenty of company, including this blogger. This is how one teatowel  —   apparently a common sight in the U. K.  —   explains cricket to a foreign visitor, according to ESPN: ”You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. ”When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. ”When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!”"
"Sometimes a career in television is launched seemingly out of nowhere. That’s how it was for Gary Cole. The actor currently appears in the HBO series Veep, but his first major TV role was in the 1984 miniseries called Fatal Vision. Cole tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies that landing the part in Fatal Vision when he was 27 was ”very  .” He estimates that he got the role only after eight other actors turned it down, adding, ”It was all like a dream. It didn’t make any sense to me, how I got there, but sometimes that’s the way that it goes.” Early in his career, Cole worked as a stage actor in Chicago. He says Fatal Vision introduced him to working in front of the camera, a skill that led to roles in films like Talladega Nights and the cult hit Office Space. On Veep, Cole plays a socially inept political consultant whose job is to measure the public’s political perceptions. ”He’s kind of a math machine,” Cole says. ”When he was first described to me by [show creator] Armando Iannucci . .. he basically said he was a highly, highly intelligent person with virtually no people skills whatsoever.” On how much improvisation goes into episodes of Veep, A lot of the improvising is actually done in our rehearsal periods, which there is a considerable amount of. . .. We spend a lot of time rehearsing, even on days when there’s not even shooting. Especially before a season, there’s a whole week spent just sitting around a table. Usually what will happen is the writers will present their first draft, we will read the draft around a table, then we will get up and we will take certain scenes and redo them  —   but basically throwing the scripts to the side and kind of improvising whatever the action of that scene that we just read is. Then the writers observe that and sometimes we stop and start and they suggest other things, and from that the writers go away and come back with a whole other draft, and that process can actually take place again. So the show is essentially a scripted show, but . .. a lot of the material comes out of improvisation. It’s not to say that there isn’t improvisation in front of the camera  —   there is. We do . .. ”one for fun” after we get a take that everybody is satisfied with. So there is a loose and spontaneous feeling in front of the camera as well, and there is improvisation used, but it’s used around a pretty firm script. On profanity on Veep  There is a lot of crafting of the   that goes on in the Veep writers room and how it can be executed. It really is a contest in terms of who can come up with maybe the most vulgar line of the day, you know, and they take it seriously. We’re the benefactors of that. On how Office Space gained a cult following, despite flopping in theaters  We all recognized that Mike Judge was a very gifted writer and director and an animator as well. And the way he shot the movie was so specific: Down to the minutest of details, he knew what he wanted seemingly all the time. So we all knew that what we were working on was really good . .. but no one had any idea that it would have a [following]. You never know if a movie will break through or if it will have any kind of lasting impact, but that’s what happened. . .. It didn’t do well in the theaters, so we thought, ”Well, this movie died.” . .. But a year after that, I was doing a play in Chicago, so I was on the street a lot  —   I was walking to and from the theater . .. and people start shouting out, ”Did you get the TPS reports?” ”Oh yeah!” without even stopping me, just saying the lines to me. I was dumbfounded. I thought this movie tanked! What happened? That was right at the time when DVDs had started to peak, and I think the way people consumed movies changed. In other words, a movie wasn’t necessarily a failure if it didn’t do well in the theater it could have a life after that. Office Space is one of those films. Had it cost a great deal of money to make, it would’ve been considered more of a flop but the truth is it just wasn’t that expensive of a movie. It lasted about a month or so, but after that it just kind of took on a life of its own. On seeing a play in college that made him want to pursue acting  I remember vividly one production  —   going downtown to Chicago to a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which starred a guy named Jack Wallace, who wound up doing a lot of work with David Mamet. . .. I was always a huge fan of that book and of that play because to me, that’s almost the perfect play. It has these great themes in it and it has a rousing, really impactful ending and all of that. But I was mesmerized by him and all the other performers, and realized how tight they were and nothing was forced and how it was directed well and nothing looked amateurish. And we were all sitting forward in our seats  —   we could barely take a breath we were so enthralled by it. And so that stuck with me and I always wanted to try to get there.   On casting directors mixing him up on paper with Diff’rent Strokes child actor Gary Coleman  After Fatal Vision wrapped, here I was in Los Angeles all of a sudden going into casting offices. Now if you remember in 1984, that was I think the height of Gary Coleman on Diff’rent Strokes, and on the same network that the miniseries was on  —   on NBC. So for the first year I was in Hollywood, when a casting director opened the door to the director and the producer sitting there, I was invariably introduced as: ”Gentleman, I would like you to meet Gary Coleman. Oh, I’m sorry! Gary Cole.” It was a nice icebreaker for a few minutes."
"Gaby remembers the first time she threw up while taking a test. It was a few months ago, early on in her freshman year at Marblehead High School in Massachusetts. She was sitting in biology class when, she recalls, she got so anxious that she excused herself to the bathroom. Gaby typically starts her day at 6 a. m. and gets to school at 7:15. On Mondays she runs a government club called Junior State of America. She’s also running for class president, sits on the women’s rights awareness group, and helps out at the school’s rotary club. But despite all these activities, she still worries about failure, getting into a good college and making family members proud. And these have led to chronic stomach pain that she says her doctor has linked to stress. Since 2013 teenagers have reported stress levels that exceed those of adults. And traditionally, parents have underestimated what their kids are feeling. This became apparent in 2009 when a Stress in America survey showed that parents had no idea the level of stress their kids were under. But parents are finally starting to notice. Almost half of parents reported moderate to extreme stress in their kids, says Dr. Hansa Bhargava who oversaw WebMD’s recent survey. These results align much closer to how teens report their own stress. So what changed? Experts say that the increase of public attention focused on stress and the health hazards it can cause  —   suicide, depression and anxiety  —   may have pushed parents to take their kid’s stress more seriously. ”So there’s a huge push in terms of suicide prevention and just treatment overall,” says Dr. Mary Alvord, a psychologist who specializes in anxiety and depression among children and teenagers. But not all stress is bad. In fact, some stress can help increase motivation and focus, Alvord says. Gaby, who’s finishing up her freshman year of high school, agrees. Without stress, she says, she might be failing some of her classes. ”I don’t know how I could be as good as I am in school if I didn’t have stress,” she says. ”If I didn’t stress I wouldn’t learn.” So for students who are teetering on the edge of extreme and   stress, how can they find a happy medium? Part of it is speaking to their parents, according to Bhargava. Opening up a dialogue about stress and being overwhelmed helps train students to be able to do the same thing with their teachers, she says. ”If they’re not getting those communication skills at home or feeling that grounding and having that trust at home,” she says, ”then they’re probably going to deal with school stress a lot worse.” And when students develop those communication skills, they can start to advocate for themselves, says Alvord. ”There are kids who have some needs, not special needs but need some accommodation,” Alvord says. ”And for those who can advocate for themselves and say, ’This is what I need,’ teachers are going to listen to them.” Editor’s Note 4:15 p. m. May 13, 2016: This story has been changed to remove the last name of Gaby, to protect her privacy. "
"Courtney Griffin was addicted to heroin and ready to get help. She packed up her things, and her mom drove her to a residential treatment facility about an hour from their home in New Hampshire. There was a bed waiting for her. But unfortunately, that’s not where her story ends. Ninety minutes after they arrived, Pamela Griffin said, her daughter was back in the waiting room, shaking her head. Their health insurance company declined to cover the treatment. ”They declined, saying that it wasn’t a matter of life and death,” said Pamela Griffin, recounting the rejection. ”And Courtney said, ’This drug is going to kill me.’ She knew.” Without insurance, the treatment would cost $12, 000. They left not knowing what to do. The hope of treatment and the letdown of not being able to get it were devastating for the Griffin family. Less than two months later, Courtney Griffin was dead. ”When you’re the parent of an addict, you’re always afraid of the call,” said Doug Griffin, who signs his emails ”Courtney’s Dad.” He said, ”you always know the call is going to come,” but when it did, he was shocked anyway. When the phone rang, Doug Griffin was at home, full of hope, looking at pictures of Courtney during happier times. With the help of a local police officer and after some time on a waiting list, Courtney was supposed to start treatment the next day. Instead, Courtney died of an overdose of heroin and fentanyl. She was 20 years old and alone. Her story points to challenges many encounter  —   not enough capacity in treatment programs, and insurance that doesn’t cover the treatment people want or need. And those delays can be deadly, said Tym Rourke, chairman of the New Hampshire governor’s commission on substance misuse. He said wait lists and insurance denials send the wrong kind of message to people who desperately need help. ”Then the belief is, ’Nobody can help me, and I’m trapped, and nobody can help me,’ and therefore they use again, and with this particular epidemic around opiates, there’s no safe use,” said Rourke. ”The next time somebody uses could kill them.” The Wait, There is no good   tracking of treatment availability or statistics about insurance denials, but one recent study found only about 20 percent of people with moderate to severe drug use disorder received treatment. And when you talk to the family members of people struggling with addiction, you’ll hear countless stories like Courtney Griffin’s. One issue is that when most people think of treatment, they think of a residential program, 28 days, abstinence and 12 steps. And there simply aren’t enough beds available to help all the people that want that kind of treatment. Many don’t realize there are other options, like   treatment. But there aren’t enough doctors who do that, either. So there are wait lists for all kinds of treatment. In 2012, Dean Lemire had been using heroin for about 18 months when he decided he needed to stop. ”The heroin wasn’t doing what I wanted it to,” said Lemire. ”When I wasn’t high, I was suicidal.” But when he went to a   treatment center, Lemire was put on a waiting list. ”I had to call every day, three times a day for three weeks,” said Lemire. ”By the end of     weeks, I gave up.” He said he downed a fifth of cheap Canadian whisky from a plastic bottle and got in his car looking for heroin. ”I got in three car accidents, totaled my car. On the third, woke up in a jail cell,” said Lemire. ”And when I finally got back home I called the rehab, and I guess they deemed me serious enough to require their services, so they bumped me up and got me in.” It worked. Lemire is in   recovery now. He’s married with a young child, and he’s the substance misuse educator at Goodwin Community Health in New Hampshire, working to help others like himself. But Lemire said the situation hasn’t improved. ”That wait period, you know, has not gotten better,” said Lemire. ”It’s actually gotten worse.” The problem with these wait lists, as Dean Lemire’s experience makes very clear, is that moment of clarity when someone who is in the grip of these drugs reaches out for help can be fleeting. And the system as it exists now isn’t always there with a warm embrace. Addressing The Problem, Elected officials are now racing to address the obstacles to treatment. States are holding special legislative sessions. The U. S. Senate has already passed a bipartisan package of bills to deal with the opioid crisis, and the House is taking up 18 different bills this week related to opioids. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just came out with new guidelines for doctors prescribing these drugs. There is also a White House task force on insurance coverage for drug treatment. In the inside pocket of his suit coat, Michael Botticelli, the director of National Drug Control Policy (aka the White House ”drug czar”) carries a small laminated card with a smiling picture of Courtney Griffin. It’s a prayer card from her funeral. Doug Griffin gave it to Botticelli when he met him briefly to talk about addiction issues. Botticelli carries a few of them daily to remind him of the more than 120 people each day, on average, who die from overdoses in America. ”I take them out of my pocket at night and say, ’What did you do today, to make a difference?’ ” said Botticelli. ”There are real people behind these numbers.” He said access to treatment is a very real problem he hears about regularly. ”Too few people are asking for help,” said Botticelli, who himself is in   recovery. ”And it’s really tragic that people aren’t able to get care and are often dying when they are on waiting lists. We know addiction is a disease. Every other disease, you get treatment on demand, and that’s what we want.” What The Presidential Candidates Are Saying, When the candidates started going into New Hampshire last year, they were surprised by how much they heard about this issue. They quickly started incorporating it into their campaigns, talking about personal experiences, friends or family members they had lost to addiction. Donald Trump says he’ll get people as much help as he can, but he doesn’t get more specific than that. He says the border wall he wants to build will also keep drugs from coming in from Mexico. He is calling for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a law that has expanded access to drug treatment to many who didn’t have coverage for it before, but he insists he will replace it with something ”terrific.” Hillary Clinton released a plan last year that has a lot of overlap with what the White House and Congress are working on now. It called for enforcing insurance parity so mental health is treated the same as other medical conditions  —   making treatment more available, while emphasizing treatment and rehabilitation over prison. She has held multiple town   forums on addiction issues. Bernie Sanders regularly says addiction should be treated as a disease and not a moral failing. ”When somebody is addicted and seeking help, they should not have to wait three, four months in order to get that help,” Sanders said in a debate moderated by ABC News earlier this year. ”They should be able to walk in the door tomorrow and get a variety of treatments that work for them.” This, he says, is one of the reasons he advocates for a Medicare for all plan. States where this has been a big problem  —   like New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia  —   are likely to be swing states targeted in the general election. It looks to be a campaign issue up and down the ballot, too. Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire all have competitive Senate races. In New Hampshire, two of the candidates for governor kicked off their campaigns at the same drug treatment center."
"One aspect of the downfall of Theranos is the   company’s leveraging of the    ethos to promote its product. Theranos provides consumers with a menu of more than 200   diagnostic blood tests for an array of drugs, ailments, deficiencies and diseases. It’s legal to order blood tests without consulting a doctor in about two dozen states. But should you? Theranos and some other medical labs say yes, while critics argue that’s a recipe for disaster. Here’s Theranos’ founder, Elizabeth Holmes, at TEDMED in 2014, lacing her stemwinder of a presentation with the ideals of patient  . ”My own life’s work in building Theranos is to redefine the paradigm of diagnosis away from one in which people have to present with a symptom in order to get access to information about their bodies,” she said, ”to one in which every person, no matter how much money they have or where they live, has access to actionable health information at the time it matters.” She also pitched the crowd an absurdity: ”(T) oday, I can go buy a deadly, exotic animal, a venomous viper, a military truck or armored vehicle. I can buy a tank . .. but I can’t order a   pregnancy test, or an allergy test. Because that could be dangerous.” An inspection by the federal government last year found that deficiencies at Theranos’ California lab could ”pose immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.” The company is currently waiting for the Centers for Medicare  Medicaid Services to render a final decision on whether it will lose its license to operate its labs. But, for now, Theranos still does tests at its wellness centers in dozens of Walgreens and other locations in Arizona, plus one in California. Theranos isn’t the only company marketing blood testing to the worried well. WellnessFX has a partnership with the longtime medical laboratory Quest Diagnostics consumers in all but seven states can use the WellnessFX website to order their own ”biomarker” tests online, along with more traditional tests of thyroid function, blood sugar or testosterone. Like Theranos, WellnessFX has baked into its marketing campaign the ideals of patient access and independence. ”A lot of the data that can be used to help understand what is best for the patient  —   historically, that’s always been the clipboard that’s been turned around facing the physician . .. and never really been shown to the patient,” said WellnessFX   Brent Vaughan in a 2013 promotional video. ”Because there’s always been this belief that patients can’t understand  —   or they don’t want to understand  —   this information.” A Growing Trend, Last year, LabCorp, a behemoth in medical diagnostics, dipped a toe in the waters of DIY diagnostics by allowing Arizona consumers to order their own tests. LabCorp CEO David King said in an email that the company’s market research shows a ”significant percentage” of consumers are interested in initiating tests on their own. The company plans to expand the service into other states later this year. ”As consumers bear more of the cost of health care out of pocket, they should be, and are becoming, increasingly engaged in managing their health care,” King said. ”We absolutely support them in doing so.” Last April, when the state of Arizona enacted its law  —   pushed by Theranos  —   allowing consumers to order their own tests, the bill passed in the House   and the Senate  . Sen. Steve Farley, a Democrat, was one of the ”no” votes. He isn’t surprised at Theranos’ unraveling. ”Really, what we were being asked to do in that bill was to allow our constituents in Arizona to become beta testers, and use their own bodies as the tool of that beta testing,” he said. (Theranos declined to comment.) The debate over the wisdom of cutting doctors out of the diagnostic loop has been going on for years. Some academics have been vocal about their reservations. Dr. Norman Paradis, an emergency medicine physician and professor of medicine at Dartmouth who has consulted for diagnostic startups, calls the model of offering a wide assortment of tests  —   as Theranos does  —   a recipe for disaster. ”If you simply run medical tests in large numbers of people who don’t have the signs and symptoms of a certain disease, then many of the results you get will be false positives,” he explained. And those patients could then wind up going farther down the rabbit hole of more invasive, potentially harmful tests and treatment. Paradis said getting medical students and even medical residents to appropriately order tests is difficult enough. ”So if it’s difficult for them, it’s even harder for the layperson.” Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, an internist at the Dartmouth Institute and author of several books on the problems of overdiagnosis, thinks getting your own blood tests is part of the larger negative trend  —   testing people who aren’t really sick. ”I’m afraid there’s a growing sense that the path to health is through testing,” he said. ”But you don’t test yourself to health. Health is much more about how you move, what you eat and finding joy and purpose in life.” WellnessFX has taken concerns about false positives into account, said Dr. Murdoc Khalegi, an emergency medicine physician, and the company’s medical director. He said the company works with physicians to make sure the tests it offers are not susceptible to inaccurate results. ”We work very hard to [offer tests] that are something a consumer can understand, like having elevated cholesterol or blood sugar,” Khalegi said. ”We encourage all of our results to be shared with physicians. But to restrict people from even having that information, which is the way it currently exists in some settings, would be unfortunate. People should be aware if they have certain health risks.” The Center for Democracy  Technology’s Michelle De Mooy, who has researched the issues of privacy and transparency in health care, dismisses the argument that patients can’t make knowledgeable decisions about when to get tested. She said the issue of false positives is ”pretty reasonably addressed” with warnings. Both she and Khalegi point to the high cost of health care as one reason to give patients more direct access to diagnostic tests. It’s often cheaper for the patient, they say. Having a health insurance policy with a high deductible, or having a lack of access to transportation or child care are reasons people might choose to get tests in the most efficient, least   way possible. ”The economic disparity question is one that the health care establishment tends to gloss over,” De Mooy said. One Patient’s Story, Amy, who lives in Santa Cruz, Calif. and asked us not to use her last name, to protect her medical privacy, explained why she was motivated to go online last year to order her own test for   anemia, though she was feeling healthy. The U. S. Preventive Services Task Force makes no recommendation one way or the other regarding testing for   anemia among people who are asymptomatic. But Amy is vegan, and some of her friends persuaded her to seek out testing because cutting meat and dairy from your diet can increase the risk of   anemia. And because of her health policy’s high deductible and what she said were bad experiences with insurance companies, Amy didn’t want to go through her health insurer. Her iron level came back low, according to the test result. But rather than start taking an iron supplement, make changes to her diet or take other action on her own, she made an appointment with a doctor, where she mentioned she’d donated blood a week before the test. Amy hadn’t known this would deplete her iron. And because her other numbers were fine, the doctor told her not to worry. The whole experience  —   the blood draw notwithstanding  —   was painless and reassuring, Amy said. ”I liked being able to answer my own questions and to go to the site and pick which things I was curious about. I like being able to do it independently, since I don’t have a regular general practitioner I go to.” In some ways Amy fits the profile that both advocates and opponents of   point to: She had no symptoms of anemia and got a test that wound up being unnecessary. But she also felt she had a psychological need to know, and a financial need to pursue the answer cheaply. Murdoc, of WellnessFX, said that while he defers to official guidelines on medical testing, Amy probably did the right thing in checking for anemia. ”It’s a very cheap blood test,” he said. This story was produced by KQED’s daily health and technology blog, Future of You. The blog’s host and editor is Jon Brooks."
"Not long after publishing his first book, London designer Thomas Thwaites found himself with no real job and in relationship trouble. His book, The Toaster Project  —   about his attempt to build a toaster from scratch  —   was a huge success, but he found the whole business of being a celebrity thinker a hard act to follow. To be human is to worry about getting by, doing better, finding love and accepting the march of mortality. Thwaites decided to try to escape the burden of being human  —   and he would do it by becoming a goat. ”Human life can just be so difficult,” he tells NPR’s Scott Simon. ”And you look at a goat and it’s just, you know, it’s free. It doesn’t have any concerns.” Thwaites’ new book is GoatMan: How I Took A Holiday From Being Human. On how he was able to walk on all fours, I made a few prototypes myself of this kind of walking frame, but found it actually to be much more difficult to get any kind of vaguely comfortable quadruped walking exoskeleton. And so [I] decided I needed a bit of help and I ended up spending a weird afternoon in the dissection room at the Royal Veterinary College to sort of examine the differences and similarities between a human anatomy and a goat’s anatomy. On eating like a goat  Obviously, goats eat grass. And any human can eat grass, but the trouble is we can’t digest it. So I decided I would have to make myself like an artificial rumen. And the rumen is the kind of . .. bit of a grazing animal that contains all this weird bacteria which actually lets these animals break down the tough fibers in grass and digest them. . .. And I kind of thought maybe I could infect my own gut with the bacteria from a goat’s rumen  —   that turned out to be a bit of a  . However, I did track down this lab where they use artificial rumens. . .. And they were very kind and sort of, you know, encouraging until I said, ”Yes, and then I’m gonna eat the product of this rumen over the space of six days and survive like a goat in the Alps.” And suddenly they got extremely worried because they got concerned that I would give myself like a   gut, parasitic infection. And that didn’t sound like a nice thing to me. . .. I made this kind of bag that I had strapped to my body, and I could take a mouthful of grass and then chew it up and then spit it into this bag. And this bag . .. was intended to be my artificial rumen with the goat bacteria in it. But I just really didn’t fancy getting diarrhea for the rest of my life so I ended up having to pressure [cook] what I spat into this bag and made a weird delicious, disgusting grass stew. On thinking like a goat, I had visited a kind of goat behavioral psychologist  —   an ethologist  —   and discussed, like, OK, I want to get into the mind of a goat. Because the whole point of the project wasn’t ever to kind of make a costume which made me look like a goat it was like a reverse costume  —   it was to make a thing that kind of made me feel like a goat. And he said, ”Well, we think that goats don’t understand language, obviously, and we also think that they don’t have episodic memories,” that they can’t project themselves into the future, you know, and build scenarios or kind of remember specific kind of stories from their past. So that was my goal, to switch off those parts of my brain. And to do that I had read about this technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation. They get basically a huge, very powerful electromagnet and put it next to your skull. The magnetic field that is generated kind of penetrates into your brain and disrupts the functioning of the synapses in that kind of bit of the brain. I thought, That sounds like a good way of turning off my ability to speak. . .. So there’s this particular patch of your cortex which is very important in your ability to speak and [a neuroscientist] put his sort of huge magnet there and switched it on. And, you know, I was reciting this nursery rhyme which I know very well  —   in fact, ”Three Billy Goats Gruff”  —   and he switched on this magnet and then all of a sudden I just couldn’t kind of get the words out. On how his beard helped him befriend a female goat, One of the things about billy goats is their beard, and they actually try and make their beard as smelly as possible because that’s a sort of attractive thing to female goats. And so I think this goat was sort of trying to work out what type of goat was I? . .. Weirdly, I think we became friends in the platonic sense. I mean, it’s kind of impossible as a human to not tell stories about things. Everything becomes a story, I think, if you’re a human, so maybe I’m putting my own vision, my own slant on it. But I did think that, yeah, I’ve got this connection with this goat."
"Donald Trump has energized millions of Republican voters this primary season with his tough talk of building a wall along the Mexico border and deporting people who entered the country illegally. But, that same language could have an unintentional side effect in a general election and energize legal immigrants to become citizens before November so they can vote against Trump. Jose Lovos moved to the U. S. legally 20 years ago from the   country of El Salvador. These days, he lives in Virginia with his wife and three kids. Lovos was eligible to become a citizen years ago, but he said he never got around to filling out the paperwork. ”I wasn’t very interested before in becoming a citizen because we weren’t too worried about anything,” Lovos said in Spanish outside a hotel in Washington D. C. where he works as a maintenance man. ”But now there’s all this rhetoric about deporting 11 million undocumented people.” So on Christmas Day, he and his wife decided it was time to become citizens. ”We want to help elect a good president for people in this country who don’t have a voice or a vote,” said Lovos. ”I want to become a citizen to help other people, because other people have done it for me in the past. Citizens are the people who have power to make change.” Lovos said the primary reason he’s becoming a citizen now is so that he can vote in November against Trump. ”I don’t understand why [Trump] has to generalize. Candidates can’t say all immigrants are bad or that we have to deport them all,” said Lovos. There are an estimated 8. 8 million people like Lovos in the country  —   legal permanent residents who are eligible to become citizens. And, in the months after Trump announced his bid for president, citizenship applications were up 14. 5 percent compared to the year before, according to data from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Of course, applications tend to spike in election years. And, from    applications also fluctuate because of other factors: possible fee increases or organized citizenship drives. This year, there’s also been an intense push by immigrant groups because of Trump. A coalition called ”Stand Up To Hate” has held held more than 300 workshops across the country in recent months. In March, they helped nearly 13, 000 people with their citizenship applications. At one workshop in Miami, Mauricio Lotero, 42, sat in a college classroom listening to instructions from USCIS officers. Lotero says he came to the workshop because of presidential politics. ”If Donald Trump is the president of the United States, maybe the immigrants or my citizenship will be affected in the future,” he explained. Lotero says he wants to have a vote in the presidential election. ”I don’t want Donald Trump as president, so that’s one of the reasons I want to vote, because I want to vote against Donald Trump,” he said. It’s hard to say for certain whether the spike in citizenship applications is a correlation or a causation. But, David Damore, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and an analyst with the public opinion research group Latino Decisions, remembers a similar pattern in recent history. ”We found this in California in some of the work I did with Latino Decisions on the effect of Proposition 187 in the early 1990s,” said Damore, referring to the ballot initiative in California that sought to eliminate government services  —   including   schooling  —   for people living in the state illegally. The measure passed, but it was never implemented. Still, in the years following the controversial vote, Damore said Latinos were mobilized in new ways. ”You saw more participation, but you also saw more people who were eligible to naturalize, naturalizing,” he said. And, data from USCIS confirm there were record numbers of citizenship applications in 1996 and 1997. ”It’s that threat that has been proven to be an important mobilizer among immigrants to get them to naturalize and eventually participate in the political process,” Damore said. Citizenship applications are currently higher than normal. The Pew Research Center points out that ”the number of legal permanent residents applying for U. S. citizenship in the four months starting last October is at its highest level in four years . .. up 5 percent from the same period before the election.” But, still the current surge in applications is a fraction of the growth seen in some previous years. In 2007, ahead of a proposed fee increase, roughly 1. 4 million immigrants applied for citizenship. According to Pew, that 2007 bump was ”an 89 percent increase over the previous year  —   the single largest annual increase since the government started tracking naturalization applications in 1907.” So, it may be too soon to definitely say what’s happening this presidential cycle. Anecdotal evidence from immigrant groups and attorneys suggest thousands of additional immigrants have applied for citizenship this Spring, but    citizenship data from USCIS is not yet available. Even if the current surge is nowhere near as high as the record years, activists point out that Latinos and Asians who become citizens are more likely to play an outsized role in the election because history shows they tend to vote at a higher rate than their counterparts who were born citizens."
"In the latest chapter from the book of ”You Can’t Make   Up: Election Edition,” we are left to ponder the strange case of Donald Trump and his alleged alter egos. The Washington Post came out with an extensive report Friday, detailing how Trump, back in the 90s, posed as his own PR person when speaking with press. He, according to the report, used the names John Miller and John Barron and talked about a lot of things, including whether or not he was romantically linked to Madonna. Trump denied the story, and the Post is standing by it. Per usual with Trump, Twitter had fun with it: There are already several John Miller parody accounts on the social media network as well. There are still some questions here. For one, did Trump really do this? Some outlets have been reporting that Trump actually testified in 1990 that he used the fake names before. A Vice article from 2015 has more detail, too. Next question: If he did, why would he do this? Trump has always good at garnering media attention, by himself. And of course, our last question has to be: What will happen next? It seems this presidential campaign magnifies the unbelievable, almost exponentially, just about everyday. What will happen next week? Usually, we try to end with some deep thought, some big think, some smart, fresh point that illuminates an underlying truth about ourselves, or the Internet, or politics. But we can’t. Because we’re still trying to pick our jaws up off the floor. We’re writing about a presidential candidate’s alter egos. Making words about a likely presidential nominee’s own personal Sasha Fierce. We have no more words."
"Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are turning their attention to the general election and to one of the most important decisions they will make  —   choosing a vice president. Picking a vice president is the first ”presidential level” decision any candidate makes. Although vice presidential candidates have rarely, perhaps never, determined the outcome of an election, the choice tells voters a lot about the candidate. The two most important criteria are always the same: 1. Pick someone who would ready to be president, if necessary, and 2. DO NO HARM, Here’s a look at the potential VP short lists for Clinton and Trump. For the purposes of this exercise, we will restrict the names to those who have indicated they would be open to the possibility or at least have not ruled out joining the ticket. The Republican has an unusual VP search, because so many prominent Republicans have ruled out joining his ticket. But he still has plenty of eager running mates to choose from. Trump told the AP this week that he has narrowed his search to five or six people. He has said he would like someone with political and legislative experience to help him deal with Congress, and he has also said he would consider some of his former rivals. Here are three categories the potential picks fall in (bolded are possible vice presidential picks): Both Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal have endorsed Trump. Both are former governors. But Trump will probably win Texas and Louisiana without them. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was one of Trump’s earliest establishment endorsers, and Trump has asked him to lead his transition team. Christie’s      style is a lot like Trump’s. If being an attack dog is a top requirement for a VP candidate then Christie’s evisceration of Marco Rubio is a  . Then again, Trump usually takes care of those duties himself. John Kasich, Ted Cruz and Rubio all fit Trump’s criteria, though Rubio has ruled it out and it’s hard to see Kasich or Cruz on the ticket after their previous brutal fights with Trump. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich knows something about running against the establishment. He has made it clear he would be happy to be on the ticket. Bob Corker, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and former businessman, has lavished praise on Trump for his recent foreign policy speech and has said he wouldn’t rule out the VP slot. Trump said this week he might consider Jan Brewer, the former governor of Arizona, who shares his position on immigration, or Joni Ernst, a freshman senator elected with Tea Party support. Ernst has been critical of Trump’s comments about women, but she hasn’t ruled out taking the VP spot. Trump’s negatives with women are sky high. A woman on the ticket might help. Plus, Ernst is from the swing state of Iowa. The Democrat, like Trump, is already vetting VP candidates, and her possible picks fall into three categories: Sherrod Brown from Ohio says he is ”not interested” but hasn’t made a Shermanesque statement ruling out the VP spot. He could be helpful if Clinton needs support in the important battleground state of Ohio. Brown is a great communicator who does well with the kind of white,   voters who have voted for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. (Plus, Brown has a wife who won a Pulitzer Prize.) One potential downside  —   if Clinton wins, a Republican governor would fill Brown’s vacant Ohio seat. Then there’s Tim Kaine, who has been an effective, if not very charismatic, surrogate for Clinton. He is from Virginia, an important battleground state for Democrats, and speaks fluent Spanish. Julian Castro is the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is also the former mayor of San Antonio and a telegenic, young  . Tom Perez, the labor secretary, is  . Both could help Clinton with Hispanic voters, if she decides Trump isn’t helping her enough there already. Elizabeth Warren is the heroine of the progressive left. She could help Clinton bring in Sanders voters, if Clinton decides that she (and Trump) can’t do that alone. Warren has also shown she has the stomach for a   brawl with Trump. She has been engaged in a Twitter war with the likely Republican nominee. He calls her ”Goofy” Elizabeth Warren, and she calls him a narcissist and a racist. Welcome to General Election 2016!"
"Last year, in an operating room at the University of Toronto, a    woman with Alzheimer’s disease experienced something she hadn’t for 55 years: a memory of her    self playing with her siblings on their family farm in Scotland.   The woman is a patient of Dr. Andres Lozano, a neurosurgeon who is among a growing number of researchers studying the potential of deep brain stimulation to treat Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. If the approach pans out, it could provide options for patients with fading cognition and retrieve vanished memories. Right now, deep brain stimulation is used primarily to treat Parkinson’s disease and tremor, for which it’s approved by the Food and Drug Administration. DBS involves delivering electrical impulses to specific areas of the brain through implanted electrodes. The technique is also approved for   disorder and is being looked at for a number of other brain disorders, including depression, chronic pain and, as in Lozano’s work, dementia. In 2008, Lozano’s group published a study in which an obese patient was treated with deep brain stimulation of the hypothalamus. Though no bigger than a pea, the hypothalamus is a crucial bit of brain involved in appetite regulation and other bodily essentials such as temperature control, sleep and circadian rhythms. It seemed like a reasonable target in trying to suppress excessive hunger. To the researcher’s surprise, following stimulation the patient reported a sensation of deja vu. He also perceived feeling 20 years younger and recalled a memory of being in a park with friends, including an old girlfriend. With increasing voltages, his memories became more vivid, including remembering their clothes. Using a   brain mapping technique called standardized   brain electromagnetic tomography, or sLORETA, Lozano’s group uncovered an explanation for the unexpected findings. They found that stimulating the hypothalamus was in turn driving increased brain activity in the hippocampus, a key cog in the brain’s memory circuitry. As Alzheimer’s progresses, not only does the hypothalamus atrophy, but electrical communication between neurons in the region also gradually becomes impaired. That our memories  —   so entwined with our personalities and senses of self  —   might be so vulnerable to a brown out is, existentially speaking, rather alarming. There’s something palpably dehumanizing about reducing our past selves to the exchange of electricity between neurons, and also about retrieving memories by   the brain. Yet the prospect of the latter is undeniably intriguing. Given that Alzheimer’s affects 1 in 9 people over the age of 65 and that current therapies are in many patients dismally ineffective, Lozano felt all but obligated to dig further. His group launched a test in six patients and published the results in the Annals of Neurology in 2010. The study included patients with mild and severe disease who received stimulation in the fornix continuously for 1 year. ”The fornix is like the highway leading into the hippocampus,” explains Lozano. ”It’s easier to stimulate than the hippocampus itself and crucial to memory function.” As expected those with more severe disease continued to mentally deteriorate, however it appeared that in those with mild disease, cognitive decline slowed with stimulation. Next, Lozano launched a randomized trial involving 42 patients from the US and Canada, all of whom had electrodes implanted in the fornix on both sides of the brain. In half the patients the stimulation was turned on right away. In the other half the stimulation wasn’t turned on for a year, though they didn’t know it. Preliminary results, published in December 2015 in the Journal of Neurosurgery, were mixed but encouraging. Given that so few people have had electrical stimulation applied to memory circuits, perhaps the most significant finding was that both the surgery itself and DBS of the fornix appear safe. No serious   neurological side effects were seen in either patient group, supporting future research in the field. In terms of efficacy, however, after one year there were no significant differences in cognition between the groups, as measured by two scales commonly used to measure Alzheimer’s disease symptoms, the   and  . Alzheimer’s tends to progress slowly and reversing or slowing the neurodegeneration associated with condition may take time to become noticeable. Lozano’s final results won’t be reported until four years out. More intriguing for now were comparisons of glucose utilization. Glucose is our brains’ primary fuel. The degree to which glucose is burned is a commonly used measure of brain activity. Patients with Alzheimer’s typically have reduced glucose activity in their brains, as well as, again, shrinking memory circuits. The older patients in Lozano’s study who had stimulation turned on exhibited markedly increased glucose use in the brain’s memory regions. Not only that, the hippocampus of some study patients who received DBS actually increased in size. Reversing withering hippocampi by encouraging the growth of new neurons is seen as a holy grail in Alzheimer’s research, and Lozano’s finding is supported by a recent animal study demonstrating that DBS in rats causes the release of growth factors that induce neuronal growth in the hippocampus. Lozano acknowledges that retrieving childhood memories, which he says has occurred in about   of his patents  —   requires lofty voltages that he would be uncomfortable sending patients home on. Yet he’s encouraged by the early findings that suggest the procedure is safe. ”We also know that in patients who receive stimulation there is an increase in glucose utilization in memory areas of the brain,” he says, a finding that could mean there’s a way to overcome some of the damage from Alzheimer’s. Evidence supporting DBS in dementia is emerging from other research groups as well. A 2012 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that in seven patients receiving DBS to a brain region called the entorhinal cortex, spatial memory improved  —   meaning they could more easily remember the locations of newly learned landmarks. The entorhinal cortex works in concert with the hippocampus to solidify memories. A group at the University of Cologne in Germany is instead focusing on delivering DBS to a part of the brain called the nucleus basalis of Meynert, another region in which impaired neuron function is thought to contribute to Alzheimer’s. Last year they published a study in Molecular Psychiatry in which four of six patients either remained cognitively stable or improved in response to DBS, as measured by the  . Like in Lozano’s study no serious side effects were seen. Despite the mounting evidence for DBS, not everyone is convinced. Referring to Lozano’s second clinical study, Dr. Nader Pouratian, a neurosurgeon and DBS researcher at UCLA, comments, ”The recent deep brain stimulation trial for Alzheimer’s disease clearly demonstrates the safety of this approach for trying to treat the progression of disease. Unfortunately, [the findings] suggest that the therapy may not be as robust as initially proposed.” However he acknowledges Lozano’s results suggest that DBS to the fornix might be promising for a subgroup of patients, those being older people with less severe disease. ”The most promising areas are likely the fornix or the entorhinal area,” he says. ”But I believe further studies are necessary to better elucidate the efficacy of this treatment before proceeding to a larger scale randomized trial.” In a 2008 episode of the medical television drama House, the show’s main character Dr. Gregory House survives a bus crash that leaves his memory murky. In an attempt to remember the medical history of a fellow collision victim  —   and inspired by Lozano’s initial paper  —   House voluntarily undergoes deep brain stimulation. Following the procedure the grouchy TV doctor’s memory returns. As is customary on the show, he cracks the case. DBS for treatment of Alzheimer’s and other dementias is a field in its infancy. Unlike on TV, in all likelihood it won’t be widely used anytime soon to retrieve specific memories. ”Even though House did this, we’re not doing it yet,” cautions Lozano. Yet the fact that the therapy can in some people rescue recollections  —   albeit random ones  —   and possibly induce new neuron growth in memory regions of the brain seems reason enough to pursue it further. ”We’re hoping to use electricity to drive activity in areas of the brain involved in memory and cognition,” says Lozano. ”We want to turn these brain networks back on.” Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired, Scientific American and on The Atlantic. com. He graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. He’s also on Twitter: @BretStetka."
"Sughra Hussainy makes her own watercolors  —   which she uses to paint intricate miniatures in the traditional Persian and Afghan styles. Her favorite hue is blue  —   made from powdered lapis lazuli gemstones. ”Blue  —   because the sky is blue,” she says. ”I just look at it and it makes me feel calm and good. It’s not like red  —   red is a dangerous color. If people look at it too much it makes them crazy!” Hussainy, 27, is one of 18 artisans from Afghanistan featured in the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition ”Turquoise Mountain: Artists Transforming Afghanistan.” The exhibit, which opened at the Sackler Gallery in March and is running till January 2017, features the work of artists who trained with Turquoise Mountain, a nonprofit founded in 2006 that aims to revive Afghanistan’s traditional crafts and help budding artisans break into the international art scene. Miniature painting and calligraphy  —   Hussainy’s specialty  —   originated in Persia in the 13th century. Her work stays faithful to the tradition while incorporating modern flourishes. One painting, for instance, features a woman portrayed in very traditional garb  —   her face obscured with a giant   emoji. ”In school, I found I was really very good at drawing and art,” Hussainy says. That’s when she heard about Turquoise Mountain and its arts school. ”So I enrolled and began studying calligraphy and painting.” For her, the painstaking process of planning, sketching and finally coloring in a miniature is meditative. ”Sometimes I start working, and next thing I notice the whole day is passed,” she says. ”I just love it.” Hussainy, now a university student, says she never imagined being an artist, showing her work in cities all over the world. When she was a kid, the Taliban was in charge. Women were barred from schools all together. And the Taliban weren’t big fans of art  —   making and enjoying artwork. And the destruction of Kabul’s historic arts district, Murad Khane  —   which began during the USSR’s invasion  —   was seen to completion under Taliban rule. They reduced masterfully designed buildings with intricately carved wood and plaster embellishments to rubble. The whole area was turned into a giant waste heap  —   much of the city was buried under several feet of trash. Which is all to say  —   this was not a fertile environment for aspiring artists. Still, Hussainy grew up creating and crafting, because she loved to and because she had to. Her father  —   a laborer who was the family breadwinner  —   died when she was 9 (he was caught in the crossfire of a shootout  —   though Hussainy isn’t sure how, exactly). Hussainy, her two older sisters and her older brother took up   to help pay the bills. ”Then my mother died five years after that,” she says. ”It was difficult for me  —   my situation was not good  —   I was sad and crying all the time. So my brother found another,   artisan job and we stopped making carpets.” The Taliban fell around the same time, so Hussainy was free to attend high school. ”We hear the older people talk about how they didn’t have such opportunities,” she says. ”So I am very, very grateful.” Over the past few years, the Afghan government and groups like Turquoise Mountain have since helped clean up and rebuild Kabul’s old city  —   though it still isn’t the cultural center it once was. There isn’t much of a market for fine art in Afghanistan  —   but with Turquoise Mountain’s help she’s been able to promote and sell some of her work to collectors in Europe and the United Arab Emirates. And she’s collaborated with British jewelry designer Alice Cicolini to create a collection of   rings and necklaces. And while she does make some money through her art, it’s not enough to make a living. She hopes the trip to the U. S. and her work with the Smithsonian will help her find more clients so she can support herself with her art. ”Now I just want to work hard at this,” Hussainy says, adding with a chuckle  —   ”And of course, become  .” The Smithsonian’s Turquoise Mountain exhibit runs until January 2017. This month, the museum is featuring the pottery of Afghan artist Abdul Matin Malekzadah. "
"Hundreds of thousands of people whose personal fates could hinge on whether Britain leaves the European Union won’t even have a vote in next month’s referendum: Polish migrants. Among other EU citizens, up to a million Poles live and work in Britain. They’re allowed to do so, because of free movement of workers in the EU. At a typical construction site in a leafy suburb of London, a brick row house is under renovation. There’s a radio on for the builders, and it’s all in Polish  —   Polish Radio London, a digital radio station that launched in 2006, two years after Poland joined the EU, which triggered a flood of Polish workers in to other EU countries, especially the U. K. Krzystof Przadak, who recently anglicized his name to ”Chris,” was one of those who moved right away. ”Poland became a member of the EU in May 2004  —   and I came in September. In the beginning it was very difficult, because I came alone. My wife and daughter stayed in Poland,” he recalls. ”Now, I am the owner of the company. I employ seven people. Slowly, step by step, I’m trying to expand the company.” His wife and daughter have since joined him, and the couple has had two more children, born in Britain. ”They speak English perfectly, with a much better accent than mine,” he says, in his thick Polish accent. The ’Polish plumber’ became the stereotype of Eastern European manual laborers who came to Britain, France and other Western European countries a decade ago. So many Poles have come to work in the U. K. that Polish is now the second most   language in Britain. Greater Opportunities, Przadak now earns 10 times what he did in Poland more than a decade ago. But the sheer number of foreign workers who’ve settled in the U. K. from other EU countries has become an issue in itself  —   bolstering groups that want Britain out of the EU. ”They’re thinking we are taking their work, but this is not the idea,” Przadak says. ”We want to work for the same money, and all the same rights. That is the idea of the EU.” In the past 12 years, Polish tradespeople have become so coveted in the U. K. that there are websites to search specifically for Poles to do work on your house. Przadak has more work than he can handle. ”Mainly the day starts from 6 a. m. and finishes around 11 or 12 o’clock at night,” he explains. ”Sometimes we have to refuse work. I simply have to say to customers, ’No, we cannot take it. ’” Przadak predicts the cost of construction would skyrocket if Poles were no longer allowed to work in Britain. A recent Oxford University study shows a majority of EU citizens working here would not meet current visa requirements to stay, if Britain were to leave the union. But most people believe some arrangement would be made for people who are already here. Still, there’s been a surge in Poles here applying for U. K. passports before the June 23 vote. At Ognisko, an upscale Polish club in West London  —   where the Polish government convened in exile during World War II  —   Polish bankers and lawyers discuss their compatriots’ future in the U. K. ”We are living over here and paying taxes, but we respect Britons’ right to decide,” says Lukasz Filim, a bank branch manager who moved from Poland 12 years ago. ”Britons opened their country to us, and we have a higher quality life here. We like the system  —   it’s a friendly system  —   for people to live and develop.” An Uncertain Future, Filim and a few Polish friends founded a group last year called United Poles, which held a town hall meeting last month for Poles in the U. K who have questions about how ’Brexit’ could affect them. They sent a list of questions to British members of parliament, asking for assurances about the status of EU citizens living in Britain. ”[Polish] people are a bit nervous, but at the same time, many people are confident that nobody will kick them out, because we are really needed,” says George Byczynski, a member of United Poles and a legal scholar who’s lived in London seven years. ”What we want is facts, statistics, real promises  —   on paper. We are part of this economy  —   a very important part.” Last year, thousands of Polish workers downed their tools for a   strike, to show their impact on the UK economy. In a symbolic gesture, many of them donated blood to Britain’s public health service instead. Back at the construction site, Przadak, the builder, shrugs when asked if he’s worried Britain might leave the EU. ”If I have to go back to Poland, we’ll see what sort of benefits, what sort of progress, Poland has made just in the 12 years,” he says. For these 12 years, Przadak has been sending money home. Such remittances have helped Poland’s economy grow. If he has to go back, he’d be returning to a country transformed by EU membership  —   and he’d be leaving one too."
"On the second floor of an old Bavarian palace in Munich, Germany, there’s a library with high ceilings, a distinctly bookish smell and one of the world’s most extensive collections of Latin texts. About 20 researchers from all over the world work in small offices around the room. They’re laboring on a comprehensive Latin dictionary that’s been in progress since 1894. The most recently published volume contained all the words beginning with the letter P. That was back in 2010. And they’re not as far along as that may lead you to believe. They skipped over N years ago because it has so many long words, and now they’ve had to go back to that one. They’re also working on R at the same time. That should take care of the rest of this decade. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae was one of many big, scholarly projects taken on by the German government in the late 19th century. Through two World Wars and German reunification, generations of Latin scholars have been chipping away at the same goal: documenting every use of every Latin word from the earliest Latin inscriptions in the 6th century BC up until around 200 AD, when it was in decline as a spoken language. Befitting the comprehensive nature of the project, the scholars will also include some words up to the 6th century AD. That means poetry and history and speeches. But it also means every gravestone and street sign. It means architectural works, medical and legal texts, books about animals or cooking. ”If a word is just on a toilet in Pompeii in graffiti, you’ll find it with us,” says Marijke Ottink, who is Dutch. She’s been working on the Thesaurus for 19 years as a researcher and an editor, ever since she came to Munich. The scholars work out of the palace that houses the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and gets funding from the German Akademienprogramm as well as academic groups around the world that support fellows working on the project, which they refer to as both a dictionary and a thesaurus. Right now, Ottink is focused on the article for the word res, which roughly translates to ”thing.” Just like ”thing” in English, it is a very common word in Latin. And here’s the thing  —   its meaning hard to pin down, because it appears in all kind of idioms. Ottink did not volunteer for this word. ”No one volunteers for res,” she says, a little ruefully. Still, she’s been plugging away at it, on and off, since 2009. On her desk, there are 16 small, brown boxes. Inside each are 1, 100 slips of paper. They’re yellowed with age and covered in neat, black, handwritten Latin. More than 100 years ago, scholars painstakingly paged through every Latin book and engraving they could find, sorting out repeats and relationships. Then, they copied out passages onto these slips  —   one slip for each word in each passage. The slips were then sorted into boxes  —   usually one box for each word. Or in the case of res, 16 boxes. Ottink and her colleagues are still using the slips today. Each one has scholarly notations about the relationships between passages and texts  —   information that you can’t easily get by just searching for a word on a computer database. Every slip of paper on Ottink’s desk is a unique instance of the word ”thing” in recorded ancient Latin, close to 20, 000 references in all. It’s her job to go through each example, read through the original text it came from, figure out the precise inflection of its meaning in each case and then wrestle all of the definitions into a descriptive article  —   written in Latin. This is especially challenging for a slippery word like ”thing.” ”You don’t get a grip of the real thing,” Ottink explains, then catches herself. ”Ha! Real thing!” Ottink finally has a rough draft of the res article ready. In the meantime, she’s taken breaks, writing or editing articles for words with fewer references, like relego, which means to reread. Her colleague, Nigel Holmes, a Thesaurus editor, wrote the article for nam, or ”for.” ”I have sometimes joked that I still have nightmares from when I was in nam,” he admits. ”But it was actually, it was easier than I thought.” They both talk, though, about going over material again and again. The process of writing an article involves putting words in chronological order, but also creating branching,   trees of syntax and semantics. Each time a word takes on a slightly different shade of meaning, it needs to be divided off into a new branch. And sometimes, halfway through a stack of slips, a new interpretation will occur to the researcher, and then they have to go back through all the slips again to make sure it didn’t appear earlier. In his dialogue Timaeus, Plato (Thesaurus scholars have to be well versed in ancient Greek as well) talks about a creature, the ouroboros. It’s a circular monster that’s always going back to eat its own tail. The Thesaurus can look like a bit of an ouroboros, even to those working on it. It’s meant to be the most painstakingly thorough reference work available. After all, there are perfectly suitable ones already, like the Oxford Latin Dictionary. The Thesaurus is meant to be just a little more definitive. But, as Nigel Holmes says, ”Even when one tries to have a completely comprehensive dictionary, there’s still work for other people to do afterwards. That is, there will still be aspects of a use of a word that haven’t been discovered.” Every time he looks back on his nam article, for example, he says, ”I see things where I wish I had done something slightly differently.” Worse, the earliest articles, written around the beginning of the 20th century, read more like lists of words than the more complete analyses being produced today, because the methodology of the dictionary has changed over the years. And new inscriptions are turning up all the time, new instances of words from A through P that aren’t noted in the dictionary. So eventually, ideally, the scholars will go right back to the beginning again and retool articles. Or they would, Holmes says, ”if anyone was willing to pay to revise earlier volumes.” The task of finishing is momentous enough. Upcoming volumes, like R and Q, are full of question words and conditionals that have thousands and thousands of instances. The Thesaurus’ projected finish date is 2050, but Holmes worries that they might not make that deadline. For now, though, their funding is secure. And for those working at the Thesaurus, the project is infinitely worthwhile. Marijke Ottink talks about the pleasure of reading through old architectural and legal texts, learning something new and strange every day. Years ago, Nigel Holmes quit a job as a computer programmer because he didn’t feel he could be happy if he was not working with Latin. And both agree that the work of teasing out the chronological histories of words is important. Still, Holmes feels a sense of hesitation, sometimes. ”It’s a question, perhaps: Is that enough?” he asks. He explains that there are several hundred people who use the Thesaurus for scholarly Latin, and draw from its definitions to inform books and articles. ”But is that enough for something that’s so expensive, that’s been going on for so long and still isn’t finished?”  After a short pause, he says, ”I don’t know.”"
"There are things that happen in Texas that you just can’t make up, such as Diamondback Day at the state Capitol building in Austin. On a cool weekend in February, a dozen of the coiled pit vipers rattle menacingly in an outdoor rotunda where cheerful handlers let visitors pet them. It’s all in good fun. The Jaycees in the West Texas town of Sweetwater bring the snakes down every year as a public relations gimmick to promote their annual rattlesnake roundup, held every March over three days. This year, there’s special urgency. The Texas Parks  Wildlife Department is considering banning the most popular method for catching rattlesnakes: spraying gasoline into their winter dens until the fumes flush them out. ”It’s very important for us because it’s the method we use primarily to catch volumes of snakes,” says Dennis Cumbie, a lifetime Jaycee member and chairman of the milking pit at the Roundup. ”Sweetwater’s got the world’s largest rattlesnake roundup. We average [4, 000 to] 5, 000 pounds of snakes per year. Without the gassing we wouldn’t have those numbers.” Hunters sell rattlesnakes by the pound to the roundup. They’re displayed, milked for venom used in medicine, then slaughtered for their skin and their meat. Fried rattlesnake tastes like chewy chicken with lots of bones. ”Y’know, we don’t exploit the snakes. We respect the snakes,” Cumbie says. A growing chorus of biologists and animal rights people wants the practice stopped. They say pumping petrochemicals into the ground  —   even in small doses  —   is bad for other wildlife. They compare it to fishing with dynamite. Rob Green’s family owns a big ranch west of Fort Worth. As a kid, he says, he used to hunt rattlers with gasoline. Now, he doesn’t allow it on his land. ”When you’d squirt gas in there you’d see all kinds of stuff come out,” Green says. ”You’d see rats and rabbits and armadillos and box turtles. But those animals that can’t get away from the fumes there may have been stuff down there that was asphyxiated before they could get out.” According to Cumbie, however, in the nearly   history of the roundup there haven’t been any problems with using gasoline to catch the reptiles. ”Some of the same dens have been gassed for   years with no harm to anything. They’ve not done any scientific research whatsoever,” he says. Actually, there has been scientific research. But it wasn’t conducted in Texas snake dens. John Davis, a biologist with Texas Parks  Wildlife, describes the results of a laboratory study where   bugs were subjected to gas fumes. ”When one exposes rattlesnakes to gasoline vapors, all of the invertebrates exposed to that same level of vapor exposure were killed,” Davis says. The state wildlife agency is going slowly as it considers how to regulate snake hunting, because the Roundup is so important to Sweetwater. From the Rattlesnake Parade to the crowning of Miss Snake Charmer, it drew 25, 000 people and raised some $8 million in 2015. Banning gassing may not mean the end of rattlesnake roundups, but it would mean fewer snakes. Howard Ellett says he has been catching rattlesnakes in Burnet County, northwest of Austin, for 25 years. As one of the state’s champion snake wranglers, Ellett knows how easy it is to use unleaded gas and how   it is to catch diamondbacks the old way  —   wait until they leave their dens. ”You go snake hunting seven days in a row, one of those days the snakes are gonna be out. It’s hard to figure out which day that’s gonna be it’s kinda like trying to figure out which is the best day to go fishing,” he says. Currently, 29 states ban the gassing of snake burrows. Texas is the big holdout, but it may not be much longer. Earlier this year, the Snake Harvest Working Group, appointed by Parks  Wildlife, released its recommendations. A majority agreed that gasoline fumes do pose potential threats to other species and that a statewide ban on gassing may be the answer. The full state commission is supposed to take action on the gassing of Western diamondbacks when it meets in Austin on May 25."
"It’s not easy being a dung beetle. Besides the obvious fact that they eat, well, dung, the act of just getting a meal is an involved process. In the most elaborate   scenario, the dung beetles must first stake claim to their piece of poop at the main dung pile, then shape it into a sphere for easy transport, fend off other dung beetles trying to steal it, and then  —   using the stars to navigate  —   determine the fastest way to roll their prize away to a safe spot for consumption. But now, researchers from Lund University in Sweden say one part of this process might not be as taxing for the dung beetles as previously thought: The celestial navigation. In a study published in the scientific journal Current Biology, researchers say dung beetles take ”snapshots” of the stars and store the images in their brains. Instead of using the stars  —   specifically the Milky Way  —   as a map that the beetles intermittently reference for directions, the researchers say dung beetles take one snapshot of the constellation, which is sufficient for navigation. One of the researchers, Basil el Jundi, explains in a press release that the snapshot method for orientation allows the beetles to be more efficient because they don’t have to rely on long processes to retrieve information. ”We are the first to have shown that dung beetles are taking these snapshots. We are also the first to show how they store and use the images inside their tiny brains,” el Jundi says in the statement. Researchers say the beetles make the snapshot while ”dancing” atop their ball of dung. As the   previously reported, this   jig helps the beetles determine which path away from the dung is the best route. After the dancing and the   the beetle is ready to roll. It uses the mental snapshot to help navigate its way through its present environment, the researchers said, explaining their scientific process: ”The experiments were performed in South Africa at a facility where the dung beetles only had access to an artificial firmament to orient themselves. Because the sky was artificial, the researchers were able to regulate the amount of light, as well as change the positions of the celestial bodies. Put simply, this allowed them to compare how the beetles changed direction depending on the placement of the artificial sun or moon, etc.” Researchers in Lund first discovered in 2013 that the dung beetles were using the heavens to guide their hasty   getaways. As NPR reported at the time, getting the balls to safety as quickly as possible is paramount to survival. ”They have to get away from the pile of dung as fast as they can and as efficiently as they can because the dung pile is a very, very competitive place with lots and lots of beetles all competing for the same dung,” zoologist Eric Warrant from Lund told All Things Considered three years ago. ”And there’s very many lazy beetles that are just waiting around to steal the balls of other industrious beetles and often there are big fights in the dung piles,” he said. After conducting an experiment in which some beetles wore cardboard hats that blocked their views of the stars, the researchers determined that ”dung beetles can roll their balls of dung in straight lines by using the Milky Way as a compass queue,” Warrant said. He added that the tiny waste harvester wearing the cardboard hats just ”rolled around and around and around in circles. They couldn’t keep a straight path.” The new findings about dung beetles’ ability to take snapshots of the night sky could be significant for humans as well, el Jundi says in the statement. According to him, it could help in the ”development of navigation systems in driverless vehicles.”"
"Waiting quietly in the living room of a home in an upscale New Delhi neighborhood are a dozen people of all ages  —   maids, security guards, construction workers, all of whom earn at most a few dollars a day. The elegant,   room is hushed except for the sound of coughing. Over in the next room, Dr. Gita Prakash is at her dining table with a stethoscope pressed to a pregnant woman’s chest. Prakash has been treating indigent patients here for 30 years, six nights a week, in the evenings after she finishes her rounds at the local hospital where she works. Some of the people Prakash sees are the third generation from their families to seek her help. And over the decades, the kinds of problems she treats have changed. ”You know, there’s a lot more of coughs and colds and allergies. And asthmas, which were not so prevalent earlier,” she says. A lot of the patients at her clinic spend all day outdoors. Restaurant delivery man Dilip Kumar Chaudhary has brought his feverish son in for treatment. I ask him what it feels like to inhale fumes in traffic day after day. ”I feel very strange. I feel very stressed,” Chaudhary says. He has a hacking cough. ”My whole body sweats a lot. I feel very tired.” Prakash takes care of Chaudhary’s son today, but she is worried about the father, too. ”I know that in two days, he’ll be back with his cough,” she says. ”The problem is he’ll have infected his son by then.” ”As a doctor,” I ask her, ”what do you do?” ”I pray.” New Delhi has some of the most polluted air in the world, even worse than Beijing’s. When President Obama came to India last February, the stories that ran during his visit warned that the president’s life would be shortened by six hours  —   just from breathing the Indian capital’s air for a few days. Indian newspapers ran headlines saying the U. S. Embassy purchased 1, 800 air purifiers before the president’s arrival. Indrajit Singh, who saw a spike in sales of air filters at his own New Delhi electronics shop, says this is when Delhi’s pollution problem really burst into the public consciousness. ”That’s when people started thinking that, yes, it’s a serious matter,” he says. In New Delhi, people feel pretty good when the air quality index, as measured by a monitor of airborne fine particulate matter at the U. S. Embassy, is below 50. Anything over 150 is considered unhealthy. The chart tops out at 500, but even so, ”We’ve hit over 500 on this,” Liam Fitzgerald, an assistant management officer at the embassy, tells me. What does the air feel like on days like that? ”Chunky,” he says. Reecha Upadhyay, the organizer of an environmental campaign called Help Delhi Breathe, says Delhi’s filthy, sometimes chunky air provides an opportunity to talk about something more abstract  —   climate change. ”It’s a concept. It’s not a reality for a lot of people,” she says. ”But air pollution is a reality because it’s now affecting your kids, you can feel how it affects you, and it’s a very tangible thing that people have in their minds and can experience.” Upadhyay and other environmentalists hope public pressure will push the government toward clean energy policies. India is the world’s   emitter of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, after the U. S. and China. Today, per person, Indians use much less energy than Americans or Chinese people. Many of its 1. 2   population live on roughly $2 a day. But what if all of those people had electricity at night, a refrigerator, a car? With ambitious goals to improve the standard of living, and 400 million people already lacking reliable electricity, ”This means we need to enhance the energy supply by four to five times what it is now,” says Ajay Mathur, a climate expert who runs the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. He says no matter how fast India increases its clean energy, like solar and wind, the country will probably also double its use of coal between now and 2030. Todd Stern, who served till last month as the top U. S. envoy on climate change, says India has a steeper hill to climb than anywhere else. ”There is no country, probably, with a bigger challenge  —   looking at the number of people, the level of their economic growth, the number of people who don’t have access to electricity,” he says. The impacts of climate change would hit people in India harder than almost anywhere else in the world, making it more vulnerable to flooding and drought. ”Tropical cyclones are likely to become more intense. We’re also seeing that climate change is going to have an impact on the monsoon,” says Richard Hewston of the global risk assessment firm Verisk Maplecroft. His company looked at which countries around the world are most vulnerable to storms, flooding and other acts of nature. India is already at the top of the list, first in the world. Two of its biggest cities, New Delhi and Kolkata, with a combined population of more than 14 million, are on the top 10 list of global cities most vulnerable to natural hazards. Every highly developed country in history, including the U. S. has gotten where it is in an unsustainable way  —   by cutting down trees, adding cars to the roads, pumping carbon into the atmosphere. If India can find a sustainable way to develop, that could be a template for the rest of the world. In the filtered, cooled air of the U. S. Embassy in New Delhi, Ambassador Richard Verma tells me he thinks India is poised to take the lead on clean energy and climate change. Already, it has set an ambitious target of 100 gigawatts of solar energy by 2022, which would be a faster buildup than any country has managed. ”There’s no other country on the planet that has set the kind of renewable targets and goals that India has. So I think the way to get there is a challenge, but India, I think, is really going to be a trailblazer in this whole area,” he says. The challenge for India is how to manage the tension between development and climate change. What happens next here could have a huge impact on the world and has the potential to write a new story on how developing countries enter the 21st century  —   including whether the world can alter the course on climate change or not. India has big plans to give its people things Americans take for granted, like refrigerators and cars. In the U. S. almost 90 percent of households own a car. In India, that figure is only 6 percent. The number is growing steadily, though. New Delhi used car salesman Deepak Sharma has conflicted feelings about all this. ”Cars are increasing global warming. So I don’t think it’s good,” he says. Many people would be surprised to hear somebody who sells cars for a living saying cars are part of the problem. But, Sharma says, ”If I’m a car seller, that means I’m also a human being, no? So I have to tell them, please use car  —   but as much as you can, use less.” New Delhi has been experimenting with a plan to reduce pollution by getting cars off the road. There were 8. 8 million registered vehicles in Delhi in 2015, a 6 percent increase over the previous year. (In comparison, there were 7. 4 million registered vehicles in Los Angeles in 2014.) For two weeks in January and April, on alternate days, you could only drive your car depending on whether the license plate ended in an odd or even number. Used cars keep their old plates, but this means those who can afford it are looking for a workaround: another car. ”If anybody has an   car, they want to buy an   car also,” says Sharma. So the   scheme, which is supposed to get cars off the street, is ”not successful,” Sharma says. ”It’s not successful because people are buying other cars.” In a South Delhi neighborhood, the Wadhwa family is grappling with this very issue. The Wadhwas are   by Indian standards. They own two cars. But both have   plates. And this is a Monday, when only   cars can be on the road. The sun hasn’t even been up for two hours, and the mother, Muskan, is already exasperated. ”It’s really difficult,” she complains. Mohid, the father, is about to put their    into a taxi before he puts their    onto his motor scooter, which is exempt from the rationing. He says if this rationing goes on, he’ll buy car No. 3. Does he think the   scheme is a good idea? ”It’s good if it’s controlling the pollution,” he says. ”If it’s not controlling the pollution, then it’s a very bad idea.” The government has had a hard time showing that its plan did actually reduce pollution. But cars are just one small part of India’s carbon footprint  —   one of the many things the country will have to get right to develop in a sustainable way. Buying another car to deal with the   rationing won’t help with pollution, Mohid concedes. ”But we have to manage our family needs. So we have to manage that also.” His    daughter grabs her Disney backpack  —   she’s obsessed with Frozen  —   and hops on the scooter with Dad. ”Did you do your homework?” he asks. ”Nope.” ”Tell your teacher it was your auntie’s wedding,” Mohid says. They motor off into Delhi’s tangled, chaotic traffic to start their day."
"In addition to the letter today to the nation’s school districts urging them to protect the rights of transgender students, the Education Department provided a long report on states and districts it says are already doing so. That list includes the nation’s three largest school districts: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. It also names plenty of smaller places, like   Borough School District in Alaska, and Shorewood School District in Wisconsin. And while inclusion on the list doesn’t mean those states and districts are doing everything the federal government now says they should, it does provide a snapshot of policies the department thinks are worth highlighting: The other places with policies singled out in the report are: California Colorado’s Boulder Valley the Washington, D. C. Atherton High School, in Jefferson County, Ky. Maryland Massachusetts Minneapolis Kansas City, Mo. Washoe County School District in Nevada New York State Oregon Rhode Island Washington State. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, an advocacy group, also tracks which states have   and   laws that specifically protect transgender students. NPR Ed decided to take a look at the other side of the ledger as well  —   places that have seen legal challenges over this issue or that may have policies in conflict with the new guidance. We talked to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been defending transgender students all over the country, as well as GLSEN, for examples of ongoing and recent cases. Again, this is not a comprehensive list. North Carolina would be at the top of that list, with its highly controversial law that requires people to use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificate. Similar ”bathroom laws” are pending in Washington, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. In Marion County, Fla. last month, the school board passed a ”bathroom bill” resolution. On May 12, the ACLU filed a discrimination complaint alleging that a transgender student was suspended for using the male restroom. Also on May 12, the Transgender Law Center filed a similar complaint against the Kenosha Unified School District in Wisconsin. Gloucester County, Va. recently passed a similar resolution and is involved in ongoing litigation. In 2013, in   High School District 211 in Illinois, a transgender girl filed a Title IX complaint for access to the girls’ locker room. While settling the complaint and accommodating the student, the district decided against adopting a districtwide policy on transgender students’ access to locker rooms or bathrooms. The district was sued this month by parents and students seeking to overturn the agreement and deny transgender student access to these facilities. NPR Ed wants to know: What are your school district’s policies on accommodating transgender students? This story was reported by Anya Kamenetz for NPR Ed and by Gabrielle Emanuel for All Things Considered."
"North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory defended HB2, the state’s   bathroom bill, and said the ”political left” fed the emergence of transgender issues in politics. ”Most people had never heard of this issue five months ago, until the political left started saying, ’We need bathroom rules and policies,’ not just for government facilities and schools but also for the private sector,” McCrory said in an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered. McCrory also defended the spirit of the HB2 law, which limits protections for LGBT people and requires transgender people to use public bathrooms that correspond with their sex at birth. McCrory said the questions surrounding the law weren’t just about civil rights for transgender people but also about privacy. ”The expectation of privacy that men and women, boys and girls have in a highway rest stop, in gym, a locker room after gym, or a shower, a showering facility,” he said. ”There’s an expectation that the only other people will be the same gender as they are and that’s the way we’ve been doing things for a long time.” The governor’s remarks come just hours after the Obama administration sent a letter to the nation’s schools that issued guidelines on how to treat transgender students. The advisory said students should be able to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. The letter also makes clear that any states that do not comply could be at risk of losing federal money. McCrory characterized Obama’s advisory as government overreach. ”I don’t think the president has the authority by himself to make that decision,” he said. He also said that transgender students in North Carolina and around the country are offered ”alternative choices for this very complex situation in which there’s not a clear definition for gender identity or gender expression.” McCrory addressed the part of the law that denies many people in North Carolina  —   not just LGBT people  —   the right to sue for discrimination in state courts. He said he didn’t have a   veto, meaning he couldn’t strike that measure without vetoing the entire law, including the parts dealing with transgender people in public restrooms. But McCrory said he will work to repeal the limits to discrimination suits. ”I’m going to get that reversed,” he said. Listen to the whole interview here."
"On Friday morning, the Obama administration issued a ”Dear Colleagues” letter to the nation’s school districts spelling out what they can do to safeguard the civil rights of students at   schools and colleges, based on their gender identity. The administration argues that Title IX, which outlaws sex discrimination for any school receiving federal funding, covers gender identity. The letter does not change any existing laws, but provides what is called ”significant guidance.” It explains exactly what policies the Education and Justice departments consider to be compliant with Title IX. ”There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement. ”This guidance gives administrators, teachers, and parents the tools they need to protect transgender students from peer harassment and to identify and address unjust school policies.” In addition to the letter, the Education Department issued a pamphlet giving examples of ”emerging practices” and policies to support transgender students in states around the country. The move has widely been seen as intensifying the ongoing confrontation between the federal government and the state of North Carolina, which has passed a law restricting transgender people’s access to bathrooms. Here’s what the letter says schools should do:"
"The   Whit Stillman’s Love  Friendship is an improvement on its source, Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan. That’s not quite as heretical as it sounds. Austen wrote the book early in her career, before Pride and Prejudice. It wasn’t published in her lifetime. The title isn’t even hers  —   it didn’t have one. It’s an epistolary work, told via letters, and, as such, missing Austen’s   voice as narrator. Her protagonist, Lady Susan Vernon, is an impoverished widow with designs on a married lord and a malign indifference to her own teenage daughter. She seems a pale copy of the villainess of another epistolary novel that was   at the time, Les Liaisons Dangereuse. Early in Love  Friendship you realize that Stillman doesn’t hate Lady Susan nearly as much as Austen seems to. The woman’s will must be thwarted, of course, for the sake of her spirited daughter. But as played by Kate Beckinsale, she cuts an impressive figure. She’s attractive, she’s indefatigable, and she’s poetically eloquent in justifying her immorality. We meet her after she has left the estate of one Lord Manwaring after enchanting the host and driving the hostess, Lady Manwaring, to despair. The next place she decides to stay  —   that’s how she lives, you see, off wealthy friends and relations  —   is the mansion of her late husband’s brother. She charms him, but unnerves his wife, Lady Catherine DeCourcy Vernon, an unusually empathetic woman played by the delightful Emma Greenwell. Just as alarming to Lady Catherine is the behavior of her younger brother, Reginald DeCourcy, played by Xavier Samuel with a bit of Hugh Grant’s adorable lockjaw. Reginald claims to want to study Lady Susan’s wiles from an anthropological perspective, but he seems more and more seduced by them. You might be thinking, ”That’s a lot of names to keep track of”  —   and I’ve cited only a few. Stillman helps by presenting the characters one or two at a time, with accompanying title cards and descriptions. It’s still hard to keep the relationships straight, but the device bespeaks an affection for the milieu that makes you want to use words like ”bespeaks.” Love  Friendship has both formal elegance and theatrical glee, so what might have seemed stuffy and posed now sings with undercurrents. The catalyst is Lady Susan’s teenage daughter, Frederica, who has run away from her expensive boarding school  —   and who’s trailed to the Vernon estate by a boobish suitor named Sir James Martin. Sir James is    played by Tom Bennett, who reminded me of Peter Cook as one of his    titled Englishmen. But Lady Susan insists that Frederica acquiesce to this idiot’s affections. Beckinsale’s attack is driving and precise, her diction so sharp it can draw blood. And Stillman has given her amazing lines, some  —   but not all  —   culled from the novella’s letters. They come at you so fast that the movie’s texture is positively Oscar Wildean  —   or perhaps I say that the movie reminds you how much Wilde owed to Austen. In one scene, Lady Susan declares of her daughter’s private school, ”The fees are too high to even think of paying, so, in a sense, it’s an economy.” Later, she dubs America ”a nation of ingrates,” adding, ”Only having children makes you understand such behavior.” Lady Susan’s poor daughter  —   played by the winsome Morfydd Clark  —   wouldn’t stand a chance without a benign intervention that builds the film to a   pitch. The cast has one weak link: Chloë Sevigny, who’s forced to speak too quickly as Lady Susan’s American confidante. The performance, though, makes you realize why Sevigny is so wonderful in other roles: Her dreamy rhythms are uniquely her own. And I don’t care for Stillman’s dullish title, Love  Friendship. I even prefer the ones suggested with    by author Leo Rockas, who adapted Lady Susan into a novel: Flirtation and Forbearance or Coquetry and Caution. But by any title, the movie is an absolute treat."
"Dating is plenty complicated as things stand. But suppose romance came with deadlines, and a penalty for not meeting them. That’s the dilemma Colin Farrell faces in filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest weirdness. The maker of Dogtooth, which takes home schooling to comically absurd extremes, and Alps, which does much the same for the process of grieving, is tackling notions of romance in The Lobster, and let’s just say that   don’t come much stranger. Farrell plays David, a doughy (the actor gained 40 pounds for the role) nebbishy guy whose wife has just left him as the film begins. He lives in a slightly futuristic society that so values coupledom that living a solitary existence is simply outlawed. So as soon as it becomes known that he’s single, the authorities pack him off to a grand rural hotel where the manager (a deliciously    Olivia Colman) explains the ground rules: Guests have 45 days to   and if they fail to do so, they’ll be turned into an animal of their choice. David has brought his dog (formerly his brother, who didn’t make it) so he knows the ropes. What animal, wonders the manager, has David chosen to become in the event that he can’t find a compatible mate? ”A lobster,” he replies, noting that lobsters remain fertile for life, have blue blood like aristocrats, and that anyway, he quite likes the sea. ”Excellent choice,” he’s told, and the clock starts ticking. Everyone in this society assumes that compatibility means ”like with like,” so a guy (Ben Whishaw) who wants to attract a girl who gets nosebleeds bangs his head against walls to make his own nose bleed. A guy (John C. Reilly) with a lisp looks for a gal with a speech impediment. David briefly tries to ingratiate himself with a heartless woman by faking indifference to her. Always, though, there is the knowledge that things may not work out. David discovers there is an alternative of sorts. In the woods surrounding the hotel are quite a lot of unusual animals  —   camels, Shetland ponies, flamingos  —   but also a revolutionary bunch of loner escapees. For recreation, the hotel guests hunt them with tranquilizer darts, with each bagged loner getting the hunter an extra day of  . The loners, who prize lonerness as strongly as the rest of society prizes coupledom, have their own set of rules, which turn out to be just as peculiar  —   and simultaneously funny and cruel  —   as those of the society they’re rebelling against. Greek filmmaker Lanthimos is fond of hermetically sealed satires like this, where the logic is rigidly internal and the results of following that logic determinedly strange. The Lobster is his first film in English, and it plays cleverly with the compatibility assumptions behind, say, singles groups and online dating sites. Hard to tell how he feels about the idea that opposites attract. But perhaps it’s reflected in the opposite first and second halves he has given the movie. The early going is comic and light. Then, when David escapes into the woods and encounters soulmate Rachel Weisz, there’s a tonal shift to darkness, coupled with violence. Arguably, that’s less rewarding. Still, if weird is what you’re looking for, The Lobster is, claws down, the   of the year (though possibly not one you’d want to choose for a first date)."
"Donald Trump says he did not pose as his own spokesman, denying that it is his voice on a 1991 recording obtained by The Washington Post. In addition to the allegations of the apparent presidential nominee misrepresenting himself, the comments on the call about women stand out during a campaign that has struggled to connect with female voters. The newspaper reports that a publicist calling himself ”John Miller” or ”John Barron” called journalists from Trump’s office during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, sounding very much like Trump himself. Journalists and ”several of Trump’s top aides” tell the Post that those calls were in fact made by the billionaire real estate mogul. The newspaper says Trump has testified to using the name John Barron and notes that he named his son ”Barron.” In the recording, published by the Post on Thursday, a man who identifies himself as Miller speaks with People magazine reporter Sue Carswell. Carswell told the Post that she had immediately recognized that the man on the phone sounded like Trump. ”This was so farcical, that he pretended to be his own publicist. Here was this     real estate mogul, and he can’t hire his own publicist,” she said. ”It also said something about the control he wanted to keep of the news cycle flowing with this story, and I can’t believe he thought he’d get away with it.” The source of the recording is a person ”who asked to be identified only as a person with whom Carswell shared the microcassette of the call shortly after the interview,” the Post says. On the Today show Friday, Trump denied the accusations. After the hosts played a portion of the audio, Trump said, ”You’re telling me about it for the first time and it doesn’t sound like my voice at all.” ”I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice and you can imagine that,” he added. ”This sounds like one of these scams, one of the many scams. It doesn’t sound like me.” Trump went on to criticize Today for bringing up an alleged phone call from 25 years ago, saying, ”Let’s go on to more current subjects.” The hosts then turned to other news. In the 1991 interview, Carswell asks about Trump’s personal life  —   the end of his marriage to Ivana Trump, his relationship with model Marla Maples and other rumored affairs. In this conversation and others, the Post says, ”what stands out to some who received those calls is Trump’s characterization of women who he portrayed as drawn to him sexually.” This is of note given the accusations of sexism that have been leveled against Trump. The man identified as Miller tells Carswell, ”Actresses just call to see if they can go out with him and things.” He says that in addition to living with Maples, Trump had ”three other girlfriends.” Discussing rumors that Trump also had a relationship with Carla Bruni, Miller says: ”Well, she’s a very successful model, et cetera, et cetera. But again, he didn’t leave Marla for her. . .. When he makes a decision, that will be a very lucky woman. . .. You know, when he makes the decision, he’s very capable of a total commitment when he makes the decision. But he felt it’s too soon. Off the record, he probably felt Marla wasn’t the right one, or whatever, but he just felt that it was too soon.” Hear the recording for yourself:"
"Donald Trump has made various statements about his tax plan in recent days that have left some people pretty confused about just what he’d like to do. Here’s a guide to interpreting his remarks. ”In other words, it’s going to cost me a fortune.”  —   News conference, Sept. 28, 2015, At a news conference at Trump Tower, Trump unveiled a series of proposals to dramatically simplify and cut business and personal taxes. The proposals would have reduced the top marginal tax rate from 39. 6 to 25 percent for couples with annual income above $300, 000, which would have meant big cuts for   people. Trump maintained that the cuts would benefit   families and that the rich would actually end up paying more in taxes, because he would eliminate unspecified deductions and loopholes. Analysts who studied the proposals say they would increase the federal budget deficit by as much as $11 trillion over the first decade. ”For the wealthy, I think, frankly, it’s going to go up. And you know what? It really should go up.”  —   NBC’s Meet the Press, May 7, Last weekend, during appearances on NBC’s Meet The Press and ABC This Week, Trump appeared to suggest that he favors higher taxes on wealthy individuals. If true, it marked a significant departure from longtime Republican dogma on taxes, and many in the GOP were, to say the least, confused. ”Even this morning, you know, he’s talking about changing his tax policy and raising taxes,” said Rep. Sean Duffy,  . a Trump supporter. ”We want to button him down and say, ’Where are we going to go, Mr. Trump, if you’re president?’ ” ”I’m not talking raise from where they are now. I’m talking raise from my low proposal.”  —   Fox Business Network, May 9, Starting Monday, Trump sought to clarify his remarks, with interviews in The Wall Street Journal and on Fox Business Network, among others. Trump said he absolutely does not favor raising taxes on the wealthy, or anyone else for that matter. But he acknowledged that in negotiations with Congress, he would almost certainly have to concede on some points, and his plan might have to be scaled back a bit. The rich would still get a tax cut, but it wouldn’t be as big as he first proposed. ”The interesting thing about how Trump looks at this stuff is, he sort of compromises his negotiating position right upfront by admitting that he doesn’t really think this is really his plan, and that’s something unusual, something I’ve not seen from other political candidates,” says Alan Cole, an economist at the Tax Foundation. Stephen Moore, a prominent conservative commentator and founder of the Club for Growth, who met with Trump several weeks ago, says he remains convinced that the candidate is committed to tax cuts. ”He told us in the meeting he wants to cut tax rates. He believes this is the way to grow the economy, and I take him at his word on that. I think that’s been a centerpiece of what he’s been talking about on taxes,” Moore said. But Moore says he and other conservatives, including Larry Kudlow and Arthur Laffer, have met with Trump staffers to discuss ways to tweak Trump’s tax cuts, to mitigate their impact on the deficit. While Trump hasn’t actually endorsed their ideas, his staff seems willing to consider them, Moore says."
"It’s been a tough spring for air travel. Long lines at security checkpoints have stretched across terminals at airports from Atlanta to Denver to San Jose. Nearly 7, 000 American Airlines passengers missed their flights during a spring break week in March owing to security backups. In New York, the operator of the region’s three major airports calls the situation abysmal and is threatening to privatize the screening system. The U. S. Travel Association, an air travel group, says it’s a ”national crisis.” So Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson went to Washington’s Reagan National Airport Friday to give assurances that he feels the pain of air travelers and that help is on the way. ”Waiting three hours for what may be a   flight or   flight is not acceptable,” Johnson said. ”It would tax everybody’s patience. We want to reduce that as much as possible without compromising the safety of the American public.” The problem has many parts. Air travel is at record levels thanks to a relatively healthy economy. But there are fewer Transportation Security Administration screeners because of faulty traffic projections in years past. What’s more, the TSA is finding it hard to hang on to the screeners it has. Many of them work part time, and in stressful conditions, for low pay. TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger says the attrition rate for   screeners, or TSOs, is as high as 25 percent. Neffenger said while ”it is true that we lose a lot of our transportation security officers,” the agency is still ”bringing on more than we’re losing.” None of this has gone unnoticed by members of Congress. Florida Republican Rep. John Mica, who has long called for privatizing TSA screeners, was irate that some visitors to his office the other day missed their flights home. At a hearing this week, Mica fumed to Neffenger, ”You cannot recruit, you cannot train, you cannot retain, and you cannot administer.” The TSA, he said, is ”a huge, failing government program, and it will fail.” But Congress is not without blame. Lawmakers demanded changes after a government watchdog was able to smuggle mock explosives past screeners 95 percent of the times it tried last summer. So the TSA ordered screeners to focus on inspecting bags and not to worry about long lines. Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch summed up the dilemma: ”When we criticize you today about having long lines and taking too long to screen people  ” next week if there is a breach we will haul you up here again and lambaste you for not being more thorough.” Congress gave the TSA authority to hire more than 700 new screeners, who are expected by   and the agency is redeploying others. It will also be making additional use of canine teams to help screen passengers, as well as stepping up marketing of the TSA   program, which allows passengers who undergo a background check and pay $85 to go through expedited screening. Still, Johnson says air travelers should expect ”increased wait times” at security checkpoints this summer and that passengers should have ”appropriate expectations.” And he is encouraging travelers to download an app called My TSA, which gives estimated security waiting times at airports."
"Brandy Beck considers herself lucky. As a   mom, the Frontier Airlines pilot has experienced severe breast pain, engorged breasts, clogged ducts, decreased milk supply, three interruptions while pumping at work, and pumping in airport and airplane bathrooms. But unlike some of her colleagues, she escaped mastitis. Mastitis is a bacterial infection of the breast that can occur with clogged milk ducts if women cannot fully express their breast milk. And not receiving adequate, legally required accommodations for pumping breast milk at work is precisely why Beck and fellow Frontier pilots Randi Freyer, Shannon Kiedrowski and Erin Zielinski are involved in a complaint against Frontier Airlines. ”All four of us love our jobs, we love flying for Frontier and we love flying airplanes,” Beck says. ”Most of us have wanted to do it all our lives, and we just want some equality in the workplace.” The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Colorado and the law firm Holwell Shuster  Goldberg LLP filed discrimination charges May 10 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on the women’s behalf. The charges claim that Frontier is discriminating against women by not providing sufficient accommodations for pregnant and   employees. ”This has been a long process of trying to struggle to get these accommodations with no success,” says Galen Sherwin, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU in the women’s right project. ”This lawsuit is the necessary last resort.” According to Sherwin, the ACLU and the law firm sent Frontier management a letter describing the women’s difficulties and several possible solutions, including temporary   assignments that would allow easier accommodations, extension of maternity leave if the women wanted it and designated places where the women could pump in airports Frontier uses and on the plane when necessary. For its part, the airline says that it already provides places that comply with federal and Colorado state requirements in all airports it uses, according to Cindi Ruff, vice president of human resources at Frontier. Women can contact the station manager of each airport to find the location, she says. ”If they do [have those stations] they have not communicated that to the women I’ve spoken with, including women beyond these four pilots, despite repeated requests,” Sherwin says. ”If it’s up to the individual woman to contact each individual airport on her own, that would not be a sufficient accommodation. It’s tantamount to providing no support to the women.” Beck says the stations she does know of are often a half mile from Frontier gates and are sometimes insufficient, such as the one at Denver airport that was being used for storage when she needed it. As directed by an assistant pilot, she used a vacated office  —   and movers attempted to enter while she was pumping. Any temporary reassignments are governed by the collective bargaining agreement of the pilots’ union, Ruff told Shots. That contract only addresses   reassignments for    injuries and states that pilots who cannot return to work after four months may be entitled to receive an unpaid medical leave of absence. Maternity leave also is unpaid. ”We assume that Frontier is in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations, and temporary reassignment is one potential accommodation that Frontier that would be legally obligated to provide,” Sherwin said. ”If they’re offering that to people with disabilities, then they should be offering that to women.” Sherwin added that medical leave has only been granted for serious childbirth complications leading to physical injury or postpartum depression, and that   women who requested it were denied. Shannon Kiedrowski, one of the pilots involved in the suit, writes that she ”battled for months to get Frontier’s management to help future new moms.” But, she says, ”my efforts went nowhere.” Frontier’s Ruff says that the airline has worked with pilots who have raised concerns and adjusted their schedules to have less flying time. But less flying time doesn’t address the needs for accommodations during flying time, Sherwin says. Beck says she plans her flight days carefully to schedule in pumping time, but unexpected and sometimes long flight delays can interfere, necessitating pumping during a flight. ”This situation is unique, but ultimately it’s all about the safety of our passengers,” Ruff says. ”Being on an aircraft and being a pilot is a very unique situation, unlike any other profession, and unfortunately there are sometimes limitations in what can be extended to an individual.” The challenges for pilots are similar to those for surgeons operating, where the patient’s safety is paramount, says Katy Kozhimannil, an associate professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. ”It is a unique circumstance, but there are other circumstances where businesses face similar challenges in managing the   between the safety of the patients or passengers and the urgent health needs of their employees,” Kozhimannil says. ”If there are barriers, that’s certainly understandable, and maybe there’s a need for greater support for employers. But there have to be ways to try to address the needs of nursing mothers. It’s extraordinarily important, and it’s the law.” Pilots needing bathroom breaks leave the cockpit to do so, and the copilot must don an oxygen mask while the pilot is gone, Ruff says. ”The request is that women be permitted to take breaks during flights as needed on the same terms that pilots are able to address their other bodily needs,” Sherwin says. ”To say to a woman who’s   that you can’t leave the cockpit to take care of her bodily needs but to allow everyone else to leave to use the bathroom is sex discrimination.” It can also have health consequences, Kozhimannil says. Her research has found that only 40 percent of   or   employed women surveyed in 2011 and 2012 have been provided both break time and private space to express breast milk, as required by the Affordable Care Act. Those women were also twice as likely to be exclusively   at 6 months and more likely to   at all with each passing month. ”That’s unsurprising, given the physiology of   because women need to express breast milk during the day when they’re away from their child for their bodies to keep producing breast milk,” Kozhimannil says. ”When you stop expressing breast milk, your supply diminishes and you’re no longer able to  .” Clogged ducts and mastitis are other risks of not adequately expressing breast milk. One possible solution more broadly would be state or federal laws requiring paid family leave, enabling the pilots to take a longer unpaid leave without losing as much income. Pilots are already required to start unpaid maternity leave 8 weeks before their due date and have the option of four more unpaid months after delivery. ”I believe it’s unrealistic to ask a working mom to come back after four months and be away from her child for four to five days,” Beck says, adding that the problem is industry wide for pilots and flight attendants. ”Some people can afford that, and some people can’t. The most ideal solution is to have choices, because every individual needs something different.” The U. S. is the only country in the world besides Papua New Guinea that does not require employers to provide any paid family leave, says Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values @ Work, a network of coalitions working for paid leave policies. ”We tell women to be good mothers and then we punish them for doing so by making their family suffer financial insecurity or by shaming them for doing something like ” Bravo says. ”That’s got to change. It’s a scandal that nearly one in four women go back to work within two weeks.” The only states currently requiring paid family leave are California, New Jersey, Rhode Island and, as of April 1, New York. The lawsuit does not request money, Sherwin says. ”They would like ideally to have Frontier adopt these solutions so no other women would have to go through what they went through,” Sherwin says. ”It’s 2016. It shouldn’t be that women have to choose between their jobs and   their babies, and that’s why our clients are bringing the case.”"
"Susannah Mushatt Jones, who was believed to be the world’s oldest person at 116, has died in New York. Known as Miss Susie to her friends and family, she reportedly had a penchant for bacon and lingerie. The Gerontology Research Group (which verifies and tracks the most elderly people in the world) says that now, Emma Morano of Italy is the world’s oldest living person  —   and, the last person alive to have been born before 1900. Jones hailed from Alabama and ”went on to work as a   housekeeper and childcare provider,” according to the Guinness Book of World Records. She was the ”daughter of sharecroppers and the granddaughter of slaves,” according to Reuters. In a 2014 interview with Time, she said she was the 3rd of 11 siblings and was married for a short time but never had children. She never drank or smoked, Time reported, and slept more than 10 hours every night. But Jones added that she does love bacon  —   four strips daily, to be exact  —   along with eggs and grits for breakfast. And according to her niece Selbra Mushatt, she had a soft spot for upscale lace lingerie, Time reported. ”She would save her money and then go to Bloomingdale’s. . ..One time, when she had to get an EKG, the doctors and nurses were surprised to see her wearing that lingerie, and she said, ’Oh sure, you can never get too old to wear fancy stuff. ’” Jones also was involved in starting a ”scholarship fund for young African American women,” according to the BBC. Until 10 years ago, at the age of 106, she served as a ”member of the tenant patrol of her nursing home.” Jones’ death means that there’s a new oldest living person. According to the Associated Press, Morano met the news ”with a smile” after she woke from a nap to find assembled journalists, relatives and friends in Verbania, Italy. The wire service reports that her doctor of 23 years, Dr. Carlo Bava, broke the news to her: ”For the occasion, he brought flowers as well [as] seven Easter cakes called Colomba, an Italian specialty that he managed to procure out of season to satisfy her sweet tooth until Christmas, when Panettone is available. ”The doctor said Morano has never had a very balanced diet, relying mostly on animal protein, the occasional banana and grapes in season. Her diet now includes two raw eggs and 100 grams of raw steak a day, which Bava prescribed after she had a bout of anemia some years back. Her nieces also make her apple sauce.” Bava adds that she left a husband who beat her during ”the Fascist era, when women were supposed to be submissive. She was always very decisive,” AP reports. Last year, she told the wire service that her singing voice used to draw a crowd. ”I sang in my house, and people on the road stopped to hear me singing. And then they had to run, because they were late and should go to work.” Today, the AP says, she summed up her 116 years like this: ”I finished school and I went to work. I used to sing. I had a beautiful voice.”"
"The Slow Food movement, founded in 1989 with the aim of restoring a healthy relationship between people and food, embraces a celebration of local, environmentally responsible food cultures. The movement’s snail logo reminds us to slow our pace and take time to savor as we grow or purchase, prepare and eat our food. A snail also graces the cover of The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, a new book by Canadian humanities professors and literary critics Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber, who shine the light of slow food principles onto academic culture. In 90 thrilling pages of text, Berg and Seeber describe the current corporatization of the college campus and urge professors to resist it with all they’ve got. ”Thrilling” isn’t a word I often apply to books about higher education, but these pages galvanized me. Last December, I concluded 27 years of college teaching and, for now, I still feel a part of campus culture. I’m in contact with colleagues (locally, nationally and internationally) who feel burned by this corporate model. They work long hours yet have little time to read or write for work, or just to think  —   the faculty activities that Berg and Seeber say a university should prize most and that may benefit its students the most. What exactly is the corporatization of the academy? Here’s a powerful descriptive passage from The Slow Professor: ”The corporate university’s language of new findings, technology transfer, knowledge economy, grant generation, frontier research, efficiency, and accountability dominates how academic scholarship is now framed both within the institution and outside it.” The buzzwords in this quote describe activities that might sound good but in fact often aren’t, because emphasis on them leaches away the joy and the humanity from the   process. ”Frontier research” is an example: It sounds good, right? But when the plum prize is considered by university power structures to be external funding from governments and corporations, money that underwrites applied research, then       approaches to learning in the humanities and social sciences may be devalued. (Applied science research plays a vital role in the life of the university, in fact in all our lives. I hope this goes without saying. It’s a matter of balance.) Working at corporate universities, professors often become ”beleaguered, managed, frantic, stressed, and demoralized,” Berg and Seeber say. It’s as if there can never be enough product generated (grants,   documents about students’ learning outcomes, committee white papers) in the hours available. Does anyone still think that college professors have it easy? That they teach two or three classes a week, meet students for another hour or two, attend a faculty meeting, and then are free to go home  —   with summers off? The Slow Professor lacerates that notion and, along with it,   but misguided advice that all will turn out just fine if only professors could manage their time better. Some of this advice as reported by Berg and Seeber is funny, sad and appalling all at once: Save Saturdays for research and slate 12 hours each Sunday for marking papers and preparing the week’s classes to come! Wake at 4 a. m. during the week to write! Berg and Seeber aren’t having it the fault isn’t with professors’ time management skills. ”The real time issues,” they write, ”are the increasing workload, the   pace, and the instrumentalism that pervades the corporate university.” Professors, Berg and Seeber say, need to take back the intellectual life of the university. How to do this? Professors can say no without guilt to endless university committee assignments refuse to buy into the ethic of overwork talk 1:1 with colleagues in the hall instead of going online to connect recognize that shared positive emotion, emerging from thoughtful engaged discussion in the classroom, boosts learning. Most important of all, college teachers should insist, unapologetically, that reflective inquiry is the heart and soul of the university. And reflective inquiry can’t be done in a distracted rush, without uninterrupted time to focus. Berg and Seeber acknowledge that ”being an academic has privileges not enjoyed by the majority of the workforce.” College teachers have more flexible hours than many other workers. Tenured professors may enjoy an unusual degree of job security, too. (The stresses felt by   faculty are massive  —   but that’s another topic.) Teaching at the corporate university is no paradise, even for faculty with tenure. I admire Berg and Seeber for asserting this fact clearly, explaining why it’s true and insisting that change through resistance is possible  —   even as they also convey just how joyful college teaching and scholarship can be. I hope that college teachers will take time to savor The Slow Professor and talk about it with each other at faculty reading groups. With slow food served as refreshments, of course. Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara’s most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape."
"Almost no one saw Donald Trump coming a year ago, it seems. And there’s all sorts of   as to why: Journalists blew it. Or maybe it was political scientists’ fault. But there’s one big reason why so many smart people overlooked him: He’s the opposite of what many of the loudest voices in the Republican Party said they wanted. Last year, GOP pollster Whit Ayres famously laid out what the party would need to win the White House in 2016 and Beyond. In particular, Ayres’   book focused on the nation’s demographics, insisting that the party had to win over nonwhites, and particularly Hispanics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his conclusions in several ways mirrored what the GOP laid out in its 2013 ”autopsy”: The party needed to change with a changing America, reaching out in particular to minorities, young people and women. (It’s one reason Ayres eventually backed Marco Rubio  —   for his potential for broader appeal.) The candidate the GOP is nominating doesn’t meet those criteria. In fact, he underperforms among all of those groups. But while Beltway insiders crafted their recommendations, more than 10 million primary voters doused those recommendations in lighter fluid, threw a match and walked away in slow motion, with Carmina Burana playing in the background. So we decided to see how far off the voters were from the GOP insiders. Fortunately, Ayres created the easiest way to count this up  —   an   checklist. Here’s what he thought a successful presidential candidate would need in 2016, based on what he saw as the party’s weaknesses after 2012 and the nation’s changing demographics: NPR scored the final three (Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Trump) plus a couple of this cycle’s former strong contenders (Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio) as well as two dark horses whose names popped up during the nominating fight (Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney). (We also attempted to score two other dark horses who occasionally were mentioned as candidates  —   Condoleezza Rice and Nikki Haley  —   but given their lack of   polling data and stated policy positions in some areas, we ended up with too many blanks.) Using a simple scoring system involving polls and expert opinions, we tried to answer each of these questions for each selected candidate, except No. 7 (gaming out which of these people could hypothetically win swing states is just too hard to do reliably). On each one, the candidates received a score between   and 1. Here are their scores: (For an explanation of how we did this, scroll down to the ”Methodology” section.) It’s a rough calculation, but there are a few important takeaways here: 1) The candidates who scored the worst also did best in the primaries. Trump and, to a lesser extent, Cruz failed to meet the criteria Ayres (and, in many cases, the GOP) thought a successful   candidate would need in 2016. Meanwhile, Ryan, who didn’t even run, does by far the best, scoring a total of 3 points. He’s followed closely by John Kasich, at 1. 75 points, who won only his home state. (One caveat here is that Ryan hasn’t sustained the negative attacks that this year’s GOP contenders have  —   which could bring down his poll numbers. But at the very least, even had Ryan somehow performed poorly among all three groups in this analysis, he still would have beat Cruz and Trump here.) To be clear, none of this is to say that the GOP primary voters were wrong. They picked who they wanted. But their ideas of what they wanted were very different from the party’s, for better or worse, from the party’s point of view (more on that later). 2) These criteria were just a baseline. Rubio did relatively well here. And he also flamed out after Chris Christie embarrassed him at a February debate, calling out Rubio’s constant repetition of one particular talking point. After that, Rubio drew still more criticism for joking about the size of Donald Trump’s, er, hands. The point is that someone could have performed well here and still have had big problems as a candidate. Despite barrels of superPAC money, Bush excited very few voters. Despite being a     governor, Kasich never really caught fire. The point is that the ability to connect with voters is a necessary  —   maybe the most necessary (and unspoken)  —   item on any   checklist. And this year, that may have meant this checklist was incomplete, as voters also seemed to demand a candidate who openly, actively despised the Washington establishment. 3) There’s a difference between the primaries and the general election. To reiterate, this is a general election checklist, as Ayres framed it. This is what he thought the party would need to appeal to a wider swath of voters than GOP primary voters. Unfortunately for the GOP, the two are at odds. Winning more women, Hispanics and young voters, everyone seemed to agree, was necessary to beating whomever the Democrats might nominate. But those aren’t exactly the keys to winning the GOP nomination fight. The primary electorate, for example, is almost entirely white. Any presidential candidate has to win first the one group, then the other. The GOP’s problem right now is that while winning the nomination, its de facto candidate staked out positions (deporting 11 million immigrants, punishing women for getting abortions) that could scare off those constituencies the party thinks it needs. 4) Establishment, meet actual voters. Voters, meet establishment. Maybe the clearest,      message here: The GOP establishment and primary electorate were fantastically disconnected from one another. The party took a cold,   look at its failings after 2008 and 2012, then looked over the nation’s demographics, and put two and two together: Something needed to change. Strategists decided they needed to rethink their outreach and, to an extent, change their very policies in order to appeal to a   (and, they feared, steadily slipping away) electorate. The problem is that many Republican voters, distrustful of all things Beltway and increasingly hostile toward Democrats, didn’t want (or believe) cold and  . Their final two candidates, Trump and Cruz, also scored the worst on these criteria. It’s not that Republicans’ recommendations were grounded in fantasy. Demographics are changing. The party would do well to move further beyond older, white voters. And given all that, there is another intriguing possibility here: 4. 5) The GOP establishment may have been right on emphasis, wrong on execution. The establishment seemed to think the party needed a softer, more approachable face in 2016. Consider the GOP’s giant subhead in its autopsy: ”Some people say, ’Republicans Don’t Care,’ ” or Ayres’ call for a ”positive” candidate whose attitude offered ”more grace, less condemnation.” Trump doesn’t project a warm, fuzzy, caring persona. But there is more than one way to show voters you care. One  —   the one that the GOP and Ayres appear to have been talking about  —   is perhaps best exemplified in Kasich’s Ohio victory speech: ”We are leaving no one behind, not the mentally ill, the drug addicted, the working poor.” Trump picked a different way to show that he cared: He got pissed off. So for all his bluster, voters just might see empathy in Donald Trump: ”I am very angry because our country is being run horribly, and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger,” he said. It’s a tactic that didn’t pop up in many   analyses, but it sure has worked.  —   —   METHODOLOGY, All categories are scored on a scale of   to 1. 1: ”Positive, hopeful, and optimistic” 7: Can unite the GOP, Four top conservative strategists and pollsters scored the candidates with a 1, 2 or 3 (which we later converted to   0, or 1) on whether the candidates are ”positive, hopeful, and optimistic” (question 1) as well as whether the candidates could ”unite the various factions of the Republican coalition” (question 8). Our loose definitions we set up:   means awful, 0 means   and 1 means excellent. We then averaged the scores together. 2: Has held office, We simply gave candidates a   or a 1 on this one: 1 for having held office,   for not. 3: Offers a ”specific and persuasive agenda” for the middle class, Four top economists and economic experts from   organizations weighed in on whether the real and hypothetical candidates had a ”specific and persuasive agenda to appeal to the economic anxieties of the middle class.” Again, the scores were 1 to 3, which we later made   0 or 1. We then averaged the scores together. 4. Appeals to Hispanics and other minority voters, For any candidate who ran for president in 2016, we looked at their recent net favorability ratings among nonwhites before they dropped out (or, in Trump’s case, recent ratings, period). For Cruz, Kasich, Ryan and Trump, we used data from a recent national poll (an   poll of registered voters from April). We also used a February   poll to get numbers on Rubio and Bush. For Romney, we looked at his favorability rating among nonwhites according to a   Quinnipiac poll from April 2012  —   not a perfect comparison, but we were only looking for direction of favorability among registered voters from a similar time period in the last cycle. Substantially negative (  negative) favorability gave a candidate a score of  . Substantially ( ) positive gave a candidate a score of 1. Anything around 0 was a score of 0. 5. Appeals to   white voters, In these cases, we used the same polls as above for everyone, looking at the favorability figures for white people without a college degree. Substantially negative (  negative) favorability gave a candidate a score of  . Substantially ( ) positive gave a candidate a score of 1. Anything around 0 was a score of 0. 6. Appeals to young people, As with No. 4, we looked at the aforementioned polls for candidates’ favorability ratings among young voters (  to   ). Substantially negative ratings gave a candidate a score of  . Substantially positive gave a candidate a score of 1. Anything around 0 was a score of 0."
"Contested primaries in both political parties have led to another cycle of record political ad spending, according to a new analysis of campaign advertising by the Wesleyan Media Project. The analysis, which covers ads from Jan. 1, 2015, through May 8, 2016, tallies $408 million in ad spending compared to $120 million in 2012 when President Obama sought  . Updated at 3 p. m. ET with details: Bernie Sanders has spent more money  —   $73. 7 million  —   to air more ads than any other presidential candidate. So far, he’s aired 124, 732 ads, with 99. 9 percent of them produced by the campaign. Hillary Clinton ranked second at $62. 6 million with 105, 376 ads, 99. 4 percent of them from the Clinton campaign. On the Republican side, just 24 percent of the ad spending came directly from the candidates’ campaigns with the remainder coming from outside groups, such as superPACs. De facto Republican nominee Donald Trump aired 33, 050 ad spots in that period costing $18. 5 million. That’s less than vanquished rivals Ted Cruz ($37. 6 million) Marco Rubio ($72. 7 million) and Jeb Bush ($66. 9 million) all spent. Sanders and Clinton both benefited from the federally mandated discounted advertising rates for candidates. Republicans Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush both had more spending on their behalf than Clinton. But because they outsourced advertising to outside groups, the money bought substantially fewer ads: 59, 275 for Rubio’s team, 39, 062 for Bush’s team. It’s no surprise that most of the action has been in the Republican primaries. The season isn’t over yet, but candidates and outside groups together have aired 249, 327 TV ads. That’s up 34 percent from 2012, and 212 percent from 2008. The media project also looked at Senate primaries, and found that undisclosed, ”dark” money accounts for 62 percent of 48, 072 ads aired by outside groups. The spenders that don’t disclose their donors include the Natural Resources Defense Council, a 501( c)(3) charity 501( c)(4) ”social welfare” groups 501( c)(6) business associations and at least one corporation. The Wesleyan Media Project is a consortium of political scientists from Wesleyan University, Bowdoin College and the University of Washington. The advertising data come from Kantar  ."
"Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day? And does eating a morning meal help us maintain a healthy weight? The    dogma is based on a blend of cultural tradition  and science (and more than a little cereal marketing.) Some of the earliest evidence goes back to the 1960s, when researchers in Alameda County, Calif. documented residents’ everyday habits. The   study linked eating breakfast  —   along with other lifestyle choices, including a good night’s sleep and regular exercise  —   to improved health and longevity. But in recent years, this association has come under more scrutiny. And what’s emerged points to a more complicated conclusion. For instance, researchers in Canada who studied the habits of about 12, 000 adults concluded that ”breakfast consumption was not consistently associated with differences in [body mass index] or overweight prevalence.” And a recent study  published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that, when it comes to weight loss, breakfast eaters do no better  —   or worse  —   than people who skip the morning meal. Here’s the deal: Lots of American adults aren’t sitting down to breakfast anymore. In our informal Twitter poll, almost 1 in 5 respondents said they skip the morning meal entirely, or just drink coffee. Another 25 percent of respondents grab a quick yogurt or energy bar at some point during the morning. Our results mirror the findings of industry research. The NPD Group finds that Americans are moving away from prescribed mealtimes. The trend is most pronounced among millennials, who, according to NPD, skip twice as many breakfast meals compared with older Americans. And, increasingly, what millennials are choosing to eat in the morning  —   when they make time for it  —   also marks a significant departure in eating habits: They’re often opting for a hot breakfast instead of cereal. How do we square the ”     ” belief with the shift in our eating habits? If you sift through the scientific evidence, there doesn’t seem to be anything magical about eating first thing in the morning. Lots of us aren’t hungry until a few hours after we wake up. If you’re a ”     a. m.” person, that’s OK. And waiting to eat anything until lunchtime might actually work best for some of us. As we’ve reported, some dieters have found success with minifasts. So, is there a downside to skipping breakfast  —   or not eating early in the morning? We put the question to David Ludwig, an obesity researcher, nutrition professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, and author of the book Always Hungry? And his answer, in short, is this: What we eat in the morning may be more important than when we eat it. ”If [your] breakfast is based on highly processed carbohydrates [such as sugary cereals or sweet rolls] it may be as bad [as] or worse than, skipping breakfast,” Ludwig says. Why? All of those refined carbs and sugars can lead to a spike in blood sugar and insulin. ”The high insulin programs the body for fat storage, making it hard to cut back calories,” says Ludwig. And a breakfast of highly refined carbohydrates may leave you feeling hungrier later in the day. On the other hand, if you eat a   breakfast (think eggs) you’re likely to be satisfied longer. ”  foods, specifically protein and fat, slow down digestion,” says Ludwig. So, what’s an ideal breakfast? We asked the advice of Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist at Columbia University who studies the links between food and mood. Ramsey pointed us to eggs, topped with a mix of fresh greens and pumpkin seeds, which are rich in magnesium, thought to play a role in fending off anxiety. The body of evidence linking high protein to more satiety is growing. For instance, a new study finds that a   breakfast may help people control their appetites and eat less the remainder of the day. And it seems millennials are ahead of the curve on this advice: NPD Group’s Darren Seifer says young adults are big on   foods. They may not eat breakfast every day, but when they do, ”we are seeing a greater number of younger consumers consuming eggs in the morning,” he says. And based on NPD’s modeling, this trend is set to accelerate. In some ways, it seems as if we’re going back to where we were at the turn of the last century, when a   cooked breakfast was the norm. We turned away from this when cereal was marketed as the healthier, more convenient alternative. ”Americans really did make this shift . .. to a lighter,   breakfast,” says Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. Cereal became the   option. Now, habits are shifting once again. This post is adapted from a story that originally ran last August."
"Ahead of our forthcoming podcast, I’ve been   in some reading and interviews about the way we talk about, well, white people. Whiteness has always been a central dynamic of American cultural and political life, though we don’t tend to talk about it as such. But this election cycle is making it much harder to avoid discussions of white racial grievance and identity politics when, for instance, Donald Trump’s only viable pathway to the White House is to essentially win all of the white dudes. And indeed, the roiling civil war between the Republican Party’s elites and a huge swath of its base has prompted an unusually candid public grappling with whiteness. Take this paragraph from a post by Bloomberg’s Sasha Issenberg on ”Hillary Clinton’s Appalachian Problem:” ”This is all a reminder of how circumstantial Clinton’s position as tribune of the white working class was during her first presidential campaign. (Thought exercises: what would Clinton’s 2008 coalition have looked like had it been John Edwards, not Obama, who had won the Iowa caucuses that year? And what would it look this year if her liberal challenger were Deval Patrick instead of Sanders?) Perhaps now that she is no longer running against an   candidate —  and has anointed herself a crusader against the ’challenges of racism, of sexism, of discrimination against the LGBT community’ —  Clinton no longer has much of a connection with those ’  Americans.’ ” This is much closer to Saying The Thing than we normally get, an acknowledgment that the reason ”  Americans”  —   the quotes underscoring the euphemism  —   don’t really rock with Hillary Clinton is a sense that some of the concerns she’s championing are, if not anathema to them, then at least not theirs. And that this time around, there isn’t a black candidate to ensure that some white voters will vote for her, however grudgingly, despite her platform. But then, there’s the liberal commentator Jonathan Chait’s recent essay at New York Mag, ”The Real Reason We All Underrated Trump,” in which he openly wonders whether Republican voters who’ve fallen for Trump are ”idiots”: ”Most voters don’t follow politics and policy for a living, and it’s understandable that they would often fall for arguments based on faulty numbers or a misreading of history. . .. As low as my estimation of the intelligence of the Republican electorate may be, I did not think enough of them would be dumb enough to buy his act. And, yes, I do believe that to watch Donald Trump and see a qualified and plausible president, you probably have some kind of mental shortcoming. As many fellow Republicans have pointed out, Donald Trump is a con man. What I failed to realize  —   and, I believe, what so many others failed to realize, though they have reasons not to say so  —   is just how easily so many Republicans are duped.” It’s telling that Chait finds it easier to imagine that huge swaths of Republican primary voters are childlike and naive, rather than folks who quite rationally dig Trump’s direct appeals to their interests  —   their racial interests. Among Trump’s most notorious policy proposals is a moratorium on Muslims entering the country. He has called Mexican immigrants ”rapists.” Maybe we should concede that these declarations are not incidental to his appeal among his supporters, but central to them. Calling them ”idiots” posits that they’ve been duped, when perhaps Trump is saying precisely what they want to hear. When Trump’s supporters aren’t being written off as intellectually incapable of knowing a huckster when they see one, their motivations are often ascribed to their being ”working class.” But the working class today is nearly 40 percent people of color  —   and among people of color, Trump is profoundly unpopular. His coalition is nearly entirely white. Even the class part of the ”working class” narrative is inaccurate Trump’s supporters are wealthier than most Americans, and have higher incomes than supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The ”working class revolt” explanation for Trump’s rise is overstated  —   and it can be a useful dodge to avoid talking about explanations involving racial grievance. There have been outlets and pundits this election cycle who’ve shown they’re willing and able to dig into the role that racial grievance plays in How Trump Happened. Others haven’t, and continue not to. And that’s a problem. When we don’t grapple with whiteness in our politics directly and explicitly  —   to talk about the fact that   numbers of white voters are motivated more by identity politics than by ideology or faith  —   we’re essentially agreeing to misidentify some of the most important dynamics of this cycle."
"The massive bleaching hitting the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is likely that country’s ”biggest ever environmental disaster,” says Dr. Justin Marshall, who has studied the reef for three decades. Only 7 percent of the reef has escaped bleaching, according to researchers at the ARC Center of Excellence. Marshall, a professor at the University of Queensland, says the destructive phenomenon is happening in an area the size of Scotland. ”Before this mass bleaching started, we already were at the point of losing 50% of the coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef. This, I think, will probably take another 50% off what was left,” Marshall says. Over the course of the last six months, Marshall and his colleagues with the citizen science project Coral Watch have documented the degradation of reef structures near Lizard Island, one of the   areas. They photographed the same formations of coral multiple times, showing clearly the pace of the destruction. ”It was a beautiful, wonderful paradise of reef structure and animals, and it’s not there anymore. Or it is  —   but it’s a slime ball, it’s a gloomy place,” Marshall says. In this series of photos, you can see first that the coral is healthy  —   then, bleached. Algae begin to grow on the coral, which later intensifies, eventually resulting in disintegration of the coral and the loss of a habitat. Bleaching is caused by    water temperatures that stress the coral, as The   has explained: ”Coral bleaching occurs when the living organisms that make up coral reefs expel the colorful, photosynthetic algae that normally live inside their bodies, and provide them with food. Those algae give coral reefs their color and disappear when the reefs are exposed to stressful climatic conditions, such as temperatures even a few degrees higher than normal.” The phenomenon is linked to global climate change, says Marshall: ”Mass coral bleachings have only been happening for 20 years, and they are irrevocably, totally, absolutely linked to   climate change.” The New York Times reports climate change has compounded ”heat stress [to the reefs] from multiple weather events including the latest, severe El Niño.” This series of images taken by Coral Watch shows a   of healthy coral’s progression through bleaching, and later covered with thick algae. This is the ominous final photo in the series: Scientists are concerned about reefs worldwide. ”We are currently experiencing the longest global coral bleaching event ever observed,” C. Mark Eakin, the Coral Reef Watch coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Maryland, tells The New York Times. ”We are going to lose a lot of the world’s reefs during this event.” Now, Australia’s summer is ending and the water is cooling down. Marshall says some of the bleached coral is beginning to recover  —   but much of it is dying. He says that reefs in the area where these photos were taken could see 90 percent mortality. Longer term recovery can happen over the course of years and even decades, should corals regrow and recolonize. Marshall compares it to ”cutting down a forest and then regrowing trees.” He adds: ”I will probably never see the Great Barrier Reef in the state that it was in six months ago ever again.”"
"At first glance, it seems easy to spot the point at which Alain Macklovitch’s career leapt into another tier of international stardom. The Canadian DJ  —   who goes by the name   onstage  —   recalls an afternoon in London, where he’d been booked to play a show at a tiny record shop in 2004. It turns out he wasn’t the only one performing there that day. So was another young artist by the name of John Legend  —   ”and Kanye West came to support John Legend,” Macklovitch says. West had been in London for a promotional trip for his record label, right around the time his first album, College Dropout, dropped in stores. ”People who paid attention knew that Kanye was really going to revolutionize  . And I was one of those people,” Macklovitch says. ”I was really excited about him.” After West caught Macklovitch’s show  —   purely by coincidence  —   that excitement quickly became mutual. ”When he saw me, that light bulb went off above his head,” Macklovitch recalls, ”and he said, ’I found my DJ! That guy’s going to be my DJ!’ ” And that was it all it took. Macklovitch says he toured with West for four years, brewing a collaboration that extended beyond the stage and into the studio  —   for some of West’s most popular tracks, like ”Gold Digger.” You can catch Macklovich’s work most obviously in the closing seconds of the song. Scratch In Chapters, But that’s not the only moment Macklovitch marks as his big break. ”My career spans about 20 years at this point. And so, it feels like there’s distinct chapters to it  —   and each chapter has a kind of break,” he says. Rewind that career back to its origins, and you’ll find a preteen kid who didn’t know much about    —   manipulating records to create rhythms and melodies from the sounds of scratching. What he did know, he knew only from clips in   music videos or random scenes in The Fresh Prince of  . But he did have his father’s record player at home  —   and he decided one day to take it for a spin. Surprisingly, he didn’t break the thing his first attempts actually ”sounded kind of all right,” he says. ”And I had some of my dad’s vinyl and I had my dad’s double LP for Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life,” Macklovitch recalls. ”Once I started taking it seriously, which was pretty quickly, I would just come home and practice for hours every day. It gets pretty technical, and it’s similar to any other musical instrument, except that scratching would often be  .” So, he dug into rap records that featured scratching, playing scratch solos over and over just to figure out the tricks and techniques behind them. Within two years, in 1997, he entered the DMC World DJ Championships, the premier international DJ competition, and headed to Italy to perform in the finals. He was just 15 years old. ”I remember very well I had to miss class. I had to speak to my teachers and say I was going to Italy for a scratching competition,” he laughs, ”which went over people’s heads. They looked at me puzzled, but they allowed me to miss a few days of school.” Soon, he was on his way to Rimini, Italy  —   with his mom, turn tables in hand. (Heads up: There’s some salty language in this video.) ”There had never even been a Canadian DJ that made it to the finals, period. And I came in and I won.” And that, Macklovitch says, was the start of it all, the first of a string of big breaks that have led him to this moment. ”There was demands for me to play in different countries. I got booked to play in Korea two months later. That was my first international gig,” he says. ”Everything took off from there.” As part of a series called My Big Break, All Things Considered is collecting stories of triumph, big and small. These are the moments when everything seems to click, and people leap forward into their careers."
"Ah, the cardigan: your granny’s cozy   used to be available   but in limited quantities and colors. It was considered the sartorial equivalent of flossing: necessary, but not glamorous. ”The cardigan used to be something to keep you warm in the work place,” explains Teri Agins, who covered the fashion industry for the Wall Street Journal for years. ”It was not really an accessory you left on —  unless you wore it as part of a twin set.” That look, sweater upon sweater, was considered too prim for a lot of young women. It was their mother’s look. Enter Michelle Obama, and the game changed. ”She wore cardigans with her sleeveless dresses, wore a lot of print dresses with solid cardigans,” Agins says. She even sometimes belted her sweaters to show off her trim waistline. And she didn’t just wear the sweaters behind closed doors at 1600 Pennsylvania. For a March 2009 Vogue interview about her new job, she wore a papaya cashmere cardigan with a soft ruffled blouse. When the Obamas made their first official trip to England, she donned a jeweled cream silk cardigan over a pale green pencil skirt when she visited 10 Downing Street. The   international press noticed. IDTV described the effect this way: ”Her upbeat ensemble stood out alongside the British Prime Minister’s wife’s navy outfit.” That sweater, from   retailer J. Crew, sold out within hours the same day photos of Mrs. O were released. The total cost of the sweater and skirt (also J. Crew) was $400. Kim Kardashian’s every outfit may be chronicled by photographers, too, but you don’t see sales of her     dresses or   jeans selling out after those photos are published. Kardashian is a celebrity, but she does not move markets in the same way. Most celebrities don’t. Michelle Obama does, and it’s often her more casual clothes that cause bottom lines and stocks to soar. There are even numbers that prove it: David Yermack, a professor of finance at NYU’s Stern School of Business actually tracked Mrs. O’s looks for about a year in a study that was published in the Harvard Business Review. How This First Lady Moves Markets looked at 189 outfits Mrs. O wore to public events from November 2008 through December 2009 and eyeballed 30 publicly traded stocks from the businesses whose brands the first lady wore. Yermack says the findings surprised even him: ”It was truly remarkable how much more effect Mrs. Obama had on the commercial fashion industry that almost any other celebrity you could find in any other commercial setting,” Yermack says. And it wasn’t just a freak blip on the graph: ”This would be a very permanent thing,” Yermack emphasized. ”The stocks would not go down the next day. So to put a number on it for just a generic company at a routine event, it was worth about $38 million to have Mrs. Obama wear your clothes.”  . The brands tracked in the Yermack study yielded $2. 7 billion in the cumulative appreciation of stock prices. While J. Crew had some of the biggest gains, clothes from Target, The Gap and Liz Claiborne also did well when Mrs. Obama wore them. As did   clothes from companies like LVMH —  which owns Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, among others —   and Saks Fifth Ave. Markets can go up or down, professional fashion observers can praise or pan her, but Mrs. Obama herself has always downplayed her fashion savvy. She told ABC’s Robin Roberts in 2008 she felt there was some pressure to represent, since her clothes (like many first ladies’) were so closely scrutinized. ”It’s hard,” she admitted to Roberts. ”I’m kind of a   at heart —  but I like to look nice.” She has been widely praised for using clothes to reflect her personality and the occasion, but she hasn’t been perfect. Some people thought the   black Narcisco Rodriguez dress she wore in election night in Chicago was a risk that didn’t work. And there was a slight misstep on vacation the first year, when the Obamas visited a national park during a heat wave and the first lady exited Air Force One in shorts. (Sensible, but an apparent protocol  .) And some people, including the late Oscar de la Renta, thought a sweater  —   even, apparently, a very expensive one by Azzedine Alaia  —   was a little too casual to wear for drinks with Queen Elizabeth. He told Women’s Wear Daily, ”You don’t . .. go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater.” He was also critical of her decision to wear an Alexander McQueen gown to a state dinner in 2011. (De la Renta later softened his stance on Michelle Obama’s choices, saying, ”she’s a great example to American women today. ”) But when FLOTUS got it right, she really got it right: the   dresses in bright prints she’s worn since day one. The simple sheaths in jewel tones. The sleeveless dresses and blouses. The flats. Those looks translated into sales. And the cardigan: ”The sweater business traditionally would not be doing well in a time like this,” says Marshall Cohen, who analyzes retail fashion for the market research firm NPD. ”However, there are certain styles within the category that are doing well.” And it’s probably not coincidental that Michelle Obama has glamorized this   staple. Her way of dressing has resonated with American women, says Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer   fashion critic for the Washington Post. ”One of the really vital things that Michelle Obama has done, is she’s wearing real fashion,” says Givhan, who covered the first lady for her first year in the White House. Mrs. Obama’s decision to wear consciously   looks, Givhan says, ”was her own use of fashion as a way of defining who she was going to be in the White House.” Mrs. Obama was going to continue being what she had been —  a working wife and mother, wearing what she liked, what was comfortable and what worked for her. In doing that, Givhan says, the first lady was not so much initiating change as reflecting how women around the country already had begun to change their own look —  dresses instead of suits, sweaters instead of jackets, bare legs instead of pantyhose. Those choices struck a plangent note. ”When Michelle Obama came along and made all these these things a matter of course,” Givhan says, ”I think it validated a lot of things they were doing, and also validated things that they wanted to do but often felt they weren’t allowed to.” Unlike style, fashion used to be restricted to a fairly small group: the young, the thin, the wealthy . .. and the white. Michelle Obama broadened the serious fashionista membership, says Teri Agins. And not just in dress size and economic status. Besides Oprah, ”we haven’t seen many     women who have been celebrated for their beauty and style.” And for decades, we haven’t seen women of any race or age who have been able to make cash registers ring simply by stepping out the front door. Safe to say the fashion industry is going to miss this Obama Effect."
"Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. In this week’s episode, listeners ask what to do when political differences with family members turn downright hostile. Here, Bleeding Heart says a disagreement with her parents about Donald Trump has hurt the family’s ability to communicate. Dear Sugars, I’m a young millennial who was raised in a fairly conservative environment. I came into my liberal views pretty young, and they’ve only gotten stronger as I’ve entered the nonprofit legal aid world. Growing up, I saw my parents as measured and wise, even if I disagreed with them. My mom is   and they are   rights. My dad is on the board of an education nonprofit that serves   youth. However, this election has changed everything. My mom has become   hostile. I try to avoid politics because I’m passionate as well, and it always ends with screaming. Unfortunately, she can turn every conversation into an aggressive political nightmare. I bring up a TV show, and it’s about how Hillary has lied about everything. I mention how weird the weather is, and it’s about how gullible I am to have faith in Bernie. When my   joke that they don’t know anyone who’s voting for Trump, I become the token ”friend whose parent is voting for Trump.” My patience is forever for my parents. I love them and will always adore them. However, I’m sad that my respect is waning. Aren’t you always supposed to respect your parents? How can I divorce their views from my feelings for them when it’s all my mom will talk about? How can I avoid her combative nature while having a serious discussion about politics? I used to feel comfortable sharing my views and beliefs, but now I bite my tongue constantly so I’m not ganged up on by the ones I love. Best, Bleeding Heart, Steve Almond: It is sad. The real thing, to cut underneath the politics a little bit, is this is a young woman who really loves and adores and is loyal to her folks  —   and she’s having to deal with the reality that she’s losing esteem for them, she’s losing respect for them. That’s what the election brings out. And my counsel, Bleeding Heart, is to the extent that it’s possible, try to be a good listener and figure out  —   whether you view it as irrational or not  —   what’s it about. What’s the meaning of their having had this significant shift in the way they view the world and the solution to the world’s problems, at least politically? When a figure like Trump becomes popular, it’s because he’s activating a whole bunch of different things within different sorts of voters. There are complicated motives. So that’s my first piece of advice for you, Bleeding Heart, is listen to your folks and try to understand why they have become so aligned with and in support of this guy. Recognize that this election has put your parents in a place you cannot find respect for, but maybe you can find understanding for it. Cheryl Strayed: Yeah, see I think that’s good advice and yet it’s not the advice that I’m going to give. My read of the situation is that she’s tried to do that and that her parents aren’t interested in listening. And in fact what happens is they have a screaming match when this happens  —   they’re both passionate about their candidates and their beliefs. I think the thing that will probably be the most constructive and protective of your relationship is to say to your parents, ”I love you and we obviously don’t agree politically right now. So let us, through this very heightened season of the election, just not talk about politics.” There’s a reason for that old adage that you don’t talk about religion or politics. You know, those are two areas of life that people feel very passionately about. Many people, they don’t feel that their identity is even separate from their religious beliefs or their political values. I certainly feel that way about my own political values. And I don’t enjoy arguing with people; I don’t want to persuade anyone to agree with me nor do I want to be persuaded. You are not going to convince your parents, Bleeding Heart, to vote for anyone but who they want to vote for. And the same is true, they are not going to convince you to vote for Trump. So give it up, that is my advice. Sometimes silence is really the most loving solution. Steve Almond: I agree with that. What I want to say, though, is there’s something powerful in you saying, ”I used to feel comfortable sharing my views and beliefs.” And I think it’s the part of you that connects to your parents, who even in this conservative environment were   supportive of gay rights, doing good work in education. And at the center of this  —   and this happens oftentimes when the political becomes personal  —   is a kind of mourning of a loss. There’s some part of you that’s saying, what happened to those parents? I hope somehow you can hang on to some way of connecting to them that does involve some sort of shared values. But it may be that it’s not this election season that that’s going to happen. And then you have to just make your peace with that. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. This week, Steve and Cheryl further consider this letter from Bleeding Heart, and talk to a letter writer whose political differences with her family have been even more divisive  —   she hasn’t spoken to her uncle in eight years, after an incident at Christmas dinner that may be uncomfortably familiar for many listeners."
"Talk to some of the folks who lived through the bombing of 62nd and Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia 30 years ago, and you’ll notice that they refer to the event by its full date. May 13, 1985. That’s how Gerald Renfrow refers to it when we talk about the inferno. His house is about 30 yards from the compound on which the bomb was dropped  —   practically ground zero. He’d been living there since long before the bombing, and now he’s the block captain, trying to hold on to the home where he grew up and raised his own family. That’s how Perry Moody refers to it, too. His house is on the north side of Pine Street. On that day three decades ago, he had been evacuated from the block but watched as the houses on the other side of the street were swallowed up by flames. So does Ramona Africa. She was actually inside the targeted house at 6221 Osage as it was battered by police bullets and deluge guns and, eventually, brought down by a makeshift bomb dropped from a police helicopter. She managed to escape the burning building. Her fellow members of MOVE, the radical organization to which she belonged that was standing off against the City of Philadelphia, were not as lucky. The MOVE bombing was a cataclysm for my hometown, a part of the collective memories of Philadelphians of a certain age. I grew up in South Philly, about a   drive from ground zero, but I was just 4 when it happened, too young to remember the actual day. But as I got older, I would learn in bits and pieces about it, and the central role it played in the history of policing in my hometown. I started revisiting the story of MOVE in earnest again last fall, when the issue of race and policing had started to become a regular feature of the news. Almost every chord from that larger metastory  —   the mutual distrust between the police and black communities, the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, incidents of police brutality  —   seemed to resonate in the particular story of the bombing. But in the case of MOVE, the volume was turned way up. City police had killed nearly a dozen people and, in the process, leveled an entire swath of a neighborhood full of   black homeowners. Neither the mayor who approved the bombing nor the officers who carried it out faced any official repercussions. Today, the narrow block sits eerily quiet most of the houses that were built to replace the ones destroyed by the fire are now vacant, boarded up and padlocked. The remaining residents, like Renfrow, are in limbo. Maybe the city will rehabilitate these buildings. Maybe it will raze them. But since most of the people responsible for the tragedy and the city have moved on to grappling with new dilemmas, it’s been pretty easy to forget 62nd and Osage altogether. But a few residents never left the 6200 block of Osage Avenue, and they’re quick to recall what their neighborhood was like before the spring of 1985: a nice block right by the Cobbs Creek Park, part of a safe,   community where folks barbecued together while their kids played in the street. I wanted to talk to them, and others who lived through that day in Philadelphia, about what they remembered. Here’s what my mother recalls about the bombing. It was the Monday after Mother’s Day, and three days after her birthday. She took my twin sister and me to school before heading back to our South Philly apartment. She was taking a personal day from work  —   a day of peace and quiet that was meant to be a belated birthday gift to herself. But when she got home and turned on the TV, she saw that Philly was not going to oblige her. All of the local stations were reporting from a standoff in West Philly between the police and MOVE, a radical group that had turned a row house at 6221 Osage Ave. into a fortified compound. She wasn’t exactly surprised by what she saw on the grainy live feed everyone had known that day was coming for a while, as tensions between MOVE and the police  —   and between MOVE and their neighbors on that block  —   had been rising for years. As the residents were evacuated from their homes ahead of the showdown, the police told them to take some clothes and toothbrushes. They should be back in their homes by the next day, the police said. There were nearly 500 police officers gathered at the scene, ludicrously, ferociously    —   flak jackets, tear gas, SWAT gear, .  and .  machine guns, and an   machine gun for good measure. Deluge guns were pointed from firetrucks. The state police had sent a helicopter. The city had shut off the water and electricity for the entire block. And, we’d come to learn, there were explosives on hand. The police had come with warrants for several people they believed to be in the compound at 6221. No one knew how many weapons the MOVE folks had, or even how many people were in the compound  —   the police guessed that there were six adults and possibly as many as 12 children inside. The MOVE members had built a bunker on the roof of the house, giving them a clear view of the police positions below. The final warnings from the police started that morning, a little after 5:30. ”Attention, MOVE . .. This is America,” Gregore Sambor, the police commissioner, yelled into his megaphone to the people in the compound. ”You have to abide by the laws of the United States.” Around 6 a. m. the members were told they had 15 minutes to come out. Instead, someone from the MOVE house began shooting at the police. The police returned fire in kind  —   over and over and over. According to the official report on the event, the police fired 10, 000 rounds of ammunition at the MOVE compound over the next 90 minutes they eventually had to ask the police academy to send more bullets. Meanwhile, SWAT teams tried to blast holes into the side of the compound via the adjoining row houses. It didn’t work. On TV, reporters at the scene ducked for cover while filing their dispatches. Spectators and residents gathered at the barricades nearby to watch. Over the next few hours, police set off more explosions to try to gain access to the building. The cops couldn’t get inside, and the MOVE folks weren’t coming out. It was chaos, and it went on like that all day  —   gunshots and explosions and   homes nearby being shot up and blown apart. In the afternoon, Mayor Wilson Goode held a press conference and told reporters that he wanted to ”seize control of the house . .. by any means possible.” In the afternoon, Goode made his fateful decision: The police got the   to drop a makeshift bomb on the MOVE compound in an attempt to destroy the bunker on its roof. Here’s how Linn Washington, a journalism professor at Temple University who was covering the siege that day as a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, remembers what happened next. He was standing at a police command post nearby, flipping through his notes. There was a helicopter in the parking lot, he said. ”I see these three guys come out [of the building]  —   all of them with 9 millimeters [pistols] on one of them had a submachine gun and one of them had a satchel,” he said. ”And they said, ’Hey, you gotta get outta here!’ ” ”So the helicopter took off, made a circle, came back and then the whole neighborhood shook,” Washington told me. ”It sounded like a gas main had exploded  —   but some of the media members knew it was a bomb. And things just went down from there.” Everyone on the scene heard the explosion. Television viewers at home saw the moment of impact on TV, and they also saw that the rooftop bunker  —   the target the bomb was apparently meant to neutralize  —   was still standing. But the roof had caught fire, and smoke began billowing over the tops of the row houses. The fire seemed to be getting bigger, but the firefighters were ordered by Sambor, the police commissioner, to stand down. (”I communicated . .. that I would like to let the fire burn,” he later told the city commission.) Within 45 minutes, three more homes on the block were on fire, too. Then the roof of the MOVE house buckled under the flames and collapsed. By the time the firefighters finally began fighting the fire in earnest, it was too late. Within 90 minutes, the entire north side of Osage Avenue was on fire. Philadelphia’s streets are famously narrow, making it easy for the fire to leap from burning trees on the north side to more homes on the south side. Then the flames spilled over to the homes behind 6221 Osage, to Pine Street. By evening, three rows of homes were completely on fire, a conflagration so large that the flames could be seen from planes landing at Philadelphia International Airport, more than 6 miles away. Smoke could be seen from across the city. ”Drop a bomb on a residential area? I never in my life heard of that,” a neighborhood resident told a reporter that night. ”It’s like Vietnam.” By the time the fire was finally under control, a little before midnight, 61 houses on that tidy block had been completely destroyed. Two hundred fifty people were suddenly, shockingly, without homes. It was the worst residential fire in the city’s history. In the end, 11 people died in the fire. Five of them were children. It took weeks before the police were able to identify their remains. Only two people managed to make it out of the MOVE compound alive: a woman named Ramona Africa and a young boy named Birdie Africa. Growing up, I’d seen Ramona Africa a few times on television being interviewed by reporters during her civil suit against the city. I remembered her as a   woman with dreadlocks. In 1996, a jury ordered the city to pay her $500, 000, ruling that the siege on the MOVE compound violated her constitutional rights. I met Ramona Africa last week, in a Philly park near where she’d lived since she was released from prison in 1992. (She was the only person involved in the MOVE bombing to serve any time.) She wore a peach shirt, shorts and sandals. Her signature dreadlocks were now flecked with gray. Her arms and legs were covered in burns. She’s close to 60 now, but she was still on message. ”What makes Nathan Hale a freedom fighter and Delbert Africa an urban terrorist?” she asked me, rhetorically. ”Either resisting wrong, resisting oppression [and] injustice despite legality is to be commended and celebrated, or it is to be penalized and never accepted. Can’t have it both ways.” For some reason, I’d always remembered her from her TV interviews as erratic and raving. But as we talked in the park, I couldn’t figure out where or how I’d formed that impression. Aside from the specifics of what she was saying, she seemed like the kind of person who might go to church with my mom and aunt  —   full of conviction, sure, but amiable and chatty. As we sat in the park, she retraced her own story and told me how she linked up with MOVE. Ramona grew up in West Philly in a   family, went to West Catholic High School, later to Temple University. She wanted to be a lawyer, she said, until she started working on community housing issues. ”You cannot be a housing worker and not become an activist,” she said. It was around this time, in the   when she started meeting members of MOVE, whom she would see in court. They were righteous, she thought. I learned from other folks, though, that in those years, the MOVE organization enjoyed a weird reputation in the city, in part because no one could quite figure it out. The group was formed by a man who went by the name of John Africa all of his followers dropped their surnames and adopted ”Africa” instead. Members of MOVE would protest outside the city zoo for animal rights. They ate raw food. They were against technology. ”You had the vegetarianism and some aspects of Rastafarianism,” Robin   an author who has written about MOVE, told me. ”I think they had their own conscious desire to be uncategorizable.” In news accounts, they were often described as ideological kin of other black radical groups of the day, but Ramona told me that MOVE wasn’t a black nationalist group and that it always boasted some nonblack members. Indeed, their antics and outspokenness often put them on the wrong side of many local and community groups they were lumped in with. Washington, the former Philadelphia Daily News stringer, told me that MOVE members once vocally interrupted and derailed a meeting brokered by community leaders between two local gangs that were set to agree to a truce. ”The liberals and progressives and the nationalists in the city were like, ’Uhhh, what’s up with this crew?’ ” he said. But Washington said they weren’t exactly outcasts, either. ”There was this deference in terms of respecting rights,” he said. ”And [other groups] were saying, we may not like them, but if it’s MOVE today, it’s us tomorrow, so we’ve got to stand up . .. and unpack the stuff they’ve gotten themselves into.” Over time, though, the group’s reputation grew more menacing. MOVE members began squatting in a home in Powelton Village, a neighborhood in West Philadelphia not far from the University of Pennsylvania. It was an area whose residents were known for being amenable to countercultural, nontraditional family arrangements. But even there, it didn’t take long for MOVE to exhaust the patience of its neighbors. MOVE members would pace the roof of the house they occupied, dressed in fatigues and brandishing weapons. In megaphoned harangues, often issued by a member named Delbert Africa, they would call for the release of imprisoned MOVE members and threaten city officials. Federal agents seized a cache of weapons from MOVE that included dozens of pipe bombs. At one point, the city barricaded several blocks surrounding the MOVE compound for 56 straight days. In the summer of 1978, MOVE members reached a deal with the city: they would turn over their weapons and leave their building if the city would release several MOVE members from city jails. The city honored the deal, but MOVE didn’t leave. On Aug. 8, 1978, the tension reached what seemed like its peak. Police tried to remove MOVE from the building with water cannons and battering rams and were met with gunfire from the building’s basement. An officer named James Ramp fell to the ground and died. Sixteen other police officers and firefighters were injured. After several hours of holding out, the MOVE folks finally surrendered and began trickling out of the basement one at a time. But the cops were livid over Ramp’s killing. They went after Delbert Africa  —   the MOVE member who had been taunting them from the building  —   grabbed him by his dreadlocks and threw him to the ground. Several officers joined in, kicking and stomping him. That moment was captured on film by a Philadelphia Daily News photographer, and for many people, the police beating an unarmed,   man was the showdown’s lasting image. Two years later, nine MOVE members were convicted of   murder in Ramp’s death and sentenced to 30 to 100 years in prison  —   the MOVE 9, they were called. After MOVE left Powelton Village, it set up a new base at 6221 Osage Ave. where one member’s sister lived, on a quiet,   block in a black neighborhood. It was around this time that Ramona became MOVE’s ”minister of information,” handling most of its interviews with the press, and changed her last name to Africa. But on Osage Avenue, too, tensions rose: MOVE began boarding up the windows and doors to the home with wood and rail ties, turning the row house on the narrow street into a fortified bunker. The residents continued their diatribes over the loudspeaker. Their new neighbors pleaded with them. Then the neighbors contacted the city. The police had a detail on MOVE and the new compound. There were warnings from the police, and counterwarnings from MOVE. MOVE responded with more belligerence from the loudspeaker. On and on it went like that, until May 1985, when the city police and MOVE hunkered down for their fiery standoff. I still vividly remember the first time I heard about MOVE and the bombing. It was 1987, two years after it happened, and my mom was getting my sister and me ready for school in the morning. The morning news was on TV, and a political ad came on during a commercial break. In the ad, a caricature of Mayor Wilson Goode was sporting goggles and one of those leather World War   bomber pilot helmets. An ominous voice, the kind you only hear in political ads, intoned: Wilson Goode dropped a bomb on a Philadelphia neighborhood. Do you want him running your city? Then the ad urged viewers to vote for Goode’s challenger in the race, Frank Rizzo. I was only 6 years old, but I’d heard of Wilson Goode  —   he was the city’s first black mayor, and he was on the TV all the time, besides. I’d never heard of this Frank Rizzo, but I knew he wasn’t a bomber. ”Mom, you should vote for Frank Rizzo because the thing on the TV said that he firebombed some people’s houses,” I remember telling my mom. Mom was not having it. ”I’m voting for Wilson Goode.” Her tone signaled that she was not about to entertain any further questions. I got the message. My mother never talked to me much about the messy politics of the MOVE bombing. I don’t remember hearing about it from any other adults, or teachers I had. Indeed, until college, I’d only heard passing references to the group. But when folks did bring it up, I always remembered them expressing a weird ambivalence  —   vague sympathy toward MOVE abutting vague disdain. And every now and then as I was growing up, a MOVE member named Ramona Africa would appear on the local television news, usually because of some legal fight she was engaging in with the city related to the bombing. Sometimes there was   of what seemed like an endless line of row houses that looked like ours, going up in flames. The first time my mom and I really talked about the MOVE bombing and what she remembered was this spring. She didn’t recall me questioning her about Goode or Rizzo all those years ago, but she could imagine rolling her eyes at the idea of voting for Rizzo, even if it hadn’t come from a chatty   . Back in 1986, Rizzo had been running for mayor again he’d already served two terms in the 1970s before running up against term limits. He tried to have those term limits overturned, openly appealing to white voters in the city to ”vote white” regarding the ballot measure. For a lot of black Philadelphians of a certain vintage, like my mother, the swaggering,   Rizzo, the city’s former police commissioner, was the face and brains of Philadelphia’s brutal, aggressive police force. My mom recounted to me the time he arrested a group of Black Panthers,   them in public, and invited the press to cover the whole ordeal photos of the naked, humiliated men were splashed across the pages of the local papers the next day. And she told me about the time the police shot and killed her friend Ricky, who was a bystander during a shootout and had hidden beneath a nearby car for cover. There was the stuff she didn’t witness: the melee that ensued after Rizzo sent hundreds of   police officers to break up a peaceful demonstration of black high school and junior high school students who were protesting at the Board of Education building. (”Get their black asses!” he was widely quoted as saying during the fracas.) Or the fact that Philly cops were infamous for ”turf drops”  —   instead of taking black folks they’d arrested to jail, they’d leave them in hostile, white ethnic neighborhoods across town. The enmity that black folks in Philly had for the police department was   and Rizzo had helped sow the seeds. And during his mayoralty, he became even more emboldened. (”I’m gonna be so tough as mayor, I gonna make Attila the Hun look like a faggot,” Rizzo was famously quoted as saying.) He was the city’s mayor during the first MOVE siege in 1978 during his tenure, the Justice Department would file a lawsuit against the city’s police department for brutality. My mother had grown up in Rizzo’s Philadelphia, and when we talked this spring she told me that he was essentially the reason I got The Talk when I was growing up, why she always freaked out during my teenage years if I was out late at night and hadn’t called to check in. That’s why she could never have considered voting for Rizzo, even if it meant supporting the incumbent mayor who had firebombed a black neighborhood. Goode won in 1986, but by the slimmest of margins: 51 percent for him, and 49 percent for Rizzo. Clearly, my mom wasn’t the only black Philadelphian with a weird ambivalence toward MOVE. I remember picking up on that sentiment from other adults as a kid: On the one hand, there were the older folks who outright called the group dirty and weird. But then you’d also see signs reading ”Free The MOVE 9” at any   black cultural festival in the city. Some of that ambivalence was certainly due to MOVE’s own slow   in the years after the bombing, an attempt to make the organization seem less antagonistic. But I suspect it also stemmed from a feeling held by a lot of black folks in Philly, then and now: While MOVE folks were crazy troublemakers whom they wouldn’t want as neighbors, the police could be much, much worse. Here’s how Ramona Africa, the only adult survivor of the bombing, remembered that day from inside the MOVE house. She and the other MOVE members inside the house were listening to the events as they unfolded on the radio  —   events that they, of course, were at the center of. ”We finally got the impression that they had their plans all laid out and they were ready to attack us  —   and kill us,” she said. They decided to hunker down in the basement, which they thought was the safest part of the house. There was gunfire during the day and smoke from tear gas. Then, in the afternoon, the house rocked. ”Initially we didn’t know that they had dropped a bomb,” she said. ”I mean, why would it even enter our minds that they had dropped a bomb on our home?” Over the years, Africa has maintained that when MOVE members tried to escape the burning building to surrender, the police opened fire on them and they were forced back inside. The police have steadfastly denied this. After the bombing, Birdie Africa, the    boy who escaped with her, was taken into his father’s custody. He later changed his name back to Michael Moses Ward. The night of the bombing would be the last time either he or Ramona ever saw or spoke to each other. (Ward died suddenly at the age of 41 in 2013.) I told Ramona I was going to talk to the folks over on 62nd and Osage and asked her about the last time she’d been there. She told me she had never been back, not since that day. ”Why would I want to go back there?” she asked. ”I don’t need to go there to remember and I don’t want to go back there. I have feelings. What John Africa taught MOVE is that we are living beings. We are alive. We have feelings. . .. I see no reason to put myself in a position to be hurt.” She said that MOVE is still around today, although she declined to say how many members it had. As we said goodbye, Ramona motioned to a young woman who looked to be in her 20s who was coming to meet her. Ramona said the woman, who was with several small children, was a MOVE member. As they chatted, a tall young man jogged by where we were standing, with some younger kids trailing him. ”On the move!” the man said, raising his fist in the air to Ramona as he ran. The little boys did the same. Ramona and the young woman wrapped up their conversation, and said goodbye. ”On the move,” she said to Ramona as she turned away. ”On the move,” Ramona replied. With additional reporting from Walter Ray Watson and Jeff Brady"
"After my stories last week on the 30th anniversary of the MOVE siege in West Philadelphia in 1985, in which Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a residential neighborhood, leaving 11 dead  —   including five children  —   we were surprised by how many people told us they’d never heard of the bombing. At first, we thought the knowledge gap might be generational. My Code Switch teammate Kat Chow, who was born years after the MOVE incident, had never heard of it. But another NPR colleague who’s about a generation older hadn’t either. Maybe it was regional. On Twitter, a few people told us the bombing never landed on their radars until they moved to the Philadelphia area. But even though Tasneem Raja, my editor on Code Switch, grew up 20 minutes north of Philly and attended a ”hippie” (her words) Quaker high school where events like the Kent State shootings got a lot of airtime in class, she remembers hearing about MOVE only from her dad, never in school. I grew up in Philly during and after the bombing. My elementary school was the kind of place where we we learned Afrocentric songs and teachers dressed in kente cloth, while my high school was overwhelmingly black. We never discussed it in class, either. What gives? It’s seems incredible that so many people had never heard about the time American law enforcement bombed U. S. citizens on U. S. soil, which, on top of the deaths, left dozens of bystanders’ homes destroyed in an uncontrolled fire that the police commissioner told firefighters not to put out right away. The details are so extreme, so   . How have we forgotten this? I put the question to Robin   who teaches at the New School and has written books on MOVE and other fringe militant groups involved in bloody government standoffs, including the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and the Weaver family in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. She has noticed that while those groups identified with each other to a degree, referring to each other in their manifestos as fellow victims of the state, they don’t seem to feel the same way about MOVE. ”They created this kind of genealogy,” she says, ”but none of them mentioned MOVE.” She thinks the reason was ideological: MOVE’s        worldview doesn’t neatly fit on any part of the political spectrum, while other militant groups she has studied had some degree of overlap. And you can’t lump MOVE in with other black power movements of the time, either black radical groups often bristled at their tactics. In the universe of violent fringe movements that ended in deadly mayhem, MOVE occupies a lonely branch. To some degree, maybe this helps explain why the story of MOVE isn’t better known: If few people feel like your ideological kin, few people feel cause to carry your torch.   also traces this relative obscurity back to the players involved. Unlike other fringe groups she has studied, MOVE’s final confrontation wasn’t with a big federal agency like the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. They clashed with local Philly cops and some state police. So while the story of Ruby Ridge has been folded into the larger national debate on gun control and the limits of federal power, the political implications of MOVE were seen as more provincial and  . And unsurprisingly, local politicians were all too eager to move on and leave those implications behind. Of course, Ferguson protesters faced off against local law enforcement, too, and Ferguson city cops would have loved if Michael Brown’s death had stayed a hyperlocal affair. But technology has changed everything in the decades since May 13, 1985. If the MOVE bombing were to happen today, bystanders would be furiously uploading videos to YouTube, spawning Twitter hashtags and interconnected protests in cities around the country. CNN would be camped out in West Philly for weeks, to say nothing of the countless  . If MOVE happened today, it might be quickly folded into the classroom, as has happened with other recent incidents of police violence. Teachers have all the materials at their fingertips: clips from livestreams, links to mainstream news articles and personal blogs, embeddable tweets, and so on. Back in the   you’d have to wait around for the inevitable Frontline documentary or for an academic to publish a book. History gets commodified and redistributed much more quickly today. The MOVE story faded into relative obscurity partly because no one connects with their cause today, and largely because the mechanisms to preserve the story weren’t in place yet. But had it happened now, it would be much harder to forget."
"Despite the fiery, complicated past of the 6200 block of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, Gerald Renfrow is bullish on its future. He’s one to know he has lived here forever. His parents bought one of the bigger houses on the corner of 62nd and Osage Avenue and he grew up there. When it was time for him to buy his own home, he landed just up the block and raised his own kids there. Then came the fire. On May 13, 1985, the city aggressively tried to remove the radical group MOVE from the row house at 6221 Osage. At the climax of a chaotic standoff that day, the police department dropped an explosive device on the MOVE house, setting off a fire that, by evening, had brought most of the block and a row of homes behind it on Pine Street to the ground. Thirty years later, Renfrow, now nearly 70, still lives on Osage. Today, he’s the block captain he seems to know everyone. As we talked outside his house, folks honked and waved as they drove down the narrow street. Osage and the surrounding blocks have always been home to a   community, full of homeowners and families. It’s one of the things he’s loved about Osage Avenue  —   and one of the things that stand in stark contrast to the fiery portrait the nation still has of the place he calls home. As we talked, Renfrow raved about the neighborhood. ”I can ride my bike to City Hall, and I could be downtown in 15 minutes,” Renfrow said. ”It was a peaceful block. Everybody was extended family. It was a block where we could raise our children.” He reminisced about the time he and his wife saw Prince and Janet Jackson in concert at a theater just on the other side of Cobb’s Creek Park. But despite the warm memories, this block has also been the center of decades of entangled frustrations for Renfrow. The MOVE organization, a radical group with a    political philosophy, moved onto the block in the early 1980s  —   a member had a sister who lived at 6221 Osage about 50 feet from Renfrow’s front door. Renfrow and his neighbors found themselves thrown into the middle of an escalating battle between the group and the Philadelphia police department. Indeed, that was part of MOVE’s plan. Robin   the author of Discourse And Destruction: The City Of Philadelphia Versus MOVE, told me that their stated strategy was to harass their   black neighbors so much that those neighbors would eventually cave and press the city to help the group win the release of several MOVE members being held in state prison on murder convictions. That plan went nowhere. ”They started to board up their windows and doors,” Renfrow said. ”They started to espouse their philosophy. We thought it was inappropriate to come onto a residential block, with loudspeakers blaring all hours of the day and night.” Renfrow had a tricky relationship with MOVE. He is a former cop. He spoke warmly about his time on the Philadelphia force he smiled as he remembered not being able to fit his uniform cap over his afro. Still, he was not   in the abstract, even though part of the reason the organization had come to Osage Avenue was to   itself after a deadly shootout with police. ”We sympathized with MOVE, but we didn’t want them to have their stage on Osage Avenue, because it infringed on us who had been living here,” Renfrow said. ”No, I did not want them to be here . .. but I did not want to be murdered, I did not want them to be attacked. I was disappointed by the police I was disappointed in the mayor.” After the city bombed 6221 Osage Ave. MOVE stopped being Renfrow’s problem. Over the past three decades, he and the other residents of Osage Avenue have been engaged in a messy fight with the City of Philadelphia over what to do with the block. After the fire, the city entered into a deal with developers to replace the 61 row houses destroyed in the fire. But the homeowners who lived there found their new homes wanting. ”The homes were so shoddily reconstructed after the 1985 fire  —   nearly every house had leaky roofs, bad plumbing, sagging floors because beams had not been properly installed, cedar siding peeling off exteriors, and faulty electrical wiring  —   that the original contractors went to jail because money was misused,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote. (Perry Moody, a homeowner on Pine Street whose house was across the street and not destroyed in the fire, told me that the rebuilt homes were ”tissue paper. ”) Osage homeowners pushed the city to make fixes to the homes to make them livable, but after about two decades, the city stopped the rehabilitation. Instead, in the early 2000s, the city offered to buy out the folks living in them  —   $150, 000 per building. The buyouts resulted in a mass exodus of longtime residents, some who had been there for generations. ”Today, as you see, we have at least 37   homes and all of them are owned by the city,” Renfrow said. The homes on Osage Avenue in which people still live are well cared for, with flowers and benches out front. But most of those replacement homes sit unoccupied, with their plywood and padlocks on their doors and windows, while trash piles up. Walking down 62nd and Osage is eerie  —   it’s empty and quiet, and it’s hard not to feel that the potted plants in front of the occupied homes are, in part, an act of resistance. While the rest of the city has moved on, the bombing still casts its shadow over the lives of Renfrow and his neighbors. When he tried to use equity from his home to finance his roofing business, his lender declined, he says. ”I wasn’t allowed to do it because the city hadn’t determined what they’re going to do with the houses,” Renfrow said. ”We’re living in a state of limbo. The city will not tell us what it’s going to do.” Still, when he talks about the bombing, he can sound a bit   particularly about the city’s initial decision to let the fire burn to scare the MOVE residents off the block. ”I believe that the reasons these homes, once they caught afire, with an army of firemen and fire engines surrounding the whole area was allowed to burn was that the city could take over this area so that they could redevelop it and gentrify this area,” he said. The theory doesn’t hold together for one thing, the city, which has seen its leadership change a lot in the 30 years since the fire, would have to be playing a mighty long game of resident removal. But it’s easy to see how paranoid musings might take root given what’s happened in the decades since: One of the nation’s biggest cities dropped a bomb on a   black neighborhood on live television, watched it burn to the ground as 11 people, including five children, died, and no one involved in any of those decisions was ever punished for it. Not that Renfrow is moving. This is home, and he’s outlasted MOVE, four mayors and a buyout attempt. ”Why would we move?” he said. And then he pointed to the park on the corner, and bragged about the skating rink, the picnic tables. It was a nice place to raise a family, he said."
"Harry Truman had been vice president for only 82 days when Franklin Roosevelt died, so there was quite a lot he needed to learn when he became president in 1945. ”He didn’t even know the atomic bomb existed,” historian David Priess said. ”He didn’t know about the Manhattan Project.” Priess, a former CIA officer and author of The President’s Book of Secrets, a history of the president’s daily brief, said that experience made Truman resolve that no future president should come into office unprepared. So in 1952, as the world grew accustomed to nuclear peril and other threats in the unfolding Cold War, Truman offered classified briefings about the global security situation to each of the   nominees running to replace him. That tradition has held up ever since. Traditionally, the White House waits until Republicans and Democrats have formally nominated their candidates at their party conventions, Priess said, but not always. Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter had no experience with foreign intelligence, so he asked President Gerald Ford for his briefings before he was nominated  —   and got them. ”Ultimately, it’s the president’s call,” Priess said, about who is briefed and when. Although presidents typically try to accommodate candidates, even ones in the opposite party, they do not share everything. So, as the White House prepares to arrange briefings by the intelligence community, officials will likely hold back sensitive details about covert operations, secret nuclear and other defense programs, and other such details. In fact, intelligence briefers this year may need to be more careful than ever, said former CIA analyst Aki Peritz. The de facto Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is ”a man famously with no filter,” Peritz said of Trump, who has built his campaign upon what he calls straight talk. ”He’s never held public office before,” Peritz said. ”He’s a business developer and a reality TV star. So if the United States starts giving Donald Trump classified briefings” with certain kinds of sensitive information, ”it could be a disaster.” And Democratic   Hillary Clinton has had her own problems with allegations that she’s been careless with classified information. Clinton ran her own private email server as secretary of state and has been accused of imperiling the security of her office and the correspondence she kept with top leaders around Washington. Clinton denies she did anything wrong under the rules in effect at the time. As for resuming her access to classified material in the candidate briefings she and Trump will receive, the details aren’t yet clear. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told reporters at a recent breakfast that the   briefings would take place at a secure facility, whenever the candidates request. He was pressed about how his office would be sure the information in its presentations would stay secure. The process is set up ”to ensure that everybody gets the same information,” Clapper said, ”and that we do comply with the need to protect sources and methods and comply with security rules.” EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was reported by Mary Louise Kelly and edited by Philip Ewing"
"Heavily funded progressive organizations are coordinating a sustained effort to define apparent Republican nominee Donald Trump. They’ve been   messages for months. Now they’re primed to start filling the screens of TVs, computers and smartphones with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of   messages. At the hub of the effort is the main Democratic superPAC, Priorities USA Action. It expects to spend $125 million in TV and digital messaging from this month to election day. That’s twice as much as it spent in 2012. ”Our focus is really going to be on Donald Trump himself,” said Guy Cecil,   of Priorities. He listed three lines of attack: first, Trump’s record on military and international issues second, what Cecil called the businessman’s divisiveness and ”carnival barking” and third, Trump’s ”record of building his own fortune on the backs of people and . .. the fraudulent claims that he has made about his business record and . .. how he has treated the people around him.” That last item echoes one of Priorities’   ads from 2012. Aimed at Mitt Romney just as he was being nominated by his party, the ad was narrated by Mike Earnest, a former worker at a factory that closed down after the company was taken over by Romney’s private investment firm. ”Mitt Romney made over a $100 million by shutting down our plant, and devastated our lives,” Earnest said. Cecil said the alliance with other progressive organizations is critical. ”It’s something that, for the last 11 months, I’ve put a priority on,” he said. That time frame means the work began well before Trump announced he was running. Priorities and other groups have been exchanging poll data and research and   messages. This kind of coordination is legal because it doesn’t involve the candidates or parties. This winter, Priorities and two other groups tested a batch of     ads promoting Democratic   Hillary Clinton. In one spot, two   a woman and a man, worked at computers side by side. Over a light, syncopated rhythm track, a narrator said, ”When you find out that bro who has your same job gets paid more than you . .. you give them Hill.” One of Priorities’ partners on the ad is the superPAC arm of EMILY’s List, which supports liberal female candidates. The ad’s target audience is young working women, whom EMILY’s List is working to turn out on election day. ”If we do our jobs right and educate them on the stakes of the election, millennial woman could make up 20 percent of the overall voters in November,” said Denise Feriozzi, deputy director of EMILY’s List. Priorities also works with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, where Executive Director Deirdre Schifeling said they aim to reach 3 million to 5 million voters. ”We will spend as much money as we can raise,” she said. ”We feel like everything is at stake this year.” Altogether, Planned Parenthood, EMILY’s List and Priorities are out to spend roughly $175 million. Still, that doesn’t seem like much in the context of the 2016 presidential campaign. ”We are preparing for, you know, upwards of $1 billion of spending against Hillary Clinton in the targeted presidential states,” Cecil said. Those are just the seven or so states where the reputations of both Trump and Clinton will be trashed over the coming months."
"More than seven months after it began, a wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis appears to be slowing. Israeli military officials say Palestinian attacks continue, but the number of attempted attacks has dropped significantly. Notably, they say, stabbing attacks by teenagers acting alone have gone down. As that downward arc took shape, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas went on Israeli television. Speaking on the Channel Two program ”Uvda,” or ”Fact,” in late March, Abbas made a remarkable claim. ”Our security guys go inside schools searching students’ bags for knives,” he told the Israeli interviewer in Arabic. ”We found 70 pupils, boys and girls, carrying knives in one school.” Abbas went on to say Palestinian security officers talked with the students. ”We told them this is wrong. We do not want you to kill and get killed. We want you to live and the others to live too,” Abbas said. This was remarkable for two reasons. First, because it’s politically very delicate for Abbas to acknowledge his security forces do things that some Palestinians see as following Israeli orders. Second, the stabbing attacks against Israelis, which began in October and for several months continued almost daily, were initially popular among many Palestinians. They said this was a legitimate response to Israel’s military occupation. Abbas would not have risked making such statements earlier, says Palestinian political analyst and pollster Ghassan Khatib. ”Only when this phenomenon became less and less popular,” he says. ”He wouldn’t have said it in the first month, because it could have been much more damaging to the public opinion.” Abbas’ comment was also notable because numerous Palestinian politicians and security officials could not or would not verify his statement. Khatib himself cautioned that he did not take the specific claim of finding 70 knives in one school literally, citing past examples of illustrative speech by Palestinian officials that were misinterpreted in the West. No one could confirm that Palestinian security forces have searched students’ bags. But according to some accounts, Palestinian police have warned students that committing attacks could lead to their own deaths. Since Oct. 1, Israeli figures show more than 30 Israelis and two Americans were killed by Palestinians. According to Palestinian health officials and U. N. reporting, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since then. Some were shot during clashes with Israeli forces. But Israel says most Palestinians were killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis. Many Palestinians believe Israeli forces fatally shot Palestinians who were not intending to attack or who could have been otherwise subdued. Khatib believes the high number of Palestinian casualties during the wave of heightened violence has led to lower public support for stabbings, which recent surveys indicate. ”I think that the public at large is not happy with this phenomenon. It’s a waste of souls with little return, if any,” Khatib says. Israeli military officials credit increased arrests and other measures for reduced attacks. At a boys’ high school in Sair, a Palestinian town in the West Bank where more than a dozen young men were killed by Israeli forces since last fall, teachers and administrators say they have been trying to keep their students focused on studies, as well as manage grief and anger that arose with the wave of violence. Two of those killed were students at this school. One was killed last November in a clash with soldiers after the funeral of his cousin  —   who had also been killed by Israeli undercover troops in an arrest raid in a hospital. The other was shot in January during an attempted stabbing, according to the Israeli military. School administrators were nervous to speak publicly. The principal selected five seniors to answer questions. One of them, Mohammad Frukh, was friends with both of the students who were killed. ”The intensity of shock and grief has been very difficult,” Frukh says. ”Not only on me but on the whole village.” But he says with help from his teachers, he is focusing on school and final exams. ”I understand now we can face the Israeli occupation through education,” Frukh says. The school’s psychology teacher and counselor, Areef Miri, has taken the lead in helping students cope. He says he has done a lot of    ”venting” sessions, encouraging students to share feelings of anger. He has taken groups of students to visit the families of their former classmates as well as the graves. He’s run sports tournaments in the deceased students’ honor. Miri says he’s also offered students practical advice on how to behave around Israeli soldiers. ”To protect yourselves from getting killed, getting arrested or injured, follow these rules,” Miri tells them. ”Cross checkpoints in groups. Never answer the phone as you’re passing. Show your hands.” Palestinian security forces came to the school to help with these conversations, school officials say. But teachers say they cannot influence social media or Palestinian TV. The   channel, run by the militant group Hamas, frequently replays video composites of Israeli violence against Palestinians and memorials honoring attackers. Watching the   channel at home in a West Bank refugee camp, Jihad Khatari, a    Palestinian who has a job installing windows, gets riled up. ”I get very upset, frustrated, furious.” Khatari says. He sometimes participates in demonstrations against Israel’s military presence in the West Bank. ”I feel personally inside like I want to go out and do something.” While support for knife attacks has appeared to drop, one recent poll also found more than half of young West Bank Palestinians favored continuing the current uprising generally. They were split on whether the violence might intensify, and whether it will aid Palestinian interests in the end."
"”Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be: In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue,” President Obama told Rutgers University graduates in a commencement address urging broad engagement with the world. His remarks, which stressed ”reason” over ”” have been widely interpreted as a critique of the de facto Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, though he did not explicitly name him: ”Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science: These are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy. . .. That might seem obvious. . .. We traditionally have valued those things, but if you’re listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of   came from.” Obama continued, ”When our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they’re not held accountable for repeating falsehoods and just making stuff up, when actual experts are dismissed as elitists, then we’ve got a problem.” His full remarks  —   which you can watch here  —   ”illustrate a world view antithetical to the ideas espoused by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee,” as the AP reported. ”The world is more interconnected than ever before, and it’s becoming more connected every day. Building walls won’t change that,” Obama said, in an apparent reference to Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the border with Mexico. He added: ”The point is: To help ourselves, we’ve got to help others, not pull up the drawbridge and try to keep the world out.” He also criticized ”isolating or disparaging Muslims” and ”suggesting they should be treated differently when it comes to entering this country”: ”That’s not just a betrayal of who we are. It would alienate the very communities at home and abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism.” As NPR’s Scott Horsley reported, Obama has delivered nearly   commencement speeches since he took office  —   and each has provided a snapshot of a moment in his presidency. Scott compared a 2009 speech at Arizona State University, where Obama spoke about the ”historic recession,” with his speech last weekend to Howard University grads, where he ”said with confidence that this is one of the best moments in history to be alive.” ”You can track from the 2009 addresses a progression toward an Obama who believes that the economy is prospering and these young people are entering a much better world  —   implicitly, of course, thanks to his policies,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who researches presidential speechmaking at the University of Pennsylvania, told Scott. Judging by his remarks Sunday, Obama is feeling very confident about the positive impact of his presidency. He rattled off a list of changes since this graduating class started high school: ”Twenty million more Americans now know the financial security of health insurance. We’re less dependent on foreign oil. We’ve doubled the production of clean energy. We’ve cut the high school dropout rate. We’ve cut the deficit by  . Marriage equality is the law of the land.” Obama still has one more commencement address scheduled during his presidency  —   he’s set to address Air Force Academy graduates at their graduation ceremony next month."
"President Obama is delivering the commencement address Sunday at Rutgers University in New Jersey, on the 250th anniversary of the school’s founding. It’s one of the last times Obama will speak to a graduating class while he’s in office. But it’s by no means his first. In fact, the president has delivered nearly two dozen commencement speeches over the past seven years. A look back at that collection of commencement remarks helps reveal the problems and promises of the days they were delivered. Among the topics that have loomed largest in that time is the economy. And in that regard, members of the Rutgers class of 2016 might count themselves lucky. They’re graduating into one of the best job markets in years. The picture was very different back in the summer of 2009, when Obama delivered a sobering message to graduates of Arizona State University. ”We gather here tonight in times of extraordinary difficulty, for the nation and for the world,” he said then. ”The economy remains in the midst of a historic recession, the worst we’ve seen since the Great Depression.” Digging out of that hole would take years. But by the time he spoke to graduates at Howard University last weekend, Obama said with confidence this is one of the best moments in history to be alive. ”You can track from the 2009 addresses a progression toward an Obama who believes that the economy is prospering and these young people are entering a much better world  —   implicitly, of course, thanks to his policies,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who researches presidential speechmaking at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. You can also track the nation’s military movements in the graduation speech the president gives each spring at one of the five service academies. When Obama spoke to cadets at West Point in 2010, the country had been at war for nine years and was in the midst of a troop surge in Afghanistan. ”I stand here humbled by the knowledge that many of you will soon be serving in harm’s way.” Four years later, Obama returned to West Point, having ended one combat mission and with a deadline to end another. ”You are the first class to graduate since   who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan,” he said. The celebration was premature. Within weeks, the Iraqi city of Mosul would fall to ISIS. When he speaks to graduates at the Air Force Academy next month, Obama will still be staring at an   troop commitment in Afghanistan. While the military academies are regular stops, other graduation venues are carefully chosen to make a point  —   about immigration, for example, at Miami Dade College, or about   achievement, at Morehouse College. Jamieson says the pomp and circumstance offers the president a chance to step back from the crush of the daily news cycle. ”One of the interesting things about commencement addresses by presidents is they are highly introspective in interesting ways,” she says. ”These are very personal moments.” A recurring theme for Obama is how citizens in a diverse country like this one can navigate their differences. He addressed that early on at Notre Dame, where just the invitation from a Catholic school was controversial, given the president’s position on abortion. Obama returned to the subject last weekend at Howard, telling graduates change requires listening as well as speaking out. ”In particular,” he said, ”it requires listening to those with whom you disagree and being prepared to compromise.” Graduations are always a milestone for the students. This year they’re a milestone for the president, too, as he begins to look towards his own graduation from the Oval Office and the commencement of his   career. ”I used to joke about being old,” he said at Howard last week. ”Now I realize, I’m old. It’s not a joke any more.” Obama says one ceremony he won’t be speaking at this year is his oldest daughter’s high school graduation. When his daughter Malia gets her diploma next month, Obama says he’ll be sitting in the audience wearing dark glasses and crying."
"In recent years, there’s been a   movement within the restaurant industry. The idea has been to rectify a basic pay unfairness to even out the pay between tipped and untipped employees. Dishwashers and cooks at the back of the house don’t earn as much money as waiters because they don’t get tips. So, do away with tipping, raise menu prices a little bit, and pay everyone a higher wage. But that experiment has failed at some restaurants. Joe’s Crab Shack, the first large U. S. chain to implement a   model, announced this month that it is moving away from the experiment, which only lasted three months. Restaurant owner Thad Vogler also dropped tipping for a while, but found it was too difficult to maintain. He owns Trou Normand and Bar Agricole in San Francisco. San Francisco’s minimum wage law got Vogler to try it in the first place, he says. ”There are a number of city mandates that are expensive, and the imminent $16 minimum wage is among those, so it’s been very much on restaurant owners’ minds how to compensate differently. So I’d been at a number of meetings with other restaurateurs in the city and there was a sort of sense that a number of us were going to make this shift, and I thought I would go first.” In our weekly series covering the middle class, Hanging On, Vogler talks to NPR’s Linda Wertheimer about why he returned to the traditional tipping model at his two restaurants, and what he might’ve done differently. Other San Francisco restaurants weren’t making the switch, he says, but he still thinks   policies are the future of the industry. On how much the staff was making before eliminating tipping  I would say the kitchen staff was making between $13 and $20 an hour probably, and the front of the house staff was making between $25 and $40 an hour. On whether he gave raises to even out the back of the house versus front of the house income disparity, Yeah, very much so. I would describe it that the kitchen received raises, the senior staff in the front of the house, their income remained pretty similar, and then   staff took a bit of a hit in the front of the house. On what made him decide to switch back to tipping, Attrition. We were losing staff, servers mostly. Kitchen was of course happy and turnover was nonexistent. And senior staff in the front of the house were happy. We were continuing to hire young, new people, train them, and then they’d get the set of skills necessary, and they would generally give notice and move to other restaurants in our community who were still on a traditional tip economy. On how the staff has reacted to the switch back to tipping, Oh, they were delighted. Most of all, my management was very relieved. It had been a tremendous amount of work, and we all remain very much in favor of it, ideologically, and I, like many, think it may be the way things are going. We just started to feel like an ideologue, insisting on this way of doing it when others in our community that had said they would switch were not switching. So it really wasn’t happening after a year the way we had thought it might. Financially, we wanted to be more one of the pack, while innovating more with food and drink and service. On what he think needs to happen in order for a restaurant to make a   policy work, There was one primary mistake, which was thinking that somehow I wanted the prices to be basically what people were paying previously, including tip. So we knew our tip percentage was around 21 percent, so we increased all of our prices by that and charged accordingly, and then we gave the kitchen raises. So there was a bit less for the front of the house, so that was really my mistake. I know that others that are making the switch now are raising their prices by more like 40 percent to be sure that that doesn’t happen."
"Last winter, a retired Brooklyn firefighter drove down to Walter Reed Hospital, outside Washington, D. C. with what he considers holy artifacts: a bucket full of scraps from the World Trade Center. ”It’s remarkable, the pieces of steel that we have. They’re so important and you don’t want to waste anything,” said Danny Prince, who is also a Navy veteran. Steve Danyluk, a former Marine combat pilot met Prince in Maryland and took on his cargo. Danyluk, another veteran activist, wanted to turn the steel into a symbol with the power to save the lives of veterans. ”The pure, almost religious nature of the steel from the World Trade Center . .. it’s being transformed into something about healing,” said Danyluk. That’s how the steel wound up in McKinney, Texas, where another veteran hammered it into a Greek style ”Spartan sword.” Danyluk and Prince hope the sword will inspire veterans to take the ”Spartan Pledge”  —   a promise made between veterans not to commit suicide. Statistics on veterans’ suicide are hard to pin down, but the high rate among the most recent generation of vets has alarmed the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA says its programs reduce suicide, but trust for the department is not running high. So veterans groups are looking for anything that works. The Spartan Pledge was created almost accidentally by an Iraq vet named Boone Cutler, as he spoke with another veteran about a friend’s suicide. ”I said to him, ’Have you ever thought about it? ’” Cutler remembered. ”And he said, ’Yeah, I think about it every day.’ And it blew me away. We’d never discussed that  —   and we were tight. We covered each other.” Off the cuff, Cutler and his buddy made a promise. ”You really can’t think too far ahead when you’re in that state of mind, so I said, ’Just call. Just call me first. Don’t punk out. Don’t go without saying goodbye,’” Cutler told his friend. ”And then we made an agreement to at least call each other first.” Other veterans helped that evolve into what he started calling the Spartan Pledge, which Cutler says around a thousand vets have made. It’s just two lines, meant to give vets a pause before they hurt themselves: ”I will not take my own life by my own hand until I talk to my battle buddy first. My mission is to find a mission to help my warfighter family.” Cutler recited the pledge with half a dozen veterans last month in McKinney, Texas, as the finished sword was presented to Prince, the Brooklyn firefighter and former sailor. Skeptics wonder how effective the pledge might actually be in curbing suicides. Therapists have been making   ”no suicide contracts” with patients for years. ”But they’ve really gone out of favor, there’s no evidence that they actually prevent people from taking their lives,” said Rajeev Ramchand, who researches military suicide at the Rand Corporation. He says the most important thing is to get a suicidal person into professional treatment. ”I don’t think doing the pledge will do any harm, [but] we can’t think [that] taking the pledge is going to all of a sudden reduce suicide,” said Ramchand. Ramchand does agree with these Spartan Pledge veterans about the importance of raising awareness about suicide and creating connections between veterans. Cutler says many people can’t understand the power of a promise made between veterans. He’s confident that the pledge helps, in part by reconnecting people with a sense of mission. And it’s also a way to bring up a difficult topic. ”That’s one thing about the Spartan Pledge, it creates the conversation. It gives you a chance to bring that up,” Cutler said. It never occurred to him that his friend would be having trouble, he remembered. ”I never thought he needed to have that talk. And I don’t think he thought I needed to.” Taking the pledge in Texas, next to the forge where the sword was made, were a local army vet who was crippled by a bullet early in the Iraq war his mom, who also served in the Army a soldier from Florida who lost both legs to a bomb in Afghanistan another wounded Army Ranger who came down from Kansas as well as Prince and Danyluk, the former Marine. ”Early on, we realized the value of getting guys together  —   some get really isolated, and that’s one of the root causes [of suicide],” said Danyluk. Danyluk had more plans to ”get guys together” around the sword  —   last weekend at Ft. Belvior Army Base in Virginia, more than 300 veterans and caregivers attended what Danyluk called ”Spartan Weekend.” There was golfing and a bicycle race, as well as a concert at the Hard Rock Café. In between musical acts a military widow spoke about her husband’s suicide. Then Prince brought out the sword. ”All impromptu  —   the guys closest to the sword laid their hands on it,” said Danyluk. Those who couldn’t reach it put their hands on someone who could, until the whole room was connected. Then several hundred veterans, caregivers and first responders recited the pledge in unison. ”I swear to God, I felt an electric tingle passing through me from one person to the next,” Danyluk said."
"Chance the Rapper is determined. The independent artist from Chicago is a hometown hero. At this point, it’s common to see headlines scurry across your Twitter timeline about his efforts to make his city better. One day, he might be supporting initiatives to curb homelessness on another day, he might be hosting a youth concert to address gun violence. But now, he’s on a new mission: taking gospel music mainstream, with his new mixtape, Coloring Book. His plan of attack has been at least a few years in the making. On his breakout tape, 2013’s Acid Rap, he and his band The Social Experiment played around with sounds of the church  —   organs and hand claps and layered harmonies reminiscent of a choir. Chance also used Acid Rap to speak directly about his faith and worship, with   lyrics like: ”I am a new man, I am sanctified. I am holy, I have been baptized.” More recently, on Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, he had a   verse on the powerfully spiritual opening track, ”Ultralight Beam.” Kirk Franklin, one of the most recognizable names in gospel, was also featured. But alongside Kanye, he took a backseat to Chance on the track. With Coloring Book, Chance is taking it a step further. But he’s doing it in a way that feels like a test run  —   like he’s easing his listeners into the idea of gospel  . He calls on the top rappers in the game, like Atlanta’s Young Thug and Future, to assist on songs that wouldn’t be quite welcome in a church. It’s a way to access a crowd that might not have darkened the doors of one in a while. And he brings unlikely collaborators together  —   like edgy RB    Jeremih and the hermetic New York band Francis and the Lights  —   as another way to bridge the gap between audiences. Chance is walking the tightrope between secular and religious, with his devoted followers, who are legion on the Internet, looking up at him. Coloring Book isn’t a complete gospel album. But with its myriad influences and creative directions, it’s certainly praiseworthy."
"Science can sometimes come across as a stuffy, inflexible collection of facts  —   absolute truths not to be questioned. At least, that’s the way it is often taught in schools. The reality of science is very different. Scientists are always questioning, holding out the possibility of being wrong, and learning new things by making mistakes. The progress of science is one long sequence if trials and errors  —   mostly errors. But emphasizing the tentative,     nature of science can be taken too far. Science has taught us some things, after all. The computer on which you’re reading this really is made of atoms future discoveries aren’t going to reveal that the very idea of atoms was just some kind of mistake. Scientific knowledge never reaches metaphysical certainty, beyond the pale of any possible revision but there’s a lot we know with sufficient confidence that it’s not worth spending too much time in doubt. Remarkably, the scope of what we do know is actually quite broad. In particular, it includes the basic particles and interactions that are responsible for absolutely everything that happens in a typical person’s everyday life. (Presuming that typical people don’t build   detectors or spend weekends jumping into black holes.) Essentially everything you see around you as you go through your day is made of just three particles of matter  —   protons, neutrons and electrons  —   interacting through a handful of forces  —   gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces. Together they make up the Core Theory, which has been tested experimentally in countless ways to exquisite precision. The fact that these particles and these forces are all we need to account for ourselves and our environments is as firmly established as the existence of atoms, and similarly unlikely to be overturned at any future time. How can we be so sure? After all, there is unquestionably much we don’t know, from the ingredients of the dark cosmos to what happened at the Big Bang. And scientists through history have an embarrassing track record of proclaiming that we are very close to Having It All Figured Out, only to be proved wildly wrong when the next revolution came along. But we’re not claiming to have it all figured out, or anywhere close. We claim to Have Some Things Figured Out. Those things just happen to include everything you and I are made of. The reason we can be confident that we haven’t missed an important new particle or force that might be relevant to everyday life stems from the power of the basic framework of modern physics, quantum field theory (QFT). According to QFT, you can’t just toss in random new particles in any old way. If there were any new particles or interactions that could possibly play a role in everyday processes, then we could very easily make them or detect their existence, in particle accelerators or searches for new   forces. We’ve looked, hopefully and enthusiastically they aren’t there. It’s natural to imagine that QFT itself is wrong at some fundamental level. That’s certainly possible  —   anything’s possible. But QFT is extraordinarily robust. If you want to invent a theory that is compatible with the basic requirements of quantum mechanics, relativity and locality (events far away don’t affect what happens here) your theory is guaranteed to look like quantum field theory at the low energies characteristic of our everyday lives. Indeed, QFT is almost certainly not the final word on physics at its most fundamental level. Spacetime itself might be emergent, for example, perhaps out of some tangle of loops or superstrings. But that won’t matter. Just as learning that air is made from molecules of nitrogen and oxygen and other atoms doesn’t change the fact that air is a gas with various properties (pressure, temperature, speed of sound) discovering the quantum reality underlying spacetime won’t change the effectiveness of quantum field theory in the everyday regime. Reality at its deepest level could be something utterly different than we have ever imagined, but we still have a good handle on how it behaves in front of our noses. That knowledge has implications. You can’t bend spoons with your mind, and the location of Venus in the sky doesn’t affect your love life there’s no way an unknown force can reach that far without us having detected it yet. More profoundly, there’s no way for our consciousness to survive after death there’s simply no process by which the information in our brains can be preserved once our bodies shut down and decay. As much as people love the excitement of discovery, we also have a soft spot for the romance of mystery. JJ Abrams has made wonderfully compelling movies and TV shows by exploiting the idea of a Mystery Box  —   a secret at the heart of a story that may or may not ever be revealed. It works well as a dramatic device, but when apprehending reality it’s important to acknowledge what we have learned, and accept the consequences of that   understanding. It’s easy, and wrong, to think of scientific truths as fixed and absolute. It’s also easy, and just as wrong, to act as if we know nothing and everything is up for grabs. We have a responsibility to do the hard work of figuring out exactly where the dividing line between knowledge and uncertainty lies, and take seriously what we do know. Sean Carroll is a physicist at Caltech and author of The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. Follow him at @seanmcarroll."
"If you think your job is painful, try spending a workday with Justin Schmidt. Schmidt is an entomologist who focuses on a group of insects called Hymenoptera  —   we know them as stinging ants, wasps and bees. Schmidt has traveled all over the world looking for bugs . .. and getting stung by them. The result of his work is an alarmingly comprehensive pain index, ranking 83 insect stings on a spectrum of 1 to 4. For example, the red fire ant, native to South America is a 1: ”Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming,” Schmidt writes. ”Like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch.” Far worse is the tarantula hawk, which clocks in at a 4: ”Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has just been dropped into your bubble bath.” As for whether he wants to be stung, Schmidt says ”want” isn’t quite the right way to put it. ”Want is kind of a dual word,” he tells NPR’s Linda Wertheimer. ”I want the data, but I don’t want the sting.” Schmidt has written a book about his travels (and travails) called The Sting of the Wild: The Story of the Man Who Got Stung for Science. On the giant mandarin Japanese hornet, These things are about 2 inches long  —   they’re huge, absolutely enormous. And I was so worried about getting stung by those that I actually succeeded in doing a really nice couple of studies on them and never got stung. So I guess you could say that was disappointing in the respect that I’m missing a very valuable data point, but I’m also still in tact. On bullet ants,  Bullet ants are wonderfully beautiful organisms. They live going from Nicaragua down to about southern Brazil. They live in the forest and nest usually on the bottom of the forest floor. But they go up into the canopy, way, way up into the top of the trees and that’s where they forage for prey. They’re black and very stocky looking  —   you look at them and you say: That’s kind of like a dinosaur, that’s a very primitive looking ant. But, boy, don’t let that deceive you because these ants are really, truly acrobats. You often think of big ants as being sluggards and slow . .. don’t make that mistake with bullet ants. On his favorite  —   the harvester ant, They have the most toxic known insect venom. It’s really potent  —   something like 40 times stronger than a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake. The good news, of course, is that they have very little of it. They have this extremely long, lasting pain. They’re the only insect sting venom that causes the hair on your arm where you’ve been stung to stand up kind of like the hair on the back of a dog’s neck when it’s frightened. And it causes sweating. These are all kind of neurological things which are unique to it. It’s got very complex biochemistry that still, after 35 years, we have lots of mysteries left to discover with them."
"In Hindi, the saying goes that to survive, you need three things: roti, meaning bread or food, kapda or clothing, and makaan, shelter. India has a roti problem. While the country has catapulted to No. 3 in the world for obesity, it’s also the hungriest country in the world. India has 194. 6 million undernourished people  —   that’s more than half the world total. It’s what people mean when they talk about ”food insecurity:” the economic and social condition of limited or unpredictable access to adequate food. But in a study published in the August 2015 issue of the journal Lancet, researchers found that India also has 46 million obese citizens. The dabbawallas  —   Mumbai’s lunch delivery collective  —   have stepped in with an initiative they’re calling the Roti Bank. Their aim is to connect the   with the   . ”We deal with food every day, so we’re ideally placed to fix this,” says Dashrath Kedare, a   of the Roti Bank and a leader of one of the dabbawalla unions. Across India, there are a few   equivalents, mostly religious charities that dole out food at gurudwaras  —   Sikh temples  —   mosques and churches. And there are midday meal schemes to ensure kids in some schools get lunch. But there’s no way to deal with leftover cooked food. ”An average wedding has 500 guests,” says Rushikesh Kadam, an event planner in Mumbai. ”The smallest one I’ve done had 100 guests, the largest had 2, 500.” Typically, he says, a quarter of the food that’s prepared is trashed. Sometimes, beggars will hang around the back of an event location, near the kitchen, when parties wind up in the wee hours of the morning. The caterers then dispose of leftovers at their own discretion. But, generally, it’s for scavengers  —   and then the trash dumps. ”Thousands of tons of food is wasted every day,” Kadam adds. ”And it needs to be distributed and consumed within an hour or it will spoil.” Enter the dabbawallas, translated as ”the ones with [tiffin] boxes.”  Every day 200, 000 office workers in Mumbai receive lunch sent from their own homes through the network of 4, 000 dabbawallas who crisscross the city with pushcarts and lunch boxes, called ”tiffins,” by road, train, bicycle and on foot to ensure the right dabba reaches the right person at the right time. They’re so efficient, there’s even a Harvard Business School case study about them. At one of Kadam’s events, a group of dabbawallas was helping with serving and catering as a bit of side business. Subhash Talekar, a leader of the dabbawallas’ union, had seen food wasted before  —   but something clicked this time. Kedare and Talekar packed up the food and took it to the closest train station, where they distributed it to the homeless and hungry. ”We travel these routes every day. We know exactly where the poor people gather,” Talekar says. They addressed their union and found unanimous support: The dabbawallas agreed to volunteer their evenings to collect leftover food from parties, award ceremonies and weddings. Their first pickup was December 28, 2015, from an event for an airline, and they distributed the food to 16 people. So far, they’ve connected with 30 wedding planners in the city. And they’ve publicized their phone numbers, so they get cold calls as well. ”On the first day, we got 300 phone calls from people checking we’re not a hoax,” Talekar says. ”Now I’m getting between 20 and 30 calls for food collection, daily. The response is so high, we’re overwhelmed and wondering what to do.” Dabbawallas earn about $180 a month, plus a train pass and reimbursement for bicycle maintenance. They’re usually the primary breadwinners for their families, making six times more than the poverty line. Most of them start collecting dabbas from homes at 8:30 a. m. and finish in the late afternoon. Some food pickups are scheduled after lunch hour and some for late nights. Talekar commissions dabbawallas, often in pairs, who are within the vicinity of the event to cycle over and pick up the food. At their discretion, they take it to the closest spot where they know homeless people live and distribute it in the huts and shanties. Talekar says he realizes this model isn’t sustainable. All the dabbawalas are contributing time, effort and bicycle mileage on their own dime. ”We’re hoping NGOs across the country will want to tie up with us and take this forward,” he says. ”We have the network and the   but we can only do so much.” They’re loathe to say no to people who ask, but some locations aren’t accessible by bicycle or cheap public transport. And sometimes residences want to give food away that will only feed a few people. Still, Talekar is optimistic about scaling up. He and Kedare have launched rotibankindia. com as a repository for anyone who’d like to donate food or know more. They’ve also set up collection points at several stations for two hours each morning and evening for household leftovers, to convert smaller contributions into more substantial amounts. They’re also looking to share their expertise with groups in the Indian cities of Lucknow, Noida and Hubli. Even though the dabbawallas don’t have much, they have plenty of empathy for those who have far too little."
"If you’re reading this section of the site, there’s a better than good chance that at one time, you’ve read a book that changed your life. For literature lovers, that’s not hyperbole  —   occasionally, books have a way of finding you when you most need them they really can alter the way you look at things, the course of your life. It can feel a lot like magic. It’s a safe bet that Martin Seay, author of the transfixing debut novel The Mirror Thief, feels the same way. His characters certainly do. As one character observes, ”It is difficult, but probably necessary, to remember that books always know more than their authors do. They are always wiser. This is strange to say, but it’s true. Once they are in the world, they develop their own peculiar ideas.” The Mirror Thief is also the title of the book that forms the center of Seay’s novel. It’s a collection of poetry by Adrian Welles, a fictional writer living in southern California at the height of the Beat Generation era. The book tells the story of a man named Crivano, a   Venice alchemist who conspires to smuggle two legendary mirror makers out of the  . The book is comprised of three separate but connected stories. There’s the story of Crivano, the doctor and spy on whom Welles’ book is based. Another story, set in 1958, follows a teenage con man named Stanley Glass, who becomes obsessed with the book, and travels to Los Angeles with his boyfriend Claudio, a Mexican immigrant, to track down the mysterious author. The third story, set in 2003, deals with Curtis Stone, a Marine veteran who was nearly blinded in a car accident overseas. He’s hired by an acquaintance who works for a casino to run a skip trace on Stanley Glass, who has grown up to become a successful gambler. Curtis has his doubts about the mission  —   he doesn’t quite trust his unhinged   boss  —   but he needs the money, and reluctantly searches for Stanley in Las Vegas. The common thread, of course, is Welles’ book. Curtis happens on a copy, and is nonplussed by its contents: Curtis: ”It’s all supposed to be very smart and serious,” he thinks, ”but at the same time there’s something goofy and Dungeons  Dragons about it, too.” For Stanley, the book has become a de facto Bible: ”There are certain moments that open onto another world, onto the world that Stanley’s sure he belongs in. The book is a map that will take him there, a password that will unfasten the locks.” His obsession becomes   he’s changed by the book, but not necessarily for the better. The Mirror Thief is as difficult to explain as it is completely original. It’s one of the most intricately plotted novels in recent years, and to call it imaginative seems like a massive understatement. The three stories are as different from each other as can be, and the fact that Seay weaves them together so skillfully is almost miraculous. It’s not just time and place that make the stories so different, either. Seay is a tremendous writer, and each story has its own distinctive voice. The chapters with Crivano call to mind Umberto Eco, while the ones with Stanley and Welles form a picaresque similar to Saul Bellow. The sections that follow Curtis are brutal and suspenseful Seay’s voice in these chapters has echoes of James Ellroy. If there’s a flaw in The Mirror Thief, it’s that Seay occasionally becomes a little too bogged down in philosophizing, which leads to some conversations that become difficult to follow. He’s clearly an intelligent man with a surfeit of great ideas he might have tried to stuff a few too many into this novel. On the other hand, his penchant for ideas provides some of the book’s greatest moments, which he’s able to pull off thanks to his pure skill at writing. Take this passage early in the book, in which Curtis enters a Las Vegas shopping mall: ”Patterns proliferate, as if in terror of blankness: geometric, vegetal, endlessly elaborated. Every surface seems vented, weightless, shot through with numberless holes.” It’s hard to put a book down when it’s filled with writing like that. There’s no doubt that Seay swings for the fences with his novel, and the scope of his ambition is endlessly impressive. The Mirror Thief is a startling, beautiful gem of a book that at times approaches a masterpiece. ”I think [your book] knows that this kind of magic is really possible,” Stanley tells Welles at one point. You could say the same thing about this thrilling dynamo of a novel."
"Populations are shrinking so fast in East Asia that some Japanese and Koreans actually talk about the eventual extinction of their civilizations. To tackle demographic declines driven by low birthrates, the historically homogeneous South Korea is opening itself to more immigrants than ever before. It’s happening most notably in a place called Wongok Village outside the city of Ansan, an hour’s drive south of Seoul. At Ansan West Elementary School, the students represent dozens of countries  —   China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and several more. Most of them have managed to pick up the Korean language quickly, but for those who don’t, the school is one of few public schools in the country to offer remedial Korean classes. The elementary school is in the heart of Wongok, which is billed as a ”borderless village” in which   of the 17, 000 residents are  . Industrial work requiring cheaper migrant labor and Ansan city’s efforts to provide services for   led to a fourfold jump in Wongok’s immigrant population from 2002 to 2010. Most of the immigrants are from China, living here as residents on work visas. But under Korea’s latest immigration policies, migrants who seek citizenship are allowed to hold dual citizenship. ”[In] places with multicultural kids, the kids can interact with each another and get into conflicts with one another and break prejudices,” says Kim   a teacher and multicultural coordinator at the school. She plays an increasingly vital role here, as Wongok  —   unique in its concentration of    —   offers a lesson in fast adaptation to immigrant communities. ”There is real immigration going on that is supported, facilitated, advocated by the South Korean government,” says Katharine Moon, the SK Korea Chair at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on the impact of a changing Korean population. Immigration is a fairly new concept in South Korea, where foreigners make up only about 3 percent of the population. Bars and restaurants can ban   from entry because no   laws exist. Foreign workers in Korea are subjected to mandatory HIV testing. ”It has been a homogeneous society linguistically, culturally, for so long. It has prided itself on the purity of the bloodline, the   bloodline,” Moon says. But because the birthrate has fallen to such low levels  —   South Korea has the lowest fertility rate among developed nations  —   immigration policies are changing. Government figures show the number of foreign residents living in South Korea climbed by about 50 percent between 2009 and 2014. Moon says attitudes will take a little longer to adjust. ”Right now, [integration] is about fitting into the Korean context, learning Korean language and not teaching your kids Vietnamese or Tagalog or some other foreign language,” Moon says. ”True multiculturalism would involve mixing and blending and fusing of different languages, cultures, customs. We don’t see much of that  —   except in places like Wongok Village.” Outside, on what’s known as ”Multicultural Street,” people from different backgrounds mix. In front of the banks, there are signs in four or five different languages. Food stalls sell a lot of Chinese food, and there are Chinese markets and Chinese karaoke joints. You can hear Vietnamese as you walk up and down the streets. ”[There are] job opportunities here because there’s a lot of factories. And you know, in every place where there’s electricity, there’s work opportunity,” says Eugene Okoye, who came to Wongok four years ago from Nigeria to run a clothing export business. As more people like Okoye seek opportunities in Wongok, their kids fill the classrooms of teachers like Kim. She says the children have taught her about dropping prejudices. ”Multicultural people are people that Koreans have to work together with to make Korea into a better country,” she says. ”Wongok Village is what Korea will look like in the future.” The kids offer a key lesson, she says: They relate to one another as peers  —   not as different peoples. Haeryun Kang contributed to this story."
"One issue at the center of North Carolina’s   bathroom bill controversy is safety, but who’s at risk? Depends on whom you ask. Supporters of House Bill 2 tend to focus on people born male who later transition to female. The HB2 supporters say that without the new law, sexual predators could just say they’re a transgender person with the right to use a women’s bathroom and easily gain access to potential victims. ”He could be there to look at the anatomy of the opposite sex. He could be there because he’s a sex pervert. He could be there to bring damage to a young girl,” says Ron Baity, president of Return America and pastor at Berean Baptist Church in   N. C. Baity organized a rally at the state Capitol last month to thank lawmakers and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory for making HB2 into law. The legislation limits civil rights protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, preventing local governments from extending rights beyond what the state offers. The part of the law getting the most attention requires public institutions  —   including schools and government offices  —   to ensure that public restrooms be designated ”male” and ”female” and used by people based on their biological sex. Baity and others with similar beliefs offer anecdotal evidence  —   crime reports  —   to support their claims. But those cases involve sexual predators who put on women’s clothes and violated any number of previously existing laws. And conflating ”transgender” with ”predator” is something many find offensive. ”As a trans person . .. it’s hard not to take it personally when people are comparing trans people to child predators or saying that we’re somehow dangerous,” says Alison Gill, vice chair of the Trans United Fund. Gill points out that not long ago, many people incorrectly thought gay men were pedophiles. She says some people just don’t understand that when it comes time for a transgender person to start using the other restroom, they’d rather do it privately, and with as little fuss as possible. ”The last thing you as a trans person would want to do is draw attention to yourself,” Gill says. So far 17 states and many more communities across the United States include transgender people among protected classes for public accommodations. UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, a research group that focuses on sexual orientation and gender identity law and policy, is working on a study to learn whether extending public accommodations rights to transgender people leads to more crimes by predators. Early indications are that it does not. ”As far as we know there hasn’t been some sort of, you know, devolving into chaos in restrooms,” says Jody Herman, a public policy scholar at the institute. One thing Herman can say for certain: Based on her survey of 93 transgender and gender nonconforming people in Washington, D. C. in 2008 and 2009, they themselves are at risk in restrooms. ”About 70 percent of the sample reported experiencing being denied access to restrooms, being harassed while using restrooms and even experiencing some forms of physical assault,” says Herman. Eight of the 93 respondents in her survey said they had been physically attacked in a restroom."
"The legal case over transgender rights hinges on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion and sex. But the word ”sex” wasn’t always going to be part of the bill. And ”sex”  —   which, at the time was meant to mean gender  —   was not on that list when the bill came to the House. Todd Purdum, a national editor and political correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, wrote a book about the Civil Rights Act in which he recounts the dramatic political battle to pass this law that helped shape modern America. The book, published in 2014, is titled, An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Purdum recently spoke with NPR’s Linda Wertheimer about how the word ”sex” became part of the law and commented on North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law. On how the word ”sex” ended up in the Civil Rights Act  It got in there in a mischievous way in the final phase of the Florida bill in the House of Representatives, when Howard Smith, an elderly Virginian, unrepentant segregationist and racist and chairman of the rules committee  —   which was the absolute bottleneck that had held all such rules hostage for years  —   decided to insert it. And there’s some disagreement about exactly why he did it. Most people think he did it as a poison pill, to kind of make people vote against the bill because it would be so ludicrous on the face of it to protect women in a bill that was intended to end racial discrimination. On varying thoughts on why Judge Smith wanted the law amended, A modern school of feminist scholarship actually points out that Judge Smith had actually been sympathetic to the feminist cause and he had warned leaders of the House that he might bring up this amendment at some point. And he did on a day in February, a Saturday. It put the House in pandemonium, and it was known later as ”Ladies Day” in the House. And it caused peals of raucous laughter. But also, the female members of the House, both Republican and Democratic, joined forces to make sure this amendment would pass, and it did. On why Judge Smith thought putting ”sex” in the bill would doom it in the Senate, I think he thought that there were a bunch of people who thought that   should not be enshrined in federal law. There was another school of thought that in the early 20th century, it was seen as progressive to limit the hours and working responsibilities of women as a humane gesture and in places like Virginia, where the textile mills depended on female labor, that meant that there were severe restrictions that limited what many manufacturers could demand of female workers. So a very cynical view could hold that Judge Smith wanted to eliminate that safeguard for women in his home state and there would be a boon to manufacturers who could in fact treat women just like men and make them tote the barge and lift the bale and get more work out of them. On the difference ”sex” made in passing the bill  I don’t know whether at the end of the day it helped or hurt in passing it. But I think it indisputably made the bill stronger because it extended the bill’s protections to more than half the population of the country  —   women. And it paved the way for a whole series of court victories all through the ’70s and ’80s in the women’s movement, getting equal treatment in the workplace for women. On North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law  What I’ve been thinking in these recent weeks when this North Carolina battle has gone on, it feels to me in North Carolina, this is a solution without a problem. I can’t imagine that issue of transgender persons in North Carolina going to use the bathroom of their choice is really upsetting anybody on the ground level in North Carolina. And it feels to me much like a political battle that’s being ginned up, particularly by the governor there for his political advantage. On what Judge Smith would say today, He would wonder what he brought, I suppose. It’s also fair to say that many of the people who voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had they known that it was going to lead to affirmative actions or quotas or those kinds of   remedies, would have surely voted against it, and they did not intend that, either. As the jurisprudence continues over the years, the law has grown in ways that maybe its supporters wouldn’t have seen."
"It’s a perennial story: An older student returns to the classroom education he’d long set aside, finally finishing his studies and graduating years later. Typically, that story includes detours like service in war or a family tragedy. Bobby Ellerbee’s story, however, is not exactly typical. He took four decades to get his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Georgia  —   but it wasn’t an obstacle that caused the delay. Instead, it was a successful  —   and remarkably diverse  —   career, which began even before he stepped foot in a college classroom. ”I started in radio when I was 16 years old, because my   neighbor owned a radio station,” he tells NPR’s Linda Wertheimer. ”For 30 years, I did live shows every day.” He left the airwaves in the late ’80s to pursue another love, he says  —   writing and producing commercials. He became the international voice of the Scotch whisky brand Johnnie Walker, roomed with the bassist for Lynyrd Skynyrd, Leon Wilkerson, even hung out with Eartha Kitt and Etta James for his 33rd birthday. ”Oh yes,” he says, ”that was quite a night. Been a lot of those along the way.” These days, he supplies the voice of the sheriff on the surreal adult cartoon Squidbillies, which features a family of squid in the hills of northern Georgia. He says he returned to Georgia to take care of his parents around 2006. And, as long as he was back, he figured he’d take advantage of a little perk in state law. ”Not long ago, the state of Georgia passed a law that said if you’re over 62, you can go back to college free,” he says. So, he decided to take them up on it. And, not surprisingly, these days his voice turns heads on campus. ”Our biggest demographic [watching Squidbillies] is young males from 18 to 24 or 32, and we sure have a lot of them at the University of Georgia, I’ll tell you that,” he laughs. Whatever the divide in generations, this recent graduate says that connection forged by the show helps close the space between them. ”You know, I’m 65 and my cohorts there at Georgia are in their early 20s,” Ellerbee says. ”But as soon as we kind of start to laugh about some of the things we do on the show, we’re all 20, you know?”"
"A young British girl unwraps a package from her mum  —   a stuffed animal. The child’s face breaks into a smile. But after this moment, her life in a   London is stark: She gets a serving of gruel, reads in the dark, tries to keep warm with a cigarette lighter  —   then narrowly escapes a bombing, nearly drowns and is separated from her mother, who sacrifices her spot on a tugboat so her daughter can flee. The 1 minute, 34 second video  —   ”Still the Most Shocking Second a Day”  —   has amassed over 314, 500 views in the five days since Save the Children released it. It’s the sequel to its 2014 viral video, ”The Most Shocking Second a Day.” The ads, created by the global charity to raise awareness and funds for the Syrian refugee crisis, have gathered a ton of attention, both negative and positive, for using a British girl  —   not a Syrian girl  —   as the main character, and London  —   not Damascus or Aleppo or any other Syrian city  —   as the setting. Jess Crombie, deputy creative director at Save the Children, argues that casting a white British child as the protagonist is key to bring the   issue closer to home and raise awareness in the hope people will respond with donations. ”When we created the first film in 2014, we wanted people to relate to what a child caught up in the conflict goes through, so we chose London as the location,” she wrote to Goats and Soda in an email. ”We knew the viewer would not expect to see the streets of London to be   and its children forced to become refugees. This contrast makes it more relatable to those not living in a war zone.” At the end of that 2014 video, a sentence appears on the screen: ”Just because it isn’t happening here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.” That ad garnered 53 million views  —   and counting  —   on YouTube. But ”a video going viral has no value in and of itself,” notes Jason Wojciechowski, creative director at Corelab, a digital agency that works in nonprofit campaigns, including for the Syrian crisis. Save the Children spokesman Jeremy Soulliere says that the first ad did help bring in funds and direct attention to the crisis and that donations were distributed to refugee aid groups on the ground, though he declined to name a specific amount. He said the group had not tracked the amount of money raised directly from the video and that the goal was to raise awareness. That doesn’t mean everyone agrees with the idea of telling the Syrian refugee story with a British setting. Heidi Moore, a digital media consultant based in New York, tweeted that she found the ad ”annoying. As if the refugee crisis doesn’t matter unless the child is white and  .” Moore says the intention of bringing awareness to the Syrian refugee crisis is admirable, but the execution is ”misguided.” ”If you go over to a refugee camp, are you going to see this girl there? No,” she says. ”It adds distance to the refugee crisis. Syrian refugees are not aliens they are highly educated and from a society that is very advanced. Discarding that sets us back [in empathizing with their situation].” But Syrian refugee Shadi Martini does not share those concerns. ”It is accurate, actually,” says Martini, who left Syria in 2012 and is today the senior Syria adviser for the Multifaith Alliance in Farmington, Mich. where he lives with his wife and two children. ”When I saw it, I had flashbacks immediately,” he says. If anything, he adds, Save the Children didn’t present the reality of war graphically enough. Then he breathes a heavy sigh. ”A problem we [Syrian refugees] always face is that people think we are exaggerating. What we [tell people] is only 5 or 10 percent of the truth. We can’t explain in words what the situation is. The reality is much more horrifying [than what is shown in the video].” Martini is quick to add that neither he nor fellow Syrian refugees he’s spoken to feel the ad is unfair to their situation without a Syrian voice. ”It’s not insulting to me, it’s accurate,” he emphasizes. ”It explains to people it can happen to anyone, to any nation. What would you do if you were this child, in this place?”"
"Millennials are now as large of a political force as Baby Boomers according to an analysis of U. S. census data from the Pew Research Center, which defines millennials as people between the ages of  . Both generations are roughly 31 percent of the overall electorate. For some perspective, the   Generation (ages 71+) is roughly 12 percent of the voting pool, while Generation X (ages  ) makes up about 25 percent of the electorate. According to the Pew analysis, Baby Boomers reached their peak voting power in 2004. But since then, that population has been dying and declining while, at the same time, millennials have been aging (turning 18) and increasing as a percent of the voter pool. And, so their political power is likely to grow in the coming years. But, as the Pew analysis points out  —   this all refers to potential, not actual political clout. In the 2012 election, voters between the ages of   made up just 19 percent of the electorate  —   that’s HALF the share of the Baby Boomer voting bloc (who were 38 percent of the electorate). In fact, millennials continue to have the lowest voter turnout of any age group. Only about 46 percent voted in the last presidential election compared to 72 percent of the Silent Generation, who habitually punch above their weight. But, this election is unique for millennials  —   it marks the first time essentially all the millennials in the country are old enough to vote. ”They’re maturing, and many of them are facing the third election as young adults, so that is the age where young people would start to transition to more consistent voters,” said Kei   the director of CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at Tufts University   an initiative to study and boost youth voter turnout.   has studied changes in voter turnout over time   by looking at how millennial turnout compares to Generation X and Baby Boomers when they were young (essentially the same age as the current millennials) and she doesn’t see a huge difference  —   it seems young people when they’re young tend to be lax voters. ”People do become more stable and consistent voters over time but it’s not a straight line, where you start voting and keep going up in the ranks,” she added. Still, she acknowledges millennials don’t vote reliably compared to their elders. She says the fact that young people move around frequently can be a ”huge barrier” to voting. Plus, she points out that campaign outreach often overlooks young voters.   says turnout this cycle depends partly on how the presidential campaigns engage young voters. So far in the primary season, Bernie Sanders has the clear advantage with young voters. An analysis of state exit polls shows he has captured more than 2 million raw votes from   year olds and if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee she’ll need to find a way to mobilize that demographic. In fact, even though millennials lean Democratic, Donald Trump has actually won more raw votes from   year olds during the primaries so far than Clinton, according to exit poll estimates from CIRCLE. But, at the same time  —   young voters seem to be leaning left more than before, according to John Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. He’s polled young voters three times in the past year, asking the same question: ”Which party do you prefer to win the 2016 campaign for president?” His most recent poll on that question shows the strongest support for a Democrat in the White House come November. ”We recorded the highest number of young people participating in Republican primaries this year in almost every state that we looked at by substantial numbers . .. so that’s an indication that the conservative youth have been very excited by this election,” said  . She says young people have the potential to influence elections, particularly in battleground states. But, it’s a matter of whether they show up on election day."
"The National Transportation Safety Board investigation into last year’s Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia has concluded that the train’s engineer was distracted by radio transmissions before the crash, a federal official briefed on the findings told NPR. A second source told NPR an official said only that the engineer was distracted, but did not specify radio transmissions. The crash on May 12, 2015, killed eight people and injured scores of others when the train, going 106 miles per hours in a 50 mile per hour zone, jumped the tracks. The train was traveling from Washington, D. C. to New York. As NPR’s David Schaper reported last week, the yearlong investigation has yielded some answers so far: ”Investigators have ruled out brake, track, engine, and signal failures as potential causes and are focusing on human error. The train’s engineer,   old Brandon Bostian, could not explain why he kept accelerating, telling investigators he cannot remember the final moments before the crash. Drug and alcohol testing came back negative and investigators determined he hadn’t been using his cell phone. ”Regardless of why the train was going too fast, the nation’s top railroad official says ”this accident was preventable.” The NTSB is set to publicly report the findings at a public meeting Tuesday."
"Feminine products are having a moment. With some calling for a red wave to take the taboo out of menstruation, politicians across the country are trying to make tampons and sanitary pads as affordable and accessible as possible. Five states have eliminated sales taxes on pads and tampons: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland and Minnesota. In New York, a bill awaits the governor’s signature, and other efforts to improve access to sanitary products are underway. The bill would reclassify pads and tampons so they’re exempt from the 4 percent state sales tax, like many other items on pharmacy shelves, including bandages, swabs and contraceptives. The bill passed both houses of the legislature, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s media representative has spoken positively about it. In New York City, a bill would provide free sanitary supplies in schools, homeless shelters and prisons. Council speaker Melissa   backs the bill, and the mayor has expressed support for the cause. New York lawmakers in Congress are working on the issue, too. Rep. Grace Meng,   has introduced the Fund Essential Menstrual Products Act of 2015 (also known as the FEM Products Act). It would make feminine hygiene products eligible for purchase with pretax Flexible Spending Accounts. And Rep. Carolyn Maloney,   has asked the National Institutes of Health to research the safety of certain fibers and chemicals used in the products. As is so often the case, politics is catching up with pop culture. Although menstruation management has long been a favorite topic among comedians including Tina Fey and Key  Peele, tampon advertisements now mock the euphemistic ads of yore, and period starter kits are being marketed with cheeky YouTube videos. That may help make it easier for proponents of the legislation to push ahead. ”Everyone’s talking about this inequity,” says New York Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who introduced the state tax exemption bill. At the High School for Arts and Business in Queens, a simple machine may be a  . It has dispensed free tampons and pads since September. ”It keeps me from missing class, in case I need one,” says sophomore Emily Torres. ”I don’t have to worry about accidents. It’s always there if I need it.” The school is one of 25 around the city piloting the dispensers this school year. Previously, students had to get tampons or pads from the school nurse. ”You go to the nurse’s office when you’re sick,” says City Council Member Julissa   has advocated for free menstrual supplies in all schools. ”These girls aren’t sick. Getting your period just says that you’re healthy.” Principal Ana   thinks making it easier for girls to get these products has improved class attendance. ”I have heard sometimes girls stay home because they don’t have the money to buy what they need, and that’s no longer the case,” she says. ”I just want girls to stay in school and do well, and we’re going to support them no matter what.” Rosenthal isn’t sure exactly where the momentum is coming from. When she introduced her bill last year it got nowhere. Even this year, despite the unanimous support, she said the legislative discussion was awkward for some. ”I used the words ’period’ and ’blood’ and they were shifting in their chairs,” she says. ”Some couldn’t look at me because I was saying these words.” As High School for Arts and Business student Ashley Celik might put it: that’s on them. ”Sometimes when guys overhear us, they’re like, ’Omigod! Gross! Keep it to yourself!” she said. ”Of course we’re going to talk about it. It’s something normal. You shouldn’t be telling us we shouldn’t be talking about it because it’s awkward for you.” This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WNYC and Kaiser Health News."
"Seventeen states have legal protections to prevent discrimination against transgender people in areas like housing and employment. One of those states is New Jersey, and when employers there want to know how state law applies to transgender people, many of them call Robyn Gigl. She’s a partner at a top law firm a board member of Garden State Equality, a nonprofit that works on LGBT issues, and is also a transgender woman.   ”I put a human face on something, and I consider myself the most normal person in the room,” she says.  It’s been nearly 10 years since New Jersey expanded its   law to include gender identity, with little fanfare or opposition, Gigl says. That means it’s illegal to fire people, or deny them an apartment, or any other public accommodation, just for being transgender. ”Once the law changed, the word got out there relatively quickly that people were protected based on their gender identity or expression. And as a result employers became very aware that they couldn’t discriminate. I think you see that most of the major employers in the state get it,” Gigl says. Still, Gigl says New Jersey sees a handful of transgender discrimination cases every year. Often, it’s a wrongful termination lawsuit that’s brought after an employee comes out or transitions to a different gender. But there’s only so much the law can cover. Leslie Farber, an attorney in Montclair, N. J. who specializes in family and employment law, says a lot of times, there’s just not enough evidence to prove that a landlord or an employer was breaking the law by not giving a transgender person a job or an apartment. ”Those cases are hard to prove because rarely will you get the smoking gun. You may have felt that was the real reason you got denied . .. but you have to have something more than a feeling,” Farber says. Within the LGBT community, transgender people have the highest rates of unemployment and homelessness. Still, transgender people can be reluctant to bring discrimination lawsuits because they don’t want to attract attention. But that did not stop Amira Gray. A publicist, model and transgender woman, Gray was pulled over by police in North Bergen, N. J. in 2013. Gray says she got a bad feeling as soon as officers started using the wrong pronoun to refer to her. ”I was bullied by three grown men and harassed and I was defenseless because there was nothing I could do,” she says. ”I knew that they were abusing their power.” Gray says the police accused of her of driving with a suspended license, even though her license was valid, and improperly impounded her car. The police department settled the case but did not admit any wrongdoing. Gray’s lawyer, Kevin Costello, says that New Jersey’s law is both working and not working. ”At least New Jersey allowed me to help Amira and to challenge this police department to do better the next time. So it totally worked. On the other hand, it’s a shame that we still are having the conversations we’re having,” Costello says. Costello says just having a law on the books hasn’t instantly changed people’s attitudes. But it can be a first step, says transgender activist Barbra Casbar Siperstein. She pushed hard to expand New Jersey’s   law 10 years ago. ”A law is just a tool and what we want to change is the culture  —   and that’s long term,” she says. Siperstein thinks New Jersey’s law has helped more transgender people to come out  —   and stand up for their rights."
"Gently bouncing up and down in microgravity aboard the International Space Station, NASA’s Jeffrey Williams delivered a message to the people of Earth. ”Monday, May 16, 2016, at 06:10 at GMT, the ISS will begin its 100, 000th orbit as it crosses the equator,” Williams said in a video, calling the feat a ”significant milestone.” Nearly 18 years after its initial launch, the ISS has traveled 100, 000 laps  —   2. 6 billion miles  —   around planet Earth, according to a statement from NASA. Traveling at speeds of nearly 18, 000 miles per hour, the craft takes about 90 minutes to complete one orbit. This means the astronauts living   experience 16 sunrises and sunsets in a   period. Right now, there are six astronauts on the ISS: Williams, from the U. S. Tim Kopra, also from the U. S. Russian cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko, Oleg Skripochka, and Alexey Ovchinin and British astronaut Tim Peake. Williams said in the video that the   mark was a ”tribute to international partnership made up of the European Space Agency, Russia, Canada, Japan and the United States.” He said more than 220 astronauts and cosmonauts from 18 different countries have been on the ISS since its ”first element launch” in 1998. Since humans began living and working on the ISS continuously in 2000, they’ve repeatedly pushed the boundaries of what’s possible for life in space. In March, astronaut Scott Kelly returned from nearly one year in space, the   space flight ever. And last month, the current ISS commander, Peake, ran the London marathon from space, as the   reported. Harnessed to a treadmill to keep from floating away, Peake finished the race with an estimated time of 3:35. 21. As Williams said in his video message, this is just the beginning. ”   orbits, the journey continues.”"
"Those of us ”of a certain age” have always been told to be true to ourselves, with the understanding that maturity will show us a better sense of our true selves. The hope is that we can move forward and look backward with both confidence and (hopefully) not a lot of regret. But musicians of a certain age are often better off if they resist the    and look for something new to stretch their sense of self. They rely on a body of work to inspire yet more growth that way, their sound changes while still feeling familiar. Pardon my philosophizing, but that’s how I hear Steve Kimock’s music  —   both in this video and on his latest album, Last Danger Of Frost. Long known for his   work in improvisational settings, he’s rightly considered a musician’s musician. I’ve always thought of him as one of those gifted players whose dedication to his instrument is matched only by his imagination. There’s joy in hearing Kimock play acoustically, with no filter (or pedals or amps) between his ideas and his fingers. Special mention on this video goes to legendary bassist Bobby Vega, who commands his instrument as easily as he breathes or walks around. It’s a rare treat to hear these musicians up close and unplugged. Last Danger Of Frost is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon) Producers: Felix Contreras, Niki Walker Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin Videographers: Niki Walker, Kara Frame, Nick Michaels Production Assistant: Jackson Sinnenberg Photo: NPR. For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast."
"When it comes to the issue of religious rights versus   contraception, the only thing the Supreme Court could agree on was not to decide. In an unsigned opinion issued Monday, the court sent a series of cases back to a raft of federal appeals courts, with instructions for those courts and the parties in the lawsuits to try harder to work things out. ”The Court expresses no view on the merits of the cases,” the opinion said. At issue is the extent to which religiously affiliated employers (such as universities or hospitals) need to participate in the requirement under the Affordable Care Act for most employer health plans to provide   contraception for women. The government made several changes to the rules over the past four years in an attempt to accommodate the religious employers’ objections while still ensuring that female employees would get contraceptive coverage. But dozens of religious nonprofit employers sued anyway, claiming that even the act of notifying the government of their objections (which would, in turn, trigger a requirement for the government to arrange coverage) made them ”complicit” in providing a service they see as sinful. The court’s opinion, and an accompanying order on several similar cases that were awaiting a decision on whether the high court would take them up, erased all the lower appeals court rulings, all but one of which had sided with the government. The opinion and order appeared at first glance to put at risk coverage for contraceptives for tens of thousands of employees of the organizations that filed suit. However, the court made clear that because the employers who have sued have already in effect notified the government of their objections, the government can rely ”on this notice, to the extent it considers it necessary, to facilitate the provision of full contraceptive coverage going forward.” At the same time, however, the opinion said the government ”may not impose taxes or penalties on petitioners for failure to provide the relevant notice.” The goal, the justices wrote, is that both sides ”should be afforded an opportunity to arrive at an approach going forward that accommodates petitions’ religious exercise while at the same time ensuring that women covered by petitioners’ health plans ’receive full and equal health coverage, including contraceptive coverage.’ ” Both sides in the dispute claimed at least a partial victory. ”From our point of view this is a win for religious liberty,” said Mark Rienzi, a senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the Little Sisters of the Poor, one of the groups that sued the government. ”The government can find ways to give out contraception without hassling nuns.” But at the same time, said Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the Americans Civil Liberties Union, ”the opinion states clearly the need for women to receive full and equal coverage.” Contraceptive advocates also pointed to a concurring opinion from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg that stressed that the decision should not be read as approving coverage strategies that make it harder for women to get the benefits. ”Requiring standalone   coverage would leave in limbo all of the women now guaranteed seamless   coverage under the Affordable Care Act,” they wrote. ”And requiring that women affirmatively opt into such coverage would ’impose precisely the kind of barrier to the delivery of preventive services that Congress sought to eliminate.’ ” It remains unclear what the lower courts might do. In an effort to break what was clearly a   deadlock, the court in March asked each side for supplemental material outlining potential compromises. The decision Monday referred to those new briefs as suggesting that providing contraceptive coverage without requiring notice from religious employers ”is feasible.” But Sotomayor and Ginsburg, in their concurring opinion, noted that ”the Courts of Appeals remain free to reach the same conclusion or a different one on each of the questions presented by these cases.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can follow Julie Rovner on Twitter: @jrovner"
"Pork shoulder, cauliflower and cheese curds are all trending in 2016, according to Google’s tracking of   searches. That list might either nauseate you or make your mouth water. Our food preferences are intensely personal, but scientists have tried to figure out why some people are so picky about the things they eat. Jane Kauer is anthropologist who has studied this topic at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Monell Chemical Sciences Center. She’s also a board member of the youth nutrition company Rebel Ventures. She sits down with Here  Now   Jeremy Hobson to talk about the science and culture of picky eating. A transcript of their conversation follows, edited for brevity and clarity. For the things that people just don’t like, why don’t they like them? One of the things [our research] was striving to do was get at that, so we were asking broader questions: Is it texture? Is it flavor? Is it other qualities of food? We asked about color. We also asked other things about food than strictly one of the sensory properties. For example, foods that touched other foods on the plate. That’s for some people really a striking problem. Or foods that someone else has handled, and I don’t mean handle in a yucky way like coughed on them  —   just something someone else has handled at all. There’s a general sense for some people that that’s just not cool at all. Foods that have things in them . .. like a raisin in a muffin. The people we found who were on the more picky end of the spectrum, some of these things I mentioned tend to push them much further away from wanting to eat that kind of food. What about people who don’t like beans, or corn or cheese or whatever?  We all don’t like things. People develop individual tastes for all sorts of things, and we don’t seem to single out any other category of behavior or preference in the same way we single out food. I would never get on you for wanting to wear gingham shirts . .. but we do seem to feel that we have the right in the public domain to talk about each others’ foods. For people who are picky eaters, they can feel very strongly under assault by being around other people who are kind of pushing on them, telling them, ”Oh, you should eat this, it’s healthy, it tastes good,” when they feel that’s clearly something wrong. And that’s wrong to do that? You shouldn’t try to get people to eat something that they don’t want? I think it’s a great idea to have this invitational, open idea that you’re another human being, I like you, and in some way I want to share my experience and pleasure with you. You’re taking it into another domain once the person says ”no,” and then you push again and say, ”But it’s good for you, and I like it! . .. You should just try it!” . .. It’s like asking someone how much they make in our culture. It’s really not comfortable. . .. If you said, ”But Jane, it’s good for you, and you don’t eat a healthy diet, you don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables,” that becomes more unpleasant, like ”you’re a good person, you’re a bad person.” . .. Food has a strong moral component in America. . .. We somehow have this public comfort with insisting what’s right and wrong about food, what’s healthy and who should eat what, and who should lose weight. There’s a lot going on around moralization in food and eating. And that comes up with picky eating a lot. What if picky eaters decide for themselves that they want to get over something they don’t like? Is it possible to do that? Well, there are a lot of people who are in that position. There are some groups on the Internet of adults who are picky eaters who talk about this stuff. . .. Usually the method that is effective, from what I understand anecdotally, I don’t think there’s any research on this, is start small, and start with something you have some desire to want to like. It’s just like you imagine doing with a kid . .. ”I took one sip, that’s it.” If you do that serially, and not too spread out in time, then you will increase liking. To be clear, it doesn’t mean that person will like it it just means their disliking may be decreased. When I was a kid, I had a Cool Ranch Dorito and threw up. Since then, I’ve never had a Cool Ranch Dorito.  That particular experience is a very specific neurobiological response. . .. It does seem to be somewhat primitive, because we share it with at least rats  —   the ability to become nauseated. But in our case, we can vomit. That’s all quite unpleasant, but for good reason, because that goes along with having ingested something that’s bad for you. In your case, it probably wasn’t that Cool Ranch Dorito that got you, but something else. But the neurobiological pairing is so strong with specifically the stimulus of nausea. You can get rid of it, but it’s not easy. Do we all start out with a blank slate when it comes to taste? Or could you have five people growing up in the exact same way all come out liking different things  —   and disliking different things? There’s a lot of experience and learning and cultural influence that’s part of this. We have a preference in infancy, at birth, for sweetness. We have a dislike or strong aversive reaction to bitterness. We have a slight preference for slightly salty things, but not much of a preference, and a slight preference for moderate to low sour things. But the sweet and the bitter, we all come in with that, so we’re not a total blank slate. Otherwise, it is mostly experience  —   personal experience, cultural values, everything that affects us in just the same way about clothing and all that. So there are fashions in food. For example, Cool Ranch Doritos, if I understand the kids correctly, are more fashionable now than Nacho Doritos. That’s too bad for them. Yeah, it’s pathetic. You can hear the audio of this interview here."
"Before there was Star Wars’   and the robot who famously warned of ”Danger, Will Robinson!” on TV’s Lost in Space, there was Eric  —   one of the world’s first real robots. He was built in 1928, less than a decade after the word ”robot” was first used. He wowed audiences in Britain, where he was created, and elsewhere in Europe and the United States. And then, he disappeared. Now, a team from the Science Museum of London is planning to rebuild him, using original archival materials. They have the technology. Now, they need money  —   and they’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $50, 000. Made of aluminum, Eric measured about 6 feet tall and weighed about 100 pounds. ”He looked quite scary,” says Ben Russell, curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum. ”He was designed so that when he spoke, sparks flew between his teeth”  —   created by some 35, 000 volts of electricity. ”Looking back, I suppose you could say he was relatively simple,” Russell says. ”He could stand up, he could move his arms, he could take a bow and sit down again. He was, in a way, everything that we imagined a robot would be. He’s that sort of stereotype that even now when you ask kids to draw a robot, they draw something that looks pretty much like Eric.” Eric was the creation of two men  —   Capt. W. H. Richards, a World War I veteran, and A. H. Reffell, an engineer  —   and was intended as a showpiece. His first public appearance was in September 1928, when he opened the Society of Model Engineers’ annual exhibition. The society had invited the Duke of York to open the event, but he declined. Richards decided that since it was a mechanical show, ”let us have a mechanical man to open it,” and started work on creating Eric. His inventors took Eric and their next robot, George, on an international tour, which included a stop in New York City, where the press dubbed Eric a nearly perfect man. Russell, the curator, is currently putting together a major robot exhibit scheduled for next year at the Science Museum  —   and he wants to include Eric. But there’s a problem: Eric no longer exists. ”No one’s quite sure what happened,” Russell says. ”We know George was destroyed by a bomb in the Second World War. But Eric vanishes off the record.” To get Eric back, Russell wants to rebuild him. Enter the Kickstarter campaign. ”You can only go so far with a picture of something or a computer simulation,” Russell says. ”People want to see actual stuff. As a   object it has much more appeal than just a drawing or a photograph.” And he’s intrigued by the technical challenge. ”Although there’s lots of photographs  —   and there’s one or two artistic   of what was inside him  —   no one quite knows how he worked,” Russell says. For the curator, unraveling that mystery is as much about technology as it is about art. ”One of the points we wanted to make in the exhibition is that robots aren’t just science or technology with a capital S or a capital T, but actually they are the product of a much wider range of motivations, which might be about the thrill of a show, or our curiosity about ourselves and our bodies, and those questions of magicalness or faith or spectacle or showmanship. So it’s a much richer story,” Russell says. The robot exhibition is scheduled to open in February 2017. If the Kickstarter campaign is successful, Eric will be there, ready to take a mechanical bow."
"All eyes were on    Abdullahi Yusuf when he stepped on the stand in federal court last week in Minneapolis to testify for the prosecution in America’s largest ISIS recruitment trial. As Yusuf began to speak, his words provided a rare,    look at how more than a dozen young men convinced themselves that the way to prove they were good Muslims was to travel to Syria and fight for ISIS. The radicalization process in this case was frightening simple. It began with a meal at a Somali restaurant and a pickup game of basketball. Then, he testified, smart phones came out of their pockets and the young men began watching ISIS videos on a YouTube channel called ”Enter the Truth.” They stayed up until 2 a. m. Yusuf said, talking about the killing in Syria and watching ISIS videos. ”The channel is saying that the West is corrupt and you can follow religion perfectly over there [in Syria],” Yusuf told the court. ”And you don’t have to conform to anyone else’s traditions.” Yusuf said he had never seen videos like that before and when he got home that night, he stayed up for another couple of hours watching the videos on his own. In retrospect, Yusuf said that it was that Friday night in 2014 that his ISIS recruitment began. Testifying Against His ’Former Friends’ He testified he was introduced to radical Islam by the three men now on trial, Guled Omar, 22, Abdirahman Daud, 22, and Mohamed Farah, 21. ”My former friends,” he called them. Asked why he was testifying against them, Yusuf stopped for a moment and said, ”Because I realize what I did was wrong . .. and I am thinking for myself for once.” Yusuf is not only a key witness in this case. He’s also the charter member of America’s first jihadi rehabilitation program. He was arrested last year, months after the FBI stopped him from boarding a flight that would eventually have taken him to ISIS in Syria. He pleaded guilty in February to providing material support  —   essentially himself, as a fighter  —   to a terrorist organization. While he awaits sentencing, he is getting counseling so he can better understand what lead him to embrace ISIS. His counselor is a local high school social studies teacher named Ahmed Amin. Amin was born in Somalia and his family moved to the U. S. when he was 12. His English is unaccented. He wears designer shirts. He the kind of teacher with the creative lesson plans who holds classes outside on sunny days. He teaches at Roosevelt High School during the day and began working with a Minneapolis group called Heartland Democracy that has created a counseling program for young men like Yusuf. ”I understand the difficulties of identity that lead people to join organizations like ISIS,” Amin told NPR in an interview. ”It is hard trying to live in two worlds. From 9 to 5 these kids have to live one way when they are at school, they are socialized to be American. And then they go home, learn to be religious and are trying to cope with that. It is harder than you’d think.” A Lengthy Reading List, Abdullahi Yusuf was just 18 years old when he decided he would go to Syria to fight with ISIS. Amin is trying to help him understand why he made that choice. ”Initially, I wanted him to read some texts that would get him to really question his own personal views, to question his understanding of the world,” said Amin. ”One of the first things I had him read was Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues.” The 1995 novel is about the difficulties of navigating two worlds at once, in this case, the life of an American Indian off the reservation. Amin also had Yusuf writing papers about French philosopher Michel Foucault’s ideas about prisons and power and society. ”I’m introducing him to many different texts that could really challenge how he thinks and sees the world,” Amin said. ”We try to give him as much work that gets him to be critical in hopes of finding out what really led him to do this,” Amin added. ”I think that’s the first step, for him to really have an answer as to why he did what he did.” In his testimony, Yusuf said the three defendants in the trial helped goad their friends into joining a complicated plan to go to Syria. Commotion In The Courtroom, This ISIS case has rocked Minneapolis. The courtroom gallery erupted last week during Yusuf’s testimony after some young Somalis on the back benches told Yusuf’s mother that her son was a spy. U. S. District Court Judge Michael J. Davis ended up throwing some people out of the courtroom to restore order. Yusuf was subjected to blistering   on Monday as defense attorneys claimed there were inconsistencies in his story. The prosecution plans to call two other young men who say they were involved in the alleged conspiracy. One of them backed out of the plan, told the FBI about the plot, and became a confidential informant. Defense attorneys say the FBI used him to entrap their clients and that has sparked protests outside the courthouse. ”Somali youth are under attack,” one chant begins. ”Stand up, fight back.” Because all the men involved in the case are all in their early 20s, there has been a push to develop a program that helps young men like Yusuf who have pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. Amin says watching this happen in Minneapolis is heartbreaking and brings back painful memories. The Twin Cities struggled with young men from the Somali community leaving to join  ’s arm in Somalia,   nearly 10 years ago. ”You know, these are really young kids,” Amin said, ”and in my heart I really believe that they fell for something. They need a chance to correct, to undo, what they did.” Judge Davis has appointed a German radicalization expert, Daniel Koehler, to assess the men who have already pleaded guilty in the case. Koehler runs the German Institute on Radicalization and   Studies. He wouldn’t discuss the individual assessments he’s made of the young men in Minneapolis, though he did tell NPR that he thought that some of the young men who pleaded guilty, though not all of them, could be helped with counseling. Koehler is in negotiations with six states, including Minnesota, to set up   programs. ”There’s a real desire to figure something out to fix this,” he said."
"Every movie is set somewhere, yet most movies feel as if they’re happening nowhere at all. They’re set in a Manhattan so generic that the filming was actually done in Toronto, or in a Paris we only know is Paris because we get a shot of the Eiffel Tower, or in an imaginary small town from some unnamed state whose purpose is to be every small town. Such settings have no presence, no weight, no humidity, no purpose  —   they’re background. If you want to enjoy a location being used properly  —   and alluringly  —   let me suggest A Bigger Splash, the gripping   film by Luca Guadagnino, the Italian director who made I Am Love, the swooningly romantic hit film starring Tilda Swinton. Set on the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria, where the likes of Madonna and Giorgio Armani go for RR, this remake of a 1969 French thriller offers the brand of   entertainment that has all but vanished from our theaters. Swinton stars as Marianne, a   rock star who’s recovering from a throat surgery that keeps her from speaking for nearly the whole film. She has rented a villa with her boyfriend, Paul  —   that’s the Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts  —   a photographer who’s recovering from a psychological crisis. Marianne and Paul are having an idyllic time until they get a call from Marianne’s old producer and lover, Harry Hawkes, played by Ralph Fiennes. Before they know what’s hit them, they’re hosting Harry and his nubile daughter, Penelope (Dakota Johnson from 50 Shades of Grey). The four first meet at the island’s airport, and it’s instantly clear that Fiennes’ garrulous Harry is going to be the quartet’s ringmaster. The newcomers’ arrival shatters Marianne and Paul’s quiet holiday. It’s not simply that Harry is a   life of the party, but that he wants everyone else to get with the program. Even as he works to win Marianne back to their old excesses and ecstasies  —   a life she’s outgrown  —   his daughter appears to be making eyes at Paul. As old memories and resentments bubble up, you sense that something bad is going to happen. These shifting psychological dynamics are deftly caught by Guadagnino, who skillfully orchestrates the quartet’s varying energies, from Schoenaerts’ wary Paul  —   whose still waters run deep  —   to Johnson’s unreadable Penelope, a young vixen whose silence always feels a tad insolent. As for Swinton, long before she became a fine actress, she was an extraordinary creature that no camera could resist. Certainly Guadagnino’s can’t. She’s his muse. He looks raptly, sometimes rapturously, at her lanky body and cool, otherworldly features. Swinton’s mere being makes Marianne the eye of the emotional storm. The storm itself is Harry, the sort of whirling dervish character I nearly always find annoying and unconvincing. But in recent years, Fiennes  —   who was always a terrific actor  —   has discovered a rich new vein of joy in his work. He turns Harry into a dazzling creation. Whether telling old stories, dancing to the Rolling Stones, or skinny dipping in the pool, Fiennes gives us the definitive portrait of a man whose embrace of life’s pleasures is fueled by desperation. The movie is worth seeing for Fiennes and Swinton, yet what makes it doubly seductive is Guadagnino’s skill at revealing social privilege from the inside. In I Am Love, he gave us the sumptuous textures of   Milan  —   you could almost feel the fabrics. Here, he gives us the Pantelleria that is at once a playground for the entitled and a   for illegal North African migrants, who serve as the film’s  —   and maybe the filmmakers’  —   guilty conscience. Guadagnino makes you feel the island in all its   tactility. The light may be gorgeous, but there’s also heat making you sweat, mosquitoes to swat and snakes to watch out for. Marianne and Paul’s villa may be enviable, but its rooms aren’t particularly large or posh. The best meal takes place at a roadside joint where the quartet eats great food off plastic tables  —   the quintessence of shabby chic. This is how the rich live. Guadagnino clearly knows their world in all its details. And in A Bigger Splash, he plunges us into its many comforts and corruptions. Walking out of the theater, you’ll know that the movie has done something that movies ought to do. It has lifted you out of your seat and taken you to a place that’s really a place."
"What’s the best way to help out someone in need? Just give money? Or try to make sure they’ll spend the money effectively? That’s a dilemma that’s faced anyone confronted by someone begging on the street. And it’s an international problem as well. When rich countries give aid to poor countries, how do they know the money will go to good use? The Millennium Challenge Corporation has come up with one strategy. MCC, as it’s called, is a U. S. government foreign aid agency created by Congress in 2004 to fight global poverty. Its mission says: ”MCC forms partnerships with some of the world’s poorest countries, but only those committed to good governance, economic freedom and investments in their citizens.” To be selected for aid that can help reduce poverty, countries are evaluated by a scorecard drawn from third party data gathered by groups like Freedom House, the World Bank and UNICEF. If there are concerns  —   say, evidence of corruption or a lack of democratic rights  —   then a country would not be eligible for an MCC compact. So far, MCC has signed compacts with 32 countries and handed out about $11 billion. The average compact is around $350 million. But partnerships do not always go smoothly. Of those 32 compacts, six have been suspended or terminated for falling short of MCC’s expected commitment to good governance. The latest suspension is Tanzania. A $463 million grant  —   designated to improve the access of rural residents to electricity  —   was suspended this spring. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Tanzania. MCC doesn’t issue ”warnings” says Beth Tritter, vice president for policy and evaluation, but there are ”open and honest conversations with partner countries when we take an action like this.” The problem is that the country hasn’t lived up to the MCC definition of ”good governance.” An election on March 20 on the island of Zanzibar (a   part of Tanzania) was deemed ”neither inclusive nor representative” by MCC. What’s more, says Tritter, ”the Government of Tanzania has also not taken measures to ensure freedom of expression and association are respected in the implementation of the Cybercrimes Act.” The question is: Is this linking of aid to government behavior a good way to encourage countries to change for the better? Tritter thinks so. A case in point is Malawi. In March 2012, an MCC compact that would have provided funding for electricity was formally suspended because of concerns about ”democratic rights and human rights,” she says. When the president passed away in April, the new president ”took actions to deal with the human rights issues and fairness issues, the treatment of protesters, freedom of speech.” The MCC board reconvened in June of that year and reinstated the compact. Sarah Rose, a senior policy analyst at the think tank Center for Global Development, agrees with MCC’s mission statement. Rose worked at MCC from 2007 to 2010 in the department of policy evaluation. There are studies that show that ”aid could be more effective [if it is delivered to] countries that are well governed,” she says. Although she concedes that this theory ”is not widely held as a complete truth.” The steps to qualify after a suspension are up to the government, Rose notes. MCC does not provide a list of needed reforms. But in her experience, governments believe it is a ”mark of distinction” to be eligible for MCC funding. So there’s motivation to live up to the aid group’s standards. Could an analogy be drawn to a parent who promises to pay for a child’s college tuition if the child lives up to certain standards and doesn’t get into trouble? Rose didn’t think the analogy was appropriate: ”It’s a partnership, an aid partnership. MCC provides a chunk of money to invest in poverty reduction and economic growth, and there are expectations associated with that chunk of money.” On the other hand, Phyllis Pomerantz, a professor of the practice of public policy at Duke University, says the analogy is apt. ”If it’s a partnership,” she says, ”somebody is a junior partner.” ”If your intent is to reduce poverty and promote honest growth, the [MCC approach] is not helpful,” Pomerantz says. Consider the Tanzania example. The country is dependent on foreign aid but ”doesn’t know under what circumstances and conditions a donor is going to stop giving money,” she says. Meanwhile, she says, the rest of the donor community is still giving aid to Tanzania even if MCC stops. Cutting off aid in this manner ”sours [the donor’s] relationship with the country,” Pomerantz says. And if the reason for the cutoff has to do with elections, she says, ”this is a violation of their political sovereignty.” She does agree that ”countries that don’t have good governance don’t use resources as effectively as better governed countries.” But the relationship between governments and economic development is a ”chicken and egg situation” that is much debated in academic circles, she says. Maybe good governance can help spur economic growth, she explains, but maybe if a country is making economic progress because of aid, ”a rising middle class and private investors put pressure on the government to improve and get its act together.” So in her view, there’s no clear answer to the question: Does the MCC approach work? There’s been no definitive response yet from the government of Tanzania. Mujobu Moyo is an economist who is a research fellow at the Center for Global Development  —   whose specialty is managing natural resources in developing countries. She sent an optimistic   citing the comments of finance minister Dr. Philip Mpango, who’s said that the government will engage with MCC to understand what Tanzania should do to be reconsidered. ”There is reason for hope,” Moyo wrote. ”It is hard to doubt the sincerity of President Magufuli’s intentions to bring positive change to Tanzania. His actions to increase accountability and curb corruptions within the government speak for themselves. He will take action, but in his own time. He’s not the kind of man that can be pushed around.” So she has faith that the president can restore freedom of expression and other citizen rights. And if that does happen, then Tanzania will have both people power and electrical power."
"In two of The New Yorker’s most famous articles, writer Joseph Mitchell tried to answer one question: Who was Joe Gould? Mitchell first introduced Gould in 1942: He was a quirky, possibly mentally ill Harvard dropout who wandered the streets of Greenwich Village and Harlem filling pages and pages of   notebooks with everything people said to him. Gould said he was writing the longest book ever he called it The Oral History of Our Time. ”And actually, the term oral history comes from Gould,” New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore tells NPR’s Kelly McEvers. ”Gould coined that phrase. And what he meant by that was he thought history shouldn’t be the story of celebrities and kings and queens and presidents and generals, but should be the story of ordinary people  —   the ’small fry,’ he liked to call them.” Lepore is the latest writer to become fascinated by Gould, and here’s why: In 1964, Mitchell wrote about Gould again, and this time he concluded that Gould’s Oral History never existed. It was a figment of Gould’s imagination. In her new book, Joe Gould’s Teeth, Lepore sets out to answer the question once and for all: Did Gould write his Oral History? On what she discovered from Gould’s student files at Harvard, Everything in them belied pretty much everything in either of Mitchell’s profiles, so then I was sort of stuck. I thought: Well, if all this is wrong, then maybe The Oral History really exists. Like, maybe there is this    manuscript somewhere. I became completely obsessed. And this is sort of like Joe Gould’s curse  —   Mitchell had become obsessed, too. So I ended up trying to retrace Gould’s footsteps and follow him through his life, and then trying to retrace Mitchell’s footsteps. And I went on this kind of endless, crazy search because I really believed what Gould believed  —   or said he believed  —   which is that the stories of ordinary people really matter. On Gould’s mental instability, I had become uncomfortable spending time with Joe Gould because his insanity was a little terrifying. And so it soon became clear to me that he was possibly dangerous to other people, not just to Joseph Mitchell, who I think he harmed in many ways as well. On how Gould’s obsession with an   artist contributed to her being largely forgotten, I found evidence that Gould had harassed an   artist. And that made a lot of sense to me because a lot of Gould’s instability had to do with his ideas about race  —   especially, he was obsessed with interracial sex. He was obsessed with white men having sex with black women. And so, that he would be obsessed with a black woman artist was almost predictable at that point. But then I couldn’t figure out who it was, because it seemed like it was almost as though she had been erased from the historical record. In any case, I eventually found out it was a woman  —   Augusta Savage  —   who at the time was the most prominent artist in Harlem and one of the most influential still, because she was a teacher of art. She had been the obsession of Joe Gould since 1923, when he first met her at a poetry reading. And what I ended up walking away from the project wishing was that Gould hadn’t basically been complicit in destroying what we could possibly know about Augusta Savage and that Savage herself hadn’t been so haunted by Gould that she hadn’t done the willful act that she did, which was apparently to have destroyed many of her papers and much of her art. On whether she ever found Gould’s Oral History, After ”Joe Gould’s Secret” was published in 1964, a whole lot of people wrote to Mitchell and said: You know, the piece is just beautiful. I mean it’s beautiful it’s poetry. But I knew Joe Gould and there was an oral history and I’ve seen it and I have some of his notebooks. Do you want to see them? A lot of people  —   enough to really, I think, be concerning if you were Joseph Mitchell. And one woman in particular wrote and said: I know that I have one of his notebooks at least because he gave it to me when I went to Europe on my honeymoon and would you like it? And Mitchell said: Sure, send it along. And she did. And then I’m sort of pawing through his papers and I came across the notebook, and it does have oral history in it. It really is what Gould said it was: It’s not staggering, it’s just the notebook. It’s just snippets of speech. But he really was writing down the things that people say. On what ended up happening to Gould, He spent the last years of his life at Pilgrim State Hospital, which was the largest mental hospital in the world and the place where lobotomy was perfected. And I wasn’t able to get his records from the hospital, but the medical director of the hospital published a number of academic papers about the practice of lobotomy and experimentation with lobotomy. And one of the case records very closely resembles Gould and describes him by age and by all kinds of other features that line up very well with where Gould was in his life and what’s knowable about Gould. I think he was probably lobotomized. . .. He died there without a scrap of paper to his name, according to the medical director at his death."
"As researchers work to understand the human genome, many questions remain, including, perhaps, the most fundamental: Just how much of the human experience is determined before we are already born, by our genes, and how much is dependent upon external environmental factors? Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross the answer to that question is complicated. ”Biology is not destiny,” Mukherjee explains. ”But some aspects of biology  —   and in fact some aspects of destiny  —   are commanded very strongly by genes.” The degree to which biology governs our lives is the subject of Mukherjee’s new book, The Gene. In it, he recounts the history of genetics and examines the roles genes play in such factors as identity, temperament, sexual orientation and disease risk. Mukherjee notes that genetics is fundamentally changing our understanding of countless diseases, including schizophrenia and cancer. ”We used to think of disease as something that happened to us,” he says. ”Genetics allows us to really begin to think of disease as something that happens as a result of us interacting with the environment. . .. Not all, but many, many [diseases] are acutely dependent on the intersection between genes and the environment.” On understanding how some diseases are more genetic than we originally thought  There’s a spectrum, so I’ll start with one end of the spectrum and work my way to the other end. So let’s start with cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease, where we know that the influence of genetics is extremely strong, almost autonomous. This means that if you inherit the abnormal version, or the mutated version, for one of these two diseases, the chances that you will have that disease are very high. In genetics we use a word for this called ”penetrance,” these diseases are highly penetrant. In the middle somewhere are diseases like diabetes or heart disease. Here there’s still a powerful influence of genes. In fact, we know some of these genes, but it’s an interaction between multiple genes and the environment. Then, on the far end of the spectrum there are things that one might imagine, things like infectious disease where . .. there’s clearly an influence of genes. We now know that if you have certain genetic combinations or if you inherit certain genes, your susceptibility to HIV, for instance, might change, or your susceptibility to influenza might change, even though these are infectious pathogens. But these lie in sort of a different area, where the interaction between you and the pathogen, or you and the environment is much, much more acute. On how genetics is changing how we think about and treat cancer  There’s a substantial degree of reorganization in the way we fundamentally think about cancer that’s going on right now, some of it related or a large part of it related through genetics. If you look at the mutations in individual cancers, you might find actually that a lung cancer carries a mutation that it shares with, let’s say, breast cancer, or it shares a mutation that it shares with leukemia. The question that’s being asked right now in the field, which is an important question, is . .. should we reorganize this old anatomical classification of cancer, you know, lung cancer, breast cancer, and base it a little bit [more] on a kind of mixed classification? Yeah, you say ”breast cancer, which has these following mutations.” My overall impression is that the anatomical classification isn’t going to go away. I think there are very important things that the anatomy determines  —   there are genes that are particular to breast cancer, there are genes that are particular to lung cancer. But it’s going to be vastly refined, and we’re seeing this already with genetics. So we’re going to say, ”lung cancer, but with genetics or genes that share some things with leukemia.” We might, in fact, treat these two cancers similarly. On targeting pathways of cancer  The simple analogy that I like to make is, we now know from cancer that even when a single gene is mutated, it rarely causes cancer. There’s some instances, but it rarely causes cancer. You need multiple mutated genes in a single cell for it to become cancerous, and these mutated genes make products, proteins, and they   the normalcy of a cell, and they kind of create a kind of whisper campaign, in which they   the behavior of the cell, and now the cell begins to behave abnormally, divide abnormally, metabolize abnormally, ultimately leading to cancer. The idea of a pathway is that if you think of these individual mutations by themselves, you can think that there’s infinite numbers of combinations, in infinite different ways. One person has one combination, another person has another, but the point here is that what I’ve called a ”whisper campaign,” the internal network of these is often quite common between diverse individuals. And so rather than focusing on individual mutations, which can be very diverse and can cause us to get confused, we can focus on . .. the core things, core networks, as it were, that are leading the abnormal behavior of a cancer cell, and target that using a drug. On the new technology that allows doctors to make changes to cells  Making genetic changes in cells used to be very complicated. We used to be able to use viruses and deliver some genes into the cells. We used to be able to make mutations by exposing cells to, for instance,  . But if you were to ask me 10 years ago, ”Can you change this one particular gene in a cell?” I would say, ”I could do it, but it’s pretty hard to do.” What’s happened in the last five years [is] . .. this technology has allowed us, in an astonishing way, to go into a normal cell or a cancer cell, even potentially an embryonic stem cell, and essentially directionally or intentionally make a mutation in a single gene, in an intentional manner. I’ve likened this technology to saying, you know, it’s like saying if you imagine the human genome as a vast encyclopedia . .. what this technology allows us to do, essentially, is to go into that 66 entire sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and identify one word in that and change that word and leave most of the rest of the encyclopedia untouched. I’m saying ”most of the rest,” because there are still some collateral effects. . .. But what it allows you to do is you can erase one word and replace it with a slightly different word. That’s how powerful the technology is, and so therefore you could now ask me, which you couldn’t ask me five years ago, ”Is it easy to make a directional or intentional change in a cell?” The answer, I would say, ”infinitely easier today.” On the ethical considerations related to working with the human genome, The biggest ethical questions are should we be tampering with the human genome when we don’t know very much about it still? Should we be changing human genes? And that leads to the question of what is disease? What is a genetic disease? In Gene, I offer up a simple formulation that we might be able to think about . .. one question you might think about is, ”We’re going to change some genetic material  —   are we sure that the benefits outweigh the risk? Is there truly extraordinary suffering associated with that disease?” . .. The phrase ”extraordinary suffering” . .. one person’s extraordinary suffering [might not be] another person’s extraordinary suffering, but at least we can use the word ”extraordinary” to say that this is not a casual technology, we shouldn’t be using this, obviously, to change the shape of eyes or the color of hair and so forth. On how far science has come in isolating a ”gay gene”  If you take identical twins, male twins, the chances that these male twins will share a sexual orientation is much higher than siblings, for instance. Now, what does that tell us? That tells us that there may be genetic determinants, because identical twins have exactly the same genome, there may be genetic determinants that determine one’s sexual orientation. That number, how much they share, is not 100 percent. So in other words, if one twin is gay, the other twin will not necessarily be gay. It’s not 100 percent exactly the same, so we know that either genes or   exposures, or some other factors, environments, have a powerful effect on this  —   society, culture has powerful effects on this. But we know, also, that there must be at least some genes involved, and if you look carefully at the patterns, it’s clear that . .. it’s not one single ”gay gene,” that probably multiple genes are involved. I don’t even like that term, ”gay gene,” I think it’s very misleading as an idea. It’s a gene that influences sexual preference. Of course, most of this work has been done in males. There’s very, very little evidence in females. We know there’s some genetic determinants . .. that are involved. When people have gone to look for those genetic determinants, the hunt has come up quite not so clear. . .. The summary is, basically, that thus far we have not found, as I said, I don’t like the word or the phrase, we have not found a ”gay gene,” and it’s unlikely that we’ll find one. . .. Like many phenomena in human identity, there will be multiple genetic determinants interacting with environments, but it’s very important to be clear about these ideas, because otherwise we fall into language that’s all incorrect and wrong, and then you just foster nonsensical controversy. To hear more from Terry Gross’ conversation with Siddhartha Mukherjee, including Mukherjee’s take on epigenetics, the BRCA1 gene and his family history of schizophrenia, click the ”listen” link at the top of the page."
"Donald Trump likes to tout his popularity among conservative Christians, who make up a key voting base within the Republican Party. But even with Trump as the de facto nominee, some evangelicals say they’re unsure about voting for him  —   as a matter of conscience. At Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, a sign on the front lawn reads, ”Abortion is America’s Holocaust.” Inside, after a rehearsal for Sunday’s service, Pastor Mike Demastus sits down to talk about the state of the presidential race. He describes Trump as ”morally loathsome.” Demastus had backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa caucuses thanks in large part to evangelical support  —   but in the end, it wasn’t enough for the nomination. ”We came up with the worst possible candidate out of all of the choices that we had,” Demastus says. ”He’s the worst.” Even though Cruz has dropped out, Demastus says he plans to write him in come November. Demastus is troubled by Trump’s shifting positions on several policy issues. And he’s disturbed by a statement Trump made months ago in Iowa, when a pollster asked if he’s ever sought God’s forgiveness  —   and Trump said he hadn’t. ”He’s a reprehensible man. I would classify him as a wicked man,” Demastus says. For Demastus, Trump is no better than likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. And Demastus is not alone. While it’s true that the real estate developer has picked up substantial support among white voters who describe themselves as evangelical, polling suggests Trump is less popular among those who attend church regularly. ”The true evangelical  —   not defined by the media, but the true evangelical  —   is going to be put into a quandary, a dilemma,” Demastus says. At Cornerstone Church in Ames, Iowa, Pastor Jeff Dodge is facing a similar internal struggle. Dodge preaches to up to 3, 000 people at his church each weekend, and he says he avoids talking politics from the pulpit. Out in the lobby, Dodge tells me he typically votes for the Republican nominee. But he has big concerns about Trump’s comments on women and immigrants  —   and about his temperament. ”The brashness, the arrogance,” Dodge says. Dodge also brings up Trump’s response to the question about asking for forgiveness from God: ”Man, that’s a sacred tenet of the Christian faith. That’s right in the Lord’s Prayer.” At 53, Dodge says this is the first time he can remember feeling so torn about how to vote in a general election. ”I’m in an awkward place because a . .. big chunk of the platform from Hillary Clinton also does not settle well with my convictions as a Christian,” Dodge says. ”And so I’m left in a very weird place.” Dodge hasn’t totally ruled out voting for a Democrat, but he says he’s more likely to look to a third party  —   or skip the top of the ticket. Several of his church members say they’re also wrestling with the idea of Trump as the nominee. ”I think I’m still a little bit in shock. I was very much on the Never Trump bandwagon, just because I don’t think he’s suitable as a leader of a country,” says Carley Hoben, a    mom and child care provider. Hoben doesn’t want a Democrat in the White House, either. If the election were today, she says, she’d vote libertarian. But Hoben adds that she’s somewhat hopeful, because her faith teaches that even sinners can be redeemed. ”I don’t want to view Trump as though he can’t change and as though he can’t be a suitable leader,” she says. ”But at this point I also can’t deny the fact that he doesn’t align at all with my beliefs.” Kara Warme stays home with her two daughters and works   as a consultant. She usually votes Republican, but she says Trump is negative and divisive. ”I feel disappointed and nervous,” Warme says. ”I want change politically in the country, but I don’t like some of the emotions that I feel Trump is bringing out in people, so I’m just nervous for how that’s going to go.” At this point, Warme says she’d probably vote reluctantly for Trump over his Democratic rival. But she says she will be watching the race closely in the months to come. ”I think what’s difficult about right now is I don’t believe much of what Hillary Clinton says and I don’t believe much of what Donald Trump says,” Warme says. But some Republican leaders downplay the idea that evangelical voters will give Trump the cold shoulder in November. Tim Albrecht, a consultant to the Republican Party of Iowa, says he believes Trump will do what’s needed  —   including reaching out to prominent conservative leaders and outlining conservative policy proposals  —   to solidify that support. ”I think that as the choice becomes more clear between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Republicans are going to fall in line,” Albrecht says. ”I think that conservatives will come around.” Bob Vander Plaats of the group The Family Leader says many conservative Christians will be watching to see how Trump talks about key issues like abortion, and whom he names as a running mate. He says many evangelicals won’t vote for a Democrat, ”so they’re going to try to warm up to Donald Trump.” ”I would say, if I’m a Facebook post, ’It’s complicated right now,’ ” Vander Plaats says. Vander Plaats says many evangelicals want the next president to nominate Supreme Court justices who align with their views on abortion. Trump has promised to release the names of his potential nominees, which could convince some evangelicals. That could be especially important in battleground states, like Iowa, Ohio and Virginia, where evangelicals make up a big share of the population."
"If Democrats take back the Senate in 2016, they’ll likely have women to thank for it. The party is likely to have at least six female nominees who are challenging Republican incumbents in their   states, helping them flip the four seats necessary to take back Senate control, if Democrats hold the White House. And Democrats believe they have the perfect storm brewing to help them do that  —   likely the first female presidential nominee coupled with a probable GOP nominee who has a   history of controversial remarks about women. ”With Donald Trump’s toxicity permeating the Republican Party, never has there been a better time for a slate of Democratic women who remain focused on issues rather than insults,” said Marcy Stech of EMILY’s List, whose group helps recruit   rights women to run for political office. And if women win in these   races, they’re on pace to break the current record of 20 women in the Senate. If Democrats run the table, women could make up nearly a quarter of the upper chamber come January 2017. Women headline top 2016 Senate races  In all, Democrats could have nine female Senate nominees Republicans have two female incumbents running for   New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. Two current female Democratic senators are retiring this year  —   California’s Barbara Boxer and Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski. Boxer is likely to be replaced by a woman (Attorney Gen. Kamala Harris leads Rep. Loretta Sanchez in polls). But they’ll be down at least one after Rep. Chris Van Hollen defeated Rep. Donna Edwards in the Maryland Democratic primary last month. One marquee general election race will be won by a woman either way  —   Ayotte is being challenged by Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. And in many of the Democrats’ top Senate targets, they already have or are likely to get women as nominees: Rep. Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, former state environmental chief Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, former state Rep. Deborah Ross in North Carolina, and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona. Iowa isn’t yet a top target, but could become more competitive the national party has endorsed former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge in the Democratic primary to try to unseat GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley. How big will the 2016 gender gap be? Presidential years are typically good boosts for women seeking office anyway, given the more favorable dynamics for Democrats  —   more female voters turning out, more minorities and younger voters. Democrats have had more success at recruiting women to run overall too, given the typical demographics of their party. And Republicans haven’t yet been able to replicate pipeline programs like EMILY’s List to recruit women and have a deep bench in lower offices to draw from. ”Any good year for Democrats tends to be a good year for women,” said Jennifer Lawless, director of American University’s Women  Politics Institute. In the last presidential election, women made up over half of the electorate, and President Obama carried that bloc by 11 points. That cycle, Democrats also added to their Senate majority, and Republicans lost several winnable races after Missouri GOP nominee Todd Akin, when asked about abortion restrictions, made a comment that women rarely got pregnant by ”legitimate rape.” After that, Republicans realized they had to talk to and about women more. Campaign committees trained male candidates on how to talk to their female opponents, and Republicans made efforts to recruit more women to run. Their efforts paid off, and in 2014, two more GOP women were elected as Republicans took control of the Senate. They were also able to push back on the Democratic argument that Republicans are carrying out a ”war on women”  —   a message pushed hard by Sen. Mark Udall, who lost his 2014   bid in Colorado to Republican Cory Gardner. After 2014 success, the ”war on women”    But those efforts have been derailed by Trump. Earlier this year, the National Republican Senatorial Committee admitted in a leaked private memo to candidates and campaigns that Trump’s rhetoric was a headache. ”Houston, we have a problem: Donald Trump has said some wacky things about women,” wrote NRSC executive director Ward Baker. ”Candidates shouldn’t go near this ground other than to say that your wife or daughter is offended by what Trump said. We do not want to reengage the ’war on women’ fight so isolate Trump by offering a quick condemnation of it.” But now, with the reality that Trump will be their party’s nominee, it’s becoming harder for candidates to distance themselves from him. Not all vulnerable incumbents have said they will endorse him for president, but not one has said they won’t. Ayotte, in fact, tried to saddle the fence by saying she supports Trump as the GOP nominee but won’t endorse him. There’s no question that Trump has a woman problem  —   a Gallup poll last month showed that 70 percent of women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. And the fear that he would alienate even more women in the general election was a main argument of   groups in the primary, with one group running an ad that had women reading the insults that Trump had hurled at women in the past: ”Bimbo. Dog. Fat pig.” And a New York Times story over the weekend explored Trump’s ”unwelcome advances, a shrewd reliance on ambition, and unsettling workplace conduct over decades” toward women. Gender becoming a driving issue in 2016  De facto GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has already accused likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton of ”playing the woman’s card.” ”Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote,” he said last month. Clinton’s campaign has capitalized on that, even selling official ”Woman Cards” on her website. ”If fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in,” she has said on the campaign trail. Democrats have worked to tie those comments to   races, too. An EMILY’s List statement after Trump’s comments hit GOP male incumbents over his ”strategy to marginalize women by claiming that women voters only support women candidates because they are women.” ”There are more women now for whom that concern [of electing a woman president] is maybe salient,” she said. ”And the notion of competing against Donald Trump, who in some ways is the complete antithesis of progress for women, might make the issue more salient for voters.” Deborah Ross, a Democrat who’s challenging Republican Sen. Richard Burr in North Carolina, said the GOP nominee’s comments about women would hurt him in that swing state  —   and she plans to make them hurt her opponent. ”The comments that Mr. Trump has come out with are not going to be helpful to him with women, but I really firmly believe that Burr’s record won’t be either, because it’s in black and white,” Ross said, pointing to his votes to   Planned Parenthood and to scuttle paycheck fairness legislation. Republicans argue that Clinton has plenty of weaknesses, too, including her own high negative ratings on favorability and trustworthiness. ”There is a reason Democrat candidates aren’t lining up to campaign with Hillary Clinton. She is a toxic candidate whose failed leadership has put the security of our country at risk,” said NRSC spokeswoman Andrea Bozek. Nonetheless, Clinton still holds a narrowly positive favorability rating among women, and    matchups so far have shown she wins women in a general election by nearly 20 points. It’s no guarantee that a majority of female voters will elect a female candidate. For example, earlier this year Edwards lost to Van Hollen despite women making up the majority of the primary electorate. And Lawless, the American University professor, said that it’s yet to be determined how much Clinton could be a motivating factor on more women turning out, but that Clinton is embracing the historic nature of her candidacy in a way that she didn’t until it was too late in her 2008 primary with Obama. There’s also hope that a Senate with more women could possibly lead to more congeniality in a notoriously divided Congress. A bipartisan group of women in the Senate meet regularly for supper, and during the 2013 government shutdown, it was Republican women who worked with their Democratic colleagues to broker a deal. But to the women running this year, the historic nature of this election isn’t lost on them either  —   not just the possibility of the first female president, but a potentially historic percentage of women in the Senate as well. ”I think it will be fabulous for this country to have more perspectives,” said Ross, the Senate candidate in North Carolina. ”But remember, 25 percent still doesn’t represent the 50 percent of the population. We have to start somewhere, but I think there’s always going to be room to grow.”"
"On a recent March morning at his home in a New Jersey suburb, Anthony Mendez was on his living room couch with his    daughter. He was watching the previous night’s episode of Jane the Virgin, studying his own performance as the show’s unseen narrator. ”I’m like, ’That’s Daddy,’ and she’s on her computer, not even looking up. She says, ’I know.’ And I’m like, ’That’s Daddy  —   you’re not even impressed?’ And she’s like, ’I’m on YouTube,’ ” Mendez says. His daughter  —   one of three kids  —   runs a YouTube channel where she vlogs about makeup with her sister. This is the sort of thing Mendez says helps keep him grounded. Still, Mendez’s ability to turn an omniscient narrator into one of Jane’s funniest characters has gotten him plenty of attention. He’s been described by people as ”the best thing about the show” and ”one of the show’s most entertaining characters,” and is growing a small cult following on the Internet. His   recap the show’s dramatic,   plots: Jane, a    virgin, was accidentally artificially inseminated the father just happens to be a playboy hotel owner she once kissed the doctor who accidentally inseminated her is the father’s sister and so on and so on. But Mendez’s performance is unique from other narrator roles because of its comedic timing and punch. In an episode in which Jane goes to her high school reunion, Mendez’s voice swoops in to introduce us to Stephanie Kovakovich, a mean girl who Jane used to beef with. A string of text  —   as if the narrator is typing it  —   appears on screen: Stephanie Kovakobitch. ”Oops,” the narrator apologizes, correcting his typing. ”No, I meant it,” he says, changing it back to Kovakobitch. (  Mendez is just as playful as his character. Before I arrive at his apartment, he posts a   video to Snapchat and Instagram, in which he announces he has to clean his apartment before his NPR interview. The video pans to him nudging a plastic container under his bed.) But his journey in finding this voice  —   one that encourages him to play with an accent instead of dampen it  —   came after years of career change and trying to fit himself to a mold. A typical kid, Mendez loved comics. They fed his imagination and were a break from a more serious, less typical childhood: He sold headstones at the family business  —   and even designed a   mausoleum as he got older. Mendez’s dad, who immigrated to the states from the Dominican Republic, worked in a tombstone factory before opening his own business, and hoped Mendez would take it over with his three other brothers. But Mendez had other ideas. He studied architecture  —   the most creative major he thought he could get away with  —   for a short while at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. After that, he tried pursuing a career in producing reggae, struggling so much in the early 2000s he thought he’d be homeless. ”In your mind, you’re like, ’No, I’m gonna show them, I’m gonna show them,’ ” Mendez recalls feeling about his parents, who hadn’t wanted him to leave their business. ”But, you know, it takes eight to 10 years to show them, so at the beginning when I was struggling, they said, ’Come back to the family business,’ and I actually agreed to do it.” But Mendez said he had a nightmare that stopped him from returning. He dreamed he was trapped and anxious, working at a headstone factory forever. So he fell back on something he had all along: his voice. People always said there was a Mendez voice  —   his grandfather, his father, his brothers all had it  —   that was deep and booming. ”In high school when I would read in Spanish, especially, some of the girls would ask me to do it again . .. and that kind of took me back, like, ’Huh, there’s something there,’ ” Mendez says. He signed up for   classes and learned his     Jersey upbringing made things complicated. During one class, he’d just finished recording a track in the studio and his classmates were on the other side of the glass, observing. They thought he couldn’t hear their reaction to his  . ”You heard everyone in the room talking about, ’What accent is that?’ where they had never heard someone in   who had an urban, Latino, New York, New Jersey mixture. So they were like, ’That’s urban. That’s urban,’ ” Mendez says. This insistence on labeling him one thing  —   which he’s written about before  —   was an issue he ran into with talent managers, too. He was sent     roles and   ones, but rarely received ones meant for the general market. ”[Managers] were like, ’Oh, you’ve got an accent. You’re not gonna do it,’ ” Mendez says. His goal was to learn to talk without his accent but not lose it entirely. So in his makeshift studio, in the bedroom he shares with his wife, recording out of a small closet that’s lined with board games and books to absorb the sound, he created a workout he calls VO 90 X  —   like boot camp for your voice  —   with which he spent 30 minutes daily for 90 days, intensely working on sounds. His L’s, N’s, M’s and R’s, he says, are weaker than standard American English. He studied how people’s inflections and tongue placements change depending on what accents they’re taking on. ”Grandmother” in standard American English has different syllable emphasis  —   ” ”  —   than the word spoken with, say, English with a Dominican accent  —   ”  .” And it worked. Mendez began booking gigs with brands like CNN, Miller Lite and Target, lending his voice to ads in both Spanish and English. A few years ago, he got an email invitation to audition for a TV show  —   Jane the Virgin. ”It said telenovela announcer with a Hispanic accent. The role literally said ’Latin Lover Narrator.’ And I was like, I don’t wanna do this. This sounds like a joke. Stereotypical stuff. So I put it away,” he says. At first glance, Mendez thought it was yet another role poking fun at Latinos. Then, later that day  —   before he had to pick his kids up from school  —   he pulled up the email again, and decided to give the audition a shot. Not knowing much about the narrator  —   who he was, even  —   Mendez debated how the voice would sound. ”Initially I was going to do a standard telenovela announcer, which is what I call the Spanish Dracula, the ’Telemundo guy,’ ” Mendez says. ”I said an hour show with that guy is going to get really super annoying.” He didn’t want the narrator to sound stereotypical, but he wanted people to hear a real connection to the Spanish language. When asked about how his own father feels about his career, Mendez is equivocal. He says his parents, who returned to the Dominican Republic, don’t really watch Jane the Virgin, but they understand he’s made a mark in a difficult industry. He might have left the family headstone business, but at least he’s successful on his own terms. These days, as Jane begins its   hiatus, Mendez is busy with his other   gigs. And in a throwback to when he was a kid, he’s working on a motion comic series  —   a mix between audio book and animation  —   called Mike Tomb. It’s about a   guy named Mike Gonzalez. Gonzalez’s goal? To break from the family tombstone industry and become a poet."
"For Tim Goliver and Luther Glenn, the worst illness of their lives started in the same way  —   probably after having a stomach bug. Tim was 21 and a college student at the University of Michigan. He was majoring in English and biology and active in the Lutheran church. ”I was a literature geek,” says Tim. ”I was really looking forward to my senior year and wherever life would take me.” Luther was in his 50s. He’d spent most of his career as a U. S. military policeman and was working in security in Washington, D. C. He’d recently separated from his wife and had just moved into a new house with his two daughters, who were in their 20s. Both men recovered from their stomach bugs, but a few days later they started to feel sluggish. ”Here we are trying to unpack, prepare ourselves for new life together, and I’m   dead tired,” says Luther. He fell asleep in the car one morning and never made it out of the garage. Then he fell in the bathroom. For Tim, it started to feel like running a marathon just to lift a spoonful of soup. One morning, he tried to comb his hair and realized he couldn’t lift his arm above his shoulder. ”At that moment I started to freak out,” he says. Both men got so weak that their families had to wheel them into the emergency room in wheelchairs. They got the same diagnosis:   syndrome, a neurological disorder that can leave people paralyzed for weeks. People who come down with   typically have had some sort of illness a few days or weeks before, like the flu, says Dr. Ken Gorson, a neurologist at Tufts School of Medicine and St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston. He’s on the medical advisory board of   Foundation International, which is dedicated to   syndrome. In many cases the trigger is a bacterial infection like Campylobacter jejuni, which sometimes contaminates undercooked chicken. In   cases, people have developed   after getting certain vaccines. The patient gets well, and then, ”within days or a week, has terrible numbness or tingling and weakness,” says Gorson. The syndrome gets its name from two French military doctors, Georges Guillain and Jean Alexandre Barre. In 1916 they diagnosed two World War I soldiers with the illness. The soldiers had come to the military hospital weak and with a tingling sensation up their arms and legs. One tried to leave at 5 a. m. to rejoin his comrades, but fell down with his backpack on and couldn’t get back up. Here’s what happens. The immune system launches an attack against the pathogen that’s making someone sick. It succeeds, and the person gets better, but the immune system doesn’t realize the battle is over and attacks stuff in the body. Unfortunately, that can include the myelin coating around nerves. ”The immune system is by mistake attacking the peripheral nerves,” says Gorson. That is not good, because like the insulation around an electrical wire, if the nerve coating gets damaged, the messages traveling from the central nervous system to the rest of the body can get lost. Tim and Luther were admitted to the hospital and were told to expect a quick decline. Their blood was filtered to remove the antibodies attacking their own bodies, and they received injections of antibodies from donated blood. No matter what the cause, a diagnosis of   syndrome, or GBS, usually means you’re about to go through something really traumatic. You can expect to lose almost everything that makes you you. That could mean not being able to walk, to talk  —   even to breathe. But after weeks or months in the intensive care unit, you’ll gain it back. Probably. Gorson says about 80 percent of people who come down with   will recover almost fully. Very few die. And some people recover, but never fully regain their abilities. And no one knows, while in the midst of   how much they’ll get back. ”I was watching TV and I lost use of the right side of my face. All the muscles just sagged,” says Tim, recalling the first few days in the hospital. Within five days of entering the hospital, the muscle that used to lift Tim’s lungs for each breath went lax, so the staff put a breathing tube down his throat, taping it to his mouth. Then he had to go on a ventilator, through a tube that went straight to his windpipe through a hole in his neck. ”You feel like your body is a bellows, and you feel like you’re being pumped and fanned again, again, again,” says Tim. Because Tim’s nerves were under attack, every little touch was excruciating  —   even a soft towel felt like steel wool digging into his skin. And he’d lost control over his mouth and throat muscles, so he couldn’t talk anymore. He could blink and nod to some extent, but that was about it. ”I was just completely unable to move and I just would watch the same episode of Sports Center again and again on replay and feel like I was in a loop and things were totally out of control,” says Tim. When friends and family came over, they’d communicate to him with a poster full of letters, slowly dragging their fingers across each letter until Tim nodded or blinked to indicate he wanted to use it to spell something out. It could take 10 minutes to spell out one word. For weeks, he lay paralyzed and silent, fed through a tube. When he did start breathing on his own again, Tim says, each breath was so   it felt like he was about to fall off the edge of a cliff. ”But bit by bit, it got to the point where I was able to do that and it felt like I was in control,” he says. Tim spent two months in the intensive care unit and two months in rehab, and then went home in an electric wheelchair. Luther lost mobility, too, and spent weeks in intensive care. But he was able to breathe and talk the whole time. ”I remember my sister saying, ’GBS took everything else away but didn’t take his mouth away,’ ” says Luther, laughing. During his years in the military, Luther had routinely aced the physical fitness tests. He trained about 2, 000 recruits and sent them off on their military careers. There’s an old saying, ”the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war,” he says. ”The military gave me the idea that I could do just about anything, so when I was in the hospital, I looked at this illness as just another mission that I had to accomplish,” says Luther. He loved being in shape because it was the one thing he knew he could control, but   syndrome made him so weak that he couldn’t even blink. When he fell asleep, his eyes would just roll back in his head. The nurses had to put gel on his eyes so they wouldn’t dry out at night. After six weeks in the hospital, he saw himself in a mirror for the first time. ”And when I looked up, I was shocked. I was floored that that was me  —   this thin, gaunt guy. That was probably more shocking to me than anything,” he says. He’d lost about 30 pounds. For his birthday, the nurses pureed a cake for him, because his face and throat muscles were too weak to chew and swallow solid food. ”It was horrible, but I loved them for it,” he says. For a while, things did not look good  —   he wasn’t making any progress toward moving again. But when a doctor told Luther that most people fully recover, that gave him hope. ”It’s on. I got this, Doc,” he said. ”GBS done messed with the wrong person.” Every night he’d give himself a pep talk, repeating a line from a song. ” ’Nobody told me the road would be easy, but I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave me.’ Just say that every night. Every night,” he says. One day, Luther moved his hand ever so slightly. Then a muscle twitched in his leg. A few days later, he blinked. After months in the hospital, he was transferred to rehab, where he learned how to move around in a wheelchair. Finally he was able to return to the house that had been full of boxes when he left about six months before. He had to live in the basement because he couldn’t get up the stairs. His progress at home was excruciatingly slow. ”Days start running into weeks, weeks start running into months,” he says. Luther was not one of the lucky 80 percent. He’s in the 20 percent of GBS patients who don’t recover fully. For the most part, he’s independent. He lives in his own apartment at National Harbor near Washington, D. C. An aide stops by three times a week to help out with cleaning and cooking. He goes out to movies and dinner with his family in an electric wheelchair. He loves to read on a dock at the harbor. He’s even learning Spanish. But he still can’t take more than a few steps with a walker, and just moving his face enough to talk can feel like a muscular feat. ”One of the things I hate the most is that I lost my ability to smile. It’s difficult for me to do. It looks almost like a grimace,” he says. It’s been six years since he first got sick. ”It doesn’t dishearten me, but I realize this just might be my plight, so I take a smile with me and let’s go. Make the best of it,” he says. Tim, on the other hand, recovered almost fully. He quickly regained his ability to talk and work. He went back to school and got his degree. He even proposed to his wife at the top of a mountain. ”At the point where I started to walk up mountains again without pain, I felt that I had conquered the actual experience. I look at it now and I don’t see anything that it’s keeping me from doing,” says Tim. He has leather braces to stabilize his ankles, some tingling in his feet, and a very small scar on his throat from the ventilator, a mark from when he hit rock bottom. That’s about it. Why did Tim recover so much more function than Luther did? And why did the two of them get   syndrome when so many other people who were exposed to the same bugs didn’t? ”Unknown,” says neurologist Gorson. ”There’s clearly an interaction between the infectious agent, the immune response, and then something that’s special or unique about the patient’s peripheral nerve system,” he says. Sometimes it has to do with age, medical care, how much nerve damage happened, or even the kind of bacteria or virus that caused the illness in the first place. Predicting how much a patient will recover is one of the things Gorson and other neurologists are trying to figure out. They’re collecting blood from over 1, 000 people around the world, hoping to find out what triggers some people’s immune systems to react in such an extreme way. It might lead to better treatments, or maybe even something they can do to stop the progression of the disease before it gets so bad. If the Zika virus does begin spreading through the U. S. as predicted, there may be more cases of   syndrome. The condition will still remain rare, but even a slight increase in cases could be horrible  —   not just for the people who get it, but also due to the strain it puts on hospital intensive care units and insurers. ”I cost over a million dollars, and that is something I have never forgotten,” says Tim. Tim and Luther did not get   from Zika. But the result is the same. And if their cases show anything, it’s that no matter what the cause, the disease is one wild ride."
"Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton appear to have split victories in the Oregon and Kentucky primaries Tuesday night. With all counties reporting in Kentucky, Clinton was leading Sanders by a narrow margin of 1, 924 votes out of more than 450, 000 cast. Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes told CNN that Clinton was the ”unofficial winner,” but the Associated Press said the race was too close to call. Sanders had a more comfortable victory in Oregon, where he was leading Clinton by more than 7 points. De facto GOP nominee Donald Trump, the only remaining candidate, easily won the state’s Republican primary. Ultimately, Tuesday’s dueling victories did little to change the trajectory of the Democratic race. The two will end up splitting delegates in Kentucky, and Sanders will gain a handful more than Clinton in Oregon. But her delegate lead will still remain almost 280 pledged delegates  —   virtually impossible for Sanders to make up in the remaining six state contests. Speaking at a rally in California late Tuesday, Sanders was defiant that he would remain in the race despite the ”steep hill” he faced. He said he was confident he would win the state’s primary on June 7 and promised to ”fight for every vote” until the District of Columbia’s Democratic primary on June 14, and ”take our fight to the convention” in July in Philadelphia. Clinton’s apparent Kentucky win was her first primary victory since April the Vermont senator recently notched wins in Indiana and West Virginia, but by margins that did little to close the gap with Clinton. Still, her repeated losses spurred talk that Clinton would have difficulty uniting Democrats in the fall, and also exposed her weaknesses with younger voters and white,   men. And it stalled her efforts to fully turn her attention to a likely general election matchup with Trump. That Bluegrass State victory is one Clinton fought hard for, campaigning heavily in the state. According to NBC News, it was the first state since March 15 where she outspent Sanders on the airwaves. Both the Kentucky and Oregon contests were closed primaries  —   meaning only registered Democrats  —   and not independents or crossover Republicans  —   could vote. Throughout the primaries, Clinton consistently has done better in such closed contests. Sanders did well in Kentucky’s more rural areas  —   coal   regions similar to those he captured last week in the West Virginia primary. Those are areas Clinton did well in versus Barack Obama in 2008, but since then she has come under fire for comments suggesting she would begin to phase out the industry in favor of cleaner energy sources. She also has become aligned with President Obama’s unpopular environmental policies in the region. But Clinton did well enough in metro areas of the state like Lexington and Louisville to take the lead over Sanders. In Oregon, where votes were almost entirely cast by   ballot, Sanders carried the state’s progressive electorate and won by big margins in areas with college towns. Kentucky’s 55 pledged delegates will be split proportionally, and such a close finish means Clinton and Sanders each will get roughly the same number  —   again, not really enough to change Clinton’s advantage over Sanders. He still needs to win about 66 percent of all remaining pledged delegates to hold a majority of them when superdelegates are included, that proportion climbs to around 84 percent. Sanders has remained in the race despite nearly insurmountable odds of reaching the 2, 383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. Tensions escalated between the campaigns and the national party on Tuesday as the Sanders campaign doubled down on charges it had been unfairly treated at this past weekend’s Nevada Democratic convention. There were tense confrontations between Sanders delegates and Nevada party officials, and the state party chairwoman has said she since has received threats from Sanders supporters."
"After an unruly and chaotic Nevada Democratic convention over the weekend, Bernie Sanders is doubling down on accusations that the state party treated him unfairly, and he denies that his supporters were inciting violence. ”Within the last few days there have been a number of criticisms made against my campaign organization. Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim that the Sanders campaign has a ’penchant for violence.’ That is nonsense,” the Democratic presidential hopeful said in a statement Tuesday. ”Our campaign has held giant rallies all across this country, including in   areas, and there have been zero reports of violence. Our campaign of course believes in   change and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals.” Sanders also argued that his campaign had been victim to violence in the state before, pointing to a possible shooting that occurred at one of his campaign offices. The Sanders campaign says that in Nevada on Saturday, ”the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place.” It is alleging that the chair of the convention incorrectly ruled on a voice vote, unfairly deeming 64 of its delegates ineligible, ignored floor motions from his supporters and wouldn’t accept any petitions to change the rules. ”If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned,” the Sanders statement continued. Rival Hillary Clinton won the state’s caucuses back in February by five points, and the 23 delegates were split proportionally between the two, 13 to 10. The remaining 12 were set to be awarded last Saturday at the state convention. The Sanders campaign had worked to make sure many of its loyalists were at that gathering, where they hoped to win a majority of the delegates and narrow Clinton’s lead to 18 to 17 delegates out of Nevada. But chaos followed after Sanders supporters allege they were denied being seated at the convention and that the state party chairwoman, Roberta Lange, was slanting the rules in favor of Clinton. In the end, Clinton ended up with 20 delegates out of the state to Sanders’ 15. Sanders supporters, believing they had been treated unfairly, rushed the stage, threw chairs and were shouting obscenities, according to veteran Nevada journalist Jon Ralston. Even after the convention concluded, many refused to leave and had to be escorted out by security. Since then, Lange, the Nevada Democratic chairwoman, said she’s been receiving threats from Sanders supporters. ”It’s been vile,” she told the New York Times. ”It’s been threatening messages, threatening my family, threatening my life, threatening my grandchild.” The dent Sanders supporters hoped to make in Clinton’s nearly insurmountable delegate lead would have been minor  —   she leads Sanders by 283 pledged delegates, and that grows when superdelegates are factored in. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid,  . had said earlier in the day that he was confident Sanders would condemn the violence. ”This is a test of leadership, as we all know, and I’m hopeful and very confident Sen. Sanders will do the right thing,” Reid said. Earlier on Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee said it would ”be reaching out to the leadership of both of our campaigns to ask them to stand with the Democratic Party in denouncing and taking steps to prevent the type of behavior on display over the weekend in Las Vegas.” ”There is no excuse for what happened in Nevada, and it is incumbent upon all of us in positions of leadership to speak out,” DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said."
"Millions more American workers will soon be eligible for overtime pay under a rule being finalized Wednesday by the Labor Department. The rule says anyone who makes less than $47, 476 per year must receive     pay for hours worked beyond 40 hours a week. That’s roughly double the current threshold of $23, 660. The measure is one of the most sweeping moves the Obama administration has made so far in its efforts to boost   incomes. But it’s sure to face opposition from some business owners. According to the Labor Department, the higher income threshold will make 4. 2 million salaried workers newly eligible for overtime pay. The rule could also benefit millions of others who are already technically eligible but not receiving overtime. ”Our whole mission here is about strengthening and growing the middle class,” Labor Secretary Tom Perez told NPR. ”In order to do that, we need to ensure that middle class jobs pay middle class wages.” The rule change is authorized under New   legislation called the Fair Labor Standards Act. As recently as 1975, more than 60 percent of salaried workers were eligible for overtime. Inflation and regulatory changes under the George W. Bush Administration eroded that protection, and today, only about 7 percent of salaried workers receive time and a half when they work extra hours. Managers at many retail stores and fast food restaurants making as little as $24, 000 have not been eligible for overtime, even when they work 60 or 70 hours a week. ”The angst that people feel across this country is so frequently the product of the fact that they’re working hard and falling further behind,” Perez said. ”They feel like they lost leverage. And the reason they feel that is because in the case of the Fair Labor Standards Act, they indeed lost a lot of leverage.” The new rule has been more than two years in the making. The Labor Department initially proposed an even higher income threshold of more than $50, 000 but scaled that back in response to complaints that it didn’t reflect pay scales in   parts of the country. The new threshold will cover about 35 percent of salaried workers, Perez says. Some employers have welcomed the change, and Vice President Joe Biden will meet with one of those on Wednesday. But others complain that the Labor Department is moving too quickly. ”What our members have told us, what many other employers have told us, is there’s not a golden pot of money out there sitting in employers’ pockets where they can all of a sudden pay a lot more overtime pay,” said David French, vice president of the National Retail Federation. ”Instead, they’re going to make the rational change and they’re going to change jobs.” Critics are urging Congress to block the new rule, but any such push would face a certain veto by President Obama. Secretary Perez says employers have a variety of ways they can comply with the new rule when it takes effect Dec. 1. ”People are going to get at least one of three benefits,” Perez said. ”They’re either going to get more money . .. more time with their family, or everybody is going to get clarity.”"
"Nine months. That’s how long Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and presidential candidate Donald Trump have been feuding. Ever since Kelly asked Trump, during the first televised Republican presidential debate of this campaign season, about offensive statements he’s made toward women. Tuesday night, when Fox broadcast Kelly’s interview with Trump, there seemed to be a truce, but no new information. Trump didn’t actually apologize for anything he’s done or said, and Kelly didn’t push him too hard on anything. You could view it as a bit of a letdown after all the drama between the two. And there was drama. For nine months, there were tweets and   and secret meetings. Then a truce. And finally, Tuesday night, the   televised   between Trump and Kelly. Like the end of a long, dysfunctional, political   pregnancy, after nine months, the thinking was that something  —   who knew what  —   would be delivered. The questions, to start, weren’t  . ”When did you realize you could be president?” Kelly asked Trump. His answer: ”I felt the debates were a big thing.” Trump pointed out that 24 million people watched that first GOP debate, setting a record for a   cable broadcast. ”I felt comfortable with the subject,” he told Kelly, and ”the people I was competing with.” Next, Kelly asked if Trump could go four years without suing anybody. Trump didn’t give a real answer he said filing suit is one of his ”tactics,” that he’s been successful at it, but, he added, ”Sometimes I use it maybe when I shouldn’t.” When asked about any mistakes he’s made, he wouldn’t name any, not even his   from a supporter that seemed to mock the looks of Heidi Cruz, wife of former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz. ”The thing that gets me in trouble are ” he said. (Trump also revealed his tweet style: During the day, he’ll dictate tweets, exclamation points and all, but at night he himself tweets.) There were more questions, in an almost rapid, highly edited succession, about when he’s been emotionally hurt in his life. (Trump spoke at length about his   brother, who was an alcoholic. Trump said he does not drink.) Kelly asked Trump if he’d ever been bullied. He said no, and his advice to young people who had been bullied was to get over it and fight back. When Kelly suggested that Trump himself can be a bully at times, he said he only counterpunches. ”In just about all cases, I’ve been responding to what they’ve done to me.” And then Kelly turned the conversation to the feud. ”Let’s talk about us,” she said, bringing up that question she asked Trump during the first GOP debate regarding his comments  —   widely regarded as offensive  —   about women. Kelly asked, ”I thought it was a fair question. Why didn’t you?” Trump said he thought it was unfair, and that it was a statement, not a question. And then the two went back and forth with   and  . Should journalists have to be nice? Who’s to blame? Was Trump really angry? Or was it strategy? Did he really boycott Fox News? Did Trump have any regrets about his behavior? Trump said he did, but he wouldn’t name them specifically. ”I could have done certain things differently,” he told Kelly. But he also said that he wouldn’t have succeeded as a presidential candidate if he hadn’t conducted himself the way he has this entire campaign. When Kelly pushed him on having used the word ”bimbo” to describe women (including herself) in the past, he joked, ”Did I say that?” And then he told Kelly, ”[It’s] not the most horrible thing. Over your life, you’ve been called much worse.” This dance, back and forth between the two, was a special kind of awkward  —   Trump and Kelly both trying to smile, while not giving anything away, each seeming to need the other for a bit of a transformation. Trump needs to soften his image, particularly with female voters. And Kelly wants to become something bigger than she already is: an Oprah Winfrey or Barbara Walters for this decade. But the best parts of the best Winfrey or Walters interviews are the long, pregnant pauses, full of facial expressions and silences that say what words can’t. The   tears, the hesitation. Walking the line between exploitation and intimacy, interrogation and affirmation. Those are the kinds of interviews that make an Oprah, or even a president. Tuesday’s Megyn Kelly special was not that. After their conversation, Kelly interviewed transgender actress and activist Laverne Cox, actor Michael Douglas and superstar attorney Robert Shapiro. No real new ground was covered in those interviews, either. But at the end of the hourlong special, the true point of the exercise became clear. Kelly plugged her new book, telling viewers it’d soon be on sale wherever books are sold. If this special couldn’t take Kelly or Trump to the next level, at least it could make one of them some profit."
"The Senate confirmed the nomination of Eric Fanning to the position of Army secretary, making him the first openly gay leader of a U. S. military service. The confirmation comes eight months after President Obama nominated Fanning to the position. ”The voice vote approval Tuesday came after Sen. Pat Roberts,  . dropped his opposition to Fanning after a senior Pentagon official told him that no detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be sent to the Army prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, or other facilities in the United States,” The Associated Press reports. As the   previously reported, ”Fanning has held numerous military posts in the Obama administration including special assistant to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, acting secretary of the Air Force, and deputy undersecretary of the Navy.” ”Eric brings many years of proven experience and exceptional leadership to this new role,” Obama said in a statement when he nominated Fanning. ”I am grateful for his commitment to our men and women in uniform, and I am confident he will help lead America’s Soldiers with distinction. I look forward to working with Eric to keep our Army the very best in the world.” The   also reported on Fanning’s experience with the Pentagon as an openly gay man: ”In a Defense Department statement in July, Fanning said he came out as gay in 1993 and talked about how attitudes at the DOD have changed in recent decades. ” ’There is a much larger community out there that is looking for opportunities to show its support of us  —   that’s certainly been my experience as I’ve come out in my professional network, and it’s picking up steam,’ Fanning said. ’It’s gone from tolerance to acceptance to embrace.’ ”The nomination is the latest in a series of policy changes and appointments the Obama administration has made that advance the rights of LGBT people in the government. In addition to extending federal benefits to   couples and repealing ”don’t ask, don’t tell,” which allowed gays to serve openly in the military, last month, Obama announced the hiring of the first openly transgender White House staffer.”"
"Scientists and doctors say the case is clear: The best way to tackle the country’s opioid epidemic is to get more people on medications that have been proven in studies to reduce relapses and, ultimately, overdoses. Yet, only a fraction of the more than 4 million people believed to abuse prescription painkillers or heroin in the U. S. are being given what’s called   treatment. One reason is the limited availability of the treatment. But it’s also the case that stigma around the addiction drugs has inhibited their use. Methadone and buprenorphine, two of the drugs used for treatment, are themselves opioids. A phrase you often hear about   treatment is that it’s merely replacing one drug with another. While doctors and scientists strongly disagree with that characterization, it’s a view that’s widespread in recovery circles. Now, the White House is pushing to change the landscape for people seeking help. In his 2017 budget, President Obama has asked Congress for $1. 1 billion in new funding to address the opioid epidemic, with almost all of it geared toward expanding access to   treatment. The White House is also highlighting success stories. At the National Prescription Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit held in Atlanta in March, Obama appeared on stage with Crystal Oertle, a    mother of two from Ohio. Oertle spoke of her spiral into addiction, which began with prescription painkillers and progressed to heroin. She tried unsuccessfully to quit on her own several times, before being prescribed buprenorphine a year ago. ”I personally couldn’t get through the withdrawal symptoms,” Oertle said in Atlanta. ”I couldn’t tough it out. I know some people can. I couldn’t do it. This last time has been the most successful recovery for me.” Her experience isn’t unique. ”I’ve seen people with   disorders go through inpatient treatment without medications time and time and time again, without ever being offered alternatives,” says Michael Botticelli, director of National Drug Control Policy at the White House. ”We wouldn’t do that with any other disease. If one treatment failed for you, we’d say, let’s look at other possible treatment options.” Botticelli says patients should consider the evidence for   treatment and together with their doctors make a decision about what’s best for them. Methadone and buprenorphine have been tested in scores of clinical trials. Researchers have found that when combined with counseling, they significantly reduce opioid use and keep people in treatment longer. ”We have tons of experience with patients who remain in treatment for months and years, who do very well on   medicines,” says Dr. Marc Fishman, medical director at Maryland Treatment Centers in Baltimore. He says among his patients, primarily young people, about half remain with the program six months into treatment. Studies have shown far worse outcomes for patients who detox without   medications, with relapse rates topping 90 percent. Still, there are many people who stand by the   abstinence route  ” recovery without the use of medications. Their views are informed by personal experiences and deeply held beliefs about what constitutes true recovery. For years, Juan Ramirez, 56, led a   lifestyle to support his use of prescription painkillers. ”When you start robbing drug stores and drug dealers because of your drug habit, your life is not working right,” he says. A friend told Ramirez about a doctor in Baltimore who prescribed Suboxone, a brand of buprenorphine. He liked the way Suboxone made him feel, so he would often exceed the dosage, buying pills from other patients so he wouldn’t run out. He stopped using other narcotics and, overall, he felt more functional. Still, after three years of seeing the doctor, he never felt like he’d achieved full recovery. ”I was still an addict,” he says. ”It was just legal.” That line of thinking extends to some people whose mission is to help people in recovery, including David Lidz, a recovering alcoholic, who runs a group home in Hagerstown, Md. The home has 10 beds for men who are transitioning out of intensive drug treatment back into daily life. In addition to beds, Lidz offers the men work with his contracting business, refurbishing houses. The emphasis is on hard work, personal responsibility and purpose. It’s what worked for Lidz in his recovery, but even he knows it doesn’t work for everyone. When he started his work as a recovery advocate, Lidz knew little about   treatment and had yet to form an opinion about it. Soon, he started getting reports from the group home that someone’s Suboxone had been stolen, or someone looked high, or that people were trading, selling and snorting Suboxone. ”That to me just looks like heroin,” Lidz says. So he made a decision: He wouldn’t accept anyone on it. Today, that stance is threatening the group home and his business. ”Now we’ve been told by clinical settings that we’re essentially blacklisted, that they can’t even mention our program if we won’t take people on opiates, on Suboxone,” Lidz says. He worries it could lead to missed opportunities for people like Charles Testerman, who came to Lidz’s group home after several months in drug treatment. Testerman describes his years of drug use as ”doing everything to excess.” He drank, smoked marijuana, and got hooked on prescription painkillers and later heroin. When he couldn’t afford heroin, he bought Suboxone on the street, hoping it would help him stop using other drugs. It didn’t work. ”I was doing Suboxone in the mornings, as well as Adderall to bring myself up. Then at night, I was taking Xanax, smoking weed and drinking, just to go to sleep every night,” Testerman says. ”It was just a constant cycle.” Today, he has an apprenticeship with a master woodworker at a place called The Stoner Farm, Anglicized from Steiner, the name of the family who built the place. Testerman is working to restore an early 19th century barn there. ”I feel great, happy to be out here doing this,” he says. ”It’s just nice to wake up in the morning and not have to do anything to feel normal.” Fishman, the addiction doctor in Baltimore, knows there are people like Testerman who find the strength to have what he calls a   conversion without medications. But, he cautions, not everyone can do it, and it’s not scalable. He wants to convince the doubters that   treatment is the best tool available at the moment, and, in making his case, he’s willing to acknowledge its limitations. ”This doesn’t change my claim that it should be the standard of care,” he says. ”But we don’t have the penicillin for addiction. These are not curative medications. In having a nuanced, thoughtful discourse with people who might disagree with us, acknowledging those limitations I think would make us more credible.”"
"Walk around a    Railriders game talking to Donald Trump supporters, and you’ll hear a whole bunch of different reasons people in Northeastern Pennsylvania are supporting him. Some Trump backers say they’re worried about ISIS. Others say the economy is their top concern. But every person eventually returns to the same central quality he is most passionate about in the likely Republican nominee: the fact that he’s not a typical politician. ”What a breath of fresh air,” said Mike Zuby, who wore a ”Pennsylvania For Trump”   to a recent game between the   Railriders and Pawtucket Red Sox. ”To be able to wake up and at least know that someone’s out there  —   the average and   guy. He’s not just a billionaire he’s speaking with total unpolitical correctness. He’s speaking exactly what we want to be saying to this big monster called Washington.” Republican Rep. Lou Barletta believes that outsider quality is what propelled Trump to a dominating win in Northeastern Pennsylvania last month. He represents the Scranton region in the House and was one of the first congressmen to endorse Trump. In Luzerne County, home of   Trump won more than 77 percent of the vote. ”People feel that Washington will never control him. And that’s what they want,” Barletta said. The Trump campaign believes the road to the White House runs through places like Scranton. It’s banking on reshaping the electoral map and carrying traditionally Democratic industrial states like Pennsylvania by riding a wave of   votes. Can Trump Change Pennsylvanians’ Party Loyalty? Barletta thinks Trump can be the first Republican to win Pennsylvania since 1988, pointing to the fact that more than 60, 000 Democrats switched their party registration to the GOP before this year’s state primary. ”That’s for Donald Trump,” he said. ”They weren’t doing that to vote for Ted Cruz or John Kasich.” But winning Pennsylvania in November will be a very steep climb for Trump. The state has about 1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans. And while many of them stay home in other years, Pennsylvania Democrats typically show up en masse when there’s a presidential race on the ballot. ”At the end of the day, I just don’t think there’s enough angry old white people in Pennsylvania to make up for the fact of what Trump is doing on the other side to motivate the Democratic base,” said Christopher Nicholas, a longtime Pennsylvania Republican strategist who ran several campaigns for former Sen. Arlen Specter. ”I hope I’m wrong.” ”In a statewide election in Pennsylvania, you have to worry about how many votes you come out of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh down,” he said. ”Because at a certain point there’s not enough votes in the rest of the state, in the other 65 counties, to make up for that. The math just doesn’t work anymore.” President Obama carried Philadelphia by about 492, 000 votes in 2012, and ended up winning the state by about 309, 000. In 2004, John Kerry topped President George W. Bush by 412, 000 votes in Philadelphia. The wide margin offset Bush votes elsewhere, and Kerry ended up winning the state by about 144, 000. Play For   Democrats  Former Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat with close ties to Hillary Clinton, is confident that fears about a Donald Trump presidency will turn out urban Democrats. ”You know, there’s an old saying in politics that hate is a more powerful emotion than love,” he said, ”or fear is a more powerful emotion than love. I think Donald Trump will produce the turnout.” Still, Rendell isn’t dismissing Trump’s play for   Democrats in Western and Central Pennsylvania. ”There’s no question that they’re part of the angry slice of America,” he said. ”Many of them have lost their jobs because of manufacturing problems. Not just   but technology, related, etc. So I think he will be successful in taking some of those into his column.” But Rendell thinks that Trump’s    antics will also turn off moderate Republican voters  —   particularly Republican women  —   in the populous suburban counties surrounding Philadelphia. ”I think he will wind up, my guess is, losing more of those type of Republicans than he gains in   Democrats,” Rendell said. Indeed, Pennsylvania’s most   moderate Republican, former Gov. Tom Ridge, announced Tuesday that he won’t vote for Trump in November. If Trump is banking on winning Pennsylvania with a coalition of disaffected Democrats and Republicans who haven’t been motivated to vote in previous elections, he’ll need to track them down. But Trump recently dismissed the   voter outreach efforts that have become a key part of modern presidential campaigns as ”overrated.” ”That’s part of what makes me skeptical about Trump. He hasn’t seemed particularly interested in building a big ground game,” said Sarah Niebler, a political scientist at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. ”And I think that’s what it would take in these rural counties. It’s a lot of ground to cover  —   just physical voters  —   to find those voters, to register those voters, and to mobilize them to turn out in November.” Niebler thinks Trump would need to pull the political equivalent of a royal flush to win the Keystone State. ”He would need to find new Republican voters that aren’t currently registered, attract Democratic voters to vote for him, he’d have to win pretty much all the independents, or he’d have to win Republicans by a much wider margin than Clinton wins Democrats,” she said. But picking up Pennsylvania is Trump’s most feasible route to the White House. ”This path is dependent on Trump being able to use his populist, protectionist and   rhetoric to fire up white,   voters affected by outsourcing in the Rust Belt and Upper Midwest,” NPR Political Editor Domenico Montanaro put it in NPR’s initial electoral college analysis last week. In other words, expect Trump to make a lot of visits to places like Scranton, Johnstown, Altoona and   over the next six months."
"At White House state dinners, it’s customary for a president to nod to the strengths and contributions of guest countries. And when hosting Nordic nations on Friday, President Obama paid tribute to a particular Finnish export. ”I do want to point out, that Finland has perhaps the most heavy metal bands in the world, per capita,” he said, ”and also ranks high on good governance. I don’t know if there’s any correlation there.” Albert Mudrian is the    of the heavy   Decibel Magazine. He says that many metalheads took note of President Obama’s comment. ”The metal underground got pretty excited about the President of the United States referencing the Finnish metal scene,” he says. He says Finland has one of the most vibrant metal scenes in the world. It’s estimated the country has 54 metal bands for every 100, 000 Finns. But why Finland? ”I’m sure the 200 days of a   winter have something to do with it,” he says. ”And perpetual darkness.” He might be on to something. Finland does share that climate with its neighboring Scandinavian countries, and metal is a flourishing genre all over the region. But while Sweden is known for its death metal bands, and Norway is famous for black metal, Mudrian says the Finns are less homogeneous. ”There’s so many different types of bands, but the one thing, to me, that kind of unites them is that they all have kind of a difficult sound,” he says. ”Finland is making the weirdest heavy metal imaginable.” Whether there’s a connection between bizarre heavy metal and good governance, however, is still anybody’s guess."
"The National Academy of Sciences  —   probably the country’s most prestigious scientific group  —   has reaffirmed its judgment that GMOs are safe to eat. But the group’s new report struck a different tone from previous ones, with much more space devoted to concerns about genetically modified foods, including social and economic ones. The report marks an anniversary. Twenty years ago, farmers started growing soybeans that had been genetically modified to tolerate the popular weedkiller known as Roundup and corn that contains a protein, extracted from bacteria, that kills some insect pests. In the years since, arguments about these crops have grown so contentious that the National Academy can’t be sure that people will believe whatever it has to say on the topic. Even before this report came out, an   group called Food  Water Watch attacked it. The group accused some members of the committee that prepared the report of receiving research funding from biotech companies, or having other ties to the industry. ”The makeup of the panel is pretty clear. People are coming in with a perspective that is   engineered crop,” says Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food  Water Watch. The preemptive attack frustrates Fred Gould, the North Carolina State University scientist who chaired the committee. Gould has been known in the past as a GMO critic. He has pushed for restrictions on the planting of some GMO crops. ”I have not been a darling of the industry. As a matter of fact, they denied me seeds and plants to do my experiments,” he says. Gould says that over the two years that he and the other members of this committee worked on this report, they had one important rule: ”If you had an opinion, you had to back it up with data. If you didn’t have the data, it didn’t go into the report.” The report tries to answer a long list of questions about GMOs, involving nutrition, environmental effects, effects on the farm economy and monopoly control over seeds. The most basic conclusion: There’s no evidence that GMOs are risky to eat. The committee also found that GMOs, as promised, have allowed farmers of some crops to spray less insecticide to protect their crops  —   although there’s a risk that the GMO crops may not work as well in the future, because insects could develop resistance to them. Also, there’s no evidence that GMOs have reduced the amount of wild plant and insect life on farms. And the report found that some claims about the benefits of GMOs have been exaggerated. For instance, the productivity of crops has been increasing for a century, and that didn’t change when GMOs came along. ”The expectation from some of the [GMO] proponents was that we need genetic engineering to feed the world, and we’re going to use genetic engineering to make that increase in yield go up faster. We saw no evidence of that,” Gould says. The report urges federal agencies to change the way they regulate GMOs. Up to now, companies have introduced just a small number of different kinds of genetically modified crops. That could change very soon, because there’s new technology, called gene editing, that isn’t exactly genetic engineering, but it’s not traditional plant breeding, either. The report urges regulators to look at all new crops, no matter how they’re created, if they ”have novelty and the possibility of some kind of risk associated with them,” Gould says. Many scientists who got their first look at the report Tuesday praised it. Some called it the most comprehensive review of GMOs that anyone, so far, has carried out. But longtime critics of GMOs were less impressed. Patty Lovera, from Food  Water Watch, the group that attacked the National Academy’s committee for being too closely linked to industry, took a quick look at the report and didn’t see much that seemed new. ”It’s not the final word” on GMOs, she says. The National Academy of Sciences is trying to make this report more easily accessible to the public. It has set up a website where people can read the report and also look up the sections that address specific comments that were submitted by the public."
"They are often called the ”missing 28 pages,” and while they are not exactly missing, they are back in the news again. They are, more precisely, the final 28 pages of a massive 2002 congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks that runs more than 850 pages. Those last few pages have never fully been made public and they deal with the highly sensitive question of foreign financing of the suicide hijackers who carried out those attacks. President George W. Bush ordered that those pages be viewed by official eyes only, and they’ve remained classified ever since. Some who have read them say the time has come to reveal their contents. Leading those calls for declassification is a former senator, Bob Graham. When he was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Florida Democrat was deeply involved in the Congressional Joint Inquiry into the   to the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. ”While I can’t discuss the details of that chapter,” Graham said of the redacted 28 pages in an April interview with NPR, ”they point a strong finger at Saudi Arabia.” Some of Graham’s former colleagues on the intelligence committee are now seconding his call. ”The American people deserve to see this information,” said Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who is   a bill that would mandate declassification of the pages. ”Then there’ll be a debate about what the pages mean,” Wyden added. ”I’ve read them the American people deserve to know what’s in them.” Different Interpretations, The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel agrees those pages should be made public. ”I think it would clear the air,” said Dianne Feinstein of California. But unlike Graham and Wyden, Feinstein doubts that declassification would have big repercussions. ”I’ve read the 28 pages now over the years three times  —   I just read them again last week,” she told NPR. ”It’s my belief that investigative bodies have found essentially no evidence that the 28 pages relate to any specific government’s culpability.” A 2004 report by the   Commission concluded, in a carefully worded line, that it found no evidence that ”the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials” had supported the Sept. 11 hijackers. But investigators did find that Saudis in the U. S. met with, helped and gave money to the attackers as they plotted and prepared for the attacks. One question raised by the classified section of the report is what connection those men may have had with Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency or other parts of its government. John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy who was one of that bipartisan panel’s Republican members, recently told The Guardian the report should not be read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia. Lehman also joined the calls for declassifying the congressional report’s censored 28 pages. No Final Word From The Administration, Obama administration officials have not said whether the pages will be made public. But the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia last month reawakened the issue, and a decision may come soon. Earlier this month, the White House let it be known a lengthy evaluation of whether to declassify was nearing completion. ”The good news is that our intelligence officials have indicated that they expect to complete that process by the end of June,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, ”and we’ll look forward to their decision at that point.” At least one of the Obama administration’s top intelligence officials is opposed to releasing the pages. ”I think some people may seize upon that uncorroborated, unvetted information that was in there that was basically just a collation of this information that came out of FBI files,” CIA Director John Brennan said earlier this month on NBC’s Meet the Press, and ”point to Saudi involvement, which I think would be very very, inaccurate.” Saudi Arabia, for its part, protested 13 years ago against being ”indicted by insinuation” and formally requested that the 28 pages be made public. That appeal was rejected by President George W. Bush. Meanwhile, two leading senators, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer and Texas Republican John Cornyn, are sponsoring a bill to strip away protections in the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act so that any nation, not just those deemed ”state sponsors of terrorism,” can be prosecuted for terrorist attacks on American soil. Opening The Door To Lawsuits, The bill opens the possibility that if a court found evidence that Saudi government officials helped sponsor the Sept. 11 attacks, the kingdom could be liable for damages. ”It creates a very narrow provision which may or may not apply to Saudi Arabia,” said Cornyn of what he has called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA. ”My attitude is, let the chips fall where they may.” On Tuesday, the full Senate approved the JASTA bill by unanimous consent. ”The United States needs to use every tool available to stop the financing of terrorism,” Cornyn declared after the bill’s approval. ”I’m glad we are one step closer to empowering victims with the ability to hold those who helped perpetrate these horrific acts responsible.” How quickly the House will act on JASTA, or whether it will even consider the legislation, remains unclear. When asked about the bill last month, House Speaker Paul Ryan sounded a note of caution. ”I think we need to review it to make sure we’re not making mistakes with our allies,” he told reporters, ”and that we’re not catching people up in this that shouldn’t be caught up in this.” Saudi officials are adamantly against the bill. Foreign Minister Adel   recently warned that to guard against potential lawsuits under JASTA, the Saudi government may feel compelled to liquidate American holdings worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The bill is also opposed by the Obama administration. ”We’d be very troubled by it,” Secretary of State John Kerry warned Congress earlier this year, ”because what it would do is really expose the United States of America to lawsuit and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent in its current form.” Many Senate Democrats disagree. ”The families deserve no less than accountability from Saudi Arabia,” says Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal. ”The United States has nothing to fear and the administration has been excessively defensive on this issue.”"
"Last week’s episode of The Mindy Project finally addressed a lingering criticism of the show  —   that it doesn’t explore Mindy’s ”otherness.” In it, Dr. Mindy Lahiri  —   the character played by series creator Mindy Kaling  —   goes on a date with an Indian man named Neel. He is, as Mindy admits to him, the first Indian guy she’s gone out with. She also tells him she knows little about the place her parents came from. ”I wanna say there’s a river there,” she says. ”And some tigers?” Neel, on the other hand, values his Indian identity and is put off by Mindy’s lack of awareness. ”I don’t think I could date a coconut,” he says  —   ”brown on the outside, white on the inside.” Neel and Mindy may be fictional, but this dichotomy isn’t. They represent the two extremes of South Asian immigrants in the United States: One is determined to assimilate (and loses touch with roots in the process) the other holds on to the culture for dear life even while forging a new identity. And my conversations with friends whose parents moved here from other parts of the world, especially developing countries, have led me to believe that many immigrant communities have their versions of Neel and Mindy. When I first arrived in the United States in 2002 for graduate school, I was unwittingly a little  . Not that I was trying hard to assimilate, but I didn’t really think much about my cultural identity. I fancied myself a citizen of the world even though this was my first time traveling abroad. (Yes, I was a bit of a brat.) I didn’t yearn to be part of an Indian community. I had a handful of good Indian friends in the States, and that was enough for me. What I loved about the United States was being able to meet people from all over the world. I cultivated a multicultural circle of friends, including a Croatian, a Vietnamese, an Australian, two Costa Ricans, a Georgian, a Ukrainian and some Germans, Americans and Indians. When we hung out, our discussions easily went to similarities and differences between places we’d grown up in. Questions ranged from ”What festivals did you celebrate growing up?” to ”Did you wear uniforms to school?” and the   favorite, ”What do dogs and cows say in your country?” (In my home state of West Bengal, India, the answer is ”bhow bhow” and ”humbaa! ”) After graduate school, I felt as if I didn’t fit in. As the only foreigner or one of a few in places where I worked, I began to think more about my identity. I had little in common with most people, in terms of childhood experiences, food, movies, music. That hadn’t stopped me from connecting with someone before. Having grown up in urban India with many cultures, languages, music and cuisines, I was used to openly discussing people’s backgrounds  —   that’s how I got to know them better. But here, I felt I was hitting an invisible wall  —   there seemed to be an awkward silence around cultural differences. Only a handful of   and curious people asked me about India or my childhood. Most others simply declared their love for yoga, Slum Dog Millionaire and mango lassi! Some American friends have said they worry about offending people from different backgrounds by pointing out differences. Meanwhile, another friend (her parents are from India) told me she didn’t want her childhood friends to ask her about her culture, because she didn’t want to feel different. Kind of like Mindy. I was beginning to understand why the need to assimilate in America combined with the tiptoeing around differences might create a Dr. Mindy Lahiri. But in that recent episode, even Mindy was pushed to deal with the ”coconut” issue. So she decides to have a Mundan ceremony for her new son. It’s the shaving of a Hindu baby’s head as a symbol of freedom from its past life. ”I just don’t want my kid to learn how to be an Indian from a Bombay Palace menu on my fridge,” she explains to the guests at the ceremony. That kind of return to heritage is a step many hyphenated Americans take (although, unlike Mindy, they may not turn to Yelp to find the   Hindu priest in their neighborhood). Over the years, I found myself wanting to understand better where I came from. I made an effort to find   young Indian people. I celebrated Indian festivals at home and included my friends, both South Asians and American. I felt I was connecting my present to my past, gaining a sense of continuity that I was missing. Lighting lamps and sharing meals with my friends during the festival of Diwali became an annual ritual, opening up conversations around different cultures and bringing me closer to my friends. I began to see why immigrants hang on so tightly to their traditions in their adopted country. It’s a mix of homesickness and wanting to belong in a foreign country. Because identity becomes more important when you can no longer take it for granted. Now, 14 years since I first moved here, I have arrived at a middle ground when it comes to my cultural identity. Early on, I wouldn’t bring up India or my upbringing unless asked. Now I make it a point to do so. My poor friends have to suffer through stories about my childhood or updates on the weather back home  —   which is often a variation of ”Gosh, it’s superhot in India!” I make it a point to wear Indian fabrics and saris more often, partly because I enjoy wearing them and partly because it’s a way to open up conversations around cultural differences. I’m also trying to get my American husband to learn my mother tongue, Bengali, but that’s a work in progress. Like Mindy, I too am thinking of the next generation. Mindy’s Indian parents raised her as an American, assuming that meant keeping their heritage from her. So her mother is surprised when she embraces her roots once again with her son’s ceremony. ”Mindy, I’m very happy you want to be more Indian,” she says. ”We weren’t sure you’d ever want that.” As for me, I hope someday when my husband and I have children, the definition of ”American” will be different. I hope that celebrating Indian festivals with their   mom will feel just as normal and American to them as eating hot dogs at a baseball game with their dad."
"Exactly 62 years ago, on May 17, 1954, the U. S. Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional. The Brown v. Board of Education decision was historic  —   but it’s not history yet. Just this week, a federal judge ordered a Mississippi school district to desegregate its schools. The case on which the judge was ruling was originally brought during the summer of 1965. The first named plaintiff, ”Diane Cowan, minor,” was a   at the time. Now she’s Diane Cowan White, a    clerk with the U. S. Postal Service. The legal saga that bears her name continues because, for 50 years, the Cleveland, Miss. school district has failed to integrate. The town of 12, 000 people  —   like many, many towns and cities in America  —   is racially segregated. A railroad track runs through town. Black people live on the east side of the tracks white people live on the west side. (Last year, The Washington Post published a stunning set of visualizations showing how American cities are separated along railroad tracks and highways. Suffice it to say Cleveland is not unique.) In the early 1960s, the town’s schools were explicitly segregated by race. There were white schools and black schools, and no matter where children lived, their school attendance was determined by their race. So began the case against Cleveland School District  —   and a   saga of resistance and inadequate action. There was some backlash to a judge’s first order, instructing the district to desegregate. The Wall Street Journal wrote that according to a historian, some Cleveland residents proposed segregating schools by sex if they couldn’t segregate them by race, to keep black boys and white girls from interacting at school. But Cleveland agreed to allow black students into white schools, and vice versa. However, the federal government later alleged that the district established ”dual residency” policies to cheat and send students to schools based on their race instead of their neighborhood. The district also built new schools in locations designed to keep black students in   schools, the U. S. said in a motion in the ’80s, and assigned faculty based on race. Fifteen years passed. Schools remained segregated. So Cleveland agreed to make an effort  —   to stop distributing faculty based on race, to encourage students to transfer to classes where they’d be in the minority, to set up exclusive and attractive classes to give them an incentive to make such a transfer, to establish appealing magnet schools in   communities. Fifteen years passed. And . .. schools remained segregated. In 2011, the U. S. revived the case with a motion stating that Cleveland lacked the will to ”meaningfully integrate.” ”In a school district where approximately 67 percent of the students are black and 30 percent of the students are white, half of Cleveland’s schools  —   the schools on the east side of the railroad tracks  —   are all black or virtually all black,” the federal government wrote. The other schools were disproportionately white. A judge noted that ”despite the District’s attempts to attract Caucasian students to the    Eastside High, today, the school is attended by 99. 7%   students.” And in the eyes of residents, it is both separate and unequal, The New York Times reports: ”Testimony given in court by both white and black residents described a stigma associated with the black schools and a perception among families that white students received a better education.” The district said, basically, it would try harder  —   with better course offerings to tempt white kids to cross the railroad tracks, or with an intense high school magnet program. But the U. S. argued that none of that had worked before. This time around, it didn’t accuse the school district of active resistance or any ill will  —   just of failure. Time for the nuclear option: merging both high schools into a single school with around 1, 000 students, and similarly combining middle schools. Some residents thought that would be too big and that the town couldn’t afford new buildings. They also argued that forcing integration by merging would cause white families to turn to private schools, causing a drop in enrollment. No dice, said the judge: The fear of white flight doesn’t override students’ constitutional right to an integrated education. ”The delay in segregation has deprived generations of students of the   right of an integrated education,” Judge Debra Brown wrote. ”Although no court order can right these wrongs, it is the duty of the District to ensure that not one more student suffers under this burden.” The Associated Press writes that the case may be   but it’s not unique: ”Merging black and white schools was a common desegregation method in the 1960s and 1970s, and the opinion is a reminder that desegregation lawsuits never ended in some places. As recently as 2014, the U. S. Justice Department was still a party to 43 such suits in Mississippi alone.”"
"Older voters might wonder this campaign season whether presidential candidates are taking them for granted. People 65 and older make up more than a fifth of the electorate, but the issues that concern them are rarely mentioned on the campaign trail. Rudy Pavini, 81, and Tommie Ward, 84, recently spent lunchtime dancing at the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center north of Los Angeles. It takes their minds off their worries about Social Security. ”Some people say they’re gonna change it, destroy it. And I live on Social Security, so we need more,” Pavini says. ”We need to live. We can’t survive we’ll be out in the street.” Ward lives with her niece because she says she doesn’t get enough money from Social Security. ”If something should happen to her, I don’t know what would happen with me,” she says. To be fair, candidates have discussed Social Security some. Months ago, Republican candidates talked about cuts, though the apparent nominee, Donald Trump, has said he’s against that. Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton both want to expand benefits, though their plans differ. And they’ve both talked about opening up Medicare to younger people. But at the senior center, people raised other issues, too, like continuing education for older adults and affordable housing. Without exception, Clinton was their choice for president. But concern about these issues  —   and their neglect in this campaign  —   cuts across party lines. David Cole, 60, was a delegate to the recent California Republican convention, so he follows politics pretty closely. ”I’ve heard nothing from any candidate other than some doublespeak we hear in every election,” he says. Cole finds that’s unfortunate. He has a particular interest in older Americans not just because of his own age, but because he’s a developer of assisted living facilities. Those aren’t cheap. But he notes that people now in middle age have saved next to nothing for retirement. ”Those people who are in their 60s, 50s and 40s, I don’t know where they’re going have the money to afford what I do for a living,” he says. ”So there needs to be another model [for retirement] out there, and no one’s talking about the future. And it concerns me a lot.” It concerns Ken Dychtwald, too. He’s the CEO of a research and survey company called Age Wave. By the year 2030, he notes, one in five Americans will be 65 and older. ”Are we prepared?” he asks. ”No. Are the candidates addressing this age wave and offering innovative solutions? No.” In a conference call with reporters, Dychtwald lists a host of issues that the candidates should be forced to address, including the retraining of older workers, finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and combating ageism. ”I am absolutely outraged that these core issues have not been meaningfully covered, if covered at all, during the presidential debates and interviews,” Dychtwald says. There’s a good reason for that, says Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. ”Hillary Clinton will be 69 on Election Day and Donald Trump will be 70. This will be the oldest pair of nominees that we’ve ever had,” he says. Pitney said the candidates may not want voters to wonder how old is too old while they’re making up their minds."
"As a former senator and secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has a long foreign policy track record. That record suggests she’d be more hawkish than President Obama  ” and many of her fellow Democrats. But don’t expect her to go overboard. She knows all too well the political price that can come with military intervention. Here are four things to know about Clinton’s approach to foreign policy: (We’ve previously broken down Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ approaches to foreign policy.) If Clinton is elected, she’ll have more foreign policy experience than any president since George H. W. Bush. She traveled extensively as first lady and as a senator and logged nearly a million miles visiting 112 countries as secretary of state. ”Hillary Clinton is really the rare candidate with a long track record,” said Elizabeth Saunders, a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The former secretary will try to make that background an asset in the campaign, arguing the country can ill afford a president who needs    training. ”Our new commander in chief will walk into the Oval Office and find a world of hard choices and tough problems,” Clinton told an audience at Stanford this spring. ”So the stakes could not be higher.” Clinton is less reticent when it comes to deploying military force than President Obama. While she hasn’t advocated   ground operations, she has pushed for the creation of ”safe zones” in Syria, and she was a strong advocate for the U. S. military intervention in Libya. ”Her default preference seems to be for action,” Saunders said. ”People have described her as having a preference for being ’caught trying.’ She’d rather do something and be criticized for it than be criticized for doing nothing at all.” That distinguishes Clinton’s foreign policy approach from Obama’s, whose instinctive caution has been summed up by the phrase, ”Don’t Do Stupid [Stuff].” If Obama’s caution is, in part, a reaction to the excesses of the George W. Bush era, Clinton’s more aggressive posture might reflect a reversion to the mean. But don’t expect her to go overboard. After all, she paid a political price for backing Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, as well as the Libyan intervention in 2011, which left a violent vacuum in which four Americans were later killed in Benghazi. ”Given the fact that many of her decisions to use military force have come back to haunt the United States generally and Hillary Clinton specifically, she may well have to temper some of those hawkish instincts in the service of prudence. And the reality is that we have very bad options,” said veteran Middle East diplomat Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson Center. Clinton has criticized some of the more hawkish proposals from Republican candidates for indiscriminate bombing of ISIS. ”Proposing that doesn’t make you sound tough. It makes you sound like you’re in over your head,” Clinton said at Stanford. ”Slogans aren’t a strategy. Loose cannons tend to misfire. What America needs is strong, smart, steady leadership to wage and win this struggle.” Compared to her remaining presidential rivals Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, Clinton is a committed internationalist. ”For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations have understood that America’s alliances make us stronger,” Clinton told the Stanford audience in March. ”Turning our back on our alliances or turning our alliance into a protection racket would reverse decades of bipartisan American leadership and send a dangerous signal to friend and foe alike.” Erstwhile Republican White House hopeful Carly Fiorina complained that all of Clinton’s globetrotting as secretary of state produced little in the way of concrete agreements. But the Council on Foreign Relations’ Saunders says that’s too simplistic. ”Diplomacy is important but it’s not always dramatic,” Saunders said. ”Most   diplomatic travel by the president or secretary of state is really about tending to relationships.”"
"In recent days, Donald Trump has given a series of   interviews shedding some light on what he means by the policy he calls ”America First.” The interviews are giving a clearer picture of the Republican presidential hopeful’s approach to foreign policy. Here are four things to know about Donald Trump’s foreign policy: Reporters covering Donald Trump never know what he’ll say or do next. And that’s the way he likes it. Trump thinks it’s an advantage for the United States to keep foreign leaders guessing. ”I always say we have to be unpredictable,” Trump told the Washington Post editorial board. ”We’re totally predictable. And predictable is bad.” Trump has spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also likes to confound expectations. Putin’s invasion of Crimea and his recent military intervention in Syria both took international observers by surprise. That can be an important element of military success. Trump, for instance, refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in battling ISIS in Europe or the Middle East. ”I would never take any of my cards off the table,” Trump said in a town hall meeting on MSNBC. But critics warn the approach can be taken too far. ”The unpredictability shifts into unreliability. Then you pay a high price for that,” says Peter Feaver, who worked for the National Security Council under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. ”We could become untrustworthy,” Feaver says. ”And we would squander what has been the United States’ great advantage over the last 25 years, which is while other countries complain about the United States, they basically prefer the United States to be the global leader than any other possible candidate.” Speaking to a   group, Trump likened talks with the Palestinians to the kind of business negotiation he’s famous for. ”I know about ” Trump said. ”That’s what I do. I wrote The Art of the Deal.” Indeed, reporters from The New York Times who conducted a lengthy interview about foreign policy with Trump concluded that he approaches ”almost every current international conflict through the prism of a negotiation.” For the most part, Trump thinks the United States has been getting the bad end of the bargain. ”You look at what the world is doing to us at every level, whether it’s militarily or in trade or so many other levels, the world is taking advantage of the United States,” Trump told CNN. ”And it’s driving us into literally being a   nation.” It’s not surprising that someone who built his business fortune through   would lean on that experience in foreign affairs. But critics say Trump is   in approaching each encounter as a   game, where a gain for China, for example, is automatically a loss for the United States. ”He fails to realize that there are a lot of   agreements in the world,” says Daniel Drezner of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. ”By threatening to drive harder bargains, he might manage to eke out a slightly larger share of the pie. But he also threatens to blow up that pie in the process.” Some of Trump’s foreign policy pronouncements have a familiar ring, although he tends to say loudly what others only whisper. ”You have countries in NATO that are getting a free ride,” Trump complained on CNN. ”It’s very unfair. The United States cannot afford to be the policeman of the world anymore, folks. We have to rebuild our own country.” President Obama and his defense secretaries have also pressed NATO members to spend more on their own defense. And Obama has complained that countries in the Middle East are all too willing to have the U. S. fight their battles for them. ”Perhaps most surprisingly is the extent to which [Trump] overlaps with some of President Obama’s positions,” Feaver says. ”Where there’s a sharp difference, of course, is that President Obama wanted to do less in the Middle East in order to do more in Asia. And Trump is talking about doing less in the Middle East and less in Asia.” Indeed, Trump has threatened to withdraw U. S. forces from Japan and South Korea, unless those countries agree to cover a much larger share of the cost. Trump has recently named a handful of his foreign policy advisers, but insists he also keeps his own counsel. ”I understand this stuff,” Trump told CNN. ”I mean, I really do understand this stuff.” Many foreign policy practitioners disagree. More than 100 Republican national security experts signed an open letter challenging Trump’s policy positions and his competence. One of them, Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, warned in a separate essay that the billionaire businessman is ”singularly unqualifed to be commander in chief.” ”It’s just a stunning degree of ignorance this guy has,” says Drezner, another signer. ”Fifteen years ago, people were talking about whether George W. Bush knew enough about foreign policy when he became president. George W. Bush is George Kennan compared to Donald Trump,” he said, referring to the scholarly Cold War diplomat. Even the name Trump has given to his brand of foreign policy alarms some observers. Trump has embraced the label ”America First,” a slogan that was also used by isolationists in the   effort to keep America out of World War II."
"Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has focused much of his presidential campaign on economic issues. He describes income inequality as the great economic and political issue of our time. Less has been written about Sanders’ approach to foreign policy. Here’s a quick summary: Sanders has highlighted his opposition to the war in Iraq throughout the campaign as a way to draw a distinction with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. ”I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq,” he told supporters in Philadelphia last week. As a member of the House of Representatives, Sanders also opposed the first Gulf War. But as cautious as he is about sending U. S. forces into combat, Sanders has not always opposed military intervention. He supported the invasion of Afghanistan after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. And he voted in favor of NATO bombing during the war in the Balkans. ”The Balkans worked because it was internationally sanctioned and there was a plan for what to do when we got rid of [Slobodan] Milosevic,” said Sanders foreign policy adviser Lawrence Korb. When talking about foreign policy, Sanders often injects an economic note. This might be seen as a diversion  —   a way of changing the subject to more familiar ground. Or it could simply be a sign that Sanders’ views on many subjects are colored by an overriding concern with economic  . ”Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy views are shaped by the lens of the economy,” said Elizabeth Saunders, a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”He views most issues through the lens of economics and inequality.” ”I am not running for president to pursue reckless adventures abroad, but to rebuild America’s strength at home,” Sanders told an audience at Georgetown University last November. ”Nobody understood better than Franklin Delano Roosevelt the connection between American strength at home and our ability to defend America around the world.” In Sanders’ view, poverty and income inequality undermine America’s status as a superpower. And while he agrees the battle against ISIS must be waged, he argues wealthy Muslim nations should play a larger role. ”Countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the [United Arab Emirates] countries of enormous wealth and resources, have contributed far too little in the fight against ISIS,” Sanders said. ”That must change.” Foreign policy adviser Korb sees Sanders following in the footsteps of an earlier president: Dwight Eisenhower. The Midwestern military hero might seem an unlikely role model for the   Democratic socialist. But Korb, who served as assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, notes Eisenhower, like Sanders, was wary of the growing   complex. He knew that every federal dollar spent on guns was a dollar that couldn’t be devoted to butter, or other domestic needs. ”His proudest accomplishment is the interstate highway system,” Korb said of Eisenhower. ”He basically told the military these are the things we have to do to be strong at home. And if we’re not strong at home, we’re not going to win this battle with the Soviet Union.” President Obama once shrugged off a similar comparison, noting that as supreme Allied commander in World War II, Eisenhower had credibility on national security issues that Obama himself did not. (Even Eisenhower was not immune to criticism that he was weak on defense. Remember John F. Kennedy’s accusations of an alleged ”missile gap. ”) Sanders has already faced questions about his command of international issues and would surely face more if he were elected. ”A lot of his critics said, ’Well, you don’t have a foreign policy. You don’t talk about it. So you’re really not up to the challenge of dealing with it,’ ” Korb acknowledged. ”I try to say, ’No, he has a serious foreign policy.’ ” Sanders arguably talked more about foreign policy during the 1980s, when as mayor of liberal Burlington, Vt. he was a fierce critic of Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America. ”One of the things we’re trying to do in Burlington is do away with this gap between what happens . .. in Washington regarding Nicaragua and what happens here in local government,” Sanders said in 1985, introducing a speech by Noam Chomsky. ”We have the belief here that local government is everything that affects human life.”"
"Grammy winner, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member and Academy of Country Music Poet’s Award honoree Guy Clark has died at 74 after a long battle with illness. Born in Monahans, Texas, Clark was exposed mainly to mariachi music until he moved to Houston and worked the   circuit. It was there that he developed his own style of     and in 1975, he released his debut album, Old No. 1. Since then, Clark has released 12 more studio albums and written songs that have been recorded by artists like Johnny Cash, Ricky Skaggs and Rodney Crowell. Join World Cafe in remembering Clark’s life and work by listening back to sessions from 2006 and 2009, below."
"Chinese companies are on a major shopping spree in the U. S. They’re set to break a record for investment deals this year, snapping up everything from entertainment companies to methanol plants. Most of these investments are takeovers, though Chinese companies are also expanding their existing operations to the U. S. They include Fuling Plastic, one of China’s largest manufacturers of plastic cutlery, cups and straws. Its biggest customers are fast food chains in the U. S. Fuling Plastic has been supplying American customers for about eight years, manufacturing in China and shipping its products to the U. S. A year ago, Fuling opened up operations in Allentown, Pa. transforming an empty   warehouse into a factory for its plastic straws. Now, at any given time of the day or night, machines at the plant are churning away, producing and wrapping drinking straws. Gilbert Lee, who runs the Allentown operation, says that’s a lot of straws over the course of one year. ”It would be a few hundred million,” he says. ”We have already made enough straws to go around the world one and a half times.” Lee, a U. S. citizen born in Hong Kong, says it was a strategic business decision to open up an American factory. He says it will save shipping time and millions of dollars in freight costs. ”First of all, a lot of our customers really like the fact that our products are made in the U. S.,” he says. ”And then we’ll be able to cut about a month of delivery time because it had to ship by ocean freight” when the straws were made in China. Seeking More Chinese Business, Fuling Plastic currently employs 43 people, including a few workers from China. A new factory is important in a place like Allentown. For decades it was an area dominated by heavy manufacturing. But a generation ago, large corporations moved elsewhere and jobs dried up. Don Cunningham, president of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. says his group lobbied hard to get Fuling Plastic into the area in the hopes that other Chinese companies would follow. ”My belief was that once one comes and breaks the ice, so to speak, there’s a [comfort level] that others will tend to look at the same area,” he says. ”If someone’s already done the due diligence and it seems to work, then you have a better chance of a pipeline behind it.” Fuling Plastic may be the first Chinese company in the area, but it represents a   trend playing out more broadly. Some acquisitions have been very large, like the nearly $2 billion purchase of the Waldorf Astoria hotel by a Chinese insurance company. This year, direct Chinese investment in the U. S. is projected to hit a record $30 billion. That’s double last year’s record. ”We’re now looking at 90, 000 Americans that are directly employed by Chinese organizations in the U. S.,” says Steve Orlins, president of the National Committee on U. S.  Relations, which   a report studying the surge of direct Chinese investments over the past few years. He says Chinese companies have been scooping up all types of businesses. ”There is travel and leisure we’re seeing lots of investment in hotels,” he says. ”We’ve seen billions of dollars in investment in entertainment, automotive parts, semiconductors.” Still Relatively Small, But Growing Fast, Nicholas Lardy, with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says Chinese investment is getting a lot of attention because it’s increasing so rapidly. But it accounts for less than 5 percent of the investment coming into the U. S. ”Our traditional trading partners like the U. K. Canada and so forth are the really big investors,” he says. Still, Lardy says Chinese investment will continue to grow. He says in the past, it was mostly   Chinese companies that invested abroad. Now, thanks to economic changes by Beijing, it’s mostly private companies on a buying spree. ”Some of them are expanding because of opportunities. Some are expanding because of low prices. But the underlying factor I think is liberalization,” he says. ”I think private companies have better access now to borrow money to make the acquisitions.” Back at the Fuling Plastic factory, Gilbert Lee says the future of the company is looking very positive. It became a public company listed on the Nasdaq last year, which will help give it an image as being reputable and transparent. ”We have a lot of very loyal customers already. But new customers, seeing that we have established our manufacturing base in the U. S. now they want to do business with us,” he says, adding that the company is due to expand over the next year, doubling its work force."
"This week’s essential mix from All Songs Considered includes a surprising, electronic, mostly instrumental cut from The 1975  —   a British group known more for its brash   pop and rock  —   an intimate home demo recording from My Morning Jacket and a spare, moody cover of Led Zeppelin’s ”Immigrant Song” by the Irish folk singer known as SOAK. Also on the show: A new studio recording of ”Some Day We’ll Linger In The Sun,” the heartbreakingly beautiful song by Gaelynn Lea that won this year’s Tiny Desk contest A troubled love story from singer Haley Bonar and mangled, electronic rock from the   band Holy F***. But before we can even think of playing any music, Robin needs to pound his seventh cup of coffee of the day and welcome Bob back from his week on the road."
"As the population of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder keeps growing, so does the number of people with that diagnosis who aren’t finding employment. Though many young adults on the spectrum are considered high functioning, recent research shows 40 percent don’t find work  —   a higher jobless rate than people with other developmental disabilities experience. Research scientist Anne Roux, of the A. J. Drexel Autism Institute in Philadelphia, studies young adults with autism and was the lead author of that study. ”When we learned that last year  —   that about 40 percent of people were never getting employment or continuing their education  —   we wondered, ’Why is that, and what happens to them?’ ” Young people on the spectrum  —   just like other young people  —   are eager to live independently and work, she and her team found as they looked deeper. But social services aimed at helping children overcome early deficits in communication and problems with social skills become less available as those students get older. ”Once you develop into an adult, those resources plummet,” says Leslie Long, vice president of adult services for the advocacy group Autism Speaks. An estimated 50, 000 people on the spectrum enter adulthood every year.    job interviews can be a challenge for many, Long says, and some engage in repetitive behaviors, which can seem odd to the uninitiated. But those idiosyncrasies sometimes mask hidden talents, she says  —   like intense focus, or a facility with numbers and patterns. ”I mean, look at what happened with the housing bubble and the financial market,” she points out. ”It was a man on the spectrum who saw which mortgages were going to fall. And I don’t think that’s something an average person would have been able to do.” That particular case  —   of Dr. Michael Burry, the physician and hedge fund manager featured in the book and movie The Big Short  —   is in many ways exceptional, Long admits. (Burry has a son with Asperger’s syndrome and has said he believes he fits the diagnosis as well.) Still, with baby boomers starting to retire, and with talent in increasingly short supply, companies as varied as Microsoft, Walgreens, Capital One, AMC Theaters, and Procter  Gamble are all starting to actively recruit people who have autism spectrum disorder. They aren’t yet putting a lot more people to work, but their recruiting and training programs are becoming models for other firms. Take, for example, Bank of America’s support center in Dallas, which prints, checks and sorts reams upon reams of paperwork regarding bank customers. The work involves, as manager Duke Roberson says, ”a lot of paper handling.” All the members of Roberson’s staff of 75 have some form of disability. His workers with   autism, he says, tend to be aces at catching errors  —   and they enjoy the repetition. ”I tell my guys as we start in the morning, ’We do the same thing the same way, every day,’ ” Roberson says. Methodical tasks others might find monotonous, these workers find comforting. ”I have one individual who, when he comes in, has to have the same seat every day or it kind of upsets his whole day,” Roberson says. Turnover within Roberson’s team is incredibly low, and performance, profitability and morale are good. ”There’s no charity to this at all,” he says. The company Specialisterne USA helps people with autism find work as consultants ”in information technology and other sectors with technically oriented tasks and jobs,” its website says. Executive Director Mark Grein says accommodating a worker with autism is often as simple as adjusting lighting to prevent overstimulation or permitting frequent breaks.  ”Our recommendation is just clear communication in terms of expectations,” Grein says of his advice to companies. ”Be able to provide rules.” It also helps, he says, to train   beforehand, and to provide a mentor who can help the worker with autism ease into the workplace.  Grein says he has successfully placed hundreds of workers and hopes to eventually reach a goal of 250, 000 people. Getting past the obstacles of a conventional job search, however, can be hard. Last year, Autism Speaks launched thespectrumcareers. com, a website to match workers who have autism with prospective employers. Gerald Franklin, who is 24, is the website’s lead developer. Among other helpful aids, he says, the site allows job seekers to post videos. ”Video played a huge role in helping people with special needs showcase what they can do,” Franklin says. He was diagnosed with autism at age 4 and says he has developed workarounds over the years for communicating with his team without long explanations. ”I would try to explain something really cool or interesting to someone, but they did not understand,” he says. ”So, it would be making lots of drawings, making lots of notes  —   and my team members are extremely appreciative.” Franklin sees his autism as an asset. It gives him insight, he says, into creating tools that can help others."
"Crucifixions, executions, food shortages, forced prayer: These are features of life in the ISIS stronghold of Sirte, Libya, according to a new Human Rights Watch report. ISIS has controlled Sirte since last August. The central Mediterranean city is the hometown of Libya’s former dictator Moammar Gadhafi and the site of some of the final battles of Libya’s 2011 revolution. Human Rights Watch interviewed 45 residents of the city for its report, which paints a vivid picture of how ISIS controls every aspect of life, ”down to the length of men’s trousers, the breadth and color of women’s gowns, and the instruction students receive in state schools.” ”We were filled with hope. Then step by step, Daesh [ISIS] took over. Now we feel we are cursed,” one resident who fled Sirte told HRW. The city drew international attention in February 2015 when an ISIS video showed its fighters decapitating 21 men, almost all of them Egyptian Coptic Christians who were kidnapped in Sirte. In its new report, Human Rights Watch says it documented 28 other killings by ISIS in the Sirte area between   2015 and   2016. These amounted to ”scenes of horror  —   public beheadings, corpses in orange jumpsuits hanging from scaffolding in what they referred to as ’crucifixions,’ and masked fighters snatching men from their beds at night.” That’s in addition to ”scores” of rival fighters disappeared by ISIS and presumed dead, the rights group says. For example, Human Rights Watch documented the execution of    Amjad bin Sasi, who was accused of ”insulting God.” According to two family members, ”ISIS enforcers burst into bin Sasi’s house and hauled him to jail for allegedly naming God while swearing as he brawled with a neighbor earlier that day.” He was brought before an ISIS judge and, three days later, shot dead in a public execution. His family says they haven’t received his body, because ISIS will not allow them to bury him in a Muslim cemetery  —   they consider him a  . The report details other cases where people have been taken from their beds at night and executed for being suspected ”spies.” Others were killed for preaching against ISIS or for conducting ”sorcery.” ISIS keeps a tight grip on the    activities of the Sirte population, according to the report. Residents say morality police ”aided by informants patrolled the streets threatening, fining or flogging men for smoking, listening to music, or failing to ensure their wives and sisters were covered head to toe in loose black abayas, and hauling boys and men into mosques for prayer and mandatory religious education classes.” The militant group has taken control of the city’s schools, port, air base, power station and radio station, the report says. At least   of Sirte’s population has fled since ISIS took over. And amid widespread food shortages, the report says ISIS is funneling reserves to its fighters at the expense of local residents: ”The group is failing to provide basic necessities to the local population. Instead it is diverting food, medicine, fuel, and cash, along with homes it confiscated from residents who fled, to as many as 1, 800 fighters, police and functionaries it has amassed in the city.” According to the report, ISIS fighters have destroyed ”at least 20 homes belonging to fighters from prominent local families who joined militias trying to ousted the group.” And five times a day during prayer times, ISIS enforcers comb the streets, ”herding residents into mosques and ordering merchants to close their shops from the start of the prayers of   in the   until the end of the prayer of   after nightfall, current and displaced residents said.” They say the punishment for not attending is flogging, according to the report. Additionally, women are not allowed to leave their homes without a male relative and fully covered according to the ISIS guidelines. Likewise, ”shop owners are whipped and their shops are closed if they receive an unaccompanied woman.” Chaos has erupted in Libya since the ouster of Gadhafi, with two separate governments each claiming authority. A U. N.  agreement signed in December was meant to unify the two into one. But as The Associated Press reports, the agreement only has ”patchy support” and the government’s head Fayez Serraj ”has been ensconced in a naval base in Tripoli since his return to the country in March, unable to exercise much power beyond his office walls  —   much like his predecessors.” ISIS, which first appeared in Libya in 2014, has benefited from Libya’s ongoing chaos and now has multiple local affiliates. Human Rights Watch says the militant group controls some 120 miles of Mediterranean coastline, where Sirte lies. As NPR’s Michele Kelemen reported, the U. S. is considering sending weapons to the U. N.  government. John Kirby, spokesman for Secretary of State John Kerry, says ”it will take time to make sure weapons get to the right groups in Libya and don’t just add to the chaos,” Michele reported."
"Watch   favorites Yeasayer, The Jayhawks, Bonnie Raitt, Kurt Vile and more perform live at the 2016   at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia. The show is streaming on VuHaus, a new website that publishes studio sessions and concerts from public radio stations around the country. Find the full   below. Hear a 2012 interview with Yeasayer on World Cafe. Hear Darlingside’s 2015 performance on Mountain Stage. Watch The Jayhawks perform live in the World Cafe studio. Hear a conversation and performance with Sunflower Bean from World Cafe. Listen to a 2013 World Cafe interview with Amos Lee. Watch Hayes Carll perform live for Folk Alley. Read a review of Bonnie Raitt’s new album, Dig In Deep. See Kurt Vile give an   performance for KCRW."
"The most tangible sign of a growing American military presence in Eastern Europe, behind the former Iron Curtain, is tucked inside a former military base in rural Romania. Hidden from view is a U. S. naval facility, where sailors use   radar day and night to watch for incoming ballistic missiles fired at NATO countries. If any are spotted, the Americans would fire back with   Block IIA missiles. A second such American site will also be built in Eastern Europe over the next two years, this one near Poland’s Baltic coast. It’s inside a base that once belonged to the Nazis and later the Soviets. Once this site is finished, the entire $800 million ballistic missile defense shield for NATO countries in Europe, more than a decade in the making, will be complete. Top U. S. and NATO officials last week declared the Romanian facility up and running, and a day later broke ground on the Polish site. They say the     Aegis defense system, which will ultimately be under NATO control, is about protecting the alliance against rogue states like Iran and has nothing to do with Russia. But Moscow considers the American bases on NATO’s eastern flank to be a provocation, a position Russia has maintained ever since the alliance began moving into Eastern Europe in the 1990s, following the Soviet breakup. ”After the deployment of those missile defense elements, we will have to think about how we can fend off the threats to the Russian Federation’s security,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday. He has rejected repeated assurances by the Americans and NATO that Aegis is designed to take out only    range ballistic missiles fired from outside Europe. ”It is fully compliant with existing arms control regimes,” U. S. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said at the groundbreaking in Poland. ”It’s not about Russia,” added Frank Rose, the assistant secretary of state for arms control verification and compliance, who attended the Romanian ceremony. Rose says the alliance has ”been clear for over 20 years that U. S. and NATO missile defense are not directed against Russia, nor do they have the technical capability to undermine Russia’s strategic deterrence.” That comes as a surprise to many Romanians, who have a different view of the U. S. Navy’s ”Aegis Ashore Facility,” located on the outskirts of Deveselu, a farming community that is a   drive southwest of the capital Bucharest. Romania, like Poland and the Baltic States, has been clamoring for more U. S. and NATO troops and equipment since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its backing for separatists in eastern Ukraine. The Obama administration responded by quadrupling its spending on initiatives intended to reassure its European allies, and it has been increasing the scope of military exercises in Northern and Eastern Europe. The plan also includes adding a third Army combat brigade in Europe, as well as a continuous rotation of 4, 000 NATO troops in the Baltic States and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Kremlin, meanwhile, is reported to have sent more troops and weapons  —   including missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads  —   into Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania. The buildup on both sides has been accompanied by an escalation in rhetoric. At a    ceremony earlier this month, U. S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter lashed out at Moscow over its actions in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. He criticized Russia for intimidating its Baltic neighbors. ”And most disturbing, Moscow’s nuclear   raises troubling questions about Russia’s leaders’ commitment to strategic stability,” Carter said. It’s making Romanians nervous, too, and helps explain why they are comforted by the U. S. Navy setting up a base in their country, even if the Americans say it’s not about Russia.   Obreja, who heads the Romanian Senate’s Defense, National Security and Public Order Committee, says Russian actions are destabilizing Ukraine. And Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, some 300 miles off Romanian shores, ”caught us off guard and leaves us in huge need of help from a military power.” He said the Romanian government is working to modernize its military and join the handful of NATO countries that are spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, which alliance members agreed to do in 2014. But he added it will be at least a decade before the improvements are complete. The senator said he believes that even if it isn’t directly targeting Russian missiles, the U. S. facility will make Moscow think twice about causing trouble in Eastern Europe. There’s also a palpable economic benefit to the American base for the 3, 500 residents of Deveselu, where the whole village is getting a facelift. Mayor Ion Aliman says about $8 million in local and European Union funds have gone to upgrade the power grid, sewage systems, roads and municipal buildings to accommodate their new American neighbors, who officially moved in 18 months ago. In addition, the U. S. Embassy has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to refurbish the local school and build a new kindergarten. ”Like many Romanians, my grandfather had been waiting for the Americans since 1944, and they have arrived” says Aliman, who has several American and NATO flags hanging in his office. Workers were also busy improving roads across from the Navy base last week in a housing complex known as the ”Airmen Neighborhood.” Lined up to look like a Russian MiG jet when viewed from above, the apartments and homes were built for pilots who worked at the former Warsaw Pact base. A handful of the Deveselu base veterans still live here, including retired navigator Marian Georgescu, 54. He boasted that he’d given some of his American neighbors rides in his   wagon, a common form of transport in Romanian farming communities. Anca Nelson, 34, of Highland, N. Y. who was visiting her mom and dad, a retired paratrooper transport pilot, says ”it’s great to have a different culture so close to us.” ”This opens our minds a little bit,” she added. ”This is a very traditional community and we haven’t had contact with foreigners very often.” Nelson said she hopes the base will attract investors and provide jobs for residents in this impoverished region. Hundreds of miles to the northwest, in Poland, Slupsk Mayor Robert Biedron had the same hope for his picturesque city and its 100, 000 residents. But he has since soured on the American base that was first proposed nine years ago and where ground was finally broken Friday at the Redzikowo Air Base, 2 miles from his city hall. Biedron said the Polish government had promised to bring in investors and improve the highways, port and railway in Slupsk in exchange for the base, which he said would have otherwise been turned into a regional airport for residents. But none of it ever happened, and the new government that took over last fall refuses to even talk about it, Biedron said, adding that he is incredibly frustrated. ”There are so many limitations today” because of the base, he explained. ”If I want to built anything in my city, I have to ask the American government for permission . .. like if I want to build a factory, if I want to build a higher block of flats, I have to ask  —   not in Warsaw, but in Washington,” the mayor said. ”This is so crazy!” He added that analysts estimate the region will suffer big economic losses because of the new base. Other Slupsk residents I spoke to worried that the base will make them ground zero for any Russian retaliation, fears that were exacerbated by a Russian military jet conducting a ”barrel” roll last month over a U. S. Air Force plane that was flying a reconnaissance mission above the Baltic Sea. One    retiree, who said she was too afraid to give her name, whispered that she has always been against building an American base in her community. ”It’s a provocation to the Russians,” she said, ”and that makes a lot of us afraid.”"
"The heist of a major historical document apparently went undiscovered for more than 20 years. Now, a stolen letter from Christopher Columbus spreading the news that the world isn’t flat has been returned from the U. S. to Italy. The 1493 letter from Columbus to his royal patrons Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain details his ”voyage of discovery to the Americas,” the Justice Department said in a statement. Printed copies of the letter, which was written during the   journey back to Europe, were ”instrumental in spreading the news throughout Europe about Columbus’s voyage.” Justice Department investigator Jamie McCall, who is involved in the case, tells NPR’s Chris Arnold about this account of Columbus’ historic journey. ”Columbus described the native people [as] very quick to provide him with gifts, and friendly: individuals that would be easy to conquer by the European powers,” McCall says. ”I mean, that’s something that stuck out to me.” The Riccardiana Library in Florence, Italy, housed one of those printed copies of the letter. But as Chris reports, the document was stolen at some point before 1992 and ”replaced with a forgery that was only recently discovered.” Then, as Chris reports, it was sold in 1992 at a New York auction for $300, 000 and eventually donated to the Library of Congress. The Justice Department says special agents with U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were tipped off in 2012 that the letter had been stolen  —   and was believed to be in the Library of Congress. First, the investigators confirmed that the letter in Florence was a forgery, according to the Justice Department: ”The inspection determined, among other things, that the text of the forged letter was a   photocopy, that there was no original library stamp from the [Riccardiana] Library and that the stitching patterns did not match original stitching patterns for known Plannck II Columbus Letters.” Next, they examined the letter at the Library of Congress: ”The experts found, among other things, evidence that chemical bleach had been used to remove the [Riccardiana] Library’s stamp, and that printed characters had been retouched to further disguise the letter’s provenance, or place of origin.” McCall tells Chris that it appears ”a   collector who didn’t believe the letter was stolen donated it to the library”  —   which may be a first for the Library of Congress. According to Reuters, the letter is now valued at $1. 13 million. The letter has been returned to Rome, where it was displayed for reporters with the modern forged version. In a tweet, Italy’s culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said, ”Thanks to the cultural heritage protection police, Columbus’s letter on the discovery of America will return to (Florence’s) Riccardiana Library,” according to Reuters."
"A handful of scientists around the United States are trying to do something that some people find disturbing: make embryos that are part human, part animal. The researchers hope these embryos, known as chimeras, could eventually help save the lives of people with a wide range of diseases. One way would be to use chimera embryos to create better animal models to study how human diseases happen and how they progress. Perhaps the boldest hope is to create farm animals that have human organs that could be transplanted into terminally ill patients. But some scientists and bioethicists worry the creation of these interspecies embryos crosses the line. ”You’re getting into unsettling ground that I think is damaging to our sense of humanity,” says Stuart Newman, a professor of cell biology and anatomy at the New York Medical College. The experiments are so sensitive that the National Institutes of Health has imposed a moratorium on funding them while officials explore the ethical issues they raise. Nevertheless, a small number of researchers are pursuing the work with alternative funding. They hope the results will persuade the NIH to lift the moratorium. ”We’re not trying to make a chimera just because we want to see some kind of monstrous creature,” says Pablo Ross, a reproductive biologist at the University of California, Davis. ”We’re doing this for a biomedical purpose.” The NIH is expected to announce soon how it plans to handle requests for funding. Recently, Ross agreed to let me visit his lab for an unusual look at his research. During the visit, Ross demonstrated how he is trying to create a pancreas that theoretically could be transplanted into a patient with diabetes. The first step involves using new   techniques to remove the gene that pig embryos need to make a pancreas. Working under an elaborate microscope, Ross makes a small hole in the embryo’s outer membrane with a laser. Next, he injects a molecule synthesized in the laboratory to home in on and delete the pancreas gene inside. (In separate experiments, he has done this to sheep embryos, too.) After the embryos have had their DNA edited this way, Ross creates another hole in the membrane so he can inject human induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS for short, into the pig embryos. Like human embryonic stem cells, iPS cells can turn into any kind of cell or tissue in the body. The researchers’ hope is that the human stem cells will take advantage of the void in the embryo to start forming a human pancreas. Because iPS cells can be made from any adult’s skin cells, any organs they form would match the patient who needs the transplant, vastly reducing the risk that the body would reject the new organ. But for the embryo to develop and produce an organ, Ross has to put the chimera embryos into the wombs of adult pigs. That involves a surgical procedure, which is performed in a large operating room across the street from Ross’s lab. The day Ross opened his lab to me, a surgical team was anesthetizing an adult female pig so surgeons could make an incision to get access to its uterus. Ross then rushed over with a special syringe filled with chimera embryos. He injected 25 embryos into each side of the animal’s uterus. The procedure took about an hour. He repeated the process on a second pig. Every time Ross does this, he then waits a few weeks to allow the embryos to develop to their 28th day  —   a time when primitive structures such as organs start to form. Ross then retrieves the chimeric embryos to dissect them so he can see what the human stem cells are doing inside. He examines whether the human stem cells have started to form a pancreas, and whether they have begun making any other types of tissues. The uncertainty is part of what makes the work so controversial. Ross and other scientists conducting these experiments can’t know exactly where the human stem cells will go. Ross hopes they’ll only grow a human pancreas. But they could go elsewhere, such as to the brain. ”If you have pigs with partly human brains you would have animals that might actually have consciousness like a human,” Newman says. ”It might have   needs. We don’t really know.” That possibility raises new questions about the morality of using the animals for experimentation. Another concern is that the stem cells could form human sperm and human eggs in the chimeras. ”If a male chimeric pig mated with a female chimeric pig, the result could be a human fetus developing in the uterus of that female chimera,” Newman says. Another possibility is the animals could give birth to some kind of     creature. ”One of the concerns that a lot of people have is that there’s something sacrosanct about what it means to be human expressed in our DNA,” says Jason Robert, a bioethicist at Arizona State University. ”And that by inserting that into other animals and giving those other animals potentially some of the capacities of humans that this could be a kind of violation  —   a kind of, maybe, even a playing God.” Ross defends what his work. ”I don’t consider that we’re playing God or even close to that,” Ross says. ”We’re just trying to use the technologies that we have developed to improve peoples’ life.” Still, Ross acknowledges the concerns. So he’s moving very carefully, he says. For example, he’s only letting the chimera embryos develop for 28 days. At that point, he removes the embryos and dissects them. If he discovers the stem cells are going to the wrong places in the embryos, he says he can take steps to stop that from happening. In addition, he’d make sure adult chimeras are never allowed to mate, he says. ”We’re very aware and sensitive to the ethical concerns,” he says. ”One of the reasons we’re doing this research the way we’re doing it is because we want to provide scientific information to inform those concerns.” Ross is working with Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. and Hiromitsu Nakauchi at Stanford University. Daniel Garry of the University of Minnesota and colleagues are conducting similar work. The research is funded in part by the Defense Department and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)."
"When it comes to sexual assault of students, some say private secondary schools are still being a little too private about how they handle misconduct. A recent Boston Globe investigation found hundreds of students were allegedly abused by teachers and staff at scores of New England prep schools since the 1950s. Many of the perpetrators were quietly let go, and then moved on to   at other schools. To many who’ve been through private boarding schools, the stories of sexual abuse comes as little surprise. There are not only more opportunities for misconduct with kids at school day and night, but also, arguably more pressure on elite, competitive prep schools to keep such problems private. ”That’s just how it is,” says Maggie Fitzgerald, who enrolled at the Williston Northampton School in western Massachusetts five years ago as it was being sued for trying to cover up a teacher’s sexual misconduct with a student. The news didn’t dissuade her. ”I mean, every boarding school has come out that they’ve had one of these scandals. I mean, how was I supposed to find a school that hadn’t?” she asks. That case eventually settled. Just last year, another faculty member resigned after it came out that he had a relationship with a student in the 1970s. Former administrators knew about it but kept promoting him anyway. ”It reminds me of the Catholic Church,” Fitzgerald says. ”[There’s] an air of ’Let’s keep this quiet [to] protect our brand.’ ” Not Enough Change, Current Williston administrators have apologized, noting that times have changed, and schools everywhere have since changed their ways. But some say, not enough. ”If you’re asking me if I believe there are instances where people duck under table here and push things to the side, I’m quite sure things like that happen regularly, still,” says Paul Reville, the former secretary of education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and now a professor at Harvard’s graduate school of education. ”Private schools who depend on the tuition of paying customers would rather not raise concerns so that becomes rationale for, ’Well, let’s just get it off stage with as little fanfare as possible,’ ” he says. Attorneys for survivors of sexual abuse say they will often discover, after the fact, that schools let an employee go under a confidential deal that requires both sides to keep quiet. ”Schools that have a problem teacher fairly frequently say, ’Look, if you resign quietly and go somewhere else, we’ll give you a reference saying that you were teacher here and we won’t say anything beyond that,’” says Boston attorney Carmen Durso. Breaking The Cycle, The practice is known as ”passing the trash.” Jetta Bernier, executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for Children, is pushing a bill aimed at stopping it, by mandating better vetting of teachers in both private and public schools. Modeled on laws that have passed in other states, the bill would require a school who’s hiring to specifically ask former employers if an applicant was ever investigated for sexual misconduct. The applicant would have to sign a waiver so his or her former bosses could answer, without worrying about getting sued for defamation. ”We need not be playing games around child protection,” Bernier says. ”We need to make sure that our schools put the protection of children first.” But some teachers have objected. ”I think that putting children’s safety first shouldn’t mean that due process rights for teachers shouldn’t also be considered,” says Matt O’Connor, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers in Connecticut, where a similar bill recently passed. The union has protested to the fact that unproven allegations would remain on a teacher’s record, arguing that leaves teachers effectively ”presumed guilty.” ”Simply having claims against them is then used against them,” O’Connor says, ”so it is a very unfair burden being placed on innocent teachers.” Many private schools declined to comment for this report. But Peter Upham, head of the Association of Boarding Schools, concedes administrators are in a tough spot when trying to deal with suspicions that haven’t been substantiated. ”It gets a little murkier in terms of how a school properly fulfills its ethical obligation” to alert other schools about unproven allegations, Upham says, ”because believe me, there’s defamation lawsuits coming.” ’A  ’s Land’ Private schools are also vulnerable to getting blindsided by a candidate with a checkered past, since most don’t require teachers to have a state certification or license to teach as public schools do. That means private schools also can’t access the national database that tracks teachers who’ve lost certification due to misconduct. ”If they don’t require certification, then they are in a  ’s land, ” says Phillip S. Rogers, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, the nonprofit that runs the database. For example, Rogers says, if a teacher lost his certification because of misconduct at his most recent job, he could simply leave the school off his resume, and a private school might never know to check there for a reference. Rogers says the group is considering allowing private schools to start using the database next year. It’s hardly a perfect system, Rogers says, but it would help private schools at least have the same information that public schools do. ”It’s really meant to be a trigger, so then they would know who they needed to call,” he says. The Association of Boarding Schools says it would welcome that. But Upham says what’s really needed is a database that covers not only certified teachers, but also everyone who works with kids, including in camps and scouting and church groups. Otherwise, he says, there will always be holes in the system that will allow some bad apples to move around undetected."
"One of the world’s   and   classical musicians has joined the ranks of artists refusing to perform in North Carolina. Violinist Itzhak Perlman canceled an appearance scheduled for Wednesday with the North Carolina Symphony in Raleigh to protest HB2, the controversial North Carolina law limiting civil rights protections for LGBT people. HB2 excludes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from the state’s   laws and prevents local governments from offering discrimination protections that go beyond the state’s. It also requires people to use public restrooms that correspond with the sex indicated on their birth certificates. Speaking by phone Wednesday, Perlman said he had been contemplating a cancellation and its repercussions for weeks. ”The first thought was to cancel,” he said. ”And then I thought, ’Well, what’s going to happen to the orchestra musicians? They’re going to suffer. It’s not their fault.’ So I thought that I was going to go, and that I would donate my fee to Equality North Carolina. And I wanted to put fliers into the program explaining my position. So I thought that was all set.” ”And then yesterday morning at 9:30 AM,” Perlman continued, ”I get a phone call  —   and the symphony said, no, the state would not allow that statement. After that exchange, I thought, ’I am going into a hostile situation.’ And that’s when I said, ’As much as I hate to cause problems and stress, I have to have a stand. I’m canceling. ’” ”The law is ugly and hostile, as far as I’m concerned,” said the violinist, who was born in Israel in 1945 and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2015. ”I feel that it is discriminatory  —   and it’s not just about bathrooms. It’s about dignity, like [U. S. Attorney General] Loretta Lynch said. I’ve been an advocate of equality for the disabled, and this is just another situation in which this is the subject. We are dealing with the equality and dignity of citizens.” Perlman has also published a statement on his Facebook page, in which he links his opposition to the North Carolina bill with his own work and experiences as a person with and activist for those with physical disabilities. (Perlman contracted polio as a young child, and uses crutches and a motorized scooter.) Linda Charlton, the orchestra’s vice president for marketing and audience development, sent NPR an emailed statement that reads in full: ”The North Carolina Symphony welcomes all people with our hearts and minds open, and we are honored to share our   with everyone. However, as a   organization our performances are not an appropriate forum for political commentary.” Charlton did not respond to NPR’s questions about links between Perlman’s proposed statement and the state funding that the orchestra receives, or about discussions with Perlman about putting a flier with his statement in the concert program. According to the symphony’s published materials, they received 26 percent of their funding in 2015 from the state of North Carolina, which is split between recurring and   monies. (The state has provided funding to the orchestra since 1943.) In response to the orchestra’s written statement, Perlman replies: ”The orchestra cannot say that they are  . How can they say that? They’re getting help from the state. And the state is very partisan. That’s a little bit inaccurate. They’re caught in the middle here, but they are very concerned about their support from the state. I don’t blame them, and the orchestra is not at fault, but that is the fact.” The    violinist says that at other points in his career, he has refused other engagements on ethical and political grounds, pointing to two specific examples: He says he declined to play in South Africa due to the apartheid regime, and turned down opportunities to play and record with the renowned Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, who had been a member of the Nazi Party. ”It’s about a willingness to live with a decision  —   how are you going to feel about it in 10 years?” Perlman said. ”I just couldn’t do it.” Perlman says he wrestled with what his cancellation would mean for the North Carolina Symphony musicians with whom he would have been performing. It is a different and more locally collaborative process than that of a musician such as Bruce Springsteen, who canceled a North Carolina concert in April, and who tours with his own band. Perlman directed a message to the members of the orchestra. ”I’m sorry,” he said. ”I really think they are caught in the middle of this ugly period. All I can say is that my thoughts were very pure on this matter. I was going to come and play, even though it was a bittersweet decision. But once I was being told by the state that I cannot really express my opinion  —   which I’m sure some of you share  —   I unfortunately had to cancel. ”I’m hoping that if the law is repealed, and of course if you still want me, if I’m invited again, we’ll be able to play together in the future. But under these circumstances, I just cannot do that. I’d like to tell them that I’m really sorry for any pain that I’ve caused, but that I felt that I simply have to take a stand, and this is the only way I could do it.”"
"Corinne Bailey Rae has traveled great distances in her music. The UK singer’s   debut album came out 10 years ago all sunshiny pop, it was a huge hit. Her second album, The Sea took an emotional turn, coming shortly after her husband of seven years died suddenly. Rae was 29. Now, Rae has released her third album, The Heart Speaks in Whispers. She spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about how her latest songs reflect her experiences with loss, transformation and newfound love. You can hear their conversation at the audio link, or read on for an edited version. Ari Shapiro: Let’s talk about the song ”Stop Where You Are.” You’ve got this lyric, ”Lying in the dark, your seeds will grow   Miracles just like a winter rose.”  Corinne Bailey Rae: That song really came about through thinking about nature, and the things that nature tells us. You know, I think that nature has such a powerful message about moving from dark to light, and bitterness to sweetness. I love the idea of the winter rose that’s sort of sleeping underneath the soil. Underneath all the snow is this plant that was growing and developing and could present itself as this beautiful flower in this time where everything else around it is very barren. And like the flower, the song bursts out.  Yeah, I love the way that the song develops. I wanted it to start off really intimate. You know, the song is about how it’s really important to be in the moment and be present. I’ve learned to do it more and more, I guess, as I’ve just gotten to sort of how rich life can be, and how fragile life can be as well. What is it that has taught you those lessons? And what is it that pulls you away from the present moment? I think that I’ve learned a lot in the last few years about the fragility of life. You know, losing my husband in 2008, that was a completely unexpected thing. And that process of grief and mourning that has taught me a lot about life, and how we never know how long we have. I think that every day should be savored, and so a lot of ”Stop Where You Are” comes out of that idea that life is really precious, the people around us are precious, and every single moment is worth celebrating. This idea of transition from darkness to light, from bitterness to sweetness, seems to come up in song after song on this album  —   for example, the song ”Caramel.” For me, that song was amazing because I felt like so much of it came through in this really subconscious way. I was playing my guitar and that first line, ”It isn’t love, but pain, that makes you brave”  —   I had no intention of singing that. I hadn’t written it down. But as I played my guitar, this phrase just came out. And I was able to look at it and think, ”What does this mean?” and realize I was writing a song about transformation and renewal. I love that image of caramel  —   and how, if you’ve only been tasting bitter things, exactly how sweet something like that tastes to you. And the idea of feeling that love was a possible thing  —   I compare it in the song to dawn, and the idea of the sun slowly coming up. I think that’s really what that transformation time has been about for me: that it’s been a very gradual process, but how, when that sun does finally come up, it appears to be so bright. When you finally taste the sweetness, it appears to be so sweet. It’s so thrown into relief because of what you’ve experienced. Even in what sounds like the most poppy, upbeat track on the album, ”Tell Me,” there’s this idea: ”There will be heartbreaks and blue skies   But feel it all, walk tall, don’t close your eyes.” Like, just get through it and you will emerge. That’s a really important thing for me, the idea of telling young people there will be blue skies and there will be heartbreak. I think that it’s really important for young people to know that life is not expecting it always to be this kind of sunshiny, easy thing, but [rather] being able to sort of roll with it and be pushed around by it and be able to survive it, and know when you have to hide, and when you have to sort of hunker down, and when you can  . And you can speak with credibility about coming through darkness because you have not only experienced the darkness, but you’ve fallen in love again. You are married now to your longtime producer. That’s true! Steve [Brown] and I got married three years ago. The amazing thing for me was that I never really thought I would be able to experience love again in this sort of uncomplicated way. And it was even more incredible for me that it was someone I had known for a long time and been friends with for a very long time. It’s been really a great joy in my life to find this relationship with him. You know, a big theme of the record, for me, is hope. And the reason I say a big theme of the record for me is because I feel like the album has been making itself known to me. I haven’t sort of sat down and thought, ”These are the themes, these are the ideas, these are the songs.” I really feel that just in being still and being quiet and letting the songs kind of float in, it’s really been this   thing for me  —   almost like a process of waking up."
"For the first time, one of the missing Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram has been found and reunited with her family, according to news reports. More than 270 girls were abducted in Nigeria in April 2014, sparking worldwide outrage. During and immediately after the abduction, some girls escaped  —   including one who spoke to NPR’s All Things Considered last month about her journey from captive to U. S. college student. But 219 remained missing. There have been occasional claims of rescued or discovered captives, including a teenager who surrendered to authorities in Cameroon in March, but none have been confirmed. Last month, on the second anniversary of the abduction, CNN aired a video it said showed that some of the kidnapped girls were still alive. And now, news reports say one of the captives has been found. The Associated Press says the    woman was ”wandering near the Sambisa Forest” in northeastern Nigeria when hunters came across her. She had a baby with her and was severely traumatized, according to her uncle. She’s been reunited with her mother, the AP reports. Army spokesman Sani Usman confirmed that one of the schoolgirls had been found, claiming the rescue was performed jointly by the military and a civilian vigilante group, according to Reuters. The young woman reportedly said some of the Chibok abductees have died but that many remain alive in Boko Haram captivity. NPR’s Ofeibea   reporting from Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria, says the Sambisa forest is a former stronghold of Boko Haram. The purported return of a Chibok abductee is raising hopes that the Nigerian military might be able to locate and rescue more of the missing girls. Ofeibea says the families of the 219 missing girls have been ”living through desperation and anxiety for the past two years.” ”Don’t forget that Boko Haram said at the time that these schoolgirls had been sold off as slaves to Boko Haram militants, had been converted to Islam and that they would never be seen again,” she says. ”So the families have been desperate for news of these girls for the past two years and one month.” Ofeibea also reminded us of why the abduction of these schoolgirls made headlines around the world, prompting a social media campaign called #BringBackOurGirls. ”It was in the dead of night, from their dorms. They were just about to sit exams,” she says. ”And many people have described these young women  —   girls, between the ages of about 13 and 18  —   as the cream of the cream. They were waiting to take exams, they had their future ahead of them, and suddenly they were disappeared, abducted, kidnapped. . .. It really touched the world consciousness. ”It’s not that girls had not been abducted before by Boko Haram in Nigeria  —   or since. Hundreds have. But the fact that it was so many . .. in this dramatic mass abduction . .. many, many people were outraged and they said something must be done about it. And it called attention to the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria,” Ofeibea says. It’s estimated that thousands of women and children have been kidnapped by Boko Haram. Some captives are used in bombing attacks. Many who escape  —   after suffering violence, sexual assault and other traumas  —   face fear and hostility when they return to their communities, because of the stigma of bearing the children of militants or the worry that they may have been brainwashed. According to a report by The Global Terrorism Index, Boko Haram was the deadliest terrorist group in the world in 2014."
"Kenya Barris, creator and showrunner of the ABC comedy series   wasn’t raised in the same privileged world as his own children. Instead, he grew up in a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles. But after his father was injured on the job, Barris’ family received money through a legal settlement and they were able to move to a different part of town. Now he’s a successful Hollywood writer who is married to an anesthesiologist, but he sometimes worries that his five kids have too many advantages. ”You’re taught to give your kids more, but in giving them more, what do they lose?” Barris tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ”That sort of was the conceit and premise of [ ].” Barris’ show tells the story of Andre ”Dre” Johnson Sr. an   man who grew up poor but now works as an advertising executive. Dre lives in a predominantly white suburb with his wife, who’s a doctor, and their four children. He thinks his privileged children are becoming too assimilated  —   ” ” instead of black  —   so he tries to teach them about black culture. Barris says the premise is based on his own family’s experience. ”I wanted to be honest with what it’s like sort of raising your kids in a different environment than you were accustomed to being raised in,” he says. ”My kids are nothing like I remember black kids being when I was a kid.” On his family’s   class changing when he was young, My father lost a lung in a chemical accident at General Motors, and after a while he got a settlement that sort of changed all of our lives and moved us from, what we say, ”ashy to classy,” in some aspects. At the same time, my mother had gotten her real estate license and she was really, really entrepreneurial and started selling real estate and her life sort of changed around that same time. . .. My sister and brother had started going to college . .. and all of a sudden we went from one segment of the   ladder, and we sort of went up a rung. And it was around the time for me, where I was just old enough to see really both sides, and it really influenced who I am. On comparing his generation’s approach to protesting with that of his kids, My mom went through civil rights my dad went through civil rights. My name was Kenya because they wanted to give me an African name. Subsequently, my generation sort of took more of . .. an intellectual sort of revolutionary approach. There was Public Enemy and The Autobiography of Malcolm X exploded there was the Malcolm X movie there was Spike Lee. We sort of became more of philosophical revolutionaries. Now, my kids and their generation . .. [when the] Trayvon Martin incident happened and my daughter came in and I was like, ”How do you feel about this?” and she was like, ”We’re really upset. Kids I know are protesting.” I’m like, ”That’s awesome. What are you doing?” And she said, ”Look, we’re doing it on Instagram.” And she shows me this Instagram picture and it’s just a black frame . .. and I’m like, ”OK, so where’s the protest?” She’s like, ”This is it. Look how many people are putting black on their Instagram.” I realized, this must be the most   protest I’ve ever seen in my life. I was like, ”I can’t get a small trash can fire? I don’t know, like, anything?” It really showed me the generational difference. On how his son views Barack Obama’s presidency, There was a moment in the pilot . .. where [Dre’s son] Jack didn’t know that Obama was the first black president. That really happened to me in my life. We were actually walking through the Atlanta airport when the inauguration was going on and people were crying and this and that and my son didn’t quite understand what was happening. We had to explain, ”It’s the first time  —   the first black president.” He’s like, ”He’s the first black president?” Years later, we had the conversation when he was a little bit older and we’re like, ”Remember that he was the first black president. That’s why those people were crying.” He’s like, ”Oh, I forgot about that.” I’m like, ”How could you forget about that?” And we realized, that’s the only president he’s ever known. And for him, a president is black. . .. There’s something sort of really nice about that, and there’s also something sort of  —   for who I am  —   a little scary, because I want him to know how big of an accomplishment that is for the country, not just for our people. . .. I don’t know if he gets the context. On the   I think it is one of the most divisive, densely discoursed, just polarizing words in American history. I think a lot of things around that word are what this country [was] based on, and I feel like, as a writer, I believe our words are powerful. But I do believe that . .. anything that has power, it means it has growth, and in having growth it can evolve, and I think that word has evolved. . .. Obviously there’s the ”er” and the ”ah” . .. but I feel like the word is sort of a tribal badge. . .. My generation . .. we took the disdainful indictment that my mom’s generation would use it in  —   because of how it was said to the generations before her  —   we took that away from it and we made it a badge of tribalism between two members of that tribe: To say . .. ”Look, I know that you’re a part of this tribe and we have some shared heritage, whether I know you or not.” On deciding to bleep the   on the show, One of the most interesting conversations that happened with ABC was around this episode, and . .. they were going to let us say it. They were going to let us see how many we could say. There was a debate. We had literally  —   I call it a ”n***ah negotiation” or ”  negotiation,” because it was like, ”I’ll give you two  .” . .. What we ended up doing  —   and I’m so glad my partner Jonathan Groff always comes from the scientific method way of doing things  —   we went and did an experiment. . .. There’s nothing like being around a group of white people, and when two dudes are just saying it you just see them just cringing and tensing up or whatever. . .. We played it with and without. We felt that without the beep limited our access points, limited our entry points for comedic accessibility. We felt like you were going to be so cringed every time the word was said that you were not going to be able to really hear it. The beep made it louder and funnier. On being influenced by TV writer and producer Norman Lear, of All in the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Maude and Sanford and Son, I am what I am as a writer because of Norman Lear and Spike Lee. Norman Lear in particular. I feel like Norman had this amazing ability to have the foresight to talk about real things at a time when they needed to be talked about. For some reason, television went through this amazing hibernation of not talking about things. [The Evans family, from Good Times] in particular affected me, and it affected my family and it affected other families that didn’t look like my family. It really showed that at the core  —   rich or poor  —   family is about love and about sticking together. And I think that that is one of those specific universalities that really influenced and informed what my show does."
"Researchers in Arizona are fighting fire with fire. They’re collecting new data on a wasp that may help slow the spread of citrus greening, a plant disease that has devastated millions of acres of citrus crops, particularly in Florida. The disease is spread by the Asian citrus psyllid, an insect which is no bigger than the head of a pin. The psyllid feeds on citrus trees and carries in its gut the bacteria that cause greening. Leaves become twisted and fruit becomes withered and unusable. Once a tree is infected, there is no cure. Eventually, it dies. The parasitic wasp, Tamarixia Radiata, is a predator of the Asian citrus psyllid. The wasps are so tiny that scientists can ship 200 of them in a vial about the size of a photo film canister. Bobby Baker, a technician with the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been receiving weekly shipments of the vials. ”They arrive in a cooler, and they’re chilled . .. so it keeps them dormant,” Baker says. The insects come from Pakistan. They are reared in a University of   laboratory and sent to Baker. He and an Arizona Department of Agriculture inspector release the wasps at sites in Yuma and Mohave counties. ”We’re lucky because here in Yuma County . .. we have not found the disease yet,” Baker said. The Asian citrus psyllid resides in parts of Arizona, but not the disease. Citrus quarantines are in place in seven of the state’s counties to prevent the spread of the insect. But greening has been discovered just next door in residential trees in California. The disease has already wreaked havoc upon the $10 billion citrus industry in Florida, where scientists are trying to produce   trees through conventional breeding. The problem is that these trees will require years of testing. So researchers are looking in several directions for solutions, and each piece may help the larger effort to find a remedy for the disease. Greg Simmons, a USDA entomologist, is the project leader tasked to find biological control agents for the Asian citrus psyllid in Arizona. ”It’s a field . .. we call classical biocontrol, where we try to establish a new agent in the environment and sort of reunite a natural enemy with its pest species that it has evolved to attack,” Simmons said. Tamarixia only attacks the Asian citrus psyllid, something known as  . A parasitic wasp finds a host and lays eggs inside its body. When the eggs hatch, new wasps emerge and kill the host as they exit. The goal is for the wasps to remain in the environment as long as the Asian citrus psyllid is around. The Arizona Department of Agriculture and USDA are monitoring the entire state to find psyllids and respond to any new infestations. ”We think hot summers in the Yuma area probably limit the psyllid population a little bit,” Simmons says, but he adds that the pest can reproduce well in spring and fall, and in cooler microclimates. This means the insect still poses a risk to the citrus industry and backyard citrus in Arizona. The experimental trees for the trials in Yuma County are all located in residential areas  —   with permission from homeowners. And the wasps have already established populations at other Arizona sites. It’s spring, and new tree growth attracts the psyllid. ”This would be an ideal place for them, right here,” Baker said. ”This new growth is like perfect territory for them.” So far, there is feeding damage but no psyllids. Baker said the tiny wasps can spot their prey better than we can. This story comes to us via NPR’s Here  Now. A version first aired on member station KAWC."
"Single mothers, untenured professors, young reporters and   doctors might have a thin silver lining for their hurried days and response for the people who insist on slowing down: All that hustling may translate into superior brain power as you get older, as a study finds that the busiest people perform best on cognitive tests. Sara Festini, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas, Dallas, and her adviser, Denise Park, published the study in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on Tuesday. They tested over 300 people between the ages of 50 and 89 on cognitive functions including memory, reasoning and mental quickness. These same people also answered questionnaires on their busyness. ”These are   data,” Park says. ”People who tend to report chronic busyness tend to report it as a stress. Like ’Oh God, I’m just so busy.’ If you’re chronically busy and dumping stress hormones into your body, that could be bad for your cognition.” Festini and Park at first imagined that the harried, mentally taxed among us could be wearing our minds away. ”[They’d] end up with worse cognition,” Festini says. But on every test, those who had fuller days and less time on their hands outperformed those who were less busy. ”We were somewhat surprised, I have to be honest,” Park says. Instead, the busier the individual, the higher he seemed to score. It’s possible, the researchers hypothesized, that the daily workout of completing task after task is building our brains up and improving mental skills. That performance gap between the busy and the free seemed to be wider among older participants too, ”which is particularly exciting,” Park says. If those with crammed schedules have sharper minds, then staying active in old age could protect against dementia. Past research has shown that this might be the case, and that includes not just mental effort but physical exertion. Park has done research in the past suggesting that engaging in new, mentally difficult tasks does seem to improve certain cognitive functions. Still, Festini and Park are hesitant to say busyness equals staying mentally sharp. ”It could be that people become slowly less busy over their lifetime as dementia [sets in],” Park says. That would make less busyness a consequence of failing cognition, not the other way around. Or it could be that those who are ”better endowed cognitively are more likely to take on more roles and tasks,” Margie Lachman, a cognitive psychologist at Brandeis University who was not involved in the work, writes in an email to Shots. But she also thinks the study has a promising and rather sanguine hypothesis. ”Ironically, I am too busy,” she joked in one email. ”At least my cognition [may] benefit.” But Park doesn’t want to paint a rosy picture of the chronically busy or stressed. It’s possible the busiest among us will still suffer. ”Maybe those people are experiencing some negative effects from a lifetime of busyness. We haven’t looked at that,” she says. This study is one of only very few on how busyness might affect our health, Park says. Even if the hypothesis that staying busy keeps the brain honed is true, a hurried life could carry less positive consequences for our hearts and metabolisms."
"Apparently, Americans are tired of taking ”staycations.” During the Great Recession, when layoffs and foreclosures were hitting hard, millions of people stayed home for summer vacation. Air travel fell off dramatically. Now, with jobs growing and wages rising, record numbers of passengers are booking flights. Airlines for America, the trade group for major carriers known as A4A, on Wednesday predicted that 231. 1 million passengers will board U. S. airlines between June 1 and Aug. 31  —   a 4 percent increase from last summer’s record number. That means airlines are planning to transport about 30 million more passengers than in summer of 2009, during the depths of the recession. Not only is the improved U. S. economy helping more people afford vacation travel, but a 28. 9 percent drop in fuel costs is enabling the industry to restrain fares despite higher labor costs. A4A says that collectively, airline revenue was flat during the first three months of this year, with a 6. 7 percent decline in fares offsetting the 6. 2 percent growth in traffic. To help accommodate the increased number of people wanting to fly, airlines will be offering 109, 400 more seats compared with last summer, bringing the total to 2. 78 million seats a day, A4A says. ”We saw airfares fall throughout 2015 and that trend continued in the first three months of 2016,” A4A economist John Heimlich said in a statement. All of that sounds rosy for travelers, but there’s one big thorn that might hurt: long wait times at airport security checkpoints. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson held a news conference to offer assurances that the government is trying to fix the problem of too few checkpoint workers. ”Waiting three hours for what may be a   flight or   flight is not acceptable,” he said. On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the Transportation Security Administration is sending more security officers and authorizing more overtime pay to help relieve the hyperlong lines at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. A4A has launched www. ihatethewait. com, a website to encourage passengers to tweet about their airport lines and send complaints to @AskTSA. The goal is to pressure the TSA, Congress and the White House to take more action to relieve long lines. During a teleconference with journalists, A4A officials were asked whether lowering airline baggage fees might encourage passengers to haul fewer   through TSA checkpoints. The answer: ”There is no relationship” between steep bag fees and passengers trying to push bulging   through security. Pro Tip for Travelers: Avoid flying on Fridays in June and July. A4A says those will be the busiest travel days."
"Before I had a child, I only occasionally set foot in the many parks in our neighborhood. Now I spend so much time in them that I can tell you about every swing set, picnic table and unfenced patch of grass within a   radius. Also the location and cleanliness quotient of every park restroom. A study published Wednesday finds my own relationship with parks is part of a larger trend: Urban parks in the U. S. are largely geared toward the young, with far less appeal for adults, especially older ones. And that leaves on the table a big opportunity to use parks as a way to increase physical activity. ”You’d think that seniors would be retired and would have more time” to go to the park, but ”they’re not using the parks very much,” says Deborah Cohen, a senior natural scientist at RAND and lead author of the study, which was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Adults ages 60 and up made up only 4 percent of   even though they’re 20 percent of the population. While the potential health benefits of public parks have been cataloged, there’s been less research on describing the nation’s park infrastructure. Researchers at RAND Corp. wanted to get an idea of what’s currently on the ground in cities with a population of more than 100, 000. So they sent data collectors into 174 parks in 25 major cities, asking them to describe the facilities and conditions, and the demographics of users during a typical week during the spring or summer of 2014. Parks, of course, varied from neighborhood to neighborhood. But looking across the entire survey sample, almost all had lawns and play areas. About half had outdoor basketball courts and baseball fields. But just 29 percent had a walking loop, and the percentage of parks with a dedicated exercise area or fitness zone was in the single digits. Those basketball courts and swing sets are also the ones more likely to be used by kids and teens, so it’s not a surprise that 38 percent of park users were children and 13 percent teens, though those demographic groups represent 20 percent and 7 percent of the U. S. population. Breaking that down by gender, boys accounted for 60 percent of the time children spent on moderate to vigorous physical activity in the parks. Among teens, that figure was 68 percent. Cohen says that disparity may be explained by a greater participation in   team sports like   and basketball by males. Overall, 57 percent of park users were male. There were also disparities in use by neighborhood income, with parks in   areas used less than in   ones, even though facilities were similar. Parks represent an efficient,   way to improve public health, researchers say. ”If you give people convenient, safe access to park space where they can do physical activity, they’re more likely to do it,” says Ross Brownson, a professor of epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis. Parks also may offer a mental health benefit by exposing people to nature. So how to attract more users? Provide more facilities aimed at older folks and people of all ages, for one. For example, localities are increasingly promoting the intergenerational use of parks by adding walking trails around playgrounds and ball fields, so parents can keep an eye on their kids while getting some exercise for themselves, says Andrew Mowen, a professor of recreation, park and tourism management at Penn State University. The study found that more supervised activities like classes or organized sports and more marketing via banners and signs were associated with more hours of moderate to vigorous physical exercise in the parks. Brownson said it’s important to target that to what’s popular in a given community. ”If it’s soccer, animals, hunting and fishing, scenic beauty,” park administrators need to tailor programs and outreach accordingly, he says. Katherine Hobson is a freelance health and science writer based in Brooklyn, N. Y. She’s on Twitter: @katherinehobson"
"He’s sitting up, staring straight at the camera, gripping the bars that hold him in. On the ground before him, recent newspapers are visible. The message needs no translation: This panda’s not dead. The ”  ” photo was posted by the Taipei Zoo, following Chinese media reports that    Tuan Tuan had died of distemper. The zoo wrote in the posting, ”Do not listen to Internet rumors, concerned friends,” according to a translation by the news site Asian Correspondent. The Chinese newspapers that erroneously reported on Tuan Tuan’s death  —   including The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece for the Communist Party  —   have apologized, the BBC reports. The Associated Press explains that this isn’t just about pandas. It’s a delicate diplomatic situation: ”Giant pandas exist only in China and Beijing has often used overseas gifts of the animals to make political statements about its relationship with other governments. Beijing claims the   island of Taiwan as its own territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary. ”Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, whose combined names translate as ”Reunion,” were sent by Beijing to Taiwan in December 2008 following the election of   President Ma   as the island’s leader. ”The rumors of Tuan Tuan’s death came just days before the inauguration of Ma’s successor, Tsai   whose party formally supports Taiwan’s formal independence from China.”"
"When someone tags you in a photo on Facebook, it’s often a nice reminder of a shared memory. It lets your whole social network see what you’ve been up to or where you’ve been. Well, to three men from Illinois, this feature takes on a much more sinister capacity. They argue that when someone tags you in a photo on Facebook without your consent, Facebook is breaking the law  —   and a federal judge has allowed the case to proceed. Facebook is hardly the only facial recognition technology that exists, but this company in particular is being challenged because its capabilities are so powerful. In Europe and Canada this month, privacy advocates won a victory when Facebook launched its photo app, Moments, without facial recognition scanning. ”There are more [facial recognition] algorithms and techniques than there are companies,” says Jonathan Frankle, staff technologist at the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology. But with its huge database of images, Facebook’s algorithm has a leg up on most others in that it is constantly being taught how to improve. Every time you tag a photo, you’re adding to an enormous,   wealth of knowledge and data. Every time one of its 1. 65 billion users uploads a photo to Facebook and tags someone, that person is helping the facial recognition algorithm. The tag shows the algorithm what someone looks like from different angles and in different lights, Frankle says. If you give Facebook a face to identify, it has fewer photos to parse through, because it’s only looking at photos of you and your friends. Facebook, according to the company, is able to accurately identify a person 98 percent of the time. Compare that with the FBI’s facial recognition technology, Next Generation Identification, which according to the FBI, identifies the correct person in the list of the top 50 people only 85 percent of the time. Facial recognition in the Google Photos app is prone to error as well  —   the company came under fire last year when its system tagged two   as gorillas. Part of why the FBI’s technology has such a large margin of error is that its database usually only has a photo taken straight on  —   a mug shot, or in several states, a driver’s license photo. The software has to look through a huge database to find a match, and each photo is often of a different person. Grainy security footage can be problematic. ”It’s much harder for face recognition to work when you’re trying to identify one person from a very large database versus one from a very small database, which is what Facebook is doing,” says Jennifer Lynch, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Another reason Facebook is a target for privacy advocates is that its database  —   so carefully updated and tended  —   is tempting to the FBI. Law enforcement officials can issue a warrant for any information available on Facebook, including tagged photos. ”The FBI has said publicly that they do not put these photographs in the facial recognition database, but there is nothing in the law to prevent them from doing that,” Lynch says. Be careful about conspiracy theory rabbit holes, though. ”People don’t have a good intuition for what is and isn’t possible,” Frankle says. ”And a lot of times until you’ve written code and tried to do this yourself it’s hard to have a real visceral sense for just how hard some of this stuff is.” So next time you tag a friend on Facebook, go ahead  —   just remember that you’re helping to train one of the most powerful facial recognition systems in the world."
"In a dimly lit hut made of mud and straw, a shaft of sunlight slices through a hole in the ceiling and lands on a bag of rice. Debendra Tarek, 80, pulls out a handful of the rough brown grains and holds them up to the beam of light. His bare chest is sunken, and his eyes glow deep in their sockets. ”This resists the saltwater,” the village elder explains through an interpreter. This variety of rice, he says, allows his family to remain here on Ghoramara, the island where they were born. Ghoramara is one of thousands of islands that make up the largest mangrove forest in the world. It is part of the Sundarbans  —   a delta on India’s eastern border with Bangladesh, where three major rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal. This is tidal country, where land disappears and reappears as waters rise and fall each day. Lately, noncyclical change is reshaping this landscape in unfamiliar ways. Rising waters tear chunks out of the landscape. Islands disappear and don’t return. Ghoramara has lost half its land mass since 1969, according to researchers at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India. Sugata Hazra runs the university’s School of Oceanography Studies. Hazra says the island has shrunk from 8. 5 square kilometers in 1969 to just 4. 3 kilometers in 2014. Ghoramara used to be home to 40, 000 people. Today, most have been forced to leave. They’ve become climate refugees. Tarek and his family are among the 3, 500 people who remain. Many of the 4 million people who live in the Sundarbans are poor subsistence farmers like Tarek. Rice is the staple crop, and growing it requires abundant fresh water. In a rice paddy, the brackish water that surrounds these islands can be devastating. ”When floodwater would enter the fields, it would destroy the entire crop,” Tarek tells me. It might be three to five years until a rice paddy can be planted again. In Kolkata, about 60 miles north of Ghoramara, Asish Ghosh understands that climate change could cause rice paddies to flood with saltwater more frequently, making Tarek’s problems worse. And he believes he can help. Ghosh is the founder of an environmental organization called ENDEV, The Society for Environment and Development. ”We used to grow 6, 000 varieties of rice” in the Indian state of West Bengal, Ghosh says. ”That is an incredible figure.” The problem is, 90 percent of those varieties have disappeared. Farmers no longer grow them, and nobody has saved the seeds. Still, Ghosh figured that some of the 600 remaining varieties must be  . His team called research facilities and universities, asking for the names of   rice varieties. They collected six names  —   but no samples. ”Where are you going to get them?” Ghosh recalls one researcher asking. ”He laughed at me over the phone.” The hunt was on. ”I was searching like a madman, writing emails to all possible places. To the national plant center, the national rice collection center,” says Ghosh. ”Then I called up an NGO in the Sundarbans I’d been working with. They searched out the oldest man they could find and asked whether he had any of these varieties.” After six months of scouring villages and research institutions, Ghosh procured seeds for five of the six   rice varieties. (It still bothers him that he can’t find the sixth.) In 2011, he gave small samples of the rice to farmers in the Sundarbans, along with careful instructions: ”Grow these for seeds. Don’t eat the rice. Save it.” There are places in the world where farmers have raised hardier crops thanks to technological innovation,   or other advanced scientific practices. This is not that kind of story. ”I am reviving traditional knowledge,” says Ghosh. Five years into the program, Ghosh says ”countless” farmers in the Sundarbans are now planting   rice. He has been recognized by the Nature Conservancy and other international organizations. And countries far from India have picked up the idea. Ghosh says he has presented at conferences with researchers who are planting   rice native to Tanzania, and he’s met scientists who have     potatoes in   parts of coastal Pakistan. This is not a   solution for the islands most affected by climate change. But   rice can provide a buffer for some of the most vulnerable people who might otherwise be ruined. On Ghoramara Island, it has given Tarek’s family a reprieve. They know the island is shrinking too quickly for them to stay another generation. But at least they can grow food while they remain. ”Everybody is using this rice now,” says Tarek. ”We even think it tastes better.”"
"Today, I want to riff on Sean Carroll’s stimulating contribution to 13. 7 this past weekend by bringing up a few open scientific questions that are particularly baffling. These are the kinds of questions that may not be answerable, which brings us to the complementary side of the fear of knowing  —   the fear of not knowing. How do we deal with questions that have no answers? They also play an essential part in our search for meaning, be it through the sciences, the arts and, of course, different modes of spiritual devotion. Let me first write down the challenges (possible unknowables) and then list what it would take to overcome them from a scientific perspective: This is just a sampler, as I covered some of these in my last book and revisit them in my upcoming book, The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected. Of course, the notion of an unknowable must be considered with care, given that what may seem unknowable today may become knowable tomorrow. However, at least for the examples above, this    transition would require very fundamental revolutions in our understanding of physical reality, such as the following: In one way or another, all these unknowables share one common characteristic, in that they require achieving some sort of total knowledge, an   explanation of a given physical   biological system from within: It is the     dilemma. How can we acquire an outsider’s view of a system that we belong to without compromising what we see? As we confront such questions, we are like the fish in a bowl. We can and should use our creativity and ingenuity to come up with possible scenarios that can give us at least a partial view of what lies ”outside” the bowl, a scaffolding that allows us to step out and look back in. But we should also realize that unanswerable questions are part of how we make sense of the world and learn from our limitations, without fear of not knowing all answers. Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist  —   and professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the   of 13. 7, a prolific author of papers and essays, and active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser"
"”This is an intolerable situation,” Sen. Lamar Alexander said last week in a heated speech on the Senate floor. The Tennessee Republican is chairman of the Senate’s education committee, and he is furious with the Education Department. He even gave states some remarkable advice: ”If the regulations are not consistent with the law, I don’t believe [states] should follow them,” he said. ”If the department persists, then the state should go to court to sue the department.” Things could get even more heated Wednesday as Alexander, himself a former education secretary, hosts a Senate hearing to spotlight his frustration with the current secretary, John B. King Jr. Why is he so angry? The easy answer: Title I. That’s the $15 billion the federal government sends to districts to help schools that serve lots of   students. But there’s nothing easy  —   or simple  —   about this fight. Alexander and King disagree on how to enforce the new law governing Title I. It says that to get federal money, districts have to prove a few things  —   among them, that they’re using state and local dollars to provide roughly the same services to kids in poor and   schools alike. ”Basically, schools within a school district have to be similar,” says Liz King, director of education policy at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. ”The idea here is that if they’re not similar, then these federal dollars are just going to fill in gaps.”  Everyone agrees that Title I dollars are not supposed to  . They’re meant to be extra  —   the technical term is ”supplemental”  —   for   kids who need them most. What the sides don’t agree on is how districts prove they’re not just filling gaps and that state and local resources are being spread fairly. The current system is not fair, says the Education Department’s King. ”What we see, as we look around the country, is districts where they’re actually spending significantly more in their   I schools than they’re spending in their Title I schools.” The Teacher Salary Gap, Nora Gordon, of Georgetown University, studies Title I and says much of that spending gap between poor and   schools comes from teacher salaries. ”  schools typically have more teacher turnover,” Gordon says. ”That means they have more novice teachers.” And novice teachers cost less. That matters because, believe it or not, most school budgets are based on staff positions instead of actual teacher salaries. To comply with the law, according to Alexander, districts have to show that all schools are getting their fair share of jobs, not dollars. As a result, schools may have similar   ratios, but   I schools often end up getting and spending more local and state money to pay for their more experienced teacher corps. The Education Department wants to change that. It is proposing a rule to require that districts prove their actual spending per student in poorer schools is equal to, or greater than, the average spent in   schools. But Alexander isn’t having it. He insists that Congress debated whether to address this   spending gap and chose not to. To him, the law is clear: ”You’ve got to be spending a comparable amount of money in schools that get the [Title I] money and schools that don’t  —   except teacher salaries may not be included in that computation. That is in the law.” A recent report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service appears to back Alexander, finding that ”a legal argument could be raised that ED exceeded its statutory authority.” Unintended Consequences, The Education Department’s plan also worries Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. ”We don’t want to hurt one school to help another school. We have to help all schools,” Weingarten says. Her concern is that unless districts and states find new money for their poorer schools (and our School Money series showed how rare that is) their less poor schools will  —   under the Education Department’s proposal  —   have to make cuts. That could mean losing valuable programs or even transferring some of those more experienced (and expensive) teachers. ”And if you know other kids are gonna get hurt by this, why would you do it?” Weingarten asks. In this way, the Title I fight pits pragmatism against principle. On one side are Weingarten and many of the nation’s school leaders, who say this attempt to level the playing field is   but would come at too high a cost to other kids and schools. In the opposite corner are the Education Department and advocates who argue: This is about protecting students’ civil rights. ”When is it ever OK to spend less money on the education of poor children than we spend on the education of   children?” Liz King asks. It’s a simple question. The answer is anything but."
"The cause isn’t yet known, but the loss of an Egyptian plane into the Mediterranean has already delivered a new round of trauma to a beleaguered country struggling on several fronts. President Abdel Fattah  ’s hardline rule faces mounting criticism at home and abroad. An   group is waging an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula. The tourist industry has been in the doldrums for years. And the EgyptAir plane that vanished early Thursday marked the country’s second aviation disaster in just over six months. Sissi’s strongest argument for his three years of tough rule has been delivering a modicum of stability in a region plagued by civil wars, struggling to absorb millions of refugees and confronting general chaos. But cumulatively, Egypt’s woes are now making the most populous Arab nation look increasingly shaky. ”Since his accession to power, President Abdel Fattah   has made decisions that are undermining both Egypt’s domestic stability and key American policy goals in the region,” Tamara Cofman Wittes, a former State Department official, now at the Brookings Institution, wrote recently.  Sweeping Crackdowns: Many activists say Sissi has proved even more repressive than the former president, Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in a popular uprising in 2011 after three decades of rule. President Sissi ”leads a country that remains in a human rights crisis,” according to Human Rights Watch. ”Authorities have effectively banned protests, imprisoned tens of thousands  —   often after unfair trials  —   and outlawed the country’s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood.” Nearly 500 people died in custody or were killed by security forces last year, according to the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence. The center, which has documented abuses by the security forces for more than two decades, is battling to remain open as the government moves to silence its critics. In the West, the case that’s drawn the most attention is that of Giulio Regeni, a    Italian graduate student whose body, with marks of torture, was found on the outskirts of Cairo in February. Italy has been highly critical of the Egyptian investigation, including the Egyptian claim that he was not detained by police. But Reuters, citing Egyptian security sources, reported recently that Regeni was in police custody shortly before his death. A Fragile Economy: Egypt’s long struggling economy now appears especially vulnerable, according to many economists. Egypt last month transferred two uninhabited Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, a move that came as Saudi Arabia’s visiting King Salman pledged a    aid package. Egypt said it was simply returning islands the Saudis had handed over in 1950, but many Egyptians didn’t buy it, taking to the streets and accusing Sissi of selling off Egyptian land for cash. Under Sissi, the economy ”has markedly deteriorated, precipitated by declining tourism and Suez Canal revenues, as well as a persistent Islamist insurgency led by ISIS,” David Schenker wrote earlier this week for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A big part of the problem is a   tourist industry that’s shriveled. Egypt used to host 15 million visitors a year, but the numbers dropped dramatically after the 2011 uprising and have been below 10 million a year since then. The broader Middle Eastern turmoil has scared away many Westerners. But Egyptians have contributed to the problem as well. Egyptian security forces fired on Mexican tourists last September, mistaking them for militants and killing 12 visitors and their guides. Tourism has been further depressed since Wilayat Sinai, an Islamist group linked to the Islamic State, claimed responsibility for blowing up a Russian charter plane filled with tourists last October. Relations With The U. S.: The U. S. is still providing $1. 3 billion in military aid to Egypt and has generally refrained from public criticism of its longtime ally. However, Samantha Power, the U. S. representative to the United Nations, last week put the Egyptian government on notice for its recent crackdown on the Egyptian media. ”Attacking the media will not produce a more compliant citizenry,” Power said at the U. N. Security Council. ”It will produce a more alienated, suspicious and disenfranchised public, one more likely to chafe under a government’s attempts at control, all to the benefit of terrorist groups.” Meanwhile, the U. S. military is particularly concerned about some 700 U. S. peacekeeping troops who have been stationed for decades in the northern Sinai Peninsula to monitor the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. While that treaty is still holding strong, the U. S. is worried the troops are vulnerable to attack by the   group, Wiliyat Sinai. ”Egypt’s looming instability demands that the United States take steps now to safeguard itself from reliance on a country we cannot rescue, not least from its own leaders’ worst impulses,” wrote Wittes, of the Brookings Institution. Greg Myre is the international editor of NPR. org. Follow him @gregmyre1."
"Updated 5:40 p. m. ET, EgyptAir’s Flight MS 804 disappeared during a flight from Paris to Cairo early Thursday morning with 66 people onboard. At one point it was reported that debris from the plane was found near the island of Karpathos. That finding has been retracted by EgyptAir Vice Chairman Ahmed Adel. ”We stand corrected,” he told CNN. The wreckage is ”not our aircraft.” The Associated Press reports that ”as night fell, the searchers had yet to find any confirmed debris.” The cause of the incident has not yet been determined. Here’s what we know about what happened: Egyptian President     released a statement saying the country will continue to search for debris and investigate the cause of the disappearance. The statement read, in part: ”The President gave directives to all relevant state authorities including the ministry of civil aviation and the armed forces’ search and rescue center, the navy and air force, to intensify search operations for the Egyptian aircraft and to take all measures necessary to locate the debris of the plane in collaboration and coordination with friendly countries.” ”Officials have been trying to avoid speculating about what happened,” NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports. ”Nothing has been ruled out as far as the cause.” The Paris prosecutor’s office announced it has opened an investigation into the flight’s disappearance, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports. Egypt, Greece, France, England, Cyprus and Italy all worked to search for the plane after it disappeared from radar, according to Egypt’s military spokesman. A U. S. Navy patrol aircraft has also joined the search, the Navy says. Egyptian authorities say search teams are continuing to work. Earlier in the day, families of the victims had been gathering at the Cairo airport to await news of their loved ones, NPR’s Emily Harris reports. ”My Egyptian colleague here spoke to one woman very briefly this morning who was coming out of an EgyptAir office with no information, talking about her daughter and wiping away tears,” Emily told Morning Edition by phone from the airport. ’We’re Not Ruling Out Any Hypothesis’ Egypt’s civil aviation minister emphasized how little was known about the cause of the plane’s disappearance in a press conference on Thursday. ”All we know is that a plane disappeared. We’re not ruling out any hypothesis,” Sherif Fathy said. He said a terrorist attack seems like a higher possibility than a technical issue but that both were being considered as potential explanations. Greece’s civil aviation department head Kostas Litserakis said air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot of MS 804 over the island of Kea, in what is believed to have been the last communication with the plane. ”The pilot did not mention any problems,” Litserakis said, according to Reuters. Radar contact with the plane was lost shortly after it transitioned from Greek airspace into Egyptian airspace, the Greek authorities say. The missing plane is an Airbus A320. NPR’s Russell Lewis tells our Newscast unit that the model has a very good safety record. Egypt’s National Security Council met to discuss the disappearance. In March, an EgyptAir flight was hijacked and made to fly to Cyprus by a man who was later described as ”psychologically unstable.” He remains in custody in Cyprus. About Thursday’s missing plane, The Associated Press reports: ”The incident renewed security concerns months after a Russian passenger plane was blown out of the sky over the Sinai Peninsula. The Russian plane crashed in Sinai on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people onboard. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and a local branch of the extremist Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for planting it.”"
"Despite badly lagging in the delegate count, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager told NPR the campaign believes Sanders can and will be the Democratic nominee by winning over superdelegates at the 11th hour. ”If we can substantially close the gap between Secretary Clinton and Sen. Sanders in terms of pledged delegates,” Jeff Weaver told NPR’s All Things Considered, ”he can go into the convention with a substantial momentum from having won the vast, vast majority of states at the end of the process.” It’s a sharp contrast from earlier in the campaign when Sanders supporters called superdelegates ”undemocratic” and petitioned for them to support the candidate who has the most votes by the Democratic convention this July. ”When they get to the convention,” Weaver continued, ”nobody has the delegates to win with pledged delegates. It’s going to be the superdelegates who are going to have to decide this.” Hillary Clinton is 90 delegates away from securing the nomination (including superdelegates). She is set to cross the threshold June 7 when six states vote, including California with a massive delegate haul of 475 pledged delegates. Clinton leads by 274 pledged delegates and 760 overall. Sanders currently has the support of 39 superdelegates, while more than 500 have said they will back Clinton. (See the count here.) ”Now we can argue about the merits of having superdelegates,” Weaver continued, ”but we do have them. And if their role is just to   the   count then they really aren’t needed. They’re supposed to exercise independent judgment about who they think can lead the party forward to victory.” Weaver added that superdelegates don’t vote until they actually go to the convention, and he considers their allegiances as movable as poll numbers. If by the convention Sanders has ”substantial momentum” and has substantially ”closed the gap” in pledged delegates, Weaver said, ”I think there’s a strong argument to be made to superdelegates that they should take another look.” Weaver also argued that because Sanders has won several late primary states, he would have momentum going into the convention. In 2008, Obama lost nine of the last 12 contests, but still left the primary season with a pledged delegate lead over Clinton. The Sanders campaign has had a rough week after chaos at the Nevada Democratic Convention stemming from Sanders supporters feeling they were being treated unfairly. Weaver insisted that was an isolated incident and that July’s national convention will be a ”peaceful, orderly process.” ”To the extent that we have events outside, I can guarantee they will be peaceful rallies, just like the senator is having all over the country,” Weaver said. ”Our events will be the same as they’ve always been  —   upbeat, positive and talking about transformative change in the country.”"
"The general election ads are already out, and it seems clear: This election will be fought out (and hard) on the airwaves. This week, a Democratic superPAC released two ads attacking Donald Trump on statements he has made about women. Here’s one: This election is also on track to be the most expensive ever. New data this week confirmed that the number of TV ads  —   one of the biggest costs of any political campaign  —   is a full 112 percent higher than at this point in 2012. Four hundred eighty thousand ads have aired thus far this election cycle. That’s according to a new report from the Wesleyan Media Project, which at one point characterized 2012 ad spending as ”pulverizing.” This year, twice the pulverization has already occurred than at this point last time around. So who’s spending it and what are they getting for their money? Wesleyan’s data shows that the   candidates are quite often not the   candidates. Here are four takeaways from the 2016 ad spending thus far: 1. Sanders has outspent everyone else, Bernie Sanders has spent more on TV ads than any other candidate in the election, and without the aid of mammoth superPACs. Fueled largely by small donors (guess how big the average donation was) Sanders aired nearly 125, 000 ads as of May 8. By comparison, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton spent about $11 million less, dropping $62. 6 million on 105, 000 ads. But then, she has earned more votes, so the gap between the two candidates widens when you look at how much Sanders spent per vote (using vote totals through May 3) versus Clinton and her allied groups. While he has spent about $8 per vote, she has spent about   less per vote, about $5. (The totals are approximate because Wesleyan’s figures are rounded and also because vote totals for some contests  —   namely, Democratic contests where delegates and not votes were counted  —   are estimates.) That doesn’t mean his ads didn’t ”work,” of course. Sanders wasn’t as well known as Clinton at the start of the race, so his ads had to do additional work  —   not only informing people of his positions but also simply letting people know who he was. 2. But the really fascinating disparities are on the Republican side, Any gap between Sanders and Clinton pales in comparison to what happened in the GOP race. That race has had 17 major candidates, many of whom ran aggressive campaigns, only to drop out after only a few votes were cast  —   or even before the primaries altogether. Because Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal both had a superPAC operation behind him and because he dropped out before any contests took place  —   his campaign dwarfs all of the ones Wesleyan lists, with about $17, 000 spent for each of the 222 votes officially cast for him (according to totals on election tracking site The Green Papers). OK, so he throws this all way off (and to be clear, it’s possible he had some   votes that Green Papers couldn’t have counted). So here’s a better look at how much the candidates spent per vote  —   that is, minus Jindal’s astronomical figure. Jindal is out there, yes, but he’s still in the same company as Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Lindsey Graham: three candidates who, with their supporters, amassed (and spent) millions but had few votes to show for it. 3. Ads (from superPACs in particular) don’t buy votes, Bush, Christie, Graham and Jindal are all similar in another way: The majority of their ads were bought through money from outside groups like superPACs  —   more than 90 percent of the money for Bush, Christie and Jindal’s ads came from outside groups, along with nearly 60 percent for Graham. The superPAC has certainly changed the campaign fundraising game, but money doesn’t buy votes  —   Jeb Bush and his megasized superPAC, Right to Rise, know that firsthand. Part of what’s behind seemingly ineffective ads is that advertising is an arms race: As long as your opponents are running ads, you have to, as well, just to keep up. It’s also true that ads may be losing their punch as Americans cut the cord and spend more time online. ”There is some evidence that more and more people are sort of turning off those [TV] ads,” Gregg Phillips, who ran Newt Gingrich’s 2012 superPAC, Winning Our Future, told NPR last year. ”The younger generation is going to be moved by a different type of ad. They’re going to be moved by some enterprising group on Reddit that has found a way to deliver a message rather than on a traditional format.” 4. Trump: winning by spending little, Amid all this spending, one candidate stands out by not standing out. We’ll give you a hint: We said up there that Trump had ”spent best”  —   by which we mean that he simply knew he didn’t need to spend that much at all. As of the May 3 contests, Donald Trump had spent about $2 on TV ads per vote  —   less than half of what any of his competitors have. Part of this is that he had less work to do than some of his opponents. He was already a household name in the U. S. while candidates like John Kasich and Scott Walker had to work to gain national name recognition. But then, it’s also true that Trump worked to get as much free media as he could, as one insider told Politico earlier this year: ”He said, ’I’m going to walk away with it and win it outright,’” a   New York political consultant recalled. ”Trump told us, ’I’m going to get in and all the polls are going to go crazy. I’m going to suck all the oxygen out of the room. I know how to work the media in a way that they will never take the lights off of me. ’” Indeed, by one estimate, he had received $2 billion in free media coverage as of March. 5. So much for #NeverTrump, That estimated $2 billion may be a big reason why the   ads didn’t seem to dent his support. Wesleyan estimates that the   forces spent $24. 2 million on TV ads  —   nearly $6 million more than the candidate himself spent."
"While Congress fidgets over whether and how to pay for the fight against the Zika virus, state and local health departments are scrambling and slimming down.  That’s because these   public health agencies have already seen their budgets chopped because of the debate.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April cut $44 million from its fund that helps state and local governments prepare for public health emergencies. It was part of the $589 million the White House moved from other programs  —   mostly money allocated for domestic and international responses to the Ebola virus  —   to combat Zika as it awaited action on Capitol Hill. New York City’s health department lost $1. 1 million in the deal. Marisa Raphael, the deputy commissioner in New York’s Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response, says she expects to have to cut jobs. ”We depend on this grant to create an infrastructure for our preparedness and our response,” Raphael tells Shots. ”That’s everything from our lab staff to our surveillance staff, so when we have this cut, that does immediately impact our capabilities.” New York isn’t unique. A survey of state and local health departments shows that many are struggling with the reduced funding. About a third of state health departments say they expect to lay people off, and the same number say they’ll likely eliminate training programs. The cuts will affect the kinds of things these departments normally do. ”A new measles outbreak? That’s the job of the health department to discover and to control,” says Thomas Inglesby, the CEO of the Center for Health Safety at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. ”Or a new mumps outbreak on a college campus, or a meningitis outbreak. That’s the     work of public health.” He says public health department budgets have been slashed over the past 10 years and they just don’t have excess resources or people that can be cut. ”If you take funding from local health department preparedness that means people are fired or labs can’t run the same way or disease surveillance has to stop,” he says. ”If we take people from those jobs to work on Zika, that will help with Zika, but that will hurt our other preparedness efforts.” President Obama in February made an emergency request of $1. 9 billion to combat the Zika virus. The money would be used for research into a new vaccine, treatments and tests for the disease as well as to study and track how it spreads and try to control the population of mosquitoes that carry the virus. Scientists agree that the Zika virus is linked to microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with undersized brains and skulls. It is also linked to several other types of birth defects, and to   syndrome in adults. The House of Representatives this week passed a bill allocating $622 million for Zika response, about a third of the president’s request. And all of the money comes from other programs. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers,  . argued at a recent markup that the emergency money was a stopgap until Congress could allocate more money as part of the regular budget process. The Senate is working on a separate bill that would provide $1. 1 billion in new money for the disease. Public health experts argue that three months is a long time to wait for what many say is an impending public health emergency. And since Zika is just the latest in a string of infectious disease threats, many public health experts want to create a standing fund for public health emergencies. Such a fund could operate like the one maintained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The agency can draw on it as needed in an emergency it would be replenished in the regular government budgeting process. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC, advocated for such a fund in recent weeks. ”The whole idea is to have funding available urgently when it is needed urgently,” says Melinda Moore, associate director of the Population Health Program at the Rand Corp. She says FEMA money is ”available as soon as it’s needed, right on the heels of a hurricane, a tornado, et cetera. Some of these outbreaks  —   and Zika is a good example  —   are nearly as urgent as that.” Inglesby agrees that an emergency fund would eliminate these repeated budget fights.   But for Zika that debate is too late, he says. Congress should allocate emergency money for Zika now and then treat is as a regular part of our public health landscape. ”Zika is the new normal,” Inglesby says. ”Zika is something we’re going to have to deal with not just this summer, but next summer and the summer after that.”"
"We’re facing a kind of food revolution, and my generation is driving it. Not so long ago, when   giants reigned supreme, takeout meant cheap, quick, greasy meals. But a recent Goldman Sachs report found that people under 35 are now demanding food that’s fresh and healthful  —   as well as fast. That’s good news for food entrepreneurs like Charley Wang. ”We don’t want something that everyone and anyone can have,” Wang says. ”We want something that has soul, that has personalization to it.” Wang is   of Josephine, an Oakland. Calif.  startup that connects home chefs in the San Francisco Bay Area looking to break into the food marketplace with folks in their neighborhood who are hungry for a good meal. Customers can go to Josephine’s website, choose from an array of   options, pay online and pick up dinner within minutes of placing their order. ”So it’s convenient, says Renee McGhee, 60, who has sold her homemade comfort food on Josephine. ”It’s like, here’s a business in your hand, run with it!” The company takes 10 percent of cooks’ revenue in exchange for access to the online ordering platform, community forum and marketing materials. McGhee’s pantry is piled high with paper containers, plastic lids and   bags  —   all provided by Josephine. Most of the cooks on Josephine, like McGhee, operate out of their home kitchens. But the company’s most popular meals come from an unexpected place: a   campus. Willard Middle School in Berkeley, Calif. is in its second year of partnering with Josephine to make and sell hundreds of meals every month  —   with some adult supervision. The   operation sells about 200 meals on one designated day each month in the week leading up to that day, you’ll see teachers preparing giant piles of vegetables from the school garden to be chopped by   and   . The partnership is a  . Josephine gets the kind of community credibility consumers want, while the school gets a cool learning opportunity and a   source of ongoing funding. The scheme has also taught Willard students a lot about the food business. The first massive meal the students made for Josephine customers definitely didn’t go as planned, recalls    Willard student Fae Rauber. ”We had rice we were making, and it all didn’t work,” she says. The students weren’t used to making rice on that scale and discovered shortly before mealtime that the batch didn’t cook properly and was inedible. ”So we had to go and buy rice, like half an hour before people started coming.” But despite mishaps, last school year Josephine’s partnership brought the school more than $30, 000 in revenue and accounted for 25 percent of Josephine’s new customers. Like other companies that are part of the   sharing economy, Josephine’s business model has put it at odds with industry regulators. Last month, the city of Berkeley’s Environmental Health Division sent several Josephine cooks  —   including McGhee  —   cease and desist orders for selling meals from their homes without a permit. ”The issue really is about food safety and being able to inspect how food is prepared,” said Matthai Chakko, a spokesman for the city of Berkeley. He says it’s not safe to buy food made in home kitchens because they aren’t inspected and usually don’t have the equipment you need to make food safely in mass quantities. Luckily, the kids at Willard Middle School have access to   kitchens that have the necessary permits  —   so they’re still in business. And the company says it is pushing to change California’s law regarding who can make and sell food. ”People were happy and pleased to come here and get their meals, and I think that’s their right,” McGhee says. But actually delivering on what makes consumers happy is something the   food industry is still figuring out. With pioneers like SpoonRocket, a startup that made and delivered inexpensive meals in about 10 minutes, going out of business, and other companies trying to stir up more regular use of their services by discounting meals and charging monthly membership fees, it seems that entrepreneurs are still working on getting the recipe right. This story was produced by Youth Radio as part of its series Fast Food Scramble with NPR’s Sonari Glinton. Don’t forget to check out the map of $5 meals sent in by listeners at YouthRadio. org."
"There was a time, in the late ’80s and early to  ’90s, when Shane Black was the   screenwriter in Hollywood  —   and one of the most widely resented, too. As a    film brat wunderkind, Black codified the buddy   with his script for Lethal Weapon, and a series of commercial hits and misses followed, including Lethal Weapon 2, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight. At the time, it seemed like Black was being paid to inject more vulgarity and smarm into the mainstream, but the dialogue in those scripts  —   fast, clever, literate, referential  —   suggested a voice tied as much to Old Hollywood and   fiction as the blockbuster trends of the day. After a decade in the wilderness, Black returned with an electric directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, that clarified his   sensibility better than anything he had written in the past. He still loved the   genre  —   the film’s throwback quality started with the casting of Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in the lead roles  —   but the sheer musicality of the writing, with its dextrous wit and nested conspiracies, evoked the   tradition of LA noir, from The Big Sleep to The Big Lebowski. Once tagged as an overpaid purveyor of Tinseltown trash, Black had emerged as a bridge between two genre traditions, the noir and the buddy picture, that had long since fallen out of favor. With The Nice Guys, his wildly entertaining new detective comedy, Black visits the   libertine Los Angeles of the   to late 1970s, a few years and a few miles removed from private eyes like Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye or Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice. Only, The Nice Guys doesn’t linger in the haze. It has the byzantine plot of an LA noir, but races through it with the breathless energy of Black’s other work. From a simple   case, the film opens up a    array of running jokes, ornate action set pieces, municipal schemes, and twists large and small. The only trouble is keeping up with it. Each sporting wrinkled clothes and sloppily managed facial hair, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe star as Holland March and Jackson Healy, respectively, a pair of    . A widower living in a rented house with his     daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice) Holland is the type of private detective who takes retainers without investigating anything. Jackson doesn’t have a PI license, but he ekes out a living as a    slipping on brass knuckles and slugging people for cash. The two men meet when Jackson is hired to beat up Holland, but they eventually team up to search for Amelia (Margaret Qualley) a rebellious young woman who has gotten herself mixed up in a criminal plot much larger than she can control. The porn industry, the Big Three automakers, and the Justice Department all have their roles to play. Black understands the mechanics of LA noir, which inevitably connect to City Hall like roots to a rotting tree, but the difference between The Nice Guys and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is that he loses the   and mostly plays the genre straight. But just because he doesn’t point out the cliches he is defying doesn’t mean he’s not defying them all the same. One of the pleasures of The Nice Guys is the countless small ways in which Black upends expectations, like emphasizing his heroes’ cravenness in the face of serious danger or pulling a twist on the familiar   shot of men jumping into a pool from a hotel balcony. Black knows every trick in the book and he assumes the audience does likewise. Gosling and Crowe are a winning team  —   one a flaky slacker, the other a dumb brute  —   but of the two, Gosling’s comic performance, on the heels of his   turn in The Big Short, is a knockabout delight. For all the liveliness of the dialogue, it’s Gosling’s physical shtick that pays the biggest dividends, from his hapless attempts to cover himself after Crowe confronts him in a bathroom stall to a   Lou Costello routine when he comes upon a dead body. And true of a many an LA sleuth, he presents himself as a lazy dope, but in crucial moments, proves to be considerably more sly than expected. The Nice Guys does likewise."
"We’ve all been caught in that hazy tug of war between wakefulness and sleep. But the biology behind how our brains drive us to sleep when we’re   hasn’t been entirely clear. For the first time scientists have identified the neurons in the brain that appear to control sleep drive, or the growing pressure we feel to sleep after being up for an extended period of time. The findings, published online Thursday by the journal Cell, could lead to better understanding of sleep disorders in humans. And perhaps, one day, if the work all pans out, better treatments for chronic insomnia could be developed. To explore which brain areas might be involved in sleep drive, Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Dr. Mark Wu and his colleagues turned to fruit flies, that    subject of scientific inquiry. Despite our rather obvious physical distinctions, humans and fruit flies  —   or Drosophila  —   have a good deal in common when it comes to genes, brain architecture and even behaviors. Included in the study were over 500 strains of fly, each with unique brain activation profiles (meaning certain circuits are more active in certain flies). By employing a genetic engineering technique in which specific groups of neurons can be activated with heat, the researchers were able to monitor the firing of nearly all the major circuits in the fruit fly brain and monitor the resulting effects on sleep. Moreover, the neurons of interest were engineered to glow green when activated allowing specific cells to be identified with fluorescent microscopy. Wu found that activating a group of cells called R2 neurons, which are found in a brain region known as the ellipsoid body, put fruit flies to sleep, even for hours after the neurons were ”turned off.” Next, using more generic tinkering, Wu engineered R2 neurons that can produce tetanus toxin in order to deactivate the cells by preventing the release of neurotransmitters (in other words cutting off communication with neighboring neurons). Flies that weren’t   but whose R2 neurons expressed the toxic compound slept their usual amount. However   flies  —   their lab vials were mechanically shaken through the night  —   also with silenced R2 neurons experienced, on average, 66 percent less rebound sleep. The authors took this to mean that the flies felt less tired following inadequate sleep. Cutting off R2 activity appeared to suppress sleep drive in the sleep deprived. ”We didn’t know circuits for sleep drive even existed,” Wu tells Shots in an email. ”If we can find the analogous circuits in humans, we might be able to induce more powerful and   changes in sleep or wakefulness in patients that suffer from severe pathologic sleepiness or severe insomnia.” As Wu explains, for years sleep has been primarily attributed to the release of chemicals involved in arousal and circadian rhythm control, namely adenosine and melatonin. And these compounds certainly appear to play a role in sleep. However once released they are transient scientists have wondered how then they contribute to prolonged sleep. By using a technology called synaptic tagging with recombination  —   or STaR  —   that allows for the communication between two neurons to be visualized in live animals, Wu’s group found that R2 neurons in   flies showed an increase in neurotransmitter release. The increased neuronal activity was still evident two hours after sleep disruption ended, possibly explaining how extended sleep is maintained. Following 24 hours of recovery sleep, the increased activity in R2 neurons subsided back to normal. ”The current view has been that the increase in sleep pressure with extended wakefulness is caused by an increase in the concentration of chemicals in the brain that induce sleep,” says Frank A. J. L. Scheer, a sleep scientist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. ”However, these chemicals typically have a short   on the order of minutes, while the buildup and dissipation of sleep pressure is on the order of hours,” he continues. ”[Dr. Wu’s] elegant study in fruit flies shows that homeostatic sleep pressure is partially encoded by changes in how well neurons are connected.” Scheer says the findings provide a new model of how sleep is regulated in the brain. Yet he does express some reservations. ”Whether and how it translates to the mammalian system, including humans, is currently unknown,” he cautions. Wu is upfront that applying his findings to humans is, for now, speculative. Still, the prospects are exciting. He envisions using   neuron stimulation much in the way deep brain stimulation is now used for movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. In other words, influencing neuronal activity with an implanted stimulator that monitors and controls sleep drive, boosting it or suppressing it as needed. It’s not hard to imagine the potential drawbacks of convincing the brain and body that they’re not tired when in fact they are. Normally our brains alert us to sleep for a reason: to rest our cellular machinery to restore energy reserves to consolidate memories. What would be the consequences  —   health or otherwise  —   of, say, an overly ambitious, overworked surgeon stifling her innate sleep drive? Given the early stages of this work, Wu doesn’t appear concerned. He believes that a better understanding of mechanisms behind sleep drive could in the future help doctors treat patients with an overactive desire to sleep. ”I envision that sleep drive treatments would be used in patients with very severe disease who are resistant to existing therapies,” he said. Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired, Scientific American and on The Atlantic. com. He graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2005. He’s also on Twitter: @BretStetka"
"Oklahoma lawmakers have passed a bill that makes performing an abortion a felony. NPR’s Jennifer Ludden told our Newscast unit that the bill is the first of its kind, and an   rights group plans to sue if the governor signs the bill into law. Gov. Mary Fallin has not yet indicated what she plans to do. Here’s more from Jennifer: ”Under the bill, doctors who perform an abortion could face three years in prison, and lose their medical license. There are no exceptions for rape or incest  —   only the mother’s life. Oklahoma lawmakers passed the measure with no debate. The only doctor in the Senate  —   a Republican  —   voted no, calling it ’insane.’ ” That doctor, Sen. Ervin Yen, predicted it would be ”declared null and void” should it be signed into law, The Oklahoman reported. As Jennifer reported, ”Abortion rights groups say the bill is unconstitutional, a direct violation of Roe v. Wade,” the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. According to The Associated Press, State Sen. Nathan Dahm, one of the bill’s authors, is hoping the law will be a step toward overturning Roe v. Wade. ”Since I believe life begins at conception, it should be protected, and I believe it’s a core function of state government to defend that life from the beginning of conception,” Dahm told the wire service. The Center for Reproductive Rights sent a letter to Fallin, who is a Republican, asking her to veto the bill. ”This measure is harmful, discriminatory, clearly unconstitutional, and insulting to Oklahoma women and their families,” the letter reads. The Center for Reproductive Rights has this recap of Fallin’s history with the issue: ”Since Governor Fallin took office in 2011, she has signed 18 bills restricting access to reproductive health care services, including a   clinic shutdown law, a ban on the most common method of second trimester abortion, unconstitutional restrictions on medication abortion, and a law that forces abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and display and describe the image. Each of these laws have been blocked by courts in fact, the Center for Reproductive Rights has challenged unconstitutional restrictions on reproductive health care in Oklahoma eight times in five years.” Thursday, the Senate voted   in favor of the bill, with three abstentions. Last month, Oklahoma’s House of Representatives voted   to approve the bill, with 33 abstentions."
"A team of scientists has developed ”robot flies” about the size of a quarter that can perch on almost any surface. The flies were developed at Harvard’s Microrobotics Laboratory, where researchers look to Mother Nature for design inspiration. For years, they have been working on   drones that could be deployed in groups. The drones could, in theory, be outfitted with cameras and provide multiple vantage points of a disaster, or link up to make an improvised communications network. The roboflies work, but they also suck up a lot of energy staying airborne. They currently get power from wires attached to the ground, according to a paper in the journal Science. To try and make the little robots more energy efficient, researchers have figured out how to make them perch on surfaces. Perching is up to a thousand times more   than hovering, the researchers say. Perfecting the perch could dramatically lengthen the time that roboflies can operate in the field. The perching works using static electricity. Each drone carries a tiny copper electrode on its head. When the electrode is energized, it creates a static charge that sticks the robot to a surface. Turning off the electrode sends the little drone back into the air. And it’s effective most of the time: Occasionally a drone misjudged the landing and fell helplessly to the ground."
"Nicholas Winton is often referred to as ”Britain’s Schindler.” He was a young British stockbroker when, in December 1938, he canceled a trip to go skiing in Switzerland, and instead went to visit a friend in Prague who was helping refugees fleeing from the Nazis. That visit changed his life  —   and the lives of many others. Winton went on to save 669 children, most of them Jewish, by arranging their safe passage to England from Czechoslovakia in the   to World War II. Many of the parents they left behind perished in Nazi concentration camps. Winton was knighted in 2003 and died last July, at age 106. In London on Thursday, some of those he saved  —   often called ”Winton’s Children” or ”Nicky’s Family”  —   are celebrating his life at a memorial. Among them is John Fieldsend, born Hans Heini Feige in Czechoslovakia in 1931. When he was a baby, his family moved to his father’s hometown of Dresden, Germany. Then, in 1933, Adolf Hitler won power in Germany. ”When things got too dangerous in Dresden for us, as a Jewish family, we escaped to my mother’s parents’ home in Czechoslovakia,” Fieldsend told NPR in an interview this week at his home in Oxfordshire, about 40 miles west of London. Then, in 1938, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia’s northern and western border regions, known as the Sudetenland  —   where the Feiges were staying. ”I remember the German army marching through our [Czech] village,” he says. Fieldsend’s parents decided to send their two sons, Hans (later renamed John) 7, and Gert (later renamed Arthur) 10, on the Kindertransport  —   trains carrying children to safety in England. ”My father said, ’Sit down, boys. You’re going on a long journey. We can’t come with you,’ ” Fieldsend recalls. ”As the train was leaving, my mother took her wristwatch off and gave it to me through the window of the train, and simply said, ’This is for you to remember us.’ So they probably knew more than we did.” Fieldsend and his brother were sent to live with foster families in England  —   with whom they remained through World War II and until adulthood. After the war, they received a package from the International Red Cross with family photos, and, later, a separate letter. The following is the full text of that letter, a farewell from Fieldsend’s parents to their sons. Fieldsend read it aloud to NPR, translating from the original German: Dear Boys,  From Mother, When you receive this letter, the war will be over, because our friendly messenger won’t be able to send it earlier. We want to say farewell to you, who are our dearest possession in the world, and only for a short time were we able to keep you.  Fate has not left us for months now. In January 1942, the Weilers were taken we still don’t know where to and whether they are still alive. In June, Grandmother Betty. In September, Aunt Marion, Uncle Willy and Pauli. In October, your Steiner grandparents. In November, your      and the Bermans. In December, it will be our turn.  The time has therefore come for us to turn to you again, and to ask you to become good men, and think of the years we were happy together. We are going into the unknown not a word is to be heard from those already taken.  Thank those who have kept you from a similar fate. You took a piece of your poor parents’ hearts with you, when we decided to give you away. Give our thanks and gratitude to all who are good to you.  From Father  Your dear mother has told you about the hard fate of all our loved ones. We too will not be spared and will go bravely into the unknown, with the hope that we shall yet see you again when God wills. Don’t forget us, and be good.  I too thank all the good people who have accepted you so nobly.  Signed,  Curt  Trude Feige, 1943, Records show the Feiges were interned in the Auschwitz concentration camp on Feb. 26, 1943. The exact date of their deaths is unknown. ”A couple weeks after writing this, they went to the gas chambers,” Fieldsend says. ”What a letter. Wonderful parents.” Fieldsend and his brother grew up in separate foster families in England, but stayed close. They anglicized their names. John embraced Christianity and became a vicar in the Church of England, a career from which he is now retired, at age 84. It would take 50 years for him to learn exactly who had arranged his passage to safety. In 1988, the BBC got hold of a scrapbook, found in the attic of a retired stockbroker named Nicholas Winton. In it were photos, names and records of hundreds of European children for whom Winton had paid train fares, forged travel documents and arranged foster families in England. Winton had never spoken about it publicly. But his wife apparently found the scrapbook in their attic, and it eventually made its way to the BBC through other relatives, despite Winton’s modesty. A popular BBC TV program at the time, That’s Life, aired a segment about the scrapbook, and a photo of Fieldsend as a boy briefly appeared on TV. ”A friend rang me and said, ’John, were you watching That’s Life?’ We often watch it, but that night, we weren’t watching,” Fieldsend recalls. ”She said, ’Well, John, you were on it.’ ” Fieldsend phoned the BBC and was invited to the studio for the next episode. Winton was there, too. But what Winton didn’t know was that the entire studio audience was made up of people whose lives he had saved. Onstage, BBC presenter Esther Rantzen asked: ”Is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton? If so, could you stand up please?” The whole studio audience, several dozen people, stood up. ”It was absolutely amazing,” says Fieldsend about that moment when Winton turned around and looked at the room filled with people he’d saved. ”He was such a human, ordinary, quiet man. It was amazing.” After meeting on TV, 50 years after Winton had saved Fieldsend, the two men began a belated friendship. Turns out they lived close to one another, and enjoyed pub lunches together in Oxfordshire. Winton attended a 50th wedding anniversary party for Fieldsend and his wife, Elizabeth. That friendship endured until Winton’s death last summer. Fieldsend says he never figured out how to adequately thank him. ”He could have been imprisoned, he could have been shot  —   anything could have happened to him,” Fieldsend says. ”He had no reason to be involved. He was just a good British stockbroker.” On Thursday, John Fieldsend and other survivors will attend the memorial for that good British stockbroker."
"Note: NPR’s First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. Between her 1996 breakthrough Trailer Park and 2012’s Sugaring Season, Beth Orton embarked on a steady but   transition from her signature ”folktronica” sound to styles rooted in far more traditional rock instrumentation. Beats and samples gave way to more guitars and strings, to the point where Orton’s appearance at the Tiny Desk in 2012 found her showcasing new material with the aid of only an acoustic guitar. Nearly four years later, with Orton’s career now in its third decade, she returns with Kidsticks, on which she employs an arsenal of subtle but   technology. The new record never feels like a retreat into the familiar instead, it finds her marrying her gorgeously   voice to a palette expansive enough to incorporate quietly throbbing pulses and   futurism. (In the case of the mysterious, sonically cluttered, oddly peaceful ”Corduroy Legs,” she makes room for both and then some.) Appropriately, Kidsticks often revolves around themes of searching and identity. In ”Snow,” Orton opens the record with the words, ”I’ll astrally project myself into the life of someone else,” while ”Moon” finds her losing sleep over the machinations of heavenly bodies. But even her most grandiose thoughts take her back to human concerns  —   ”The same moon rises over me as you,” she sings  —   in songs that sound like conflicted dispatches from a familiar friend. Sugaring Season demonstrated both the sturdiness of Orton’s craft and the degree to which her songs thrive when stripped to their   essence. Having proven herself, she seems liberated on Kidsticks, an album that functions as both yearning journey and   victory lap."
"There’s an old adage in the television biz: stars don’t make TV, TV makes stars. Perhaps that’s why seeing Late Late Show host James Corden face a Carnegie Hall audience packed with CBS advertisers on Wednesday, dancing and singing his way through a parody of the hit musical Hamilton, felt so appropriate. Corden wasn’t widely known in America until he took over The Late Late Show last year and his carpool karaoke segments turned him into a viral sensation. As he twisted lyrics from the hit musical about Founding Father Alexander Hamilton into jokes about selling ads  —   ”We just want your Hamiltons,” he rapped at one point  —   Corden became a symbol for how TV can turn a fresh spin on an old story into serious money. Corden’s performance was part of a series of big budget presentations, cocktail parties and schmoozy   that fill network TV’s upfront week, where broadcasters roll out trailers for their new shows next season and ask for an estimated total of $9 billion in advance sales for commercials. There’s always a tension here: Broadcasters are caught between their need to look like they’re presenting the future of TV in a world filled with Netflixes and Hulus, and advertisers’ needs for predictable,   places to spend their ad dollars. Fresh concepts work best. That’s why a show like Fox’s Empire, filled with    talent on a show developed by an executive producer who hadn’t created a TV show before, could emerge as last TV season’s biggest hit. But it is tougher to sell a new concept than a familiar one, and easier to hype big stars than rising ones. So there’s lots of talk at this year’s upfronts about new takes on old series like 24 and MacGyver, along with new shows featuring Ted Danson, Matt LeBlanc, Geena Davis and Kiefer Sutherland. After a few days soaking up the spin in Manhattan, here’s a few trends which stick out: Remakes and Reboots Rule  —   But Why? There’s a long list of new shows coming next TV season that are updated versions of old movies or TV shows. CBS has MacGuyver and Training Day, The CW has Frequency, Fox is redoing 24, Prison Break, The Exorcist and Lethal Weapon, while NBC is trying Taken and a version of the Wizard of Oz called Emerald City. The problem: many similar attempts to revamp old franchises failed last TV season. ABC canceled The Muppets after one embarrassing season and moved its   take on Uncle Buck to summer. CBS canceled its version on Rush Hour and hasn’t yet figured out what to do with a series based on Limitless. Fox dumped Minority Report, while NBC canceled Heroes: Reborn and never aired its   reboot of ’90s sitcom Coach. There have been some successes. Fox’s revival of 24 with original star Kiefer Sutherland worked, as did its return to The  . But both of those shows were limited series created as special events. Of course, when a network owns the intellectual property it’s reviving, as CBS does with MacGyver, the motivations become clearer. ”There is a great interest in the character of MacGyver, and the idea of MacGyver,” said Glenn Geller, CBS’s new entertainment president, noting that the reboot’s executive producer also rebooted Hawaii   for CBS back in 2010. ”Individual titles . .. it’s hard to say . .. I don’t think you can lump everything into one example or genre and say it’s not working. It depends on the individual shows.” In a fragmented TV landscape filled with new shows, powerful brand names are important. But it gets tougher to make the case that you’re focused on TV’s future, when your broadcast schedule is filled with names from TV’s past. Guys Take Over at CBS. On Wednesday, the network revealed eight new shows for the next TV season  —   seven of them feature men as the lead characters, including a revival of the old ”schlubby guys with hot wives” comedy trope in series featuring Kevin James and Matt LeBlanc. This also comes in a year where CBS ended The Good Wife after eight seasons, moved Supergirl to The CW and passed on developing a Nancy Drew series. They do have one new show planned for midseason featuring Katherine Heigl and Laverne Cox, but given the imbalance of women in TV and film roles already  —   and that women typically watch more TV than men  —   this turn toward men seems odd. Time Travel and Tech Billionaires. Every TV season it seems the networks jump on the same stories at the same time. This year, ABC, The CW, Fox and NBC all each have   series in which time travel plays an important part  —   from ABC’s Time After Time, a drama about H. G. Wells traveling to the present to chase Jack the Ripper, to Fox’s Making History, which feels like a TV version of Hot Tub Time Machine. There are also two series about tech billionaires saving the world. Fox’s APB centers on a tech billionaire who takes over a Chicago police precinct, using an app, his fortune and unconventional methods to save the day. In Pure Genius, a billionaire creates a   hospital to save the day. Both feel a little like Tony    Social Network another case of network television trying to look like it’s facing forward, when it’s really rehashing the recent past."
"Everyone needs a copy editor. (Thank you, Susan and Amy and Pam.) Today, the Texas Republican Party is probably wishing it had one, too. Check out this sentence from the   2016 party platform: As Texas Monthly rightly points out, the sentence actually says that homosexual behavior ”has been ordained by God in the Bible, recognized by our nations founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.” That’s probably not what Texas Republicans meant. The august magazine blames that Oxford comma there at the end for the confusion, but we asked our aforementioned (and heroic) copy editors where the real problem was and they zeroed in on the verb ”has.” It’s singular, so the rest of the sentence ends up referring to the noun ”behavior” instead of ”truths.” Susan Vavrick, NPR’s copy chief, took out her pen and suggested three quick corrections: The Texas GOP did not immediately return our request for comment. We’ll update if it does, but it turns out that the 2014 version of its platform has the verbs all correct."
"Mention the concept of food waste, and for many people, it’s likely to conjure images of rotting fruit and vegetables or stale meals unfit for consumption. But a lot of the food that gets tossed out in America  —   some $162 billion worth each year, enough to fill 44 skyscrapers  —   is fresh, nutritious and downright delicious: think plump eggplants, bright yellow squashes, giant,   carrots with a crisp bite. The kind of beautiful produce that would be perfectly at home in, say, this giant vegetable paella made by celebrity chef José Andrés and his team.  That    platter of paella (actually, two of them) was served up Wednesday as part of Feeding the 5000, a giant,   free lunch for 5, 000 people staged in an outdoor plaza in Washington, D. C. Attendees also lined up for a ladle full of slightly spicy vegetarian curry, which, along with the paella, was made with some 2, 000 pounds of food rescued from a destiny in the landfill. The event, organized by Feedback together with partners including the USDA, the EPA, the Natural Resources Defense Council and others, was designed to raise awareness about all the food waste that results from inefficiencies in the system and consumer behavior  —   and give people a tasty incentive to do something about it. ”People are really waking up to the scale of the problem and the fact that the solutions are obvious, practical, delicious, nutritious  —   it just simply means celebrating and enjoying all of the foods that we are currently wasting but shouldn’t be,” says Tristram Stuart, the founder of Feedback, which is based in the U. K. All told, organizers say they served more than 6, 500 meals. Stuart began staging these outdoor feasts in 2009. In the years since, they’ve been held in concert with local partners in cities from London to Athens to Warsaw to Sydney, Australia, and beyond. Wednesday’s was the 36th so far and the second one this month in the U. S. where interest in food waste has exploded recently. ”I have never been to a country where I’ve felt that there’s going to be such rapid and deep changes on the issue of food waste as I’ve had that feeling in the U. S. over the last 18 to 24 months. It’s been really incredible, the level of energy,” Stuart says. It took a small brigade of volunteers to prep and chop all the rescued veg that went into the meal. The produce was donated by wholesalers, local farms and groups like Hungry Harvest, an enterprise that sells subscription boxes of   ugly fruit and vegetables at a discount  —   and helps feed the hungry in the process. Food gets wasted for many reasons: On the farm, for example, a   carrot or   apples might get cast off because they fail to meet industry beauty standards. Bagged lettuce can get discarded while still fresh because of hurdles related to shipping time. In the home, consumers often purchase more than they can eat, so food goes bad before it ends up on dinner plates. And often, good food gets thrown out because of confusion surrounding ” ” dates. (Coinciding with Wednesday’s events, House and Senate lawmakers introduced a bill that would create the first federal rules for the date labels used on food.) Most of the produce used for Wednesday’s feast was rejected for cosmetic reasons. Grocery stores like to market unblemished beauties, but ”nature didn’t get that memo,” says Mike Curtin, CEO of D. C. Central Kitchen, which procured and prepared the meal. The group has been using food that would otherwise be wasted to feed the hungry for nearly three decades. ”We want people to think, ’Wow, this is really good. Maybe I should think next time before throwing something away. Or maybe I should get more creative in the kitchen,’ ” Curtin says. Curries like the one served up Wednesday are a staple in DCCK’s repertoire they can easily accommodate various veggies. And because everything is chopped up small, who cares what it looked like to begin with, says Amy Bachman, DCCK’s procurement manager. ”In a curry, they’re fine. It’s really amazing to be able to salvage it when you realize it could end up in a dumpster, and that’s so sad.” The irony is that most of the stuff the chefs were working with was actually pretty gorgeous to my eyes  —   a minor scar here or there, but nothing most home gardeners wouldn’t be proud to grow. Events like Feeding the 5000 are ”always a helpful reminder and always inspiring,” says D. C.  chef and restaurateur Spike Mendelsohn, of Top Chef fame. He showed up Tuesday as a volunteer. ”I’m just one of the peelers. They used to call me el pelador back in the day!” In his Miami restaurant, he says, he now serves a veggie burger made with farro mixed with the pulp left over from the juice bar. ”It’s a   veggie burger that people are ordering like crazy now,” he says. Food waste is the single biggest component of solid waste in U. S. landfills  —   and a major source of the powerful greenhouse gas methane. The U. S. has set a goal of cutting food waste by 50 percent by 2030, in line with a similar benchmark from the United Nations. The Ad Council recently released a TV campaign highlighting the issue. And the Rockefeller Foundation has given Feedback a $500, 000 grant to help spread the word. Stuart says the money will help pay for more events to put the issue in the public eye, as well as fund the group’s investigations into where waste occurs throughout the food chain. The U. K. supermarket giant Tesco recently announced it would no longer require its Kenyan suppliers to top and tail their green beans to fit standardized packaging. An earlier Feedback probe had revealed this practice resulted in at least 30 percent of each bean going to waste on average. Zia Khan of the Rockefeller Foundation likens the issue to littering. Fifty years ago, it was common to see people boot their trash out the car window. But now, he says, try doing it  —   ”it just feels really weird. And that’s our goal with this effort. We want to make it really weird and unusual and wasteful for people not to pay attention to this problem.”"
"She was a mother in rural Ghana. She only wanted four children. But she had seven. That’s a story that Faustina   told at the Women Deliver conference this week in Copenhagen, Denmark.   works with the reproductive health care nonprofit Marie Stopes International. ”She was let down by the community, the government and us,”   told the audience. And there are millions of women like this Ghanaian mom, unable to get access to contraception. But what if you could use drones to transport contraception and   medicines to the world’s most remote places? A group of public health experts came up with that idea during a brainstorm session two years ago. And even they admitted it was a bit  . But maybe not that  . In the global health care sector, a number of drone delivery projects have been popping up  —   including one jointly funded by the United Nations Population Fund and the Dutch government. A group of public health experts, local health authorities and   partners dreamed up the idea in 2014 when trying to figure out ways to improve access to contraception for women in the    areas of   Africa. Access to birth control, reproductive health information and other services for women of childbearing age is a massive problem in this region, where fewer than 20 percent of women use modern contraceptives. The World Health Organization estimates that 225 million women in developing countries would like to delay or stop having children but lack access to reliable birth control methods. Cue the drone. In late November of last year, an unmanned, automated machine with a wingspan of about 50 inches carried about 4. 5 pounds of supplies like condoms and birth control pills, as well as   drugs like oxytocin, which prevents hemorrhaging during childbirth, to parts of Ghana. The drone can cover large distances quickly and can take off and land without a runway. The ultimate goal is to get the drone to travel about 60 miles in an hour. Flown by a pilot who’s stationed in a nearby health care facility, the drone unloads its delivery to a spot in the village designated for dropping off health products. A health care worker picks up the goods and takes them to the local clinic. If a health care worker tried to do the same job by motorcycle or truck  —   the typical vehicles used for deliveries  —   it would take several hours at best. And poor roads coupled with bad weather conditions could make the route impassable. Dr. Renee Van de Weerdt, senior technical adviser of reproductive health commodities at UNFPA, says drones have a huge potential to overcome tough terrain that is common in the region. ”They can rapidly deliver supplies that are about to run out,” she says. ”They might also prove useful in places where there is no ground transport. Many health workers currently have to   heavy boxes of medicines for long distances.” The project is still in its pilot phase. Experts are assessing the   of the drone program before scaling it up nationally in Ghana and expanding it to other   African countries. They’ve got to figure out how much each delivery will cost, and they’re also grappling with terrain challenges like dust, which makes it hard for the pilot to see where the drone is flying. A second prototype is being developed with this issue in mind. The idea of using drones for health care delivery seems to be catching on. Just recently, Malawi started testing the use of drones to speed up the time it takes to fly blood samples from infants to test for HIV. Rwanda is also experimenting with drones to deliver blood for transfusions to help prevent deaths from postpartum hemorrhage. But a machine can’t do it all by itself. Rosalijn Both, a researcher on contraception choices in   Africa from the University of Amsterdam, says people’s religious beliefs are also a key factor in providing contraceptive products. ”If contraceptives and other reproductive health commodities are simply dropped in remote areas without health education materials in the local language,” she says, ”I would be surprised if the impact would be big.”"
"Morley Safer, who reported from around the world for nearly five decades on the newsmagazine 60 Minutes, has died. He was 84. Safer was the   correspondent on the show, and had just announced his retirement last week during a special that recapped his career. Here’s how CBS News describes his work: ”That work included a groundbreaking 1965 CBS News report from Cam Ne, Vietnam, where Safer showed U. S. Marines torching villagers’ huts, and a 60 Minutes story on Lenell Geter, a black man in Texas wrongly accused of armed robbery and later exonerated as a result of Safer’s report. ”There were countless stories, on every imaginable topic, each tale uniquely his own. ’They were works of art almost,’ [’60 Minutes’ Executive Producer Jeff Fager] explains. ’What makes a story a Morley story is his original voice. And by that I mean not just the timbre, but [also] the quality of the storytelling, his writing.’ ”Fager recalls working as Safer’s producer and bringing him the first draft of a script. Safer would look at it, stare out the window for a few seconds, and then quickly scroll a piece of paper into his trusty typewriter and rework it to his own satisfaction.” During his career, Safer produced more than 900 stories. CBS New York has a bit more on Safer’s biography: ”Safer, 84, was born in Toronto, Canada, and covered major stories around the world for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before he joined CBS News in April 1964. He began his CBS News career as a correspondent in the London bureau, and opened the CBS News Saigon Bureau in 1965. ”Safer became CBS News’ London bureau chief in 1967, covering Europe, Africa and the Middle East and returning to Vietnam to cover the war. ”Safer joined as a regular correspondent for ’60 Minutes’ in 1970, with a story about the training of U. S. Sky Marshals. His last 919th and last ’60 Minutes’ report  —   a profile of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels  —   aired in March.”"
"Let’s pretend I asked you to run a mile as fast as you can. Now let’s pretend I asked you to run a mile as fast as you can, and if you broke nine minutes, you’d get $90. Which mile do you think would be faster? A new study suggests that students taking a test behave like you or me: They do better with a little incentive. Dollars and cents, that is. Jeff Livingston, the lead author of the study, is a professor of economics at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. He also happens to be the husband of a   teacher, which makes him privy to a lot of discussion about the impact of   tests on the classroom. ”I hear my wife and other teacher friends express concerns all the time about teacher evaluation systems which use standardized tests as part of the metric,” he says. ”They constantly worry that such tests do not accurately measure what their students have learned.” Livingston set up a randomized, controlled trial. He reasoned that, if test performance increased substantially with a cash incentive, that would mean that typical standardized tests, given without the bonus, don’t measure what students really know. His subjects were students in nine middle and elementary schools in Chicago Heights, Ill. They were judged, based on previous performance, to be at risk of scoring below the passing mark on state reading and math tests. The students were given a baseline test, then offered a tutor for about nine weeks. In various conditions of the study, a $90 reward was offered to children, their parents or their tutors, or was split among them. At the end of the trial period, students took a ”probe”: a test with about 20 questions. They were repeatedly reminded by their tutors, including right before taking the test, about the reward. The test was given within a week of an official district test covering the same material, to which no incentives were attached. Sure enough, students scored ”substantially better” on the tests for which they, their tutor or their parent stood to gain. The effect size was relatively large, between 0. 3 and 0. 5 standard deviations. The incentives had the most consistent impact on the easiest exam questions. This suggested that the improvement came from students simply trying a bit harder while taking the test and maybe   their answers. So, what does this study really tell us? There’s a whole body of research on the idea of paying students to work harder in school and get better grades. Harvard’s Roland G. Fryer Jr. is most associated with this work. His research shows a range of outcomes, but quite small results on average. Steven Levitt, of the University of Chicago and Freakonomics fame, has also done an experiment showing test score improvement with immediate rewards. But again, this seems to work best as a   intervention, not something that can improve school performance over the long haul. In fact, psychology research suggests that paying students to do well in school could be counterproductive. It creates what is called ”extrinsic,” or external, motivation, which can paradoxically reduce students’ intrinsic, or internal, motivations. Douglas Harris, the director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, has conducted his own research on financial incentives in education. He says, ”in general, I’d be leery of drawing   implications from carefully crafted experiments.” Livingston did intend his study to have a   implication, though. Remember, he set out to investigate whether   tests are accurate measures of what students know  —   for the purposes of evaluating teachers as well as students.   measurement of teacher performance is a pretty hot topic in education policy these days. A teacher is currently suing U. S. Education Secretary John King Jr. formerly the top education official in New York state, over what she argues is the unfairness of these   measures. A New York State Supreme Court judge ruled in her favor earlier this month, calling her rating ”arbitrary” and ”capricious.” Does the result that students respond to incentives on standardized tests undermine the premise of rating teachers based on changes in test scores? Harris says not necessarily. Remember,   is based on comparing students’ scores on two tests taken at different times. If the students aren’t given any special incentive on either test, then any bias in the results would at least partly cancel out. But, says Harris, the basic result of Livingston’s study does suggest something we have a lot of evidence about: the importance of student motivation. It’s an ”interesting angle” on the notion that ”student scores are driven by factors beyond their own skills and knowledge.”"
"People have been wrapping their babies like burritos since before there were burritos. My husband described the skillful nurses where I gave birth as ”swaddling ninjas,” and by my estimation he had at least his brown belt by the time we left. But people have also been worrying about their babies dying in their sleep for millennia. Today, about 3, 500   infant deaths occur each year, including 1, 500 from sudden infant death syndrome. It’s only in recent years that researchers have explored whether the two are connected: Could the   practice of swaddling increase the risk of SIDS? Headlines about a study in the journal Pediatrics would suggest as much, but the research didn’t actually find increased risk when parents follow other safe sleep guidelines. ”This study was really looking at old data and trying to put together really apples and oranges,” says Harvey Karp, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. He says media coverage missed ”the forest for the trees and emphasize[d] this scary outcome which the study wasn’t even reporting.” The study is a   research that combines results of previously published studies and analyzes the data together. The most recent of the studies included in this   was published in 2009, and the findings reaffirm much of what doctors already knew. ”We only found four studies and they were quite different, making it difficult to pool the results,” senior author Peter Blair, a professor in social and community medicine at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, said in an email. ”This we have emphasized as strongly as any of the findings, but does not seem to get as much media coverage. Given the weak evidence, we do not conclude that swaddling is a risk factor for SIDS but rather that more evidence is needed.” The four studies compared a total of 760 infants who died from SIDS with 1, 759 infants who didn’t. The researchers in each study noted the percentage of infants who were swaddled in each group, along with data on their ages and the positions the infants were placed down in and found in. ”More thought needs to go into at what age swaddling provides reduced benefit and potentially more risk as the infant grows,” Blair said. The combined analysis reiterated what scientists concluded in the 1990s: The biggest risk factor for SIDS is placing babies on their stomach to sleep. Swaddling just increases those odds further  ” 13 times more than placing them on their backs. Side sleeping also triples the odds of SIDS, partly because babies can too easily end up on their stomach. ”I would be shocked if there were any pediatricians out there who didn’t already consider that to be a greater risk factor than prone sleeping when not swaddled,” says Clay Jones, a neonatal hospitalist at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Mass. Despite these unsurprising conclusions, media outlets seized upon the finding that swaddled babies placed on their back also have an increased risk of SIDS and that swaddled babies over 6 months old are twice as likely to die from SIDS. But those findings are ”unconvincing,” says Jones, concurring with the study authors. He found the conclusion about babies older than 6 months odd since SIDS risk is highest between 2 and 4 months. ”With so few cases occurring past 6 months, this could be a statistical fluke,” Jones said. ”Perhaps these were babies being placed in a very tight wrap in order to keep them swaddled, but I’m not convinced it is a real phenomenon.” It may also be that older babies can roll and break out of swaddles, increasing the risk of smothering or suffocation, the authors noted. Still, swaddling has clear benefits, Jones says. The danger of media coverage suggesting otherwise can make strung out, exhausted parents feel they’ve lost a crucial tool for calming their babies and keeping them asleep. ”The issue really is about reducing crying and increasing sleep,” says Karp, who included swaddling as one of the five strategies he recommends combining to calm crying babies in his book and DVD The Happiest Baby on the Block. (Disclosure: I enthusiastically recommend his   methods to all new parents because they saved my sanity with two kids.) ”Those are the two biggest pain points that new parents have.” Discouraging a key strategy for addressing crying and poor sleep has been implicated as a risk factor for abusive head trauma, for example, when parents shake or otherwise injure a child out of   desperation. ”You damn well better know that swaddling is a problem before you encourage people to stop it or impugning it as a risk factor,” Karp says. ”If, as they say in this article that swaddling has been demonstrated to reduce crying and to increase sleep, then what happens if you stop swaddling is more crying and worse sleep.” That can then lead to more postpartum and parental depression, more child abuse, more women giving up   and more parents resorting to unsafe sleeping arrangements, such as sleeping on the sofa or placing infants on their stomachs, Karp says. ”While they really showed no clear evidence it was a risk factor to swaddle your baby safely, they created this worry that may discourage people from swaddling, which may then have unintended consequences that increase infant deaths,” Karp says. He, like Blair, argues for more research, plus a more ”robust academic dialogue” about swaddling within the American Academy of Pediatrics. In the AAP’s technical report for its policy statement on safe infant sleeping environments, the Academy didn’t issue an official recommendation on swaddling. Instead the group said, ”Although swaddling may be used as a strategy to calm the infant and encourage use of supine position, there is not enough evidence to recommend it as a strategy for reducing the risk of SIDS.” A past AAP article explores the controversy over swaddling among doctors, and the AAP provides guidelines for parents on proper, safe swaddling. ”The upstream issue is crying, exhaustion and feeling incompetent, and that’s where we need to focus our efforts,” Karp says. ”If we can teach families to be better at calming babies and getting more sleep, we have a real chance at making a dent on these other serious issues.” Tara Haelle is the   of The Informed Parent: A   Resource for Your Child’s First Four Years. She’s on Twitter: @tarahaelle"
"Paul Simon has a new album coming out and it’s wonderful. Titled Stranger To Stranger, it’s his thirteenth solo release and he told me he it could be his last, at least for a while. For this week’s +1 podcast, I sat with Paul Simon at NPR’s New York bureau to talk about the new record, but more specifically to talk about a single song on the album, the puzzling and quirky opening cut, ”The Werewolf.” Paul Simon walked me through the song, the thousands of decisions he had to make and the minutia of songwriting that I think makes his music complex, conversational and memorable. This entire song was inspired by a sound, and from that sound Paul Simon had to find the subject and characters. What he came up with is a scary tale of where he believes we are in the 21st century. You can listen to the full conversation with the link above or read edited highlights below. The entire album will be part of our First Listen series on May 26, a week before its June 3 release. ”I started off with a rhythmic premise on the album and the rhythmic premise is that I really like the sound of hand claps and Flamenco dancing. I like Flamenco music, too, but I didn’t want to make a Flamenco record. So I didn’t want the guitar and those vocals and I didn’t want to be learning a new form. All I wanted was the claps. In order to get that though, the musicians said, ’Well we can’t just clap. We need to clap to a song!’ So we had a guitarist and a singer and they were in the control room, and the percussionists were in the studio with earphones. And the singer is singing and the guitarist is playing a traditional song. And the percussionists are playing along with it. At a certain point I might say, ’That minute and a half is fine.’ I can make a loop of that for     or five minutes and then I’ll think about what should be laid on top of it. And once that happens I’ll think about what might lyrically appropriate in that musical context. And that’s the typical way that I write.” ”One of the hardest parts of making a song is finding the first line. It’s very important, just as the last line is. And I started off with, ’I knew a man who. ..’ and I immediately didn’t like it. ’I knew a man who led a decent life. Made a fairly decent living. Had a fairly decent wife.’ I’m kind of happy with all these ’fairly decents.’ And then the quick turn: She killed him. And the specific thing: Sushi knife. Shows you what kind of household they had if they had a sushi knife. And now they’re shopping for a fairly decent afterlife. They’re still shopping.” ”There’s a lot of trial and error that goes into the record making process for me. Most of the time I enjoy it immensely, except for when I get frustrated and I’m ’ ’ and ’ ’ but I’m more ’ ’ than ’ .’ You keep doing it until it feels right. And when it doesn’t feel right, the ear goes to the irritant. The thing that doesn’t feel rights eventually gets on your nerves to such a degree that you finally pull it out. It may take a while before you recognize that you really don’t like a certain thing. Because you start off saying, ’It’s okay. It’s not my favorite part, but it’s okay.’ And usually that’s about denial because you’ve worked on it a long time. You know, ’It’s fine, it’s not the best part of the song.’ But it’s okay until you get to the point where you say, ’I really can’t stand that. ’” ”I really wonder what would happen to my creative impulses, which seem to come on a regular basis every three, four years they manifest themselves. And by habit, they manifest themselves as songs. But this is really the decision of a   old. Me, who said, at 13, ’No, I want to write songs.’ So I’m doing it 60 years later. This   old is still telling me what to do. But I wonder what happens if I simply prohibit myself from expressing whatever the creative urge is, if I do not allow that to happen in song or music form. I’m sort of willing to give it a year or so. I think maybe in the beginning it’ll be frustrating and annoying and I’ll want to go back to the other way. But if I stay with the rules maybe I’ll discover some other outlet.”"
"In a basement office at Purdue University in Indiana, associate professor of engineering practice Brad Duerstock has designed a special space. His desk sits up on cinder blocks, slightly higher than all the rest. In the meeting area, tables have adjustable heights. And in the corner, a few feet away, there’s an early version of one of his latest inventions, something he calls RoboDesk. Behind all this is Duerstock’s work to make his office space  —   and the college environment  —   easier to navigate for people who use wheelchairs. And having an easier way to use laptops or tablets in class has become an indispensable part of it. RoboDesk is a motorized metal arm that attaches to a rail underneath a wheelchair, smoothly extending and retracting a sort of tray for an electronic device or a notebook  —   or anything else. Duerstock, who’s been using a wheelchair since he suffered a spinal cord injury as a teenager, was trying to improve on similar mounts that already exist. What he wanted was something that would be light and thin, and extend or fold away neatly in a way that wouldn’t make the wheelchair bulkier or harder to maneuver, for instance, through a door or sliding under a desk. ”I’ve used mounting systems where I was so kind of physically away from the table, (that) I was more close to the table behind me than the table I was really involved with,” Duerstock says. ”So it is excluding.” Duerstock says often, using a wheelchair also comes with a stigma, just because the person looks different. ”The more they can do things, the more they can interact how people without disabilities interact, which is electronically, then yeah, those social barriers also drop,” Duerstock says. His goal is to make incremental progress toward wheelchairs being as accepted a human augmentation as wearing glasses, while also giving people with mobility challenges another way to be as productive and independent as possible. ”What Brad’s trying to do and the product itself could have great implications for the market,” says Microsoft Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny   . ”I don’t think, broadly, we  —   as in society  —   appreciate how big the segment of people with disabilities is in the world. It is huge.” In fact,   says, the number, globally, is more than 1 billion people. ”I think the scope and scale of the market here is pretty immense.” Microsoft and other tech companies regularly talk to or work with various inventors to make products for people with disabilities, often through a group called the Assistive Technology Industry Association. Many of these inventors are often entrepreneurs who see a problem encountered by someone in the family, says ATIA CEO David Dikter. But though the assistive technology is getting attention from inventors and the tech corporations, the education tech space is still underserved. ”I think that no matter what, all of our companies  —   all of our manufacturers of technology  —   would likely agree that they’re not reaching the number of students or adults or individuals with disabilities that we can be reaching,” Dikter says. The reason? Dikter and Duerstock agree: ”When you talk about people with disabilities, one size does not fit all,” as Duerstock put it. The RoboDesk creator has only one prototype right now, which he’s testing through his company Prehensile Technologies. Duerstock’s goal is to mass produce his invention in a way that could be adapted to any wheelchair. He says the price would be around $1, 000 to $2, 000, which he says is a rough price of a standard physical mount system. Duerstock says he hasn’t made any calls to companies like Apple (which declined an interview for this story) or Microsoft. But Microsoft’s   says those are exactly the kind of phone calls she’s happy to take."
"In 2009, Emily Vorland went to Iraq with the Army for a year, hoping it would lead to a career in special operations. That dream was derailed not by the enemy, but by a superior officer, who started sexually harassing her. ”I said no and then reported it. And my direct chain of command relieved him of his position. However, it was three months later when the retaliation started,” she says. She says that’s when the investigation started to focus on her. It came down to a threat of perjury charges, unless she accepted a general discharge. She took that deal, but it was hard to find civilian work because of what it said on her discharge papers. ” ’General under honorable,’ and then what they have under there  —   conduct unbecoming. It was hard to apply for a job.” The military released data this month showing over 6, 000 reported sexual assaults during 2015. The real number is likely three or four times higher. Just like in the civilian world, most rape doesn’t get reported, and the Pentagon acknowledges this happens in the military because victims fear they  —   not the perpetrators  —   will face reprisals from commanders. Human Rights Watch says in a report today that the Pentagon doesn’t do enough to repair the damage from those reprisals. ”It’s a common perception in the military that you have to choose between reporting your rape and staying in the military,” said Sara Darehshori, who interviewed hundreds of military sexual assault survivors for the organization. Army veteran Liz Luras didn’t even get to make that choice. She says she was raped early in her career, about 15 years ago. The assault put her in the hospital, which triggered an investigation.  ”When I walked back onto base, everyone knew that now I wasn’t just the soldier doing great things and on a great path,” she says. ”Now I was the rape victim.” After that, she was raped twice more, she says, and then pushed out of the military. She got an honorable discharge  —   but her commanders used a category that critics charge has been used to get rape victims, especially women, out of the service quickly. ”Right next to it saying that I have an honorable discharge, it says that I have a personality disorder,” she says  —   despite it never having been diagnosed. ”That was handed down just by the decision of my chain of command. It was not anything where I saw a licensed psychologist or clinician.” Men make up the vast majority of the military  —   85 percent  —   and a slight majority of military sexual assault victims, though only 10 percent report the crime, compared with 38 percent of women, according to the Pentagon’s most recent report on sexual assault in the military. Heath Phillips joined the Navy at 17 and says he was raped repeatedly by a group of sailors. ”When you wake up and see six guys doing stuff to each other and to you? I still have nightmares about it,” he says. ”I am 45 years old, and I still have that vision in my head.” To escape, Phillips went AWOL, repeatedly. The Navy told him he could take an ”  ” discharge to avoid court martial. ”I was 18 years old, already an alcoholic because I drank to be numb,” he says. ”I won’t lie, I would’ve signed a deal with the devil at that moment in time.” Anything other than an honorable discharge can carry heavy consequences. It usually means no VA care, no benefits. Phillips says he wound up sometimes homeless, in jail  —   a drunk for most of 20 years. ”Nothing has been done for the thousands of people who were kicked out after they reported their sexual assault and still have to live with these terrible discharge papers that continue to impact their lives,” says Darehshori, with Human Rights Watch. She says many of them believe incorrectly that a    discharge can be easily upgraded by a Discharge Review Board or the Board of Corrections of Military Records. ”In fact, those bodies are dead ends,” says Darehshori. She says they upgrade only a tiny fraction of the cases that come up for review. ”Victims we spoke to are reluctant to go to the boards [and] bare their souls and relive trauma, when they have essentially no chance of being heard,” she says. In 2014, the Pentagon directed the boards to give more weight to issues like   stress disorder (PTSD) which affects many rape survivors. This year, the Pentagon clarified that this applies to vets who may have been rejected previously, or who are past the normal deadlines to apply. A Pentagon spokesman says the rate of upgrade for those PTSD cases is now near 40 percent, but he says the boards do not track how many sexual assault cases get upgraded. The Pentagon’s inspector general released a report this month that found ”personality disorder” and other mental health classifications still are being misused to put sexual assault survivors out of the military. Phillips says that he knows he can’t get back any of the 20 years he spent   after being raped and kicked out of the Navy, but that getting an upgrade  —   he was denied in 2013 and is appealing  —   would mean everything. ”The military will finally admit they were wrong,” he says."
"Sometimes astronomy can be challenging, but spotting Mars this weekend should be a breeze. Step 1: Head outside right after sunset and look toward the southeastern sky. Step 2: Find the full moon. (So far, so good, right?) Step 3: Look up and to the right, and find what looks like a bright red star. That’s Mars, our planetary neighbor  —   getting up close and personal. This weekend is the ”Mars opposition,” when the planet shines most brightly at the end of the month, in a related event, we’ll have the ”Mars close approach,” when there’s the shortest distance between the two planets. The term ”Mars opposition” is an old one, explains NASA scientist Michelle Thaller. It dates back to the days when astronomers had a more   view of the universe. During the Mars opposition early Sunday, Mars and the sun will be on opposite sides of Earth. When the sun is setting, Mars will be rising. ”The cool thing is, now that we understand that the Earth is a planet and that we’re all going around the sun together, we know that it means that this is the closest Mars ever gets to us,” Thaller says. ”And that means it’s the best time to look at Mars from Earth. . .. Mars is the largest we ever see.” That’s still pretty small, she notes  —   the size of a star, not a large disc. (A recurring Internet hoax maintains that Mars sometimes gets as large as the moon, which, well, is a hoax.) But it’ll be readily visible, near the moon all night long, and will be conspicuously bright for at least a week. Mars opposition happens approximately every other year, although some years the planets are closer than others. The 2016 opposition event will be the closest the planets have been in more than a decade, EarthSky reports. The Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of the proximity to turn its cameras  —   often focused at   stretches of space  —   closer to home. NASA released new Hubble photos of the Red Planet this week. The image includes a glimpse of Martian weather  —   clouds on the face of the planet  —   as well as noteworthy landmarks, NASA explains: ”The large, dark region at far right is Syrtis Major Planitia, one of the first features identified on the surface of the planet by   observers. Christiaan Huygens used this feature to measure the rotation rate of Mars. (A Martian day is about 24 hours and 37 minutes.) Today we know that Syrtis Major is an ancient, inactive shield volcano.   clouds surround its summit in this view. ”A large oval feature to the south of Syrtis Major is the bright Hellas Planitia basin. About 1, 100 miles across and nearly five miles deep, it was formed about 3. 5 billion years ago by an asteroid impact. ”The orange area in the center of the image is Arabia Terra, a vast upland region in northern Mars that covers about 2, 800 miles. The landscape is densely cratered and heavily eroded, indicating that it could be among the oldest terrains on the planet. Dried river canyons (too small to be seen here) wind through the region and empty into the large northern lowlands. ”South of Arabia Terra, running east to west along the equator, are the long dark features known as Sinus Sabaeus (to the east) and Sinus Meridiani (to the west). These darker regions are covered by dark bedrock and   sand deposits ground down from ancient lava flows and other volcanic features. These sand grains are coarser and less reflective than the fine dust that gives the brighter regions of Mars their ruddy appearance. Early Mars watchers first mapped these regions.”"
"We’ve made great progress treating people who are infected with HIV, but if they get cancer they’re less likely to get the care they need, a recent study found. Researchers examined treatment for a variety of cancers, including upper gastrointestinal tract, colorectal, prostate, lung, head and neck, cervix, breast, anal and two blood cancers. With the exception of anal cancer, treatment rates differed significantly between   people and those who weren’t infected, according to the study published online Tuesday by the journal Cancer. For example, a third of patients with HIV and lung cancer failed to receive any treatment for the cancer, compared with 14 percent of those who were  . Similarly, 44 percent of people who were   didn’t receive treatment for upper GI cancer versus 18 percent of those who weren’t infected with HIV.   percent of men with prostate cancer who were   didn’t get treatment, compared with 7 percent of men uninfected with HIV. Cancer treatment was defined as radiation, chemotherapy   surgery. ”To have made such great strides with treating HIV only to have them succumb to cancer is devastating,” said Dr. Gita Suneja, a radiation oncologist at the University of Utah’s Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City and the lead author of the study. The study used the National Cancer Data Base to analyze treatment for adults younger than 65 who were diagnosed with any of the 10 most common cancers to affect HIV patients between 2003 and 2011. The study included 10, 265   adults and 2. 2 million without HIV. The database, which is sponsored by the American Cancer Society and the American College of Surgeons, captures roughly 70 percent of newly diagnosed cancer cases in the United States. The study noted that more than a third of the patients with HIV had stage 4 cancer  —   cancer that has metastasized  —   when they were diagnosed, while only 19 percent of those without HIV did. Improvements in antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV have helped reduce the incidence of cancers such as Kaposi sarcoma that are closely linked to AIDS. But rates for other cancers often associated with normal aging have increased among HIV patients. In addition, people with HIV have a higher incidence of some   cancers, such as lung cancer, which could be linked to higher rates of smoking. Cancer is now the second most common cause of death among   people, behind   causes. HIV patients are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured, and lack of coverage can affect access to cancer care. But having insurance didn’t eliminate the problem: Privately insured people with HIV were significantly more likely to be untreated for many cancers than were privately insured people without HIV, the study found. ”We know that people with Medicaid or who are uninsured receive subpar cancer treatment, and that’s a big public health issue,” said Suneja. ”But even factoring that in,   people are still less likely to receive cancer treatment. That means there are other drivers that we couldn’t measure in the study.” Disparities in cancer treatment could exist for several reasons. For one thing, for most cancers there are no national treatment guidelines for   patients, Suneja said. One of the few exceptions is anal cancer, the only cancer for which the study found little discrepancy in treatment among   and uninfected patients. According to the research, the difference among those not receiving treatment was 4. 8 percent for HIV patients versus 3. 1 percent for others. For other cancers, ”the oncologist may pause and ask, ’Does the HIV infection mean they shouldn’t get standard cancer treatment?’ ” Suneja added. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter: @mandrews110."
"In a remote corner of eastern India, far in the jungle and hours by boat from any village, there is a camp with a brightly colored shrine to a forest goddess. Behind a tall fence, a statue of Bonbibi wears silks and garlands, with a gold headdress. She shelters a boy from a tiger. Every day, forest guard Bhabotaron Paik prostrates himself before the goddess and makes an offering of sweets before he goes out on patrol. When he has finished the ritual  —   the puja  —   Paik explains that protection from Bonbibi comes with conditions. ”We will not take more than we need from the jungle. That is our vow to the goddess.” The goddess Bonbibi  —   revered by Hindus, Muslims and Christians alike  —   reminds people here to live lightly on the land. But the landscape is changing, despite the people’s small footprint. Climate change has started to reshape some parts of this place, the Sundarbans, where three major rivers  —   the Ganges, Meghna and Brahamaputra  —   blend into the Bay of Bengal and tides smudge the boundaries between land and water. It’s a patchwork of islands, some as small as sandbars, others miles long. And it’s home to the world’s largest mangrove forests, nearly 4, 000 square miles stretching across India and Bangladesh, full of trees that survive on the border of land and brackish water. ”There are no borders here to divide freshwater from salt, river from sea. The tides reach as far as 200 miles inland, and every day, thousands of acres of forest disappear underwater, only to reemerge hours later,” author Amitav Ghosh wrote in his 2004 novel, The Hungry Tide. The islands that make up the Sundarbans  —   the name means ”beautiful forest”  —   are home to 4 million people. They’re also home to nearly 200 Bengal tigers. Unlike most big cats, Bengal tigers are happy in water and swim for miles from island to island. But they’re elusive. ”The first time I saw a Bengal tiger in the Sundarbans, it was some 45 years after I’d first been there,” says Bittu Saghal, a conservationist and the editor of Sanctuary Asia magazine. ”So you only see them when they decide that you’re good enough to be given a vision of orange and black.” Not everyone wants to see them. People here have been eaten by tigers. The forest rangers who protect this habitat put their lives at risk every day. Locals keep telling me that tigers here are so stealthy that if I see one, it will only be as its jaws clamp down on my neck. They don’t smile when they say this. At the Netidhopani camp, on the western edge of the forest reserve, the most recent tiger sighting was just yesterday, around high noon. I meet forest guard Debnath Mondal. A long scar runs from his left ear down his jaw. His mouth is pulled to the right, near his cheek. ”It was the first of June, 2010, at 8:15 in the morning,” he says, starting to tell me about how he got those scars. Two weeks before, a team had gone out to attach a radio collar to a Bengal tiger. Mondal himself put the tracker on the animal. He believes the tiger remembered that, and hunted him down. On that morning six years ago, his team of about a dozen men left the camp to visit a nearby watering hole, intending to take the data card out of a camera trap there. The radio collar on the tiger was sending GPS signals to a tracking center thousands of miles away in northern India. If someone had been watching those signals, he would have seen the blip of the tiger on the screen, slowly creeping through the forest to the watering hole where the men were working. The forest guards stood in a circle, facing out, scanning the trees for movement. And then everything happened very fast. ”I saw the tiger coming in. Everyone shouted, ’Tiger!’ But before I could do anything, it pounced on me. It landed on my thighs and chest and bit my face and head,” Mondal says. He takes his hat off and shows me the line on his scalp where the tiger tore at him. ”I had 80 stitches in my scalp. I can no longer see out of my left eye or hear out of my left ear.” The forest guards fought the tiger with their bamboo poles until it ran away, and they rushed their bleeding friend to a speedboat to take him to the hospital, hours away. Three months after the attack, Mondal was back on patrol. He bears no ill will toward the animal that attacked him. ”No,” he says. ”We are here to save the tiger. It gives us life. I have to be careful. And teach others to be careful. But I don’t have any anger towards the animal.” The tiger is an integral part of the forest, he says. ”I believe that if the forest is destroyed, man will not survive. We have to save the forest, the tiger, the trees are our life.” Already, an average of 25 people on the Indian side of the Sundarbans are attacked every year by tigers. Some experts warn that climate change will lead to even more tiger attacks. With every high tide, a huge amount of land in the Sundarbans disappears, says Saghal, the editor of Sanctuary Asia. Rising seas mean the land will shrink even more. Tides are taking away chunks of land that don’t return. ”So tigers, people, everybody gets squeezed into smaller land areas,” he says. ”When fields and farms and residential areas get completely unusable and people try to move into tiger habitats, there is an inevitable clash [that] is going to take place. People will die tigers will die.” In the village of Rajat Jubilee, people depend on the jungle for food and income. Sometimes they ply the coastline for crabs or go deeper into the forest for honey. And activities like that can make them vulnerable to tigers. ”I’ve seen my friends being caught by the tiger. And some of the women in this village have been widowed because their husbands were taken away by the tiger,” says Arjan Mondal (who is not related to Debnath). He has worked as a fisherman here for 20 years. We sit in his dusty courtyard outside a mud brick hut, surrounded by tropical fruit trees and a small plot of vegetables. A line of   ducks from his pond waddles by to eat out of a bowl. Mondal tells us that three times when he’s been fishing out in the jungle, a tiger has crept up on him and he’s had to fight it off with a pole. Over the years, villagers have tried different ways of preventing tiger attacks. At one point, they made special   masks with a face to wear on the back of the head. People thought this would confuse the tigers, since cats like to sneak up on people from behind. It didn’t work. Sometimes the animals even venture into this village, searching for a meal. Arati Sardar, who lives in a hut near the river with her children, raises bees for honey and keeps goats and chickens for food. One morning, she woke up to find that a goat was missing. ”So when we came out of the house, we saw the track marks and we guessed that it was a tiger,” she says. ”Later on, people who were near the river found blood, and everybody knew that the tiger had come in to take the goat.” The World Wildlife Fund came up with a plan to allow people to make a living in the village instead of foraging deep in the jungle  —   and scare tigers away from villagers’ homes. It’s a solar energy project, run via a power station on land donated by the local community. ”If the people are accessing the clean energy, you have time to spend during the evening and also during the day because it gives you opportunities to do different livelihood activities than they were doing,” says Ratul Saha, who runs the Sundarbans program for the World Wildlife  . ”Spending less time inside the forest means less exposure to the tiger.” Beyond this, having light deters tigers and other wildlife and means people can see their own surroundings more easily.   experts hope that underdeveloped places like this can skip straight to clean energy without ever relying on fossil fuels, in the same way that they got cellphones without ever depending on landlines  —   ”leapfrogging” technology. Solar power arrived in this village about five years ago. Until that time, people lived pretty much the same kind of lives their grandparents did. Nighttime lighting has changed everything. The fisherman Mondal no longer has to venture far away from the village. The women in his household make products that they sell at the local market. They don’t have to set aside their weaving or embroidery when the sun goes down. Before solar lighting came, people tended to stay in their huts after dark. There was nothing to do outside, and you might get bitten by a snake or attacked by a tiger. Now, when the sun goes down and the air has cooled, this little village completely comes to life. Each of these little shacks has opened up for business, each one with a bulb hanging down from the ceiling. In one shop, people huddle around a television set. In another,    Pintu Mondal is making a sale. (He is not related to either Debnath or Arjan.) ”I’ve got cellphones here, printers  —   it’s a cybercafe,” he says. He says this is like a little city now, it’s a business hub. He’s wearing a digital bracelet like a Fitbit that sends his health statistics to his smartphone: heart rate, number of steps he’s walked that day. Mondal says his parents and grandparents don’t understand this at all. But they do understand that this shop has made him financially independent, without having to go into the jungle and cross paths with a tiger. And over at the hut of Sardar, who lost the goat to a tiger, her    daughter Ria can now study after dark without having to rely on dim, smoky kerosene lamps, as she used to. ”What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you hope your life will be?” I ask her. ”I want to serve human beings,” she says."
"For the second time this month, demonstrators stormed Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, home to Iraq’s parliament, government buildings and embassies. NPR’s Alison Meuse reports the Iraqi Interior Ministry confirmed that ”indirect fire and tear gas were used to quell today’s protests.” The government also declared a citywide curfew. ”Riot police are dealing with anyone trying to damage state institutions in accordance with the law,” Iraq’s military says, according to Reuters. Witnesses told the news service that ”dozens” of protesters were injured from ”tear gas and live fire,” though the use of live fire has not been confirmed. The Associated Press says one of its reporters ”saw several protesters badly wounded and one was shot in the head” and adds that the demonstrators had been cleared out by evening. News photos showed   demonstrators carrying wounded colleagues out of the melee. Many of the protesters were supporters of fiery Shiite cleric Muqtada   who has been publicly pressuring Prime Minister Haider   to follow through on promised reform measures. As we reported earlier this month, they’re frustrated by government deadlock that continues to delay   measures. Reuters says, ”Sadr did not explicitly call for Friday’s demonstration.” The news service also reports that the demonstrators included people from other groups, many of them frustrated with the government’s failure to provide security. Friday’s incident follows a series of deadly attacks in Iraq’s capital. Alison notes that ”the past 10 days have seen the bloodiest string of ISIS attacks since the start of the year.” The crackdown by security forces stands in contrast to the Green Zone breach earlier this month. As NPR’s Hannah Bloch reported, that demonstration had been ”chaotic but largely peaceful.” Protesters withdrew from the area hours after they entered. Since then, according to the AP, delays of the reform legislation have left ”the country’s government gridlocked and the parliament unable to convene.”"
"The National Rifle Association endorsed Donald Trump on Friday, just before the apparent Republican nominee addressed its annual conference in Louisville, Ky. ”To get the endorsement, believe me, is a fantastic honor,” Trump said, adding that he and his sons are members of the NRA. ”They’re much better shooters than I am,” he said. ”They have so many rifles and so many guns, I tell you, sometimes even I get a little concerned,” Trump said. Saying the Second Amendment is ”under attack” and ”on the ballot in November,” Trump laid out his case as the best candidate for protecting gun rights and he hit at Hillary Clinton’s stance on guns. He also called her ”unqualified to serve as president of the United States.” (Trump was invoking Bernie Sanders, who questioned Clinton’s qualifications at a debate.) ”The only way to save our Second Amendment is to vote for someone you know named Donald Trump,” he said. ”I will never let you down.” Trump also called for   zones, which he also called for in a tweet last summer. ”We’re getting rid of them,” he said. He spoke about the 2015 shooting in Chattanooga, Tenn. that killed five people and occurred in a   zone on a military installation. However, several Trump properties, including    and Trump International Hotel in Chicago, tell NPR that guns are not allowed on the premises. Clinton and Trump, now likely opponents in the general election, are sure to increasingly clash on the issue. Clinton favors stricter background checks and holding dealers and manufacturers liable for crimes committed with their weapons. ”Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment . .. we’re going to preserve it, we’re going to cherish it, we’re going to protect it,” Trump said. ”Crooked Hillary Clinton is the most     Amendment candidate ever to run for office.” Trump also called Clinton a ”heartless hypocrite” for wanting to ”take away guns,” while having bodyguards for protection. Trump, meanwhile, said he would ”guarantee that   Americans have the right to   100 percent.” ”Without defense, we don’t have a country,” he said, adding that he feels it is more important than economic issues. This campaign, Trump has previously vowed to ”totally protect” the Second Amendment, and has said more gun ownership would help prevent mass shootings. He echoed that theory in his remarks Friday while talking about recent shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. ”If we had guns on the other side, it wouldn’t have been that way,” he said. ”I would have  —   boom,” he continued, making a gun gesture. Trump’s current stance on guns is a shift from the candidate’s earlier statements on the issue. In 2000, he supported a ban on assault weapons and longer waiting periods, as he wrote in his book The America We Deserve (  NPR’s Sarah McCammon): ”I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun. With today’s Internet technology we should be able to tell within   if a potential gun owner has a record.”"
"The new, redesigned ”Nutrition Facts” label is coming. The Food and Drug Administration has announced that the new label will be required on most packaged food by July 2018. The big change: The label will have a separate line showing how much sugar has been added to each food. The amount of ”added sugar” will be expressed in grams and as a percentage of a ”Daily Value”  —   an amount of sugar consumption that nutritionists think would be reasonable as part of a daily   diet. The label also will display calories per serving, and serving size, more prominently. As one example, a   bottle of Coke could show 65 grams of added sugar, representing 130 percent of a recommended daily intake. The change reflects increasing concern about the amount of sugar that Americans consume, and the amount of sugar that’s added to common foods. Several advocacy groups cheered the FDA’s move. Michael Jacobson, founder of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, released a statement saying that the new labels will allow consumers to make more informed choices and ”should also spur food manufacturers to add less sugar to their products.” The FDA proposed including ”added sugar” on the label last summer, and many food companies, such as General Mills, opposed it. The companies argued that from a health point of view, it doesn’t matter whether sugar is added or is already present naturally in ingredients such as fruit. The existing labels already show the amount of total sugars in packaged food, and food manufacturers argued that this already tells consumers what they need to know. Now that the FDA has made its decision, however, the Grocery Manufacturers Association does not seem interested in continuing the fight. The GMA released a statement welcoming the FDA’s revised food label and calling for a ”robust consumer education effort” to help explain it. The Sugar Association, on the other hand, was outraged, calling the FDA’s decision a ”dangerous precedent that is not grounded in science.”"
"Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed a bill on Friday that would have made it a felony for doctors to perform an abortion. The legislation, which was the first of its kind, as NPR’s Jennifer Ludden reported Thursday, would have effectively eliminated abortion in the state. Oklahoma lawmakers passed the bill on Thursday, as the   reported. Fallin’s office issued a press release saying she vetoed the bill because it was ”vague and would not withstand a criminal constitutional legal challenge.” It continued: ”Fallin is the most   governor in the nation. She has signed 18 bills supporting   values and protecting the health and lives of mothers and their unborn children. ”Senate Bill 1552 would have made it a felony for physicians to perform abortions. It also contained a provision to revoke their medical licenses unless the abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother. ” ’The bill is so ambiguous and so vague that doctors cannot be certain what medical circumstances would be considered ’necessary to preserve the life of the mother,’ Fallin said. ” ’The absence of any definition, analysis or medical standard renders this exception vague, indefinite and vulnerable to subjective interpretation and application,’ she wrote in her veto message.” As Jennifer reported Thursday, abortion rights groups said the bill ”is unconstitutional, a direct violation of Roe v. Wade,” the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, and predicted it would be struck down by the courts if it were signed into law. The Associated Press adds that ”state law already makes it a felony for anyone who is not a doctor to perform an abortion. [The] bill would have removed the exemption for physicians.”"
"Snakes and lizards and crocodiles, oh my! All of these creatures, which include Burmese pythons and carnivorous lizards, have turned up in Florida in recent years, sparking concerns about possible damage from invasive species and questions about how the nonnative animals came to be in the state. Now scientists have determined that three crocodiles captured near Miami in 2009, 2011 and 2014 are indeed Nile crocodiles, the far more aggressive relative of American crocodiles, which are native to the Everglades. The researchers suspect there are other Nile crocodiles in Florida as well, The Miami Herald reports. ”I’ve heard of enough sightings of a   croc in the areas that are connected to this to make me think it’s possible,” University of Florida biologist Frank Mazzotti, one of the scientists who confirmed the crocodiles’ species, told the Herald. ”But yeah, I don’t think we’ve pulled out the last one yet.” Using DNA, Mazzotti and another biologist, Kenneth Krysko, ”also confirmed the crocs don’t come from any known captive populations,” the Herald adds. Krysko said ”the captured crocodiles matched genetically, meaning they are related to one another, but didn’t match Nile crocs kept at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and other licensed Florida attractions,” The Associated Press reports. So how did the aggressive crocodiles  —   which, according to the AP, ”are believed to be responsible for up to 200 fatalities annually in their native   Africa”  —   get to South Florida? ”They didn’t swim from Africa,” Krysko told the news service. ”But we really don’t know how they got into the wild.” The AP says the crocs, a species whose adult males can grow to 16 feet and weigh up to 1, 600 pounds, were very likely ”brought to Florida illegally by an unlicensed reptile collector who either didn’t contain them properly, allowing them to escape, or, more sinisterly, planted them in the Everglades in hopes they would multiply.” With any invasive species, there’s a risk of disrupting the ecosystem. As NPR reported earlier this year, in the past two decades, the Burmese pythons, which can grow up to 20 feet, have ”taken a big toll on native wildlife” in the fragile Everglades ecosystem. In fact, their presence has become so problematic, Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission held an ”event where it showed prospective hunters how best to corral a    snake,” NPR’s Greg Allen wrote. The Herald says that the crocodiles could pose a similar problem. The newspaper wrote: ”While no one’s suggesting the Nile crocs may become the next Burmese python, their presence does raise concern. This species, commonly found in South Africa, can live in colder regions  —   a range that would extend as far north as Savannah, Ga. A special state permit is required to legally possess or breed Nile crocs in Florida but there is fear that illegal trade in the reptiles could increase the risk of more escapes.”"
"After the regular Friday prayers at Cairo’s Sultan Hussain Mosque, it was time to say prayers for the dead. Worshippers outside for the overflow service stood in neat rows through four calls of ”God is great.” They said silent prayers in between.  Afterward, Khalid   67, received hugs and claps on the back from many friends. His brother and    plus their son and his wife, were all on EgyptAir Flight 804. The son and his wife have two small girls, one age 2, the other just 8 months old. The children were not on the plane. They stayed with relatives in Cairo while their parents and grandparents went for what Kassam said was a vacation to Paris. ”What can you say? It’s life. It’s life. And there are many tragedies, not only ours. There are tragedies,” said Kassam. Egypt’s military said the navy has found some of the wreckage and some human remains from EgyptAir Flight 804, which went down in the Mediterranean Sea early Thursday. There’s still no word on what caused the crash that killed 66 people. A friend of the Kassam family, Khalil Kandil, 48, described Ghassan Abou Laban, the father of those two little girls left behind, as a ”gentle” person who had been married three years. His wife was from Syria, Kandil says. ”All these accidents, you always hear about them, and they’re somebody else,” Kandil adds. ”That’s the first time for me to have somebody I really know, know very well, that he’s taken away.” But it’s not just a personal loss that Kandil feels. He’s a businessman. He has worked in heavy industry and shipping consumer goods to neighboring countries. He says in the end, the deadly crash just adds to the current woes of the region. ”At the end of the day, nobody will care a lot about why this plane crashed. Is it really a terrorist act or a [mechanical] failure? It’s just another problem adding to the area, killing the tourism,” he said.  A sense of deep sorrow sprinkled with fatalism permeated the crowd on the mosque sidewalk. Mariam Abu Shakra, 22, who just graduated from college, came to pay her respects even though she did not know any of those killed. ”It affected a lot of people,” she said. ”And it’s not something small. It’s not something someone could be quiet about. It’s something huge. I don’t know, I just see it as something really big.”"
"Over 150 pregnant women in the United States appear to have been infected with Zika virus. That’s in addition to more than 120 women affected by Zika in U. S. territories, mainly Puerto Rico. Those are the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which has been keeping track of all pregnant women in the U. S. and its territories who have lab tests suggestive of Zika virus infections. So far, officials say they are aware of fewer than a dozen pregnancies that have had complications, although many of the pregnancies are ongoing. ”We don’t have full information yet on all of the outcomes,” says Margaret Honein, chief of the CDC’s birth defects branch. Zika virus infection has been associated with miscarriage as well as birth defects like unusually small brains, called microcephaly. The exact risk posed by the virus remains unclear, and figuring that out is one reason the CDC is keeping track of affected pregnancies. In the past, the CDC publicly reported on only those women who had both positive lab tests as well as symptoms. But officials say recent research suggests that women do not necessarily have to have symptoms to have their pregnancies affected. So the CDC is expanding its reporting to include women who didn’t have symptoms. ”As the data accumulated about the risk of asymptomatic infections, it seemed more and more important to be very transparent and share publicly the numbers, the full number of pregnant women at risk of adverse outcomes associated with Zika,” said Honein in a press briefing Friday. Among the 157 pregnant women from U. S. states and the District of Columbia who are being monitored, only 49 percent reported symptoms consistent with Zika  —   mostly rash and fever. Right now, CDC officials say they have no evidence that anyone has gotten Zika from being bitten by a mosquito in the continental United States. But public officials worry that this may eventually occur in places that have seen local transmission of other   disease, such as dengue."
"Playwright Dominique Morisseau is kind of the unofficial poet laureate of Detroit. She has written three plays about her hometown and her latest, Skeleton Crew, looks at four   automobile workers struggling with the economic downturn in 2008. The play is currently running   where it’s gotten rave reviews. Skeleton Crew takes place in a drab break room in a stamping plant  —   that’s where workers manufacture parts for the big three automakers. The factory has laid off a lot of people and the ones who remain  —   the skeleton crew  —   are stressed. In an interview with WNYC earlier this year, Morisseau described these workers as a family. ”I’m from Detroit,” she said. ”I was born and raised there and I wanted to explore three eras in my city’s history that I felt were transformative, that changed the landscape of the city. But also, I just wanted to learn more about the people that were living through some of the crises that happened.” So she went home to talk to people about what it felt like to be in Detroit in 2008. The automobile industry was on the verge of going under, and for the workers in Skeleton Crew, it’s an   moment. Director Ruben   says Morisseau brings audiences into ”the world of blue collar life” with a specific kind of empathy. Each employee is different, and yet ”they all need each other,” he says. In one scene, one worker tells another, ”You’ve got to make yourself irreplaceable. That’s what I’m doing.” But, as Skeleton Crew goes on, all the characters learn just how replaceable they are  —   the supervisor, who could lose his house the worker, who might have to take a   job, right as she’s about to have her first baby the shop steward, who has been making cars for her entire adult life, and is now living in one. Morisseau wrote the part of the shop steward  —   Faye  —   for actress Lynda Gravatt. ”She is as vulnerable as she is strong . ..” Gravatt says. ”She hasn’t quite figured out how to negotiate how life has beaten her or why it has beaten her.” In a way, Skeleton Crew examines how the financial crisis in Detroit  —   and in the country  —   creates personal crises.   says Morisseau makes those crises feel and sound real. ”Dominique hears the language of her life, of her community,”   says. ”And she not only hears it, she relays it just the way she heard it. It takes a certain amount of courage, because everybody wants to dilute and everybody wants to sanitize. She’s not trying to sanitize she’s just trying to let you experience them.”"
"From the outside, it looked like any of the other mugs in the Auschwitz museum. But on the inside, this one had a secret  —   faithfully kept for seven decades. A false bottom concealed a gold necklace and a gold ring inlaid with stones. The enameled mug was one of more than 12, 000 pieces of kitchenware that Nazis stole from people sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland. ”The Germans incessantly lied to the Jews deported for extermination,” Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywinski, the director of the   State Museum, said in a statement. ”They were told about resettlement, work and life in a different location.” But the Nazis would allow Jews to take only a small amount of luggage. It was a calculated move: If you were going to start a new life, and could only take a small bag, you’d fill it with your most precious possessions. So when a victim arrived at Auschwitz, the Germans could be confident they’d be able to loot their luggage and find valuables. Victims often tried to hide costly possessions from sight. On one hand, Cywinski says, that’s proof that Jewish families were well aware that their belongings would be looted during their deportation. But it’s also a heartbreaking reminder of how much people didn’t know about the fate they faced at Auschwitz. Every effort to hide valuables ”shows that the Jewish families constantly had a ray of hope that these items will be required for their existence,” Cywinski says. ”Despite the passage of more than 70 years since the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, there are still cases of accidental discovery of objects hidden by the victims,” the museum statement read. And that’s what happened with the mug, which was being examined as part of routine work at the museum when the false bottom was discovered. Beneath, there was a necklace coiled in a circle and wrapped in canvas, and a ring with some stones remaining in the setting. ”It was very well hidden, however, due to the passage of time, the materials underwent gradual degradation, and the second bottom separated from the mug,” Hanna Kubik of the Memorial Collections said in the museum’s statement. The museum says that while every find is ”carefully documented,” it is often impossible to connect a personal item to the victim who owned it because of a a lack of identifying characteristics. ”The jewellery found in the mug will be stored in the Collections of the Museum in the form reflecting the manner in which it had been hidden by the owner, as a testimony to the fate of the Jews deported to the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp,” the museum writes. More than 1 million prisoners, mostly Jews, died at Auschwitz during the Holocaust."
"For some weeks now, as Bernie Sanders has extended his remarkable and improbable run as a presidential candidate, people have been asking: ”What does Bernie want?” That question is a distant echo of ”What does Jesse want?” a relic of the 1988   candidacy of Jesse Jackson, another ”outsider” challenger with a dedicated hardcore following. But more about Jackson in a moment. This week, the question took a different form. After a rowdy convention in Nevada prompted death threats against that state party chair, the question suddenly became: ”Are the Democrats coming apart?” Uniting for the fall has always been an issue for both parties. But this year, it was supposed to be the Republicans, with their 17 candidates and their frustrated #NeverTrump rearguard action, who broke up over their differences. Now, it’s working out quite differently. So we hear again that old nostrum: ”Democrats want to fall in love, Republicans want to fall in line.” A remarkable number of Republicans have accepted, if not embraced, Donald Trump as their nominee. But a large contingent of Democrats continue to feel the Bern, or at least remain very much out of love with Hillary Clinton. Which brings us to this past weekend, which proved that sometimes what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. The ”Nevada fracas” has created a media meme and a conversational focus for the conflict roiling the Democratic Party. That is because it encapsulates the grievances felt on both sides. Sanders supporters see that some of their number were not seated in Las Vegas and see evidence that the system is rigged against them. Clinton supporters hear the epithets hurled at women on that stage, including the state party chair and Sen. Barbara Boxer, and perceive evidence of something else. Others will adjudicate what happened in Las Vegas, where both candidates’ camps seem to think they were entitled to a majority of delegates. (Although Clinton won the initial round of caucuses back in February, Sanders had the upper hand in an intermediate round at the county level on April 2.) One camp wanted an open process the other wanted respect for the rules. A voice vote was gaveled to a conclusion despite an uncertain outcome, which is bound to cause trouble. But in the end, the party chair herself has come to seem the principal victim  —   ”more sinned against than sinning”  —   because of extreme phone and online harassment. Nevada’s convention seems to have been an egregious case, an outlier. In other states where actual delegates are chosen in several phases, regular order has been followed without a similar outburst. But exceptions to the rule often make news. And in this case, cable TV and social media have endlessly repeated the raucous video shot at the convention and the toxic harassment that followed. As Nevada became a national story, Sanders was pressured to respond. The candidate has condemned violence generically, but has not apologized for his backers. Instead, Sanders and his retinue have denied responsibility for what happened and doubled down on their   resentments against Democratic Party officials. They say the entire process has been rigged against them, even parts that have been in place for decades. And the implicit message has been: Treat us fairly or expect there to be consequences. When this message is combined with Sanders’ vow this week to ”carry our fight to the convention,” it darkens the portents for the national convention in Philadelphia. So what does Bernie want? Let’s start with the obvious: He wants to be nominated and elected. That’s understood. Every candidate has a perfect right to continue fighting until the last ballot is cast, as Sanders vows to do. But even if he wins California, and several other states on June 7, Sanders would need vertiginous victory margins to win enough delegates to close the pledged delegate gap with Clinton. (The Democrats divide delegates proportionally according to the popular vote, which is just about as democratic a method as you can imagine.) So Sanders’ one path is to persuade superdelegates to prefer him over Clinton, even though they currently prefer Clinton by more than  . (The only superdelegate to flip so far deserted Sanders for the  .) Sanders and his spokespersons say superdelegates should now ignore the overall vote and the pledged delegate totals and look at how much better Sanders does against Trump in hypothetical November matchups. The only problem is that hypothetical tests six months before the election are notoriously unreliable. Just ask President Perot. Moreover, many of the poll respondents who create this November differential right now are Sanders supporters who say they will shift to Trump in November. The likelihood of their actually doing so is problematic, given past experience with disgruntled backers of other candidates who fell short. (The most recent example would be the Clinton backers in 2008 who swore they would not vote for the man who beat her, Barack Obama, but wound up doing so in the fall.) So the ”path to the nomination” for Sanders is not just uphill, it is essentially vertical. So what else might Sanders want? No one seems to think Sanders wants to be vice president or have any other role in a Clinton administration. He would return to the Senate, where he would be in a wholly new weight class of political influence. But he clearly wants to make a difference, to alter how the Democrats go forward in the fall campaign and beyond. And that is what the Clinton camp must manage. It is entirely possible that the Democratic convention in Philadelphia this July will vote to change party rules, shrinking the number of superdelegates or requiring them to follow the voting results in their states. It is also possible, if less likely, that the party would agree to allow more independents a role in its nominating process (although this would still depend on the will of the various states). Sanders supporters will also strive to make the party platform more progressive, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and expanding Medicare to cover people of all ages and perhaps calling for free tuition at public colleges. (The platform already calls for much of Sanders’ program regarding the campaign finance system and other issues.) This might fall far short of the ”political revolution” Sanders says his campaign is about. But it could still matter. And it could still point the party toward a far more progressive future. That is one way in which the 1988 precedent is relevant. Jesse Jackson arrived in Atlanta with about 30 percent of the delegates (not nearly as many as Sanders will have this summer). At the time, it was easily the best showing for an   presidential candidate. And although Jackson was not going to be nominated (Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis had a   majority) his message of racial and economic inclusion was popular and powerful within the party’s base. The Dukakis forces recognized this and turned the proceedings over to Jackson on the second night of the convention. Thousands of Jackson supporters jammed the arena while delegates, alternates and journalists waited outside  —   unable to enter. Jackson gave an hourlong oration on the theme of common ground, a siege gun speaking for unity. Jackson did his part in the fall, helping Dukakis carry nearly 90 percent of the black vote and 70 percent of the   Hispanic vote. Unfortunately for Dukakis, minority voters cast only about one ballot in seven in 1988. But by 2012, the share of the vote cast by people of color had nearly doubled. That stunning growth has turned a dozen states that were red in 1988 to blue in 2012 (California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, New Mexico, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Delaware and Vermont). The same demographic trends have made Florida, Ohio and Colorado   in presidential elections. All had been solidly Republican in 1988. Sanders’ hard base is not among minorities, of course, but among younger voters. His success has been built on winning   or even more of the voters under age 30. That is a group Clinton will need in the fall just as much as Dukakis needed Jackson’s base in 1988. Sanders may not want a     convention session all his own. He might be willing to settle for platform and rules revisions that would validate his campaign. But if he wants a Bernie night in Philadelphia when he can bring his political revolution to life  —   even for a few hours  —   it might be a small price to pay for peace."
"A good ingénue role is stuffed with smarts, as Gracie Allen, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball and other comic greats all understood. Greta Gerwig, an accomplished filmmaker and actress who’s been pinned (Damsels in Distress, Frances Ha Ha, and others) as the   ingénue of American independent film, gets that, too. On the whole, she’s made hay with the knowledge, even when the purported ditz isn’t drawn distinctly enough to give room for expansion. In Maggie’s Plan, a   if rambling romantic comedy by Rebecca Miller from a story by Karen Rinaldi, Gerwig demonstrates again that playing innocent doesn’t mean playing stupid. She plays Maggie Hardin, an earnest young New York singleton in pinafore frocks and sensible tights, who longs for a child and an authentic life, whatever that is. Maggie’s a practical sort, so with nothing doing on the love front, she commandeers the presumably robust sperm of Guy (Travis Fimmel) a   former college mate  —   and   innocent in his own right  —   who’s starting out in the pickle business. At that very moment, Maggie meets and falls for a college professor named John Harding (serendipity!) played in wire rims and   hair by Ethan Hawke. That John is already married, if none too happily, to a hotshot Columbia academic from Denmark (Julianne Moore, in a wavering German accent) presents little obstacle. Maggie persuades herself that John’s discontent gives her the green light to shack up with him. The pickle purveyor is shunted to the wings, and we cut without ceremony to a couple of years later, when Maggie and John’s troubles really begin. Slushy streets aside (this is a deglamorized Manhattan to be struggled with) what follows is early Woody Allen. Nobody knows what they’re doing, and everyone’s chasing blind instinct. In the name of honesty and following the heart and all that stuff, damage is done partners are switched. The madness is noted with wry disbelief by the     couple, Maggie’s best friends (Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph). Miller has a more forgiving heart than Allen, and the payoff is less about the wages of sin than it is about the lethal potential of a control freak armed with good intentions based on faulty assumptions. At its best, Maggie’s Plan shows genuine wit as a comedy of manners set among the peculiarly   ”professions” that grow like moss between the cracks of the new economy, for want of a better term. John calls himself a ”  anthropologist,” which means he can’t decide whether he’s a novelist or a social scientist, while his   chat with the first missus features a lot of   references to commodity fetishism. The pickle guy sells on the street, and Hader mostly wheels a stroller around town. As for Maggie, ever the   reconciler, she’s trying to make a living by ”bridging art and commerce,” which means trying to sell the strange educational toys of kooky inventors. Still, for someone who’s cast as the vital connective tissue in this shifting ménage, Maggie comes off as intelligent but a bit nerveless. Gerwig’s blend of smart and clueless is always charming and astute, but as a lover tells Maggie with unfortunate accuracy, ”You’re such a hall monitor.” Of such undersexed stuff romantic comedy is rarely made, and though Miller is a bit lighter on her feet here than in some of her other movies, Maggie’s Plan doesn’t clip along smartly enough for screwball. In the end, there just isn’t enough chemistry to go round  —   until the return of Mr. Pickle, and even he’s too little, too late."
"When Philip Gelb was a young music student in Tallahassee, Fla. he had an unusual friend and mentor: the great jazz musician Sam Rivers. Rivers, who died in 2011, was known for his improvisational style, and for the gatherings he would host in the ’70s at Studio Rivbea, a New York City loft where musicians would come together and just, well, jam. He wanted to create a space for artists to experiment. Decades later, Gelb, 51, is now a professional chef, though he still teaches music. And for the past 10 years, he’s been creating a culinary version of those jam sessions at his own industrial loft in West Oakland, Calif. As often as several times a month, he hosts an underground supper club called ”Sound  Savor”  —   intimate dinner concerts for about 20 paying guests. The   menu is an act of improvisation, and so too, in a sense, is the entertainment served up by   musicians who often play larger venues. Gelb plays the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute. Though he once toured with leading musicians, including trailblazing composer Pauline Oliveros, he couldn’t make ends meet. ”And the only other skill I had was cooking,” he says. So, along with a catering business, he started the dinner and concert series, inviting his musician friends to play. ”For many of the musicians who have performed on my series, improvisation is an integral aspect of their approach to creating music,” Gelb writes in his new cookbook, Notes From An Underground Restaurant. As a musician, he’s always been intrigued by the idea of composing in real time. ”And this interest extends to the kitchen.” The performers featured on the series over the years aren’t household names, but many are innovative figures who have challenged boundaries within their genres. They include people like double bassist Mark Dresser and saxophonist Oliver Lake  —   who also played at Sam Rivers’ Studio Rivbea sessions. Booking Lake was an act of serendipity, Gelb says. ”One time a woman was at [my] cooking class and she’s like, ’Oh, my friend Oliver Lake is going to be in town. Would you like to have him play here?’ My jaw just dropped.” Sometimes, the meal is directly inspired by the artist. For instance, when musician Stuart Dempster played, Gelb whipped up   dishes as an homage to the trombonist’s   sound. ”When I first heard Stuart, it was one of his solo records, recorded in a big cathedral with a   reverb,” Gelb explains. ”What he was doing on that recording was playing a note, letting it resonate and then just stacking up layers on top of it, all using layers of natural reverb. . .. We had an eggplant Napoleon with five different treatments of eggplants, all stacked on top of each other.” Other times, an ingredient itself becomes Gelb’s muse, such as peaches grown on the Central Valley, Calif. farm of Mas Masumoto, a pioneering figure in the organic agriculture movement who first gained fame for his eloquent defense of heirloom peaches. ”I became a huge fan of him as a person . .. and then I got to taste his peaches,” Gelb says. Now, each summer, Gelb hosts a dinner in which each course features Masumoto’s peaches  —   raw, roasted, grilled and served over salad,   in teas and smoothies. At just 750 square feet, the loft is an intimate space. The dinners and music playing take place in the kitchen, so cooking becomes part of the performance. The bassist Dresser once performed a solo while apples baked in an oven right behind him, Gelb says. Gelb is a vegan, and so are all of his locally sourced menus, which share with the entertainment the ethos of improvisation. For instance, a   ice cream was born of a desire to blend two ingredients with the same beautiful green hue, he says. Then he and his sous chef tossed in some dried cherries. It’s ”spur of the moment ideas that I would refer to as improvisation,” he says. Just as musicians aren’t expected to play a certain piece the same way each time, he says, chefs should feel free to riff off recipes. Why this approach to cooking? ”Most chefs, when they’re young, they’re in the kitchen working with great chefs. I was on stage working with great musicians. And I went out to eat with them,” says Gelb. Gelb’s vegan repertoire is  : His cookbook runs the gamut from Mexican to Chinese to Jewish soul food. He says he approaches cuisines as he does compositions: He immerses himself in ”as much tradition as I can, and then throw it out the window and go from there.” Over the years, Gelb has hosted close to 100 musicians from more than 14 countries and many different genres: from Yang Jing, a soloist on the Chinese lute (or pipa) to   rapper Shingo Annen. Gelb estimates well over 1, 000 guests have paid for the pleasure of dinner and a show at his loft. (Tickets usually go for about $60 each.) ”Underground restaurants have been around for a long time,” Gelb says. ”So have house concerts. The idea of blending them is relatively new, especially at the level we’re doing it.” What does he hope his guests take away? ’A smile, I hope, a full heart, a full belly, a full mind. We want these experiences to be all encompassing. Of course, you have to eat to survive. But every culture has music, which says something. . .. We need it. . .. We’re trying to feed not just the body but the spirit as well.”"
"Aristotle wrote that imitation is natural to human beings from childhood, and he observed that this is one of our advantages over the   lower animals. A human being is ”the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation,” he said. In the last two millennia, we have learned very little that would contradict Aristotle’s believe that imitation  —   the ability to see others and do what they do  —   is critical for human learning and development. But is it true that we learn ”at first” by imitation? Notice, it is one thing to say that humans learn by imitation, and another to say that imitation is innate, an   capacity that is triggered at birth. For the last 30 years, or so, this innateness hypothesis has been widely accepted on the strength of experimental evidence supposedly showing that neonates reliably mimic facial gestures (such as sticking out the tongue). The discovery in the ’90s of cells in the frontal lobes of monkeys that fire not only when an animal performs an action, but also when it witnesses that very action being performed by another  —     ”mirror neurons”  —   seemed, to many, to give a clue to the mechanisms underlying our   capacity to imitate. One prominent cognitive scientist went so far as to say that mirror neurons are likely to do for psychology what DNA did for biology they are a plausible candidate for the neural machinery that lets us, from the moment of birth, perceive and understand each other and that, in turn, makes human relationships and human society possible. And this, despite the fact that there is no direct evidence of the existence of these cells in human beings. (For more on mirror neurons and what they explain or don’t explain, here’s a recording of a debate last year at NYU.) And, so, it can only be considered an event of significance that, according to a study published this month in Current Biology, there is no evidence of imitation on the part of children in the first 9 weeks of life. More than 100 children were tested at weeks 1, 3, 6 and 9, using as models facial gestures, hand gestures and, as controls, inanimate objects that is, each child was presented with nine natural face or hand gestures and then with two   things. There was no indication whatsoever that children were more likely to perform the movement or make the expression they were witnessing than they were any other movement. Which is, of course, not to deny the importance of imitation for human learning, development and social life. But any theory that takes the innateness hypothesis for granted  —   such as the belief in an inborn imitation module realized in the mirror neuron system  —   can be considered undermined. In the words of the authors: ”Our results undermine the idea of an innate imitation module and suggest that earlier studies reporting neonatal imitation were methodologically limited.” The authors of the study  —   Janine Oostenbroek, Thomas Suddendorf, Mark Nielsen, Jonathan Redshaw, Siobhan   Jacqueline Davis, Sally Clark, Virginia Slaughter  —   note that it is more likely that children learn to imitate or, at least, that they acquire the ability to do so, at something more like 6 months of age, as the great Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget ( ) had proposed. As is typically the case with good science, there are still many questions unanswered. The fact that kids acquire the ability to imitate does not mean that they don’t acquire this ability by nature, just as many would argue that although kids aren’t born with the ability to talk, they are born with the ability to learn to talk. This would indicate that the opposition of learned vs. innate is perhaps too crude to help us understand our ability to make sense of each other. Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe"
"A new label on some of the steaks in your grocery store highlights a production process you may never have heard of: mechanical tenderizing. This means the beef has been punctured with blades or needles to break down the muscle fibers and make it easier to chew. But it also means the meat has a greater chance of being contaminated and making you sick. The labels are a requirement from the U. S. Department of Agriculture that went into effect this week. ”Blade tenderized,” that label might read, followed by safe cooking instructions: ”Cook until steak reaches an internal temperature of 145 F as measured by a food thermometer and allow to rest for three minutes.” (Other labels might simply recommend cooking to 160 degrees, which doesn’t require a   rest time.) Why do you need to be so careful about how you cook tenderized meat? If pathogens like E. coli or salmonella happen to be on the surface of the steak, tenderizing can transfer those bacteria from the surface to the inside. Since the inside takes longer to cook and is more likely to be undercooked, bacteria have a higher chance for survival there. And without a label, you can’t tell if you need to be especially careful with your steak. ”It doesn’t look any different,” says a spokesman for USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. ”It’s not filled with [visible] holes from the needle piercings.” Mechanical tenderizing is not uncommon: Approximately 2. 7 billion pounds, or about 11 percent, of the beef labeled for sale has been mechanically tenderized, according to FSIS. The new labels will affect an estimated 6. 2 billion servings of steaks and roasts every year. And it’s not unheard of for tenderized beef to be linked to food poisoning: The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked six outbreaks of foodborne illness since 2000 that were linked to mechanically tenderized beef products prepared in restaurants and consumers’ homes. In 2009, 21 people in 16 states were infected with the most common strain of dangerous E. coli, called O157. Nine had to be hospitalized, and one victim developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a potentially fatal kidney disease. USDA food safety officials connected the illnesses to   steaks from National Steak and Poultry, and the company recalled 248, 000 pounds of beef products. ”We need to improve how we tell consumers and the food service workers about the particular risks that would be involved in cooking it so that they can reduce the risk of illness,” says Patricia Buck,   and executive director of the Center for Foodborne Illness Research  Prevention, a nonprofit advocacy group. Buck, who has been pushing for the labeling rule since 2009, says she’s ”very excited” to see it happening. ”I think it’s an important step in the direction we need to go.” Even before the label became a requirement, Costco had been voluntarily labeling its meat. According to Consumer Reports, the grocery giant began labeling its mechanically tenderized beef in 2012 after an E. coli outbreak in Canada was linked to its   steaks. Consumer advocate Buck lost her toddler grandson to an E. coli O157 infection in 2001. ”I don’t like scaring people,” she says, ”but on the other hand, people don’t really know that these can be really deadly pathogens.” Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation."
"Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour has likely been killed by a drone strike authorized by President Obama, the Associated Press reports. According to the Associated Press, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the attack occurred in a remote region along the   border. ”He said the U. S. was studying the results of the attack, leaving Mansour’s fate unclear,” the AP says. A second male combatant accompanying Mansour in a vehicle is also likely to have been killed. A U. S. official not authorized to publicly discuss the operation tells the AP the attack was carried out by unmanned aircraft operated by U. S. Special Operations Forces about 6 a. m. ET, southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal. The Department of Defense issued a statement to the media via email saying Mansour was ”the leader of the Taliban and actively involved with planning attacks against facilities in Kabul and across Afghanistan, presenting a threat to Afghan civilians and security forces, our personnel and coalition partners.” Mansour became leader of the Taliban in July 2015, replacing founder and spiritual head Mullah Mohammad Omar. The Taliban confirmed that year that Omar had actually died in 2013. Mansour’s leadership was met with dissension and a rival group selected its own leader. Says the AP: ”His formal ascension was divisive in the Taliban, handing him the challenge of uniting a fractured  —   but still lethal  —   insurgency that has seen fighters desert for more extreme groups such as the Islamic State.” The Pentagon added in its statement that, since Omar’s death and Mansour’s appointment as leader, ”the Taliban have conducted many attacks that have resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and Afghan security forces as well as numerous US and coalition personnel.” Last December, the Afghan government reported Mansour had been was severely injured in a gun battle in Pakistan. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan according to a harsh interpretation of Islamic law until they were toppled by a U. S.  invasion after the Sept. 11 attacks."
"Exaggerator has taken home the second gem in horse racing’s triple crown. The colt won a   Preakness Stakes on Saturday, handing rival Nyquist the first loss of his career and ending his shot at a triple crown. It wasn’t an easy win for Exaggerator, though. For much of the race, the colt trailed not only Nyquist but Uncle Lino, as well. As in the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago, Exaggerator mounted a   bid to take the lead unlike that last race, however, Exaggerator finished the job. Nyquist entered the race as the favorite, with   odds, trailed by Stradivari and Exaggerator, whom he narrowly defeated at Churchill Downs two weeks ago. Nyquist  —   who’s named for the NHL’s Gustav Nyquist by his hockey fan owner  —   has now gone 8 for 9 in major races. Rain came down for much of the day at Pimlico Race Course, just outside Baltimore. Still, Nyquist’s trainer, Dale Romans, betrayed no concern for the conditions in the   to the race. ”My horse loves the mud,” Romans quipped to AL. com. Yet it was Exaggerator  —   and his jockey, Kent Desormeaux  —   who emerged from the muck with the win. Now, speculation surrounding a possible triple crown is also effectively silenced. With wins split between Nyquist and Exaggerator in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, respectively, American Pharoah remains assured of his status as the only horse to win a triple crown since 1978. The thoroughbred managed that achievement last year. Next up on the schedule: the Belmont Stakes, which will be run on June 11. Deaths In The Undercards, Dark notes sounded at the   track earlier in the day, however. Two horses died within the first four undercard races at Pimlico, including one of the victors. Homeboykris, a    underdog gelding, won the day’s first race at long odds  —   but collapsed shortly after leaving the winner’s circle. Officials don’t yet know the horse’s cause of death, but his trainer, Francis Campitelli, told The Baltimore Sun he suspects it was a heart attack. ”They’re thinking at this point it was some sort of heart attack  —   you know, ruptured aorta or something like that,” Campitelli said of the horse, which had a long racing career behind him. He had finished 16th in the 2010 Kentucky Derby. ”We won’t know until they do a necropsy on him, just to find out exactly what happened.” Not long after that, Pramedya, a    filly, fractured her leg during the fourth race. The horse’s jockey, Daniel Centeno, also broke his clavicle in the accident. The horse was euthanized on the track. It’s not the first tragedy for Pramedya’s owner. The Washington Post reports that Lael Stables also owned Barbaro, a former Kentucky Derby winner ”who broke his right hind leg racing in the 2006 Preakness and died from complications from the injury in January of 2007.”"
"”It’s up to you,” said a 1945 public service announced aimed at Americans. Find ”one of man’s worst enemies” and ”destroy their foxholes.” The video came from the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas (now known as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). And it was talking about a particular species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti  —   the very same mosquito in the news now. Back then, public health officials were mostly worried about dengue and yellow fevers. A Boy Scout helpfully dumps out stagnant water  —   a potential breeding ground for dangerous mosquitoes. The video opens with the cartoon image of a man bludgeoning a giant mosquito, its tongue hanging out and    striped legs akimbo. Pamphlets showed people how to destroy breeding sites. Boy Scouts, ”prepared and anxious to undertake their duties,” went from house to house dumping out wagons, telling housewives to change the water in vases every few days, and turning empty cans and bottles upside down. They also emptied tires and punctured cans in trash piles, so that they couldn’t refill with water. Activities like that were part of an international   campaign that started in the early 1900s and actually worked. Cases of yellow fever dropped in urban areas, and a 1961 map proclaimed that much of the Americas  —   including Brazil and Colombia  —   had made a big dent in the mosquito populations. But shortly after, the mosquitoes made a comeback. And here we are, 70 years later, still trying to reduce populations of the same mosquito. The message is much the same  —   dump out containers of standing water, cover cisterns and rain barrels, and try to keep from being bitten. It’s just that now there are probably fewer Boy Scouts involved."
"The copper craft makers in Seffarin Square in the historic district of Fez, Morocco, bang out designs on platters and shape copper pots to a rhythm. Called the medina, neighborhood streets lined with domes and archways take you back through the history of the dynasties and occupiers that ruled Morocco from the 9th century on. At the center of the square is the Qarawiyyin Library, founded more than a millennium ago. We’ve heard much recently about the destruction of grand historical sites in places like Syria and Iraq, where war and ISIS wreak havoc on the present and the past. But this library has been lovingly restored to protect ancient manuscripts by some of the greatest Islamic thinkers. It’s part of what the United Nations calls the oldest operating educational institute in the world. The complex started as a mosque in the 9th century and expanded to include a university and library in the 10th century. It’s defined by beautiful courtyards centered around fountains. Inside the library are ornately carved wooden window frames and archways, colorful ceramic tile designs on the floors and elegant Arabic calligraphy engraved in the walls. The high ceilings in the reading room are adorned with gold chandeliers. ”There is a big restoration because there was a need for the building and the manuscripts to be preserved,” said Abdullah   part of the restoration team that’s been working on the restoration since 2012. ”There were problems of infiltration, of sewage, degradation of walls, some cracks in different places in the library.” The library holds some 4, 000 manuscripts: Qurans that date back to the 9th century, the earliest collection of Islamic hadiths  —   the words and actions of Islam’s prophet Mohammed  —   and an original copy of the great Muslim thinker and historian Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah. And Henda points out the library connected the east and the west. ”It was a bridge of knowledge of researchers, between Africa and between the Middle East and Europe,” he said. When the library opened, it created a space for   and Muslims to exchange ideas. In the 10th century, Pope Sylvester II, known as a prolific scholar, was one of the visitors. And notably it was all made possible because of a woman, Fatima  . She was the pious daughter of a wealthy merchant who provided the money to found the mosque, the university and the library. That doesn’t surprise Henda. ”Ladies are half of society,” he said. ”She was descended from a rich family, she has the capacity, she has the ability, the money to do it and the will.” It’s a small reminder of the importance of women in the history of Islam. And it’s echoed in the fact that a   woman, architect Aziza Chaouni, led the restoration. Now the library has a new gutter system and solar panels. Air conditioner units are tucked behind wooden carvings that match the aesthetic. And finally, the delicate manuscripts are protected in a   and   room with a modern security system. Henda says the library, which will reopen officially in May, is more than just a building. ”We have to preserve it. We have to restore it because it’s our identity,” he said. ”It’s our archives. It’s our memory.”"
"The ongoing controversy in North Carolina over access to bathrooms has increased the general public’s awareness of issues facing transgender people. One thing you might not think about is voice: How does that essential tool of communication change with gender transition? It’s something that has deep emotional and psychological resonance. It’s also something that’s playing out in a growing number of transgender choruses across the country. As a young child growing up in South Africa, Gillian Power sang in school and church choirs. ”It was one of the things I remember from that time as something that was just so deeply joyful,” Power recalls. Now she is in her early 40s. She came out as transgender a couple of years ago. ”A person’s sense of identity and who they are is so inextricably linked to their voice,” Power says. ”Voice is probably one of the deepest signifiers of who a person is.” Female hormones didn’t change Power’s voice. So she’s taking voice lessons. As she works with her teacher, Power seems to find the confidence to really breathe, to release feelings, to express her true self  —   things she says felt incompatible with her body for so long. Power lives in Kansas City with her wife and two young children. Last year on a business trip to Boston, she sat in on a rehearsal of that city’s Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus. ”I was so deeply moved,” she recalls, ”and I said, ’Kansas City needs a chorus too! ’” So Power started the Heartland Trans Chorus. The Boston ensemble that inspired it was founded by Sandi Hammond, a   performer and voice teacher. Hammond thinks of the trans voice as an entirely new instrument, pointing out that during male puberty, vocal cords lengthen and thicken and the voice box grows. For trans men, it’s not the same. ”It’s going to be a different timbre, a different color, some of the bottom notes that a bass might get are not as likely to appear,” Hammond explains. ”And for trans women, why are some able to explore what we call falsetto in the male voice to develop a more female sound and some are not? And then collectively what is that timbre of a trans chorus?” Boston’s Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus had its first performance last month. Other choruses have started up in Chicago, Atlanta and New Hampshire. The biggest one is the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles. When TCLA Artistic Director Lindsey Deaton put out the call for singers last summer, she didn’t know what to expect. ”I had no idea who was going to show up,” she says, ”much less what their voice type was, what they could sing, or if they could sing.” Turns out, they could sing. ”I was so ecstatic,” Deaton says. ”People came into the room and their spirits were bright.” Just like in other cities, people brought years of musical experience. Many of them had given up on the idea they’d ever perform again, either because they lacked confidence in their new voices or they felt unwelcome in traditional church choirs or other community choruses. Deaton reached out to arrangers from gay choruses to help put songs in the right keys and registers. ”We were pretty close to being a TTBB chorus,” she says. ”That’s tenor 1, tenor 2, baritone and bass, with some people singing a little higher. In thinking about it, of course that’s where we’re going to end up. Most of our adult trans women are going to be singing tenor and baritone and bass. And most of our trans men who’ve been on testosterone and had a voice change are going to be down in tenor and bass and baritone.” Deaton says anyone who opens their ears will find something in common with trans singers. ”You know, the soul has a direct line through song,” she says. ”And that’s what music is all about, is sharing that emotion. And once you do that, then everybody gets it. Unless you’re dead from the neck up and you don’t hear. But, I haven’t seen anybody not get it so far.” The Trans Chorus of Los Angeles has concerts through the summer. In Kansas City, the Heartland Trans Chorus will give its first performance in June  —   just in time for the LGBT pride events."
"On Thursday, Candace Payne livestreamed a video on Facebook. It was simple, short  —   a   number that showed her trying out a toy she’d just bought from a local department store. Pretty standard, right? Well, by Saturday that little video had been viewed more than 105 million times . .. and counting. It has already beaten Buzzfeed for the   Facebook Live video of all time. If you somehow haven’t seen it yet yourself, go ahead now. We’ll wait. The Star Wars fan had just bought the talking wookiee mask  —   as in, Chewbacca  —   on store credit after making a few returns. Of course, it takes a little while to even make out the fact that the mask talks, because Payne could not hold it together. Frankly, much of the video is simply Payne laughing hysterically at what she clearly thinks is the funniest thing she has ever seen. And by the end, it’s difficult to disagree. NPR’s Rachel Martin said she was ”literally weeping, she was laughing so hard” herself when she watched the video. So, Martin decided to catch up with Payne, calling her at her home outside Dallas on Friday afternoon. ”I didn’t expect to laugh that hard,” Payne told her. ”But I was looking at the phone videotaping it. I didn’t think that Chewbacca would look so happy!” And she didn’t expect the prodigious response to her video, either. ”Oh my goodness, I’m reeling. I don’t know what to do. I’m like, ’Jesus, take the wheel!’ ” she says. She says she’s already gotten messages from people hoping to license the video and manage its distribution, aiming to drum up revenue from it. ”That’s kind of where I’m negotiating that right now.” Still, she hasn’t escaped the sense that all of this hubbub is, well, just a little bit crazy. ”I’m like, y’all, come on.” That said, she says something serious and lovely has come of her funny little video. ”I’ve had some people  —   they’ve sent me private messages, and they’ll just say stuff like, ’Man, I’ve been battling depression.    passed away, and I hadn’t laughed since they died and this video made me laugh again,’ ” she says. ”I couldn’t ask for more. It’s just awesome.”"
"A massive space shuttle fuel tank is winding its way through the streets of Los Angeles Saturday, on a   trek heading to the California Science Center. It’s set to be displayed with the space shuttle Endeavour. The tank, which was never used in a mission, is the ”last   space shuttle external tank in existence,” according to the science center. As reporter Danielle Karson tells our Newscast unit,   weighs ”66, 000 lbs. and is as tall as a   building.” Of course, there are plenty of logistical challenges in moving an object of this size through a crowded metropolitan area. As The Associated Press reports, the giant tank started moving at midnight from Marina del Rey, where it ”arrived by barge Wednesday.” It’s crawling along at about 5 mph, the wire service reports, and is expected to take 13 to 18 hours to reach the science center. Crews had to prepare the route in advance for the huge tank. As the Los Angeles Times reports, crews loosened ”utility lines, street lights and traffic lights so they can be removed just before the fuel tank passes. They will be reinstalled immediately afterward.” It took 30 engineers to work out how to get the tank through Los Angeles  —   where ”along with affecting 50 of the city’s intersections, it will also have to make two epic turns,” member station KPCC reports. A Times infographic shows how the tank makes a turn. It’s a slow process that involves eight crew members guiding the   transport device. The spectacle is drawing big crowds along the tank’s route, where people are posting photos and videos using the hashtags #ETcomeshome and #ET94, among others. Fans include these aspiring astronauts: The tank delivered to NASA before the Columbia accident. After the Columbia shuttle was destroyed as it   Earth’s atmosphere, NASA scientists studied   to determine whether its design played a role in the incident. Today’s ride is the last step in a long journey it was shipped from New Orleans by barge, passing through the Panama Canal on its way to Los Angeles. Los Angeles residents have actually recently seen another piece of NASA history cruising down their streets: The space shuttle Endeavour made a similar journey in 2012 (charmingly dubbed ”Mission 26: The Big Endeavour”). At 122 feet, it was significantly shorter than the tank, which measures 154 feet. The tank was donated by NASA, and Science Center President Jeff Rudolph tells Danielle that he’s thrilled to acquire the tank. ”As soon as we got Endeavour, we said we got to see if there’s any way we can get that one remaining external tank,” he says. Danielle adds that the center is hoping to eventually add booster rockets to the display. According to the center, that means it will be the ”be the only place in the world that people will be able to see a complete shuttle stack  —   orbiter, external tank, and solid rocket booster  —   with all real flight hardware in launch configuration.”"
"Adia Victoria Paul spent a good bit of her South Carolina childhood in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but you won’t hear the songwriter wax nostalgic for a pastoral paradise. The South we used to hear about in songs was a land of shade trees, sweet tea and southern belles. Victoria makes it abundantly clear on her debut album, Beyond the Bloodhounds, that that’s not the South she knows. Instead, she remembers an unforgiving landscape. ”Nature terrified me: the constancy of it and its cold disregard for mankind,” she says. ”I don’t think that I could ever try and ’aw shucks’ that up, folksy that up. I would never disrespect what nature has meant to me and be like, ’Oh, you know, I’m just a country girl. ’” In her song ”Sea Of Sand,” the artist  —   who goes by her first and middle names  —   sings about the time a river swept her precious patent leather shoes right off the bank. Those were her church shoes, and they saw a lot of use. For years, life revolved around her Seventh Day Adventist congregation. She and her siblings even attended the church school. And the hymnal was Victoria’s main source of music. ”So I kind of had this veil shrouded around me,” she says. ”But there still were small ways that the world would break through the veil. I remember Michael Jackson as a little girl. I was like, ’He’s not like us. Have you seen him dance? ’” She got thrust into that secular world when her single mom put her into public high school. But Victoria couldn’t identify with her schoolmates’ comfortable suburban lives as a young woman of color in a family that often struggled to get by. ”I just realized, ’Okay, wait a minute. Whatever it is that you’re trying to sell, I don’t want this. I don’t want my life to look like this,’” she says. ”So when I went to high school, it was with this attitude of, ’Okay, I have to be here by law, but I’m not going to sing and dance for you, and I’m not going to impress my teachers. I don’t care about letters of recommendation. ’” Victoria dropped out of school, and wanted out of the South altogether. She saved up for a plane ticket to Paris, determined to learn French. Then she caught a train to New York to try Northern city life. But by 21, she’d moved to Atlanta and fallen for delta blues. ”I heard black inner lives for the first time,” she says. ”I heard this kind of soundtrack to what I was already going through. It was just like: Y’all went through it too! You’ve been tried by the same fire that I’ve been tried in, as a black Southerner. I was like, ’I need someone to tell me who I am. I need to see what I’m going through out there.’ So I had to go back about 80 years, but I found it.” At first, she only played her songs for her cat. After she joined her mom and sisters in Nashville, they overheard her singing and started requesting their favorites. But it took an awakening for Victoria to get serious about putting her music out there. ”When I saw that the things that I was singing about,” she says, ”that were frustrating me  —   I was seeing it played out on the news with the Black Lives Matter movement, and Trayvon Martin, and Sandra Bland, and Tamir Rice  —   I was just like, ’Okay, I have to say something. I have to put myself out there, because my art is speaking to what’s happening now. ’” Victoria’s presence was so powerful that drummer Tiffany Minton offered to join her band before she’d even heard the music. Just talking with Victoria made that much of an impact. ”What she’s saying is challenging for a lot of people, particularly white people, which tends to be a lot of our audience,” she says. ”So it draws them to a place of defensiveness or disconnection. I think she’s able to challenge them with grace and dignity, but also with a fierceness, without apology. I love that she stands up for herself and her artistic vision.” By now, Victoria is used to catching audiences  . Instead of, say, an ”RB diva,” they see a black woman commanding attention with her electric guitar. ”I think it’s just that we were so silenced that people don’t know what to do with a black woman,” she says, ”unless it is displayed to them, given to them in a way to consume that they are already familiar with.” With her first   album, the    wanted to find the musical language for what she felt at 6 and 17 and 23. ”I think that I sing now with more conviction,” she says. ”I feel more sure now about my words. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re flattering. I know a lot of the songs don’t paint me as a great person that’s not what I’m here for. But I feel the agency to own the experiences that I went through and not have to be like, ’Sorry. Sorry. ’” Then again, Victoria’s really never been one to apologize for who she is."
"Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer ”radical empathy” and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety. In this week’s episode, listeners ask what to do when they have political differences with their partners and  . The hosts are joined by the liberal writer Samantha Dunn and her husband, Republican political operative Jimmy Camp, who help the Sugars understand how a politically divided relationship can work. Here, (Love) Stuck Behind Party Lines seeks guidance on just that. Dear Sugars, I am a    female. My boyfriend and I have been together for two years, and we are stuck. Lovingly, oh so stuck. We often talk about our future together. We are open and honest. If I shared this letter with him today, not a word about it would surprise him. He is kind, affectionate, brilliant, generous, thoughtful, understanding, forgiving, patient and so beautifully sensitive  —   he tears up when he sees dead animals on the side of the road, every time. And off the bat, we identified some differences in how we view the world: our definitions of purpose, financial goals, ambition, social justice, religion, health, taxes, world affairs and  —   of course  —   the boxes we check in the voting booth. If I were to define myself, I would say first and foremost, I am a strong feminist. And it’s extremely important to me that my partner is a feminist as well. My boyfriend gushes about how much I’ve ”taught [him] about the world” and opened his ”eyes to new views.” But I can’t seem to get on board with some of his views. Am I simply stubborn and  ? We try the ”active sharing and learning” route: sending each other articles, and we end up in heated discussions for hours. He tells me these discussions are ”exciting and energizing,” whereas I feel defeated, frustrated and angry. I often wind up in tears  —   cringing at the thought of him teaching our children ways about the world I don’t agree with. I want a family and a big, deep love with my partner. I am 27, but I feel the clock ticking, in the sense of wanting to start defining if this is ”the” relationship for me, or if I should move on. I don’t want to leave my boyfriend whom I love so much because of my own inability to connect with someone different than myself. How do I know if I should let go, or continue? Sincerely, (Love) Stuck Behind Party Lines, Cheryl Strayed: This is a hard one. Honestly, my feeling about her situation is I would have these same doubts. Those kinds of very different political views are a deal killer for me. And (Love) Stuck, for that reason, alarm bells are going off. The fact that you’re writing to us tells us that this is a big deal to you  —   it’s something that you’re haunted by. Steve Almond: One thing that’s very odd to me is that you talk about the importance of feminism in your life, and you say it’s important that your partner’s a feminist as well. And then you don’t tell us, ”and I’m glad to say, that when it comes to equality, my boyfriend is totally on board with that.” I’m unsettled that there’s no mention of it. I think it would be mentioned if he was affirmatively saying: Yes, you’re right, women  —   equal work, equal pay. The other thing that’s unsettling is that the attempt at discourse, which I think is great  —   the sharing and learning approach  —   you find defeating and thwarting. And right after that is: I cringe at the thought of him inculcating our children with these values that I don’t agree with. I wonder, you say your boyfriend would be OK with hearing this letter. Would he be OK with hearing that? You’re right, since you want to have a family, and your political views are really important to you, you need to figure out whether you can be compatible in this way. Samantha Dunn: I actually didn’t know specifically what the issues were. She spoke more in abstractions. And I wondered if she was so attached to the abstraction of being a feminist  —   she didn’t look at what the relationship actually looks like. Is there equality, is there respect in the relationship? Is the practice there, versus the label? That’s what made me wonder if she should just abandon labels and just be with this person that she loves. Steve Almond: Interesting. So, Cheryl and I were very focused on how defeated her interactions are with him around trying to align their values. And what you are saying is: Hold on a second, what about the whole beginning of the letter? You can choose to focus on the parts of the relationship that are nourishing and supportive or you can get fixated on the places where you have political disagreements and maybe even moral disagreements. But that’s not ultimately what you should be focusing on for   happiness. Samantha Dunn: That’s exactly it. Cheryl Strayed: (Love) Stuck, only you know if you actually have common ground with your partner. It’s not clear to us from your letter if that’s the case. If you find yourself seriously at odds  —   feeling like you don’t have common ground, feeling like your ideas aren’t valued and you really can’t hear your partner’s ideas  —   that to me is a real red flag in a relationship. And it might be one that you want to take seriously. You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. This week is the second in a   series about political differences with family and friends. They further consider this letter from (Love) Stuck Behind Party Lines and take a letter from Lefty Lucy, a progressive Democrat who has married into a conservative Oklahoma family and is finding it increasingly difficult to stay silent about her true beliefs."
"The Egyptian military has released images of debris recovered during its search for the missing EgyptAir plane, which disappeared from radar over the Mediterranean early Thursday. The images, published on the official Facebook page of Egypt’s army spokesman, show crumpled metal with the EgyptAir insignia, shredded cloth that appears to belong to a plane seat, life preservers and a pink backpack adorned with green and yellow balloons. Video footage released by the military shows more of the items recovered, including carpeting and a soggy white handbag: On Friday, the Egyptian military said it found the first debris from the crash, including human remains. There were 66 people on board the Airbus A320 when it went down. It’s still unclear what caused the   plane to crash, though smoke apparently detected in the cabin is the latest clue. Sebastien Barthe, a spokesman for the French air accident investigation agency, told The Associated Press that automatic messages from the plane indicated that smoke was detected in ”multiple places” in the cabin, minutes before the plane disappeared. He says the messages ”generally mean the start of a fire.” Still, he says: ”We are drawing no conclusions from this. Everything else is pure conjecture.” As we reported, The Aviation Herald reported Friday that smoke was detected in a bathroom before the aircraft went down. The publication said this was from data transmitted by the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System to ground stations during the flight. This is the data published by The Aviation Herald: ”On May 20th 2016 The Aviation Herald received information from three independent channels, that ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) messages with following content were received from the aircraft: ”00:26Z 3044 ANTI ICE R WINDOW 00:26Z 561200 R SLIDING WINDOW SENSOR 00:26Z 2600 SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE 00:27Z 2600 AVIONICS SMOKE 00:28Z 561100 R FIXED WINDOW SENSOR 00:29Z 2200 AUTO FLT FCU 2 FAULT 00:29Z 2700   SEC 3 FAULT no further ACARS messages were received” Industry analyst Robert W. Mann tells The New York Times that these messages ”did not necessarily mean that there was a fire.” He adds: ”The messages could also have been prompted by rapid decompression of the aircraft, which can produce condensation that the plane’s sensors could mistake for smoke.” Egyptian officials have said terrorism is a more likely explanation for the crash than a technical issue. Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry has launched an investigation into the crash, which includes French investigators and an Airbus representative. The search continues for the plane’s flight data recorder, the investigation’s head Ayman   tells Egyptian   newspaper   adding that it has ”large importance” to the investigation. A Civil Aviation Ministry official has denied reports that the recorder was recovered, according to independent daily    . And as the AP reports, ”French aviation investigators have begun to check and question all baggage handlers, maintenance workers, gate agents and other ground crew members at Charles de Gaulle Airport who had a direct or indirect link to the plane before it took off, according to a French judicial official.”"
"The commencement speech season is underway and grads are soaking up advice and wisdom all over the country. And since it’s an election year, it’s hard for speakers to resist stepping onto the soapbox. Last weekend, President Obama spoke at Rutgers University in New Jersey, one of the nation’s oldest higher ed institutions. He appeared to take a jab at Donald Trump  —   though he didn’t call him out by name. ”Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be: In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue,” he told grads. Obama continued, ”When our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they’re not held accountable for repeating falsehoods and just making stuff up, when actual experts are dismissed as elitists, then we’ve got a problem.” In Philadelphia,   Miranda, the mastermind behind the Broadway hit Hamilton spoke at the University of Pennsylvania  —   asking forgiveness for having just one Philly reference in his musical. He also made his political point in a brief nod to immigration: In a year when politicians traffic in   rhetoric, there is also a Broadway musical reminding us that a broke, orphan immigrant from the West Indies built our financial system. A story that reminds us that since the beginning of the great unfinished symphony that is our American experiment, time and time again, immigrants get the job done. If these political commentaries seem a bit   it may be because commencement speakers often skew to the left, and this year appears to be no exception. But these speeches are just the beginning. There are still many, many more to come this graduation season  —   including NPR Ed’s Claudio Sanchez, who delivers the commencement speech for DePaul University College of Education in June. In the meantime, if you’re looking for life advice  —   like ”Do not pick your nose in public,” from Sandra Bullock, or job advice  —   such as, ”Try not to get a regular job,” from Jay Leno  —   you should check out NPR Ed’s online commencement database. We sifted through hundreds of grad speeches (dating back to 1774) and compiled our favorites. We Need Your Help!  In the next few weeks, we’ll be updating the database with the best speeches from the 2015 and 2016 seasons. If you see a great graduation speech this month or next month, let us know and we’ll put it in. Here are just a few we’re looking forward to: You can see a more comprehensive list from the blog Graduation Wisdom here. Tell us about your favorite graduation speeches  —   We’re on Twitter at @npr_ed. Our Facebook page is here or you can drop us an email at NPREd@npr. org."
"On Sunday, May 22, over 100, 000 Peruvians are expected to arrive at a site in the Andean highlands near the peak of Ausungate, in the southeastern region of Cusco. They may have traveled hundreds of miles to get there. At an altitude of 16, 500 feet, they’ll camp out, sing, dance and pray at the holiest  —   and one of the biggest  —   religious festivals in the Andes mountain chain. It’s called Qoyllur Riti, which means ”snow star” in the local Quechua language. These days, the festival is an example of how climate change is affecting far more than daily life and agriculture. The mountains here are considered sacred by the worshippers and known as ”apus,” or mountain spirits, gods. The tradition is for each province represented at the festival to carve out heavy chunks of ice from the glacier  —   symbolic of water and life  —   to bring back to their communities. But things have changed. ”We can’t take snow down from the glacier anymore,” says Walter Mamami, a participant from the Canchis province. ”The glacier is getting smaller. We now stop at the foot of the glacier.” The festival itself is a combination of native and Catholic traditions. It celebrates the reappearance of the Pleiades constellation in the night sky, marking the start of the Andean new year and the harvest season. There’s a Christian context as well: According to a legend, in 1780, a   boy appeared to a young shepherd who lived in the mountains, then turned to stone when suspicious villagers came after him. The belief is that the boy was Jesus. That was a time of tension between the local peoples and Spain, which ruled Peru from the 16th century until the 1820s. Spain tried to quash the Indian language and culture. But in the case of the festival, the two cultures, Spanish and Andean, became intertwined. I visited the festival last year, following a group of official guardians of the Qoyllus Riti tradition, known as pablitos in Spanish or ukukos in the local language. The pilgrimage itself is a test of endurance, a penitence of sorts. It takes days to arrive as villagers travel in open trucks most of the way, stopping in every village along the way to pray, dance and sing. There’s lots of   chewing and nonstop music to keep the deeply devoted pilgrims going with little or no rest. Worshippers disembark in Mahauyani, the furthest trucks can go, before hiking another six hours to cover the final steep 6 miles to their destination. On the vast plain in the glacial basin of Sinakara, surrounded by   peaks, a cacophony of    music and prayers blares from loudspeakers at the chapel on the site. People come wearing their community’s traditional dress as well as special outfits made for the festival. ”Hairy” woolen robes worn by the ukukos are a reminder of a mythical bear, believed to live in the surrounding mountains. Meanwhile colorfully dressed male dancers bounce around carrying what looks like a stuffed baby llama on their backs. ”The glacier receded a lot,” Jaime Rios Farfan, from the Acomayo province, told me after he returned from the main ritual at the foot of the glacier  —   1, 500 vertical feet higher than the camp site  —   held at sunrise. ”We prayed and asked Apu Qollqupunko [the name of the peak] that the glacier not recede any more, that it not disappear.” At the celebration in years past, each community had its own area in the snowfields where it would carry out its rituals and prayers. Participants from the province of Paucartambo said only muddy land remains in its reserved area. ”It’s a sad reality,” says Rios Farfan. If and when the glacier disappears, ”It will threaten peaceful coexistence between the groups,” says Javier Felix, an anthropologist, speaking of possible tensions between those communities that might still have a sacred area on the glacier and those that don’t. He lamented that many of the younger ”guardians” didn’t appear to understand the importance of the glaciers to the spiritual traditions. ”The elders understand,” he adds. What the elders can’t understand is why no one seems to care about earth’s changing climate. ”The big factories and all the garbage are destroying the ozone layers. Over here while it used to be all white, there are more and more rocks,” admits Rios Farfan. Indeed, last year at the festival, local chiefs criticized the world’s disrespect for Mother Nature."
"The head of the Transportation Security Administration is promising the agency will do a better job of staffing enough officers at airport security checkpoints to reduce long lines. But he says those long lines are likely to continue through the peak summer travel season. Travelers at some airports have been waiting two to three hours or more to get through screening. As a result, thousands have missed their flights in recent weeks. The problem has been particularly bad at Chicago’s airports. The security checkpoint line Sunday night at Midway stretched all the way to the airport’s transit station. At O’Hare,   to   waits forced 450 passengers to miss flights on American Airlines alone. Friday at O’Hare, TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger apologized. ”Earlier this week, we had a breakdown here in Chicago and that was unacceptable,” Neffenger said. ”I am very sorry to those people that did that, and we are working very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” After meeting with airline executives  —   who called the Friday session with the TSA administrator ”productive”  —   Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Dick Durbin and other elected officials, Neffenger tried to explain what exactly went wrong. ”It was a big day for volume, but it was not an unpredicted big day for volume. People arrived early as they’ve been recommended and uh, we, quite frankly, simply put, did not have enough checkpoint lanes opened when they arrived. And once behind, it takes a long time to catch up.” In fact, some airlines officials and passengers say the TSA was actually closing lanes as the lines grew on Sunday, because screeners had reached the end of their day and overtime hadn’t been approved. Neffenger says policies are being changed and more overtime is authorized so that doesn’t happen again. In addition, he is sending more   dogs and dozens of additional security officers to Chicago. He says 100   employees are being made full time, and hundreds of new officers are being hired this summer in Chicago and at other busy hub airports all around the country that have had similar problems. But overall TSA staffing levels are down 10 percent from 2013, while demand for airline travel is now reaching record highs. ”I think we need to increase the staff size of TSA to meet all the demands of the growing travel population,” says Neffenger, who adds that changes to security protocols, already ratcheted up after the terrorist attacks in Brussels, might be needed again ”as we learn more and more about what might have happened to EgyptAir, as well as what we already know has happened to other aircraft.” After all, Neffenger says, ensuring safe air travel is the agency’s top priority, and that means long waiting times at security checkpoints may remain. ”I think this summer is going to continue to be a challenge,” he says. ”I think you’ll still see crowds in airports but my goal is to keep you moving. We can’t have a situation like we had here in Chicago again.” That stark reality worries many of the nation’s airlines heading into the busy Memorial Day weekend and summer travel season. ”Of the 25 busiest days of the year, 19 of them fall between June 1 and the end of August, says Jean Medina, spokeswoman for the industry group Airlines for America. ”This is a very high priority for us in terms of how do we make this better, how do we make the travel experience better, how do we make sure people aren’t missing their flights.” Some airlines have their own workers and contract employees taking over    functions for TSA agents in and around the checkpoints. But travelers are bracing for the worst, Jack Weir of Wilmington, Del. says because of the long delays getting through security in Chicago and elsewhere, he now arrives two or three hours early, even though he is enrolled in the TSA’s   program which, for an $85 fee, speeds travelers through more quickly. But the    points out that when traveling for business, ”time is money,” so ”you have to plan accordingly and you can spend less time making sales calls or visiting.” ”I don’t think I should have to wait that long in line,” says Chicagoan Katelyn Delany. ”Just travel anyway is stressful, so I think getting to the airport and having to wait in these extra long lines, people missing their flights, it’s pretty crazy.” Delany is heading to Nashville with friends for the weekend and she arrived at O’Hare 2. 5 hours early. Add to that the hour of travel to the airport from her home and almost an hour and a half in the air, and Delany is spending about five hours flying to a city that takes six to seven hours in the car. ”I know. It just doesn’t make sense anymore at this point. We all should’ve just jumped in the car and gone, but we booked these flights a few months ago.” That was before she knew brutally long security lines would be such a big hassle."
"I flew back and forth to Chicago this week, and here were lots of passengers, myself included, who groused about the long, slow security lines: where schoolgirls have to kick off their pink running shoes, that can seem to take forever to unlace and   and convalescent senior citizens are made to limp out of their wheelchairs to walk through metal detectors and body scanners and traveling salespeople who have to heft their bulky black cases onto conveyors, and shake their small, tired   bags of toiletries to show they’re not carrying incendiary materials. It’s easy to groan and grow impatient if we think: when is the last time that a sixth grade student in running shoes, or an elderly woman in a wheelchair, or a software salesman who filched the shampoo bottle from his last hotel tried to bring down an airplane? And then last year, an internal investigation by the Department of Homeland Security documented how their covert teams snuck banned items through the screeners 67 out of 70 times. When I flew back yesterday morning, the day after EgyptAir flight 804 apparently fell from the sky, the lines were even slower. But there was a lot more silent resignation among us sullen lines of passengers. The loss of that aircraft, whether or not it turns out to be a terrorist act, reminded us why those security lines are there. I am among those Americans who grew up ducking to the floor a few times a year to take shelter from a nuclear bomb. We look back at those times now and usually laugh to think that government officials ever advised citizens that a school desk could keep anyone safe from a nuclear fireball. But while nuclear war was a real threat, the menace was hard to imagine. In these times, we have seen airplanes being taken over, or blown up in the sky. There are security experts who have raised sound questions about whether those long lines, body scans, and occasional   do much to actually catch or deter bombers and hijackers. Some suggest that locks on cockpit doors, and the increased vigilance of passengers have done much more. But terrorists can adjust their tactics more quickly than bureaucracies can change their policies. The TSA can do the right things thousands of times, and never get credit. But if they’re wrong just once, they’re disgraced and it can cost lives. Those guards who can seem so grim, slow, and unreasonable when you’re in a hurry may cause you to miss your flight. But as we’ve been reminded again this week, that’s not the worst thing that can happen."
"For most of us, eye tracking technology sounds interesting. But it’s not life changing. Eye tracking allows users to move a cursor around a computer or mobile device simply by moving your eyes and head. Oded Ben Dov initially used eye tracking technology to develop a video game that he showed off on Israeli TV. The next day, he says, he got a phone call from a man who told him: ”I can’t move my hands or legs. Can you make me a smartphone I could use?” That’s when Ben Dov realized that his eye tracking technology could change lives. ”For me, that was a calling to put my skills and knowledge to good use.” Ben Dov went on to found Sesame Enable, a company that sells smartphones for people who can’t use their hands. Sesame Enable, which is based in Israel, was in Mountain View, Calif. this week for Google   the annual conference for developers who make products using Google technologies. Sesame Enable is getting support from Google. org  —   the company’s charitable arm. Eve Andersson, who leads accessibility across Google, says Google. org has given out $20 million to organizations that use technology to help people with disabilities. She says a lot of the technology that ends up helping people with disabilities comes out of   technology aimed at all consumers. ”We shouldn’t need to know they have a disability,” Andersson says. ”It should just work for them.” But taking existing technology and making it useful for a disabled person often does require new designs. Tomglobal. org  —   a nonprofit that brings together technologists who want to solve problems for people with disabilities, gets financial support from Google. org. One of the products generated at a tomglobal. org hackathon was on display at the   conference. It’s a special sensor device for people in wheelchairs who face the problem of ”pressure sores.” It was developed by Paul Herzlich and some of his colleagues. Herzlich works in the legal department at Google and he uses a wheelchair. Pressure sores ”happen when someone is sitting in the same position for too long,” Herzlich says. ”It decreases blood circulation to that area and eventually leads to a breakdown of the skin in that area.” Herzlich says he was once hospitalized after getting a pressure sore and that the condition can be deadly. The sensor device he developed fits easily on a wheelchair seat and it’s connected to a smartphone app via Bluetooth. ”If the app notices that the pressure hasn’t changed in a certain period of time it will notify the user as a reminder to move,” Herzlich says. ”It’s raising that awareness for the user because we’re often paying attention to other things throughout our day and don’t remember to move.” Herzlich and his colleagues hope to bring the product to market and develop a version for hospitals where patients face health problems related to bedsores. Google was actually a little behind some of its rivals when it comes to making accessibility a priority, says Mike Shebanek, the senior director of accessibility at Yahoo. Shebanek is also with an organization called Teach Access, which brings together employees at tech companies that want to work on accessibility issues. Shebanek says in the tech world, Apple led the way by making its smartphones accessible. ”Things like magnifiers and screen readers were built into the product,” he says. Though Apple poses other issues for developers who want to make technology accessible. Oded Ben Dov of Sesame Enable says his company can’t make its product work as well on Apple devices because of its closed operating system. Google’s Android is open source. The next update to the Android operating system will enable Open Sesame, an app that can be used on any Android smartphone. Yahoo has an accessibility team, which works and trains engineers throughout the company to design all Yahoo products to be accessible. ”What we find is that when we give these designers and engineers an opportunity to do this, they have such a positive experience they want to keep doing it,” Shebanek says. He says a lot of tech companies realize that the market for products that have a variety of accessibility features is large. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1 billion, out of the approximately 7 billion people in the world, experience a disability. But, as much as disabled people often benefit from technology developed for regular consumers, it also works the other way around. ”We discovered that when we focus on users with disabilities our products get better for everybody,” Shebanek says. For example, Shebanek notes that Yahoo has been working on closed captioning for live events streamed on the Web. ”We know that more people than those with hearing problems use closed captioning,” he says. Try watching a TV screen in a loud airport or sports bars. While it’s great news for disabled people that tech companies are increasing their interest in making products for them, Shebanek says there’s still a long way to go. It’s still rare for companies to have an accessibility team, and that’s especially true at startups. Google  ’s dedicated space appears to show a real commitment on the part of one of the world’s largest and most influential tech companies to using technology to make life better for people with disabilities. And, as Google’s Eve Andersson notes, most of us are likely to discover that accessible technology will become more important to us as we age. ”I use magnification a lot more than I did in my younger days,” she says."
"As the Democrats’ primary process begins to wind down, the big question on a lot of people’s mind is, what does Bernie Sanders want? The Vermont senator now has a lot of clout within the Democratic Party, and is in the position to demand some changes. One thing Sanders has voiced concerns about is how Democrats vote for president: He’s made it clear he doesn’t like closed primaries, where only Democrats can vote. Neither do Sanders supporters. When Sanders mentioned during a primary night rally this week that Kentucky is ”a closed primary, something I am not all that enthusiastic about, where independents are not allowed to vote,” the California crowd roared to life with boos. So, perhaps Sanders will make a push the party to embrace open primaries at the Democratic National Convention this summer. There are electoral stakes here. All year, Sanders has done better in contests where independents, or even registered Republicans, were allowed to participate. (Of course, Sanders has also done well in caucuses, which are very closed and very limited, compared to statewide primaries.) There’s a big philosophical split to consider, too. University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket said a lot depends on how you view the main function of a primary. ”Is a primary just an election that your tax dollars are paying for, and that helps determine who our leaders are?” he said. ”And if so, you tend to think, ’sure, all of us should be allowed to participate in that.’ ” Masket said the other way to view a primary is as a political party making its most important decision: whom to choose for its nominee. ”If that’s what it is, well then, really shouldn’t people who are members of that party be the ones who make that decision?” he said. There are four basic camps that existing primaries fit into. Open and closed are   and there are several different variations of hybrid primaries. Some states allow independents to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary, but block party members from crossing over. ”Or, sometimes it may mean that an unaffiliated voter goes to a polling place, decides to vote in a party primary, and that choice of ballot then registers them with that party,” said Dan Diorio, of the National Conference of State Legislatures. The most open format out there is the type that California has: a   primary. ”Every registered voter has the same ballot in the primary. It has all the candidates in all the primaries on every ballot,” said Kim Alexander, who heads the California Voter Foundation. Voters can vote for any candidate they want in every race, and the top two finishers advance to November. While a Democrat and Republican ended up facing each other in every statewide election in 2014, Alexander said the   system has shaken up many local races. ”We have seen a number of contests where, in the general election, you have a Democrat vs. Democrat, or occasionally a Republican vs. Republican. And that can make those contests more competitive,” she said. Of course, if you don’t happen to be a member of the party with two candidates on the fall ballot,   may leave you feeling more excluded than a closed primary. There is a big catch in California  —   the state’s upcoming presidential primary is still partially closed. That could cause confusion for independent Sanders supporters, who will have to specifically ask for a separate Democratic ballot. Sanders may ask for big changes to the primary system at the Democratic National Convention this summer. Seth Masket is skeptical that the party would push for national changes, but suggested what that might look like. ”They could put a lot of pressure on state parties to comply with that,” he said. ”They could say, look, if you still want your full share of delegates in the next election, you better sign onto this.” But elections are run by states, and most state legislatures don’t seem to be too interested in changing their primaries. About 50 bills are introduced across the country each year to change the process, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and most don’t go anywhere  —   only one in ten bills affecting primary voting typically end up becoming law. A push to give Colorado an open presidential primary, for instance, died in the state Senate earlier this month. In fact, just one state legislature has changed how its primaries work in recent years, and Sanders fans wouldn’t much care for it: Idaho went from an open system to a closed one."
"The NBA is a league of millionaires, where even the   benchwarmer earns more than $500, 000 a season. But away from the spotlight, hundreds of players are striving to break in, grinding in the minor league basketball trenches of the    —   ”D” for development. They play for teams like the Canton Charge in Ohio, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ affiliate. During a   season that stretched through cities like Bakersfield and Grand Rapids, there was one shot that stood out  —   for both the team and the player who made it. The moment was a single, high arcing jump shot. John Holland has made countless of them in his life: on playgrounds, alone shooting in gyms, in high school and college games, and playing overseas. But none compare to the shot Holland took in Portland, Maine, on April 7  —   the very last shot the    would make for the Canton Charge. ’This Is The Grind, Chasing The Dream’ There are some things you should know about Holland. He was not groomed from early childhood to be a professional basketball player. His high school in the Bronx was known for its academics more than for sports. And he wasn’t recruited by major college programs. ”Coming out of high school I didn’t have any offers, Division I offers,” he says. ”I thought I was good. Nobody else really on the Division I level thought I was good enough.” Holland landed at Boston University, a Division I school but hardly a basketball powerhouse. After college, he signed with professional teams in France, Spain and Turkey. He made six figures, but the moves didn’t get him any closer to the NBA. He figured his best shot was to come back to the States, and that’s how he wound up in Canton, in the   making $19, 000. ”Sometimes it’s about more than money, it’s about the dream,” he says. ”And this year, this is what it’s about. This is the grind, chasing the dream.” Holland lives outside of Canton, about an hour’s drive south of Cleveland. He shares a townhouse with a teammate, and his life is hardly what one would consider glamorous  —   especially for a professional athlete. There’s practice,   and film sessions at a nearby community center, and the games themselves. Beyond that, the guys spend a lot of their free time just hanging out at the complex where many of them live. It’s February, predictably cold and snowy. Mike Dunigan, a teammate, has come over to make a pasta dinner and watch a game with Holland and his roommate. But there’s a mess in the sink, and Dunigan draws the line: ”No way, I’m not doing those dishes.” So the task falls to Holland. It’s a risk, choosing the   when you can earn a lot more money playing overseas. Only a small fraction of   players get NBA  . And for players at Holland’s position, the competition is fierce. ”I’m a guard, dime a dozen,” he says. ”We’ll see what happens when it’s all said and done. But it’s also a thing where it could end at any second.” As the season winds down, just one of his teammates gets a   a player with previous NBA experience. Holland is just under the radar: not the highest scorer on the team, but consistently good, helping Canton to a   winning streak and a spot in the   playoffs. ’An Amazing Moment’ Holland’s pivotal shot for the Canton Charge comes during the second game of the team’s playoff series against the Maine Red Claws, the Boston Celtics’   affiliate. The game is close throughout. Holland makes two crucial   shots to keep the pressure on the Red Claws. With Canton up by one and less than a minute to go, the team’s point guard passes to Holland. He’s behind the   line. The   shot clock ticks toward zero. A defender  —   a former Celtics player who’s     —   is draped all over Holland, who’s 2 inches shorter. There’s no other option: He has to let it fly. Holland goes straight up  —   his shot swishes through the net. It clinches the game, and the series, for Canton. The excited    announcer compares the ”unbelievable shot” to the dramatic basket by Villanova that won this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament. ”It felt good when I released it,” Holland says later. ”It was an amazing shot, an amazing moment. One that I’m going to remember forever now.” Amazing, especially, because of what happens next: Three days after the shot, as he’s about to take a nap, Holland gets a   call. It’s his agent: John, you’re going to the NBA, to the Boston Celtics. ”I think I just sat back and screamed,” Holland says. ”I was just happy. I just screamed in happiness. Then I called my parents. Called my girlfriend. Called everybody.” Beating The Odds, For Now, It’s impossible to know whether Holland would have been called up by the NBA if he hadn’t made the shot. NBA scouts and officials regularly watch   games looking for players who can help their teams. But Holland was signed by the Celtics, whose   team Holland beat with his shot. Mike Gansey is general manager of the Canton Charge. ”I’m sure that helped him with . .. whoever from the Celtics (was) watching, and saying, hey, this guy beat us up pretty good, why don’t we have him join us,” Gansey says. The   couldn’t have come at a better time for Holland, because at age 27, the biological clock is ticking if you’re trying to crack into the NBA. ”In basketball,” Holland says, ”life is short.” And the odds are long  —   but for now, Holland has beaten them. He made $25, 000 with the Celtics for two games and the playoffs, more than his salary for the entire   season. He has a contract to play for the Celtics for next season, though it isn’t guaranteed.  The Celtics lost in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Holland played a grand total of one minute. But that’s one minute more than he’d ever played in the NBA. Next season, he’ll have a shot at turning that single minute into many."
"Baltimore police Officer Edward Nero has been found not guilty of all four misdemeanor charges he faced in connection with the arrest of Freddie Gray. Gray died on April 19, 2015, after suffering injuries while in police custody. Following the ruling, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie   said in a statement, ”This is our American system of justice and police officers must be afforded the same justice system as every other citizen in the city, state, and country.” Outside the courthouse, about a dozen protesters gathered. Once news of the verdict made its way through the crowd, they began chanting, ”Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail!” The Rev. Westley West, a   activist in Baltimore, looked shocked. He was angry. ”[Baltimore] should be upset,” he said. ”They should also let their voice be heard. Take to the streets. How much longer are we gonna lay down and let the same thing to keep happening?” Nero was not charged directly with Gray’s death. As the   reported when the bench trial began, he faced charges of   assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment. Nero, 30, was accused of negligence for failing to buckle Gray into a seat in the police van. Gray’s neck was broken during transport while he was handcuffed and shackled, but not buckled in. One unconventional element of the case against Nero has drawn attention: Nero was accused of assaulting Gray, 25, by arresting him without probable cause. ”Nero’s defense has said they can find no other case of an officer being prosecuted like that,” NPR’s Jennifer Ludden reported earlier this month. Multiple police officers face charges in connection with Gray’s death, including charges of manslaughter and murder. Nero is the second of the officers to be brought to court the first trial, of Officer William Porter, ended in a hung jury. As Nero left the courthouse, the group of protesters followed him. Tina Thompson, 29, screamed that he should be ashamed. As he entered a parking garage, with other officers surrounding him, Thompson was overcome with emotion. She doubled over near the sidewalk. She said she felt like throwing up. She cried. ”He’s just walking around, looking like he’s OK,” she said. ”You killed somebody! You killed somebody’s child.”"
"President Obama announced Monday that the U. S. is fully lifting a    arms embargo against Vietnam. The embargo on lethal military equipment had been partially lifted in 2014 now it will be raised fully, the White House says. The president spoke about the decision from Hanoi, during the first day of a weeklong trip to Asia. ”As with all our defense partners, sales will need to still meet strict requirements, including those related to human rights,” Obama said at a joint news conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang. ”But this change will ensure that Vietnam has access to the equipment it needs to defend itself and removes a lingering vestige of the Cold War. It also underscores the commitment of the United States to a fully normalized relationship with Vietnam, including strong defense ties with Vietnam and this region for the long term.” Michael Sullivan, reporting for NPR from Hanoi, tells us that Vietnam had been looking for an end to the embargo for years. ”But some both in the U. S. and Vietnam argued the embargo should remain until the   state improved its human rights record,” Sullivan says. The Associated Press notes that in his speech Monday, Obama largely avoided the issue of how Vietnam treats political prisoners: ”Obama steered clear of harsh condemnation of what critics see as Vietnam’s abysmal treatment of dissidents, describing instead modest progress on rights. . .. Activists said his decision to lift the embargo destroyed the best U. S. leverage for pushing Vietnam on abuse.” Obama’s visit to Vietnam is meant to strengthen the bond between the two countries as regional anxiety grows over China’s activities in the South China Sea, Sullivan reports. He notes that China ”has reclaimed several contested reefs, constructing   airfields its neighbors and the U. S. view as a potential threat.” But the White House maintains that’s not the motivation for the lifting of the arms embargo on Vietnam. ”President Obama insists the decision to allow arms sales to Vietnam after a  ’s prohibition is not intended as a provocative response to China’s growing military might,” NPR’s Scott Horsley reports. ”Instead, he says it’s a nod towards the deepening and broadening ties between the U. S. and Hanoi, 20 years after the resumption of normal diplomatic relations.” Relations between the two countries were normalized in 1995. There’s a growing commercial bond between the two countries, Scott notes. Both imports and exports between the U. S. and Vietnam have been steadily increasing in recent years."
"Six years of your life. Or 2, 190 days. That’s about how long the average woman will spend having her periods. For some women, that’s too many days, too many periods. More women in their 20s and 30s are choosing contraception that may suppress their menstrual cycles, says Dr. Elizabeth Micks, who runs an   clinic at the University of Washington in Seattle. ”In general, I think views are changing really rapidly,” Micks says. ”That need to have regular periods is not just in our society anymore.” With traditional birth control, a woman takes a hormone pill for 21 days to stop her cycle. Then she takes a sugar pill for a week, so she can have what looks like a period. But Micks says, physiologically this isn’t a real period at all. And it isn’t necessary. ”There’s absolutely no medical need to have a period when you’re on contraception,” she says. So why have women been having all these ”fake” periods for decades? ”It’s actually a historical thing,” she says. One of the doctors who helped invent the pill was Catholic. He thought the pope might accept the pill if it looked like women were having periods. But the Catholic church never came around to the pill. And when doctors actually asked women if they wanted to have these fake periods, many said they didn’t. Today women have many options if they want to try to suppress their cycles. There’s the hormonal IUD, an arm implant and a hormone shot. They can also take some types of birth control pills continuously. Use of the IUD and implant has risen nearly fivefold in the past decade, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. And two top medical organizations  —   the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics  —   recommend these forms of contraception as the top choice for young women who want birth control. One study found the IUD and implant were nearly 20 times more effective at preventing pregnancies than birth control pills. But none of 